AREA 51 GROOM LAKE LAWSUIT TRANSCRIPTS LEAKED 2012

AREA51 LAWSUIT THE LEAKED TRANSCRIPTS OF THE CASE 2012

CRIMINAL ACTS AT Groom Lake AREA 51 REPORTED BY WORKERS AND A LAWSUIT FILED 2012 NEWS

THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
September 29, 1995

Presidential Determination
No. 95-45

MEMORANDUM FOR THE ADMINISTRATOR OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL
PROTECTION AGENCY
THE SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE

SUBJECT: Presidential Determination on Classified
Information Concerning the Air Force's Operating
Location Near Groom Lake, Nevada


I find that it is in the paramount interest of the United States
to exempt the United States Air Force's operating location near
Groom Lake, Nevada (the subject of litigation in Kasza v. Browner
(D. Nev. CV-S-94-795-PMP) and Frost v. Perry (D. Nev. CV-S-94-
714-PMP)) from any applicable requirement for the disclosure to
unauthorized persons of classified information concerning that
operating location. Therefore, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 6961(a),
I hereby exempt the Air Force's operating location near Groom
Lake, Nevada from any Federal, State, interstate or local
provision respecting control and abatement of solid waste or
hazardous waste disposal that would require the disclosure of
classified information concerning that operating location to any
unauthorized person. This exemption shall be effective for the
full one-year statutory period.

Nothing herein is intended to: (a) imply that in the absence of
such a Presidential exemption, the Resource Conservation and
Recovery Act (RCRA) or any other provision of law permits or
requires disclosure of classified information to unauthorized
persons; or (b) limit the applicability or enforcement of any
requirement of law applicable to the Air Force's operating
location near Groom Lake, Nevada, except those provisions, if
any, that would require the disclosure of classified information.

The Secretary of the Air Force is authorized and directed to
publish this Determination in the Federal Register.

[Signed]
William J. Clinton

Judge releases Groom Lake files

Fed documents used in lawsuit made public

By Mary Manning
A Las Vegas federal judge has released a foot-thick stack of government documents, adding details to a lawsuit brought by former workers at the Air Force's secret Groom Lake base.

The former workers charged that they were exposed to toxic materials burned in open pits at the base.

U.S. District Judge Philip Pro dismissed the suit March 6 on grounds that national security at Groom Lake, about 150 miles north of Las Vegas, must take priority over the alleged health and environmental damages. Another suit against the Environmental Protection Agency was dismissed last year.

Nothing startling

Pro ordered blacked out background materials released late Monday. The four volumes of documents contained no startling information, but show the legal battle between the U.S. Justice Department defending national security and Washington, D.C., attorney Jonathan Turley defending the unnamed workers.

When these documents were sealed, Turley said he feared that the documents he had gathered could be used for criminal or civil charges against individual workers.

The documents state that the Justice Department never threatened to search Turley's files or seize any of the materials. Instead, the department insisted, it asked him to turn over the files voluntarily.

There are plenty of blacked-out paragraphs and pages, and some areas indicate entire documents missing.

The workers accused the government of burning hazardous material in open pits, 60 feet long, 15 to 20 feet deep and 30 to 40 feet wide.

The suit alleged fumes caused serious injuries and at least one death.

Sheet metal worker Robert Frost died in 1989, and his widow, Helen, claimed the death was linked to inhaling poisonous smoke from the pits. She was unsuccessful in a suit filed over her husband's death in 1993.

In the released documents, former Groom Lake worker Kim Pagliaro said he saw Frost near the pits. Pagliaro testified at an appeal hearing for Frost.

Pagliaro said whenever black solid flakes escaped from the pits, Groom Lake workers had to check them to see if anything about them linked them to the secret projects at the base.

Several versions of an Air Force security manual the government insisted was classified -- and Pro sealed -- appear in the materials.

Called "DET 3SP JOB KNOWLEDGE," the 29 unnumbered pages indicate codes for use at and near the Nevada Test Site, as well as maps locating Quick Kill Radar (QK1) and a weapons assembly/storage building located at the desert base where some of the most secret military projects, including the F-117 stealth fighter, were tested.

Security information

Directions for stopping nosy inquiries include: "For security reasons if a contractor is asked where he/she works, they will answer, 'E.G.&G. at the Test Site.' Then decline from giving details. For Air Force personnel, they work at Pittman Station, Henderson," said the manual, which circulated on the Internet.

There is no "top secret," "secret" or "classified" markings in any version of the manual. The government argued that some classified documents are not marked so if they fall into the wrong hands, they could not be linked with secret projects.

Rachel, the town closest to the base and now famous as a must-see stop on the new Extraterrestrial Highway, was referred to as Northtown in the manual. Highway 375 -- the ET Highway -- is known as highway and the Test Site is called over-the-hill.



Executive Order 12958 created new standards for the process of identifying and protecting classified information, and led to an unprecedented effort to declassify millions of pages from the U.S. diplomatic and national security history. In 1995, United States President William J. Clinton signed this Executive Order. As of 2002, this policy has resulted in the declassification of what were 800 million pages of historically valuable records, with the potential of hundreds of millions more being declassified in the near future. Clinton's White House Chief of Staff, John Podesta, was an important influence in this process.

One outcome of this change in policy is the government's 1995 admission of its two-decade-plus involvement in funding highly-classified, special access programs in remote viewing (RV).

This effort also involved the late Laurance Rockefeller and also focused on the classified UFO records that Clinton wanted declassified. Clinton's interest in UFOs is explored in a book by Webster Hubbell titled Friends In High Places. Hubbell was Janet Reno's Assistant Attorney General and reveals that he was asked by Clinton, the newly-elected President at the time, to learn everything he could about who killed John F. Kennedy and about UFOs. Later, on November 30, 1995, while visiting Belfast, Northern Ireland, Clinton made a comment in a humorous tone, about the controversial Roswell UFO incident:

I got a letter from 13-year-old Ryan from Belfast. Now, Ryan, if you're out in the crowd tonight, here's the answer to your question. No, as far as I know, an alien spacecraft did not crash in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. And, Ryan, if the United States Air Force did recover alien bodies, they didn't tell me about it, either, and I want to know.
—Bill Clinton,

EO 12958 was amended and effectively replaced by President George W. Bush on March 25, 2003, in Executive Order 13292 (text). EO 13292 has itself since revoked and replaced. The current EO in effect for classified information is Executive Order 13526.

Groom Lake Hazardous Waste Lawsuit

Former workers and widows of workers claim injuries resulting from illegal hazardous waste practices at Area 51 in the 1970s and 80s. Highly toxic resins were allegedly dumped into open pits and burned, and workers at the base were exposed to the fumes. The most prominant plaintiff is Helen Frost, window of Robert Frost, who died in 1988. An autopsy of Frost's body revealed high levels of dioxins and other carcinogens which the widow contends were caused by exposure to fumes at the base. In 1996, the lawsuit was dismissed by a Federal judge on the grounds of military's national security priviledge. That decision has since been appealed to the Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, and the appeal is pending.

THE DAILY NEWS OF LOS ANGELES

DATE: SATURDAY July 12, 1986
EDITION: Valley SECTION: News ZONE: rop PAGE: 1 LENGTH: MEDIUM
ILLUSTRATION: Map
SOURCE: Daily News Staff and Wire Services
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES

CRASH OF AF FIGHTER CLOAKED IN SECRECY

An Air Force pilot, believed flying one of the military's most
secret weapons, was killed early Friday when the jet crashed 12
miles northeast of Bakersfield.
Experts in military technology said the plane was a Stealth
fighter aircraft that eludes radar and other sensors.
Air Force officials, abandoning their usual policy, refused
to discuss details of the 1:50 a.m. accident, which ignited a 150-
acre brush fire in a remote corner of the Sequoia National Forest.
The fire was contained by 8 a.m. Military authorities declared the
crash site a national defense zone, unapproachable except by
authorized personnel, and barred commercial and private aircraft
from flying over the area.
Authorities confirmed that the pilot, whose identity was
withheld, was the sole occupant of the aircraft and that there
were no weapons on board.
Gen. Michael McRaney, head of public affairs for the Air
Force, said the plane was not a bomber.
The weapon experts, who asked anonymity, said the crash
involved a plane that variously has been called the F-19 or the
Stealth fighter. Its development by the Lockheed Corp., reported
many times in newspapers and technical publications, has never
been confirmed by the military.
According to ''Jane's All the World's Aircraft,'' the F-19 is
believed to have a 31-foot 8-inch wingspan and the entire aircraft
is 16 feet 5 inches wide when the wings are folded back for speed.
The aircraft reportedly is about 13 feet high and 59 feet long.
The F-19, which weighs about 22,000 pounds, flies at an altitude
of 65,000 feet and travels faster than twice the speed of sound.
Officials at Lockheed in Burbank, as well as Northrop Corp.,
which is developing the Stealth bomber, refused to comment.
The Kern County sheriff's and fire departments and the
California Highway Patrol's Bakersfield office all remained silent
about the crash. All three agencies were involved in the emergency
until officials arrived from Edwards Air Force Base near Lancaster
and imposed a news blackout.
The U.S. Forest Service pinpointed the sight of the crash
between Saturday Peak and the Ridgebar Campground, just west of
the Kern River. The area, 12 miles northeast of Bakersfield at the
mouth of Kern Canyon, lies in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.
Cloud cover was heavy there overnight, according to the National
Weather Service. The fire posed no threat to campers, Forest
Service spokeswoman Irma Contreras added.
Officials from Edwards, the closest base to the crash site,
would not say where the plane had departed and where it was to
land. Staff Sgt. Lorri Wray of Edwards public information office
said further information about the pilot will come from
Washington. Edwards is used to test advanced military aircraft.
News reports and other sources have said the Air Force has
based dozens of the Stealth project planes at a secret, remote air
base in the Nevada desert.
It is not known why the Stealth fighter would be flown in
California. Most tests of the Stealth fighter are thought to take
place at the*Groom*Lake*and Tonopah test ranges, near Nellis Air
Force Base in Nevada.
In 1984, the Air Force closed thousands of acres of land in
the Groom Mountains of Nevada, citing national security reasons.
The plane probably was being tested, not merely moved from
one location to another, when it crashed, sources said. The tests
are done at night so that the plane is not seen. In daytime it is
parked under protective bunkers. When it is moved from one
location to another it is carried in a C-5 military transport
plane.
The first prototypes of the Stealth fighter reportedly were
built in the mid-1970s, and the plane first flew in 1977,
according to a book about Stealth aircraft by Bill Sweetman, a San
Francisco writer, published earlier this year.

CAPTION: Map: Plane crash site

KEYWORDS: AIRPLANE; ACCIDENT; STEALTH; FIGHTER; AIR FORCE; DEATH;
BAKERSFIELD; US; MILITARY
END OF DOCUMENT.

THE DAILY NEWS OF LOS ANGELES

DATE: SUNDAY July 13, 1986
EDITION: Valley SECTION: News ZONE: rop PAGE: 7 LENGTH: MEDIUM
SOURCE: Daily News Staff and Wire Services
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES

MYSTERY JET PILOT'S IDENTITY DISCLOSED

Air Force officials Saturday identified a pilot killed in the
crash of a mysterious aircraft believed to be a top-secret F-19
Stealth fighter as guards with automatic rifles sealed off a wide
area of Sequoia National Forest surrounding the crash site.
The Air Force imposed strict secrecy about the crash and
would only confirm the identity of the pilot killed, Maj. Ross E.
Mulhare, 35, who was stationed at Nellis Air Force Base near Las
Vegas.
Mulhare, 35, a native of Fall River, Mass., was married and
had four children. He was attached to the 4450 Tactical Group at
Nellis. Air Force officials refused to reveal the group's mission.
The pilot's father, Edward A. Mulhare of River Edge, N.J.,
said Saturday that his son trained other Air Force pilots ''by
playing the devil's advocate in the air, by flying like the Soviet
pilots fly.''
Mulhare said his son's work was so secret that ''he didn't
talk to anyone, including his wife, about it, and had to have a
lie-detector test every three months to prove it.''
''I just wanted people to know that we consider our son a
hero who was doing exactly what he wanted to do, despite the
danger involved,'' Mulhare said before boarding a flight to be
with his son's family at Nellis.
Nellis is one of three sites in Nevada used to test super-
secret aircraft. Its bombing and gunnery range covers about 3
million acres of desert and mountain areas, and borders on three
sides the Nevada Test Site, where nuclear weapon tests are
conducted.
The other aircraft test sites are the Tonopah Test Range,
about 200 miles northwest of Las Vegas, where the runway was
lengthened about one year ago, and a location known only as Area
51, about 100 miles north of Las Vegas.
So confidential is Area 51 that military officials refuse to
confirm its existence. It includes*Groom*Lake,*a dry lake bed.
A recently published book, ''Stealth Aircraft,'' by British
author Bill Sweetman, says Stealth fighters are tested in a
closely guarded section of Nellis.
The F-19, reportedly built by Lockheed California Co. in its
Burbank plant, has been described as an experimental aircraft that
would employ the latest electronic technology, materials and
aerodynamic design to foil radar and infrared sensors. Officially,
the Air Force doesn't even acknowledge that the aircraft exists.
''The Air Force has no comment on what type of aircraft it
was, where it came from, what it was doing and its mission,'' said
Edwards Air Force Base spokesman Don Haley.
Haley said the Air Force was taking special precautions in
releasing information about the crash.

KEYWORDS: AIRPLANE; ACCIDENT; DEATH; MILITARY; STEALTH
END OF DOCUMENT.

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
DATE: FRIDAY October 16, 1987
PAGE: B16 EDITION: FINAL
SECTION: NATIONAL LENGTH: MEDIUM
MEMO: NATIONAL NEWS IN BRIEF

STEALTH JET CRASH REPORTED
United Press International
WASHINGTON - A secret Stealth fighter plane crashed during
exercises 100 miles north of Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada,
killing the pilot, sources said yesterday.
The F-19 plane, which the Pentagon has not officially
confirmed exists, is crammed with top-secret technology designed
to make it virtually invisible to enemy radar. The crash marked
the fifth time in about 10 years that one of the fighters has
crashed during tests.
Sources knowledgeable about the Stealth fighter and bomber
program told United Press International the fighter crashed
Wednesday night 100 miles north of*Groom*Lake*on the base during
exercises simulating combat in Europe.
An Air Force spokesman said only that an ''Air Force aircraft
went down.'' He would not confirm the type of plane. Nellis Air
Force Base, which tests experimental aircraft, issued a statement
last night saying that the pilot, who was not identified, was
killed in the crash.

Date: 12-28-89 00:40

PROBING THE SECRETS OF NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE
By Steve Douglass

If you are ever on Highway 6, just outside of the little town of
Tonopah, Nevada, and you can brave the heat, the rattlesnakes, and the
isolation of the desert, get out of your car and wait. If you are
patient enough you just might be amazed by what you'll see.

At first you'll only hear it, a high-pitched whining sound in the
distance. Risking eye damage, you squint into the desert glare trying
to locate the source of the sound. Suddenly you'll see it. It's an
ominous-looking aircraft, perfectly flat on the bottom, pyramidal on
the top.

Roaring across the high desert with its twin tail and swept back
wings, it looks like a large black swallow. As it gets closer, you'll
feel the urge to duck down among the lizards and the cacti. Such
action is meaningless, though, for if you can see it, it can see you.
So just stand and watch the Nighthawk go through its paces.

Since the beginning of the year, the F-117A Nighthawk stealth
fighter has been engaged in daylight training missions from its secret
base in Nevada. Still considered off limits to the press and public,
the security forces at the base take a dim view of prying eyes.
However, once in a while the Nighthawk must leave its protective nest.

It is on these rare occasions, when the Nighthawk is not
surrounded by razor wire, patrolling dogs or security teams, that is
when you might catch the F-117A strutting its stuff.

The secret Tonopah base is part of the Nellis Air Force Base
military operations area. This secret range, which covers a large
portion of south central Nevada, is the home of the Air Force's top
secret proving grounds. Edwards Air Force Base was once the premier
testing center but now is considered too public to test top secret
stealth aircraft. The F-117 base on the northwest corner of Nellis is
remote and removed from all but the most determined.

The F-117A Nighthawk is the official name of the stealth fighter
bu those who fly it have nicknamed it "The Wobbly Goblin." At slow
speeds, the fighter is apparently hard to handle, hence, the odd
title. Another term for the aircraft is "the sacred airplane" because
when people see it for the first time they usually remark "Oh my God!"

A total of 49 are thought to be based on the Tonopah range, also
known as Mellon Strip. The secret base, located in Area 30 on the
Nellis range, consists of 72 nuclear hardened, specially built hangers
for these secret aircraft.

The pilots who fly the F-117 are members of a new elite unit, the
445th Tactical Group.

{That should have been the 4450th TG.
====
- JJA
}

Most of the pilots first flew F-111 Aardvarks or have Wild Weasel
experience. The special unit, known as "Team One-Furtim Vigilans"
(vigilant by stealth) became operational in 1983.

Becuase of the secret nature of their missions, the pilots are not
allowed to acknowledge to civilian air traffic controllers what type
of craft they are flying. If asked, they are to say they are an A-7
Corsair.

Team One squadron is not the only squadron flying strange-looking
aircraft on the Tonopah range. The 447th test and evaluation
squadron, the Red Eagles, is based there as well.

{That should have been the 4477th TES.
====
- JJA
}

The Red Eagles fly authentic Soviet fighters. Captured in Afghanistan
and turned over to the U.S., Mig 17s, 19s, 21s, 23s, 25s, 27s and
Sukhoi Su20 Fighters are flown regularly in Nellis' Red Flag war
games.

Occuring almost every eight weeks, the Red Flag exercises are
conducted in much the same way as the Navy's Top Gun school is used to
train USAF pilots in dissimilar air combat tactics. What better way
to train than against real Soviet fighters? To add to the realism, the
Nellis range even is dotted with real Soviet air defense radars and
SAMS (surface to air missiles) to give training pilots the feel of the
real thing.

There is yet another secret base located in the middle of Nellis.
Groom Lake, in an area called Dreamland, is known to be the test base
of the mysterious Aurora and the F-19 stealth fighter. The Aurora,
the stealth replacement for the SR-71 Blackbird and the F-19, the
stealth replacement for the F-15 Eagle, is said to be flying from the
Watertown Strip.

The Air Force has reportedly been testing the two top secret
aircraft in Dreamland, Area 51, since 1980. (The SR-71 Blackbird was
test flown in complete secrecy.) Other aircraft likely to be test
flown from Dreamland in the near future are prototypes for the ATF
(Advanced Tactical Fighter), the Phalanx Dragon, a stealth helicopter
killer, and the A-12 (Navy Advanced Tactical Aircraft), a replacement
for the A-6 intruder.

Although the bulk of stealth aircraft operations seem to be
centered around Nevada, it is said that stealth aircraft have been
seen at other bases as well. Last April the USAF said the F-117A
would be used at bases nationwide to help integrate thge stealth
technology within the rest of the Air Force inventory. The F-117A has
been seen flying near Yuma, Arizona; Edwards AFB in Calfiornia, and
Kadena AFB in Okinawa.

Recently it was rumored that F-117s are being stationed at the
recently opened Roswell Air Force Base in New Mexico.

{They ended up at Holloman AFB, NM.

- JJA
}

The Roswell strip was constructed originally for heavy bombers during
WWII and Vietnam but closed in the late sixties. Residents of th area
report that strange aircraft are once again slying out of the base.
The White Sands missile range is not far from Roswell and the F-117A
may be using the range to test the stealth cruise missile, General
Dynamics AGM-129.

Another black aircraft program by General Dynamics known only as
Project 100 is even more secret than all other stealth programs.
Little is known about the project except that it is thought to be test
flying out of Holliman AFB near Alamagordo, New Mexico, and only at
night. A military radio net has been heard on various frequencies in
the Holloman area (see frequency list) and it may be the testing of
the Project 100 aircraft.


MONITORING

Trying to monitor the secret air force is nearly as hard as
catching a glimpse of them. Best bets are the HF and UHF frequencies
of the flight test bases and aircraft manufacturers. Also, a good
place to monitor would be SAC and TAC frequencies. Another good place
to listen is air traffic control centers near test areas.

So get cracking, heat up your set, and maybe you'll be the first
to monitor the top secret Aurora and F-19!


FREQUENCIES

HOLLOMAN AFB, ALAMAGORDO, NEW MEXICO

Approach 324.3 MHz UHF
Departure 255.9 MHz UHF

Holloman flight test net/White Sands

Primary 260.8 MHz UHF
Secondary 264.9 MHz UHF


Other UHF frequencies
monitored 189.4, 251.1, 353.6, 364.2, 376.1, 397.9

HF link 9.023 MHz USB

SATCOM links mentioned 262.925 MHz uplink
297.525 MHz downlink

Call signs heard:
Sierra Papa, Sierra Pete, Ringmaster, Battlestaff, Guardian Papa,
Dark Star, Dark Star Oscar


ROSWELL AIR FIELD, NEW MEXICO

Approach 239.6 MHz UHF
Tower 272.7 MHz UHF

Military Net

Primary 305.6 MHz UHF
Secondary 397.9 MHz UHF

Other frequencies
monitored 259.2, 305.6, 348.7


NELLIS AFB, NEVADA

Approach 279.7 MHz UHF

Tower 324.3 MHz UHF

Ground control 275.8 MHz UHF

Clearance Delivery 289.4 MHz UHF

ATIS 270.1 MHz UHF

Nellis Military Operations Area

Dreamland base 255.8 MHz UHF

Sally corridor 343.0 MHz UHF

Groom Lake approach 361.3 MHz UHF

Watertown Strip approach 297.65 MHz UHF


EDWARDS AFB, CALIFORNIA

Tower 269.9 MHz UHF

Edwards command post
(Conform) 304.0 MHz UHF

Edwards VHF ground
control 121.8 Mhz UHF

Edwards approach 318.1 MHz UHF

Test site helicopter crash kills five

Las Vegas Review-Journal, Friday, July 26, 1991
An aircraft carrying three security workers and two pilots on a patrol mission may have hit power lines.

By K.J. Evans
Review-Journal

Initial evidence shows a helicopter crash that killed five men Wednesday night at the Nevada Test Site was caused when the chopper collided with a power line, Department of Energy officials said Thursday.

Department spokesman Chris West said the crash is the worst non- military aviation accident in the 40-year history of the nation's nuclear weapons testing site, 66 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"We've had some helicopters lose power and make rough landings or have to feather the rotors down. And we've had Air Force jets crash, but never anything like this," West said.

Killed in the crash were pilots Glenn W. Ewton Jr., 54, of Las Vegas, captain of the craft, and Dennis J. Longman, 48, of Logandale. Both worked for EG&G Energy Measurements Inc., a government contractor.

The others, all from Las Vegas, were Richard C. Lowery, 51; George H. "Mike" Tolster, 34; and Robert D. Brooks, 28. They worked for Wackenhut Security Inc., hired by the department to provide .security for the test site.

The final call on the cause of the accident will be made by a special crash team that arrived at the site late Thursday, West said. The team is made up of investigators from the Energy Department, Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board.

"We've established our own investigation board, which is customary whenever there is a major accident at the site

A videotape of the crash site viewed Thursday at the department's Las Vegas headquarters, showed widely scattered wreckage and power poles nearby, West said.

The crash site is in a mountainous area of Pahute Mesa.

"There are a lot of power lines in that area, but we're not sure that was a factor," West said.

No power poles were visible in the photographs the Energy Department released to the public of the crash site, 110 miles north west of Las Vegas.

The chopper carried no "black box" flight recorders. They are not required under FAA regulations, West said.

The helicopter was one of two Messerschmitt BO-105s assigned to a routine security patrol of the 1,350-square-mile test site. It was one of seven owned by the Energy Department and operated by EG&G, West said.

The five men were on a routine security patrol at the time of the accident, West said. Standard procedure has one pilot aboard day patrols, and two for night patrols, which he described as "more strenuous duty." The patrols usually last from one to 1-1/2 hours.

Shortly after the last radio call, there were reports of a short electric power interruption at the test site, which authorities say supports the theory that the chopper may have hit a power line.

Ewton radioed in at 9:15 p.m. and was to have checked back at 9:30 p.m., according to an Energy Department news release. The call didn't come.

Two Air Force helicopters carrying the search-and-rescue teams of the 66th Air Rescue Squadron were sent aloft then. About two hours later, they were the first to spot the burning wreckage, about 20 miles from the air strip where it took off, according to a Nellis Air Force Base spokesman. The death of the five crew members was confirmed at 1:40 a.m. Thursday.

Ewton had more than 20 years of experience flying helicopters, said Cindy Kimball, an EG&G spokeswoman. Much of his experience was as a pilot for the Houston Police Department, Kimball said. He graduated first in his class at the police academy and was the department's designated FAA flight examiner, she said.

Longman also had more than 20 years of flying experience. He was a former pilot for Valley Hospital's Flight for Life. Before then, he was the chief pilot for Rocky Mountain Helicopter in Provo, Utah. He also was a Vietnam veteran.

Ewton had been with EG&G since April 1988, and Langton since March of last year.

A Wackenhut official said Lowery had been with the company since 1981; Tolster since November 1983; and Brooks since March 1986.

GROOM LAKE REVISITED: A SPACE AGE ODYSSEY
By Michael D.

If there is an act more brazen or stupid than attempting to gain access to this country's most top secret military installation, it would have to be a real doozy, say on par with having Salman Rushdie autograph his next book in downtown Tehran; or swimming the Santa Monica Bay. But the heady rush of being only two hours drive from the vaunted Groom Lake/Dreamland/Area-51 installation, with nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon in Sin City, provided the mindless charge myself and two compatriots needed to fill our sails.

So as throngs of greased-up Beautiful People went poolside, we threw caution to the wind and accepted a weighty mission: To seek out evidence of otherworldly craft, rumored to be docked at Groom Lake, America's most highly classified military base, stalking central Nevada's skies.

Deployed in a nondescript late-model four-wheeler, we headed for high country while deciding our nom de guerres, spymaster akas given only during apprehension and subsequent .45-against-your-temple-style interrogation. Agreeing upon Brick, Face and Larvae as our new identities, we then secured our provisions: pork rinds (Larvae's in training), gum and Gatorade.

Leaving the garish confines and cable porno of the Desert Inn, we ascended the Las Vegas Valley in a northerly course toward Lincoln County and Tikaboo Valley. Face knew little of the Groom saga, so Larvae and I briefed him en route; ever the Young Hollywood type (thus his appropriate alias) Face inquired as to whether his urban hiker attire was acceptable: "What do you wear to a top secret base?" he moaned.

With that opening salvo, Face launched two-hours worth of unrelenting sarcastic flak toward Larvae and myself. "I wanna see an alien; show me a UFO!" became his battle cry. "What's that coming at us?!" Partial to hookers, cigars and brandy, a bottom-line type of guy, I accepted Face's p.o.v. and wrote him off as our triad's weak link, the Third Column.

Undaunted by an onslaught of cynical barbs we powered on to reach our first objective sleepy Rachel, Nevada, and the Lil' Ale Inn bar-restaurant on State Route 375.

Because Rachel consists of little more than trailers, small livestock pens and a less-than defined grid of dirt roads, all life begins and ends at the Lil' Ale Inn. For once you exit this funky roadhouse, there ain't nothing out there but a sagebrush ocean and some serious mountains.

So it becomes a somewhat surreal experience for those unaccustomed with the Groom Lake phenomena to break up a long road trip across unflinching high desert by ambling into what appears-save for the strange moniker and alien images adorning the exterior-to be a typical Western bar & grill. Then find a plethora of spacey bric-a-brac, like grainy night shots of purported UFOs, more ET composites, and a slew of visuals depicting past and present cutting-edge Air Force craft (launched from Groom) that tested their wings in the deep, broad Tikaboo Valley surrounding this place.

After a quick once-over of the wall decorations, Larvae motioned me to an impromptu publication rack set-up on well worn wooden bookshelves and nightstands. This very collection of UFO magazines and small press hardcovers put Groom on the map: They all basically ascribe to some sort of underground alien presence and/or extraterrestrial military collusion at the nearby labyrinthine Groom Lake research and development facility.

(I should point out here that one of the nicknames for the Groom facility, Area 51, no longer applies. Recent Department of Energy dictum [secured through the Freedom of Information Act] relates that "the [38,400 acre] land once known as Area 51, withdrawn from public use by the Atomic Energy Commission [predecessor to the DOE] more than 25 years ago...has been used and administered as a national asset. Because DOE is no longer active there, Area 51 no longer appears on maps of DOE's Nevada Test Site." And since the Air Force illegally seized a huge swath of public domain around Groom in 1984, this base has become a de facto part of the larger Nellis Range.)

The three of us then saddled up to the bar where owner/operator Joe Travis slings his own far-out concoctions, such as the Beam-Me-Up-Scotty and the Transporter. Now Travis is a big, bearded man of measured words and easy-going demeanor who looks as though he was born in a Stetson, flannel shirt and Lees. To hear him talk about alien ships etc., while his physical image is so stoically rock solid, struck me a little strange.

While a few locals sipped beers and a German couple perused the walls with wide eyes, Travis, prior to inviting us to accompany him and other Rachelites to the black mailbox later to watch UFOs, relates that a Marine Corps unit had just apprehended some folks who'd attempted to slip into Dreamland.

Now I was aware that both inner and outer security at Groom-where Air Force Black Projects are honed-was an extremely weighty matter which fell upon a number of different agencies, all with the green light to use necessary force, including the deadly variety, on trespassers. However, this was the first time anyone alluded to leathernecks penciled in amongst Groom Lake's defensive roster.

The first line of security at Groom is Wackenhut, a private outfit contracted to patrol defense and nuclear installations and cavaliere servente to the CIA.

UFO-seeking civilians are most likely to encounter these blue jumpsuit-clad guards on the bases' widespread fringe. Wackenhut personnel drive plain white, full-sized four-wheel drives, such as Ford Broncos. (They also maintain perimeter security at Nellis Air Force Bombing and Gunnery Range and the Nevada Nuclear Test Site-both of which encompass Groom.)

Yet don't assume these fellas are dunderall rent-a-cops-they are all business. For as a Vegas based fed who's visited Groom told me, "These [Wackenhut] people are high-speed low-drag types. And they will light you up! " Which is exactly what transpired about five years ago when-and the events remain sketchy-Wackenhut guards opened up with H&K assault weapons from a Messerschmidt BK-117 helicopter on some citizen whose fascination got the best of him.

In a nutshell, this guy drove one of the dirt roads leading into Groom (years before guard shacks were erected at the periphery) and allegedly carried a 30-30 rifle.

If there is anything frowned upon more than toting a camera around a top-secret military installation, it's having a weapon in tow. Wackenhut claim the would-be intruder shot at their German-built whirlybird; their response, immediate and unequivocal: "They turned him into about 190 lbs. of ground round," a Vegas-based special agent told me.

And Wackenhut are just the gatekeepers: Groom Lake's reception committee! Beyond Wackenhut are Air Force Security Police (SPs); bolstering the SPs are the ultimate keepers of the realm, the Department of Energy's Special Response Team, or DOE-SRT, a world-class, take no-prisoners SWAT unit. Security is so paramount at Dreamland that when a Nellis-based fighter pilot experienced mid-air malfunctions at Mach speed, performing a masterful job just to get his plane down at Groom (a totally restricted area-even to other military elements) in one piece, he thought those hard charging fellas circling his plane where there to congratulate him on a heroic piece of flying.

Imagine his surprise when Air Force SPs hauled him from his cockpit, handcuffed, blindfolded and dragged the airman into a security office for an aggressive debriefing, followed by his signing sworn affidavits that he saw nothing at Groom and would never admit to landing there.

Leaving Mr. Travis and the Inn with that very painful image of a Wackenhut-style welcome still firmly etched in my mind, we departed Rachel and headed southeast on Nevada 375. Nearly 19 miles from town stands the Black Mailbox-the spot where UFOies congregate, video and still cameras and binoculars pointed skyward, hoping to catch a glimpse of either lACs (identified alien craft) or H-PACs (human-piloted alien crafts).

And this was where Joe Travis and his gang will be tonight, reclining in their beach chairs, an extraterrestrial tailgate party in the middle of the Great Basin desert. Taking a detour from the blacktop, we cut across open country. From the mailbox, the only man-made marker for miles, we drove south on rancher Steve Meddlin's dirt road, passing large numbers of range cattle, scattered Joshua Trees and Yucca, for 13 miles. Meddlin's road arcs around the formidable Groom Mountains, then joins another unmarked dirt road (from Hancock Summit) leading directly into Groom Dry Lake.

In the distance far ahead of us, moving east at a terrific clip is a white four-wheeler-probably a Wackenhut vehicle-kicking-up a huge plume of dust as it goes by. With field glasses we followed his pursuits, but he chose not to engage us and continued on the main Groom Lake road heading towards Hancock Summit and 375. Maybe luck and the extraterrestrials were smiling down at us.

At the juncture with Groom Lake Road, we headed west and the tension became palpable. We were close now. No more than four or five miles from the huge underground research facility and adjoining dry lake bed crisscrossed by a runway almost seven miles in length. Where the prototypes, even while poised on the runway's edge for takeoff, remain covered by huge, mobile hangars painted on top with silhouettes of other military aircraft to deceive spy satellites.

Inside a narrow canyon marked by at least three or four signs exclaiming: "No-Trespass," "Fine & Imprisonment," "Cameras or Film Subject to Confiscation," we stopped and began to hike. The road ahead and probably the one we stood on were rigged with seismic, magnetic and infra-red sensors, in addition to video surveillance and radar down to the ground. People had been messed with only a few feet from the black mailbox back by the highway, and here we were a good 14 miles in from that point!

Larvae and I climbed the Jumbled Hills south of the road in the hopes of gaining a vantage point while Face decided his contribution to this mission (and his motion picture career) would be better served by staying inside the vehicle. Our excitement and anticipation grew with each step. A strenuous, almost vertical hike across some of the most irradiated downwind landscape in the world-20 miles southwest of us lay Yucca Flat and Plutonium Valley, site of nearly 200 aboveground nuclear weapons detonations-put us high atop Tikaboo Valley.

Five thousand feet above sea level and totally out of breath, the previous night's voluminous tequila intake now churning, we finally reached the summit. Though immediately we stooped down because below us stood a white guard shack, road gate and another white four-wheeler, either Air Force SPs or Wackenhut .

A guard in blue fatigues peering through field glasses looked up in our direction; did he know we were there? I'd been warned beforehand they pick up the glint from trespasser's camera lens and binoculars, but there was little direct sunlight above the Jumbled Hills so Larvae and I stayed put. Yet from this position we could see little and to go any further we'd have to circumvent the shack down below.

It being daytime Saturday nothing extraordinary or otherworldly was airborne, plus we felt lucky enough to get as far in as we did without going home in a body bag, so back to Lost Wages we headed. Larvae and I laid out our plans for a future mountain bike trek around Groom while Face looked forward to more Desert Inn home-porno: "I just gotta see those two lezbos on the stairway again. That s my idea of a celestial body."

HIGH STRANGENESS IN THE HIGH COUNTRY:
Is The Air Force Flying A UFO Over Nevada?
By Michael Digregorio

Sequestered at the ultra remote northeastern corner of the 3.1 million acre Nellis Air Force Bombing and Gunnery Range, which swallows up a chunk of southern Nevada larger than many states or any national park, lies one of America's most clandestine military installations, Groom Lake or Area 51.
Out here where God lost his tennis shoes, where the AEC cut its teeth and where Francis Gary Powers earned his wings is also the home of the most anonymous major flight facility in the world, where the Air Force pursues secret Black Protects (budgeted at 16-billion unaccountable dollars annually, a constant figure since the early 80s).

Concurrently, this same base is all the rage of many UFOies who claim human piloted alien crafts, or H-PACS, are alighting out of Area 51 on a regular basis.

But let's jettison back to terra firma and the Sagebrush Steppe for a moment.

Seated in the towering shadows of the 8,000-foot Groom Mountains, this highly classified testing and operations area, girding both ends of Groom Dry Lake, is as off limits and secluded as it gets.

For starters, Groom's north and west periphery are cloaked behind Nellis AFR's completely restricted, sprawling badland boundaries and its massive war training theatre, which begins just beyond north Las Vegas and devours the horizon for 160 miles.

Physically, Nellises' own brand of climax ecology mirrors post-war Iraq: a freakish, lethal landfill puncuatated by 1,000-lb. bombs, obliterated tanks and jeeps, plus half-buried Cadillac-sized darts - airborne targets towed around by one Top Gun type and shot up by another. Evoking the above ground testing period (1951-'63), half- singed Joshua Trees and charred cholla cactus - burned only on the side facing the blast - stand as forsaken landmarks of more than 100 nightmarish nuclear firestorms.

(Incidentally, nestled amidst Plutonium Flats and Fallout Hills, Nevada wildlife officials - a misnomer if there ever was one - established the Nevada Wild Horse Range at the north end of Nellis; and hard-pressed to Nellises' southeast corner is a 1.6 million acre Desert National Wildlife Range, an FDR-engendered haven for rare bighorn sheep, where, since World War-II, the Air Force has regularly honed its bombing and target acquisition. Official Air Force dictum says any pilot wilfully shooting a mustang loses his wings, though a Nellis-based airman admitted they'd "smoke anything that gets in the way of a mission.")

Looking out towards Emigrant Valley, Groom's southern fringe is buffered by a radioactive dirt moat larger than Luxembourg or Rhode Island, the Nevada Test Site (also encompassed within Nellis). Thirteen hundred and fifty square- miles of horrificly irradiated no-man's land, haphazardly pockmarked by hundreds of mammoth, moon-like craters carved-out by incessant, pointless (especially in a single superpower world) and costly (up to $60-million a pop) sub-scrub detonations of Nuclear Winter warheads.

Looming in the abstract as a Cold War dinosaur, the Test Site itself is the literal hub of a downwind cancer corridor manifesting epidemic proportion and millennium-spanning duration. With that kind of ominous reputation you'd think trespass would be the last thing on anyone's mind. But securing this outland remains a daunting task - made even more so as Groom's acreage and importance increases - for squads of ATV-riding rent-a-cops responsible for the outer perimeter, and inner sentries of military police in 4-bys and eggbeaters.

Published Area 51 images (of a non-high altitude nature) are scarce, mostly dated, preexpansion longdistance black & white pictures harking back to a few Outer Limits and Serlingesqe backdrops: a covert, seemingly lifeless base rising mirage-like against barren, totally unforgiving environs, almost obscured at distance behind shimmering heat waves.

This stark, foreboding Great Basin Desert apparition is now marked by dozens of protracted, nondescript and impermeable-appearing hangars, plus an extensive new production facility (comparable in size to the massive Palmdale skunkworks) rising incongruously off the alkali flats. A major expansion is underway: Groom is stretching in three directions, though in a one-superpower world and a dawning era of shrinking defense budgets, nobody knows why.

Consistent with western America's big hallmark, Groom already possesses the world's largest air traffic control antenna, a 150' by 400' rectangular-shaped mesh monster jutting from the base's north-west edge and conspicuous for 12 miles!

Yet another wild and overgrown Area 51 feature, where underfoot thousands of scientists toil in subterranean laboratories, is a nearly interminable six-and-half mile runway (most commercial tarmacs are less than a third that length) bisecting the dry lakebed.

Recently, a 10,000' extension was tacked on to the runway's southern end. Here again, Air Force officials from Las Vegas to Langley are at a loss for words. No one knows anything about Groom.

Unusually beefy (especially for this area) 750 kilovolt power lines run into Groom, purportedly for laser weapon and particlebeam experiments. They're presence may correlate with recurrent, dramatic voltage loss in widely spread not-even-a-Stop-sign towns from Hiko to Caliente, pinpricking the big and beautiful Tickaboo and Pahranagat valleys arcing around Groom.

True or imagined, Area 51's transcendental qualities recently spun off grunge-metal Megadeath's "Hanger-18" rock vid, depicting aliens with a 'tude conspiring alongside four-star and scrambled egg brass deep beneath the Nuclear Proving Ground's concertina and electrified barbed wire perimeter, performing diabolical experiments on more laid-back cosmic callers.

Adding to Area 51's mysterious allure, you won t find the Groom base designated on run of the mill Silver State or Nuclear Test Site maps. And when I entered California Map & Travel to assemble the region's various USGS charts, unwittingly I walked into a startling subplot to a story that's dark chiller, sci-fi thriller, and Cold War holdover. There's even a real-life Beond character, (but we'll produce him later).

Jerry, a topo-type salesguy, began relating matter-of-factly the harrowing experience of a customer who'd requested similar maps six months earlier. This cute young lady (the only reason anyone remembered her story) visited Area 51's periphery charged with magazine storys and trash TV heresay of ET craft shooting through Tickaboo Valley's broad expanse.

Such as a glowing, joking ball of light saucer groupies hail as "Old Faithful" for its punctual, regular display on Thursdays at dawn during the winter - its rumored the base closes during brutally hot summer months. (On most Wednesday evenings fellow travelers assemble astride a black mail box 18-and-a-half miles south of Rachel, Nevada, the only man-made marker for miles and the best spot for eyeing unknowns.)

She then described a run-in with Air Force security who provided the military's version of a travel advisory for the Groom Mountains. Quoth the goon squad: 'If you return here we'll make sure you disappear." The map shop boys haven't seen her since.

Now if your curiosity is piquing, don't bother trying to purchase US Geological Survey's aerial photography quadrangles of Groom. Jim Goodall, a military aviation authority who's had three books published on Black Projects, relates all USGS coverage of the area - including files and indexes - has been removed from public access at their Reston, Virginia, headquarters.

And don't even think of towing a camera around Groom's outskirts. "They (inner security) pick up the glint off your lens," Goodall began, "and under 1950 criteria for protection of classified operations areas," specifically Executive Order Title 18, section 794, all cameras and film will be confiscated."

On a similar note, a few months back a Las Vegas-based Department of the Interior employee revealed where all his Groom Lake and Groom Range visuals formerly resided. Opening a floor-to-ceiling fireproof safe of regularly updated color slides pertaining to Nevada public land, a peculiar gap became immediately apparent among the solid file order. Very quietly, the cartographer explained Air Force officers, serious brass and scrambled egg-types, paid him a visit a few years ago to impound all Groom-area reproductions.

Fear & Loathing In Lincoln County
April, 1984. Roughly 100 clicks north of 'degas a solitary figure turns off of lonely Route 375 onto a hard dirt road originally trailblazed by the same driver's grandparents in 1890, This path into the Groom Mountains - delineated on state geological maps as a "fair weather, unimproved surface" - skirts the Groom mine, its adjacent spartan cabins and outbuildings all belonging to the Sheahan clan.

The road then descends toward and ends in a bone-dry playa three miles across and nearly five miles in length.

Thirty years ago Pat Sheahan's parents both died of cancers attributable to the atmosphere surrounding the family-owned and operated ore lead and silver mine. However, their physical demise had no connection whatsoever to manual labor, but to an invisible, virulent poison blanketing them.

During the 50s, while the Atomic Energy Commission detonated nuclear bombs into the atmosphere - blowing doors inward off hinges, causing windows to explode and tearing sheet metal sidings off of cabins at the Groom site, described in father Dan's diary inscriptions as "those terrifying tests" - atop Frenchman and Yucca Flats, only 38 miles upwind, the Sheahans worked their 100-plus patented claims.

They did so as horses showed large beta-burns and cattle went blind amid dry pelting cloudbursts of radioactive end-products and churning fallout-filled dust storms; even after a bombing and strafing of their property by Air Force jets as the entire family ate lunch close-by.

Unconsciously, Groom mine's 16 residents became the' original downwinders - the sole post-Hiroshima civilian victims of, American nuclear weapons.

Now roughly 13 miles from the blacktop and turning on a bend in the trail, the Sheahan heir finds heavily armed soldiers blockading the entrance to his own property.

Victor McLaglen's Lost Patrol?
Wielding full-auto assault weapons, Sheahan quickly realized these fellas meant business. An Air Force security contingent, Delta Force blue berets had seized his land plus 144 square miles of public space, denying access to all in the name of national security. Martial law had been laid down, not in some brackish People's Republic, but on nearly 90,000 acres of American soil without any authorization from state or local officials. And while a coup d'etat unfolded in our own backyard media coverage was undeniably MIA.

No Wolf Blitzkrieg reporting from, not even a silver-tongued Norman conqueror or a General Vague accounted for the Great Basin Desert Quiet Storm.

Welcome to Nevada: The Military's Playground
Harry Reid's constituents were optimistic they'd get some answers when their representative accepted an Air Force helicopter tour of Groom in the insurgency's aftermath. But upon returning from the disputed region Reid's desire for full disclosure petered out.

Thereafter, the Nevada Dem sang an Air Force tune about, "A need (for the takeover) based on information (he) received in Washington," and uttered "No comment on what is going on at Area 51." Moreover, congressman Reid apologized for Air Force transgressions: "It's not altogether (their) fault."

Likewise, as subsequent and contentious congressional hearings concerning Groom unfolded, Air Force spokesmen, evoking Watergate, consistently ducked a public disclosure, passing the buck all the way to the top. Orders for the Groom range annexation came from either the defense secretary or the president.

So why was Washington compelled to act in such a brazenly lawless manner, and what was so damned important about some mountain range in Lincoln County, Nevada?

Two years prior to the Groom land grab a group of Greenpeacers set foot on the Nuclear Test Site, en route they side-stepped dummy and live ordnance and ducked from earsplitting B-52s and F-16s flying just off the deck inside Nellis to stage an anti-nuclear testing demonstration. Video the group shot at the Test Site appeared almost immediately on Las Vegas TV.

Could this trespass have instigated an egg-faced Air Force to draw their own line in the Nevada sand, exerting greater hegemony in a state perpetually run roughshod over by the military with nary a hint of protest, to shore up easily compromised boundaries.

Some pondered a greater implication: if longhairs and tie die-clad peaceniks could perpetrate an ultra serious and highly embarrassing breach of security at Nellis and the top-secret Test Site, who couldn't?

Then again, in 1986, an even bolder Greenpeace group actually delayed a nuclear detonation by trekking to the Test Site via the same path - through Nellis. Soon after their demonstration one activist/hiker relayed to me an observation made near Ground Zero.

He eyed something truly awesome which left the entire group speechless and shaking. No one could identify this huge, whisper-quiet black flying wing. In actuality, Greenpeace spotted the Stealth bomber five years before Northrop partially unveiled the batplane at the Palmdale skunkworks.

Within Las Vegas spook circles that have withered altogether - along with a Soviet espionage wing which nurtured this shadowy subculture - Area 51 was unofficially known by myriad codenames: The Ranch, Watertown, S-4 (or S/Four, depending on your source) and Red Square, because maps supplied to Nellis-based flyguys delineate Area 51's borders in red, meaning flyovers are prohibited. It is also known as Dreamland, a handle which gained popularity when a former Ranch hand bragged crates buzzin' Groom Lake would make George Lucas drool.

And peering south from the family mine at 5,649-feet up in the Grooms, Pat Sheahan had a hellava view onto this max-security facility. Though in fairness to Sheahan, the miner's vista was less than earth-shattering; the entirety of Area 51's hands-on cloak 'n dagger work is conducted within a labyrinth of underground research labs.

Consistent with Area 51's surreptitious hallmark, its employees, mostly young mega-egghead MIT grads commute hugger mugger via their own terminal at Las Vegas- McCarran airport.

Until 1984, the remainder were bused-in as groups from the bustling one-building metropolis of Crystal Spring, 100-plus miles north of Neontown. Now a ghost town, this barroom/restaurant was a CIA ruse to covertly observe both loose-lipped Groom personnel, in addition to any drifters.

Surveyed in 1944 and constructed in 1955, Groom originally came under the aegis of the CIA. At other junctures, possibly simultaneously, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA) and the Department of Energy (DOE) had ongoing involvement at Area-51.

Prior to being shot down high over the old USSR, Francis Gary Powers, along with the first U-2 prototypes, were bivouacked here within a 50s version of Biosphere.

Powers, part of a supremely elite Detachment 10- 10, spent his every waking moment like a monk at the Groom base sealed within a fenced compound. The high altitude, strategic reconnaissance plane Powers piloted, and its successor, the SR-71 Blackbird, were also partially designed and flight tested at Groom.

So naturally our next generation spyplane, the hypersonic Aurora, which hums along at between Mach 5 and Mach 6 (or six times the speed of sound) and creates phantom earthquakes when it flies, is stretching its wings there, or in conjunction with a new restricted area at Pahute Mesa. Stealth technology, dubbed "Senior Trend" by the Air Force way back when, was also refined at Area 51, resulting in the basing of those early birds observed by Greenpeace.

In the early 70s an Air Force intelligence group, "Systems Command" assumed Groom reigns; a few years hence Las Vegas TV divulged Area 51's existence for the first time. (Ironically, just after the illegal Air Force takeover of Groom's adjoining area, Systems Command vice-commandant, Lt. General Robert Bond died behind the controls of the then hottest Soviet fighter, the MIG23 Flogger over Groom Lake in April of '84.)

And this is when things started getting weird.

The original scuttlebutt surrounding Groom hinted at Project Redlight, recreating flight handling characteristics of extraterrestrial vehicles; though Redlight may also relate to an ongoing military effort at stamping out brothel soliciting of Air Force personnel.

The existence of an Air Force designed, conventionally-powered disc was officially acknowledged, However, rumors later spread that Area 51 played host to "Project Snowbird," an Air Force sub-product of the umbrella "Aquarius" program: test driving a ditched alien craft christened in 1972.

A former Nuclear Test Site radio technician wielding top-secret work clearance for Area 51, furthers the aforementioned by claiming said domestically produced disc was merely a decoy for the interplanetary imported type.

Presently residing in Iowa, "Mike" disclosed a UFO of unconventional or otherworldly propulsion and silent operation had taken to the skies of south-central Nevada during the early 60s. (At roughly the same juncture Readers Digest published a story based on a UFO exploding over the Nuclear Test Site.)

While running remote lines into an Area 51 warehouse between 196263, Mike noticed large numbers of heavy wooden crates, shipped in from Edwards Air Force base in California, marked "Project Redlight."

Mike and other ex-Groomies contend they contained parts from an extraterrestrial West Coast aerospace scientists tried to copy unsuccessfully.

On numerous occasions Mike noted the purported spaceship's silent running characteristics while working nearby. Standard operating procedure dictated that he was never allowed to view the runway during liftoff and landings. Although Mike claims to have glimpsed a grounded UFO behind a building at Groom, 20-30 feet in diameter and pewter-colored. The same craft, he believes, was recorded on film by Test Site radar techs and seen on a UFO documentary.

But the biggest bombshell on Area 51 had yet to be dropped.

In late 1989, the Las Vegas CBS affiliate trotted out a physicist-scientist claiming to have done a four month stint at the S-4 section of Area 51. Bob Lazar, a gaunt, bespectacled 33-year old Dungeons & Dragons type and one of only three people in Nevada history to be convicted of pandering, is currently the hottest ticket on the New Age/UFO speaking circuit.

Like Willie Kennedy Smith's alleged assailant, Lazar's identity was electronically altered for previous TV appearances and he usually gave "Dennis" as a pseudonym (which Lazar asserts was his supervisor's name at S-4).

But on a highly successful weeklong KLAS-TV series on UFOs, a descrambled Lazar asserted to the presence of nine different alien craft berthed in connecting hangars at Groom. He described them as: "The'top hat"'; "the 'jello mold"'; "the 'sport model', (which) looked new and operated without a hitch"; and one (that) looked like it was hit by some sort of projectile...a large caliber had gone through it."

Regarding how one properly hails a broken-down ET, Lazar referred to them as "The kids," a term gleaned from official Area 51 memoranda.

For credibility's sake, the KLAS report made Lazar undergo polygraphs, testing his transmundane mettle. The first lie-detector examination proved inconclusive, the second revealed deceit. Another polygrapher believed Lazar was passing along information he had only heard of and not seen.

A third polygraph operator, a corporate security advisor/ex cop from Los Angeles, found Lazar's responses to be unfeigned in four pass-throughs.

Though he added, "lie_ difficulty in determining Lazar's truthfulness stems from the fear that was drilled into him. Lazar insists Area 51's oppressive security atmosphere was the major bummer of what could have been a tremendously exciting post, alluding to intimidation tactics by guards (even at his very first security briefing) who made their points at the end of M-16s while thumping his chest and screaming in his ear.

By stepping forward Bob Lazar feels his life is in danger. Besides crank calls, Lazar affirms while embarking to an Asia-bound jumbo at Las Vegas-McCarran airport, where a great deal of yen in speaking fees awaited, his tires were shot out. Though Lazar failed to produce or keep the perforated rubber as evidence and has refused inquiries by respected paranormal researchers.

George Knapp, the KLAS newsman who interviewed Lazar, maintains Lazar isn't the only Dreamland deep throat the reporter is privy to. Though Lazar remains the only one to go public so far.

A Las Vegas "professional" formerly stationed at Nellis told the TV journalist he saw a saucer touching down outside of Area 51. The upshot of his observation resulted in "being taken away for several hours of debriefing."

Another Knapp source, a Nellis airman responsible for a radar installation, professes to "unknowns" appearing on radar scopes in three quick blips, estimating their speed at roughly 7,000 mph. They could also stop "on a dime." When word of this leaked out, radar operators were told to turn off sensors for that area and forget it.

Pat and Joe Travis, proprietors of the Little A'Le'lnn bar and motor lodge, have a stake in the going's on at Groom Lake. Besides a few local cow-pokes, they serve pub grub and selfstyled libations like the Transporter and the Beam-Me-Up-Up-Scotty to legions of UFOies arriving weekly from L.A. (where else?) breaking up long road trips to the black mail box outside of Area 51.

Groom-based camo-clad Air Force thugs leering behind RayBans, who arrive as foursomes in nondescript Chevy 4x4s or Ford Broncos, also frequent the Inn.

But Pat Travis knows which side her bread is buttered on, this cute little 50ish lady falls in line with the true believers. For not only are the ET craft real, in her estimation there's six of Lazar's "kids" hunkered down at Area 51.

And like all good things the Air Force, on the heels of their own high-country junta and blatant trampling of constitutional law, has, literally gone ballistic in attempting to squash the heady atmosphere surrounding the recent goings on at Groom.

Last year, the loosely-knit Los Angeles-based Secret Saucer Expedition Group, had a close encounter of the worst kind when one of their caravan vehicles was buzzed, then bumrushed by an olive-drab CH-53 helicopter bearing no insiginia. Assault charges were filed with the DA's office, dually bolstered by video capturing the airborne intimidation act and a dented car-roof submitted as evidence.

Only the Shadow Knows
Conceding to those handicapped by stinted imagination, like Bush voters and Skeptical Inquirer subscribers, hard and fast explanations abound concerning the crafts defying gravity and the laws of physics. Such as a laserpowered, disc-shaped lunar shuttle craft called "Delta"; any one of three Lockheed "Black" projects, including "Aurora." Or the "Shadow" which saw duty in the Gulf War, an unmanned aeriel vehicle (UAV) and a dead ringer for a flying saucer.

Nevertheless, quite a few respected aerospace experts have gone on record believing in UFO activity at Groom.

But as for the laws separating civilian and military control of our land and airspace, military aviation experts like Jim Goodall aren't hedging about the latest additions to the Groom facility and another powerplay in the works for adjacent Lincoln County public land.

"Strong rumors persist that the Air Force plans on absconding with all the land bordering west of Route 375, south of Highway 6 and east of 95." They haven't submitted a building permit or an Environmental Impact Statement, and there's absolutely no justification for another landgrab.

SECRET "SAUCER" SITES

By Richard J. Boylan, Ph.D.
If you haven't yet made next summer's vacation plans, consider Dr. Boylan's recent itinerary. Just take an extra spare tire and don't say you weren't forewarned!

Dr. Boylan is a licensed clinical psychologist living in Sacramento, CA, and a MUFON consultant. Needless to say, we cannot recommend his extracurricular activities to everyone!

Between April 9 and 15 of this year, I conducted a personal field investigation of several secret military industrial sites where made-in-the-USA UFOs are allegedly designed, manufactured and flight-tested. This intense reconnaissance trip took me from California to Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. I traveled as a casually-dressed ordinary citizen in a four-wheel-drive vehicle with no special military or intelligence clearances. My interest in UFOs and accounts of joint government-EBE operations and technology transfers had been stimulated by my professional work as a clinical psychologist. Various per sons began to show up in my caseload over the past three years who came into counseling for other reasons, but during the course of therapy revealed, or had flashback recall of, encounters and abduction by extraterrestrial beings. Earlier this year I had begun conducting a formal private research project, interviewing and debriefing persons with at least partial memory of a CE-IV experience. Hypnosis was used as necessary. So motivated, I determined to find corroborating evidence on this trip, if available, for the presence of UFOs and alien human contact, primarily because my CE-IV contactees found it so hard to believe the reality of their visitation by EBE's; confirming data would provide helpful reassurance of their sanity. (Not to mention that of their therapist!) My first stop, on April 9, was Tonopah, NV, where I discovered that the U.S. Air Force Air Defense Command (ADC) maintains a headquarters, although the nearest "official" air base - Nellis - is on the edge of Las Vegas, 210 miles to the south. Strange, unless there is a secret aircraft base near Tonopah itself (there is). My next stop was approximately 15 miles east of Tonopah on U.S. 6, where a paved road leads south 25 miles through desert flats to the extremely secure Tonopah Test Range (TTR). Although this is where the Stealth F-117A fighters were kept until declassified, it is no longer an Air Force Base, having been taken over by the Department of Energy's weapons development and refinement organization, Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) of Albuquerque, which is one of the defense budget enterprises of AT&T. Sandia is heavily into Star Wars refinement, with nuclear fusion, electromagnetic pulse and particle beam weapons, extreme magnetic fields, and laser research, among other things. Thus, SNL's Tonopah Test Range is conveniently located only 60 air miles from Area 51, where anti-gravity research has reportedly reached a high level of execution. I proceeded next towards the secret saucer test range at the Groom Lake (Area 51) and Papoose Lake (Area S4) complex. At Warm Springs, NV, I took State Highway 375 for 62 miles to Rachel, NV, where a number of the employees of Area 51 live. It is also home to the Little Ale Inn restaurant and bar, where flyers from Area 51 sometime stop in for a beer or two. The genial hosts, Joe and Pat Travis, have a veritable museum of UFO photos and lore on their walls. With precise directions from them and the assistance of my US Government Survey map (Pahranagat Range, NV) of Groom and Papoose Lakes area, I drove about 24 miles southeast on Highway 375 to the infamous Black Mailbox which marks the intersection with the dirt road leading southwest to Area 51. It is 20 miles to Groom Lake base, but the military reservation boundary is five miles out from there. I drove 10 miles down the road (and was therefore still five miles from the military reservation boundary), when I passed a parked, unmarked Bronco with a light-bar on the roof. Two men were sitting inside wearing camouflage jumpsuits and no insignia, but armed. As I drove past I immediately noticed a pulling on my drive train. I stopped and got out, to discover that my rear tire on the side facing the Bronco was completely shattered. Although the tread was good, there was a sidewall puncture (courtesy of a silenced bullet?). As I started to change my tire, the camouflaged duo drove up and asked sarcastically, "having any trouble?" They probed as to whether I was headed "up ahead," and whether I had a badge (photo ID). When I said no, they replied, "No use going up there, you can't get in." I asked if there was a closed gate, and they replied affirmative.

Since I had learned earlier that security at Areas 51 and S4 is provided by EG&G and the Wackenhut Corporations (with NSA and CIA ties), I concluded I was not going to get my rights to unhindered travel honored by these two. So I strategically retreated until nightfall. Under cover of darkness I again traveled down Groom Lake Road but stopped a half-mile short of where the armed duo's truck was parked. I set up binocular watch around 9 p.m., facing west and scanning just above the jagged ridgeline of the Groom Mountain Range. I was not disappointed. About 9:15 p.m. an intensely burning gold orb of light rose above the range, hovered, and glided slowly sideways. The intensity of the radiating light was directly proportional to the power demand of the maneuver being executed. Thus the orb grew extremely bright as it rose upward, and when it turned. After about four minutes the orb descended below the ridgeline.

About 9:40 p.m. a second orb of super-intense white light with bluish tones arose, reached an estimated height of 1500 feet, hovered, then drifted slowly south, then reversed and drifted north and hovered again. After this the craft began blinking and then began a series of maneuvers difficult to describe and almost defying the laws of physics.

It jumped from one position to another, changing positions almost simultaneously over a distance of ahout (?) feet in two-thirds of a second, in a crazy quilt pattern of sideways, crisscrosses and ups and downs, in a random tic-tac-toe kind of sequencing. The craft kept up these split-second gyrations for several minutes in an incredible display of ability to defy inertial and gravitational forces. No fighter plane could ever execute such maneuvers. None could turn so fast as to per form right angle and direction-reverse maneuvers without any turning radius and so fast that the craft seemed almost to be in two positions at the same time. Any pilot in a conventional aircraft attempting such maneuvers would have been slammed against his seat and other restraints so hard as to be knocked unconscious, or at least left dizzy and faint from inertial shifts. Clearly this craft is not reliant on the limitations of gravitational and inertial forces.

The blue-white orb of light finally paused and hovered, and then began tracking downrange in a south-southwesterly direction above the ridgetops. I followed it in binoculars for another 15 minutes or so before it finally became too small to view.

About 10:20 p.m. another intensely burning, bright yellow orange radiating orb arose above the Groom Range, and began blinking upon reaching the 1500-foot hovering height. This third craft did a rather modest bumble-bee-dance set of maneuvers when compared to the second, executing the turns rather slowly. It then went into a pulsing pattern, blinking once as a sharp distinct orb, followed by a second blink in which it appeared as a smeared patch of light. This one-two, one-two pattern persisted as it slowly proceeded downrange at perhaps ninety miles per hour. I followed it about 15 miles as well before it became indistinguishable from the stars.

While I use the word orb to describe these burning bright craft, I feel free to call them saucers because of corroborative information from two sources. The first is a telephoto photograph of a similar orb above Area 51 taken last year, enlarged and enhanced for detail, on display at the Little Ale Inn. The other source is Bob Lazar, a physicist formerly employed at Area S4. His description of the HPAC's (Human Powered Alien Craft) he claimed he helped build matches the telephoto picture of the gold orb seen over Areas 51 and S4. Lazar states that the HPAC's are powered by nuclear fusion. On April 11, I reconnoitered Los Alamos National Laboratories, a Department of Energy (DOE) complex at Los Alamos, NM, where the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory researches the relationship of magnetic and gravitational fields. On April 12, I did reconnaissance on Sandia National Laboratories, another DOE complex, inside Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, where I learned that sustained nuclear fusion, magnetically contained, was achieved seven years ago. (Lawrence Livermore Laboratories in California is also heavily into nuclear fusion research using lasers.) These labs conceivably provide much of the technical research for any human-powered, anti-gravitational craft. But the actual production takes place elsewhere. I headed west to California. Northeast of Los Angeles in the Antelope Valley portion of the Mojave Desert are the "secret" Black Budget aircraft production facilities of Lockheed (Helendale), McDonnell Douglas (Llano) and Northrop. Northrop's facility is located on the huge Tejon Ranch in the Tehachapi Mountains, near the mouth of Little Oak Canyon. Here is where the Made-In-America flying saucers are purportedly built. I drove west of Lancaster on Highway 138 to 190th Street, turned north for three miles to the Los Angeles Kern County line, parked and got out my binoculars. Between 3-5 a.m. on April 16, I witnessed four short test flights of the seemingly same intensely-burning, bright yellow-orange orbs I had seen over Areas 51/S4. The first one lifted off around 3:15 a.m. On the ground it had looked like a parked passenger airliner in the dark an elongated shape with a row of lighted panels like airline windows. As it began to power up and leave the ground, however, the entire frame began to emit powerful throbbing light. Even from seven miles away through crisp desert air, the light radiating from this saucer dazzled my eyes. After rising an estimated 500 feet in the air, the HPAC began to travel southwest about l/3 mile, then hover, then slowly fly back towards the Northrop plant. Approximately half an hour later a second intense orb of the same color lifted off. In all, 3 HPAC's were test-flown short hops from the southwest hangar area. A fourth one flew later from the northeast staging area in a due-East l/3 mile test loop. This appears to be production testing, with the lengthy field testing taking place at Area S4. The United States Black Budget military-weapons industry complex is theoretically assembling a fleet of U.S. saucers whose operational capabilities make the F-117A Stealth fighter look like a biplane. The purpose of this operation can only be guessed at. My hypothesis is that the Hawk elements in the military-intelligence community are preparing for an alien invasion by seeking to have equivalent spacecraft "on our side" for defense, or as part of a first-strike, coordinated with Star Wars electromagnetic-pulse and energy-beam weapons. Your tax dollars at work.

DREAMLAND AND THE CIA
By Andrew D. Basiago

Mr. Basiago is a West Coast investigative reporter and lawyer, and former Contributing Writer for the Cousteau Society's Calypso Log. This is his first article for the Journal, but we hope it will not be his last.
Was Lockheed consultant an agent of the Cosmic Watergate?
For several years, controversial voices have sounded in UFO circles, telling a terrifying story. The government, these critics say, is perpetrating a cosmic Watergate. Extraterrestrial humanoids are visiting our civilization. Some of these beings have crashed their spaceships on our planet. These crashed saucers have been recovered by special military teams. The saucers-even their occupants-are being studied at a supersecret base in Nevada. At this base, scientists are busily endeavoring to "reverse engineer" alien flight technology and plumb the complexity of alien anatomy. The base is called "Dreamland."
Area 51 is where Dreamland is allegedly located. Area 51, we know, is a real and not a fictional place. The northwestern corner of the vast Nevada Test Range near Nellis Air Force Base, Area 51 is encircled by the austere majesty of the Groom Mountains and unpopulated stretches of surrounding desert Area 51 is a perfect place for the military-industrial complex to tinker with Space Age toys. In fact, experimental aircraft have streaked across the skies of Area 51 for decades. In the 1950s, Area 51 was where the U-2 spy plane was tested. Here, U-2 pilot Frances Gary Powers, who was shot down and captured in May 1960 while on a spy flight deep inside the USSR, was trained. Area 51 was a testing ground for the spy plane, the SR-71, which allowed the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] to detect Soviet nuclear missile installations in Cuba in 1962. In recent years, Area 51 was where the Stealth bomber was developed and perfected. Area 51 is secured terrain. Displayed on aeronautical maps, it cannot be overflown by civilian planes. Nor can it be trespassed by unauthorized individuals on the ground.

Charges by UFO proponents that the government is engaged in an active program to direct downed extraterrestrial craft Area 51 for research and development purposes are as important as they are provocative. If Area 51 has been commissioned as a UFO laboratory, then the government is engaged in a conspiracy that denies the existence of UFOs while researching their very design. The allegations of a young engineer, Robert Lazar, in 1989, that he witnessed flying saucers being test flown at Area 51, were compelling and believable. What the UFO community has lacked is a factual nexus linking Area 51 to the agencies that have, as revealed in government documents declassified under the Freedom of Information Act [FOIA], shown keen interest in UFOs-the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency. Missing from the story of Area 51 has been a "Deep Throat" from the intelligence community whose story confirms the existence of Dreamland.

A good candidate for the role of "Deep Throat" of the Cosmic Watergate is Marion Leo Williams-a voice UFO researchers will not hear. Leo Williams died in 1989. But his untold story is a story that should be told, for it links Dreamland to the CIA and provides additional evidence of a UFO study effort.

Williams first made his allegations about government concealment of extraterrestrial visitations to Earth to a relative in 1976. In 1981, years before similar claims were made by such individuals as Stanton Friedman, William Moore, Jaime Shandera, John Lear and William Cooper, figures on the UFO-circuit, Williams' relative shared his secrets with this reporter. Before succumbing to cancer in 1989, a cancer he linked to the radioactive materials he handled during a long career with the CIA, Williams recounted his career as a government operative, and later, as a Lockheed consultant who visited the "Top Secret" UFO research Area 51.

The allegations by Williams' relative about his career are worth reporting at some length:

Williams entered the clandestine service with the Office of Strategic Services, the CIA's precursor, during World War II. Stationed in Burma, he participated in the operation that flooded the Japanese empire with counterfeit yen in order to cause inflation and foil Japan's dreams of conquest. After graduating from the University of Kansas at Wichita in 1953 with degrees in engineering and history, Williams joined the CIA. Williams worked for the CIA on numerous "jumps" for 30 years. As a CIA agent, Williams returned to Burma, where he organized Burmese tribesmen to recover downed low-flying satellites completed reconnaissance missions over China. In another assignment for the agency, he was a member of a secret team that brought pieces of the Chinese atomic bomb out of the People's Republic of China. His assignments for the intelligence agency took Williams to China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Thailand.

During the late 1960s and 1970s, Williams returned to the United States, where he was active in counter-intelligence, primarily in securing United States defense intelligence bases from being penetrated by KGB agents and their lackeys. This work afforded Williams a security clearance that allowed him access to numerous defense intelligence facilities around the world. Such bases can only be entered after the person seeking access places a thumb against a finger print identification system or an eye before the lens of a retinal scanner. But even Williams was impressed by what he described as the "top, top, top, top, top secret" UFO research lab that he visited and that has since come to be known as Dreamland.

According to Williams' relative, a stable and successful professional who is deemed highly credible by this writer, Williams developed cataracts in the 1970s, and left the CIA to go to work for the aerospace firm Lockheed. Williams was told that Lockheed was supplying equipment to a supersecret laboratory in Nevada dedicated to exploiting the technologies of crashed UFOs and studying the biologies of their occupants. Williams' job for Lockheed was to acquire parts from foreign manufacturers to secure and outfit the base.

Williams recalled that he had been flown to the lab several times as part of his assignment for Lockheed. He reported being transported to Dreamland in planes and buses with blacked-out windows so that he remained ignorant of the base's location. Much of Dreamland was underground or recessed into the surrounding desert terrain. The largely underground elevators and security locks were built with so many advanced control systems that it was common knowledge among those who had visited Dreamland that it formed the basis for the virus-control fortress featured in the film The Andromeda Strain. Williams' relative claims that Williams sometimes called Dreamland "The Ranch," which parallels aspects of the MJ-12 literature.

The theme of the ailing CIA agent's revelations to his relative was that because he was dying and had no reason to fear retaliation for breaking his secrecy oath, he wanted his relative to know that the Earth is being visited by a non- human intelligent species, that American government re- searchers are busy conducting genetic studies of intact alien corpses recovered from crashed alien spacecraft and that design principles deduced from the saucers have been utilized in the Stealth bomber.

Williams' story closely mirrors that of the young physicist Lazar. In May 1989, Lazar agreed to be interviewed on a confidential basis by reporter George Knapp of Las Vegas television station KLAS. At that time, Lazar, interviewed in shadows so that his identity would not be revealed, reported that there are nine flying saucers at Dreamland, all of extraterrestrial origin. After his life was threatened by his supervisor at Dreamland, Lazar stepped forward to reveal his identity, and in November 1989 he spoke at length with Knapp on camera, asserting that the publicity would protect him from retaliation.

Lazar told Knapp that he was hired to work at Dreamland by the United States Navy, following an interview at the high technology firm E.G.&G. According to Lazar, he was assigned to work in a region of Area 51 described as "S-4" on government maps. Lazar would report for work at a meeting place near E.G.&G. and fly to Groom Lake. There, only a few individuals would board a bus for the final journey to S-4. The windows of the bus were blacked-out so that the passengers could not learn the precise location of Dreamland.

The exterior of Dreamland, Lazar said, has a slope of about 30 degrees. The structure in which Dreamland is housed consists of two hangar doors textured to look like sand to disguise it from Soviet satellites passing overhead.

On his first day at Dreamland, Lazar said, he was informed that he would be conducting research into advanced propulsion systems, and was asked to read various briefing documents. Rather quickly, as the young physicist read the documents and was introduced to the working of the lab, Lazar was astonished by the level of technological inquiry under- taken at Dreamland. According to Lazar, the propulsion systems he was assigned to study used as their power source anti-matter reactors. The propulsion system consisted of a two-part mechanism that used gravity as a wave with "wave guides" almost like microwaves. The craft at Dreamland, Lazar claimed, were propelled by way of gravity amplification. By tremendously amplifying gravitational energy, they bend time and space around them, so that when the gravity amplifier is switched off, the craft has moved a tremendous distance in space, but with virtually no passage of time.

The fuel source for this propulsion system, Lazar told Knapp, was Element 115, which cannot be made on Earth, but which the government he said has 500 pounds of. By bombarding Element 115, anti-matter is produced, which propels the saucers. A kilo of anti-matter would be the most powerful fuel source ever to be held in human hands, for it represents the energy equivalent of 46 10-megaton bombs. Lazar said that Element 115 could never be manufactured on Earth, where it would have to be assembled by bombarding it one proton at a time, which would take an infinite amount of time and energy to accomplish. Instead, Element 115 has to come from a place where superheavy elements have been produced naturally-such as a binary star system, a supernova or some other cosmic environment where there is an almost in- estimable release of energy. The presence of Element 115 in government stockpiles, Lazar posited, points logically to the conclusion that the government has either colluded with aliens to receive it, or has gathered it from downed alien craft.

As days passed at Dreamland, Lazar was introduced to the entire facility. He learned that the nine different disks being studied occupy a series of nine connected hangars separated by huge bay doors. One saucer had apparently been pierced by a projectile. In one demonstration, Lazar was permitted to watch a disk rise some 30 feet from the ground.

Initially, Lazar chose not to believe that he had been admitted into the inner sanctum of a secret military base where recovered alien spacecraft are being stored, studied and flight- tested. Rather, he chose to entertain the notion that the Dreamland research team was just another group of advanced government scientists exploiting "flying wing" technology that emerged after World War II. Then, one day, Lazar told Knapp, he was permitted to look inside one of the craft. If these are being designed for human pilots, he wondered, why do they have such tiny seats? Soon, it clicked. The little furniture had been fashioned for the diminutive bodies of nonhuman extraterrestrials. Dreamland was a place not of original research but a place where alien flight technology was reverse-engineered.

Note the similarity between Williams' story and that of Lazar.

Both Williams and Lazar reported having been employed in advanced military research-Williams as a CIA liaison to Lockheed procuring vital defense parts from around the world, Lazar as a research physicist for another defense con tractor, E.G.&G.
Both men reported having been transported to a base in the Nevada Desert in vehicles with blacked-out windows.
Both reported that the base was partially or substantially underground.
Both reported a supersecret level of security at the base. In addition, Lazar claimed that guards pointed guns at him and threatened his life to make him comply with the secrecy regime.
Both reported having been told that recovered craft of extraterrestrial origin were located at the facility.
Both reported that the base was dedicated to an ongoing investigation to ascertain how the craft worked.
Both reported that their expertise was needed by the UFO study effort. Williams sourced parts from around the world on behalf of the base, whereas Lazar studied the craft's propulsion systems.
Williams claimed to have been told only that the craft were at the facility, whereas Lazar claimed to have actually seen the craft. It is logical, therefore, that Lazar, but not Williams, would be intimidated at gunpoint, for he was allowed to see the UFOs and work on the saucer investigation, whereas Williams was only informed of the base's mission.
These similarities establish that the confessions of retired CIA agent Williams substantially foretold Lazar's disputed 1989 allegations. What kind of base these men visited remains open to speculation.

On the one hand, the base Williams and Lazar visited may be dedicated to military research into recovered UFOs of extraterrestrial origin. But that explanation is susceptible to criticism. It is doubtful that the military would provocatively down extraterrestrial craft with hostile fire, or even has the technology to do so, given the wealth of data describing UFOs as impervious to human weapon systems. Furthermore it is doubtful that, somehow, visitors from "out there" would be capable of getting "here" across the vast reaches of space, only to crash when they got here.

On the other hand, the base Williams and Lazar visited may be dedicated to advanced military research of entirely terrestrial origin. Perhaps their military supervisors convinced them the craft were not of this world to achieve some secrecy objective. Reasons an "extraterrestrial cover story" would have been placed over a Pentagon research project into alternative flight technologies might include a desire to keep such technology out of the hand of other nations, tort liability associated with flying experimental craft over populated areas or the sensitive origins of such technology (e.g., perhaps the UFOs were developed by some of the 1,500 Nazi scientists the CIA secreted into this country after World War II in "Operation Paperclip.") These explanations, of course, are, in turn, susceptible to the criticism that UFO sightings have for decades been a global phenomenon and that the fact that some UFOs are of intelligent extraterrestrial origin is suggested by a growing body of close encounter and abduction evidence.

In any case, Williams' story provides more tantalizing evidence of a cosmic Watergate. A variety of individuals are reporting that a reality of high strangeness has emerged on a secreted expanse of the Nevada desert. Dreamland may be a real and not a chimerical place. If it is-if the government has evidence proving the existence of life beyond this planet, such information must be disclosed in order that human knowledge of the nature of the universe be advanced. Why such a laboratory of cosmic inquiry has apparently remained only an imaginary Dreamland for humanity at large is a topic to be pursued with diligence and vigor on behalf of the world community that would be enlightened by such information.


TITLE: MYSTERY MAY DEEPEN FOR BASE IN NEVADA

PUBLICATION: Reno Gazette-Journal

DATE: Dec. 26, 1994

AUTHOR: McClatchy News Service

* Air Force: Hoping to get control of 4,000 acres of mountains.

SACRAMENTO, Calif.- The military appears to be within days of
shrouding one of its worst-kept secrets, a much-publicized Air Force
facility in Nevada that officially doesn't exist.

Two mountain peaks that provide a distant vista of the base may
soon be off-limits to the public. Yet the attempt by the Air Force
to ban access to the vistas hasn't stopped aviation buffs, UFO believers
and even the Russians from viewing and photographing the phantom base.

"The publicity is what created my business," said Glenn Campbell,
a 35-year-old resident of rural Nevada who has subsisted in part
by selling $15 guides to the mountain vistas.

The vistas in question-- White Sides Mountain and Freedom Ridge--are
next to the giant Nellis Air Force Range north of Las Vegas and
are now controlled by the Bureau of Land Management.

The Air Force in 1993 requested that it be given control of nearly
4,000 acres of the mountains. After a formal consideration process,
the BLM in November gave a tentative yes.

Barring any change of mind, the BLM could make the decision final
within days or a few weeks, said Curtis Tucker, an area land manager for
the agency.

It's unclear precisely what the Air Force is Doing on its complex of
airstrips and buildings on the part of the Nellis base known as
Groom Range.

"Some specific activities and operations conducted on the that range,
both past and present, remain classified and cannot be discussed,"
said Lt. Col Mike Gannon, a spokesman for the Air Force.

The most conventional explanation is that the base is one of the places
where the Air Force has tested various top-secret aircraft and has
trained its pilots.

The least conventional explanation is literally out of this world.
In 1989, a Las Vegas man said he once worked at the base and helped
to conduct tests on alien spaceships the Air Force had obtained
through a cooperative arrangement with the non-earthly beings.

"I've seen some strange things in the sky, but nothing that would
lead me to believe that we're dealing with things from another planet"
said Tucker. "In my mind, there's human beings behind what is going on."

There is no doubt that something is down there. Popular Science magazine,
for example, splashed on its cover an aerial photograph of the base
reportedly taken by a Russian satellite in 1988.

The 35-year-old Campbell, who is single, and lives in a mobile home
trailer and conducts his "Psychorat" computer activities from another
next door.

"I've repackaged this as an issue of government accountability," said
Campbell, who now down-plays the UFO theories because, after two years
of surveillance,he has yet to see one.

He plans an "End-of-the-World" party on the ridge just before it
becomes off limits.

From: shooter@expert.cc.purdue.edu (Shooter)

Subject: FLASH-- Jane's on SR-71 Replacement (fwd)

Got back home tonight after the holiday and got a nice present-- the December 17 issue of Jane's Defence Weekly, with a cover story on the SR-71 replacement. The article, quoting "several well-placed military and industry sources" indicates that the projects are defunct. Here is an outline of the details:

* The followon was to be an unmanned recon aircraft, operating at high altitude at subsonic speeds.
* The name of the classified program was said to begin with the letter "Q." (And you thought Gene Roddenberry was only kidding.) * There were only to be a few of these "Q"s built, as few as four. * Seven companies submitted designs in 1983-ish, including the Skunk Works.
* There was separate related research effort on an "extremely fast" aircraft, which was cancelled in the 80s/
* The "Q" was cancelled at the end of the Cold War or two years ago (the article is confusing in that it uses both phrases) because of its high (to use an understatement) cost of about $1 billion per aircraft. "Hundreds of millions" were spent on R&D.

The article is in the December 17th issue of Jane's Defence Weekly, and was written by John Boatman.

(And to think I almost didn't renew my subscription in the fall... shrudder.)

This still leaves us with a number of other unknowns, though, such as the unusual contrails and witness reports of very strange and unique-sounding engines heard at night a Groom. Hmmmmmmmm.

Jim Cunningham
jcunning@delphi.com

Subject: Groom Hits Headlines (U.K.)
From: S.D.Silver@ncl.ac.uk
Date: 4 Dec 1994 18:36:31 GMT
Message-ID: 3bt27f$los@whitbeck.ncl.ac.uk

Over here in Britain, The 'high brow' broadsheet The Observer has just this
morning published an article about the 'Motion To Compel' the American
Government in to admitting that the base exists.This would mean that the
case against the site for burning toxic waste, If it is admitted that the
place exists, can go through with a chance that it may succeed.
It also mentions Psychospy,and shows the 1988 Russian sattelite picture
of the non-existant base.

Apparently the Government are having some headaches over there. :)


Subj: Area 51 and Groom Lake in _Le Monde_
Date: Fri, Dec 9, 1994 4:40 AM PDT
From: PHARABOD@FRCPN11.IN2P3.FR

The existence of Area 51 and Groom Lake has appeared yesterday in
the most serious French newspaper,_Le Monde_, December 7, 1994. In
an article "Apres la mort de six techniciens - Un journal britannique
revele l'existence d'une base secrete dans le Nevada", _Le Monde_
quotes _The Observer_ which reports the existence of a secret military
base named "Area 51" in the Nevada. It is said that six people, one of
them named Robert Frost, died after manipulating dangerous materials.
They speak briefly also of the U2, Blackbird and Aurora. _The Observer_
(December 4) publishes also a photo made by an ex-Soviet satellite
(it seems that _Le Monde_ ignores the article published in _Popular
Science_ a few months ago).

J. Pharabod

LARRY KING LIVE AT AREA 51

The media continue to make pilgrimages to Groom Lake. You can, too, with the proper precautions.

by Dennis Stacy

I'd visited Rachel, Nevada, once before, in April of last year, to attend what was billed as "The Ultimate UFO Seminar" (MUFON Journal, June, 1993). It wasn't, of course, but we did get to listen to shadow physicist Bob Lazar field questions from the audience, check out the interior of the famous Little A'Le'Inn, and of course climb White Sides Mountain by moonlight, from where we could look down on the "secret" base at Groom Lake (aka Area 51), home to the F-117A Stealth fighter, the SR-7l high-altitude reconnaissance Blackbird and, if Lazar were to be believed, several alien flying saucers now in Air Force possession and allegedly in process of being "reverse engineered."

In the year and a half since then, much water has flown into Groom Lake. Glen Campbell, in particular, set up shop in Rachel and turned his trailer home into a Sort of civilian spy shop on the edge of the Air Force's most treasured base of covert operations, where he proved to be a prickly pear in the military's public relations (and operational) behind. The media, from "48 Hours" to The New York Times, including many lesser stops in between, soon began trooping to Campbell's aluminum side door in droves. Campbell found a less strenuous overlook of Groom Lake which he dubbed Freedom Ridge. The Air Force countered by asking permission to withdraw same and some 4900 other acres, including White Sides, from public access, that is, incorporating it as part of the vast Restricted Zone comprising part of the already existing Nellis Gunnery and Bomb Range.

Then, sometime in September of this year, I learned, via MUFON member Bob Bletchman, that Larry King would be taking his traveling talk show on the road to Rachel, as one of his twice annual specials for Ted Turner's TNT cable network. A two-hour, call-in program scheduled for airing on Saturday, October first, "Larry King Live From Area 51" would feature live interviews with onstage guests Kevin Randle, Stanton Friedman, Steven Greer and Glenn Campbell, as well as previously taped segments with Carl Sagan, Jacques Vallee, former senator Barry Goldwater and others. Along with the fact that the Air Force seizure of Freedom Ridge seemed imminent, the fact that a Larry King production would be taking place seemed reason enough to revisit Rachel once again.

In Las Vegas, I met up with Greg Bishop, editor of The Excluded Middle, and another friend of his, fellow LA writer Scott Sawyer, for the three-hour drive to isolated Rachel, normal weekend population approximately 100. I'd already talked by phone with the segment's producer, Tom Farrner, and been assured that we would have some kind of access to the set itself, although he couldn't guarantee an interview with Larry himself.

Since the program was scheduled to air at 8 p.m. on the East Coast, that meant it would actually begin in Rachel at 5 p.m. About an hour before show time, we arrived in town simultaneously with the limousine driving Mssrs. Friedman, Randle and Greer up from Vegas. I was somehow under the impression that the King set was either going to be in the Inn itself or across the street, underneath a canvas (circus?) tent, which proved erroneous. It was across Highway 375 opposite the Inn, but the set, half-ringed by microphones, cameras and light banks, was atop a raised dais under a bowl of blue sky with scattered clouds. Although it had rained copiously only a day or two before, the production crew's luck held. More foreheads were beaded with sweat than with rain drops in the afternoon Nevada sun. By program's end, King, who had begun in shirt sleeves and trademark suspenders, would be donning his jacket like most everyone else.

Engineers piped a live feed into the Inn and onto an impromptu large-screen TV set up just west of same, which really was inside a canvas tent. While the show was in progress, however, we made a late afternoon run for Freedom Ridge, in which we were frustrated by both time and failing daylight constraints. We did drive down the dirt road leading into Groom Lake-passing at least one obvious roadside sensor-until we reached the warning signs, where we turned around and stopped. Clearly visible on a hilltop just to our north sat a security vehicle, its occupants outside and observing us with binoculars. It was soon joined by a second vehicle. By the time we returned to Rachel the program had just ended; most participants, crew and speakers alike, were retiring to the Little A'Le'Inn for a buffet dinner and liquid libation before tackling the drive back to Vegas.

Somewhat to my surprise, prior to broadcast, Larry King emerged from one of the production trailers at our request, showed us around the set, and granted us an interview. He looked fit and relaxed, and was completely cooperative, giving off very little of any air that implies "I'm Chevy Chase and you're not." All three of us asked questions at one time or another. I began with the obvious: "What's your general opinion on the subject?"

"To tell you the truth, I have no idea," King said. "So you've never seen one yourself?"

"No, I saw something one night flying home with the Dolphins," King answered. "I used to do color for the Miami Dolphins. There was this glowing light following our plane about a mile off, at the same altitude. It glowed, and then dimmed and glowed, and we didn't know what it was. We reported it to the ground and they didn't have anything on radar, and it went away in about an hour."

"The size of a star?" I wondered.

"Larger. It wasn't a star. It could have been anything. I talked to Carl Sagan, and he said it could have been a Brazilian aircraft." King was unclear as to whether Sagan meant to imply an aircraft smuggling drugs or some sort of off-shore operation in which one plane monitored another's guidance system. But King himself was adamant: "It wasn't a plane," he said.

I asked what year it had happened and how could he be sure?

King's eyes crinkled. "It was the 72-73 undefeated season."

By now we had approached the outdoor studio, bristling with microphone booms, light banks and rail-mounted cameras, Nevada's desert skyline providing the backdrop. Parked nearby were half a dozen hi-tech production trailers out of Los Angeles. "You couldn't pay for this set," Greg Bishop ventured, "although obviously you did."

"We paid a lot of money," King admitted, sans braggadocio. "The best equipment available. I mean this is TNT."

Bishop asked how long everybody had been out here and why they chose Rachel?

King wasn't curt, but he didn't mince words, either. "I just arrived," he answered. "The crew got here on Wednesday and the producer picked the site."

"That's what Dennis had said," Bishop continued. "How did he convince you to do it?"

"I do two specials a year for Turner," King explained. "Normally they're taped interviews with sports stars or movie stars. We did this Kennedy thing in November, on the anniversary of the assassination. We had people on telling where they were at the time, and we had a number of people call in. We got real good ratings on that one. So we wanted to do something else different that was not [just] 'Larry King Live,' or just taped interviews. So they thought I could come out here. When they first asked me about it, I kind of laughed and said I didn't want to get flown up with the aliens, or whatever. But they said they would talk to Carl Sagan and Goldwater, get some prominent individuals who 'believe,' and set up an 800 number. So the more I thought about it, who isn't interested in this? I mean, you'd have to be dumb not to be interested."

Noting that live guests Randle, Friedman and Greer could all be considered ardent "believers," or at least enthusiastic supporters of the UFO phenomenon Bishop wondered who was supposed to represent the skeptical viewpoint?

"The skeptics were invited, the Air Force were invited," King replied. "Very hard to get them. You know, I had to really talk to Carl Sagan just to be on tape, because he thinks they [UFO believers] give it credibility just by talking about it. He does not say that there isn't life, he just has no proof that they've ever landed. And the same guy who's always on, the roving skeptic?"

Philip Klass?

"Yeah," King said. "I've had him on so many times. So I guess the skeptic is me. You know, show me! Show me a good photograph, but even there you have to be careful because they can be doctored."

King seemed much more animated regarding the issue of a possible cover-up. "I abhor secrecy in any form," he said, "unless in the case of extremes, say, when you're at war, experimenting with something like the A-bomb. But now there's no reason. So what if you've got a base there and you're working on a plane that goes 9000 miles an hour and takes off vertically..."

"Isn't that something you'd want the Russians to know?" I ask.

"I want them to know," King laughs. "What Russians? That was one of the greatest myths of all time."

"So theoretical secrecy only exacerbates the problem," I said. "And if we're not able to keep it secret from the Soviets, who are we keeping it secret from?"

"You only add to the confusion," King answered, "to the conspiratorial theories, by letting things go on."

"It's partly out of habit, then," Bishop offered.

"Right," King said. "Let's say there is life out there. I think that's something people want to know. If you take it to its wildest extreme, that there is life on another planet that's threatening us and we're dealing with them through their leadership, then that I'd keep a secret. That's the only way. . there's life out there, they have extraordinary arms, they're mad at Earth, they're going to blow us off the face of the planet, and we've got someone to negotiate with them, then I could say if I were president that it should be kept a secret."

"Do you think Clinton might make a move in that direction?" I asked, referring to the recent release of previously unclassified documents by the Department of Energy.

"I'm going to talk with him in the next few weeks and I'll ask him. He's always been pretty open. I don't know why he wouldn't. He's anti-secrecy," King said.

Sawyer raised the issue that it was taxpayer money that funded such secrecy, "yet there's really no oversight of it by the public. Is that something you'll go into today?"

"Absolutely," King responded. "There's no defense of that. There's got to be someone that knows all about this stuff. I mean. they work for us. We don't work for them. Last I checked, the military works for the civilians."

"Perhaps you can remind them of that," Bishop said.

"They're out there," King said, gesturing toward the desert. "Any secrecy about this is unwarranted if there's no cold war. Who's our enemy? Has Moammar Quaddafi got these kinds of planes?"

On the way back into Vegas we stopped just south of Rachel at the "Black Mailbox," located in the V of Highway 375 and a dirt road connecting with the road running into Groom Lake. Here we met up with several friends of Bishop's, one of whom had a night vision scope which we passed around while exchanging scuttlebutt and impressions. A few airplane lights were seen, as well as a couple of car headlights returning from the direction of Groom Lake, a distant ranch light, and at least one or two other interesting light points which seemed to pulsate and jump about. Given the scattered cloud cover, it was hard to make any definite determination of their nature or origin, let alone to assign them the status of true UFOs.

Anxious as to our gas situation and the late hour, we said good-bye and headed for nearby Ash Springs, only slightly more removed from the middle of nowhere than Rachel itself. We filled up and were barely a mile south of town when the light bar atop a Lincoln County Sheriff's Department squad car lit up the desert night like a belated Fourth of July celebration. Our rented 4-wheel-drive Blazer didn't have a rear license plate. I pointed out to the officer that it was a new 1995 model and had a 20-day permit attached to the front windshield. He seemed less interested in that legality, however, than in raising county revenues. (According to Campbell, sparsely populated Lincoln County has one of the highest police officers per capita ratios in the country.)

The ensuing scenario, which took a full hour to unfold, resembled something out of a Steve Martin movie, or perhaps an out-take of "Late Night with David Letterman" stupid pet tricks, employing a human as the guinea pig. Before the ordeal was over, two other patrol cars had pulled up, lights flashing, leaving one to ponder just how much of Lincoln County was going unprotected at the time. The officers were informed that the driver had indeed been drinking-in fact, he'd had a beer three or four hours previously, prior to dinner, with which he'd had iced tea.

But smelling a potential road kill, the officers persisted. Unfortunately for Lincoln County's incoming receipts, we passed the ensuing breathalyzer test with flying colors and were soon on our way, registering a mere 0.1, the lowest trace measurement possible, or, as one officer admitted, "wholly consistent with your story." We point this incident out not to brag, and certainly not to advocate drinking while you drive, but only to warn others to be extremely careful when visiting the Rachel, Nevada, area. We have no way of knowing whether our "friendly" hilltop observers reported our presence to the local authorities and asked them to "check that car out" or not, although we suspect so. What we do know is that we were fully within our rights but were needlessly pulled over and hassled nonetheless.

In the latest issue of his on-line digital journal, "The Desert Rat," Campbell also reports being closely questioned by two Lincoln County deputies regarding the recent disappearance of eight Air Force sensors guarding the approach to Freedom Ridge, never mind that the latter were on public property supposedly overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. The sensors and their accompanying transmitters are relatively unsophisticated as far as state of the art electronic systems go, but the Air Force is apparently valuing them at $4-6000, making their theft a felony and punishable by a sizable jail sentence.

I don't mean to make more of the situation, especially the increased police activity leading into and out of Rachel, than the situation warrants. I seriously doubt, for example, that the Air Force has any secret saucers sequestered away at Area 51. On the other hand, their official denials that they have some relatively hot-shot terrestrial technology closely resembling same-the much-rumored Aurora platform seems the most likely candidate-seem somewhat disingenuous in light of the proposed land grab and mounting police patrols out for a buck. On the most obvious level, if they don't have anything to cover-up, then what is it exactly that they are trying to not cover-up?

Larry King trucking out to Rachel for the weekend certainly didn't resolve the issue. But it does indicate that the local authorities are getting increasingly sensitive about something, and growing less patient by the day with cascading media attention. That they wouldn't pull King over and administer a breathalyzer test seems obvious. That they won't pull you over seems less certain.

TITLE: NATIONAL SECURITY DEFENSE CUT FROM GROOM LAWSUIT

PUBLICATION: Las Vegas Review-Journal

DATE: Nov. 11, 1994

AUTHOR: Keith Rogers

Government attorneys retreated Thursday [Nov. 10] from their plan
to use national security as a defense to prevent two lawsuits from
proceeding against the secret Groom Lake air base in Lincoln
County.

In a conference hearing in Las Vegas, U.S. District Judge Philip
Pro granted a request by Justice Department lawyer Richard Sarver
to withdraw the government's defense, which was based on the
military and state-secrets privilege.

It was the first time the government has tried to dismiss a case
on jurisdictional grounds, said plaintiff's attorney Jonathan
Turley, a George Washington University law professor who directs
the Environmental Crimes Project at the university's National Law
Center.

Sarver acknowledged during the hourlong, pretrial conference that
invoking the privilege was premature, because no evidence had been
presented that could be challenged on the grounds it needs
protection for national security reasons.

Sarver, as he was leaving the Foley Federal Building, declined to
comment on his strategy change. He offered only a general
comment, saying the United States supports and abides by all
environmental laws at its federal facilities.

He also declined in court proceedings to acknowledge the existence
of the base, sometimes called Area 51, 35 miles west of Alamo on
the Groom Dry Lake bed.

Pro asked Sarver, "What about the existence of the facility?"

Sarver replied, "That is a subject probably better taken up at
another time. This it not the right time to do it."

Air Force officials, however, released a statement Thursday
saying, "There is an operating location near Groom Dry Lake," but
some operations in the Nellis Range Complex "remain classified and
cannot be discussed."

Sarver also told Pro that the government's negotiations with
Turley for an out-of-court settlement were "almost DOA"--dead on
arrival--for Thursday's pretrial conference.

Turley said, "The admission of the Department of Justice that the
use of the privilege was premature will clear the way for
discovery."

As for Sarver's comments about all government facilities abiding
by the nation's environmental laws, Turley said, "I have
plaintiffs with injuries who would strongly disagree. The injuries
were not brought about by compliance with federal laws.

Turley represents the family of Helen Frost, a Las Vegas widow of
one former Groom Lake base worker, and six other former workers at
the base. The former workers, who the court has allowed to use
fictitious names, claim they were injured from toxic chemicals
that were burned at the base during the 1980s in defiance of
environmental laws that prohibit open-pit burning of hazardous
wastes.

The first case, described in court papers as "the EPA case," was
filed Aug. 2 in federal court in the District of Columbia on
behalf of six John Does. It names U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency Administrator Carol Browner as a defendant, claiming she
failed to inspect the base for compliance with the Resource
Conservation and Recovery Act.

The other lawsuit, "the Air Force case," filed Aug. 15 in federal
court in Las Vegas, names as defendants Defense Secretary William
Perry, National Security Advisor Anthony Lake, and Air Force
Secretary Sheila Widnall. It claims these official used secrecy
to hide hazardous waste violation that resulted in injuries to
Frost's late husband, Robert, and six John Does.

At Thursday's conference, Pro denied Sarver's request to postpone
the EPA case even though Sarver suggested the government could
"render the EPA case moot" by performing the inspections Turley
had requested.

Sarver said he intends to file a motion to dismiss the EPA case.

Pro set a May 10 deadline for the parties to complete discovery.
He also referred Sarver and Turley to U.S. Magistrate Judge Roger
Hunt to schedule a settlement conference and gave the government
an extension until Wednesday to respond to Turley's change-of-
venue motion.

[End of article]

----

Note:

"Turley's change-of-venue motion" refers to his request to have
the trial moved back to Washington, closer to both the defendants
and Turley.

--psychospy@aol.com

George Washington University
Office of University Relations
Washington, DC 20052

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MEDIA CONTACT: NORA KELLEY
Nov. 10, 1994 (202) 994-3087


DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE MOVES TO STRIKE ITS OWN
NATIONAL SECURITY DEFENSE IN GROOM LAKE ENVIRONMENTAL CRIME CASE

Motion to Strike Rules out Military and State Secrets Privilege
at This Juncture in Cases Filed against
EPA and Military and Intelligence Agencies
By GW Law Professor Jonathan Turley


Washington, D.C. -- At a hearing held in Las Vegas, NV, the
Department of Justice moved today to strike its own affirmative
defense under the Military and State Secrets Privilege in cases
filed against the Environmental Protection Agency and the three
principal military and intelligence figures with jurisdiction over
the Groom Lake top-secret Air Force base -- the Department of
Defense, The National Security Advisor and the Air Force.

The government's decision was made in response to a motion
filed by The George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan
Turley. The Military and State Secrets Privilege is a common law
evidentiary rule that allows the government to object to specific
discovery or production requests on the basis of national security.
In the past, courts have not permitted the Privilege to be used as
a general defense.

The filing of the Groom Lake case marks the first time a
"black program" has been sued. The invocation of the Military and
State Secrets Privilege at this stage of the case is the first time
the government has tried to use the Privilege to dismiss an entire
case on jurisdictional grounds. The decision on the part of the
government to yield to Turley's motion clears the way for a trial
and is considered a significant hurdle for the Plaintiffs.

"The government's argument failed to recognize that the
Privilege is an evidentiary rather than a jurisdictional
challenge," said Jonathan Turley, director of the Environmental
Crimes Project at GW in his motion opposing the use of the
invocation of the Privilege at this point in the case.

"The Privilege does not deny a court jurisdiction but rather
denies the use of specific access to specific items of evidence at
trial," stated Turley in the motion.

In today's hearing the Court also addressed the question of
the government's answering a complaint before being formally
served. The issue was raised in Turley's Motion in which he states
that Counsel for the Air Force was not served with the Air Force
case complaint at the time of filing in August, due to the pending
approval of a verified petition for the appointment of local
counsel and approval of a Motion Pro Hoc Vice for Plaintiffs'
Counsel in Washington, D.C. On October 19, 1994, however, Counsel
for the Air Force filed an answer to the complaint, without having
yet been served.

By successfully challenging the use of the Privilege during
the jurisdictional phase of the case, Turley has established
precedent for restricting the use of Privilege to non-
jurisdictional evidentiary questions. "Today's hearing removed the
final jurisdictional barriers to trial of these cases," said
Turley.

After acknowledging its mistake in invoking the Privilege,
Government Counsel asked the court to delay discovery so that it
could consider other possible grounds for staying this action. That
request was denied and the court ordered discovery to begin
immediately and set a trial schedule.

George Washington University
Office of University Relations
Washington, DC 20052

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MEDIA CONTACT: NORA KELLEY
November 1, 1994 (202) 994-3087


GW LAW PROFESSOR JONATHAN TURLEY FILES
FOR CHANGE OF VENUE FROM NEVADA TO WASHINGTON, D.C.
IN GROOM LAKE ENVIRONMENTAL CRIME CASE

Turley Cites Violation of Plaintiffs'
Fifth Amendment Rights and
Lists Witnesses/Sources for Trial

Washington, D.C. -- The George Washington University
National Law Center Professor of Environmental Law Jonathan
Turley, consonant with actions filed against the EPA, Department
of Defense and National Security Advisor, filed a motion today
for a change of venue in the case involving environmental crimes
at Groom Lake, a top-secret Air Force base in Nevada. The change
of venue would nullify the court's earlier, unexpected decision
to relocate the case from Washington, D.C. -- where it was filed
originally -- to Nevada. The Project for Government Oversight,
another public interest group, is assisting Turley in his
investigation of the case.

"The district of Nevada has only one tangible connection to
the basis of this suit: the location of Groom Lake Base, which is
over 100 miles from Las Vegas," says Turley. "Since this base is
closed to both the court and the public, the advantage of having
the trial in Nevada is remote at best. The prohibitive burden
for the Plaintiffs, however, may allow the government to avoid
accountability for egregious conduct through simple forum
selection."

Turley argues that the D.C. District Court has jurisdiction
over the subject matter of the action and that the majority of
witnesses the Plaintiffs intend to call for deposition and trial
testimony reside within a 100-mile radius of the United States
District for the District of Columbia. Since the case centers on
legal questions under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act,
the John Doe Plaintiffs themselves will not testify at trial.

"There is certainly precedent for locating the trial in
D.C.," says Turley, "It has been recognized by the Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia that when a case touches
upon policy decisions of federal agencies which are headquartered

-- more --
in Washington, D.C., and testimony from policy makers is
required, the convenience of having the case tried in the
District of Columbia should be considered." Specifically, the
Plaintiffs must call senior officials and several government
employees including the EPA administrator, the secretary of the
Department of Defense, the secretary of the Air Force, the
national security advisor and the White House counsel.

In making a motion for venue, Turley is forced to "show his
hand" early and detail his expected witnesses and sources in this
first action against a top-secret "black program." Perhaps most
surprising, Turley has listed a senior Russian embassy official
and former intelligence officials as potential witnesses. In his
motion, Turley states that "in the absence of willing
representatives from the United States government, Plaintiffs
will call on these [Russian] witnesses to inform the court of the
existence of this base in order to assist them in securing
judicial relief."

"While the United States Government refuses to acknowledge
the existence of this base to the American public, the Russian
government recently declassified much of its intelligence
information as part of a new openness policy following the fall
of the communist regime and the adoption of democratic process."
Turley informs the court that he will also submit Russian
satellite pictures of the base.

In addition to the Russians, Turley lists two experts on the
so-called Open Skies Treaty, signed by the United States last
year. Turley will show that this treaty not only obligates the
United States to allow other countries to photograph the base,
but, if necessary, even supply the planes and cameras. "The
government's continued refusal to acknowledge the existence of
Groom Lake base and the threats against citizens who attempt long
distance photographs stands in direct contradiction of a large
and growing public record abroad."

"The central element motivating a transfer of this case to
Nevada appears to be the presence of Groom Lake base in this
judicial district," says Turley. "The Groom lake base, however,
is completely sealed from review, inspection, or access by
governmental agencies....Counsel for the government is unwilling
to give the names of people with access to, or experience with,
Groom Lake base. Consequently, only the military and
intelligence witnesses that are known to have the knowledge and
access to Groom Lake base can answer basic environmental
questions posed at trial. These military and intelligence
witnesses are located in Washington, D.C., the Plaintiffs'
original choice of forum."



-- more --

Turley's suit against Groom Lake -- also known as Dreamland
or Area 51 -- alleges that the Environmental Protection Agency
failed to live up to its duties to inspect the base for
violations of federal environmental laws and cites serious

injuries, and at least one death, to employees due to the burning
of hazardous and toxic wastes at the facility. His suit further
alleges that workers were denied requests for protective clothing
-- including gloves -- in handling hazardous wastes, and that
hazardous wastes were intentionally trucked in by a California-
based defense contractor in order to be disposed at the site.
"We have compelling evidence that the government and its
contractors have used the secrecy of Groom Lake not to protect
national security but to shield the illegal disposal of hazardous
waste," says Turley.

In his original complaint, Turley alleged that the
activities conducted at the Groom Lake base have involved the use
of hazardous waste and material producing hazardous wastes when
burned -- including hardeners, plastics, solvents, sealants and
paint wastes -- and that these wastes are stored on site at the
base. Plaintiffs allege that these hazardous wastes -- including
wastes releasing dioxins, and methyl ethyl ketone,
trichloroethylene and dibenzofurans -- were thrown into open,
unlined trenches at Groom Lake base, doused with jet fuel or
other inflammable substances and then ignited.

The plaintiffs claim they were required to be in close
proximity to the burning wastes and that some workers had to
enter the trenches to ignite the wastes; stand around the trench
to secure the area during incineration; or work next to, or down
wind from, the trenches. After incineration, defendants or their
agents allegedly instructed workers to enter the trenches and
sort through the residue to guarantee complete destruction of
classified materials. Workers complain of a number of
symptoms -- blackouts, skin rashes, headaches, respiratory
problems and eye irritations. They allege that requests for
protective clothing, respirators and gloves were denied.

Cosmic Conspiracy: Six Decades of Government UFO Cover-Ups, Part
Six



(Vol. 16, No. 12, September 1994, pp. 52-56, 89)


By Dennis Stacy


Editor's note: In the final installment of our six-part series on
alleged government cover-ups and UFOs, we look at the most
controversial case of the 1990s.

The sun sinks beyond the jagged Groom Mountains like a bloated red
basketball. As temperatures plummet in the thin desert air, we
make our way up a narrow arroyo to the base of White Sides, a
towering jumble of limestone ledges overlooking the super-secret
air base below, our hiking boots making crunching sounds in the
growing darkness.

We've been whispering and walking side-by-side. Now our guide, a
young mountain goat by the name of Glenn Campbell, takes the lead.
"Damn!" he suddenly hisses, "they've erased them again," referring
to the orange arrows spray-painted on the white rocks a few days
earlier. "They" are the anonymous individuals Campbell refers to
as the "cammo dudes." Thought to be civilian employees of the Air
Force, they patrol the perimeter of the unacknowledged base in
white all-terrain vehicles, monitoring electronic detectors and,
by the way, erasing signposts like those on the rocks. When
interlopers cross the military boundaries or haul out their
cameras, it's the cammo dudes who call in the local constabulary,
the Lincoln County Sheriff's Department, to confiscate the film.

Campbell assures us that we don't have to worry, though. For one
thing, we all agreed to leave our cameras locked in our cars at
the bottom of White Sides. For another, we're still on public
property, well outside the restricted zone which comprises part of
the vast Nellis Air Force Range complex and stretches more than
halfway from here to Las Vegas, 100 miles away. "Besides," he says
cheerfully, "it'll take the sheriff 40 minutes to get here. By
that time we'll already be on top, and he'll have to wait for us
to get down."

Still, White Sides is no cake walk. Beginning at about 5,000 feet,
it rises in altitude for another 1,000 feet. From here, however,
you can peer down on one of the world's longest runways and one of
the Cold War's most isolated inner sanctums. It was here,
variously known as Groom Lake, Area 51, Dreamland, or simply the
Ranch, that sophisticated black-budget (that is, off-the-record)
projects like the U-2, SR-71 Blackbird, and F-117A Stealth fighter
first earned their wings in secrecy. And it was 15 miles south of
here, at an even more clandestine (and controversial) base of
operations known as Area S4 at Papoose Lake, that shadowy
physicist Robert Lazar claimed to have helped study captured
flying-saucer technology.

Because of its remoteness, spying on alleged Area S4 is out of the
question, which leaves Groom Lake as the next best UFO mecca,
assuming the many rumors surrounding these remote outposts are
rooted even in half-truths. We break out our binoculars and sweep
the runway, clearly outlined by a string of small red lights. At
one end, backed up against the base of the Groom Mountains, squats
a collection of radar arrays and giant hangars, feebly illuminated
on this Saturday night by fan-shaped rays of yellow light. "Looks
like they're shut down for the weekend," Campbell whispers.

Still, the thrill of visually eavesdropping on this country's most
secret air base sends a certain chill up the spine, where it
mingles with the growing desert chill and the memory of the signs
at the bottom of White Sides authorizing the use of deadly force.
All remains eerily silent, however; not so much as a cricket,
cammo dude, sheriff, or UFO disturbs the night. After a few hours
of fruitless surveillance, fingers and toes numbed by the cold, we
start back down.

Campbell, a retired computer programmer, explains why he left the
comfy confines of his native Boston and moved lock, stock, and Mac
Powerbook to Rachel, a hardscrabble community of 100 smack in the
middle of the Nevada desert. "You go where the UFO stories are,"
he says, "and in the fall of 1992, when I first came here,
Dreamland was where they were." Campbell had read an article
published the year before in the monthly journal of the Mutual UFO
Network (MUFON) detailing some of the exploits of Lazar, who
claimed to have actually been aboard one of nine recovered flying
saucers sequestered at Area S4 while helping reverse-engineer
their apparent antigravity propulsion system. (See OMNI, April
1994.) In a series of November 1989 interviews with then-anchorman
George Knapp of KLAS-TV, the Las Vegas CBS affiliate, Lazar went
public with his claims. Dreamland, at least, was now in the public
domain.

Though Lazar's credibility has recently taken a nosedive, even
with UFO insiders, Knapp, now senior vice president with the
Altamira Communications Group, an independent video production
company, notes that "stories of captured or acquired alien
technology have circulated in the area since the mid 1950s and the
very beginning of the base." His best source, among the 14 he has
interviewed to date, is a member of a prominent Nevada family who
will not allow his name to be used, although he has supposedly
videotaped a deposition to be given to Knapp upon his death.
According to Knapp, his source occupied a position of senior
management at Groom Lake during the late Fifties and early
Sixties, and admitted that at least one extraordinary craft was
being test flown and taken apart. "It's the totality of the
accounts, not any specific one, that I find convincing," says
Knapp.

Spurred by the local lore following his first visit, Campbell
returned to Boston, packed his belongings in a rickety Toyota
camper, and in January of 1993 moved to Rachel, setting up shop in
the dusty parking lot of the Little A-Le-Inn, a combination bar
and restaurant turned UFO museum, joint jumping-off point,
watering-hole headquarters, and sometime conference center for
UFOlogists hoping to repeat the earlier Lazar sightings. Campbell
began his own investigation and was soon desktop publishing the
Area 51 Viewer's Guide, of which he estimates he has now sold more
than 2,000 copies.

As reports of UFOs in the area soared, so did Campbell's
reputation as de facto onsite guide. In the last year alone,
virtually every major media outlet in the country, from CNN, NBC,
and ABC News to the New York Times, has beaten a path to
Campbell's door. Despite the temptation to turn tabloid, Campbell
seems to have kept his head on straight. "I am still interested in
the UFO phenomenon," he says, "but the evidence has to speak for
itself. I've been living here night and day for over a year now
and still haven't seen anything that couldn't be explained." He's
also seen satisfied believers come and go. "But most of what they
report," Campbell warns, "is ordinary military activity, from
Russian MiGs to parachute flares. You pretty much see what you
want to see, depending on what kind of expectations you bring to
the table."

A case in point is so-called Old Faithful. In the wake of Lazar's
allegations, observers were soon reporting a brilliant UFO
adhering to a rigid schedule at 4:50 every weekday morning.
Campbell, a UFOlogist who readily admits he likes his sleep,
nonetheless routinely roused himself--until he became convinced
that what he was seeing was nothing more than the landing lights
of an approaching 737. Methodical by nature, Campbell purchased a
radio scanner and began monitoring flights outside McCarran
Airport in Las Vegas. It turned out that Janet, a private charter
airline, routinely flies into Groom Lake from Las Vegas,
transporting workers as Lazar had previously alleged. Old Faithful
was their early morning flight, and in the next release of his
Viewer's Guide, Campbell published the airline's complete
schedule.

But stories of alleged alien involvement at or near Area 51
continue. On the evening of March 16, 1993, William Hamilton,
director of investigations for MUFON Los Angeles, and a companion
were parked alongside Highway 375 near the popular Black Mailbox
viewing area when a bright light winked into view to their right.
"I looked at it through binoculars," Hamilton remembers, "and it
seemed to be on or near the Groom Road and casting a beam [of
light] on the ground." As it drew nearer, according to Hamilton,
"the light appeared to be an object the size of a bus with square
light panels lifting off from the ground. The panels appeared to
glow amber and blue-white."

A bus does travel the dirt road leading into Groom Lake,
transporting civilian workers who gather every morning at nearby
Alamo for the 30- to 40-mile ride, returning in the afternoon. But
this bus was clearly out of the ordinary, says Hamilton. As he
watched, "the lights rapidly resolved into two glowing orbs or
discs of brilliant blue-white light, so bright they hurt my eyes."
The two baby suns rapidly approached the parked car and confusion
reigned. When Hamilton looked at his watch, approximately 30
minutes of time were missing. Hypnotically regressed later, both
Hamilton and his companion had memories of being abducted aboard a
UFO by now-traditional little gray beings with large dark eyes,
the leader of whom in this case referred to himself as Quaylar.

Campbell was at the Little A-Le-Inn when the couple returned. "I
can attest they were both visibly shaken," he says, "but neither
had any memory of an abduction at that time. I don't know what to
think. I've spent many a night in Tikaboo Valley, where the
sighting occurred, and as far as I know nothing like that has ever
happened to me. I've never seen or experienced anything that I
couldn't explain."

It may be that the remote desert interface between alleged
extraterrestrial technology and known or suspected terrestrial
technology predisposes or inflames the human imagination to see
flying buses where only earthly ones exist. Light can play tricks
in the thin air, making determination of distance and brilliance
doubly difficult at best. Or it could be that the latest
generation of Stealth and other secret platforms being test flown
out of Groom Lake demonstrate such odd performance characteristics
that they are easily misidentified at night as one of Lazar's
reputed H-PACs--Human-Piloted Alien Craft. Rumors have long
circulated of a hypersonic high-altitude spyplane, code named
Aurora, designed to replace the recently retired SR-71 Blackbird.
Both the Air Force and Aurora's alleged manufacturer, Northrop's
secret Skunk Works facility at Palmdale, California, deny any
knowledge of such a platform. Another potential candidate is the
TR-33A Black Mantra, an electronic warfare platform widely rumored
to have flown support for the F-117 Stealth fighter during
Operation Desert Storm. Other advanced airforms could be in
research and development, too, their operating expenditures buried
in the Pentagon's estimated $14.3 billion per year black-budget
programs.

Even with the Cold War apparently successfully concluded--and the
strategic necessity of much of our black budget presumably
obviated--the Air Force can't be happy campers at Groom Lake. They
certainly don't relish the prospect of a growing number of
UFOlogists and media types, increasingly armed with sophisticated
video cameras and night-vision equipment, all on the prowl for H-
PACs or UFOs, stumbling across a plane which they've gone to a
great deal of trouble to keep secret from both Russian and
American citizens, presumably in our own best interests.

But previous attempts to seal off Groom Lake from public scrutiny
have met with just partial success. In 1984, the Air Force seized
(or withdrew, in their vernacular) some 89,000 acres on the
northeast quadrant of the Nellis Test Range in order to provide a
better buffer zone for the base. Due to a surveying error, White
Sides and a few other vantage points were overlooked. But then, in
the wake of the Lazar story, Campbell and other UFOlogists began
making the trek up White Sides, triggering security perimeter
alarms and forcing the cammo dudes out of their white vehicles.

Subsequently, on October 18, 1993, the Air Force filed a request
in the Federal Register seeking the withdrawal of an additional
3,792 acres, presently public property under the control of the
Bureau of Land Management. Not surprisingly, White Sides is
contained within the new acreage, as is another lookout point
discovered by Campbell and dubbed Freedom Ridge. The additional
land was needed, the Air Force claimed, "to ensure the public
safety and the safe and secure operation of activities in the
Nellis Air Force Range complex." No mention by name was made of
Groom Lake, the air base that doesn't officially exist.

By now, Campbell had become a professional prickly-pear in the Air
Force's exposed side. He formed the White Sides Defense Committee
and publicized the public hearings the Bureau of Land Management
was required by law to hold. The Air Force request is currently on
hold, awaiting an environmental assessment and final approval. In
the meantime, Campbell formed Secrecy Oversight Council to market
his Viewer's Guide and an assortment of Area 51 souvenirs,
including topographical maps, bumper stickers, and a colorful,
self-designed Groom Lake sew-on patch. More recently, he took out
an address on the electronic highway and began publishing a series
of regular digital updates, "The Desert Rat," including a map
detailing the location of known magnetic sensors. And he tweaked a
few local noses with a defiant fashion statement, updating his own
apparel to match the desert camouflage suit of the cammo dudes,
shade for shade.

Such pranks aside, Campbell insists he's a serious civilian spy.
"The difference between me and the Air Force is that I don't have
any secrets," he says, "and everything I do is legal." On at least
two occasions Campbell and visiting journalists were buzzed by
low-flying helicopters called in from Groom Lake, both times while
clearly on public property outside the restricted zone. "The rotor
wash throws up a tremendous amount of dust and debris," he notes,
"endangering us and the helicopter crew, too." Indeed, the Secrecy
Oversight Council tracked down the appropriate Air Force
regulation and found that pilots are restricted to a minimum of
500 feet altitude except when taking off or landing.

But if the Air Force is peeved or perplexed by Campbell's
activities, they aren't saying so in public. "We know who Mr.
Campbell is," admits Major George Sillia, public affairs officer
at Nellis AFB, Las Vegas. "He keeps us informed as to what he's up
to. Beyond that, what can I say? He's an American citizen, and
they have a right to certain activities on public property." The
Air Force is more mum about the existence of Groom Lake itself.
"We can neither confirm nor deny the existence of a facility at
Groom Lake," Sillia adds, "and if we can't confirm its existence,
we certainly can't say anything about it."

A more vocal Campbell critic is Jim Bilbray, a Democratic
congressman from Las Vegas who sits on both the House Armed
Services Committee and the Select House Committee on Intelligence.
Without mentioning Campbell by name, Bilbray says that "these
people are persistent, and if they're taking pictures, they're
breaking the law. But that really isn't the problem; there's even
a Soviet satellite photo of Groom Lake in circulation. The problem
comes when you have to shut down operations and secure the
technology, which is time-consuming and costly, and which they
have to do every time someone is up on the mountain. And believe
me, they make sure they know when you're up there."

Bilbray also doesn't subscribe to the argument that now that the
Cold War is apparently over there is a concurrent corollary that
reduces the need for secrecy in general and secret high-tech
technology in particular. "The Nellis Range is one of the few
secure areas in the country where you can test these new
technologies," he says. "And most people in the intelligence
community will tell you that the world is a more, not less,
dangerous place, now that the old system of checks and balances
between the two superpowers has seriously broken down."

Still, Bilbray admits that he, the Air Force, and other government
agencies are caught in a classic Catch-22 situation vis-a-vis
UFOlogists. "I can't name them," he says, "but I can tell you that
I've been on virtually every facility in the Nellis Range and that
there are no captured flying saucers or extraterrestrial bodies
out there. I've heard all the rumors. But the minute I say I've
been to one valley, the UFOlogists are going to ask, what about
the next valley over, or claim that everything has been moved.
Well, what about the next valley over? We used to test atomic
bombs above ground here and some of the valleys are still so hot
that a Geiger counter will start spitting the moment you turn it
on. Doesn't sound like a very good place to test flying saucers or
hide alien bodies to me."

But researchers like Campbell say they're in a Catch-22 as well,
because they know the Air Force routinely denies things that do
exist, beginning with the big secret base on the edge of Groom
Lake. If it didn't exist, why would they need more space to keep
you from seeing it? And if Groom Lake exists, then why not Aurora,
the Black Mantra, and possibly even a UFO or two?

Nature abhors a vacuum, and where a lack of openness and a
penchant for secrecy persists, rumor and rumors of rumors are sure
to flourish, even in the middle of the desert. "You just keep
shaking the secrecy tree," an unperturbed and determined Campbell
advises, "and, hopefully, something drops out."

That may prove increasingly difficult to do, at least from White
Sides or Freedom Ridge. Bilbray, who supports the latest
withdrawal of land around Groom Lake, advises that Congress, while
it has the opportunity to object and call for a review, does not
have to give approval, and the Bureau of Land Management will most
assuredly approve the Air Force's request, "probably within this
year."


George Washington University
Office of University Relations
Washington, DC 20052


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MEDIA CONTACT: NORA KELLEY
August 15, 1994 (202) 994-3087


GW LAW PROFESSOR JONATHAN TURLEY FILES AGAINST THE DEPARTMENT OF
DEFENSE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER AND AIR FORCE
FOR VIOLATION OF FEDERAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS
AT TOP SECRET AIR FORCE BASE

Washington, D.C. -- The George Washington University
National Law Center Professor of Environmental Law Jonathan
Turley, following an action filed against the EPA earlier this
month, filed suit today against the Department of Defense, the
National Security Advisor and the United States Air Force for
violations of federal environmental laws at a top-secret Air
Force base in Nevada. This is the second in a series of legal
actions planned by Professor Turley. Turley received assistance
in conducting the field investigation from the Project on
Government Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog organization located
in Washington, D.C.

Turley is representing current and former workers at Area
51, a secret Air Force base in Nevada -- also known as Dreamland
or Groom Lake. The suit alleges serious injuries, and at least
one death, to employees due to the burning of hazardous and toxic
wastes at the facility. Turley's suit further alleges that
workers were denied requests for protective clothing -- including
gloves -- in handling hazardous wastes. Turley is seeking to
represent the workers, who signed secrecy agreements upon
employment at the base, as "John and Jane Does" to prevent
possible retaliation -- including physical threats.

This case is the first of its kind. Area 51 is generally
considered the most secret, classified base in the U.S. military
network. "By forcing compliance at Area 51, we hope to establish
a precedent whereby the military will be forced to acknowledge
its responsibilities in every base and facility," says Turley.
"Ultimately, this case is a direct confrontation between national
security laws and environmental and criminal laws."

Specifically, Turley will be asking the United States
District Court in Nevada to address eleven charges against the
defendants, William Perry, Secretary of Defense; Anthony Lake,
National Security Advisor to President Clinton; and Sheila
Widnall, secretary of the Air Force. The charges include:
violation of the federal facility reporting and inventory
requirements; violations of the ban on open burning of hazardous
waste; and illegal land disposal of hazardous wastes. He will
argue that the federal hazardous waste law does not give any
exception for secret bases in its provisions.

"We want to establish that workers at secret bases should
not be forced to rely on the arbitrary protection of the
military, but should be able to go to court to receive remedies
for violations," says Turley. He also intends to establish that
secrecy agreements do not preempt environmental protection.
Eventually, Turley plans to draft a new law on the judicial
review of such cases and on issues ranging from anonymous legal
action to standing questions to citizen suit actions against the
EPA.

In his complaint to the District Court of Nevada, Turley
alleges that the activities conducted at the Groom Lake base have
involved the use of hazardous waste and material producing
hazardous wastes when burned -- including hardeners, plastics,
solvents, sealants and paint wastes -- and that these wastes are
stored on site at the base. Plaintiffs allege that these
hazardous wastes -- including wastes releasing dioxins, and
methyl ethyl ketone, trichloroethylene and dibenzofurans -- were
thrown into open, unlined trenches at Groom Lake base, doused
with jet fuel or other inflammable substances and then ignited.


The plaintiffs claim they were required to be in close
proximity to the burning wastes and that some workers had to
enter the trenches to ignite the wastes; stand around the trench
to secure the area during incineration; or work next to or down
wind from the trenches. After incineration, defendants or their
agents allegedly instructed workers to enter the trenches and
sort through the residue to guarantee complete destruction of
classified materials. The plaintiffs complain of a number of
symptoms -- blackouts, skin rashes, headaches, respiratory
problems and eye irritations. They allege that requests for
protective clothing, respirators and gloves were denied.

Turley also alleges that hazardous wastes were intentionally
trucked in by a California-based defense contractor in order to
be disposed at the site. "We have compelling evidence that the
government and its contractors have used the secrecy of Groom
Lake not to protect national security but to shield the illegal
disposal of hazardous waste," said Turley.


George Washington University
Office of University Relations
Washington, DC 20052

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MEDIA CONTACT: NORA KELLEY
August 2, 1994 (202) 994-6460


GW LAW PROFESSOR JONATHAN TURLEY FILES AGAINST THE EPA
FOR FAILURE TO INSPECT SECRET AIR FORCE BASE FOR VIOLATION
OF FEDERAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS


Washington, D.C. -- The George Washington University
National Law Center Professor of Environmental Law Jonathan
Turley, in an unprecedented move, filed suit today against the
Environmental Protection Agency for failing to live up to its
duties to inspect violations of federal environmental laws. This
will be the first in a series of legal actions planned by
Professor Turley.

Turley is representing current and former workers at Area
51, a secret Air Force base in Nevada -- also known as Dreamland
or Groom Lake. The suit alleges serious injuries, and at least
one death, to employees due to the burning of hazardous and toxic
wastes at the facility. Turley's suit further alleges that
workers were denied requests for protective clothing -- including
gloves -- in handling hazardous wastes. Workers, who signed
secrecy agreements upon employment at the base, will be
represented as "John and Jane Does" to prevent possible
retaliation, including physical threats.

This case is the first of its kind. Area 51 is generally
considered the most secret, classified base in the U.S. military
network. "By forcing compliance at Area 51, we hope to establish
a precedent whereby the military will be forced to acknowledge
its responsibilities in every base and facility," says Turley.
"Ultimately, this case is a direct confrontation between national
security laws and environmental and criminal laws."

Specifically, Turley will be asking the D.C Court to force
the EPA to inspect and monitor the secret base. He will argue
that the federal hazardous waste law does not give any exception
for secret bases in its provisions and will be asking the court
to force the EPA to fulfill a mandatory duty under the law.

"We want to establish that workers at secret bases should
not be forced to rely on the arbitrary protections of the
military, but should be able to go to court to receive remedies
for violations," says Turley. He also intends to establish that
secrecy agreements do not preempt environmental protections.
Eventually, Turley plans to draft a new law on the judicial
review of such cases and on issues ranging from anonymous legal
action to standing questions to citizen suit actions against the
EPA.

Title: OFFICER ARRESTS MAN, SEIZES NEWS VIDEOS
Type: Newspaper article
Publication: Las Vegas Review-Journal
Date: July 21, 1994
Page: 6B
Author: Susan Greene

A Lincoln County sheriff's deputy arrested activist Glenn Campbell on
Tuesday and confiscated videotapes from a news crew working near the Air
Force's secret Groom Lake base.

Early Tuesday evening, a reporter and a camera operator from KNBC-TV in
Los Angeles were interviewing Campbell - a government oversight activist
and leader of the Rachel-based Secrecy Oversight Council - on public
land near Freedom Ridge, a viewpoint overlooking the secret installation
12 miles to the west.

Reporter Chuck Henry and camerawoman Julie Yellen assert that they
obeyed signs posted in the area and did not videotape the restricted
base itself. But they said they intended to emphasize the absurdity of
being able to see the base yet not photograph it.

Lincoln County sheriff's Sgt. Doug Lamoreaux arrived on the scene at the
request of unidentified security guards who accused the crew of direct-
ing their camera toward the base, Campbell and Henry said.

When Henry refused to turn over the videotape for inspection by the Air
Force, Lamoreaux threatened to seize them without a warrant, Campbell
and Henry said. Campbell then reached into the news crew's vehicle and
locked the door to block seizure of the tapes that were inside.

Lamoreaux arrested Campbell on a charge of obstructing a police officer.
Without a search warrant, Lamoreaux rummaged through the KNBC-TV crew's
equipment and confiscated five of their videotapes, Campbell and Henry
said.

"It's a disturbing precedent to see film seized without a warrant,"
Campbell said. "The important thing is that people are being interfered
with on public land."

Although Henry and Yellen were not arrested in the incident, KNBC-TV
plans to legally pursue the case.

"I was shocked that they intimidated and harassed us, that they went
through our vehicle without a search warrant or even probable cause, all
because of a base they say doesn't exist," Henry said.

Lincoln County sheriff's office did not respond Wednesday to phone calls
regarding Campbell's arrest. Officials at the Air Force's Office of
Special Investigation in Washington, D.C., could not be reached for
comment.

The incident was the third since March in which Lincoln County sheriff's
deputies detained news crews working near the secret base.

GLENN CAMPBELL IS STANDING ATOP a long ridge in the deepest Nevada outback. It's shortly after sunrise on midspring morning, and in the valley ahead of Campbell 12 miles downhill to the west is one of the last great riddles of cold-war America. Along the valley floor, arranged across the pale, alkaline silt of a dry lake bed, sits a test facility so secret the United States Government won't even admit its existence.

"There it is the base that doesn't exist," Campbell says, pointing at the boxy buildings and runways in the distance. Campbell, a balding 35-year-old dressed in desert-colored military fatigues, tilts his camouflage-blotchy cap back on his head. He lifts a pair of binoculars and stares. "Yep," he says, lowering the field glasses and smiling, "it's the same top-secret air base that was there last week."

Even from a dozen miles off -- as close as civilians can get before entering restricted land and being arrested -- the facility below us is as Campbell describes. Nestled between steep mountains and inside the recesses of the off-limits Nevada Test Site, 90 miles due north of Las Vegas, dozens of airplane hangars are easily visible, as are satellite dish gardens, control towers and a handful of 737's. The airfield below us, Campbell says, is among the largest in the United States. Because of its secret "black budget" status, it doesn't appear on any Federal budget allotments. Nor does it appear on Federal Aviation Administration or United States Geological Survey maps. "Doesn't have an official name, either," Campbell adds.

A computer programmer by trade, Campbell in 1992 sold his shares in the Boston-based software company he worked for; he'd heard of the roiling mystery surrounding the air base and, with time on his hands, came out to see it for himself. By January 1993, Campbell had relocated to the nearest town, Rachel (20 miles away, one gas station, a bar-restaurant, no post office), eventually setting up shop in a $215-a-month trailer and calling himself the Secrecy Oversight Council. Since that time, he has translated a dogged, computer hacker esprit into 18 months of exploring base perimeters and pioneering two mountaintop vantages on safe Bureau of Land Management holdings. He also writes and publishes a newsletter, The Groom Lake Desert Rat (named for the dry lake bed the base abuts), with a circulation of 900 and a cheekily informative $15 Baedeker called the "Area 51 Viewer's Guide" (Area 51 is the numbered square the base inhabits on old gridded Nevada test site maps) that helps steer the curious clear of arrests.

Campbell lifts his binoculars again. He scans the rills between our lookout -- a mountain he's named Freedom Ridge -- and the distant airfield. In the intervening desert is a line of orange posts, some topped with stainless-steel orbs the size of basketballs. Several closed-circuit TV cameras have been positioned as sentries. At those places, and at other key locations around the desert, are large, unambiguous "Restricted Area" signs, signs that also advise, "Use of deadly force authorized."

"Ah," Campbell says, pointing, "they've arrived. The Cammo Dudes are here."

Mark Richards, a photographer, and I follow Campbell's gesture. Along the perimeter below us, two white Jeep Cherokees with Government plates have materialized from the desert emptiness. They sit just inside the gravel-road gateway to the base, their engines idling in the growing daylight. Inside the Jeeps are heavily armed, camouflage-clad (hence the "Cammo") security agents who were tipped to our arrival by the automobile sensors that litter all the public roadsides leading to this mountain.

"What's this," Campbell says. "There's another fellow -- over there, driving a different kind of vehicle." He points to a low mountain just north of Freedom Ridge. A white pickup truck is parked on the knoll's top.

Richards, using a telescope, fixes on the truck. "Hey," he says, "they're filming us. They're got a big telephoto TV camera. They're filming us!" Campbell commandeers the telescope. 'That's new, that's new," he says, obviously pleased. He hands the telescope around: the hilltop TV camera is the kind usually seen at stadium-size sporting events. It's being operated by a man wearing a camouflage uniform and a green insulated jacket. Campbell suggests we wave a greeting to the cameraman, then adds: "They're probably filming us to establish probable cause, in case they want to search us on the way out. I love it. This is a wonderful development!"

IT IS PERHAPS THE MOST SECRET MILITARY installation in American history. And, in addition to Area 51 and Groom Lake, it has, over its 40-year history, acquired a slew of other, less-formal nicknames: Dreamland (for the strange aircraft developed there), the Ranch, the Box (for its restricted airspace) and Watertown Strip, to name just a few.

Since Air Force and Pentagon officials -- including Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall and Gen. Walter S. Hogle, the Air Force director of public affairs -- continue to flatly deny its existence, "facts" are hard to come by. According to Campbell and what scant few pieces of information the Pentagon will impart, the area began life as a secret base in 1954, when Lockheed arrived there to develop the U-2, a high-altitude spy plane used for surveillance beyond the Iron Curtain. In later years, the facility -- whose runways, hangars and sheds were built by the Department of Energy -- has served as a laboratory for such top-secret aircraft as the SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, the B-2 Stealth bomber and the F-117A Stealth fighter. Most recently, it has also been said to house the "Red Hat Squadron," a stable of aircraft purchased from defecting Soviet fliers, and the teardrop shaped TR-3A Tactical Reconnaissance Plane said to have been secretly employed in the gulf war.

Another rumor widely circulating is that the base has recently been home to an entirely new breed of supersonic spy plane. Dubbed Aurora, the $15 billion plane runs on controlled explosions of cryogenic methane or ammonia, which propel the triangular, matte black aircraft to between four and eight times the speed of sound. Aurora may have actually left behind two pieces of evidence. The first was a powerful "sonic wake" that some say may have tripped a trail of earthquake sensors beneath its flight path over the Mojave Desert in June 1991; others describe seeing a unique looking contrail that resembles doughnuts on a rope.

During the base's first 35 years, local ranchers and miners were merely titillated by the vacuum-like secrecy surrounding the place. Sometimes, on slow sagebrush nights, the high-desert locals congregated at Steve Medlin's black-painted mailbox just off Route 375 and watched the blinding, fluttering lights that illuminated the skies above the base, 36 miles to the west. Other nights, they stood by the rancher's mailbox and listened as sonic booms creased the sky from every angle, cracking and echoing chaotically through the canyons. Still other nights, it was said, a silent, whirling dome appeared above the mountains, hovering in one place, then hopscotching around the sky.

Then, in 1989, the simple pleasures of having a secret air base as a neighbor faded when a self-described physicist named Bob Lazar flashed across the Las Vegas TV news. Lazar said he had worked at the base for a few months the previous year, "reverse-engineering" one of the nine captured alien saucers housed there to learn exactly how its extraterrestrial power source worked. Lazar's personal credentials haven't checked out (he claims his educational records, from the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, were destroyed by the Government), but his description of how the saucer worked was enticingly elaborate -- as are the Government pay documents Lazar can show for the period he claims to have worked at the air base. Within weeks, tabloid TV had picked up Lazar's allegations, and flying saucer and Government conspiracy buffs from around the world began arriving. Then, when a Soviet satellite photo of the Groom Lake base turned up, legitimate news reporters began arriving as well, turning the hamlet of Rachel, with its l00-some residents, into a unique tourist destination and converting a onetime roadhouse into the Little A'Le'Inn ("Earthlings Welcome"), a bar-restaurant-motel whose five rooms are constantly booked.

Meanwhile, as Campbell continues playing to an ever-increasing audience, his efforts are not lost on the Air Force, which he's placed on his "Desert Rat" mailing list for free. "We read his publication," says Air Force Col. Douglas Kennett, "and we know what Mr. Campbell's doing near a base that may -- or may not -- exist. While Mr. Campbell says the base is there, and while the Soviets appear to have photographed a base there, the Air Force is also aware of those times when Mr. Campbell or Russian spy satellites might be looking us over -- and we can adjust our activities for that. That is, if any activities are going on at a base that may -- or may not -- exist."

Existent air base or no, the United States Government has decided to end Campbell's desert romps. Last September, and despite all Air Force denials that the place exists, Air Force Secretary Widnall wrote Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt requesting control of nearly 4,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management holdings just outside the base perimeter. Not coincidentally, the property requested by Widnall includes the mountaintop vantages Campbell has designated for his "tours."

AFTER A FEW HOURS ATOP FREEDOM RIDGE, the thrill of watching a top-secret airfield from 12 miles has crumbled into boredom. Campbell has pointed out some of the specific buildings on the base: the commissary; the bowling alley-movie theater; the employee housing, and the "Scoot-N-Hide Shed," an open-walled roof beneath which secret aircraft can be shuttled in the event of a spy satellite flyover.

For the past few hours, Campbell has been using a police scanner radio to monitor a conversation between the security forces and the local sheriff's department, which has dispatched a patrol car to "meet" us as we leave Freedom Ridge. Over the radio, there is much talk of search warrants, and because of this, Campbell has another plan. "Let's see if we can't draw them out a little," he says. "Let's get lost up here for a while."

We get back in our rented Jeep and head down the ridge toward the valley. Rather than follow the gravel two-track back toward the highway and Rachel, however, Campbell turns off early, down one of the steep draws that falls away from the roadside. "Let's ditch the car," he says. "It makes 'em really nervous when they don't know where we are. Let's see if they won't come find us."

Leaving the car, we stumble down the draw's slope on foot, threading our way into a rocky wash. About a half-mile along, the stone walls draw close together, providing overhang and shade. Here, Campbell says, is where we should wait. In his desert camouflage suit, he sits down and, reaching into bulging pockets, extracts a luncheon only an ex-computer programmer could love: a few cans of Mountain Dew ("twice the sugar and double the caffeine of Pepsi") and a plastic bag of Dutch-style pretzels.

For a while, nothing happens. Then, in the distance, we hear the distinctive whomp-whomp of helicopter blades. An olive-drab Blackhawk helicopter passes overhead and we all duck beneath the overhangs as the aircraft moves along the ravine, a few hundred feet above us. "This is great," he says, tucked beneath the granite outcrop as if playing ding-dong-ditch on the Government. "They'll have to come for us on foot." The helicopter, which has Air Force insignia -- but no identifying numbers -- continues up the gully, finally hovering above our Jeep half a mile beyond us.

After a few fruitless passes, the helicopter heads off, and over the radio we hear the voice of Sgt. Doug Lamoreaux of the Lincoln County Sheriff's Department. He has found our Jeep just off the Freedom Ridge two-track and has parked near it. He's searched the area, he's saying, and has now started tracking our footprints in the sand. To keep ahead of him, we continue working down the wash until it opens up, spilling onto the open desert floor.

As we head across the sagebrush, hoping to circle back to our vehicle, the helicopter returns and drops down until it hovers just above us, its downblast throwing a hurricane of sand into the air and -- in violation of the Air Force General Flight Rules -- forcing us to lay flat on our stomachs and cover our faces against the sandstorm. There the helicopter hangs, pinning us to the desert, until Sergeant Lamoreaux exits the wash and spots our location.

The game is up.

STANDING IN THE DESERT WITH SERGEANT Lamoreaux, you get the idea he doesn't enjoy being called upon as law enforcement for Groom Lake. "They've got their own security," he says, "but those guys aren't allowed to make arrests, so they call the Sheriff, and I'm the one who always ends up sweating out here."

As Lamoreaux politely threatens to arrest us unless Richards surrenders his film, you can tell that he's tired of having to chase the curious away from this place. "Iv seems everyone and their dog has photos of that base," he says after Richards hands over two rolls of film. "So I don't know what they're trying to protect. I've even seen a picture of it that was taken from a Russian spy satellite."

Still, Lamoreaux does his job. Which, in this case, means conducting a field interrogation. He requests that Richards and I produce identification, adding: I don't need to see your ID, Glenn. We've got your records already." Over the next few minutes, as he takes notes about the day's events, Lamoreaux says that the Lincoln County authorities are growing tired of protecting this place from people who can legally visit it. "The District Attorney is talking to higher-ups about getting the Sheriff's Department out of having to come here," he says. "It's a time and money consuming waste."

Due completely to an accident of proximity, Lamoreaux and Lincoln County have been increasingly dragged into Groom Lake's vortex. Each year since 1989, Lincoln County has billed the Air Force about $50,000 for police visits to the land east of Groom Lake. Only a few of Lamoreaux's field interrogations resulted in anything more than paperwork. Most recently, on Jan. 2 of this year, seven Las Vegas residents were detained by base security forces toting automatic rifles after the seven became lost on desert back roads and crossed inside the Groom Lake boundary. "They held us at gunpoint, searched our vehicles and detained us for approximately two hours before the Highway Patrol came," says Connie Ruiz, one of the trespassers. "They never read us our rights."

Today, however, all is friendly. In fact, by the time we return to our vehicles, Lamoreaux has turned into a tour guide, advising us of a naturally occurring hot-spring pool nearby. "That's where I'll be tonight, ' he says, climbing into his four-wheel-drive Dodge. "After chasing you guys down that canyon, I'm gonna need to soak the soreness out of me."

PARADOXICALLY, DESPITE ALL THE CAT AND mouse fun of secret air-base hunting, what may prove Area 5l's undoing aren't fantasies of little green men or the activities of people like Campbell. In the next few weeks, in a Washington Federal courtroom, a pair of organizations -- the Environmental Crimes Project and the Project on Government Oversight -- will file a citizen action lawsuit against the Air Force, claiming criminal environmental violations and at least one possible death stemming from the illegal burning of toxic and hazardous wastes at the base.

The suit names at least 39 former Area 51 employees who are ready to testify that, thanks to the open-air burning of hazardous and toxic wastes in exposed "burn pits" north of the base, they have sustained long-term damage from dioxins and other hazardous materials. The wastes burned -- resins, hardening compounds and solvents called furans (used in the anti-radar coating of Stealth aircraft) -- are said to cause dioxin-related health problems like liver damage, skin diseases and birth defects. The lawsuit, which will include testimony illuminating daily operations at Area 51, is the first of many steps to gain reparation, a process that may also lift the veil of secrecy that has covered the base all of its life.

One of the plaintiffs, a former air base worker named Sam Paternostro, says: "The bottom line is that it did occur, and I saw it. I don't know exactly what was burned, but I've seen guys from Lockheed dumping all sorts of stuff into those pits. Everybody dumped their wastes in there." Paternostro, who describes the burn pits as open trenches 15 feet deep and 300 feet long, says that, when the pits were ignited, "acrid smoke, with a plastic smell to it" filled the air.

Unlike Paternostro, Helen Frost cannot give firsthand accounts of the burning or the base, since it was her husband, Robert, who worked there and who died in November 1989 of cirrhosis of the liver, a disease she claims he contracted after being exposed to the toxic smoke at the base. According to Frost -- and the worker's compensation claim her 56-year-old husband was awarded in October 1988 -- one day while working directly downwind of the burns, the skin on her husband's hands and neck turned red and began to peel, a condition known as acute phototoxic dermatitis. While Frost's case has languished in a courtroom before (a wrongful-death lawsuit against Lockheed was dismissed on procedural grounds), she is hoping that, this time, she will prevail. Toting a chemical tissue report filed by Peter Kahn, former member of the New Jersey Agent Orange Commission and a Rutgers University biochemist -- which says her husband's tissues showed unusually high levels of dioxins and dibenzofurans -- she plans to enter the District of Columbia courtroom with new data and a renewed sense of mission.

Heading up the litigation will be Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who also directs the 30-member Environmental Crimes Project. While Turley won't speak specifically until the case begins, he does say this: "We believe we've got at least two convictions here, stemming from the knowing and illegal incineration of toxic and hazardous waste. These are serious charges, and the Air Force can no longer wish them away."

THE SUN HAS RISEN HIGH IN THE sky now, and as Glenn Campbell drives along the roads leading from the secret air base, he says he doesn't know what he'll do when -- and if -- the Groom Lake facility is finally exposed.

"I really haven't thought that far ahead," he says, adding that one of the kooky aspects he's enjoyed by being America's Area 51 authority is his notoriety within a strange circle of U.F.O. fans. "I've seen them all," Campbell told me the day before our outing. "They all come to my door wanting accreditation. The paranoids, the curious, the conspiracy buffs and people who believe they've been abducted."

One of Campbell's favorite visitors was a man who claimed to be Ambassador Merlyn Merlin II from the planet Draconis. 'The Ambassador hung around town for a couple of days," Campbell says. "He came to my door every morning, then he eventually left the area. I try not to be judgmental; I try to keep an open mind."

As the Jeep rolls toward the stop sign at the paved highway's shoulder, Campbell says that, for the short-term, he'll keep overseeing the comings and goings, just to see how the story plays out. "For a long time now," he adds, "Groom Lake has served as the ultimate Rorschach inkblot. Anyone can see anything in the sky at night. If what's happening out there ever is unveiled, a lot of people may be disappointed."

Cammo Dudes Raise The Ante

Is It Illegal To Photograph A Nonexistent Base?

These can't be happy times for the "Cammo Dudes," the anonymous camouflage-clad security guards who patrol the outer border of the Groom Lake base and adjoining public lands. The recent national publicity has brought a steady stream of tourists to the Freedom Ridge viewpoint, and the Dudes have to track them all. A security system set up to catch relatively crude Soviet spies seems ill- equipped to deal with hordes of high-tech Americans in their sport utility vehicles toting the latest electro-optic gadgets from the Sharper Image catalog.
Particularly irksome to the men in beige is enforcement of a vague 1948 federal statute against photography. According to Section 795 of Title 18 U.S.C., it is illegal to photograph any "installation or equipment" defined by the President as requiring such protection, with a potential fine of up to $1,000 and one year in prison. This statute is cited in signs approaching the border, but we have not yet found any case of it being tested in court. The main legal problem is that if the base does not officially exist and is not publicly defined anywhere, how can a visitor know when he is taking a picture of it? The military could claim that ANY picture taken of ANY land within the Restricted Zone is illegal, but by that definition you couldn't take a snapshot anywhere in southern Nevada if military-controlled mountains happened to appear in the background.

Given that detailed photos of the Groom base taken from public land have already been widely published and televised without a peep of protest from the military, the average citizen might assume that any such regulations are moot. The technology of 1948 was certainly different from today, when camcorders can fit in the palm of your hand and telephoto lenses can get clear shots from dozens of miles away. If the military does not control people's movements and activities on public land and cannot restrict the possession of cameras themselves, it is pretty near impossible for them to control photography.

But that doesn't prevent the Dudes from trying. They diligently track and observe all visitors to see if they might be carrying a camera. If they see one, they call the Sheriff. A deputy makes the long trip from Alamo to interview the suspects. He asks if they were taking pictures, and if they admit they were, he asks for their film. It has taken a while, but the watchers have eventually caught on that he is "asking," not "ordering" them to turn over their film, and all they have to do to retain it is say, "No."

The burden of proof is then on the authorities to show "probable cause" that a crime has been committed. Visiting Freedom Ridge and having a camera in your possession do not constitute probable cause, since there are no legal restrictions against either. To justify a warrant for search, seizure or arrest, some witness has to come forward to say he saw you taking pictures. This is a problem for the Dudes because they, like the base itself, do not officially exist. If the patrols saw you taking pictures, they are unlikely to make an official statement to that effect, because that would place them at risk of public exposure in the court system.

When they see a camera on Freedom Ridge, the Dudes still call the Sheriff. The deputy who responds goes through the motions of investigating the complaint, but not with much apparent enthusiasm. The Dudes dump their problem on the Sheriff's Department but provide no support should the situation get hot. This has lead to a number of embarrassing encounters where the county has been left holding the bag.

In March 1993, a crew from a Dallas TV station was caught red handed. When stopped by the deputy, they admitted to taking footage of the base from White Sides Mtn. The deputy asked for their video tape, but they refused. After a standoff of a couple of hours in which the station's lawyers were called and the feds consulted, the feds declined to pursue the matter, and the crew walked away with their tape.

In August 1993, Psychospy and several of the legendary Interceptors were camped on Freedom Ridge when they were awakened by a Sheriff's deputy, escorted to this remote site by a Cammo Dude. The deputy asked to search our bags for cameras, but we declined the offer. Without our consent, opening our bags would have required a warrant. If any of the Cammo Dudes had seen us with cameras earlier, they were apparently unwilling to make a statement to that effect, and again, the feds backed down. The deputy had made a long drive and a stiff hike for nothing.

The issue of "probable cause" is a natty one for the Cammo Dudes. If they don't exist, won't interact with visitors and can't testify in court, how can they pursue a case against alleged photographers? By the time the Sheriff arrives any infraction that might have occurred is long past. Film, cameras and even the suspects themselves can easily vanish in the 40 minutes it takes the deputy to arrive. Without a direct admission from the suspect or the testimony of a Dude, any prosecution of the 1948 statute would seem hopeless to pursue.

The Dudes never give up, however. The problem of tourists photographing the nonexistent installation has evidently caused enough chagrin in the secret base hierarchy to make them to pull out all the stops. In their latest move, they've gone to the top secret "Q" Division of the Special Weapons Research Directorate for a high-tech James Bond gizmo to quash those Interceptors once and for all....

The Super Mega Spy Cam

On March 23, Psychospy was visiting Freedom Ridge accompanied by the usual media rif-raf. This time it was a reporter and a photographer working for the New York Times Magazine. We drove to the top on the now well-beaten "Freedom Ridge Expressway," then lounged at the viewpoint for an hour or two. Two Dude patrols, a Cherokee and a white pickup, watched us from separate hilltops behind the line as we scanned Groom Lake with a spotting scope. All we saw was your run-of-the- mill secret base, just sitting there, no big deal.
Turning the scope toward the Dudes, however, one of the visitors caught something new. The occupant of the pickup, about a mile and half from us, was now out of his vehicle and doing something in the desert about 50 feet away. At low magnification, he seemed to be standing behind a large, dark green form about as tall as he was. The shape of the blob was reminiscent of the Creature from the Black Lagoon when first emerging from the slime, and we might have wondered at first whether the man was being attacked by the creature's desert cousin.

Switching to higher magnification revealed that the blob was actually a tripod draped in camouflage netting, and on top was some sort of bulky device that the man was looking through. It was hard for us to make out the details from our distance, but the device resembled a large studio video camera pointed directly at us. Psychospy was reminded of the device spotted atop a camouflaged van during the Freedom Ridge Field Trip in January. [DR#1] It was apparent to us that this was a surveillance camera, probably of high magnification given its size, and that it was probably attached to a VCR deck. They were obviously trying to collect evidence of people photographing the secret base.

At times like this, we find it immensely helpful to have the Sheriff's radio frequency (154.86 MHz) programmed into our scanner. Sure enough, shortly after we spotted the "Super Mega Spy Cam" looking up at us, we heard from the Sheriff's dispatcher that Range Security had called with a complaint. Three individuals, including the notorious GLENN CAMPBELL and a reporter from "The New York Press," were seen taking pictures from "the area referred as Freedom Ridge."

We were outraged at these unfounded charges. Psychospy didn't have a camera. The reporter didn't have a camera. The photographer... darn it, where did he go to? Up until now, anyone taking reasonable precautions could pretty much snap whatever pictures they wanted. CNN did it. So did local stations from Boston, Dallas and Las Vegas and major newspapers and magazines from around the country. Big time news crews, used to filming in really dangerous situations in wars around the world, drive past the wordy No Photography signs without even slowing down. Even the little guy without the backing of a powerful news organization could get away with a few snaps as long as he didn't wave his camera around. The Dudes can't see much from over a mile away, and even if they did, they probably wouldn't come forward to testify.

The Super Mega Spy Cam (SMSC) changed all that. On the Sheriff's frequency, we heard our own license plate number reported. Reading license plates from a mile and a half away is no mean feat. With that magnification, you could not only see if someone had a camera but maybe even the f-stop and exposure settings. What's more, everything the operator sees is probably also being recorded on tape, perhaps for use in court. Over the radio, we heard that the District Attorney and local Justice of the Peace were being notified, as well as the legal advisor for the range. This could mean only one thing: search warrants.

The authorities had never gotten this serious before, and all Psychospy can say is, it couldn't have happened at a better time. The Times guys wanted action, and the Cammo Dudes were graciously providing it. Full red carpet treatment. The reporter had dodged bullets and counted bodies in the Gulf War, while the photographer cut his journalistic teeth in Afghanistan, Haiti and the L.A. riots. These guys couldn't be happier than to relive the thrill of battle, this time with no real risk of being shot. With the Sheriff still twenty minutes away, we decided it was time to pack up. In full view of the Dudes and the SMSC, we casually loaded our gear into the 4WD, rolled down the dirt track at a leisurely pace, then stopped at a lower ridge where we waved at the guy in the white Cherokee.

Then we vanished.

It was a pleasant day and we had plenty of time, so we decided we would take an alternate route. We turned off the track and down into a ravine where the Dudes couldn't see us. We went as far as we could in the 4WD, then we decided to take a stroll. We hiked about fifteen minutes down a gorge to some protected ledges near the base of Freedom Ridge. There we relaxed and broke out the Mountain Dew and pretzels.

After a while we began to feel really guilty. Over the radio, we heard that the deputy had discovered our car and was now tracking us on foot. He was good. Psychospy was used to dealing with the uninspired Cammo Dudes who hardly ever left their vehicles. Now we were being pursued by a professional who was reading our footprints in the sand. Sooner or later, he would find us, and he would be pissing mad.

We debated the merits of hiking back to meet the deputy instead of putting him through the wringer. We had no problem with playing with the anonymous Dudes--That's what they are there for.--but the deputy deserved more respect. Obviously, he was not here of his own volition. The Dudes had dumped an impossible problem on him and expected him to solve it. We felt bad about making him sweat and were getting ready to head back to face the music when miraculous redemption came from the skies.

Black Hawk.

Suddenly, our escapade became all worthwhile as we dove for cover. We huddled behind bushes along the sides of the ravine as the big green helicopter combed the hillsides looking for us. It made several passes down the ravine, as the Times photographer snapped away, but they apparently didn't spot us. As they began to search other areas, we realized that we would have to make ourselves more obvious if we wanted to bring the chopper back. We hiked down to the bottom of the ravine and out into the open desert. Wanting to be spotted but too proud to wave the white flag, we crouched behind spindly bushes that didn't do much to hide us. The helicopter came back, and they managed to detect us. It circled around us a couple of times, then came down low, hovered directly above us and blasted us real good.

All right!

It is very tempting in cases like this to overestimate the threat. For example, in a similar story published in Popular Science, where Psychospy and aviation expert Jim Goodall were "picnicking" under a small tree, the helicopter that blasted us seemed to get closer and closer with each telling of the tale. In Popular Science, it nearly took off half the tree, when in reality it never physically touched it, only hovered within a couple of feet (or roughly 25 to 30 feet above us). In the later encounter, the Times reporter conservatively estimated that the helicopter was 50 feet above us, although Psychospy and the photographer thought it was less. In any case, it was close enough at least to blast us with sand and force us to close our eyes. The helicopter "sat" on us for about ten seconds, then it rose straight up.

The obvious message was, "Ha, we found you!"

Regardless of whether the chopper was 30 feet or 50 feet above us (or whether we were frightened or thrilled by the encounter), this action violates the Air Force's own regulation regarding operating altitudes, which, except for take-off and landing, require a minimum altitude of 500 feet above any person, vehicle or building. (AF Regulation 60-16, Section 5-10.) Never during our visit did we leave public land, and at the time of the "assault," we were about a half mile from the border.

The helicopter went back to where the deputy was and transported him to a hill that was closer to our position. Then it hovered near us at a fairly respectable distance, about 100 feet above and 100 feet away, as it waited for the deputy to reach us. As it hovered, we had a chance to examine the helicopter in detail with binoculars. We were looking for tail numbers but found none. There was a faint Air Force insignia and a few other minor markings but otherwise nothing to identify the craft. Certainly, this must be a violation of a regulation, too.

When the deputy arrived, he was not a happy camper. He asked us if we had cameras on the hill. Psychospy replied, in lawyer-like tones, that what we were doing on the hill was our private affair and that we had no desire to discuss our activities. The deputy said it was the wrong answer. We were seen taking pictures from Freedom Ridge, and based on this information, he could hold us until search warrants could be obtained. Psychospy replied that the deputy must do what he has to do.

That's when the photographer broke down and confessed. He admitted that he did have a camera on Freedom Ridge but that there was no film in it at the time. His only goal in displaying it was to provoke the Dudes into sending out the helicopter. The only shots he took were of the Black Hawk buzzing us over public land.

Showing no emotion, not even a smirk, the deputy relayed this story over the radio to his superiors at the Sheriff's Department. He asked them what he should do next. After a long pause, the word came back that the subjects could either voluntarily turn over their film or they would be held until a search warrant could be obtained for their vehicle.

The reporter and photographer huddled for a moment, then they began to argue violently. The photographer did not want to turn over his film. He was a professional, he said, and he had broken no law. The reporter insisted that he must turn over his film, that it was the only way to get out of this sticky situation. The argument went on for five minutes at least, while Psychospy paced around in the background, shaking his head and rolling his eyes to high heaven.

Finally, the photographer gave in. Psychospy nearly cried as he watched this proud man, veteran of countless Third World conflicts, reduced to quivering jelly by the Cammo Dudes and the Lincoln County Sheriff's Department. Haltingly, painfully, the photographer emptied his camera and his bag and turned over his film to the Sheriff. Both rolls.

There was some debate on the Sheriff's channel about whether the photographer might have shot more than two rolls. We don't know what was happening off the radio, but presumably the Sheriff was contacting the Dudes about what they wanted to do. We heard from the deputy that there was some talk of executing a warrant anyway, but evidently the will was not strong. As we hiked back up the hill with the deputy to where our cars were parked, the reporter took the opportunity to interview him. At the top, the deputy provided the photographer with a receipt for the two rolls, and we parted amicably.

Did the photographer shoot more than two rolls? Perhaps the answer will be revealed in a future edition of the New York Times Sunday Magazine.

Analysis

The journalists had identified themselves as working for the New York Times, but we sensed that it didn't have much to do with how we were treated. It seemed to us that the Sheriff's Department had gone through the motions of investigating the complaint but had no interest in pushing it any further than necessary. It seems that whenever the Sheriff's Department goes out on a limb to pursue an AF complaint, the AF leaves them hanging. The Cammo Dudes may complain a lot, but they never back it up with a court appearance or any kind of public action that might "reveal" their existence.
Realistically, serving a search warrant would have opened a Pandora's box of problems for the Sheriff that the nonexistent feds would immediately wash their hands of. If the Sheriff had searched our vehicle, found exposed film and seized it, a noisy custody battle would become inevitable. If the Sheriff searched the vehicle and find no exposed film, nationally publicized embarrassment might follow, with the Cammo Dudes, as usual, providing no support to the county.

Even the Super Mega Spy Cam doesn't help any. At best, what the tape might show is close-up pictures of people using cameras on public land. It doesn't provide any indication of what the people are pointing their cameras at. The tape alone provides no useful legal evidence unless someone is willing to testify that the base exists, the cameras were pointed at it and that the Groom installation is designated by the President as requiring protection from photography.

Any attempt to prosecute a photographer who stays on public land would seem a legal and public relations nightmare as long as the Groom base is unacknowledged. Indeed, any such court case might only provide an opportunity for activists to prove, without a legal doubt, that the base does indeed exist. It seems unlikely, then, that the feds would ever press charges, especially in the current climate where any case would be intensely watched. Without the political will to prosecute, complaints to the Sheriff and the execution of search warrants would seem only a means of harassment. As it stands now, calling the Sheriff when people are seen with cameras seems little more than an attempt by the Cammo Dudes to coerce visitors into "voluntarily" relinquishing their film.

How To Trap A Dude

With so much public interest in the mysterious Cammo Dudes, every journalist wants to interview one. Trouble is, whenever you approach them on public land, they literally run away, dashing across the border where you can't follow.
The day before the incident reported above, Psychospy and the Times reporter were touring a different part of the border with several other visitors. While traveling in a three-vehicle convoy down a rugged dirt road, we passed one of the Dudes in a white Cherokee, evidently alerted by the ILLEGAL ROAD SENSORS we had tripped. After he passed, the reporter jumped out of our vehicle and ran after him, trying to get him to stop, but the driver gunned the engine and sped away.

Fortunately, we saw a second Cherokee coming down the road a few minutes later, and this time we knew what to do. After our lead vehicle passed him, it turned diagonally across the road, and the trailing vehicles did the same, trapping the Dude between. The reporter then sauntered over and conducted a leisurely interview.

What did the driver have to say? "No comment" pretty much sums it up. "Don't ask me any questions," was his most memorably line, although spoken in an amiable tone. The Dude was clearly embarrassed at being so easily captured, but he did have the presence to ask the reporter who he was writing for.

The reporter's reply was relayed through the Cammo Dude bureaucracy, but got strangely garbled in the process. The next day, the Dudes reported to the Sheriff that the journalist was from "The New York Press." We had never heard of this publication but speculated that it must be one of the gay community newspapers out of Greenwich Village.

Perhaps the Dudes are more worldly than we thought.

Title: GROOM LAKE TOXIC BURNING ALLEGED
Subtitle: A former worker at the secret Air Force base says
poisonous substances were routinely ignited.

Las Vegas Review-Journal, Mar. 20, 1994, Page 1B.

Illustration: Photo of "The B-2 Stealth bomber, one of the planes
tested at the Groom Lake base." Map of buildings at the Groom
Lake base, titled "Groomed for secrecy," with the following
labeled: "Lockheed hangers," "burn pits," "Scoot-N-Hide shed,"
"Red Hat hangers," "Satellite dishes" and "Sam's Place bar and
recreational complex."

By Keith Rogers, Review-Journal

Trucks hauling poisonous waste from California routinely arrived
at the Air Force's secret Groom Lake base on Mondays and
Wednesdays, said a former base worker who was employed there
during the 1980s.

There were always two Kenworth rigs, he said. They towed trailers
with sealed cargo bays sometimes filled with 55-gallon drums of
resins, solvents and hardening compounds--stuff he said Lockheed
Corp. used to coat its radar-evading Stealth aircraft.

At the base, 35 miles west of Alamo in Lincoln County, the trucks
would roll past the dormitory complex where as many as 2,000 full-
time residents lived, then down a road that parallels a taxiway
that leads to Lockheed's hangers at the south end of the base.

There, just west of the road and at the foot of Papoose Mountain,
the trucks would back up to one of the 300-foot-long trenches.
Workers would then roll the barrels into these pits where the
drums and their classified contents would be doused with jet fuel
and ignited.

Like every activity at the base, the Air Force and the phantom
trucking company, known only a NDB, operated with great latitude
under the veil of secrecy, often in defiance of state and
environmental laws at the time.

The waste shipments were never accompanied with manifests, which
are required by law in Nevada and California. And the trail of
paperwork to the base, once known as Area 51, was covered by code
words.

Any reference to the base during the Stealth project was
nonexistent in government correspondences, other than the name
"Score Event," said the source who spoke on the condition of
anonymity, but who provided a base manual, map and aerial
photograph of the base that was taken in the mid-1980s by a
government contractor.

"They could have hauled in untold amounts of things," he said.
"They would bring the stuff up from California at first twice a
week, then once a week," he said.

His story about waste disposal practices at the Groom Lake base
confirms what other workers and former workers have said about the
burn pits and the acrid fumes that wafted over the hangers and
dormitories where people lived and worked.

Nevada environmental officials are probing whether the burning was
proper and George Washington University law professor Jonathan
Turley is preparing legal action against the Air Force, accusing
it of environmental crimes. Turley has said his growing list of
clients includes people who were injured by the Air Force's
actions.

Nevada's only environmental official with a clearance to enter the
base, Air Quality Bureau Chief Thomas Fronapfel, has visited the
base twice since allegations about open-pit burning were made last
year. He said he has "looked at most of the information" about
waste burning practices at the base and has found that classified
materials were burned, but they were mostly papers.

Fronapfel and his boss, Environmental Protection Division
Administrator Lew Dodgion are still trying to determine how they
will report their findings and what action, if any, they will
take. Dodgion has said, though, that the amount of information
that state has compiled about waste disposal practices at the base
is small compared to what his staff has not reviewed.

Neither the Air Force, Lockheed nor NDB are licensed waste haulers
in Nevada, according to the state's Motor Carrier Division in
Carson City. NDB is not listed as a trucking firm in Nevada,
California or in the National Directory of Addresses and Telephone
Numbers.

Allen Hirash, a spokesman for the California Department of Toxic
Substance Control, said, however, that Lockheed Aeronautical
Systems Co., in Burbank, Calif., was a registered hazardous waste
hauler from 1982 to 1991. Likewise, several Air Force bases in
California once were registered to haul hazardous waste but the
registrations have expired, the latest being the one for Beale Air
Force Base. Its registration expired Jan. 31.

When asked about its waste hauling practices from Lockheed's
Advanced Development Co. in Palmdale, Calif., the so-called Skunk
Works division that developed Stealth aircraft, company spokesman
Jim Ragsdale issued a statement that he said "is all my management
is willing to say on this topic."

"Lockheed on occasions in the past has had requirements for
removal of materials from our factory that our customer, the US
Air Force, deemed to be classified materials. In those instances,
Lockheed followed instructions from its customer as to how the
materials were to be transported away from the factory location,"
the statement says.

"When the materials were trucked away, the destination of the
trucks and the eventual disposition of the classified materials
were determined by the Air Force," Ragsdale's statement says.

Air Force officials in Las Vegas and at the Pentagon did not
respond last week to questions about Lockheed's statement.

But in a telephone interview Thursday, Rep. Jim Bilbray, D-Nev., a
member of the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees,
said he has asked the Air Force to give him a "full, detailed
briefing on any burning activities in its Nellis Range Complex,
which maps show include the Groom Lake base.

"They may not be willing to come forward and admit to violations
that they don't think took place," Bilbray said, noting that while
he can't acknowledge the base's existence he said he has "deep
reaching ability to peer in."

"What was done out there a few years ago, the institutional memory
might not be there. Records might not exist," he said.

Regardless of the secret nature of the Groom Lake base, Bilbray
said if any environmental crimes took place, the people who
suffered from them should be compensated.

Bilbray confirmed that he has heard of the words, Score Event, in
connection with the Nellis Air Force Range complex, but "I
shouldn't get into it," he said.

"When you cannot acknowledge that a facility exists, it makes it
very difficult to talk about what goes on there," he said.

What did go on at the Groom Lake base from 1980 through 1990
didn't come cheap, said the source who worked there during those
years.

The source said he saw charts that listed the base's budget at
between $93 million and $115 million per month. That figure fits
with the $1 billion to $1.5 billion annual budget that private
military analysts have estimated based on projects at the base and
daily flights to shuttle workers there.

"I was staggered by the numbers," the source said.

High-powered, telemetry satellite dishes at the base's north end
serve a dual role for communicating and fogging film of any would-
be photographers who were detected on nearby ridges, he said.

A Scoot-N-Hide shed on one runway was used to keep secret advanced
aircraft out of sight while foreign satellites orbited in view of
the base.

While the F-117A Stealth fighter jets and a prototype B-2 bomber
were housed at one end of the base, the government's Red Hat
teams--the foreign Technology Assessment Group from Edwards Air
Force Base in California--kept its collection of advances Soviet
MiG jets in hangers at the other end, the source said.

In the time he worked there, the source said base personnel were
involved in seven plane crashes that involved three F-117s, one A-
7 Navy chase plane and three Soviet MiGs, including one that
landed in a woman's back yard in Rachel.

At least five unmanned F-86s were shot down for any Army
battlefield air defense system project. The crashes and missile
exercises sometimes caused range fires that could have been
avoided, he said.

Sidebar: EXTRAVAGANT LIVING ON A SECRET BASE

Just because the 2,000 or so civilian and military personnel
working at Groom Lake were fighting the Cold War didn't mean they
couldn't enjoy a cold one.

A favorite watering hole was Building 170, the hanger-size
centerpiece of the base's recreational complex. It is listed in
one base directory as Sam's Place, a bar named after a Central
Intelligence Agency official who once ran the base, said a source
involved in base operations during the 1980s.

Sam's Place was a dark, fully carpeted nightclub with large padded
chairs and a bar ringed with stools that rivaled the largest ones
in Las Vegas, the source said. The bar and many of the facilities
probably still exist, he said.

The club had four pool tables, dart boards and a big screen where
pornographic movies were shown "until a few ladies on the base
complained," he said.

The recreational complex was complete with an eight-lane bowling
alley, a heated indoor pool, four racquetball courts, a basketball
gymnasium with a wooden floor, tennis courts, saunas and a snack
bar. At one time, a golf course and lighted softball field
existed.

Supplies for the base were flown in from Hill Air Force Base in
Utah aboard C-130s.

"Sometimes people would chip in and buy big ice boxes of shrimp
that were flown in specially to the base from Florida in 20 to 30
big Styrofoam coolers," he said. The planes stopped at the base
only long enough to offload the shrimp, he said.

Some colonels, he said, "had very extravagant tastes," including
one who had grapefruit flown in from Israel at $25 a piece and
requested deliveries of canned tuna from South America that he
estimates cost the government $26 per can.

In the dining hall, prime rib was offered every Wednesday
afternoon and New York steaks were often on the lunch menu. "They
used to serve frog legs, king crab and filet mignon at no charge,"
he said.

"They drank bottled water to the tune of $50,000 a month," he
said, comparing the lifestyles of some base inhabitants to high
rollers in Las Vegas at the government's expense."

WIRED 2.02
Features

Stealth Watchers

Armed with Radio Shack scanners and PCs, Steve Douglass and a
small group of private citizens are unmasking the US Defense
Department's black-budget aircraft.

Phil Patton reports from Dreamland.

First Steve Douglass heard and saw familiar shapes - F-117s he had
seen many times since they emerged from the black-budget world;
Stealth fighters he had tracked and monitored when they were still
secret. Then came one that was slower, with a different sound, a
different shape.

Douglass's radio scanner crackled, the numbers churned on its
readout. He was at White Sands Missile Range, and the sky was
filled with B-1Bs and F-15s. He raised his video camera - and the
battery warning light flashed. He grabbed seven seconds of video
before the machine snapped off.

Douglass had gone that May weekend with his father-in-law, Elwood
Johnston, packing his Radio Shack Pro-2006 and other scanners, to
cover an exercise near Holleman Air Force Base in New Mexico. He
received a tip that something interesting would happen.

Now, in the living room of his ranch-style home in Amarillo,
Texas, the country's top military monitor shows his tape. Beavis
and Butt-head disappear from the screen, and from a powdery mix of
colors emerges a dot, a dot growing larger, a dot becoming a
winged bat, a ray-shaped airplane swooping overhead - then the
image dissolves to gray grit. He flicks the machine off. "Seven
seconds," he says. "You live for those moments. You listen all
those hours for that kind of gold nugget."

The "bat" is a still-secret TR3A Black Manta, captured on video
for the first time by Douglass - the dean of a new culture of
digital scanner buffs who monitor military channels to find secret
planes. The image is published here (see page 83) for the first
time (the 5,000 or so subscribers to Douglass's Intercepts
newsletter got a sneak preview last fall). The Black Manta
operates in tandem with the F-117A Stealth fighter, and although
evidence suggests it was used in the Gulf War, the Air Force has
yet to admit its existence.

With the help of a frame grabber, Douglass printed an enhanced
view of the bat plane after he returned from White Sands. Then,
consulting with his wide network of experts in the industry, the
aviation press, and the military, Douglass tweaked the details to
create a speculative image of the airplane the government says
does not exist.

Thanks to new technology, military monitors and stealth stalkers
can listen in on the President talking from Air Force One and hear
pilots from mysterious planes called Manta and Aurora. Around
1970, solid state electronics replaced old crystals as the heart
of scanners. Before long, you could buy a 200-channel scanner from
Radio Shack for about US$300. Radio Shack has sold more than 4
million 2006 scanners worldwide, but Douglass estimates there are
probably only about 500 hardcore military monitors in this country
- which is by far the most relaxed nation when it comes to
civilian ownership of such equipment.

Several other companies, including Bearcat and Uniden, also make
scanners. Current equipment can cover thousands of channels a
second, defeating most "channel-hopping" transmitters. Encryption
is used at high-level bases, but it's expensive and vulnerable to
atmospheric shifts. Until recently, even Air Force One broadcast
communications without first encrypting them.

It's all completely legal - except for the practice of listening
in on cellular phones, something Douglass finds of little use.
When he was suspected of tapping the cellular phone of a Texas
congressman - the FBI paid Douglass a visit. Suits suddenly
appeared in the windows of the long-vacant house behind him, and a
bug showed up on his phone. The real culprit was later found, but
Douglass now sweeps the place monthly for bugs.

Long before they tried to find out about the Manta or the Mach 6
Aurora, monitors, and black birders told us about the U-2 and a
project called Oxcart, which turned out to be the SR-71 Blackbird.
They insisted that the Stealth fighter existed years before the
Air Force released the first murky snapshot and admitted its
existence. (Some stealth watchers even believe the Air Force
called the fighter the F-117 simply so they could go on insisting
there was no F-19, the logical designation for a new plane in
official sequence. "Adds up to 19, right?" smirk the stealth
watchers.)

To those who criticize their listening in and who accuse them of
endangering national security, Douglass and other monitors answer:
"Hey, Radio Shack sells to the bad guys too; anything we can hear,
the spies can hear too."


In Douglass's thickly carpeted retreat, six scanners work
steadily, hopping from channel to channel - short wave, VHF, UHF,
sideband - all feeding into a little voice-activated Radio Shack
tape recorder that vacuums up every scrap of voice, packing a
day's talk into 90 minutes or so that Douglass listens to late at
night. After years of practice, his ear strips away the static; he
listens simultaneously to stereo, television, and multiple
scanners.

Models of planes hang from the ceiling, pictures of planes line
the walls. In one corner lurks a huge oscilloscope - military
surplus - and a Hallicrafter's short-wave set, packed with tubes,
picked up for $25 at a garage sale. There are maps of military
bases and of New Mexico, as well as a Landsat photo of the F-117
base at Tonopah.

Red and blue lines on a map show main air routes, and refueling
courses. Amarillo is dead center in the heart of the country's
military flyways. "Why go to Groom Lake," people ask him, "when
the planes seem to come to you?" Douglass has been uncanny in
catching, say, F-117s coming almost over his house. "It's as if
they know where you live," his colleagues joke.

Flying high and fast, taking off and landing from secret bases of
sand and sage as big as Switzerland, the black aircraft elude the
senses: By the time you hear them, they have passed. But as
Douglass knows, a scan of radio frequencies will tell you where to
look.

In one of the coups from which his reputation was made, Douglass
took the first pictures of the "donut on a rope" contrail
associated with a mystery aircraft, possibly the long-rumored
Aurora reconnaissance plane that the Air Force denies exists.

Now he shows off his latest find, the Black Manta. He loads sound
bites captured at White Sands onto Soundscan files on his Performa
450. This allows him to set them off one by one, clicking each
little folder, so they explode like little firecrackers, with
sharp sparks of voice amid the smoke of static.

"You've seen one of these before, haven't you, Steve?" says the
voice of one airman talking to another (the coincidence of the
name seems like a taunt). And the pilot complains, "I've got a
couple of screws loose on the heat shield." The tail number is
given - 806 - but F-117s stop in the 600s. All this tells Douglass
the airplane is an unusual one - almost certainly a TR3A or
another secret plane.

The maintenance and security people talk about the arrival of a
VIP in the morning. Later, Douglass would discover that General
Colin Powell, then chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had been
visiting El Paso, Texas, the day before. He suspects Powell might
have made an unpublicized side-trip for a glimpse of the Black
Manta.



Douglass and his wife Teresa, an artist and computer whiz, write
and publish Intercepts - a newsletter for monitors - from their
home. Douglass also runs a BBS and operates the Above Top Secret
forum (under Aviation, Military) on America Online. He is a
stringer for CBS, and monitors fire and police channels for the
Amarillo Globe Times, where he spent six years as a news
photographer.

He's just finished The Comprehensive Guide to Military Monitoring,
which is likely to become the bible of military monitoring,
sharing tricks, frequencies, and some of the wonderful American
music of callsigns and radio vocabulary. In the pages of
Intercepts he runs letters and columns above the code names of
correspondents: Darkstar November, Big Red, Lone Star, Ghostrider
- some of them people with jobs they don't want to jeopardize by
using their real names.

Douglass has subscribers at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia
and throughout the military. His followers are hackers of a black-
budget world, an underworld that costs American taxpayers about
$16 billion. Looking at the federal budget, it's hard to figure
out how all that money is spent. But one can see where it ends up:
The parking lots at Lockheed remain full and analysts show the sum
of its work from federal projects swelling from $53 million a few
years ago to some $400 million last year.

Bubbling away on an old Commodore 128, soon to migrate to a Mac,
Douglass uploads selected items from the Intercepts bulletin board
to America Online. On AOL, he finds, many stealth chasers are
meeting each other for the first time. The service, Douglass says,
has become a clearinghouse for monitors to share military
intelligence. "It's almost like a public intelligence network," he
says.


Douglass's frame-grabbed print of the TR3A looks at first glance
like a flying saucer. No wonder monitors are often equated with
the UFO gang. "That word is misused," he says. "Yes, (secret
military planes) are objects, they fly, and they are
unidentified." Some of his subscribers are saucer buffs; others
threaten to cancel their subscriptions if "any of that UFO
foolishness" shows up in his pages. But, like it or not, some of
the best-informed stealth watchers believe that the military is
"reverse engineering" alien craft at a site called S-4, near
Papoose Lake inside the military reservation south of Groom Lake
in Nevada.

The ideas of both secret planes and flying saucers strike deep
chords in the collective unconscious. They may be the demons and
the angels of our time. The two groups merge almost seamlessly
into each other. Descriptions of sightings sound similar: "there
was a very, very low rumble, like air rushing through a big tube"
or "the lights had a diamond shaped pattern and the object turned
rapidly and dashed away."

"They really are unidentified flying objects," says Tim Weiner a
Philadelphia Inquirer reporter who dissected the black budget and
described secret aircraft in his definitive book Blank Check.
"Sent by a mysterious alien civilization - the Pentagon."

The best places to monitor are in the west: Tonopah, Nevada, where
the Stealth fighter was based; Holloman AFB, New Mexico; Edwards
Air Force Base in California; plant 42 in Palmdale, California run
by Lockheed; the mysteriously shaped radar cross section test
facilities at Tejon Ranch, California, and Groom Lake, the holy of
stealth holies.

In addition to the TR3A, which hunts in concert with the F-117 and
seems to be a reconnaissance and laser designator craft, the plane
that draws the most speculation is called Aurora. Its real name,
if the craft does indeed exist, is not known. But many
reconnaissance programs have been given names related to the dawn.
In 1986, a censor's slip left a line billed "Aurora" unblackened
in the public version of the Pentagon budget. That is the name
most often given the new spy plane, although another Pentagon
designation is "Senior Citizen." Some say Aurora flies without a
pilot - like the remote-controlled drones that plied the skies
during the Gulf War, but pumped to supersonic performance. Some
say there's a bomber too, perhaps a whole family of strange birds.

There's one stalkers call "The Mother Ship," that looks like a
Concorde with stubby front fins, or canards, similar to the XB-70
of the '60s. Others are nicknamed Honey Dripper and Goldie.

No one knows for sure how many real planes these sightings
represent. "It is useful to consider mystery aircraft not simply
as an engineering product, but also as a sociological and
epistemological phenomenon," reads an oddly unscientific sentence
in "Mystery Aircraft," a 1992 report by The Federation of American
Scientists. That report concluded that it was highly likely that
these craft exist, but unprovable. There is, the American
Federation of Scientists says, "a signal to noise ratio" problem
in dealing with secret aircraft. Or as Douglass puts it in Texas
Panhandle vernacular, "it's tough to pick the pepper out of the
shit."

There are all kinds of monitors. Monitoring Times, for which
Douglass writes a column called "Federal File," speaks to an
audience of some 40,000 people, of widely differing interests.
Some listen to locomotive engineers, others to ships at sea.

Although military monitoring has been called "ham radio cubed" or
"super ham" and the scoops monitors provide are often described in
the press as "ham radio reports," Douglass says the monitoring
culture is misunderstood. "Hams say, 'you can only listen?' They
look down on monitors," Douglass explains.

Monitoring culture is more closely related to the nation's brief
infatuation in the mid '70s with CB Radio. Motorists listened to
CB to find out what the police were doing; many then graduated to
police scanners that let them listen to the police directly.
Douglass played around with CB until "the idiots all got on."

Douglass grew up in Idaho, where he came to love airplanes after
going to local air shows. His work at the Amarillo Globe Times,
where he used police scanners to track stories, made him curious.

He began to wonder what else was in the air. "It was like the old
George Carlin bit," he says, "'what's on beyond the edge of the
dial, after the knob stops? What are they hiding out there?"

Douglass began feeding information to The Associated Press, then
to NBC-TV. His first coup came in 1986, when he picked up
transmissions from a Soviet nuclear sub with a critical nuclear
reactor problem. In an early sign of detente, US Navy ships rushed
to the scene to help out. The Pentagon denied the story, but when
an AP reporter brought in Douglass's tape - on which a sailor
screams: "It's sinking! It's going down! Radiation counters are
going up!" - the military finally admitted what was going on.
Television cameras were present when American ships rescued the
Soviet crew.

Douglass heard the troops assembling to invade Grenada, then
Panama. During the Gulf War, he fed shortwave reports of Scud
launchings from troops in Saudi Arabia to network reporters before
their Israeli bureaus heard the sirens.

In 1989 Douglass picked up communications between "Joshua control"
and an aircraft calling itself "Gaspipe." He realized it was
flying close by. He ran out of his house, slapping film into his
Canon AE-1. He could hear the rumbling sound of the engine, even
feel it in his chest, but all he saw of the craft itself was "a
silver glint of light, a metallic shape." Even with a 400-mm
telephoto lens he managed to photograph only the plane's contrail
with the Aurora's purportedly characteristic "donut on a rope"
shape, suggesting an advanced pulse-jet engine. Aviation Week ran
the photographs.

Later, he talked by phone with a pulse-jet engine expert he knows
at a military contractor. The engineer played chords on a
synthesizer over the phone, striking lower and lower frequencies
until Douglass found the one he had heard. "Damn," the engineer
said, recognizing that his rivals had perfected the advanced jet
engine, "they've done it."

Black planes raise dark issues. Critics say now that the Cold War
is over and now that satellites (run by the folks over at the
National Reconnaissance Office, whose very name cannot legally be
spoken by government officials) can see through clouds there is no
real need for these planes. Some question the stealthiness of any
"top secret" plane that amateurs can pick up on a Realistic Pro-
2006 scanner from Radio Shack.

For many, the issue is cost: A covert program costs two to three
times as much as an overt one. Others wonder about duplication of
research efforts on the black and "white" sides of aviation. The
technology of Aurora and other airplanes is close to that for the
National Aerospace Plane, or X-30 - Ronald Reagan's Orient Express
- a dreamed supersonic airliner. Is the same work being done
twice? Or is the $600 million budget line for the NASP, as one
European Space Agency scientist has claimed, simply a cover for
Aurora?

And many suspect that the stealthiness of these airplanes has less
to do with escaping detection by enemy radar than with escaping
detection by the public, the press, and Congress. Some experts
estimate that black-budget aviation programs are the largest
single item in the whole Defense Department budget and that
keeping them out of the public eye protects them from
congresssional budget cutters.

Those who doubt the usefulness of what the monitors do should
consider a phone call Douglass got not long ago from the father of
a dead B-1B pilot. The airplane had crashed into a mountainside,
and the Air Force blamed the pilot. Investigators came to the
father's house, asking him if his son was a homosexual or a drug
abuser. Congress was considering further funding for the B-1B and
Douglass, after hearing of the crash, checked his scanner tape
from the night before. It clearly recorded the pilot complaining
of problems with the plane's autopilot. When the news came out,
the military brass denied that any "amateur ham radio operator"
could have such information.

But Douglass had the tape and was able to tell the father the
truth. He can't answer all the big questions, but he could answer
that one.


SIDEBAR

A Visit to Dreamland

They call it "Dreamland," the Shangri-la, the Forbidden Temple of
black aircraft. The Groom Lake secret base in central Nevada,
a.k.a. Area 51, is set amid a bomb range as big as Switzerland and
is off limits to visitors. Here the U-2 first flew, and the SR-71
Blackbird and the F-117 Stealth fighter - all in secret. Only a
few grainy pictures of the place exist; it is illegal to
photograph - or even to sketch. Fighter jocks in the area call it
"The Box" and if they stray into it they are interrogated,
harangued, and grounded.

Groom Lake is tough for military monitors. Most radio
transmissions are encrypted - a costly and difficult process
rarely undertaken by the military. But there are a couple of
places from which to actually see the Groom base. This spring,
secret plane and UFO buff Glenn Campbell, a military monitor and
author of the Area 51 Viewer's Guide, discovered the closest and
most accessible viewpoint. He named it "Freedom Ridge" and was
delighted when he heard the local guards using that name on their
radios.

The first Lockheed engineers who brought the U-2 here in 1954
wryly named the place Paradise Ranch. But sometimes in the early
'60s the name "Dreamland" began to appear on military maps. Today,
it is omitted completely, and Landsat offers no satellite
photographs of the area, although the Russians will sell you one
for about $5,000.

In 1984 the military went to the Bureau of Land Management and had
large tracts of land around the base declared part of the Nellis
Bomb and Gunnery Range. The perimeter is marked by signs along
roads warning "use of deadly force authorized." But two high
points that allow a glimpse of the base to intrepid hikers remain
accessible. Last October, the military filed papers to take over
those points too. In protest, two dozen stealth chasers, monitors,
and UFO buffs climbed to the top of Freedom Ridge for a final
glimpse before the shades came down.

I joined them, driving up from Las Vegas past the B-1s landing and
taking off at Nellis Air Force Base. The desert seemed like low-
res detail on a flight simulator game: RISC landscape. I came to
the little town of Alamo, then through a pass in the hills, when
suddenly a white stick of gravel road appeared, heading off to
Groom. Cars send up dust streamers on this road, as they rise
steadily up it, mile after visible mile.

Hiking up to Freedom Ridge, we dodged the brambly and fragrant
sage and the fuzzy, Muppetlike Joshua trees, we crossed rocks that
seem inscribed in some alien cuneiform. We walked a few feet from
the perimeter of the base, marked by orange sign posts running
across the high desert. On the other side of this barrier were
strange looking silver balls the size of basketballs on poles,
said to be motion detectors or other sensors. Some claim these can
sniff the difference between a human and a wandering wild burro or
rocky mountain sheep - the place is a de facto wildlife preserve.
At sunrise, helicopters sweep along the border and semi-private
Wackenhut guards, known locally as "Wackendudes," keep an eye on
intruders and call the local sheriff if need be.

This day, a few Wackendudes appeared, then retreated. The base
unfolded beneath us as we reached the crest - the long white dry
lake, a line of buildings, fuel tanks, an old bus, satellite
dishes, a big hanger said to be for the Mother Ship, and a seven-
mile runway.

The only black birds we saw that day were ravens - eight or a
dozen hovering near sunset in the thermals at the edge of the
rocks, spiralling in formation. As night fell, the lights came on
in the base below, where personnel were probably watching the
World Series more intently than they watched the few people, high
above Dreamland, watching them. - PP

Title: Groom lake lawyer targets exemption in workers' toxic
contaminants lawsuit
Document type: Newspaper article
Publication: Las Vegas Review-Journal
Date: December 13, 1995
Author: Warren Bates

GROOM LAKE LAWYER TARGETS EXEMPTION IN WORKERS' TOXIC CONTAMINANTS
LAWSUIT

By Warren Bates

An attorney representing former workers of the U.S. Air Force's
operating location near Groom Lake is asking a federal judge to-
consider what he calls the most important issue in their lawsuit
against the government ‹whether base information is privileged
even if crimes were committed there.

Jonathan Turley, professor at George Washington University Law
School, is fighting a presidential exemption the government
received in October that allows to be kept secret virtually all
information regarding operations at the base west of Alamo in
Lincoln County.

Turley is asking U.S. District Judge Philip Pro to determine the
scope of the exemption and ,the government's assertions of
national security. In court briefs filed this week, he argued that
the government, for the first time, has taken the position that
the privilege covers even activities alleged to be illegal.

Workers have two lawsuits pending that say they were exposed to
toxic contaminants while working on projects. When the
presidential exemption was granted, Turley said it meant only that
current and future activity was protected.

"This motion is a defining issue for this litigation ... it sets
up a national threshold," Turley said Tuesday. "If the executive
branch can withhold evidence of its own crimes, it becomes a
government onto itself."

Turley's motion argues that Pro would be the first judge to
interpret how far the government can go in its efforts to maintain
national security.

"If the court believes that the government may refuse to confirm
evidence of its own criminal conduct as a national security
matter, there is no limitation on their use of the privilege," his
motion stated.

Turley has filed eight motions to compel the government to
release details of base operations. While the United States has
claimed executive or state secrets privilege on all of them,
Turley is arguing that if authorities withhold a confirmation of
acts they are not allowed to commit," the information must be
released.

The attorney said his requests for information have been tailored
so that sensitive details can be "easily segregated" from evidence
of criminal conduct. He said he has not asked for anything more
specific than an admission that violations of the Resource and
Conservation Recover Act have occurred.

The government has called Turley's charges mere allegations and
insinuations and therefore is not responsible for any disclosures.
Turley claims they are factual matters supported by affidavits
from eyewitnesses, including participants in burning operations.

Government attorneys Russel Young and Sylvia Quast have asked Pro
to reconsider part of his order that requires presidential action
under the Resource Act. They contend the order is unwieldy and
frustrates the system previously used by presidents ‹ the delegation
of classified decisions to subordinate executive branch officials.

The Minnesota UFO Conference

by Geoff Olson
It was a chilly night in Minnesota, the North Star state -- home to the sitcom Mary Tyler Moore and the rock star Prince (or the unpronouncable whatsis he calls himself now).

And there I was sitting in a hotel room in St. Paul with Glen Campbell, watching the X-Files.

Really.

This, however, was not the Glen Campbell who sings Rhinestone Cowboy for his supper. This was the anti-secrecy activist Glen Campbell, whose investigations touch peripherally on the topic of flying saucers.

The mainstream media offers us a smorgasbord of choices on the question of UFO reports. There's the pop culture interpretation: they're the stuff of supermarket tabloids, about as reliable as Elvis sightings. Or the anthropological view: they're millennial fantasies of otherworldly contact. And then there's the most intriguing interpretation of all: a small percentage of the reports involve real, technological craft not originating from earth.

A number of academics from across North America gathered recently to present papers on the evidence for UFOs. It was the Science Museum of Minnesota's second annual conference on The Science and Politics of UFO Research, held at the Radisson Hotel in St. Paul. Moderated by Seattle information science writer Terry Hansen, the event was a sober litany of anomolous radar reports, photographs, and video footage from around the world.

Is there a government cover-up? Those in attendance were in consensus that the American intelligence community knows far more than what they're willing to admit on the topic of UFOs. In particular, rumours of recovered alien technology in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 have convinced many "ufologists", that the smoking gun -- or guns -- is now warehoused somewhere in the United States. Glen Campbell, however, is more concerned with what UFO rumours "say about us" than they do with any purported craft and their pilots: his interest is more of the "human parade" that attends the acrimonious UFO controversy. Unlike the scientists in attendance, Campbell's in this mostly for the pop culture angle.

Campbell -- kmown on the Internet as Psychospy -- is a balding 36 yr. old former software developer who makes his home in Las Vegas, ninety miles due south of a top-secret military test facility out in the Nevada desert. Known to the locals as Dreamland, Area 51, and Groom Lake, the very existence of the test area is denied by the US government, even though it's the size of Connecticut.

In 1992 Campbell sold his shares in the Boston-based software firm he worked for, and headed out west to investigate the strange rumours buzzing around the mysterious area, where US stealth technology is tested. Campbell has been a civilian fly in the official ointment ever since, drawing public attention to the quasi- illegal land grabs by the Nevada military. The result has been that both he and Area 51 have received coverage in everything from tabloid TV to the New York Times.

(Those with access to the World Wide Web will find Campbell's adventures and misadventures with the base security forces in the electronic pages of his newsletter, The Groom Lake Desert Rat. Point your browser to The Area 51 Research Center.)

Stories from the Nevada desert are legion of craft performing impossible aeronautical maneuvers, and technology that's literally "out of this world". Campbell's heard it all, and is familiar with the more enthusiastic element that comes calling to the fringes of the not-so-secret base: those who see extraterrestrial landings in signal flares and landing jets.

Campbell - a sardonic observer of human folly, with a Pythonesque sense of humour - has long taken the UFO folklore that has accreted around Area 51 with a grain of salt. So I found it surprising to find Campbell entertaining "extreme possibilities" when I met with him.

Sitting cross-legged on his hotel bed, with The X Files' Scully and Mulder debating in the background, Campbell soberly told me, and a few others, a tale that would test the credulity of any reporter.

Campbell has published the testimony of a man who he will only identify as "Jarod 2" -- an retired 70 year old mechanical engineer who claims to have worked at an unidentified facility from the 1950's into the 1980's. According to Campbell, his source claims to have spent at least a decade working on a top secret project involving flight simulators, which Jarod later learned were based on recovered alien technology. He came forth with his story, says Campbell, only after checking with his old supervisor, who gave Jarod the go ahead to relate some, but not all, aspects of his work.

Not only was alien technology recovered decades ago in New Mexico -- in 1953, according to this particular tale -- but alien bodies as well. Some of which, according to Jarod, were alive.

"Do you believe his story?" I asked Campbell.

"I don't know whether to believe it or not," he replied. "All I know is that its a story from an old guy I'd trust with my life." Campbell adds that he is satisfied by interviewing Jarod's family members that he is genuine.

Not a story that particularly satisfies all the protocols of who, what, when, where. Campbell won't identify Jarod as yet -- citing the unwanted attentions of the fringe element. Only one person has gone on record with a tale similar to Jarod's: the legendary Bob Lazar, who really began the whole Area 51 craze. Lazar has pretty much gone underground, apparently tired of the fickle opinions of the UFO subculture.

On the face of it, the Jarod story sounds ridiculous. Campbell would be the first to agree, and simply shrugs and says his role is simply that of a "collector of stories", a sort of postmodern folklorist. He remains resolutely agnostic about the tales of crashed saucers. "If this civilization is so advanced," he writes in The Desert Rat, "why can't they keep their craft in the air? It would be just our luck that the aliens visiting earth are the drunk drivers o f the universe, sent here to complete a 12-step program but taking the wheel again while still in denial."

Another collector of stories is George Knapp, a burly, bearded investigative journalist and Las Vegas television reporter. Knapp has said he has found greater fear in current and retired military personnel with UFO information than any Nevada residents with information on organized crime. I asked Knapp if anyone with a military background has told him anything similar to the Jarod tale. "About twelve people," said Knapp, adding that none of them are willing to go on record.

In his opening remarks to the conference, moderator Terry Hansen drew parallels between the reluctance of establishment science to deal with UFOs and similar diffidence throughout scientific history, giving examples such as meteorites (rocks can't fall from the sky) and continental drift (countries stay put, for good). Add to this a deliberate official program of UFO debunking engineered back in the fifties, Hansen stated, and you have the necessary conditions to create more than an academic chill. It's resulted in a scientific deep-freeze for the UFO topic, although there are recent signs of a thaw. Michael Swords, a professor from Western Michigan University, is chairman of the Journal of UFO Studies, the only refereed scientific journal in the field. UFO research is not an area that's especially good for career advancement, Swords said in his talk, and funds are hard, if not impossible, to come by. Richard Haines, a Ph.D. psychologist formerly with NASA, discussed the film evidence for UFOs, as did Bruce Maccabee, an optical physicist with the U.S. Navy.

The second part of the conference dealt with the claims of so-called alien abductions. Here there was less consensus.

David Jacobs is an associate professor of history at Temple University, who wrote his Ph.D. thesis in 1973 on the UFO controversy in America. In recent years he has taken to hypnotically regressing "abductees" to disinter trau matic memories of capture by the "greys", spindly beings with large black eyes. Jacobs is adamant that these are "real events taking place in real time to real people, really ", but others on the panel were more circumspect in their remarks. Don Donderi, an associate professor of psychology from McGill University, spoke of the problem differentiating between the signal and the noise in stories of this kind, but asserted that a portion of the reports aren't reducible to dreams or fantasies. Richard Haines suggested that UFO entities may not be material beings in a typical sense. UFO researcher Ann Druffel expressed her opinion that the abducting entities are of a more "dimensional" than "extraterrestrial" in nature.

According to the evidence presented at the conference, UFOs -- as in anomalous structured objects -- have been caught on film, radar, and video. Have they also been caught in more overt sense, as well? UFO researchers, like Sysphius, are engaged in an uphill battle, pushing a growing weight of evidence toward some definitive answer.

George Washington University
Office of University Relations
Washington, DC 20052
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 12, 1995
Attempted Exemption Of Secret Air Force Base By President Clinton Is Challenged As Military Violates Commitment Previously Made To Federal Court

On Friday, October 13, 1995, workers at a secret air force base will ask a federal court In Las Vegas to strike down an attempted exemption of the base from requirements of the hazardous waste laws. President Clinton's personal exemption of the base was made public on October 3, 1995 in an unprecedented act under the environmental laws. (The only other exemption was a global exemption in handling the Haitian boat crisis).
President Clinton's exemption occurred after months of argument by the government that they would not issue such an exemption and that a court order would violate the President's constitutional authority as Commander and Chief. Instead the military argued that it can simply classify all information on violations at the facility as a state secret, including evidence of possible crimes committed at the base. in a thirty-page opinion, Judge Philip Pro ruled that the national security arguments of the government were "illusory" and "unpersuasive." Judge Pro gave the military until October 2, 1995, to declassify the information demanded by Plaintiffs or secure a personal exemption from President Clinton. In filing the exemption, the Justice Department simultaneously asked the Court to reverse its earlier order requiring 1he exemption.

On Friday, the workers in this litigation will file a motion to strike the exemption as legally invalid under the federal law. Their counsel, Jonathan Turley dismisses the exemption as "little more than the military's rejected legal theory placed on a piece of paper and signed by the President." He continues:

This document does not resemble anything recognizable in the statute. The President can exempt the facility from 'requirements' under the Act, not their results. Exempting the military from releasing information that they classify would create a unilateral, self-exempting authority in military officials and permit the total concealment of evidence of environmental violations. If the President wishes to exempt this facility from its responsibility under environmental laws, he must take responsibility for this decision and specifically state the requirements that he is waiving. Otherwise, the President would create a type of stealth law to be used by the military whenever it decides to conceal violations from the public.
Professor Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor and Director of the Environmental Crimes Project, represents workers at a secret Air Force base in two cases charging that the military has committed environmental crimes at the base. Various workers have died of cancer and other workers have become ill from a variety of complications, including a rare painful skin disease linked to the burning of hazardous wastes.
President Clinton's exemption was made public on the same day that he announced compensation for the victims of prior military abuses in radiation experiments and production. Without mentioning his exemption decision, the President stated:

Those who led the government when these decisions were made are no longer here to take responsibility for what they did, They are not here to apologize to the survivors, though family members and the communities whose lives wore darkened by the shadow of the atom and these choices. There are circumstances where compensation is appropriate as a matter of ethics and principle, I am committed to seeing to it that the United States of America lives up to its responsibility. Our greatness is measured not only in how we so frequently do right, but also how we act when we have done the wrong thing, how we confront our mistakes, make our apologies, and take action.
This decision came after a Commission showed how the military had misused secrecy laws to hide evidence of environmental and safety violations. In the Area 51 case, the military has claimed the existence of "jet fuel," "paint," "car batteries" and other generic items at the air base to be top secret matters and incapable of disclosure without "risking American lives." The contradiction of these two acts on the same day was not lost on the workers or their counsel. Professor Turley noted:
The hypocrisy of President Clinton's statements was both painful and shocking for these families. The criminal acts committed at Area 51 may have caused the death of at least two workers and certainly injured a greater number of workers, President Clinton has confronted his mistakes by personally exempting the military from releasing any information to the widows or the Federal Courts. It appears that President Clinton's concern over "how we act when we have done the wrong thing" extends to the mistakes of his predecessors alone. It is one thing to allow the military to engage in this type of criminal conduct at the cost of their own workers, it is another to claim moral superiority by compensating the military's victims of the 1940s while actively opposing their victims in the 1990s. The Area 51 victims do not want compensation, they want justice and will clearly not find it In the Oval office.
In another development, October 11, 1995, was the day that the military had agreed to publicly list the base for the first time on a federal facilities docket. In asking for a dismissal of the worker's claims, the military assured the Court that the facility would be publicly listed on the docket by this date. They have now violated this commitment and this violation will be raised with the Court in Friday's filling. "Repeatedly in this litigation, the military demanded immediate dismissal on the basis of statements or promises that were later proven to be false," Turley stated. "This is only the latest example of a litigation policy to say and do anything to avoid legal responsibility for these acts."

OPEN GROOM HEARINGS, TV STATION URGES JUDGE

Las Vegas Review-Journal, Oct. 4, 1995, Page 5B

By Warren Bates
Review-Journal

A Las Vegas television station has asked a federal judge to open
up hearings on a lawsuit brought against the federal government by
former workers of the U.S. Air Force's operating location near
Groom Lake.

KLAS-TV, Channel 8, has asked U.S. District Judge Philip Pro to
unseal a transcript of a June 20 hearing in which the workers'
attorney Jonathan Turley was ordered to surrender files to protect
military secrets.

Turley previously failed to get Pro to order the hearing unsealed.
The lawsuit centers on former base workers who claim they were
exposed to toxic fumes from open-pit burning of hazardous waste.

Last week, the government obtained a presidential exemption that
keeps secret all aspects of projects at the base 35 miles west of
Alamo.

Attorney Christopher Byrd, who prepared KLAS's request, argued
that common law and the First Amendment guarantee media and public
access to court hearings and files "improperly shielded from
public scrutiny."

He argued that Pro's order sealing the hearings was "narrowly
tailored" to serve the government's "general and unsubstantiated
claims of national security."

The court, he said, has control over sealed documents that were
previously part of the public domain.

Byrd argued the government has to prove that "only total secrecy"
can protect national security to keep the hearing and files
sealed. His motion said that if an option friendlier to openness
were available, such as editing, that route should be taken.

Nevada citizens, he argued had a compelling interest in the
hearing and files because of the health-related nature of the
allegations.

Reno Gazette-Journal October 4, 1995
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
(headline) GROOM LAKE REMAINS 'SECRET'
-------
(sub) Clinton exemption: Air Force information will stay classified.
-------
Las Vegas--President Clinton has signed an exemption allowing
the Air Force to withhold classified information about Area 51, a
secret base northwest of Las Vegas.
The base, also known as Groom Lake, has been used in the
testing of aircraft such as the U-2 spy plane, the F-117A Stealth
Fighter and the SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance plane.
Some former workers at the site have filed suit against the
government, saying they were exposed to toxic contaminants
while working at the remote base.
U.S. District Judge Philip Pro ruled on Aug. 30 that the
government could not claim certain documents sought in the
lawsuit were classified unless it obtained an exemption from
Clinton.
Clinton signed the exemption Sept. 29, saying: "It is in the
paramount interest of the United States to exempt the Air Force
from disclosing classified information about the base".
Attorney Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington
University who represents the workers, had hailed Pro's decision
as a victory. Turley said Monday he was not discouraged that an
exemption was granted.
"The military should not conclude that a presidential exemption
is the same as a presidential pardon," Turley said. "This relieves
them of current and future responsibilities. If nothing else, we
can accept that the activities at Groom Lake have been reviewed
at the highest office".
Lawyers for the Department of Justice filed a motion Monday
asking Pro to reconsider parts of his decision.
Attorneys Russell Young and Sylvia Quast argued that Congress
never intended to require presidential action regarding disclosure
of classified information. They said the order would frustrate the
current system that presidents use--the delegation of classification
decisions to subordinate executive branch officials.
*Associated Press.

NEWS ARTICLE: GROOM LAKE CHEMICALS CAN BE SECRET

SUBTITLE: A presidential exemption counters workers who have
lawsuits pending against the federal government.

PUBLICATION: Las Vegas Review-Journal, Oct. 3, 1995, page 1B

AUTHOR: Warren Bates

The federal government has obtained a presidential exemption that
will allow it to keep secret the identification of chemicals used
at the U.S. Air Force's operating location near Groom Lake.

On Sept. 29, President Clinton signed an exemption saying it "is
in the paramount interest of the United States to exempt" the Air
Force from disclosing classified information regarding the base.

The details are being sought by workers who have two lawsuits
pending against the government, alleging that they were exposed to
toxic contaminants while working on projects.

In an Aug. 30 ruling U S. District Judge Philip Pro said that
under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the military
could not arbitrarily claim certain documents were classified,
forcing it to either release the data or get Clinton's signature
preventing disclosure.

Lawyer Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington
University who represents the workers, had hailed Pro's decision
as a victory. Turley said Monday he was not discouraged that an
exemption was granted.

"The military should not conclude that a presidential exemption is
the same as a presidential pardon," he said. "This relieves them
of current and future responsibility, but it does mean they can go
back in time and make unlawful conduct lawful.

"The first act of Bill Clinton in this case is to ride on the
scene and shoot the wounded," Turley said. "While we wish the
president had stood with the workers, the law is a wonderful
equalizer. Even a Groom Lake worker can prevail over the president
when he is right."

Turley said: "If nothing else, we can accept that the activities
at Groom Lake have been reviewed at the highest office.''

Lawyers for the Department of Justice on Monday filed a motion
asking Pro to reconsider parts of his decision.

Attorneys Russell Young and Sylvia Quast argued that Congress
never intended to require presidential action regarding disclosure
of classified information under the Resource Act.

They said the order would frustrate the current system that
presidents use -- the delegation of classification decisions to
subordinate executive branch officials.

"It would be impossible for the president to personally make all--
or anything but a minuscule percentage of-- classification or
declassification decisions," their motion says.

Turley said the motion for reconsideration was based on an
inconvenience theory." He said the government is unhappy with the
hoops they have to now go through, so they want to circumvent the
law.

"While Groom Lake may seem expendable or remote in the Beltway,
the cost of violations are felt by real people and there are real
injuries. Fortunately they have real protections given them by the
Constitution."

The following is taken from a September 5, 1995 press release from the George Washington University National Law Center:
COURT RULES AGAINST MILITARY IN "AREA 51" SUIT AND FINDS THAT THE "JOHN DOE" WORKERS HAVE BEEN SUCCESSFUL IN ENFORCING HAZARDOUS WASTE LAWS AT THE SECRET NEVADA BASE

Today, the parties in the Area 51 case were formally notified that the federal court had denied the government's motion to dismiss the action on grounds of national security. In a thirty-page opinion, Judge Philip Pro ruled that the national security argument of the government was "illusory" and "unpersuasive." Judge Pro, who was appointed by President Reagan in 1982, gave the military until October 2, 1995, to declassify the information demanded by Plaintiffs or secure a personal exemption from President Clinton, which would be the first of its kind under this provision. In response to the ruling, Plaintiff's Counsel Jonathan Turley stated:

"This decision resolves the core question underlying the litigation: The obligations of the military under environmental laws at all bases, including its most secret "black" facilities. If the military's most classified facility is subject to these laws, all federal facilities will need to comply with environmental laws. Despite determined opposition from the Justice Department, the court found that national security claims do not trump the environmental statutes and that the military cannot operate facilities outside the law.

"The military discovered today that its stealth capabilities do not extend into federal court. The crimes committed at Groom Lake will become all too apparent in the coming weeks as we explore the ramifications of today's decision."

Professor Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor and Director of the Environmental Crimes Project, represents workers at a secret Air Force base in two cases charging that the military has committed environmental crimes at the base. Represented anonymously as "John Does," these workers allege that the military burned hazardous wastes in open pits and knowingly exposed workers to the burning. Various workers have died of cancer and other workers have become ill from a variety of complications, including a rare painful skin disease linked to the burning of hazardous wastes. The Project on Government Oversight, a national watch dog group, has assisted in the investigation of these crimes.

Since the Court also ruled that the military has met two other demands in the action, the Court's decision means that the entire complaint against the EPA will have to be satisfied before the case is terminated. Judge Pro rules that two claims in the complaint have now been satisfied by the military after completion of a formal inspection and inventory of the "black" facility. Despite their initial refusal to admit that the facility existed, the military relented during litigation and admitted the existence of the "black" facility and agreed to bring the facility into compliance by allowing EPA to inspect and take inventory of hazardous wastes at the site. While the Court called the Justice Department's argument on these matters to be "somewhat dubious," the Court allowed those counts to be closed. "Simply put," Judge Pro noted, "Plaintiffs' objective in bringing [these claims] have been accomplished."

Moving quickly to capitalize on this groundbreaking ruling, Plaintiffs have prepared an amended complaint in the second case against the military. Not only does the decision prevent the government from terminating the EPA action, but the decision also strengthens similar claims against the military. The new complaint against the military will include information confirmed in discovery that shows knowledge of possible criminal violations at the base. The expanded complaint will be filed tomorrow [September 6] in Las Vegas, Nevada.

For the moment, the military will need to decide whether to declassify the reports from the base or seek an unprecedented exemption. Previously, the Justice Department insisted that the government has authority outside the statute to exempt information from public disclosure. In arguments before the Court, Colonel Richard Sarver stated that any argument that an exemption from the President is required "is flatly wrong" and would run afoul of the President's constitutional authority as Command and chief. The decision would potentially require the President to name all "black" facilities on either the federal compliance list or the noncompliance list of Presidential exemptions.

Professor Turley and his clients were hopeful for a new attitude toward compliance: "I hope that the military will view this as more of an opportunity than a defeat. Compliance with federal law can bring untold benefits and a real sense of citizenship."

Another issue remains unresolved. Last month, the government declared papers contained in Professor Turley's office to be top secret. In on-going sealed briefings, the parties continue to fight over these documents and Professor Turley's refusal to turn them over to the government. Professor Turley argues that such material would reveal the identities of his clients and sources, who have been threatened by the military in the past.

FEDS FORCED TO ACT ON GROOM LAKE

The government must either declassify an EPA report about the base
or seek a formal exemption.

Las Vegas Review-Journal, Sept. 2, 1995

By Warren Bates

A federal judge is forcing the government to either declassify an
Environmental Protection Agency inspection of the U.S. Air Force's
operating location near Groom Lake or seek a presidential
exemption that would keep the information secret.

The ruling, filed in federal court Friday by U.S. District Judge
Philip Pro, stems from a lawsuit filed by workers against the EPA
for noncompliance with environmental standards at the Lincoln
County base, 35 miles west of Alamo.

Jonathan Turley, the attorney handling the case, said Pro's
decision would have national significance in part because
government agencies will no longer be able to arbitrarily decide
what is and is not classified material.

"We believe this establishes a precedent that goes beyond this
case ... national security (claims) do not trump domestic laws,"
Turley said. "The government can no longer have nameless, faceless
bases.

"Today these workers were vindicated."

Government lawyers, in arguing that the case should be thrown out
entirely, had contended that classified information from the EPA's
March inspection of the base was not required to be made public
under Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

The EPA had given its report to the Air Force, which promptly
termed the information a potential threat to national security,
putting it under wraps. Government lawyers said it should remain
there and refused to say anything other than the base was
compliance with EPA requirements.

U.S. Department of Justice lawyers Richard Sarver and Russell
Young had argued that if the information was made available under
the Resource Act, it would essentially repeal executive orders
restricting the public's access to national security information.

Pro noted it is a felony to spill national secrets and that
repealing executive orders is something courts generally shy away
from. But he said the Resource Act language was clear and if the
military wanted to get around it, they could always seek a
presidential exemption.

The judge gave the EPA until Oct. 2 to decide whether it would
declassify the information or seek the exemption.

Government spokesman Jim Sweeney could not be reached late Friday
for comment and Air Force spokesman, Col. Tom Boyd, was on
assignment in Japan.

"On Oct. 2, citizens will learn they have a new federal facility,"
Turley said of the base, which he claims is known widely within
government circles as Area 51, an allegation the military denies.
"The president will now have to
personally exempt this facility by name, or order the military to
operate it under the same rules as other (bases)."

The lawsuit claimed that for years, environmental crimes such as
open pit burning of chemicals were taking place without any type
of monitoring by the EPA. The March inspection, Pro said, was
conducted "no doubt because of this litigation."

The United States prevailed on its request to throw out part of
the lawsuit on grounds that because the inspection was done, the
workers' claims were moot. Government lawyers said the Resource
Act only covered current or future environmental operations and
because the facility was in compliance with EPA inspection
standards, the workers had no claim.

Turley had argued that part of the lawsuit should remain alive
because there were still factual issues in dispute, such as the
contentiousness over the name of the base or the completeness of
the inspection.

Pro, in the ruling, acknowledged that Turley had not seen much of
the classified documents. He said his own access was "not so
limited" and that a review of sealed material showed there were
"no genuine issues of fact" in dispute.

Turley said he is not bothered by the possibility the government
might simply go to President Clinton and get its exemption.

"If the president wishes to deprive the public of environmental
information or allow the military to circumvent the law, he will
have to do so publicly and face the political consequences," he
said. "He will have to do so in dozens of cases."

The law professor at George Washington University said the
government has vigorously fought the idea of asking for an
exemption because if one was needed for the Groom Lake facility,
others would have to be obtained for other federal facilities that
are in noncompliance with environmental standards.

Turley has a similar suit pending against the U.S. Air Force that,
unlike the EPA case, seeks monetary damages on behalf of workers
who allegedly contracted injuries or disease because of
environmental waste violations.

He said he believed Pro's ruling strengthened the chances that
case surviving government challenges.

George Washington University
Office of University Relations
Washington, DC 20052

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MEDIA CONTACT: SHAWN TATE
August 4, 1994 (202) 994-6460


* * * MEDIA UPDATE * * *


CHIEF JUDGE JOHN GARRETT PENN GRANTS MOTION THAT ALLOWS
GW LAW PROFESSOR JONATHAN TURLEY TO PROTECT ANONYMITY OF WORKERS
IN SUIT AGAINST EPA

Turley Sues EPA For Failure to Inspect Secret Air Force Base for
Violation of Federal Environmental Laws


Washington, D.C. -- Today Chief Judge John Garrett Penn
granted the motion, filed by The George Washington University
National Law Center Professor of Environmental Law Jonathan
Turley, to proceed in his suit against the Environmental
Protection Agency using fictitious names for the plaintiffs.
With the decision, comes formal filing of the suit and summons
against the defendents.

Turley is suing the EPA for failing to live up to its duties
to inspect violations of federal environmental laws. Granting of
the motion allows Turley to file on behalf of workers who signed
secrecy agreements upon employment, representing them as "John
and Jane Does" to prevent possible retaliation. This will be the
first in a series of legal actions planned by Professor Turley.

Turley is representing the current and former workers at
Area 51, a secret Air Force base in Nevada -- also known as
Dreamland or Groom Lake. The suit alleges serious injuries, and
at least one death, to employees due to the burning of hazardous
and toxic wastes at the facility. Turley's suit further alleges
that workers were denied requests for protective clothing --
including gloves -- in handling hazardous wastes.

This case is the first of its kind. Area 51 is generally
considered the most secret, classified base in the U.S. military
network. "By forcing compliance at Area 51, we hope to establish
a precedent whereby the military will be forced to acknowledge
its responsibilities in every base and facility," says Turley.
"Ultimately, this case is a direct confrontation between national
security laws and environmental and criminal laws."

- MORE -

PAGE TWO TURLEY PROTECTS WORKERS IN SUIT AGAINST EPA





Specifically, Turley will be asking the D.C Court to force
the EPA to inspect and monitor the secret base. He will argue
that the federal hazardous waste law does not give any exception
for secret bases in its provisions and will be asking the court
to force the EPA to fulfill a mandatory duty under the law.

"We want to establish that workers at secret bases should
not be forced to rely on the arbitrary protections of the
military, but should be able to go to court to receive remedies
for violations," says Turley. He also intends to establish that
secrecy agreements do not preempt environmental protections.
Eventually, Turley plans to draft a new law on the judicial
review of such cases and on issues ranging from anonymous legal
action to standing questions to citizen suit actions against the
EPA.

GROOM LAKE RULINGS FILED

Government seeks dismissal of lawsuit

Las Vegas Review Journal/Thursday, July 27, 1995

By Warren Bates

A federal judge has refused to penalize a government lawyer who
was accused in two environmental lawsuits of lying about the name
of the classified air base near Groom Lake.

Also Wednesday the United States stepped up its urging to get rid
of the litigation, claiming that there have been recent incidents
that pose a threat to national security.

The developments come as U.S. District Judge Philip Pro decides
whether to throw out the lawsuits brought by former workers and
widows of one-time employees at the facility at Groom Lake,
situated 35 miles west of Alamo in Lincoln County.

Attorney Jonathan Turley alleges the workers contracted disease
after exposure to toxins released in open pit burning. He had
asked Pro to sanction Department of Justice attorney Richard
Sarver, alleging the government lawyer was deliberately misleading
by stating that the facility is not known as Area 51.

Turley said he has offered eight witnesses and a handful of the
government's own documents attesting that Area 51 is a common base
reference. Sarver has denied the moniker has been used by the
government.

In a two-paragraph decision Pro said that Turley "failed to
demonstrate" the government "engaged in any sanctionable conduct."

"We understand the court's reluctance to sanction an attorney
without the clearest possible evidence," Turley said afterward.
"We had hoped for a decision after the court had read the
affidavits from workers at the site."

Included among the affidavits was a statement by William Cleghorn,
a sensitive assignment specialist who worked 25 years with a
security contractor at the base. Cleghorn said Area 51 and Project
51 were widely known as operations under U.S. Air Force control.

Also in the case Wednesday:

--Government attorney Russell Young told Pro that in recent weeks
"incidents have occurred that demonstrate the necessity of
terminating this action quickly in order to prevent further damage
to national security. Because those matters are under seal they
cannot be discussed ... but they are well known to the court. This
case must be dismissed now."

Turley and Department of Justice spokesman Jim Sweeney said they
could not speculate on what the language meant.

--The government argued that the case should be dismissed be
cause, if potential evidence is protected under the state secrets
clause, the United States would be prevented from putting on a
defense. Turley responded that the material he has generated in
the case isn't subject to such security considerations and that
there were still factual issues in doubt that would keep the case
alive.

--Pro denied a request to unseal certain hearings in the case and
an affidavit from a former worker who recently died. He allowed
substituting the worker's widow into the case as a plaintiff.


GOVERNMENT TRIES TO STOP GROOM ATTORNEY

Las Vegas Review-Journal, July 13, 1995

By Warren Bates

The U.S. government is trying to halt attempts by an attorney
representing former workers at the Air Force's Groom Lake
installation from questioning potential witnesses in two lawsuits.

Citing national security issues and an argument that the
litigation is moot, government attorneys are asking U.S. District
Judge Philip Pro for a protective order that would prevent witness
depositions.

The motion is aimed at Jonathan Turley, the George Washington
University law professor who recently sent notices that he would
depose two Environmental Protection Agency officials and the
"commander of the Groom Lake facility."

The workers' lawsuits allege they were exposed to toxic fumes from
open-pit burning of hazardous waste at the facility, 35 miles west
of Alamo in Lincoln County.

Since the case's inception, Turley has been in protracted battles
with the government, which recently tried to seize documents from
his possession on a claim that national security was threatened.

In court papers filed Wednesday, U.S. Justice Department attorney
Russell Young Said Turley's attempts to interview witnesses should
be stayed.

He argued that the government has pending before Pro motions to
dismiss the cases and additional discovery will lead to additional
disagreements, which would "distract the court."

Young contended that if Turley is allowed to proceed, there could
be a "serious risk that national security information might be
inadvertently disclosed."

The procedure would be "burdensome and cumbersome" because the
government would have to decide whether the information given
during questioning posed security risks, Young said.

He argued that if Pro denied the motions to dismiss, the workers
would not be prejudiced because they would be given time
extensions to conduct interviews.

The government is arguing that one of the worker suits is moot
because an EPA inspection has been done at the facility. Young
contended this satisfied the goal of that particular lawsuit.
Results of the inspection are not being made public.

Young said the other case also will fail because Pro has
previously ruled that much of the information is classified. thus
the workers will not be getting any new information that will
assist their case.

GENERAL'S FIRING SPARKS DEBATE

Students of military ethics say a higher moral code Is required of
officers; others charge a double standard.

Las Vegas Review-Journal, July 2, 1995

By Susan Greene

Last summer, while waiting for Congress to approve his third
general's star, Thomas Griffith said he never figured he'd make it
that far.

"For a guy who thought he was going to retire as a lieutenant
colonel, I'm pretty thrilled," said the Nellis Air Force Base
commander last July before heading to Tucson's Davis Monthan Air
Force Base to command the 12th Air Force and the U.S. Southern
Command Air Forces.

One year later, the thrill for Griffith is gone.

In a rare public announcement Monday, Air Force brass cited
"inappropriate personal conduct" as cause for relieving the
lieutenant genera1, a 28 year service veteran, of his duties
commanding 43,000 personnel and 530 planes in the West, Midwest
and Latin America.

Neither Pentagon nor Nellis spokes men would elaborate on the
allegations, but Air Force sources corroborated news media reports
that Griffith was fired for cheating on his wife.

Griffith--who commanded Nellis' Weapons and Tactics Center from
1992 to 1994--was not in his office last week and did not return
phone calls. His case is being investigated by the Air Force
inspector general.

Four years after the Navy's Tailhook scandal and three years after
presidential candidate Bill Clinton, now commander in chief
acknowledged a "friendly acquaintance" with Gennifer Flowers,
Griffith's dismissal triggers questions about whether military
leaders should be held to higher personal standards than other
professionals. Some observers say the military must impose higher
standards to win wars, while others see policing personal lives as
a means of achieving more political goals.

Officers in the Air Force and other military branches are subject
to the laws of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which lists
adultery as a legal transgression on grounds that it prejudices
"good order and discipline" and "bring(s) discredit upon the armed
forces." Maximum punishment is dishonorable discharge and
confinement for one year.

It is unclear whether Griffith will retire or face a court-
martial.

News of his dismissal has surprised Nellis personnel and members
of Las Vegas' retired Air Force community, many of whom worked or
socialized with Griffith during his tenure here.

"You don't expect this to happen to a three-star general," said
Realtor and retired Air Force Col. Pete Peterson, secretary of the
Nevada's Air Force Association chapter.

Peterson said the code serves a practical function in the military
-- to uphold trust among comrades in and out of combat.

"When you're flying or fighting next to somebody and it's a matter
of life and death, you've got to be able to trust him and his
word. Breaking marriage vows violates that integrity. It goes
against the trust you need to uphold," he said.

Navy Cmdr. Ronald Smith is writing a thesis on ethics for military
officers as part of his master's degree at the Institute for
Ethics and Policy Study at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

"None of us are saints," he said. "But our work is different from
other professions in that if you're going to lead a battle, you
have to be as morally correct as possible. You can't put young
people's lives on the line unless you're on stable moral ground."

Smith's professor, the institute's Director Craig Walton, said
standards upheld by the code serve as a vital link in the
military's chain of command.

"These generals don't have authority just because they have stars
on their shoulders. They have it because of merit," said the
former Air Force navigator. "If you want to be a real moral
sleazeball, then don't become a military officer."

Others, however, see demanding particularly upstanding personal
conduct among service members as a double standard.

University of Nevada, Reno Professor Barbara Thornton specializes
in professional ethics and sits on the board of directors at the
Hastings Center for the Study of Ethics in New York. Having worked
with the Defense Department in drafting ethics codes, she says
there's nothing peculiar about the military that would require
higher personal standards than in civilian life.

"In an ideal world, I would argue that nobody should cheat on
their wife or husband. But those aren't the standards in normal
society and we can't fairly expect to impose special standards in
the military," she said, citing the arrest in Los Angeles last
week of actor Hugh Grant, who was caught with a prostitute. "In a
society that's confused like ours, it doesn't seem fair to single
out one individual."

Thornton said Griffith's dismissal violates one of the major
principles in justice--enforcing all standards equally among all
people. Ethics should not be enforced selectively, she says, nor
should they result in a witch hunt.

"The military apparently didn't think those principles applied to
the men involved in Tailhook," Thornton said of the Navy's sexual
harassment scandal stemming from a 1991 convention at the Las
Vegas Hilton. "One would want to know whether (Griffith) is the
only man in such a position who has committed adultery.
Unfortunately, these situations can get very political."

Some see Griffith's case as an: example of the military
overstepping its boundaries, and possibly an excuse for firing him
for other reasons.

"It's just like these guys to interfere in someone's personal
life," said Grace Bukowski, a: Reno-based activist with the Rural
Alliance for Military Accountability, a nonprofit military
watchdog group. "I'm sure that if the military kicked out every
man who ever cheated on his wife, then they wouldn't have very
many people in uniform. ... It makes you wonder what's really
going on, why they really let him go."

Griffith's dismissal came just days after a safety official
claimed that top Air Force commanders tried to cover up
embarrassing performances by flight crews involved in more than
two dozen plane crashes. Griffith was to have had the final say in
sentencing a colonel reprimanded for perhaps the most widely
publicized of those incidents--a B-52 crash last year near
Spokane, Wash.

Said Peterson: "If there's some cover-up going on in that way, in
my mind it would be a good time to put Griffith on notice."

Subject: Secrecy at Area 51 Leads to Abuses (fwd)
From: Steve Wingate steve@linex.com
Date: Mon, 3 Jul 1995 13:35:06 -0700
Message-ID: Pine.NXT.3.91.950703133404.22463A-100000@linex


Workers blow whistle on Air Force's secret Nevada base

Vincent J. Schodolski Sun, May 28, 1995

RACHEL, Nev. - One warm July evening in 1988, Robert Frost pulled up in
front of his home outside Las Vegas, climbed out of his car and started to
scream. "His face was swollen and burning," Frost's widow Helen said.
Although he threw water on his face, the burning and swelling persisted.
Eventually, his skin started to split and bleed. Frost's condition continued
to deteriorate, eventually spreading to his internal organs, and 16 months
later he was dead of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 57. Local doctors
never figured out what caused Frost's illness, but a Rutgers University
biochemist who examined tissue samples taken shortly before his death
concluded that Frost had been exposed to toxic fumes. Had he lived longer, the
scientist said, Frost would have contracted cancer. "He had been exposed to
large amounts of dioxins and dibenzofurans," Helen Frost said. "But where? We
had nothing like that around the house."

Frost's widow and six other workers who claim to have been poisoned by the
fumes have filed lawsuits against the Department of Defense and the
Environmental Protection Agency. They say the fumes appear to have come from
burning toxic waste on a U.S. Air Force Base in the Nevada desert. The case is
shaping up as a test of the extent to which the U.S. military can withhold
information from the public on national security grounds. Finding out anything
about the base, where the U-2 spy plane and the stealth bomber reportedly were
tested, is difficult. It is so secret that the Air Force does not even admit
that it exists. Although the base, just 30 miles from this rag-tag desert
hamlet, can be seen from surrounding public lands, a nearly impenetrable cloak
of secrecy surrounds it. It is so secure that local dirt roads are lined with
sensors that detect cars. Get too close and guards wearing desert camouflage
fatigues appear as if from nowhere in unmarked white four-wheel-drive
vehicles.

The super-secrecy has led to a small cult of UFO fanatics here who are
convinced the U.S. government has captured flying saucers and maybe even
living extraterrestrials locked up on the base. Frost, a sheet metal worker,
erected buildings and installed air conditioning ducts at the base for almost
nine years as an employee of Reynolds Electric Engineering Co., a contractor
to the Air Force. He and his fellow workers called the place "Area 51," or
"Groom Lake," the name of the dry lake bed that lies beside the base. It was
here, the plaintiffs contend, that they were routinely exposed to the fumes
when hazardous waste was burned in huge open trenches. The Defense Department,
arguing that disclosure of even the smallest scrap of information about the
secret base would endanger many lives, has stonewalled since the suits were
filed in August 1994. Using common-law provisions that provide the government
the right of "military and state secret privilege," the Pentagon has refused
to acknowledge that the base has a name and even refused to confirm that jet
fuel might be stored there, even though jets regularly fly in and out.

The government refuses all public comment on the ongoing legal battle.
Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University and director
of the nonprofit Environmental Crimes Project, is representing Helen Frost and
the six other plaintiffs who are known only as John Does in the suit against
the government. Their names remain under court seal, Turley said, because the
former Air Force contract workers say the government threatened to imprison
them if they went public with their complaints. Turley contends that the Air
Force used the Groom Lake base not only to test exotic aircraft but also to
dump toxic waste. He says he has evidence that government contractors brought
truckloads of hazardous waste to Groom Lake for disposal so that it could be
eliminated without having to comply with stringent environmental protection
laws. "Corporate officials have gone to jail for violations that are far less
egregious than those involved in this case," Turley said. "This case is about
whether the federal government is subject to federal law in the same way as
corporations and individuals are." According to the plaintiffs, trucks would
bring 55-gallon drums containing various toxic and hazardous wastes to an area
on the fringe of the base every other week and place them in deep trenches the
size of football fields.

Once in place, the drums were covered with refuse, doused with jet fuel and
then set alight with a flare gun. The smoke and fumes that billowed out of
those open trenches had an acrid odor, the plaintiffs said, like the smell of
burning plastic. Some of the effects were felt immediately. Workers complained
of respiratory difficulties, burning sensations on their skin and impaired
motor ability. But some of the effects took longer to appear. "There have been
elevated levels of cancer," Turley said. Helen Frost said three of her
husband's co-workers not involved in the lawsuits have died of cancer since he
died.

SUDDENLY, YOUR BRIEFCASE IS CLASSIFIED

Groom Lake Litigation Tests Government's Secrecy Standards

LEGAL TIMES, JUNE 26, 1995

By Benjamin Wittes

The press has copies. The Justice Department has copies. Even the
public can obtain copies over the Internet of a thin U.S. Air
Force manual dealing with security issues at a super -secret
military facility in southern Nevada.

Yet the Air Force and the Justice Department are pulling out the
stops to make sure that one man--the plaintiffs lawyer who wants
to use the manual in court against the government--doesn't get to
keep his copies.

Despite the manual's widespread availability, the government
claims that the document, which bears no classified markings,
contains secrets so sensitive that letting Jonathan Turley
introduce it in court could cause "exceptionally grave damage to
the national security."

The manual in question deals with security at the Groom Lake Air
Force base in Nevada, a facility so sensitive that the government
will not even confirm that it exists. Turley is suing the Pentagon
and the Environmental Protection Agency in U.S. District Court in
Nevada, claiming that his anonymous clients were injured by
systematic environmental abuses when they worked at the base.

The manual has been circulating publicly for at least a year with
no peep of protest from the government. It even recently appeared
on the Internet, and can be downloaded with a few keystrokes.

But the Justice Department lawyers defending the government are
suddenly claiming that the booklet is classified. In fact, the
government now asserts--in a June 15 telephone notice to Turley's
staff--that not only is the manual classified, but so are Turley's
court filings that mention it.

What's more, Turley says, the government has requested that Turley
and the court turn over to Justice for safekeeping all material in
their possession that it claims is classified--including Turley's
own briefs, notes, files, computer records, source names, and
media contacts.

And on June 16, Justice lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Philip
Pro for summary judgment, arguing that security concerns preclude
litigating the matter further.

"It is apparent that plaintiffs will not be able to present
evidence to prove any of their claims and defendants will not be
able to present evidence disproving those claims without causing
serious risk to the nation's security," the department argued in
its motion.

THE CLASSIFIED ZONE

The incident has Turley fuming that the government is classifying
information simply as a litigation tactic in a case he claims
proves criminal conduct on the part of government officials.

"The only element missing from this situation is a Rod Serling
voice-over," says Turley, a professor at the George Washington
University National Law Center and director of the school's
Environmental Crimes Project. "This document was clearly viewed
and treated as unclassified until June 14, when it was introduced
as evidence of dilatory practices by the defendants."

The Air Force, meanwhile, denies that it classified the document
in response to Turley's action. Officials there insist they are
merely protecting legitimate state secrets. "The [document] has
always been classified, and Mr. Turley's motions that were created
using information in that classified document are therefore also
classified," says Col. Thomas Boyd, a spokesman for the Air Force
to whom the Justice Department referred questions. "Our position
is that a secret is still a secret, even if it appears on the
front page of The New York Times in a World War II-sized
headline."

Boyd adds that the Air Force feels anyone in possession of the
manual is obligated to return it. The Air Force "would appreciate
if [anyone with copies] would turn those back over to us, and we
will make any arrangements convenient . . . in doing that," he
says.

But if the government claims it is merely engaged in standard
efforts to protect sensitive information, national security
litigators--including three former general counsel of federal
security agencies--say the situation is hardly routine. And civil
liberties advocates describe it as outrageous. "This appears to be
a very disturbing effort by the government to attempt to use the
courts to suppress information which . . . has now been widely
circulated in the public domain," says Kate Martin, director of
the Center for National Security Studies. Justice is "invoking the
general supervisory powers of the federal courts to silence an
attorney, when it would be constitutionally barred from taking
such actions against other private individuals."

Stewart Baker, a former general counsel of the National Security
Agency, describes such talk as "overheated rhetoric." While he
agrees that the effort to keep public-domain material out of court
is peculiar, Baker, now a partner at D.C.'s Steptoe & Johnson,
says that "if someone reveals classified information in the brief,
the government has the authority to try to secure the brief."

Professor Turley has long claimed that the government is using
secrecy for tactical reasons to counter his claim of environmental
abuses at Groom Lake. The existence of the base, which is believed
to be used for testing of experimental and captured foreign
aircraft, has been widely reported in news articles, and pictures
of the facility have been published. But the government still
refuses to admit the base exists, acknowledging only that there is
an "operating location near Groom Lake."

Turley, however, insists not only that there is a base, but also
that it is an environmental disaster. He claims that hazardous
wastes were burned in open trenches on the site. Workers were not
given protective clothing, he alleges, and they developed elevated
risks of cancer and, in some instances, a rare and painful skin
condition.

Turley, with help from a watchdog group called the Project on
Government Oversight, is representing five John Doe plaintiffs and
a sixth who recently died of cancer. Turley is suing the EPA,
alleging that it failed to monitor environmental conduct at Groom
Lake as required under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
The John Does, all former workers at Groom Lake, are also suing
the Pentagon for committing the environmental abuses. In the
Pentagon suit, they are joined by Helen Frost, the widow of former
Groom Lake sheet-metal worker Robert Frost. (See "Target of Suit
Doesn't (Officially) Exist," Sept. 5, 1994, Page 1.)

The current dispute arose because of the Justice Department's
repeated use in discovery of the rarely invoked, but extremely
powerful, military and state secrets privilege. That common law
privilege allows the government to withhold information from
discovery with a sworn declaration by the head of a government
agency that national security would be harmed if the information
were made public.

For months, Turley's only discovery request was for the name of
the base. Justice, whose team in the case was then headed by Lt.
Col. Richard Sarver, claimed that the "operating location" had no
name and refused to give more information, citing the state
secrets privilege and a declaration from Air Force Secretary
Sheila Widnall that the material requested could "reasonably be
expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national
security" if made public.

Sarver, whom the Air Force had detailed to the Environmental
Defense Section of the Justice Department's Environment and
Natural Resources Division, recently resigned from government
work, leaving Russell Young, another attorney in the section, as
counsel of record in the case.

After failing to secure the name of the base, Turley submitted
further interrogatories, asking the government to confirm that
items sure to be present at any air base are present at Groom
Lake, which is also known by such other names as "Area 51" and
"Dreamland."

The government invoked the state secrets privilege in response to
many of his inquiries. Using the privilege, the government claimed
that it could not describe any firefighting units at Groom Lake.
It also refused to specify whether any jet fuel is kept there or
whether a single automobile battery has been disposed of at the
facility. MANUAL KNOWLEDGE

In an attempt to prove that the government had invoked the
privilege improperly, Turley submitted the Air Force manual, a
version of which was provided to Legal Times by Steven Aftergood
of the Federation of American Scientists, a group that opposes
government secrecy. The version provided by FAS differs in small
ways from the one submitted in court by Turley, but is
substantially the same document, according to Aftergood and two
other sources.

The document, entitled "DET3 SP JOBKNOWLEDGE," gives no indication
that it is classified. Turley submitted it under seal, asking
Judge Pro to certify that it contained no classified information,
and then unseal it and place it in the court record. In a June 9
motion--which has since been classified--Turley argued that the fact
that this unclassified document answered his interrogatories
proved that the government had used the classification system not
to protect secrets, but to stymie his case.

The manual clearly establishes the presence of firefighting units
at Groom Lake--although nowhere in the document is the facility
itself named. It also clearly establishes the presence of jet
fuel, hazardous material personnel, and the contractor that
employed Robert Frost, the sheet-metal worker. While the manual
further indicates the presence of cars--and hence, presumably, the
car batteries Turley asked about--it does not seem to indicate that
any batteries have been disposed of at the facility.

"The manual establishes that this information is not classified,
should have been disclosed to Plaintiffs' Counsel, and that these
facts easily could have been confirmed by Defendants," Turley
wrote in the June 9 brief, a copy of which was given to Legal
Times before the government's classification action.

Turley says he notified the Justice Department that he intended to
file the manual a week before doing so, and that he received no
objection to its use. Col. Boyd claims Justice attorneys notified
Turley that the document was classified, although Boyd says he
does not know whether the notification predated Turley's
submission of the manual.

But six days after Turley filed it, Justice notified his staff
that both the document and all Turley's filings referring to it
were classified. And the department obtained an order from Judge
Pro forcing Turley to attempt to retrieve all copies of the brief
that he had previously handed out.

"If [Turley's] brief asserts that the document was unclassified,
his premise was wrong," says Boyd. "The manual, as you call it--I
can't confirm that [it is a manual]--has always been classified."

However, if the manual was classified before Turley introduced it
into evidence, that's not immediately apparent from looking at it.
The document bears none of the telltale stamps of classified
material, only the warning "DO NOT REMOVE FROM SITE--FOR OFFICIAL
USE ONLY."

Asked how the document could be considered classified without
being marked as such, Boyd notes that "in a facility where
everything is classified, you can stamp it 'Do Not Remove,' and it
is assumed to be classified." But Aftergood, FAS's point man on
secrecy, ridicules this interpretation.

The document "is manifestly unclassified, because if it were
classified, it wouldn't say, 'For Official Use Only,' " asserts
Aftergood. "You don't say, 'Top Secret,' and, by the way, 'For
Official Use Only.' "

Aftergood points to language in Executive Order No. 12356, which
currently governs official secrecy. The order allows only the
words "Top Secret," "Secret," and "Confidential" to be used to
designate classified status. "Except as otherwise provided by
statute, no other terms shall be used to identify classified
information," the executive order says.

A PROTECTIVE HEARING

Regardless of whether the document was properly classified, the
government persuaded Judge Pro to hold a sealed hearing to discuss
Justice's request that Turley return his classified material.

Neither Boyd nor Turley will discuss the June 20 hearing, citing
the court-ordered seal, but since the government had already asked
Turley to turn over any additional notes, source names, and media
contacts, it is likely that this request was also considered at
the hearing. Boyd, in any case, denies Turley's pre-hearing claim
that Justice was preparing to search his office for classified
material.

"We never said we would seize the documents. But we said we would
seek relief to prevent him from distributing them, and the court
granted that," says Boyd.

Two Justice Department sources, however, do not deny that Justice
might have asked Judge Pro to compel Turley to produce the
documents. One says that the department "was trying to have the
court craft what was needed to protect the government's secrets
and then enforce its decision."

Responds Turley: "If the government is stating that it has only
asked for a guarantee of nondissemination, then the government is
lying. . . . Counsel should keep in mind that a seal affixed today
can be a seal lifted tomorrow." If the government did request a
seizure at the closed hearing, the request apparently was not
immediately granted, since no search of Turley's offices had taken
place as of late last week. Turley, who says he spent the night of
June 15 guarding his office with students, was confident enough
after the hearing to sleep at home.

He insists that he will go to jail before complying with any court
order to turn over his files.

"The suggested authority of the government to rifle through my
files to extract objectionable materials is wholly foreign to this
legal system," says Turley, noting that the files may contain the
names of his clients as well as information covered by the
attorney-client privilege. "I fully intend to protect the contents
of my office and my personal contacts from government seizure or
review."

Turley's case is not the first time the government has classified
opposing counsel's court filings. National security litigators say
that it happens occasionally in the criminal context, when a
defendant with access to classified information--such as Iran-
Contra figure Oliver North--needs to use that material to construct
a defense.

Even in the civil context, the government has classified an
opposing counsel's brief when nuclear secrets were involved.
According to Mark Lynch, a partner at D.C.'s Covington &Burling
who 16 years ago helped litigate United States v. The Progressive
Inc., the government sought to review some of his filings in that
case.The 1979 case involved a government effort to stop The
Progressive magazine's publication of an article on the
construction of a nuclear bomb.

But the government has never indicated that the Groom Lake case
could compromise nuclear secrets. And civil liberties lawyers
upset with the government's conduct in the matter point out that
the secrets surrounding Groom Lake do not seem all that well-
concealed.

"To fight over the name just seems absurd to me," says Martin, the
Center for National Security Studies director. Even national
security specialists who defend the government's current action
describe it as unusual.

"Oh, boy, what a mess!" exclaims Kathleen Buck, who served as
general counsel at the Pentagon under President Ronald Reagan. "I
find it disturbing that some process has not been established to
handle classified filings. That's the first thing I would have
done representing the government in this case." Buck, who is now a
partner in the D.C. office of Chicago's Kirkland & Ellis, says
that she can think of only two other civil cases in which the
government found opposing counsel in possession of classified
information. But she says those matters were very different
because they weren't in litigation and documents never became
public.

Baker, the former NSA general counsel, also says that he knows of
no other case like Turley's, but he adds that the government's
action "doesn't sound inconceivable."

"One of the things one worries about in classification is the
mosaic," says Baker, citing the government's longtime claim that
individual items of unclassified information can, when taken
together, make up a composite picture that is classified. "When
someone as smart as Turley . . . gets some information from this
unclassified source and some from this one, all of a sudden there
are real secrets being revealed."

But if the purpose of the government's action was to protect the
mosaic, the effect has been just the opposite. Within four days of
Justice's notifying Turley that the manual was classified, copies
appeared on an Internet-accessible newsgroup called
"alt.conspiracy.area51" and later showed up on the World Wide Web.

How worried is the Air Force? Boyd will not confirm or deny that
the document now available on the Internet is the manual at the
heart of the current controversy, or even that it is classified.
He does say that the Air Force will redact and return copies of
Turley's motion that have been turned in. But when asked whether
the military will similarly redact the security manual, he laughs:
"If you were to redact the document, you wouldn't have much of it
left."

Editorial from Las Vegas Review Journal, Monday, June 19, 1995

TOSSING OUT CHAFF

* Air Force accountability not detectable.

Everyone knows why we have military security. In time of war,
even seemingly innocuous hits of information can be pieced
together by an enemy, putting men and operations at risk.

Those responsible for security in the military are brought up on
such tales, and their instinct is to err on the side of caution.
But on the other hand, this is a democratic republic, where the
military is subject to civilian oversight. We are not at war, and
the fact is that far too much "military secrecy" these days is
designed to keep things secret not from the likes of the Serbs
and the Iraqis, but from precisely the citizens who are paying
for it.

This is demonstrated in spades by the Air Force's ongoing
behavior in the lawsuit in which workers at the secret Groom Lake
base claim they have contracted cancer and suffered other ill
effects from illegal and careless burning of toxic wastes on the
base.

Representing the plaintiffs, Professor Jonathan Turley of the
Georgetown University School of Law has filed briefs charging the
Air Force with seeking to "over-classify" information which might
reveal its guilt. In order to demonstrate this tactic, Turley
says he introduced in court the Air Force Manual from the base,
which was "clearly marked unclassified." Professor Turley
pointed out that this unclassified document contained much of the
information which the Air Force has been claiming to be
classified. The Air Force responded on June 15 by ordering
Professor Turley's motion and brief themselves, declared
"classified."

Although Turley's pleadings point out that "Aircraft of various
sizes can be seen taking off and landing from the facility from
public lands," the Air Force has refused to answer, on grounds of
military security, whether any jet fuel is kept at the base.

The military's strategy, evidently, is to give ground so
grudgingly that the plaintiffs' patience and finances will be
exhausted before the real issues can ever come to judgment.

No one expects or wants the Air Force to present blueprints for
secret aircraft at this trial. But the military would be well
advised to remember that the single most important requirement
for their security is the continued faith and trust of the
American people. Civilian employees do not sign away their rights
to due process when they go to work for the military ‹ the United
States government must remain as liable for harm caused by
negligence as any other defendant.

The vast majority of Nevadans love the Air Force, and are proud
to have played such a large role in its development. Maybe the
service really is blameless in these illnesses -- though if so,
we would think the government would be anxious to so prove in
open court.

No long-term good can come from this pattern of stonewalling.
Leaders whose very stock in trade is courage should demonstrate
the courage now to whistle in the hounds, and either settle this
suit (if wrongs were done), or allow the real issues to be
resolved, promptly and fairly, in open court.

GROOM LAKE PLAINTIFF SUCCUMBS TO CANCER

Las Vegas Review-Journal, June 14, 1995

By Warren Bates

A former worker who sued the government alleging violations at
an Air Force operating location near Groom Lake has died,
prompting the attorney handling the case to ask if his wife can be
substituted as a plaintiff.

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who
represents six former base workers and the widow of another, said
the man recently died of cancer, declining to elaborate on his
illness. The suit contends that hazardous waste dumping at the
base, which is 35 miles west of Alamo in Lincoln County, caused
workers to suffer various medical problems .

A current court order has al lowed the workers to remain
anonymous. But Turley said he will ask U.S. District Judge
Philip Pro to add the man's widow as a named plaintiff.

"(The death) has had a sobering effect on an already serious
case," Turley said. "It is easy to lose sight of the fact that
these workers, while anonymous, are real individuals with, in some
cases, serious medical problems."

He said he expects that once the widow is allowed into the suit,
the workers' affidavit will be unsealed, leading to additional
discovery in the case.

"We hope to gather additional information from the (government) on
his medical and employment history," Turley said. "Thus far they
have been unwilling to share that. We will continue to ask the
court to access to documents that have no national security
value."

Pro has already ruled against the workers on the issue of what
types of chemicals have been used at the base. He did so after
U.S. Secretary of the Air Force Sheila Widnall submitted an
affidavit explaining why the government felt disclosures would be
a grave threat to national security.

Turley said that in response he is filing under seal an Air Force
Security manual containing much of what the military has deemed
classified. He said the manual itself has been marked
unclassified.

He said he will ask Pro to accept the document and then unseal it,
which will prompt a review of the military's position.

"We have repeatedly objected to the use of national security for
purely tactical purposes in this case," he said.

The Air Force does not acknowledge a military base with an
airstrip and hangars exists at Groom Lake. The Air Force only
confirms "there is an operating location near Groom dry lake."

Nevada's UFO Heaven
Prying Eyes Look In on Secret Air Base
Associated Press
The Washington Post
May 30, 1995

Rachel, NV -- Chuck Clark's search for UFOs brought him to this
desert outpost, a place with happenings so bizarre a state
lawmaker wants to name the road through here "Extraterrestrial
Alien Highway."

Clark has yet to encounter flying saucers, but one thing is
certain: Something is out there.

Folks you'll meet at the Little A'Le'Inn, the only restaurant in
town say they're entertained some nights by strange lights and
sonic booms.

Space aliens? A more likely cause is a military base so secret
the government cryptically acknowledges its existence only as an
"operating location." Locals refer to the installation as
"Dreamland" or Area 51."

Hard-core UFO and conspiracy buffs like Clark are convinced the
government is keeping recovered alien craft and working alongside
little bug-eyed creatures at the sprawling complex, just 20 miles
south of ere across the rocky Groom Mountain Range.

Aside from classified man-made technologies, the military says
there's nothing unearthly out here -- only sagebrush and the
locals' overactive imaginations.

Until recently, the military flat-out denied the presence of a
base. today, officials do acknowledge something's going on
outside Rachel.

"We don't have UFOs out there," said May. Mary Feltault, and Air
Force spokeswoman. "What goes on out there is classified."

But you can decide for yourself. With a four-wheel-drive truck
and lots of nerve, you can sneak a peek at "Dreamland" -- even
though the military recently made it much tougher to do so.

In early May, the Interior Department agreed to give the Air Force
control of nearly 4000 acres of public land adjacent to Area 51,
including an ideal vantage spot called Freedom Ridge.

For the 100 residents of Rachel, many of whom have established a
cottage industry based on UFO fascination, the decision won't
really change things.

Locals including Pat Travis, co-owner of the Little A'Le'Inn, say
they'll just use other mountain ridges to view the base and will
keep searching for what's really going on.

Visitors to Rachel can still get a guided trip to other ridges
overlooking the base or swap flying saucer stories and order an
"Alien burger" at the Little A'Le'Inn -- though they can't yet
ride down the Extraterrestrial Alien Highway suggested by state
assemblyman Roy Neighbors.

Travis and her husband Joe, share Clark's enthusiasm for space-age
--or just spacey -- occurrences. They tell of a white beam of
light that blazed through their closed back door on morning
several years ago.

"I can feel their presence," Pat Travis said. "I get goose bumps
when I think of them."

Then there's Glenn Campbell, a former computer software developer
who operates what he calls the Secrecy (sic) Oversight Council
from a trailer her rents for $215 a month.

Campbell also puts out a newsletter and an "Area 51 Viewer's
Guide" that helps the curious avoid being arrested by the guards
who prowl the base's perimeter.

Others who frequent the area include Bob Lazar of Las Vegas, a
self-described physicist who claims he worked at the base -- on
one of nine captured alien saucers to determine how its power
source worked.

Area 51 reportedly served as a laboratory for the U-2 spy plane
and later the SR-71 spy plane, the B-2 stealth bomber and the F-
117A stealth fighter.

Among other rumors: The base has a stable of aircraft obtained
from defecting Soviet fliers and is the proving ground for a $15
billion spy plane, the Aurora, that can do 5000 mph.

Aviation Week & Space Technology recently said radar-evading
helicopters and oddly shaped pilotless spy planes are being
developed at the 40-year old base, with money from secret "black
budgets" that don't appear in any federal budget allotments.

Clark said exotic military aircraft developed at the base may be
mistaken for UFOs. But sometimes fast-moving soundless pulsating
balls of light that appear in the sky just seem to be from another
world, he said.

"They may not be UFOs to the Air Force. They know what they are.
But they are UFOs to us," he said.


TITLE: JUDGE ASKED TO TOSS OUT GROOM LAKE SUIT

PUBLICATION: Las Vegas Review-Journal

DATE: May 24, 1995 (Page 7B)

AUTHOR: Warren Bates

[Reproduced without permission.]

The U.S. government is asking a federal judge to toss out a law
suit filed by former workers at the Pentagon's operating location
near Groom Lake, saying an environmental inspection has rendered
workers' claims moot.

U.S. Department of Justice lawyers Russell Young and Richard
Sarver argue that issues in a suit brought on behalf of former
base workers and their families have been addressed now that an
inspection has been done.

The families contend the Environmental Protection Agency violated
federal law by failing to monitor the open-pit burning of
hazardous chemicals at the facility, which is 35 miles west of
Alamo in Lincoln County.

Their attorney, Jonathan Turley, said Tuesday that while his
clients are willing to claim victory as a result of the
inspections, issues of the lawsuit have not been addressed.

The EPA's inspection occurred between December and mid March. The
government says the results are classified and is not disclosing
details.

In an affidavit submitted to U.S. District Judge Philip Pro on
Monday, Barry Breen, director of the EPA's Federal Facilities
Enforcement Office, termed the inspection thorough and said a
final report was issued April 19.

"The Air Force has classified the EPA inspection report for
national security reasons," Breen's statement read. "EPA has made
the ... report available to appropriately cleared officials of the
state of Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources."

On Friday, Breen said, the EPA and the Air Force entered an
agreement "setting forth future compliance" with environmental and
national security laws at Groom Lake.

The agreement says the Air Force will submit an inventory to EPA
every other year and will allow access to the base and classified
information to the EPA "for purpose of administering the
environmental laws of the U.S."

Annual inspections under the Resource Conservation and Recovery
Act will be conducted at the operating location, according to the
agreement.

The act, Young and Sarver argued in court briefs filed Monday,
does not require public disclosure of classified inspection and
inventory information. Previously, U.S. Secretary of the Air Force
Sheila Widnall said if environmental data were released, it would
be a threat to national security.

But Turley said the government's move will be opposed.

"We are obviously pleased with the military's announcement that
they will comply with federal law," Turley said. "The devil,
however, is in the details. Since they refuse to even confirm the
specific facility in the case, it remains wholly unclear which
facility has been inspected and inventoried.

"The refusal to disclose any confirming evidence or documents is
unprecedented and excessive under federal law," he said. "The law
requires all federal facilities to make public reports of this
information. A secret public report is something of an oxymoron."

Turley said the inspection was the first of its kind and done only
in response to the lawsuit. The lack of prior inspections, he said
was essentially an admission by the government of wrongdoing and
the suit seeks compensation for injuries suffered for past
injuries to workers.

"The military now acknowledges full responsibility but refuses any
accountability. It is astonishing that the government can admit to
federal crimes but refuse to release information on such conduct
while prosecuting private individuals for similar offenses,"
Turley said.

Traumland des Todes

[Der Spiegel (Germany), Mid-April 1995 (#16)]
SPIEGEL-Redakteur Joachim Hoelzgen über die Experimente auf dem geheimsten Militärstützpunkt der USA

Das Tikaboo Valley in der Wüste von Nevada ist so abgelegen, daß kein Schild den Weg weist. Die Schatten der Trucks, die hier ohne Halt durchfahren, gleiten einsam ans Ende des Horizonts, vorbei an Gestrüpp und mannshohen Kakteenbäumen.

Glenn Campbell, 35, hat sich auf die abweisende Landschaft eingestellt; er hat eine Art Baedeker über sie geschrieben. Seine Beobachtungen trägt er in Rachel zusammen, dem einzigen Ort am Asphaltband der State Route 375.

In Rachel ist ein Schleier des Geheimnisvollen spürbar, der Bedrohung einschließt. Jenseits der Berge, die das weite Tal begrenzen, befindet sich ein rätselvoller Stützpunkt, den noch niemand in seiner ganzen Ausdehnung erblickt hat. Manchmal steigt dort in der Dunkelheit ein grelles Leuchten an den Bergflanken empor, die dann aussehen wie die Klarsichthüllen einer kalten Zukunft und Phantastik. "Ich habe hier alle und alles gesehen", berichtet Campbell, "Exzentriker, Paranoide und Leute, die glauben, von fliegenden Untertassen entführt worden zu sein."

Zuletzt hat das Ehepaar Hamilton behauptet, am Kiesparkplatz beim Meilenzeichen 32,3 sei ihm eine unheimliche Begegnung widerfahren. Die Hamiltons wollen sich an eine gleißend helle Scheibe erinnern und an den Namen eines Ufo-Kommandanten: Quaylar.

Vor drei Jahren ist Campbell von Boston, wo er Programmierer war, nach Rachel gezogen. Sein Wohnwagen ist mit Computern vollgestellt. Suchscanner gestatten es ihm, die Funkkanäle in diesem Teil Nevadas abzuhören.

Campbell kann jede Begebenheit erklären: Der große schwarze Fleck beim Kiesparkplatz etwa war nicht eine Untertassen-Aufsetzspur, wie manche in Rachel vermuteten, sondern Schauplatz eines Fahrzeugbrands. Der Sattelschlepper eines Panzers hatte während der Fahrt Feuer gefangen; auf dem Anhänger glühte der stählerne Koloß aus.

Es ist nicht verwunderlich, daß das Militär die meiste Zeit Campbells beansprucht. Denn das Tikaboo Valley ragt wie ein Dorn in die Flanke großer Übungsplätze, die hier konzentriert sind. Im Westen befinden sich das Atomversuchsgelände Yucca Flats und ein Teil des Übungsplatzes Nellis Bombing and Gunnery Range. Im Norden dehnt sich der Stützpunkt Tonopah aus, der vor Beginn des Golfkriegs nie zuvor gesehene Flugzeuge erhielt: Tarnkappenbomber vom Typ F-117A, die dank einer Spezialglasur Radarwellen verschlucken.

Alles in allem hat die US-Luftwaffe ein Sechstel Nevadas als Waffenreservat für sich abgesperrt, eine Fläche größer als Bayern.

In der Holzbar von Rachel, dem "Little A'Le'Inn", trinken Cowboys am Abend ein kaltes Bier. Womöglich müssen sie noch in der Nacht ausrücken, um Buschbrände zu löschen. Draußen stoßen Jagdmaschinen "flares" aus, pyrotechnische Scheinziele, die im Ernstfall feindliche Raketen irritieren sollen und nun feurig herabregnen.

Glenn Campbell hält nichts davon, Zaungast bei den Top-Gun-Manövern der US-Luftwaffe zu sein. Er versteht sich als Kundschafter. Beharrlich observiert er einen Stützpunkt, der jenseits der Groom Range am Trockenbett des Salzsees Groom Lake liegt.

Die Betreiber dieser Anlage versuchen das Äußerste, um sie vor den Blicken Unbefugter abzuschirmen. Sie kommt nicht einmal auf den Karten des U. S. Geological Survey vor, die das Gebiet südwestlich von Rachel als "unsurveyed" bezeichnen, als nicht vermessen. Der Stützpunkt besitzt keinen offiziellen Namen. Campbell nennt ihn Area 51 - anhand eines Plans aus einer Zeit, als in einem Bergwerk nahe Rachel Wolframlager ausgebeutet wurden.

In seinem Trailer gibt Campbell eine Zeitung zum Thema heraus, die Groom Lake Desert Rat, gespickt mit Sonderinformationen. Als mutmaßliche Eigentümerin der mysteriösen Installation erhält die Air Force ein Freiexemplar.

Campbell hat in den Bergen der Groom Range einen neuen Aussichtspunkt auf öffentlichem Land entdeckt: den Freedom Ridge, einen 1600 Meter hohen Höcker neben dem Kegel des White Sides Peak. Von beiden Plätzen bietet sich ein Blick auf das abgekapselte Gebiet jenseits der Berge. Doch mit den Patrouillen "an unserer Berliner Mauer", wie Campbell die Grenze zum militärischen Sperrbezirk nennt, ist nicht zu spaßen. Die Wächter machen mit Hubschraubern gelegentlich auch Jagd auf Berggänger, die das verbotene Areal gar nicht betreten haben. Die Helikopter schweben herab und haben Campbell schon wie eine Backform in den Sand gepreßt.

Die Fahrt zum Freedom Ridge führt zunächst über die Staatsstraße zum schwarzlackierten Blechbriefkasten des Ranchers Steve Medlin, der die Wasser- und Weiderechte am Fuß der Groom Range besitzt. Campbell stoppt den Geländewagen in einem Kakteenwald. Der Boden wirkt hohl und von seltsamen Gängen durchzogen. Hinter einer Pflanze steht ein grauer Zylinder aus Metall. Von dem Behälter gehen zwei Kabel aus und verschwinden im Boden. Es sind Sensoren, die auf das Magnetfeld eines vorbeifahrenden Wagens ansprechen.

Knapp unterhalb des Bergrückens markiert ein futuristisch anmutendes Arrangement die Sperrzone: Kugeln aus nichtrostendem Stahl, die auf Aluminiumpfähle montiert sind. Niemand kennt die Funktion der Kugeln. Daneben warnt ein Schild mit roter Schrift: "Use of Deadly Force Authorized".

Der Stützpunkt ist 16 Kilometer vom Freedom Ridge entfernt und wirkt wie ein zartes Luftgebilde. Ockerfarbene Betriebsgebäude sind erkennbar, Treibstoffkessel im feinen Dunst, daneben der turmhohe Trichter einer Satellitenantenne. Klar zeichnet sich der sogenannte Hangar 18 ab. Er ist so hoch, daß eine Boeing 747 mit einer Weltraumfähre auf dem Rücken in ihm Platz fände.

Eine Landebahn, 3,5 Kilometer lang, endet am Becken des Groom Lake, in dem das Wasser des Winterregens noch nicht ganz verdunstet ist. Parallel zu dieser Piste erstreckt sich die längste Landebahn der Welt. Sie ist 9,6 Kilometer lang und reicht bis zum anderen Ufer des Salzsees.

Der Blick durch das Teleobjektiv fällt wie durch ein Vergrößerungsglas in die Zeit des Kalten Kriegs zurück. Der Rüstungskonzern Lockheed hat hier schwarze, vom Kongreß in Washington kaum kontrollierbare Spionageprogramme entwickelt und war neben dem US-Geheimdienst CIA der eigentliche Hausherr am Groom Lake - und womöglich sind es Lockheed und die CIA noch heute.

1954 startete auf der damals noch einzigen Piste die erste U-2, ein Höhenaufklärer. Der Rumpf der Maschine war in den berühmten Skunk Works von Lockheed am Flughafen von Burbank in Los Angeles gebaut und im Bauch eines Transportflugzeugs zum Groom Lake geflogen worden.

Alles habe unter einem "Schirm der Geheimhaltung" geschehen müssen, heißt es in einer Festschrift zum 50jährigen Bestehen Lockheeds; die Air Force habe als "Front" vorgeschoben werden müssen, da der Auftrag zum Bau der U-2 und die Piloten von der CIA kamen. Die Piloten galten als "Fahrer", die U-2 als "Forschungsflugzeug" und der Stützpunkt am Groom Lake als "test location".

Am 1. Mai 1960 beschwor der Abschuß einer U-2 über Swerdlowsk eine Weltkrise herauf, doch Lockheed und die CIA stachelte das Mißgeschick nur noch mehr an. Als nächstes wurde die A-12, ein Monster mit 3,2facher Schallgeschwindigkeit, auf dem Testgelände flügge - mit Triebwerkseinlässen, die einen größeren Durchmesser besaßen als der Rumpf der Maschine. Die A-12 spähte Nordvietnam aus und überflog das Land in nur zwölfeinhalb Minuten.

Als Monument des Kalten Kriegs weist die Basis keine Sprünge auf. Sie wuchert sogar weiter; neue Hangars sind errichtet worden, darunter ein langes Betondach, unter das Flugzeuge gerollt werden, wenn russische Aufklärungssatelliten am Horizont aufsteigen.

Bis zu 1500 Arbeiter und Techniker werden von einem Sonderterminal des Flughafens Las Vegas aus zur Tag- und Nachtschicht an den Groom Lake transportiert. Auf dem Vorfeld stehen Boeing-737-Maschinen, die außer einem roten Streifen in Höhe der Kabinenfenster keine Markierungen aufweisen. Die Passagiere werden im Abfertigungsgebäude identifiziert und von Sicherheitsbeamten zu den Flugzeugen gebracht.

Die Scanner-Scouts von Rachel haben die Funkfrequenz des Kontrollturms hinter den Bergen und die Kennung der von Las Vegas anfliegenden Jets ermittelt: "Janet". Die Janet-Piloten melden sich bei einem "Traumland" (261,1 Megahertz) und manchmal bei einer "Schweinefarm" oder der "Wasserstadt".

Die Portale der Flugzeughallen von Groom Lake sind nur nachts geöffnet. Halogenlicht dringt dann aus den Hangars und erzeugt die Illusion von einer schwerkraftlosen Welt.

Die Umtriebe am Trockenbett des Groom Lake sind Experten ein Rätsel. Der Fachautor Bill Sweetman vermutet, daß ein hyperschnelles Spionageflugzeug mit achtfacher Schallgeschwindigkeit erprobt werde: "Aurora", eine Art Kreuzung zwischen Düsenmaschine und Rakete, betrieben mit flüssigem Methan. Aurora könnte in drei Stunden jeden Punkt der Erde erreichen.

In Rachel wird auch spekuliert, ob hinter den Bergen eine zerstörerische Schallwaffe getestet werde, ähnlich jener, von der Wladimir Schirinowski, der rechtsradikale Russe, schwadroniert hat. Man will auch nicht ausschließen, daß auf dem Stützpunkt ein Atombomben-Notvorrat lagert; von infamen Experimenten an verschwundenen Kindern ist die Rede - und natürlich von fliegenden Untertassen.

Im schummrigen Little A'Le'Inn, dessen Name das Wort "alien" lautmalerisch wiedergibt, hat schon mancher den harten Boden der Wirklichkeit verlassen. Der Stammgast Chuck Clark, ein Hobby-Astronom aus Vandenberg in Kalifornien, mutmaßt, auf dem Stützpunkt verkaufe die Air Force Borax und Arsen an Ufo-Besatzungen, die auf solche Stoffe angewiesen seien.

Guru der Ufologen ist Bob Lazar, ein Physiker. Lazar behauptet, daß es inmitten des Sperrgebiets eine noch geheimere Basis mit unterirdischen Hangars gebe, auf der Forscher insgesamt neun Ufos untersuchten. Er selbst habe Ende der achtziger Jahre am Antrieb eines unbekannten Flugobjekts gearbeitet. Als Beleg legt Lazar Gehaltsstreifen der Regierung vor.

Dem Streifzug durch die Irrungen menschlicher Phantasmen in der Ufo-Bar entspricht ein kafkaesk anmutender Vorgang im fernen Washington.

Am 28. Februar hat Sheila Widnall, die Luftwaffenministerin der USA, Amerikas umfassendste Geheimhaltungsvorschrift - das Military and State Secrets Privilege - erlassen, um Fragen nach dem Groom-Lake-Stützpunkt abzuwehren. Die Verbreitung einschlägiger Informationen und selbst die Verwendung von fiktiven Namen wie Traumland oder Schweinefarm sollen unter Strafandrohung gestellt werden. "Man muß davon ausgehen", meint die Ministerin, "daß sonst die nationale Sicherheit der USA schwerstens gefährdet wird."

Wie die Ufologen, so scheint es, hat sich die Air-Force-Ministerin eine Wirklichkeit geschaffen, die dabei ist, auseinanderzufallen. "Genausogut könnte man den Namen Weißes Haus zur Geheimsache erklären", sagt Jonathan Turley, 33, ein Groom-Lake-Spezialist der rationalen Art.

Turley ist Rechtsprofessor an der George Washington University und bearbeitet vor allem Umweltdelikte. Er führt zwei Prozesse gegen die US-Regierung, weil der Stützpunkt in Nevada noch einem anderen Zweck dient: Die Basis ist eine geheime Giftmüllzentrale, auf der exotische Harze, Lacke und Lösemittel verbrannt werden.

Die Chemikalien, so bekunden Turleys Zeugen, stammen aus den Lockheed-Skunk-Works und waren zur "test location" gebracht worden, wo man sie in offenen, 100 Meter langen und 4 Meter tiefen Gräben deponierte.

Arbeiter präparierten gleich mehrere Schichten des giftigen Schlicks, rührten ihn mit Stangen um und versenkten auch noch Fässer in der Brühe. Danach wurde der unheimliche Cocktail mit Kerosin übergossen und angezündet. Am Groom Lake tobte dann immer das Inferno. Aus den Gräben stiegen Qualmwolken und stechende Gase, die Fässer explodierten, Rauchfahnen trieben bis zu den Landebahnen am Salzsee.

Die Entsorgung auf die schnelle geschah Mitte bis Ende der achtziger Jahre, als die Produktion des Tarnbombers F-117A auf Hochtouren lief. Die bizarr aussehenden Flugzeuge waren am Groom Lake erprobt worden und hatten dabei jene Fähigkeiten bewiesen, die sich später im Golfkrieg bei den Nachtangriffen auf Bagdad bewährten.

Turley vertritt sechs Arbeiter, die das Anti-Radarmaterial verbrannten. Atemschutzgeräte und Spezialbekleidung gab es beim Füllen und Abfackeln der Gräben nicht, selbst Handschuhe waren ihnen vorenthalten worden. Jetzt sind die Männer krank. Sie leiden an Leberkrebs und toxischen Ekzemen.

Ein siebter Arbeiter, der Blechschlosser Robert Frost, ist im November 1989 gestorben. "Sein Gesicht war angeschwollen wie ein Fußball, alles war rot, auf dem Rücken wucherten Geschwüre." So beschreibt Helen Frost das langsame Siechen ihres Mannes. Das Gift griff die Nerven an, es verursachte Muskelschwund und Krämpfe. Trotzdem pendelte der Familienvater weiter mit den Janet-Boeings zwischen Las Vegas und dem Groom Lake hin und her. Nur wenn in den Bohrlöchern von Yucca Flats eine Atombombe gezündet wurde, durften die Arbeiter zu Hause bleiben.

Helen Frost wohnt in einem adretten Haus im Nordwesten von Las Vegas, weit entfernt von dem Panoptikum menschlicher Schwächen und Begierden an den Kasino-Boulevards der Spielerstadt. Sie hat die Wohnküche in ein Büro mit Faxgerät und Personalcomputer verwandelt. "Ich werde nicht aufgeben, solange Jonathan Turley genug Stehvermögen hat", sagt sie.

Doch die gerichtliche Auseinandersetzung verläuft zäh. Das Umweltministerium in Washington behauptet, daß der Stützpunkt im Verzeichnis bundeseigener Liegenschaften nicht enthalten sei und deshalb nicht existieren könne. Damit ist auch ein Befund des Biochemikers Peter Kahn gleichsam fiktiv: Kahn ist Agent-Orange-Experte an der Rutgers University in New Jersey und hat in Gewebeproben Robert Frosts hohe Werte von Dioxin und Dibenzofuranen festgestellt.

Das Verbrennen von Giftmüll in offenen Gräben ist überall in den USA ein kriminelles Delikt. Als Verantwortliche hat Turley deshalb Verteidigungsminister William Perry, Sheila Widnall und den Nationalen Sicherheitsberater Anthony Lake, zuständig für die Geheimdienste, beim Bezirksgericht Las Vegas verklagt.

"Wenn sie den Namen des Stützpunkts mitteilen, würden sie dessen Existenz bestätigen - und damit, daß sie gegen das Gesetz verstoßen haben", beschreibt Turley das Dilemma der Regierung. Immerhin hat die Air Force zugeben müssen, in der Nähe des Groom Lake "eine Installation" zu unterhalten. Das kann Turley nicht genügen: "Was ist damit gemeint? Ein Parkhaus oder eine Snackbar?"

Vor allem der Verteidigungsminister kann in Schwierigkeiten kommen. William Perry hat als Pentagon-Staatssekretär seinerzeit die Entwicklung des Tarnbombers und der sogenannten Stealth-Technologie in Auftrag gegeben. Er muß befürchten, daß vor Gericht die Zusammensetzung der radarhemmenden Spezialbeschichtung bekannt wird.

Die Beschwörung des "Privilege" durch Sheila Widnall soll das verhindern. Sie geht aber noch weiter und hat das Innenministerium ersucht, den letzten Rest von öffentlichem Land am Freedom Ridge und White Sides Peak an die Air Force abzutreten. Damit wäre auch die letzte Sichtverbindung zu dem Stützpunkt abgeschnitten.

Gut möglich, daß sie dabei die Geographie Nevadas und die Ausdauer des Landeskenners Campbell unterschätzt. Vor kurzem hat er den 2300 Meter hohen Tikaboo Peak am Südende des Tals bestiegen. Der Tikaboo Peak ist eine mächtige Berggestalt und wirkt dank seiner Quarzadern wie mit einem Blitzableiter geerdet.

Der Gipfel ist 40 Kilometer vom Groom Lake entfernt - und bietet einen prächtigen Rundumblick auf den Stützpunkt. "Man braucht nur starke Ferngläser", hat Campbell herausgefunden.


DER SPIEGEL 16/1995 - Vervielfältigung nur mit Genehmigung des SPIEGEL-Verlags

[ Der Spiegel (Germany), Mid-April 1995 (# 16)]
SPIEGEL editor Joachim Hoelzgen about the experiments on the secret U.S. military base

The Tikaboo Valley in the Nevada desert is so remote that no sign points the way. The shadow of the trucks that pass through here without stopping glide, alone at the end of the horizon, past head-high scrub and cactus trees.

Glenn Campbell, 35, has responded to the unfriendly landscape, he has written a kind of Baedeker about it. His observations he wears in Rachel, the only place on the asphalt ribbon of State Route 375th

Rachel in a veil of mystery is palpable, including the threat. Beyond the mountains that border the valley-wide, there is an enigmatic base that no one sees in all its extension has. Sometimes there is rising in the darkness, a bright light on the mountain slopes up, then look like the clear plastic of a cold future and fantasy. "I have seen everyone and everything," says Campbell, "an eccentric, paranoid, and people who believe to have been abducted by flying saucers."

Finally, the couple Hamilton has asserted that the gravel parking lot at the 32.3 miles mark him a close encounter happened. The Hamiltons want to remember a blazing bright screen and the name of a UFO Commander: Quaylar.

Three years ago, is Campbell of Boston, where he was a programmer, moved to Rachel. His caravan is crammed with computers. Such scanners allow him to listen to the radio channels in this part of Nevada.

Campbell can explain each event: the big black spot in the gravel parking lot is not it was a saucer Aufsetzspur, as some suspected in Rachel, but the scene of a vehicle brands. The truck had a tank caught fire while driving, the trailer was burning from the steel colossus.

It is not surprising that the military most of Campbell's claims. For the Tikaboo Valley stands as a thorn in the side of large training areas, which are concentrated here. To the west are the atomic test site and Yucca Flats, part of the Nellis Bombing and Gunnery Training Area Range. In the north, stretches from the Tonopah base, which was before the Gulf War never-before-seen aircraft: Stealth bomber F-117A, the swallow, thanks to a special glaze radar waves.

All in all, has blocked the U.S. Air Force Reserve sixth of Nevada as a weapon in itself, an area larger than Ireland.

The wooden bar of Rachel, the "Little A'Le'Inn" cowboys drink a cold beer in the evening. Maybe they need to move out into the night to clear brush fires. Outside fighters encounter "flares" off pyrotechnic decoys that will confuse enemy missiles in an emergency and now rain down fiery.

Glenn Campbell does not believe onlooker at the Top Gun maneuvers of the U.S. Air Force to be. He sees himself as a scout. He persistently under surveillance a base, which is beyond the range at Groom Dry Lake Groom Lake bed of salt.

The operator of this plant are trying their utmost to shield them from view of unauthorized persons. She is not even on the cards in front of the U.S. Geological Survey, who call the area southwest of Rachel as "unsurveyed", not as a measure. The base has no official name. Campbell calls it Area 51 - using a plan from a time when in a mine near Rachel tungsten bearing have been exploited.

Campbell is in his trailer on the subject of a newspaper, the Groom Lake Desert Rat, peppered with special information. As alleged owner of the mysterious installation receives the Air Force a free copy.

Campbell has discovered in the mountains of the Groom range provide a new vantage point on public lands: the Freedom Ridge, a 1600-meter bump next to the cone of Whitesides Peak. From both places, a view over the encapsulated area beyond the mountains. But the patrols "in our Berlin Wall," as Campbell calls the border to the military area, is not to be trifled with. The guards do with helicopters occasionally hunt for hikers who do not enter the prohibited area. The helicopter hover down and Campbell have been pressed as a baking pan in the sand.

The drive to Freedom Ridge starts via the main road to the black-painted metal letter box of the rancher Steve Medlin, who owns the water and grazing rights at the foot of the Groom Range. Campbell stopped the SUV in a cactus forest. The ground is hollow and has criss-crossed by strange programs. Behind a plant, a gray cylinder is made of metal. Of the container are two cables in the ground and disappear. There are sensors which are responsive to the magnetic field of a passing vehicle.

Just below the ridge is marked by a futuristic-looking arrangement, the restricted zone: balls of stainless steel, mounted on aluminum poles are. No one knows the function of the balls. In addition, warns a sign with red letters: "Use of Deadly Force Authorized."

The base is 16 kilometers away from the Freedom Ridge and acts like a soft phantom. Ocher-colored buildings are visible operation, fuel tank in a fine mist, beside the towering funnel of a satellite antenna. Clearly distinguishes itself from the so-called hangar 18th He is so high that a Boeing 747 with a space shuttle on its back in place it could find.

A runway, 3.5 miles long ending at the basin of the Groom Lake, where the waters of the winter rain is not quite evaporated. In parallel to this slope extends the longest runway in the world. It is 9.6 kilometers long and extends to the other shore of the salt lake.

The view through the telephoto lens falls back through a magnifying glass at the time of the Cold War. The defense contractor Lockheed black here, by the Congress in Washington barely controllable developed espionage programs and was adjacent to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency of the real master of the house at Groom Lake - and perhaps there are Lockheed and the CIA today.

Started in 1954 on the then single track, the first U-2, a high altitude reconnaissance. The fuselage of the plane was built in the famous Skunk Works of Lockheed at the airport in Burbank, Los Angeles and fly in the belly of a cargo plane to Groom Lake was.

Everything had to happen under a "shield of secrecy," it said in a Festschrift for the 50th anniversary of Lockheed and the Air Force have a "front" must be advanced, as the order came to build the U-2 and the pilots of the CIA . The pilots were seen as "driver", the U-2 as a "research aircraft" and the base at Groom Lake as a "test location".

On 1 May 1960 urged the firing of a U-2 over Sverdlovsk up a world crisis, but Lockheed and the CIA instigated the misfortune to still more. Next, the A-12, a monster with 3.2 times the speed of sound, at the test site fledge - with engine inlets, which had a larger diameter than the body of the machine. The A-12 from North Vietnam and peered over the country flew in just twelve and a half minutes.

As a monument to the Cold War, the base has no jumps. It grows even further, with new hangars have been built, including a long concrete roof, rolled under the aircraft, if Russian reconnaissance satellites rising on the horizon.

Up to 1,500 workers and technicians be transported by a special terminal for the airport in Las Vegas, day and night shift at the Groom Lake. On the apron are Boeing 737 aircraft, in addition to a red stripe at the level of the cabin windows have no marks. The passengers are identified in the terminal building by security guards and taken to the aircraft.

The scanner Scouts of Rachel, the radio frequency of the control tower behind the mountains and the identification of approaching aircraft determined in Las Vegas: "Janet". The Janet pilots sign up for a "dreamland" (261.1 MHz) and sometimes with a "pig farm" or "water city".

The portals of the Groom Lake hangars are open only at night. Halogen light penetrates from the hangar and then creates the illusion of a gravity-free world.

The machinations of the dry bed of Groom Lake is a mystery to experts. The technical writer Bill Sweetman suspects that a hyper-fast spy plane tested at eight times going the speed of sound: "Aurora", a sort of cross between a jet engine and rocket powered by liquid methane. Aurora could be reached in three hours each point on the earth.

In Rachel is also speculated that'll test the mountains behind a devastating sonic weapon, similar to that has the rants of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the Russian right wing. You do not want to exclude the possibility that a bomb hidden on the base-Stockpile; of infamous experiments on missing children, the speech - and of course by flying saucers.

In the dim Little A'Le'Inn, whose name the word "alien" is onomatopoeic again, has already left some of the hard ground of reality. The regular Chuck Clark, an amateur astronomer from Vandenberg in California, speculates on the base sell the Air Force borax and arsenic in UFO crews who are dependent on such substances.

Guru of ufologists is Bob Lazar, a physicist. Lazar said that in the midst of the restricted area an even more secret base with underground hangars admit to the researchers studied a total of nine UFOs. He worked in the late eighties on the drive of an unknown flying object. As proof sets Lazar payslips from the government.

The journey through the trials of human fantasies in the UFO bar corresponds to a Kafkaesque-sounding process in faraway Washington.

On 28 Sheila Widnall February, the Minister of the United States Air Force, America's most comprehensive disclosure requirement - the Military and State Secrets Privilege - adopted to fend off questions about the Groom Lake base. The dissemination of information and even the use of fictitious names like Dreamland or pig farm should be placed under subpoena. "One must assume," said the minister, "that otherwise the U.S. national security is at risk and severely."

As the ufologists, it seems, the Air Force Secretary has created a reality that is going to fall apart. "Just as well you could tell the name of the secret White House deal," says Jonathan Turley, 33, a groom-Lake-specialist kind of rational

Turley is a law professor at George Washington University and worked primarily environmental offenses. He cites two cases against the U.S. government because of the base in Nevada still serves a different purpose: the base is a secret toxic waste center, burned at the exotic resins, paints and solvents.

The chemicals, express Turleys witnesses are from the Lockheed Skunk Works, and were brought to "test location" where they are deposited in the open, 100 meters long and 4 meters deep trenches.

Workers prepared several layers of toxic silt stirred it around with sticks and even barrels sunk in the broth. Then the weird cocktail was doused with kerosene and set alight. At Groom Lake, then always the inferno raged. Clouds of smoke rose from the trenches and pungent gases, the barrels exploded, plumes of smoke drove up to the runways at Salt Lake.

The disposal of the fast was the mid to late eighties, when production of the F-117A Tarnbombers ran at full speed. The bizarre-looking aircraft were tested at Groom Lake, and had thereby demonstrated the skills that later in the Gulf War in the night attack on Baghdad proven.

Turley represents six workers who burned the anti-radar material. Was respirators and special clothing can fill in the ditches and flaring not even gloves had been withheld from them. Now the men are sick. You suffer from liver cancer and toxic eczema.

A seventh worker, sheet metal mechanic, Robert Frost, died in November 1989. "His face was swollen like a football, everything was red, overgrown sores on her back." Helen Frost, describes the slow sick of her husband. The poison attacked the nerves, it caused muscle atrophy and cramps. Nevertheless, the family man swung further to the Janet-Boeing between Las Vegas and the Groom Lake back and forth. Only when it fired into the wells of Yucca Flats an atomic bomb, the workers were allowed to remain at home.

Helen Frost lives in a neat house in the northwest of Las Vegas, far from the panopticon of human weaknesses and desires of the casino gambling capital of the boulevards. It has transformed the kitchen into an office with fax machine and personal computer. "I will not give up as long as Jonathan Turley has enough staying power," she says.

But the legal battle goes tough. The Ministry of Environment in Washington, said that the base is not included in the directory federally owned property and therefore could not exist. Therefore a finding of biochemist Peter Kahn is like fiction: Kahn's Agent Orange expert at Rutgers University in New Jersey and has determined in tissue samples Robert Frost's high levels of dioxins and dibenzofurans.

The burning of toxic waste in open trenches throughout the United States is a criminal offense. As the person responsible has therefore Turley Defense William Perry, Sheila Widnall, and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, sued in charge of the intelligence community, the District Court in Las Vegas.

"When they announce the name of the base, it would confirm its existence - and the fact that they have violated the law," Turley describes the dilemma of the government. After all, the Air Force has had to admit to entertain in the vicinity of Groom Lake, "an installation". This may not be sufficient Turley: "What is meant by a parking garage or a snack?"

Above all, the defense can get into trouble. William Perry has given the Pentagon as secretary of state at the time the development of Tarnbombers and so-called stealth technology in order. He must fear that the composition of the court special radar-resistant coating is known.

The invocation of the "Privilege" by Sheila Widnall to prevent this. She goes even further and has asked the Interior Ministry to assign the last vestiges of public lands at Freedom Ridge and Whitesides Peak to the Air Force. So the last sight would be to cut off the base.

It is quite possible that they underestimated while the geography of Nevada and the stamina of the country connoisseur Campbell. He recently the 2,300-meter peak climbed Tikaboo at the south end of the valley. The Tikaboo peak is a powerful and has a mountain shape, thanks to its quartz veins like a grounded lightning rods.

The summit is located 40 miles from Groom Lake - and offers a magnificent panoramic view of the base. "You only need strong binoculars," Campbell has found.


DER SPIEGEL 16/1995 - Reproduction only with permission of the publisher Spiegel-

1. "Dreamland of death"

SPIEGEL reporter Joachim Hoelzgen about experiments at the most
secret military base of the US: The machinations at the dry-bed of
Groom Lake are a mystery to the experts. It is presumed that a
hyper-fast spy plane with eightfold sonic speed is being tested.
In near Rachel there are speculations that behind the hills a
destructive sonic weapon is being tested, like the one, Vladimir
Shirinovsky, the right-wing radical, was blustering about. Nobody
wants to exclude the possibility, that an emergency supply of
nuclear weapons is stored at the base; there is talk about
infamous experiments on missing children - and, of course, about
flying saucers.

From The Hollywood Reporter, April 12, 1995

CARRADINE FILM SIZES UP "AREA"
by Kirk Honeycutt

A Japanese-financed, independent film will fictionally examine a
real-life mystery that now exists in the Nevada desert. "Area
51," written by Mike Gray -- Oscar nomincated for co-writing a
similar muckraking feature, "The China Syndrome" -- and directed
by actor Robert Carradine, is slated to start production in June
in Rachel, Nev.

The science-fiction thriller will focus on a government facility
in Nevada known to UFO groupies as Area 51 or Groom Lake. Until
recently, the Air Force denied the very existence of the site.

Thanks to considerable media attention, hundreds of people in
recent weeks have converged on the perimeter of the site, located
90 miles northwest of Las Vegas on Nellis Air Force Base. There,
they are convinced, the Air Force is reproducing a captured flying
saucer.

Last weekend, CNN aired a story on the mysterious Area 51.

International Mondo Entertainment, a subsidiary of Mondo Corp., a
major real estate and development company headquartered in Tokyo,
will finance and Naofumi Okamoto, president of Apricot
Entertainment, will produce the film.

Okamoto said the film's budget will be somewhere between $5
million and $8 million ìdepending on the special effects.

The story concerns a female TV news producer trying to get to the
bottom of the mysterious site.

Carradine, who makes his feature directing debut with this film,
describes "Area 51" as a "detective story with a documentary sense
of reality."

Okamoto said he and Carradine mutually came up with the idea for
the film after seeing a half-hour documentary on Fox and reading
stories about the site in several publications, including the New
York Times and Popular Science.

Newsweek then reported in its Feb. 20 issue that five former and
current government employees and the widow of a sixth have filed a
lawsuit charging they were exposed to burning toxic wastes at the
secret Air Force facility.

The widow, Helen Frost, has charged that poisonous fumes from
plastics and chemicals thrown into open pits and doused with jet
fuel contributed to her husbandís death in 1989.

However, the workers' attorney has been stymied by the
government's refusal to reveal the name of so-called "operating
location" on the base. Without an officially recognized name, the
suit cannot proceed.

What is known about the site is that it has been used as a testing
ground for the U-2 spy plane and the F-117A Stealth.

Okamoto, who has headed Apricot Entertainment since its inception
in 1989, said the company previously produced a film called
"Illusion," which starred Emma Samms, Heather Locklear and
Carradine.

The investment by International Mondo marks the company's first
foray in the movie business, Okamoto said. International Mondo's
Fuminori Hayashid will serve as the film's executive producer.

Feds close hill, prohibit peeking at "secret" base
Dayton Daily News, April 11, 1995
Page 3A

By Timothy R. Gaffney
Copyright C. 1995 Dayton Newspapers Inc.

DAYTON, Oh--If you wanted to climb Freedom Ridge in Nevada for a look at the
government's secret desert air base, you're out of luck: The Interior Department
has closed the land to the public, finally acting on a nearly two-year-old
request by the Air Force.
The unofficially named ridge offered a distant but unobstructed view of a
sprawling base whose existence the government refuses to acknowledge. Despite
the secrecy, the base has become widely known as Dreamland, Area 51 and Groom
Lake, for the dry lakebed where the base is located.
It's said to be the base for everything from experimental Stealth jets to
recovered flying saucers.
But hikers hoping for a glimpse of the base Monday found off-limits signs
posted around the ridge, local Area 51 investigator Glenn Campbell said from his
desert office in Rachel, Nev.
Alan Shepherd, acting area manager for the agency's Bureau of Land
Management in Caliente, said the Interior Department reached its decision last
week.
It adds 3,972 acres to the 3.5 million of the Air Force's Nellis Range
complex, a vast bombing and gunnery range stretching northwest from Las Vegas.
Air Force secretary Sheila Widnall asked the Interior Department to seal
off the land in September 1993. The request didn't mention the secret base, but
said it simply needed the land ``for the safe and secure operation of the Nellis
Range.''
``It's outrageous they can get the land for such a flimsy reason,'' said
Campbell, who organized campouts on the ridge and crusaded against its closing
in The Desert Rat, an electronic newsletter.
But ``The Air Force lost the battle,'' Campbell said. ``They actually
attracted more attention to their secret base.''
Few people knew of the vantage point until the Air Force asked to have it
sealed off. After that, the land withdrawal issue became a cause celebre for
critics of government security policy, and the ridge, accessible on foot or in
four-wheel-drive vehicles, became a minor tourist attraction.
Critics say the government is only keeping the base secret from U.S.
citizens. They note that Russia and the former Soviet Union have observed it
with spy satellites for years.
In March 1994, the Dayton Daily News published a special report that
included photos and Russian satellite images of the base.
Under the international Open Skies Treaty, foreign nations will be allowed
to overfly and photograph any U.S. military base, including Dreamland.
The base will still be visible from public land. Campbell said he and
others have observed it from Tickaboo Peak, a more distant but higher mountain
northeast of Groom Lake.

George Washington University
Office of University Relations
Washington, DC 20052

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MEDIA CONTACT: NORA KELLEY
March 15, 1995 (202) 994-3087


"GROOM LAKE" ATTORNEY TURLEY FILES MOTION AGAINST
GOVERNMENT'S INVOCATION OF MILITARY AND STATE SECRETS PRIVILEGE

Washington, D.C. -- In an on-going battle over disclosure of
the identity of "Groom Lake," the top-secret Air Force base in
Nevada where workers were allegedly exposed to hazardous materials,
Jonathan Turley, pro bono lawyer for the plaintiffs and professor
of law at The George Washington University National Law Center,
will file a motion against the government's invocation of the
Military and State Secrets Privilege on Thursday, March 16.
Disclosure of the identity of the base is the first step toward
Turley's ability to identify and question government officials and
other witnesses involved in the case.

Turley alleges that the government is trying to use national
security as an excuse to hide evidence of possible crimes committed
at the facilty. The federal law expresssly requires disclosure of
the name of every federal facility. "The statute does not allow
for a stealth federal facility or "black" hazardous waste program,"
says Turley.

Ten days ago, the secretary of the Air Force gave the court a
sworn affidavit stating that the confirmation of even publicly used
names like "Area 51" would cause "exceptionally grave damage" to
national security and place American lives in extreme jeopardy.

This is the second time such an allegation has been made.
At the outset of this case, the military attempted to dismiss the
actions on the grounds of national security, but were successfuly
thwarted. As part of his current motion, Turley will submit a 300-
page exhibit containing over 290 articles published internationally
which name the top-secret base.

Turley will also present proof that government officials have
used the words "Area 51" and "Dreamland" to refer to the base; that
the court overseeing the case has put "Area 51" into written
opinions; that the term was entered into the Congressional Record
by various congressional leaders; and that the Pentagon itself has
distributed articles referring to the base through its publication
"Inside the Pentagon."

"The defendants have improperly invoked the State Secrets
Privilege in order to avert the establishment of a prima facie case
against itself and the growing embarassment from their own
contradictions in this case," says Turley. "When the case was filed
the defendants refused to even acknowledge the facility's existence
even though it is visible from public land."


TITLE: GROOM LAKE GURU WILL FIGHT COURT'S JUDGMENT

PUBLICATION: Las Vegas Sun

DATE: March 9, 1995

AUTHOR: Steve Sebelius

For Groom Lake secret base gadfly Glenn Campbell, wrangling with
the law atop Freedom Ridge has turned to wrangling in Nevada
courts on an obstruction-of-justice charge.

Campbell, who locked the doors of a news crew's truck July 19 to
prevent a Lincoln County sheriff's deputy from seizing footage
shot on the hill overlooking the Air Force's secret test facility,
has vowed to appeal his Friday conviction to District Court in
Ely.

He said the punishment imposed by Ely Justice of the Peace Ronald
Niman -- a $315 fine and five days of community service -- is not
so much the issue as the seizure of the tapes.

"Effectively, what has happened is that the Air Force, when a news
crew is covering the story out there... can call the sheriff's
department and seize the film, thereby suppressing the story,"
said Campbell.

Campbell had agreed to accompany a news crew from a Los Angeles
NBC station to the hill overlooking the base, but had warned them
that government secrecy rules prohibit photographing the base.

The crew interviewed Campbell on the ridge, but the photographer
had his back to the base so as not to violate the rules. However,
private security guards who patrol the perimeter of the base
called Lincoln County deputies to investigate.

When a deputy came to the base [of Freedom Ridge], the crew
photographed him as well, and he insisted on seizing the tapes
because the crew had allegedly pointed their cameras at the base's
border.


STATE OF NEVADA ASSEMBLY

DRAFT RESOLUTION FOR LEGISLATION, BDR #1591

WHEREAS, State Route 375 is located in Lincoln and Nye
Counties, along the northern edge of the Nellis Air Force Range
between Hiko and Warm Springs, Nevada; and

WHEREAS, The United States Air Force (USAF), after years of
denial, has now officially admitted to operating a facility on the
Nellis Air Force Range near the dry bed of Groom Lake for testing
techniques, operations, and systems critical to the effectiveness
of the United States Military; and

WHEREAS, This remote USAF secret testing facility is commonly
referred to as "Area 51," and is purported to be where the
development and testing was conducted for military aircraft
including the U-2 and SR-71 "Blackbird" spy planes and the F-117A
Stealth attack plane that was so effectively used in the Gulf War
of 1990; and

WHEREAS, "Area 51" and Groom Lake have become a magnet for
hundreds of people curious about unacknowledged flying objects
such as an alleged new hypersonic spy plane, and the even more
exotic Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO's) from outer space; and

WHEREAS, There is speculation by UFO observers that "Area 51"
is also the home of an extra terrestrial alien facility and that
aliens have on occasion visited the small community of Rachel,
"Nevada's UFO Capital"; and

WHEREAS, Rachel, which is located on State Route 375, has
become a mecca for the study of extra terrestrial life, and is the
staging area for UFO viewing sites near " Area 51"; and

WHEREAS, Rachel, is host of semi-annual UFO seminars, which
attract between 100 and 200 UFO experts, enthusiasts, and watchers
from throughout the world; now therefore, be it

RESOLVED, by the Nevada Legislature that State Route 375is
declared "The Extra terrestrial Alien Highway" and the Department
of Transportation is directed to install identifying signs along
the state route; and be it further

RESOLVED, That the Legal Division of the Legislative Counsel
Bureau provide copies of this resolution to the various entities
who may be interested in the dedication of State Route 375 as "The
Extra Alien Highway."

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FOR BILL INTRODUCTION

Additional information that could be included in introduction
portion of the bill is:

1. Larry King, Television Talk Show Host, held a program on UFO's
in Rachel on October 1, 1994.

2. Glenn Campbell of Rachel, who is considered America's Area 51
Authority, publishes the Area 51 Visitors Guide and the Groom Lake
Desert Rat newsletter.

3. The Little A'Le'Inn, which contains UFO memorabilia, is
operated by Pat and Joe Travis. The restaurant and sole watering
hole in Rachel is the gathering place for cowboys, UFO buffs,
Nevada Test Site workers, and possible extraterrestrial aliens.

INFORMATION SOURCES

The following sources were used in developing draft resolution:

1. Aviation Week & Space-Technology, October 3, 1994.
2. Omni Magazine.
3. The New York Times Magazine, June 26, 1994.
4. Popular Science, March 1994.
5. The Capitol Embassy Saucerian Consulate, Mr. Ambassador Merlin
II.
6. Nevada Magazine, October 1993

Introduced by
Assemblyman P.M. "Roy" Neighbors
[Document Obtain March 8, 1995]

Subject: News Item: Nellis F-4 Crash, 3/1
Date: 9 Mar 1995 03:57:29 -0500

Nellis Wild Weasel crashes
NELLIS AFB, Nev. (AFNS) -- Both crewmembers safely
ejected from a Nellis F-4G Wild Weasel fighter jet that crashed
about 11:30 a.m. March 1 northwest of the Tonopah Test Range.
Capt. Michael T. Manning, pilot, and Maj. Michael J. Leggett,
electronic warfare officer, were flown by helicopter to Nellis
Federal Hospital, where they were treated for minor injuries and
released.
The aircraft, assigned to the 561st Fighter Squadron, was on a
training mission over the Nellis Range Complex when the accident
occurred.
A board of officers is investigating the accident.

Groom Lake: The Base That Isn't There
The official secrecy: For some aviation watchers, it proves supersecret aircraft are being tested; for UFO and conspiracy buffs, it confirms something evil or otherworldly; for those concerned with the state of democracy, it symbolizes a clandestine culture not accountable to civilian institutions.
by Glenn Campbell

From the crest of Coyote Summit, not a single tree interrupts the alien vista. Nevada Highway 375 dips to the valley floor, then climbs smoothly, arrow straight, to the rim of mountains 20 miles distant. At the base of this bowl-shaped crater, a few mobile homes lie scattered like buckshot. Don't bother looking for this town in your road atlas; it probably won't be there, but if you pass though be sure to fuel up at the single gas station since the next is at Tonopah, 110 miles to the west. Las Vegas is 150 miles in the other direction with nothing worth mentioning in between. No daily newspapers are delivered here, and radio and TV reception is spotty at best. It is possible, on entering the area, to lose touch with outside reality. Indeed, this has happened to many visitors and perhaps also to the operators of a secret Air Force facility not far away.
Welcome to Rachel, Nevada, currently vying with Roswell, New Mexico, and Gulf Breeze, Florida, as America's "UFO Central." Whether the UFOs actually come here is a matter of debate, but the humans definitely do. In growing numbers, tourists have been making the pilgrimage to the desert outside town to see fantastic lights in the nighttime sky. Satisfaction is almost guaranteed, at least on week nights, because Rachel lies adjacent to a major Air Force war games area, the Connecticut-size (1) Nellis Air Force Range. Exotic-looking flares, dropped by jets to distract hypothetical heat-seeking missiles or launched by ground troops for illumination, are a frequent occurrence that must account for a large proportion of UFO sightings in the area. In the pristine desert skies, distant aircraft lights and even the planets and brighter stars seem to the urban observer to jump around in fantastic ways that "could not possibly" be human or natural and therefore must represent alien spacecraft somehow operated or condoned by the U.S. Government.

Since 1989, tourists have been searching the local skies for alien craft, often seeing what they expect in the ambiguous lights. Some visitors claim to have been abducted by aliens along the highway; a few contend they are aliens themselves, imprisoned on this planet in human form. Ambassador Merlyn Merlin II from the planet Draconis is a frequent visitor, driving a beat-up Monte Carlo and knocking on doors of townspeople to read from the Bible. Interplanetary ambassador Venus-from-Venus, clan in leopard-skin tights, once stopped in Rachel en route to an alien convention, as did the intergalactic Willow from the Pleiades.

In this isolated area with few points of reference, folklore and misperception often get jumbled up with fact until the only thing certain around Rachel is Rachel itself. About 20 miles south of town lies a place that is truly unknown and where most of the questions and fantasies focus: "Area 51," the base that doesn't exist--at least until a few months ago when the Air Force released a brief statement to inquiring journalists: "There are a variety of facilities throughout the Nellis Range Complex. We do have facilities within the complex near the dry lake bed of Groom Lake. The facilities of the Nellis Range Complex are used for testing and training technologies, operations, and systems critical to the effectiveness of U.S. military forces. Specific activities conducted at Nellis cannot be discussed any further than that. (2)

Secrecy Attracts Attention

Naturally, the last sentence grabs the reader's attention. What is going at "Nellis," and why can't we be told? Therein lies the essential irony of this area and perhaps the root of the UFO problem. Like a celebrity famous for being reclusive, Groom Lake has captured the public imagination precisely because the Air Force won't talk about it. The facility has no public name or admitted history. It is buffered by miles of empty desert, while the airspace around it--known on aviation frequencies as "Dreamland"--is off limits even to most military pilots. The base is buffered by miles of empty desert, although it remains visible in the distance from certain hills still on public land. So what is going on there? The answer for the tourists who can still look down from public land and see tantalizing images of the base seems to be, "Anything you want."
What brought the first wave of UFO watchers to Rachel were the publicized claims of a 30-year-old Las Vegan named Bob Lazar. In November 1989, he appeared on a local TV newscast, (3) to announce that he had worked with alien spacecraft at a secret government facility about 15 miles south of Groom Lake deep within the military Restricted Zone and just beyond the ridge from the big air base. In hangars allegedly built into a hillside at the shore of Papoose Dry Lake, Lazar said he saw nine alien flying saucers (but no aliens), and worked extensively with one craft, helping to dissect and "reverse-engineer" its propulsion system.

Lazar claimed that while working in the government program, he secretly brought his friends to the deserts near Rachel on Wednesday nights to watch the saucers being flight tested at Papoose Lake. Following the broadcast, it seemed everyone was coming here on Wednesdays, scrutinizing the skies from their cars parked beside the highway, and then descending like aliens themselves on the Rachel Bar & Grill, the closest watering hole. Within months, the restaurant changed its name to the Little A'Le'Inn; the hamburger plate became the "Alien Burger," and Rachel became the epicenter of something big that no one could quite pin down.

The center of the UFO universe was the mysterious Black Mailbox, a prosaic rancher's mailbox that happened to be the only significant landmark on the empty stretch of Highway 375 about 20 miles southeast of Rachel. Even today a visitor who holds vigil at the mailbox and manages to stay awake won't be disappointed. Every Thursday morning at 4:50 a.m., a shimmering white orb appears above the horizon in the direction of Papoose Lake. Although it has no discernible structure, one would swear it was disk- shaped. It hovers almost motionless above the hills, pulsating and getting steadily brighter for up to five minutes until it slides gently to the right and disappears below the horizon in the direction of Groom Lake. Skeptical observers - inevitably seen by the watchers as government spies - may point out that Boeing 737 airliners regularly transport workers from Las Vegas to Groom Lake. On their regular route, the planes fly directly toward the watchers with bright landing lights on. Some visitors who have staked their reputations on the veracity of this "Old Faithful" UFO counter the insinuation by claiming that they saw a flying saucer turn into a 737 in mid-air, part of a deliberate government deception.

For observers, Area 51 is like a Rorschach test which draws out their own personalities. For the Air Force, its function was more mundane - at least in the beginning.

Born in the Black

The base at Groom Lake was born in the mid-1950s as a remote testing locale for the ultra-secret U-2 spy plane. (4) Lockheed officials selected the site based on its relative remoteness, the presence of a solid lake bed for use as a runway, and the proximity to the Atomic Test Site, which was nominally expanded to take in the area. The popular "Area 51" designation purportedly came from a numbered 60 square mile block on the old Atomic Test Site map. (5) The A-12 and SR-71 spy planes and early versions of the F-117A Stealth fighter were tested here, long before the planes were made public. (6)
Starting with a few simple hangars and Quonset huts, the base grew relatively slowly during its first three decades. Until 1984, although workers were barred by their security oaths from discussing the facility, there seemed to be no official effort to hide its physical presence. The base appeared on U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) maps, (7) and anyone could even drive to the lake bed itself and look across to the hangars in the distance . Back then, the only civilians interested in the base were hard-core aviation buffs and presumably a few real Soviet spies.

Then, in 1984, during the weapons buildup of the Reagan administration, the base went "deep black." In a controversial action initially without legal sanction, the Air Force seized control of the entire Groom Mountain Range, which overlooks the base, and posted armed guards. (8) After the Groom Mountains were withdrawn by act of Congress, the base - not unlike the secret cities of the Soviet Union - disappeared from official maps. Current USGS maps and even most military air charts show only a blank lake bed with no significant roads or runway. (9)

In reality, the base expanded significantly. Standards of measurement are hard to find, but a 1990 satellite image revealed twice as many buildings as appeared on a 1968 Landsat photo. Ironically, the 1990 imagery comes directly from the Russians, who will sell it to anyone, friend or foe, willing to fork over between $500 and $2000 per frame. (10) They and their former Soviet allies are also permitted to over-fly and photograph the secret Groom Lake base, as well as the rest of U.S. territory, as part of the new Treaty on Open Skies. (11) Today, it seems that only the U.S. taxpayer is denied official information about the base.

So What's Up?

Confirmable evidence about what might be going on at Groom since 1984 has been thin. Only a few peripheral facts are known about current operations. The 10 to 12 round-trip 737 flights each weekday to ferry workers suggests a work force between 500 to 1500 people--depending on the number of empty seats and how many stay overnight. Russian satellite imagery showing recent runway construction suggests that aircraft testing is still a major mission of the base.
Conventional wisdom says that the base has been used primarily for the testing of Stealth aircraft and miscellaneous "Star Wars" systems, both intended to keep pace with a technologically sophisticated enemy which the U.S. no longer has. If projects relevant to the current world are indeed going on there, the Air Force isn't talking and neither are the employees. Mentioning Groom Lake to a current worker usually produces visible emotional distress and immediate silence, a reaction which seems to diminish only decades after employment. Since publicly verifiable sources are almost as nonexistent as the base, any review of projects taking place now is, for the most part, conjecture or hearsay.

Speculation over the past few years cites Groom as the testing ground for a high-speed, high-altitude spy plane which the popular press has dubbed "Aurora," based on an unexplained budget line item with that name. (12) Aurora seems as hard to pin down as UFOs. Some black budget aviation watchers, like writer Bill Sweetman who has written a popular book on the subject, (13) believe it must exist. They look for confirmation to the unexpected retirement of the SR-71 in 1990, mysterious "sky quakes" felt in southern California, and a sighting of a triangular aircraft by a reliable witness over the North Sea. (14)

The official response is unequivocal: "The Air Force has no such program, either known as 'Aurora' or by any other name," asserted Secretary of the Air Force Donald Rice. (15) Ben Rich, former chair of the Lockheed Skunk Works, most frequently cited as the alleged manufacturer, echoes the denial explaining that "Aurora" was a code name for funding related to the B-2 bomber. (16)

John Pike, space policy expert for the Federation of American Scientists speculates that at least some of the talk about the elusive Aurora "has to have been actively inspired" as a distraction. "The main thing going on at Groom Lake," Pike contends, "is testing spy planes and dissecting Russian aircraft. In the last few years the U.S. has spent a significant portion of a billion dollars from the Foreign Materials Acquisition Program hauling off everything in the former Soviet Union that wasn't tied down.... The Russians are having a fire sale, no reasonable offer refused," and much of the booty ends up at Groom Lake. (17) Indeed, former workers say that three of the largest hangars at Groom were built to house our country's "Red Hat" squadron of purloined Soviet aircraft. (18)

Other plausible projects include another stealth aircraft intended to replace or supplement the aging F-117A, (19) and a plethora of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). A UAV can be a big, slow, and very light "flying wing" that, if stealthy enough, could probably perform or even outperform most of the reconnaisance tasks of the Aurora. It could loiter over a target for hours instead of mere minutes allowed a hypersonic craft. To the airplane watchers targeting Groom, UAVs aren't as sexy as something faster, higher or more maneuverable than planes of the past, so the UAV theory is rarely discussed.

But why should this secrecy be necessary after the fall of the USSR? Perhaps if the stolen planes were exposed, the corrupt Russians who traffic in the technology might still be at political risk and the program endangered. Alternatively, maybe Groom Lake retains its current secrecy - not because there is anything particularly secret going on there now, but because the government wants to protect the ability to run highly classified projects there in the future. Once a secret base is lost, the military might reason, it cannot easily be regained. And once granted, "leftover" secrecy tends to hang around after the initial justifications fade in order to prevent "meddling" by outsiders, including taxpayers and their elected representatives. And once granted, "leftover" secrecy tends to hang around after the initial justifications fade away.

The Kind of Attention the Military Hates

While the Lazar story and the UFO wave that followed ended decades of successful obscurity for Area 51, it has taken two legal actions to attract the attention of the mainstream media.
When the military seized the Groom Mountain Range in 1984, it forgot two obscure hills, the most popular now known as "Freedom Ridge." Anonymous camouflage-clad security guards without name tags or insignia patrol this public land in white Jeep Cherokees. Said to be employed by the government contractor EG&G, (20) the well armed, tight-lipped "cammo-dudes" are now as much a tourist attraction as the base itself. Visitors to Freedom Ridge who make the 45 minute trek by foot or four-wheel-drive from a maintained dirt road are rewarded with a static view of hangars and support buildings fronting a long runway about 13 miles distant. With a telescope, they can pick out aircraft, vehicles, and even people engaged in routine activities they cannot even report to their families. Scanner radio buffs can tune in the unacknowledged control tower frequencies. (21) When the controller says, "Watchdog is in effect," it is a warning to pilots that there are civilian observers on the ridge and, presumably, that they should not engage in any action that would expose a secret project. Some aircraft, according to the broadcasts, are even turned away by the control tower until the watchers leave.

In October 1993, the Air Force applied to the secretary of the interior to withdraw the two viewpoints from public use. (22) Apart from patriotic rhetoric about the need for a strong national defense and the importance of the Nellis Range for training pilots, the only explanation the Air Force provided was a single sentence:

"The purpose of the withdrawal is to assure the public safety and the safe and secure operation of activities in the Nellis Range Complex." (23)

The withdrawal application and the ambiguous explanation triggered immediate and widespread publicity and gave the media the kind of story the public seems to find irresistible: a government cover-up. From Popular Science (24) to the New York Times Magazine, (25) news outlets asked the same basic question: "What is going on at Groom Lake and why can't we be told?" When local sherrif's deputies seized videotape shot by ABC News (26) and KNBC-TV of Los Angeles, (27) the events become part of their stories and only heightened public interest. The Lincoln County Sherriff's Department was accused of deputizing the anonymous security guards and acting as Air Force rent-a-cops, seizing film and arresting naive tourists who wandered across the unfenced border. (28) The crest of the media wave was a two-hour Larry King television special on UFOs broadcast "Live from Area 51," or more precisely, live from the desert across the highway from the Little A'Le'Inn. (29)

For now, Freedom Ridge remains open, and Watchdog seems to be in effect almost every day. The number of groups hiking in to catch a glimpse of "the base that doesn't exist" has soared from one a week to four or five a day. Whatever importance the withdrawal may have for national security, it cannot be called a triumph for Air Force public relations.

A potentially worse disaster, not only for public relations, but for public health is a recently-filed hazardous waste lawsuit. [See p. 40.] Unless the suit is settled out of court, it could linger for years, keeping Groom in the news and perhaps forcing some real changes in military policy. The fundamental problem is, how to sue a base that doesn't exist. Former workers are under oath not to talk about their employment, so how can they testify? In similar legal and political battles in the past, like the initial 1980's Groom range landgrab, the military has often triumphed simply by outlasting the enemy, but now the attacks are more broad-based and the public support for such secret operations is dwindling. In the post-Cold War era, blind public patriotism and employee trust are not what they were, making denial of the obvious increasingly difficult to maintain.

The End of an Era?

About 90 miles west of Groom is yet another secret base, the Tonopah Test Range (TTR), first operational base for the F-117A Stealth fighter. (30) It has a very long runway and an expanse of hangars and support buildings roughly equivalent to Groom's. Because it so closely resembles Groom, it should be a UFO hotbed and a popular tourist attraction, but it is not, either because the UFOs simply aren't there or because TTR doesn't have Groom's mystique. TTR "exists" while Groom does not. Guards at Tonopah have name tags, the facility has a sign on the highway, and the base itself is plainly visible from a remote but public road. Because it is not hidden, TTR is perceived by the public as too obvious to possibly hold any mysteries and thus has largely escaped public scrutiny.
Paradoxically, the very fact that Groom was once America's most secret air base may assure that it will soon be the least secret. Perhaps the management felt that by acknowledging anything at all about the place, even its existence, it would be starting down the slippery slope toward releasing everything. That fear may be self-fulfilling. Now that the "nonexistence" of Area 51 has attracted so much attention, it seems doubtful that the Air Force can dilute interest with dribbles of information. The power of tourism and compulsive data collecting by civilian hobbyists may do more to expose the base than all the efforts of Soviet spies.

Until a few months ago, inquiries about Groom Lake to the staff at the Nellis A.F.B. Public Affairs Directorate yielded only facetious responses like, "Groom Lake, where's that?" or "Area 51? Never heard of it." Today, the caller is patched through immediately to the public affairs director who provides the statement quoted at the beginning of this article: "We do have facilities within the complex near the dry lake bed of Groom Lake." For those who have long pursued "the base that doesn't exist," it is a remarkable admission. It is the first crack in the wall and probably won't be the last.


TITLE: LAWMAKER PUSHES 'E.T' HIGHWAY RESOLUTION

PUBLICATION: Las Vegas Review-Journal

DATE: February 27(?), 1995

AUTHOR: Ed Vogel

CARSON CITY -- Not every bill that comes before the [Nevada]
Legislature deals with such weighty topics as crime, punishment
and the budget.

Some of the bills are fun, like Assemblyman Roy Neighbors'
resolution to designate a 98-mile stretch of state Route 375 as
Nevada's official "Extra Terrestrial Alien Highway."

Neighbors, D-Tonopah, doesn't mind attaching his name to the UFO
highway bill because he's a believer.

As a Navy pilot during the Korean War, he spotted a streaking blue
object as he was was flying at about the 20,000-foot elevation
over Florida and reported it to authorities.

"Nothing showed on radar," Neighbors said. "Some Air Force guy
came on the radio and said, 'What are you Navy guys drinking.'"

The isolated Lincoln County route Neighbors wants given special
degination has for decades been the road where observers have
noticed UFOs. Skeptics, of course, contend the objects likely are
experimental aircraft being tested at the Groom Lake military base
that the government refuses to acknowledge exists.

An "Extra Terrestrial Alien Highway" would attract national
attention, Neighbors said. "We'd put up some funny signs. 'Alien
Crossing.' 'Watch Out for Low Flying Spacecraft.' We'd have some
fun with it and it would help attract people to Lincoln County."

TITLE: EX-WORKER DESCRIBES STEALTH COPTER

SUBTITLE: The Air Force has been testing the high-tech craft at
Groom Lake, a former base employee contends.

PUBLICATION: Las Vegas Review-Journal

DATE: February 26, 1995

AUTHOR: Susan Greene

A classified, black-budget stealth helicopter was being tested at
the Groom Lake Air Force base as early as 1990, a former base
employee said this week.

The former worker, who asked not to be identified, closely
monitored daily base operations and revealed the code name for the
helicopter as "T.E.-K," standing for "Test and Evaluation Project
K."

That code name is consistent with those of at least two previous
stealth projects tested at the classified Lincoln County air base
-- the F-117 stealth fighter, known as "T.E.-A," and the B-2
stealth bomber, known as "T.E.-B."

The former worker described the helicopter as drab green, angular
and riveted, with gull-wing doors that flip vertically and cup
underneath the body when closed.

The two-seater was loaded with telemetry gear in back and flew
silently, without the loud beating of rotor blades typical of
other helicopters, he noted.

The former worker said two of the helicopters were stored near the
southern end of the base complex in Hanger 8, the structure where
the Air Force reportedly stored the B-2 while testing that
aircraft during the late 1980s.

He recalled that pilots took the helicopter for spins up to twice
a day, sometimes testing them against Soviet radar systems in the
Nellis Air Force Range, and sometimes simply hovering over the air
base, occasionally switching directions.

"I'm not sure exactly what they were testing, but it looked like
they were trying it out pretty completely," he said.

Some aspects of his description match details about secret high-
speed stealth helicopters outlined in the Feb. 6 issue of Aviation
Week and Space Technology magazine.

Aviation experts believe plans for such aircraft have been under
way for at least 10 years.

"This is a project that could be very close to completion," said
John Pike, director of the Space Policy Project for the
Washington-based Federation of American Scientists.

Experts say light, quiet and stealthy helicopters could be used
for clandestine "Rambo-type missions," quick-in, quick-out
assignments without being noticed.

"I'd say they could get a lot of use out of that type of
aircraft," Pike said.

Officials at the Pentagon and Nellis Air Force Base would not
comment specifically on the existence of stealth helicopters or on
other black-budget aircraft being tested within the Nellis Air
Force Range. They have also refused to acknowledge the existence
of the Groom Lake base itself, which has been observed by
thousands of onlookers from nearby mountain ridges in Lincoln
County.

The Air Force has applied to withdraw those ridges as a buffer
zone around the air base. That withdrawal is expected to be
approved this spring.

TITLE: "IT DARES NOT SPEAK ITS NAME"

SUBTITLE: "Environment: How to stymie a toxic-waste lawsuit"

PUBLICATION: Newsweek

DATE: Feb. 20, 1995

AUTHOR: Bruce Shenitz and Sharon Begley

What's in a name? Maybe the key to a pathbreaking environmental
lawsuit. Five former and current government employees and the
widow of a sixth, charge that the workers suffered blackouts,
rashes, respiratory problems and dime size open sores after they
were exposed to burning toxic wastes at a secret air force
facility in Nevada. The widow, Helen Frost, contends that
poisonous fumes, from plastics and chemicals that were thrown into
open pits and doused with jet fuel, contributed to her husband's
death in 1989. Lawyers have a tough enough time pinning illness,
let alone death, on exposure to toxics. But the worker's
attorney, Jonathan Turley of George Washington University's law
school, faces a more basic problem. For four months after the
suit was filed, the government denied the very existence of the
facility; now is acknowledges that there is an "operating
location" in the area, but refuses to reveal its name. (The
workers know the site by several names, but the Feds won't say
whether any is right.) And in a Kafkaesque technicality, without
the officially recognized name, which Turley filed a motion last
week to get, the suit cannot proceed.

If the site's a secret, it's badly kept. Russian spy satellites
have amassed a nice albumful of snapshots of the facility, 90
miles northwest of Las Vegas on Nellis Air Force Base. UFO
groupies know it as Area 51, or Groom Lake: hundreds have flocked
to the perimeter, convinced the air force is reproducing a
captured flying saucer at the site. It was also the testing
ground for the U-2 spy plane and the F-117A stealth. But just as
you can't sue someone you know only by nickname, so Turley's
clients can't sue the Pentagon over a site whose proper moniker
the government won't disclose. The plaintiff's request for the
name, says a government brief, is "vague, overbroad, and
unreasonably burdensome." If the Feds remain mum about the name,
Turley plans to call o the witness stand the military attache at
the Russian Embassy, whose testimony would show that Area 51 is
eminently real, and no secret.

If he gets past the procedural hurdle, Turley says, he has a
strong case. He has evidence that the Air Force denied the
worker's requests of protective clothing, and that Frost's body
had high levels of dioxins and furans (produced when plastics
burn) when he died. The Department of Justice and the
Environmental Protection Agency have launched a probe into
hazardous waste violations at Area 51; an air force spokesman says
it "takes its environmental responsibilities very seriously." Of
course, if the Pentagon blocks the suit by refusing to release the
name of the site, the validity of the charges won't matter.

Subj: AW&ST February 6, 1995 (long)
Date: Wed, Feb 8, 1995 4:21 AM PDT
From: schnars@ais.org
X-From: schnars@ais.org (Kathryn & Andreas Gehrs-Pahl)
Sender: skunk-works-owner@gaia.ucs.orst.edu
To: skunk-works@gaia.ucs.orst.edu (Skunk Works List)

If someone from AW&ST is reading this, please excuse excessive quoting,
but keep in mind, this is for non-profit and educational purpose only --
and actually some sort of free advertisement too. :)

The front page shows an artists impression of a single-seat stealth
helicopter and the title:
"LIFTING THE CURTAIN ON THE MILITARY'S BLACK WORLD"

The cover story consists of 4 articles:

"U.S. BLACK PROGRAMS STRESS LEAN PROJECTS", pages 18-21,
by David A. Fulghum and John D. Morrocco, Washington;
and William B. Scott, Colorado Springs

"LONG-RANGE STRIKE NEEDS DRIVE BLACK PROGRAMS", pages 20-22,
by David A. Fulghum, Washington

"DARA SOUGHT STEALTHY ROTORCRAFT", page 23,
by staff, no name given

"JAST TO BE SINGLE SEAT/ENGINE DESIGN", pages 22-23,
by John D. Morrocco, Washington

First Article:
==============
"Standoff weapons dominate U.S. military black program development, but
fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters continue to draw Pentagon investments

The U.S. military currently is pursuing twelve significant black
aviation projects, according to high-ranking Pentagon officials.
AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY has confirmed that these classified
projects include two fixed-wing aircraft prototypes, two rotary wing
projects and eight weapons programs. There are believed to be more, but
some may not fall into traditional "development" categories, and several
may be proof-of-concept vehicles or production prototypes."

[The next two paragraphs are about budget and the likelyhood that a new
stealth aircraft program is about 10-15 years away. -- Andreas]

" Defense and industry officials confirm there are at least two U.S. and
one British classified, fixed-wing aircraft prototyping programs underway.
Others are believed to exist, based partially on numerous in-flight and
on-ramp sightings over the last few years, but these have not been verified.
"There are studies and cardboard [mock-up] aircraft, but no follow-ons
to the F-117 or F-22 have flown yet, although at some point we will [fly
some]," a senior U.S. defense official said. When they do appear, however,
it will be obvious that current predictions of "long range and unusual
weapons capabilities are vastly overstated," he said.
The two U.S. fixed-wing projects were described as fighter-attack-type
aircraft with moderate range and payload. Their chances of going into
production currently are slim because they have yet to show promise of
"significant improvement over the F-117 or F-22," the senior defense
official said. "We're just not there yet.""

[The next paragraph talks about employing standoff (and small amounts
of active) jamming to mask the aircrafts signature into the background
noise -- Andreas]

" "It will take another generation of aircraft before the major
technological hurdles are cleared that will make building a stealth
follow-on worthwhile," he said."

[That could mean, that the TR-3A is the same (old) generation of stealth
design as the F-117A, and would probably not fall under the category of
new black programs or new stealth aircraft -- Andreas]

" "The British have designed a manned aircraft with a low RCS from the
frontal aspect, but I don't think they have anything flying," the first
senior U.S. defense official said. "It is easier [and cheaper] to treat
the nose, the frontal hemisphere, than it is the aft. That is how most of
your engagements are flown -- nose to nose.""

[Maybe that's the one that crashed at Boscombe Down? -- Andreas]

" In addition, the U.S. military has been working for years on at least
two helicopter projects. The more recent is development of a light, very
quiet helicopter with a mast-mounted sight. An older, long-term project
is aimed at trying to reduce the radar signature of helicopter rotors.
"The helicopter work going on at the Nellis [AFB, Nev.] ranges is not
Air Force," a third senior U.S. defense official said. "They are treating
blades and jet engines to reduce the radar reflectivity. They are working
on RAM [...] for the blades and a redesign of the blade tips to reroute
the radar signals.""

[The next seven paragraphs describe the small helicopter, but more about
the helicopter in the third article -- Andreas]

" Many of the Defense Dept.'s classified projects appear to be associated
both with improved stealth and precision-strike capabilities. The resulting
requirements for space, security and radar measurements by both U.S. and
foreign equipment ensure that new models or prototypes of aircraft and
weapons are flown or tested at one or more facilities."

[RCS and other radar test facilities listed are:
- Nellis Test Range, north of Las Vegas, Nev.;
- Northrop Grumman's Tejon Test Range, west of Edwards AFB, Calif.;
- a McDonnell Douglas facility, south of Edwards;
- Lockheed's Helendale, Calif., RCS range near Barstow, Calif.;
- RATSCAT (Radar Target Scatter) facility at Holloman AFB, N.M.;
- RAMS (RATSCAT Advanced Measurement System) facility, also at Holloman AFB;
photos of RAMS and RATSCAT (with F-117) are included
- and a not specified facility in the U.K.]

" Most of the reputed sightings of aircraft in flight, U.S. defense
officials associate with unmanned aerial vehicle prototypes or
proof-of-principle designs for the Tier 2, 2-, 3- and now-canceled Tier 3
reconnaissance programs; the stealthy Tri-Service Standoff Attack Missile
(TSSAM), and stealthy helicopter programs. Moreover, there are projects
that do not involve airframe development. A Pentagon Advanced Concept
Technology Demonstrator (ACTD)project is flying a manned aircraft at the
classified Groom Lake, Nev., facility. A project, until recently named
"Ivy," involves an aircraft coating that changes hues and brightness when
subjected to an electrical charge."

[Ok, here we go again: ACTD or "Senior Citizen" (not 'fixed-wing', not
'rotorcraft', not 'reconnaissance drone') manned LTA (what else is left?),
maybe incorporating the "Ivy" coating to become 'invisible'? -- Andreas]

[The next paragraph says that the Pentagon is more concerned with RAM than
with active camouflage, and the following article blames all the 'UFO'
sightings on flying scale models and RCS mock-ups -- Andreas]

" Defense Dept. and industry officials confirm that there are classified
aircraft on the large, restricted Nellis ranges, but they make that
assertion with a number of caveats.
"The aircraft being tested are either not manned, not flying or not
Air Force," the third official said. "There are one-half and three-quarter
scale mockup aircraft that have been loaded in Air Force aircraft and
transported that people may have seen."
HOWEVER, that leaves open the possibility that some are aircraft that
belong to the U.S. Navy, Central Intelligence Agency, Advanced Research
Projects Agency or other organizations with black budgets. Aerospace
companies also have their own closely guarded research projects.
"There were numerous private [companies] designing aircraft and they
may have flown something," he said."

[The article contains artists impressions of the Loral Tier 2+ flying
wing concept study, the Lockheed/Boeing Tier 3- (which looks 'different' :))
and again of the little stealth helicopter -- Andreas]

Second Article:
===============
[It mainly talks about stealthy and precision (GPS) guided weapons, to
substitute or accompany the more or less stealthy aircraft. It also mentions
HPW (High Power Microwave) and Carbon-fiber warheads to take out electrical
grids, antennas and C3I installations. It ends with the description of a
stealthy first strike -- Andreas]

" Stealth advocates draw a scenario in which waves of the longest-range
cruise missiles would strike first, particularly against low-frequency
radars that can glimpse stealthy aircraft, a Pentagon warplanner said.
Then, Tomahawks with carbon-fiber warheads would strike antenna arrays
and electrical grids to knock out a city's electricity and thus any
ambient light that might reveal an F-117 or B-2 to a foe.
Next, stealthy aircraft would strike hardened command and control
structures with large, penetrating bombs. Finally, partially stealthy
aircraft would approach within standoff weapon distance of the target,
shielded by flights of decoys and standoff jamming. The new generation of
classified, high-precision, mid-range standoff weapons would ignore any
GPS jamming to finish destroying high-density surface-to-air missile
threats and key strategic targets."

[The article also includes two photos of the canceled A-12 Avenger II
mock-up, a frontal view and a side/top view -- Andreas]

Third Article:
==============
[This article describes the two stealth helicopter projects from the
mid-80s, mentioned earlier -- Andreas]

" The larger of the two was a secret version of the NASA/DARPA/Sikorsky
X-Wing Rotor Systems Research Aircraft (RSRA), and it is not clear if a
prototype ever flew. The unclassified RSRA X-Wing program was canceled in
1988 after several flights in only its fixed-wing mode [...]. However,
DARPA's secret version of the X-Wing -- also run by Sikorsky -- was a
larger program than its unclassified cousin, according to sources
familiar with both programs."

[It describes the three main stealth technologies employed as:
- the stopped X-Wing (at 45-deg.) reduced frontal radar reflection and
enables fast flight without the tell-tale Doppler signature of a
helicopter;
- NOTAR-like -- but more conventional -- thrusters in the tail booms tip
for torque control;
- convertible engines (modified TF34), able to switch between turboshaft
and turbofan modes;
It concludes with some deception practice -- Andreas]

" The RSRA X-Wing program provided an open method to develop the crucial
X-wing technology, and provided cover for the broad nature of the classified
effort. The white program could order parts for the black program, and
vendors would be none the wiser."

[The description of the other, smaller helicopter is combined from the
first and the third article -- Andreas]

" THE SMALL ROTORCRAFT is a McDonnell Douglas Helicopter project conducted
with the renamed Advanced Research Projects Agency. Configuration details
are sketchy, and it is not known if it uses the McDonnell Douglas
no-tail-rotor (Notar) technology.
More than one of the McDonnell Douglas craft may have been built, and
flights are conducted in the restricted airspace of the Nellis AFB range.
Tests include flying against radar sites to measure the rotorcraft's
signature. The program is considered "extremely black," and the aircraft
fly at night or out of sight of uncleared personnel during the day.
Flights are scheduled to avoid spy satellite coverage."

[In the first article, the aircraft is described as a single-seat,
"twin-turbine-powered helicopter", "said to have four rigid, slightly
scimitar-shaped rotor blades and a four-port, no-tail-rotor (NOTAR) boom".
The main rotor blades are supposed to have very little droop when the
aircraft is sitting at the ramp. "The rotor hub is claimed [...] to be
configured so that the main rotor-disk diameter can be reduced several
feet by sweeping the blades, ostensibly to reduce noise and allow higher-
speed forward flight. A mast-mounted electro-optical sight extends above
the main rotor hub." It "has an overall length of about 33 ft. Short stub
wings can carry external weapons, augmenting a single-barrel gun mounted
on the aircraft's belly and may aerodynamically unload the main rotor
during high-speed flight." -- Andreas]

" Senior defense officials contend that while progress has been made
with reducing the noise signature of helicopters, major RCS improvements
on the main rotor and hub have proved elusive."

[This quiet helicopter, which is supposed to have flown for years, is
believed to utilize new RAH-66A Comanche technology improvements. The
(third) article also mentions that Bell apparently has not developed a
stealthy helicopter design, mentioning that Bell's usual high tail rotor
designs are not very stealthy -- Andreas]

Fourth Article:
===============
[This article describes the latest concepts for JAST, which will be a
single-engine, single-seat (with growth capability) aircraft, with several
more or less stealthy versions, with CTOL and STOVL capabilities. Engines
in questions are the F119-PW and maybe the YF120-GE. It will have a small
internal weapons capability, and the less stealthy versions use external
loads. It might be possible to eliminate most of the vertical stabilizers,
incorporating vectored thrust, but the (non-)stealthyness of axisymmetrical
thrust-vectoring nozzles may proof problematic -- Andreas]

" OVERALL, CONTRACTORS are looking at graduated levels of signature reduction
for each version of the baseline aircraft. "You are going to see a range of
signatures as a function of the application of the airplane," Muellner [Maj.
Gen. George Muellner, head of the JAST program -- Andreas] said. The Navy's
desire for a first-day survivable aircraft will require a very low observable
[VLO -- Andreas] signature as compared to that for an Air Force F-16
replacement, for example. For Marine Corps close air support, infrared
signature control is more critical than radar signature."

-- Andreas

TITLE: NEVADA WILL GET EVEN SWAP FOR GROOM LAKE LAND DEAL

PUBLICATION: Las Vegas Sun

DATE: Feb. 3, 1995

AUTHOR: Rachael Conlin

Nevada is likely to get 4,000 acres the military owns within state
borders in exchange for giving up an equal amount of land near a
secret base under a deal negotiated by Sen. Richard Bryan.

The Air Force wants the land to tighten security around the top-
secret base 120 miles north of Las Vegas. The base, dubbed Area
51 or Groom Lake, has been used to test advanced U.S. aircraft,
including U-2 spy planes and the F-117A stealth fighter.

Included in the proposed swap is Freedom Ridge, which provides an
unobstructed view of the base about 12 miles away.

The equal exchange was agreed upon by Bryan, D-Nev., and Air Force
Secretary Sheila Widnall last month. The agreement responds to
public criticism that the military was grabbing more land and
offering Nevada nothing in return.

It was reported incorrectly earlier this week that Bryan secured
the Air Force's promise that the military would return Nevada land
it owns for that which it bombs in the Desert National Wildlife
Refuge.

Nellis Air Force Base wants ownership of 107,000 acres of the
federally protected land that it presently uses for target bombing
practice. The Desert National Wildlife Refuge consists of 1.5
million acres northwest of Las Vegas.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manages the entire refuge, but
the Air Forces activities keep it from acting as caretaker of the
bombed land.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., proposed the land swap as a way to strike
a balance between the need to expand and strengthen Nellis and
protect threatened wildlife.

Reid is fighting to keep the proposed swap within state
boundaries, just like the Groom Lake exchange. Last year,
environmental groups criticized the proposal because the military
could have assumed ownership of the Nevada land in exchange for
giving up land in another state.

Reid originally authored legislation for the Desert Refuge land
exchange. But once the Republican Party assumed control of
Congress, the senator chose to pursue the swap through the Clinton
administration.

[End of Article.]

Notes:

The Groom Base is actually about 90 air miles north of Las Vegas.

The 4,000 acre swap and AF's request for a 107,000 acre bombing
range are techically unrelated. It is possible to support the
107,000 acre action while opposing the 4,000 acre one. (The
article seems to mix the two together in a confusing manner.)

-- Glenn Campbell

Subj: GROOM LAKE PICNIC REPORT
Date: Jan 21 1994
From: Bill Moyer
To: Any interested parties

The Picnic went very well, from an activist point of view.
This Report starts out at 3:00 A.M. on 1-21-95 when I left Reno for Rachel
Nevada. The first four hours of the six hour trip was smooth to Tonopah,
then it started to snow.

Going through the snow in the mountains twenty five miles from any form of
human life is quite an experience, one that has to be experienced to be
appreciated. After clearing the mountains east of Tonopah, on highway 6 the
weather turned to rain, then cleared up to a partiality cloudy day with snow
flurries dancing around the mountain ranges, Strange weather for a
strange place. The remaining two hour drive from the mountains on
highway 6 and state route 375 to Rachel was uneventful and lonely.

After stopping at the Area 51 Research Center for the event update sheet I
proceeded to the black mailbox on SR 375, 20 miles east of Rachel, and
followed the "This way to the SECRET BASE" arrows and signs marking the roads.

When I reached the Freedom Ridge trailhead I was astonished that a
CNN news crew taping the dramatic arrival of Bill Moyer in his dented
yellow 1979 Ford Fairmont. This was a full blown low level camera shot
with a sound man and microphone boom, camera man and David Mattingly
the CNN reporter. I can see it now on Headline News: Bill Moyer drives
down Groom Lake road in his dented yellow 1979 Ford Fairmont and doesn't
break down, Wow that's big news out of Rachel.

At the trail head about six or seven of us got together and was interviewed
by the news crew and was ask to state our names, where we were from, and
why are we here? Each person there stated their reason in cute oneliners
like: I'm here because its there, I'm here because its not there,"officially",
One person said something about UFO's, another about Black Projects, the
usual stuff about the Groom Mysteries.

When it became my turn, that is when the fireworks started:

My name is Bill Moyer, I'm here from Reno Nevada, the reason I am here
is to protest government accountantability in the management of toxic
waste and using the secrecy of the area to cover up, the burning
of toxic chemicals left over from the stealth programs, as evidenced
by the pending court cases by the surviving family members of the
Groom lake base workers who were exposed to these chemicals.

I then pulled out my letters from Senator Reid, Senator Bryan, and
Congress Representative Vucanovich, which I received about my opposition
to the Groom lake withdrawal and they (news crew) went wild and put
the camera, microphone and reporter in my face. They taped the letters,
Taped me plagiarizing the local Groom Lake scanner frequencies from
Paul McGinnis's scanner into my scanner on the trunk lid of a dented yellow
1979 Ford Fairmont. They taped me listening to encrypted Camodude
communication, while I was looking at them (Camodudes) looking at me
through binoculars. And last but not least My dramatic arrival to the
Groom Lake road trail head. (only because I was one of the first tourist
to get there)

What has this simple minded podunk activist done to deserve this CNN attention?

As it turned out after the excitement was over I found out from the reporter
that CNN sent (him) David Mattingly and crew to cover the Groom Lake Picnic
as part of their report on hazardous waste disposal, and other reported
pollution problems at Groom as part of their on going environmental reports.
So much for UFO's, Black Projects and other Groom Lake crazy stuff.

The Picnic went as planned. We massed at the trail head so Glenn Campbell could
perform the Freedom Ridge rules ordination ceremony. Then the crowd divided
into two groups, the 4 wheel drive group, and the hikers to proceed the ridge.

At the Ridge there was a surprise. The base was functional. The government
did not even shut it down. There was a F-15 in flight emergency which landed
at Groom on one of the cross runways, talk of area 63 being secured
and entering area 55 from the scanners. The Super-Mega-Spy-Cam was left
un-manned and no extra cammo dudes were on overtime, andthe two that were there
not even getting out of the white jeeps to watch us. Several of the surveillance
cameras were missing from the hills along the boarder. No new sensors on public
land to replace the missing ones that were taken a few months ago.

All of this has left me to ponder.....Has Groom come out of the closet and
become a normal Air Force Base? Is there a base open house down the road,
like other normal, NORMAL AIR FORCE BASES?? Is the land withdrawal going to
happen? You can bet I'll stay tuned to the Groom Lake Desert Rat for more news
of this strange secret base behavior.

The people also had a since of complacency at the routine for the day, with
the scheduled events of eating hot dogs, drinking a Pepsi watching the base,
watching the press watch the people watch the base, nobody seemed to care about
the photography going on, no sheriff or BLM officers showed up and signing
the guest registry proved to be one of the event highlights. All of this seemed
...well normal, nothing out of place. At about 2:00 P.M. or so people started
to pack up and head out of the area, and my thoughts were on praying that the
dented yellow 1979 Ford Fairmont makes it home. It did and for that I am very
grateful.

Document title: Inside Edition "Independence Day" Segment
Document type: Television transcript
Program: Inside Edition
Broadcast date: December 15, 1995 19:00 EST
Producer: Jeremy Spiegel
Editor: Pamela Phelps

Inside Edition "Independence Day" Segment

Producer: Jeremy Spiegel
Editor: Pamela Phelps

(Transcribed from East Coast feed. First 2 minutes of broadcast are
scenes from the trailer to "Independence Day" with voice-over.
Transcript starts where Area 51 is first mentioned in the broadcast.)

....

(Cut to zoom-out of White House to Washington monument.)

Narrator: What Devlin and his colleagues learned turned out to be as
intriguing as the concept of their film.

(Queue spooky menacing music.)

(Voice over montage:

1: Pan left across desert to 4-Runner(?) driving past camera.
2: Cut to pan left across desert with mountains in background.
3: Cut to shots of scary border signs.)

Narrator: Deep in the Nevada desert lies what is perhaps one of the
government's greatest kept secrets, a place so mysterious no one in
Washington will even acknowledge its existence.

(Cut to Campbell.)

Campbell: This is a place of mystery... a place where, uh, the
government is doing a lot of secret things...

(Transitional cut to Campbell walking on road holding camera.)

(Voice over montage:

1: Zoom in across road and trees towards mountains after rain.
2: Cut to pan left across desert with mountains in background.
3: Cut to jet taking off at night.)

Narrator: Glenn Campbell has made a career out of investigating the top
secret facility known as Area 51, a block of government land where many
believe the US military is housing a secret Air Force testing facility.
But folklore has it that high tech military planes aren't the only craft
being housed here.

(Queue Spooky Romper Room Music.)

(Voice over montage:

1: Shot of White Cherokee driving towards camera and past border signs.
2: Cut to close up of eyes of alien sketch. [Jarod?])

Narrator: True believers say that Area 51 is the hiding place for actual
alien spacecraft seized after an invasion many years ago.

(Cut to Campbell.)

Campbell: It is assumed in the UFO community that the government has
more knowledge about UFOs than it is telling... (Campbell appears to be
cut off in mid-sentence.)

(Cut to shots of border signs.)

(Cut to Hollywood sign.)

Narrator: Whatever knowledge that is, it is well protected. Posted
warning signs keep sightseers at a distance, but keeping Hollywood
away is a little more difficult.

(Voice over montage.

1: Clip from movie.
2: Title from movie.
3. Pan right from Black Mailbox across desert.)

Narrator: Area 51 seemed a logical location for some of the scenes in
Independence Day. The film makers didn't realize just how Top Secret
the base was until they approached the US government asking for
technical assistance.

(Montage continued.

4. Shot of border signs.
5. Pan right across desert with mountains in background.)

(Cut to Devlin.)

Devlin: They basically said, great we've come to an agreement, we love
the script, we love we're you're going... there's one little thing.
Take out all references to Area 51.

Narrator: The producers agreed they didn't want to compromise the
integrity of the film and decided to keep Area 51 in the script. As a
result, they were forced to build replica Air Force jets and models of
military locations.
(Voice over montage.

1: Shot of mountain. (White Sides?)
2: Zoom in to Black Mailbox.
3. F-16 on runway.)

Narrator: Despite the government's rejection, Devlin admits he
understands better just how serious the government takes all this.

(Montage continued.)

4. Devlin at computer.
5. Scene's from movie.
a. Ominous shadow darkening Statue of Liberty.
b. Ominous shadow darkening Central Park.
c. Ominous shadow darkening The Mall.
d. Ominous shadow darkening Lincoln's statue in Lincoln Memorial.)

(Cut to Devlin.)

Devlin: They're not in the business of supporting movies, so, they have
to have very strict rules of what they'll support and they won't
support. But it seems that a reference to Area 51... c'mon, guys. We
all know it's there.

(Freeze of Devlin grinning.)

(Cut to hostess.)

Hostess: The Department of Defense told us today that the film received
only technical advice because, quote, "The overall military depiction
was very inaccurate." And, interestingly enough, they did mention the
name Area 51. But they said there're no aliens there.

Lots more still ahead today, we'll get the first glimpse at sexy Daisy
Fuentes' new calendar, and coming up next, you'll meet the woman who's
love affair story have been the inspiration for "Bridges of Madison
County".

(End Segment.)

Conspiracy Mania Feeds Our Growing National

Paranoia

Aliens killed JFK. The CIA started the crack epidemic. Kurt Cobain was murdered. Who comes up with this stuff? And why do so many people believe it?

BY RICK MARIN AND T. TRENT GEGAX

Inside a beat-up white trailer home in the Nevada desert, Glenn Campbell sits leashed to his desk by a telephone headset. Faxes grind and modems screech while Campbell (no, not that Glen Campbell) runs the one-man government-watchdog station he calls the Area 51 Research Center. A giant black satellite dish out back points ominously skyward. The front yard is decorated with the tail of a crashed F-4 jet. Animal bones scattered in a macabre rock-garden formation separate the trailer from the dirt frontage road along Nevada State Route 375-a.k.a. The Extraterrestrial Highway. A sonic boom from the local air force base cleaves the heavens as Campbell hangs up with a deep military source. "We found a connection between Ron Brown's plane crash and Area 51!" he announces. "It's all linked together!"

He's kidding-- sort of. Campbell is a conspiracy theorist, not a conspiracy nut. A retired Boston software executive, he cashed out a couple of years ago at the age of 33 and relocated to the sun-baked hamlet of Rachel, Nev., to become the leading authority on Area 51. You know: the "secret" section of an air base that houses alien spacecraft. This is ground zero for UFOlogists convinced that the world has been controlled by aliens ever since the first flying saucer fell to Earth in 1947. "There is alien contact with the military," Campbell says, though, he admits, "I don't have proof other than what I hear from my sources at Area 51." Coincidentally, those sources commute from their homes in Vegas to the air base in a T-43 transport plane just like the one that carried Secretary Brown to his death.

[Campbell says the above quote is not his. See his Letter to the Editor to Newsweek.]
Conspiracy paranoia is surrounding us. A paranoid person might even say it's closing in, because these wacky theories aren't just spreading in the usual cheesy newsletters dense with type and craziness. Fomented on the Internet, mass-marketed by Hollywood ("The X-Files," "Independence Day"), conspiracism has become a kind of para-religion. Its vast flock ranges from casual believers to zealots who think O. J. Simpson was set up by the Japanese mafia and that Prince Charles is a puppet of the new world order, instructed by a computer chip planted in his royal buttocks. Wait until Pierre Salinger starts looking into that one.

This great nation has always had its share of conspiracy freaks. Hell, the country was founded by Freemasons, the ultimate secret society. (Who doyou think put that weird eye-ball-and-pyramid symbol on the dollar bill?) But the ranks of the darkly deluded may be growing. A recent survey in George magazine indicated that three quarters of Americans believe that "the Government is involved in conspiracy." Depending on your level of venality, that statistic can be read as either mass psychosis or a marketing opportunity. This year, America Online started a "channel" called ParaScope, to attract devotees of the paranormal and the paranoid. Mel Gibson's next movie is called, simply, "Conspiracy Theory." He'll play a cabdriver who finds himself in trouble when one of his harebrained theories turns out to be true. Surprisingly, Oliver Stone is not directing. "There certainly seems to be a resurgence in sympathy toward conspiracy theory and an increasing strain of paranoia," says Kendrick Frazier, editor of The Skeptical Inquirer, a monthly devoted to debunking wacko theories. Clearly, something is heating up in the more tropical climes of the American psyche. So, herewith, a skeptical inquiry of our own.

Kurt Cobain's Suicide. The shotgun blast that killed the Nirvana front man was not self-inflicted, this far-out theory goes. The grunge martyr's widow, Courtney Love, is implicated, or at least that's how the rumor mill has churned it through such national media outlets as The Dallas Morning News, Entertainment Weekly, Playboy and Westwood One Radio. (The national radio network has since retraced the accusations.) Private investigator Tom Grant was originally hired by Love to look into her husband's disappearance. He continued his own investigation after Cobain's death, making accusations in the media and on his Web site. The upshot: to many Gen-Xers, the death has tak en on some of the mystery of Vince Foster's suicide.

Contrary to reports, Grant claims, Cobain did not set out his driver's license to help authorities identify his body. According to Grant, a cop told him he put the license out. In addition to the suicide note at the scene, Grant claims, Cobain left Love a Dear John letter: "He was retiring, leaving the music business, leaving his wife. That was a retirement note to his fans, not a suicide note." No note, however, has emerged to back Grant's assertion. The motive? "She was after his fan base. The motivation is greed and career" - the same motivation Grant has been criticized for by the Courtney camp. Love's attorney, Michael Chodos, dismisses the charges: "There is nothing to 'debate' about this issue. Mr. Grant's accusations (and whatever other similar accusations are out there) are false and defamatory, and that is that." Moreover, Seattle police spokesman Sean O'Donnell says, "I've had to respond to so many conspiracy theories, and I've refuted them consistently. There's just no information that would indicate this is anything other than a suicide.

Hemp Power Suppressed. Another Gen X and stoner favorite, since hemp (another name for cannabis) can be smoked as pot or turned into a fiber. In June actor Woody Harrelson was arrested when he planted four nonhallucinogenic, industrial hemp seeds in a Kentucky field. Such a Thoreau-like act of civil disobedience would have been unnecessary in 1938, when a Popular Mechanics cover story headlined hemp as the NEW BILLION-DOLLAR CROP. But something went wrong between 1937 and 1942," says Allen St. Pierre, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). "I can't tell you that I've been able to find a conspiracy. But there was such a moneyed interest involved, it makes you wonder.

NORML claims to have documents showing that as part of the war effort the government set up hemp farms in Kentucky, Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio. St. Pierre says hemp supplied superstrong twine for parachute cord and oil for war vehicles. "The U.S. forces were one big mobile hemp unit," St. Pierre says. During World War II, a "Hemp for Victory" newsreel featured fresh-faced 4-H kids sewing hemp seeds. It also made Levi's denim famously sturdy. What happened? St. Pierre blames Harry J. Anslinger, the nation's first drug czar, who he says needed a fresh target once Prohibition failed. "They made pot illegal for their own purposes," St. Pierre says, citing an Anslinger-Du Pont-Hearst triumvirate as the culprit. The Du Pont family feared cannabis could supplant many of their petrochemicals, and William Randolph Hearst needed a new moral high horse for his newspapers. Nonsense, says Bob Barker (no, not that Bob Barker) of the American Fiber Manufacturers Association. He says hemp doesn't even compete with textile and petroleum products: "It's kind of a nice, back-to-nature sort of thing to believe. Especially if you're baked.

The Klan in the 'Hood. The black community is a hotbed of this kind of suspicion and mistrust, some justified, some fantastical. In October, Rep. Maxine Waters convened a town meeting in South-Central Los Angeles between her constituents and CIA Director John Deutch. A heated debate ensued over reports speculating that the CIA had spread the crack epidemic by backing Nicaraguan drug dealers whose profits went to the contras. "Black-oriented talk-radio shows are rife with conspiracy stuff," says Dr. Jewelle Taylor Gibbs, a University of California, Berkeley, professor who has written extensively on race issues. At WVON in Chicago it's conventional wisdom among listeners that AIDS is a plot to wipe out African-Americans. Keisha Chavers, an executive producer at the station, says, "The common refrain is 'Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you'." Such is the conspiracist's reflex mentality. It's often a reaction against authority among groups that feel they've been politically marginalized, socially isolated or economically oppressed. Gibbs agrees: "Invariably, blacks start asking if the government is against us. Once these urban myths take hold, you can't do much to disprove them." Like the myth that the Snapple Iced Tea label depicts a slave galley, reflecting the company's solidarity with the KKK. The picture in question is actually of the Boston Tea Party.

The New World Order. When Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and right-wing political extremist Lyndon LaRouche meet, they can agree on one thing: the malign, totalitarian power of the NWO and its executive arm, the Trilateral Commission. When President George Bush (a member of Yale's secret society Skull & Bones) proclaimed a new world order, he didn't tell us that "black helicopters" would be patrolling the night skies, monitoring our every move. Or that the government keeps a genetic record of every citizen in secret "DNA banks" (a hot topic in AOL's ParaScope chat rooms). Oklahoma City bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh reportedly claimed that the U.S. Army (the military arm of the NWO) had implanted a computer chip in his buttock to control him. He didn't say whether he and the Prince of Wales had experienced any chip-to-chip contact.

These bizarre fantasies would seem safely ridiculous if they didn't occasionally turn out to be true. "My paranoia and mistrust of authority came of age during Watergate," says Chris Carter, creator of "The X-Files," TV's weekly conspiracy-geek bible. On "The X-Files, everything from who killed JFK to why the Buffalo Bills lose so many Super Bowls is traceable to a single master plan. "It helps when you pick up the paper every day and see how the government has lied to us," Carter adds, ticking off recent revelations about the cover-ups surrounding gulf war syndrome and President Clinton's apology for radiation experiments conducted on unwitting Americans as late as 1974. In "Journey Into Madness: The True Story of Secret CIA Mind Control and Medical Abuse" (Bantam, 1990) British journalist Gordon Thomas meticulously documents the brutal brainwashing of soldiers in the Korean War. Militia extremists who had been warning of a new world order for years felt vindicated when their president actually announced one. See! They told you so. As Glenn Campbell likes to tell people out at his trailer in the middle of nowhere, it's all linked together. He just can't quite prove it. Yet.

Group retraces trail of lost gold seekers

Backpackers OK'd to pass through Area 51

By Christopher Smith
Salt Lake Tribune
ENTERPRISE, Utah - Impatient to join California's gold rush in 1849, a group of fortune seekers veered its wagons from the Old Spanish Trail near here, taking a rumored 20-day shortcut into the mountains of southwestern Utah.

It turned out to be the "Road to Hell" - four months of starvation, thirst and suffering that gave Death Valley its name and remains one of the most poignant tragedies in the history of Western migration.

This week, a small group of Californians will begin retracing the path of the so called "Lost '49ers," hiking 376 miles from Enterprise, Utah, to Death Valley National Park. The history buffs and backpackers claim they will be the first people to walk the tortuous route since the original passage of 1849-50.

"I guess we're a bunch of nuts," says Allan Smith of Palmdale, Calif., a Sierra Nevada backcountry guide and former paramedic who is part of the five-member "Footsteps of the Lost '49ers" expedition leaving Saturday from Enterprise. "The Forest Service and BLM (Bureau of Land Management) have aSked U9 to photograph and document any artifacts we come across, because so few people have walked over this country."

A portion of the Lost '49ers Trail crosses through Area 51, the secretive military base east of the Nevada Test Site that has become grist for hordes of UFO and captured-alien conspiracy theories and science fiction plots. Earlier this month, expedition leaders announced that the Air Force and the Department of Energy gave permission for the party to follow the '49ers Trail across territory normally off-limits.

"We passed their security clearance and the only condition was that we will have two government escorts accomplany us while we are in Area 51," says Smith.

Death Valley National Park officials were surprised that the expedition received authorization to enter the classified Groom Lake testing area, the existence of which routinely is denied by the Pentagon.

"That's amazing," says park spokeswoman Ann Holeso. "They never let anyone in there."

Winding southwest from Enterprise, the Lost '49ers Trail twists over the Utah-Nevada border, around the head of Beaver Dam Wash, through Meadow Valley Wash near the current Nevada hamlet of Elgin, skirts the Sheep Mountain Range, across the southeastern corner of the Nevada Test Site to Amargosa Valley, then over the Nevada-California border into Death Valley.

Little outside contact

The five members of the expedition - Smith, fellow hiking guide Clay Campbell, archaeologist Jerry Freeman and Freeman's adult daughters, Holly and Jennifer - plan to carry their camping gear and have arranged food-and-water supply drops every five days. The group will not have radios, and members will have little outside contact.

"We suspect we'll have just about every type of weather imaginable this time of year, which is the same season that the original expedition was done," Smith says. "We all know what we're getting into and we're a little nervous but quite excited. We want to do this as realistically as possible."

Perhaps, but true realism would mean a slow, agonizing death on the trail.

The saga of the Lost '49ers began Jan. 24, 1848, when gold was discovered in California, triggering the rush of 80,000 emigrants to the coast in 1849.

Many of these westbound prospectors arrived in the Salt Lake Valley too late in the fall to chance going directly across the desert and through the Sierras before snowfall. News of the Donner Party, trapped by snow in the craggy Sierra Nevada in the winter of 184ff47, still was fresh in the minds of the emigrants. Donner survivors had been forced to resort to cannibalism.

But gold fever got the better of about 500 fortune seekers, who were eager to keep moving and did not relish the idea of wintering among the Utah Mormons because of mutual theocratic disdain and fear of violence toward non-Mormon "Gentiles."

Capt. Jefferson Hunt of the Mormon Battalion had been over the southerly Salt LaketoLos Angeles section of the Old Spanish Trail twice and offered to guide the estimated 500 emigrants for $10 per wagon. The convoy, which left Springville on Oct.2, 1849, made good time down a route that today roughly follows Interstate 15. In Beaver, the wagon train was joined by a group of 20 supply packers led by Capt. O.K. Smith.

Smith began circulatinga map he claimed had been drawn by mountain man Bill Williams, who supposedly knew every pass through every mountain range in Utah. The map showed a shortcut through the barren peaks that make up the rim of the Great Basin, a path that would cut 500 miles from the trip to Los Angeles and take a mere 20 days, Capt. Smith promised.

On Nov.4, 1849, near presentday Newcastle in Utah's Iron County, most of the wagon train split from Hunt. About 100 wagons joined Smith for the westward shortcut, while a mere . seven wagons heeded Hunt's warning to stay the course.

"If you want to follow Captain Smith, I can't help it," Hunt said, according to the journal of emigrant Jacob Stover. "But ... you will get into the jaws of hell."

His prediction quickly proved true as the wagon train trundled up Shoal Creek west of what is now Enterprise and encountered a canyon that seemed impassable for the oxen teams and wagons. The place was dubbed Mount Misery.

Disgust over the dead end splintered the group seeking the shortcut. Some settlers retraced their tracks to catch up with Capt. Hunt, who had stayed on the main route. Others swore allegiance to the map, while still others - including Smith struck out on their own.

Those who turned back toward the Old Spanish Trail eventually reached California without unnecessary hardship.

Smith tried to scramble down Beaver Dam Wash with others in tow, but soon they fractured again, with some turning south to intersect the Spanish Trail and Capt. Smith turningnorth to Salt Lake tity, which he reached successfully. Nine others pressed west overland on foot with fatal consequences.

"The boys said we would have to draw cuts in the morning to see who should be killed to eat," two survivors later recounted. "As we did not want to be killed to be eaten or to eat anybody, when we thought they were asleep, we got up and traveled 'til day." The seven others died in the desert. The estimated 50 emigrants in 27 wagons - who would become the Lost '49ers decided to continue on westward from Mount Misery, through the imagined shortcut.

Moving west into Nevada, they dropped into a barren basin, seemingly walled in by black rocky mountains. Optimism evaporated in the dry desert air.

"When the sun was fairly up, I took a good survey of the situation and it seemed as if pretty near all creation was in sight," wrote William Lewis Manly, whose first-person account of the tragedy, "Death Valley in '49," remains the most popular version.

"North and west was a level plain, fully 100 miles wide it seemed, and from anything I could see it would not afford a traveler a single drink in the whole distance or give a poor ox many mouthfuls of grass."

Bachelors leave

As days drew on with diminishing supplies, weakened livestock, scant water and seemingly endless rows of mountains to cross, the wagon train splintered again. A group of bachelors - who called themselves "the Jayhawkers" decided to abandon the men who had brought wives and children, arguing that speed across the desert would mean survival. Although three of the bachelors died, the Jayhawkers managed to reach safety Feb. 5.

Although Manly was single, he decided he could not abandon the remaining emigrants - the Bennett, Arcane, Earhart and Wade families - left behind by the Jayhawkers. They struggled on across the Nevada badlands that a century later would become an atomicbomb proving ground. They burned wagons for fuel, thirsted constantly, slaughteredskeletal oxen where they fell, and ate everything but the animals' hldes.

"The mothers were nearly crazy, for they expected the children would choke with thirst and die in their arms, and would rather perish themselves than suffer the agony of seeing their little ones gasp and slowly die," Manly wrote. "For the love of gold they had left homes where hunger had never come and often in sleep dreamed of the bounteous tables of their old homes only to be woefully disappointed in the morning."

Sensing impending doom, the slowly starving group members asked Manly and John Rogers to press on and return with help while they remained in the barren basin. The two men scavenged ice from cracks in rock cliffs and ate the only game they saw for days - a black crow. "A vestpocketful of powder and shot would last a good hunter till he starved to death for there was not a living thing to shoot, great or small,'' Manly wrote.:

After two weeks, the men reached a Spanish mission 30 miles from Los Angeles, and, by communicating in sign language, managed to buy three horses and a burro loaded with jerky, cornmeal and flour. The horsesand some supplies were lost on the return rescue trip. When Manly and Rogers finally came to the four families nearly a month after leaving, many already were dead.

As Manly escorted the starving eight survivors - fout. adults and four children - outof the basin toward Los Angeles, he wrote that they turned and "overlooking the scene of 80 much trial, suffering and death, spoke the thought uppermost, saying: 'Goodbye, Death Valley.'"

TOP SECRET: U.S. holding Nazi war criminals in secret Area 51 in Nevada -- as slave scientists to build weapons!

By Mike Foster
Weekly World News
A new blockbuster book accuses the federal government of a shocking 50-year cover-up -- charging that the U.S. has secretly been using Nazi war criminals as "slave scientists" since 1946.

According to researcher Byron Lavalle, 67 of Hitler's top scientists were brought to the U.S. as captives -- and at least 11 of the now-elderly men are still alive, held at the ultra-secret U.S. Air Force base known as Area 51, near Rachel, Nev.
"At the end of World War II these scientists were given a simple choice: Hang like dogs at Nuremburg or go to work for Uncle Sam," says Lavelle, author of the upcoming book, The Boys from Berlin.

"They chose to live--as prisoners--and they ended up creating a host of weapons for our country, including the Stealth Bomber, the neutron bomb and elements of the Star Wars defense system."

Lavelle says he reached the startling conclusion after receiving classified documents from a concerned Defense Department insider.

"There are some among the military brass who feel extremely uncomfortable with the idea of our nation's security resting in the hands of a cabal of Nazi bigwigs," explained the historian.

The strange saga began during World War II, when Hitler threw his scientific team into high gear in the fight against the Allies.

"Hitler's scientists were remarkable," said Lavelle. "They developed the V-2 missile used to devastate London.

"They even invented a wooden plane that was invisible to radar. It's no coincidence the prototype's shape was almost identical to the space-age F-117 Stealth Bomber later tested at Area 51."

At the end of the war there was a scramble for German scientists between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Some, like famed Werner von Braun, were simply allowed to immigrate to America, their involvement with Hitler overlooked.

"Drawing upon their previous experience with missiles, they played a vital role in our space program," said Boston-based Lavalle.

But others were deemed too evil for such treatment. "These men had committed unspeakable atrocities, including experiments on concentration camp prisoners," said the historian.

"Had it not been for this program, these men would surely have been tried by the war crimes tribunal at Nuremburg and hanged."

Feds investigating burning of hazardous waste at Area 51

By Mary Manning
and Rachael Levy
LAS VEGAS SUN
Federal agents are investigating allegations that hazardous wastes burned in open pits at a secret military base in Southern Nevada, lending credence to former workers' claims that they became ill from inhaling toxic smoke.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Air Force have refused for two years to respond to the six workers' allegations that repeated contact with the chemicals throughout the 1980s caused health problems ranging from skin lesions to cancer.

Two lawsuits brought by the former workers were dismissed by a federal judge who said that one case fell outside his jurisdiction and the other compromised national security.

But now the Justice Department has revealed that it has taken the workers' claims seriously -- even when the official word was quite the opposite.

In a motion filed Wednesday in Las Vegas federal court, prosecutor James Morgulec said that in December 1994 -- four months after the lawsuits were filed -- the EPA launched an investigation.

The motion asks permission to interview one of the unidentified workers who allegedly witnessed environmental crimes at the military base, dubbed Area 51, 125 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Also known as Groom Lake, the base housed the top-secret Stealth fighter and U-2 spy planes.

A court order issued in the civil cases prohibits federal investigators from contacting the workers, whose names have remained a secret. Only one of the workers' names is known, that of Robert Frost. The sheet metal worker died in 1989. His wife, Helen, represented him in the lawsuit.

Despite the possible validation of the workers' claims, their attorney, Jonathan Turley of Washington, D.C., is not pleased by news of the investigation. In fact, he is angered.

Turley, a law professor with George Washington University's Environmental Crimes Project, believes the criminal investigation is retaliation against the former workers' whistleblowing efforts.

"We asked the government for two years to allow these workers to disclose evidence of criminal conduct they witnessed at the base," Turley said. "The government was unwilling to grant the level of protection granted to drug dealers and racketeers who are guilty of crimes."

Turley believes the government wants to prosecute his clients for allegedly committing environmental crimes while working at Area 51.

There are nine federal laws that detail the criminal penalties a person or company can receive for harming the environment. Punishments range from fines to prison time.

Although the alleged burning of toxic chemicals occurred on federal property and, ostensibly, under government supervision, the United States cannot be sued, said EPA Special Agent-in-Charge David Wilma of San Francisco.

Although Wilma would not discuss the ongoing Area 51 investigation, he said generally environmental crime cases involve an element of fraud and usually seek to punish the "highest-level responsible person." In other words, that means managers, owners or, in this case, military contractors.

Area 51 contractors in the 1980s were Reynolds Electric & Engineering Co., EG&G Inc., Wackenhut and Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University.

Wilma's statement counters Turley's worries for his clients, who were craftsmen. Additionally, government attorneys agreed in good faith that the anonymous workers were not targets of the investigation, the motion said.

"They were, unless otherwise informed, to be considered witnesses only," Morgulec wrote.

But the workers' lawyer remains unconvinced for two reasons.

First, before the civil lawsuits were filed, the workers encouraged and volunteered to cooperate with a criminal investigation but were instead "threatened with criminal and civil reprisals," Turley said.

And second, the lawyer points to the government's unwillingness to grant complete immunity for all the environmental crimes the workers may have committed and for all unauthorized disclosures of classified information except those made to foreign spies.

Past attempts by investigators to talk with former workers were blocked by Turley, who accused them of violating a court order that banned them from contacting his clients.

Today, Turley asked U.S. District Judge Philip Pro, who granted the original order, to not immediately grant investigators the right to interview his clients.

Rather, he asked that both sides be allowed to fully research the request and argue the issue at a public hearing before a decision is made.

"We are prepared to protect our workers from this irresponsible action," Turley said. "We anticipated this type of hostile filing."

The Justice Department and Nevada U.S. Attorney Kathryn Landreth did not return telephone calls.

U.S. Investigation into Air Force Base Winds Down

By Warren Bates
Review-Journal
A 20-month-long criminal investigation into allegations of environmental crimes near the Air Force's classified Groom Lake base is winding down.

The investigation into activities at the base has been conducted at the same time as a civil case that sought to expose military secrets at the Nye County facility, 30 miles west of Alamo.

Meanwhile, an attorney who represents former base workers who brought the civil suit is resisting government attempts to have his clients interviewed as part of the investigation, saying they could be exposed to retaliation.

James Morgulec, special attorney with the Department of Justice's Environmental Crimes Section, is asking a federal judge to clarify a protective order that, so fare has kept secret the identities of the workers.

Morgulec claims witnesses can be interviewed about the underlying facts of the case without jeopardizing the protection that the order, signed by U.S. District Judge Philip Pro early on in the lawsuit, has given them.

In motions filed Wednesday in federal court in Lab Vegas, Morgulec said the order has kept the Environmental Protection Agency's Criminal Investigative Division from completing its work, and it wants to "tie up loose ends."

The workers alleged in the civil suit that environmental crimes such as the burning of solvents in open trenches occurred in the 1980s. That suit, which is under appeal after having been tossed out of court on national security grounds earlier this year, was fought by a separate group of government attorneys.

Morgulec said the Environmental Crimes Section is conducting an independent investigation and does not wish to discover whether any witness it interviews is a worker who filed suit.

Investigators, he argued, "have no stake or interest in protecting either the Air Force or those businesses that work with it. The only interest (they) seek to protect are those of the United States."

But workers' attorney Jonathan Turley said he will oppose the move, calling it an "extremely hostile act" by an agency that was dilatory in bringing the investigation and that "has no intention of prosecuting individuals in this case."

Any breach in national security laws allows for criminal charges to be filed, Turley said, adding that the Air Force has repeatedly placed him and the workers under threat of such charges.

A key issue is whether the workers have been granted immunity in speaking with the Environmental Crimes Section and whether the protection would go far enough.

Morgulec said the section's attorneys, during the lengthy investigation, became "reasonably confident in their knowledge of events and activities at the facility ... and were able to take the unusual step of offering (complete) immunity" for any violations.

The government said it also promised not to ask workers if they had divulged classified material.

But Turley said it was his clients who repeatedly made good-faith efforts in approaching the government, and the government's offer was essentially irrelevant.

"From the outset we said that we would agree to any condition that would allow my clients to reveal evidence of these crimes while being protected from retaliation," he said. "The government insisted only to grant immunity for crimes committed. Obviously my clients are witnesses to, not perpetrators of, crimes."

The attorney said he is not reassured by Morgulec's representations that two government entities are handling the case independently. The appeal in the civil case is expected to be filed by Aug. 28.

Nightmare in Dreamland

By Ed Vulliamy
A lawyer is threatened with jail as the US government claims the right to hide its crimes at a secret air base, reports Ed Vulliamy

WHILE the movie Independence Day is packing cinemas with its story of aliens and a secret base called 'Area 51', a surreal law suit that echoes its plot is building into a secrecy trial of great significance.
One of America's leading public interest lawyers is threatened with 10 years in jail after bringing a case over secrecy and death at the real Area 51, a US Air Force site, also known as 'Dreamland', on the desert plains of Nevada. Its existence is denied by the government.

For the first time in American history, an administration is claiming that if it has committed crimes, it has the right to classify the evidence. Even the Nixon and Reagan administrations did not claim such privilege. Recent incidents show the Clinton administration to be obsessed with secrecy and surveillance.

Evidence includes a rapid increase in authorised telephone taps and the calling-in of FBI files on political opponents.

In the movie, space aliens are kept by the Air Force at Area 51, and the President takes refuge there during a UFO assault. In the real world, workers at Area 51 have died or developed fatal diseases while building the Stealth fighter bomber and other supersonic aircraft.

The workers are suing the government. It, in turn, is threatening to imprison their lawyer, Jonathan Turley, if he refuses to hand over all his case papers which it asserts include classified documents. These would reveal the names of his clients and their evidence.

Turley, director of the environmental law project at George Washington University, who gives his services free, said the consequences of compliance 'would be that no whistle-blower -- or anyone who wants to break ranks to tell some truth -- can be legally represented or afforded any reliable legal protection'. If Turley refuses -- which, he told the Observer, he must -- he faces imprisonment and loss of a legal licence.

The Area 51 workers have testified to witnessing criminal breaches of environmental law which directly caused their illnesses. They are suing the President's National Security Adviser, Anthony Lake, Secretary of State for Defence William Perry and Air Force chief Sheilahi.Widnall as responsible for Area 51 at the Groom dry salt lake, north of the Nellis air force base.

One client is Helen Frost, whose husband, Bill, died of horrific skin diseases and chemical burns after working at Area 51. The others are former workmates who suffered similar diseases, some of whom are close to death.

Area 51 has a bizarre history, part fantastical, part very real. It was developed to build and test prototypes for the then secret Blackbird supersonic spy plane. Later it became the high temple of UFOs and alienology.

Enthusiasts became convinced that the parts of a supposed flying saucer which crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, in the 1950s were taken to Area 51. Bob Lazar, a scientist working on supersonic planes, said he had worked with space aliens on developing the technology. The theme was excitedly 'taken'up in Independence Day.

ln reality, the facility continued to a laboratory for the next century's fighting aircraft. The Stealth fighter bomber was prototyped and tested there, and now work is under way on the Aurora, which will be able to fly at 3,000mph, leaving no radar trace.

The government's insistence that the facility does not exist means it is not on any maps. Two years ago the Observer visited the area. The supersonic jets roared below a desert sky bright with stars. A long mountain track led to what campaigners called 'Freedom Ridge', from which one could see the hangars, runways and planes landing and taking off in the harsh sunlight.'Freedom Ridge' has since been closed by a Pentagon order, commandeering another 40,000 acres.

The aircraft flyovers merely fuel the ardour of UFO enthusiasts, who stay at the Little Ale Inn trailer motel and marvel at their sightings. More important, each day at 3am, an unmarked 747 leaves Las Vegas airport carrying men to work, to build the air force's latest machines.

Turley's clients come from among these emn, with tales of open trenches filled with ferocious toxins used as paint-hardeners, metal reinforcers, and so on. These are the poisons which, say the writs, killed Bill Frost, and are killing or crippling scores, if not hundreds, of others.

The government retorted that Turley's clients could not sue, since Area 51 did not exiist, and because their allegations affected national security.

In the hearings, a solitary Turley is ranged against teams of government lawyers. "The argument,' he summarises, 'is that these men cannot have a lawyer since any discussion of their work at Area 51 violates security laws. The government has used national security as a legal defence, to stifle the case. gag the media and retaliate."

Turley won the first round. The court ruled that national security did not trump environmental laws under which the plaintiffs were suing. Then the government alleged that the case papers contained classified information about the construction site. It demanded that Turley hand over the documents, dispatching air force personnel to his office.

When he refused, it called for a sealed hearing, assuring the public that it had only sought to ask him to hand the papers over voluntarily. This was a lie: it later emerged that the authorities were seeking in closed hearings to compel Turley to hand them over on pain of contempt and imprisonment.

Judge Philip Pro in Nevada ruled earlier this year that a civil court was not the appropriate place for an order resulting in the incarceration of an attorney over an issue of national security.-But he expressly cleared the way for the government to initiate criminal proceedings against Turley for retention of classified material, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

From: webmaster@ufomind.com
Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1996 22:10:43-0400
To: campbell@ufomind.com
Subject: Fwd: Buzz Aldrin

8/1/96 episode of Politically Incorrect

Nancy Friday- Author Olivia Goldsmith- Author Kevin Nealon-
Actor/Comedian Buzz Aldrin- Astronaut

In the Politically Incorrect episode, Buzz Aldrin mentions Area 51 in
two instances during the segment where they talk about the Penthouse
alien photos. He essentially says that con-men are using the base as a
supposed repository of Aliens to take advantage of gullible people
living in a fantasy world..... UFO nuts, I think he means.

He're's a transcript of where Buzz goes off. Buzz is relatively animated
in this segment.

Bill Maher- You know the government, You worked for the government,
especially in this capacity, I mean, the government, God bless them,
they try, but, I mean, they don't even have what it takes to keep a big
secret like this, do they?

Buzz Aldrin- Not for 40 years, not about alien bodies and Roswell, but I
certainly hope that the government can keep a secret at Area 51, because
we're, they're protecting us against individual terrorists, they're
developing countermeasures out there, and they're developing the
security of this nation.....

Bill Maher- Well, they're doing a hell of a job this week, let me tell
you. Allright, we've got to take a break.

*****

Note the use of terrorism as the boogey man to justify the base. Not
quite as sexy as the Russians. And I'm still trying to figure out how
stealth can be implemented against any future Unibomber, Hezbollah, and
right-wing militia gun-nuts.


---------------------
Forwarded message:
From: will@escape.com (William Seiber)
To: webmaster@ufomind.com
Date: 96-08-08 17:01:02 EDT


Hey, I just happened to catch the program today on CNN. It was very
interesting what Aldrin said. It started out with the panel of guests
talking about life on the planet of Mars. The Woman ofor CNN asked
Aldrin if he thought that there was any way that the Government was
hiding info on aliens, she did not ask him about area 51 specifically.
The most interesting thing was Aldrins response. He said "What we do out
at area 51 is test certain objects for the military and the national
security." The reason I find this so interesting is that he made it
sound like HE was involved at groom also he said the word "objects"
which was very interesting. This might be a possible lead that most of
our astronauts are active at groom. Might want to check to see if Aldrin
has ever had a PO box at Pittman station. :)

hope this helps

will@escape.com

Will Seiber

Conning the tourists

To the editor:
On page 2D of the July 23 Review Journal appears an ad from the Nevada Division of Tourism promoting the "Extraterrestrial Highway." A photo shows a flying saucer abducting a cow from the road. In the text, the state of Nevada all but promises UFO encounters to tourists who visit this remote region.

Close examination of the photo reveals it is a fake. Apart from the pasted-in saucer, the photo shows a single line of power poles next to the road. There are no such poles anywhere near state Highway 375.

Like the movie "Independence Day," which the state promoted at the April 18 highway unveiling, this advertisement was photographed elsewhere. In Utah perhaps? Because there is nothing for most tourists to see or do on the "E.T. Highway," the state can only resort to false advertising. Most residents have never seen any UFOs here, so how can the state promise UFOs to visitors?

Our star-struck governor imposed this designation from Carson City without consulting residents. Locals were then barred from the lavish unveiling ceremony when it was turned over to Twentieth Century Fox to promote its movie. The 4-H group set up a concession stand but sold only one hot dog. Three months later, bills for electricity and other local services remain unpaid.

The "E.T. Highway" proves the rule: In Nevada, rural interests mean nothing; money can buy anything, and the truth makes no difference when it comes to tourism.

GLENN CAMPBELL
Rachel

This highway's
really out there.

The Extraterrestrial Highway

A desolate desert highway. The allure of the unknown. And the possibility of that chance encounter. It's Nevada Highway 375, the newly designated Extraterrestrial Highway that the talk of the galaxy. But, since inexplicable phenomena happen randomly, we've created the E.T. Experience, a club and membership kit featuring some of the more reliable attractions along the route. So make contact. Celebrate the road where few have done before. Call or write for your free E.T. Experience kit today. Then, get out there. Because seeing is believing.

AREA 51
FORMAT=INTRO
ANCHOR=MARK
WRITER=GKN
SOURCE=IT17.IT19
TAPE#=
PHOTOG=
DATE=7-18-96
(*BRADSHAW*)
SINGLE
(**SINGLE**)
HUNDREDS OF PAGES OF DOCUMENTS RELATED TO NEVADA'S INFAMOUS AREA 51
MILITARY BASE HAVE BEEN MADE PUBLIC BY ORDER OF A FEDERAL JUDGE.
THE ACTION WAS TAKEN IN RESPONSE TO LEGAL MOTIONS FILED BY CHANNEL
8. HOWEVER, THE PENTAGON IS STILL WITHHOLDING OTHER SENSITIVE
MATERIAL, IN DEFIANCE OF THE COURT.
(***PAULA***)
3-SHOT
(**3-SHOT**)
GEORGE KNAPP OF THE CHANNEL 8 I-TEAM IS HERE WITH THE STORY.
S-AREA 51
FORMAT=INTRO
ANCHOR=GEORGE
WRITER=GKN
SOURCE=IT17.IT19
TAPE#=
PHOTOG=
DATE=7-18-96
AFTER SEVERAL MONTHS, NUMEROUS DELAYS, AND THREE COURT ORDERS, THE
PENTAGON HAS FINALLY COUGHED UP SOME OF THE MATERIAL CONCERNING A
LAWSUIT FILED BY FORMER WORKERS AT AREA 51. CONSIDERING HOW MUCH THE
MILITARY DRAGGED IT'S FEET, YOU MIGHT THINK THE DOCUMENTS HELD VITAL
NATIONAL SECRETS. NOT SO.
P-AREA 51
FORMAT=PKG
ANCHOR=GEORGE
WRITER=GKN
SOURCE=IT17.IT19
TAPE#=
PHOTOG=
DATE=7-18-96
((Jonathan Turley/Law professor: what they're saying is that they can
classify evidence of their own crimes.))
LAW PROFESSOR JONATHAN TURLEY REPRESENTS FORMER AREA 51 EMPLOYEES WHO
SAY THEY WERE EXPOSED TO TOXIC MATERIALS AT THE BASE. THE MILITARY HAS
CONTENDED THE LAWSUIT CANT PROCEED BECAUSE IT WOULD ENDANGER NATIONAL
SECURITY TO REVEAL ANYTHING ABOUT THE BASE, INCLUDING WHETHER THERE IS
PAINT OR JET FUEL STORED THERE. CHANNEL 8 NEWS ASKED THE COURT TO
UNSEAL TRANSCRIPTS FROM THE TRIAL, TRANSCRIPTS WHICH HAD NO REASON TO
BE SEALED IN THE FIRST PLACE.
((Jonathan Turley/Law professor: so why is the hearing sealed? The
answer is the oldest trick in the book. The governbment is embarrassed.
it doesnt want the public to know what it did behind closed doors.))

THE PENTAGON RELUCTANTLY RELEASED HUNDREDS OF PAGES FROM THE TRIAL,
INCLUDING COPIES OF AN AREA 51 SECURITY MANUAL, WHICH TEACHES BASE
SECURITY OFFICERS HOW TO LIE TO THE PUBLIC. THE MANUAL CONFIRMS THAT
AREA 51 HAS ITS OWN SWIMMING POOL, TENNIS COURTS, AND CORNER BAR.
ALSO RELEASED WAS TESTIMONY FROM BASE WORKERS WHO WITNESSED EXPOSURES
TO TOXIC CHEMICALS. BUT THE MOST IMPORTANT MATERIAL REQUESTED BY
CHANNEL 8 AND ORDERED RELEASED BY THE COURT IS STILL BEING WITHHELD.
WHEN AND IF IT'S FINALLY RELEASED, THE MATERIAL COULD SHOW THE
EXTREME LENGTHS THE GOVERNMENT HAS TAKEN IN ORDER TO HIDE EVIDENCE OF
ITS OWN CRIMES.

((Jonathan Turley/Law Professor: We've has three court orders and have
yet to get the release of these documents. Itr's bloody ridiculous for
the govt to reinterpret orders and delay the release. as we made clear
in our motion, we are not going away.))
T-AREA 51
FORMAT=RDR
ANCHOR=GEORGE
WRITER=GKN
SOURCE=
TAPE#=
PHOTOG=
DATE=7-18-96
NOR ARE WE. TODAY, THE U.S. 9TH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS
ACKNOWLEDGED THE GOVERNMENT'S DELAY TACTICS. IT GRANTED THE AREA 51
EMPLOYEES MORE TIME TO FILE THEIR APPEAL, BASED ON THE FACT THAT THE
PENTAGON HAS NOT YET HANDED OVER THE INFORMATION THAT CHANNEL 8 AND
THE WORKERS HAVE REQUESTED.
TX-2


Newspaper: THE OBSERVER
Country: England
Date: 7/14/96
Picture credits: Chuck Clark (#1), Centfox (#2)
Article re-typed without pernmission of The Observer (no one was there when
I tried to contact their offices this afternoon. They had probably all gone
home to watch Atlanta's terrific traffic jams...)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------
NIGHTMARE IN DREAMLAND:

A lawyer is threatened with jail as the US government claims the right to
hide its crimes at a secret Air Base, reports Ed Vulliamy.

(Picture #1: Area 51: Only the mountains appear on the maps as the
government denies it exists, but clandestine images of the base are on the
Internet)

While the movie Independence Day is packing cinemas with its story of
aliens and a secret base called Area 51, a surreal law suit that echoes its
plot is building into a secrecy trial of great significance.

One of America's leading public-interest lawyers is threatened with 10
years in jail after bringing a case over secrecy and death at the real Area
51, also known as "Dreamland", on the desert plains of Nevada. Its
existence is denied by the government.

For the first time in American history, an administration is claiming that
if it has committed crimes, it has the right to classify the evidence. Even
the Nixon and Reagan administrations did not claim such privilige. Recent
incidents show the Clinton administration to be obsessed with secrecy and
surveillance.

Evidence includes a rapid increase in authorised telephone taps and the
calling-in of FBI files on political opponents.

In the movie, space aliens are kept by the Air Force at Area 51, and the
President takes refuge there during a UFO assault. In the real world,
workers at Area 51 have died or developed fatal diseases while building the
Stealth fighter bomber and other supersonic aircraft.

The workers are suing the government. It, in turn, is threatening to
imprison their lawyer, Jonathan Turley, if he refuses to hand over all his
case papers which it asserts include classified documents. These would
reveal the names of his clients and their evidence.

Turley, director of the environmental law project at George Washington
University, who gives his services free, said the consequences of
compliance "would be that no whistle-blower -or anyone who wants to break
ranks to tell some truth- can be legally represented or afforded any
reliable legal protection". If Turley refuses -which, he told The Observer,
he must- he faces imprisonment and loss of a legal licence.

The Area 51 workers have testified to witnessing criminal breaches of
environmental law which directly caused their illnesses. They are suing the
President's National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, Secretary of State for
Defence William Perry and Air Force chief Sheila
Widnall as responsible for Area 51 at the Groom dry salt lake, north of the
Nellis Air Force Base.

One client is Helen Frost, whose husband, Bill, died of horrific skin
diseases and chemical burns after working at Area 51. The others are former
workmates who suffered similar diseases, some of whom are close to death.

Area 51 has a bizarre history, part fantastical, part very real. It was
developed to build and test prototypes for the then secret Blackbird
supersonic spy plane. Later it became the high temple of UFOs and
alienology. Enthousiasts became convinced that the parts of a supposed
flying saucer which crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, in the 1950s were taken
to Area 51. Bob Lazar, ascientist working on supersonic planes, said he had
worked with space aliens on developing the technology. The theme was
excitedly taken up in Independence Day.

(Picture #2: The White House is destroyed in "Independence Day" - a surreal
parallel with the mirage of Area 51)

In reality, the facility continued to be a laboratory for the next
century's fighting aircraft. the Stealth fighter bomber was prototyped and
tested there, and now work is under way on the Aurora, which will be able
to fly at 3'000 mph, leaving no radar trace.

The government's insistence that the facility does not exist means it is
not on any maps. Two years ago, The Observer visited the area. the
supersonic jets roared below a desert sky bright with stars. A long
mountain track led to what campaigners called "Freedom Ridge", from which
one could see the hangars, runways and planes landing and taking off in the
harsh sunlight. "Freedom Ridge" has since been closed by a Pentagon order,
commandeering another 40'000 acres.

The aircraft flyovers merely fuel the ardour of UFO enthousiasts, who stay
at the Little Ale Inn trailer motel and marvel at their sightings. More
important, each day at 3am, an unmarked 747 leaves Las Vegas airport carrying
men to work, to build the air force's latest machines.
Turley's clients come from among these men, with tales of open trenches
filled with ferocious toxins used as paint-hardeners, metal reinforcers,
and so on. These are the poisons which, say the writs, killed Bill Frost,
and are killing or crippling scores, if not hundreds, of others.

The government retorted that Turley's clients could not sue, since Area 51
did not exist, and because their allegations affected national security.

In the hearings, a solitary Turley is ranged against teams of government
lawyers. "The argument", he summarises, "is that these men cannot have a
lawyer since any discussion of their work at Area 51 violates security
laws. The government has used national security as a legal defence, to
stifle the case, gag the media and retaliate".

Turley won the first round. The court ruled that national security did not
trump environmental laws under which the plaintiffs were suing. Then the
government alleged that the case papers contained classified information
about the construction site. It demanded that Turley hand over the
documents, despatching air force personnel to his office.

When he refused, it called for a sealed hearing, assuring the public that
it had only sought to ask him to hand the papers over voluntarily. This was
a lie: It later emerged that the authorities were seaking in closed
hearings to compel Turley to hand them over on pain of contempt and
imprisonment.

Judge Philip Pro in Nevada ruled earlier this year that a civil court was
not the appropriate place for an order resulting in the incarceration af an
attorney over an issue of national security. But he expressly cleared the
way for the government to initiate criminal proceedings
against Turley for retention of classified material, punishable by up to 10
years in prison.


Subject: Small Forest Fire Near Area 51
From: campbell@ufomind.com (Glenn Campbell)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.area51
Date: Sun, 14 Jul 1996 15:53:28 -0700
Organization: Area 51 Research Center
Lines: 43

Small Forest Fire Near Area 51

July 14, 1996, 3:30 pm PT

Word has reached me that there is a small forest fire in the Groom
Mountain Range about 15 miles NE of Area 51. The fire itself
seems unremarkable, probably caused by lightning in the area, but
it's location is mildly interesting, since it may be within a
restricted military area.

My assistant in Rachel says she saw the flames and smoke while
driving on Route 375 in the Tikaboo Valley. The fire was in the
foothills on the east side of the Groom Mountain Range, probably
just out of sight of Area 51 but within the Air Force restricted
zone. This area is close to White Sides mountain, the viewpoint
into the Groom Lake base that was closed by the Air Force last
year. The fire cannot be seen from Rachel. Current whether in
the area is cloudy with occasional rain, suggesting lightning was
the cause of the fire.

The fire could burn itself out, or it might consume more of the
forest areas of the Groom Mountain Range. The Groom Range was
withdrawn by the military in the 1980s as a buffer zone for the
base. The base itself is not in any danger from the fire,
however, since the mountain range is about 10 miles from the base
at the closest, and there is empty desert in-between.

More interesting is the jurisdictional problems in fighting a fire
like this. Will the Air Force let BLM firefighters into this
restricted military area to fight the blaze? Will they need
security clearances? What would happen if the fire was much
closer to the base? Would the Air Force have the resources to
fight the fire on its own, or would it require outside assistance?

If the fire burns out, this is a non-story, but if it continues,
it could be interesting. I will post any new information that
comes to me.

Glenn Campbell

--
Area 51 Research Center - Las Vegas & Rachel, Nevada
http://www.ufomind.com
FIRE FOLLOWUP - 7/20

As of 7/17, the fire in the Groom Range was out. It generated a
lot of smoke, but was apparently extinguished within 24 hours.

A Las Vegas reporter called BLM about it. A BLM representative
said they were aware of the fire, but they weren't doing anything
about it. It was on military land, and BLM firefighters could
enter military land only if invited -- and they weren't. This
suggests that the Air Force has its own forest fire equipment.

A Rachel resident gave me photos of the fire. Smoke filled the
Tikaboo Valley late Sunday afternoon. Nearest I can tell from the
pictures, the fire was about halfway between White Sides and Bald
Mountain in the Groom Range. It must have been in a depressed
area, because I could see no burn marks from the Tikaboo Valley
on my 7/17 visit. This general area is out of sight of the Groom
Lake base, but the weekend crew at the base could certainly have
seen the smoke. This area is also accessible by a road from the
base, so there would have been no need for Air Force equipment to
be seen on public land.

An unconfirmed report by tourists passing through Rachel said that
vehicles were blocking the dirt roads west of 375 on Monday.

A lightning strike remains the best explanation for the fire.
Such fires are quite common, caused either by lightning or flares.
Examination of any satellite image of the area shows many fire
scars both on and off the range. The brush in this area isn't
very thick, so most fires burn themselves out. Trees are limited
to the mountain ranges. Around the Groom Lake base itself, there
isn't much to burn, so fire isn't a threat there.

Tourism Panel Unveils E.T. Highway Member Kit

List of attractions available to travelers
By Mary Manning
LAS VEGAS SUN

The Nevada Commission on Tourism has created a traveler's kit and club for those looking for close encounters on the Extraterrestrial Highway.

"Since inexplicable phenomena happen randomly, we have created the ET Experience, a club and membership kit featuring some of the more reliable attractions on the route," said Lt. Gov. Lonnie Hammargren, chairman of the tourism panel.

Since February, a 98-mile stretch of State Route 375 in Lincoln County has been formally known as the Extraterrestrial Highway because of its proximity to Area 51, a secret government air base that some consider a magnet for UFOs.

The ET Experience starts Monday.

First, call the Commission on Tourism's toll-free information hotline at (800) NEVADA-8.

That will get you the kit that includes a brochure about the ET Highway and nearby natural attractions, such as the Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge, the historic mining towns of Tonopah and Goldfield, and the Lunar Crater Volcanic Field.

The brochure also contains a mileage chart and suggested travel itinerary.

Callers also receive a Pioneer Territory pamphlet, a list of regional traveler services and a state map.

To become official members of the ET Experience Association, visitors must obtain a receipt from any business in Rachel, the town halfway along the ET Highway, and a receipt from one other business in Alamo, Amargosa Valley, Ash Springs, Beatty, Goldfield, Hawthorne, Luning, Mina, Pahrump, Scotty's Junction or Tonopah.

Prospective members must submit these receipts, plus a written account of their ET Highway experience (200-250 words suggested) to the NCOT, Capitol Complex, Carson City, NV 89710.

In return, travelers will be eligible to have their articles printed in the official ET Highway newsletter, Eyes Only.

They'll also receive a collection of exclusive ET Highway memorabilia, including a glow-in-the-dark license plate frame and a bumper sticker, both bearing the legend, "I Was Out There."

There's also a cloisonné lapel pin reproduction of the official ET Highway road sign, unveiled by Gov. Bob Miller on April 18.

In addition, the first 1,000 to call will receive a T-shirt with "The ET Experience" printed on the front and "I Was Out There" on the back. All who respond will receive the Eyes Only newsletter, tentatively set for publication twice a year.

Area 51 is a key location in the new movie "Independence Day" about aliens trying to take over the Earth.

DATE=7-4-96
(( THE FOURTH OF JULY IS NO TIME TO ONCE AGAIN BEAT UP ON AREA 51, SO
LET'S PUT THESE STORIES IN A POSITIVE LIGHT. THE SECRET FACILITY AT
GROOM LAKE IS SOMETHING OF AN ANOMALIE IN A FREE SOCIETY. WE'VE SIGNED A
TREATY WHICH ALLOWS OTHER NATIONS TO FLY OVER AND TAKE PICTURES OF THE
PLACE, BUT AMERICAN CITIZENS DON'T HEAR WORD ONE. THAT MAY BE CHANGING.

THIS PAST WEEK, THOSE OMINOUS SECURITY GUARDS WHO PATROL THE PLACE
VOTED TO JOIN A UNION. THE UNITED PLANT GUARD WORKERS OF AMERICA
CONFIRMS THAT NON-EXISTENT WORKERS AT THE NON EXISTENT BASE VOTED 43 TO
6 IN FAVOR OF UNION REPRESENTATION. CONGRATULATIONS, GUYS.

REMEMBER THE LAWSUIT FILED BY FORMER BASE WORKERS, ALLEGING EXPOSURE

TO TOXIC CHEMICALS? IT'S NOT OVER. THE WORKERS WILL SOON APPEAL TO THE
9TH CIRCUIT, AND KLAS TV HAS A SEPERATE BUT RELATED ACTION PENDING.
JUDGE PHIL PRO HAS GIVEN THE PENTAGON UNTIL JULY 10TH TO RELEASE
DOCUMENTS ABOUT THE BASE TO US. IT'S THE LAW. ONE OF OUR FREEDOMS

DID YOU SEE THE LATEST COVER STORY IN NEWSWEEK. THE MAGAZINE HAS
FINALLY CAUGHT ON THE THE FACT THAT PEOPLE ARE INTERESTED IN UFOS. IT
DUBS AREA 51 AS A UFO MECCA. BOY, NEWSWEEK WAS ON TOP OF THAT STORY. THE
SAME ISSUE HAS A SNIDE REVIEW OF THE NEW FILM INDEPENDENCE DAY.

WHILE SOME CRITICS DON'T SEEM TO LIKE THE FLICK, THE PUBLIC DOES. ID4
RAKED IN 11 MILLION DOLLARS IN ITS FIRST NIGHT.

THURSDAY'S R-J NOTES THAT THE FILM, AND HOOPLA ABOUT THE ET HIGHWAY,
HAVE INCREASED INTEREST IN AREA 51, THIS TRANSLATES INTO MORE TOURISM
DOLLARS FOR AN AREA WHICH DESPERATELY NEEDS THEM. IN THE ARTICLE,
ACTIVIST GLENN CAMPBELL POUTS BECAUSE THE NEW INTEREST MEANS THE REGION
WILL ATTRACT THE NAIVE AND THE NUTCASES.

THIS IS ONE NAIVE NUTCASE WHO'S VISITED THE SITE MORE THAN 40 TIMES.
NEVER SAW A UFO, BUT HAD A BALL DURING EACH VISIT. ODDLY, CRITIC
CAMPBELL IS AUTHOR OF THE AREA 51 VIEWERS GUIDE AND HAS GIVEN HUNDREDS
OF INTERVIEWS ABOUT THE PLACE, CREATING CONSIDERABLE INTEREST. GO
FIGURE. I'M SURE LAS VEGAS CASINOS AGREE WITH HIS VIEW THAT NEVADA
DOESNT WANT ANY NAIVE TOURISTS COMING HERE. TOURISTS THAT DUMB MIGHT
DRINK, SMOKE, OR EVEN... GAMBLE EXCESSIVELY.
THAT'S THE WORD ON THE STREET. I'M GK.))

SIDE TRIP

The Road Out There

Visitors keep their eyes on the skies while traveling the ET Highway.
By Carolyn Graham

At first glance one wonders why even aliens would land in Rachel. The tiny town is situated on State Route 375, a 98-mile ribbon of asphalt flanked by volcanic hills and sparse vegetation. It is a route without theme parks, casinos, or palm trees. So why travel this road to nowhere?

In a word, UFOs. The hope of a close encounter lures people from around the world to Rachel, 150 miles north of Las Vegas. UFO watchers claim that nearby Area 51 at Groom Lake, a super-secret Air Force testing facility, is where alien spacecraft and their pilots are studied and stored. (Visitors beware: The military is darned strict about keeping binocular toting tourists from peeking into Area 51's hangars and runways. Trespassing is not an option.)

State Route 375 was dedicated this spring as the Extraterrestrial Highway in honor of its unique reputation. But travelers will find an ET Highway trip worthwhile even if ET is not to be found.

"There's a little bit more to the community of Rachel than people think," says Burnadine Day, owner of the Quik-Pik, a convenience store packed with traveler's necessities such as ice, soda pop, and glow-in-the dark alien key chains.

After rattling off a list of service clubs and nearby attractions, Day points out that at eight miles east you'll find the old mining camp of Tempiute. Also, the Lunar Crater Volcanic Field is 96 miles north of Rachel. Surprisingly, the Tempiute Range offers pine forests and pleasant day hikes. In fact, Day says that aliens are only half the lure of the area. "People can go out all day," she says, "and then at night sit and watch the UFOs."

The hope of a close encounter
lures people from around the
world to Rachel.
Rachel, a community of 105 residents, has a few new businesses in the works. Day says her brother-in-law is starting a business this summer called Close Encounters, where he will sell Area 51 memorabilia and memberships in the Groom Lake Yacht Club. The Little A 'Le' inn, a popular UFO-watchers' hideout, has an RV park, motel, restaurant, UFO library, and a shop with alien-themed T-shirts and mugs.

The town really hit the big time last April when the ET Highway was officially dedicated. The 4H club sold hot dogs to the bizarre gathering of celebrities, state officials, Elvis impersonators, and curiosity seekers. Actors Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pulman, and Brent Spiner (who plays Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation) and news crews occupied the town for one wind-blown afternoon.

The Hollywood stars dedicated a time capsule and a concrete obelisk to serve as a "beacon for visitors from distant stars." The event helped promote 20th Century Fox's new sci-fi flick, Independence Day 4, or ID-4, and put Rachel on Inside Edition and in Newsweek.

Subsequent travelers pursuing UFO sightings near Rachel will find a new support system. The ET Highway Experience, a club sponsored by the Nevada Commission on Tourism, provides maps, information, and itineraries for the journey on State Route 375 (call 800-NEVADA-8 for information). To join you must send a receipt from two businesses at opposite ends of the loop that includes the ET Highway and US Highways 6, 95, and 93.

You also must submit a "truthful" tale of your travels on the ET Highway for the club I newsletter, Eyes Only. As an official member, you'll receive a bumper sticker, map, and a glow-in-the-dark license-plate frame that sums it all up: "I was out there."

UFO gimmick polarizes Nevada town

Extraterrestrial Highway brings tourists - some locals make money, some regret changes
Gordon Dillow
ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

RACHEL, Nev. - A lot of folks in this dot-on-a-map town say it used to be a pretty nice place to live - until the aliens came.

Not that life in this tiny high-desert community of about 100 people was ever exactly luxurious. A dusty, windblown collection of mobile homes and old pickups and tumbleweeds whistling across dirt yards, Rachel is 50 sunbaked, desolate miles away from the nearest school, the nearest cop or the nearest anything else.

But if the people in Rachel were far from the rest of the world, they were always close to one another.

The aliens changed all that. Now some folks in this town 110 miles northwest of Las Vegas are looking at each other with anger and resentment and even a little fear.

Rachel, you see, is the unofficial capital city of Nevada's newly designated Extraterrestrial Highway, a promotional scheme hatched by state officials to lure tourists to this tourist-poor area by hyping Highway 375's reputation for frequent space-alien sightings.

But while some people in Rachel are busily counting up the tourist dollars, others worry that their quiet little town is being overwhelmed by what they call "kooks" - people who want to see spaceships, people who think they've been abducted by aliens, and even people who want to be. "We have a lot of people who come here looking to be abducted," says La Rae Fletcher, 63, a waitress at the town's only cafe. "They want to be taken up in a spaceship."

As far as Fletcher is concerned, if somebody thinks they can come to Rachel and book a warp-speed trip to Venus or Alpha Centauri or wherever, well, that's their business. After all, she herself has seen some strange things in the sky - including an oblong-shaped thing with little portholes that she says she spotted just a few months ago.

But it's all just a little too much for some Rachel residents.

"I think we're getting a lot of lowlifes around here," says Rita Potter, 67, a 10-year resident and a firm nonbeliever in aliens and UFOs and all that stuff. "Everybody locks their doors now; that's something we never had to do before."

"The alien thing has really divided the town," laments Harold Singer, 34, a truck mechanic and longtime Rachel resident who recently came back to town after a long absence - and who, to his amazement, found himself in the middle of an internecine battle over aliens. "Now when I go see friends I haven't seen for a few years, I never know if I'm gonna get a handshake or a shotgun pointed in my face."

Boiled down to its essence, it's that same old battle of development vs. the status quo that so often wracks communities as they battle over proposed housing projects or malls or theme parks.

Except here the struggle is over aliens from outer space - and aliens from places like California.

Now, because of the aliens, people here are worrying about traffic, strangers, the potential for crime - in short, everything people came way out here to get away from in the first place.

Rachel landed in this alien controversy by virtue of being the only cluster of human existence on the entire 98-mile length of Highway 375, which skirts Nellis Air Force Base and the mysterious, heavily guarded Area 51, the U.S. government's top-secret aircraft test site.

It's a place where strange lights from secret aircraft are an almost nightly occurrence.

The test site has been here since the late 1940s, but Rachel is a more recent arrival. It was founded in the 1970s by D.C. Day, who came out from Tennessee to start an alfalfa farm.

There was a time when about 200 people lived in Rachel, back when Union Carbide was still operating a tungsten mine a few miles north. But the mine closed and the town started to wither.

Then came the rumors about aliens.

It all started ...

It started in earnest in 1989, when a man who claimed to be a former government physicist announced that he had been hired to work on an extraterrestrial spacecraft the U.S. government was keeping at a site near Area 51. That, along with regular news reports about strange goings-on in the desert sky, was enough to bring a steady stream of hard-core UFO buffs to Highway 375.
The idea to rename the highway started, strangely enough, in the Orange County suburb of Los Angeles. A couple of years back, a North Las Vegas electrician and state assemblyman named Bob Price was visiting his daughter in Newport Beach when he saw a Larry King TV show about Area 51 and the aliens who supposedly infested Highway 375.

"A light came on in my head," says Price, 59 - a light that Price cheerfully admits spelled out "Tourism!"

Price went home and introduced a bill in the legislature to rename the road the Extraterrestrial Highway. It sailed through the Assembly, but cooler - or crankier - heads in the Senate scotched the idea, calling it "frivolous."

Then Gov. Bob Miller and the Nevada Commission on Tourism got into the act, and the highway was renamed without legislative action. This month, amid howling 40 mph winds, the governor and various other dignitaries and movie stars - the stars, including actor Jeff Goldblum, were there to promote an upcoming Twentieth Century Fox movie about aliens - rode out to Rachel on buses to formally dedicate the new signs.

Unfortunately for Rachel residents, most locals were excluded from the dedication ceremony, which has left a lot of people sore at the governor.

All that aside, if tourism is the goal, it's working.

"I can remember when if we had two cars a day pass by here, we figured we were seeing a lot of traffic," says Fletcher, who has lived here since 1976 - which is to say, since two years before the town had electricity or telephones or even a name. "Now we're seeing 50 or 75 a day."

Who's making money

The primary economic beneficiaries of the whole alien thing are Joe and Pat Travis, owners of the Little A"Le'Inn - pronounced "alien" - bar-cafe-motel. The Travises moved to Rachel in 1988 and bought the town's only cafe, the Rachel Bar & Grill, which already had gone through 10 owners, none of whom was able to make a living with it. Then the Travises had an idea.
"This UFO thing had come up, and I told my wife that every business needs a gimmick," recalls Joe, a bearded 57-year-old former carpenter who said he has had a seemingly extraterrestrial experience in the bar - a strange light that penetrated a steel door. "So we kicked some names around and came up with the Little A"Le'Inn."

The Little A"Le'Inn is ground zero for the Rachel alien craze.

Through the bar's doors come an increasingly steady stream of tourists and UFO buffs and would-be alien abductees from all over the nation and the world.

Senior citizens

A couple of hundred yards from the Little A"Le'Inn, at the Rachel senior citizen's center, questions about aliens and alien-seekers prompt some serious eye-rolling.
"We're a lot more leery than we used to be," says Edith Grover, 76, a silver-haired, graceful woman who has lived here for 16 years.

"Have I seen an alien?" says Lois Messier, 60, who moved here with her late husband 14 years ago. "Sure! I was married to one!"

The ladies all laugh.

The senior citizens' center folks are reluctant to specifically criticize their neighbors to an outsider.

Some folks think the alien craze is only going to get bigger - especially after the aliens make a fully public appearance, as some people expect.


Title: Air Force Anti-Nuke Dump, Too
Subtitle: Concern focuses on routes going through off-limits areas
Publication: Las Vegas Sun
Date: May 17, 1996
Page: 1A
Author: Mary Manning

The Air Force says the proposal to ship high-level nuclear waste to
Southern Nevada poses a national security threat to pilot training.

Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall has told the House Resources
Committee that any route across lands used for training would "severely
affect national security by reducing Air Force and joint training."

The Nellis Range extends over Southern and central Nevada where live
fire and instrumental threats test U.S. and allied pilots training in
B-1s, B-2s, F-15s, F-16s, F-117s and F-22s. Top-secret testing also is
undertaken, Widnall said.

Widnall did not disclose the classified programs referred to in her
letter to the committee.

"In regard to classified programs, there would be significant impacts
and in accordance with your request we have provided that information
through the House National Security Committee," she said.

Instead of using the proposed Chalk Mountain heavy-haul route from
Rachel, through the Nellis Range to Area 25 at the Nevada Test Site,
Widnall asked that the bill be amended to keep six to 13 shipments per
week for 30 years on existing roads and interstate highways.

Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Project Office, said he
has sought a position from the Air Force this month on a Senate bill
that designates that very route.

"Any transportation is basically incompatible with the bombing range and
those flights in training," Loux said. The state is concerned about
access to top secret areas needed by state staff to evaluate safety and
risks on the nuclear waste routes.

"The Air Force concerns are above and beyond the state's opposition to
storing or dumping the waste in Nevada," Loux said.

Maj. Gen. Marvin Esmond, commander of Nellis Air Force Base, said anyone
entering top secret areas requires clearances and a "need to know" for
access.

Although Senate Majority leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., had promised Rep. John
Ensign, R-Nev., not to bring the temporary storage bill to the floor
this year, with Dole's resignation from the Senate, the future of
temporary nuclear waste storage remains in limbo.

Air Force concerns about nuclear waste storage in Nevada are not new.

In 1983, the Air Force objected to a permanent high-level nuclear waste
dump at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, because it
could create a disaster if a fighter jet crashed into the site while
radioactive canisters were being unloaded from trucks or rail cars.

At the time, the U.S. Department of Energy, in charge of studying Yucca
Mountain and other possible sites in Washington state and Texas,
considered such a jet crash the worst kind of accident.

Air Force Times 05-06-96 Issue

BACK TALK: DON'T RENEW THOSE UFO HUNTS


By Robert F. Dorr



Some people think the Air Force is covering up information about unidentified
flying objects, or UFOs -- those pesky flying objects often portrayed as
invaders from outer space.

Many critics, such as aviation writer Don Berliner of Alexandria, Va., who
wrote "Crash at Corona," a 1992 book about an incident that occurred near
Roswell, N.M., in July 1947, are responsible people who have no explanation
of their own for UFOs and shy away from talk of alien ships and aliens.

"Qualified observers have seen things in the sky we do not understand," says
Berliner, who adds he has seen evidence that the Air Force is hiding
documents from the public.

Others with more extreme views claim the service is covering up that 1947
incident, which they claim involves an interplanetary flying saucer, an
autopsy of a dead space alien and plenty more.

In my opinion, some UFO sightings do defy earthly explanation, but none is
proof of visits from outer space. That is why I worry that the Air Force may
be pressured to spend taxpayer money re-opening UFO investigations or
explaining its past and current actions. This could come as the result of the
publicity Nevada Gov. Bob Miller is giving to space aliens.

"I'm afraid we will have to get into the UFO business again," says a former
Air Force civilian official who asked not to be named.

The Air Force investigated UFOs from 1948 to 1969 under a variety of names,
including Project Sign, Project Grudge and Project Bluebook. During that
time, taxpayer dollars went into investigations and into explaining to the
press and public what the service was doing.

"It was a costly business," says the retired civilian.

This month, Miller officially gave the name Extraterrestrial Highway to
Nevada Route 375, which crosses the desert near the Air Force's secret test
facility at Groom Lake. Miller and Tom Tait, the state's tourism director,
say they want to attract travelers of the very ordinary variety -- humans who
come to their state to soak up the sights, gamble, and spend money in other
ways.

In fact, Nevada's current mania for UFOs is being underwritten in part by
20th Century Fox, which is using the renaming of the highway to promote its
summer movie blockbuster, "Independence Day," about an invasion by space
aliens.

All of this makes the Nevada state government much friendlier toward UFOs
than the Air Force, which seems to regret the efforts expended for 15 years
and to want nothing more to do with intergalactic visitors.

Last September, the service released a 1,000-page report on the Roswell
incident.

Some have claimed for years that an alien spaceship crashed at Roswell and
that the event was covered up. A grainy black-and-white film purporting to
show an autopsy of an alien creature is believed by a few UFO watchers to be
authentic. "That was real schlock as far as I'm concerned," says Berliner.
"I've seen funnier looking people at the Safeway."

The report said the crash involved an unmanned balloon from Project Mogul, a
program that was developing a reconnaissance capability aimed at Soviet
nuclear tests. (Mogul was not a weather balloon, as widely reported).

In recent years, the service has shied away from becoming involved in UFOs.

What we did when asked," said retired Maj. Richard Cole, former Air Force
public affairs officer, "we always answered that the Air Force had
investigated UFOs fully. There is a standard fact sheet explaining that
virtually all UFO sightings, when investigated, had been found to have an
explanation. We would send anyone who asked the fact sheet and tell them that
the Air Force is not in the UFO business."

These days, Lt. Col. Mack McLaurin fields the UFO questions. "Basically," he
says, "I listen."

McLaurin says he has received invitations from media outlets all over the
world to go on TV in uniform and discuss the Roswell report, but "that would
make it seem like we're continuing the investigation. And we're not."

Back when it accepted, studied, and commented on UFO incidents, the Air Force
agreed that up to 10 percent of reported sightings were made by serious,
reputable observers, such as airline or military pilots. The Air Force said
none were a threat to national security.

Air Force Secretary Sheila E. Widnall called "a damned nuisance" in an
interview last October. And she is absolutely right.

I am not humorless. I enjoy Miller and his fellow Nevadans having a little
fun.

But these are lean times. The Air Force has serious business at hand. This is
not the time for the Air Force to resume investigating UFOs. There are plenty
of private citizens who can do that.


Tourism ploy breeds alienation in windswept town


DAVE YODER/The Orange County Register
HIGHWAY 375: Area known for UFO 'sightings.'


CULTURE: The newly christened Extraterrestrial Highway is drawing otherworldly types, unsettling Rachel, Nev.

BY GORDON DILLOW
The Orange County Register

RACHEL, Nev. - A lot of folks in this dot-on-a-map town say it used to be a pretty nice place to live-until the aliens came.

Not that life in this tiny high-desert community of about 100 people was ever exactly luxurious. A dusty, windblown collection of mobile homes and old pickups and tumbleweeds whistling across dirt yards, Rachel is 50 sun-baked, desolate miles away from the nearest school, the nearest cop or the nearest anything else.

But if the people in Rachel were far from the rest of the world, they were always close to one another.

The aliens changed all that. Now some folks in this town 110 miles northwest of Las Vegas are looking at each other with anger and resentment and even a little fear.

Rachel, you see, is the unofficial capital city of Nevada's newly designated Extraterrestrial Highway, a promotional scheme hatched by state officials to lure tourists to this tourist-poor area by hyping Highway 375's reputation for frequent space-alien sightings.

But while some people in Rachel are busily counting up the tourist dollars, others worry that their quiet little town is being overwhelmed by what they call "kooks" - people who want to see spaceships, people who think they've been abducted by aliens, and even people who want to be.

"We have a lot of people who come here looking to be abducted," says La Rae Fletcher, 63, a waitress at the town's only cafe. "They want to be taken up in a spaceship."

As far as Fletcher is concerned, if somebody thinks they can come to Rachel and book a warp-speed trip to Venus or Alpha Centauri or wherever, well that's their business. After all she herself has seen some strange things in the sky-including an oblong-shaped thing with little portholes that she says she spotted just a few months ago.

But it's all just a little too much for some Rachel residents.

"I think we're getting a lot of lowlifes around here," says Rita Potter, 67, a 10-year resident and a firm nonbeliever in aliens and UFOs and all that stuff. "Everybody locks their doors now that's something we never had to do before."

"The alien thing has really divided the town," laments Harold Singer, 34, a truck mechanic and long-time Rachel resident who recently came back to town after a long absence-and who, to his amazement, found himself in the middle of an internecine battle over aliens. "Now when I go see friends I haven't seen for a few years I never know if I'm gonna get a handshake or a shotgun pointed in my face."

Boiled down to its essence, it's that same old battle of development vs. the status quo that so often racks communities as they battle over. proposed housing projects or shopping malls or theme parks.

Except here the struggle is over aliens from outer space- and aliens from places like California.

Now, because of the aliens people here are worrying about traffic, strangers, the potential for crime-in short, everything people came way out here to get away from in the first place.


DAVE YODER/The Orange County Register
PHONE HOME: Little A'Le'Inn caters to many a UFO attracted by the area's reputation for strange sightings. An Air Force base is nearby.


Rachel landed in this alien controversy by virtue of being the only cluster of human existence on the entire 98-mile length of Highway 375, which skirts Nellis Air Force Base and the mysterious, heavily guarded Area 51, the US. government's top-secret aircraft test site.
It's a place where strange lights from secret aircraft are an almost every-night thing.

The test site has been here since the late 1940s, but Rachel is a more recent arrival. Founded in the 1970s by D.C. Day, who came out from Tennessee to start an alfalfa farm, it was named after little Rachel Jones who in 197X became the first baby born in the town-and who, residents say, later died of respiratory complications after her family moved to Washington state and she breathed volcanic dust from the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption.

There was a time when about 200 people lived in Rachel, back when Union Carbide was still operating a tungsten mine a few miles north. But the mine closed and the town started to wither.

Then came the rumors about aliens.

It started in earnest in 1989 when a man who claimed to be a former Government Physicist announced that he had been hired to work on extraterrestrial spacecraft the U.S. government was keeping at a site pear Area 51. That, along with regular news reports about strange goings-on in the desert skies, was enough to bring a steady stream of hardcore UFO buffs to Highway 375.

The idea to rename the highway started, strangely enough, in Orange County. A couple years back, a North Las Vegas electrician and state assemblyman named Bob Price was visiting his daughter in Newport Beach when he saw a Larry King TV show about Area 51 and the aliens who supposedly infested Highway 375.

"A light came on in my head," says Price, 59 - a light that Price cheerfully admits spelled out "Tourism! "

Price went home and introduced a bill in the legislature to rename the road the Extraterrestrial Highway. It sailed through the Assembly, but cooler -or crankier-heads in the Senate scotched the idea, calling it "frivolous."

Then Gov. Bob Miller and the Nevada Commission on Tourism got into the act, and the highway was renamed without legislative action. This month, amid howling 40 mph winds, the governor and various other dignitaries and movie stars-the stars, including actor Jeff Goldblum, were there to promote an upcoming Twentieth Century Fox movie about aliens-rode out to Rachel on buses to formally dedicate the new road signs. The green and white signs say "Extraterrestrial Highway" and bear drawings of flying saucers.

Unfortunately for Rachel residents, most locals were excluded from the dedication ceremony, which has left a lot of people sore at the governor.

All that aside, if tourism is the goal, it's working.

"I can remember when if we had two cars a day pass by here we figured we were seeing a lot of traffic," says Fletcher, who has lived here since 1976-which is to say, since two years before the town had electricity or telephones or even a name. "Now we're seeing 50 or 75 a day."

By Rachel standards, that's darn near a traffic jam.

The primary economic beneficiaries of the whole alien thing are Joe and Pat Travis, owners of the Little A'Le'Inn - pronounced "alien"-bar-cafe-motel. The Travises moved to Rachel in 1988 and bought the town's only cafe, the Rachel Bar & Grill, which already had gone through 10 owners? none of whom was able to make a living with it. Then the Travises had an idea.

"This UFO thing had come up, and I told my wife that every business needs a gimmick," recalls Joe, a bearded 57-year-old former carpenter who claims to have had a seemingly extraterrestrial experience in the bar-a strange light that penetrated a steel door. "So we kicked some names around and came up with the Little A'Le'Inn."

The Little A'Le'Inn is ground zero for the Rachel alien craze.

Outside the cafe, signs proclaim "Earthlings Welcome"; inside, visitors are offered a mixture of customary bar decor - for example, a sign that says "WE DON'T HAVE A TOWN DRUNK - WE ALL TAKE TURNS" - coupled with alleged alien photographs and tourist gimcracks of every description: yellow and black "Alien Crossing" road signs, "I Traveled the Extraterrestrial Highway and Landed at the Little A 'Le' Inn" bumper stickers, and so on.

And through the bar's doors come an increasingly steady stream of tourists and UFO buffs and would-be alien abductees from all over the nation and the world.

Jan and Glenn Kolleda are two of them. They'd just hit town looking for aliens.

Until a few years ago, Glenn, 42, operated an art and miniature-figures store in Orange; now he and Jan, 46, spend most of their time traveling around in their '86 Chevy van, attending psychic fairs and UFO shows across the country. Glenn, a big guy with a silvery beard, sells artwork and crystal jewelry; Jan is a raven-haired psychic who says she has "regressed" more than 200 people who were abducted by aliens.

"If they get you, remain calm and try to talk to them," Jan advises. "If you fight them, they're just going to hold you down."

Both Jan and Glenn note that most abductions are committed by "grays," the small, big-eyed, human-like aliens of popular conception. But they've never seen one.

"We've seen things we can't explain," Jan says. "But we want to see something concrete."

So one night last week Glenn and Jan drove about 20 miles south of Rachel to a lonely stretch of Highway 375-actually, every stretch of 375 is lonely -in the hopes of seeing aliens. There they ran into another UFO buff, a 39-year-old underwater photographer from Concord named Bill Whiffen, a self-described "flying through the air freak." ("I've made 220 parachute jumps, four of them naked.")

"Seen anything?" Glenn asks.

"I can't be sure," Bill says, then he points out in the desert. "But right over there? I think I may have seen a gray."

"Wow," says Glenn.

For the next several hours, they will stand in the desert in the light of a rustler's moon, necks craned skyward, watching as jet aircraft from the Air Force base go booming and zooming and illuminating the skies with missile decoy flares and practice bombs.

But, to their bitter disappointment, they did not see an alien.

The Kolledas are happy, friendly and seemingly sincere people who merely march to a far different drummer than most. But to many of the retirees and Air Force base workers and others who call Rachel home, they are simply two more of the weird or the lost or the emotionally challenged people who are changing the nature of the town.

A couple hundred yards from the Little A'Le'Inn, at the Rachel senior citizen's center, questions about aliens and alien-seekers prompt some serious eye-rolling.

"We're a lot more leery than we used to be," says Edith Grover, 76, a silver-haired, graceful woman who has lived here for 16 years.

'Have I seen an alien?" says Lois Messier, 60, who until she moved here with her late husband 14 years ago was an apartment manager in Garden Grove. "Sure! I was married to one!"

The ladies all laugh.


DAVE YODER/The Orange County Register
AWAY FROM IT ALL: Lois Messier, formerly of O.C., stands by the town cemetary. She knows all about aliens: 'I was married to one!' she jokes.


The senior citizen's center folks are reluctant to specifically criticize their neighbors to an outsider. But Glenn Campbell is less circumspect.

Campbell, 36, is a Boston-born computer programmer and former friend of the Travises' who had a falling out with them a few years back. Now he runs the Area 51 Research Center out of a trailer on the other side of town from the bar. Campbell partisans avoid Little A'Le'Inn partisans, and vice versa; it's sort of a dueling UFO-ology thing.

Campbell doesn't believe in visitations by aliens, although he does believe some strange, government-sponsored things are going on at Area 51. He also thinks the Extraterrestrial Highway promotion is bringing in a bad element. When the governor came out for the highway renaming ceremony, Campbell organized a small group of protesters.

"Some of these (alien-seekers) are frightening," he says. "They look like street people."

Campbell also worries that ordinary tourists from Las Vegas will be drawn here by the publicity and wind up in trouble-either from the desert elements or from the security guards at the test site.

"The state is saying, 'Come and see the UFOs!' " Campbell says. "They're bringing uninformed people into a hostile physical and political environment."

Some folks think the alien craze is only going to get bigger - especially after the aliens make a fully public appearance, as some people expect.

"I think something earthshaking is about to happen," says Joe Travis.

And as for the naysayers in Rachel, well, Travis says they'll just have to get used to the idea that aliens are here to say.

"Some people don't like it," he says. "But there's always going to be people who are anti-progress."

Town of Rachel worries about latest attraction

By Mary Manning
LAS VEGAS SUN

RACHEL - E.T., there's a Nevada highway open and waiting for a visit from you, state officials sang.

But 13-year Rachel resident Shirley Taylor failed to swoon for their siren song Thursday. She sniffed at the hype about the "Extraterrestrial Highway" - a 98 mile two-lane stretch of State Route 375 in central Nevada.


GLENN CAMPBELL, head of the Area 51 Research Center, says Gov. Miller sold out to filmmakers who promoted the upcoming alien invasion film, "Independence Day."

SIGNS at the Little A'Le'lnn Restaurant and Motel give the yield to aliens and flying saucers.
Admitting to seeing four UFOs in Northern California once, Taylor, whose husband works at the Nevada Test Site, said she's never seen any aliens from outer space.

"The only aliens I've ever seen are the people who come to this town," she said.

Business boomed at Rachel's Little A 'Le' Inn, owned by Pat and Joe Travis, as well as booths set up nearby offering out-of-this-world mugs, T-shirts and alien models at the grand opening of Nevada's newest tourism destination.

Taylor worried that with all the publicity hovering over Area 51, the secret base where cutting-edge aircraft are tested, Rachel's small-town atmosphere will evaporate along with the celebrities.

"This town is not a joke," she said.

At least one state agency took that sentiment to heart. The Nevada Department of Transportation was paying Lincoln County's 4H clubs to clean up after the media blitz.

With 120 residents, some Rachel residents felt literally invaded as six bus loads of media, the curious, believers and nonbelievers descended for a party celebrating the 20th Century Fox production of "Independence Day," opening July 3 in theaters across the country.

State officials mingled with Hollywood actors such as Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman and Brent Spiner, best known as Data from TV's "Star Trek: The Next Generation." They traveled 150 miles from a Las Vegas-style party at Planet Hollywood on Wednesday night.

Roland and Ute Emmerich, who produced the sci-fi film "Stargate," said they got the idea for galactic attack on 30 major cities around the world from thinking about what would happen if "they" landed. No one had to define "they" on Thursday.

Unveiling road signs bearing "Speed Limit Warp 7," Gov. Bob Miller declared the opening of the first intergalactic attraction in Nevada.

"America, and the rest of the world, has long held a fascination with space," Miller said. The state has touted "the other side of Nevada, " meaning wilderness, ghost towns and historical sites, but this is a new market.

"There's one other market left and today we're going to begin getting our message out to that market," Miller said, adding he believed a few highway signs pointing to the wide blue skies might attract someone out there.

Among those in attendance was Lt. Gov. Lonnie Hammargren, who greeted the crowd, "Good afternoon, Earthlings."

The Nevada Commission on Tourism will launch "The ET Experience" on July 1, inviting travelers to explore this lonely road, join the club and see their adventures printed in "Eyes Only, " the official Extraterrestrial Highway newsletter, Hammargren said.

Hammargren, a Las Vegas neurosurgeon, chairs the commission. Its toll-free number is (800) NEVADA-8. Callers may request a package complete with map, travel information and membership instructions.

Assemblyman Bob Price, D-Las Vegas, appeared as Darth Vader, although one young lad stopped him and said, with a straight face, "You look like Bob Price." Price had exchanged the alien antenna he wore during the 1995 Legislature.

Rachel resident Glenn Campbell, who wrote "The Area 51 Viewer's Guide," didn't think much of the state inviting unsuspecting tourists to roam near a military installation where guards have detained visitors, confiscated videotape and made arrests.

In a "creative expression of alternative viewpoints, " Campbell and some helpers tweaked a sign that sent one bus down a dirt road into the danger zone. No harm done. The vehicle was retrieved and made it to the white tent.

Campbell sent letters to the governor, asking the state to reconsider its plans to bring more traffic to Rachel and other ranches and towns along the route because most people are caught unprepared for the harsh desert conditions.

Calling "Independence Day" a remake of the sci-fi classic "War of the Worlds, " Campbell said the newest version portrays killer aliens, instead of emphasizing a more cooperative approach to intergalactic tourists.

Perhaps those traveling the ET Highway will have a kinder, gentler approach. Rachel residents hope so. They are celebrating Rachel Day on Saturday.


HOMEBUILT SHELLS fill the sky with brilliant bursts. An aquamarine laser shoots oscillating beams that shimmer against the distant sagebrush. The thunder of an afterburner pierces the air, and glowing tracer bullets arc across the machine-gun firing area. Pungent smoke billows.

Welcome to Desert Blast, a secret annual gathering of pyrotechnics enthusiasts and a private fireworks party that in some ways resembles a July 4th picnic. Just delete the youngsters and the mayor's speech. Substitute a jet car, a gun collection, and a stark desert setting where death by dehydration is a genuine possibility.

Broad-brimmed hats and water bottles are a good idea out here on the cracked beige expanse of a remote, dry lake bed in Nevada, a state with plenty of wide-open space to accommodate folks who are lusting for combustion. Each summer a group of about 150 thrill seekers converges here, by invitation only, to celebrate the joys of combining oxygen with explosive chemicals.

A gasoline bomb (top) explodes, tossing burning magnesium chips into the air. Desert Blast attendees (left to right) stave off dehydration and prepare pyrotechnic displays for nightfall.

In workshops scattered around the Southwest, many hours have been spent preparing combustible devices and outrageous vehicles. A circle of people, most of them technical types by trade, lend their skills and labor to make the Blast happen. They're led by principal instigators Bob Lazar, who describes himself as a "freelance scientist and businessman," and real-estate appraiser Gene Huff.

Lazar is an accomplished pyrotechnist who caught the bug at a tender age attending fireworks displays produced by the famous Grucci family. As a teenager living in California, he gravitated to El Mirage dry lake in the Mojave Desert, where motorcyclists went to drive fast and fireworks builders gathered to ignite their creations. He learned to construct shells that spit big bursts of color at impressive heights.

After moving to Las Vegas, Lazar began periodically heading out into the desert with friends to fire off shells. Thus was born the Desert Blast tradition. "As the thing started to grow, we trained more people in assembling shells and rockets," he says. "We've got a particular color of blue and an electric magenta that you won't see anywhere else."


Some Blast attendees jest that final fireworks assembly takes place at a secret facility many stories underground. The joke is a reference to Lazar's personal history: He is best known for going public in 1989 with an account of having worked on hovering, disc-shaped aircraft at a classified government facility near the mysterious Groom Lake air base.

An important ingredient of a Desert Blast is the spectacle of Lazar's jet car shrieking across the lake, belching yellow-white flame from a hand-fabricated afterburner. Acquired as government surplus, its Westinghouse J34-36 turbojet engine originally powered a Navy Banshee fighter. A tubular steel frame, four wheels, and nothing extra make up this thrusting machine, said to have been clocked at more than 300 mph.

Another fire-breathing propulsion system powers an insane pint-size vehicle: the ramjet go-cart. Once ignited, the propane-gobbling engine begins to glow cherry red, emitting an eerie sound that has been compared to a giant table being dragged across a linoleum floor.

Although there's no ice anywhere nearby, Waldo Stakes has brought a vehicle with three runners that's designed to break the world's record for speed on a frozen lake. Stakes and rocket engineer Ken Mason have their creation lashed to a trailer for a crowd-pleasing test firing. Fueled by alcohol and liquid oxygen, the engine is similar to the design used in the Bell X-l airplane that first broke the sound barrier in 1947. Slender, pointy, and finned, the ice rocket raises a rooster tail of fire and dust as it strains against the steel cables.

Mason has also brought a water-cooled argon laser with two movable mirrors. After sunset, the desert scrub bordering the lake bed begins to flicker brightly as a man plugged into loudspeakers plays The Star Spangled Banner, Jimi Hendrix-style, on his electric guitar. Above him on the Desert Blast command tower flaps a black flag bearing the skull-and-crossbones favored by pirates and outlaw biker gangs.

"We want to have fun, and we'll clean up after ourselves. So just leave us alone," says Lazar. "You can't burn down a lake bed."

Title: MILLER, 'ALIENS' TO CONVERGE
Subtitle: Stars of a new alien film will be on hand when the
governor dedicates the Extraterrestrial Highway.
Type: Newspaper article
Publication: Las Vegas Review-Journal
Date: March 22, 1996
Page: 1B
Author: Ed Vogel

CARSON CITY‹Sensing a chance for a publicity bonanza, Gov. Bob
Miller has decided to dedicate the state's Extraterrestrial
Highway on April 18 as part of a promotion for a hot Hollywood
alien movie.

Stars of "Independence Day," a movie about an alien attack on the
Earth, will make the trip with Miller to Rachel, 140 miles north
of Las Vegas, to dedicate Highway 375 as Nevada's Extraterrestrial
Highway.

Large signs proclaiming the 98-mile highway north of the Nevada
Test Site as a haven for aliens will be unveiled during special
ceremonies. UFO experts also will be on hand to lead discussions.

The state Transportation Board, chaired by Miller, proclaimed the
road as the Extraterrestrial Highway on Feb. 1. The highway is
just north of the secret Area 51 base where the Air Force is
believed to have tested the stealth, U-2 and other aircraft.

UFO buffs also claim aliens and their downed aircraft have been
taken to the base for study.

Besides unveiling the signs April 18, "Independence Day" producers
will dedicate a monument for the movie. The monument is supposed
to serve as a beacon for outer-space visitors.

The movie will not be released nationally until July 3, but
producers plan a celebration on April 17 in Las Vegas during which
selected scenes will be shown.

Scenes from the movie, starring Bill Pullman and Jeff Goldblum,
were filmed in West Wendover and Wendover, Utah. "Independence
Day" is being tabbed as one of the summer's top movies.

Since the Extraterrestrial Highway was proclaimed, the state has
been bombarded by requests for information, said Richard Urey,
Miller's press secretary.

Miller visited Los Angeles last month to talk to Twentieth Century
Fox, the distributor of "Independence Day," about tying the road
dedication in with the movie.

State government officials did not plan to announce the dedication
ceremonies until next week, but "Independence Day" producers
surprised them with a Wednesday release out of Hollywood.

Airport Purchases Apartment Complex Near Janet Terminal

Future of Research Center Annex Unclear

DATE: March 22, 1996
PUBLICATION: Unpublished
AUTHOR: Glenn Campbell
Clark County has purchased the Oasis Apartment Complex, across the street from the air terminal where workers depart for Area 51, according the management company that runs the complex. The apparent aim of the purchase is to allow future expansion of the airport.

The sale was completed on Feb. 16 for a rumored price of $20-25 million. The former owner was Southern Nevada Income Properties. ConAm Management Corp of Las Vegas will continue to operate the complex of 128 apartments in 16 two-story buildings. The resident manager, Alice Jennings, said there are no plans to evict residents.

The airport is currently engaged in a project to widen its north-south runway to accommodate larger jets. While this will not impact the apartment complex directly, it may result in a higher noise level.

One of the residents of this complex is Glenn Campbell, Director of the Area 51 Research Center, whose apartment faces the EG&G "Janet" terminal. At this unmarked terminal, workers board Boeing 737 jets for their daily commute to the restricted military bases at Groom Lake and Tonopah Test Range.

Clark County has purchased a number of properties around the airport in recent years, including two trailer parks on Tropicana Ave. beneath the runway approach zones. Residents there have be offered generous cash settlements to leave their rented trailer spaces so the area can be turned into an unoccupied safety zone.

However, there is no indication of any similar moves at the Oasis Complex. The complex continues to solicit new residents and invest in upkeep of the facilities. Manager Jennings points out that Clark County recently paid to put a new roof on the laundry room. She believes they would have only patched the roof if they had intended to raze the complex anytime soon. However, the complex has ceased to offer one-year leases to residents and now offers only six month leases. The county's current management contract with ConAm is for one year. That would seem to imply that the soonest the county could raise the complex would be Feb. 1997.

Title: NEVADA'S NEW "EXTRATERRESTRIAL HIGHWAY" GETS HOLLYWOOD-STYLE
LAUNCH WITH 20TH CENTURY FOX'S "INDEPENDENCE DAY"; GOV. MILLER,
FILM'S STARS TO ATTEND UNVEILING AND DEDICATION CEREMONY
Type: Wire report
Organization: Associated Press
Date: March 20, 1996

Twentieth Century Fox's upcoming epic adventure film INDEPENDENCE
DAY (ID4) explores the great "What If?"

What if visitors from another world showed up? What if tomorrow
morning, you walked out of your door and saw an enormous spaceship
hovering over your entire city? And what if you learned that the
same thing was happening across our planet?

While you will have to wait until the opening of INDEPENDENCE
DAY on July 3 for the answer to "What if...?" the response to the
equally intriguing question of "Where?" will be disclosed much
sooner. For on April 17 and 18, the worlds of state politics, UFOs
and Hollywood will come together for the unveiling and dedication of
one of the nation's current focal points of UFO discussion --

Nevada's "Extraterrestrial Highway."

The announcement was made Wednesday by Nevada Governor Bob
Miller, and Robert Harper, president of marketing at 20th Century
Fox.

Formerly known as Nevada State Route 375, the Extraterrestrial
Highway is located 140 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Most
significantly, it is situated just outside the top-secret Air Force
base known as Area 51. The facility has long been purported to be
the home of an alien research project, and UFO watchers and
believers regularly travel across the highway to congregate around
the terrain surrounding the off-limits base. Sightings of strange
phenomena are an everyday occurrence in the region.

The gala unveiling and dedication will get a starry kick-off in
Las Vegas on April 17, when Governor Miller and Fox host a special
screening of selected scenes from INDEPENDENCE DAY, followed by a
press and V.I.P. reception at Planet Hollywood. Several of the ID4
film makers and stars are also expected to participate.

The following morning, a large convoy of UFO watchers and movie
fans, many of whom were winners of special promotional contests held
across the country, will gather in Las Vegas, at a location to be
determined, in buses, limos, helicopters and R/Vs. The giant
ET HWY/ID4 convoy will then journey to the town of Rachel, which is
next to the highway, for the unveiling and dedication ceremonies.

Activities on site will include welcoming speeches by Governor
Miller and Nevada state officials, presentation of the key to the
Pioneer Territory to the ID4 stars and film makers, a panel
discussion with some of the nation's leading UFO experts, and
distribution of special ET HWY/ID4 commemorative items. The event
will culminate with the unveiling of the ET HWY signs and ID4
monument. The monument will serve as a beacon for possible `close
encounters' with visitors arriving from the far reaches of outer
space.

INDEPENDENCE DAY is the creation of the film makers behind 1994's
smash hit, "Stargate" - director/executive producer/co-creator
Roland Emmerich and producer/writer Dean Devlin. With ID4, they
have revolutionized and re-defined the way big-event movies are
produced through a new level of ground breaking effects techniques
and spectacular, never-before-seen images. In this epic adventure
film, strange phenomena surface around the globe. The skies
ignite. Terror races through the world's major cities. As these
extraordinary events unfold, it becomes increasingly clear that a
force of incredible magnitude has arrived; its mission: total
annihilation over the Fourth of July weekend. The last hope to stop
the destruction is an unlikely group of people united by fate and
unimaginable circumstances.

Twentieth Century Fox is a unit of Fox Filmed Entertainment, a
News Corp. company.


Title: QUIET NEVADA TOWN ON E.T. ROAD BANKING ON UFO LORE
Type: Newspaper article
Publication: New York Times
Date: March 9, 1996

RACHEL, Nev. - This speck of a town is little more than a trailer park,
a gas station and a diner alongside State Route 375, a 100-mile stretch
of secondary road through the scrub country of southern Nevada where
there are often more cows on the blacktop than cars.

Yet Rachel has become a tourist destination for finders and seekers of
UFOs, prompting the state to designate the road running by here as the
Extraterrestrial Highway and to order signs along the thoroughfare.

``It's kind of a tourist ploy,'' said Scott Magruder, spokesman for the
Nevada Transportation Department, which gave the highway its new name
after a similar effort faltered in the Legislature last year.

Many locals and visitors, however, are not so lighthearted about the
subject. Seminars on flying saucers have been held here and tours
frequently take to the rough side roads and barren hills to look for
strange objects in the sky.

Their tales range from those who say they have seen flying saucers or
have psychic contact with aliens to those who do not know what they saw
but reject conventional explanations.

The highway skirts a secret military test site called Area 51. Some
believers in UFOs suspect that the U.S. government is using the site to
test captured alien spacecraft. But a more prosaic explanation for
sightings attributed to the extraterrestrial is that they are actually
flights by aircraft over the nearby Nellis Air Force Base.

Still, Glenn Campbell was intrigued enough to leave a job as a computer
programmer in Boston and move to Rachel in January 1993, where he is the
director of the Area 51 Research Center, which has a staff of one and
operates out of a trailer surrounded by cattle skulls.

Campbell, who has written a viewer's guide to the area and sells
detailed maps of the Area 51 installation, discounts most of the wilder
tales but believes that advanced aircraft of extra-worldly origin may be
in the possession of the government.

He is not happy, however, about the road's new name, fearing that
tourists will inundate the area, unprepared either for the harsh desert
or the vigilant security officers who are well known for arresting
straying sightseers.

``It pulls down the credibility of the UFO movement,'' he said of the
designation. ``It trivializes the serious issues here.''

But few of the other 100 folks who live here are worried about too many
visitors. ``Earthlings welcome,'' says a sign at the Little A'Le' Inn, a
restaurant-motel-gift shop that sells items like Extraterrestrial
Highway doormats and playing cards.

Dolls of bald, doe-eyed aliens hang on the walls, along with blurry
pictures of lights in the sky and the engineering plans for a flying
saucer. The blueprints are based on a description by Bob Lazar, whose
assertion that he worked on captured alien spacecraft at Area 51 put
Rachel on the map in 1989.

On a recent afternoon, with temperatures around 30 and snow covering the
mountains that flank the road, several tourists shopped for souvenirs
while a group of locals bad-mouthed the federal government.

Taking part in the conversation between rounds of video poker was Chuck
Clark, who said he had been interested in the subject since he saw
several UFOs playing cat and mouse with jet fighters in the skies over
Los Angeles in 1957.

Clark, an astronomy enthusiast who moved to Rachel after retirement and
spent months camping in the hills and watching the heavens, pulled out
some photos taken in the desert. One showed a dot of bright light in the
night sky, another a shaft of purple light shooting into a mountain.

He said he did not have a camera on another occasion when he witnessed
some type of craft going through aerial maneuvers that defied the known
laws of physics.

Clark has also written a viewing guide to the area but said he did not
subscribe to any one theory about UFOs. ``We might all be
extraterrestrials,'' he said. ``Basically our missing link could be in
the sands of a Martian desert. I don't claim it's true, but it's a
possibility.''

Title: AREA 51 HIGHWAY SERIOUS BUSINESS
Subtitle: Resident fears road's more mundane dangers
Type: Newspaper article
Publication: Las Vegas Sun
Date: March 8, 1996
Author: Mary Manning

Area 51 watcher Glenn Campbell isn't expecting Nevada's new Extraterres-
trial Highway" to attract any ETs, but he fears the remote roadway will
trap hapless Earth-bound tourists in natural and man-made dangers.

Gov. Bob Miller designated State Route 375, running about 100 miles
through south-central Nevada, as the "Extraterrestrial Highway" after
the state Transportation Board approved the name change in February.

South and west of the highway, the Air Force operates the top-secret
Groom Lake air base, known as Area 51, where the government has
developed such exotic aircraft as the U2 spy plane, SR-71 Blackbird and
F-117A Stealth fighter. The base is also thought by many UFO buffs to
contain the bodies of aliens recovered from crash sites.

The lure of possible UFOs leads many people to hang out on public land
around the base, where there is no fence and poor markers to warn them
that they are near a sensitive military area, said Campbell, director of
the Area 51 Research Center in Rachel, population 100.

"Instead of accurately portraying this as a harsh desert area, the state
is putting an appealing label on it," Campbell said, "making the area
seem gentle and attractive instead of dangerous."

Campbell has witnessed base security officers confiscating film and
video equipment from television crews. He was arrested and convicted of
a misdemeanor for obstructing an officer during one media visit.

There's danger to visitors from Mother Nature, as well, he said. Or-
dinary cars may get stuck in off-road sand or people unfamiliar with the
desert may drive into the middle of nowhere without water. Last year,
five people died in Southern Nevada's desert areas from heat exposure
and lack of water.

"This has happened to perhaps a half-dozen people in my time here," said
Campbell, who moved to Rachel near the secret military base in 1981.

To warn tourists about the hidden dangers in the desert, Campbell asked
state officials to post more warning signs with specific dangers, modify
the state's trespassing laws and resolve warrantless film seizures by
rural sheriff's deputies on behalf of armed guards at the base.

Miller appeared on national television Monday to announce the designated
highway. The Nevada Transportation Department will post "Extraterres-
trial Highway" signs costing $3,300, Miller said, including at least one
pointing skyward to welcome any out-of-this-world visitors.

"The designation of Highway 375 as the Extraterrestrial Highway serves
to accentuate the sense of mystery that pervades a stretch of this
road," Miller said. "This is a tourist attraction and I don't believe
for a minute that anyone visiting the highway and its immediate area
should be concerned about being bothered by security personnel." The
governor noted that 87 percent of Nevada is owned by the federal govern-
ment and the state contains many military installations.

"So I don't feel there's a need to make a particular issue out of the ET
Highway and its immediate public access land area," he said.

The Extraterrestrial Highway runs from Hiko to Warm Springs, drawing
about 50 vehicles a day. Campbell said he felt responsible for the
highway's special designation. In 1993 he published "The Area 51
Viewer's Guide" calling State Route 375 "America's Alien Highway."

Although he's camped in the hills surrounding Groom Lake and joins the
UFO spotters in Rachel twice a year, Campbell said he has never seen
anything unexplainable in the skies above the obscure rural road.

Judge throws out Groom Lake suit

Workers' case called threat to security

By Rachael Levy
LAS VEGAS SUN

A Las Vegas federal judge tossed out a lawsuit brought by former workers at a secret Nevada military base where illegal toxic-waste burning is alleged to have occurred.

U.S. District Judge Philip Pro dismissed the suit Wednesday on grounds that national security at Groom Lake base must take a priority over alleged health and environmental damage.

"The court ... finds that disclosure of any further information or a trial on this matter risks significant harm to the national security," Pro wrote.

The move marks the second significant blow against the workers, who recently lost a similar case filed against the Environmental Protection Agency. Their attorney, Jonathan Turley of Washington, D.C., has indicated to a federal court official that he will appeal.

The workers, who have remained anonymous, have accused the government of burning hazardous material in open pits at the base 150 miles north of Las Vegas. They alleged that the fumes caused serious injuries and at least one death.

Worker Robert Frost died in 1989 and his widow claims the death was linked to inhaling the poisonous smoke. Helen Frost unsuccessfully sued over her husband's death in 1993 and is a plaintiff in this suit.

Frost worked as a sheetmetal worker at the Groom Lake base in the 1980s when some of the military's most secret aircraft, including the F-117 stealth fighter, were tested there. He allegedly suffered from skin rashes and cracked, bleeding skin that is blamed on the exposure.

His widow and others accused the Air Force of 11 environment-related violations under the Resource Conservation and Recreation Act and other federal laws.

In response, the government set up numerous legal roadblocks - even disputing the name of the military site commonly referred to as Groom Lake base and Area 51.

The government's main defense was national security. Air Force attorneys argued that the workers could not build a credible case without releasing military secrets.

The workers' lawyer disputed the claims, arguing the government could not hide behind the cloak of national security to hide environmental crimes and the case should go forward.

The attorney submitted 11 photographs of Groom Lake that he says verify the legitimacy of the suit. The photos were unsealed last Friday.

All but one of the color photos depict a grainy compound of buildings, automobiles and an airstrip nestled among some brown hills. The last photograph is a close-up of a white jet plane with a red stripe running from nose to tail.

The government has refused to either confirm or deny that those photos are of the Groom Lake base and was able to convince Pro that the suit should be dismissed on face value.

Title: STEALTH SECRETS OF THE F-117 NIGHTHAWK
Subtitle: It's developement was kept under wraps for 14 years, but by
1991, the F-117 nighthawk had become a household word.
Type: Magazine article
Publication: Aviation History
Date: March 1996
Author: Don Holloway

Television viewers who tuned to the Cable News Network (CNN) on the
evening of January 16, 1991, were treated to a rare live preview of wars
to come. Correspondents Bernard Shaw and Peter Arnett, broadcasting live
from their room in Baghdad's AlRashid Hotel, were covering the state of
alert of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Aliens given own road

State Route 375 renamed the Extraterrestrial Highway

By Robert Macy
ASSOCIATED PRESS

RACHEL - If E.T. is ever looking for a place to phone home, or searching for a route back to his extraterrestrial kin, this blip of a town may be just the ticket.

Long a mecca for people who believe we are not alone, Rachel is now the anchor for Nevada's newest tourist attraction - the Extraterrestrial Highway. It's even going to get official state highway signs.

Folks in this Lincoln County town 150 miles north of Las Vegas are convinced there are alien visitors at the nearby top-secret government base known as Area 51 or Groom Lake.

"I think there are people and machines from other planets over there," Pat Travis said as she scrubbed breakfast dishes at the Little A'Le'Inn - think "alien" the focal point of this hamlet of 100 people. "I think our government is working in conjunction with them."

"I don't doubt for a minute that there are extraterrestrials," added Chuck Clark, an amateur astronomer who has written a guidebook on the area. "To think we're the only life in the universe is ludicrous."

Area 51 is veiled in mystery. The heavily guarded, isolated base is where the government has tested some of its most exotic aircraft, including the U-2, SR-71 Blackbird and F-117A stealth fighter, and is now believed to be flying Aurora, apparently a new reconnaissance plane.

Officially, the military won't even acknowledge the base exists. Uniformed Marines and Air Force personnel drive through, and some stop at the Little A'Le'Inn for breakfast.

But "I have never had anybody who works at Area 51 tell us anything," Travis said. "We've had some of them get pretty drunk and they still don't tell anything."

While the federal government wishes everyone would go away, the Nevada Transportation Department recently named a 92-mile stretch of desolate State Route 375 the Extraterrestrial Highway. It plans to put up four signs at a cost of $3,300.

Gov. Bob Miller quipped that some of the signs should be placed flat on the ground "so aliens can land there."

The governor said the designation shows Nevada has a sense of humor, as was the case several years ago when a magazine named U.S. 50 across the state "the loneliest road in America."

"Instead of being insulted, we turned it around," Miller said.

The Extraterrestrial Highway runs between Hiko and Warm Springs, traversing mountain passes and deserts covered with scrub brush and juniper trees.

Highway officials say it draws only about 50 vehicles a day on average, though more show up twice annually when Rachel holds "UFO Friendship Campouts" for tourists looking for flying saucers. p Clark, 50, said he has seen mysterious sights such as glowing orbs of light around Area 51.

"I think the stuff that is being seen is alien, but under the control of our government," he said. "I don't know if they're spaceships. But they're beyond our physics."

The tiny cafe features racks of UFO T-shirts, caps and books, and photos taken from a distance of the hangars and 30,000-foot runway at Groom Lake.

The photos were taken before the government last year banned public access to two ridges overlooking the complex.

UFO buffs still seek out the black mailbox along highway 375 that marks the road leading to restricted land surrounding Area 51. But armed guards keep gawkers more than seven miles from the base.

They cannot block the sights and sounds, such as the light and deafening roar that sweep across the remote valley when Aurora takes to the sky, Clark said.

Pat Travis has seen many strange sights in the nighttime sky around Rachel. She told of one incident when a strange beam of light pierced an iron door at the cafe, illuminating the doorjamb.

"I really believe in UFOs," she said, flipping a pancake on a griddle. "This is not just something to sell T-shirts."

Title: UNIONS WIN REPRESENTATION ELECTIONS FOR WORKERS AT GROOM LAKE
Type: Newspaper Article
Publication: Las Vegas Review Journal and Las Vegas Sun
Date: Saturday, February 17, 1996
Page: 5B
Author: Marian Green/Review-Journal

A company holding a top-secret Defense Department contract cut
deals Friday with three unions allowing elections to determine
whether some employees want to be represented by the labor
organizations.

The United Plant Guard Workers of America, the International
Association of Firefighters and the International Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers Local 357 all either had signed or reached
agreements Friday with EG&G Special Projects Inc. to hold
elections for workers falling under their respective bargaining
units, according to Jim Small, resident officer for the Las Vegas
office of the National Labor Relations Board.

EG&G Special Projects Inc. is the contractor for the Air Force's
operating location at Groom Lake, 125 miles northwest of Las Vegas
in Lincoln County, former employees at the installation have said.
The installation where radar-evading aircraft have been tested is
the focus of federal lawsuits by former workers who claim they
were exposed to toxic chemicals.

Discussions to reach stipulated agreements with the guard and
firefighter unions had begun Thursday.

But an agreement with the electrical workers didn't appear to be
on the horizon Thursday, judging from EG&G's posture during the
hearing before NLRB Hearing Officer Michael Chavez.

EG&G attorney Kevin Efroymson argued, in part, that the classified
nature of EG&G's Defense Department contract precluded the
disclosure of critical information in determining whether the
bargaining unit is appropriate.

He called EG&G Special Projects Manager Bernard VanderWeele to
testify about contract requirements spelling out security
safeguards and requirements that employees must sign classified
information nondisclosure agreements with the U.S. government.

Chavez queried VanderWeele about the boundaries of information
employees could disclose. The security chief said electronic
technicians could divulge things such as their job classification,
wages, hours and benefits but could not discuss, for instance,
aspects of their jobs with photo technicians.

Efroymson also said the union's proposed unit is inappropriate
because he contends it does not include all the employees who
perform electronic work or who work in an integrated manner with
people who conduct such work.

The classified nature of the EG&G contract, Efroymson said, also
meant he couldn't adequately prepare to address the issue because
he is not authorized access to certain information.

After Thursday's hearing, Patricia Waldeck, the electrical workers
attorney, said the burden is on the employer to show the unit
would not be appropriate. She said VanderWeele's testimony
indicated there is enough latitude in the worker agreements to
disclose pertinent information related to the bargaining unit.

The hearing raised issues not normally heard in such union
petition cases, Small said.

"This is unusual. To some extent, it's a matter of balancing
security concerns with the rights of employees," he said.

EG&G Special Projects is believed by many to be the contractor for
the installation, also known as Area 51, but Small said, "No one
has said on the record it's Area 51."

A Secret Air Base Hazardous Waste Act, Workers' Suit Alleges

U.S. Cites National Security In Fighting Claims Tied to Toxic Disposal Fires

Plaintiffs Fear Retaliation

By MARGARET A. JACOBS
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

LAS VEGAS -- One day two years before he died, Helen Frost says, her husband, Robert, returned from his sheet-metal job at a top-secret Air Force base with flaming-red skin that soon began peeling off his face.

''He was a pretty tough guy, but he burst through the door yelling in fear,'' she recalls. ''Every hour, I'd have to take a washcloth'' and take off some more skin.

Mrs. Frost is one of two widows who, along with four former civilian workers, are suing the Defense Department in a so-called citizen's lawsuit (rather than a claim for tort damages). They contend that it violated federal hazardous-waste law by repeatedly burning ordinary chemicals and highly toxic classified materials in open pits at the base, which is located 125 miles northwest of Las Vegas and is commonly called Area 51.

The workers, who say their exposure to toxic fumes throughout the 1980s caused health problems ranging from skin lesions to cancer, are seeking information to facilitate medical treatment and help with medical bills but no other monetary damages. As employees of government subcontractors, which aren't named in the lawsuit, some of the plaintiffs say they have no medical insurance. They also want a court order requiring the government to follow the law and dispose of such waste safely. They themselves can't bring criminal charges.

So far, the government refuses to confirm or deny their allegations or to respond to their request for criminal prosecution. Instead, it asked U.S. District Judge Philip Pro, who is overseeing the case in Las Vegas, to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that almost any disclosure about Area 51 could pose a ''serious risk'' to national security.

Unusual Maneuver

That strategy is startling because the government apparently has never before invoked the so-called national-security privilege in a case in which the effect is to shield itself from criminal liability. The privilege is intended to prevent courtroom disclosures of state secrets involving intelligence gathering or military planning. But the burning alleged by the workers is a serious crime, punishable by up to 15 years in prison and a $1 million fine. Indeed, the Justice Department has made the prosecution of civilians who illegally burn hazardous waste a priority.
Constitutional experts say the case could ultimately go to the Supreme Court because it tests the limits of executive-branch power. In a case involving Richard Nixon and Watergate, the high court said the president can't use executive privilege to shield evidence of a crime. But in response to the workers' suit, the government in effect argues that the national-security privilege -- a form of executive privilege -- gives the military more leeway than the president has to keep information secret, even if it involves a crime.

The case is also significant because it could determine whether the military will be held accountable for what many observers consider its dismal record of compliance with environmental laws. A government task force estimated in 1995 that cleaning up hazardous waste at federal facilities, mostly military-related, would cost $234 billion to $389 billion.

Information at Risk

''What I fear is the broadening of a principle that could block access to a whole range of information that should be available to the public,'' says Stephen Dycus, an expert on national security and the environment at the Vermont Law School.
At almost every turn since filing suit 18 months ago, the workers have been stymied by Justice Department lawyers. For several months last year, the lawyers even refused to acknowledge the existence or name of the base. Only after the workers introduced 300 pages of references to it in government documents, including the Congressional Record, did the lawyers relent somewhat.

The government lawyers also classified documents retroactively, preventing the workers from using them as evidence, the workers say. They refused to acknowledge that any of the men except Mr. Frost ever worked at the base. They even obtained a court order preventing the workers' lawyer from removing files from his own office.

In a special filing required from agency heads who want courts to recognize the national-security privilege, Secretary of the Air Force Sheila Widnall explained why the military is so cautious about disclosing anything about Area 51. ''Collection of information regarding the air, water and soil'' around a base, she said, ''is a classic foreign intelligence practice because analysis of these samples can result in the identification of military operations and capabilities....Disclosure of such information increases the risk to the lives of United States personnel and decreases the probability of successful mission accomplishment.''

The Air Force declines to comment on specific allegations or on the lawsuit, but a senior attorney for the service defends its record. ''We take our responsibility concerning protection of the environment seriously, and we also take seriously our obligations to protect national security,'' he says. ''We believe protecting the environment and national security are not incompatible.'' In addition, a spokeswoman says that in 1993 the government's Council on Environmental Quality rated the Air Force's environmental-management program the best in the government.

Although the plaintiffs concede Area 51 harbors military secrets that must be protected, Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who represents the plaintiffs and more than two dozen other Area 51 employees who so far haven't joined in the suit, says the government's position is too extreme.

''The government claims that revealing any information about Area 51 would jeopardize American lives,'' he says. ''The only American lives lost so far are those of their own workers.''

Base Not So Secret

The plaintiffs disparage the government's response, partly because Area 51 isn't much of a secret. Until access to a nearby ridge was restricted last year, Area 51's runways, radar towers and many of its 200 buildings could be seen by anyone who looked. Just off the Las Vegas strip, in fact, is a bar called Area 51.
The base has had a local reputation as a big employer since the 1950s. Well before dawn most weekdays, hundreds of civilian workers can be seen parking in a far corner of McCarran International Airport. From there, they fly free of charge in unmarked planes to the base, which sits on a dry lake bed called Groom Lake near where atomic bombs were once tested. The Area 51 name is derived from its designation on Nevada test-site maps.

Area 51's 1,000 civilian and 2,000 military employees sign oaths to keep all information about the base confidential, and the former workers who sued take it seriously. Fearing government retaliation for whistle-blowing, they have obtained unusual permission from Judge Pro to be known publicly as John Does.

Speaking nervously in interviews in Las Vegas hotel rooms, where their lawyer had taken precautions to prevent government monitoring, the men recently described the illegal burning and what they view as the military's indifference to their health. They spoke on the condition that they not be identified in any way.

They say the illegal burning grew out of the extreme secrecy at the base, where U-2 spy planes, F-117 stealth bombers and other secret aircraft have been developed and tested. In military parlance, it is a ''black'' base: Access is granted only to people with top-secret security clearance.

Nothing left the facility except the workers, they say. All else, including office furniture, jeeps and leftover lobster and prime rib, was either burned or buried.

Frequent Fires

During the 1980s, the men say, classified materials were burned at least once a week in 100-yard-long, 25-foot-wide pits. With security guards standing at the edge, Air Force personnel threw in hazardous chemicals such as methylethylketone, a common cleaning solvent, and other things, such as computers, that produce dioxin when burned. The toxic brew, including drums of hazardous waste trucked in from defense facilities in other states, was ignited with jet fuel and typically burned for eight to 12 hours, the men say.
Helen Frost says her husband, after being exposed to the thick, black fumes, endured constant headaches and itchy eyes. But, like many of the men, he continued to work because his pay -- about $50,000 a year -- was high and the work was consistent, she says.

In the mid-1980s, however, dozens of Area 51 workers began developing breathing difficulties, chest pains, neurological problems and chronic skin inflammation -- all classic signs of exposure to toxins. The burning especially affected those who worked outdoors in maintenance and construction, about 150 to 300 yards downwind from the pits.

The skin condition, which they called ''fish scales,'' broke out on their hands, legs, backs and faces. They say they used emery boards and sandpaper to remove the embarrassing scabs. ''I never saw anything like it. We would get it dried up in one spot, and then it would pop up somewhere else,'' says Stella Kasza, another plaintiff. Last April, her husband, Walter, a sheet-metal worker, died at age 73 of liver and kidney cancer, which his wife blames on a decade of exposure to the burning.

The workers contend that when they asked for protective gear, Air Force officers rebuffed them. ''They told us we could buy our own masks and then pointed to the gate and told us we could leave if we didn't like it,'' recalls one of the John Does, who, like the others, believes that the officers resented the civilians' higher wages. Though the workers used gloves they purchased themselves, they say base-security policy prevented them from bringing in any other protective gear.

Reticent Patients

Many refused to seek medical help or gave doctors incomplete explanations for their symptoms. They say they feared 10-year prison terms for talking about the base, as, they say, Air Force security police repeatedly warned them.
But after Mr. Frost died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1989 at age 57, many felt they had no choice but to seek legal advice. A study of Mr. Frost's fatty tissue by Peter Kahn, a Rutgers University biochemist and expert on chemical and hazardous substances, found unusually high levels of dioxins and other carcinogens in Mr. Frost's cells that he attributed to industrial exposure. Dioxins typically target the liver and cause severe skin reactions, Mr. Kahn says. Though not the cause of Mr. Frost's liver ailment, Mr. Kahn adds, exposure to the chemicals could have accelerated its progress, resulting in premature death. But the government had denied Mr. Frost's request for worker's compensation.

Prof. Turley and his clients say they can prove the government violated the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the federal law regulating hazardous waste. And they say they can do this without revealing anything that would undermine national security.

The law makes it a crime for anyone who handles hazardous waste, including owners of oil-change shops such as Jiffy Lubes, to do so without getting a permit or transportation manifest. It also requires Environmental Protection Agency inspections. Early in the litigation, the government conceded that it had never applied for a permit or manifest for Area 51.

But the government has consistently refused to acknowledge that hazardous wastes of any sort were kept at the base or that common industrial chemicals such as trichloroethylene were used there. The solvent, found in most machines with moving parts, is on the list of toxins that must be reported and are regulated under the law.

''Acknowledging that a large military base has trichloroethylene is like saying that a cleaning crew has ammonia. It would hardly be cause for celebration in the Russian intelligence services,'' Prof. Turley says.


Evidence in a Manual

The government's position outraged some Area 51 workers, who sent an unclassified government security-training manual to Prof. Turley. It confirms the existence of a ''vehicle paint and body shop'' and ''base battery storage'' operations that typically produce hazardous waste. When Prof. Turley asked Judge Pro to accept the manual as evidence, however, the plaintiffs say the government classified it retroactively. Government lawyers then tried to retrieve the document from Prof. Turley and from news reporters even though it was available on the Internet.
The government also asked the judge to seal the transcript of a telephone conference call he held with attorneys for both sides about the manual. At the government's request, the judge placed Prof. Turley's office under seal until he decides what to do.

''The government has been simply stonewalling,'' says Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington group concerned with, among other things, what it considers excessive government secrecy.

The workers' attorneys have repeatedly asked Judge Pro, who once found that the government wasn't liable for injuries to 216 workers exposed to radiation at the Nevada test site between 1951 and 1981, to limit the material the government can restrict under the national-security privilege to truly sensitive information. In other privilege cases, the lawyers say, judges have segregated sensitive material and given the public access to the rest. A few courts have enlisted special judges with high-level security clearance or held secret trials rather than dismiss cases against the government, Vermont's Prof. Dycus says.

The 'Mosaic' Theory

The Defense Department, however, claims to have properly asserted the national-security privilege. Though conceding that its position will result in some routine information about the base being withheld, government lawyers argue that they can't acknowledge seemingly innocuous facts without creating a ''mosaic'' that an enemy could use to figure out what the military considers a secret.
While Judge Pro hasn't ruled on the government's motion to dismiss the case, he has decided in its favor on most important issues, including the ''mosaic'' theory. Last month, he found that the government had properly refused to provide virtually all of the material sought by the plaintiffs and that the government had properly classified the manual. He also rejected without explanation the workers' argument that the government can't use the privilege to conceal evidence of a crime. Prof. Turley's office remains under seal and off limits to faculty members and students. He says his clients intend to appeal many of the judge's rulings.

On one important point, however, the workers prevailed. Last spring, the government disclosed that the EPA had begun inspecting Area 51, making it the first ''black'' base opened to public inspection. But, citing the privilege, the government refused to make the inspection report public, as required by law. After the plaintiffs objected, Judge Pro ruled the government could withhold the report only if it got an exemption from the president.

Shortly afterward, President Clinton, who the same week publicly apologized to the victims of radiation experiments and who is opening up long-classified files about public exposure to atom-bomb tests in the 1950s, granted the exemption. His memo said keeping the reports secret was in the nation's ''paramount interest.''

Title: GROOM LAKE TESTS TARGET STEALTH
Publication: Aviation Week
Date: Febuary 5, 1996
Page: 26-27
Author: David A. Fulghum/Washington

Advanced coatings and unmanned designs appear to dominate efforts to
keep new-generation, low-observable aircraft unseen both day and night

U S. military and aerospace officials contend that tests of improved
stealth technologies, which are already underway and showing success,
could make warplanes virtually invisible to radar, infrared sensors and
the human eye. The claim puts an interesting light on a call by top U.S.
Air Force scientists for the Pentagon to push rapid development of a new
generation of stealthy, unmanned combat aircraft.

At least two classified aircraft programs, one unmanned and another that
can fly with or without a pilot, are involved in current stealth
research, according to a senior aerospace industry official.

The projects, reportedly being worked on within a block of each other at
the Groom Lake development facility on the restricted government ranges
north of Nellis AFB, Nev., involve aircraft built primarily of composite
materials that use the same type engine and employ a special, next-
generation stealth coating that limits their visibility in at least two
spectrums.

PENTAGON OFFICIALS confirmed lost year that there were at least two
fixed-wing black aircraft projects at the facility, but denied that
either had yet taken to the air. A senior Defense Dept. officials echoed
that assessment lost week by saying, "If it's [already] flying, it
belongs to some other agency." The industry official contends that the
pure UAV, at least, has flown and evidenced some control or stability
problems. These qualified affirmations leave open the possibility that
more than two projects are involved.

The manned/unmanned aircraft's coating, considered a forerunner of the
smart-skin concept, is activated by a 24-v. charge that helps trigger
both radar and visual masking. The electrically charged coating
attenuates radar reflections better than current stealth coatings.
Dissipation of 10 dBsm. of radio frequency energy con reduce the
operating range of an air defense radar by 40-50%. Moreover, the coating
has properties that allow aircraft's skin color to be changed to blend
the aircraft into the sky if viewed from below, or various hues of earth
if seen from above. The aircraft also incorporates infrared limiting
technology for a multispectral signature reduction effect.

Natalie Crawford, a long-time RAND official and chairman of the attack
panel for the U.S. Air Force scientific advisory board, said the Air
Force must raise the threshold for new stealth technology and pursue an
"invisible air vehicle" so that U.S. stealth warplanes can operate in
daylight. High visibility and distinctive shapes are a major limitation
of the F-117, F-22, and, in particular, the large, black B-2 bomber. But
being invisible means considerable improvement both in the infrared and
visual spectrum.

PARALLEL, ALTHOUGH not necessarily associated research, has shown that
aerodynamic drag can be reduced and shock wave buildup on high
performance aircraft delayed by putting an electrical charge on aircraft
skins.

Both aircraft being tested at Groom Lake have hard points to carry
weapons. Since U.S. combat rules currently do not allow UAVs to drop
bombs or shoot missiles, some aerospace officials note that the larger
aircraft could be flown by a pilot on strike missions and then be
operated unmanned on reconnaissance missions, particularly where enemy
air defenses are heavy. Air Force Chief Scientist Gene McCall predicted
that unmanned aircraft and their sensors will be sophisticated and
reliable enough to carry weapons within 10-20 years.

Other aerospace specialists suggest that the accommodations for a pilot
were made simply to get through the testing more easily and with less
fear of a crash that would delay or kill the project. This is a common
practice within the UAV community where there often are one or two test
vehicles.

An aircraft without a pilot can be maneuvered far more violently,
thereby making it harder to shoot down. Both Air Force pilots and
scientists concur that an aircraft capable of making 15-20g turns could
outmaneuver most enemy missiles.

McCall called for uninhabited combat and reconnaissance aerial vehicles
(UCAVs and URAVs) that can endure +10-+20g. The Nellis unmanned/manned
aircraft project is reportedly designed for 12g. U.S. Air Force
officials are more demanding, saying they need "15-18-20g," to ensure
they can win aerial fights against newer missiles.

McCall estimates the UCAVs will be demonstrated within 10 years and
operational within 20 years. Moreover, he predicted that the lost
aircraft off the Joint Advanced Strike Technology {JAST) production line
will likely be built as unmanned vehicles. Air Force officials hove
suggested that operators on board the larger sensor platforms-such as
the E-3 AWACS or E-8 Joint-STARS-will direct the unmanned JAST and
reconnaissance UAVs during missions and return them to home base
operators for the return flight and landing.

UCAVS, BY ELIMINATING the pilot, could present a completely smooth,
seam-free surface to ground-based radars during a flight, McCall said.
The landing gear, the seams of which are impossible to hide, would be on
top of the aircraft. When ready to descend, the aircraft could simply
roll over and lower its landing gear, a feat impossible with a pilot on
board.

McCall noted that stealth shaping has about reached its limits. To make
an aircraft truly invisible, the Air Force would need to perfect the
ability to repeat and reverse radar signals so that there appears to be
no return and to further improve infrared signature reductions."

Skunk Works Digest Wednesday, 7 February 1996 Volume 05 : Number 615
------------------------------

From: Kathryn & Andreas Gehrs-Pahl schnars@ais.org
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 03:40:26 -0500 (EST)
Subject: News about Groom Lake

To get away from the word jousting and name calling, here is something really
interesting to the Skunk Works List.

The latest Aviation Week & Space Technology (AW&ST), from February 5, 1996,
has two very skunky articles on pages 26-28. I am a little bit behind with my
AW&ST summaries, but I think, this one can't wait:

The headlines are: "GROOM LAKE TESTS TARGET STEALTH", pages 26-27, and
"PILOTS TO LEAVE COCKPIT IN FUTURE AIR FORCE", pages 26-28.

The first article confirms rumors about two or more new stealth aircraft
being tested at Groom Lake. One is an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) the other
is an aircraft, which can fly manned or unmanned. At least the UAV has
apparently already flown, while the other will incorporate "Smart Skin"
properties. These include the ability to attenuate radar reflections better
than current Radar Absorbing Materials (RAM), as well as the ability to
change its color, to blend in with the background. It also incorporates
infrared signature limiting technology. The aim is for an "invisible air
vehicle" (in the radar, infrared and visual spectrum), which can operate
unimpeded day or night. AW&ST also mentions drag reduction by electrostatic
fields, again.

Both vehicles have hard points for weapons, but because the current US combat
rules do not allow UAVs to drop bombs or fire missiles, at least the second
aircraft could fly manned attack missions, besides unmanned reconnaissance or
targeting missions.

To make an aircraft truly invisible, the USAF would need to perfect the
ability to repeat and reverse radar signals, and further improve infrared
signature reductions.

[Besides those two fixed-wing USAF stealth aircraft, it is also rumored that
a British stealth aircraft and at least one stealth helicopter is currently
tested at Groom Lake.]

The second article (and parts of the first) deal with the "New World Vistas"
report, which highlights the technological advances, expected to be used by
the USAF in the next 30 years (1995 to 2025).

The possible high-tech weapons listed in a year-long study released by the
service are so advanced that special training would be essential to make sure
humans are not overwhelmed by science. "The keyboard and the mouse are simply
not adequate for the 21st Century," said Gene McCall of Los Alamos National
Laboratory (LANL), chief of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. Some of
the technologies, sketched out in the 15-volume report:

* Use of unmanned aircraft to do more than the spy missions they perform now;
Uninhabited Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAV) and Uninhabited Reconnaissance
Aerial Vehicles (URAV), able to out-maneuver missiles at 15-20 g, flying at
speeds of Mach 12-15 and operating at altitudes of 85,000-125,000 ft.

Guided from control centers inside the United States or from aircraft like
E-3 AWACS or E-8 J-STARS (and their follow-ons), robot planes could roam
the world with laser or other high-energy/microwave weapons to destroy
ground and air targets. Although it goes against the grain of traditional
Air Force people, the idea of pilotless combat aircraft has inherent
advantages over manned warplanes. Unmanned craft could be more survivable,
for starters. Shape and function need not be constrained by a cockpit, a
human body or an ejection seat.

Gene McCall, who directed the "Vistas" project, told a Pentagon news
conference an unmanned strike plane could be designed to accelerate and
maneuver at 20 times the force of gravity, or double what a pilot can
withstand. With such speed of maneuver the unmanned plane could simply
outfly a hostile missile, McCall said. An unmanned bomber or fighter also
could be stealthier. The plane could be perfectly flat on the bottom,
reducing vulnerability to radar detection. The landing gear could be on top
rather than on the bottom, and a simple rollover maneuver -- impossible
with a human in the cockpit -- would put it in landing position.

Small versions of the unmanned combat plane could be carried aboard and
launched from large conventional aircraft -- giving them truly global
reach. For all its promise, remotely piloted combat planes aren't likely to
enter the Air Force for another 20 years or so, McCall said. Even then,
pilots will not become extinct. "I don't think we're ever going to replace
completely the manned aircraft," he said.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) is working on a modification
program for F-16s, to enable autonomous flight and auto-landing capability.
Other options include an F-117-like delta-wing design without a cockpit,
but with a blended surface fuselage, instead of flat planes. [A sketch of
this design is included, which might also be a candidate for the "A-17".]

* Hypersonic fighters and UCAVs could soar into battle at 12 to 15 times the
speed of sound, enabling the USAF to reach high value targets anywhere in
the world in minutes. Hypersonic UAVs would cut costs dramatically and give
better performance. Crucial to their development would be advanced dual-
mode ramjet/scramjet engines and high-temperature, lightweight materials,
allowing for long-range, long-endurance, high-altitude supercruise flight.

* Stealth will have to be pushed to a new plateau -- the multispectral
approach would encompass capturing, repeating and reversing enemy radar
signals, further reducing the infrared signatures and making the aircraft
invisible in the visual spectrum. [Considering the difficulties encountered
with relatively slow sound waves, the active cancellation of light-speed
fast radar signals seems to be quite a feat to me.]

* Mega-lifter with up to 1 million pound gross takeoff weight will be able to
deliver cargo within 10 meters of a preselected point at a range of 12,000
miles, after dropping them from 20,000 ft. They will be equipped with an
all-weather, automatic landing aid, using Differential-Global Positioning
System (D-GPS), enabling the pilot to land and taxi with an accuracy of 30
centimeters (1 foot) in zero visibility. Those airlifters could also carry
UAVs or directed energy weapons like lasers, to be used as survivable
offensive weapons platforms in high-thread areas.

* Hypersonic missiles. With on-board links to navigation satellites, they not
only will be faster but also more accurate. McCall said a one-second
electronic emission from a hostile surface-to-air, or SAM, missile radar
would be enough to enable an Air Force plane 200 miles away to strike it
within one minute. "We can make the operation of SAM sites the world's most
dangerous occupation," McCall said.

* Precision guided micro-bombs will be able to kill tanks with mere grams of
more powerful explosives. Besides being more accurate, munitions will be
more powerful, per unit mass, by a factor of 10. Tiny bombs using just
grams of explosive could destroy moving targets, even tanks or missile
batteries. Natalie Crawford, a RAND defense specialist and chairman of the
report's attack panel, said, that aircraft firepower could be increased 100
times while reducing the cost for war reserves.

* High-power microwave weapons and Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) generators.
These would be used against electronics or computers, not people. McCall
said a fighter pilot threatened by a hostile warplane could send microwave
signals to confuse his opponent -- perhaps by causing all of the other
plane's warning lights and signals to come on. EMP generators were already
tested on board of cruise missiles, which were powerful enough to destroy
small electro motors and disable auto ignitions.

* Space-based surveillance and reconnaissance is expected to be worldwide,
continuous and largely conducted from commercial satellites. A new, highly
accurate and jam-resistant GPS system would be available, as well as
distributed space-sensors and starring sensors aboard of URAVs, which could
continuously monitor important targets with increased resolution.

* Brain-wave guidance of UAVs and other vehicles as well as other advanced
human-machine interfaces will be perfected. "Information Munitions" will be
developed, to seek out and confuse enemy computers -- the USAF's "Hacker
Squadron" (the 609th Information Warfare Squadron (IWS), based at Shaw AFB,
SC) is only the beginning.

* Drugs. Using what the "Vistas" report called "chemical intervention," the
endurance and performance of pilots and other Air Force personnel can be
enhanced. Chemical and other means can be found to reduce physical and
psychological effects of jet lag, for example.

"Let me assure you that this study is not going to sit on the shelf and
gather dust. We have already set aside funding for some of these promising
new areas of research," Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall said.

Rural road may help E.T. find home

A new designation for Highway 375 Is no longer an alien concept to the state Transportation Board.

By Ed Vogel
Donrey Capital Bureau
CARSON CITY - Joking that Nevada needs to attract visitors from other worlds, Transportation Board members unanimously decided Thursday to designate Highway 375 as the state's official ~Extraterrestrial Highway."

Since only 95 vehicles travel on the rural road about 140 miles north of Las Vegas in a typical day, Gov. Bob Miller said it will be easy to determine if the special designation is a boon to-tourism.

He suggested to Transportation Director Thomas Stephens that some of the signs denoting the Extraterrestrial Highway be placed flat on the ground so aliens "can land there."

Stephens said the department intends to put up four 3-foot by 8-foot signs that cost a total of $3,360. The signs would be erected at Rachel and other locations along the 98-mile highway that runs from Warm Springs to Hiko.

He said the big signs will be well anchored and placed only near inhabited areas so "they aren't stolen every five minutes."

The Extraterrestrial Highway is just north of the Nevada Test Site and the Area 51 base where the Air Force is believed to have tested the stealth, U-2 and other aircraft.

Unidentified flying object buffs claim that an alien hurt in a crash near Roswell, N.M., was taken to Area 51. Fox Television last year showed film of an autopsy being performed on the purported alien.

The Transportation Board's action is in sharp contrast to the Legislature. The Assembly last year passed a bill to designate an "Alien Extraterrestrial Highway," but the measure never received a vote in the Senate.

Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Bill O'Donnell, R-Las Vegas, blocked a vote, saying the Legislature had more important matters to consider.

But tourism officials in rural counties began to lobby the Tourism Commission and Transportation Board to approve the designation.

John Riggs, a member of E Campus Vitus, a fraternal organization known for its prankish behavior, told Transportation Board members they were making history.

"People will go out of their way to drive the road", Riggs said. "Nobody in this country or world has done this. Those people who believe in flying saucers will visit."

A man who calls himself Merlin II and claims he is an extraterrestrial also pitched for the designation. His real name is David Solomon.

"All kinds of tourists from all kinds of places will visit," said Merlin II, who originally asked the Legislature to designate the alien highway.

"Some of the people visiting might not come in cars," Miller replied.

Lt. Gov. Lonnie Hammargren, also a board member, said the board was not trying to override the Legislature.

He said the Legislature tends to "micromanage state government" and road designations should be made by the Transportation Board.

"Anything we can do to promote tourism is wonderful," he said. "We do have a sense of humor in Nevada."

Other Transportation Board members voting for the designation included Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa and Controller Darrel Daines.

Subj: Groom Lake, circa 1937
Date: Wed, Jan 3, 1996 5:34 PM PDT
From: HurstCR@MASPO3.MAS.YALE.EDU
X-From: HurstCR@MASPO3.MAS.YALE.EDU (Hurst, Charles R.)
To: Psychospy@aol.com (Glenn Campbell)

Another Nevada Magazine article mentioning the Groom Lake area. It
is purely historical in nature, talking about the winter of 1937 and how
a mining party was stranded in their car for several days on the dry
lake bed of Groom Lake. Pretty neat photos of old stuff (car, telegram,
bus). It also showed a small map of the rescue trail (rats - it's a
current map, not an old original!). Page 16 of the February issue, "The
Big Chill".

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release January 31, 1996
TEXT OF A LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT
TO THE SPEAKER OF THE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AND
THE PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE
January 30, 1996

Dear Mr. Speaker: (Dear Mr. President:)

Consistent with section 6001(a) of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) (the "Act"), as amended, 42 U.S.C. 6961(a), notification is hereby given that on September 29, 1995, I issued Presidential Determination 95-45 (copy attached) and thereby exercised the authority to grant certain exemptions under section 6001(a) of the Act.

Presidential Determination No. 95-45 exempted the United States Air Force's operating location near Groom Lake, Nevada, from any Federal, State, interstate, or local hazardous or solid waste laws that might require the disclosure of classified information concerning that operating location to unauthorized persons. Information concerning activities at the operating location near Groom Lake has been properly determined to be classified and its disclosure would be harmful to national security. Continued protection of this information is, therefore, in the paramount interest of the United States.

The Determination was not intended to imply that in the absence of a Presidential exemption RCRA or any other provision of law permits or requires the disclosure of classified information to unauthorized persons, but rather to eliminate any potential uncertainty arising from a decision in pending litigation, Kasza v. Browner (D. Nev. CV-S-94-795-PMP). The Determination also was not intended to limit the applicability or enforcement of any requirement of law applicable to the Air Force's operating location near Groom Lake except those provisions, if any, that would require the disclosure of classified information.

Sincerely,

WILLIAM J. CLINTON


Title: DEFENSE SECRETARY FORESEES CONTINUING ROLE FOR NELLIS
Sub-title: William Perry talks about U.S. troops in Bosnia and Groom
Lake safety during a stopover in Las Vegas.
Type: Newspaper article
Publication: Las Vegas Review-Journal
Date: Jan. 28, 1996
Author: Warren Bates

Defense Secretary William Perry said Saturday if harm were to come to
U.S. troops in Bosnia, it would have happened already.

"We always had to be concerned we would meet organized resistance,"
Perry said while visiting Nellis Air Force Base, a stopover on a tour of
southwestern military installations. "We have been there one month and
have not met such resistance.

"But we're still concerned as long as we're deployed of dissident
individuals or dissident gangs harassing our forces basically terrorist
activities."

Perry said he does not think the United States is or should be the
police of the world," and he said the military must be "very selective"
about sending troops into world conflicts. In a short news conference,
Perry also touched on Groom Lake litigation, in which former government
workers at the Lincoln County military facility allege they were exposed
to hazardous waste.

He declined to comment specifically on the federal lawsuit but said, "We
feel very deeply the responsibility for maintaining an adequate environ-
ment at that facility and all U.S. facilities."

He also said training operations at Nellis are "in our plans and in our
programs as far as I can see," adding the budget cuts that have affected
the base and other military installations over the past few years are
stabilizing.

Perry's arrival at Nellis was part of an itinerary that also included
visits to military facilities in Twentynine Palms, Calif., and San
Antonio.

Maj. Andy Bourland, a Nellis spokesman, said the nation's highest
ranking military officer wanted to "get a closer look and broader
understanding of the operations" at the base.

"While he's here he's going to meet with a lot of the enlisted folks as
well as senior staff," Bourland said last week. "He'll also attend a
mass debriefing on the Red Flag mission.

"I think you could pretty honestly say the base is seriously looking
forward to showcasing a very important aspect of the Air Force and the
Department of Defense", Bourland said. "We hope to leave him with a
better understanding of the capabilities and spirit and attitude of the
men and women of the base."

Perry has taken recent trips to Germany to visit troops of the Army's
1st Armored Division, which has been training as the U.S. element of the
NATO peace force for Bosnia. He also visited NATO military command
headquarters in Belgium.

Perry recently said the U.S. government intends to begin rearming the
Bosnian army as early as next summer if international armscontrol
efforts fail to bring a balance of power between the warring factions.

Earlier this month, the secretary said the United States also will
expand on its already massive military presence in the Persian Gulf to
deter the long-term threat of aggression.

Title: TELEVISION STATION LOSES BID TO HAVE MATERIAL OPENED UP
Type: Newspaper article
Publication: Las Vegas Review-Journal
Date: January 23, 1996

A Las Vegas television station on Monday lost a bid to unseal material
connected to a lawsuit against government officials filed by former
workers at the U.S. Air Force operating location near Groom Lake.

U.S. District Judge Philip Pro rejected a motion by KLAS-TV, Channel 8,
to unseal the transcript of and documents related to a June 20 hearing
regarding the litigation.

Despite the setback, Pro granted the station's request for status as a
legitimately interested party in the case for purposes of challenging
his orders.

The station had also sought edited versions of the documents, saying
national security could be protected without such a sweeping sealing of
all material.

Pro, in his order, agreed with an idea that the military had proposed -
that edited versions of the documents be provided after the litigation
had been completed.

The workers claim they suffered various injuries as a result of exposure
to hazardous wastes at the base, 35 miles west of Alamo.

Title: JUDGE SHUTS DOOR ON AREA 51 ACTION
Subtitle: TV station's request for secret data denied
Type: Newspaper article
Publication: Las Vegas Sun
Date: Jan. 23, 1996
Author: Rachel Levy

A local television station lost its attempt to shed light on a lawsuit
brought by former Groom Lake workers who claim exposure to toxic fumes
while at the once-secret military base.

U.S. District Court Judge Philip Pro rejected KLAS Channel 8's request
to unseal a June 20, 1995, telephonic hearing.

"The right of access by the public is not absolute," Pro wrote.

The June hearing involved a dispute about a classified military manual.
The taped conversation and all documents related to it were sealed for
national security reasons.

The lawsuit is brought by former workers who said they were exposed to
open-pit burning of hazardous waste. Groom Lake, also referred to as
Area 51, is an Air Force operation located 35 miles west of Alamo.

Channel 8's attorney, Christopher Byrd, argued that the records should
be unsealed because the telephone line was not secured and the court
employees attending the hearing had not received military clearance.

Pro conceded that the June hearing was not in line with court protocol
on sealed cases. But, the judge said, that does not negate the fact that
the material discussed was classified and should remain so.

Pro said that once he has ruled on all sealed motions, he will give the
military 30 days to delete sensitive material from all court records.
Then he will consider releasing them for public view.

Pro had dismissed one of two lawsuits the workers had filed. He said the
case was outside the court's jurisdiction since President Clinton signed
an order to keep Groom Lake work conditions a secret.

Title: GROOM LAKE SECRETS TOUGHER TO KEEP
Sub-title: JUDGE REJECTS GOVERNMENT ARGUMENT TO EASE CONDITIONS FOR
SECRECY
Type: Newspaper article
Publication: Las Vegas Review-Journal
Date: Jan. 13, 1996
Page: 5B
Author: Warren Bates

A federal judge has dealt a setback in a government attempt to make it
easier for the military to keep secret the identification of chemicals
and other information at the Air Force's operating location near Groom
Lake.

U.S. District Judge Philip Pro rejected an argument by the government
that the requirement for a presidential exemption in cases such as the
Groom Lake litigation would frustrate the military, which used to
delegate such orders to subordinate executive branch officials.

In making his decision, Pro dismissed one of two lawsuits brought by
former workers against the government. The workers claim they suffered
injuries as a result of hazardous waste violations while working on base
projects.

Pro said that because President Clinton had given such an exemption,
keeping the details secret, he no longer had jurisdiction over the case.

Attorney Jonathan Turley, representing the workers, said the case
dismissal will not affect another lawsuit his clients have pending
against the military.

"The only disagreement we have is the acceptance of President Clinton's
exemption," he said. "Even though he ruled in our favor, the public is
still being barred from disclosure."

Clinton granted the exemption Sept. 29. Turley said an appeal of Pro's
decision to the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals will be coming. Pro also
denied a request by the government for a protective order that would
require seizure of classified information Turley has in his possession.

Turley said the government has been dishonest in its position on how
vigorously it sought to retrieve the documents from him, one of which is
an Air Force manual he tried to submit under seal to Pro.

Air Force Col. Tom Boyd said at the time that no threat existed to seize
the document and that the government merely "expressed an interest" in
getting it back.

Turley said Pro's order on Thursday vindicated his position that he was
being forced to relinquish the document. Pro's ruling said the govern-
ment wanted Turley to turn over all copies of the document, delete any
electronic reference to it and not divulge the contents to anyone.

Pro said he could not issue protective order because Turley obtained the
document through "alternative means" outside the litigation. The judge
said he lacked authority to force Turley to turn over documents, even if
classified, to the government.

Also, in the second lawsuit, Pro rejected several requests for base
information by Turley. Pro said the lawyer was seeking information that
was protected by the state's secret privilege.

The judge said some of Turley's requests were rehash of old issues.

"Frankly we are relieved to have decisions on some of these issues so we
can move on to the next level of judicial review," Turley said.


ACTUAL VERBAL TRANSCRIPT
CBS-TV -- 60 MINUTES
March 17, 1996.

Transcribed with permission.
Public domain. Distribute without editing.

This 60 Minutes segment orignally aired on March 17, 1996. It follows the
controversy at a top secret air base which supposedly doesnít exist. For
more information regarding the lawsuit and / or Area 51, point your web
brouser at:
http://www.cris.com/~psyspy/area51/


Leslie Stahl: Why this story is called Area 51 / Catch 22 will become
clear as it unfolds. But letís start at the beginning... What if we told
you that someone is dumping truck loads of toxic waste in open trenches,
and setting it on fire, endangering the health and lives of everyone down
wind? Youíd probably want the government to prosecute. After all, it is
a federal crime, punishable by up to 15 years in prison, and a one million
dollar fine. But what if we then told you that the perpetrator, the one
who is doing the open pit burning, is the government. In this case, the
United States Department of Defense. Well thatís exactly what dozens of
government whistle blowers are charging. The problem is, they canít prove
it. Because it took place at a top, top secret air force base, that
officially, doesnít exist.

Stahl: Las Vegas, McKaren Airport. Every morning, civilian contractors,
test pilots, and others, board unmarked planes with whited out windows.
They are flying to an air force installation that has never appeared on
federal aviation pilot charts, or U.S. geological survey maps. It exists
only in what is called the "black world". A place so sensitive, that only
those who take an oath of secrecy for life are allowed in.

Stahl: The perimeter of the base is blanketed with ground sensors and
listening devices, and patrolled by security guards in unmarked white
jeeps who are authorized to use deadly force to keep intruders out. They
kept a close watch on us as we approached the border. This is as close as
you can get to the base, which is thirteen miles back off (points behind
her) in this direction. Itís known as Area 51, Groom Lake, Dreamland,
any one of a dozen names depending on who you ask. But just donít ask
anyone at the defense department. They donít want to talk about it.

Stahl: But Jonathan Turley is only too happy to talk about it. Heís a
law professor representing Area 51 employees, past and present, who say
they not only witnessed dumping of toxic waste at the base, but in many
cases participated in it. Turley is suing the government on their behalf,
trying to get the defense department to acknowledge the burning, and to
get a federal court order barring it from happening again. He isnít
asking for punitive damages, all he wants is information about what toxins
his clients were exposed to, and help paying their medical bills.

Stahl: But heís been about as successful as we were in getting the
defense department to say anything about the base, seen here by a nearby
mountaintop, even that it exists.

Jonathan Turley: Oh, they would not confirm itís existence or itís non
existence.

Stahl: They wouldnít say it wasnít there. They wouldnít say that it was
there?

Turley: Right. The only problem of course is that you can see the damn
base from public land. You can take a picture of it. This is in the
middle of the desert!. Itís a large facility. Itís about as concealable
as a pig in the parlor.

Stahl: And about as secret. UFO groupies from around the world,
convinced that the air force is hiding flying saucers there, trek to the
perimeter of the base by the busload. There is an Area 51 research
center, an Area 51 viewers guide, and in downtown Las Vegas, the base that
doesnít exist has a bar and a video game named after it.

Turley: We finally said listen, if you are going to deny the obvious,
then we are going to prove the obvious. Then I took a series of pictures
and submitted those in evidence. I submitted affidavits of people who
worked there, which said they were real people and this is a real base. I
even had satellites from Russian and French satellites take pictures of
the base

Stahl: The Russians have satellite pictures of this base?

Turley: Not only do they have satellite pictures, under treaty, the
Russians are required to be flown over this base. Itís called..

Stahl: Required?? Required to be flown over this base???

Turley: Yeah, itís called the Open Skies Treaty. The United States
Government must fly the Russians, upon the demand of the Russians, and
other countries over this facility. And they have to do the same at their
bases.

Stahl: And they still deny it existed?

Turley: Yeah!

Stahl: "They" meaning the Pentagon?

Turley: Right..You sorta sit there and ya think, ya know.. this is like
an out take of Maxwell Smart.. (laughs) These guys are gonna grab a
phone or something..

Stahl: After nine months of hand to hand litigation, over whether or not
the base exists, Air Force attorneys in November of 1994 finally confirmed
the obvious. That yes it does exist. But then they dug in on a new
front. This one, over whether or not the base has a name.

Turley: Well the name was important because we have a lot of documents
that show that they had hazardous waste here. Weíve got testimony and
affidavits.

Stahl: You needed to link the name with what you have in your documents..

Turley: Yes, and by denying Area 51, which was the common name, they
made, or at least they tried to make all those documents irrelevant.

Stahl: But if the base has no name, as the Air Force insists, then how
does the Pentagon explain this old film produced by Lockheed Skunk Works,
the legendary defense contractor that flight tested the U2 spy plane, and
the F117 stealth fighter among others, at Area 51? If you look closely,
you can see this man write ëmove out to Area 51í. And how do we know that
those planes were flight tested at the base? We asked Jay Miller, the
man Lockheed Skunk Works hired to write the companiesí official history.

Jay Miller: Once the manuscript was completed, one of the things that the
Department of Defense asked me to do is remove the words Area 51, Groom
Lake, Dreamland, The Ranch, ..those are all names that have been utilized
for this one particular facility.. and uh.. to refer to it as the "test
location".

Stahl: So they didnít mind that you described it, but they did mind that
you named it. Explain that??

Miller: I have no answer for ya, I wish I did.

Stahl: The Air Force also refuses to answer any and all questions about
the dumping of hazardous waste at Area 51, which as we said is why the
workers are suing. Workers like John Doe #1, who is pressing the case
anonymously, since anything he says about the base would violate his oath
of secrecy, a crime punishable by up to ten years in prison.

John Doe #1: (producers altered his voice to mask his identity) You could
not tell anyone that you even worked there. The acknowledgment of the
operating location is strictly forbidden.

Stahl: He and other Area 51 employees say security is so complete that
nothing except the workers ever leaves the base, not even garbage. It is
either burned or buried right there, everything from food scraps, to
jeeps, to jet parts. And those drums of toxic chemicals and wastes used
in classified programs.

Stahl: This former Area 51 worker says the open pit burning was executed
with extraordinary security.

JD#1: There was armed guards which would stop us approximately 100 yards
or even more near the dump area.

Stahl: There were armed guards?

JD#1: Yes..

Stahl: Come on.. Armed with what?

JD#1: Rifles, side arms..

Stahl: You are talking about something thatís in the middle of a totally
secure, secret air base, and in the middle of this, there are armed
guards?

JD#1: Yes maíam..

Stahl: The burning he says, lasted for hours, and generated plumes of
toxic smoke that swept over the base like London fog.

JD#1: Your eyes would water, sting, your throat would go dry, and uh, you
felt like you were drug through a pig pen, so to speak.

Stahl: Do you think that you were exposed to something that was harmful
to your health?

JD#1: Yes. Definitely, yes.

Stahl: And why do you say that?

JD#1: Skin irritation. ..wonít go away. Thereís no cure for it that I
can find.

Stahl: What do you mean by skin irritation? Is it a rash?

JD#1: Cracking, bleeding. Itís gets pretty scaley.

Turley: Not surprisingly, people that were downwind from this operation
became ill. And two of them have died.

Stahl: Youíre absolutely sure they died from the wastes that went up in
this open pit?

Turley: No, Iím not absolutely sure. What Iím trying to find out is
whether they did die because of this.

Stahl: One of those that did die, Robert Frost, also had cracking scaley
skin, which can be caused by exposure to cancer causing chemicals like
dioxin. This anaylsis by a Rutgers University biochemist found
substantial quantities of dioxins in Robert Frostís fatty tissue. He also
found other toxic chemical compounds he couldnít recall having ever seen
in human tissues.

Stahl: Instead of responding to the specific charges, the defense
department asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that neither
the government nor the workers can make their case without divulging top
secret information.

Turley: I donít care if theyíve got Jimmy Hoffa buried in those trenches.
What I care about is whether they burned hazardous waste and exposed my
clients to the burning of those hazardous wastes. We can handle that
without getting into sensitive areas.

Stahl: The Air Force maintains that if they answer your question, then
the enemy will be able to piece together a mosaic about the specific
operations at Area 51.

Turley: Yes, and thatís just facially absurd.

Stahl: Didnít you ever ask them any specifics?

Turley: Yes.

Stahl: Like what?

Turley: Oh, we asked if they have jet fuel there.

Stahl: Jet fuel.. What did they say?

Turley: They said to "admit or deny the presence of jet fuel at an air
base would put American lives in danger."

Stahl: They said that?

Turley: Oh yeah..

Stahl: Címon.. What else did you ask?

Turley: We asked about paint.

Stahl: What ? (laughs)

Turley: Not the magic paint, not the stuff that makes planes disappear..
Paint.. Like in your house.

Stahl: What was the answer?

Turley: "American lives would be put in danger if we answer that
question."

Stahl: No...

Turley: Yeah...

Stahl: What else did you ask?

Turley: Pesticides.

Stahl: Answer?

Turley: "Oh well.. Thatís a national security question." We asked what
about if they have a single discarded car battery.?

Stahl: You actually asked that?

Turley: Yeah..

Stahl: What was there response.

Turley: "This is a top secret question that we could never answer."

Stahl: If itís so top secret, how come this manual distributed to Area 51
employees, identifies a gas station, a paint storage building, and yes,
even a motor pool battery shop all on the base. The manual is available
on the Internet. It was for years, unclassified, and widely distributed
in the public domain. But when Turley introduced it into evidence, the
defense department suddenly classified it, and everything in Turleyís
office that quotes from it including notes and legal briefs.

Stahl: Congressman Lee Hamilton, former chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee, has been following the Area 51 lawsuit.

Lee Hamilton: The Air Force is classifying all information about Area 51
in order to protect themselves from a lawsuit.

Stahl: The Air Force says, quote, "to reveal this information increases
the risk to the lives of United States personnel, and decreases the
probability of successful mission accomplishment." I mean, thatís very
strong..

Hamilton: Itís very strong and itís completely unsubstantiated. Iím not
personally prepared to take the word of a person who has, or an entity
which has a huge financial stake in the outcome here, that this
information needs to be classified.

Stahl: There in court, a judge agreed with that, and has said yes, that
they can keep these things secret.

Hamilton: I think that judges are often snowed by the national security
establishment.

Stahl: Because of the lawsuit, the Environmental Protection Agency
inspected Area 51 last year for the first time, and prepared a hazardous
waste inventory. They did a hazardous waste inventory, but they wonít
admit there is hazardous waste there. But it gets better because they
stated in court that they would put this facility on the hazardous waste
docket.. Itís a list of federal facilities with hazardous waste. And
they said, "weíre gonna put it on that list." And I said, "Well,
Hello!", "doesnít that mean you have hazardous waste??!!" [Their
response] well, not necessarily...

Stahl: Turley asked to see the hazardous waste inventory, since the law
requires that it be disclosed to the public, unless that is, the President
of the United States personally exempts it. You guessed it.. The Air
Force asked President Clinton for the exemption, and got it.

Turley: There are very comical aspects to this case. The government is
so absurd. And even in my office, we sit there and sort of guffaw they
are claiming these things are secret. But at the end of the day, Iíve got
two dead clients, Iíve got other people who are ill, and Iíve got
defendants who committed crimes. They know they committed crimes. So do
I. And so does the court. And the question is, whether they are going to
be held accountable? Because ultimately, that is what this case is
about. Whether there is something unique about the United States
Government that either makes it accountable or exempt from it own laws.

Stahl: On March 6, 1996, the Federal judge overseeing the lawsuit
dismissed it, ruling that pursuing the case risked "significant harm to
national security". Turley is appealing.

HANGAR/18
FORMAT=INTRO
ANCHOR=MB/JH
WRITER=GKN(JHA)
SOURCE=GKTAPES
TAPE#=IT17
PHOTOG=ESO
DATE=2-5-96
(*BRADSHAW*)
RUMORS ABOUT ALIEN TECHNOLOGY BEING STORED AT NEVADA'S AREA 51
MILITARY BASE HAVE BEEN AROUND FOR MANY YEARS.
(***JUANA***)
BUT THE STORIES HAVE A CLEAR PREDECESSOR---THE LEGEND, OF HANGAR
18!TAKE THREE SHOT
GEORGE KNAPP IS HERE WITH AN I-TEAM REPORT... ON HOW THESE TALES
BEGAN!


S-HANGAR/18
FORMAT=ONSET
ANCHOR=GEORGE
WRITER=GKN
SOURCE=
TAPE#=IT17
PHOTOG=ESO
DATE=2-5-96
HANGAR 18 IS THE GRANDDADDY OF UFO CONSPIRACY STORIES. IT'S OF
INTEREST TO US BECAUSE, AS IT TURNS OUT, THERE'S A HANGAR 18 OUT AT
AREA 51, A PLACE WHICH HAS INSPIRED MORE THAN A FEW UFO STORIES OF
ITS OWN. WE KNOW ABOUT THIS HANGAR 18 BECAUSE OF A SECURITY MANUAL
TAKEN FROM THE BASE.

P-HANGAR/18
FORMAT=PKG
ANCHOR=GEORGE
WRITER=GKN(DLI)
SOURCE=GKTAPES
TAPE#=IT17
PHOTOG=ESO
DATE=2-5-96
((Glenn Campbell/Anti-Secrecy Activist: This is hangar 18....it's
also possible there's a sens of humor out there. doesnt prove there
are aliens, but they have a sense of humor.))

IT MAY BE THE PEOPLE WHO RUN THE BASE WITH NO NAME WANTED TO TEASE UFO
BUFFS WHO FORMERLY CLIMBED THE HILLS TO PEER INTO DREAMLAND, OR IT MAY
JUST BE THIS WAS THE 18TH HANGAR BUILT AT GROOM LAKE, BUT THE IRONY OF
THE NAME HAS NOT ESCAPED RESEARCHERS. THE EXISTENCE OF HANGAR 18 WAS
CONFIRMED BY THIS SECURITY FROM AREA 51, A MANUAL THE GOVT SAYS SHOULD
BE CLASSIFIED. IT LISTS THE NAME OF THE HANGAR 18, ALONG WITH EVERY
OTHER BUILDING ON THE BASE, EVEN THE NAMES OF ITS STREETS.
THE HANGAR 18 LEGEND BEGAN NOT IN NEVADA BUT IN NEW MEXICO.
PERSISTENT REPORTS CLAIMED THAT DEBRIS AND BODIES FROM FLYG SAUCER
CRASH SITES HAD BEEN FLOWN TO WRIGHT PATTERSON AIR BASE IN OHIO,
HIDDEN INSIDE HANGAR 18, AKA THE BLUE ROOM. THE STORY GREW AFTER
SENATOR BARRY GOLDWATER, CHAIRMAN OF THE SENATE INTELLIGENCE
COMMITTEE, ASKED TO SEE WHAT WAS INSIDE THE HANGAR AND WAS TOLD TO
NEVER ASK AGAIN. AND A CHEESY MOVIE OF THE SAME NAME ADDED TO THE
FOLKLORE. NOW, THERE ARE MAPS OF AREA 51 WHICH CLEARLY SHOW THE
NAMESAKE HANGAR.
GLENN CAMPBELL IS PARTLY RESPONSIBLE. HIS AREA 51 RESEARCH CENTER
NEAR AREA 51 HELPED GENERATE WORLDWIDE ATTENTION ON THE BASE. TODAY,
HE HAS DIFFERENT DIGS.
((Glenn Campbell/Anti-Secrecy Activist: it just happens to overlook the
JKanet terminal out here. this is where all the workers at thebase take
off, park theircars.))
CAMPBELL'S APARTMENT NEAR MCCARRAN ALLOWS A BIRDS EYE VIEW OF EVERY
PERSON WHO FLIES IN AND OUT OF GROOM LAKE. HE OCCASIONALLY COUNTS THE
CARS TO GUAGE ACTIVITY AT THE BASE.
((Glenn Campbell: what ive noticed since the first of january is a
pickup of activity. more cars in the parrking lot.))
ABOUT 30 PERCENT MORE, HE SAYS. WE DONT KNOW FOR SURE WHAT THEY'RE
DOING UP THERE. THE SECURITY MANUAL NOTES THAT COVER STORIES ARE
ROUTINE PROCEDURE. SECURITY FORCES WHO MEET INTRUDERS ARE INSTRUCTED TO
SAY THEY'RE TRYING TO PROTECT THE PUBLIC FROM ORDINANCE AND LOW FLYING
PLANES.
((Jonathan Turley/Law Professor: What we have at the base is a cultural
feeling, anything can happen here because this is a place that doesnt
exist, so how can you have enforcement?))
T-HANGAR/18
FORMAT=RDR
ANCHOR=GEORGE
WRITER=GKN
SOURCE=
TAPE#=
PHOTOG=
DATE=2-5-96
PROFESSOR TURLEY IS THE LAWYER FOR FORMER AREA 51 WORKERS WHO SAY
THEY WERE EXPOSED TO TOXIC CHEMICALS OUT THERE. COVER STORIES, ALSO
KNOWN AS LIES, ARE AMONG THE LEAST OF THE GOVERNMENT'S
TRANSGRESSIONS AT GROOM LAKE, HE SAYS. SO FAR, FEDERAL COURTS HAVE
SIDED WITH THE PENTAGON. TURLEY SAYS HE HAS NO DOUBT THE WORKERS
WILL WIN AND HE EXPECTS THE CASE TO GO TO THE SUPREME COURT.
TX-2
FORMAT=CAM-VO/CAM-VO
ANCHOR=JUANA/PAULA
WRITER=ROC(JHA)
SOURCE=
TAPE#=
PHOTOG=
DATE=2/5/96
(***JUANA***)
(--2 SHOT --)
WE'LL BE RIGHT BACK.

From: campbell@ufomind.com (Glenn Campbell, Las Vegas)
Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 16:09:28 -0800
Subject: Campbell's Letter in this Week's Newsweek

My letter to the editor appears in this week's Newsweek, Feb. 10,
page 19. It is the issue with Madeline Albright on the cover, and
the letter is right below one from "Brad Pitt" of Los Angeles,
who I guess is some sort of famous person. The letter was given
the inevitable "The Truth is Out There" title.

The Newsweek people were very courteous. There was some negotiation
involved in cutting down the size, but I'm reasonably satisfied with
the results. -- Glenn


THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE

IN YOUR ARTICLE CONSPIRACY MANIA Feeds Our Growing National
Paranoia" (LIFESTYLE, Dec. 3-Jan. 6), I am quoted as saying,
"There is alien contact with the military." If I made that
statement, it was in the context of a description of a scenario,
not an expression of my belief. I am a researcher, and it is my
responsibility to reserve judgment and let each UFO story speak
for itself. Your article also quotes me as saying that "I don't
have proof other than what I hear from my sources at Area 51," a
classified air force base in the Nevada desert. Area 51 is
America's testing ground for top-secret aircraft systems, and
employees there face federal penalties for discussing it in any
form. Although I have spoken with former Area 51 employees, I
have never attempted to communicate with anyone currently working
at Area 51, and no one there has ever tried to contact me.

GLENN CAMPBELL
Owner, Area 51 Research Center
RACHEL, NEV.

A51 Story in July Monitoring Times [2 msgs]

From: campbell@ufomind.com (Glenn Campbell, Las Vegas)
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 1997 14:50:55 -0800
Subject: A51 Story in July Monitoring Times [2 msgs]

From: Chuck Penson penson@sci.mus.mn.us
Subject: Monitoring Times Story on Area 51

There is a great article on Area 51 and surrounding military installations
in the July issue of Monitoring Times magazine.

The story is written from a military radio monitoring perspective and
contains loads of radio frequencies used by various agencies and
contractors, as well as a (very) brief history of the area.

=====================================================================

Subject: Monitoring Times Article on Scanning Area-51
From: jetguy1@ix.netcom.com (BRENT CLARK )

Just recieved my July issue of "Monitoring Times" magazine which
includes an article dealing with radio frequencies and scanning the
Area-51 and Nellis complex. The article is by Assistant Editor Larry
Van Horn and contains an extensive frequency list covering Nellis,
Tonopah Test, Desert Rock and McCarran International.
The magazine can be found at most bookstores. Barnes & Noble has it in
the "Electronic" section of the magazine section. Cost $3.95

"Stealth" Archaeologist Approaches Papoose Lake [news]

From: campbell@ufomind.com (Glenn Campbell, Las Vegas)
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 1997 21:53:46 -0800

See the Las Vegas Sun for a significant article about an archaeologist
who hiked into the Nellis Range to within sight of Papoose Lake, south
of Area 51.

The 7/20/97 front page story can be found at:
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sun/dossier/events/journey/index.html

STEALTH SEARCH FOR HISTORY

Archaeologist braves barren desert, government security to find lost
site

By Ken McCall
LAS VEGAS SUN

As the full moon rose on an April night, Jerry Freeman picked up his
backpack and headed into a desolate and forbidding landscape.

Driven by an obsession about an episode in American pioneer history --
and the stubbornness of the Air Force -- the 55-year-old archaeologist
and adventurer began an unauthorized seven-day, hundred-mile trek
through the Nevada Test Site, into highly restricted Air Force
property, and near, if not in, the top-secret Area 51.

His objective: To find an inscription made in 1849 by a member of a
lost and desperate wagon train that eventually gave Death Valley its
name. Also, Freeman wanted to see Papoose Dry Lake, the last place
where the group of would-be gold-diggers camped together before
splintering in search of water.

His problem: The dry lake and the canyon that is thought to contain
the inscription are deep within one of the nation's most restricted
military bases.


Re: Stealth Archaeologist [more info]

From: campbell@ufomind.com (Glenn Campbell, Las Vegas)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 16:12:07 -0800

In private email, James Graham jgraham@genetics.com said:

I read your post and the article--did you talk to this guy yourself?
What do you think of the lights he said he saw? Do they correspond to
Papoose Lake in your opinion?

I visited with Jerry Freeman for a couple of hours today. I don't
feel comfortable discussing too many details not in the article, since
his possible arrest is of great concern and I don't want to give
anything away unless he does it himself. (Poison pills were
discussed. I urged him to keep the story small unless there was a
reason to make it big.)

He was definitely there -- within about 3 miles of the Papoose Lake
bed and perhaps 5 south of Lazar's "Secret Saucer Base." He said he
thoroughly scanned the area with binoculars and saw nothing -- no
structures or signs of life. There was not even a test stand in the
lake bed as previously reported.

Using the Nellis Range Chart and Freeman's descriptions, I figure that
his closest approach was 37deg03'N 115deg48'W. (Or the circle below
the "E" of "Emigrant" on the chart). His risky path across the Test
Site was dictated by the route of the Lost 49ers.

At night, he saw two lights near the Papoose lake bed, as reported in
the article....

"Freeman saw several lights. One appeared to be a security vehicle
that moved around. Another, however, was stationary and appeared to
get larger and smaller -- as would a hangar door as it opened and
closed."

On photographs, he showed me where he saw the lights. The moving
light was consistent with a vehicle moving along a road on the
northeast shore of the lakebed, along the foot of the Papoose Range,
while the location of the stationary light was consistent with -- ah
-- Lazar's secret saucer base. (Why won't Lazar stay dead!?) That
is, the light was at the base of the Papoose Range near the lakebed at
around the midpoint of the range as seen from the south. I didn't
query him on the duration of the light or span of time between the
moving and stationary lights.

Freeman is obsessed with 49ers lore, not UFOs or secret aircraft, and
he seemed somewhat naive about Area 51. When he pointed out to me
where he saw the stationary light, he apparently had no idea that this
was the location of Lazar's supposed base. (I emphasize, of course,
that the light could be anything. It only signals some kind of human
presence, not necessarily a hangar. However, any light is significant
in this region where there is not supposed to be any.)

The Nye Canyon road was a faint track -- it was not used very often if
at all. There were no structures in or near Nye Canyon. (It now seems
certain that the "building" previously reported in Nye Canyon, seen
from Mt. Sterling and previously reported on this list, was a rock
outcropping.) Freeman apparently saw no structures at all outside of
the Nevada Test Site, except sightings of the abandonned tow targets
that litter the Nellis Range. He did not get within sight of Area 51
proper, only Papoose Lake. Papoose Lake is partly within the "Dreamland"
airspace but outside of the 10x6 mile Area 51 boundary.

For the record, Freeman was a damn fool, and if he had contacted me
about his expedition beforehand, I would have advised against it. If
he were not an experienced desert survivalist -- having previously
hiked from Utah to California -- he would have either died of
dehydration or given himself up to the guards to prevent it.

Glenn


Washington Post article on Groom lawsuit

From: campbell@ufomind.com (Glenn Campbell, Las Vegas)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 23:10:29 -0800
The Washington Post ran a lengthy article on Groom Lake on Sunday,
July 20, 1997

See full article at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1997-07/20/032l-072097-idx.html

(If missing, see Local copy of
article)



"Secrets Under the Sun"

Out in the Nevada desert is Area 51, a military base so
hush-hush it does not officially exist. Tell that to the
widows of the men who died there.

LAS VEGAS-In the dim light of her tidy trailer, the widow dabs at her
eyes and presents proof that the man she loved for more than four
decades -- "my Wally" -- existed. Proof that he was born, worked,
sacrificed, lived and died. An ordinary man, but one like no other.
His name was Walter S. Kasza, and Stella Kasza wants you to know that,
damn it, he existed. He was her man.

She displays his Army papers: He landed in Europe in '44, fought in
the Ardennes, earned three bronze stars. On the paneled wall hangs
their wedding portrait -- St. Norbert's Church in Detroit, 1950 -- and
pictures of their children. "You're together that long, you eat
together, you sleep together," Stella says, her voice dissipating to a
sigh. More tears, another tissue.

From the pantry she retrieves a brown paper bag full of empty pill
vials. For years the doctors couldn't figure out why Wally was
coughing so much, why his skin cracked and bled, turning their
bedsheets red. They prescribed unguents, antibiotics, decongestants,
pain killers. His guts ached for years, too, and when they finally
found the kidney cancer, even morphine didn't help the pain. He died
in April 1995, a wraith, 73 years old.

Aliens/Roswell/A51 in August Motortrend

From: campbell@ufomind.com (Glenn Campbell, Las Vegas)
Date: Tue, 1 Jul 1997 18:18:10 -0800
Subject: Aliens/Roswell/A51 in August Motortrend
I just received a copy of the August Motortrend Magazine.
It's got aliens on the cover. (Is there any magazine _without_
aliens on the cover this month?)

A two-page article on "Gen-X" cars includes small photos of Highway
375, the gate of the Janet terminal and the signs at the Nellis
border. Also Roswell photos. ...Mostly with sexy cars in
the foreground. The accompanying article is about visiting this
places. (You know the drill.)

Comments on Discovery Channel A51 show [4 msgs]

From: campbell@ufomind.com (Glenn Campbell, Las Vegas)
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 23:16:41 -0800

[Comments on Sunday's (12/14) Area 51 documentary shown on the
Discovery Channel.]

From: Steve 1957 Steve1957@aol.com
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 1997 23:50:12 EST
Subject: Intercepts Net News: Quick Review

My quick 2 cents.

I watched with great interest the Discovery Channel's AREA 51 The
Real Story tonight.

The Minister looked and sounded great .. very intelligent yet
with a matter of fact quality! Really pulled the whole piece
together as the: "how this is all connected" guy.. cause he's a
well connected guy.

Nice to see Xelex and Agent X in the flesh.

'Till now I only knew them from theie e-mails and their legendary
status .. Now I have faces to go with the words. X photographs
well under night vision green, but I was dissapointed not to see
a crashed F-117 on the wall behind Xelex!

Mahood and Bilbray put Lazar's claims in perspective and let a
little hot air out of the Lazar legend. Good to see that.

Psychospy did a good job .. took them to McCarren and told the
tale of the Janets quite well. Very credible .. as opposed to ..

Chuck Clark who believes that UFOs at Groom are
interdimensional!

Jim Wilson.. who believes Area 51 has closed up shop and moved!

Bob Lazar .. who was mysteriously missing and didn't have a
chance to defend his claims.

The "Reptoid" time jump guy.. who was that?

All in all there was nothing new here.

Random notes:

Stu debunked the JANET/Mothership.. take that true believers!

The weight they gave Pop Mech's Jim Wilson's AREA 51 MOVED"
claims without a chance for debunking .. bugged me a bit. Now
that it was on TV, even more people will actually believe
Wilson's bad reporting.

Also .. the B-2 wasn't used over Iraq during the Gulf War.

I did like the coverage of the Area 51 toxic waste lawsuit. Nice
to see that get more attention than alien stories..

The Discovery crew spent too much time in the alien giftshop.
Almost thought I had accidentally tuned into the Alien Home
Shopping channel.

A xerox machine will do in a pinch when you need a palm print
identifier .

-Steve

==============================================================

From: Peter W. Merlin
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 20:32:17 EST
Subject: Re: Discovery Special

During my interview, I gave Discovery Channel all the best new
information about recent operations and management/"ownership" of
the Groom Lake facility. It presumably ended up on the cutting
room floor to make space for Jim Wilson from Popular Mechanics.
He has no crediblity, and they did not allow for rebuttal. His
ridiculous story will gain artificial crediblity from the extra
exposure.

Peter W. Merlin

==============================================================

From: David Darlington
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 02:39:32 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Discovery Special

Bravo! All Interceptors acquitted themselves admirably!

I thought the show was pretty good. As in most visual/print
media relationships, it played like an outline of My Book (even
though presumably the producers never saw it! Could it be that,
like the base itself, documentary approaches to Area 51 are
finitely defined and inviolable?)....

Considering the strictures of the one-hour TV format, I have only
two critical questions:

(1) Who the hell let that jerk Jim Wilson on the show?
(2) Who encouraged Tom [Mahood] to wear that tacky shirt?

==============================================================

Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 03:40:57 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Registration of Janet aircraft seen on Discovery program
From: "Brunner, David" David.Brunner@Den.Galileo.com

I caught the Area 51 program on the Discovery channel last night
(Sunday 14Dec). I thought it was a pretty good program, overall
(especially that Campbell fella). Anyway, I was able to note the
N-registration number on the Janet aircraft that was seen a
couple of times. I did a search on WWW.LANDINGS.COM and came up
with the following info. (This may or may not be "new" news). The
first part is the owner and the second part gives details on the
particular aircraft type (737-200 series). I'd previously thought
the aircraft were owned by a private firm - EG&G, perhaps. Quite
odd to have a civilian-registered aircraft owned by the Air
Force. An AF 737 would normally be known as a T-43, not a 737.
Our tax dollars at work!

N-number : N4529W
Aircraft Serial Number : 20785
Aircraft Manufacturer : BOEING
Model : 737-275
Aircraft Year :
Owner Name : DEPARTMENT OF AIR FORCE
Owner Address : PO BOX 1504
LAYTON, UT, 84041-6504

Registration Date : 13 Feb 1996
Airworthiness Certificate Type: Standard
Approved Operations : Transport
Manufacturer Name : BOEING
Model Name : 737-275
Aircraft Type : Fixed Wing Multi-engine
Engine Type : Turbojet
Category : Land
Number of Engines : 2
Number of Seats : 119 ----------------- That's a
lot of seats for a -200 series ...?
Aircraft Weight : 115000 lbs
Aircraft Code : 1384485


Area 51 in Sept. "Psychology Today"

From: campbell@ufomind.com (Glenn Campbell, Las Vegas)
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 10:13:05 -0800
The Sept./Oct. 1997 issue of Psychology Today (now on newsstands)
has a feature article on the author's visit to Rachel:

"Dispatch from Dreamland", page 50 (8 pages)

"Join PT's Jill Neimark on a journey to the epicenter of America's
UFO obsession -- a tour of trailer parks, alien buffs, tight-lipped
scientists, and a desert garden littered with shards of secret
aircraft."

I haven't actually _read_ the article, but scanning it I see mention
of Steven Greer, Chuck Clark, Robert Bigelow, John Alexander, Dean
Radin, Glenn Campbell, Jonathan Turley, Pat & Joe Travis.

A BIG photo of the Little A'Le'Inn appears on the title page. I
reconize Pat Travis, local resident Roger Castleton and Roger's dog.

The reporter also visited the Society for Scientific Exploration
conference in Las Vegas (June 1997), but no one there would talk to
her about UFOs. Roswell is also discussed, and a sidebar discusses
the hazardous waste lawsuit.

The article looks like nothing new in data, but a cut above the
rest in tone. If anyone would like to write a synopsis of it, please
post it here.

They Can't Kill Rachel (Pop. Mech. rebuttal) [article]

From: campbell@ufomind.com (Glenn Campbell, Las Vegas)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 1997 17:37:25 -0800

[From LV Style Magazine (about a month after the Popular Mechanics
story). Reprinted by permission of the author.]

THEY CAN'T KILL RACHEL

(with stock 8x10 pic of barren Test Site landscape)

By Jim Barrows (JBarr84722@aol.com)

They say they're going to move Area 51.

Which doesn't exist for Americans, but shows up clearly on Russian
satellite photos.

Area 51, in the remote northern reaches of the Nevada Test Site, is
where the Boeing 737s land, disgorging scientists daily from Lawrence
Livermore Lab in California and various civilian contractors from Las
Vegas.

The U-2 and SR-71 spy planes, the Stealth fighter and bomber were
developed and tested at Area 51. Strange craft still fly from this
secret base.

Some say the technology for the Stealth submarine was developed at
Area 51. After all, what more unlikely a place to test submarine
technology than in the middle of the Nevada desert, hundreds of miles
from any water?

And how to explain the weird blue-green machines that swoop over
Nellis Air Force Base -- the most advanced fighter and bomber training
grounds in the world -- hovering over the military's power supplies at
Nellis and causing power outages there at several locations in the
pre-dawn darkness?

Perhaps it is the Aurora, a few steps beyond the Stealth aircraft.
Perhaps the mysteious X-33. Or one of the alien craft that survived
the notorious "weather balloon" mystery at Roswell, New Mexico, in
1947.

In the June issue of Popular Mechanics magazine, its Science &
Technology Editor Jim Wilson surmises that the mission of Area 51 has
been moved to a remote part of Utah -- White Sands, or Area 6413. An
interpretation of his accompanying map places Area 6413 somewhere
"south of Utah Route 70 and east of the Green River."

Perhaps, Wilson means Interstate 70 (not Utah Route 80), vaguely south
of the towns of Green River and Salina, somewhere around Goblin Valley
State Park; sandwiched between the Roan Cliffs and the Coal Cliffs,
Canyonlands and Capitol Reef National Parks. There are also vast areas
of national forests. Such overlapping jurisdictions would require
stepping on toes at the Department of Interior (U.S. Forest Service)
and Bureau of Land Management (U.S. Department of Agriculture) by
either the Pentagon (Department of Defense) or the nuclear testers
(Department of Energy) -- or any combination thereof.

A standard highway map shows no airports in that region; only
settlements with names like Moab, Hanksville and Elmo.

Civilian aircraft can't fly over the Nevada Test Site, though the
Russians monitor Area 51 activities there with their spy satellites.
Moreover, Area 6413 is in the middle of a transcontinental flyway for
commercial passsenger and next-day-delivery freight jetliners. Why
would our military planning geniuses move a testing ground to such a
place?

* A suit by former Area 51 workers who alleged burning of toxic wastes
there made them sick. A federal judge stamped that case "Secret."

* Nuclear fallout from above-ground tests at the Nevada Test Site in
the '60s and early '60s that poisoned parts of Area 51.

* The military needed a different test area for a new type of aircraft
that could take off vertically, fly faster than Mach 15, fly as high
as 50 miles up, carry a payload of more than five tons, and reach any
spot on Earth in 40 minutes -- then land on a regular runway.

A re-usable space aircraft.

Naah!

The community of Rachel, Nevada, has the only bar for close to a
hundred miles along Rte. 375, which skirts the northern edges of the
Nevada Test Site. If the "Loneliest Road in the World" runs through
Central Nevada, Route 375 leads into it. Rachel is so far out, what
with the weird lights that sometimes illuminate the rarely traveled
two-lane blacktop, that Route 375 is officially (by a decree of the
Nevada Highway Department) "The Extraterrestrial Highway."

Wilson, the magazine writer, asserts that "Area 51 has been shut
down."

"Crapola!" says Glenn Campbell, director of the Area 51 Research
Center He used to live in Rachel, but moved to Las Vegas a couple
years ago. His apartment overlooks the McCarran International Airport
runway from which the scientists are flown to Area 51. Their numbers
are about 800 to 1,000 a day, he says.

Wilson's Popular Mechanics article "gives me no evidence at all that
anything has changed at Area 51," Campbell told one local reporter.
Nor was there anything to connect Campbell's move from Rachel to Las
Vegas with any hint of Area 51 downsizing, as Wilson implies. Campbell
told Las Vegas Style two years ago, as a previous story on Area 51 was
being written, that he was moving to Las Vegas. That was a few months
before UFO-watchers were barred from their usual photo-op mountain at
the edge of Area 51 and the real world.

"The cammo dudes are no longer patrolling the perimeter of Area 51,"
asserts Wilson. "Cammo dudes" are security guards who are not
officially there. They patrolled inside that restricted area in their
white four-wheel-drive vehicles (usually white). Security guards at a
place that does not officially exist, peering across an invisible line
in the sand and along the ridges at the occasional UFOlogists and
read-and-rip television nutcase show editors who, in turn, are
directing their film crews with megamillimeter telescopic lenses to
get them in the same frame with the massive aircraft hangars in the
background, 12 miles away, across the bone-dry Groom Lake.

The "cammo dudes" were aptly named for their camouflage skills. White
vehicles on the crests of the parched desert hills. A chain of five-
foot-high silver-coated spheres has obviated the need for such a
payroll expense. Inside each of those spheres: ground-motion
detectors, infrared cameras, linked to a central security monitor. In
case of any security breach at Area 51's boundaries, dispatch a ground
assault team by helicopter (see any version of "The X-Files").

"DOD (Department of Defense) even agreed to consider -- but at press
time had still not acted upon -- our request to visit" Area 51, Wilson
trumpets. None except those with top-level security clearances have
been allowed in Area 51 since the Groom family got kicked off their
hardscrabble mining operation there more than 20 years ago, barred
access suddenly by forerunners of the "cammo dudes."

Compounding Wilson's hypotheses on the meltdown of Area 51, an article
in the June 1997 issue of Popular Science magazine debunks the
Roswell, New Mexico, UFO crash story. The feds said then it was a
weather balloon. The magazine's Dawn Stover says it was "a 700-foot
string of weather balloons, radar reflectors and acoustic sensors."

Oceanographers had learned of an ocean layer that conducted the sound
of underwater explosions for thousands of miles. The Roswell balloons
were testing a theory that a similar layer existed in the upper
atmosphere so Soviet nuclear tests and ballistic missiles might be
detected, Popular Science says.

Roswell's new slogan: "Crash in Roswell."

Meanwhile, the warning signs remain just outside Nevada's Area 51:

"This is a restricted militarty installation. It is unlawful to make
any photograph, film, map, sketch, picture, drawing, graphic
representation of this area or equipment at or flying over this
installation." Violators face a $1,000 fine and a year in federal
prison.

- - -

There's an old English poem that should accompany this story of a
military base that doesn't exist that may be moved somewhere else:

"Yesterday upon the stair
I saw a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
Oh how I wish he'd go away.

Area 51 saga heads to federal court [news]

From: campbell@ufomind.com (Glenn Campbell, Las Vegas)
Date: Mon, 3 Nov 1997 21:37:42 -0800
November 03, 1997

Area 51 saga heads to federal court

By Steve Kanigher
LAS VEGAS SUN

Workers say there were fatalities and serious injuries from exposure
to hazardous waste at a top-secret military facility in Southern
Nevada.

The government resists acknowledging the installation even exists. An
attorney's office is sealed from the public. A sitting president
invokes executive privilege to suppress evidence.

The continuing saga involving Area 51, the secret Air Force facility
on Groom Dry Lake near the Nevada Test Site, moves to San Francisco
Wednesday. That's where the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will
review rulings by U.S. District Judge Philip Pro of Las Vegas.

Lawsuit Appeal... and Barbra Streisand?!? [news]

From: campbell@ufomind.com (Glenn Campbell, Las Vegas)
Date: Thu, 6 Nov 1997 08:29:21 -0800
The revelation of the day is -- Barbra Streisand!!!!

Lawyer Jonothan Turley appeared to get a chilly reception
in Federal Appeals Court yesterday.

...But the strangest news is Turley's funding source:
Barbra Streisand

----------------------

Las Vegas Review-Journal
Thursday, November 06, 1997

Lawyer hopes to take Area 51 dangers public

National security is at the heart of a decision to deny a lawsuit
by ex-workers at a top-secret Air Force facility.

By Ed Vogel
Donrey Capital Bureau

SAN FRANCISCO -- Appeals judges ridiculed arguments Wednesday by
a lawyer who urged them to disregard national security concerns
and allow him to sue the government for harm suffered by workers
at the classified Area 51 base in Nevada.

Judge Pamela Rymer of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at
one point even scolded Washington, D.C., attorney Jonathan Turley
for making exaggerated arguments.

"You have a serious problem here, Mr. Turley," she said. "I am
trying to get you to explain to me in English."

Rachel Cover Story in Las Vegas "City Life"

From: campbell@ufomind.com (Glenn Campbell, Las Vegas)
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 16:45:02 -0800

From: [withheld by request]
Date: Sat, 15 Nov 1997 12:15:03 +0000
Subject: City Life....

The November 13-19, 1997 edition of "City Life - News and Culture
in Las Vegas" (free). Has the most wonderful photo on the cover;
a "gray" alien reading Mr. Darlington's book -- "campy" would be
an understatement... [this is the periodical I thought was titled
"Alien Nation", that's just the headline.]

Inside, on page 12, it gets better. Although the story is light
on coverage of Mr. Darlington's work, it does cover the basic
Nevada UFO culture quite well -- and get this: Without a single
mention of Huff or Lazar!!! (Hmmm, now how could that have
happened??)

Second to the cover photo, the next best is the one of our leader
on page 13. This is not the usual grinning, animated, Campbell.
But a dark and mysterious, very somber looking Campbell (kids
will do that to you...). Mr. Campbell comes off as a very
down-to-earth researcher, if not the worlds' authority on the
paranormal....

Business's Name Change To "Area 51" Concerns Town Council

From: Stig_Agermose@online.pol.dk (Stig Agermose)
Date: Wed, 31 Dec 1997 09:00:31 -0800

[Message from moderator follows]

Myrtle Beach Access page of Sun-News, Myrtle Beach SC, Nov. 2, 1997
http://www.myrtlebeachaccess.com/news/97-11-2/abmeet02.htm

BUSINESS'S NAME CHANGE CONCERNS TOWN COUNCIL

By Yolanda Jones
THE SUN NEWS

ATLANTIC BEACH - What's in a name? A lot according to the Atlantic
Beach Town Council, which wants to know the meaning behind the name of
a new business that plans to open in the town.

Al Scott, sitting in for Town Manager Merv McMillan, told the council
during its regular Monday night meeting that a new business that will
sell tobacco products wants to be called Area 51. Scott said the owners
of the new business originally told the council that it would name the
business Tobacco Emporium. But when they applied for a business
license, the name of the business license was Area 51.

"When I asked what Area 51 meant, I was told it meant an area in the
galaxy where UFOs have been sighted," Scott told council. "In an
agreement with the town we were told the name of the business would be
Tobacco Emporium."

None of the council members knew what Area 51 is. Area 51, also known
as Groom Lake, is a secret military facility about 90 miles north of
Las Vegas. The number "51" refers to a 6-by-10-mile block of land, at
the center of which is a large air base the government will not discuss.

The site was selected in the mid-1950s for testing of the U2 spy plane.
Since then, Area 51 has been associated with UFO and conspiracy
stories. Area 51 has become a popular symbol for the alleged cover-up
of UFOs by the U.S. government. The town's attorney told council they
couldn't deny a business license because they didn't like the name of
that business.

The council said it will discuss the matter with McMillan, who was out
of town, when he returns.

In other business the council voted:

-To grant resident Joe Montgomery 60 days to demolish his building on
the corner of 30th Avenue South.

Montgomery, the town's former mayor, ran a liquor store for years, but
closed it. The building was condemned by the town. Montgomery told the
council that he was told by the Department of Health and Environmental
Control that before the building can be torn down asbestos must be
removed from the building.

-To hold an economic summit in February to discuss the future
development of the town. On Dec. 13, a committee of 50 people will meet
to discuss plans for the summit.

Area 51 Lawsuit Appeal Rejected [news]

From: campbell@ufomind.com (Glenn Campbell, Las Vegas)
Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 19:28:21 -0800

Las Vegas Review-Journal, Friday, January 09, 1998

AIR FORCE SECRECY UPHELD

Groom Lake workers are not entitled to information about a classified
base for their litigation, a court rules.

By Bob Egelko
Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO -- An attempt to pry loose information about
allegations of toxic waste burning at a secret Air Force site in the
desert -- said to be the "Area 51" of extraterrestrial lore -- hit a
stone wall of secrecy in a federal appeals court Thursday.

The lawyer for five current and former workers at the base, and
the widows of two workers killed allegedly by toxic wastes, are not
entitled to learn whether hazardous substances exist there or how they
are handled, the results of a federal inspection or even the name of
the base, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said.

The 3-0 ruling upheld the Air Force's claim that giving out that
information could endanger national security and a 1995 order by
President Clinton further restricting disclosure. Before arguments in
the litigation in November, the judges reviewed confidential
government statements, while Air Force security officers guarded their
conference room.

Weekly World News: Area 51 Has A Stargate?

From: Ken MacGray ken@vvcs.com
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 22:53:58 -0800

From: Sean Scott Kihan
Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors,alt.conspiracy.area51
Subject: WWN this week: Area 51 has a stargate???
Date: Wed, 07 Jan 1998 14:15:27 GMT

From the files of the Weekly World News:

Last week, they reported two of their ppl went to Area 51 to get some
"secret" pics of the facility, and one of the reporters was "missing".

This week, the reporter was "found" and said that Area 51 has some
sort of StarGate-type time machine! The pics shown in the article were
taken direcly from Stargate SG-1!! lol

Ahhh...yes! Another prime "news" story from a paper that outsells most
"real" newspapers.

UFO's I can believe in, but a Stargate-type time machine is a bit of a
stretch!!

Still watching the skies...

The deserts have always held a certain primal appeal for many people. But there is one American desert that holds a special high-tech fascination for many aviation and radio buffs. Maybe it is the strange lights that appear to dance in the night skies over the desert floor or rumors of captured flying saucers. Maybe it is the strange looking aircraft that cannot be seen on radar, or the rumbling from aircraft engines that cause earthquake sensors to trigger false seismic alarms. Or, maybe it is just the Cold War secrecy that draws our attention to this place.

But the Cold War is over - at least this is what the American public has been told by our government and the media. And (if you believe a recent story in Popular Mechanics), we could be seeing the end of an air force base that is so secret, it doesn't exist. It is perhaps the most secret military installation in American history.

This base is nestled between steep mountains in the Nevada high desert. It is located inside the recesses of the off-limits Department of Energy (DOE) Nevada Test Site, 90 miles due north of Las Vegas. This phantom air force base consists of an airfield (among the largest in the United States), dozens of aircraft hangars, miscellaneous support buildings, several satellite dish gardens, a control tower, and a handful of U.S. Air Force 737 aircraft that fly in and out of its airspace daily.

Because its mission is so secret, its existence is not reflected in any federal government budget allocations. It doesn't appear on any U.S. Geological Survey maps. Check a Las Vegas sectional aeronautical chart and you won't find this airfield on it. In fact, the base doesn't even have an official name.

But the base that doesn't officially exist is there, and radio hobbyists know this phantom in the Nevada desert as Groom Lake or Area 51 of Independence Day fame.



A Step Back in History

In April 1955, Lockheed test pilot, Tony LeVier, was sent by his boss, Kelly Johnson, head of the Lockheed "Skunk Works" (the unofficial name for Lockheed's special projects division), to search for a remote site to test the new U-2 reconnaissance spy plane. He found a deserted spot in the central Nevada desert right next door to the Nevada Nuclear Test Site.

"I gave it a ten plus. Just dandy. A dry lake bed about three and a half miles around. I had some sixteen-pound cast-iron shotput balls with me and dropped them out to see if the surface was deep sand. Damned if it wasn't as hard as a tabletop," said LeVier.

Several days later, LeVier flew Johnson, and CIA special assistant Richard Bissell, to the site. Bissell remarked, "This will do nicely." He even liked LeVier's proposed name for the site, "Paradise Ranch."

Johnson decided to place a runway at the south end of the dry lakebed known to the locals as Groom Lake. Work then began on this covert facility under the direction of Kelly and the Lockheed Skunk Works.

Fronting for the CIA under a phony C&J Engineering logo, Kelly hired a construction company to put in water wells, two hangars, an airstrip, and a mess hall in the middle of the desert in blistering 130-degree summer heat.

In his book, Skunk Works, Rich Ben writes:

"At one point, the guy Kelly used as his contractor put out a subcontracting bid. One subcontractor warned him: 'Look out for this C&J outfit. We looked them up in Dun & Bradstreet, and they don't even have a credit rating.' This base was built for only $800,000. 'I'll bet this is one of the best deals the government will ever get,' Kelly remarked to several of us. And he was right."

On August 4, 1955, the first flight of a U-2 spy reconnaissance plane was made at Groom Lake. Of course, the rest is history. But the U-2 wasn't the last secret aircraft to spread its wings on the dry lake bed of Area 51. In the 42 years since that first flight Groom Lake has been the home of many top secret aircraft first and it is still in use today.



The Big Picture

Groom Lake is part of one the hottest areas in the world for the military aircraft monitor. It is part of the sprawling three million acre Nellis Air Force Range.

Located in North Las Vegas, Nevada, the primary mission of Nellis Air Force Base is the training of military aircrews in realistic air combat exercises. The vast, Connecticut-size Nellis Range Complex, north and west of Las Vegas, is attached to the base. These ranges contain at least two secret bases, the aforementioned Area 51 and the Tonopah Test Range, both used for testing of advanced technologies. The DOE Nevada Test Site (frequencies in Table 1 and 2) - home to the U.S. government's nuclear weapons testing - is also a large part of the Nellis Range Complex.

For the military monitor, this is Mecca. Nowhere else in the world will one find a larger collection of military aircraft, military activity, and military radio frequencies. In most places around the country, monitors claim that the 225-400 MHz is like a wasteland on their scanners, but not on the Nellis ranges. Hundreds of frequencies have been cataloged and many more await discovery. A large sampling of those frequencies can found in our exclusive list in Table 3.

What follows are the descriptions of a few of the more interesting facilities on the Nellis Range.



Tonopah Test Range

The Tonopah Test Range (TTR) is a 625 square mile area located at the very north end of the Nellis Complex, about 32 miles southeast of Tonopah, Nevada. First opened in 1957, it has been a major test facility for DOE funded weapons programs by Sandia Laboratories of New Mexico. This facility is heavily instrumented with camera and radar tracking devices that record data from non-explosive aspects of nuclear weapons testing such as artillery shell testing, bomb drops, cruise missiles, rocket tests, and parachute testing.

In 1984, TTR also became host to the first F-117 stealth fighter squadron, prior to its being moved to Holloman AFB in New Mexico.

There are three electronic combat ranges located on this north range that provide user-selectable, low-to-high electronic threat environments. These ranges are:

Tonopah Electronic Combat Range (TECR) - The TECR is the main, manned threat simulator range. It has generated mock electronic threats that include surface-to-air (SAM) missile sites with numerous anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) fire control radars to simulate a realistic array of enemy signals.

The following military air ("milair") frequencies have been reported from this range: 253.2, 253.6, 280.0, 284.0, 343.2 MHz.

Tolicha Peak Electronic Combat Range (TPECR) - The TPECR contains long- and short-range strategic threat and associated point defense systems, along with acquisition and ground control intercept (GCI) radars. The TPECR simulates enemy defense deep interdiction and offense counter air targets. TPECR is a smaller range than the TECR and is less capable. It is located on Pahute Mesa about three miles northeast of Tolicha Peak.

The following milair frequencies have been reported from this range: 235.2, 280.0, and 284.0 MHz.

EC South - This is a limited EC range that contains a few electronic threat simulators representing both missiles and AAA systems. The EC South range is not tied into the integrated air defense systems of the TECR/TPECR.



Nellis Area II (Lake Mead Base)

Nellis Air Force Base Area II (once known as the Lake Mead base), is a separate facility about a mile northeast of the main Nellis base. Area II is a munitions storage facility for both conventional and non-conventional munitions (reportedly 200 nuclear weapons and air launched cruise missiles).

Area II is dominated by a high-security triple-fence compound encompassing several dozen earthen bunkers. This fence is well-lit at night and can easily by seen from Interstate 15 and passenger jets on approach to McCarran International Airport at Las Vegas.

In additional to the munitions storage, Area II contains the Nellis Federal Prison Camp, a minimum security prison occupying old air force dorms. The following frequencies are being used at this federal prison: 170.650, 170.875, 170.925, and 409.250 MHz callsign KVL 331.

It is also the home for the 820th Red Horse Engineering squadron depot. Look for their communications on 149.175 and 149.500 MHz. HF equipped listeners might want to watch 11589.0 kHz (USB) for Red Horse activity.



Department of Energy

DOE is a large government player in the Las Vegas area. Over the years, several DOE civilian contractors have been associated with Area 51. One of the largest players, EG&G, was the prime contractor for the DOE/Nevada Test Site. EG&G also has played a large role in Area 51 operations.

Additional companies associated with NTS operations included Radio Systems of Nevada (RSN) and Reynolds Electric Company (RECCO). According to an anonymous source these companies no longer have their contracts (except a special segment of EG&G). Those operations have now been taken over by Bechtel of Nevada. It is reported that EG&G is still involved in "special projects" (Area 51 almost by definition).

The status of the radio systems that EG&G used to support their operations on the NTS is unclear at this writing. We hope to have a clearer picture in the months ahead.

The most visible presence of the EG&G company continues to be at the McCarran International Airport. EG&G provides support at the Escondido facility for the daily Janet flights that ferry personnel to Area 51. Prior to the Air Force taking control of the Boeing 737s that fly north to Groom Lake, a civilian company, Key Airlines, had the duty to transport groom Lake personnel. Look for Escondido facility radio activity on 164.250 (Security) and 164.750 (Maintenance support). Air to ground communications can be heard on 118.7 MHz (callsign Gold Coast)

Janet flights fly north from McCarran to Groom Lake and enter R-4808N (Groom Lake airspace); they contact Dreamland Control (Area 51 approach control) on civilian VHF aeronautical frequencies. Over the years, these frequencies have changed (sometimes yearly). When the aircraft come within five miles of Groom Lake, control is handed off to the Groom Lake tower (again on a VHF civilian frequency).

Janet flights also fly up to the Tonopah range and it is reported that some flights originate from Edwards AFB (home of AFFTC-Air Force Flight Test Center).



Area 51

The Air Force Flight Test Center (AFFTC) is headquartered at Edwards AFB, California. There is ample evidence to indicate that AFFTC operates the secret base at Groom Lake. This assumption is drawn because AFFTC appears on many documents regarding base security and land use. AFFTC is also the logical master, because Area 51 was founded for the testing of secret aircraft and Edwards is responsible for that function. AFFTC, Det 3, is the organization responsible for Groom Lake.

In addition to AFFTC military personnel, Groom Lake is home to numerous civilian aerospace personnel that are there to support the testing program. An eyewitness of Groom Lake operations has revealed who occupies the various sections or sites on the base. Here is that exclusive list:

S-2

Northrup/Grumman B-2 bomber, Tacit Blue, A-12 follow-on
S-3

Unknown No air vehicles spotted
S-4

Lockheed A-11, U-2, SR-71, F-117 (Have Blue), Darkstar (Tier 3- UAV)
S-6

Unknown Several variants of C-135 aircraft sitting around
S-7

----------- Seems to be in a caretaker status
S-9

Teledyne Ryan Aero Tier 2+ and Tier 3+ UAVs
Since these are civilian companies, scanner enthusiasts might want to check VHF/UHF itinerant frequencies for activity from the base. Be sure the following frequencies are loaded into your scanner: 151.505, 151.625, 154.570, 154.600, 158.400, 451.800, 456.800, 464.500, 464.550, 469.500, 469.550 MHz. You should also have the U.S government itinerants (27.575, 27.585, 163.100, 168.350, 408.400, 418.050, 418.075, 418.575) and aircraft emergency (121.500/243.0) frequencies loaded.



And Then There are the Rumors

One rumor about Groom Lake that many citizens take seriously is that area S-4 is where the remains of the Roswell flying saucer was taken and where the US government is reverse engineering a flying saucer. This is all supposed to be in an area located south of the base at a secret mountain facility near Papoose Lake.

There has never been any creditable evidence to support this conclusion and, based on the information above, the author seriously doubts any of these claims. This is a Deep Black base that supports advanced technology aircraft, but that is all.



Taking a trip to Dreamland?

Area 51 is a closed government facility; anyone wanting to take a trip to Groom Lake should be aware that you will not be allowed on or near this closed facility. There are signs posted indicating that deadly force is authorized (they mean serious business). The security force you will run into are known as the "cammo dudes" (so named by Glenn Campbell at the Area 51 Research Center). This security force is part of the AFFTC, DET 3 SP unit, and they don't mess around. You will find them on 141.550 and 142.500 MHz.

According to a copyrighted story in the June 1997 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine, the cammo dudes are gone and with it the beginning of the end of Area 51. According to the story written by Jim Wilson, Science/Technology editor, Area 51 is shutting down and moving to the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah. However, as of this writing, Janet flights continue into Groom Lake and we do not see any let-up in activity. The PM story is highly suspect in its content and conclusions.

If you are planning a trip to the Groom Lake vicinity, I highly recommend you purchase a copy of Glenn Campbell's Area 51 Viewers Guide. This is the best and most informative work on the Groom Lake/Nellis Area and a requirement for those wanting to make the pilgrimage. You can find more information about the Viewer's Guide and Groom Lake on the internet by visiting Campbell's Internet site (the best on the web) at: http://www.ufomind.com or write Glenn Campbell, P.O. Box 448, Rachel, Nevada 89001.

An article of this magnitude could not have been written without the help of numerous individuals and hundreds of hours of monitoring and research. I would like to specifically thank four individuals who really helped behind the scenes: Captain Xenon, my friend in the south, Glenn Campbell, and Bruce Ames. I dedicate this article to the person who got me started on this project several years ago: a good friend, Ed Flynn.

There are many rumors, speculations, and wild theories about Groom Lake that have circulated over the years (we can now add the base closing to the list of oddities). But there is one rumor you can put to rest for certain: Groom Lake does exist and it isn't just a "Phantom in the Desert."


Table 1: Department of Energy-Nevada HF Networks

Legend:
EACT Emergency Action Coordination Team
ERC Emergency Radio Centers
ERS Emergency Radio System

(All frequencies are in kilohertz and mode is USB)


Net Designation

Usage

Frequencies (kHz)

NV301 Numerous Ionospheric Sounders Various Frequencies
NV302 ERC/EACT/EACT Aircraft 2286.0, 6981.0, 7839.0, 9114.0
NV306 Aircraft Operational Control Net 2621.0, 3422.0, 6535.0, 8912.0, 10045.0, 13312.0, 17901.0, 21931.0
NV310 Emergency Radio System (ERS) 2625.5, 3335.0, 4480.5, 4603.0, 4946.5, 5378.0, 6930.5, 7428.0, 7464.0, 7690.5, 8054.5, 10554.0, 10870.0, 11125.0, 11556.5, 12020.5, 13802.0, 14400.5, 15454.5, 16065.0, 18416.0, 20404.0, 23532.0, 25431.0
NV315 Pacific Area Emergency Net 4479.0, 8053.0, 9114.0, 11125.0, 13802.0, 16065.0, 18416.0, 20404.0, 25431.0
SN048 Aircraft Air to Ground 4600.0, 4919.0, 8964.0
SN297 Emergency Evacuation Comm Net 8053.0

DOE HF Callsigns

KAL 23 Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant, TN
KAL 24 DOE Headquarters Washington, DC
KBW 49 Nevada Test Site, NV
KGO 45 Estes Park (Rocky Flats Plant), CO
KLJ 87 Los Alamos National Laboratory, NM
KOI 20 Hickam AFB, HI
KOI 22 Tonopah Test Range, NV
KOI 23 Kauai Test Facility, HI
KOI 24 Johnson Atoll
KSJ 87 Lemont (Argonne National Laboratory), IL
KYS 6 Nevada Test Site, NV

Table 2: Department of Energy-Nevada VHF/UHF Networks

(All frequencies are in MHz and mode is narrowband FM unless otherwise indicated)

Legend:
DOD Department of Defense
DOE Department of Energy
EMS Emergency Medical Service
NEST Nuclear Emergency Search Teams
NTS Nevada Test Site


NV001 DOE/DOD Operations 173.6875/164.175
NV002 Local Law Enforcement Mutual Aid 154.770
NV003 NTS Fire/EMS/Radiation Safety Net 167.925/164.475
NV004 NTS Test Operations 170.750/164.375
NV005 Los Alamos Labs Operations 173.5125/164.100
NV006 EG&G Atlas Facility Technical Net 173.7125/164.775
NV007 DOE/Los Alamos Operations 407.050/416.300
NV008 NTS Sandia Operations 173.6125/164.275
NV009 NTS Los Alamos Operations 173.8125
NV011 DOE Nevada Command and Control 168.475/164.400
NV012 Public Safety Net 36.330/41.310
NV013 NTS Operations Net 170.025
NV014 Nevada DOE Common User Net (Dragon Ops) 167.875/164.025
NV015 NTS Operations 407.350/416.250
NV016 DOE Equipment Operations 408.950/415.150
NV017 NTS Field Operations 167.975
NV018 DOE Security/Emergency Net 167.825
NV021 NTS Operations 171.975/166.200
NV025 NTS Operations 168.350
NV026 Reynolds Electric Power Line Maint 36.050/41.030
NV028 NTS Operations 419.350
NV029 NTS Operations 406.425
NV030 NTS Security Net 166.225
NV032 NTS Operations 419.175
NV034 DOE Pager System 164.9625, 173.025, 410.800
NV037 NTS Operations 408.175/416.200
NV040 Reynolds Electric simplex field ops 162.475
NV041 NTS Operations 410.050
NV042 NTS Operations 411.150
NV044 DOE/NTS Control Link 406.625/414.775
NV047 EG&G Technical Ops (currently inactive) 148.350/150.450
NV049 EG&G Communications Net 170.350, 171.2375
NV050 EG&G Security - Escondido Facility 164.250
NV051 EG&G Maintenance - Escondido Facility 164.750
NV053 EG&G Technical Ops (currently inactive) 148.470/150.555
NV054 NTS Emergency Command Post 163.325
NV055 NTS Operations Net 169.575
NV057 NTS Security Force 414.725/409.200, 409.500
NV067 NTS Security Net 170.375/165.3125
NV069 DOE Managers Net 409.550/416.100
NV073 EG&G Technical Operations Net 409.325/419.150, 409.125
NV074 Wackenhut Security 410.000/419.650
NV076 DOE Radiation Safety Net 409.175/416.000
NV078 DOE/DOD Operations Net 409.775/417.600
NV079 EG&G Technical Operations 409.400/417.700
NV080 DOE Security Net 409.300/416.100
NV095 NTS Operations Net 172.725
NV095A NTS Operations Net 173.175
NV100 DOE Las Vegas/NTS Trunking System 406.550415.350, 406.750/414.750,
407.550/416.750, 407.950/417.150, 408.750/417.550
NV101 Pahute Mesa Area Operations Net 171.000/173.6625
NV206 DOE NEST Teams 164.275, 167.850, 168.450, 171.200, 171.950, 173.000
NV307 DOE Meteor Burst Network 40.470
NV400 Air to Ground Comms at McCarren Intl (AM) 118.700
NV401 Desert Rock Airstrip Control Tower (AM) 118.700
NV402 Desert Rock Airstrip Approach Control (AM) 122.800
NV410 Desert Rock Airstrip/NTS (AM) 121.500, 122.750, 126.150, 255.800,
261.100, 315.100
EG&G Company (Las Vegas): 153.050, 464.500, 464.550, 469.500, 469.550
DOE NTS Medical/EMS frequencies: 462.950, 462.975, 463.000, 463.025, 463.075, 463.100, 463.125, 463.150,
463.175



Table 3: Nellis AFB Complex/Range Frequencies

All frequencies are in MHz unless otherwise noted. Frequencies with [] numbers are aircraft radio preset channel numbers.

Nellis Airfield/Range Operations (AM mode)

A-10 Ground Attack Coordination: 32.45, 32.65, 34.15, 40.15, 41.45, 41.95,
142.300
ACC Command Post: Raymond 22 320.000, 381.100, 381.300
ACC Command Post (Nationwide): 311.0
ACMI Pod Shop: 288.600
Aerial Refueling Operations: 255.750, 291.900 (AR-625L), 295.400 (AR-641),
303.0, 305.500, 319.500 (secondary all routes), 344.700
ALCE (AMC) Command Post: 257.350, 259.950
Approach Control: 124.950/279.7 [6], 323.900
Automatic Terminal Information Service (ATIS): 270.100
Caliente MOA Range Control: Jeddi GCI 289.300 [13], 286.500
Clearance Delivery: 120.900/289.400 [2]
Contingency: 305.450, 343.200
Control Tower: 132.550/324.300 [4]
Coyote Range Control: 379.400, 379.500
Dreamland MOA Control (R-4808): 118.55, 119.550, 120.050, 120.350 122.800,
126.150/255.800, 261.100
Departure Control: 135.100/352.800 [5]
Edwards AFB Test Range: 389.025
Elgin North/South (Boneyard Control): 357.100 [16]
Ground Control: 121.800/275.800 [3]
Helicopter Control: 134.850
Inbound Air Emergency/Single Frequency Approach (SFA): Alpha 321.100 [10], Bravo 385.500, Charlie
326.200, Delta 392.200
Interplane Communications: 225.350
Las Vegas Terminal Control Area: 133.950/295.0
Lockheed Test Frequencies (Nationwide): 275.200, 314.600, 345.400, 382.600
Los Angeles ARTCC: 377.100 [17], 352.050 [18]
Metro: 344.600
Nellis Range Control: 119.350/343.000 [7], 124.450/392.1, 126.650/253.400
[8], Bat Ops 297.500, 124.450/392.100, 238.150, 238.700, 268.600, 271.600,
272.100, 272.200, 274.800, 276.400, 278.400, 283.000, 287.500, 287.600,
289.200, 295.200, 304.800, 323.700, 343.300, 348.900, 349.500, 359.900,
389.000, 392.900
Pilot to Dispatcher (PTD): 372.200
Precision Approach Radar (PAR): 384.900, 397.200
Range 14 Operations: 357.500
Range 61 Operations: 320.100
Range 62 Operations: 280.000, 292.200
Range 63 Operations: 268.000, 361.600
Range 64 Operations: 260.100, 319.700, 351.200
Range 65 Operations: 288.800
Range 71 Operations: 344.800
Range 74 Operations: 228.000
Range 75 Operations: 363.900
Range 76 Operations: 354.300
RBS EW Training (Utah Test Range): 283.700
Red Flag Exercise Operations: GCI 225.450, ACMI 238.800, GCI 259.400,
266.600, Snake Ops (GCI) 268.200, 270.025, Barnyard (GCI) 294.900, 288.000,
290.800, 293.500, 343.200, 343.200, 397.000
Red Flag/Green Flag: Frisbee Ops 228.200, 229.250, 233.450, 238.650,
253.700, 255.700, 260.250, 266.000, 276.050, 276.850, 291.850, 292.450,
308.000, 309.500, 316.200, 318.400, 320.800, 325.500, 326.400, 327.200,
338.400, 347.400, 349.200
Red Flag Squadron Common: Red Flag Ops 234.900 [1]
Red Flag Tonopah Range (Wildfire 3): 46.65, 46.75, 46.85
Search and Rescue Training (SAR): 252.800, 259.000, 392.775
Squadron Common: 225.500, 257.100, 264.600, 305.650, 315.800
Supervisor of Flying (SOF) 414 CTS-MIG Ops: 139.925, 139.975
Supervisor of Flying (SOF) 57 FW-Bullseye Control: 303.200 [9], 304.900
TACCS Training: 319.300
USAF Thunderbirds Flight Demonstration Teams: 141.850, 322.950
VHF Air to Air: 138.025, 138.100, 138.200, 138.250, 138.275, 138.375,
138.425, 138.750, 138.875, 139.050, 139.100, 139.500, 139.700, 139.725,
139.750, 139.800, 139.850, 139.875, 139.900, 140.375, 140.400, 140.425,
141.000, 141.150, 141.550, 141.625, 141.675, 141.900, 142.175, 142.525,
143.750, 143.825, 143.925, 148.450, 149.525
VHF Search and Rescue (SAR): 138.300
414 CTS Command Post (MIG Ops): 252.100
Other known active freqs: 127.650, 228.500, 228.750, 233.400, 236.500,
238.300, 240.150, 251.200, 252.200, 253.600, 258.250, 275.850, 308.600,
314.300, 325.900, 333.550, 334.100, 335.800, 335.900, 337.400, 337.500,
Rambo 341.500, 349.700, 360.000, Cobra Ops 361.500, 364.000, 364.050, 375.800,
379.550, 385.800, 390.000

Nellis Ground Frequencies (Narrowband FM mode)

ACMI Maintenance: 148.400/150.350, 148.450/150.325
Airlift Control: 413.300, 413.350
Base Paging: 150.200/138.325
Base Police: F1 163.4875, F2 163.5875
Base Taxi/Transportation Dispatch: 150.300
Civil Engineers: 173.4125/163.4625, 163.5125/165.0875
Combat Arms School: 413.050
Commanders Net: 148.325/149.000, Ops-1 173.150/165.0125, Ops-2 173.5375/165.1125
Contingency: 138.050, 163.5625
Disaster Contigency: 149.450
Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) Teams: 149.750
Fire/Crash: Tac-1 173.5875, Tac-2 173.8375
Flightline Operations: 138.225/140.300, 139.825, 140.675, 141.575, 148.075,
148.175, 148.450, 148.700, 149.200, 149.325, 149.550, 150.125, 164.050,
173.8625
Flightline Operations (Red Flag): 409.025, Fox 2 411.850, 413.275, 415.625
Groom Lake Ground Intrusion Sensors: 496.250, 496.275, 486.300
Groom Lake Security Patrols: 141.550 (Unconfirmed), 142.200
Groom Lake Video Surveillance Cameras: 210.010
Hazmat Contigency/Operations: 141.725
Law Enforcement (Security): 407.500
Maintenance: 163.5375/173.4625
Medical Net: 173.5625/168.000
Miscellaneous Test Range: 141.775/143.475
Munitions: 149.475 (Flightline), 165.1875, 413.400
Nellis Range Control: Fox-1 150.225, Fox-2 148.100/150.275, Fox-3 148.225/149.150,
Fox 4 148.500/150.175, 148.250/150.100, 409.025, 412.850, 413.375, 413.500,
413.550
POL Dispatch: Net A 148.300, Net B 150.050
Ramp Control/Base Ops: 148.525
Range 62: 412.950
Range 71: 413.450
Red Flag Maintenance: 142.750
Red Flag/Green Flag Maintenance: 413.225
Red Horse CE: 149.175, 149.500
Security: 139.600, 141.925, 143.875, 162.6125, 163.5375, 166.5625, 170.175/173.7375,
170.500, 170.600, 173.6375
Security Nellis Area 2 (Weapons Storage): 164.500, 163.375/165.0625 "Pickup
Control"
Special Communications: 142.175
Supply Depot: 142.125
Test Range Safety: 407.575
Unidentified communications: 138.300, 138.400, 138.900, 138.950, 148.050/149.225,
148.475, 149.250, 149.875, 407.550/413.125, 408.400/418.050, 418.075, 418.575
USAF MARS: 143.775/142.275, 143.450/142.150
USAF Thunderbirds: Maintenance 413.025, 413.100

McCarran International Airfield Operations (AM mode)

ATIS: Departure 125.600, Arrival 132.400
Clearance Delivery: 118.000/379.950
Control Tower: 119.900/257.8
Ground Control: 121.1, 121.9, 319.950
Janet Flights Air-Ground (Escondido facility): Gold Coast 118.700
Las Vegas Approach: 120.450, 127.150, 379.150
Las Vegas Departure: South 125.9/380.050, North 133.950/353.700
Las Vegas Class B Airspace: 353.700, 379.150, 380.050
Las Vegas Radio: 122.4 (Reno FSS)
Unicom: 122.950

Desert Rock Airstrip (NTS) (AM mode)

Control Tower: 118.700 (shared with TTR/McCarran)

Indian Springs AAF

Control Tower: 118.300/358.300 [12] (AM)
Fire/Crash: 173.075/173.9875 (FM)
Flight Support: 165.0375 (FM)
Flightline Operations: 165.1375, 409.025, 415.625 (FM)
Ground Control: 118.300/275.800 (AM)
Ground Defense Forces: 138.350/148.550 (FM)
Helicopter Control: 122.900 (AM)
Pilot to Dispatcher (PTD): 372.200 (AM)
Range Control (R-4806): 138.150/141.700 (FM)
Security: 173.4375 (FM)
Supervisor of Flying (SOF): 142.250 (AM)
Unknown usage: 173.9375 (FM)

Tonopah Test Range

Approach Control: 124.750, 126.950/338.700 (AM)
Control Tower: 126.600, 127.250 (AM)
Fire Net: 409.975 (FM)
Flightline Operations: F3 148.200/150.600, 149.425, 173.100/165.0625
(FM)
Range Control: 118.700, 377.800 [15], 239.900, 254.750, 255.950, 256.775,
DOE 257.000, 262.000, 264.7, 264.750, 266.300, 286.700, 287.300, 297.750,
376.100, 383.300, DOE 384.000, DOE 384.800, 389.100, 399.800 (AM)
Test Range Operations: 407.300/412.900, 407.650/413.250, 407.975/413.575,
408.800/414.400 (FM)

Watertown Strip

Air to Ground Operations: 297.650 (AM)
Copyright © 1998 by La

Torrance, CA, newspaper on Norio's Area 51 rally (June 6)

From: francesbarwood@juno.com (Frances E Barwood)
Date: Sun, 24 May 1998 17:32:19 -0800

--------- Begin forwarded message (reformatted by moderator) ----------

From: GroomWatch GroomWatch@aol.com
To: francesbarwood@juno.com
Subject: Fwd: Article on AREA 51 in Torrance Daily Breeze newspaper, SUN.
Date: Sun, 24 May 1998 03:30:56 EDT

Torrance Daily Breeze newspaper, California:

TORRANCE DAILY BREEZE, Sunday, May 17, 1998 Section B1
by Michael Gougis, Staff Writer: (quote verbatim)

SECRETS IN THE DESERT

Rumored UFOs aren't the real danger at Area 51 test facility, Torrance
man warns.

Stories about alien spacecraft and UFOs surround the military test
facility in Nevada known as Area 51, but Norio Hayakawa doesn't pay
any attention to them. To him, they just cloud the issue.

The Torrance resident's interest in the long-secret facility 90 miles
from Las Vegas has to do with more down-to-earth concerns: toxic
pollution; the possibility of weapons tests posing a danger to people
far, far away from the remote location; the potential for the abuse of
the technology that may be under wraps at the site.

"It is our tax dollars going out there. And it is the only military
facility in the nation where you will be arrested if you make it to
the guard shack. The secrecy must end," said Hayakawa, 55, a funeral
director who also is a member of a civilian intelligence group that
monitors covert government operations and black projects -
developments so secret they don't show up on the Pentagon's books.

In the past decade, Hayakawa has assembled a file of declassified
documents and other documents relating to operations at the base. One
makes reference to an antenna system so powerful that it is hazardous
to stand within 500 meters of the dish if it is pointed toward you.
Hayakawa also has a series of detailed photographs of the base showing
hangars, aircraft, radar and satellite dishes and other details.

Hayakawa has been to the edge of the secret base at least 15 times in
the past decade. He's going back in June, and he's taking some
friends.

On June 6, Hayakawa and others will host a gathering they're calling
The People's Rally, right at the border of the restricted zone, the
thousands of acres surrounding the base that the military has sealed
off to the public.

Fact and fiction

The rally is designed to draw attention to the amounts of taxpayer
dollars spent at the site, as well as the environmental damage some
fear has been done there. It is expected to draw between 400 to 800
people, from as far away as Canada and New Zealand, as word of the
event spreads via the Internet. Hayakawa maintains several Web sites,
including one devoted specifically to the test facility at Groom Lake.

Area 51 has existed in the world of fiction for some time, perhaps
most prominently as the secret military installation nearly destroyed
by very unpleasant aliens in the movie "Independence Day."

The reality is probably stranger than anything Hollywood has come up
with.

The U.S. government refused to acknowledge the base's existence for
decades. In 1994, lawsuits were filed against the government by
workers who contend they were exposed to fumes from toxic wastes that
were thrown into ditches, covered with jet fuel and burned into ash.

In response, the Air Force admitted only that an "operating facility"
is located at Groom Lake, a dry lake bed in the heart of Area 51, and
said national security prohibited any discussion of what might have
occurred there. The federal Environmental Protection Agency, also
named in the lawsuits, contended it could not enforce environmental
laws at a place that didn't officially exist.

What is actually known about the site reads like passages from a Tom
Clancy novel.

Super-secret testing

Established by the CIA in the mid-'50s, the location has served as a
test facility for the nation's most secret aircraft, including the U-2
and SR-71 spy planes and the F-117A Stealth fighter-bomber, used so
successfully in the Persian Gulf War, military analysts have
concluded.

Operations at the site, which employs between 1,800 and 2,300 people,
are funded by the government's "black" budget, a $22 billion fund used
by the CIA, the Pentagon and the National Security Agency for secret
weapons and technological development. The ground outside the buffer
zone surrounding the base is laced with sensors buried in the dirt to
detect anyone or anything moving toward the restricted zone.

"We couldn't tell you what happens there, and to be honest they don't
tell me anything," Tech. Sgt. Richard Covington of Nellis Air Force
Base's public affairs office said Friday. "I could refer you to
Washington, but that's what they'll tell you, too. It's on the base,
but it's not a Nellis asset."

Hayakawa's interest in the base stems from the years he spent living
in Albuquerque, where he befriended people who worked at military and
defense industry jobs. "They always talked about the remarkable
aircraft that were being developed in secret," he said.

Hayakawa began reading AVIATION WEEK AND SPACE TECHNOLOGY and digging
up information on advanced aircraft development. "I always have had
an interest in exotic aircraft design and military development," he
said.

Then in 1988, he read a number of articles and saw a number of
television specials that made intriguing references to the site. He
wrote to a magazine in Japan, suggesting it to do a story on the base.
Instead, a Japanese television crew contacted him.

"In 1990, I took the television crew from Japan to interview a man in
Las Vegas who said he was a government scientist working on what he
called unusual aircraft," he said. "There were about 10 of us, and we
interviewed him at his home. He said there was going to be a test,
and he gave us a map, but he refused to say what was going to be
tested."

Hayakawa and the television crew followed the map and set up cameras.
What they saw astounded them.

"We saw an incredibly bright object rise over the Groom Mountains. Its
maneuverability really impressed us, as did its brightness," he said.

Some might have concluded UFO. Others argue the object was most
probably an experimental aircraft; at extreme distances, high-speed
maneuvers performed by Earth-designed aircraft can look positively
impossible. Hayakawa sides with the latter.

UFO smoke screen?

"There's nothing extraterrestrial or strange there. It's good old
American technology," he says. "The government sits back and watches
- and sometimes manipulates - these UFO stories to keep people from
asking about the real activities there."

By the way, the two-hour television program produced by the Japanese
crew drew an audience of 40 million when it was aired in Japan, he
said.

Hayakawa has run into the security forces before. In 1991, he and his
colleagues were chased by a helicopter back to the highway, where
sheriff's deputies were waiting for them at a roadblock.

Hayakawa's concerns about Area 51 are twofold. The first is laid out
in the lawsuits filed on behalf of former workers at the site.

Two of them, Walter Kasza and Robert Frost, since have died. An
autopsy showed that Frost's body was laced with industrial toxins
rarely seen in humans, the lawsuit contends. Kasza went to doctors
for years, but none could explain why his skin was cracking so badly
his bed sheets would be covered in blood in the morning.

The lawsuits don't even seek monetary damages. Attorney and law
professor, Jonathan Turley is seeking only records that might indicate
what the workers were exposed to, or even to have them treated by
military doctors in secret.

In a demonstration of just how secretive the government is about the
subject, Turley's office at George Washington University was sealed by
a federal court order because of the classified documents he has
obtained; he can't have visitors or students in the office.

Hayakawa also has concerns about biological and chemical weapons he
says may be under development at the site, as well as unmanned
surveillance aircraft he said could be used not only in war, but
against civilians during times of peace.

"Progress is going to take place, and it's not necessarily a bad
thing. But it has the potential for abuse," he said.

"There is a danger that these projects could impact the public,
environmentally as well as in the area of privacy."

Spacemen Land at Las Vegas Airport [news]

From: Visitations visitations@skipnet.com
Date: Mon, 1 Jun 1998 17:11:59 -0800

Via: skygypsy@vegasnet.net

------ Begin forwarded message -----

Sunday, May 31, 1998, Los Angeles Times

Spacemen Land at Vegas Airport
By Michael P. Lucas

Conspiracy theorists, secret agents and space abductees, take
note: Soon you won't need to drive far out into the desert to
reach the mysterious Area 51.

The super-secret Air Force base cum cultural lightning rod for
all things alien has inspired a themed shopping experience in Las
Vegas' new $300-million airport terminal, which opens June 15.
Shoppers will be able to browse under hovering spacecraft among
"Star Trek" videos and glowing jewelry as lifelike space
creatures peer over their shoulders.

The real Area 51, 100 miles north of Las Vegas, attracts UFO
buffs worldwide. Aficionados of unexplained phenomena take state
Route 375--Nevada's official "Extraterrestrial Highway"--to reach
the parched outpost of Rachel. They gather there at the Little
A'Le'Inn tavern and motel to watch lights moving in the night
sky. Key scenes of "Independence Day" were set there.

McCarran International Airport's Area 51 is in the east wing of
the spacious new terminal with the unglamorous name D Gates--no,
not after the former L.A. police chief, but because the A, B and
C gates were there first. This Area 51 will be within the Nevada
Desert shopping zone, sprawling between a bank of slot machines
and the duty-free shops.

Kathy Hussey, an executive of airport concessionaire W.H. Smith
Inc., said she had been pondering possible shopping themes for
the new terminal when she happened upon an air show at Nellis
AFB. There she saw the light: Actually, she spotted merchants
from Rachel selling Area 51 merchandise. She hurried back to the
office to contact vendors.

"There is so much alien stuff out there," she said as
construction workers hauled an ungainly model flying saucer
through the unfinished terminal toward the future store. She
plans to sell educational space videos, alien-infested lava lamps
and copies of the definitive reference work, "Area 51 Viewer's
Guide" by Glenn Campbell, a researcher who has done a lot to make
the shadowy place a cultural icon in recent years.

Meanwhile, longtime Las Vegas writer-editor Jim Barrows said he
has heard word of another even more mysterious base out in the
desert: Area 58.

Area 51 lawsuit appealed to Supreme Court [news]

From: campbell@ufomind.com (Glenn Campbell, Las Vegas)
Date: Tue, 4 Aug 1998 14:53:06 -0800

Found at: http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/1998/Aug-04-Tue-1998/news/7966878.html

Las Vegas Review-Journal
Tuesday, August 04, 1998

WORKERS' ATTORNEY APPEALS TO SUPREME COURT IN AREA 51 CASE

By Tony Batt
Donrey Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- The attorney for workers at Area 51, the
classified base in the Nellis Air Force Range, has filed an appeal
with the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a court order protecting
information about the base.

Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor,
claims two workers died from exposure to toxic waste burning at the
base, 90 miles north of Las Vegas.

"What happened was an outrage, and we will remain active in
pursuing justice," Turley said Monday.

Turley filed the appeal July 27, asking the Supreme Court to
overturn a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San
Francisco.

The appeals court, in a 3-0 decision on Jan. 8, upheld the Air
Force's claim that disclosure of the information Turley seeks could
endanger national security and violate a 1995 order by President
Clinton.

The appeals court ruled that five current and former workers at
the base and the widows of the two dead workers, all represented by
Turley, are not entitled to learn whether hazardous substances exist
at Area 51 or how they are handled. The court also ruled that the
results of a federal inspection of the base and even its name could
not be disclosed. Turley's request for a rehearing was rejected on
April 24.

Justice Department spokeswoman Chris Watney said Monday the
department has not been notified of Turley's appeal to the Supreme
Court but would have 45 days to respond "and we will."

The Supreme Court is out of session until October. When the
justices return, it should take about six weeks for them to decide
whether to consider the Area 51 case.

Turley acknowledged his appeal is a long shot, noting that few
cases are accepted by the Supreme Court. But he said the issues in the
Area 51 lawsuit should interest some justices.

"The 9th Circuit's ruling seemed to create new law in national
security as well as environmental law that contradicts past Supreme
Court rulings," he said. "This case has many of the elements the court
looks for. The question is whether a sufficient number of justices
will be interested."

Turley has raised his national profile in recent weeks by
appearing on several television talk shows to criticize Clinton's
actions in response to allegations of sexual misconduct with former
White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

"If the president had shown a fraction of the concern for the
workers (at Area 51) that he has shown for his own case, this case
would have ended long ago," Turley said.

The White House referred a phone call about Turley's comments to
the National Security Council, which did not respond.

Scripps-Howard article on Area 51 [news]

From: Ken MacGray ken@vvcs.com
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 15:23:34 -0800

----- Forewarded Message Follows -----

From: Dave Bethke bethland@ix.netcom.com
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.area51
Subject: Detroit News -- Area 51
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1998 11:48:18 -0500

In Thursday's (08/27/98) Detroit News --
[Scripps Howard News Service]

LAS VEGAS -- Many people who believe in UFO's also believe "Area
51" is where the Air Force keeps its stockpile of captured flying
saucers.

And maybe an autopsied alien body or two.

Others believe the military base in the southern Nevada desert is
the testing grounds for America's most secret military machines,
everything from the F-117 stealth fighter to electro-magnetic pulse
weapons that would make Buck Rogers nervous.

Rachel article in Salt Lake Tribune [ref]

From: CircusMan@aol.com
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 15:49:40 -0800

Hello Dudes,

I thought you might find the info below of some interest. This was
published in the "Salt Lake Tribune," Sunday, 09-13-98.

The title of article was "The People next Door," deals with Area 51.

Some disinformation there, so I thought you might want to take alook see.

Goto:
http://www.sltrib.com/1998/sep/09131998/sunday%5Fa/sunday%5Fa.htm

----- Begin Excerpt -----

he People Next Door: Area 51 lures Internet junkies,
UFO searchers

BY DAN NAILEN
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

NEVADA STATE HIGHWAY 375 -- On the map, Warm Springs is a dot
signifying a town, a hope for gasoline in the middle of Nevada's high,
south-central desert.

In reality, Warm Springs is a burned-out bar/motel in the middle
of nowhere, 115 miles across utter desolation from the last gas
station, in Ely, and hopefully the next one, 98 miles down the road in
Rachel.

Rachel is the unofficial gateway to a very unofficial place,
popularly known as Area 51, although it has many other monikers:
Dreamland, Groom Lake and Paradise Ranch among them. Area 51 is --
while completely classified and for years repeatedly denied -- the
U.S. government's secret aircraft testing area. It is also, some say,
sight of all manner of UFOs, unexplained phenomena and walking,
talking aliens.

DOE gives up Area 51

From: campbell@ufomind.com (Glenn Campbell, Las Vegas)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 1999 09:16:38 -0800

A story in today's Las Vegas Review Journal says that Area 51 is
being relinquished by the Department of Energy.

The full article can be found at
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/1999/Dec-16-Thu-1999/news/12566049.html

Title: Test site gains contaminated land
Author: Keith Rogers

----- Begin excerpt ----

The Department of Energy made it official Wednesday: the Nevada Test Site
has grown by nearly 200 square miles thanks to some surface contamination
from a 1968 nuclear test and President Clinton's signature on a law this
year.

The new law, according to an Energy Department statement, also serves to
"correct several land use and jurisdiction misalignments throughout the
complex." That means the Air Force takes control over DOE's rectangle
around Groom Lake, along the northeastern corner of the test site, which
had been controlled by the Air Force under a secret agreement.

The location, also known as Area 51 - the site of at least one classified
airstrip - has been shown on government maps as a 38,400-acre rectangle
primarily in Lincoln County that belonged to the Department of Energy but
was controlled by the Air Force and had not been shown by DOE as part of
the Nevada Test Site.

The "misalignments," according to the Energy Department's statement, "had
become outdated and inefficient because of evolving mission needs among the
Department of Energy and Department of Defense.

AREA 51, AREA51, LAWSUIT, CASE, WORKERS, AREA51 LAWSUIT THE LEAKED TRANSCRIPTS OF THE CASE 2012