PROJECT HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) is a joint Air Force and Navy project under the Department of Defense and operated by the Air Force's Phillips Laboratory at Hanscomb Air Force Base near Boston. The stated public goal has been to focus electromagnetic beams at the ionosphere for a variety of reasons ranging from communication with submarines to nuclear ballistic missile detection.
I have discovered some surprising facts in an interview I had with HAARP Director John Heckscher on Friday, December 23, 1994.
First, in Gakona, Alaska, the first phase of equipment is now in place to focus an electromagnetic beam at the lower level of the ionosphere about 25 miles above the earth's surface.
Second, the 15 megawatt-capacity equipment was turned on December 14th to see if it could function. The power is provided by four diesel engines and there are no plans to expand operations to 5,000 diesel engines necessary to generate 1.7 gigawatts in later phases of operation, as reported in some journals and newspapers. Perhaps there was a misunderstanding of terms. According to Heckscher, the compressed beam focused down on two kilometers of ionosphere will be equivalent to 1.7 gigawatts in those two kilometers.
But HAARP has no 1995 money. The reason, Heckscher says, is wording inserted in U. S. Senate Bill No. 2182 printed in June this year as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1995. It states:
"This transmitter in Alaska, besides providing a world class research facility for ionospheric physics, could allow earth-penetrating tomography over most of the northern hemisphere. Such a capability would permit the detection and precise location of tunnels, shelters, and other underground shelters. The absence of such a capability has been noted as a serious weakness in the Department of Defense plans for precision attacks on hardened targets and for counter proliferation."
"... Unless the Department of Defense is committed to include such a project in future budget requests, the recommended authorization for fiscal year 1995 will have little effect. Therefore, the committee directs that none of these funds may be obligated or expended until the Secretary of Defense notifies the Committees on Armed Services of the Senate and the House of Representatives that the DOD will, as part of the nonproliferation and counter proliferation program recommended in the May 1994 report, include the cost for a full-scale HAARP facility in its fiscal year 1996 budget request."
Essentially, that means there will be no release of funds for HAARP unless proliferation and counter proliferation offices in the Pentagon, whose tasks involve looking for bombs, missiles, and hidden bases, determine that HAARP is necessary to their search and assign HAARP those missions.
Partial Transcript of Dec 23 Interview with John Heckscher, Program Manager, PROJECT HAARP
(From Audio Tape) LINDA HOWE: So it sounds as if there is a contingency being made for funding?
JOHN H: You're absolutely right. I have no 1995 money because of that.
LH: Well, who is making the decision?
JH: The counterproliferation people.
LH: And they are?
JH: They have to put it in their budget request. Otherwise, I can't get my money.
LH: And the counterproliferation people are ....?
JH: They are DoD. I don't know where they are. ...I have to think that either the language will be changed to remove that stipulation, or the counterproliferation people will do something.
LH: And you are in no dialogue with them?
JH: Not at the moment.
LH: Do you know anyone in counterproliferation?
JH: No, I don't.
LH: Do you know anybody in the office where they are that you have any dialogue with?
JH: No.
LH: As Project Manager of HAARP, with this Senate language, there has been no dialogue whatsoever?
JH: I can't say that. Perhaps the Program Directors have talked to them. See, what my function -- you have to realize what my function is. My function is to build and direct the contractors who are building the facility at Gakona.
LH: It sounds like there has been some discussion between Senator Stevens (U.S.-Alaska) and someone in counterproliferation?
JH: I would agree with you. Or maybe there hasn't been. Therefore, the language got in there some ... Because I think this is frustrating to Senator Stevens. I don't think he wanted to see the language in there like that which prevented the money from being put on this project.
LH: Oh. So now the question is: Who is responsible for this language?
JH: I can't tell you that. I don't know. I don't think it was Senator Stevens.
You're delving into these areas where I don't go. I'm not allowed to go anyway. I'm too busy with other things to worry about these...
LH: But this is the very thing that you won't have any money to do a project if it's not resolved.
JH: That's true.
LH: So, I don't understand saying that you're too busy to look into it.
JH: I can't. I'm not allowed to.
LH: OK, I understand that politically it is not your purvue.
JH: Right.
LH: OK, so now I have a major enigma: Who is responsible for the tomography language in the Senate bill?
JH: It's in there because someone has determined that to make HAARP a viable program, it has to do something like this or probably wouldn't get funded.
LH: How do you see HAARP's main importance if you took the tomography away?
JH: Well, then you go back to what we originally had for building HAARP and that was its ability to generate signals that could communicate with submarines, at least in the Navy, and as well, to generate long waves that would propogate long distances and be received on bombers (for the Air Force) and other things - mainly basic research.
I work for an orgnization in Phillips Lab in an area called Ionospheric Research. It's a tool to study a portion of the earth's atmosphere that you can't get at very well physically. It's too high for balloons. It's too low for satellites and so you use radio waves as probes to see what its basic constituents are and how it reacts.
LH: If nothing else, I am going to try to understand who put in the tomography reading because it must be that somebody feels that's important.
JH: Well, in order to, as you know, the DoD budget is decreasing. If something wants to be done, it has to have an application. So, people are casting about for applications. This particular application is one that can be done with no change -- if it, in fact, proves out and if it can be demonstrated that you can see these underground structures, then that's an application that essentially comes free. Because we were going to generate the ELF waves anyway. And if they are there to be used and we can find a use for them, that's great. I will applaud the person who thought up this. It's just that if it has to go into a counter-proliferation budget -- if they have to say "It's good." -- they can't say that until we demonstrate it. And we can't demonstrate it without the money, so we're caught in a Catch 52 here, or Catch 22 situation.
LH: Right. So, to your best knowledge, no one yet has demonstrated the ability to precisely locate underground tunnels, shelters and structures with ELF?
JH: It depends on what you mean by demonstrate because the technique, electromagnetic probing of the soil, is an old one. It's been used.
LH: For things like oil?
JH: Yeah. To find discontinuities. There is no question in my mind that the technique is a valid one. But what has not been demonstrated is the use of the HAARP machine to generate the ELF in the ionosphere which then is the ELF that is sent to the ground looking for the tunnels and mine shafts and things like that.
John Heckscher, Program Manager
PROJECT HAARP
Phillips Lab/GPIA
29 Randolph Road
Hanscomb AFB, Massachusetts 01731-3010
Original file name: .CNI - HAARP.Linda Howe
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