BBC News, 16
August 2013
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Stories
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| Area 51, so-named for its designation on a 1950s-era map, surrounds a dry lake bed, Groom Lake |
The CIA has
officially acknowledged the secret US test site known as Area 51, in a newly
unclassified internal history of the U-2 spy plane programme.
The
document obtained by a US university describes the 1955 acquisition of the
Nevada site for testing of the secret spy plane.
It also
explains the site's lingering association with UFOs and aliens.
The remote
patch of desert surrounding Groom Lake was chosen because it was adjacent to a
nuclear testing facility.
"The
U-2 was absolutely top secret," Chris Pocock, a British defence journalist
and author of histories of the programme, told the BBC.
"They
had to hide everything about it."
The U-2
plane, developed to spy on the Soviet Union during the Cold War, is still flown
by the US Air Force.
Reports of
UFOs
The
document, a secret 1992 internal CIA history of the U-2 programme, was
originally declassified in 1998 with heavy redactions.
Many of the
blacked-out details were revealed this month after a public records request by the National Security Archive at the George Washington University in Washington
DC.
The site
was selected for the U-2 programme in 1955 after an aerial survey by CIA and
Air Force staff.
According
to the history, President Dwight Eisenhower personally signed off on the
acquisition.
Officials
from the CIA, Air Force and Lockheed, the contractor building the U-2, began
moving into the facility in July 1955.
While a lengthy
account of the development of the U-2 spy plane programme, the history also
attempts to shed light on the public's fascination with the Area 51 site and
its lingering associations with extra-terrestrials and UFOs.
It notes
that testing of the U-2 plane in the 1950s - at altitudes much higher than
commercial aeroplanes then flew - provoked "a tremendous increase in
reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs)".
"At
this time, no one believed manned flight was possible above 60,000 feet, so no
one expected to see an object so high in the sky," note authors Gregory
Pedlow and Donald Welzenbach.
'Inclination
towards secrecy'
The
original request for the redacted portions of the history was made in 2005. It
was released to the National Security Archive several weeks ago.
Jeff
Richelson, a senior fellow at the National Security Archive, said the long
period of secrecy was notable because of the extent people across the world
were already aware of Area 51's existence.
Mr
Richelson speculates the CIA must have recently made a conscious, deliberate
decision to reveal Area 51's existence and origins.
"There
is a general inclination towards secrecy," he said, and the many US
agencies and non-US governments involved in the U-2 programme would have had a
say in the declassification process.
"As
far as I can tell, this is the first time something must have gone to a
high-enough level to discuss" whether or not to formally acknowledge Area
51's existence, he said
 |
This map
was released due to a Freedom of Information Act request
submitted by Jeffrey
Richelson in 2005.
|
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