You Can't Tell The People reports Britain’s Rendlesham Forest Incident. Sidgwick & Jackson (11/00), Pan Macmillan (11/01), the title's from Margaret Thatcher telling the author in '97: "UFOs!

You must get your facts right & you can't tell the people".
RAF Bentwaters-Woodbridge, Suffolk was a NATO installation leased to the USAF. During Xmas week '80 UFOs appeared. USAF personnel witnessed them. An official memo was sent to the Ministry of Defence by deputy base commander, Lt Col. Charles Halt. In '83 researchers obtained an FOIA copy, sparking public interest. Georgina Bruni introduces:
>A cover letter supporting base liaison officer, Squadron Leader Donald Moreland's official memo to the MOD entitled “Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOS)”.
>Nn interview with Moreland.
>Reexamination of official witness statements.
>Eyewitness drawings of UFOs & landing sites.
>USAF photos showing police & USAF officers examining three marked ground indentations. Enlargements depict alleged landing marks.
>Proof Halt’s memo mistakes times & dates.
>An original audio tape of the event involving Lt Col. Halt. A poor copy leaked to researchers in '84 which witnesses said was edited.
>An interview with the NCO running telecommunications revealing lines were blocked by emergency Flash calls.
>A resident describes a UFO encounter & how four USAF friends were recalled to base on Red Alert. He recounts one's account of the forest incident involving aliens repairing a craft. He never saw his friends again.
>Interviews with the former AFOSI deputy commander & his wife who witnessed the UFO.
>Over a hundred original interviews: Maj. Gen. Gordon Williams, installations' commander; high-ranking officers; NCOs; regular airmen; police; MOD employees & civilians.
>After release of MOD files in 2001, a new edition was published in 11/2001.

according to some of the witnesses there was a close encounter of the third kind it sounds like a b science fiction movie it just does but there they were and they weren't from here [Music] these stories are some of the strangest experiences ever described in the uk we can't tell if they're true but they are all recounted by ordinary people now they are your witnesses [Music] this unique audio recording is of conversations between us air force soldiers and their superiors as they investigate a series of strange lights in the uk's most outstanding and controversial ufo encounter the rendelsham [Applause] you'll see incident maybe a quarter to half mile maybe further out still getting reading on the meter about two clicks over three nights up to 40 us air force personnel from bases in suffolk saw strange lights nearby there are many conflicting accounts and interpretations of what actually happened in the forest even those who believe that something unusual happened do not all agree former airman larry warren was one of the witnesses who came forward on december 28 1980 i at that period in time i was a security policeman at rf bent waters and i had a secret clearance i was an airman first class and i was assigned a d flight that night i showed up at 11 30 on the bentwaters flight line for guard mount i was in a five-man group and i was told to move off into the forest the big event took place on the night of the 28th and the early morning of the 29th of december this is when the huge spaceship landed it was about 30 foot wide and multiple colors sort of spinning if you like and there were about 30 to 40 witnesses in this incident the first two witnesses that were involved in this incident were told to go out to investigate lights over the forest the first thing i saw was a giant probably 50 foot across diameter yellowish green translucent object on the ground it was probably a foot in height it was attached to the ground it wasn't hovering above it but had shape and definition uh you could see through it at times periodically and the lights went from green to yellow mist is all i can describe it as it was like a platform but fluid beyond all this was a farmer's house and there was a light on on the second floor there was a car in the driveway and there were people probably outside watching this also we do have evidence that this since the first incident took place because we've got the photograph of the landing site also a patrol went out following this and took radiation readings [Applause] on the 29th of december two days after the original sighting the soldiers took radiation readings and mounted cameras in the area to see if they could make some sort of sense of the situation to my right there was a motion picture camera on a tripod and someone else had at that time a video camera filming everything i'm about to describe that night larry warren claims he witnessed alien life forms the place of the explosion of light was this triangular structured object that had like a rainbow effect on it it had box boxes and pipes or things on its surface it looked very heavy it looked very old i had this feeling it was this old thing i don't know why time seemed to be at half speed i wasn't looking at this as a rational normal person i i don't know how it affected others uh though again there was no heat there was no sound that i can recall in fact it was everything was almost like in a vacuum [Music] some people ran off had run retreated quite quick the cameras were filming this the whole while some people just stayed in place i was probably shocked you know the man in charge of the patrol was lieutenant colonel charles halt larry warren remembers the encounter his team had in the forest as recorded on the u.s air force tape halt's tape actually describes the beginning of this event through a scene from about 200 yards away through the trees where the red light comes in and then this an object or something explodes and that's what they were seeing in capo green through the forest okay we're looking at the thing we're probably about two to three hundred yards away it looks like an eye winking at you still moving from side to side and when you put the star scope on it it has a hollow [Music] now this light came around this blind side of the object never saw the back of it it couldn't move from the air it was in and inside the light where these um the light diminished in brightness it was a foot off the ground and there were um uh what you'd only describe as children at that time i wasn't the only one that did it some other people said i thought these were children and uh they had uh four or four and a half feet tall above the ground very bright translucent at points you couldn't see the lower extremities but you could clearly see the face and it wasn't human but it seemed like it was either a projection or it was separate from us or was protected from us it was uh but it was alive there was no doubt in my mind the way these things moved the upper extremities there was a noise behind this at one point and the arms on one of these three beings raised almost like this in a defensive posture it had some kind of equipment around its belt all three of them and i mean it sounds like a b science fiction movie it just does but there they were they weren't from here at all according to some of the witnesses there was a close encounter of the third kind there was actually beings these were translucent they were almost human looking but translucent the witnesses were absolutely in a terrible state i mean these are military we see strange uh stroke-like flashes to the uh sporadic but there's definitely something some kind of phenomenal 305. we approach these uh things uh i there's been mis statements over the years that there was communication with sign language and all this like closing the movies it wasn't it was definitely a visual standoff a very uncomfortable one so it looked with this phenomena some of the other people looked totally buried like everything they knew collapsed it was done we were called off by our shift supervisor back to the staging area parking area and it seemed the lower ranking guys were called out first so i gladly left i looked over my shoulder my left shoulder as i was going over the rise and this face-off was still going on on this field called cable green and i'll never forget it and there it was we got back to the vehicles and uh [Applause] the witnesses were believed they made statements the british police were also called out where the ufo had landed and they found three indentations in the ground which were photographed and remarkably in 1983 they were sent a copy of a memorandum that was written by lieutenant colonel charles halt the very person who went out there with the patrol and investigated this case for many years the truth behind britain's equivalent to roswell remained surrounded in secrecy closely guarded by both the british and u.s governments then in 1983 after years of campaigning the us government was forced to release official documents on the incident under the freedom of information act this controversial report is signed by lieutenant colonel charles halt the commander in charge on the night this memorandum was sent to the ministry of defence and it's really what it what it depicts is what happened during that week it mentions the triangular-shaped craft it also mentions that colonel holt was out there himself at a later date mentions the radiation readings and and numerous other things so here we have for the very first time an official document to say that this case actually took place the halt memo dated january 13th 1981 uh just weeks after these events uh as important as it is an official air force letterhead authored by a deputy-based commander of a very important nato air base describing phenomena that reads like science fiction all that is good and fine but the bottom line is i witnessed it and it's the biggest story ever told really when it gets down to it if this case is brought into a court of law the testimony from the witnesses and the evidence that could be brought forward would bring this house of cards down in a matter of hours and that i stand by [Music] over three nights in december 1980 a series of strange lights was seen at a u.s air force base near reynoldshum forest in suffolk the lights were investigated by military police but they could find no explanation for the extraordinary sights in an official memo written by lieutenant colonel charles halt he described his men as reporting seeing strange objects in the woods early in the morning of december 27 1980 approximately 0 300 hours local two usaf security policemen the individuals reported seeing a strange glowing object in the forest the object was described as being metallic in appearance had a pulsing red light on top and banks of blue lights underneath the object was hovering or on legs as the patrolmen approached the object it maneuvered through the trees and disappeared the next day according to holt the site was checked for evidence of anything unusual three depressions one and a half inches deep and seven inches in diameter were found where the object had been sighted on the ground let's check for radiation beta gamma readings of 0.1 milli run chins were recorded with peak readings in the three depressions and near the center of the triangle formed by the depression on the evening of the third day halt himself reported further sightings of unexplainable lights in the sky light was seen through the trees it moved about and pulsed at one point it appeared to throw off glowing particles and then broke into five separate white objects traffic to the south was visible for two or three hours and beamed down a stream of light from time to time numerous individuals including the underside witness police were called in after their initial examination they found nothing significant they decided that they too could see nothing further to investigate now the british police were also called out on the night does it on the the time it took place but they they were actually called 4 a.m in the morning when it was all over so what we have now is a police officer who is saying oh but there was nothing there when you know when i went out to investigate it but of course it was all over by that time the official line was that the lights had an innocent rational explanation possibly the beam from a nearby lighthouse but some still think differently throughout the last 20 years gradually some of the witnesses have come forward and started to talk about what happened one of the witnesses was told that what he had seen was the beam from the nearby lighthouse now this is five miles in the distance he said no i did not see a lighthouse beam what i saw was an unidentified craft they kept on and on and in the end he finally said okay it was the beam from the nearby lighthouse he was so upset about this that when he was returned back to his quarters he actually thought of going awol official reaction from the u.s air force and the uk ministry of defense was the same and remained so to this day the ministry of defence have denied this incident took place in other words they just say oh it was lights in the sky it was of no defense significant no matter how many times people talk about it no matter how many witnesses come forward the ministry of defense continued to deny that this incident took place the ministry of defense statement was clear and unambiguous the lights posed no threat the ministry of defense examines any reports of unexplained aerial sightings it receives solely to establish whether what was seen might have some defense significance namely whether there is any evidence that the united kingdom's airspace might have been compromised by hostile or unauthorized air activity the judgment was that there was no indication that a breach of the united kingdom's air defenses had occurred on the knights in question and no further investigation into the matter was deemed to be necessary the government of great britain has always said these cases these events were of no defense significance and i countered that by saying we had the largest backline supply of tactical nuclear weapons and nato secretly housed in east anglia these objects were flying with impunity over the weapon storage areas firing beams of light down to the ground at these hardened weapon storage areas adversely affecting the ordinance in that sounds to me like extreme defense significance there are actually a number of reasons why the british and american governments would not want to admit that this very powerful incident took place at that particular time it was the height of the cold war the bases deployed nuclear weapons that we weren't supposed to know about there was a lot of conflicts going on in the world but if you actually look back on on the historical records on ufology you will realize that every case is being covered up um including of course roswell so is this britain's roswell the conspiracy theorists and believers had a field day though they don't all agree they felt they had credible eyewitness evidence of sightings of alien craft but the ministry of defense and u.s air force still maintain that there was no threat to air defenses even though nuclear weapons were stored nearby there could be whole reasons a whole host of reasons why we're talking about a cover-up it could in its simplest form be bureaucracy it could be red tape and it's nothing more than that i mean our own official secrets acting in the uk buries things for years some of it is quite trivial and there's no reason why it shouldn't be released it's just that the way that's the way bureaucracy works again it could be that that's the way bureaucracy works regarding the rendering events alternatively it could be that there was no aliens involved at all that the events in question were something that our own military forces were experimenting with playing around with that went wrong so therefore there's a reason for hiding this you know military blunders in the past have been been hidden for a long long time but again if it is an alien presence who knows the reasons why this may be kept secret amid the many conflicting stories of the rendelsham incident whether it was a lighthouse beam or other rational explanation larry warren still believes that he saw alien beings that night to the best of my knowledge larry's the only one that actually states that aliens were there at the time were responsible for this that he physically saw aliens i'm not sure that any of the other witnesses to these events even talk about aliens but to be fair to larry he said on many occasions that if you take larry warren out of the whole renders from story there is still a story there and he's absolutely 100 correct [Music] how do i know the truth on uh these events i i know uh from first-hand experience and 23 years later i'm looking for ranches still i was 19 years old when it happened i'm in my 40s now and i'm still looking and i think everyone else that went through them in their own ways are doing the same thing i don't know what the great truth of who they were that was there i know the object i saw was not built in detroit and i know the uh pilots weren't lighthouse keepers um it's to be funny about it but the explanations the counter explanation the more ridiculous in the fact that there was a non-human presence in that forest on the night i was involved and that was the third night that involved the most participants i've named them for years long before this was part of any part of pop culture at all and the bottom line is i wrote a book about this just to set the record straight on what happened to me and five years later i have never been sued for what i said or naming the people and placing them in the roles they were in at all larry has had some difficulties however the us government temporarily suspended his passport restricting his freedom to travel i can look at myself and say that i'm the first person ever to be an alleged whistleblower and i am a government whistleblower to have his united states passport suspended officially which does not happen our passports are given to us and it's a matter of constitutional right unless you're a convicted felon i'm not i had mine suspended for a year and uh with the simple reason that i spoke about sensitive defense issues on public soil and it took a former united states attorney general under two presidents ramsay clark to get it back now i can't think of any witness over the last 50 55 years in this subject that has had repercussions like that the definite heat reflection off the tree or four feet off the ground twenty years after the event the ministry of defense released documents relating to the rendlesham incident but this was not enough to satisfy the believers there were more than 150 documents but there were really only 12 documents that were very important to the case most of them were just uh letters from the public or letters from mps i mean over the years many members of parliament have asked questions in the house of lords you know but still the ministry of defense denied that this incident ever was of any defense significance i had the opportunity to interview margaret thatcher in 1997 and of course margaret thatcher was the prime minister in 1980 when this incident took place i talked to her about military personnel scientists who are now coming forward and talking about their encounters she turned around and said you have to have the facts and you can't tell the people now why can't i tell the people why can't the people be told but if you have if you think about it does the government know what's going on i mean are they able to deal with this what president or prime minister would want to risk their reputation by standing up and saying yes we have had contact