Expert to share secrets from Area 51

Area 51 is probably the best known, most talked about place that until recently didn't exist, at least officially. It is featured in books, on television, in comics and video games, most of which have populated it with top-secret government projects involving aliens, flying saucers and back-engineered technology.

Much of what happened at Area 51 has been declassified, and the government has gone so far as to admit the base exists. Thornton D. Barnes, an expert on the subject who worked there during its secret heyday, is set to spill the beans on it at 11 a.m. Dec. 6 at the Cora Coleman Senior Center.

"It was over 40 years before I could tell my wife where I worked or what I did," Barnes said. "The CIA has been very supportive on letting us honor the accomplishments in Nevada, but there are some things that will never be declassified."

As they used to say on "The X-Files," the truth is out there. Now Barnes is set to present that truth, but alien aficionados hoping to hear about big-headed gray aliens and wormhole technology will be disappointed. According to Barnes, Area 51, or Groom Lake, was mostly a testing ground for spy planes.

Barnes is in a position to know. He worked there for many years, using radar to track what for civilians were UFOs. For Barnes, they were pretty much IFOs.

"They wouldn't even tell us what we were tracking," Barnes said. "We had a pretty good idea. So much of what happened there seems unreal. But that's the history we're getting out to people now."

When Barnes speaks in the plural, he is usually referring to himself and his fellow members of the Nevada Aerospace Hall of Fame and Roadrunners Internationale. Barnes is the chairman of the board of the former and the president of the latter.

The Hall of Fame is a virtual museum at nvahof.org, which is dedicated to education about previously classified aerospace breakthroughs and experiments and honoring the heroes behind those projects. Roadrunners Internationale is an association of the CIA, U.S. Air Force and the aerospace companies that built and flew the CIA's early U-2 and A-12 Blackbird. The organizations' goals often dovetail.

"Right now we're organizing and compiling oral histories," Barnes said. "We don't have a place or the planes for a real-world museum yet. (The government) shipped all the planes out of state, and a lot of them wound up in museums in other places."

Mark Hall-Patton, director of Clark County Museums, including the Howard W. Cannon Aviation Museum, is on the board of the Hall of Fame, too. He seconds Barnes' sentiments about a museum including real planes but holds a more long-range view.

"It's not impossible," Hall-Patton said. "It's something that's probably a ways off. But it would make sense to have that sort of thing here."

Barnes had a varied career in the military, mostly in things he couldn't speak about. Now that he has the clearance to talk, he's like an uncorked bottle, spilling out stories so fast it's hard to keep up with him.

"We did all kinds of things out there," he said. "We worked on the space shuttle and the lunar landing module. We developed eight astronauts in the state of Nevada that no one ever knew about. We flew MiGs out there."

Hall-Patton is excited by the information Barnes is releasing.

"T.D. (Barnes) has a real wealth of information," Hall-Patton said. "We're getting stuff that we didn't expect to find out about. And we're getting it from a firsthand source, which is a great thing."

Barnes said the Top Gun program and similar exercises at Nellis Air Force Base sprang from work at Groom Lake. In those exercises, U.S. personnel were trained to think and fly like Soviets in order to give other U.S. personnel an accurate threat to train against.

"We've got more aviation history in this state than anyone could even dream," Barnes said. "Fortunately, I was able to participate in a lot of it."

Barnes is set to speak on the subject "Area 51 -- Facts and Fiction" from 11 a.m. to noon Dec. 6 at the Cora Coleman Senior Center, 2100 N. Bonnie Lane. The cost is $2 and a light lunch will be served. Registration is required. To register or to obtain more information, call 455-7617.

Contact Sunrise/Whitney View reporter F. Andrew Taylor at ataylor@viewnews.com or 380-4532.