Back in the day, the United States and the Soviet Union both had their eyes to the sky. Space was seen as the last frontier for the Cold War they had long been waging, and they constantly sought to one-up each other. Space was a potential battle ground not just for trying to gain an upper hand, but also as a stage on which they could flex and pose for the world stage, constantly trying to show who was best. It was in this climate of competition and trying to master the domain of space that the Soviets would build a tactical armed space station, and become the first, and so far only, nation to actually fire a space cannon.

There was a time when the Soviets were winning the space race. Initially they came out of the gate strong, with many decisive victories. The launching of the Sputnik on October 4, 1957 was the first manmade object placed in space, followed by putting the first living animal in space in the form of a dog named Laika, and then there was the Soviet unmanned space probe Luna II, which on September 14, 1959 became the first manmade object to land on the moon. They followed this up on April 12, 1961, when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was launched into orbit for 108 minutes, becoming the first human being in space. At this time the Soviet Union were showing that space was their domain, which made the United States very nervous indeed. At the time space was being increasingly seen as sort of the battlefield of the future, with all manner of potential uses for reconnaissance satellites or even proposed orbital weapons. The early Soviet early dominance of space was alarming and unacceptable for the Americans, not only militarily but also ideologically, as it showed that communism was winning, so they did what they were good at and started throwing tons of money at their space programs.

Laika, the first Earth creature to go to space

Flush with cash from its newfound industrial and economic surge in the wake of World War II, the United States doubled their efforts in the space race, and it paid massive dividends. In quick succession they launched their own satellite, put astronaut Alan Shepard into space, and then performed their coup de grace on July 20, 1969, by landing astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon. In short order The United States had upped the ante and clawed ahead of the Soviets to leave them reeling. The U.S. now had the upper hand, and the thought of American satellites circling the globe unchecked terrified the Soviets, only made worse when the U.S. began preparations for a manned space station called the American Manned Orbital Laboratory (MOL) program. This just wouldn’t do, so they began a space station program of their own.

The Orbital Piloted Station (OPS), code-named Almaz, meaning “Diamond,” was a top-secret program launched in 1964 and carried out by the Soviets to put their own manned space station into orbit for the purpose of military reconnaissance. To this end it was to be fitted with cutting edge spy equipment, cameras and radar, and it was designed to be able to be resupplied while in orbit. It was to be the first of several planned military space stations, and money was poured into it. All of this was very hush hush, of course, hidden behind the façade that it was to be a part of the civilian space station program called Salyut. They didn’t want the Americans getting wind that they were planning on putting a military apace station in orbit, but they had to be sure their investment stayed safe. At the time, both sides were very concerned with anti-satellite and space station weapons, paranoid that anything put up into space was liable to be shot down or straight out stolen, so the Soviets made sure that one aspect of the Almaz was developed, and that meant they wanted to mount a big space cannon on it.

In order to arm their fancy space station, the Soviets designed the R-23M Kartech, basically a modified version of the Rikhter R-23, which was a 23mm, fully automatic tail gun designed for the Tupolev Tu-22 Blinder supersonic bomber. The new modified cannon weighed 37 pounds and could supposedly fire up between 950 to 5,000 rounds per minute, that could hit targets with accuracy up to two miles away. It was designed to be mounted on the forward belly of the Almaz station, but firing the weapon was the tricky part. As the cannon was to be mounted in a fixed position, actually aiming it would require the entire space station to be moved into a firing position. Another problem was that thrusters would be needed to counterbalance the recoil of the weapon, as every shot fired would potentially push the space station out of orbit, a big problem in the weightless vacuum of space. Nevertheless, the Soviets went ahead with arming their space station.

Between 1973 and 1976, the Soviets would launch three crewed military reconnaissance stations with the Almaz program, which were disguised under the civilian Salyut program and launched under the names Salyut 2, Salyut 3 and Salyut 5. While the Salyut 2 failed shortly after achieving orbit, the Salyut 3 and 5 were successfully tested, and the Salyut 3 managed to be a historic first when it actually test fired its space cannon in orbit. The test occurred on January 24, 1975, and although the cannon had been tested on land, since no one had ever fired it in space no one was really sure how the weapon was going to affect the station. For this reason, the test was scheduled for shortly before the Salyut 3 was to deorbit and long after the crew had left. The station was at the time being remotely operated, and when the weapon was fired thrusters were used to counteract the recoil. According to reports, approximately 20 rounds in one to three controlled blasts, all of which purportedly burned up in orbit, although the exact results have remained classified. To this day, the Almaz program represents the only armed and crewed military spacecraft ever flown, a rather interesting and somewhat unsettling milestone.

At the time of this space cannon test, the U.S. had no idea that any of this was going on. They of course knew about the Salyut 3, but at the time they were unaware that it was a military spacecraft and certainly knew nothing about the fact that it was armed or that the Soviets planned to actually test the weapon. In fact, it was not until long after the Cold War had ended and the end of the Soviet Union, that the information on the test firing would get out with the Russian Defense Ministry finally revealing it on the Russian military show Voennaya Priemka. However, the test results are still classified, the footage from the experiment was destroyed on reentry, and there is only one known photo of the actual cannon used aboard the Salyut 3.

Although we don’t know the exact results of the test firing, it must have been successful enough for the Soviets to see space-based weapons as viable, as they planned for future space stations to be armed with interceptor missiles. However, in the end the Almaz program never really caught on. Manned space stations were increasingly seen as to cost-inefficient, and the military lost interest, instead focusing on automated satellites for reconnaissance purposes. The Almaz program was grounded and absorbed into the civilian Salyut program, but much of it still remains classified. This was the first, and as of yet as far as we know the last time anyone tried to fire weapons from space, but make no mistake the interest is still there, and who knows how many secret programs there might be. Although there are many laws now in place to keep this sort of thing from happening, there will likely always be those who see space as a potential battleground, and now you know that the Soviets took the first step with their clandestine operation.

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Today’s article is on the subject of some of the weirdest government projects that span more than a few decades. I’m going to focus on the United States and the United Kingdom. I’ll begin with the U.K. and reveal some of its strange secrets. And tomorrow I’ll focus on the U.S. In the heart of North Wales, U.K., there exists a body of water called Lake Bala. You may say, well, there’s nothing particularly strange about that. You would be correct. Lake Bala is not out of the ordinary, in the slightest. But what is rumored to dwell in its dark depths most assuredly is out of the ordinary. It’s the domain of a violent lake monster called Teggie. Or, is the story born out of secret, military experiments? It all very much depends on who you ask and who you believe. There are longstanding rumors in and around the Bala area that in the build-up to the First World War, the British Royal Navy clandestinely let loose a group of seals into the lake. The reason: to strap them with dynamite and train them to attacks specific targets, namely warships.

It should be noted that the dynamite was not real and the “warships” were just small rowing boats. In other words, the project was a test-run, in the event that the Royal Navy might find itself at war with Germany (which it did in 1914, when the First World War broke out), and suicidal seals, strapped with explosives, might be required to fight for their country.  So the story goes, the seals proved impossible to train, and the project was abandoned. And, so today, what people are seeing today are brief glimpses of the original seals that bred and bred and so on. Of course, it’s very possible this is nothing more than a tall tale, passed on through the generations and without any actual facts to support it. Thus, the legend of Teggie continues to thrive. Now, onto the matter of Aleister Crowley.

Aleister Crowley, the “Great Beast” who died in 1947, was the subject of sensitive files that are said to have been destroyed, but which may not have been. In this case, the records were said to have originated with MI5, which is the U.K.’s equivalent of the FBI. Richard B. Spence, of the International Spy Museum, has done his utmost to try and unravel the connections between Crowley and the intelligence community. Spence says of Crowley: “He was such a disreputable and even evil character in the public mind that arguably no responsible official would think of employing him. But the very fact that he seemed such an improbable spy was perhaps the best recommendation for using him.” Another theory is that during the Second World War, British Intelligence planned on using the world of the occult to try and prevent the Nazis from invading the U.K.

It was thanks to Spence that in 2003 something extraordinary happened. That was the year in which Spence found not a file on Crowley per se, but a file on another topic, but which referenced Crowley’s MI5 file. The claim that there had not been an MI5 file on Crowley, now had no merit. Caught in an awkward situation, MI5 went back on its previous stance and claimed that, yes, there had been a Crowley file, after all. But, it had been destroyed back in the 1950s. Spence dug deeper and found further references to Crowley-based files. They, too, had been destroyed, claimed MI5. W. Adam Mandelbaum, who worked for U.S. Intelligence, said that: “Given the political fallout that would have resulted from making this involvement public, it should be no surprise that there is a paucity of documentation concerning Crowley’s intelligence efforts.” Now, let’s look at a similar situation but a different person.

There are rumors that secret files exist within the U.K.’s MI5 – which is the British equivalent of the United States’ FBI – on “Britain’s Most Famous Witch.” Her name was Sybil Leek, who was rumored to have undertaken work of a very weird kind to help defeat the Nazis during the Second World War. I have tried to secure such files, but with no luck. But, there’s a chance they exist. The BBC says: “One of the most incredible claims about her is that she was recruited by the British Government during the Second World War. According to the Second World War author Michael Salazar, her role was to provide phony horoscopes for the Germans who believed in Astrology. She apparently wrote a chart which convinced the Nazi Rudolf Hess to fly to England, where he was captured.” Maybe, one day, we’ll know for sure the truth of this weird affair.

• Part-2 is coming!
  

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Today’s article is the second part of a two-part story on strange, secret programs. The first feature was on the secret files and projects of the U.K. Now, I’m focusing on the United States. We’ll begin with the field of Remote-Viewing. The whole RV phenomenon is well-known. But, how about a certain operation that the late RV expert, Pat Price, got into during the 1970s? In his 1997 book Remote Viewers, Jim Schnabel told the story of the U.S. Intelligence community’s involvement in the controversial issue of psychic spying that largely began in the early-to-mid 1970s. Commenting on the skills of a talented remote-viewer in relation to matters of a UFO nature, one Pat Price, Schnabel noted Price was of the opinion that “…Alaska’s Mount Hayes, the jewel of a glacial range northeast of Anchorage, housed one of the aliens’ largest bases.” According to Pat Price, the aliens that lived deep inside Mount Hayes were very human looking, differing only in their heart, lungs, blood, and eyes. Ominously, he added that the aliens use “thought transfer for motor control of us.” Price added: “The site has also been responsible for strange activity and malfunction of U.S. and Soviet space objects.”

Now, onto a completely different issue: dowsing. In 1978, staff at the Foreign Technology Division (FTD) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio prepared an extensive document titled Paraphysics R&D – Warsaw Pact [R&D referring to Research and Development]. Page twenty-three of the document details positive results of both U.S. and Soviet research in the field of dowsing. Notably, a copy of the entire FTD document was sent to the CIA’s Office of Science and Technology (OSI) shortly after its publication.

How about the FBI’s file on Spontaneous Human Combustion? That was a subject that the Bureau studied for a long time. It’s a little-known fact, however, that midway through the 20th century the FBI got involved in the controversy of SHC. The unfortunate person whose fiery death caught the attention of the FBI was Mary Hardy Reeser, a then-sixty-seven-year-old woman from St. Petersburg, Florida. It was some time on the night of July 1, 1951 when Reeser took her last breaths. Reeser’s son Richard (who was a physician), his daughter Nancy, and the landlady, Patsy Carpenter, were hanging out with Reeser in her room. Around 9:00 p.m. they all left. Their last image was of Reeser reclining in her chair and smoking a cigarette. It wasn’t until the next morning that it became clear something terrible had occurred overnight. As fate would have it, on the morning in question Carpenter received a telegram for Reeser and took it to her room. There was no response to Carpenter’s knock on the door. So, Carpenter turned the doorknob. She screamed and jumped back. The doorknob was red hot.

Carpenter quickly caught the attention of a couple of house-painters, who raced over and forced open the door. All three were hit by a blast of scalding hot air. The scene in front of them was like something out of a horror-movie. The chair in which Mary Hardy Reeser had been reclining was severely burned. Ashes were everywhere. Teeth and bones could be seen on what was left of the chair. And then there was the matter of Reeser’s head: it was shrunken significantly and burned almost raw. Undamaged was Reeser’s left ankle, as well as her left foot and left shoe. Those remains aside, she was pretty much gone. The FBI’s file on SHC, however, still exists.

Then, there’s the Collins Elite, a think-tank-type group that believes the UFO phenomenon is demonic in nature, rather than having extraterrestrial origins. I pursued them a great from 2007 onward and they were a sinister and strange bunch. Today, the Collins Elite still exists – despite the widespread denials of the U.S. Government that it has ever existed. And, in the 21^st Century, the group is a definitive secret society. Entrance to the group is strictly limited to those that move effortlessly between the domains of the Pentagon and the Trilateral Commission, the Department of Defense and fringe archaeologists, the Pope, and those well-versed in the black arts. As the Collins Elite sees it, the group is at the forefront of a worldwide, secret war to prevent a full-scale demonic invasion, worldwide martial-law, Armageddon, the rise of the Anti-Christ, and a planet and its people plunged into a literal, hellish nightmare. Time may tell if the theories of this secret network are valid or not.

In 1952 the U.S. Army secretly looked into the matter of teaching dogs to search for deadly landmines on battlefields. The strangest aspect of the program was that it would explore the feasibility of the dogs using extra-sensory perception (ESP) to find the landmines! The Army contracted Dr. Joseph Banks Rhine, PhD, to come on-board. The operation progressed quickly. According to the documentation – which has been released under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act – two dogs in particular, named Tessie and Binnie, scored very well. Rhine also suggested to the Army that pigeons might be good candidates for certain, tricky operations of the military and espionage type. The official records contain Rhine’s own words on this intriguing issue. He said: “The mystery of pigeon-homing and the possibility that extrasensory perception enters into that performance led us to undertake the solution of the problem of how these pigeons find their way home. At the termination of the contract the problem had not been solved.”

Rhine added, however, that regarding the matter of pigeon-homing: “…researchers have ruled out all existing sensory hypotheses, thereby making extrasensory perception a more plausible interpretation than it has been hitherto. This research has opened up possibilities of importance not only within but far beyond the scope of the projects specifically dealt with. The problems raised on this project involve basic research that may remain in the category of the inapplicable for many years. Measured against this is the enormous value, not only to intelligence but to application in a wide range of military uses of extrasensory perception.”

Although the intelligence communities, military and government agencies of numerous nations have undertaken countless official (and off-the-record, too) projects pertaining to both mind-control and mind-manipulation, without any doubt whatsoever, the most notorious of all was Project MKUltra: a clandestine operation that operated out of the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence, and that had its beginnings in the Cold War era of the early 1950s. It was, I believe, MK-Ultra that created the fabricated “alien encounters” of 1950s-era “UFO Contactee” Orfeo Angelucci. The date of the project’s actual termination is a somewhat hazy one; however, it is known that it was definitely in operation as late as the latter part of the 1960s – and, not surprisingly and regretfully, has since been replaced by far more controversial and deeply hidden projects.

To demonstrate the level of secrecy that surrounded Project MKUltra, even though it had kicked off at the dawn of the fifties, its existence was largely unknown outside of the intelligence world until 1975 – when the Church Committee and the Rockefeller Commission began making their own investigations of the CIA’s mind-control-related activities – in part to determine if (a) the CIA had engaged in illegal activity, (b) the personal rights of citizens had been violated, and (c) if the projects at issue had resulted in fatalities – which they most assuredly and unfortunately did. Rather conveniently, and highly suspiciously, too, it was asserted at the height of the inquires in 1975 that two years earlier, in 1973, CIA Director, Richard Helms had ordered the destruction of the Agency’s MKUltra files. Fortunately, this did not stop the Church Committee or the Rockefeller Commission – both of whom had the courage and tenacity to forge ahead with their investigations, relying on sworn testimony from players in MKUltra, where documentation was no longer available for scrutiny, study and evaluation.

The story that unfolded was both dark and disturbing –in equal degrees. Indeed, the scope of the project – and allied operations, too – was spelled out in an August 1977 document titled The Senate MK-Ultra Hearings that was prepared by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on Human Resources, as a result of its probing into the secret world of the CIA. As the document explained: “Research and development programs to find materials which could be used to alter human behavior were initiated in the late 1940s and early 1950s. These experimental programs originally included testing of drugs involving witting human subjects, and culminated in tests using unwitting, non-volunteer human subjects. These tests were designed to determine the potential effects of chemical or biological agents when used operationally against individuals unaware that they had received a drug.”

The Committee then turned its attention to the overwhelming secrecy that surrounded these early 1940s/1950s projects: “The testing programs were considered highly sensitive by the intelligence agencies administering them. Few people, even within the agencies, knew of the programs and there is no evidence that either the Executive Branch or Congress were ever informed of them. The highly compartmentalized nature of these programs may be explained in part by an observation made by the CIA Inspector General that, ‘the knowledge that the Agency is engaging in unethical and illicit activities would have serious repercussions in political and diplomatic circles and would be detrimental to the accomplishment of its missions.'”

The research and development programs, and particularly the covert testing programs, resulted in massive abridgments of the rights of American citizens, and sometimes with tragic consequences, too. As prime evidence of this, the Committee uncovered details on the deaths of two Americans that were firmly attributed to the programs at issue; while other participants in the testing programs were said to still be suffering from the residual effects of the tests as late as the mid-1970s. And as the Committee starkly noted: “While some controlled testing of these substances might be defended, the nature of the tests, their scale, and the fact that they were continued for years after the danger of surreptitious administration of LSD to unwitting individuals was known, demonstrate a fundamental disregard for the value of human life.”

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Throughout human history the art and weapons of warfare have evolved continuously, and much as with natural evolution itself, warring sides have been locked in a never-ending cycle of increasing one-upmanship. Our relentless arms race goes way back to ancient times, going from clubs, to spears, to arrows, and beyond, in modern days bringing us firearms, missiles of increasing lethality, and of course nuclear weapons, but even this is not seen as the ultimate weapon of devastation. Research and development has continued to find and refine better ways to kill each other, to beat the other guy, and among these the realm space has been seen as a sort of last frontier of warfare. What if you could wield weapons of mass destruction orbiting in space where the enemy would be helpless to do anything about it, and what if you could whisk these weapons to anywhere on the globe in minutes to rain down death from above? To the military this is almost too good to pass up, and it might be disturbing to many readers that this science fiction scenario has been hotly pursued. Let’s take a look.

One of the main problems with using space as a battlefield is that it is technically banned, in a sense. The Outer Space Treaty, which was signed by 107 countries in 1967 prohibits nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons from being placed in or used from Earth’s orbit. This is a bummer for warmongers, but there is a loophole. What if the weapon wasn’t nuclear, biological, or chemical? How could we devise something that skirted the treaty, yet was still utterly devastating? Lasers have been proposed in the past, but far from what you see in the Death Star in the Star Wars films, lasers just haven’t proven to be that effective at blowing things up. They require too much power to focus, are ineffective at long distances, and simply cost too much to develop. Laser technology for warfare, especially that from space, has been considered largely a dead end, and our technology in this area is woefully inadequate for anything other than perhaps burning through a piece of plywood with a concentrated burst at short range for sustained periods on an unmoving object, or perhaps shining a little mini cat toy laser in an enemy’s eyes. But what if you could just drop something heavy on them from space? It might sound absurd, like something Wile. E. Coyote might try, but this is a very real, and very frightening area of research, and far more powerful than you might think.

It’s called “Kinetic Bombardment,” also known as a “Kinetic Orbital Strike,” which is a lot scarier-sounding than “big heavy thing dropped from space,” and indeed it is scary. The basic premise behind it involves using an inert projectile, no explosives, no moving parts, propellants, or chemicals, just a, well, big solid heavy thing, to drop down from orbit at a target. The idea is that a satellite would carry a magazine of these objects, most likely tungsten rods about the size of a telephone pole and weighing around 9 tons, with fins attached to keep them straight, and more or less just drop them towards a target. So, it’s just a big heavy object falling towards earth, right? You’d just have to get out the way and you’d be fine, right? Well, not exactly.

As it travelled towards the surface of the earth powered by gravity alone, the projectile would gain tremendous velocity and speed, going 8 kilometers per second in orbit and eventually getting up to an impact speed of about Mach 10. When just one of these “rods from God” hit the surface, it would penetrate hundreds of feet into the ground, while releasing its built up kinetic energy to create an explosion roughly on par with over 11.5 tons of TNT (or 7.2 tons of dynamite). If more than one was dropped over an area, they could create incredible devastation on par with a tactical nuclear strike. For instance, one hundred rods would have the total destructive power of 1,150 to 14,000 tons of TNT, approaching the yield of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, all without the fallout, no radiation, and no need for actual explosives of any kind. Often called Project Thor, there are envisioned to be between 6 to 8 satellites in orbit at any given time carrying these projectiles, giving them the capability to hit any target on the planet’s surface within 10 to 15 minutes from order to launch to impact. This would give the enemy very little time to prepare, and furthermore the launch would be difficult to detect, the rods would be hard to see on radar, and they would be moving so fast that they would be nearly impossible to defend against. It sounds horrifying, and there would not really be much an enemy could do to predict or stop such attacks, but surely this is all just science fiction speculation, right? Again, not exactly.

It does sound a lot like science fiction, and indeed the rods from God have appeared in many science fiction stories and were even originally conceived of by Boeing employee turned science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle back in the 1950s, but make no mistake this is not purely fantasy. Indeed, not only is the concept and theory behind it totally sound and achievable, but kinetic strikes in one form or another have already been used in real life. Using heavy solid objects dropped from great heights has been going on since World War I, when masses of metallic objects, called flechettes, were dropped in great numbers on enemy positions from aircraft, with the effect being on par to machine gun fire. During the Vietnam and Korean wars, the U.S. occasionally used what were called “Lazy Dog bombs,” which scattered hundreds of little solid hunks of metal with fins of sheet metal welded on to allow a straighter fall and higher velocity, with each one hitting with enough force to penetrate 9 inches of concrete after being dropped from as little as 3,000 feet. In as recently as 2020, a kinetic weapon, in this case basically a 100 pound modified missile fitted with detachable blades for added lethality, was dropped from an aircraft to obliterate a vehicle carrying a senior Al Qaeda official.

This technology is very real, the theory is sound, and it really works. The rods of God of Project Thor could definitely be a reality today, and the only reason it isn’t is down to money. It just simply costs too much to haul such heavy projectiles into space, making it too cost-prohibitive, with it costing at least $10,000 to carry just one pound into space at the moment. To carry hundreds of 9 ton rods into orbit would be astronomically expensive, and this is likely the only reason Project Thor has not been more seriously pursued. Yet, the plan has continued to come across the table of military officials, and has been reconsidered on more than one occasion, if even in a limited capacity as a bunker busting weapon. If the cost wasn’t so exorbitant, they would absolutely pursue this to fruition, and if they can work this out, then who knows? For now we are probably safe, but it does make one look up and hope there is not a satellite up there with a rod aimed at you.

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There are countless strange conspiracies theories swirling about the government and shadowy organizations lurking out in the gloom past what we usually see. Everything from mind control, to hidden spaceships, to weird government experiments, and much, much more, the field of conspiracy theories is a minefield. One of the more bizarre and pervasive of these in recent times has been the idea that the government, Illuminati, whatever you want to call “them,” is using advanced weaponry to cause forest fires around California.

On December 4, 2017, a blaze ignited near the city of Santa Paula, in Ventura, California, and while normally it might not have been the tragedy it was to become, aided by record Santa Ana winds the fire proved to be extremely fast. In an alarmingly short amount of time the fire exploded outward, expanding out of control to engulf large swaths of both Ventura and Santa Barbara counties while creating other offshoot blazes along the way. The hungry fire and its spawn were well fed with the dry brush of the rugged mountain terrain, and it was all was soon a hulking beast of a fire the likes of which no one had ever seen. By the time what would collectively be called The Charles Fire was finally contained on January 12, 2018, it had devastated approximately 281,893 acres, forced over 100, 000 people to evacuate, and had caused immeasurable destruction of property and agriculture, vast economic damage, and dozens of tragic deaths. It was the largest wildfire in modern California history, even generating its own weather, and at one point fought by an army of over 8,500 firefighters, the largest mobilization in history, who fought battles with multiple fires on many fronts.

In the wake of the Charles Fire, authorities began a full investigation into how the fire had started and spread, but as this was going on there were some strange conspiracies brewing. One was that it was terrorists or drug cartels from Mexico or South America trying to destroy the region’s extensive marijuana farms, and another was that it was due to the Illuminati, but although eyebrow raising these pale in comparison to another insidious conspiracy that began doing the rounds on the Internet and sites such as YouTube. People began talking about how the fires had not only been intentionally started, but that they had been started by the U.S. government using giant lasers from outer space. Wait, what?

The idea is that the fires had been deliberately started by weapons called “directed energy weapons” (DEW), basically giant laser beams, which had been mounted on either planes or satellites to be fired upon the area. Why would the government do this? Well, according to the conspiracy theorists there are several possible reasons. One is that it was a show of force, while another is that it could have been done as a media distraction to keep eyes off of something else going down. Yet another idea is that it was done to clear people out of the area for some nefarious purpose, or according to one theory as a way to make room for a high-speed rail system. Even the conspiracy theorists can’t even really agree as to the whys of it all, with many picking whatever version fits their own agenda, but the ones who began spreading these stories and theories also come armed with what they claim to be “evidence.”

The main form this evidence comes in is from many alleged witnesses and firefighters who supposedly claimed that the fire did not behave or burn things in a normal way. It was noticed that in some areas only human structures seemed to have suffered the wrath of the blaze, while the surrounding trees, vegetation, and even other buildings were untouched. The conspiracy crowd speculates that this could only have been through the use of actual targeted, directed laser attacks on the buildings themselves, and one conspiracy theorist by the name of Matt Procella has said of this:

You’ll notice here that stores and restaurants are wiped out, while other things are still in perfect shape. Other buildings are fine, trees are untouched, but specific structures are just devastated. You gotta ask yourself, what’s up with that … Is this the result of direct energy weapons? Ranged weapons that inflict damage on a target by emitting highly-focused energy? The answer is most likely yes.

The idea of attack lasers being at work soon expanded to be applied for other wildfires that occurred in 2017 and 2018 throughout California, and making it even weirder still were people who came forward with stories that they had actually seen blue beams shooting down from the sky before fires broke out, further fueled by eerie photos or videos of these beams that began making the rounds. Proper fire authorities speculated that the fire and others like it had actually likely been caused by downed power lines, but of course not everyone bought this.

Although these conspiracy theories have flourished online, there are some rather good skeptical points to be made here. For one, there is very little evidence put forward for the giant laser angle. Some usually unnamed and unverified witnesses, as well as some photographic and video evidence that is inconclusive at best and obviously photoshopped at worst. Even if there really are these mysterious unburned areas, it could be attributable to moisture in the vegetation or the rather unpredictable winds at the time. However, most damning of all is that, although they look really awesome and powerful in science fiction films, it turns out that in real life lasers are not nearly as destructive and almighty as we have been led to believe by fiction. In reality we are woefully behind in any breakthroughs for super-powerful lasers, and they are decidedly worse at blowing stuff up than was once thought. The fact is, we seem to be a long way from producing a laser of this magnitude, making it less plausible that there is someone going around strafing whole areas with them. But then again, it’s the government, so there are plenty of people who say that the technology does exist, but is top secret. What is going on here? Is there any truth to this at all or is it just looney conspiracy nonsense for some agenda or other? Who knows, but it is definitely eye-opening, and another weird conspiracy theory to add to the pile.

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Part 1 of this two-part article was on a notorious character in a post-Second World War-era program called Paperclip. It was a Faustian pact of the worst kind: to secretly bring Nazi scientists to work in the United States. Indeed, immediately after the Second World War came to an end in 1945, certain elements of the military and intelligence community clandestinely sought to bring numerous scientists within the German medical and scientific communities into the United States to continue research – and at times highly controversial research – they had undertaken at the height of the war. It was research that included studies of human anatomy and physiology in relation to aerospace medicine, high-altitude exposure, and what was then termed “space biology.” The startling fact that some of these scientists were ardent Nazis, and even members of the notorious and feared SS, proved not a problem at all to the government of the time. Thus was born the notorious Paperclip, so named because the papers of the recruits were paper-clipped to regular American immigration forms.

In part 1, I revealed that if we are going to solve the Roswell mystery of 1947, then we need to think of new approaches – mainly because we’ve pretty much hit a brick wall. This brought me to a man named Hubertus Strughold – also a Nazi and also someone brought to the United States to work. Strughold was also someone who knew what happened at Roswell. My view is that instead of just focusing on Roswell the event to try and find answers, we should focus on the scientists who may have know what really happened at Roswell. And that would include at least some of the Paperclip scientists. So, having addressed Strughold in the first part of this article, today I’m going to focus on another German scientist brought to the United States and who knew of the “human experimentation” angle of Roswell.

Wernher von Braun was born in Wirsitz, Germany, on March 23, 1912 and earned his bachelor’s degree at the age of twenty from the University of Berlin, where he also received his doctorate in physics in 1934. Between 1932 and 1937, von Braun was employed by the German Ordnance Department and became technical director of the Peenemuende Rocket Center in 1937, where the V-2 rocket was developed. Von Braun came to the United States in September 1945 under contract with the Army Ordnance Corps as part of Paperclip and worked on high altitude firings of captured V-2 rockets at the White Sands Proving Ground, until he became project director of the Ordnance Research and Development Division Sub-Office at Fort Bliss, Texas. On October 28, 1949, the Secretary of the Army approved the transfer of the Fort Bliss group to Redstone Arsenal; and after his arrival in Huntsville in April 1950, von Braun was appointed Director of Development Operations.

Wernher von Braun

Major development projects under von Braun’s technical direction included the Redstone rocket, the Jupiter Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile, and the Pershing missile. He and his team of German scientists and engineers were also responsible for developing the Jupiter C Reentry Test Missile and launching the Free World’s first scientific earth satellite, Explorer 1. On July 1, 1960, von Braun and his team were transferred to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and became the nucleus of the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center at Redstone Arsenal. He served as Director of the Marshall Center until February 1970 when he moved to NASA Headquarters to serve as Deputy Associate Administrator. On 1 July 1972, von Braun left NASA to become Vice President of Engineering and Development for Fairchild Industries in Germantown, Maryland and was inducted into the Ordnance Corps Hall of Fame in 1973. Von Braun retired in January 1977 due to ill health and died on June 16, 1977.

The fact that several old-timers quietly told me that von Braun knew of Roswell – the truth of a horrifying human experiment and zero to do with aliens – makes me think that going after von Braun’s files might find something. Now, I’m not talking about the huge numbers of known files of the man. I’m talking about potential unknown files, ones that are perhaps tucked away in old archives – and that just might lead us to something important on Roswell. Going deeper and deeper into the work (and the still-hidden files) of Nazi scum just might throw light on the biggest controversy Ufology has ever had: Roswell.