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From:<br />
OMD/AD(Efficiency & Machinery of Government)<br />
MINISTRY OF DEFENCE<br />
Room 617, Northumberland House, Northumberland Avenue, . ·.<br />
London WC2N 5BP<br />
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Telephone<br />
(Direct dial)<br />
(Switchboafd)<br />
(Fax)<br />
Dr David Clarke<br />
Your Reference<br />
Our Reference<br />
D/DOMD/2/3/2<br />
Date 27 July 2000<br />
Thank you for your letter of 20 July<br />
I have recently taken over<br />
in this post and am now responsible for implementmg policy on Open Government. am<br />
sorry for the delay in replying but your letter was routed to -<br />
and was only delivered to me yesterday.<br />
ibYI t®l MOD internal mail system<br />
Your letter asked why you had not received an acknowledgement or a substantive reply to<br />
a letter written on 21 June requesting access to a series of files relating to UFOs and UFO policy.<br />
I have checked with the MOD officials in the MOD's Secretariat( Air Staff), who handled your<br />
request, and you may fmd it helpful to know the background to dealing with your request. Your<br />
letter of21 June was received in the Secretariat( Air Staff) on 23 June and they set about<br />
researching your request (which involved looking through a sample of the very many files<br />
concerned). In the event, this took rather longer than they expected and, when they realised that<br />
they were not going to be able to reply within the 20 working day deadline, I understand they<br />
wrote to you explaining this and promising a substantive reply as soon as possible. This interim<br />
reply was sent on 20 July, which was 19 working days after they had received your letter but 21<br />
working days after you had posted it. A substantive reply was subsequently sent to you on 25<br />
July, ie: 22 working days after they received your letter, which I hope you have now received.<br />
In retrospect, it would have been better if you had been sent an acknowledgement as soon<br />
as your letter had been delivered to the MOD official who was dealing with your case, and the<br />
Secretariat(Air Staff) accept this.<br />
I understand you are also in correspondence with MOD's Departmental Records Officer<br />
over a request to view some Defence Intelligence files . I have asked that your request is processed<br />
as soon as possible.<br />
I hope this explains the position. If you have any other problems with requesting ·<br />
information from the MOD, either with the time taken to receive a reply or with the information<br />
provided, please let me know.
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