Americas...:CIA Acknowledges Area 51 Test Site for First Tim...

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CIA Acknowledges Area 51 Test Site for First Time

Local Editor

The US government has finally confirmed the existence of the mysterious aviation test site Area 51 in Nevada, but the test site does not involve UFOs or extraterrestrial beings.

After decades of extreme secrecy surrounding the site, the CIA lifted the mystery off Area 51 in response to a public records request from George Washington University scholars in Washington, D.C.

Publicly released online on Thursday by the university's National Security Archive, the 400-page CIA history contains the first deliberate official references to Area 51, also known as Groom Lake, as a site developed by the intelligence agency in the 1950s to test fly the high-altitude U-2 reconnaissance plane.

"It's the first time that there must have been a senior-level decision to acknowledge the term 'Area 51' and its specific location," archive senior fellow Jeffrey Richelson told Reuters on Friday.

"AEC Chairman Admiral Lewis Strauss readily agreed, and President Eisenhower also approved the addition of this strip of wasteland, known by its map designation as Area 51, to the Nevada Test Site," the document mentioned.

To make the barren new facility seem more appealing to its workers, managers of the U-2 program dubbed the facility "Paradise Ranch," which was later shortened to "the Ranch."

"What readers of the CIA study will find is that CIA tests its U-2 and A-12 reconnaissance aircraft at the site in Nevada sometimes referred to as 'Area 51,'" CIA spokesman Edward Price said. "What readers won't find are any references to aliens or other conspiracy theories best left to the realm of science fiction."

Moreover, Richelson noted that the CIA declassified document makes no mention of UFO theories, but pointed to one passage that discusses the relationship between U-2s and unidentified flying objects. "In the sense that people sighted U-2s in a time that they were very secretive and at very high altitude and didn't know what they were, and in that sense they were UFOs."

Source: News Agencies, edited by website team