Reports of alien sightings to be binned in Britain

LONDON - Britain’s defence ministry is fed up with mounting reports of alien sightings and says it will destroy all future reports in order to save staff time.

Reports of sightings have been kept for 30 days before being binned after Britain’s official UFO (unidentified flying object) investigation unit and hotline were closed down in December.

The ministry received 634 reports of sightings from people last year, the highest total since 1978 when there were 750, and well above the average of about 150 reports a year over the past decade.

Now, a secret memo obtained by a journalism lecturer has revealed official exasperation at having to deal with UFO reports.

“The dedicated UFO hotline answer phone service and e-mail address serve no defence purpose, and merely encourage the generation of correspondence of no defence value,” says the memo obtained by David Clarke of Sheffield Hallam University under the country’s freedom of information act.

“Accordingly, these facilities should be withdrawn as soon as possible.

“Reported sightings received from other sources should be answered by a standard letter and should be retained for 30 days and then destroyed, largely removing any future FoI [Freedom of Information] liability and negating the need to release future files post-November 30, 2009,” the memo says.

Clarke said: “This is the final rubber-stamping of the decision - they just want to totally wash their hands of the UFO business altogether. It’s just been a millstone around their necks ever since the Cold War. They have decided that whatever they do, it reflects badly on them.”

Britain’s defence ministry has decided to make its historic UFO records public and has released five instalments so far through the National Archives - about a third of the total.