Posted on 04/13/2009 11:39:11 AM PDT by TaraP
A former engineer at the top secret airfield "Area 51" in Nevada has spoken out about UFO sightings in the region in the 1960s, saying the witnessed flashes of light were part of top secret US aircraft experiments.
In an interview with ABC News, Thornton "T.D." Barnes, 72, a former special-projects engineer at Area 51 said: "No one really knew we existed. Even our wives didn't know where we were going when we left Monday morning and came back Friday evening."
Barnes was an electronics engineer for NASA who also specialised in advance radar and Soviet MiG fighter aircraft and was asked to join a team of CIA experts who would work on secret military projects at the infamous base.
UFO folklore has it that Area 51, about 80 miles north northwest of Las Vegas, is where captured aliens and their spacecraft have been stored by the US military. The conspiracy theory comes in part because of the preponderance of strange, unaccounted for lights that have been seen in the region of the top secret military base.
However Barnes poured cold water on the theory saying the "alien spaceships" were in fact light flashes from top secret spy planes being flown at 2,000 miles per hour at altitudes of 90,000 feet.
The experimental planes produced light flashes that some interpreted as alien spaceships and this was considered helpful by the team in covering their activities.
"We considered it to be a bonus," said Barnes. "They made it easier to conceal what we were doing."
However some ufologists have said the area has only been partly declassified and UFO work at the base may well have carried out though in a region unknown to engineers such as Barnes.
"Those guys who came forward may very well be telling the truth, with the caveat that they wouldn't know if there was something going on," said Stanton T. Friedman, a nuclear physicist, lecturer and top UFO researcher.
Friedman added that evidence coming out of places such as Area 51 proved how much was going on in the country without peoples' knowledge.
"National security has a real place in all of this stuff. There is no way to tell your friends without telling your enemies," he said. "A lot of Americans woke up to the fact that there's a lot going on that they don't get told about."
So, let me get this straight. The guys who work there don't know the whole story, but you do Mr. Friedman?
Why don't you enlighten us?
I agree!!
"Survival kit contents check. In them you'll find: one forty-five caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days' concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair of nylon stockings. Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff."
Problem is that the Groom Lake military installation did not exist until 1955. The first big, well-publicized UFO sightings began in 1947.
I think he just means that they may not have been privy to information going on in other areas of the base. Sort of like one person not knowing all of the ingredients of a secret recipe.
Here's a recently declassified photo of a Zeta J.
planes being flown at 2,000 miles per hour at altitudes of 90,000 feet. THIS CAUSES A LIGHT FLASH????
You’d be exceedingly less like your mascot
IF
you did tons more research before ASSUMING.
I LOVED Quisp cereal!!!!
Research doesn’t consist of taking to heart the lunatic ravings of tin foil hat wearing cretins.
Nice that you recognize the bird that symbolizes your movement. The Cuckoo.
Uhm, maybe they had, uh, what's the word? Oh yeah! LIGHTS!
Yes Lights not Flashes...
Those that believe in this stupidity will be all mad, like a wet hen, seeing as their foolish dreams have been further doused.
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