From: Stig Agermose <stig.agermose@privat.dk>
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 20:47:08 +0200
Fwd Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 21:33:15 -0400
Subject: Bush Re-Issues Order Keeping Area 51 Secret


Source: MSNBC

http://www.msnbc.com/news/809766.asp

Stig

***

Area 51, truth seekers 0

Bush reissues order keeping Nevada site secret

By Alex Johnson, MSNBC

**

Sept. 18 =97  For more than four decades, an unusual alliance of
mainstream lawyers, conspiracy theorists and UFO enthusiasts has
tried to find out just what is going on at Groom Lake, Nev. =97
the top-security Air Force facility better known to fans of "The
X-Files" as Area 51. Now they will have to wait at least another
year after President Bush reissued an executive order Wednesday
barring the disclosure of any information about the site.

In the continuation of a drama played out every Sept. 18 since
1995, Bush signed the order to make sure that lawyers pursuing
hazardous-waste claims against the Environmental Protection
Agency could not get their hands on classified information about
the site, which lies in the middle of a remote stretch of desert
100 miles north of Las Vegas.

The government did not even acknowledge the existence of the
site until the mid-1990s, when it had to begin responding to
workers' claims of injuries resulting from hazardous waste
practices.

Even now, all the Air Force will say is that the area is used
"for the testing of technologies and systems training for
operations critical to the effectiveness of U.S. military forces
and the security of the United States." It insists that
"specific activities and operations ... both past and present,
remain classified and cannot be discussed."

Although exasperated government lawyers say nothing nefarious is
going on at Groom Lake, they have gone to herculean lengths to
make sure no one knows what is going on at Groom Lake.

President Dwight Eisenhower began the process all the way back
in 1955, when he issued an executive order restricting airspace
over the site. Then, in 1995, President Bill Clinton raised the
stakes by issuing an order clamping down on discussion or
release of any information whatsoever.

That was about the time attorneys for former government workers
began taking their rejected medical claims to court. Those
lawyers believe the government is trying to keep the site secret
to avoid having to admit it mishandled hazardous materials,
exposing the workers to toxic fumes when it allegedly dumped
poisonous resins into open pits and burned them in the 1970s and
'80s.


THE ULTIMATE COVER-UP?

There is another group, however, that thinks something else
entirely is going on at Groom Lake =97 something spooky, something
otherworldly.

To this group, the site is known as Area 51, the nexus of the
greatest government cover-up in history. It is, they say, where
the government studies alien spaceships, where it keeps captured
unidentified flying objects stored in underground bases, and
where it conducts autopsies on aliens.

Writers for "The X-Files" were able to dredge up numerous
scripts from stories that have built up since May 1989, when a
physicist named Bob Lazar told a Las Vegas television station
about nine alien flying saucers he said were being held near
Groom Lake by a rogue agency of the federal government.

Lazar claimed that the government was studying the propulsion
system of the spacecraft, which were flown to Earth from the
Zeta Reticuli star system. According to Lazar, the Reticulans
have been overseeing human evolution for a hundred centuries,
and since they were found out, they have been cooperating with
the U.S. government on a direct exchange of technology.

The government, to the extent that it has commented at all,
says Lazar's account is utter nonsense.

More prosaically, mainstream scientists suggest, the government
simply wishes to limit its liability as it establishes the
Nevada Test Site at nearby Yucca Mountain as a storage
repository for hazardous nuclear waste. Those alleging an
extraterrestrial conspiracy say instead that Yucca Mountain was
chosen precisely so federal researchers could have unfettered
access to its stored nuclear energy sources via a secret
underground tunnel.

  In any event, the government has argued that it cannot say
anything about Area 51, and it has fought workers' lawyers
zealously in court to keep government documents about the site
sealed. One of those lawyers, Jonathan Turley of George
Washington University, described the courtroom jousting with
federal lawyers as "otherworldly." And every year since Clinton
issued his executive order in 1995, the White House has
reaffirmed the cloak of secrecy on Sept. 18.

Presumably, as Agent Mulder would have it, "the truth is out
there."

Just don't ask the president.

=A9 2002