Area 51 is a US Air Force base within the Nevada Test and Training Range, used to test experimental aircraft and weapons, and also known as Homey Airport or Groom Lake.1 It is also referred to by the name Watertown.2 The United States Air Force (USAF) first acquired the site in 1955 to develop Lockheed’s U-2 spy plane,3 and after the USAF took full control in the late 1980s the facility was officially renamed Detachment 3 Air Force Flight Test Center.4 Its existence was not officially acknowledged until 2013.5 According to In Plain Sight, the base enjoys a mythical status among UAP researchers as a site of frequent sightings of strange glowing and hovering objects, as well as secret tests of more mundane but nonetheless super-secret aircraft,6 and remains a frequent focus of conspiracy theories about recovered extraterrestrial craft and sightings of gravity-defying UAPs.7 The same source notes that by 1989 there was widespread speculation that America had developed a new super-stealthy craft inside Area 51, potentially involving a breakthrough in Anti-Gravity Propulsion, giving rise to the mythical ‘Aurora’.8
Christopher K. Mellon monitored Area 51 - a highly secure US Air Force facility within the Nevada Test and Training Range - for the Senate Intelligence Committee.9 Mellon visited Area 51 and had full access to review every classified project onsite,10 and has said he never saw anything there that equated to the kind of technology demonstrated by the sighted UAPs, and certainly no captured alien spacecraft.11 Mellon has also said he never saw an enormous spending line for a TR3B-type craft, nor evidence of such a craft during his visits to Area 51 and adjacent ranges.12 According to In Plain Sight, Jim Goodall’s source Dave (SR-71 pilot) eventually became the facility manager at Area 51.13 Goodall said that after becoming facility manager, Dave asked around whether the base had ever flown anything that could reach 13,000 to 16,000 kilometres per hour, and the reply was always no.14
Bob Lazar is a Nevada businessman who went public in the late 1980s claiming to have worked as a physicist at Area 51 reverse-engineering the propulsion systems of recovered alien craft.15 During the 1989 Bob Lazar KLAS interview, Lazar spoke to journalist George Knapp on Las Vegas television station KLAS-TV, asserting - anonymously at first - his purported employment working on a recovered extraterrestrial flying saucer at a facility he called Site 4 (S-4).16 Site 4 (S-4) is a much-rumoured but never officially confirmed secret facility said to be located near but separate from Area 51,17 adjacent to USA, Nevada, Papoose Lake and south of Area 51 itself.18
David Fruehauf worked at Area 51 for six years from 1979 to 1985, commuting daily from USA, Nevada, Las Vegas on a private charter flight named Janet Airlines.19 He noticed a regular group of scientists and military officials at Area 51 who would board a bus to a facility he knew as Site 4 (S-4), which he understood to be even more secretive than Area 51 itself,20 though he did not know what work was carried out there; he observed that certain people boarded a Boeing 737 in the morning and were taken off in a different direction by bus on arrival at Area 51, while others went north towards the hangars.21 Fruehauf said that Lazar was never at Area 51 at the same time as him, but that he considered Lazar’s account very accurate and said it sounded totally believable.22 Fruehauf also said he knew witnesses who had seen Lazar somewhere at Area 51.23 Filmmaker Jeremy Corbell separately found a witness whom Lazar said had vetted him for his Area 51 security clearance.24 Jim Goodall said that a source of his went treasure-hunting about a 30-minute south-westerly drive from the main Area 51 base, near where Lazar said Site 4 (S-4) was located, and was confronted by armed security personnel demanding identification who appeared to arrive with no vehicle and no visible building or tunnel nearby.25
Area 51 has drawn attention from senior US political figures. Harry Reid was the senator of Nevada, the state that housed Area 51,26 and during his Senate term he visited the Area 51 air force base, a site associated with speculation about strange glowing craft and future aerospace technology.27 Bill Clinton has admitted he had his aides research Area 51 ’to make sure there was no alien down there’.28 According to Jesse Mitchells, Barack Obama publicly dismissed as a myth the idea that beings are held captive in a basement at Area 51,29 and Jason Samosa said Clinton made the same claim as Obama about there being nothing underground at the base.30 Samosa said he finds it strange that both Clinton and Obama, given a brief opportunity to speak about UFOs, chose to single out the question of whether anything is underground at Area 51.31 During the 2015-03 Obama Jimmy Kimmel Live interview on aliens on Jimmy Kimmel Live in March 2015, Jimmy Kimmel said that if he were president he would immediately race to find the files about Area 51 and UFOs upon inauguration, and asked President Obama whether he had done that.32 Hillary Clinton said that during her 2016 presidential campaign she would consider a taskforce to investigate the Area 51 military base.33 Mitchells also said that James R. Clapper personally talked about having helped set up UFO tracking programmes at Area 51.34 Tom DeLonge said he camped out at night with two friends near Area 51, north of the town of Tonopah, midway between Las Vegas and Reno, before he quit Blink-182,35 and separately said he was invited to a meeting inside a secure concrete bunker at the base, passing through four layers of security including guns, electronic code entry systems, hallways playing white noise, and a series of solid doors with rotary locks and no windows.36 Eric Davis has said he drove around the border of the facility for a peek, provoking security guards from Wackenhut security to rumble his car.37
Dr Craig McPherson was a scientist and former employee of Area 51,38 working there from May 1956 until September 1988.39 According to McPherson, the Advance Studies Group (ASG) was a very secret group located on the second level of Area 51, Complex III,40 and after a 1973 accident, an object known as the Blue Chariot was taken to another facility in a very remote area of Area 51, adjacent to the old above-ground nuclear testing land.41 Separately, an enormous new hangar was reported under construction at Area 51, with speculation about whether extraterrestrial activity would move in permanently by November 2009;42 the hangar’s estimated size was approximately 61 by 152 metres and 30 metres tall.43 According to In Plain Sight, a leaked US National Reconnaissance Office security advisory from July 1991 listed a series of codenames and command locations in and around Nellis Air Force Base in the Nevada desert, including the Area 51 sites known as Groom Lake and Dreamland, around the time of the 1991 Nellis Air Force Base security lockdown.44 Willard Miller said he could provide the name and last known location of a senior officer he believed had first-hand knowledge of US government Alien Reproduction Vehicle (ARV) programmes at Area 51 and associated locations.45