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

Lying practically in the center of Australia, sitting out among the dry and dusty forbidding landscape around 11 miles from the remote desert outpost town of Alice Springs, is the somewhat jarring sight of an installation of squat buildings and satellite dishes ensconced within odd-looking white balls dotting the area, called radomes. Sitting out in this remote, inhospitable land of sun scorched earth as it is, it is easy to conjure up the image that this is a mysterious base on some alien world, but it is in fact a top secret joint American-Australian run military installation officially called the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap (JDFPG), or more commonly just Pine Gap, also known by its unclassified cover name RAINFALL. Although its official function is to track and monitor satellites, the isolated location out in the middle of nowhere and the complete secrecy surrounding it have made sure that this place has attracted plenty of conspiracies and tales of secret experiments, UFOs, and all manner of strangeness.

The base itself began operations in 1970, established by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in conjunction with the Australian government. Originally described as a facility for “space research,” its main purpose, or at least what they tell us, is satellite surveillance, its location and remote moonscape of an area perfect for watching vast expanses of the skies, as well as hiding from any spy ships passing in international waters that might try intercept the signals from its array of spherical tracking systems. Since the Cold War it has also been utilized as a missile detection and tracking station, as well as for intercepting and recording weapons and communications signals from hostile nations such as North Korea. The base employs around 1,000 people, sprawls out over at least 20,000 square meters of floor space, and houses a massive expanse of supercomputers and a spider web of tunnels beneath it all, however, its exact layout and the extent of its subterranean facilities are hidden behind a wall of classified top secrecy. Since it is a secret, reclusive desert base completely off limits to outsiders, patrolled by armed security and surrounded by fences generously festooned with “Keep Out” signs, it is perhaps no surprise that over the years strange tales have gravitated towards Pine Gap, ranging from the weird to the totally outlandish.

Pine Gap

Perhaps the most well-known, publicized, and plausible stories surrounding the facility are that it has been instrumental in coordinating and carrying out lethal drone strikes in warzones such as Afghanistan, rumors which angered many Australians who did not want to be complicit in illegal targeted strikes and objected to having that blood on their hands. The accusations of Pine Gap being used to coordinate these killer drone strikes have been categorically denied by military officials for years, even though declassified NSA documents have shown that similar facilities, such as Menwith Hill Station in the UK, have indeed been used for launching targeted drone strike missions, so these documents heavily suggest that Pine Gap, with its cutting edge technology, is also used for these purposes. There has been some confirmation in that the NSA has admitted to using Pine Gap for intelligence sharing and for missions concerning the war on terror, whatever that may entail.

Similarly nefarious and unethical are claims made by famed whistleblower Edward Snowden, who has said that Pine Gap is heavily used for intercepting communications not only from enemies of the state, but also from private communications over phone, emails and faxes, essentially allowing the military to eavesdrop and spy on anyone in the world at any time, monitoring everyone at all times. Making this more ominous still is that there have been claimed to be at least two areas of the base that are completely off-limits to Australian personnel. Of course both the governments of Australia and the United States dismiss all of these allegations, but still they persist. After all, that the government would be involved with this will probably be not that big a stretch of the imagination for many, yet this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Pine Gap, and other claims start to veer off into the bizarre. Yes, I’m talking about UFOs and aliens.

Pine Gap has for years been ground zero for all sorts of claims of UFO activity in and around the base. It has gained a reputation as a hotspot of UFO sightings, and has even gained the reputation as “Australia’s Area 51,” furthering its cred as a decidedly oddball place. One strange type of report that has popped up frequently is that of all the hidden camouflaged doors in the surrounding area of the base that strange flying craft come and go through. In as early as 1980 there was a report from two police officers that were in the vicinity helping with a search for a missing child, combing through the desert scrub when right in front of them a door opened in the ground to disgorge several bizarre craft described as “flying bathtubs.” These mysterious objects then flew across the base to enter some sort of portal that appeared in the hills not far away, after which it and the craft vanished. A similar report occurred in 1989, when three hunters saw a hidden door open in the hillside they were on, from which emerged a large metallic gray disc. The door then closed to blend perfectly into the environment as if it never existed. This flying object then reportedly silently flew out across the base to hover right above it before shooting straight up in the sky at breathtaking speed.

Other strange UFO activity has been reported from the base as well. Back in 1975 the pilot and passengers of a private plane flying not far from Pine Gap witnessed a huge white light take off from the base and shoot off into the distance at speeds far exceeding a normal aircraft. Interestingly, when they tried to file a report of the sighting they were told in no uncertain terms to forget what they had seen. Perhaps even stranger than this was an incident that supposedly happened in 1984, when a group of five UFO watchers were staking out the area after apparently receiving an anonymous tip that something big was going to go down at the base, and it seems they would not be disappointed. They claim that there was a sudden flurry of activity by personnel at the base, after which a beam of light shot into the sky and formed some sort of cloud-like portal, from which flew five UFOs that flew around the base shooting down green pillars of light at the domed radomes for several minutes before entering the cloud again and vanishing into thin air. There have indeed been numerous other reports of UFOs hovering over the radomes, and these domed radar installations seem to be of particular interest to these mystery craft.

The mention of the portal in this case fits in very well with some of the other off-the-wall conspiracies about the Pine Gap base. It has long been rumored that among the many secret experiments allegedly carried out at the base are those concerned with opening up doorways to other planets and even other dimensions. Other experiments said to happen at the base are those involving time travel, teleportation, reverse engineering alien technology, controlling the weather, and creating super soldiers. You name it, there has probably been a conspiracy claiming that it is an experiment being carried out at Pine Gap. It is hard to know just how many of these rumors are true and how much of it is just conspiracy theory nonsense, but considering that it is such a top secret place that no one can get near, out in the middle of a forsaken wasteland, it is not hard to see why it has managed to attract so much weirdness. What is with this place? We will perhaps never know what really goes on there, but as long as something is going on there the stories will likely continue to swirl, and if you want tales of UFOs, weird experiments, and high strangeness, you can do worse than Pine Gap.

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Over the years (decades, in fact) a number of people have come forward claiming that alien technology, alien bodies, and even live ETs, are secretly held out at Area 51 – and maybe even deep underground the facility itself. The most well-known such figure is Bob Lazar. He scarcely needs an introduction. Also, there is Charles Hall. He claims knowledge of one particular type of alien at Area 51 that have become known as the “Tall Whites.” As their title makes clear, in appearance they are far removed from the dwarfish Greys. According to Hall, back in 1964 he was working at Nellis Air Force Base, a facility inextricably tied to Area 51 and its secret programs of numerous kinds. There is absolutely no doubt at all that Area 51 would not have attained the high degree of mystique and mystery that it has without the input of the aforementioned Bob Lazar. He, more than anyone else, thrust both the base and the name solidly into the public domain. It should be noted, though, there were others who knew something of the tales of aliens at Area 51, and that have added to the claims of Lazar.

One of those people, said George Knapp – a highly-respected, long-time journalist in Las Vegas, Nevada – was a man named Roy Byrum; he provided tax-based services to some of the employees at Area 51 from 1976 to 1979. Several of Byrum’s clients quietly told him what they knew of the alien craft held at Area 51, and of how massive funding for the UFO programs was being siphoned from other government programs, as a means to hide the paper-trail and the money. After sharing this information with journalist George Knapp, Byrum was leaned on by government agents who paid him a less than friendly visit.

Also in the 1970s, several employees of a company called Holmes & Narver Corporation revealed certain data on Area 51’s alien angle, said George Knapp. It’s a company that provides engineering and construction services. One of the sources – and a former employee of Holmes & Narver – was a woman who worked in the Clark County court system and who was ready to speak with journalist George Knapp. That was quickly nixed, though, when the woman’s life was threatened. As was that of her family. Also pre-Lazar, there is the story of Doug Schroeder, an electrical engineer who confided in Las Vegas TV producer Bob Patrick about what he was told was going on at Area 51. Namely, the reverse-engineering of alien craft and extraterrestrial technologies. Although, Schroeder stressed that, in terms of actually flying the craft, not a great deal at all had been achieved. George Knapp noted that in 1991 Schroeder “died in somewhat mysterious circumstances.”

You may buy into the stories of aliens (dead or alive) out at Area 51. Or, you just might suspect the stories could have been concocted by U.S. Intelligence to try and freak the Soviets – during the Cold War – into thinking that we really do have extraterrestrial technology, when we actually don’t. It’s interesting to note that the tales concerning Byrum and Schroeder both dated from the 1970s. That was the very same time-frame when the CIA – and other U.S. agencies, too – were concerned that certain American ufologists were being groomed for secret work by none other than the KGB. Let’s take a closer look at all of this. In the 1990s, Gerald K. Haines – in his position as the historian of the National Reconnaissance Office – wrote a paper titled “CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90.” It’s now in the public domain, thanks to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. It can be read at the CIA’s website. Haines’ paper detailed the history of how, and why, the CIA became interested and involved in the phenomenon of UFOs. Although Haines’ study covered a period of more than forty years, I will bring your attention to one particular section of his paper. It’s focused on the 1970s.

Haines wrote that CIA officials “…looked at the UFO problem to determine what UFO sightings might tell them about Soviet progress in rockets and missiles and reviewed its counterintelligence aspects.” The Soviets, then, in the 1970s, were camouflaging their secret rocket tests by spreading false and fantastic tales of UFOs. Haines also noted something that is absolutely key to this article: “Agency analysts from the Life Science Division of OSI [Office of Scientific Intelligence] and OSWR [Office of Scientific and Weapons Research] officially devoted a small amount of their time to issues relating to UFOs. These included counterintelligence concerns that the Soviets and the KGB were using U.S. citizens and UFO groups to obtain information on sensitive U.S. weapons development programs (such as the Stealth aircraft), the vulnerability of the U.S. air-defense network to penetration by foreign missiles mimicking UFOs, and evidence of Soviet advanced technology associated with UFO sightings [italics mine].”

What all of this tells us is that U.S. counterintelligence programs, Russian plots, and certain American Ufologists tied to KGB operations in the 1970s, were swirling around everywhere. Could it be that some (or all) of the 1970s-era stories concerning aliens at Area 51 – that I described above – were carefully seeded by U.S. Intelligence to (a) spread the “aliens at Area 51” scenario; (b) scare the Russians into thinking we have extraterrestrial technology; and (c) maybe, as a result, snare a couple of men from overseas named Ivan and Dimitri? ? Very possibly, yes.

Finally, if you want to learn more about the pre-Lazar accounts and cases that George Knapp secured, get a copy of George’s excellent paper, “Area 51, Bob Lazar, and Disinformation.” You can find it in the MUFON Symposium Proceedings of 1993.