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  Annie Jacobsen's "Area 51" X-15 stories, are they true?

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Author Topic:   Annie Jacobsen's "Area 51" X-15 stories, are they true?
p51
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Posts: 1642
From: Olympia, WA
Registered: Sep 2011

posted 03-19-2013 02:27 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for p51   Click Here to Email p51     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I'm reading Annie Jacobsen's book on Area 51 with a very skeptical look through certain sections. I know of a few of the declassifed projects and some of them aren't as she described.

Two mentions of the X-15 seemed really odd to me. One states that a NASA promotional shot of X-15 actually caught an 'Oxcart' prototype way in the background but clearly seen in the shot.

Another states that an X-15 had to do an emergency landing near Beatty, NV and the crew of a nearby radar site towed the plane to the driveway of one of their techs, where it stayed over a weekend and nobody came to look at it.

Neither of these stories seems right to me. The CIA rarely ever flew the oxcarts ito an area they might be photographed in in broad daylight and a X-15 sitting in someone's driveway, and nobody noticed?

Opinions, anyone? I know the book has some serious errors as it is (perhaps disinformation, but some are downright silly, like the shock wave from a nuke travelling at 100 MPH) but both of these sound downright silly...

Jim Behling
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Posts: 1463
From: Cape Canaveral, FL
Registered: Mar 2010

posted 03-19-2013 02:41 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Jim Behling   Click Here to Email Jim Behling     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
The book is so wrong, it is not even worth going into all the errors and disinformation in it.

p51
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Posts: 1642
From: Olympia, WA
Registered: Sep 2011

posted 03-19-2013 03:08 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for p51   Click Here to Email p51     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I totally agree with you. There are things I know for sure that are in the book that never happened or happened differently than they did for several of the non-space-related things. Either the author is a crummy writer or was a dupe who got a lot of disinformation, probably both.

But those two X-15 stories were so over the top that I couldn't imagine either taking place (I just read the driveway story over lunch about 90 minutes ago and I almost yelled out loud, "You gotta be kidding me!"). But the photo showing the Oxcart way in the background seemed like something that space fans would surely know about as something like that would likely be well known.

onesmallstep
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Posts: 1310
From: Staten Island, New York USA
Registered: Nov 2007

posted 03-19-2013 04:20 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for onesmallstep   Click Here to Email onesmallstep     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
If you thought the X-15 stories were incredible, take a look at the whopper she tells about the Roswell incident in 1947: that Soviet leader Stalin recruited former Nazi death camp doctor Josef Mengele to surgically alter some young teenagers to look like 'aliens', place them in a Russian-built UFO craft (presumably built with 'their' German rocket scientists) and crash it in New Mexico.

If all that is true, then the moon landings were filmed on a Hollywood back lot.

capoetc
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Posts: 2169
From: McKinney TX (USA)
Registered: Aug 2005

posted 03-19-2013 09:39 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for capoetc   Click Here to Email capoetc     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
quote:
Originally posted by onesmallstep:
If all that is true, then the moon landings were filmed on a Hollywood back lot.
Wait a second... you mean they weren't?

p51
Member

Posts: 1642
From: Olympia, WA
Registered: Sep 2011

posted 03-20-2013 02:33 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for p51   Click Here to Email p51     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
quote:
Originally posted by onesmallstep:
If you thought the X-15 stories were incredible, take a look at the whopper she tells about the Roswell incident in 1947...
I just finished the book today at lunch. What a waste of time reading that was! I just finished the part you mentioned (folks, he ain't kidding, it's exactly what the book says!) and I just stared at the book for a few minutes in befuddlement.

What was this supposed to be, humor? Or was she a total dupe of people who either played with her (just to see if she'd write anything they told her, no matter how insane) or were spreading disinformation.

How anyone would believe that Roswell was a practical joke by Joe Stalin and assisted by Mengele (which I've never seen anything to support he ever went to Russia and I can't imagine ANY German going there voluntarily after the horror stories returning soldiers told in WW2) just baffles me.

cspg
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Posts: 6210
From: Geneva, Switzerland
Registered: May 2006

posted 03-20-2013 02:49 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for cspg   Click Here to Email cspg     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
quote:
Originally posted by p51:
How anyone would believe that Roswell was a practical joke by Joe Stalin and assisted by Mengele
When I read that part in the promotional material when the book came out, I first laugh then wonder why would anyone want to spend 1 cent on this... (no offense!)

p51
Member

Posts: 1642
From: Olympia, WA
Registered: Sep 2011

posted 03-20-2013 03:40 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for p51   Click Here to Email p51     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
quote:
Originally posted by cspg:
(no offense!)
None taken, clearly I didn't read what you'd read. I'm just glad I bought the book used and didn't pay too much. I'd have been VERY angry if I had paid full price for this worthless hunk of...

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