Again, it’s in the numbers. This book is full of instances showing that it does happen a lot, that these things are attracted to secret places, but even after this journey we still don’t know why. The entities that fly, control, manipulate these things we call UFOs—are they just looking in on us? Are they all-powerful yet benign observers? Or could they be something as simple as “time tourists”—that is, people from our own future who have come back to see history as it’s being made? This is probably the most optimistic theory of all because, as a very learned friend once told me, at least it means we have a future.
Or could it be something more sinister? Are UFOs showing up over these secret places—just as they show up over ICBM bases, nuclear power plants, nuclear weapons factories and other high-priority military targets—because they are just doing what any good military commander would do: performing intensive and extensive reconnaissance before some kind of attack begins?
And if that’s the case, how and when will we find out?
It Gets Weird, One Last Time
My second meeting with the Spook started just as the first one, with a couple beers in a half-empty bar on a weekday afternoon.
The location was not the same, though; it was nowhere near the waterfront bar where our first meeting had taken place.
This new location was a bit surprising, and at first glance as far removed from the topic of UFOs and secret bases as I could have imagined.
But there was a point to it, as I was about to find out.
We finished our beers and walked out of the bar, down the crowded sidewalk, across a busy street and through an iron gateway.
A minute later, we were sitting on two small park benches pulled together.
We were surrounded by redbrick buildings neatly laid out between geometrically perfect patches of finely trimmed lawns and lots of shady trees. This was a busy place. Many people were walking about—men and women, but mostly young people in their early twenties. By design, we’d put ourselves out of earshot of all of them.
Once settled, my friend returned to a subject he’d briefly mentioned at the bar. Glancing around our new location and at all the people passing by, he said, “You’d be surprised how many here work for the agency.”
I knew he meant the CIA.
“Or have worked for them,” he continued. “Or how many come here for a year or two. Or some for even longer. There’s a lot of them here, though. More than people realize.”
As I was taking this in, because I was indeed surprised to hear it, my Spook friend told me this story.
Years before, closer to the beginning of his intelligence career, he was on assignment at an air base in Florida that must go unnamed. One day he passed by one of the base’s buildings and noticed it was surrounded by concertina wire and heavily guarded by Air Force security personnel. The building, which was ostensibly a hospital, was also festooned with hazmat signs.
My friend had heard the rumors that something had been hidden away at Homestead Air Force Base all these years. Maybe what Nixon had shown Jackie Gleason, or maybe something else. He’d also heard that whatever it was had been moved to this other Florida base after Hurricane Andrew basically wiped Homestead off the map in 1992.
So when he later got in a conversation with one of the security people assigned to this mysterious “hospital,” he asked, half serious, “Is this where they brought the UFOs from Homestead?”
The security man just shook his head and replied, “If we had anything like that, we wouldn’t hide it here. We’d hide it in plain sight.”
And that was the point. Megiddo, all over again.
“Sure, there are secret bases,” my Spook friend told me, now with a couple decades of intelligence work under his belt. “But when you think about it, a lot of people know where they are. Your book is a good example. Most of those locations are very well known. It’s what’s done inside them that’s ‘secret.’
“But just as that security guy told me, if something is really valuable or if something is so high priority it has to be hidden away at all costs, the best way to hide it is to hide it in plain sight. Someplace where no one would ever think of looking for it. Someplace where it couldn’t be found by someone like you. That’s the way these things work.”
He looked around us and with a straight face said, “Maybe even in a place like this.”
He pointed to the redbrick buildings and continued. “It could be hidden there, or there, or there…. You’d never know.”
And for the last time, at least for this project, that’s when it got really weird.
Because where we were sitting when he was telling me all this was in the middle of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a place called the Old Yard… of Harvard University.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The following books, articles, websites and interviews were extremely helpful to me while writing this book:
Clark, Jerome. The UFO Encyclopedia: The Phenomenon from the Beginning. 2nd ed. 2 vols. Detroit: Omnigraphics, 1998
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Redfern, Nick. Keep Out! Top Secret Places Governments Don’t Want You to Know About. Pompton Plains, NJ: New Page Books, 2012
S4 and Area 51
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Interview with Norio Hayakawa, May 3, 2012
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San Luis Valley
O’Brien, Christopher. Secrets of the Mysterious Valley. Kempton, IL: Adventures Unlimited, 2007
Interview with Christopher O’Brien, May 11, 2012
Dulce Base
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Bishop, Greg. “Official name for Dulce, New Mexico underground base disclosed!!”www.ufomystic.com/2010/09/27/official-name-for-dulce-new-mexico-underground-base-disclosed/, September 27, 2010
Bishop, Greg. Project Beta. New York: Paraview-Pocket Books, 2005
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“Dulce.” http://aliens.monstrous.com/dulce.htm
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www.mufon.com
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Home
stead
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Autec
Interview with Bill Birnes, May 8, 2012
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Ong’s Hat
Interview with Michael Kinsella, July 12, 2012
www.hijackedsignal.com
http://deoxy.org/inc2.htm
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The Writings of Alexandra Bruce
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UK’s Area 51
Interview with Nick Pope, May 15, 2012
http://news.stv.tv/tayside/181127-radio-ghost-mystery-at-former-raf-station
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Interview with Andrew Hennessey, April 4, 2012
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Kapustin Yar
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Pine Gap
Interview with Nick Redfern, May 30, 2012
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HAARP
www.ufo-blogger.com
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http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2010/05/are-we-in-a-haarp-earthquake-war-20951.html
www.bariumblues.com/haarp1.htm
So many cars have been chased by flying objects along Australia’s Nullarbor Plain, one local government erected a sign warning motorists to “Beware of the UFOs.”
Photo by Robert Paul Van Beets
Some researchers say more UFOs are reported over the Falkirk section of Scotland than anywhere else in the world. But this
region is also home to the famous Rosslyn Chapel of Knights Templar lore. Could there be a connection?
Photo by S. Duffett
For nearly ten years, the United States Air Force kept the F-117 Stealth Fighter hidden from friend and foe alike by flying it out of Nevada’s highly classified Tonopah Test Range, a place even more secret than its desert neighbor, Area 51.
Photo by Trekandshoot
Explorers entering Russia’s M-Triangle in the Ural Mountains report hundreds of strange incidents, including multiple UFO sightings; meetings with aliens; unexplained noises; bizarre star formations and, in some cases, a fantastic increase in intellect, leading some to claim the area is a piece of “Heaven on Earth.”
Photo by AlxYago
In 1962, China and India fought a war over the Aksai Chin region in the Himalayan Mountains. Some UFO researchers are convinced both sides suspected a UFO base was located somewhere close to the battleground.
Photo by Daniel Prudek
Though searching for it is like chasing Alice through Wonderland, the well-hidden British Area 51 might be located surprisingly close to the equally mysterious ancient formation at Stonehenge.
Photo by David Maska
Richard Nixon and Jackie Gleason were unlikely friends who shared a love of golf. When Nixon learned of Gleason’s long fascination with UFOs, the presiden
t is said to have brought the comedian to Homestead Air Force Base in Florida to show him the wreckage of a flying disc, as well as the bodies of its occupants.
Photo © by Everett Collection Historical / Alamy
Many of America’s nuclear submarines undergo testing at AUTEC, the mysterious Caribbean facility that’s been called the United States Navy’s Area 51.
Photo courtesy of the United States Navy