Area 51: new name, still secrets
Obviously, the conspiracy theorists and UFO buffs have made Area 51 a significant part of popular culture. But in Nevada, Area 51 is a very real place that has given rise to very real concern.
For example, in the Review-Journal this morning there is an interview with law professor Jonathan Turley. Turley represented two deceased workers and other former employees of the nonexistent military base who claimed they were injured while serving their country at Area 51. The workers think their illnesses may have come from burning pits of chemical toxins used to coat stealth jets. Such open-pit burning would violate all sorts of environmental laws.
In 1995, President Clinton signed the first exemption preventing any information about what the workers may have breathed at the officially nonexistent base from entering the court system. Turley tells the Review-Journal: "As humorous as this naming may be, it produces very bitter feelings among those of us who have tried to disclose the crimes at that facility. . . . Whatever its name is, it will remain a symbol of how the government has the ability to avoid accountability for environmental crimes."
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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)
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