He gathered a stack of books and was out the door.
I was about to leave when a man I had seen at another table across the room approached.
He stuck out his hand. “I’m Dr. Evan Daniels, a professor here, and I don’t mean to intrude but I couldn’t help overhearing bits and pieces of your conversation. I hope you don’t put too much stock in what my elderly colleague was telling you.”
“Excuse me!”
“Dr. Katz. He’s known around campus as Konspiracy Katz. He’s been trying for years to get someone to listen to his wild theories about a covert government conspiracy which is filling our skies with poison.”
I was immediately defensive. “Seems to me he had some pretty convincing evidence.”
“What evidence?The thin, wispy clouds left behind by high-flying aircraft are known as contrails, short for condensation trails. These clouds are left behind as a result of the warm, moist exhaust of the plane's engines meeting the extremely cold temperatures of the upper atmosphere. It's a similar principle behind why you can see your breath on cold mornings. Contrails appear and disappear based on the moisture content of the air through which the plane is passing. If the upper atmospheric air is moist, the plane will leave a contrail which could last hours and spread out into a deck of cirrus. If the air is extremely dry, it might not leave a contrail at all.
“The year 1958 was a watershed year in commercial aviation. Boeing introduced the 707 and Douglas the DC-8, while a year later Convair debuted the 880. The turbojet engines on these airliners thrived in the cold thin air found above 30,000 feet and they were routinely operated in these flight levels. In the 1960′s, contrails became commonplace across the United States, especially along designated jet airways between ground based navigation aids. When the temperature is low enough and the humidity high enough, the 1,500 gallons of water produced every hour by these jetliners was transformed into four cirrus clouds. When the humidity is very high, the contrails will remain for hours. In moderate humidity the contrails may last only a few seconds as the ice is absorbed into the atmosphere in a process known as sublimation. If the humidity is very low, the water vapor will immediately be absorbed into the atmosphere leaving the sky clear of contrails. Although the engines are producing numerous chemical compounds from the combustion of jet fuel, the only one which can be seen at altitude is H20 in a frozen state. It’s all really quite simple.”
“Really! What about these?” I asked, showing him the photos on my phone.
“Ahhh, yes! The infamous storage containers for the deadly chemicals. Those pictures are of ballast tanks used in flight testing of new airliner designs. The tubes simply allow water to be pumped from tank to tank, simulating passenger motion in the cabin for the aircraft test.”
He seemed to have an answer for everything.
“Before you go spreading Katz’s daydreams, consider this. Both the Air Force and the Environmental Protection Agency have stated unequivocally there are no chemical or biological agents being deliberately released into our atmosphere.”
“Well, if a government agency says so, it must be true,” I replied with a hint of sarcasm. “Thanks for the tip.”
As I walked back to my car, I was more confused than ever.
Everything Jack Carson, the Professor and Frank Katz had told me, while wildly speculative, had the ring of truth, but so did Evan Daniels’ rebuttal.
Was I really dealing with a government conspiracy or was the whole thing just a paranoid delusion?
I knew I had to learn more before I could let it go.
CHAPTER 6
I hadn’t heard from Jack Carson for a few days, so I figured I should give him a call and tell him what I’d learned at UMKC, from both Frank Katz and Evan Daniels. He deserved to hear both sides of the story.
I tried his office at the Star first and was told he was not available. Next, I tried his cell phone.
“This is Jack Carson. Who is this?”
The reception was poor and I could hear traffic in the background. “Walt Williams. Where in the world are you, Jack?”
“Highway 54, heading back to Kansas City. I’ve been to the Pinal Air Park in Marana, Arizona, the place where Falcon took the photos which were in his drawer. You wouldn’t believe what I found.”
“Try me.”
“Before I left, I dug up as much as I could about the base. Turns out, it was owned and operated by the CIA during the Cold War and Vietnam, and served as a base of operations for many of their covert missions. Then it was sold to the Evergreen Company. The cover story was the airbase was to be kind of a graveyard for jets which were to be scrapped and it’s true, there are hundreds of them waiting to be dismantled for parts. Evergreen also has a few tankers which the Forest Service uses to fight fires.”
“Sounds pretty benign to me.”
“That’s what I thought until I got into the place. I was free to roam around and look at the derelicts, but then I spotted a gravel road which led to another more remote part of the facility. I finally came to a guard hut out in the middle of nowhere. The road was blocked by a barrier. A guard appeared out of the hut. I figured I must have stumbled onto some military installation, but the guard wasn’t wearing a regular uniform. He was dressed in all-black para-military garb and carried an M4/M, M16 rifle. He told me in no uncertain terms this was a secured area, that I should turn around and never come back.”
“I assume you did just that.”
“You bet I did, but before I left, I saw the array of planes Falcon photographed in the distance.”
“So did you get more photos?”
“Not then. The guard made me vamoose, so I got out of there and found a private aviation company and rented a helicopter for a couple of hours. The pilot didn’t want to fly over the airbase, but finally relented when I opened my wallet. It cost me a bundle, but it was worth it.”
“What did you see?”
“When we got over the part of the base which was restricted, I spotted a building that was built into the ground. The flat roof was camouflaged to look exactly like the surrounding desert, so it was very difficult to spot. I had just snapped a couple of photos when a black helicopter which looked exactly like the photos of the ones operated by the CIA was on our tail. The moment the pilot spotted it, he turned and high-tailed it out of there. The black chopper followed us until we were far away from the base.”
“I’ll bet that was pretty intense.”
“No kidding! Anyway, after we landed, I decided to ----. Hey! What the hell! Oh shit!”
Then the line went dead.
I tried to call him back but the call went straight to voice mail.
I sat for several minutes trying to decide what to do. Since I really had no idea where he was, I had just decided there wasn’t much I could do when the phone rang.
“Walt, it’s Jack again.”
“Are you all right?”
“I guess so. Just shaken up. I’m out here in the middle of nowhere and some asshole runs me off the road. I was pretty lucky I guess. There was a real steep drop-off which went down to a dry creek bed. I was able to get stopped before I went over, otherwise, it would have been a long, bumpy ride to the bottom.”
“I don’t suppose the offending vehicle was a black SUV?”
“How did you ---? Oh, crap! Surely you’re not thinking someone from the Air Base was trying to take me out.”
“Think about it. You confronted an armed guard, then flew over restricted air space, and after that I’m guessing you stopped and tried to talk to people who lived near the base. Am I right?”
“Sure did, but nobody was talking. As soon as I mentioned the Air Base, people started slamming doors. Wow! I don’t know why I’m surprised. Look what they did to Falcon.”
“Allegedly did to Falcon.”
“Yeah, right! Anything happening on your end?”
Carson got back on the road and while he was making his way back to Kansas City, I filled him in on my conversations with
the Professor and Frank Katz as well as the rebuttal from Evan Daniels.
Carson was as excited as a kid on Christmas morning. “With everything we’ve got, how can anyone honestly deny the existence and purpose of the chemtrails?”
“What we have are a lot of opinions and no empirical evidence to back them up. I’m betting at this point anything you bring up can be explained away by someone like Evan Daniels. Without proof, your conspiracy theory is no more believable than sightings of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster.”
“Maybe so,” he replied, “but I think I’m on to something big and I’m going to keep digging.”
“Dig away, but just in case you’re right, watch your back.”
After hanging up from Carson, I was torn.
I knew I definitely wanted to know more about the wispy trails in the sky, but I also remembered the promise I’d made to Maggie. It wasn’t a stretch to believe that if Carson was right, the SUV running him off the road probably wasn’t an accident. The last thing in the world I wanted was to be the target of some black ops assassin.
I was pondering how I could get more information without drawing attention or ruffling feathers when it hit me --- Arnold Goldblume and Nicholas Thatcher.
I had met them several years earlier when I had been part of a Homeland Security team investigating people with terrorist ties in Kansas City.
Goldblume and Thatcher were part of a group known as the ‘Watchers.’ Their stated purpose was to be a watch dog organization keeping an eye on government shenanigans. They got Homeland Security’s attention by sending emails which said things like, “I dropped my bomb pop and got it dirty.” Since the emails contained the words ‘bomb’ and ‘dirty’, a covert program run by the government called Echelon, picked them up as terrorist threats for the deployment of a ‘dirty bomb.’
Of course they weren’t terrorists and Homeland Security agents had egg on their collective faces once it was discovered they were monitoring private citizen’s emails.
The two met when they were part of a class action suit against the pharmaceutical company which made the drug Vioxx which had claimed the lives of both of their fathers.
The loss of their loved ones from a drug approved by the FDA fueled a suspicion of pretty much everything the government was up to, and the huge settlement they received funded their ongoing surveillance operations.
I figured if anyone had the inside skinny on the chemtrails, it would be them, and I could quiz them without worrying about reprisals from government assassins.
By the time our investigation was over, I had become friends with Arnie and Nick and an unofficial member of the Watchers, so when I called they were more than happy to have me drop by their office on Warwick Boulevard, a stone’s throw away from the J.C. Nichols fountain where Arnie often held rallies to inform the public of the government’s covert operations.
“Walt! So good to see you again,” Arnie said as I walked in the door. “Nick, get your ass in here. We’ve got company.”
When Nick joined his partner, I couldn’t help wondering again at the remarkable resemblance they had to Simon and Garfunkle. Arnie was small and balding while Nick was gawky and gangly with a shock of unruly blonde hair.
They both gave me a hug and motioned me to a chair.
“So, to what do we owe the pleasure of your company?” Arnie asked.
“How much time to you have?” I replied.
“As much as you need, old friend. What’s on your mind?”
I took a deep breath and told them everything. “So what’s your take on all that?” I asked wrapping up my story. “Is there any truth to it or is this just another Elvis sighting?”
Nick and Arnie exchanged glances. “We’ve been preaching this for years, but nobody seems to give a damn. The trails in the sky have been there for so many years they’re just a normal part of what most everyone has seen for their entire lives. They’re so white and soft and fluffy. How could they possibly be dangerous? But make no mistake, those planes have been spewing poison into our atmosphere for years and now we’re paying the price.”
“Are you talking about the change in the weather patterns?”
“Absolutely! The droughts, the floods, the variations in the path of the jet stream --- they’re all directly related to Project Cloverleaf and the bombardment of the ionosphere by HAARP, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We’re just now starting to feel the cumulative effects of the chemicals they’ve been spraying for years.”
“What effects, exactly?”
Nick pulled a thick file folder from a cabinet. “It all started with the threat of global warming. The idea was to spray aluminum oxide into the atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays and reduce the steady rise in the earth’s temperature.
“Once the technology for spraying the chemicals was perfected, the government think tank came up with the program we know as Operation Cloverleaf where ethylene dibromide, EDB, and barium are dispersed and then zapped by HAARP to make a defensive barrier to combat the threat of ICBM missiles.”
Nick thumbed through some papers in the folder. “According to the Environmental Protection Agency, and I quote, ‘Ethylene dibromide is a carcinogen and must be handled with extreme caution. A seven-page summary of this pesticide’s extreme toxicity notes EDB may also damage the reproductive system. Exposure can irritate the lungs and repeated exposure may cause bronchitis, development of cough, and shortness of breath.’”
“But Evan Daniels said the EPA categorically denied chemicals are being sprayed into the atmosphere,” I protested. “Surely the government wouldn’t tell a bold-faced lie.”
Arnie smiled ruefully. “You mean the same government that told us Agent Orange could defoliate a tropical jungle overnight but was harmless to humans? Just ask any Vietnam War vet how that turned out. The same government that told us nuclear power plants posed no danger? Ask anyone that lived within fifty miles of Chernobyl.”
He wiped a tear from his eye. “The same government that told my father Vioxx was safe? Well, that was a lie, too, and now he’s gone.”
Nick quickly changed the subject. “Over the past decade, independent testing of the chemical fallout of atmospheric spraying around the country has shown a dangerous and extremely poisonous brew which includes nano sized aluminum particles, mercury, radioactive thorium, cadmium, chromium, nickel, desiccated blood, which may or may not contain a myriad of specific viruses, barium, mold spores, yellow fungal mycotoxins, ethylene dibromide, and other unidentified organic materials.”
“Holy crap!”
“No kidding, and now all the stuff which has been sprayed over the years has accumulated on the ground, in the plants we eat and in all living organisms, and it’s taking its toll.”
“Have you heard about the disappearance of the bees?” Arnie asked, regaining his composure.
I nodded. I had read something about it in the Kansas City Star.
“It is estimated that one third of everything we eat was pollinated by bees, and now we discover the number of the little critters is declining by thirty percent in some areas and as much as eighty percent in other areas. Can you imagine the devastating effect this will have on our food supply in the future?
“Then there’s the bats. In the past four years more than a million bats have died from a disease called white-nose syndrome.
“Ever heard of chronic wasting disease? It’s a disease of the nervous system in deer and elk which results in distinctive brain lesions and death. It’s estimated that already 25% of the herds are affected.
“There are massive fish kills all over the world and whales and dolphins are washing up on our shores in increasing numbers.
“Why, all of a sudden are these things happening? It’s the cumulative effect of years of spraying poison in our skies that’s finally taking its toll.”
“Why in the world isn’t something being done about this?” I asked in disbelief.
“Oh, someone is,” Arnie replied. “Monsant
o! They have applied for and been granted a patent to produce aluminum resistant seeds. At some point in time, the earth will simply be too toxic for natural plants to grow, so where will we turn? To Monsanto, of course, to save the day and provide seeds which will grow in toxic soil. Can anyone smell profit here?”
“Monsanto isn’t the only company getting their foot in the door with the chemtrails,” Nick added. “The huge pharmaceutical companies are lobbying for aerial disbursement of vaccines. The day may come when you’ll be medicated whether you like it or not.”
“So what’s the answer to all this?” I asked, bewildered. “Why aren’t the American people up in arms?”
The answer Arnie gave me was the same as the one given by the Professor --- apathy, frustration and complacency.
“If you gave this information to the average guy on the street, his response would probably be, ‘Maybe it’s true, maybe it isn’t, but even if it is true, what could I do about it?’ We’ve all been conditioned to believe government is just too big to fight.”
“You still haven’t given me an answer,” I replied.
“Maybe what we need is another Edward Snowden,” Nick said. “Some call him a traitor, some call him a hero and a patriot, but however you feel about him, we really didn’t know how far the NSA was reaching into our private lives until he blew the whistle.”
“Yeah, and look how that turned out for him.”
“Yes, there is that, but nothing’s going to happen with these chemtrails until someone with first-hand knowledge comes forward to expose what’s going on.”
I silently wondered if Jack Carson would be that person.
CHAPTER 7
After my meeting with Arnie and Nick, I was totally confused.
What they had to say, added to what I had learned from the Professor, Frank Katz and Jack Carson, pointed to a covert government operation which affected every American.
I went to the Internet to get more information on the subject and discovered there were HUNDREDS of sites supporting the notion that the chemtrails were part of an ongoing government program.
The Chemtrail Conspiracy Set (Lady Justice Book 22) Page 4