Area 51 vets break silence: Sorry, but no space aliens

[Newsjock]

Source: Seattle Times

VANCOUVER, Wash. — After nearly five decades, guys like James Noce finally get to tell their stories about Area 51.

Yes, that Area 51.

The one that gets brought up when people talk about secret Air Force projects, crashed UFOs, alien bodies and, of course, conspiracies.

The secrets, some of them, have been declassified.

Noce, 72, and his fellow Area 51 veterans around the country now are free to talk about doing contract work for the CIA in the 1960s and '70s at the arid, isolated Southern Nevada government testing site.

... Noce remembers always getting paid in cash, signing a phony name to the receipt, during his several years of working security at the site. It was, in CIA parlance, "a black project."

... On Monday mornings, a Lockheed Superconstellation would fly in from the "Skunk Works" in Burbank, Calif., bringing engineers and others who were working on the A-12. They'd stay there during the week and return home on weekends.

... "They had these cooks come up from Vegas. They were like regular chefs," Noce remembers. "Day or night, you could get a steak, whatever you wanted."

Lobster was flown in regularly from Maine. A jet, sent across the country to test its engines, would bring back the succulent payload.

Read more: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011461015_area51vets28m.html

[SpiralHawk]

1. But...TeaBaggers Aliens (R) are attacking America from Area 51

With their warped wide-stance, diaper-clad 'ideas'

[peekaloo]

2. A surf and turf restaurant?

*whispers* for aliens.

[The Straight Story]

3. Hmmm. So if they say 'no aliens' we rush to believe them? What else would they say????

"Yeah, we had aliens there." then people would just say they were lying....

[MajorChode]

5. It would have been more newsworthy if they had said there were aliens

The declassification that it was a skunkworks project is old news. They aren't saying anything that wasn't already known.

[LiberalFighter]

4. They lie. McCain is an alien. Who else but an alien would had picked Palin?

[lpbk2713]

10. Answer:

A complete idiot.


:rofl:

[sakabatou]

6. Loved the "Gorilla" test pilot

[undeterred]

7. Aliens came to visit us and they ended up being dinner.

[KittyWampus]

9. I've had alien- it tastes a lot like lobster.

[jmowreader]

14. Really? You must have gotten a bad batch

The alien I had tasted like chicken.

"Here, try some alien! It tastes just like chicken!"
'Well, if it tastes just like chicken, why didn't you just feed me chicken?'

[UTUSN]

8. You know you're OLD when lifelong secrets are exposed

Or, I like it better how Lao-tzu said it,

If you sit by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.

[Robb]

11. It's important to remember the first Blackbirds were flying in 1963.

The engines were test-fired five or six years earlier. The whole thing was designed in the 1950s, and little changed other than manufacturing methods and surveillance equipment during operational deployment.

The Blackbird was bleeding-edge aviation technology 55 years ago. Think about that.


55 years before that, state-of-the-art was this:


...My point is that what "we" are flying around in secret right now is as unimaginable to us as an SR-71 would've been to the Wright Brothers. :)

[KittyWampus]

15. I've made the point that the military does have secret technological developments-

and been attacked for it on DU.

But yes, I do occasionally like to dwell on advances like the ones you point out.

I find it incredible the advances made in film technology in what amounts to a very long lifetime.

[HughMoran]

12. Just as I always thought

I didn't realize that the A-12 developed there flew somewhat faster than the much more famous SR-71 2-seat variant of this plane. Interesting reading this morning :)

[rucky]

13. Mysteries are way more fun.

[KittyWampus]

16. very important point, actually.

[Arkana]

17. Yeah, that's just what they WANT us to think.

There's something there they don't want us to see--why else would you be arrested for coming within a mile of the base?