Note: The following is an excerpt from an article about "Area 51 The Uncensored History Of America's Top Secret Air Base." author Annie Jacobsen.
I post it because it speaks to the credibility of this "investigative reporter" who theorizes that the "Roswell Incident" was actually a elaborate scheme cooked up by the Russians - using - genetically engineered (with the help of Joseph Mengele) little green pilots to crash saucer-shaped aircraft (designed by Nazi aircraft designers the Horten Brothers) into the New Mexico desert to convince America we were under risk of alien attack.
INMHO, If you are interested (and who isn't) what really is going on in Area 51 - don't buy this book.
Visit Dreamland Resort instead.
-Steve Douglass
The Hysterical Skies
She survived a flight with 14 harmless Syrian musicians -- then spread 3,000 bigoted and paranoid words across the Internet. As a pilot and an American, I'm appalled.
BY PATRICK SMITH
In this space was supposed to be installment No. 6 of my multiweek dissertation on airports and terminals. The topic is being usurped by one of those nagging, Web-borne issues of the moment, in this case a reactionary scare story making the cyber-rounds during the past week.
The piece in question, "Terror in the Skies, Again?" is the work of Annie Jacobsen, a writer for WomensWallStreet.com. Jacobsen shares the account of the emotional meltdown she and her fellow passengers experienced when, aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Detroit to Los Angeles, a group of Middle Eastern passengers proceeded to act "suspiciously." I'll invite you to experience "Terror" yourself, but be warned it's quite long. It needs to be, I suppose, since ultimately it's a story about nothing, puffed and aggrandized to appear important.
The editors get the drama cooking with some foreboding music: "You are about to read an account of what happened," counsels a 70-word preamble. "The WWS Editorial Team debated long and hard about how to handle this information and ultimately we decided it was something that should be shared ... Here is Annie's story" [insert lower-octave piano chord here].
What follows are six pages of the worst grade-school prose, spring-loaded with mindless hysterics and bigoted provocation.
Fourteen dark-skinned men from Syria board Northwest's flight 327, seated in two separate groups. Some are carrying oddly shaped bags and wearing track suits with Arabic script across the back. During the flight the men socialize, gesture to one another, move about the cabin with pieces of their luggage, and, most ominous of all, repeatedly make trips to the bathroom. The author links the men's apparently irritable bladders to a report published in the Observer (U.K.) warning of terrorist plots to smuggle bomb components onto airplanes one piece at a time, to be secretly assembled in lavatories.
"What I experienced during that flight," breathes Jacobsen, "has caused me to question whether the United States of America can realistically uphold the civil liberties of every individual, even non-citizens, and protect its citizens from terrorist threats."
Intriguing, no? I, for one, fully admit that certain acts of airborne crime and treachery may indeed open the channels to a debate on civil liberties. Pray tell, what happened? Gunfight at 37,000 feet? Valiant passengers wrestle a grenade from a suicidal operative? Hero pilots beat back a cockpit takeover?
Well, no. As a matter of fact, nothing happened. Turns out the Syrians are part of a musical ensemble hired to play at a hotel. The men talk to one another. They glance around. They pee.
READ MORE HERE
3 comments:
She failed to do basic research - a Freedom of Information Act request would have helped her enormously. A few years back the History Channel did a program where they went to the National Archives and looked through the declassified Roswell files. They dealt with all sorts of interesting programs, including Project Mogul.
You get a kick out of this Nightline report about the book. The interview between Bill Weir and Annie Jacobsen is very telling.
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/questioning-area-51s-author-13699901
Steve,
The book is a trip. As I see it there are two ways to perceive it.
# One, from the viewpoint of an Area 51 insider. In which case the book is highly objectionable and quite a disappointment. Why? because most if not all of those insiders had preconceived notions about the book. Many of the Area 51 folks had gained confidence in Jacobsen and had trusted her to tell their story representative of the highlights of their lives and careers.
They expected the book to be centralized about them and their heroic work at Area 51. Their biggest mistake was in not realizing that Jacobsen is a media news reporter who's primary function in life is to sensationalize for profit. She has a responsibility to her bosses to produce a product that sells.
# Two, from the viewpoint of an outsider, the book stands as a conglomeration of facts describing in detail the horrendous environmental crimes committed toward the achievement of World domination. She makes very clear that her writing are based on the interviews of elderly Area 51 workers whom in some cases, memories have faded and or changed over the decades. And she also points out that some of the accounts may actually be disinformation and that she felt she had an ethical duty to include it anyway. She makes it clear that these are not her point of view but rather the account of the interviewees.
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I myself see both sides of the story, having worked many years on Area 51 aircraft and very closely to Area 51 workers and also working many years in the high profile media complex. I know how they think.
The sensationalism created by the last chapter of the book killed two birds with one stone. It sold more books and it spread the word about the heroic achievements of those Area 51 workers to many people who would otherwise never know they existed.
It was really too bad that the Area 51 worker felt disappointed and disrespected by it. But I must say it seems they couldn't see the forest for the trees. Jacobsen not only had to tell their story, she also had an ethical responsibility as a journalist to point out what she perceived as criminal activity, environmental ills, and also the hazardous materials that many of those veterans may have unknowingly been exposed to.
Now of course she is no expert on many of those subjects and perhaps she had no business writing the book in the first place. But she did step up to the plate and wrote it. Am I'm willing to bet if any of the top experts of the subject wrote such a book it would not be competitive as far as sales go.
Yes, the book is full of technical errors as many do, especially in their first editions, but to point them out is against the code of ethics in journalism.
As far as my perception on that last chapter. I see it simply as disinformation. Maybe perhaps a tiny portion of truth exist in that story, but most of all it omits any reference to the silly space alien theories. I see it as perhaps an introduction to the truth about Roswell, relating some past known horrors to some very secret realities.
Thanks, and keep up the good work!
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