Earth

I
n any democratic society, a process for the proper evaluation of evidence
is essential, usually within the context of criminal or civil proceedings or of public or governmental inquiries. We are used to assessing the credibility and reliability of witnesses and of seeking corroborative evidence where possible. We know that even honest witnesses may be mistaken, and many people have been sentenced to life imprisonment or even the death penalty on the strength of a single uncorroborated witness.

The history of the UFO phenomenon, going back to Biblical times, is essentially a record of human testimony of lights, objects, or events that cover the spectrum from the unusual to the high strangeness of close encounters. No doubt the same can be said of paranormal phenomena. This record has its share of charlatans, those who are mistaken, and perhaps those who have been deceived by othersâor even by themselves. But the fascinating feature of ufology is the core of honest, intelligent people in different eras and from different cultures all over the world, including many who are scientifically or aeronautically trained, who describe very similar objects or similar experiences of high strangeness which on any basis cannot be the product of a “black” research program. In many cases there are multiple witnesses or there is corroborative evidence in the form of photographic images, radar readings, or physical traces. For the lawyer,
who too often has to make bricks out of straw, such a body of material represents a refreshingly strong case, particularly if examined in the same way in which we examine evidence in other contexts.

We cannot, of course, though, accept these accounts at face value. In the world we inhabit, all is often not what it seems, so how much more so in the world of ufology where our reference points, let alone our vocabulary, are wholly inadequate? This was the hard lesson of Shakespeare's Macbeth who, having interpreted literally the predictions of the three ethereal witches that strongly implied his future safety, was left dejectedly to ponder that the “instruments of darkness” often “win us to our harm” by half-truths and “with honest trifles.”

And so to the question asked as long ago as 1955 by Captain Edward Ruppelt (the former head of the U.S. Air Force Project Bluebook): “What constitutes proof? Does a UFO have to land at the River Entrance to the Pentagon, near the Joint Chiefs of Staff offices?” The answer is no easier to provide after more than fifty years of further reports and investigations, despite the advent of the digital camera. UFOs seem to be a phenomenon that coexists with us and which is as baffling to an Israelite in the Sinai desert, or a medieval monk, or a modern fighter pilot or astronaut. That we are not alone is no longer in doubt. But at present that still remains an inference rather than a proven fact.

There are many powerful institutions that would balk at recognizing such proof even if a landing did occur at the Pentagon on prime-time television. The risk of destabilizing organized government and religion would be too great, and the risk of advanced technology falling into the wrong hands would be greater. In that event, who is to call the shots on whether proof exists or not, especially if key evidence is to be concealed or confuted? If we cannot expect official and honest recognition, then maybe only the people can decide on the basis of the “evidence” that is placed before them. Maybe the much-criticized “new age” culture is the only way to combat the clandestine secrecy that certainly surrounds this subject.

We owe the few reliable researchers like Timothy Good a huge acknowledgment because they keep the record of this phenomenon, which may be all that we can do, and they get it into the public consciousness. I greatly admire the quality of his books and his perseverance. And I
strongly suspect that the real value of his work will only be fully appreciated in years to come.

Jonathan Caplan
is a well-known lawyer practicing in London and has acted in many high-profile cases. He was appointed a Queen's Counsel in recognition of his standing in the profession. He has been interested in ufology for over forty years.

Introduction

A
liens “have landed on Earth, infiltrated British and American nuclear
missile sites and sabotaged weapons, according to U.S. Air Force officers,” declared
The Daily Telegraph
in 2010, citing an extraordinary press conference held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. “Six retired officers and one former non-commissioned officer claim to have gathered witness testimonies from more than 120 military personnel revealing the infiltration of nuclear sites by aliens as recently as 2003. In some cases, nuclear missiles supposedly malfunctioned while a disc-shaped object hovered nearby.”
1

“We saw this thingâit was coming right at us and was as low as the car and huge,” reported Bruce and Priscilla Wetherill in January 2012, two years after an incident which had occurred between Gainford and Barnard Castle, in the Teesdale area of England's Northern Pennines. “It was very frightening,” admitted Priscilla. “Bruce kept driving but we both ducked down, expecting it to hit us. I thought, âThis is it. We've had it.'”

Described as saucer-shaped, dark on top but glowing underneath and soundless, the object also had “steel-like tentacles hanging down.” At the last moment, it lifted up and narrowly missed the car before disappearing into the sky. The couple expected the car roof to have scratches, but none could be seen. “I'm a realist, but I know what I saw and it was unbelievable,”
said Mr. Wetherill. “If I lived to two hundred I would never see anything like it again.” The couple came forward two years after the event, following a spate of sightings in Teesdale.
2

Roy Shaw did not believe in aliens, ghosts, flying saucersâor anything he could not touch or explain. That is, until 2010âaround the same period as the Wetherills' experience. At about 21:30 on February 6th, he encountered a large craft of unknown origin while walking his dog in Phear Park, Exmouth, Devon.

“The object was round in shape and about thirty feet in diameter and a hundred feet long, with blue and red flashing lights on its perimeter, and it appeared to land at the top end of the park by the bowling green,” he described to local reporter Becca Gliddon. “My dog started to growl when what I can only describe as a white shape came toward us. It was about four feet high and seemed to be translucent, and moved very slowly toward us. I was transfixed because it made a droning soundâ¦. I didn't know where the sound was coming from but it was coming straight toward me. I immediately ran back down through the park.”

Mr. Shaw said the UFO seemed to hover over the hedge of the bowling green, then flew horizontally from left to right before immediately shooting off at high speed back to the left, at a 45-degree angle. It had “appeared from nowhere”âhe did not see it actually land or fly overhead. His normally placid border collie dog ran away from it after baring its teeth at the approaching object. “I twisted my ankle when I ran like hell. My dog Syd kept whimpering and looking out of the bedroom window toward the park until at least two in the morning.

“I still can't believe what I saw and I am still in a state of shock. Syd doesn't like going back up there. Something put him off. Everybody thinks you are a crank when you report something like this. I am an engineer. I like to touch and feel things. If I can touch it, it exists, but there's no way I can explain this.”
3

Another dog-walker told Roy Shaw the following morning that he had also witnessed the incident.
4

In August 2010, the Ministry of Defence released another of its voluminous (if often innocuous) files on reported UFO sightings and related correspondence. True to form,
The Times
remains behind the timesâat
least from an editorial standpointâdebunking the subject in its tendentious commentary on leading articles:

“In reality, there is exactly no evidence that Earth has ever been visited by spacecraft from other worlds, but reports of UFO sightings do form a pattern. They manifest the boundlessness of human credulity, which takes shifting forms in different ages but has a stubborn irrationalism at its coreâ¦. A culture of pseudoscience impoverishes the condition of the masses as well as the life of the mind.”
5

In late December 1980, an extraordinary series of incidents occurred in Rendlesham Forest, adjoining the twin U.S. Air Forces Europe NATO bases of Bentwaters and Woodbridge (81st Tactical Fighter Wing), near Ipswich, Suffolk. This well-known caseânow dubbed “Britain's Roswell”âwas first revealed in a front-page story in 1983.
6
On several nights, security patrolmen observed small, remotely controlled probes, which at one stage beamed rays of light at the Bentwaters nuclear weapons storage area (where at the time more nuclear weapons were stored than anywhere else in Europe). Lieutenant Colonel Charles I. Halt, a deputy base commander at the time, witnessed a number of these events. Most dramatically, an elongated triangular-shaped craft (associated with the smaller probes) landed in the forest in full view of a couple of security personnel, Staff Sergeant Jim Penniston and Airman First Class John Burroughs.
7
In response to Col. Halt's official memorandum to the Ministry of Defence at the time, detailing some of these events, the MoD has gone on the record stating repeatedly that the incidents were of “no defence significance.” At the Washington conference cited earlier, Halt hit back:

“The security services of both the United States and the United Kingdom have attempted, both then and now, to subvert the significance of what occurred at RAF Bentwaters by the use of well-practiced methods of disinformation. The UFOs I saw were structured machines moving under intelligent control and operating beyond the realm of anything I have ever seen before or since. I believe the objects I saw were extra-terrestrial in origin.”
8

As admitted in Ministry of Defence documents released in early 2011, certain intelligence papers relating to the Rendlesham Forest incident have gone missing. “The files reveal the MoD received a request for its own records of the incident in 2000, but when officials looked they discovered a
âhuge' gap where defence intelligence files relating to it should be,” reported Neil Henderson of BBC News. “The hunt generated a series of notes, with one official speculating that âit could be interpreted to mean that a deliberate attempt had been made to eradicate the records covering this incident.'”
9

In 2011, U.S. Air Force Colonel Theodore “Ted” Conrad, base commander of Bentwaters and Woodbridge at the time of the multiple Rendlesham Forest incidents, provided David Clarke, a skeptic and adviser on UFO matters to the National Archives, with a series of statements condemning Halt's testimony. “We saw nothing that resembled Lt. Col. Halt's descriptions either in the sky or on the ground,” he claimed. “We had people in position to validate Halt's narrative, but none of them could.” There was no “hard evidence” of anything suspicious, he continued, adding that the Geiger counter radiation readings at the landing site were later found to indicate “normal” levels of radiation. All of which is strongly disputed by the witnesses and by Nick Pope, a former MoD UFO investigator who later requisitioned the relevant data proving otherwise.

Halt “should be ashamed and embarrassed by his allegation that his country and England both conspired to deceive their citizens over this issue,” Conrad's diatribeârevealed in
The Sunday Telegraph
âcontinued. He also disputed the subsequent testimony of Penniston, a security policeman who was in the woods on the first night of the sightings and has since claimed he touched the alien spacecraft. “Although he cannot explain the subsequent accounts of his subordinates,” reported Jasper Copping, “Col. Conrad said he thought the incident may have been a hoax.”

“I don't think anyone, least of all Conrad, doubts that Halt and his men saw âsomething,'” said Clarke. “They had an extraordinary experience [which] would remain extraordinary regardless of whether ultimately it was a lighthouse or poachers' lanternsâwhich has also been suggested. But Col. Conrad is responsible for the only proper investigation of this incident. He went to look and if there was anything to be seen, I cannot see how he could not have seen it.”
10

I have remained in contact with Col. Charles “Chuck” Halt periodically since the Rendlesham case was first revealed in 1983. “The fact is, [Conrad] never investigated,” he told me when the article was published:

“I took Penniston, Burroughs and the others to him and then took him out
into the forest (with his whole family). He didn't even know where the site was but now claims he was out there the day beforeâ¦. Up until now he denied being in contact with me on that night and now he says he was, and was out in the yard. I guess he fails to remember telling me on the radio he could see something. He also doesn't know U.S. and U.K. radar picked up an object and the Bentwaters Tower Operators saw the object streak by and go down into the forest. My memo was typed in our office and he reviewed it and showed it to [Colonel Gordon] Williams before it was given to [Squadron Leader] Don Moreland. He and Williams wanted to stay at a distanceâ¦.”
11

“Ted Conrad is either having memory problems, has his head in the sand, or continuing the cover-up,” wrote Halt (in part) to Jasper Copping. “When I talked with Gordon Williams, neither he nor Conrad wanted their name mentioned with the incident. Thus, I was directed to get with Don Moreland (RAF) and see what he wanted as it was to become a British affair. I did so and he asked for a memo. I wrote it and it was typed by Conrad's Secretary. Conrad read it, showed it to Williams, and both approved. It was never meant for public disseminationâ¦. I suppose having to look for details or the truth is less important than the âstory.' It's sad, but I've come to understand how the mainstream press works. Truth gives way to the âStory.' Prove me wrong.”
12
The letter was not published.

“I've heard many people say that it's time for the government to appoint an agency to investigate,” said Halt during a conference on the subject at the National Atomic Testing Museum, New Mexico, in association with the Smithsonian Institution, in September 2012. “Folks, there
is
an agency, a very close-held, compartmentalized agency that's been investigating this for years, and there's a very active role played by many of our intelligence agencies that probably don't even know the details of what happens once they collect the data and forward itâ¦. In the last couple of years, the British have released a ton of information, but has anybody ever seen what their conclusions were or heard anything about Bentwaters officially? When the documents were released, the timeframe when I was involved in the incident is missing. Nothing else is missingâ¦.”
13

In September 2010, a major airport in China was reportedly forced to close down following an intrusion by a UFO. The “flat and tubular” object hovered two miles from Bootee in Inner Mongolia. “Astonished officials say
it then zoomed in to circle the airport before suddenly vanishing,” reported
The Sun
. “Three flights from Beijing and Shanghai were diverted to nearby airports. It is the third mysterious UFO sighting this year to have resulted in Chinese airfields being closed. Xiaoshan, in Zhejiang province, shut for a few days in July after an âoddly-shaped, twinkling bright light' was seen nearby. Another scare was reported in the summer at Hong Kong.

“The latest UFO was spotted by air traffic controllers in Inner Mongolia's capital Hoot on radar screens. But they could not make radio contact with it and immediately warned Bootee. A spokeswoman said: âAircraft had to land at secondary airports to avoid a collision.' The airport was closed for around an hour last month. The Chinese authorities have refused to comment but some experts believe the three sightings could be evidence of a new Chinese military aircraft.”

Asked for a comment, Nick Pope declared: “Whatever you think about UFOs, there are serious national security and air safety issues involved.”
14

On August 3, 2011, Mike Sewell, a sports journalist for BBC Radio 5 Live, described his encounter with a flying craft while driving through the village of Cottered, near Buntingford, Hertfordshire, at 04:15 that morning. “There was this big bright light in the sky descending toward the road,” he reported to Radio 5 Live presenter Nicky Campbell via his cell phone shortly afterwards. “It was certainly a kind ofâand I dread saying thisâdisc shape. As it got closer, it then banked to the left [and] went across the countryside and just sat or circled a certain area above the field. I could see underneath it. It wasn't an aeroplane, and it wasn't a helicopterâ¦. It had several lights flashing all around it.” Underneath could be seen at least two large, soft white panel lights. A driver in front also observed the craft.
15,
16
A few hours later, I was interviewed by Nicky and offered my opinion that the craft might have been “one of ours.”

On June 16, 2012, two glowing unidentified objects were reported to have buzzed the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft a few minutes after its launch in the Gobi Desert. The objects were recorded by an infrared video camera monitoring the launch and spotted on a screen at a control center in Beijing about four minutes after the Long March-2F rocket had blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China's Gansu Province. According to Wang Sichao, an astronomer and UFO expert at Nanjing
Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the objects “couldn't be planes, meteors, birds or separated parts from the rocket.” The Shenzhou-9's crew of three included China's first female astronaut, Liu Yang.
17

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