Published June 07, 1999 --------------------------------------- NOTE: Local contrail pictures were published with the print version of the report in Vol. 3, No. 22, of The Asheville Tribune ~ Weekly News Magazine. --------------------------------------- Part I of the Tribune's Investigative Series  NEW "AIR QUALITY"  THREAT SEEN By Dana Davis, The Asheville Tribune "Not a cloud in the sky." When is the last time you can remember using that phrase? For many of us living in the continental United States, a truly clear sky has become a thing of the past. Is this due to the industrialized society that our nation has become? Yes, in part, but what about Montana, Idaho, and Western North Carolina for that matter? What about the quiet neighborhoods and otherwise undisturbed wildlife throughout the United States whose skies are being tainted with clouds which cannot be defined by any meteorologist? The answer is contrails. Contrails are the white/silver cloud-like exhaust from airplanes that are visible from the ground. Normal contrails from commercial planes dissipate and vanish into air. That's nothing new. What is new is the abnormally thick contrails appearing with great frequency as of late from non-commercial planes. These planes are obviously not commercial jets because they fly together in tight formations too close to comply with Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations. And they often fly in grid patterns and mark X's in the sky with the contrails they leave behind. The contrails these suspicious planes produce do not immediately dissipate. Instead, they linger across the sky and, after several hours, spread out into what appears to be cloud coverage hovering over us in the sky throughout the day. If you have not noticed them, it is probably because you thought you were seeing clouds, but quite often, on what would be an otherwise clear day, contrails create a partly cloudy atmosphere. And when there are already clouds in the sky, contrails simply blend in with the atmosphere, making them even less detectable. However, quite a few weary observers have taken notice of the suspicious contrails zig-zagging and eventually blanketing the sky. In fact, several websites have formed that are devoted to the research of this bizarre and mysterious trend which has become somewhat of a fixture throughout the U.S. As a result, some unconfirmed theories have come forth which could help to shed some light on the matter. An influx of respiratory illnesses have been reported in areas of heavy contrail activity. Meningitis outbreaks have occurred in several states recently -- North Carolina being one of them. Some who believe they have fallen ill as a direct result of the contrails say the ailments they suffer from are not unlike symptoms of some types of biological warfare. Meanwhile, William Thomas, a veteran award-winning journalist, notes that toll-free tracking numbers across the country are asking people to come forward for tests and treatment -- "if they qualify with specific symptoms incurred within a specific time period within a specific radius of exposure." Shocking as this may sound, it should be noted that U.S. government experiments have been conducted on the American population before. For example, just last year the federal government made a public apology for secretly exposing select men to a painful, contagious and uncurable sexually transmitted disease just to study the effects. According to Thomas, two U.S. Senate investigations in 1977 and 1994 document decades of open air biowarfare testing over the American and Canadian public. Thomas gives a few examples among hundreds of US cities which he says have been the target of open air experiments: In 1950, the U.S. Navy sprayed a cloud of Serratia marcescens bacteria over San Francisco. Monitoring devices tested the extent of infection as many residents fell ill with pneumonia-like symptoms. In 1966 the U.S. Army dispensed Bacillus subtilis variant Niger throughout the New York City subway system. More than a million New Yorkers were exposed. And Minneapolis was hit with the same disease causing bacteria 20 years later in 1997. United States Code - Title 50 - War and National Defense Chapter 32 - Chemical and Biological Warfare Program Sec. 1520 - Biowarfare experimentation on the American public - states that the Secretary of Defense may not conduct any test or experiment involving the use of a chemical or "biological agent" on a civilian population...except for research and law enforcement purposes, including any purpose related to riot control. This same U.S. Code defines "biological agent" as "Any micro-organism (including bacteria, viruses, fungi, rickettsiac, or protozoa), pathogen, or infectious substance, and any naturally occurring, bioengineered, or synthesized component of any such micro-organism, pathogen, or infectious substance, whatever its origin or method of production, that is capable of causing: (1) death, disease, or other biological malfunction in a human, an animal, a plant, or another living organism; (2) deterioration of food, water, equipment, supplies, or materials of any kind; or (3) deleterious alteration of the environment." This law also requires that all test subjects must give their informed consent 'for research.' Grant it, military servicemen surrender their civilian rights upon enlistment, but, chances are less than likely that the more than 460,000 American GIs forced to take PB in the Gulf were ever asked for their consent, much less, informed that this nerve agent actually amplifies the effects of the sarin nerve agent raining over them. Or, that they were ever given the choice to refuse mycoplasma-contaminated anthrax. Furthermore, Executive Order 12975 - Protection of Human Research Subjects and Creation of National Bioethics Advisory Commission - signed by President William Clinton, speaks to departments and agencies taking into account recommendations contained in a report from the "Advisory Committee" on "Human Radiation Experiments." There's much more to report on this topic and even more that is still unknown and unavailable to the public. This report is Part I of a series.