British military 'suppressed UFO info' [from CNN]

Wednesday, December 4, 2002 Posted: 6:44 AM EST (1144 GMT) LONDON, England (Reuters) -- The British government tried to cover up one of the country's most famous sightings of an unidentified flying object, a parliamentary watchdog has ruled. The "Rendlesham Files," which were finally published on the Internet on Sunday, contain eyewitness accounts by U.S. Air Force officers at a military base close to Rendlesham Forest, near Ipswich in eastern England, who saw a brilliantly lit object land in the forest in December 1980. The incident is widely regarded as one of the most significant UFO sightings -- the British quivalent of the 1947 incident in which a spacecraft supposedly crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, with aliens aboard. Several people had complained to the British parliamentary ombudsman, Ann Abraham, that the Ministry of Defence had refused to divulge full details of the Rendlesham witness accounts. Abraham ruled the ministry had "withheld three documents relating to reported sightings of unexplained aerial phenomena in 1980 -- the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident." A ministry spokeswoman said the files had not been deliberately withheld and had always been available to anyone who asked. In late December 1980, U.S. officers investigating what they thought must have been a crashed plane in the forest saw a triangular "strange glowing object" that sent farm animals into a frenzy. White light illuminated forest "The object was described as being metallic in appearance and triangular in shape, approximately two to three meters (seven to 10 feet) across the base and approximately two meters (seven feet) high," reads a report in the file by Deputy Base Commander Lt. Col. Charles Halt. "It illuminated the entire forest with a white light," he added. "The object itself had a pulsing red light on top and a bank of blue lights underneath. The object was hovering, or on legs." Sceptics say the witnesses were merely seeing the beam from a lighthouse on the nearby coast. But the report adds that the next day three depressions seven feet in diameter were found in the grass and that readings of beta and gamma radiation were 10 times higher than normal. Disturbances were also noted on air force radar at the time. Later in the night, a second UFO was seen, described as a red sun-like light. "At one point it appeared to throw off glowing particles and then broke into five separate white objects," said the file. A Ministry of Defence memo in the file notes that: "No evidence was found of any threat to the defence of the United Kingdom. In the absence of any hard evidence, the MoD remains open minded." Until last week, only about 20 members of the public had seen the file. The government said it would also be publishing other files on reported UFO sightings on www.mod.uk. The Rendlesham File contains a Ministry of Defence memo suggesting British requests for audiotapes made by the American officers at the time were brushed aside by the United States. Later reports by UFO enthusiasts claimed that photographs and tapes were taken away by senior U.S. officers.