Military secrets of Nevada desert come to light |
The Columbus Dispatch
By Janet Maslin
NEW YORK TIMES
At the start of Area 51, Annie Jacobsen's caldron-stirring book about
America's most mysterious military installation, the author offers
a
passing glimpse of a little gray space alien being interrogated by
scientists in white coats.
The scene serves as both a tease and a distraction.
Jacobsen eventually addresses the UFO issue with which conspiracy
theorists associate Area 51, but her book is not science fiction. It's
much more levelheaded - an assertive account, revelatory but also
mystifying, of the long-hidden U.S. weaponry and espionage programs
to
which she says Area 51 is home. (Some say Area 51 is home to nothing
because it doesn't officially exist.)
Jacobsen, a national security reporter and contributing editor to The
Los Angeles Times Magazine, happened to be at a family dinner in 2007
with physicist Edward Lovick when Lovick said, "Have I got a good story
for you."
That happened to be the year that top-secret records about the
development of certain stealth technology - most notably the CIA's
A-12
aircraft - were made public, even though the creation of the A-12 dated
back 50 years.
Lovick, who had been instrumental in A-12 research, did much more than
relate his own story. He plugged Jacobsen into a network of elderly
scientists, pilots, engineers and other witnesses with firsthand
accounts of Area 51 and its surrounding area, the Nevada test range
in
the southern part of the state.
The interviews pointed her in the direction of extremely arcane
documentation, and she put together a set of strong allegations about
Area 51's covert history.
Part of Area 51 is devoted to the nuclear-weapons testing that began
with the Manhattan Project, continued under the aegis of the Atomic
Energy Commission and prompted The New York Times to tell tourists,
in
1957, about a project called Operation Plumbbob: "This is the best
time
in history for the non-ancient but nonetheless honorable pastime of
atom-bomb watching."
Jacobsen recoils at the weaponry being developed and the ghastly results
of atomic testing. But she acknowledges ways in which it ended up
keeping Americans safe.
Her book moves on to the surveillance technology that was meant to
override the need for nuclear arsenals. And her research into the world
of "overhead" - the aerial espionage that needed to be developed in
extreme secrecy - is compellingly hard-hitting.
According to Jacobsen, not even President Bill Clinton was able to gain
full knowledge of the goings-on of the military contractors at Area51.
Area 51 is guided by the author's political assessment of changing U.S.
military strategy, particularly during the Cold War. It describes Area
51's strategic importance during the eras of Sputnik, the Bay of Pigs,
the lunar landing and the Vietnam War, with a strong narrative account
of territorial fights between the CIA and Air Force about whose aircraft
was better-suited to combat situations.
But she doesn't take seriously what some readers will find most urgent
about an Area 51 study: rumors that alien spacecraft are studied there.
Back to the little gray alien allegedly seen at Area 51: Jacobsen does
have a theory about the base's alleged UFO connections. It goes back
to
the radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds in 1938 and the panic
that
it engendered.
Making a series of implications that are her book's most controversial
aspect, she connects this hysteria to the 1947 crash in Roswell, N.M.,
of an alleged flying saucer - a story cherished by conspiracy theorists
and not easily refuted.
Jacobsen connects the appearance of a real, disc-shaped hovering object
with Stalin-era Soviet intrigue. She hypothesizes that the relic found
in Roswell was the opening shot in the Cold War. She suggests that
the
supposed space creatures were human guinea pigs, the results of American
experiments as monstrous as the Nazi ones conducted by Josef Mengele.
And she thinks that, once the rumors of a Roswell landing and cover-up
began, U.S. intelligence sources might have found UFO rumors to be
excellent cover for their own activities - no matter how surprised
they
were by the need to encourage such thinking. Two Air Force officials
once found themselves on a panel with members of the Civilian Saucer
Investigations Organization of Los Angeles.
Although the connect-the-dots UFO thesis is only a hasty-sounding
addendum to an otherwise-straightforward investigative book, it makes
an
indelible impression. Area 51 is liable to become best-known for its
inflammatory sci-fi provocation.
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