UFO HUNTERS - Area 51 Revealed

History Channel - Original Air Date: 2/25/09

For years, people have been seeing strange things at the Groom Lake test site, also known as Area 51.  Since the 1950s U2 program, secret testing has gone on here.  The base is off limits, and the area around it patrolled by armed guards, but the UH team hopes to get a peek inside using new, high-resolution cameras.  Is this merely a secret military base, or are they back-engineering captured UFOs here?  The show recaps the well-known history of Area 51, and pokes around the area until they are overflown by F15s -- at which point they figure they've been spotted, and will see no more strange things today.  The show mentions Bob Lazare, believed by many (including Stanton Friedman) to be a fraud, though Bob claimed to have worked on UFOs in Area 51.  John Weir, a former-pilot friend of Lazare's, says that Lazare took him to see UFOs over Area 51.  Under the watch of the military, the team pokes around the edges of the base, and then takes up position 26 miles away to watch.  In a "television first," they then show pictures of the base and airstrip that, while clear, look similar to other pix seen on such shows.  They also see a Janet Airline plane bringing workers into the base and spot a new warehouse/hangar amid the complex.  A former base worker says that when you worked there, you "didn't exist" (which the show suggests is confirmation of Lazare's intimation that the government is trying to erase his existence).  The worker also says that if you weren't working on a particular project, you didn't know anything about it.  Meanwhile, cameras set up on the outskirts of Area 51 have captured some odd lights at night, which "blink off" as they get close to the base.  Using calculations, Ted (the scientist in the team) claims the light was moving at least 3600 miles per hour.  Only the X15 is known to have flown so fast -- and the X15 has been mothballed since the end of the 1960s. But, though the show speculates nearly endlessly, they shed no new light on what's actually happening at Area 51.  (It seems likely to be "merely" a top secret testing base, to me.)