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!)

Fact Checking the UFO Hunters Episode

The recent Area 51 episode of UFO Hunters was fine entertainment, but let's make it clear: This was not journalism. It was never intended as journalism, so don't get your knickers in a bunch about factual accuracy. It's only a TV show, designed to appeal to a certain market and sell advertising.

Sadly, the roughly 2 million people who saw it might not perceive it that way. They may be duped by the "History Channel" label and think this some kind of National Geographic documentary. That's part of the big disjoint between Hollywood and the rest of the world. The Hollywood people know they're producing a cheesy consumer product to win market share, but the rest of the public still takes it seriously.

This is not your father's History Channel. Stodgy Civil War documentaries have been replaced by anything that sells—just like all the other cable channels.

I was happy enough to have a new Area 51 show produced after all these years. I enjoyed participating in the process and am kinda pleased to be a public figure again, but the "Area 51 Revealed" episode might have taken a liberty or two... or three or four. I'm not one to get stuck on little things like "truth", but some of my readers might be sticklers in this regard. Therefore I feel it is necessary to chronicle just a few of the "factual deviations" in the show.

Here are things I noticed on my single complete viewing of the show (in no particular order)...

1) The mystery light in the sky seeming to travel toward Area 51 could have been an alien craft, but it looks like a meteor to me. Traveling at enormous speed? Winking out before reaching the ground? Yup, that's what meteors do as they burn up upon entering the atmosphere. You see them almost every night in the dark desert skies, and if you set up cameras all night like UFO Hunters did, there's a high probability you'll catch one. (They are more common even than military flares.)

Remember: The name of the show is "UFO Hunters". That means that they have to find UFOs or suggestive evidence of them in every show. When a mystery light has the good grace to appear on camera, the producers aren't going to look too deeply into what it might be. It's a "unidentified", isn't it? Case closed.

2) According to Peter Merlin, the "new" hanger highlighted graphically on the show was the wrong one. The graphics were impressive, but they showed the wrong building.

Again, this is only going to be a problem for people who care about factual accuracy. In no way does it diminish the ratings numbers or impede the network's ability to sell advertising (the only standard of truth in show biz). You got issues with this? Welcome to "infotainment".

3) The presence of a new hangar at Area 51 in no way implies some kind of giant "black triangle" inside. It could be true I suppose, but I prefer my own theory that this so-called "hangar" is actually a brand new, top-secret Costco Warehouse Store. What evidence do I have of this? None whatsoever—i.e. the same evidence that UFO Hunters has for their Black Triangle theory.

4) The whole show was highly scripted beforehand and filmed out of sequence, just like a movie. Apart from the actual words spoken, nothing was spontaneous. In reality, we climbed Tikaboo Peak first, then after we came down, we filmed the starting-the-hike scene and the driving to the peak scene. In case it isn't obvious, there is no opportunity for real "investigation" when everything is choreographed in advance and the "conclusion" is filmed before the supposed research.

5) The F-15 seen by Mark Farmer and Pat Uskert at Mark's viewpoint is the sort of thing seen every day in that area. It is probably connected to the war games completely unrelated to Area 51. It is highly unlikely that the F-15 pilot had any awareness of the presence of the UFO Hunters crew.


Personally, I liked the show—so much so that I giggled and guffawed through the whole thing—but it was infotainment, not to be confused with real news. What was really memorable to me was the process of filming. It was the most complex production I have been involved in, and the off-screen expedition was for more interesting and challenging than the manufactured story that appeared on TV. I'm interested only in the dozen people I interacted with in the process, not the millions of couch potatoes who watched the show.

What was the effect on me of those two million viewers? Virtually nil. On my own Area 51-related websites I expected a surge of traffic after the show, but there was only a minor blip in interest—perhaps a couple hundred new surfers hitting the websites but not staying for long. Apparently the demographic is TV addicts serially watching one show after another who don't have the initiative even to click a mouse. So far I have not sold any Viewer's Guides or Area 51 tours as a result of the show (and my only pay for the filming was my standard $250/day guide fee). Still, it was a great experience!

If you don't like UFO Hunters or believe is biased in a certain direction, there really isn't anyone to blame or complain to. This is a corporate production where nearly everyone involved is beholden to someone more powerful than he. Everyone is just a cog in the machine doing their little part on the assembly line. I am proud to have been one of those cogs. I did my own job to the best of my ability, and I didn't say or do anything I was uncomfortable with. Beyond that, the finished product was out of my hands.

---

BTW: Here are some screen shots from the UFO Hunters episode.

(If you've found any other inaccuracies in the show that you would like me to add to this list, let me know, or add them as comments below.)

Also see my report on the UFO Hunters Tikaboo Death March.

Green River Tunnel?

Reader R.S. draws our attention to my mailing list posting of 11.5 years ago...

I just saw your blog that you went out and visited the Green River Complex. I also visited the area and was determined to find the supposed large open tunnel system [that you alluded to on your mailing list in 1997]...

http://www.ufomind.com/area51/list/1997/aug/a01-005.shtml

The River Complex has a real intriguing ghost town atmosphere. You almost feel the ghosts of the past in each building. For me the trip out there was well worth it; however I felt that I never really had a chance to explore the entire complex (lack of time, sunlight, and directions). Given your recent photos and trip to the complex do you have anything further to add regarding the rumor of a large open tunnel system somewhere on the base?

I don't recall anything about the 1997 posting, but apparently someone sent it to me as an email and asked that their name not be used. Their actual name and email address is long lost (since I've been through many computer crashes since then).

While I spent only two hours superficially exploring the area near the freeway, the chance of anything especially secret near Green River is remote.

This is essentially public land now. There are still a few fenced-in compounds where no one has broken the lock yet, but the public has had the run of this place for three decades. There are no end of idle males with 4WDs who have explored every road-accessible corner of the American desert. (I was one of them once!) Any "open tunnel" would have been found and publicized long ago. There are no secrets on public land. That's not to say there aren't hidden gems out there, like these abandoned buildings of the missile complex, but nothing "big."

Heck, there could be secret tunnels anywhere, right below your feet even, but where the tunnels come to the surface, there have to be signs. If there's dirt, you have to haul it away and put it someplace, and if there are human workers, you have to have some reliable way to keep them quiet. That pretty much limits the prospects to actively guarded military installations, and at Green River there aren't any.

The West, in fact, is riddled with tunnels. They are called "mines" and there are abandoned ones everywhere. If you search hard enough, you can usually find some old timer who remembers working at any specific mine. There is never any significant secrecy attached to these facilities, so news of anything interesting would certainly spread to the wider community.

The community of Green River is miles from anywhere with NOTHING TO DO. What people in towns like this do for amusement is explore every corner of the desert around them. If there were anything remotely interesting in the hills, I am sure that someone from Green River itself would have found it and posted it on the internet.

Photos from Green River (The "New Area 51")

Yesterday, I visited the Green River Missile Complex in Utah (identified by Popular Mechanics a decade ago as the "new Area 51"). Here is my photo album (in 2 parts)...

Green River Missile Complex (80+ photos)

I may write a field trip report later.