Meet the real-life Fox Mulder: Nick Pope talks UFOs, cliches and busts myths

What first drew you to UFO investigations and how did you become a leading expert?

I fell into it rather by accident than design, because I was given it to do as a government job. I was a civilian employee of the Ministry of Defence for 21 years, and I was due in 1991 for a move. You get posted to all the different areas, so you could be in security, policy, finance personnel, and they had a UFO job – I was due for a move at the exact time that that vacancy came up. And I was given that job to do for three years to essentially research and investigate the phenomenon, to assess the defence and national security implications.

I did that for three years and then I just felt that it was too interesting to walk away from, so at the end of that particular posting, I stayed involved. Years later, the British government declassified and released a lot of the Ministry of Defence UFO files. Thousands of documents, many of which I wrote, so I helped with that programme, my name got out there and so the rest is history.

The rest is indeed history. We can see how that would be something that you would sort of fall into and then not want to lead, it sounds so interesting! What would be the most surprising discovery that you came across during a time that, if you can tell us.

Well, I think it was the general point that some of these sightings were much, much more than just vague lights or shapes in the sky, and that there was some really good hard data on a lot of these cases. For example, multiple instances where these things were seen by not just commercial airline pilots, but military pilots [and] simultaneously tracked on radar systems. We've now, particularly in the United States, over the last few years seen senior intelligence officials talk about these things being picked up on satellites, and we've even seen some declassified films of these things shot from fast jets through forward-looking infrared cameras. I think what surprised me was just the fact that this wasn't all just kind of science fiction and conspiracy theory territory, that it really did take you into some fairly hard defence, national security and flight safety issues.

Do you think that [because] there's more evidence cropping up, and a lot more hard, factual evidence, as opposed to the sort of conspiracy theories or general conversations, that the governments are taking more action to be prepared for things, worst case scenario?

Very much so, yes. The US government in particular has really led the way on this subject. There's been a study and reports issued by NASA, who of course a few years ago said we're not interested in UFOs. They said we're looking for life out there, but we don't think any of it's coming down here. But that completely reversed in the last three or four year, and now [they’re a] part of the wider US government UFO research and investigation. Also, the Department of Defence, so the Pentagon, is involved [and] the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has issued reports. [Now that] we've had these declassified US Navy videos that I think a lot of people saw and wondered about because again, there's just been this complete 180° narrative flip, that this subject has come out of the fringe and into the mainstream.

I mean, a few years ago the US government was saying we're not interested, we don't have a programme, and I think what's really amazing is that there's been engagement from the United States Congress, down to the point of having congressional hearings on this and… for all the political divide we see, we've had both Republicans and Democrats come together and push for answers on this. It's less, it's less pronounced in the UK, but there are a few hints that things are going on behind the scenes. Firstly, the US government revealed that the Five Eyes Intelligence Sharing Alliance (United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand) has been doing some work on UFOs, so we know even though they're not talking about it, there's been, there's been some engagement from the UK. The other really interesting thing is that just about a month ago, it was revealed that [the] Department for Science, Innovation and Technology are doing a small study on how the discovery of extraterrestrial life might be announced.

So they're kind of dressing it up as ‘well, what if the James Webb Space Telescope finds something?’ But of course, you can read it across to any scenario you like involving aliens, and just so the fact that the British Government, for the first time is working on a plan of how this would be announced and maybe asking questions like ‘do we have a contingency plan for this?’ Because the answer actually is no, you don't. So, I think they're about to find out they might need one.

Just watching some of the films and some of the programmes like not the not the actual ones or the documentary ones, but just fiction/science fiction, it very much feels like there needs to be a contingency plan and that's just from a viewer's perspective. If you actually started to look into the data behind it, you would definitely think you need a contingency plan.

100% yes. In government, we often use the phrase low probability, high impact and it just well I guess it means what it says. Even if you think there's a comparatively small chance of something happening, if the societal implications are big enough, you must have a plan. So, for example, there are contingency plans, and NASA is actively working on things like what if we discovered a big comet or asteroid heading for the Earth and there have been science fiction movies about that. Of course, Armageddon and Deep Impact for example, and Meteor way before that, I guess Sean Connery back in the 70s.

So you have it's better to have a plan and not need it than need it and not have it. We don't know what extraterrestrials might be like, [or] what they might want, but… if we ever do get visited and they land on the White House lawn, that kind of ‘first-contact’ scenario, about the only good assumption you can make is that their technology will be orders of magnitude above and beyond anything we have, just because they can get here. And we certainly can't get there.

I think now we've got this realisation that previously it's like the iceberg we've just seen the tip of it, but below the surface, there are tens of thousands of people. There's a great line in the movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind it's “ordinary people under extraordinary circumstances” and it's that I think that's driving it. So, it's coming from the bottom upwards from the public with their sightings. And then it's coming from the top downwards when we've got all these government officials and top guns in the US and suddenly there no stigma anymore – or there's less stigma than there was. There's still some [but] not as much.

I mean, when you were literally in a situation where you can turn on the Evening News and see a U.S. Navy pilot talk about how they were chasing these things, and suddenly they were performing speeds, manoeuvres, accelerations that go way beyond anything they've got. And you think these top guns are fairly difficult to impress and they're just like, wow, this thing, whatever it was, went from virtually standstill to high max speeds in a second, and we got it on radar, so it's not just optical illusion or sensor error. So, I think I think it's those sorts of things that have led to this fundamental change.

It's definitely made it a lot more difficult to ignore. That's probably where a lot of the stigma came from before – it was just a few people here and there who had spoken about their encounters or experiences. And then you've got a lot of people saying ‘well, I didn't see it and you can't prove it’. Whereas now, like you said, there's a lot of things that make it very difficult to ignore – the data, radars, there are experienced pilots, and it's not just the average [person] who said something about something.

Exactly. And all of this ties back to the fact that even when the sceptics say, well, ‘why should I take this seriously?’, you can now say, well, they've just had a hearing on it in Congress or the office of the Director of National Intelligence just issued a report on it. And these are the people who normally report on things like ballistic missile programmes or next-generation stealth fighters, whatever it might be. And then you can go on to the website and read [UFO reports], or at least the unclassified versions.

When you have that comparison – they're talking about those important things, and they're also talking about UFOs, it very much like these are things that everyone should be paying attention to, sitting up and being a bit more observant about what they see and who says what.

Yes, exactly. And you when, when government and the military and the intelligence community are taking it seriously, demonstrably so, then I think even the most hardened sceptic might sit up and say ‘well, wait a minute. Why? Why are they suddenly doing all these studies and issuing all these reports and having all these hearings?’ Because there's no smoke without fire.

Exactly! What do you think is the biggest misconception about UFOs that you possibly have encountered?

I think one that springs to mind is the shape people going to still have this idea of flying saucers and disc-shaped craft. I'm not saying that there haven't been sightings over the years, clearly there have been, but I think most times now when you talk to the pilots, they talk about smaller craft which are either spherical or oval-shaped. In the US very famously one of them was even known as the Tic Tac incident because this thing was white and oval-shaped.

But also, these things are often triangular shape to sort of flat triangle. I've spoken to witnesses who've seen these things slide directly overhead. And I remember one witness very clearly said that he just thought it was a really, really cloudy night because one by one the stars disappeared as if behind some cloud. Then he suddenly realised that he was looking at the underside of a huge black triangular shaped craft, just a couple of hundred feet above him, just moving almost silently overhead, and he was like, wow. I think by his own admission he stood there with his mouth open, his eyes wide, thinking what the heck is that?

Another counterintuitive point is that people always think UFOs are very, very fast, and they're not necessarily. Sometimes they are capable of hovering or moving at very slow speeds, then accelerating away to the horizon in a split second. Another surprising fact, I'm busting all the cliches today, is that these things are just often seen in really remote rural areas. And it's not true. Actually, if you plot them out on a map, a lot of the sightings are in the big cities.

Now you could say that from a sort of statistical point of view, a lot of these lists are not controlled, they don't factor in population. So, in one sense, if you've got a city like London with 8+ million people, if there's something strange in the sky, there are more potential witnesses.

But people just think that [with the] light pollution and the obstructed view from tall buildings. ‘oh you don't have UFO sightings in big cities’. You absolutely do. London, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leeds, these are all UFO hotspots.

Looking ahead, what do you think the future holds for UFO research? Or what do you hope is the next big breakthrough?

I think and I forgot to add this to one of your earlier questions when you asked what's driving this. And one of the things I meant to bring in is the way in which science and academia are now engaging on this. So for example, we have people like Professor Avi Loeb at Harvard, who leads a research programme called Galileo Project, and he's an astrophysicist. A few years ago, scientists wouldn't touch this subject with a barge pole, but now they are. Academics are studying this, more scientists are coming on board. We're seeing UFOs now studied not just by enthusiasts, but by governments, the military, the intelligence agencies, science, academia, and I think that's the future.

And [I think] we're going to see the scientific search for extraterrestrial life, so things like astrobiology come closer and closer, develop linkages with UFO research, because in a sense, as I always say, all these people are looking for the same thing, but they're just looking in different places, and with different methodologies. But what we're now seeing for the first time is those people linking up and doing a bit of both. So, like I say, NASA using James Webb Space Telescope to look for biosignatures, but also doing UFO sightings because going back to that cliché of life out there, you'd feel pretty foolish if you spent millions and millions looking for life out there. And the very thing you were looking for was down here, under your nose all along.

Finally, you've been a regular guest on various TV shows and documentaries and also a spokesperson and consultant for several UFO and alien-themed movies to date. Has there been any that has been a favourite sort of experience or favourite to talk about or consult on?

Well, I think I can't not mention The X-Files, it's just such an iconic TV series and of course now spin-off movies. And in the early years when Chris Carter was creating The X-Files, he went around quietly attending UFO conferences, sitting at the back taking notes. So, it's this great situation where art imitates life, or life imitates art. People say that there's a relationship between science fiction and the UFO phenomenon, and there is but not in the way that a lot of people think. People think ‘ohh these people who see UFOs, they're just picking this up from science fiction’. Often, it's the other way around.

I did some spokesperson work for Fox on The X-Files, one of movies and I think a DVD box set and I got to meet Chris Carter, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson and things. And the media had for years called me the real-life Fox Mulder. So that was fun.

Two of the most thoughtful and possibly realistic science fiction movies are Contact and Arrival – like all good science fiction, yes, it's about aliens, but it's also about us, and the human reaction to all of this, so that was good. And, of course, more recently, with UFO Day on BLAZE, I'm on a lot of those shows. I'm one of the series regulars on Ancient Aliens, and I know now I'm segueing into documentaries, but Ancient Aliens is obviously an institution that's been running for multiple seasons and still going strong, and I'm very happy to be involved in that show. I know BLAZE are going to be showing a lot of episodes.

And then of course the new show UFO Encounters UK that I'm also on both those episodes. I mentioned that Close Encounters of the Third Kind quote – “ordinary people under extraordinary circumstances” – I guess that's the epitome of that quote because that's it's just very visceral, how these people just tell their stories. People with nothing to gain, and but potentially quite a lot to lose. Just telling it straight, and how this is what happened. With the UFO subject comes back to the ordinary people and their sightings, their experiences of this and. And I mentioned again there's this thing that people often say the day before I had my sighting or experience, and the day after and these people are changed profoundly and deeply by it and often it sets them on a quest, a sort of journey of discovery as they try and make sense of all this and try and find other people like them, who've had these experiences because often they often think that's the only people I could talk to about this is somebody else who's been through it. I've had people who haven't even told family members about sightings and experiences, but they'll try and connect with other people who've had that shared experience.

Yeah, it is about the shared experience, isn't it? It's difficult when you have something like you said that's profoundly changes you that no one else can really relate to.

Yes. It's not necessarily that these people are looking for validation. I mean they know what they saw, But they want that sense of community. They want that sense of oh, it's not just me.

Tune into BLAZE (Freesat channel 162) all day on Tuesday 2nd June to find the very best UFO shows, and catch the premiere of UFO Encounters UK from 9pm.