Why Area 51 is very dangerous – The Home of All Secrets

March 6, 2020February 22, 2020 by Santosh Bhunia

Area 51 is the common name of a highly classified United State Military base located within the Nevada Desert identified as Groom Lake. The facility is known as Area 51, or Groom Lake was publicly acknowledged by the US Government only in 2013, via the release of declassified documents on the CIA FOIA website. Area 51 is located in the desert of the state of Nevada, roughly 100 miles (161 Km) north of Las Vegas, very close to a salt flat known as ‘Groom Lake’. The exact coordinates are 37 degrees 14 minutes north latitude, 115 degrees 48 minutes west longitude.

The base was established in the mid-1950s, expanding on a previous training facility for bomber pilots, founded during World War II. For decades, the existence of this base was hidden in all records, with the government even deleting satellite imagery. Only in 2000, photos taken by a former Soviet satellite were published by the Federation of American Scientists. This publication finally confirmed the existence of this secret testing facility to the general public, even though rumors and witness reports had been circulating for years prior.

The military base in itself is relatively small and consists of the main hangar, a guardhouse, radar antennas, housing, and office facilities. As this is an Air Force base, there are also plenty of runways and shelters to protect military aircraft from prying eyes and cameras. The military classifies Area 51 as a Military Operating Area (MOA). And despite the classified nature of its operations, the outer borders are not fenced, simply marked with warning signs. These signs warn visitors that photography is not allowed and that trespassers may face a fine or even deadly force if they insist. The perimeter is patrolled by the so-called ‘cammo dudes’

Other security measures include motion sensors planted around the base and CCTV cameras. All in all, these security measures sound pretty standard for any US military facility, although surely, they have been effective in keeping unauthorized citizens at bay. Why then, has Area 51 attracted so much attention, and why do many of the theories on its operations are related to aliens?

The Rumors About Aliens in Area 51

The first rumors came with the numerous sightings of strange lights flying at night over the Groom Lake, and even UFOs soaring at impossibly high altitudes. These sightings were reported by numerous and reliable sources, including airline pilots. Some of these pilots witnessed strange looking objects flying at an altitude of 60,000 feet, in a period in which passenger planes could reach a maximum of 20,000, while military planes flew at 40,000. The Air Force and the Government always remained silent, as did the personnel of Area 51. But then, this all changed with a man called Robert Lazar.

A scientist named Robert Scott Lazar had revealed that the US Government-owned nine aircraft of extra-terrestrial origins, stored in a hangar at Area 51. Lazar claimed he had read documents about research on an ‘anti-gravity reactor’. He had also been shown nine flying discs of extra-terrestrial origin, stored at the base. The advanced propulsion system of these discs was based on an unknown substance, ‘element 115’, impossible to synthesize on Earth.

Air Force researchers had collected 500 pounds of the element, to experiment on developing an ‘anti-gravity reactor’ similar to that of the Aliens. Lazar claimed to have been hired by Defense contractor Edgerton, Germeshausen, and Grier, EG&G for short. EG&G had hired him to reverse engineer the alien technology to the benefit of the US military.

In July 1947, an airborne object crashed on a ranch near the Roswell Army Air Field. A spokesman from the base, General William “Butch” Blanchard, stated that the US Military had recovered the remains of an unidentified flying object UFO of extraterrestrial origin. The Army immediately retracted the statement, saying it was not a flying disc at all but a weather balloon – which sounded even more incredible and just fed further conspiracy theories. In 1995 Air Force declassified documents revealed that the object was a balloon created for a top-secret surveillance program, called “Project Mogul”.

Those were the early years of the Cold War, and Project Mogul was tasked with devising unmanned methods to spy on the Soviets. The weather balloon version was an un-understandable cover for a classified espionage operation. However, it is still unclear why General Blanchard made the UFO statement. Statements from Lazar and investigations from UFOlogist William Moore have sparked another theory around the real purpose of Area 51: the existence of a secret organization called Majestic 12.

The Majestic 12

The Majestic 12 were originally founded during President Truman’s administration with the original goal of overseeing experiments on the remains of alien crashes, safely kept in Area 51. These remains included also corpses of alien beings, not just their technology. According to the more sinister versions of this speculation, the ultimate goal of the Majestic 12 is to exploit alien technology or even an alliance with the aliens to achieve World Domination.

Rumors about their existence were substantiated in December 1984, when Los Angeles TV producer Jaime Shandera received an anonymous package containing a dossier, dated the 18th of November 1952. Its author was Vice-Admiral Hillenkoetter, its purpose was to inform President Eisenhower of the recovery of the remains of two crashed spaceships. In the first of these crashes, in July 1947, authorities had recovered the bodies of four humanoid beings.

According to the dossier, President Truman had authorized the creation of a top-secret group, the Majestic 12, to study the remains. Shandera and UFOlogist William Moore found a July 1954 memo in the National Archives, sent from General Cutler to Eisenhower, referring to an ‘MJ-12 Special Studies Project’. Shandera and Moore claimed that they found the memo following a tip from an unnamed Air Force Intelligence informant. The memo seemed to substantiate the existence of the Majestic 12 group. In 1987 an unknown individual leaked the Majestic 12 document to British writer Timothy Good.

This rushed Moore and Shandera into publishing their findings, which sparked massive media coverage and an FBI investigation. The Majestic 12 dossier can be retrieved from the vault of declassified FBI documents. The FBI’s opinion of the authenticity of the dossier is made clear by the word ‘Bogus’ scrawled in giant letters over every page.

James Forrestal Suicide is Real or Fake?

According to the document, the head of the Majestic 12 was Truman’s secretary of Defence, James Forrestal. In the early hours of the 22nd of May 1949, Forrestal plunged to his death from the 16th floor of the Bethesda Naval Hospital. The official cause of death was suicide. But another FBI dossier reveals that the Secretary of Defense had reason to suspect that his phone had been wiretapped in the months leading to his death.

An unidentified FBI informant also claimed in March 1952 that Forrestal was being regularly poisoned with opium and other narcotics, to drive him insane. Forrestal’s mental deterioration was well documented, and he was known to have an active interest in the possible extraterrestrial origin of the numerous UFO sighting of 1947, as was President Truman. All these elements, combined with inconsistencies around the circumstances of his suicide, have led conspiracy theorists to believe that Forrestal may have been silenced.

The reason was his inclination to reveal to the public the extent of the Government’s involvement with alien research. This implies that the Majestic 12 was a real organization, despite the FBI bogus claims. Speaking of bogus-ness, let’s go back to Robert Lazar, the Area 51 whistleblower. Skeptics of his claims investigated many of Lazar’s statements and most appeared to be false. For example, Lazar said he holds master’s degrees from CalTech and MIT, but there’s no evidence he ever attended those universities. Also, the Air Force denied he had ever worked for them.

In 2013, a writer tried to contact him to discuss his allegations. But Lazar was not interested in discussing Area 51 anymore. The writer was told: “Mr. Lazar no longer involves himself in matters related to the topic of UFOs”.

Weather Controlling Experiments in Area 51

Area 51 conspiracy theory may take us back to the realm of science and possibility. This theory asserts that the Air Force is using Area 51 to experiment on weather control for military purposes. This assertion is even backed up by The Las Vegas Tourism Bureau, and there may be a kernel of truth. According to the National Science Foundation report, the U.S. military engaged in Project Cirrus: a research effort in the late 1940s and early 1950s to modify clouds and use the rain, and the lack of it, as a weapon.

And between 1962 and 1983, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ran a project called “STORMFURY”, in which scientists attempt to use cloud seeding to slow hurricane winds, though without much success. The idea was to tame the destructive power of hurricanes, by seeding silver iodide tostimulate convection outside the eyewall of hurricanes. This would result in decreasing the speed of hurricane winds, a 10% reduction being sufficient in reducing the destructive power of such storms.

This project was focused on protecting civilians against freak storms, rather than in harming enemies through weather control, and was ultimately unsuccessful. Both Cirrus and Stormfury, though, prove that the US Government was at least interested at some point in controlling the weather, but there is no evidence that such experiments took place at Area 51.

The Cold War and Aircraft Testing Field

When the Soviet Union and China backed North Korea’s invasion of South Korea in June 1950, it became clear in the West that the Kremlin was intent on expanding its influence. How could the US keep tabs on Stalin’s schemes? In the early 1950s, U.S. Navy and Air Force sent low-flying aircraft on reconnaissance missions over the USSR, but these were too vulnerable to anti-aircraft guns and interception. In November 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved the secret development project of a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft called the U-2 program.

This program required a remote, covert location for training and testing. Groom Lake, which had been a training ground for World Ware II pilots, fitted the bill perfectly. With the designation of Area 51, this site became a new top-secret military base. Kelly Johnson, one of the leading engineers of the U-2 project, re-christened it ‘Paradise Ranch’ to entice recruitment of new technicians. The first U-2 aircraft prototypes began their test flights in July 1955, and immediately reports came flooding in about UFO sightings.

Many of these sightings were observed by commercial airline pilots who had never seen an aircraft fly at such high altitudes as the U-2, soaring 40,000 feet higher than the normal flying routes. It is understandable if these planes looked completely alien! Air Force officials knew exactly the nature of the UFO sightings but could not reveal classified information to the public. So they either remained silent or explained them as natural phenomena or weather research balloons – an explanation that had been used already at Roswell.

In the late 1950s, U-2 operations were replaced by other military aircraft, such as the Lockheed A-12 Oxcart, the Bird of Prey, Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk, and Northrop TACIT BLUE. These were and are models used to collect intelligence, or equipped with stealth technology, which again accounts for the extreme secrecy. Extensive testing and training were required, and accidents did occur. A CIA declassified document reports the wreckage of an Oxcart being transported back in secrecy to the base, in January 1967. The grounds of Area 51 were also used to train pilots in vital skills, should they have to parachute in enemy territory, or be captured by the Soviets.

In August 1963 new mandatory training courses for pilots were created, including resistance to interrogation, escape and evasion, and survival. More declassified documents reveal Area 51’s role in Project ‘Have Doughnut’: this was about studying Soviet MIG fighter jets, obtained covertly in the 1970s. According to aerospace historian Peter Merlin, this is a frequent occurrence in the skies above Area 51: simulated dog fights where USAF jets were pitted against Soviet fighter planes to develop counter-tactics. The practice continues today, now it’s new Russian models, MIG-29s and SU-27s, that are being studied.

The secrecy around Area 51 may not hide sinister truths about Alien tech, weather control or moon hoaxes. But it is completely justified, in the sense that it is meant to protect top-secret military development programs, as well as the training of pilots involved in espionage activities. According to Merlin and colleague Chris Pocock, military research continues to this day, focused on stealth technology, electronic weapons systems, unmanned aircraft or even directed energy weapons or lasers.

Area 51 A Place Of Human Imagination?

Based on what we have learned today, there are plenty of motives why the Government and the Military don’t want you to access Area 51. Testing new prototypes of spy planes, training pilots in espionage techniques or even disposing of hazardous waste are all perfectly satisfactory reasons to justify the secrecy and seclusion of the facility. A related consideration is: how many more military research bases are there, around the US and the world, that are carrying out similar programs?

Or have caused harm to their personnel due to their negligence and unwillingness to cooperate? How many more secret facilities could be hiding sinister experiments or extra-terrestrial technology? And yet Area 51 seems to be always at the center of attention, speculation, and many conspiracy theories. Over time, since the first sightings in the mid-1950s, Area 51 has become a sort of lightning rod – or scapegoat – for every unexplained event linking aliens, secret societies and the US Government.

In that respect, Area 51 has grown in the collective imagination as an abstract place, a repository for all our fears, or hopes that another level of reality is out there, hidden from our eyes by a select group of sinister conspirators. I have resisted so far from saying this, but yes, the truth is out there. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be hidden in Area 51, and there hasn’t necessarily to be only one truth.