"Area 51 Declassified" On Nat. Geo.

Last night I watched a 1 hour documentary on the National Geographic Channel called Area 51 Declassified. (You can watch the full documentary on You Tube by clicking on that title.)  It tells the true story of how Area 51 was started by the CIA in Groom Lake, Nevada in 1955, initially to develop the U2 spy plane away from prying eyes. It tells this story via on-camera interviews with clearly visible, fully-named, retired Area 51 personnel.  (No anonymous figures here, photographed in shadow, telling sinister tales.) About 18 months ago I wrote HERE about a similar story published in the Los Angeles Times Magazine at the time. This documentary features many of the same people and their stories.

Many of these men's anecdotes tie back to the fact that they were strictly forbidden from telling anyone, not even their own wives and families, about what they were doing.  They would just get up every day in Las Vegas (or Burbank) and fly off on a chartered plane to Area 51, sometimes coming home that night, and sometimes a week later.  And when they returned, they could offer no explanation. 

The documentary also explains that in the 1950s over half the reported UFO sightings were tracked back by the Air Force's famous "Project Bluebook" to inadvertent sightings of the U2 spy plane, primarily by commercial airline pilots and their passengers.  But because the U2 was so secret at the time, they were forced to proffer to the public all these 'BS' explanations like 'swamp gas' and 'weather balloons.'