Joe Rogan | The Real Reason Area 51 Was Started w/Annie Jacobsen

I'm super excited to talk to you about several subjects, but this one, thank you very much for this first edition copy of your Area 51 and uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Basebook. I'm super excited about this. I heard through the grapevine you were a fan. I'm a freak when it comes to this stuff. What do you think is going on up there? I mean, same thing that's going on all over the place when it comes to military secrets, which is stuff that you want to know about, very few people know about, and every now and then a journalist gets a hint at it, right? Yeah. Do you think there's any alien stuff up there? I write in the book all about that. Yeah? Well, tell me. Last 12 pages. You want me to- You want me to go to the last 12 pages? What do you think? So Area 51 was this secret test base where the CIA was running spy plane programs, right? So interestingly, my new book is about ground branch, guys on the ground. That's about air branch, what we were doing in the air. And it was this idea that we should spy on the enemy, okay? But if you go back in time, why Area 51 really started, you learn that it was a base hidden inside of a base, nuclear weapons. And it was all about beating Stalin at his black propaganda campaign, as I write in the book, to hoax Americans in a war of the world type scenario whereby little men who looked like aliens would get out of an aircraft and the government would go crazy about it. And then Stalin would say, look, not only do we have technology better than you, but we have a better propaganda department than you. Really? Joe, you got to read the whole book. Okay. This is a tough opening. You got me on the spot. It is a tough opening, but it's a good spot. Right? It's a good spot. So Stalin just hired short people? What did he do? All right, I'm going to make you save that. I'm going to make you earn that. Save it? Yeah. How's that? I mean, you want me to talk about that right now, right off the bat. I'm sweating. We're going to get to surprise kill vanish as well. I want to just, yeah. Why does it make you sweat? Oh my God. It's such an incendiary topic. I mean, people want to believe they're aliens. Right. Okay. I mean, I've spent five books dealing with the mythology of Area 51, which is phenomenal in its own way because it speaks so much to power, to morality, to information, to people's desire to know what's going on. And the government's desire to keep things hidden. So this topic is always coming up because a lot of people want to believe that there were aliens in that craft. And my source, who I write about in the book, told me otherwise that they were genetically, you know, that they were- Let me stop you right there. Because when you say that craft, what you mean is the supposed UFO wreckage that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. That's what you mean, right? Yes. And it was supposedly taken to Area 51. It was supposed to be taken to Wright Patterson Air Force Base. The legend has it that Truman flew there to meet them and- Right? That's one legend. Yeah. So in my book, I interview a man who worked for the Atomic Energy Commission, who tells a different story, tells the story of receiving that craft at Area 51 in 1951, which is why the base is called Area 51. And that inside the craft were humans who had been altered, surgically altered to look like aliens in a plan for Stalin to sort of twist Truman's arm. Because at that time, we had the atomic bomb. When Roswell happened, we had the atomic bomb and the Soviets did not. Can I stop you there? When you say humans that were surgically altered to look like aliens, do you mean this is 1951? So you're talking about four years after this supposed crash. Yes. So what was left- They had the bodies, they kept the bodies. They kept the bodies. In what? From Albeheim? Yes. And also because the idea was, and remember, or I can't say remember because you haven't read the book yet. Right. And I wrote this book eight years ago. But it did really impact a lot of my thinking and working on government secrecy projects because it makes you really consider what a hoax means and what it means to a population of people and how the government begins to work with disinformation versus cover stories and all of that. But going back to answer your question, that is what I was told by the source that- But how reliable is this source? This is a very incendiary idea to rely upon one individual's recollection of it. Which is why the book went through the roof in terms of people being upset about it. I mean- Were they? Oh my God, I interviewed 79 CIA guys, Air Force guys, spy pilots, engineers. I mean- Who's mad at you? The conspiracy theorists were mad at me because they said, this woman is bananas. They were aliens. Well, even if they weren't aliens, right, there's also, there's accounts that it was some sort of a test vehicle and that there were actually just dummies inside there, crash test dummies that they used. There's been a bunch of different versions of it. But the most compelling version of the Area 51 alien myth to me is Bob Lazar. Did you get into that? Yeah, he plays a huge role in Area 51. I mean, before Bob Lazar went public, no one even knew about Area 51. People hadn't heard of it. Well, people knew. It was common folklore, but there was no definitive proof that there was something going on over there other than some weird VHS footage of things flying around in the desert that seemed to be behaving in a way that modern aircrafts are not totally capable of, at least modern piloted aircrafts are not totally capable of. I mean, which brings me to another book I wrote called The Pentagon's Brain, which sort of off this idea was like, wait a minute, what kind of technology is the government capable of? Right. And the whole department for that reason called DARPA, which looks at weapon systems 25 years out. So the idea that you and I don't know what the military is capable of in the air, underwater, wherever it may be, is because we're not thinking 25 years out and they are, and they're developing weapon systems, the great weapon systems of the future. That's what they call them. Right. Like how they developed the stealth bomber. And that was all out in area 51 in Groom Lake. Yes. What do you think of Bob Lazar's story? Because Bob Lazar's story, there's some fascinating aspects to it. One of the most fascinating is some of the things that he's said that people said was horseshit has been proven to be true. Like one of the things, the biometric reader that measured the length of the bones in your hand and that they are as unique as a fingerprint. And people are like, what are you talking about? And then they actually found out that this was something they really did have. And they have photos of this thing now. This is something that he talked about and they claimed it was science fiction. I mean, it's fascinating when someone touches upon a subject that the government does not want known about for any reason. And there is a campaign to discredit that person. Yeah. There's no doubt that that happened to him. I mean, it was remarkable. And I write about him in the book because if you follow the logic that my source told me that these were modified human beings as part of a hoax. And the reason that I trust the source is because Joe, he told me that he also worked on the program. So he had like a burden to unload. And so if you follow that logic through, then the Bob Lazar story is that when Bob Lazar said I saw an alien, it looked like this, it was small, it had big eyes. It's yes, those were the genetically, I mean, those were the surgically modified humans that the government was doing experiments on. I think Bob Lazar's exact quote was he walked by a window and he looked in and he saw two agents that were, they were looking down at something that was very small and looked humanoid, but he didn't know if it was a dummy or anything. And he wasn't even supposed to be looking in there. It was a brief like one second look that he has bounced around in his head back and forth. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe the guy who gave you that information did work there but is also feeding you horseshit? Well, the source was a major player in the Manhattan Project. He went on and worked in the Atomic Energy Commission. I mean, there's a wing of a museum named after him. His accolades, his awards were so extraordinary. What's his name? I've never said his name, although, you know, I will say this. Well, you're giving away, like you're giving away a lot of the stuff that he- He recently died and he did give me permission to tell his full story after he died. And I'm circling around that. I'm circling around that. But he was absolutely, you know, with a cue clearance, that's what you have when you have access to nuclear secrets. So if someone has a cue clearance for decades and they're full of garbage, you really have to ask, my God, should this guy have a cue clearance? I mean, that's reverse engineering his credibility. But I think you should read the whole book because, you know, it's shocking what he says, but it does make sense if you can get through 400 pages of, you know, the CIA's idea about information, disinformation, why we need to cover things up. That's why I'm asking if you think that he might've been lying to you. I don't believe he was lying whatsoever. And he's feeding you disinformation. No, I don't believe. I don't believe- So you think that Stalin, that the Russian government definitely did surgically alter people to make them look like aliens? I believe- Were there images of these things? I believe what he told me. Did you see photos? No, I did not see photos. But here's the rub. Ready? Okay. When I was writing another book called Phenomena, which dealt with the CIA and the Pentagon's use of psychics, okay, over decades. I mean, this goes back, everything I write about pretty much goes back to post-World War- All that remote viewing stuff? Yes. Yes. And it's all about government, US government takes pole position after World War II, and we now need to always be ahead of the curve. We must lead. We can never get beaten by the Russians. Now it's China, okay? So the psychic program had a lot of people who really believe in aliens or intelligence from other worlds. And when I was writing the Phenomena book, I learned a whole bunch of new information about how upset they were with my story because they- And they all knew the source, by the way. They knew the source, and they believed that he was fed misinformation. So these are two sides of the coin, which are super interesting, I think, if you can look at them with your own biased turned off and not have a desired outcome. I want to believe this. I don't want to believe this. Speaking of I want to believe, I was working on a project with Chris Carter, who is the X-Files creator. And the one person I took the source that I wanted to meet the source was Chris Carter, and we went out there together and sat with him and met him. And it was well because the source had never even heard of the X-Files. And it was like, oh, I know. They talked about baseball, you know? Really? Yeah. See, I don't have a desired outcome. I mean, I would love it if aliens were real. But when someone starts talking about disinformation and propaganda campaigns, but they want you to believe them. Right. Listen, I'm here telling you the truth. I'm here telling you the truth. I'm not saying I'm telling you the truth at all. That's why I was like, chill, let's wait for hour three because it's too explosive. People have such a horse in the race already. With aliens, you think? Well, I mean, maybe you are neutral. I don't know. I know I'm neutral. Yeah. Well, listen, I absolutely want aliens to be real. 100%. Wouldn't it be interesting? I'm neutral. But I am neutral in my perceptions. And when I look at things, I go, hmm, I don't know about that. Me too. I want to see a picture. Like, what do these guys look like? I mean, what did they do to them? Did he describe what kind of surgical alterations? I stayed with the source. I mean, after the book published, I would go and visit him. We'd sit in a Chinese restaurant and eat and talk. And I would try to get a droplet of information out of him. And what was he doing? Avoiding it? He avoided it. I mean, look, here's another thing. When the book came out, his wife of 65 years knew it was him. Okay? And I went out to Las Vegas and sat there in a room with the source and his wife. And she said, tell me this isn't true. Tell me you made this all up to her husband. And he said, it's the truth. I mean, that's a triangular version of getting at the truth. But again, to reiterate, I believe he believes what he told me was the truth. That was the truth he was told. I think there's certain agents that think it's fun to fuck with reporters and journalists and make things up. I really do. And I think, especially when they're talking about secret information that they were sworn to protect. And then all of a sudden, they want to talk to someone that they don't even know on the sneak tip. Let's meet at a diner. I'm going to tell you everything. That's not how we met. I mean, however you met. Yeah. Well, we met because I was interviewing nuclear weapons engineers who were setting off nuclear bombs in area 51. In the Nevada test site, area 12, area 23. And they all said to me, you've got to talk to the top engineer of all this weaponry. And they gave me his name. And we talked for days and hours about nuclear weapons. And then in one conversation, he began to cry and told me this story that I was like, what? What? Why was he crying? He was crying because he participated in our version of the human experiments. Because what the Russians do, we do it. Look, I've written five books about this. We altered people to make them look like aliens? According to him, we had a small program in 1951 where we wanted to see how the Russians did what they did, how they made human beings look like this. So what'd they do, take prisoners or something? Who did they alter? He said they were handicapped children. Oh, Jesus. And he told me that he participated in this. So again, I mean, unless you have someone that lost their mind at age 90 and was willing to tell their wife of 65 years, I lost my mind. So he's saying that he participated in something that altered handicapped children. When you say handicapped, you mean like Down Syndrome or something like that? And they made them look like aliens and then killed them? Like, how did they do with this? This is where we get into drops of information coming in. But what I can say is he had a grandchild that was born that way. And the grandchild did not live long. The grandchild died. And it made him feel so guilty about what he had done that he felt compelled to confess, if you will. And I remember saying to him, why are you telling me this? Why don't you tell a priest? And he said, a priest would judge me and I can tell you won't. Why wouldn't you judge him? I'd judge him. Well, I guess that's why I'm a born journalist, Jo, because I really try not to judge people. I mean, my new book, Surprise Kill Vanish, it's about assassins. It's about people who work for the CIA who do what needs to be done on the ground in the name of national security. I don't judge them. This is why, you know, what's really at issue here is morality, right? Yeah. I mean, can I tell you how I got the idea for this book? Sure. But let me, before we go any further, so... You want to talk about the aliens. Was he saying that there have never been any encounters with alien spacecraft? He was totally neutral about aliens. He had nothing to do with aliens. He could have cared less. He didn't watch the X-Files. And what was his take on Bob Lazar? His take on Bob Lazar was that he probably saw something that the government had an extension of the program. I mean, he didn't know that was speculative. We didn't talk about that. I mean, you know, other than inference, he was very limited in his, in the information that he would get out. But I mean, I used 79 sources in that book that all went on the record in name. And he was the one anonymous source because, but like I said, you know, he told me after he died that I could tell the whole story. Are you going to? I might. You might come back. You write another book? Well, if you give me a break and back off the subject, I might come back and tell you and your audience his name. What are you saying back off the subject? This is your book. I want to promote your book. I know you want to promote your new book, but I want to promote this book as well. I mean, I'm teasing you, right? I know you are. It's like, it's an astonishing story. And I think the best line of all is that people that read about that in the very end of what we did, they go, I wish they were aliens. So Stalin created some sort of a craft that mimicked. You're going to read it. That's what you're going to do the rest of the afternoon. Nope. I'm going to come back on your show after you read it. Well, this is a podcast and we're talking. I think we should probably get into this a little bit. Okay. Come on with the questions. I'm asking the questions. Are you? Oh, right. As a journalist. Yeah. Now, Stalin and the Russians created something that mimicked a UFO, something that looked like it would be from another planet. Is that what they did? Mothership. In those days, drones were, there was a mothership and a drone was attached to it and it was jettisoned off. Okay. So in those days. Well, in 1947, 48. What do you mean by? Well, they didn't, I mean, that was drone technology then. Okay. So they had a mother craft, like an aircraft and then the drone is like a small aircraft under it and it gets jettisoned off. And that was what the craft was. It was jettisoned off. So Stalin actually, according to the source, invaded our airspace, which was the deep embarrassment to Truman. So we invaded our airspace and then let this drone crash land on the ground with these things that turned out to be human. They looked like aliens, but they turned out to be humans that were manipulated surgically to look like aliens. Yes. As a way to, and remember, I mean, not remember, but where this was, was very close to a nuclear weapons base, to our White Sands military base. I mean, this is like not a place you want the Russians to be able to get near. Right. I mean, what was interesting is that area 51, we then went out and mimicked all of those. One of our early drones was a mimicry of that. There was an M-21, which was the mothership, and a D-21, which was the daughtership. How did they pilot them? Was it wirelessly? Like we do now? No, no. Then it was like there was a pilot in the mothership and they kind of let it go and it flew off. I mean, there's incredible stories of what the CIA was able to do out there at area 51 with their air branch. The technology, they're always ahead of technology. That's what's remarkable. Well, what Bob Lazar did film that was really shocking was the filming of these drones flying around and performing these really crazy... You've seen those videos, I'm sure, right? In the 80s, it gets really crazy with what they're able to do and what they're... But I mean, why I like looking at history is because you can see the progression. You see how science evolves bit by bit. And then there's these great breakthroughs because what the government is always looking for is called a revolution in military affairs. And that's certainly what drone technology did later on as drones became developed after the Vietnam War. So in the 1980s, when Bob Lazar was filming all this stuff, you think this was similar to the technology that we see publicly described today in terms of like what drones are capable of? Sure. I mean, that's... They probably had something like that back then. When the F-117 was revealed during the first Gulf War, that aircraft was being developed for 20, 25 years out at Area 51. Actually, at Area 52 was where they had it set up to develop that stealth technology. Think about... And what was amazing, talk about keeping secrets. They had something like 10,000 people working on that. No one knew about it. That story was never broken by the press, not by anyone. It just suddenly appeared in the Gulf War and took out Saddam Hussein's facilities. That's a revolution in military affairs. What becomes interesting is then it becomes obsolete because now everybody knows about it and everybody's going to mimic that. And now you have to have a new weapon system and that's the military industrial complex. So was this drone aircraft that was released from the mothership, was this capable of autonomous flight or was it just... They just threw it out there and let it crash? The latter, right? And remember, that information I am very limited to. That's why it's 12 pages. It's like, the source gave me these little bits of information, which I felt was important to include because it speaks to the big issue. Why is Area 51 classified? I mean, now it's not. President Obama was the first president to actually say Area 51 publicly. Some people say it because of my book, right? Meaning it was out. The secret was out. But before that, I went through 10,000 pages of documents from the National Archives. And every place you see, the word Area 51 was actually redacted, right? Why would you keep that so secret? I mean, all the guys that I was interviewing say they could call it, you know, Groom Lake. They could call it the test facility. They could call it Paradise Ranch. But they couldn't say Area 51. Why? And the source said, well, because we did this horrible program out there. And the government doesn't want anyone to know about that ever. I mean, there are stories of like somebody asking Bill Clinton, you know, about Area 51, him going white. I mean, human experiments, who wants to be part of that? It's horrible. But the human experiments were, were they limited to this mimicry of the Russian experiments where they were trying to get people to look like aliens or were there something else going on? Well, my goodness. I mean, you read now the declassified documents tell us how many different human experiments were going on around nuclear weapons. Horrible experiments where they were subjecting people to radiation because they wanted to know. They felt, well, it's more important to know what happens to people than to not know. And so they would take groups of people that say had cancer or something and test them. So there's no doubt that the government has experimented on humans. It's just, is that something that is wise to make public? And, you know, there's two sides of the coin on that. I mean, you, you, when you reveal these kinds of things, when you write about them, I mean, people get really upset and, you know, vilify the government partially with good reason and partially it's like bad for national security. So I think that's the justification on the part of the defense department to keep things secret. That makes sense. Wow. That's a, that's an interesting take that I never thought of before. But if I was Stalin and I was trying to air quotes, fuck with the Americans, that's maybe where I would do it. Hey man, you got a problem? Zalans they're coming. And there was, if people, it's hard for people that live in 2019, especially if you're young, to really imagine a world, not only without the internet, but with two television channels, right? And radio, which was where people got all their information from. I mean, was there two channels? How many channels were there in 1947? Maybe three. Maybe. Maybe three. I mean, it was radio in world war two, right? Most people have radio. Yeah. Mostly radio and newspapers. And that's where people were getting their information. And there was a mass hysteria where people were absolutely terrified that we were going to be invaded, which is why when Orson Welles' war of worlds, which when they released it, when they did it on the air, they were very clear that this is going to be a reading of Orson Welles' war of worlds book, or that, uh, HG Wells, excuse me, war of, right. It was HG Wells book and Orson Welles read it. Yes. And when they were talking about this on the radio, a lot of people missed that part. Right. And so as the radio went on, as the broadcast went on and people were tuning in later in the day, it erupted in mass hysteria. People were freaking out hundreds of thousands of people really did think that it was, and it was also something that was recreated in other countries. I don't know if you know that they did that in other countries in different languages when they saw how cute it worked in America. And, you know, so you see, you can see the logic. I mean, at first it sounds absurd and it sounds ridiculous. And that's why I was sweating because it's like, I know. Right. Right. But when you think it through, and I challenge you to read the whole book because you start piecing together these various ideas and disinformation becomes less vague and more specific and you go, ah, that's how it works. And you begin to see how people's perception and how they're easily manipulated factors into national security, just like you just described. Stalin knew about that. He was a master. He was the master of propaganda. He invented it. I mean, he didn't invent it, but he invented it in a, you know, on the political stage to be used to mess with another country's perception of things. Think of what he did with brainwashing, right? Okay. So like in the fifties, and this is journalists, you know, said, so there was a journalist who was putting out stories about brainwashing and there was this idea, which is well taken that totalitarian governments brainwash people. And this became a big code word. It was introduced into the American lexicon in 1950. Well, then we're in the Korean war. Our pilots start getting shot down. They're put on TV by the communists saying terrible things about America, American pilots. And suddenly it was like, they've been brainwashed. It was very convenient to have that story. So these things work part and parcel and you've got all kinds of smart people behind the scenes, knowing this, looking at it, examining it, and using it to their advantage to stay where? In the poll position. That's the goal of the US government. So the propaganda that we did that sort of copied, Stalin's, we're kind of playing catch up in that sense. I mean, we're playing catch up, then we're ahead, then we're behind. It's always a, it's a game. It's, I mean, you're a competitor, you know this. That's a crazy thing to do to make a fake spaceship and just let it slam into the ground with a bunch of people that you cut up to look like aliens. Did he say specifically what kind of modifications they made to people that made him look like aliens? I got drips. You'll read it in those 12 pages. Come on with this 12 pages. I'm telling you that because you're asking me these questions that as if I spent, I mean, look, I did spend literally hundreds of hours with a source. We sat there and talked about everything and I would try to squeeze out just like you're trying to squeeze out of me. And that's why I'm saying read it because I literally tell you everything that there is. I think what's most interesting about the source and why I might come back and talk to you about it and tell you who he is on your show is because of his backstory, right? Why he did what he did, how he wound up in the Manhattan project. Sounds like he was probably Jewish from Germany. No? No. All right, I'm trying. Okay. Trying to get you.