Remembering Nick Pope

by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear  Last week, Nick Pope, full name Nicholas George Pope, passed away on April 6th at the age of 60. A fixture in the UFO scene, Pope first gained notoriety with his 1996 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 1991 t0 1994. 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 and association with the more sensationalistic aspects of UFOlogy, 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 2A at the Ministry of Defense. He had been with the MoD since 1985, 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 Good who wrote the Foreword 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 30 reports to the MoD of bright lights over the Southwest England in areas that included RAF Shawbury and RAF Cosford, overnight from March 30-31, 1993. 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 24, 1994, 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 Bonnybridge, 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 “convinced by the sheer weight of evidence” that some of what are seen in the sky “are extraterrestrial in origin.” After moving on from Sec (AS) 2a 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 14 of the pdf) of one of these in the article by Mike Merritt headlined “Expert in UFO Probe on Isle” published in the November 4, 1996, Sun. According to Merritt, “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 2006, and in 2007, the Ministry made the decision to release its UFO files. Pope describes this on his website, Nick Pope in 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 P.R., 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, redaction, and digitizing which led to the first group of documents being released in 2008 and the final group in 2019. 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 2019, he began appearing as a regular guest on The Basement Office with Steven Greenstreet starting with the first episode which premiered on May 29th. 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. Besides Open Skies, Closed Minds, his other two UFO books are The Uninvited, a book about abductions published in 1997, and Encounter in Rendlesham Forest written with John Burroughs and Jim Penniston (both USAF Ret.) about the reported lights and UFO landing near RAF Woodbridge in 1980 that was published in 2014. R. I. P. | Check out Martin’s Tribute HERE