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SECRETS OF THE NEVADA Test Site & AREA 51 SECRETS NEVADA THE SITE AREA TEST "V. L.", a physicist who says he worked at the Nevada Test Site and Area 51 from 1965 to 1977, divulges details about nuclear and neutron bombs, antigravity devices and national security issues. The following is an edited transcript of a videotaped talk (including Q&A session) given by ''V. L." at a meeting in Custer, South Dakota, USA, in August 1995. V. L., a physicist, says he worked for 12 years at the Nevada Test Site and "Area 51". The transcript was posted on the Internet without additional source information provid- ed, but despite the lack of corroboration we present it here because it dovetails with other testimony from former Area 51 scientists and military personnel. — Editor spent from June of 1965 to August of 1977 directly on the Nevada Test Site; worked there full time. I was "Radiation Health and Safety". Most of the time I worked there, I either worked for Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Lawrence Radiation Laboratory out of Livermore...Berkeley, rather, California, or Sandia Corporation out of Albuquerque, New Mexico. All those testing laboratories have since changed their names. Lawrence Radiation Laboratory is now the Lawrence National Laboratory; they don't use the word "Radiation". In my job we had responsibility for and access to all of the areas of the Nevada Test Site, which encompasses about 1,800 square miles. It begins north of Las Vegas at Indian Springs, where the bombing and gunnery range starts, and goes all the way to Beatty, Nevada. It's an area that has armed guards around it, surveillance devices. It's a restricted air space—you can't fly over it. If you're caught on it, things happen to you. I had a Top Secret clearance and I think there probably wasn't a square mile of that test site that I haven't been on or seen, part of which is Area 51. One of the things I'd like to tell you folks right now is that there are certain things that I cannot and will not talk about. When you quit out there, quitting what used to be the Atomic Energy Commission...it's now the Department of Energy...it's kind of like quit- ting the Central Intelligence Agency. You never quit. They never let loose of you. There are certain things that I saw and was part of that I will take to the grave with me without talking about. However, there are a lot of things that I can talk about. And I think the news media have titillated public interest in a very dishonest way because 95% of what's at Area 51 is totally uninteresting; it's very mundane. The federal government tests aircraft at Area 51 that they want to keep secret. To give you an example, when I was out there, during the later years I was out there, they tested the Stealth fighter and the Stealth bomber; the Blackbird SR-71 flew in and out of there on a weekly basis. The reason the government uses Area 51 is because it has a 10-mile-long runway, absolute secrecy; you can't see anything that's worth seeing from the air or the ground. And that hill that sits away from Area 51 where everybody goes up and looks, all they can see...we used to sit there and look back at people and do this (wave) because all you can see is administration buildings. That's all you can see. The government knows that peo- ple are out there looking into the area and, because of that, a deliberate effort has been made that there's absolutely nothing to see right there. Now if you go a few miles north, there's a lot of things that people might want to see but never will. The Department of Energy now has yearly tours of the test sight. Once a year, the fam- ilies of employees that belong to certain classifications of workers are allowed to take bus tours through part of the test site. It's a very small area that they let people see; it's Frenchman Flat, the flat where the old air-bursts...where atmospheric tests were per- formed. But you can't get within 40 miles of Area 51. As I told Paul Strassels on the radio the other day, there were things I saw and have seen in Area 51 that would make one wonder where they came from. I've also seen things A Talk by "V. L." Custer, South Dakota, USA August 1995 APRIL — MAY 2003 NEXUS = 55 www.nexusmagazine.com