Torrance, CA, newspaper on Norio's Area 51 rally (June 6)
From: francesbarwood@juno.com (Frances E Barwood)
Date: Sun, 24 May 1998 17:32:19 -0800
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--------- Begin forwarded message (reformatted by moderator) ----------
From: GroomWatch <GroomWatch@aol.com>
To: francesbarwood@juno.com
Subject: Fwd: Article on AREA 51 in Torrance Daily Breeze newspaper, SUN.
Date: Sun, 24 May 1998 03:30:56 EDT
Torrance Daily Breeze newspaper, California:
TORRANCE DAILY BREEZE, Sunday, May 17, 1998 Section B1
by Michael Gougis, Staff Writer: (quote verbatim)
SECRETS IN THE DESERT
Rumored UFOs aren't the real danger at Area 51 test facility, Torrance
man warns.
Stories about alien spacecraft and UFOs surround the military test
facility in Nevada known as Area 51, but Norio Hayakawa doesn't pay
any attention to them. To him, they just cloud the issue.
The Torrance resident's interest in the long-secret facility 90 miles
from Las Vegas has to do with more down-to-earth concerns: toxic
pollution; the possibility of weapons tests posing a danger to people
far, far away from the remote location; the potential for the abuse of
the technology that may be under wraps at the site.
"It is our tax dollars going out there. And it is the only military
facility in the nation where you will be arrested if you make it to
the guard shack. The secrecy must end," said Hayakawa, 55, a funeral
director who also is a member of a civilian intelligence group that
monitors covert government operations and black projects -
developments so secret they don't show up on the Pentagon's books.
In the past decade, Hayakawa has assembled a file of declassified
documents and other documents relating to operations at the base. One
makes reference to an antenna system so powerful that it is hazardous
to stand within 500 meters of the dish if it is pointed toward you.
Hayakawa also has a series of detailed photographs of the base showing
hangars, aircraft, radar and satellite dishes and other details.
Hayakawa has been to the edge of the secret base at least 15 times in
the past decade. He's going back in June, and he's taking some
friends.
On June 6, Hayakawa and others will host a gathering they're calling
The People's Rally, right at the border of the restricted zone, the
thousands of acres surrounding the base that the military has sealed
off to the public.
Fact and fiction
The rally is designed to draw attention to the amounts of taxpayer
dollars spent at the site, as well as the environmental damage some
fear has been done there. It is expected to draw between 400 to 800
people, from as far away as Canada and New Zealand, as word of the
event spreads via the Internet. Hayakawa maintains several Web sites,
including one devoted specifically to the test facility at Groom Lake.
Area 51 has existed in the world of fiction for some time, perhaps
most prominently as the secret military installation nearly destroyed
by very unpleasant aliens in the movie "Independence Day."
The reality is probably stranger than anything Hollywood has come up
with.
The U.S. government refused to acknowledge the base's existence for
decades. In 1994, lawsuits were filed against the government by
workers who contend they were exposed to fumes from toxic wastes that
were thrown into ditches, covered with jet fuel and burned into ash.
In response, the Air Force admitted only that an "operating facility"
is located at Groom Lake, a dry lake bed in the heart of Area 51, and
said national security prohibited any discussion of what might have
occurred there. The federal Environmental Protection Agency, also
named in the lawsuits, contended it could not enforce environmental
laws at a place that didn't officially exist.
What is actually known about the site reads like passages from a Tom
Clancy novel.
Super-secret testing
Established by the CIA in the mid-'50s, the location has served as a
test facility for the nation's most secret aircraft, including the U-2
and SR-71 spy planes and the F-117A Stealth fighter-bomber, used so
successfully in the Persian Gulf War, military analysts have
concluded.
Operations at the site, which employs between 1,800 and 2,300 people,
are funded by the government's "black" budget, a $22 billion fund used
by the CIA, the Pentagon and the National Security Agency for secret
weapons and technological development. The ground outside the buffer
zone surrounding the base is laced with sensors buried in the dirt to
detect anyone or anything moving toward the restricted zone.
"We couldn't tell you what happens there, and to be honest they don't
tell me anything," Tech. Sgt. Richard Covington of Nellis Air Force
Base's public affairs office said Friday. "I could refer you to
Washington, but that's what they'll tell you, too. It's on the base,
but it's not a Nellis asset."
Hayakawa's interest in the base stems from the years he spent living
in Albuquerque, where he befriended people who worked at military and
defense industry jobs. "They always talked about the remarkable
aircraft that were being developed in secret," he said.
Hayakawa began reading AVIATION WEEK AND SPACE TECHNOLOGY and digging
up information on advanced aircraft development. "I always have had
an interest in exotic aircraft design and military development," he
said.
Then in 1988, he read a number of articles and saw a number of
television specials that made intriguing references to the site. He
wrote to a magazine in Japan, suggesting it to do a story on the base.
Instead, a Japanese television crew contacted him.
"In 1990, I took the television crew from Japan to interview a man in
Las Vegas who said he was a government scientist working on what he
called unusual aircraft," he said. "There were about 10 of us, and we
interviewed him at his home. He said there was going to be a test,
and he gave us a map, but he refused to say what was going to be
tested."
Hayakawa and the television crew followed the map and set up cameras.
What they saw astounded them.
"We saw an incredibly bright object rise over the Groom Mountains. Its
maneuverability really impressed us, as did its brightness," he said.
Some might have concluded UFO. Others argue the object was most
probably an experimental aircraft; at extreme distances, high-speed
maneuvers performed by Earth-designed aircraft can look positively
impossible. Hayakawa sides with the latter.
UFO smoke screen?
"There's nothing extraterrestrial or strange there. It's good old
American technology," he says. "The government sits back and watches
- and sometimes manipulates - these UFO stories to keep people from
asking about the real activities there."
By the way, the two-hour television program produced by the Japanese
crew drew an audience of 40 million when it was aired in Japan, he
said.
Hayakawa has run into the security forces before. In 1991, he and his
colleagues were chased by a helicopter back to the highway, where
sheriff's deputies were waiting for them at a roadblock.
Hayakawa's concerns about Area 51 are twofold. The first is laid out
in the lawsuits filed on behalf of former workers at the site.
Two of them, Walter Kasza and Robert Frost, since have died. An
autopsy showed that Frost's body was laced with industrial toxins
rarely seen in humans, the lawsuit contends. Kasza went to doctors
for years, but none could explain why his skin was cracking so badly
his bed sheets would be covered in blood in the morning.
The lawsuits don't even seek monetary damages. Attorney and law
professor, Jonathan Turley is seeking only records that might indicate
what the workers were exposed to, or even to have them treated by
military doctors in secret.
In a demonstration of just how secretive the government is about the
subject, Turley's office at George Washington University was sealed by
a federal court order because of the classified documents he has
obtained; he can't have visitors or students in the office.
Hayakawa also has concerns about biological and chemical weapons he
says may be under development at the site, as well as unmanned
surveillance aircraft he said could be used not only in war, but
against civilians during times of peace.
"Progress is going to take place, and it's not necessarily a bad
thing. But it has the potential for abuse," he said.
"There is a danger that these projects could impact the public,
environmentally as well as in the area of privacy."
For more information, visit Hayakawa's website at "GroomWatch : Home
Page for Norio Hayakawa" at www.eagle-net.org/groomwatch
Contributing to this article were Scripps McClatchy News and The
Associated Press.
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RELEVANCE OF THIS MESSAGE: Area 51
Index: Norio Hayakawa (#15)
Index: 1998 Articles about Area 51 (#4)
Created: May 24, 1998
