Sunday, June 05, 2011

Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s TOP SECRET Military Base | A Review By Stanton Friedman

Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s TOP SECRET Military Base



By Stanton friedman
www.stantonfriedman.com
6-4-11


     I frankly cannot remember the last time a “UFO” book was published that received as much attention as did the publication in May of Annie Jacobsen’s “Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s TOP SECRET Military Base”. The book is a big one at 523 pages and was published by Little, Brown and Company. The last 133 pages are notes. I am listed as one of 45 secondary interviews along with investigative Journalist George Knapp, Norio Hayakawa and Robert Lazar. Strangely, what has received the most attention, despite the title, is the claim of a totally new explanation for the Roswell Incident.

Project MogulThere have, of course, been several official Roswell explanations put forth by the government, including a ”flying Saucer”; a weather balloon radar reflector combination; a Mogul balloon train and my favorite, to explain reports of alien bodies: Crash test dummies dropped all over New Mexico. Of course, none were dropped before 1953 and all were 6’ tall and weighed 175 pounds and were in USAF pilot uniforms. Unfortunately, this ridiculous explanation was uncritically accepted by the New York Times which also carried a favorable review of the new book.In stark contrast the Washington Post of June 3 carried a scathing review.

As the original civilian investigator of the Roswell Incident, I have been convinced, based on my own very extensive research, and on that of other serious investigators such as Don Berliner (we co authored “Crash at Corona: The Definitive study of the Roswell Incident”), Don Schmitt and Tom Carey’s “Witness to Roswell” and Don Schmitt’s and Kevin Randle’s Roswell books as well as research by Dennis Balthaser, Dr. David Rudiak and others, that the explanation best fit by the evidence is an alien spacecraft. Of course, the debunker explanation is always “ABA” or “Anything But Alien”.

Annie, apparently only supported by an anonymous source who worked at Area 51 for many years, claims that in reality what was recovered was basically a hoax: a flying wing aircraft designed by the German aircraft designers brothers Walter and Reimar Horten.

Horten Parabola
It was flown remotely somehow from Alaska containing 5 13 year old boys genetically modified by Dr. Josef Mengele (the Nazi angel of death at Auschwitz) by arrangement with Joseph Stalin. Stalin’s goal supposedly was to create a panic in the United States when this craft crashed, similar to what happened in response to the Orson Welles “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast in October 1938. People would interpret the deformed boys as aliens and there would be panic! Don’t laugh, she is very serious.

Anybody who recalls the radio broadcast knows it was presented as a live news broadcast in real time as people and buildings were supposedly being destroyed by strange Martian invaders. This was in New Jersey in one of the most densely populated areas of the USA. If the stories were believed, then there was certainly reason to panic. What could we do against such an attack? Of course, near Roswell there was no real time event, no reporters present, and no mention of killing or destruction. It was truly out in the boondocks. The Anonymous Source (AS) says the flying wing, with sort of a dome on top, was taken with the bodies, some of whom were alive, to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. Then a special area was created in the Nevada desert to which the bodies and the craft were brought in 1951 because the guys in OHIO had been unable to determine how the vehicle worked. It was named area 51 because of the year!! No evidence was provided except the story by AS..

General Nathan F TwiningIt should be noted that the Air Materiel Command under General Nathan Twining (who later became Chief of Staff of the Air Force and then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and was a member of the Majestic 12 group) had brought back literally tons of German Air Force research and development reports which they had translated. To say the least, it was very unlikely that the US couldn’t figure how the Horten Brothers flying Wing worked. It was made out of wood! Jack Northrop (with whom I spent some time years ago) had built flying wings and was the Godfather of the B-2. Annie says the craft could supposedly hover. It had 2 jet engines which would certainly have been noisy. Nobody has ever claimed the flying wings could hover. One could understand that Christopher Columbus in 1493 could not have back engineered a nuclear submarine.But nobody would have been fooled by a wooden flying wing.

I do recall that Joseph P. Farrell had a big book (“Roswell and the Reich: The Nazi Connection” -2010)claiming the Roswell saucer was advanced Nazi technology somehow shipped to Argentina and then flown to Roswell and the secrecy was because the USA did not want to admit that the Nazis were still going strong. One does have to ask, if the Nazis had perfected a truly advanced aircraft, why they didn’t use it in the war??


   
Nick Redfern’s “Body Snatchers in the Desert: The Horrible Truth at the Heart of the Roswell Mystery” (2005) claimed, again based on second hand information, that what crashed was really deformed experimental humans flying in a Japanese Fugo balloon carried aloft by a Horten brothers craft to perform radiation shielding experiments for the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion program (on which I worked for 3 years)! The secrecy was because we didn’t want to admit, after Nuremberg, that we were doing such inhumane experiments! AS seems to have combined all this fiction in one grandiose scheme.

Annie mentions that Walter Haut, the PR man at Roswell, brought the press release about the crash to a Roswell radio station KGFL and the Roswell Daily Record on July 8, 1947, and that it also appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle the next day. For some reason she seems unaware of the fact that it also appeared on July 8 in many many evening papers from Chicago West.

RAAF Captures Flying Saucer - The Roswell Daily Record
She then claims that three hours later she brought the new weather balloon press release to the station. That is nonsense. The 2nd press release was issued for General Roger Ramey, Chief of the 8th Air Force, based in Fort Worth, Texas.. a good ways from Roswell. She mentions that a statement by Walter testifying to seeing strange bodies was released after his death, but doesn’t reference the Carey/Schmitt book in which it appeared. She does mention “The Roswell Incident” by Berlitz and Moore, but none of the other books noted above. She does reference debunking books by Benson Saylor, Jim Oberg, Curtis Peeples.

She talks a lot about the CIA, but seems unaware that it was preceded by the Central Intelligence Group. Her lists include Blue Book Reports 1-12, which were progress reports, but doesn’t mention “Blue Book Special Report 14” which was comprehensive and included more than 220 charts, tables, graphs, and maps. She mentions the Congressional UFO Hearings of 1966, but not the much more comprehensive Hearings of 1968 with testimony from 12 scientists (including myself). She doesn’t mention Colonel Blanchard by name though he was the Roswell base commander and went on to be a 4 star General and vice chief of Staff of the USAF. She doesn’t mention Ramey’s chief of Staff, Thomas Jefferson Dubose. His testimony is included in a referenced DVD “Recollections of Roswell” with that of 26 other first hand Roswell witnesses. He and Ramey are in a widely circulated photo taken in Ramey’s office.

J Allen Hynek She also never mentions Air Force UFO consultant Dr. J. Allen Hynek. She doesn’t mention Dr. (Colonel) Jesse Marcel Junior or his testimony about the material he handled on July 7, 1947,which certainly wasn’t conventional or from a Horton Brothers flying wing. His father’s testimony (in our first conversation in 1978) made clear there was nothing conventional on the debris field. She claims that according to AS there was a ring on the craft with Cyrillic letters on it. If the purpose was to cause panic because of an alien invasion, why would there be Cyrillic symbols? Did Stalin really think there were no Americans who could read Russian?

She falsely claims that Bill Moore and I just showed up in Roswell in 1978 and started asking questions there! We spent a great deal of time money and effort tracking down 62 witnesses (huge phone bills in those pre internet days) after I had talked to Major Marcel, the intelligence officer of the elite 509th.I had located Walter Haut, the Rancher’s son, William Brazel, Brazel’s neighbors, etc. etc. Haut had a base yearbook with loads of names and pictures.

So I am obviously very much bothered by her ignoring first hand testimony from dozens of people who handled wreckage and even flew with it to Texas or Ohio.

In a note on page 474 Annie briefly mentions a published story about Stalin in 1947 asking Sergei Korolyev (his top Rocket Designer) to review documents about flying saucers and Roswell(some obtained from spies at Los Alamos).. in secret and with the help of translators to see if the saucers were a threat. Why in the world would Stalin have asked his top designer to waste his time if he had already known that the Roswell saucer was of Nazi/Soviet origin?? Details are given in “Crash at Corona”. One must also ask why the Russians did not build many of the jet powered Horten Brothers Flying wings? Years later they were building copies of a propeller driven B-29 to be used to deliver their atomic bombs. It was certainly slower.

Annie covers a lot of ground , seems terrified by anything nuclear, but for no good reason suggests that the Soviet Cosmos 954 satellite, one of many powered by a small nuclear reactor, must have required phenomenal power to get it into orbit “most likely nuclear” . This is nonsense. She mentions nuclear rockets many times, but doesn’t seem to understand that they were only designed as upper stages and would not be used, (not nearly enough thrust and serious concerns about launch pad safety), to launch payloads from the ground. She talks about operating them for long periods of time to get to Mars. Maybe she thinks rockets operate all during their flight. They actually operate for short periods of time. I worked on nuclear rockets for 3 years.

Summing up, she talked to loads of people connected with area 51 activities, could surely have used a review by knowledgeable people especially about Roswell, and certainly does not substantiate this latest fictional Roswell explanation. Far more fiction than fact about it is supplied.

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