Area 51: The Base That Officially Did Not Exist Until 2013
67 years of denial. 5,000 employees. A daily 737 from Las Vegas. The CIA finally admitted it exists. They admitted nothing else.
For decades the official position was that Area 51 - a base 83 miles north of Las Vegas, surrounded by 23 miles of restricted airspace and motion sensors - did not exist. Aerial photography showed it. Soviet satellites tracked it. Pilots saw it. The U.S. government denied it.
In 2013, in response to a FOIA request from George Washington University, the CIA released a 400-page document titled The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and OXCART Programs. The word "Area 51" appears in the report. The base is acknowledged. The map is included.
The CIA's explanation: it's where they tested the U-2 spy plane, the SR-71 Blackbird, and the F-117 stealth fighter. End of story.
The unanswered questions:
- Why did Bob Lazar - a man with verifiable employment records at Los Alamos National Laboratory - describe nine recovered alien craft at Area 51's S-4 facility in 1989?
- Why does the airspace surrounding Area 51 (Groom Lake) have a deadly-force authorization?
- Why did former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid publicly confirm a Pentagon UAP program in 2017 - 47 years after first hearing about it?
Whatever they tested there, it's still classified for a reason.