European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - June 17, 1980, Darmstadt, Hesse Tut printout say has been connected the top officials in he penal hunrhtrft1" in Lalk direct launch and bomber Crews. Linn?,"8 rep a c electronic Between the while Ink option pcs alerting network to All it is Over such a yellow Telephone that the Sac com Mander in chief can expect to receive an order passed Down from the president to launch an american Retalia tory attack. That is. If the Sac command Post has t already been demolished in that Case both the president and surviving Sac officers would presumably be trans mitting orders from their separate flying command posts White painted Boeing 747 s kept constantly ready for Takeoff at Andrews air Force base near Washington and at Offutt air Force base Sac s command Post. To make sure that some Sac official will always be at the other end of the yellow Telephone Sac keeps a succession of looking Glass communications planes Fly ing random eight hour shifts Over the Central untied states. One Little known aspect of the system is the Sac senior controller s it is a simple electronic switching device thai allows him to Patch he yellow phone into the red phone. Once the Patch at least n theory this system would allow the presi Dent to retain absolute control Over the release of nuclear weapons. He could if he chose require that the firing codes fur nuclear weapons consist of two sols of digits one to be transmuted by the president Ond anole or by Sac head quarters. In the past there have been indications that such a split coding system is already in effect. Sac officials at Omaha would not Lalk about that. On june 3, the supposed threat evaporated Eien As the Sac bomber pilots in places like Loring air Force base. Me., were running toward their planes. Someone in the Sac command Center presumably the Wise officer figured out that the warning from Norad was based on faulty information of some sort. Within 15 seconds one of the Delia learn members tapped out the appropriate instructions on the computer console to get direct readings from the country s array of missile warning sensors. What the computer reported Back is that none of the sensors had noticed anything wrong. We get our tactical information from Norad said Mai. Jim Plait the briefer. This is part of an old division of labor within the air Force that Norad has the radars and satellites and assimilates the information to Issue Battle alerts. Then it is up to Sac to keep its Force from being wiped out on the ground. As warning times have shortened succeeding secretaries of defense have found ii Wise to bypass Norad with some of the warning signals making sure that ii As Well As Sac and the Pentagon s command Post have the same sensor data simultaneously. So it was possible within seconds for Delia team to query the huge pave paws radar installation in Massachusetts and find that it had found no sign of a submarine launched missile rising off the East coast. Pave paws which sends 1,000 pulsing radar beams in a 240-Degrce arc became operational under Sac s direct management in Early 1980. Anole or pave paws installation is still being us std in California. Until it goes on line later this year the air Force relies on an older radar network to select sub launches known As the Fss-7, or Fuzy 7." system. The Delta team May also have had the ability to by pass Norad and obtain direct readings from the radar systems in Greenland Alaska. England and several other classified Sites that Are assigned to detect launches of missiles from thu rata a big missile base in the soviet Union As Well As All other russian ground based Sites some of Silas used to be in Iran other reportedly remain in Turkey and Cyprus still other sensor readings were no doubt available from America s spy satellites which detect the Booster name of any missile and report the data to Norad. As it happens it was the Delta team which acted first within 15 seconds to figure out that some compute somewhere was wrong. If the men on duty no women have Cyl been As signed to emergency action teams had been More opaque that morning their counterparts at Norad or at the Pentagon command Post could have solved the computer glitch by taking the same set of actions. The Alert ended with a Telephone conference Call be tween a Sac general presumably one of those roused by the senior controller and the ranking duty officers at Norad and the Pentagon command Posl. Using along established procedure they Voied Ihal in arc was no real threat All along. For Delta my. It was Back to die old routine. There were no secret meetings with the president Obook offers no medals. Like the four other Sac emergency action teams Delta team works two Day shifts then two afternoon shifts then two Midnight shifts. Then follows four Days of free Lime plus As a Chance for any pilots among the teams to keep up on their Hying time then Delta Tea starts in the rotation again. The five team members work together even though the six others on a shift the communications group the display operator the logistics people need no always be in the command Post together. Anyone on an emergency action team must bring a Brown bag lunch. There in t time to go to the cafeteria. If someone has use the bathroom it is a few feel behind the senior controller s desk and in arc is an alarm Bellin the bathroom to summon him. The Job of senior Sac controller lasts Only 12 to 1� months. If the senior con roller survives it he can Hope to be assigned to one of Sac s More prestige Laden jobs for colonels such As commanding a Wing of b-52s. Stull 9lins and marshmallows a in ibid to 9 ibid u Isif provided by the manufacturer arc not completely explicit. Bused on certain assumptions about the device it was concluded that under some conditions the deleted could cause partial by paralysing the subject yet even with the deletions the documents offer tantalizing hints of investigations by the Agency of proposals that Range from the Edge of possibility Toile deadly real. There were several references to studies of a Jet propelled Medicine Ball which presumably refers to a Mur Der weapon that has been used by soviet agents to kill several anti communist dissidents in Western Europe. One Case involved Corgi Markov a bulgarian dissident who died in London two years ago after having been struck by a poisoned Pellet shot from an umbrella tip. The hollow Pellet smaller than a by shot was filled with a deadly Poison derived from the Castor bean. The timing of the Cia document written years before the dissident s murder raises the possibility that scientists at the Agency May have invented the weapon Only to have it pirated by their soviet counterparts. One memorandum dated october 1971, stated that electric current appears to be a promising Means of delivering a wide spectrum of incapacitation to a single individual or a few individuals. Application of the agent can be Well controlled and is reasonably Safe under appropriate a subsequent report stated the deleted system is the Only electrical incapacitation unit for which the authors of this report have detailed information. The concept May be summarized As a self contained hand car ried Battery powered unit design to project one or two insulated delivery wires at High velocity to a subject who May be at ranges of up to 100 meters delivery wires May terminate at electrodes thai May be Bare wire net Dart Barb Burr adhesive or some other form current is passed through the subject in Brief .1 Joule to 3 Joule pulses at about 30,000 volts repeated 2 to 20 times per data Are presented from tests involving a Small num Ber of experimental animals and human volunteers the report continued. During these tests incapacitation Peri ods were limited to four seconds or less. The concept appears basically sound provided that a reliable wire delivery and electrode emplacement system can be proved satisfactory under Field conditions.1 other projects mentioned were a study of incapacitating darts and a Flash blindness incapacitate or from an extremely Bright Light source similar to a British device used to end a number of hostage sieges. For projects involving a hand held calibrated Blackjack Plas tic cocoons Taffy pellets and marshmallow barrages Many details were deleted. As in papers obtained through previous Freedom of information requests there were references to project often which was started in 1968 jointly with the army chemical corps at Edgewood md., to study the effects of rare drugs. The current Balch of documents however deals less with the drugs themselves than with the Means of delivering them into the body. As was described in the earlier documents the Intelli gence Agency spent an enormous amount of time an resources investigating exotic drugs that were said to influence behaviour. One memorandum of March 1973stated that while some drugs were effective for altering moods and behaviour the techniques Are not As efficacious or finely tuned As the popular Media leads one psychopharmacology or control by altering brain chemistry is for the most part Safe and effective outdoes not really afford mind control the memorandum said adding anal the notion of a peace Pill truth Pillor smart Pill is still in the wish the investigation of Bio plasma Fields extremely weak electrical forces surrounding both inanimate objects and humans was another source of scientific preoccupation according to the documents. While the exact aim is somewhat unclear the Intelli gence apparently sought to determine if reports of extra sensory perception mind Reading and the like were True. The end result could have been both espionage and coun Ter espionage if the thoughts of an enemy agent could be interest in this area is on the upswing again in Large part due to current popularity in Lay literature of biofeedback technology one document said. It added that the popular notion was that a person would have at his Beck and Call telepathic clairvoyant psycho Kinlic or other unusual capabilities. Thus far no evidence other than testimonials has surfaced which substantiates incs claims. Self hypnosis sleep learning and electro sleep techniques also were tried and apparently discarded As being worthless. Some involved complicated gadgets that would induce sleep while others would Leach foreign languages. None gained the Agency s approx yet one american scientist who travelled to the soviet Union to learn More about a technique in wide use there and in other parts of cur pc sounded note of caution. A would nol be difficult to dismiss Ceciro sleep Asano Lucr form of quackery and indeed this has been done in the United states however i must accent the fact that All the scientists surgeons and psychiatrists to whom i addressed myself seem honestly convinced of the routine use of this form of therapy. It is inconceivable to me that they Are All the Agency considered then apparently discarded re search into a theory of communication Between plants and humans. One of the few names remaining in the documents is that of Clave Backster. A former Cia poly graph specialist and a proponent of the idea that such human feelings As fear and pleasure Are reflected in the electrical Field of plants. Backster a former new yorker who now lives in san Diego said the idea that the Cia was interested in his work was news to he said he hoped that the Agency would stay out of the Field since it might involve the misuse of plants As innocent sensors in offices an Homes. In addition to plants the Agency spent an enor Mous amount of research on animals. One project sought to duplicate the sonar systems of electric fish found in South America and Africa. The idea eventually discarded was to find a better method of detecting submarines and scuba divers. Another project apparently attempted to teach seals oilers dogs cats and other animals to carry explosives or microphones to places humans could not reach. Oilers seemed to be a favorite since they were at Home on land or water were extremely intelligent and were very dexterous. The experiments appear to have ended inconclusive 17, 1980 the stars and stripes Page 15
