Guestbook
on May 15 in contact by AnnieFor publicity inquiries, please contact
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Little, Brown and Company
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156 Comments
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Annie, Bought the book shortly after its release but it took a while for me to get to it. All the critcisim aside, I believe the book to provide more previously unknowns than untruths. A lot of what was in print filled in a lot of spaces for me. An informed person, reads and contemplates all and draws hi or her own conclusions. Great job. Larry
A. Jacobsen
I was given your book at Christmas. I turned each page with excitement and a flood of memories. One was listening to the scope watchers at the radar site at Gander Newfoundland discussing the angels they saw on their scopes. “Angels” as any known aircraft could not fly that high. U2s were flying in the airspace just to the east in the Atlantic.
I remember giving a weather briefing to a SR-71 pilot at USAF Goose Bay, Labrador. He had landed due to refrigeration problems. I believe it was the only time one landed in Canada.
Excellent book. Thanks Don
Thanks for a great read. As a young man during the 60′s and 70′s you have supplied some of the missing puzzle pieces. I was in the USAF stationed at Edwards AFB in 1973….first time the SR71 “buzzed” the area I knew it wasn’t my grandfathers Air Force!
Interesting phrase….”Need to know”…..having spent 20 years in the military I heard it often.
I’m not a military buff, aviation buff or a buff of any kind. I don’t even know why I picked up the book, read the jacket and bought it. But I could not be happier that I did. While I can’t speak to some of the technical errors posted earlier, I frankly don’t care. The work, the research and story-telling is brilliant. I cannot imagine the organization required to pull all this together and you should be congratulated for a true achievement. Congratulations on an outstanding piece of writing and for sharing what you learned in such a cogent, enetertaining fashion. If you find yourself speaking in Boston I certainly hope to know about it.
Area 51 is a terrific accomplishment in publishing information about the hidden history that needed to be told for several decades now. Thank you.
I was a member of a SAC bomber crew in the Korea and Cold War years and flew some of those missions carrying nuclear weapons around in case of a sudden Russian attack on the United States. We did regularly scheduled briefings for various targets in Russia. After I ended my active duty I finished college and went to work as a journalist on several midwest newspapers and wound up working for technical companies as a writer for the next 40 years. I was fortunate to have worked on projects for the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, and I can guarantee that our astronauts did in fact land on the moon,
In my later years, I also helped several business writers edit some of their books, so I can appreciate the time and effort you put into this remarkable book, that I hope will have a sequel.
Every author I have ever worked with has asked me and other friends to let them know if they ever find any discrepancies in any of their works, so that they could correct them in a later edition. I found just three minor word usages that seem a bit off in Area 51, and thought you might like to know about them. No offense or criticism intended. These things creep through the most carefully edited works, and I have created my share of them in my puny efforts.
For what it’s worth, here they are:
1. Near the top od p. 159 in talking about the suicide of Frank Wisner, you say he “took a shotgun….and put a bullet in his own head.” Shotguns do not fire bullets.
2. Near the bottom of p.167 you say “the men did not catch any deer anyway.” I have done a lot of hunting and no hunter would ever “catch” a deer. He would “take” a deer or “kill” a deer, but he would “catch” a fish.
3. Near the top of p. 184 you say Brig. Gen. Jack Ledford was “attacked by Japannese fighter jets” during WW2. “Fighters” yes. “Jets” no, not in WW2 except for a handful of German aircraft in the final months of the war.
These are all little things that in no way detract from the value of your book, but they are like fingernails on a chalkboard to us military guys.
Submitted with great respect and admiration.
annie i just finished reading area 51 the other night.read it in record time.i worked at the nevada test site while in the air force,feb 1976 thru august 1978.i was assigned to the tonopah electronic warfare range as a memeber of tfwc/range group.the section on sandia corporation and their tests with plutonium caught my attention,as we shared that section of the range complex with them….had no idea they did any nuke testing on that section of the range but,it doesn’t surprize me..i did have a great time working up there however.we provided a good portion of the testing for dod,the us military and our allies on that range.basically,we simulated the soviet air defense network,so every new weapon system was run against us to see how they would fare in the event of war with russia or her client states as well as us devising our tactics and training our aircrews on how best to penetrate thier defenses,personally i was assigned to the mps t1 radar system which simulated the sa2 and sa3 surface to air missle system.our mission was to lower the learning time of our aircrew in identifing the threats aligned against them,know what tactics work best and lower the losses of our aircrew in the 1st weeks of a conflict.the air force data accrued from all of the airwars every faught show a pilot/aircrew is most apt to be shotdown in its 1st 10 missions,if we could lower that to 9,we would have saved many a crew to fight another day.the name of the operation we ran was red flag and its been run out of nellis air force base and the ranges since 1975.that is one of the reasons why our air airforces and those of our allies have been so successful in both gulf wars and bosnia.wanted to let ya know that as we,the 300 folks i served with are never mentioned anywhere,but i do watch with pride whenever i see what our airpower accomplishes and with so little loss.makes me know that the long hours/days and weeks we spent away from our loved ones allowed so many to come home safely to theirs…
joe delgrande
smsgt/usaf/ctang retired
I need to know more about Area 51 test facility & about the ufo & Aliens.
Annie im half way thru your book which to putting it mildly is GREAT!. It verifies some things ive read or suspected for years.Some things in your book i have read in other non fiction books on current events, spy stuff etc and in eye spy magazine.All i read is non fiction stuff,Are there other newer books by you or others that have info like this,please advise.
If all the information that you have learned about Area 51 is the size of a crouton and the real truth about it is the size of a restaurant table, you could assume that the coverup of both Area 51 and the Roswell Incident is gigantic! The story about the Russian flying disc was mostly intent on deceiving you and others, since there has never been any proof historically that such a craft ever existed.
What would be so great and profound as to cause the engineers at EG, and G and others, to keep the information regarding Roswell so secret? What would be their motivation? Given the amount of fear and hysteria that resulted from the 1938 radio broadcast of “War of the Worlds”, I think those involved with the Roswell Crash had a great fear of what would happen to our nation and the world with the discovery another world. This would be information that would have to be kept from mankind. There is also the possibility that the ” alien bodies” that were recovered were later used for experiments with unwilling humans.
So, logically, it seems that a UFO coverup along with experiments on unwilling humans with alien tissues and, or, fluids, would be a large enough truth that would match the size of a restarant table and chairs.
If there is ever another UFO crash, it won’t be as easy to coverup since everone today has a cell phone.
Ron
Dear Ms. Jacobsen:
I thoroughly enjoyed reading your book, “Area 51″. You obviously put a lot of work into it. The timeline you mentioned regarding the 1947 Roswell incident and the thirteen year old ” child pilots” doesn’t fit. They would have been born in 1934 and that was just as Hitler was coming to power. Josef Mengele wasn’t appointed research assistant for ” The Third Reich Institute for Heridity and Racial Purity” until 1937. Mengele didn’t arrive at Auschwitz until 1943 where he performed most of his experiments. There simply wasn’t enough time to genetically engineer or surgically alter children into ” space aliens”
The suggestion that the two crashed discs at Roswell of Russian design is difficult to believe given the technology of the day and what about the size of the aircraft needed to transport the drone discs? Stealth or not, it would be hard to miss something that large in the sky. On the other side of the coin, it is highly unlikely that any spacecraft from another world would crash given the technology that they would have to have to travel across galaxies to get here. Most likely, they have zero equipment failures and I doubt a lightning strike on their craft wouldn’t cause them to crash. I know, I know………..don’t kill the messenger!
Last April, while visiting the Pima Air Museum in Tucson, Arizona, I had the opportunity to meet one of the SR 71 Blackbird pilots, Brig. Lt. Col., Ray Haupt. He told me that during the Cold War the engineers of the SRA 12 and the SR 71 couldn’t obtain enough titanium to build the planes. So, they had to go to an outside source, the Soviet Union–the very country they were going to use the planes to spy on. Needless to say, the Soviet Union would have never sold them the titanium if they knew what it was going to be used for. Lt. Col. Haupt thought that was very ironic and he chuckled when he told me about it.
All in all, it is amazing that you were able to put together this book considering the amount of smoke and mirrors you had to deal with. Is there anything that you learned that you were afraid to put into the book? Kudos to you for having the courage and tenacity to get this book published.
Ron Lamb
aldrene1@verizon.net
I just finished reading Area 51, and I must say, you’ve put together for me a major piece of the puzzle. I have a friend who worked in black operations many years ago, who once told me he’d been inside the complex and witnessed the “aliens” you describe in the book. I confess I never really believed him until now.
Thank you for bringing this information to light. It seems to me that Vannevar Bush was attempting to “fight fire with fire” when it came to dealing with the Nazi experiments that Mengele continued under Stalin. Unfortunately, he only furthered the evil that was perpetrated by bringing it here and keeping it wrapped in a cloak of secrecy for so long that no one could hold him accountable for it.
At any rate, more things make sense to me now than ever have before. Do you have any additional information on whatever became of Nikola Tesla’s work? I’ve tried finding info on the internet, but most of what I’ve come across is conspiratorial garbage. Very frustrating when trying to compose a novel that is reasonably accurate in historical details–as I’m sure you can appreciate.
I know you have family, but you look very like my girlfriend of a few years ago who was a hypnotist. That said, in 2002 I discovered Monarch Programming which terrified her, and so on and so forth so I wrote a series of three articles on it. There is kinda a link with Area 51 and secret stuff, you probably know it. I dealt with what interested me more directly….the use of Monarch Programming to affect many of us in a focused but twilight world within our everyday experience. The Engineering of Consent type approach. But, and this is something I am trying to find corroboration for, my version of this angle, software ratger than hardware, led to this blog: http://web.mac.com/beachhutman/MIND_CONTROL_FOR_KIDS/Wilcommen.html I wrote that. Mengele a problem because he has two histories, the official one, and the one claimed for Monarch programming after.
I urge you to run through it. The more exotic China Lake claims I passed by, for some reason I find anything else, like that, a shill or front for Monarch Programming seeking to dominate any enterprise. And weighed as a scientist, Monarch Programming IS A CON. It is just you need so much imagination to filter the evidence that no one gets anywhere. I wish I knew I was right, but then so much is at stake if my assumptions are correct.
I spotted you here so you know http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/josef-mengele?before=1322226253
When in trauma I instinctively believe it is man made and not attributable to agencies beyond our own?
Fascinating reading.
Just a few nitpicks based upon working at Lockheed Burbank in the late 50′s/early 60′s.
If my memory serves me right, I believe that the shuttle plane from Burbank to Area 51 was a C47 (military version of a DC3). The plane was retrofitted with dense seating, similar to a school bus. The Constellation was the triple-tailed Lockheed four-engine airliner flown by TWA.
Jack Real was the head of Lockheed Aircraft Engineering Flight Test. “Fish” Salmon was the Chief Test Pilot.
Jack Real’s adventures dealing with Howard Hughes as Lockheed developed aircraft for Hughes are worthy of a book of their own. The Howard Hughes mention could tie into these.
My father worked on the Pacific tests in the early 50′s, as a construction worker. He reportedly was never provided protection when being around sites of previous explosions. He died in 1968 at age 51. I only recently learned the names of the two projects he was involved with at the time, Greenhouse and possibly Ivy. Secrecy, exposure, and “no records” are the hallmarks of his dossier.
While I enjoyed the subject of your book and found that the many questions that you posed and are still unanswered are the basis of a political discussion that has never been publicly aired, I found that the editing of the book left a lot to be desired. WMD was defined for the first time on page 348, and while every American over the age of 15 probably knows what this stands for, it should have been defined when first used. On the other hand, many terms, people and places were constantly being identified as if they had not earlier been used, so the book was annoying to read. Also, it could have benefited greatly from a timeline of events, programs and agency directors who appear in the book so that the sense of timing could be more easily sensed.
The claim by the publisher, that the truth about area 51 is told, is garbage. The author can offer nothing but speculation based on the evidence gathered.
The use of the term “Conspiracy Theory” by the author is ridiculous…moronic even. Any secrecy is conspiracy. All governments engage in keeping secrets…engaging in “conspiracy”. Area 51 by its very nature is nothing but a series of conspiracies, and eny speculation about what those secrets are, is just theory. You can gather evidence but you cant prove anything. So the whole book is CONSPIRACY THEORY.
But actually the term “conspriacy theory” is a nonsense term, used to describe secrecy ideas you dont like, in a derogatory stereotype. And its use by Jacobsen shows her bias.
Even the evidence gathered by Jacobsen, thru documents and testimony by former workers at the site, is not really evidence of anything, as we know our government, and maybe all governments, engage in disinformation.
Bottom line is that Area 51 houses secrets and so it should, and you will find only speculation the Jacobsen book.
I found your book fascinating. It is the first solid, verifiable, research I have come across on Area 51. I am always trying to sort through the sloppy “psuedo” research and find books that show the facts. I did find one connection(the only connection)to the story presented to you about the origin of Roswell that is a possible lead. I would be interested in forwarding the author to you. There is a lot more information about about both the research that the Germans (or at least some of them)were doing during the war, and why the Paperclip scientists suddenly went from being brilliant rocket engineers in Germany to ones that couldn’t land a rocket in the right country in the U.S., when there wouldn’t seem to be any tactical advantage to their situation to show inept skills and not deliver on the only reason they were of value to the U.S.. I would love to discuss the theory with you in more detail.
Dear Ms. Jacobsen,
Thank you for Area51. It was a fascinating read and my hope is you’ll enjoy many printings.
At the risk of sounding nit-picky I’d like to submit a few items that might warrant further editing. Page 159 refers to shotguns firing bullets when in fact they fire shells. Page 152 refers to a test facility in Northern California, near the Mohave. If you meant the Mohave desert it, of course, is located in Southern California. Page 189 refers to the Lockheed Constellation as a twin prop when in fact the ‘Connie’ was a four engine aircraft. Page 205 mentions the time being 0948-106 local. Did you mean 0948-1006 local? Page 229 refers to LBJ hunting deer from his convertible with a shotgun. I hope to God he was using some sort of hunting rifle instead. Page 230 speaks about Ike and while it’s true he lead all forces in the European Theater during WWII he did not lead troops ashore during the Normandy landings. He commanded from England. Neither was he at the Battle of the Bulge. Page 271 speaks of the Tet Offensive as being a major turning point in the Viet Nam War. True if you’re speaking about political and phycological victory. Otherwise it was huge military defeat for North Viet Nam. Page 276 refers to the island of Kadena when I’m sure you meant Kadena AFB on the island of Okinawa.
Area51 is a monumental work and in my humble opinion you deserve the Medal of Freedom for ferreting out and presenting information long hidden from all of us.
Continued success,
RM
I greatly enjoyed your well researched book, and the hours you must have spend with sources who wanted their story to be told, along with endless FOIA work. A huge takeaway is that you cannot trust the government in things nuclear, which resonated as I recently visited Las Vegas, and the national nuclear waste dump was an active topic of discussion in the news. I was somewhat perturbed to see the last bit about Nazi/Soviet engineering, human and otherwise, at the very end. It made a good story but didn’t seem as solid as the others. If the Soviets wanted to hoax us, why drop the craft and engineered humans in the desert, not, say a populated area near a City anywhere. I don’t think that if true, the time existed to craft the engineered humans in the timeline, as even if it somehow worked, you still have to raise the unfortunate humans enough. Lastly, if we had antigravity tech, we’d be using it, not wasting billions on chemical rockets to get to orbit.
Do I think that there may have been unethical work concerning results of exposure on humans….yes, one only needs to see the photos of the observers at detonations to see that that was clearly a goal.
Other than that last bit, the other 500 pages were solid, well researched, and great information. Recommended to anyone with an interest in the SR 71/oxcart or our early nuclear history.
I am enjoying reading your book. I was a sailor on the USS Curtiss which was assigned to the atomic Energy Commission for support on atomic and hydrogen bomb tests in the pacific ocean. I would like to comment on the Operation Ivy hydrogen bomb test. When it was detonated, almost in unison you could hear everyone on the ship say “oh my God ” It not only blew the shot island away it also took the instrumentation island away also. It was everyone’s opinion that it was more powerful than reported. I was an engineeer on the X-15 rocket aircraft and other aircraft also.
Hello: I have just finished “Area 51″” and have this question: what happened to the two surviving ‘pilots’ from the Roswell, “47 crash? They are mentioned as being preserved in a jello-like concoction, in a tube, for the study done in 1952, but afterwards, no mention or conclusion.
Please respond; this is important.
Terry Dudas
Tucson, AZ
I have just read your book and was very happy to find out the information about the base. I wanted to discuss with you something that I did see anything about in the book. I worked as a Westinghouse Tech. Rep. at Laughlin AFB, Del Rio, Texas maintaining side looking photography radar on U – 2′s and if you are interested, I would like to discuss my experiences there. Hope to hear from you soon via e mail.
Annie: I have just read your book and really enjoyed it. I have a question regarding the Soviet craft that crashed at Roswell. Do you know if the Soviets had conducted more flyovers in the US or was the crash the first instance and was the aim to gather intelligence or create mass hysteria. Also, to my limited knowledge, the are no flying discs in any country’s arsenal. What do you say to the critics who claim there was not the technology to create an intercontinental flying disc in the late 1940′s?
Annie, I loved your book and just tweeted about it to my 34,000+ followers, my 4400+ Facebook friends and my 1500+ LinkedIn connections. I gave the book a Five Star Amazon review:
https://twitter.com/#!/terrywhalin/status/124618260854472705
Keep up the good work,
Terry
Thank you to everyone who wrote to me to point out technical errors. There are a total of 23, which will be corrected in the forthcoming paperback edition. I would especially like to thank the readers who wrote to me in a kind manner. It goes a long way.
Thank you for reading.
–Annie Jacobsen