The Why Files: Operation Podcast - 7: The Most Secret Places in the World

Episode Date: June 26, 2022

The Most Secret Places in the World - And the wild theories about what really happens inside. In the modern world, places are supposed to be accessible. People move freely around the country they live in and even between countries.  However, the most interesting, fascinating and mysterious locations in the world, even today, are strictly off limits to just about everyone.  Most of the places on this list are only accessible to those with the proper clearances, but some are not accessible to anyone at all. Regardless of the status of the places on this list, if you're searching for them, you absolutely do not have the proper access to visit them.  The tantalizing status of the unknown and the secret makes these spots remarkable. You probably have your own theories about what goes on at some of these locations. If you don't, we'll provide some. You may not have ever heard of a few of these places. In fact, there are government facilities in the United States -- and around the world -- that are unknown to people even in the highest levels of government.  Let's find out why. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thewhyfiles/support

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She was this angelfish that I knew when we were guppies. Oh, no. Oh, she had the most perfect gills. And on my own, her pelvic fins went all the way back. No, no, no. I'm talking about secret places. Oh, I dreamed about Sheila's secret places. You know what I'm talking about?

No, I don't. I mean, I do, but we're not... Why am I even talking to you? I lost my train of thought. Yeah, you're really floundering. Ha! Floundering. You see what I did there? I'm on fire today, baby.

Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. Oh, what are you doing? Oh, come on. Can you take you doing? Oh, come on. Can you take a joke? Oh, nice. We are mature. These are the most secret places in the world, off limits to almost everyone. And when you tell us we can't go inside or photograph or even know what's happening in

these places, well, we need to know why. Welcome to the Y files, where smart folks like us come to laugh and learn. Today, we're talking about the most secret places in the world and the mysterious theories that surround them. A few weeks ago, we covered the scariest places in the US that you can actually visit. The locations on this list are different. You can't visit any of these without special access, and no one really knows what's happening inside. And when you don't give the public information about something,

we'll fill in the blanks. Hecklefish, you ready to behave? Oh, thank goodness. Oh, I couldn't breathe. Yeah, just give me a second here. Okay, I'm ready. Drama queen. Area 51. Oh, we're getting right to the meat, huh?

Right to the meat. You can't do a list of secret locations without this one. Area 51 has been a perennial American obsession for more than 50 years. It's been the backdrop for countless movies, books, TV shows and YouTube videos. In 2019, this well-known but little understood location basically broke the Internet when some crazy person got millions of people to RSVP. Yes, to trespassing on Area 51. Did we RSVP? Yes, we did not. You're not as dumb as you look.

Area 51 is located in Rachel, Nevada, about 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and is a remote detachment of Edwards Air Force Base. It's so highly classified that the military disputed it even existed for years. Gaslighters. The Air Force finally acknowledged Area 51 as real in 2013, but nobody really knows what's happening in there. Built in 1955 as part of the Nevada Test and Training Range Complex, it was initially constructed by contractor Lockheed Martin as a test facility for the U2 spy plane. That joke worked on two levels. I appreciate you noticing. Now, although it's never been declared top secret, the area is highly protected and deadly force is authorized against trespassers. So what's going on there? Well, the official

statement is for operational security reasons, we do not provide detailed information regarding what takes place in the facility. Not good enough. I agree. The most widely circulated theory is that Area 51 houses an alien spacecraft that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, along with the bodies of the pilots. We got ET bodies. That's huge. The Air Force said the UFO was a weather balloon. Bulls. I don't buy it. Oh, you don't trust our super honest, transparent government and military industrial complex?

I do not. Lots of people don't. Area 51 operated in secret for decades until 1989, when Bob Lazar, who claimed he worked there, gave a public interview where he said that the military reverse engineered alien spacecraft and utilized that technology in American military and space programs. I believe that. I know you do. And think about how quickly technology advanced in the second half of the 20th century.

Look at it this way. Twenty years before Roswell, 1927, Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic Ocean in the spirit of St. Louis, a single engine, single seat aircraft. And that was a huge deal. He became an international star. That's 20 years before Roswell. OK, well, about 20 years before Roswell. Okay. Well, about 20 years after Roswell,

we were launching satellites into orbit and landing people on the moon. Fake news. Oh, the moon landing was faked. Faked. Fine, fine, fine, fine. I don't want to get into this now. But still, the airplane was just invented about 20 years before Lindbergh. So there are huge leaps forward in technology in a relatively short period of time. Proof we use the alien stuff.

But we have no evidence. But it's clear that technology advancements started accelerating in the fifties and sixties because of something. What do you guys think? Let us know in the comments that these technological leaps come from reverse engineering alien spacecraft. Or was it something else? R.A.F. Menwith Hill. Menwith Hill is a Royal Air Force station in North Yorkshire, England, which was built to provide communications and intelligence support services to the UK and the US.

Now, even though this is a Royal Air Force station in the 60s, operational control was transferred to the National Security Agency of the United States. No boys who then created the largest electronic monitoring station in the world. Does monitoring mean spying? Sure does. And there it is. Project Echelon is a surveillance program operated by the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK, also known as the Five Eyes. Oh, I love their fries.

No, no, you're thinking of Five Guys. Delicious. They do have good fries. Right? All right. So the Five Eyes and Spies... Nice. ...developed Echelon into a global system for the interception of private communications.

And we're talking mass surveillance of high-threat individuals and corporations via industrial espionage. Ah, who decides who's a high threat? Yeah, I thought so. Echelon is now a global network of electronic spy stations that can eavesdrop on landlines, cell phones, fax machines, computers. It can even track bank accounts. And all that data is stored in Echelon computers, which can keep millions of

records on millions of individuals, companies, even countries. Barton Gelman, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for The Washington Post, summarized the leaks as follows. Secret legal authorities empower the NSA to sweep in the telephone, Internet and location records of whole populations. There are reports that every text message and phone call in the world flows through Echelon and then is then added to the files of the sender and the receiver and stored for later analysis. Um, is this legal? Well...

Well is the wrong answer. It's not legal in the United States without a warrant, but this facility is not in the United States. That's a bull**** loophole. And officially this project doesn't even exist, so nothing to see here. Who built this crazy thing? Lockheed Martin. That company seems to show up in an awful lot of these videos.

Yeah, I noticed that too. So what do we do about it? Can you make one of those for me? I'm terrified right now. I'm using a stolen Netflix password. Oh, I know. You stole it from me. I didn't really peg you as a fan of the Twilight movies. Stop breaking my horns. I need some protection over here. Way ahead of you, pal. There you go. I don't know why, but that feels so much better.

I know it does. What do you guys think? is Echelon real? Are you concerned about governments reading your texts and screening your calls? Let us know in the comments. Now, whether emergency operations center built in 1958, Mount Weather serves as the operations center for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a.k.a. FEMA. It's part of the United States is continuity of government plan, and it's a relocation site for the highest level of civilian and government personnel.

This is a five hundred and sixty four acre high security federal government facility along the Loudoun Clark County border in Virginia, built during the Cold War as a relocation site. The facility consists of two parts, the above ground FEMA complex and a six hundred thousand square foot underground facility. Reportedly, it's a fully self-contained city with its own leaders, its own police and fire departments, even its own set of laws. This underground bunker has a hospital, dining and recreation areas, sleeping quarters, a self-contained water system, emergency power plant, even a radio and television studio, which is part of the emergency broadcasting system. People are said to be able to survive down here in isolation for years without ever leaving the compound.

Sounds a lot like 2020. Too soon. Mount Weather has been designed to survive conventional, chemical, biological, even nuclear attacks. Even though it's been operated and maintained for over 60 years, very little is known about Mount Weather. The general public first learned about it in 1974 when TWA Flight 514 crashed nearby. And up until then, most federal officials didn't even know it existed. Has it ever been used? Oh, yeah. Mount Weather was briefly activated by federal agents

on April 7th, 2015, after a major power outage hit Washington, D.C. It was also used during the 9-11 attacks, when the entire congressional leadership was transported there by helicopter. All of Congress in one bunker? I'd rather take my chances with the bombs. I hear you. Nobody really knows who's on the Mount Weather list, but it's a pretty exclusive list. So how do we get on the list?

Of course, those. It will work in a tails off over here. Do us a favor and hit the thumbs up and a like, but no, whatever button you got there. I mean, come on, you're doing nothing but walking around with a mask. You're angry, you're depressed. Come on, help a brother out. Now, you're Montauk Mezzo Mez. The road half. Help a brother out. Mount Yamantau, Mezo-Mezh-Guru... Ah, f*** it. Yamantau, along with Kavinsky Mountain, are claimed by the U.S. as being secret nuclear

facilities with underground bunkers because large excavation projects have been observed by satellites. Several military garrisons were built on the site and then merged into the closed town of Mezhguria. Closed town? Well, a closed town is a residential area where travel is restricted in and out. How many people live in Mezhgorya or whatever? Well, estimates are there are 30,000 military and another 30,000 non-military personnel.

But nobody really knows because people haven't been able to enter or leave for over 20 years. And nobody knows? Well, countries in the West have been asking Russia for years what's going on in there, and the story keeps changing. It is place for mining rocks. It is place for making delicious cheeses. It is like a big Home Depot. They really said that?

They did. I don't trust those guys. They're Russian. They don't care what you think. The Global Seed Vault. I don't trust those guys. They're Russian. They don't care what you think. The global seed vault. Oh, that looks like the thing that the Jawas drive around. It's just a big cow. Deep in an icy mountain above the Arctic Circle, between Norway and the North Pole, lies a resource of vital importance for the future of civilization.

It's not coal, oil or precious minerals, but seeds. Millions of seeds from more than 900000 varieties of food crops are stored in the global seed vault on Spitsbergen, part of Norway's Svalbard Archipelago. Dad, tell the people how many tries it took you to get that right. Go ahead. Tell them. It took me 14 tries. Svalbard Archipelago. Archipelago. It's been a long day, folks. It took me 14 tries. Fallbarg Archipelago. Archipelago. F***.

It's been a long day, folks. The seed vault is basically a huge safety deposit box to protect against loss during large scale regional or global crises. So if they drop bombs on us, we still got tomatoes? We still got tomatoes. The seed bank is 120 meters inside a sandstone mountain and employs seriously advanced security systems. Seeds are packaged in these special foil packets that allow them to last basically forever. The facility is managed by the Nordic Genetic Resource Center, but they only open the vault to make deposits. There are no permanent staff on site. A Spitsbergen was considered ideal because it lacks tectonic activity, has

permafrost and it's one hundred and thirty meters above sea level, which keeps the site dry even if the ice caps melt. Also, Norway typically tries to stay out of military conflicts. He. Guy, I said they try, while the press has emphasized its use in the event of a major global catastrophe, the seed vault will be more frequently accessed when gene banks lose samples due to mismanagement, accidents, equipment failures, funding cuts or natural disasters. These events are actually pretty common. War and civil strife have a history of destroying seed banks.

For example, the National Seed Bank of the Philippines was damaged by flooding and then later destroyed by a fire. And the seed banks of Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq have all been lost completely. From Bob's? I'd rather end on a high note. Thanks to the Global Seed Vault, many of those seeds were recovered. Tomatoes!

Tomatoes. Vatican Secret Archives. 53 miles of shelving. 35,000 volumes. Millions of pages going back 1200 years, housed in one of the most iconic bastions of religion and culture. The Vatican's apostolic archives are the stuff of historical legend and Dan Brown books, but they're absolutely real. The archives indexes are not public and they're only accessible to very few scholars. And then only after the deposits have been stored for at least 75 years and they're housed in a fortress inside the Vatican. Why do we have to wait 75 years to read this stuff? I'd rather not get into it. I got you.

Anyway, notable documents include Henry VIII's request for a marriage annulment, a handwritten transcript of the Trial of Galileo, and letters from Michelangelo complaining he hadn't been paid for his work on the Sistine Chapel. They sniffed Michelangelo on his bill? Apparently they did. Ooh, what a pieta. Eh, someone out there gets it. The secretive nature of the Catholic Church and the potential information within have fueled years of wild speculation about what's inside.

And there are tons of crazy conspiracy theories about what's in the archives. Can we talk about a few? Yes, we can. Disclaimer, we are merely reporting we are not endorsing any of these theories. I may endorse one. You may not. Fine, fine, fine. What do you got? Many conspiracy theorists believe the archives show the Vatican is hiding proof that Jesus didn't exist.

No, boy, you're right. I'll stay out of this one. Good thinking. Another theory says the Vatican has evidence of extraterrestrials and that the pope is conspiring with aliens to implant us with computer chips. There's also this great theory about a device. I have to say it slowly. It's called the chrono visor. Crow.

No visor chrono visor now try saying that word fast and Watch how quickly our YouTube video gets banned Anyway, the chrono visor is a machine that allows the operator to view past and future events And it was designed by an Italian priest and scientist who is trying to prove evidence of the crucifixion And the archives are said to contain the three secrets of Fatima, which is a series of visions and prophecies that predict the end of the world. And of course, some people believe the archives are controlled by the Illuminati, which the Vatican is a founding member.

Fact. A conspiracy theory that turned out to be true is that the Vatican archives contained a document that absolved the Knights Templar of crimes against the church. In 2001, the Chinon parchment was discovered in the archives. And the parchment is dated August 1308 at Chinon, France, and contains interrogations, confessions and absolutions of the Knights. When the Chinon parchment was made public in 2007, it confirmed the legacy of the Knights Templar by proving that Pope Clement the fifth actually absolved the group of heresy in 1308. It's a fascinating document that reads like a law and order episode, actually a law and order SVU episode. If you know what I mean, if you want to check it out, I'll put a link to the full text in the description.

And if you want to see a whole video about the Knights Templar, I do let us know in the comments and we'll get on it. Room thirty nine. Room thirty nine, also called Bureau thirty nine and Office thirty nine, is officially known as the Central Committee Bureau thirty nine of the Workers Party of Korea. And it's a secretive North Korean party organization that seeks to bring in foreign currency to party leadership. The organization is estimated to bring in $1 billion a year or more and may be involved in activities such as counterfeiting $100 bills,

producing meth, heroin, and committing international insurance fraud for big, big bucks. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. What? Can we ease into this? This is crazy. Okay, okay. We'll ease into it. Office 39 was set up in the 1970s by the founding father of North Korea, Kim Il-sung, as a kind of royal slush fund. It takes its name from the office it occupies inside the Workers' Party building in the capital Pyongyang, not far from the official residence of the party leader. Much of what we know about Room 39 comes from a defector that ABC interviewed in 2018. He said he spent five years working as an agent in the Dyson Group, an umbrella

corporation that smuggled ginseng, gemstones and gold into China so it could be sold on the international markets as Chinese gold. Apparently evading United Nations sanctions was easy and China played a central part. They just changed company names and had branches in different countries. We don't know much about the internal operations of Room 39 because the defector is afraid of assassination attempts on himself and his family. But there are plenty more shady details, which I'll link below. Uh, should we be talking about this? Now you're squeamish?

I was fine until the last story. Maybe we could cut this one out. It's too late now. Well, s***. Well, how do you say I'm sorry in Korean? Jisung, hiya. Wait, I was being rhetorical. Is that really how to say it?

Yep. Why do you... Hey, we all have secrets, don't we? Yes. Yes, we do. You searched for your informant, who disappeared without a trace. You knew there were witnesses, but lips were sealed.

You swept the city, driving closer to the truth. While curled up on the couch with your cat. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover heart-pounding thrillers on Audible. You sailed beyond the horizon in search of an island scrubbed from every map. You battled krakens and navigated through storms. Your spade struck the lid of a long-lost treasure chest. While you cooked a lasagna.

There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover best-selling adventure stories on Audible. You searched for your informant who disappeared without a trace. You knew there were witnesses, but lips were sealed. You swept the city, driving closer to the truth. While curled up on the couch with your cat.

There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover heart-pounding thrillers on Audible. You sailed beyond the horizon in search of an island scrubbed from every map. You battled krakens and navigated through storms. Your spade struck the lid of a long lost treasure chest. While you cooked a lasagna. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover best-selling adventure stories on Audible. Thanks for hanging out with us today. My name is AJ. That's Hecklefish. This has been the Y-Files.

Today we talk about some of the most secret locations in the world and the theories about what happens inside. Are there other secret places you want us to cover? Do you want us to get into more detail on any of the ones we covered today? Let us know in the comments. We're working hard for you. So do us a favor. Give us a thumbs up. And if we haven't earned your subscription today, I promise we'll keep making fun, brainy content until we do earn it. Until next time, be safe, be kind, and know that you are appreciated.