E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSMo' Joe: Area 51 is the largest government-controlled land parcel in the U.S., but the government still denies its existence. Author Annie Jacobsen joins Morning Joe to discuss her new book, "Area 51."
Investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen's new book, "Area 51," suggests that the Soviets stirred up the Roswell UFO incident in 1947 by sending flying disks into New Mexico with child-size aviators on board, as a warning that they could spark a UFO panic if they wanted to.
But will that explanation fly?
Jacobsen's revelation is based on an account from just one unnamed source. This source said he was an engineer with the company EG&G at Area 51, the hush-hush military research site in Nevada. He told Jacobsen that he studied the remnants of the Roswell crash in 1951, along with four other EG&G engineers.
There are no documents to confirm the account — because, Jacobsen says, this was one of the most tightly held secrets of the Cold War. Even though that confirmation is lacking, Jacobsen says she stands by her source's amazing account. "He had nothing to gain and everything to lose by telling me," she told me, "but it was a matter of conscience for him."
Michael Hiller
Annie Jacobsen is the author of "Area 51."
Jacobsen's source recounted what he says he saw, as well as what he was told and what he surmised based on that information. Here's the scenario presented in "Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base," based on the source's account:
- After World War II, the Soviets capitalized on the work being done on stealthy flying-wing aircraft by a group of Nazi German engineers headed by two brothers, Walter and Reimar Horten. They developed disk-shaped flying machines that could sporadically evade radar detection. The U.S. military perfected such technology at Area 51 over the decades that followed to produce planes such as the F-117 stealth attack aircraft.
- Soviet leaders were spooked by the U.S. military's use of the atom bomb to bring the war to a quick close. They were a couple of years away from developing their own atomic weapons, based on secrets stolen from the U.S. bomb effort. The Roswell incident was aimed at warning the Truman administration that the Soviets could create a UFO hoax, stirring up fears similar to those that were sparked inadvertently by the fictional "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast in 1938.
- Jacobsen's source believes that the Soviets dispatched flying-disk drone aircraft from a mothership flying near Alaska. Intermittent radar signals were picked up by U.S. installations, but the disks were nevertheless able to enter U.S. airspace and come down near Roswell, N.M.
- "Child-size aviators" were aboard the disks: humans, seemingly about 13 years old, who may have been surgically or biologically altered to give them enlarged heads and eyes. Jacobsen quotes her source as saying he was told that the alien look-alikes were the result of experiments conducted by Nazi mad scientist Josef Mengele. The bodies were recovered from the wreckage, and two of them were alive but comatose.
- The wreckage and the bodies were transported from New Mexico to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio for study, then transferred again to Area 51 in Nevada. This is where Jacobsen's source saw them in 1951. The source is quoted as saying he saw Russian writing stamped on a ring that went around the inside of the aircraft, and that he saw the child-size bodies on a life support system.
- When Jacobsen asked why President Harry Truman didn't report all this in 1947, she said the source replied, "Because we were doing the same thing." She notes in the book that the Atomic Energy Commission and the Defense Department carried out human experiments on the effects of radiation, and suggests that the hundreds of experiments revealed in 1995 were just the tip of the iceberg. "I believe that a lot of what the Atomic Energy Commission did was reckless and dangerous," she told me.
This latest explanation runs counter to the scenarios put forward by the federal government — first, that the Roswell wreckage came from a weather balloon, and then that it was debris from a crash-test dummy drop as well as a balloon-borne experiment to monitor nuclear blasts. It also runs counter to the long-held claims by UFO activists that the crash actually represented a covered-up visitation by extraterrestrials.
Drawing fire from both sides
As such, Jacobsen's Roswell account is taking fire from UFO skeptics as well as those who give the alien scenario more credence. In a novel twist, Clifford Clift of the Mutual UFO Network told the Santa Fe New Mexican that the linkage to German aerospace technology was too tenuous to be believed.
Little, Brown & Co. / Hachette
"Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base" delves into decades' worth of hush-hush programs.
"After researching the claim, I found little truth in this theory," he said. "It is a stretch. One of my concerns is if they wanted to create panic, why in New Mexico and not in New York where there are more people to panic? I would suggest it is another conspiracy theory, and heavens, MUFON knows about conspiracy theories. They do sell books."
Peter Davenport of the National UFO Reporting Center said he also was skeptical about Jacobsen's account, although he stressed that he hasn't yet read the entire book.
"People have been studying the Roswell case for decades now," he told the New Mexican. "They've got deathbed testimony. They've got testimony from military officers who were involved, eyewitnesses. I think I'll go with the latter, rather than this young lady who penned this new book."
Investigator Kal Korff — who took aim at the alien claims in his 1997 book, "Roswell UFO Crash" — said he wasn't buying the "Area 51" story either. "Of all the crazy ideas as to what is behind Roswell, this is one of the most extreme out there," he told me in an email.
Beyond the substance of the story, there's the issue of basing such a dramatic story on one person's account. "I would never report anything related to UFOs based on only one unnamed source!" journalist Leslie Kean, the author of "UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record," wrote in a Facebook update.
Jacobsen told me that getting the story out of even one of the five engineers who were involved in the Area 51 follow-up to the Roswell incident was a months-long job.
"What's important to understand is that all of the top five EG&G engineers had top secret clearances and also Q clearances. ... So you're dealing with the most upper-echelon clearances you could possibly have within the federal government, in the Atomic Energy Commission. Your 'need-to-know' is so strict that you only know what you know. ... To suggest that the five engineers could stand around and discuss, 'Hey, what do you think is,' is a bit naive," she said. "It's 'take this craft apart and put it back together ... take these bodies and move them over here.' And that is about the extent of it."
It's also important to understand that there's a lot more to "Area 51" than Roswell. The Roswell tale, which takes up about 30 pages of the 544-page book, is the only one that depends on a single unnamed source, Jacobsen said. Most of the book focuses on the stories behind formerly secret programs ranging from nuclear bomb tests to the development of the U-2 and A-12 Oxcart spy planes. To this day, military officials avoid referring to Area 51 by that name.
The gorilla-mask scenario
So if the Roswell UFO wasn't an alien (or Soviet) intruder, and if you don't buy the official explanation that it was a balloon experiment, what else might it have been? One of the alternate explanations is that the "UFO" was indeed a flying disk, but that it was a U.S. rather than a Soviet experimental craft. In this scenario, the alien-looking bodies might have been dummies designed to create a preposterous cover story.
Jacobsen herself refers to a similar disinformation strategy that the Air Force used in 1942, when the first jet aircraft were being developed at California's Muroc dry lake bed. She said one of the test pilots for the Bell XP-59A jet plane, Jack Woolams, put on a gorilla mask when he went on a flight — just in case other pilots training on different planes came flying nearby to take a look.
YouTube video provides views of the German-built Horten Ho 229 flying wing. Does flying-wing technology explain the "flying disk" supposedly involved in the Roswell UFO incident?
"Instead of seeing Woolams, the pilot saw a gorilla flying an airplane — an airplane that had no propeller," Jacobsen wrote. "The stunned pilot landed and went straight to the local bar and ordered a stiff drink. He told the other pilots what he'd definitely seen with his own eyes. His colleagues told him he was drunk, that he was an embarrassment, that he should go home."
Thus was the secret of the Bell XP-59A preserved, even from the other fliers at the Muroc base (now known as Edwards Air Force Base).
Were the Roswell aliens actually dummies, the equivalent of pilots wearing gorilla masks? Or is Jacobsen's source correct? Is the truth more monstrous than people thought? Even though the eyewitnesses are dying off, Jacobsen believes the real story may be contained within the hundreds of millions of documents about "black" projects that are still said to be classified.
She notes that all of the sources she consulted while researching "Area 51" told her they knew much more than they were telling. "Everyone always ends with, 'Well, Annie, I've actually told you 5 percent of what I know,'" Jacobsen said.
Is the truth out there? Or will it remain mired in reams upon reams of conjecture and disinformation? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.
More about UFOs:
- UFO reports come from Russia ... right on time
- Why we love to fear E.T.
- Jerusalem videos stir UFO buzz
- Year of the UFO? Let's get real
- Still more from Cosmic Log's UFO files
- Search for UFOs on msnbc.com
You can connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. Also, give a look to "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Leave a Comment:
The people who worked at the Area 51 base, like many other across our country tend to be deeply patriotic people who take pride in understanding the value of being secretive.
There's every indication that deliberately leaking classified information, even on one's deathbed could be grounds to cease spousal survivor benefits from pensions, etc.
In general, I think that there's a lot of misinformation that is both purposely disseminated from credible sources, as well as misinformation from conspiracy theorists, or just those trying to make a buck.
In general, we're probably not going to learn all about what happened thanks to the numerous modifications made to FOIA under the Clinton and Bush administrations which basically allow material to remain classified, or heavily redacted almost indefinitely so long as there's any sort of (even loosely supported) national security interest...or just executive privilage.
The only people that are taking this latest claim seriously are, well, nobody.
The idea alone that the Russians developed a hovering disk that was able to launch anf travel thousands of miles from an airborne "mothership" from Alaska to New Mexico is preposterous. Add to that the fact that they were piloted by kids bred with swollen heads and black, disk-shaped eyes, and you have yourself, well, a crock of crap.
Where were subsequent versions of a fairly capable hovering disk?? Of the "mothership"? Of any indication whatsoever of human genetic experimentation in Russia?
This MO is textbook counter-intelligence operations, if she is in fact telling the truth. One source, unnamed. Further clouding the credibility and all around story on this subject. Bravo, USAF.
This is the most misleading, cooked up theory i've ever heard. The "child sized aviators" are gray aliens. Now-a-days so much misinformation is on book shelves and fed to you on corporate controlled media organizations across the world. There's one reason we don't actually know, because they suppress it and censor it. How about credible witnesses like Bob Lazar or a plethora of retired Area 51 workers. What about John Lear who is one of the most influential technological pioneers of our time, is he lying too? Just like the kook trying to say the world was going to end Saturday at 6, people that don't know can say whatever they want. All they do is see one government funded website talking about how Area 51 never happened and doesn't exist and draw their conclusion from that. Open your minds and open your eyes, almost 70 years of cover-up, and you think that they wouldn't let people know that if it was Russian or not at the height of the Cold War??? GROW UP.
Recipe: Take one well known conspiracy theory, add a few absurd and impossible to verify allegations from an "anonymous source" regarding our arch-enemy, The Ruskies, mix with one rather attractive female author who wears dorky black rimmed glasses and the result... geek fest media frenzy!!
I think that what Jacobsen is up to is an attempt to write something so ridiculous in every possible aspect then laugh at anyone who latches on and believes it. She is likely just proving the theory that the more outlandish a lie the more likely it is to be believed and in the process making a little money. You can always tell that a lie is coming when someone says...""He had nothing to gain and everything to lose by talking to me."
Additionally, it always strikes me as odd that people refer to Area 51 as the place that the U.S. stealth F-117 came from when it was really the Skunk Works in Palmdale, CA. You can tell she has no idea what she is talking about right there.
The author looks like she makes a pretty nice living selling this garbage. Shame on MSNBC for doing a story on such nonsense.
For those interested; read Leslie Kean's Book, which made the New York Times' Best Seller List. Then read Jacobson's book. Worlds apart in journalistic professionalism. Kean's book goes the distance with thought provoking interviews of credible witnesses that will make you think (and maybe shudder at the possibilities.) Jacobson's book will be used to start my next camp fire as long as I can get someone else to pay for the book. Her "theory" is preposterous at best and indefensible.
The government already explained the truth of what happened at Roswell. It truthfully came from base commander Colonel Blanchard of the 509th Bomber Wing before he answered to a higher authority that made him change his story.
The U.S. Government publicly acknowledged Area 51 several years ago but did not state what its purpose was.
You really need to read the book. It's fascinating. The problem with the news on this is that it is attempting a Cliff's Notes version and going straight for the sensationalist jugular. The Roswell story takes up less than 10% of the book. The history of Area 51 (from conception through now) makes the book a great read.
Also, believing it was Russians or aliens requires the same leap of logic... this thought/understanding runs through the entire book, by the way.
"Your 'need-to-know' is so strict that you only know what you know. ... To suggest that the five engineers could stand around and discuss, 'Hey, what do you think is,' is a bit naive," she said. "It's 'take this craft apart and put it back together ... take these bodies and move them over here.' And that is about the extent of it."
-----
If you would ever make such a statement, then it appears likely you've never had a "need-to-know" and thus have no idea what the concept actually means in practice. I'll leave it at that.
a bit unrelated
but doesn't the author bear a striking resemblance (in facial structure) to Amy Chua?
GenericName - I was thinking that she looks like a man.
Mikey - if there's a part of Ms. Jewcobsen that's attractive, it's not in that photo. Where's Mengele when you need him?
Hell someone will buy her book, if for nothing else then for laughs.
She is probably a birther too
D.Man said, "The only people that are taking this latest claim seriously are, well, nobody."
Oh, I doubt that. I'd bet my rather substantial paycheck that there are MANY people out there who automatically went "THAT'S the explanation right there!!" just seconds after reading the first 2 or 3 sentences of this article. CON-Theorists will believe ANYTHING ..... as long as it isn't the plain ole boring truth. And if anyone disagrees with a single thing they say, the automatic response is always the same style, consisting of calling those people something resembling "sheep", throwing forth several mature insults & reminding them how stupid they are for NOT believing every single thing a government does is a conspiracy, then calling them a "sheep" word again.
Just read achtung's ramblings up there ^^^^^^^ for a good example of this. It's all there. All the normal prerequisites are included. You know ..... aliens, corporations, mass media, Area 51, censoring, government, cover-ups, etc., etc., etc. And of course this broad collection of stuff which we ordinary uneducated sheeples can't possibly comprehend is cemented in proof by channeling the greatest minds the human race has ever known.
Like John, the guy who claims that NO airplanes ever hit the WTC towers & all of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of people who were actually there & saw it happen (unlike him) were actually fooled by a massive brainwashing campaign performed by .... wanna guess .... ah come on .... yep .... the same government which pre-planned the entire disaster. And of course John has also seen proof positive that a 2nd species of humans live on the surface of the Moon. He can't really show that positive proof however, because .... wanna guess .... ah come on .... yep .... it's even beyond above top secret. I'm not sure however if these Humans #2 were the ones who weren't flying the airplanes which didn't exist which never crashed into the twin towers that fell anyway. Must be another one of those even beyond above top secet things ....... or maybe that specific CONspiracy is even above even beyond above top secret, not real sure, since my latest security clearence only goes to below above top secret.
But to make the CON-Theories even MORE impossible to deny, one expert isn't enough. So 'ole Bob gets included also. You surely know him & his qualifications, a Masters from CalTech & both a Masters and Doctorate from MIT. He has no diplomas showing any of those degrees, he appears in exactly ZERO yearbooks of either school, & neither have even a record of him ever just APPLYING, but the cause of that is obvious .... wanna guess .... ah come on .... yep .... that danged CONspiracy-laden government erased all them thangs, confiscated all existing yearbooks showing him & then republished the same ones minus Bob, danged them. But Bob DID take a couple of chemistry courses at a small Junior College, before dropping out to work full-time at mounting a surplus small jet engine onto a stripped down old car frame, which he drove at 200MPH a few times, before metal fatique made it too unsafe. A few years later Bob must have wanted some excitement in his life. So he started an amateur scientific supply company, which among other things sold radioactive ores & samples of radioactive metals. It took him several years to organize that excitement, but he finally did .... by getting raided, charged, tried, & convicted for selling illegal & hazardous materials without license or appropriate protective packaging .... one of those materials being deadly Polonium, occasionally used for "extended assassinations". Curiously, during the time he was going through the judicial system involving these crimes, part of that period coincides with when he was working with "Greys" (aliens) at S-4, a research facility near & attached to the Top Secret Area-51, only Topper Secreter than that place.
Lastly, there's really only a single one of the "normal" CONspiracy-type standby's which ISN'T exposed in achtung's post. I find this VERY worrisome, in that maybe the mysteriously unknown Emperor of the Amerikan Empire found achtung's post & censored it, removing the offending words exposing this other MVP of the CONspiracy Bowl championship. That is BUSH! Every good CON-Theorist knows that Bush was the biggest CONspiracy ever encountered by the human race .... both the species here on Earth (that means all of us, minus the Lizard-People Persons of course) AND that other John Lear species living up there on the Moon.
That guy (or is he a Lizard-People?) CONspirirated for 8 full years & is STILL doing CONspirirating. Only now however, since he never managed to get the U.S. Constitution changed, dropping the 2-term limit, increasing his rank, & confirming him as Permanent Big Boss-Man, Endless Emperor, Never-Ending Chief Master of All Military, Plus Perpetual Prez Bush the Great, he had to figure out a back-door which would effectively & secretly allow him to still be in charge. You know what he did? Wanna guess .... ah come on .... yep .... he surgically darkened his skin, got a new "do", & legally changed his name to ..... you guessed it!! OBAMA!!
I'm definitely NOT a CONspiracy-Theorist. I despise them as a prime example of ignorance of truth. But the above is simply a VERY close approximation of a CON-Theorists Modus Operandi. They are hugely naive, gullible, & generally clueless about whatever subject they are slasing apart, since 99.7% of the time they are simply repeating something they have read on a CONspiracy site .... or making it up as they go, using the extreme paranoia within their own mind. They will believe ANYTHING, as long as it sounds dramatic, exciting, & is 180 degrees difference from the REAL story.
And remember guys, if you can't find ANY info or documentation to support your claims, then just use the oh-so-common-excuse-of-all-CON-Theorists ......... "It's a Cover-up. They destroyed all my evidence!" And also, finally, be sure to end your CON-Theory Claim by an insult, or by telling the audience, 99.85% of whom know the actual TRUE story, that they are overly immature and/or stupidly unintelligent and/or completely blind-to-reality if they disagree with your expert description of what's REALLY going down. Achtung chose the first option, showing those who don't think he's got it all figured out that they just aren't mature enough to handle his reality of the situation, by telling them to "Grow Up" & "Open Your Minds". And he also decided to touch on the 3rd "blind" option, with the command to "Open Your Eyes".
Regardless of just how MUCH of a fairy tale these CONspiracy fairy tales are, or how LITTLE if they actually managed to mix in some real fact with their twisted fiction, one thing is certain ....... the producers of these CON-Theories are so HUGELY paranoid that it might even be unhealthy, have a REALLY over-active imagination & the things they write about are so bizarre that most of them are absolutely hilarious.
So everyone thank them for their comedy when you get a good laugh at their expense.
Well kids that's a real interesting story and all but I think it's BALONEY!
Somebody, sorry I don't remember who, said the simplest explanation, no matter how unrealistic or improbable, is most likely the answer to any mystery.
The simplest answer is the military mis-handled the incident and their attempts to correct their earlier mistake has been viewed as a cover-up. Case closed.
As much as I WANT to believe that Aliens crash-landed in the New Mexico desert in 1947 it just belies all the known facts. Where is the physical proof of ANY OTHER Alien visitation? There is none.
What almost certainly happened was there was a crash of some kind, a weather balloon or even an experimental aircraft which was piloted remotely and contained crash dummies of some kind. When the airforce arrived on scene the wondered "What d'ya think that is, a flying saucer?" and somebody picked up on that and WHAM it's on the front page. By then the Air Force has figured out what it really is, maybe it was a classified experimental aircraft of some kind, so they try to correct their earlier gaff with the "weather balloon" story and WHAM the Grassy Knoll Gnomes go wild with conspiracy theories. Now they are screwed.
The military is not good at this kind of thing and they are not good a communicating with each other either. This would not be the first time the military's RIGHT HAND didn't have a clue what their very own LEFT HAND was doing. After 60+ years and much hullabaloo we still do not have a smoking gun.
No spacecraft debris, no bodies, no confirmation of a government cover up.
So, I think the idea that the Soviets sent counterfeit aliens into the New Mexican desert to teach Truman a lesson is so much cow manure.
Heck, I'm come closer to believing that it WAS an alien space craft and Truman called in his military and religious advisors and they told him to reveal the alien visitation would cause world wide panic and the religious leaders would caution on top of that it would cause religious upheaval and we were better off not knowing. That's a sexier explanation than the Russians did it.
Although, I admit, my favorite Roswell related "theory" was the one suggested on STAR TREK DS9 in the episode LITTLE GREEN MEN where the three Ferengi get transported back in time to Roswell New Mexico in 1947 and get picked up by the military. That makes as much sense as the Russian theory.
Area 51 got it's "name" due to a military map...it could have been called area 13'a4'25 etc...
Im so happy we can stop wondering about Roswell, we finally have the answer...Stalin, Mengele, deformed children and a bizarre attempt to create a panic in the US is responsible for the crash. But when the Air Force buried the story, why didn't Stalin pull a few strings at his end to interest the MSM. Why'd he let it die?
But the MSM listens to this because Annie Jacobsen, who is a contributor editor of the LA Times Mag said that she interviewed a guy, who remains nameless and he said so. Deformed children the result of the horrific "experiments" of Mengele in some kind of Horten Brothers flying wing for the ET flavor. Stalin thought this "War of the Worlds" scenario would create public panic or something, though Im at a loss to understand what he would have gained by this.
Its amazing to see all of the doc that have been made about this subject many times over without unnamed sources, but the actual people appearing on camera to tell their tales to the MSM yawn because these were crazy old men and women whose memories were probably playing tricks on them. Besides, there were no flying saucers because the Air Force said so.
As an almost lifelong resident of Roswell, let me voice some things.
@D.Man - the flying disc idea came along quite a long time after the actual event. Originally something hit the tower of KCRX, if memory serves it was KCRX. No one knew what.
@Achtung! What is credible about Bob Lazar? There is NO evidence to support ANYTHING he has said.
@MikeyMike - Roswell was one of the places where Robert Goddard was experimenting with rockets and trying to find ways to make them stable. The Roswell high school is named Goddard High School and the football/basketball/etc. teams are called The Rockets. Of course there were Soviets spying on the area.
@StMiller - what could be more ridiculous than a story about creatures NOONE has ever been able to document exist? Do you know what delusion is?
@FranklyTrue - go back to your home planet where people are hatched instead of being birthed. Try downloading the certificate from the Whitehouse website, open it in Adobe PS or Illustrator and see if it separates into layers, and if the colored edges of a B&W scan suddenly change into black only. See if the smooth lines made by a real pen suddenly become solid black pixels. You have no credibility on this subject because you are too lazy to investigate your allegations yourself.
@David - stupid comment. Of course people are buying it because it is at #2! OMG! Have you been smoking dope again. BTW, they grow a lot of it just outside Roswell in Hope, NM.
@skip Nicholson - you could be right.
@Fox - so I've heard
@MrPink - I've never wondered about Roswell -- and I have never met any residents who did. But please visit frequently and go to our UFO museum because we need the money.
NOW, all of this is not to say that I have not seen things in the sky that I could not identify.
ok i admit i had pause for a quick second, until she said Russia, Stealth, and Mothership. Russia didnt get actual air worthyness until maybe mid-late 80's tech wise. always 3 steps behind. That my opinion, its not a knock, but a compliment.
however, it really seems i have heard this version before, like on some Leonard Nimoy mystery what ever the hell it was, (good show in its day).
yes! she does look like a man! its like the makeup is almost hiding a apple, but just cant be too sure.
To clairify however, if Russia did have some sort of means to dodging our radar, perhaps maybe a disk shape may/maynot come off like that, but the mothership wouldnt. it would have stuck out like a sore thumb, because it then would actually have been defective, if we perfected it. Russia if having this available to them, i think we would have known about as well, long before the Stealth editions. However, lets say, these were rescued teens from some mad scientist. and Russia wanted a good laugh. Be it any means, it would have made more sense to go public with such information upon discovery. why cover up the guy next door, lit a sack of crap on our stoop? make more sense maybe to say, no worries, so far we the shiz.
and if you think our government has given up useing humans as lab rats, think again.
Are you serious? This is more preposterous than the UFO explanation. The Soviets were biologically altering the size of their heads? Are you kidding me?. You people snort at those who believe UFOs might be extraterrestrial?
I'm with Peter Davenport on this one. This lady's idea is really a knee-slapper.
Agreed. ET's actually visiting this planet is easier to believe than believing biologically-altered pint-sized people willingly flew a top-secret experimental aircraft to a lightly populated area of the USA only to crash it.
Yeah, this is utter and complete nonsense. This "unnamed source" is a crackpot, there is nothing credible or even likely about all of this rubbish.
You gotta admit she's kinda got a sexy voice though. A little Demi Moore with a slight smoker's cough .... anyone .....
The unnamed source is laughing. And to make $, point out that Roswell, NM has a UFO museum, and a parade that honors the 1948 event every year.
Surgically altering the size of a persons head and eyes is within the realm of "Star Trek" technology, NOT today's technology and certainly not 1950's technology.
That's the point where I stopped reading the article.
C'mon Allen, you have a great opportunity to write some very useful and influential articles. Not cheap tabloid stories. We need people to champion the causes for future space flight. We need voices that will be heard to influence our government into restarting the manned space flight program.
Even at the most leisurely rate of progress since Apollo, we should have been to Mars by now. It's such a shame we can't focus on that a little more.
I dunno, it sounds pretty believable to me. If ETs were visiting Earth on a regular basis (and I'm not saying they aren't) then wouldn't we have more concrete evidence? A verifiable picture, something. As it is today it's about like the evidence supporting the existence of a Bigfoot.
This is an article that belongs in the National Enquirer or the Sun. not a legitimate news article.
WHAT!!!!!!!!!!
No more preposterous than Russian's invasion of Alaska, predicted by author Drury, and its
control of our weather and then the Ulitmatum.
well, guess what, she will make tons of money from this story no matter what you say or believe. it doesnt matter this story is stupid or not, it is all about money. When spider man came out to movies, almost all of you spend $10 to $50 depends of your family size but didnt you know it was also a stupid story? :) if i catch any of you spending money on her book or future movie, i will kick your ass. :)
DevAvo:
Allen's job is to provoke thought on all issues related to science. Certainly the UFO issue has been a boil (sorry Allen) on the butts of many journalists since 1947. This subject is one of the most read about; thought provoking; debated; contentious controversies of our times. let Allen do his job. If it's thought provoking and fun; or just poking fun, put your brain in neutral (if you like) and just let it flow! If its answers your looking for; keep reading like I do. At 60 it's about all the fun I have left. I enjoy the subject and the thoughts conveyed here.
Keep 'em coming Allen!
Where's Waldo:
While I believe there is intelligent life on other planets (which IS a discussion for scientists), I believe the majority of UFO claims are hoaxes, mistakes or pure fantasy. Scientifically speaking there has been no hard data to support any claims that we have been visited by ET. So in this context, the subject of UFO's (especially genetically altered Russian midgets) is NOT worthy of a true science column. And IMHO not worthy of Allen's time or column space.
It is all a bunch of nonsense. ET's or Soviet aircraft with mini-me inside. Alcohol and drug abuse is most the cause of this nonsense. Or maybe extensive head trauma from football, boxing or car accidents.
DevAvo:
I agree wholeheartedly with you. Those who have been expending the time and digging deeply into the issue (including a former NASA scientist and other professional people) have come to the same conclusion. Very few claims can be substantiated. Project Blue Book, according to some of its own scientific experts, was pretty much an exercise in lip service and a white wash of the whole issue, even though some of the events they investigated could not be explained. Blue Book was a joke. If you haven't read Leslie Kean's book, and are interested in the issue, give it a try. She is very methodical and analytical in her search for the truth. Other countries have come forward and exposed well kept information on the subject. The U.S. remains, as always, dead silent and obfuscatory on the issue. Get Kean's book and read it with an open mind. It seems that Ridicule has done as much to dampen an honest look into this ongoing issue as secrecy has.
W.Waldo - Thanks for the book recommendation, I'll check it out.
One of the few times that I hear about a UFO report that sounds like it might have some credibility is when an airline pilot reports an unknown object outside the aircraft moving in an unusual way.
Now, I've only seen television documentaries on this, so even with these types of reports, I have to wonder how much did the documentary producers "spice up" the event. I like to keep an open mind, but as with anything, I try to filter through the BS to find what seems most logical and plausible.
I visited one of the subjects in Kean's book last year. My wife and I traveled to his home and spent the day with this retired airline pilot. He is 91 and as sharp as a tack. He flew B-17s in the Great War and also many other aircraft. He is a deeply religious man and his son is also an airline pilot. He retold the story to us, that he was quoted in Ms. Kean's book. Hearing the story first hand made the hair stand on the back of my neck. He was urged by his employer (the airline company) not say anything about the occurrence. He accounted to us the fact that this object actually caused the aircraft to begin to be pulled off course. As the pilot, he had to disengage the auto-pilot to regain straight and level flight. As this was happening Air Traffic Control asked him "where he was going?" (his words.) He responded: "When I find out I'll let you know." (his words.) The plane's compass was whirling about and was thought to be caused by some magnetic anomaly.
I am not a scientist, but at my age I can get a pretty good 'read' on people and this retired pilot had absolutely no reason to tell a tall tale as far as I could determine. He was actually leaving himself open for ridicule. He was steadfast in his description.
I mention the "Great War" and misspoke. World war 2.
This sounds like rubbish. Why would MSNBC even take the time for this. Most people believe area 51 is based off the map where Groom Lake is.
MSNBC is taking the time because they are pimping this lady's book. She was also on the daily show recently, I believe that episode is still on OnDemand.
Annie Jacbosen is an author for multiple publications, so she already has that going for her in terms of connections to different media outlets.
That's one reason. The other is because the claim is outrageous. The mainstream press loves running with these "new' revelations about Area 51 and such because it gets them ratings, but she's merely a blip on the radar screen in terms of the real experts on this subject.
It's the same reason all the major media outlets were all over the Doomsday predictions for last Saturday. It generates controversy and gets peoples' attentions.
NatGeo had a more relevant story about this last night..... I should write a book about that... far more informative. I also like money...
Clearly the engineer is throwing out another elaborate cover story to cover for the alien visits that prompted the subsequent tech surge. If the Soviets had been that far ahead then with flying discs it seems you would have seen something more substantial out of their own technology sooner.
Ever since the 50's a lot of our leadership has also apparently spent a lot of their time in deep space - just more evidence for contact.
Anyone wo ever has done even the tiniest bit of study into the area 51 cover ups knows that George W. Bush was behind all of its cover ups. Right from day one of the studies.
Now I need help removing my tongue from my cheek. We know it was Sarah Palin.
Hey it makes as much sence as the bull crap this so called aurthor is trying to put out.
If they went to so much trouble to surgically or biologically alter these "Child-size aviators", and try to make everything else look so convincing, then why would they leave Russian writing stamped on a ring that went around the inside of the aircraft?
That's a pretty good point. It already sounded like BS to me though. How well do you think children altered by radioactivity experiments or who have been surgically altered would fly an advanced aircraft?
Why would any government risk millions of dollars of technology in the hands of horribly mutated pilots?
I guess it's more entertaining than "oh, it was a weather balloon".
More to the point, the timeline doesn't even match up. Her Nazi geneticist was busy committing crimes against humanity until he fled to South America, at no point did he have time to cook up a few phony aliens for the USSR, which he would have had to have started on before WW2 even broke out.
This statement by Jacobsen begs the question... Why did her source choose her?
I didn't delve into the genesis of this book, but in her acknowledgments, she says the project got started at a Christmas Eve dinner in 2007 when her husband's uncle's wife's sister's husband (Edward Lovick) told her, "Have I got a good story for you." He talked about his freshly declassified work in aerial espionage at Area 51 ... and that set her off to talk with scores of folks who were familiar with Area 51. I reckon she eventually found her way to the EG&G engineer. No comment on Daryl's answer.
Well, Alan, I'll comment on Daryl's sexist answer. I doubt that if the author had been male, Daryl would have been commenting about the bulge size in his pants. And, Daryl, the addition of these low brow types of comments negates any point you're trying to make. So do us all a favor, and make sure your zipper is pulled up.
Is that true Alan? Her "husband's uncle's wife's sister's husband?! That is just too funny.
My cousin's cousin's dad is a contractor.
The most fun you guys could ever possibly have would be to go to Roswell, New Mexico, and meet up with the folks who are keeping this whole thing alive. They are descendants, grandkids I think, of one or two of the original "witnesses" to the "incident". This family is more frightening than any extraterrestrial biological entity would ever be and goofier, to boot!
Shucks, they're just trying to make a livin'.
Your visit to Roswell will be most enlightening and full of fun, irony and the Mexican food in Roswell is great.
PS: I don't live in Roswell. And, it's true, there is something in the water.
Something in the water? Do you mean like hydrogen? or oxygen? or fish? ...wait a tick... this New Mexico you speak of... There's no water in New Mexico. LOL you almost fooled me! ;-p
mob barley,
Well, we do have a little water hereabouts, but not much. The water we do have does, indeed, have hydrogen and oxygen and trout and kokanee salmon.
But the water in Roswell? Well, actually there is an oil slick on top of your water in your glass of water from all of the oil wells. Pretty colors and swirls.
There may be alien stuff in the water too, maybe a fuel leak from their space ship. (I made that up.)
This vine has been most entertaining. Thanks for the fun.
mob barley,
Oh I forgot. We also have the plague here in good quantity. New Mexico, land of the flea, home of the plague. Maybe it's and alien plague.
All right, Bob!! Let's not start getting state-ist, as in racist. People living in New Mexico are just like anybody else. We're all humans, last time I checked!
...........I confess....it was me....I crashed it....I survived.....the govt. relocation program put me in Hardwater, TX......I've been earning a living delivering pizzas for decades now.................I want to go home............Boeing can't fix my saucer............................................................................................................Earth food really sucks......
Help me, grump.....................
Steve,
I couldn't even find Hardwater, Texas, on the map.
OK, if you just stop living on leftover pizza crusts and switch to Tex-Mex instead you should be fit to go. I hesitate to say where you will be "going".
Virgin Galactic might be able to help with the saucer or maybe the auto repair students at the local technical-vocational school. They are slow but go good work.
Good sailing ahead for you! Say hello to the Doctor for me when you see him.
Thanks, grump...will do.
It's crap like this that makes me want to not believe.
pure fantasy for science fiction lovers.. bet I can make up a better story
and have you all believing it, if you buy this load of tripe.
I'll take that bet. I'll be the first to buy the book too. What's the story??
It starts as the brainchild of one of the producers for the "outer limits"...
ratings were slumping and hollywood needed a way to boost the next
generation of science fiction programing... they had all the props, all
they needed was a clandestine group of ex-military to perpetrate the
elaborate hoax... should I go on.
I'm on the edge of my seat here. More, I need more!
I think this lady needs to change her meds or quit eating shrooms....I'm amazed I even commented on this.....anyone seriously thinking about buying her book...DONT!...send me the money and I'll write a much better one for you ......hehehehe
What a great marketing gimmick this author missed out on. Why didn't she release the book on April 1? And seriously, the government shouldn't even concern itself any longer with paying people, like this lady, to throw excrement against the Roswell wall to see if it sticks. For, at this point, even if they were to tell the truth of what crashed there, no one would believe them anymore. Thanks to the insane cold war and Roswell, the Robertson panel, the Kennedy's, etc., the government has the credibility of a liars club alumnus at a truth tellers convention.
You mean, ....this isn't true??!
lol mob
More importantly how will the TEA baggers blame President Obama for it?
Simple.. Obama MUST be the unnamed source. Duh.
;-p
He's one of the aliens. Look at that swollen cranium and big ears.
Obama's tryin to spread his secret MUSLIM SOSHULIST ALIEN KENYAN takeover!!
Yeeeeeehhhhhaaaa!
Obama's real birth certificate was what crashed in Roswell.
That's why the government immediately stepped in and hid the wreckage.
Hey - I'll buy one ...
The alien explanation holds more water. Read from the FBI's own website, a memo that just came out from 1950 stating that an Air Force informant reported to them that 3 flying discs were recovered from New Mexico, 1950. Don't believe me, read the memo yourself.
My favorite theory (not joking, a book was written) is Nazi scientists working for the US, or from secret bases in South America, were surveying US nuclear operations in disc shaped aircraft. Here's the kicker: The bodies were small because they were PROGERIA victims!
Progeria? You mean like those poor kids I've seen on the talk shows? That sounds more realistic than her answer of surgically altered or radioactively mutated children.
The real story of Roswell is Cold War related but not for the reasons this book's anonymous source describes. See Wikipedia's article on "Project Seal" and the Center for UFO Truth website for research based on unimpeachable sources.
It was a weather balloon. I lived in Roswell for 10 years, back in the 1980's, before this whole UFO tourist attraction blew up. The town really wanted to grow back then. They have always wanted to present themselves as a larger city than they really are. They tried the "All America City"designation, all good with wholesome values. But then later, someone got the idea of exploiting that newspaper article from 1947, using that to try putting Roswell on the map. Needless to say, it worked! And now Roswell is a tourist attraction in the semi-arid prairie.
The reality is this, folks: It was nothing more than a glorified weather balloon, loaded with dummies. Think of the technology they had back then: No GPS, no radio control (at least not by today's standards), and aerodynamics essentially limited to conventional, prop-driving aircraft, all controlled by analog inputs with analog avionics. And even today, with all the advanced technology and telescopes we have, there is STILL no real evidence of interstellar beings.
Enjoy Roswell for what it is: A nice place to raise kids, with a yearly get-together that can rival most any state fair. Oh by the way: NMMI (New Mexico Military Institute) is a good place your kids, if they need some discipline.
Exactly right.
So you expect us again to believe that an intelligence officer for the 509th BG, the only bomb group in the US military in 1947 with nukes, couldn't tell a balloon from a flying disk? You don't see the threat to national security there? Weather balloon- Project mogul? A balloon by any other name, is still a balloon, to paraphrase Shakespeare. And if that's the case, then I have a lot to fear, as the not very intelligent 509th bomb group now resides less than forty miles from my house.
The supposed witness from the 509th was talking about something he saw in the dark, not very clearly, long after the event. It's quite easy to mistake what you see in such circumstances.
There's a reason that eyewitness testimony is considered to be one of the weakest forms of evidence.
It is shameful that the Russians would "alienate" their children this way.
Ok now thats funny lmao
lol
you can push any random nonsense you want, as long as you wrap it up in "Area 51" and tie it with a bow. it's a fact. The Voices told me.
Midget communist aviators from the "mother ship" taking flying saucers on a mission to warn Truman that they can scare us anytime they want. Riiiight…
I think I'll skip the book and wait for the movie.
I hear they're thinking about digging up the three stooges to star in it,
That was when midget commie aviators could find work in their chosen field.
Now, they're relegated to porn movies and shows on Spike TV.
"My girl's an alien, with bulging eyes and a little chin, I would do anything to keep her alive". "My girl's from outer space, a big skull and Russian face, I would do anything to keep her alive."
This is utter nonsense to sell books.
In 1947 the Soviets were approaching, but hadn't yet attained, advanced fighter jet technology. Their early jets were little more than test beds based on captured German WW2 technology. The much more advanced MiG-15 with a copy of a Rolls-Royce licensed jet engine was still about a year or two away from full deployment when Roswell occurred. Moreover, even assuming the Soviets had a Mig-15 derived circular flying aircraft available, they lacked the range to reach the mainland U.S. and would therefore have had to refuel in mid-air undetected, a very unlikely proposition. Lastly, in 1947 the Soviets and the U.S. were still on marginally good terms. The Cold War hadn't started in earnest yet and Korea was a few years off. Sending a circular flying craft to scare Americans would have been a bizarre adventure with no appreciable benefit for the Soviets. If anything, the UFO scare drove U.S. defense spending forward during the Cold War. It certainly didn't curtail it. Scared Americans spend money on arms, which is something Soviets wanted to avoid.
The Soviets wouldn't have had the nads or the technology to pull off something like this undetected. As much as we might like to demonize the Soviets of the Cold War era, they wouldn't have been that stupid.
Roswell was MOGUL. Period. Move out of your parent's basement and get over it.
As I stated earlier, if Jesse Marcel(rest his soul) couldn't recognize a balloon from a flying disc, then we should all be very afraid. Period.
Marcel was wrong. He didn't design or build the Mogul arrays, and he didn't know what he was looking at. I'm sure it looked very "alien" to him.
I make no statement on the existence or non-existence of UFO's or E.T.'s. There are plenty of other incidents that give me the willys, Cash-Landrum and Rendelshem being the strongest in my mind.
But Roswell was a joke. A bad joke, gone horribly wrong, that has morphed into a national mythology, that people like this "researcher" like to cash in on.
The only thing that looks like a balloon- is a balloon. And nothing will change the fact that if an intelligence officer for the only atomic bomb group in the world couldn't recognize balloon material, then, we had no 'national security' in 1947, and almost certainly have even less today. The military apparently should not be allowed to have weapons.
MOGUL projects had some then very odd stuff. Stuff that was "need to know" only, and someone from outside the project didn't need to know. He reported on something he saw in the dark, didn't get a good look at, and wasn't familiar with, long after the fact.
Well this is exactly what our military wants-one more idiot to spread their misinformation.
This woman's book makes it all the more clear that we will never know the truth about anything concerning area 51.
The truth is out there.
no
l
We will all soon know the truth. Time has come.
al
n
oo
s
ll
wi
e
W
no no no, you've got it all backwards and upside down.
If there wasn't some type of ET situation involved in Rosewell or anywhere else for that matter, than why did the US (and the rest of the world) race to try to beat everyone else into space??? No one seemed to care about space before.
Goddard, Koralev and Von Braun were all dreaming about space before WW2 intervened. Only the Soviets and the US tried to "race into space" after WW2 because they were the only ones with the technology and the financing to do it. LBJ was worried (you could say paranoid) that the Soviets would build orbiting space platforms to drop nuclear weapons on the U.S. with litte or no warning, which is why he was one of the biggest supporters of NASA budgets.
The Russians drove us to win the space race. Not little green men.
I cannot beilive it are we really attempting to provoke the Russians? and to what end . Why should we really be concerend about it at this late date?. Get a life and report news that is truly News worthy.
The Soviets beat the US when it came to putting the first manmade object into space, the first man into space, and the first man to orbit the earth. The US managed to get the first man on the moon, but Apollo the space race was essentially over and has declined to the point of near nonexistence. If aliens were real and a concern of the US government, something tells me the space program would have more priority and wouldn't have been atrophied to its current nearly nonexistent state.
If there wasn't some type of ET situation involved in Rosewell or anywhere else for that matter, than why did the US (and the rest of the world) race to try to beat everyone else into space??? No one seemed to care about space before.
Just reading this article about her book gave me a headache. What will they think of next?