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Project OXCART Declassified From Area 51
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from the LA Times:
"... the myths of Area 51 are hard to dispute if no one can speak on the record about what actually happened there. Well, now, for the first time, someone is ready to talk ... Colonel Hugh 'Slip' Slater, 87, was commander of the Area 51 base in the 1960s. Edward Lovick, 90, featured in 'What Plane?' in LA's March issue, spent three decades radar testing some of the world's most famous aircraft (including the U-2, the A-12 OXCART and the F-117). Kenneth Collins, 80, a CIA experimental test pilot, was given the silver star. Thornton 'T.D.' Barnes, 72, was an Area 51 special-projects engineer. And Harry Martin, 77, was one of the men in charge of the base's half-million-gallon monthly supply of spy-plane fuels."
Lying to the american public, drugging the pilot, forcing the civilians to sign a non-disclosure agreement... it's a good thing they kept this spy plane so secret. If the Kremlin had learned what our prototypes looked like at that point, the russian economy probably would have been much stronger, they never would have embarked on those economic reforms that backfired, and they eventually would have won the cold war.
Well, at least we're done with the ridiculous and pointless paranoia of the cold war. It would be terrible if our government were to get us into another "war" with a mostly imagined enemy in order to justify absurd spending on ridiculously overpowered and overpriced weapons, a bigger military, and a quieter citizenry, while stepping all over our god-given rights in the meantime and spying on us. Really dodged a bullet there.