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nick-pope-mod-role-documented-record

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Nick Pope’s MoD role — the documented record

Compiled 2026-05-29 from the public/FOI record. Primary for nick-pope-mod-ufo-desk. The question this material settles: what Pope’s MoD job actually was, versus how he has publicly described it.

Official MoD statement (UK Parliament record)

“From 1991 to 1994 Mr. Pope worked as a civil servant within Secretariat (air staff). He undertook a wide range of secretariat tasks relating to central policy, political and parliamentary aspects of non-operational RAF activity. Part of his duties related to the investigation of unidentified aerial phenomena reported to the Department to see if they had any defence significance.”

— UK Parliament (publications.parliament.uk). Note: investigating UAP was part of the duties of a policy-secretariat post, not a standalone job.

MoD internal document (April 2006, released under FOI)

Pope “elected to describe his position as the ‘Head of the MoD’s UFO Project’, a term entirely of his own invention.”

Pope “constantly puts himself forward in various parts of the media, solicited and unsolicited, as an ‘expert’ (despite his lack of recent knowledge about the work carried on in the branch concerned).”

The MoD has also stated: “there is and never has been any such thing as a UFO Project.” The UFO desk officer for 2003–2007 said: “There is no UFO project.”

Information Commissioner decision

Pope “was not at any time a senior civil servant”; his actual role was “Executive Officer during 1991–94” (a junior/middle grade).

The UFO-desk work “represents a small part of the overall duties of the section.”

Dr David Clarke (journalist who FOI’d the MoD UFO files), via Philip Mantle / Martin Willis podcast, 18 Nov 2020

“There was a UFO desk when he was an incumbent for three years but he was just one of dozens of people who did that task and he didn’t actually investigate anything.”

“He was a junior manager who passed any UFO items of interest to DI55 and if there was any ‘investigations’ to be done it was DI55 who were responsible.”

Clarke, reporting what DI55 (Defence Intelligence) investigators told him:

“Well, Nick Pope didn’t have any involvement in this. We did the investigations, we didn’t share information with them because we didn’t trust them.”

Philip Mantle: “The place where he worked got the nickname ‘UFO desk’ but it was not an official title.”

Career arc

  • MoD civil servant 1985–2006; the Sec(AS)2a “UFO desk” posting was 1991–94; final posting Directorate of Defence Security.
  • 1996 book Open Skies, Closed Minds — concluded an alien race was “waging a secret war on humanity,” a position he later distanced himself from.
  • Post-2006: full-time media commentator/author; regular on History Channel’s Ancient Aliens; PR work promoting sci-fi releases.
  • Central public commentator on the Calvine photograph.

Sources

Graph View

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