As if UFOs weren’t mysterious enough, the latest batch of previously confidential files to be released by Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) contain two unexpected items. The first is an enquiry about a psychic, Chris Robinson (right) who dreamed of a terrorist attack on an RAF base near London. The second is a letter that claims Sir Winston Churchill, when informed of an RAF jet’s close encounter with a UFO, insisted that it should be kept from the public. What are we to make of these?
What puzzled me when I read about the terrorist premonition was why it was being released by the MoD since it had nothing to do with UFOs. It was a story I was familiar with because the psychic who had the dream – Chris Robinson – tells it in his book, Dream Detective, which was published in the UK in 1993 and is available to read, online, at his website. It was written together with Andrew Boot.
Chris tells how he knew in advance that there would be a terrorist attack at RAF Stanmore. So convinced was he that his dream was accurate that he went to the military base in 1990 and spoke to the uniformed guards at the gate, to warn them. Not surprisingly, he was detained and questioned but eventually released.
A month later, the IRA terrorist group placed a bomb at the base in a rucksack. No one was hurt in the explosion.
So, though fascinating, it’s not a new story. But that hasn’t stopped a couple of newspapers reporting on it. What’s more, having waded through the many pages that have been released to try to understand why it’s a story the MoD is releasing now, I discover that it is no more than the record of a response to a journalist’s enquiry. The so-called “UFO X-files” are often no more than a mundane exchange of correspondence between the Ministry and enquirers.
An internal MoD letter seeking more information about the Stanmore event explains: “Whilst Sec(AS)2 has no direct role in this particular query, because we are the MoD focal point for ‘UFO’ enquiries we tend to get saddled with answering questions about strange or out of the ordinary incidents.”
In fact, the MoD appears not to have been able to corroborate Chris Robinson’s account but it did confirm that there was an explosion at the RAF base in 1990. It said it was an incident that the Metropolitan Police would probably have handled.
When I spoke to him about the publicity he’d received, Robinson was equally surprised to learn that the MoD had him in its UFO files. He suspects it’s all part of a greater conspiracy to keep the truth about psychics (and probably UFOs) from the public.
The letter relating to Sir Winston Churchill certainly suggests this to be the case. It was sent to the MoD in 1999 by a Leicester scientist whose grandfather claimed to have heard Sir Winston Churchill discussing with General Eisenhower a UFO sighting during World War II, when an object followed or kept pace with an RAF bomber.
Churchill was said to have declared that the incident should not be reported for half a century for fear that it would create public hysteria. More than 50 years have elapsed, of course, but the grandson was informed that the Ministry could find no record of such a discussion or directive. It was, however, suggested that he might want to conduct further research at the Public Record Office.