UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

Over the course of the last couple of weeks, I’ve posted a number of article here at Mysterious Universe on Area 51. Now, it’s time to wrap things up with what we know and what we might think we know about the tales of the base. It has, for sure, been a winding and twisting story. And a highly conspiratorial one, too. It’s also a story filled with facts that may well be fiction, and tales that sound like fiction, but which just might be filled with incredible truths. Add to all of that, cloak-and-dagger characters who prefer to stay in the shadows, but who claim to know a great deal and occasionally reveal it, disinformation experts, counterintelligence personnel, and a host of figures who suggest that there really might be an extraterrestrial presence at Area 51, and what we have is a story that truly boggles the mind. Perhaps those in charge of Area 51 want our minds boggled. After all, a state of confusion might be the perfect way to keep people away from the truth and have them focused on conspiracies that may not actually be real. Let’s take a look at what we know for sure.

It is a fact that the origins of what eventually became Area 51 date back to the early years of the Second World War. The Nevada Test and Training Range soon came to fruition and planted the seeds for what would come in the mid-1950s: Area 51. Highly advanced aircraft, such as the U-2, the SR-71 Blackbird, the Stealth Fighter and the Stealth Bomber were all secretly test-flown from Area 51. Probably the near-legendary Aurora, too. In that sense, many might say, there is no doubt that Area 51 has a valid reason for keeping just about everything under wraps. Indeed, considering the fact that those aforementioned aircraft were being built, tested, and flown when the Cold War was still in place and the Soviet Union had still yet to fall, one can easily see why measures would be taken to ensure that the U.S. Government’s most advanced aircraft would be subject to incredible secrecy. But, is there just too much secrecy for a squadron or several of radical, futuristic aircraft? That depends on who’s version of the “facts” believe.

Air Force U-2

As we have seen, there is one thing – more than any other – that sets Area 51 apart from just about every other military or government facility in the United States: it’s the sheer extent of the government’s determination to make sure that absolutely nothing gets out of Area 51 and no one gets in. Of course, and particularly so in today’s climate of uncertainty and threats of nuclear attacks, everyone needs to be vigilant. And that includes everyone who works at Area 51, too. They are, when all is said and done, just like us, regular people with lives and families. The big difference, though, is that they know the reasons for so much secrecy and we don’t.

It would be hard – in fact, impossible – to find a military installation in the United States that protects its secrets to a greater degree than Area 51. People have been forced to leave their homes and their land – solely due to U.S. Government concerns and worries that those same people just might see something they shouldn’t see. Those who stray too close to portions of the Nevada desert that the staff of Area 51 would prefer to keep under wraps risk large fines, imprisonment and even death, and all in the name of national security. Aircraft are banned from flying close to or over Area 51. They can even be shot down out of the sky, if circumstances dictate and warrant such drastic action. When, in 1974, NASA’s astronauts on-board Skylab took an aerial photo of the base, all hell broke loose in the defense- and intelligence-based communities of the United States. The CIA and the Department of Defense quickly got involved. Major concerns were expressed about how on Earth (or, in this case, off it) such a thing could have happened. Secret files were created, most of which have never publicly surfaced. Motion-detector equipment peppers the landscape. Cameras are everywhere. Guards patrol the local roads for any perceived suspicious characters. Night-vision technology ensures that no-one can penetrate the base in the early hours of the morning.

The government practically refuses to acknowledge not just the existence of Area 51, but even its name. That same government refused to offer help on the 1996 movie Independence Day, and all because a substantial portion of the movie revolved around Area 51 and the 1947 incident at Roswell, New Mexico. All of the above is astonishing. No facility in the United States comes even close to the level of secrecy and paranoia that surrounds Area 51. Which brings up an important question: is all of this overwhelming secrecy just in place to protect next-generation after next-generation of aircraft? Or, are the rumors and the whispers true? You know the ones, of course: the claims that deeply hidden at Area 51 are the remains of the Roswell wreckage, recovered flying saucers, and alien corpses. Maybe, even living aliens are at the base, too.

Regardless of where you, me and everyone else stands on the matter of what goes on at Area 51, there can be no doubt that it is the UFO-driven rumors and revelations which attract so much attention. Certainly, there’s no doubt that it was Bob Lazar who, in the late 1980s, set the wheels in motion for the controversy to begin and for the media and the public to sit up and take notice. And, as we have seen, accounts relative to aliens and UFOs – all in relation to area 51 – abound, and have done so for decades. The so-called “alien interview” footage led many to believe that living aliens are housed somewhere at Area 51. It is, however, garbage. Boyd Bushman told incredible stories of alien life and Area 51 connections. Likely it too was garbage – or disinformation. But, it was Bob Lazar – more than anyone else – who defined the beliefs and suspicions, and who still defines those beliefs and suspicions.

We should note, though, that there are certain threads running through the tales of UFOs at Area 51 that should make us cautious of what we are told. Let’s not forget that Lazar told of how his mind may have been messed with – possibly using updated MK-Ultra-type technologies. Certain portions of his memories were wiped clean. He felt that his very brief glimpse of a small creature at S-4 may have been a staged event; an event designed to make him think that live extraterrestrials were hidden at the base, when they may not have been.

There can be no doubt that the alien angle of the history of Area 51 excites many. Maybe that’s what the government is counting on. After all, not even the power of all the military-, defense-, and intelligence-based agencies in the United States can prevent a few leaks of classified information. So, perhaps to keep eager Ufologists away from stumbling on legitimate covert programs concerned with new aircraft designs, next-generation weapons-systems, mind-control techniques and more of a down to earth nature, they swamp those same Ufologists with enticing tales of extraterrestrial conspiracies and interviews with a sickly creature from another world (that never was).

With the recent FOIA release of a list provided to Congress pertaining to the controversial Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), there has been a lot of resulting buzz about wormholes, warp drives, and other futuristic concepts pertaining to advanced physics.

Steven Aftergood with the Federation of American Scientists was one of the recipients of the new disclosure, which he posted on the FAS website. In an interview with Motherboard, Aftergood expressed some surprise that the Defense Intelligence Agency would have provided so little financial backing for such disproportionately far-out projects.

“I think anyone who looks at these titles will scratch their heads and wonder what on earth the Defense Intelligence Agency was thinking,” he said. “These are the kinds of topics you pursue when you have more money than you know what to do with.”

Most news outlets that have commented on the release have, as expected, gravitated toward its more sensational aspects. While there is little in the way of direct mention of UFOs in the small batch of documents, a number of physics papers and research studies pertaining to propulsion, cloaking, and other technologies are listed. One might presume such technologies—if they existed in ways that could be practically and efficiently implemented—would be required to account for some of the more compelling UFO observations spanning the last 75 years.

However, what few are talking about in relation to the little breadcrumbs that are finally beginning to appear in relation to AATIP is what it tells us not only about the scope of the program but also the motivations behind it… wherein there are a number of similarities to previous government UFO studies.

One minor detail—but an important one—is the inclusion of the word “and” between “Threat” and “Identification.” In other words, the implication of the new title as referenced by the DIA in their letter to Aftergood (Nick Pope and others received essentially identical FOIA information around the same time) entails Advanced Aerospace Threat AND Identification Program: hence, the objective is not so much “threat identification” as it is an assessment of aerospace-related threats and the identification of advanced aerospace technologies. Yes, it’s a minor point, but one worth noting.

In terms of the financing side of the equation, as Aftergood noted, “These are the kinds of topics you pursue when you have more money than you know what to do with.” The paltry $22 million that was appropriated for the program hardly foots that kind of bill, although the reasons for its allocation are fairly evident. One aspect has to do with the fact that the Congressmen involved with the project—Harry Reid (D, Nevada), the late Ted Stevens (R, Alaska) and the late Daniel Inouye (D, Hawaii)—all had a history of allocating earmarks for their constituencies in their home states.

U.S. Senator Harry Reid.

The other has to do with what the latest FOIA releases show: that the clear areas of focus of the “contract” (as it is referred to in the documents) are in technological areas which, presumably, may have applications for weapons systems or other advancements well outside mere threat assessment and identification of different varieties of “advanced aerospace.”

I recently spoke with Alejandro Rojas, a writer for Open Mindsand arguably one of the more fact-oriented reporters on the UFO subject today, about the new releases. He shared my view that the practical side of government UFO studies—having to do with financial incentives and other advantages a government agency might hope to glean from such investigation—is something that is often under-emphasized, if not overlooked entirely in light of the more sensational implications of unidentified aircraft or other phenomena.

“First of all we live in a world where you’ve gotta make money,” Rojas says. “Any research or scientific research project out there has to have an end game that means profits. And it’s rare that you get research in areas that don’t have that.

“Sometimes government does need to step in for that reason: corporations don’t see that they can make a profit off of the medicine. We’ve seen this even in cancer research, where they think, ‘we’re not sure we can make money off of this medicine, even though it may help people.’ So the government has to step in to fund that sort of research because its gotta make money.”

“It’s got to have a purpose; it’s got to have a benefit. It can’t be science for science’s sake. Unfortunately, that’s frustrating for scientists… Then you have to play the politics game.”

Journalist Alejandro Rojas at Devils Tower, Wyoming

(photo by the author).

Rojas and I also spoke about past government studies in relation to this, most notably the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book, and how it contrasts with the present AATIP program and its apparent areas of focus.

“In Project Blue Book they said they were researching potential threats caused by UFOs, essentially, and they determined there was no threat posed by the phenomenon,” Rojas said. “Which is interesting in itself because it does seem that that’s true. I mean, even with the Nimitz situation (see the U.S.S. Nimitz Incident, as recounted by pilot Dave Fravor) they’re chasing something around, but in none of the Blue Book cases does a threat seem to be posed.”

Rojas, who has spoken in the past with Luis Elizando, former head of the Pentagon study associated with AATIP, notes that Elizondo describes the ideology of the AATIP program slightly differently from its earlier government predecessors; specifically, the threat angle seems to come into play more prominently.

“However, what Elizondo has done is something different—and I don’t know if it’s him, or maybe Harry Reid and the group, you know, this was what they were doing—but Elizondo is very quick to point out… that anything unidentified constitutes a threat. Potentially, at least from their perspective, they have to consider every unknown a threat until we know otherwise. And I think that ideology is important because Blue Book closed when they determined this unidentified ‘whatever’ doesn’t seem to pose a threat. Elizondo is saying, ‘no, if you’re saying it’s unidentified, then by its nature it’s still a threat, from our perspective.”

“So it’s kind of justifying why we have to continue, even though Blue Book already happened. Blue Book determined arguably that there was unidentified craft… so what [Elizondo] is saying is that we can’t stop there–that if they’re unidentified, then we still need to consider them a threat, and that justifies us looking further into all of this.”

“There is a difference between the two programs in that manner,” Rojas concludes, underscoring the necessity for practical results from government UFO studies which seems to remain. “[AATIP] is more actively looking to produce some science or some potential other benefits in developing weapons from these identifications.”

Within this context, the AATIP program may be seen with at least some degree of greater clarity than before. It is a “contract”, as the recent DIA papers phrase it, which secured a limited amount of funding on behalf of Senators from three states based on a mutual interest they shared (and in the case of Harry Reid, which he shared with certain friends and constituents, namely Robert Bigelow). However, in order to obtain earmarks for such a program, its focus, as outlined in the recent DIA documents, clearly seems to have objectives which may have hope for producing scientific, strategic, or other incentives in the long term. The result appears to be a program that explores more practical areas of development and national security interest while facilitating some justification for the study of “unknowns” along the way, and on a budget that would have been considered pretty modest even decades ago.

None of this undermines the scope or objectives of the AATIP program, per se, although it is perhaps worthwhile to consider some of the details we have begun to glean about it that have less to do with its sensational elements and the mysterious phenomena associated with it.