Hello.
I honestly didn't intend it to be odd. I just thought most people wouldn't be familiar with the term, that's all.
With respect, I appreciate the filing matter, too. Other former servicemen in similar roles have told me similar stories. I nonetheless can't help but notice that whilst the MoD thoughtfully saved a "loose minute" and a blurry scan of a fax of a photocopy, it didn't think it necessary to save any of the prints, copies of the negatives, any of the vu-foils, any analyses by JARIC or DFCIT, none of the likely correspondence with the DA notice committee, the documents sent from RAF Pitreavie, the interview transcripts from Pitreavie or Defence Intelligence, or any part of either investigation in 1990 or 1992.
When one considers the above, "obfuscation and official secrecy" seem to fit the bill very well, and that's not even taking into account the decision to seal the crumbs that were left in the files until 2076.
Plus, there is a pattern here. In other files, such as the Topcliffe sightings, similar key evidence is unaccountably missing, yet copies of green-ink diatribes by religious visionaries from obscure sects in the West Midlands have mercifully been spared from the shredder and preserved in their entirety alongside articles from the Daily Sport about aliens eating a Mexican man's dog.
Elsewhere, though, despite announcing in 2011 new rules designed to preserve files such as this in their entirety, MoD now claims to have "accidentally" destroyed the original, unredacted, 400+ page Condign report, ironically whilst they were themselves digitising it. Colour me sceptical.
Thanks
I’ll chip in at this point.
The partial and random preservation of files doesn’t strike me as unusual.
I’m ex-MOD, spending many years as the local IT expert before evolving into a central policy role developing MOD Information Management processes and practices.
One of the biggest problems we had was duplication and gaps. Back in the 90s, when you raised a loose minute, copies went to everyone listed. Another copy went into the registry for filing, and another copy went on circulation within the unit.
The circulation copy would be destroyed pretty quickly. The registry copy would be filed, The copies sent out would be retained or destroyed depending on how interested the receiving desk officer was.
If anyone replies, copies will go to everyone on the original distribution list. The reply might also contain a snippet of useful information. And, again, the receiving desk officers will retain or destroy depending on how interested they are.
This means it is entirely possible that a receiving desk officer would destroy the first loose minute but retain any of the subsequent loose minutes because they contain something of interest beyond that contained in the original loose minute (e.g. the name of an expert who was consulted who might be a useful contact for the desk officer‘s other work). It’s fairly random, but means some documents are destroyed quite quickly, whilst others are held in multiple places.
If you then throw in 20 years of review and weeding, by desk officers who are several post-rotations away from the originator, then the retention becomes even more random.
Then add in endless reorganisations and responsibility changes, and what may have been within a unit’s Area of Responsibility in 1990 would not be in the unit’s AOR ten years later, so any records would get destroyed as no longer being relevant to that unit.
And then we moved to electronic records, with pressure to reduce the amount of paper held so migration to the electronic system would be cheaper, thus putting further pressure on keeping old documents.
Incomplete and random records from 30 years ago is not at all surprising.
Edited for typos. Bloody aliens targeting my Ipad keyboard…
