The UFO report: A British Perspective 1988 – GRAHAM and MARK BIRDSALL
Graham and Mark Birdsall have been interested in UFOs for many years, and in 1981 formed the York shire UFO Society. Despite its title, namely that of a group which op erates out of Britain’s largest county, YUFOS has succeeded in establishing itself as one of Europe’s leading organizations, with a flourishing member ship.
The Birdsall brothers both work in the printing industry, and devote most of their spare time to the society and its bi-monthly journal, Quest Interna tional (see Appendix) .
The illustrations are by Mark Birdsall.
Britain, with a population of nearly 60 million, has the highest number of reports in proportion to the rest of the ·world. One of the reasons behind this extraordinary fact is the number of dedicated researchers who actively pursue the phenomenon on behalf of several organizations, one of which is the Yorkshire UFO Society.
It is here in the United Kingdom that our active investigators have found ample evidence to convince us that we are facing a genuine phenomenon that simply cannot be dismissed by this or any other government as being merely misidentifications or products of the mind. Nor do we believe that perfectly honest and respectable people, from a police officer of twenty-five years’ service, through to the average man and woman with able background and character, are always mistaken in their conviction that they have encountered something that defies logic. · When one speaks with police officers, who are generally the most objective of people, and listens to their description of a UFO encounter that leaves them nonplussed and clearly shocked by their experience, one begins to question those in the UFO community and elsewhere who insist that we are dealing at all times with simple misidentifications of aircraft lights, meteorological phenomena, astronomical events, or even some form of psy chic experience.
We have every confidence in our researchers’ ability to get at the truth, but some UFO groups continually mock those very people who risk ridicule and sometimes their livelihood for having the courage to describe their encounters with the unknown.
As an organization, we are careful to protect the identity of all witnesses who claim to have confronted some form of UFO. It is a sad reflection on ufology that some investigators clamor to involve what is, after all , a very skeptical media. In doing so, mostly for private gain, it is at the expense of the witnesses, who suddenly find them selves thrown into the public limelight and wish they had never agreed to disclosing their information in the first place. There is intense rivalry, almost bordering on the fringes of common decency, amongst many UFO groups and self-made experts, to be the first to a UFO case, to be the first to research it, to be the first to relate details to the media, and to hell with the consequences.
British UFO research has often dealt with some of the most important events to have occurred during the last four de cades. It has failed, however, to deliver much in the way of real progress, simply because it has never got its act together.
The most notable success in the UFO field of literature in recent years was Above Top Secret, whose author Timothy Good, a great supporter of our organization, set out to redress the balance. It is no secret that Timothy con ducted much of his research practically isolated from the major U.K. groups. The result was unquestionably the best work ever written on this subject.
Timothy presented a calculated appraisal of the phenomenon, and in doing so proved that many governments both here and abroad were and still are actively engaged in suppressing known facts relating to their own research from the public. Using hitherto secret official documents, all relating to the UFO subject, he exposed the myth once and for all that UFOs do not interest government agencies, and therefore must be dismissed as being mere fanciful tales of imagination.
Our organization has centered its activities on similar areas of research. Here in Yorkshire, for example, is the ultra-sensitive Distant Early Warning base of RAF Fyling dales. This complex can detect any item in orbit around our planet, from I ,500 satellites to 15 ,000 items of space debris. It is known, for example, that the base can detect an object as small as a tea tray above Moscow, so one would think it highly likely that if structured UFOs are indeed entering or leaving Earth’s atmosphere at will, they would know about it. Perhaps not. At this, and other key sensitive bases within these shores, personnel operate on a “need-to-know” basis. At the top-secret listening post at Menwith Hill, close to Harrogate in North Yorkshire, and operated by over I ,000 members of the U.S. National Security Agency, personnel come under many security classifications, none more sensitive than “S.C.I. ” (Senitive Compartmented Information).
During his research for the book Deep Black, author William E. Burrows interviewed General Paul D. Wag oner, then head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command. It is to here that all data from RAF Fylingdales is sent. The General was invited to comment on the existence of a top-secret imaging satellite codenamed KH- 11 .
He refused point blank, and then went on to explain that the KH- 11 project was more sensitive than the “Top Secret” category, and came into the classification known as S.C.I. Staff who work on such “black” projects (the General included) come under this classification. They are given only enough access in order to do whatever is necessary to complete their task.
On his own admission, General Wagoner is allowed to know as much data about ‘ ‘blacker’ ‘ than top-secret projects as his immediate superiors will allow.• It follows therefore that officers and personnel within security agencies are themselves allowed to know only so much. How is the young RAF operator to know if the object seen over Moscow is just a tea tray?
For as long as we can remember here in Britain, the Ministry of Defense has taken the view that until such time as UFOs constitute a threat to the defense of the realm, no active research is being undertaken by Her Majesty’s Armed Forces, or any other body. The MoD’s official clearing house for all UFO reports within Whitehall is publicly known as AS2 (Secretariat, Air Staff 2), where public and official reports are purportedly routed, be they from the police or civilian pilots, etc.