(London Observer)
RACHEL, Nev. - The pilots who fly the supersonic fighters through the deep blue sky above call it Dreamland on their radios. To the UFO-watchers who gather by night to peer into the desert heavens, it is Area 51. To those who chart the designs of secret aircraft
before they are built, it is Groom Lake.
At the foot of a ridge in the ancient, high desert of Nevada, it
spreads across the edge of the dry lake with mighty mountains
rising behind: a collection of hangars, buildings, runways and
parked aircraft, and rising smoke caught by the late desert sun.
But it does not appear on even the most detailed maps; the
Pentagon says Dreamland or Area 51 air force base does not exist.
And the reason Dreamland "does not exist" is because it hides not only the wonders of military technology, but the human price being paid for such technology: men now revealed as badly sick and even dying from toxic waste burned within the base.
For 40 years, Dreamland has been the keeper of the darkest U.S.
military secrets, the black programs that never appear on budget
lists. The prototype for the U2 spyplane was built here; the
Blackbird that flew at 3,500 km/h; then the jet-black Stealth
fighter that defies belief as well as radar.
And now the base is cradle to a next generation of hypersonic
airplanes, christened Aurora, which - at 8,000 km/h - will be the fastest mechanical creatures ever built by man. Dreamland's human secrets are at the centre of one of the most remarkable cases in
recent U.S. legal history. Last week, a young lawyer, Jonathan
Turley, filed a motion to compel the U.S. government to name
whatever lies beside Groom Lake, thereby admitting its existence
and bringing it within the jurisdiction of the law.
Turley is mounting the first legal challenge of the black
programs, claiming that workers at Dreamland are suffering
terrible, sometimes lethal diseases - their skin covered with
sores, peeling and cracking - as obnoxious clouds bulge and swirl across the terrain.
Helene Frost, the widow of one man who died of what tests showed
to be high levels of toxic chemicals, together with five workers
and former workers at the base, is suing U.S. Defence Secretary
William Perry, Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall and Anthony
Lake, President Bill Clinton's national-security adviser, for
breach of federal laws on toxic-waste disposal.
Turley's clients say materials used in the development of aircraft
- paints, solvents, fuels - are so secret that they have to be
disposed of on site. They are dumped in open trenches, doused with fuel and burned.
The government has sought, unsuccessfully so far, to block the
action on national-security grounds.
"We don't contest the government's need for national security,"
Turley said. "But at Area 51, the government attempted to create a secret enclave in which domestic laws were not applicable. If a
corporation had committed these violations, someone would be
heading for jail right now. And the minute the government
acknowledges the existence of Area 51, it falls within the
jurisdiction of domestic laws and penalties."
Near the base, you switch off the car engine and lights and behind the night there moves the roar of jet engines.
A red light darts into view and then another, the pair dancing
around each another, the twisting and jinking of a practice
dogfight.
The exercise over, runway lights flare up for a few moments
behind the mountains, then the empty land falls silent again.
The only hamlet in this wilderness is Rachel, formerly a tungsten mining town, and now no more than a scrappy collection of about 50 mobile homes. Its residents were among the so-called Downwinders
caught in the clouds of the early nuclear bomb tests of the 1940s. And the legacy is a strange local folklore.
The only place to stay in Rachel is a trailer called the A'le'Inn, a play on the word alien. The sign reads: "UFOs and crews always
welcome."
Area 51 first entered the world of U.S. scientific mythology when Bob Lazar, a former colleague of A-bomb wizard Edward Teller,
claimed he had worked with the air force at Area 51 on alien
space-craft.
The zone quickly became a favorite spot for flying-saucer
sightings. And so, halfway through supper at the A'le'Inn, the
door bursts open and a score of UFO tourists arrives for a meal.
They are people like Helen Bradley from California: "Oh yes, we
saw one all right, on a tripod, moving very fast... It's in the
Scriptures that we shall ascend with them, but the government is
covering it up."
But the base is all too worldly, the threat all too real. The scene is Las Vagas airport, 4 a.m.; beside a terminal tucked away on the outskirts of the runways, adjacent to a hotel-casino complex, a
white Boeing 737 marked only with a red stripe waits to take off. Several men appear in the half light, escorted by security guards, and board the jet. They are on their way to work the shifts at
Dreamland.
When he did not catch the bus, this was how Robert Frost went to
work for 10 years as a journeyman and foreman, during the
development of the Stealth fighter, until his death in 1989.
"He couldn't tell anyone where he worked, or what he was working
with," said his wife, still living on the outskirts of Las Vagas. "The phone at work wa tapped."
Frost fell ill. "He came home from work saying `My eyes are on
fire, my face is on fire' and he splashed himself with cold
water," his wife recalled.
He lost weight rapidly, developed rashes and weeping sores, his
stomach swelled, his face peeled, his skin began to crack and
bleed. He was cold even in the sweltering desert summer. It was
then that he finally died - by which time he was almost blind.
Tissues sent for analysis to an Agent Orange expert, Dr. Peter
Kahn at Rutgers University in New Jersey and later to a laboratory in Sweden, showed high levels of hazardous chemicals.
Frost's wife knew one sick man at Area 51 who committed suicide,
and others who were treated in hospital for their illnesses. "As
with my husband," she said, "they can't talk to the doctor about
their work, because it doesn't exist, and it was made clear that
if they did, they'd go to jail."
Frost's wife joined five employees and former employees to work
with Turley's Environmental Crimes Project in Washington, and to
sue the highest military authorities in the United States. The
five remain anonymous, for fear, says the writ, of "extrajudicial harassment and even physical harm."
The affidavits say cocktails of toxic chemicals - dioxins,
methyl-ethyl-ketone, trichlorethylene and dibenzofurans - were
being burned, causing explosions and releasing clouds of hazardous gas.
Repeated requests for protective clothing and respirators
were denied.
The workers were "unable to seek redress for injuries or to
prevent injuries to other workers... (because) the disclosure of any activities within Groom Lake base... might be viewed as
actionable violation subject to severe criminal or civil penalty."
The submission claims the process was a flagrant breach of laws
governing disposal of toxic waste, and of reporting and site
inventory regulations.
"The central issue in this case," reads the submission, "is the
invocation of national security to shield government misconduct,
even potential crimes, from public disclosure or judicial review."
The government's first response was either to deny the allegations or to say that there was insufficient detail on the chemicals
involved for the defendants to respond.
Turley found himself sitting alone opposite a team of 10
government lawyers, whose opening move was to assert the National Security Privilege, that civil courts were unable to deal with the case.
But the judge (an air-force veteran) awarded Turley the first
round, conceding that the privilege applies to evidence, not to
judicial terrain. With the discovery process under way, and the
stakes raised, Turley - presuming the government would expect a
long "wish list" from him - filed only instead a single question:
What is the name of this facility?
The government stalled and Turley began an unprecedented battle by filing his motion to compel.
He said he intends to call Perry, Lake and Widnall as witnesses,
even though it is forbidden to subpoena cabinet members.
The legal tool would be an exception to the cabinet's immunity,
which provides that a member can be called if he or she has
specific personal knowledge of, or interest in, a case.
Turley asserts that "both Perry and Widnall headed companies with financial ties to this facility of black programs that precede
their service in government."
He claims that before Perry became deputy defence secretary in the Carter administration - directly responsible for the
classification of pre-Stealth black programs at Area 51 - he was
president of a company called ESL. The company was later merged
into the giant TRW aerospace conglomerate, a major contractor on
the Stealth program.
Widnall was trustee of a company called Aerodynamics, whose
records are now blocked for reasons of national security, and who the plaintiffs say supplied equipment for air force black
programs.
The Pentagon declines to discuss the business affairs of its
political masters, or the case itself. But its line on Area 51
meanders. "There is no such place," one spokesman declared.
Another said: "There is a facility there, but I can't say what it is."
A computer programmer from Boston, Glenn Campbell, de-camped to a trailer in Rachael to set up what he calls the Secretary Oversight Council, a watchdog on Area 51. Campbell found the ridge from
which we looked down upon Dreamland, but soon even this may be
impossible.
The air force has staked a sudden claim to 4,500 square miles of
carefully designated land which would remove all viewpoints of the base from public access, possibly within one month. If the USAF
wins, Dreamland will finally disappear from view.
"It's like something out of a bad 1950s movie," Turley said.
"The Soviets had pictures of it, kids in Nevada play with toys of planes that fly from it, and I've got clients that are dying from it - but it doesn't exist."
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