Search of Shack Fails to Find Secret Papers on Jet

Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies said Friday that a search of the cluttered Canyon Country shack of a dead Lockheed Corp. machinist may have been a wild goose chase.

The deputies had been searching for documents allegedly tied to the secret stealth bomber, an aircraft designed to elude radar, but they turned up only non-classified material.

Detective Terry D. Sonntag said spies would have no interest in the documents recovered in the Sept. 21 search. Deputies, acting on a tip, obtained a warrant to search the shack on Tick Canyon Road in a remote part of unincorporated Canyon Country.

The shack was owned by Lockheed machinist Stacy Botkin, 65, who died June 27 of heart disease.

Sonntag said deputies searched the property after a man helping Botkin’s son clean it up said he found a gray file folder stamped “Classified” with documents about the secret B-2 bomber.

The man also found tools stamped with Lockheed identification numbers in Botkin’s messy collection of books, papers and tools, Sonntag said.

Sonntag said deputies found papers concerning the F-18 jet fighter, which is not made by Lockheed, and two documentary videotapes dealing with Lockheed and some Lockheed tools.

Company spokesman Bill Spaniel said Botkin had worked at Lockheed’s Burbank plant since 1980. Spaniel also noted that Northrop, not Lockheed, is building the B-2 bomber.