Russian Spy Photos of Area 51 Hit Web

Mulder and Scully of "The X-Files" are still out there searching for the truth, but the Russians may have had it all along.


Two years ago, a satellite launched by Sovinformsputnik, a private space association, took photos of a top-secret U.S. Air Force test site in Nevada known to conspiracy theorists and Ufologists as Area 51.


On Monday, servers crashed as those pictures were posted on the Internet for the first time. Aerial Images Inc., a company in the United States that specializes in satellite photographs, saw its web site, www.terraserver.com, flooded with visits by UFO buffs.


"We have been overwhelmed by people wanting to get on," said David Mountain, marketing director of Aerial Images Inc., in a phone interview from North Carolina on Wednesday. Mountain said it would soon be possible to see the images. But late Wednesday, efforts to access the web site's photos from Moscow met little success.


Perhaps, one speculates, they aren't meant to be accessed.


Area 51, officially called the Groom Dry Lake Air Force Base, has long been rumored to host flying saucers and extraterrestrial life forms captured by the U.S. government.


Situated just 135 kilometers away from Las Vegas, the Air Force base has long been shrouded in secrecy. The United States government only admitted its existence a few years ago; signs saying "Use of deadly force is authorized" warn visitors away from the heavily guarded base.


So what do the pictures show?


"I don't see anything like a UFO, but I don't think I know what a UFO looks like," said Mountain. "There's a lot of military buildings out there. It lets everybody look for themselves and decide for themselves."


Older, fuzzier satellite photographs of Area 51 are posted at www.abovetopsecret.com.


The photos all show a vast base, complete with airfields, outbuildings and craters, purportedly from U.S. nuclear tests in the 1950s. The Pentagon concedes the base has been a testing ground for top secret U.S. aircraft, including the U-2 spy plane and the B-2 stealth bomber. But beyond that, the Pentagon will not go.


"We've long said that this is not a center for UFO or alien activity," said Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon in a Washington news conference Tuesday, when asked about the pictures by wire services. "I think I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that we have no classified program that relies on aliens from outer space."


But as Komsomolskaya Pravda nicely put it on Tuesday: "No little green men or other mysterious figures can be seen on the film. But on the other hand, who would let them wander freely around a top-secret zone?"


And the absence of the little green men isn't going to stop the theories, or the thousands of people who come to the site each year.


"They all come and look for basically the same thing ... the excitement of Area 51 in itself, because it's such a top-secret place," said Pat Travis, the owner of Little A'Le'Inn, a restaurant and guest house in Rachel, Nevada, just outside the gate to Area 51.


Travis opened the restaurant in 1988 with her husband, Joe. Formerly called The Rachel Bar and Grill, the pair renamed it Little A'Le'Inn in 1990 and have attracted thousands of UFO buffs from all over the world ever since, including tourists from Russia.


Travis is not just exploiting the Ufologists. She truly believes.


"My niece and I together saw a spaceship, and I think my husband and I have been visited by more than one being," said Travis in a telephone interview Wednesday.


"I think that we've had one person that was what is called a Wokkian," said Travis - breaking off from making eggs, bacon and pancakes for a customer to speak by phone from Nevada.


"That means that a being took over a body. ... Someone came here and talked to me and I felt very strongly that something had taken over the body."


Travis, who had already given a couple of interviews that morning and was due later on radio that night, is sure the base is not just for humans.


"I feel that there are crafts. I feel that our government is working side by side with the beings that are there," said Travis.


Aerial Images Inc. say their satellite photos of Area 51 are the clearest yet. Sovinformsputnik was allowed to take the pictures after a presidential order in 1994 allowed such photographs to be taken.


The conspiracy theories continued this week, as web surfers found their way blocked to the pictures.


"There's a sense there's some kind of government interference," said Mountain, who denied that any pressure had been put on their company by the local, federal or world government.


It's not the first time Aerial Images Inc. has been doubted. The company called the makers of the "X-Files" to offer them their pictures of Area 51 - only to be rebuffed.


"We approached them and they basically said, 'We don't believe you,'" said Mountain. "They thought we were nuts."


Others questioned why Aerial Images Inc. took two years to put the photos on the web.


Was it to alter them?


"No," said Mountain.


Or was it a dastardly plan to garner as much publicity as possible and get their servers ready for the overload, as suggested by the general director of Sovinformsputnik, Mikhail Fomchenko?


"Of course," said Mountain.


Viewers can download a copy of the images for $7.95 or order a Kodak print for an extra $14.95.