If Roswell Happened Today (Part 2)
By Nick Pope
Introduction
In the first part of this article I addressed the issue of what the government
would do if a UFO crashed (or landed) in the UK. Is there a plan? Who would be
involved? Would the authorities try to cover it up? This two-part article sets
out the issues and works through some possible scenarios. In the first part of
the article I dealt with the issue of first response and established that while
the police would have a key tactical role, at the strategic level the Cabinet
Office and COBRA would take a co-ordinating role, with MoD quickly emerging as
the lead department. The next questions that would need to be handled range from
what to tell Ministers, through to how to handle the media. What would
Parliament be told and would there be any attempt to cover up such an incident?
COMETA
Before addressing these issues, it was remiss of me in Part 1 of this article
not to mention the COMETA Report. I had given examples of where officialdom had
given some thought to the consequences of detecting an extraterrestrial radio
signal or of a UFO crashing or landing and where some sort of contingency plan
had been drafted. I mentioned the paper "UFO Hypothesis and Survival Questions"
from the NSA's website and also the "Post-Detection SETI Protocol" drafted by
the International Academy of Astronautics. I also mentioned the second edition
of "Fire Officer's Guide to Disaster Control" by William M. Kramer and Charles
W. Bahme. I should also have mentioned the COMETA Report. This 3-year study was
undertaken by the French Institute for Higher Studies of Defence, a
government-funded 'think tank' staffed by people whose backgrounds are generally
government and military. The findings of their study were set out in a 90 page
report entitled "UFOs and Defense: What Should We Prepare For?". An English
language version of this report is available on the internet, but when searching
for it, remember that Defence is spelled the US way, i.e. Defense.
Informing Ministers
Ministers are, of course, politicians. Defence Ministers (i.e. the Secretary of
State for Defence and the various 'junior' Ministers) and the MoD more generally
aspire to a culture of "no surprises". In other words, Ministers want to be told
as quickly as possible of any major or controversial development. They certainly
don't want to find out something only when asked about it by a journalist or by
an MP in Parliament. This is why briefing is so central to the MoD culture and
indeed to the civil service as a whole. Civil Servants must ensure that
Ministers and senior staff are briefed quickly and accurately on important
issues. In our scenario of a UFO crash, an early action would be to brief
Ministers. This would probably be done by telephone in the first instance (with
calls to one of the Minister's Private Office staff) and then followed up with a
Ministerial submission. The Ministerial submission is a written brief in a set
format, setting out the issue, making recommendations and discussing the
presentational issues. A few examples of the template for a Ministerial
submission can be found on the internet, but few actual submissions have been
released, as they tend to be covered by Section 35 (Formulation of Government
Policy) of the Freedom of Information Act. This exemption applies where
information relates to the formulation or development of government policy. The
thinking is that if the advice and debate behind policy-making is routinely made
public, there is a risk that officials would be less willing to offer frank
advice and challenge the status quo. Accordingly, this is an area where I can
say little more. However, it's worth noting that for any major incident (and
this would certainly apply to our scenario of a UFO crash) the briefing process
would have to include the Prime Minister and HM The Queen.
Decision Making
The next step would be to call a meeting. Meetings are central to the culture of
the civil service and I attended hundreds in the course of my 21-year MoD
career. Some meetings are minuted and some aren't and as I've said before, the
paper trail never tells the whole story. In the scenario of a UFO crash there is
likely to be an initial MoD meeting chaired by the Secretary of State for
Defence. Attendees would probably include the Chief of the Defence Staff, the
Chief Scientific Adviser, the Chief Press Officer, the Head of Directorate of
Air Staff, staff from the Defence Intelligence Staff and other senior officials.
The UFO desk officer would probably not sit at the main table but (as subject
matter expert) might be 'in attendance, alongside other experts who might be
called on for specialist advice. But generally speaking, such a meeting would be
at director level and it would be expected that the respective heads of division
would have been fully briefed by their subject matter experts. After this
meeting there would inevitably be a meeting chaired by the Prime Minister,
attended by Ministers and officials from other government departments. While the
decisions that would need to be taken would vary according to the specifics of
the crash, issues that would arise would include the following: is there a
threat and if so, should alert levels be raised? Is there a biohazard (this was
covered in Part 1 of this article) and if so, what measures should be taken?
What - if anything - should parliament, the media and the public be told? What -
if anything - should other countries be told?
Presentational Issues
We have all heard of the 'dodgy dossier' and 'spin', while the post 9/11 phrase
"a good day to bury bad news" - even though it's a slight misquotation - has
also become firmly embedded in the public consciousness. What's the truth behind
these soundbites and how would this play out in our hypothetical scenario?
There's no doubt that presentational issues and news management are hugely
important to the MoD and indeed to government as a whole. Type "Defence Press
Office" into the search box on the MoD website for some basic details on the
role and structure of this organisation. Additionally, the evidence from the
Director of News on the Hutton Inquiry website gives an interesting insight into
the working of the MoD's press office. Assuming the event was to be made public,
a news brief would be drawn up. Again, there's a set format to this, which
generally involves the key message and subsidiary Q & A material, posing the
questions the MoD is most likely to be asked and giving the lines to take on
them. Self-evidently, the key message would be something positive and in this
case it might be something along the lines of "MoD scientists are currently
examining the object and we will make a further statement when they have
completed their investigations. There is no evidence of any danger to the
public". As with all material from government, while it can put a positive spin
on matters, downplay negative issues and omit some material, it must be
fundamentally truthful. I realise many people think governments lie all the
time, but for a minister, lying is still a resignation issue and for a civil
servant it is a serious disciplinary offence.
Secrecy
Assuming the media hadn't already found out about the event and put out the
story, the question would inevitably arise as to whether to try to keep the
matter secret. Procedurally, this would be relatively straightforward.
Essentially, the matter would be given a classification (probably Top Secret -
UK Eyes Only) and any questions would be met with a "no comment". As to why this
move might be considered, the reason has little or nothing to do with the usual
ideas about destabilising the economy, undermining religions and causing panic.
It would reflect the fact that any nation that exclusively acquired
extraterrestrial technology it was able to use (the most obvious example being a
propulsion system that allows viable interstellar travel) would become the
dominant force on the planet. If the technology was to be acquired exclusively
by the British government and passed exclusively to British companies,
politically, militarily and economically the UK would once more lead the world.
This would be the temptation and with the stakes that high, it's easy to see how
such a course of action would be attractive. Of course, this is exactly what
many people believe happened at Roswell and despite the controversy, the central
idea (whether or not it actually happened) behind Philip Corso's book "The Day
After Roswell" is sound. This is the one reason for a cover-up that does make
sense in terms of the way government and the military actually think.
Search and Rescue
A final observation needs to be made about the scenario of a UFO crash. While we
can make few assumptions about extraterrestrials (which is why I instantly
distrust anyone who authoritatively makes a statement that begins with a phrase
along the lines of "aliens wouldn't do that because") it's a fair assumption
that the loss of the craft would be noticed and the location it had been in
would be known. Therefore, just as happens when an aircraft crashes, it's
reasonable to suppose that a search and rescue mission would be attempted. So
any UFO crash is very likely to be followed by a UFO landing. Though it's often
overlooked, this rather obvious point is one more indication that the alien
autopsy video was a hoax. First contact is unlikely to go well if the first
revelation from the military is that they have just dissected an
extraterrestrial body. Ufologists and government officials think in
fundamentally different ways. Nobody in the government and the military, when
confronted with a UFO crash, would view the event as an isolated incident. It
would be seen as an event with consequences and the mindset would be "Others may
come to recover the craft. What should we do to prepare for this?".
The Need for a Plan
All of this brings us back to where this article started, in Part 1, when I said
that one of the most frequent questions I'm asked is what the MoD would do if
confronted by a UFO crash and whether there's a plan for this contingency. In
the course of these two articles I think I've answered much of the first part of
the question. But the second part of the question can be dealt with very simply:
the UK has no official plan for such an eventuality. There are bits of other
plans that could doubtless be adapted (e.g. the procedures for dealing with an
aircraft accident and the plans for dealing with a suspected chemical or
biological terror attack) but there's no discrete plan for a UFO crash, a UFO
landing or any other form of 'first contact', including the detection of a radio
signal of extraterrestrial origin. This is partly because officials are
naturally conservative and the possibility lies outside many people's belief
systems. "There's no contingency plan should the Loch Ness Monster turn out to
be real, so why should we have one for UFOs?", the reasoning goes. However,
given the cumulative evidence in relation to UFOs and given the issues at stake,
such reasoning is arguably flawed. We are back to the issue of this being a "Low
Probability/High Consequence" event. There's an old adage "train hard, fight
easy". Having a plan, training people and then testing the people and the plan
through realistic exercises is central to the ethos of the MoD and the military.
The lack of a plan means that if the event does occur, the response will be less
effective and less speedy than would otherwise be the case. Given the magnitude
of some of the issues here (e.g. the potential biohazard) this is unfortunate,
to say the least.
Conclusion
This 2-part article has been one of the most speculative that I've ever written,
because of the huge number of variables and unknowns in our scenario. But in the
absence of a plan, all we can do is speculate. I may be wide of the mark in some
areas, but having served for 21 years in a wide range of MoD jobs, I understand
the culture. So I may be wrong about what decisions would be taken, but I'm
pretty sure I'm right about the way in which those decisions would be reached. I
hope readers have enjoyed these two articles and that they've offered some food
for thought. If nothing else, I hope it's offered an intriguing glimpse into
contingency planning and crisis management in government.