Although truth is often even stranger than fiction, some topics are so enmeshed in both that discovering the truth is like panning for gold.

The military installation in the Nevada desert known as Area 51 has been the matrix for conspiracy theories and UFO sightings for decades and tops the list of controversial and very heated topics. Some new light may now shine through as some of the workers from mysterious base finally speak out.

New York’s Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum tells part of the Area 51 story. On display is An A-12 Oxcart, which was a spy plane tested at the notorious secret military base in Nevada.

Oxcart was the moniker applied to the CIA A-12 program that was originally intended to succeed the U-2 in conducting over flights to the Soviet Union. After the U-2 incident of 1960, Eisenhower suspended Soviet airspace violations, but the flight trials continued.

The Los Angeles Times Magazine interviewed five men who worked at the military facility known as Area 51 in an attempt to get to the truth. They are more willing to talk now because in 2007 the CIA declassified certain information concerning the A-12 Oxcart.

All of the men interviewed related fascinating stories about life at the mysterious base, including how the military responded to security breaches involving secret projects. Their responses to the legends arising from the military base were also quite interesting.

One of the legends surrounding Area 51 concerns the belief that the base is connected to other “secret sites” via underground tunnels and remote railroad networks. There is some truth to this as verified by Thornton “T.D.” Barnes, aged 72, who was an engineer at Area 51. He told The Los Angeles Times that he conducted much of his work in underground chambers.

In his own words:

“Three test-cell facilities were connected by railroad, but everything else was underground.”

Air Force Col. Hugh “Slip” Slater, the base’s commander in the 1960s, suggested that many of the UFO sightings around Area 51 were among the 2,850 Oxcart test flights. It had a disk-like fuselage and flew at speeds of over 2,000 mph. The plane’s titanium body was highly reflective, which also may have thrown anyone off who caught a glimpse of it. Slater said:

“When commercial pilots would report a UFO around Area 51, they’d be met by FBI agents who’d make them sign nondisclosure forms.”

Project Blue Book was an Air Force operation whose sole function was to log such incidents from all around the country. By the time the Oxcart program was terminated in December 1969, it had received 12,618 reported sightings, 701 of which remained classified as “unidentified.” Currently, the CIA maintains a searchable database of declassified Oxcart information.

Majestic 12 (also known as Majic 12, Majestic Trust, M12, MJ 12, MJ XII or Majority 12) is the purported code name of a secret committee of scientists, military leaders, and government officials, supposedly formed in 1947 by an executive order of U.S. President Harry S. Truman.

The purpose of the committee was to investigate UFO activity in the aftermath of the Roswell incident. This infamous incident concerns the alleged crash of an alien spaceship near Roswell, New Mexico, in July of 1947. The existence of this committee forms the bulwark of the theory of an ongoing government cover-up of UFO information.

Is there evidence to support the existence of this committee?

There indeed seems to be something at least debatable in the form of a collection of documents discovered back in 1984. The original MJ-12 documents state that:

“The Majestic 12 group… was established by order of President Truman on 24 September, …1947, upon recommendation by Dr. Vannevar Bush and Secretary of Defense James Forrestal.”

Some agencies insist that documents suggesting the existence of this committee are hoaxes. The FBI investigated the documents, and concluded they were forgeries, based primarily on an opinion rendered by AFOSI, the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations.

Opinions among UFO researchers are divided. Some argue the documents may be genuine while others contend they are phony, primarily due to errors in formatting and chronology. Still others argue that the documents (as well as UFOs) do not exist.

So what is the truth about Area 51? Why can’t we know it? Will it ever really be known? The answers to all of these questions may well be blowing in the wind as Bob Dylan used to say, but if they are, do we really want to know?