Area 51 declassified: Documents reveal Cold War 'hide-and-seek'

Warning signs tell people to stay away from Area 51. (Shutterstock.com)

Leonard David
Space.com

Newly declassified documents reveal more detail about past use of the mysterious Nevada test site known as Area 51 and the concern for maintaining secrecy about the work done at the facility.

The recently released papers, which date mostly from the early 1960s into the 1970s, spotlight the U.S. government's desire for tight security at Area 51, also known as Groom Lake. The area was photographed with American reconnaissance assets to better assess what the Soviet Union's spy satellites might be able to discern.

The documents also detail the debate over the possible release of a photograph "inadvertently" taken of the secret facility by NASA astronauts aboard the Skylab space station in 1974. [Flying Saucers to Mind Control: 7 Declassified Military & CIA Secrets]

Stealthy work

More than 60 declassified documents in an Area 51 file were posted on the Internet by the National Security Archive late last month, compiled and edited by archive senior fellow Jeffrey Richelson. The archive is located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Those of you hoping for information about captured aliens and flying saucers will be disappointed.

A number of documents focus on the quest to develop stealth capability in aircraft. Others report on another type of activity at Area 51 — the exploitation of covertly acquired Soviet MiG fighter jets.

American engineers assessed the design, performance and limitations of MiGs in an attempt to learn their vulnerabilities — knowledge that could come in handy during combat situations.

Spysat overflights

An April 1962 document sourced to the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) outlines the rationale for photographing Area 51 by either a high-flying U-2 spy plane or a then-classified CORONA reconnaissance satellite. The idea was viewed as a means of seeing what the Soviet Union might learn from its own satellite images of the facility.

This would provide "a pretty fair idea of what deductions and conclusions could be made by the Soviets should Sputnik 13 have a reconnaissance capability," explains the memorandum, which was marked "secret." [Gallery: Declassified US Spy Satellite Photos & Designs]

Also part of the plan, the memo states, was having a U-2 image Area 51: "Without advising the photographic interpreters of what the target is, ask them to determine what type of activity is being conducted at the site photographed," the memo states.

Secret facility at Groom Lake taken by the Skylab 4 astronauts. (NASA)

Skylab image

Also of interest is another document, dated April 11, 1974, from the deputy director of the NRO to the chairman of the director of central intelligence's Committee on Imagery Requirements and Exploitation. This memorandum discusses what to do about a photograph taken by Skylab astronauts of Area 51, outlining the issues to be considered in deciding whether or not to release the photograph.

The two-page document, marked "Top Secret," mentions a draft decision paper that focuses on the "relative merits of retaining [deleted in document] as a high-priority secret national security installation versus the merits of the NASA belief that there would be domestic and foreign problems created by withholding the photograph."

The April 1974 memo also says that the Skylab photograph "in the public domain would almost certainly provide strong stimulus for media questioning and the potential near-term revelation of the missions of the installation."

Unclassified platform

A follow-up memorandum from April 19, 1974, marked "Confidential" for then-Director of Central Intelligence William Colby, explains that the recent Skylab mission "inadvertently photographed" Area 51, and that there were "specific instructions not to do this."

The memo also reports that the Skylab photo is the subject of an interagency review and that Department of Defense officials believed it should be withheld from public release.

At the time, NASA — and, to a large extent, the State Department — took the position that the image should be released. It would be allowed to go into a repository in Sioux Falls, S.D., that contained satellite remote sensing data of the Earth's land surface and "let nature take its course," the memo states.

Complex issues

The April 19 memo explains that there are some complicated precedents that should be reviewed before a final decision could be made about the Skylab image. For example, there was a question of whether anything photographed in the U.S. can be classified if the platform from which the image was taken, such as NASA's Skylab, is unclassified.

In addition, the April 19 memo notes that there are some complex issues in the United Nations concerning U.S. policies about imagery from space. Further, the document raises the question of whether or not the photo would be leaked anyway, even if it were withheld.

The memo also carries handwritten responses by the CIA's Colby.

Colby expressed some doubts about the need to protect the image, since the Soviet Union had it from their satellites anyway. He further asked, "If exposed, don't we just say classified USAF [U.S. Air Force] work is done there?"

Hide and seek

Dwayne Day, an American space historian, policy analyst and author, has previously written on Area 51, as well as the 1974 Skylab image flap.

It turns out that the Skylab shot of Area 51 was placed in NASA's collection of Skylab photographs, Day said, but nobody had noticed. So, in the end, NASA won its argument with the intelligence community over the image, he said.

As for playing Cold War hide-and-seek at Area 51 with the Soviet Union, Day said the Soviets had spy satellites and that they could certainly see the airfield.

"But, of course, the CIA knew the flight paths of Soviet satellites, and they would avoid having their aircraft in the open when satellites were overhead," Day told SPACE.com. "The best form of concealment is a big hangar where you can park all your planes."

Day said that there has been at least one report of an effort at Groom Lake to create a fake heat signature for orbiting satellites to see.

"I have my doubts about that," Day said. "The timing is wrong — too early for anybody to expect the Soviet Union to be capable of that kind of infrared observation."

Day said he's also wondered about a photograph taken at Area 51 showing a line of A-12 OXCART spy planes, probably from 1964. OXCART was the label given to the CIA's A-12 program, meant to come after the U-2 to perform reconnaissance flights over the Soviet Union.

"The Soviets did not always have reconnaissance satellites in orbit," Day said, "so did the CIA line these planes up for a beauty shot when they knew that they were safe from observation? Or, did they simply not care?"

Howard Hughes and the atomic bomb

Why the Central Nevada Test Area conducted only one nuclear test puzzles even the aficionados.

Steel well casing marking the location of the 1968 1-megaton Faultless hydrogen bomb test in the old Central Nevada Test Area. Ralph Vartabedian / Los Angeles Times

By Ralph Vartabedian
Los Angeles Times

At the center of a desolate valley in the middle of Nevada, more than a dozen miles from the nearest paved road, one of the few signs of human activity is a rusty steel well casing that juts oddly out of the desert floor.

Nobody lives here, but it has a name: the Central Nevada Test Area. It was once a hub of scientific activity. Today, it is an abandoned outpost of the Cold War.

In the lore of the nuclear arms race, the Central Nevada Test Area has occupied a special place of mystery. Only one test was ever conducted there, and even for aficionados, the reasons have never been entirely clear.

Amid the emptiness, an 8-foot-tall cylinder bears a message to future generations from Glenn T. Seaborg, once chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission.

"Project Faultless January 19, 1968: A nuclear detonation was conducted below this spot at a depth of 3,200 feet," reads a brass plaque on the casing.

The explanation of its purpose is terse: "The device, with a yield of less than one megaton, was detonated to determine the environmental and structural effects that might be expected should subsequent higher yield underground nuclear tests be conducted in this vicinity."

At the bottom of the vertical shaft, there's a load of radioactive rubble.

"No excavation, drilling and/or removal of materials is permitted without U.S. government approval within a horizontal distance of 3,300 feet from the surface ground zero," the plaque warns visitors.

Just why the government detonated a bomb here is even more puzzling given that the sprawling Nevada Test Site was already set up officially for nuclear testing about 100 miles south.

Philip Coyle, the former test director of the Nevada Test Site, has rarely spoken about the issue, but he does know the answer. It involves a peculiar effort by the government to placate one of the wealthiest men in the world.

In the 1960s, the U.S. and Soviet Union were engaged in an all-out nuclear arms race to see who could build and then detonate the biggest weapons -- almost a nuclear war by proxy. But in this fight, each side bombed itself.

Every time a big hydrogen bomb was detonated on the Nevada Test Site, the tremors would shake the penthouse suite atop the Desert Inn in Las Vegas about 75 miles away and the frayed nerves of its sole resident, multibillionaire Howard Hughes.

At the peak of testing, a bomb was going off about every three days. Before there was a national environmental movement, Hughes became the most unlikely -- and no doubt most powerful -- opponent of nuclear weapons testing during the Cold War.

"Has anybody ever tried to compute the price paid . . . for the privilege of laying waste, mutilating and contaminating for all the days to come millions of acres of good, fertile, vegetated Nevada earth . . . through the damage wrought by these explosions?" Hughes wrote in a 1967 memo to his aide Robert Maheu.

At the time, Hughes not only controlled the Las Vegas Strip and part of the nation's oil-drilling industry, but also one of the nation's largest defense contractors, Los Angeles-based Hughes Aircraft Co.

Hughes wrote a rambling letter to President Johnson, asking him to stop nuclear testing. And he dispatched aides with envelopes each containing tens of thousands of dollars for many of the candidates for the 1968 presidency, according to the authoritative Hughes biography "Empire."

It was long assumed that Hughes' efforts were ignored.

But Coyle said in a recent interview that the Atomic Energy Commission was under so much heat from Hughes, as well as other hotel owners, that the agency ordered a test to see whether a big detonation farther from the Strip would reduce the shaking there.

"Howard Hughes was unhappy with the situation and complained about it to the AEC," Coyle recalled. "That's why Faultless was done."

The Faultless test involved one of the biggest hydrogen bombs ever detonated in the Lower 48 states. Unexpectedly, the violence of the blast caused the earth to sink 8 feet and opened gaps 3 feet across. It did not reduce the problem of shaking in Las Vegas, either, Coyle recalled.

Although many of the practices of the U.S. nuclear weapons program during the Cold War are incomprehensible by today's standards, the very survival of the nation seemed to hinge on its success.

"It is surreal to look back on some of these things," Coyle said. "It was a different time."