Background
“Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us”, commonly referred to as Raid Area 51 or Storm Area 51, was an American Facebook event that took place on September 20, 2019, at Area 51, a United States Air Force (USAF) facility within the Nevada Test and Training Range, to raid the site in a search for extraterrestrial life. More than 2 million people responded “going” and 1.5 million “interested” on the event’s page, which subsequently attracted widespread media reaction and made the event become an Internet meme.
USAF was fielding e-mails and phone calls from journalists (and others) about the event. On September 5, 2019, I filed a FOIA request for all e-mails sent to/from USAF Spokeswoman Laura Mcandrews that contained the keyword “Area 51.”
On October 24, 2019, I received the below documents.
Document Archive – Highlights
(Full Release is below)
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- On July 27, 2019, Joe Macias sent the USAF a list of “demands” about the Storm Area 51 event.
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- This e-mail was sent to the PAO at USAF, Laura Mcandrews, expressing concern over the Storm Area 51 event. One note is that whomever this was (name redacted) expressed concern over “Unexploded ordnance” (aka: UXO) in and around Area 51 that someone may have stepped on.
Document Archive
Storm Area 51: Air Force Public Affairs Office E-Mails [28 Pages, 0.5MB]