New Area 51 program on History Channel, page 1

The MysteryQuest episode was originally to focus solely on Area 51. Halfway through the final edit, the producers decided to expand the scope to include a whole bunch of unrelated stuff (Roswell, Nazca lines, the jet pilot's sighting, etc.). It went from a coherent narrative to a confusing jumble. The result was terrible and an insult to the audience.

Even the original concept had serious problems. I had been promised that this show would tell the real story of Area 51 and that my expertise was needed. Unfortunately, the script outline was already fixed and the field producer stymied me at nearly every turn. If I tried to give some facts about Area 51 that had been uncovered through hard research efforts after the mid 1990s, I was told I couldn't say that because it would spoil the mystery. I was repeatedly told to remember that "Area 51 is a mystery." Well, I thought the point was to solve the mystery. Apparently not. They just wanted to tease the audience.

It was mostly kabuki theatre, highly stylized moves. All the drama about the cameras set to record the skyline over Groom Lake was bogus. The cameras had such wide-angle lenses that they wouldn't capture anything. They fed into VHS tape decks so resolution was poor. The big lens on Tikaboo was wasted because it was to shaky and the air temperature was too hot by the time we reached the peak. We had to "oooh" and "ahhh" about the "biggest lense ever taken up Tikaboo Peak even though we could clearly see the pictures were not as good as those taken under better atmospheric conditions with smaller lenses.

The crash site visit was another problem. We had a clearly identifiable structure from the front end of the DZ-1 rocket booster that propelled the D-21B drone. I said I could prove this through the materials (no lab analysis needed), construction methods, paints and coatings, manufacturer's inspection stamps ( Skunk Works), part numbers (see the tech manual), and recognizable components (from photos). The field producer insisted that this would "spoil the mystery" and that we had to send a sample to the lab for scientific analysis. She didn't want a sample off the big piece because it was obviously rusted steel. So I gave her a small brass fragment from some electronic component because it looked more exotic than any other piece, very distorted and "alien." Off course, the lab tech doesn't have any knowledge of aerospace vehicle construction so all he can tell is that it was made on Earth and could be from just about anything.

I fought hard to get some factual information into the show and I fought to make the program more original. I consider it a minor victory that they allowed me to say that, over the years, there has never been any hard evidence of "Aurora." They cut out the part where I explained the origin of the AURORA name (line item for B-2 budget). They also perpetuated the myth that Area 51 was an officially unacknowledged base, something I have disproved with extensive documentation. I spent a lot of time in front of the camera revealing information about Groom Lake that has never been included in an Area 51 documentary. As in the past ("Return to Area 51," UFO Hunters," etc.), these scenes never made the final cut.