Dan Snow's History Hit - The Truth About Area 51

Episode Date: January 31, 2023

Fake moon landings, aliens and secret weapons; conspiracy theories about Area 51 abound but what exactly is it, and do we know anything about it with certainty? Dan is joined by Annie Jacobsen, investigative journalist and author of Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base, to find out what really goes on in this mysterious Air Force installation. They discuss dirty bomb tests, nuclear explosions in space and soviet hoaxes.Produced by Mariana Des Forges and James Hickmann, and edited by Dougal Patmore.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download the History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download the History Hit app from the Apple Store.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. We're talking Area 51, a place that is so shrouded in conspiracy, it's almost impossible to separate fact from fiction. I say almost impossible because there's one person who can help us do that. It's Annie Jacobson. She's an investigative journalist. She's an author. She's the 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist. journalist. She's an author. She's the 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist. She's a big deal. She even produces Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan on the TV. That's cool. She is coming on the podcast talking about Area 51. She's written a book about it, in fact, an uncensored history of America's top secret military base. Area 51, as you know, is where people keep thinking the aliens are all stored and all that kind of stuff. It is in a parcel van in Southern Nevada, just outside Las Vegas. It's called the Nevada Test and Training Range. It's divided into quadrants,

and they do stuff there. In some parts of the test and training range, President Truman ordered the test of 100 atmospheric nuclear weapons. It was a part of the country where they tested out, for example, the new U-2 super high flying surveillance aircraft. In another part of the range, Area 13, they conducted a dirty bomb test. They decided they'd check what would happen if an aircraft crashed into the ground while carrying a nuclear weapon. And so they decided to do that. Really, it is extraordinary what our forebears got up to. Today, it's still in use. We know Homeland Security trains special ops in Area 25

in how to respond to a nuclear event on US soil. So let's hear from Annie Jacobson about what she thinks really goes on in Area 51. Enjoy. T-minus 10. Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again.

And liftoff. And the shuttle has cleared the tower. Annie, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me. Wow, where do you even start with this? Is your social media feeds in a state of complete meltdown permanently? I mean, how do you even enter a debate which is so riven with conspiracy theories and popular culture references? How do you do the journalism, the history? People often say to me, you know, I came for the conspiracy and then I stayed for the facts because that is what we're dealing with here. You know, a lot of these historical

subjects that you and I both care about are interwoven with fundamental conspiracies. And I think that has to do a lot with warfare and the idea of deception and what an integral part deception is with warfare or, you know, pre-warfare, shall we say. Deterrence as well. Area 51, it's infamous. It actually exists, right? There is something called Area 51. There is, although it also exists in people's minds, because when you think about it, those of us who don't have a very top secret, high level security clearance have never been there. And most of the people who talk about Area 51 are those who have never been there. So it really is a mental conception for a lot of people. But I had the pleasure of interviewing 75 of these men who

lived and worked there for extended periods of time. And this is pilots and spies and engineers all doing secret things mostly related to aerial reconnaissance. And I learned from your book that it is part of an area the size of Connecticut, which is restricted federal land. It's outside Vegas. And so what it's, as you say, aerial constance, but also testing nuclear weapons as well. That's right. So let's go back in time to the origin story of Area 51, because I always think it's so interesting to know how something began to then be able to think about what happened there over the course of its history and where

it's headed. And Area 51 began very specifically on orders from the president, President Eisenhower in the early 1950s, as a place to build the world's first high-flying spy plane, the U-2. And the idea was, this must be kept secret from the Soviets. So where do we put it? And that result was the perfect place, as you say, why not hide it inside a top secret facility the size of Connecticut so we can do a lot of flying out there with no one seeing. And so the site chosen was this dry lake bed in the middle of the Nevada desert, inside this massive test and training range, just at the edge of where the nuclear weapons were being tested at the time, so that it was literally technically off the map.

Well, there you go. So you have it there. So top secret, ultra modern U-2 spy plane technology, which would have been like unidentified flying objects. It was a UFO if anyone had caught a glimpse of it from a hotel in Vegas at the time. It absolutely was at the time, right? So when you think of early 50s, the CIA was only a few years old. And the CIA was doing a lot of dirty things, as is said at the time, dirty tricks. You know, the idea was try and beat the Soviets at their own game of deception warfare. And there was a lot of paranoia built into that. believed that the Russians were going to try to overload the U.S. early warning air defense system, manipulating these UFO ideas. As I found in declassified documents, out at Area 51,

the CIA was dealing with people doing exactly what you said, seeing the U-2 way up in the sky, 70,000 feet up. Aircraft were not supposed to fly that high. Of course they were mistaken for UFOs. The CIA had a bunch of ways of dealing with that. They created an office of deception to sometimes lean into that and really promote the idea that it was a UFO, because why not? It might keep the Soviets from finding out what was really going on. We'll come back to some UFO stuff, but I got to just ask you about, because I mean, every time I read about Cold War nuclear testing and some of the really good ideas that some of our best and brightest had, I'm amazed that as a species, we're still here on this planet. I'll tell you what. Tell me about the dirty bomb test that you explored. It's so fascinating.

That was a remarkable feat of journalism, I must add. And I say that kind of in quotes, too, because I really came across that by sort of fate and circumstance, which is how I believe a lot of American journalism gets unfolded. You know, I had heard rumors about it from some of the guys I was working with. And what I really needed was a keyword to be able to try and unearth those documents from the National Archives. Because of course, you can't just march in there and say, give me the info on the dirty bomb test. They will say, what dirty bomb test? But when those who worked on it said to me, wink and nod, Annie, you might want to look up Project 57, which was the code name. Lo and behold, this project actually had been

declassified and buried. And what it was, was the U.S. Air Force had a serious fear that an aircraft carrying a nuclear weapon, because at the time, nuclear weapons were constantly being flown around by the U.S. Air Force. So the fear was, what if one of these planes crashes? What kind of a result will it be? Will the bomb actually detonate? Or will it be what we now know as a dirty bomb? Will sort of plutonium be spread across the crash site area. And so they decided to actually test this at a little area outside of Area 51 called Area 13. And I write about the specifics of the test in my book, Area 51, because they're so remarkable, the actual details of doing this and the planning and the plotting that went into it, interviewed people who,

one man, Richard Mingus, who was the security guard on this test. I mean, imagine having a guy standing there keeping guard. It's like apocryphal. And yet, one of the things they didn't plan for was the cleanup. And that was the most remarkable part of it to me, because not for another 25, 30 years did someone have the bright idea of realizing, hey, wait a minute, we have all this plutonium spread around the earth on Area 13. Okay, there's a barbed wire fence around it. Humans can't go there. But what about the earthworms?

What about the deer? what about the deer? And I chronicle the ideas about what may have happened with animals moving plutonium across the test site. And they did actually end up scraping up all the topsoil, right? I mean, it's a huge operation. After decades, yes. Wow. Extraordinary. It doesn't stop there. They did all sorts of weird stuff. It was a bit of a blue sky thinking place, right? They tried to blow up a nuclear bomb to see if it could affect incoming Soviet missiles, so kind of creating a protective shield of sorts. And the people that you've interviewed, how did they feel like when they were involved in these tests and presumably exposed to pretty dangerous long-term consequences?

It's so remarkable having had the privilege of interviewing a lot of these men now deceased when they were in their 80s and 90s and, you know, mindful of their obligations to their security clearances, but also aware that some of these programs had been declassified and buried. People talk to me about exactly that. And I think that's why a lot of people end up going on the record at the end of their lives, because they realize in hindsight, the recklessness of a lot of it. Now, before we judge too quickly, it's important to think about the context of what the sort of threat was in the 1950s. As you say, this idea that the world was really at the edge of World War III was very true with the hydrogen bomb just having been invented. And the sort of enmity between the two countries was so virulent. And everyone out there that I interviewed believed they were doing the patriotic duty with these tests, however reckless or dangerous they may have been.

duty with these tests, however reckless or dangerous they may have been. After decades, you have a little bit of an opportunity to reflect on what that might mean, certainly going forward. And speaking of going forward, Area 25, you're right, people still train there on how to respond to a nuclear event. So this is still an active and important training area for the US. It is. And I think that's what makes it so mysterious and so fascinating to so many people, as it should be, because what goes on there, you are definitely not supposed to know about. The curiosity factor in all of us, okay, then we want to know even more of what's going on there. And when you consider just how large the facility is and also how much underground activity there is there, that was astonishing to me to learn about how many tunnels had been dug out at Area 51, allegedly for a lot of these underground nuclear weapons tests when atmospheric nuclear weapons testing was prohibited.

And so, yes, we set off a lot of nuclear bombs underground, but that begs the question, what else? Because the tunnel boring capacity out there is just remarkable. And that has given birth to a whole new set of conspiracy theories about what the government might be doing underground. So it's a little bit of the chicken and the egg. You listen to Dan Snow's history, there's more coming up. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga.

And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends.

Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Let's kill off a quick conspiracy theory here. Moon landing staged in Area 51. What's going on with this?

Again, some truth to the fiction, meaning the astronauts tested what it might be like walking in a crater on the moon by walking in craters on the test site left over by nuclear weapons tests. And so I have now declassified photographs of astronauts walking in these test craters. And so how could that not give birth to conspiracies on some level? I mean, they've got to train somewhere, right? That makes sense. But the one that's so well known and talked about is UFOs, aliens. What's going on here? right? You know, your cover story, it conceals the truth. And the other is deception, this idea of conveying false information. And one of the greatest stories I learned, which I'm going to tell briefly because it stands as an analogy, I think, or a metaphor for a lot of conspiracy,

right? And it takes us back to the dawn of the jet age, 1942, when airplanes had propellers, okay? And this is before Area 51 started, but this is where a lot of the programs were going out in the Mojave adjacent to this area. And you have these test pilots flying the first jet aircraft, the Bell. And they're trying to keep it secret because they don't want the Nazis to know what's going on. And meanwhile, these lightning pilots are flying nearby. And so the head test pilot, Jack Mullums, gets this idea, well, let's stick a propeller on the nose of the new jet aircraft. So if anyone sees it, they'll think it's a propeller. Then the other pilots start seeing smoke coming out of the back of the bell. And so they get another idea. They decide to take it one more level of strategic deception. They go to a Hollywood prop house and get a gorilla mask,

a gorilla suit. And the test pilot flying this brand new jet aircraft in 1942 is now flying around above the Mojave Desert dressed like a gorilla. And so when the P-Lightning pilot flies up alongside and sees a plane without a propeller being flown by a gorilla, he has to really think long and hard before he goes to the local bar and starts talking about it. And in one case, he did. A local pilot said, I saw a gorilla flying a plane without a propeller. And, you know, the guy lost his ability to be a test pilot anymore. And so the idea there was, what are you seeing with your own eyes? And by the way, fact check with the historian at NASA as an actual deception campaign.

And so when you think about that, I think whatever you believe, whatever side of the UFO debate you fall upon, that aliens are real and are among us or up in the sky or absolutely not, this is completely absurd. Consider the gorilla story in your own narrative thinking. There's always the possibility that it's just a dude in a gorilla suit. It's a good life lesson now. We should all repeat that forever. Tell me about the unidentified flying object that crashed in 1947, because this is the part of your work that I was astonished by. I find hardest to kind of get my head around. What's going on with this? You know, the Nazis always come up in all of my books. I have now written six books about war, weapons, national security and secrets in a post-World War II America. And all of these weapons programs link back to the Nazis.

and the UFO idea is no different from my research. After the war, the U.S. government was extremely interested in Nazis, pursued many of them, and one set of brothers that they pursued were called the Horton Brothers, who, if you look at the historical documents and photographs, the Horton Brothers created who, if you look at the historical documents and photographs, the Horton Brothers created the first flying wing. And they also created a parabolic shaped aircraft, which looks exactly like a UFO. And as I unearthed at the National Archives here in the United States, there was a long classified campaign to find the Horton brothers who were in South America hiding out after the war. And when they were found, what was done with

them remains classified, which is a little bit on the suspicious side to my eye because so much of the other Nazi documents have been declassified. And there begins this tangled story that I report in Area 51 about the U.S. government believing that these Nazis had worked with Stalin after the war to work on the Russians' version of a war of the world hoax. And according to my sources, that was the whole premise of the Roswell crash. It was in fact a Soviet disinformation campaign to freak out Americans and overload the US early air defense system. I mean, at the time,

it was just jet planes coming in, right? That's what was the big threat. And the idea at the time, it was just jet planes coming in, right? That was the big threat. And the idea that the U.S. communication system would be overloaded and the Soviets would be able to attack. And this is all sourced to declassified CIA documents, declassified Army Air Force documents, and people that want to believe UFOs are part of a strategic deception campaign look to these documents as proof. And people who want to believe the U.S. government is secretly trying to hide a lot of dirty details about aliens look to this as proof. So again, it's like a Hydra-headed deception campaign that has many rabbit holes.

And actually, people who are interested in the Horton brothers designed the flying wing that will be familiar to people from the late 20th century, the stealth bomber, the stealth fighter, you might think of it as. So it would have been unimaginably futuristic when the prototypes flew right at the end of the Second World War. Absolutely. And again, through the lens of history, and maybe if you're someone who studies history as much as you and I do, we can perhaps see the different data points and make one conclusion. But I think a lot of people leap to another conclusion if you just look at a certain

set of data points from a certain time frame without looking at the greater context. And that's why, as we said earlier, I think people come to my books for the conspiracy and stay for the facts. At least I hope so. In your research, why do you think people enjoy conspiracy theories? I think there's a natural desire in all of us to know what we don't know. It kind of goes back to being a kid and you hear your parents whispering about things and go back to bed. You can't hear this. I think it's a real Jungian concept that inside of each of us, there is a curiosity that is bigger than any one of us individually. I write about Jung

in the book and his idea about what UFOs represent to that end, that it's this kind of collective unconscious that we all have and tap into about things in the sky, monsters in the closet, in the sky, monsters in the closet, dot, dot, dot. Yeah. And also, is there a sense that people, they almost want the military, the government to be kind of all powerful and manipulating, and otherwise it's a bit scary. What if the government is kind of hopeless and bits fall off aircraft and stuff crashes and they don't quite know what's going on? Absolutely. And another thing is like this idea that the government, right? And I often stop and say, well, wait a minute, let's just, especially in my world where you're talking about the federal government and I'm talking about the military a lot of times, but I have to say, wait, let's

really separate out the intelligence community from the Department of Defense because they are very separate animals. I mean, the short version is that the Defense Department is very much like a giant bureaucracy. And the intelligence community, the CIA specifically, acts very much like a technology startup. They are way ahead of the curve. They do not have to service a bureaucracy. And they are really all about that blue sky quest that you are talking about.

And then, of course, Donald Trump in 2020, he said famously, I won't talk about what I know about it, but it's very interesting. So he's re-stoked that fire for a new generation. I don't think the UFO conspiracy I don't think the UFO conspiracy ideas subset will ever go away because it has been around for as long as man has been recording history and talking about strange things in the sky. And so why wouldn't it stay with us through the future, especially when you consider how technology is moving us into places that we were never able to go before? Annie Jacobson, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. How can people buy your book? Well, the book we discussed today is Area 51. I've written six books about

subjects involving U.S. national security and secrets. Go and check it out, folks. Thank you very much for coming on the pod. Thank you.