My Trip Inside Area 51

Crossposted from MikeGerber.com:

Okay, so right off the bat know: they didn't talk about aliens. Which was a shame, because the crowd at the Santa Monica Public Library was Ready for Contact. They were, in fact, aching for it, them and their kids, and got kinda belligerent when it didn't happen. (After all, 64 years is a long time to wait.) The jittery guy next to me—who smelled of stale weed and had something in his breast pocket that clinked every time he shifted in his seat—actually left in a huff when it was clear the Grays were not going to be invited to this lecture.

But you could tell that by glancing at the stage. These people weren't ufologists, they were octogenarians, secret soldiers in the Cold War: Bob Murphy, a mechanic at the base beginning in 1952; Ken Collins, a CIA pilot who flew the A-12 Oxcart (a variant of the SR-71 Blackbird); Edward Lovick, a CIA physicist who "invented stealth technology" (somehow I think that might've been a team effort); and Wayne Pendleton, who was in charge of Area 51's radar range. Plus, of course, the author of the book Area 51, LA Times reporter Annie Jacobsen.

Area 51 has gotten a lot of press, mainly off of one seven-page section which reports the claim that Stalin sent over a saucer-shaped aircraft piloted by genetically engineered children, as the World's Most Convoluted and Useless Psy-Op. When this was brought up, the author was rather curt, saying that it was essentially external to the book—one source, which she believes to be valid, but could not verify. Putting on my publishing x-ray specs, I suspect Jacobsen turned in a sober, mildly interesting manuscript that did not discuss Roswell, and her publisher rightly insisted that the UFO crash was the sizzle to this steak. So Jacobsen added this outrageous, completely unverifiable account—which, as usual, has no possible ramifications for the contemporary American reader. When Jon mentioned this "Stalin did Roswell" theory to me, I immediately thought, "limited hangout"—an intelligence term for a partial disclosure of information that satisfies external curiosity without addressing the larger questions. And indeed these larger questions were not even raised last night, when Dr. Lovick, the panel's expert, said he "didn't know why anybody would even attempt a circular airframe."

All this leads us back to an old problem: for the better part of 60 years, the government has claimed what crashed at Roswell was a weather balloon. Now we have this "reliable source" giving us another theory. If this source is right, then the government has been lying. If the source is wrong, then Jacobsen's own credibility is cast in serious doubt. Whatever the outcome—the government has an incredibly strong commitment to misleading its citizens, or our media is being played like a fiddle—we're the ones getting screwed.

I don't mean to be too hard on Jacobsen—it's basically one woman against the entire military-industrial complex—but with that asymmetry, forgive me if I don't think she was in charge. Last night, Jacobsen was nothing if not professional, gliding the conversation effortlessly through the U2 program, the development of its much faster and cooler replacement, and the scads of A-bomb tests that were held next door, with a few splashes of Cold War color along the way. I particularly liked Collins' story about downed U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers. After Powers was exchanged for a Red spy and returned to the US, he had dinner at Collins' house. Powers talked about being thrown in the Lubyanka, the USSR's most famous prison; while there he met a Lithuanian prisoner.

"How long have you been in?" the airman asked.
"Seven years," the Lithuanian answered.
"What crime did you commit?"
"They haven't told me yet."

Boy am I glad we don't live in a country where people are detained indefinitely without charge! Thank GOD we won the Cold War, huh? All that secrecy and defense money was totally worth it.

Jacobsen did address the other Area 51 conspiracies, namely that the moon landings were faked there, and that there's a system of tunnels linking the base to other bases in the area. Her explanation for the moon landing theory I found totally plausible: the craters created by underground nuke tests were structurally similar to the ones found on the Moon, so astronauts went there to practice. And indeed there are tunnels linking the bases—which of course you'd expect. As usual, however, "conspiracy theories" were treated as something worth ridicule, instead of what they really are: a completely rational, predictable response to a world where people in authority are always lying to you. If Roswell was a bad idea of Stalin's, why not release that file? If not in 1947, how about in 1977, when detente was in full swing? Both sides of the Cold War could have a good giggle at a monstrous leader neither approved of anymore. It's not deviant psychology that spurs conspiracy theories like the ones that have sprung up around Area 51—its the cult and culture of government secrecy for its own sake. Making fun of conspiracy theorists is blaming the victim, and that's ugly, especially when it's cloaked in a supposed respect for "the truth."

Though it was an enjoyable hour and fifteen minutes and everybody seemed genuinely nice, nothing I heard made me want to read Jacobsen's book, the gist of which seems to be, "Area 51 is a secret government base where the CIA and Air Force ran reconnaissence missions, developed new aircraft, and reverse-engineered MiGs." In other words, what every 12-year-old who's read about the Skunkworks already knows. Only to the mainstream press is this information worth a book. It changes the story of the Cold War not one little bit. It's actually more interesting as a way to judge just how ineffective the press has been—here in the land of the free, it's taken us 60 years for the MSM to recognize the existence of something that…obviously exists.

But this isn't just the press' fault—everybody onstage took the necessity of massive government secrecy as a given, and nobody in the audience was ready to challenge them on this. Except for one guy—when we were breaking up, a male voice shouted, "What about Roswell?"

Nobody answered.

—Mike Gerber

Vigintillion Dollar Friday

Things have been busy and I've fallen out of the habit of giving out money for five dollar Fridays. This is problem because I made a vow to double the amount donated for every day I was late. This means I now owe over $1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to Antiwar.com, a number slightly smaller than the number of atoms in the observable universe. Right now we're engaged in negotiations to see if I can cover some of this with coupons to wash their car.

In the meantime, I'm getting started again with a $20 donation for the past month's worth of five dollar Fridays to The Real News. I encourage you to send them some money too, because they have until June 8th to max out a $200,000 matching grant, and currently they're only at $60,000.

—Jonathan Schwarz

We're All Going to Die

Living in the United States is like being over Iowa on a cross country plane trip heading west when the captain gets on the intercom and explains that there's a tunnel through the Rocky Mountains and they're going to use it to fly through to the other side. You just have to PRAY TO JESUS CHRIST that they know they're lying to you.

For instance, here's an article about Robert Lutz, who used to be vice chairman of GM:

"We are no longer the richest, most all-powerful nation in the world, where we can afford to pay each other high salaries and high wages and high benefits and import $19 DVD players from China," Lutz said in an interview.

"That is not going to work. We pay for it in IOUs called Treasury bills..."

The scary reality is that Lutz almost certainly believes this, and doesn't understand the difference between the U.S. trade deficit and the U.S. federal budget deficit. That would be a drag but wouldn't matter too much if he were a normal person, but it's dangerous considering that he's at the pinnacle of American power.

The trade deficit is the difference between the value of things we sell to the world and the value of things we buy. We have to make up the difference by selling U.S. assets, but there's no reason they have to be treasury bills—they can be real estate in New York, movie studios in Los Angeles, or even stock in GM. The trade deficit was gigantic toward the end of the Clinton administration even as the federal government was running a surplus.

That's not to say the trade deficit, which is huge, isn't a real problem. It is. But the textbook way to solve it is by letting the value of the dollar fall. However, most U.S. elites hate that idea because, while that would increase the long-term well-being of most Americans, it would make U.S. elites relatively less powerful compared to foreign elites in the short run.

But people like Bob Lutz somehow have gotten it into their head that budget deficits are bad and trade deficits are bad and they're the same thing and he was just at a fundraiser with Mitch McConnell and they had a great discussion about how the only way to restore manufacturing in America is to finally by god cut that damn Medicare.

Anyway, the point is that we're all going to die when Bob Lutz and friends confidently plow this plane straight into the side of the Rockies.

—Jonathan Schwarz

I Steal Pets

Of course I do, but this isn't about me, it's about Rachel Bloom:

Man, that's great work. I heard about it by following Tami Sagher, who wrote and performed one of the funniest segments ever on This American Life.

—Jonathan Schwarz

Surprise!

Shadows and Fog, a Woody Allen movie that came out in 1992, is atrocious. But it does contain one of the most surprising moments in the history of world cinema. It's neither a good surprise nor a bad surprise; it's just...surprising. I think anyone who's honest with themselves can admit that they expected to live and die without ever seeing this:

This Is Not a Form of Brainwashing. This Is Not a Form of Brainwashing.

Happy Memorial Day.

—Jonathan Schwarz