'Area 51' Really Does Exist, But Still, Nobody's Talking 


By Thomas Hargrove Scripps Howard News Service


Many people who believe in UFOs also think that "Area 51" -- 
dried-up Groom Lake in Nevada -- is where the Air Force keeps 
the flying saucers it captured.

And maybe an autopsied alien body or two.

Others think the military base is the testing grounds for 
America's most secret military machines, everything from the 
F-117 Stealth fighter to electro-magnetic pulse weapons that 
would make Buck Rogers nervous.

What is certain is that there is something in that moonscape 
property north of Las Vegas. Officially designated the "Nellis 
Air Force Bombing and Gunnery Range," the federally protected 
territory covers an area equal to Rhode Island and Connecticut.

What also is certain is that 1,851 federal civilian workers are 
employed in mostly well-compensated jobs at several 
ultra-high-security facilities in and near the range, according 
to a Scripps Howard News Service analysis of U.S. Office of 
Personnel Management payroll records.

"This really is one of the last big secret military bases in the 
United States," said Jeff Moag, a National Security News Service 
researcher in Washington. "It used to be that the Air Force 
tried to pretend that Area 51 didn't exist at all."

The Air Force last year conceded the existence of the base when 
it released a publication that suggested experimental Cold 
War-era aircraft could have been mistaken for flying saucers.

Whatever they do in the Nellis Bombing Range continues under the 
Clinton administration.

Payroll records show the Department of Energy, which controls 
the nation's stockpile of nuclear bombs, employs 32 people in 
Mercury, Nev., the only town inside the bombing range.

But non-government military observers for several years have 
said they think that hundreds, or thousands, of military and 
civilian workers who are employed in the desert facilities take 
daily flights from Las Vegas airfields into the base. The 
computer records appear to confirm this.

The Department of Energy officially employs 448 people in the 
Las Vegas area, even though there are no known federal projects 
in the city that could justify such employment. The Air Force 
has 1,068 civilian employees there, some of whom certainly work 
at Nellis Air Force Base.

But more suspect are the 166 civilian employees of the 
departments of Defense and Army, the 156 Environmental 
Protection Agency workers, the 10 Federal Emergency Management 
Agency employees and at least two representatives of the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission staff. Some of these people work in 
classified operations at the bombing range.

The payroll for all of the civilian workers in the area totaled 
$80.6 million.


August 9, 1998



© E.W. Scripps