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'Spy' turns focus on buffer area

GROOM MOUNTAIN RANGE -- A mule deer darted through a stand of Joshua trees as Glenn Campbell made his ascent on Freedom Ridge.

The sight of the stag, with its rack bobbing as it ran for the horizon, epitomized free access to the ridge that the Air Force wants to withdraw from public land for a buffer to keep its secret Groom Lake base out of view.

Sealing off the ridge to public access would be like putting up a curtain after the Cold War, according to Campbell.

"We're still fighting the Soviets," he said about the activities believed to take place at the Groom Lake base, 35 miles west of Alamo.

"There's an element in there still fighting the Cold War," he said. The base is where the Aurora, a hypersonic spy plane is believed to be housed along with other high-speed, high-altitude aircraft that reportedly have been built with so-called "black budget" government funds.

On a hazy morning last month, Campbell, a self-employed, 34-year-old former computer programmer, wound his sport utility vehicle through a maze of dusty, bumpy trails leading to a ridge that overlooks Groom Lake.

Two men wearing camouflaged fatigues and traveling in a white Jeep Cherokee with U.S. government license plates followed Campbell, never letting him out of their sight. They kept their vehicle about a half mile behind Campbell's.

Once, Campbell stopped to unscrew an antenna from an electronic-sensing device that someone had hidden along the trail. After driving past that point, he replaced the antenna.

A sensor detects vehicles passing beside it. Without the antenna, signals can't be transmitted.

It was Campbell's way of debugging the bugging device. He called it being "stealthy."

Campbell admits he is somewhat of a spy on his government. He has scribbled "Psycho Spy" with a black pen on the rocks of Freedom Ridge. He and dozens of others also have left their mark. Campbell adds a date each time he goes there.

He relishes experiences like on this November morning when a Blackhawk helicopter, dispatched from the base, thundered overhead, 40 yards away on the public side of the Nellis Air Force Range. He says they know who he is and that he is not an intruder.

"I'm completely open about what I do. I sneak, but I'm a spy that stays entirely within the law," he said.

Since coming to Lincoln County from Boston a year ago, Campbell has formed the Secrecy Oversight Council - a private research and publishing company based in Rachel, a hamlet on state Route 375 of about 100 people who live mostly in trailers sprawled in a high desert valley along the base of the Groom Mountain Range. That is where he also operates the Area 51 Research Center.

"What I see out here is this heavy duty secrecy that could keep anything under wraps. I'm spying for the American people." he said.

Rachel is best-known for its mystique about unidentified flying objects. A gallery of photographs in the Little A Le' Inn, a tavern and social hub of the community, documents the history of sightings.

Taking a sip of Mountain Dew, Campbell says he's never seen a UFO or flying saucer, but once he saw great orbs of light that hung in the sky for five minutes. "They looked like little suns. They were magnesium flares on parachutes," he said, attributing the "sighting" to Air Force activities.

"I don't think you can trust any big organization without some controls on it. When you take that away, it becomes defending egos instead of the nation. If you take away the oversight, they're bound to be abuses," Campbell said.

The widow of a sheet-metal worker who helped build hangars at the Groom base alleged in a federal lawsuit that abuses did occur in connection with environmental laws that regulate the disposing of hazardous waste. Helen Frost claimed in the wrongful death suit last summer that her late husband, Robert Frost, and others at the base inhaled toxic fumes and smoke from chemicals that were burned in open pits near where they worked.

A federal judge dismissed the case, ruling that Frost and her daughters did not prove dioxins in the fumes hastened her husband's death from a liver disorder. The lawsuit named Lockheed Corp. as a defendant, because the company was a government contractor at the base, also known as Area 51.

The Air Force has never acknowledged that chemicals such as those used for coatings on radar-evading Stealth aircraft were burned in open pits near the base, nor has the Air Force acknowledged that the base exists.

Nevertheless, Frost has compliled a list of 55 workers who either saw the burn pits or who have developed symptoms such as skin and liver disorders they believe could be linked to exposure to dioxins that were released when more than 3,000 partially filled barrels of liquid chemicals were burned during the 1980s.

Frost, of North Las Vegas, has asked Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., to investigate.

. Meanwhile, state Environmental Protection Division officials met with Air Force officials Nov. 23 to discuss hazardous materials used at the base.

"We talked about three potential areas where burning took place or might have taken place including a fire training area and a documents destruction burn facility. You've always got to believe burning might have taken place in a landfill," said Lew Dodgion, the division's administrator.

Dodgion said Air Force officials agreed to make records of their hazardous chemical inventory and disposal practices available.

"There are some environmental reports that have been done, but they're classified," he said. The only employee on Dodgion's staff with a clearance to visit the base, Thomas Fronapfel, "will physically inspect the records and do whatever on-site inspection is necessary."

Fronapfel's probe won't be completed until about mid-January, Dodgion said.

Campbell said he suspects the government "is protecting programs that were designed to defend against the Soviets."

Exactly what occurs at the Groom Lake base is not known beyond the military and civilian employees who hold special clearances for access to it.

Officially, the base does not exist. Government maps show only a dry lake bed on the fringe of the northeast corner of the Nevada Test Site, some 100 miles north of Las Vegas. Asked about the existence of the base and activities there, Nellis Air Force Base officials respond with, "We have nothing for you on Groom Lake."

Yet, photographs show an active base operates on the dry lake bed. It is complete with a six-mile runway, hangars big enough to house a space shuttle, fuel tank farms, radar equipment and satellite dishes pointed upward.

Three Boeing 737s sit parked on the tarmac, waiting to shuttle workers back to McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, said Campbell, who added he has monitored radio transmissions of the flights. It's logical, he said, that the 737s also carry workers to and from Palmdale, Calif., where the Lockheed Advanced Development Co.'s aircraft plant is located.

On Oct. 18, the Bureau of Land Management published a request by the Air Force in the federal register to withdraw 3,972 acres of public land, including Freedom Ridge, at the south end of the Groom Mountain Range, to "ensure public safety and the safe and secure operation of activities in the Nellis Air Force Range complex."

Jackie Gratton, a realty specialist for the BLM's Las Vegas District, said, "The land proposed for withdrawal won't be utilized for bombing, nor environmentally damaged by extensive use or major construction of structures."

Federal law allows the Air Force two years to win approval of the land withdrawal before the land can be open again. A comment period on the proposal expires Jan. 14. No date has been set for a public meeting on the withdrawal.

Citizen Alert, a statewide environmental watchdog group, however, wrote a letter Nov. 20 that Bob Fulkerson, the group's exzecutive director, intends to send to BLM requesting a public meeting on the proposed withdrawal.

The letter recounts the Air Force's acquisition of 89,000 acres of Groom Mountain that was discussed before the House Subcommittee on Public Lands in 1984.

"It was revealed through public testimony that the Air Force had illegally seized control of the surface access and egress to Groom Mountain," the letter says.

Curtis Tucker, manager of the BLM's Caliente Resource Area, which includes l and near the Groom Mountain Range, said he was unaware that the Air Force had hidden electronic sensors on public land this year to monitor public access to Freedom Ridge.

"They have an application. They don't own it," Tucker said about the Air Force's proposed buffer zone.

"If security folks are coming across the line and messing with citizens, there's a regulation about interfering with someone enjoying the use of public lands. That's a violation," he said.