Host Annie Jacobsen, its start with definitions. Whats area 51 . Guest thats a secret basese out in nevada where all kinds of mysterious things happen that you and i can talk about and maybe we know what is going on out there maybe we dont. Host whew its called area 51. Guest big debate. I believe its called area 51 because of the original project that went on us there in 1951. Information given to me by some of the sources that i interviewed at length for that book, but of course, everything about area 51 is kind of a mussel inside of a palestine sol thats debated. The actual origins, the original date, the origin story of area 51. Host in 1951 what was going on . The Atomic Energy commission was doing loots of Nuclear Testing out there in the middle of the desert, and they wanted to keep what they were doing secret, and the cia was kind of coming into existence with its programs, and the two merged in this idea of if you have a secret base in a secret place you can do secret programs. Host not a military operation . Necessarily . Guest well, area 51 has every organization you can imagine there over the decades. Military, Intelligence Community, Atomic Energy commission. So, everybody has their foot in area 51. Host what is operation paper clip . What was person paperclip . Guest i guess the idea of my books can from the books if hey written before, and when i was finishing up area 51, i learned quite a bit about some nazi scientist were here working on programs and i found this fascinating in particular ay imt fellow named sigfried neimeier, fare important air force Technical Intelligence person, and when he retired in the 70s he was given the Defense Departments distinguisheded civilian service award. So thats kind of this incredibly high honor to get from the pentagon. And when i looked into his pastt i learned that he had been during the war, world were 2, he head been one of the most important Technical Intelligence officers for gehring of the the houston i thought how do you work wore one skies then the other side and thats why i wrote operation paper klein. That was the springboard of the journey. Host what was operation paper clip . To bring nazi scientists to u. S. Correct. Guest yes, after the war we brought as plane as 1600 nazi scientist create our weaponsur o program. This brings up a lot of moral questions and what i found most intriguing about writing theng book, of all my books, trying to maintain this neutral position and looking at both sides 0 the argument because many people will tell you paper clip was imperative. We had to bring the nazi scientists to the United States in order to beat back the russians. Others would kell you how could be bring this nazis sneer someis were war criminals. Theres dod weapons policy forr you in nutshell, i. E. , extremely complicated and always two sides of the argument. Host what is the pentagonss brain . Guest pentagons brain, buck number three for me. That idea came from paper clip when i editor dish was finishing up with pain clear and werner von braun a famous scientist, create of Rocket Program and responsible for the pay poll low program. Si host he was a nazi scientist guest hitlers robert rocket builder and my editor at little brown asked me, what win on with van braun in such a such a year and i looked into and it found out that this was in 1957. That this new agency was emerging the pentagon and waitit called arpa, advanced Research Project agency. We know is at darpa with a d for defense. When they were beginning this organization, the query was who is this best scientist in america to lead the program . To lead all of American Military technology in what is calledmi blue sky research, and the chose von braun, and the was interviewed for the job but his caveat, to take the job was, i need to bring 12 of my colleagues from the rocketee program and they were all former nazis. So that was the dividing line for the pentagon. They said no. And they passed on von braun being darpas first director, and but the way that it came about of call it the pentagons brain was realizing that the Defense Department is looking at the great minds. Thats what theyre concerned with. They want to know who will lead us in technology of the future . Host what are the thing that have come out of darpa. Guest i mean, you name it. The most famous is, of course, the internet, which wasur originally called the a. Pa net arpa net but techer tollings like gps, Laser Weapons no end to what the pentagon produces. Theres reason to say thates rs Artificial Intelligence is a darpa product. Biotechnology. So, theres the idea that the pentagon this is important to think about. Darpa is the most powerful and most productive military Science Agency in the world, and so few people know about it. Thats pretty much wife i wrote the book in a nutshell. It was like, how can this agency be so significant, kind of changing and shaping our world, if you will, and yet its Public Perception its close to zero. Host psychokinesis. Guest book number four nor me that i have just publishedded last week, is the idea of the book is called phenomena, about the governments investigations into extra sensory perception, and psycho kinesis. Extra sensory perception, gaining knowledge through means other than the five known senses, psycho kinesis, the ability to move objectses with the mind. These are subjects that manysu scientist is will tell you pseudo science. I came off this hard book, the pentagons brain, and on the other side of the spectrum, called squishy science but the pentagon exDefense Departments, hentagon, are interested in these subjects. Host taxpayer dollars spent studying psychokinesis and espn. Guest yes. This goes back by the way look, all roads lead back to the nazis. Find certainly when im investigating and reporting on Defense DepartmentWeapons Programs and Intelligence Community intelligence collection programs and esp, the phenomena leads back to nazis. Were talk can decades of research in the area, still going on today, but the original programs came from the idea that after the war we head a intelligence collection unit called operation al foss. That began in the end when the war was going on. And we sent our sort of finest scientists to try and capture Nazi Technology and we did, and this is the link between all of my books. So, one of the cache of documents we found, this links up to the book phenomena was part of me lers organization and in that organization he was investigating extra sensory perception, psychokinesis, and when we got these documents they became very interesting to a lot of individuals in the military Intelligence Community. Bout guess who get half of the documents . The russians. So anything we knew they had, we were worried about who would win the race and that is how the psychic arms race began. Same way the over in the hard Science Department you had the rocket arms race, that idea of getting man into space began with captured nazi documents, v2s and scientists, literally von braun. It host was your career arc to be an historian, talking about National Security affair snooze not at all. Fate and circumstances intervene, its an interesting concept for me to write about, about how how circumstance has a role in the path that one is on. I wanted to be a novelist when i was younger. And i went away to boarding school with a typewriter when i was 15, and i was going to be the Great American novelist, and decade passed and nat was not the case, and i one of my mentors said to me, stop making things up. Pursue the truth. Its the truth that matters. She also pointed out i had a little difficulty following direction, and that if i work with an editor, at a newspaper, or a magazine, i would learn how to follow direction and that was exactly what i did. It was extraordinarily help for me and i tell anyone interested to do that. If youre willing to take criticism about your work and work with very smart individuals who can help you streamline your ideas and pull out what is really important and send you on other paths and suggest you interview different people, that becomes, i think, an enormously powerful journey, when you bring other great minds into the mix to kind of direct you, and then you kind of wind up where youre headed. Thats my experience. Host how did you get started on area 51. Guest that was fate and circumstance intervening. I also think luck comes into play. What was interesting writing the book on extra sensory perceptios and psycho kin sunny sis is a lot of psychokinesis is that scientists who lean first the super natural talk about including coincidence and say these are these these fall into the category ofel extrasensory perception. A very squishy science concept but i like thinking bit because of this question that youut brought up. So, how does one get a lucky break . You could say, fortune favors the prepared mind. He if youre always reading and writing and thinking and working on subjects that are of interest to you, then circumstance intervenes and you are on your way, but specifically with area 51 i was at a dinner party with seated next to a gentleman named ed lovic who is a distant nationally member. Always under the impression he was an aircraft designer because i new he worked for lockheed, and he leaned over to me one day in must have been 2007 or 2008 and he said, boy, have ii got an interesting story for you. At the time i was reporting on terrorism. He said he read was reading what i jet enjoyed reading it. So what was his interesting story . And he said the cia just declassified my lifes work. I invented Stealth Technology i was a physicist that led the team and this goes back to when eisenhower was president and this is a remarkable lead for a reporter to get. I went to the cia and of course lo and beholds they just declassified this Aircraft Program called ox cart. That took place at area 51. At so then i began to work with lovic, talking to him about this role in the science and tech knowingly role building this incredible aircraft and i learned, ahha, theres a back story to the back story and a lot of tangents that are super interesting and all going fall on the axis of area 51 and thats how i got the idea of the book. Host when did the larger bill clinton aware of area 51 . Guest well, thats pa great question. Its very interesting in terms of u. S. National security but a be when you become at that time what a powerful potent idea area 51, the fact it remains almost unknown to the general population, until the early 1990s, is astonishing. Talk about being able to keep a secret. I mean, make the analogy in theb book about the Manhattan Project, same idea. Even Vice President harry truman did not know about host or congress. Guest or congress. The one funding the program did not know about the program. E so, i think secretkeeping is very interesting. I write about it in all of my books. But to your question, it wasnt untillen individual named roberd lazarr squeaked this built of news out whichland on the edge of conspiracy, and then area 51 became known and that is the origin of an extraordinary amount of Conspiracy Theory that grew out of that base and still exists about that base. And there are still things going on there now. Host who is robert lazar. Guest an interesting, lets say, engineer and was out the base and su things host he was working there. Guest yes. S. People will tell you he never worked there again, you know,te the myth inside the puzzle inside the conundrum but he stood by his position he saw an alien, and then you get into to as i was reporting the story, all these realms of black propaganda and did they dress someone up and make them look like an alien . This idea of mythology and misinformation and disinformation is part andnf parcel to area 51. Real to all of the book i have written. The subject jazz you talk about you have to sign an oath if you are working at area 51. By the way is it called area 51 by people who work there or guest yes and no. When i was interview thingngthec scientists who pocked that and the spies and by lots they called ill loon lake, or thend ranch, and of course, what is fascinating or was to me was that the actual word area 51 was classified when i was writing the book. Its since been declassified because president obama referred to it publicly. N that is a quick way to declassify something. But when i was looking at those documents we were talking about easterly yes, the ox cart documents wow would be read andi then be a small word redacted, like blacked over and if you look at into the light thats area 51 and out of Something Like 7,000 pages pages of docums that i reviewed, i found two places where someone forgot to block out area 51. So you would see it there and it was an ahha moment. Host lazar. La las vegas television, what happened . Guest well, he went on tvap and made this claim that host local channel in las vegas. Guest yes, yes, and saidid there were there was Alien Technology and there was an alien out there, and people have been fascinated with ufos and for millennium. Thats so so this was like setting off a match in dry grass. S the people went the story built and it became kind of a firestorm and i think that that has since become a great point of contention and why area 51 is on such a lockdown issue because people will not move off the idea that there are aliens out there many people believe that and still do. Host what kind of cooperation did you get from various government agencies, or trade to work with. Guest everybody book is different. Every book is different. Theres a dance, i think, done with journalists because remember that just basic job of the journalist is to inform the public. In spirit youre really not even supposed to have an opinion so one would think you would want to work with transparent elements of the government to also make things known, but i find in my experience that current, lets say, like, the p. R. Office of the agencies, they only want to present a certain message, and that is not thats a message, not a fact, lets say. So where i do most of my reporting is in interviewing scientists who are retired who worked on very significant programs for these individual agencies, and are acutely aware of what they can speak of and what they cannot because its still classified. And because i also write about a lot of cold war programs, things that were incredibly interesting and involved extraordinary classification measures decade ago, everyone wanted to know about them then then but could not. When they become declassified the pock has moved on and i the public has moved on and i find that by tracking down thet scientists, the super men of science, theyre happy to share their stories because people have lost interest. Its an idea that its important to know the past to safeguard the future and thats the greatest joy with working with defense scientists, who are dedicated patriots, who believe in what they did, but are also especially asia getid older willing to share the pitfalls, the failures, and the press office of any given military or Intelligence Agency does not want to talk about failure, period. They only want to talk about success. , and i think theres a danger in that. Thats a theme in all of my books. Not to ridicule a failure, but, rather, to demonstrate that failure is part of success, but we must be very careful and about trying to cover up failure. Host how much of what goes on or did go on at area 51 is still classified and. Guest i mean, if i host or dont you know . Guest this is the analogy. Its sometimes said i wrote the book on area 51, but if you imagine an iceberg and you think of how much of the iceberg youer see and then however is below the surface, i probably if you planted a flag the top of the iceberg thats probably what i reported, in a 450 page book. What has been what has gone on there and what can continues to go on there boggles the mind. We could talk about Tunnel Technology for three more hours. When you think you have whats going on at area 51, a lot of tunnel systems city base,ing this goes on there. These are the great mysteries if cant wait to write area 52. Host have you become a freedom of information request expert . Guest most definitely. My kids i filed so many foia requests that sometimes the often come in the mail and their i theyre usually anally eight eightbyten1 2s and say nsa or dod or cia, and theyre the thin envelopes because that means you open up one sheet of paper and it says, request nonresponsive, meaning, sorry, we cant find any information. Every now and then you get a bigger envelope and that sort of a great moment of joy. That happen with phenomenak acame i came home country and was thick pact from the central Intelligence Agency and there are were almost a thousand pages of documents on the esp and psychokinesis programs that wer bays of pomona. I learn that the apollo astronaut ed mitchell was doing tests going to the moon. Details are priceless. Host lets go to phenomenas you visited Edgar Mitchell and Tell White House he was, but you visited him in his last part of his life. Guest yes. The way i got the idea to writee phenomena, the park was researching pentagons brain. Look to go apollo image library, and i found this image and it shows an astronaut standing on the moon, reading a document, and i thought, oh, my god, this is an incredible image. You have advanced science i mean, space travel and proto technology, writing, reading, in this one image, and i had to know what that astronaut was reading on the moon. First i found out it was Ed