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Astronauts and Area 51: the Skylab Incident
Posted on Thursday, January 12, 2006 (CST) by Thoth
 Far out in the Nevada desert, miles from prying eyes, is a secret Air Force facility that has been known by numerous names over the years. It has been called Paradise Ranch, Watertown Strip, Area 51, Dreamland, and Groom Lake.
Groom is probably the most mythologized real location that few people have ever seen. According to people with overactive imaginations, it is where the United States government keeps dead aliens, clones them, and reverse-engineers their spacecraft. It is also where NASA filmed the faked Moon landings.
However, for humans whose feet rest on solid ground, Groom is the site of highly secret aircraft development. It is where the U-2 spyplane, the Mach 3 Blackbird, and the F-117 stealth fighter were all developed. It has also probably hosted its own fleet of captured, stolen, or clandestinely acquired Soviet and Russian aircraft.
Because of
this, the United States government has gone to extraordinary lengths to
preserve the area’s secrecy and to prevent people from seeing it.
This secrecy was threatened
in early 1974 when the astronauts on Skylab pointed their camera out
the window and took pictures of a facility that did not officially
exist. They returned to Earth and their photographs quickly became a
headache for NASA, the CIA, and the Department of Defense. That story
has never been told before.
Shutterbugs
On April 19, 1974 someone
in the CIA sent the Director of Central Intelligence, William Colby, a
memorandum regarding a little problem.
“The issue arises from the
fact that the recent Skylab mission inadvertently photographed” the
airfield at Groom Lake. “There were specific instructions not to do
this,” the memo stated, and Groom “was the only location which had such
an instruction.” In other words, the CIA considered no other spot on
Earth to be as sensitive as Groom Lake, and the astronauts had just
taken a picture of it.
The third and last Skylab
crew had launched into space on November 16, 1973. Onboard were three
rookie astronauts: Gerald Carr, Edward Gibson, and William Pogue. Carr
was a Navy commander, Pogue was in the Air Force and had flown for
their elite Thunderbirds team, and Gibson was a scientist-astronaut
with a doctorate of engineering physics.
The crew quickly fell
behind schedule early in their mission for a number of reasons, but
soon regained time. The crew repaired an antenna, fixed problems with
the Apollo Telescope Mount and an errant gyroscope, and replenished
supplies. They soon accumulated significant EVA time and studied the
sun for over 338 hours.
What they also did was take
photographs of the Earth, including photos of the secretive Groom Lake
facility in Nevada. On February 4, 1974, after a record 84 days in
space, they splashed down 280 kilometers southwest of San Diego. They
were recovered aboard the USS New Orleans and found to be in excellent
shape.
NASA had an agreement with
the US intelligence community that dated from the beginning of the
Gemini program. All astronaut photographs of the Earth would first be
reviewed by the National Photographic Interpretation Center in Building
213 in the Washington, DC Navy Yard. NPIC (pronounced “en-pick”) was an
organization managed by the CIA that interpreted satellite and aerial
photography. The details of the agreement remain classified, but the
photo-interpreters had wanted to see what astronauts could contribute
to reconnaissance photography. During the Gemini program they
discovered the answer—not much. The photographs returned during the
Gemini missions had many problems, including the lack of data on what
the camera was pointed at. There was no good way for an astronaut to
record the precise time and pointing angle of a camera when he took a
picture, and so the interpreters often had a very difficult time
determining what they were looking at. This had been one of the factors
that contributed to the demise of the US Air Force’s Manned Orbiting
Laboratory program.
But there was another
reason to evaluate the astronaut photographs: to see if they showed
anything interesting, or anything that they should not, like Groom Lake.
Spooky actions at a distance
There was a certain irony
in NPIC photo-interpreters discovering photographs of Groom Lake,
because even within NPIC’s Building 213 Groom Lake was classified.
Images of Groom were removed from rolls of spy satellite film and
stored in a restrictive vault. As a former senior NPIC official
explained, “there were a lot more things going on at Groom than the
U-2.” Not all the photo-interpreters at NPIC were cleared to know about
these things, but probably included aircraft testing, including
advanced reconnaissance drones and captured Soviet fighter planes. The
average photo-interpreter would know that the U-2 and the Blackbird
were based at Groom, but would be surprised to see a B-52 with drones,
or a MiG-21 sitting on its runway.
In fact, in April 1962 a
CIA official suggested to his superior that they consider taking
pictures of Area 51 using their own reconnaissance platforms. John
McMahon, the executive officer of the abstractly named Development
Plans Division, wrote the acting chief of DPD: “John Parangosky and I
have previously discussed the advisability of having a U-2 take
photographs of Area 51 and, 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.” He continued:
“In connection with the upcoming CORONA shots, it might be advisable to
cut in a pass crossing the Nevada Test Site to see what we ourselves
could learn from satellite reconnaissance of the Area. This coupled
with coverage from the Deuce [U-2] and subsequent photographic
interpretation would give us a fair idea of what deductions and
conclusions could be made by the Soviets should Sputnik 13 have a
reconnaissance capability.”
Whether or not CIA ever
undertook such an exercise remains unknown, but CORONA spacecraft did
photograph Area 51 at least a handful of times. Thousands of rolls of
film are stored at the National Archives, with the relevant negatives
cut out.
The controversy
Why the Skylab astronauts
disobeyed their orders and took the photo is unknown, as are what it
depicted. Because they had only handheld cameras for earth observation,
the resolution of the image would have been limited. The existence of
the base was not a secret, particularly to an Air Force pilot like Bill
Pogue—the pilots who flew in the huge Nellis testing range in Nevada
referred to Area 51 as “the box” because they were under explicit
instructions to not fly into that airspace. But for whatever reason,
they had taken the photo and now it had created a stir within the
intelligence community.
“This photo has been going
through an interagency reviewing process aimed at a decision on how it
should be handled,” the unnamed CIA official wrote. “There is no
agreement. DoD elements (USAF, NRO, JCS, ISA) all believe it should be
withheld from public release. NASA, and to a large degree State, has
taken the position that it should be released—that is, allowed to go
into the Sioux National Repository and to let nature take its course.”
What the memo indicates is
that there was a difference between the way the civilian agencies of
the US government and the military agencies looked at their roles. NASA
had ties to the military, but it was clearly a civilian agency. And
although the reasons why NASA officials felt that the photo should be
released are unknown, the most likely explanation is that NASA
officials did not feel that the civilian agency should conceal any of
its activities. Many of NASA’s relations with other organizations and
foreign governments were based on the assumption that NASA did not
engage in spying and did not conceal its activities.
The CIA memo writer added
that “There are some complicated precedents which, in fairness, should
be reviewed before a final decision.” These included “A question of
whether anything photographed in the United States can be classified if
the platform is unclassified; Such complex issues in the UN concerning
United States policies toward imagery from space” and “the question of
whether the photograph can be withheld without leaking.”
The answer to the last
question is obvious—the photo was withheld, and this fact never leaked.
It has only come to light now, after the CIA declassified this document
(but not the photograph itself). Obviously the answer to the first
question was also positive, for the agencies involved did classify a
photograph taken on an unclassified spacecraft. As for the “complex
issues in the UN,” obviously they vanished if the United Nations never
learned of the existence of the photograph.
Secret as an onion
A cover note to the
memorandum, apparently written by the Director of Central Intelligence
William Colby himself, stated that “I confessed some question over need
to protect since: 1-USSR has it from own sats. 2-What really does it
reveal? 3-If exposed don’t we just say classified USAF work is done
there?”
Colby’s questions almost
seem naïve given the debates that have raged within the U.S.
intelligence community over decades over the need for secrecy. Those
within the intelligence community who have asked “what is the harm in
acknowledging the obvious?” have almost always lost the argument.
Government officials have
frequently argued over the need to refuse to confirm even the most
basic knowledge about things that have been widely reported in the
press for decades. For instance, the existence of the National
Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which manages America’s spy satellite
program, first became known in a 1971 New York Times article, but
arguments flared up within intelligence circles for the next twenty
years over whether or not to confirm its existence. Finally, in
September 1992 the “fact of” the existence of the NRO was revealed in a
terse press release that never even used the word “satellite.” Even
after that decision, for several years the NRO refused to confirm that
it actually conducted rocket launches, another glaringly obvious fact.
This refusal to admit the
obvious was only surpassed by Groom Lake itself. The existence of an
airstrip at Groom was first revealed when it was actually constructed.
But it was not until 1999 that the U.S. Air Force issued a terse
statement acknowledging that the facility did indeed exist, even though
photos taken on the ground and overhead had been available for decades.
In fact, at least two U.S. Geological Survey aerial photographs of
Groom taken in 1959 and 1968 had been available in public archives, but
not discovered until many years later.
To be fair, there is a
logic to this secrecy policy of refusing to confirm the “fact of” an
organization, or even an airbase in the Nevada desert. Intelligence
officials often refer to secrecy being like an onion, and each layer
that is peeled off reveals a little more of what is contained within.
Even if the next layer is visible in vague form, the advocates of
strong secrecy want to keep all the layers in place.
This policy is usually
given solid form in legal discussions within government agencies. There
the concern is not so much with foreign intelligence agencies, but with
American citizens and the press, and their ability to request the
declassification of government documents through the Freedom of
Information Act. By refusing to even acknowledge the existence of
something, government agencies have erected an outer legal barrier
against requests for information from their own citizens.
But critics of excessive
government secrecy argue that such policies are often pursued
unnecessarily, since no law requires the government to reveal anything
further about the facilities. The onion analogy holds validity, but can
also be taken too far; after all, the Soviet Union was an extremely
secret society and classified things such as road maps. This secrecy
was effective at limiting the ability of the West to determine what the
Soviets were doing, but it came at a cost, in freedom. Clearly the
United States government establishes lines where public knowledge is
deemed more important than national security, but the question is
occasionally asked where those lines should be drawn.
Secrecy critics also argue
that there is something wrong when America’s adversaries have better
information about the federal government’s actions than its own
citizens. Groom Lake had obviously been photographed numerous times by
Soviet spy satellites at high resolution. Refusing to release a single
low-resolution photograph from a Skylab mission was taking an abstract
ideal—maintaining all the layers of the onion—to an absurd extreme.
They also argue that when the government fails to confirm the obvious,
it both undermines governmental authority and legitimacy, and
contributes to wild speculation, such as aliens and soundstages in
underground hangars at Area 51. And despite the best efforts,
information will still seep out. After all, while various agencies of
the federal government were arguing over whether or not to put this
low-resolution photograph in an unclassified government archive, nobody
realized that several other higher-resolution images were already
sitting in that archive.
Nothing more is known of
this Skylab photography incident than the fact that the photograph was
not released. NASA and the State Department clearly lost the argument.
But the opponents of releasing it preserved national security, as they
defined it.
Article Source
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