Banking reforms will go ahead, says Vince Cable

BBC News, 31 August 2011

Related Stories 

• Banks up on regulation fightback

Business Secretary Vince Cable has said banking reforms will go ahead despite a row over the speed of the changes.

Bankers have warned that reforms could
risk Britain's economic recovery

On Tuesday, CBI director general John Cridland said taking action to reform banks now would be "barking mad".

But Mr Cable said it was "disingenuous in the extreme" to warn that reform could damage economic recovery.

Ensuring taxpayers are not liable for any future losses or bank collapses and ring-fencing banks' retail operations are among the recommendations.

Anxieties about the big financial institutions were "all the more reason for grappling with this issue", Mr Cable told the Times.

He said: "It is disingenuous in the extreme to use the current context to argue against reform.

"Banks are in a way trying to create a panic around something which they know has got to happen.

"The governor of the Bank of England and many other people have been arguing that we have to deal with the too-big-to-fail problem.

"We can't have big global banks with balance sheets bigger than British GDP underwritten by the taxpayer; this can't go on and it has got to be dealt with."

'Risking recovery'

The Liberal Democrat minister's comments came after attacks on the proposals from CBI director general Mr Cridland and British Bankers' Association chief executive Angela Knight.

"From now on, the UK's efforts must be focused on the economic recovery," Mrs Knight said.

"This means allowing the banks to finance the recovery first, pay back the taxpayer next, and only then turn to further regulatory change.

"If more regulation remains at the top of the list, then this will only have the affect of risking the recovery which is so essential to our future."

In comments reported in the Financial Times, Mr Cridland said: "Taking action at this moment - this moment of growth peril, which weakens the ability of banks in Britain to provide the finance that businesses need to grow - is just to me barking mad."

'Ring-fenced'

The Independent Commission on Banking's final recommendations are due on 12 September.

In its interim report published in April, the banking commission recommended ring-fencing banks' retail operations from their investment banking arms.

It also said that taxpayers should not be liable for future losses, and that depositors should get their money back before creditors.

The commission was set up by the government last June to review the UK banking sector after bailing out some of the UK biggest banks during the financial crisis.

However, the government is under no obligation to implement its recommendations.

Related Articles:

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Vince Cable: disingenuous bankers are trying to derail reforms

EU agrees on Syrian oil ban as Assad continues brutal crackdown on protesters

Al Arabiya, By Mustapha Ajbaili, Al Arabiya and Agencies, Monday, 29 August 2011

Anti-regime protesters carry banners during a rally in Talbiseh, in the
central province of Homs, Syria. (File Photo)

  

The European Union reached an agreement in principle Monday to ban oil imports from Syria, tightening the noose on President Bashar al-Assad, who has refused to heed international and regional calls for an end to his brutal crackdown on peaceful protesters.

“There is a political consensus on a European embargo of imports of Syrian petroleum products,” a diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The new sanctions were backed by all representatives at a meeting of experts from the 27-nation bloc in Brussels, another diplomat said.

Individual EU governments are expected to give their final approval by the end of the week, the diplomat said.

The EU buys 95 percent of the oil Syria exports, representing nearly one-third of government receipts, according to diplomats.

The latest move by the European Union came as Syrian security forces in armored vehicles besieged the town of Ruston, outside of Homs, on Monday in response to reports that a military unit defected in the area, Local Coordination Committees of Syria said.

At least 40 light tanks and armored vehicles, and 20 buses of troops and military intelligence, deployed at 5:30 a.m. at the highway entrance to Ruston, 20 km (12 miles) north of the city of Homs, and began firing heavy machine guns at the town,

two residents said, according to Reuters.

“The tanks deployed at both banks of the highway, which remained open, and fired long bursts from their machine guns at Ruston,” one of the residents, who gave his name as Raed, told Reuters by phone.

He said defections began in the town when it was stormed by tanks three months ago to crush large street protests against Assad in an assault that killed dozens of civilians.

Ruston, situated near the main highway leading to Turkey, is traditionally a reservoir of recruits for the mostly Sunni rank-and-file army dominated by officers from Syria’s Alawite minority sect and effectively commanded by Assad's younger brother Maher.

Mustafa Tlas, who was Syria’s defense minister for three decades before retiring in 2006, hails from Ruston.

In Damascus, dozens of soldiers also defected and fled into al-Ghouta, an area of farmland, after pro-Assad forces fired at a large crowd of demonstrators near the suburb of Harasta to prevent them from marching on the centre of the capital, residents said.

“The army has been firing heavy machine guns throughout the night at al-Ghouta and they were being met with response from smaller rifles,” a resident of Harasta told Reuters by phone.

A statement published on the internet by the Free Officers, a group that says it represents defectors, said “large defections” occurred in Harasta and that security forces and shabbiha loyal to Assad were chasing the defectors.

It was the first reported defection near the capital, where Assad’s core forces are based.

“The younger conscripts who defect mainly go back to their town and villages and hide. We have seen more experienced defectors fighting back in the south, in Idlib, and around Damascus,” said an activist, who gave his name as Abu Khaled.

Meanwhile, security forces broke up a sit-in by hundreds of people in front of the Badr Mosque in Malki, near the presidential palace in the center of Damascus, overnight on Monday.

In other regions, military and security forces stormed the villages of Deir Ezzor and Bokamal, killing one child and wounding dozens of residents, the coordination committees said. The forces also shot at protesters in the Daraa’s cities of Inkhel, Nawa and Daeel, in Damascus suburbs including Douma and Kesweh, and in Deir Ezzor, Idlib and several neighborhoods in Homs.

The latest demonstrations in Damascus were triggered in part by an attack on Saturday by Assad's forces on a popular cleric, Osama al-Rifai. He was treated with several stitches to his head after the forces stormed al-Rifai mosque complex in the Kfar Sousa district of the capital, home to the secret police headquarters, to prevent protesters from assembling.

Related Article:

Syrian businessmen signal revulsion with President Assad's regime

Merkel tops global women's power rankings

Deutsche Welle, 25 Aug 2011  

Merkel was the only German woman
on the list of 100 powerful women

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been named the world's most powerful woman by influential business magazine Forbes. The 57-year-old came in ahead of the likes of Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama and Dilma Rousseff.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has regained her spot as the world's most powerful woman, according to a list published annually by business magazine Forbes.

Merkel, 57, was described as the head of "the one real global economy in Europe" and the "undisputed" leader of the European Union.

Forbes makes note of Merkel's current task of seeking to stabilize EU debt and keep the 17-member eurozone unified in the face of a possible renewed crisis in the single-currency bloc.

The magazine notes, however, that Merkel's increasingly international clout comes amid a waning in domestic support. In Germany, she currently has a 36-percent approval rating, representing a five-year low.

Many Germans are still apprehensive about their country's emerging role as guarantor for a host of eurozone countries currently struggling under mountains of debt, and Merkel has borne the brunt of much of this skepticism.

Born in the West German city of Hamburg, Merkel moved to the East at a young age and spent her youth in the Socialist state. She married quantum chemist Joachim Sauer in 1998, and assumed her role as chancellor in 2005.

Clinton shot to near the top of the list
when she became secretary of state

Following Merkel in the list of the world's 100 most powerful women were US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, PepsiCo chief Indra Nooyi and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. Merkel was the only German to figure in the rankings. Last year's most powerful woman, Michelle Obama, came in at eighth on the list.

"Our list reflects the diverse and dynamic paths to power for women today, whether leading a nation or setting the agenda on critical issues of our time," Moira Forbes, president and publisher of ForbesWoman, said in a statement.

"Across their multiple spheres of influence, these women have achieved power through connectivity, the ability to build a community around the organizations they oversee, the countries they lead, the causes they champion and their personal brands," Forbes added.

Author: Darren Mara

Editor: Rob Turner

Austrian man accused of raping his daugthers for four decades

Deutsche Welle, 25 Aug 2011

The victims were barred from having
any social contacts

Austria has been rocked by a new incest scandal as a father allegedly imprisoned and raped his two daughters for more than 40 years. The abuse ended only in 2011 when the victims fought back.

Austrian police have arrested a man suspected of sexually abusing his two daughters for more than 40 years between 1970 and March 2011.

The now 80-year old man allegedly kept the two women locked up in a small room with only a narrow wooden bench to sleep on.

"The accused repeatedly threatened to kill them and threatened them with weapons," the local police department said in a statement.

He also prevented them from having "any social contact" outside the home.

The victims are now 53 and 45 years old and according to media reports are mentally disabled. The mother who died in 2008 was also regularly abused by her husband.

Too intimidated to flee

"They were evidently locked up in their own house, hardly ventured out into the open," police chief Alois Lissl told Austrian television.

"They received (outside) care but were apparently so intimidated that they kept quiet about these acts their entire life."

The case came to the attention of the authorities when the women escaped after the father tried to rape the elder daughter and was pushed back.

He fell and injured himself so he could not get up anymore. The two women refused to help him but called a social worker instead, who then reported the abuse to the authorities.

The man was arrested on suspicion of assault, duress, rape, abuse and neglect of minors or defenseless persons among other offences. The suspect is in hospital and denies all charges. 

Reminiscent of Fritzl case

In an earlier incest case in Austria,
 Josef Fritzl held abused his
daughter for 24 years

The allegations eerily evoke the case of an earlier Austrian incest case. Josef Fritzl imprisoned his daughter in a cellar prison for 24 years, repeatedly raped her and fathered seven children with her - one of whom died.

He was found to have caused the death of the newborn by failing to seek medical help despite knowing the child was in danger of dying.

In March 2009, Fritzl was found unanimously guilty of murder through negligence, incest, rape, enslavement, coercion, and forced imprisonment.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Author: Andreas Illmer (AP, AFP, Reuters)

Editor: Rob Turner

European technology company accused of enabling torture

Deutsche Welle, 24 Aug 2011  

NSN again faces charges its
technology is being misused

Bahraini security officials used systems from Nokia Siemens Networks to track dissidents, who were later tortured, a new report says. Human rights activists don't want repressive regimes to get surveillance technology.

Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) faces new allegations that technology it exported is being used by repressive governments to track human rights activists. Bloomberg reports that Bahraini officials used NSN monitoring systems to intercept text messages and gather information about mobile phone conversations.

Bahraini activist Abdul Ghani Al Khanjar told Bloomberg that security officials tortured him numerous times while he was in detention for some seven months. When questioning him, his captors were able to quote from his private conversations with alarming detail.

In a statement to Deutsche Welle, NSN said that it divested the monitoring center business in March 2009 and no longer provides the technology to any country.

The statement goes on to say that "such abuse, if it has occurred, is wrong and is contrary to [NSN's] Code of Conduct and accepted international norms. The company condemns such misuse. ... While Nokia Siemens Networks recognizes the risks of abuse and its responsibility to take steps to reduce the potential for abuse, it strongly believes that, on balance, individuals - including those who live under repressive regimes - are better off for having access to telecommunications."

Calls for government to step in

Companies often point out that they're not responsible for what people do with their products. But human rights activists don't accept this answer, and want regulators to step in to make sure corporations don't let technology get into the wrong hands.

Activists say Iranian officials used NSN
systems to monitor dissidents

"If the US or the EU are proudly focusing on internet freedom while security and other ICT products made in the West are used to repress the same citizens we are trying to protect, this is clearly neither credible nor effective," said Marietje Schaake, a European Member of Parliament from the Netherlands who closely follows human rights issues, via e-mail.

Schaake said that she wants to see more transparency from companies. She also sees a role for the European Union.

"The EU should take the lead in raising awareness of the double-edged sword technologies," Schaake said. "The EU could also implement an early warning mechanism in order to prevent the export of technologies to regimes that systematically abuse human rights."

A troubled history

The revelation about Bahrain is the latest in a series of human rights controversies to strike NSN. Last year, two Iranians, Isa Saharkhiz and Mehdi Saharkhiz, sued NSN in an American federal court. They alleged that the sale of surveillance technology enabled Iranian security forces to arrest and torture Isa Saharkhiz.

The case was subsequently dropped, but the Iranians' attorney Ali Herischi said at the time that he planned to revisit the suit later.

Nokia Siemens Networks is a joint venture founded in 2006 between the Finnish telecom giant Nokia and the German corporation Siemens.

Author: Mark Garrison

Editor: Stuart Tiffen

Catholic church used $400m in Irish bank loans to pay U.S. sexual abuse victims

Daily Mail, by JOHN LEE and JOHN BRESLIN, 21st August 2011

• Allied Irish Bank behind pay-outs for four U.S. dioceses in 2007
• Loans signed off by bank's headquarters in Dublin
• Lawyers brand AIB the banking arm of the Vatican

More than $400m of compensation to American victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests was paid with loans and guarantees from Allied Irish Bank, it has ben revealed.

The funds, in the form of loans, guarantees and lines of credit, were given specifically to pay clerical abuse victims, and led to AIB being dubbed the 'Vatican's banking arm' in U.S. legal circles.

The revelation that a comparatively small Irish bank based on another continent was used to pay off victims will raise questions about AIB's links to the church.

Corrosive links: Allied Irish Bank became known as the
'Vatican's banking arm' in U.S. legal circles

One of the payments, of $250m to the Los Angeles diocese, emerged in a new book entitled 'Render Unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church', by Jason Berry, which outlines extraordinary links between the bank and the church.

But an investigation by the MoS has established that in a few short months in 2007 AIB emerged as the lender behind abuse settlements for four separate dioceses, and the true figure was almost twice as high.

It also emerges that while AIB was used to pay the bulk of the Church's abuse claims, the dioceses were able to hold on to most of their properties.

More...

• And the heavens opened: Lightning strikes Pope's Spanish visit as flash storm cuts short speech to million-strong crowd

Berry also claims that out of 194 Catholic dioceses in America, 45 banked with AIB. In the book, he asks: 'Was AIB a pass-through for Vatican funds to help certain dioceses while others had no such advantage?'

Many American dioceses, confronted in recent years with compensation cases, have filed for bankruptcy and negotiated settlements with victims.

But instead of being funded by the Vatican, which is fighting court cases by denying any legal responsibility to pay, almost half a billion of the money paid out in America was borrowed from AIB in Dublin.

Top men: The then- Allied Irish Banks director Eugene Sheehy,
left, and the chairman of AIB at the time was Dermot Gleeson,
right

Many other agreements may have been made out of court, in secret.

The MOS has confirmed that all of the loans were agreed by the bank's headquarters in Dublin, and amount to as much as a quarter of AIB's €2bn exposure in America the following year.

The MoS has also discovered that the loans are now being quietly repaid. In a revelation that will prompt further questions about whether the Vatican is behind the international deals, the supposedly-indebted dioceses have begun to pay off the AIB debts with money from other, unnamed, institutions.

Just last month a $40m line of credit to the Diocese of Portland in Oregon was taken over by an un-named creditor.

Bob Krebs, a spokesman for the diocese for many years, declined to name the new lender. 

Asked why AIB had been used to help fund its abuse compensation cases, he said he did not know who 'found Allied Irish for us'.

Of the deals, by far the largest line of credit was for Los Angeles, for $256m. The diocese avoided going into court with abuse victims by reaching a settlement in advance. 

Teen victim: Esther Miller was abused
by a young deacon in Los Angeles

It emerged afterwards that AIB loans and guarantees accounted for almost half of total settlement.

The deal included $175m in cash and another $25m to pay the interest, and helped Los Angeles avoid selling the bulk of its properties or reveal the true value of its total assets.

In San Diego AIB gave cash and credit of some $100m, almost half the $198m paid out to 144 victims.

That diocese filed for bankruptcy on the eve of the first civil trial against it, a case involving Monsignor Patrick O'Keeffe, originally from Kilkenny.

The Diocese of Portland, in Oregon, also filed for bankruptcy because of compensation actions.

Of a $129m settlement for victims $40m came from AIB. The loan effectively allowed the diocese to close the bankruptcy proceedings without selling any assets.

A loan document obtained by this paper details the loans in Portland. On AIB headed paper, it details how the loans were being specifically made to trusts set up to pay known and future abuse claims for the diocese.

The letter was written one day before a similar letter giving credit to the Diocese of Los Angeles, again signed by its LA-based senior vice president Charles Lydon and London-based vice president John McGrath.

U.S. lawyer Jim Stang, who sat on nine bankruptcy committees charged with looking after victim creditors, said: 'We joke that AIB is the bank of the Catholic Church.'

The bank is still exposed on some of the loans. It is owed almost $10m by the diocese of Wilmington in Delaware.

An AIB spokesman said: 'AIB's business focus in America was in the 'Not for Profit' areas and this included churches.

'Any loans advanced were approved in accordance with AIBGroup policy.'

An AIB source said they were 'standard commercial loans'.

A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles said the allegation of Vatican involvement 'is complete rubbish'.

'The Archdiocese initiated the loan discussions with AIB and other potential lenders in the summer of 2007. An arrangement was closed with AIB in November 2007,' he said.

'Settlement related financing was undertaken as a way to allow an orderly liquidation of surplus assets by the Archdiocese, and provided time for the Archdiocese to formulate a post-settlement recovery plan.

Financing arrangements with AIB or any other potential lender had no impact on the settlement timing or terms. The AIB loan was repaid in full during the 2011 fiscal year.'

AIB deal meant US church could hide abuse documents

By John Breslin

Esther Miller was a teenager living in Los Angeles when she was repeatedly forced to commit sexual acts with a priest who went on to abuse other young girls.

That period in her life still haunts her as she enters her fifties.

The man who abused her – a young deacon still at seminary college – groomed her by getting close to her parents.

Over the course of two years, until she was 17, the priest forced himself on her. He was later appointed principal of a Catholic high school despite questions over his behaviour.

He told Esther to go to confession, but only to a particular priest. He called her evil. He later turned out to be a serial abuser of boys too.

She mentioned some details of the encounters to her mother, who slapped her and told her never to speak ill of the clergy.

The abuse had a profound effect on the next two decades of Esther’s life. She was married four times and had dozens of jobs.

Only after the revelations in the Boston diocese in 2002 did she set off on the long road to forcing the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to reveal what it knew. Esther’s case was one of hundreds, which were finally settled in mid 2007 for $660m.

‘I was surprised at the dollar amount. I had no idea of the insurance and other ways of raising money.’

And she had no idea until this week that Allied Irish Bank had helpfully stepped in with guarantees of hundreds of millions.

The deal allowed the Archdiocese to avoid going to court and opening all its documents to scrutiny.

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Vatican recalls ambassador after Irish PM's comments on sex abuse row

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elitism" of Catholic Church

Moody's managers pressured analysts: ex-staffer

Reuters, by Sarah N. Lynch, WASHINGTON | Fri Aug 19, 2011

(Reuters) - An ex-Moody's Corp derivatives analyst said the credit-rating agency intimidated and pressured analysts to issue glowing ratings of toxic complex, structured mortgage securities.

In a 78-page letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, William Harrington outlined how the committees that make the ratings decisions are not independent and how managers often intimidated analysts.

"The management of Moody's, the management of Moody's Corporation and the board of Moody's Corporation are squarely responsible for the poor quality of previous Moody's opinions that ushered in the financial crisis," he wrote.

"The track record of management influence in committees speaks for itself -- it produced hollowed-out (collateralized debt obligation) opinions that were at great odds with the private opinions of committees and which were not durable for even a short period after publication," he added.

Harrington's August 8 letter, which was sent in response to a 517-page proposal by the SEC on credit-rating regulations, raises similar issues that are already at the heart of a Justice Department probe into McGraw-Hill's Standard & Poor's.

"We cannot emphasize strongly enough the importance Moody's places on the quality of our ratings and the integrity of our ratings process," said Moody's Corp spokesman Michael Adler. "For that very reason, we have robust protections in place to separate the commercial and analytical aspects of our business, and our ratings are assigned by a committee -- not by any individual analyst."

The Justice Department has been looking into what S&P analysts wanted to do with ratings during the financial crisis, and what they were told to do, according to one source familiar with the matter.

A second source has said the department also has been investigating Moody's in connection with structured product ratings during the crisis, although the exact focus on that probe is unclear.

Earlier this year, a U.S. Senate panel led by Michigan Democrat Carl Levin found that Moody's and S&P helped trigger the financial crisis after the two rating agencies gave overly positive ratings to toxic mortgage-related products and then later downgraded those ratings en masse.

Last year's Dodd-Frank Wall Street overhaul law tightens regulations for raters, including improving the transparency of the methodology used and curbing potential conflicts of interest. The SEC in May issued a proposal seeking comments on many of the Dodd-Frank provisions on rating agencies.

Harrington, who said he worked as an analyst in the derivatives group from 1999 until July 2010, said he thinks that if the SEC's proposed rules had been in place in 2002, they would still not have gotten to the heart of the problems at Moody's.

"Many of the proposed rules still give more license to the management of Moody's to step up its long-standing intimidation and harassment of analysts, to the detriment of opinion formation," he said.

(Additional reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky)

Related Articles:

Standard & Poor's mortgage ratings investigated by US

Europe aims to set the credit rating rules

Moody's may cut Portugal on growth, debt concerns (Dec 21, 2010)
Moody's slashes Ireland to Baa1, warns more may be ahead (Dec 17, 2010)
Moody's may cut Greek credit rating, puts on review (Dec 16, 2010)
Moody's warns it may downgrade Spain's debt (Dec 15, 2010)
Moody’s Threatens Credit Downgrades for Belgium, U.S. (Dec 14, 2010)

Europe wants to ensure ratings
agencies operate by EU rules

UFO filmed flying over motorway in Essex (Video)

Newslive.tv, August 19, 2011

A video of a UFO flying over the M11 in broad daylight - near to where BBC journalist Mike Sewell says he saw one - has become an online hit.

Described by UFO expert Nick Pope as: "One of the most bizarre pieces of UFO footage I've seen in a long time," the video was shot near Stansted Airport in Essex.

The 34-second clip shows a series of bright lights zipping around the cloud-filled sky above the motorway at high speed before vanishing.

All the time the passengers in the car can be heard screaming as thy drive along… that's if you ignore the fact it sound's like it's beed dubbed afterwards and the UFOs look like they were added with a bit computer trickery.

Related Articles:

As U.K. Releases UFO Files, Former UFO Project Chief Apologizes For 'Spin And Dirty Tricks'

UFO Mass Sight over Carmichael CA near Sacramento CA, US

As U.K. Releases UFO Files, Former UFO Project Chief Apologizes For 'Spin And Dirty Tricks'

Huffington Post, Lee Speigel, Aug 17, 2011

This image from 2004 was taken of the town hall in Retford, Nottinghamshire.

 When the image was developed, it revealed what appears to be a flying 

saucer in the sky (right side of image). A senior government image analyst

 ruled there was insufficient information to determine what the object was.

As the British National Archives continues to release UFO-related documents, the former Ministry of Defense (MoD) UFO Project chief is openly admitting to being part of what he claims was a U.K. policy of ridiculing UFO reports and the people who reported them.

The U.K. made public 34 previously-classified files, totaling about 9,000 pages of documents covering the years 1985 to 2007. For three of those years, 1991 to 1994, Nick Pope was in charge of the official MoD office.

"What's abundantly clear from these files is that, while in public we were desperately pushing the line that this was of no defense interest," Pope told The Huffington Post. "We couldn't say 'There's something in our air space; pilots see them; they're tracked on radar; sometimes we scramble jets to chase these things, but we can't catch them.' This would be an admission that we'd lost control of our own air space, and such a position would be untenable."

WATCH:

"Every time we got a report from a pilot, we were checking the radar tapes. So it was an interesting sleight of hand. We were telling the public we're not interested, this is all nonsense, but in reality, we were desperately chasing our tails and following this up in great detail," he added.

One file reveals how officials were afraid to be embarrassed if the public learned that UFO research was hindered by a lack of funds and higher priorities.

Another case, from 2007, took place in the vicinity of the Channel Islands and involved a small commercial aircraft.

"The pilot and several of his passengers saw a UFO, which they said was essentially a mile long," Pope recounted. "And several other pilots saw it, but said, 'We're not going to report this.' And here's the great little get-out-of-jail-free-card for the MoD: Just by a matter of maybe a few hundred meters, it turned out that this was in French air space, so MoD was given this little get out to say, 'Well, it happened in French air space, so it's not an issue for us.' Clearly, that was an absolutely outrageous abrogation of responsibility."

A file from 1993 (while Pope was chief of the UFO Project) describes how European Union funds had been wasted on a report that included a theory that aliens had established a base in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

It turns out that Pope may have been directly involved with this case.

"I'm a little bit apologetic about this because obviously, when I was in MoD, I had to play this game myself. To really achieve our policy of downplaying the UFO phenomenon, we would use a combination of 'spin and dirty tricks.'

"We used terms like UFO buffs and UFO spotters -- terms that mean these people are nut jobs. In other words, we were implying that this is just a very somewhat quaint hobby that people have as opposed to a serious research interest."

But Pope said the ridicule policy went much further than that.

"Another trick would be deliberately using phrases like 'little green men.' We were trying to do two things: either to kill any media story on the subject, or if a media story ran, insure that it ran in such a way that it would make the subject seem ridiculous and that it would make people who were interested in this seem ridiculous."

WATCH:

Pope further admits that he may have been the one who drafted actual MoD statements that contributed to the ridicule policy.

"If it was my words, then I apologize, I'm very sorry for that. I believe in open government and freedom of information. I believe that the UFO phenomenon does raise important defense, national security and air safety issues, and if I helped kill any initiative on that, I'm deeply sorry."

Some U.K. cases were apparently easier than others in trying to make them seem non-credible. Like the file that describes UFOs reported at the June 2003 Glastonbury Music Festival.

"It was very easy to find an incident where something is seen at an event like a rock concert," Pope noted. "You don't even need to say a thing without the public or media perception being that drugs and alcohol might have played a part. It was all part of the way in which we spun the subject, to try and discredit it."

Despite the thousands of pages of documents released -- with one final batch of files yet to come, sometime early next year -- Pope concedes there's still no written evidence confirming alien visits to Earth.

"Not just yet -- there's no spaceship-in-a-hangar smoking gun. However, there are plenty of sightings that I think show that we're dealing with more than just aircraft lights and weather balloons."

The latest 34 U.K. UFO files can be downloaded free of charge for the next month at the National Archives website.

Related Article:

UK UFO file release August 2011