Open Skies, Closed Minds [Hardcover]

Nick Pope (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1999

Nick Pope, a high-ranking official in Britain's Ministry of Defense for eleven years, was assigned from 1991 to 1994 to Secretariat (Air Staff) Department 2A - better known to insiders as "The UFO Desk." His job was to investigate and analyze claims of UFO sightings and to assess their threat to national security. In Open Skies, Closed Minds, Pope tells his story as the investigator for the government on paranormal activity and how his experiences there changed his life. He started out as a skeptic, and quickly became a believer... Pope reveals for the first time in this book the contents of the Governments "X-Files" residing in the deepest vaults of the Ministry of Defense. While there, he discovered that truth is much stranger than fiction and that indeed something bizarre is going on, something beyond human experience and something potentially hostile. He presents convincing arguments in support of the existence of UFO's by using cases that he has researched in an official capacity, and warns that extraterrestrial spacecraft are visiting Earth despite our skepticism.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

If Pope is correct, Earth is currently in the middle of an interplanetary war. He claims that while he was stationed at the "UFO Desk" of Britain's Ministry of Defense, he studied UFO sightings as well as crop circles and cattle mutilations--all of which led him to the conclusion that the aliens are here, and they aren't friendly. He believes it is time the British government and the world in general rally to confront the invaders. The author openly compares himself to Fox Mulder of TV's X-Files in his struggles to bring forth the hidden evidence of the security danger to planet Earth. This work, which originally was published in England and was a best-seller there, is one for the true believers. Although numerous incidents are cited, actual evidence is lacking, and logic is often absent from the author's arguments. Nevertheless, the topic is perennially popular, and Pope's belief in UFOs will attract attention. Eric Robbins

From Kirkus Reviews

As a career civil servant with Britain's Ministry of Defence, Pope served a three-year stint in the early 1990s as chief investigator of UFO sightings in the United Kingdom. He began as a skeptic and ended up a true believer. This book, a bestseller in Britain, attempts to explain his conversion but does a poor job of it. Fully a third of the book is spent discussing what is by now a familiar litany of UFO-related phenomena: Roswell, Area 51, the US Air Force ``Blue Book'' of UFO investigations, etc. Pope's own work consisted mainly of investigating alleged sightings of UFOs, crop circles (huge, symmetrical designs mysteriously created in open fields), and cattle slaughters (aliens apparently like hamburgers). Slim as this investigative work is, and even though, as he himself admits, there is no proof of the existence of UFOs, Pope still insists that ``there is a war going on'' with aliens. To make matters worse, he contends, we aren't even aware that this war is happening. He also assures us that 95 percent of UFO sightings go unreported, though his only evidence for this is that private UFO groups have said so. Still, the book is blessedly free of the paranoia found in so much of the UFO writing done in the US. For Pope, the government of Britain is not engaged in a conspiracy to cover up the existence of UFOs (as some believe about the US government); it just hasn't bothered to do much investigating. He can also be lyrical, such as when describing the joy and wonder of visitors within a crop circle. But he can also turn around and be facile and trite. On the connection between aliens and ghosts he concludes, ``The spirit world is highly complicated.'' One would suppose this to be true. An odd, unconvincing statement of belief from a government official. (8 pages b&w photos) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 270 pages
• Publisher: Overlook Hardcover (March 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879519169
• ISBN-13: 978-0879519162
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,671,549 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars People from New York are crazy anyway..., July 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Open Skies, Closed Minds (Hardcover)

Despite what some people would like you to believe, Nick Pope's book, Open Skies, Closed Minds is obviously one of the best UFO and paranormal activity books ever written. It presents his years of research in a clear and analytical way that is easy to understand and use. Though it is not a story book or a "conspiracy thriller, it reads just as well if not better than most novels I have read. If you're into UFOs and want a good resource book that you will be able to read the whole way through, then Open Skies, Closed Minds if definitely the best book to buy.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Extraordinarily Important Book, August 7, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Open Skies, Closed Minds (Mass Market Paperback)

This book should be required reading for anyone even mildly interested in UFOs. In this book, Pope tells us the story of what he himself calls his three year "voyage of discovery" during which he came to the conclusion that the "Extraterrestrial Hypothesis" was the best (and, possibly, the only) explanation for the twenty percent or so of cases that could not be explained otherwise.

To come to this conclusion, however, Pope had to start with an "open mind." Given the title, the reader should be instantly aware that this is not the way most of officialdom approaches this topic. But, Pope does something most Civil Servants would never do: he takes his new responsibility as the Ministry of Defense's (MoD's) UFO Desk Officer SERIOUSLY! He reads into the topic (which shows up clearly in his knowledge of the history of the phenomenon). To extend his capability to investigate sightings, He develops good relations with civilian UFO investigation groups like the British UFO Research Association (BUFORA) and QUEST International, and actually shares data with them. Not only that, but Pope actually tries to help and comfort witnesses and abductees. When he says "I'm with the Ministry and I'm here to help you," he actually means it!

So, what we have thus far is an MoD Civil Servant who, after three years of dealing with civilian and military close encounters, has come to the conclusion that some significant percentage of these events involve extraterrestrial craft piloted by some form of extraterrestrial intelligence. I cannot stress how important this publically stated conclusion is. It has, insofar as I can tell, happened only once before and that was in the first edition of Edward Ruppelt's book "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects." In that case, though, so much pressure was placed on Ruppelt's employer that he was forced very quickly to write a second edition with a new chapter that contradicted the conclusion of the previous edition. So far, at least, no such pressure has been placed on Nick Pope. And, that, too, is also extraordinary.

Also like Ruppelt, Pope seems unaware that there may be a UFO cover-up going on in the UK. As we finally learned in America, the best cases never went to Blue Book. Instead, they went directly to Air Intelligence Service Squadrons. And, there is evidence that the best cases in the U.K. did not go to Mr. Pope's office at Whitehall but, instead, went to a secret group at RAF Rudloe Manor in Wiltshire. Yet, despite the evidence, Mr. Pope insists that there is no cover-up in Britain. I am certain that Mr. Pope is not party to one and is not knowingly telling a lie. But, I cannot bring myself to believe that there is none - especially given the close relationship between the U.S. (which seems to follow a strict code of secrecy) and the UK, which would have to agree to follow the same policy if it expected U.S. cooperation and support.

Finally, being objective, Pope broaches the issue no one seems willing to confront. Being a defense analyst, Pope cannot fall in with the "Space Brothers" view of extraterrestrials. He views their deeds objectively, and doesn't like what he sees. They violate our airspace (including restricted military airspace) without our permission. They can, at least at times, completely evade detection by our air defense radar systems. They land on our sovereign territory and proceed to kidnap our citizens and subject them to "medical examinations" that only Dr. Mengele could appreciate. And, last but not least, they kill and mutilate our farm animals and pets in an especially gruesome manner. If people from another nation on earth did all this, we would treat it as an act of war. And so, being logical (another extraordinary trait in a Civil Servant), Pope draws the appropriate conclusion: we are at war right now. According to Pope, it's currently a very secret and quite one-sided war. It's one-sided because we don't seem to know that we are at war. Pope advocates the development of appropriate military contingency plans for use if and when we can't make the Aliens stop these practices by any other means. What's extraordinary about this is that Pope is, again, the first high-ranking Civil Servant I have ever heard draw the logical conclusion regarding the objective implications of Alien activities on this planet, and do so publicly. This conclusion will come as a shock to those who have heard nothing but the apologists for the Aliens, but it's about time they woke up.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Authoritative and well-researched, June 5, 2008

By 

Ernest Baltok (Budapest, Hungary) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Open Skies, Closed Minds (Mass Market Paperback)

Mr. Pope is one of the extremelly well-informed ufologists who spent years on researching, cataloging and assessing extraterrestrial phoenomena.

While working for the British Crown at the Ministry of Defense in England, Mr. Pope examined a considerable number of extraterrestrial occurances that froze the world of ufology. His guest appearences on world television enlightened viewers around the globe.

His candor, honesty and open mind shed lights on areas that were totally ignored by the media and mainstream ufology. Although, Mr. Pope is cautious in his statements and press releases, Mr. Pope always told the truth to the best of his abilities.

This book is a strong example. American readers should look at the UFO phenomena from an European perspective. Sometimes it is quite different and even astonishing.

This book is written to serve this purpose. It is an open invitation to the serious Ufology authors and inquisitive minds. I highly recommend Mr. Pope's present work, a man you can really trust.