Friday, October 24, 2008

DISCLOSURE & DESTRUCTION OF OFFICIAL AUSTRALIAN UFO FILES

(from my October 2006 UFO History Keys column)

The Australian Disclosure Project, supported by AUFORN and carried out by AURA is a worthy and excellent effort at making much of the official UFO history more readily identified and accessible. Their efforts have complimented and expanded upon my own research of official government files which I carried out some two decades earlier, particularly during 1982 to 1984.
(Photo: (copyright Bill Chalker) Bill Chalker in the Russell Offices of the Australian Department of Defence studying Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF)/Directorate of Air Force Intelligence (DAFI) UAS (Unusual Aerial Sighings) files.)
The Disclosure project however identified one disturbing action on the part of the Australian Department of Defence where they indicated the DoD had destroyed a substantial part of their UFO files, for little more reason than “cleaning house”. The Disclosure project had John Peterson, case officer, FOI unit for the DoD in 2004 confirm that the AF 529/1/3 series and AF84/3265 Part 1 files were destroyed in accordance with NAA Disposal Authority GDA 14. These represent the RAAF UFO (or UAS) sightings files from 1974 to 1982! 8 years of official sighting files destroyed.

The FOI decision maker in this extraordinary destruction of important UFO case material was Group Captain G. MacDonald, Director of Coordination – Air Force. This unfortunate and extremely short sighted decision needs to be closely scrutinised and forcefully addressed to avoid any further destruction of official Australian UFO files.

Fortunately I had the opportunity during 1982 to 1984 to examine these now destroyed files and was able to photocopy key documents from them. So at least many of the key case events and documents have been independently preserved despite the recent DoD file destruction.

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