Archive
Nick investigated dozens of cases, wrote six books, and spent two decades as one of the most quoted voices in the field. This page keeps a record of that work: the cases that made his name, the books he wrote, and the consultancy and speaking work that came after. His original website is preserved in full further down this page, so that none of what he built is lost.
The Cases
UFOs
For three years Nick investigated reported UFO sightings for the Ministry of Defence, assessing what they meant for defence, national security and flight safety. His position statement, and the questions he was asked most often by journalists, the UFO community and the public, are preserved on his original site.
The MoD Files
The British government declassified and released most of its UFO files, and Nick had worked on many of the documents inside them. Through hundreds of media interviews, he became the public face of the release. His overview of the programme is preserved on his original site.
Rendlesham Forest
In December 1980, US airmen stationed near Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk reported an unexplained craft in the trees. Nick led a cold case review of the incident while at the MoD, and later co-wrote its best-known account with two of the airmen who were there. His briefing on the case, still used by journalists and by film and TV productions, is preserved on his original site.
The Calvine UFO
In 1990, a photographer in Perthshire, Scotland, captured what became one of the most debated UFO photographs on record, kept out of public view by the Ministry of Defence for over thirty years. Nick had seen the original print. He and two former MoD colleagues judged a later recreation a close match, and he never confirmed nor denied whether a subsequently surfaced image was one of the originals he had access to.
Project Condign
Project Condign was the Ministry of Defence's own multi-year study into unidentified aerial phenomena, declassified in 2006. Nick worked on the file, though he was not the author of the final report, as has sometimes been claimed. His account of the project is preserved on his original site.
AATIP
When the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program came to light in 2017, Nick was one of the first people the media turned to. His MoD background let him contextualise a very American story for a global audience. His Q&A on it is preserved on his original site.
Conspiracy Theories
Nick was one of the world’s leading commentators on conspiracy theories, discussing them on television and writing about them for outlets that included tie-in material for the second X-Files film and truTV’s Conspiratorium. He was a skeptic of conspiracy theories himself. He thought challenging government was healthy for a free society, but that most conspiracy theories grew out of a lack of critical thinking, and it troubled him when they were used to justify anti-Semitism or to inflame people already struggling with their mental health. Having investigated UFOs for the government, he became the subject of a few conspiracy theories of his own, not least the persistent belief that he was still secretly working for the MoD. His essay on the subject is preserved on his original site.
Books
Blood Brothers2021
Action thriller. Counter-terrorism in Britain, written as fiction because the work behind it was classified. The last book he wrote, and the one fewest people found.
Encounter in Rendlesham Forest2014
Non-fiction, written with John Burroughs and Jim Penniston. The definitive account of the case Nick reopened at the MoD.
Operation Lightning Strike2000
Science fiction. The sequel to Operation Thunder Child.
Science fiction. A novel about how government and military would really cope with a hostile alien presence, cleared for publication by the MoD.
The Uninvited1997
Non-fiction. The only book on the alien abduction phenomenon written by someone who investigated it as part of his government duties.
Non-fiction. His account of official reactions to the UFO phenomenon, drawn from his years running the MoD’s UFO desk.
Every title links to Amazon. His author page is here.
Consultancy & Public Speaking
Nick was in constant demand across the film, TV and games industries, consulting on and appearing in alien and conspiracy-themed projects for clients including 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures, Microsoft and 7-Eleven, and working with agencies such as Ketchum, Freud Communications, Bartle Bogle Hegarty and Taylor Herring. He was just as in demand as a speaker, giving lectures, joining panels and debates, and appearing at UFO conferences and science fiction conventions from Contact in the Desert to the Oxford Union. Most of his talks came back to the same three years at the Ministry of Defence, and to the stories that made the media call him the real-life Fox Mulder.
The Original Site
Nick built nickpope.net over more than two decades, adding to it as each new case, book and interview came in. Rather than fold that archive into this site, we have kept it exactly as he left it, preserved on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
nickpope.netThe original site, archived in full→