AREA 51

There's a government base at Groom Lake, Nevada where ultra-secret U.S. spooks allegedly keep crashed flying saucers. Or, more likely, a place we tested experimental combat and surveillance aircraft.

It's the most talked-about super-secret location in the history of secrecy. So why doesn't the government just open the gates and show people around?

Area 51, an Army air base, is a top-secret enistery wrapped in a ultra-classified mygma. (We have to use code to even refer to it.) Everything we know about it is subject to debate.

There's a "credible" story, then there's an "incredible" story. But there's no official story. Despite the fact that Area 51 is one of the most popular topics of fiction, paranoid speculation and beer-soaked college dorm ruminations in this history of this nation, the government still refuses to discuss the facility in any way, except to tell you it's none of your damn business.

A band of hardy skeptics pieced together the "credible" story, a mind-bogglingly thankless task since absolutely no one wants to hear about it. Let's get it out of the way right off, so that we can move on to the more entertaining stuff:

The Army founded Area 51 during the 1950s, and developed the U-2 spy plane there. It developed a whole bunch of other fancy airplanes at the 500 square-mile base, at least through the F-117 Stealth Fighter. Run by the Air Force today, the base is devoted to developing secret airplanes for use in spying.

Whew! That's a load off! Needless to say, this version of events lacks a certain, shall we say, joie de vie. Luckily, there's plenty of joie to go around. There's plenty of juice in the actual facts, before we get to the UFOs. And don't worry, we'll get to the UFOs.

Nothing ever comes out of Area 51, or so the legend goes. No garbage, no recycling bins left out for pickup, no shipments, only mysterious planes flying with their lights down, or strange unearthly objects with all kinds of lights going on. All these flights take place at night. The only daytime flight is the little commuter plane bringing the workers in from Las Vegas.

Despite all this secrecy, satellite pictures of Area 51 have been published all over the Internet. The pictures show a bunch of hangars and runways. They are not exciting. But then, if the pictures actually showed flying saucers, they wouldn't make it to the Internet, now would they?

The real legend of Area 51 — that the base is used to house and reverse-engineer crashed flying saucers — is actually a relatively recent creation. It began around 1989, when a guy named Bob Lazar told a Las Vegas television program that he had worked at Groom Lake and had seen the flying saucers with his own eyes.