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AREA 51 53 AN UNDERGROUND BASE John Lear, I was told, was a captain for a charter airline company. He held seventeen world speed records in the Lear Jet invented by his father, legendary aeronautical engineer William P. Lear. During 1988 John Lear had become fascinated with stories of crashed saucers and he had issued his own revelations, allegedly gained through his contacts in the intelligence community, regarding a joint research facility main- tained by hundreds of live aliens and the U.S. government at Area 51. "Where is this Area 51 anyway?" I asked, feeling like an ignorant kid among an assembly of scholars. "In Nevada," said Bill Moore. "Nellis Air Force Base." "At Groom Lake," added Linda Howe. They told me that, according to John Lear and others, it is the headquarters for projects called Redlight and Snowbird. But the major installation is supposed to be in New Mexico. "Why doesn't anybody know about it?" I asked. "It's underground, hidden in the desert. You can't see it." "How large is it?" "The size of Manhattan." "Who takes out the garbage?" The group looked at me in shock. There is a certain unwritten etiquette one is supposed to follow when crashed saucers and govern- ment secrecy are discussed; you must not ask where the information comes from, because informants' lives would be in danger, presumably from hired assassins paid by the Pentagon, the kind who try to hit the tires of fully-loaded gasoline trucks speeding through refineries. And you are not supposed to point out contradictions in the stories. Questions must always be directed at the higher topics, such as the philosophy of the aliens, or their purpose in the universe—not the practical details of their existence. In other words, it is not done to ask any question that has a plain, verifiable answer. "Well, it's a fair question, isn't it? Who takes out the garbage?" 1 repeated. "You just told me there was a city the size of Manhattan