The Body Electric
by Robert O. Becker
Fifteen
Maxwell's Silver Hammer(part 2)
Conflicting Standards
The establishment Attitude toward EMR's health effects derives largely
from the work of Herman Schwan. An engineer who had been a professor at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Biophysics in Germany during
most of the Nazi era, Schwan was admitted to the United States in
1947, soon accepted a post at the University of Pennsylvania, and since
then has done most of his research for the Department of Defense.
Like infrared radiation, radio waves and microwaves produce heat
when they're absorbed in sufficient quantity. Although not a biologist,
Schwan assumed this heating was the only effect EMR would have on
living tissue. In this respect he considered living things no different
from the hot dogs that World War II radarmen used to roast in their
microwave beams, so cooking was the only harm he foresaw. Schwan
then estimated danger levels based on how much energy was needed to
measurably heat metal balls and beakers of salt water, which he used to
represent the size and presumed electrical characteristics of various animals.
Appreciable heating occurred in these models only at levels of
100,000 microwatts or above, so, incorporating a safety factor of ten,
Schwan in 1953 proposed an exposure limit of 10,000 microwatts for
humans. By showing soon afterward that it took more than this intensity to cause burns in real animals, Sol Michaelson seemed to have confirmed the safety of "nonthermal" dosages. No one tested for subtler
effects, and the 10,000-microwatt level was uncritically accepted on an
informal basis by industry and the military. In 1965 the Army and Air
Force formally adopted the Schwan limit, and a year later the industry sponsored American National Standards Institute recommended it as a
guideline for worker safety.
There were persuasive economic reasons why the 10,000-microwatt
standard was and still is defended at all costs. Lowering it would have
curtailed the expansion of military EMR use and cut into the profits of
the corporations that supplied the hardware. A reduced standard now
would constitute an admission that the old one was unsafe, leading to
liability for damage claims from ex-GIs and industrial workers. One of
the strongest monetary reasons was given in a 1975 classified summary
of the DOD's Tri-Service Electromagnetic Radiation Bioeffects Research
Plan: "These [lower] standards will significantly restrict the military use
of EMR in a peacetime environment and require the procurement of
substantial real estate around ground-based EMR emitters to provide
buffer zones." The needed real estate was estimated to be 498,000 acres.
The price of this much land would surely run well into the billions of
dollars.
Even before it was adopted, there were indications that the standard
might be inadequate. During the obligatory fight for compensation in the face of callous official denials of responsibility, an interesting discovery was made by Thomas Montgomery, a former civilian technician
working for the Army Signal Corps, who is now blind, deaf, and crippled because of a massive accidental exposure to a radar beam in 1949.
In one of the files opened by his suit, Montgomery found a document
proving that in the late 1940s the Institute of Radio Engineers had
formulated more conservative safeguards that included methods for preventing accidents like the one that had incapacitated him. (He'd been
repairing a transmitter when a co-worker, not knowing he was standing
in front of the wave guide, turned it on. Since the microwaves were
imperceptible, Montgomery didn't know he was being irradiated until it
was too late.) Leaders of the military-industrial electronics community
chose not to promulgate these proposed regulations.
There were other hints that all was not well. In 1952 Dr. Frederic G.
Hirsch of the Sandia Corporation, a maker of missile guidance systems,
reported the first known case of cataracts in a microwave technician. The
following year Bell Laboratories, alarmed by reports of sterility and baldness among its own workers as well as military radar personnel, suggested a safety level of 100 microwatts, a hundred times less than
Schwan's. Even Schwan has consistently maintained that his dosage limit
probably isn't safe for more than an hour.
In 1954 a study of 226 microwave-exposed employees at Lockheed's
Burbank factory was reported by company doctor Charles Barron. He
said there were no adverse effects, despite "paradoxical and difficult to
interpret" changes in white blood cell counts, which he later ascribed to
laboratory error, as well as a high incidence of eye pathology, which he
determined was "unrelated" to radar.
However, the safety standard had already become a Procrustean bed
against which all research proposals and findings were measured. Grants
weren't given to look for low-level hazards, and scientists who did find
such effects were cut down to size. Funds for their work were quickly
shut off and vicious personal attacks undermined their reputations.
Later, when undeniable biological changes began to be noted from
power densities between 1,000 and 10,000 microwatts,, the idea of "differential heating"—hot spots in especially absorptive or poorly cooled
tissues—was advanced, as though this convenient explanation obviated
all danger. Soviet research could easily be discounted because of its "crudity," but when nonthermal dangers were documented in America, military and industrial spokespeople simply refused to acknowledge them,
lying to Congress and the public. Many scientists, who naturally wanted
to continue working, went along with the charade from nuclear weapons tests. Throughout the 1950s there was "no cause
for alarm," but twenty years later the Wyoming sheep ranchers' suit for
compensation for fallout-damaged herds unearthed documents proving
the responsible officials had known better at the time. Even the symbol
of American military machismo may have fallen victim to the policy.
John Wayne, as well as Susan Hayward and other cast members, died of
cancer about two decades after making a movie called The Conqueror,
which was filmed in the Nevada desert while an unexpected wind shift
sifted radioactive dust down on them from a nearby test.
Today the EMR deceit still proceeds. On August 2, 1983, Sol Michaelson was quoted as saying some bioeffects had been observed in animals and a few claimed in humans from intensities under 10,000
microwatts, but "none of these effects, even if substantiated, could be
considered hazardous or relevant to man"—even though three years before he'd co-authored a paper that reviewed previous evidence and added
some of his own in support of the generalized stress response from microwaves.
The evidence had begun to come in over twenty years previously.
John Heller's 1959 finding of chromosome changes in irradiated garlic
sprouts and the 1964 Johns Hopkins correlation of Down's syndrome
with parental exposure to radar were mentioned in the previous section.
In 1961 a study was conducted on a strain of mice bred to be especially
susceptible to leukemia and used to evaluate risk factors for that disease.
Two hundred mice, all males, were dosed with 100,000 microwatts at
radar-pulse frequencies for one year. An unusually high proportion of the
animals—35 percent—developed leukemia during that time, and 40
percent suffered degeneration of the testicles. Admittedly, this was a
very high power density, but the mice were exposed for only four minutes a day. The most disturbing part, however, is that the sponsor, the
Air Force, cut off all funds for follow-up work, and to this day no American research has adequately addressed this potential danger.
In 1959 Milton Zaret, an ophthalmologist from Scarsdale, New York,
began a study for the Air Force to see if there was any special risk to the
eyes of radar maintenance men. He at first found none, because he'd
geared the examinations to check the lens of the eye. A few years later,
when several private companies referred to him microwave workers
who'd developed cataracts, Zaret saw he'd made a mistake. Because the
microwaves penetrated deeply into tissue, cataracts from them had developed behind the lens, in the posterior capsule, or rear part of the
elastic membrane surrounding the lens. At this point the Air Force
again suddenly lost interest, but Zaret has doggedly pursued the matter
in his own practice. Although military and industry people still deny that nonthermal microwave cataracts exist, Zaret's work has proven
beyond good-faith dispute that low doses exert a cumulative effect that
eventually stiffens and clouds the posterior capsule. Surveys by others
here and abroad have confirmed his conclusion. In fact, these behind the-lens cataracts constitute a "marker disease" for sustained microwave
exposure. Zaret has personally diagnosed over fifty clear-cut cases, many
in airline pilots and air traffic controllers.
In 1971 Zaret was involved in a projected five-year primate study for
the Navy when he made the mistake of telling his overseers the disturbing news that one of the monkeys had died after a few hours' exposure to
just twice the U.S. safety level. Within days Captain Paul Tyler "happened to be in the area" of the Hawaii research facility and wanted Zaret
to show him around. He left in about twenty minutes, having seen little
of the equipment, and in a few days more the entire project had been
canceled.
The double-dealing has only made Zaret dig in his heels. Through the
years he has been one of the few doctors willing to take on the government by testifying on behalf of plaintiffs filing claims for microwave
health damage. At such proceedings one always runs into the same cast
of characters speaking more or less the same lines. At one trial the ubiquitous Michaelson attacked Zaret's professional abilities, only to have
later testimony reveal the embarrassing fact that Michaelson's mother
owed the vision in one eye to the ophthalmologist's surgical skill.
As we've already seen, there are many indications that EMFs and
EMR weaker than the Schwan guideline have serious effects on growth.
The 10,000-microwatt level was directly tested in 1978 by a group at
the Stanford Research Institute. Pregnant squirrel monkeys and their
offspring were irradiated. Of nine babies zapped in utero and/or after
birth, five died within six months, compared with none in the control
group.
The U.S. safety standard would be grossly inadequate even if it was
law. In actuality, although some businesses and military agencies have
adhered to it, it has never posed any threat to those that have not. A
federal court case decided in 1975 and upheld in 1977 defined it as an
advisory or "should" guideline, which couldn't be enforced. Now, as per
instructions dated March 17, 1982, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspectors can no longer issue even meaningless
citations to companies for exposing workers to more than the limit. [ that is bs, why even have the agency other then to waste taxpayer money and lives dc]
The only actual regulation of public electromagnetic energy dosage
pertains to microwave ovens. In 1970 the FDA's Bureau of Radiological
Health stipulated that no oven should leak more than 1,000 microwatts
at a distance of 2 inches when new, nor more than 5,000 after sale. Even
Maxwell's Silver Hammer 309
at that time, research suggested this was an unsafe level, a fact recognized by Consumers Union in 1973 when it recommended against the
purchase of any brand. Leakage surveys have shown that all types put
out an average of 120 microwatts near the door, while many emit much
higher amounts. A worn seal or piece of paper towel stuck in the door
can increase the user's exposure to well over the 5,000-microwatt level,
according to Consumers Union tests.
What amounts of electromagnetic energy do workers and the general
public actually absorb? The levels vary greatly. Some antenna repairers
receive up to 100,000 microwatts for minutes or hours during a job.
Many factory workers are in the same bracket. From 1974 to 1978
NIOSH surveyed eighty-two industrial plastic molders and sealers. Over
60 percent exposed the operator to more than the Schwan limit, some to
over 260,000 microwatts. Because of low wages for such work, nearly
all sealer operators are women of childbearing age. NIOSH has estimated that some 21 million workers are exposed to some level of radiofrequency waves or microwaves as a direct result of their jobs. No metal
shielding is provided for most workers in this country, although it's sold
to other nations having better safety rules.
At this time there's no way to estimate how much EMR people are
getting away from their jobs, because the few readings that have been
taken have measured only single sources and single frequencies. No one
has yet surveyed our cities and countryside throughout the whole spectrum from ELF to microwaves. All we know is that most people's daily
exposure is high. Even the Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that if the Soviet off-the-job safety limit of 1 microwatt in the
radio and microwave bands was adopted here, over 90 percent of our FM
stations would have to be shut down.
Table 1. Power Density at Various Distances from a 50,000 Watt
AM Radio Station
Distance Power Density Distance Power Density
(feet) (microW/cm2) (feet) (microW/cm2)
15 838 482 23
29 284 663 12
69 196 1571 2
152 43 3280 1
308 33 5760 0.3
Note Data from R. Tell et al., "Electric and Magnetic Field Intensities and Associated
Body Currents in Man in Close Proximity to a 50 kW AM Standard Broadcast Station,"
presented at Bioelectromagnetics Symposium, Seattle, 1979.
Table 2. EMF in Typical Tall Buildings
City Location Power Density
(microW/cm2)
New York 102nd Floor, Empire
State Building 32.5
Miami 38th Floor, One
Biscayne Tower 98.6
Chicago 50th Floor, Sears Building 65.9
Houston 47th Floor, 1100
Milam Building 67.4
San Diego Roof, Home Tower 180.3
Note: Data from R. Tell and N. H. Hankin, Measurements of Radio Frequency Field
Intensity in Buildings with Close Proximity to Broadcast Systems, ORP/EAD 78-3, U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, Las Vegas, 1978.
Table 3. Power-Frequency Electric Fields of Household Appliances
Measured at a Distance of One Foot
Appliance Electric Field
(V/m)
Electric blanket 250
Broiler 130
Phonograph 90
Refrigerator 60
Food mixer 50
Hairdryer 40
Color TV 30
Vacuum cleaner 16
Electric range 4
Light bulb 2
Note: Data in tables 3 and 4 from Fact Sheet for the Sanguine System: Final Environmental
Impact Statement, U.S. Navy Electronic Systems Command, 1972.
Table 4. Power-Frequency Magnetic Fields of Household Appliances
Range Appliance
10-25 gauss Soldering gun, Hairdryer
5-10 gauss Can opener, Electric shaver, Kitchen range
1—5 gauss Food mixer , TV
0.1-1.0 gauss Clothes dryer, Vacuum cleaner, Heating pad
0.01-0.1 gauss Lamp, Electric iron, Dishwasher
0.001 -0.1 gauss Refrigerator
NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN CERTAIN CITIES EXPOSED TO RADIO AND TV
SIGNALS ABOVE USSR SAFETY LEVEL (these numbers are from 1978, 44 years later you do the math on how many are exposed d.c)
Boston- 29,300
N.York- 49,100
Washington DC- 70,500
Chicago-19,000
Atlanta- 9,800
Miami- 29,900
Los Angeles- 7,000
Most city dwellers continuously get more than a tenth of a microwatt
from television microwaves alone. This may be especially significant,
because of the human body's resonant frequency. This is the wavelength
to which the body responds "as antenna." Next to the ELF range, it's
perhaps the region of the spectrum in which the strongest bioeffects may be expected. The peak human resonant frequency lies right in the middle of the VHF television band.
Many people live in zones of higher-than-average risk. Levels rise
steeply from 1 microwatt within half a mile of most radio stations. Near
"antenna farms" like the forest of transmitters on Mount Wilson on the
outskirts of Los Angeles, the densities can reach well into the thousands.
They regularly go up to about 7 microwatts near microwave relay towers, which are often placed in the center of towns. Exposure to 100
microwatts is not uncommon within half a mile of military or airport
radar towers. Office workers in tall buildings are often in direct line
with microwave beams, whose intensities may reach 30 to 180 microwatts, as measured in a recent EPA survey. CB radios and walkie-talkies
bombard users, especially their heads and chests, with thousands of microwatts. These figures, of course, represent only single sources, not the total exposure.
Although most people's absorption doesn't approach the Schwan
guideline, it should be clear by now that the lower levels are little cause
for comfort. Everywhere in Western nations, except in the most remote
forests or deserts, the ambient energy from ELF power systems is several
thousand times above the earth's background field strength, providing
abundant interference with the biocycle timing cues. Moreover, the accumulated research has clearly shown that small doses often have the
same effects as larger ones. Ross Adey, who has intensively studied the
"window effect,", in which a certain result is produced at some frequencies and power levels but not at others interspersed between the effective ones, believes future research will reveal such windows at much lower
levels, even at fractions of a microwatt. Indeed there has already been one report of brain wave changes suggesting resonance of neural electrical currents with radio waves and microwaves down to a billionth of a microwatt.
There's a chance of somewhat stricter rules in a few years. In 1982 the
American National Standards Institute recommended that the radio wave safety level be lowered to 1,000 microwatts and the microwave
level to 5,000. This was the first semiofficial admission that nonthermal
effects do exist. Now several federal agencies have begun discussing a
formal regulation. The most likely source is the Environmental Protection Agency, but at last report the rumored EPA proposal of a 100-
microwatt limit for the general public, which had been anticipated in
late 1984, was abruptly and indefinitely postponed due to dissension
within and pressure from outside the agency.
A health-protecting federal standard with the force of law would have
a major impact on both industry and government. Industry would experience a decline in revenue and an increase in costs. Government, especially the military, would be inconvenienced in a multitude of activities.
Both would be subject to lawsuits for exposures and damages prior to
establishment of the standard. In addition, we must understand that no
amount of artificial EMR, no matter how small, has been proven safe for
continuous exposure. Bioeffects have been found at the lowest measurable doses. However, we must also understand that the greatest danger
lies in uncontrolled exposure to large amounts of EMR at many overlapping frequencies, and therefore a stringent standard with a definite timetable for phasing it in is the only way to protect the public health.
Moreover, such action must come from Washington. New Jersey and
Connecticut have recently adopted the ANSI standard, while in 1983
Massachusetts enacted a much stricter one of 200 microwatts, which
large areas of New York City already exceed considerably. Some communities, recognizing that even a 100-microwatt level is too high, are
beginning to set their own, lower, ones. Without realistic federal regulation we will end up with a totally unworkable patchwork. Suppose, for
example, that the Air Force, from a base outside a town, operates a radar
dome that produces illegal EMR levels inside it. Without federal direction, that will become one more confused legal issue to be hammered
out for years in already overburdened courts.
All of the industrialized West is locked into a false position on electro pollution's risks. It's these countries that have made the maximum
use of electromagnetism for power, communications, and entertainment.
The Soviet Union and China, partly due to underdevelopment and wartime destruction, and partly by choice, have severely limited its use and
the exposure of their civilians.
Soviet scientists have consistently assumed that any radiation that
doesn't occur in nature will have some effect on life. We've consistently
made the opposite assumption.
Throughout our recent history American
regulators have followed a "dead body policy." They have extended no
protection until there was proof of harm sufficient to overcome all deception. There's no longer any question that, as far as electromagnetic energy is concerned, we've been wrong and the Soviets have been right.
In the 1950s, Russian doctors conducted extensive clinical exams of
thousands of workers who had been exposed to microwaves during the
development of radar. Having disclosed serious health problems, these
studies weren't swept under the rug. Instead, the USSR set limits of 10
microwatts for workers and military personnel, and 1 microwatt for others. Both levels are strictly enforced. When this first became known in
the West in the early 1960s, instead of checking their assumptions
many American scientists and administrators chose to believe this was
Russian propaganda aimed at embarrassing us.
By 1971, when they presented their work at a momentous conference
in Warsaw, Zinaida V. Gordon and Maria N. Sadchikova of the USSR
Institute of Labor Hygiene and Occupational Diseases had identified a
comprehensive series of symptoms, which they called microwave sickness. Its first signs are low blood pressure and slow pulse. The later and
most common manifestations are chronic excitation of the sympathetic
Maxwell's Silver Hammer 315
nervous system (stress syndrome) and high blood pressure. This phase
also often includes headache, dizziness, eye pain, sleeplessness, irritability, anxiety, stomach pain, nervous tension, inability to concentrate, hair loss, plus an increased incidence of appendicitis, cataracts,
reproductive problems, and cancer. The chronic symptoms are eventually succeeded by crises of adrenal exhaustion and ischemic heart disease
(blockage of coronary arteries and heart attack).
The Soviet standards were set long before the dangers were this clear,
however. The comparison is instructive. At a 1969 international symposium on microwaves in Richmond, Virginia, Dr. Karel Marha of
Prague's Institute of Industrial Hygiene defended his findings on birth
defects and recommended that the Eastern European standard be adopted
in the West. Replying to objections that the dire predictions hadn't
been proven beyond doubt, he said: "Our standard is not only to prevent
damage but to avoid discomfort in people."
Apparently this concern doesn't include Americans, for the Soviets
have been bombarding our embassy in Moscow with microwaves for
some thirty years. In 1952, at the height of the Cold War, there was a
secret meeting at the Sandia Corporation in New Mexico between U.S.
and U.S.S.R. scientists, allegedly to exchange information on biological
hazards and safety levels. It seems the exchange wasn't completely reciprocal, or perhaps the Americans didn't take seriously what the Russians told them; there have been other joint "workshops" since then, and
each time the Soviets have sent people who publicly acknowledged the
risks, while the American delegates have always been "no-effect" men.
At any rate, soon after the Sandia meeting, the Soviets began beaming
microwaves at the U.S. embassy from across Tchaikovsky Street, always
staying well within the Schwan limit. In effect, they've been using embassy employees as test subjects for low-level EMR experiments.
The strange thing is that Washington has gone along with it. The
"Moscow signal" was apparently first discovered about 1962, when the
CIA is known to have sought consultation about it. The agency asked
Milton Zaret for information about microwave dangers in that year, and
then hired him in 1965 for advice and research in a secret evaluation of
the signal, called Project Pandora. Nothing was publicly revealed until
1972, when Jack Anderson broke the story, and the U.S. government
told its citizens nothing until 1976, in response to further news stories
in the Boston Globe. According to various sources, the Russians shut off
their transmitter in in 1978 or 1979, but then resumed the irradiation for
several months in 1983.
According to information given Zaret in the 1960s, the Moscow signal was a composite of several frequencies, apparently aiming for a synergistic effect from various wavelengths, and it was beamed directly at
the ambassador's office. Thus it may have been used at least partially to
activate bugging devices, but it wasn't consistent with one of the other
subsequent official American explanations—a jamming signal to disrupt
the U.S. eavesdropping equipment on the embassy roof.
The intensity isn't known for certain. When the State Department
admitted the signal's existence, officials claimed it never amounted to
more than 18 microwatts. However, although released Project Pandora
records don't directly reveal a higher level and the relevant documents
have allegedly been destroyed, research protocols aimed at simulating
the Moscow signal called for levels up to 4,000 microwatts.
In the mid-1960s published Soviet research indicated that such a
beam would produce eyestrain and blurred vision, headaches, and loss of
concentration. Within a few years other research had uncovered the entire microwave syndrome, including the cancer potential.
By all accounts except the official ones, the Moscow bombardment has
been highly effective. In 1976 the Globe reported that Ambassador Walter Stoessel had developed a rare blood disease similar to leukemia and
was suffering headaches and bleeding from the eyes. Two of his irradiated predecessors, Charles Bohlen and Llewellyn Thompson, died of cancer. Monkeys exposed to the signal as part of Project Pandora soon
showed multiple abnormalities of blood composition and chromosome
counts.
In January 1977, the State Department, under duress, announced results of a series of blood tests on returning embassy personnel: a
"slightly higher than average" white blood cell count in about a third of
the Moscow staff. If 40 percent above the white blood cell counts of
other foreign service employees (levels common to incipient leukemia)
can be considered "slightly higher than average," then this technically
wasn't a lie. The finding has been officially ascribed to some unknown
microbe. Unfortunately, there's no such doubt about the veracity of explanations about some earlier research. As part of Project Pandora in the
late 1960s, the State Department tested its Moscow employees for genetic damage upon their return stateside, telling them the inner cheek
scrapings were to screen for those unusual bacteria. No results were ever
released, and they're reportedly part of the missing files, but one of the
physicians who conducted the tests was quoted by the Associated Press
as saying they'd found "lots of chromosome breaks." The embassy staff
had to learn this when the rest of us did - in the newspapers nearly a
decade later.
The Russians themselves have never admitted the irradiation, and the
Schwan guideline has put the American government in an embarrassing
bind. In 1976 the State Department gave its Moscow employees a 20-
percent hardship allowance for serving in an "unhealthful post" and installed aluminum window screens to protect the staff from radiation a
hundred times weaker than that near many radar bases. That same year
the government gave Johns Hopkins School of Medicine a quarter of a
million dollars to see if there was a link between the signal and "an
apparently high rate of cancer" in the embassy (which wasn't confirmed).
Nevertheless, although President Johnson asked Premier Kosygin at the
1967 Glassboro talks to stop the bombardment, Washington has never
had any formal basis to demand that it be stopped due to danger to the
staff. That was apparently considered an acceptable risk in the protection
of the lenient U.S. standard.
Invisible Warfare
The Soviets have led the way in learning about the risks of electropollution, and, as we have seen, they've apparently been the first to harness
those dangers for malicious intent. However, the spectrum of potential
weapons extends far beyond the limits of the Moscow signal, and Americans have been actively exploring some of them for many years. Most or
all of the following EMR effects can be scaled up or down for use against
individuals or whole crowds and armies:
The crudest of these armaments would be a sort of electromagnetic
flamethrower with a greater range than chemical types. Dogs were
cooked to death in experiments at the Naval Medical Research
Institute as long ago as 1955, and high-power transmitters using
short UHF wavelengths can severely burn exposed skin in seconds.
Electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is a term designating the immensely powerful, near-instantaneous surge of electromagnetic energy produced by a nuclear explosion. It was first discovered in the
late 1960s. The EMP from one detonation a few thousand miles
above the earth would destroy all electrical systems throughout an
entire continent. In the early 1970s new types of EMR generators
emitting power levels on or twenty times higher than ever before
were developed in in an effort to simulate EMP and help devise communications systems shielded from it. In 1973 these transmitters
were described in an invitation-only seminar at the Naval Weapons Laboratory in Dahlgren, Virginia, where their use for antipersonnel and anti-ballistic-missile energy beams was discussed. No
information about their subsequent development has since been
made public, and the difficulties of long-range missile tracking
argue that ABM beams haven't yet become feasible, but there are
no such difficulties in the way of EMR beam weapons for use
against unshielded people.
At some UHF power densities there's an insidious moth-to-the flame allurement, which would increase such a weapon's effectiveness. As discoverer Sol Michaelson described it in 1958, each
of the dogs used in his experiments "began to struggle for release
from the sling," showing "considerable agitation and muscular
activity," yet "for some reason the animal continues to face the
horn." Perhaps as part of the same effect, UHF beams can also
induce muscular weakness and lethargy. In Soviet experiments
with rats in 1960, five minutes of exposure to 100,000 microwatts reduced swimming time in an endurance test from sixty
minutes to six.
Allen Frey's discovery that certain pulsed microwave beams increased the permeability of the blood-brain barrier could be turned
into a supplemental weapon to enhance the effects of drugs, bacteria, or poisons.
The calcium-outflow windows discovered by Ross Adey could be
used to interfere with the functioning of the entire brain.
In the early 1960s Frey found that when microwaves of 300 to
3,000 megahertz were pulsed at specific rates, humans (even deaf
people) could "hear" them. The beam caused a booming, hissing,
clicking, or buzzing, depending on the exact frequency and pulse
rate, and the sound seemed to come from just behind the head.
At first Frey was ridiculed for this announcement, just like
many radar technicians who'd been told they were crazy for hearing certain radar beams. Later work has shown that the microwaves are sensed somewhere in the temporal region just above and
slightly in front of the ears. The phenomenon apparently results
from pressure waves set up in brain tissue, some of which activate
the sound receptors of the inner ear via bone conduction, while
others directly stimulate nerve cells in the auditory pathways. Experiments on rats have shown that a strong signal can generate a
sound pressure of 120 decibels, or approximately the level near a
jet engine at takeoff.
Obviously such a beam could cause humans severe pain and prevent all voice communication. That the same effect can be used
more subtly was demonstrated in 1973 by Dr. Joseph C. Sharp of
the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. Sharp, serving as a
test subject himself, heard and understood spoken words delivered
to him in an echo-free isolation chamber via a pulsed-microwave
audiogram (an analog of the words' sound vibrations) beamed into
his brain. Such a device has obvious applications in covert operations designed to drive a target crazy with "voices" or deliver
undetectable instructions to a programmed assassin. There are also
indications that other pulse frequencies cause similar pressure
waves in other tissues, which could disrupt various metabolic processes. A group under R. G. Olsen and J. D. Grissett at the
Naval Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory in Pensacola has already demonstrated such effects in simulated muscle tissue and has
a continuing contract to find beams effective against human
tissues.
In the 1960s Frey also reported that he could speed up, slow
down, or stop isolated frog hearts by synchronizing the pulse rate
of a microwave beam with the beat of the heart itself. Similar
results have been obtained using live frogs, indicating that it's
technically feasible to produce heart attacks with a ray designed to
penetrate the human chest.
In addition to the methods of damaging or killing people with EMR,
there are several ways of controlling their behavior. Ross Adey and his
colleagues have shown that microwaves modulated in various ways can
force specific electrical patterns upon parts of the brain. Working with
cats they found that brain waves appearing with conditioned responses
could be selectively enhanced by shaping the microwaves with a rhythmic variation in amplitude (height) corresponding to EEG frequencies.
For example, a 3-hertz modulation decreased 10-hertz alpha waves in
one part of the animal's brain and reinforced 14-hertz beta waves in
another location.
Some radar can find a fly a kilometer away or track a human at
twenty-five miles, and several researchers have suggested that focused
EMR beams of such accuracy could bend the mind much like electrical
stimulation of the brain (ESB) through wires. We know of ESB's potential for mind control largely through the work of Jose Delgado. One
signal provoked a cat to lick its fur, then continue compulsively licking
the floor and bars of its cage. A signal designed to stimulate a portion of
a monkey's thalamus, a major midbrain center for integrating muscle
movements, triggered a complex action: The monkey walked to one side of the cage, then the other, then climbed to the rear ceiling, then back
down. The animal performed this same activity as many times as it was
stimulated with the signal, up to sixty times an hour, but not blindly—
the creature still was able to avoid obstacles and threats from the dominant male while carrying out the electrical imperative. Another type of
signal has made monkeys turn their heads, or smile, no matter what else
they were doing, up to twenty thousand times in two weeks. As Delgado concluded, "The animals looked like electronic toys."
Even instincts and emotions can be changed: In one test a mother
giving continuous care to her baby suddenly pushed the infant away
whenever the signal was given. Approach-avoidance conditioning can be
achieved for any action simply by stimulating the pleasure and pain
centers in an animal's or person's limbic system.
Eventual monitoring of evoked potentials from the EEG, combined
with radio-frequency and microwave broadcasts designed to produce specific thoughts or moods, such as compliance and complacency, promises
a method of mind control that poses immense danger to all societies—
tyranny without terror. Scientists involved in EEG research all say the
ability is still years away, but for all we could sense of it, it could be
happening right now. Conspiracy theories aside, the hypnotic familiarity
of TV and radio, combined with the biological effects of their broadcast
beams, may already constitute a similar force for mass standardization,
whether by design or not.
The potential dangers of televised lethargy are no yawning matter. It's
well known that relaxed attention to any mildly involving stimulus,
such as a movie or TV program, produces a hypnoid state, in which the
mind becomes especially receptive to suggestion. Other inducers of
hypnoid states include light sleep, daydreams, or short periods of time
spent waiting for some predetermined signal or action, such as a traffic
light.
The Central Intelligence Agency funded research on electromagnetic
mind control at least as early as 1960, when the notorious MKULTRA
program, mostly concerned with hypnosis and psychedelic drugs, included money for adapting bioelectric sensing methods (at that time
primarily the EEG) to surveillance and interrogation, as well as for finding "techniques of activation of the human organism by remote electronic means." In testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Health
and Scientific Research on September 21, 1977, MKULTRA director
Dr. Sidney Gottlieb recalled: "There was a running interest in what
effects people's standing in the field of radio energy have, and it could
easily have been that somewhere in the many projects someone was trying to see if you could hypnotize somebody easier if he was standing in a
radio beam."
Hypnotists often use a strobe light flashing at alpha-wave frequencies
to ease the glide into trance. It seems for over thirty years the Communist bloc nations have been using an ELF wave form to do the same
thing undetectably and perhaps more effectively. Ross Adey recently lost
most of his government grants and has become a bit more loquacious
about the military and intelligence uses of EMR. In 1983 he organized a
public meeting at the Loma Linda VA hospital and released photos and
information concerning a Russian Lida machine. This was a small transmitter that emitted 10-hertz waves for tranquilization and enhancement
of suggestibility. The most interesting part was that the box had an
ancient vacuum-tube design, and a man who'd been a POW in Korea
reported that similar devices had been used there during interrogation.
American interest in the hypnosis-EMR interaction was still strong as
of 1974, when a research plan was filed to develop useful techniques in
human volunteers. The experimenter, J. F. Schapitz, stated: "In this
investigation it will be shown that the spoken word of the hypnotist
may also be conveyed by modulated electromagnetic energy directly into
the subconscious parts of the human brain—i.e., without employing
any technical devices for receiving or transcoding the messages and without the person exposed to such influence having a chance to control the
information input consciously." As a preliminary test of the general concept, Schapitz proposed recording the brain waves induced by specific
drugs, then modulating them onto a microwave beam and feeding them
back into an undrugged person's brain to see if the same state of consciousness could be produced by the beam alone.
Schapitz's main protocol consisted of four experiments. In the first,
subjects would be given a test of a hundred questions, ranging from easy
to technical, so they all would know some but not all of the answers.
Later, while in hypnoid states and not knowing they were being irradiated, these people would be subjected to information beams suggesting
answers for some of the items they'd left blank, amnesia for some of
their correct answers, and memory falsification for other correct answers.
A new test would check the results two weeks later.
The second experiment was to be the implanting of hypnotic suggestions for simple acts, like leaving the lab to buy some particular item,
which were to be triggered by a suggested time, spoken word, or sight.
Subjects were to be interviewed later. "It may be expected," Schapitz
wrote, "that they rationalize their behavior and consider it to be undertaken out of their own free will."
In a third test the subjects were to be given two personality tests.
Then different responses to certain questions would be repeatedly suggested, and nonpathological personality changes would also be suggested, both to be evaluated by new testing in a month. In some cases
the subjects were to be pre hypnotized into talking in their sleep, so the
microwave programmer could gear the commands to thoughts already in
the brain. Finally, attempts would be made to produce the standard
tests of deep hypnotic trance, such as muscular rigidity, by microwave
beams alone.
Naturally, since this information was voluntarily released via the Freedom of Information Act, it must be taken with a pillar of salt. The
results haven't been made public, so the work may have been inconclusive, and the plans may have been released to convince the Soviets and
our own public that American mind-control capabilities are greater than
they actually are. On the other hand, the actualities may be so far ahead
of this research plan that it was tame enough to release in satisfying
FOIA requirements.
How many of the EMR weapons possibilities have actually been developed and/or used? Those not privy to classified information have no
way of knowing. There are plenty of rumors. Boris Spassky claimed he'd
lost the world chess championship to Bobby Fischer because he was
being bombarded with confusion rays. I recall hearing about one secret
American experiment in which a scientist was supposedly set up with
invitations to three conferences to give the same presentation each time.
The first one went fine, but at the last two he was irradiated with ELF
waves, reportedly to induce Adey's calcium efflux, and he became confused and ineffective.
Another FOIA release from the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1976
may be revealing. Prepared by Ronald L. Adams and E. A. Williams
of Battelle Columbus Laboratories, it's entitled "Biological Effects of
Electromagnetic Radiation (Radiowaves and Microwaves), Eurasian
Communist Countries." The pages released merely recount Allen Frey's
discoveries without mentioning his name, implying instead that only
the Reds would be so dastardly as to investigate such things for use as
weapons. Immediately after mention of the blood-brain barrier leak phenomenon, a paragraph was deleted, followed by the tantalizing sentence,
"The above study is recommended reading material for those consumers
who have an interest in the application of microwave energy to weapons." Even without this document, considering the relentless pace of
arms development, we would have to be very naive to assume that the
United States has no electromagnetic arsenal.
The Soviets may already be using theirs, however, on a scale far
beyond that of the Moscow signal. During the U.S. bicentennial celebration of July 4, 1976, a new radio signal was heard throughout the
world. It has remained on the air more or less continuously ever since.
Varying up and down through the frequencies between 3.26 and 17.54
megahertz, it is pulse-modulated at a rate of several times a second, so it
sounds like a buzz saw or woodpecker. It was soon traced to an enormous transmitter near Kiev in the Soviet Ukraine.
The signal is so strong it drowns out anything else on its wavelength.
When it first appeared, the UN International Telecommunications Union
protested because it interfered with several communications channels,
including the emergency frequencies for aircraft on transoceanic flights.
Now the woodpecker leaves "holes"; it skips the crucial frequencies as it
moves up and down the spectrum. The signal is maintained at enormous
expense from a current total of seven stations, the seven most powerful
radio transmitters in the world.
Within a year or two after the woodpecker began tapping, there were
persistent complaints of unaccountable symptoms from people in several
cities of the United States and Canada, primarily Eugene, Oregon. The
sensations—pressure and pain in the head, anxiety, fatigue, insomnia,
lack of coordination, and numbness, accompanied by a high-pitched
ringing in the ears—were characteristic of strong radio-frequency or microwave irradiation. In Oregon, between Eugene and Corvallis, a powerful radio signal centering on 4.75 megahertz was monitored, at higher
levels in the air than on the ground. Several unsatisfactory theories were
advanced, including emanations from winter-damaged power lines, but
most engineers who studied the signal concluded that it was a manifestation of the woodpecker. The idea was advanced that it was being directed to Oregon by a Tesla magnifying transmitter. This apparatus,
devised by Nikola Tesla during his turn-of-the-century experiments
on wireless global power transmission at a laboratory near Pikes Peak,
hasn't been much studied in the West. It reportedly enables a transmitter to beam a radio signal through the earth to any desired point on its
surface, while maintaining or even increasing the signal's power as it
emerges. Paul Brodeur has suggested that, since the TRW company
once proposed a Navy ELF communications system using an existing
850-mile power line that ended in Oregon, the Eugene phenomenon
might have been the interaction between a Navy broadcast and Soviet
jamming.
Be that as it may, the woodpecker continues in operation, and there
are several unsettling possibilities as to its main purpose. A former chief of naval research has privately discounted the idea that it's directed
against the U.S. population. However, Robert Beck, a Los Angeles
physicist who regularly serves as a DOD consultant, told me that the
signal has a threefold purpose. He said it acts as a crude over-the-horizon
radar that would pick up a massive first strike of U.S. missiles if Soviet
spy satellites and other detectors were knocked out. Second, the signal's
modulations are an ELF medium for communicating with submarines
underwater. Third, he claimed the signal has a biological by-product
about which he promised further information. Of course, I haven't been
able to contact him since.
Several educated guesses can be made, however. Adey's research suggests that the best way to get an ELF signal into an animal is to make it
a pulse modulation of a high-frequency radio signal. That's exactly what
the woodpecker is. Within its frequency range, it could be beamed to
any part of the world, and it would be picked up and reradiated by the
power supply grid at its destination.
Raymond Damadian has theorized that the woodpecker signal is designed to induce nuclear magnetic resonance in human tissues. Damadian, a radiologist at Brooklyn's Downstate Medical Center, patented
the first NMR scanner, a device that gives an image of internal organs
similar to CAT scanners but using magnetic fields rather than nuclear
radiation. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, NMR could greatly
magnify the metabolic interference of electropollution or EMR weapons.
Maria Reichmanis calculated the pulse frequency that would be required
to do this with a radio signal in the woodpecker's range, and she came
up with a band centered on the same old alpha rhythm of 10 hertz. And
in fact, the signal's pulse is generally about that rate, although it is
often a two-part modulation of 4 + 6, 7 + 3, and so on. The available
evidence, then, suggests that the Russian woodpecker is a multipurpose
radiation that combines a submarine link with an experimental attack on
the American people. It may be intended to increase cancer rates, interfere with decision-making ability, and/or sow confusion and irritation.
It may be succeeding.
I keep hearing persistent rumors of American transmitters set up to
try to nullify the Russians' signal or to affect their people in a similar
way. In 1978, Stefan Rednip, an American reporter living in England,
claimed access to purloined CIA documents proving the existence of a
program called Operation Pique, which included bouncing radio signals
off the ionosphere to affect the mental functions of people in selected
areas, including Eastern European nuclear installations.
The whole business sounds too much like an undeclared electromagnetic war. However, there are persistent complaints that the American
effort is being hampered in a strange way. Shortly after the rigged National Academy of Sciences report on Project Seafarer, for example, the
Navy sent a delegation to a meeting at the National Security Agency to
complain about an alleged "zap gap" between the United States and the
USSR, and to ask other delegates to push for more research money for
turning nonthermal EMR effects into weapons. According to one of my
Navy contacts, the NSA sent several "experts" who had never done any
research on EMR and who firmly advised the Navy to abandon its program. Later he voiced the same suspicions I'd already heard from others:
Given the allegedly vigorous Soviet electro weapons research program and
the underfunding of ours, he concluded that there is a mole highly
placed in the American military science establishment, perhaps in the
NSA itself, who is preventing us from acquiring any clear competence in
this field.
Unfortunately, my source, having served as a hatchet man for defunding research on the environmental dangers of electropollution, isn't exactly reliable. Complaints of a mole could easily be a blind for a large
and intense U.S. EMR weapons program. That there's more going on
than meets the eye is clear from my last communication with Dietrich
Beischer. In 1977 the Erie Magnetics Company of Buffalo, New York,
sponsored a small private conference, and Beischer and I both planned to
attend. Just before the meeting, I got a call from him. With no preamble or explanation, he blurted out: "I'm at a pay phone. I can't talk
long. They are watching me. I can't come to the meeting or ever communicate with you again. I'm sorry. You've been a good friend. Goodbye." Soon afterward I called his office at Pensacola and was told, "I'm
sorry, there is no one here by that name," just as in the movies. A guy
who had done important research there for decades just disappeared.
The crucial point to me is that both sides may be embarking on
hostilities whose consequences for the whole biosphere no one can yet
foresee. Even if the Soviets have begun an electromagnetic war and we're
totally unprepared to fight back, I doubt that a simple buildup and
retaliation are the best course for our own survival.
The extent of the danger can be dramatized best by considering one
last potential weapon. Around 1900, Nikola Tesla theorized that ELF
and VLF radiation could enter the magnetosphere, the magnetic field in
space around the earth, and change its structure. He has recently been
proven right.
The magnetosphere and its Van Allen belts of trapped particles produce many kinds of EMR. Since they were initially studied through audio amplifiers, the first kinds to be discovered, around 1920, were
given fanciful names like whistlers, dawn chorus, and lion roars. Many
of them result from VLF waves produced by lightning, which bounce
back and forth from pole to pole along "magnetic ducts" in the magnetosphere. This resonance amplifies the original VLF waves enormously.
Satellite measurements have proven that artificial energies from power
lines are similarly amplified high above the earth, a phenomenon known
as power-line harmonic resonance (PLHR). Radio and microwave energy
also resonates in the magnetosphere. This amplified energy interacts
with the particles in the Van Allen belts, producing heat, light, X rays,
and, most important, a "fallout" of charged particles that serve as nuclei
for raindrops.
Recent work with sounding rockets has matched specific areas of such
ion precipitation with the energy from specific radio stations, and established that the sifting down of charged particles generally occurs east of
the EMR source, following the general eastward drift of weather patterns. In 1983, measurements from the Ariel 3 and 4 weather satellites
showed that the enormous amount of PLHR over North America had
created a permanent duct from the magnetosphere down into the upper
air, resulting in a continuous release of ions and energy over the whole
continent. In presenting this data at the March 1983 Symposium on
Electromagnetic Compatibility in Zurich, K. Bullough reminded the
audience that thunderstorms have been 25 percent more frequent over
North America between 1930 and 1975 than they were from 1900 to
1930, and suggested that the increased energy levels in the upper atmosphere were responsible.
Since the mid-1970s there has been a dramatic increase in flooding,
drought, and attendant hardships due to inconsistent, anomalous
weather patterns. It appears likely that these have been caused in part by
electropollution and perhaps enhanced, whether deliberately or not, by
the Soviet woodpecker signal. It now seems feasible to induce catastrophic climate change over a target country, and even without such
weather warfare, continued expansion of the electrical power system
threatens the viability of all life on earth.
Critical Connections
It may be hard to convince ourselves that something we can't see, hear,
touch, taste, or smell can still hurt us so dreadfully. Yet the fact must
be faced, just as we've learned a healthy fear of nuclear radiation. Certain scientists, some perhaps acting in a program of deliberate disinformation, keep telling the public that we still don't know whether electropollution is a threat to human health. That's simply not true.
Certainly we need to know more, but a multitude of risks have been
well documented.
Three dangers overshadow all others. The first has been conclusively
proven: ELF electromagnetic fields vibrating at about 30 to 100 hertz, even if
they're weaker than the earth's field, interfere with the cues that keep our biological cycles properly timed; chronic stress and impaired disease resistance result.
Second, the available evidence strongly suggests that regulation of cellular growth processes is impaired by electropollution, increasing cancer
rates and producing serious reproductive problems. Electromagnetic
weapons constitute a third class of hazards culminating in climatic manipulation from a sorcerer's-apprentice level of ignorance.
There may be other dangers, less sharply defined but no less real. All
cities, by their very nature as electrical centers, are jungles of interpenetrating fields and radiation that completely drown out the earth's
background throb. Is this an underlying reason why so many of them
have become jungles in another sense as well? Is this a partial explanation for the fact that the rate of suicide between the ages of fifteen and
twenty-four rose from 5.1 per 100,000 in 1961 to 12.8 in 1981? Might
this be an invisible and thus overlooked reason why so many governmental leaders, working at the centers of the most powerful electromagnetic
networks, consistently make decisions that are against the best interests
of every being on earth? Is the subliminal stress of electronic smog misinterpreted as continual threats from outside—from other people and
other governments? In addition, if Teilhard de Chardin's noosphere exists, our artificial fields must mask it many times over, literally disconnecting us from life's collective wisdom. This is not to ignore the plain
fact of evil, but it often seems there must be some other reason why
today's power elite are so willing to bring the whole world to the brink
of so many different kinds of destruction. Maybe they literally can't hear
the earth anymore.
Everyone worries about nuclear weapons as the most serious threat to
our survival. Their danger is indeed immediate and overwhelming. In
the long run, however, I believe the ultimate weapon is manipulation of
our electromagnetic environment, because it's imperceptibly subtle and
strikes at the core of life itself. We're dealing here with the most important scientific discovery ever - the nature of life. Even if we survive the
chemical and atomic threats to our existence, there's a strong possibility
that increasing electropollution could set in motion irreversible changes leading to our extinction before we're even aware of them.
All life pulsates in time to the earth, and our artificial fields cause
abnormal reactions in all organisms. Magnetic reversals may have produced the "great dyings" of the past by disrupting biocycles so as to
cause stress, sterility, birth defects, malignancies, and impaired brain
function. Human activities may well have duplicated in three decades
what otherwise would have taken five thousand years to develop during
the next reversal. What will we do if the incidence of deformed children
rises to 50 percent, if the cancer rate climbs to 75 percent? Will we be
able to pull the plug?
Somehow these dangers must be brought into the open so forcefully
that the entire population of the world is made aware of them. Scientists
must begin to ask and seek answers to the questions raised in this chapter, regardless of the effect on their careers. These energies are too dangerous to be entrusted forever to politicians, military leaders, and their
lapdog researchers.
Since our civilization is irreversibly dependent on electronics, abolition of EMR is out of the question. However, as a first step toward
averting disaster, we must halt the introduction of new sources of electromagnetic energy while we investigate the biohazards of those we already have with a completeness and honesty that have so far been in
short supply. New sources must be allowed only after their risks have
been evaluated on the basis of the knowledge acquired in such a moratorium.
With an adequately funded research program, the moratorium need
last no more than five years, and the ensuing changes could almost certainly be performed without major economic trauma. It seems possible
that a different power frequency—say 400 hertz instead of 60—might
prove much safer. Burying power lines and providing them with
grounded shields would reduce the electric fields around them, and magnetic shielding is also feasible.
A major part of the safety changes would consist of energy-efficiency
reforms that would benefit the economy in the long run. These new
directions would have been taken years ago but for the opposition of
power companies concerned with their short-term profits, and a government unwilling to challenge them. It is possible to redesign many appliances and communications devices so they use far less energy. The
entire power supply could be decentralized by feeding electricity from
renewable sources (wind, flowing water, sunlight, geothermal and ocean
thermal energy conversion, and so forth) into local distribution nets.
This would greatly decrease hazards by reducing the voltages and amperages required. Ultimately, most EMR hazards could be eliminated
by the development of efficient photoelectric converters to be used as the
primary power source at each point of consumption. The changeover
would even pay for itself, as the loss factors of long-distance power transmission—not to mention the astronomical costs of building and decommissioning short-lived nuclear power plants—were eliminated. Safety
need not imply giving up our beneficial machines.
Obviously, given the present techno-military control of society in most
parts of the world, such sane efficiency will be immensely difficult to
achieve. Nevertheless, we must try. Electromagnetic energy presents us
with the same imperative as nuclear energy: Our survival depends on the
ability of upright scientists and other people of goodwill to break the
military-industrial death grip on our policy-making institutions.
Postscript: Political
Science here at page 312 on the scroll
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