Crop circles:

When I first met Colin Andrews he was still working as an electrical engineer for local government (Test Valley Borough Council, Hampshire, England) and had just begun work on his excellent crop circle video documentary, Undeniable Evidence. The year was 1990 and Colin was riding high on a wave that promised much: crop circles falling from the sky like prophetic rain; TV and radio interviews every other day; a best selling book that sold in excess of three hundred thousand copies worldwide, enough in itself that he was soon able to give up his job and dedicate himself full-time to researching the crop circle phenomenon. Then came the MI5-orchestrated `Doug and Dave' debunk campaign. The wave lost its momentum. The world to which Colin had dedicated himself suddenly began to crumble.

Since those heady days Colin has pursued his endeavours as the world's leading crop circle researcher with some tenacity. In the face of jealousy, ridicule and derision aimed at him by many of his so-called `peers' he has doggedly-and often painfully-stuck to his task, and today still remains the leading figure in the field of crop circle research. However, the fact that he is the leading figure has provoked its own comebacks.

For instance, since 1989 Colin has been consistently hounded, intimidated and often threatened by British and US intelligence agencies. So much so that, at one point, he was offered an undisclosed sum of money by the CIA, a `Swiss bank account' that would have set him up for life. In return he was to denounce publicly the crop circle phenomenon as a hoax. True to his character, he refused. The intimidation of him and the close scrutiny of his work by the intelligence community continues to this day. I recently spoke to Colin at his new home in Connecticut, USA. What follows is a verbatim transcript of our conversation.

The Government Hoax Campaign:

JK: Colin, how did an electrical engineer become embroiled in the crop circle phenomenon?

CA: Oh, I just couldn't resist it! I'd entered local government in 1974 as an electrical engineer and, following a series of very rapid promotions, I became a senior officer at the Test Valley Borough Council. It was during that period - in July 1983 - when I was driving along a major highway near Winchester, that I saw my first crop circle. In fact it was a `quintuplet' set of five circles. Together they formed a major pattern in a wheat field at Cheesefoot Head.

JK: And the attraction was instant?

CA: Yes, very much so. I returned that evening with my camera and took the first photograph I'd ever taken of the phenomenon. Having looked very closely at the ground features, the first thing that impressed me was the absolute symmetry, the precision of the formation, and the total lack of damage to the wheat - you know, I couldn't see any tracks or footprints leading in or out of the field. In those days a lot of the formations were like that. Sometimes circles would appear between the tramlines made by the tractors, and there would be absolutely no tracks leading to or from the patterns. This one at Cheesefoot Head was like that. It was very impressive. And it really called for the engineer inside me to fathom how this could possibly have happened.

JK: So how did you set about achieving that?

CA: Over the following days I returned several times to the same area, making contact with the farmers and landowners, and as a result became further impressed with what was happening there. You see, the locals and the farmers were not only telling me that, yes, they had seen the patterns on their land, and that they had been seeing them for a number of years, but they also told me how their fathers before them had also seen the patterns, and that they had been arriving on their land for thirty years or more. Indeed, records of crop circles go back many, many decades. This is not a new phenomenon. Although, I should say, it has certainly evolved very rapidly over the last few years.

JK: What other enquiries did you make?

CA: Well, for one thing I got in touch with the Ministry of Defence, the Army Air Corps at Middle Wallop, and made enquiries there. I also made enquiries with the local police at Winchesterand Andover, and it seemed that the phenomenon was clearly known about in those areas.

After this I sought out two other people who had commenced their own research about a year earlier - Pat Delgado and Terence Meaden - and the three of us began meeting regularly. We began working as a team, informing each other of events in our own immediate vicinities and cross-referencing our findings. In 1985 Busty Taylor became involved, and then there were four of us. And that's how it all got started.

JK: There must have been any number of theories in those days - theories about how the patterns were being formed.

CA: Absolutely. Of course, it's a whole lot easier now, looking back over a decade and more of researching the phenomenon, with so many possible causes eliminated from the equation. Nowadays the probable causes consist of maybe half a dozen, no more. That's all we're left with after years of eliminating other possibilities, like whirlwinds, hedgehogs and Doug and Dave.

JK: Nice analogy.

CA: I thought so, yes!

JK: OK, Colin. Seeing as you brought the subject up, what about Doug and Dave? Did they hoax the whole thing as they claimed?

CA: I'll tell you something about Doug and Dave. Firstly, what helped to carry me through the whole Doug and Dave episode was that I knew there were at least a handful of patterns they simply could not have made. In those days - and still today - certain patterns arrived that defied the laws of physics as we understand them. One of those patterns became extremely important to me personally.

I don't understand quite how this works, but I have certainly come to believe that there is an intelligence involved in the making of the crop circle patterns, and that there has been an element of interaction with that intelligence. I know that you have had a similar experience, Jon, and I know that others have also. For me it happened like this.

I had reached the end of my tether in terms of researching something that seemed to be giving up few, if any, solutions. In fact I was almost ready to pack the whole thing in and get back to my normal, fairly comfortable life, when something occurred that has kept me on the case ever since.

One night whilst lying in my bed I wished - almost prayed - for a sign that would take my research at least one step further towards solving the mystery. At this point I was convinced that an intelligence was involved, an intelligence we don't yet understand. With this in mind I visualized a pattern - a Celtic Cross-and I asked, you know, I asked, at a deep level inside me: could this pattern be reproduced, and for convenience sake, could it please arrive close to my home?!

Well, you know, we'd been given the runaround for so long, chasing patterns all over central and southern England. I just thought, well, you know, just for once, you come to me instead!

Anyway, the next morning I received a phone call from a local farmer, telling me that he had discovered a new formation next to the double-ringed formation I'd been looking at the night before. When I arrived to investigate the new arrival I could hardly believe my eyes. For one thing it was indeed a Celtic Cross formation, the very pattern I had asked for the previous night. It was the first time ever the phenomenon had produced something of that nature. And secondly, it had arrived in the crop field closest to my home! I was completely overwhelmed. I vowed there and then that nothing would ever convince me that this was a hoax phenomenon, not even Doug and Dave.

JK: Speaking of whom...

CA: Yes, quite. Well, now you see why I could never believe that those two had made all the crop circles. I never believed that anyway. But now I had gained, at least for myself, proof. As others began to `fall' around me, succumbing to the whole hoax situation, I became more and more resolute about the phenomenon, largely of course because of my personal experience, of somehow being involved, in some mysterious, interactive sense, with the formation of the Celtic Cross pattern. So when I was confronted by a reporter from the Today newspaper who told me about the claims of Doug and Dave, I was ready to challenge them publicly. Especially as one of the claims made by them was that they had made that pattern -the Celtic Cross. Indeed, they made this claim to the Today newspaper. Apart from the fact that, speaking from a research point of view, this particular pattern was very unusual - in that the lay of the crop was at right angles to the circumference, and included other anomalies which have never been found in man-made circles - I of course was convinced that neither Doug nor Dave could possibly have made this pattern.

So I challenged the two of them to tell me how they had made this pattern. I didn't say anything about what I'd discovered concerning the unusual floor-lay, nor indeed about my experience. I simply said: 'How did you make that? How did you make that?' [. . .] They'd been with the Today newspaper for a week before our meeting - the paper had already published their claims. The story had hit the headlines on the previous Monday morning, and as anybody in the media knows, if you really want a story to hit, then publish it on a Monday morning. So far as the media is concerned the world goes to sleep on the weekend. So if you can conjure up a story for Monday morning then you know you've got a story that is likely to capture public imagination. This is what people in the business have always told me. It was all so perfectly timed, and of course, the story went worldwide. I don't think there was a television or radio station that didn't cover it. Somebody wanted this story out there. And they made sure they succeeded. We had worked for years trying to encourage serious scientific investigation, and that one day, that one story, set our program back many years. It has never fully recovered.

Soon afterwards people started saying things to me like, well, you know, Colin, at least Doug and Dave have spread knowledge of the crop circles abroad; you know, at least they've managed to reach people who otherwise would not have heard about it. Well, that may be true. But they heard about it in a way that made them, from then on, think about the phenomenon as a hoax. [...]

JK: Do you think it was all planned from the outset?

CA: There's no doubt in my mind about that. This was one of the - well, I should be careful here - in my opinion this was possibly one of the best executed (. . .] planned disinformation programs, of modern times.

JK: My own information on the dissemination of the Doug and Dave story is that it was indeed a premeditated propaganda exercise perpetrated by the British and US governments and executed via their respective intelligence agencies. Do you agree?

CA: Yes, I do. Indeed, there are three significant events that I can think of right now which have probably been the result of some sort of government planning or involvement.

Firstly, of course, there was `Operation Blackbird'.

JK: Can you say something about that?

CA: Well, it was a very sophisticated, well-planned, and extremely expensive surveillance operation, the largest of its kind anywhere, whereby we cordoned off acres of land and set up a whole collection of cameras and equipment in order to see if we could catch a crop circle being formed on film. We had more than a million pounds' worth of hi-tech equipment there, some of it on loan, some of it provided by the British Army, some of it paid for by the BBC and Nippon Television (Japan). It was a highly sophisticated operation set up in conjunction with the media and - in the event - the military, too. It was planned to go on for ten days.

JK: The military were involved?

CA: It turned out that way, yes. Although I don't want to name names, I can say that within the first twenty-four hours - and remember we were on MoD land - two Army officers turned up and volunteered the technical assistance of the British Army. We were asked to leave the site for a confidential meeting with them, which took place in my car. We were offered the assistance of military personnel and equipment, but only if we would collaborate with them. As far as Operation Blackbird is concerned, on the second day, with a huge media presence - I mean, it really was the Fleet Street Circus at its height; even people in the business said that only the Royal Family had pulled more cameras and hype than this; thirty-two major national and international networks were there, bouncing their stories off satellites and beaming them all around the world - we all felt that something had to happen.

And of course, it did. A hoax appeared. I then had to go on live television and tell the world that a triangular UFO had been seen over the field where the hoax had appeared, and that in my opinion, the formation was genuine. Indeed, I was pulled out of my bed to do this! I was really made to look a fool in front of the world.

But what, in retrospect, is so blatantly obvious to me now that the whole thing had been a set-up was this.

In my car, on my way to the scene, I made five telephone calls, which were private calls - no one knew about these calls. I was alone in my car, on a radio telephone. When I got to the site I made an announcement based on what I was told - it was pitch-black; I could see nothing, but I was put under immense pressure to make the announcement. The next day it became very obvious that we'd been set up. The world's media heard me say that we'd had an event - there was a crop formation in the field, UFOs had been seen, we'd got it all on film: we'd had an event!

However, as soon as daylight came I saw that the formation was clearly a hoax. I remember thinking at the time: `Somebody has set this whole thing up; somebody has infiltrated our operation and knows the technical parameters of the equipment so well that in front of at least twelve infrared and low-light cameras they've managed to execute a major hoax.' The making of this hoax was not captured on film - at least not officially-because it had been made just beyond the design criteria of the equipment installed. Whoever hoaxed that formation knew the equipment inside out - somebody had a very good inside knowledge of what was there.

JK: And you think the British Army or Intelligence may have been behind it?

CA: Well... I have to be careful here... but two army personnel had arrived the day before, as I've said, and had offered their assistance in return for my... cooperation, shall we say. To add to this, another person - again, I have to be careful here - a person who entered the research arena on that very day, the first day of Operation Blackbird (a person who has since gained an international tag, someone who is well known in the research fraternity) also arrived. And so far as I'm aware, the arrival of this person was the first step in the intelligence community's infiltration of the crop circle research arena.

So this was the first indication to me that `someone' was very keen to find out about this phenomenon. The military were there. The world's media were there. And also, of course, the government were there, represented by this person, whose name I dare not reveal publicly.

Then came Doug and Dave, and phase two of the disinformation program got under way.

JK: So why do you think the government would have wanted to infiltrate a research program which most of the world sees as cranky anyway?

CA: What we have to understand, Jon, is this. The reason the crop circle phenomenon is considered cranky, is because of the government's carefully executed hoax and disinformation program. They have deliberately made it seem that way. My personal view is that, even if they knew the cause of the phenomenon, they did not want this information to be shared with or leaked out to the public. I think that somebody - whoever the people are who really run governments, and it certainly isn't who we elect as our representatives - these people feel that we have to be controlled, like children. And I think they are afraid that this, ultimately, by sensing the nature of the mechanism, would lead us to question even such institutions as religion, things that stabilize society so that they can continue to control society. And once you start sniffing in that area, it's highly dangerous to them, to their control.

JK: So you think the Doug and Dave situation was a continuation of that policy?

CA: Yeah, I do. But I'll tell you what, Jon, I think the Doug and Dave thing can be looked at in two parts. One: I think that they could well be two innocent, elderly men who were friends with one another, who'd had a dabble and did make some crop circles - purely for fun or whatever - and then decided to approach the daily press, off their own backs, make a few bucks. Indeed, they earned around ten thousand pounds for their story. This I find quite possible.

JK: That's a lot of money for a crop circle hoax story.

CA: Yes, it is. But according to my media sources, the Today newspaper paid them two large installments - five thousand and five thousand. Indeed, Doug and Dave threatened to sue for their second payment. They'd had five thousand up front, but the second five thousand, for some reason, didn't come. So they threatened to sue. But they got the full amount in the end.

The second option is that they were used by the British intelligence agencies (although I should point out that Doug and Dave themselves are not, I'm sure, employed by British Intelligence - they're simply not the caliber of the people we're looking at). But they could nevertheless have been used by them. Indeed, the way in which the whole thing was worked supports this probability. For one thing, the intelligence communities in all major countries - certainly in Britain and America - have very good relations with the major editors. Some of these people are paid. The PR people in the intelligence agencies cooperate with them so that they can get the leads on political developments. This information comes through collaboration, cooperation. And once you buy into the major editors, the national newspapers, you've got your stage. I think myself that once Doug and Dave came forward -and I think this is what probably happened - having perhaps been responsible for one or two simple hoaxes in their area, they were then unwittingly used by the intelligence machine to front the government's hoax campaign. Indeed, Doug and Dave themselves may never know that they were used in this way. But what perfect stooges they made! Two old men, sixty-five or thereabouts-if they could make crop circles then anybody could. It was the perfect plan, very clever.

JK: You said that you thought there were three main phases in the way the disinformation program unfolded. Operation Blackbird, Doug and Dave...

CA: Right. The third phase came along in the guise of someone we both know, Jon (and I'm prepared to go into print on this; they can threaten whatever they like). This person's name was [name deleted by publisher for legal reasons].

[Name deleted], working for the agency who had already put several nails firmly in the coffin of the crop circle phenomenon, arrived on the scene in order to hammer those nails home. They needed to keep the momentum going, and that momentum came in the form of [name deleted], working for the CIA - and that is absolutely fact; I have gleaned information on this man from within the CIA and from people who knew him because he worked on the desk next to them. He'd arrived in Great Britain posing as an American freelance journalist, that was the cover story. Crap! [Name deleted] had come to do a job, and he did it very effectively. He came between people, interviewed people, put wedges between fellow researchers [identifying detail deleted by publisher for legal reasons] and all the rest of the stuff. And here's the evidence if you ever needed it.

The five phone calls I made in my car, privately, the ones nobody knew about- [name and identifying detail deleted by publisher for legal reasons) the contents of those five phone calls, and the names of the people I had phoned! How did he know? How could he possibly have known? It was obviously inside information. My phone had been tapped.

And if you want to go even further on this one - and this was clearly overlooked by British Intelligence- I happened to be the guy who signed the invoices, sanctioning payment of the communication system for Test Valley Borough Council. A ten-thousand-to-one chance, but it was nevertheless true. These invoices, of course, included my own radio telephone.

Now, I noticed that throughout the period that covered Operation Blackbird the invoice for my radio telephone simply wasn't there. It seemed, for this period of time, that Test Valley Borough Council were getting my radio telephone calls for free! Very strange. But then, some weeks later, when the invoice finally did arrive in the system, the calls I'd made from my vehicle had been deducted from the bill and stamped by the British government! That phone was bugged! It was taken into a special monitoring system during Operation Blackbird because, for the duration of the operation, in order for them to make that hoax without my knowledge, my movements, my every movement, had to be precisely known by them.

And the information they eavesdropped was given to [name deleted] of the CIA.

These, then, are the three major attempts that I know of, made by the intelligence agencies of both Britain and America to debunk and discredit the crop circle phenomenon. There is no doubt in my mind about this.

The CIA and the Crop Circles:

JK: So, Colin. Can you think of any other instances where government agents have become involved in the crop circles research program?

CA: Yes, yes, I can. One instance in particular comes to mind.

A man who announced himself as working for the CIA back in, I think, June or July of 1989, approached me and said he had been assigned to `bring me into a plan', or more precisely, `buy me into a plan'. He said this was the sole reason he'd come to England - that his assignment was to implement and execute this plan in which I was to be involved.

JK: And did he tell you what this plan was?

CA: He did, yes. He told me that certain individuals, all of whom you know, Jon - Richard Andrews, Terence Meaden, Pat Delgado, to name a few - he told me that the CIA were about to promote each major researcher in turn and then publicly debunk them. He said this was a ploy that was frequently used. He said they would give them a stage, encourage them to declare their hand and, one by one, take them out. He said that I would then be left with a `role' that he later revealed to me.

JK: How did this man make his approach? How did he contact you?

CA: Well, when he first arrived, Pat and I were asked to go up to Pebble Mill television studios in Birmingham to take part in a program called Daytime Live. It was a kind of live TV debate situation. They were going to air the sequence that contained the mysterious sound detected in a crop formation and recorded by the BBC - the sound that destroyed a hundred thousand pounds' worth of TV camera one sunny afternoon at a crop circle site in Wiltshire! As we came on air, they were running this particular sequence.

Anyway, on the morning of the program we were in our hotel, and we received a phone call from David Morgenstern of the BBC who said that they had received some communication from a man who claimed he had actually seen a crop circle being formed, and what questions should they ask that would allow them to know if he was telling the truth? So we gave them some questions that we thought would be helpful. When we arrived at the studios we were told that this man had been flown directly in to Birmingham and that we would not be able to meet him because they wanted it to be an absolutely first-time contact on air. As we came on air they panned to the studio audience, and this man described what he'd seen, live on TV.

JK: What exactly did he say?

CA: That he'd been out studying foxes in Scotland, and that one of the foxes on this particular night had refused to follow its regular path which, he explained, was not consistent with the usual behaviour of foxes. I don't know if this is right or not, but it sounded plausible. The fox apparently refused to go any further and instead went back the way it had come. The man then apparently heard some rustling, and then he described the way this circle formed. What he was saying is that the fox had presumably sensed something strange and that after it had scampered off he witnessed the formation of this circle. But the point is that his live TV appearance seemed to legitimize him.

JK: You think this was his way of becoming accepted on the crop circle scene?

CA: Right. From that moment on his being seen in the presence of the crop circle researchers - myself and Pat in particular - became acceptable. It was his `way in', so to speak.

JK: So what happened next?

CA: Well, some weeks later there was a rap on my door, and when I answered it I immediately recognized the man standing there. It was the `fox-study' man. He said that he'd come to tell me something... he wanted me to get Pat Delgado over to my place because he wanted to talk to both of us.

Pat lived about seventeen miles away. It was late at night but I phoned him and he agreed to come over. When he arrived the man spent all evening into the early hours with both of us, asking question after question. He appeared to be comparing the answers I gave against those that Pat gave. Well, perhaps not surprisingly, Pat eventually grew more and more frustrated, and said to the man: `Look, exactly what have you come to tell us?' But the man just shook his head, as if to say: `I'm not ready to tell you yet.' So Pat just stood up and said something like: `Well, I've got better things to do with my time,' and headed out the door and went home. He was very angry.

The guy accompanied me to the door to see Pat out (I didn't know whether he was going to leave as well - I was rather hoping he would, because I was pretty bloody angry about it, too) but as Pat left and I closed the door the man just spun round on me and said: `Get your jacket on. I want to tell you something.'

So against my better judgment I went through into the front room and told my wife I was popping out for a few minutes (I wanted to tell her so she didn't become worried). We then went out.

JK: Where did you go at that time of night?

CA: We wandered down towards Andover town centre, then back up Salisbury Road, back and forth, back and forth, questions and more questions, most of a fairly general nature, but none of the questions were about me. Rather they were to do with things like, you know: Where were the circles? Who were we in touch with? What did we know, particularly about the Russians? That kind of thing. He was asking every question you could possibly think of that an intelligence agent would probably ask. But the conversation wasn't going anywhere at all. As for myself I was furious, but I didn't quite have the courage to walk away.

JK: But presumably at some point he told you what it was he'd come to tell you?

CA: Yes. When we eventually started to walk back towards my home he stopped on the pavement and said: `You are now one of us.'

So I said: `What do you mean by that?'

He said, simply: `CIA.'

When I asked him for ID he just laughed and said: `You really think a CIA agent would carry identification?' And then he laughed again.

He told me I would never see his boss, and that he never saw his boss's boss. He said that was the way it worked. He said that from here on in I was 'one of them'. He gave me no say in the matter whatever. He never asked me if I wanted to be associated with the CIA - he just told me that from then on I was to consider myself one of them.

Following this he named a lot of people - most of whom were my colleagues in crop circle research - who were to be eliminated from the research program (he did not mean that they were to be killed or anything quite like that, but they were nevertheless to be taken off the stage, so to speak). And they have been. I have watched the process in operation for some years now - a process he openly told me about on that night. And every name he named that night has since been `got at', and everything that he said would happen has happened.

JK: Could you give us an example?

CA: Well, for instance, the following year Terence Meaden was never out of the newspapers. Nobody else could get a look in. This is exactly what he told me would happen. But where is Terence Meaden now? Who knows what Terence Meaden's latest ideas are? Answer: no one. Because, presumably, his stage has been taken from him - he's been `taken out'. Pat Delgado was next, and we all know what happened to him.

[Author's note: sadly, Pat Delgado was so taken in by the `Doug And Dave' episode, and so distraught because of it, that he retired from crop circle research soon thereafter.]

JK: Do you think there was a reason why you weren't `taken out', too? Did this man indicate why you should be singled out from the rest?

CA: He did, yes. The CIA guy told me that, so far as they were concerned, I seemed to have a particular affinity and contact with the public. 'You have a way,' is what he said. `The public identify with you.'

JK: And at the time, of course, you were getting a lot of media coverage.

CA: Yes, I was. There were really only two people in those days, Pat and myself. We'd written a book and it had sold a lot of copies. We were getting a lot of TV and radio coverage. But a decision seemed to be made that night that I was the one. I mean, if you look at it logically, it could have been either one of us. So this man must have been in a position to make a decision. He must have carried some authority within his agency.

JK: Right.

CA: So he chose me to go with this `role'...

JK: And what was this 'role'?

CA: Once they had taken these other researchers out of the frame, so to speak, they wanted me to do something for them. He said I was to carry on being Colin Andrews, researching the phenomenon, just doing my thing, and at some point in the near future I would be asked to do one interview which would enjoy maximum, saturated media coverage. During the course of this interview I was to make one statement, and one statement only.

They wanted me to state publicly that the crop circle phenomenon was a hoax. When we got back to my home he said that he would show me how to say it and what to say. In return for this I was offered a bank account in Switzerland, in which would be enough money that I would never need to even think about money ever again. On top of this he said that they were in possession of some kind of "instrument" which they would send to me within two weeks. He said that this instrument would allow me to identify immediately a real crop circle from a hoax - something that, presumably, could measure some or other microwave residue, or some other residual effect. He told me: `You will then be in a privileged position, and we will put you right out there as the number one crop circle expert.' He then said that they would send me to a certain college... (which I know to be a government establishment, so my ears pricked up at this point)... where you will be familiarized with coding structures. I mean, this is an absolute bloody horror story I'm hearing... I mean, I was... God, no one will ever know how I felt that night. I was terrified. I even cried. I was completely and utterly bloody freaked. I even saw my daughter the next day and I broke down while I was talking to her, too. I said to her: 'Darling, I want you to forget everything I've ever told you about crop circles. I think I'm in terrible trouble. You know, I'm in bloody trouble.' Of course, she didn't know what I was talking about but I just wanted my family out of it. It took everything I knew to get over that ordeal and carry on a relatively normal life...

(At this point Colin took a few moments to himself. It was obvious that the ordeal had affected him very deeply- indeed, that the memory was as painful as the ordeal itself. A short while later we resumed.)

CA:... So anyway... I was told that there would be another couple of contacts made and that these would be 'voice-only' contacts via the telephone. And sure enough they phoned me, but by this time I'd had time to think about the situation and I'd decided I was going to take his head off, you know. There was no way I was going to give them what they wanted.

JK: So what did you do?

CA: I was given a contact number at the Ministry of Defence and I rang that number and told them that I'd had this approach, but I was told they had no jurisdiction. Can you believe that? A British subject was being harassed by a member of US Intelligence and the MoD had no jurisdiction to protect me! My God! I mean, it really made me ashamed to be British. Anyway, they also told me that I was not to be concerned, that I should simply refuse to cooperate with them. They said that if I refused to go along with it there should not be any danger to me. Hah! I thought: `Thanks for the invaluable assistance!'

JK: And is that what you did?

CA: In the event, yes. That's precisely what I did. I literally ignored the phone calls. And I guess, in retrospect, it might just have saved my life, the fact that I'd contacted the MoD. Perhaps they have a little more jurisdiction than they admitted to. Perhaps the fact that I contacted the MoD meant that the CIA dared not harm me in any way.

JK: So how did you know which calls to ignore? How did you know it was them?

CA: Oh, it was them, all right. The guy was on the answer machine saying: `Pick up the phone. Pick up the phone.' But I didn't. I just let it go. Then the voice said: `Ring me back at this number.' And then they gave a number, but I didn't ring back. A few days later they phoned again, and this time what they said was vile, and frightening. But my answer was: `Sorry, I'm not playing.' And that was that so far as I was concerned. Like I said, perhaps they knew I'd contacted the MoD. Maybe, just maybe, this was enough for them to leave me alone.

JK: Have you had similar approaches since you moved to America?

CA: Well, nothing quite like that. But I have certainly been approached, yes. A computer analyst at the Pentagon, for example, approached me with a person called [name deleted] Pretty soon this woman, [name deleted], sought [name deleted] out and asked to see her in her office. Now this meant that my new office - which I used to share with [name deleted] - had already been infiltrated by people who we now know for sure were CIA. I have since had several approaches by both of these people.

JK: Sounds like someone was pretty desperate to gain access to your database.

CA: Absolutely. This is the only possible answer. Well, I know that's what it was all about. They told me so. For instance, [name deleted], who is an author in the US, offered that I should co-author a book with her and she went to every extreme in order to get me to agree. She wanted to work with me on the project in my office here in Connecticut, which of course would have allowed her unlimited access to my database. But again, I turned the offer down.

JK: Well, thank you for being so frank, Colin. I'm sure you've opened a lot of people's minds about the ways in which the world's intelligence agencies work and about just how seriously they view the UFO and crop circle phenomena.

Thanks once again.

CA: My pleasure.