Annie Jacobsen

Back in the 1950s, there was a top-secret program code-named SUNTAN being conducted at a top-secret facility called Skunk Works. Its objective? To develop a liquid-hydrogen-powered spy plane. Because liquid hydrogen is incredibly volatile, early experiments were conducted inside a bomb shelter with eight-foot-thick walls.

In 2001, Katie Couric told 'Today Show' audiences that 7 percent of Americans doubt the moon landing happened - that it was staged in the Nevada desert.

The problem is the myths of Area 51 are hard to dispute if no one can speak on the record about what actually happened there.

For decades, the men at Area 51 thought they'd take their secrets to the grave. At the height of the Cold War, they cultivated anonymity while pursuing some of the country's most covert projects. Conspiracy theories were left to popular imagination.

Urban legend has it that Area 51 is connected by underground tunnels and trains to other secret facilities around the country.

Many of the engineers I interviewed worked on reverse-engineering technology. It's a hallmark of Area 51.

The activities that went on at Camp King between 1946 and the late 1950s have never been fully accounted for by either the Department of Defense or the CIA.

The CIA teamed up with Army, Air Force and Naval Intelligence to run one of the most nefarious, classified, enhanced interrogation programs of the Cold War. The work took place inside a clandestine facility in the American zone of occupied Germany, called Camp King.

The oil under Libya is the champagne of oil, drop for drop the world's most valuable.

I do believe that the truth gets out.

Who would have thought that in the 1950s, Burbank was a hotbed of international espionage?

With stealth technology, the U.S. could spy on its Cold War adversaries without running the risk of getting caught.

Because it flew without a pilot, the D-21 was designed to fly over territory where the U.S. was denied access and to take photographs of weapons facilities from altitudes as low as 1,500 feet. But the project was canceled on July 30, 1966, after a fatal accident at sea during the drone's first official launch.

Since 9/11, the Justice Department has been widely criticized for one particular tactic it uses in fighting the War on Terror: it detains suspicious persons for long periods of time and puts them under heavy questioning before they are ever even charged with a crime.

Can a democratic nation fight a War on Terror and at the same time bend over backward so as not to offend a few visitors' rights?

Anyone who's read my 'Terror in the Skies' series knows that I have not been writing with an eye toward approval from any government agency.

On the morning of January 17, 1966, a real-life dirty bomb crisis occurred over Palomares, Spain. A Strategic Air Command bomber flying with four armed hydrogen Bombs - with yields between 70 kilotons and 1.45 megatons - collided midair with a refueling tanker over the Spanish countryside.

The Cold War had become a battlefield marked by doublespeak. Disguise, distortion, and deception were accepted as reality. Truth was promised in a serum.

In the winter of 1973, the American POWs held captive in Vietnam were released according to the terms of the Paris Peace Accords.

In the late 1960s, Ontario Airport was a throwback to a bygone era. Located 35 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, the airport served only two carriers, Western and Bonanza. Passengers could catch regional flights to San Francisco, Sacramento, Las Vegas, Palm Springs, Phoenix and Los Angeles, and that was about it.

In many previously classified documents relating to activities at the base, the words 'Area 51' are conveniently blacked out. There's always a euphemism for it - like 'the test facility' or 'the base' - but never 'Area 51.'

The idea that Area 51 was this test facility working to move science and technology faster and further than any other nation is true and is one of the great hallmarks of Area 51. There are other areas of the base that are controversial - but they both exist simultaneously - out there in the desert.

The area out at Area 51 that was part of the Operation Plumbbob test continues to be contaminated. It was not cleaned up until the '80s.

You can absolutely drive through an atmospheric bomb test and not be affected.

As far as I know, all the presidents know about Area 51. It would almost be impossible for them not to.