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Beyond the Gemstone Files |
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AUTHORSHIP ALPHA-1775 GEMSTONES A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Y Z |
The
Mysterious Rainbow Bomb of 1962
My own photocopy of the front-page article, which also took up most of the second page, is too small to transcribe, so I'm trying to locate a copy big enough to read. (The Banner went out of business a few years back after being taken over by Gannett.) This was one of the two reports that triggered the firestorm. I often prepare reports for members of Congress or different administrations in the White House on sensitive subjects, but I will never again let slip the name of an individual who requests or receives these reports - without their permission. I failed to understand just how sensitive some of these topics are, even though the bulk of my reports are somewhat arcane and technical. It is odd, looking over the one below, how it becomes newly-relevant in the light of President George W. Bush's renewed efforts to create a "Star Wars" missile defense shield. Perhaps he or one of his advisors should read this old, dusty report. I will post the contents of the other report mentioned if and when I can find it.
There was an air of excitement on the beaches of Hawaii that hot July evening. Across Diamond Head motorists scurried to get the best vantage points from which to look out over the ocean. Officials opened the gates of Punchbowl Cemetery so crowds could swarm up the famous concrete observation pad. Radio stations interrupted their normal programming. Residents left their homes to get out on the beaches with binoculars and transistor radios. A quarter-moon peeked through a cloud-patched sky at intervals as nervous throngs waited below. It was a tense moment...not quite five years after the first Russian Sputnik blinked in the heavens and jolted America into action. The Soviet Union had taken the lead in the space race then and Americans were eager that they should be first. At precisely 11:00 p.m. the world saw the most dazzling display of extraterrestrial pyrotechnics ever seen in recorded history. Suddenly, as the warhead of a three-stage Delta rocket exploded 260 miles above Johnston Island, the night became day over millions of square miles. The sky exploded like an electric arc on July 9, 1962. "At first there was a burst of electric white," wrote a Newsweek correspondent. Seconds later, the fireball in space turned "a vivid, luminous blue," according to Business Week, "then to green, bellow, rosy pink, and finally to blood red." For six minutes a part of the planet Earth saw a new sun dwarf the moon. In New Zealand, 4,000 miles away, the auroral displays were "breathtaking." In Samoa where islanders believed the moon had exploded at first, natives, when told the awesome sight was the product of United States technology, angrily shook their fists at the sky and screamed, "Crazy white man!" The thousands packed onto the Hawaiian beaches became strangely silent as a chill of fear swept them, replacing the dissipated gaiety. Women instinctively reached for their children and their men· Men stared slack-jawed "as if the gods were hurling thunderbolts before our eyes." In New Zealand, an elderly lady who claimed she was a devout Bible-reader calmly called a local newspaper to ask if the end of the world had begun. Over the ocean, the pilot of a Canadian Pacific airliner flying to Sydney turned his plane around to give stunned passengers an eerie bird's eye view of the hellish inferno. "Everyone has seen fireballs in pictures." Time quoted an amazed Hawaiian," "but no one has ever seen the sky on fire before." He was one of the few able to summon forth the words to express their experience. On that day in history man stepped across a fragile threshold into a new age from which he can now never retreat. On that day mankind altered the magnetic field of the earth and the generals of the world rejoiced, for they had a new weapon of destruction that left no "long-lasting, visible marks" on the planet's face. The human race still does not know the full implications of what it has done. The term "rainbow bomb" was coined in an editorial by The Nation on May 12, 1962 - before the controversial blast was set off, but after a series of other, smaller tests had been conducted. "To the uranium bomb, the hydrogen bomb, the neutron bomb, there is how added the effulgence of the rainbow bomb." (It is interesting to notice that the neutron bomb, which didn't fully impact on the public until 1979, was already a fact in 1962. It is also interesting that the media, which acted so righteously indignant in the l980s over the fact that American troops were used as guinea pigs for nuclear tests, calmly reported in 1962 (Business Week, July 14, 1962) that "Another test, scheduled for this week, will involve troops dug in at varying distances from ground zero." 'Why has it taken 20 years for the media to get interested?) "It will be an ordinary hydrogen bomb," the Nation editorial said, "but because it is to be exploded 500 miles above the Pacific, unusual effects are expected. One is a vast arc of auroral light which may be visible as far as Los Angeles, 3,400 miles away." As the editorial, and several other news articles, explained, the rainbow bomb would distort part of the earth's magnetic field and particles from galactic space, which travel at enormous speeds, may cause minute opacities in the lens of the eye -- which probably will disappear in a few months --- and probably will turn an astronaut's hair gray." This report, ironically, came from Brookhaven National Laboratory where Nick Christofidos had gained attention. This report by H.J. Curtis was based on tests using Brookhavens 60-inch cyclotron to produce a 22 million electron volt (mev) deutoron beam aimed at mice. Years later we would learn the results would be far more tragic, as U.S. ambassadors were killed by a Soviet "death ray beam" with uncomfortable similarities to the rainbow bomb. Those extremely low frequency (ELF) bombardments of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, using microwaves as carriers, began only months after this conference was held. The Central Intelligence Agency first became aware of the "death ray beam" in 1963 -- despite 1978 claims by the government that it wasn't until 1975 -- and immediately put together Project Pandora. Tragically, the CIA wasn't aware of what the Department of Defense was doing and so the connections were never made and indeed may still not be recognized in official circles. In that 1962 conference we learned some other disturbing things about what was happening to the planet since man's spaceships began tearing holes in the ozone layer. "Atmospheric density has decreased by a factor of 10:1 since 1957-58, based on recent measurements made using the Explorer 9 satellite," reported Aviation Week May 7, 1962. William J. O'Sullivan, Jr., of NASA's Langley Research Center, made the report. "The satellite, launched February 16, 1961, is a 12-ft. dia. inflated sphere. Air density computed from changes in orbital altitude was 3 x 1o17 grams per cc. at an altitude of about 675 km., one-tenth that published in the 1959 ARDC Model Atmosphere." The story of the rainbow bomb has an unlikely beginning and an unlikely author. It was given birth by "a crazy Greek" with no training in nuclear physics and by a 17-year high school student who built spy satellites for his local science fair. That 17-year-old is today, twenty years later, the author of this article. Nicholas Constantine Christofidos is a stocky, black-haired, rambunctious man who worked for an elevator company in Athens, Greece in the early days of the atomic age. Born in Boston, he was taken to Greece as a small child and spent most of his life there. During World 'War II and the German occupation of Greece, Christofidos worked for an elevator company that soon folded; from there he went to work as a supervisor in a truck repair depot. It was as a supervisor that he found he had a lot of free time and began to teach himself nuclear physics. "I had some thoughts on how to build atom-smashers," he said. "There were many German books on the subject, so I got them and read them on the job." By 1948 he had come up with an original theory and with his typical "little boy excitement" he wrote a letter to the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California-Berkeley. They promptly told the Greek his idea was "unworkable." "They were right," Christofidos admits. "My calculations were crude. There were things I didn't know." Back to the drawing boards he went and in 1950. he sent another letter to the United States. This time the scientists had to admit that his idea was important (known as the "strong-focus" principle that makes it possible to obtain tremendous amounts of energy from a small atom-smasher). Still, no one took "the crazy Greek" seriously. According to Life Magazine (March 30, 1959), "In some quarters he was viewed as a harmless crank. He was apparently a bit clumsy in his presentation of the theory, and some scientists now claim that the phrasing of the letter made it hard for them to understand what he was driving at. They did answer his second letter, though, suggesting that he read a standard text to clear up his mathematical shortcomings. He read it, made some corrections in his theory, and set sail for the United States in 1953. "When Christofidos set foot on American shores, he headed for the New York Public Library." "I wanted to get hold of some physics publications and see what had been done recently," he explained. "The first one I read had an article on the Brookhaven Laboratories' development of the strong-focusing principle. :So you see, on the first day I came back to my country, I found that my theories were okay." One of his next stops was the Brookhaven lab, on Long Island, where he left them wondering with his blunt proclamation that he had thought of strong-focusing before they had. From there he went to the Atomic Energy Commission in 'Washington and spread out before the amazed officials his ASTRON idea -- a proposal to use high energy electrons trapped in a magnetic field to control thermonuclear explosions and produce cheap and plentiful electricity. Intrigued, the ABC asked him to sit down with scientists at the University of California. Meanwhile, unknown to either Christofidos or the ABC, the Berkeley scientists had stumbled across an article about the Brookhaven research and suddenly remembered the fractured letters from "the crazy Greek" and decided to write him again for more information. A letter was actually on its way to Greece when Christofidos popped up in person in the reception room. It was while he was working on his $2 million ASTRON Project that he first brought up the idea of the rainbow bomb in 1957. The idea that was to become known as Project Argus was first discussed with Herbert York, then head of the University of California's Livermore Laboratory and later (in 1959) director of research and engineering for the Department of Defense. York urged Christofidos to write a paper about his idea. His report was promptly classified secret and was read only by security-cleared ABC scientists who were immediately captivated with the idea and approved its implementation, By early 1958 Project Argus was underway, "Christofidos is now considered an original thinker of considerable importance," LIFE wrote, "who has -- in the words of the great thermo-nuclear expert Edward Teller -- 'gone very far, essentially on his own.' It may even be that his lack of training gives him an advantage. 'Very often the untrained people are more original in their thinking than the trained ones,' says Edwin McMillan, director of the California Radiation Lab. 'Of course they tend to go around inventing things that have already been invented, but Nick doesn't do that. He seems always to be first,'" In the fall of 1958 the U.S. Navy launched three nuclear bombs into space and encased the earth with thin layers of electrons. Because the warheads were small and the tests ~re top-secret, the world was unable to explain why radio transmissions were suddenly blacked out. Project Argus was not made public until later that following year in March. "This was the most fantastic experiment ever conducted by man," Nick Christofidos proudly exclaimed. Argus began as an offshoot of the ASTRON when Christofidos reasoned that since the earth itself contains a powerful magnetic field, electrons could be created by a nuclear explosion in space and then trapped in the magnetic field. If this powerful field could be tapped, the earth would have an abundance of cheap electricity. The Department of Defense, however, had other questions. Could such a "force field" be used to disrupt an enemy's communications systems and render his nuclear missiles impotent and useless? Most of the findings from Project Argus are still classified, and probably for very good reason. In 1958, when Argus was made public, I was in junior high school and mesmerized by the space race. My homework abandoned and my grades in shambles, I could do nothing but eat, drink and sleep "space." I had a collection of index cards that by 1963 numbered in the thousands; this collection contained a wealth of information about every missile and rocket known on earth. Later I was to learn that much of my information, obtained from readily available sources, was classified military secrets, not only of the United States, but of other nations as well. One example was the location of underground missile silos; detailed maps and photographs were published in the local newspapers and I felt lucky to be living only 30 miles from such a silo. It was only after the press had played the maps on page one that the information was classified -- something like closing the barn door after the cow got out. It was only natural that when a local science fair was inaugurated that I should enter a project related to space. My project was known simply as Project OBSAT (OBservation SATellite) It was, looking back on it now, as crude as Christofidos' early efforts. My six-foot 500-lb. satellite was filled with gadgets that would never stand up to the rigors of a real space launch. Over and over again I had used very basic electronic circuits for novel applications. One example was an article I had read in a how-to electronics magazine on how to build a simple Very Low Frequency (VLF) radio receiver that could pick up thunderstorms and, if you were close enough to Cape Canaveral or Nevada, missile launches and nuclear tests. Living in the middle of Kansas I was close to neither -- but it dawned on me that such a gadget could be used (if much more sophisticated) to detect nuclear tests anywhere in the world. I did not know in 1962 -- the first year I entered OBSAT in the science fair -- that the Department of Defense was looking for just such a monitor system. Nor did I know that Project Dominic with its fiery blast over Hawaii, had literally fried several U.S. spy satellites; the only ones publicly reported as "knocked out" were TRAAC, Ariel and Transit IV-B. The Telstar satellites (which had even inspired a Top 40 hit record) survived only because their solar cells happened to be coated with sapphire, which saved them from the intense radiation. A year later I would be using surplus Telstar hardware in Project OBSAT, supplied to me by engineers at 'Western Electric in Lee's Summit, Missouri. 'We never really gave it much thought in the 1950s and the early 60s because we always assumed that Uncle Sam acted as openly and as honorably as we had every right to expect him to. But it was com3uonplace for military intelligence agents to visit local science fairs and seek out promising new young people who could be groomed for a career in service of their country. I was one of those early recruits and I never had reason to regret it; I only regret the possibility that the technology I helped in my infinitely small way to develop has today become such a hideous Frankenstein. I was publicly honored by the Navy, the Army, the Air Force, NASA and the National Science Foundation. In 1963 I was an International Science Fair finalist. My prize was a trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico and to San Diego, California and surrounding areas. I even walked the decks of the USS. Thresher before she disappeared at sea, losing all hands. But it was in 1962 that I received the most support from government and from private industry, notably Western Electric and Boeing Aircraft in Wichita, Kansas. It would be years later before I was to discover just why the military was so interested in the skinny, shy kid from Pratt, Kansas who had built a spy satellite in the high school basement. A number of reports presented at the Third International Space Science Symposium, sponsored by the Committee on Space Research (Cospar) of the International Council of Scientific Unions, was to play an important role in the later development of the rainbow bomb. These reports, published in part in Aviation Week May 7, 1962, appeared at virtually the same time Project OBSAT articles were being published by Boeing Aircraft. I had been invited to visit the Boeing facilities and discuss my theories with their scientists. It was during that visit that I first learned of what would later become known as the STEALTH bomber; I also learned of other projects that would render U.S. fighter and bomber planes undetectable by infra-red sensing device missile guidance systems. Boeing scientists were discouraged that no way could be found to block the heat waves coming from a jet's exhaust. My own proposal, offered with the innocence of youth, was to simply warp the infra-red emissions to such an extent as to make them unrecognizable to a heat-seeking missile such as the Sidewinder. The conference reports delved into the electromagnetic mysteries
of near-space. 'We knew, for example, in 1962 that "heavy
cosmic ray black out all radio signals for a radius of several
thousand miles; the effects could last for hours -- or for weeks.
Some scientists fearfully protested that it could even take
centuries for the Van Allen Belt, a "The difference between these extremes," the magazine editorialized, "shows how little is actually known about what there is in space and how it behaves. It also explains why many scientists are vehemently opposed to the rainbow bomb, as they are to a swarm of dipoles which U.S. military scientists are preparing to sow in space. Sir Bernard Lovell, head of Britain's radio-astronomy station at Jodrell Bank, said he was appalled. Scientists who are searching for a basic understanding of the nature of the solar system 'will be filled with dismay,' he declared. 'The operators of this project should be restrained by all possible means from this presumption of moral right to interfere with the environment of the earth."' No one nation, the magazine continued, had the right to consider space its own private laboratory. "Outer space is a universal laboratory in the truest sense of the word, and all mankind has a vested interest in the way its immeasurable potentialities -- for good or evil -- are handled." But these few isolated voices in the wilderness were ignored and America went on to tear asunder the very heavens with a blast estimated variously as two and five megatons. Operation Dominic was a resounding success from the point of view of its military planners in the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). For the throngs of humanity on the beaches and the hilltop vantage points it was the opening of Pandora's Box, the transformation of the nuclear age from a vague concept to a cold, brilliant reality in the skies over Diamond Head. Very Low Frequency radiation, known as those radio waves between 3,000 cycles per second and 30,000 cycles per second (or 3-30 kilohertz), was the area of the spectrum used by my VLF nuclear test detector in OBSAT. It was also the subject of a report that year by K.L. Maeda and Iwane Kimura at Kyoto University in Japan. That report, presented at the Third International Space Science Composium, claimed that "very low frequency emissions, once thought to be generated by lightning discharges on earth, may be due to positive-charged particles from the sun interacting with the exosphere to amplify cosmic noise." This struck my curiosity because of a nagging theory in the back of my mind that VLF rays might be used to communicate with extraterrestrial civilizations. The Japanese report tended to confirm my own gut feeling. The amplified "cosmic noise" would most certainly be a lot of static and whistles and screeches, but by searching on the proper frequencies a scientist might detect intelligent signals. I believed the VLF frequencies would be the proper waveband. I was therefore alarmed to read that Dr. Harold Brown, later Secretary of Defense, but currently (in 1962) director of defense research and engineering, was pushing ahead with Project Dominic, which included the blast that lit 'Waikiki Beach. There was just something vague and undefined about the project which frightened me and it wasn't until years later that I learned what it was, when I learned of the physio-psychological effects Project Dominic and others like it could have. Had it not been for some mysterious Soviet nuclear tests in the fall of 1961, there might never have been a Project Dominic. Project Argus had revealed an unknown phenomenon; Project Dominic revealed military applications. Soviet high-altitude tests of 53-megaton nuclear bombs convinced U.S. military scientists that the Soviets were working on an anti-missile system that involved the use of a nuclear "force field"~ or umbrella that could be dropped on the U.S., making it impossible for our radar to see a massive missile invasion, and making it impossible to launch a retaliatory attack. On March 2, 1962, President Kennedy announced that it was essential to conduct Project Dominic to determine how vulnerable our defense alert systems are, "as well as how much of our present plans for defense would thus be made useless, blacked out, paralyzed or destroyed by the complex effects of a nuclear explosion." Chapter X of the revised "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons," published by the Atomic Energy Commission for the Department of Defense, stated: "Such systems as those involving line-of-sight stations below the ionosphere are essentially unaffected by nuclear bursts which disturb the ionosphere. They might be disrupted for a short time by a surface or low-altitude blast directly between the stations, but the effect would probably last no more than seconds." The Defense Department was whistling in the wind, and knew it. Other-wise there would have been no need for Project Dominic. which totally discredited military estimates. What publicity did reach the news media was carefully controlled
and criticism was frowned upon. For example, the June 16, 1962 issue
of Science News Letter quite by blind faith alone in military
statements repeated the official line that "the United States
would still have its main force ready to strike when and where it
may be required," even if the effect of such explosions should
paralyze ground missile defense systems. Quickly-silenced reports by other agencies, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency in 1981, directly contradict this line of reasoning. The 1981 FEMA report, for instance, titled "Energy, Vulnerability and War," claimed that airplanes would fall from the sky, power plants would shut down in an instant and that even electronic ignitions in cars and trucks would be rendered useless. According to Aviation Week, May 7, 1962, in one of the more revealing and more impartial accounts, the Defense Department was aware early on that the effects of the rainbow bomb could be stupendous: "Senator Clinton P. Anderson (D-N.M.), former chairman of the Joint Congressional Atomic Energy Committee, said last week that too little is known about the effects caused by weapons explosions in addition to the conventional effects of radiation, heat and blast." "Principal effect expected to be encountered would result when the highly ionized gasses of a fireball, cutting the earth's lines of magnetism, produce long electromagnetic standing waves of such intensity that any electrical conductors, such as wires and cables that are strung on poles or buried in the around in straight lines, would have currents of thousands of amperes induced in them, resulting in their destruction by melting." (Emphasis added by the author). "By extrapolation, using data obtained from relatively low-yield explosions in the past, Atomic Energy Commission scientists have determined that thermonuclear blasts could have profound effects on communications equipment to a depth of 300 feet below the surface. "They believe this is the principle the Russians discovered with their high altitude, high-yield explosion last fall and the basis for Russia's claim that it has developed an anti-missile weapon." It would be another year before America's military scientists would acknowledge the hair-raising possibility that American cities could be totally blacked out and that the minds of American citizens could be "scrambled" by the powerful radiation of the rainbow bomb. (For further information read "A Report On The ELF Phenomenon" issued November 19, 1981 by the Phoenix Foundation.) Aviation Week May 7, 1962 claimed: "If the effects are as serious as suspected, the whole concept of fixed missile installations could be altered." It was from these fears that the MX missile was later developed, in the hopes that a mobile missile system could evade such an electro-magnetic umbrella. Defense research in the years since has revealed that not even a mobile missile provides any invulnerability against the hideous rainbow bomb. This is why President Reagan's Secretary of Defense, Casper Weinberger, claims even the MX system is, at best, "a temporary measure." "Other effects that are of concern," claimed Aviation Week, "are blackout of atmospheric communications, possible neutralization of nuclear warheads or premature detonation of warheads. Senator Anderson said one aim of the developmental testing program is to be absolutely sure that warheads which are stored in missile silos after being moved across the country to various missile installations are safe against premature detonation under such circumstances as an enemy attack, "'The Soviets,' he said, 'are probably somewhat ahead of us -- maybe six months, maybe a year." As the full impact of the rainbow bomb's potential began to dawn on us, we saw the Russians were much farther ahead of us than we had thought possible. Today, as the Reagan administration advocates the spending of hundreds of billions for complex missile and fighter systems, there are those within the Defense Department who know these billions are nothing more than waste, spent to subsidize financially floundering corporations. In the event of a war, and that eventuality becomes more probable every day, all of our sophisticated hardware will become as potent as a hand-thrown dirt clod. It was the Russian experiments that prompted President Kennedy to go ahead with the rainbow bomb development. Ironically, the U.S. could have held the lead from the beginning because of its lead in nuclear development. In experiments at the Nevada Test Site after 'World 'War II, it was noticed that relatively low kiloton explosions caused the same electromagnetic effects. High voltage power transmission lines carrying electrical power for the large cities of the West Coast picked up the standing waves, Aviation Week reported. Voltage surges caused circuit breakers to open even though the power lines were 30 miles away from the test site. Either a full investigation was shelved because of the Pandora's Box it represented, or U.S. scientists did not recognize its full potential at the time, not until after the Soviet tests. However, when the same mysterious voltage surges opened circuit breakers in the Northeastern power grid of the United States in 1965, sending the entire Atlantic coast into sudden blackness, military planners panicked, believing the Soviet Polyot 1 satellite represented a terrifying new weapon that rendered the U.S. literally powerless. The United States, according to Hubert Humphrey, was afraid as early as 1963, a year after the Dominic explosions, that a Soviet satellite would soon be capable of crippling the United States. For these reasons, there was ample warming that by going ahead with Dominic, we would indeed be unleashing the horrors of Pandora's Box; it was only fitting that the CIA probe of the mind control potential of the rainbow bomb should be code-named Project Pandora. And yet there was no choice. The cat had already been let out of the bag (by us) and recaptured (by the Russians). Me could not allow a nation bent on remolding the world into its own athiestic design hold sole claim to such a weapon. President Kennedy's decision to proceed was made with no small reluctance, limited though his technological knowledge was. ABC tests showed that a nuclear fireball pulsates like a living, breathing monster as it transforms colors. These pulsations, the same as the pulsations of the human brain (10 cycles per second) are what produces the motion in the earth's magnetic field to create these awesome electromagnetic forces (EMF). These forces alternately shut down (by cutting) and overload the natural magnetic lines of force (or cables that stretch from one part of the earth to the other. Johnston Island, for example, is connected to Samoa by such a magnetic line. By exploding a nuclear bomb over Johnston Island, the "cable" to Samoa is overloaded and Samoa is then hit with a rainbow bomb, though the actual explosion may be thousands of miles away. Likewise, if Moscow is to be the target, the actual blast could take place in the Indian Ocean -- or in space anywhere between the two points along the magnetic force line. It was President Kennedy's awareness of the potential of the rainbow bomb that made him reluctant to go ahead with the Nike-Zeus anti-missile system. Classified DOD research led scientists to feel the time had come to play a new ball game by a new set of rules. According to Aviation Week, May 14, 1962, publication of the revised DOD-ABC report "The Effects of Nuclear 'Weapons" "makes brief reference to the hydro-magnetic wave produced by extremely high altitude bursts, which results from violent distortion of the earth's magnetic field by the expanding burst-produced plasma and the interaction of this plasma with the magnetic field." "There has been considerable scientific-military speculation following the recent Soviet high-altitude, high-yield tests that such detonations could induce extremely high currents in underground missile command and control cables, producing temporary or permanent disruption." A nuclear explosion produces two fundamentally different types of electromagnetic effects: - Brief duration pulse of extremely high intensity, which is produced directly from the explosion itself or from the disturbed plasma region near the blast, - Longer-term changes ·in the electrical characteristics of the ionosphere, which adversely affect radar and radio communications. While DOD researchers felt in 1962 that those most affected were the long-range High Frequency (HF) radio and ionosphere scatter communications and early-warning and tracking radar designed for use against ICBM warheads and space vehicles in or above the ionosphere, they had not yet discovered ELF frequencies; it is on the ELF bands that the most far-reaching and potentially most dangerous changes take place. The pulse-type effects, according to an Aviation Week report May 14, 1962, are of two types. One, which takes place following a blast at or near the surface, reaches its peak intensity within 0.01 microsecond (millionths of a second) after' the explosion, and produces EMF radiation up to 100 mc., though the bulk of the energy is radiated at lower frequencies. According to the Aviation Week report by Philip J. Klass: "At a range of 100 miles from the burst, the radiant energy is distributed around a median frequency of 10-15 kc., which is related inversely to the size of the burst. At longer distances up to several thousand miles the form and spectrum of the pulse are determined largely by the characteristics of the propagation medium -- the duct formed by the D and B regions of the ionosphere and the earth." Because ELF was still virtually unheard of, no measurements were obtained below 3,000 cycles, though there is very strong evidence that the most disruptive effects (such as those on power lines and on the electrical functioning of the human brain) take place in the ELF band. "The second type of pulse effect," the Defense Department report says, "is considered to be of particular significance for extremely high altitude bursts." Immediately after the blast, the hot weapon debris is a highly-ionized vapor -- plasma -- that rapidly expands. Because such plasmas "tend to exclude a magnetic field, the plasma from such a blast causes "a violent distortion of the earth's magnetic field." The interaction of the geomagnetic field and the plasma produces a hydrodynamic wave (known as a standing wave) which retains its identity and characteristics in propagating over very long distances at high altitudes. "But at lower levels, where it interacts with the denser atmosphere, it is detected as an ordinary electromagnetic wave or magnetic disturbance." In addition to the effects known to occur to weather and human brain wave activity from such standing waves, there exists a very real danger that such "violent distortion" of the magnetic field could trigger a sudden and cataclysmic reversal of the magnetic poles of the earth. More information about the effects of standing waves is available from a Phoenix Foundation report entitled "A Report On The ELF Phenomenon" issued November 19, 1981. Both the nuclear and thermal radiation produced by a nuclear blast in space can create ionization in the atmosphere, yet another factor which greatly affects human behavior and mental processes. Between 10 and 75% of the total yield goes into such electron production it has been discovered that such a blast can create ten times the number of free electrons found naturally in the entire ionosphere of the planet. The effect could be similar to that of hooking up a 12-volt light bulb to a 120-volt power source -- it blows. Antarctica experiments during the International Geophysical Year, as well as secret Soviet experiments in 1976 and 1977, showed there may be an amplification factor of 10,000. Radar designed for use against air-breathing targets at line-of- sight ranges operating at Ultra High Frequencies (UHF), do not appear vulnerable except to a blast in the immediate vicinity of the station or in the direct path to the target. It is this type of radar that would most likely be used to detect long-range bombers or cruise missiles. Radar systems such as the Ballistic Missile Early 'Warning System (BMEWS) are more vulnerable because their signals must penetrate the ionosphere and depend upon weak echoes returning via the same path. With such systems, the minimum attenuation from an undisturbed ionosphere occurs generally in a 10-mile thick layer centered about 45 miles high. This is in the D region of the ionosphere. The attenuation is directly proportional to electron density and inversely proportional to the square of the signal frequency. Under normal conditions, for example, a 400 mc. radar system with its beam at a low elevation angle of 10 degrees above the horizon must deal with an attenuation of its signal passing through the D region both to and from the target of only 0.003 db. If a one-megaton bomb is detonated from 10 to 40 miles high within 10 miles of where the beam passes through the D region, the signal attenuation six minutes after the blast would be 150 db., more than enough to "overload" the radar and black it out, leaving that much-touted "window of vulnerability" through which an enemy could launch an undetected hail of nuclear missiles. 'We would be unable to detect this assault and unable to respond to it. Even an hour later, long after a missile wave would hit the United States, the attenuation would be 3db., or a thousand times higher than for an undisturbed atmosphere. "Admittedly, any enemy that exploded several nuclear weapons simultaneously in several locations to black out all BMEWS radars before launching an all-out attack would risk giving away his intentions by this very act," Aviation Week reported, "However, it would provide an enemy with the opportunity to black out anti-missile system acquisition radars which probably would compensate for the risk of disclosing the attack.." In addition to an outright blackout, such nuclear detonations also warp or bend radar signals used for anti-missile missile guidance. This is because changes in ionospheric electron density create changes in its refraction. The amount of increased bending is directly proportional to the change in electron density and inversely proportional to the square of radar operating frequency. A radar system, for example, operating at 100 mc. at an angle of 20 degrees to the horizon would experience a bending of 0.8 degrees if the electron density of the D region is increased by one million electrons per cc. Such an increase would take place within a few minutes after a nuclear blast 10 to 40 miles high. At higher frequencies the bending would not be as severe. At 1,000 mc., for instance, it would be only 0.008 degrees -- still enough to adversely affect the accuracy of an anti-missile missile. Still another nightmare military strategists face is that this distribution of free electrons is not uniform, but aligns itself in cords or veins around the planet, meshing with the lines of the geomagnetic field. These irregularities create scintillation in radar echoes when small ionized patches create false echoes, making it nearly impossible to tell if the radar signals is coming from an incoming ICBM or from distortion. The VLF signals used by the Navy for long-range submarine communications and for its Omega long-range navigational system, normally travel through a duct formed by the lower portion of the ionosphere and characterized by an electron density of about 1,000 electrons per cc. A nuclear blast will increase this electron density, causing the VLF signals to reflect at a lower altitude and thus reducing the range of the system. Another profound effect on VLF is the sudden shift in the phase of VLF signals following a nuclear blast. The one-megaton Teak and Orange explosions during Project Hardtrack at Johnston Island in 1948 (made at 252,000 and 141,000 feet respectively), produced a sudden 40-degree shift in the phase of the 18.6 kc. signal transmitted from the Naval radio station facilities at Seattle and received at Cambridge, Mass. The path between the two points was 3,000 miles from the test site. Radio signals between 30 kc. and 3 mc. (low and medium frequencies) will not be as strongly affected, but their range will be limited to a few hundred miles. Because the 3-30 mc. band is most strongly affected (if one excuses the fact that we didn't even know about the ELF band then), the military has relied less and less on these frequencies in recent years. The HF band, though, is still the backbone of the Strategic Air Command link to its long-range bombers on their way to their Fail-Safe points. A one-megaton blast at 50 miles in daylight would disrupt signals within a 600-mile radius for at least 17 minutes and possibly three hours. An HF signal passing within 500 miles of a megaton blast at 10-40 miles will be disrupted five hours after a daytime blast and will not recover for several hours. If the blast were at 40-70 miles, a signal passing within a 500-mile radius will be affected within 15 minutes and won't recover for at least 10 hours, the ABC report claimed. This electromagnetic disruption will spiral from one point of the globe to another, following the magnetic lines in a squiggly pattern, bouncing back and forth at the speed of light and creating massive blackouts in two locations. A Soviet blast in the South Pacific, directly south of the U · S., could blacken HF communications over most of the continental United States. A blast set off higher than 40 miles produces a high-altitude shock wave that moves upward and outward at 2,000 mph, disturbing the B and lower-F regions of the ionosphere. This means that any HF signal within 1,000 miles of a one-megaton blast at, say, 70 miles, would be lost for an hour or more. It was these discoveries that led the United States to put stronger emphasis on communication satellites rather than on ground-based systems. Satellites would face a much shorter disruption period. 'While their signals still must penetrate the ionosphere, the attenuation at UHF satellite frequencies "is not expected to become too severe unless electron density exceeds 10 million electrons per cc.," according to the DOD report. "Such densities do not exist for more than a few seconds except in the vicinity of the bursts." The military response of both the U.S. and the Soviet Union has been the creation of killer satellites which will snuggle up to an enemy satellite and then explode. In that event, there is nothing that can be done short of orbital evasive action or a pre-emptive strike against the enemy killer satellite. All these figures and calculations were known before Project Dominic's July 9, 1962 explosion. 'We knew the effects and so did the Soviets -- or so we thought. The Soviet tests in the fall of 1961 led us to believe there may be mare at stake than we had thought. Business Week, the week after the Dominic test that lit up 'Waikiki Beach, reported that scientists were excited about the possibilities of using the Bomb as an anti-missile defense system, but, in the words of President Kennedy, U.S. monitoring of the Soviet tests "do not, in our judgment, reflect a developed AICBM system..." "Just the same," the magazine reported, "scientific advisors of the Pentagon and 'White House were clearly worried lest the Russians score a clean beat in this vital area by learning to use the earth's magnetism to destroy prematurely the electronic controls of missiles -that were still at a safe distance. "An electronics specialist for the Atomic Energy Commission put it this way: 'The discovery by U.S. scientists, sifting through secretly-compiled records of the Russian high-altitude tests, that an anti-ICBM. defense system was indeed what Soviet scientists were shooting for certainly had a major influence on the President's decision to go ahead with U.S. atmospheric testing in the face of world opposition. From a military standpoint, the fact that the Russians were testing last fall a large number of improved nuclear warheads was interesting information. But it was the high-altitude tests ... and what they implied ... that really tipped the scales in favor of resumed U.S. tests."' The spectacular Dominic test was only one of 25 such tests that had been conducted over a period of time, most of them on British-owned Christmas Island, just above the Equator where the electromagnetic effects were believed to have been minimal. The tests involved Titan and Atlas warheads as well as underwater Polaris launchings. Many of the weapons tests were deceptively carried out under Project Gnome, Project, Project Sedan and Project Plowshare, supposedly to develop "peaceful" uses for the atom bomb. Some of these tests, including those in Project Gnome, Project Sedan and Project Vela reportedly "got out of control" and created more destruction than expected; fortunately, most of them were underground tests designed to improve our nuclear test detection system, since the Soviets refused to allow on-site inspections. First reports, including those provided to Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report, claimed the communications effects "were not nearly as extensive as test officials had expected." The truth is somewhat different. In making this statement, the Department of Defense relied on the most extreme predictions by scientists opposed to the tests. For example, many theoreticians predicted radio blackouts across the Pacific would last 36 hours, while the most optimistic military planners suggested only a few minutes. American observers were not the only interested parties. Four Soviet ships "bristling with electronic gear" were on " snooper?? patrol in the Pacific during the tests. 'While the U.S. openly claimed it was upset, secretly we were "tickled pink." "'We wanted them to see first hand that we were dead serious about our vow to remain ahead in the arms race," said one official, who saw the test as a psychological victory as much as anything. Two earlier tests before the one July 9 were embarrassing failures. The next test, at 500 miles up, was cloaked in secrecy even more so than the July 9 -test. One reason is that, after tons of data from the July 9 test were evaluated, the Pentagon learned it had made some serious and potentially dangerous miscalculations. For example, Professor James Van Allen, discoverer of the belt of radiation above the earth that bears his name, smugly predicted that any major effects on the earth's electromagnetic field would be very minimal and would disappear within a few days. "Last week the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of Defense issued a sheepish joint report that proved both defenders and critics were wildly wrong," reported Time Magazine September 21, 1962. "The new artificial belt is unexpectedly large, strong and long-lasting." "At its lowest point over the South Atlantic the belt reaches to within 200 miles of the earth's surface. Over the Pacific it stays 500 miles above the surface," the magazine reported, "In latitude it extends 1,300 miles north and south of the magnetic equator. It is 3,100 miles thick, reaching well into the Van Allen Belt of natural radiation. Its spiraling electrons ... have as much as 1.5 million electron volts of energy. At their strongest they are about ten times as intense as the natural radiation. "After their notably poor predictions, few scientists are eager to give firm estimates of how long the new radiation will last....NASA estimates can be interpreted to mean that some of the highest electrons "may last for 10,000 years." (Emphasis added). Virtually nothing more was ever said publicly about the tests or about the use of electromagnetic energy to cripple defense systems until January 8, 1981, when ABC-TV News Correspondent George Ensor broke the story of a new federal study by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The Ensor story, broadcast the same day a massive power blackout crippled Utah and parts of neighboring states, was "extremely upsetting" to the Pentagon and was quickly muffled. No written reports have ever been discovered in the news media, even though the Phoenix Foundation made several efforts to try to interest the media. The FEMA report, titled "Energy, Vulnerability and War," was prepared by Wilson Clark, the project director. It would indicate that the secret tests after July 9, conducted at higher altitudes, had an even more profound effect upon the fragile spaceship Earth. The report claims that a few Soviet warheads exploded a hundred miles or wore above the continental United States "could totally and permanently blacken the nation's electrical system, silence its telephones, make airplanes fall out of the sky, and in fact destroy or permanently disable just about everything that contains modern solid-state circuitry, right down to televisions, transistor radios and even trucks and automobiles containing electronic ignition systems." A 100-mile high blast would create electromagnetic pulses (EMP) "hundreds of times more powerful than lightning" that would literally melt America's electronic technology. Soviet electrical systems, the report noted, had been hardened to withstand such an attack, and Soviet citizens have been briefed on how to react -- but America is virtually defenseless. "Whereas Soviet citizens have been told by means of posters how to deal with a national blackout, American business, industry and citizenry have been deliberately kept in the dark," a Phoenix Foundation researcher protests. "The military is afraid of critical public reaction. "There is very little, if any, research being conducted on the resistance of components that are used in aircraft or automobiles or trucks or other elements of the transportation system," adds 'Wilson Clark, author of the FEMA report. It is the recommendation of the Phoenix Foundation that a program be initiated by Civil Defense authorities to warn the American public about the potential dangers of the rainbow bomb. Sadly, there appears to be little point in seeking an international treaty under which development, deployment and use of the rainbow bomb would be banned; past experience has shown us that the Soviet Union would only sign such a treaty and then disregard it, while the United States would adhere to it. The Phoenix Foundation would hope that the international news media would react with more diligence and deeper research of its own to publicize the dangers we are creating. Mankind does not understand the complexity of his electrical makeup and until he does, such experiments are far more deadly than anything that has ever been done in the field of nuclear energy. There is evidence, for example, to support the theory that such tests of the rainbow bomb and other weapons which greatly affect ELF radiation levels are capable of unknowingly inducing nationwide apathy and listless-ness, mental illness, and depression; all of these can lead to increased suicides, increased crime, increased spouse and child abuse and increased drug abuse. The Phoenix Foundation calls upon the worldwide scientific community to express its public outrage at mankind's brutal rape of the planet's environment. The Foundation endorses the statement of Sir Bernard Lovell, head of Britain's radio-astronomy station at Jodrell Bank, when he said: "The operators of this project should be restrained by all possible means from this presumption of moral right to interfere with the environment of the earth," The Phoenix Foundation is believed to be the only institute in the world specifically chartered to study the effects of ELF radiation, and claims that such radiation may adversely affect mankind's future through physiological changes in the pineal gland, a mysterious reddish, pine- cone shaped organ at the base of the brain believed to be the center of certain psychic and spiritual activities. "The rainbow bomb is a mind control bomb," claims the Foundation director, Jim Moore. "It literally puts us in 'a battle for the minds of men' and opens up a Pandora's Box of horrors unequalled in the history of the human race. Conventional nuclear weapons are like firecrackers in comparison." Additional reports covering other phases of ELF research are
available from the Phoenix Foundation. NEXT: THE CIA YEARS |
This
story caused quite a stir on April 7, 1987, not because of its
contents (because the local newspapers never saw it). What created
the furor was a tiny one-sentence comment I had made in a booklet I
published about the Iran-Contra scandal. It was a quote from then-Sen.
Jim Sasser (D-TN) in a letter he sent me Dec. 28, 1981:
