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Letters protest Air Force land request

Thirteen people from as far as Switzerland have formally protested the Air Force's land withdrawal near its Groom Lake air base.

The letters obtained Tuesday from the Bureau of Land Management oppose the bureau's plans to hand over 3,972 wilderness acres to the Air Force for reasons ranging from protecting a rare wildflower species to increasing military oversight and accountability.

The land in question includes two remote mountain ridges where government watchdogs, aviation buffs and UFO watchers monitor activities at Area 51, the airbase in Lincoln County that military brass have never acknowledged exists.

The Air Force has requested the land "to provide a security and safety buffer to prevent a compromise of national security interests and to protect assets of the adjacent withdrawn Nellis Air Force Range."

The bureau held a required 30-day comment period for the public to protest the withdrawal. That process, which ended earlier this month, brought in 13 letters submitted by environmental and government oversight activists, Lincoln County officials and supporters of Rachel resident and Groom Lake gadfly Glenn Campbell.

Many of the letters presented similar arguments, questioning the need to protect the base from public viewing when satellites from 24 foreign nations can, as agreed upon in the international Open Skies Treaty, freely fly over and photograph the facility.

Some letters demanded the military prove its need for safety and secrecy. "It is the Air Force which has the burden of proving both the need for additional secrecy and entitlement to it," wrote Steven Hofer, an attorney from Indianapolis. "There is no evidence that the safety of military personnel or of persons on the affected ridges is significantly effected because of the public use of land."

Others emphasized environmental aspects of the withdrawal, calling for studies of a rare evening primrose flower species on the affected land or demanding a detailed history of the Air Force's environmental conduct at Groom Lake.

The issues include allegations by former base workers about burning toxic chemicals in open pits, a routine practice they claim made them sick. Those allegations are contained in lawsuits filed this year against four federal agencies.

"It would be irresponsible to blindly go along with the new Air Force request without a proper review and judicious study of that questionable history," wrote John Andrews of San Diego, a designer with the Testor Corp., which has manufactured models of secret aircraft said to have been tested at Groom Lake.

While most of the protestors limited their letters to specific issues covered in the bureau's report on the withdrawal, others were more emotional.

Brian Dumas from Easton, Conn., for example, called the proposed withdrawal "a crock of bureaucratic hooey."

"I am really controlling myself to be polite, wouldn't want any bureaucrats getting their blood pressure or something out of control, might have to get back to taking Prozac or something again and that's just bad business right there," Dumas wrote.

Bureau officials will begin evaluating Dumas' and the other protests in January, and should reach a decision on the withdrawal by the end of February.