A51Nwsat

Celestial Cover-Up?

UFO Believer Says U.S. Is Hiding Truth In Nevada Desert

by Carol Masciola
Orange County (CA) Register (date unknown - 1993)

It is twilight and Sean David Morton is driving 90 m.p.h. across the Nevada desert.

He is headed for a dimension where unearthly flashes appear in the sky, and the lone local bar serves alien-burgers. He is hurtling toward a sector where he says extra terrestrials prowl the Earth, mutilating cows, con- spiring with the U.S. military and watching late-night television.
He is entering the terrifying Area 51.

The government says Area 51 is a testing site for secret airplanes near Nellis Air Force Base. But Morton insists that it's a U.S.-alien cooperative where flying saucers are tested and grotesque genetic experiments take place.

"NASA is a fake. The real stuff is out here," he says.

In the back of his rented van sit seven wide-eyed passengers. Each has paid $99 to see the flying saucers that Morton says spin through the desert at night.

The fee also entitles them to an earful of the self-proclaimed prophet's arcane tidbits about space travel and government cover-ups. He spews them forth with a lunar gleam in his eye.

Casually, he explains that Area 51's aliens are probably from Krondac, a planet 800 light-years away.

"They're actually bluish-gray and a little bigger than most people think.
They're 3 to 4 feet tall."

Morton acknowledges he's never seen any aliens, but so-called sources tell him they're living at Area 51--those little creatures with the smooth heads and the wrap-around eyes.

His fellow travelers include three students of the paranormal from Mexico City, one guy with a video camera who sells material to the Fox Network series "Sightings," an inscrutable Brazilian, and a hairdresser from West Hollywood, Calif.

Morton, 34, makes his living as a psychic, a healer, a predictor of earth- quakes and a screenwriter. He just finished a book of prophecy for the next
30 years. He also worked on TV shows about Area 51 for the NBC series
"Unsolved Mysteries" and for Geraldo Rivera's "Now It Can Be Told."

"Hidden here is the technology to end all wars, to end hunger, to provide an endless supply of energy," he said. "I'm outraged that they're not showing it to the rest of the world."

Some 100 miles later, the UFO van pulls in for supplies at Ash Springs, Nev., population 11. Store owner Goodie Goodman immediately recognizes Morton. He bags groceries and muses.

"I am not a believer because I have not seen anything, but I know
people who have," he says. "You have to understand where we are in
relation to Area 51."

More and more desert. More and more darkness. One of the students nods off.
Suddenly, Morton swings the van off the road, kills the headlights and leaps onto the road, screaming, "Look, look, look! Over there, over there!
What the hell's that? Oh! It's gone!"

The fellow travelers run out after him. There are lights all over the sky.
Some look like helicopters, some like flares, some like Fibs. Two huge planes, possibly B1s, swoop close overhead in the dark, barely making a sound. And something else seems to hopscotch across the sky, leaving an orange flash at each stop.

"You just saw tiny space jumps," Morton declares.

But skeptics say Morton's the one doing the jumping--right off the deep end.

"For nearly 25 years, my specialty has been the field of UFOs, as a hobby," said Philip Klass, a senior editor at Aviation Week & Space Tech- nology for 34 years and a specialist in aviation electronics. "In all that time, I've yet to find a UFO case to suggest we have any alien spacecraft in our skies."

Area 51 is used for testing new covert airplanes, Klass said, and for staging war games and testing electronic jamming equipment.

Barry Karr, executive director of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, said con artists are promoting Area 51 to make easy money giving tours and lectures.

"There are about four or five guys running around the country, and they all have a different shtick about Area 51," Karr said.

Klass suggested that pranksters might be enhancing the military's aerial show with their own bogus UFOs and that local businesses might be perpe- tuating the myth to bring tourists to an otherwise uninviting corner of the desert.

As midnight neared, the van pulled up at the only bar for 85 miles--the Little A'le'inn, a converted trailer. The signs outside say "Earthlings Welcome" and "Budweiser."

Proprietor Joe Travis sells Alien Burgers and cocktails called Photon Torpedo, Solar Flare and the popular Beam Me Up, Scotty (Jim Beam, 7-Up and a dash of scotch).

"It's not just kooks and idiots that come out here. These people are genuinely interested," said Travis, standing behind the bar. "We had a man in here last night from another planet. He didn't tell me, but I knew."