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A VETERAN of one of America’s most secretive bases is fighting for justice after he and his colleagues ended up riddled with diseases.
Dave Crete, 60, believes his experience working at a top secret base in Nevada left them with horrific tumours due to radiation exposure.
He told The Sun: “Multiple times in a week, I’m on the phone with a widow telling me the story of her husband.
“And it gets really hard, and my doctor thinks it’s been really hard on me.”
Dave served in the US Air Force at the Tonopah Test Range in Nevada in the 1980s – a base better known as the secretive Area 52.
The work at this range is highly classified – and has long attracted the fascination of conspiracy theorists.
But since his retirement, he and his former servicemen noticed a horrifying trend of ghastly cancers among their ranks.
Not only that, but the medical records from their service days are redacted due to the classified nature of Area 52 – making it even harder to get the support they need.
It all started when he invited his old colleagues for a reunion BBQ at his home in Nevada.
A group of eight of them sat around and reminisced about their service before they quickly realised the shocking trend.
Dave told The Sun: “One of the guys brought up the question, ‘does anyone have a tumour?'”
It transpired that six of the eight men there had tumours – while a seventh said his son had been born with one.
“So I found that kind of strange, maybe a little too too coincidental,” Dave said.
The revelation inspired him to dig deeper into the matter, pouring years into researching any possible link between their service and illnesses.
Dave found an environmental assessment dated to the 1970s that suggested parts of the range were contaminated with plutonium.
But the report added the national security benefits of continuing to operate the range outweighed any negative impacts.
It reads: “The environmental costs inherent in the work are small and reasonable for the benefits received.”
Dave told The Sun: “That was an environmental assessment I’ve done in the area where I worked, and it said that the range is contaminated with plutonium.
“They knew all that, but they said the juice is worth the squeeze.”
He eventually compiled his findings into a Powerpoint presentation and invited his comrades to hear what he had found.
“Everyone I’m telling was shocked. Everyone was really surprised at what I was saying,” he said.
“But I backed up everything I had to say with government documents.”
Dave estimates that his average fellow serviceman is dying young as a result.
He told The Sun: “I can’t do a statistical analysis yet, but the average age of the guy dying is about 65 years old.”
Dave added: “I’m 60 and you’re sitting there… the average says I’ve got five years.”
It prompted him to set up a charity called The Invisible Enemy, campaigning for justice for those affected.
The charity released a short documentary detailing the challenges Dave and his comrades have faced.
The old Area 52 crew have been afflicted with “every kind of cancer you can imagine”, he added.
Everything we know about Area 52
AREA 52, otherwise known as the Tonopah Test Range, is located in Tonopah, Nevada, around 70 miles northwest of the famed Area 51 facility.
The military facility spans 525 square miles and was opened in 1957 as a testing site for United States Department of Energy weapons programs.
Missiles have been tested, bombs have been dropped and state-of-the-art aircraft have all been piloted at the base over the last six decades.
Between 1977 and 1988, the range hosted a combat training program code-named Constant Peg which tested Russian Mikoyan MiG aircraft against US aircrews, radars, and UAVs.
Despite flying thousands of missions over the course of 11 years, the operation was kept completely secret until November 2006.
The famed twin-engine stealth attack aircraft Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk was also secretly tested at the site from 1982 through 1989 while the F-117 program was classified.
But around 1992, very little is known about the aircraft that were tested at the site thereafter.
The base remains active and in 2017 it received state-of-the-art upgrades to help advance the US’ nuclear arsenal modernization initiative, as well as other programs.
One of the primary facilities at the base is a large airfield, consisting of a 12,000-foot runway and numerous hangars.
A glimpse at the facility also shows 50 twin-level dormitories capable of housing thousands of workers.
Workers who are flown in to work at the base land in a private terminal and are escorted via government vehicles, local reports say.
According to its website, TTR “offers a wide array of signal-tracking equipment, including video, high-speed cameras, and radar-tracking devices.
“This equipment is used to characterize ballistics, aerodynamics, and parachute performance for artillery shells, bomb drops, missiles, and rockets.”
While the facility is known publicly as TTR, in government documents it is referred to as Area 52.
“The number of people that I know that have had cancers multiple times is very high.”
Dave himself has had tumours all over his body in the years since his service, and he’s far from the only one.
But to make matters worse, when Dave and his buddies requested their medical records from the US military, the documents were redacted – plunging them further into the dark.
“Our time out there is still classified,” Dave said.
“We’re trying to remove that veil of secrecy – not over what we did – but we need to be able to go down to the Veterans Administration and get the benefits that every other veteran would get.”
Dave has now testified before Congress over the treatment of former servicemen at the Nevada Test Range.
“What’s happened to us is complete garbage, and I think most reasonable people agree. It’s just not right,” he said.
“I want to connect the dots from my service to my illness, and because of the classification they say no.”
Dave estimates that a few thousand people are affected at least, and that number “continues to grow”.
The Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs were contacted for comment.
