Bird Deaths

As you know, in late 1993, the Air Force, in cooperation with the Navy, began construction of HAARP in Gakona , Alaska . The main element of HAARP is a large radio wave transmitter which "utilize[s] powerful, high frequency (HF) transmissions and a variety of associated observational instruments to investigate naturally occurring and artificially induced ionospheric processes that support, enhance or degrade the propagation of radio waves." ROD at 1. Construction of the HAARP facility is currently scheduled to be completed within six or seven years and presently it runs at about ten percent of projected power levels. See O'Harra, HAARP's Mixed Signals; Solid Research Or Menace To Alaskans, Anchorage Daily News (April 7, 1996).




As the Air Force originally explained, HAARP is aimed at studying the ionosphere, "with particular emphasis placed on being able to better understand and use it to enhance communications and surveillance systems for both civil and defense purposes." FEIS Vol. I at iii. As an example, one touted potential military benefit from the project is the development of a communication system for use with submerged submarines.



The Air Force, in the FEIS, detailed its view of the impacts of the project. The Air Force focused almost exclusively on the local and regional impacts of HAARP, primarily on things such as impacts to animals, degradation of air quality and vegetation loss due to construction activities. FEIS at 3-1 to 3-165. The Air Force deemed HAARP's effects to the atmosphere and biological effects to be non-existent or insignificant. See id; see also ROD at Table 2.4-1. The only admitted potentially significant impact is "interference to radio communication systems and electroexplosive devices during transmitting periods." Id.



In the years since the EIS process was completed, several groups and individuals have raised questions concerning the uses to which HAARP will be put and the likely effects flowing from those uses. Some of these assertions are set forth in a book, published in 1995, called Angels Don't Play This HAARP. Manning, Begich, Angels Don't Play This HAARP, Earthpulse Press (1995).1 In this book, the authors set forth a detailed and fully-referenced description of HAARP and its potential uses and effects. During the course of their research for the book, the authors found that, rather than the innocuous project described by the Air Force, HAARP represents a technology which could lead to a new class of weapons that could change our world profoundly - an all-purpose military tool. If misused, the tool could mess up the weather. It could be used against humanity in a way that would change what people think, believe and feel. . . . [HAARP could]: