I'm not an aviation historian, I'm not an Air Force aficionado, and I'm definitely not a ufologist. I'm not someone who studies UFOs.
In 1957, with the arms race in full swing, the Department of Defense had decided it was just a matter of time before an airplane transporting an atomic bomb would crash on American soil, unleashing a radioactive disaster the likes of which the world had never seen.
To understand how black projects began, and how they continue to function today, one must start with the creation of the atomic bomb. The men who ran the Manhattan Project wrote the rules about black operations. The atomic bomb was the mother of all black projects, and it is the parent from which all black operations have sprung.
The area out at Area 51 that was part of the Operation Plumbbob test continues to be contaminated. It was not cleaned up until the '80s.
In many previously classified documents relating to activities at the base, the words 'Area 51' are conveniently blacked out. There's always a euphemism for it - like 'the test facility' or 'the base' - but never 'Area 51.'
Who would have thought that in the 1950s, Burbank was a hotbed of international espionage?
Area 51 is located in southern Nevada desert about 75 miles north of Las Vegas. It's set inside a greater land parcel that's about the size of the state of Connecticut that's called the 'Nevada Test and Training Range.'
In 2001, Katie Couric told 'Today Show' audiences that 7 percent of Americans doubt the moon landing happened - that it was staged in the Nevada desert.
In the late 1960s, Ontario Airport was a throwback to a bygone era. Located 35 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, the airport served only two carriers, Western and Bonanza. Passengers could catch regional flights to San Francisco, Sacramento, Las Vegas, Palm Springs, Phoenix and Los Angeles, and that was about it.
In the winter of 1973, the American POWs held captive in Vietnam were released according to the terms of the Paris Peace Accords.
One of the few things the Air Force did admit to me existed out there presently without admitting that it was Area 51 is this drone called the 'Beast of Kandahar' which does not fire missiles, unlike the Predator and the Reaper, but just conducts surveillance.
Back in the 1950s, there was a top-secret program code-named SUNTAN being conducted at a top-secret facility called Skunk Works. Its objective? To develop a liquid-hydrogen-powered spy plane. Because liquid hydrogen is incredibly volatile, early experiments were conducted inside a bomb shelter with eight-foot-thick walls.
With stealth technology, the U.S. could spy on its Cold War adversaries without running the risk of getting caught.
