Bruecke Note: Another debunking to the old yarn that the insider 9/11 conspiracy would have been too difficult to keep secret. Add this to the Manhattan Project regarding large numbers keeping secrets. I didn't copy all of the pages; go to the source link for more.
articles.boston.com/2011-12-25/news/30557217_1_satellites-pacific-ocean-spy
By: Helen O'Neill
Date: 2011-12-25
For more than a decade they toiled in the strange, boxy-looking building on the hill above the municipal airport, the building with no windows (except in the cafeteria), the building filled with secrets.
They wore protective white jumpsuits, and had to walk through air-shower chambers before entering the sanitized “cleanroom’’ where the equipment was stored.
They spoke in code.
Few knew the true identity of “the customer’’ they met in a smoke-filled, wood-paneled conference room where the phone lines were scrambled. When they traveled, they sometimes used false names.
At one point in the 1970s there were more than 1,000 people in the Danbury area working on The Secret. And though they worked long hours under intense deadlines, sometimes missing family holidays and anniversaries, they could tell no one — not even their wives and children — what they did.
They were engineers, scientists, draftsmen and inventors — “real cloak-and-dagger guys,’’ says Fred Marra, 78, with a hearty laugh.
He is sitting in the food court at the Danbury Fair mall, where a group of retired co-workers from the former Perkin-Elmer Corp. gather for a weekly coffee. Gray-haired now and hard of hearing, they have been meeting here for 18 years. They while away a few hours nattering about golf and politics, ailments and grandchildren. But until recently, they were forbidden to speak about the greatest achievement of their professional lives.
“Ah, Hexagon,’’ Ed Newton says, gleefully exhaling the word that stills feels almost treasonous to utter in public.
It was dubbed “Big Bird’’ and it was considered the most successful space spy satellite program of the Cold War era. From 1971 to 1986 a total of 20 satellites were launched, each containing 60 miles of film and sophisticated cameras that orbited the earth snapping vast, panoramic photographs of the Soviet Union, China and other potential foes. The film was shot back through the earth’s atmosphere in buckets that parachuted over the Pacific Ocean, where C-130 Air Force planes snagged them with grappling hooks.
The scale, ambition and sheer ingenuity of Hexagon KH-9 was breathtaking. The fact that 19 out of 20 launches were successful (the final mission blew up because the booster rockets failed) is astonishing.
So too is the human tale of the 45-year-old secret that many took to their graves.
Hexagon was declassified in September. Finally Marra, Newton and others can tell the world what they worked on all those years at “the office.’’
“My name is Al Gayhart and I built spy satellites for a living,’’ announced the 64-year-old retired engineer to the stunned bartender in his local tavern as soon as he learned of the declassification. He proudly repeats the line any chance he gets.
Bruecke Note: Go to the source link for more pages to this sappy story.
The article is reproduced in accordance with Section 107 of title 17 of the Copyright Law of the United States relating to fair-use and is for the purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.
articles.boston.com/2011-12-25/news/30557217_1_satellites-pacific-ocean-spy
By: Helen O'Neill
Date: 2011-12-25
For more than a decade they toiled in the strange, boxy-looking building on the hill above the municipal airport, the building with no windows (except in the cafeteria), the building filled with secrets.
They wore protective white jumpsuits, and had to walk through air-shower chambers before entering the sanitized “cleanroom’’ where the equipment was stored.
They spoke in code.
Few knew the true identity of “the customer’’ they met in a smoke-filled, wood-paneled conference room where the phone lines were scrambled. When they traveled, they sometimes used false names.
At one point in the 1970s there were more than 1,000 people in the Danbury area working on The Secret. And though they worked long hours under intense deadlines, sometimes missing family holidays and anniversaries, they could tell no one — not even their wives and children — what they did.
They were engineers, scientists, draftsmen and inventors — “real cloak-and-dagger guys,’’ says Fred Marra, 78, with a hearty laugh.
He is sitting in the food court at the Danbury Fair mall, where a group of retired co-workers from the former Perkin-Elmer Corp. gather for a weekly coffee. Gray-haired now and hard of hearing, they have been meeting here for 18 years. They while away a few hours nattering about golf and politics, ailments and grandchildren. But until recently, they were forbidden to speak about the greatest achievement of their professional lives.
“Ah, Hexagon,’’ Ed Newton says, gleefully exhaling the word that stills feels almost treasonous to utter in public.
It was dubbed “Big Bird’’ and it was considered the most successful space spy satellite program of the Cold War era. From 1971 to 1986 a total of 20 satellites were launched, each containing 60 miles of film and sophisticated cameras that orbited the earth snapping vast, panoramic photographs of the Soviet Union, China and other potential foes. The film was shot back through the earth’s atmosphere in buckets that parachuted over the Pacific Ocean, where C-130 Air Force planes snagged them with grappling hooks.
The scale, ambition and sheer ingenuity of Hexagon KH-9 was breathtaking. The fact that 19 out of 20 launches were successful (the final mission blew up because the booster rockets failed) is astonishing.
So too is the human tale of the 45-year-old secret that many took to their graves.
Hexagon was declassified in September. Finally Marra, Newton and others can tell the world what they worked on all those years at “the office.’’
“My name is Al Gayhart and I built spy satellites for a living,’’ announced the 64-year-old retired engineer to the stunned bartender in his local tavern as soon as he learned of the declassification. He proudly repeats the line any chance he gets.
Bruecke Note: Go to the source link for more pages to this sappy story.
The article is reproduced in accordance with Section 107 of title 17 of the Copyright Law of the United States relating to fair-use and is for the purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.
1 comment:
The amazing thing is, the truth about 9/11 has NOT been kept a secret. YouTube is heavily populated with videos of newscasters telling the truth only to ridicule the same positions soon afterwards. The 9/11 commissioners expressed doubts about the official story, only to be ignored by the corporate-owned media. Many other key witnesses have told us the truth only to be ignored or murdered. The litany goes on and on.
The truth about 9/11 is probably the worst-kept secret in history.
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