Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Oct. 22, 1997 - Art Bell

02:39:37

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Nuclear Submarine - Officer X

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Welcome to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
	Tonight, featuring Coast to Coast AM from October 22nd, 1997.
	From the high desert in the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening.
	Good morning, as the case may be, across all these many prolific time zones, stretching from, in the west, the Hawaiian and Tahitian island chains, eastward over flyover country, to the Caribbean.
	Gentle breezes, warm temperatures, volcanoes, In the South!
	All the way down into South America, North to the Pole, worldwide on the Internet.
	This is Coast to Coast AM, and I'm Art Bell.
	All right, a couple of announcements up front, and we're going to have an interesting morning, there's no question about it.
	Submarines have always fascinated me, and my guest is an ex-submarine communications officer.
	Who has quite a few things to tell us that he... I'm not sure he should be telling us, but we'll see what we can find out.
	Now, I want to issue a warning to my affiliates.
	And this goes for those of you who have a particularly sensitive audience.
	You may be located dead set in the middle of the Bible Belt or something.
	So, just consider this fair warning.
	I got a fax earlier today from a woman Who says the following, I am 32 years old.
	My coven name is Harlan.
	I am a witch of the most unholy kind.
	I am by no means a goddess.
	I use no crystal balls, tricks, nor treats.
	I'm from a long line of witches and warlocks and so on.
	She belongs to the coven of the unholy and says, Hail Satan.
	Now let me say, Art, I am a good witch by no means.
	Even if I do something that someone would consider good, I do with evil in my heart.
	Hail Satan.
	Well, this one goes a little far for even me.
	Nevertheless, I am going to explore, as a matter of fact, I called her, And, on the phone, she was every bit what she seemed to be in this fax.
	And I admit, it kind of freaked me out a little bit, too.
	You know, I will just about explore anything, and that includes this.
	But I'm just kind of issuing a warning to those of you who are in the Bible Belt, or feel you're listeners, may be offended by what they hear, and I was a little offended by some of what I heard.
	Be wary, and you might want to have a tape standing by and run a different show and protect your listeners' ears.
	Having given that warning, in a moment we will sound the klaxons and we'll go down fathoms and fathoms.
	You'll see what I mean.
	Here's how my guest, the one that's about to be on the air here, who we are going to
	call Officer X, got on the air here.
	He sent me email reading as follows.
	Art, I'm a ham radio operator, and I eliminated his call letters, and a former submarine communications officer, and I thought you might be interested in hearing about some very frightening things that happened with military radio in the 1980s, late 80s, such as a near complete failure of the low-frequency radio systems used to communicate with SSBN submarines that brought the world to the brink of a nuclear war.
	This event and many others were the primary reason why I left the military service, as a potential for disaster became very clear to me.
	Are you aware there is a second Russian Mir space station in orbit?
	This station was in orbit as early as 1985 and its whereabouts in space carefully tracked by the US government as it was dedicated to strictly military purposes.
	I would be willing to speak on your show provided we could protect my identity.
	I am still bound by the top secret SCI crypto clearances that I held while in the military.
	While not active in the militia or any other anti-government movement, I can tell you I'm highly suspect of many things the government tells us.
	Particularly with regard to communications and space.
	And he signs it with his name for the purpose of this program.
	He shall remain Officer X. Welcome to the program.
	Hi, how are you, sir?
	I'm just fine.
	I must tell you to begin with that I have always been totally, absolutely fascinated with submarines.
	My wife's brother serves on the USS Simon Lake, a nuclear sub, and every time he comes to visit, I try and drag as much from him as I can, and normally he tells me Pretty much nothing.
	Generally, I can't talk about it, is what I get.
	So, we have you.
	And what can you tell us about your background?
	Well, I can tell you a little bit, Art.
	I would say, I mentioned that I was a ham radio operator.
	I've been licensed, actually, since I was seven years old.
	That's quite a while ago.
	Wow!
	I did it at 13, and I thought that was good.
	I always had an interest in electronics, communications, that sort of thing.
	I went to college and majored in electrical engineering.
	While I was in college, money was tight, that sort of thing.
	I became interested in the ROTC program and got involved in that.
	I left college and accepted a commission in the United States Navy.
	I had already volunteered for Submarine Duty largely because the pay is better and the benefits are a little better and it seemed interesting.
	Do most people volunteer for Submarine Duty or are they, you know, stuck in there?
	No, the Submarine Service is all volunteers.
	It's one of the unique branches of the service for that reason.
	So I volunteered and entered after completing basic training, that sort of thing.
	I went to submarine school and learned the basics of submarines, that sort of thing.
	Then I went aboard and took my first active duty assignment.
	I was on board the USS Ulysses S. Grant, which is SSBN 631.
	Still commissioned, I believe, to this day, though probably not nearly as active.
	It was a Poseidon missile submarine, and it was quite old when I came on board.
	It had probably been in service 15 years, which made it a pretty old ship.
	And I served there.
	I did five ballistic missile patrols, patrols being the missions that are involved in going out and keeping the vigil in case of a How long would you go out for?
	Patrols typically last three months.
	They can extend.
	The patrol in question that I'll talk to you about later lasted over five months, and it was the longest patrol that I was on.
	Later, when I served on board a fast-attack submarine, the USS Dallas, they make what are called med-runs.
	That was on the Dallas?
	Correct.
	And what position did you serve in there?
	I was communications officer onboard both submarines.
	so you're not underwater or even necessarily actively engaged that entire time.
	And that was on the Dallas?
	Correct.
	And what position did you serve in there?
	I was a communications officer on board both submarines.
	My background, of course, lended itself to that sort of duty,
	and primarily since that was my training as an officer was in the operations department.
	You know, that was the area that I served in.
	All right.
	I know only a very few basics about how we communicate with our submarines.
	I know that in the upper Midwest, there is this incredible transmitter and incredible antenna underground, I believe, that is designed to send a very slow, Arduous form of communication that can be received at great depths in the ocean.
	I know we have that, I forget what it's called.
	But I would presume you know what it is.
	Yes, that form of communication is called ELF, or E-L-F, Extremely Low Frequency.
	And it is a method of communicating with submarines, though it is not the primary method because it is very slow.
	You have to realize all the information that is sent to submarines is encrypted in some form to varying degrees.
	Sure.
	And so this slows the transmission rate considerably as opposed to sending something in the clear.
	And the low frequency, you know, further limits the amount of signal that you can transfer.
	ELF essentially sends five-letter groups that are random, for instance, E, E, F, M, G, Might be a five-letter group.
	A group of five letters on ELF might take as long as 10 minutes to receive.
	Wow.
	Yeah.
	But you can do that at nearly any depth?
	Effectively, ELF operates at any depth and was a considerable improvement in the reliability of the United States government to communicate with submarines under almost any condition.
	And incidents like the one that I'll tell you about later, Um, probably prompted ELF, though, you know, I don't know that for certain.
	ELF was in the testing phase whenever this incident occurred.
	It was not active yet.
	And so it was not available to us.
	And had it been available, the incident might have never occurred.
	Well, the alternative method, or the method used prior to that, I could imagine shortwave.
	I could imagine satellites.
	But in both of those cases, I would also imagine you would have to get something to the surface to receive it.
	Correct.
	Actually, the primary method, Art, of communicating with submarines is via low-frequency radio waves, which are anywhere from, say, 15 kilohertz to 30 kilohertz, well below the AM broadcast band.
	No kidding?
	Yes.
	And there are large and very powerful transmitters, for instance, in Cutler, Maine, which is basically the middle of nowhere.
	There's a very powerful, one of the world's most powerful transmitters that operates essentially 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
	And it sends out, you're familiar with radio teletype or FSK, Frequency Shift Keying, basically a teletype signal that is encrypted and it sends messages around the clock to submarines around the world.
	There are also stations in Thurso, Scotland.
	There's one in Hawaii, Australia for the Pacific fleet.
	And at one time, there was one near Annapolis, Maryland.
	But I don't believe that it functions.
	Why, as a matter of curiosity, do they use such a low frequency?
	Those radio waves have the ability to penetrate saltwater.
	Not to any depth, like ELF does, but to a pretty good depth, sometimes as much as 100 feet underwater.
	Oh.
	So it is possible to trail, essentially, a long wire behind a submarine.
	No kidding.
	And the wire is submerged, but not very much.
	It might be, you know, 50 feet below the surface.
	But the wire is then able to pick up those signals and, you know, essentially allow you to establish one-way communication with submarines around the clock.
	And that's essential too.
	People need to understand that most communications with submarines It's of a one-way nature.
	Your primary mission, if you're on a ballistic missile submarine, is to remain undetected.
	Any radio transmission essentially could almost be instantly direction-finding techniques.
	Using satellites could almost instantly pinpoint your location.
	So, in other words, there's really no way for individual submarines to confirm that they've received any communication?
	That is correct.
	And there are a number of safeguards set up to ensure that messages, essentially, messages like this are called emergency action messages, or EAMs.
	These are the kinds of messages that would trigger a nuclear response to an attack.
	And because they are one-way in nature and cannot be confirmed, you can imagine there are all kinds of redundant safeguards built into that system to ensure that there are no accidental launches.
	All right.
	I want to ask this.
	I watch all the sub-movies, so my questions are going to come from what I've seen in the movies.
	But I understand that Russian submarine commanders are not autonomous.
	In other words, there is no way that they're allowed to make decisions involving nuclear weapons or anything else on their own.
	They just can't do that.
	They're not set loose.
	And I always understood that American submarine commanders had some amount of autonomy.
	Is that anything you can talk about?
	To my knowledge, that is probably not true at all.
	In fact, all submarine commanders, all submariners worldwide have a great deal of autonomy.
	It's one of the reasons why it's a fairly elite military force.
	I would say that a captain of a nuclear submarine is probably the closest thing in real life to Captain Kirk or Captain Picard that you would ever see.
	Most commanders operate under strict control of their superiors and have very little decision-making authority.
	Submarine commanders, because they cannot confirm their orders, because they cannot transmit without risking detection, Essentially operate on their own.
	They, of course, have orders that they follow for a given patrol, that sort of thing.
	But in times of crisis, like the one that I will describe, there's a great deal of leeway there for all submarine commanders, Russian, United States, whatever.
	And that economy is what makes them a very effective weapon and a very effective deterrent to nuclear war, but it's also what makes them Extremely dangerous.
	How undetectable are our submarines versus the Russians?
	I know there was a big flap, and again this was in the media, so we can talk about it I'm sure, about some technology that passed from our country to Japan to the Russians that made the Russian submarines as quiet or nearly as quiet as ours.
	I did read something about that.
	That was, of course, after my time of service.
	To be honest with you, Art, I found my experience in the military to be very rewarding and very proud to be a qualified submariner and to have had that experience.
	I have no real armchair detective interest in submarines.
	I won't sit around the house and watch Sharks of Steel or read Tom Clancy novels.
	I just, you know, really have no interest in, so I honestly don't follow developments in submarines very closely anymore.
	Interesting.
	I do.
	I watch every Clancy movie.
	Anyway, here you are on the submarine, the Dallas, which is, was that a Los Angeles class?
	The USS Dallas was a Los Angeles class test attack, yes.
	At one time, by the way, the fastest submarine in the world.
	Oh, really?
	Yes.
	Can you tell us anything about the capability of a Los Angeles-class submarine in terms of what they carry and what they can deliver and the firepower they carry?
	Certainly, to a limited extent, I can tell you what they carried when I was on board.
	They had Mark 48 torpedoes with the primary offensive weapon of a Los Angeles-class submarine, and to my knowledge, still is.
	A very lethal projectile that could achieve speeds in excess of 60 knots underwater.
	Wow.
	That's about 80 miles an hour.
	And these operate off, they sense magnetic fields and, you know, or explode when they are near the enemy's target when they sense the magnetic field.
	60 miles an hour?
	I'm closer to 80 miles an hour.
	80 miles an hour?
	Good Lord!
	Los Angeles class submarines could also carry, forgive me here, I'll have to remember the actual designation, they are Tomahawk cruise missiles.
	And I believe the Los Angeles class submarines could carry as many as four of those.
	And those could be armed with conventional warheads and more likely they were normally armed with Nuclear warheads.
	And in actuality, one of the reasons why, in fact the primary reason why I left the service was because after the incident that we'll discuss later, I was questioned by one of my superior officers who basically posed the question, did I believe in the mission of the United States Nuclear Navy, which was basically to retaliate against the Russian government in the event of a nuclear war.
	And the inclusion of weapons like the Tomahawk cruise missile with nuclear capability is one of the reasons why I left the service.
	All right, I want to explore that.
	We're at the bottom of the hour.
	Take it easy.
	We've got several minutes break.
	And this is going to be a very interesting point to pick back up on, isn't it?
	I wonder how you would have answered that question, and we'll contemplate what the question really means when we come back.
	From the high desert, this is Coast to Coast AM.
	You're listening to ArcBell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
	Tonight an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from October 22, 1997.
	Coast to Coast is a song about the people of the Caribbean, and the people of the Caribbean.
	It's a song about the people of the Caribbean, and the people of the Caribbean.
	to Arc Bell somewhere in time.
	Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from October 22nd, 1997.
	It is, and here I am again, Officer X is my guest.
	A communications officer on the Ulysses S. Grant at one point, and then the Dallas, a Los Angeles-class submarine.
	a man who held top secret S.C.I. crypto clearances but he's got something he wants to tell us and we're about
	to get to that back now to officer X and let's pick up where we left off
	You said Tomahawk nuclear-tipped missiles, or that they could be, and they asked you if you were in concert with the mission, which could be retaliation.
	In other words, the U.S.
	or one of our allies would be hit, and then your job would be to launch your nuclear weapons in retaliation.
	Well, to be honest with you, at the time, I think I replied a curt, yes sir, of course I believe in the mission of the nuclear navy.
	When in reality, I didn't.
	And you were presented with that question.
	How did you answer it?
	Well, to be honest with you, at the time, I think I replied, a, Kurt, yes, sir, of course I believe in the mission of
	the nuclear navy, when in reality I didn't.
	And I had had some time to examine that belief based on the incident.
	The incident actually occurred while I was on board the Ulysses S. Grant,
	and I think probably I should just tell that story.
	Please.
	You have to understand a lot of conditions conspired to make this possible, many of them unusual, and so perhaps people should not go to sleep at night worrying about it.
	It probably does not happen very often.
	at the time we were involved in uh... some fairly uh...
	intense negotiations and diplomatic wrangling with momar qaddafi in
	libya i recall this culminated in the uh... air force airstrike
	against uh... mister coffee
	straight on that was ordered by president reagan during this time of course there was uh... stringent uh...
	russian objection to that
	policy and to the impact of that whole line of discourse and uh... that uh...
	tension between united states and russia had built and built to the point that we
	were ready a very high state of readiness
	I believe we were at DEFCON 3 at the time, which was a very high state of readiness.
	And through a series of accidents, misadventures, and just plain bad luck, we, for a period of about six hours, lost all communications with The outside world, we lost.
	We originally ran over our trailing wire antenna, which is very easy to do.
	You can make a sudden turn, as we did, trying to avoid a surface contact, trying to avoid being detected.
	We turned suddenly, and the antenna, which is hundreds of feet long, does not turn nearly as swiftly, and you can very easily run over it with your propeller and cut it.
	That's exactly what happened.
	So momentarily, we lost communication.
	That was not unusual.
	It happened a lot.
	We attempted to launch a secondary antenna, which is actually a buoy-type thing, which floats just below the surface.
	And in attempting to raise the buoy, the buoy malfunctioned.
	Again, not uncommon.
	But for both of them to happen that quickly was kind of strange.
	So we didn't have communications, but we really didn't have any reason to worry about it.
	That was, you know, we could explain both of those incidents.
	We replaced the wire antenna, which can be done inside the submarine, and we deployed a new trailing wire and slowed down so that it could float to the surface.
	When this happened, we could not reacquire our signal locks.
	We couldn't, you know, hear anybody, essentially.
	That was very unusual.
	Now, we did some tests to ensure that the equipment was working properly, that the antenna was working properly, etc.
	And everything checked normal, but we had no reception.
	We couldn't hear anybody.
	And that was very unusual.
	And you have to understand, if a submarine is out of communication, For even a moment, that has to be reported to the officer of the deck.
	If you are out of contact for any extended period, that has to be reported to the captain.
	Extended period being about 10 minutes.
	At DEFCON 3, which is the high state of readiness we were at, it had to be reported immediately to the captain.
	So this became kind of a big deal.
	When 20 minutes had went by and we had been unable to reestablish communication, There was a lot of anxiety.
	This was unusual.
	It had not happened, you know, in my experience.
	Everybody's imagining the worst.
	Absolutely.
	Compounding this was the fact that we had a hostile Russian contact, a surface ship in the vicinity, very near us.
	And we were aware of that.
	So, going to the surface, or near the surface, to deploy another type of antenna to listen to shortwave, which is, you know, there are a lot of redundant systems to communicate with submarines.
	shortwave satellites just like you mentioned longwave But we were precluded from doing that because of the high
	state of readiness and because of this surface contact, right?
	So I mean hence you can imagine Oh, well, if you're if you presume the worst which you have
	to run Obviously, you're not going to go to the surface
	particularly if you've got somebody dogging you on the surface. So that makes sense, right?
	Exactly.
	So, you know, we did everything that could be done to try to re-establish communications and continue to check the equipment and this sort of thing.
	Compounding it was that this same antenna will also receive HF, or shortwave signals, to a lesser extent.
	So if you slow down really slow, this antenna will come within a few feet of the surface, and it does become possible to pick up shortwave.
	Shortwave, sure.
	Yes.
	So we attempted that.
	It's a dangerous maneuver because the antenna can break the surface of the water, and if that happens, you could be detected.
	But there was really nothing else to do.
	Well, not only couldn't we hear the military stations, we couldn't hear, you know, very powerful shortwave broadcasters like HCJB or BBC or the Voice of America.
	We couldn't hear anything.
	What part of the world were you in?
	We were somewhere in the North Atlantic.
	And, you know, I say somewhere because quite literally I have no idea.
	I mean, you know, I didn't bother checking very often to see exactly where we were.
	It just was not relevant.
	But you were in an area where the European shortwave should have been pounding.
	Oh, yes.
	Exactly.
	Okay.
	So now, again, to compound the situation, to make it even more unusual, is that we had a navigation officer who is essentially a department head and two steps below the captain.
	There's the captain, the executive officer, and then there are department heads, like the navigations officer, the weapons officer, the engineering officer.
	The navigation officer was an older gentleman who had been passed up for command.
	In other words, he was older than the captain, perhaps by ten years.
	He had been passed up for promotion and passed up for command of his own submarine.
	He was kind of bitter about that.
	He was not what I would call a very good officer.
	In fact, I did not have a lot of respect for him, even though he was my superior.
	He became very frightened.
	He assumed the worst.
	You have to realize the situation was a lot more heated than any of you are aware of.
	What you heard in the media about what was going on.
	Was probably a fraction of what was really was going on.
	Well, I didn't know the Russians were particularly exorcised over Muammar Gaddafi or what was occurring in Libya.
	I remember the strike and I remember there was a lot of tension.
	But I don't particularly remember a whole lot of Russian public statements about it at the time.
	Exactly.
	And that, you know, is kind of my point in all this.
	A lot goes on that, you know, by necessity people are not aware of, probably shouldn't be aware of, you know.
	Um, and this was one of those situations.
	Um, so when this officer, the senior officer, the navigation officer, became extremely frightened, um, he really assumed that the worst had happened.
	Sure.
	And you have to realize at this time, you know, I'm a fairly junior officer and I'm in a panic, uh, working with my senior enlisted guys trying to figure out what is wrong, you know, why we cannot receive radio signals.
	Um, and that's my primary concern, but I am, you know, becoming increasingly aware That this officer is panicky.
	The standard operating procedure in a situation like that is basically to go very, very deep and to wait because there's nothing else you can do.
	You don't have authorization to release weapons.
	You cannot come up and launch a raised periscope or another kind of antenna or send a message.
	You can't do anything.
	So you go deep and you wait and you hope that the signals come back.
	So we did that.
	For a period of about two hours.
	And within this two hour period, the navigation officer became so agitated that he went down to the ward room where the officers eat their meals and actually went aft in the ship back towards the engineering compartment and the weapons compartment.
	And he began to kind of talk up his version of what was happening in the outside world.
	Essentially that we were at war and that, you know, Life as we knew it had ceased to exist.
	And there became, in this period of a few hours, a kind of a growing movement on board the ship that perhaps the thing to do would be to retaliate.
	To actually launch weapons.
	You could have done that with no other authorization from land?
	No.
	Not without being in total violation of every Regulation in the books.
	Could it have been done physically, though, if everybody in the ship had decided they were going to want to do it?
	Well, that's the problem.
	Unfortunately, everybody in the ship does not have to agree.
	You know, about three or four key officers have to agree, and enough of the crew would have to be persuaded that it was the thing to do, because obviously three men can't launch missiles alone.
	Right.
	But yeah, it could happen.
	And basically the situation grew more and more heated.
	The weapons officer essentially sided with the navigator and stated publicly that he believed the captain was wrong and that he was being too cautious and that he should go to the surface and try to establish communication, that he should do more to try to resolve the situation.
	What were the rules regarding You said you had a surface ship that was close to you or dogging you.
	Did they know you were there?
	No.
	No?
	No.
	All right.
	What were the captain's options regarding surfacing?
	He's got a Russian ship above him.
	We might be at war.
	He would have no way of knowing for sure at that moment.
	Essentially, under the rules of engagement at the time, he had no option.
	His option was to go deep and wait.
	And that was the option he exercised.
	The problem became kind of this internal atmosphere in the submarine.
	There was no problem with the regulations.
	There was no problem with the safeguards.
	All that was in place.
	All that was working.
	It was all fine.
	But, you know, the internal politics, human nature took over was the problem.
	And essentially it got to the point where the crew was so agitated that the captain felt the need.
	To post literally an armed guard at the small arms locker because the weapons officer had the key to that locker and so did a few other senior officers and he was really concerned.
	He posted an armed guard at the small arms locker to make sure that no one gained access to the rifles and shotguns and .45s and that sort of thing.
	And the situation continued.
	It lasted about six hours.
	Uh, and eventually ended up with like, you know, heated, very passionate, uh, arguments, you know, on the, um, the, the con, the control room center, uh, between the navigations officer and the captain and, you know, uh, the weapons officer and other people.
	And eventually the executive officer, who was kind of a small mouthy kind of guy, bookish kind of individual, um, really kind of took charge and became in my eyes, maybe the hero of the whole situation.
	Very calmly and very rationally, you know, stated what the options were and how that, you know, under naval regulations, we really didn't have any other option.
	And basically, you know, counseled the captain in a very wise way.
	And the captain eventually made the decision that what would happen was that we would risk going to the surface to deploy another antenna, which was Really contrary to what his options were.
	But he felt like that with the internal situation, he didn't have a choice.
	In other words, it would have soon been out of control.
	Well, perhaps.
	And he was fearful enough of that to disregard the standard operating procedures and go to the surface.
	Not surface the submarine, but go close enough to the surface to deploy a periscope-like antenna that just barely broke the surface.
	It's an HF antenna that received shortwave.
	Right.
	When we did that, sure enough, the signals returned.
	And I cannot tell you, Art, in a room that normally is clattering with five teletypes going off at the same time, silence in a room like that is deafening.
	It was the most eerie thing I'd ever heard.
	I'd never heard that room be silent in my life.
	And when we broke the surface, it takes a few minutes for the signals to lock up because they're encrypted.
	They don't immediately start.
	But about 45, 60 seconds after we surfaced, they started.
	The teletype started working, and we knew everything was okay.
	Oh, brother.
	Yeah, and you know, absolute pandemonium, you know, breaking out on the ship.
	Massive relief all the way around.
	And then shortly after that, there was, you know, when we returned from the mission, by the way, we found out later that what had happened Was that the antenna that we had deployed, the Trailing West, was faulty.
	It had a short.
	Now, it had the circuit to test that, but it had shorted in such a way that the circuit to detect it didn't work.
	So the antenna read normal, it appeared to be normal, but in fact, it did not function.
	Understood.
	Understood.
	Right.
	And that was compounded by the fact that the station in Thurso, Scotland, one of the stations which should have never been off the air, Especially in Defcon 3, had an accident at the transmitter site that forced it off the air for a period of about 12 hours.
	It was the closest transmitter.
	If it had been functioning, even with the antenna shorted, we probably would have still heard it.
	But because it was down at that exact moment, we heard nothing.
	It was a series of things that went badly wrong.
	When this was over, I said, my God, that's a scary scenario.
	It was extremely scary.
	But there was a Board of Inquiry, and you can imagine it was kind of a big deal that all this had transpired.
	And eventually, the Navigation Officer resigned from the Navy.
	And I recall that after that action happened, I approached the Executive Officer and I said something like, you know, I'm really glad that Commander So-and-so is leaving.
	I don't think that a man like that needs to be around nuclear weapons.
	His statement at the time was, the Navigator was doing his duty.
	The Navigator was saying what he believed to be right with all of his heart and his conviction.
	His actions were motivated by the desire to do his duty.
	He addressed me and basically said, I believe your actions were motivated primarily by fear.
	And, you know, the Navigator was prepared to do his duty.
	Which would have been what?
	To release nuclear weapons.
	To release nuclear weapons.
	Correct.
	And he addressed me directly and said, you know, were you prepared to do your duty?
	And, you know, and I didn't say anything for a moment and then he said, you know, Lieutenant Commander, or excuse me, Lieutenant Junior Grade so-and-so, do you believe in the mission of the nuclear navy?
	Uh-huh.
	And as I said, I said very quickly, I said, yes, sir, I do.
	And the truth was, no, sir, I did not.
	In what sense, though, this incident aside, did you conclude from this incident that you didn't any longer, or at that moment, believe in the mission?
	Well, basically, it was motivated by that incident, by I guess the rational, the realization that despite all the safeguards, that Even if it was a very small percentage of a possibility that there could be an accidental release, there was that possibility.
	No matter how remote, that possibility existed, and that had been demonstrated very visibly to me, and that terrified me.
	The thought of slaughtering millions of innocent people who have no more control over their government's actions than you have over yours.
	To me, it was just terrifying.
	I could not imagine being part of an organization that could put millions of people to death for no other reason than they happen to live in the wrong country.
	Suppose, just for the sake of the question, that we had been at war.
	Would you then be in concert with the mission to release, or even at that point, Would it be, in your opinion, useless and slaughter to kill millions of people in retaliation?
	Well, I think that was the problem, Art, in the process of this discourse when there was all this discussion about what was going on in the outside world and therefore what we should do.
	Of course, a lot of people were theorizing that, you know, basically we had no home to go home to, and that everybody we knew and loved was dead.
	All right.
	We've got to hold it there.
	We're at the top of the hour.
	Holy mackerel.
	Stay right where you are.
	My guest is Officer X. I'm Art Bell.
	This is Coast to Coast AM.
	You're listening to Arkbell somewhere in time tonight featuring a replay of coast to coast am from October 22nd
	1997 Oh
	Oh Oh
	Oh Take the long way home
	you Take the long way home.
	When you're up on the stage, so unbelievable, unforgettable, I may have told you.
	But then your wife seems to think you're losing your sanity.
	Then your wife seems to think you're losing your sanity Oh, the time I see you
	With the no way out Oh, yeah
	Premier Radio Networks presents Art Bell, Somewhere in Time Tonight's program originally aired October 22, 1997.
	Boy, if this one doesn't cause you to slow down, you can't be slowed.
	My guest is Officer X, a communications officer on the Ulysses S. Grant and the Los Angeles-class Dallas submarine.
	And he's just finished describing an incident in which, for a period of six hours, The Ulysses S. Grant was out of communication during the crisis with Libya.
	During that time, a number of the crew, not hearing any communications at all, began to lean toward the idea of launching their nuclear weapons.
	Fortunately, I guess you really wouldn't want to call this a comedy of errors, because there was nothing funny about it.
	But that ended, and they did get back in communication again, but it changed a lot of people.
	Some left the service, including, actually, my guest.
	uh... for the purpose of anonymity we're going to call him officer x we're going
	to address that question here in a moment back now to my guest officer x welcome back
	Let me read you a fax I just got, which is really the obvious, and see how you respond to it, okay?
	it says hello art
	please ask officer x the following considering the rather detailed information given about his
	education duty assignments sub names an official on board duties
	uh... et cetera why be anonymous by the end of his own introduction
	naval intelligence would know exactly who you are interviewing
	maybe were not to know who mister x is officer x
	but if he's the real thing you can be damn sure
	naval intelligence knows well that's a valid point art and uh...
	to be to be quite frank with you that uh...
	something i thought about Almost since you contacted me.
	In reality, when I sent you the email, it was after a particularly long day of having some kind of philosophical discussions along these lines with people that I used to serve with.
	Quite frankly, I didn't really think you'd ever respond to the email.
	When you did, after a considerable delay of time, I was kind of taken aback.
	You know, I really kind of debated whether or not I wanted to talk to you at all about it for just those reasons.
	I don't have any desire to, you know, have my life made difficult by the United States government or anybody else.
	All right, you sign papers, right?
	Excuse me?
	You sign papers.
	Yes, of course.
	You say top secret, SEI, crypto, clearances, that kind of thing.
	In what way are you bound?
	For example, the really horrendously scary incident that you just described to us.
	In what way were you bound or are bound not to talk about that?
	In all honesty, I don't know.
	That incident or instance like that I would imagine would fall into some sort of a gray area.
	It happened.
	It occurred.
	It had some impact.
	Um, whether or not it was actually classified, I have no idea.
	Well, let's try this attack.
	Do you think that other submarines in our service in the Navy learned exactly what went on on the Ulysses S. Grant?
	I have no doubt that there was some, you know, that's a very common thing in the military.
	If there's an accident or Did you hear of any incidents similar to what occurred on the grant?
	procedure or whatever, any kind of an incident really, it's written up and widely reported
	so that everyone can learn from others' mistakes.
	So I have no doubt that that was reported widely, at least within the submarine community,
	for just that reason.
	Did you hear of any incidents similar to what occurred on the grant?
	Never.
	Never?
	Nope.
	In some ways, I suppose all that it really proves is that the system works.
	Gentlemen who are selected to be submarine commanders are a very special and unique type of human being.
	And I would assume that that's probably true for Russian submarine commanders as well.
	Basically, these are individuals who can handle those kinds of stresses and those kinds of situations and deal with them in an effective and cool-headed Logical kind of way.
	Having said that, obviously, even in your case as an officer, you would have been, they would have had a great big file on you and I'm sure lots of psychological profiling is done and that sort of thing on anybody who serves on a nuclear submarine.
	Correct?
	Correct.
	I would imagine they even look at your family situation.
	Certainly.
	That sort of thing.
	Now, you psychologically and philosophically more or less decided that you didn't believe in the mission.
	Correct.
	How did they miss that fact?
	Well, I think when I entered and went through the psychological evaluation, I did believe in the mission in a way.
	I think the problem with the military, especially nuclear war in the military, is that it's kind of an abstract idea.
	You train for it.
	You talk about it.
	You discuss it.
	But the consequences of that action are almost never discussed in military circles.
	In other words, when you're going through training and you're discussing what would be involved in launching nuclear weapons, no one sits there and says, By the way, do you realize that if you take this action that millions of people you don't even know will die?
	Nobody says that, because basically no one believes it will ever happen.
	So it's kind of a game, I guess, almost.
	I hate to phrase it that way, but I don't really know how else to put it.
	It was never real to me.
	It was always an abstract ideal.
	I entered the service because...
	You know, I wanted the training, I wanted the job skills, I wanted whatever.
	And that was part of the deal.
	But for those chance, crazy hours on the grant, it got real.
	It became very real.
	And the thing that I mentioned about the Tomahawk missiles on the Dallas that was also very frightening to me was that at the time when I left the service, when I entered the service, there was one prevailing theoretical, tactitional type Check a train of thought, it was called MAD or Mutually Assured Destruction.
	You bet.
	You launch your weapons and I'll launch all of mine and we'll all die.
	Right.
	And the theory there is that that deters anybody from launching any weapons.
	But when I left the service there was this beginning to develop a theory, a tactical theory, that perhaps a very few, a very small number of nuclear weapons could be released Well, another good example might be Korea.
	Exactly.
	situation like the one in libya or or others uh... and that you could get away with that in other words
	that if you watched only one nuclear weapon
	maybe the russians didn't want to fight bad enough to launch all of theirs
	well another good example might be korea exactly if the koreans decided they wanted to come rushing
	across the dmz and that's a distinct possibility
	i would think that uh...
	with forty or fifty thousand u.s. troops in south korea uh... there would be some quick thought about the use of
	limited use of nuclear weapons of course with uh...
	some concern about uh... china becoming involved but again with the same theory that uh... china would not
	want to enter the mad scenario so they'd stay out
	Correct.
	And, you know, just me as an individual, that train of thought, to me, seemed to border on madness.
	I don't know any other way to put it.
	I firmly believe that if you launched even one, that the possibility became very distinct that they'd all go up and that we would all be in a lot of trouble.
	So, I left.
	When my tour of duty was over, I resigned.
	On that day, going back now, before your resignation, but going back to that day on the grant, if it had gone the other way, and somehow the captain himself had become convinced, and the preparations became underway to launch nuclear weapons, could you have done it?
	Well, as a communications officer, I was not I would imagine I would have had a great deal of difficulty remaining silent at the time.
	In other words, not speaking out very vocally.
	I basically thought that the navigator was a very incompetent officer.
	It was very difficult for me not to just flat out say that, which as you would imagine is not something that would be good for your career.
	I think I would have had difficulty participating in something like that and I think a lot of other people would have too.
	I think it became very real for a lot of people that day.
	How did it affect others?
	Were there any others affected in the way that you were, that sudden driven home realization
	that you would have killed millions?
	Oh, certainly.
	And there was talk of that while we were returning to Scotland.
	There was talk of that.
	And in a very kind of hush-hush kind of way, no one wanted to openly stand up and say that
	because it's a tad amount to, you know, you would probably be released from submarine
	service, because essentially you'd be viewed as somebody who wasn't willing to do the mission
	that you were there to do to begin with.
	So while there was talk of it, it was not very, you know, open talk.
	Well, at that moment, during those hours, For those who believed it, the assumption would have had to have been their mothers, their fathers, their wives, their daughters and sons were all dead.
	Exactly.
	I think maybe the entire reason why I even wanted to talk to you about this was because I think people have this notion now that because the Cold War is over that Yeah, they're safe.
	And the chances of nuclear weapons ever being used by any country are slim.
	And I think, in fact, quite the opposite is true.
	I think that you mentioned Korea, and I think that's a very real possibility that you would have some sort of limited use of nuclear weapons there that could escalate.
	While I think Russia probably has a good handle on their nuclear assets, I think some of the other republics Do not have a good handle on their nuclear assets.
	I think there's every possibility that there are nuclear assets that are missing.
	There's a story out now, very public, that 100 suitcase size nuclear devices are missing.
	And very possibly that's true.
	You know, unfortunately, you have a situation in some of the former Soviet republics where you have submarine crews, for instance, who haven't been paid in eight months, you know, and yet they're still out on a submarine.
	And that submarine, conceivably anyway, has nuclear weapons.
	Desperate times make desperate men and that sometimes translates into desperate action.
	You might be tempted to sell one of those or to lease one of those.
	That's a very frightening possibility.
	Unfortunately, it's a real possibility and people should be aware of it.
	The government doesn't always tell us what's going on.
	Being out of contact for six hours is a very, very long time.
	What went through your mind during that period of time?
	Well, I guess the first three or four hours I primarily was concerned with the equipment and what was going on in my own little part of the world.
	I felt a tremendous need To restore communications because basically I felt like I was letting the captain down and that I was hampering his decision making and basically just not doing my job and I was not comfortable with that.
	After a period of about three or four hours, it became clear that the discussions that were taking place outside of the radio room were becoming pretty heated and that it was maybe a bigger deal than I thought it was.
	I want to tell you, I never believed for a second That the Russians have launched anything.
	I believe that it was purely and simply a mechanical, technical failure, an error of some kind, and that absolutely nothing was wrong.
	Even with your own equipment telling you the antenna was okay?
	Never believed it.
	And I guess maybe that's because of, you know, if you grow up around radios, since you're seven years old, I've seen them work very well, and I've seen them break, and I've seen propagation do all kinds of crazy, weird things.
	You know, I just, I didn't believe it.
	Not even for a second.
	I never really even considered the possibility that the unthinkable had happened, but I did consider the possibility that not everybody felt that way.
	When you resigned from the Navy, what did you say to them?
	Nothing.
	Basically, I had decided to pursue opportunities in the civilian world and that was that.
	I didn't really feel the need to There was nothing to be accomplished.
	That's not a system you could change very easily, or that one man could change at all.
	And there was no point to it.
	Do you think the American people, and you must, have a right to know that we got that close?
	I think they do.
	I think that military leaders And political people, you know, must be held accountable to their citizens.
	I think that, you know, to a certain extent that the public has a right to know, you know, if theories of war are being developed that maybe don't make a lot of sense, like the kind of limited nuclear engagements that we were talking about.
	You know, unfortunately, I'm not a person who believes in conspiracies or things like that.
	I hate to hear people talk about the media having an agenda or politicians having an agenda, Basically, I don't think things like that are possible.
	I don't think you can get hundreds of people to keep anything secret.
	The media and political figures are basically made up of individual human beings who are just trying to live their lives every day like you and I are.
	I think the danger of that is that sometimes we don't hold those people as accountable as we should and we think things can never happen.
	The one constant throughout all of history is human nature.
	When all the Senators got together in Rome and decided they would kill Caesar, that was politics.
	That was men who wanted to be powerful acting together.
	And basically nothing has changed since then.
	Politics is still politics and men still want to be powerful and men will still do desperate things to become powerful.
	People shouldn't forget that.
	That's kind of what I'm trying to get across.
	Unfortunately, there are people in the military who were trying to advance their own career by expressing these kind of outrageous theories of war because it got them noticed, it got them attention, and it helped advance their career.
	But if that kind of thinking grows and becomes the norm, then all of a sudden, if there ever is an invasion in Korea, perhaps you have a commander on the ground who Well, let us discuss the philosophical implications of that for a moment.
	I can almost understand the limited use of a nuclear weapon in that case.
	For example, if you had a half a million North Koreans crossing the border, probably slaughtering 40 or 50 thousand Americans and untold numbers of South Koreans, it wouldn't be an easy choice.
	In other words, do you sacrifice those 40,000 to 50,000 Americans' lives, or do you use a weapon that will end a conflict right there and then, and save their lives?
	Those are kind of advanced military, tactical-type discussions, and obviously philosophical discussions.
	I think every individual has to figure out where they stand.
	You know, obviously where I stood was that I think that's ludicrous.
	I think that using one, unfortunately, there's another axiom, kind of like MAD, that basically says, use them or lose them.
	And you hear that a lot in the military.
	In other words, if somebody launches a nuclear weapon, and I don't use mine, the next nuclear weapon launched may be launched at my launch site, or at my submarine, or at my whatever.
	Of course.
	Use them or lose them.
	That kind of thinking, on either side, could mean the end of everything.
	Do you think anything in that realm has changed, or is that still the working psychology today?
	Well, I think, fortunately, much like the situation that happened on the individual submarine, I think cooler and level heads have probably prevailed.
	I think there's a lot less of that kind of thinking in the military now.
	Um, you know, and I think that's a good thing.
	And I think, you know, basically because the Cold War essentially ended, that it ended a lot of the tension that caused all that.
	All right.
	I know that you've got something to say about the Mirror Space Station.
	And when we get back after the bottom of the hour, I want to do that, and then I want to open the line.
	So stay right there.
	My guest is Officer X.
	And you should about now be feeling sort of a little chill down the back of your spine.
	I'm Art Bell, and this is Coast to Coast AM.
	You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time, on Premier Radio Networks.
	Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from October 22, 1997.
	The Coast to Coast AM concert, October 22, 1997.
	F Crank Message
	Ji Cre
	File Bill
	Safe Ets
	JI Sh
	Is Is
	There is another officer that has faxed me named Andy.
	Andy, the number you supplied me, I tried to call you in Seattle, and the number you supplied me has been changed.
	If you want to supply me with a good number, Andy, I'll try to get hold of you.
	I realize you can't get through.
	1997 there is another officer that has faxed me named Andy Andy the number you supplied me I tried to call you
	In Seattle and the number you supplied me has been changed if you want to supply me with a good number Andy
	I'll try to get hold of you. I realize you can't get through
	Andy has comments We will get back to officer X in a moment
	Thanks for watching!
	Back now to Officer X. Officer X, uh, here's one fact.
	It says, on my ship, we were dead serious about the release of special weapons.
	The officers on the Grant should have been all fired.
	There will be no release without a real E.A.M.
	Does that make sense to you?
	Yes, it makes total sense.
	I would have to agree with that fact.
	Art, I have to interrupt here for a moment.
	I have to apologize.
	I believe I mentioned to you when we started the conversation that I would be able to continue until about 2 a.m.
	and that I had a project that required me to be at work fairly early in the morning.
	While we were away at the break, I had a call waiting, a call that came through, and there is a situation at work that's going to require my attention.
	I'm going to have to leave and go there now, and I apologize for that.
	I will attempt to listen to the show on the way to work and see if I can glean anything from your other response.
	I apologize if that leaves you in a bit of a lurch for programming.
	No, that's all right.
	I fully understand.
	These things occur.
	Uh, the only, if I can just take one minute and ask you about the mirror station.
	Uh, you believe there is a second, uh, mirror?
	Well, I think at this time, Art, I probably would rather just not comment.
	Alright, very good.
	I appreciate your being on the air.
	I'm sure that on the way to work you're going to hear some response to what you have said.
	Great, thank you.
	Alright, take care.
	Uh, that is Officer X. And...
	I guess we could imagine, particularly based on his last comment, we could imagine, or I guess I could imagine, that he has been contacted.
	Now I have no way of knowing that is true.
	But if I were forced to hazard a guess, I would guess that he has been contacted.
	Just was contacted.
	And told to shut his mouth.
	So I guess we should consider ourselves fortunate to have heard what we heard.
	Because indeed, in his original email to me, I quote, also are you aware there is a second Russian Mir space station in orbit?
	The station was in orbit as early as 1985 and its whereabouts in space carefully tracked by the US government as it was dedicated to strictly military purposes.
	Huh.
	So, I'm just guessing now, and I'm just speculating now, and it may well be the man was simply called away to work early.
	But I don't think so.
	And I also think that what you just heard over the last hour and forty minutes was absolutely real.
	In fact, the first hour of programming this evening was about as riveting as I've ever heard radio programming be.
	And I believed every word of it.
	And I'm going to contemplate what I'm going to do with that hour.
	Anyway, I would like your assessment of what you just heard.
	What do you think happened there just now?
	Let us go to open lines.
	Anything you would like to talk about is fair game.
	Again, I would like to warn my affiliates and, for that matter, my audience about a show coming up tomorrow night.
	Tomorrow night, I got a very, very serious fax earlier today and I followed up by making a phone call and I'm telling you, what you're going to hear tomorrow night, what we're going to hear, is going to shock you, upset you, surprise you, maybe disgust you, and I'm still contemplating what I heard from this young lady today.
	In fact, I'll tell you what I heard.
	She writes, I'm 32 years old.
	My coven name is Harlot.
	I'm a witch of the most unholy kind.
	I am by no means a goddess.
	I use no crystal balls, tricks, nor treats.
	I'm from a long line of witches and warlocks.
	She gives a number.
	The coven of the unholy.
	Hail Satan!
	Now, let me say, Art, I am a good witch by no means.
	Even if I do something that someone would consider good, I do with evil in my heart.
	Hail Satan!
	When I called her, she said to me, I understand you've been on vacation and you were just at the place where Christ was born and then crucified.
	She said, I would love to visit that location myself so I could desecrate it.
	I went, Oof!
	Oof!
	And she was very serious.
	I'm issuing fair warning right now.
	We'll see what this is all about.
	I'm not afraid to explore it.
	At least not too afraid.
	Maybe a little afraid.
	But if you have a station that is in the Bible Belt and your listeners would be horrendously offended, then make note now and run some alternative programming.
	So I guess she is, um, I guess she is a devil worshipper.
	I asked her about Wicca, and she had some pretty nasty things to say about Wicca.
	And I might add that I've also scheduled a couple of Wicca guests, you know, as we approach Halloween.
	But this one's, this one tomorrow night, this is something else indeed.
	One more note before we go to the phones.
	That is that I'm going to be doing the only book signing I will ever do for this book, The Quickening, on the New York Times bestseller list.
	I'm going to do one, one, one book signing.
	And it is in a really neat place just north of San Diego, where, by the way, we just got a call from KOGO.
	With a big congratulations for the latest survey numbers that just came rolling in.
	Where we are once again, way out, far and away, number one in San Diego.
	So the book signing is actually going to be just to the north in Encinitas, California.
	It's gonna be at Barnes & Noble, which is located at 1040 North El Camino Real.
	Now, I will be there at 10 o'clock sharp.
	My advice to you is to get there early.
	As early as possible.
	And I will sign my little heart away.
	At the very least, if you can imagine this, I'm going to sign books from 10 o'clock in the morning till at least 8 o'clock at night, which is a good solid 10 hours of signing books.
	Pity my poor hand.
	But I am going to do that, and I will simply do as many as I'm humanly able to do personally to you.
	So, it is the one time I'm going to do this.
	I'm never going to do it again.
	It's a one-shot deal.
	Barnes & Noble, this Saturday.
	Today's already... Well, it's still Wednesday in this time zone, but it'll be Saturday at 10 a.m.
	In Encinitas, so if there's any way you can pencil it in on your calendar, I would love to see you there.
	Alright, we've got lots of reason now to go to the phone lines.
	Man, what an interview.
	And I'm gonna have to sit back and see what I think about what we just heard for a while.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air, good morning.
	I didn't push the button.
	There.
	Now, West of the Rockies, you're on the air now, I think.
	Hi.
	Hi, Art.
	How's it going?
	Oh, well, you're listening.
	All right.
	Hey, uh... Where are you, sir?
	Oh, I'm in, uh... Excuse me, I'm in San Rosa.
	Okay.
	Listen, I'm KSRO.
	Yes, sir.
	Hey, uh, about, uh, Ken last night, I was kind of, uh... I don't know, I was kind of surprised that she was, uh, upset that, uh, she felt that, uh...
	She was upset at you because you were mad at her or something.
	I thought that was kind of weird.
	Oh, you mean when 10 called during the end of the show?
	Right.
	Um, she was upset with me because she thought that I thought that she was a fanatic fan.
	Yeah, I thought that was kind of strange.
	Well, she's kind of strange.
	I mean, she's, she's a, she has a good heart.
	Yeah, I know.
	I know.
	But she was, you know, I had a little, a lot more respect for her up until, She kind of was upset because of something you did.
	I didn't really understand it.
	But anyway, hey, you know, I wanted to ask you one time.
	I know you're not going to take any more Spanish words on the phone because sometimes one time someone pulled a trick on you.
	Yes, they did.
	I want to ask you because I remember that was like two months ago.
	Some guy called about a story from Texas.
	Is that the one you're talking about?
	Yep.
	Yeah, I wanted to call you back on that one.
	I was going to tell you about it, but I guess someone clued you in.
	Oh, absolutely.
	And so, you know, burn once, twice shy, and I'm not going to do it again.
	That's all.
	It was pretty funny.
	I was listening on the radio, and I couldn't believe you were... Well, I don't speak Spanish.
	Yeah, I know, I know, I know.
	You know, I'm a trusting soul, but once I'm burned, that's it.
	Yeah, that was a rotten trick the guy did, but... Yes, it was.
	Yeah, because if you were told, you didn't know.
	You didn't have a clue.
	It was, however, funny.
	Yeah, it was.
	It was funny to me.
	Anyway, I was able to laugh about two days later.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I wanted to call you so bad.
	I tried and tried and tried.
	I couldn't get in, but I guess somebody clued you in.
	Oh yes.
	Hundreds of people clued me in.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	All right, all right.
	Great show.
	Take care.
	Bye bye.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Good morning.
	Good morning.
	Hi.
	Thanks, John.
	Just wanted to call up and say hi to you.
	Yes, sir.
	I listen to your show a lot.
	Well, thank you.
	And I like that guy about the submarine.
	That's pretty scary.
	Did you believe him?
	Probably, yeah.
	I was in the military myself.
	Yeah, I believed him, too.
	I was in crypto.
	We did some bizarre things.
	If you had to guess, would you say he probably got a call a few moments ago telling him enough?
	I would say they told him to get his butt back there before he was court-martialed.
	Well, he's not active duty.
	Well, of course you can.
	There are conditions under which you can be pulled back in court martial.
	I'm very well aware of it.
	So that's possible.
	That was a strange hour.
	Yeah, it was.
	Anything else?
	Not really.
	I just want to say I like the show.
	I think it's just swell.
	All right.
	I appreciate the call.
	Thank you.
	The Air Force says two airmen One, a visiting pilot from Britain's Royal Air Force were killed when a T-38 training jet crashed after apparently colliding in midair with an F-16 over Southern California's Edwards Air Force Base.
	Yet another military accident.
	Boy, there have been an awful lot of military accidents going on lately.
	I wonder what's going on.
	First time caller line, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Hi.
	Uh, first I wanted to answer a question for you about the, uh, you had asked me in the show about, uh, how the Soviet subs had gotten quieter.
	Yes.
	Uh, what happened was, I think it was Mitsubishi?
	Yep.
	Sold them the plans for the machine that makes our screws.
	Right.
	So that's, that's how that happened.
	Yeah, I recall.
	I recall the story.
	And then I, I believe that, uh, Soviet subs from that point Became roughly as quiet as ours, and our lead in detection virtually evaporated.
	Yeah, they were a lot quieter, but their engine rooms were still a lot noisier.
	So that's how we basically heard them was the tonal from their engine room.
	And that guy there, he's crazy for talking like that.
	You know, we found a piece of paper that said we forgot everything when we got out.
	For him to, I mean, give us both You know, they could track him, especially officers.
	They're on a totally different path from enlisted people.
	I understand.
	And I was enlisted on subs, and I, you know, probably didn't, you know, do as much as he did in terms of crypto, but... Well, I think one of two things occurred, and this is just me speculating.
	Either, over the period of the hour and 40 minutes we did the interview, either A, he became scared on his own, or B, He got a call, as he mentioned during the break, but it wasn't from work.
	Oh, I doubt that.
	I'm sure they contacted him.
	Yeah.
	Because when you're an officer, I'm pretty sure you don't... You can be called back at any time.
	Like, when a list of guys finishes his core duty, he's out.
	But an officer, you know, their ID cards say indefinite for the expiration date.
	Mm-hmm.
	So, uh, yeah, he's still susceptible to UCMJ, just like, uh, as if he was an active-duty personnel.
	On the other hand, uh, what he described was pretty damn scary.
	Uh, if it occurred, and I frankly believe every word that he said.
	Yeah, he sounded pretty, uh, pretty convincing.
	It's only like maybe a couple discrepancies that I noticed when I was 10 years in the submarine force.
	What did you notice that didn't sound right?
	Oh, we never called submarines ships.
	They're called boats.
	It was always like a nitpick thing.
	You know, when you were doing your submarine qualifications?
	Uh-huh.
	If you ever called it a ship, it was a boat.
	That was the first one, and boomers don't carry Mark 48s.
	Only fast tack boats carry Mark 48s.
	Well, I think that he was referring to the Dallas with the Mark 48s.
	Well, that's right.
	He said he was at a Dallas.
	Yeah.
	Okay, well, that makes sense then.
	Well, yeah, that was the only thing I saw that was wrong.
	I just, uh, you know, and the things about the floating wires, hell yeah, we used to cut those things all the time, especially if you were to broach every once in a while, which means your sail kind of sticks out of the water a little bit when you're in rough seas.
	Right.
	And hell yeah, we used to cut that thing all the time.
	That's why we carried like two or three on board.
	But yeah, I can't believe that he actually said all that stuff.
	Huh.
	I appreciate your comments.
	I don't know what to say.
	I'm still contemplating the seriousness of what he said to us.
	Yeah, that's pretty terrible.
	That's about as close as I've ever heard.
	Things get around in the sub-community.
	You can't really keep something like that a secret for too long.
	You move from place to place so much.
	You get to a school.
	You meet new friends.
	You get comfortable with them.
	You start talking.
	Little things pop up.
	They're in a beer or something like that.
	I just shocked that he actually said something like that over the air to 15 million some odd people.
	Were you an officer?
	No, I was a nuke.
	I was back after doing a reactor plant.
	I was enlisted.
	Why would you think he told us?
	What do you think his motivation was?
	I would say he probably came to a point where the more he thought about it, the more it bugged him.
	And he wanted to get the word out to people, let them know how close we come.
	I mean, once you launch, it's...
	You can't stop it.
	It's going to go no matter what you do.
	I don't know.
	I can't see it.
	I've only been out for two years now and I would never... Everyone has run-ins and subs.
	You do weird things and there's always a chance for something to go wrong.
	I would never ever talk about it on the air.
	I don't know what would motivate them to do that.
	Um, maybe he's hoping there'll be some kind of change.
	I'm not really sure what kind of change can change the hearts and the minds of individuals faced in a crisis situation the way he was at that point.
	So I'm sitting here trying to think, you know, his motivation might have been to produce some sort of change in procedure, or the thinking of the military, he complained about that, that a limited nuclear war might be possible or is becoming more possible now.
	Yeah, but he was a lieutenant junior grade in the service.
	You know, coming on the air and saying all this, that's not going to change a thing.
	They're pretty, you know, military set in its ways.
	You know, typically a traditional institution.
	And, you know, they're going to listen to the general before they listen to Lieutenant J.G.
	Alright, I appreciate your call.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Take care.
	Strange and stranger, huh?
	Anyway, I'm sure we'll get your take on this.
	That was one wild hour-and-forty-minute program, wasn't it?
	From the high desert, I'm Art Bell, and this, of course, is Coast to Coast AM.
	You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
	featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from October 22, 1997.
	This is a test.
	This is a test.
	¶¶ ¶¶ And it's alright, and it's coming on We got to get
	right back to where we started from ¶¶ ¶¶ Love is good, love will be strong We got to get right
	back to where we started from ¶¶ ¶¶
	¶¶ Remember the day, sure remember the day When you first came my way ¶¶
	¶¶ I said no one could take your place ¶¶ You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time.
	Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from October 22nd, 1997.
	Wow, what a couple of hours, huh?
	We just got finished talking with a man who I call Officer X, who was a communications officer on board the USS, or the Ulysses S. Grant, a submarine, and the Dallas, a Los Angeles-class submarine.
	And he spent about an hour and forty minutes detailing one of the scariest damn things I've ever heard.
	A period of time when they were out of communication due to a non-comedic series of errors that resulted in the, uh... See, how can I put this?
	The disagreement among many of the ship's officers about whether or not to release nuclear devices.
	I think it was absolutely real, and I'll leave it at that.
	If you didn't catch that first hour, and you catch the first hour as the last hour of the show, then you still have an opportunity to hear it.
	I'm sort of flirting with the idea of repeating that hour sometime in the next couple of hours, because it was so incredibly, incredibly, incredibly dramatic.
	But it will repeat as a matter of course.
	You know what, though?
	I could repeat that hour, say, in about an hour, and then change the course of the repeat show toward the end.
	I might do that.
	Just in case there's an audience out there that didn't hear that.
	that that was one of the damnedest hours i've ever run on talk radio
	anyway uh... we're going to open lines uh... here in a moment
	Thank you.
	By the way, I am booking an interesting guest next week sometime.
	There was an Associated Press story titled, Astronauts as Aliens Have Landed.
	And I'm going to read it to you now, once again, from Phoenix, Arizona Associated Press.
	Former astronaut Edgar Mitchell is among those who believe aliens have crash-landed on Earth.
	Mitchell, who in 1971 became the sixth man to walk on the moon, wants congressional hearings into what he calls a secret U.S.
	government that knows all about it.
	He believes the military and other planes use technology derived from alien spacecraft that have been captured and dissected.
	Quote, when I went to the moon 26 years ago, it was conventional wisdom, religiously and philosophically, that we were still the biological center of the universe.
	Mitchell told a spiritual gathering called the Prophets Conference on Saturday Continuing the quote, few if any thinking knowledgeable people accept that theory anymore.
	Well, as I told you what I would do, I followed up and I called Edgar Mitchell, Dr. Mitchell, and he said, give me a call Tuesday and I'd be glad to appear on the program sometime next week.
	So, we'll probably arrange that and ask him about this story.
	When he heard about the story, he chuckled a little bit the moment I mentioned the Associated Press.
	So we'll see what there is to it, but we'll have Dr. Mitchell on the air next week, I think.
	Officer X's statement, quote, nobody believes it will ever happen, end quote, referring, of course, to nuclear exchanges or war, would make a great title for a book about nuclear topics.
	Your guest's articulate and rational thought process ...is chillingly similar to Dr. Michio Kaku's view of the slippery slope upon which nuclear capability rests.
	I was wondering what Mr. X's educational background is, and if he was exposed to any formal ethics training.
	That's from Tom in Tucson.
	Tom, because of the abrupt manner which he terminated the interview, we cannot ask that.
	But again, because of the abrupt way in which the interview was terminated, I think that I lean toward believing that somebody made contact with him.
	And I wonder what you believe.
	One other item I'll throw in, then we'll go back to the phone lines.
	President Clinton proposed a plan today.
	To avert the, quote, unacceptable risk, end quote, of global warming.
	But immediately drew heat from many sides.
	His proposal, Clinton's, for a treaty to fight global warming, would require industrial countries
	to limit emissions of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2008 to 2012.
	It would also require reducing emissions after that, but some environmentalists said
	the proposal, which falls far short of the goals sought by other major industrial countries,
	was insufficient to win international approval or to prevent environmental disaster while
	business lobbyists said it could wreck the U.S.
	economy.
	And I would like to talk with you about this a little bit.
	I think the argument about global warming is a continuing valid disagreement.
	In other words, whether it's real or not.
	I think what the two sides, and I mentioned this last night, the two sides do not disagree about one thing, and that is our climate is changing.
	There's no question about it, our climate is changing, and it seems like advocates on both sides of the global warming issue agree on that one fact.
	They simply disagree about why it is changing.
	Now, in 40 to 45 years of use at present levels, we are going to run out of oil.
	And a good friend of mine the other day said it would make an awfully good topic to ask your audience, since we're not developing alternative methods at any great rate at the moment, what's going to happen when we run out of oil?
	That's a really good question.
	What is going to happen when United Airlines and Air France and British Airways and Southwest And TWA, when they don't fly anymore, when ships don't have fuel to cross our oceans with cargo, when cars don't have gasoline to move, what will happen?
	Will we worldwide regress to an earlier period?
	So it seems to me one of two things must occur in the next, oh I don't know, four decades.
	Either we've got to develop clean energy sources or we're going to undergo a massive change in our standard of living.
	What do you think would happen?
	I mean really, particularly in our society where we are particularly dependent on power and transportation, which is provided by the use of fossil fuels.
	So if they suddenly dry up, would we make it?
	Do you think?
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Good evening, Art.
	This is Bill in Dubuque, Iowa.
	Hi, Bill.
	How are you this evening?
	I'm alright.
	That's good.
	Today in the President's speech about global warming, the President mentioned that because of the efforts of reducing the levels of CFCs in our atmosphere, our ozone layer has begun to thicken.
	Well, that's not the news I've got.
	That's not what I heard either.
	In fact, let me read you what I've got, alright?
	Sure.
	This is a brand new story from Reuters.
	Quote, the ozone hole over Antarctica is as severe as ever this year.
	New Zealand's Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research said Friday.
	Institute scientists at Scott Base on the frozen continent have reported readings of the ozone layer's thickness At close to record lows, and satellite data from NASA show the ozone hole covering 9.65 million square miles.
	The extent and severity of the 1997 ozone hole is about the same as in each of the past five years, about 60% less ozone than prior to 1980.
	Not looking good, Art.
	There you are.
	Anyway, you said that he... Now, I didn't specifically hear the President, so... Yeah, well, he was trying to compare what we did with CFCs while we tried to eliminate them, and then what we should do with the greenhouse gases, basically.
	But, from what I heard, that... Well, let me put the question straight out to you and maybe the rest of the audience at the same time.
	Sure.
	Do you think, do you believe, that man's presence on Earth Whether it's ozone or global warming or whatever it is, do you believe that our presence is what's causing the change in our climate?
	I would say it's added to it.
	I'll say that.
	So maybe not the primary cause, but An extenuating factor, at least.
	It's quickening.
	Have a good evening, Art.
	Thank you very much.
	Just can't stay away from that, huh?
	God, it was weird about that book.
	I... You know, I really, really, really do not believe in channeling.
	You know that.
	I don't believe in channeling.
	I don't dismiss channeling altogether.
	I'll tell you why I'm saying this.
	I don't dismiss it altogether.
	I simply believe that there is a very great deal of room for fraud, you know, that a lot of people claim to be channelers.
	Oh, let me go into a trance.
	Here I am, the great Rosinsky from the Roman era, and I'm going to tell you, you know, that kind of thing.
	I think there's a lot of room for fraud, and so I generally tend to dismiss channelers.
	And my very own sister, who lives in Berkeley, is a channeler.
	So I dismiss it.
	I don't embrace generally information that comes from so-called channeled sources.
	That doesn't mean there may not be valid channelers, it just means there's so much bunk out there that you can't separate the wheat from the chaff.
	Now, having said that, this book that I wrote, The Quickening, which unfortunately is unfolding now as absolutely true, What was written is unfolding before my eyes in a way that damn near scares the you-know-what out of me.
	And when I wrote the book, it, uh, it wasn't great labor.
	It poured out of me.
	It just came out.
	Now, it may well be that I had simply mentally prepared over the years having talked about this subject so much that it just gushed out.
	But there have been a few quiet moments where even I have wondered if the information came totally from me.
	So now you see my comments about channeling.
	I don't want to believe that this information came sourced from anywhere but my own little brain.
	But it came out too easily, too quickly, and so I have a few little reservations about its source.
	Strange, huh?
	Anyway, that is the book.
	It is called The Quickening.
	It is rising rapidly on the bestseller lists, right now on the Business New York Times bestseller list number four.
	It's number four.
	And I'm going to do one, repeat, one and only one ever book signing for The Quickening.
	It's going to be in Southern California at, or in, at Barnes and Noble, At 1040 North El Camino Real in Encinitas.
	I'll be there at 10 o'clock Saturday morning.
	This coming Saturday morning.
	And if there is any way you can make... I recommend everybody come early.
	If there's any way you can make it, I will sit there and I will sign books for as long as humanly possible.
	So that's this coming Saturday.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hi.
	This is Leslie in Bloomington, Illinois.
	Welcome.
	It's late here.
	Yes.
	I'm a native-born Californian, displaced.
	Displaced, huh?
	Yeah.
	They didn't throw you out, did they?
	No.
	I'll go back when all the non-natives leave.
	I see.
	Anyway... So you're never returning, huh?
	Probably not.
	I wish I could, but it's gotten too crazy for me.
	I wonder how anyone could not believe Captain X. Yeah.
	It's quite obvious to me.
	I'm one of the fortunate people who was nuked in the 1950s.
	Well, my only hope is that Officer X, we'll call him, is not now in big trouble.
	What did I call him?
	Captain.
	Oh, well.
	Okay.
	I hope he isn't either.
	But I trust our government All across the board, about as much as I would trust an elephant in a china shop.
	Especially since I was nuked.
	I have an enlarged thyroid now, thank you.
	It is insane.
	What we are doing on this planet is totally insane.
	I would urge everyone to read Jerry Mander's book, In the Absence of the Sacred.
	I will read your book, The Quickening, and if we don't stop soon, we won't have a world to worry about.
	Our grandchildren will not have a world to worry about.
	I really believe that as well, or at least not a world that anybody would recognize.
	No, and a nuclear accident is inevitable, I think.
	We cannot trust computers to always do what is correct.
	We cannot trust human beings to always do what is correct.
	And I think that we're headed for a total disaster if people don't demand that we dismantle all nuclear, stop... Well, recall that even Dr. Michio Kaku, one of the nation's premier physicists, scientists, Suggests that though we are on the threshold of becoming a type 1 civilization, we're presently a type 0, the odds of our attaining type 1 civilization status, in other words, getting past the possibility of blowing ourselves up, the chances of that are very, very slim.
	He's hopeful, but remember, he said the chances are very, very slim.
	I hope we make it But I'm not sure.
	You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time, on Premier Radio Networks.
	Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from October 22nd, 1997.
	Without your love, oh baby Don't leave me this way, no I can't exist, I'll surely miss Your tender kiss Don't leave me this way Baby!
	Baby, my heart is full of love and it's not for you Now cool down and do what you gotta do
	You started this fire down in my soul Now can't you see it's burning out of control?
	Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh Ooh, you can dance, you can jive
	Having the time of your life Ooh, see that girl, watch that scene
	Diggin' stars in green Friday night and the lights are low
	Looking out for a place to go.
	Where they play the right music.
	Getting in the swing.
	You'll come to want the king.
	Anybody could be that guy.
	We here at Radio Networks present Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
	Tonight's program originally aired October 22, 1997.
	Once again, here I am on the radio.
	I'll tell you what I'm going to do, and I don't do this kind of thing very frequently.
	The first hour of the program was so dramatic, so important, and so real, that I think at 2 a.m.
	Pacific Time, or in a little less than An hour and a half.
	As the last hour of the normal show, I'm going to start with the first hour.
	Because I want the latter audience to be able to hear what occurred in that first hour.
	And I'm telling you, run a tape.
	Prepare yourself to hear something that's going to scare the living tissue out of you.
	So we'll do that.
	If you've missed it, then you haven't missed it because I'm going to rearrange the replay schedule.
	So we just begin the replay an hour earlier.
	Alright, back to the phones here in a moment.
	The quickening is real.
	Amen.
	About that, I have absolutely no doubt the quickening is real.
	By the way, you can pick that book up in just about any bookstore nationwide now.
	What's written in there is real.
	In fact, it's happening now.
	Now, the president had a talk with us about the climate plan, if you want to call it that, the climate plan.
	That's what Reuters here is calling it.
	And I want to ask you about it.
	What's your feeling?
	If we proceed in a way that will turn this around, we, without question, are going to damage our economy.
	We are going to change our lifestyles.
	We're going to change a lot of very basic things about the way we live.
	On the other hand, if we don't change, It may well be that Mother Nature will change our lifestyle for us.
	It's a hard problem.
	What's your gut feeling?
	Begin making changes now?
	Ignore it?
	Say man couldn't do anything that would mess with Mother Nature or Earth?
	Or change the climate?
	What a joke to imagine that we could We could do something that would change the climate.
	What a joke!
	That's what a lot of people say.
	You think it's a joke?
	Or do you think we should begin making changes?
	Or do you believe that if we don't, changes will be made for us?
	How do you feel about it?
	First time caller line, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hi, this is Patrick from San Diego.
	Hello, Patrick.
	How are you this evening?
	Fine.
	If you're in San Diego, I hope you'll come up to Escondido on Saturday.
	I'd like to try.
	I'm moving out to the Arizona area.
	That's tempting.
	I'd like to try.
	I hope to see you.
	I was curious if you said at one point in the show, I guess with Mark Furman, that you I've lived in the Monterey area.
	Yes?
	And I was curious if you were familiar with the late Mae Brussels?
	Well, no.
	Actually, no.
	Okay, she had a show.
	I was just... I guess the reason I was calling was I'd like to see if you would be interested in having some guests on that are not aware that I'm calling you, who have a different perspective, I'd say, on the UFO phenomenon.
	Yes, the answer to that is clearly yes.
	One gentleman is Martin Cannon who wrote a monograph entitled The Controllers, An Alternative Hypothesis to Alien Abductions.
	What is the alternative hypothesis?
	If I understand it correctly, it's essentially that he does believe in the abductions, however
	he feels that rather than being extraterrestrials or extra-dimensional beings as the one caller
	I guess from the pay phone when you're showing off the air would suggest he feels that it's
	more likely an extension of the military and the CIA's MKUltra experimentations and mind
	control.
	Mind control.
	And I think one of...
	He quotes from... Oh, look, let me stop you right here.
	Let me stop you right here.
	I'm absolutely... I just wanted to say one thing.
	No, I'm absolutely open to it.
	Yeah, the other thing was, I guess, another reason why he feels that way is, I guess, people like William Cooper, who's fairly prominent in the UFO lecture circuit, he feels that a lot of these people have military intelligence backgrounds.
	And that's a red flag, I guess, for him.
	I think you might have said at the beginning of the evening that the guest that you had on was going to speak about, at one point, Star Wars technology, how he's skeptical about that.
	Yes.
	Obviously, I shouldn't say obviously, but in my opinion, somebody got to him.
	Yeah.
	Well, there's another Researcher and author Alex Constantine, who is the author of Psychic Dictatorship in the USA, as well as Barbara Honiger, who wrote the October Surprise and was in the Reagan Justice Department from 1980 to 1983, have spoken about this.
	They both feel, if I'm not mistaken, that the money that was supposedly going into Star Wars research was actually going into mind control technology.
	Um, non-lethal weaponry and areas in that regard.
	Alright.
	I'll have numbers for them if you'd like those off the air that I could... Yes, you will have to get them to me though by email or snail mail or... What?
	I don't know which... Or by fax or whatever method.
	I don't have your address or fax number.
	Alright, then listen on the radio and I'll give them out right now, alright?
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Uh, let me give you both.
	Uh, my fax number I'm going to give you now Limit three pages.
	Now a lot of people... I've got a special fax machine provision that puts any incoming fax into memory and anything in excess of three pages is wiped out before it prints.
	So I never see it.
	So no matter what you do, do not send more than three pages or I'll not see it.
	People call me up all the time to see my fax.
	No.
	How many pages did you send?
	Thirty.
	Well, no, I didn't see it because the machine didn't print it.
	Obviously, there's a limit to how much paper can be consumed, so I have that provision in my fax machine.
	So, three pages max, including the cover.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Good morning.
	Hi.
	Hi.
	Art?
	Yes.
	I taught school for years, and one of my former students came back Who is a navigator on a submarine base over here in Bangor, Washington.
	Yes.
	And this one time when he was on leave he came to see me and I said, how do you feel being a navigator on a nuclear sub?
	Right.
	Because we were a Catholic school and I had hoped that I had given him some kind of ethical training as a child.
	And he told me, he said, he was given a questionnaire in which he was asked what he would do if communications were blocked out and his commander told him to navigate a missile toward a target that he knew personally would kill innocent people.
	Well, yeah, that's the entire Okay, but here's what he told me.
	He said, I put down, I would disobey the commander if he told me to target innocent human beings instead of a military target.
	Wrote this out.
	He said, I thought, well, there goes my Navy career.
	Well, he was right.
	No, he wasn't.
	He's still in.
	He said he was called in by the brass and they said that you are the kind of person we want on these submarines because we don't want trigger happy guys.
	No, no, of course not.
	No, no, ma'am.
	I agree with you.
	Thank you.
	Nobody wants trigger happy people.
	But, as my guest, and you will hear it because I have decided I'm going to repeat that one hour, about an hour from now, I'm really going to do a lot of thinking about what this man said.
	And the situation that he really thought that he might have been in, and a lot of people on the Ulysses S. Grant were in, was that nuclear war had already occurred and that their mission was retaliation.
	No signals, no shortwave, no broadcast, no military signals.
	They thought, at least some of the crew obviously thought, that nuclear war had already occurred And that they should carry out their mission and launch their special, so-called, weapons.
	And, you know, I sat here thinking myself, when this man was speaking, how I would feel about that.
	In an all-out exchange, or after roughly the land arm of our nuclear triad had been used in the air arm that there might be cities more or less left and that their mission would be to destroy those cities along no doubt with military targets but make no doubt you know there's no doubt about it I mean Moscow and Vladivostok and no doubt
	St.
	Petersburg and other civilian areas would be, without doubt, targeted.
	And so, would you, could you, under those conditions, push a button killing millions of people?
	It's not an easy answer.
	It would not be for me.
	Even after I knew my relatives, My mother, my son, my wife, my family were gone.
	Could you continue the madness?
	Could you extend the madness?
	Could you push the button and kill millions of people who might be very much in disagreement with their government's policy?
	I don't know.
	These are not easy questions.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Hi, Art.
	This is Ed from Madison, Wisconsin.
	Yes, sir.
	You asked essentially before what people were going to do during the upcoming cataclysm when the Earth rolls over on its side and it hits the fan.
	Well, I tell you, once those 200-mile-an-hour winds start whipping around, I'll be the first one celebrating.
	Celebrating?
	Celebrating.
	Right now, I'm working three jobs just trying to make ends meet and to see All those, uh, the crazy way that we're living, stop.
	That will be a refresher for me.
	And I wanted to ask you, Art, when you had Merle Haggard on before?
	Yes.
	You had said that you were going to try doing that cayenne pepper lemonade and water for a while?
	Yes.
	Did you do that yet?
	Not yet, no.
	Of course, as you know, I went on vacation almost immediately, but I'm going to give it a try shortly.
	Sounds good.
	How about you?
	Yeah, I've done that for a couple days, and I found it really helpful.
	Really?
	You tried it, huh?
	Yeah.
	And what were the effects?
	It was a cleansing, light feeling, and just overall better health.
	Well, you've encouraged me.
	Okay.
	All right?
	All right, take care.
	Thank you very much.
	I'll give it a try.
	That was a cayenne pepper fasting diet described by Merle Haggard when I interviewed him.
	And I really do think I'd like to give it a shot.
	West of the Rockies, you are on the air.
	Good morning.
	Good morning.
	How are you doing, Art?
	I'm okay.
	Hey, Art, I've been listening to you for years and years.
	Yes, sir.
	But I'm compelled to call tonight.
	I'd like you to give that officer a break, Officer X, and not replay that first hour.
	Well, it doesn't matter.
	I mean, it's aired already.
	So the re-airing of it is not going to change anything.
	I guess not.
	Anyway, um, from the eyes of a private, I'll tell you something just a little bit scarier.
	Let me first ask you, you listen to the hour, right?
	Yeah.
	Did you believe it?
	Uh, absolutely.
	Yeah, so did I. Okay, um, as a private, okay, in the Army, working with 1091 SPs, you know what they are?
	No.
	They are, uh, 155 millimeter howitzer self...
	Propelled?
	Okay, yes.
	Okay, they are nuclear capable?
	Tipped, yes.
	All right.
	Field grade type things?
	Yes, yes, limited whatever.
	Right, right.
	Anyway, say during riot control, did you know we had those battlefield nuclear weapons in the 60s?
	Yes, I knew that.
	Ah, okay.
	We are out in the field.
	We are set up for nuclear training exercises.
	Held in conjunction with riot control.
	We sighted Denver.
	I beg your pardon?
	We sighted Denver, Colorado.
	In an exercise?
	Yes, sir.
	Held in conjunction with riot control training.
	Well... Serious.
	I understand you're serious.
	You're just talking about an exercise, though.
	We're talking about live ammo exercise.
	We didn't pop the cap.
	You're kidding?
	Not in the least bit, sir.
	And you targeted Denver?
	Yes, sir.
	Didn't that bother you at the time?
	I tell you what, if I had known at the time Yes, it would have bothered me.
	I probably wouldn't have been there.
	Well, you guys are scaring the hell out of me tonight.
	Sir, I'll tell you why.
	It is scary.
	The thing being, I boresighted the weapon, okay?
	And I laid in the coordinates.
	And later on, I cross-referenced the coordinates to the map.
	Found out.
	Oh, my.
	Exactly.
	Uh-huh.
	All right, I think I've got it.
	I've got to run.
	We're at the top of the hour.
	I heartily appreciate your call.
	All right, guys.
	Have fun.
	Yeah, take care.
	You're listening to Arc Bell, Somewhere in Time.
	Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from October 22nd, 1997.
	I see them bloom for me and you, and I think to myself, what a wonderful world.
	And I think to myself, what a wonderful world I see skies of blue and clouds of white
	I see skies of blue and clouds of white, the bright blessed day, the dark sacred night, and I think to myself, what a
	The bright blessed day and the dark sacred night And I think to myself, what a wonderful world
	The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky I'm a man in a city, only fools around the machine
	You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time, on Premier Radio Networks.
	Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from October 22nd, 1997.
	Well, here is a fax I just got in.
	Dear Mr. Bell, you should try to call Officer X back later and see what happened to him.
	I wouldn't give up until I find out you owe him and your listeners that much.
	Well, I doubt he'll tell me.
	Caller.
	Uh, faxer.
	He goes on, I have no doubt that the Navy Command faxed an arrest warrant to the local marshal where Officer X lives.
	If the marshal was closed or not accessible, they faxed an arrest warrant to the local police force sheriff who went forth with emergency call status to arrest Officer X. I was shocked that more was not done by you and Officer X to conceal his identity.
	It is a no-brainer that naval intelligence could figure out who he is, without a doubt.
	But I believe your phones are wiretapped anyway, so that only made their work easier.
	It could not be coincidence that he was cut off right when he began to tell what he knows about an additional Mir space station.
	The government probably already has a continuous wiretap on your telephones, no doubt, and already knew who he was before you put him on the air.
	That may well be.
	Well, let me tell you this.
	I discussed with this officer earlier in the day, extensively, the fact that obviously there was going to be enough information given regarding the boats he served on and the positions he served in, even though there may have been 30 or 40 officers with regard to Grant in and out.
	Obviously, they can identify him.
	He knew that.
	He knew that.
	And we talked about it.
	And it was his choice to go on the air with that information.
	That was his choice.
	And he was fully aware of the risks involved with regard to identifying himself.
	So he had no illusions about that.
	He chose to go on with that information for you based on his philosophical and ethical decision.
	No doubt, not made easily.
	I'm not sure that I agree with him, and I'm not sure I disagree with him.
	I'm going to be somewhat thoughtful on the matter, but it was... I surely believe it was the absolute truth.
	It certainly was as dramatic as radio comes, and it should be provocative, and we should all think about what he had to say.
	We came that close.
	And that is why I'm going to repeat the hour.
	Because it should be heard.
	It's not going to do any more or less in terms of identifying him than has already been done.
	And I believe he told us the truth.
	Should he have told us the truth?
	I don't know.
	I'm not sure.
	I'm really not sure.
	I'm really not sure.
	We'll be right back.
	Oh, Art, let me get the radio, okay?
	Yes, please turn it off.
	And you should have it close by, folks, so you can get it right away when you get on the air.
	Gee, Art, I'm so glad you're home.
	I'll tell you, I really prayed for you.
	Thank you.
	Yeah.
	Listen, you know, I want to talk about gold for a minute.
	All right.
	Okay.
	Sure.
	Beings that we're living in these days.
	Yes.
	You know how everybody's talking about gold?
	Wasn't there a time when, was it Roosevelt, went and had it to where they went and did some kind of thing where if people had gold they'd go to jail and a big fine and all that?
	Gold was confiscated, yes.
	What year was that?
	Strange you should ask.
	It was It was, I think it was just after the Great Depression.
	After 1929.
	Yeah, I think so.
	And they literally confiscated all of the gold.
	Well, you know, it's written that in them days, which we're in now, it says that people are going to be cast in their gold and their silver in the streets.
	And I think I'd rather have a garbage can full of rice and beans versus a whole bunch of gold.
	There's always going to be some sort of medium of exchange, whether it's food, or precious metals, or diamonds, and those methods of exchange are going to be around a lot longer than the paper dollar.
	Well, what if that cashless society comes to existence, like they're talking about?
	I mean, would you rather have something like, you're talking about them radios and all that kind of food you're putting back?
	Well, of course, but if a cashless society is coming about, Then it's not going to make any difference whether you're talking about paper money or plastic money.
	Did you hear what I said a little while ago about gold?
	did you hear what i said a little while ago about gold when i did the ad i said look at twenty dollar gold piece
	in what nineteen oh seven
	would buy you a good suit of clothes you know find suit of clothes for a man
	Today, it will buy you the same thing.
	Yet you wasn't allowed to own it back in 1930.
	in nineteen thirty also if you don't if you have a
	if you had a uh... twenty dollar bill
	back then and you would say that bill all this time today
	what would you get for that twenty dollar bill yeah you're right on that
	But you know, also back in them days, people could like go and build a little wheelbarrow and go pick some apples and they could stand out on a straight corner and make a day's ration to feed themselves.
	But they're making it now where people can't even work for themselves.
	You know, they're like tying people's hands in behind their backs.
	You know, to where everything's got to be all accounted for.
	You know what I'm talking about?
	Yes.
	It's like they discourage you on even wanting to start a business.
	Oh, yes.
	Listen, thank you very much.
	We live in a very fragile A civilization from a lot of points of view.
	Have you heard the figures on how many people in America today live from payday to bayday?
	And how many people would go under very quickly if the economy turned sour and they lost their job?
	Within a very short time, indeed, they would lose their home, their car or cars, if they have them, And just about everything else they have.
	In other words, they have no reserves.
	Americans are not saving.
	It's a very dangerous, very tenuous situation.
	As long as the economy remains basically sound, it should be okay.
	But any sort of downturn would produce dramatic, immediate results for a lot of people.
	Bluster the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Yes, sir.
	You know, the other night you guys were talking about that cloning?
	Oh, yes.
	And you were talking about that.
	So one of your colleagues, I think, said something about when they clone you, that part of your spirit would go with that clone?
	Correct.
	Okay, well, what would happen if they had two clones of me, and I got killed in a car wreck?
	You'd be dead.
	Well, what would happen to my spirit in those clones?
	Well, I don't think your consciousness would be imparted to those clones.
	Now, there is one way down the line where that might be different.
	Let us assume that you've got two clones, and you're killed in a car wreck, and they manage to, in effect, download your brain to one of the clones.
	Then your consciousness and you would, in fact, continue in a new body.
	Otherwise, you're dead, they're alive.
	I was just wondering if a guy was getting ready to go over to the promised land and he didn't have the Holy Spirit with him, what would he do?
	I don't know.
	One other thing, Art, and then I'll let you go.
	My mother-in-law is 88 years old.
	And the other day, I thought, well, I forgot her birthday to the last minute, and I thought about those flowers you advertised.
	Yes.
	And I sent them to her.
	She said, did you send me 88 carnations?
	And I said, no, I just ordered these flowers.
	She got about eight dozen of them.
	She couldn't believe it.
	She gave them to everybody in the restaurant she lived in.
	I know.
	It's a really good deal.
	Okay, nice talking to you.
	Take care.
	He's talking about absolutely fresh flowers, of course, and it really is a good deal, as good as I say it is.
	First time caller line, you're on the air, hi.
	Yeah, sorry, I've got a question.
	Actually, it's a comment, maybe a possibility for an upcoming show or something.
	Myself and several other friends at work have discussed this before, and I hope I don't step on your toes or anybody else's toes, I'm sure.
	Oh, that's alright, my toes are mushy anyways, you might guess.
	I've got some concerns and some questions about Masonic Lodge.
	It never really concerned me a whole lot before, and I was in DeMolay myself.
	But a friend of mine brought a book to work one night, and in the book it discussed several things about the Masonic Lodge.
	I was just wondering, would you ever be doing a show on the Masonic Lodge or anything like that?
	Are you a Mason yourself?
	What do you think?
	I believe you probably are.
	No matter what answer I were to give you, would you believe it?
	Yeah.
	Why?
	Well, I've listened to you for quite a while.
	Okay then, suppose I say no, I'm not a Mason.
	Well, then I would believe that.
	But you would have severe doubts, wouldn't you?
	Well, possibly.
	I know it's kind of a touchy situation.
	It's a touchy area.
	But you're kind of known for going into them areas.
	Yeah, I'm in trouble all the time.
	Well, we don't want to get you in any trouble.
	That's one reason I really didn't want to say where I was calling from.
	I see.
	You know, you deal with military a lot in areas like that, and I'm thinking, well, this couldn't be as bad as that.
	Oh, yes, it could.
	That's also what I'm thinking, too.
	So, what is your opinion on this?
	No comment.
	Are we off the air or are we on the air?
	Oh, we're on the air.
	Well, that's all I wanted to know.
	Okie dokie.
	What do you think about it?
	Do you think you'll ever do a show on that?
	I could.
	Goodbye, sir.
	Okay, goodbye West of the Rockies you're on the air
	Good morning.
	Welcome back, Art, from the U District.
	Oh, it's Dan.
	Yes, sir.
	To the caller who just called, by the way, Art's a 99-degree Mason.
	He told me one time.
	Don't tell them that stuff.
	Anyway, I love your story about the Coliseum breaking into that.
	That was great.
	Well, Bob Crane broke me into it.
	Yeah, right.
	Let's keep it straight here.
	Yeah, Bob Crane.
	I meant to say that.
	That's right.
	What's your book standing now?
	He reached around and unlatched.
	It was so cool.
	I couldn't believe he did it.
	The Colosseum was closing.
	It was the last day there, right in Rome.
	And I was dying to see the Colosseum.
	And so Bob reached around and caught this latch on a metal gate.
	I love that.
	the gate and Ramona and myself went slipping through just like we knew
	exactly what we were doing and he closed it and we went into the Coliseum when it
	was virtually empty well you can see that in the photographs I love that
	that's the kind of adventuresome spirit that I really identify with and I
	thought I was going to a Roman jail for sure I got three quick questions
	Sure.
	What's the book standing now?
	The Quickening?
	The Quickening.
	It is on the New York Times Best Seller Business List.
	Number four.
	Oh, my God.
	I know.
	I feel the same way.
	Oh, my God.
	Incredible.
	Have you ever seen the movie Needful Things?
	Yes.
	Did you like it?
	Yes.
	I did, too.
	It was immensely entertaining, and most people don't even know about it.
	Stephen King.
	I'm a very, very big movie fan.
	Well, that was a gem.
	Max von Sydow was a perfect actor for that part.
	Oh, yes.
	I've always wondered, and this may be old news, but did you ever resolve the rabbit thing?
	Yes.
	Well, I guess I should qualify that.
	Halfway, I've got a fence up.
	A big strong chain link fence.
	Yeah.
	However, the little tiny rabbits, you know, those little tiny fuzzy things, they can get under there.
	They can get under.
	But we've got a nice second fence around our garden area.
	So once they get in here, there's not a hell of a lot they can do.
	Huh.
	Interesting.
	So yeah, you solved it.
	I was always wondering what you did.
	Yep.
	It was quite an ongoing thing.
	One last one I've got to ask you.
	When Sean David Martin was on, He said that there was a craft photographed on the moon.
	Numerical designation was E-something with four digits.
	Do you remember the designation?
	I'm sorry, I don't.
	And we just replayed that show the other night.
	I know, and I didn't have my tape rolling, because I wanted to tell somebody who's in the aerospace industry, and so I'll dig it up.
	But anyway, Art, welcome back.
	It's good to have you back.
	Thank you, my friend.
	Take care.
	And for any of you who would like to order a copy of a program that we have done, Sean David Morton, Gordon Michael Scullion.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Good morning.
	Hello, hello.
	Goodbye.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hi, Art.
	With respect to this global warming issue, I think this is something that's been going on since the very beginning of time.
	After all, we've gone through innumerable ice ages and warmings.
	I know exactly who you are.
	You know I'm very good with voices, and I'm going to tell you that if you misbehave and I have to blow you off the air again, you'll be gone forever.
	Well, let me just continue to say that... Do you understand?
	Yes, I do.
	That every word that has ever come out of the mouth of Bill Clinton has just been a despicable lie.
	And this... Well, that's... Look, that's crazy.
	That's not crazy.
	Every word Bill Clinton has said has not been a despicable lie.
	Let me give you an example.
	Our troops will be in Bosnia one year.
	And they've been there two and a half years already.
	All right, I recall Somalia.
	Do you remember Somalia?
	Oh, all 44 were killed there.
	Right, well, um, all right.
	Were there despicable lies told by people on the right about Somalia and our mission there and what we were going to do and when we were going to leave?
	The people on the right said we had no business being there in the first place.
	Oh, but people on the right put us there?
	No, no, sir.
	No, sir.
	George Bush was not on the right.
	George Bush was just the first coming of Bill Clinton.
	And besides, when George Bush left office, there were fewer than 1,200 troops on the ground in Somalia.
	The other 24,500 were put there by Bill Clinton, who didn't want to go to Vietnam.
	I know, but what I'm saying is, if you're going to call a troop Extension, wherever it occurs, a despicable lie, well then these despicable lies have occurred on both sides of the aisle, haven't they?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	But what's going on here with this global warming thing is what they want to do is impose an energy tax on us.
	They want to cut down and chop down our standard of living.
	To those of some mud hut third world country.
	Alright, alright.
	Hold it, hold it.
	You want to hold on through the break?
	Okay.
	Fine.
	Because I do want to talk about this and I'll hold you over.
	Stay right there.
	You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time, on Premier Radio Networks.
	Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from October 22, 1997.
	This is a presentation of the Coast to Coast AMX-4.
	Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from October 22nd, 1997.
	Welcome to the program, those of you who joined at this hour.
	Anything is possible tonight, anything at all.
	Who knows?
	But then again, that's kind of the way I like it.
	Alright, back now to my caller.
	Hi Art.
	Hello.
	This is Rick Meister Gerhardt.
	I know who it is.
	The NRA Hippie.
	And we were talking about Bill Clinton being a liar and this whole global warming thing.
	Well what you said was Bill Clinton, every word from his mouth is a despicable lie.
	That's right.
	Well it isn't right.
	And I would rather than list the lies, I would rather ask other people to list what he has said that has been true.
	But the point of my call Let me stop you there and ask you a question.
	which they're trying to pull on us they have two things that they want to do
	with this year number one
	is they want to slap us with energy consumption taxes the purpose of which
	is to drive the driver standard of living into the into the dust
	number one alright let me stop you there and ask you a question
	let's just say for the sake of argument that we continue
	as we are now allowing population to increase allowing that population to
	continue to use fossil fuels uh... at an ever-increasing rate
	What do you think that's going to lead to?
	I don't think that that's going to particularly lead to anything in this country.
	The most population increases are coming from other places on the Earth.
	That is true.
	And so it's not really our problem.
	It's not?
	The fuel consumption is the standard of living thing here, and this is what they're going after.
	So you think there's no chance that what man is doing on earth right now is contributing to climate change?
	Not at all, not in the least.
	Not a chance, huh?
	But this is being used as an excuse, and this is my number two, this is being used as an excuse to hand over to the one world odor of the United Nations That which has, up until now, been our sovereignty.
	The sovereignty of our Constitutional Republic is being handed over to these one-world odor bureaucrats of the United Nations, which Bill Clinton is in lockstep with, and he has doled out our troops in 100 here, 200 there, All over the world.
	We have troops in over 100 countries.
	This coming from a man who did not want to go to Vietnam himself.
	I mean, talk about a despicable liar.
	He's also a coward and he's a murderer.
	Talking about Waco.
	But this global warming is a farce.
	Anybody that falls for it is a sucker and I feel sorry for them and I am here to help them To show them the way to the truth.
	We have only, in the last couple of decades, been able to see things from above, from in orbit.
	We've only, in the last couple of decades, been... We've only had the capability to see thinning patches in the ozone layer.
	They have always been there.
	They have not just recently got there, they've always been there.
	But, you know, tell that to Woody Gore.
	You know, this is being used against us in a hysterical campaign of lies, disinformation, and half-truth, which is to destroy the sovereignty of our constitutional republic and to drive our standard of living down to that of some mud-hut third-world country.
	Alright, that just about brings us full circle.
	Thanks for the call.
	I wanted to let you go ahead and get that out because I wanted everybody to hear that.
	Now that is the standard ideological myopic view of somebody on the far right who with blinders on will suggest that everything that is being suggested by anybody who has an environmental consciousness of any sort is an absolute lie Designed to simply destroy our sovereignty, I believe he mentioned, and reduce our standard of living to that of a mud hut third world nation.
	His words.
	There's a lot of that point of view out there, and it's pretty frightening as far as I'm concerned.
	And I will ask the rest of you again now, because I think it is a very important question.
	Do you or do you not believe that the climate change which is underway right now is at least in part due to the activities of man?
	Yes or no?
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Yeah, hi Art.
	This is Hans in Kirkland, Washington.
	Yes, sir.
	Yeah, I just heard your caller there.
	What an idiot.
	But that's my opinion.
	Probably, hopefully a lot of other people's too.
	Sorry for the background noise here.
	I'm on a car phone.
	Understood.
	Wanted to make a quick comment on your guest tomorrow.
	I was hoping to be able to get through to talk to her.
	All right.
	But I don't know if I will, so I'll pose a couple of questions to you that you may ask her if you wish.
	Sure.
	One thing that you need to know is that if, as you said earlier when you were talking about her, that you might be slightly afraid, perhaps, of having her on, is that there is no reason for you to be afraid.
	You are, in your body, you reign supreme.
	There is nothing that anyone can do that you do not want them to.
	So there is no way, unless you say, okay, and be that, you know, whether subconsciously or consciously, go ahead put a hex on me or, you know, do your worst to me.
	yes i'm not let you you know want her to do this there's nothing that she can do it or
	her cover no matter how powerful they think they are well let me just say this to
	you The reason, maybe fear was the wrong word, or maybe it wasn't.
	The reason that I felt that way was because after I talked to her, I had a very real sense that I was talking to a person truly devoted to evil.
	And I haven't, in my life, I really haven't I've run up against that before.
	Not really.
	I mean, I've had a lot of people who hedge around and hedge around here and there.
	But I mean, here was somebody who told me on the phone, I'd love to go visit the place where Jesus was born or died so I could desecrate the sites.
	I mean, this is somebody really devoted to evil.
	And that is very possible.
	But the other thing is that I would like to make a comment on is that she is not a witch.
	Never has been, never will be.
	Well, she's going to take strong issue with that, and she has a lot to say about those who call themselves Wiccans.
	She is a Satanist.
	Yeah, I think that's probably fair.
	Witches, which are Wiccan, were around long before Satanists ever were.
	Wicca was around long before Christianity ever was.
	And in essence, she is a Christian.
	And she's going to love that, and so are all the other Christians, because there were no Satanists before there was the Bible or Christ.
	In fact, there were no Satanists until about the time of the beginning of the Catholic Church.
	Well, we'll know tomorrow night.
	We'll explore it tomorrow night and see.
	Yeah.
	Well, good luck with you on that one.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, good luck on that one.
	I'm not afraid to explore anything, and I know that a lot of people are going to be disturbed by what I do tomorrow night.
	I got a fax earlier today, which I will read to you, and I will read it to you so that you might be warned.
	And I advise my affiliates to listen to what I'm about to read.
	I advise you, the listening audience, to listen, to give you every opportunity to tune out Or to give my affiliates an opportunity not to run tomorrow night's show, but to run something else if you think your audience can't handle it.
	Here's what she wrote.
	Hi, Mr. Bell.
	My name is blank.
	I'm not going to give her name.
	I'm 32 years old.
	My coven name is Harlot.
	I am a witch of the most unholy kind.
	I am by no means a goddess.
	I use no crystal balls, tricks, nor treats.
	I am from a long line of witches and warlocks and so forth.
	She then gives her address and phone number and goes on the coven of the unholy.
	Hail Satan!
	Now let me say, Art, I am a good witch by no means.
	Even if I do something that someone would consider good, I do with evil in my heart.
	Hail Satan.
	That's pretty serious.
	So I called her and had about a, I don't know, 10 or 15 minute conversation with her.
	and when I was done, I felt like I had talked with somebody truly devoted to pure evil.
	So tomorrow night I am going to explore this, and consider yourself to have received fair
	warning.
	Bye.
	Bye.
	That's all.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Going once.
	Going twice.
	Gone.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hello there.
	Sorry, I gotta get the radio.
	Get that radio!
	You don't have a call screener?
	No!
	No.
	No, I don't have screen calls.
	Oh, really?
	So you don't have the ability to alter my voice?
	Um... Well... Yeah, I can alter voices, uh, given some notice.
	Not right now.
	Okay, well, perhaps I should do that, then.
	Take care.
	Okay.
	Alright, so that was somebody who was going to tell us something.
	No doubt, relating to Officer X.
	And decided when I didn't alter his voice not to proceed.
	First time caller line, you're on the air, hello.
	Hello?
	Hello?
	Yes?
	Yes?
	Hello?
	Shall we dance?
	No, I'm sorry, what, uh... Turn your radio off, that's number one.
	It is off, yes.
	Okay.
	Go right ahead.
	Hello?
	Oh, let's not do it again.
	Oh, I'm on the air now?
	Yes.
	I'm sorry, I didn't hear that.
	When I answer the phone and say, hi, you're on the air.
	Alright.
	That means you're on the air.
	Okay.
	Go ahead.
	Alright.
	I'm calling regarding the cloning that you were talking about the other day.
	Right.
	And the cloning with the headless people?
	Yes.
	And a lot of the problem seems to arise with people thinking that the soul is something different than what it is.
	Well, I don't think a lot of people are absolutely certain what the soul is.
	I'm not.
	Are you?
	I have a good idea.
	What do you think it is?
	Well, the soul, we really have an understanding of the soul as being spiritual or something of the spirit.
	Where our soul, if we can really understand ourselves as being sensual beings or sensory beings, and then being a sensory being rather than a spiritual being, and as we develop our senses and tweak them to a very, very high degree, what happens is we start to get the impression of a spirit or a spiritual entity, where actually what it is is just the senses highly developed. So you're suggesting that in reality
	there really is not a soul in the conventional understanding of the term soul? What is soul
	though is our DNA. Our DNA is actually our soul. Well in that case a clone would have
	soul. A clone would have soul.
	Anything, every cell of our body has a soul.
	Even a clone without a head or a central nervous system would have the same DNA structure you have, and so if your DNA structure is the architect of your soul, that's one way to put it, then the architect would be in place, head or not.
	Right.
	And the spirit, that we call spirit, is really the animation All right, I think that's quite reasonable, and I don't reject it.
	I don't necessarily embrace it, but I don't reject it.
	And I think right now science regarding the possibility of cloning human beings, for example, taking cells from you and growing an exact duplicate of you, minus a head, minus a central nervous system, is jumping way too far ahead of our understanding of what a soul is.
	And until we have a better understanding of what it is and what it isn't, to do such a thing even causes me great pause.
	Here's a fact I feel I should read.
	We're about to repeat an extremely unnerving one-hour segment with Officer X. Hi Art, Officer X did not do a very good job at remaining anonymous.
	At least to anyone with whom he served in the Navy.
	I have a sinking feeling, no pun intended, that he's in very deep doo-doo.
	I agree with him, philosophically.
	Any nuclear weapons launch is a lose-lose situation for the entire planet.
	I hope everything's okay with him.
	I hope you can contact him again.
	This kind of stuff is completely unnerving.
	A fond regards, Linda in Auburn, Washington.
	Well, I certainly agree with you about the unnerving part, Linda.
	Rarely, rarely will I do a repeat of an hour as I'm about to do.
	But it was that dramatic, that real, in my opinion, in the opinion of most people who have faxed here, Then it bears repeating.
	I want it repeated.
	I want it heard.
	So, prepare yourself to hear something coming up after the top of this hour that is almost in a class all by itself.
	All right.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Art Bell.
	Yes.
	Good to talk to you.
	Darryl from Sacramento here.
	Hi, Darryl.
	How you doing tonight?
	Okay.
	Say, listen, two things.
	One, I don't think that global warming is contributed to by us as people.
	I mean, scientists have studied this since the beginning of science and, I don't know, one month or one three month period they say the temperature is dropping a degree or two.
	Then they say it's going up.
	If you look back in the history, you know, 20, 30 years back, they've said it's gone up, then they've said it's gone down.
	Which is it?
	Well, that's a good question.
	Another thing, that guy that called from his car phone, like me, said that somebody couldn't bother you if they were a Satanist.
	Right.
	There's a guy named Mike Warnke.
	He wrote a book called Satan Seller.
	Uh-huh.
	He was a Satanist high priest for a couple of years.
	You should get that book and read it, and then I think you'd have a lot better insight as to whether or not someone involved in Satanism could bother you.
	Because I think he would tend to argue that point.
	I read the book, and it's definitely something you don't want to read at night alone.
	Well, look.
	If there is a God, I wish I had more time to discuss this, but if God is real, then I think the other side is probably real, too.
	Absolutely.
	And so, in that, in light of that, and my continued exploration, I am going to air what I'm going to air tomorrow night, and those a week apart probably ought not listen.
	Yeah.
	All right, my friend, thank you.
	Thank you.
	Thank you all very, very much.
	It has been another, yet another, truly intriguing night.
	Of ever so many.
	Talk radio the way it ought to be.
	Free, open, unscreened.
	You just never know.
	And this proves it again.
	Have a good night everybody from the high desert.

▲