From: rthomson@mesa.dsd.es.com (Rich Thomson)
Date: 29 Oct 93 18:11:31 GMT
Organization: Design Systems Division, Evans & Sutherland, SLC, UT
Message-ID: <2armcj$c91@orca.es.com>

From the Salt Lake Tribune, October 17th, 1993,
reproduced with permission.

        No Peeking from Peak:
        Air Force Wants to Seize Mountain to Protect Secret Base
        by Joshua B. Good
        Special to the Tribune

        Rachel, Nev. -- Hikers who make it to the top of
        6,089-foot White Sides Mountain get a clear view of
        dry Groom Lake.

        Trekkers can spot long runways, barnlike hangars and
        crops of communications equipment in the distance.

        Some people even pull out binoculars and telescopes
        trying to get a peek at the latest U.S. Air Force
        jets that routinely take off and land at the
        facility.

        The Pentagon wants it stopped.  It plans to seize
        4,000 acres around White Sides Mountain and end
        public observation of an air base so secret
        officials refuse to say it exists.

        Environmentalists, aviation buffs and UFO watchers
        have banded together to fight for access.  On
        Saturday, about 20 protesters crossed sagebrush and
        walked to the edge of the restricted military zone
        at Groom Lake.  They set up camp at a place they
        call "Freedom Ridge" -- about two miles from the
        foot of White Sides Mountain.

        From the ridge, protesters could look down and see
        the air base, located some 125 miles west of St.
        George, Utah.

        With protesters gathered around, Glenn Campbell said
        in a mocked bravado: "Just let them try and seize
        Freedom Ridge.  We will defend that to the death."

        But Nevada Rep. James Bilbray says the mountain
        should be restricted for national-security reasons.

        "Every time someone goes up on White Sides it costs
        taxpayers a lot of money," Said Bilbray, a Democrat
        serving on the House Armed Services Committee.
        "They have to cover up what they're doing [at the
        base] with camouflage netting or roll it into
        hangars.  They have to wait until the people get off
        the mountain before they can go on with what they
        were doing and that's not fair."

        The base has been used by the Air Force and the CIA
        to test secret aircraft, such as the U-2 spy plane
        and more recently the F-117 stealth fighter.

        Bilbray says the military security knows that spy
        satellites routinely observe the facility, but the
        base knows their orbit schedules -- and plans
        accordingly.

        However, he says, hikers with cameras are
        unpredictable.

        Campbell sees no reason for the government's
        secrecy.  The 33-year-old leader of the White Sides
        protesters says times have changed.

        "We've already won the Cold War", Campbell said.
        "We've got no one out there who can compete with us
        on a technological ground unless we go to war with
        France."

        Campbell describes himself as a UFO investigator.
        He moved from Boston to Rachel in January after
        reading about alien-spacecraft sightings at the
        Groom facility.  So far, he says, he has seen
        nothing but military planes cross the sky.

        When Campbell moved to the town of about 100 people,
        he set up shop at the A-Le-Inn.  The bar's owner,
        Joe Travis, had painted a picture of a bug-eyed
        alien on his sign to attract the numerous UFO
        enthusiasts who make the pilgrimage to Groom.

        At first Campbell was welcome.  But his activism
        about White Sides brought the Lincoln County sheriff
        out to Rachel one too many times.  In August, he was
        ejected from the A-Le-Inn after a sheriff's deputy
        came to confiscate pictures Campbell had taken near
        the Groom facility.

        Photography is prohibited near the base.

        Grace Bukowski also has vowed to stop the Air Force.
        She works for Citizen Alert, the state's most active
        environmental group.

        "We're gonna fight any military expansion in the
        state.  They've already got 4 million acres",
        Bukowski said, "You don't get more 'til you fix what
        you took."

        Bukowski did not attend this weekend's protest.  She
        was arrested at Groom when she and three other
        Citizen Alert members walked into the restricted
        zone to work a friend's mining claim.  Charges were
        later dismissed.

        Jim Goodall, an aviation historian who lives in
        Tacoma, Wash., plans a more direct approach.  He
        says he will sneak up to the border at night, armed
        with his cameras until he gets a clear photo of a
        new, secret aircraft rumored to be at the base.

        "I'm a real pain in the a-- to my government because
        I'm not someone you can brush off.  I keep hanging
        on", the 48-year-old said.

        Goodall is a sergeant with the Minnesota Air
        National Guard and is the group's wing historian.
        He also has free-lanced for several aviation
        publications and sold photos of the stealth fighter
        before the Air Force publicly revealed the aircraft.

        On Oct. 6, the Air Force filed a petition with the
        Bureau of Land Management office in Reno, asking
        that 3,972 acres of land on White Sides be withdrawn
        from public access.

        The purpose of the withdrawal they wrote, would be
        to "ensure the public safety and the safe and secure
        operation of activities in the Nellis Range
        Complex".

        The Nellis Range is a 3 million acre military
        reserve used for combat training, weapons testing
        and -- at the secret air base -- a lengthy airstrip
        for worldwide reconnaissance flights.

        When the base expanded in 1984, the Air Force took
        89,000 acres of public land.  They set up guard
        posts and turned hunters, miners, ranchers and
        reporters away at gunpoint.

        Nevada politicians raised a stink, saying the land
        grab was illegal.

        Although after-the-fact, Congress approved the land
        withdrawal in October of that year.

        This time around, the land withdrawal process will
        be more different, according to Curtis Tucker, the
        BLM area manager who oversees much of Central
        Nevada, including White Sides Mountain.

        "A decision could take six months to a year", Tucker
        said.  "Of course, I don't know how much political
        pressure will come to make it happen sooner."

        Tucker said a representative of the secret facility
        approached him in the spring to explain why the Air
        Force wanted White Sides shut off to outsiders.

        "He was nonspecific.  We talked in generalities",
        Tucker said.  "It basically gets down to there are
        some assets they don't want people to see".

        What they don't want people to see, according to
        published reports in aviation trade journals, is a
        secret high-flying spy plane code-named "Aurora."

        The super-secret jet is said to attain speeds of
        4,000 mph (Mach 6) and seismologists in Souther
        California now call the plane's earth-shaking sonic
        booms "airquakes".

        Air Force information officers offer some surprising
        answers when asked about the plane or the secret
        test facility.

        "You're not going to get anyone in the Air Force to
        talk about it", said Maj. Monica Aloisiom, a
        public-affairs officer stationed at the Pentagon.

        "[Groom] is probably a secret test facility and I
        don't have a need to know that, so I don't know
        about that".

        The Air Force has a history of running people out of
        the Groom area.

        During the late 1940s and early 1950s the Sheehan
        family, led by Dan Sheehan, mined at Groom.

        But atomic blasts damaged the mine and above-ground
        buildings at Groom, according to Department of
        Energy records.

        The Sheahans' horses were killed after they
        developed open sores.  The Sheahans blamed
        radioactive fallout.

        Then, in the summer of 1954, Air Force pilots flying
        from the Las Vegas Gunnery Range attacked the
        Sheahan mining operation.

        "Buildings have been struck by bullets, several
        people have narrowly escaped being killed and some
        pilots have even gone so far as to dive down and
        strafe our workings", Dan Sheahan wrote in a July
        7, 1954 letter to then-Nev. Gov. Charles Russell.

        In 1958, the Air Force bought out the Sheahans.

        That is when the military began the U-2 spy-plane
        mission, according to a book written by Francis
        Gary Powers.  He was the U-2 pilot captured by
        Soviet forces in 1950 when his spy plane went down
        over Russia.

        In his book _Operation Overflight_, Powers referred
        to the secret air base in the Nevada desert where he
        trained "as one of those you-can't-get-there-from-here
        places".

        It was run by the CIA, he wrote, and called
        "Watertown Strip" or simply "the ranch".

        Powers spent nearly two years in a Soviet prison
        after his capture.  In 1977, he crashed a Los
        Angeles television station's helicopter and died.

        During the Reagan administration, the Groom facility
        got a big boost as part of the president's Strategic
        Defense Initiative (SDI) plan.

        That is when the Air Force seized the 89,000 acres
        adjacent to the base in 1984, presumably to protect
        the stealth fighter and other black-budget aircraft.

        In 1989, UFO enthusiasts began traveling to the base
        after stories spread that live aliens were being
        kept at so-called "Area 51".  They have climbed
        White Sides and the ridges overlooking the air base
        looking for outer-space critters.

        If the Air Force succeeds and takes White Sides, the
        people who trek into the desert to look at lights in
        the night sky have a backup plan.

        "I've already found a spot", says aviator Goodall.
        "You can't see the facility, but you can see
        anything that takes off from the facility."

        --
        Joshua B. Good is a Las Vegas free-lance writer.


