It wasn't just Tony Blair and New Labour that Michael Howard had to worry about in the run-up to the 1997 general election.It was aliens, too.
Several witnesses insisted that they saw a UFO over the then Home Secretary's home less than two months before his Tory Party was crushed at the polls. The large triangular craft, double the size of a jumbo jet, was hovering 1,000ft above the house near Folkestone, Kent, according to Ministry of Defence files released yesterday by the National Archives.
The revelation was among hundreds of close encounters described in the previously top-secret files. The 6000 pages of material, spanning from 1994 to 2000, included a claim from a policeman that he'd spotted a UFO hovering over the Chelsea football ground in March 1999, and a 'near miss' between a Boeing 737 jet approaching Manchester Airport and a UFO, which was investigated by the Civil Aviation Authority.
The spacecraft had lights around its edge, a giant spotlight at the front, a disc attached to its back and could be heard 'humming' in the night skies, observers said. They claimed it had homed in on Mr Howard's house and appeared to have been monitoring him for some time. The RAF launched a investigation into the sighting but found nothing to explain it. The Air Defence inquiry said there was 'no such security incident' involving Mr Howard or and 'no such military activity reported anywhere, and, specifically, in the Kent/Folkestone area'. (Daily Mail)
