Area 51 The Revealing Truth of Ufos, Secret Aircraft, Cover-Ups & Conspiracies
One of the more intriguing rumors surrounding Area 51 is the theory that it is the home base from where the legendary and ominous Men in Black operate. Make mention of the Men in Black to most people and doing so will likely provoke images of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. After all, the trilogy of Men in Black movies were phenomenally successful and brought the subject to a huge, worldwide audience. Outside of ufology, most people assume that the Men in Black were the creations of Hollywood. This, however, is very wide of the mark: in reality, the movies were based upon a short-lived comic book series that was created by Lowell Cunningham in 1990. Most important of all, the comic books were based on real-life encounters with the MIB that date back decades.
In fact, in the movies, the characters portrayed by Jones and Smith are known as J and K for good reason: they are the initials of the late John Keel, who wrote the acclaimed book The Mothman Prophecies and spent a lot of time pursuing MIB encounters, particularly so in the 1960s and 1970s. In that sense, the producers of the Men in Black movies and comic books were paying homage to Keel. Now let’s get to the heart of the matter, namely, the real Men in Black, not those of Hollywood. Who are they? Where do they come from? What is their agenda? If we can say one thing for sure when it comes to the matter of the MIB, it’s that they are the ultimate controllers—they threaten, intimidate, and terrify those into silence who they visit. Let’s see how the mystery all began.
It was in the early 1950s that a man named Albert Bender created a UFO research group called the International Flying Saucer Bureau. The group was based out of Bender’s hometown of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Bender quickly became enthused by the UFO phenomenon when it kicked off in earnest in the summer of 1947 with Kenneth Arnold’s acclaimed and now legendary sighting of a squadron of UFOs over the Cascade Mountains. The world was changed, and so was Albert Bender.
As a result of the establishment of the IFSB, Albert Bender found himself inundated with letters, phone calls, and inquiries from people wanting information on the UFO enigma. Bender was pleased to oblige, and he created his very own newsletter: Space Review. It was a publication that was regularly filled with worldwide accounts of UFO activity, alien encounters, and sightings of flying saucers. On the worldwide issue, it’s worth noting that so popular was Bender’s group and magazine, he found himself inundated with letters from all around the planet: communications poured in from the United Kingdom, from Australia, from South America, and even a few from Russia.
Bender was on a definitive high: the little journal that he typed up from his attic room in the old house in which he lived was suddenly a major part of ufology. It’s most curious, then, that in the latter part of 1953, Bender quickly shot down the International Flying Saucer Bureau, and he ceased the publication of Space Review. Many of Bender’s followers suspected that something was wrong, as in very wrong. They were right on the money, as it happens.
When Bender brought his UFO-themed work to a hasty end, a few close friends approached him to find out what was wrong. After all, right up until the time of his decision to quit, he was riding high and had a planetwide following.
It didn’t get much better for Bender, so his decision to walk away from all things saucer-shaped was a puzzle. One of those who wanted answers was Gray Barker. A resident of West Virginia and both a writer and publisher who also had a deep interest in UFOs, Barker had subscribed to Space Review from its very first issue and had developed a good friendship and working relationship with Bender— which was an even bigger reason for Barker to question Bender’s decision.
At first, Albert Bender was reluctant to share with Gray Barker his reasons for backing away from the subject that had enthused him for so long, but he finally opened up. Barker wrote in his 1956 book on the Bender affair, They Knew Too Much about Flying Saucers, that Bender had been visited by a trio of men—all dressed in black—who warned him to not only keep away from the subject but to completely drop the subject, as in forever. Somewhat of a nervous character at the best of times, Bender hardly needed telling once.
Well, yes, actually, he did; despite having the fear of God put in him, Bender thought at first that what the Men in Black didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them, so despite the initial threat, Bender chose to soldier on. It was a big, big mistake. When the MIB realized that Bender had not followed their orders, they turned up the heat to an almost unbearable level. Finally, Bender got the message.
For Gray Barker—who recognized the dollar value in the story of his friend —this was great news, in a strange way, at least. The scenario of a mysterious group of Men in Black suits terrorizing a rising UFO researcher would make for a great book, thought Barker—which it certainly did, hence his 1956 book. The problem was that although Bender somewhat reluctantly let Barker tell his story, Bender didn’t tell him the whole story. Bender described the three men being dressed in black suits and confirmed the threats, but that was about all he would say.
As a result, Barker quite understandably assumed that the Men in Black were from the government. He suspected that they were from the FBI, the CIA, or the Air Force. Barker even mused on the possibility that the three men represented all of those agencies. When Barker’s book was published, it not only caught the attention of the UFO research community of the day, it also, for the very first time, brought the Men in Black to the attention of just about everyone involved in the UFO issue. A legend was born—one that continues.