This is an interesting perspective - was written recently (no date!) but published a few wks ago: http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/tierra_hueca/esp_tierra_hueca_14.htm

Excerpts (char limitation):

"In recent weeks, a series of disturbing and mysterious reports have been coming out of Antarctica, centered around a strange "anomaly" recently detected on that perpetually frozen Continent...In 1957, the Russians built a base in eastern Antarctica which they named "Vostok" (East), which also happens to be the name of the first series of manned Russian spacecraft...The Lake, which is still liquid and not frozen, has been isolated under the ice sheet since anywhere from 13,000 to 14 million years ago, depending on who you talk to (thus, who’s estimating precisely "when" the ice last completely covered the Continent). The water in the Lake (determined by surface thermal scans) ranges from 50 to 65 degrees F, clearly indicating a sub-terranean heat source. In addition, the whole Lake is covered by a sloping air "dome" several thousand feet high that has formed (from the "hot" water melting the overlying ice) just above the Lake’s surface.

Core samples taken by the Russians a couple years ago at their Vostok Base -- when they drilled down very close to the bottom of the ice sheet -- have revealed the presence of microbes, nutrients and various gases -- like methane -- embedded in the clear, refrozen Lake water just above the "dome"....from about 1998 on, NASA began to see it as an ideal test bed for its eventual plans to drill through the ice and search the oceans of Jupiter’s moon, Europa. Accordingly, JPL received NASA grants to develop unique "sterile" drilling technology, conduct actually drilling and probe experiments in other terrestrial environments, and to prepare a Plan to actually enter Lake Vostok by 2002. But, coincident with a stunning new discovery, JPL has evidently now backed off these ambitious exploration plans...(due to) "concern over environmental contamination."

A team of scientists from Columbia University, working under the auspices of the NSF, early in 2001 began a series of unprecedented low-altitude aerial surveys over Lake Vostok, designed to chart gravitational, magnetic and thermal activity under the ice. In the course of doing so, they made a stunning find.

A huge magnetic anomaly was discovered covering the entire Southeast portion of the shore of the Lake. This remarkable anomaly, which is discrepant from the background by over 1,000 nanoteslas (a significant variance, compared to daily variations in the Earth’s magnetic field), could of course be caused by "natural" processes.

An "ancient city under the ice?" Such a discovery would be absolutely dazzling, sending shockwaves through our world as profound as the discovery of "artifacts on Mars" or "ruins on the Moon." And the notion is not as improbable as you may think.

There is a growing trend toward the acceptance of the notion of "catastrophism" as a viable alternative to conventional geologic models. This is in opposition to the current (but retreating) geological model, called "gradualism" -- the concept that geologic changes only happen slowly, over eons. However, more and more evidence has mounted (from the Vostok ice cores, for example) that climatological changes can happen rapidly. Some attribute these "catastrophic" changes in the record to sudden polar shifts. Many researchers, from a variety of evidence, have put the last such sudden shift at around ~13,000 years ago.

Under this "catastrophic" model, Antarctica might well have been a temperate, even a jungle Continent, as recently as that 13KYA time frame. A sudden change in the Earth’s alignment relative to the sun would have plunged this once hospitable land into a perpetual freezing hell, as cold as Mars in some places. Indeed, it is easy to see Antarctica as Hitler did, as the source of worldwide "Atlantis" legends we have all heard and read. According to least one source, Dr. Werner Von Braun of NASA was convinced that Hitler’s belief in an "Atlantis below the ice" was correct.

...unconfirmed reports began to surface that a JPL spokesperson had admitted at a February press conference that the National Security Agency (NSA) had literally taken over the JPL polar research program at Lake Vostok. It was this report which created something of a firestorm on the Internet.

...A December 2000 report, carried on this Continent by NPR, stated that "someone at McMurdo had become disoriented" and began to spread the rumor of a "UFO landing" in Antarctica. There was even a poster circulating though the Base, depicting a giant spacecraft hovering directly over McMurdo!

The individual supposedly responsible was promptly "deported" from the Continent -- literally put on the next plane back to New Zealand (the official gateway to McMurdo)! Equally bizarre, at least three scientists -- including the Russian discoverer of a remarkable set of geometric "dunes," seen directly above the strongest region of the Vostok anomaly -- have died on the Continent in the past two years. Curiously, the causes of these deaths -- all of them young men in their thirties and forties -- have not been reported...

Initially, it was reported that the doctor at the South Pole (the second replacement in two years at the Amundson-Scott Base) needed an unprecedented airlift extraction (this late in the season) -- because of "complications from a gall stone."

Then, coincident with that, other reports began to surface of the need for four more medical extractions, in an equally unprecedented fashion, from the coastal base at McMurdo Station, the largest US base on the entire Continent.

Again, as with the previously reported deaths, the reasons were somewhat mysterious as to the precise need for these "emergency medical extractions." Public speculation has hinged on the idea that someone coming into McMurdo from New Zealand brought "something" with them from home, some kind of infectious disease, that was subsequently spreading among the isolated population there.

However, this is extremely unlikely. Precisely because of the isolated population in Antarctica, immigrants are screened for a wide range of diseases before being allowed on the Continent. In fact, upon arrival, they are quarantined for a number of days -- to ensure they have not brought any "friends from home" with them. And, as is well known, the environmental conditions in Antarctica are so harsh that normal viruses and other microbial life cannot readily survive (even common colds are vanishingly rare), virtually guaranteeing that nobody in this instance caught a case of the "Antarctic flu."

So what’s happening? Two thoughts immediately spring to mind: One is that some "Special Project" has, against all scientific and environmental prudence, indeed drilled through the ice into the Lake Vostok eco-system (clandestinely, of course). And, the participants have suddenly found themselves exposed to "something" for which their bodies literally have no immunity -- something not extant in the rest of Earth’s biosphere for between 13,000 and several million years!

After the initial reports of "four emergency extractions," the number changed to five ... and now twelve McMurdo personnel are supposedly in need of a dangerous, "emergency medical evacuation" well into the Antarctic winter season. At one level, this has all the earmarks of "something" virulently spreading among the limited winter population at the Base, something that even the fairly complete medical facilities at McMurdo can no longer cope with.

Complicating the picture is the fact that the "extractees" are not research scientists or long-term support personnel, but are all employees of Raytheon Corporation -- a high-tech firm that is deeply involved in a variety of black-ops programs for the U.S. government all around the world.

This idea (that these two simultaneous "emergencies" are actually due to some kind of "black ops fiasco" in Antarctica) is reinforced by another little noticed story coming out of the Amundson-Scott Base -- that the doctor being brought in (to replace the ailing doctor) has been asked to also bring in "an emergency supply of salt." She’s even been asked to "stuff her own pockets full of salt packets," ostensibly because there is "no room on the rescue aircraft itself."

This is obviously a silly, thinly-veiled "cover story" ... designed to tell someone "outside" ... "something." Salt is crucial to survival in outdoor conditions in Antarctica. The air is so dry, that unless someone exposed to the outdoors there has a good supply of salt, they are likely to face the possibility of death by mineral depletion and dehydration. Obviously the Base, after years of operation, would have a pretty good handle on just how much salt is needed until the next re-supply plane arrives. So how is it that they suddenly find themselves desperately without any of it left?!

Maybe, because they suddenly had a unique situation. Maybe because a team of scientists and engineers from Raytheon spent a lot of unplanned days out on the windswept ice, frantically drilling against the clock, in an all-out effort to break through to the Lake below -- and in the process, used far more than the normal complement of salt to survive.

What if these Raytheon black ops personnel did indeed find "something" in their secret drilling under Vostok -- and needed to get it back to civilization ASAP for in-depth study. Under this scenario, the whole idea of an "outbreak" is simply a ruse to cover the need for a large airplane (a New Zealand C-130 Hercules) dramatically visiting McMurdo at a time never attempted in all its years before: the only "way out" for something very important from the Continent. ...before the dead of the Antarctic winter makes any such attempt this year impossible!

Is it...2001?