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The following program presents theories about an historical event that is shrouded in mystery.

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It contains archival footage, reenactments and dramatizations, which invite you, the

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viewer, to draw your own conclusions.

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To the uninformed, this dark terrain, 100 miles north of Las Vegas, may look like any other patch of desert.

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But its rugged valleys conceal a military facility so secret, it is off limits to all but those with the highest security clearance.

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Known as Area 51, this is one of the most mysterious places on the face of the earth.

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What they have out in the desert would make George Lucas envious.

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We have things out there that are literally out of this world.

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For decades, there has been a coordinated strategy among several federal agencies to deceive people about what the military is doing here.

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Until recently, the government even denied the existence of a base at Area 51.

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Not only did the people not know, the people's representatives didn't know, and the chance for abuses were very great.

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In the face of the government silence, Area 51 has become fertile ground for fantastical lore, legend and rumor.

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The Easty cover-ups, the shrouded trucks, the secret flights of cargo planes, this was exactly what you would do if a UFO had crashed and you wanted to keep that secret.

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First-hand accounts of the activities around and within the perimeter are scarce.

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Those few who have been inside are sworn to secrecy.

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We flew all over the United States, but nobody knew we were there. We didn't tell anybody.

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But in 1989, one man came forward with an amazing claim that he had worked inside Area 51, retro-engineering and alien spacecraft.

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It had an absolute classic flying saucer in there. So like something out of a cartoon or a science fiction movie.

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Are flying saucers being tested in the Nevada desert, or is the government's veil of secrecy hiding something else?

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In Southern Nevada, there is a 575 square mile expanse of heavily guarded land and restricted airspace that pilots call Dreamland.

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But most people refer to it as Area 51, the designation it received from the Atomic Energy Commission in 1958.

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42-year-old German-born Jor Garnu maintains a website dedicated to exploring this mysterious region and makes regular scouting trips to its closely guarded perimeter.

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This is the famous border of Area 51 right here. We see the warning signs on both sides of the road here.

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Up on the hill behind me, there's a security vehicle with two security guards, with binoculars and probably all kinds of other equipment watching us right now.

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Since the late 1950s, numerous unidentified flying objects have been spotted in the skies above Area 51.

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The locals are used to hearing reports about such unexplained phenomena.

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We saw a craft in the sky and we stopped our vehicle and watched it do maneuvers. It was doing zig-zags right, left, up. Oh, it was pretty crazy.

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Whatever is happening within Area 51, the government is committed to keeping it secret.

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They're authorized to shoot you. If they did, there isn't a law enforcement agency in the world that could go retrieve your body if you were in Area 51.

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You have no access to get in there.

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The propulsion system is really amazing.

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But in 1989, a 30-year-old resident of Las Vegas named Bob Lazar, claims to have pierced the veil of secrecy surrounding these flights.

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If there were United States craft, we wouldn't be going back. We're trying to find out how they were built if we had built them.

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His story leads thousands of people to believe that something otherworldly is happening in the Nevada desert.

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When Bob Lazar emerged in public with his claims to have worked on reverse-engineered flying saucers,

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it began to draw UFO fans from around the world.

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Oh, yeah.

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It's floating.

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Yeah, it does. It looks like it's floating, but it's changing shape.

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And his legend became critical to the whole emerging folklore of Area 51.

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To this day, Lazar stands by his story.

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I am convinced this was an extraterrestrial craft.

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I verified how the equipment in it worked and it was a technology that doesn't exist even today.

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Spring, 1989. Bob Lazar meets with George Knapp, a reporter for Las Vegas TV station KLAS.

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Lazar claims to have secrets he can no longer hold.

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This was really taking a toll on me. I mean, I was exhausted.

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He tells Knapp that he was hired by the federal government to work on an alien spacecraft at Area 51.

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Great.

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Probably would have gone to about 60.

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And he insists that the authorities will do anything to stop him from revealing what he knows.

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There was a guy in the car with a gun.

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He shot at me in the mouth and I just thought it was some government guy trying to wipe me out.

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Lazar tells the reporter he wants to protect himself from reprisals by going public with his amazing story.

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Nevertheless, he appears in silhouette to conceal his identity.

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The first interview was really just to state what had happened, what was going on, and in case I suddenly disappeared, all it would do was prove that what I was saying was true.

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A very short amount of time and I guarantee you gentlemen that...

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Lazar's story begins in 1988 when, he says, his background in physics and electronics lands him a job interview with top government contractor Edgerton Girmashawzin and Greer over EG&G.

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I was told there was an opening available for a new exotic field propulsion system that I would be working in a remote area.

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It all sounded great to me. It's exactly what I wanted to get into.

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In December 1988, he is hired.

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On his first day of work, Lazar claims to have met a man named Dennis Mariani at the EG&G Special Projects Office at McCarren International Airport in Las Vegas.

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Dennis Mariani is kind of a military looking guy. It always looks you in the eye and very hard looking. I don't think the guy ever smiled.

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Mariani escorts Lazar aboard a private plane that flies them 100 miles north to an isolated military base in the Nevada desert, Area 51.

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Immediately after landing, Mariani subjects Lazar to a rigorous security briefing and has him sign a secrecy agreement.

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You basically signed away a lot of your rights. I believe it was called the 10-10 agreement. It was a $10,000 fine, 10-year prison sentence for divulging any of the information presented to you.

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According to Lazar, he agrees to conditions he will later regret. He even gives up his right to a trial if he ever reveals anything about working at Area 51.

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After Lazar signs the document, he and Mariani board a bus with blacked out windows.

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The bus leaves Area 51 and drives, I'm guessing, 10-15 miles south on a dirt road.

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It was kind of exciting because I thought, boy, if we're leaving Area 51 in a bus with windows that I can't look out of, this must be really secret and so I was fascinated.

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The bus finally stops at an installation called S-4. Mariani explains that the site is a series of hidden hangars built into the landscape.

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It's extremely well camouflaged.

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Years later, Lazar will have a graphic artist create detailed renderings based on his own drawings of what he claims he saw at S-4.

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There are hangars doors that are sand textured and standing back maybe three or four hundred feet, you really can't see them at all. It pretty much just looks like a continuation of the mountain.

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Mariani leads Lazar inside the tightly guarded facility.

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It was very much an oppressive military atmosphere. There was always somebody there on top of you, keeping an eye on you.

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They were virtually robots. They had no emotions. Not to imply that they were robots, but they acted like robots.

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Lazar says he is issued a security badge that authorizes his clearance through the, quote, U.S. Department of Naval Intelligence.

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Mariani then leads him to a secure briefing room. On the desk is a stack of blue folders.

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Lazar is allowed to review these files. Alone.

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Looking through some of the information, it gave direct references to a flying saucer to an extraterrestrial vehicle.

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I pretty much just counted that and just kept going on. And I thought, well, boy, this must be part of some security measure.

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It could be a part of all some big psychological test of some sort. So I glanced through everything and digested what I could.

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When Mariani takes him back to the hangar, Lazar claims he is confronted with an incredible sight.

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We walked into a hangar which was extremely large and it had an absolute classic flying saucer in there.

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So like something out of a cartoon or a science fiction movie. It was sitting on its belly on the ground.

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And I went up and raised my hand to touch the metal on the craft and immediately got disciplined for that.

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Lazar assumes that the vehicle is an experimental aircraft designed to resemble something from outer space.

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You know, well, it's got a flying saucer shape. This explains why so many people see flying saucers because we're trying to make an aircraft that way.

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So still nothing really hit my mind as far as being alien or anything along those lines.

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But Lazar says he revises that assumption when his job duties are explained to him.

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The basic aim of what we're doing here is to see if we can duplicate any of this material with substances found on Earth.

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What do you mean with substances found on Earth?

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And then it began to validate some of what I had read that this was in fact an alien craft.

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As he examines the saucer, Lazar becomes convinced that it is in fact of extraterrestrial origin.

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It was obviously made for something smaller. Ideally about half the height of a human would have no problem walking around in there.

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Everything is a rounded, curved, radius to it. It looks like the entire thing was an injection mold, like made out of plastic or wax.

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He says he is then told that the vehicle's propulsion system allows the pilot to traverse great distances instantaneously by manipulating time and space.

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If you have a machine that can create gravity that makes force fields a reality, that makes time travel possible, all the stuff you read about in science fiction becomes possible if you can manipulate gravity.

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Lazar is overwhelmed by the possibilities. Until now, he had considered the whole idea of flying saucers to be a fantasy.

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It actually left me pretty much confused. And led to a lot of sleepless nights for a long time. Everything you didn't believe is true.

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December 1988. According to Bob Lazar, he is employed at a top secret military installation in the Nevada desert called Area 51.

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The Las Vegas resident is here, he asserts, to study an alien spaceship.

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Lazar claims there are at least nine such craft concealed within Area 51.

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They were all on hangers and some were not completely assembled, but the sport model, the sleek one, the one that I was allowed in at that one time was the only one I ever had physical contact with.

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Lazar's main responsibility is to determine what had powered the vehicle.

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This was such an advanced machine that we were looking at. From the fuel to the way it was handled to the energy it puts out, it was completely alien in every way.

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He nicknames one ship the sport model and claims it makes several low-altitude test flights in early 1989.

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Lazar says his supervisor, Dennis Mariani, invites him to observe one of them.

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The craft lifted off the ground silently with this light glow on the bottom, which I assumed was a corona discharge, kind of like a St. Elmo's fire from high voltage.

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It made just a little hissing sound.

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Lifted off the ground and moved over to the left and to the right and sat down and to me that was absolutely impressive.

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Throughout his time at Area 51, Lazar claims, his employers keep him working irregular hours.

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I only went out when I was called out there. I could get a call at 9 o'clock at night.

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Actually, I got a call once at 1130 at night and they stated we would like you down at McCarran Airport by 1215.

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How do you tell your wife, you know, you're in bed, you get a call? Okay, I got to go.

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Well, what is it? Oh, it's my job. I don't know if I'm going to be coming back until tomorrow.

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By this point, Lazar says, he had worked at Area 51 for four months and felt he could no longer abide by his confidentiality agreement.

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At sundown on Wednesday, March 22, 1989, Lazar, his wife and three friends drive to the edge of Area 51 to watch the test flight of a saucer.

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The craft was typically only tested on a Wednesday night because it was the middle of the week, because there was very little travel on the adjacent highways to the test site.

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Around 8 p.m., the group notices a bright light rising behind a mountain pass in the distance.

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It came towards us very fast and made abrupt 90-degree turns.

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Sure, okay. Yeah, we're fine.

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The higher energy level of the craft is at the more it glows.

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Oh my God.

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Lazar's friends are awestruck by the object's erratic maneuvers.

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Nothing can make a 90-degree turn moving at hundreds of miles an hour, and that's what left an impression on everyone's mind.

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According to Lazar, the alien ship hovers for a few more moments before it disappears behind the mountains.

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The following Wednesday night, Lazar and his group return to the same spot in the desert.

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Since we got away with it the first time, we wanted to go back and now actually get pictures of the craft, but, you know, it's like filming a star at night.

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It's just a blob of light moving around.

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One week later, they make a third nighttime foray to Area 51.

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Oh, three people?

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This time, however, they've pushed their luck too far.

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The security guys had found us and it's pitch black out there, and they turned the lights on and there's just an army of people out there.

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It was quite incredible.

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The armed guards check their IDs and take their names before releasing them.

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As they leave, Lazar and his friends are pulled over by a Lincoln County Sheriff's deputy, who holds them for questioning.

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The next day, Lazar asserts, Dennis Mariani and Area 51 security agents threaten him.

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One of the first things they said was, you know, when we trusted you with this information, we didn't mean, you know, intend for you to tell everyone you know about it.

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They guard Elzen M16 directly in my face and, you know, wanted to impress upon me how serious they were about it.

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According to Lazar, he is released and his employment at Area 51 ends.

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From then on, he says, he becomes the victim of a relentless campaign of intimidation.

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I was driving down Charleston Boulevard in Las Vegas and as I came to the freeway on ramp, there was a car that kept trying to get alongside of me.

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I heard a gunshot and it caught my attention and there was a guy in the car with a gun.

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I went straight, went off the end and stopped in the dirt.

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I was really just paralyzed in the car. I was holding the steering wheel and I thought he was coming up alongside of me and there was just nothing I can do.

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It is at this point that Lazar decides to take his story to the public in an interview with KLAS TV reporter George Knapp.

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In May of 1989, he appears in silhouette on the 5 o'clock local news.

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I did go on the air and basically say some of the stuff that I had seen.

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Right after the interview, I get a call from Dennis Mariani at home and he said,

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you have any idea what we're going to do to you now?

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And I said, no, what? And he hung up the phone.

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Six months later, Lazar agrees to another interview with KLAS TV.

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This time, he reveals his identity on the air.

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Afterwards, he appears on numerous other television and radio shows and even creates a video about his experiences.

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I had at least partial views of the 9 different discs out of S4.

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I went into much greater detail.

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Years ago, I thought I'd never hear myself say this, but that vehicle explained what was going on,

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who I worked with, where the things were.

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You know, just pretty much got it all on the record.

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They led me to believe it was a field.

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The TV reports that he did brought a lot of attention to the area and to him.

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In secret that we were working.

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They were picked up nationally by other media and they helped establish the whole mythology of Area 51 in the national consciousness.

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Soon, people from across the country flock to the Nevada desert,

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hoping to glimpse the mysterious lights of an alien spacecraft.

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I watched a craft with my niece one night for 20 minutes do really, really strange maneuvers.

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I know there's strange activity that goes on out here.

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It was actually the second time when I saw the craft, when I got to enter it.

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In November 1989, Bob Lazar makes an astonishing claim on a Las Vegas television news program.

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He says that he worked on alien spacecraft at a super secret military base called Area 51.

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Lazar is not the first to describe extraordinary events at a facility the government denies even exists.

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Rumors about UFO sightings in the Nevada desert had been heard for decades.

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But Lazar is the first to maintain that he had actually worked on alien technology.

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He seems to have little reason to lie.

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I don't know anything about aliens or reductions or crop circles or any of that,

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but I do know this craft came from somewhere else.

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Lazar looked like he could have been what he said, which was a sort of nerdy engineer who worked for government high-tech research programs.

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The materials that were in use completely alien to us.

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And he seems to be radiating the sense of conviction.

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Almost all UFO stories can usually tell in about five seconds that the person is nuts.

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What was interesting in Lazar, really it was a compellingly well-told story.

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In the world of UFO fans, Lazar becomes an overnight sensation.

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Bob's coming out, so to speak, just let a fire under every UFO nut and enthusiasts in the world.

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There were bust loads of people coming in there.

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At the edge of Area 51, the town of Rachel Nevada becomes the jumping-off spot for the curious.

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Rachel is obscure a little community in the middle of absolute nowhere.

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Rita became the center of the universe for people interested in Area 51 and in UFOs.

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Everybody in the country and the world right now knows about what's going on out here.

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UFO buffs are not the only ones who make pilgrimages to watch the desert skies.

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Aviation enthusiasts, including a group of amateur planespotters called the Interceptors, are also intrigued by Lazar's story.

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Jim Goodall is a senior member of the Interceptors and, since 1987, a regular sky-watcher at Area 51.

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My obsession has been classified aircraft programs.

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It's that first glimpse of something you've never seen or the public has never seen.

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That's what's exciting about going out here in the desert.

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And you want to be the first person to get a high-quality image.

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While some attribute the mysterious lights in the sky to extraterrestrial visitors,

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the Interceptors maintain that Area 51 is really a top-secret testing facility for U.S. military aircraft.

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They point to hard facts and photographic evidence to make their case.

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This particular disc appeared to be in excellent condition and even so, some of them, including Goodall, find Bob Lazar's story credible.

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I'm a technology person. I'm a hardware person. I'm not a UFO nut.

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I believe Bob Lazar because Bob Lazar told a believable story and has never altered it.

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Goodall is persuaded, in part, by what appears to be solid evidence that Lazar did work for the military,

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a yearly earning statement from 1988 to 1989.

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According to Lazar, his W-2 tax form was issued by the, quote, Department of Naval Intelligence.

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There is, however, no such known Department of Government.

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In 1990, during Operation Desert Shield, Goodall is on active duty in Washington, D.C., with the Minnesota Air National Guard.

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He decides to check on the validity of Lazar's W-2 form and goes to the Navy's investigative office in the Pentagon.

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I went in to the Department of Naval Investigation in the Pentagon and I said,

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I'd like a verification of where this location is. It's a classified zip code.

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And the Navy officer said, just a minute, and made a phone call.

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He said, you know, Admiral would like to see you.

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Close the door, Sergeant.

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So I go into this admiral's office and he said, Sergeant, if you ever come in this office again with something like this,

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I'll have you court-martialed. Now get out of my office and get out of there now.

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If his W-2 was phoning, why did this admiral have a hissy fit over it?

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Lazar's supporters claim that the so-called Department of Naval Intelligence,

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in keeping with the secrecy of Area 51, is a covert organization.

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As such, its existence has been kept from the general public and even the U.S. Congress.

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But despite the support of people like Jim Goodall, critics believe that Bob Lazar is perpetrating a hoax.

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In particular, they cite the absence of any evidence to corroborate his story.

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He talks about what kind of UFOs he saw inside and so forth.

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You know, how can you react to that?

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I just try to think about, for what he tells us that we can verify, I just haven't found anything.

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Skeptics scrutinize other claims made by Lazar.

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He worked there for less than 40 hours and this is according to his own statements.

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In this one work week, he found a fuel that prepares these aircraft or these flying saucers.

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Now that's a pretty amazing discovery for your first work week.

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Stanton Friedman, a physicist educated at the University of Chicago,

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checks into Lazar's educational background.

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He supposedly had a master's in physics from MIT.

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He had another one in electronics from Caltech.

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Okay, I check MIT, they never heard of him.

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I checked Caltech, they never heard of him.

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I checked his high school.

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Turned out, he graduated in the bottom third of his high school class.

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Moreover, government contractor EG&G, with whom Lazar claims to have interviewed for the Area 51 job,

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says it has no record of Bob Lazar at all.

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So, right away you have a problem with a guy who has a background that doesn't match up to what he claims

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and can't demonstrate that he worked where he says he worked.

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So, while you may not reject his claims out of hand, you've got to look at them with more suspicion.

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He's a clever guy, he sounds very good, he comes across very well.

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People want to believe him.

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He's a con man.

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While some dismiss Bob Lazar as a fraud, others believe there is a more sinister motive to his behavior,

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that he is an agent of the government, tasked with perpetuating disinformation about Area 51.

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One had to question whether Lazar was sure who he was.

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Perhaps he was serving as a disinformation agent unwillingly.

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There were those who believed that he had been in some way brainwashed or even drugged.

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But for Lazar's supporters, the US government's silence speaks volumes.

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If he hadn't been involved with these people, they could say, hey, he's a phony.

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That ended Bob Lazar's career as a spokesperson for UFOs and reverse engineering and propulsion systems.

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No one ever did that.

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Some conspiracy buffs believe that the US government actually encouraged Lazar's story and the myth of UFO sightings.

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It's an attempt, they say, to distract the public from what was really happening inside Area 51.

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There seemed to be a good strength of the theory that they were generating a lot of noise to disguise the real signal,

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which was experiments with advanced aircraft and that Lazar was the most intense piece of noise they were delivering.

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Generally referred to as a flying saucer.

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In the early 1990s, after Bob Lazar goes public with his sensational claim that there are alien spacecraft inside Area 51,

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the isolated high-security base becomes a magnet for tourists.

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There were bus tours going out there, so that pretty much did it, that put it on the map.

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Security is intensified to keep the curious out.

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But some say that the government actually uses Lazar's story to its advantage.

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In that case, if somebody actually saw a test flight and saw something they weren't supposed to see and they talk about it,

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they're just dealt with by the public as another UFO, not to a senior UFO flying.

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Even though eyewitness reports and photographs of Area 51 are widely circulated on the Internet,

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government officials continue to deny that the base even exists.

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You like going out and having a good year blimp on the parking lot and someone tell you, there's no blimp out there.

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You know, darn well there's one. Until someone official says, yes, this is Area 51, it doesn't exist.

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And that's our government.

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In 1995, the installation's borders are greatly expanded, effectively prohibiting outsiders from even seeing the base.

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Any sign that says that we will shoot you if you trespass into here, well, why is that? What's the reason for it?

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I'm an American taxpayer. That's my stuff they're flying out there. I help pay for it. It's we the people, it's not us the government.

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That's been my philosophy from the very beginning. If you're flying over public land, I have every right to photograph and see it.

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You can't blame the government for wanting to conceal what's going on there, but you can't blame the public for wondering what's going on there.

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There are some who say they know exactly what's been happening at Area 51. Men who work there and can prove it.

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They saw much that the government didn't want the public to know about, but none of it, they say, was from outer space.

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Supposedly, you know, extraterrestrial, something's happened over there. I know nothing about that. I just read about it.

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It certainly didn't have any of that there when I was there. I was all over that base.

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Frank Murray flew the top secret A-12 spy plane at Area 51.

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He says the base played a vital role in U.S. military research and development during the Cold War.

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The base really got started in about 54 when Lockheed needed a place to test and develop the U-2 airplane, the first spy plane.

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In the early 1960s, the A-12 was developed to replace the U-2.

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The CIA commissioned this supersonic reconnaissance jet, capable of reaching speeds in excess of Mach 3 and cruising at altitudes over 90,000 feet.

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Frank Murray and others tested the A-12 at Area 51.

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We flew all over the United States with the airplane. Nobody knew we were there. We didn't tell anybody. There was no need to.

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Murray and former radar operator T.D. Barnes can talk about their experiences now, because the top secret projects were declassified in the 1990s.

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Barnes does acknowledge that he had limited access to the base.

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There was something going on that we did not have a need to know.

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They'd hurt everybody on the base into the mess hall and pulled the blackout curtains. They'd have guards on them and would stay in there for two, three hours.

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Whatever the time period was required for whatever they were doing outdoors to wrap up.

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For the men assigned to Area 51, the intense secrecy permeated every aspect of their professional lives and even extended to their own families.

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Tell them nothing. Tell them just on a classified project that can't talk about it.

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And they never did know until the whole thing was over.

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Both Murray and Barnes say they saw no alien spacecraft during their time at Area 51.

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But they did observe their colleagues serving their country in a program so secret most Americans never knew of their heroism.

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We lost a lot of pilots and I do not recall ever hearing a test pilot panic.

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As they hit the ground they were still giving us scientific data. They're so trained.

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After Barnes and Murray left, other servicemen tested newer technology like the F-117 stealth bomber in the late 1970s.

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Some say this plane could have been the real source of many UFO sightings at Area 51.

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First time you see an F-117 head on, it looks like a flying saucer.

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If F-117 flight tests sparked rumors of alien spacecraft over the Nevada desert, that may have been just fine with military authorities.

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Why give it away by saying, oh, there's another military test going on in the high altitude aircraft?

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Much better to dismiss it all as just being so much UFO nonsense.

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What military scientists have been developing at Area 51 in the years since the F-117 is anyone's guess.

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In the tense post-911 era, Area 51 is as impenetrable as ever.

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But it is evident that the base is still very active.

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Gotta be. The runway is now 25,000 feet long and it's two or three times bigger than when I was there.

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For all I know, they're building systems to prevent an invasion of alien beings. You don't know. The technology doesn't sit still. So what are they up to?

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Jim Goodall says he once posed that very question to Ben Rich, a now deceased former vice president of the Lockheed Corporation.

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He said, Jim, we have things out in the desert that are 50 years beyond what you can comprehend.

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If you've seen it on Star Trek, or Star Wars, or whatever science fiction movie you've seen, we've been there and done that.

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I said, can you expand upon that? He said, nope.

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Despite efforts to keep a tight lid on the activities at Area 51, officials are forced to publicly acknowledge the existence of the base for the first time when a lawsuit is filed in 1994 against the government.

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Allegations that hazardous chemicals had been improperly burned at the site leads critics to charge that the veil of secrecy is endangering the public safety.

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The whole existence of a toxic waste stump in Area 51 is a perfect metaphor for the toxicity of excessive secrecy and the dangers of secrecy.

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Secrecy, like any powerful chemical, is very useful stuff and it's also very dangerous stuff.

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Until 1994, the US government refused to acknowledge the existence of its super secret base known as Area 51.

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But in August of that year, a lawsuit brought by former employees of the secret air base forces the Department of Defense to change this policy.

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The suit claims that workers had been ordered to burn toxic byproducts of the stealth fighter program in open pits at the base, causing them serious illnesses and in some cases death.

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When they went to court, the government used every measure at its disposal to shut down the whole story.

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Government attorneys argue that publicly revealing any information about the case would threaten national security, but critics believe the security measures had gone too far.

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Here's a situation that has nothing directly to do, you'd say, with secrecy, with black project aircraft and so forth.

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Not only has the government not taken responsibility, they basically just quashed the case and will not release any information about what's going on there.

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Within a year, the government effectively stalls the suit, but the case does pressure the Pentagon to state that it in fact has an operating facility near Groom Lake, finally acknowledging the existence of Area 51.

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It just forced their hand. There was a point at which they, yes, we acknowledge that there is a facility here, they wouldn't say any more than that, but at least that was a change from not even acknowledging it was there.

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Those pressing to learn the truth about Area 51 begin to ask more questions. Among them, how did the government manage to pay for a non-existent base for nearly four decades?

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The answer? The so-called black budget.

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The black budget is what's used to fund things like Area 51 or Dreamland, because you don't want to reveal the specific details of what is being done.

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If you spent a billion or a couple billion dollars on a program and it failed, if it was a white program, you'd have people jumping all over you.

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If it's a black program, no one knows.

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People saw Area 51 as a symbol of the abuses of some of our military decision-making, and there was a lot of concern that, again, secrecy had become excessive, that not only did the people not know, the people's representatives didn't know, and the chance for abuses were very great.

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Activists like Yer Garnu regard themselves as public watchdogs, determined to limit the potential for such abuse.

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What we're trying to accomplish is keeping the powers somewhat honest in not abusing this secrecy.

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Garnu claims that his quest to keep the government honest has led to a series of confrontations.

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In February of 2003, Garnu reported on his website that the government was using illegal tracking sensors on public land around the military base.

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Four months later, Garnu claims he received a threatening phone call from the FBI.

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But, he says, he refuses to give up monitoring the activities at Area 51.

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Bob Lazar stands by his tantalizing story, that the government is hiding alien spacecraft at Area 51.

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We can't prove things one way or the other.

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He can't prove what he says he saw. I can't prove he didn't see it.

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Lazar asserts that the government has gone to great lengths to quash his story and discredit him, including erasing his name from all of his past employment and academic records.

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There was a concerted effort to eliminate me, and I was able to do it.

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I don't know who pulls the strings, I don't know who even wrote my paycheck.

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Lazar insists that he is still working to provide the government with the best possible results.

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The government is not going to give up on his work.

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The government is going to give up on his work.

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The government is going to give up on his work.

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I don't know who will give up on his paycheck.

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Lazar insists that he is still working to provide proof of his claims.

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It is something I'm going to pursue.

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I have people that can verify everything.

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No offence or buts, and I can't wait to prove it all.

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To date, Lazar has yet to produce such verification.

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The history channel submitted a request to the Air Force for an interview regarding Area 51, but the request was denied.

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The Air Force maintains that all operations there are classified.

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Every year since the 1994 lawsuit, the President of the United States has renewed Area 51's top secret status, making it inevitable that the criticism and speculation will continue.

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Certainly there are things there that have to be kept secret, but the idea of a total blackout of a certain place frightens a lot of citizens.

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For many, the questions remain. Does Area 51 represent the cutting edge of aviation engineering, or is the source of its most innovative technology otherworldly?

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Though as the years go on, we'll find out what some of these are, and it's what makes the place of increasing in constant interest. You never know what might come out of there.

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You know, it's the age-old question. We all want to know where we came from and what we're doing here.

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You know, some people view this almost as a religion, that if there is another life form out there running around, it's probably been out here longer than we are.

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Maybe Area 51 has answers to some of those questions.

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The preceding program presented theories about an historical event that is shrouded in mystery. It contained archival footage, reenactments and dramatizations, which invite you, the viewer, to draw your own conclusions.

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On the next episode of The Revolution.

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When Franklin gets to France, his job is essentially to make it appear to the French that the American cause is a viable one, and that the Americans can win this contest. Those are all of them at that point, fictions.