This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 17, Issue 2-3, from 2006.
To the devoted connoisseur of skeptic-versus-believer debates, the argument over the Rendlesham ‘UFO’ of December 1980 looks like turning into a classic of its kind. The latest phase (October 2003) of this decades-long guerrilla campaign revolves around the suggestion – and it was only a suggestion, not a ‘claim’ – by the former USAF law enforcement officer, retired Senior Master Sergeant Kevin Conde, that while on patrol at Woodbridge he played a prank that may have been the cause of one feature of the case.
Briefly stated, Conde – then a Technical Sergeant – adapted a USAF police car’s fancy lighting system to throw a brilliant display of coloured illuminations into a misty sky, and so could have created the impression that mysterious beams of light were being shone not up from, but down onto the Woodbridge base from above.
It seems possible that Conde perpetrated his jape at the same time Lt Col Charles Halt and his party were stumbling around in the dark in Rendlesham Forest. If so, these exchanges, on the tape-recorded commentary that Halt made at the time make sense:
LT COL HALT:
Now we’re observing what appears to be a beam coming down to the ground.
M/SGT BALL:
Look at the colours … shit.
LT COL HALT:
This is unreal.
[Break in recording]
LT COL HALT:
3.30: and the objects are still in the sky, although the one to the south looks like it’s losing a little bit of altitude. We’re turning around and heading back toward the base. The object to the sou … the object to the south is still beaming down lights to the ground.
[Break in recording]
LT COL HALT:
0400 hours: one object still hovering over the Woodbridge base at about five to ten degrees off the horizon. Still moving erratic and similar lights beaming down as earlier.
Interestingly enough, two other witnesses – local residents – saw coloured lights moving around in the region of the East Gate at the same time. James Easton has noted (in a post to UFORL email list, 1 September 2003):
In UFO Crash Landing?, Jenny Randles documents a witness, Sarah Richardson (only 12 at the time), who reportedly watched enigmatic ‘light beams’, when Halt was making a similar observation. … At the time, she was at her mother’s home in Woodbridge. It was between 1 and 3 am into Sunday, 28 December.
From (Mum’s) house you could see the river and the forests and the bases. You could hear the revving of the engines. You became familiar with all the spotlights and other activity.
This night was different. Three bands of light appeared over the woods to the side of the runway … They were star-like and they were bright, coloured red, blue and yellow … the oddest thing was the colour changes. Blue, green, yellow and so on.’
Jenny also notes that on the same night, local garage owner Gerry Harris claimed to have observed near [the] East Gate, and apparently emanating from within the forest, ‘three separate lights’ which sometimes ‘moved around in circles’.
So Conde’s practical joke, or one like it, looks like a good explanation for that small but otherwise puzzling aspect of the case.
I mention all this simply to give Kevin Conde his due locus standi in the Rendlesham affair. Inevitably, if now perhaps to his chagrin, Conde was drawn into what one can only call an argy-bargy on the Internet with Georgina Bruni, author of the True Believer’s Bible on the Rendlesham incident, You Can’t Tell The People (Bruni, 2000), over his possible part in the events of the second night. Equally inevitably the question of a ‘cover-up’ arose in the course of the exchange. In responding to that idea in an email to Georgina Bruni dated 17 July 2003 (quoted in a post to the UFORL email list of 20 July 2003), Conde wrote:
Knowing the USAF as I do I am still convinced that if the USAF was covering anything up, it was a vice base commander leading a search for UFOs off base accompanied by people responsible for guarding nuclear weapons. The fact that senior leadership did nothing to Halt can be attributed to their desire to keep the situ-ation low key. Relieving Halt would have made a splash, especially if he threw a public fit, coupled with a lack of firm evidence. They may have believed he was a wacko, but could not prove it.
In April 1998, when my brain was still able to keep track of the various claims and counter-claims in this case, I became intrigued by this question of USAF personnel wandering around on duty, en masse, in the Suffolk woods. It struck me as strange that they should feel free to do so. I lifted the electric telephone, and spoke at length with the RAF and British Army press officers at the Ministry of Defence. I didn’t mention the Rendlesham case. I merely asked, à propos any RAF base leased to the USAF, where the USAF’s territorial responsibility ended and who would defend the perimeter if it were attacked.
The answers were interesting, for they suggested that Lt Col. Halt had put himself in a potentially embarrassing position. They were:
- USAF responsibility starts (and ends) with the fenceline of an RAF base leased to the USAF.
- Beyond that, i.e. outside the base, responsibility for security rests with the local police.
That’s the strict legal position: No less a person than Mr Plod himself is in charge. Imagine the scene. Hordes of Red Army Spetsnaz troops parachute into the Suffolk countryside as Soviet ICBMs rain down on Birmingham, Manchester, Stowe-in-the-Wold, Charlton Marshall, &c.
For those unaware of the term, ‘Spetsnaz’ is an abbreviation of Spetsialnoye Nazranie – ‘troops of special purpose’. As one authority explains (John Keller):
Although Spetsnaz units may be used for other purposes during peacetime, their primary role is to carry out strategic missions during the final days prior to war breaking out and in war itself. These wartime tasks would include: deep reconnaissance of strategic targets; the destruction of strategically important command-control-and-communications (C3) facilities; the destruction of strategic weapons’ delivery systems; demolition of important bridges and transportation routes; and the snatching or assassination of important military and political leaders. Many of these missions would be carried out before the enemy could react and some even before war had actually broken out.
Faced with such an outrage, the protocol, at face value, would go as follows. The US base commander complains to the RAF base commander, who passes on American expressions of distaste to the local police who, duly incensed at the Soviets’ offence of armed trespass, request (in suitably clipped tones) the Army to give military aid to the civil community. Note that formula: the strict legal and constitutional position is that the British military would come to the assistance of the police and thus to the defence of the British sovereign, her subjects, and her realm – not to the aid of the US military per se.
This ritual may seem quaint and curious, even Byzantine, to those unaware of the delicate constitutional position of the British Army. This swears to serve, and is commanded by, the sovereign. But it exists only by consent of parliament, which annually enjoys the opportunity to decline to raise taxes to support it.
The arrangement has its roots in the causes of the Civil War and the Glorious Revolution of the 17th century, and revolves around the British distaste for standing armies, which historically have been seen as potential instruments of regal tyranny. As part of a series of safeguards against the politicization of the Army on the one hand and the abuse of power by the Crown on the other, the separation of military and police powers is taken rather seriously by the British. And consequently, as will become clear, it is important to the ‘Rendlesham Incident’ and the nature of any cover-up by the authorities.
Wars and Rumours of Wars
It’s not hard to see that the intricacies of the British constitution could create problems, unforeseen in the 17th century, for those wanting to defend an American air base against a common enemy. But in the interests of pragmatism much may be done by way of laws, leases and treaties when a country enjoys an unwritten constitution. Even the egregious Nick Pope, devotee of an ET interpretation of the Rendlesham incident, recognizes as much in a post to UFO Updates (Re: More Bentwaters Information, 30 August 2003):
The legal position with regard to United States Visiting Forces (USVF) is complex, and there are a number of different laws and treaties governing what USVF personnel can and cannot do in the UK. The general rule is that US jurisdiction ends at the perimeter fence, though there are a number of circumstances where it would be quite proper for on-duty USVF personnel to go off-base.
One such circumstance is certainly the defence of the base. USAF security police are also trained as infantrymen, fulfilling the same role as the RAF Regiment does on a British air base. As Kevin Conde explained it in a post to the UFORL email list (21 July 2003):
In the event of real tensions, and the belief that the Russians were coming, we would … have operated freely off base. The exercises that have figured into some of this controversy are an example. The majority of the hard core ‘combat’ occurred off base. When in the air base ground defense mode we knew that if we waited until we had Russians in the wire we were already too late. It was our mission to go off base and engage them as far from the flight line as possible.
In the prelude to what turns out to be a shooting war, the preliminary stages from political crisis to outbreak of hostilities generally take a long time. According to Lord Birdwood’s account of a briefing at the House of Lords, by the mid-Sixties it had been calculated that an international crisis would pass through some 40–50 discrete stages before an exchange of nuclear missiles became inevitable.
During that time US bases in the UK would have ample opportunity to prepare their defences. This would happen even despite the probability that they might be the object of pre-emptive nuclear strikes rather than of invading paratroopers. And there is nothing in law to prevent the British Army or police from requesting assistance from the USAF in undertaking precautionary defensive moves. Indeed, given the habitual overstretch of British forces, this is the obvious thing to do. Any necessary diplomatic niceties would, in one form or another, have been observed long before any shooting started.
Such US exercises as occurred off-base would also have been cleared with everyone concerned in the proper order, including the British police. Constitutionally, ‘clearance’ would, after all, take no more than a telephone conversation with the local Chief Constable to become legal – that officer is sufficiently autonomous – and thereafter it’s up to him whom else, including no one, he might choose to tell about it.
One circumstance in which it is legal and most definitely moral for US forces to move beyond base perimeters in formation is to deal with downed aircraft. I suspect that the responsibility of USAF police for finding downed aircraft is also covered in the leases and treaties to which Pope refers, and involved some kind of standing licence to cover such emergencies. In any case, in such a circumstance, it would clearly be mad to have to go through a diplomatic rigmarole before getting rescuers to twisted metal and roasting flesh.
If anyone wanted to go nosing around the PRO again, or use such FOI as we have in this furtive little country, there is the starter for a bit of research. Just what were (and are) the arrangements, agreements, contracts or treaties by which (even allied) foreign troops could go into action on British soil?
But on the second night of the Rendlesham saga, the night Lt Col. Halt went poaching in the woods, there was no such triggering misapprehension about downed planes to inspire (or justify) an off-base expedition. According to Halt himself (interview for Strange but True?, UK ITV, 9 December 1994),
The duty Flight Lieutenant [Bruce Englund] came in, and he was quite shaken, and insisted upon speaking to myself and the base commander about a matter of utmost urgency. He said, “It’s back,” and I said, “What’s back?” and he said, “The UFO is back.” I assembled a small team of experts and we set off in the forest, ready to debunk it.
Two points emerge from this revelation. In the first place, it suggests a high degree of psychological priming among the airmen involved in favour of some anomalous occurrence, deriving (one presumes) from reports or rumours of the events of the previous evening. In fairness, Englund may
have been using the term ‘UFO’ in the strict technical sense in which it’s employed by aviators and air traffic controllers. But Halt’s retrospective claim that he “set off in the forest, ready to debunk” the UFO suggests that he, at least, didn’t take the term in that sense. Second, Halt’s formulation here fits the traditional template of believers’ rhetoric – the claim to have started as a sceptic but to have been slowly converted to a belief in a favourite anomalous or paranormal phenomenon by the overwhelming nature of the evidence, etc.
The intention, conscious or otherwise, of this ploy is to endow both the evidence and the adherent with authority; but implicitly, it depends on the fragile notion that personal ‘authenticity’ and experience outweigh the forces of logic and rational examination.
Be that as it may: given Lt Col. Halt’s position and responsibilities, it would be surprising (or anyway depressing) if he hadn’t been apprised of the subtleties of the British constitution. At the very least he should have known enough to be aware of the possible consequences of going for a mass hike off-base, on duty and in uniform. Sqn Ldr. Moreland, the British base commander, should have known that better than anyone. US forces overseas are subject to local law for crimes committed on the host’s territory and, legally speaking, Halt and his men were trespassing.
Even under the law of trespass as it stood at the time, had they caused significant damage in the forest, they would have been committing an offence, albeit minor, and could have been prosecuted. For diplomatic reasons it is perhaps unlikely they would have been hauled up before the local beak, but it is not impossible. Either way, one can see a public relations problem.
On the face of it, this may seem rather a minor issue, but really it is not. I believe Kevin Conde has quite accurately pinpointed the nature of such ‘cover-up’ as there was, and the key to it is this question of territory, who was responsible for what, and the natural and legal obligations of the guest nation (the USA) to respect the laws and constitution of the host (the UK).
Halt’s disregard of British customs and conventions should have been vexatious enough by itself to have caused his commanders and his hosts to want to keep his aberrant behaviour out of the public eye. It could hardly have mitigated their dismay that he blatantly flouted US law into the bargain. Under the Posse Comitatus Act (18 USC 1385, originally proposed in 1878) the US military has no power to enforce, or to assist in enforcing, civil law, except in certain rigorously defined circumstances entailing a prescribed protocol not unlike that obtaining in the UK. For the background to the Posse Comitatus Act, see Bonnie Baker, ‘The Origins of the Posse Comitatus’, originally published in the USAF magazine Airpower.
Military law enforcement officers have no jurisdiction outside a ‘national defense area’ except over troops in uniform. Later clarifications of the Posse Comitatus law prohibit direct participation of Department of Defense personnel in law enforcement including searches. Kevin Conde (in a personal communication to the author, received 2 October 2003) notes that:
Halt, and every other military member, is briefed routinely on the prohibition against attempting to act off base. … By definition, the area of and surrounding a military aircraft accident site is a national defense area, and we can and do exercise authority within that area. This goes back to my contention that only in the case of an aircraft crash would we immediately go off base and act as if we were in charge, because we were. … Halt had no excuse – he could not have done what he did in the States, and doing what he did in a foreign country is much worse, and he knew that.
Even if it could be argued that Halt was not precisely in breach of the US law, he was certainly mocking its spirit. And that calls his competence severely into question.
Red Peril, Red Faces
This interpretation of the ‘cover up’ at Rendlesham is borne out by various accounts Halt himself has given of what happened when his senior officers learned of what he had been up to and listened to his tape. One version is in James Easton’s article in this issue. According to another version (Dillon, 1997), Halt maintained that when one of the US Third Air Force’s staff officers enquired “What do we do now?”,
You could have heard a pin drop and then somebody answered. “This occurred on British soil so let’s turn it over to the Ministry of Defence,” [Halt] said.
Halt was told of the decision to hand the matter over to the British MoD and he had no choice but to inform them of the incident. He asked if they wanted a complete report of the events, personnel involved and measures taken, but all that was asked of him was a concise memorandum that detailed briefly what happened over those three [sic] nights.
“I was very surprised but I attended to it,” [Halt] said. The summary was taken by Squadron Leader Donald Moreland, British Commander at the adjoining RAF/USAF base at Bentwaters and sent to the Ministry of Defence. And so forth [sic] was born the notorious Halt memo[.]
Halt’s apparent incomprehension is incomprehensible, and remarkably naïve, if his version of events is accurate. What else but a stunned silence might have greeted his tape recording of his caper out of bounds? Of course no one wanted the lurid details.
It is not clear how much of the rumour surrounding the Security Police’s various sylvan expeditions reached the ears of that staff meeting, but its members would surely have been unnerved had they heard the various tales of firearms being taken into the forest (and even discharged), or the story from the first night’s events – so sublimely vulnerable to a Chinese whisper – that Sgt Jim Penniston had the mistaken impression that his cohort John Burroughs was still armed, so that “When we got close to whatever it was, Penniston thought I was armed and told me to open up on it.” (see James Easton’s post Re: Rendlesham Revelations, to the UFORL mailing list, 24 October 2003).
USAF police routinely carried Smith&Wesson Model 15 Combat Masterpiece revolvers with a 4in barrel, loaded with military ball ammunition. British law is quite straightforwardly draconian about carrying firearms in public places without due authority, not to mention armed trespass. More to the point, sections of the British press would have had hysterics at the mere thought of the US military wandering about the countryside, tooled up, and carrying live ammunition.
Looked at from a certain point of view, Halt’s famous memo can now be seen as a disguised apology, or rueful admission and explanation of why he had abandoned his legal responsibilities. He did indeed have “no choice” but to explain himself, bizarre as that explanation was. It says something about the lack of political nous of the campaigning Left that when the Halt story hit the News of the World in 1983, CND and its fellow-travellers missed the opportunity to raise hell about the ease with which USAF officers could be deflected from their duty.
The relevant authorities’ response in 1981 to news of Halt’s foray should also be viewed in the general political context of the time, and against the backdrop of the presence of nuclear weapons at the Woodbridge/Bentwaters complex.
At the end of 1980, there were US hostages still held in Iran (for whose release, on 21 December, the recently self-installed ayatollahs had demanded $10 billion), and the Iran–Iraq war was in its opening stages; there was an IRA mainland bombing campaign in progress; the USAF base at Greenham Common was infested with ladies protesting against stationing US cruise missiles in the UK, while there had recently been a rise in militant anti-nuclear protest in general (for instance, the Sharpness incident of 8 July); the Soviets had renewed jamming of Western radio broadcasts to the USSR; Poland was in upheaval, threatening the integrity of the Soviet empire, and there was a real possibility of invasion by the Red Army; the Gang of Four was on trial in China; and Ronald Reagan, whose rhetoric promised an end to détente, had just been elected President of the United States.
