http://www.msnbc.com/news/809766.asp?pne=msn&cp1=1
For more than four decades, an unusual alliance of mainstream lawyers,
conspiracy theorists and UFO enthusiasts has tried to find out just what is
going on at Groom Lake, Nev. - the top-security Air Force facility better
known to fans of "The X-Files" as Area 51. Now they will have to wait at
least another year after President Bush reissued an executive order
Wednesday barring the disclosure of any information about the site
IN THE CONTINUATION of a drama played out every Sept. 18 since
1995, Bush signed the order to make sure that lawyers pursuing
hazardous-waste claims against the Environmental Protection Agency could not
get their hands on classified information about the site, which lies in the
middle of a remote stretch of desert 100 miles north of Las Vegas.
The government did not even acknowledge the existence of the
site until the mid-1990s, when it had to begin responding to workers' claims
of injuries resulting from hazardous waste practices.
Even now, all the Air Force will say is that the area is used
"for the testing of technologies and systems training for operations
critical to the effectiveness of U.S. military forces and the security of
the United States." It insists that "specific activities and operations ...
both past and present, remain classified and cannot be discussed."
Although exasperated government lawyers say nothing nefarious
is going on at Groom Lake, they have gone to herculean lengths to make sure
no one knows what is going on at Groom Lake.
President Dwight Eisenhower began the process all the way back
in 1955, when he issued an executive order restricting airspace over the
site. Then, in 1995, President Bill Clinton raised the stakes by issuing an
order clamping down on discussion or release of any information whatsoever.
That was about the time attorneys for former government workers
began taking their rejected medical claims to court. Those lawyers believe
the government is trying to keep the site secret to avoid having to admit it
mishandled hazardous materials, exposing the workers to toxic fumes when it
allegedly dumped poisonous resins into open pits and burned them in the
1970s and '80s.
THE ULTIMATE COVER-UP?
There is another group, however, that thinks something else
entirely is going on at Groom Lake - something spooky, something
otherworldly.
To this group, the site is known as Area 51, the nexus of the
greatest government cover-up in history. It is, they say, where the
government studies alien spaceships, where it keeps captured unidentified
flying objects stored in underground bases, and where it conducts autopsies
on aliens.
Writers for "The X-Files" were able to dredge up numerous
scripts from stories that have built up since May 1989, when a physicist
named Bob Lazar told a Las Vegas television station about nine alien flying
saucers he said were being held near Groom Lake by a rogue agency of the
federal government.
Lazar claimed that the government was studying the propulsion
system of the spacecraft, which were flown to Earth from the Zeta Reticuli
star system. According to Lazar, the Reticulans have been overseeing human
evolution for a hundred centuries, and since they were found out, they have
been cooperating with the U.S. government on a direct exchange of
technology.
The government, to the extent that it has commented at all, says
Lazar's account is utter nonsense.
More prosaically, mainstream scientists suggest, the government
simply wishes to limit its liability as it establishes the Nevada Test Site
at nearby Yucca Mountain as a storage repository for hazardous nuclear
waste. Those alleging an extraterrestrial conspiracy say instead that Yucca
Mountain was chosen precisely so federal researchers could have unfettered
access to its stored nuclear energy sources via a secret underground tunnel.
In any event, the government has argued that it cannot say
anything about Area 51, and it has fought workers' lawyers zealously in
court to keep government documents about the site sealed. One of those
lawyers, Jonathan Turley of George Washington University, described the
courtroom jousting with federal lawyers as "otherworldly." And every year
since Clinton issued his executive order in 1995, the White House has
reaffirmed the cloak of secrecy on Sept. 18.
Presumably, as Agent Mulder would have it, "the truth is out
there."
Just don't ask the president.
xponent
Yucca Yucca Yucca Maru
rob
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