As the man in charge of property control at Area 51, Jim Freedman was a taskmaster. “It was my job to provide services for all the different groups at the area,” Freedman explains. “This included the CIA, the Air Force, EG&G, REECo [Reynolds Electric and Engineering], and even Howard Hughes—an individual who very few people had any idea had his own hangar out at the Ranch.” What exactly Hughes was doing at Area 51 remains classified as of 2011, but Freedman explains the dynamic that was at play. “The CIA liked to foster competition between groups. It was why we had Kodak and Polaroid, Lockheed and North American, EG&G and Hughes. They were all no-bid contracts for security reasons. But competition keeps people on their toes.” Jim Freedman acted as the gofer among the groups from 1960 until 1974. If a scientist needed a widget, if an engineer needed an oscilloscope, or if a radar expert needed a piece of magnetic tape, it was Freedman’s job to get it, fast. As a prerequisite for the job, Freedman knew how to keep secrets. He carried a top secret and a Q clearance and had worked for EG&G since 1953. “We worked under a code that said, ‘What you learn here, leave here.’ That was pretty simple to follow,” says Freedman. “You couldn’t afford to talk. You’d lose your job and you’d be blackballed. So instead, my wife and family thought I fixed TVs. ‘How was your day, Dad?’ my kids would ask when I got home. ‘Great!’ I’d say. ‘I fixed twenty-four TVs.’”
As they had been with the Manhattan Project, the various jobs going on at Area 51 were compartmentalized for Oxcart, so that every person worked within very strict need-to-know protocols. The radar people had no idea about the ELINT people, who had no idea what any of the search-and-rescue teams were up to. Each group worked on its part of the puzzle. Each man was familiar with his single piece. Only a few individuals, officers working in managerial capacities, understood a corner of the puzzle—at most. But someone had to act as a go-between among these disparate groups, and in this way, Freedman became an individual who knew a lot more than most about the inner workings of Area 51.
He also knew the layout of the base. Most Area 51 workers were confined to the building, or buildings, they worked in, the building they slept in, and the mess hall, where everybody dined together. As the Area 51 runner, Freedman “went to places out there that I don’t think other people even knew were out there.” For example, Freedman says, there was “the faraway runway where people who were not supposed to be seen by others were brought into the base.” Freedman tells a story of one such group, the exact date of which he can’t recall but that was during the Vietnam War. “One day I was out there delivering something to someone, it was three in the morning, and I watched an airplane land. Then I watched forty-one Vietnamese men get off the plane. I never saw the men again, but a few days later I was sent on an errand. My supervisor said, ‘Jim, can you go to Las Vegas and get me x number of pounds of a special kind of rice?’ I’d say it was fairly obvious who that rice was being requested for.” Freedman elaborates: “These [foreign nationals] were being trained to use state-of-the-art Agency equipment out at the Area, which they probably took with them when they left and went and put behind enemy lines.”