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| Biological Tests Off Key West
| Swedishoo from Chemtrail and Company III |
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| Biological Tests Off Key West |
 Posted 4-23-2002 03:19 |
Posted on Sun, Apr. 21, 2002
Army Tests Have Keys in Uproar
BY JENNIFER BABSON
jbabson@herald.com
BOCA CHICA KEY - They worry about allergies and immune system difficulties and ailments yet to be diagnosed.
A few bolted for points north; others shuttered windows and stayed inside.
Word that the U.S. Army was conducting biological and chemical detection tests off Key West last week -- using a crop duster to spray what it says are benign substances over a small swath of the Gulf -- set alarm bells ringing for some on this island chain.
''Monday I had my house closed up all day and the air conditioner running because I was concerned and I couldn't find out what was going on. The newspaper didn't say exactly where they were dropping,'' said Bill Eardley, a retiree who lives on Sugarloaf Key. ``If I had known in advance, and I was concerned, I would have jumped in a car or plane and gotten out of here.''
Using a small plane to release egg white powder, clay dust, ethanol, irradiated vegetable spores and a chemical compound commonly found in drugstore cosmetics -- all designed to simulate more ominous compounds -- Army and Environmental Protection Agency researchers were trying to determine whether civilian Doppler and drug interdiction radars can tell the difference between a raincloud carrying moisture and a cloud carrying something more ominous.
The experiments -- concluded last week -- were deemed a success, though the Army still says it needs to conduct an additional $15 million to $20 million worth of testing in the U.S.
Researchers are hoping software could be attached to civilian radars like those used by the National Weather Service to alert military and civilian authorities to unusual chemical or biological events or attacks.
But some locals greeted the tests themselves as a kind of preliminary attack.
''The weirdest thing I heard from a couple of people was that spores can travel 1,300 miles. They said that there was a spore release in Texas that arrived in Florida,'' said Mickey Morales, an Army spokesman who was on hand for the drill. ``Some people have told me they have left the area or they have recommended to people that they leave the area.''
It probably didn't help matters locally that the Pentagon went public with details of the tests less than a week before they began.
AN EXPOSE
A few days earlier, a free Key West newspaper carried a front-page exposé on suspicious, Keys-photographed contrails that sources -- including an unnamed wife of a Navy service member -- insisted were actually ''chemtrails'' that could be the results of secret military experiments.
Some worried residents contacted the Army, the media, municipal officials, the EPA and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson with their concerns -- prompting Nelson's Washington office to inquire about the nature of the tests, Morales said.
Last week, it was Morales' job to make the words ''military experiment'' seem palatable.
It was a challenge in some quarters.
''A lot of people have claimed they have read X, Y, and Z on the Internet,'' Morales said. ``Somebody called me on his cell phone and wanted to know if it was OK to go boating.''
Liz Holloway's neighbor on Sugarloaf Key ''evacuated'' to a place north of the Everglades when she heard the tests were imminent.
''She has chronic fatigue syndrome and thought it might exacerbate her condition,'' Holloway said. ``Am I worried I am going to get sick 15 years from now? Maybe. But who knows?''
LITTLE NOTICE
Holloway said she would have liked more advanced notice.
''My major problem was that I read the stuff in the newspaper and I called the agencies that were supposed to be responsible for the activity, and even their public information officers had no clue what was going on,'' she said. ``I don't begrudge them that they have to do this kind of thing, but at least give us a choice to not be here.''
Some in the Pentagon considered forgoing the public information campaign altogether, said Col. Stephen V. Reeves, program executive officer for the Chemical and Biological Defense program. Reeves was in the Keys Thursday to monitor testing.
'I received [a recommendation] from counsel, `Maybe we should just go ahead,' '' Reeves said. ``I decided not to do that. If we had been quiet about it and somebody had suddenly discovered it, it would have confirmed everybody's worst suspicions.''
The decision on how to publicize the tests apparently went all the way up the chain of command to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's office.
And so, last week, a steady parade of Keys residents was escorted to a blue tent pitched next to a government RV across U.S. 1 from the entrance to the Boca Chica Naval Air Field.
In an effort to allay local fears, Morales made a run to a local grocery, picking up an angelfood cake, Visine eyedrops and a mud mask of the kind used to combat acne -- all of which he said contained test ingredients.
''You can go to the supermarket and buy this stuff basically, except for the dead spores,'' he explained.
NOT SATISFIED
The explanation didn't entirely satisfy Debora Edholm, the wife of local Navy employee who says she has seen and photographed hundreds of ''chemtrails'' of dubious origin.
Thursday afternoon, Edholm and a friend were escorted down a winding and wooded path, past a fence that's usually chained and beyond the sharp cries of a mother hawk to the blue tent where researchers were communicating by radio with pilots and radar operators involved in the testing.
Next to radio consoles, maps and computer equipment were jars containing examples of the compounds the Army dispersed in the tests.
''I have done a lot of research on what vitamin supplements to take to combat the chemtrails. I get exhausted,'' Edholm explained. ``A lot of people down here are sick, you know. A lot of people think they are doing this to take out weak people. It's population control.''
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/community/states/florida/counties/monroe_county/cities_neighborhoods/florida_keys/3106371.htm | |
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