Brookesmith on Rendlesham

The People4, over his possible part in the Stomping around, goo"ng o# events of the second night. Equally inevi- Why the US Air Force and the British MoD kept quiet tably the question of a ‘cover-up’ arose in about the Rendlesham Forest Incident the course of the exchange. In respond- ing to that idea, Conde wrote: by Peter Brookesmith Knowing the USAF as I do I am still con- o the devoted connoisseur of skeptic- vinced that if the USAF was covering any- Tversus-believer debates, the argu- thing up, it was a vice base commander ment over the ‘Rendlesham Incident’ of leading a search for UFOs o! base [em- December 1980 has become a classic phasis added] accompanied by people re- of its kind. The case was early dubbed sponsible for guarding nuclear weapons. ‘Britain’s Roswell’—an appropriate sou- The fact that senior leadership did nothing briquet, for claims and counter-claims to Halt can be attributed to their desire to about both cases have unfolded along keep the situation low key. Relieving Halt strikingly similar lines over the years. would have made a splash, especially if he Believers and star witnesses have elabo- LT COL HALT: 3.30: and the objects are threw a public "t, coupled with a lack of rated the story, some in fantastical ways, still in the sky, although the one to the "rm evidence. They may have believed he while intrepid truth-seekers with nothing south looks like it’s losing a little bit of was a wacko, but could not prove it.5 to gain—decried in the trade as fact-shy altitude. We’re turning around and head- debunkers and government shills—keep ing back toward the base. The object to Conde’s hint that Halt was out of order digging up bits of evidence that indicate the sou... the object to the south is still in rambling about o# base was echoed nothing anomalous happened. beaming down lights to the ground. by Col Sam Morgan, who in the summer of 1981 succeeded Col Ted Conrad as Lt One phase of this decades-long debate [Break in recording] Col Halt’s immediate commanding of- revolved around the suggestion—and it $cer. In a 1984 phone conversation with was only a suggestion, not a ‘claim’—by LT COL HALT: 0400 hours: one object famously horned, hoofed, and tailed the former USAF law enforcement o!- still hovering over the Woodbridge base commentator on ufology, Phil Klass, Col cer, retired Senior Master Sergeant Kevin at about $ve to ten degrees o# the ho- Morgan said: “Halt really had no authority Conde: that a prank he played while on rizon. Still moving erratic and similar out there in that forest anyhow. So he was a patrol at Woodbridge may have been be- lights beaming down as earlier. 1 kind of hobbyist on his own lurking around. hind one feature of the case. When I... looked into it I concluded that it Interestingly enough, two other wit- was just a bunch of guys screwing around Brie"y stated, Conde—then a Technical nesses—local residents—had said they in the woods.” 6 This last phrase in turn is Sergeant—on one occasion adapted a saw coloured lights moving around in strangely redolent of Kevin Conde’s fel- USAF police car’s fancy lighting system the region of the East Gate at the same low 81st SPS security policeman Chris to generate a brilliant display of coloured time.2 So Conde’s practical joke, or one Armold’s words, in a message to the e- illuminations in a foggy night sky. This like it, looked for a while as if it might be zine UK UFO Network. 7 Apart from some could have created the impression that a good explanation for that otherwise exceedingly dry remarks about the event mysterious beams of light were being puzzling aspect of the case. On the other (such as it was—“It just was not an issue,” shone not up from, but down onto, the hand, Ian Ridpath’s analysis of which stars said Armold) and some of its latter-day Woodbridge base from above. Conde were scintillating, and subject to autoki- stars, Armold describes the venture into was not sure, but thought it possible that nesis, near the horizon on the night Halt the woods as “just a half-dozen or so of us he had perpetrated his jape at the time was in the woods, could equally well ex- stomping around goo"ng o!.” Lt Col Charles Halt and his party were plain the remarks about ‘light beams’ on stumbling around in the dark in Rendle- Halt’s tape.3 And as Kevin Conde can’t be The o!cial position sham Forest. If so, these exchanges, on certain when he played his prank, and the tape-recorded commentary that Halt no testimony has so far emerged to pin n April 1998, I became intrigued by made at the time, make sense: something similar on someone else on Ithis question of US airmen wandering the Night In Question, Ridpath’s explana- around, apparently on duty, en masse, in LT COL HALT: Now we’re observing what tion becomes the most parsimonious. the Su#olk woods. It struck me as strange appears to be a beam coming down to that they should feel free to do so. I lift- the ground. I mention all this simply to give Kevin ed my electric telephone, and spoke at Conde his due locus standi in the Rendle- length with the RAF and British Army M/SGT BALL: Look at the colours... shit. sham a#air. Inevitably, if now perhaps to press o!cers at the Ministry of Defence. his chagrin, Conde was drawn into what I didn’t mention the Rendlesham case. LT COL HALT: This is unreal. one can only call an argy-bargy on the I merely asked, à propos any RAF base Internet with the late Georgina Bruni, leased to the USAF, where the USAF’s [Break in recording] author of the True Believer’s Bible on territorial responsibility ended and who the Rendlesham incident, You Can’t Tell would defend the perimeter if it were at- 6 tacked. Crown on the other, the separation of from political crisis to outbreak of hostili- military and police powers is taken rather ties generally take a long time. By the mid The answers were interesting, for they seriously by the British. Given Lt Col Halt’s Sixties it had been calculated that there suggested that Lt Col Halt had put him- position and responsibilities,9 it would be were some 40–50 discrete stages an inter- self in a potentially embarrassing posi- surprising (or at least depressing) if he national crisis would pass through before tion. They were: hadn’t been apprised of the subtleties an exchange of nuclear missiles became of the British constitution and where he inevitable.12 During that time US bases in t USAF responsibility starts (and ends) stood in relation to it. the UK would have ample opportunity to with the fenceline of an RAF base prepare their defences. leased to the USAF. Wars and rumours of wars One can safely say that any necessary t Beyond that, i.e. outside the base, t’s not hard to see that the intricacies diplomatic niceties would, in one form or responsibility for security rests with Iof the British constitution could cre- another, have been observed long before the local police. ate problems, unforeseen in the 17th any actual shooting started. One can say century, for those wanting to defend a this particularly safely because in Octo- That’s the strict legal position: Mr Plod is USAF base in the UK against a common ber 2010 the aforementioned Nick Pope, in charge. If hordes of Red Army Spetsnaz enemy. But in the interests of pragma- former Ministry of Defence (MoD) clerk 8 troops were to have parachuted into tism much may be done by way of laws, and would-be half-colonel of the British the Su#olk countryside as Soviet ICBMs leases and treaties when a country enjoys Army, stated at the Fortean Times Un- rained down on Birmingham, Knotty Ash, (and sometimes su#ers from) an unwrit- Convention that US forces in the UK had Stow-in-the-Wold, &c, the protocol, at ten constitution. Even the egregious Nick standing authorization under the Status face value, would have been as follows. Pope, devotee of an ET interpretation of of Forces Agreement to venture o#-base The US base commander complains to the Rendlesham incident and of whom if the security of a base was compromised. the RAF base commander, who passes on more later, recognizes as much: As the person who provoked this useful American expressions of distaste to the revelation, I regret not having had the wit local police who, duly incensed at the So- The legal position with regard to United to point out at the time that proceeding viets’ o#ence of armed trespass, request States Visiting Forces (USVF) is complex, mob-handed o#-base to debunk (Lt Col (in suitably clipped tones) the Army to and there are a number of di!erent laws Halt’s own word) a UFO or two, scarcely give military aid to the civil community. and treaties governing what USVF per- constitutes defending ‘the security of the Note that formula: the strict legal and sonnel can and cannot do in the UK. The base’ as that term might commonly be constitutional position is that the British general rule is that US jurisdiction ends at understood.

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