a reply to:
Poon
As pertains to the Bakersfield incident in 1986, Nick Cook's overly melodramatic narrative relies heavily on the testimony of "Amelia Lopez" (not her
real name), who claimed to have witnessed the accident. By 1996 she had become a Kern County Sheriff's deputy and agreed to guide Cook to the crash
site.
In the prologue to "The Hunt For Zero Point" (Broadway Books, 2001) Cook wrote, "Over a rusted barbed-wire fence and we were into the scrub—with new
traces of green at its tips from the spring rains. Beyond lay the edge of the Sequoia National Forest, a huge expanse of protected park and woodland.
We left the broken fence posts behind and our cars were lost against the sunset.We reached the crash site soon after the sun dipped below the edge of
the mountain. The summit was only 2,000 feet above us, but here the ground was even and covered in a crusty layer of dirt. The plants and trees were
younger than the vegetation we'd passed on the way up. But that was the only real clue something had happened here."
This description immediately set off some red flags for me. There are no fences in close proximity to the crash site. This description suggests Cook
started his hike from Rancheria Road, four miles west of the site. The easiest route from this point involves six or seven miles of winding dirt road
(across private land, through two locked gates) up to the crest of the mountains, followed by a hike of nearly a mile down a steep ridge into the
canyon. Alternately, an approach from the east would require crossing the Kern River and climbing up a rugged canyon for about a mile, with a
1,000-foot elevation gain. The crash site is located two miles inside the western boundary of Los Padres National Forest. This also indicates that
Cook was heading east, meaning he would have to climb over the mountain and descend into the Kern River gorge. His description indicates they were
hiking across open country and not on a road or trail. If they started as the sun was setting, they could never reach the crash site before dark. The
airplane crashed in a steep, rugged canyon. The plants and trees don’t look noticeably different from those in the surrounding area. A few of the
trees and larger bushes have charred trunks from the post-impact fire. There are two natural springs that flow year-round. Cook's description sounds
nothing like this, and he failed to mention seeing the flagpole memorial the Air Force crew left in memory of the pilot. Even if the flag itself had
deteriorated, which it did from time to time before being periodically replaced, the pole itself remained a prominent landmark.
"Amelia Lopez" claimed that in the early hours of July 11,1986, she and several friends "had been out partying with her college friends at a campsite
near the Kern River." She recalled that just as she was settling into her sleeping bag there was a loud "sonic boom" and that "the entire horizon was
flash-lit by an enormous explosion, the flames shooting skyward as the plane plowed into Saturday Peak ten miles away." She and her friends started
hiking toward the crash scene but "hadn't gone more than five miles toward the impact point when one of them noticed a figure on the trail up ahead.
The scrub either side of her erupted with movement and the next thing she knew her face was in the dirt and she had a boot in her back and a gun at
her head. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that they were soldiers—not California National Guard, as might have been expected in an
environmental emergency, but SWAT-types brandishing assault rifles, night-vision systems and a #-load of threats about government property and
national security. Two of her friends started on about their rights under the Constitution, that this was public land and there wasn't a person on
earth who could tell them to get off it. She screamed and she yelled and she flailed against the pressure in her back, until the next thing she felt
was the slap from her roommate that brought her around. When she finally understood what she was being told, it was that the soldiers were gone."
There are so many things wrong with that story. To begin with, in the twisting canyons and mountainous terrain, it is unlikely (though not impossible)
that witnesses 10 miles away would have seen or heard anything. Why would anyone hike such a long distance in the dark over rugged, mountainous
terrain when you can drive to within a mile of the site? Why would soldiers hide in the bushes to ambush unauthorized persons rather than set up
obvious checkpoints and barricades on roads and trails approaching the crash scene? Why would the soldiers suddenly disappear after detaining the
intruders?
In fact, the accident occurred at 1:45 a.m. PDT. Local fire and police department officials were the first to respond to the accident scene. Air Force
personnel from Edwards Air Force Base arrived shortly thereafter, but found that a brush fire made access to the impact site virtually impossible. At
3:00 a.m. PDT, a Divert Team was initiated at Tonopah Test Range and arrived at the crash site approximately eight hours after the plane struck the
mountainside. Delays due to difficulty arranging transportation prevented the team from arriving sooner. Containment of the 150-acre brushfire
hindered the team’s access to the site as it took 16 hours for county firefighters, who were not allowed into the immediate area of the crash site,
to extinguish the blaze. The site was declared a National Defense Area to prevent entry by unauthorized personnel. Civilian overflights were
restricted within a five-mile radius, below 7,000 feet altitude. Armed military guards and Kern County Sheriff’s deputies manned roadblocks at outer
perimeter checkpoints.
Recovery efforts at the crash scene lasted three weeks. The story that the cleanup crew "sieved the dirt for a thousand yards out from the impact
point" (sometimes described as "a thousand feet beyond the last recognizable debris") to sanitize the site was started after news reporters and hikers
reported finding wreckage after the site was re-opened. Had an excavation of such scale taken place, the result would have stood out like a sand trap
on a golf course. Such a dig would have been difficult to undertake on flat ground. The crash scene was a steep, rugged canyon with rocky outcrops.
The most interesting element of the cover story was that the site had been salted with wreckage from "an old F-101 Voodoo that crashed at the test
site some 20 years earlier" (according to aviation author Jim Goodall). What makes this fascinating is that they could have claimed to have used
wreckage from any airplane but specifically chose a mishap that had occurred at Area 51 (a Nevada newspaper headline in September 1967 read
"Super-Secret Nevada Base Crash Kills Jet Pilot").
It's theoretically possible that even failing to sanitize the Bakersfield site, crews could have intentionally contaminated the debris field with
F-101 wreckage. Thus far, no one I am aware of has ever found any identifiable F-101 parts at Bakersfield but I know of multiple individuals that
found pieces marked with part numbers specific to the F-117A. As for the physical characteristics of the crash scene, the impact crater remained
visible into the early 1990s. By 1996 it had become overgrown but there was still a scattering of debris in the surrounding area.