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In the height of the Cold War, RAF Bentwaters/Woodbridge in Suffolk, England, was leased to the United States Air Force (USAF), serving as a twin NATO military installation. During Christmas week 1980 the Woodbridge base was visited by several UFOs, two of which actually landed on the perimeter of the base in Rendlesham Forest. Numerous air force personnel witnessed these events, including senior officers. So extraordinary were these encounters that it prompted the British liaison officer to authorise an official memorandum to be dispatched to the Ministry of Defence. Witnesses claim they were interrogated by special agents and threatened into silence. For years the witnesses suffered terrible nightmares and were under constant surveillance by the Air force Office of Special Investigation (AFOSI), an agency that polices the USAF.
You Can’t Tell The People produces a mass of new information on this famous case, with the author claiming that approximately 80% has never been published before. Listed below are some of the new revelations.
For three years the USAF and MOD denied the incident, but in 1983 an American research group managed to obtain the memorandum (composed by the deputy base commander, Lt Colonel Charles Halt) through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
You Can’t Tell The People presents vital new evidence:
- A covering letter (which supported the memorandum) written by Squadron Leader Donald Moreland, the then British liaison officer at the USAF installation, and addressed to the MOD, which is titled “Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOS)”. This is supported with an exclusive interview with Moreland.
- You Can’t Tell The People also examines documents that claim to be official typed witness statements taken at the time of the initial incident.
- Intricate drawings of the UFOs and the landing sites that the witnesses made following the incident in 1980.
- Official USAF photographs taken the morning after the initial incident which show a British police officer and a USAF officer examining three ground indentations, each with a marker. Enlargements of the photographs depict indentations of what appear to be the UFO’s landing marks as well as a scuffed up area, which was reported twenty years ago by witness Lt Colonel Charles Halt.
- You Can’t Tell The People also proves that Halt’s memorandum, albeit a valuable piece of evidence, depicts the wrong times and dates of the events.
- Bruni also located a firsthand copy of an original audio tape recording of the second major event that involved Lt Colonel Halt. A bad copy of this tape was leaked to researchers in 1984, but witnesses claimed it was edited. The tape revealed vital new information.
- You Can’t Tell The People presents an interview with a former NCO who was in charge of the telecommunications at the time of the incident. The interview reveals that the communication lines were blocked with “Flash” calls, which were only ever used in dire emergencies.
- A local civilian witness speaks out about his encounter with one of the UFOs and tells how four of his USAF friends were called back to the base on a “Red Alert”. The witness also described what one of his friends had told him about the incident in the forest, which involved alien entities repairing a space ship. He never saw any of his friends again.
You Can’t Tell The People also produces interviews with the former AFOSI deputy commander and his wife who also witnessed the UFO.
Bruni has interviewed more than one hundred people who have assisted with her enquiries. Many of those who were involved in the events have never talked before, including Major General Gordon Williams, the commander of the installations; several high-ranking officers; NCOs and regular airmen; police and MOD employees and civilians.
Margaret Thatcher, who was the Prime Minister at the time of the events, told the author in 1997 that she can’t tell the people about UFOs, but Bruni went on to investigate Britain’s most famous UFO case and her book reveals the story of the incident, the aftermath and the cover-up.
In early 2001, after years of denying there was a file on the case, Bruni managed, with the help of Admiral of the Fleet The Lord Hill Norton, to acquire the MOD’s files on the case. These were not due for release until 2025. Details of the documents appear in the paperback version of You Can’t Tell The People published in November 2001.
In November 2003 the MOD finally released the files to the general public via their website.
book reviews
- Admiral of The Fleet The Lord Hill-Norton G.C.B.
Of the half dozen books I have read about the UFO landing in Rendlesham Forest, I found this easily the most convincing.
- Major General Gordon E Williams USAF Ret
Georgina has written the definitive work on this adventure near Rendlesham Forest. While twenty years have passed, she brings new light to this story that just won’t go away.
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