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With reporting forms that keeps careful records of UFO sightings. With unintentional humor the manual goes on to say that "if concern is expressed that life or property might be endangered" by the UFO, "report the activity [18] to the local law enforcement department." Does this mean the local police department over whose jurisdiction the jet is flying at the time it is endangered at, say, 35,000 feet above the ground? Or the nearest police force to an airport that might have a UFO hovering over it? Assumedly, such illogical directives would be changed if our country ever set up a UFO agency. Two witnesses to the O'Hare incident did just as the manual suggested: They called NUFORC and submitted written reports on their sightings. Ironically, both told me they had never read the FAA manual and were unaware that the official tome dictated that this is what they ona 1 Re ArIMARnA: should do! Both had heard of NUFORC independently and didn't know where else to go with their information, which they felt, as a matter of duty, needed to be on the record. It was these reports that were eventually provided to the Chicago Tribune, prompting transportation reporter Jon Hilkevitch to investigate further and eventually to break the O'Hare story It is my understanding that most FAA employees probably do not read the manual—certainly not cover-to-cover—but when sightings occur they seem aware of their employers' attitudes regardless. The message is conveyed to them, often subtly and indirectly as a kind of veiled professional threat, that they are not to talk to the press about these incidents. The FAA's negligence may border on the dangerous, or the problem may be that other government agencies need to take more responsibility for UFO incidents that the FAA claims are outside its jurisdiction. No matter which branch of government does so, the threat, if there is one, posed by unidentifiable objects in proximity to commercial aircraft needs to be properly assessed by a new unit established to MHA investigate UFOs. Nick Pope, former MoD official and UFO expert in the UK, says that governments define "threat" in a very specific way, especially within military intelligence circles. The formula goes like this: Threat - capability + intent. For example: the United States is aware that the UK has nuclear weapons (threat) and therefore could launch a nuclear attack on America (capability), but since the UK has no intent to launch such an attack, the United States faces no threat in this regard. Pope points out that we certainly know that UFOs have the capability of being a threat, given their fantastic speed and maneuverability, far superior to our own technology. But, in this case, the intent of UFOs is completely unknown, and therefore immeasurable. Because of that fact, UFOs must be taken seriously as possible threats, and the UK's Ministry of Defence monitors them for that reason. [19] Pope suspects that United States military intelligence circles also on the front page.