Raw capture
Nick Cook and Guy Norris - "The Light Beyond The Mountains: Area 51 - Where It All Began"
Nick Cook and Guy Norris - "The Light Beyond The Mountains: Area 51 - Where It All Began"
- Shared URL: https://substack.com/@nickcook/note/p-140443765?r=e7fih
- Canonical source: https://nickcook.substack.com/p/the-light-beyond-the-mountains-area
- Publication: Nick Cook’s Rogue Icons
- Host: Nick Cook
- Guest: Guy Norris
- Published: 2024-01-07
- Post ID: 140443765
- Type: Public video podcast
- Duration: 1:26:10
- Extraction: Official Substack per-post JSON and native speaker-labelled transcript JSON
- Sourced: 2026-08-13
- Cited by: ../../queries/2026-08-13-nick-cook-guy-norris-area-51-1992
- Fidelity note: Substack marks the native transcript as transcribed and publisher-approved and maps SPEAKER_00 to Nick Cook and SPEAKER_01 to Guy Norris. It spans 00:00:10 through 01:25:59 of the 01:26:10 recording. Automated transcription errors may remain.
Transcript
[00:00:10] Nick Cook: Guy, it's so good to see you.
[00:00:13] Nick Cook: How was the Christmas New Year break?
[00:00:16] Guy Norris: Yeah, it was great.
[00:00:17] Guy Norris: Thanks, Nick.
[00:00:18] Guy Norris: We managed to actually get away onto the high seas for a few days on a cruise, which was wonderful.
[00:00:24] Guy Norris: So now it's sort of digging back into the reality of life again and work.
[00:00:32] Nick Cook: Well, look, thanks so much for doing this.
[00:00:34] Nick Cook: And, you know, as as I explained, it's to tie in with the prologue of the new book that I'm launching now on Substack, which is called The Light Beyond the Mountains.
[00:00:47] Nick Cook: And it's obviously about consciousness.
[00:00:51] Nick Cook: It's about reality.
[00:00:52] Nick Cook: It's about a little bit about UFOs and UAP.
[00:00:55] Nick Cook: But it's also about
[00:00:57] Nick Cook: You know, classified aircraft, how I got from sort of there to here.
[00:01:05] Nick Cook: And I also wanted to talk to colleagues along the way who've sort of been on that journey somewhat with me.
[00:01:14] Nick Cook: And of course, you feature in the prologue.
[00:01:17] Nick Cook: of the book.
[00:01:18] Nick Cook: So we're going to get on to that.
[00:01:22] Nick Cook: And I really want to talk about your memories and of course, you know, mine too, about that trip that we took in, I think it was March 1992 from, I think we went from Reno, Nevada, down to the Texas-Mexico border.
[00:01:42] Nick Cook: I think I seem to remember it took us about 10 days or so.
[00:01:47] Nick Cook: But before we get on to that, obviously, you and I have known each other a really long time, and I'm hoping that it will be of interest to some people, at least, about to talk about our careers, because we're both trade journalists or we've been trade.
[00:02:04] Nick Cook: I've been a trade journalist.
[00:02:05] Nick Cook: You still are one.
[00:02:07] Nick Cook: So would you just give a little introduction to yourself, first of all, and tell people who you are and what you do?
[00:02:18] Guy Norris: Yeah, sure.
[00:02:19] Guy Norris: If you if you absolutely insist, I will.
[00:02:21] Guy Norris: I do.
[00:02:24] Guy Norris: Well, yes, as you rightly say, we we have known each other a long time.
[00:02:28] Guy Norris: And in fact, you were absolutely at the beginning of my aerospace reporting career, because when I was basically looking for a job in aviation writing, you were the first person I got to talk to
[00:02:46] Guy Norris: about a possibility of this job with this magazine now long defunct sadly called Interavia which was based in Switzerland but in the 80s was quite a thriving sort of vibrant operation and they had a London office in Fleet Street or just off Fleet Street in Temple Chambers which is where I arranged to meet you and you said
[00:03:11] Guy Norris: Look, we must go for a drink and before we meet the other person in the office who can be quite grumpy, I really need to give you some guidance.
[00:03:23] Guy Norris: So I remember that from the very beginning and feeling that you were pretty instrumental in the first steps of my new career in aviation journalism.
[00:03:33] Guy Norris: So that was probably 1989, I think, would it have been?
[00:03:39] Nick Cook: I think it must have been a bit earlier than that because I joined Jane's Defence Weekly in 1986.
[00:03:46] Nick Cook: Yes.
[00:03:47] Nick Cook: So obviously you took over my job at Inter Ravia and I do remember that first drink and I probably did make a jokey reference about the grumpy person in the office but of course he turned out to be a fantastic mentor didn't he and we're talking about an amazing defence journalist here called Mark Hewish
[00:04:10] Nick Cook: Nick Cook.
[00:04:21] Nick Cook: Well, we should talk a bit about that mentoring aspect because I was mentored by him and he gave me this incredible sense of sort of detail, you know, you have to get the detail of the story right and he was quite strict in that sense, wasn't he?
[00:04:40] Guy Norris: He was, yes, absolutely.
[00:04:42] Guy Norris: And the strange thing was that his way of doing things to me was like this, you know, for example, he would quite happily go to the pub, any, there was a huge range of pubs at lunchtime in and around Fleet Street, as you know, we were right beside Temple Chambers.
[00:05:00] Guy Norris: And I think his favourite watering hole I knew at that time was the Edgar Wallace.
[00:05:05] Guy Norris: which was named for the famous author, of course, but he would quite happily drink six or seven pints at lunchtime and I would try and match him and think that was normal.
[00:05:20] Guy Norris: I'd come back to the office and be completely overwhelmed and be sleeping at my desk and he would come round and say, what are you doing?
[00:05:28] Guy Norris: Get on the phone, start working.
[00:05:31] Guy Norris: I just couldn't, I couldn't believe it, you know.
[00:05:34] Nick Cook: Yeah, I know.
[00:05:36] Nick Cook: It was extraordinary.
[00:05:37] Nick Cook: And of course, that all sort of tied in with that legendary sort of Fleet Street behaviour of, you know, massive drinks down the pub, come back, file a story, go off and have more drinks, file more stories, go out and get a story, maybe.
[00:05:53] Nick Cook: I mean, it was an incredible time.
[00:05:56] Nick Cook: Hard to believe now.
[00:05:58] Nick Cook: Yes.
[00:05:59] Guy Norris: And yet, of course, it was this unbelievable professionalism, as you mentioned amongst that, about getting the details totally accurate and being able to operate even in that kind of boozy, you know, jocular environment.
[00:06:15] Guy Norris: Underneath it all, you know, he gave that impression, but he was the consummate professional.
[00:06:22] Guy Norris: And he would, you know, for example, he would
[00:06:25] Guy Norris: get people at ease, he would be chatting with them and he wouldn't show the slightest hint of bringing out a notebook or anything, you know, nothing quite so gauche.
[00:06:35] Guy Norris: He would store that knowledge until his brain was brimming over it, excuse himself, rush off to the nearest men's lavatory and quickly scribble it all down.
[00:06:48] Nick Cook: That's a really good point.
[00:06:50] Nick Cook: I'd forgotten that key lesson, which was, look really casual.
[00:06:55] Nick Cook: Whatever the person is saying to you, don't react.
[00:06:58] Nick Cook: Then rush off to the lav, scribble it all down as fast as you could.
[00:07:02] Nick Cook: You could remember it before you forgot it.
[00:07:04] Nick Cook: And then on you went.
[00:07:06] Nick Cook: I mean, it was surprisingly investigative, wasn't it?
[00:07:12] Nick Cook: I mean, in a sense, we weren't just
[00:07:16] Nick Cook: getting the facts down about, you know, defence equipment and, you know, what was going on in that world.
[00:07:23] Nick Cook: There was, for you and for me, this sort of investigative element as well.
[00:07:29] Guy Norris: Yeah.
[00:07:29] Guy Norris: And of course, in those days, I guess I probably still are, but, you know, you were at the heart of a lot of big companies, big corporations.
[00:07:38] Guy Norris: You know, London was an important part of the world's sort of defence infrastructure and
[00:07:44] Guy Norris: you know, the British airspace as it was before it was really BAE Systems, had its, you know, just down on the Strand, had its headquarters there, there were all the embassies, the defence attaches, there was all of the US, big US primes, had their local people who would meet you for lunch and, you know, you would, it was all, it was all a great atmosphere at that time, I thought, and
[00:08:09] Guy Norris: Never any two days were the same, frankly, if I remember right.
[00:08:13] Nick Cook: It was 87, I think, when I joined up with you guys.
[00:08:21] Nick Cook: Yeah, and I mean, I was going to ask you your first impressions, if you can remember them, in your first week in the job.
[00:08:33] Nick Cook: Mine was surreal.
[00:08:36] Nick Cook: I went from, I left university,
[00:08:40] Nick Cook: I got a job after leaving university because I didn't know what I wanted to do, being a painter and decorator.
[00:08:46] Nick Cook: Let me tell you, nothing focuses the mind more on what you really want to do than being stuck up a ladder with a paintbrush and a pot of paint for days and days on end.
[00:09:00] Nick Cook: And I really decided at that time that what I wanted to do was pursue this career in aerospace and defence journalism.
[00:09:08] Nick Cook: And I then, so I went from university to nine months of that while I was trying to find my break, my big break in that world.
[00:09:20] Nick Cook: Eventually, I got it going to Interavia in 1983.
[00:09:27] Nick Cook: And I remember my first day in the office, I was a starving penniless
[00:09:33] Nick Cook: painter and decorator, well not quite panelist but almost, and I went from that world into the boardroom of Rolls-Royce where, do you remember Alan Brothers, the very consummate star professional at Rolls-Royce?
[00:09:48] Nick Cook: He, I mean, you know, I was wined and dined in the Rolls-Royce boardroom, which was extraordinary, and I imagine you've got similar memories to that.
[00:10:01] Guy Norris: Oh yes, absolutely.
[00:10:02] Guy Norris: I mean, similar to you, I kind of went off half-cocked as it were at the end of coming out of university, not really
[00:10:11] Guy Norris: having failed completely to really secure any sort of proper career path but always knowing that aviation was a passion underneath it all and then figuring out how to get into aviation as soon as I was out of the sort of out of the academic world and it wasn't until I had a pretty close call in an aircraft
[00:10:34] Guy Norris: in the middle of Canada really in the winter and the winter of I guess it was winter of 85 that you know it was such a close call that when I was telling my family about it they suggested I write a story because I've never written anything and this one way to the other led me going to Flight International for an interview and I arrived in London you know went to the flight offices
[00:11:02] Guy Norris: and it was pretty clear within about 10 seconds that I had zero experience, that they needed somebody, you know, to hit the ground running sort of thing.
[00:11:12] Guy Norris: But they sort of said, well, look, you've made all this big effort to come all this way to London, you know, would you like to see the office?
[00:11:18] Guy Norris: I went, yes, that would be great.
[00:11:19] Guy Norris: You know, they opened the doors and it's like Nirvana, you know, there was inflatable A9s hanging from the ceiling and there was, you know, somebody rushing out of the door saying, I'm just off to Rio, I'll see you in 10 days.
[00:11:33] Guy Norris: people on the phone to the US.
[00:11:34] Guy Norris: I mean, it was just it was just a magic environment.
[00:11:37] Guy Norris: I thought, finally, I found it.
[00:11:40] Guy Norris: This is what I want to do.
[00:11:42] Guy Norris: And then I spent from there until I met you actually getting that first proper reporting job in in aviation.
[00:11:51] Guy Norris: And then, as you say, you know, you arrive feeling completely, you know, imposter syndrome.
[00:11:57] Guy Norris: It doesn't do it, really.
[00:11:58] Guy Norris: But you arrive
[00:12:00] Guy Norris: you know, to these huge companies and you sort of wind and dined and they respect you and they treat you for as somebody who knows what they're doing, you know, you're talking about.
[00:12:10] Guy Norris: Of course, we didn't.
[00:12:12] Guy Norris: Not really, but I didn't.
[00:12:13] Nick Cook: I didn't at all.
[00:12:14] Nick Cook: I had a massive imposter syndrome.
[00:12:18] Nick Cook: And I was bluffing my way because I was on a on a three month trial period.
[00:12:24] Nick Cook: And I thought, oh, my God, they're going to find out, you know, that I've bluffed this whole thing and I'm going to be out.
[00:12:30] Nick Cook: And this and like you, I had found my dream job.
[00:12:34] Nick Cook: I never wanted it to end.
[00:12:36] Nick Cook: And it was like you said, it was it was Nirvana.
[00:12:40] Nick Cook: It was heaven.
[00:12:41] Nick Cook: Yeah.
[00:12:42] Nick Cook: Such a good time to be reporting because there was so much going on as well.
[00:12:46] Nick Cook: The industry was huge and diverse.
[00:12:50] Nick Cook: It was unmerged or not merged in the way that we know it today, you know, around those sort of nine or ten big prime contractors.
[00:12:59] Nick Cook: So lots of people to go and see.
[00:13:02] Nick Cook: And we learnt on the job.
[00:13:05] Nick Cook: We did.
[00:13:06] Nick Cook: It's fantastic.
[00:13:07] Guy Norris: I do remember shortly after you left and I was the new boy, you know, and we would meet occasionally at various industry events.
[00:13:16] Guy Norris: And, you know, you'd ask me how I was getting on and, you know, coping with the strange characters in our two worlds sort of thing.
[00:13:25] Guy Norris: And the classic moment occurred when we went to Yeovil for the rollout of the H101.
[00:13:29] Guy Norris: I mean, that's how long ago we're talking about now.
[00:13:32] Guy Norris: And you came up to me and said, I don't know about you, old boy, but you might want to be,
[00:13:40] Guy Norris: You might want to be aware that my former boss, your new boss, has just asked me to make sure I file the story by five o'clock this evening.
[00:13:47] Guy Norris: I sent that to you?
[00:13:50] Guy Norris: Yeah, because Mark Lambert had mistakenly forgotten completely that you'd left and I was the new guy.
[00:14:00] Guy Norris: I'd asked you to file a story.
[00:14:04] Nick Cook: Very good.
[00:14:04] Nick Cook: Yeah.
[00:14:07] Nick Cook: Well, look, should we move on to your time at, well, we worked together for a very brief window when Jane's group, Thompson or whoever it was, bought into Ravia.
[00:14:19] Nick Cook: So, old mag, where you were, we all then moved into the same office in Coulsdon, South London.
[00:14:27] Nick Cook: And so for a while we were sort of co-located.
[00:14:29] Nick Cook: And I remember that.
[00:14:30] Nick Cook: And then you got your job at Flight.
[00:14:35] Nick Cook: And what position were you there?
[00:14:38] Guy Norris: I was technical editor in 1989.
[00:14:43] Guy Norris: That was the 1989.
[00:14:44] Guy Norris: So it was a pretty rapid sort of progression.
[00:14:47] Guy Norris: And I truly did feel like an imposter at that stage.
[00:14:51] Guy Norris: But within two years,
[00:14:55] Guy Norris: flight at that stage was trying to put the international in flight international and they basically decentralized and cast us out to the four corners of the globe really and I was lucky enough to get the position in California which was the LA office and I moved there in 1991
[00:15:14] Guy Norris: to start what I thought was going to be a three year assignment.
[00:15:19] Nick Cook: So you are speaking to me today from the from the US still integrated there.
[00:15:27] Guy Norris: Yeah, three years turned into three decades.
[00:15:31] Guy Norris: What more can I say?
[00:15:33] Nick Cook: Amazing.
[00:15:35] Nick Cook: So what was it like when you first arrived in LA for flight?
[00:15:42] Nick Cook: What sort of stories were you covering?
[00:15:44] Nick Cook: And then we ought to get on to the stuff that we really want to talk about, which is Black World secret aircraft programs.
[00:15:52] Guy Norris: Yeah, well, of course.
[00:15:53] Guy Norris: Yeah, I mean, it was curious, actually, because although in those days, you know, sort of Southern California was really the beating heart of the U.S.
[00:16:03] Guy Norris: aerospace industry, you know, because of the great weather there and the historic connections with Douglas, you know, McDonnell, Douglas, Lockheed, Northrop.
[00:16:15] Guy Norris: you know, Boeing to a smaller extent, but they were, I mean, they were all there and all the heritage companies were there, all the way down to the sort of mom and pop, you know, small contractor companies that there was flourishing network of people, hundreds of thousands of people employed in aerospace, Hughes, you know, all of these companies that sort of along, as you mentioned, have long since all mostly consolidated into one or two big primes.
[00:16:41] Guy Norris: But they were all still independent there.
[00:16:42] Guy Norris: I mean, I had this huge contact book that I was sort of gifted by my predecessor who'd moved on to Singapore office.
[00:16:52] Guy Norris: And, you know, his one warning was, if you're going to go anywhere, you might want to fly.
[00:16:59] Guy Norris: It's a lot better than trying these freeways.
[00:17:02] Guy Norris: So I'd often end up flying all the way to Seattle to see Boeing rather than driving north of LA to see Lockheed and that sort of thing.
[00:17:12] Guy Norris: It was just it was it was very such a change, such a different world.
[00:17:17] Guy Norris: But of course, at the time, you know, you mentioned the Black World projects.
[00:17:23] Guy Norris: You know, the F-117 was then sort of out in the open.
[00:17:30] Guy Norris: The B-2, that was in early flight test and development.
[00:17:37] Guy Norris: You know, and of course, there was a lot of rumors going around about this
[00:17:43] Guy Norris: doughnuts on a rope, hulls detonation powered aircraft and mystery booms that would echo across Southern California in the middle of the night sort of thing.
[00:17:55] Guy Norris: So I arrived there in the midst of this new wave really of discussion about new classified aircraft and who knew what they were.
[00:18:08] Nick Cook: Well, let's turn the clock back a little bit because let's go back to around 19, well, for me, 1985, I think, maybe 84, was when our erstwhile colleague, Bill Sweetman, started to write about these hidden aircraft programs in California.
[00:18:33] Nick Cook: And I think Bill, who was initially
[00:18:37] Nick Cook: of course, a sort of wunderkind at flight.
[00:18:40] Nick Cook: Then he joined, I think he was freelance for a bit, then he joined International Defence Review, Interavia's sister publication.
[00:18:51] Nick Cook: And I then, in about 1984 or 5, I think I first became aware, because I was part of that same group, of Bill's writing about these secret projects.
[00:19:01] Nick Cook: And what I loved about Bill's stuff was that he was kind of the Sherlock Holmes of, you know, uncovering these black world programs.
[00:19:10] Nick Cook: He would look for these signature clues, you know, in the industry.
[00:19:15] Nick Cook: Of course, he was talking to everyone.
[00:19:19] Nick Cook: And employing those skills that you were talking about earlier, no doubt, you know, which was looking calm, don't look ruffled when somebody says something they shouldn't have and then you rush into the loose and you scrub all this top secret stuff.
[00:19:31] Nick Cook: But Bill's writing was an absolute revelation to me.
[00:19:35] Nick Cook: It was so
[00:19:37] Nick Cook: Fresh and Investigative.
[00:19:54] Nick Cook: was stealth.
[00:19:55] Nick Cook: You know, the stealth program had got underway in secret.
[00:19:59] Nick Cook: It had, of course, kicked off probably late 1970s with some demonstrator programs at Groom Lake, Area 51, which we're going to come on to in a minute.
[00:20:13] Nick Cook: And then it led into this contract, I think it was in
[00:20:19] Nick Cook: I think it was in 1981-ish, or might have been, actually might have been earlier than that, late 70s, with Lockheed as it was then for the F-117A Stealth Fighter.
[00:20:30] Nick Cook: The Stealth Fighter comes into squadron service, I seem to remember, in 1983, secretly out of a base in Nevada that we also spent some time hanging around at.
[00:20:41] Nick Cook: Yes, which we'll discuss a bit later.
[00:20:44] Nick Cook: We will discuss that in a minute.
[00:20:47] Nick Cook: And so, you know, that sort of was the backdrop until 1988 when the Reagan administration revealed formally that this aircraft, the F-117A Stealth Fighter, had been in squadron service for a long time and it was now out in the open, semi-open, because it
[00:21:10] Nick Cook: still wasn't that widely seen in 1988.
[00:21:15] Nick Cook: And anyway, so I just wanted to sort of paint the backdrop of what that secret world was like when you and I were getting into the business, and also that sort of formative role of Bill Sweetman, and we'll come back to Bill in a bit.
[00:21:31] Nick Cook: So,
[00:21:35] Nick Cook: And as you said, at the end of the 80s, not only were these sort of signature
[00:21:44] Nick Cook: giveaways, perhaps, you know, clues about the stealth program.
[00:21:49] Nick Cook: But there were also these telltale, tantalizing signs of another breed of secret aircraft, which was this hypersonic bird, which came to be known as Aurora.
[00:22:02] Nick Cook: And some of the, you already mentioned, it's sort of putative,
[00:22:07] Nick Cook: signature contrail, which was this doughnuts on a rope thing.
[00:22:12] Nick Cook: So let's let's pick it up from the outing of a stealth fighter, late 1980s.
[00:22:23] Nick Cook: You'd then arrived in in L.A.
[00:22:27] Nick Cook: in, did you say in 1991?
[00:22:29] Nick Cook: Was that when you got there?
[00:22:30] Guy Norris: Yeah, yeah, that's right.
[00:22:32] Guy Norris: And just sort of just stepping on from that that sort of or stepping off from that point to to mention Bill.
[00:22:41] Guy Norris: I mean, you're absolutely right.
[00:22:42] Guy Norris: He was he was an inspiration at that time, because you're correct.
[00:22:47] Guy Norris: His right his reporting style was so unique.
[00:22:50] Guy Norris: He had this ability to sort of pick up the full of the crumbs of a story and
[00:22:56] Guy Norris: read, you know, sort of reports from conferences and basically put together a picture that nobody else seemed to have been able to detect.
[00:23:08] Guy Norris: And the other part of Bill's special ability really was he had the guts to interpret it and just write about it without necessarily interviewing or bouncing it off any other expert at all.
[00:23:23] Guy Norris: He just basically went ahead and
[00:23:25] Guy Norris: he told the story.
[00:23:27] Guy Norris: And I think that was a remarkable thing at the time.
[00:23:30] Guy Norris: And, you know, generations of people have tried to really follow that since.
[00:23:35] Guy Norris: But as you said, in the early 90s, that was the atmosphere.
[00:23:38] Guy Norris: You painted a really good picture of it, which is why, you know, it was a great time to be looking at, to be going to those mystery, mysterious mountains and seeing what was hidden in there, you know.
[00:23:53] Nick Cook: So let's cut to that.
[00:23:55] Nick Cook: And we're going to have to help each other's memories here.
[00:23:58] Nick Cook: You're certainly going to be mine.
[00:24:01] Nick Cook: But I, at that time, so 1991, you just moved there.
[00:24:07] Nick Cook: I think I just got a contract because I was writing thrillers back in the late 80s and I just got a deal to go and write a new thriller and I wanted to set it
[00:24:23] Nick Cook: Amidst That Black World Landscape, but I wanted to take it further into the blended field of classified aircraft and UFOs.
[00:24:38] Nick Cook: There were sightings, as you and I know,
[00:24:41] Nick Cook: purportedly over Area 51 and around, you know, all over the Nevada desert at that time.
[00:24:47] Nick Cook: And those, many of those sightings were, of course, being triggered because people were seeing black world aircraft like the F-117 stealth fighter, which was then secret or it had been in the early, mid, late 80s.
[00:24:59] Nick Cook: And
[00:25:03] Nick Cook: the sort of the correlation then between those sightings and UFO reports was sort of really going up.
[00:25:09] Nick Cook: So that, I think, triggered my desire to want to write about this in a kind of thriller-ish setting.
[00:25:16] Nick Cook: That book, by the way, went nowhere.
[00:25:18] Nick Cook: I never wrote it in the end.
[00:25:21] Nick Cook: Sorry, Penguin.
[00:25:24] Nick Cook: But I had a jolly good time anyway.
[00:25:27] Nick Cook: Well, exactly.
[00:25:29] Nick Cook: So there we are, 1991.
[00:25:31] Nick Cook: I think you and I then started to begin plotting this trip.
[00:25:36] Nick Cook: And I think the trigger for that had been Bob Lazar's revelations about Area 51.
[00:25:45] Nick Cook: Again, I can't exactly recall it, but it strikes me that Lazar
[00:25:53] Nick Cook: who had claimed to have worked on recovered, crash retrieved, alien flying saucer technology at Area 51.
[00:26:04] Nick Cook: And he sort of, he went on initially, I think anonymously, you know, behind a sort of shadowy sort of silhouette persona, he went on TV and said that he'd done this stuff.
[00:26:17] Nick Cook: But that was the first time I think that
[00:26:20] Nick Cook: Area 51 as a term came into the sort of public lexicon.
[00:26:27] Nick Cook: Because until then, I seem to remember, whenever I read Bill Sweetman's stuff, and if you and I would be discussing it, we would have referred to the base, which of course we knew about, as Groom Lake, or, I don't know,
[00:26:44] Nick Cook: What other nicknames does it have?
[00:26:45] Guy Norris: Dreamland, Watertown, Paradise Ranch.
[00:26:49] Guy Norris: I mean, you've got a list as long as your arm, really, for that.
[00:26:53] Nick Cook: Exactly.
[00:26:54] Nick Cook: And then suddenly this Area 51 term pops up.
[00:26:57] Nick Cook: And, you know, so that's just sort of setting the scene for this trip.
[00:27:01] Nick Cook: So I wanted to go on the trip to research this thriller.
[00:27:05] Nick Cook: You were in L.A., newly posted there as a correspondent for Flight.
[00:27:12] Nick Cook: And off we went, or at least we plotted the trip, and I think we kept going in the end in, as I said, March 1992.
[00:27:22] Nick Cook: What's your memory of the planning stage?
[00:27:26] Guy Norris: Yes, I do remember, as you say, it was
[00:27:32] Guy Norris: It was a sort of a golden moment, really, to try and for both of us, we sort of had slightly different agendas, but they were perfectly perfectly good excuse to go on a trip together.
[00:27:43] Guy Norris: And and I think we decided that rather I only had the one car at the time and
[00:27:53] Guy Norris: let's see we didn't have any children at that stage but we only had the one car anyway so I think one of the one of the things we discussed was let's rent a something maybe with a chunky thing with a four-wheel drive or something because we realized that we were going to be out there in the wild and that's why I think we decided to go we'd start north
[00:28:16] Guy Norris: Work Our Way Down, which is why we decided we'd start at Reno and rent a car from there.
[00:28:22] Guy Norris: One-way rental with a white Chevy Bronco.
[00:28:27] Nick Cook: Bronco or Blazer?
[00:28:31] Nick Cook: It was one of the two.
[00:28:32] Nick Cook: You're right, I can't remember, but in my head I've always construed it as a blazer, but it might have been a bronco.
[00:28:37] Nick Cook: Anyway, you're right, it was an off-road, pretty sturdy old thing, which we then hopped into in Reno, having stocked up on supplies there.
[00:28:50] Nick Cook: And we set off, I think, for Tonopah, didn't we?
[00:28:53] Nick Cook: We did.
[00:28:54] Nick Cook: Yes, we did.
[00:28:54] Nick Cook: And
[00:28:56] Guy Norris: I think, and the weird thing was that we were so excited because it was already dusk when we really headed out of Reno with our supplies and in our new vehicle and it was cold, it was clear and it very quickly turned completely, you know, the sun set, it was dark
[00:29:18] Guy Norris: and we drove on that highway heading basically east across what would be the northern part of the Nellis Range area
[00:29:28] Guy Norris: And we spotted these flashing white lights, which were, I think, sort of basically anti-collision or, you know, sort of warning lights for large masts.
[00:29:40] Guy Norris: But from our perspective, as we were moving along the road at 70 miles an hour, they seemed to be white flashing lights moving through the sky because we had no other visual reference.
[00:29:50] Guy Norris: And I remember that was the first time I thought, oh, my God, what are we what are we letting ourselves in for, you know?
[00:29:58] Nick Cook: Yeah, no, I remember that.
[00:30:00] Nick Cook: And I also remember being quite paranoid that we were going to be picked up by security.
[00:30:08] Nick Cook: And so we did hang around, I seem to remember,
[00:30:13] Nick Cook: sort of, I don't know, we must have been ten, five, ten miles from Tonopah.
[00:30:19] Nick Cook: We could see the lights, couldn't see any aircraft at all.
[00:30:23] Nick Cook: And I think we then retired back to the mining town of Tonopah, where we spent the night.
[00:30:34] Nick Cook: And then, of course, the following day, we set off for Area 51.
[00:30:40] Nick Cook: Now, I just would love, I've written about my memories of that.
[00:30:46] Nick Cook: You tell me your memories of that trip.
[00:30:48] Nick Cook: It just made such an impression on me.
[00:30:50] Nick Cook: I remember the weather was shit.
[00:30:52] Nick Cook: It was absolutely terrible.
[00:30:54] Nick Cook: It was March, it was cold.
[00:30:57] Nick Cook: I'd not anticipated how cold Nevada was going to be in March.
[00:31:01] Nick Cook: And anyway, over to you.
[00:31:04] Guy Norris: Well, I think it's worth remembering as well too.
[00:31:09] Guy Norris: I mean, I was brand new in the Western US and, you know, and I'd never really experienced the wilderness aspect of the West, you know, firsthand yet.
[00:31:22] Guy Norris: You know, I'd been on the coast of California and that was basically all I'd seen of it so far.
[00:31:28] Guy Norris: And what was amazing to me was that landscape, you know, and the fact that Nevada is mostly, nearly all of it is made up in this incredible sort of geological phenomena, an area which is known as the Range and Basin.
[00:31:47] Guy Norris: It's the Range and Basin region.
[00:31:50] Guy Norris: And it's basically a set of blocking, blocked faults.
[00:31:56] Guy Norris: It's an area where the Earth's crust is stretching.
[00:31:59] Guy Norris: Even as we speak, it's still continuing.
[00:32:02] Guy Norris: It has been doing this for about 16 million years because the U.S.
[00:32:06] Guy Norris: plate over this part of the world has been stretched because the Pacific plate along the San Andreas fault
[00:32:15] Guy Norris: is gradually pulling it stretching it out and as it stretches it out blocks have gone up which have formed these ridges these ranges and other blocks have sunk down which creates the basins and that's created this in what you know unique geography and geology
[00:32:35] Guy Norris: which is why Area 51 is where it is because none of these basins are meant to be there.
[00:32:42] Guy Norris: They're all, there's no drainage patterns, they're all fantastically flat, basically desert sort of basins, perfect for artificial airfields for example.
[00:32:56] Guy Norris: But they're all, you know, completely, there's really no reason for them to be there other than this bizarre geographical combination of events.
[00:33:05] Guy Norris: And in fact, this stretched landscape, this range and basin area, is the biggest area of its size in the world, you know, where the crust has been spread so thinly, and as I say, it continues to do so.
[00:33:19] Guy Norris: So just that kind of, that creates that image, there's 160
[00:33:25] Guy Norris: different ranges make up this region, and 150 or thereabouts basins, of which, you know, we were driving down one of those basins towards the base of Area 51.
[00:33:39] Guy Norris: And of course the other thing is that, as it turns out, Area 51 has been a name or term that had been bandied around
[00:33:49] Guy Norris: for quite a long time.
[00:33:50] Guy Norris: In fact, as we know, the area had been established in the 50s so that Lockheed could develop the U-2 under the CIA's Project Equitone.
[00:34:02] Guy Norris: And then when the U-2 was sort of sunsetting or at least moving into an operational more
[00:34:08] Guy Norris: public role, it was reactivated for what would eventually become the, you know, the A12 and the SR70 and SR71, the Blackbird program.
[00:34:20] Guy Norris: And it was then that for an accounting reason, an accountant, what was his name?
[00:34:26] Guy Norris: His great name, I've got to tell you it.
[00:34:31] Guy Norris: He was, let's see, I think he was called Robert Van
[00:34:36] Guy Norris: Campanile, that's right.
[00:34:38] Guy Norris: He was an accountant for the Reynolds Electrical and Engineering Company, which was contracted to do some of the work on it.
[00:34:44] Guy Norris: And he just decided for the purposes of expenses to call it Project 51 because that was the next one in the line, the order.
[00:34:52] Guy Norris: Of course, the Atomic Energy Commission, which ran the entire region, decided, yeah, well, actually, that's not a bad, we'll just call it Area 51, because that's where the contractors are calling in.
[00:35:03] Guy Norris: So all of the other areas then began to be named as part of that sequence.
[00:35:07] Guy Norris: So anyway, there we were driving south towards it.
[00:35:12] Guy Norris: And as you say, it was colder than
[00:35:15] Guy Norris: you know it was cold and a lot colder than I expected and I do remember just the bizarre nature of that raw rugged terrain and the fact there was no greenery there was no virtually no vegetation everything the raw bones of the earth are just completely exposed there
[00:35:36] Guy Norris: And you know, there's dust devils and yet there's massive rainstorms sweeping across the highway.
[00:35:44] Guy Norris: It's the most extraordinary place on the planet.
[00:35:47] Nick Cook: Yeah.
[00:35:48] Nick Cook: And I mean, I say in the book, in the prologue, I think I describe or it came across to me as some of those early pictures that came through from Mars landers of the Martian landscape and what you just described.
[00:36:03] Nick Cook: is like a Martian landscape.
[00:36:05] Nick Cook: And it was that.
[00:36:06] Nick Cook: And of course, you know, you'd had a bit of a climatisation because you'd been in LA a while.
[00:36:12] Nick Cook: You know, this was my first as a Brit, I think it was my first real exposure to the desert southwest of America.
[00:36:21] Nick Cook: And I just, I was like you, I was captivated by it.
[00:36:25] Nick Cook: The geography,
[00:36:26] Nick Cook: there was an atmosphere about the place, that big sky that you're just not used to in the UK.
[00:36:34] Nick Cook: It was phenomenal.
[00:36:34] Nick Cook: And it felt like this place where anything was possible.
[00:36:38] Nick Cook: I remember that.
[00:36:40] Nick Cook: And then, of course, we approached the environs of the base.
[00:36:45] Nick Cook: So I'm handing back to you now.
[00:36:47] Nick Cook: What do you recall of sort of our first
[00:36:52] Nick Cook: First Contact.
[00:37:06] Guy Norris: and others at that time, because as you say, following the Bob Lazar kind of story coming out, there's this ramped up interest from a much broader community.
[00:37:18] Guy Norris: Not all of it quite focused on aerospace and much more, you know, a broader community, let's say.
[00:37:25] Guy Norris: Anyway, the point was that there was more to read about what we should look for.
[00:37:29] Guy Norris: And one of the things I do remember is there was two things.
[00:37:32] Guy Norris: One was the black mailbox.
[00:37:34] Guy Norris: which was the, you know, the sort of mailbox for the local, the ranchers who still lived actually within the sort of range itself.
[00:37:43] Guy Norris: And the other was, of course, this little tiny settlement of Rachel, which was really nothing more than a sort of just a collection of trailer homes and a gas station and the all-important inn, the Little Ailey Inn, which was a huge relief to us to actually find at the time because it was civilisation
[00:38:04] Guy Norris: you know with a small sea maybe but I mean it was it was right there it was a refuge for us it was a place to get out of the wind and the cold and it was surrounded that what I remember we pulled up in the parking lot which was just it's all dusty and crushed gravel and you know and we'd actually
[00:38:24] Guy Norris: We filled up with the gas station and you and I, you'd got out to put the fuel in and said, come on, look at this.
[00:38:32] Guy Norris: And I'm looking between the gas pumps was a Geiger counter.
[00:38:36] Guy Norris: Yeah, I remember.
[00:38:37] Guy Norris: And there was an old guy sitting on the on the veranda, wasn't there?
[00:38:41] Guy Norris: And I saw a rocking chair watching the music.
[00:38:45] Guy Norris: Yeah.
[00:38:46] Nick Cook: Yeah, there were a lot of old guys on rocking chairs on that trip, I seem to remember.
[00:38:51] Guy Norris: And we looked at him and you said to him, is that actually what I think it is, the Geiger counter?
[00:38:58] Guy Norris: And he goes, yep.
[00:38:59] Guy Norris: He says, that's our government keeping us safe.
[00:39:03] Nick Cook: Yes, I do remember that.
[00:39:05] Nick Cook: I do remember.
[00:39:07] Nick Cook: Yeah, that's our government keeping us safe.
[00:39:09] Guy Norris: Yeah, wow.
[00:39:11] Guy Norris: And then we drove back to get our lunch or whatever it was at the Little Alien and parked.
[00:39:18] Guy Norris: And there was the first thing we saw were these bits of crashed military aircraft all around the edge of the parking lot.
[00:39:26] Guy Norris: So there was a bit of F4 tail sitting right where we'd put the nose of the Bronco or Blazer.
[00:39:35] Guy Norris: Maybe you're right, maybe it was a Blazer.
[00:39:37] Guy Norris: But I remember looking down at it and we could see the serial number written, the sort of peeling remnants of camo paint on it.
[00:39:46] Nick Cook: and it it was like this is I think we've hit ground zero here you know this is pay dirt sort of yeah but the other thing I remember is coming through there was very low overcast that day um it was and it was snowing actually it was it had started to snow and
[00:40:04] Nick Cook: sort of almost breaking through this low overcast I suddenly I mean coming into Rachel there was that billboard for the little alien and there had there was a grey alien with a sort of weird kind of holding its hand up waving and going
[00:40:21] Nick Cook: you know, welcome to Rachel, Nevada, population, you know, 93 or whatever it was.
[00:40:27] Nick Cook: That might have been too many, actually.
[00:40:29] Nick Cook: And then with this alien's head and underneath saying Earthlings welcome.
[00:40:34] Nick Cook: Do you remember that?
[00:40:37] Nick Cook: Yes.
[00:40:38] Nick Cook: Yeah.
[00:40:39] Nick Cook: Yeah.
[00:40:40] Nick Cook: And that was so new and shocking.
[00:40:42] Nick Cook: I mean, it's not shocking at all now because it's become so well known.
[00:40:45] Nick Cook: But in early 1992, I
[00:40:50] Nick Cook: I'd not read about, I don't think I'd read about The Little Alien.
[00:40:53] Nick Cook: I might have, maybe.
[00:40:55] Nick Cook: Anyway, we then, as you say, we drove in there and I think we met the legendary Joe and Pat Travis.
[00:41:02] Nick Cook: Do you remember them?
[00:41:03] Nick Cook: They used to run The Little Alien.
[00:41:06] Nick Cook: And we did feel somewhat, again, I recall, like, you know, classic outsiders.
[00:41:13] Nick Cook: It was almost like, you know, had there been a stand-up
[00:41:17] Nick Cook: honky-tonk piano there.
[00:41:18] Nick Cook: It would have stopped playing the moment we walked in and opened our mouths.
[00:41:26] Nick Cook: I think we chatted a bit to Joe and Pat Travis about some of the local legends and then we decided to go off and camp.
[00:41:33] Nick Cook: What were we thinking of in a two-man tent overlooking the base on a night when it was snowing?
[00:41:43] Guy Norris: pretty much.
[00:41:44] Guy Norris: Yeah, it was extraordinary, wasn't it?
[00:41:46] Guy Norris: I think all that was missing was the swinging saloon doors, wasn't it, really, as we went in there?
[00:41:53] Guy Norris: And sort of the warning, like, I wouldn't go out there if I were you.
[00:41:58] Guy Norris: Yeah.
[00:41:58] Nick Cook: Well, that was certainly going on in my head, even if no one said it.
[00:42:04] Guy Norris: I do remember we spent the afternoon sort of you know with a nice big sort of having eaten a big burger or something we felt somehow the Dutch courage or something we felt yes we we should be here we can be here you know and we went and explored that area around I think Welsh Mountain or
[00:42:23] Guy Norris: We didn't know about, there was an area called Freedom Ridge which was relatively close to there, which we could have gone up had we known about it and seen the base quite clearly from there.
[00:42:38] Guy Norris: area was later requisitioned by the air force and that that area is all off limits since well only two years after our visit I think the two or three years the fight for freedom ridge as it was called was uh was over you know um but anyway we we kind of did a reconnaissance really around that while it was still daylight
[00:43:01] Guy Norris: and went up and down as many of the little dirt tracks as we could, edging our way forward until we got to our first warning sign, didn't we?
[00:43:11] Guy Norris: That's right.
[00:43:13] Guy Norris: And it said, use of deadly force authorised in red letters.
[00:43:19] Nick Cook: Yeah, and I don't want to pick, you know, split hairs, but it might have been lethal force.
[00:43:25] Guy Norris: Sorry.
[00:43:26] Guy Norris: Yeah, maybe.
[00:43:27] Guy Norris: Either way, lethal, deadly.
[00:43:30] Nick Cook: Hey, it's all the same.
[00:43:33] Guy Norris: I'm sure you're right.
[00:43:37] Nick Cook: Yeah I remember that and that signalled definitely we weren't going any further because beyond that of course you were into, well you were onto base territory, Area 51 territory and then I seem to remember we turned around and then you know it was a sort of, had I been writing the thriller it was the classic moment when suddenly in my
[00:44:03] Nick Cook: I can't, I think I was, in the rear view mirror I suddenly saw a pair of headlights come out from the base.
[00:44:11] Nick Cook: Yeah, from nowhere.
[00:44:12] Nick Cook: From nowhere, yeah.
[00:44:14] Nick Cook: I think the closer and closer, of course, we knew that we were on a whatever it is, a 15 mile dirt track.
[00:44:19] Nick Cook: So we weren't going to outrun this guy.
[00:44:23] Nick Cook: What would I have been thinking of anyway?
[00:44:25] Nick Cook: And then he caught up with us.
[00:44:27] Nick Cook: And I just remember there was just this wonderful exchange between him and us.
[00:44:33] Nick Cook: And of course, he was totally bemused by the fact that we were a couple of Brits and
[00:44:39] Nick Cook: Anyway, it was, as I say in the prologue, the guy himself seemed straight out of central casting, you know, there was chewing on a match and looking faintly bemused by these two characters.
[00:44:51] Guy Norris: Did he not even have a Stetson on?
[00:44:53] Guy Norris: I think he did.
[00:44:54] Nick Cook: Yeah, I think he did.
[00:44:55] Nick Cook: He was certainly a sheriff's deputy of some description.
[00:44:58] Guy Norris: And he was the friendliest guy.
[00:44:59] Guy Norris: He said, I think we kind of said we're looking for a place to camp, which we legitimately were.
[00:45:05] Guy Norris: Yeah.
[00:45:06] Guy Norris: And he goes, well, there ain't much good camping around here.
[00:45:11] Guy Norris: But if you go all the way to and he basically pointed us out of the valley into the next range to Eli or somewhere.
[00:45:19] Guy Norris: And he said, there's trees and water there, which is kind of what you're looking for.
[00:45:23] Guy Norris: I'm
[00:45:40] Guy Norris: In a weird way, we were.
[00:45:43] Nick Cook: Well, yes, indeed.
[00:45:45] Nick Cook: Certainly, I was very metaphorically, I was I was definitely very lost in that valley.
[00:45:57] Nick Cook: Yeah, that that that that was a really it was an amazing experience.
[00:46:03] Nick Cook: And I wanted to come back, actually.
[00:46:06] Nick Cook: I mean, we could have we then went on, of course,
[00:46:09] Nick Cook: for a further, whatever it was, seven or eight days, down to the Mexico-Texas border.
[00:46:17] Nick Cook: But unless you've got any particular memories you wanted to pick up on the rest of that trip, did you have?
[00:46:25] Guy Norris: Well, I just wanted to, there was a couple more episodes that night, which I think are
[00:46:31] Guy Norris: to me, really underlined the complete weirdness of the place.
[00:46:37] Guy Norris: And when we camped in a sort of a dell in like a sort of a dell in the sort of rugged terrain.
[00:46:43] Guy Norris: And to me, it was like imagining, you know, we were on our way to Mount Doom in Lord of the Rings.
[00:46:50] Guy Norris: You know, it was that sort of blasted ground, wasn't it?
[00:46:53] Guy Norris: There was no wasn't a cosy place at all to camp.
[00:46:57] Guy Norris: Not at all.
[00:46:58] Guy Norris: And that night, you and I were sort of watching as the sun went, there was a bit of sunset by then,
[00:47:06] Guy Norris: and the darkness spread over that valley like a like a cloth didn't it just like a just bump it was black and dark and eerily as darkness fell a set of twinkling lights appeared in the distance between us and the base and it was the security teams who are the known fondly as the camo dudes because that's what they kind of wore
[00:47:32] Guy Norris: working their way slowly through this valley in our direction and it reminded me have you ever seen the movie um uh oh yeah i was thinking about that western you know the the um the the one where they're being chased you know through the desert and they're always going to um
[00:47:57] Guy Norris: the Rogue Icons
[00:48:10] Guy Norris: you know, who are those guys?
[00:48:13] Nick Cook: Yeah, who are those guys?
[00:48:14] Nick Cook: That's familiar.
[00:48:15] Nick Cook: I still can't remember the movie, but I do remember that line.
[00:48:18] Nick Cook: Who are those guys?
[00:48:19] Guy Norris: Right.
[00:48:19] Guy Norris: Yeah.
[00:48:20] Guy Norris: Yeah.
[00:48:21] Guy Norris: It sort of had that feeling about the mystery.
[00:48:23] Guy Norris: But later that night, when it was too cold to sleep, really, and we were pretty, I think, fundamentally quite scared about where we were.
[00:48:31] Guy Norris: Petrified.
[00:48:32] Guy Norris: I was.
[00:48:33] Guy Norris: I was bloody terrified.
[00:48:35] Guy Norris: In the middle of the night we decided we'd stand, we'd drive in our little car, our Trump.
[00:48:41] Guy Norris: We parked it on the only bit of, on the main road, it's a gravel road leading from basically the highway to the main gate.
[00:48:52] Guy Norris: the road to nowhere because there was no other indication, there was no signposts, nothing at all to indicate there was a major military installation just over that ridge.
[00:49:02] Guy Norris: And in the middle of the night, it was three or four in the morning, out of nowhere a big blue Air Force bus
[00:49:09] Guy Norris: came up and we were literally parked in the way and this big bus came up so quickly that we didn't have a chance to to really move out of the way so it had to stop while you maneuvered the truck off the road and then it trundled away into its red lights dwindling into the distance and it was like you and I just looked at each other going holy
[00:49:33] Guy Norris: That's amazing.
[00:49:34] Nick Cook: Yeah, it really is.
[00:49:35] Guy Norris: You know, yeah, it really is.
[00:49:37] Guy Norris: Yeah.
[00:49:38] Guy Norris: And then the orange glow in the evening as the base came alive over that ridge again, sort of in the sky, just showing that, yes, there really was something.
[00:49:47] Nick Cook: And that was the only light in that valley.
[00:49:50] Nick Cook: I mean, anywhere around you could there was that made such a deep impression on me.
[00:49:55] Nick Cook: There was no other.
[00:49:56] Nick Cook: It was so black, as you said, so dark.
[00:50:00] Guy Norris: Yeah.
[00:50:00] Nick Cook: That was the only light you could see.
[00:50:02] Nick Cook: Right.
[00:50:03] Nick Cook: I also remember thinking, feeling so alone, even though we were, well, we were 100 miles from Las Vegas or something, but so alone that when a plane flew over flying from LAX to God knows where, I remember feeling a small shred of comfort that there was some other form of humanity, you know, visible in the sort of, if you can call it the vicinity.
[00:50:29] Nick Cook: I mean, it was that
[00:50:32] Nick Cook: that isolated.
[00:50:33] Nick Cook: It was an extraordinary feeling.
[00:50:36] Guy Norris: It really, really was.
[00:50:37] Guy Norris: And I think the last thing that I thought was really a vignette really from that was when, you know, the next night we decided that we, before we moved on, we went to, back to the Little Alien for a sort of a restorative burger.
[00:50:56] Guy Norris: I shouldn't wonder.
[00:50:58] Guy Norris: and a few beers, god yes, and there was that we were sitting at the bar, ballied up to the bar and there was a somebody to our right who was really not participating at all in the general hubbub of the of the inn and we got chatting to him and he turned out to be a geologist working on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project and
[00:51:25] Guy Norris: he was he'd been out there for months on end and he'd been working remotely by himself cooking over a stove in the middle of the desert overnight or in these canyons all the way around the whole of the Nellis range and if you look at the map you can see that the Yucca mountain area is on the
[00:51:48] Guy Norris: completely the other side of Area 51 from where we were at Rachel.
[00:51:53] Guy Norris: It's right down by BT and almost the border with California area.
[00:52:01] Guy Norris: But anyway, he'd basically been all around surveying it.
[00:52:06] Guy Norris: And of course, that's not a good story in the end because
[00:52:11] Guy Norris: 20 years after we left, they decided to abandon the project, or thereabouts.
[00:52:16] Guy Norris: Do you remember what he said to us?
[00:52:21] Guy Norris: I remember the guy, I don't remember what he said.
[00:52:28] Guy Norris: Everybody we bumped into, I think, your question was, have you noticed any strange lights in the sky?
[00:52:35] Nick Cook: Do you remember that to my shame?
[00:52:37] Nick Cook: Yes.
[00:52:38] Guy Norris: That's a great question.
[00:52:39] Guy Norris: Because it was a fair question.
[00:52:41] Guy Norris: It was a fair question.
[00:52:43] Guy Norris: And I think we asked the same question to him.
[00:52:45] Guy Norris: And he goes, he says, we've now been out here for months.
[00:52:49] Guy Norris: And he says, I honestly can't say other than the Janet flights, going in and out of the base all times of the night and day.
[00:52:58] Guy Norris: I really haven't seen anything.
[00:53:00] Guy Norris: He said, except once, kind of like, really?
[00:53:03] Guy Norris: Yeah.
[00:53:04] Guy Norris: Tell, do tell, do tell us more.
[00:53:06] Guy Norris: And he said there was one evening he said, I was looking, I was making my dinner.
[00:53:12] Guy Norris: I was in this, I made a sort of camp in this small valley and I had a perfect view looking west towards the base.
[00:53:22] Guy Norris: And all of a sudden, well after sunset, a bright light appeared above the base itself.
[00:53:33] Guy Norris: And he said, at first, I thought it might be, you know, a star, obviously, probably the wrong time of the evening and the direction for Venus at that time.
[00:53:44] Guy Norris: He said, but I just assumed it was a star because it was so bright.
[00:53:47] Guy Norris: And I knew it wasn't a Janet flight because I'd seen enough of them to know
[00:53:51] Guy Norris: you know, spot the anti-collision beacons and the change in direction as it maneuvered onto a heading for the runway and all that.
[00:53:58] Guy Norris: I mean, he knew his stuff.
[00:53:59] Guy Norris: He was a scientist, you know, and he said, I watched this point of light.
[00:54:05] Guy Norris: And as I watched it, it suddenly accelerated straight up in the in the time I've just described it to you and became positioned itself really amongst the background of the stars in the sky.
[00:54:21] Guy Norris: And he said, I've literally no idea what that was.
[00:54:25] Guy Norris: He said, was it a laser or something?
[00:54:27] Guy Norris: I don't know.
[00:54:27] Guy Norris: But he said that was the weirdest thing I've seen.
[00:54:29] Guy Norris: And I've been out here for months.
[00:54:31] Guy Norris: I can't wait to leave.
[00:54:32] Guy Norris: I'm about to be off duty.
[00:54:36] Guy Norris: That really is weird.
[00:54:37] Nick Cook: You know, I don't remember.
[00:54:38] Nick Cook: I mean, I don't I remember it now you say it, but I'd completely forgotten that.
[00:54:44] Nick Cook: And of course, it actually comports with sort of other sightings
[00:54:49] Nick Cook: descriptions post Lazar, you know, so now that's that's interesting.
[00:54:56] Nick Cook: So shall we move on quickly to September 1992?
[00:55:02] Nick Cook: So that was March 92.
[00:55:03] Nick Cook: And then we came back in September.
[00:55:06] Nick Cook: And I remember the difference then, you know, in weather was just extraordinary.
[00:55:11] Nick Cook: It was I mean, gone from freezing to baking.
[00:55:14] Nick Cook: Yes.
[00:55:16] Nick Cook: And and on this particular night, I think we were, again, only there one one night.
[00:55:25] Nick Cook: And we we'd done this sort of long stakeout and this time we were on higher ground.
[00:55:31] Nick Cook: We were on a higher piece of elevation.
[00:55:34] Nick Cook: Yeah.
[00:55:35] Nick Cook: And and and, you know, we've done this long stakeout.
[00:55:39] Nick Cook: Nothing had happened.
[00:55:40] Nick Cook: Nothing had happened.
[00:55:41] Nick Cook: And then
[00:55:43] Nick Cook: As we were packing up to go, and I think we might have been going to Las Vegas or wherever we were going next, but it was night, you nudged me and went, what's that?
[00:55:58] Nick Cook: And I looked at the bass and there was this
[00:56:04] Nick Cook: orange light.
[00:56:06] Nick Cook: It was like a miniature sun, and I'm slightly conscious that I'm aping Close Encounters of the Third Kind here.
[00:56:15] Nick Cook: It was like the sun that came up at night, but it was like a miniature sun that came up from behind the mountain range where Area 51 was,
[00:56:27] Nick Cook: And it was strange.
[00:56:29] Nick Cook: I mean, unlike, you know, other things you saw in the night sky around there, you know, there were obviously those Janet flights coming in.
[00:56:37] Nick Cook: There were other flights coming into the base.
[00:56:39] Nick Cook: And when they were on those long approaches into the base, if you were
[00:56:44] Nick Cook: looking at the lights as they were coming towards you, they would appear to hang in the sky for a long time and look like a UFO.
[00:56:53] Nick Cook: So there was one, I seem to remember, that got people very excited as they hung around that black mailbox called, I think they nicknamed it Old Faithful because it always gets up at a particular time.
[00:57:04] Nick Cook: Well, of course it was because it was the landing, you know, a set schedule.
[00:57:11] Nick Cook: But this thing was different.
[00:57:13] Nick Cook: It was orange, it glowed, it hung there, and then it sort of drifted slowly off downrange.
[00:57:22] Nick Cook: And I, you know, as I say in the prologue of the book, it's the only time I've seen a UFO in that it was an unidentified flying object to me.
[00:57:35] Nick Cook: Anyway, I just wanted to share that.
[00:57:37] Nick Cook: I don't know what your memory of it is.
[00:57:40] Guy Norris: Yeah, no, by then I was sort of, I mean, what do you think at that time though?
[00:57:46] Guy Norris: Because as you say, it was our second visit.
[00:57:49] Guy Norris: Did you feel more
[00:57:51] Guy Norris: not at ease with the area, but obviously a bit more familiar.
[00:57:55] Nick Cook: I felt more at ease with the area, totally.
[00:57:57] Nick Cook: And because it was partly to do with the weather, because the weather was climate and it felt more friendly.
[00:58:06] Nick Cook: And I remember there was fantastic visibility.
[00:58:09] Nick Cook: So wherever we were, we were up on this, you know, as we were up on this higher ground.
[00:58:16] Nick Cook: I had great, I felt I had much more visibility over the valley, over Ticaboo Valley.
[00:58:23] Nick Cook: So yeah, I felt much more comfortable that second time around.
[00:58:27] Nick Cook: Right.
[00:58:28] Nick Cook: And I do remember where we were camped somewhere.
[00:58:32] Nick Cook: We'd parked the car down in this sort of, I don't know, parking area below where we were, where we'd set up our little outpost.
[00:58:40] Nick Cook: And I do remember it was some of the camo dudes or a sheriff's deputy came in.
[00:58:45] Nick Cook: I remember seeing the lights sort of circling around.
[00:58:48] Nick Cook: He wanted to know who had camped out there, you know, who was there.
[00:58:52] Nick Cook: And it was us.
[00:58:53] Nick Cook: We were off, you know, up
[00:58:55] Nick Cook: higher up than that parking spot.
[00:58:59] Nick Cook: But yeah, no, the whole thing felt much less threatening than it did on that first visit.
[00:59:04] Nick Cook: Right.
[00:59:04] Guy Norris: Yes.
[00:59:05] Guy Norris: No.
[00:59:05] Guy Norris: And I think the other thing was that I think before we left the final time for the final time,
[00:59:12] Guy Norris: in the morning, we saw some for the first time, we also saw some proper military aircraft activity, including some Soviet era aircraft that were the Red Hats, the foreign material evaluations people were looking at were using, as well as a B-52, which I that was the first time I'd ever seen a B-52 in the air.
[00:59:39] Guy Norris: with a large wing-mounted payload.
[00:59:42] Guy Norris: I still have no idea.
[00:59:43] Guy Norris: It was red.
[00:59:44] Guy Norris: I can remember it was painted red.
[00:59:47] Guy Norris: But yeah, I mean, that to me was like, you know, whoa.
[00:59:54] Nick Cook: Yeah.
[00:59:56] Nick Cook: No, I do remember that.
[00:59:58] Nick Cook: I remember slightly thinking, you know, oh, yeah, OK, gosh, Soviet stuff.
[01:00:03] Nick Cook: And it was still Soviet.
[01:00:04] Nick Cook: No, it wasn't quite.
[01:00:05] Nick Cook: The Soviet Union ended at the end of 91.
[01:00:09] Nick Cook: So it was sort of ex-Soviet, just Russian stuff.
[01:00:13] Nick Cook: And seeing that over the Nevada desert was strange.
[01:00:16] Nick Cook: I remember that.
[01:00:19] Nick Cook: I wanted us to move us on a little bit to the stories of
[01:00:27] Nick Cook: classified aircraft testing and sightings over the desert southwest.
[01:00:32] Nick Cook: Actually, and I must interview him, I mean, I hope he would like to be interviewed, but he, the guy who did more, I think, at that time to really advance stories about, you know, strange lights in the sky over Area 51 was your colleague, Bill Scott of Aviation Week.
[01:00:55] Nick Cook: Bill, what was Bill?
[01:00:56] Nick Cook: He was Rocky Mountain editor or he was what was his position?
[01:00:59] Nick Cook: Do you remember at the time?
[01:01:00] Nick Cook: And we're talking early 90s.
[01:01:03] Guy Norris: Yeah.
[01:01:03] Guy Norris: I mean, I think at that time Bill was moving.
[01:01:06] Guy Norris: He'd been in L.A.
[01:01:08] Guy Norris: for the longest time, the L.A.
[01:01:10] Guy Norris: working in the L.A.
[01:01:11] Guy Norris: bureau.
[01:01:13] Guy Norris: Then he had a short assignment in D.C.
[01:01:15] Guy Norris: and then came back to establish the Rocky Mountain Bureau, which, of course, Bill still spends much of the year here as well.
[01:01:26] Guy Norris: So, yeah, I'm sure he would love to
[01:01:30] Guy Norris: I'm speaking for him, of course, but I'd love to I'd love to talk to him.
[01:01:34] Nick Cook: But, you know, his reports at that time, 1991, 92, was sort of seminal reports of, you know, pulsing lights moving, you know, a bright light pulsing, moving very fast across the sky.
[01:01:51] Nick Cook: I mean, these weren't
[01:01:52] Nick Cook: classic UFOs.
[01:02:04] Nick Cook: at this time from that stealth story, although that, of course, was very much still in the background, to this hypersonic story.
[01:02:12] Nick Cook: So Bill, I seem to remember, was sort of quite instrumental in picking up from where Bill Sweetman had somewhat left off, talking about these Aurora stories, you know, sounds around the base of this beast, this aircraft, supposedly,
[01:02:32] Nick Cook: whose engine, do you remember, made a sound like the sky tearing?
[01:02:36] Nick Cook: Yeah, I do, yeah.
[01:02:39] Nick Cook: So this was nominally, you know, people on the hunt, colleagues of ours on the hunt for this putative hypersonic Mark V plus aircraft nicknamed Aurora.
[01:02:51] Nick Cook: There were those sightings over kind of Amarillo, Texas by Steve Douglas,
[01:02:58] Nick Cook: Donuts on a Rope.
[01:03:11] Nick Cook: you know, your world and mine of, well, let's see what we can report as far as we can about these mysterious classified aircraft technologies that were being developed at the time.
[01:03:25] Nick Cook: And this quasi-weird, for you and me certainly, I mean, me particularly, me back then too, these sort of UFO type reports.
[01:03:37] Nick Cook: And that's where the two
[01:03:39] Nick Cook: sort of blurred and blended.
[01:03:41] Nick Cook: Now, of course, I'm sure counterintelligence would have loved that because any time you get a blurring between UFOs and classified aircraft, you've got a bit of a smoke screen in place.
[01:03:55] Nick Cook: But anyway, I just wondered what your do you have any reminiscences about those sorts of stories written by Bill Scott or or anyone else at that time?
[01:04:06] Nick Cook: Popular Science was doing a lot actually at that time as well.
[01:04:08] Nick Cook: Do you remember?
[01:04:09] Guy Norris: Yeah, they were.
[01:04:10] Nick Cook: Yeah.
[01:04:11] Guy Norris: In fact, there was a whole movement really at that time, wasn't there?
[01:04:16] Guy Norris: What did they call them?
[01:04:18] Guy Norris: Well, it was the people who would go and camp out on freedom rides.
[01:04:22] Nick Cook: They were called the Roadrunners or the Roadrunners International.
[01:04:27] Nick Cook: They were run by a guy called Glenn Campbell, funnily enough, not the Rhinestone Cowboy.
[01:04:32] Guy Norris: The Interceptors.
[01:04:34] Nick Cook: The Interceptors.
[01:04:37] Nick Cook: The Groom Lake Interceptors.
[01:04:40] Nick Cook: You're right.
[01:04:41] Guy Norris: Yeah.
[01:04:41] Guy Norris: Yeah.
[01:04:42] Guy Norris: And so, yeah, it was a
[01:04:46] Guy Norris: And as you mentioned, obviously, in some ways, it was sort of it was a help and a hindrance to whatever was probably going on in the classified world at that time.
[01:04:55] Guy Norris: Because the more attention that the base got, the more difficult it would obviously been for flight testing to go on or any sort of testing in daylight.
[01:05:05] Guy Norris: And I think that was a major, that was a significant concern, I think, at the time for
[01:05:13] Guy Norris: you know, the Air Force or whoever was doing the testing of those sort of classified projects.
[01:05:23] Guy Norris: But at the same time, you know, if there was something more deeply mysterious going on, which, you know, we haven't even talked about the purported S4 area around Papoose Lake, which is slightly further in the centre of the complex beyond Groom Lake.
[01:05:42] Guy Norris: then that sort of conflation adds to the mystique and the mystery of what's going on.
[01:05:48] Guy Norris: So it helps disguise it, in other words.
[01:05:52] Nick Cook: Yeah, we should say.
[01:05:55] Nick Cook: And yeah, thank you for mentioning S4, because S4 was purportedly this sub base of Area 51.
[01:06:05] Nick Cook: I think it was like sort of eight or 10 miles from Groom Lake.
[01:06:10] Nick Cook: Yeah.
[01:06:11] Nick Cook: Bob Lazar said he'd worked on his recovered alien, you know, flying saucers.
[01:06:16] Nick Cook: And I remember actually first reading about that in a book by Timothy Goode.
[01:06:23] Nick Cook: Yes.
[01:06:23] Nick Cook: I can't remember what it's called.
[01:06:25] Nick Cook: I think Alien something or other and being sort of intrigued by it.
[01:06:31] Nick Cook: But, you know, the
[01:06:34] Nick Cook: left brain rational side of my trade journalistic training and with Mark Hewish on my shoulder going, don't listen to that nonsense, boy.
[01:06:45] Nick Cook: Concentrate on the story.
[01:06:49] Nick Cook: But it was a thing.
[01:06:50] Nick Cook: And of course, it was Bob Lazar's testimony that brought, you know, those tourists out to the Black Mailbox and Rachel in the droves at the time.
[01:07:03] Nick Cook: Absolutely.
[01:07:04] Guy Norris: It completely changed the narrative for Area 51 too, didn't it?
[01:07:07] Guy Norris: Because before from being just the subject of an area where it was known as the, you know, classified flight test centre for the Air Force,
[01:07:17] Guy Norris: to becoming this potential, you know, re-engineering of extraterrestrial craft as well.
[01:07:24] Guy Norris: I mean, how extraordinary, you know, to suddenly be associated with this idea, you know.
[01:07:32] Guy Norris: And of course, having us, having been there, it was like, well, if you are going to have such a, if there is such a project, this probably is a really good place for it.
[01:07:40] Guy Norris: But, you know.
[01:07:42] Nick Cook: Well, it would be.
[01:07:42] Nick Cook: I mean, it definitely would be.
[01:07:44] Nick Cook: But of course, you know,
[01:07:46] Nick Cook: steeped in the law, again, of trade journalism, you and I weren't really allowed to think like that.
[01:07:55] Nick Cook: Not at all.
[01:07:56] Nick Cook: And certainly I wasn't.
[01:07:57] Nick Cook: And that just wasn't how I was thinking at that time at all.
[01:08:04] Nick Cook: And actually, as we sort of get into the closing stages, I did want to ask you, you know, I mean,
[01:08:13] Nick Cook: I've stopped being aerospace editor of Jane's Defense Weekly in, I think it was about 2005.
[01:08:19] Nick Cook: So I've been long out of that game professionally.
[01:08:25] Nick Cook: But you're still in it.
[01:08:26] Nick Cook: And I wanted to ask you what your reactions had been to some of these revelations that have come out post 2017 when the New York Times came up with its now seminal story about there having been a secret unit in the Pentagon which had been studying UFOs for a long time, even when the Pentagon said it had no interest in UFOs.
[01:08:51] Nick Cook: What is the trade press's view of that story?
[01:08:56] Nick Cook: How has it met it?
[01:08:58] Guy Norris: Right, gosh, that's such a great question, Nick.
[01:09:03] Guy Norris: But hang on, just a second, though, before I delve into that.
[01:09:07] Guy Norris: Two things.
[01:09:07] Guy Norris: I've remembered the name of the movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
[01:09:11] Guy Norris: Of course it was.
[01:09:14] Guy Norris: The Interceptors were the Dreamland Interceptors.
[01:09:17] Guy Norris: So just wanted to, for the record,
[01:09:21] Guy Norris: Aviation Week was well known as
[01:09:42] Guy Norris: you know, as the sort of Bible of the aerospace reporting business in the States, certainly, and debunker, frankly, of anything remotely associated with them, certainly in the, you know, the era of the 70s and 80s and, you know, right up to recent times, really.
[01:10:10] Nick Cook: Sorry to interrupt, but it's a good point.
[01:10:12] Nick Cook: You mentioned that, of course, Aviation Week had sort of the guy who's often referred to as the debunker-in-chief, Philip Klass.
[01:10:21] Guy Norris: Yeah, yeah.
[01:10:24] Guy Norris: Phil Klass, whose claim, by the way, is apparently to have invented the word avionics, by the way.
[01:10:30] Guy Norris: There you go.
[01:10:32] Guy Norris: The trivia moment there.
[01:10:35] Guy Norris: Yeah, and in fact, there's all sorts of potentially mysterious and dark elements to that story, too, which we probably don't have time to go into.
[01:10:45] Guy Norris: But yes, but anyway, the bottom line is that that was the platform from which it was accepted that Aviation Week would have and other trades would probably deal with that whole scenario.
[01:11:01] Guy Norris: Everything else was fringe, you know.
[01:11:04] Guy Norris: But there's been a significant sea change in that area since the New York Times story.
[01:11:11] Guy Norris: And I think there's a couple of people who are really leading the realism side of it.
[01:11:17] Guy Norris: and helping shift the paradigm, perhaps.
[01:11:22] Guy Norris: You know, there's the guy Ryan Graves, who, you know, of course, I think him, perhaps, is one of the leading examples of somebody who's a former professional US Navy Super Hornet pilot who's personally seen things which he doesn't understand and is very concerned about the air safety implications for at least not treating this as a serious
[01:11:45] Guy Norris: question, you know, I mean, he's trying to raise the level of awareness, really, and interchange.
[01:11:53] Guy Norris: And what's happening is, partially as a result of that, is that learned societies in the US, which previously, you know, if there has been any discussion about it, it's been behind closed doors, but the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, for example, AIAA,
[01:12:11] Guy Norris: you know, has set up a scientific-based community or committee to try and help look at this whole subject area in a broader sort of way that's going to bring in people that would not be afraid to be identified with it, you know, and who will be able to in a sort of a forum
[01:12:32] Guy Norris: discuss what they've seen via, you know, the videos that were released in the New York Times, for example.
[01:12:38] Guy Norris: I mean, I've actually been to sessions at recent science conferences where this has been debated and the videos have been analysed and, you know, people have been taking it very seriously.
[01:12:51] Guy Norris: And it's all happened in the past three years or so, four years.
[01:12:56] Guy Norris: So
[01:12:58] Guy Norris: I do see a real significant sea change but you know there's an edge to it and where it sort of falls off a cliff is good old Area 51 again because you know sure you know we can talk about what's been seen out there but as to the Area 51 connection there's still nothing
[01:13:20] Guy Norris: in
[01:13:32] Nick Cook: You know, if you're getting together with your colleagues, I'm not talking necessarily about, you know, colleagues at Aviation Week, but just trade press colleagues, and this story comes up, I mean, A, does it ever come up?
[01:13:44] Nick Cook: And B, if it does come up, what's the sort of reaction?
[01:13:47] Nick Cook: Is it intrigue, interest, or is it just, you know, what are they smoking?
[01:13:55] Nick Cook: Or is it somewhere in between?
[01:13:59] Guy Norris: Well, it's again a good question.
[01:14:02] Guy Norris: I think I've personally have started to report on, you know, for example, the, you know, the Pentagon's stories coming out, you know, their sort of setting up of various groups and the AIAA committees, for example.
[01:14:20] Guy Norris: I've reported on those because they're factual events.
[01:14:23] Guy Norris: That's a story.
[01:14:25] Guy Norris: You know, now we are in the business of aerospace reporting.
[01:14:28] Guy Norris: And I consider that a legitimate area now.
[01:14:31] Guy Norris: And there's been no kickback to me or to my colleagues who've been doing that at all.
[01:14:36] Guy Norris: Not one.
[01:14:37] Guy Norris: So I see that as a progressive, you know, it's not being ignored anymore.
[01:14:44] Guy Norris: It's something that deserves attention.
[01:14:47] Guy Norris: And let's face it, you know, this industry is replete with anecdotal or other much more serious reports, you know, of events that cannot be explained and observations of things that do not fit any any known sort of
[01:15:09] Guy Norris: any known solution in the regular world of physics as we understand it.
[01:15:15] Guy Norris: So, you know, I think those the sheer body of evidence is that deserves some sort of further investigation.
[01:15:24] Nick Cook: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
[01:15:26] Nick Cook: So one of these days, then you and I ought to go and do this trip again for old time's sakes.
[01:15:32] Guy Norris: That's right.
[01:15:34] Nick Cook: What would you like to see?
[01:15:39] Guy Norris: Well, I don't know.
[01:15:40] Guy Norris: I think I might need a rickshaw to help me up to some of this.
[01:15:44] Guy Norris: You and me both.
[01:15:46] Guy Norris: Oh, my gosh.
[01:15:47] Guy Norris: No, I don't know.
[01:15:48] Guy Norris: Gosh, I wonder really whether, you know, whether there's much more to see there now.
[01:15:56] Guy Norris: I don't know.
[01:15:57] Guy Norris: I mean, of course, now there's probably a lot of activity, you know, in conventional and advanced combat aviation with the
[01:16:08] Guy Norris: the development of the NGAD, Next Generation Air Dominance concept vehicles.
[01:16:16] Guy Norris: There's fly offs, there's all sorts of new competition going on.
[01:16:22] Guy Norris: And it's all going to be based out of there because it is and it remains despite the fact there's overhead surveillance now from the bad actors out there.
[01:16:35] Guy Norris: It's still a very, very legitimate facility and it's, you know, a world-class test centre, so long should it remain so, I think.
[01:16:48] Nick Cook: Yeah, well, you know, it's so good to have sort of seen the legend, you know, when you and I did that trip before the stories went sort of mental, which they kind of then later did.
[01:17:04] Nick Cook: I mean, we caught it, I think, just at a time before when it was still all a bit raw, you know, unexplored.
[01:17:12] Nick Cook: I'm
[01:17:34] Nick Cook: One last question before we kill this, if I may, because it sort of is pertinent and it is a matter of record.
[01:17:43] Nick Cook: But the stuff that's been coming out of Congress over the past year, including, of course, there was this move
[01:17:52] Nick Cook: at the end of, towards the end of 2023, to get an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for 24 this year, which was called the UAP Disclosure Act, which was trying to get, this is Congress people, I mean, you know,
[01:18:13] Nick Cook: politicians on both sides of the of the political divide in both houses, trying to get done through the Senate, trying to get legislation in place to force companies to disclose and government departments to disclose what they know about UFOs.
[01:18:32] Nick Cook: Has anyone ever talked to you about any of that stuff, particularly around industry circles?
[01:18:37] Nick Cook: Because of course, the legend is, or the accusation is, is that companies have spirited this stuff into their, quotes, you know, science and technology basements.
[01:18:51] Nick Cook: Anything popped up on your radar screen about that in industry circles?
[01:18:58] Guy Norris: Frankly, no, and good luck with that, basically, is what I would imagine would be the answer, because
[01:19:07] Guy Norris: you know, this is a long, if this is true, if it's all, you know, rooted in some sort of reality, then it goes back a long, long time.
[01:19:17] Guy Norris: So I do not believe that there's anything like yet the pressure to really force anything like that sort of level of disclosure or whatever would be needed.
[01:19:29] Guy Norris: And, you know, whether or not
[01:19:33] Guy Norris: you know, if there is such a thing as that sort of technology hidden away in these basements, whether that's actually all, you know, over the decades has begun to spin out into things that are now in our everyday use or flying in advanced military aircraft, I don't know.
[01:19:51] Guy Norris: But I just don't see yet any sign of a of a of a breakthrough like that, if that if that's what you'd call it, to get that sort of disclosure out there.
[01:20:01] Guy Norris: And I just don't think there'd be an appetite within industry to support it.
[01:20:08] Guy Norris: It's, you know, I just can't.
[01:20:10] Nick Cook: We're forced.
[01:20:11] Nick Cook: I mean, that hasn't happened, of course, because the legislation fell flat or at least the the sort of the meaningful parts of it fell flat.
[01:20:19] Nick Cook: Right.
[01:20:20] Nick Cook: But if they were forced to, what do you think would their reaction to that be?
[01:20:28] Guy Norris: Yes, well, I think that it would all be part and parcel of a much more integrated, it would have to be part of a much more government industry integrated sort of disclosure approach, you know, given the implications of what we might be discussing here.
[01:20:47] Guy Norris: And so therefore, I wouldn't imagine that anything piecemeal would be would take place not I just can't imagine it, but it may be possible.
[01:20:55] Guy Norris: But you can, you know, you can imagine where people are sort of saying, look, they've been given this
[01:21:03] Guy Norris: They're now the curators or the holders of this dark secret, which has been in the company for 70 years or something, with bits and pieces added over the decades.
[01:21:14] Guy Norris: And they're stewards of that.
[01:21:19] Guy Norris: On their watch, are they going to be the ones that
[01:21:22] Guy Norris: give over this to the world or to the, you know, the US population or something?
[01:21:27] Guy Norris: That's a big ask, isn't it?
[01:21:31] Guy Norris: Not, not even bringing into account the bigger global impact of, you know, of what all this could mean, you know, from a societal and socioeconomic perspective.
[01:21:44] Guy Norris: I mean, all the big things that are probably
[01:21:47] Guy Norris: I don't know.
[01:21:47] Guy Norris: It's a very good question.
[01:21:48] Guy Norris: I just can't see anything major happening
[01:21:57] Guy Norris: immediately you know on this but I do feel like there's pressure building you know you know like we discussed the fact that AIAA in this world renowned you know group is willing to talk publicly about it that you know you've got these groups that are out there it's no longer a laughing matter and I do
[01:22:18] Guy Norris: you know, air crews are being encouraged to actively report things.
[01:22:23] Guy Norris: It's not the taboo that it once was.
[01:22:27] Guy Norris: And, you know, I do see a sea change in that respect.
[01:22:32] Guy Norris: So it's fascinating, really.
[01:22:34] Guy Norris: Yeah.
[01:22:35] Guy Norris: Do you think we should end by saying, telling, remembering the White Sands moment?
[01:22:42] Nick Cook: You go for it.
[01:22:43] Nick Cook: So we because we OK, so I'll just set the scene, I think.
[01:22:46] Nick Cook: So we went
[01:22:49] Nick Cook: This was in, again, this was on our March 1992 trip.
[01:22:53] Nick Cook: So we departed Area 51, I think we went to Las Vegas next, and then we meandered down through Arizona till we got to New Mexico.
[01:23:01] Nick Cook: And I shall hand over to you for this final memory of our trip.
[01:23:07] Guy Norris: So so we were driving in the good old whatever blazer Bronco blazer thing.
[01:23:13] Guy Norris: Yeah.
[01:23:15] Guy Norris: And we'd had I think we'd had a bit of a tour of the museum there.
[01:23:19] Guy Norris: And there's a there's a fantastic missile park at the entrance to the to the White Sands facility.
[01:23:29] Guy Norris: And there's also a PX, which is a sort of
[01:23:35] Guy Norris: U.S.
[01:23:35] Guy Norris: version of the NAFI, where there's a gas station where you can fill up with cheap fuel and we desperately needed to fill up.
[01:23:46] Guy Norris: I think we were just about flying on fumes by then.
[01:23:50] Guy Norris: And we got to the far end of all of these pumps, which was right beside a big sort of fenced off area of sort of junk really.
[01:23:58] Guy Norris: It was like a high tech junkyard.
[01:24:01] Guy Norris: And as we're filling up, we just both looked over our shoulders.
[01:24:05] Guy Norris: And there, right behind us, beside the fence, was this unusual saucer shaped craft sitting there amongst all the other debris.
[01:24:15] Guy Norris: We sort of nudged each other and thought, is that what I think it is?
[01:24:19] Nick Cook: Except, yeah, we had to whisper to each other, best say nothing and move on.
[01:24:27] Nick Cook: Yeah, though I do remember it was a weird thing.
[01:24:30] Nick Cook: And it was it was called an aeroshell, I think it was.
[01:24:34] Nick Cook: Yeah.
[01:24:36] Nick Cook: And it was it was something to do with some NASA program that was testing, I don't know, some high speed reentry vehicle.
[01:24:44] Guy Norris: Yeah, something like that.
[01:24:45] Guy Norris: Yeah, and it had the big giveaway the fact that it was completely conventional and nothing extra ordinary or extraterrestrial was the fact that it had three little at least three or four little thrusters underneath sitting there like sort of little mushroom, like a mushroom stalk wasn't it really?
[01:25:03] Guy Norris: It was quite comical.
[01:25:05] Nick Cook: It was very comical and sort of somewhat surreal end to a fabulous day trip.
[01:25:14] Guy Norris: But boy, it had us going for just a few seconds there.
[01:25:17] Nick Cook: Yeah, we thought we cracked it then momentarily.
[01:25:22] Nick Cook: Well, Guy, look, it's been such a pleasure catching up with you again.
[01:25:27] Nick Cook: Likewise, likewise.
[01:25:29] Nick Cook: Best of well, Happy New Year 2024 and best of luck with your, you know, reporting going forward.
[01:25:38] Nick Cook: And I'll look forward very much to, you know, having a beer with you, perhaps when we meet up at the well, it would be the Farnborough Airshow this year, wouldn't it?
[01:25:46] Guy Norris: It would.
[01:25:47] Guy Norris: Yes.
[01:25:48] Guy Norris: I'll look forward to that for sure.
[01:25:49] Nick Cook: Yeah.
[01:25:50] Guy Norris: All right.
[01:25:51] Guy Norris: Thanks, Nick.
[01:25:52] Guy Norris: It was great.
[01:25:52] Guy Norris: Great catching up with you again and great memories.
[01:25:56] Guy Norris: Yeah.
[01:25:56] Guy Norris: Fantastic for me, too.
[01:25:58] Nick Cook: All the best.
[01:25:59] Nick Cook: Cheers guys.