After nearly five decades, guys like James Noce finally get to tell their stories about Area 51.

Yes, that Area 51.

The one that gets brought up when people talk about secret Air Force projects, crashed UFOs, alien bodies and, of course, conspiracies.

The secrets, some of them, have been declassified.

Noce, 72, and his fellow Area 51 veterans around the country now are free to talk about doing contract work for the CIA in the 1960s and ‘70s at the arid, isolated Southern Nevada government testing site.

FREEDOMUS AO ANAT COSAMUS

This patch is from an unknown program that took place at Groom Lake (Area 51) sometime during the late 1990s. The collection of six stars above the eagle's head may represent Area 51 (5 + 1 stars), while the collection of three stars below the eagle might represent "Detachment 3" (Groom Lake is also known as "Air Force Flight Test Center, Detachment 3"). The phrase Freedomus Ao Anat Cosamus is a garbled concoction of dog-Latin and dog-Greek. Although the intended meaning of the phrase is entirely unclear, one might venture the guess "Freedom throughout the cosmos."

PANTHER DEN

Panther Den is a Special Access Program (SAP) based at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts. Managed by the Big Safari project office, Panther Den is charged with overseeing classified information warfare projects. Related to electronic warfare, information warfare involves defending and attacking computer networks and other kinds of information infrastructure.

Projects falling under Panther Den's umbrella include Pirate Sword, Steel Puma, and Project Deborah.

Based at the Air Force's secret base near Groom Lake, Nevada, the Special Projects Flight Test Squadron is the Air Force's only "black" flight test squadron for classified prototype aircraft and advanced concept technology demonstrators.

The squadron's mascot is a wizard. A collection of six stars (5 + 1) on the patch references the unit's operating location: the secret base known as Area 51. The lowercase Greek sigma symbol in the wizard's right hand is the engineering symbol for the unknown value of an object's radar cross section (RCS). The ideal radar signature of a stealth aircraft is zero. While no stealth aircraft has yet achieved this goal, several have come close. On the right side of the patch, the falling globe references the hollow aluminum spheres dropped from the sky to calibrate radar equipment. A sphere of a given size has a known RCS value. Lightning bolts, such as the one emanating from the wizard's staff, seem to refer to electronic warfare. The aircraft in the lower right is probably a generic symbol representing flight testing of advanced aircraft. The sword at the bottom of the; image refers to a recently declassified Boeing stealth demonstrator known as the "Bird of Prey": the handle on the sword approximates the shape of the aircraft.