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

Experiments, by John Harbett and Gil Whittemore, New Mexico, November 2, 1994.

Oral history interview with Al O’Donnell, by Colleen M. Beck and Hilary L. Green. Desert Research Institute, University of Nevada, 2004.

Oral history interview with Roger Andersen by Mary Palevsky. Nevada Test Site Oral History Project, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, September 20, 2005.

Oral history interview with T. D. Barnes by Mary Palevsky. Nevada Test Site Oral History Project, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, January 12, 2007.

Oral history: Conversations with Colonel Hervey Stockman, by Ann Paden and Earl Haney, 2004–2005.

Web Sites

• Central Intelligence Agency archives (http://www.foia.cia.gov/)

Central Intelligence Agency archives

• Department of Energy archives

(http://www.osti.gov/opennet/index.jsp)

• U.S. Air Force Archives (http://www.archives.gov/research/guide

fed-records/groups/342.html)

• G-2 Intelligence Archives (http://www.dami.army.pentagon.mil/)

• Office of the Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for

Nuclear Matters

(http://www.acq.osd.mil/ncbdp/nm/nuclearchronology1.html)

• The National Security Archive (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/) • Federation of American Scientists (http://www.fas.org/) • GlobalSecurity.org (http://www.globalsecurity.org/)

• Roadrunners Internationale

(http://roadrunnersinternationale.com/)

• The Long War Journal (http://www.longwarjournal.org/)

• JT3 NTTR — Nevada Test and Training Range

(http://www.jt3.com/ne_range.asp)

Documentary Films and Television

The Day After Trinity, 1981.

Return with Honor: American Experience, 1999. Forgiving Dr. Mengele, 2006.

The Search for Dr. Mengele, 1985. Vietnam: A Television History, PBS, 1983. America’s Atomic Bomb Tests, 1997. Hearts and Minds, 1974.

The Nuremberg Trials: American Experience, 2005. Radio Bikini, 1987.

Atomic Journeys: Welcome to Ground Zero, 2000. Modern Marvels: The Manhattan Project, History Channel, 2002.

The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, 2003.

The Living Weapon: American Experience, 2006.

“Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs in American History.” ABC, February 24, 2005.

Walter Cronkite. “UFO: Friend, Foe or Fantasy?” CBS News, May

List of Illustrations

^{Groom Lake, Nevada, in 1917. Once little more than a dry lake bed in the southern Nevada desert, what is now known as Area 51 has become the most secretive military facility in the world. (Special Collections, University of Nevada-Reno)}

^{From up on top of the old Groom Mine in 1917, looking down. Not until the 1950s would the federal government take over the dry lake bed and adjacent land. (Special Collections, University of Nevada-Reno)}

^{Vannevar Bush, age eighty, receives the Atomic Pioneer Award from President Nixon at a White House ceremony in 1970. Other recipients are (from left to right) Glenn T. Seaborg, the man who co-discovered plutonium; James B. Conant of the National Defense Research Committee; and General Leslie R. Groves, who was the commander of the Manhattan Project but took orders from Vannevar Bush. (U.S. Department of Energy)}

^{Colonel Richard S. Leghorn during Operation Crossroads, at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, July 1946. Leghorn led the mission to photograph the nuclear explosions from the air, and he is credited with the concept of “overhead,” which led to spy planes and satellites. (Collection of Richard S. Leghorn/Army Air Forces)}

^{The Baker bomb at Operation Crossroads, July 25, 1946, was 21 kilotons, one and a half times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Baker’s underwater fireball produced a “chimney” of radioactive water 6,000 feet tall and 2,000 feet wide. Stalin had spies at the event. (Library of Congress)}

^{The black device attached to this balloon in Area 9 of the Nevada Test Site is a 74-kiloton atomic bomb code-named Hood, the largest atmospheric nuclear weapon ever exploded in the United States. Standing on a ladder minutes before this photograph was taken on July 5, 1957, Al O’Donnell put the final touches on the bomb’s firing system. Area 51 is over the hill to the right of the device. (Collection of Alfred O’Donnell/National Nuclear Security Administration)}

^{A column of radioactive smoke rises from the Hood bomb. To the right of the mushroom stem the landscape can be seen on fire. Approximately one hour after the bomb went off, security guard Richard Mingus drove through ground zero to set up a guard post at the Area 51 guard gate, directly over the burning hills. (National Nuclear Security Administration)}

^{In Area 12 of the Nevada Test Site, workmen enter an underground atomic bomb tunnel through its mouth, summer 1957. (National Nuclear Security Administration)}

^{Operation Paperclip scientists at Fort Bliss, Texas, in 1946. Until 1945, these men worked for Adolf Hitler, but as soon as the war ended these “rare minds” began working for the American military and various intelligence organizations, the details of which remain largely classified. Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun is in the front row, seventh from the right with his hand in his pocket. (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)}

^{Nazi Dr. Walther Riedel after his capture by the U.S. Army in 1945. Unsmiling in this never- before-published file photograph, Riedel is missing teeth, which had been knocked out by U.S. soldiers while questioning him about his role in Hitler’s “bacteria bomb.” (National Archives)}

^{Alleged to be Stalin’s secret UFO study team are (standing left to right) Sergei Korolev, chief missile designer and inventor of Sputnik; Igor Kurchatov, father of Russia’s atomic bomb; and Mstislav Keldysh, mathematician, theoretician, and space pioneer. (Collection of Museum of M. V. Keldysh, Russia)}

^{This photograph of the all-wing Horten V appeared in the Secret G-2 Combined Intelligence Objective Sub-Committee report “Horten Tailless Aircraft,” dated May 1945. (National Archives)}