Project Censored

9. The Pentagon's Mysterious HAARP Project

Source: EARTH ISLAND JOURNAL, Date: Fall 1994, Title: "Project HAARP: The Military's Plan to Alter the Ionosphere," Authors: Clare Zickuhr and Gar Smith

SYNOPSIS: The Pentagon's mysterious HAARP project, now under construction at an isolated Air Force facility near Gakona, Alaska, marks the first step toward creating the world's most powerful "ionospheric heater." The High Frequency Active Aurora] Research Project (HAARP), a joint effort of the Air Force and the Navy, is the latest in a series of little-known Department of Defense (DOD) "active ionospheric experiments."

Internal HAARP documents state: "From a DOD point of view, the most exciting and challenging" part of the experiment is "its potential to control ionospheric processes" for military objectives. Scientists envision using the system's powerful 2.8-10 megahertz (MHz) beam to burn "holes" in the ionosphere and "create an artificial lens" in the sky that could focus large bursts of electromagnetic energy "to higher altitudes ... than is presently possible." The minimum area to be heated would be 31 miles in diameter.

The initial $26 million, 320 kw HAARP project will employ 360 72 foot-tall antennas spread over four acres to direct an intense beam of focused electromagnetic energy upwards to strike the ionosphere. The next stage of the project would expand HAARP's power to 1.7 gigawatts (1.7 billion watts), making it the most powerful such transmitter on Earth.

For a project whose backers hail it as a major scientific feat, HAARP has remained extremely low-profile-almost unknown to most Alaskans, and the rest of the country. HAARP surfaced publicly in Alaska in the spring of 1993, when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) began advising commercial pilots on how to avoid the large amount of intentional (and some unintentional) electromagnetic radiation that HAARP would generate. Despite protests of FAA engineers and Alaska bush pilots, the final Environmental Impact Statement gave HAARP the green light.

While a November 1993 "HAARP Fact Sheet" released to the public by the Office of Naval Research stressed only the civilian and scientific aspects of the project, an earlier, 1990, Air Force-Navy document, acquired by Earth Island Journal, listed only military experiments for the HAARP project.

Scientists, environmentalists, and native people are concerned that HAARP's electronic transmitters could harm people, endanger wildlife, and trigger unforeseen environmental impacts.

Inupiat tribal advisor Charles Etok Edwardsen, Jr., wrote President Clinton on behalf of the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope and the Kasigluk Elders Conference expressing their concern with the prospect of altering the earth's neutral atmospheric properties.

HAARP also may violate the 1977 Environmental Modification Convention (ratified by the U.S. in 1979), which bans "military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting, or severe effects."

HAARP project manager John Heckscher, a scientist at the Air Force's Phillips Laboratory, has called concerns about the transmitter's impact unfounded. "It's not unreasonable to expect that something three times more powerful than anything that's previously been built might have unforeseen effects," Heckscher told Microwave News. "But that's why we do environmental impact statements."

COMMENTS: Co-author Gar Smith said that to his knowledge, "there has been absolutely no coverage of Project HAARP and its implications in the mainstream media. The only report that I am aware of was an exchange of letters in Physics and Society and an article in Microwave News. I had written an article on the Eastlund patents in Earth Island Journal in 1988, the same year that OMNI magazine ran an article on Eastlund's work. As far as I know, there has been no coverage of this story in the environmental press. Given the nature of the proposed experiment and the covert-defense-related implications of the project, I believe that Project HAARP deserves a full and thorough public debate."

Smith said the public should be aware of Project HAARP since, as taxpayers, they have already paid for the demonstration phase of the project and will be footing the bill for the costly, vastly expanded version of the ionospheric transmitter. "Perhaps of greater importance, is the possibility that HAARP may expose nearby human populations to health and safety hazards and given the planet-wide nature of an experiment that would interact with the Earth's ionosphere and magnetic fields-potential risks to the entire planet. I believe the public should be entitled to determine the real purposes of HAARP, the possible risks, and the process by which this proposal was promoted."

The limited amount of coverage given the issue tends to benefit the Navy and Air Force scientists who are involved in Project HAARP and would rather conduct their research without undue interference. Also, says Smith, Pentagon strategic planners are clearly interested in the "secret agenda" behind the public face of HAARP -- i.e. "triggering ionospheric processes that potentially could be exploited for DOD purposes." Smith added that the ARCO oil company and its subsidiaries are involved in the project to various degrees.

Gar Smith, co-author of the article and editor of Earth Island Journal, said that one of the biggest obstacles he had to overcome to get the article published was his own staff. "Both the assistant editor and managing editor insisted that the article should not be considered for publication because HAARP had ,no environmental impact' and the article, by its nature, was `too jargony' to be understood by the average reader. This served to demonstrate a critical problem that stymies environmental criticism: without 'positive proof ' of a harmful impact, some people argue, it is irresponsible to speculate on potential hazards. This, of course, is the technique that Rush Limbaugh uses so effectively to dismiss claims of `global warming.' "Non-experts are not supposed to ask questions concerning rarefied scientific matters. As my managing editor put it, being concerned about the possible environmental impact of HAARP was tantamount to being concerned about the impacts of 'farting into the wind.' I consoled myself with the thought that, had more non-experts asked more questions about CFC gases, we might still have an intact ozone shield.

"I was struck by the argument of HAARP's scientists that heating the ionosphere and altering the region's electron densities should not be a matter of concern because the energy released by HAARP was `insignificant' when compared to the energy pouring into the magnetosphere from the sun. This is another logical fallacy favored by Rush Limbaugh, who has argued that there is no reason to be alarmed by the release of manmade atmospheric gases because volcanoes release much larger volumes of similar vapors. This is something like advising jaywalking pedestrians that they needn't worry about being hit by motorcycles because, compared to being run down by a Sherman tank, the consequences would be 'insignificant.'

"When I attempted to obtain a Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) from the regional EPA, I was told that I would have to go `to Seattle or Alaska to see it.' Project HAARP officials were difficult to locate. It required two hours and a dozen misdirected calls to establish contact. Several attempts were made to obtain the FEIS from HAARP officials.

"The documents didn't arrive until after the article deadline had passed. In order to complete the article, I haunted the local libraries to educate myself about the Earth's geomagnetic fields, trolled a variety of scientific conferences on computer networks, and called a dozen scientists for comment.

"I was able to contact a number of correspondents in the U.S. (and one as far away as Australia) who were lay-experts in electromagnetic phenomenon. They provided useful commentary and suggestions.

"Lacking the FEIS, I was able to draw from my own clipping and document files and from an article on the PAVE PAWS radar that I had written for New West magazine many years ago. Library research suggested that the frequency and power range of the proposed HAARP transmitter would be comparable to the PAVE PAWS radar. Using this information, I was able to extrapolate a number of potential harmful effects that might be expected from the operation of the HAARP transmitter. When the HIS finally arrived, I was pleased to see that these issues were, in fact, cited as problems that were expected to accompany the activation of Project HAARP

"I sent drafts of the developing article to scientists at the American Federation of Scientists, Union of Concerned Scientists, NOAH, and the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. I also sent copies of the article to leading environmental writers, including Dr. Steven Schneider, David Suzuki and Paul and Anne Ehrlich. Everyone contacted has expressed concern about the project but professed ignorance about the nature of ionospheric experiments.

"A copy of the magazine reached the desk of Ryan Ross of the Washington, DC-based Environmental News Service. I have spoken with Ross and shared information. Ross hopes to produce an article based on the journal's initial disclosures.

"At the same time copies of the articles were being sent to scientists for comment, I was engaged in a parallel campaign to get the attention of members of Congress. Copies of the article were faxed to Washington and copies of the magazine were sent in the mail. The hope was that a public debate might take place before an expected vote on full funding of the 1.7 billion-watt transmitter.

"Finally, in late November, I succeeded in reaching Lee Halterman, Rep. Ron Dellums' (D-CA) aide, at the House Armed Services Committee in Washington. After a flurry of faxes and a telephone conversation, I received a faxed copy of a letter sent by Rep. Dellums to the Pentagon's Deputy Under Secretary for Environmental Affairs requesting a halt to the planned "test' of the HAARP demonstration transmitter on December l."

The planned "test" of HAARP did not occur on December 1, nor was it known when the test might take place; it seems that no money had been budgeted for the test.

FULL ARTICLE AS PUBLISHED

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PROJECT HAARP: THE MILITARY'S SECRET PLAN TO ALTER THE ION0SPHERE,

by Clare Zickuhr and Gar Smith; Earth Island Journal, Fall 1994

The Pentagon's mysterious HAARP project, now under construction at an isolated Air Force facility near Gakona, Alaska, marks the first step toward creating the world's most powerful "ionospheric heater." Scientists, environ-mentalists and native peoples are concerned that HAARP's electronic transmitters-capable of beaming "in excess of I gigawatts" (one billion watts) of radiated power into the Earth's ionosphere-could harm people, endanger wildlife and trigger unforeseen environmental impacts.

The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Project (HAARP), a joint effort of the Air Force and the Navy, is the latest in a series of a little-known Department of Defense (DoD) "active ionospheric experiments" with codenames like EXCEDE, RED AIR and CHARGE IV.

"From a DoD point of view," internal HAARP documents state, "the most exciting and challenging" part of the experiment is "its potential to control ionospheric processes" for military objectives [emphasis in the original]. According to these documents, the scientists pulling HAARP's strings envision using the system's powerful 2.8-10 megahertz (MHz) beam to burn "holes" in the ionosphere and "create an artificial lens" in the sky that could focus large bursts of electromagnetic energy "to higher altitudes...than is presently possible." The minimum area to be heated would be 50 km (31 miles) in diameter.

The initial $26 million, 320 kW HAARP project will employ 360 72 foot-tall antennas spread over four acres to direct an intense beam of focused electromagnetic energy upwards to strike the ionosphere. The Earth's ionosphere is composed of a layer of negatively and positively charged particles (electrons and ions) Iying between 35 and 500 miles above the planet's surface. The next stage of the project would expand HAARP's power to 1.7 gigawatts (1.7 billion watts), making it the most powerful such transmitter on Earth. While the project's acronym implies experiment-ation with the Earth's aurora, HAARP's public documents make no mention of this aspect. For a project whose backers hail it as a major scientific feat, HAARP has remained extremely lowprofile-almost unknown to most Alaskans, and the rest of the country.

A November 1993 "HAARP Fact Sheet" released to the public by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) stated that the Department of Defense (DoD)-backed project would "enhance present civilian capabilities" in communications and "provide significant scientific advancements." However, while previous DoD experiments with smaller high frequency (HF) heaters in Puerto Rico, Norway and Alaska were conducted to "gain [a] better understanding" of the ionosphere, internal HAARP documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reveal that the project's goal is to "perturb" the ionosphere with extremely powerful beams of energy and study "how it responds to the disturbance and how it ultimately recovers..."

The public fact sheet describes HAARP as "purely a scientific research facility which represents no threat to potential adversaries and would therefore have no value as a military target." However, while ionospheric experiments at the government's Puerto Rico transmitter site are managed by the civilian National Science Foundation, the Journal has learned that proposals for experiments on HAARP are to be routed through the Pentagon's Office of Naval Research.

A February 1990 Air Force-Navy document acquired by the Journal lists only military experiments for the HAARP project, including: "Generation of ionospheric lenses to focus large amounts of HF energy at high altitudes... providing a means for triggering ionospheric processes that potentially could be exploited for DoD purposes...; Generation of ionization layers below 90 km [145 miles] to provide radio wave reflectors ("mirrors") which can be exploited for long range, over-the-horizon, HF/VHF/UHF surveillance purposes, including the detection of cruise missiles and other low observables." The document concluded that "the potential for significantly altering regions of the ionosphere at relatively great distances (1000 km or more ) [1613 miles] from a heater is very desirable" from a military perspective.

One of HAARP's less-publicized goals is to find ways to disrupt the global communications capabilities of adversaries while preserving US defense communications. The Pentagon also wants to know if HMRP could bounce signals to deeply submerged nuclear subs by heating the ionosphere to trigger bursts of Extremely Long Frequency (ELF) radio waves.

Patents held by ARCO Power Technologies, Inc. (APTI), the ARCO subsidiary that was contracted to build HMRP, describe a similar ionospheric heater invented by Bernard Eastlund that claimed the ability to disrupt global communi-cations, destroy enemy missiles and change weather. One of ARCO's patents identifies Alaska as a perfect site for a transmitter because "magnetic field lines...which extend to desirable altitudes for this invention, intersect the Earth in Alaska."

While HAARP officials deny any link to Eastlund's inventions, Eastlund has told National Public Radio that a secret military project was begun in the late-1980s to study and implement his work and, in the May/June 1994 issue of Microwave News, Eastlund claimed that "The HMRP project obviously looks a lot like the first step" toward his vision of surrounding the entire planet with a "full, global shield" of charged particles that could explode incoming enemy missiles.

The military implications of HMRP were further underscored in June, when ARCO sold APTI to E-Systems, a defense contractor noted for its work in counter-surveillance.

ELECTROMAGNETIC GUINEA PIGS

HMRP surfaced publicly in Alaska in the spring of 1993, when the Federal Aviation Administration (FM) began advising commercial pilots on how to avoid the large amounts of intentional (and some unintentional) electromagnetic radiation that HMRP would generate. Despite the protests of FAA engineers and Alaska bush pilots (for whom reliable communications can be a matter of life or death) the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) gave HMRP the green light. Ironically, the FEIS also concluded that the project's radio interference would be too intense to allow HMRP to be located near any military facilities.

On November 11, 1993, Inupiat tribal advisor Charles Etok Edwardsen, Jr., wrote to the White House on behalf of the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope and the Kasigluk Elders Conference. "Many of us are not happy with the prospect of ARCO altering the Earth's neutral atmospheric properties," Edwardsen wrote. "We do not wish to be anyone's testing grounds, as the Bikini Islanders have been...." referring to Pacific Islanders subjected to radiation exposure from US atomic bomb testing. Edwardsen has appealed to President Clinton to deny further funding to HMRP.

In the past, the EPA has accused the USAF of "sidestepping" the nonthermal hazards of electromagnetic pollution from powerful radar transmitters. Over the past three decades, numerous US and European studies have linked electromagnetic exposure to a range of health problems including fatigue, irritability, sleepiness, memory loss, cataracts, leukemia, birth defects and cancer. Electromagnetic radiation can also alter blood sugar and cholesterol levels, heart-rate and blood pressure, brain waves and brain chemistry.

Wildlife advocates also have cause to be concerned. The HAARP site lies 140 miles north of the town of Cordova on Prince William Sound, on the northwest tip of Alaska's Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. Since ordinary radar is known to be deadly to low-lying birds, HMRP's powerful radiation beam could pose a problem for migratory birds because the transmitter stands in the path of the critical Pacific Flyway. In addition, HMRP's ability to generate strong magnetic fields could conceivably interfere with the migration of birds, marine life and Arctic animals that are now known to rely on the Earth's magnetic fields to navigate over long distances.

The HAARP fact sheet states that "most of the energy of the high-power beam would be emitted upward rather than toward the horizon." Later on, however, the fact sheet notes that care will have to be taken "to reduce the percentage of time large signal levels would be transmitted toward large cities." The closest large cities are Fairbanks and Anchorage.

Even if HAARP's beam were to be directed primarily at the ionosphere, people on the ground would still have reason to be concerned. According to DoD consultant Robert Windsor, clear damp nights, downdrafts and temperature inversions can cause "ducting" and "super-refracting" that can send energy beams streaming back to Earth with "a significant-up to tenfold-increase in field intensity."

In addition to their main beams, all electromagnetic transmitters produce large swaths of "sidelobe" radiation along their flanks. US-based PAVE PAWS over-the-horizon radars, for example, use approximately one megawatt of power to send a 420-430 megahertz (MHz) beam on a 3000 mile-long sweep. At the same time, the "incidental" sidelobe radiation from these Pentagon radars can disable TVs, radios, radar altimeters and satellite communications over a 250-mile range. PAVE PAWS radiation can also disrupt cardiac pacemakers seven miles away and cause the "inadvertent detonation" of electrically triggered flares and bombs in passing aircraft. At peak power, the energy driving HAARP could be more than a thousand times stronger than the most powerful PAVE PAWS transmitter.

HAARP'S HIGH-LEVEL HAZARDS

HMRP project manager John Heckscher, a scientist at the Department of the Air Force's Phillips Laboratory, has called concerns about the transmitter's impact "unfounded." "It's not unreasonable to expect that something three times more powerful than anything that's previously been built might have unforeseen effects," Heckscher told Microwave News. "But that's why we do environmental impact statements."

The July 1993 EIS does, in fact, admit that HAARP is expected to cause "measurable changes in the ionosphere's electron density, temperature and structure," but argues that these disruptions are insignificant "when compared to changes induced by naturally occurring processes."

Subjecting the ionosphere to HF bombardment can ionize the neutral particles in the upper atmosphere. The HMRP Fact Sheet notes that "ionospheric disturbances at high altitudes also can act to induce large currents in electric power grids" on the ground, causing massive power blackouts. According to the 1990 Air Force-Navy document, power levels of one gigawatt and above "can drastically alter [the ionosphere's] thermal, refractive, scattering and emission character." While the ionosphere over the government's smaller HF transmitter in Puerto Rico is relatively "stable," the document notes that the ionosphere above Alaska is "a dynamic entity" where added bursts of electromagnetic energy could trigger exaggerated effects.

Writing in Physics and Society (the quarterly newsletter of the American Physical Society), Dr. Richard Williams, a consultant to Princeton University's David Sarnoff Laboratory, denounced ionospheric heating tests as irresponsible and potentially dangerous.

"Trace [chemical] constituents in the upper atmosphere can have a profound effect" on the formation of ozone molecules, Williams stated. It is known that altering the temperature of the ionosphere can affect the chemical reactions that produce ozone. Referring to the Montreal Protocol (the international agreement to protect the ozone layer from ozone-depleting chemicals), Williams warned that activating HMRP's ionospheric heater "might undo all that we have accomplished with this treaty."

"Look at the power levels that will be used-10 [to the 9th] to 10 [to the 11th] watts!" Williams told the Journal in a recent interview. "This is equivalent to the output of ten to 100 large power-generating stations. A ten-billion-watt generator, running continuously for one hour, would deliver a quantity of energy equal to that of a Hiroshima-sized atomic bomb."

"Of course," Williams added, "they will operate in a pulsed mode [producing a series of short, powerful bursts], rather than continuously." The HMRP fact sheet states that the HF beam, which operates in the 2.8-10 MHz band, will only be used 4-5 times a year for several weeks at a time over a 20-year period. Nonetheless, Williams argued, to proceed without a full public discussion of HAARP's potential impacts runs the risk of committing "an irresponsible act of global vandalism. With experiments on this scale," Williams concluded, "irreparable damage could be done in a short time. The immediate need is for open discussion."

Dr. Daniel N. Baker, director of the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, offered a less-alarming assessment. "The natural input of energy to the magnetosphere from the sun is very commonly 10 [to the 11th] - 10 [to the 12th] watts," Baker told the Journal. "Thus, HMRP may be a small fraction of the energy that flows into the region." Baker added that the ionosphere is, by nature, a "highly dynamic and fluctuating" environment that is able to "flush" away energy disturbances in a matter of hours or days.

Of course, in nature, one cannot simply "flush" something away without anticipating potential "downstream" consequences. Caroline L. Herzenberg, an environmental systems engineer at the Argonne National Laboratory, has suggested that, by "changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere; [and] transporting plumes of particulates or plasma within the atmosphere," HMRP may violate the 1977 Environmental Modification Convention, which bans all "military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting, or severe effects...." The US ratified the convention in 1979.

THE PENTAGON'S $90 MILLION CAT SCAN

On June 14, a Senate committee report noted that the Deputy Secretary of Defense had called for increasing HMRP funding from $5 million to $75 million in the 1996 defense budget. The sudden increase would be used to promote a disturbing new mission for HMRP.

Instead of just pouring its vast energy into the skies, the transmitter's power would be aimed back at the planet to "allow earth-penetrating tomography over most of the northern hemisphere"-in effect, turning HAARP into the world's most powerful "X-ray machine" capable of scanning regions hidden deep beneath the planet's surface. According to the Senate report, this would "permit the detection and precise location of tunnels...and other underground shelters. The absence of such a capability has been....a serious weakness for [DoD] plans for precision attacks on hardened targets...."

Meanwhile, construction on the larger HMRP facility-with a potential effective radiated power of 1.7 GW (1.7 billion watts)-is set to begin in 1995. This expanded version would require additional funding from Congress. According to the 1990 project document: "The desired world-class facility... will cost on the order of $25-30 million." The Senate Committee's April report, however, predicts that the cost "could be as much as $90 million."

What You Can Do: Write Congress to demand a review of HAARP's environmental impacts. Request that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration [NITA, c/o US Department of Commerce, Washington, DC 20230] reject the HAARP frequency/power request pending the outcome of a Congressional inquiry. Queries and contributions may be sent to NO HMRP c/o Jim Roderick, PO Box 916, Homer, AK 99603.

Clare Zickuhr, a former ARCO employee and ham radio operator based in Anchorage, is a founder of the NO HAARP campaign. Gar Smith is editor of the editor of Earth Island Journal.