# Area 51: No ETs, but the truth is even weirder?! **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 10, 2011, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946 "2011-06-10T03:40:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/1 "2011-06-10T03:40:51Z")
Investigative journalist [Annie Jacobsen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Jacobsen) recently published [_Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base._](http://www.amazon.com/Area-51-Uncensored-Americas-Military/dp/0316132942/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1307676256&sr=1-1) Based in large part on interviews with retired [Area 51](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_51) personnel. She claims astonishing revelations – in fact, the Secret of Roswell! And, no, she does not claim to have finally unearthed proof that We Have Made Contact. Nothing so predictable as that. As she stated in a [recent NPR interview:](http://www.npr.org/2011/05/17/136356848/area-51-uncensored-was-it-ufos-or-the-ussr) > [@](#): > > **On flying discs and conspiracy theories** > > "The UFO craze began in the summer of 1947. Several months later, the G2 intelligence, which was the Army intelligence corps at the time, spent an enormous amount of time and treasure seeking out two former Third Reich aerospace designers named Walter and Reimar Horten who had allegedly created [a] flying disc. … American intelligence agents fanned out across Europe seeking the Horton brothers to find out if, in fact, they had made this flying disc. > > “The idea behind it remains, why? Why were they looking for a flying disc? And conspiracy theorists have had their hands on this declassified file for over a decade now, and they say it proves that this flying disc came from outer space. If you read the documents, the takeaway that I found fascinating was that at the end of it, the Army admits finding the Horten brothers, and that the Horten brothers admitted their contact with the Russians and that’s where the file ends. Everything after that is classified.” > > **On why Area 51 is actually classified, according to a source** > > "The Horten brothers were involved in the flying disc crash in New Mexico. And that is from a single source. … There was an unusual moment where that source became very upset and told me things that were stunning that’s almost impossible to believe at first read. And that is that a flying disc really did crash in New Mexico and it was transported to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and then in 1951 it was transferred to Area 51, which is why the base is called Area 51. And the stunning part of the reveal is that my source, who I absolutely believe and worked with for 18 months on this, was one of the engineers who received the equipment and he also received the people who were in the craft. > > “The people were, according to the source, were child-sized pilots, and there’s a lot of debate about how old they were. He believes they were 13, although other people believe they may have been older. But this is a firsthand witness to this, and I made a decision to write about this in the very end of the book, after I take the traditional journalist form of telling you everything in the third person, I switch and I kind of lean into the reader and I say, ‘Look, this is not why Area 51 is classified to the point where no one in the government will admit it exists. The reason is because what one man told me.’ And then using the first person, I tell you what I was told. And there’s no doubt that people are going to be upset, alarmed and skeptical of this information, but I absolutely believe the veracity of my source, and I believe it was important that I put this information out there because it is the tip of a very big iceberg.” > > \*\*On the Soviet human experiments her source told her about > > "The child-sized aviators in this craft [that crashed in New Mexico] were the result of a Soviet human experimentation program, and they had been made to look like aliens a la Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds,\*\* and it was a warning shot over President Truman’s bow, so to speak. In 1947, when this would have originally happened, the Soviets did not yet have the nuclear bomb, and Stalin and Truman were locked in horns with one another, and Stalin couldn’t compete in nuclear weaponry yet, but he certainly could compete in the world of black propaganda — and that was his aim, according to my source. … > > “What is firsthand information is that he worked with these bodies [of the pilots] and he was an eyewitness to the horror of seeing them and working with them. Where they actually came from is obviously the subject of debate. \*\*But if you look at the timeline with Josef Mengele, he left Auschwitz in January of 1945 and disappeared for a while, and the suggestion by the source is that Mengele had already cut his losses with the Third Reich at that point and was working with Stalin.” > > On why the Soviets would have undertaken such a hoax\*\* > > “The plan, according to my source, was to create panic in the United States with this belief that a UFO had landed with aliens inside of it. And one of the most interesting documents is the second CIA director, Walter Bedell Smith, memos back and forth to the National Security Council talking about how the fear is that the Soviets could make a hoax against America involving a UFO and overload our early air-defense warning system, making America vulnerable to an attack.” . . . I actually think I preferred the universe that had the incomprehensible random-abductions-and-probings in it. Easier to live with. Likely? Possible? Impossible? Or a subtle, planted smokescreen for the **real** story of the **Nazi-Commies from Mars?!** :eek: ---
**Author:** ![medicated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@medicated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/medicated)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/2 "2011-06-10T03:47:09Z")
Her story amounts to a whole lot of “X says that this happened, and if so, then Y might be true, which means that Z is possible.” Is that what happened? Possibly. I’d bet large sums of money against it though. The entire Area 51 story (as widely told, anyway) amounts to mythology. A good rule is that one should determine whether a phenomenon actually exists before trying to work out the causes. In this case, there’s very little reason to think that there’s anything that needs explaining. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/3 "2011-06-10T03:56:23Z")
To begin with, I remember that Mengele was not keen on going to the Soviet side, he fled the areas that Russia was taking over at the end of WWII and then fled to South America, dying later on 1979 in Brazil. It is very unlikely that the Soviets used him. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/4 "2011-06-10T04:07:30Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > To begin with, I remember that Mengele was not keen on going to the Soviet side, he fled the areas that Russia was taking over at the end of WWII and then fled to South America, dying later on 1979 in Brazil. No, actually, I think that was his clone. One of them, anyway. Not the one who invented Valium and Viagra and silicon implants, the other one. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/5 "2011-06-10T04:11:08Z")
Annie Jacobsen has a very rich and active imagination which feeds her selective and credulous belief system. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/6 "2011-06-10T04:11:23Z")
To address such a topic seriously, I do not believe it likely the Soviets had sufficient biology expertise in the 1940s to have developed strangely mutated, small people who had the appearance of aliens. Given scientists today would probably question the possibility of doing such a thing, scientists back in the 30s and 40s with more limited resources would have an impossible time at such a task. If such a task was even possible. What this basically does is takes a story that mostly defies the laws of physics (alien visitation–namely due to the vast distances etc), and replaces it with one that may violate anything close to what is possible with modern biology. How would the Soviets have gone about creating these people? Selective breeding? Even if it was possible through selective breeding to create people who “appeared like aliens”, how many generations of breeding would be required for such an outcome? ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/7 "2011-06-10T04:28:04Z")
If the Soviets sent a flying disc with strange looking people in it to the US, why would we cover it up? ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/8 "2011-06-10T04:44:50Z")
The Mengele angle alone makes this whole story spurious. He was no scientist, and his “experiments” lacked any sort of scientific value. He was a butcher, not an evil genius. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/9 "2011-06-10T05:03:05Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > How would the Soviets have gone about creating these people? Selective breeding? Even if it was possible through selective breeding to create people who “appeared like aliens”, how many generations of breeding would be required for such an outcome? I would guess surgery and hormones, if anything. (I doubt they could have achieved anything at all with the other approach – [Stalin’s understanding of genetics was deeply confused and it was mandatory for all to share the confusion.)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism) ---
**Author:** ![Oldeb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ea666f/32.png) [@Oldeb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oldeb)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/10 "2011-06-10T05:38:47Z")
> [@](#): > > **On why the Soviets would have undertaken such a hoax** > > “The plan, according to my source, was to create panic in the United States with this belief that a UFO had landed with aliens inside of it. And one of the most interesting documents is the second CIA director, Walter Bedell Smith, memos back and forth to the National Security Council talking about how the fear is that the Soviets could make a hoax against America involving a UFO and overload our early air-defense warning system, making America vulnerable to an attack.” This part doesn’t really make much sense. If the point was to create a panic in the US why crash it in the desert where nobody is going to see it? Ram it into a major city. And why stop at just one? Even if you can’t get more fake spaceships in you can keep smuggling in the your little mutants to make it look like a real invasion. Just stuff random apartments or warehouse with the corpses and start leaving anonymous tips. Leave one on some random guy’s lawn to find in the morning. Even as a hoax it’s not that great. The part about the Soviets being able to ignore air-defense systems seems odd too. Wouldn’t the first reaction be that parts or plans were brought in and assembled in the US? If the Soviets wanted to show they could penetrate US airspace at will they’d just fly over and drop some pamphlets. It’d be a lot cheaper then faking alien spacecraft and breeding midget mutants. And why is it the fake alien’s were made to look like those in **Orson Welle’s** _War of the Worlds?_ ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/11 "2011-06-10T05:42:58Z")
> [@Oldeb](#): > > This part doesn’t really make much sense. If the point was to create a panic in the US why crash it in the desert where nobody is going to see it? I think the theory is they were trying to rattle the U.S. **government,** not the general public. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/12 "2011-06-10T06:19:40Z")
I don’t think I’ve ever seen as clear a case of a “source” messing with a credulous reporter just to see how much crazy he can get her to print as this one. Somewhere, someone is buying her source a drink in payment of the bar bet he/she just won. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/13 "2011-06-10T07:43:34Z")
Coincidentally, I just finished watching a History Television show called _Hitler’s Stealth Fighter_ about the Horten brothers. Their “flying disk” was a prototype stealth fighter called the Horton Ho 229, a jet-propelled flying wing that actually looked really nifty. Mixed in with the historical info was footage of Northrop-Grumman engineers trying to rebuild the 229 for radar testing. Their consensus was the 229 would have been significantly harder for British radar to spot and its speed (~600 knots) would allow it to strike pretty much at will. Decades ahead of its time. The reality is cool enough. Why embellish it with bullshit? ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 9:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/14 "2011-06-10T09:08:40Z")
> [@](#): > > … the Soviets could make a hoax against America involving a UFO and overload our early air-defense warning system, making America vulnerable to an attack." But just a bit earlier, she pointed out that the Soviets did not yet have a nuclear bomb, while the USA had several. So how was America ‘vulnerable’? Any attack on American soil that seriously looked like it might succeed would have led to President Truman ordering a nuclear counter-attack (again). This story doesn’t make sense. ---
**Author:** ![glaeken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@glaeken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glaeken)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/15 "2011-06-10T09:42:19Z")
It sounds like they have not even read War of the Worlds. The aliens in War of the worlds are not at all human like. This may seem like a small point but you have to wonder about the researching abilities of the author when they get something wrong that is so easily verifiable. It sounds to me like they are saying War of the Worlds to connect up with the famous Orsen Wells broadcast and just thinking the audience they are aiming at won’t have read the book but do connect that broadcast with roughly those times. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 9:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/16 "2011-06-10T09:54:20Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > The reality is cool enough. Why embellish it with bullshit? Agree, up to the Soviet ‘Mind games’ and Mengele the story sounded good. The Hortens built, or helped build, a US version of one of their prototypes. One crashed at Roswell. That the pilots were small(ish) could well be. Fighter cockpits of the time were truly cramped already. Having small of stature pilots is an asset. This part could all be true. ---
**Author:** ![JacobSwan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@JacobSwan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JacobSwan)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/17 "2011-06-10T10:16:51Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > Agree, up to the Soviet ‘Mind games’ and Mengele the story sounded good. > > The Hortens built, or helped build, a US version of one of their prototypes. > One crashed at Roswell. That the pilots were small(ish) could well be. Fighter cockpits of the time were truly cramped already. Having small of stature pilots is an asset. > > This part could all be true. Does this explain Tom Cruise in Top Gun? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/18 "2011-06-10T10:23:16Z")
She even has the basic history of Groom Lake(Area 51 as it was designated by the CIA) wrong. Formerly used for bombing practice in WWII, in _1955_ Lockheed chose the area as the best place to test the U-2 spyplane, among others. As if this wasn’t enough to keep the area secret, the place shares a border with the Nevada Test Site, where over 700 nuclear tests were done. Most of the Groom Lake area is taken up by runways of various sizes, which is what you expect of a place designed to test aircraft. ---
**Author:** ![glaeken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@glaeken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glaeken)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/19 "2011-06-10T10:53:49Z")
What I find odd is I would have thought anyone with a slight interest in this area would be familiar with the Horten flying wing. The author acts like their audience won’t have heard of the Horten’s or the experimental aircraft and this is some new previously unknown thing. I can totally see how from some angles the flying wing came to be mistake for a flying disc as well and I would have thought this was obvious to anyone who gets a look at a pictures of one so there really is no need at all for there to be another secret Horten aircraft beyond the flying wing to cover the flying disc angle. ---
**Author:** ![Death\_of\_Rats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a6a055/32.png) [@Death\_of\_Rats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Death_of_Rats)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/20 "2011-06-10T12:34:54Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > How would the Soviets have gone about creating these people? Selective breeding? Even if it was possible through selective breeding to create people who “appeared like aliens”, how many generations of breeding would be required for such an outcome? Please. you are not fooling anyone. We have all seen some form of Star Trek, we know all you need to do is resequence something’s DNA and instantly turn it into something else and then change the DNA back to restore them to reset for the next episode. Sheesh. Like the Soviets couldn’t do _that_. 😃 > [@JacobSwan](#): > > Does this explain Tom Cruise in Top Gun? Honestly, yes. Cruise is closer in size to the prototypical fighter pilot, It is Tim Robbins and Anthony Edwards who are about as believeable as this Roswell story. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946.md?page=2)