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Area 51 is the common name of a highly classified United States Air Force (USAF) facility within the Nevada Test and Training Range. A remote detachment administered by Edwards Air Force Base, the facility is officially called Homey Airport (ICAO: KXTA, FAA LID: XTA) or Groom Lake (after the salt flat next to its airfield). Details of its operations are not made public, but the USAF says that it is an open training range, and it is commonly thought to support the development and testing of experimental aircraft and weapons systems. The USAF and CIA acquired the site in 1955, primarily for flight testing the Lockheed U-2 aircraft. The intense secrecy surrounding the base has made it the frequent subject of conspiracy theories and a...

Walker Air Force Base is a closed United States Air Force base located three miles (5 km) south of the central business district of Roswell, New Mexico. It was opened in 1941 as an Army Air Corps flying school and was active during World War II and the postwar era as Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF). During the early years of the Cold War, it became the largest base of the Strategic Air Command. It is also known for the Roswell UFO incident, an event that occurred on 4 July 1947. It is alleged that a "flying disc" crashed during a severe thunderstorm near the base at Corona, New Mexico. What became Roswell Army Air Field was acquired by the United States Army Air Forces in 1941 from rancher David Chesser for the purpose of establishing a...

Dulce Base is the subject of a conspiracy theory claiming that a jointly-operated human and alien underground facility exists under Archuleta Mesa on the Colorado–New Mexico border near the town of Dulce, New Mexico, in the United States. Claims of alien activity there first arose from Albuquerque businessman Paul Bennewitz. Starting in 1979, Bennewitz became convinced he was intercepting electronic communications from alien spacecraft and installations outside of Albuquerque. By the 1980s he believed he had discovered a secret underground base near Dulce populated by grey aliens and humans. By 1983, Bennewitz's claims appeared in the popular press. The story spread rapidly within the UFO community and by 1987, UFOlogist John Lear...

Luis Elizondo is a media personality and author formerly employed by United States Army Counterintelligence and the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. According to Elizondo, he was director of the now defunct Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which was associated with the Pentagon UFO videos. Elizondo's statements about his Pentagon role with AATIP have been contested by Pentagon officials. Since 2017, he has claimed there is a government conspiracy to suppress evidence that UFOs are of non-human origin. Starting in 2008, Elizondo worked with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (OUSDI) in the Pentagon. Elizondo has reported that he worked with officials from the...

Greer founded the Center for the Study of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (CSETI) in 1990 to create a diplomatic and research-based initiative to contact extraterrestrial civilizations. The group defined CE-5 or 'close encounters of the fifth kind' as human initiated contact and communication with extraterrestrial life. CSETI claims to have over 3,000 confirmed reports of UFO sightings by pilots and over 4,000 of what they describe as landing traces. The organisation uses RAMITs ('Rapid Mobilisation Investigative Teams') with the aim of arriving at landing sites as quickly as possible. CSETI has defined a psychic protocol for human initiated contact to UFOs. In 1993, Greer founded the Disclosure Project, the goal of which is to publicly...

Arthur William Bell III (June 17, 1945 – April 13, 2018) was an American broadcaster and author. He was the founder and the original host of the paranormal-themed radio program Coast to Coast AM, which is syndicated on hundreds of radio stations in the United States and Canada. He also created and hosted its companion show Dreamland. Coast to Coast still airs nightly, now hosted weeknights by George Noory. Bell's past shows from 1996 to 2000 are repeated on Premiere Networks on Saturday evenings. They are retitled Somewhere in Time with Art Bell. In 2003, Bell semi-retired from Coast to Coast AM. During the following four years, he hosted the show for many weekends on Premiere Networks. He announced his retirement from weekend hosting...

Philip James Corso (May 22, 1915 – July 16, 1998) was an American Army officer. He served in the United States Army from February 23, 1942, to March 1, 1963, and earned the rank of lieutenant colonel. Corso published The Day After Roswell in 1997, about his alleged involvement in the research of extraterrestrial technology recovered from the 1947 Roswell Incident. On July 23, 1997, he was a guest on the popular late-night radio show, Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell where he spoke live about his Roswell story. In his book The Day After Roswell (co-author William J. Birnes), Corso claims he stewarded extraterrestrial artifacts recovered from a crash near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. Corso says a covert government group was assembled...

Timothy Good (born 28 July 1942) is a British author on UFOs. His books include Above Top Secret: The Worldwide U.F.O. Cover-up (1987), Alien Liaison (1991) and Beyond Top Secret (1996), all published by Sidgwick & Jackson. Good has made many television and documentary appearances. Critics challenged the reliability of his writings. Good was born in London. He has also had a career as a violinist. In 1987 it was reported in The Observer that he was "Britain's leading UFO researcher". In his 1987 book Above Top Secret: The Worldwide U.F.O. Cover-up, he was involved in the initial publication of the purported Majestic 12 documents; later, according to skeptic Phil Klass, Good questioned the authenticity of at least some of the documents...

Eduard Albert Meier (born 3 February 1937), commonly nicknamed "Billy", is the founder of a UFO religion called the "Freie Interessengemeinschaft für Grenz- und Geisteswissenschaften und Ufologiestudien" (Free Community of Interests for the Border and Spiritual Sciences and Ufological Studies) and alleged contactee whose UFO photographs are claimed to show alien spacecraft. Meier claims to be in regular contact with extraterrestrial beings he calls the Plejaren. He also presented other material during the 1970s such as metal samples, sound recordings and film footage. Meier claims to be the seventh reincarnation after six prophets common to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Enoch, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Immanuel (Jesus), and...

Robert Scott Lazar is an American conspiracy theorist. In 1989, Lazar claimed to have been part of a classified US government project concerned with the reverse engineering of extraterrestrial technology; he also purported to have read government briefing documents that described alien involvement in human affairs over the past 10,000 years. A self-proclaimed physicist, Lazar supposedly worked at a secret site near the United States Air Force facility popularly known as Area 51. His story brought additional public attention to the facility and spawned conspiracy theories regarding government knowledge of extraterrestrial life. Lazar has provided no evidence of alien life or technology, and his claims about his education and employment...

It is unclear if life and intelligent life are ubiquitous in the cosmos or rare. The hypothesis of ubiquitous extraterrestrial life relies on three main ideas. The first one, the size of the universe allows for plenty of planets to have a similar habitability to Earth, and the age of the universe gives enough time for a long process analog to the history of Earth to happen there. The second is that the chemical elements that make up life, such as carbon and water, are ubiquitous in the universe. The third is that the physical laws are universal, which means that the forces that would facilitate or prevent the existence of life would be the same ones as on Earth. According to this argument, made by scientists such as Carl Sagan and...

The Hills lived in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Barney (1922–1969) was employed by the United States Postal Service, while Betty (née Eunice Barrett) (1919–2004) was a social worker. Active in the local Unitarian congregation, the Hills were also members of the NAACP and community leaders, and Barney sat on a local board of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. They were an interracial couple at a time when it was particularly uncommon in the United States; Barney was black and Betty was white. According to a variety of reports given by the Hills, the alleged UFO sighting happened about 10:30 p.m. September 19, 1961. The Hills were driving back to Portsmouth from a vacation in Niagara Falls and Montreal. Just south of Lancaster...

Types of Security Clearances First signed into law in 2009, Executive Order 13526 joined other executive orders that changed how the U.S. government handles classified information. This order established a uniform classification system for sensitive information. It also provided a process for declassifying data. The U.S. government recognizes three levels of security clearance: confidential, secret, and top secret. Using a federally mandated rubric, government officials classify documents in one of those levels. Candidates can receive clearance for information up to the level for which they qualify. Security clearances can be issued by many United States of America government agencies, including the Department of Defense (DoD), the...