From: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V4 #75 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Saturday, 27 November 1993 Volume 04 : Number 075 In this issue: Re: Air Force Land Siezure What's wrong with the land grab? Re: What's wrong with the land grab? Re: What's wrong with the land grab? See the end of the digest for information on subscribing to the skunk-works or skunk-works-digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gavin Adams Date: Fri, 26 Nov 1993 12:47:52 PST Subject: Re: Air Force Land Siezure > From: TRADER@cup.portal.com > Date: Thu, 25 Nov 93 13:47:32 PST > Subject: Save White Sides, NV from the Air Force! > > As readers of this group may already know, the Air Force has proposed taking > almost 4000 acres of public land from the BLM (Bureau of Land Management, > Dpeartment of the Interior) to prevent people from seeing the secret Air > Force facility at Groom Lake, Nevada. This includes the famous mountain > known as White Sides. I encourage you to voice your opposition to this > land seizure, to the BLM at the address shown. Is this a bad thing? I, for one, think that the Air Force has the right to ask for the land if they feel that this would enhance their security at the Groom Lake site. With respect to your statment about buying high resolution photos of the Groom Lake site: this is nothing new. I have a wall-size photo of the NTS (for reference) that clearly shows Groom Lake, a small cluster of buildings, and a couple of very long runways on the lake bed. As soon as I can order a blowup of the north-eastern sector of the map, I'll scan it and post it on the net. - --- Gavin - -------------------------------+-------------------------------------- Gavin Adams | GEnie: G.ADAMS13@genie.geis.com Digital Equipment Corporation | Air Warriror: #3644, "Boo Boo" Gavin.Adams@lso.mts.dec.com | 666th Internet Daemons - -------------------------------+-------------------------------------- Los Alamos National Laboratory | MIME Mail Spoken Here adams_g@jdol.lanl.gov | NT: I use it, I like it. ------------------------------ From: Rick Pavek Date: Fri, 26 Nov 1993 16:35:56 -0800 Subject: What's wrong with the land grab? The history if the United States is full of examples of Government committing unethical or illegal acts. The Teapot Dome Scandal Watergate The Bay of Pigs The Iran/Contra Affair... I am of the opinion that Governments are comprised of people with all their motivations and weaknesses. These people are no different than any of us, in spite of the idea that they should be morally superior. Any time the government hides its actions from public view, no matter the reason or the rationale, it has the opportunity to abuse the trust that we, the people, place in its hands. There are suspicions that some of the projects currently under development abeing done so outside of Congressional oversight, and outside normal, approved methods. The government, as it was formed, is supposed to exist for the benefit of the citizenry and responsible to the citizenry, not in spite of it. That is why, periodically, elected officials do not get reelected. Putting up a fence between you and your neighbor is one thing... but when that neighbor is your landlord and its pure is to prevent your landlord from seeing what you do to property is another. It's ok to keep the dogs out of your yard, but just try to make it look like you are hiding something from view, and you'll find an unlimited number of curious onlookers. Your landlord has the right to enter your premises. I feel we have the right to see what is at Groom Lake. Anybody up for a rebuttal? Rick SR-75/XR-7 _|_*O*_|_ | Rick Pavek \ __|__ / | HA!! kuryakin@halcyon.com \_______/_(O)_\_______/ | Ruby - \___/---\___/ | Galactic Gumshoe ------------------------------ From: tim@umcc.umich.edu (Tim Tyler) Date: Fri, 26 Nov 1993 23:54:44 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: What's wrong with the land grab? > > I feel we have the right to see what is at Groom Lake. > > Anybody up for a rebuttal? > > Rick Yeah, I think you're full of B.S.! :) The government has a duty to protect the nation. A good part of that protection stems with the Department of Defense, and for various reasons, certain DOD assets need to remain as secret as possible from all people without the need to know. I certainly would love to see the neat stuff at 'Dreamland,' but I also relize & support the fact that certain assets can lose their effectiveness once they become known. Would the U-2 program have been so successful, if a bunch of 'skunk-works' nerds (myself included) had been tramping around Groom back in the 1950s? I sure hope noone would claim that they'd not talk about anything they happened to see there, especially since it is a big cottage industry for some people to talk about the goings on there. If they're going to spend X million dollars trying to protect the operational security of a particular project, they have the duty to spend an additional Y million dollars to improve the security, when possible loopholes are found. The philosophy that 'we must oversee the government' is a bunch of crap. Who appointed Rick Pavek to do that? I suppose that if I get pulled over for driving down the freeway at 120MPH, I'll tell the officer that I was just doing my civic duty, overseeing their effectivness in traffic enforcement. The cop will then think of me as a model citizen & let me go. Of course, if I had ended up getting into an accident due to speeding, & several people were killed, Rick would chalk it up to the price that has to be paid for citizens to oversee the government... It is the same thing with Dreamland. Anyone with a camera who gets lucky & takes a photograph of something not seen before is going to run off with dollar signs in their eyes & fame in their mind to AW&ST, Newsweek, ABC News, etc. without stopping to think that the unauthorized disclosure of certain information might end up causing a lot of damage to *our* national security and interests. The assumption that other countries have satellite imagery of Groom Lake means nothing. Should we be able to buy KH-11 manuals at Border's or Waldenbooks, just because we have evidence suggesting that the Russians already have a copy? That's not the way things work. That is always a risk that the government runs in testing & developing 'black' projects, & the USAF is doing its best to mitigate that risk by buying up the parcel of land. We've seen the U-2, the SR-71, & the F-117A, and I trust that we'll eventually see whatever our government is working on in Dreamland. I just hope that we see it as a result of the government deciding to make the project's existence public, and NOT as the result of some eager guy with either a warped sense of 'civic duty,' or trying to make a buck, regardless of whether it is to make a buck off the media, or a foreign intelligence agency. > Rick Pavek \ __|__ / | HA!! > kuryakin@halcyon.com \_______/_(O)_\_______/ | Ruby - I'm just as anxious to see the 'black' aviation projects as everyone else... Tim Tyler P.S. If anyone has any evidence of fraud, waste, or wrongdoing at Groom Lake or any other government location, I'll be happy to try to put you in contact with the appropriate investigative agency. - -- Tim Tyler Internet: tim@ais.org MCI Mail: 442-5735 GEnie: T.Tyler5 P.O. Box 443 C$erve: 72571,1005 DDN: Tyler@Dockmaster.ncsc.mil Ypsilanti MI AOL: Hooligan Packet Radio: KA8VIR @WB8ZPN.#SEMI.MI.USA.NA 48197 "If I weren't a vegetarian, I'd eat PC people for lunch." ------------------------------ From: MP%MPA15C@MPA15AB.mv-oc.Unisys.COM Date: 26 NOV 93 22:15 Subject: Re: What's wrong with the land grab? A quick review of the U-2 history shows that the then USSR was fully aware that an American high altitude reconnaisance plane based in Germany, Turkey, Pakistan and England was violating its borders and making overflights of militarily sensitive facilities. The citizens of the respective countries were kept in the dark about the true capabilities and mission of the U-2. That is one of those pretty damning statements about our own government. We know, they know, we know that they know, they know that we know that they know and we know that they know that we know that they know. So who are we kidding? Only ourselves. The F-117 existed for years before the US government acknowledged it. Are we so naive as to think that the USSR and all its puppet nations didn't know about it and by knowing about have some idea of what it was capable of doing? Are we so naive as to think that our "allies" weren't fully briefed on it? I don't think that Rick or anyone else here is demanding a full disclosure of Aurora's technical specifications, nor a full FOIA release of KH-11 or LaCrosse or other surveillance techniques. But we should stop kidding ourselves about their existence. We do engage in overt and covert espionage programs. No, we shouldn't release details. But we should stop denying it. ________________________________________________________________________ Mark Perew (714) 380-5484 | He jests at scars that never felt a wound. mp@mpa15c.mv-oc.unisys.com | cb103@cleveland.freenet.edu | -- Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene 2 ============== "All opinions are mine," sayeth the poster ============== ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V4 #75 ******************************** To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "listserv@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu". If you want to subscribe something other than the account the mail is coming from, such as a local redistribution list, then append that address to the "subscribe" command; for example, to subscribe "local-skunk-works": subscribe skunk-works-digest local-skunk-works@your.domain.net To unsubscribe, send mail to the same address, with the command: unsubscribe skunk-works-digest in the body. 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