Aerial Phenomena Enquiry Network (APEN) - Uncovered?

a reply to: Jayceedove

It seems like APEN were a very vindictive, manipulative "organisation" and I've come to the conclusion that they did target you and like you say, were attempting to "big themselves up".

How interesting regarding Ralph Noyes. I'm absolutely baffled by that and had no knowledge of it. I'll get the book.

Ive got most of your books (a few are signed) and recently read Skycrash Through Time, which turned out to a be brand new shrink wrapped copy. I'd ordered it assuming you were involved and it was a follow up to Skycrash. I'd already got a few of your RFI related books so was looking to finish my collection.

I was a little dissapointed to discover it was Brenda alone. Two things stood out as really unexpected and odd.

The first was Karen, who claimed that Rendlesham was the result of a Tupolev 142 Russian Bomber crashing / defecting. She even provided a photo of the retrieved cannister from the sea which I've posted somewhere. I didn't believe the story for a moment but I am still puzzled why anyone would go to those lengths.

The second was about David Daniels, some sort of alien who Brenda claims both you and Noyes met and could shape shift.

One other thing caught my eye reading Skycrash again last week. Before the release of the Halt tape, you were told it was played at dinner parties and featured the line "Oh my God, it's a m...".

At this point Halt is cutoff and the tape ends but I think the conclusion you came to was that it was probably Machine.

It seems odd that the person who told you this must have been obvious you would eventually get the tape and find out this wasn't part of it...

a reply to: Jayceedove

Hi Jenny,

Thanks for indulging us further. Fortunately this thread is quiet enough to keep up easily with. I've been quietly reading whilst ctj83 posed questions.

When you say :

When the case got into the News of the World two months later (we still do not know exactly how) it later emerged that Noyes had contacted them and spoke to them as an anonymous MoD source about the case.

Now I heard an interview with Keith Beabey from the NOTW and he claimed a lawyer, Harry Harris, had tipped them off about the details. It was on Radio Suffolk's Rendlesham Revealed Show back in 2010 which is sadly no longer easily available to listen to.

I don't know if that resolves it for you or just throws up more questions?

Personally I don't remember Berwyn back in the day as I was still in infant school. It remained a sort of footnote UFO case for a long while. But I do remember the 'revival' in 90s. I also feel that Russ Kellet's book two years ago turned it into a farce. The core of the case is what Pat Evans saw on the mountainside that night.

Funnily enough the two replies above - though on very different things - the News of the World story and the 'machine' comment about hearing the tape are linked by the same person.

I never heard the 'machine' reference directly. But it came from a group of people who met Halt on base in June 1983 in secret and were deliberately told (allegedly by Halt) to not bring 'those dumb broads' with them. As in the three of us!

Halt later said he never said this, by the way. But I suspect he said something like it as we were being a bit of a nuisance so I can sort of understand it if he did to be honest.

As for the News of the World being 'tipped off by Harry Harris'. Well Keith Beabey was the man at the paper who coordinated the story.

I knew him and we met a few times as he was based in Manchester where the News of the World was then based during the 1980s and in the mod 80s I worked for the BBC in Manchester for a time researching, writing and presenting a series of radio documentaries on the paranormal. So our paths crossed.

We did meet over Rendlesham, too, because in 1983 (which was before I worked for the BBC) I lived in Wallasey with my 'hubby' and had a weekly spot on UFOs and the paranormal that I wrote for Radio City. When Harry set up the News of the World story Brenda and Dot were too far to get to Manchester to attend the meetings so I agreed to get the train over from Merseyside - as it was easier for me to do - and keep them informed as to what was happening.

So - yes - it is true that Harry Harris did the negotiating with the NOTW as a lawyer who at that time had sold several previous UFO Cases to the tabloids. However, so far as I know he was not the one to first alert the paper.

Brenda, as I recall, was called by them after BUFORA held a conference in August 1983 where we had held an in camera session to show UFO researchers the then just released - but not yet public - MoD and USAF documentation. No press were there but someone who was there may have tipped them off.

As I recall it Harry simply persuaded Brenda and Dot that the story was getting out given the call she had had about it already and it was best that he negotiate a controlled sale so as to keep them in the loop and ensure the paper got the facts right.

But I do not know how the paper became aware there was a story in the first place between that August BUFORA conference and the point this happened a week or two later.

Only of the torturous meetings and negotiations over fees which was paid to multiple people for various things they contributed and in total came to somewhere around £15,000.

Larry Warren says I told him it was £25,000 but I don't know why I would have as that is a figure I have never seen linked to the total. It is possible some people were paid things by the paper that I do not know about. But my guess is I told Larry $25,000 - which seems somewhere around the right amount in dollars.

This fee seems to have caused friction in the US because of a belief that we had made a fortune selling things not ours to sell. But Brenda, Dot and I were only paid around £5000 - or £6000 between us and that was for things that we had obtained ourselves such as MoD documents and so forth. What we got was all ploughed back into the case which by that point was proving very expensive and in no way compensated by Sky Crash (for which the advance was so small that you would likely all laugh).

Dot and I spent a month in the US with our NOTW money (a trip neither of us could have ever afforded at that time otherwise) where we went all over the country to collate data about the case for the writing of Sky Crash. In order to make the money last I travelled thousands of miles entirely by Greyhound bus and by train and slept many nights on seats on those and not in hotels.

It was invaluable and we were helped greatly by J Allen Hynek who I had won over to the case during the years between 1981 and 1983 when we were struggling to prove anything. It was for him more than anything that we had that special session on the case at the Aug 1983 BUFORA conference and Allen repaid us hugely and was a large factor in how we got the data for Skycrash together.

a reply to: Jayceedove

Thanks for the in-depth reply Jenny!

I do sometimes wonder if it was more than coincidence that Dan / Steve Roberts just so happened to stumble upon Brenda in a pub and relate the entire story of Rendlesham (that is very similar to Larry Warren's early version , and to an extent Halts).

Over time, it seems aspects such as Aliens in silver suits, a traditional flying saucer shape and Burroughs climbing on the craft have all disappeared from the 'story'!

I'm not entirely clear on how Ralph actually became involved after reading that. It seems like he was something of an Enigma himself.

Another odd connection with Ralph was David Daniels, who supposedly you met as well, and lived with Brenda for a time?

Did you ever consider David might have been connected to APEN in some way?

A couple of minor additions to the thread.

Andy Roberts is one of the ufologists to receive APEN "literature"

Jenny Randles used to stay in the area near the Berwyn incident with her boyfriend in their caravan. It is possible this motivated APEN to pick this case or target her?

a reply to: ctj83

Just to clarify that last point. I started getting APEN letters and tapes in late 1974/early 1975.

I did not meet Paul until July 1977 and it was between 1978 and the mid 80s when we spent time at his family caravan in Llandrillo.

So the APEN contact over this case was not dependent on my association with the area.

However, if those running the APEN campaign knew me via the local UFO group in Manchester and NUFON - as I am pretty sure was the case - then they may very well have been aware that I had studied geology at college and been on field trips to that area of Wales whilst doing so. As I am fairly sure I would have raised the earthquake in that context when we talked about the case at a MUFORA meeting soon after it happened - given that it was reported on the nightly news so was a story that had immediate attention.

During the 70s and 80s MUFORA held our meetings in the board room at Granada TV as one of our members was a senior staff member. The group was not open membership - invite only - and directly focused on investigating cases and discussing the results at these meetings. So I am 99% sure the Berywn case will have been discussed at one of these prior to the first APEN contact.

Also - from January 1975 onward (around the time the APEN letters/tapes began) we were invited to do a regular UFO slot on the then new commercial radio station in central Manchester (Piccadilly). Peter Warrington and I did these shows and talked about current cases and took listener calls. It is possible we discussed Berwyn on there. Trying to recall the presenter but several of those starting out there at that time became quite big in broadcasting later. Chris Evans (Top Gear) and Tommy Mallett started out there but from the early days I remember Andy Peebles.

a reply to: Jayceedove

Thanks for the corrections and clarity Jenny.

I'm rather taken aback by the idea that top level ufologist meetings were taking place at Granada Tv with a senior staff member.

It appears that there were some people who probably wouldn't want to be publicly known as interested in ufology involved in Mufora and Nufon!

We have a senior police officer, solicitors, a TV executive and more. Not exactly the crowd that people were made to believe via the media were interested in ufology...

update #2

Between the 1970s - 1990s there are three clear groups that targeted ufologists and hoaxed various incidents or aspects of them:

- The Aviary: Members / Moore / Doty: Bennewtiz. MJ12? Targeted Jenny Randles??
- APEN - Members: Unknown but suspected. Jenny Randles and Andy Roberts targeted Events:Berwyn, RFI
- Genius Loci / Blue Hare - unkown events members: Andy Roberts connected

Did the Aviary communicate with APEN in an attempt to distribute core story documents. If not, why did both APENand MJ12 document creators target Jenny?

a reply to: ctj83

My association with MJ 12 came when I was invited to meet a military man who claimed to have come into possession of some documents about ufo retrievals and the like whilst in the US. At that point MJ 12 had not surfaced.

I agreed to meet him and took my colleague Peter Hough with me for back up so it was not just my word. Quite a complicated story emerged that I will elaborate on if anyone is interested. Peter and I did some digging into this guy to check what we could without exposing him in those (1980s) pre internet days.

He promised to deliver documents and evidence and set up a rendezvous at a country park near where I then lived in Cheshire. But he never showed.

Not long after Tim Good seems to have come into contact with the MJ 12 papers and I always suspected this was a dry run on me and my suspicions/or checking him out had filtered through to this intermediary and they decided not to go further.

One reason I was always very negative towards the MJ 12 stuff when it went public - something that ended up costing me dear by subsequent misfortune.

But I believed then - and still believe today - it was an APEN like set up on UFO researchers.

By the way I did not mean that the Granada meetings occurred because the member was a TV executive. He was not. He was a senior staff member there but not an executive.

MUFORA was a very unusual UFO group - created by Peter Warrington (with whom I co authored two books) - a local astronomer - and always operated as a working team that never had more than 8 - 10 members. Basically people involved contributed by doing investigation or research into cases or they drifted away as there was no other aspect to the group in those early years (1974 - 1988 or so).

The group courted those with good contacts to help with research. I think I was first invited because I had taken astronomy courses at Manchester University so had some links with Jodrell Bank, who in the end proved helpful by passing witnesses onto us and even running programmes for us to help try to resolve cases. Though never with public acknowledgement, of course. Though Peter and I paid them back by giving talks on UFOs in the planetarium there.

Others offered contacts with Kodak - and their lab at Hemel Hempstead did free research with us on several big photo cases.

So someone with video recording equipment or a senior police officer who could put witnesses from the forces at ease to talk to us were quickly recognised as assets.

This was less sinister (as I guess it might seem from the outside) and more really by design so as to try to maximise our ability to follow through cases.

We even managed to work with the sceptics - such as Ian Ridpath and a couple of scientists at Salford who were part of The Skeptic magazine - who all were willing to assist on specific cases.

In other words it just tended to attract active members who wanted to do Ufology rather than debate it or read about it as tended to be the way of most UFO groups.

Over the years there were a couple who got involved whom I have my suspicions about in terms of their actual motives for being involved. If anyone 'out there' wanted a finger on the pulse being at MUFORA meetings was the place to be in those days. So no surprise if they knew it. But to be honest I saw that as a vindication we were doing something right.

By the early 90s it had fizzled out as Peter Warrington had become a bit disillusioned (though we are still in touch) and Peter Hough had taken over running the group. He always was more interested in a broader spectrum of paranormal phenomena than just UFOs and changed the focus of the group to that wider scope. It was also renamed from MUFORA to NARO - Northern Anomalies Research Organization. And carried on until around 2000 I think - though by then I had moved out of the area so was not directly involved.

Peter is still out there but became a local politician, then qualified as a psychologist and these days publishes horror novels. We keep in touch and did write an update on the Ilkley entity photo case together for Fortean Times a few years ago. But he is not really that involved in the field any more.

a reply to: Jayceedove

Thank for the detailed reply and again, the clarification! I for one, would love to know the backstory you mention! I'm also both unaware and disturbed as to why being negative on MJ12 documents had a negative effect for you?

Am I misunderstanding?

I've just finished "The UFOs That Never Were" and many of the cases are intruguing btw.

Thank for the detailed reply and again, the clarification! I for one, would love to know the backstory you mention! I'm also both unaware and disturbed as to why being negative on MJ12 documents had a negative effect for you?

I would rather have a negative reaction because of sensible caution than a positive one where I just let my brain fall out!

a reply to: Mogget

I cannot legally discuss what I said about MJ 12, sorry.

But please do not assume from that remark that it involves something sinister or government pressure or any link with the MJ 12 documents from me. It is none of those things. I simply cannot discuss it.

But I can tell you more about the events that got me involved in what seems in retrospect to be a UK version of the MJ 12 scenario just before that story surfaced.

As noted I was contacted out of the blue by a man who knew that I was a writer and had just read my then new book with Peter Warrington - Science and the UFOs - which we had been asked to write by Oxford science publisher Basil Blackwell after we had an article called 'The Neglected Science of UFOs' published by New Scientist.

This is coincidentally the same book that has a bit part in the Whitley Strieber 'Communion' story - as in him tossing it across the room as if it were a coiled snake, for anyone familiar with that abduction case.

Anyhow, this man got my home number (he did not say how) and told me that he had been handed by his commanding officer in the British Army six ultra top secret reports totalling 600 pages. He gave me some information - enough to be tantalising - and the gist of their content. But asked to meet somewhere covertly to take this further as he was very worried about possessing these things.

As I mentioned above I asked my colleague Peter Hough to come with me for some back up if this went gaga and this guy did show up - sheepishly - apparently recognising me (which was not too surprising as I had been on TV quite a bit so did not find that odd).

Peter and I grilled him for quite some time and we spent an hour or two with him. He looked worried and kept glancing around.

He told us he was in the Army up to early 1985 and his commanding officer had been on attachment in the States and befriended a USAF officer from Wright Patterson. This guy was a computer tech who one night confided that by accident he had accessed some locked UFO files. Intrigued he copied them to read later but was arrested as he had somehow alerted higher ups. With this man's help his British friend took them from their hiding spot and carried them to the UK.

So far, so much nonsense we both thought. Especially when this Army man (who called himself John) said both his boss and the Wright Patterson man wanted the files made public but soon after they were brought to the UK the USAF computer tech died in a car crash. Which, surprise, surprise, neither of the Brits now believed was an accident.

Allegedly the British CO tested some of his men one after the other by raising the general issue of UFOs with them to see how they responded. And if they kept his chat with them about the subject (but not these files as he did not tell them about these) to themselves.

Only later - after John had left the Army but was still a reservist - did his ex CO tell him all the above when he returned for a training weekend. He told John that after his test he was the only one he could trust with the files and that he should try to get them into the open and that he should do so via myself.

Aside from my books around then I was being rather ludicrously portrayed on TV in a TV advert because a new women's magazine was out around then and there was an interview with me inside issue 1. That ad went a bit (well actually a lot!) over the top and spouted about me also having had a close encounter on a 'deserted Wiltshire road'. In real life (and the interview) this was just a sighting of three lights in a triangle (nothing else) - which my fiancé and I had whilst on his motorbike heading back to Cheshire from the Farnborough Air Show. And the 'deserted' road was far from that and actually was the M4 motorway! So for a brief while I was 'famous'.

John had not got the documents with him when we met. Not one page. Despite him telling us there were many documents with illustrations and photos. He had agreed with his CO to check me out and see if I would help get the world to see this news. But his own fears after reading them (one was a file dated October 1977 titled 'Elimination of non-military sources') made him split them up into individual unsorted piles in different locations so that nobody accidentally finding them would get the proper picture.

He saw we were pretty sceptical by this point - as we both were. And did start offering up codes and names and described in more detail the content of the files. One was a biological analysis by a scientist of an alien body retrieved from a crash. This file dated from 1948.

It was all interesting, of course, but nothing at all that could not have been made up with a rudimentary background reading into USAF files on UFOs and a few books by Tim Good and others.

We told him that before even considering helping him we needed to see some evidence for his story as right then it was just that - a story. He said he understood and asked to meet us in a covert spot - a country park - where he would bring 'samples'. We were not sure what to do but we did turn up for the meeting and waited quite a while but he never showed up.

In the meantime we had done some digging as discretely as we could to try to check out his story. What we could check of his claims worked out but we could not really dig deep as if he was telling the truth we would have alerted someone.

We had just written it all off as a probable hoax when 11 days after the no show I got a letter from him in which he apologised for not turning up, said he had been 'invited' in to an internal investigation. Two days after he met Peter and I he was taken to his base and made to hand over the documents which he was assured were 'sensitive' but the creation of an educated prankster' and 'no credence could be attributed' to them.

Not long after Tim Good apparently got leaked documents and published the news and we wondered if we had been a dry run and been opted against because we were not jumping eagerly into accepting this story.

Or it was all a joke and nothing to do with MJ 12 at all.

a reply to: Jayceedove

I think your story and the MJ12 story point to one thing. Someone wanted to infiltrate the UFO community on both sides of the Atlantic. Was this all some kind of social experiment to test the gullibility of people chasing UFOs? Or (like in the Paul Bennewitz case) was it a serious piece of disinformation to throw numerous people off the scent of the military?

We know that military bases were monitored by UFO enthusiasts (and so did the Soviets!) back in the 1980s. But I don't get what the creator(s) of the MJ12 documents was trying to achieve. I have heard that Bill Moore wanted to use bogus documents as a way of 'outing' people who were involved in keeping UFO secrets. But it seems a bit more sophisticated than that and there were other motivations.

Anyway if anyone wants to read your article in the New Scientist it's available on Google Books here :

The Neglected Science of UFOs

I believe it suggests using the term UAP long before a certain Mrs. Clinton mentioned it.

a reply to: Jayceedove

How fascinating! Thanks for the detailed reply Jenny!

Considering the fact that AFOSI compromised 5 prominent US ufologists I don't think it's a great leap to suggest that prominent UK ufologists were also targeted?

I believe you were selected as one, but as this demonstrates, they passed on you! A lucky escape.

Thanks for the comments. The term UAP was used by British UFO researchers from far back. Not just me. Paul Devereux used it as well in his writing and I certainly did from very early on in my published stuff. At least in UFO Study (my second book out in 1981) but quite probably before that in articles.

I should emphasise - though - that I am not claiming credit for inventing it as I am sure it has been used even earlier than that by others. Though possibly not in the same context or way that I have done over the years - which is to regard it as a sub type of UFO report which points away from any kind of intelligent origin and to relate to an unknown atmospheric phenomenon.

It was just more common in the UK as there was more interest by UK researchers in looking for this possible evidence of new scientific phenomena that might push the frontiers of knowledge of atmospheric physics.

This widespread use in UK UFO literature is probably why it also features in the Condign Report (a declassified science study that emerged from recent MoD file releases). Here it is discussed UAP very specifically in the 1990s in the context of potential threats to air traffic.

The MoD likely latched onto this because of their familiarity with the UK UFO literature.

a reply to: Jayceedove

The idea that much of what is observed is the result of rare atmospheric events is compelling.

It seems almost certain that these would be linked or connected to:

- high tension power lines
- near a large body of water
- certain types of geology
- nuclear fission
- over the horizon radar
- intense magnetics

My only problem is that I'm convinced that you were targeted by several different groups.

Perhaps there is a pattern that I'm missing, that the cases most likely to be UAPs are the least likely to involve disinformation or targeting by the various 'counter groups'

a reply to: Jayceedove

Are you aware of any correlations between PC Perks and PC Alan Godfrey's encounters? The craft aren't identical but something feels similar.

I'm currently wondering if machines were made to ionise the air, in an attempt to bounce radio waves and radar to specific points over the horizon. These object would be placed near sites of interest and temporary or transportable.

One last thing, have you seen the MirageMen documentary? I'd be interested to hear your opinion.

There are links between the Colin Perks and Alan Godfrey cases, yes. Something I intend to look at more closely because I think they might reveal why the powers-that-be were so interested in these examples as opposed to many others involving police witnesses. I think there is a third sighting involving the police (not far from Menwith Hill) which I also looked into where the MoD got very curious as well.

As for atmospheric phenomena not really having defence implications in the way that - say - alien intrusions or time travellers or so forth - I think that if we think that it undersells the potential importance of physical forces.

My suspicion from the MoD people that I have talked to over the years is that they were as flummoxed by most UFO evidence as the rest of us but could not justify in depth interest or taking risks by going into the field in pursuit of cases that seem ephemeral and are like trying to study fog.

Cases that involve physical and physiological forces are different. These are tangible. They have researchable elements. Interest can be justified in two other ways that the stranger realms of UFO land cannot.

Firstly, that - regardless of origin - if they are dangerous, physically real, energetic phenomena that appear in the atmosphere and on the ground then they can pose a threat to defence infrastructure - from causing radar issues to scrambling computers on a jet fighter. So you can justify investigation - though you might prefer to call them something other than UFOs (UAP is a start) to get them through budget restrictions. Because it has positive defence minded consequences and fits the remit of the MoD or any other defence agency in the way that other UFOs may not.

Secondly, if we are talking unknown energetic forces in the atmosphere then eyes light up with the possibility that these can be harnessed (and no doubt weaponised) and this once again provides and in road to defence agencies to take these UFO cases more seriously than others. If they can provide hope of tangible discoveries that might give a tactical edge over an opponent to master and utilise then UAP seem far more like the sort of thing that ministry budgets can be allocated towards without risk of the media trying to ridicule the expending of resources on a hunt for little grey men in flying saucers.

a reply to: Jayceedove

Thanks as always Jenny, I think your reply is very insightful. A few random thoughts:

- Do you think Prisoner Tommy Doyle and his files were genuine or an even earlier attempt at sending MJ12 style papers?
- Seeing as we are 30 years out from RFI, has anyone looked for evidence of D Notice being issued?

a reply to: Jayceedove

Just to add, the Exeter (New Hampshire) Incident seems to share components of both Perks, Godfrey and RFI. It involves the 'lights' at a distance, but includes police and power lines.