The unfortunate thing is that Ms. Jacobsen took from what all accounts was a fairly comprehensive and revelatory look at the secret history of Area 51 based on actual USAF documents and multiple interviews, and kind of pissed that all away with a non-alien but somehow even more ridiculous and sensational story about Stalin and Mengele and surgically altered children in a German built flying saucer spyplane to grab headlines and sell her book. It was a success in that sense since the attention grabbing headlines and interviews have landed her on the bestseller list, but at the same time I have to wonder if taking such an outlandish story from one anonymous source and publishing it as the cornerstone of her book hasn't diminished her journalistic integrity somewhat and cast the rest of the book in a more ridiculous light than it deserves. Personally, I think the far more interesting and threatening story is the level of extreme classification and autonomy agencies and operations like Area 51 are able to undertake, to the point where even the President is not on a need-to-know basis sometimes: The President not being on a need-to-know basis about the goings on at Area 51 was played for laughs and drama in 'Independence Day' (actually they pretended like the President didn't even know Area 51 existed, which was stupid since its existence was widespread knowledge well before 1996), but it actually turns out to be quite true - at least where it comes to certain projects and agencies working there. While that's not anything new in American government or government in general, it's still a dangerous situation, and one which I wish had been more the focus than the stupid Stalin's UFO story that's gotten all the limelight instead.
Yea, that is kind of amazing that a branch of the US military would consider the President on a 'need to know basis.' Such information I'm sure you know only fuels the 'aliens are being hidden,' fires and speculation If the POTUS is on a 'need to know only basis,' on area 51 you have to wonder what other black ops projects he or one day she would be hidden from?
Well, the people who really want to believe aliens crashed at Roswell and that we're reverse engineering their ship will believe that regardless of what classification level Area 51 projects are kept at and no matter what contradictory information was revealed. Plus, even if the President wasn't on a need-to-know basis in that respect doesn't mean he or she would share it with the public in turn. I'm more worried about agencies considering themselves above the law and above all oversight for more down-to-Earth and possibly sinister reasons. I mean, we've conducted some pretty horrifying programs like the Tuskegee Experiment even with full government oversight, so even if their project wasn't illegal, dangerous, or immoral, I still wouldn't trust them without having at least some - and preferably multiple layers of - elected federal officials in an oversight capacity. Does that guarantee operating above board? Of course not, but it's better than the alternative of no one watching.
The Patriot Act supported by both the Bush and Obama administrations empowers the US government to do some very questionable, dangerous and immoral things. And I'd wager that neither Obama nor Bush were are fully aware of who's being snooped on on a daily basis. But yes I agree with your over-all premise that the Area 51 book while attempting to debunk many of the alien conspiracy theories sells the book on Nazi conspiracy theories instead of the larger issue which is oversight or a lack there of - of [to be nice about it] - over zealous government employees. I'm taking it that you believe neither the alien conspiracy theories nor the midget Russian aircraft pilots as a plausible explanation for Roswell?
Please let Larry the Cable Guy address this on his show on the History Channel. I'm dying to hear him say "Git er' done, Hitler!"
From what I've read the story of the Roswell crash in the book is contradictory, which when it's coming from only one anonymous source is pretty bad. On the one hand it says that the craft at Roswell was a German-built (Possibly Horten) Soviet spy plane that accidentally crashed. But on the other hand the children were supposedly surgically mutilated by Dr. Mengele in order to appear alien-like and sent by Stalin to create what he thought would be a Wellesian 'War of the Worlds' style panic. So, if it's just a spy plane that accidentally crashed, why would you have the surgically altered children in it? You'd only do that if crashing mostly intact was the intention all along. But if it was intended to pose as an alien spacecraft, why was the craft supposedly covered in Cyrillic writing? How long did they actually think the ruse of simply surgically altering children would hold up under an autopsy which would show that they were obviously human? While I'm perfectly capable of believing Stalin would try some pretty weird shit, this whole story sounds like such a ridiculous amalgam of WWII legends and scifi/spy/alternate history clichés to be true. It says something when you take a story that's already as fantastic as an alien crash landing and say "fuck it, I'm turning it up to eleven" and throw Stalin, Dr. Mengele, surgically altered children, and German/Russian flying saucer spyplanes into the mix. Then there's the fact that the Soviets actually were quite interested in Roswell and considered it a cover-up of much bigger events of some sort themselves. If they arranged the whole thing, why were they so fascinated by it? I just think whomever the anonymous source was they were having some fun at her expense, were throwing out officially sanctioned false explanations in order to discredit the reporting X-Files style, or were in the middle of writing 'Stalin's UFO' for the History Channel and accidentally sent her the script. As far as what really happened at Roswell, I don't know. It could easily be as mundane as a weather balloon and the story has taken on a life of its own. Or it could have been some secret US aircraft and they created a cover story to deflect attention from a crash. But no, I don't think it's anything like aliens, as much as I'd like it to be Quark, Rom, Nog, and Odo.
I am about two-thirds through that book now. The big "alien" revelation is at the end, of course, but the Roswell incident was touched on earlier and as far as I can tell there was no claim of it being a spy plane, it was said to be strictly a psychological warfare "hoax" by Stalin. The book so far is quite good and is very thorough with source citations. It puts together a lot of information about Area 51 and straightens out some blind alleys of disinformation that have been around a long time due to Cold War secrecy. It discusses the fuzzy relationship of Area 51 to the Nevada Nuclear Test Site, and gets into the rivalry over overhead reconnaissance between the CIA -- who really started it -- and the Air Force. A lot of this stuff has been available in various places since it was declassified in the past decade, but this is a pretty good one-stop book. There is not a lot of technical detail on aircraft, but it is sufficient for most readers. The idea of a Soviet-Horten origin for the Roswell "craft" has been around for a few years. The genetically/surgically altered crew is new to me. I'll have to read that part of the book, but it seems pretty shaky to me. Thirteen year old pilots? Would a thirteen year old really have the skills and experience to fly an experimental aircraft on a long and potentially dangerous mission? And if they really did have such an early stealth aircraft, why didn't the Soviets make more? Although they probably couldn't carry an early a-bomb, numbers of deep penetration bombers or even spy planes could have caused the USAF to re-balance its priorities toward air defense and away from a-bombers (SAC). I'll post again when I finish the book if there's anything interesting to add. --Justin
Thanks Justin for the update on the book and you ask some good questions about the pilots ages as asserted in the book as well as the fact that why didn't they attempt to build the aircraft again - especially since presumably it made it over US airspace for thousands of miles undetected? As Locutus mentioned I think one of the most startling revelations is that the POTUS was out of the proverbial 'loop,' on the bases existence and function.
Yes, some of the stuff that has come out about the Atomic Energy Commission in the last 20 years has been pretty startling. As was said in the Area 51 book, their secrecy and compartmentalization practices were basically lifted from Stalin's playbook. On some level they became like the Soviets to fight the Soviets. --Justin