Landsat geocover 2000 pseudocolour imagery of Area 51 at Groom Lake, Nevada, USA (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Mark Memmott

Cue The X-Files theme:

A newly declassified CIA report written in 1992 not only mentions Nevada’s Area 51, it places it on a map. What’s more, it acknowledges that the place where many sci-fi stories have said space aliens’ bodies are being kept is a real-life government facility. Alas, while the report — a history of the U-2 spy plane program — mentions UFOs, it doesn’t say that ET or any of his fellow space travelers are being kept at the site northwest of Las Vegas.

And the UFOs, according to the report, were really U-2s flying at 60,000 feet or so.

(Side note: No, we’re not saying we believe the government’s been hiding evidence of aliens. We’ve got our tongue firmly in our cheek on that point.)

We know all this about Area 51 now because the National Security Archive — “journalists and scholars [who] check rising government secrecy” — used the Freedom of Information Act to get the report declassified.

Read More There It Is! Area 51 Revealed In Declassified CIA Report : The Two-Way : NPR.