- 10/31, 4pm:
Our web site has been award the somewhat dubious
"Four Grenade Award of Excellence" from
Disinfo.com,
an unusually coherent conspiracy site.
- 10/31, 3pm:
Project
Orion:
Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth* a research paper
describing
an attempt to build an atomic propulsion system for
rockets.
The race to the moon, in the forms of Project Apollo and the still-shadowy
Soviet lunarprogram, dominated manned
space flight during the decade of the 1960's. In the United States,
the project sequence Mercury-Gemini-Apollo
succeeded in putting roughly sixty people into space, twelve of them
on the moon. Yet, during the late 1950's and early
1960's, the U.S. government sponsored a project that could possibly
have placed 150 people, most of them
professional scientists, on the moon, and could even have sent expeditions
to Mars and Saturn. This feat could
conceivably have been accomplished during the same period of time
as Apollo, and possibly for about the same amount
of money. The code name of the project was Orion, and the concepts
developed during its seven-year life are so good
that they deserve serious consideration today.
Project Orion was a space vehicle propulsion system that depended
on exploding atomic bombs roughly two hundred
feet behind the vehicle.
[Added to NTS ]
- 10/31, 2pm:
A
Memorial Page for an Air Force worker*,
Charlie Price,
who died of cancer in 1994, mentions his work at Angel peak during
atomic testing at the NTS
While he was in the Air Force, his longest tour of duty was at Mount
Charleston,
Nevada. He was a Radar Operator (Crew Chief) at Angel's Peak Radar
Station. He
was there for three years.... This radar site overlooked the Nevada
Test Site. While Charlie was there, he
witnessed "Hardtack II" which was an air to ground missile test of
an atomic bomb,
or a nuclear weapon. He saw the mushroom from his station atop Mount
Charleston.
At that time it wasn't known that the effects of this could be harmful.
Other (many)
underground tests were also done then. No one was supposed to stay
at that place
for more than 18 months, but he stayed three years.
[Added to NTS |
Nellis]
- 10/28, 2pm:
British Tourist is Okay.
We just visited Richard Hitchens at the hospital in Las Vegas.
[See below.]
He is in great pain but is definitely alive.
His is the typical naive tourist story. After seeing
Area 51 on TV in Warminster, England, he and his friend,
Adam Carpenter, decided on impulse to take a trip out here.
When they arrived in Las Vegas,
they couldn't find a room
or a rental car, so they tried to take a taxi to
Rachel, 2-1/2 hours north.
$120 later, the cab broke down in Alamo.
They then hitchhiked to Ash Springs, where they paid someone else
$80 to take them the last 45 miles to Rachel.
There they enjoyed the fine hospitality of the Little
A'Le'Inn (which, we might add,
put the "hospital" back into hospitality).
On Friday evening,
Ray offered to take them, at night,
to the Indian Caves, about 30 miles
north in a remote area of desert,
and no one at the Inn had the sense to warn the visitors off.
The truck rolled before they got far from Rachel. Had it happened
further away, it would have been a full day's
walk to the nearest road, and help would
never have never reached Hitchens in time.
- 10/28, 8am:
British Tourist Injured near Rachel.
A young English tourist visiting the E.T. Highway
was seriously injured on Friday night (10/25)
when the truck in which he and two others were riding rolled over,
according to sources in Rachel.
The three were travelling on a dirt road in a truck
driven by Ray West (aka "Ray the Hayloader"), a resident of the
Little A'Le'Inn.
West had met the two tourists at the Inn and had invited
them to ride in his hay loading truck,
which resembles a tow truck with a long
boom to move bales of hay.
The accident occurred on Gunderson Road, a county road about five miles
west of Rachel. Local EMTs were called sometime after 9pm.
They found the tourist lying on the ground
in a pool of gasoline in deteriorating
condition.
"He was beaten up pretty bad," said one witness,
who spoke on condition of anonymity.
He had a broken collar bone, a dislocated shoulder and a punctured lung on
the verge of collapse. He was transported by ambulance and then
helicopter to University Medical Center in Las Vegas. "Another half
hour, and he wouldn't have made it," said the witness.
The second tourist, who was sitting between the other two, was not
seriously injured. He was treated in Caliente and released and
is still staying at the Inn.
The two are apparently in their 20s, have little money and no transportation.
They were scheduled to go back to England this Wednesday.
The injured tourist, Richard Hitchens, 27, was admitted to the intensive
care unit at UMC in critical condition,
but he is now stable and has been moved to another ward.
When we called him,
he was well enough to answer the telephone at his bedside.
We will visit him today.
Ray West was arrested for leaving the scene of an accident
and is being held in the Lincoln County jail in lieu of $4000 bail.
Apparently, he vanished for several hours after the accident.
It is unclear what other charges he might face.
Ray the Hayloader is best described as a local thug living under
the protection of the Travises at Little A'Le'Inn.
He is the boyfriend of the daughter of Pat Travis,
and is beginning to look more and more like Joe Travis, the
no-good drunkard behind the bar.
We used to regard Ray as a friend, but drugs and alcohol have taken
their toll, and there's not much to respect anymore.
Ray assaulted Our Director at the E.T. Highway unveiling, and
has been warned by police to stay away from
Upper Rachel for making threats against other Rachelites.
[What's New 8/19].
Ray's aggressive behavior over the past few months
has the community on edge, and he is regarded by residents
as an explosion waiting to happen.
According to our informants,
Pat Travis is already formulating excuses for the
rollover accident - as she always does when her men misbehave.
Her attitude seems to be, the victim was just bruised up a bit.
He survived, so what's the big deal?
It is known by nearly everyone in Rachel that certain residents of the
Inn are abusers of and dealers in illegal drugs,
but Pat Travis denies that as well. Any accusations to
that effect are attributed to the Inn's many imagined conspiracies.
The Travises believe that the rest of the town despises them and
is out to get them,
and as usual with paranoia, this belief has become self-fulfilling.
Most Rachelites, stung by one incident or another,
will not set foot in the Inn any more,
and the only people who work there are those with no
other choice.
Visitors have to realize, when you enter the Little A'Le'Inn,
you've got to keep your wits about you.
Although everyone may seem friendly on the surface,
there is real evil just below it.
[Added to Travis
| Rachel]
- 10/27, 8am:
Nevada
Millionaire Buys 'UFO Ranch' in Utah*,
reports the 10/23 Las Vegas Sun (reprinted from the
10/20
Salt Lake City Deseret News*). There is also a
Photo*
of the former owner examining a strange impression in his field.
FORT DUCHESNE, Utah (AP) - The search for answers to one of
science's greatest questions has led millionaire Robert M. Bigelow to
an isolated cattle ranch in the heart of eastern Utah's Uintah Basin.
Here, far from the bright lights of his native Las Vegas, the real estate
magnate hopes his team of scientists can unearth the roots of UFO
folklore prevalent in this region since the 1950s.
Bigelow, easily the most prominent American financier in the
paranormal research field, is convinced there is something to the weird
stories told by the family of Terry Sherman.
The article points to the web site for Bigelow's
National Institute
for Discovery Science*. There not much there
except for three technical reports from credentialed
researchers concerning metallic "implants"
and near death experience.
[Added to Bigelow]
- 10/26, 4pm:
Systems Programming.
If What's News does not seem as active as usual, it is because we
are occupied with systems programming and catalog work at present.
Most of the systems changes are invisible but will allow us
to get more done in less time. One visible change....
- The referrals list at the bottom of most of our index pages
now sorts
by number of hits, giving the most active pages first. For example,
see the massive
referrals
list for the Area 51 page.
- 10/25, 10am:
Secret
nuclear records handy: Symposium reviews DOE openness"*,
an article in the 9/25 Las Vegas Sun on nuclear secrecy.
[Added to NTS.]
|
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.
|
- 10/25, 9am: Turley Awarded Legal Fees.
A
7/25 news brief* from the Las Vegas Sun (which we missed earlier)
says that the plaintiff's lawyer
in the hazardous waste suit has been awarded $100,000 in legal fees.
JUDGEMENT AWARDED -- The attorney who battled the federal
government to open records about a secret Air Force base north of
Las Vegas has
been awarded $100,000 in legal fees. U.S. District Judge Philip Pro
issued the
award Wednesday to attorney Jonathan Turley of Washington, D.C., in
the case
of six Area 51 workers who sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The workers claimed they had been exposed to toxic fumes from open pit
burning at the base about 150 miles north of Las Vegas. Pro has thrown
out the
workers' case and declined to order the release of many documents
on national
security grounds.
That seems unusual.
We thought you had to win a case to be awarded legal fees.
Search
for other lawsuit articles in Las Vegas Sun*
- 10/25, 8am:
Scientists
Give Meteor Account*, an AP story from
Las Vegas Sun, 10/15. Offers possible explanation from
fireball seen recently over a wide area of the Southwest.
Other
meteor stories*
- 10/25, 7am:
Recent Mailing List Postings.
Here are some noteworthy messages sent
to the Area 51
Mailing List.
- 10/24, 9pm:
A
personal account of work at the Nevada Test Site and Area 51*
appears on a South Dakota
"Mysteries" page. Very interesting!
"V.L." says he worked at the Nevada Test Site
from 1965 through 1977.
This text is a direct transcript of V.L.'s talk
before a group. He seems a bit rambling and prone to conspiracy,
and some of the more recent facts are
incorrect, but the account is basically consistant with
that of a real worker who hasn't been back to the Test site in two
decades.
There were things I saw and
have seen in Area 51 that would make one wonder where they came from. I’ve
also seen things out there that violate most of the laws of physics.
My degree is
in physics, and we, on a routine basis, used to observe... because
we worked
at night, it was a 24 hour a day, 365 days a year operation out there.
And I
worked all three shifts, graveyard, swing and days. I worked at night
a lot out
there. I’ve seen things that most aircraft or no aircraft that I know
of could do,
do. So the news reports that you hear are accurate to the extent that
someone is
testing either weapons or various vehicles that go through the atmosphere
that
use technology that we’re not really in possession of. Now, if that
sounds a bit
odd, I would say this. The federal government is afraid... in fact we had a
whole division of public relations people to feed the public information
that was
cleansed. The federal government is afraid that if the population
of the United
States knew some of the things that we have done and have seen and have
found, people would panic. And that’s all I can say about that.
V.L. also wins our trust with this statement...
Edward Teller was the kind of man that would have been loyal to
Adolph Hitler or to whoever was the boss, so to speak. I didn’t like
the man, I
still don’t like the man. He’s arrogant, he was totally unsympathetic
to radiation
health and safety, he was totally unsympathetic to people’s lives
and he still is.
This transcript is well worth review.
Also visit the
sponsor's line of Black Hills gift items.*.
- 10/16, 3pm:
"Ex-workers:
Judge ignored Area 51 evidence*: Pro removal, opening of records
sought,"
reports the 10/14 Las Vegas Sun, recording the filing of 118-page
appeal by the workers in the dismissed
hazardous waste case.
[Added.]
A Las Vegas federal judge is accused of ignoring the law and repeatedly
ruling against former Area 51 workers in a lawsuit over alleged unlawful
burning of toxic waste at the once-secret military base.
The workers charge that U.S. District Judge Philip Pro refused to examine
any evidence that would support their allegations and perhaps reveal
that the
government lied or at least exaggerated its claims of national security.
Journalism notes:
"Accused of ignoring the law" sounds a bit too emotional,
and "the workers" here are speaking exclusively through their attorney.
It is standard for an appeal to claim errors by the judge.
- 10/16, 2pm:
Glenn Campbell
Profile
updated. [Added to Campbell]
Hype.
- 10/16, 9am:
The move to the new server appears to be successful.
You shouldn't ever get a "Temporary Bandwidth Overload" message
again.
We can now begin to do some fancy things with server-side processing.
Note, for example,
our new counter and referrals link at the bottom of this page.
Here at the Research Center, we believe in
"Freedom through Technology."
We will continue to work on advanced web programming
to make our site more efficient and easier to use.
Remember: "Life is but a wet, wet web site."
(Didn't Shakespeare say that?)
- 10/14, 8am:
We have moved to a new server today,
to resolve our over-limit problems.
No URLs have changed.
Request will now be routed to a different machine -- in Pittsburgh
this time.
Our new provider is Pair, which offers
a better deal for high bandwidth than
our old provider Best
(but we can still recommend Best for smaller sites than ours).
If you can read this message, then you are already looking at the
new site.
There may be some minor glitches over the next few days, so please
bear with us.
No more "Temporary Bandwidth Overload" messages!
- 10/12,
7pm: Groom Lake Environmental
Exemption for Groom Lake has been renewed by Bill Clinton for
a second year.
See 10/8 Federal Register,
61
FR 52679*
I find that it is in the paramount interest of the
United States to exempt the United States Air Force's
operating location near Groom Lake, Nevada (the subject
of litigation in Kasza v. Browner (D. Nev. CV-S-94-795-
PMP) and Frost v. Perry (D. Nev. CV-S-94-714-PMP) from
any applicable requirement for the disclosure to
unauthorized persons of classified information
concerning that operating location. Therefore, pursuant
to 42 U.S.C. 6961(a), I hereby exempt the Air Force's
operating location near Groom Lake, Nevada, from any
Federal, State, interstate or local provision
respecting control and abatement of solid waste or
hazardous waste disposal that would require the
disclosure of classified information concerning that
operating location to any unauthorized person. This
exemption shall be effective for the full one-year
statutory period.
It sort of makes it all worthwhile -- to be
validated like this by the President of the United States.
"Paramount interest" is important indeed.
This and the previous exemption are very unusual documents,
and we wonder what kind of
presentation he was given by the military to make them happen.
- 10/12, 4pm:
Area 51-55?
A search of
DOE's Opennet
Database*
for "Area 51"* reveals a number of documents including
this
intiguing item*:
BIOTIC RESOURCES OF THE FALLOUT AREA ( 06/52 ) FAUNA PHOTOGRAPHS NTS
ENVIRONS, RADIOACTIVITY MEASUREMENTS, GROOM MINE AREA 51-55
...Which seems to imply that there are other areas numbered 52-55
grouped near
Area 51, a fact we hadn't known. It has never been clear where the
number "51"
came from, and this might at least establish a pattern.
One of our Test Site groupies has ordered the document and been disappointed.
It turns out that "51-55" refers to the years of the survey, not the
area numbers.
To recap what we know about the land:
The 6 by 10 mile block of land that was known as Area 51 with withdrawn
by the
AEC in Public
Land Order 1662 on June 28, 1958.
The NTS Draft EIS (Jan. 1996, v.1, page 4-9) states:
"Under Public Land Order 1662 (June 20, 1958),
approximately 38,400 acres were reserved for the
use of the Atomic Energy Commission in connection the the NTS.
Management of this land has since been delegated to the U.S. Air Force."
Inquiries to DOE yielded this
1996 statement,
while FOIA requests to DOE have brought vague national security denials,
implying (to us) that any agreement between DOE and the AF is secret.
This means that Area 51 is indeed a no man's land -- neither controlled by
DOE nor confirmable by the Air Force. (The AF only acknowledges that they
do have "facilities at Groom Dry Lake," not that they control the land
or the entir base.)
We still don't know...
- When the land gained the "Area 51" designation.
- When and how Area 51 was turned over to the Air Force.
- Under what authority the Groom Lake
land was used by the military and DOE prior to June 20, 1958.
One revealing tidbit: The Tonopah Test Range
is referred to as Area 52 in the DOE/NV internal phone book
(June 1990).
If Areas 53-55 exist, we expect they are satellite sites. For example,
if there was an area number for the Project Faultless site (about 100 miles
north of the NTS), we would expect it to be numbered in the 50s.
This orderly view of the universe is belied only by Area 13, which is
a plutonium dispersal site on
Air Force land north of Area 51.
Perhaps 50s numbers refer to areas of joint AF/DOE control.
[Added to Area 51 Law]
- 10/12, 10am:
The Consciousness
Research Page*
a well-designed site by UNLV researchers Dean Radin and Jannine Rebman
is worth a visit.
These two parapsychology researchers resigned recently from the semi-mysterious
Bigelow
organization in what has become known (erroneously) as the "Las Vegas
Massacre."
They way the rumor is circulating now, Las Vegas
philanthropist Robert Bigelow has pulled the plug on his
entire National Institute of Discovery Sciences -- just a few days
ago in fact.
We have no evidence for this, however, and it is probably just a recycling
of
earlier rumors. As far as we know only the director of UFO research,
Pete McDuff,
was sacked by Bigelow. [See What's
New 9/17/96]
- 10/11, 1pm:
A complete set of MJ-12 Documents*
has been assembled by Scott Hale.
These are ostensibly government documents that indicate a long term
official cover-up of UFO information.
[Added to Area 51
| Guide to Knowledge
| UFO Miscelanea]
- 10/10, 6pm:
Lawsuit Docket Sheets. Here are the remainder of the
docket sheets
(document indexes) for the Area 51 hazardous waste lawsuit
(Frost vs. Perry). [Followup from What's
New 9/13.]
This brings our set up to date.
These 23 pages provide an index into a stack of
court papers that must be about 36 inches high.
In a visit today to Federal District Court in Las Vegas,
we found that filings in the case amount to 14 volumes,
each 2 inches thick, plus various supplements.
These are only the documents for the original court case,
not the appeal, which is now in progress in San Francisco.
Of particular
interest are 4 volumes of previously sealed documents that were
released after being redacted (censored) by the government.
Many documents, mostly authored
by plaintiff's attorney Jonothan Turley,
have lines or paragraphs blacked out using the classic
magic marker method.
(Make a copy; black out text with magic marker, then make another
copy of that copy for release.)
We don't expect that what lies behind those black lines is
anything we don't know already, since it is mostly the civilian Turley who
is censored.
The stack includes several unredacted copies of the
Groom Lake Security Manual,
printed
from the internet, as well as a number of gratifying references to Glenn
Campbell putting it there.
Clearly a lot of paperwork was expended on the security manual.
We have ordered copies of one of the redacted volumes
as a keepsake and may put
some of the more interesting documents on the net.
[Added to Hazardous Waste
Lawsuit.]
- 10/10, 2pm:
Popular culture. GeoCities has introduced a
web "neighborhood" called Area
51*.
It is apparently a UFO/SciFi section of no great relevence to our
own Area 51.
- 10/10, 8am: Doing the Macarena for Hungary.
Our amusement with all things Hungarian drew our attention to
this
10/8 item* in the
Las Vegas Sun's "People in the News"
column.
Things got a little choked up at a recent United Nations party celebrating
the 1,100th anniversary of the
birth of Hungary. As the 10 Hungarian-born honorees detailed their
life struggles to an audience that
included Walter Cronkite and Isabella Rossellini, well, everyone's
mood rings just turned blue.
"Walter Cronkite had tears in his eyes," one attendee says. Asked
for some upbeat music to liven the
atmosphere, the Hungarian bandleader didn't know any. At last he located
a guitarist who knew just what
to do: He played "The Macarena," and everyone -- including Cronkite,
his ancient tendons no doubt
creaking like old lawn furniture -- did "The Macarena" for Hungary.
Coming soon to the U.N.: The
funky chicken for the United Arab Emirates.
Apparently based on
this
AP newswire* on the event.
Be sure to add
"People
in the News"*
to your hot-links list for your daily fix of celebrity devastation.
|
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.
|
- 10/10, 7am:
BDU or BLU? Would a bomb by any other name blow
as high?
Remember the bomb we found in a wash at the base of the Worthington
Mountains?
[See What's New, 8/29/96
| 8/28
| Leviathan Cave.]
Aviation historian xelex@aol.com has looked it up and comes back with
this report:
I have been researching that bomb you found on the hike. An inert 500-lb.
practice bomb would be painted blue and labeled BDU-50A/B for "Bomb, Dummy
Unit." A Mk.84 Mod.1 is a BLU, or Bomb, Live Unit. The nose of a
BDU-50 has
a 5-lb. steel nosecap with two wrench flats instead of a fuse. There are a
variety of fusing options. The nosecone you describe ("gray composite or
plastic") is a target-detecting device for airburst. Obviously it
failed to
function or was not activated.
We have emailed Col. Carpenter to see if this is correct.
[No reply as of 10/31/96. -- GC]
- 10/9, 9pm: New Product -- Delorme
Nevada Atlas.
Added to our complete line of Delorme State
Atlases
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
- 10/9, 5pm: Article Confirms Nuclear Weapons at Nellis Area
II (archive).
Library research has yielded this 1991 article:
"Nuclear Bombs Stored
at Nellis --
Experts believe the site will be used to store old nuclear weapons
that are waiting
to be dismantled."
Las Vegas Review-Journal, 10/2/91. Senator Harry Reid
confirmed that
Nuclear weapons are stored at Nellis Area II on the outskirts of
Las Vegas, one of three Air Force stockpiles in
the country.
Includes an overview map.
Added to Nellis Area II.
- 10/8, 3pm:
Cartoon:
"Big Alien" (44k).
An anonymous artist familiar with local politics drew this futuristic
vision of what Rachel might become.
"Happy Holloween!" Added to Travis.
- 10/7, 5pm:
An on-line audio recording of the 9/24 UK special
on "Dreamland" is available on
Crow and Raine's UFO Site*.
Listen to the Satellite T.V. program that was on Sky One called Dreamland,
all about Area 51. There were two 1 hour TV documentaries
shown on the 24th and 25th of September 1996. Here you can download the
first show that was shown on the 24th, you will need all three parts
which make up the first show. The second show that was
aired on the 25th will be here for download within 2 weeks. We hope this
gives as many people as possible chance to download the first program.
- 10/4, 3pm:
Questioning
of Area 51 Workers Delayed* reports today's Las Vegas Sun.
The Justice Department agreed to delay questioning former Area 51
workers who fear
government retaliation for exposing alleged unlawful burning of hazardous
waste.
- 10/4, 9am:
Recommended site (humor/philosophy): The
Curmudgeon Quotelist*
curmudgeon n. A crusty, ill-tempered and often difficult person.
- 10/3, 11pm:
Catalog Work.
We have introduced a basic
On-Line Ordering System
for credit
card orders. We have also begun work on "The
Wall",
a graphical representation of our products.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
