Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tex stuff from stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com either and welcome to text stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, and today joining me in the studio is
Speaker 1: my esteemed colleague and UH conspiracy theorist extraordinaire Ben Bolan.
Speaker 1: Now I would say that I use critical thinking. I know,
Speaker 1: I think conspiracy theorists is a little bit of a pejorative.
Speaker 1: Nowadays I appreciate it. Yeah, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: other pejoratives I often used to describe you. I could
Speaker 1: rely on some of those if you prefer. Yeah, I've seen,
Speaker 1: I've seen, we hate been dot blogspot dot com, and
Speaker 1: I appreciate. No, we're we're kidding ladies and gentlemen. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's always fantastic to be on the show with one
Speaker 1: of my favorite UH colleagues, and uh, we're actually friends
Speaker 1: outside of the shows. That's absolutely true. Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: ever hear us beating each other up, I want to
Speaker 1: assure you that it's even worse off the air. But
Speaker 1: it's all man in good fun. So we decided I
Speaker 1: had talked about doing an episode about Area fifty one
Speaker 1: for years. Threatening might be the better word for it.
Speaker 1: I've been threatening to do an episode about Area fifty
Speaker 1: one for years and just it was one of those
Speaker 1: things that we kept on putting off because it's a
Speaker 1: it's a big topic and it's so big that Ben
Speaker 1: has been very generous with his time and he and
Speaker 1: I are going to be doing three episodes about this subject.
Speaker 1: So the first two episodes are a history of this
Speaker 1: facility and what what is actually documented as having happened there,
Speaker 1: the real history, mind you. The third episode will be
Speaker 1: the mythology of Area fifty one and some of the
Speaker 1: stories that have been attributed to that area, some of
Speaker 1: which border on um whacka doodle. I think it's a
Speaker 1: good way of putting in. Yeah. So yeah, So we're
Speaker 1: gonna cover all of that. So this episod So we're
Speaker 1: gonna look at the history and if you've heard the
Speaker 1: term Area fifty one, but you've only seen the depictions
Speaker 1: in pop culture, like in science fiction, you probably aren't
Speaker 1: entirely sure what it is now. First of all, Area
Speaker 1: fifty one isn't necessarily the the proper designation for this facility.
Speaker 1: It's the popular one, but really it's more often referred
Speaker 1: to within within UM documents official documentation as Groom Lake
Speaker 1: and that's because there's a big dry lake bed in
Speaker 1: Nevada called Groom Lake, and this facility is built right
Speaker 1: on there, right, and it's built there for a reason.
Speaker 1: It's in Nevada. And you you've got some great notes
Speaker 1: on this all the way down to latitude and longitude. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: because because this was the thing, you know, for years
Speaker 1: and years and years, the government would would very very
Speaker 1: carefully disavow any inform any knowledge of such a facility.
Speaker 1: They would say, no, you know, nothing out there exists
Speaker 1: Groom Lake. What what is that? Why would you groom
Speaker 1: a late That's what purpose a dry lake? You are
Speaker 1: speaking crazy talk. So yeah, but but one of the
Speaker 1: big reasons why it's out there is cause a dry
Speaker 1: lake bed in Nevada tends to be pretty darn flat.
Speaker 1: And if you want to say have a remote location
Speaker 1: where you can develop and test secret aircraft and you
Speaker 1: need that space in order to take off and land
Speaker 1: the aircraft, a big dry lake beds a pretty good
Speaker 1: you know location, right, Yeah, it's fantastic. It's also far
Speaker 1: enough inland that the any foreign observers at the time
Speaker 1: of Groom Lakes construction would have a really difficult time
Speaker 1: observing anything to happen there without being noticed. First absolutely,
Speaker 1: because at the time, this is before we get into satellites, right,
Speaker 1: So if you are trying to spy upon the construction
Speaker 1: of Area fifty one it was built back in the fifties,
Speaker 1: then you essentially had to have a spy plane flying
Speaker 1: over the United States, which was a pretty risky thing
Speaker 1: to do. But meanwhile, that's exactly what was going on
Speaker 1: at Area fifty one was the development and testing of
Speaker 1: spy planes. So it's also known as Homey Airport. That's
Speaker 1: more that's a more recent moniker over there. Um and
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's probably I have it in my notes.
Speaker 1: I have it as the most famous secret facility, worst kept. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the it's the secret facility everyone has heard of,
Speaker 1: which is kind of funny, but but they still managed
Speaker 1: to keep the actual activities within the the facility itself
Speaker 1: largely secret. There's been some reports that have come out.
Speaker 1: Some of them are credible, some of them are less so.
Speaker 1: But it's it's one of those things that that secrecy
Speaker 1: has also led to some serious issues that will get
Speaker 1: to more in the second part. Some things that have
Speaker 1: happened that that bring up the question of accountability, like,
Speaker 1: how can you be accountable if you can't acknowledge the
Speaker 1: stuff that goes on at that site? Right? And it's
Speaker 1: no wonder we know that whenever there is a lack
Speaker 1: of transparency, we find a plethora and I'm using that
Speaker 1: word correctly of speculation. Absolutely, because we have to fill
Speaker 1: in the gaps. Right. Yeah, it's like a Hitchcock movie.
Speaker 1: The monster you don't see is always going to be
Speaker 1: worse than the monster on screen. Absolutely, But let's go
Speaker 1: to uh as, as they say in Alice in Wonderland,
Speaker 1: let's start at the beginning. What do you say? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: So let's say that you are uh you are a
Speaker 1: country that is involved in a little altercation called World
Speaker 1: War two, and as a result, you need to start
Speaker 1: building out your own military capabilities. Well, the United States
Speaker 1: was very much concerned with s and started to look
Speaker 1: for all sorts of places where they could build various airport,
Speaker 1: landing strips, or military purposes. So they identified this one
Speaker 1: spot and you mentioned I had the latitude and longitude.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go ahead and give it. It's at thirty
Speaker 1: seven degrees fourteen minutes north latitude and one fifteen degrees
Speaker 1: forty eight minutes west longitude, which means it's right, it's
Speaker 1: within a hundred miles or hundred sixty one kilometers of
Speaker 1: Las Vegas. Uh, that's that's to the south of Area
Speaker 1: fifty one. And then the closest town is actually called Rachel, Nevada,
Speaker 1: and that's about twenty five miles or forty kilometers to
Speaker 1: the north. And uh, the the original purpose of the facility,
Speaker 1: which wasn't really even a facility, was just a couple
Speaker 1: of landing strips, like more like a little compound or
Speaker 1: small airport. Yeah, it was meant to be a training
Speaker 1: place for gunner schools, for for people who are actually
Speaker 1: working on on gunner positions within aircraft. So it's a
Speaker 1: training facility. And uh it was created by the Army
Speaker 1: Air Corps. Notice we didn't say Army Air Force. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is before the Air Force was ever a thing.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it was Army Air Corps. Uh. They ended
Speaker 1: up using it, like I said, during the forties. By
Speaker 1: the end of it, they essentially they didn't formally decommission
Speaker 1: it because there wasn't really enough there to do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they just sort of stopped using it. Yeah, they're kind
Speaker 1: of like, well, wars done, let's pack up and go,
Speaker 1: and they left it kind of where it was. Now,
Speaker 1: that didn't mean that that was the only you only
Speaker 1: organization to use that area. Uh, there was something else
Speaker 1: that happened. So in the nineteen fifties, and this is
Speaker 1: jumping around a little bit because I don't actually have
Speaker 1: it right here in my notes, But in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: two things are going on. One is you have the
Speaker 1: rise of the Cold War, which means that now we
Speaker 1: no longer have an active armed conflict going on, but
Speaker 1: we do have an escalating political conflict between the United
Speaker 1: States and the Soviet Union. And bunch of spine, yes,
Speaker 1: a bunch of spine, which would factor in heavily. We
Speaker 1: also had that same time on both sides. Both the
Speaker 1: United States and Soviet Union had an era of developing
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons, right, So the part of the developing them
Speaker 1: was testing them to make sure that one they worked
Speaker 1: and two you you wanted you wanted other countries to
Speaker 1: know you had them without knowing specifically what your armament was, right,
Speaker 1: and without you explicitly admitting that you had them either, right,
Speaker 1: It was tricky stuff. So the the waste lands of
Speaker 1: Nevada were often areas that UH, the Atomic Energy Commission
Speaker 1: would use to test this stuff. And there was this
Speaker 1: grid of land that they were using to test various
Speaker 1: types of atomic weapons, including some that were developed by
Speaker 1: Edward Teller. UH. Joe McCormick and I recorded an episode
Speaker 1: about five technologies that were supposed to bring it into
Speaker 1: World War but didn't and were Teller is the father
Speaker 1: of the hydrogen bombs, so several of his designs were
Speaker 1: tested in this area. That grid had thirty squares in it,
Speaker 1: and each square was called an area alright, so he
Speaker 1: had areas one through Area thirty. This particular parcel of
Speaker 1: land where the former Army Air Corps facility was, it
Speaker 1: was more or less adjacent to a square known as
Speaker 1: Area fifteen. So it's possible that the Area fifty one
Speaker 1: name comes from transposing the one in five and saying,
Speaker 1: all right, well that was the area fifteen. This is
Speaker 1: Area fifty one. It was not part of the grid originally.
Speaker 1: In fact, when when the facility was constructed, the grid
Speaker 1: had not expanded. It did expand gradually. I think it
Speaker 1: eventually had something like two squares to it. Testing increased
Speaker 1: and they built the fake towns and everything, right, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you see Indiana Jones getting the refrigerator. I knew,
Speaker 1: I knew we were going to say that. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the new Jump the Shark, isn't it. Yeah. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: Jump the Shark and Jump in the Fridge, which which
Speaker 1: did not work out for Punky Brewster but did work
Speaker 1: out for Indiana Jones. Um. So, I mean, while we've
Speaker 1: got this testing going on in this remote part of Nevada,
Speaker 1: which I don't know if you're aware of. This turns
Speaker 1: out that if you're testing lots of nuclear weapons in
Speaker 1: an area, it tends to be a deterrent for people
Speaker 1: to come snooping around. Oh that's what we did wrong.
Speaker 1: We weren't we weren't actively testing new devices around the office.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so yeah, that's true. There's a there's a
Speaker 1: profound effect. And I know it sounds like we're jokingly
Speaker 1: noting something that is glaringly obvious. But even at that time,
Speaker 1: before there had been the before we had had such
Speaker 1: extensive research on the effects of this sort of weaponry. Uh,
Speaker 1: everybody kind of saw the writing on the wall. Yeah. Right,
Speaker 1: So at that same time, like you were saying with
Speaker 1: all the spine going on, and there was a lot
Speaker 1: of it. We've we've done episodes on tech stuff about
Speaker 1: spy tech before, and we've even done episodes on specific
Speaker 1: spy planes, like the the YouTube plane being one of
Speaker 1: the most famous. There needed to be some way of
Speaker 1: developing this technology and testing it without people being aware
Speaker 1: of it, so that we can maintain that superiority of
Speaker 1: folks not knowing what we're we are and are not
Speaker 1: capable of doing so. That led to the Central Intelligence
Speaker 1: Agency trying to find a good spot for this. And
Speaker 1: you might say, wait, the c i A. Aren't they
Speaker 1: for an intelligence They are foreign intelligence. So these were
Speaker 1: going to be mostly spy plane spying on other places,
Speaker 1: not the United States. We have plenty of agencies that
Speaker 1: are here to spy on us, and it isn't the
Speaker 1: Air Force already involved? So that's what you would think, right, like,
Speaker 1: why why the CIA? Why not the Air Force? Well,
Speaker 1: it comes down to and Ben, I know you've heard
Speaker 1: this term black budgets, the idea that you need to
Speaker 1: have a budget that is impenetrable people. People are prove them,
Speaker 1: but they cannot see what the budgets are actually for.
Speaker 1: And it's all under the umbrella of national security. And
Speaker 1: the reason that this exists now, I know these get
Speaker 1: a tough time nowadays, and they should. There's a great
Speaker 1: argument for the transparency at this time. Just to be
Speaker 1: fair we have to play devil's advocate and say that
Speaker 1: the argument against transparency is, of course, during the Cold War,
Speaker 1: when people are trying to mask their capabilities, anyone with
Speaker 1: the right amount of subterfusion influence could find uh something
Speaker 1: that wasn't a black budget all the way down to
Speaker 1: individual components, the literal nuts and bolts. So at the
Speaker 1: time their argument will be that this is necessity and
Speaker 1: if you want something secret, you put it under At
Speaker 1: this time in American history, you put it under the CIA,
Speaker 1: because the Air Force would end up having a budget
Speaker 1: that was reviewable by Congress, right exactly, and so this
Speaker 1: would at least mean that everyone in Congress and plus
Speaker 1: all the congressional aids would have access to those budgets,
Speaker 1: which could mean that that's a security risk that that
Speaker 1: information could leak out and it would get into the
Speaker 1: hands of of of foreign agents that would end up
Speaker 1: having the advantage because now they know what we were
Speaker 1: capable of by having it as a black budget. You
Speaker 1: take that out, it also means that again you don't
Speaker 1: have that transparency and you leave the world wide open
Speaker 1: to just speculate on what's actually going on. So there's
Speaker 1: a there's another edge to that sword. So the CIA
Speaker 1: is in charge of this. They work with the Air Force.
Speaker 1: But I mean when we talk about testing these planes,
Speaker 1: it was CIA pilots that we're doing the testing, right,
Speaker 1: not Air Force pilots. It's very important distinct. So they
Speaker 1: were civilians who then got uh classification of top secret
Speaker 1: access through the CIA. I think I've talked about this before,
Speaker 1: way way back. But top secret, by the way, does
Speaker 1: not mean you automatically have access to everything that's classified
Speaker 1: top secret right spot on intelligence at that level is
Speaker 1: often what they call compartmentalized altely. Yeah, so you have
Speaker 1: access to one specific branch, but anything outside of that
Speaker 1: you don't. So you may be able to go to
Speaker 1: the very furthest links in that branch, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you have access to everything. It doesn't mean, for instance,
Speaker 1: So then just to illustrate this, the c I a pilot.
Speaker 1: Let's call him Mr. Smith because that's not a sketchy name,
Speaker 1: that's perfect. Mr Smith might be They call it being
Speaker 1: read onto a program, So Mr Smith might be read
Speaker 1: onto a program for a particular plane, or even something
Speaker 1: as small as just a particular engine or design of
Speaker 1: a plane. Everything else about that is a mystery, and
Speaker 1: it is understood that he is not even supposed to
Speaker 1: pretend that he thought of asking everyone who was working
Speaker 1: at VERA fifty one, whether you're a pilot or an engineer,
Speaker 1: you were only really allowed to know about whatever it
Speaker 1: was your specific project was was concerned with, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: even if you're in the private industry, which also was
Speaker 1: involved with this. A couple of people are familiar with
Speaker 1: this story. You're probably waiting in there saying, Jonathan Ben Sure,
Speaker 1: the CIA, the Air Force, but why aren't you talking
Speaker 1: about the people who actually built the planes. So you're
Speaker 1: talking about Lockheed hold On one. So Lockheed is a
Speaker 1: military contractor among other things, but they do a lot
Speaker 1: of work with the United States military, and so Lockheed
Speaker 1: was going to be the company that was largely responsible
Speaker 1: for building the planes that we're going to be tested
Speaker 1: at Area fifty one. So when we get down to
Speaker 1: this point where the CIA is ready to find a
Speaker 1: site for this, they work with Lockheed And there is
Speaker 1: a designer at Lockeed who is absolutely famous in the
Speaker 1: spy world, Clarence Kelly Johnson. Yeah, it's you if you've
Speaker 1: heard some of the stories about this stuff. Is definitely
Speaker 1: famous in the spy world. But he is a I
Speaker 1: think we're a family show here, so I'll just say
Speaker 1: he is a gosh darn good designer. Absolutely. Yeah. As
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, he's the top dog at Lockey.
Speaker 1: Jonathan earlier mentioned the YouTube spy playing that is our
Speaker 1: boy Kelly. Yeah. He also ended up largely defining skunk
Speaker 1: Works at Lockeed, and we've done an episode on Tech
Speaker 1: Stuff about skunk Works as well. Skunk Works now is
Speaker 1: just a general term that a lot of companies used
Speaker 1: to describe their secret R and D projects that aren't
Speaker 1: aren't meant for public consumption. This is stuff that is
Speaker 1: going to end up becoming part of products maybe five
Speaker 1: or ten years down the line, right, But that was
Speaker 1: defined at Lockeed. That was the top secret development lab
Speaker 1: where anyone outside of that lab was not aware of
Speaker 1: what was going on, and even people within the lab
Speaker 1: may only be aware of very small parts of what
Speaker 1: is going on. So uh, with you two and unk works. Obviously,
Speaker 1: he had already kind of developed this reputation of being
Speaker 1: the go to guy when it comes to this kind
Speaker 1: of thing. So the CIA consulted with him as well
Speaker 1: as some other military folks, and they started looking around. Now,
Speaker 1: Johnson had said that the facility needed to be remote
Speaker 1: enough to escape casual attention, so you couldn't have it
Speaker 1: close to any kind of metropolitan area or or settlement.
Speaker 1: Um it also had to be close enough to a
Speaker 1: major city so that you could get supplies for all
Speaker 1: the stuff you need in order to do the testing,
Speaker 1: the building and and all of that kind of stuff. Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of these vehicles were not actually constructed at
Speaker 1: Area fifty one. They'd be built in another facility and
Speaker 1: then would be transported Area fifty one for all the testing.
Speaker 1: But even so, like you have to get all the
Speaker 1: food there, you have to you know, all the all
Speaker 1: the basic the fuel that you would need, you would
Speaker 1: have to have all of that shipped to Area fifty
Speaker 1: one in some way. So there were a lot of
Speaker 1: logistics involved, which meant that it had to be far
Speaker 1: enough away from a city to avoid UH notice, but
Speaker 1: not so far as to make it impossible to get
Speaker 1: stuff there. It had to be inconvenient but not inaccessible.
Speaker 1: There's a Goldilocks zone here, Uh, sort of like in
Speaker 1: Star Trek where everybody's looking for an M class planet.
Speaker 1: That's a very good way of putting it. So as
Speaker 1: they were looking around, uh, there was a member on
Speaker 1: the search team named Colonel Osman Ritland who had actually
Speaker 1: trained at the gunnery school that had existed at Groom Lake,
Speaker 1: and so he said, hey, you know, there was this
Speaker 1: place that I had to work at when during World
Speaker 1: War Two that might be worth checking out. And so
Speaker 1: they ended up going there and as soon as Johnson
Speaker 1: saw it, he said that that was the perfect spot.
Speaker 1: It would mean that they would have to do obviously
Speaker 1: a lot of work to make it ready for it
Speaker 1: to actually be a test facility, but he said, this,
Speaker 1: this meets all the requirements I had in mind. So
Speaker 1: he called it Paradise Ranch, right, which, uh, you have
Speaker 1: a great note about this, Yeah, it says, uh, it's
Speaker 1: a little more attractive than quote site at jay into
Speaker 1: a former nuclear test area indo quote Uh. In fact,
Speaker 1: it wasn't even former, it was a current nuclear test area.
Speaker 1: There were times when the Atomic Energy Commission in later,
Speaker 1: the Nevada test site ended up having to uh evacuate
Speaker 1: Area fifty one because they were going to be doing
Speaker 1: some tests and it's possible that wind could carry radioactive
Speaker 1: particles over towards the facility. I mean, you win some,
Speaker 1: you lose some, right, Yeah. So the other term you
Speaker 1: could have used is desolate hell whole, but that also
Speaker 1: not so attractive if you're trying to get uh civilians
Speaker 1: interested in helping out. So they actually did employ civilians
Speaker 1: to help construct a right, Yeah, from us surrounding Las
Speaker 1: Vegas area and from Rachel, Nevada as well. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it meant it meant that people had to pass some
Speaker 1: pretty stringent background checks, and they had to sign silence oaths.
Speaker 1: And for the most part, people have been really good
Speaker 1: at keeping those oaths. I mean, they're only been a
Speaker 1: few people who have ever talked about Area fifty one,
Speaker 1: which is pretty amazing because we talked about how it's
Speaker 1: really hard to keep secrets, especially in that that difficulty
Speaker 1: increases exponentially the more people involved with the secret. But
Speaker 1: in this in this part too, it's important for us
Speaker 1: to remember that even the people who had signed the
Speaker 1: secrets didn't really have that much access for me. They were.
Speaker 1: They were limited by necessity, which meant that even first
Speaker 1: of all, if you were to communicate outside of area
Speaker 1: fifty one, it would very quickly become obvious who was
Speaker 1: talking because it would all be dependent upon what they knew.
Speaker 1: So if you were talking about stuff that you knew
Speaker 1: but you didn't know other things, that narrows down that
Speaker 1: list of suspects, and there could be some pretty serious penalties.
Speaker 1: We're talking like scary, scary penalties that could go against
Speaker 1: you if you were to spell the beans and those people. Also,
Speaker 1: this is a side note, but I think this is
Speaker 1: a illustrative of the kind of scrutiny that these folks
Speaker 1: were under. Afterwards, The I R. S UH keeps a
Speaker 1: tab for on these people afterward to verify that they're
Speaker 1: not suddenly coming into inexplicable amounts of income, to make
Speaker 1: sure that they're not right. Even though if you, I mean,
Speaker 1: even though, if you think about it, man, those secrets
Speaker 1: I'm air quoting so hard here, folks. Those secrets would
Speaker 1: be things like, um, I was paid to drive a
Speaker 1: truck from Rachel to this location drop off fuel right,
Speaker 1: and and I didn't you know there were three gates.
Speaker 1: I got into one or something like that. Um, and
Speaker 1: that's you know, that's for sake of example. I don't
Speaker 1: know if there was a number of tiered gates. Quote,
Speaker 1: don't come after us. We have not been there, nor
Speaker 1: have we tried to look. Um. So the Yeah, during
Speaker 1: the lifetime of the the test site, which again bordered
Speaker 1: Are one, it was pretty active. They did a hundred
Speaker 1: and five above ground explosions and more than eight hundred
Speaker 1: underground explosions. They would do their last test in nine two,
Speaker 1: So this was kind of a just a fact of
Speaker 1: life at Area fifty one, is that nuclear testing was
Speaker 1: going on. I mean several miles away. I don't want
Speaker 1: to give the implication that it was like just outside
Speaker 1: the gates, but it was certainly close enough for it
Speaker 1: to be concerned. Yeah. Because and also a lot of
Speaker 1: people are probably surprised to hear that that continued until
Speaker 1: nineteen two. So, you know, most people will place the
Speaker 1: end of the Cold War in the late eighties. But
Speaker 1: this doesn't mean that the testing would stop completely. Because, uh,
Speaker 1: just as a Cold war has kind of a hazy
Speaker 1: conflict zone, it also has a hazy beginning and end.
Speaker 1: Whereas we can trace World War Two with some concrete dates, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, if nothing else, so you can go with
Speaker 1: the declaration of war and the treaties that ended it.
Speaker 1: But when you get down to this, you also have
Speaker 1: the first acknowledgement that there was actually something there, which
Speaker 1: comes in a booklet that the Atomic Energy Commission put
Speaker 1: outs that was titled Background on Nevada Nuclear Tests, and
Speaker 1: it came out in nineteen fifty seven, and it mentions
Speaker 1: a facility at Groom Lake. But in that one it's
Speaker 1: called the Watertown Project and that it was meant to
Speaker 1: study the weather. And ladies and gentlemen remember that last
Speaker 1: fact because it comes into play later. Right. In two episodes,
Speaker 1: we will cover the the weather part of the mythology
Speaker 1: of Area fifty one. It's interesting, though, because it gives
Speaker 1: you yet another name for this place. You know, I
Speaker 1: tend to call it Area fifty one when I mentioned
Speaker 1: it to other folks, I usually say Groom Lake because
Speaker 1: that's the official designation. But Area fifty one, being probably
Speaker 1: the popular term, is the one that I tend to
Speaker 1: say in this in my notes here. Yeah, Area fifty
Speaker 1: one is sort of the street name for Groom Lake nickname,
Speaker 1: but there's uh. I think one thing that we should
Speaker 1: talk about real quick is the nature of secrecy, because
Speaker 1: we we mentioned a little bit about how people who
Speaker 1: are helping, even in a small way, had things that
Speaker 1: are essentially gag orders for life, and again that this
Speaker 1: comes under the curtain of national security or the purview rather,
Speaker 1: and which gives the the acting government agencies tremendous powers
Speaker 1: in pursuit of that goal. So one of the big
Speaker 1: questions is, you know, if Area fifty one was first
Speaker 1: publicly acknowledged they'll be under another name in nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 1: then clearly the people at least in Rachel, Nevada, knew
Speaker 1: something was there, just like the people uh in the
Speaker 1: town surrounding oak Ridge knew something was there. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: the fact that you had people commuting in from places
Speaker 1: like Las Vegas or from California who are flying in
Speaker 1: the struction crews who are coming in to build out
Speaker 1: the facility meant that there's some folks who know that
Speaker 1: something is going on. They may not know the full
Speaker 1: extent of what the purposes. But it's what's really interesting
Speaker 1: is that a lot of the documents that have come
Speaker 1: out since then, most of them avoid naming the facility
Speaker 1: at all, or the name has been redacted, it's been
Speaker 1: blacked out. Um, And a lot of the information I've
Speaker 1: read has suggested that in the two or three times
Speaker 1: that it hasn't been that it's been in an official document,
Speaker 1: they think that it was an oversight that someone had
Speaker 1: failed to black it out exactly. Yeah, they were like,
Speaker 1: do you have another sharpie? And no one's gonna be so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny that the only reason why we really have
Speaker 1: a lot of information on it at all is because
Speaker 1: it could just have been an oversight from someone who
Speaker 1: failed to mark that part out. Thank you for being
Speaker 1: in a hurry at work, uh, the Uncle Sam employees.
Speaker 1: But but with this idea about privacy, one of the
Speaker 1: big questions is, well, of course we know it's near
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, right, Las Vegas at this point already big
Speaker 1: airport hub. Right, So so how do they keep these
Speaker 1: planes from figuring out what's going on? Yeah, they ended
Speaker 1: up creating a restricted air zone where not even military
Speaker 1: aircraft were allowed to pass through without authorization. And by
Speaker 1: authorization I usually mean that the military aircraft probably took
Speaker 1: off from Area fifty one went on some sort of
Speaker 1: test flight which could go outside the restricted airspace, but
Speaker 1: then we'd be allowed to come back in if it
Speaker 1: were any other military flight. Let's say it's a training
Speaker 1: exercise from Nellis or something along those lines. They expressly
Speaker 1: were told they could not fly through this particular zone,
Speaker 1: which originally was five by nine nautical miles, which is
Speaker 1: about nine by seventeen kilometers, and the UH it went
Speaker 1: all the way up to space. So not the time.
Speaker 1: Your commercial aircraft tended to fly at an altitude of
Speaker 1: around twenty feet, and your military aircraft might go up
Speaker 1: to forty feet, but we're talking spy planes that were
Speaker 1: designed to fly at sixty ft or higher. So these
Speaker 1: altitudes meant that, you know, you didn't want aircraft coming
Speaker 1: in and seeing something flying above them. They could actually
Speaker 1: have a pretty good view of that. In fact, that
Speaker 1: did happen quite a few times, which lent UH some
Speaker 1: It ended up being not as big an issue because
Speaker 1: a lot of people assumed it was something otherworldly that
Speaker 1: they were seeing. Right. Yes, and this this is one
Speaker 1: of the big facts that later will later we'll see
Speaker 1: UM provides an explanation to some of this because at
Speaker 1: this time, for people surrounding the area right, who were
Speaker 1: just you know, just your regular civilians. They would they
Speaker 1: would eventually turn to one another and say, what the
Speaker 1: heck is going on up there? Did you see that? Well,
Speaker 1: especially since a lot of these test flights took place
Speaker 1: at night, so instead of being able to actually see
Speaker 1: an aircraft, all you see are the lights. And some
Speaker 1: of these aircraft were designed to travel at remarkable speeds,
Speaker 1: particularly compared against the state of the art aircraft in
Speaker 1: other fields, like a commercial aircraft could not hope to
Speaker 1: keep up with some of the Some of these were
Speaker 1: going mock three. I mean we're talking supersonic speeds here,
Speaker 1: and at that speed, seeing a light travel that quickly
Speaker 1: could be a real head scratcher if you didn't know that.
Speaker 1: In fact, this was a spy plane developed by the
Speaker 1: United States government, right. And that's how these things, that's
Speaker 1: how these things can evolve. Just imagine if you will,
Speaker 1: and this is hypothetical and ex airline pilot saying well,
Speaker 1: I flew planes, or a World War Two veteran saying,
Speaker 1: you know, I was a pilot in the Pacific theater
Speaker 1: and there is no earthly craft that could do this.
Speaker 1: So that's where we see people making the leap and
Speaker 1: again in the absence of transparency, going with what they
Speaker 1: think is the I want to say, the most probable idea,
Speaker 1: but really it's the most exciting and the coolest. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's one of those things where if you can't
Speaker 1: conceive of people being able to accomplish that, then what
Speaker 1: else could it be? Right? So it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where you think, I have never in my life
Speaker 1: traveled in a vehicle that is capable of moving at
Speaker 1: that speed. I don't know of anything that humans have
Speaker 1: built that could do it. Then you start saying, well,
Speaker 1: if humans didn't build it, who did? And then you
Speaker 1: go to the little gray men or a little green men? Right,
Speaker 1: And it's weird because we you know, if I could
Speaker 1: do a little bit of a sidebar here, man. We
Speaker 1: see this kind of reasoning pop up throughout history, right, yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like no one could build the pyramids because look at
Speaker 1: how big they are. There's no way they have the technology. Therefore,
Speaker 1: aliens had to do it right exactly, And in a
Speaker 1: lot of times that situation wation is bound up in
Speaker 1: assumptions about human potential. Absolutely, and we don't want to
Speaker 1: we don't want to take away from right, now the
Speaker 1: frankly astonishing and extraordinary things that human beings were doing
Speaker 1: at Groom Late. Yeah, the engineering was phenomenal. So that's
Speaker 1: relatively small restricted airspace I talked about. By nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: two when they started working on other projects besides the
Speaker 1: U two spy plane, which again wasn't developed at Groom Lake,
Speaker 1: but it was. It was tested there quite a bit. Um.
Speaker 1: They would expand it to an area of twenty two
Speaker 1: by twenty nautical miles which is forty one by thirty
Speaker 1: seven kilometers, and it became known as Groom Box or
Speaker 1: just the box. That you were not allowed to enter
Speaker 1: the box unless you were expressly told to. So there
Speaker 1: were a few times where pilots might accidentally or perhaps
Speaker 1: cheekily skirt the box and we're told in no uncertain
Speaker 1: terms to get the heck out of it before they
Speaker 1: might be fired upon. Yeah. Yeah, like be forced to
Speaker 1: the ground or fired upon. I mean, we're this serious business.
Speaker 1: So the first spy plane they started to really work
Speaker 1: on at Groom Lake after the U two was the
Speaker 1: A twelve. You're gonna get a lot of letters numbers
Speaker 1: in these episodes. Um, this was part of Project ox Cart.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen sixty two, the first A twelve spy
Speaker 1: plane arrives at Groom Lake and it wouldn't be until
Speaker 1: I think the following year that CIA pilots would actually
Speaker 1: be able to fly it. So it had been at
Speaker 1: Groom Lake for about a year before it was being
Speaker 1: flown in tests. So it was meant to be a
Speaker 1: more capable spy plane than the U two. And it's
Speaker 1: major difference was that it traveled way faster, right, and
Speaker 1: this this was I mean, clearly there's an advantage there,
Speaker 1: but also uh, while it was traveling faster, it was
Speaker 1: reducing the footprint that it leaves on a radar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it is partly to try and find a way
Speaker 1: because the YouTube has very very wide wings, right, It's
Speaker 1: it's very long and very wide. It's also from why
Speaker 1: I understand a true bear to fly like it's it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be one of the hardest planes to fly
Speaker 1: in land. Yeah. I like that you added and land.
Speaker 1: That's a really good point because it was built for
Speaker 1: the specs for which was built, and the expectations of
Speaker 1: this plane are in some ways contradictory to what makes
Speaker 1: a good plane. Yeah, it made it possible to fly
Speaker 1: it at incredibly high altitudes, which was important for the
Speaker 1: spying purposes and also just to evade UM things like
Speaker 1: like missile fire. Although what was happening was missile technology
Speaker 1: was catching up to aircraft technology, which was again the
Speaker 1: reason why they had to start developing things like the
Speaker 1: A twelve. So the ox Cart program required the Groom
Speaker 1: Lake facility to expand and include more facilities just for
Speaker 1: military and civilians alike. So it had to had to
Speaker 1: have more buildings, and that means you have to hire
Speaker 1: construction crews and figure out what you're gonna do. Uh.
Speaker 1: The A twelve also needed a longer and stronger runway
Speaker 1: than what was that Groom Lake, so they had to
Speaker 1: reinforce the existing UM runway and extend it out further
Speaker 1: or else this plane would not be able to take
Speaker 1: off in land. So cleared construction workers, these are civilians,
Speaker 1: they would take exactly, they would take either a C
Speaker 1: forty seven out of Burbank, California, or a D eight
Speaker 1: teen at a Las Vegas. So both of those planes
Speaker 1: were military transport aircraft, and uh, the secrecy around those
Speaker 1: aircraft fueled the rumors and suspicion about what was going
Speaker 1: on at Groom Lake for years, because you have these
Speaker 1: aircraft lining up at various airports and there'd be no designation,
Speaker 1: like you had to know about it in order to
Speaker 1: be able to get on it and be cleared for it,
Speaker 1: which meant that if you were paying attention, just as
Speaker 1: a commuter going through these air airports, you think, what's
Speaker 1: going on over there? Yeah, there's no there's no indication
Speaker 1: of what's happening here. And they weren't flown back immediately either, right,
Speaker 1: They weren't doing this every day because that's just not
Speaker 1: that's just not uh, you know, efficient. So what they
Speaker 1: had to do was build some some uh like sleeping
Speaker 1: facilities essentially trailers originally out at Groom Lake, and people
Speaker 1: would spend the week there and then over the At
Speaker 1: the end of the week they could fly back and
Speaker 1: go home, but for the duration of the week they
Speaker 1: would be at the facility, you know, pretty much cut
Speaker 1: off from the world, working on this stuff. And you
Speaker 1: have a great side note that I thought was fascinating.
Speaker 1: This is something that I did not know. So you're
Speaker 1: talking about how in Nevada, if you work forty eight
Speaker 1: hours or longer in the state for any given project,
Speaker 1: you are required by law to have your name recorded,
Speaker 1: so that you would have to show up on a
Speaker 1: state document somewhere. Well, the folks over Area fifty one,
Speaker 1: the CIA in particular, didn't really like that idea too
Speaker 1: much because in theory, if you got hold of that
Speaker 1: list and you made you cross reference and you figured
Speaker 1: out where everybody was from what companies they worked for,
Speaker 1: you could then start to figure out weight based upon
Speaker 1: what this company does. I have an idea of what's
Speaker 1: going on at this secret facility that they're going to
Speaker 1: uh in Nevada that you know. I know they're going
Speaker 1: there because their names are showing up on the state list. So,
Speaker 1: again out of the concern for national security, they had
Speaker 1: to figure out a way, well, how do we keep
Speaker 1: people's names off this list, and how do we do
Speaker 1: it so it's legal, because if you start doing illegal
Speaker 1: things and that catches up to you, it's the same problem.
Speaker 1: So they say, ha ha, we found a loophole. It
Speaker 1: turns out that government workers were exempt from this forty
Speaker 1: eight hour work rule in Nevada. If you work for
Speaker 1: the government, you did not have to have your name recorded.
Speaker 1: So e re single person who worked on that construction
Speaker 1: crew became listed as a government consultant. Everyone became a
Speaker 1: government consultant for the purposes of working at Area fifty one,
Speaker 1: which is a lot better than some of the alternatives,
Speaker 1: which would just be not having a job. But also
Speaker 1: it's very it's it's strange when you think about it,
Speaker 1: because when we say construction, we also mean like the caterers. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: there are stories that that the food at Area fifty
Speaker 1: one was actually quite good. They said that they would
Speaker 1: fly down occasionally, uh a chef from Las Vegas who
Speaker 1: would cook, which means that someone like chefs in Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: had to sign secrecy oaths so that they could go there. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: when you were when you were going there, you might
Speaker 1: have a lot of secrecy, not just the fact that
Speaker 1: you know you're flying on a plane that's not listed
Speaker 1: anywhere else where you're going. You might you might be
Speaker 1: put into a transport that has curtain is all along it,
Speaker 1: so you don't get a real view of what's going on.
Speaker 1: All the different buildings are essentially hidden from view from
Speaker 1: each other, so you're not gonna be able to look
Speaker 1: in and see what people are working on. So it's
Speaker 1: it's really. I mean like there were times where people
Speaker 1: were acquired to stay in their office while an aircraft
Speaker 1: was being wheeled either in or out of a hangar
Speaker 1: because they weren't allowed to see that aircraft. Which again
Speaker 1: makes sense because in retrospect as paranoid as this sounds
Speaker 1: in retrospect, we know, uh a little bit about the
Speaker 1: extent of KGBS UH spine in the United States. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there have been KGBS KGB spies that have infiltrated the
Speaker 1: CIA and the FBI. I mean yeah, the their their
Speaker 1: entire stories, fascinating stories about people who were able to
Speaker 1: do that, double agents and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: And and with that in mind, you know, yeah, it
Speaker 1: sounds paranoid. But if you don't take these incredible precautions,
Speaker 1: you set yourself up. And now these precautions are oh
Speaker 1: I never get to do this catchphrase now more than ever,
Speaker 1: the the government was saying to various departments of the government.
Speaker 1: Departments were saying to one another, we have to have
Speaker 1: this secrecy because business a groom Lake is booming. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they ended up uh for some of the buildings. You know,
Speaker 1: you're trying to you have a black budget, which it's
Speaker 1: hard to tell where that money is gonna go. A
Speaker 1: lot of ways. It appears to be a blank check. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they were still being pretty careful. I mean, they
Speaker 1: didn't just build state of the art facilities. It's not
Speaker 1: like if you were to go to Area fifty one,
Speaker 1: especially if you went to Area fifty one back in
Speaker 1: nine five or so, It's not like you were going
Speaker 1: to walk into a super awesome, state of the art facility.
Speaker 1: They bought surplus buildings from the Navy. They had Navy
Speaker 1: hangars and Navy surplus housing buildings that had been disassembled,
Speaker 1: packed into cargo planes, are on on trucks shipped out
Speaker 1: to Groom Lake, and then reassembled on the site. So
Speaker 1: we're not talking like yeah, no, they were not cushy accommodations.
Speaker 1: So getting back to the ox Cart aircraft, I have
Speaker 1: an account of a test flight that explains how quick
Speaker 1: quickly this thing traveled and and sort of the extent
Speaker 1: of the test flight. So remember I said, these test
Speaker 1: aircraft weren't confined to that restricted airspace. They could actually
Speaker 1: leave that restricted airspace depending upon the actual requirements of
Speaker 1: the test. So an impressive demonstration of the ox carts
Speaker 1: capability occurred on twenty one December nineteen sixty six, when
Speaker 1: lockeed test pilot Bill Parks, flew ten thousand statute miles
Speaker 1: in six hours. The aircraft left the test area in
Speaker 1: Nevada and flew northward over Yellowstone National Park, thence eastward
Speaker 1: to Bismarck, North Dakota, and onto Duluth, Minnesota. It then
Speaker 1: turned south and passed Atlanta en route to Tampa, Florida,
Speaker 1: then northwest to Portland, Oregon, then southwest to Nevada again.
Speaker 1: The flight turned eastward, passing Denver and St. Louis, turning
Speaker 1: around at Knoxville, Tennessee. It passed Memphis in the home
Speaker 1: stretch back to Nevada. This flight established a record unapproachable
Speaker 1: by any other aircraft. It began at about the same
Speaker 1: time a typical government employee starts his work day and
Speaker 1: ended two hours before his quitting time. So that's a
Speaker 1: pretty interesting tour of the United States right there. That
Speaker 1: was literally a whirlwind tour. Yeah. No, the fact that
Speaker 1: it goes to just about everywhere in the US besides
Speaker 1: the northeast right or the the you know, the not Alaska,
Speaker 1: Hawaii obviously, but yeah, it's pretty impressive. So during the
Speaker 1: whole history of the twelve, only thirteen were built, and
Speaker 1: out of those thirteen, four crashed in some sort of
Speaker 1: case or another. Um So that was that it was
Speaker 1: ever meant to be this is going to be the
Speaker 1: replacement You two. It was more like we are going
Speaker 1: to test all of these technologies that we've developed with
Speaker 1: this plane and then see which ones work best, and
Speaker 1: that those will inform the design of what will become
Speaker 1: the You two successor. Right. So one important part for
Speaker 1: us to remember about that is that this means and
Speaker 1: the four that crashed, as well as the thirteen total
Speaker 1: that we're built, the remaining nine are all going to
Speaker 1: be a little bit different, their variations on a theme
Speaker 1: with further improvements. Absolutely, yeah, it's not like they are
Speaker 1: cookie cutter designs that are coming out of this. Now
Speaker 1: we've got a lot more to say about Area fifty
Speaker 1: one and what went on there, including some interesting early
Speaker 1: work in unmanned vehicles, and it might surprise you to
Speaker 1: learn how how early on in this process we're talking about.
Speaker 1: So I urge you to tune in for our next
Speaker 1: episode where we will continue this to discussion. Also, you
Speaker 1: should know that if you haven't already started to follow
Speaker 1: ben overt stuff they Don't want you to Know. He
Speaker 1: and Matt cover lots of different topics that involve everything
Speaker 1: from various theories about what's really going on to UH
Speaker 1: to things like just you know, the spy stuff we're
Speaker 1: talking about. That's like your bread and butter for a
Speaker 1: lot of your episodes. Thank you. Yeah, definitely go check
Speaker 1: them out. And if you want to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us, our handle at Twitter and Facebook and Tumbler
Speaker 1: is tech stuff hs W, or you can drop me
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