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In 2008, I acquired an extremely interesting document from the UK, quietly released to a researcher through a FOI request. It comes close to verifying the existence of such a secret group in America—the only legitimate, confirmed government document to do that, to my knowledge. It so happens that it w'as written in 1993, during Nick Pope's tour of duty at the Ministry of Defence's "UFO desk," and that he played a role in its conception and execution. Titled "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Study" and running just over one page, the document is a proposal for a study (which was approved and became Project Condign, described in chapter 17). Initiated by the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS), it needed the approval of Pope's department. Written by his counterpart in the DIS, it was addressed to Pope's superior "Sec(AS)2," the Air Staff deputy director, and classified "Secret UK Eyes A." The key section is paragraph 2, with two parts redacted and replaced with rows of the letter X: 2. I am aware, from intelligence sources, that XXXXX believes that such phenomena exist and has a small team studying them. I am also aware that an informal group exists in the XXXXXXXXXXX community and it is possible that this reflects a more formal organisation. following analysis. Before spending resources on any study, the first thing a government agency would do is check with its allies and find out what they may already have learned about the subject being considered. It is reasonable to assume that UK intelligence would check with its number one ally, the United States, through its own sources in the intelligence community, since intelligence officers, like the one who wrote this proposal, work directly with their counterparts within other countries. Secondly, it is also logical to assume that UK intelligence would be interested in the work of any major countries of concern, important players that may be adversaries and thus are monitored on a regular basis. In this case, that country would be Russia. The next step is to go back to the document and see if these countries would physically fit in the spaces with the X's. The number of X's used in the redaction process does not necessarily correspond with the number of missing letters. Therefore, when seeing what fits, one has to look at the amount of space, not the number of X's. It just so happens that the word "Russia" fits in the first line, and the words "US intelligence" fit oo. . a a4: perfectly in the second line in the two spaces provided, when measuring the /ength of the words in relation to the space, and also in keeping the spacing between the words consistent within each line. Replacing the X's, the document would then read (emphasis added): I am aware, from intelligence sources, that Russia believes that such phenomena exist and has a small team studying them. I am also aware that an informal group exists After careful consideration based on deductive reasoning, I offer the