Spotlight on Area 51

"I was standing on an alien engine the size of a Greyhound bus in an underground top secret Air Force base that doesn't officially exist," wrote David Adair in an article on his website. Adair, who as a teen was a rocket science prodigy, said he visited Area 51 in 1971, where he was taken to a huge clandestine hangar containing mysterious spacecraft.

Similar claims about Area 51 (Groom Lake) have been made by Bob Lazar, who in 1989 brought notoriety to the facility with his tale of being part of a crew that was involved in "reverse-engineering" huge alien craft. As news of the location spread, a bit of a tourist industry built up around the area, including the Little A'Le'Inn in Rachel, Nevada, and Highway 375, which was officially designated as The Extraterrestrial Highway.

90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the six-by-ten-mile dry lake bed known as Area 51 was reportedly begun in the 1950's to test the U-2 spy plane. Whether or not alien craft have existed there remains debatable, but it is commonly accepted that a variety of "black projects" such as the "Blackbird" and "Aurora" have been tested there. Most recently, Pres. Bush renewed the yearly secrecy exemption for the base.

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