LA Times article on Area 51 UFOs and aircraft testing

[Henry Tenby]

Los Angeles Time Magazine 11-04-2009

After decades of denying the facility's existence, five former insiders
speak out by Annie Jacobsen

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. Colonel Hugh "Slip" Slater, 87, was
commander of the Area 51 base in the 1960s. Edward Lovick, 90, featured in
"What Plane?" in LA's March issue, spent three decades radar testing some of
the world's most famous aircraft (including the U-2, the A-12 OXCART and the F-117). Kenneth Collins, 80, a CIA experimental test pilot, was given the
silver star. Thornton "T.D." Barnes, 72, was an Area 51 special-projects
engineer. And Harry Martin, 77, was one of the men in charge of the base's
half-million-gallon monthly supply of spy-plane fuels. Here are a few of
their best stories—for the record:

Almost 46 years later, in late fall of 2008, sitting in a coffee shop in the
San Fernando Valley, Collins remembers that day with the kind of clarity the
threat of a national security breach evokes: "Three guys came driving toward
me in a pickup. I saw they had the aircraft canopy in the back. They offered
to take me to my plane." Until that moment, no civilian without a top-secret
security clearance had ever laid eyes on the airplane Collins was flying. "I
told them not to go near the aircraft. I said it had a nuclear weapon
on-board." The story fit right into the Cold War backdrop of the day, as
many atomic tests took place in Nevada. Spooked, the men drove Collins to
the local highway patrol. The CIA disguised the accident as involving a
generic Air Force plane, the F-105, which is how the event is still listed
in official records.

As for the guys who picked him up, they were tracked down and told to sign
national security nondisclosures. As part of Collins' own debriefing, the
CIA asked the decorated pilot to take truth serum. "They wanted to see if
there was anything I'd for-gotten about the events leading up to the crash."
The Sodium Pento-thal experience went without a hitch—except for the
reaction of his wife, Jane.

"Late Sunday, three CIA agents brought me home. One drove my car; the other two carried me inside and laid me down on the couch. I was loopy from the drugs. They handed Jane the car keys and left without saying a word." The only conclusion she could draw was that her husband had gone out and gotten drunk. "Boy, was she mad," says Collins with a chuckle.

At the time of Collins' accident, CIA pilots had been flying spy planes in
and out of Area 51 for eight years, with the express mission of providing
the intelligence to prevent nuclear war. Aerial reconnaissance was a major
part of the CIA's preemptive efforts, while the rest of America built bomb
shelters and hoped for the best.

"It wasn't always called Area 51," says Lovick, the physicist who developed
stealth technology. His boss, legendary aircraft designer Clarence L.
"Kelly" Johnson, called the place Paradise Ranch to entice men to leave
their families and "rough it" out in the Nevada desert in the name of
science and the fight against the evil empire. "Test pilot Tony LeVier found
the place by flying over it," says Lovick. "It was a lake bed called Groom
Lake, selected for testing because it was flat and far from anything. It was
kept secret because the CIA tested U-2s there."

When Frances Gary Powers was shot down over Sverdlovsk, Russia, in 1960, the U-2 program lost its cover. But the CIA already had Lovick and some 200
scientists, engineers and pilots working at Area 51 on the A-12 OXCART,
which would outfox Soviet radar using height, stealth and speed.

Col. Slater was in the outfit of six pilots who flew OXCART missions during
the Vietnam War. Over a Cuban meat and cheese sandwich at the Bahama Breeze restaurant off the Las Vegas Strip, he says, "I was recruited for the Area after working with the CIA's classified Black Cat Squadron, which flew U-2 missions over denied territory in Mainland China. After that, I was told,
'You should come out to Nevada and work on something interesting we're doing out there.' "

Even though Slater considers himself a fighter pilot at heart—he flew 84
missions in World War II—the opportunity to work at Area 51 was impossible
to pass up. "When I learned about this Mach-3 aircraft called OXCART, it was
completely intriguing to me—this idea of flying three times the speed of
sound! No one knew a thing about the program. I asked my wife, Barbara, if
she wanted to move to Las Vegas, and she said yes. And I said, 'You won't
see me but on the weekends,' and she said, 'That's fine!' " At this
recollection, Slater laughs heartily. Barbara, dining with us, laughs as
well. The two, married for 63 years, are rarely apart today.

"We couldn't have told you any of this a year ago," Slater says. "Now we
can't tell it to you fast enough." That is because in 2007, the CIA began
declassifying the 50-year-old OXCART program. Today, there's a scramble for
eyewitnesses to fill in the information gaps. Only a few of the original
players are left. Two more of them join me and the Slaters for lunch:
Barnes, formerly an Area 51 special-projects engineer, with his wife, Doris;
and Martin, one of those overseeing the OXCART's specially mixed jet fuel
(regular fuel explodes at extreme height, temperature and speed), with his
wife, Mary. Because the men were sworn to secrecy for so many decades, their wives still get a kick out of hearing the secret tales.

Barnes was married at 17 (Doris was 16). To support his wife, he became an
electronics wizard, buying broken television sets, fixing them up and
reselling them for five times the original price. He went from living in
bitter poverty on a Texas Panhandle ranch with no electricity to buying his
new bride a dream home before he was old enough to vote. As a soldier in the Korean War, Barnes demonstrated an uncanny aptitude for radar and Nike
missile systems, which made him a prime target for recruitment by the
CIA—which indeed happened when he was 22. By 30, he was handling nuclear secrets.

"The agency located each guy at the top of a certain field and put us
together for the programs at Area 51," says Barnes. As a security
precaution, he couldn't reveal his birth name—he went by the moniker
Thunder. Coworkers traveled in separate cars, helicopters and airplanes.
Barnes and his group kept to themselves, even in the mess hall. "Our
special-projects group was the most classified team since the Manhattan
Project," he says.

Harry Martin's specialty was fuel. Handpicked by the CIA from the Air Force,
he underwent rigorous psychological and physical tests to see if he was up
for the job. When he passed, the CIA moved his family to Nevada. Because
OXCART had to refuel frequently, the CIA kept supplies at secret facilities
around the globe. Martin often traveled to these bases for quality-control
checks. He tells of preparing for a top-secret mission from Area 51 to
Thule, Greenland. "My wife took one look at me in these arctic boots and
this big hooded coat, and she knew not to ask where I was going."

So, what of those urban legends—the UFOs studied in secret, the underground tunnels connecting clandestine facilities? For decades, the men at Area 51 thought they'd take their secrets to the grave. At the height of the Cold War, they cultivated anonymity while pursuing some of the country's most covert projects. Conspiracy theories were left to popular imagination. But in talking with Collins, Lovick, Slater, Barnes and Martin, it is clear that
much of the folklore was spun from threads of fact.

As for the myths of reverse engineering of flying saucers, Barnes offers
some insight: "We did reverse engineer a lot of foreign technology,
including the Soviet MiG fighter jet out at the Area"—even though the MiG
wasn't shaped like a flying saucer. As for the underground-tunnel talk,
that, too, was born of truth. Barnes worked on a nuclear-rocket program
called Project NERVA, inside underground chambers at Jackass Flats, in Area
51's backyard. "Three test-cell facilities were connected by railroad, but
everything else was underground," he says.