Area 51 Goes Main stream / street on NPR today with Fresh Air's Terry Gross!

reply to post by FosterVS


Bravo to Foster VS for sharing Laramie75's Amazon comments. They sum up just part of what is wrong with Jacobsen's book. I will eventually read through the book and comment on it in detail, when I have time.

For the moment, I have skimmed through it and found numerous factual errors. Some of these might be forgiven because the erroneous information has been published so many times that it is just assumed to be fact. An example is the description of Kelly Johnson's first visit to Groom Lake in 1955. Jacobsen writes that he, Tony LeVier, Richard Bissell, and Herb Miller flew to the site in a Beech V35 Bonanza. That is how the aircraft has been identified in numerous books and articles over the years, and when one hears the name Bonanza, the V35 is the first model that pops to mind. It doesn't take much effort, however, to find photos (one of which appears in the book) clearly showing the airplane to be a Beech Model 50 Twin Bonanza. This may sound like nitpicking but details are important, and demonstrate the researcher's credibility and diligence.

As I noted, the same passage claims that the fourth person on the expedition was Herb Miller of the CIA. Jacobsen gives no reference for this information but I assume it to have come from Richard Bissell's autobiography, written shortly before his death in 1994. However, according to a 1974 oral history interview with Col. Osmond J. Ritland (USAF liaison to the CIA for the U-2 program), it was Ritland who accompanied LeVier, Bisselll, and Johnson to Groom Lake. Ritland had recommended the lakebed because he was familiar with the area, having commanded the 4529th Test Group (Atomic) and had flown over Groom lake numerous times during atomic bomb tests. Kelly Johnson's personal log from April 1955 (it was not winter, as described by Jacobsen) also states that Ritland was the fourth person on the lakebed scouting trip.

I provided much of this information to Jacobsen in the form of articles that I have written about the history of Groom Lake. She seems to have ignored some important points while apparently using some of my material (again without providing a reference in the book) in the context of her apparently preconceived notions. A lot of the Project 57 material appears to have come from one of my online articles but it has been mutated into some horror story about a "dirty bomb."

For me, Jacobsen lost all journalistic credibility in Chapter One where she tells the story of Bob Lazar. Although she allows Stanton Friedman to accuse Lazar of being "a total fraud" and suggests that he might not have really seen anything extraterrestrial, she seems to accept Lazar's story of working at the secret base despite acknowledging his lack of proven credentials, and the fact that no bona fide person who worked at Groom Lake ever knew Lazar.

I smell another area 51 disinfo campaign developing.

Has anyone else noticed how many A51 threads are appearing recently?

Stanton Friedman is on ATS Live right now, and a reader posed the validity

of Annie Jacobsen's work in her new book - which he though was utterly, completely

baseless and without any credible references. For those who think Stanton is a disinfo

agent himself, i would say - not. he should have piped a lie or 2 to support some of

her points. I finished the book and can say it was utterly boring, full of useless detail on

the hohum daily dealings of groom lake, the test pilot's personal lives, etc. and too little

on any real government secrets to do with crashed ufo's.

Lol...

I came onto this thread to ask about the human experimentation aspect of Area51 but lo and behold... It's already being discussed! Guess that makes me part of the ATS mindset, now doesn't it?