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COMETA Report from France, which was initiated in 1995 and released in 1999. There was no link between the two projects, and the high classification and extreme sensitivity of the UK study precluded liaison 1999. with any other country. The report represented an attempt to undertake a proper, in-depth scientific study that was going to look at all the evidence the MoD had amassed over the decades and come to a definitive view about the UFO phenomenon. My opposite number in the Defence Intelligence Staff, who was my main DIS contact and my gateway to this secretive organization, had first discussed this with me in 1993. Like me, he seemed intrigued by certain UFO cases in our files and our discussions about UFO certain UFO in files and about cases our our aerodynamics and propulsion systems were like something from a Star Trek script. Nothing was said openly, but when conventional explanations for some of the most compelling UFO cases were eliminated, fingers were pointed suggestively upward. And whenever the question of who was operating these UFOs was mentioned, the marvelous phrase "these people" was used. More often than not, these were private meetings between the two of us, at which no notes were taken. However, on one occasion my boss accompanied me and sat in silence for most of what turned out to be a particularly surreal briefing. "What did he mean by the phrase 'these people'?" he asked, in an exasperated fashion, on the way back to our own office. But how were we going to get a study commissioned when so many of our colleagues thought the MoD should drop its UFO investigations altogether, as the United States Air Force had done in 1969? One of our tactics to pull this off was a simple linguistic sleight of hand: We banned the acronym "UFO." One mention of a "UFO," and people's prejudices and belief systems kick in, be they skeptics or believers; the term was too emotive and had too much baggage. So we devised ' "unidentified aerial wera, phenomena" (UAP) as a replacement, and tried to use this in all internal policy documents, retaining the phrase "UFO" only for our dealings with the public. a oxen ot : armmAn 4 It worked. With the term "UFO" having been quietly dropped, we pushed to get a study approved. To my surprise and delight, given some of the more skeptical voices in the department, resources were eventually obtained. I assessed the formal proposal when it arrived and recommended to my bosses that the study be commissioned; against my expectation, my recommendation was accepted. However, the project was subsequently delayed, and in 1994 I was promoted and posted to a different section. Accordingly, I played no part in the study and am certainly not—as has been alleged on the Internet—its anonymous author. So what did we get? After four years and 460 pages of analysis, had we solved the UFO mystery? Well, no, we hadn't. What we got was a comprehensive drawing together of some existing research, coupled with some exotic new theories. "That UAP exist is indisputable," the Executive