The FBI Goes Full X-Files, Raiding the Homes of a Guy Who Runs an Area 51 Website

Education Images. Getty Images.

Long before the glut of basic cable shows built around interviews with crackpots claiming every old thing ever to appear on Earth was built by ancient aliens, we had perhaps the best scripted TV drama ever to deal with the paranormal: The X-Files.

Aside from the perfect premise from showrunner Cris Carter, the brilliant writing of Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan and the stellar character development from David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, the best aspect of the show was the way it always managed to include just enough real-life aspects to make even the most improbable plot devices seem possible. 

A quick example: The first episode I ever saw opened with cops chasing a guy on foot. The end up shooting the suspect to take him down. And as they're tending to his wounds and radioing for an ambulance, a gas rises out of the bullet holes in the guy's chest and knocks them unconscious. And immediately I was hooked. Because a year or two earlier, that same thing had happened in an operating room somewhere. In a story that was all over the news for a few days, a medical team was performing surgery on a patient and were all knocked cold. No one could say why. No explanation was ever given. The story just fell out of the news cycle and was never mentioned again. Once you were reminded of that, it opened your mind to all sort of possibilities. Including the one The X-Files gave, that the guy he cops were chasing was an alien-human hybrid and part of an attempt to infiltrate and colonize the Earth. I think. It was a long time ago and I might be conflating that one with 100 other episodes. But still. 

The point being that things happen all around us in the real world that can even the most outlandish fiction seem plausible. Like the same federal law enforcement agency that Mulder and Scully worked for in the '90s coming after a UFO researcher:

Source - Agents from the US Air Force and the FBI raided two Nevada homes owned by a man who operates a website about Area 51, which runs articles positing theories about what goes on at the top secret base, officials said.

The Air Force Office of Special Investigations and the FBI entered properties linked to webmaster Joerg Arnu in Las Vegas and Rachel on Nov. 3 and confiscated potential evidence, spokesman Lt. Col. Bryon McGarry confirmed in a statement. …

Arnu runs Dreamland Resort, a popular website [which] features photographs and drone videos of Area 51 and reports on the comings and goings at the base from people who travel to the edge and take a look. 

He even writes about reports of UFOs and aliens at the site — reports that he dismisses as false and nothing but a “distraction from the real purpose of the base, reseaech [sic] and development of all sorts of Black Projects.”

Let me interject here to say the FBI does an amazing job. I have in-laws who proudly work for the Bureau, and honest, law-abiding citizens such as myself can sleep peaceably at night safe in the knowledge that these dedicated agents of the law are fulfilling their sworn oaths to protect us from all enemies, foreign and domestic. And to remind them there's no need to come to my humble little house or look into me in any way. Thank you for your service. 

With that disclaimer out of the way, this raises so many questions. We can accept that Area 51 is a military base intentionally located out in the middle of nowhere, and therefore has secret stuff going on inside all that chainlink and barbed wire. You don't plunk a Defense Department installation into hundreds of miles of inhospitable landscape that looks like the background of a Road Runner cartoon if you're not trying to hide something. And spend decades denying the place even exists. Clearly the whole operation exists to keep the public and our adversaries out of the loop. Totally understood. 

But no discussion of Area 51 is possible without mentioning those 75 years worth of rumors and speculation they're keeping downed UFOs and extraterrestrials in there. Or the credible accounts of people like Lt. Col. Phillip J. Corso who wrote about working on those downed craft to reverse engineer them. And by assigning the research to several different government contractors, they were able to produce technological advancements such as silicon chips, night vision goggles and I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. OK, that last one is mine. But you get the point. Or the famous testimony of Bob Lazar, who worked at a facility not far from there, with a specialty in advanced propulsion. Among the things he has been saying for decades that have been confirmed, is the existence of Element 115, which was thought to be something he made up, but has since been added to the Periodic Table. 

The point being there is way too much smoke here for the public not to assume there's a fire. Perhaps the Feds are coming after these Joerg and Rachel Arnu people because they've been divulging regular, every day, sensitive military information. The terrestrial origin kind. Maybe they've taken photos of some new test aircraft. Or have reported on the comings and goings of military personnel that foreign governments would like to know about. There could be any of a million perfectly benign reasons to raid the homes of a couple who runs a conspiracy website. But you're never going to do that without creating more conspiracy theories. 

Whatever the FBI is keeping secret, they're going to have to release to some extent. Silence is just going to make people do what people do best: Fill in the blanks with their own explanations. Which are going to be crazier than the likely truth 99.99% of the time. 

So the best thing they could do is make as much of this investigation public as they can without revealing military secrets for bad actors around the world to use against us. In other words: Be Mulders and Scullys, not Cigarette Smoking Mans.