Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base

by Annie M. Jacobsen

  45. operations at the Nevada Test Site: “NSTec Contracted to Operate NNSA Test Site,” United Press International, December 22, 2008. Interview with Stephen Younger.

  46. In 2006, the Senate dropped the line item: CRS Report for Congress, “Bunker Busters”: Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator Issues, FY2005-FY2007; Domenici: RNEP Funds Dropped from Appropriations Bill,” press release, Senator Pete Domenici, October 25, 2005, FY2006 hearings. From the transcript: Representative Terry Everett: “Could you please tell me directly if there’s a military need for this, for robust earth-nuclear earth penetrator?” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: “It is a question that’s difficult to answer, because sometimes they say ‘military requirement.’ And that’s a formal process. There was no military requirement for unmanned aerial

  vehicles until they came along.”

  47. proposed to revive the NERVA program: Michael R. Williams, “Ground Test Facility for Propulsion and Power Modes of Nuclear Engine Operation,” Savannah River National Laboratory, Department of Energy, WSRC-MS-2004-00842.

  48. six hundred million pages of information: Pauline Jelinek, “U.S. Releases Nazi Papers,” Associated Press, November 2, 1999.

  49. Many documents about Area 51 exist in that pile: Interviews with EG&G engineer.

  50. the Roswell crash remains: which certainly explains why the CIA and the Air Force have not been able to locate Roswell crash remains in their archives.

  51. the most powerful defense contractor in the nation: In 1999, EG&G was acquired by the Carlyle Group. In 2002 it was acquired by URS. In 2000, EG&G formed a joint venture with Raytheon to create JT3 (Joint Test, Tactics, and Training) LLC, which provides “engineering and technical support for the Nevada Test and Training Range, the Air Force Flight Test Center, the Utah Test and Training Range, and the Electronic Combat Range.” Interview with Meagan Stafford, EG&G/URS Public Relations, Sard Verbinnen & Co., July 16, 2010.

  52. former dean of engineering at MIT: Vannevar Bush papers located at National Security Archives, Truman Library, the Roosevelt Library, and MIT Archives; Zachary, Endless Frontier, Library of Congress, “Vannevar Bush, a Collection of His Papers in the Library of Congress,” Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  53. kidnapped by Dr. Josef Mengele: Interview with Gerald Posner; Posner and Ware, Mengele: The Complete Story, 83.

  54. performed unspeakable experimental surgical procedures: Spitz, Doctors From Hell: The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments

  on Humans. Spitz worked as a typist during the Nuremberg trials. Forgiving Dr. Mengele, a film by Bob Hercules and Cheri Pugh (2006); CANDLES Holocaust Museum, Biography of Eva Mozes Kor. The Japanese also performed grotesque experiments on humans during the war. “U.S. War Department, War Crimes Office, Judge Advocate General’s Office, #770475.” Japan’s version of Josef Mengele, General Ishii, was pardoned by the U.S. War Crimes Office on the grounds that information regarding the grotesque medical experiments he performed would somehow benefit the United States. Although it is science fiction, The Island of Dr. Moreau, written in 1896 by H. G. Wells, tells a twisted tale of human experimentation on a remote island.

  55. children, dwarfs, and twins: Koren and Negev, In Our Hearts We Were Giants, 85-197.

  56. Josef Mengele’s efforts to create a pure, Aryan race: Erik Kirschbaum, “Cloning Wakes German Memories of Nazi Master Race,” Reuters, February 27, 1997. America is not exempt from eugenic theology; see Edwin Black, “Eugenics and the Nazis: The California Connection,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 9, 2003.

  57. painter named Dina Babbitt: Ibid., 103-31 and photographic inserts. Bruce Weber, “Dina Babbitt, Artist at Auschwitz, Is Dead at 86,” New York Times, August 1, 2009. Babbitt’s maiden name (used at Auschwitz) was Gottlieb.

  58. Dr. Martina Puzyna: Koren and Negev, In Our Hearts We Were Giants, 109.

  59. According to his only son, Rolf: Interview with Gerald Posner. Posner interviewed Rolf Mengele and was given access to 5,000 pages of Mengele’s written correspondence as well as his personal journals written after the war.

  60. Mengele held up his side of the Faustian bargain: Interview with EG&G engineer.

  61. Mengele never took up residence in the Soviet Union: Interview

  with Posner.

  62. Eileen Welsome wrote a newspaper story: Eileen Welsome, “The Plutonium Files: America’s Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War,” Albuquerque Tribune, November 1993.

  63. direct violation of the Nuremberg Code: Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, Vol. 2, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949. Nuremberg Code: (1). The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. (2). The experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study, and not random and unnecessary in nature. Full text available at

  http://ohsr.od.nih.gov/guidelines/nuremberg.html.

  64. President Clinton opened an investigation. The advisory committee was made of fourteen members who reported to the president through a cabinet-level group called the Human Radiation Interagency Working Group, and it included the secretaries of defense and energy (formerly the Atomic Energy Commission) as well as the attorney general and the director of the CIA. The committee was dissolved in October of 1995 after publishing its findings. Today, the Office of Health, Safety and Security (HSS), a Department of Energy office, maintains a Web site. Of its efforts, DOE says, “We have undertaken an intensive effort to identify and catalogue relevant historical documents from DOE’s 3.2 million cubic feet of records scattered across the country.” Given that there are approximately 2,000 pages of documents in a single cubic foot, it is telling that a record search for “EG&G” at the HSS/DOE database delivers a paltry 500 documents.

  Epilogue

  Interviews: Colonel Leghorn, Ed Lovick, EG&G engineer, David Myhra

  1. Army Air Forces commemorative yearbook: This is the

  government-issued “Official Report, Task Force 1.52” and is meant to look like a high school yearbook.

  2. The U.S. government spent nearly two billion dollars: Atomic Audit, 102. “Operation Crossroads was an astonishing $1.3 billion [circa 1996 dollars], far more than any of the subsequent thermonuclear tests conducted during the 1950s.”

  3. Truman’s closest advisers: “Potsdam and the Final Decision to Use the Bomb,” Department of Energy Archives

  (http://www.cfo.doe.gov/): “During the second week of Allied deliberations at Potsdam, on the evening of July 24, 1945, Truman approached Stalin without an interpreter and, as casually as he could, told him that the United States had a ‘new weapon of unusual destructive force.’ Stalin showed little interest, replying only that he hoped the United States would make ‘good use of it against the Japanese.’ The reason for Stalin’s composure became clear later: Soviet intelligence had been receiving information about the atomic bomb program since fall 1941.”

  4. Stalin’s black propaganda hoax: Interview with EG&G engineer.

  5. “a warning shot across Truman’s bow”: Interview with EG&G engineer. The engineer says this information was relayed to him by his EG&G boss, who had been given the information by a government superior. One cannot rule out the possibility that the elite EG&G engineers were given false information as a means of coercing them into participating in a morally reprehensible program; in 1951, there was no greater enemy to the free world than Joseph Stalin. Until Russia opens its UFO archives, Stalin’s side of the story will remain unknown, but since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Stalin’s interest in UFOs has come to light. In Korolev, Professor James Harford discusses an incident where Stalin asked his chief rocket designer, Sergei Korolev, to study UFOs (See here, here). In 2002, Pravda.ru ran a story called “Stalin’s UFOs,” identifying the dictator’s Roswell/UFO research team as “mathematician Mstislav Keldysh, chemist Alexander Topchiyev, and physician [sic] Sergey [sic] Korole
v.” Other ufologists identify Stalin’s UFO team as Sergei

  Korolev, missile designer and inventor of Sputnik; Igor Kurchatov, father of Russia’s atomic bomb; and Mstislav Keldysh, mathematician, theoretician, and space pioneer (see photographic insert).

  6. “Hitler invented stealth,” says Gene Poteat: Interview with Gene Poteat. Also from Poteat’s participation in the CIA’s Oxcart panel discussion at the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, September 24, 2010.

  7. Whatever happened to the Horten brothers: Interview with David Myhra.

  8. captured by the U.S. Ninth Army on April 7, 1945: Myhra, The Horten Brothers and Their All Wing Aircraft, 229.

  9. London high-rise near Hyde Park: Ibid., 230. 10. Theodore von Kбrmбn: National Aviation Hall of Fame,

  biography, Theodore von Kбrmбn. http://www.nationalaviation.org/vonkarman-theodore/. Myhra, The Horten Brothers and Their All Wing Aircraft, 230.

  11. tapes can be found: National Air and Space Museum, Archives Division, Reimar and Walter Horten Interviews, Accession No. 19990065.

  12. “Reimar had me agree to two restrictions”: Interview with David Myhra.

  13. 2010 Freedom of Information Act request: Letter, October 29, 2010, to Ms. Annie Jacobsen from Nathan L. Mitchell, Assistant to the General Counsel, Department of the Army, Office of the General Counsel, 104 Army Pentagon, Washington DC.

  14. another [important] engineer: The name of this engineer and his employment with EG&G during the 1950s have been verified with other former EG&G employees.

  15. empty lot of asphalt: The lot is adjacent to the buildings identified as EG&G’s original Las Vegas headquarters in a film about

  the history of the Nevada Test Site, funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration, Nevada Site Office: “When EG&G first moved to Las Vegas, their headquarters were located on ‘A’ Street now called Commerce.”

  16. “Little wooden discs”: Interview with Ed Lovick.

  17. sworn affidavit: “Dead Airman’s Affidavit: Roswell Aliens Were Real.” Fox News.com, July 3, 2007.

  http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,287643,00.html, accessed December 30, 2010.

  18. “It’s difficult”: Written correspondence with Bob Lazar, 2010.

  19. hidden inside secret “Restricted Data” files: Interview with EG&G engineer.

  20. Vannevar Bush: To further understand Vannevar Bush, I reviewed his papers, letters, and hand-edited drafts of his articles, books, and monographs from three major collections: Vannevar Bush, “A Collection of His Papers in the Library of Congress,” Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC; Vannevar Bush, “Office of Scientific Research and Development,” National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland; Vannevar Bush Papers, Carnegie Institute, Washington, DC.

  21. human experiments to study the effects: The trials involved high concentrations of lewisite and mustard gas. Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, Final Report, 98; Veterans at Risk: The Health Effects of Mustard Gas and Lewisite, 66–69.

  22. “Although the human subjects”: Ibid., 66.

  23. Dixon Institute… Feeble-Minded: Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, Final Report, Chapter Seven, Nontherapeutic Research on Children, 320–351. Dr. Susan Lederer, Military Medical Ethics, Volume 2, “The Cold War and Beyond: Covert and Deceptive American Medical Experiments,” 514. Lederer, a Clinton committee staff member, cites D. J. Rothman, Strangers at the

  Bedside: A History of How Law and Bioethics Transformed Medical Decision Making, Basic Books, 1991.

  24. letter-number designation of S-1: Gosling, The Manhattan Project: Making the Atomic Bomb, 10.

  25. JT3: From the company Web site (http://www.jt3.com/), accessed October 18, 2010. “The Department of Defense (DoD) has merged the engineering and technical support management of several western ranges into one organization to streamline support for test and training customers. In response to this challenge, URS (URS) and Raytheon Technical Services Company (RTSC) formed JT3, a Limited Liability Company (LLC) dedicated to supporting Joint Range Technical Services (J-Tech) requirements. We are experts at assisting our customers and other contractors in the planning, preparation, and execution of test projects and training missions.”

  Author Interviews and Bibliography

  Primary Interviews

  The individuals listed below, by birth year, did many things in their long careers. Noted are topics we discussed during our interviews. All military officers and intelligence agency personnel are retired.

  Helen Kleyla (1913-). Longtime secretary to CIA deputy director Richard Bissell.

  CIA, Richard Bissell, Area 51, Bay of Pigs.

  Interviews: Written correspondence, fall 2009

  Colonel Richard S. Leghorn (1919-). The father of peacetime overhead espionage.

  Army Air Forces, USAF, CIA, World War II, Korean War; U-2, MiG, Corona satellite system, reconnaissance over Normandy, overhead espionage, Operation Crossroads, General Curtis LeMay.

  Interviews: July 21, 2009; July 24, 2009; February 10, 2010; written correspondence: July 2009-October 2010

  Edward Lovick Jr. (1919-). The father of stealth technology. Lockheed Skunk Works, U-2, A-12 Oxcart, SR-71 Blackbird, D-21 drone, Harvey, Have Blue, F-117 Nighthawk, Project KempsterLacroix, radar testing, and pole testing at Area 51.

  Interviews: January 5, 2008; February 7, 2008; March 6, 2008; April 3, 2008; April 18, 2008; April 29, 2008; May 29, 2008; June 6, 2008; June 18, 2008; July 2, 2008; July 10, 2008; July 23, 2008; July 30, 2008; August 6, 2008; August 13, 2008; August 21, 2008; August 28, 2008; September 4, 2008; November 18, 2008; December 9, 2008; January 6, 2009; January 20, 2009; March 17, 2009; March 30, 2009; June 11, 2009; June 28, 2009; August 1, 2009; February

  28, 2010; April 22, 2010; September 5, 2010; written correspondence: February 2008-October 2010

  Ray Goudey (1919-). Flew U-2 “Ship One” at Area 51. Lockheed test flights, U-2, Burbank to Area 51 flights.

  Interviews: June 12, 2009; July 8, 2009; October 8, 2009

  Fred White (1921-). Wrote the flight manuals for Lockheed U-2, A-12, and SR-71.

  Lockheed Skunk Works, U-2, A-12, YF-12, SR-71, engineering projects at Area 51.

  Interviews: October 3, 2009; October 8, 2009; written correspondence: October 2009-May 2010.

  Colonel Hugh “Slip” Slater (1922-). Base commander at Area

  51.

  Army Air Force, USAF, CIA, A-12, YF-12, D-21 drone, commander of the U-2 Chinese Black Cat Squadron, commander for Operation Black Shield, the 303 Committee.

  Interviews: November 13, 2008; December 20, 2009; January 7, 2009; March 4, 2009; April 25, 2009; June 25, 2009; July 14, 2009; October 7, 2009; October 8, 2009; January 13, 2010

  Alfred O’Donnell (1922-), early Manhattan Project member. Armed, wired, and fired 186 nuclear bombs at the Nevada Test Site and the Pacific Proving Ground.

  Nuclear weapons, World War II, Battle at Okinawa; timing, wiring, and firing system on atomic bombs; timing, wiring, and firing system on thermonuclear bombs; Operation Crossroads, Operation Greenhouse, Operation Ivy, Operation Castle, Operation Plumbbob, Operation Hardtack, Nevada Test Site.

  Interviews: May 9, 2009; May 25, 2009; May 27, 2009; June 24, 2009; June 25, 2009; July 15, 2009; September 7, 2009; September 8, 2009; October 6, 2009; October 7, 2009; November 17, 2009; December 14, 2009; December 15, 2009; December 16, 2009; January 13, 2010; January 14, 2010; February 11, 2010; March 6, 2010; June 28, 2010, June 29, 2010; written correspondence: May

  2009-October 2010

  Colonel Hervey S. Stockman (1922–2011). First man to fly over the Soviet Union in a U-2.

  Army Air Forces, USAF, U-2 pilot, atomic-sampling pilot, fighter pilot in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam; POW at the Hanoi Hilton and other prisons from June 12, 1967-March 4, 1973.

  Interviews: August 24, 2009; September 17, 2009; March 24, 2010

  Col
onel Sam Pizzo (1922-). Navigation expert for the A-12 at Area 51 and escort to Nikita Khrushchev from Moscow to America in 1959.

  Strategic Air Command, USAF, A-12 Oxcart, Operation Home Run, celestial navigation, General Curtis LeMay.

  Interviews: April 22, 2009; April 24, 2009; May 19, 2009; May 21, 2009; October 3, 2009; October 7, 2009; December 2, 2009; written correspondence: April 2009-September 2010

  General Hsichun “Mike” Hua (1926-). Flew with U-2 Chinese Black Cat Squadron.

  CIA U-2 pilot, CIA air base at Taoyuan, Taiwan.

  Interview: March 12, 2010; written correspondence: winter/spring 2010

  Ralph James “Jim” Freedman (1927-). Procurement manager at Area 51, EG&G weapons test engineer, and nuclear explosion photographer.

  EG&G, CIA, nuclear test liaison to Howard Hughes from Area 51, Nevada Test Site, Operation Greenhouse, Operation Ivy, Operation Castle, A-12 Oxcart, Project Aquiline.

  Interviews: May 7, 2009; May 8, 2009; April 25, 2009; June 24, 2009; September 8, 2009; October 8, 2009; December 15, 2009; June 28, 2010; August 4, 2010; November 30, 2010.

  Brigadier General Raymond L. Haupt (1927-). The only man to fly all three models of the Oxcart at Area 51.

  USAF, U-2, A-12 Oxcart, YF-12, SR-71 Blackbird, Blackbird flight

  manuals, Lockheed pilots, Area 51 operations.

  Interviews: October 3, 2009; October 8, 2009

  Major General Patrick J. Halloran (1928-). Squadron operations officer for the U-2, wing commander for the SR-71 Blackbird.

  USAF, U-2, SR-71 Blackbird, U-2 shoot-downs over China.

  Interview: June 12, 2009

  Dr. Albert D. “Bud” Wheelon (1929-). CIA’s first deputy director of Science and Technology, also known as the mayor of Area 51.

  Project Palladium, A-12 Oxcart, Cuban missile crisis, satellites, early missile systems, TRW, defense contracting, MIT, President Kennedy, James Killian, General Ledford, John McCone, Richard Helms, Lyman Kirkpatrick.

  Interviews: May 29, 2009; November 9, 2009

  Colonel Kenneth B. Collins (1930-). A-12 Oxcart pilot for the CIA.