Ministry of Defence

He joined the MoD in 1985.

During his time at the MOD he held the pay-grade of Senior Executive Officer, a middle rank in the UK Civil Service. He has also been involved in work on the crises in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He had many different postings and had undertaken a series of jobs within the Department, including work in the Joint Operations Centre during the Gulf War, where he was a briefer in the Air Force Operations Room.

MoD UFO reports

Between 1991 and 1994, he was posted to a division called Secretariat (Air Staff) and was given the designated post of Sec(AS)2a),the main duties of which were dealings with non-operational Royal Air Force overseas activities and red tape for diplomatic for overseas military flights.

In addition to his main duties he was given the more minor task of documenting the UFO phenomenon,mirroring the work done in the US by the now defunct Project Blue Book. Although most of the cases could be explained as misidentifications of known objects and phenomena, he was unable to find a conventional explanation for about 5% of sightings.

He was the Ministry of Defence official responsible for researching and investigating UFOs, alien abductions, crop circles, cattle mutilation and other strange phenomena. His involvement in UFO phenomena within the MOD led to his self-description as the "British Fox Mulder" from the hit television series, The X Files.

As a result of the cases that he worked in Pope became a believer in UFO phenomena, and that UFOs raised serious defence and national security issues.He came across numerous instances where UFOs had reportedly been tracked on radar, leading to jets being scrambled. There were also cases where there had allegedly been near-misses between UFOs and civilian aircraft. All this led him to believe that an extraterrestrial explanation for some sightings such as the so-called Cosford Incident could not be ruled out.

Freelance writer and UFO commentator

In November 2006, he resigned from his post at the MOD, criticizing the MOD and saying the government's "X-Files have been closed down." Although no longer carrying out this sort of work for the government, he continues his research and investigation in a private capacity.

Pope writes a column called "Weird World" for Hot Gossip online magazine and wrote the foreword to Georgina Bruni's book on the Rendlesham Forest Incident, You Can't Tell the People. In March 2006 an article giving his personal view on UFOs appeared in the Ministry of Defence's magazine Focus under the title The Official Who Wants to Believe.

He makes frequent media appearances, including the BBC's Newsnight and Radio 4's Today programme. He has lectured at academic conferences, museums, military bases and the Oxford Union.

He has appeared in numerous TV productions regarding Ufology and in 2007 appeared in an official televised biography called Nick Pope -The man who left the MOD.

Pope has written four books in total as of January 2009 and hundreds of articles relating to Ufology. All of his written works required clearance by the Ministry of Defence prior to publication; this is the case whenever any MOD employee writes a book and does not mean that the MOD in any way endorses his material.

• Open Skies, Closed Minds (ISBN 0-440-23489-1) - first publication and official biography.
• The Uninvited (ISBN 0-440-23487-5) - deals with alien abductions.
• Operation Thunder Child (ISBN 0-684-82442-6 or ISBN 0-671-01835-3)
• Operation Lightning Strike (ISBN 0-7432-0333-X)

Operation Thunder Child and Operation Lightning Strike are science fiction novels based on his government work.

• You Can't Tell the People: The Cover-up of Britain's Roswell (foreword) - ISBN 0-283-06358-0
• A Covert Agenda: British Government's UFO Top Secrets Exposed (Introduction) - ISBN 0-684-81937-6

Nick Pope is currently working with Brigitte Grant on a book - The Alien Within about her UFO and abduction experiences.

He is also working on a Gulf War techno-thriller entitled Desert Fury, which is a speculative novel where things go very differently from what actually happened.

Open Skies, Closed Minds

Open Skies, Closed Minds is Pope's autobiographical account of his interest in ufology.

It provides an overview of the UFO phenomenon, with the emphasis on Pope's three-year tour of duty as the Ministry of Defence's UFO desk officer. It examines a number of well-known UFO cases, including the Roswell crash and the Rendlesham Forest Incident, as well as a number of less well-known cases from the MOD's UFO case-files. Pope also discusses the politics surrounding the way in which those within government and the military view UFO-phenomena.

Operation Thunder Child

Operation Thunder Child is Pope's first novel based on facts he uncovered whilst working for the MOD, UFOs and alien abductions. It was first published in 1999. The book had to be cleared by the Ministry of Defence prior to publication.

The novel can be described a techno-thriller that draws on real crisis-management procedures. In it the government and military are trying to cope with an increasingly intrusive and hostile alien presence. Drawing on government research on UFOs it is a "what if" novel that reflects some of the author's concerns about the defence and national security issues raised by the UFO phenomenon. In this novel Pope speculated that alien bodies (EBE's), had been taken to Porton Down.

The book received mixed reviews, with reviewers both describing it as an "excellent read" and describing the political content of the books as confusing and close to ranting, while other reviewers question the scientific plausibility of aspects of the novel.

Operation Lightning Strike

Published in 2000, it is the sequel to 'Operation Thunder Child'. The limited battles in the previous book give way to all-out war, with the fate of Earth hanging in the balance.

Video clips

Audio clips

• Online audio interview with Nick Pope
• BBC's PM Programme interviews Pope, 10 November 2006

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