The definition of counterproductive

I’m not a UFO conspiracy guy myself, but it’s not hard to see how this sort of government behavior is going to confirm the more radical X-File-style UFOlogists in their suspicions:

Britain’s official UFO investigation unit and hotline were closed down at the start of December. Since then reports of strange sights in the skies sent to the MoD have been kept for 30 days before being thrown out, the newly released policy document shows. This stance was adopted so defence officials would not have to publish the information in response to freedom of information (FoI) requests or pass it to the National Archives.

It says: ”Reported sightings received from other sources should be answered by a standard letter and… should be retained for 30 days and then destroyed, largely removing any future FoI liability and negating the need to release future files post-November 30 2009.”

The memo reveals that MoD chiefs made a point of not discussing their plans to close the UFO unit with other countries because of fears this could be perceived as part of a global cover-up.

It states: ”We have deliberately avoided formal approaches to other Governments on this issue. Such approaches would become public when the relevant UFO files are released, and would be viewed by ‘ufologists’ as evidence of international collaboration and conspiracy.”

Actually, this approach could work well for the “climate scientists” too. Gather the data, then throw it out as soon as you’ve generated your hockey stick graph so that you don’t have to show it to anyone. Now, I know that most people are idiots but this is really astonishing. Hiding and destroying information is not exactly the most effective means of convincing the general public that there is nothing to hide.