1
AMERICA’S
SECRET
ISLAND
By Peter E. Newell
Andros
2
3
America’s Secret Island,
Submarines, and other
military bases
By Peter E. Newell
4
PHOENIX COURT
17 Ash Way,
Colchester, Essex
CO3 9FN
5
By the same author –
Fighting the Revolution: Makhno-Durruti-Zapata (London,
England, 1972)
Zapata of Mexico (Sanday, Scotland, 1979; reprinted: Montréal,
Canada, 1997; reprinted: London, England, 2005)
Stamps of Alderney (Chippenham, England, 1982; reprinted and
enlarged: Brighton, England, 1988)
Symond Newell and Kett’s Rebellion in Norfolk
(London,
England, 2007)
The Impossibilists – A Brief Profile of the Socialist Party of
Canada (Twickenham, England, 2008)
6
I give permission, in advance, to anyone wishing to reproduce or store
the following in any form, or transmit it by any means – electronic,
photocopying, recording or otherwise.
Further information, particularly on or about AUTEC and Andros,
will be welcome.
PEN, 2014
www.americassecretisland.com
7
Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to Admiral Emile Chaline of Brest in France, who
interested me in the mainly French naval matters and who, during the
Second World War, spent much of his time on Atlantic convoys
evading German U-boats; Linda Featheringill of Cleveland, Ohio,
USA, who was the first to give me information on AUTEC in Andros;
Steve Shannon of Toronto, Canada, who provided a number of
interesting facts on Andros; David Sapsford of Colchester, England,
who did likewise; and Keith Scholey of Todmorden, Yorkshire,
England, who gave me numerous internet printouts of AUTEC. I
particularly thank Julian Vein of London, England, for deciphering
my scribble and converting it into what you will read!
I am responsible for the photographs of Bay Street, Nassau, and of
Paradise Island. The US Naval Undersea Warfare Center is
responsible for all the photographs of AUTEC on Andros.
PEN (August, 2014)
+
+
+
+ +
8
Contents
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................ 7
Contents...........................................................................................................8
Chapter I ...................................................................................................... 10
Chapter II .................................................................................................... 22
Chapter III ................................................................................................... 39
CHAPTER IV .............................................................................................. 47
SECRET ISLAND OR ISLAND SECRETS? ....................................... 47
APPENDIX .................................................................................................. 64
Andros, Area 51 and Diego Garcia ........................................................ 64
NOTE 2 .................................................................................................... 68
NOTE 3 .................................................................................................... 69
NOTE 4 .................................................................................................... 69
ADDITIONAL NOTE ............................................................................. 69
DIEGO GARCIA .................................................................................... 71
Appendix Sources .................................................................................... 76
Postscript ...................................................................................................... 78
BIBLIOGRAPHY, SOURCES and picture credits .................................. 79
ODD FOOTNOTE ...................................................................................... 82
FLYING SAUCERS ................................................................................ 83
DRONES – Murder by Remote Control ............................................... 84
9
10
Andros – America’s secret Island
Chapter I
MYSTERY ISLAND
It was October 1977. I was in Nassau, on New Providence Island, in
the Bahamas. I had just returned from Freeport on Grand Bahama;
and my friends, Dominique Letessier and Jacqueline Devallois, had
decided to visit San Salvador, where Christopher Columbus allegedly
landed in 1492.
It was hot and humid; and a hurricane was reported to have struck
Haiti to the south, and was coming in the direction of Nassau and
New Providence Island. On Paradise Island, across the narrow strait
from Nassau, the hoteliers were preparing for the worst. The
hurricane, however, did not materialise. It had passed us by. The
following evening my friends and I had a meal in the restaurant of the
South Ocean Beach Hotel, with the then acting President of the
Bacardi rum company who, apparently, had fled from Cuba where
Castro’s government had nationalised it. Our companion was a Cuban
by then living in the Bahamas.
Since the early 1960s, the former owners of the Bacardi company had
waged an undeclared war on the Castro régime, in alliance with
American intelligence agents, various exiled Cubans and the Mafia.
Later that week, my friends departed for San Salvador. I remained in
Nassau. For some reason I became interested in, and thought I might
visit, the island of Andros to the west of New Providence Island. I
remember mentioning this to one or two local people. Whilst standing
on Nassau’s Bay Street a few days later, an elderly English man,
almost certainly an expatriate, approached me and, in conversation,
advised me that it would not be a good idea for me to attempt to go to
Andros, or investigate the island. There was nothing there, he said.
About the same time I heard rumours that submarines had been
sighted in the waters between New Providence Island and Andros.
11
That was all. (A cousin of mine served in a British Navy submarine
throughout most of the Second World War. I have only been in a
submarine once, a French one, in an old German U-boat pen, in SaintNazaire harbour; and just for one hour. I felt quite claustrophobic.
Imagine being submerged in a submarine for up to three months. I
would go mad! I consider submarines to be quite sinister. I digress…)
Some years later, when I again became interested in Andros Island, I
thought that maybe the gentleman on Bay Street was, or had been, a
British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) agent. Up to the early 1960s
British intelligence had a number of agents in the area; and following
the Second World War British Intelligence had assisted the American
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the Caribbean. But later, as
British influence declined, the Americans with their almost unlimited
funds, largely took over in the area, as elsewhere. Nevertheless, I
asked myself: “Why should this man warn me against visiting an
island called Andros?” It was true, however, that the previous week
the Queen of England, Elizabeth II, and Prince Philip, had visited
Nassau in the Royal yacht Britannia; and security had been
particularly tight.
NOTE: During the war, Colonel W.T. Wren represented British
security, doubling SIS Section V and Defence Security Officer in the
Caribbean, first in Trinidad and then in Bermuda and Nassau, in the
Bahamas, and looking after MI5’s interests. He was assisted by Lord
Harry Tennyson. One of Wren’s tasks was protecting and “keeping an
eye” on the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
Interestingly, sequences from a number of James Bond, 007, films,
including Dr. No, For Your Eyes Only and Thunderball, were shot on
location in the waters, and on the coral reefs around Andros, New
Providence Island and the Exuma Cays. Bond (Sean Connery) is seen
playing baccarat in the gaming rooms of Paradise Island. And
Nassau’s Bay Street and Paradise Island are featured in scenes, played
by Daniel Craig and Eva Green, in the 2006 Bond movie Casino
Royal.
+
+
+
+ +
12
Andros is almost certainly named after Sir Edmund Andros,
Commander of British forces in Barbados in 1672, and successively
governor of New York, Massachusetts, and the Dominion of New
England until deposed during the upheavals of the “Glorious
Revolution”. It was first permanently settled by the British in 1787.
Andros lies 30 miles to the west of Nassau on New Providence Island,
170 miles southeast of Miami in Florida, and about 100 miles north of
the north coast of Cuba. The southernmost tip of Andros (Water Cays)
is just north of the Tropic of Cancer.
It is by far the largest of the 700 islands and cays of the Bahamas. In
fact, Andros is actually composed of three major islands (North
Andros, Mangrove Cay and South Andros) and hundreds of tiny cays.
In the words of Paul Albury:
“Andros occupies forty-three per cent of all Bahamian land. But
there are several channels, navigable by small vessels, that pass
right through the island, and future enumerators will have to decide
whether to consider it a single island, or a cluster of islands” (The
Story of the Bahamas, p.6).
It is approximately 105 miles long from north to south, and 40 miles
wide at its widest. It is roughly 2300 square miles in area. It has no
land higher than 75 feet.
When I was in the Bahamas, much of Andros had not been explored,
at least officially. In the 1960s a few unauthorised adventurers had
penetrated some of the interior. More recently, when a friend in
Toronto asked a local travel agent what he knew about Andros, the
travel agent replied: “Only billionaires go there.” In fact few
billionaires, or millionaires, go to Andros. They prefer Paradise
Island!
Andros is low and generally sandy. It is serrated by numerous
channels, or rivulets, known as “bights”, of which some are navigable.
These include Goose River, which is 15 miles long and the only river
in the Bahamas, North Bight, Middle Bight and South Bight, and a
number of small lakes. It has thousands of miles of freshwater
13
channels that come from rainwater collected in the numerous caves in
the interior of the island.
Andros (as well as Abaco, Grand Bahama and a number of other
smaller islands) has scores of “Blue Holes” or caverns and cave
systems, often joined by subterranean waterways or tunnels. Some
have both stalactites and stalagmites. A few, such as Stargate on
southeast Andros, Sanctuary and Little Frenchman, have been much
explored in recent years; others in the interior less so, or not at all.
Many are too dangerous. Although many are filled with fresh water,
others contain poisonous hydrogen sulphide gas. Cave divers have
been attracted to one or two of them, such as Stargate. Nicolas and
Dragan Popou, in their The Bahamas Rediscovered (pp.80-81), note
that Andros has approximately 400 inland and ocean holes.
“Ocean holes, as the name indicates, are found in the sea while the
inland holes are completely surrounded by land and at the base are
separated from the sea. Ocean holes are also found in the extensive
creek system of Andros, and differ from inland holes in that there
is a very strong current flow…certain ocean holes [are]
impenetrable…the inland holes have a fresh water layer at the top
which is non-existent in ocean holes.”
There are also “boiling holes” on Andros. These are entrances to
subterranean cave systems. They differ from “blue holes”, since the
water coming out of them is under pressure and appears to be boiling.
According to local legends monsters and evil spirits called luca,
resembling octopi, live in some blue and boiling holes, lying in wait
to pull individuals as well as small boats down to the depths. They are
definitely considered “off-limits” by some Androsians.
The eastern side of Andros is famous for its bonefishing.
The western shore of Andros is utterly barren, whilst the lush, green
interior is covered with dense subtropical jungles or forests of lignum,
pine and mahogany; and on its western fringes by mangrove swamps.
Not surprisingly, the humidity can be overpowering, unless one is
accustomed to it, and the mosquitoes are not friendly! There are,
14
however, refreshing breezes along the east coast.
+
+
+
+ +
The end of the 19th century witnessed a sisal-planting boom in the
Bahamas, including Andros. Sisal was looked upon as a magic plant
which would transform the Bahamian economy. The Chamberlain
family invested £50,000 in a plantation in northeast Andros. Joseph
Chamberlain sent his son, Neville, later to be Prime Minister of Great
Britain, to supervise his Andros Fibre Company. Planning began in
1892; and, according to Paul Albury, by April 1895, 6,000 acres of
former pine and scrub had been brought into cultivation. But by 1896,
when the plants should have shown long dark-green leaves, ready for
cutting, they were yellow and stunted. Sisal would not grow in the
rock and sand of Andros.
In the late 1960s, and the 1970s, an American-owned company,
Owen’s Lumber Company, established a mill on northern Andros for
the production of timber. But the company deforested large areas of
the indigenous pineyards, resulting in dense overcrowded forests later,
of mainly young trees, caused by poor or non-existent planning for regrowth. It was not a success.
In more recent times, some quite large farms were developed; and
okras, tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries and papayas were grown.
They too were not successful, partly due to the thin and difficult soil.
Not surprisingly, there are no highways, towns or settlements on the
island except along the east coast.
+
+
+
+ +
The earliest known inhabitants of Andros, as elsewhere in the
Bahamas, were the Lucayan Indians (Island People), who generally
thrived from the 6th century AD to the 16th century, when they were
wiped out mainly by exposure to disease following the arrival of the
Spaniards in the 1550s. Skeletons, including skulls, of the Lucayans
15
have been found in caves and Blue Holes on Andros.
When the Spaniards discovered the island, they called it La Isla del
Espiritu Santo – the Island of the Holy Spirit. But they did not stay
there long. During the 18th century, pirates occupied parts of Andros;
Morgan’s Bluff and Morgan’s Cave on North Andros are named after
the notorious pirate, Henry Morgan. On South Andros, pirates are said
to have had an elaborate fortification, complete with a harem and
preyed on Spanish commerce between Florida and Cuba.
In the late 18th or early 19th century, a small tribe of Seminole
Indians, former slaves who had escaped from the Florida Everglades,
together with a handful of their former owners, settled on the northern
tip of Andros; they remained hidden from the outside world until a
few decades ago, where they continued to live as a tribal society, in
and around a village called Red Bay. The Seminole Indians are
credited with originating the myth of the island’s legendary, and
elusive, chickcharnies – red-eyed, bearded, green-feathered creatures
with three fingers and three toes that hang upside down by their tails
from pine trees. These creatures supposedly lurk deep in the forest,
and then vent their mischief on travellers. Not surprisingly, Andros
has retained an eerie mystique.
Iguanas, dragon-like reptiles up to six feet in length, are found on
Andros. They are, however, extremely shy. The forests provide
nesting grounds for parrots, partridges, quail, white-crowned pigeons
– and whistling ducks. There are also said to be 50 species of orchids
on Andros.
Sponges proliferate in the Bahamas. They are creatures, often dark
purple, which anchor themselves to the sea-floor of the shallow banks
west of Abaco, around Bimini, and particularly in the vast area
southwest of Andros, known as “the mud”. The gathering of sponges
by Androsians was, at one time, quite extensive.
The permanent, indigenous population of Andros is less than 8,000 (it
was officially 7,800 in December 2010), of whom most live in
settlements on, or near, the east coast of the island. The only real
towns or settlements are Nicholl’s Town, at the northeast corner with
16
fewer than 1,000 inhabitants; Andros Town about 35 miles to the
south, with a population of 2,318 (in December 2010), and Driggs
Hill on South Andros, halfway between Andros Town and the
extreme southern tip of the island. Also on the east coast, south of
Driggs Hill are the settlements of Congo Town, The Bluff and Kemps
Bay.
Rooted in Andros is what is known as Obeah, a quasi-religion which
originated in West Africa. It is not a cult, as Obeah has no priests,
collective rituals, gods or saints. It is more a blending of African
religions and mere superstitions.
Its practitioners claim to render evil into good, make dreams come
true, bring wealth or poverty, or even cause death. Obeah does not
have ceremonies found in voodoo or Haitian vodou. Nevertheless an
Obeah believer may chant, sing or go into a trance to give an
impression, or gain special powers. Some Christian ministers may
practice a form of Obeah; but most Christian revivalists in the
Bahamas are not involved in its practice. To orthodox Christians,
Obeah believers are “evil doers” engaged in magic. While Andros has
strong historical roots in Obeah, its beliefs can be found in other,
mainly Out Islands, such as Eleuthra.
There are four small airports: at San Andros at the north near
Nicholl’s Town, at Andros Town (International Airport), Mangrove
Cay (for the centre), and Congo Town in the south of Andros. There
are flights to and from Nassau and Miami in the United States.
If the island of Andros is something of an oddity, the waters between
it and New Providence Island to the west are even more so.
+
+
+
+ +
To the west of Andros is the Great Bahama Bank. To the east, within
a mile of the shore, and all along the coasts and beyond for more than
150 miles, is the Andros Barrier Reef, said to be the third longest
coral reef in the world. The average depth of the waters within the reef
and the shore are only between 5 and 15 feet. To the east of the
Andros Barrier Reef, however, (“over the wall”) lies the Tongue of
17
the Ocean, or TOTO as it is generally called. It wasn’t until about
1960 that what has been described as “an incredible natural wonder”
and “an inky black abyss” of coral forests, was fully discovered and
explored.
TOTO is probably unique; a deepwater basin, 110 miles long and 20
miles wide, with a vertical drop to the east of the Barrier Reef,
varying in depth from 700 to 1,800 fathoms. In one or two places, it is
more than two miles deep. The floor basin is fairly smooth, and quite
soft, with very gradual depth changes. It is bounded to the south and
east by a large expanse of very shallow banks that are almost nonnavigable; and to the north by the Northwest Providence Channel, a
shallow-water plateau adjacent to the Berry Islands, a dozen or so tiny
cays which are largely uninhabited. All of which results in little vessel
traffic, an absence of large ocean swells, and very slight currents.
The seas in the vicinity of Andros are well-known for their sponges. A
creature of shallow banks, they grow in abundance in the large
underwater area to the southwest of Andros known as “the mud”, and
on the Little Bahama Bank to the north.
+
+
+
+ +
The Bahamas became a British colony in 1783. For three centuries, an
entrenched white colonial elite dominated the commercial and
political life of the islands, maintaining a colour bar over the majority,
black population. They were known as the “Bay Street Boys”, named
after the capital’s main business street in Nassau. Most of them were
members of local Masonic lodges. Corruption was rife. They were
also involved with the Mafia, particularly before the early 1930s. The
Bahamas was a smugglers and bootleggers’ paradise. But it did not
last. By the end of 1933, with the end of Prohibition in America, and
the deepening of the worldwide depression, the economy of the
Islands likewise suffered. Nevertheless, as elsewhere, the economic
situation improved in the Bahamas with the outbreak of the Second
World War.
Following the Fall of France in 1940, and subsequent occupation by
Nazi Germany, the British government exiled the pro-Nazi former
18
King Edward VIII, by then Duke of Windsor, to the Bahamas, as
Governor. Not surprisingly, the Duke was involved in controversies,
and particularly the brutal murder of multi-millionaire, Harry Oaks, in
Nassau in 1943, and the subsequent cover-up. Windsor was well
aware that Oaks was killed by Harold Christie, and not the playboy
Alfred de Marigny. Oaks and the Duke were involved in a deal to
smuggle millions of dollars out of the Bahamas and into a Mexican
bank which money-laundered for the Nazis. I digress…
Before the 1960s, the constitution of the Bahamas remained in the
18th century. Patronage, gerrymandering, and grossly unequal
electoral districts ensured the regular return of the Bay Street
oligarchs to the House of Assembly in Nassau. There were septennial
parliaments; and a limited franchise which excluded women. Indeed,
it was not until 1962 that a number of older, white women got the
vote. There was a company vote, as well as a property vote, which
excluded most of the black (male) citizens – a majority of the
population, mainly descended from slaves.
During the Second World War, on the 2nd of September 1940, United
States President Roosevelt announced a deal with British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill to trade 50 old, mainly First World War,
destroyers to the United Kingdom in exchange for ninety-nine-year
leases on eight bases on British territories in the Western Hemisphere,
from Newfoundland down to Trinidad in the Caribbean. These
included one at Man-O-War Cay, Abaco, to the east of Grand
Bahama; and the other in the Bahamas, on Great Exuma Island, about
100 miles to the southeast of Andros. On Exuma, the Americans built
a sea-plane base near George Town. The purpose of the installation
was to provide aerial surveillance of maritime shipping and activity in
the Crooked Island Passage, and its approaches between Long Island
and Crooked Island, approximately 100 miles northeast of the
northern coast of Cuba.
On a deserted part of western New Providence Island opposite
Andros, the British and United States High Command decided to
construct an enormous pilot training centre. Dissatisfied with their
wages, political and economic conditions and racial discrimination,
black workers on two sites went on strike. Others looted properties in
19
Bay Street. Rioting lasted several days, but abated following the
increasing of the black workers’ wages.
In July 1950, the British government gave the United States base
rights for a new Long Range Guided Missile Proving Ground in the
Bahamas close to Andros, which subsequently became NASA’s
launching centre at Cape Canaveral in Florida. Later, as well as in
Andros, a number of underwater listening stations were constructed in
the Caribbean area, including in Antigua and the Virgin Islands; as
well as a listening station at Daniels Head in Bermuda. Previously in
1946, the British Labour government of Clement Attlee secretly
ordered the production of 10,000 biological cluster bombs, to carry
disease-carrying bomblets to be aimed at Soviet targets. They were
intended to “contain the most effective biological agents for
incapacitating Soviet workers”. The project was to be named Red
Admiral. The biological weapons were due to be ready by 1957; but
the project was, in fact, cancelled in 1954 before any of the bomblets
were actually manufactured.
There were, however, extensive trials of toxins and various highly
infectious viruses carried out on live animals. Called Planning
Operation Ozone, viruses were released in trials in the Bahamas in
1954, off the east coast of Andros about 60 miles south of Nassau on
New Providence Island. The crews of the British Navy
vessels involved were not told that they would be, or were, involved
in biological warfare tests until some time later. According to Dr.
Brian Balmer of University College in London, a test rig was made of
35 linked dinghies, each with a crate containing live sheep, a box for
monkeys and a carrier for three guinea pigs. During the preparations,
two of the dinghies, presumably containing animals, were eaten by
sharks! And one technician caught brucellosis from test samples; but
his family was informed by the Navy that this disease was “frequently
contracted in tropical climates”.
+
+
+
+ +
For more than 30 years, Lynden Oscar Pindling dominated politics in
the Bahamas. He was born in 1930 to a Bahamian mother and a
retired Jamaican policeman. His wife, Marguerite, was born on
20
Andros.
Pindling was a charismatic, populist, reformist black politician who
played the race card against the Bay Street Boys as well as American
imperialism – when it suited him. Yet he encouraged capitalist
investment in the Bahamas from both Britain and the United States.
He was known as the Black Moses.
In the election of 1956, Lynden Pindling, representing the Progressive
Liberal Party (PLP), which he had joined soon after its formation in
1953, was elected on the limited franchise to the House of Assembly
as junior member for the Southern District of New Providence Island,
which included the capital, Nassau. He was elected leader of the PLP
parliamentary caucus of six members. The racial composition of the
House was in inverse proportion to that of the population.
Tourism, some light industry, and banking, encouraged many black
workers to form, and join, trade unions. And, in January 1957, there
was a general strike in Nassau and on New Providence Island.
Pindling supported the strike, gaining the PLP considerable workingclass support. The Bay Street Boys panicked; and the following year,
in an attempt to widen their appeal, they formed the United Bahamian
Party (UBP) to counter Pindling and the Progressive Liberals.
Surprisingly, however, the PLP won the 1962 election. Pindling
advocated universal suffrage for all Bahamian adults, despite some
gerrymandering by the UBP. Four extra seats were created in the
“black belt” of New Providence Island. The Bahamas achieved
independence from the United Kingdom, following the 1972 election,
in July 1973.
At the 1967 election, Pindling switched his electoral base from New
Providence Island to Kemps Bay on Andros, where he defeated the
sole representative of the tiny Negro Labour Party. By a whisker, the
PLP became the government and Lynden Pindling premier of the
Bahamas, despite the Bay Street Boys and the UBP pouring large
sums of money into their campaign, and using American political
consultants against Pindling and the PLP.
American involvement, official and unofficial, continued and still
21
continues in Bahamian affairs, including Andros Island. Indeed, when
I was leaving the South Ocean Beach Hotel one morning, to go into
Nassau Old Town, an American man offered me a lift in his car, a
large Cadillac if I remember. The Bahamas had been nominally
independent for 15 years; but there were, it seemed to me, to be many
Americans in Nassau and on New Providence Island. I do not know if
the American who gave me a lift was employed locally, or if he had
come over from AUTEC on Andros. (Previously, when I was in
Freeport, on Grand Bahama, I got a lift from an English expat
engineer – in a Mini!…)
By 1970, the United Bahamian Party had largely collapsed, and was
replaced by the Free National Movement (FNM). But the United
States became increasingly critical of Lynden Oscar Pindling. So, the
Central Intelligence Agency decided in 1982 to act, prior to the
Bahamian election of 1983. The CIA sent one of its agents, Lestor K.
Coleman, to the Bahamas on his first operation, to interfere in the
islands’ election. Pindling had already incurred U.S. displeasure by
offering sanctuary to a runaway financier, Robert Vesco, wanted by
the Americans. Coleman fed Pindling’s opponents, and in particular
the Free National Movement, with disinformation and “dirt” on
Pindling, whom the American media accused of money-laundering
and drug-trafficking. But no direct evidence was found against him,
although it was proved he had received a loan of $2.8 million, as well
as various gifts. Nevertheless, Pindling and the PLP continued to win
elections. By the early 1990s, however, it was the beginning of the
end for Pindling. Unemployment and crime were increasing in the
Bahamas; and in 1992, the Free National Movement swept into power
with 32 seats to the PLP’s 17 in the National Assembly.
After a quarter of a century, Lynden Oscar Pindling’s power was
broken. He died in August 2000.
+
+
+
+ +
22
AUTEC
Chapter II
Not only is Andros the subject of “mysterious” happenings; it is at the
apex of the supposed Bermuda Triangle, also the subject of alleged
mysterious happenings during the last 75 or more years. The Bermuda
Triangle allegedly covers an area from Bermuda in the north, Puerto
Rico to the south, and the apex just west of Andros at the tip of
Florida. Over the years, there have been many disappearances in, or
over, the Atlantic Ocean between Bermuda and the tip of Florida.
Stories of ships disappearing in boiling seas, and of aeroplanes sucked
out of the sky, were numerous.
For example, at 2.00 pm on 5 December 1945, Flight 19, comprising
five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo bombers, took off from Fort
Lauderdale Naval Air Station, 150 miles northwest of Andros, on a
routine patrol over the Bahamas and into the Western Atlantic. Two
hours later, the patrol leader radioed the station, saying that his
compass had failed, and the patrol had lost sight of land. Control
ordered him to fly due west, into the sun, until he saw land. He again
radioed control to say he thought they were over the Florida Keys.
The Controller ordered him to take the patrol north. They were by
then convinced they were over the Gulf of Mexico, and turned east.
They were running out of fuel, and now out of radio range. The five
planes disappeared, never to be seen again. At 7.30 pm, a rescue plane
was dispatched from the Air Sea Rescue Station at Banana River. It
was due to call the station at 8.30 pm. It did not. It, too, disappeared.
The
captain of a ship patrolling the area, reported seeing a plane explode
and catch fire. No debris was ever found of any of the planes in the
sea. It is possible that they may have come down in the jungles of
Andros. And, at that time, there were no airfields or airstrips on the
island.
The story is often told as a classic Bermuda Triangle mystery. Over
Fort Lauderdale the weather was fine, and visibility good; yet over
Andros and the Bahamas, particularly as it was getting dark, it was
23
bad, with storms and rough seas. Over the following years, there were
many such mysterious disappearances in the area.
During the 1970s, oceanographers puzzled over strange sonar
readings, from hydrophones, which suggested a second Atlantic
seabed below the first one. Test drillings, however, revealed evidence
of abundance of methane hydrate. Aircraft were also said to be
affected.
Of the “mysteries”, Nigel Cathorne, writing in the X Factor magazine
(no.24) explains:
“To this day, craft continue to go missing in the general area of the
Bermuda Triangle, but this is inevitable when human error is given
the opportunity to combine with equipment failure, appalling
weather, murderous currents, some deepest waters on the planet,
and one of nature’s deadliest tricks. The idea that the area is home
to some mysterious ‘dark force’ which swallows up aircraft and
ships alike provides a great story, but it appears the facts are far
less sinister.”
Mysterious plane crashes, and vanishings, also continue to occur to
the south of Puerto Rico and the Bermuda Triangle, between the
Caribbean archipelago of Los Roques and the north coast of
Venezuela. Known as the “Los Roques curse”, there have been more
than 15 incidents between the mid-1990s and 2013. In January 2013, a
plane carrying 6 passengers, including the Italian fashion executive
Vittorio Missoni and the crew,
disappeared on a flight to Caracas. No wreckage has been located.
Speculation for the “curse” has included the release of methane
hydrates from the sea floor, whilst a local pilot spoke of seeing the
plane being swallowed up “by a huge cumulus cloud”.
The area, and beyond, is of course prone to violent storms, hurricanes
and earthquakes such as the one, in 2010, in Haiti. Indeed, hurricanes
occur on average every two-and-a-half years in Andros. It is no
mystery to the Americans on the island. Under Hurricane Conditions
of Readiness (COR), they remind Program Managers that the
hurricane season can run from the beginning of June through to the
end of November. (I heard warnings of one such hurricane in
24
October.) Due to varying characteristics of each storm, AUTEC (of
more later) implements appropriate plans and guidance. For latest
information of what impact a hurricane presents, computers provide
readings from the Naval Maritime Forecast Center Updates, and
National Hurricane Center Information.
The waters around Andros, and indeed other islands of the Bahamas,
are, however, strewn with the wrecks of ships and boats, large and
small. One site includes the wreck of the Potomac, which ran aground
off Andros in 1952, and is now split in two, 600 feet apart, with both
the sections visible at low tide.
According to Lesley Gordon (Bahamas, p.110), “wrecks liberally
sprinkled throughout the islands give mute testimony to the extensive
– and potentially dangerous – coral reef system that surrounds them.
The history of the Bahamas is written in them…Some wrecks date
from the two centuries when the islands were a refuge for pirates.
Rumors of hidden treasures abound in the southern
Bahamas”.Interestingly, on 1st April 2013, TV Channel 5 broadcast,
and featured, a fascinating documentary entitled Bermuda Triangle:
The Mystery Revealed. As previously noted by other investigators, the
TV programme stated that many aircraft and surface vessels have
vanished within the 4,000 square miles of what has been termed the
Bermuda Triangle. It claimed that there have been, since the 1920s,
more than 250 disappearances, with the loss of 5,000 lives. Mention is
made of the disappearance of the U.S.S. Cyclops and the British
H.M.S. Tarta. Of the aircraft lost without trace, emphasis was
unsurprisingly focused on the mysterious disappearance of the five
U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo bombers which vanished without trace in
December 1945. Known as Flight 19, the Navy said the aircraft
disappeared in “unknown circumstances”. Each had a crew of three.
The planes had a range of about 1,000 miles. The TV documentary
states that their compasses failed during a violent storm. According to
one theory, the aircraft may have come down, not in the Bahamas, but
in southern Georgia. This, however, is most unlikely. They apparently
crossed Andros, where they may have come down, or to the north
near the Berry Islands. Great Stirrup Cay Island, the most northerly of
the Berry Islands, was mentioned.
25
What, then, is the cause of the numerous disappearances of aircraft
and ships? The TV investigation argues that there is no simple
explanation. Bermuda is, like the Bahamas and areas to the south,
subject to violent storms. It rises in the sea, in the deepest part of the
Atlantic Ocean. It, also like the Bahamas, is affected by the Gulf
Stream (of warm air at an altitude of about 10km, running from west
to east, thus increasing the speed of aircraft), which, incidentally,
passes between the west coast of Andros and the east coast of Florida.
The area, particularly to the south of Andros, is subject to
earthquakes, with the inevitable movement of tectonic plates. Solar
storms may also affect the area. One rather far-fetched theory,
according to the TV documentary, is the speculation that the Triangle
is affected by Dark Energy – whatever that is!
+
+
+
+ +
In 1966 the United Kingdom signed a secret defence agreement with
the United States, leasing to it the newly-created British Indian Ocean
Territories (BIOT) for 50 years, with an option of a further 20, to use
and occupy the main island, Diego Garcia, as a military base for,
among other uses, intelligence gathering, a fuelling point for B-Stealth
bombers and the storing of nuclear weapons.
But what of Andros in the Bahamas?
In November 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in
Dallas, Texas. A few weeks previously, in October, the United
Kingdom, which at that time still ruled the Bahamas, signed a lease
agreement with the United States to establish an underwater testing
centre on Andros, close to Fresh Creek north of Andros Town, to be
known as the Atlantic Underwater Test and Evaluation Center
(AUTEC). In reality, according to Gene Wheaton in an article in the
Portland Free Press (July-October 1996) entitled “Secret Island Spy
Base 110 miles from Florida”, the “Bahamian government politicians
and bureaucrats were bribed into turning over control of Andros
Island for this purpose”. It was, he claimed “…a sophisticated
underground/undersea computerized center for tracking Soviet (and
friendly) ships and submarines”. Paul Albury noted (The Story of the
Bahamas, p.245) that AUTEC is an ideal site for testing [its]
26
underwater weapons and protective devices”.
Of course, the local politicians had no choice but to agree.
Nevertheless, the bribes would have been acceptable. Unlike in Diego
Garcia, there was not a large indigenous population to expel from
Andros. A few were found employment working on the construction
of AUTEC, which commenced in 1964. I have been told that the
initial cost of the construction of AUTEC was $150m. Whether that
included bribes, I have no idea.
It became operational in 1968, and was officially certified in 1969 by
the U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) War Center. In
theory, AUTEC “is operated jointly by the UK as well as the US, with
some participation from Canada and New Zealand” (DMS Market
Report, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1980). In fact, the U.S. runs
AUTEC. TOTO is indeed a prime location for littoral warfare training
exercises. It is, however, affiliated with the NATO FORACS (Fleet
Operational Readiness Accuracy Check Site) programme, in which
the participating NATO member nations are said to be Canada,
Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom and,
of course, the United States.
At some time in 2011 or 2012, not-so-open verbal warfare broke out
between NATO/FORACS members, Greece and Germany, with
another NATO member, Turkey, allegedly involved.
Following a private meeting of European trade union leaders,
summoned by the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, in Berlin, at
which the Greek union leader Yiannis Panagopoulos brought up the
subject of Greek weapons expenditure, rumours of submarines
became the “talk of Athens”. Merkel said that Greece owed Germany
payment on submarines for over a decade. But, apparently, Greece
had paid Germany more than €2bn for submarines that were faulty,
and which were not needed. Yet it admitted that it required, not just
submarines, but French Mirage jets and other weapons from Germany
and the U.S., because of the risks of attack by fellow-NATO member,
Turkey. Although not publicised, it is almost certain that Greek
submarines have visited AUTEC on Andros, probably to check their
performance.
27
I can reveal however that AUTEC has been increasingly used by the
British Royal Navy to test their most advanced, secret, anti-submarine
weapons.
The primary mission of AUTEC’s Check Site (later known as Naval
Forces Sensor and Weapons Check Site) is, according to NAVSEA,
“…to perform precision measurements of accuracy of target and
navigation sensors installed on surface ships, submarines and
helicopters”:
“The mission of AUTEC is to support the full spectrum of
undersea warfare by providing accurate three-dimensional
tracking, performance measurement, and data collection resources
to satisfy Research, Development, Test and Evaluation
requirements, and for assessment of Fleet Training, tactical and
material readiness.”
AUTEC had, and has, other functions as well. It has been reported
that underwater, unmanned robotic vehicles (UUVS) are tested by
AUTEC.
+ + + + +
Various buildings were constructed, the main one (referred to as Site
1) being the Command Central Building and Range Support Facility,
which houses the computer centre, communications centre, the photo
laboratory and central timing system. The Range Support Facility
houses extensive technical laboratory facilities; a complete electronics
maintenance shop, as well as a torpedo post-run workshop. At the site,
six Range User buildings (RUBs), including gantry cranes, were
constructed.
A 285-foot-long concrete pier, and an adjacent wharf 240 feet-long
were built, together with marine overhaul shops. Offshore, two Range
towers were also erected. A channel was cut out of the reef so that
submarines could dock.
AUTEC had its own airstrip constructed. It provides both fixed-wing
28
and rotary-winged aircraft to support test operations. Helicopters are
equipped to provide mobile target launch and torpedo recovery
services on the ranges. They are available to act as airborne targets for
tracking system tests and calibration; and for surveillance,
photographic and other test and training-related missions.
Fixed-wing aircraft are available for transporting personnel and
equipment between the AUTEC Airport Terminal at West Palm
Beach, Florida and Andros. AUTEC’s main administrative and
technical support offices are located in West Palm Beach. According
to Gene Wheaton in his 1996 Portland Free Press article, “Security at
the AUTEC facility is enhanced by divers and swimmers being
moved in and off the island via underwater locks accessible to
submarines.” Nosy journalists were not welcome, he says. And,
indeed, yachtsmen are warned not to approach AUTEC or its harbour.
In 1985, Queen Elizabeth II paid an official visit to Fresh Creek on
Andros, her first visit to any of the Out Islands. She did not, however,
just go, or was permitted to go, to AUTEC just a few miles to the
southeast.
The AUTEC base on Andros Island is almost self-sufficient. Housing
is available with transient quarters and messing facilities. “Off-duty”
facilities include: cable television, a library, cocktail lounges, a snack
bar, retail store; a variety of recreational and sports activities,
including basketball, racquetball, and volleyball courts, a softball
field, tennis court, fitness track, a beach house – and the inevitable
chapel! It is not “all work and no play” at AUTEC. Nevertheless,
personnel are warned that the off-base amenities on Andros are very
limited indeed.
But all is not lost for those who have the time and inclination for
extra-curricular activities elsewhere. Nassau on New Providence
Island is but a short 15-minute flight from the main AUTEC base.
And AUTEC provides, for a small fee before departure, daily flights
to Nassau International Airport, where taxis are available for
transportation to Old Town. There is not a lot to interest AUTEC
personnel in Nassau itself, although there is an excellent golf course at
the South Ocean Beach Hotel, where I have stayed. But Paradise
Island, linked to Old Town by 2 bridges, is a different world,
29
however. There are hotels, restaurants, bars, shops and, of course,
other forms of entertainment. It is not quite Havana pre-Castro, but it
is not called Paradise Island for nothing. And, anyway, the fleshpots
of Havana are no longer available to upstanding American
servicemen.
Indeed, both the Mafia and former President of the United States,
Richard M. Nixon, were at one time closely connected to Paradise
Island. And Nixon was not known as “the Syndicate’s President” for
nothing! He was a business associate of Mafia financier, Bebe
Rebozo, who was also heavily involved in Mafia-sponsored activities
against Fidel Castro. Both Nixon and Rebozo had a number of murky
deals in Florida and the Bahamas, including Paradise Island, where
Reboza’s Key Biscayne Bank was a conduit for dollars skimmed from
the Paradise Island Casino. In January 1968, Nixon was a guest at the
opening of the casino, controlled by mobster Meyer Lansky. At the
1968 Republican Party national convention in Miami, the Paradise
Island Casino’s company yacht was put at Nixon’s disposal.
According to Dr. John Coleman (The Conspirators’ Hierarchy: The
Committee of 300), not necessarily a reliable source, Meyer Lansky
“used respectable fronts associated with the British higher-ups, in
bringing gambling to Paradise Island in the Bahamas under cover of
the Mary Carter Paint Company, a joint Lansky-British MI6 venture”
(p.193). The Lansky organisation proved to be one of the best vehicles
for drug-peddling, he says.
+
+
+
+ +
The Atlantic Underwater Test and Evaluation Center provides a wide
and bewildering range of capabilities, products, services and assets,
many of which mean little or nothing to anyone other than
submariners. Nevertheless, I will list most of AUTEC’s capabilities;
then its products and services and, importantly, its assets. In the next
chapter, I will describe and discuss the United States Navy Sound
Surveillance System (SOSUS), of which few are aware.
AUTEC provides:
Active Acoustic Target Strength
30
Active Sonar Detection Assessment
Acoustic Beam Patterns
Acoustic Shielding
Acoustic Signature Noise Floor
Acoustic Simulation
Acoustic Source Levels
Acoustic Stimulation
ADCAP Torpedo Firing Assessment
Ambient Noise Measurement
Air-launched Torpedo Testing
Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Performance
Buoyant Ascent Vehicle Measurement
Counterdetectability Analysis
Deep Water Acoustic Measurements
Hydroacoustic Noise Measurement
In-Water Tracking
A Joint Special Warfare Operations Assessment
Littoral Warfare Testing
Low Frequency Ambient Noise Measurement
Magnetic Anomaly Detection (MAD) Testing
Mobile Sea Target Launch and Recovery
Mk 30 Mobile Target Miniwars
Mk 48 Torpedo Simulation
Mobile Sea Target Launch and Recovery
NATO FORACOS Support
Noise Augmentation Systems
Nonacoustic Sensor Tests
Over-the-Horizon Targeting (OTH-T)
Passive Signature Enhancement
Passive Sonar Performance Measurement
Periscope Detection Assessment
Propagation Loss Measurement
Shallow Water Acoustic Measurements
Shallow Water Minefield
Ship Navigation Accuracy Measurement
Ship Performance Maneuvering Trials
Ship Sensor Performance Assessment and Calibration
Sloping Topography
Sonar Acoustic Target Source
31
Sonar System Calibration
Sonar System Performance Assessment
Sonobuoy Tracking
Submarine Target Strength Measurement
Target Motion Analysis
Target Strength
Torpedo Launch and Recovery
Underwater Acoustic Measurement
Underwater Countermeasures
Underwater Systems Performance Assessment
Underwater Weapons Systems
Weapons Systems Accuracy Trials
Additionally, AUTEC also provides a full range of technical services,
and infrastructure, from pre-test operations planning to post-test data
analysis, including:
Air Support Services
Data Acquisition/Processing/Analysis
Engineering/Fabrication Support Services
Land-based Exercises and Situational Training
Logistic and Supply Services
Marine and Airport Services
Mine Warfare Tests
Oceanographic Research, Studies, and Hardware Systems
Development Tests
Range Intervention Development Tests
Research and Development Testing of Advanced Undersea Warfare
Combat Systems
Sea- and Air-launched weapon Evaluations
Ship Performance and Maneuvering Standardization Trials
Single POC for Test Planning, Coordination, and Fleet Liaison
Surface-Ship, Submarine, and Aircraft Sensor Performance and
Calibration Tests
Test Conduct/Execution
Unmanned Vehicles, Weapons, Surface Ships, Submarines, Acoustic
Measurements, and Performance Evaluation
Weapon/Target/Instrumentation Support Services
32
AUTEC’s assets include:
A precision 3-dimensional in-water and in-air tracking range in both
deep and shallow environments
A Range User, Support Compound with extensive technical
laboratory facilities
A tracking system for deployed sonobuoys
Andros and West Palm Beach Real-Time Displays Centers
Buoyant vehicle, deep-water haul down site with data collection
capability
Computerized Mk 46 and Mk 48 torpedo simulators to minimize Fleet
training costs
Differential GPS Tracking Systems for off-range tests, including a
Large Area tracking Range (LATR)
Exercise Weapon and test vehicle post-run and turnaround capabilities
Extensive data reduction and data processing systems and facilities
Fixed, mobile and deployable targets, noise sources, and transponders
Helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft
Large pier and wharf to accommodate vessels with up to a 20-foot (6meter) draft
Mk 46/Mk 50 REXTORP Intermediate Maintenance Activity (IMA)
Facility
Mk 48 R & D Turnaround Facility
Open-ocean research vessels, range craft and small boats
Precisely located target for platform sensory accuracy testing
Post-test debrief/replay display systems
Remote and Portable Real-Time Range Display Systems and Software
(PARGOC/PCARGOS)
Self-deployable systems for gathering radiated noise and acoustic
signature data from torpedoes
Various Range User Buildings (RUBs), including a helicopter hangar.
Probably the most important AUTEC facility is the Weapons Range,
which is primarily used to gather highly accurate positional data, to
analyse and assess the performance of undersea warfare weapons,
weapons systems and component subsystems.
The Weapons Range is parallel to the east coast of Andros Island. It is
the largest of the AUTEC ranges; about 10 miles wide and 35 miles
long. It is said to be able to track 9 objects simultaneously. It is
33
supported by the Main Base (Site 1), and various smaller sites located
along the east coast of the Island to the south. There is both In-air
tracking up to 70,000 feet (21,000 meters) over the Range, and InWater tracking. Surveillance radars are provided.
As well as the main test sites east of Andros in TOTO, there is in the
southern boundary of the Northwest Providence Channel, between the
Berry Islands and Bimini, a shallow-water plateau which can be used
for littoral warfare tests. Also available, there are test sites (for small
unmanned submarines?) off the east coast of Florida, and west of
Andros, by the Cay Sal Bank. Submarines, as well as other vessels
from America, can proceed from the Straits of Florida into the
Northeast Providence Channel, and directly to AUTEC’s pier.
+
+
+
+ +
Towards the end of 2012, it was reported that the British Ministry of
Defence will commit an additional £2.7bn to the Royal Navy’s
troubled, and generally agreed wasteful, hunter-killer submarine
programme that has been beset by delays, overspend and other
problems since it was first commissioned in 1997. The Royal Navy
plans to have seven Astute-class boats, three of which are completed
and are undergoing trials. Ultimately, the British government expects
to spend at least £10bn on a fleet of submarines which is many years
late. According to the Guardian (31 January 2013) altogether £35.8bn
will be spent over 10 years on submarines for the British Navy,
including the seven Astute-class attack vessels, plus a completely new
fleet of Vanguard nuclear ballistic missile submarines, all built at
Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, in northern England. Critics have said
that the programme should have been scrapped, although RearAdmiral Simon Lister, the MoD’s Director of Submarines, claimed
that “These boats provide optimum capability that a submarine can
offer in land strike, strategic intelligence gathering, anti-submarine
and surface ship warfare, and protection of the strategic
deterrent.” The Astute would “become the jewel in the crown,” he
said.
Nevertheless, the first H.M.S. Astute cannot reach the top speed that
the MoD claimed it could; a lead-lined water jacket, which
34
surrounded the submarine’s nuclear reactor, was constructed with the
wrong (inferior?) quality metal; and the crew’s living quarters are said
to be more cramped than in submarines made more than 50 or 60
years ago. The electrical circuit boards failed the Navy’s safety
standards and, presumably, had to be replaced.
Apparently, during trials in the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere east of the
United States, H.M.S. Astute experienced a leak; there was some
flooding during a routine dive, but it survived an emergency
surfacing. A small part of the submarine had corroded. Whether it had
undertook trials at AUTEC is not known, at least to me. In 2010, it ran
aground, and its commander was removed from command.
In an interview with the Guardian newspaper (27 December 2012),
Lister admitted that there had been design faults, technical problems
and construction flaws of the Astute-class boats. Lessons were being
learned, he said. Hopefully, Astute will be brought into service. The
programme was first commissioned back in 1997.
Admiral Lister also admitted that Astute will not be a fast-speed
submarine; but “fast enough”. Further boats, such as Ambush, should
have fewer problems. But it is unlikely to achieve the maximum 30
knots, previously claimed by the Ministry of Defence. Interestingly,
but not surprisingly, Russia Today TV news (on Wednesday, 15 May
2013) gave considerable prominence, reporting design and other
failures, to Britain’s Astute submarines.
The MoD has, however, awarded a £600m contract to the French
defence and security company, Thales, to service the “electronic eyes
and ears” of the British Royal Navy’s fleet of submarines (and other
ships), including the maintenance of the sensory systems of the
Astute, Trafalgar and Vanguard class submarines. Furthermore, until
2023, Thales will provide support and repairs for the British Navy’s
sonars, periscopes and electronic surveillance equipment. Whether
Thales is involved with AUTEC is not known, at least to me.
In late 2011, a British submariner petty officer, Edward Devenny,
who had been in the Royal Navy for 12 years, and had worked on a
number of Trident submarines, attempted to give away allegedly
secret information to the Russians. He phoned the Russian embassy,
35
and set up what he thought was a meeting with a couple of Russian
embassy officials. However, GCHQ had monitored his calls, and MI5
agents posed as the Russian officials at two meetings with Devenny.
At the meetings, he gave MI5’s “Russians” secret information about
operations by H.M.S. Trafalgar and H.M.S. Vengeance. And he
discussed the sailing dates of H.M.S. Vigilant to the “west Atlantic for
missile testing”. I would guess that this may have been at AUTEC, on
Andros, in the Tongue of the Ocean, as one of AUTEC’s functions
includes “missile testing”. Petty officer Edward Devenny was found
guilty of “misconduct in a public office”, and sent to jail for eight
years.
+
+
+
+ +
Cuban Interlude
To the south of Andros, on the 8th of January 1959, Fidel Castro’s
“army”, which never numbered 2,000 men, entered Havana, the
capital of Cuba. They were unopposed. By the end of the year, Castro
had full control. About 100,000, mostly wealthy Cubans left the
country.
The United States was quick to respond to the events in Cuba. The
National Security Council, meeting on the 10th of March, had on its
agenda “the bringing of another government to power in Cuba”. And
even before the Castro government had nationalised any U.S.
properties (such as sugar plantations and hotels), CIA Director Allen
Dulles declared that “an invasion of Cuba is necessary”. President
Eisenhower agreed. Shortly after, the Mafia departed the island.
Bombing attacks on Cuba in October 1959 began by planes based in
Florida. The CIA, together with the Mafia, made numerous attempts
to assassinate Castro. They all failed. Cuba was blockaded; and
preparations for an invasion were begun. Anti-Castro émigrés were
trained by the CIA.
Castro nationalised the entire Cuban sugar industry by the end of
1960. The United States embargoed all trade with Cuba. The U.S.
broke off all diplomatic relations with the Castro regime on the 3rd of
January 1961; and on the same day John F. Kennedy took his oath of
36
office, replacing Eisenhower as President of the United States.
Kennedy was now lumbered with the CIA-organised invasion of Cuba
– Operation Pluto.
Not surprisingly, Fidel Castro looked for an ally. The choice was
obvious, the Soviet Union. A trade pact was agreed to buy Cuban
sugar. Castro received technical assistance, and sought to purchase
Soviet oil and petrol. In May 1960, Cuba and the Soviet Union
exchanged diplomats.
The CIA continued its preparations for the invasion of Cuba. The date
was to be the 5th of March, 1961, but had to be delayed until the 17th
of April. The story of the invasion – the Bay of Pigs attack – has been
told many times and in great detail. It is not necessary here. Suffice it
to say it was a complete and absolute failure, a fiasco!
The Russians began re-equipping Cuban armed forces, which
included 40 MIG fighters. And, then in July the same year, the U.S.
air force together with U-2 observation planes, watched and
photographed Soviet ships sailing to Cuba with large crates on their
decks. From the same month, an increasing number of young men
(20,000 all told) were seen arriving from the Soviet Union, all
wearing similar suits and walking stiffly. They didn’t look much like
tourists!
+
+
+
+ +
The Kremlin decided it had to take a strategic gamble, and install
nuclear missiles and bases in Cuba. Khruschev had two motives: One
to deter another, but successful, invasion of Cuba and, two, to create a
nuclear balance between the U.S. and the USSR. The United States
had surrounded the Soviet Union with military bases, armed with
nuclear warheads capable of wiping out all Soviet cities, including
Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev, within a few minutes. Those based in
Turkey were of particular concern to the Soviets. So, argued
Khruschev on a visit to Bulgaria: why not install missiles with nuclear
warheads in Cuba?
He also decided to send anti-aircraft missiles to the island. It was a
37
risk worth taking, he felt. He didn’t ask permission from Castro,
however, although Fidel claimed later that he had given Khrushchev
permission.
According to the CIA, by mid-August, there were 65 Soviet ships
heading towards Cuba, of which 10 were carrying military equipment.
A U-2 flight over the island noted anti-aircraft construction sites.
On the 8th of September, the Russian cargo ship Omsk docked at
Havana at night, and unloaded a cargo of medium-range ballistic
missiles (MRBMs). One week later, the CIA reported a second
shipment of SS-4 missiles, with a range of 600-1,000 miles, arriving
in Cuba. Such missiles could reach Washington, as well as 40-50 per
cent of U.S. Strategic Air Command bomber bases. Moreover, the
American radar early-warning system was useless, as it was facing the
Soviet Union – not Cuba. It was the beginning of the hurricane
season. Poor weather had forced the grounding of U-2 spy flights;
and, indeed, on the 27th of October, a U-2 plane was lost over Cuba,
probably shot down by the Cuban air force. A missile site near San
Cristóbal was in construction by mid-October.
For more than a week, news was kept from the American people; and
Britain, America’s client state in Europe, was not informed until the
21st of October, either. Already, four of the sites in Cuba were
operational.
What would the United States do? Bomb Cuba? Destroy all the Soviet
missile bases? This was ruled out. Appeal to the United Nations? This
was ruled out as taking too much time; and it might fail anyway. A
full-scale invasion of Cuba? Possibly. The final option, which was
acted upon, was a naval blockade of the island, and an ultimatum to
the Soviets that the nuclear missiles be withdrawn.
Legally (in international law), the United States did not have a strong
case. Fidel Castro asserted that there was nothing illegal if a sovereign
state invited an ally, or any other country, to install nuclear weapons
and establish bases on its territories. The United States had such bases
all over the world, he said.
38
The situation was, however, critically dangerous. There were a
number of Soviet submarines, with nuclear torpedoes already armed,
prowling the area around Cuba and to the south of Andros. The
captain of one such submarine, being depth-charged by U.S. warships,
assumed that the Third World War had commenced, and ordered the
use of nuclear weapons. It was only the opposition of the second-incommand, Vasili Arkipov, whose consent was required, that
prevented a catastrophe.
The Americans established a “quarantine” line. On the 27th of
October, the Soviet vessel Grozny steamed towards this line. But on
the same day Khrushchev offered President Kennedy a deal: “We will
remove our weapons from Cuba, and you will evacuate yours from
Turkey.” Kennedy reluctantly accepted; and he promised not to
invade Cuba. Both kept their word. But on the 22nd of November
1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. That is
another story…
+
+
+
+ +
39
Chapter III
SOSUS
As previously noted, the AUTEC base had, and presumably still has,
other functions besides those described and listed above. Andros
provided an important base for the United States and NATO’s Sound
Surveillance System – SOSUS, known as ACOUSTINT, or acoustic
intelligence.
Jeffrey Richelson, in his American Espionage and the Soviet Target
(p.l53) notes that all Soviet Russian naval movements – both military
and commercial – were considered targets for US intelligence
collection. “A major role in that monitoring was played by a set of
passive listening devices installed at selective locations on the sea
floor.” By the early 1950s, American undersea intelligence expanded
fast. Richard J. Aldrich, citing W. Packard’s A Century of U.S. Naval
Intelligence (Office of Naval Intelligence, Washington D.C., p.51,
1996), states:
“In Washington, the Hoover Commission Report on American
Intelligence Activities, completed in 1956, recommended that the
US Navy expand the collection effort. This included the highly
secret SOSUS project – Sound Surveillance Stations – which
involved placing undersea microphones into the Atlantic. Using
high-frequency radio direction-finders, contacts could be quickly
co-ordinated and plotted. By the 1960s, with vast new resources
authorised, the Americans were to launch a new wave of audacious
operations” (The Hidden Hand, p.528).
SOSUS consists of an array of hydrophones attached to the ocean
floor to detect submarines. But it is more than that. Arrays were first
laid in 1950 along the east coast continental shelf of the United States
as far south as the Bahamas. They were originally codenamed
CEASAR, and were completed by 1954.
SOSUS is based upon a discovery about the nature of sound. In depths
of the ocean of about 2,000 feet, there is a layer of water which holds,
40
and protects, sounds entering it, carrying them for thousands of miles.
Of the SOSUS system, the Stockholm Peace Research Institute
(SIRRI) comments:
“Each SOSUS installation consists of an array of hundreds of
hydrophones laid out on the sea floor, or moored at depths most
conducive to sound propagation, and connected by submarine
cables for transmission of telemetry. In such an array a sound wave
arriving from a distant submarine will be successively detected by
different hydrophones according to their geometric relationship to
the direction from which the wave arrives. This direction can be
determined by noting the order in which the wave is detected at
different hydrophones” (quoted in American Espionage and the
Soviet Target by Jeffrey Richelson, pp.168-169).
The hydrophones were sealed in tanks, approximately 24 to a tank,
with the cables transmitting the data to shore facilities, as on Andros.
The data collected about each submarine detected, such as its sonar
echo, the noise of its engine, cooling system, and the movement of its
propellers, can be translated into a recognisable signal, or “signature”.
The United States, and to a much lesser extent the United Kingdom,
developed a global network of large, fixed sea-bottom arrays that
listened passively for the sounds of, mostly Soviet, submarines.
Variants, code-named COLOSSUS, were constructed along the
Pacific coast of the United States, the Greenland-Iceland-United
Kingdom (GIUK) Gap, Norway, and in the Pacific and Indian oceans.
Surprisingly, in May (2nd, 1977), Gerry Gable, at the time a producer
for London Weekend Television, but later owner and editor of
Searchlight magazine, in a “strictly secret” memo, notes that Duncan
Campbell, an investigative journalist, was asking commercial
companies “who work on top security contracts” for “information on
top secret work, including that on under-water detection hardware,
which he clearly knows is beyond the pale”. That is the SOSUS
system.
+
+
+
+ +
41
In September 1968, construction of a large fixed underwater system,
known as the Azores Fixed Acoustic Range (AFAR), began off Santa
Maria, the southernmost island of the group; and was commissioned
by NATO in May 1972.
The largest underwater monitoring station outside the U.S. located at
St. Brides Bay, near Pembroke in West Wales, began operations in
1973. This is located at the RAF base. It is operated by the U.S. Navy
Facility, or NAVFAC. According Richard J. Aldrich (GCHQ, p.377):
“A joint UK/US project team had identified RAF Brawdy on the
coast of Wales as the ideal site for an additional SOSUS centre.
Britain provided the land and the capital costs, while the United
States contributed the personnel and the equipment for the
intelligence analysis.”
In January 1982, U.S. Naval Investigative Service special agents
raided the SOSUS underwater station at Brawdy, and discovered that
of the 281 personnel with Top Secret clearance more than 45 were on
drugs, and were then charged.
Brawdy was part of “Project Caesar”, began in 1954, with NAVAC
stations sited along the United States eastern coast. It was officially
described as an oceanographic research facility. By 1980, Brawdy
NAVAC had 300 U.S. officers and other ranks on site. Altogether, it
covers more than four acres of buildings, housing computers and other
electronic equipment.
Interestingly, in 1967, the British government Joint Intelligence
Committee’s report on where, in the event of war, Russian nuclear
missiles were likely to land on the United Kingdom, listed under “26
RAF BOMBER BASES”, Brawdy (ANNEX A TO COS
1929/2/11/67). According to Hugh Lanning and Richard NortonTaylor in their book, A Conflict of Loyalties GCHQ 1984-1991 (pp5960), the United States National Security Agency (NSA) and the
British government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) have a
presence at Brawdy. The base is, or was, home to 14 Signals
Regiment (Electronic Warfare). Britain, Canada and the U.S. have
established intelligence, air and naval facilities in Bermuda, all linked
42
to AUTEC on Andros. A SOSUS base was later established on the
Caribbean island of Antigua (see map of the Atlantic Ocean).
+ + + + +
Over the years, SOSUS has been upgraded a number (at least four) of
times. As early as 1962, the capabilities of the SOSUS system were
demonstrated during the Cuban missile crisis, when every Soviet
submarine approaching the area was said to have been located, and
then trailed. When two Russian submarines moved close to the East
Coast of the United States, north of the Bahamas in April 1978, they
were detected and tracked by SOSUS. The Brawdy-Azores and east of
the Bahamas arrays were commissioned mainly to track Soviet
submarines moving towards the Cape of Good Hope, the South
Atlantic and the Caribbean.
In February 1983, Portugal began renegotiating its leases to the U.S.
of its bases in the Azores, including the SOSUS underwater tracking
facility at Santa Maria Island. But they were not, at the time, renewed
by Portugal’s government. Nevertheless, U.S. forces remained in situ
whilst new terms were considered.
While SOSUS capabilities have proved to be more than satisfactory
generally, the system was vulnerable and fallible. Cables have been
cut by Russian ships. Soviet trawlers hooked cables; and
undersea midget submarines have located the hydrophone arrays. Of
SOSUS, Professor R.V. Jones in his Reflections on Intelligence
(pp.96-97) notes that, in 1979, the arrays of hydrophones were
reported to be capable of detecting the location of Russian submarines
at a range of 3,000 miles. But:
“Since then, though, the Russians have acquired the necessary
knowledge and techniques to reshape their propellers in American
and British standards which give less noise; and so the detection
range of SOSUS may have been reduced, unless detection
sensitivity has advanced in the meantime.”
Professor Jones added later (p.166), that the key problem is to locate a
submarine in salt water, almost impenetrable to light or radio waves.
“Sound waves, which are much more effectively transmitted by water
43
offered almost the only hope…the noise of the submarine’s engines
and propellers could be detected, or pulses of higher frequency sound
waves bounced off its hull, the acoustic forerunner of radar now
known as SONAR and formerly as ASDIC”. (During the Second
World War, I worked on ASDIC in a drawing office in Westminster.)
ASDIC (Anti-Submarine Detection & Identification Committee).
The signals from U.S. hydrophones are transmitted by satellites for
correlation to shore bases, which are processed automatically by
computers at numerous stations (such as Brawdy and Andros,
certified in 1969). Further data from these shore facilities are
transmitted to acoustic research centres in California and Nevada.
Interestingly, it has been stated that one of Britain’s Royal Marines
Special Boat Section’s (SBS) intelligence-related functions was, or is,
to check sections of the SOSUS array system. Also SBS divers used
Royal Navy submarines, such as the nuclear-powered Triumph, to get
close to their targets, exiting the vessels under water via escape
chambers.
Towards the end of the last century an advanced version of the U.S.
system was the Fixed Distributed Surveillance (FDS) system, which
was intended to counter quieter Russian submarines, noted by
Professor Jones. The FDS system integrates large-scale, sea-bottommounted acoustic sensor arrays on a single fibre-optic cable system.
During the 1980s, there was a growing use of fibre-optics in global
communications, particularly by the United States and the United
Kingdom, as well as Russia. East and West attacked each others’
cable traffic. Naval security experts were concerned about devices
deposited on the seabed, monitoring the movement of submarines. In
1995, Rear-Admiral Michael Cramer, the U.S. Director of Naval
Intelligence, commented that post-Soviet Russia was continuing to
construct miniature submarines capable of exploiting “things on the
bottom of the sea”, i.e. SOSUS and other cables. By that date, it was
estimated that there were probably 100 billion under-sea fibre-optic
channels in use around the world. It was a whole new ballgame!
Nevertheless, modern nuclear submarines (British, American,
44
Russian, French etc) are increasingly difficult to locate (witness the
collision of the French Le Triomphant and HMS Vanguard on 6
February 2009, in the Atlantic), because they are very much quieter
than in the past.
Commodore Stephen Saunders, editor of Jane’s Fighting Ships, noted
that “The modus operandi of nuclear submarines is to operate as
stealthily as possible. All submarines are making less noise now.”
The U.S. Trident submarines have exceptionally quiet engines, and an
overall shape which makes them very difficult to pick up on radar,
except by satellites, where water disturbance can be seen caused by
submarines at certain depths. What these submarines do not do is go
round very quickly, as propeller or propulsion noise could give them
away.
To maintain their low sonic profiles, they do not use active sonar,
which involves using “pings” to detect other vessels and submarines,
but rely on passive sonar. Indeed, Britain’s Royal Navy nuclear
Trident-class submarines – 16,000 tons and 450-feet long – are
covered on their black hulls with sonar-absorbing anechoic (lowdegree sound reverberation) “tiles”.
It is government intention, however, to replace the present missile
system of nuclear-deterrent submarines by 2028. The new submarines
would replace the Vanguard-class submarines that currently carry the
United Kingdom’s deterrent. It is claimed that Vanguard submarines
cannot be detected at sea; and can launch missiles at a range of 6,000
miles.
NOTE
In the summer of 2010, the British lost sight of a Russian nuclear
submarine. Surveillance was lost as it departed from its base in
Severomorsk, near Murmansk. It was finally located – through
SOSUS? – three weeks later on patrol, probably west of the Azores
and east of the U.S.. Said the MoD: “We play a cat and mouse game
with the Russians; when they move out of their northern base, we
track their submarines. Part of this is done by our Nimrods.”
45
Surveillance will also continue, according to the MoD, “by using
other equipment, with the help of our allies,” primarily the United
States.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Russian nuclear
submarines were mothballed or just abandoned; and have rusted
away, often dangerously. Consequently, the Russian submarine fleet
was, and is, much reduced.
+
+
+
+ +
Whether the U.K., or society at large, will require or want armed
submarines by 2028 is, to say the least, problematic. Humankind may,
hopefully have moved on by then.
+
+
+
+ +
Additional Note: The United Kingdom has collaborated with the
United States for decades in what has been euphemistically described
as “defence”. And this has included AUTEC on Andros.
An important aspect of this “defence” is Electronic Warfare (EW),
largely developed in Britain by Marconi Defence systems, including
Marconi Underwater Systems, based at Croxley Green and at
Portsmouth. Since 1968, Marconi has been part of the General
Electric-Plessey organisation.
Involved, particularly for “defence”, is computer simulation. This is
used to test torpedoes. Such computers, according to Marconi,
“…embody the operational software, and control hardware identical
to that being used in weapons being developed”, such as for Sting Ray
and Spearfish torpedoes. Also involved in EW and submarine stealth
technology, is the British Ministry of Defence’s Admiralty Research
Establishment.
It was claimed in the 1990s, that Britain led the world in underwater
warfare technology, although the Americans (at AUTEC?) might
46
dispute that. The U.K.’s anti-submarine sonar weapons were regarded
as some of the most advanced. The Marconi group of companies
specialised in those areas.
An important, but secretive, company within the General Electric
(GEC) “empire”, is – or was – Elliot Automation Space and
Advanced Military Systems Limited (EASAMS), founded in 1962.
EASAMS, apparently specialises in the field of testing by “simulation
modelling” of computer-based “defence” projects, according to Tony
Collins (Open Verdict, p.81). Its Underwater Group carries out studies
into sensors, torpedoes and various acoustic countermeasures. One of
its publicity leaflets states that EASAMS “has a wide experience in
the performance assessment of radars, missiles, decoys and jammers”.
According to Collins (pp.140 and 143), the proliferation of
electronically controlled weapons has caused a rapid expansion in the
field of EW “to the extent that it can be a decisive factor in a war”.
Missiles can be made to miss their target by being subjected to EW.
Submarine commanders can use EW technology “to seduce an
attacking torpedo into chasing the wrong target, or into ‘seeing’ or
‘hearing’ a target that does not exist”. EW plays a critical role in
underwater warfare, as AUTEC is well-aware.
+
+
+
+ +
47
CHAPTER IV
SECRET ISLAND OR ISLAND SECRETS?
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) do not always see eye-to-eye. Often, there
has been conflict between the domestic agency and the so-called
overseas organisation.
As previously noted, in 1987, the CIA acted against Lynden Pindling,
partly because Pindling had granted sanctuary to the financier, Robert
Vesco, wanted by the FBI. In September 1983, however, according to
Time (19 September, “Vesco Redux”, p.25), a dispute developed
between a proposed covert FBI operation and the CIA. Since 1972,
the FBI had been investigating the activities of Vesco and Bahamian
officials allegedly involved in illegal drug-smuggling into the U.S..
They intended to set up a “sting operation” to catch the officials
taking bribes. But the CIA station chief in Nassau successfully
opposed the FBI operation on the grounds that it would jeopardise the
continued use by the United States of AUTEC and other activities on
Andros including, presumably, the global submarine surveillance
system. Richelson and Ball (The Ties That Bind, p.248) add: “AUTEC
at Andros in the Bahamas includes one of the largest sea-bottom
arrays in the US global submarine surveillance system.”
What were the Americans hiding on Andros? Why the secrecy? Why
was the CIA so concerned? Was it another Area 51?
+
+
+
+ +
Paul Albury, in his The Story of the Bahamas (p.245), mentions that to
the east of Andros, there is a great submarine canyon called the
Tongue of the Ocean, which was selected by the United States as an
ideal site for testing its underwater weapons and protective devices. It
is, he writes, close to Fresh Water Creek, and work commenced in
1964. Wikipedia merely notes that “The Atlantic testing and
Evaluation Center Deep Water Weapons Range runs parallel to the
48
east coast of the island, and operates a base on North Andros.”
In an article, “Secret Island Spy Base 110 miles from Florida”,
published in the Portland Free Press of July-October 1996, Gene
Wheaton asserts that the most closely-guarded secret of the U.S.
covert operators is located on Andros Island in the Bahamas; and is
controlled by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the U.S.
Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps. “The cover under which this
domestic intelligence operation is buried,” says Wheaton, “is a U.S.
Navy facility called AUTEC, a sophisticated underground/undersea
computerized center for tracking Soviet (and friendly) ships and
submarines.”
However, continues Wheaton, the compartmentalized, illegal secret
operation, buried within the AUTEC complex, is a covert intelligence
project and operation directed against the civilian population of the
United States. The reason for setting up the operation at Andros Island
was to take it “off shore”, outside the boundaries of the United States,
and bury it under the sea in a foreign country. Bahamian government
politicians and bureaucrats were bribed into turning over control of
Andros Island for this purpose, he claims, as previously noted.
In Wheaton’s view, this secret facility was central to Theodore “Ted”
Shackley’s “Third Option”; and the project to create domestic unrest,
chaos, and the illusion of a domestic terrorist threat within America.
According to the Portland Free Press, the operation was controlled by
the same group of CIA covert operators who were running the Jupiter,
Florida-based Continental Shelf Associates/ANV (“acta non verba” –
action not words), and the New Orleans-based Pacific Gulf Marine;
the same “lunatic fringe” of the intelligence community who were
investigated by the Pike and Church Congressional committees in the
mid-1970s, and Senator John Kerry’s Guns, Drugs and Covert
Operation Committee in the late 1980s, related to the Iran-Contra
scandal.
Alleged to be involved was George Bush senior, who became CIA
Director and, later, President of the United States, Theodore Shackley
who was formerly CIA chief of station in Miami, Richard Helms,
Robert Stevens, James A. Cunningham, Jr., and an élite inner circle of
49
OSS and CIA veterans, Ray Clines, William Casey, Geoffrey M.T.
Jones, et al. Incidentally, the Bush family oil company, Zapata
Offshore, an off-shoot of the Zapata Petroleum Company, was
allegedly used by the CIA as a cover in the planning of the Bay of
Pigs invasion of Cuba (see The Last Supper, 1988 by Philip Willan,
p.294). The Andros Island covert operations evolved from the mid1970s intelligence scandals surrounding CIA officer Edwin P. Wilson,
Jr. and the creation of Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) Task Force
157, Consultants International and several “front” companies. At the
time Theodore Shackley was CIA Deputy Director of Operations,
involving illegal gun-running, money-laundering and assassinations.
Such operations were allegedly planned, launched and controlled out
of Andros Island under the secrecy, unofficially, of the National
Reconnaissance Office (NRO). Wheaton says he “has reason to
believe several questionable deaths are related to illegal covert
operations under the secrecy of [the] NRC, and were planned and
launched out of Andros
Island”. He alleges that the deaths included Prime Minister Olaf
Palme of Sweden, Bill Casey, and Jim Cunningham, a friend of his
who was the former head of the CIA’s Air America in Laos; and a
number of other individuals, although he does not give any evidence.
Gene Wheaton died shortly after. The late investigative journalist,
Danny Casolaro, who died under mysterious circumstances in August
1991, associated former
presidents Reagan and Bush Snr., and sources within the CIA and the
Mafia, of being part of much the same secret group of conspirators
which he named “The Octopus”. How much of this is true, I have no
idea.
+
+
+
+ +
The National Reconnaissance Office was classified secret from its
establishment on 25 August 1960. It was not supposed to exist. It was
not until 1973 that its existence became public knowledge, due to an
error made in a Senate committee report, which mentioned its
existence. Yet its early budget was – maybe still is – probably far
more than that of the CIA. It was, apparently, created in August 1960
after lengthy debates within the White House, the Department of
Defence (DOD), the Air Force and the CIA. Its creation was in
50
response to problems plaguing the missile and satellite programmes in
general, and the shooting down of a U-2 spy plane over the Soviet
Union in particular, earlier in the year. Annie Jacobsen, in her Area 51
(pp.168-169), states:
“President Kennedy…created a protocol that required the CIA
deputy director and the undersecretary of the Air Force to comanage all space reconnaissance and aerial espionage programs
together as the National Reconnaissance Office, a classified
agency within Robert McNamara’s Department of Defence. A
central headquarters for NRO was established in Washington, a
small office with a limited staff but a number of empire-size egos
vying for power and control. The organization maintained a public
face, an overt identity at the Pentagon called the Office of Space
Systems, but no one outside a select few knew of NRO’s existence
until 1992.”
The NRO manages all U.S. satellite reconnaissance for the entire
intelligence system, which involves the collection of photographic and
signals (SIGINT) intelligence. Its main objective during the Cold War
was to monitor Soviet ships and submarines, other than those
monitored by SOSUS and ship-based operations.
The NRO is directly supervised by an executive committee chaired by
the Director of Intelligence; that is the CIA. Generally, the UnderSecretary of the Air Force has served as the Director of the National
Reconnaissance Office, but there have been exceptions. The CIA’s
component of the NRO is, or was, headed by its Deputy Director for
Science and Technology. The naval component used to be the Navy
Space Project of Naval Electronics System Command (NAVALEX);
but it later became part of the Space and Sensor Systems Program
Directorate of Naval Space and Warfare Command (NAVSPAWAR).
The NRO would, therefore, have had particular interest in Andros.
At the head of naval intelligence is, or was, the Assistant Chief of
Naval Operations for Intelligence, who is simultaneously the Director
of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), a supervising organisation
which directs the various naval intelligence operating agencies.
Directly subordinate to the Director of ONI are: the Security of
51
Military Information Division, and the Plans and Programs Division.
There are other naval intelligence, security, investigative and technical
organisations, too numerous to list here, but also including the AntiSubmarine Warfare/Ocean Surveillance Division, and the Undersea
Surveillance Project which includes SOSUS and, presumably,
AUTEC on Andros.
+
+
+
+ +
According to Gene Wheaton, when George Bush Snr. was running
illegal covert operations out of the White House, he moved his
mother’s retirement home to Jupiter, Florida, primarily: (a) to place
her under the intelligence protection and support of the covert
operators of Jupiter-based Continental Shelf Associates and its agency
ANV Limited; (b) to give a legitimate-looking cover for Bush and his
associates to visit Jupiter without rousing suspicions and questions
from the media, and (c) to give them close proximity to various CIA
covert air operations in the area, run by Air America’s “front”,
Southern Air Transport (SAT) out of Florida. (see Robbins, pp 68-74).
In his Portland Free Press article, Wheaton calls the CIA “spooks” a
“lunatic fringe”. He claims to have come across what he says was “the
Andros conspiracy”, in the mid-1980s, while investigating unsolved
murders of some U.S. military and CIA intelligence officers
connected with the National Reconnaissance Office. He travelled to
Jupiter, and then Andros, on this investigation. He mentions that
among insiders, the “assassination network” was called the “Fish
Farm”. Wheaton also claims to have been employed by some of the
covert-operations “front” companies; and was being groomed to be
part of the inner circle, until he realised how dangerous and unstable
these people were. Says Wheaton:
“I have reason to believe several questionable deaths are related to
illegal covert operations under the secrecy of the NRO, and were
planned, launched and controlled out of Andros Island.”
Security at the AUTEC facility is enhanced by divers and swimmers
being moved on and off the island via underwater locks accessible to
submarines, says Wheaton.
52
(In February 1998, Ace Hayes, the editor of the Portland Free Press
died; and in 2000 his widow, Janet, passed some of my observations
regarding Andros onto Gene Wheaton.)
+
+
+
+ +
In his book, The Killing of Karen Silkwood, Richard Rashke briefly
mentions Andros regarding the use of the island for training recruits in
counter-insurgency, torture and assassinations. It, and such other
Bahamian islands as Great Inagua (and, of course, Florida) were also
used by CIA-trained Cuban exiles to infiltrate, and attack targets, on
the northern coast of Cuba in small, but fast, boats. Indeed, Andros is
ideal for guerrilla warfare training.
In the 1960s, the United States International Police Academy (IPA)
trained foreign (mostly Cuban and other Latin American) police,
intelligence, military and security officers in surveillance skills; and
recruited promising students in counter-insurgency, and as CIA
informers and operatives. Congress, however, closed the IPA down,
notes Rashke, when the public learned that it had trained men who
turned out to be assassins and torturers. In fact, the United States has
been notorious, not just for using torture against alleged and actual
terrorists (that is anti-American, not pro-American ones!), but for
teaching torture techniques at the International Police Academy, as
well as the infamous School of the Americas located in fort Benning,
Georgia, later to become the Western Hemisphere Institute of Security
Cooperation. In October 1984, it was disclosed that the CIA had
prepared a manual of instructions of torture and violence against
civilian populations, in its war with the Sandinistas of Nicaragua.
Following Fidel Castro’s takeover of Cuba, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, CIA
Chief of its Technical Services Division, wrote an 88-page handbook
for the use of CIA personnel, titled Assassination Methods in which
he advised “decision and instructions should be confined to an
absolute minimum of persons, and ideally only one person will be
involved whose death provides positive advantage” for the Agency.
(Quoted in Inside British Intelligence by Gordon Thomas, pp.147148.)
53
In 1973, a certain Jack Holcomb founded, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida,
the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) as a replacement for the IPA.
The CIA was in on it from the beginning, says Richard Rashke. It was
a top-secret operation with CIA connections. Howard Osborn, the
CIA Director of Security, was present when Holcomb and his
colleague, Leo Goodwin Jr., drew up the plans. The local Florida
police were informed of the NIA’s CIA connections – and agreed to
co-operate in any way they could.
The National Intelligence Agency was housed in a separate wing of
the Audio Intelligence Devices
Corporation (AID), another CIA “asset”, next to the Fort Lauderdale
Executive Airport, where AID/NIA owned two heliports and a private
airstrip long enough to land a 727 aircraft. AID paid the rent.
Goodwin, and his foundation, put more than three million dollars into
the project.
According to Richard Rashke, the Audio Intelligence Devices
Corporation became the largest private company to design and sell
high-grade wiretapping, bugging, tracking and other surveillance
equipment in the United States.
The NIA offered two-week courses on the state-of-the-art in
electronic surveillance. The students, who stayed at the Tradewinds
Hotel owned by Goodwin, were taught how to bug a room, and tap a
phone, in five minutes in the NIA’s secret classroom containing a
fully-equipped telephone “city” with nearly every kind of indoor and
outdoor terminal used by telephone companies. Potential CIA agents,
double agents and informants were recruited at the NIA, and sent to
Andros for more sophisticated training, according to Rashke in his
book, The Killing of Karen Silkwood.
Security was tight. There were armed guards at the building and the
airstrip, television cameras, and roving patrols who watched the roads
around the building. CIA-owned airlines, like Air America, used the
airstrip; and there were 13 flights a day to and from Andros. A private
investigator, William Taylor, secretly spent four days snooping,
having been dropped by helicopter, into the island’s interior jungle
areas. He said he saw that Andros was full of underground facilities.
54
The bases and jungle were, he claimed, used for specialised training
of some kind. He also said that the CIA and British intelligence had
command posts on Andros Island. Not surprisingly, the CIA agent,
Lester K. Coleman, who was sent to the Bahamas to “dish the dirt” on
Lynden Pindling, was later loaned to the National Intelligence Agency
at Fort Lauderdale, as Director of Video Operations, at the time
housed on the premises of Technos International, also known as AID.
In October 2012, Steve Shannon of Mississauga, Ontario, told me that
a guy he recently met, said that in 1988 he sailed a 35-foot yacht from
Canada to the Bahamas. All you could see near Andros, presumably
from the sea, he continued, were black helicopters with no markings.
He added that the island was a base for drug smuggling. He thought,
at that time, it was also a CIA base. Shannon felt that the U.S.
authorities may have put out the story of a drug smugglers’ hang-out
to keep people away from Andros Island. It always was notorious for
smuggling, however. But not just Andros.
In 1984, a Royal Commission may have cleared Lynden Pindling of
drug smuggling: nevertheless, since the early 1970s, the smuggling of
drugs has been a considerable problem for the Bahamian authorities,
particularly South American cocaine. The close proximity of the
United States makes the Bahamas a natural base of operations for the
drugs’ trade, with hundreds of islands and cays, many uninhabited.
On Norman’s Cay in the Exumas during the 1970s, the notorious
Colombian trafficker, Carlos Enrique Lehder, established a base of a
powerful drug-smuggling ring. He was deported from the Bahamas in
1982.
The Bimini Islands are approximately mid-way between the northwest
coast of Andros and Miami in Florida. They are less than 50 miles
from the coast of Florida; and on a clear night you can see the glow of
Miami’s lights. It is said that there is money on Bimini – and there is
no secret from where it comes! North Bimini has a narrow creek
leading from the open sea to a natural harbour, which is even depicted
on maps as Drugs Channel. Fast boats can carry cargoes of cocaine
and marijuana to America in a matter of a few hours. Not surprisingly,
some local men spend their “vacations” in a Miami jail. Large
55
American cars abound on the tiny islands.
+
+
+
+ +
Jonathan Kwitny, in his The Crimes of Patriots, confirms my view
that, for at least three decades, most of the leading members of the
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency were quite mad, and that the Agency
was out of control. It has been suggested that, for example, had
Theodore “Ted” Shackley been working for the Soviet KGB, he could
not have done more damage to American interests in Cuba and
elsewhere.
Kwitny notes that Shackley, as CIA Chief of Station in Miami, was
running an “anti-Castro” terror program called JM/WAVE” of
assassinations and illegal attacks on Cuba. Indeed in South Florida, by
the 1970s, the police could scarcely arrest a dope dealer or illegal
weapons trafficker without encountering the claim, generally true, that
the subject had CIA connections. The CIA’s anti-Castro operations,
some of which certainly were organised from Andros and elsewhere
in the Bahamas, were distinguished by the seemingly endless number
of thugs and dope dealers, on whom the Agency had bestowed the
legitimacy of U.S. government service, states Kwitny. He details
Shackley’s activities, in collaboration with another career CIA officer,
Edwin P. Wilson, and two CIA field officers, Patny E. Loomis and
William Weisenburger, in a CIA unit inside the Naval Task Force
157, set up under the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), originally in
the mid-1960s.
According to the Wall Street Journal (11 November 1982), Wilson
infiltrated (on behalf of the CIA) first the American Longshoremen’s
Union, and, then moving to London, the docks’ section of the
Transport and General Workers Union (the TGWU). From there he
moved to the Netherlands, where he regularly sent a courier to Britain
with CIA funds, with which to pay off agents and informers recruited
in the TGWU.
Edwin Wilson allegedly retired from the CIA in 1971, and went to
work as a civilian employee of Naval Task Force 157, but he
continued to liaise regularly with Shackley, Loomis and
56
Weisenburger. The Task Force was supposedly created to provide the
United States government with low-profile, workaday spies that the
CIA was originally founded for, but did not always provide. So, it was
set up under the cover of the Office of Naval Intelligence. Wilson was
“planted” by the CIA or, at least, Shackley, as a “mole” inside the
Task Force 157.
Task Force 157 gathered information on maritime affairs worldwide;
it paid particular attention, however, to the activities of the Soviet
Navy and the movement of its nuclear cargoes. To facilitate Task
Force 157’s intelligence work, ONI permitted staff who did the spying
to set up their own business “fronts”, and to recruit foreign nationals
as agents, a normal procedure of intelligence agencies I would add.
According to Jonathan Kwitny, there is no record of Task Force 157
ever engaging in covert operations to actually change events on which
its agents reported. It was the very model of an intelligence agency the
United States considered it required – until Edwin P. Wilson joined it!
Unlike other Task Force 157 agents, who operated from ports
worldwide, Wilson was able to set up an office in downtown
Washington; and with financial support from a number of mainly
Republican politicians, he founded a variety of shipping companies
and international consulting firms. These were bigtime.
Wilson only occasionally visited Task Force 157’s head office; and
his salary was officially only $35,000 a year; yet he owned an estate
in Virginia valued at the time at $4 million where he regularly
entertained numerous senators, congressmen, and military and
intelligence officers including Shackley. Wilson, it has been said, was
a specialist in procuring unusual spy gear, unusual boats, and
electronic equipment for Task Force 157 and the CIA. According to
Kwitny, Wilson “was selling his services for high fees to companies
or foreign governments that wanted government contracts or
weapons”. This has become public knowledge. In 1975, Senator
Frank Church, chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence,
likened the CIA to a “rogue elephant on the rampage” (Covert Action,
p.5).
By 1976, however, Vice-Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, then Director of
57
Naval Intelligence, who discovered what was going on at Task Force
157, ordered Wilson’s contract not to be renewed; and when later the
Task Force’s budget came up for renewal Inman, by then Director of
the National Security Agency (NSA), closed down the operation.
Nevertheless, Wilson continued his business activities, worked with
Shackley who was still a CIA employee, and hired some other CIA
personnel. He exported explosives and weapons, as well as ground-toair missiles to foreign countries including Libya.
Together with another former CIA agent, Frank Terpil, Wilson not
only supplied President Muammar Qaddafi of Libya with
sophisticated assassination gear and bombs, he also hired anti-Castro
Cubans from Shackley’s old JM/WAVE programme to carry out
murders against Qaddafi’s opponents in various countries. Wilson
hired U.S. Green Berets, with CIA blessing, for the Libyans.
For years, the American government took no action against Wilson.
Theodore Shackley “was retired” from the CIA in 1979. And Edwin
P. Wilson? He was eventually convicted and sentenced in the U.S. to
a 52-year prison term for conspiring to trade arms with Libya; and for
conspiring to murder two American prosecutors and six other people.
The Wilson case resulted in several dismissals and resignations from
the CIA.
+
+
+
+ +
From 29 November 2005, a number of participants briefly discussed
AUTEC on the Above Top Secret (ATS) website, under the title of
“Area 51 and other Facilities: A.U.T.E.C. The Naval Area 51?”
“Shadow XIX” began by noting that AUTEC maybe is not as secret
as Area 51, as it has its own website,
although it is still hard to say for sure what is going on there. Testing
new types of sonar, torpedoes or unmanned underwater vehicles
(UUVs)? This seems to be the place where the Navy “test its new
underwater toys as Area 51 is a test bed for the Air Force”.
“Esoteric Teacher” replied that he/she was under the impression that
AUTEC was one of the top (U.S.) bases for the practical application
58
of experimental Naval technologies, as well as for sub-contractors.
Two other contributors, besides “Shadow XIX”, and I previously,
found it especially interesting that AUTEC is located within the
Bermuda Triangle. “Shadow XIX” pointed out that the U.S. is just
waiting for Castro “to kick the bucket”, so that it could take over
Cuba. And “Since we aren’t allowed to officially search their waters,
AUTEC is the perfect launchpoint to do just that.” The Navy knows
what is exactly down there.
Interestingly, four other contributors appear to have been in, or have
worked in, AUTEC. “JIMC 5499” claims to have been there several
times. “AUTEC is just Top Gun for ASW.” (ASW – anti-submarine
warfare.) There are ranges there that create sonar targets, and other
ranges where live torpedoes are dropped. “We would fly down there
several times a year. I used to jump at the chance to go because of the
snorkelling on the reefs,” he noted.
“Alan II”, who was in the British Royal Navy for 12 years, and was
an ASW operator, went to AUTEC on a number of occasions. “Super
70” spent a week at AUTEC. He was more concerned with the
mosquitoes (“you can’t step outside without getting covered with
them”), which infested Andros, than anything else. Outside of
AUTEC there were few people. “The water was clear and the
snorkelling fantastic, if you don’t mind the schools of barracuda and a
few friendly sharks. If there is anything bizarre going on there, they
sure hide it well.”
In the view of “orangetom 1999”, there is nothing mysterious about
AUTEC. It is merely a sound testing range, although “A certain
amount of security is necessary there because of the state of the art
applications.” The geography, location, helps. “orangetom” continues:
“I know this place because when we deliver a new submarine there
are a certain number of sea trials which take place before
acceptance. During one or more of the sea trials the boat will be
taken to this range to do a sound signature on it to check for
quietness levels. Various speeds and depths are run on this course.
She is then brought back into port, and changes or adjustments are
59
made for problems identified. I am speaking of a new boat here.
Obviously boats already in service will be run occasionally
through this course as modifications and changes to them are
made.”
“Orangetom” says that the military has lots of real estate like AUTEC.
Such as Diego Garcia. “No big mystery here outside of certain work
being done which is not open to the public for security reasons.”
Quite. According to “Shedinja 726”, who claimed to “live at
AUTEC”, there is no conspiracy regarding AUTEC. “All we do here
is test sonar, do test recoveries (recovering fake bombs from the
seafloor), and stuff like that.”
Furthermore, the canal they cut into the harbour is 25 feet deep at
most, he says. Submarines can’t fit into it. Apparently it was made for
the Hammerhead boat, and the barge that ships in supplies for
AUTEC. “And the reason the security is so tight is because it’s a
NAVY base. There isn’t a single NAVY base that doesn’t have strict
security.” Contributor “Anonymous ATS”, who also claimed to work
there, adds: “It’s a Government Naval base. Of course there are going
to be secrets, for god sake. The government keeps everything a
secret.” He says that AUTEC was built in 1966; and he was
employed there from 1975 to 1976, working on the main base and
down the test range which consists of five test sites, the last four only
being accessible by boat or a “chopper”. Sometimes the systems
would go down in the middle of the night during a test, and “we’d
have to show up at the main test building and get things cooling
again”, continues “Anonymous ATS”. Apparently, Navies “from the
free world would come to test their ships and play wargames with
dummy torpedoes, etc.”. There was nothing mysterious about it. He
was stationed at AUTEC as base communications and security officer,
and later in the weapons department.Another contributor, “Zemouk”
(in April 2010), commented that there were cables going from
AUTEC directly down in the ocean, “so deep as you can’t see where
they go”. On 31 August the same year, “hardeeboy” asserted that the
U.S. Navy “mostly conduct joint exercises with the British Navy”.
Replying to “hardeeboy”, another contributor was not so sure that
nothing secret “is going on”, adding: “Many crafts have been known
to plunge into the Atlantic Ocean down there and not resurface.”
AUTEC may be another, underwater, Area 51. And it is within the
60
Bermuda Triangle.
Indeed, “Access to Andros Island is limited and must be arranged
through the Commander, Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division in
Newport, Rhode Island” (see Global Security.org).
NOTE
The Above Top Secret website, according to Annie Jacobsen, is the
most popular conspiracy website in America (see Area 51, p.332).
+
+
+
+ +
61
SUMMING UP
Andros was, and is, uniquely situated for clandestine, covert and
secret activities, particularly against Cuba. It is less than 100 miles
from the United States, to the west, and about the same distance from
the north coast of Cuba. Yet it is part of a nominally independent
country – the Bahamas.
It is hot and humid, and subject to hurricanes. Much of the island is
covered with forests, jungles and swamps, interspersed with channels.
It was, and still is, sparsely populated, with only a few small
settlements entirely on the east side of the island; and with few roads
also to the east. The waters, particularly towards the Florida Keys, are
shark-infested; and it is just within what is termed the Bermuda
Triangle, of which over the years, considerable mystery has, quite
deliberately, been fostered, thus keeping hoards of tourists away,
except for a handful of cavers and bone fishermen towards the
southeast coast of the island.
The Tongue of the Ocean is an added bonus for the use of mainly U.S.
submarines by AUTEC. Nosy journalists and investigators have not
been welcome. Andros is, indeed, America’s Secret Island.
+
+
+
+ +
‘More dirty work – in the Atlantic’
Between 1965 and 1972, the British government expelled, deported or
forced out the indigenous people of the Chagos Islands, and
particularly, Diego Garcia, known as the British Indian Ocean
Territory (BIOT). This was because it had signed a “defence”
agreement with the United States, leasing the islands to the US for an
intelligence, military and naval base and, later, a nuclear and fuelling
depot for long-range bombers. The BIOT is located strategically in the
centre of the Indian Ocean, so controlling it provides power and
influence in the whole of Southern Asia and much of the Middle East.
(See “Dirty Work in the Indian Ocean”, Socialist Standard,
September 1996.)
History may never actually repeat itself exactly, but the present
situation on island of Ascension, midway between Africa and South
62
America in the Atlantic Ocean, is very similar.
In 1956, the British government leased to the United States Wakefield
Airfield, now a top-secret base on Ascension. According to the
Observer (12.02.06), it is one of the Pentagon’s most important
military communications hubs; and is also used for troop
deployments. Cable & Wireless, GCHQ and the BBC also have
facilities on the island. Furthermore, Ascension is 1,000 miles off the
oil-rich coast of West Africa.
About 1,100 people live on Ascension Island, some indigenous, many
of them from St. Helena 750 miles to the south and most of them
British citizens. According to the Observer of the same date, after the
Human Rights Act was adopted by the British government in 1998,
the then Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, published a White Paper
with the aim of bringing democracy, as well as establishing a right of
permanent abode, and full property rights, for all residents.
Previously, although many of the islanders were born there, they
were, and still are, only allowed to remain as long as they have jobs.
In 1999, the British government pledged that this would change.
Following Ascension’s first general election in 2002, a local council
was formed which went on to create a national park on the extinct
volcano in the centre of the island. There was a plan to encourage ecotourism to take advantage of the unique plant and seabird species, first
discovered by Charles Darwin in 1844. Many of the islanders bought
shops and other small businesses. But it was all to no avail.
In January 2006 the Foreign Office minister, one Lord Triesman,
wrote to the Islanders informing them that the government had
changed its plans, and that “they would not have a right of abode or
right of tenure”. They would be thrown out if necessary. Says the
Observer:
“The Foreign Office is accused of covering up the true reason for
its change in heart. Many blame the Pentagon for pressuring
Britain. They believe the US wants to expand its military
operations on the island and objected to plans to increase tourism.
Washington does not want its activities to be subject to unwanted
scrutiny. The west African coast has become of increasing
63
strategic interest to the US, with discoveries of oil that have turned
countries such as Equatorial Guinea into wealthy trading partners.”
And Lord Triesman, who has allegedly bowed to the Pentagon’s
wishes, or dictates? He is better known as David Triesman who, as a
sociology student at the University of Essex in the summer term of
1968, was suspended, but was later reinstated following a student
occupation of the university. And who wrote an essay ‘”The CIA and
Student Politics”, in a Penguin Special book, Student Power,
Problems, Diagnosis, Action, in which he exposed the CIA for
financing and largely controlling the International Student conference
and British NUS, adding: “The generation developing in this country
will not want to pay mere lip service to the international struggle
against imperialism, colonialism and racism; it will be in conflict with
capitalism as the parent of these enemies.” (p. 157) It would seem that
the good Lord Triesman has since changed his mind regarding
American imperialism, the CIA and capitalism. (“American
Imperialism, the CIA and capitalism”, as I wrote in the Socialist
Standard, April 2006)
64
APPENDIX
Andros, Area 51 and Diego Garcia
Andros has been likened to Area 51 and Diego Garcia. Are they
similar?
Area 51 is in Nevada, high up in the desert, ringed by mountains, and
75 miles north of Las Vegas. To the northwest of Area 51 is the
almost 5,000 square miles of the Nevada Test and Training Range;
and to its south is the Nellis Air Range and Creech Air Force Base.
Area 51’s various facilities are constructed by, and over, a dry lakebed
known as Groom Lake. It is, however, only one of a number of
similar areas which are, or have been, used by such government
organisations as the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), the Air
Force and Navy, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defence
Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Photographic Interpretation
Center (NPIC), the National Reconnaissance Officer (NRO). The
AEC is now called the Department of Energy.
The area in Nevada, generally known as the Nevada Test Site (now
known as the Nevada National Security Site), was first established by
the Atomic Energy Commission in 1951 on the orders of President
Truman. Between 1951 and September 1992, more than 100 nuclear
devices and weapons above-ground, and 830 underground in tunnels
and vertical shafts, were detonated and exploded at the Nevada Test
Site, many as near as five miles northwest of Area 51. Originally an
animal sanctuary, the site became contaminated with plutonium-239;
despite efforts at cleaning up the site by thousands of Army personnel,
one of the “dirty” bombs exploded in 1957, is reported to have a halflife of 20,000 years. (By 1955, the United States already had a
stockpile of 2,280 nuclear bombs.) Altogether, the United States is
said to have constructed more than 75,000 nuclear bombs!
+
+
+
+ +
In 1954, President Eisenhower directed Richard Bissell, Assistant
65
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, to find a secret location
to assemble and construct new spy planes, in co-operation with the
Lockheed Corporation, to investigate, and spy on the Soviet Union’s
own nuclear weapons programme.
And, so in the winter of 1955, Bissell together with CIA colleague
Herbert Miller, and Lockheed Corporation aerodynamist Clarence
Johnson, flew over Area 51 in search of a dry lakebed called Groom
Lake.
Under extreme secrecy, Area 51 was established in which the CIA, in
co-operation with the Air Force and the Lockheed Corporation, could
develop, assemble and test reconnaissance spy planes originally called
Utility-2 (or just U-2). A hangar, and later various buildings, were
constructed on the site. The U-2s were transported to Groom Lake
runway, in sections, inside giant C-124 transport planes and then
assembled on site. According to Jeffrey Richelson in his The U.S.
Intelligence Community (p.157), more than 55 U-2s in various
versions are known to have been built, all presumably at Area 51.
There were numerous crashes. By 1956, the CIA
deployed three U-2s, known as Detachment A, to fly over the Soviet
Union from the RAF airbase at Lakenheath, in Suffolk, in England.
(See also Ranelagh.) And, by July 1958, five RAF pilots, working
undercover of the Meteorological Office in London, and paid through
a SIS secret bank account, were sent to America to train as U-2 pilots
in Nevada. One of them, Squadron-Leader Christopher Walker, was
killed in a crash during training over Area 51 (see Dorril, p.659).
Soviet MIG fighter jets could climb to a maximum of 45,000 feet; the
U-2s flew to more than 60,000 feet (Guardian, 4 August 1997). They
flew at about 500 miles per hour, and had a range of around 4,000
miles.
+
+
+
+ +
By 1960, the CIA and Air Force had produced, assembled and tested
12 airplanes (A-12) which for some perverse reason they codenamed
Oxcart, at Area 51 which could fly five times as fast as the U-2s, at
2,300 miles per hours, at an altitude of almost 100,000 feet, and had a
66
range of more than 4,000 miles. Jacobsen
comments (pp.205-206):
“In total, 2,850 Oxcart flights would be flown out of Area 51 over
a period of six years. Exactly how many of these flights generated
UFO reports is not known, but the ones that prompted UFO
sightings created the same kinds of problems for the CIA as they
had in the previous decade with the U-2, only with elements that
were seemingly more explicable. With Oxcart [A-12], commercial
airline pilots flying over Nevada or California would look up and
see the shiny, reflective bottom of the Oxcart whizzing by high
overhead at triple-sonic speeds and think, UFO. When the Oxcart
flew at 2,300 miles per hour, it was going approximately five times
as fast than a commercial airplane…Seventeen miles higher up the
sun was shining brightly on the Oxcart.”
Not surprisingly, they were thought to be from outer-space.
In 1962, Lockheed secured a contract to develop unmanned vehicles,
or drones, Remotely Piloted Vehicles (RPVs) to give them their
correct name, called Tagboard, which were tested at Area 51. Drones
were first launched from an aircraft, already moving faster than sound.
Updated, and tested at Area 51, pilotless drones have been used, first
for reconnaissance and later for attacking specific targets in
Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iran, Kosovo, Niger, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen,
as well as Libya. Controlled by so-called pilots, sitting more than
8,000 miles away in front of computers at Creech Air Force Base in
Nevada, south of Area 51, both the U.S. and Britain’s RAF have
caused considerable damage, as well as killing and injuring many
people. Although the drones’ programmes are still classified, the CIA
and US Air Force, and RAF, have been concerned with what they
term “collateral damage”. Many drones go astray. The U.S. has about
8,000 drones.
According to the Times (29 October 2011), United States MQ9
Reaper drones, armed with Hellfire missile and satellite-guided
bombs, and with a range of 1,150 miles, are based at, and operating
from, an airfield at Arba Minch, a remote mountain area in southwest
Ethiopia, as well as at bases in Oman and the United Arab Emirates
67
(UAE). The Americans also have their
largest permanent base at Camp Lemonnier, in Djibouti, at the
entrance to the Gulf of Aden,
The operation of drones is, however, not simple. Each aircraft requires
a team of more than 150 personnel, maintaining and repairing it, as
well as the collection of radio signals (SIGINT), videos and
“voluminous intelligence necessary to prompt a single strike”
(International Herald Tribune, 3 October 2011). Indeed, the US Air
Force spends at least $5billion a year just on its remotely piloted
drone systems.
Writing in the Guardian (3 April 2012), Richard Norton-Taylor notes
that “Drones, armed with cameras, and increasingly with bombs and
missiles, are fast becoming a key weapon of modern warfare.” The
CIA has dramatically increased the use of drones along the AfghanPakistan borders, as well as in Somalia and Yemen. Israel is in at the
forefront of drone technology, says Norton-Taylor. He continues:
“The US-manufactured General Atomics MQ-Reaper is at the
moment the RAF’s only armed unmanned aircraft. It can fly for
more than 18 hours, has a range of 3,600 miles, and can operate at
up to 15,000 meters (50,000 ft).
The Reapers, armed with Paveway bombs and four Hellfire
missiles, are operated by RAF personnel based at Creech [Air
Force Base] in Nevada. They are controlled by satellite datalink.”
Unlike the submarines tested at AUTEC/TOTO in Andros, the
drones are not – as yet! – nuclear-powered, as they are prone to
crash.
+ + + + +
Also tested at Area 51 were the F-117 Stealth bombers, developed and
produced by Lockheed, and first named Nighthawk. Planned in the
early 1970s, they were flight-tested, at night, during the 1980s for
bomb-testing; an area designated Area 52, northwest of Area 51 was
used. According to Annie Jacobsen (Area 51, p.343), Areas 51 and 52
worked in tandem.
68
Public access to Area 51 (as with AUTEC on Andros) is strictly
forbidden. One notice states: “Photography of this area is prohibited.
18 U.S.C. 795”. Another, ominously, says: “WARNING. Restricted
Area. It is unlawful to enter this area without permission of the
Installation Commander. See Internal Security Act of 1950. U.S.C.
795. While on this Installation all personnel and the property under
their control are subject to search. Use of deadly force authorized.”
Indeed, trespassers have been arrested, put in leg-irons, strip-searched,
heavily fined and even jailed for ignoring the warnings.
Not surprisingly, ever since the Area 51 base was established, people
have reported seeing odd-looking objects in the sky. At first, both the
U-2s and the Stealth bombers’ silver bodies reflected the rays of the
sun, encouraging the sightings of “fiery objects”. Later, they were
painted black to reduce so-called UFO sightings. Rumours of alien
spacecraft – and little grey or green men from Mars – abounded.
Originally, the CIA rubbished such claims. There were no flying
saucers or aliens from outer space. No little men. They were not from
Mars, or outer space. But they did, and do, exist.
In a report, “The CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90”,
published on the 3rd of August 1997, the Agency admitted it had lied
about the real nature of UFOs in the vicinity of Area 51 and
elsewhere, to preserve secrecy during the Cold War. It admitted the
validity of hundreds of sightings from the public, aviation experts and
pilots. Initially, they were U-2s and Stealth bombers and, later,
drones.
Commenting on the CIA report, the Guardian (4 August 1997) said:
“The planes were built at Area 51, or Dreamland base in Nevada,
whose existence the Pentagon still denies. The U-2s flew to more than
60,000 ft. and the Blackbird to 80,000 ft.”
NOTE 2
The SR71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft was a futuristic aircraft
69
which flew “on the edge of space”. Unfortunately, however, its
weakness was that at top speed, it burned up more than 8,000 gallons
of fuel every hour. On some flights, it had to be refuelled at least 5
times by 16 tankers!
+
+
+
+ +
NOTE 3
Way back in 1974, Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks in their book,
The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (p.67), revealed that CIA
technicians worked with Lockheed at a secret site in Nevada, to
develop the A11 and later the SR-71, although they did not locate the
site at Area 51.
+
+
+
+ +
NOTE 4
There is, as I have already mentioned, the Bermuda Triangle, an area
which includes Andros Island. There is, however, also the Nevada
Triangle, located by Reno and the Sierra Nevada mountains to the
northwest, Schell Creek to the northeast, and Spring Mountain and
Las Vegas to the south. Area 51, Canyon Park and Bishops Airport
are apparently within the Nevada Triangle, which comprises deserts,
pine forests and, of course, mountains.
ADDITIONAL NOTE
Timothy Good, in his Beyond Top Secret, writes:
“Area 51 at Groom Dry Lake (also called ‘Dreamland’) has been
America’s most secret
installation since the early 1950s, where many spy planes (such as
the U-2, SR71, and the Aurora aircraft) as well as stealth aircraft
70
(such as F-117A) were test-flown. There is also allegedly a supersecret site – S-4 – at Papoose Dry Lake in the Nevada Test Site, 10
to 15 miles south of Groom Lake. Both sites have been mentioned
in connection with recovered alien vehicles…Mike Hunt, for
example, who held an Atomic Energy Commission ‘Q’ clearance
and an inter-agency Top Secret Clearance, claims to have seen a
disc-shaped aircraft on the ground at Area 51 during the early
1960s, and to have been present during take-offs and landings
(though he was not allowed to observe these). Hunt believed that a
highly secret programme connected with these discs – known as
Project Red Light – was in operation at Area 51 at the time”
(p.492).
+
+
+
+ +
71
DIEGO GARCIA
Compared to Area 51 in Nevada, Diego Garcia is tiny. It is, however,
the largest of 64 coral islands and atolls of the Chagos Archipelago, in
the Indian Ocean, south of the Maldive Islands and 2,000 miles east of
Africa. Diego Garcia is an irregular U-shaped or distorted horseshoeshaped atoll 40 miles from end to end, but less than one mile wide
except for a small area in the northwest corner. It surrounds a coralstudded lagoon. It has been said that he who controls Diego Garcia,
controls the Indian ocean and most of southern Asia.
Around the middle of the last century about 2,000 people lived on the
islands of the Chagos Archipelago, of whom around 1,800 lived on
Diego Garcia. They were the indigenous Ilois, first brought in as
slaves, by the French, in the 18th century, from Mozambique and
Madagascar, to work on a coconut plantation; and then by the British,
in the mid-19th century, as indentured labourers from India. Most of
the Chagossians were fourth and fifth generation islanders. They
supplemented their living by fishing, as well as growing tomatoes,
chillies and aubergines. They kept chickens and ducks; and their main
pets were dogs. Their language is Creole French.
Some time in 1961, two Americans secretly arrived at the jetty on
Diego Garcia. One of them was Rear-Admiral Grantham of the U.S.
Navy, whose objective was to locate a suitable island in the middle of
the Indian Ocean for a military and naval base. Together with a
number of British government officials, they first chose Aldebra, but
after their decision leaked out, they chose Diego Garcia. Apparently,
the U.S. military was first interested in establishing a base in the
Chagos Archipelago in 1959. In February 1964, a secret AngloAmerican conference, on the subject, was held in London.
In 1965, Britain granted Mauritius, a British colony, independence on
the condition that the United Kingdom be permitted to purchase
Diego Garcia and most of the Chagos islands, which were formerly
included in the colony, and create a new British colony or
Dependency to be called the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT),
72
which included some other islands detached from the Seychelles. The
Labour government of Harold Wilson paid Mauritius a mere £3m for
the islands. Indeed, the BIOT is the only British colony created since
the end of the Second World War, on 8 November 1965, almost
certainly on American insistence. John Pilger says it was a fake. It
still is!
On 3 November 1966, Britain signed a defence agreement, entitled
“Availability at Certain Indian Ocean Islands for Defence Purposes
(TIAS 6169)”, with the United States, leasing the BIOT to America
for 50 years, with an option of a further 20. In December, the
agreement was witnessed by Lord Chalfont, a British Foreign Office
minister, in Washington.
There was only one fly in the ointment: The Americans insisted that
there were to be no inhabitants on Diego Garcia or any of the other
islands; they had to be expelled or as one U.S. official put it, “the
islands were to be swept and sanitized”. And what did the British
government get from the agreement? In 1975, a U.S. Senate
committee revealed that the British government had secretly been
compensated with a discount of $14m off the price of a Polaris
nuclear submarine. Neither the British Parliament nor Congress were
informed of the deal.
And the inhabitants of the Chagos Islands?
The evacuation, or to be more accurate, the deportation of the Ilois
began as early as 1965, and was finally completed before the end of
1972, despite Britain’s violation of United Nations articles IX and
XIII, which state that “no one should be subjected to arbitrary exile”.
The British government assigned the task of resettling the islanders to
the Chagos-Apalega Company, coconut exporters and the only
employer on Diego Garcia. They were deported to Mauritius. And
they were only permitted to take with them “a minimum of
possessions in one small crate”. The few last remaining islanders were
told: “If you don’t leave you will not be fed.” The only ship arriving
at Diego Garcia, brought no food. All their pet dogs were killed by
gassing or poisoning by U.S. naval personnel. By 1975, almost all of
the former islanders were existing in shacks, in gross poverty, in the
73
slums of Mauritius. Some of the older ones soon died.
In 1978, the British government gave the Ilois £650,000 in
compensation, but only on condition that they renounced their rights
to return to the islands. In 1982, the government gave them a further
£4m as a “full and final settlement”. The government of Mauritius
was paid £12m. The money then disappeared! A joint UK-US
memorandum stated: “There is no native population on the Islands.”
The Ilois had become unpeople. They still are.
+
+
+
+ +
In December 1970, the British and United States governments agreed
to establish a communications facility on Diego Garcia, which was a
secure, and far more secretive, alternative to the former NSA facility
at Kagnew Station Asmara, in Ethiopia.
The first American contingent arrived, with a construction team on 20
March 1971; a radio receiver site was established in July, and a
transmitter site in August. Equipment was moved from Kagnew. By
1973, the U.S. established a naval Signals Intelligence (SIGINT)
station to monitor radio signals throughout the Indian Ocean. With
British Royal Navy participation, the U.S. National Security Group
set up its monitoring station. It became a “ground control” base for the
U.S-British-Australian CLASSIC WIZARD Ocean Surveillance
Satellite System network for electronic satellites, controlled by the
NRO. By 1974, Diego Garcia became a major GCHQ/NSA Signals
Intelligence station, manned by 200 US and 30 British personnel.
Jeffrey Richelson and Desmond Ball comment:
“Although the station is officially described as a ‘joint US-British’
facility, US officials have testified that normal day-to-day
operations are ‘conducted simply on the basis of the US military
commander on the island informing his British counterpart’. That
is all that is required” (p.205).
+
+
+
+ +
Diego Garcia soon developed as a military base. Port facilities were
74
constructed; the coral reef was blasted, and the lagoon dredged.
Writing in the Times (2 June 2011), Philippa Gregory noted that an
“armada of massive cargo ships the size of the Empire State Building
were parked, filled with tanks, helicopters, ammunition and fuel,
together with an aircraft carrier and nuclear submarines”.
An airstrip was developed on the northwest of the island, together
with an airbase to the north. In 1976, a UK-US treaty regularised the
construction of an “anchorage, airfield, support and supply elements,
and ancillary services”. Access to Diego Garcia was then restricted to
American and British military personnel, and construction workers,
brought in from outside.
Aircraft using the base have included RAF Hawker Siddeley MR2
marine reconnaissance aircraft, Lockheed p-3 Orion transport aircraft
and anti-submarine aircraft capable of patrolling for up to four hours;
USAAF Boeing B-52 Stratofortress heavy bombers, capable of
carrying nuclear devices stored on the island. During both wars
against Iraq, U.S. B-52 bombers were used in attacks, and Diego
Garcia was used as a refuelling point for such bombers. It was also
used against Afghanistan.
It has, again, been widely reported, and since confirmed by members
of the British government, that the island base has been used to hold
“terrorist suspects”, and as a stop-over, prior to them being “rendered”
(known as “extraordinary rendition”) to other countries for torture.
(See Guardian, 1 November 2011, 9 April 2012 and 10 October
2012). These have included Libya, Morocco, the United States and the
Yemen.
A particularly notorious example was Britain’s role in the rendition of
the Libyan dissident, Abdel Hakim Belhaj, his pregnant wife and two
children, to Muamma Gaddafi’s not-very-secret police, and their
subsequent torture. Apparently the CIA’s plane carrying the family
refuelled on Diego Garcia on its way to Libya.
On the 13th of December 2005, however, Britain’s foreign secretary
Jack Straw, told the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee:
“Unless we all believe in conspiracy theories, and that the officials are
75
lying, and that I am lying, that there is some kind of secret state which
is in league with the United States, there is simply no truth in the
claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition, full
stop, as we have never been” (See Guardian, 10 March 2013).
However, Sir Mark Allen, SIS/MI6 former head of counterterrorism,
stated that rendering the Libyan dissidents to Gaddifi’s intelligence
chief, Moussa Koussa, “was the least we (the U.K.) could do for you
to demonstrate the remarkable relationship we have built up over the
years. I am so glad”. Either Mr. Straw has, or had, a very poor
memory, or he was being “economical with the actualité”, with the
truth! Indeed, Seumas Milne, writing in the Guardian (24 April 2013),
says:
“The scale of torture, kidnapping and detention without trial
unleashed by the US government after 9/11 is, as the US
Constitution Project reports found ‘indisputable’. And at every
stage, it’s been backed and emulated by its closest allies. At least
54 states, including Britain and 24 others in Europe, took part in
the CIA’s secret ‘extraordinary rendition’ programme. And British
forces have carried out plenty of beatings and torture in
Afghanistan and Iraq, either on their own or in cahoots with US
and local forces, as multiple reports and inquiries have now made
clear.”
It has also been reported (The Guardian, 10 July, 2014) that “a US
senate report will identify Diego Garcia as a location where the CIA
established a secret prison as part of its extraordinary rendition
programme. According to one report, classified CIA documents say it
was established with the 'full cooperation' of the UK government” in
which the UK is in breach of “a raft of international and domestic
laws”. (see also the Observer, 13 July, 2014) And also “How we
torture our own ...
At the end of 2012, the Obama administration nominated its top
counter-terrorism adviser, and 25-year CIA veteran, John Brennan, to
be a key architect of its secret drone programme. Previously, in 2008,
Brennan had, in the words of the Guardian (8 January 2013), faced
vocal objections for “his support for the torture policy of the then
76
president George W. Bush”.
See also “How we torture our own citizens” (Guardian Weekend, 20
October 2012). This is an edited extract from Cruel Britannia: A
Secret History of Torture, by Ian Cobain. Portobello Book, London,
November 2012.
Furthermore, analysts of the United States Space Surveillance
Network (USSSN) on Diego Garcia, almost certainly with British
assistance, track 24-hours-a-day, 365-days-a-year, more than 8,000
man-made objects now orbiting the Earth. The USSSN is responsible
for detecting, tracking, cataloguing and identifying all artificial
objects, including active, spent inactive, rockets and debris orbiting
Planet Earth.
Of course, all attempts by the Chagossians to return to Diego Garcia
and the other islands have been blocked by both the British and
American governments.
+
+
+
+ +
Appendix Sources
Area 51: Annie Jacobsen, Area 51; The X Factor (magazine), No.36;
Jeffrey Richelson, The U.S. Intelligence Community; Guardian (4
August 1997); The CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-909, CIA
Report (3 August 1997). Diego Garcia: Desmond Ball and Jeffrey
Richelson, The Ties That Bind; Mark Curtis, The Ambiguities of
Power; Guardian (23 November 1998, 1 November 2002, 17 June
2004, 2 October 2004, 7 January 2005, 8 November 2005, 26 May
2006, 7 June 2011); Socialist Standard (May 1998); Times (2 June
2011, 29 October 2011, 11 November 2011), International Herald
Tribune (3 October 2011), Guardian (18 April 2012), The Observer
(29 June 2014).
+
+
+
+ +
77
AUTEC on Andros, Area 51 in Nevada and Diego Garcia in the
Indian Ocean, have much in common – and some differences. All
three are intelligence, military and/or naval bases. AUTEC and the
TOTO, together with Andros Island, are fairly extensive; Area 51, and
the other facilities in the Nevada desert, are vast; but the island of
Diego Garcia is minuscule. All three were established and developed,
in extreme secrecy, without any Parliamentary or Congressional
oversight or knowledge. More than one president of the United States
is said to have had no knowledge of what went on at Area 51 (or
Andros and Diego Garcia?) before taking office. Most people in
America or the United Kingdom, know nothing or very little of any of
them, yet Andros was and Diego Garcia still is, a British territory.
More is known about Diego Garcia than Andros because of the plight
of the former islanders, the lying of British government ministers
(mostly Labour) and, subsequent court decisions in the Chagossians’
favour. But to no avail.
In Andros, there were few people and no deportations. Nobody,
except one old miner lived in Area 51. AUTEC is conveniently
located in a nominally foreign country, the Bahamas; Area 51 is
located in a desert surrounded by mountains, and Diego Garcia is
located thousands of miles from both Britain and America, in the
middle of the Indian Ocean. Independent observers and investigative
journalists are more than unwelcome in all three areas and bases. They
have much to hide. Andros, in particular, is America’s Secret Island.
+
+
+
+ +
78
Postscript
Any further information on Andros and AUTEC will be welcome.
Corrections will also be welcome.
PEN
79
BIBLIOGRAPHY, SOURCES and picture
credits
Albury, Paul, The Story of the Bahamas, London & Basingstoke,
1975.
Aldrich, Richard, The Hidden Hand – Britain, America and Cold War
Secret Intelligence, London, 2001.
Aldrich, Richard, GCHQ, The Uncensored Story of Britain’s Most
Secret Intelligence Agency, London, 2010.
Andrews, Christopher, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized
History of MI5, London, 2009.
Bahamas, The: Charting a new course (A special report by
Archimedia, London, 16 July 2012).
Bamford, James, The Puzzle Palace: A Report on NSA, America’s
Most Secret Agency, Boston, Mass, 1982.
Bardach, Ann Louise, Cuba Confidential, New York, 2002.
Calvo, Ospina, Bacardi, The Hidden War, London, 2002.
Campbell, Duncan, The Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier: American
Military Power in Britain, London (New updated ed.), 1986.
Coleman, Dr. John, The Conspitators’ Hierarchy: The Committee of
300, Carson City, Nevada, 4th edition, 1997.
Collins, Tony, Open Verdict: An account of 25 mysterious deaths in
the Defence Industry, London, 1990.
Curtis, Mark, The Ambiguities of Power, British Foreign Policy since
1945, London & New Jersey, 1995.
Dorril, Stephen, MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations, London,
2000.
Faligot, Roger, Les services speciaux de sa Majesté, Paris, 1982.
Good, Timothy, Beyond Top Secret, London, 1996.
Gordon, Lesley (ed.), Bahamas, Singapore, 2003 edition.
Guardian, The, “Sir Lynden Pindling” (obituary), London,
28.08.2000.
Guardian, The, “Bacardi accused of campaign to oust Castro”,
15.08.2002.
Hennessy, Peter, The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War,
London, 2002.
Jacobsen, Annie, Area 51 – An Uncensored History of America’s Top
80
Secret Military Base, London, 2011.
Jones, R.V., Reflections On Intelligence, London, 1989.
Jungk, Robert, Brighter Than 1000 Suns, Harmondsworth, 1960 ed..
Kwitny, Jonathan, The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty
Money, and the CIA, New York, 1987.
Lanning, Hugh and Norton-Taylor, Richard, A Conflict of Loyalties:
GCHQ 1984-1991, Cheltenham, 1991.
Marchetti, Victor and Marks, John D., The CIA and the Cult of
Intelligence, New York, 1980 ed..
Paine, Lauran, The Technology of Espionage, London, 1978.
Pendleton, Steve, Power base, British Indian Ocean Territory Report
(Stamp Magazine, November 2013).
Popov, Nicolas and Dragan, The Bahamas Rediscovered, London,
1992.
Prados, John, The Soviet Estimate: U.S. Intelligence Analysis and
Soviet Strategic Forces, Princeton, New Jersey, 1986 ed..
Prados, John, Presidents’ Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert
Operations from World War II through Iranscam, New York, 1986.
Rashke, Richard, The Killing of Karen Silkwood: The Story Behind
the Kerr-McGee Plutonium Case, London, 1983.
Ranelagh, John, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA,
London, 1988 ed..
Richelson, Jeffrey and Ball, Desmond, The Ties That Bind, Boston,
Mass, 1985.
Richelson, Jeffrey, American Espionage and the Soviet Target, New
York, 1987.
Richelson, Jeffrey, The U.S. Intelligence Community, New York,
1989 (2nd ed.).
Richelson, Jeffrey, A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth
Century, New York, 1995.
Robbins, Christopher, The Invisible Air Force: The True Story of the
CIA’s Secret Airlines, London, 1979.
Smith, Helena, “How arms spending broke Greece” (Guardian, 20
April 2012).
Thomas, Gordon, Inside British Intelligence. 100 Years of MI5 and
MI6, London, 2009.
Times, The, “Sir Lynden Pindling” (obituary), London 28.08.2000.
Treverton, Gregory F., Covert Action: The Limits of Intervention in
the Postwar World, New York, 1987.
81
Urban, Mark, UK Eyes Alpha, London, 1996.
Vernier, Anthony, Through The Looking Glass: British Foreign
Policy in an Age of Illusions, London, 1982.
West Australian, The, “UK rearms with new-generation nuclear
weapons” (18 June 2012).
Wheaton, Gene, Secret Island Spy Base 110 Miles from Florida,
(Portland Free Press, July-October 1996).
William, Philip, The Last Supper, London, 1988
X Factor, The (magazine), No.36, pp.1000-1004, “Cruel Sea”,
London, 1998.
+
+
+
+ +
http://www.andros-bahamas.com/overtext.htm
http://www.bonefishandros.com
http://www.navsea.navy.mil/nvwc/default.aspx
http://www.nato.int/related/foracs/mission.htm
http://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/assets.htm
http://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/as.htm
http://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/base.htm
http://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/cap.htm
http://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/environ.htm
http://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/esm01.htm
http://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/flights.htm
http://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/foracs.htm
http://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/hurricane.htm
http://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/mbs.htm
http://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/map.htm
http://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/nassau.htm
http://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/ohdf.htm
http://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/oparea.htm
http://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/products.htm
http://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/st.htm
http://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/sitemap.htm
http://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/targets.htm
http://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/tongue.htm
http://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/wt.htm
NATO FORACS Mission; Naval Undersea Warfare
(NAVSEA); AUTEC, Copyright ©. All rights
Center
82
Reserved; NAVSEA Warfare Centers, Newport (Connecticut).
Includes photographs nos. 7 to 17, ©.
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread184817/ pg 1 to 7 (Area
51 and other facilities).
“Andros”
http://www.bahamas.com/bahamas/islands/introduction.aspx/island=a
ndros).
ATS Server: www2. the theaovenetwork.com
See also: AUTEC. Google. 500m/1000 ft http://wikimapia.org/ and:
http://www.,globalsecurity.org/military/facility/autec.htm
+
+
+
+ +
The Mystery of the Nevada Triangle. More4 channel TV. 9.00 pm,
repeat programme, 27 March 2013.
Bermuda Triangle: The Mystery Revealed. Channel 5 TV. 8.00 pm,
repeat programme 1 April 2013
+
+
+
+ +
A “More4” TV channel programme on Wednesday evening, March
27, 2013, entitled The Mystery Of The Nevada Triangle, investigated
the 2007 disappearance of aviator Steve Fossett, and “…how
hundreds of aircraft go missing in a part of the US’s Sierra Nevada
Mountains”. The Civil Air Patrols have found the wreckage of
aircraft. And there have been the usual stories of “aliens” within the
Nevada Triangle, of course – presumably from Outer Space!
Also, within the same area, in or near the Hawthorne Army Depot,
about 95 miles southeast of Reno (Area 20?) in the western Nevada
desert, it was reported that seven US marines from Camp Lejeune,
North Carolina, were killed in an explosion in the middle of March
2013. Other marines were injured and flown to the Renown
Regional Medical Center in Reno, according to Reuters.
ODD FOOTNOTE
83
FLYING SAUCERS
Flying Saucers did not come from Mars or Outer Space. Nor did they
originate in America or Russia, although both countries ultimately
developed them, using captured German Nazi scientists.
In the early 1940s, the Nazi German Air Ministry and Air Force
researched and developed Delta, triangular and circular flying discs or
saucers, up to 45 meters wide.
Designed and developed by the specialists, Schriever, Habermahl and
Miethe, the first flight over Prague reached almost a height of eight
miles, flying at a speed of 1,250 mph. Later, in subsequent tests, the
speed was double. After the end of the War, Habermahl was said to
have “fallen into Russian hands”. Miethe later
developed similar flying saucers at A.V. Roe and Company, for the
U.S. government. Many Nazi scientists worked in the United States.
(Source: Brighter Than 1000 Suns, by Robert Jungk. Penguin Special,
Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1960 ed., p.87, footnote.)
According to German post-war accounts, Rudolph Schriever designed
and tested, in June 1942, and in August 1943, a circular “flying
saucer” or disc. Furthermore, after the war, a full-scale prototype was
discovered in the Hartz Mountains which had been secretly flown on
14th February 1945, despite its imminent defeat of the Nazi regime.
Schriever originally believed that all his papers, and plans, as well as
the prototype, had been destroyed to stop them falling into the hands
of the Allies. But, later, right up to his death in 1950, he wondered if
that was true because by then there were persistent sightings of disclike UFOs which presumably were the result of secret developments –
in America and Russia – of this invention. This was confirmed, in U.
S. archives, in September 1992. In fact, there were two such craft
originally constructed in the Hartz Mountains, 138 feet in diameter.
+
+
+
+ +
84
DRONES – Murder by Remote Control
According to a study by Drone Wars UK, the United Kingdom has
spent more than £2bn on buying and developing military drones
between 2007 and the end of 2012; and plans to commit a further
£2bn for new unmanned military aircraft in the immediate future.
Britain has been flying armed drones in Afghanistan since 2009. The
study states that 76 countries have UAVs, but only Britain, the United
States and Israel have used armed drones in military operations up to
the end of 2012.
The UK purchased six Reaper drones from the United States in
October 2007 for future use in Afghanistan. One, at least, is known to
have crashed. Hitherto, it had flown them from Creech US Airbase in
Nevada, south of Area 51. the United Kingdom’s Reaper UAVs in
Afghanistan use laser-guided Hellfire missiles and bombs. The
Americans, it would seem, concentrated their attack on Pakistan.
By the time this is published a squadron of Reapers will have been
stationed in the UK at RAF Wallington in a purpose-built base and
headquarters in Lincolnshire.
The Americans consider that Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or
Remotely Piloted Vehicles (RPVs), have been an unqualified success
in their war in Afghanistan – if by “success” means lots of people
getting killed and injured with no risks to the so-called pilots sitting
thousands of miles away, and relatively cheaply! According to the
Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the United States has over the
past eight years, up to November 2012, killed about 3,400 people in
Pakistan alone. How many have been killed and injured in
Afghanistan and elsewhere is not known. According to the Bureau of
Investigative Journalism (Guardian, 13 April 2013), US drones have
killed 2,772 people in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, presumably in
the previous 12 months. The U.S. also makes drone strikes against
Somalia and the Yemen from a secret base in the tiny east African
state of Djibouti. Drones it seems are everywhere!
Surprisingly – or maybe not – the U.S. use of drones soared during
Obama’s presidency, compared with that of George W. Bush. Up to
85
the beginning of 2013, the CIA and the military undertook more than
400 drone strikes in Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan and Yemen,
killing about 3,500-4,000 people and an unknown number of injured.
Michael Boyle, who was a member of Obama’s counter-terrorism
group prior to 2008, wrote in the Chatham House journal,
International Affairs, that the reliance on drones was “having adverse
strategic effects that have not been properly weighed against the
tactical gains associated with killing terrorists. It encouraged a new,
increasingly violent, arms race, commented Boyle (Guardian, 8
January 2013).
In May 2013, President Obama, who at least in theory “signs off” on
targeted drone strikes, in an address to the National Defence
University, appeared to bow to increasing pressure to curtail such
strikes, while at the same time justifying them. He promised greater
transparency on America’s “war on terror” (that is anti-U.S. terror, of
course!). He proposed that future drone attacks should be controlled
by the military, and the Pentagon, rather than CIA; and be subjected
to Congressional scrutiny. Nevertheless, the President of the United
States supported all previous strikes, as they were “more
discriminating than other military options such as aerial bombing”.
And, he could have added that using drones is probably somewhat
cheaper!
+
+
+
+ +
The British government has funded the development of drones at
BAE Systems, and has also leased, for use in Afghanistan, drones
from Israel when awaiting a new surveillance drone named
Watchkeeper, produced jointly by the Israeli company, Elbit, and
Thales UK.
In May 2013 (Guardian, 7 May), Nick Hopkins published a Special
Report, “Journey towards drone revolution takes shape at a tiny Welsh
airfield”, in which he revealed that a former RAF base, now a
privately-owned airfield by Ray Mann, near Aberporth in West
Wales, Cardiganshire, is used by the Ministry of Defence to test
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) – drones. Apparently, it is the
only air space in Europe where drones can be flown alongside
86
conventional aircraft.
The MoD surveillance and targeting drone, the Watchkeeper, has
undergone trials at Aberporth’s West Wales Airport (WWA) for some
time. Also using the base is UAW manufacturers, who fly their Delta
201 and 202, and which cover 2,000 sq miles over the sea, and 500 sq
miles over, presumably, Wales.
+ + + + +
The first UAV was flown from Aberporth in 2004. Since then,
Mann’s team has overseen the flights of more than 1,000 UAVs at the
base. By May 2013, Watchkeeper has undertaken 260 test flights,
supervised by a MoD team of technicians, who have built and
maintained the UAVs from a hangar, surrounded by barbed wire. The
MoD already have more than 600 drones – and intend to acquire
many more in the coming decades.
Indeed, at least 35 per cent of the Royal Air Force’s planes are
planned to be remotely controlled by 2023 – the latest generation
drone, known as Taranis, can be sent to targets at long range, and
defend itself against attacks by hostile aircraft. Like the U.S. Navy X47B, it has weapons bays.
In 2014, the British Ministry of Defence admitted that a US Global
Hawk reconnaissance “unmanned aerial vehicle” - a drone – flew
through UK airspace on at least three occasions, during NATO
exercise, from a base in Italy, before returning. The drone flew over
Britain at approximately 50,000ft. The trials were codenamed
“Unified Vision.” (The Guardian, 30 May, 2014)
87
+
+
+
+ +
List of maps and photographs
Androsian Chickcharnie
New Providence Island, Nassau
Bay Street, Nassau
A Blue Hole
Bay Street, Nassau
Bay Street, Nassau
Bay Street, Nassau
Paradise Island
Beach, Northwest Andros
Main Base Site 1, AUTEC, Andros
Lynden Oscar Pindling
Another BUILDING, AUTEC, Andros
Main Base Site 1, AUTEC, Andros
Another building, AUTEC, Andros
Command Central Building and Range Support
Facility, AUTEC, Andros
Site 1, Range User Building, AUTEC,
Andros
U.S. submarine
Paradise Island
Paradise Island
AUTEC fixed-wing and rotary-winged aircraft at
West Palm Beach, Florida airfield
Bay Street, Nassau
88
Ocean Haul Down Facility, AUTEC, Andros
Electronic Warfare Threat Simulator (EWTS),
AUTEC, Andros
Mobile Acoustic Training
Unmanned MQ1 Predator drone on a test flight
UK Reaper Drone
89
Figure 1, Main Base Site 1, AUTEC, Andros
Figure 2, Another Building, AUTEC, Andros
90
Figure 3, Androsian Chickcharnie
91
Figure 4, U.S. Submarine
92
Figure 5, New Providence Island, Nassau
93
Figure 6, Bay Street, Nassau
94
Figure 7, Bay Street, Nassau
95
Figure 8, A Blue Hole
96
Figure 9, Bay Street, Nassau
97
Figure 10, Paradise Island
98
Figure 11, Beach, Northwest Andros
Figure 12, Lynden Oscar Pindling
99
Figure 13, Command Central Building and
Range Support Facility, AUTEC, Andros
Figure 14, Site 1, Range User Building,
AUTEC, Andros
100
Figure 15, Paradise Island
Figure 16, AUTEC fixed-wing and rotarywinged aircraft at West Palm Beach, Florida
airfield
101
102
Figure 17, Ocean Haul Down Facility,
AUTEC, Andros
103
Figure 18, Electronic Warfare Threat
Simulator (EWTS), AUTEC, Andros
Figure 19, Mobile Acoustic Training
104
Figure 20, Unmanned MQ1 Predator drone
on a test flight
105
Figure 21, UK Reaper Drone
106