[Reproduced without permission.]

TITLE:  MYSTERY MAY DEEPEN FOR BASE IN NEVADA

PUBLICATION:  Reno Gazette-Journal

DATE:  Dec. 26, 1994

AUTHOR:  McClatchy News Service

* Air Force: Hoping to get control of 4,000 acres of mountains.

SACRAMENTO, Calif.- The military appears to be within days of
shrouding one of its worst-kept secrets, a much-publicized Air Force
facility in Nevada that officially doesn't exist.

Two mountain peaks that provide a distant vista of the base may
soon be off-limits to the public. Yet the attempt by the Air Force
to ban access to the vistas hasn't stopped aviation buffs, UFO believers
and even the Russians from viewing and photographing the phantom base.

"The publicity is what created my business," said Glenn Campbell,
a 35-year-old resident of rural Nevada who has subsisted in part
by selling $15 guides to the mountain vistas.

The vistas in question-- White Sides Mountain and Freedom Ridge--are
next to the giant Nellis Air Force Range north of Las Vegas and
are now controlled by the Bureau of Land Management.

The Air Force in 1993 requested that it be given control of nearly
4,000 acres of the mountains. After a formal consideration process,
the BLM in November gave a tentative yes.

Barring any change of mind, the BLM could make the decision final
within days or a few weeks, said Curtis Tucker, an area land manager for
the agency.

It's unclear precisely what the Air Force is Doing on its complex of
airstrips and buildings on the part of the Nellis base known as
Groom Range.

"Some specific activities and operations conducted on the that range,
both past and present, remain classified and cannot be discussed,"
said Lt. Col Mike Gannon, a spokesman for the Air Force.

The most conventional explanation is that the base is one of the places
where the Air Force has tested various top-secret aircraft and has
trained its pilots.

The least conventional explanation is literally out of this world.
In 1989, a Las Vegas man said he once worked at the base and helped
to conduct tests on alien spaceships the Air Force had obtained
through a cooperative arrangement with the non-earthly beings.

"I've seen some strange things in the sky, but nothing that would
lead me to believe that we're dealing with things from another planet"
said Tucker. "In my mind, there's human beings behind what is going on."

There is no doubt that something is down there. Popular Science magazine,
for example, splashed on its cover an aerial photograph of the base
reportedly taken by a Russian satellite in 1988.

The 35-year-old Campbell, who is single, and lives in a mobile home
trailer and conducts his "Psychorat" computer activities from another
next door.

"I've repackaged this as an issue of government accountability," said
Campbell, who now down-plays the UFO theories because, after two years
of surveillance,he has yet to see one.

He plans an "End-of-the-World" party on the ridge just before it
becomes off limits.

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