Beyond Area 51 Read online

  A COLD WAR AND A HOTBED OF SECRETS

  On April 16, 1996, the New York Times reported that a mysterious underground complex was being built by the Russians in the Ural Mountains. The project was so big, tens of thousands of workers were involved and an entire highway and new railroad extension had to be built in order to service it.

  U.S. intelligence sources believe the Russian government pumped more than $6 billion into the Yamatau mountain complex, a cavern that spans some four hundred square miles. One theory suggests that in the event of a nuclear war the Russian leadership would head for Yamatau, a place where they could survive until the aftereffects of such an apocalyptic conflict settled down.

  But there might be more to it than that, especially considering, as we will see, other unusual UFO-related events going on inside Russia.

  Could Yamatau be another Area 51 located deep inside a mountain? Literally a “Russian S4”?

  No one really knows.

  BEYOND

  AREA 51

  Mack Maloney

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

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  BEYOND AREA 51

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with Kelcorp, Inc.

  Copyright © 2013 by Brian Kelleher.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

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  ISBN: 978-1-101-59521-3

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley premium edition / July 2013

  Cover design by Pyrographx.

  Most Berkley Books are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales, promotions, premiums, fund-raising, or educational use. Special books, or book excerpts, can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write: [email protected].

  This book is dedicated to the following UFO authors and

  researchers who provided me with their time and their

  knowledge during the research and writing process:

  Nick Redfern, Jerome Clark, Christopher O’Brien,

  Norio Hayakawa, Bill Birnes, Nick Pope, Andrew

  Hennessey, Nikolay Subbotin and Michael Kinsella

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Tom Colgan and Amanda Ng at The Berkley Publishing Group; Dominick Abel, Jacob Boucher, Larry Stone, Bob Messia and BP for the laughs; Charles Ketchum for his spiritual guidance and Chase for letting me on her radio show. Special thanks to my Spook friend and his Spook friends, without whose help this would have been an entirely different book, and thanks to Sky Club for doing the sound track.

  Special thanks to the Mutual UFO Network (www.mufon.com) and the National UFO Reporting Center (www.nuforc.org).

  A very special thanks to my best friend ever. She knows who she is.

  FOREWORD

  by NICK REDFERN

  One of the biggest puzzles concerning secret military-, government- and intelligence-based facilities is this: Why do so many of these classified installations seemingly attract far more than their fair share of UFOs?

  There are, I believe, two prime possibilities.

  The first is that if the stories of crashed UFOs in the hands of officialdom are valid, then it may be the case that what we are seeing in the skies above these bases are (a) attempts by military project personnel to test-fly captured UFOs, (b) attempts to test-fly their own versions of alien technology or (c) a combination of both.

  There is another more ominous possibility, however.

  Again, if UFOs really have crashed to earth, perhaps the nonhuman intelligences behind the phenomena are aware that their craft and dead (and possibly even living) comrades are held at these fortified bases, and they are testing the defenses of such places for the day when they plan to claim back what is theirs.

  If that is the case, then how might we best go about trying to vindicate such theories and scenarios?

  Well, a very profitable approach would be to do exactly what Mack Maloney has done—namely, to use investigative journalistic skills to chase down just about every piece of available data and evidence on unusual and classified installations around the world and then present it to one and all for consideration.

  Indeed, in the pages that follow, as you will quickly come to learn, Mack has expertly negotiated the globe in search of the truth behind such off-limits facilities and the amazing secrets they so jealously guard….

  —Nick Redfern

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Foreword

  Part One: Secret Places in America

  1: Beers with a Spook

  2: Early Secrets

  3: The Mysterious Mountain

  4: The San Luis Valley

  5: Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico

  6: Tonopah and the Tale of Two Cities

  7: Homestead Air Force Base

  8: The Navy’s Area 51

  9: The Mystery of Ong’s Hat

  Part Two: Other Secrets Around the World

  10: Looking for Britain’s Area 51

  11: UFOs over Scotland

  12: The False Mystery of Wenceslas Mine

  13: The Case of Saddam’s Area 51

  14: The M-Triangle

  15: Kapustin Yar

  16: The Secret at Huangyangtan

  17: UFOs over Oz

  18: Last Stop: Playing the HAARP

  19: The Second Meeting

  Bibliography

  Photo Insert

  PART ONE

  Secret Places in America

  1

  Beers with a Spook

  It took three weeks to arrange the meeting.

  My friend who works with the two most prominent U.S. intelligence agencies agreed to have a few beers and talk about a subject that makes him very uncomfortable: UFOs.

  Our conversation took place in a waterfront bar north of Boston. It was scheduled for a weekday afternoon when we hoped customers would be few, and the place was nearly empty when we arrived.

  The weather was oddly appropriate for such a meeting. Sunny and warm over most of the area, it was damp and gloomy where we were, the fog hugging the water like a stratus cloud. Not really typical for a mid-spring day.

  I’d previously given copies of UFOs in Wartime to my friend and several of his colleagues. Their response had been positive but muted—not that I was expecting anything more from people in their business. At an earlier meeting I’d asked my Spook friend if he’d ever seen any evidence that the U.S. government knows what UFOs are. His answer was no. But when I asked if he’d be able to tell me if he’d seen such evidence, his answer was a slightly less emphatic: “No.”

  That’s how it is in the U.S. intelligence community when it comes to UFOs. No, we’ve never seen anything like that—but no, we couldn’t tell you if we had.

  I explained the idea behind my new project
: a book examining unusual places around the world, many of them secret military bases like Nevada’s Area 51, that seem to have an inextricable connection to UFOs. Some of these connections are truly puzzling, and some so outlandish they border on ridiculous. But the most interesting ones fall somewhere in between. As my Spook friend was well aware, just about every secret base that we know about has some kind of link to UFOs. The book would try to find out why.

  With this in mind, I had two simple requests for him.

  Could I keep him updated on my progress, just as a way of not veering too far off course? He agreed I could. Second, once the first draft was complete, would he read it over and tell me his thoughts at a second meeting? Again, he agreed.

  It was raining by the time we left the bar, adding to the murk along this little piece of coastline. Everything seemed black-and-white—except off to the west, where there was an opening in the overcast that was shaped like a keyhole. Beyond that opening was a patch of bright blue sky.

  The writing of this book began the next day.

  2

  Early Secrets

  It’s no surprise that finding history’s first “secret base” is not an easy task.

  By definition, secret bases should be hard to find, whether on Google Earth or in the pages of a history book.

  When two parties go to war, it usually benefits each side to keep the size of its true strength from the other. This is also true when preparing for hostilities, or in times of peace between wars. This is where secret bases come in, places where you can keep your latest weapons, your newest equipment, even your best soldiers, out of view.

  * * *

  Finding the first secret base in history might actually be impossible simply because it may have come and gone without many noticing.

  But a good candidate we do know about is a place called Megiddo.

  For more than four thousand years, and maybe as far back as seven thousand years, this city, located in what is now northern Israel, saw empires, kings and pharaohs come and go like so much dust in the wind. So many military installations had been built there, one on top of the other, that what began as a village at ground level eventually became a small mountain fortress. This upward expansion was so unusual that around 3000 BC, when cities first began to develop around the ancient world, Megiddo was already a metropolis.

  Because Megiddo commanded a key part of the strategic road that linked Egypt to Assyria, countless battles were fought for control of it. Military historians agree that more important battles have been fought in or around Megiddo than probably any other place on Earth.

  In the words of Pharaoh Thutmose III, “The capture of Megiddo is the capture of a thousand cities.”

  * * *

  But how can such a historically prominent place be considered a secret base?

  For much of its history, Megiddo was surrounded by stone fortifications and earthen ramparts. At its height there were also many carefully divided quarters within its walls, places set aside for Megiddo’s royalty and citizens but also for its military.

  Because of these circumstances, a case can be made that at Megiddo, for the first time, there was a conscious effort to hide the true strength of its resources. For instance, for a long time the water supply for the city lay in a spring inside a cave located outside the city’s walls. But at some point, no one is really sure when, it became clear that in times of war or a siege, the city’s water supply had to be secure. So a subterranean water system was dug down through rock to this spring, allowing Megiddo’s residents to collect water without being exposed to the enemy.

  But then the city went a step further. They built a thick wall at the entrance to the cave where the spring was located, blocking it from the outside. This wall was then camouflaged by dirt and flora in order to hide the source of water from Megiddo’s enemies.

  So not only was the city’s key resource secured, but it was also concealed.

  * * *

  In order to utilize the water from this spring, the people of Megiddo built massive stone troughs and then, in the middle of the fortress, a giant watering pool was constructed. This in turn allowed large numbers of horses to be kept inside the walls, out of sight. It’s estimated that Megiddo’s stables may have accommodated up to five hundred horses at one point, a huge number in ancient days. More telling, other structures within the fortress were said to have housed hundreds of the newest and best in battle chariots. Again, out of sight of any potential enemies.

  * * *

  This fortress city has another historic aspect to it. Because of its vertical evolution over the years, Megiddo eventually found itself atop what in Hebrew is called a har, or hill. Hence, the fortress’s real name was Har-Megiddo, or… Armageddon, the place the Bible says will be the scene of Man’s final battle against Evil.

  For our purposes, though, we can call Megiddo a “secret base,” because it intentionally kept its secrets hidden, away from the enemy’s prying eyes.

  But at the same time, we must recognize it was a secret base that was very much hiding in plain sight.

  3

  The Mysterious Mountain

  Love and UFOs

  In the middle of the Nevada desert, about seventy miles northwest of Las Vegas, there’s a patch of salt flats called Papoose Lake.

  There’s a mountain close by, impossible to see from public land but indistinct and ordinary looking by all reports, and no different from the dozens of other mountains in this part of Nevada.

  Yet some claim that contained within this mountain is nothing less than the epicenter of the “New World Order”—not quite the one proclaimed by President George H. W. Bush back in 1990 but a deeply secret, internationally controlled shadow government of the same name whose goal is nothing less than domination of the entire planet.

  But then, there are others who believe this mountain is actually a garage for crashed UFOs—flying saucers the U.S. military has recovered and kept hidden from us over the years.

  Still others are convinced it’s a kind of extraterrestrial holding cell, a place where space aliens are kept under house arrest. Or that it’s the entrance to a tunnel that stretches all the way to Las Vegas. Or that it’s the hideout of a highly illegal CIA assassination team that’s run by ex–Vice President Dick Cheney.

  Then again maybe it’s just a mountain—and the only reason these tales even got started has more to do with a love story gone wrong than UFOs or aliens or a secret government taking over the world.

  Only one thing is certain: This mountain, known as S4 (as in “Sector 4”), is located in an interesting neighborhood. Because just fourteen miles away is the Air Force Flight Test Center at Groom Lake, the secret U.S. air base better known as Area 51.

  Not many people know for sure what’s going on there either.

  The Beginning of Bob Lazar

  Although it might not seem like it now, Area 51 was relatively unknown to the general public until the late 1980s.

  Of course, those high up in the U.S. military and the country’s intelligence services were familiar with the place. They called it “Dreamland,” “Paradise Ranch” or simply Groom Lake. It was here that the United States quietly tested top-secret aircraft like the U-2, the SR-71 and various stealth airplanes. But for most of us, Area 51 just didn’t exist, not yet.

  All that changed one night in May 1989, when a Las Vegas TV station ran a story about a young, unnamed physicist who claimed he’d worked at both Area 51 and its extension at S4, and that he’d seen the remains of damaged UFOs there, machines not of this earth, kept under lock and key by the U.S. government.

  A few weeks later this physicist appeared on TV again. This time he was identified as Bob Lazar, age thirty, of Las Vegas, and he repeated his assertion that he’d worked at Area 51 and that the U.S. government had at least nine UFOs hidden away inside the S4 complex nearby.

  Suddenly Area 51 became the most famous secret base in the world.

  * * *

  Lazar’s story
went like this: As an employee of Area 51, he was regularly taken by bus to S4, located about twenty minutes away from Area 51 / Groom Lake.

  According to Lazar, S4 was carved into the base of Papoose Mountain. He described the entrance to the facility as having nine sloped doors with a sand-like camouflage texture on them, allowing them to blend in with the rest of the mountain.

  Within the mountain itself was a huge man-made cavern containing nine hangars—thus the nine doors. A damaged UFO could be found inside each hangar.

  Lazar says he was put to work on these alien craft, studying their propulsion systems and trying to figure out exactly how they worked and how the technology could benefit the U.S. military. In other words, he was asked to help reverse-engineer the UFOs.

  In later interviews, Lazar went into detail on what these UFOs looked like. One saucer-shaped craft in particular he called the “sport model.” He claimed its exterior skin was metallic and the color of unpolished stainless steel, and that it stood upright on tripod legs. Its entry hatch was located on its upper half with the bottom portion of the door wrapping around the center lip of the disc. Basically a UFO as seen through the eyes of a Hollywood prop department.

  Lazar said the saucer’s interior was divided into three levels. The lower level contained three “gravity amplifiers” and their “wave guides.” The disc’s reactor was located in the middle level, directly above the gravity amplifiers. This level also housed the craft’s tiny control consoles and seats, items just too small and too low to the floor to have been built for adult human beings.

  Lazar claimed the craft’s reactor used fuel that did not occur naturally on our planet. Its main ingredient was a superheavy element with an atomic number of 115, something that does not appear on any Earthly periodic table.

  Finally, Lazar said that even though he worked on the discs for several months, he never learned how or where any of them had been recovered.