Beyond Area 51

by Mack Maloney

  Where between Poland and Argentina could a Nazi aircraft stop and safely refuel? Or perhaps the better question is, who would refuel a Nazi aircraft anywhere in the spring of 1945?

  The same is true for a trip to Antarctica by a U-boat. At the end of the war, the Germans’ farthest-ranging submarine was the so-called Type IX. True, it could sail eight thousand miles without need for refueling, but that was its range while traveling on the surface of the ocean, not beneath it. This means any Type IX U-boat would have been forced to make the entire trek to Antarctica in full view of flocks of Allied aircraft patrolling the Atlantic by 1945 and would have been spotted easily. Besides, the distance between Germany and Antarctica is more like ten thousand miles. Where would this Bell-carrying U-boat have refueled to make such an arduous monthlong trip?

  And finally, if the Nazis had such fantastic technology as an antigravity machine, a device for creating free energy, a fleet of UFOs, a time machine, a perpetual motion machine, a reality-shifting machine, a reanimation machine and a time-space manipulation machine, plus space travel and bases on the moon, then why did they lose the war?

  Was It Anything at All?

  If it did exist, from the bare description, the Bell might have been a crude heavy particle accelerator, something the Nazis used in a desperate attempt to breed bomb-grade uranium in order to make an atomic weapon. But again, the Nazis had nowhere near the resources the United States had in the same kind of quest, so luckily they were doomed to fail.

  But one thing from those fantastic stories does have an unintentional bit of truth to it. It has to do with a landing on the moon.

  At the end of the war, the United States did indeed allow many Nazi scientists to enter the country and work on America’s then fledgling space program. This questionable immigration was called “Operation Paperclip,” and the argument of its morality goes on too long to be hashed over here.

  But this is for certain: These Nazi scientists, the most famous among them being Wernher von Braun, formed the foundation of NASA. They designed and built the Saturn V, the blockbuster rocket that had enough lifting power to boost the Apollo lander into orbit and beyond.

  In other words, the Nazis did put someone on the moon: the United States of America.

  13

  The Case of Saddam’s Area 51

  Secrets in the Desert

  A crashed UFO in the desert. Strange debris seen by witnesses. The U.S. military gets involved, claims the wreckage and then clamps down on all media coverage.

  Sound familiar?

  But this isn’t Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. This incident, some say, happened in Saudi Arabia in 1991, during the first Persian Gulf War.

  It all began one night early in the conflict. A flight of four U.S. F-16 warplanes heading for a mission over Baghdad was alerted by Saudi air control that an unknown aircraft was heading in its direction. This unknown aircraft turned out to be a UFO.

  One of the F-16s peeled off from the formation and began chasing the UFO. The UFO changed directions in an attempt to escape, but the F-16 continued the pursuit. The UFO apparently fired a weapon at the F-16 but missed. The F-16 returned fire with two Sidewinder missiles—and both hit the saucer-shaped craft. The UFO blew up, its wreckage going down in flames.

  A Russian military attaché was in the Saudi air control center when the incident occurred; he was able to determine where the debris came down. Quickly securing transportation, he was among the first witnesses to reach the desert crash site.

  The Russian reported seeing small seats and instruments inside the heavily damaged saucer, a description similar to what Bob Lazar claimed he saw inside the saucers supposedly kept at S4. But then the U.S. military arrived on the scene and escorted the Russian and his colleagues away. Later on, the Russian learned the debris had been packed up by the U.S. Army and shipped off to parts unknown.

  It’s a strange story—but as it turns out, it’s not the strangest UFO tale to come out of that troubled part of the world in recent times.

  In fact, some think that another crashed UFO incident, this one inside Iraq itself, led directly to the U.S. invasion of that country in 2003.

  Mission Accomplished?

  On March 20, 2003, the United States led a coalition of approximately two hundred thousand troops in invading Iraq.

  According to U.S. President George W. Bush at the time, the main reason for the invasion was to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.

  After three weeks of heavy fighting, this United States succeeded in seizing the Iraqi capital of Baghdad and toppling the government of Saddam Hussein.

  On May 1, 2003, Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and gave a speech announcing the end of major combat operations in Iraq. Clearly visible in the background was a banner famously stating “Mission Accomplished.”

  That banner and the speech were criticized at the time for being premature—and history bears this out. More than 4,500 U.S. combat troops would die, and tens of thousands would be wounded over the next several years, fighting a bloody battle against an Iraqi insurgency that rose up as a direct result of the invasion. Meanwhile, several media outlets reported that at least one hundred thousand Iraqi civilians died as a result of the war, possibly many more.

  There are some who believe George W. Bush came to office in 2001 with plans already in place to invade Iraq, the aim being to gain control of that desert country’s vast oil supplies. Indeed, at first the U.S. military operations were conducted under the code name Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL). This was later changed to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

  Bush’s detractors claim further that his stated goal of seeking to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction was just a ruse. And in fact, in 2005 the CIA released a report saying that no nuclear, biological or chemical weapons were ever found in post-invasion Iraq.

  But if no nuclear, biological or chemical weapons were found, then what was Bush talking about when he announced “Mission Accomplished”?

  Wasn’t finding these kinds of weapons what the war was all about?

  Or was there another reason?

  Weird Doings Before the Start

  There’s no doubt odd things were going on inside Iraq just before the start of the war.

  The hostilities actually commenced on March 19, 2003, with two spectacular, well-publicized air strikes: one on a suspected hiding place near Baghdad where Saddam Hussein was mistakenly thought to be (this was the first and most famous “shock and awe” bombing) and the other on the city of Mosul.

  However, eight hours before any of that happened, some sort of battle took place over the Little Zab River Valley, about 175 miles north of Baghdad, near the city of Zarzi—a battle that was precipitated by the appearance of strange lights in the sky.

  On that night, a small army of U.S.-allied Kurdish militia was in control of some high ground just above the Little Zab River Valley. While awaiting the opening shots of the war, these militiamen saw a group of unusual lights flashing all over the sky.

  The Kurdish soldiers were confused. What were these lights? Some thought they were lightning bolts from a storm on the western horizon that was rapidly moving east. Others thought the flashes might be the opening shots they’d been waiting for, just coming early. Were these smart bombs or cruise missiles going off somewhere in the distance?

  No one knew. But at some point, Iraqi antiaircraft batteries about five miles away from the Kurdish position began firing at the lights. This only added to the confusion. Did Saddam’s AA crews think the lights belonged to Coalition airplanes? Or a fleet of spy drones, perhaps?

  Time passed and then more strange lights were seen. For some reason the Iraqis started shooting off flares and then streams of tracer fire. While all this was seen clearly by the Kurds, they could not determine what the Iraqis were shooting at over the Little Zab River.

  Not too long after, the war began for real.

  The Mystery at Qalaat-E-Julundi

  As the war rage
d, it was apparent to some UFO researchers that American forces were paying special attention to the Little Zab River Valley, particularly the same area where the strange lights had been seen hours before the war started.

  U.S. aircraft bombed targets in the region throughout the conflict. Reports say thousands of munitions, some dropped by massive U.S. Air Force B-52s, poured out of the sky on many occasions, all targeted on places in the Little Zab River Valley. Even in a country lit up with war from one end to the other, these actions near Zarzi seemed particularly vicious and intense.

  Why here?

  Because, some say, this part of the Little Zab River Valley is where Qalaat-e-Julundi is located. And Qalaat-e-Julundi is where Iraq’s version of Area 51 could be found, a place where some claim Saddam had some very exotic and very deadly items hidden away—possibly including a crashed UFO.

  Why Would Saddam Need His Own Area 51?

  At one time, Iraq had one of the largest militaries in the world. Supplied mostly by Russian and French arms manufacturers, by the early 1990s, Saddam’s forces boasted hundreds of modern tanks and jet aircraft as well as hundreds of thousands of well-equipped troops.

  At the very least, such a large standing army would require a place to work on its own specialized weapons or weapons adaptations. In Iraq’s case, for instance, things needed for the specifics of desert warfare.

  Plus it was well known that at one time Saddam did indeed have an extensive arsenal of poison gas. He’d used this gas on his own people in 1988, killing as many as five thousand innocent Kurds in northern Iraq. Such WMDs were probably developed and weaponized at Qalaat-e-Julundi.

  There are also whispers that Saddam had an even more powerful weapon at his Area 51, something that might have led directly to the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia. That ill-fated spaceship blew up as it was entering Earth’s atmosphere on February 1, 2003, shortly before the invasion of Iraq began. On board was Colonel Ilan Ramon, Israel’s first astronaut and one of the pilots who, nearly twenty years before, bombed Iraq’s Osiraq nuclear reactor. There was some speculation that the reason Ramon was part of the shuttle crew in the first place had something to do with gathering intelligence on Iraq every time the spacecraft passed overhead.

  Because the Iraqis probably suspected this orbital spying, and because one of their most hated Israeli foes was on board, some believe an Iraqi laser weapon of some sort may have fired at the shuttle on its last pass, inflicting enough damage to cause it to break apart and crash.

  Unlikely? Maybe. But if true, such a weapon would probably have been developed at Qalaat-e-Julundi, too.

  Whose WMDs Were They?

  Maybe such tales are the reason why another fantastic story about Qalaat-e-Julundi has shown surprising resiliency: that Saddam had a crashed UFO, aliens and possibly some kind of horrific weapons hidden away at the Iraqi Area 51.

  This particular scenario starts back on December 16, 1998, when a video clip, said to have aired on CNN, appeared to show a UFO flying over Baghdad. The object was seen trying to avoid antiaircraft fire being directed at it by Saddam’s forces.

  At the time it was assumed this was just another UFO sighting, one of hundreds that take place around the world every day. But then rumors started bubbling up that maybe the UFO was actually hit by the AA fire, shot down and recovered by Saddam’s military.

  As the story goes, the wrecked UFO and possibly its surviving occupants were taken to Qalaat-e-Julundi. Once there, Saddam had his weapons experts reverse-engineer one aspect of the technology found on board, and from that they created some really mind-boggling WMDs.

  So, was it this fantastic weapons cache that the United States was secretly looking for all along? Could some elusive extraterrestrial-based WMDs have been the reason for the invasion in the first place?

  Bizarre Bazaar

  Though it sounds outrageous, some scientists inside Iraq didn’t totally discount the story.

  One scientist was quoted before the 2003 invasion as saying, “It is rumored at a market in Sulaimaniya, to the south of Zarzi, that aliens are Saddam’s guests. Where do they stay? People mention some underground base at the old stronghold Qalaat-e-Julundi. It is practically impossible to penetrate it. The citadel stands on a hill surrounded with vertical precipices on three sides and these precipices plunge down to the Little Zab River.”

  It’s possible, though, this tale was created solely to keep the highly superstitious Iraqi people away from Qalaat-e-Julundi. Rumors are a big part of Iraqi life, usually the more outlandish the better. For instance, after the 2003 invasion, many Iraqis were convinced that the wraparound sunglasses worn by many U.S. soldiers either contained X-ray vision or projected maps showing the location of every house inside the war-torn country.

  Bottom line, it’s hard to tell fact from fiction in the bazaar.

  The Russian Version

  What’s interesting about this Iraqi Area 51 saga is that much of it came from the same Russian colonel who’d reported the dramatic F-16/UFO shoot-down story from the first Gulf War, a dozen years before. His account of the extraterrestrial goings-on at Qalaat-e-Julundi appeared in Pravda, the onetime official newspaper of the Soviet Union. And while the Pravda of the old Moscow regime doesn’t exist now as it did then, it remains a media outlet in Russia. A bit sensationalistic, but still highly read.

  As one Russian journalist explained to us, “Pravda today is sort of ‘yellowish.’ They don’t have any correspondents’ network or stringers. They are sensation hunters and usually compile secondhand news from the Internet.

  “However, that does not mean what they write about is not true.”

  Legacy TBD

  So was the massive bombing around Zarzi and the Little Zab River Valley a preparation for an assault on Qalaat-e-Julundi itself?

  Once the area had been pummeled, did U.S. troops secretly attack Saddam’s Area 51 and actually take possession of those alien WMDs? Not nuclear, not biological, not chemical—but something still very dangerous that had an unearthly origin?

  Could that have been what “Mission Accomplished” was all about, putting to bed the speculation that Bush would be so deceitful that he would send U.S. forces to war under false pretenses? There’s no disputing that Bush’s two terms were bookended by near catastrophic events for the American public, from the September 11 attacks in 2001 to the financial crash of 2008. But did he really order the 2003 invasion of Iraq because of some reverse-engineered alien WMDs?

  We may never know.

  But considering how Bush got elected in the first place, by a hanging chad, and how he almost died from eating a pretzel while in office, and that his ranch was extremely close to one of the largest and most mysterious UFO incidents in U.S. history—the famous July 2008 Stephenville sighting—then anything is possible.

  14

  The M-Triangle

  Heaven on Earth?

  The vast underground base at Yamantau is not the only mysterious place in Russia.

  The former Soviet Union boasts a number of unusual locations—including places where UFOs are frequently seen and either welcomed or shot at.

  One of the most curious in the former group is the so-called M-Triangle; there might not be another place like it anywhere.

  So many highly unusual things go on there that some say the M-Triangle might literally be a piece of Heaven that somehow wound up here on Earth.

  * * *

  The M-Triangle is located about six hundred miles east of Moscow in a remote region of Russia near the Ural Mountains.

  Also known as the Perm Anomalous Zone, the Triangle encompasses about forty square miles of mostly mountainous terrain near the villages of Molebka and Kamenka, close to the Silva River.

  According to the locals, strange things have been happening in this area for hundreds of years. Bizarre lights in the woods, unidentified flying objects streaking overhead, frequent encounters with otherworldly beings, even weird symbols and letters written across the sky. Somethi
ng highly unusual is said to occur inside the zone almost every day, and reportedly, many times, dozens of different weird things are going on there at once.

  * * *

  As is almost always the case, the M-Triangle’s strangeness begins with UFOs. They usually appear over the zone as brightly lit objects. Local villagers say they come in many colors and shapes, including spheres, domes and saucers. Sometimes these objects just pass overhead; other times, they hover above the zone for hours.

  These brightly lit objects have also been seen in the nearby woods themselves—floating low to the ground, moving in and out of the trees like phantoms. So many UFOs are spotted around the Perm Anomalous Zone that a large wooden statue has been erected at the entrance to the village of Molebka to commemorate these frequent otherworldly visits.

  It Gets Even Odder….

  But again, researchers say other bizarre things happen inside the M-Triangle, too, including the following:

  SOUND MIRAGES

  Sound mirages can be several different things. One frequent sound mirage is a real sound that apparently originates from far away yet can be easily heard within the Perm Anomalous Zone. For instance, one research group, deep in the woods within the M-Triangle, heard the sound of a car coming toward them, an impossibility due to the thickness of the forest. Another group of researchers spending the night inside the zone heard strange voices from dusk to dawn, voices so clear and distinct they seemed just inches away. A ghostly whistle, an electrical buzzing noise and the sound of ancient choral singing are frequently reported inside the zone as well.

  STRANGE FIRE

  Fire behaves very peculiarly inside the M-Triangle. Researchers have reported many instances in which a flame of any size will suddenly explode, as if being fed by an invisible propellant like gasoline. Scientists have no clue why this occurs.