Area 51

Area 51 is real and not too far from Vegas at Groom Lake (a dry lake bed). I have never tried to go there. But as we now know — or think we know — Area 51 was used to test state of the art airplane technology. The most famous of Area 51's activities concerns the secret sauce used to coat the F-117 Nighthawk fighter jets. Whatever was in it they made a lot of it. And, according to former workers, the coating that did not go onto those planes was disposed of in the most low-tech way imaginable: open pit burning. How can this be legal you ask? Well it isn't. But the president ordered the EPA to not apply environmental law to Area 51. This was also President Clinton's approach.

Obviously, whatever the workers breathed into their lungs was not good for them and many got sick and at least two may have died. The former workers are being represented by law professor Jonathan Turley. Turley has fruitlessly been charging at the windmills of the court system on this since 1994. The case stalled when the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of a 1998 ruling that favored the government's desire not to reveal any information about Area 51 and what these workers may have breathed there.

So, fast forward to 2006 and it turns out that a warning was issued to first responders on an Air Force website almost a year ago. It said that should they come across a burning stealth fighter, they should be careful of "hazardous byproducts of burning wreckage."

This is the admission that the government felt was too secret to reveal to the former Area 51 workers.

The Review-Journal interviewed one lung damaged former Area 51 worker noting:

"He is angry that the Air Force warns emergency responders about these hazardous byproducts but won't compensate him and his former coworkers."

Doesn't this seem very hypocritical? And so, as you can imagine, in the face of this public scrutiny, the Air Force has been spurred to action. The safety warning to first responders has been removed from the website and apparently reclassified to protect national security and so we can now all breathe easier (as long as we are not breathing near a burning stealth plane). Agent Mulder would not be surprised.

(Photo: Laura Rauch / AP)