Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base
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’cause I only saw a portion of the photograph but if everything else you see is correct, I would imagine it was three and a half or four feet tall. But ah, there again, you know all I had to see was a photograph. And you know, I didn’t have much to go on.” See
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAfVZcAsTxk&feature=related.
23. The group made a trip: Tom Mahood, “The Robert Lazar Timeline, as assembled from Public Records and Statements,” July 1994, updated July 1997, from dreamlandresort.com. In this time line Lazar and various friends made a total of three trips into the mountains behind Groom Lake. It was on the third trip that his group was stopped by guards.
24. transcripts of his wife’s telephone conversations: Ibid. 25. Norio Hayakawa: Interview with Norio Hayakawa.
26. He had bodyguards: In the interview with Knapp, Lazar said he was shot at while driving on the freeway (YouTube interview five of six, minute 6:00) and that during his debrief at Indian Springs a gun was pointed at him (ibid., minute 8:00).
27. Lie detector tests: WSVN-7 News reporter Dan Hausle’s interview with former policeman Terry Cavernetti, accessed on December 21, 2010, YouTube, “Bob Lazar Passes the Lie Detector on UFOs.”
28. Stanton Friedman: Interview with Stanton Friedman. Friedman was employed for fourteen years as a nuclear physicist and worked on many advanced nuclear and space travel systems for companies like General Motors, General Electric, and Westinghouse. He has published eighty UFO papers, written six books, and appears in many UFO documentaries.
29. Stanton Friedman’s exposй on the Roswell incident: Recollections of Roswell, Testimony from 27 Witnesses Connected with Recovery of 2 Crashed Flying Saucers in New Mexico in July 1947, DVD, 105 minutes.
30. a book based on Friedman and Moore’s research was published: Berlitz and Moore, Roswell Incident. Friedman said it was a group decision to give Berlitz author credit instead of him, as Berlitz was from the Berlitz Language School family and had the credibility necessary to sell the publisher on the book’s controversial subject matter. Charles Berlitz spoke twenty-five languages and is often listed as one of the most important linguists of the twentieth century. His 1974 book, The Bermuda Triangle, sold an estimated ten million copies.
Chapter Two: Imagine a War of the Worlds
Interviews: Colonel Richard S. Leghorn, Ralph “Jim” Freedman, Alfred “Al” O’Donnell, Lieutenant Colonel Hervey Stockman, Colonel Slater, David Myhra
1. became convinced that Martians were attacking Earth: Trenton Evening Times, October 31, 1938. Many documents relating to The War of the Worlds radio play are available at http://www.war-oftheworlds.co.uk/documents.htm.
2. Switchboards jammed: Ibid., “Log from Jersey Police, Port Norris Station.”
3. the FCC’s role: Associated Press, “Mars Monsters Broadcast Will Not Be Repeated. Perpetrators of the Innovation Regret Causing of Public Alarm,” November 1, 1938.
4. Adolf Hitler took note as well: Hand, Terror on the Air! 7. 5. Joseph Stalin had also been: Author interview with EG&G
engineer.
6. Vannevar Bush, observed the effects: Correspondence between Vannevar Bush and W. C. Forbes, June 8, 1939; Vannevar Bush, A Register of His Papers in the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
7. “Science Discovers Real Frankenstein”: Winthrop, “Science Discovers.”
8. War of the Worlds radio broadcast as an example: Zachary, Endless Frontier, 190.
9. President Roosevelt had appointed: “Vannevar Bush, A Collection of His Papers in the Library of Congress,” Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington DC.
10. his next move: Zachary, Endless Frontier, 285. Zachary wrote,
“Bush’s role in the A-bomb’s birth actually burnished his reputation. Like Truman, most Americans were thrilled by Japan’s surrender and the end of the war… Rather than interrogate the leaders of the Manhattan Project, the public embraced them. Bush’s reputation as a scientific seer grew; his image as an unmatched organizer of expertise solidified. For Bush, the atomic bomb capped off his fiveyear rise to celebrity from relative obscurity.”
11. As Americans celebrated peace: “Majority Supports Use of Atomic Bomb on Japan in WWII”: David Moore, Gallup News Service, August 5, 2005.
12. Operation Crossroads was in full swing: Author interview with Colonel Leghorn, who was the commanding officer of Task Force 1.5.2 for the operation. I am indebted to Colonel Leghorn not only for generously sharing with me recollections of his historic role at Crossroads, beginning with his departure by airplane from the Roswell Army Air Field, but for lending me original photographs taken from his airplane during the 1946 nuclear tests. He also loaned me two original yearbook-type books where I learned the operation involved more than ten thousand instruments and nearly half the world’s supply of film. The Air Force alone took nine million photographs.
13. There were barracuda everywhere: Interview with Ralph “Jim” Freedman. Freedman’s first visit to Bikini was for the nuclear test Castle Bravo, six years after Crossroads, but the barracuda problem was the same.
14. led by a king named Juda: Bradley, No Place to Hide, 158.
15. The U.S. Navy had evacuated the natives to Rongerik Atoll: The documentary Radio Bikini (1987), directed by Robert Stone, includes remarkable outtakes of AEC footage showing military personnel rehearsing how to best pitch propaganda to the natives.
16. three-bomb atomic test series: Schwartz, Atomic Audit, 102. Operation Crossroads cost an astonishing $1.3 billion in 1946 eleven months after the war’s end, more than any subsequent test series.
Crossroads involved 95 ships and 42,000 military and civilian personnel. It was a show of force.
17. a young man named Alfred O’Donnell: Interview with Alfred “Al” O’Donnell.
18. “In the face of intense fire”: Air Force Historical Research Agency, 30 Reconnaissance Squadron (ACC), Lineage, Assignments, Stations, and Honors, Major Richard S. Leghorn, http://www.afhra.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=10193.
19. Curtis LeMay rarely smiled: Kozak, LeMay, iv. 20. five cents per bird: Ibid., 9.
21. “Caveman in a Jet Bomber”: I. F. Stone, The Best of I. F. Stone, 326-28.
22. LeMay was at Bikini to determine: Rhodes, Dark Sun, 261-62.
23. Operation Crossroads was a huge event: The New York Times described it as the largest and “most stupendous single set of experiments in history.” Senator Huffman called the test a “Roman holiday in the Pacific” and promised that the “only important impression these tests are going to give the world is that the United States is not done with war.” Members of the Southern Dairy Goat Owners and Breeders Association recommended that the sheep being used during the test be substituted with U.S. congressmen, on the grounds that good goats were harder to find than congressmen were. In the days leading up to the event, protesters picketed the White House with signs that read, BIKINI: REHEARSAL FOR WORLD WAR THREE.
24. one million tons of battle-weary steel: Fact sheet, Operation Crossroads, Defense Nuclear Agency, Public Affairs Office, Washington, DC, April 5, 1984.
25. Alfred O’Donnell stood below deck: Interview with O’Donnell.
26. the DN-11 relay system: Interview with O’Donnell; copy of a handwritten letter by Herbert Grier from O’Donnell’s collection.
27. What Leghorn witnessed horrified him: Interviews with Colonel Leghorn.
28. tossed up into the air like bathtub toys: United States Atomic Energy Commission Memorandum for the Board, August 23, 1973, #718922, Naval Vessels Sunk During Operation Crossroads; AEC film footage of the explosion, Atomic Testing Museum library, Las Vegas, NV.
29. west of the Volga River: Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 22.
Leghorn believed: Interview with Colonel Leghorn. 30. what shipyards or missile-launch facilities: Ibid.; interview with
Hervey Stockman, who was the first man to fly over the Soviet Union in a U-2 spy plane.
> 31. Halfway across the world: Rhodes, Dark Sun, 261.
32. chain-reacting atomic pile would go critical: O’Keefe, Nuclear Hostages, 134.
33. Joseph Stalin was developing another secret weapon: Author interview with EG&G engineer.
34. secret weapon, called Hermes: Interview with Lisa Blevins, U.S. Army public affairs officer, White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico; “Report on Hermes Missile Project,” Washington National Records Center, Record Group 156.
35. belonged to Adolf Hitler: Hunt, Secret Agenda, 27.
36. secret project called Operation Paperclip: Paperclip was a postwar operation carried out by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency, a special intelligence office that reported to the director of intelligence in the War Department. Today, this would be the equivalent of reporting to the intelligence chief for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Most details about Project Paperclip remain classified despite the government’s insistence otherwise. Paperclip began before the
war ended, and it was originally called Project Overcast and/or Project Pajamas. It had two primary goals: to exploit the minds of German scientists for American Cold War research projects and to keep the Russians from getting the German scientists, no matter how heinous their war crimes might have been. It is believed that at least sixteen hundred scientists were recruited by various U.S. intelligence groups and brought, with their dependents, to the United States. Paperclip had a number of secret, successor projects that remain classified as of 2011.
37. Wernher Von Braun: G-2 Paperclip “Top Secret” files, WNRC Record Group 330. Also from FBI dossier “Wernher Magnus Maximilian Von Braun, aka Freiherr Von Braun,” file 116-13038, 297 pages; also see Neufeld, Von Braun.
38. Dr. Ernst Steinhoff: G-2 Paperclip “Top Secret” files, WNRC, Record Group 319.
39. inside the two-million-square-acre: Schwartz, Atomic Audit, 169. Now called the White Sands Missile Range, the facility is the largest military installation in the country — the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. The first atomic bomb, Trinity, was exploded near the north boundary of the range.
40. Dr. Steinhoff said nothing: Hunt, Secret Agenda, 27; Neufeld, Von Braun, 239.
41. terrifying citizens: “V-2 Rocket, Off Course, Falls Near Juбrez,” El Paso Times, May 30, 1947.
42. Allegations of sabotage: Army Intelligence, G-2 Paperclip, Memorandum for the AC of S G-2, Intelligence Summary, Captain Paul R. Lutjens, June 6, 1947, RG 319, Washington National Records Center (WNRC), Suitland, Maryland. Hunt, Secret Agenda, chapter 3; Major Lyman G. White, “Paperclip Project, Ft. Bliss, Texas and Adjacent Areas,” MID 918.3, November 26, 1947.
43. “beating a dead Nazi horse”: In a March 1948 letter to the State Department regarding “German scientists [who] were members of
either the Nazi Party or one or more of its affiliates,” Bosquet Wev, director of the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency, wrote, “[R]esponsible officials… have expressed opinions to the effect that, in so far as German scientists are concerned, Nazism no longer should be a serious consideration from a viewpoint of national security when the far greater threat of Communism is now jeopardizing the entire world. I strongly concur in this opinion and consider it a most sound and practical view, which must certainly be taken if we are to face the situation confronting us with even an iota of realism. To continue to treat Nazi affiliations as significant considerations has been aptly phrased as ‘beating a dead Nazi horse.’”
44. What made the aircraft extraordinary: Interview with EG&G engineer.
45. fighter jet: Interviews with Colonel Slater, Area 51 base commander (1963-68), Chandler’s personal friend. Chandler relayed this story to Slater decades after it happened.
46. The recovered craft looked nothing like a conventional aircraft: Interview with EG&G engineer, who was an eyewitness.
47. Cyrillic alphabet had been stamped: Interview with EG&G engineer.
48. near the Alaskan border: Interview with EG&G engineer.
49. What if atomic energy propelled the Russian craft: Interview with EG&G engineer.
50. Amerika Bomber: Myhra, The Horten Brothers and Their AllWing Aircraft, 217-20; interview with David Myhra, who interviewed both Horten brothers, Walter in Germany and Reimar in Argentina, for hundreds of hours in the 1980s.
51. Paperclip scientists… called on for their expertise: This is my defensible speculation based on interviews with the EG&G engineer. The Paperclip group attached to the project, I learned through sources with secondhand information, allegedly included Von Braun, Ernst
Steinhoff, and also Dr. Hubertus Strughold, a former Nazi and, in 1947, a research doctor at the Aeromedical Laboratory at Randolph Field in San Antonio, Texas. While employed by the Third Reich, Strughold was the leading expert on how the human body handles high altitude during flight. During World War II, Strughold had been chief of staff of aviation medicine for the German air force, or Luftwaffe. For more on Strughold, see Bower, Paperclip Conspiracy, 214–323.
52. secreted away in a manner so clandestine: Interview with EG&G engineer.
53. top secret project called Operation Harass: Jacobsen, U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) FOIA request, “Horten Brothers and Operation Harass.” The file was declassified by INSCOM beginning on July 6, 1994, CDR USAINSCOM FO1/PO Auth para 1-603 DOD 5200.1R, 358 pages. Notes for pages 38 through 62 refer to this record group.
54. testimony of America’s Paperclip scientists: Headquarters, Counter Intelligence Corps Region I, 970th Counter Intelligence Corps, Detachment European Command, APO-154, January 6, 1948, 92. “Scientists who have better than average knowledge of the HORTEN brothers’ work are: (2) Lippisch, Prof., fnu, Wright Field, Ohio, U.S.A.” Dr. Lippisch was transferred to Wright Field, along with his senior staff Ernst Sielaff and Dr. Ringleb, from Luftfahrtforshungsandstalt Wien — a German aeronautical research institute for the development of highspeed aircraft.
55. The manhunt was on: The earliest dated Operation Harass memo in the file is from November 10, 1947, APO 189, Subject: Flying Saucers, 139. It reads, “Considerable material has been gathered by the Air Materiel Command WRIGHT FIELD, Ohio, concerning the appearance, description and functioning of the object popularly known as the ‘Flying Saucer.’ A copy of the request of the report from the Air Materiel Command is on file at this Headquarters, 2. The opinion was expressed that some sort of object, such as the flying saucer, did exist. At the present time, construction models are being built for wind tunnel tests.” This, however, is clearly not the first memo. Here of the FOIA
file, in memo APO 134, January 2, 1948, a reference is made to an earlier letter, “RE: HORTEN Brothers, SUBJECT: Flying Saucers, dated 28, October 1947.”
56. Walter and Reimar Horten… had somehow been overlooked: Interview with David Myhra.
57. been a later-model Horten in the works: “HORTEN, Walter-” LKL: A.V.V. Gottingen (14-5-46) “Expert on ‘flying-wing’ aircraft, including HO VIII IX & X,” 155 (note there are two separate pages numbered 155).
58. Timothy Cooper filed a request for documents: Because the Flying Saucer memos reveal that immediately after the crash at Roswell, the Army was seeking information on aircraft made by German scientists and not by extraterrestrials, the memos have been discounted by many ufologists as being Army intelligence propaganda. In fact, they reveal an important clue in understanding the EG&G engineer’s truth about the Roswell mystery, namely, that the Joint Chiefs of Staff and perhaps the highest rank at Air Materiel Command knew the flying disc was in fact a Russian vehicle of German design.
59. Extreme maneuverability and apparent ability to almost hover: Air Intelligence [illegible] for alleged “Flying Saucer Type Air Craft,” 152-56.
60. American Paperclip scientists living at Wright Field: Headquarters Sub Region Frankfurt, Counter Intelligence Corps Region III, APO 757, 4 February 1948, 71–72. “Leiber also stated that a Dr. Alexander LIPPISCH, who is at present working at WRIGHT Field, Ohio, USA, is also fam
iliar with the work of the HORTON brothers.”
61. Messerschmitt test pilot named Fritz Wendel: Headquarters Counter Intelligence Corps Region IV, 970th Counter Intelligence Corps Detachment APO 407-A, US ARMY, IV-2574. Subj: WENDEL, Fritz, 1 March 1948, 6 pages. Includes Sheets I, II, III, and IV—
Sketches made by WENDEL re HORTEN aircraft; No. 179332, WENDEL, Fritz, “Ex-Luftwaffe Squadron leader. Presently working for Graf Von Ledebur, French Intell [sic] officer in Vienna Austria,” 56–63.
62. “very much like a round cake with a large sector cut out”: Memo, Secret, Headquarters Berlin Command, Office of Military Government for Germany (US), S-2 Branch, Subject “Flying Saucers,” 3 December 1947, 126; Drawing, Directrix, Secret, 128.
63. Could it hover?: Ibid., 57.
64. if groups could fly tightly together: Ibid., 58. 65. “high speed escapement methods”: Ibid., 59. 66. Could the flying disc be remotely controlled?: Ibid., 58. 67. Did Wendel have any idea about the tactical purposes: Ibid.
68. a rocket engineer named Walter Ziegler: Memo, Secret, Headquarters Counter Intelligence Corps Region IV, 970th Counter Intelligence Corps APO 407-A Subj: ZIEGLER, Walter Erich, 1 March 1948, 52–55.
69. four hundred men from his former rocket group: Ibid., 53. Ziegler called the town “Kubischew,” and said it was located “east of Moscow… where they are presently constructing rockets under Russian supervision.”
70. The Horten brothers had been found: Headquarters 970th Counter Intelligence Corps Detachment European Command, APO 757, D-198239, Subject Flying Saucers, dated 12 March 1948, 44.
71. “the Horten 13”: This is a transcription of a “report” originally written in German cursive writing and translated by SFC Dale R. Blohm. It is missing a cover page. The text suggests that the USG is making plans to hire “6 to 30” German scientists to create for them the “Horten-Parabel.” It reads, “The Discussions concerning the Project ‘Horten-Parabel’ are finalized. The results can be summed up in the following manner. 1). The Russians are in possession of the relevant