Here come the Men in Grey: MoD recruited UFO desk officers, files reveal

[astr0144]

Just found this about the MOD recruiting MIG...


http://uk.news.yahoo.com/here-come-the-men-in-grey--mod-recruited-ufo-desk-officers--files-reveal.html

The Ministry of Defence recruited UFO officers to discover whether the truth really was out there, it has been revealed.

Files released by the National Archives bring to light the role of the UFO Desk Officer. It was a position usually reserved for junior civil servants who would be drafted in to pore over reports of UFO sightings.

A  job description for a UFO officer, written by an incumbent in November 2009 just before the desk was closed, is included among the 6,700 pages that can now be seen on the National Archives website from today. It outlines how an officer's daily duties would be providing briefings on the Ministry of Defence's position on UFOs and extraterrestrial life, undertaking UFO investigations, handling hundreds of FOI requests, and managing UFOlogists (UFO 'experts') and press enquiries.

The incumbent said the idea of UFO investigations "tends to suggest to the public that there are Top Secret teams of specialist scientists scurrying around the country in a real life version of the X-Files....[but] this is total fiction." In fact, according to the Desk Officer, many investigations involved searching the internet.

But there was the odd exciting moment, it seems. One officer had the privilege of briefing former Prime Minister Tony Blair on UFO policy during the early days of his premiership.

And in a briefing prepared for the MoD prior to a House of Lords debate on UFOs in 1979, an officer of the time appears to have attempted to draw a line under the entire issue and potentially talk himself out of a job by insisting aliens would not be interested in visiting an "insignificant planet like Earth".