#1299 - Annie Jacobsen

Joe Rogan (0:00)

Now, we're live, three, two, one, boom. Hello, Annie. Hello, Joe. Very nice to meet you. I'm excited to talk to you. I'm super excited to talk to you about several subjects, but this one, thank you very much for this first edition copy of your Area 51, An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base Book.

I'm super excited about this.

Annie Jacobsen (0:19)

I heard through the grapevine you were a fan.

Joe Rogan (0:21)

I'm a freak when it comes to this stuff. What do you think is going on up there?

Annie Jacobsen (0:25)

I mean, same thing that's going on all over the place when it comes to military secrets, which is stuff that you want to know about, very few people know about, and every now and then a journalist gets a hint at it, right?

Joe Rogan (0:38)

Do you think there's any alien stuff up there?

Annie Jacobsen (0:41)

I write in the book all about that. Yeah?

Joe Rogan (0:43)

Well, tell me.

Annie Jacobsen (0:43)

The last 12 pages. You want me to read?

Joe Rogan (0:45)

You want me to go to the last 12 pages? What do you think?

Annie Jacobsen (0:49)

So Area 51 was this secret test base where the CIA was running spy plane programs, right? So, interestingly, my new book is about ground branch, guys on the ground. That's about air branch, what we were doing in the air. And it was this idea that we should spy on the enemy, okay?

But if you go back in time, why Area 51 really started, you learn that it was a base hidden inside of a base, nuclear weapons, and it was all about beating Stalin at his black propaganda campaign. This is what I write in the book.

To hoax Americans in a war of the worlds type scenario, whereby little men who looked like aliens would get out of an aircraft, and the government would go crazy about it. And then Stalin would say, look, not only do we have technology better than you, but we have a better propaganda department than you.

Joe Rogan (1:55)

Really?

Annie Jacobsen (1:56)

Joe, you gotta read the whole book. I mean, this is a tough opening. You got me on the spot.

Joe Rogan (2:00)

It is a tough opening, but it's a good spot.

Annie Jacobsen (2:02)

Right?

Joe Rogan (2:02)

It's a good spot. So Stalin, did he just hire short people? Like, what did he do?

Annie Jacobsen (2:08)

All right, I'm gonna make you save that. I'm gonna make you earn that. Yeah.

Joe Rogan (2:11)

How's that?

Annie Jacobsen (2:12)

I mean, you want me to talk about that right now, right off the bat.

Joe Rogan (2:14)

Why is that?

Annie Jacobsen (2:15)

I'm sweating.

Joe Rogan (2:15)

We're gonna get to Surprise, Kill, Vanish as well, but I wanna just, yeah. Why does it make you sweat?

Annie Jacobsen (2:23)

Oh my God, it's such an incendiary topic. I mean, people want to believe irelians, right? Okay, I mean, I've spent five books dealing with the mythology of Area 51, which is phenomenal in its own way, because it speaks so much to power, to morality, to information, to people's desire to know what's going on, and the government's desire to keep things hidden. So this topic is always coming up, because a lot of people want to believe that there were aliens in that craft.

And my source, who I write about in the book, told me otherwise, that they were genetically, you know.

Joe Rogan (3:07)

Let me stop you right there, because when you say that craft, what you mean is the supposed UFO wreckage that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947

That's what you mean, right? But that was never supposedly taken to Area 51 It was supposed to be taken to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The legend has it that Truman flew there to meet them.

Annie Jacobsen (3:26)

That's one legend. So in my book, I interview a man who worked for the Atomic Energy Commission, who tells a different story. Tells the story of receiving that craft at Area 51 in 1951, which is why the base is called Area 51 Oh.

And that inside the craft were humans who had been altered, surgically altered to look like aliens in a plan for Stalin to sort of twist Truman's arm, because at that time, we had the atomic bomb. When Roswell happened, we had the atomic bomb, and the Soviets did not.

Joe Rogan (4:10)

When you say humans that were surgically altered to look like aliens, do you mean, so this is 1951 So you're talking about four years after the supposed crash.