Thornton D. “TD” Barnes, author, and entrepreneur, grew up on a ranch at Dalhart, Texas. He graduated from Mountain View High School in Oklahoma and embarked on a ten-year military career. He served as an Army intelligence specialist in Korea and then continued his education while in the US Army, attending two and a half years of missile and radar electronics by day and college courses at night. Barnes deployed with the first combat Hawk missile battalion during the Soviet Iron Curtain threat before attending the Artillery Officer Candidate School, where an injury ended his military career.

Barnes first became involved with US intelligence agencies while in the Army during the Agency's Project Palladium, an on and off relationship that continues today. Barnes’s career includes serving as a field engineer at the NASA High Range in Nevada for the X-15, XB-70, lifting bodies and lunar landing vehicles; working on the NERVA project at Jackass Flats, Nevada; and serving in Special Projects at Area 51. Barnes later formed a family oil and gas exploration company, drilling, and producing oil and gas and mining uranium and gold.

Barnes currently serves as the CEO of Startel, Inc., a landowner company with extensive water rights, and actively mining landscape rock and gold in Nevada. He serves as the president of Roadrunners Internationale, an association of Area 51 CIA, Air Force, and contractor veterans, and is the executive director of the Nevada Aerospace Hall of Fame.

Two National Geographic Channel documentaries feature Barnes: Area 51 Declassified and CIA—Secrets of Area 51. Numerous documentaries on the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, the Travel Channel, and others also feature him. Barnes is the author on several books approved by the CIA PRB including the CIA Area 51 Chronicles, a three-book series about the declassified CIA U-2, A-12, MiG, and stealth projects at Area 51. Barnes remains active with oral history projects at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the National Reconnaissance Office. Barnes lives in Henderson, Nevada.

Connect with the Author Online
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ThorntondBarnes
Website: www.td-barnes.com
LinkedIn: www. LinkedIn.com/profile/edit?trk=tab_pro
Twitter: twitter.com/ThorntonDBarnes