Area 51 The Revealing Truth of Ufos, Secret Aircraft, Cover-Ups & Conspiracies
When it comes to the matter of official documentation on Area 51, the number of papers that have surfaced publicly are miniscule—and I do not exaggerate. However, a small body of documents fall into another category.
They are documents allegedly leaked to the UFO research community by insider sources who were employed at the base. The big problem with working with whistle-blowers is that one never knows whether they are speaking the truth or have another agenda: secretly following orders designed to muddy the already murky waters even more, and when one gets into such matters, it’s not unlike sinking in quicksand with no way out in sight.
Leaked documents are without doubt the absolute bane of the UFO researcher chiefly because trying to confirm whether they are the real deal or government disinformation is almost impossible. One such document, which surfaced in 1994, makes reference to Area 51 and is a perfect example of how difficult it becomes to try to unravel what really goes on at the legendary installation. It’s a document that has been carefully studied by the father-son team of Dr. Robert Wood and Ryan Wood, who have spent years—in fact, decades—trying to figure out the true provenance of huge numbers of questioned documents that have reached their eager hands.
If true, the document provides notable data on Area 51 since it references programs that the government supposedly had in hand—back in the 1950s—to have all crashed and recovered UFOs secretly transferred from the impact sites and sent directly to Area 51. If false, though, then we have to ask ourselves: why are so many government insiders determined to make it look like incredible UFO secrets are being held at Area 51?
One of the most intriguing of the many unofficially released documents that reference Area 51 and that have surfaced over the course of the last two decades is a lengthy document that has come to be known as the Special Operations Manual. First, however, some vital information on the story of the manual from Dr. Robert M. Wood:
The Special Operations Manual SOM 1-01 was mailed from Quillin’s Drug Store to Don Berliner, an author and UFO researcher, in 1994 in the form of undeveloped 35 mm film. Upon development it turned out to be a manual titled Extraterrestrial Entities and Technologies— Recovery and Disposal, dated April 1954. Clearly the purpose was to provide instruction to recovery units about the background of this program and how to handle the parts, while deceiving the public into believing that nothing important had crashed.
Wood noted that those in the UFO research community of a skeptical nature were not at all impressed by what they read, chiefly because of the controversial stories that the documents told. Some, said Wood, pointed out that the document didn’t follow government protocol. Wood hit back by stating that when it came to the matter of dealing with highly classified programs that are not even known to the presidential office, it was entirely possible that certain protocols might be irrelevant to a powerful body of elite figures out at Area 51—something that does make a degree of sense.
As for the possibility that the documents were well-produced fakes on the part of disinformation specialists, one issue really stood out in the controversy stakes. The document references how, in the event of a UFO crash in the United States, using a cover story that the UFO was really a home-grown space satellite could work in favor of those whose job it was to keep everything under wraps, but here’s the problem: the first space satellite—the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1— was not launched until October 4, 1957, so how could an alleged document from 1954 reference a space satellite of ours when the first satellite launch was still three years away?
Bob Wood stated: “In the first place, the entire strategy is that of deception —it is even the title of the paragraph in question! Deceptive statements are not usually true. Furthermore, it was just one of five choices offered to keep nosy people away. The big argument, though, comes from those who say, ‘Why would anyone be impressed by a known false statement?’ Actually, most people were aware of our plans for satellites in April of 1954, as a result of enormous coverage of this new space thinking. There are prominent public references to satellites before this date, including a Time Magazine article just the previous month speculating on whether a satellite had already been covertly launched. So, satellites were on the public’s mind and ‘downed satellites’ were a very credible concept.”
Bob Wood added: “The third objection that warrants discussion is the claim that Area 51 did not exist in 1954, and therefore the Manual must be a fake. Interestingly, early responses to the SOM 101 by the Air Force that claimed it to be a fake had the paragraph discussing this issue blacked out; as if it was so sensitive they didn’t want to touch the topic. Actually, there is evidence that this facility was started in 1951, probably for the express purpose of having a good place to send the EBEs recovered. We have a copy of the Las Vegas Review- Journal for January 5, 1951, describing a massive construction project near Indian Springs of $300 million 1951 dollars.
This is easily enough money to build this kind of a complex. Furthermore, accompanying the article was the testimony of a local witness of the time who described the large number of construction actions going on at the time. “The fourth challenge was that the description of the vehicles include details on the shapes and lengths with precision not possible with the 1950s kind of dish radars. Two of the shapes (cigars, triangles) specifically referred to radar as the source of the size and shape data. Although dish radar puts out a rather wide-angle beam, the returns from the target are quite precise in time (and thus, distance), although angles are poorly estimated.
The return from the nose of the object provides the mark at one end, and the last return before the signal drops is the end of the vehicle. Therefore, if you have several measurements, especially if you do not ignore the obvious visual information, one can make quite good estimates of size. Furthermore, the critics assume that these measurements are using ground-based radar. Aircraft had radar, too, and could have measured lengths with great accuracy.
There is no reason to doubt the sizes and shapes reported in the Manual. “The final challenge was that the ‘Restricted’ caveat on the cover page is not consistent with the use of Top Secret. Although the classification of Restricted at one time existed and was lower than Confidential, it was eliminated in about 1953. The word ‘restricted’ can have a generic meaning, too—access to this information is restricted to those who have both the clearance and the need to know. While this is officially true, the publisher of the Manual clearly thought about making it very clear that this Manual was to have extremely limited distribution. Examples of the use of restricted together with Top Secret exist.
One great example is a July 14, 1954 memo from Cutler to Twining, changing the arrangements for an MJ-12 Special Studies Project meeting of the National Security Council. This memo came from the National Archives and is one of the few archival confirmations of the existence of MJ-12. Its classification is ‘Top Secret Restricted Security Information.’” Having addressed the main criticisms of the manual, Wood continued: “Other critics have shot at the authenticity early and often, but hardly a single critic has ever asked for a high quality copy of the Manual.
Critics claim that if the evidence is not available in the archives, this suggests that it does not exist. It is well known that the archives have a declassification procedure that is charged with not releasing information that would be unfavorable to National Security. It should be evident to anyone that if the Government really wants to keep a secret, they would have no compunction about lying about the existence (or non- existence) of documents. Even ‘making them disappear’ would clearly be expected.
“In the history of questioned documents, one can only establish a trail of evidence pointing to fakery. One cannot prove they are genuine, but one can prove they are fake, using the techniques outlined earlier. Therefore, the onus is him who claims ‘fake’ to find the evidence for fakery, rather than to say, ‘You haven’t proved them to be authentic.’ Failing all the tests for fakery is about as close as you can come to proving authenticity. All the claims for fakery fail them tests for the SOM1-01.”
All we can say for sure with regard to the controversial manual is that it reinforces the claims that top-secret research into alien technology has been going on in Nevada for decades, but whether or not the documents tell a true story or one that is designed to have us chasing faked tales of dead aliens and keep us away from classified, aircraft-based projects is still very much a matter of debate.