By 1994 the Air Force issued a grudging statement of acknowledgment that carefully avoided using the term “Area 51”: “There are a variety of facilities throughout the Nellis Range Complex. We do have facilities within the complex near the dry lake bed of Groom Lake. The facilities of the Nellis Range Complex are used for testing and training technologies, operations, and systems critical to the effectiveness of U.S. military forces. Specific activities conducted at Nellis cannot be discussed any further than that.”
In an attempt to blunt the claims of the suit, the Air Force allowed Environmental Protection Agency inspectors into the base, but did not release any information about what they had found. It simply promised to abide by the environmental laws.
As part of the case materials, Turley obtained a copy of a Groom Lake security manual, and before long Glenn Campbell had posted it on the Internet. The government responded absurdly, by retroactively classifying the document.
The thirty-page booklet, of which there were several copies in multiple revisions, bore on its front cover the words “Det 3 SP Job Knowledge.” “Detachment 3 Special Police” was the assumed meaning of the initials.
It appeared to be the security manual for Dreamland and included a list of radio code names, procedures, and even maps of the base and insides of some buildings. The maps showed the Scoot-N-Hide sheds — Is this an official trademark? I wondered — used for concealing equipment from satellites, and the Quik Kill radars and surface-to-air missiles that had long been rumored. There were radio code words for areas and structures. In keeping with the best military tradition, everything had to be renamed. The test site was “Over the Hill,” and Rachel was “North town.”
For years, there was talk of high living at Groom Lake, and the manual’s maps seemed to confirm the legends of Sam’s Place, the long-rumored base casino and bar, as finely carpeted and outfitted, the Lore had it, as any in Las Vegas. The manual also offered some confirmation of the tales of fine food at the base, of grapefruits flown in from Israel, of lobsters and other delicacies, of huge spring water bills. It suggested a fleet of Auroras flying in odd delicacies, tucked in the corner of a cockpit, from the antipodes.
Was it real? The manual was crude and klutzy. It seemed unlikely that the Air Force would have put the words “Liberty and Justice for All” on the badges that appeared on its first page. The tone of the code names was unconvincing. “Dutch Apple” for the headquarters seemed inappropriately imaginative — unless it reflected some kind of inside joke. Procedures were outlined for moving test articles. When back in the civilian world, the “special police” were instructed to say that they “worked for EG&G at the test site.” There was quite detailed and accurate information on the operation of the road sensors, facts known to the outside world.
But just who was the manual written for? For the deputized guards, working for Wackenhut or EG&G or other contractors? It seemed to be written just awkwardly enough to be real. It made me wonder again about the MJ-12 documents, which shared some of the same crude explanatory quality. And if the manual was not real, why then had the government sought to classify it?
The government had never before tried such a thing, and by definition information already public cannot be made secret. Did the impossibility of such an effort suggest it was merely a ruse to make the document seem genuine? If so, why?
The case came before federal judge Philip Pro. But Judge Pro had previously found the government not liable for damages to some 216 workers who had been exposed to radiation at the NTS between 1951 and 1981—workers like Joe Bacco — many of whom had been assigned at times to Area 51 itself. Pro seemed to believe in keeping security. All he wanted was a letter from the president of the United States swearing that we needed to keep Dreamland in the dark. And he got it. In September 1995, Bill Clinton signed a statement affirming that to reveal what Turley and his clients wanted to know about Groom Lake “could reasonably be expected” to damage the national security.
The government pressed for the names of the John Doe clients, a request Turley felt sure was meant to intimidate the workers. Then Judge Pro ordered the documents in the case sealed. What that meant became clear all of a sudden. In the summer of 1995, Turley was in Chicago at the bedside of his ill father when he got a calclass="underline" OSI agents were on their way over to the George Washington University Law Center to seal his office. He immediately called his secretary back in Washington and asked her to alert campus security. He had a vision of the bicycle-mounted campus cops in hand-to-hand combat with OSI commandos infiltrating through the ventilation system. Turley’s office was officially sealed, but the files relating to the case had been placed in a safe to which only he and one associate had the combination. It was like an embassy of Dreamland inside the District of Columbia.
In 1995, the case against the EPA was dismissed, and, the following year, so was the case against the Air Force. In the fall of 1997, the Ninth Federal Circuit Court took up Turley’s appeal. The following year, the Supreme Court would reject his final appeal.
If the case had come to trial, Turley said, he planned to call the secretary of defense, the secretary of the Air Force, and the president’s national security adviser. If none of them was willing to admit to the existence of the base, then he said he would call representatives of the Russian embassy. The Soviets, after all, had photographed the base from their satellites.
Turley had the government caught in a post — Cold War half nelson: “While the United States government refuses to acknowledge the existence of this base to the American public,” he was able to argue, “the Russian government recently declassified much of its intelligence information as part of a new openness policy following the fall of the Communist regime and the adoption of democratic process.” And since the 1993 signing of the Open Skies treaty, the Russians and all other signatory nations had a right to do so.
In other words, it was legal for foreigners to photograph the base, but not for the Americans who had paid for it.
24. Rave
If sinister forces were manipulating the mass media, they were doing it quite effectively. Area 51 was infiltrating television as stealthily as any Hollywood extraterrestrials had ever invaded the planet. It kept popping up, like the Area 51 video game itself, in the oddest places. And the media had their own strange and mythologizing view of Dreamland.
In Las Vegas, which presented subcultures as casino themes, the Area 51 club opened, its big signs in red-and-white warning stripes and stencil letters visible from the freeway. X-TREME PARTY, ESCAPE REALITY, they read. A few months later the club closed, with appropriate mystery.
A whole range of cable shows dealing with the mysterious came to Rachel and talked to Interceptors. Agent X showed up on MTV! And PsychoSpy could be counted on to give good soundbite. His sentences were ambiguous enough to be useful; he seemed to know where the editing would happen.
There was a familiar pattern to most of the programs: some lights over the Jumbled Hills — Janet aircraft or flares, typically — the standard photos of the base, sometimes an establishing shot of Las Vegas neon, talking heads saying there were “mysterious things flying.” The key to all the segments was to leave open the question of whether or not there were real saucers hovering over the area like one of those magnesium flares.
After the image of the Manta appeared in magazines, Steve Douglass was flooded with calls from television and print reporters, and even Hollywood producers. Within a few days, the major networks had paid calls on him, and Unsolved Mysteries, the tabloid TV series, dispatched two trucks and camera crews to his quiet Amarillo street.