Area 51_ An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base - Annie Jacobsen [209]
25. five-page brief: Eisenhower was uniquely invested in Area 51 because the success of the U-2 program, which came to be during his administration, was critical to the nation’s security.
26. the Air Force was almost entirely left out: As recalled by General Leo Geary, Bissell’s Air Force deputy, in an interview with Jonathan Lewis, tape recording, Chevy Chase, MD, 11 February 1994; Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 100.
27. LeMay was, understandably, enraged: “Eventually President Eisenhower settled the dispute.” Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 60; Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 109.
28. the president’s decision: “I want this whole thing to be a civilian operation,” the president wrote. “If uniformed personnel of the armed services of the United States fly over Russia, it is an act of war—legally—and I don’t want any part of it.’” From Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 60.
29. Bob Murphy would often chat with George Pappas: Interview with Bob Murphy.
30. Had Pappas been just thirty feet higher: From Hank Meierdierck’s personal papers; Meierdierck located the crash remains from a U-2 he took out on a search mission.
31. the CIA acknowledged the plane crash in 2002: As part of a tribute given by the U.S. Forest Service. The CIA did not, however, acknowledge that the aircraft was traveling to Area 51; also see Kyril Plaskon, Silent Heroes.
32. security systems for Air Force One: EG&G, a Division of URS, Albuquerque Operations Web site. “EG&G has provided security systems for U.S. Government facilities: Department of Energy Headquarters, U.S. Bureau of Engraving, Presidential AF-1 Hangar Complex, Rocky Flats [nuclear weapons production facility in Colorado], Tooele [Utah, Army Depot for WMD].”
Chapter Four: The Seeds of a Conspiracy
Interviews: Lieutenant Colonel Tony Bevacqua, Edward Lovick, Ray Goudey, Al O’Donnell, Jim Freedman, Wayne Pendleton, T. D. Barnes
1. Area 51, reports of UFO sightings: Haines, “CIA’s Role,” 73.
2. U-2 look like a fiery flying cross: Interview with Tony Bevacqua; the wingspan is 103 feet and the fuselage is 63 feet.
3. the crash at Roswell occurred: Hereafter, when I refer to the “crash at Roswell,” I am referring to an aircraft, not a balloon, as has also been written. While there was a balloon-borne radar-reflector project going on at White Sands in the summer of 1947, this is not what crashed at Roswell. To learn about that project and the balloon theory put forth by one of its participants, Charles B. Moore, see Saler, Ziegler, and Moore, UFO Crash at Roswell.
4. Project Sign: U.S. Air Force Air Materiel Command, “Unidentified Aerial Objects; Project SIGN”; Haines, “CIA’s Role,” 68.
5. Project Grudge: U.S. Air Force, Project Grudge and Blue Book, Reports 1–12. Since the declassification of Projects Saucer, Sign, Grudge, Twinkle, and Blue Book, which began incrementally in the 1970s, the collection is housed in the National Archives; see http://www.archives.gov/foia/ufos.html.
6. disliked technology in general: Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 17, “High altitude reconnaissance of the Soviet Union did not fit well into Allen Dulles’s perception of the proper role of an intelligence agency. He tended to favor the classical form of espionage, which relied on agents rather than technology.” Allen Dulles’s predilection to work with former Nazis has become more obvious and more troubling as time goes by and Paperclip files are slowly declassified. The last line in Dulles’s three-page CIA biography, “Secret Security Information: Subject Allen W. Dulles 7/2-127,” reads: “At any rate, the American policy in the postwar period as regards [to] Germany has been directly and deeply influenced by MR. DULLES. He has a greater trust in the Germans than he has, for instance, in the French and the Italians.