Jul 21, 2008

July 23, 2008 - Public Meeting of the Study Team for the Los Alamos Historical Document Retrieval and Assessment Project

5 PM - 7 PM (Mountain Time)

Cities of Gold Hotel
Nambe Conference Room
Cities of Gold Road exit in Pojoaque (15 miles north of Santa Fe on US 84/285)
10-A Cities of Gold Road
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87506
(505) 455-0515 Facsimile: (505)455-3060

STATUS: Open to the public, limited only by the space available. The meeting room accommodates approximately 200 people.

MATTERS TO BE DISCUSSED: Agenda items include a presentation from the National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH) and its contractor regarding the status of project work and a summary of recent activities, such as reviews of documents held by LANL groups and divisions and information gathering that has targeted key information gaps that remain. Activities that will be undertaken to complete work by the LAHDRA contractor team within 2009 will be described. There will also be a photographic display and brief presentation by Peter Malmgren of Chimayo, NM regarding his “Los Alamos Revisited” oral history project. A representative of the Radiation Exposure Screening & Education Program (RESEP) has also been invited to review the goals and activities of that program. Administered by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, RESEP helps individuals who live (or lived) in areas where U.S. nuclear weapons testing occurred. There will be time for public input, questions, and comments. All agenda items are subject to change as priorities dictate.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yikes! LAHDRA is still around! As I recall, they (then a CDC project) announced their study in 1992 as a "five-year project to recover and assess historical Los Alamos documents relating to possible worker and community exposure." I guess the taxpayers got a little more than what they signed up to pay for. What a joke. The contractors and subcontractors have all gotten pretty rich over this never-ending study. Just what we need - more public meetings! Keep the $$ flowing to Shonka and Chemrisk. Yep, they'll find that smoking gun, just give them a few more years!

Anonymous said...

Milking a project? Those dirty rats. We would never stoop so low!

Anonymous said...

If you follow a slightly different trajectory, you will find:

(1) Did government cover up UFOs?; 10:48.

Source: CNN
Added On July 20, 2008.

Larry talks with his panel about a possible UFO cover-up by the government.

Did UFO Cause Missile Misfires?
Missiles at Malmstrom Air Force Base In Montana Malfunctioned During Tests.

(//edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2008/07/20/lkl.ufo.long.cnn (specific))

(//edition.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/larry.king.live/ (general))

(Further information:

//myufo.com/robert_hastings, //ufohastings.com, UFOs and Nukes, Extraordinary Encounters, At Nuclear Weapons Sites, by Robert Hastings, www.ufopop.org/Special/FadedGiant.htm, and Faded Giant, by Robert Salas and James Klotz.)

(2) June 26, 2008

NNSA Labs Will Play Prominent Role in U.S. National Security

(//nnsa.energy.gov/news/2055.htm)

(3) A Future Vision for NNSA´s National Security Laboratories

"Transforming the Nuclear Weapons Complex into a National Security Enterprise"

(//nnsa.energy.gov/news/documents/Future_Vision.pdf)

(4) From The InsideDefense.com:

(4.1) NNSA Seeks Larger Role In Future National Security Apparatus

As the lead U.S. agency charged with maintenance of the nation´s nuclear weapons stockpile continues to pursue an aggressive overhaul of its Cold War-era infrastructure, the National Nuclear Security Administration is also looking to revamp its role in the overall national security apparatus.

Story length: 1,028 words.

(4.2) Pentagon Lays Out Three Obstacles To Nuclear Deterrence

An administration official said this week the United States faces three obstacles to its traditional concept of nuclear deterrence in today´s more complex security environment, as well as new hurdles with space evolving into a potential conflict zone.

Story length: 984 words.

(4.3) Pentagon To Create Strategic Analysis Group On Nuclear Issues

The Defense Department is in the midst of creating a strategic analysis group to examine a range of issues such as the effect of nuclear force levels on stability, as well as to support the work of the government´s nuclear-related initiatives, according to an administration official.

Story length: 604 words.

(4.4) Panel Members For New Nuclear Command And Control Board Named

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has blessed the appointments of a five-member executive panel of the U.S. Nuclear Command and Control System (NCCS) Comprehensive Review Committee which will lead a multiagence review tasked with revamping command and control capabilities for U.S. nuclear weapons programs, Inside the Pentagon has learned.

Story length: 1,086 words.

(4.5) DOD Nuclear Nonproliferation Work In Russia To Wrap Up In 2012

Officials from the Pentagon´s Defense Threat Reduction Agency have completed security upgrades to 16 of 24 nuclear weapon storage facilities in Russia and are on track to wrap up work on the remaining eight locations by the end of this year, a Defense Department official tells Inside the Pentagon.

Story length: 765 words.

(4.6) DOD Mulling International Pacts To Support Nuclear Security OPS

The Defense Department has begun preliminary negotiations with a handful of former Eastern Bloc nations to forge a slate of new international agreements that could provide U.S. support for nuclear counterterrorism operations being carried out by border security forces in eastern Europe, Inside the Pentagon has learned.

Story length: 948 words.

(4.7) Official: North Korea Must Disclose Other Parts Of Nuke Program

While the move by North Korea to disclose portions of its nuclear weapon development program is a positive step toward denuclearization in the region, concerns remain that the Asian nation is not being completely forthright in disclosing all elements of the program, a senior Energy Department official said this week.

Story length: 821 words.

(4.8) Mullen Says Panel Could Recommend Revived Nuclear Command

The U.S. military´s top officer acknowledged this week that an ongoing Pentagon review might mull re-establishing a command to oversee Air Force nuclear weapons, but he avoided endorsing the concept or speculating on its fate.

Story length: 663 words.

(//defensenewsstand.com/cs_newsletters.asp?NLN=PENTAGON&ACTION=RECENT)

(5) From Los Alamos Report.

(//lareport.blogspot.com)

(6) From LANLs YouTube channel.

(www.youtube.com/user/LosAlamosNationalLab)

(7) From the return of Dr. Strangelove:

(7.1) Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Google Man vs Bechtel Man
Revenge of the Nerds
If Bechtel Man got in a fight with
Google Man

Who would win?

(//dontworrygonuclear.blogspot.com/2008/06/google-man-vs-bechtel-man.html) (specific)

(7.2) //dontworrygonuclear.blogspot.com (general)

(8) The National Nuclear Security Administration, Strategic Planning Guidance, For FY 2010 - FY 2014, April 2008

(//nnsa.energy.gov/about/documents/NSPG-FY10-14_04-08-08.pdf)

(The End.)

Frank Young said...

Do LANL's drug tests screen for Salvia divinorum?

Anonymous said...

7/22/08 9:14 PM, why not just email Frank Young and have him start a fresh post?

Anonymous said...

7/22 9:14 pm: "(The End.)"

We can only hope. I, myself, am not optimistic. Please take 7/23 7:07 pm's advice.

Anonymous said...

My name is Robert Hastings and I am responding to an earlier post re: my recent appearance on Larry King. I research nuclear weapons-related UFO activity, utilizing declassified U.S. government documents and the testimony of former/retired U.S. military personnel. A few of my articles may be found at my website, ufohastings.com

An excerpt from my new book, UFOs and Nukes, also available at my website, follows:

© Copyright 2008 Robert L. Hastings. All Rights Reserved.

Chapter 2: Playing with Fire

In the classic 1951 science fiction film, The Day the Earth Stood Still, an alien arrives in a flying saucer to chastise mankind for its warlike ways, and to warn of the inherent folly in possessing nuclear weapons. Although the movie-going public did not know it at the time, in reality, the U.S. government already possessed an alarming body of evidence that someone or something piloting vastly-superior, disc-shaped craft was already scrutinizing our nuclear weapons installations on an ongoing basis. Not surprisingly, this ominous development was immediately classified by the military, at a high level, and decades would pass before some of the information about these incidents was finally released to the public.

The belated official acknowledgement of the UFO-Nukes Connection finally occurred when various USAF, FBI, and CIA documents were made available to the public in the 1970s, either through routine declassification, or via the new federal law, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Although enacted in 1966, the FOIA was amended in 1974, so that a broader use of it was possible. Basically, this statute required the U.S. government to open its files—on a limited basis—to members of the public who sought information about specific classified incidents and activities. If it were not for this unprecedented legislation, it is all but certain that many nuclear weapons-related UFO sightings would have remained secret. Indeed, testimony provided by former U.S. military personnel suggests that the released information represents only a small part of the overall documentation and that many other such sightings continue to be classified.

Regardless, the U.S. Air Force and FBI documents which have been successfully declassified now reveal that, at least as early as December 1948, UFOs were repeatedly observed near the Los Alamos National Laboratory, in northern New Mexico. Some three years earlier, scientists at the lab had developed and tested the first atomic bomb, as well as the two later dropped on Japan. Multiple UFO sightings were also reported at Sandia Base, in nearby Albuquerque, where subsequent atomic weapons were engineered and assembled. Other documents from late 1940s and early 1950s, also confirm the presence of these mysterious craft near all three of U.S. government’s fissile materials production sites: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Tennessee, the Hanford Military Reservation, in Washington state, and the Savannah River Plant, in South Carolina.

For whatever reason, those piloting the UFOs—whose origin and intentions were unknown—appeared to be very interested in monitoring facilities associated with America’s atomic weapons program. Needless to say, the U.S. military, as well as the FBI and the CIA were extremely concerned by this sudden, unforeseen turn of events. As noted in this book’s introduction, an FBI memorandum, dated January 31, 1949, and sent to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, reports that civilian and military intelligence groups had recently met to discuss “the matter of ‘Unidentified Aircraft’ or ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena’ otherwise known as ‘Flying Discs’, ‘Flying Saucers’, and ‘Balls of Fire’. This matter is considered top secret by Intelligence Officers of both the Army and the Air Forces.” The last sentence was underlined, presumably for emphasis.

The reason this subject was assigned Top Secret status soon becomes clear as the memo continues: “During the past two months various sightings of unexplained phenomena have been reported in the vicinity of the AEC (Atomic Energy Commission) Installation at Los Alamos, New Mexico, where these phenomena now appear to be concentrated. During December 1948...sightings of unexplained phenomena were made near Los Alamos by Special Agents of the [U.S. Air Force’s] Office of Special Investigation, Airline pilots, Military pilots, Los Alamos Security Inspectors, and private citizens. On January 6, 1949, another similar object was sighted in the same area.”

But this flurry of aerial activity was only a prelude. Another FBI memorandum, dated August 23, 1950, discusses these, and other UFO sightings near atomic weapons sites which had occurred with disturbing regularity during the previous twenty months. Directed to FBI Assistant Director D. M. Ladd, and titled “SUMMARY OF AERIAL PHENOMENA IN NEW MEXICO”, the memo states, “Observations of aerial phenomena occurring within the vicinity of sensitive installations have been recorded by the Air Force since December 1948. The phenomena have been classified into 3 general types which are identified as follows:

1. Green fireballs, objects moving at high speed in shapes resembling half moons, circles and discs emitting green light.

2. Discs, round flat shaped objects or phenomena moving at fast velocity and emitting a brilliant white light or reflected light.

3. Meteors, aerial phenomena resembling meteoric material moving at high velocity and varying in color.

The memo continues, “…Since 1948, approximately 150 observations of aerial phenomena referred to above have been recorded in the vicinity of installations in New Mexico. A number of observations have been reported by different reliable individuals at approximately the same time.”

In response to these unsettling developments, the Air Force had earlier approached Dr. Lincoln La Paz, director of the Institute of Meteoritics at the University of New Mexico, and persuaded him to undertake a classified study of these aerial phenomena, in particular the green fireballs. At the time, La Paz was widely regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on meteors and meteorites.

A short time later, on December 12, 1948, Dr. La Paz had his own green fireball sighting as the object “passed almost centrally across the Los Alamos reservation.” Eight days later, another fireball essentially repeated the feat, prompting one witness, an Atomic Energy Commission security agent, to muse, “It might damage some of our atomic installations eventually, if it is not a natural thing [but rather] man-controlled.”

The FBI memo cited above summarizes the professor’s findings: “[La Paz] concluded, as a result of his investigation, that approximately half of the phenomena recorded were of meteoric origin. The other phenomena commonly referred to as green fireballs or discs he believed to be U.S. guided missiles being tested in the neighborhood of the installations. La Paz pointed out that if he were wrong...a systematic investigation of the observations should be made immediately. La Paz pointed out that missiles moving with the velocities of the order of those found for the green fireballs and discs could travel from the Ural region of the [Soviet Union] to New Mexico in less than 15 minutes. He suggested that the observations might be of guided missiles launched from bases in the Urals.”

The memo continues, “On the basis of the investigations made by Dr. La Paz and the Air Force, it was concluded that the occurrence of the unexplained phenomena in the vicinity of sensitive installations was a cause [for] concern.”

This FBI memorandum is important because it reveals three startling conclusions by those investigating the unexplained aerial phenomena near Los Alamos and related facilities:

First, of the approximately 150 sighting reports by military and scientific personnel at nuclear weapons installations in New Mexico, as well as civilians in the region, fully half of the objects observed were judged not to be meteors. Second, the non-meteoric and, therefore, almost certainly manufactured objects were reported to be moving at fantastic velocities—as high as 27,000 mph—thereby excluding the possibility that they were conventional aircraft or rockets. (Such velocities were first approached—but not matched—by NASA rockets in the late-1960s, during the Apollo missions to the Moon.) Third, the unknown objects were considered by government investigators to be a cause for concern, thereby minimizing the likelihood that they were highly-advanced U. S. secret weapons.

Some years later, after many more green fireball sightings, La Paz openly discussed his conclusions about them. A January 22, 1953 article in The New Mexican, stated: “A fireball expert said today Russia may be scouting the United States and other parts of the world with strange new guided missiles. Dr. Lincoln La Paz said a good many shreds of evidence point to green fireballs sighted throughout the world being a type of missile—possibly of Soviet make.”

Whatever La Paz’ assessment of the fireballs may have been, in the decades since, no official investigation or independent research has ever discovered credible evidence to confirm that the objects were of Soviet origin. Similarly, no verifiable information has surfaced to indicate that the sightings were of experimental American aircraft or rockets.

But the green fireballs were only half of the story. In one classified report to the Air Force, La Paz noted that in addition to those sightings, “the number of so-called ‘flying saucer’ incidents in this region has attained an all-time high.” While the sighting reports came in from all over northern New Mexico and west Texas, the saucers were frequently sighted around the Sandia Base atomic weapons installation, as well as the weapons laboratory at Los Alamos, as noted in the previously-cited January 31, 1949 FBI memorandum.

In short, during the late-1940s and early-1950s, someone seemed to be intent on conducting repeated, unauthorized over-flights of the U.S. government’s top secret atomic weapons sites. Reliable eyewitness accounts indicated that the aerial craft involved in these incursions were revolutionary in design—usually disc-shaped, but sometimes reported as spherical, cigar-shaped, or diamond-shaped—and vastly superior in performance to any known jet aircraft or rocket.

An important, if brief, public examination of this situation was provided in June 1952, when LOOK magazine published an article titled, “Hunt For The Flying Saucer”. Among other revelations, the exposé quoted Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, chief of the U.S. Air Force’s UFO investigations group, Project Blue Book, as saying that many of the sighting reports had originated at one atomic weapons-related site or another, not only in New Mexico, but all around the country. Given its investigative mission, Blue Book had been privy to classified intelligence summaries relating to these still-unsolved incidents at “sensitive” installations. According to LOOK, the “ominous correlation” between such sightings and these top secret facilities had been brought to the attention of high ranking Air Force officers, prompting a meeting at the Pentagon to discuss the apparent UFO-nukes link.

Later, after resigning from the Air Force, Ruppelt wrote the 1956 book, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, in which he expanded upon his earlier comments to LOOK, noting, “UFOs were seen more frequently around areas vital to the defense of the United States. The Los Alamos-Albuquerque area, Oak Ridge, and White Sands Proving Ground rated high.”

END OF EXCERPT

Responses to all of this may be posted here, of course, or be directed to me via my website, ufohastings.com

BTW: I am aware of apparent UFO activity in the vicinity of Los Alamos as recently as July 1996.

Thanks for your attention.

--Robert Hastings