I had actually meant to diary about this last year, but I didn't want the story to get lost amidst all the election hubub. It really is an important story.
Area 51 is also known as Dreamland, Groom Lake, Nellis Airforce Base, The Box, and other names. It has a well established placed in the history of modern UFOlogy. I beleieve the US Government has used the mythos of Area 51 to avoid deeper scrutiny in the matter which you are about to read. So, like most things, it's best to start at the beginning.
The Death of Robert Frost:
"My husband came home one day screaming," says Helen Frost, whose late husband, Robert, was a sheet- metal worker at Area 51. "He was screaming, 'My face is on fire.' His face was bright red and swollen up like a basketball. Then he got three- inch scars on his back. A year later, he died."
This happened in 1989. The official cause of death was cirrhosis of the liver due to heavy drinking. However there is this:
a sample of his [liver] tissue had been sent to Dr. Peter Kahn, a biochemist at Rutgers University and a former member of the Agent Orange Commission.
Kahn found high levels of lethal toxins in Frost's fatty tissue. Those chemicals, Kahn said, likely worsened his liver ailment and hastened his death. As to where the toxins came from, Kahn wrote: "Continued exposure to the smoke from the incineration of these materials could result in above-normal levels of dioxins and dibenzofurans found in the tissue samples of Robert Frost."
Robert Frost was not the only Area 51 worker to develop mysterious symptoms:
Men who worked there from the late 1970s into the early 1990s say that inhaling the smoke resulted in persistent respiratory distress, cancers and strange rashes.
"Fish scales," the workers call these hard membranes. Some use sandpaper to remove the embarrassing growths from their hands, feet, legs and arms, but they keep coming back. They slather themselves with Crisco to stop their skin from blistering and cracking.
It seems pretty obvious that no amount of drinking would cause these types of symptoms. So what happened at Area 51 after Robert Frost died? He was replaced as foreman by a man named Wally Kasza. What happened to Wally Kasza:
For years the doctors couldn't figure out why Wally was coughing so much, why his skin cracked and bled, turning their bedsheets red. They prescribed unguents, antibiotics, decongestants, pain killers. His guts ached for years, too, and when they finally found the kidney cancer, even morphine didn't help the pain. He died in April 1995, a wraith, 73 years old.
So now we have 2 deaths of Area 51 workers, who worked the same job at the facility. What was the government's response to these deaths, and requests for information on the toxic substances these workers were being exposed to? The continued denial that the base even existed. In response to what was rightly perceived as a complete lack of accountability, the widow of Robert Frost and 6 John Doe plaintiffs filed a law suit against the USAF and EPA. It was filed on their behalf by noted constitutional scholar and attorney Jonathan Turley. Wally Kasza was one of the John Does.
Jonathan Turley files lawsuit:
As stated earlier, in 1994 Jonathan Turley filed a lawsuit on behalf of Robert Frost's widow, and 6 Area 51 workers listed as John Doe 1-6. Wally Kasza's widow has no replaced him in this action. If you don't think the US Governement takes this seriously:
If Turley seems paranoid -- he avoids using hotel phones, travels under phony names, swears he is being tailed -- he has his reasons.
His campus office remains sealed by federal court order -- students and others are not allowed to enter because the government says Turley's files hold documents that are classified. In a letter, a Justice Department attorney helpfully called Turley's attention to the specific statute that, "as you know, prohibits unauthorized possession of national security information" and provides a mandatory 10 years in prison for violators. (Turley is appealing the order that classified his office.)
One thing you need to understand about this suit. It was not about money. The workers simply wanted to know what chemicals they had been exposed to, an admission of these acts, and an apology. So what was the result of this legal action? From Wikipedia:
Citing the State Secrets Privilege, the government petitioned trial judge U.S. District Judge Philip Pro (sitting in the United States District Court for the District of Nevada in Las Vegas) to disallow disclosure of classified documents or examination of witnesses on secret matters, alleging this would expose classified information and threaten national security. When Judge Pro rejected the government's argument, President Bill Clinton issued a Presidential Determination, exempting what it called, "The Air Force's Operating Location Near Groom Lake, Nevada" from environmental disclosure laws. Consequently, Pro dismissed the suit due to lack of evidence. Turley appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, on the grounds that the government was abusing its power to classify material. Secretary of the Air Force Sheila E. Widnall filed a brief which stated that disclosures of the materials present in the air and water near Groom, "Can reveal military operational capabilities or the nature and scope of classified operations." The Ninth Circuit rejected Turley's appeal, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear it, putting an end to the complainants' case.
The President continues to annually issue a determination continuing the Groom exception . This, and similarly tacit wording used in other government communications, is the only formal recognition the U.S. Government has ever given that Groom Lake is more than simply another part of the Nellis complex.
OK. So where are we? We have 2 dead sheet metal workers, who died after having mysterious and painful symptoms which seemed to indicate exposure to toxins. We also have a biopsy on the liver of one of the dead workers, which shows extremely high levels of dioxin and other toxins. We also know that they had huge burning pits at Area 51 where material was being destroyed, as the smoke covered the base. So what exactly were they burning?
The wastes burned -- resins, hardening compounds and solvents called furans (used in the anti-radar coating of Stealth aircraft) -- are said to cause dioxin-related health problems like liver damage, skin diseases and birth defects.
So now we know why the governement claims it can't reveal which chemicals were being burned. It claims that revealing these chemicals would allow our enemies to know secrets of stealth technology. So the story ends here, right? Wrong? From reviewjournal.com:
in an unclassified May 19, 2005, "Safety Supplement" that was pulled along with other technical documents last month from a Web site at Robins Air Force Base, Ga., emergency responders are warned about the danger of inhaling "hazardous byproducts of burning wreckage" of F-117A Nighthawk fighter jets. (snip)
an independent writer and policy analyst, Stephen Schwartz, said he "started poking around the Web" to explore the Air Force One documents and found a technical order that dealt with rescue and mishap response information pertaining to stealth jets, particularly the F-22A Raptor and the F-117A Nighthawk. (snip)
He found the safety supplement April 12 on a Web page maintained by the Air Force Civil Engineering Support Agency. It was removed a few days later.
"It listed all the different materials they're made of and what happens to them when they burn so that you have to know what happens when you breathe it," he said by phone Wednesday from Chicago.
To not have given the Area 51 workers the same information and then for the government to go to great extent to have similar information redacted from court documents "is incredibly wrong and quite unfair," he said.
"The people who built the planes were told, 'Forget it. You're not going to get this information because it's classified,' and yet it's not," he said.
For the F-117A, the safety supplement lists "hazardous byproducts of burning wreckage" as hydrogen cyanide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid, phosgene and formaldehyde.
It appears that the governement, by now removing this information, has decided that covering their asses is more important than the health of rescue workers. It should also be noted that Lockheed, who actually built the Stealth fighters, has compensated their injured workers. It seems like there are one of 2 conclusions you can draw; either the governement is simply covering their asses (there are now lawsuits filed by both widows seeking compensation, in addition to the Turley suit) or (cue X-Files music) they are burning something else. I believe the government has taken advantage of Area 51's "reputation" to avoid any serious scrutiny of it's actions in this case. These actions need to be exposed.