Government Projects Over the years there have been some pretty strange government projects. When I talk about some of them it may sound hard to believe. Some of the projects employed listening devices aimed at listening in on celebrities, some were mind control experiments and there were others which were just as strange or stranger. One of the most impressive buildings in New York City is the Grand Central Terminal. It is not that it is tall, because it isn’t. What makes it so impressive aside from the trains going into it is a road which cuts through the building. The building is actually blocking a street so a roadway had to be created through it. One project involving the building was said to have taken place in World War II. If one goes down under the building, way under and makes it to the lowest floor they would be nine floors under the building and would encounter a bunker. There is also a track, Track 61 which is not on any maps. This was used by Roosevelt and others to allow them to secretly enter the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. There is an elevator which allowed the president to be driven onto it in his car which then would go directly into the hotel. Anyone who has ever lifted a pot knows the name Julia Child. Julia was famous for bringing French cooking to the United States. What some do not know is she worked for the Office of Strategic Services or OSS in World War II. She had first tried to enlist in the Women’s Army Corps known as the WACs and then the U.S. Navy WAVES but was rejected because she was too tall. She became a research assistant in the Secret Intelligence Division. She assisted in the development of a shark repellent. This was important work because the allies didn’t want sharks causing torpedoes and such to explode prematurely by bothering with them. Ironically the repellant was developed by her experimenting with different foods and food ingredients. Apparently her first venture into food scared animals away. Before she married in 1946 her name was Julia McWilliams. One of the strangest projects we were involved in was a project which had the ultimate goal of killing Fidel Castro. It all became clear when a report was declassified some 36 years later. The plot was hatched by the CIA. They had mulled over many different ways to do this. They knew he liked to smoke cigars and thought about poisoning his supply, but that was only one idea. The CIA even though of ruining his image and were thinking about a plot to put a chemical in his shoes which would make his beard fall out. You just can’t make this stuff up and it certainly doesn’t say much for the CIA at the time. The agency even thought of rigging a very rare sea shell so when Castro who liked to dive saw it on a reef where he dove frequently, he would pick it up and that would trigger an explosive. One other way the CIA was thinking about how to kill Castro was by using the mob to assassinate him. We talk about how the government listens in to all our calls and reads all our posts and has several projects which do this today, but this is nothing new. In 1972 John Lennon was anti-war. He made his feelings known and this upset the FBI and others so the FBI decided it better listen in to his phone calls. He landed up on the FBI watch list, had his visa terminated and deportation proceedings were begun. His television appearances were also monitored by the FBI. When Nixon was reelected the FBI closed its investigation. Lennon was murdered in 1980. In the 1960s the CIA was involved in illegal drug testing on people. The project was known as MK-ULTRA. The CIA’s aim was to develop mind controlling drugs. The CIA uses an assortment of things to accomplish their task, the most famous being LSD. Some of the other things they used were biological agents and even radiation. There was absolutely no regard for human life. When it seemed, the project was about to become common knowledge the head of the CIA, Director Richard Helms ordered all documents relating to this project be destroyed, but it was too late. The information got out. A senate committee was formed and headed by Senator Frank Church and a commission was headed by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller to investigate the project. It has been said the real purpose of this project was to create assassins who could be controlled. When our U-2 aircraft was shot down by the Soviets and its pilot put on trial the government realized it needed a better replacement for the plane and it eventually got it in the form of the SR-71 Blackbird, but there were other steps in between and other aircraft considered. One of these aircraft was the Convair Kingfish. It also was very fast with a top speed equivalent to the top admitted speed of the Blackbird at its maximum altitude. Project Gusto was also a project to replace the U-2. While slightly slower Archangel 1 was also a speedy high-flying plane and was designed by Kelly Johnson who eventually designed the Blackbird. There are so many secret projects going on at any given time run by the government it is impossible to know what is happening. Even those who work on these projects don’t know the full extent of them, because of compartmentalization. This is the process where workers only know about the part of the project they are working on without knowing what the entire project is. An example might be a person working to develop wheels. He or she knows they are working on wheels but might not know what the wheels are for.
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