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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:
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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:
I can't believe what a bunch of pure fabricated B.S. this is! This "person" knows nothing. Truth is, there are many thousands of Americans out there who actually know what happened and what is going on, and are patriotic enough to keep their mouths SHUT, like they should, for the safety and security of all of us and this country. Thank God for their commitment and dedication.
It's hilarious to read people's ridiculous comments trying to sound intelligent while commenting on the absurd. Come on, they are pulling your leg here.
This seems to be classic disinformation about a subject that has such importance within our secret
government that exposure of Roswell would be the thread that unravels the biggest secret
since the "manhatten project".
Think about it? would our government quietly let the soviets take over from the space shuttle
without our big aerospace companies raising a big commotion unless there is a bigger secret
which they are participating in?
If Roswell was real? Our government wouldn't rest unless it could back engineer the "disk".
Since 1947 they would have the biggest coup over any nation by possessing the secret
to this device.
Our military would never rely on any other nation unless they had the ultimate ace up their
sleeve, anti gravity propulsion.This would explain their actions by officially foregoing any
moon missions for public consumption, and why no aerospace companies are complaining
since they would have to be participants in the manufacturing process providing specialized
materials.
Read the book " Witness to Roswell" by tom Carey to get a more accurate picture of that event.
If these people are not all liars then my scenario is not so far fetched.
There you go MSNBC... printing more garbage in the "Science" section. This belongs in the Entertainment section, under fiction - really bad unoriginal fiction.
Haha! I don't think is bad science fiction, just lazy science fiction. If the b.s. factory is going to come up with something then at least make it something good. Is like comparing Star Trek to X-Files. X-Files was a cool show but never really went anywhere because all it did was wade through BS. Real life technology has been inspired and invented because of Star Trek. I propose that we are building a ginormous space vehicle capable of carrying all forms of terrestrial life, has artificial gravity and can travel much farther than Mars. Have been reading popular mechanics since the 80's so I know it must be true.
So far the only verifiable evidence of space travel is humans from earth in space. To the rest of the galaxy we are UFO's. One really obvious sign of humans in space is the amount of trash and debris floating around our planet. Why do we assume aliens would travel in a disk like craft? Is it because a spinning craft could create artificial gravity? Humans would certainly need gravity to maintain bone and muscle mass over prolonged travel in space. As far as cover stories and disinformation goes, I think it was a necessary part of the technology race during the cold war. Glad the cold war is over. Really think that if there was any real evidence of UFO's, the Internet world would be all over it. The Pres would definitely be on the news bragging about USA being the first to make contact. Not saying that UFO's don't exist, if they did visit, why would they go to Area 51 as opposed to somewhere populated? Why would they visit some secret Air Force base?
Does anyone truly believe that ET's are real? Most likely UFO'S have some logical down to earth explanation. Such as balloons, meteorites, atmospheric anomalies or terrestrial aircraft. This nonsense is getting out of hand.
Listened to book on cd. Pleasant to listen to, covered a lot of ground, tons of research. thanks- the weaknesses are as follows- If Stalin was to use this as a Scare tactic to create nationwide hysteria why would they land it in Rosewell, NM in the desert instead of major suburban area? You talked about hover-and-fly, however there is no mention in the details before the crash event in the book. There was no research with regard to Stalin mentioned. There were redacted government publications that discuss fusion reactor and EMI but was scantly discussed. I was sorry to here that the use of U.S. humans in war experiments was prevalent at that time.
"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."-
You know why it`s mired in conjecture, and disinformation? Because of people like Jacobsen, who are out to earn a dollar, rather than find the truth, and who are savvy enough, to include a chapter on Roswell in their book, because they are well aware of who a percentage of their target audience will be!! That`s all there is to this!!
A comment by a reader- "Also, believing it was Russians or aliens requires the same leap of logic... this thought/understanding runs through the entire book, by the way."
Of course this thought/understanding runs through the entire book, because its that kind of thinking that came up with such a preposterous idea in the first place!
Jacobsens theory, is totally counter intuitive! The Russians would never waste money and resources on such a crackpot scheme. Breeding children with over-sized heads, to make the Americans think it was Orwells War of the worlds, all over again??? What UTTER rubbish!! The logic behind the idea, that a genuine UFO came down at Roswell, and Jacobsens theory, are worlds apart.
Does anyone really think the Americans couldn`t tell, if what they found was man made or not? One look is all that would be required. Man made technology, is man made technology! It looks.... feels.. and works.... like man made technology! How do you make WWII era technology, look, feel, and work, like Alien technology?? You cant, its that simple! Those skeptics really THINK they have it all figured out.
This is just some more disinformation fed by the US military/intelligence apparatus to another gullible researcher/reporter (or she maybe part of the conspiracy). The idea is to confuse the story about UFOs so much that no one will believe anything. The truth is that extraterrestrial aliens did crash land in Roswell in 1947 and that Area 51 does have extraterrestrials working with US scientists as consultants on advanced technologies See ufocoverup.org for more info
I have read the book. There was NOT saucer technology in 1947 or there would be incredible trickledown.
The US has not even been able to keep its ultra super stealth fighters secret.
Either there are no UFOS from outside the world, or they really crashed and are kept secret. I do find incredible is that we had mathematicians and physicists that were quite advanced in the 30's - 50's.... but computers didnt start till after Roswell.
Are there aliens at area 51 probably not.... but did russian midgets fly a saucer to america in the 1940s.. um... what do you think.
Good book other than this dumb@!$%# hypothesis.
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.
WOW Must have really hurt being on her knees for soooo long LOL......
Yepper I bought right into that story. Complete BS IMO.
What happened at Roswell was real and the Government simply lied about it.
Yes folks the Government has been known to lie about these types of events, quite systematically in fact.
Hah !
The only pea, or "pint-sized aviator" flying around here is in the author's soft cranium.
Non-stop Russia to New Mexico just to buzz the base ? What a crock of bananas.
Well Annie, I'm sure you'll make lots of money at the comic and UFO shows. Much more than the baskets and handicrafts you worked on at the Sanitorium, ... I mean "secured" facility you previous lived in.
Extraordinary!
In this post-Cold War era where the Berlin Wall has gone down and Russian authorities including a number of former top KGB chiefs had become more open about various top-secrets it had conducted for a long time, it is incredible that not one Russian expert to this day has confirmed the nation had sent a spy plane, airship, weather balloon, missile or whatever it was, to the U.S. and realized it crashed in New Mexico.
Seriously, the U.S.military and their scientists in Area 51 are still maintaining a big secret about the object to this day. What are they doing? Twiddling their thumbs and playing darts all day for the last 55 years after studying the Russian flying object? Surely not. They are clearly still studying this object for all it is worth at Area 51 (must have a lot of highly advanced technologies from the Russians). Yet the Russians have never come forth to claim any of the technologies was theirs. No patents, no nothing. Even more odd, the Russians could have made an absolute truckload of cash selling just one or two of their technologies (say, fibre optics, shape-memory alloys, the transistor etc) and the nation wouldn't be in the crap economic situation it is today (mind you, the U.S. isn't far off from joining the Russians if the last economic recession was anything to go by). But Russia has never lifted itself out of the economic hardships for its people and most of the top officials for more than 60 years.
Its amazing. It looks like the Russians must have been smoking a big bong when they conducted this failed secret experiment over Roswell to the point where they have forgotten about it and couldn't care less at all the amazing technologies they had given away to the U.S.
Somehow I get the feeling the Russians weren't involved. Sounds more like these so-called scientists at Area 51 are pulling a rug over our eyes, making us believe they are doing this work on an advanced Russian flying object and that's it. Yeah right, and I believe in Father Christmas and the Easter bunny too.
As a case in point, the witnesses of the Roswell incident who saw the wreckage up close and personal mentioned a metallic foil, dark-grey in color, that could return to its original shape. You know, the foil that could resist a blowtorch, was as thin as a sheet of newspaper, and hard as hell to resist ripping and cutting. Very tough stuff. Well, guess what? The scientists at Area 51 didn't mention anything about seeing a tough titanium-based shape-memory alloy in action (like the dark-grey NiTi) through that Roswell foil. And scientists have known about shape-memory alloys since 1958. So why didn't Area 51 scientists tell us what type of foil they discovered?
Too secret? My ass! It has to be the lousiest secret ever kept given what other scientists know about shape-memory alloys.
To be genuine, these Area 51 scientist should have told Annie in her book about shape-memory alloys. If not, just say NiTi and leave it at that. They didn't.
So why keep it secret?
One good reason is that if other scientists were to find out about this shape-memory work and start looking into the scientific literature, they will find out that the USAF and its scientists (at Wright-Patterson AFB, a couple at Battelle, and now probably at Area 51) had already been studying shape-memory alloys of the titanium variety. Then, we will realise it is not a Russian flying object. Because the scientific literature of chemical abstracts and metal journals from the world scientists shows the Russians didn't mention anything about shape-memory alloys. They started having an interest in a pseudoelastic alloy in 1949 (the term "shape-memory alloys" wasn't invented until 1958). A very weak shape-memory effect which no scientist in the world could fully explain, and certainly no titanium-based shape-memory alloys were known officially.
Then we learn the USAF started looking at titanium as an alternative aerospace material to aluminium and steel n late 1946 to March 1947. The report's conclusion was that the metal could prove promising for aerospace applications because of its tough and lightweight properties. Nothing more would be said about the metal or any alloy derived from this metal.
Then, from recently declassified USAF/Battelle reports that the USAF at Wright-Patterson (where the Roswell materials ended up for analysis) started studying NiTi, TiZr, and NiTiCo shape-memory alloys after 1947 in secret. But not before, and certainly not by mid-July 1947. And the USAF needed help from Battelle to do it, which begs the question how did the USAF (or the Russians if we were to believe these Area 51 scientists) make the foil in large quantities for the Roswell object by mid-July 1947?
The Russians didn't know. The USAF couldn't figure it out and needed Battelle's help after 1947 to get the answers, including the technology to make highly pure titanium alloys (a critical factor in making a titanium-based shape-memory alloy in order to reveal its property). Okay so what's going on?
Well, if it turns out from the scientific literature and the declassified reports that this work had occurred after the Roswell incident in July 1947 and there is no scientific knowledge or technology available form the scientific community anywhere in the world to show how to make this foil in 1947, it might question whether the object is actually "man-made" at all. Forget whether it is "Russian-made" or not. This object could have far bigger implications for everyone.
Better not to mention shape-memory alloys at all.
However, since the Area 51 scientists are willing to talk and are claiming a Russian-made flying object being responsible for the Roswell incident without mentioning NiTi, they have to be talking through their ass. They are total lying experts, probably protecting their own super payouts from the military.
They could easily spill the beans by mentioning shape-memory alloys. They don't want to. Why not? What have they got to lose? Leak a few details anonymously and no one would ever know who did it.
The reality is that no one in the USAF or the scientists studying whatever they've found near Roswell wants to talk about it. And if they do, say anything other than the truth. Just tell the public whatever the Area 51 scientists want them to believe just to keep them busy trying to figure it all out.
And if it turns out to be a hoax, then great. Hopefully more people will be turned away from the subject and the secret can be maintained for longer.
And allows other people in the know within military and some R-wing political circles to remain rich and powerful through whatever technologies they can slowly introduce to the world.
This is probably the true situation for the book by Annie Jacobsen. She may well have spoken to these scientists. But it is likely they are taking her for a ride since she has nothing to go by to question the knowledge of these scientists and so determine their true motives for revealing themselves to her.
Need a real scientific insight into the Roswell metallic foil and the status of titanium technology in 1947? Try reading the book at
Far more solid scientific stuff than what those Area 51 scientists are willing to divulge. This alternative book should stop all the nonsense coming out of Area 51 and start bringing out the real truth.
Oh, by the way, the book is called Roswell Revealed - The New Scientific Breakthrough into the Controversial UFO Crash of 1947, by SUNRISE Information Services (hopefully NBC and MS won't try to delete the book title as well through this silly site).
there seems to be a lot of misinformed individuals on this thread. space exploration was a result of geopolitica- cold war competition between the russians and the us. if you can put an object in orbit, then have it decend through the atmosphere without burning up and land where you want it to land, you now have intercontinental ballistic missiles. they can't be shot down like a bomber, and once launched you can't defend against them, even today with current anti-missile technology. unlike a bomber it is only a matter of minutes between launch and impact rather than 8-12 hours of flight time.
the russians struggled to get their space capsules to land precisley. it took them years, while the us gemini missions figured it out pretty quickly. when the first us capsule landed within a few hundred yards of the ships waiting to pick them up, the russians shi*t a brick. (maybe that should be shat). that was the holy grail of the space program. continuing on to the moon was just rubbing it in. (probably a poor choice of words given the previous use of the verb shat).
the tv show outer limits aired more than a decade after roswell. but if you belive this silly explantion you can probably explain that inconsistency with time travel by the shows creators.
this book and the explanation it offers for roswell is ridiculous. the horten craft would have been unable to carry enough fuel to go from alaska to seattle, no way it could reach new mexico. that airframe design has the glide characteristics of a brick and required and enormous amount of fuel just to stay aloft. sorry, but fact and the constraints of the technology of the time makes it impossible.
who flew the craft? there was insufficient technology at the time to program the craft to fly itself or to guide it from a remote location. brain damaged children, ok that explains it.
just like a belief in god, belief in alien visitation is an act of faith because there are no facts to support it. plenty of data that supports the existence of unidentified flying objects. ufo's are a hard scientific fact. where they come from is another story. just because someone recovers from an "uncurable" disease does not support the existence of a god any more than unidentified flying object support the belief in extraterrestial visitation.
if we are being visited, they are missing all the good spots. they should be landing in nyc or vegas. get a good hotel, have a great steak at peter luger's, check out the nightlife and roll into a comfortable bed rather than sleeping in that pod thing on the saucer. and they never tip their waiters, aliens are such jerks.