The Sound and the Fury
Socorro New Mexico is a small town whose citizens have had more than it's share of mental problems in the past year. Socorro resident Lynn Radell works at the nearby Very Large Array radio telescope observatory and believes she has found a startling connection between the public's mental health and certain tests being done at that governmental facility. Are her claims justified? Is our government using the citizens of Socorro as guinea pigs for secret sonic weapons testing?
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is an impressive sight. Rising up out of the San Augustin plains, the telescopes look to be out of place since these towering monuments to man's technological achievements are hidden far away from the bright lights of any city. There are 27 antennas in the array, each weighing about 230 tons and are spread out in a Y pattern up to 22 miles across. The official use of the telescopes is to receive radio frequencies from the heavens in order to observe different celestial bodies. Other official duties listed on their website include atmospheric studies, satellite tracking and other miscellaneous science.
It's this "other miscellaneous science" that has Lynn Radell concerned. She works at the Observatory as a county liaison officer and became concerned in early June when she started noticing something out of the ordinary going on with the telescopes.
"Around January of this year I started noticing a lot of activity out here," Radell told me. "Usually this place has 20 or so people working out here at any one time but during that month I noticed that there were upwards to 40 or so cars parked in the employee lot. I don't have access to the observatory and when I asked what was going on my boss just said it was a 'science committee' come down to observe some data first hand. I didn't think that much of it but later, after things started happening in Socorro, I started wondering if it was connected."
The things that Radell is talking about is a dramatic upswing in mental health disease for this small town of 9,000. In 1999 the county health department recorded seeing 68 patients suffering from mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, or stress.
This ratio has since skyrocketed with over 250 patients being recorded so far in the year 2000. The health department has recorded seeing patients with all kinds of metal disorders including rapid mood swings, autism, tourette syndrome, Alzheimer's disease, and eating disorders. The local police have also noted an upswing in drug related crimes which suggests that addictions may have risen from 1999 levels. City officials say that the rise in health problems and drug arrest come from a larger than average group of migrant farm workers who have recently settled into the area combined with a higher unemployment rate from last year.
"I know a lot of people have come down with problems," says Radell, "and it's just not right. My sister-in-law has been diagnosed with Bulimia and there was not a thing wrong with her before March. I know for a fact that there's nothing new in Socorro that would make people get sick like this. It has to be an outside factor. I finally put two and two together when I came out to the telescopes and started hearing the noises. Noises I haven't ever heard before out here. I went on-line and did some research and found out about sonic weapons. I'm convinced that the telescopes are being used as some kind of sound weapon and we're the guinea pigs in the test."
The idea of sonic weapons isn't without merit. In the 1940's the Nazis were the first to consider using sound as a weapon and devised a "sound cannon." In June of 1999 US News and World Report magazine printed an article that discussed the millions of dollars being poured into nonlethal sonic weapons research by the US Army. These experiments into the effects of acoustic weapons have met with notable success. The Marine Corps Nonlethal Electromagnetic Weapons project in Bethasda Maryland reported that when animals were subjected to very low frequency electromagnetic radiation (waves below normal radio frequencies) their brains were tricked into releasing large amounts of behavior regulating chemicals. Scientists conducting the experiment believed that in humans such a release would cause sudden and severe sickness. Is something of this nature being used at the Very Large Array?
Radell believes so and while I was interviewing her for this article I was lucky enough to record some of the strange noise that she says is proof that sonic weapons are being tested. Check out the quicktime and judge for yourself.
I attempted to interview several different workers at the Observatory to get their side of the issue but any questions about the claims made by Radell was met with laughter and quick dismissal. One astronomer who didn't give his name said, "It's obvious that she's upset over something and she's decided to blame us for her problems. Her reasoning is flawed. The array collects data, it does not transmit anything."
But Radell claims that the telescopes have been retrofitted with devices which now allows them to broadcast. "You heard it yourself," she told me. "I'm not crazy. There's something going on out here that's not right. We've got a right to know what the government is doing to us."
sources
Interview with Lynn Radell, August 15th, 2000
Phone interview with Socorro city councilman Wayne Derger and health department spokesperson Sam Montgomery, August 15th, 2000
Interview with Unknown Observatory Astronomer, August 15th, 2000
US News and World Report nonlethal weapons article, June 29th 1999 issue
All photos and video by Derek Barnes
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