By Al Kamen
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON – So much attention, so many trees, so much ink, devoted to the budget. Suspicious minds might wonder if all the attention is part of an elaborate smoke screen to hide what’s really going on.
Of course it is! Amid all the budget chatter last week, President Bush slipped an “Oh, by the way” letter up to Congress advising that, back on Sept. 18, a week after the terrorist attacks, he had “issued Presidential Determination 2001-27.”
That action, Bush said, “exempted the U.S. Air Force’s operating location near Groom Lake, Nev., from any federal, state, interstate, or local hazardous or solid waste laws that might require the disclosure of classified information concerning that operating location to unauthorized persons.”
Bush said that “information concerning activities at the operating location near Groom Lake has been properly determined to be classified, and its disclosure would be harmful to national security. Continued protection of this information is, therefore, in the paramount interest of the United States.”
Note it’s not just important, but “paramount.” Why would that be? Because this is in fact “Area 51,” site of alien landings many years ago and where the bodies of the aliens are still being kept?
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