Groom Lake Story Declassified?

A correspondent has sent me this blurb from the website of Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO)...

Tuesday 2 June 2009, 6 p.m. - Nellis AFB, NV - The AFIO Las Vegas Chapter event features: The Development, Testing, and Operation of the U-2 and A-12 High Altitude Reconnaissance Programs at Nevada’s Groom Lake

AFIO BulletMembers of the Roadrunners Internationale will speak about the recently declassified CIA U-2 program at Taiwan; U-2 Project Aquatone at Groom Lake; the CIA A-12 Project Oxcart (which was the recently declassified CIA plane preceding the more commonly known Air Force SR-71) at Groom Lake and its operational phase; and Operation Black Shield at Kadena, Okinawa. Their presentation will include a short video of the first flights of the U-2 and A-12 at Groom Lake, a PowerPoint presentation about the aircraft, and a large photo display of the aircraft test, evaluation, and operations. They will also recount their CIA recruitment, cover stories, living and working at Groom Lake, and the excitement of foreign missions. Their story was declassified a little over a year ago at the CIA’s 60th Anniversary. Location: Nellis Air Force Base Officers’ Club.

That's kind of interesting. It suggests that some people who worked at Area 51 (at least in the 1950s and 60s) can actually talk about it.

New Interview With Glenn Campbell

Here is a new podcast interview I did with Errol Bruce-Knapp two days ago (May 2, 2009) here in Toronto. I was visiting Errol's secret lair (shown above, wearing his "No. 6" jacket) when he sat me down to talk about my involvement with Area 51 in the 1990s. It was very impromptu. The original interview was about 45 minutes, edited down to 30 minutes in this .mp3 file...

Errol Bruce-Knapp Interviews Glenn Campbell on Area 51 (mp3, 30min)

I haven't actually listened to this recording myself because I was there! I recall talking about how I got involved with Area 51, the Bob Lazar story, the Bill Uhouse story and my general philosophy on UFOs.

Bob Lazar: True or False?

Someone has sent me a link to yet another article I wrote about Bob Lazar. (In addition to the one in the previous post.) This is pretty freaky, because I don't even remember writing this one, but lexical analysis certainly indicates I'm the culprit. I have no idea where it was originally published, but it is dated in 2002, eight years after the previous one. Since it's apparently my own work, I guess I'm authorized to reproduce the whole article here...

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Bob Lazar: True or False?

By Glenn Campbell

I am happily retired from the Area 51 field and am currently enjoying a blissfully UFO-free lifestyle, but one issue won't leave me alone: People keep asking me about Bob Lazar. True or False: Did he work with flying saucers at "Area S-4"?

I adore ambiguity, and I really hate being pinned down like this. I mean, what is truth anyway? My idle-handed colleagues and I have been researching Lazar's claims since 1992, but I wasn't there when Lazar first made those claims, and no one can visit the secure military areas where Lazar's experiences supposedly took place. Who am I to declare what is and is not reality?

Still the inquiries keep coming, especially after Lazar's recent reappearance on Art Bell (June 6, 2002), where he announced yet another movie deal. The only way to efficiently deal with my questioners is to come up with a crude one-word answer.

Unfortunately, that answer is False.

I don't mean this as an insult to Mr. Lazar. He's an incredibly creative and intelligent guy. I also don't mean to denigrate Lazar's many supporters. One thing I learned while studying Area 51 is that you don't mess with people's religion. Lazar, I believe, has a right to make his claims, and people have a right to believe him. Lazar's flying saucers have become part of Nevada's identity, and probably even my own. I mean "False" only in a rather mundane factual sense.

Lazar did not work with flying saucers in an underground hangar near Papoose Lake. He made the story up. Furthermore, he made it up by himself, without the help of any nefarious agency and probably without any deep motivation other than the pleasure of attracting attention and putting people on.

The story evolved out of a long heritage of pre-existing underground alien base claims, which eventually infected the pilot and conspiracy theorist John Lear. Lear announced, in electronic bulletin board posts in the 1980s, that gray aliens were eating humans in deep underground facilities at Area 51. Lazar met Lear, heard his ramblings, and decided to give Lear what he wanted. Lazar took Lear's paranoid delusions and repackaged them in a much more intelligent and internally consistent rendition. Initially, Lear was the only audience, but he tipped off a Las Vegas TV station, and the frenzy began. The story soon spun out of Lazar's control, and, at least until the recent Art Bell appearance, Lazar seemed to sincerely want it to go away.

Lazar's limited knowledge of Area 51 came from secondhand sources, which are plentiful in Las Vegas. Lazar has never been to Area 51. His "S-4" is a relocated and reconfigured version of "Site 4", a real Top Secret radar testing facility west of Area 51. Lazar's saucers and their propulsion system seem plausible to anyone without a physics degree. They were constructed, in Lazar's head, with the same fastidious care that he has lavished on his real-life fireworks, jet cars and other mechanical projects. "Element 115" and its peculiar periodic neighbors were discussed in an article in Scientific American just before Lazar used it to fuel his craft. Lazar has always displayed an exceptional respect for detail and consistency, and he has an extraordinary ability to focus his attention on whatever his current project is, to the exclusion of everything else. His only deficiencies are moral (that is, if you consider lies and the exploitation of others to be somehow 'wrong').

A good model for how Lazar operates is found in the forger Mark Hoffman, now in prison for murder.

While forging Mormon documents, Hoffman built a detailed web of lies that still leaves researchers in awe. Hoffman's forgeries were internally consistent and perfect in every detail, and they meshed seamlessly with the world of existing documents, many of which he also created. His trance-like ability to focus his attention was so highly developed that he easily fooled polygraph tests.

Lazar is in the same league, having convinced a hypnotherapist of his truthfulness and earned at least an "inconclusive" polygraph report. Lazar might be even more clever than Hoffman, because he hasn't significantly broken the law, and he strictly limits his claims to his original story.

You can ask me for proof for my Lazar position, but I'm not going to play the game anymore. The Lazar documentation on the internet is already massive, and the heated debates about one detail or another of Lazar's claims have been going on for over a decade. It is senseless to harp on his false educational credentials, enhanced employment claims or pandering conviction.

Those who believe in Lazar are going to continue believing, and those who don't will only say, "I told you so." The funny thing about oral traditions like this is that they continue to live and propagate regardless of the evidence and far beyond their original source. They spawn new stories, like the similar UFO claims of Bill Uhouse, aka "Jarod 2" (which is another fascinating personal journey). Lazar's story has grown much bigger than Lazar himself, and no one will ever be able to follow all of its threads.

Answering "False" still rubs me the wrong way. I distain finality, and I certainly don't want to attract the attention Lazar's rabid supporters. Instead, I would rather state things in relative terms: Lazar's claims _could_ be true, like the boy crying wolf who eventually encounters a real one, but given the known lies and lack of new information, the joy of exploring the story has dwindled. Life is full of more interesting mysteries.

Glenn Campbell
June 2002

Lazar as a Fictional Character

Also in response to an inquiry, here is an article I wrote in 1994 for MUFON UFO Journal:

Lazar as a Fictional Character (MUFON Journal, Feb. 1994)

In my view, the Lazar question is like the riddle that Captain Kirk would pose to the evil robot to make the robot overload its memory banks and self-destruct. You can debate this one for hours and not get anywhere.

Also see my later article on Lazar.

Jerry Freeman: The Guy Who Visited Papoose Lake

Someone recently emailed me to help them find a 1997 Las Vegas Sun article on Jerry Freeman. Freeman was an amateur archeologist from California who held the distinction of being the only person without a security clearance to have visited the Papoose Lake area since Bob Lazar made his claims about flying saucers there. In the mid-1990s, Freeman was determined to follow, on foot, the trail of the "Lost 49'ers" who nearly died when they took a "short cut" through Death Valley in 1849 (giving it its name), but he was thwarted by the government when they refused to let him pass through the Nellis Range and the Nevada Test Site.

But he did it anyway! After some research, he crossed 100 miles of Restricted Area on foot, without government permission, and lived.

Well, not exactly. He's dead now, but that happened four years after he completed the trek. The point is, it can be done, if you are determined or foolhardy enough: Just march into Papoose Lake and see for yourself whether Lazar's claims are true.

In July 1997, The Sun published a story on Freeman's trek. (Apparently because he himself contacted them.) The article had been available on the Sun's website until recently, when it mysteriously vanished. I was contacted because I had made reference to it in a 1997 mailing list posting. The correspondent wondered whether I had saved a copy.

I hadn't, but I still managed to find it. As I suspected, the article was still there on the Sun's website but was poorly indexed. Here it is...

Stealth Search for History (Las Vegas Sun, 7/19/97)

I recall there being photos of Freeman in the print version of the article, but they're not attached to the online one. (And I couldn't find any photos of him on the web.)

I met Freeman at least twice, both before and after he made his trek. My memory is hazy, but we may have discussed the logistics of make such a journey, and I certainly would have advised against it. When he actually completed it, I was surprised. I was halfway between admiring his balls and shaking my head at his stupidity. (He reminded me, both then and now, of Mathias Rust, the German teenager who landed a plane in Red Square in 1987.)

Of course, I debriefed him on what he saw when he passed by Papoose Lake, but nothing sticks in my mind as memorable. I recall he passed to the south of the lake, never actually touching the dry lake bed. I think he camped in that vicinity. He may have described to me some ambiguous lights or glints he saw on the ground, but there was nothing I could do anything with at the time, and I don't recall any of the details now.

What sort of security did he encounter? None whatsoever. This is exactly what one would expect if the land is what it claims to be: a mostly vacant testing and training ground. With a land area equivalent to Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, the Restricted Zone is virtually unpatrollable, except where there are specific assets to protect. (Papoose Lake is in the next valley over from Area 51.) If you come in by vehicle on a road, you are going to be detected, but maybe not on foot.

Freeman's obsession was following the 49ers route, not the UFO lore, but he was happy to share information with me. It's just that his information wasn't very interesting. It certainly wasn't worth putting ones life at risk as he did.

A 100-mile trek across the desert might have killed anyone else, but Freeman had the survival skills to pull it off. As I recall, his life depended on being able to access certain springs on the Nevada Test Site that maps said were there but that he couldn't verify until he actually arrived. Would the water still be there? Would it be radioactive? If he hadn't found water, he would have had to deliberately get himself arrested. This alone might have been a major feat: finding someone to turn himself in to.

Keep in mind, this was a family man. In my mind, if you have people depending on you, you don't put yourself at risk like that. I saw Freeman as another victim of "Male Data Collection Syndrome" (MDCS), a disease that I myself am in recovery from. (5 years sober.) If the MDCS sufferer needs certain data, he'll stop at nothing to collect it, even if isn't really meaningful in the bigger scheme of life.

Freeman died of cancer in 2001. Here is an obituary. For the record, the cancer started before he took his hike, since the obit says he was first diagnosed 5-1/2 years prior.

Just an odd little footnote to history.

Investigation: Secret Underground Facility in Washington, D.C.

I had an opportunity to spend a few hours in Washington, D.C. last week, so I checked out a TOP SECRET NAVY TUNNELING PROJECT described in the Washington Post over four years ago. In spite of the Post article, which provided all the elements of a Great Conspiracy, the facility seems to have gotten no attention on the internet, and no one from the online secret base contingent seems to have accepted the open invitation to snoop around.

What's with you people? Psychospy vanishes for ten years and NOTHING GETS DONE! If those guys over at Dreamland Resort had been on the ball, they would have been all over this four years ago, but they're apparently more concerned with maintaining the purity of their organization.

My inquiry was based on this Nov. 26, 2004 article in the Washington Post…

Navy Keeps A Secret in Plain Sight: Hush-Hush Project Underway by Potomac
The article describes a mysterious construction project in East Potomac Park near the Jefferson Memorial that was started in secret without going through any of the usual approval channels for construction in the historic capital area. It just "appeared" on Park Service land, apparently without even the Park Service knowing about it. The purpose of the work site was obviously digging, but no one in the government would say what the digging was for. It would seem to be a project born out of the post 9-11 security hysteria, but even that wasn't clear. Underground bunker for Dick Cheney? Evacuation tunnel under the Potomac? The article raised plenty of questions, but nobody seems to have followed up on them.

Four and a half years later, I decided to drop by. I was interested in it in part because I knew the area: I had walked close to the facility following the Obama Inauguration (photos), although at that time I wasn't aware of it. After an internet buddy clued me in to the Post article, I studied the article, did my Google Earthing and was reasonably prepared.

My full photo tour is contained in an annotated Facebook album that I invite you to examine: http://www.roamingphotos.com/album?potomac

My tour started at the Jefferson Memorial, which seemed like a good reference point. The cherry blossoms happened to be out, which is a big fricking deal in Washington. (I gather cherry blossoms are the dividing line between the miserable cold/rainy and the beastly hot/humid in our Nation's Capital.) I climbed the steps to talk to Tom, and from directly behind him I could see the facility.

The construction site, surrounded by a stockade fence, occupies former parkland between the highway and a Park Service office complex (so someone there had to know about it). It is on a peninsula jutting into the Potomac, but the fenced-in area is land-locked, with no direct access to the water. I decided to walk the perimeter of the facility to see what I could find.

The facility consisted of several big warehouse-type buildings. Of course I couldn't see inside, but like any black box, I could always analyze how they connected to the outside world. There was only a single gate (shown above), and there were no obvious utilities coming into the complex. No power lines, water mains or gas lines, and no obvious evidence of excavation to bring in these services underground. The facility would have to been self-sufficient for these things. There was, however, a small amount of water flowing out of the facility and into a storm drain.

Although the entire facility was surrounded by a tall wooden fence, I had no difficulty using my X-Ray Vision to see through it. Actually, there were tiny gaps in the slats that I could peer though, and one side of the site was adjacent to some raised railroad tracks. There was no fence or warning signs on the railroad tracks, so I could easily walk up to track level and poke my nose over the fence.

There was plenty of data to analyze! The power needs of the project were met by four big truck-size diesel generators (with one of them running). I have no idea about mega-wattage or any that technobabble, but I do know they can produce a shitload of power. I have seen similar-size generators in back of casinos in Las Vegas. (For example, there's one outside Palace Station.) The casino generators are designed to keep the slot machines and flashing lights running in case of a power outage, so if ONE generator could keep a casino running, FOUR generators was enough for all sorts of nefarious things.

The facility looks pretty much the same as it was pictured and described in 2004. It appeared to still be active, but not wildly so. I saw one worker in street clothes leave and another one inside the compound in a hard hat and safety vest, but no vehicles entered or left in the 45 minutes I was scoping out the perimeter. I was there roughly between 4:15 and 5:00pm (on April 6, 2009), which could have meant that most work was completed for the day and workers had already left.

It is pretty clear that whatever is happening at the project, it is happening underground. Since the intention is to return the land to park condition (according to the article), "down" is the only direction they can go.

As I walked the perimeter, I looked for signs of tunneling. There were no tailings piles (just some sand and gravel caches), and no obvious elevator tower, but the main building looked like it was designed to allow full size trucks to enter. The trucks could be filled with debris from the tunnel and then driven off. Unfortunately, I have no handle on how many trucks full of dirt have left the place in the past five years, so it's hard to judge how much tunneling has been going on.

Any underground facility also needs ventilation. I found the intake for that on the north side of the main warehouse building. The intake pipe was some 3-5 feet in diameter, and I could hear the woosh of air being sucked into it.

The land in this area, at least the top layers of it, is mucky fill, more like Jello than concrete. (The foundations of the Jefferson Memorial had to be sunk down 75 feet before they came to reliable bedrock.) The water table is very high—like six inches below the surface—so if you are going to tunnel here, you'll probably need to line your tunnel with concrete and pump out a lot of water as you do. A finished tunnel is probably also going to require continuous pumping. What happens to this water?

I think I found a processing system for the pump water, which you see in the album. I theorize that what is pumped out of the hole goes into a settling tank, is filtered a bit and then is released into a storm drain, probably consistent with environmental regulations. (Have appropriate environmental reports been filed?) The really big pipes suggest a facility that can process a LOT of pump water, but there seemed to be only a relative trickle being processed at the moment. Clear-looking water was flowing into the settling tank through a small three-inch pipe, and a comparable amount of water seemed to be flowing into a storm drain near the entry gate. I don't know if this was pump water or perhaps flushing water from an interior tank.

I didn't see any signs of recent changes in the facilities. I previously obtained top secret satellite images from the Google spy agency, and everything I saw on the ground was consistent with them (i.e. no significant changes between the time the images were taken and today). What I saw was also consistent with the descriptions in the Post four years ago. The project is STILL THERE, although the article suggested that it would be done by now.

As I left the facility and headed back to the Jefferson Memorial, I did a survey of something else that might be associated with digging: subsidence. If land was collapsing around the facility, that might suggest action underground.

Subsidence? Is there ever! ALL the land between the facility and the Memorial seems to be sinking, probably much worse than Venice, Italy. (You'll see it clearly in my photos.) The trouble is I have no evidence that it's been sinking recently. Since the whole area was built on crappy fill, the walkways and seawalls are a mess. One section of seawall near the Jefferson Memorial, originally about 3 feet above water, had sunk virtually to water level.

I asked a Park Ranger in the Memorial about it, using the clever cover story that I was a civil engineering fan who was just fascinated by seawalls. He assured me that the land had been sinking for decades, and he didn't think it had been sinking any faster in the past five years. He showed me a map of where the Tidal Basin had been filled in during construction of the Memorial in the 1930s, and sure enough, the portions of the seawall that have sunk roughly correspond to the areas that were filled in.

Then I came out of the closet, and asked him about that secret facility over yon. What was it for? Of course, he's working for the government (the sinister Ministry of the Interior), so I didn't expect a straight answer, but I got one anyway. He said it was a project of Homeland Security to allow the scanning of freight cars entering the capital. That threw me for a minute.The location might seem perfect for it, since this is the entry point for a rail line into Washington, but I didn't buy it. There is no direct connection between the facility and the railroad tracks. If you wanted to scan rail cars, you'd do it from a structure immediately adjacent to the tracks. Further probing revealed that this was merely his own theory about what the facility is for. In fact, he didn't know.

So what is the Navy digging for? I haven't a clue. Based on my political leanings, I can speculate that it's a crackpot terrorist defense scheme cooked up in the days immediately following 9-11 when terrorists seemed capable of anything, but I really don't know.

I think I covered just about everything I could from the field in 45 minutes. I've done the groundwork, and now I encourage others to do that Googling thing you do where you don't actually leave your home. For example, tell me about those contractors mentioned in the Post article.

If someone has more questions about the facility on the ground, perhaps I can answer them or maybe even go back there for a second look.

—Glenn Campbell

L.A. Times: The Road to Area 51

This article appears in the Los Angeles Times a few days ago (April 5)...

The Road to Area 51: After decades of denying the facility's existence, five former insiders speak out

Area 51. It's the most famous military institution in the world that doesn't officially exist. If it did, it would be found about 100 miles outside Las Vegas in Nevada's high desert, tucked between an Air Force base and an abandoned nuclear testing ground. Then again, maybe not— the U.S. government refuses to say. You can't drive anywhere close to it, and until recently, the airspace overhead was restricted—all the way to outer space. Any mention of Area 51 gets redacted from official documents, even those that have been declassified for decades.

It has become the holy grail for conspiracy theorists, with UFOlogists positing that the Pentagon reverse engineers flying saucers and keeps extraterrestrial beings stored in freezers. Urban legend has it that Area 51 is connected by underground tunnels and trains to other secret facilities around the country. 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. Millions of X-Files fans believe the truth may be "out there," but more likely it's concealed inside Area 51's Strangelove-esque hangars—buildings that, though confirmed by Google Earth, the government refuses to acknowledge.

The problem is the myths of Area 51 are hard to dispute if no one can speak on the record about what actually happened there. Well, now, for the first time, someone is ready to talk—in fact, five men are, and their stories rival the most outrageous of rumors.

But alas, no UFOs! (Don't give up faith, guys!)