"99 Balloons"??

This is coolbert:

"for the ten year period beginning in 1945, it would have been better if the U.S. did not have an intelligence agency [CIA]" - - Richard Helms - - former director, CIA.

[what Helms means is that during that ten year period the intelligence agencies of the U.S. were NOT able to answer basic questions demanded by policy makers, planners, decisions makers. NOT ONLY unable to answer the basic questions, but were deceived on a massive basis by the communist security services through a series of clever and well planned deception plans.]

Here is just one example of American incompetence during that ten year period.

Project Skyhook and an offshoot thereof, WS-119.

Large, massive unmanned balloons, orbiting the earth at the altitude of 100,000 feet. Carrying a gondola with photo reconnaissance cameras inside. Designed to "float" over denied territory [Soviet Union and China]. Taking pictures that would later be recovered and processed to develop badly needed intelligence on the main adversaries the U.S. faced during the Cold War.

WS-119 was AT BEST only slightly nominally successful.

Between 10 January and 6 February [1956], a total of 448 balloons were launched, and resulted in 44 successful camera gondola recoveries.

For all those missions, only a small percentage [less than 10 %] were successful. By that is meant, "floated" over the Soviet Union, took pictures, the gondola recovered, the pictures process, intelligence developed.

Control was barely minimal. The balloons floated where ever they wanted to [where the wind currents took them]. NOT over areas targeted in most of the cases.

Until the advent of the high-flying U-2 reconnaissance "spy" aircraft, NO good intelligence came out of the Soviet Union for the ten year period starting in 1945? Finally, when the U-2 began to fly and DID bring back photo-reconnaissance of superlative quality, were American planners, policy and decision makers finally able to "sort things out".

And, here is the Soviet ANSWER to the WS-119 program. The Myasishchev M-17 "Mystic" The Soviet counter-part to the U-2, but much more. Was designed originally to SHOOT-DOWN those high flying balloons, using a dorsal firing gun to do so!!




"first known as the M-17. Its life began in 1978 when Soviet engineers searched for ways to intercept American unmanned reconnaissance balloons."

" (high altitude balloon interceptor) designed originally as high-altitude aircraft with a dorsal gun turret, to shot down US reconnaissance balloons floated over the USSR after WWII."

Developed, but NEVER did take to the air until 1982 [long after the balloon program had been terminated] !!?? And when finally in production [?], built only in limited numbers and then finally relegated to the scrap heap except for a select few aircraft used for upper atmosphere measurements.

[it should be noted, and has been suggested by a whole host of "experts", that many sightings of UFO [alien spacecraft] beginning around 1947 were actually observations of high-flying balloons of the Skyhook variety!!]

coolbert.

Clowns?

This is coolbert:

“What is the matter with those clowns over at Langley??!!” - - R. Nixon.

[Langley=CIA]

By now, you have all heard it.

The latest National Intelligence Estimate [NIE] says that the Iranians suspended their atomic weapons program under pressure in 2003.

[what was actually said was that the program, the enrichment of U-238, was halted in 2003, but began again in 2005.]

This after other NIE reports subsequent to 2003 have said the Iranian atomic bomb project is going at a full-tilt pell-mell pace toward fruition!

First, the Iranian atomic bomb was a certainty. Something HAD to be done, and quick too!

NOW, the consensus from the sixteen [16 of them!!] U.S. intelligence agencies is that the Iranian nuclear program is ON HOLD!!

[enrichment of U-238 continues, but NOT at a pace to make a bomb? For peaceful purposes as stated by the Iranians!]

Such an about face. So drastically so. Makes you honestly wonder what is at work here!!

This is nothing new!!?? Rather routine actually??!! American intelligence falls flat on its face again. As with the appreciations of weapons of mass destruction and the development of same by the regime of Saddam Hussein!!

Keep in mind how well the Soviets were able to penetrate the Manhattan Project!!

Juxtapose the ability of the Soviets to learn American atomic secrets with the gross inability of U.S. intelligence TO EVEN KNOW THE SOVIET UNION HAD EXPLODED AND HAD POSSESSION OF THEIR OWN ATOMIC WEAPONS!!

From the book, "For the Presidents Eyes Only":

"Intelligence reports, however, underestimated the speed of Soviet atomic development, Hillenkoetter [Director CIA] informed him [Truman] in July 1948":

"'on the basis of the information in our [CIA] possession, it is estimated that the earliest date by which it is remotely possible that the USSR may have completed its first atomic bomb is mid-1950'"

"a Long Range Detection Program had been established air samples over the North Pacific . . . On September 3, a WB-29 . . . flying at 18,000 picked up abnormally high high levels of radiation on a litmus paper . . . .The one major insight on the nature of the Soviet adversary supplied to him [Truman] by the intelligence community thus far had been based upon scientific analysis of the radioactive dust blown by the winds far beyond Soviet borders."

UNTIL THAT AIRCRAFT WITH THE LITMUS PAPER PICKED UP THE RADIOACTIVE PARTICLES, THE U.S. HAD NO INKLING THE SOVIETS HAD EVEN EXPLODED A BOMB??!!

Well, maybe that is all you need? A little bit of fly paper in a high flying aircraft. Gather the radionuclide particles, analyze, and voila', the whole word unveils itself before you!!?? Phooey!!

[Richard Helms was quoted as saying that for the ten-year period beginning in 1945, it would have been better if U.S. intelligence had DONE NOTHING!!!]

Whoa!!

coolbert.