Originally appearing at Conspiracy Archive, this essay is republished by the Decoding Culture Foundation with permission of its authors, Paul and Phillip Collins. Keep an eye on our Articles section for other republished research from the Collins brothers, along with original cutting edge analysis from these frequent DCF contributors.

An interesting addition is being made to Area 51. A new hangar that is almost twice the size of Hangar 18 is being constructed at the top secret testing facility for experimental aircraft (“Large New Hangar at Area 51,”). The construction is located SE of the South Ramp and is an estimated size of 200×500 feet and roughly 100 feet tall. Although the sides of the structure are unfinished, a huge hangar door is visible from the side facing the flight line. Evidently, Area 51 is expanding its business. But, just what is the base’s business? Of course, theories abound. Even more abundant are myths.

When investigating Area 51, one must wade through a sea of disinformation, rumors, and legends. Perhaps the most popular claim regarding Area 51 is that the installation houses an extraterrestrial biological entity and “reverse engineered” alien technology. The 1997 documentary film Area 51: The Alien Interview helped to invigorate this belief. This film featured footage of an alleged alien inside a glass “bio-containment area” (“Area 51: The Alien Interview,” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia,). The video runs for approximately two minutes and 55 seconds with no audio. It concludes with the alien convulsing violently and being aided by two heavily outfitted medics.

Although the video seemed to satisfy UFO researchers like Michael Hesemann and Robert Dean, it did raise suspicions with Hollywood special effects wizard John Criswell and image analyst Jim Dilettso. However, what is most suspicious is the source of the footage, a man identifying himself only as “Victor.” Victor claimed that the ultimate motive was to inform the public about the “truth” regarding UFOs. Yet, simultaneously, he insisted on being paid for the rights to air the video, contending that he needed “some small measure of monetary freedom” to counter the potential consequences of his revelations concerning UFO secrecy.

Given these oddities surrounding the purported “alien interview,” one might wonder if Victor’s revelation was motivated by something far more sinister than monetary gain. What if Area 51 is not in the UFO business at all? What if Victor’s video was fabricated to merely reinforce that presupposition? If this is the case, then what is Area 51’s true purpose? Many seeking the answer to this question might try searching through apocryphal UFO documents, such as Majestic 12. However, the answer is more likely to be found in the records of the Federal Aviation Administration (F.A.A.).

According to the F.A.A.’s records, a C-123K cargo plane, serial number 54-0679, was shot down over Nicaragua (Denton and Morris, no pagination). Inside the plane, the Sandinistas not only found arms intended for the Contras, but also discovered logs that linked the C-123K to Area 51 (no pagination). Looking into this plane’s background leads one to the CIA’s doorstep. The plane was leased by Southern Air Transport, a CIA front company (“Barry Seal,”). The plane’s surviving crew member, Eugene Hasenfus, was a cargo handler for the Central Intelligence Agency. It was his admissions that would lead to the Iran-Contra scandal breaking wide open (Denton and Morris).

Months before the plane was shot down, its original owner, Barry Seal, had been murdered. Barry Seal was known as America’s most successful drug smuggler, and many believe that his murder was a gangland hit. After all, Seal did bring drugs into America on behalf of the Medellin Cartel. However, there is a body of evidence that effectively refutes this contention. When asked if Barry Seal feared that the Ochoa crime family would kill him, Seal’s good friend Rene Martin explained that Seal did not fear the Colombians because he did not implicate senior organization members (Hopsicker 377). So, who had the motive to kill Seal? According to Seal’s lawyer, Lewis Unglesby, Seal had expressed a willingness to testify against George Bush (376).

The truth is that Seal was working for the CIA. Former CIA pilot Tosh Plumlee, claims that Seal’s relationship with the CIA began as far back as the 1950s.

In an interview, Plumlee stated: “Barry Seal was involved with military intelligence in the early days… Military intelligence was the real game, with the CIA just acting as logistical people. Barry was a peripheral player back then, but he was a CIA ‘contract’ pilot all the way back to 1956 or 1957.” (113) Plumlee also told Hopsicker that Seal had been involved with none other than the Blond Ghost himself, CIA officer Ted Shackley:

“Barry Seal did a lot of damn good stuff in the late 60’s,” CIA pilot Tosh Plumlee told us. “In 67 and 68 he was with Air America in South Vietnam and Laos doing Search and Destroy and Special Ops with Ted Shackley’s boys. He’d been recruited for Special Ops because of the ‘Cuban thing.'” (156)

In an interview with investigative researcher Daniel Hopsicker, CIA contract agent Gary Hemming even claimed that Seal was part of the infamous, CIA-sponsored project known as Operation 40 (143). Seal also worked with Sonia Atala, a drug baron whose operations were protected by the CIA, according to former DEA agent (254). It is more likely that Seal was killed by people connected to America’s intelligence community than drug dealers with the Medellin Cartel. Barry Seal’s secretary, Dandra Seale, believed that the government was responsible for his death. In an interview with Daniel Hopsicker, Dandra stated: “The CIA people here allowed it to happen. He had a chart, he had dirt on anybody and everybody” (368).

Daniel Hopsicker conducted an investigation to find out who directed the Seal hit. This led him to Richard Sharpstein, a prominent Miami defense attorney who represented three of convicted assassins. Hopsicker’s interview with Sharpstein pointed to Oliver North as the culprit. Hopsicker elaborates:

“I represented Miguel Velez for the Barry Seal homicide, which was one of the most incredible experiences I have ever been through,” Sharpstein began. “It was an amazing experience. Nobody wanted to think about what any of this meant back in 1986. The implications were just too big. And I’m only speaking with you now because some of this has leaked out. All three of the Colombians who went on trial always told us – their lawyers – that they were being directed, after they got into this country, on what to do and where to go by an ‘anonymous gringo,’ a United States Military officer, who they quickly figured out was Oliver North,” Sharpstein says.

“Say that again?” we asked. We were sure we’d heard it right the first time; we just needed confirmation. . . “Once they rendezvoused together in the States,” explained Sharpstein, “they, the Colombians, were being directed, by phone, by a man who insisted on remaining anonymous, but who did identify himself as being an officer in the American military. They were put in touch with this officer through Rafa (a Colombian smuggler) who was the guy my client worked for. And they all believed that it was Oliver North.” (372)

Why would Ollie North direct the execution of Barry Seal? Could the fact that congressional investigators found no less than 500 references to drugs in North’s notebooks (those he did not shred) have something to do with it (Hopsicker 4)? The truth is that our own government has been in on the trafficking of drugs for quite some time now. There are many reasons for this involvement. Drug money helps prop up a precarious, unstable national economy. Drug money helps fund covert operations that Congress and Americans would frown upon. However, the most sinister reason was provided by deceased researcher Jim Keith in his Casebook on Alternative 3:

[T]here is a war going on worldwide which at one level has nothing to do with drugs, although it can be sold to the public, particularly the American public, on the basis of suppression of drugs. By simultaneously creating anti-drug legislation and fostering drug trade (mirroring the operation that took place in America during Prohibition), international manipulators obtain both a rationalization for that war and for the increased police penetration of society and suppression of political freedoms. The fundamental game is not traffic in drugs, but the traffic in human lives and energy, the buying, selling and herding of cattle-resources. It boils down to the ultimate master/slave relationship with the master in a continual struggle for profits and to keep the people uninformed, sated, mindless, utilized. The “host,” be it animal, human or planet, is anesthetized, then drained by its parasitic self-styled masters. And then the ravaged hulk is discarded. (99-100)

Is all the talk about aliens at Area 51 merely a smokescreen? Has Area 51 been involved in the same intelligence-connected drug smuggling operation that Barry Seal participated in? It would not be the first time that criminal activity was conducted at Area 51 under a national security pretext. In 1994, the Air Force and the Environmental Protection Agency were sued by five unnamed civilian contractors and the widows of contractors Robert Frost and Walter Kasza (Stahl). These contractors claimed to be at Groom Lake when unknown chemicals were burned in open pits and trenches there (no pagination). George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley took on the contractors’ case. Biopsies were conducted on the complainants and analyzed by biochemists at Rutgers University. The biopsies revealed high levels of dioxin, trichloroethylene, and dibenzofuran in the contractors’ body fat.

The complainants claimed that exposure to the chemicals at Groom Lake had resulted in liver, skin, and respiratory damage (no pagination). Worse still, the complainants claimed that the chemicals had even contributed to the deaths of Kasza and Frost (no pagination). The survivors wanted compensation, alleging that the USAF had illegally handled toxic chemicals in violation of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (no pagination). The survivors also claimed that the EPA was guilty of turning its head the other way).

The complainants required more information about the chemicals so that they could seek medical treatment for their injuries. However, the government claimed that revealing classified information concerning the chemicals burnt at the Groom would threaten national security. In an interview with Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes, Lee H. Hamilton, who had been the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, stated: “The Air Force is classifying all information about Area 51 in order to protect themselves from a lawsuit.” When the case went before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Secretary of the Air Force Sheila E. Widnall claimed information about materials in the air could not be revealed, alleging that such exposure could “reveal military operational capabilities or the nature and scope of classified operations” (“US 9th Circuit ruling on Kasza V Browner and related case Frost V Perry, Lake, Widnall,”).

If the government is willing to hide the fact that toxic materials were burnt at Area 51, then it would certainly try to conceal evidence of intelligence-connected drug smuggling at Area 51 as well. What better way is there to hide such a revelation than spreading disinformation about Greys from Zeta-Reticuli collaborating with the government at Area 51? Behind the alien smokescreen may lurk a story of guns, drugs, and intelligence crimes.

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Sources

“Area 51: The Alien Interview.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia 26 May 2007

“Barry Seal.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia 7 February 2007

Denton, Sally and Roger Morris. “The Crimes of Mena.” Penthouse Magazine July 1995

Hopsicker, Daniel. Barry and the Boys: The CIA, the Mob and America’s Secret History. 2001. Florida: Mad Cow Press, 2006.

Keith, Jim. Casebook on Alternative 3: UFOs, Secret Societies, and World Control. Georgia: IllumiNet Press, 1994.

“Large New Hangar at Area 51.” Dreamlandresort.com 11 June 2007

Stahl, Leslie. “Area 51/Catch 22.” 60 Minutes 17 March 1996

“US 9th Circuit ruling on Kasza V Browner and related case Frost V Perry, Lake, Widnall,” 8 January 1998