Area 51: Newly Declassified Documents Detail Cold War Stealth Work

Area 51: Newly Declassified Documents Detail Cold War Stealth Work
(NASA)
Zachary Stieber
11/14/2013
Updated:
7/18/2015

Area 51 was the subject of intense scrutiny by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, while the United States used the secret facility to test Soviet aircraft and radar systems.

That’s part of the new information that newly declassified documents about Area 51 show.

Also, a photograph taken of Area 51, which used to be a secret U.S. facility, spurred an intense debate over what to do about the picture.

The picture was taken in the early 1970s by astronauts on the SkyLab, the first American space station, and doesn’t show much detail but frightened officials involved with the top secret testing and research at Area 51. 

The Skylab photograph “in the public domain would almost certainly provide strong stimulus for media questioning and the potential near-term revelation of the missions of the installation,” according to one of the newly declassified documents, from 1974.

On the other hand, a draft decision paper included the belief of NASA personnel that “there would be domestic and foreign problems created by withholding the photograph.”

The astronauts “inadvertently photographed” Area 51, according to William Colby, the director of the CIA at the time. There were not specific instructions not to do this, he said. 

Colby said the Soviet Union had photographs of Area 51 at the time, anyway.

“If exposed, don’t we just say classified USAF [U.S. Air Force] work is done there?” he wrote in a memo. 

The picture was eventually placed in a collection of photographs from SkyLab, Dwayne Day, an American space historian, policy analyst and author, told Space.com.

The Americans spent a lot of time making sure the Soviet Union didn’t catch any key details of what was going on at Area 51, Day said.

“But, of course, the CIA knew the flight paths of Soviet satellites, and they would avoid having their aircraft in the open when satellites were overhead,” he said. “The best form of concealment is a big hangar where you can park all your planes.”

The newly declassified documents also include details about the U.S. obtaining and studying Soviet aircraft, as well as developing in secret its own aircraft.

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Area 51: US Tested ‘Secretly Acquired’ Soviet Fighters, Radar Systems