Terrorist training at the Nevada Test Site

www.newyorker.com...

From the air, the terrain of the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site, with its arid high plains and remote mountain peaks, has the look of northwest Iran. The site, some sixty-five miles northwest of Las Vegas, was once used for nuclear testing, and now includes a counterintelligence training facility and a private airport capable of handling Boeing 737 aircraft. It’s a restricted area, and inhospitable—in certain sections, the curious are warned that the site’s security personnel are authorized to use deadly force, if necessary, against intruders. It was here that the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) conducted training, beginning in 2005, for members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a dissident Iranian opposition group known in the West as the M.E.K

I was going to put this in the breaking news, but then again, the story is 7 years old. ;-) I assume the airport in question is Desert Rock, though there are a few airports on the test site. And don't forget, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. It depends on your perspective.

Note that the Bush administration trained Iraqis on the NTS under Anabasis. The group, known as the Desert Scorpions, were never used in the war. You can read a bit about this in "Hubris" from Corn/Isikoff.

And this is the perfect excuse to post my photo of a C17 leaving KDRA in a pile of dust:





Hmmh, I think I see a white bus...

The April 10th episode of Democracy Now featured an interview with Seymour Hersch regarding training the MEK at the Nevada Test Site. He said the facility is called "Site-12" and shows up on DOE environmental reports. It is listed as being used by OGA (other government agencies), but that usually means the CIA.

www.democracynow.org...

Here is one relevant parts of the transcript:

We began to—I learned about this many years ago. It’s just one of those things that it never quite occurred to me how important it was. And what is important about also the—they did stop, there’s no question, this sort of training that was going on. It was going on at a place called the Nevada Nuclear Security or National Security Test Site. It’s a former site for World War—post-World War II nuclear testing of weapons, testing of nuclear weapons. And it’s off-limits to people. And it’s—there’s an air base there. God knows what went on there. My own guess is rendition flights also flew into that air base in '02, ’03. There's some evidence for it. But certainly, the groups of MEK were flown in secretly by, I presume, the Joint Special Operations Command. This is this new high-powered group that’s been doing all the night raids in Afghanistan, that also came up in your news broadcast

However, the transcript is incomplete, or I am not looking in the right place. The revelation of "site-12" and OGA came after the break.

If Hersh meant Area 12, then all the pieces of the puzzle make sense. This is from the NTS

Area 12—Area 12 occupies approximately 40 square miles along the northern boundary of the NNSS on Rainier Mesa. There are a number of tunnel complexes mined into Rainier Mesa that are used for experiments, including E-, G-, N-, P-, and T-Tunnel complexes. The Area 12 Camp was renovated and upgraded and will provide a secure base camp for military units and other government agencies for conducting counterterrorism and other exercises in the northern region of the NNSS. It provides an urban terrain setting utilizing existing commercial, residential, and industrial buildings. The camp includes 200 dormitory rooms, a cafeteria, weapons and munitions storage, and numerous operations and support buildings. The NNSA Office of Secure Transportation currently uses it as a training facility. No atmospheric tests were conducted in Area 12; 61 underground nuclear tests were conducted in Area 12 between 1957 and 1992.

Note that there is no airport at Area 12. There is a heliport. But nearby Pahute Mesa has an airport that has Xs on the runway, as Hersh mentioned. Of course, so does Base Camp, which is a bit further north.

Pahute Mesa at at
37° 6'6.90"N 116°18'46.14"W
on Google Earth.

This is the map they handed out at the YMP tour. It has more information on it than the NTS has on the maps on their website. I scanned it, which is why you see a small break in the image.



This link will take you to Google Earth, with the NTS map as an overlay.
www.lazygranch.com/google_earth/nts_map_overlay.kmz

Originally posted by gariac
Note that there is no airport at Area 12. There is a heliport. But nearby Pahute Mesa has an airport that has Xs on the runway, as Hersh mentioned. Of course, so does Base Camp, which is a bit further north.

Pahute Mesa at at
37° 6'6.90"N 116°18'46.14"W
on Google Earth.

This is the map they handed out at the YMP tour. It has more information on it than the NTS has on the maps on their website. I scanned it, which is why you see a small break in the image.



This link will take you to Google Earth, with the NTS map as an overlay.
www.lazygranch.com/google_earth/nts_map_overlay.kmz

Thanks for that NTS map, I had a copy of it, in poster size, hanging on my office wall for quite a while. It has since been replaced with a 2' x 4' poster of Area 51 I patched together from image grabs off GE.

One thing I have always wondered about the NTS pic, is the numbered references i.e.boxes all over the map with 18-13C, 6-3E, 22-4P, etc. I notice the first digits match the area, but what are these?

Originally posted by FosterVS

Originally posted by gariac

One thing I have always wondered about the NTS pic, is the numbered references i.e.boxes all over the map with 18-13C, 6-3E, 22-4P, etc. I notice the first digits match the area, but what are these?

Looks to me. If solid squares are security barricades

C = Camera

E= Entry/Exit

P= Perimeter Patrol Post

R= Radio or Radar tower

I think this map was set up to document communication infrastructure, and the YMP just used it because it is a nice map. When I was in the NTS cafeteria, this was the map they had on the wall.

I don't buy the camera idea because I've been on some of the roads and never saw cameras just sticking out like a stick in the ground in the middle of nowhere. The facilities had cameras.

I only noticed one barricade when on the site. It was basically a saw horse type barricade indicating that there was an "open source" (as in unshielded radioactive material) ahead. Now technically radiation doesn't just stop at a barricade, but I presume the barricade was at a point where the dose was "acceptable." ;-)

The only R facility I saw was the Tweezer, and I don't know if it is a radio site. Certainly the mountain peaks with radio sites didn't get a R designation.

I suspected the sites might have something to do with the SORD weather sensors. This page has the location of the weather stations.
www.sord.nv.doe.gov...
If you look on the page, there are some KML links. One for the NTS area outlines (pretty handy), and two for weather stations. A few of the "C"s are weather stations, but not all.

My conclusion is I don't know!

This is a direct line to the NTS borders KML:
www.sord.nv.doe.gov...

MSM n CIA got their work cut out for them sealing up this leak!

reply to post by BiggerPicture


The RT video was good stuff. I did a check of PressTV (official Iran propaganda) and zilch!

This is a story the LV Sun ran on the Area 12 facility:
www.lasvegassun.com...

yah inspired by ur thread (thx) i just created a separate thread related to the investigation of the us officials behind supporting MEK.

RT is cool, i avoid Press TV yeah cuz its likely propaganda and so obviously so, that i wonder if its rhetorical propaganda and Press TV reporters are actually MEK sympathizers or supporters.

most of the Iranians I know are Jewish refugees living here in USA, go figure and i heard some stories.. =/