(Oh, man, this story is even better than the whole alien bit. I hope it's true. I mean, the part with Mengele and the deformed kids is twisted and sad, but it happened long enough ago that mourning for them passes quickly, unfortunately.
But I've never bought into the whole "UFOs are space aliens" theory. I'd love it if they were coming here, it would add an air of mystique to our mundane existences, but I just don't buy it. This actually makes sense, and it's funny, though not so much "ha ha" funny. Wow!--jef)
'Area 51' book says Stalin enlisted infamous Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele in plan to scare US
By Mark Russell, News Staff
Posted May 16, 2011
(Newser) – Roswell and Area 51 have long been the focus of alien-hunting conspiracy theorists—and a new book's theory is likely to disappoint them. Annie Jacobsen's Area 51, a history of the top-secret base based on interviews with scientists and engineers who worked there, presents an explanation for the famous "flying disc" that crashed in Roswell in 1947—and it's nearly as crazy as the UFO theory. Jacobson writes that Josef Stalin was inspired by Orson Welles' famous 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds, and wanted to throw the United States into a similar panic.
So Stalin enlisted Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, who had fled to South America after World War II, to create a crew of "grotesque, child-size aviators" to fly in a Horton Ho 229 plane the Soviets had seized from Germany; in exchange, he would get a eugenics lab. Actually, children, ages 12 and 13 and described by Jacobsen as having "unusually large heads and abnormally shaped oversize eyes," did not fly the plane; instead it was piloted remotely. But the Horton crashed in the New Mexico desert and authorities decided to hush up the incident, according the Telegraph.
A new book suggests that a favorite incident of UFO conspiracy theorists was really just a Cold War attempt to scare Americans!
UFO conspiracy theorists may be in for a letdown. A new book —Area 51 by Annie Jacobsen — says no alien spacecraft crashed to Earth in the famous so-called Roswell Incident of 1947. According to Britain's Telegraph, Jacobsen says the craft that smashed into the desert in a terrible storm was actually a top-secret Soviet plane with "grotesque, child-size aviators" bred in horrific human experiments and sent by Josef Stalin to create panic in the U.S. Is that possible — or is this story even harder to believe than tales of shipwrecked aliens?
On the Soviet human experiments her source told her about
"The child-sized aviators in this craft [that crashed in New Mexico] were the result of a Soviet human experimentation program, and they had been made to look like aliens a la Orson Welles' War of the Worlds, and it was a warning shot over President Truman's bow, so to speak. In 1947, when this would have originally happened, the Soviets did not yet have the nuclear bomb, and Stalin and Truman were locked in horns with one another, and Stalin couldn't compete in nuclear weaponry yet, but he certainly could compete in the world of black propaganda — and that was his aim, according to my source. ...
"What is firsthand information is that he worked with these bodies [of the pilots] and he was an eyewitness to the horror of seeing them and working with them. Where they actually came from is obviously the subject of debate. But if you look at the timeline with Josef Mengele, he left Auschwitz in January of 1945 and disappeared for a while, and the suggestion by the source is that Mengele had already cut his losses with the Third Reich at that point and was working with Stalin."
On why the Soviets would have undertaken such a hoax
"The plan, according to my source, was to create panic in the United States with this belief that a UFO had landed with aliens inside of it. And one of the most interesting documents is the second CIA director, Walter Bedell Smith, memos back and forth to the National Security Council talking about how the fear is that the Soviets could make a hoax against America involving a UFO and overload our early air-defense warning system, making America vulnerable to an attack."
Area 51: Never Before Seen Photos of America's Secret Base
In her new book AREA 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base, which goes on sale May 17, Annie Jacobsen offers for the first time an inside look at the history of America's top secret military base. It is the first book based on interviews with the scientist, pilots, and engineers -- 74 in total -- who for the first time reveal what really went on in the Nevada desert, from testing nuclear reactions to building super-secret supersonic jets to pursuing the war on terror.
Jacobsen, a contributing editor and investigative reporter at the Los Angeles Times Magazine, interviewed the former Area 51 employees in 2008 and 2009, shortly after the CIA declassified much of the work they had done, including countless pages of redacted memos and declassified reports. Area 51 is still officially a military secret, unmentioned by name, Jacobsen notes.
In this exclusive excerpt, Jacobsen reveals some of the wild research that went on in the 1970s at Area 51 -- where the military built the U-2 spy plane, rather than harboring crashed UFOs.
Operation Plumbbob
In the summer and fall of 1957, a series of atmospheric nuclear tests — called Operation Plumbbob — were conducted above ground at the Nevada testing and training range, located just outside of Area 51. Twenty-nine explosions were set off while tests were conducted on troop readiness, accidental detonations and the effects of flying debris on living targets, according to documents declassified by the Department of Energy that Jacobsen details in her book.
During the explosions, security officer Richard Mingus stood guard outside many of the weapons-testing sites, including one with the largest atmospheric bomb that has ever exploded in the United States.
"The bomb goes off. Richard Mingus is at ground zero, safe away in a bunker somewhere, and suddenly someone realizes, 'My God, Area 51 is unsecured,' " Jacobsen says. "And so they send Richard Mingus through ground zero, 45 minutes to an hour after this nuclear bomb has exploded, so that he can get to Area 51 to guard the gate."
Mingus survived, as did many other atomic veterans who stood close to ground zero during other Plumbbob tests.
"You can absolutely drive through an atmospheric bomb test and not be affected," Jacobsen says. "Richard Mingus also stood guard at a test at a sub parcel of Area 51 ... [during] a dirty bomb test."
During the dirty bomb test, the Department of Defense and the Atomic Energy Commission simulated a plane crash where plutonium was dispersed on the ground, to see what would happen if an aircraft carrying a nuclear weapon were to crash on American soil. The resulting fallout and structural damage made much of the land uninhabitable.
"The area out at Area 51 that was part of the Operation Plumbbob test continues to be contaminated," she says. "It was not cleaned up until the '80s. And at that point, they sent in men in hazmat suits to scrape the land."
But I've never bought into the whole "UFOs are space aliens" theory. I'd love it if they were coming here, it would add an air of mystique to our mundane existences, but I just don't buy it. This actually makes sense, and it's funny, though not so much "ha ha" funny. Wow!--jef)
'Area 51' book says Stalin enlisted infamous Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele in plan to scare US
By Mark Russell, News Staff
Posted May 16, 2011
(Newser) – Roswell and Area 51 have long been the focus of alien-hunting conspiracy theorists—and a new book's theory is likely to disappoint them. Annie Jacobsen's Area 51, a history of the top-secret base based on interviews with scientists and engineers who worked there, presents an explanation for the famous "flying disc" that crashed in Roswell in 1947—and it's nearly as crazy as the UFO theory. Jacobson writes that Josef Stalin was inspired by Orson Welles' famous 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds, and wanted to throw the United States into a similar panic.
So Stalin enlisted Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, who had fled to South America after World War II, to create a crew of "grotesque, child-size aviators" to fly in a Horton Ho 229 plane the Soviets had seized from Germany; in exchange, he would get a eugenics lab. Actually, children, ages 12 and 13 and described by Jacobsen as having "unusually large heads and abnormally shaped oversize eyes," did not fly the plane; instead it was piloted remotely. But the Horton crashed in the New Mexico desert and authorities decided to hush up the incident, according the Telegraph.
++++++++++++
++++++++++++
A new book suggests that a favorite incident of UFO conspiracy theorists was really just a Cold War attempt to scare Americans!
UFO conspiracy theorists may be in for a letdown. A new book —Area 51 by Annie Jacobsen — says no alien spacecraft crashed to Earth in the famous so-called Roswell Incident of 1947. According to Britain's Telegraph, Jacobsen says the craft that smashed into the desert in a terrible storm was actually a top-secret Soviet plane with "grotesque, child-size aviators" bred in horrific human experiments and sent by Josef Stalin to create panic in the U.S. Is that possible — or is this story even harder to believe than tales of shipwrecked aliens?
On the Soviet human experiments her source told her about
"The child-sized aviators in this craft [that crashed in New Mexico] were the result of a Soviet human experimentation program, and they had been made to look like aliens a la Orson Welles' War of the Worlds, and it was a warning shot over President Truman's bow, so to speak. In 1947, when this would have originally happened, the Soviets did not yet have the nuclear bomb, and Stalin and Truman were locked in horns with one another, and Stalin couldn't compete in nuclear weaponry yet, but he certainly could compete in the world of black propaganda — and that was his aim, according to my source. ...
"What is firsthand information is that he worked with these bodies [of the pilots] and he was an eyewitness to the horror of seeing them and working with them. Where they actually came from is obviously the subject of debate. But if you look at the timeline with Josef Mengele, he left Auschwitz in January of 1945 and disappeared for a while, and the suggestion by the source is that Mengele had already cut his losses with the Third Reich at that point and was working with Stalin."
On why the Soviets would have undertaken such a hoax
"The plan, according to my source, was to create panic in the United States with this belief that a UFO had landed with aliens inside of it. And one of the most interesting documents is the second CIA director, Walter Bedell Smith, memos back and forth to the National Security Council talking about how the fear is that the Soviets could make a hoax against America involving a UFO and overload our early air-defense warning system, making America vulnerable to an attack."
Area 51: Never Before Seen Photos of America's Secret Base
 |
| The crash of a disc-shaped aircraft in Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947 kicked off UFO speculation worldwide. In fact, the disc was a Russia spy plane -- one of many eye-opening revelations in AREA 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base |
 |
| Alleged to be Stalin’s secret UFO study team are (standing left to right) Sergei Korolev, chief missile designer and inventor of Sputnik; Igor Kurchatov, father of Russia’s atomic bomb; and Mstislav Keldysh, mathematician, theoretician, and space pioneers |
Jacobsen, a contributing editor and investigative reporter at the Los Angeles Times Magazine, interviewed the former Area 51 employees in 2008 and 2009, shortly after the CIA declassified much of the work they had done, including countless pages of redacted memos and declassified reports. Area 51 is still officially a military secret, unmentioned by name, Jacobsen notes.
In this exclusive excerpt, Jacobsen reveals some of the wild research that went on in the 1970s at Area 51 -- where the military built the U-2 spy plane, rather than harboring crashed UFOs.
 |
| Part of a U-2 spy plane seen in 1955 coming out of a transport airplane at Area 51 -- where the secret craft was designed and perfected. The CIA’s first spy plane was so secret that Air Force pilots transporting it to Area 51 in pieces inside larger airplanes, would fly to a set of coordinates over the Mojave Desert and contact a UHF frequency called Sage Control for orders. Only when the aircraft was a few hundred feet off the ground would runway lights flash on. |
 |
| "Operation Paperclip" scientists at Fort Bliss, Texas, in 1946. Until 1945, these men worked for Adolf Hitler, but as soon as the war ended these “rare minds” began working for the American military and various intelligence organizations, the details of which remain largely classified. Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun is in the front row, seventh from the right with his hand in his pocket. |
Operation Plumbbob
In the summer and fall of 1957, a series of atmospheric nuclear tests — called Operation Plumbbob — were conducted above ground at the Nevada testing and training range, located just outside of Area 51. Twenty-nine explosions were set off while tests were conducted on troop readiness, accidental detonations and the effects of flying debris on living targets, according to documents declassified by the Department of Energy that Jacobsen details in her book.
During the explosions, security officer Richard Mingus stood guard outside many of the weapons-testing sites, including one with the largest atmospheric bomb that has ever exploded in the United States.
"The bomb goes off. Richard Mingus is at ground zero, safe away in a bunker somewhere, and suddenly someone realizes, 'My God, Area 51 is unsecured,' " Jacobsen says. "And so they send Richard Mingus through ground zero, 45 minutes to an hour after this nuclear bomb has exploded, so that he can get to Area 51 to guard the gate."
Mingus survived, as did many other atomic veterans who stood close to ground zero during other Plumbbob tests.
 |
| In Area 12 of the Nevada Test Site -- a separate though related nearby military facility -- workmen enter an underground atomic bomb tunnel through its mouth, summer 1957. |
During the dirty bomb test, the Department of Defense and the Atomic Energy Commission simulated a plane crash where plutonium was dispersed on the ground, to see what would happen if an aircraft carrying a nuclear weapon were to crash on American soil. The resulting fallout and structural damage made much of the land uninhabitable.
"The area out at Area 51 that was part of the Operation Plumbbob test continues to be contaminated," she says. "It was not cleaned up until the '80s. And at that point, they sent in men in hazmat suits to scrape the land."
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