Keep Out!: Top Secret Places Governments Don't Want You to Know About

MIDWAY THROUGH 1996, THE UNITED STATES Air Force announced the publication of what was termed the USAF 2025 report. Prepared by the 2025 Support Office at the Air University, Air Education and Training Command, and developed by the Air University Press, Educational Services Directorate, College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research, and Education, at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, the report was, to quote the military, “a study designed to comply with a directive from the chief of staff of the Air Force to examine the concepts, capabilities, and technologies the United States will require to remain the dominant air and space force in the future.”[64]

One particularly intriguing subsection of the report had the notable title of “Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025.” That’s correct: the U.S. military has been hard at work trying to determine if the manipulation and even creation of harsh weather conditions — such as hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, and other forms of devastation that are normally ascribed to nature — might be considered a viable tool of warfare in the very near future.

In the astounding words of the Air Force’s most learned forward-thinkers of the mid-1990s: “In 2025, U.S. aerospace forces can ‘own the weather’ by capitalizing on emerging technologies and focusing development of those technologies to war-fighting applications. While some segments of society will always be reluctant to examine controversial issues such as weather-modification, the tremendous military capabilities that could result from this field are ignored at our own peril. Weather-modification offers the war fighter a wide-range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary.”[65]

The Air Force also noted, “The desirability to modify storms to support military objectives is the most aggressive and controversial type of weather-modification. While offensive weather-modification efforts would certainly be undertaken by U.S. forces with great caution and trepidation, it is clear that we cannot afford to allow an adversary to obtain an exclusive weather-modification capability.”[66]

The Air Force was not the only area of officialdom expressing interest in and concerns about weather-modification technologies for specific use in warfare. On April 28, 1997, the U.S. Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen delivered the keynote speech at the University of Georgia — based Conference on Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and U.S. Strategy, and intriguingly warned the audience that there were powerful, shadowy forces out there who were “engaging in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of Electro-Magnetic waves. So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations. It’s real.”[67]

HAARP

The big questions are: to what extent have such technologies gone beyond the theoretical and been successfully (clandestinely) developed? Is such technology already being secretly utilized on a planet-wide scale, in order to instill fear in, and exert control over, the world’s population, and also exert military control and influence over areas of strategic interest? Many conspiracy theorists say yes. The target of their accusations is a sensitive, Department of Defense installation in Alaska that is home to a project shrouded in deep controversy: HAARP, or the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program. In the words of scientists at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, who coordinate the work of HAARP along with the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research and Naval Research Laboratory as well as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the project is designed to “analyze the ionosphere and investigate the potential for developing ionospheric enhancement technology for radio communications and surveillance purposes.”[68]

Based at the HAARP Research Station near Gakona, the project is seen by many as an even more terrifying Alaskan phenomenon than Sarah Palin, which surely serves to indicate the profound levels of anxiety that surround the project within those realms where the conspiracy-minded lurk. As well as its legitimate involvement in analyzing the ionosphere and studying its potential for developing ionospheric enhancement technology for radio communications and surveillance purposes, HAARP staff perform other tasks, too, such as analyzing weather-related issues and “long-term variations in the ozone layer.”[69] The fact that most of this work is undertaken by military agencies is one of the reasons why so many suspicions surround HAARP.

It could be argued that HAARP’s overwhelming military link is not so strange; after all, in today’s world, with an ever-increasing reliance upon ever-advancing technologies, fluctuations in the ionosphere — which commences roughly 35 miles above the surface of our planet — might adversely affect military communications systems, particularly so in emergency situations.

Those behind HAARP are keenly aware of the conspiracy theories that surround the program, and have specifically, and carefully, made their position clear on why there is so much involvement on the part of the U.S. Department of Defense in its operations: “Interest in ionosphere research at HAARP stems both from the large number of communication, surveillance and navigation systems that have radio paths which pass through the ionosphere, and from the unexplored potential of technological innovations which suggest applications such as detecting underground objects, communicating to great depths in the sea or earth, and generating infrared and optical emissions.”[70]

Those who see HAARP as having a distinctly covert agenda, however, point to what they consider the projects’ darkest of all secrets.

The Earthquake in Haiti

On Tuesday, January 12, 2010, the Caribbean country of Haiti was hit by a devastating earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people, injured approximately the same amount, and left more than a million people homeless. It was a terrible, shocking tragedy for the people of Haiti, and one from which, even at the time I write these words, the nation is still struggling to fully recover. And, in the wake of the carnage, it did not take long at all for conspiracy theorists to suggest that the reckless — some even suggested the cold and deliberate — actions of HAARP personnel were to blame.

Just 48 hours after the Haitian events occurred, the Website Ahrcanum (www.ahrcanum.wordpress.com), which covers such issues as New World Order fears, weather-modification technologies, and conspiracy theories relative to the swine flu controversy, among many other topics, devoted much Web space to a discussion of the events at issue, and whether or not HAARP staff, using technologies that might have the ability to induce and target earthquakes in specific areas of the planet, were the actual culprits. Although such a theory might provoke the rolling of eyes in the majority of people, it should not be forgotten that, back in 1997, none other than U.S. Defense Secretary Cohen had specifically warned about hostile forces that might soon possess the technology to deliberately stimulate earthquakes.

The Ahrcanum article provoked a wealth of online debate and response. Some pointed to the fact that immediately after the disaster occurred, U.S. military personnel descended on Haiti en-masse to deliver assistance, food, clothing, and medical supplies, as a means to help the populace recover from the disaster — not everyone was so sure that the reason behind this effort was as altruistic as most people assumed. Commentators at the Ahrcanum site came right out and suggested that the earthquake was a deliberate HAARP-induced event, designed to provide the United States government with a reason to make its presence strongly felt in an area in which it had special interests. One concerned writer asserted at the Website, “Haiti is going to be the next U.S. colony.”

But why would anyone want to colonize, or even exert control over Haiti? What would be the reason? After all, it’s hardly a nation equipped with nuclear-tipped missiles aimed at the United States. Its people are not planning dirty-bomb attacks on U.S. soil. And Haiti is most certainly not in a position to launch a large-scale military assault on America, even if it wanted to. However, Haiti does have something that many nations lack: substantial oil reserves. Currently, the island is estimated to be home to 3 million barrels of off-shore oil. More significantly, the Greater Antilles, which includes Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic, have a combined estimated 142 million barrels of oil, and 159 billion cubic feet of gas, according to a U.S. Geological Survey report in 2000. The authors of the USGS report speculated that the levels might actually be much, much greater: perhaps more than 900 million barrels of oil, and more than a trillion cubic feet of gas.

And guess what: HAARP technology can remotely sense the mineral content of the planet’s subsurface. In other words, in plain, easy-to-understand English, HAARP can be secretly utilized to find underground and undersea oil reserves. Conspiracy theorists say that both Afghanistan and Iraq have large reserves of oil, but the hostilities in the Middle East have already allowed U.S. military forces to occupy both countries, and, as a result, hold some sway over the oil supply of both. But what about countries deeply rich in oil that are not showing hostility to the United States? How might they be successfully occupied and their oil supplies targeted and perhaps even manipulated in the future? The theorists say that when large deposits of oil have been found by HAARP, and there is no military justification for invading the relevant country, HAARP’s earthquake-inducing technology has been used to provoke a seeming natural disaster that has then allowed officialdom to move in with what looks like a friendly offer of help.

To be sure, this is a highly controversial and massively damning scenario, but — as far as the HAARP-watchers are concerned — it’s seen as a wholly viable one. And in a world where oil reserves are becoming ever more depleted, such a technology is not just important; it may prove vital in determining which nations survive and which go under in the undoubtedly fraught decades and centuries ahead of us. Make no mistake: our current, overwhelming reliance upon oil will pose major challenges in the years to come.

As a perfect example of the situation in which even now we find ourselves, in 2007, a U.S. diplomat met with one Sadad al-Husseini, a geologist and the former head of the Saudi oil monopoly, Aramco. Husseini said, in bleak terms, that Saudi oil output would likely reach its peak production point in the next few years, after which the rate of production would decline very noticeably. Precisely how fast that downward journey might be is, right now, open to much debate. We might, however, be able to glean more than a few ideas from a report titled “Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk Management” that was prepared by Robert Hirsch for the U.S. Department of Energy and published in February 2005.

Consider the following extract from the report: “The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented.”[71]

That one stark word alone—unprecedented—should give us at least some idea of how our world might radically change once oil goes belly-up.

The Tsunami in Japan

In the wake of the even more tragic events that devastated Japan on March 11, 2011—involving a pulverizing earthquake, a tsunami that provoked ocean waves of more than 120 feet, and a meltdown at the Fukushima 1 and Fukushima 2 Nuclear Power Plants that led to more than 12,000 deaths and a nation stunned into shock and disbelief — online conspiracy theorists expressed concern when 20,000 U.S. military personnel, 19 Naval craft, and 120 aircraft, via an operation called Tomodachi (friend, in Japanese), took a leading role in handling the crisis.

Once again, a theory was suggested that the friendly, humanitarian assistance was in reality a cover to allow U.S. forces to increase their presence in an area of the globe deemed to be of strategic and military value. And, said the same conspiracy theorists, what better way to subtly — and seemingly innocently — ensure one’s influence in an area of keen interest than via a selfless mission of mercy? If the conspiracy crowd were correct in their views on HAARP, could oil have been a motivating factor here, too?

As of 2010, Japan had state-controlled oil reserves in excess of 300 million barrels, and privately owned reserves that exceeded 120 million barrels. Interestingly, however, way back on February 21, 1922, the New York Times published an article titled “Experts Say Japan has 300 Years’ Oil,” with a subtitle of “Engineers Estimate that American Reserves will be Exhausted in 20 Years.” The newspaper quoted from a new report prepared for the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers that, in part, said, “Considering her actual requirements, it appears that Japan is more fortunate than most nations in the possession of oil reserves in the future. Japan possesses much more oil than her propagandists have tried to make the world believe she has.”[72]

Of course, U.S. oil was not depleted by 1944, as the article alarmingly suggested it might be. And back in 1922 it would have been pretty much impossible to predict how Japan’s reliance on oil would increase, to the point where that 300-years scenario became utterly useless. Nevertheless, the idea that Japan may secretly possess far more oil than many have even begun to realize is, if nothing else, significant food for thought.

The worrying reality is that of the 21 largest oil fields on the planet, no less than nine are already in steady, irreversible decline. Finding new reserves of oil, and controlling access to those same reserves, may prove vital in determining the fate of whole countries as the decades progress. And just maybe, say some at least, HAARP is playing a fundamental role in a secret race for future survival; a future that, if not somehow averted, might see the lights forever extinguished, our oil-reliant vehicles utterly extinct, and civilization in chaos and savagery.

E.M. Fields

HAARP has also become the target of people who see its actions as being wholly nefarious in nature for another, very different reason, but no less disturbing in scope. Aside from the HAARP staff themselves, there is probably no one who knows more about the project — and the dark theories regarding what many accept that its personnel may really be doing — than Dr. Nick Begich, Jr., the son of Democratic Party member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Alaska, Nicholas Joseph Begich, Sr., who was presumed killed when the Cessna 310 plane he was flying in on October 16, 1972 vanished without trace during a flight from Anchorage to Juneau. Begich Jr.’s brother is Mark Begich, currently the junior U.S. Senator for the state of Alaska. As for Nick Begich, as well as having been twice elected President of the Alaska Federation of Teachers and the Anchorage Council of Education, he is the co-author, with Jeanne Manning, of the illuminating book Angels Don’t Play This Haarp, which is a deeply unsettling exposé of the HAARP program.

Begich said that whereas HAARP personnel are keen to impress upon people that the program is chiefly an academic project with the intent to alter the ionosphere to upgrade communications for our own benefit, there is another side to the story. He noted that as far back as 1996, the U.S. government had assigned no less than $15 million to HAARP to develop Earth- penetrating tomography, or imaging of the planet’s subsurface. The problem with all this, Begich said, is that “[the particular frequency required for] Earth-penetrating radiations is within the frequency range most cited for disruption of human mental functions. It may also have profound effects on migration patterns of fish and wild animals which rely on an undisturbed energy field to find their routes.”[73]

The U.S. Air Force — a central player in the HAARP program — has long been aware of these effects that Begich has warned about for years. One of many official USAF documents on such matters spells out the disturbing facts: “The potential applications of artificial electromagnetic fields are wide-ranging. Some of these potential uses include dealing with terrorist groups, crowd control, controlling breaches of security at military installations, and antipersonnel techniques in tactical warfare. In all of these cases the EM (electromagnetic) systems would be used to produce mild to severe physiological disruption or perceptual distortion or disorientation. In addition, the ability of individuals to function could be degraded to such a point that they would be combat-ineffective.”[74]

That the work of HAARP may have significant, adverse side-effects on the human nervous system and psychological state is highly worrying. But there is another issue too. Begich’s discoveries that HAARP’s work could conceivably have adverse effects on the migratory routes of certain animals has led a number of commentators to suggest that the unsettling, planet-wide wave of bird and fish deaths that were heavily reported on by the world’s media in the latter part of 2010 and early 2011 were the result of wild and reckless HAARP operations.

It was during this clearly delineated period that literally hundreds of red-winged blackbirds were found dead in Louisiana, countless blackbirds met their deaths under unusual circumstances in Arkansas, and tens of thousands of fish turned up lifeless in the Arkansas River. On top of that, more than 50 Jackdaws were found dead, lying on the ground in Sweden; at least 200 birds of varying types were discovered on a Texas bridge; and no less than 40,000 devil crabs died under mysterious circumstances off the coast of England.

Some scientists and elements of officialdom struggled to place all the mystifying deaths into wholly down-to-earth categories — such as the rigors of nature, the extremes of weather, and man-made pollution — but others suggested this collectively pointed towards a looming apocalypse of Old Testament proportions. Some quietly — and more than a few not so quietly — suggested that HAARP was to blame. On this latter point, on January 5, 2011, Steve Cooper of the Conservative Monster Website published an article titled “Was HAARP Missile Defense Test Behind Massive Bird Deaths?” It was this paper that provoked a flurry of online debate about what HAARP was up to, and how our world faced potential collapse and destruction as a result of the crazed actions of an elite group of harebrained scientists up north.

The debate concerning the strange, massive die-offs of animals from late 2010 to early 2011, the theoretical links between HAARP and earthquake activity around the globe, and HAARP’s alleged tie-in with the scrambling of the U.S. government to secure what may be left of the oil-reserves continues to rage online, at conferences, within the pages of magazines, and on radio-talk-shows where the conspiracy-obsessed like to hang out. Whether HAARP really is up to something truly abhorrent — and on a worldwide scale, no less — or if an earthquake is sometimes just an earthquake, and the numerous deaths of animals are merely the tragic results of the harshness of nature, depends to a great degree on whose conclusions you accept as being the valid or most likely ones. Until we do have a firm answer, it seems certain that conspiracy researchers will continue to harp on about what’s really afoot in the Alaskan wilderness.