David Clarke
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 👤 Person
Contents 5
| Type | Person |
|---|---|
| On the Timeline | 2 events, 1993–2022 |
David Clarke is a British journalist, folklorist and academic at Sheffield Hallam University, known for his historical research on UFOs and for his role in the release of the UK Ministry of Defence's UFO files. He takes a skeptical, social-history approach to the subject.[1][2]
Freedom of Information
After the UK's Freedom of Information Act came into force in 2005, Clarke used it to obtain official UFO records. In September 2005, with researcher Gary Anthony, he requested the secret Defence Intelligence Staff study later known as Project Condign, which was released on 15 May 2006; Clarke said it showed that the intelligence staff's UFO work had been larger than previously admitted, though it shed no new light on UFOs.[1]
The National Archives
Clarke served as consultant and spokesman for the National Archives' project to release the MoD's UFO files, which put 209 files totalling about 52,000 pages online between 2008 and June 2013. He wrote a guide to the files, The UFO Files. He has written that the MoD closed its UFO desk in 2009 largely because of budget pressure and a flood of reports of what were probably Chinese lanterns.[2]
Later work
Clarke has continued to obtain and publish official UFO documents, including the last files of the intelligence branch DI55, which reached him in 2018, and writes about the history of government UFO investigations in Britain and the United States, including the 1977 exchange between President Carter's science adviser and NASA.[3][4]
On the UAP Timeline
- Project Condign (2 December 1993) — A UK Ministry of Defence memo discusses a proposed UAP study.
- Calvine UFO photograph (12 August 2022) — Researcher David Clarke publishes the 1990 'Calvine' UFO photo from MoD files.
References
- Project Condign — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- David Clarke, "The End of the UFO Files" (20 Jun 2013) · drdavidclarke.co.uk · archived copy
- David Clarke, "'Fraught with perils'", Substack · drclarke.substack.com · archived copy
- David Clarke, "Why Britain's MoD closed the UFO files: exclusive new evidence" (6 May 2018) · drdavidclarke.co.uk · archived copy
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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