-
Being in the business, you know that fads can pass, and the "Area
51" phenomenon has persisted on hot air for too long now. Unless
you can produce some bona fide aliens or can demonstrate clear, achievable
goals, I think that by May you'll be on the downside of the interest
curve and will get little more than sarcasm from the press. The recent
failure of a Rave party in Rachel, even when it had significant publicity,
ought to be taken as an omen.
-
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
-
Former workers at the Air Force Groom Lake base today will appeal
the dismissal of a federal
lawsuit claiming they were made ill and injured by environmental crimes
at the installation.
|
Glenn... I want to personally thank you for the "heads up" on the practice bomb you observed. As you probably know, we scrambled a team of experts to the location, and they confirmed it was indeed a practice bomb... an inert MK-82. As you can imagine, we take great care in these matters. Off-range releases of any type ordnance is considered a serious matter, even if required because of an aircraft emergency. The particulars of this incident will be hard to track... the practice bomb has been there for a long time! But we will do our best to follow up. As for the final disposition... our team, which included explosive ordnance disposal experts, my Tonopah commander, Public Affairs and a BLM representative - all agreed: it's safe! That was #1! Despite the obvious impact of the practice bomb, our goal will be to develop the right plan to remove it with minimum additional impact to the area. Again... a personal "thanks" for the notification and the directions. By the way... our folks enjoyed the hospitality afforded them in Rachel. Please pass that on. Next time I pass by, I'll stop and thank them personally. Col Jerry Carpenter |
Note on Accessing Las Vegas Sun: Since Sun articles
are available for free on their
server*, we try to link directly to their copy. If our
link to a Sun article does not work,
you may need to register
with them* to obtain a user name and password.
"Oh, you're here to get the bomb," said an observer.
Bomb? What bomb? Everyone on the recovery team tried not to say the "B" word. In the politically correct 90's, you can call it a "device" or "ordnance," never anything that sounds like it might kill someone in a discriminatory manner. The team was looking for the Unidentified Fallen Object we described at the end of our Leviathan Cave page and that we dutifully reported to the Air Force a few days ago. We recognize the sensitivity of the "B" word, especially on public land, because people tend to overreact to it - just like the "N" word - nuclear - which also gets people agitated by the mere mention. We regard this "B" incident as no big deal. Every once in a while you lose one. (Happens to us all the time.)
Still, the team could have been more discreet. Had it been our operation, we would have sent just one guy. That's all it would have taken to reconnoiter. He would collect enough data to make an assessment, and then we would send the full team by an unobtrusive route. Under no circumstances would we send our Elite UFO Recovery Team to the Little A'Le'Inn first, as this only invites speculation. What is the New World Order up to, and why won't they tell us? The PR guy should have recognized that there was no need to stop in America's UFO Capital, especially when we had provided such explicit instructions.
Sometimes we get so frustrated teaching PR to the AF that we could just scream. But they're making progress; they just need some time. They're going through an awkward phase right now, heavy on the Clearasil, but someday they'll catch on and we'll be proud.
-
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
-
"The sheriff's department was a little overzealous. Fine if they're
on standby in case anything happens, but they made their presence
overbearing," [said organizer Don Suttle]. Lincoln County Sheriff
Dahl Bradfield was unavailable for comment.
-
LAS VEGAS - Thousands of knife wielding gang members descended upon
Rachel, Nevada Saturday night causing untold damages to private property.
Busload after busload of gang members arrived from Los Angeles, San
Diego, Las Vegas and Phoenix intent on destroying the town and beating
the townsfolk senseless...
-
Leviathan Cave is an impressive series of tunnels and chambers on the top of the Worthington Mountain Range, north of Rachel, Nevada. The opening is a huge sinkhole on the northwestern flank of Meeker Peak at an elevation of about 7800 feet. The remote location and difficult four hour hike keep most visitors away. Entering the cave involves a vertical drop of about 15 feet requiring ropes or freehold climbing, but the rest of the cave is fairly level. This is a "living" limestone cave with stalagtites, stalagmites and many other formations. It is said to be about 1/5 mile at its longest, but many side passages make this cave quite complex. [GC 8/96]
-
Pat Travis, who runs the A'Le'Inn restaurant and motel with her husband,
is a firm believer in the existence of alien life and is a recognized
community spokeswoman. Nevertheless, she felt slighted by Suttle's
failure to involve her and was vexed by stories she heard about "Rave"
parties,
as techno music celebrations are frequently called.
"I'm scared," she said. "I'm going to have two guards outside my door, and I'm not renting any of my (motel) rooms out that night."
[Oct. 25 update: The motel seemed well used last night.]
-
Not knowing much about him - apart from his walking on the Moon -
we dropped by the shopping plaza at about 3pm yesterday. There he
was, a Famous Person, sitting at a card table in the back of
the small store surrounded by Star Trek merchandise and the people
who buy it. We decided not to stand in line but instead simply lurked,
just behind that Famous Person, bathing in his aura. We knew Buzz
Aldrin was Famous because we had seen his face on television, and
he also acted Famous, which we sensed in his aura as well.
At the Research Center we are always concerned about evaluating personalities. Whenever we meet someone new, we ask ourselves how much we can trust them and what sort of things we can talk to them about without it coming back to bite us. Aside from the battery of psychological tests we could run on any willing subject, we find that the best way to figure out a personality is to listen to what they say. One should listen to the words but, more importantly, to how they are said. How does this person respond to the circumstances now surrounding him? What does he choose not to talk about, and how does he regard his own role on this planet? With a few random frustrations thrown at the subject, he will eventually reveal himself through his own words.
Mr. Aldrin suffered no lack of words, mostly expressing frustration with the current national space program and its "lack of foresight." His book, he said, described future space exploration as it could realistically be accomplished with technology drawn from today's science. We gathered that the novel was about travel to some distant star or planet. We looked at the cover of the book in one of the boxes stacked beside Aldrin. There were two names on it. His was first, and the second we didn't recognize. We wondered, then, who had really written the book.
We wandered away from the table and examined the Klingon masks and "Beam Me Up" T-Shirts that lined the walls, but then a commotion of some kind drew us back. There was an exchange taking place between the astronaut and a man in front of the table. Although the conversation was cordial on the surface, our radar detected tension, with everyone else backing off. It seemed that the man had committed a terrible faux pas: He had brought Aldrin a picture to autograph. It was a photo of an astronaut stepping down onto the surface of the Moon from the ladder on the Lunar Module. Aldrin had refused to sign it, and he went on for about ten minutes explaining why.
The gist of the monologue was, he wouldn't sign it because he wasn't being paid to sign it. If you bought a book, he would sign the book for free, and the book would be worth $200 in a couple of years, he said. Aldrin explained, with Ferengi logic, that if he signed the man's photo, then the man would profit but Aldrin would not. "If I'm going to fly First Class occasionally, then I have to start thinking about money," said Aldrin. At that point, we felt that we had collected sufficient data to conclude the experiment and leave the store. We did not buy Aldrin's book, and we do not remember the title, but you can probably find it at your local bookstore.
Something else happened to us, too. As we were walking through the parking lot back to the car, we experienced a revelation. A glorious epiphany! We saw the world differently now than when we had arrived. We realized, at that moment, that we didn't need to see another Star Trek episode, of any variety, ever again.
Free at last!
-
At first is was nice to see your interrest in OUR party....
As we cotiniued reading, our vision in seeing someone looking at this
subject as WE do was gone.
Not just have YOU made FALSE statments in your page(s), but you also
misinterpreted the hole idea of this event, as we where just about to
MIRROW your page and your interrest, BUT we realized you have the wrong
idea about the hole thing.
This is a party.... a FUN time for everyone to have..... it is also a celebration of our first amendment right! Hope to see you there! But you WON'T see US from OUTSIDE the property as you THINK you will!!!!
t r i p h o p + c o s m i c h o u s e
s p a c e f u n k
-
The government has been withholding information pertaining to the
secret base located at Area 51
on Groom Lake (it's a dry lake) from the people of the world. We want
to know what is really
going on there, and this is your chance to help find out ... while
busting some phat trancey grooves
on top of the speaker stacks. Abduction will have petitions ready
for you to sign indicating that you
want the government to tell us what is really going on. In essence,
this is a political rally ... and an
alien invocation at the same time. :) There will be multiple stages
of sound totalling 150,000 watts
pumping out the booming bass, plus concessions, lasers, and a medical tent.
You know what cracks us up the most about this event? Suddenly, we find that the term "young people" no longer applies to us! Having passed the 30 mark some time ago, we at the Research Center are no longer "cool cats". We've become "the Establishment" and haven't the faintest clue what motivates those phat trancey groovesters.
-
Fermi's famous question, now central to debates about the prevalence
of extraterrestrial civilizations, arose during a luncheon conversation
with Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller, and Herbert York in the summer
of 1950. Fermi's companions on that day have provided accounts of
the incident.
-
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
-
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
-
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
-
The Little A'Le'Inn has come out in vocal opposition to this
party/concert/political rally and promises to fight it in tomorrow's
County Commissioner's meeting, where a permit must be issued. This
means that the rest of Rachel, previously neutral, now tends to support
the event, and many townsfolk have signed a petition to counter the
Inn. At least the organizers have tried to consult with residents,
unlike Fox or the State of Nevada at the previous extravaganza. Denizens
of the Inn, frequently found in a less than sober state themselves,
say the party will attract drugs, which seems to us like the pot calling
the kettle black.
The Inn, as always, is a fascinating study in paranoia and emotional reactivity, not polluted by any hint of intelligence. The Research Center opposed the E.T. Highway unveiling, so now the Inn in opposing the Abduction Party, thinking that we are somehow involved. Fact is, we've been cool to the party from the beginning, and it appears to be unravelling on its own anyway. The "political rally" portion of the event, sponsored by an alleged UFO group no one has heard of, seems highly dubious and certainly won't accomplished anything. The organizers arrived in town within days of the ID4 release, and their insistance on putting together a major event in little more than a month could be the plan's undoing. Latest word now is that there won't be any live bands at the $25 open-air party, just recorded, lyric-free "Techno" music (in our mind, as boring as listening to bagpipes for six hours). Nonetheless, interest among the Grunge element of Las Vegas seems to be building, and some people might actually make the 2-1/2 hour drive to show up. The organizers are claiming that MTV, American Journal, Current Affair and NBC have expressed interest in covering the event, and at least one Las Vegas radio station, The Edge, is promoting it. The Groom Lake Interceptors, of course, will be there, too, not paying twenty-five bucks by any means, but sitting up on top of the Research Center Storage Barn making sardonic observations. (We'll be recovering from the Leviathan hike, also taking place that day.)
In other news, Ray the Hayloader, the same Inn resident who assaulted Our Director at the E.T. Highway unveiling, was arrested about a week ago for violating an order to stay away from the Quik Pick convenience store in Upper Rachel. After repeatedly threatening the propriator for no discernable reason, Ray was warned by police to stay away, but he couldn't resist one last dig. According to witnesses, he rode by the store on a motorcycle and yelled "Pussies!" at the folks out front. That landed him in jail for three days. Things are quiet for the moment, but we wonder when tensions between Lower and Upper Rachel might erupt into bloody civil war. If this happens, Upper Rachel may be woefully underarmed, but Lower Rachel will be too drunk or stoned to shoot straight.
-
I am a cartographer at the USGS Mid-Continent Mapping Center, and
formerly I worked at the Rocky Mountain Mapping Center. While I was at
Rocky I was involved in a mapping project in and around the Nellis
Bombing Range. I compiled the Groom Lake Quads (it's on more than one
1;24,000 quad map. The photos that I compiled the map from had been
screened by the Air Force before we received them. The AF had scraped
the emulsion off (not satisfied with just inking over) the photos for
certain areas in that vicinity. That partially explains the blank spots
on the maps, another explanation is that there aren't many mappable
features out in that region anyway. What was funny is that there would
be miles of dirt road, then it would change to paved road, then you'd
hit the scraped off emulsion. There were several areas scaped off but
the areas that I saw were less than about 300 acres each. Not much of a
base can fit in an area that size.
-
I encourage your magazine to report on Area 51 -- beyond a
superficial review of other people's work -- because this social
circus certainly deserves criticism. However, I do resent the
Skeptical Inquirer recycling my openly available work and then
asserting intellectual property rights over the results.
-
The State of Nevada appears to have pulled off another minor miracle,
transforming a barren stretch
of desert road into a major tourist destination. In this column (Spring
1992, 250) you were among
the first to read of the tall tales surrounding the supposedly mysterious
"Area 51," where UFOs
galore could allegedly be seen by anyone who took the trouble to drive
out near the tiny hamlet of
Rachel along barren State Highway 375....
-
This underground complex is part of a greater complex called "Dulce"
(this was the code name). The "Dulce
Complex" or Area "E" is composed of sixty buildings: some are underground,
some are revetments, and some are
bunkers. Badges with a color security system is in effect. All this
according to a key government source who had
been there in circa 1978/79. His words to me: "You should have seen
what I have seen." The underground part of the
facility is estimated to be over a 100++ ft down in this mountain
ridge area close to the national forest. This area also lies just
outside the main lab complex at Los Alamos.
-
Federal agents are investigating allegations that hazardous wastes
burned in
open pits at a secret military base in Southern Nevada, lending credence to
former workers' claims that they became ill from inhaling toxic smoke.
Basecamp Airfield is an auxiliary airstrip and support facilities adjacent to Route US-6 about 10 miles northeast of Warm Springs. This is a "secret" facility in plain sight: Signs on the fence say only the "U.S. Government" owns the facility, and personnel there will not divulge any further information. Circumstantial evidence indicates this facility is operated by a government contractor on behalf the Air Force Flight Test Center, probably in support of testing programs at Area 51. Basecamp is in line with the runway at Groom Lake, making it a possible emergency field for aborted take-offs of test aircraft from there.
A 20-month-long criminal investigation into allegations of environmental
crimes near the Air
Force's classified Groom Lake base is winding down.
Any one who would knock a great movie like Independence Day and then
make a page on the
Internet just to show people how horrible it is must be really sick.
I saw ID4 and I
thought it was fantastic. I'd like to remind you of one little thing.
It's a MOVIE!!!
It's not supposed to be real. Would you rather they make it realistic?
Well, if they
did, the movie would take up all of 2 minutes. The alien mothership
blows up Earth and
the ending credits start. THAT would be realistic. I don't know
about you, but I'd
much rather watch the movie they made, as unrealistic as it may be,
than something that
says the human race is wiped out of existence, wouldn't you? I really
can't stand it
when people nit-pick over the littlest things in movies. What you
are is a freaking
idiot who has nothing better to do than knock down the greatest movie
of the year.
Northrop had an Antonov An-2 biplane they used for various work, apparently
including some related to
stealth. This is a large 60-ft.-span, 1,000 hp. single engine STOL
utility aircraft, first flew in 1947.
Apparently there are a number of An-2 biplanes in the U.S., and they
may be used by military to simulate
opposing forces. Northrop's An-2 apparently was used as a target
for the radars of F-5 fighters. They no
longer have it, and it may be used by the National Test Pilot School
at Mojave as a demonstrator of bad
handling characteristics!
Why should anyone care about Papoose Lake? Aliens, of course!! According
to some, it's where
our beloved government has stashed all the extraterrestrial debris
that has rained down upon our
planet in the last 50 years or so, the result of intergalactic student
drivers. There are even some folks
who'll take the story further and suggest that ET and his buddies
themselves have taken up
residence there (talk about a lousy neighborhood!). Are these people
nuts?! Are they just mislead?
Or are they right? (or some very strange combination of all three!) ...
Area 51, also known as Groom Lake, is a secret military facility about 90 miles north of Las Vegas. The number refers to a 6-by-10-mile block of land, at the center of which is a large air base the government will not discuss. The site was selected in the mid-1950s for testing of the U-2 spyplane, due to its remoteness, proximity to existing facilities and presence of a dry lake bed for landings. Groom Lake is America's traditional testing ground for "black budget" aircraft before they are publicly acknowledged. The facility and surrounding areas are also associated -- with varying levels of credibility -- with UFO and conspiracy stories. In 1989, Bob Lazar claimed on a Las Vegas television station that he had worked with alien spacecraft at Papoose Lake, south of Area 51. Since then, "Area 51" has become a popular symbol for the alleged U.S. Government UFO cover-up. [GC 8/96]
Nellis Air Force Base Area II, once known as Lake Mead Base, is a separate facility about a mile northeast of the main Nellis air base on the northern outskirts of Las Vegas. Area II is munitions storage facility for both conventional bombs and "non-conventional" munitions which reportedly include 200 nuclear warheads. Area II is dominated by a high-security triple-fenced compound encompassing several dozen earthen bunkers. Because the fence is well-lit at night, it can be easily seen from Interstate 15 and by passenger jets approaching Las Vegas. A lower security area outside this compound includes support buildings and a federal minimum security prison. Conventional weapons used in military exercises are stored in a separate area from the nuclear compound and are transported to the main Nellis air base via a secured roadway. During the years of nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site, Lake Mead Base was a storage and transfer area for atomic devices to be detonated at the Test Site. [GC 8/96]
[an error occurred while processing this directive]