The truth is finally out there
Little remains known about what is at mysterious base
CIA acknowledges what conspiracy theorists have said all along — top-secret Cold War test site Area 51 does exist.
UFO buffs and believers in aliens are celebrating the CIA’s clearest acknowledgment yet of the existence of Area 51, the top-secret Cold War test site that has been the subject of elaborate conspiracy theories for decades.
But the revelations, which have set the tinfoil-hat contingent abuzz on the Internet, aren’t quite The X-Files or Independence Day. There’s no mention of UFO crashes, black-eyed extraterrestrials or staged moon landings.
The 407-page document contains many redactions, however, so much fodder for the imagination still exists.
The CIA history, released Thursday, not only refers to Area 51 by name and describes some of the activities that took place there, but places the U.S. air force base on a map, along the dry bed in Groom Lake, Nevada It also describes some cool planes, though none of them are saucer-shaped. George Washington University’s National Security Archive used a public records request to obtain the CIA history of one of Area 51’s most secret Cold War projects, the U-2 spy plane program.
National Security Archive senior fellow Jeffrey Richelson first reviewed the history in 2002, but all mentions of the country’s most mysterious military base had been redacted. So he requested the history again in 2005, hoping for more information. Sure enough, he received a version a few weeks ago with the mentions of Area 51 restored.
Former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush referred to the “location near Groom Lake” in insisting on continued secrecy, and other government references date to the 1960s. But Richelson as well as those who are convinced “the truth is out there” are taking the document as a
‘My opinion is that whoever is flying these craft will break the story and will reveal themselves at some point in the future.’ ROBERT HASTINGS UFO researcher
sign of loosening secrecy about the government’s activities in the Nevada desert. Some UFO buffs and others believe the most earth-shattering revelations will come from Area 51 workers, not an official document.
“The government probably will not release what it knows,” UFO researcher Robert Hastings said. “My opinion is that whoever is flying these craft will break the story and will reveal themselves at some point in the future. The CIA is not going to release anything they don’t want to talk about.”
The site is known as Area 51 among UFO aficionados because that was the base’s designation on old Nevada test site maps. The CIA history reveals that officials renamed it Paradise Ranch to try to lure skilled workers.
Beginning with the U-2 in the 1950s, the base has been the testing ground for a host of top-secret aircraft, including the SR-71 Blackbird, F-117A stealth fighter and B-2 stealth bomber. Some believe the base’s Strangelovian hangars also store alien vehicles, evidence from the “Roswell incident” — the alleged 1947 crash of a UFO in New Mexico — and extraterrestrial corpses. The CIA history mentions an “unexpected side effect” of the high-flying planes: “a tremendous increase in reports of unidentified flying objects.”
The mystery surrounding the site — about 160 kilometres northwest of Las Vegas — has been a boon. One bicycle event company produces an “X Rides” event that incorporates mountain and road biking near a certain heavily guarded patch of desert. Las Vegas’s baseball team is called “the 51s.” Small-town restaurants along State Route 375, officially designated the Extraterrestrial Highway, sell souvenir T-shirts to tourists making their way to the boundary of Area 51, which consists of a no-trespassing sign, a surveillance camera and an armed guard on a hill.