By: Ron Mckay

IT'S OFFICIAL - there are aliens out there and they have been visiting Earth for years, breaching air defences and endangering national security.

At least this is the belief of a Ministry of Defence official who has investigated more than 600 alleged UFO sightings and had access to all the top-secret departmental files over 40 years. Nick Pope, a 30-year-old civil servant, was in charge of the MoD's X-Files section - prosaically titled Secretariat (Air Staff) 2a - which handles inquiries into unexplained air phenomena. He arrived in 1991 as a sceptic and left three years later convinced.

Mr Pope still works for the Ministry, which stresses that his opinions are his own and are not shared in Whitehall, where the official view is that while we are open-minded about the possible presence of others in our galaxy, there is no proof they have been parking their spaceships on our lawns.

Mr Pope has a book coming out in June based on his MoD experiences, Open Skies, Closed Minds, but when the Observer rang him at his desk in Whitehall he was decidedly close-mouthed. 'It's in my interest that the news interest manifests itself when there is a book on the shelf,' he said.

He did confirm that he now believed in extraterrestrial visitations and that direct experience of investigating sightings had convinced him.

However, the author has been less guarded elsewhere. He spoke at a conference in London last weekend organised by Fortean Times magazine, and even has his own space on the Internet, where he reveals that his departmental colleagues have nicknamed him 'Spooky', the same as Fox Mulder's in the X-Files.

'The official reason why the MoD looks at UFO reports is simply to see whether there is evidence of any threat to the defence of the UK,' he says.

'But how can anybody say there's no threat if they don't know what UFOs are?' Stressing this point to his superiors allowed him to 'investigate UFO sightings and handle policy in this area'.

Speaking at the London 'Unconvention' conference, Mr Pope said he had dealt with more than 200 sightings a year and, during his spell at the department, found around 80 that could not be explained. He believes Britain's most famous alleged sighting, on a December night in 1980 in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, was compelling evidence of visitors from outer space. American airmen from two nearby RAF bases described an object the size of a tank, triangular with three legs and made out of what looked like black glass, which rose slowly upwards, hovered briefly and then shot off at incredible speed.

His book has been vetted by the men from the Ministry ('We're quite relaxed about it,' said a spokesman). But he stressed Mr Pope's job had been purely administrative: 'It was not his job to investigate. I am not aware that our air defence system has ever been penetrated.'

Nonsense, says Mr Pope. 'Not only is the truth out there,' he says 'but it is much stranger than fiction.'

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