from EYEWITNESS NEWS, Channel 8, Las Vegas
July 28, 2003   6 p.m. news item:


George Knapp, I-Team Reporter

Rachel Resident Waits for Return of Confiscated Items

(July 28) -- A Nevada man whose home was raided last month by the Joint
Terrorism Task Force says he is still waiting for the return of his property. 

Chuck Clark, a self-described military watchdog, says FBI agents and other
lawmen used a sealed search warrant to seize his property, including computers
and personal files. This came after Clark took the Channel 8, Eyewitness News
I-Team on a tour outside the infamous Area 51 military base. 

Other than the raid itself and an FBI interview with Chuck Clark's Webmaster,
the case hasn't gone too far. Clark hasn't been charged with anything, and has
had no further contact with the government, but he hasn't been given his
property back either. 

He thinks this was all an intimidation tactic meant to scare him away from
keeping an eye on Area 51. The raid on Chuck Clark's modest trailer in tiny
Rachel came just a few days after he escorted the I-Team on a tour of the
perimeter of the Area 51 military base, the very existence of which was long
denied by the government. 

Neighbors snapped photos of the FBI agents and other unidentified members of
the task force as they carted away Clark's computers, photos, and files. 
"They're paranoid about this location and I don't see why. There's nothing in
sight, not even close," said Chuck Clark, military watchdog. 

Clark is an admitted pain in the rear to the people who run Area 51. He's spent
years exploring the outer edges of the super-secret base, snapping photos of
the facility from far-away vantage points, compiling information from public
sources and then posting his findings on the website of Rachel's Little
A'le'inn. He's also written a visitors guide to the base, which has been the
testing ground for the most sensitive military technology of the past 50 years.

Name a secret plane, and it's been based at Area 51 at one time or another.
Clark is well known to the security force, which guards the base. He's
routinely shadowed by the so-called "Cammo Dudes" and has been picked up by the
array of cameras and other sensors positioned all around the edge of the
sprawling test facility. But it wasn't until he began exposing the existence of
hidden spy gear on public land that his legal troubles began. 

"I've found 31 or 32 of them and have only covered 3 or 4 roads. They started
putting time delays in them, making them harder to find," said Clark, referring
to hidden sensors.  Relying on a frequency counter, Clark is able to zero in on
the secret sensors, hidden in bushes and miles away from the edge of the base,
on public land. "This is the motion detector and vibrator. It detects metal
from a car driving by." 

Once he finds one, he digs it up, takes a photo, and then puts it back. He has
never removed one. "They're clearly marked and I'm not about to go down that
road. I'm sure I could do long years in a nice federal facility somewhere."
Five days after he made that remark, federal agents raided his home. Clark has
declined to appear on camera to talk about the raid but told us he thinks this
is an intimidation tactic meant to make him back off from his interest in Area
51. 

He says the people at the base know full well that he isn't a terrorist. In our
earlier interview, he said the military has no right to hassle citizens on
public land, and no justification for hiding spy equipment along these roads.
"They have a 25-mile buffer zone around the base. Why they have to put this
stuff outside the line really escapes me? I've found them (sensors) in the next
valley as much as 8 miles outside the line," he said. 

The military has a long history of bending the law concerning Area 51. In the
mid-1980's, the United States Air Force seized 89,000 acres of public land
around Groom Lake and only later sought congressional permission to annex the
acreage. In the 1990's, it took control of high points used by the curious to
peer down on Area 51. It also put up signs falsely claiming one area to be the
boundary of the base and fessed up when caught. 

But is it legal to spy on private citizens on public land? A freedom of
information inquiry to the BLM has failed to turn up any memo of understanding
giving the military the okay to install the devices. The Pentagon thus far has
no comment. Longtime Nevada military watchdog Grace Potorti says if the air
force didn't inform the BLM, then it's action would likely be illegal. The use
of the terrorism task force, she said, is typical of the civil rights excesses
now allowed under the USA Patriot Act. 

Already, the Nellis range and Nevada Test Site comprise the largest military
facility in the western hemisphere. Area 51 has 525 square miles of restricted
air space. It isn't possible to get within 15 miles of the base itself. 

So it's tough to make the case that they don't already have enough of a buffer
zone out there. Grace Potorti thinks this may be a sign that the military
intends to make another land grab around Groom Lake. 

Watch George Knapp's special report Tuesday at 6 p.m. when he takes a look at
the attempts by the military to get exemptions to environmental laws.