Speaker 1: Remembering Nick Pope by UFO history buff and author Charles
Lear last week. Nick Pope full name Nicholas George Pope,
passed on April sixth at the age of sixty. A
fixture in the UFO scene, Pope first gained notoriety with
his nineteen ninety six book Open Skies, Closed Minds. Besides
providing an overview of UFO history up to that point,
the book has an autobiographical account of his time as
the head of the UFO Desk at the Ministry of
Defense from nineteen ninety one to nineteen ninety four. After
the book came out, he became a go to UFO
expert whenever an authoritative comment was needed to punch up
a news story. He maintained his interest and a media presence,
and was sought after as a speaker at conventions and
a commentator in various documentaries. By the time of his passing,
he was a well known personality in the ufotainment industry,
having appeared regularly on Ancient Aliens and at Contact in
the Desert. In the midst of his notoriety, in association
with the more sensationalistic aspects of eufology, his commentary seemed
to be heartfelt and true to his actual beliefs. According
to Pope in his book, he was a skeptic before
he was assigned to the UFO Desk in Secretariat Air Staff,
Department two A at the Ministry of Defense. He had
been with the MOD since nineteen eighty five, and personnel
were shifted to different sections every three to four years
as a matter of policy to give them a breadth
of knowledge and experience. When he was assigned to deal
with UFO reports, he took it upon himself to learn
as much as he could about the subject, and the
comprehensive historical overview in the book shows the depth of
his research. Besides studying UFO history, Pope reached out to
British UFO researchers such as Timothy Goode, who wrote the
forward of the book, and established relationships with organizations such
as the British UFO Research Organization. This set him apart
from his predecessors and helped diminish the US and them
perception between the MOD and the British UFO community. Pope's
assignment came when the X files was popular, and he
describes his co workers calling him spooky and whistling the
X Files theme when passing him in the hallway. He
was fully aware how unusual his job was, and when Focus,
the mod's in house journal started a regular feature on
unusual jobs within the organization, he was the first person
to be profiled. Pope presents cases he looked into, and
the most notable of these was what has become known
as the Cosford Incident, which involved over thirty reports to
the MOD of bright lights over the southwest England in
areas that included RAF Shawbury and RAF Cosford overnight from
March thirtieth to thirty first, nineteen ninety three. According to
him in his book, the MOD was asked to take
part in the production of a central television program on UFOs.
While such a request would normally have been refused, Pope
persuaded his superiors that it would be good to explain
the ministry's policy on UFOs on camera and lay to
rest a few misconceptions. On April twenty fourth, nineteen ninety four,
he was interviewed by producer Lawrence Moore and freely admitted
that many of the cases on file cannot be explained
today in conventional scientific terms. Just before his book came out.
Pope made his first BBC television appearance on the Newsnight program.
A segment was devoted to him and his book and
begins with an actor dressed like him on a shadowy
office set reading from the book over ominous background music.
The actor reads from the section describing cases Pope looked into,
and witness interviews are presented, covering incidents in Bonniebridge, Scotland
and Dorset, England. Pope is then interviewed and he is
remarkably confident and articulate. In this very early television appearance.
The interviewer, Peter Snow, is noticeably taken aback when Pope
says that he is con convinced by the sheer weight
of evidence that some of what are seen in the
sky are extraterrestrial in origin. After moving on from section
two A with what he describes in the book as
a promotion, Pope continued investigating UFO reports in his spare time,
and there is an early account page fourteen of the
PDF of one of these in the article by Mike
Merritt headlined Expert and UFO Probe on Isle, published in
the November fourth, nineteen ninety six Sun. According to merit
top UFO hunter Nick Pope is probing a mystery mid
air explosion which sparked a massive search nine days ago.
Pope is quoted as saying, this sighting off the Isle
of Lewis could be a UFO. I would not rule
it out until I look at the reports I have
asked for. The caption under his picture at the top
of the column reads Pope former MOD Man, which is
inaccurate because he was still with the MOD at that time.
Pope left the MOD in two thousand and six, and
in two thousand and seven the Ministry made the decision
to release its UFO files. Pope describes this on his
website Nick Pope and the section titled mod UFO Files.
According to him, there were three reasons for the decision.
The French had released their UFO files that year, it
would be good pr and there had recently been a
huge number of Freedom of Information Act requests for UFO
related documents. Pope describes the laborious process of review, reaction
and digitizing which led to the first group of documents
being released in two thousand and eight, in the final
group in twenty nineteen. As for his involvement, Pope says
that the staff at the National Archives asked him to
select cases to highlight in the media, and that he
did literally hundreds of interviews across all media and thus
became the public face of the file release project, as
can be seen in the section titled Spokesperson on his website.
Pope embraced his fame as a UFO expert and capitalized
on it, working in film, television, video games, and advertising,
besides his appearances on sensational programs such as Ancient Aliens.
In twenty nineteen, he began appearing as a regular guests
on the Basement Office with Stephen green Street, starting with
a first episode which premiered on May twenty nine. While
still advocating for the extraterrestrial hypothesis and displaying obvious enthusiasm
when discussing cases that he has a personal interest in,
his commentary is restrained and well informed. Pope wrote a
total of six books in his lifetime, which include three
books on UFOs, two science fiction novels, and one action thriller,
The Side's Open Skies Closed Minds. His other two UFO
books are The Uninvited, a book about abductions published in
nineteen ninety seven, and encounter in Rendelsham Forrest, written with
John Burrows and Jim Peniston, both USAF retired about the
reported lights and UFO landing near raf Woodbridge in nineteen eighty,
that was published in twenty fourteen. Rest in Peace, Nick Pope.
Charles Lear is the author of The Flying Saucer Investigators
in its second edition on Amazon dot com.