Area 51 / Dreamland
Secret Bases
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National Security Agency Facility located at the entrance to the Coyote Canyon Area of the Sandia Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is reported that this facility played a major role in the Paul Bennewitz UFO affair which the Kirkland AFB, AFOSI office began investigating in 1981 and ending in 1983. Both the NSA and FBI were said to have carried on the investigation until 1985. President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George Bush made frequent visits to Manzano. | ||
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Area 51 / Dreamland |
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The road to Area-51. |
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The famous mailbox that marks the entry point of the service road that leads to Area-51. |
| AMERICA'S TOP-SECRET `X FILES' AIR BASE EXPOSED Feb. 16, 2000 | 12:17 p.m. LONDON -- These are the pictures that ``X Files'' fans the world over want to see. Armed with the latest in high-powered cameras, two plane-spotters have blown a hole through the U.S.'s strictest security and revealed detailed shots of the legendary Area 51. In case you've been abducted by aliens, ``The X Files'' is a cult American TV series majoring in the paranormal. And Area 51 is an ``above top secret'' base featuring in many of its storylines. So secret is the base that the U.S. government denies its existence. But unlike ``The X Files,'' Area 51 is real. The pictures have provoked a red-hot reaction on the Internet from aficionados of all things spooky. The base has given birth to a legion of Area 51 enthusiasts embracing ufologists, conspiracy geeks, plane-spotters and the plain mad. Some say it is the site of germ and biological warfare tests, citing reports that workers from the base have died of strange skin diseases. Others say that the remains of nine UFO crashes are kept there, and rumors abound that it is home to the U.S. government's very own flying-saucer program. What is certain is that Area 51 is a secret military facility about 90 miles north of Las Vegas, hidden in the three-million-acre Nellis Bombing and Gunnery Range. It was the site selected for the testing of the then-top-secret U-2 spy plane in the mid-1950s. The U-2's successor, the SR-71 ``Blackbird,'' and the F-117 stealth fighter, are both said to have made their test flights there. Rumors that the 4,000-mph Aurora spy plane is there have recently been strengthened with a photo showing a large delta-winged aircraft at the base. And sightings of ``UFOs'' are so frequent along the highway that it has been redesignated ``Extraterrestrial Highway'' by the State of Nevada. Area 51 is certainly suitable for a hypersonic aircraft, as it has one of the longest runways in the world which, at six miles, could land three space shuttles at a time. Visitors are not welcome. The perimeter is patrolled by armed guards in Jeeps and helicopters. Signs warn to keep out of restricted areas and state that ``the use of deadly force is authorized.'' This is the only part of the U.S. that cannot by law be photographed from the air. But the power of modern camera technology has made a nonsense of such distinctions, as has the enthusiasm of the base-watchers and spy plane enthusiasts drawn to the dry Groom Lake bed where the base is situated. It was a pair of these ``Groomies'' who took the latest pictures from a mountaintop 12 miles away -- having first evaded the base security patrols. Richard Cooper of Aircraft Illustrated, the first magazine to obtain the prints, said: ``These panoramic shots are by far the most revealing done of the base so far.'' |
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CONSTRUCTION CONTRACT AWARDED FOR SPACE COMPLEX |
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Near Harrogate in North Yorkshire, England, is run by the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States. It employs over 1800 staff, mainly American, who are ordered never to mention the NSA and to report all contacts with foreign nationals (including the local British!). The NSA was set up by Presidential decree in 1952 without any debate in the US Congress. The American people know very little about it and they know even less about Menwith Hill. "Within Europe all email telephone and fax communications are routinely intercepted by the United States National Security Agency transferring all target information from the European mainland via the strategic hub of London then by satellite to Fort Meade in Maryland via the crucial hub at Menwith Hill" in Yorkshire. The report confirms for the first time the existence of the secretive Echelon system. With the creation of Intelsat and digital telecommunications, Menwith and other stations developed the capability to eavesdrop on an extensive scale on fax, telex and voice messages. Then with the development of the Internet, electronic mail and electronic commerce, the listening posts were able to increase their monitoring capability to eavesdrop on an unprecedented spectrum of personal and business communications. |
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Menwith Hill Images |
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| Menwith
Hill in the UK is the principal NATO theater ground segment node for high
altitude signals intelligence satellite . Although this facility is jointly
operated with the UK's General Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), GCHQ is
not privy to the intelligence down-linked to Menwith Hill, since tapes
containing the data are returned via air to the United States for analysis.
Menwith Hill Station was established in 1956 by the US Army Security Agency (ASA). Inside the closely-guarded 560 acre base are two large operations blocks and many satellite tracking dishes and domes. Initial operations focused on monitoring international cable and microwave communications passing through Britain. In the early 1960s Menwith Hill was one of the first sites in the world to receive sophisticated early IBM computers, with which NSA automated the labor-intensive watch-list scrutiny of intercepted but unenciphered telex messages. Since then, Menwith Hill has sifted the international messages, telegrams, and telephone calls of citizens, corporations or governments to select information of political, military or economic value to the United States. Every detail of Menwith Hill's operations has been kept an absolute secret. The official cover story is that the all-civilian base is a Department of Defense communications station. The British Ministry of Defence describe Menwith Hill as a "communications relay centre." Like all good cover stories, this has a strong element of truth to it. Until 1974, Menwith Hill's Sigint specialty was evidently the interception of International Leased Carrier signals, the communications links run by civil agencies -- the Post, Telegraph and Telephone ministries of eastern and western European countries. The National Security Agency took over Menwith Hill in 1966. Interception of satellite communications began at Menwith Hill as early as 1974, when the first of more than eight large satellite communications dishes were installed. In 1984, British Telecom and MoD staff completed a $25 million extension to Menwith Hill Station known as STEEPLEBUSH. The British government constructed new communications facilities and buildings for STEEPLEBUSH, worth L7.4 million. The expansion plan includes a 50,000 square foot extension to the Operations Building and new generators to provide 5 Megawatts of electrical power. The purpose of the new construction was to boost an cater for an 'expanded mission' of satellite surveillance. It also provides a new (satellite) earth terminal system to support the classified systems at the site. With another $17.2 million being spent on special monitoring equipment, this section of the Menwith Hill base alone cost almost $160 million dollars.
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Secret Military Base Under Kansas City Amusement Park!!
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Secret Base Discovered In Mississippi
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| October 21, 2001 NORAD CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN OPERATIONS CENTER: Nerve center of the binational North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the U. S. Space Command (USSPACECOM) and the U.S. Air Force Space Command. Serves as the binational central command for a global system of sensors designed for early warning of air, missile or space threats to North America or troops overseas. A series of 15 independent two- and three-story buildings, each with its own tunnel. 7,100 feet above sea level. Mounted on more than 1,300 half-ton springs, allowing the complex to sway up to a foot horizontally in any direction, in case of earthquake or nuclear blast. The two main blast doors are each 25 tons of baffled steel, at least 3 feet thick. A third blast door is 18 tons. Employs about 1,100 people. Most are U.S. Air Force personnel. About 10 percent are from Canadian forces. Features include a chapel, medical and dental ward, convenience store, and a restaurant called the Granite Inn. Even the barber has secret clearance. CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN -- Deep inside the granite belly of this bored out Colorado mountain, Air Force Lt. Col. William Glover has got a situation. The FAA reports a non-operating radio on a domestic commercial flight. Glover oversees the Air Warning Center, the focal point for North America's air defense radar and intelligence network. He calls up the plane's flight plan. The din grows louder in the crowded room. At his right rests a plain, eggshell-colored telephone with no dial or keypad. Grab it, and officials with the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) join him in a classified "Noble Eagle conference." That could lead to F-16 fighter planes being "scrambled" to a suspect aircraft within minutes. Glover, a 46-year-old father of three who wears an Air Force jumpsuit to work, keeps the phone in its cradle and holds tight for more information. "We've had a proliferation of instances reported to us that wouldn't normally be reported to us," he explains. "We're not bothered at all by it." The flight would land safely Monday -- one of many false alarms that illustrate the degree to which the nerve center of the nation's air defense system has abruptly launched itself into a new role: defender of attacks launched from within. Prior to Sept. 11, such reports never would have penetrated this 35-year-old complex, built during the Cold War to defend against a Russian attack. Now, such reports come several times a day under an improved link between the FAA and NORAD. "Generally speaking, our role was to keep a wary eye and make sure (a hijacked plane) wasn't going to land in a sensitive area. The key word is 'land,'" said Canadian Air Force Brigadier General Jim Hunter, vice commander for the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center. "Everybody's twitchy right now," he said. "Now, something remotely out of the ordinary gets FAA attention, and through that, our attention. Now we assume nothing." The nation's air defense command, which entered Cheyenne Mountain in 1965, looks outward across the oceans and over the poles. Its radars encircle North America, facing outward. Any aircraft taking off from within American or Canadian borders was considered friendly, Hunter said. Following the attacks, the military deployed mobile radars looking inward. Before Sept. 11, NORAD could call on 14 fighter jets in the continental United States. The number now exceeds 100. F-15s and F-16s fly round-the-clock combat air patrols above the New York and Washington, D.C., areas, with spot patrols in other sensitive areas across the country, officials said. In the NORAD command center, where crews gather data and interpret threats to space and sky, a bank of four big-screens faces the dimly lit theater. Crew members scan banks of smaller screens. A bright red digital clock keeps Afghanistan time. Since Sept. 11, officials here have added a new screen to the panoply of computer-generated maps and radar images. It looks like a cinnamon cookie in the shape of America, with green sprinkles showing thousands of flights throughout the U.S. The FAA program allows NORAD to track the flight paths of suspect airliners. Command Director Jerry Hatley, an Army colonel, sits front and center in the hot seat. His charge: Paint a picture of a pending threat for four-star Gen. Ralph E. Eberhart, commander of NORAD and the U.S. Space Command. Since Sept. 11, Hatley said, he has awakened Eberhart a half-dozen times in the wee hours. "Tracking aircraft in the middle of the night flying over a nuke plant, something the FAA says 'We don't know where it came from,' it's very intense," said Hatley, a calm, tanned 50-year-old distance runner from Oklahoma City. "I would say (more) so because it's American citizens. It's brought it home." Hatley said he yearned for the hot seat last month when terrorists hijacked four East Coast planes. His Echo Crew ended its shift 15 minutes earlier. He heard it on the radio down the mountain. "Sitting in the chair, I would have felt like I was contributing," he said. "We told the (next) crew it was pretty quiet," said Lt. Col. John Donovan, a 42-year-old missile officer from Stockton. "I would have been honored to be on duty that day." In the nearby Air Warning Center, where a sign on the door reads "Loose lips sink ships," Glover and others were in the middle of a twice-yearly NORAD-wide exercise when American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston veered off course toward the World Trade Center. The command sealed shut its 25-ton steel blast doors. And the men and women charged with guarding against a foreign attack watched in horror as hijacked domestic planes hit the Pentagon and World Trade Center as Air Force fighter jets scrambled to catch them. "We were correlating our reports with what we were seeing up there, and it's just disbelief," Glover said. "I wouldn't say it was unnerving. We just set about doing our business." Right then, a room normally staffed by three to five military personnel became a round-the-clock Battle Management Center, with 30 officials from four U.S. military services and Canadian forces. Glover said he paused only when he left the mountain. "You're driving home, thinking about family, relatives," he said. "There's a certain amount of second-guessing that went on when I got home." NORAD scrambled fighter jets 129 times last year to unknown aircraft entering North America. The command has responded to domestic threats, too, including the runaway plane that carried U.S. Open champion golfer Payne Stewart to his death. Hunter, the brigadier general, said he doubted the added patrols would have thwarted the Sept. 11 attacks without the new posture that NORAD was forced to adopt. "The change is a different attitude," the general said. "We know now if a plane is hijacked, it's a potential bomb." Hunter called NORAD's role in a long-term homeland defense strategy "nebulous," saying much would depend on the strategies being forged under new Homeland Defense czar Tom Ridge. Canadian Army Major Douglas Martin sees a greater, lasting role for this mountain stronghold. "What we're witnessing is the festering of a worldwide cancer, and the cancer is terrorism," Martin said. "The working together, the allied mission, the people of NORAD are chemotherapy. This facility has the ability to beat cancer." Contra Costa Times / CA | John Simerman |
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Joint US/UK Spy Base
Ian Herbert 2/11/02 The Ministry of Defence has been forced to admit that Fylingdales, the remote Yorkshire radar base earmarked for a frontline role in the US Star Wars defense program, has been upgraded, secretly and without planning permission. The building of a new road in the complex, changes to the access road and the installation of an additional, razor wire perimeter fence have been condemned by the National Parks watchdog. Vicki Elcoate, director of the Council for National Parks (CNP), said: "There have been many concerns about plans to upgrade Fylingdales for the US 'son of Star Wars' missile system. This incident has heightened concerns that Fylingdales could be developed by the back door, without proper public scrutiny." The Defence minister Lewis Moonie and CNP had a weekend meeting after the National Park Authority was informed of the changes. The new road drains on to a site of special scientific interest and work has been stopped, leaving the road incomplete. Necessary notification of the proposed work must now be given retrospectively. The veteran activist Lindis Percy, who was at the perimeter fence for five hours undetected two days ago, has also seen a deep trench outside it. Ms Percy and other activists regularly examine planning applications to the National Park to guard against "quiet" improvements to the secretive base, the centre of which is a 32m-high irregular pyramid no British minister has entered. The MoD said planning procedures had been "unintentionally overlooked" while "a number of measures to improve security at the base" were being made. But activists have been saying for some weeks that preparations for Fylingdales' role in Star Wars – said to include a 14-storey building – may be made on the basis of security because of the 11 September attacks. "This is what we have been seeing at Lakenheath [RAF base in Suffolk] since 11 September," Ms Percy said. "Public footpaths and a road have been closed there in the name of security." Last year, Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, made a commitment to adhering to the local planning system at such bases, except when national security was at risk. This erodes the ability of the MoD to use Crown immunity to steamroller local planning inspectors, but the Government is also expected to issue a consultative paper on the removal of all Crown immunity this spring.
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Mysterious Goings OnWhat's Going On at 'Closed' UK MoD BaseSIR - I have heard and read about much controversy concerning the ex-RNAD NATO base at Broughton Moor. My own interest in what is known locally as the Dump spans back quite a number of years. I know of a few people who used to work there as labourers. It does not seem that long ago since its sad demise or closure, in 1992. There is so much surplus military land out there, they all have slowly become natural wildlife reserves, care of mother nature. What I cannot fathom is why it has taken so long for the MoD to decide whether or not to keep or sell the 1,200 acre site. I would love to see the site left in its natural state of decay to become a wildlife reserve, leaving the remaining buildings to stand as a memory to our Cold War past. There is not much of our natural landscape left. Every time I go past the Dump it triggers a flood of memories. Don't be fooled though, the Dump is still being patrolled by white security jeeps. I have also observed black unmarked helicopters flying over and landing in the derelict Dump. I have even filmed them at night time. They fly very low down and seem to be searching for something. This activity started last summer. I wonder if anybody else has observed these unmarked helicopters near to the old Dump? I cannot see any pilots in them as they fly at an angle so as not to see them, or they have tinted windows. I recently contacted the MoD Defence Estates concerning these elusive helicopters, but they flatly deny all knowledge of them. Somebody owns these helicopters, they do not fly out of thin air. Sometimes I've seen two of them fly together along the coast. Only military helicopters fly at night. It seems the mystery of the Dump deepens. If the RNAD base closed in 1992, why so much security and fuss over this derelict site and the increase in helicopter flights over the last few months? I've seen more activity recently than when the Dump was fully operational. I have heard stories of the SAS using the old Dump a few years ago, I was told this by the MoD. Perhaps they still use it secretly. I am not aware of any agreement to sell the Dump
since the last article published in the I would look forward to hear of anyone's views or observations of this derelict RNAD facility through the editor, address can be supplied. XXX XXXXXX Workington |
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May 21, 2002 In the place where President Bush has chosen to draw a line in the sand against the ultimate terrorist threat, there is no sand and little sign of terrorists. There was snow, at least there was until last week. There are moose, stalking over the open ground when the earthmovers allow, and even the odd grizzly bear. Workers on contract to the US Army Corps of Engineers have been quietly clearing a large T-shaped swath of forest from the Fort Greely military reservation, 200 miles south of the Arctic Circle in the heart of Alaska, for nearly a year. The site is invisible from civilian roads. The airspace above it is restricted. Visitors are vetted exhaustively and the perimeter is guarded by military police and a newly installed cordon of steel boxes 6ft high and filled with gravel. Security is tight here and will get tighter. Starting on June 14, six months to the day after Mr Bush announced that the United States was withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty signed by Presidents Nixon and Brezhnev 30 years ago, excavators will gouge six yawning silos out of the Fort Greely earth. By 2004 each of them will house a 65ft “exo-atmospheric kill vehicle” designed to intercept incoming nuclear missiles high over the Pacific Ocean. Whether any of America’s enemies can or would launch a first nuclear strike of this kind is now beside the point. After two decades of debate the talking is over: Mr Bush believes that the threat is credible. Initial construction contracts worth $250 million (£171 million) were awarded last month. Barring a humiliating U-turn for the White House, America is going to get some sort of missile defence shield, starting in Fort Greely. It is bitterly cold here in winter, swarms with oversized mosquitoes by May and hauntingly remote, all of which is somehow apt. Few places could reflect more accurately the defiant unilateralism that Mr Bush brings this week to Europe, however artfully clothed in talk of co-operation with Russia. His missile defence plans are part of a foreign policy based on crushing military superiority that Washington now wants to extend with technologies that none of its allies could conceive of building themselves and to which many of them remain strongly opposed. The Pentagon insists that Fort Greely will be only a test site, at least at first. But, if the testing goes well, orders could come from Washington for 100 more silos and “kill vehicles” to fill them. There would be plenty of room. “This is good for us and great for America,” said one local contractor who last week got the go-ahead to build a year-round work camp for 350 labourers on the edge of the reservation. Others in the Alaska Steakhouse in Delta Junction, the only source of liquor in the only civilian settlement within a two-hour drive, overwhelmingly agreed. A year ago Fort Greely was virtually defunct. Its housing for 400 soldiers and their families stood empty and its pool tables were being sold for $25 each. Now being reborn as science fiction made fact, it is due for an injection of $400 million even if missile defence does not go beyond testing, and billions more if it does. It is meant to operate as follows: alerted by military satellites over the north Pacific and enhanced early warning radar beacons in Alaska and California, Fort Greely would launch an interceptor roughly 20 minutes into the flight of any hostile ballistic missile heading for America. Once airborne, the interceptor would be guided by a specially-built X-band radar station, probably installed on Shemya Island in the Aleutians and linked to a Battle Management Command and Control Centre at Fort Greely by 1,000 miles of fibre-optic cable. With three separate systems providing constant real-time telemetry the interceptor would be targeted to within a margin of error of a few feet and would be able to distinguish the incoming warhead from any decoys that it released. It would hit its target 150 miles above the Pacific at 15,000mph and the fruits of years of secret labour for a rogue state, international terrorist group or combination of the two would detonate harmlessly in outer space. Whether missile defence will actually work is still a multibillion-dollar question. President Reagan’s plans for a space-based “Star Wars” shield were mothballed before they could be tested. President Bush has enlisted every relevant technology, including giant lasers mounted on Boeing 747s, and is reserving judgment on which to use until the “north Pacific test bed” based at Fort Greely starts producing results. Those obtained elsewhere are not encouraging. Two of America’s past five anti- missile tests failed when the interceptors missed their targets completely and none of the other three was fully realistic as the kill vehicles were fed their target data by the targets themselves. Professor Theodore Postol, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, claimed last year that the tests had been rigged and that fundamental design flaws meant that the kill vehicles would never find their prey. He had singlehandedly disproved the US Army’s boast of a 96 per cent success rate against Iraqi Scud missiles with the Patriot system during the Gulf War (he says that not a single Scud was intercepted) and the Pentagon took his new intervention seriously enough to send two agents to his office in an apparent attempt to intimidate him. It also demanded that his correspondence be classified. Officials say that his latest claims relate to an interceptor that is no longer being used. Even so, no replacement has been chosen. That the White House is pressing ahead with missile defence at all has stunned many of its critics into silence. Before the September 11 attacks, Russia, China, most European governments, many US Democrats and some Republicans agreed that any anti-missile shield would be technically fraught, prohibitively expensive, diplomatically risky and above all strategically wrong, since it countered a threat that went out with the Cold War. These critics seized on the September atrocities as tragic proof that America’s enemies would find alternatives to building their own missiles. Mr Bush and his advisers declared that, on the contrary, if terrorists or states that sponsored them did have missiles, they would use them. Resistance crumbled. Congressional Democrats dropped their vetoes on spending and tests that violated the ABM treaty. The treaty was torn up and “Son of Star Wars” was born.
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MENWITH HILL
UNIVERSAL ELECTRONIC SPY SYSTEM 
(Photo
by Paula Solloway)