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

by Annie Jacobsen

In the 1950s, one ancient miner hung on to his federal mining rights with such ferocity that the government ended up giving him a security clearance and briefing him on Area 51 activities rather than continuing to fight to remove him. The miner kept the secrecy oath and took Area 51’s early secrets with him to the grave.

one-millionth of a gram of plutonium will kill a person if it gets in his or her lungs.

Before joining Skunk Works, Ben Rich had only one claim to fame: being awarded a patent for designing a nickel-chromium heating system that prevented a pilot’s penis from freezing to his urine elimination pipe.

“the nucleus for NEST-related activity was established within EG&G,

Another CIA endeavor, Acoustic Kitty, involved putting electronic listening devices in house cats. But that project also backfired after too many cats strayed from their missions in search of food. One acoustic kitty got run over by a car.

The EG&G engineer’s explanation about the child pilots inside the flying disc answers the riddle of the so-called Roswell aliens, certainly in a manner that would satisfy the fourteenth-century English friar and philosopher William of Ockham. It is an answer that is not more complicated than the riddle itself.

I don't know, lady, it's pretty fucking complicated.