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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
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
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.
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
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?