>> NARRATOR: It is one of the most covert military bases on
American soil, protecting the nation's most confidential
research and development. >> T.D. BARNES: You didn't have
a need to know, and you just didn't ask.
>> NARRATOR: But could Area 51 also be holding secrets?
Secrets so incredible... >> STEPHEN BASSETT: Congress
hasn't the slightest idea what's going on in these facilities,
and couldn't get in if they wanted to.
>> NARRATOR: ...so shocking... >> BILL BIRNES: At least some of
the material from the Roswell crash went to the area known as
Area 51. >> NARRATOR: ...so terrifying...
>> GEORGE KNAPP: Inside each hangar was a flying saucer.
>> NARRATOR: ...that they must be kept hidden from the public?
>> JIM MARRS: If indeed they have alien bodies or, whoa, live
aliens, then that secret is world-shaking.
>> NARRATOR: There are those who believe in the existence of a
book, a book that contains the most highly guarded secrets of
the United States of America... a book whose very existence is
known to only a select few. But if such a book exists,
what would it contain? Secret histories?
Secret plans? Secret lies?
Does there really exist America's Book of Secrets?
Just 83 miles north from the bright lights of Las
Vegas, in the middle of the Nevada high desert, lies the
most well-known secret location in America: Area 51.
>> KNAPP: Area 51 is sort of the citadel of secrecy.
It's the Mount Olympus of secrecy.
It is the location of choice for more than 55 years for our
government's deepest, darkest secrets, our blackest projects.
>> MARRS: Popular Mechanics once styled it as the place where the
U.S. government goes to be alone.
It's the one place in the United States, in this land of freedom
and democracy, that nobody can go to.
>> NARRATOR: Strange lights in the night sky... unidentified
flying objects... and the impenetrable security
surrounding the mysterious facility have helped fuel
speculation and curiosity about what really goes on at Area 51.
For decades, the military base has been shrouded with dark and
sinister conspiracy theories. But is there any truth to the
fantastic tales told by so many over the years about Area 51?
Or might there be an extravagant government cover-up to obscure
the real and highly classified activities of the base?
Is the truth about the activities at Area 51 even
stranger than fiction?
Officials insist the secrecy surrounding sites like Area 51
is essential for national security, and the covert
technology created and tested there has saved countless
American lives. >> KNAPP: You need places like
Area 51. It's a place to test our most
secret stuff. And I think that it is no
exaggeration to say the Cold War was won at Area 51.
>> BIRNES: It's an area of the Nevada desert that, during World
War II, was just a gunnery range.
Lockheed needed a place with long, long runways for the
development of the U-2 spy plane.
And they chose this old gunnery range in Nevada, which then
became Nellis Air Force Base, Groom Lake and Papoose Lake.
>> NARRATOR: The infamous outpost is so top secret, it has
been erased from maps since its inception.
>> RICHARD DOLAN: Back in the 1950s, when this base was first
developed, the United States had a lot of secret agencies that
the rest of the world didn't know anything about.
>> STEVEN GREER: Ironically, there were Soviet-era satellite
images of the facility with operations going on there, and
yet on our own satellites, it would all be digitized out.
So the Soviet Union knew that we had super-secret
programs there, but we were still denying it to our own
citizens that such a facility existed at all.
>> NARRATOR: After 60 years of secret operation, in July of
2003, the U.S. government publicly confirmed the existence
of the military base.
Today, Area 51 is officially described simply as an operating
location for the development and testing of experimental aircraft
and weapons systems. Called The Box, there is a
strictly enforced no-fly zone above the base.
Some claim that The Box is the nexus of a so-called Nevada
Triangle, where thousands of planes have mysteriously crashed
and disappeared. >> GREER: Area 51 is a highly
classified airspace and base. I mean, this is the size of some
small states. The airspace that they control
is a huge area of classified airspace, and that means that
commercial aircraft are routed around that area.
You cannot just fly in there and look at what's going on.
>> PETER MERLIN: Area 51 is ideal for conducting secret
projects. It lies in a deep valley
surrounded by mountains, so it's not easily observed from the
outside. It sits in the middle of a
625-square-mile block of restricted airspace where they
conduct mock combat exercises, including air-to-air combat,
bombing and gunnery practice. In addition, Area 51's located
right next to the Nevada Test Site, where nearly a thousand
nuclear weapons were tested, both above and below ground.
So it's a very remote and forbidding place.
>> NARRATOR: A sophisticated high-tech security system
surrounds the massive base, ensuring that intruders will not
penetrate the perimeter. Guards, known as Cammo Dudes,
are authorized to use deadly force, when necessary, to stop
any and all trespassers.
Some believe the security even stretches to public roads, where
surveillance censors may be hidden.
>> DOLAN: There are electronic sensors that are placed along
the ground. There are censors, we're told,
that can detect your heat signature.
That's helpful at the daytime, but it's especially helpful at
night, if you try to sneak in. >> BIRNES: There are very
sophisticated microphones, and they're actually hidden in the
bushes. There are very sophisticated
motion sensors... small cameras that are
mounted around. There are also snipers working
at Area 51, and these snipers come from Delta Force.
Delta Force snipers are the best snipers in the entire world.
These are kill machines.
>> NARRATOR: In June 1997, an article in Popular Mechanics
magazine claimed that Area 51 had been closed down and
abandoned. But many believe the top-secret
work continues and, in fact, has expanded in recent years.
Over the past decade, satellite images have revealed new
runways, hangars, buildings and radar facilities.
And every day, secret so-called "Janet flights" carry workers
from Las Vegas directly in and out of Area 51.
>> MICHAEL SCHRATT: They have an EG & G terminal at McCarran
that takes you to the test site, and you fly in a white 737,
unmarked, with a red strip down each of the fuselage sides.
It's the gateway to Area 51. You cannot drive your car to
Area 51, but you can take their designated bus.
There's no such thing as commuting personally to Area 51.
It doesn't exist.
>> NARRATOR: Before stepping foot on the base, employees and
their families undergo an intense background check to
ensure they will maintain complete secrecy.
But perhaps the most secure aspect of the base is the fact
that even the workers don't really know what goes on there.
>> THORNTON BARNES: Even though I was allowed in there, there
was things I wasn't allowed to see.
We did not talk to each other in that sense.
You never asked, "Just what do you do?"
'Cause once we got there, we went our separate ways and did
our jobs. You didn't have a need to know,
and you just didn't ask.
>> MERLIN: Workers at the base typically have a top secret
clearance, but access within each project is strictly
compartmentalized. It's on a need-to-know basis.
>> SCHRATT: It is a base of compartmentalized strangers.
When classified Northrop aircraft is tested at Area 51,
people who work in the Lockheed skunk works laboratory are told
to bring the shades down and never to look out the window,
as the other aircraft is taxiing by, so you can see how one
doesn't even know what the other is doing.
>> NARRATOR: The veil of secrecy that surrounds Area 51 has
fueled the conspiracy theories about what goes on there.
Claims range from the testing of chemical and biological warfare
weapons to time-travel machines and even alien technology.
>> DOLAN: Area 51 didn't become known because we tested our
secret aircraft there, it became known because people made the
claim that there was this place called Area 51 where we tested
flying saucers.
>> GREER: Stories began to leak out of that facility of people
who had seen unusual things going on there, related to
so-called reverse engineering of extraterrestrial vehicles and to
new research and to our aerospace programs.
>> NARRATOR: Could the secret research and development at Area
51 include extraterrestrial technology?
If so, just what, or perhaps who, is being hidden at Area 51?
Coming up... >> GREER: There's a lot of
evidence that we did we retrieve an extraterrestrial vehicle
there. >> NICK REDFERN: The craft
looked unusual. It was almost like they'd come
out of a mold. >> KNAPP: Inside each hangar
was a flying saucer.
>> NARRATOR: February, 1980. Air Force Major Jesse Marcel
made headlines across the country after giving a
controversial interview about his eyewitness account of the
infamous Roswell incident. (whooshing)
(explosion thundering) Marcel claimed the military
covered up the recovery of alien spaceships that crashed
near Roswell, New Mexico, on July 8, 1947.
Many speculate that the material recovered from the crash was
taken to Area 51.
>> GREER: The story broke and then it got carried around the
world. It sort of opened Pandora's box.
>> MARRS: 500 people are now in the public record that said I
was there, and there's alien bodies, and they recovered a
crashed flying saucer exactly as the original press release from
the Roswell Army Airfield stated.
>> KNAPP: If you were to recover something like a downed flying
saucer, where would you take it? You'd take it to Area 51.
It is the location of choice for testing and developing black
projects. It's the place where you know
you can keep a secret.
>> NARRATOR: November, 1989. In a sensational interview with
investigative reporter George Knapp, physicist Bob Lazar
reveals shocking details about his work in Area 51.
>> KNAPP: We did a live interview with Bob.
We blacked out his face. He used a pseudonym, Dennis,
which was actually a first name of the guy he said was his boss
at Area 51. >> NARRATOR: Having worked at
the base from 1988 to 1989, Lazar claimed to have seen nine
mysterious discs in an area of the facility called Sector Four
or S4. >> KNAPP: And he told this
incredible story. He said that he had been hired
by the U.S. Navy to work at a place called S4, south of Area
51 on the Papoose dry lake bed. That a facility had been built
into the mountains, a series of hangars, and inside each of
these hangars-- which were designed to look like the
desert-- inside each hangar was a flying saucer.
>> REDFERN: Lazar said the craft looked unusual in the sense
there were nor rivets or bolts or anything like that that you
would see on a regular aircraft.
It was almost like they'd come out of a mold.
They just seemed to be like a melted and, you know, sealed,
solid, solidified device where you couldn't really see how
they'd been put together. >> KNAPP: He said that the, uh,
the craft were powered by an antimatter reactor, that the
fuel was something called element 115.
He says at one point he saw one being test-flown over the dry
lake bed; that it, uh, it glowed blue and floated as if by magic.
>> BIRNES: After that story began to circulate, was in the
news, Area 51 became a Mecca for UFO enthusiasts.
(camera shutter clicking) 'Cause part of what was going on
was that Bob Lazar said that he knew when UFOs were flying over
the Nevada desert, and so folks came from all over the United
States and all over the world, descending upon Area 51, looking
for UFOs. (camera shutter clicking)
>> MERLI For a while, there were tourists on the hilltops
pretty much hours a day, seven days a week.
And so the Air Force seized an additional 5,000 acres of public
land to take away these hilltops.
>> NARRATOR: In 2004, biologist Dan Burisch corroborated the
sensational claims of Bob Lazar. As a scientist who had also
worked at Sector Four,urisch said the super-secret facility
housed not only nine extraterrestrial vehicles, but
also an alien being.
>> DOLAN: Now, what he has claimed is that he's a
microbiologist who has done work inside the Groom Lake facility,
dealing with alien biology; ET biology.
He's claimed, furthermore, that he was selected for his work
because he was able to have telepathic connection with the
primary being he dealt with, which he called J-Rod.
>> BIRNES: And J-Rod was kept in a kind of quasi-captivity,
working with a select group of Americans-- scientists, but also
part of a civilian and government community.
>> MARRS: If indeed they are retro-engineering UFOs, and
particularly if they have alien bodies or, whoa, live aliens,
then that is a secret that is world-shaking.
>> NARRATOR: Had Lazar and Burisch actually witnessed
extraterrestrial technology at Sector Four?
And if so, was there aink to the mysterious crash at Roswell
in 1947?
In response to the extraterrestrial claims, the
Air Force released an official report in 1994 stating the
debris found and recovered at Roswell came from a top seet
experiment called Project Mogul. The report claimed that accounts
of alien aircraft were simply misidentified crashed military
balloons that were used to detect radiation in the upper
atmosphere. >> DOLAN: And so what the Air
Force said is that the materials at were recovered and that you
can see in the famous photograph of Jesse Marcel holding the
balloon, material, whatever-- th said, "This is clearly the
Mogul balloon apparatus." >> NARRATOR: Just a few years
later in 1997, the Air Force issued another report,
explaining that the alleged alien bodies were, in fact,
dummies attached to parachutes as part of the high-altitude
experiment. >> REDFERN: So, in other words,
the Air Force has presented four theories, which surely begs the
question, there's got to be more going on if you consistently
have to keep changing your story.
>> GREER: There have been a lot of explanations, none of which
make sense, and there's a lot of evidence that, in fact, we did
retrieve an extraterrestrial vehicle there.
>> MERLIN: Many of these conspiracy theories and UFO
sightings probably help to hide the operations of the cret
base, because if people see something strange and report it
as a UFO, they'rnot taken seriously.
It acts as a perfect cover story.
While people are distracted with theories of
extraterrestrials and alien spaceships, the government is
actually accomplishing a great deal of work with real
down-to-earth hardware. >> NARRATOR: Was the so-called
alien spaceship really just a high-altitude balloon designed
to detect radiation from Soviet nuclear tests?
Or are the government reports a smoke screen for an even bigger
secret, one concerning covert military operations at Area 51?
Coming up... >> REDFERN: Area 51 has focused
upon test flying of highly-advanced, radical
aircraft. >> KNAPP: The men and women who
who toiled in obscurity out there protected our security and
won the Cold War. >> NARRATOR: Groom Lake, Nevada.
Scoring the floor of the salt flat is what has become known as
one of the longest airstrips in the world, measuring more than
four miles from end to end. And if there were an American
Book of Secrets, it would most likely contain information about
hundreds of military aircraft tested on the runways at
>> REDFERN: There's absolutely no doubt, if we look back into
the history of what we can verify has gone on at Area 51
since the early 1950s, much of it has focused upon the design
and deployment and test flying of highly-advanced radical
aircraft.
>> NARRATOR: In recently declassified documents, the U.S.
Air Force revealed that they had used the Groom Lake Site for a
variety of classified activities.
Many believe that this is an admission that the government
used Area 51 to conduct top secret tests on the U-2
spy plane.
First taking flight on August 1, 1955, it was capable of soaring
as high as 70,000 feet, beyond the reach of Soviet technology.
It also had groundbreaking cameras and optics designed to
take invaluable pictures of facilities, weapons and
technology being developed by the enemy during the Cold War.
>> SCHRATT: The U-2 spy plane was a special aircraft, because
it was very lightweight, had very high-altitude capability,
and very long range, and nothing could shoot it down for years.
They were very successful. Then finally, they were shot
down, so that's the reason why they had to go to the next one,
which was at least three times to four times faster and much
higher capability.
>> NARRATOR: Seven years after creating and launching the U-2
at Area 51, Lockheed began testing their next
reconnaissance aircraft at the base in April, 1962.
Top secret and referred to only by its codename "Oxcart" for
more than 40 years, program details only became available in
2007. >> THORNTON "T.D." BARNES: We
flew 2,850 missions out of Groom Lake with the A-12...
...which flies faster than a bullet and up to 90,000 feet.
And it's just the perfect place that we could fly in and out,
and no one should be able to see us.
It was the first Mach-3 spy plane, and everything had to be
invented about it.
>> MERLIN: Stealth technology was essentially developed at
Area 51. The beginnings took place during
the Oxcart Program. But in the 1970s, this was
expanded. A project called Have Blue
developed two technology demonstrators.
They were faceted like diamonds, very unaerodynamic shape, but
very resistant to being tracked by radar.
This led to the development of the F-117A stealth fighter,
which was highly successful during Operation Desert Storm,
able to fly through Iraqi air defenses, which were heavily
defended, without being hit once.
>> NARRATOR: Many also believe that Area 51 is home to the
top secret research of various unmanned aerial vehicles, or
UAVs. >> BARNES: We tested the first
UAVs in the '60s. We had what we called the D-21,
and it was a drone that we were designing to fly over China.
That's who was needing to spy on at the moment, at that time.
And we would launch it off of a modified A-12.
In other words, we'd launch it at 90,000 feet at Mach 3.
And it was a stealth, just like the mother ship.
And then it would take its photographs, and then it'd drop
them off at sea. And then it would disintegrate
itself. >> NARRATOR: In September, 1995,
President Bill Clinton issued a presidential determination,
exempting Area 51 from environmental disclosure laws.
The order came following a lawsuit filed by former Area 51
workers who alleged they had become ill after being exposed
>> KNAPP: Nothing could leave Area 51.
Not a computer, not a piece of trash, nothing.
Everything had to be destroyed there.
So, they would dig these great big trenches, throw all this
stuff in the trench, douse it with jet fuel, and set it on
fire. And these gigantic clouds of
toxic muck would float over the base.
Everybody who worked out there breathed this stuff.
>> NARRATOR: The lawsuit was dismissed, based on the grounds
that further investigation would breach national security.
Exactly what was destroyed at Area 51 will remain a mystery.
But one secret has been confirmed.
Reverse engineering has been going on at Area 51 since the
1950s.
The research was based on foreign technology, but not from
out of this world. >> BARNES: We did reverse
engineer the Soviet MIGs. We got our hands on the MIGs.
We needed to know why they were whacking us bad in Vietnam.
The kill ratio was nine to one against us.
We didn't know why, so we went through a technical phase
where we tore them down to see what made them work,
whatever they got-- radios, missiles, ejection seats--
everything about them. And then we went into the
tactical phase where we actually flew them against our planes to
see, compare the maneuverability and the, um... figure out what
they could do that we couldn't.
>> KNAPP: The men and women who toiled in obscurity out there,
for so many years, who did all this work, made so many
sacrifices, protected our security and won the Cold War.
(explosion thunders) >> NARRATOR: Coming up...
>> DOLAN: This thing goes down deep, like, ten, 20 floors down.
>> SCHRATT: One of those shafts-- that you could put two
B-52s side by side and still have six feet on either
wing tip.
>> NARRATOR: The 625 square miles of restricted skies above
Area 51 is the most highly guarded airspace in the world.
But with modern satellite technology, getting a bird's-eye
view of Area 51 has become as easy as the click of a mouse.
With hangars and runways now clearly seen in satellite
photos, is it possible a secret operation exists below the
desert surface?
>> MARRS: As I understand it, Area 51 is built like an
upside-down ice cream cone. You see a little bit at the very
top, including runways. But then you go down, and it
spreads out. And what goes on down there,
who knows? >> DOLAN: All of the accounts
from individuals who've spoken to journalists about Area 51,
all of them have said this thing goes down deep.
You hear things like ten, 20 floors down.
>> NARRATOR: Could there be secret underground facilities
20 floors below Area 51? And if so, why did they go
so deep?
>> BIRNES: As the base was being developed in the 1950s,
Eisenhower negotiated an open skies agreement with the Soviet
Union. And under the open skies
agreement, we could look at their stuff, they could look at
our stuff. So what we began doing, very
early in, was using huge tunneling machines to dig out
the earth under Area 51, under the whole desert complex.
>> NARRATOR: Some researchers claim Area 51 is the central hub
of a vast underground network connected to other top secret
facilities across the country, allowing materials and
technology to be transported through a subterranean
government complex by high-speed maglev trains traveling at up to
Mach 2 speed. >> ALEX JONES: There are
hundreds and hundreds of admitted bases that are
completely secret. Area 51 is the tip of the
iceberg. It's one of the most popularized
sites that is secret, and it basically operates as a cover
for all the other sites. The investigators all flock
there, when there's other secret sites all around it that have
things that are even more secret.
>> GREER: You can go underground at Edwards Air Force Base in the
high desert of California and very quickly get transported
underground to the Nellis Area 51 facility.
>> SCHRATT: I interviewed a gentleman who worked for General
Electric. He said that there were four
connecting shafts that connected to the shaft that he was on, and
he said that one of those shafts was twice as big as the shaft
that he was in. And he said that you could put
two B-52s side by side and still have six feet on either
wing tip. >> NARRATOR: What might these
huge and wide shafts have been designed to accommodate?
And what could they be transporting?
Is it possible that they were built to move around some sort
of extraterrestrial technology?
Though there is little physical evidence to prove such a vast
tunnel complex exists, former Area 51 specialist T.D.
Barnes claims a large underground testing facility can
be found near the Nevada Test Site.
According to Barnes, the secret subterranean installation was
used from 1952 to 1972 to test nuclear rockets developed under
a program called Project NERVA. >> BARNES: The NERVA project
was, uh, primarily a NASA project.
But we were developing a nuclear rocket engine to go to Mars.
That's just one of the places. You get the stories that we
worked underground at Jackass Flats.
We did, we went underground. We had the engines test stems up
above us with a nuclear rocket shooting a plume up into the
air, and it's, you know, nose down.
And we were underground 'cause it was so radioactive.
(Geiger counter clicking)
>> NARRATOR: This knowledge has led some to speculate that alien
doomsday weapons, high-tech lasers and even teleportation
devices have also been tested and developed underground at
Area 51, through reverse engineering.
>> MARRS: Up until about 1950, human knowledge and technology
advanced every 20 or 30 years. But since 1950, it has exploded.
Fiber optics, LEDs, computer technology, night vision...
Well, where did all that come from?
Are we really so smart that we can advance technology in about
a ten-year period or did we find it from somewhere else?
>> REDFERN: One of the areas that the Air Force has looked
into is actually trying to find ways to modify the weather.
And in sort of stark and simple terms, the idea you can provoke
earthquakes. You could create tsunamis.
You could actually insure that certain parts of the world
didn't get rain anymore, provoke drought.
>> BIRNES: What about the ultimate?
What about time travel? Imagine a weapon so powerful
that you could send military units back into the past to
alter history. It's the ultimate doomsday
weapon. >> NARRATOR: But is there any
proof to the controversial claims of secret projects based
on reverse engineering of extraterrestrial technology?
In 1984, documents emerged from the National Archives describing
a top secret group called the Majestic 12, formed by President
Truman in September 1947, in the wake of the Roswell incident.
The papers describe the secret committee as 12 scientists,
military leaders and government officials ordered to investigate
UFO activity. Some speculate the Majestic 12
may have been based at Area 51. >> DOLAN: They become known as
the MJ-12 documents or the Majestic 12 documents.
They all discuss, in detail, various elements of ET,
UFO reality from a very deeply classified level.
>> MARRS: And it was all created after the National Security Act
of 1947, which was apparently rushed into law just months
after the Roswell incident. >> NARRATOR: After months of
investigation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation
confiscated the documents and declared the Majestic 12 were
completely bogus. But when the papers were
released back to the public, they were heavily redacted.
Why? What were they hiding?
>> DOLAN: Some of the UFO documents that were yanked out
of the intelligence community were just completely blacked
out. It's like almost nothing there,
or in some cases whited out when they realized that the black
looked pretty ominous. So you got a phenomenon that's
top secret and yet you're not seeing any of the top secret
documents pertaining to it. So we've got a problem there.
>> NARRATOR: Are the Majestic 12 documents released in 1984 a
smoking gun? Could they prove that the
government was and still is actively engaged in reverse
engineering alien technology at and possibly under Area 51?
And, if the UFO claims are baseless, why is the military
base cloaked in secrecy? >> PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: If
the United States Air Force did recover alien bodies, they
didn't tell me about it either, and I want to know.
>> NARRATOR: Perhaps the most shocking secrets covered up at
Area 51 aren't from out of this world but instead, firmly
planted on Earth. Coming up...
>> MERLIN: The thing that crashed at Roswell was not an
alien spacecraft but was in fact something from the Soviet Union
that was flown over here and then crashed intentionally to
create a War of the Worlds type panic in the U.S.
>> CONTROLLER: Five, four, three, two, one, zero.
>> NARRATOR: July 20, 1969.
The crowning achievement in America's epic space race with
the Soviet Union.
American astronauts become the first humans to land on the
Earth's moon.
Apollo 11's commander Neil Armstrong becomes the first man
to walk on the lunar surface. >> ARMSTRONG: That's one
small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
>> NARRATOR: Hundreds of millions of people around the
world watched in amazement as this milestone of human
engineering was broadcast on live television.
But not all who witnessed the event were convinced of its
authenticity. In fact, some believe that the
historic moon landing and the many that followed were all a
sophisticated hoax filmed at Area 51.
is the reason why people aren't allowed to go to
Area 51 is because, if they were to go there and film, like, the
sand dunes, the mountains, et cetera, that they would show
land identical to what's shown on the moon landing pictures, so
people would know, hang on, this is just filmed at the same
place, it's not outer space after all.
>> MARRS: The lights are particularly puzzling because
there shows backlighting on the lunar lander and on some of the
photographs and yet they didn't take any lighting to the moon.
>> BIRNES: They were shadows being thrown because of motion
picture lights, klieg lights, camera lights being set up in
the desert at Area 51 to simulate the lunar landing
at night. >> NARRATOR: Those who believe
that the moon landings were faked point to the American flag
as it was supposedly photographed on the lunar
surface.
The flag's movement, they say, clearly shows the presence of
wind, impossible in a vacuum. >> REDFERN: As they're planting
it and maneuvering it, it seems to really shake and, and wither
in the-- in what people said is the wind.
Now, the moon is a vacuum, which means it has no oxygen, it has
no air. In other words, there's nothing
to blow the flag.
>> MARRS: So why would the U.S. government, you know, fake the
moon landing? Number one, it was national
prestige. President Kennedy had pledged
that we would have a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
That was in the early '60s. And when did we supposedly land
a man on the moon? August of '69.
Just a few short months before his deadline.
>> KNAPP: I think the reason that the story has evolved
around Area 51 is because the astronaut corps did some
training here in Nevada, out in the desert 'cause it was so
much like the lunar environment that astronauts were here
for a time. There was a connection there.
>> NARRATOR: Might the U.S. government have faked the moon
landing at Area 51 in order to fool the Soviets?
Or might the secrets being kept at Area 51 be part of a more
sinister Cold War cover-up? In 2011, a book titled Area 51:
An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military
Base, written by journalist Annie Jacobsen, was released.
In it, she claims Soviet leader Joseph Stalin sent a remotely
controlled disc-shaped craft filled with surgically altered
children into the United States, crashing at Roswell in 1947.
>> MERLIN: An anonymous source, who has since been identified as
an EG & G engineer, who worked out at the Nevada test site, had
this wild claim that the thing that crashed at Roswell was not
an alien spacecraft but was, in fact, something from the Soviet
Union, an aircraft with advanced hovering capabilities, that was
flown over here and then crashed intentionally to create a War of
the Worlds type panic in the U.S.
>> REDFERN: Joseph Stalin, Soviet premier, really wanted
to frighten the U.S. public and government, and so the plan was
to biologically alter a number of Russian children, and that
this would be done by a notorious Nazi scientist named
Josef Mengele. To sort of fake an alien
invasion, these weird-looking kids would get out and the
belief would be, "Oh, my God, America has just been invaded by
aliens," that it would sort of possibly disrupt the Earth's
infrastructure, which might allow Russia to launch a sneak
attack or, you know, take advantage of the situation.
>> NARRATOR: Though many dispute Jacobsen's claim, could
outrageous tales of what might go on at Area 51 be strategic
ploys to conceal what's really going on at the top secret
facility? >> BIRNES: There were no
deformed children at Roswell in 1947.
That was disinformation to cover up the fact that there were
actually aliens in the craft that crashed at Roswell.
>> MARRS: The easiest way of keeping a secret is obfuscation.
You just cover it all over with layer after layer of story,
counterstory, claim, counterclaim, one theory after
another theory, and then everybody gets so confused and
arguing over all the various theories.
That's keeping a secret. >> NARRATOR: How will we ever
know if any of the stories that come out of Area 51 are true?
Could there be an intricate mythology created to cover up
the truth? Even so, not everything
developed at Area 51 has remained under wraps.
Perhaps by looking at what we do know, we can gain more insight
>> DOLAN: I do believe that the truth is going to come out.
It's going to come out. You can't hide it forever, and
incidentally, as a society, we're just moving way too fast.
We're on a trajectory that is going to take us, like it or
not, into that very, very blinding light of the truth.
>> NARRATOR: Have the UFO stories and conspiracy theories
surrounding Area 51 simply been a smoke screen to protect actual
clandestine military projects? Or is the truth about Area 51
really stranger than fiction? Will we ever know what the
government is hiding at Area 51, or will we continue to be
in the dark? Captioning sponsored by
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