LIDAR & Hyperspectrometry

LIDAR Laser Sensor (LIght Detection And Ranging), Transmits laser light in much same way a Radar or sonar system to force 'echo' from ultraviolet laser beam. The radiation excites molecules and illuminates them at the same time for sensor detection. At present used to detect air pollutants and secret N.B.C. weapons research and use. Has special office in Los Alamos to co-ordinate research into use (1992).

HYPERSPECTROMETRY Satellite and J-STARS, captures not only sight, heat and radar signature of object from satellite but also measures tiniest variations in the different wavelengths of reflected radiation to give a light signature. From satellite orbit can analyse metallic composition of any object by comparison with known metals, other materials presumably can be analysed in the same fashion.

Both Articles summarised from "The Sorcerer's Challenge" By David Shuckman. BBC Defence Journalist at the time.

Already the Morrises challenge the $1 billion allocated to Los Alamos for its highly secret microwave weapon, described by the laboratory as a non-lethal project. Microwave-weapon research has been running in different guises for decades and, as Janet Morris said, ' I wouldn't put my baby or my cat anywhere near a microwave, would you?'

Some of the most influential proponents of non-lethal weapons insist that American interests are best served by developing them in secret. One such figure is John Alexander, a man well accustomed to the highest levels of secrecy. After a long and discreet career in Special Forces, including tours with the green Berets in Vietnam, and as Head of Advanced Concepts for the US army, he only recently chose to allow his name to appear in print. He is now director of Non-lethal weapons at Los Alamos and was the author of the leaked list of suggested weapons. He organised a two-day conference on the subject in November 1993 and declared- to the disgust of the Morrises- that nearly all the proceedings should be classified.

John Alexander comes with a reputation. 'Kind of strange,' one of his colleagues had warned me. ' Alexander? Oooh, spooky!' another had exclaimed. He's into near-death experiences, UFOs, alien kidnap-victims, you name it, said a defence analyst who chose to remain anonymous. A Los Alamos public relations officer had advised me against pressing Alexander too closely on the details of the various weapons systems. 'He'll talk policy but he'll just clam up if you ask about the systems themselves. 'Given what others had said, this advice made me wonder, not a little nervously, about the likely response of this mysterious figure to unpalatable questions.

We met in the lobby of my hotel in Washington. John Alexander stood tall, neatly dressed, the picture of an anonymous businessman. Only the black clothes, black hair and heavy black make-up of his girlfriend seemed to offer any support for this man's sinister image. I found myself being overly polite. And, as our interview got underway, two characteristics of John Alexander left more of an impression than they might otherwise have done.

The first was that whenever the subject of avoiding death came up- which happened in nearly every answer- he would stress each point with an unsettling widening of his eyes, stretching them open as if to reinforce his message. The second impression was left by the curiousness of his language. Although he explained his view of non-lethal weapons with great fluency- no doubt the result of innumerable briefings to the military- he produced some startling phrases. For example, in one of his earliest answers, he began straightforwardly to outline the rationale for non-lethal weapons. The US, he was saying understood war and it understood sanctions and it now needed options in between. The problem was that the military had too much firepower in an age 'when it's no point using a sledgehammer to kill flies'. The military still believed that their classic mission was to locate a target and kill it without reckoning on the cost of the aftermath, even though it was always the winner of any conflict who had to foot the bill for reconstruction. A logical enough argument, yet what followed left us stunned:

'If you go to keep the peace in a country, you don't want to antagonise the local population. You want to be friendly towards them and killing them doesn't do that. Death is an irreversible process in most cases.'

Death irreversible in most cases… The very notion made me wince and also, in morbid fascination, yearn to see the reaction of the black figure sitting in the corner. I resisted. The moment passed and Alexander was producing yet another oddity. I had asked about the applicability of his ideas to Northern Ireland. Alexander had briefed the chief Scientific Adviser to the British Ministry of Defence only weeks before and Northern Ireland had come up. If your young soldiers were confronted in an ambiguous situation, he said, and were unsure whether a hostile group was armed, it would be much better if they could make the group uncomfortable rather than kill them. 'Just slime them and then sort it out,' he concluded. 'Sliming' was to become a catchword for the next few days.

Alexander however saw nothing remotely strange or humorous in any of this. When I suggested that some people might find the idea of bugs that eat plastic or sound weapons that disrupt the enemy's bowels as bizarre, to say the least, he replied with a stony face. 'I'm not so sure I would call them bizarre at all.' There was no alternative. It was the way the West was being driven' because of the requirements of national security in the future'. Here was a man who evidently believed time was on his side, that there was little point engaging in a public debate on a strategy the military would inevitably come to accept, if slowly. He had said all he wanted to; our interview came to an end. Alexander and his girlfriend-in-black slipped away to their motel.

We were the first journalists to secure access to the still-secretive 193rd Special Operation Group, specialists in psychological warfare. Their motto: 'We fire electrons Not Bullets'

Suddenly the clouds parted. Hollywood could not have staged an entrance more dramatically. Just a few hundred feet behind us was the vast pale-grey shape of an EC-130 Command Solo. Although based on the airframe of a Hercules transport plane, it bore little resemblance to one. From almost every surface, weirdly shaped bumps and aerials protruded. The tail-plane sported what looked like double horns. Beneath the wing hung large discs. And from the spine sprouted numerous spikes and fins. As the plane edged ever closer, manoveuring into position to refuel, it was hard not to be awe-struck by the ingenuity packed into the machine that gently swayed below us. For this was the world's most advanced airborne television and radio station, the latest word in the dark art of 'psy-ops'.

[Note: mind control device as in Tannoy system can be disguised in music or static-like white noise or even be transmitted in the audio shadow of a radio or television programme.]

Such is the secrecy surrounding the Commando Solo and its sister aircraft that permission had taken months to arrange……………………….

The planes can broadcast propaganda on AM, FM, short wave and military radio frequencies. They can also transmit television programmes on six different technical systems to be able to dominate the airwaves and reach television sets virtually everywhere.

Used in Cambodia 1970.

Used in Grenada 1983

Used in Panama 1989

Used in Iraq 1991

'We own the airwaves' We fire electrons not bullets. It was therefore only mildly surprising when he declared without a blush: 'psy-ops got a bad name with Goebbels but now they're coming into their own'.

The essential idea is targeting minds not bodies. As a non- lethal

That may not be as far off as it sounds. The ultimate in non-lethal weaponry- A MIND CONTROL SYSTEM-has long been under development in Russia. It has potential that is both benign and terrifying. The device was discovered in Moscow by Janet and Chris Morris, during a hunt for previously secret technologies soon after the failed coup attempt in August 1991. In an establishment with the disturbing title, The Department of Psycho-Correction, at the Moscow Medical Academy, they witnessed a demonstration of the system. They saw how it could provide an unprecedented accurate analysis of the human mind. Then they were shown how, using the information obtained in the analysis, the system could surreptitiously target an individual's weaknesses and shape his behaviour. Tailor-made messages or instructions could be disguised in music or static like white noise or even transmitted in the audio 'shadow' of a radio or television programme. The Morrises were convinced it worked.

The designers, Igor Smirnov and Sergi Kavasovets, stress the positive aspects of their research. By building up a 'picture of the mind', they then know which key words, phases or sounds would produce a constructive reaction. They envisage the technique helping mental patients and alcoholics and they quote a particular case. A fourteen-year-old Russian boy had been repeatedly assaulting his sister sexually. He was put through the analysis process and the researchers, having identified the factors contributing to his behaviour, prepared a cassette-tape of appropriate sounds and signals to penetrate his subconscious and cure the problem. The boy was instructed to listen to the tape every day. It is claimed that the attacks stopped- until the day the tape snapped.

More significantly, Smirnov and Kavasovets claim that if enough members of a particular country or ethnic group are analysed, common vulnerabilities could be identified and large-scale influence achieved. This too could have positive roles, it is said. If a fire started in a crowded cinema, for example, the Tannoy System could covertly broadcast messages instructing people to remain calm. What the two researchers will not address though even when pressed- is the potential for the opposite to apply as well. Such a system could presumably be used to urge people to fight.

It is believed in western intelligence circles that such a technique was applied to certain key Soviet units in Afghanistan. The open scientific literature certainly reveals a highly active research programme in this area and, with morale low among the occupying troops, a device for encouraging a robust performance would have proved useful. One former Soviet paratrooper sergeant confirmed as much to me, in an interview in Minsk in February 1992. He said that before particularly unpleasant missions, such as a search-and-destroy operation, he and his colleagues were sometimes ordered into a dark room to watch swirling coloured shapes projected on to a screen and to listen to 'strange noises'. He was not at all sure this had any effect. Like many Soviet soldiers at that time, this one said he was either too high on marijuana or too drunk to pay much attention. Yet it is this kind of application of mind-control devices that triggered immediate interest in the technology unearthed in Moscow. The Morrises, worried their discovery might be snapped up by the highest bidder, possibly with disastrous consequences, quickly made arrangements for the machine and its designers to be brought to the United States.

Officially described as an aid for psychiatric care, the device was immediately seen as having valuable potential as a weapon. That its origin remains unclear was of little concern. Though it is thought that the device might have been developed to 'correct' the views of political dissidents, some of the American military and intelligence officials who scrambled to see it wondered if it might eventually fulfil a much larger roll, trying to 'correct' the scourge of nationalism. The device provoked intense interest when it arrived, with the CIA, the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), the FBI, the armed forces and the Special Operations Command all sending representatives to inspect it. The hunger for a wonder-weapon to answer their fears was all too evident.

The Morrises had anticipated such a reaction. Ever distrustful of the motives of the more secretive organisations, they had set up a company to import the device and to hold the rights to it (though without claiming any future profits). This ensured that no single organisation could seize it and remove it to the world of secret unaccountability. The Morrises wanted to avoid losing the device to the wrong hands-above all, to hands that were likely to avoid any public scrutiny or debate on the issue. The merits and dangers of a weapon of this potential power, they decided, needed thorough examination. Firm democratic control was essential.

'I wouldn't put anything past any of these people,' Janet Morris said. Part of her strategy to force an open debate was to invite us to film the device. (Indeed, the Morrises' help with my report on non-lethal weapons for Newsnight provided an insight into one of the mechanisms by which Washington functions. Having opened several important doors for us, the Morrises then circulated video copies of the broadcast reports as part of their campaign. The report was shown to some highly influential audiences, including staff members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, officials on the long-range planning staff in the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon and middle-ranking officers of the National War College.)

We arrived at one of the sleek modern buildings clustered around the CIA's headquarters at Langley, just outside Washington. It was think-tank country. Signboards bore names like 'Defence Systems Inc.' and 'Systems Technology and Control' which reveal little except an association with the military and the intelligence services. The first people we saw had that give-away combination of disciplined stature and neat suits. One, who ushered us to the right office, Almost immediately rattled off the names of the people he claimed to have met in the SAS. We were among people whose interest in weapons other than those of the most lethal kind was not immediately apparent.

The device, when we eventually saw it, was hardly impressive in appearance: a few pieces of computer equipment. Chris Morris had volunteered to let us film him being analysed by it. He sat still while electrodes were taped to his head, one in the centre of his forehead, one above each ear, one on each lobe. These were connected to an electroencephalograph (EEG) which would register the impulses in his brain. In front of him was a computer screen and, suspended across it, a large wire circle adorned with little red lights. It might have seemed farcical if the two Russians had looked a little less evil. They muttered darkly to each other, reeking of smoke, as they fussed over their equipment: Igor Smirnov had a dark beard and never smiled. Sergei Kavasovets' cold, pale-blue eyes were similarly humourless. We dimmed the lights; it was time to start.

The computer screen came to life. A large white block in the centre of the screen flashed on and off, a smaller red block appearing for brief moments inside it. The little lights on the wire ring began to wink, at a different rhythm to the computer screen. Then came a succession of words. Each was at least six letters long; a few made sense but most had the curious characteristic of nearly resembling a recognisable word but not quite so:

'Dreambutt…Jovotree…Christoph…Ficknell…Borotty…Bainstar…'

Chris remained motionless. The light from the screen flashed across his face, his eyes transfixed by the words. A slight furrow appeared on his brow as he struggled to interpret them in the split-second before they vanished. Some stayed up fractionally longer than others; a few almost seemed to overlap. It was relentless.

Mistador…Seenfirn…Crensery…Boronate…Dillar…Decrease…Brolloli…'

Yet it turned out that there was another, hidden layer of probing taking place as well. When we replayed our videotape several days later, we discovered that sandwiched between the visible words were other words, caught on a single frame, appearing for as little as one-sixtieth of a second. These had a more sinister tone:

'Armed…attack…defence…weapon…''

After twenty minutes, the screen stopped pulsating and Chris was allowed up. 'It's not unpleasant, just tiring,' he said, as Smirnov and Kavasovets went to work analysing what they had found. The words, they explained, were merely a device to focus the mind, to distract the conscious while the electroencephalograph gathered the responses of the subconscious. Within minutes the Russians had produced a three-dimensional graph showing the relative importance in Chris's mind of ten different factors including family, sex, job, father, health and anxiety. For Chris, the analysis rang true so much so that he asked me not to report it. With this level of understanding of an individual's mind, Smirnov and Kavasovets said, they choose the 'optimal strategy for treatment'. Left unsaid was the fact that 'treatment' might well be involuntary.

The FBI's senior officers were feverishly interested in that possibility. During the single week in which the device was in Washington, in March 1993, they sent experts to study the device no fewer than three times. They had a particularly pressing motive. David Koresh, the self-styled prophet of the Branch Davidian cult, was at the very time successfully resisting a siege of his compound at Waco in Texas. Federal agents had bungled an attempt to capture him and to free the dozens of his followers, some with their children, holding out with him inside. The troops surrounding the compound stood humiliated. The best they could do was to maintain a barrage of noise with helicopters and loudspeakers to keep the followers awake and to try to undermine their morale. As an image of the government's impotence, it could not have been more telling. Hence the FBI's intense discussions with the two Russians 'psycho-technologist', as they described themselves.

The idea, guarded with great secrecy, was to use the Russian device to analyse David Koresh's immediate relations, especially his mother, and any followers who had escaped or who had been close to him. A detailed database of their psychological characteristics would be built up; the hope being that such a mental picture might resemble that of Koresh himself. Subconscious messages urging him to surrender would then be broadcast hidden in music or a loudspeaker announcements by the police. Given the intense pressure on the FBI to end the standoff, without huge loss of life, this strategy for mind-control had immense appeal. Later, though not confirming this plan, the Attorney General, Janet Reno revealed how desperate she had been to find a non-lethal solution, 'some magic weapon'.

After much agonising though, the FBI got cold feet. The Russians could neither guarantee the plan would work nor promise there would not be some unexpected reaction. The FBI officials realised the immense difficulty they would face in Congress if they had to justify using a novel, foreign technique, without assessing it properly first. The idea was abandoned. The stand-off ended in a bloodbath, Koresh and his followers dying in a massive fireball. The Russian mind-control device was shipped back to Moscow, unused but not forgotten.

The Concept left an impression on many senior officials. A staff member of the highly influential Senate Armed Services Committee said, after hearing an explanation of the device, that 'it felt like the curtain being pulled back on a new era'. According to one USAF colonel, the System has 'the potential to leapfrog everything we have now'. At the same time, the realisation dawned on many that even if the United States chose not to pursue this approach, other countries may do so. Worse, it could help others to win wars. The only acceptable option, which has yet to be realised, was to secure it for America's Sole Use: that America must retain its technological lead in war fighting.