Slashdot Mirror
Area 51 No Longer (Officially) a Secret
schnell writes "The first-ever declassified story of Area 51's origin is now available, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act filed years ago by George Washington University's National Security Archive. The (only lightly redacted) document is actually primarily a history of the U-2 and A-12 ("Oxcart") spy plane programs from the Cold War, but is remarkable for being the first-ever official unclassified acknowledgment of Area 51's purpose and its role in the program. Interesting tidbits include that the U-2 program was kicked off with a CIA check mailed personally to Lockheed Skunk Works chief Kelly Johnson for $1.25M; a U-2 was launched off an aircraft carrier to spy on French nuclear tests; and the U-2 delivery program itself was actually done under budget, a rarity for secret government programs then or now."
kelly johnson was an engineering god and he didn't run the projects to just pump money out of government. of course back then the guys were probably actually motivated, that they felt a real need to build u2, a12 etc.. and their plan to pump more money out of government was to keep churning out cool stuff instead of extending one project to last their entire professional career.
"Um.. it'll work if we build it out of titanium! what do you mean we'll have to invent the machinery to make it happen? do it already!"
14 rules for saving cash:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Johnson_(engineer)#Kelly_Johnson.27s_14_Rules_of_Management
"Because only a few people will be used in engineering and most other areas, ways must be provided to reward good performance by pay not based on the number of personnel supervised."
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
If you look at the aircraft that came out of the skunk works you'll know what I mean. He and his organization came up with the P-38, the U-2, the C-130, and the SR-71; to name only a few achievements. It makes most people in tech look like little kiddies playing in a sandbox.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
So where is the part about the captured Space Aliens and their ship?
Exactly. I bet there are current yet unheard of planes there still.
A UFO is an unidentified flying object. The average person is an idiot and can't tell the difference between a fly and a bird under certain conditions.
For me a couple of weeks ago I got caught in the middle of a coast guard search and rescue. They were dropping parachute flares for hours bright enough to light up miles and miles if open water. It took us 20 minutes to figure out they were parachute flares and not boats. You couldn't hear the planes unless they were close. It was surreal for a little while as they didn't fall very fast. And sometimes took sharp changes in course.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I highly recommend the memoir, "Skunkworks" by Ben Rich, who was Kelly Johnson's successor. He tells a great story of the building of the U-2 program, and also later projects including the SR-71 Blackbird, and the F-117 stealth fighter. Amazing stories.
According to Ben Rich, it was Dick Chaney who ultimately got the SR-71 canceled, and instructed them to destroy all the plans, tooling, and parts for building the aircraft. Ostensibly this was to prevent any other nation from ever learning its secrets. And all this was because Chaney's cronies owned companies who made spy satellites. Even though a lot of analysts argued we still needed aircraft for some surveillance, they decided to go with satellites. Which of course other nations know where they are and when they go overhead. And since then the U-2 has still flown because there are missions that only an aircraft can perform.
Even as recent as the gulf war (yes I'm old enough to consider 1991 as recent) these aging spy planes were pressed into action because they were all we had, and they performed their task very well. Have to admire how well the military does being yanked around so much by politics (and of course they dish the politics right back... sequester and all that). But with all the abuses revealed of late by Private Manning, perhaps it's only fitting that the military is in decline, along with the nation, and has had its toys taken away.
is it me or is FOIA kinda toothless these days? the oxcart and have blue shit has been a discovery channel/history channel show fodder for almost a decade. most everything in the release is common knowledge to anyone with access to wikipedia. FOIA was designed to start answering questions like who visited the whitehouse while George Bush was president, how does the domestic spy program work, and did we seriously commit war crimes in iraq.
instead its been so neutered, ignored and redacted at every level of government its basically a rubber stamp for any agency seeking to claim legitimacy in their clandestine day to day operations. the NYPD ignored for 2 years their FOIA for stop and frisk, and administrations routinely claim state secrets or executive privilege when they hear a question they dont like.
People like Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning and Julian Asssange are today the only means by which we request the freedom of information from our government, elected by and for the people. sideshows like this are to ensuring accountability in the government as the scopes monkey trial was to ensuring credibility to evolution.
Good people go to bed earlier.