Equipment seized near secret base

Keith Rogers
Review-Journal

Camera equipment and a videotape were confiscated last week from a television news team out of fear that national security regulations were violated when the group traveled near the Air Force's secret Groom Lake base, authorities confirmed Wednesday.

Nellis Air Force Base spokesman Maj. George Sillia said the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations was reviewing the videotape "to see if there is anything that is a national security violation."

"If there is nothing classified we'll return them. If there is we'll retain them," Sillia said about the confiscated equipment.

ABC World News Tonight correspondent James Walker, who was involved in the incident Friday, said an assistant general counsel for the Air Force has told an ABC lawyer that the confiscated items will be available for pick up today.

"Once again it backfired," Walker said in a telephone interview. "Taking my tape recorder was preposterous."

Walker said the items a Lincoln County sheriff's deputy confiscated from him, his cameraman and Rachel resident Glenn Campbell, who accompanied them to Freedom Ridge, included a video camera, videotape, two wireless microphones, sound gear, a cassette tape recorder, radios and some electronic sensing gear.

He said the team had traveled to the ridge, west of Alamo, to shoot a story about the Air Force's proposal to withdraw public land for a buffer zone around the base, where advanced U.S. aircraft including the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes and the F-117 stealth fighter have been tested. He said the base was not videotaped.

Campbell, leader of a private research company, the Secrecy Oversight Council, who has advocated free access to public lands adjacent to the base, said he believes the Air Force will resolve the matter very soon.

"Given the explosive nature of the case, the equipment and tape will mysteriously reappear in the hands of the sheriff and the Air Force will pretend the incident never occurred," Campbell said.

He said the incident follows a similar one that occurred March 23 involving a reporter and photographer for the New York Times Magazine, in which film was turned over to a sheriff's deputy after the deputy threatened to get a search warrant.

But in the case last week, Nola Holton, Pahranagat Valley justice of the peace, said she gave verbal authorization for the search warrant even though she could not say whose complaint prompted the deputy sheriff to request it.

Asked about probable cause, she said, "There hasn't been a complaint filed."

Lincoln County District Attorney Thomas Dill could not be reached Wednesday.