In the United States, at least 29 states have licensed weather 
   modification programs. Weather Modification Inc. of Fargo, North 
   Dakota has been working with the Kings River Conservation District 
   (KRCD) in California's Central San Joaquin Valley since 1954. 
   Responsible for one of the world's richest agricultural regions, the 
   KRCD water management agency has consistently contracted for cloud 
   seeding above the crucial Pine Flat Reservoir. 
 
   According to Weather Modification Inc. (WMI), "The program's objective 
   is to increase precipitation efficiency of clouds and storm systems 
   crossing the watershed." WMI says that artificially-induced rainfall 
   in the Kings River Conservation District replenishes groundwater 
   depleted by heavy use, allowing uninterrupted hydroelectric power 
   generation. 
 
   Employing techniques little changed since Dr. Vincent Schaefer 
   undertook the first weather modification experiments for General 
   Electric in 1946, cloud seeding companies use aircraft or ground 
   generators to release silver iodide particles into clouds when 
   temperature and moisture are ripe for rain. Attracting clumps of 
   moisture, the silver iodide particles trigger formation of ice 
   crystals which then fall as additional rain or snow. 
 
   TRC North American Weather Consultants has conducted more than 200 
   weather modification projects to augment normal snow or rainfall since 
   1950. Using radar and aircraft sensors to track atmospheric changes, 
   TRC works to refill reservoirs and generate snow for ski resorts. The 
   weather modification company also drops dry ice to dissipate fog over 
   busy airports. 
 
   Based in Salt Lake City, Utah, TRC claims that precipitation increases 
   from its weather modification programs range from 10 to 15 percent 
   over normal rainfall in the wintertime northern hemisphere areas to as 
   much as 25 percent in tropical regions. A partial listing of the 
   company's cloud seeding operations conducted through 1994 includes 
   repeated application of silver iodide to rainclouds over Utah, 
   California, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, Texas, Georgia, Oregon, 
   Washington state, Iowa and British Columbia. Similar projects have 
   enhanced municipal water supplies in Greece, Guatemala, Taiwan, Abu 
   Dhabi, Jamaica and Mexico. 
 
   An 18 member U.S. Weather Modification Advisory Board established in 
   April, 1977 has sought in vain to introduce a national weather 
   modification policy. The board's efforts have been hampered by 
   continuing uncertainties in weather prediction and weather's 
   trans-border aspects which have already sparked lawsuits from 
   litigants claiming to be harmed by floods resulting from weather 
   modification. 
 
   Besides the unpredictability of its effects, cloud seeding's biggest 
   drawback is that it requires clouds containing enough moisture for 
   silver iodide crystals to tip near-saturation into rain or snow. 
   Draining energy from budding hurricanes and hailstorms, or creating 
   rain from a clear blue sky are the twin grails of more ambitious 
   weather wizards. 
 
   Internationally recognized weather modification expert Thomas 
   Henderson founded Atmospherics, Inc. in 1960. En route to Thailand 
   from his Fresno, California headquarters to attend the World 
   Meteorological Organization's International Weather Modification 
   Conference, Henderson told ENS, "Within the weather modification ranks 
   interest has always existed regarding discovery and development of 
   potentially improved seeding materials." 
 
   According to testimony before a House subcommittee on Science and 
   Technology in October, 1977 more than 60 countries were enagaged in 
   active weather modification at that time. A discussion paper released 
   at this early hearing called for "introducing perturbation energies to 
   redirect the atmosphere's 'natural' energies" using infusions of 
   chemical and electromagnetic energy. 
 
   Two decades later, a U.S. Air Force research study, "Weather as a 
   Force Multiplier" outlines how powerful "ionospheric heaters" and 
   clouds generated by chemical condensation trails - contrails - spread 
   behind airborne tankers could allow U.S. aerospace forces to "own the 
   weather" by the year 2025. Military researchers are already attempting 
   to influence the weather "by adding small amounts of energy at just 
   the right time and space," the report stated. 

   Located in Gakon, Alaska, an experimental U.S. Navy and Air Force 
   ionospheric heater known as the High-Frequency Active Auroral Research 
   Program (HAARP) has been projecting tightly-focused beams of intense 
   radio-frequency energy into the atmosphere for the past several years. 
 
   Bernard Eastlund, the inventor and original patent-holder for HAARP, 
   notes NATO interest in modifying the weather for military advantage. 
   In May, 1990 a NATO paper, "Modification of Tropospheric Propagation 
   Conditions" detailed how the atmosphere could be modified to absorb 
   electromagnetic radiation by spraying polymers behind high-flying 
   aircraft. 
 
   Absorbing microwaves transmitted by HAARP and other atmospheric 
   heaters linked from Puerto Rico, Germany and Russia, these artificial 
   mirrors could heat the air, inducing changes in the weather. 
 
   U.S. Patent 4253190 describes how a mirror made of "polyester resin" 
   could be held aloft by the pressure exerted by electromagnetic 
   radiation from a transmitter like HAARP. 
 
   A Ph.D. polymer researcher who wishes to remain anonymous told this 
   reporter that if HAARP's frequency output is matched to Earth's 
   magnetic field, its tightly-beamed energy could be imparted to 
   molecules "artificially introduced into this region." This highly 
   reactive state could then "promote polymerization and the formation of 
   new compounds," he explained. 
 
   According to Eastlund, two U.S. companies make polymer products with 
   microwave-absorbing properties. Heat generation need to modify the 
   weather can be fostered by adding magnetic iron oxide powder to 
   polymers exuded by high-flying aircraft. Radio-frequency-absorbing 
   polymers such as Phillips Ryton F-5 PPS are sensitive in the 1-50 MHz 
   regime, Eastlund pointed out. HAARP transmits between two and 10 MHz. 
 
   Former Raytheon missile engineer Tommy Farmer has been collecting 
   samples from the strangely lingering contrails covering U.S. skies for 
   the past two years. "The chemist I had originally engaged to analyze 
   the material, during microscopic exam, had noticed yellow orange orbs 
   impregnated into the filaments of the material," Farmer told ENS. 
   Looking for living pathogens, the researchers discounted the 
   non-organic material. "In retrospect," Farmer muses, "I must wonder if 
   the orange yellow orbs might be an oxidizing ferrous alloy as 
   described in Dr. Eastlund's commentary." 
 
   While admitting that an atmospheric mirror could be made from existing 
   polymers, weather expert Henderson told ENS, "I'm not too sure a 
   required very large mirror could be held aloft by strongly focused RF 
   energy. Right now the amount of heat required to alter the weather far 
   exceeds any realistic system I can imagine." 
 
   HAARP's U.S. Air Force and Navy sponsors claim that their transmitter 
   will eventually be able to produce 3.6 million watts of radio 
   frequency power. But on page 185 of an October, 1991 "Technical 
   Memorandum 195" outlining projected HAARP tests, there is a call by 
   the ionospheric effects division of the U.S. Air Force Phillips 
   Laboratory for HAARP to reach a peak power output of 100 billion 
   watts. Commercial radio stations commonly broadcast at 50,000 watts. 

   A bigger objection to HAARPs ability to hurt the weather comes from 
   the Ph.D. polymer researcher interviewed above, who points out that 
   jet tankers normally cruise at 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) altitude. "I 
   don't know if it is possible to create this [artificially heated] 
   region so close to the ground. None of the patents I have looked at 
   are claiming anything less than 50 kilometers (31 miles). Furthermore, 
   at the 10 kilometer height, it is hard to see how HAARP would have 
   anything to do with effects seen in the lower 48 states." 
 
   Whatever the reasons, this winter has produced some of the wackiest 
   weather ever seen over the United States. Usually a hot weather 
   phenomenon, dozens of wintertime tornadoes have struck Arkansas, 
   Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama this year. On February 11-12, 
   temperatures in Chicago, Dayton, Charleston, Indianapolis and other 
   cities ricocheted between the low seventies and the twenties, with 
   overnight snow falling in some of those cities basking in sunlight 
   during the day. 
 
   While temperature records are normally broken by no more than a tenth 
   of a degree, the World Meteorological Organization reports global 
   temperatures up more than 0.6 degrees Celsius since the end of the 
   last century. 
 
   As Pacific hurricanes packing 220 mile-per-hour winds introduce a new 
   Category 6 into storm lexicons, tropical mahi mahi and marlin are 
   being caught off the coast of Washington state. 
 
   Department of Energy researchers Alan Schroeder and David Bassett note 
   that 15 weather-related disasters in the U.S. since 1992 have cost $70 
   billion in damages and several hundred deaths from floods, heat waves, 
   hurricanes, blizzards and hail storms. 
 
   With HAARP shut down for February and not scheduled for reactivation 
   until March, 1999, the race is on to modify climate being brought to a 
   boil by carbon emissions generated by burning fossil fuels, methane 
   releases from melting permafrost and record levels of heat-trapping 
   cloud cover. Despite exotic technologies and squadrons of 
   cloud-seeding aircraft, the people doing the most to change the 
   weather may be us. 
 
   © [20]Environment News Service (ENS) 1999. All Rights Reserved. 
 

SEATTLE, WA.... As formations of unmarked tanker aircraft continue to 
criss-cross American skies on a mission authorities refuse to disclose, an 
environmental laboratory has identified an extremely toxic component of the 
spray drifting over cities and countryside. 

Several independent sources claim that samples of fallout from the lingering 
smoke trails and have been independently tested and found to contain 
ethylene dibromide (EDB). "We had the fuel sampled in August, 1997," a 
contrails investigator who wishes to remain anonymous told this reporter. 
"The lab immediately identified the sample my friend took in, however once 
the lab started receiving quite a few phone calls, they went cold! They 
didn't want much to do with us after that." 

The lab in question - which shares its name with several subsidiaries and 
several separate laboratories - could not confirm the test, which would 
remain confidential in any case. But in 1998, a US Air Force public affairs 
officer told residents of Las Vegas that their sudden upsurge of respiratory 
ailments could have come from "routine" fuel-dumping by military aircraft 
reducing weight for landing. 

An extremely hazardous pesticide, EDB was banned by the US Environmental 
Protection Agency in 1983. But in 1991, the composition of jet fuel used by 
commercial and military jet aircraft in the U.S. was changed from JP4 to 
somewhat less flammable JP8. A Department of Defence source says the move 
"has saved some lives" in air crashes. Ethylene dibromide is a key component 
of JP8. 

The 1991 Chemical Hazards of the Workplace warns that repeated exposure to 
low levels of ethylene dibromide results in "general weakness, vomiting, 
diarrhea, chest pains, coughing and shortness of breath, upper respiratory 
tract irritation" and respiratory failure caused by swelling of the lymph 
glands in the lungs. "Deterioration of the heart, liver and kidneys, and 
hemorrhages in the respiratory tract," can also result from prolonged 
contact with JP8. 

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's hazardous materials 
list: "Ethylene dibromide is a carcinogen and must be handled with extreme 
caution." A seven-page summary of this pesticide's extreme toxicity notes 
that EDB may also damage the reproductive system. According to the EPA, 
"Exposure can irritate the lungs, repeated exposure may cause bronchitis, 
development of cough, and shortness of breath. It will damage the liver and 
kidneys". 

Mark Witten, a respiratory physiologist at the University of Arizona in 
Tucson where an official US Air Force study on JP8 was carried out, told 
Scientist in March, 1998 that crew chiefs "seem to have more colds, more 
bronchitis, more chronic coughs than the people not exposed to jet fuel." 

EDB is 6.5-times heavier than air. Unlike normal contrails, the thick white 
streamers being sprayed from downward-pointing tailbooms over at least 39 
states does not dissipate, but spreads into an overcast that refracts a 
purple color in sunlight and appears suddenly as an oily film in puddles and 
ponds. 

Hundreds of photographs and videotapes made by ground observers show pairs 
or larger formations of aircraft spreading a white mist that thickens and 
drifts toward the ground. More than 200 eye-witnesses - including police 
officers, pilots, military and public health personnel - have provided 
detailed accounts of aerial spraying in characteristic "X"s and east-to-west 
grid patterns, followed by occluded skies - and acute auto-immune reactions 
and respiratory infections throughout affected regions. 

"I keeps coughing phlegm that tastes bad," 50 year old Mary Young of 
Sallisaw, Oklahoma told me after an aircraft sprayed her home at rooftop 
level one night last January with something that struck the windows like 
sand. "My eyes hurt, my joints hurt. I'm not catchin' my breath right. I 
can't get rid of this cold. I've had this bad headache - it's not just a 
headache. My eyeballs hurt so bad - way in the back - I just wish they would 
fall out." 

Severe headaches, nosebleeds, shortness of breath, joint pain and a dry 
hacking cough "that never leaves" are being reported by countless Americans 
jamming hospital Emergency Rooms from coast to coast. While December and 
January are traditionally bad months for asthma sufferers, patients, doctors 
and nurses across the U.S. report hospital wards filled to overflowing with 
bronchitis, pneumonia and acute asthma admissions at up to twice normal 
winter rates. 

Early last month, The News and Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina reported 
that respiratory admissions to Durham regional hospital jumped from the 
usual 184 patients a day to 247. Ambulance drivers were told that the 
hospital was not receiving any more patients. 

In New York City, doctors are calling a flood of respiratory cases an 
epidemic. "We have people double- and triple-parked in the ER on 
stretchers," Dr. Elliot Friedman, associate director of emergency medicine 
at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in Queens, told the New York Times on 
January 31. "And there have been times when upwards of 40 people have been 
admitted but are waiting for someone to be discharged," Friedman added. 

"This high fever is not typical of other flus," Dr. Sigurd Ackerman, the 
president of St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center told the 'Times shortly 
after a TV cameraman panned up to frame lingering "X"-shaped contrails over 
Times-Square. Dr. Robert Saken, a partner in the Soho Pediatrics Group, told 
that newspaper,  "It was surprising to me how sick they got and how quickly 
it happened." 

Dr. Ilya Spigland, Montefiore hospital's director of virology, doesn't know 
the reason for the sudden epidemic of respiratory cases. It is, Spigland 
told the New York Times, "very possible that the increase in respiratory 
infections may not be due to the flu." 

That same day in Lake Havasu, Arizona, headlines in Today's News Herald 
announced: "Victims curse unnamed bug, but can't call it the 'flu'." MD Mary 
Lou Kallername told the Herald "that a nameless virus is bringing at least 
10 patients a day into her office and driving some into the hospital, but 
laboratory tests show only a few are suffering from Type A or other 
identifiable strains of influenza." 

The previous weekend, after San Francisco resident Curtis Schumann noticed 
"sky grids in the making," and Melanie Zucker watched nine contrails being 
woven over Berkeley, local TV stations reported Bay area emergency rooms 
inundated with flu-like cases. 

In Seattle - where a resident reports "I've lived here for 26 years never 
seeing this number of contrails at once" - pneumonia patient Lowell Barger 
told me that in the hospital where he was admitted in late January, "their 
respiratory ward was overflowing with people, and they were having to put 
respiratory patients in other wards." At that time, a resident of Spokane 
listening to a police radio scanner told me he heard "many rescue calls for 
people with breathing difficulties." 

In Palmyra, New Jersey, shortly after Lucrecia Moon watched unusual 
lingering contrails from a McDonald's restaurant, a nurse reported "many 
people ill." In Las Vegas, Nevada, TV news coverage told of area hospitals 
being filled with people experiencing breathing problems. 

After a resident of Lexington, Kentucky watched helicopters circling the 
city for several days, flying low overhead at 3 a.m., "the sky looked like a 
giant checkerboard from the planes criss-crossing it, and the air still had 
the steel mill smell." According to this eye-witness, "Everyone here is 
sick. So far six counties have closed all the schools because all the 
students were sick with 'flu-like symptoms'.  I've been having headaches, a 
sore throat, and an annoying, hacking cough for the past four months and it 
seems to get worse after I see these aircraft circling the area." 

Similar "chem trails" sightings continue to be reported over Phoenix, 
Arizona. The January 28, 1999 edition of Arizona Republic reported that "The 
incidence of bronchial problems in Phoenix this month is 237 
hospitalizations vs. last year at 160 or so." 

At the same time, hospitals in Portland, Oregon; Marietta, Georgia; 
Chandler, Arizona, Bakersfield, Santa Cruz, Redding and Salinas, California 
- and other cities across the nation - were jammed with bronchitis, 
pneumonia and other acute respiratory cases after repeated spraying and 
cobweb-like fallout was reported in those regions. 

"We're getting sprayed real heavily with the contrails," a south 
Pennsylvania resident told this reporter. "It's just total saturation." As 
overfilled Pennsylvania hospitals were forced to divert respiratory 
emergencies to other facilities with bed space, another south-central 
Pennsylvania resident, Deborah Kammerer, looked out her window and watched 
aircraft "flying and dispersing over the city. It was supposed to be a clear 
sunny day. It became more overcast as the day progressed. I observed how the 
white trails widened out and settled down creating a haze over everything." 

South Florida resident Karen Okenica told me she has watched on several 
occasions as contrails "criss-crossed or ran parallel to each other. They 
did not dissipate but got thicker and stayed in the sky for quite a while." 
Okenica says she became frightened after gazing through Nikon binoculars and 
noticing an all-white jet with "plumes" coming from the rear of the plane. 
In early December, local newspaper reported that Bethesda Memorial and 
Delray Community hospitals were full and could not accommodate any more 
patients. 

The January 7 Philadelphia Daily News reported that "Emergency Room 
patients overflowed into the hallways at West Jersey Hospital in Berlin, 
New Jersey, and ambulance crews were temporarily diverted to other 
institutions as a wave of respiratory illnesses swept the area." At 
Northern Westchester County Hospital, "there was a 24 hour waiting 
period to get in." 

In Manitou, Michigan, Registered Nurse Kim Korte was driving north on 
M52, when she noticed "stripes" in the sky. "It appeared as if someone 
took white paint on their fingers and from north to south ran their 
fingers through the sky. These contrails were evenly spaced and covered 
the whole sky!" from east to west. 

Within 24 hours, Korte became very weak and feverish. After her 
boyfriend told her that "many in his family started coming down with the 
same complaints," the RN "started noticing alot of my patients and 
their family members were coming down with these symptoms at the 
same time." On checking with her colleagues, the former hospital 
supervisor learned that other nurses and physicians were complaining 
"of being extremely busy with respiratory diagnoses." 

In Austin, Texas - where Richard Young reports that "The skies here are 
filled almost daily with trails crossing each other" - a school nurse 
told a worried parent that she had seen over 100 sick children in a single day. 

Where is the mass media's reporting of this mass phenomenon? Indications of 
a concerted cover-up came on February 11, when a retired Southern Baptist 
preacher named Everett Burton finally succeeded in reaching C-span. After 
voicing his opinion on the Clinton impeachment trial, this former minister 
told Americans to get a copy of the Constitution and read it to realize what 
they have lost. Rev. Burton then advised viewers not to take his word for 
what was happening in the US -  but to "just look up in the skies as the 
planes regularly spray contrails across the skies, spraying people and 
making them ill." At this point, Rev. Burton was cut off. The screen flipped 
from C-span to the Tennessee state seal, remained silent for several minutes. 

Americans are not alone in their anxious bewilderment and suffering. In 
England, after lingering contrails and cobweb-like fallout were reported 
over London and Birmingham, the BBC reported on January 14 that 
more than 8,000 people - mostly elderly - died from pneumonia and 
other respiratory complications in the last week of December and the 
first two weeks of January, 1999. 

According to the BBC, in early January of this year, more than 97,100 people 
in England and Wales were stricken with respiratory ailments in a single 
week - almost double the usual rate. Ambulances in the Greater Manchester 
and Mersey region were each dealing with more than 1,000 calls every day - 
almost twice the norm. Norfolk and Norwich suffered such an unexpected 
increase in deaths, a refrigerated semi-trailer capable of holding 36 bodies 
was pressed into service as a temporary morgue. [see BBC photo] 

As this story goes to press, fresh leads now point to a bacteria in the 
spray that targets the respiratory tract. Lab tests confirming this 
development are expected to be in my hands shortly. Stay tuned. 

My investigation continues. 

PLEASE ADDRESS INQUIRIES, REPORT YOUR 'CONTRAILS" SIGHTINGS AND JOIN OUR 
COAST-TO-COAST CONTRAILS NETWORK by writing:   richardy2k@ccms.net 
 

SEATTLE, Washington, January 8, 1999 (ENS) - Contrails spread by fleets of jet aircraft in elaborate cross-hatched patterns are sparking speculation and making people sick across the United States. 

Washington state resident William Wallace became ill with severe diarrhea and fatigue after watching several multi-engine jets spend New Year's day laying cloud lines in an east to west grid pattern. A neighbor working outside came down with similar symptoms. But their wives, who remained indoors, suffered no ill effects from the inexplicable maneuvers which observers liken to high-altitude "crop-dusting" by unidentifed multi-engine aircraft. 

Condensation trails, called contrails, are generated at altitudes high enough for water droplets to freeze in a matter of seconds and not quickly evaporate - typically where the temperatures are below -38 degrees Celcius. 

Contrails can form through the addition of water vapor to the air from the jet engine exhaust. Even tiny nuclei released in the exhaust fumes may be sufficient to generate ice crystals, and hence, condensation trails. 

Wallace wonders if ethylene dibromide, a highly toxic component of JP-8 jet fuel, is making people sick. Similar incidents over Las Vegas last year prompted a US Air Force spokesman to explain that the military aircraft were "dumping fuel" before landing. 

But the strange spray patterns are being reported repeatedly over towns in Tennessee, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, Nevada, Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, Michigan, Texas, Oklahoma, Washington state and California. 

Wallace has been watching formations of high-flying jets weave grid-like contrails above his home since last summer. Each time, "We get a taste in our mouth," he reports. He and his wife Ann get "kind of tired and sick," having "no energy to do anything." 

After plants began dying around his mountain cabin, "I got real sick for about three weeks," Wallace relates. "My eyes watered. Fluid came out of my nose. I could hardly move my arm up above my head to comb my hair for about a week." 

Wallace and his wife are not alone in their plight. In March, 1996, Dr. Greg Hanford bought an expensive camera and binoculars to keep an eye on jets spraying white bands above his Bakersfield, California home. Hanford has counted 40 or 60 jets on some "spray days." 

"Everybody seems to be getting sick from it," Hanford told ENS. "Hackin' and coughin' when you really get nailed with this stuff." The dentist, many of his patients and two receptionists have repeatedly contracted severe respiratory infections. Hanford's illness lingered for five months despite courses of four different antibiotics. 

"It's really weird," Hanford says. "You think two jets are going to hit each other - and then they make an X." The dentist says he has sometimes seen "furry globular balls" spread downwind in a long feather from the high-flying aircraft. 

Unlike normal contrails, which dissipate soon after a lone jet's passage, video taken by Wallace and Hanford show eerily silent silver jets streaming fat contrails from their wingtips in multiple, criss-cross patterns. But instead of dissipating like normal contrails, these white jet-trails coalesce into broad cloud-bands that gradually occlude crystal clear skies. 

"Passenger jets don't make contrails that stay and become clouds," Wallace observes. 

Government officials deny that anything unusual is taking place. When Hanford called the local airport, tower personnel told him there was nothing going on." The jets were "just commercial" undergoing "international flight training." 

But a skeptical Hanford responded, "Is the FAA going to allow two jets to come at each other?" 

Pseudo-color, multispectral images taken April 20, 1994 by a NOAA satellite, reveal a number of contrails over Oklahoma and Kansas. X'es, overlapping W's and the Roman numeral XII are among the patterns flown by the mystery aircraft. Last June, Hanford watched four aircraft spraying in circles to form a perfect bulls-eye. Through his Swaroski binoculars, Hanford could see what "looked like a 737" painted all-white on top with an "orangish-red" underbody and red engine cowlings. Another 727-like aircraft was painted "all-white with a black stripe up the middle of fuselage." None of the planes carried identifying markings. 

Pat Edgar has been watching the jets spraying over eastern Oklahoma since a sunny day in October, 1997 when as many as 30 contrails gradually occluded the sky. "They look like they're playing tic-tac-toe up there," he says. "You know darn well it's not passenger planes." 

Edgar says he has watched "cobwebbing stuff coming down" from the zigzagging jets flying "all day long, line after line, back-and-forth, like furrows in a farm field." 

Edgar adds that "There is a lot of Lupus in the area now. A lot of women have come down with it." 

Edgar's father-in-law, a former judge, and three or four other close friends were hit hard in their immune systems. Symptoms include swollen hands and legs, night fever and shortness of breath. 

Retired Oklahoma state judge Bill Ed Rogers now runs out of breath after walking 20 feet to the bathroom. Climbing stairs, he says, "is directly out of the question." 

Rogers, does not attribute his strange malady to the mystery jets. But neither he nor his doctors can explain his breathing difficulty, which began shortly after spraying began in November, 1997, and is getting worse. The 57 year old former judge says he thought he was experiencing congenital heart failure when he was admitted into the Mayo clinic last January. But after being diagnosed with severe inflamation in his right lung, a team of top surgeons were unable to pump an unidentified "jello-like" fluid from his lung. 

Edgar, Wallace, Hanford and other eye-witnesses are uneasy over the ongoing aerial "experiments and the secrecy surrounding them. "They're gettin' ready, practicing," Edgar believes, for some kind of mass population cull. 

Before Edgar sold his restaurant, customers came in complaining of airplanes "flyin' around all night" over a remote area of Oklahoma. In the morning, they could see "stuff comin' out of their wings." Edgar says he knows four-dozen witnesses who have "come down violently ill, coughin' up blood for two weeks - or [with] real bad nosebleeds." As far as he's concerned, "it had to be something in that doggone plane that was spillin' out in the middle of the night." 

Edgar joins witnesses across the U.S. who worry that whoever is behind the mystery spraying just has to "come up with something a little stronger later on. It's just a guess," he says. "But it sure seems weird. They have a mission. They go back and forth all day. Hey man I'm talkin' hundreds of contrails in a day! It's unbelievable." 

U.S. Air Force aerial tankers may be causing and seeding clouds to modify the weather. The condensation trails and chemicals spread by these aircraft could be what is making some people sick in Tennessee, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, Nevada, Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, Washington state and California. 

Tommy Farmer, a former engineering technician with Raytheon Missile Systems, has been tracking patterns of jet contrails phenomena for more than a year. Farmer has "positively identified" two of the aircraft most often involved in the aerial spraying incidents as a Boeing KC-135 and Boeing KC-10. Both big jets are used by the US Air Force for air to air refueling. A Boeing T-43 used for navigation training and mapping may also be involved. 

Confirming reports from eye-witnesses across the United States, Farmer reports that all aircraft are painted either solid white or solid black with the exception of two KC-135s which were in training colors - orange and white. No identifying markings are visible. 

Farmer has collected samples of what he calls "angel hair" sprayed by the mystery aircraft on six occasions since February, 1998. Four samples have been taken since November, 1998. 

Farmer says that globular filaments resembling ordinary spider webs, "usually fall in clumps or wads ranging from pencil eraser size to the size of a balled up fist." 

Winds often whip the cobweb-like material into filaments as long as 50 feet (15.3 metres). Farmer told ENS that the sticky substance "melts in your hands" and "adheres to whatever it touches." 

Farmer urges caution to collectors after becoming ill after his first contact with the "angel hair." Like Bakersfield, California dentist Dr. Greg Hanford and other ground observers exposed to the spraying, Farmer's ensuing sore throat and sinus infection lasted several months. 

After repeatedly observing aircraft spraying particulates "in front of and into cloud systems," Farmer is "fairly certain the contrail phenomena is one part of a military weather modification weapons system." 

He notes that because the chemical contrails allow much more moisture to form inside cloud systems, severe localized storms result from the aerial seeding while surrounding areas that have surrendered their moisture to the storm cells experience drought. 

The huge Xs being traced by formations of tanker jets in the sky can be tracked by satellite and coordinated with the crossed-beams of ionospheric heaters to heat the upper atmosphere - changing its temperature and density and enhancing the storm's effects. 

Based in Gakon, Alaska, this unclassified joint U.S. Air Force and Navy project known as the High Altitude Auroral Research Project (HAARP) has for the past several years been using phased array antennas to steer powerful beams of tightly-focused radio waves "to stimulate," heat and steer sections of the upper atmosphere. 

Awarded in 1985 to MIT physicist Bernard Eastlund, HAARP's commercial patent claims that directed energy beams of more than one-billion watts can be used for "altering the upper atmosphere wind patterns using plumes of atmospheric particles as a lens or focusing device" to disturb weather thousands of miles away. 

In an interview with this reporter, Eastlund admitted, "I had looked at using this intense beam, which can be angled, to do some experiments in terms of guiding the jetstream, moving it from one spot to another. I presume it is possible, which might lend credence to these other things." 

In a U.S. Air Force research study, "Weather as a Force Multiplier" issued in August, 1996, seven U.S. military officers outlined how HAARP and aerial cloud-seeding from tankers could allow U.S. aerospace forces to "own the weather" by the year 2025. Among the desired objectives were "Storm Enhancement," "Storm Modification" and "Induce Drought." 

According to the Air Force report, "In the United States, weather-modification will likely become a part of national security policy with both domestic and international applications." 

Within 30 years, the Air Force foresees using Weather Force Support Elements with "the necessary sensor and communication capabilities to observe, detect, and act on weather-modification requirements to support U.S. military objectives" by using "using airborne cloud generation and seeding" techniques being developed today, the 1996 Air Force report says. 

But on its HAARP website, the U.S. Navy says, "The HAARP facility will not affect the weather. Transmitted energy in the frequency ranges that will be used by HAARP is subject to negligible absorption in either the troposphere or the stratosphere - the two levels of the atmosphere that produce the earth's weather. Electromagnetic interactions only occur in the near-vacuum of the rarefied region above about 70 km known as the ionosphere." 

Still, according to the Air Force's 1996 report, other routine weather-modification missions will deploy "cirrus shields" formed by the chemical contrails of high-flying aircraft "to deny enemy visual and infrared surveillance." 

When it is completed, the HAARP antenna array will consist of 180 antennas on a total land area of about 33 acres. The final facility will have a total transmitter power of about 3,600 kilowatts. 

When the HAARP facility is completed, the transmitter will be able to produce approximately 3.6 million watts of radio frequency power, the HAARP website states. The Air Force says HAARP transmitters have been designed to operate "very linearly so that they will not produce radio interference to other users of the radio spectrum." 

Farmer guesses that besides its obvious tactical military applications, aerial-seeding of contrail-clouds aligned in HAARP's characteristic grid-patterns could be part of a secret U.S. government initiative to address the global weather crisis brought about by atmospheric warming. 

The aircraft spraying that has sickened Americans across the country may not be confined to the United States. On August 11, 1998, "USA Today" reported dozens of residents of Quirindi, Australia "swearing they saw cobwebs fall from the sky" after unidentified aircraft passed overhead.