1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:16,260 It is the nation's most secure, most clandestine military installation. 2 00:00:16,260 --> 00:00:22,560 UFO experts claim it is also home to captured flying saucers and alien corpses. 3 00:00:22,560 --> 00:00:27,320 Tremendous things have happened out there that will probably never be told. 4 00:00:27,320 --> 00:00:35,040 The site has long been the subject of bizarre rumors about extraterrestrial life and extraterrestrial death. 5 00:00:35,040 --> 00:00:47,000 Some day what happened at Area 51 will be made public and the public will be shocked about what was done in their name. 6 00:00:47,000 --> 00:00:57,280 Driving along Highway 375 in central Nevada, the desert landscape of basin and range stretches out in all directions as far as the eye can see. 7 00:00:57,280 --> 00:01:06,840 It is the archetypal American West, wide open spaces and harsh conditions where only the most rugged of individuals have settled and survived. 8 00:01:06,840 --> 00:01:12,840 There are no cities here. Towns, if you can call them that, are few and far between. 9 00:01:12,840 --> 00:01:19,840 And the only sounds that disturb this pristine wilderness are rattlesnakes, coyotes and jet aircraft. 10 00:01:19,840 --> 00:01:28,120 Highway 375 is on the eastern flank of the Southwest Test and Training Range complex. 11 00:01:28,120 --> 00:01:37,440 At its center is Nellis Air Force Base, 5,000 square miles of earth and sky that's known as the military's private playground. 12 00:01:37,440 --> 00:01:42,200 Here, the Air Force's version of top gun exercises take place. 13 00:01:42,200 --> 00:01:47,120 Nellis Air Force Base is probably the high, holy place of the fighter pilot. 14 00:01:47,920 --> 00:01:54,000 For fighter pilots training at Nellis, the sky's the limit with one unqualified exception. 15 00:01:54,000 --> 00:02:05,200 No one, no matter what their level of security clearance, is allowed to fly at any time or at any altitude in the airspace designated R4808. 16 00:02:05,200 --> 00:02:15,000 You do not fly into that area. Even if it means breaking off a combat or diverting, it is simply not done. 17 00:02:15,080 --> 00:02:25,200 In Air Force Parlton's airspace R4808 is called Dreamland, so named by a pilot who was inspired by a poem of the same name by Edgar Allen Poe. 18 00:02:25,200 --> 00:02:31,800 Dreamland encloses 60 square miles of the most secure, most secret land in the United States. 19 00:02:31,800 --> 00:02:37,280 And inside lies the mysterious place known as Area 51. 20 00:02:37,280 --> 00:02:48,640 Just the idea of a secret base out in the middle of Nevada where the possibilities are endless because we don't know what's going on there for the most part is powerful and potent and alluring. 21 00:02:48,640 --> 00:02:54,200 For nearly a half century, Area 51 has been the military's best kept secret. 22 00:02:54,200 --> 00:03:00,480 So secret, in fact, that until very recently the US government denied it even existed. 23 00:03:00,480 --> 00:03:06,720 Everybody knows that the place is there, everybody knows it's working, but the government is the secret. 24 00:03:06,720 --> 00:03:13,840 However, for a place that is supposedly non-existent, Area 51 has an inordinate amount of security. 25 00:03:13,840 --> 00:03:23,920 Just a few miles down this road lies a bastion, a sanctuary of some of the most classified and high technology programs that exist in the world. 26 00:03:23,920 --> 00:03:37,960 Along nameless dirt roads off Highway 375, signs warn the curious that it is illegal to enter, photograph, sketch or even look at anything beyond this point. 27 00:03:37,960 --> 00:03:45,080 Motion sensors in the road and along the perimeter alert a private security force to approaching trespassers. 28 00:03:45,080 --> 00:03:52,960 As far as we know, nobody's ever been able to penetrate the base and somebody would be, you'd have to be extra stupid to try. 29 00:03:53,200 --> 00:04:00,280 Everything is highly monitored, it is impenetrable and even if you've got close, you still have a dry lake bed across to get to the base. 30 00:04:00,280 --> 00:04:05,720 It is situated in such a place that makes security quite easy to maintain. 31 00:04:06,320 --> 00:04:13,680 Exactly what is the government hiding at Area 51? What projects could possibly require such intense security? 32 00:04:13,680 --> 00:04:17,600 The answer remains one of America's biggest mysteries. 33 00:04:18,400 --> 00:04:24,400 The absence of information is the most intriguing and titillating thing possible in the information age. 34 00:04:24,400 --> 00:04:30,000 Speculation about the secret work being conducted there has become a cottage industry. 35 00:04:30,000 --> 00:04:35,800 Now you've got the conspiracy nuts out there who say that it's the headquarters for the new world order. 36 00:04:35,800 --> 00:04:45,880 You've got the hopelessly gullible saucer nuts who say that there are underground bases and huge vats where our military is cooperating with aliens to build these hybrids. 37 00:04:46,000 --> 00:04:51,960 You've got some of these folks who say this is where the milk carton kids are all taken away for horrible medical experiments. 38 00:04:51,960 --> 00:04:56,720 All sorts of people have all put their own veneer on Area 51. 39 00:04:56,720 --> 00:05:05,600 The government's continuous refusal to acknowledge the existence of a research facility at Groom Lake naturally intensifies public interest. 40 00:05:05,600 --> 00:05:11,160 If they had said, yeah, we've got a base out here, yeah, it's called Area 51. We've got some secret programs. 41 00:05:11,160 --> 00:05:14,720 We need the secrecy for purposes of national security. 42 00:05:14,720 --> 00:05:19,440 They wouldn't have half the level of interest from the public and all these crazies that they have now. 43 00:05:19,440 --> 00:05:24,320 Instead, they've denied that the base existed. They deny that it has that name. 44 00:05:24,320 --> 00:05:29,240 They've denied what programs are out there. They wouldn't even say what agency controls the base. 45 00:05:29,240 --> 00:05:31,840 And that has all fed the myth machine. 46 00:05:32,960 --> 00:05:37,560 At Area 51, separating myth from reality is extremely difficult. 47 00:05:37,640 --> 00:05:44,080 What we do know comes from former employees, declassified government documents, and tenacious researchers. 48 00:05:47,000 --> 00:05:53,040 Central Nevada may not be fit for man nor beast, but it's just right for testing nuclear warheads. 49 00:05:53,040 --> 00:06:01,640 And on February 2nd, 1951, the Atomic Energy Commission detonates an atom bomb 30 miles southwest of Groom Lake. 50 00:06:01,640 --> 00:06:07,480 Now, the newly established 200 square mile area called the Nevada Test Site. 51 00:06:08,280 --> 00:06:13,120 When the Nevada Test Site was set up, it was divided into areas. 52 00:06:13,120 --> 00:06:18,920 And there's no apparent logic to the deployment of the numbers on the map with these different areas. 53 00:06:18,920 --> 00:06:27,040 But Area 51 was the number given to the one at the upper northwest corner that included the Groom dry lake. 54 00:06:27,040 --> 00:06:36,360 Between 1951 and 1954, Area 51 is just another uninhabited patch of desert on the grid of the Nevada Test Site. 55 00:06:36,440 --> 00:06:44,440 To understand how it comes to be the site of the world's most secret military base requires a sign trip to Burbank, California. 56 00:06:46,840 --> 00:06:55,280 In the 1950s, the hangars and test facilities around the Burbank Airport belong to Lockheed, the nation's largest aircraft contractor. 57 00:06:55,280 --> 00:07:03,640 What the average American citizen doesn't know is that deep within Lockheed is a secret testing facility known as Skunk Works. 58 00:07:03,640 --> 00:07:07,840 It is under the direction of aviation pioneer Kelly Johnson. 59 00:07:09,120 --> 00:07:14,480 Kelly Johnson is probably the most brilliant aerodynamic engineer in the history of the United States. 60 00:07:15,720 --> 00:07:24,760 Johnson and his Skunk Works team have a reputation for not only building state-of-the-art aircraft, but for doing it quickly, cheaply and quietly. 61 00:07:24,760 --> 00:07:32,680 This is why the government comes to Johnson first in the summer of 1954. The Cold War needs a hot secret weapon. 62 00:07:33,880 --> 00:07:50,880 The CIA came with this dramatic and immediate brief. We need an airplane that can fly over the Soviet Union, see what they're doing in the way of bombers and missiles and nuclear weapons, because they were not yet spy satellites, of course. 63 00:07:51,720 --> 00:08:00,280 Kelly Johnson's answer is to design the U-2, a long-range jet aircraft that can fly at 70,000 feet above the reach of radar. 64 00:08:00,840 --> 00:08:08,480 Work begins in the winter of 1954 on the new plane. Eight months later, Johnson's U-2 is ready for a test flight. 65 00:08:09,480 --> 00:08:21,640 Up until that time, he had tested all the aircraft up at Edwards, and it was clear that if this thing was going to be as secret as it had to be to work, they were going to have to find somewhere even more hidden away to test it. 66 00:08:22,200 --> 00:08:38,200 Kelly Johnson, along with test pilot Tony LeVier, heads east to search for a new site. Flying over Groom Mountain, the men spot a large, dry lakebed reminiscent of their Edwards test site. The fact that it has been bathed in atomic bomb fallout for more than four years is only seen as a plus. 67 00:08:39,400 --> 00:08:49,400 The idea was that they needed somewhere far from prying eyes to test this spy plane. Where better but the Nevada nuclear test site, where no one in their right mind would venture. 68 00:08:50,360 --> 00:08:58,360 When we continue, cover stories and a pattern of denial becomes standard operating procedure at Area 51. 69 00:08:58,360 --> 00:09:08,360 Area 51, Groom Lake, Dreamland. The government's super secret testing facility in the Nevada desert will go by many names. 70 00:09:09,320 --> 00:09:23,320 The names this place had were almost like religious terms. Ben Rich, who was the head of the Lockheed Skunk Works, told me that he legally could not say the words Groom Lake or Area 51. 71 00:09:23,320 --> 00:09:31,320 On July 14, 1955, the first U-2 prototype is shipped from Burbank to Area 51. 72 00:09:32,280 --> 00:09:38,280 The U-2 spy plane was at first disguised as a weather plane. 73 00:09:38,280 --> 00:09:52,280 Three weeks later, it's ready to fly and the government has its cover story in place. A phony press release is issued. As far as the government is concerned, Area 51 does not exist and neither do its employees. 74 00:09:53,240 --> 00:10:09,240 One man who had worked out at Groom Lake described to me the whole secrecy experience as being like a lead overcoat. It was a constant weight and it was a weight of not being able to tell your family what you did. 75 00:10:10,200 --> 00:10:24,200 Two weeks after the first U-2 test flight, on August 19, 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs Executive Order 10633, restricting for the first time the airspace over Groom Lake. 76 00:10:24,200 --> 00:10:38,200 And to further protect the Skunk Works operations, a public land order is signed on June 20, 1958, making the 60 square miles around Groom Lake officially non-existent. 77 00:10:39,160 --> 00:10:49,160 It is not very effective, however, in keeping the U-2 a secret from the Soviet Union, who have spies at the Turkish military installation where the U-2 is based. 78 00:10:49,160 --> 00:11:03,160 The Russians very quickly became aware that the aircraft were up there, but it became a question of cat and mouse. The operation was deniable until the Russians could shoot down a U-2. And that's what eventually happened. 79 00:11:04,120 --> 00:11:11,120 On May 1, 1960, pilot Francis Gary Powers U-2 is shot down over the Soviet Union. 80 00:11:11,120 --> 00:11:25,120 President Eisenhower first denied that it was a spy plane, but as the facts of the matter emerged, it was clear that this was something the American people had been kept in the dark about for years. 81 00:11:26,080 --> 00:11:41,080 And it was not only important in the history of the Cold War because it scuttled an important summit conference that was about to begin, but it was one of the first episodes where the American people knew they had been lied to by their government. 82 00:11:41,080 --> 00:11:53,080 The government's response to revelations about the U-2 is not to come clean, but to make the testing facility at Groom Lake even more secure, even more secret. 83 00:11:53,080 --> 00:12:00,080 What it doesn't want anyone to find out is that Area 51 is already building its next top-secret aircraft. 84 00:12:00,080 --> 00:12:14,080 The CIA launched a program for a replacement that would not only be very high-flying, but would also be very fast, and the extent that was possible would be hard to detect on radar. 85 00:12:14,080 --> 00:12:27,080 On January 15, 1962, the Air Force requests that the restricted airspace over Groom Lake be quadrupled. Three months later, the top-secret A-12 makes its first test flight. 86 00:12:28,080 --> 00:12:44,080 This is one of the most astonishing technological feats in history. It's still a plane that looks like it comes out of the next century, even though it first flew in the early 60s. 87 00:12:45,080 --> 00:12:57,080 But like the U-2, the A-12 doesn't stay secret for very long. In the election year of 1964, President Lyndon Johnson reveals the existence of the Blackbird to the American public. 88 00:12:57,080 --> 00:13:05,080 He said the aircraft were being tested at Edwards, which of course there was no A-12 at Edwards and there never had been. 89 00:13:06,080 --> 00:13:15,080 When the press is invited to Edwards for the A-12s unveiling, the secret machine inside Area 51 has to do some fancy footwork. 90 00:13:15,080 --> 00:13:25,080 Two A-12s were very hastily flown to Edwards. They came across at Mawt Tree. When they landed, they were still hot from aerodynamic heating. 91 00:13:26,080 --> 00:13:37,080 But in order to keep them out of sight, they were ushered very quickly into a hangar, whereupon the sprinkler system went off and drenched all the guests waiting for the airplanes to arrive. 92 00:13:37,080 --> 00:13:47,080 While the nation gawks at the A-12, designers at Area 51 are already busy planning its successor, the SR-71 Blackbird. 93 00:13:47,080 --> 00:13:55,080 As the SRs came along, the base was greatly expanded, new hangars were built, new fuel tanks were installed. 94 00:13:55,080 --> 00:14:01,080 With newer, larger facilities come many significant changes in the history of Area 51. 95 00:14:01,080 --> 00:14:10,080 Any designation of Area 51 per se or of test facility at Groom Dry Lake were left off all the government maps. 96 00:14:10,080 --> 00:14:17,080 It was also left out of the government satellite imagery databases that were on the internet. 97 00:14:17,080 --> 00:14:22,080 So that means that someone who had the highest clearance in the government couldn't even look at Groom Lake. It was so secret. 98 00:14:22,080 --> 00:14:30,080 In 1967, the government policy of creating cover stories changes to one of absolute denial. 99 00:14:30,080 --> 00:14:38,080 1967 is also the year the Air Force captures its first Soviet MiG-17 and ships it to Area 51. 100 00:14:38,080 --> 00:14:43,080 In the following years, more MiGs and other enemy aircraft will follow. 101 00:14:43,080 --> 00:14:49,080 Activities at Groom Lake now begin to descend out of historical fact and into speculation. 102 00:14:50,080 --> 00:14:55,080 In 1968, Area 51 is wrapped up in its ultimate security blanket. 103 00:14:55,080 --> 00:15:02,080 Everything on, in and over the base gets a special designation, Black Project. 104 00:15:02,080 --> 00:15:05,080 Some of these programs are what are called unacknowledged. 105 00:15:05,080 --> 00:15:12,080 And what that means is that the existence of the program and its purpose are secret. 106 00:15:12,080 --> 00:15:16,080 And that's what makes them black. They don't officially exist. 107 00:15:17,080 --> 00:15:23,080 Even the people working inside Area 51 are kept in the dark about exactly what their facility is doing. 108 00:15:23,080 --> 00:15:28,080 For instance, there would be simultaneous projects going on inside Area 51. 109 00:15:28,080 --> 00:15:33,080 When one plane produced by one project was rolled out for testing, 110 00:15:33,080 --> 00:15:38,080 the guys working on the project in the hangar next door would all have to go inside. 111 00:15:38,080 --> 00:15:44,080 Funding for the Black Project in Area 51 comes out of a secret pool of taxpayer dollars 112 00:15:44,080 --> 00:15:46,080 known as the Black Budget. 113 00:15:46,080 --> 00:15:51,080 It's uncontrolled money. At this point we figure it's about $30 billion a year. 114 00:15:51,080 --> 00:15:56,080 It's a lot easier for people to get away with a lot larger spending, more wasteful spending, 115 00:15:56,080 --> 00:16:02,080 perhaps without the same sort of scrutiny that goes on around the rest of the government. 116 00:16:02,080 --> 00:16:08,080 And no matter what the cost, it is believed that only a third of the money in the Black Budget 117 00:16:08,080 --> 00:16:11,080 goes into the actual projects themselves. 118 00:16:11,080 --> 00:16:15,080 The rest is spent on keeping the secrets secret. 119 00:16:15,080 --> 00:16:21,080 There's no easy rule of thumb on how much keeping a program in the black, as they say, adds to it, 120 00:16:21,080 --> 00:16:25,080 but it is a factor of several times. 121 00:16:25,080 --> 00:16:29,080 There's the tremendous cost of security background checks. 122 00:16:29,080 --> 00:16:35,080 There are the geographical transport costs of getting things out into the middle of nowhere. 123 00:16:35,080 --> 00:16:42,080 And then there are the costs of patrolling not only the physical edges of these facilities, 124 00:16:42,080 --> 00:16:45,080 but patrolling the lives of those who work there. 125 00:16:45,080 --> 00:16:53,080 Because of its black designation, after 1968 we know nothing for certain about what is being developed at Groom Lake. 126 00:16:53,080 --> 00:16:59,080 We know there are programs out there. It's a question of assigning an identity to them. 127 00:16:59,080 --> 00:17:02,080 And that's where the sheer size of the black budget makes it difficult. 128 00:17:02,080 --> 00:17:05,080 There's all sorts of things that could have been done out there. 129 00:17:05,080 --> 00:17:13,080 When we continue, a former government employee reveals the contents of alleged Area 51 briefing papers. 130 00:17:13,080 --> 00:17:16,080 Basically I looked at the pictures of them. 131 00:17:16,080 --> 00:17:18,080 To save time. There were pictures of what? 132 00:17:18,080 --> 00:17:20,080 The dead aliens. 133 00:17:20,080 --> 00:17:28,080 In the 1970s and 1980s, the secret test facility at Groom Lake operates in total obscurity. 134 00:17:28,080 --> 00:17:35,080 Its activities known only to the people inside Area 51, and they are sworn to secrecy. 135 00:17:35,080 --> 00:17:39,080 The test pilots were doing something that was at the top of their profession. 136 00:17:39,080 --> 00:17:44,080 They were setting new speed altitude records almost daily. 137 00:17:44,080 --> 00:17:47,080 And yet they couldn't tell anyone. They couldn't tell their wives. 138 00:17:47,080 --> 00:17:52,080 They couldn't tell the Guinness Book of World Records. 139 00:17:52,080 --> 00:17:56,080 Even now we know very little about the black projects developing there, 140 00:17:56,080 --> 00:18:00,080 and the few facts we do know come out in strange ways. 141 00:18:00,080 --> 00:18:07,080 For instance, there was an airplane called Tasset Blue, which flew around the same time as the early stealth prototypes. 142 00:18:07,080 --> 00:18:13,080 The military denied the existence of this craft for years and years. 143 00:18:13,080 --> 00:18:19,080 Then all of a sudden they announced it was going to be brought to the Air Force Museum. 144 00:18:19,080 --> 00:18:29,080 In hindsight, we also know that in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Area 51 tests and perfects the technology known as stealth. 145 00:18:29,080 --> 00:18:36,080 The Air Force, quite rightly, didn't even want to give anybody a clue of how far they were going in terms of stealth. 146 00:18:36,080 --> 00:18:41,080 Because that would have allowed people to make some preparations to detect these aircraft. 147 00:18:41,080 --> 00:18:45,080 The few aware of Area 51 fall into two groups. 148 00:18:45,080 --> 00:18:50,080 Aviation buffs, who speculate about the outer limits of aircraft technology, 149 00:18:50,080 --> 00:18:57,080 and a handful of UFO enthusiasts who believe that Area 51 is the successor to Hangar 18, 150 00:18:57,080 --> 00:19:06,080 the infamous location where the supposed debris from the Roswell saucer crash of July 1947 is being stored. 151 00:19:07,080 --> 00:19:15,080 Stories started bubbling up about UFOs in Area 51 back in the 70s and really started going in the mid-80s with a man named John Lear 152 00:19:15,080 --> 00:19:19,080 who started putting out some very outlandish tales. 153 00:19:19,080 --> 00:19:25,080 He's a guy who's really credible in a lot of ways, Air Force pilot, son of the Learjet developer, a sharp guy. 154 00:19:25,080 --> 00:19:29,080 So that made people kind of prick up their ears. 155 00:19:29,080 --> 00:19:36,080 But Lear's tales of flying saucers at Groom Lake remain on the fringes of Area 51 lore. 156 00:19:36,080 --> 00:19:48,080 Then, in May 1989, a television station in Las Vegas broadcasts a series of interviews that changes the imaginary landscape of Area 51 forever. 157 00:19:48,080 --> 00:19:53,080 Well, for better or for worse, I think a lot of the blame or credit goes to myself and KLAS-TV 158 00:19:53,080 --> 00:19:58,080 because although there had been stories here and there about Area 51 before we did our series, 159 00:19:58,080 --> 00:20:04,080 after that it went everywhere and it became a household name all over the world. 160 00:20:04,080 --> 00:20:06,080 You get off the bus, what do you see? 161 00:20:06,080 --> 00:20:13,080 It's a very interesting building. It's got a slope of probably about 30 degrees. 162 00:20:13,080 --> 00:20:22,080 The man being interviewed is Bob Lazar, and what he is describing is a secret testing facility near Area 51 called S4. 163 00:20:22,080 --> 00:20:26,080 Lazar knows this place, he claims, because he worked there. 164 00:20:26,080 --> 00:20:34,080 Little reports in blue covers that were stacked up on a table, I sat down in a room and I just glanced through all of them. 165 00:20:34,080 --> 00:20:38,080 They said they only gave me 20 some odd minutes just to thumb through these things. 166 00:20:38,080 --> 00:20:44,080 I think they just stuck me in the room to keep me busy for a minute, but there were some really shocking things in the reports. 167 00:20:44,080 --> 00:20:54,080 There were reports of chode alien cadavers like I spoke about before, any matter reactors technology that doesn't exist. 168 00:20:54,080 --> 00:20:58,080 Let's take them on a report on alien cadavers. 169 00:20:58,080 --> 00:21:04,080 There were autopsy reports. I mean, I didn't look completely read them because I didn't have time, 170 00:21:04,080 --> 00:21:10,080 and as soon as I got into some interesting things, I wanted to get through these really quickly because I knew I didn't have much time. 171 00:21:10,080 --> 00:21:14,080 Basically, I looked at the pictures and I'm just saved. 172 00:21:14,080 --> 00:21:16,080 I know the pictures of what? 173 00:21:16,080 --> 00:21:18,080 The dead aliens. 174 00:21:18,080 --> 00:21:25,080 Lazar not only has an incredible story to tell, he also appears to have the credentials to back up his claims. 175 00:21:25,080 --> 00:21:33,080 Lazar also has proof that he once worked at another top secret testing facility in Los Alamos, New Mexico. 176 00:21:33,080 --> 00:21:37,080 We took him to a couple of polygraph examiners. The first one was inconclusive. 177 00:21:37,080 --> 00:21:41,080 The second one said there was no question that he was telling the truth. How did he pass that? 178 00:21:41,080 --> 00:21:48,080 He knows about the inner workings of the base because I was a guy I know who worked out there, who put him through his paces, 179 00:21:48,080 --> 00:21:53,080 asked him a bunch of questions, not where do they store the flying saucers, but things like, where's the cafeteria? 180 00:21:53,080 --> 00:22:00,080 How do you pay for your meals? What color is it inside? That sort of thing, and he passed. How did he know? 181 00:22:00,080 --> 00:22:07,080 It's enough to convince a lot of people that Lazar is telling the truth, and the more he is interviewed, the more he tells. 182 00:22:07,080 --> 00:22:13,080 Believe it or not, that was not the most shocking thing to me. I said, great, okay, now and you know, next. 183 00:22:13,080 --> 00:22:15,080 And I began to dig through. 184 00:22:15,080 --> 00:22:16,080 What was next? 185 00:22:16,080 --> 00:22:24,080 Well, the technology part. The drive on the flying saucers, the flying discs, how they operated, the power source forum. 186 00:22:24,080 --> 00:22:29,080 I really dived into that most deeply and spent most of my time on that. 187 00:22:29,080 --> 00:22:31,080 What could say? 188 00:22:31,080 --> 00:22:39,080 The power source is an antimatter reactor. They run gravity amplifiers. 189 00:22:39,080 --> 00:22:49,080 But perhaps the most compelling part of Bob Lazar's remarkable story is that he says he knows exactly when and where these extraterrestrial craft can be seen. 190 00:22:49,080 --> 00:23:00,080 For one month in 1989, Lazar leads expeditions out to a black mailbox just off Highway 375 near the tiny town of Rachel, Nevada. 191 00:23:00,080 --> 00:23:07,080 As if on cue, strange discs begin hovering in the distance inside Dreamland. 192 00:23:07,080 --> 00:23:13,080 We've got video tape of things that look very much like flying saucers. We've got the witnesses who say they've seen them. 193 00:23:13,080 --> 00:23:19,080 If this is a secret government program and it's been developed since the 50s, where the hell is it? 194 00:23:19,080 --> 00:23:27,080 The Lazar sightings put Area 51 in the town of Rachel on the map. It is the right story at the right time. 195 00:23:27,080 --> 00:23:31,080 As a country, we didn't believe what our government told us. 196 00:23:31,080 --> 00:23:39,080 There was a poll that said more people believed in UFOs and believed they would get their money out of the social security system, which I thought was indicative. 197 00:23:39,080 --> 00:23:49,080 A struggling bar and grill in Rachel is renamed the Little Ailey Inn and becomes the de facto gathering place for newborn UFO enthusiasts from around the world. 198 00:23:49,080 --> 00:23:57,080 Lazar could have been ordered up by the Nevada Tourist Board. He brought so many people into the area. 199 00:23:57,080 --> 00:24:07,080 In fact, the governor of the state of Nevada drove up to Rachel, Nevada on Highway 375 and in tandem with the producers of the film, Independence Day, 200 00:24:07,080 --> 00:24:11,080 officially dedicated that highway as the extraterrestrial highway. 201 00:24:11,080 --> 00:24:23,080 The black mailbox becomes so much of an attraction that the owner of the box, rancher Steve Medlin, has to paint it white and padlock it to keep people from stealing his mail. 202 00:24:23,080 --> 00:24:38,080 It's not like a stone hinge or anything like that, but some people revere this thing to the point that to come here and to be with the mailbox and to sign the mailbox basically completes the whole reason for their trips. 203 00:24:38,080 --> 00:24:45,080 But even in the midst of the UFO boom, not all the UFO believers are convinced that Bob Lazar is telling the truth. 204 00:24:45,080 --> 00:25:03,080 He had enough information that he made many people believe he might be a disinformation agent, a plant to throw attention away from the real secret projects that were going on. 205 00:25:03,080 --> 00:25:11,080 If it was a setup of some sort to divert attention away from something else going on out there as many people have claimed, it was a miserable failure. 206 00:25:11,080 --> 00:25:21,080 Because the result has been that tens of thousands of people from all over the world have trekked out there to see whatever it is that's flying around in the sky. 207 00:25:21,080 --> 00:25:29,080 When we continue, intense public interest marks the beginning of the end for many of the secrets within Area 51. 208 00:25:29,080 --> 00:25:36,080 It is going to be a lot more difficult for security managers to keep what's going on at home like a secret. 209 00:25:37,080 --> 00:25:50,080 In the early 1990s with the Area 51 boom in full swing, the piece of public land with the best view of the secret facility is a place called Freedom Ridge, 12 miles east of the Groom Lake complex. 210 00:25:50,080 --> 00:26:01,080 From Freedom Ridge, patient sky watchers camping out for days on end are treated to a tantalizing show of strange shapes and lights in the sky. 211 00:26:01,080 --> 00:26:12,080 I've seen a double delta aircraft that is unidentifiable. I've seen a large diamond shaped aircraft. I've seen a small batmobile shaped thing. It looks like a baby B2. I've seen some drones. 212 00:26:12,080 --> 00:26:24,080 I don't believe it is just airplanes. There's too many people that have seen and heard things. I think alien beings have been with us forever. 213 00:26:24,080 --> 00:26:28,080 And I think they're working side by side with our government on this test site. 214 00:26:28,080 --> 00:26:44,080 It was interesting how tech lore and folklore graded into one another and how there seemed and even the nerdiest techno geek to be a desire for some kind of exciting, almost spiritual experience out there. 215 00:26:44,080 --> 00:26:54,080 Eventually, Bob Lazar tires of what he perceives to be near hysteria surrounding Area 51 and stops talking about the subject altogether. 216 00:26:54,080 --> 00:27:07,080 In reaction to the outlandish theories of UFO believers, aviation and technology buffs including Mark Farmer and Bill Sweetman form an organization called the Interceptors. 217 00:27:07,080 --> 00:27:20,080 The Interceptors exchanged information, had camp outs and tried to go the Air Force a little bit. I refer to them at times as the Decentral Intelligence Agency. 218 00:27:20,080 --> 00:27:36,080 If we have an icon as Interceptors, it's the lawn chair. It's men in lawn chairs out here in the desert sitting for days for really no good reason that has caused the government to basically change the rules of engagement out here. 219 00:27:36,080 --> 00:27:42,080 They were able to find an amazing amount of information, looking at budget documents, going to places and taking pictures. 220 00:27:42,080 --> 00:27:56,080 All these small bits and pieces of information by themselves are not classified, but the mosaic we've been able to produce as Interceptors is highly classified and the government doesn't like that and I'll blame them a bit. 221 00:27:56,080 --> 00:28:11,080 On October 18th, 1993, the Air Force demonstrates its disapproval by closing off an additional 3,972 acres around Groom Lake from public use. The new secured area includes Freedom Ridge. 222 00:28:11,080 --> 00:28:22,080 Although closing off Freedom Ridge makes it easier to keep prying eyes away from Area 51, it ultimately fans the flames of suspicion. 223 00:28:22,080 --> 00:28:39,080 I think it's no coincidence that it did happen in a period when people were suspicious of the government, when the Cold War had just ended. And yet there was continuing secrecy. What could the Air Force be being so secret about? 224 00:28:40,080 --> 00:28:52,080 The cause for truth at Area 51 is given a tremendous boost in 1996 when the respected Federation of American Scientists initiates a program called Public Eye. 225 00:28:52,080 --> 00:29:06,080 For the most part, the American public never gets an appreciation of what they're paying for or what they're doing. And what we're trying to do is sort of keep the government policy community and the intelligence community honest. 226 00:29:06,080 --> 00:29:16,080 And one of the ways the Federation achieves its goal is by hiring a private satellite, Space Imaging's Iconos satellite, to snap their own pictures of Area 51. 227 00:29:17,080 --> 00:29:26,080 Our intention for ordering the image of Area 51 was really to see whether we would get the image in the first place and to shed more light on what the government is doing there. 228 00:29:26,080 --> 00:29:35,080 We can point cameras at even the most sensitive U.S. government facilities with impunity, which means that we can point our cameras anywhere else in the world. 229 00:29:36,080 --> 00:29:45,080 The images don't display alien bodies or flying saucers as some hope, but they do provide the public with the most detailed images ever taken of Area 51. 230 00:29:46,080 --> 00:29:56,080 Now, with the proliferation of more high-resolution satellites, it is going to be a lot more difficult for security managers to keep what's going on at Green Lake a secret. 231 00:29:57,080 --> 00:30:06,080 As the aviation experts see it, what the government is hiding continues to be what they've always hidden there, the government's most cutting-edge aircraft technology. 232 00:30:07,080 --> 00:30:16,080 I think you'd see, for example, Taylor's aircraft. I'm sure there's some work going on in terms of visual stealth. 233 00:30:17,080 --> 00:30:23,080 Probably the greatest piece of G-Wiz work that's going on out there is that we built a space plane. 234 00:30:24,080 --> 00:30:35,080 It's suborbital and takes off under its own power. And you could figure that once you have a target, once you've figured out where you need to go, this thing could respond and be to where it needs to be. 235 00:30:36,080 --> 00:30:38,080 It could be within an hour, anywhere on the planet. 236 00:30:39,080 --> 00:30:48,080 Back at the little alien in Rachel, there are still those who cling firmly to the belief that government waste and space planes are only the tip of the Area 51 iceberg. 237 00:30:49,080 --> 00:31:00,080 I've had from several different sources have said that anything that is above ground in this facility over here, there's ten times or more than that underground. 238 00:31:00,080 --> 00:31:13,080 I've actually been told that there are six different beings on our test site. The large and the small, no, gray, the humanoid, the orange, the blue and the reptile. 239 00:31:14,080 --> 00:31:20,080 In some ways the government invited the alien obsession at Area 51. It was a helpful distraction. 240 00:31:21,080 --> 00:31:29,080 The irony at Area 51 is that the greatest danger at that facility didn't come from aliens and it didn't come from foreign powers. 241 00:31:30,080 --> 00:31:33,080 The greatest danger to those workers came from the United States government. 242 00:31:35,080 --> 00:31:43,080 To understand the real danger that Area 51 is hiding requires a step back in time, back to, strangely enough, 1989. 243 00:31:43,080 --> 00:31:54,080 While Bob Lazar is capturing national headlines with extraterrestrial tales about Area 51, a man named Robert Frost is suffering from a mysterious illness. 244 00:31:55,080 --> 00:32:01,080 His skin was starting to peel off his entire face and he developed blisters and sores all over his body. 245 00:32:02,080 --> 00:32:05,080 The skin kept peeling off to a point where it was every day. 246 00:32:05,080 --> 00:32:12,080 And he'd have to wash it off with a washcloth about every hour or so. It was just scaly like a fish. 247 00:32:13,080 --> 00:32:18,080 He said his face was on fire and his eyes were burning and he just ran right through the house. 248 00:32:19,080 --> 00:32:24,080 He ran to the bathroom and he started throwing cold water all over his head and he said he couldn't stand the pain. 249 00:32:25,080 --> 00:32:30,080 In 1989, Robert Frost is a sheet metal worker at Area 51. 250 00:32:31,080 --> 00:32:44,080 He is just one of the hundreds of nameless, faceless people who commute daily from their homes to the job site via unmarked 737s that take off from a secure hangar at Las Vegas' McCarran International Airport. 251 00:32:45,080 --> 00:32:53,080 On board the half hour flight are the people who keep the secrets at Area 51 and a lot of them are getting just as sick as Robert Frost. 252 00:32:55,080 --> 00:33:02,080 Many of these guys developed a fish-like scale that could cover much of their body and would crack and bleed. 253 00:33:03,080 --> 00:33:09,080 Robert Frost had this condition more severely than most and his guys tried to help him as much as they could. 254 00:33:10,080 --> 00:33:16,080 And when Robert died, it put a real chill through the base. 255 00:33:17,080 --> 00:33:25,080 When the workers go to their doctors, they are told they have a form of toxic poisoning that can only be treated if the specific poisons are known. 256 00:33:26,080 --> 00:33:34,080 Supervisors at Area 51 refuse to disclose what those poisons are or to release information from Robert Frost's autopsy report. 257 00:33:36,080 --> 00:33:44,080 It's a hell of a thing to lose a friend and have the government say there's not a bloody thing you can do about it because this place doesn't exist and frankly you don't exist. 258 00:33:44,080 --> 00:33:50,080 Well, they did exist. They're American citizens and so they sued and they proved that they existed. 259 00:33:51,080 --> 00:33:57,080 When we continue, what lawyers found when they went searching for the secret dangers hidden at Area 51? 260 00:33:58,080 --> 00:34:05,080 Private citizens have gone to jail for violations that are a fraction of what occurred at Area 51. 261 00:34:06,080 --> 00:34:15,080 In 1992, lawyer Jonathan Turley is contacted by several Area 51 employees who are suffering from a debilitating illness. 262 00:34:16,080 --> 00:34:23,080 I was the first lawyer that most of them had talked to. These are not the type of people who look to lawyers in the courts to resolve their problems. 263 00:34:24,080 --> 00:34:33,080 These are very patriotic people. They were put at Area 51 for a reason and things had to get very, very bad for them to seek help. 264 00:34:33,080 --> 00:34:41,080 They decided that what was happening at Area 51 was a greater danger to the American people than what they were trying to defend against. 265 00:34:42,080 --> 00:34:43,080 That's a pretty awful point to reach. 266 00:34:44,080 --> 00:34:52,080 The workers aren't seeking money or punitive damages from the government. They just want to know why Robert Frost is dead and if they're going to die too. 267 00:34:53,080 --> 00:35:00,080 They didn't come to the government with these medical problems saying we want big cash settlements. They just wanted to know what they'd been exposed to. 268 00:35:00,080 --> 00:35:12,080 These workers were coming down with classic symptoms of exposure to hazardous waste. What made it an almost impossible case was where they were exposed. 269 00:35:13,080 --> 00:35:22,080 Fearing severe reprisals from the government that has sworn them to secrecy, Area 51 workers are listed on court documents as John Doe's 1 through 6. 270 00:35:23,080 --> 00:35:27,080 Turley's meetings with the John Doe's are held in secret locations. 271 00:35:27,080 --> 00:35:40,080 And so you would sit in a garage with a man who was dying, who had to get out of his bed so that he wouldn't cause difficulty for his family if the government saw him or found out he was one of the John Doe's. 272 00:35:41,080 --> 00:35:55,080 And you sit there and you think, what's wrong with this picture? And this man was hiding from his government because he had the audacity to bring forth violations, including criminal violations committed in his presence. 273 00:35:55,080 --> 00:36:07,080 What Jonathan Turley learns from the John Doe's is that not only is Area 51 the nation's most secret base, it's also America's most secret toxic waste dumping ground. 274 00:36:08,080 --> 00:36:17,080 Area 51 faced a problem. They couldn't ship out hazardous waste from places that didn't exist. So they started to burn the waste. 275 00:36:17,080 --> 00:36:34,080 And the trenches and pits started to get bigger and bigger. Soon they were digging football field-sized trenches, filling them with 55-gallon drums of waste, dousing them with air fuel, and then setting them alight with a flare. 276 00:36:34,080 --> 00:36:46,080 But there's a reason why burning hazardous waste is a crime. And the reason is that most hazardous waste is more dangerous when you burn it because it's an easier way to enter the human body. 277 00:36:47,080 --> 00:36:58,080 Now in the genius of the military, they dug these trenches on the wind-receiving side of the base. So the wind would blow acutely hazardous waste throughout the base. 278 00:36:58,080 --> 00:37:05,080 That's why the workers called it London Fog. And when they complained, they were told that it's basically our way or the highway. 279 00:37:06,080 --> 00:37:18,080 They were told that Area 51 was a place that was so secret that federal law didn't apply there. And it shouldn't be much of a surprise that when you have a place where most anything can occur, most anything does. 280 00:37:19,080 --> 00:37:33,080 Secrecy is something that we need in government clearly. But it is a very dangerous thing as well. It's very easy to use secrecy, not just to hide from the enemy, but to hide from friends, congress, citizens, whatever. 281 00:37:34,080 --> 00:37:42,080 And the burning of toxic waste was a perfect metaphor for the abuses of secrecy that happened inside Area 51. 282 00:37:43,080 --> 00:37:49,080 It takes three years for the workers at Area 51 to get their first day in court in 1995. 283 00:37:50,080 --> 00:37:59,080 There was something almost feliniasque about the case. I mean, we would stand in court and the government would deny the existence of a base that you could see from public lands. 284 00:38:00,080 --> 00:38:08,080 I could drive the judge to the base and point at the bloody thing. But here we were debating with the United States government whether it would exist or not. 285 00:38:09,080 --> 00:38:19,080 And while Turley debates the existence of a non-existent base, one of his John Doe's dies. It's Wally Kaza, the man who replaced Robert Frost as foreman. 286 00:38:20,080 --> 00:38:30,080 At points there were statements made by the government that left you laughing. And they would be enormously funny if you didn't have two dead clients. 287 00:38:31,080 --> 00:38:36,080 Eventually, Turley does get the government to admit that there is a secret testing facility at Groom Lake. 288 00:38:37,080 --> 00:38:50,080 But to this day, they deny that it is called Area 51. And the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules that the workers or their widows are not entitled to learn what hazardous substances exist at the secret facility. 289 00:38:51,080 --> 00:39:06,080 The ruling is based, in part, on Presidential Determination No. 95-45 in which President Clinton exempts the Air Force Operating Location near Groom Lake, Nevada from all federal environmental laws. 290 00:39:07,080 --> 00:39:24,080 For several years, the President has signed a letter saying that it was quote, of the paramount national interest that Area 51 remained secret and that it remained outside the reach of discovery of court suits on behalf of workers. 291 00:39:25,080 --> 00:39:32,080 The government claimed that simply acknowledging that it is hazardous waste would put American lives at risk. Well, obviously, that's facially absurd. 292 00:39:32,080 --> 00:39:40,080 And it wasn't done for national security. It was done for the oldest reason in law. It was to hide misconduct in crimes, crimes that may have killed two people. 293 00:39:41,080 --> 00:39:50,080 Although the John Doe suit does not allow workers at Area 51 to know what they've been exposed to, it does mandate that future workers will not suffer the same fate. 294 00:39:51,080 --> 00:39:57,080 We forced the first inspection of a black facility, the first commitment to future compliance of a black facility. 295 00:39:57,080 --> 00:40:04,080 We forced them to acknowledge the existence of the base. We did a lot of things for the first time in Area 51. 296 00:40:05,080 --> 00:40:10,080 But, you know, it really didn't feel like a point of celebration because there were people that were not around to see it. 297 00:40:11,080 --> 00:40:18,080 And despite everyone's best efforts, in the end, the whole truth about Area 51 is still a mystery. 298 00:40:19,080 --> 00:40:27,080 Tremendous things have happened out there that will probably never be told. And in some respects, it makes me sad. 299 00:40:28,080 --> 00:40:38,080 Some day, what happened at Area 51 will be made public. I truly believe that. And the public will be shocked about what was done in their name.