NASA space shuttle footage of suspected UFO 1991 mission

On August 4, 1990, two young men were working as chefs in a hotel in Pitlochry, a beautiful Highland Perthshire town, just outside the Cairngorms National Park in Scotland.

At 9pm, after a long day in a hot kitchen, they drove about 13 miles north along the A9 to Calvine, a spot on the edge of the Cairngorms, for a walk in the hills.
When he visited the MoD later that year, however, he saw the Calvine photo blown up to poster size on the UFO office wall.

'I asked how they were getting on. They said it was being investigated. I was told to 'leave it to London'… they asked me not to get involved, so I have done exactly that,' he said.

'The years passed and gradually I just forgot about the print in my drawer. Now I hope the two witnesses will come forward and tell their own stories.'

I hope so too. My interest in UFO sightings started in the 1990s when, working as a journalist in Yorkshire, I began using the Freedom of Information Act to request access to MoD files on famous UFO sightings such as the Rendlesham Forest incident that is often called Britain's Roswell (an incident in 1947 in New Mexico long believed to have been a cover-up of UFO evidence).

In 2008, shortly before the MoD disbanded their UFO desk, I had become such an authority on the MoD files that I was offered the opportunity to curate the release of thousands of once secret UFO papers at The National Archives.

In here, among the hundreds of drawings from schoolchildren and letters from UFO conspiracy theorists demanding to know where the aliens were being kept, I found a poor-quality, photocopied drawing of a UFO with a Harrier beside it.

Yet, even more intriguingly, alongside the image there was a briefing prepared for Defence Ministers in Margaret Thatcher's government of the time if they were approached to comment on the sighting.

The wording was vague and non-committal, the typical 'swatting away' investigators are used to. Under the sub-heading 'Defensive Lines to Take' is the official response the MoD should give, if asked.

'Have looked at the photographs, no definite conclusions reached regarding large diamond-shaped object. Confident that jet aircraft is a Harrier. Have no record of Harriers operating in location at stated date/time. No other reports received by MoD of unusual air activity or sightings at location/date/time.'

I checked, but of course, no one did ask. The story was immediately shelved. I went looking for more.

Although the sparse MoD papers on the Calvine sighting were declassified, the names of the photographer (and Craig Lindsay) were removed from the file under Data Protection laws. Normally, these would have been released after 30 years — on January 1, 2020 — but the MoD and The National Archives continue to insist they must be kept secret for another 54 years — until 2076 — because of 'privacy concerns'.

Even the Daily Record's decision not to publish the story is intriguing. Had it been spiked by a D-Notice — a gagging order based on national security concerns, served by the MoD?

While this might sound like something from TV's The X-Files, some clever sleuthing by my fellow UFOlogist Matthew Illsley discovered that the Record's editor, the late Endell Laird, had been a member of the MoD's D-Notice committee at the time. A coincidence?

Matthew from Mansfield in Nottinghamshire is challenging the extended closure decision that he says is unjustified, asking: 'What have they got to hide after all these years?'

So what was it? Sadly, I do not think that mysterious aircraft arrived from another galaxy. I believe it was man-made somewhere in a secret hangar — and whatever it was remains on the secret list and highly sensitive. The witnesses had simply been in that 'million to one' chance of being in that particular place at that particular time, and needed to be shut up.

Remember, this was 1990, the Cold War was still a year away from thawing. The Gulf War started literally days earlier. The world was — as many would argue it still is today — divided along 'them and us' battle lines.

Since the mid-Eighties, there had been rumours of a top secret, exotic, American reconnaissance aircraft named 'Aurora' — a silent, supersonic, geometrically shaped craft, used for spy missions.

Although there has never been any substantial evidence that it was ever built or flown, there have been numerous unexplained sightings and incidents in both the US and the UK over the years that have fuelled the Aurora myth — Calvine included.

In 1991, Defence Ministers denied in Parliament that the US had been given permission to fly or land their secret spy plane in UK airspace after reports that Aurora had been spotted leaving RAF Machrihanish on the Mull of Kintyre.

But papers I obtained using the Freedom of Information Act suggest that some MoD intelligence officers did believe Aurora existed but were not allowed to say anything publicly.

A source in the MoD tells me that once Britain's intelligence chiefs realised the Calvine photographs showed a top secret US project they were immediately classified secret — UK Eyes Only.

Last June, the Pentagon released its long-awaited report on what it now calls UAPs or 'unidentified aerial phenomena' after a spate of similar sightings and the release of films showing fast-moving UFOs taken by US Navy pilots. The new American UAP Task Force listed five categories that most sightings, when resolved, would likely fall into — and one of these is 'classified programs' developed by the US government.

I am convinced the Calvine photograph shows one of these classified programs. Meanwhile, the American, and possibly our own, government have found it useful to 'keep the myth of UFOs flying' because it provides a useful cover for their own covert military activities.