According to these reports, which include a map of the base's location in Nevada, Area 51 was merely a testing site for the government's U-2 and OXCART aerial surveillance programs. But up to now, mentions of the base in officially released documents were rare and “probably inadvertent,” said Jeffrey Richelson, senior fellow of the National Security Archive, a research institute that contains a major library of declassified U.S. documents. The 407-page history, “The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance,” was released to Richelson in June in response to a Freedom of Information Act request he filed in 2005. Richelson submitted the request as part of his continuing study of aerial surveillance programs and told CNN that he was not given an explanation of why the new documents were less redacted than previous versions declassified by the agency.
– It's a milestone of sorts for conspiracy theorists: The CIA has for the first time declassified documents that detail the existence of Area 51 in Nevada, reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The documents, obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request by a national security institute at George Washington University, explain that Area 51 got its start in 1955 because the government needed a place to test U-2 spy planes. Aliens in crashed spaceships are nowhere to be found in the documents. But here's one weird detail that is: The government initially called it "Paradise Ranch" to make the "facility in the middle of nowhere" sound more alluring to workers. The documents include a CIA map of the site, which is pretty much the same one that has long been available in a Google Maps search for "Area 51," notes CNN. So what's the big deal here? It's "clearly a conscious decision to acknowledge the name, the location rather than play pretend about the secrecy,” says the researcher who filed the FOIA request, Jeffrey Richelson. It should pave the way for the release of even more information about the site, he adds. You can dig into the 400 pages of documents here.