Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base

Acknowledgments

Many have asked me how this book came to be. In 2007, I was at a Christmas Eve dinner when my husband’s uncle’s wife’s sister’s husband — a spry physicist named Edward Lovick, who was eightyeight years old at the time — leaned over to me and said, “Have I got a good story for you.” As a national security reporter, I hear this line frequently — my work depends on it — but what Lovick told me ranked among the most surprising and tantalizing things I’d heard in a long time. Until then, I was under the impression that Lovick had spent his life designing airplane parts. Over dinner I learned that he was actually a physicist and that he’d played a major role in the development of aerial espionage for the CIA. The reason Lovick could suddenly divulge information that had been kept secret for fifty years was because the CIA had just declassified it. When I learned that much of Lovick’s clandestine work took place at that mysterious and mythic location Area 51, also called Groom Lake, I smiled. So, the place was real after all. Immediately, I wrote to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense requesting an official tour of the Groom Lake Area — Lovick also told me that the CIA had given up control of the place decades earlier. My request was formally denied, on Department of Defense letterhead, but oddly with the words “the Groom Lake Area” separated out in quotes attributed to me, so as to make clear the Pentagon’s official position regarding their Nevada base: That locale may be part of your lexicon, they seemed to be saying, but it is most definitely not officially part of ours. As an investigative journalist I sought to know why.

Since then, more individuals than I could have ever imagined have generously shared their Area 51 stories with me. I am indebted to each and every one of them. The list I thank includes everyone in this book: the legendary soldiers, spies, scientists, and engineers— professionals who, for the most part, are not known for sharing their inner lives. That so many individuals opened up with me — relaying their triumphs and tragedies, their sorrows and joys — so that others may make sense of it all has been an experience of a lifetime. Why I was given access to information that countless others have been denied remains a great mystery to me. A reporter is dependent on primary sources. From their stories, and using keywords such as operational cover names, I was then able to locate corroborating documents, often found deeply buried in U.S. government archives. I wouldn’t have had a clue where to look without their aid. Specific examples are sourced in the Notes section.

T. D. Barnes is one of the most generous people I have met. He introduced me to many people, who in turn introduced me to their colleagues and friends. Barnes took me to Creech Air Force Base, at Indian Springs, Nevada, as part of a very private tour. There I was allowed to watch U.S. Air Force pilots fly drones halfway across the world, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Barnes also arranged for my tours of Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, where I sat inside a Russian MiG fighter jet and examined the Hawk missile system and the F-117 Nighthawk up close. And it was Barnes who, in the fall of 2010, advocated tirelessly on my behalf to allow me to join a group of pilots and engineers at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and at the Defense Intelligence Agency Headquarters in Washington, DC, as part of a week-long symposium on overhead espionage. I met many people during this trip who were extraordinarily helpful to me, on background, and I thank them all.

Ken Collins lives in the same city as I do, which meant that for a year and a half I got to interview him regularly over lunch. He is a remarkable pilot and an even more extraordinary person. Thank you, Colonel Slater, Frank Murray, Roger Andersen, Tony Bevacqua, and Ray Goudey, for sharing so many unique flying stories with me. Thank you, Buzz Aldrin, for explaining to me what it feels like up there on the moon.

Al O’Donnell arranged for my temporary security clearance so that I could accompany him to the federally restricted land that is the Nevada Test Site. Looking into the Sedan nuclear crater — so vast it is visible from outer space — is not something I will ever forget. While Area 51, Area 25, and Area 13 were off-limits to us on that visit, that I was able even to get within a stone’s throw of these three hidden places is thanks to O’Donnell. And a special thanks to Ruth, Al’s very capable wife. From Jim Freedman I learned things that could be contained in their own book. Freedman has the unusual ability to share deeply personal experiences with stunning clarity, objectivity, and conviction. Once, he explained why: “I tell you all this, Annie, because you give a damn.”

Dr. Bud Wheelon, the CIA’s first deputy director of science and technology, has given only a few interviews in his life. I am grateful to have joined those ranks. During one of our interviews he stopped midstory to thoroughly explain missile technology to me. From that moment on I understood what was at stake during the Cuban missile crisis. How close we came to nuclear war.

Lieutenant Colonel Hervey Stockman and Colonel Richard Leghorn are legends among legendary men. Colonel Leghorn generously shared with me artifacts he had stored away in his attic, shipping original photographs, long-lost articles, and out-of-print books across the country for my review. Thanks to his assistant, Barbara Austin, for her help. Hervey Stockman was not so easy to locate at first, but when I finally did reach him, on the telephone, it was a magical moment. Thank you, Peter Stockman, for sending me a copy of Hervey’s oral history, which was an invaluable source of information.

For all the investigating that goes on in writing a book like this, sometimes the most sought-after information comes in the most whimsical of ways. In the summer of 2009, I went to the Nuclear Testing Archive library in Las Vegas to locate declassified documents on the Project 57 “dirty bomb” test, ones that were mysteriously missing from the Department of Energy’s online repository. Even in person, the staff was unable to fulfill my records request. Hindered and frustrated, I took a walk around the adjacent atomic-testing museum to cool down. Reporter’s notebook in hand, I was staring at a photograph of a mushroom cloud hanging on the wall when the museum’s security guard walked up and said hello. It was Richard Mingus. We’d met briefly before, on an earlier visit. I told Mingus that I felt records on Project 57 were being withheld from me over at the library. In his characteristic matter-of-fact style Mingus said, “Well, I worked on that test. What is it you’d like to know?” Mingus, I quickly learned, was also one of the CIA’s original Area 51 security guards. Thanks to Mingus, the “missing” Project 57 documents became easier to locate.

At the National Archives and Records Administration, thank you to Timothy Nenninger, chief of the Textual Records Reference Staff, Martha Murphy, chief of Special Access and FOIA Staff, and Tom Mills, who specializes in World War II records; thank you, Rita Cann, at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri; Martha DeMarre of the Nuclear Testing Archive in Las Vegas; Troy Wade of the Nevada Test Site Historical Foundation; Tech Sergeant Jennifer Lindsey of the U.S. Air Force; Staff Sergeant Alice Moore, Creech Air Force Base; Dr. David R. Williams, NASA; Dr. David Robarge, chief historian, Central Intelligence Agency; Tony Hiley, curator and director of the CIA Museum; Cheryl Moore, EEA CIA; Jim Long, Laughlin Heritage Foundation Museum; R. Cargill Hall, historian emeritus, National Reconnaissance Office; Dr. Craig Luther, chief historian, Edwards Air Force Base; S. Eugene Poteat, president of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers; Melissa Dalton, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics; Dr. Jeffrey Richelson, National Security Archives; David Myhra, author and aviation historian; Fred Burton, former special agent with the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service; Sherre Lovick, former Lockheed Skunk Works engineer; Colonel Adelbert W. “Buz” Carpenter, former SR-71 pilot; Charles “Chuck” Wilson, former U-2 pilot; Arthur Beidler, 67th Reconnaissance Tactical Squadron, Japan; Dennis Nordquist, Pratt & Whitney mechanical engineer; Tony Landis, NASA photographer; Michael Schmitz, Roadrunners Internationale photographer; Joerg Arnu, Norio Hayakawa, and Peter Merlin of Dreamlandresort.com. A special thank you to Doris Barnes, Barbara Slater, Stacy Slater Bernhardt, Stella Murray, Mary Martin, and Mary Jane Murphy. Thank you, Jeff King, for making me such an excellent map, and Ploy Siripant, for a phenomenal job on the jacket. Thank you Tommy Harron, Jerry Maybrook, and Jeremy Wesley for the great work on the audio book.

Once I completed a draft of this manuscript, my editor, John Parsley, helped me to refine it into the book that it is. What I learned from John about storytelling is immeasurable. Thank you also to Nicole Dewey, Geoff Shandler, and Michael Pietsch.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Jim Hornfischer, the perfect agent for someone like me, and to my confidant Frank Morse. Thank you for the wise counsel, Steve Younger, David Willingham, Aron Ketchel, Eric Rayman, and Karen Andrews.

It takes a village to make a writer. I’m one of the lucky ones who has always known writing is what I was meant to do. I arrived at St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, at the age of fifteen, typewriter in hand, and wrote for nearly twenty years straight without earning as much as one cent. Only at the age of thirty-four did things shift for me, and I’ve earned my living as a writer ever since. I say that for all of the writers following in my footsteps. Don’t give up. My village fire keepers — those to whom I am deeply indebted for their individually imperative roles — include Alice and Tom Soininen, Julie Elkins, John Soininen; my writing teacher at St. Paul’s School, Michael Burns, and at Princeton University, Paul Auster, Joyce Carol Oates, and P. Adams Sitney; my storytelling hero in Greece, John Zervos; those who supported me in Big Sur: Lisa Firestone, Thanis Iliadis, Alex Timken, Robert Jolliffe, Harriet and Jeremy Polturak, James Young, Nate Downey, Emmy Starr and Stephen Vehslage, Samantha Muldoon, Erin Gafill and Tom Birmingham; my mentors in Los Angeles: Rachel Resnick, Keith Rogers, Kathleen Silver, Rio Morse, and my friend and editor in chief at the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Nancie Clare, who commissioned my original two-part series on Area 51 for the magazine; my fellow writers from group: Kirston Mann, Sabrina Weill, Michelle Fiordaliso, Nicole Lucas Haimes, Annette Murphy, Terry Rossio, Jolly Stamat, Moira McMahon, Lisa Gold; fellow storyteller Lucy Firestone; my mother-in-law, Marion Wroldsen, not only for her deep love of reading but for lending me her son.

Nothing in this world is so joyful as being the wife of Kevin Jacobsen and the mother of our two boys. While writing this book, it was Kevin who made endless sandwiches for me, brewed pots of coffee, and let me travel to wherever it was that I needed to go. Kevin hears out every first draft, usually standing in our kitchen or yard. Everything gets better after I listen to what he has to say.