Quote:In the mid-1980s, Air Force technician Mark Ely's job was to inspect secretly obtained Soviet fighter jets.

The work, carried out in hidden hangers known as hush houses, was part of a classified mission in the Nevada desert, 140 miles outside of Las Vegas at the Tonopah Test Range — sometimes referred to as Area 52. The mission was so under wraps that Ely said he had to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

Ely was in his 20s and physically fit when he was working at the secret base. Now 63 and living in Naperville, Illinois, he's confronting life-threatening consequences from the radiation he says he was exposed to.

For decades, the U.S. government conducted nuclear bomb tests near Area 52. According to a 1975 federal environmental assessment, those tests scattered toxic radioactive material nearby.

"It scarred my lungs. I got cysts on my liver. ... I started having lipomas, tumors inside my body I had to remove. My lining in my bladder was shed," he said.

All these years later, his service records include many assignments, but not the mission inside Tonopah Test Range, meaning he can't prove he was ever there.