Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base

by Annie Jacobsen

For months I asked the engineer why President Truman didn’t use the remains from the Roswell crash to show the world what an evil, abhorrent man Joseph Stalin was. I guessed that maybe Truman didn’t want to admit the breach of U.S. borders. For a long time, I never got an answer, just a shaking of the head. Here was the engineer who had the answer to the riddle inside the riddle that is Area 51, but he was unwilling to say more. He is the only one of the original elite group of EG&G engineers who is still alive. He said he wouldn’t tell me more, no matter how many times I asked. One day, I asked again. “Why didn’t President Truman reveal the truth in 1947?” This time he answered. “Because we were doing the same thing,” he said. “They wanted to push science. They wanted to see how far they could go.” Then he said, “We did things I wish I had not done.” Then, “We performed medical experiments on handicapped children and prisoners.” “But you are not a doctor,” I said. “They wanted engineers.” “On whose authority did you act?” “The Atomic Energy Commission was in charge. And Vannevar Bush,” he said. “People were killed. In this great United States.” “Why did we do that?” “You do what you do because you love your country, and you are told what you are doing is for the good of the country,” the engineer said. Meaning out at the original Area 51, starting in 1951, the EG&G engineers worked in secret on a nefarious Nazi-inspired black project that would remain entirely hidden from...