The Road to Area 51

[Cees Binkhorst]

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Daar komen dus de verhalen over vliegende schotels vandaan.
Zie hieronder '2,850 OXCART test flights were flown out of Area 51' met
een snelheid van meer dan 3000km/h in een schotelvormig vliegtuig.

Groet / Cees

http://www.latimes.com/features/la-mag-april052009-backstory,0,3355162.story

After decades of denying the facility's existence, five former insiders
speak out
by Annie Jacobsen
Area 51. It's the most famous military institution in the world that
doesn't officially exist. If it did, it would be found about 100 miles
outside Las Vegas in Nevada's high desert, tucked between an Air Force
base and an abandoned nuclear testing ground. Then again, maybe not— the
U.S. government refuses to say. You can't drive anywhere close to it, and
until recently, the airspace overhead was restricted—all the way to outer
space. Any mention of Area 51 gets redacted from official documents, even
those that have been declassified for decades.

It has become the holy grail for conspiracy theorists, with UFOlogists
positing that the Pentagon reverse engineers flying saucers and keeps
extraterrestrial beings stored in freezers. Urban legend has it that Area
51 is connected by underground tunnels and trains to other secret
facilities around the country. In 2001, Katie Couric told Today Show
audiences that 7 percent of Americans doubt the moon landing happened—that
it was staged in the Nevada desert. Millions of X-Files fans believe the
truth may be "out there," but more likely it's concealed inside Area 51's
Strangelove-esque hangars—buildings that, though confirmed by Google
Earth, the government refuses to acknowledge.



    * April 05, 2009 Issue
      April 05, 2009 Issue

The problem is the myths of Area 51 are hard to dispute if no one can
speak on the record about what actually happened there. Well, now, for the
first time, someone is ready to talk—in fact, five men are, and their
stories rival the most outrageous of rumors. Colonel Hugh "Slip" Slater,
87, was commander of the Area 51 base in the 1960s. Edward Lovick, 90,
featured in "What Plane?" in LA's March issue, spent three decades radar
testing some of the world's most famous aircraft (including the U-2, the
A-12 OXCART and the F-117). Kenneth Collins, 80, a CIA experimental test
pilot, was given the silver star. Thornton "T.D." Barnes, 72, was an Area
51 special-projects engineer. And Harry Martin, 77, was one of the men in
charge of the base's half-million-gallon monthly supply of spy-plane
fuels. Here are a few of their best stories—for the record:

On May 24, 1963, Collins flew out of Area 51's restricted airspace in a
top-secret spy plane code-named OXCART, built by Lockheed Aircraft
Corporation. He was flying over Utah when the aircraft pitched, flipped
and headed toward a crash. He ejected into a field of weeds.

Almost 46 years later, in late fall of 2008, sitting in a coffee shop in
the San Fernando Valley, Collins remembers that day with the kind of
clarity the threat of a national security breach evokes: "Three guys came
driving toward me in a pickup. I saw they had the aircraft canopy in the
back. They offered to take me to my plane." Until that moment, no civilian
without a top-secret security clearance had ever laid eyes on the airplane
Collins was flying. "I told them not to go near the aircraft. I said it
had a nuclear weapon on-board." The story fit right into the Cold War
backdrop of the day, as many atomic tests took place in Nevada. Spooked,
the men drove Collins to the local highway patrol. The CIA disguised the
accident as involving a generic Air Force plane, the F-105, which is how
the event is still listed in official records.

As for the guys who picked him up, they were tracked down and told to sign
national security nondisclosures. As part of Collins' own debriefing, the
CIA asked the decorated pilot to take truth serum. "They wanted to see if
there was anything I'd for-gotten about the events leading up to the
crash." The Sodium Pento-thal experience went without a hitch—except for
the reaction of his wife, Jane.

"Late Sunday, three CIA agents brought me home. One drove my car; the
other two carried me inside and laid me down on the couch. I was loopy
from the drugs. They handed Jane the car keys and left without saying a
word." The only conclusion she could draw was that her husband had gone
out and gotten drunk. "Boy, was she mad," says Collins with a chuckle.

At the time of Collins' accident, CIA pilots had been flying spy planes in
and out of Area 51 for eight years, with the express mission of providing
the intelligence to prevent nuclear war. Aerial reconnaissance was a major
part of the CIA's preemptive efforts, while the rest of America built bomb
shelters and hoped for the best.

"It wasn't always called Area 51," says Lovick, the physicist who
developed stealth technology. His boss, legendary aircraft designer
Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson, called the place Paradise Ranch to entice men
to leave their families and "rough it" out in the Nevada desert in the
name of science and the fight against the evil empire. "Test pilot Tony
LeVier found the place by flying over it," says Lovick. "It was a lake bed
called Groom Lake, selected for testing because it was flat and far from
anything. It was kept secret because the CIA tested U-2s there."

When Frances Gary Powers was shot down over Sverdlovsk, Russia, in 1960,
the U-2 program lost its cover. But the CIA already had Lovick and some
200 scientists, engineers and pilots working at Area 51 on the A-12
OXCART, which would outfox Soviet radar using height, stealth and speed.

Col. Slater was in the outfit of six pilots who flew OXCART missions
during the Vietnam War. Over a Cuban meat and cheese sandwich at the
Bahama Breeze restaurant off the Las Vegas Strip, he says, "I was
recruited for the Area after working with the CIA's classified Black Cat
Squadron, which flew U-2 missions over denied territory in Mainland China.
After that, I was told, 'You should come out to Nevada and work on
something interesting we're doing out there.' "

Even though Slater considers himself a fighter pilot at heart—he flew 84
missions in World War II—the opportunity to work at Area 51 was impossible
to pass up. "When I learned about this Mach-3 aircraft called OXCART, it
was completely intriguing to me—this idea of flying three times the speed
of sound! No one knew a thing about the program. I asked my wife, Barbara,
if she wanted to move to Las Vegas, and she said yes. And I said, 'You
won't see me but on the weekends,' and she said, 'That's fine!' " At this
recollection, Slater laughs heartily. Barbara, dining with us, laughs as
well. The two, married for 63 years, are rarely apart today.

"We couldn't have told you any of this a year ago," Slater says. "Now we
can't tell it to you fast enough." That is because in 2007, the CIA began
declassifying the 50-year-old OXCART program. Today, there's a scramble
for eyewitnesses to fill in the information gaps. Only a few of the
original players are left. Two more of them join me and the Slaters for
lunch: Barnes, formerly an Area 51 special-projects engineer, with his
wife, Doris; and Martin, one of those overseeing the OXCART's specially
mixed jet fuel (regular fuel explodes at extreme height, temperature and
speed), with his wife, Mary. Because the men were sworn to secrecy for so
many decades, their wives still get a kick out of hearing the secret
tales.

Barnes was married at 17 (Doris was 16). To support his wife, he became an
electronics wizard, buying broken television sets, fixing them up and
reselling them for five times the original price. He went from living in
bitter poverty on a Texas Panhandle ranch with no electricity to buying
his new bride a dream home before he was old enough to vote. As a soldier
in the Korean War, Barnes demonstrated an uncanny aptitude for radar and
Nike missile systems, which made him a prime target for recruitment by the
CIA—which indeed happened when he was 22. By 30, he was handling nuclear
secrets.

"The agency located each guy at the top of a certain field and put us
together for the programs at Area 51," says Barnes. As a security
precaution, he couldn't reveal his birth name—he went by the moniker
Thunder. Coworkers traveled in separate cars, helicopters and airplanes.
Barnes and his group kept to themselves, even in the mess hall. "Our
special-projects group was the most classified team since the Manhattan
Project," he says.

Harry Martin's specialty was fuel. Handpicked by the CIA from the Air
Force, he underwent rigorous psychological and physical tests to see if he
was up for the job. When he passed, the CIA moved his family to Nevada.
Because OXCART had to refuel frequently, the CIA kept supplies at secret
facilities around the globe. Martin often traveled to these bases for
quality-control checks. He tells of preparing for a top-secret mission
from Area 51 to Thule, Greenland. "My wife took one look at me in these
arctic boots and this big hooded coat, and she knew not to ask where I was
going."

So, what of those urban legends—the UFOs studied in secret, the
underground tunnels connecting clandestine facilities? For decades, the
men at Area 51 thought they'd take their secrets to the grave. At the
height of the Cold War, they cultivated anonymity while pursuing some of
the country's most covert projects. Conspiracy theories were left to
popular imagination. But in talking with Collins, Lovick, Slater, Barnes
and Martin, it is clear that much of the folklore was spun from threads of
fact.

As for the myths of reverse engineering of flying saucers, Barnes offers
some insight: "We did reverse engineer a lot of foreign technology,
including the Soviet MiG fighter jet out at the Area"—even though the MiG
wasn't shaped like a flying saucer. As for the underground-tunnel talk,
that, too, was born of truth. Barnes worked on a nuclear-rocket program
called Project NERVA, inside underground chambers at Jackass Flats, in
Area 51's backyard. "Three test-cell facilities were connected by
railroad, but everything else was underground," he says.

And the quintessential Area 51 conspiracy—that the Pentagon keeps captured
alien spacecraft there, which they fly around in restricted airspace?
Turns out that one's pretty easy to debunk. The shape of OXCART was
unprece-dented, with its wide, disk-like fuselage designed to carry vast
quantities of fuel. Commercial pilots cruising over Nevada at dusk would
look up and see the bottom of OXCART whiz by at 2,000-plus mph. The
aircraft's tita-nium body, moving as fast as a bullet, would reflect the
sun's rays in a way that could make anyone think, UFO.

In all, 2,850 OXCART test flights were flown out of Area 51 while Slater
was in charge. "That's a lot of UFO sightings!" Slater adds. Commercial
pilots would report them to the FAA, and "when they'd land in California,
they'd be met by FBI agents who'd make them sign nondisclosure forms." But
not everyone kept quiet, hence the birth of Area 51's UFO lore. The
sightings incited uproar in Nevada and the surrounding areas and forced
the Air Force to open Project BLUE BOOK to log each claim.

Since only a few Air Force officials were cleared for OXCART (even though
it was a joint CIA/USAF project), many UFO sightings raised internal
military alarms. Some generals believed the Russians might be sending
stealth craft over American skies to incite paranoia and create widespread
panic of alien invasion. Today, BLUE BOOK findings are housed in 37 cubic
feet of case files at the National Archives—74,000 pages of reports. A
keyword search brings up no mention of the top-secret OXCART or Area 51.

Project BLUE BOOK was shut down in 1969—more than a year after OXCART was
retired. But what continues at America's most clandestine military
facility could take another 40 years to disclose.

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