It’s a rarity when you get someone from officialdom joining the cause of ancient aliens, but Britain’s Nick Pope (9 September 1965 – 6 April 2026) was one of those unique individuals. He began work at the Ministry of Defence in 1985, and from 1991-94 he worked for the Secretariat (Air Staff) Sec (AS) 2a, the MoD’s de facto UFO Desk. A believer in public discourse, he gave his first-ever TV interview on BBC’s Newsnight in 1996, earning him the reputation of Britain’s Fox Mulder.
By Emad Aysha
Pope left government service in 2006, lamenting how the UK government had closed the country’s X-Files with no hope of disclosure. From that point onwards, he shifted his efforts to the private sector, becoming an advocate of everything from fringe science to conspiracy theories to science fiction.
He left England for the USA in 2012 and appeared multiple times on the Canadian TV series UFOs Declassified and on the History Channel’s Ancient Aliens – a show that has been going strong since 2010. He even helped promote the alien invasion movie Battle: Los Angeles (2011) online by answering questions over Facebook.
Pope also built a long-term relationship with Tucker Carlson, when he was at Fox News, through a famous 2019 interview on UFOs. This was the first talk of many come, and on one occasion, he was the one doing the interview of Tucker.
NEWS WORTHY: Tucker Carlson and Nick Pope (RIP). Birds of a feather flock together, as the saying goes.
One of his last interviews was with News Nation in 2024 about UFO disclosures in Congress. In addition to his job in the civil service, he was also a prolific author, beginning his literary career with his controversial book Open Skies, Closed Minds (1996), followed by subsequent non-fiction works in the same vein. He also wrote fiction, including SF novels such as Operation Thunder Child (1999) and his political thriller Blood Brothers (2018).
A man of great enthusiasm and energy, with a warm heart and a cheery disposition, always open to self-criticism and willing, if not eager, to grow beyond himself. Nick Pope became terminally ill with a metastasised cancer in February of this year, dying peacefully at his home on April 6. He is inherited by his loving wife, American anthropologist Elizabeth Weiss.
He will be sorely missed.
