Explore the Recent Mysteries and Controversies about Area 51

Do you remember the scene in the 1996 movie "Independence Day" where the President of the U.S. is airborne on Air Force One, looking for someplace to land where it is safe after an alien invasion?

Julius Levinson: Hey, hey, hey, don't you tell him to shut up! You'd all be dead now if it weren't for my David! None of you did anything to prevent this!
Gen. Gray: There was nothing we could do! We were totally unprepared for...
Julius Levinson: AAAHHH, don't give me unprepared! You knew about this for years! What, with that spaceship you found in New Mexico! What was it called... Roswell, New Mexico! And that other place... uh... Area 51, Area 51! You knew then! And you did nothing!
President Thomas Whitmore: Mr. Levinson, contrary to what you may have read in the tabloids, there is no Area 51. There is no spaceship...
Albert Nimzicki: Uh... excuse me, Mr. President? That's not entirely accurate."

Two things happened in early June 2019 that could make that scene a reality.

First, the movie "Bob Lazar: Area 51 and Flying Saucers" came out on Netflix. Lazar first brought Area 51 to the attention of the public by claiming to have worked on a secret project that attempted to get an alien spacecraft to fly.

Lazar isn't jumping on the red-hot UFO trend only recently. He first made his claims 30 years ago, in 1989, when he spoke to investigative reporter George Knapp of Las Vegas television station KLAS. Over these 30 years, Knapp has steadfastly held to the belief that Lazar was telling him the truth.

Lazar claimed to work at a facility called S-4, which was part of Area 51, which consisted of concealed aircraft hangars built into the side of a mountain. Lazar claimed that the alien craft he worked on, which was one of nine, was fueled by atomic element 115, Moscovium. The element was first synthesized in 2003, or 14 years after Lazar's claim.

Lazar also said that briefing documents he had read described aliens' involvement with Earth over the past 10,000 years. Lazar also claims to have degrees from both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), yet neither institution has any record of his attendance.

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The Davis-Wilson meeting notes

The second thing that happened in early June is the appearance of what are purported to be notes taken on October 16, 2002, by scientist Dr. Eric Davis during a meeting with U.S. Navy's Vice Admiral Thomas R. Wilson.

Davis is the Chief Science Officer of EarthTech Int'l, Inc. and the Institute for Advanced Studies in Austin, Texas. His bio claims that his research includes propulsion physics for interstellar flight, beamed energy propulsion, directed energy weapons, quantum gravity theories, and SETI-xenoarchaeology.

The notes can be found on the website Imgur. There is no way to know if the notes are real or a clever fake. If fake, they join Clifford Irving's "Hitler Diaries," and Melvin Dummar's so-called "Mormon Letter" as among the most famous hoaxes of all time. If the notes are real, they have the potential to upend everything we think we know about our place in the universe. As you continue reading, you can decide for yourself whether or not the notes are real.

The notes concern events that took place during the Spring of 1997, when Wilson was Deputy Director of Intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Vice Admiral Thomas R. Wilson, USN was the 13th Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 1999 to 2002. Other flag rank assignments included Director of Intelligence (J2) for The Joint Staff from 1997 to 1999, Associate Director of Central Intelligence for Military Support, Central Intelligence Agency, Vice Director of Intelligence, The Joint Staff, and Director of Intelligence, United States Atlantic Command. While there is room for doubt about the notes, there is no doubt that Wilson is "the real deal."

The Two Men Meet

The meeting between Dr. Davis and Vice Admiral Wilson was in the back of Wilson’s car, which was supposedly parked in back of the EG&G Special Projects Building. At that time, EG&G’s "Special Projects" division was the operator of the Janet Terminal at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas.

Janet Airlines is the unofficial name given to the highly classified fleet of passenger aircraft operated for the U.S. Air Force as an employee shuttle to transport military and civilian contractor employees to the Nevada National Security Site, which is known as Area 51, and to the Tonopah Test Range. Workers are flown out in the morning, and back in the evening. In the image of one of their airplanes below, notice the lack of markings on the plane and the lack of a tail number, both of which are highly unusual.

The notes begin with Dr. Davis asking Vice Admiral Wilson about a meeting which supposedly took place on April 9, 1997, in a conference room at the Pentagon. According to the notes, at that meeting were UFO researcher Dr. Steven Greer, Apollo 14 astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell, U.S. Navy Lt. Commander Willard Miller, Wilson, Admiral Michael Crawford, and General Patrick Hughes.

While Davis’s notes don't state what the purpose of the meeting was, the notes include statements made by Greer and Mitchell which imply that the purpose was to bring to the attention of the military the existence of private contractors who were studying alien technology.

The notes also detail how a recently published book came up in the meeting, The Day After Roswell by Philip J. Corso, which alleged that alien technology recovered from the Roswell crash in 1947 ended up in the hands of private industry.

Corso claimed that the development of accelerated particle beam devices, fiber optics, lasers, integrated circuit chips and the material Kevlar all were the result of reverse engineering the crashed Roswell spaceship. The notes say, there "is more than enough to believe Corso told truth about seeing 'alien' hardware, etc."

According to the notes, as Wilson spoke to Lt. Commander Miller, Wilson said that "he knew about intelligence on US mil/intel on UFO close encounters – and foreign gov't encounters." This was five years before the AATIP Pentagon program was begun.

AATIP, which stands for Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, was a secret program begun in the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency to study unidentified flying objects (UFOs). AATIP began in 2007 and closed in 2012, with its director, Luis Elizondo, going on to become a founding member of the nonprofit "To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science."

Currently, Elizondo can be seen on the History Channel's "Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation."

Wilson purportedly told Davis that in June 1997 he was able to confirm that "there is such an organization in existence" in relation to "MJ-12/UFO cabal – crashed UFO." The use of the word "cabal" is interesting.

Miller discussed this meeting with Wilson in a May 2000 article by author Leslie Kean that appeared in the Boston Globe newspaper. In that article, Miller expressed concerns that the military's lack of openness about UFOs could cause dangerous misunderstandings, and that "precipitous military decisions ... may lead to unnecessary confusion, misapplication of forces, or possible catastrophic consequences."

Wilson Takes Action

The meeting with Greer, Mitchell, Miller, Crawford, and Hughes supposedly spurred Wilson into action. The notes state that a week after the meeting, Wilson "'made phone calls, knocked on a few doors, talked to people.' This went on for 45 days, on and off, he said." However, Wilson has denied ever following up on the meeting.

According to the notes, Wilson goes on to say that he received a suggestion from a General Ward to search through the records group files in the OUSDAT office. This is the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology.

In a commentary on the purported notes, writer Richard Dolan speculates that this General Ward is Air Force General H. Marshal Ward, who became Director of special programs at the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology in the Pentagon.

The notes also state that around the same time, Wilson is said to have spoken with former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry, who also told him to go through the OUSDAT records.

Wilson reportedly said, "they [Ward and Perry] told me of a special projects record group not belonging to usual SAP – a special subset of the unacknowledged /carve-outs/waived programs – not belonging to the usual SAP divisions as organized in '94 by Perry himself – set apart from [the] rest but buried/covered by conventional SAPs."

SAP stands for Special Access Programs, and they are programs that are run by private contractors that are outside of Congressional oversight, and possibly even armed services oversight. Vice Admiral Wilson seemed to be telling Dr. Davis that a UFO crash retrieval program appears to have been buried within other Special Access Programs.

According to the notes, Wilson said he found this unusual group, and he mentioned three other names: Paul Kaminski, General Michael Kostenik, and Judith Daley, who was the Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Advanced Development, OUSDAT. When Dr. Davis asked Wilson what SAP compartment he found it in, Wilson replied: "core secret – won’t say."

But, he did say that the private contractor was an aerospace technology contractor with intelligence capabilities in their corporate portfolio.

Wilson Sets Up a Meeting With the Contractor

Wilson then supposedly contacted the defense contractor and spoke to the program manager, the company's security director, and the company's corporate attorney. According to the notes, Wilson told them that he had read their program record in the OUSDAT special program records group "and wanted to know about their crashed UFO program, what their role in that was, what they had, etc."

Wilson supposedly then demanded a formal briefing on the program under his authority as Deputy Director Defense Intelligence Agency and Joint Chief of Staff J-2. The defense contractor's response was to set up a face-to-face meeting in mid-June 1997 between Wilson and the same three individuals he had spoken to. According to the notes, Wilson stated that the security director was retired from the National Security Agency (NSA) and was a counter-intelligence expert.

The three refused Wilson access to any information, stating that he wasn't on their "BIGOT list."

This is a term referring to a list of personnel possessing appropriate security clearance and who are cleared to know details of a particular operation or other sensitive information. The only people appearing on the contractor's BIGOT list were company employees and a handful of Pentagon officials, however, no politicians appeared on it, nor did anyone from the White House or Congress.

A "Reverse Engineering Program"

The notes state that when Davis asked what kind of program they were running, the three representatives replied that they weren't a weapons program, or an intelligence program, and they weren't a special ops or logistics program. They said they were a reverse engineering program.

And, they supposedly revealed to Wilson that they had an intact craft that they believed they could get to fly. They said it was "technology that was not of this Earth - not made by man - not by human hands."

According to the notes, they went on to tell Wilson that their program had been going on for "years and years" and had achieved "little or no success" due to a lack of collaboration from the outside community. They conceded that between 400 and 800 people were on their "BIGOT list" who were workers "varying in number with funding or personnel changes." It is possible that Paul Kaminski, General Michael Kostenik,  and Judith Daley were on the BIGOT list.

A Lack of Oversight

Upon returning from the meeting, the notes state that Wilson complained about the program's lack of oversight to the Special Access Program Oversight Committee (SAPOC), who sided with the contractor. Wilson was then told to drop the matter entirely, with the Senior Review Group chairman threatening him that he wouldn't be promoted to Director of DIA, but instead would get early retirement and lose one of two of his stars.

In January 1998, Wilson supposedly spoke with Jacques Singleton Gansler who was Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisitions, Technology and Logistics. Gansler told Wilson to drop his inquiry, and that "UFOs are real, so-called alien abductions are not."

A Long History of Suppressing UFO Information

The U.S. has a long history of suppressing information about UFOs. In 1953, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) became interested in UFOs, and in January 1953, they set up a committee to study the issue. The panel, which was headed by mathematician and physicist Howard P. Robertson, concluded that UFO sightings posed no direct threat to national security, but the CIA was worried about mass hysteria.

The CIA began a campaign through mass media and schools to convince the U.S. public that there was a lack of evidence for UFOs. The CIA also began monitoring private UFO groups for what they termed "subversive activities."

The U.S. military responded with the December 1953 Joint-Army-Navy-Air Force Publication 146 (JANAP 146) which details the procedures to be followed in the filing of reports from pilots and crews of military aircraft and surface vessels regarding information of vital importance to the security of the United States, including sightings of UFOs. The Air Force Regulation 200-2 (AFR 200-2) revision of 1954 made all UFO sightings reported to the USAF classified, and AFR 200-2 revision of February 1958 allowed the military to deliver to the FBI names of those who were "illegally or deceptively" bringing UFOs to public attention.

It's only been a month since the Davis notes appeared on Imgur, and again, there is no way of knowing whether they are real or not. If they are authentic, they could be a large step towards learning the truth about Area 51.

At the end of the miniseries "Chernobyl," the character of Valery Legasov says, "Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid."

Sooner or later, the truth about Area 51 will come out.