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April 1, 2002 - Art Bell
02:48:18
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - War Games - Bonnie Ramthun
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Welcome to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from April 1st, 2002.
From the high desert and the great American Southwest.
I bid you all good evening, good afternoon, good morning, wherever you may be in all 24 time zones covered by this program called Coast to Coast AM.
I'm Art Bell.
It's great to be here.
It is still the first of April here and Oh my God, did Keith get me?
He got me too, folks.
Listen, first I'd like to welcome a brand new affiliate, KKXL, in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
Welcome to this strange program, 1440 on the dial in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
Let's say hello to the GM, Jim Hoberg, and the PD, Brian Rivers.
Great to have KKXL on board.
It's a very long Distinguished, rotten tradition we have of doing these April 1st things, and this year I had no idea what they were, what Keith was going to do, and it was sort of an array of things, but the one that got me, of course, was the Blue Screen O'Death.
when you bring up my website I was at an XP computer that I recently put XP in earlier
in the day I went to the website and the blue screen of death came up
and I was like, damn!
You know, I thought I was away from this.
I mean, I'll be anyway.
And there it was, and like everybody else, you know, I didn't read.
I didn't even, like a dummy, notice, gee, new font, you know?
I just noticed Blue Screen of Death, and I rebooted my computer.
Well, Keith did that, along with several others.
Then, there was another one that actually got me, too.
Because, somehow, he managed to make the webpage jiggle every now and then.
But it only does it after you've been on it for a while, so... God, look at my monitor!
What the hell's going on?
The screen is jiggling.
He had an array of guests in there, and guest hosts that And then he had black mold in my house and had me living, gone for the week and living out in my motorhome and oh, man.
But the one that got me?
The blue screen of death.
And listen to this.
Here's a letter.
Dear Mr. Bell and Mr. Rowland, I realize now, prior to reformatting my hard drive and back in the comfort of my home, that I've been truly had.
Mr. Bell, I work in a high school with roughly 200 computers in it.
Guess how many I went through before I gave up trying to figure out the blue screen fatal exception error?
Take another guess to where I have my internet homepage set.
In each case, of course, I was brashly greeted by what I had begun to believe was the product of a disgruntled Microsoft programmer.
The problem lay much deeper.
I am indeed grateful that my school is not in session, Mr. Bell.
All are still away for the Easter holiday.
I would have raised the proverbial red flag to full mast and would have been lashing stock of nearly 1,000 students and faculty.
In conclusion, thank you for giving me something to do today.
This will look exemplary on my April Fool's Day work journal.
Dave in Erie, Pennsylvania.
I had no idea it was coming.
It got me, too, folks.
It shows how we read, doesn't it?
Coming up in a moment, Linda Moulton Howe, author, investigator of all things abnormal, a winner of many documentaries on the environment, reporter, science reporter for this show now for years, with a report coming up.
up in the next hour we're going to play real war games.
Here from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is Linda Moulton Howell.
Linda?
Well, thanks a lot, Art.
You bet.
Fishermen who have spent their lives catching marine life in the waters between Naples and the Florida Keys began noticing massive areas of water in January, so dark and dense that it was eerie to them, and many fishermen said that they had never seen anything like it before.
Most of us have only seen the satellite photographs of this monstrous black That's right, by the middle of March NASA satellite images clearly showed dark waters that at one point spanned an estimated 100 miles.
You can see one of the NASA satellite images of this dark water taken March 21st at my website www.earthfiles.com along with images that have now been taken of some of the dead and dying coral and sponges in the area that this dark water passed through.
Fishermen also noted that dead plants from the ocean floor seemed to rise up and follow the movement of the dark water through Florida Bay and the Keys.
Fish seemed to turn away from the dark currents and eventually scientists discovered that coral and sponges had died in certain channels where the dark waters had been.
This past week, on March 28, members of the scientific community met at the Florida Marine Research Institute in St.
Petersburg to review data from some water samples that they had collected up to that point, and many more have been collected.
And later on in the next half hour, I will be bringing a report hot off the presses that I got just about an hour ago.
But on Thursday, their consensus was this quote, Discolored water is most likely due to a non-red tide algal bloom of coastal marine origin.
The presence of a large amount of algae in the water can potentially cause problems for bottom organisms as the bloom decays, unquote.
The discolored area is now still observable in a region about 30 by 10 miles And divers will be going down over the next couple of weeks into the dark waters to take more water samples.
After this meeting, I interviewed Dr. Brian Keller, science coordinator for the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary in Marathon, Florida.
The sanctuary is funded by NOAA, even though no single organism has been identified as the cause of the massive dark waters.
Dr. Keller has a theory that the organism responsible is a species of diatom, which is a microscopic type of algae that gives off a kind of gold-brown color.
First, I asked Dr. Keller about the fishermen's first reports.
The observations that were coming in from commercial fishermen were Water conditions unlike anything that they had ever seen in their time on the water.
Dark appearing water.
No sheen characteristic of an oil spill.
No strong aroma that would be characteristic of a red tide.
At night, boat propellers caused phosphorescence.
There were sightings of large numbers of comb jellies in the water that can cause phosphorescence, as well as some of the types of phytoplankton can cause phosphorescence at night.
They said they were seeing something like they had never seen before, a dark mass of water that fishes appeared to be avoiding and that the fishes in the water appeared to be behaving unusually.
They talked about Stringy masses in the water column.
That could have been a type of cyanobacteria that can form stringy looking growth forms in the water column.
They collected water samples that have been sent to the Florida Marine Research Center for analysis.
Some of those samples have Fairly large numbers of diatoms in them.
More recent samples collected by the Mote Marine Laboratory just north of an area called Sugarloaf.
Many of those samples had medium to high concentrations of a particular type of diatom.
And so our thinking is that this may be a particularly massive And why blackness and why such an unprecedented appearance to the fishermen?
Well the blackness is apparent only in satellite imagery and people on the water in what appears to be black in the satellite imagery appears a brownish Greenish brown there at the water's surface.
So we have some kind of a disconnect between the satellite imagery and the actual appearance of the water, which is more of a dark color.
It's not black to the eye up close.
And what's unusual is the size and persistence.
And we can only speculate that there was more than the usual influx of nutrients that set this bloom and enabled it to grow to such a massive size and to last as long as it has.
And those nutrients would fall into the category largely of fertilizers and pesticides?
Well, these actually come out of the system naturally.
part of the geology in that part of Florida, we have a shift from sediments, the normal
types of sands that are silica sands, into Florida Bay, which is all carbonate sands.
And so the Shark River outfall can bring with it naturally occurring silicate.
The agricultural areas are a long distance away from that part of Florida and pass through
a lot of wetlands vegetation and studies in the Everglades indicate that the agricultural
nutrients pretty rapidly get taken up by the wetlands vegetation in what are called water
conservation areas.
And so it's unlikely that agricultural nutrients are going all the way across to the southwest
coast of Florida.
And so you would say right now as an educated guest that whatever fed this diatom bloom
was...
Was some natural relationship between the silica and the other kind of sandy floor in those two waters?
That's correct.
And we've had a very wet, what normally would be our dry season from November until about April.
We've had a very wet, dry season that may be linked with what we think is a forthcoming El Nino event.
And that could explain why more than the usual outflows It came from Shark River, bringing these nutrients to feed this diatom bloom, but that's just a guess.
Is it definite that it is the diatoms that are causing the blackness from the satellite, or could there be something else there mixed with the diatoms?
Again, looking at the water up close, it does not appear black.
But what can happen in these blooms is that there can be shifts in the types of algae that dominate the bloom, so that one type of algae will bloom and then die off and provide nutrients that feed yet another bloom.
And that may have been the sequence in this case.
In early January, Florida International University conducted one of its four-time-a-year surveys Out through the sanctuary waters out onto the southwest Florida shelf.
And they saw a low salinity between the 10th and 13th of January, right in the area of the mouth of the Shark River that supports the notion of an outflow at that time.
They saw an area of concentration of chlorophyll A, which is a photosynthetic pigment utilized by these algae.
And they saw the highest concentrations of chlorophyll a that they've ever measured in these waters since 1995.
They also saw a very high concentration of oxygen, which also supports the idea that this was a dense bloom of algae that generate large amounts of oxygen when they're photosynthesizing during the daytime.
This was definitely not a dead zone.
This was a very full of life zone at that time.
And now, two months later in March, we're seeing signs down here in the sanctuary that we still have large numbers of diatoms, but we're seeing dead diatoms, the skeletal material they leave behind.
So it appears that the bloom is starting to Now, there were reports that sponges and corals in a channel off of Key West were found dead at the height of the fishermen reporting the dark water?
That's correct.
Those observations were made about a week ago by a very experienced diver who's an excellent natural history observer.
And we have scientists from Marine Lab are going to that same site today to collect tissue samples for analysis, get some photographs and some video of what the community looks like, and possibly get some more quantitative data on what's happening there.
If the answer to all of this dark water is a diatom, why would a diatom, which is a plant, Had the ability to kill sponges and corals?
Well, we're not sure that there is that linkage.
We're not sure whether it's something associated with the bloom other than the diatom that is causing this effect.
We had a massive sponge die-off in Florida Bay in the early 1990s that was associated with a different kind of algal bloom, with a cyanobacterial bloom.
And there can be a combination of toxic effects.
A lot of these microscopic plants carry nasty chemicals to try to prevent animals from eating them.
There can also be physical clogging of filter feeders by huge quantities of these microscopic particles that can clog up the filtering apparatus of things like sponges.
So we're not sure what's causing the die-off that we've seen near Key West associated with this bloom and we're hoping that the tissue samples that are being collected today and probably more in the future will give us some insight into what caused those die-offs.
Now what is the current status from pilots or fishermen as we begin April in terms of how Much of this discoloration is still being seen in the waters?
Well, we had another vessel from NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in the vicinity of the plume on Friday, and it did a cruise track along what's called the backcountry, which would be the northern edge of the Keys that are characterized by a lot of shallow water areas.
And they saw these bloom conditions from an island known as Big Pine west to Key West, and that would cover a distance of approximately 30 miles.
And they estimated that it extended approximately 10 miles to the north of this very brownish-green water.
So it is still covering a large area?
That's correct.
The underwater visibility is typically less than 2 feet.
In this kind of pea soupy appearing water, the divers that I've spoken to have experienced no adverse effects other than the limited visibility in the water.
Again, there are areas where the bottom community appeared healthy and okay despite being immersed in this what appears to be very concentrated plankton bloom.
What is it about a bloom of something like a plant that naturally exists in the ocean that can become so dense that it can cause destruction of coral and destruction of sponges?
And what makes that become a potential threat in the future?
The general, a general issue in that regard for any such phenomenon is how much is due to human-related causes and how much is truly natural.
And in this particular bloom, I'm not sure that we're going to be able to develop a good answer for that.
Wow!
And this complete inability to fully understand what is happening, point a finger at one thing, you will hear in the next half hour From a woman who has spent hours and was up tonight up till 10 o'clock when I last talked to her.
She had been looking under a microscope and examining some of the water from this area and you will find it very interesting to hear from a woman who for 30 years has been analyzing and examining flasks of water from Florida.
And how this one is so hard to finger any particular culprit, but she will also, I think that all of this is perhaps leading to something that all the scientists say that they need to understand more, Art, and that is, is it possible that in this time of increasingly warm temperatures and the warmest winter on record in North America, Combined with what Dr. Heller pointed out was water in Florida with warmer temperatures.
Could we be moving into a new era in which these kinds of explosive growth might happen on a more frequent basis?
And I'll also update you on some history.
Okay, Linda, hold it right there.
We'll be right back.
I know you can see me now.
Here's a surprise.
This is Coast to Coast AM.
Good morning.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time, on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from April 1st 2002
Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen If you think that I don't know about the little tricks you
play It's a good one.
It's a good one.
And never see you when deliberately you put things in my way.
Well, here's a point.
It's the first time.
The last time we ever met.
But I know the reason why you keep your silence on the beautiful me.
Well the hurt doesn't show, but the pain still grows So strangers are you and me
I knew we'd come in the end of night, oh Lord But I knew we were small for all that I
Oh Lord I knew we'd come in the end of night, oh Lord
Oh Lord Oh Lord
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time, on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM, from April 1st, 2002.
Now scientists, we just heard, had an excellent theory, but everybody out there should be cautioned.
It is still a theory, and there's even, he says, we may never know.
I heard low salinity, chlorophyll, oxygen, not a dead zone.
Of course, the fish fled.
But the coral and the sponges are the big question, of course, and it's a gigantic area out there.
I'm not surprised, and I think if you were to ask a Hopi, could you find one, they wouldn't be either.
Of course it isn't so, but Dave in Missoula, Montana asks, all this stuff in the water, could it be the missing chads?
You have to have some levity.
This is such serious stuff.
My God.
So that's the real bottom line, isn't it?
They don't exactly know for certain.
That's right.
And I would like to share with Coast listeners a historic reference from Dr. Keller that is worth noting.
Coast listeners can see this report in photographs, and it's a historic reference.
At my website www.earthfiles.com, go to headlines and scroll down to the top story about scientists investigating dark Florida waters.
And there is an excerpt from my conversation with Dr. Keller in which he said that in the mid-1950s, a crew of a boat that went on a regular basis out by the Tortugas National Park, which is out further from the Naples and Sable Bay Area, that they wrote in their logbook that, and I'm quoting, they saw a very unusual mass of dark water between Key West and the Dry Tortugas.
Then, back in 1898, scientists there on a marine lab that then existed in the Dry Tortugas, which is an island, At that time they reported a dark water event.
Dr. Keller raises these historic questions saying nobody knows from that time period what these massive dark areas were but could it be related to whatever happened in terms of the conditions this time around in 2002?
Now to show you how strange and Totally right now.
This is just not nailed down.
Tonight, while she was in the lab, this is what you're going to hear from is Beverly Roberts.
She's Research Administrator for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in the Florida Marine Research Institute.
For 30 years, she has analyzed flasks of water And she had, before her tonight, she had the whole gamut of what had been turned into the Florida Marine Research Institute.
Flasks have also gone to the Moat Laboratory and some other places.
So in other words, you talked to her as she was actually, she was in the lab examining those waters, you talked to her?
That's right, and she was writing a report that will be put up at their website by tomorrow morning, and everybody can Check out these websites also at earthfiles.com, but right now you're going to hear exactly as we started, and I said to her, how many samples would you say that you have in your lab right now that you've analyzed from these dark waters?
Here is Beverly Roberts.
This should be interesting.
It looks like we may have had over 30 samples.
Some of those are Clumped fairly close together and that is over a period of time from March 8th to March 30th.
And of those, what seems to be the most dominant organism, plant or otherwise, that you've found?
There isn't one.
There isn't a single dominant one?
Not really.
What?
That's what I'm saying about our samples are giving us quite varied results.
in terms of phytoplankton.
Samples collected from March 28th through the 30th in areas just north of the Keys indicate that a Florida red tide organism, Karenia brevis, is still present and apparently a very patchy distribution all throughout that area.
We have observations that The discoloration and actual textural variations along the surface are quite different within just a few nautical miles of one physician and another recorded physician.
And we may not have good resolution of what's causing this discoloration at this time, certainly, and possibly for some time to come.
What about the issue of a diatom being present?
Diatoms are still being observed in the samples that are coming in.
Not the same species in all occasions.
And not always the dominant species.
Diatoms are a typical component along the west Florida shelf.
So it's not surprising to find them I'm certain that they are part of the overall event that is being observed in southwest Florida.
But that it is not clear right now what the mass of darkness that has been observed since January was specifically produced by?
It's uncertain what This is the major component of the discoloration that's been reported since January.
Our sampling at this point seems to indicate that there may be various causes involved with the entire area.
Now, Linda, can I quickly say one thing?
Yeah.
You know, the fish took off.
The fish, when this water appeared, the hundreds of miles of water, they took off.
Fish left.
Now, you said it was very much alive, wasn't a dead zone, but the fish, in fact, chose to get out of there quick.
I wouldn't go swimming in that water, would you?
Well, the divers have been going down and getting right in the middle of it, in what they call the pea soup, and have been reporting that they are not finding anything deleterious in themselves, but another part of the findings so far by Beverly Roberts was what's called brevetoxin, and this is produced from red tides, which are very common to the Florida area, and in almost all of the samples she has found, The presence of some brevitoxin.
She cannot prove absolutely conclusively that there is enough red tide algae to be producing the brevitoxin and it gets even more complicated because some other plants can produce this toxin.
Yeah, but if I heard it correctly, actually she said it was present but not in large levels at all, that it was pretty scattered and so... Yeah, in terms of the algae, but she has been finding the brevitoxin, which is this chemical that the red tide produces And in her own mind, she wonders if that could be responsible for what might have happened to some of the coral and the sponges.
It is truly a, if it's pea soup water right now, clarity about exactly what has happened since January is not very clear either.
And right over the next two weeks, they're going to send down more teams of divers There will be what's called cruises, more scientific cruises.
They're going to do some more sampling.
They think right now that they can say this much with some certainty, that the amount of the diatom skeletons that are building up means that whatever this bloom was, or series of blooms, which is more likely, a whole series of different kinds of algae growing and getting more expansive on each other until it covered this hundred miles that because they are building up they think this is the decline of it and that it should be over but both Dr. Keller and Beverly Roberts raised a similar question with warming temperatures with this having been the warmest winter in North American history
With a general trend for the last 13 to 15 years of increasingly warmer temperatures that we are possibly moving into a new era in which these kinds of explosive blooms without anybody knowing exactly what sets them off and how big they can become could become more common than they've been in the past.
A question for you, Linda.
I've got from Australia.
She says Australia has had its coldest summer ever, and this devastated the grape production.
Also hundreds of thousands of baby penguins were killed during the Antarctic summer because there was so much sea ice that they had to travel 30 miles to get food.
What kind of sense does that make on a global scale?
We're getting hotter, Australia getting colder.
In the computer projections over the last 15 years in which they've put in the data of CO2 buildup and global warming patterns, you find the oddest cold and warm areas.
The poles get warmest fastest, and we've certainly been seeing that in terms of the melt of the North Pole ice now down to 43% Of what it was only a couple of decades ago?
That's incredible.
May I interject one more because it's here it fits.
L.A.
Times today, it says, Yekaterinburg, Russia.
The native elders have no explanation.
Scientists are perplexed as well.
The icy realm of the Eskimo, the tundra and ice of Russia, Alaska, Canada, and Greenland has begun to thaw.
Strange portents are everywhere.
Thunder and lightning, once rare, have become commonplace.
An eerie warm wind now blows in from the south.
Hunters who prided themselves on their ability to read the sky say they no longer can predict the sudden blizzards.
The Earth, one hunter concluded, is turning faster.
It's an eight-page article, but you get the idea.
Yes, and Larsen B, disintegrated.
The scientific world was expecting that there would be disintegration of that big Larsen B ice shelf, but they never expected that it would be nearly gone in 2002.
And now we're looking out at a projection that maybe in only three years, maybe at the outmost five, it'll all be gone there.
And then that means these questions about increasing Antarctic other melt is still there.
And this is all part of what appears to be a pattern that is affecting the world and right now drought is worsening in the United States on a national basis.
A lot of stories on that I've seen.
Yeah, and I have just done a big report at earthviles.com in the environment section and it is so bad now on the east coast That up in the Cannonsville Reservoir, the Delaware River watershed, that feeds, it's one of three reservoirs that feeds Manhattan, for example, that the watershed was exposed to mud for the first time since it was built and that reservoir, which helps get water to Manhattan, had only
Three percent of its water capacity in December.
Holy smokes!
Yeah, nobody had expected that anything like that would happen and in fact half of the drinking water for New York City comes from these three reservoirs in the Delaware River watershed and all three right now on April 1 have less than half their normal water levels.
Now this means that we are We're just starting into what's going to be five months of increasing temperatures.
What is going to happen in Manhattan?
Well, the mayor last week declared a drought emergency.
That is the most severe that the mayor or governor can declare.
The governor of Pennsylvania in February declared 17 counties here in drought emergencies.
From Maine and New Hampshire, People have been spending huge amounts of money trying to drill new wells to find water because the ground table water has lowered so much that wells have been drying up.
They're estimating that over a thousand wells in Maine alone are now dry.
We've got all the specific data that is coming in that apparently an El Nino is brewing.
And when an El Nino kicks in, which would be over the next 6 to 12 months if it really takes hold, one of the things that almost always happens is that the East Coast gets drier and warmer while the Southeast and Texas get wetter.
And already that pattern seems to have been developing.
And I talked, if you want to hear it, it's very brief, but I talked with uh... bill douglas he's an executive director in the upper
delaware council uh... up in in new york
about uh... what is happening with the reservoirs and how serious this could get always by all means of the
president of the national and i'm a little bit bill douglas
these reservoirs uh... have gone to uh...
extremely low capacities over the past several months.
As a matter of fact, back in probably December, the one reservoir was down to approximately 3% of its capacity.
Only 3%?
Only 3%, yes.
That's the Cannonsville Reservoir.
That would mean you were seeing mud a lot in the bottom?
Oh, definitely.
Definitely.
I think the lowest I'd ever heard it go down to in the past was approximately 17%.
Typically there'd be a couple feet of snow up in the Catskill Mountains and that would come out in the spring rains of March and April and May.
But right now there's little to no snowpack in the mountains.
Now what is the demand for water in the New York City area?
How much?
The figures that I've heard most recently is Approximately 1.5 billion with a B gallons of water a day is what they use.
And if you take that against all three reservoirs being less than half of what they should be.
Right.
And this is March 29th.
How serious is it if we do not get rain The word I'm getting from the experts in the field are that this coming summer, if we haven't made significant impacts on bringing that deficit up, we're going to be in very serious trouble meeting all the water demands that we have here.
For the very first time, I had a discussion with Bill Douglas and a couple of other people.
What happens if the three reservoirs that feed Manhattan, they have other reservoirs that they also draw water, but half of the water, one and a half billion gallons of water a day that they're counting on, and what happens if these reservoirs that are now less than half Continue to go down over the next five months?
Well, Linda, you know, I wrote a book called The Quickening and then The Superstorm, Global Superstorm, and I feel like day by day, week by week, month by month now, I'm just watching the predictions come true.
And do you know another area, besides questions now, that he and I discussed?
What would they do?
Would they have to start importing water from some of the places that have water?
And where would that be?
The Great Lakes is suffering.
Nebraska has water, but that's in the Midwest.
Water wars, Linda.
Well, it really is a concern in the future.
These temperatures continue to keep increasing incrementally each year and I also talked with Don Wilhite.
He is the climatology man and director of the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln and he pointed out that he, this week, he read a report from Colorado and the state of Colorado is so concerned about the fire hazards there And he was pointing out to me that in West Texas, in New Mexico, in Arizona, in Colorado right now, that one of the greatest worries is dryness to the point that it's tender.
So as we start going into the hot temperatures, they could be trying to cope with huge fire threats there.
Incredible report.
Linda, we're out of time.
Listen, we've got to do a whole program soon.
God, there is so much going on.
I know, there is.
It's just a wonderful report.
Thank you.
Go ahead and plug your website one last time.
Thank you.
It is www.earthfiles.com.
I cover a wide range of subjects that aren't in-depth on the 6 o'clock news, and you can write me your questions and comments to earthfiles at earthfiles.com.
All right.
Good deal, Linda.
Bless you.
Thank you, as always, and good night.
Thank you.
Well, as I said, I just have this feeling that if I had the Hobie Elders about, they'd have a lot to say on this subject.
Coming up in a moment...
War Games.
You're listening to ArcBell, somewhere in time.
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from April 1st, 2002.
🎵Music🎵 🎵Music🎵
🎵Music🎵 Well, the knife is heavy on his guilty mind.
This far from the borderline.
When the hitman comes, he knows damn well he hasn't cheated And he says, now I'm a-steppin' into the twilight zone
This is the madhouse, it feels like deep bone It's like we've been moved at the moon and sun
And I know, now that I've gone too far So you will come when I'm too low
When the bullet hits the bone So do what I do, girl
When the bullet hits the bone When the bullet hits the bone
Premier Radio Networks presents Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight's program originally aired April 1st, 2002.
Tonight should certainly be a different kind of experience.
Bonnie Ramtham is here.
Bonnie Ramtham is the author of Ground Zero and Earthquake Games.
Ha!
No kidding.
She's a former war gamer for the Department of Defense.
With a computer science degree from the University of Wyoming and an itch to see the wild side of the defense world.
Oh, that'd be the wild side, alright.
She's worked in helicopter crash investigations, robotics, Automobile assembly, missile defense, war gaming.
She now lives in Erie, Colorado with her husband Bill and their four children.
She's skilled, very skilled at military maneuvers, savvy about international defense, at ease profiling a terrorist, been known to save the world from nuclear annihilation, often before lunchtime.
As a war gamer for the Defense Department, it was all in a day's work.
That's who's coming up next.
Well, I've always wanted to talk to somebody like you, Bonnie.
I have always, and I never have.
This is going to be a great honor.
You're in Colorado, huh?
Yes, I am.
You are.
And is your last name Ramtham?
Am I doing that correctly?
That's right, Ramtham.
Okay, Ramtham.
Very good.
Gosh, where to begin?
What's it like?
I mean, most people in the audience, of course, probably saw the movie War Games.
Right.
And you have no idea how much influence, or maybe you do, a movie has on society and how we think of things and view things.
Well, I'll tell you something.
What's so interesting is, of course, the facility where I worked was built after the movie WarGames, and when they finished building the main facility, in fact, the laboratory or the WarGaming Center, guess what it looked like?
It looks exactly like the movie!
You've got to be kidding me.
So, this was built after, after the movie, and it looks like the movie?
Yes!
In fact, when they did the redo of NORAD, I'm sure almost everyone knows, but for those who might have been off the planet for the last few years, NORAD is the giant underground facility in Colorado Springs.
It's built inside a mountain, Cheyenne Mountain.
Well, they did a redo of Cheyenne Mountain after the movie War Games came out.
Not because of the movie, it was just that time.
And the actual facility in Cheyenne Mountain was just this little room.
and they thought that the movie with so much better than what they had in
reality when you got it
and i think you know the question was a bit whether uh...
you know the public enough and things are drive hollywood or hollywood drives
things in the public and
maybe this proves the uh... the the latter Oh, I think so.
In fact, the facility where I work, Shriver Air Force Base, was built I swear it was built by people who had seen every James Bond movie and had a lot of money to spend.
I went through a retina scanner every day that was a clear glass booth.
I would step in and it would lock me in quick.
And I would be locked in there until I passed all the tests.
It would weigh me.
You're not kidding, are you?
I'm not kidding.
A retinal scanner, it would weigh you?
It would weigh me, and then I would have to badge myself through.
It would read my badge, and then I would have to type a certain number in.
Really?
Only if all those things happened in the right way.
This really does sound like it's out of James Bond.
It does.
And then the booth would open and let me out.
So there really is a world like this.
Yes.
And after a while, it's funny, after a while, it just becomes part of your world.
You know, you step over the submarine-style door with the flat brass plates that intermesh when you close it.
Whoa.
And you say, oh, you know, this is the way I, you know, this is the way I get to my desk.
And if I have to go get a pop, I step out through the submarine door and spin it closed, and off I go to get my pop.
Oh my God!
Yes.
You mean that kind of spin closed a real submarine door?
It was just like a submarine door.
Spin it closed?
You would spin it closed.
And what was in it was heavy.
Luckily, it was counterbalanced because I'm not big.
What was this door protecting against?
What was it for?
Well, there's two things.
First of all, it is supposed to keep the interior, which is where the war games were held, from electronic surveillance.
Okay.
And the other thing, which I was curious, The whole reason I became a wargamer is because I always wanted to get into the most interesting places I could find.
That was my entire goal of becoming a computer programmer.
I always wanted to be a writer, but I wanted to write about really interesting things.
But I mean, how in God's name do you get to it?
Maybe I shouldn't use his name in connection with all this.
How do you get to be a wargamer?
I mean, do you just go down and apply to the Department of Defense and say, look, you know, I'm a computer person and I'd really love to do War Games.
How do you get there?
Well, actually I was working for a company that was doing some bidding work on the facility.
And so they needed to hire some computer programmers in on this bid.
And in every government contract, including that for the War Games facility, you have different private companies and they bid.
And they have to come up with enough of a bid.
They have to show that they can do What the government contract requires them to do.
So Boeing will build a prototype fighter and show it off.
So the company that I worked for built a prototype gaming center and ran war games to show the government that they could do this.
Oh, and so here you were, a part of the design of the project.
It would be natural then for you to be of interest to them in its implementation and running?
Yes.
Although, I did get a haircut and wore my nicest suit.
I did the best I could to make myself as attractive as possible.
How did they come to interview you for this?
I mean, did a couple of guys in suits show up and say, hey, listen, we'd like you to apply?
I mean, how does that happen?
Yeah, well, the guys in suits showed up at my grade school teacher's door and my... Oh, so you were... really?
Oh, yeah.
I was investigated.
It was so funny.
I was investigated all the way back to the house where I lived in in second grade, and they interviewed the mom across the street.
And I heard about this through a roundabout way.
But they investigate in order to get the kind of clearances I had.
They investigate your life really thoroughly.
Are you allowed to say how high your clearance was?
And how do you know that, Art?
How do you know that I'm not allowed to say what level my clearance was?
Yeah, you're right.
I just took a shot.
And you're not actually even allowed to say how high it was?
Um, can you answer this?
Sure.
Is there such a thing as a Q clearance?
I am not aware of a Q clearance.
It doesn't mean there's not a Q clearance.
And I'm just not the person who got one.
Okay, then let's see if you can answer this general question.
Are there levels above top secret?
Yes, there are.
And that's not anything I'm going to get thrown in prison saying.
Good.
You know to be very careful.
I don't have to tell you, right?
Yeah.
Of the things that we are going to discuss tonight, we will talk of many things, Bonnie.
How much of your work, by percentage, are you completely unable to speak about?
Very little.
I would say around 10-15%.
This will freeze my mouth shut, and not because I'm afraid of prison, although I am.
I hear it's real cold, the food's bad, don't want to end up there.
But because those things might be abuse to the enemy.
And that's really... I was so scared of getting my clearances because I thought, what are they going to do?
Are they going to put electrodes in my brain?
Because people would come back from their clearance review and they would just be pale and shaky.
Really?
I thought, what secrets do they reveal?
It was actually almost scary.
And then, when I got the clearance, I figured out one of the reasons people come back in pale and shaky is because they keep the room at like 50 degrees.
You're freezing to death!
So there's a reason for that, I'm sure, right?
Yeah, I'm sure there's some kind of... Yeah, they put you in a sort of a state.
Did you come back from the interview also cold and shaky?
Yeah, I did.
And the reason I did is because they managed To impress upon me that if I revealed secrets that were important to the country, then people would die.
You know, Robert Hanson, the FBI spy, may he burn in hell forever, he got people killed because of the secrets he revealed.
And there are people in Congress who revealed secrets during the Gulf War that got some of our soldiers killed.
So the pale and shakiness was because I really had this responsibility now.
of knowledge that could hurt people.
So that's why I'm careful.
I was very careful in my book to go right up to the edge but not cross the line.
But I went right up to the edge.
Did you give them a copy of the book to review?
I spoke quite extensively with the security director and found exactly what parameters I needed to have.
And he was unhappy with some of the It was not an unhappiness that he could put me in jail for.
No, he wasn't happy about some of the things I did.
Your books are Earthquake Games and Ground Zero.
Ground Zero.
That came out before September 11th.
So it was an unhappy coincidence of names.
Tell me a little bit about the books.
What is Ground Zero?
Ground Zero is a thriller murder mystery that takes place in a wargaming center.
And I take you, the reader, into my world because there's a murder that occurs.
And it's a locked room murder mystery.
You have to figure out who done it as well as how done it.
And the murder itself causes a cascade of events which leads to a terrorist group getting hold of information which they use to launch a nuclear weapon at the United States.
I'm sure your bosses, ex-bosses, were real happy about that.
Well, especially because the scenarios that we ran, I had such fun with the scenarios.
There was one scenario that we ran that I mention in the book where England tried to take us back as a colony.
We would play all sorts of different games and the world that we created was essentially, think of it as a three-dimensional chess board.
This was not a canned scenario where you just sit around and look at Actually, it's much like chess wargaming, isn't it?
Yes, and we had rooms in the back where people who were playing the bad guys would actually launch weapons and move submarines and send out disinformation, and then we'd have the good guys in the different rooms, and they would battle.
They would fight the war, and we would figure out how to fight it better next time.
Who, more times than not, won?
At first, everybody died.
Nuclear war, not good.
Especially when you get into a massive situation where you have nukes flying everywhere.
The old end of the world scenario happened so many times, we used to call it the hand of God.
You called it the hand of God?
Yes, because when you look at it, we would have Yes.
missile trail marker so at the nuclear weapons came up china or the city union would curve over the polls and head
down towards the united states yes
you would be all the tendrils and it would look like that they can't coming
over we called it the hand of god it was over we thought that uh...
and i think that the president of south america because there's not going to be
anything living here bigger than a cockroach In most cases, then, that scene, with all those tendrils, that was the end of it all.
In other words, it inevitably, almost always, resulted in both sides launching everything they had, ultimately.
Just like in the movie, War Games.
But we would battle to the very end.
We would try and shoot down everything we could.
So that there would be some potential for life on Earth.
I hate those words.
There we probably get into some national security issues, because what we have in space right now, I think, probably we don't know everything we have in space right now.
And do we have weapons there?
Do we have what we're going to call defensive weapons in space right now?
I played war games where we had brilliant pebbles.
That was what we called them.
Oh, yes.
They're basically like... Rocks.
They're rocks.
BBs.
BBs.
Those would be weapons that simply sort of spread out like a shotgun shell and physically actually destroy whatever is coming in, right?
Right.
And the whole idea of a brilliant pebble in space is that you want to shoot down the missile coming out in its country of origin.
For example, if you shoot down a nuclear missile heading towards the United States, and you hit it off the coast of the United States, or you hit it over the United States, it won't go off.
You're not going to have a nuclear bomb, because a nuclear device does not go off unless everything works perfectly.
So you hit it with a big rock, no more nuclear weapon.
But what you do have is plutonium, which will rain down upon the country where you hit it.
Or, if that missile has something else on it, like Well, that's pretty... Why don't you stop right there.
If plutonium, high-grade plutonium, were to begin raining down, what do your war games say would have been the effect?
Oh, it's bad.
If you had a hunk O.R.V., re-entry vehicle, land in your backyard, that's bad.
The E.K.
is going to have to come dig up your backyard.
And you're not... It's going to kill your dog.
It's not going to be very pretty.
On the other hand, it's not going to kill your dog and you and one million of your nearest neighbors.
It's going to be something that they're going to have to come and clean up.
So it's only going to be a very localized problem.
Yeah.
And again, the whole hand of God scenario, end of the world scenario, really went away when the superpowers decided they'd had enough.
What we really saw after the Soviet Union fell was the concept of a limited strike.
Yes.
Yeah, you would have three or four missiles, let's say, coming in, and you would have to shoot those down.
And sometimes, well, I personally would prefer to shoot them down over the country that sent them.
Let them have Ebola.
Let them have the chemical weapons.
Let them have plutonium in their country.
Not ours.
Well, I know that's certainly what we're worried about now, and why we're building space-based defense.
We're going to chuck a treaty and just go ahead and do it.
And something else about space, too, is that Think of what's up there floating around.
You know, your doctor who's on his pager, or her pager, who gets called in in case you get into a traffic accident, that pager is based on a satellite system.
Oh, yeah.
You take away that satellite system, and it isn't just that the Army can't talk to each other or the Air Force can't talk to each other.
Well, it happened, Bonnie.
One of the satellites went out.
I think it was a huge satellite.
I'm not sure about that.
It was, oh, a couple of years ago.
And exactly that scenario played out.
Doctors were not getting pages.
All kinds of ATMs were shutting down.
Right.
Doctors had to go sleep at the hospitals.
That's all correct, yes.
It was very frightening and it is a vulnerability in our space-based assets.
In our present technological society.
If there was a war that, let's say it didn't get to the ground, implausible as that is, but we just destroyed all these satellites and they destroyed ours, what would that do to our economy?
I don't know.
We never played a scenario where it didn't get into a shooting war.
You mean they almost all go eventually to Well, let's say the bad guys put up what we call an EMP weapon, an Electromagnetic Pulse Weapon, and take out all the non-hardened satellites.
Of course, you can harden a satellite against electromagnetic pulse.
Are they hard enough?
I don't think the doctor satellites are.
I don't think a satellite that sends me my cartoon network is hard enough.
That's what scares me.
And probably the one delivering this program right now is not.
Probably not.
And that's a vulnerability.
I would like to see that taken away.
I don't want to lose the capability of hearing your show.
How expensive is it to harden a satellite against EMP?
I believe it's very expensive.
That's one of the reasons Army and the Air Force always seem to cost so much more when they put their birds up in the air, as well as the fact that they don't tell anybody that it's going up.
That's a whole other can of worms.
When they put those birds up in the air, you say, hey, what's that sound on the horizon?
I didn't know there was a launch today.
Yes.
You were in a very, very strange business, Bonnie.
It was very odd.
Did you ever have nightmares from it?
How interesting.
Yes, I did.
In fact, one of the reasons I decided to get out finally was, first of all, it was consuming my life because it was so intense.
Every week was something new.
It really was absorbing my life.
I wanted to be a writer.
I didn't want to be a war gamer my whole life.
Second of all, I kept having these nightmares of driving home and seeing the flash.
Imagine that I would bring that up.
Stay right there.
We're at the bottom of the hour.
We'll be right back.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time, on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from April 1st 2002
What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Say it again y'all!
What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Listen to me!
I despise, coasting means distortion of this life War means tears, and thousands of mothers die when their
sons go off to fight And you stand up, I say what? Good God y'all!
Time, time, time, sin must become a way Time, time, time
See what's become of me Time, time, time
See what's become of me While I looked around
At my possibilities I was so hard to please
Look around He's a brown
In the sky He's a hazy shade of winter
Fearless, dalmatian, only man Down by the riverside, it's bound to be a better ride than what you've got planned.
Carry it up in your hand.
The ground is brown, and the sky seems a hazy shade in the winter.
Hang on to your hopes, my friend.
Premier Radio Networks presents Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
Tonight's program originally aired April 1st, 2002.
I guess that would be a hazy shade of nuclear winter.
We'll ask about that a whole lot more.
We've got a war gamer.
Bonnie Ramthon was a war gamer for the Department of Defense.
She explained in the first part of the interview she had to go into a room where a retinal scan and much more would identify her as the real person.
Only then would she enter the room that has a door like a submarine that you've got to spin open and spin closed.
And that would take her into her work area.
She has two books that have received incredible reviews at Amazon.com.
Earthquake Games, five stars across the line, and Ground Zero, also big-time winners.
Coming up in a moment, the real war games once again.
Look around, knees are brown, there's a patch of snow on the ground.
Look around, knees are brown, there's a patch of snow on the ground.
Sound of explosion.
I don't know if you all know this or not, but Whitley Streber, a very good friend of mine,
co-authored the book War Day, one of the best written on the topic.
There have been many, many good ones.
I think I've seen every movie and read every book on nuclear war that's been out, including On the Beach, with both the original and the HBO remake, which was awesome.
I've always wondered, Bonnie, in a full nuclear exchange, would the rather immediate aftermath of that perhaps unfold as on the beach suggested it would with, you know, the northern hemisphere and, of course, the northern hemispheres, I guess I ought to say, all going into virtual dead zones and then, of course, with the winds the way they are bringing The whole thing down eventually to Australia and ending all life, is that how it comes out?
Yeah, pretty much.
Not something I really... It's so depressing to even think about that, but yes, that's what would happen.
One of the things that we fought desperately to do during a Hand of God war game was to prevent that from happening, if we could.
For example, we knew that there was no way we could prevent Enough nuclear weapons getting to our country, to save our country.
But we could shoot down enough of them so that the radioactivity would fade out before it took all life on Earth.
So it was a matter of preserving, if we could, a chance for life.
And boy, those were depressing.
Depressing war games to play.
Because while you're fighting the battle, Ground interceptors, ground interceptors, put some more sensors up in the air so we can deter.
And then somebody would tap you on the shoulder and you'd look at the map and you'd say, oh, I'm dead.
I'm out of the game.
Out of the game.
But it really would unwind that way in a full nuclear exchange with eventually the entire world being enveloped in lethal amounts of radiation.
Right.
End of the world.
True end of the world.
The cockroaches, they'd survive?
Right, pretty soon.
A couple of hundred millennia from now, there'd be the Art Bell cockroach interviewing the Bonnie Ransom cockroach.
What about the scientific theories that suggested there would be a nuclear winter?
Is there substance to that, do you believe?
I guess it was suggested that so much debris would be thrown up into the high atmosphere?
It would be very similar to what happened with the meteor.
that killed the dinosaurs. You would create a blocking effect of the sun's rays. Everything
would cool down. Once you started the cooling down, it would cause an ice age. And you would
end up with, you know, the few people who had survived, if they survived, would not
then be able to plant or grow anything because the world would be glaciated just as it was
back in the ice age. I just don't know how you could have...
and of course, ultimately, You said you began to have nightmares about it.
Were you having nightmares about these scenarios?
I was, but not the massive scenarios, because very shortly after we started doing wargaming, we began to realize that that sort of conflict was becoming less and less of a potential, because not only were we bringing our nuclear weapons, our nuclear bombs, down in levels, but also the Soviet Union was.
Also, It's so interesting, Art, that one of the first war games we played with blue, which is our forces, we played several missile defense war games where we did not have any blue assets in the field.
Essentially, we would play as though we had no nuclear weapons.
Well, the first time we played blue, we had been playing for a year, basically, shooting down incoming weapons, but not doing anything in return.
So we play this war game, and I don't know who it was, China or the Soviet Union, sent over a very small-scale attack.
And we're all getting ready to do the usual, you know, we shoot down the small-scale attack, we call them up on the phone and say, let's talk, you know, we don't need to end the world here.
And all of a sudden, all these lights started going over the United States, and we looked, and all the missiles are coming out of all the silos all across the United States.
Yeah, firing back.
They've launched everything.
And we turned and we looked at the blue guys, you know, the blue asset guys, and they're like, what?
That's what we do.
If you see a nuke coming, you'll launch everything you have.
And is that what you think we would do if we saw nukes coming?
Not after we got through with those guys.
I mean, there were people who lost their jobs because of that war game.
What they did is they were under the old Cold War concept, which is that, yes, You see news coming, there's nothing you can do about it.
You send what you have back.
Everybody kisses their fanny goodbye.
They were operating under the old Cold War rules.
Let's play a few games.
Here's a little game for you. Let's play a few games.
Suppose, for example, over an issue like Taiwan, maybe.
Let's say the Chinese have blustered that they could fire a nuclear device, say at Los Angeles,
and do that from a submarine, and they probably could.
If Los Angeles went up in a white flash, what do you think the U.S.
response would be?
Well, I would hope that Los Angeles would not go up in a white flash.
Yeah, we all hope that, but I'm just asking.
But, you know, when that thing comes up on the radar, The missile defense system goes into operation and we shoot that puppy out of the sky.
We try.
Yes, we try.
In the case of weapon of mass destruction, our response has always been that we reserve the right to use a weapon of mass destruction in response.
But that doesn't mean that we have to.
And we fought war games where we lost several cities and did not respond in a nuclear fashion.
Because we didn't need to.
We could take those countries on without nuking them.
It was not a situation where we needed to use nuke.
You know, it's interesting, Bonnie, and this will of course have been way since you're out of the War Games business, but Gee whiz, Bonnie, the other day, the President of the United States made a statement about sort of a rethinking of The use of nuclear weapons.
Right, the Nuclear Posture Review.
Yeah, that's right.
And a British did the same thing.
And it's like two gongs went off in my head.
And I said to myself, oh, the important story is really, if you look very carefully, this is a major change, probably in response to 9-11 and what they might see coming after 9-11.
But it sounds like they're getting ready to justify the use of nuclear weapons.
That's what it sounds like.
How did it sound to you?
Well, we played... I thought it sounded like a psy-op to me.
Psychological operation.
Think so?
You know that Pentagon office they shut down?
Yeah.
What'd they do?
Box it up and move it across the street?
I don't know.
I think they were doing... Just saber rattling?
Well, more than that.
We have always had the option to use a weapon of mass destruction against a weapon of mass destruction.
And I say those words very carefully.
Yes.
A weapon of mass destruction includes smallpox.
It includes sarin gas.
Yes.
What they were saying to Saddam Hussein, who is frantically attempting to develop a hardened Ebola and a smallpox that's resistant, is that if he uses those against the United States, that's a weapon of mass destruction and we'll nuke him.
Yeah, that's kind of what I thought we were saying, too.
And so what they're saying is, as a preemption, they're saying, don't do it, we're serious.
Don't even try it.
Yeah, you better be listening here, or we'll turn you to dust.
Yeah, and let's hope and pray that that doesn't happen, because obviously there are many people in Baghdad who hate Saddam Hussein a whole lot more than I do.
They have been under his jackboot for a generation.
But either way, our side, their side, millions of innocents potentially die.
Most, yes, potentially.
And I believe that the saber-rattling, that's a really good way to put it, the saber-rattling was done as an attempt to prevent such a thing from occurring.
Because we don't want to do that.
But you know, that's a warning to people that you would think are thinking rationally in some sense.
People who take over airliners and crash them into buildings and the Pentagon and stuff like that, from our point of view, are not thinking rationally.
I'm not saying from their point of view it's not rational, but from our point of view it's completely irrational.
So threatening them with utter annihilation might not register the way we would imagine it would register on us?
Yeah, I would hope that it would register in some sense.
It's essentially Telling the bully in the schoolyard, you're going to punch his lights out.
Yeah, oh yeah.
And if he, you know, if he tries.
The other thing I think it does is signal.
Which would work for a normal bully.
Right, for a normal bully, not a psycho.
One of the problems, though, I think with the world opinion thingy, which I'm not an expert on, is that a weapon of mass destruction has been understood to be nuclear.
I think that the United States is making it very clear to our allies as well as our enemies that a weapon of mass destruction includes biological and chemical weapons.
Yes.
And we don't have.
We don't develop smallpox if it kills people.
We don't develop Ebola that's hardened so that it's resistant to antibiotics.
Could in fact Ebola be weaponized to the degree that it would live long enough to propagate itself in the horrible manner that we could imagine it might propagate if it didn't.
You know, it's like Ebola seems like a brush fire.
It's so horrible that it burns itself out very quickly.
Right.
You need to make it a little bit less deadly so that it has time to spread.
Exactly.
Saddam Hussein hired a bunch of starving, essentially, Russian scientists To do exactly that.
To do exactly that.
Oh, and here's something.
Here's a little clue from the, you know, defense biz.
There is a bomb that was tested in Afghanistan recently.
Not the daisy cutter, but something called a thermobaric bomb.
Did you hear about that one?
Yes, ma'am.
The big incendiary thing.
You know, fire, and then it sucks all the oxygen out of the cave structure.
People within the cave structure are suffocated.
Right.
And anyone within the path of the bomb itself, of course, It's incinerated.
Yes.
Thermobaric, it was called.
Thermobaric bomb.
Yeah, very nasty sounding.
Why did we test this in Afghanistan?
Well, you know, obviously we want to kill Al-Qaeda, and that's a good way to kill Al-Qaeda.
Right.
However, if you attack a biological facility, you don't want to throw a big, dusty bomb on top of it that throws, essentially, pieces and parts of that facility into the air.
What you want to do is you want to incinerate that facility and not disturb it.
So you basically burn it out without potentially, let's say for example, throwing particles into the air which might infect someone several miles away.
So the thermobaric bomb might not have been a spiffy idea?
Oh, I think that the thermobaric bomb's idea, the reason we tested it in Afghanistan Is so that we can use it against a biological facility.
Oh, I see.
Of Saddam.
He's saying, yeah, thermobaric, ooh, all of a sudden it doesn't seem so nasty after all.
Right.
Because I don't, it's just to think, just to think one guy gets sick and then he's in Baghdad and he gets on a plane.
Yeah.
Or, you know, you know the scenario, you know the drill.
I don't even like to think about that.
That is, unfortunately, probably more likely Today, kind of 2002 scenario, the all-out nuclear war for sure, isn't it?
Yes, and that's a good thing, isn't it?
My job as a war gamer... I don't know if it's a good thing.
I'm not sure.
Everybody's had a cold.
Everybody's been involved in a nuclear war, but we've all had colds.
And to think of that happening, it's so horrifying.
Listen, I even get jittery when...
We start getting reports all across the nation of these strange rashes.
These kind of stories, now it's probably nothing, but you know, from coast to coast in Nova Scotia, everywhere I've got stories of these strange rashes suddenly developing.
Well, people don't say it, and I'm not certainly saying it now, but I mean, who's to say that something like that is not, that they have no idea what it is?
It doesn't mean that somebody caught something, it is a precursor to something else, and We just live in very, very strange times.
After 9-11, everybody, of course, is on edge and almost expecting something biological.
In fact, our government was saying, you know, they were talking about smallpox so much, I was like waiting for the other shoe to fall.
They were talking so much about smallpox that I thought, it's coming.
They know it's coming and that's why they're talking about it.
Yeah.
How about you?
I think they're afraid it's coming.
We certainly know more about the Russians and their biological facilities than we know about Hussein's biological facilities.
But what we know about the Russian facilities is really scary.
What do we know that you can tell?
The Ebola.
They were working on hardening Ebola, just as you said, to make it a little less deadly so that it could spread more.
Then there is the smallpox, obviously.
And I just have to laugh.
I clipped an article out of the paper a while back.
A woman, a scientist, was going up.
This is before 9-11, when such things seemed scary but kind of charming.
She was going up to the Arctic Circle to dig up a couple of victims of the 1918 flu epidemic.
Oh yes, I read that story.
I was horrified, Art.
I thought, what the heck are you doing?
The 1918 flu epidemic could have been a hemorrhagic fever.
Stories that have come from that made it seem, the historical record makes it seem as though that was no flu.
It killed people way too rapidly and killed them dreadfully.
I too thought, what the hell are you doing up there?
Why are we doing this?
Well, they will get perfectly preserved samples of this mass killing stuff.
Of course, ostensibly to take it back and figure out some sort of, I guess, inoculation against it.
That would be the, you know, blue side, wouldn't it?
I guess so, or to find out whether or not, what kind of sickness it really was.
You know, sometimes scientific investigation can go a little too far.
I just didn't think she needed to do that.
And luckily, it turned out that the bodies were decomposed and they could not get.
Good.
I know.
Yeah, but Captain Trips all the way, right?
Exactly.
A very Stephen King sort of scenario.
The first hour of King's The Stand, of course, was... That stood the hair up on the back of my neck.
Those first scenes from The Stand.
Do you recall that?
Yes, I do.
And the way that our country and our world is networked together with travel.
Really makes that a potential reality.
If something gets loose, it could go everywhere.
Well, if the Russians are working on these things, or were, and the Chinese are, and I think they probably are as opposed to were, don't we have to be vigilant?
Well, no, I didn't say vigilant.
If other people are working on these things, then don't we, in a way, have to work on them?
We might not say we're working on them.
We might say we're working defensively, but there are offensive aspects to this kind of work as well, right?
I think so.
That's one of the places I didn't get into, Art.
I applied for a job at the United States Army Air Medical Research Center.
And I didn't get in there.
Darn it.
I ended up flying helicopters instead, or flying in helicopters, which was a lot of fun, doing helicopter crash investigation.
But, um, but I tried to get in there because I thought, now, what are they doing?
Right.
Now, is it good?
Is it bad?
Well, I mean, they have to be actively coming up with defenses if they know Russia or whoever is working on these things, and in that effort to get a defensive against it, you have to be able to create it, which means you have to have it.
Hold on, Bonnie, we're already at the top of the hour.
My guest is Bonnie Rantham.
She was a war gamer for the Department of Defense.
We will be right back.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from April 1st, 2002.
Oh so young you don't have to go Oh so young you don't have to go
Oh so young all the tears I cry Oh so young all the tears I cry
Oh so young all the tears I cry Oh so young all the tears I cry
Thanks for watching!
Some velvet morning when I'm straight I'm gonna open up your gate
And maybe tell you about Phaedra And how she gave me life
And how she made it in Some velvet morning when I'm straight
Flowers growing on a hill Dragonflies and daffodils
Learn from us very much Look at us but do not touch
Phaedra is my name Some velvet morning when I'm straight
I'm gonna open up your...
Phaedra was a very unlucky Greek goddess.
And maybe tell you about Phaedra and how she gave me life.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time, on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM, from April 1st, 2002.
Phaedra was a very unlucky Greek goddess. I wonder if our name is Phaedra.
Good morning, everybody.
My guest is a very serious person, Bonnie Ramthon, who was a war gamer for the Department of Defense.
it's pretty interesting conversation if you have the stomach for it
back now to my guest, Bonnie Ramtham who was a wargamer for the department
of defense So, anyway, wrapping up with what we were talking about with regard to germs,
You know, Bonnie, even though you can't answer directly because you didn't get in, it wouldn't seem to me that we could afford to have a germ gap, as it were.
Yeah, but not in offensive weapons.
Is that my optimism?
What is that?
I know that our response to a weapon of mass destruction is the one weapon of mass destruction that we acknowledge, which is nuclear weapons.
If they release smallpox, We do not have a game plan where we release a super smallpox against them.
We nuke them.
Now that's not a very pleasant thing to think about either, but that's what our national policy is, and I prefer that.
In a war scenario of that sort, let's say we got attacked biologically.
It was something awful, Ebola-like, whatever.
Right.
And we responded, let's say it was Iraq, and we responded with nuclear weapons.
What would be the consequences of that, do you imagine, in the games you play?
In other words, how many dead would there be in Iraq?
How much territory would be unlivable for how long?
That sort of thing.
Would others likely get involved, or would they stand back on the sidelines saying, we don't want a piece of that action?
Thank you very much.
We don't want a piece of that.
What the point of nuking back is not revenge.
That's not the whole idea.
The whole idea of launching a nuclear assault, shall we say, is to remove the possibility of them hurting us again.
So, you don't nuke to kill people, you nuke their facilities.
Our nuclear response against, let's say, Russia, even during the big bad days, was not to target their cities, their population centers, but to target their missile fields, to target their military facilities.
Well, I remember the Russians saying they had every town and city over 50,000 targeted?
Yep.
Yes, they did.
Kind of a different policy?
It was a different policy, and that was their whole mutual assured destruction stance.
Lots of people think that we had a mutual assured destruction pact with Russia.
It was like, nobody's going to nuke, you're not going to nuke us, because we've got our nukes aimed at your women and children, so don't fire at our women and children.
That's mutual assured destruction, and that's just so morally bankrupt I can't even I can't even imagine anybody subscribing to that theory.
Well, but a lot of people say that the MAD scenario is what prevented nuclear war through all the bad times.
I personally don't agree with that.
You don't?
No, because we really didn't have a mutual assured destruction.
They did.
They targeted our civilian centers, because that's their political system.
And you're saying we didn't target Moscow?
Oh, we target in Moscow, but Moscow is a military target.
And yes, there are civilians living there.
But we didn't target... Stalingrad?
Yeah, like the equivalent of a Los Angeles.
The city centers... St.
Petersburg.
That's Stalingrad, right?
Yeah, it is now.
Where, by the way, I must say, a lot of Russian... I've been there.
There's a great deal of Russian treasure there.
As well as, of course, inside...
of the Kremlin.
I was inside the Kremlin.
Have you been there?
No.
I was not allowed to go there.
They had lunch for me at the Kremlin.
It was great.
And they've got a lot of jewels and a lot of treasure both in Moscow and what used to be Stalingrad now.
So we wouldn't hit secondary targets of that sort then.
That's the idea.
And I watched it happen.
uh... in a military war gaming and to the post reality uh... you know i watched where blue launched and where they
landed that that dot com that is
very precise limited strike that would remove their capability of launching
more nuclear weapons on the other hand
what you really want to do it prevent them Yes.
from getting their nukes into this country and then send, you know, send in the Marines.
Let's send conventional forces over.
We don't need to nuke Baghdad.
We can take Baghdad with conventional forces.
What we do need to prevent if they release smallpox on the world, let's say, is we need
to prevent them releasing a secondary, let's say, Ebola or, you know, a flu like in the
So you believe that one major attack would be, in the minds of our president and the allies, justification for a nuclear response?
That's what they say.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
And I played war games where we did, and I played war games where we didn't.
And how did they turn out?
In those situations, we always won.
We always won.
We kept it from cascading.
And you know exactly what I mean by cascading.
Cascading is where India decides, hey, you know, they're not looking.
I'm going to use Pakistan.
Let's get Pakistan and the problem.
How much of that went on, that cascading effect, during those games?
Yes, we played several games where we had a cascade.
Where India and Pakistan are busy throwing nukes at each other, and China gets into it, and then China decides to launch towards us because they think we're coming in.
You know, one of those horrible situations where everyone's trying to settle things down, and it's a mob situation.
Everything gets worse and worse.
We did play those games, but I don't know.
Well, how did they come out, Bonnie?
Once the Soviet Union went down, now China does not have the same capabilities that the old Russia did.
Russia bankrupted itself building nuclear bombs.
They do not have the capability to destroy the whole Earth.
We're looking at a pre-Depression situation in this country where we possibly could have two or three different people declaring themselves President just because You know, you would lose Washington, D.C.
You would lose New York.
The major city centers would be uninhabitable.
And people would basically be alive.
There would be no nuclear winter.
It would not be a situation where you couldn't grow crops.
But it would be a situation where you wouldn't have a big federal government.
Well, looking back at what just occurred on 9-11, and what that did to the probably already to some degree in trouble economy, And the scale you're talking about would be... Oh, it's the worst, Art.
You'd still have to pay your mortgage, but your 401K would be gone.
I mean, what worse situation?
You still have all your debts to pay, but the stock market's been nuked.
It's not a good situation.
On the other hand, I remember playing a practice war game, and there was an attack, what we call a decapitation attack, where they're trying to take out Washington, D.C.
And, um, all the bombs going towards Washington, D.C.
This was a practice.
All the bombs going towards Washington, D.C.
were not getting shot at.
They were all friendly.
They were blue-colored.
And I'm just going around trying to figure out what's going on.
Finally, I, you know, get on the intercom and I said, I think we got a bug in the system.
Everything going towards Washington's blue.
And somebody gets on, this guy down the road, down the, you know, three or four doors down, gets on the intercom and says, oh, that's just me.
I kind of figured if we took out Washington, things might be better.
Ha!
So there was a little bit of humor, at least every now and then.
Every now and then there's a little bit of humor.
We didn't have a bug in the system.
We just had somebody who thought maybe Washington would be better not around.
Did people get caught doing these things, pranks?
Probably wouldn't be thought of real well, would it?
Heavens no.
That certainly wouldn't be popular with people in Washington.
We would play these pranks, in a sense, to have fun with each other, because it was a very high-stress job and, like I said, nightmares occasionally.
But on the other hand, you want to test out the system.
You want to say, does this work under any wild scenario that I can come up with?
What if Australia gets the bomb?
England tried to take us back to the colony.
What if the aliens come and we have to... Oh, you know, I was going to ask you that.
Whether any scenarios had been played in which the adversary was non-human.
Yeah.
Actually... The answer is yeah?
Our practice games we played, non-human adversaries.
There were games that I didn't play.
Even at my level of clearance.
Oh?
Yeah.
Did that just drive me crazy or what?
I'm sure it did drive you crazy, because at that point you had the book swimming in your mind, and you thought, big time chapter here.
Yes, what are they doing in there?
How come I can't go in there?
This was a level you couldn't get to?
This was a level of game that I was not allowed to play.
I do know, though, that our system was built to play a non-human enemy.
And a good thing too, don't you think?
Are you folks listening to this?
And so then of course you can't comment on how those particular scenarios played out because you weren't part of them.
If I could have turned myself, well actually a fly couldn't possibly get into the area where the war games were.
But if I could have, I would have.
Just to even know that's going on is pretty interesting.
That's why I was there.
To even know that's going on.
We're making up scenarios against non-human adversaries.
Oh my, my, my, my.
Now, you know, that would be considered not something that I would imagine our government would do unless they knew something we don't.
Yeah, I read Is that logical or not?
I think that's absolutely logical.
In fact, my second book, Earthquake Games, is kind of the opposite take on Ground Zero.
In Ground Zero, my characters worked on a government project that does great good, which is missile defense war gaming.
It's an incredibly good thing to shoot down nuclear missiles.
But I could also see how a government project could do evil.
Because I knew that my project was in this area that nobody could get in except those of us with this particular sort of clearance.
There were buildings on the base in which I worked that I couldn't get into.
And Art, believe me, I tried.
You tried?
I took my hacky sack.
I took my lunch bag.
Oh, I was just looking for a place to practice hacky sack.
Did you really?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Well, in places where they do retina scans to let you in, they're probably not humored by that, huh?
They were not amused.
But then I was, you know, I was I was in the club, so to speak.
I made it through the retina scan, so they knew I wasn't a bad guy.
But no, you cannot come in here and play hacky sack.
You know, I'd be in the foyer of the building looking around, you know, thinking, hmm, what's going on here?
And some big guy would come up and start talking to me, and pretty soon they'd elbow me out of the building.
And I mean, it was a game, and it was part of my writing.
But it was also because I had started to read extensively about government projects and what they could do.
And I realized that, yes, there are government projects that could do things that no one else would know about.
And then I had read that we were using UFO technology and missile defense wargaming, you know, the whole Star Wars thing.
We were using UFO technology.
Well, there were no aliens in my cubicle in my area.
But I saw the potential for Keeping those sorts of secrets in other areas.
So I kind of used that in Earthquake Games to come up with a project.
Do you think it's okay that you have even revealed this tonight?
I mean, that they were gaming this?
Mm-hmm.
Because, see, I have told you we practiced that.
I have not told you that they played that scenario.
Although I suspect it is true, because that was held at a level beyond my own.
It's very tantalizing.
Well, yeah, but the fact that it was at a level beyond your own, and you're at a nuclear war level, Uh, a level beyond.
Boy, what that suggests, Bonnie, gosh.
Gosh!
But what, yeah, but who knows?
You know, nothing I ever saw.
Yeah, I know, but again, because it was at a level beyond yours, and I can imagine yours had to be way up there.
Yeah, I programmed a silly chess board.
What kind of moves were they making on that chess board that they wouldn't let me see?
Oh, it was so irritating.
By tantalizing.
For how long did you enjoy that work before it began to get you?
I was a war gamer for about seven years.
Seven years?
Yeah.
That's a long time.
It's a long time in a windowless building, let me tell you.
That's right, windowless.
Were you above ground?
Above ground, in a building that was just the most amazing thing.
You know, I talked earlier about how The War Game Center in which I worked was submarine-style doors.
Yes.
And I used to go into the building while it was being built because I had my hacky sack in my lunch bag.
I just wanted to see what was going on.
The core of the building was, it looked like something right out of Aliens, where she goes down and fights the mother alien.
Are you kidding?
No, of course it was built to withstand A nuclear attack.
I see.
At a distance.
You know, obviously it couldn't take a direct hit.
But it was built in a sturdy fashion.
In other words, they thought you would have to, after a nuclear attack, you would have to keep playing games?
I'm not sure what they thought.
I'm wondering about the reasoning for that.
Sometimes the reasoning escapes me, too, really.
But the core of the building, you know, where a lot of the equipment was run up and down, was a series of catwalks and girders and the most amazing It was beautiful.
It would be beautiful in an artwork.
But the other thing that they did in the Council, where we played war games, essentially put an electronic web around it.
And I wonder sometimes if they weren't trying to interrupt remote viewing.
Do you?
Yeah, I do.
As you know, there was a 20-year U.S.
government remote viewing project.
And they know damn well the Russians and the Chinese are both still actively engaged in that.
And so you think that might have been, or you're just sort of speculating here?
It's a speculation, yes.
I don't have no, you know, I didn't get told by any of the engineer guys that's what they were doing.
But I've looked as it was being built.
I was in there with my lunch bag, poking around, and they had electronic wiring throughout the girders.
Around the area where the War Game Center was being built.
And of course there was the submarine-style doors.
Now these, I mean, what in the heck was the point of submarine-style doors?
I'm trying to figure that out myself.
They were contrasting copper metal plates that meshed with each other as the door opened and closed.
Oh, you're kidding.
No.
No, you're obviously not kidding.
Yeah.
Big heavy doors, contrasting copper plates.
And of course, then I read a little bit about remote viewing because I thought, now this is more than trying to intercept electronic surveillance.
Obviously a satellite's not going to be able to see into this building.
There's no windows.
And there was no way you could park a truck and aim a dish anywhere nearer than half a mile away.
Good point.
So what were they doing?
So then what were they protecting against?
Yeah, interesting stuff.
And I know that remote viewing was successful.
The Russians did quite a good job with it.
That's right.
Of all the people that I've interviewed that are on the edge, the remote viewers have long since convinced me.
I've interviewed every one of the ones, the major ones, in the project.
Every single one of them.
And I've long since been a believer in that.
Bonnie, hold on.
We're at the bottom of the hour.
Bonnie?
Ramthon is my guest.
Her books, Earthquake Games and Ground Zero.
I've got to read both.
I'm going to get both.
I guarantee you.
She booked at the last minute.
Didn't get a chance to get them first.
But I'm going to get hold of them.
You're listening to ArcBell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from April 1st, 2002.
In the heat of a summer night In the land of the dollar bill When the town of Chicago died And they talk about it still When a man named Al Capone Tried to make that town his own And he called his gang to war With the forces of the law I heard my mama cry I heard her pray the night Chicago died
Brother, what a night it really was.
Brother, what a fight it really was.
Go, go, ride by the wind.
I gave you love, I thought that we had made it to the top I gave you all I had to give, why did it have to stop?
you You've blown it all sky high
By telling me a lie Without a reason why
You've blown it all sky high You've blown it all sky high
Our love had wings to fly We could have touched the sky
You've blown it all sky high You've blown it all sky high
You've blown it all sky high Tonight's program originally aired April 1st, 2002.
In Bonnie's work, when the missiles and the streaks began to appear coming over the pole, you know, the big one, they called it the Hand of God.
I'm gonna have to think about that for a while.
Hand of God.
Maybe so, huh?
If you're like me with these kinds of books, these are two books I mean you're just gonna have to go for.
And I checked Amazon.com, five star all the way.
Earthquake Games, Ground Zero.
Both of the books, if you'll go to my website, artbell.com.
Yeah, the blue screen of death is now off there, folks.
If you'll go to artbell.com, under tonight's guest, there are going to be links to both of these books.
Extremely reasonable at Amazon.com, as always, and these are my kind of books.
Bonnie, I want to ask you about two contemporary things.
You know, we've been through the Cold War and the Partial Wars and all the rest of it, as far as the gaming is concerned.
There are two things going on in the world right now that demand my asking you about them.
One, of course, is the Middle East.
Now, biblically, I guess that's where Armageddon's going to occur, and if you watch the news lately, it seems like we're, you know, the fat lady's beginning to hum.
And I don't know how much more the Israelis are going to take.
I know that they have nuclear weapons buried in the desert.
I think that's pretty common knowledge.
And I think their backs are getting pretty far up against the wall.
How many scenarios did you run on the Middle East, Bonnie?
Many.
Many?
Yeah.
You know, what is it about the Earth over there?
It generated the world's greatest religions, but it just seems to also generate unending war.
That's right.
Many of the scenarios would begin in the Middle East.
And some of our cascading scenarios would start in the Middle East.
In the Middle East.
Yeah.
That's still not out of the question, is it?
Because, of course, if Israel became involved to the nuclear level, not out of the question, that would no doubt involve us in some way rather quickly.
And then you don't know about the Russians anymore, depending on what begins to happen to some of their friends.
And the Chinese, as well.
And the Chinese, so... There's somebody who's willing to kick them when they're down.
You would not want to be a country vulnerable around China, I would think.
Speaking of us or anyone else in the area... What do you think the United States would do if the Israelis used nuclear weapons?
I have no idea.
I know that in the scenarios that we ran, the nukes were not used by Israel.
But used by us.
By us?
Yeah.
Well, in fact, if you look at, for example, the Gulf War, somehow we kept Israel out of it.
I don't know how we did that.
I still don't know how we did that.
There must have been some fancy dancing going on because we kept them out of it.
And they were in buildings with gas masks.
I mean, it was that bad in Israel.
And we kept them, we kept their hand down and took care of it ourselves.
Right, in order to quiet the rest of the Arab world so that we could kick Saddam out of Kuwait.
Precisely so, but Israel is more and more up against it right now.
Yeah.
And it could turn from what it is right now into a full-fledged war.
It's like dry timber just waiting.
That is exactly the image I had.
They've got a big puff of cotton over there and everybody's striking matches.
When is it going to go up?
I'm not sure what would happen.
I think that the entire intent is to keep things from going nuclear.
It would be so easy to put a couple of nukes on Saddam Hussein's biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons facilities over there.
Or just get a good-sized nuke in the general area.
And if they say, oh, we didn't have anything there, say, well, look at that big crater.
Who knows?
I mean, that's an easy solution, isn't it?
We're not doing that.
What we're trying to do is come up with bombs, like the thermobaric.
Thermobaric, my new favorite bomb, that does not require nuclear weapons to destroy these facilities.
So we're really putting forth a great effort here to keep the nukes away, and for good reasons.
By the way, they're using these daisy cutters and thermobaric bombs in Afghanistan, and it may be completely unrelated, but there sure have been a lot of earthquakes over there lately.
Were you noticing that?
Believe me, the title of my second book is Earthquake Games, and isn't it interesting that there have been two earthquakes in Afghanistan since we went to war there?
Yes, I thought it was interesting.
Yeah, the premise of my book, Earthquake Games, is that The United States government has a Tesla machine, originally designed by Nikola Tesla, which generates a magnetic Earth-resonance pulse, which causes a fault line then to vibrate harmonically and sets off an earthquake.
Now, I originally got this idea because in 1994... Not really so wild, Bonnie.
Not so wild.
In 1994, there was an earthquake in Northridge, in California.
Right.
And I heard that all of the National Guard and police were on alert.
Prior to the earthquake?
Prior to the earthquake.
And that was my big gotcha.
I thought, oh my goodness, what if they didn't predict it, they caused it.
And then I read about, then it all falls into place from there, that in order to prevent major earthquakes like what happens in places like South America, or Turkey, or now Afghanistan, you create a smaller earthquake that bleeds that pressure off that fault, so you don't get the killer earthquake.
But of course, that kind of power in the hands of a secret government organization is very tempting.
To turn towards your own purposes.
Do you believe that kind of power exists?
I believe in the Tesla machine.
When I started... So do I. I mean, as we all know, they beat feet right in as soon as Tesla passed and took everything he had away.
Right.
And they still have it.
Under the War Powers Act, they still have it.
That's right.
I have this great scene in my book where they go into, and my CIA analyst, of course, who has the requisite clearances, It goes into this labyrinth world to find the Tesla files.
It was so fun to write as fiction because it's so close to reality.
They have all the Tesla files.
So my book came out, Earthquake Games, and while I was doing the first series of publicity on the hardback, there was another earthquake.
Yes.
And it was January 13, 2001, over Martin Luther King Day weekend.
Correct.
The January 17, 1994 earthquake was on Martin Luther King Day weekend.
And I was thinking, wow, you know, either nature has an affinity for Martin Luther King Day or there's something to this.
It was a lot of fun to write the book, but the more I delved into it, the more I realized that it parallels reality almost too much.
Almost too much.
Right.
All right.
Let's try this one.
The buildings came down in New York.
The Pentagon was attacked by yet another plane.
And behind this, it is said, in quotes, is Osama Bin Laden.
What do you think you know about Osama Bin Laden?
And what should we, if you were wargaming the scenario, knowing what you know now about Osama's willingness and capability Uh, what kind of gaming would you be doing about this?
We actually gamed at this scenario.
Uh, excuse me?
Except with nuclear weapons and not with planes.
And believe me, while I was weeping with the rest of the world over what happened, I mean, I couldn't believe that we never thought of that.
And that we never gamed aircraft.
Of course, I also know that in 1985, was it during the Reagan administration, A airliner was shot down in the Persian Gulf.
It was an Iranian airliner.
That's correct.
That had some problem with their communication system and our aircraft carrier shot it out of the sky.
I think it was an Aegis-controlled system that shot it down.
That's what it is.
The Aegis system.
Aegis systems can shoot down missiles.
They can shoot down aircraft.
Kind of like one by my house, really.
You know, usually you wouldn't expect the Aegis system and those running it to make that kind of a mistake, would you?
No, you wouldn't.
On the other hand, you know, this was a major threat to an aircraft carrier.
It is the right and province of an aircraft carrier to kill things that are coming to kill it.
Yes.
They made a huge mistake.
They killed a lot of innocent people.
And so in response to this, there was an executive order signed.
Gosh, don't you love those executive orders?
Yeah.
That only a presidential directive could be, that a presidential directive had to be signed in order to shoot down an airliner.
Isn't that?
It was in effect on 9-11?
Yeah, it is no longer in effect.
Bush rescinded the order.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
So we gained 9-11.
It's called a decapitation attack.
And what you do, and they used airliners, which is quite unconventional of them, but brilliant.
They used airliners To essentially do what we've gained in a nuclear sense.
You take out Washington D.C., the capital of the White House, the Pentagon.
You take out the financial district of New York.
Right.
Then you take out several city centers, such as Atlanta, and what's the other one we always gain?
Of course, Colorado Springs, because that's got the NORAD and war gaming, missile defense, and Peterson Air Force Base, and the Air Force Academy.
So that's definitely ground zero.
And several other city centers, and then that's it.
How about Nellis Air Force Base?
Was that a zero?
No.
No?
You would think that Nevada would be a target, but that was not one of the... How about our test site in Area 51?
Right.
I would think that you'd try and cover the waterfront there in Nevada, but for some reason... It was never part of it.
Right.
It was not a decapitation attempt.
I believe the reasoning behind that was Basically, in Nevada, you had all of the pawns, not the major chess pieces.
You have to have the king and the queen on your chessboard in order to direct those pawns.
So why take out Nevada when they are pawns?
Now, this is a philosophy, the decapitation attempt is a philosophy that comes from people who believe that you have the ruling elite and then a bunch of peasants.
So once you knock off the ruler, like what happened in Afghanistan, Then everybody descends into tribes and they fight each other.
Which is not really what America is all about.
But that's the concept.
So what they did on 9-11 was they failed in a decapitation attempt.
They hit the World Trade Center first, which allowed the alert to go out.
They grounded the planes so the other terrorists on the planes were not able to complete their missions.
And then, of course, the airliner that crashed into the Pentagon Um, may have been aimed at the White House, may have been aimed at the Capitol.
And or the one that went down in Pennsylvania due to the heroic efforts of those passengers could have been headed for the White House.
Most definitely was headed either for the White House or the Capitol Building.
Sure.
Yeah.
And who would have been President if they had succeeded in their attempt and they had taken out the White House, the Capitol, the Pentagon?
I don't know because I don't know where Dick Cheney was at the time.
Right?
And if the President had been in the White House, they didn't know he wasn't.
But if he'd been at the White House, And they had taken out, basically, the first three or four in the command structure.
You might have two or three different people, like a guy in a bunker in Omaha, saying, I'm the president now.
You might have.
Now, do you remember, there was a very interesting sort of story that hasn't been reported on much since it occurred, but the president, of course, I believe was in Florida, got on a plane and went hop, skipping, and jumping All over the place in the strangest way during all of this, and there were reports of credible threats against Air Force One.
Do you remember all that?
I do.
I do.
And there was no... There was reason to believe, certainly I would have believed, that if they were doing an attack like that, that the secondary wave might have been a suitcase nuclear bomb.
So, you know, don't go back to Washington D.C., Mr. President, because there may not be one if we go back there.
So he forced them to go back to Washington D.C.
in the evening, basically to say, you know, to show that he was not a coward, you know, that he wasn't being hidden in some bunker somewhere.
Yes, but for a while some strange things went on, and later sort of denials and confirmations of it, then denials, and something weird happened there.
Right, and I've played war games where I've seen it's so interesting to watch what happens when you apply
pressure in unexpected ways
the people who are used to dealing with a b c and d and you throw them w right
then sometimes they they uh...
in if they don't really panic in a sense that you are i would panic because
these are trained military men and women who've been to the war
college and everything but what they'll do it they'll start throwing
intimate felt are trying different things trying to find a solution
you know that that getting a couple people and Okay, what about this?
Okay, what about this?
What about this?
And it's pretty frantic.
You know, I remember seeing a very... He was a Marine.
I love the Marines.
And he was just in a purple-faced rage because he was trying to save the Earth, and everything was going wrong.
And, you know, he couldn't get the proper commands out.
And I think something like that must have happened.
It was so unexpected.
So you think what we saw was a state of official confusion?
I don't know if confusion is the good word, or more of so many options.
Well, confusion as a result though isn't a bad word either.
Yeah, I guess not.
around a little bit you think what we saw was a state of official confusion
uh... confusion if the good word on more of uh...
uh... too many options well can only as a result of is the bad
wordy there yeah i guess i don't know right i think this word of speech
uh...
all right so also mobile on
have we do you believe that we have to be captivated uh...
okay to Or do you think that there is significant threat?
I mean, the government certainly seems to think there is continuing significant threat.
I do too.
You do?
I do.
I think there are terrorist cells in this country and our government.
I'm really a fan of our military.
I think our military is doing a really good job in Afghanistan.
As far as the government agencies in this country, I'm not real confident that they're doing a good job.
For example, the flight certificate approvals that were given to two of the dead terrorists by the INS.
Yes, yes.
When people say, oh, the FBI's on top of all those terrorist cells, oh really?
How about the ones that we know are already dead?
And they're giving approval for them to take flight lessons in this country.
That's not very encouraging.
I think that Al-Qaeda was supported by some state.
When you get a decapitation attempt, and that's really a point I wanted to make about talking about 9-11 in terms of a military strike, this was not a terrorist strike.
This was a classic military maneuver.
That does not sound to me Like, you know, some whack job in a cave somewhere.
And if you were guessing, would you be guessing Iraq, for example?
Yes, I would.
Although I'm not a big fan.
Well, the government obviously must be guessing Iraq as well, because all the signs are pointing toward... Well, when you start hearing about policy changes, and you start hearing about, you know, a trifecta of evil or whatever... Yeah, the axis of evil.
That was it, the axis of evil.
That means that we know something and we're beginning to shape public opinion for what's going to happen.
Oh, I think so.
Again, my favorite word of the week, thermobaric bomb.
They're not dropping that on Afghanistan just for fun.
They're taking it out.
And a good thing, too.
To me, really, the thing that scares me most in the world is contemplating something like that loose in the world and raging.
A biological attack is really scary.
And in order to stop someone like Saddam from using that, because he will, if he gets a chance, he will use it.
No doubt about that, right?
Yeah, I don't think any doubt about it.
Based on what he's already done, if he has the ability to do this, from our point of view, he's absolutely crazy enough to do it.
Right, and look what he did to Kuwait.
He has proven that he is not of the 21st century.
He believes that he can impose his will on other countries.
He gassed the Kurds.
He sent doctors in to take notes on how far away from the gas canisters the bodies lay.
He's doing scientific experiments to see how efficiently he can kill.
And I think that there's a good policy to go in and take him out.
I'm not real happy about it.
And you know what I'm really frightened about?
Is not our military guys in the Persian Gulf going after Saddam?
Because these are guys that are well-trained.
They've got good equipment.
A lot of them have been in this part of the country before.
They know the terrain.
What I'm nervous about is here in this country.
What do you mean?
We're targets.
We are targets of their terrorist cells.
So no, the Iraqi Republican Guard is not going to be able to withstand our Marines.
No, no, no.
Of course not.
But they believe in fighting war in a different way.
Uh, they've already proven that.
They certainly have.
Hold on, Bonnie, we're at the top of the hour.
We will open phone shortly.
I'm Art Bell.
Bonnie Ramthon, who was a wargamer for the Department of Defense, is my guest.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from April 1st, 2002.
You don't come easy.
You know you don't come easy.
And all of the colors are black.
It's not that the colors aren't there.
It's just imagination they lack.
I have to shout all these goodbyes you can't even blame me When all of the colors are black
It's not that the colors aren't there It's just imagination
Me like, everything's the same back In my little town, I don't have a house
Nothing but the dead and I back in my little town you
Nothing but the dead and dying back in my little town In my little town
I never meant nothing, I was just my father's son Saving my money
Dreaming of glory Twitching like a finger on a dream
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time, on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM, from April 1st, 2002.
Good morning everybody, Bonnie Rampton, who is a war gamer for the Department of Defense.
Ours, the big games, is my guest.
Headlines so far, She admitted to us here that at levels above her security clearance, they war-gamed against non-human enemies.
I repeat, she told us they war-gamed against non-human enemies at a level she couldn't even get to with her security clearance.
Think about it.
And here's Bonnie Ratham.
Bonnie, again, with Saddam, you really expect that within, say, a year, within six months, thermobaric bombs are going to be going off over there?
Hopefully, yes.
Hopefully, yes.
Yeah, I really do.
Unless some miracle occurs and somebody gets a nice He slips in the shower.
Slips in the shower.
Yeah, well, we've been hoping for that for a long time.
Now, I understand why they did not go in and finish the job during the Gulf War.
Because they wanted to keep Saddam down, but not out.
They were almost worried about who might come after Saddam.
And they were worried about Iran coming in.
And, you know, they had a lot of reasons, geopolitical reasons, for not finishing the job, I guess.
But in retrospect, We really should have gone in there and finished, eh?
I think so.
But again, I'm not aware of all the different reasons that they chose not to do so.
And I don't know if we are going to go in again and take care of the job this time.
I have hopes.
I have suppositions based on playing enough games to know that when you get a bad guy of this magnitude, you don't wait for him to knock more pieces off your side of the board.
You have to strike at him.
But that doesn't mean that we're going to do so.
I hope we do.
I think that there's a lot of people who have fears of what will happen if we do.
I'm one of them.
Alright, a lot of people want to talk to you, which is not a surprise to me, so let us begin.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Bonnie Rantham.
Hi.
Hi Bonnie, how are you?
Hi, I'm fine.
My question, and actually I've got to comment first, This nuclear war thing just scares the bejesus out of me.
I got a 13 year old son and I'm five months pregnant right now and to think what our kids are growing up in or are going to grow up in just scares me to death.
My question though is you had said something about going through the retinal scan.
Uh-huh.
You had said also that you could carry a lunchbox.
Was there any special Kind of clothing you could wear, anything that you could or could not take into the room with you?
Uh-huh.
No, actually, it was funny because when they would go through our bags, occasionally they would do random checks and go through our bags.
At the time, I was a nursing mom, and boy did they have a difficult time with my breast pump!
And the support guards were so, you know, embarrassed.
And I said, I'm sorry guys, but this is just what I have to do.
So yeah, we would get our bags searched and occasionally they would come up with something interesting like that.
Secret Tesla technology.
Super secret.
Mother technology.
And the other thing too is I think our children are growing up in a much more safer world.
And we did.
Do you really?
I do!
I mean, I wonder about that.
You know, the old MAD scenario, which you don't believe in, I sort of always did.
I thought, gee, that's what kept nuclear war away, was the fact that we would destroy, you know, it's suicidal.
It exactly is right, and I'm not saying that I didn't believe in it.
Yeah, but that world is essentially crumbled right now, Bonnie, and what we're left with is, for example, the Palestinians are now blowing themselves up on a regular basis.
Six days now, six of them or whatever it is, it's been every single day.
Now what if other groups begin to adopt that kind of strategy?
And the reason I say that is because it is either hard or even impossible to stop anyone willing to give their life to take yours.
Yes, that's true.
But it is a terrible thing that is going on right now.
But in the macro sense, in the earth-wide sense, You're not destroying, let's say, the very last wild tiger, because India and Pakistan nuke each other.
You're not destroying habitat that people can live in.
You're destroying people, and you're creating war.
But no more war than was waged in World War II or World War I, or when the Romans took on the Brits in Gladiator.
This is battle of a kind that does not have the potential to destroy this Earth.
That's more of a comfort.
I think that the chances of planet-wide destruction are less now than they have ever been, and that's a good thing.
Yes, but destruction still on a massive level is obviously not only possible, but just occurred, so... Yes, most definitely.
Okay.
Onward.
Wild Card Line, you are on the air with Bonnie Runtham.
Hi.
Hi, how are you doing?
Hi, Bonnie.
It's Bob from Los Angeles.
Hi, Bob.
I'm just wondering, quick thing, I've worked in defense a little bit with some weird categories.
I was wondering, have you ever met some guys, they call them CIA, but they're real tall individuals, men, they look very healthy and good looking.
Have you ever met these individuals?
I had some CIA guys brief me occasionally, me and the members of my team.
Really?
Oh yeah, we had the CIA in there.
And I would love to think of the CIA as being tall, good looking guys, but they were real I'm sorry.
That's just the word I have to use for them.
I didn't like them.
They were arrogant.
They had this attitude that they knew everything.
I just didn't like those guys at all.
But they were neither tall, good looking, nor particularly intelligent.
all came in and they open it up and they communicated they got faith to faith
with each other and they whispered to each other and you guys do that
that that they think that not that it happened
i think it is a big organization and i'm happy time that so uh... you would characterize
them as arrogant booms hurricane food
uh...
the students now that you do only have a very small sampling of cia
interaction or were you able to observe uh... a disproportionate
My statistical sampling of boobs was very small.
Very small?
Hopefully there was a large cadre of very smart, intelligent, good-looking guys and ladies out there, but I never met them.
At least intelligent.
That's right.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Bonnie Rantham.
Hi.
Hello?
This is Doug.
I'm in Tennessee.
Hey, Doug.
And my question for Bonnie is, in your expert opinion, is Oak Ridge, are they doing anything that still makes them a viable target?
I don't believe so.
Although in a large-scale attack, yes, Oak Ridge would definitely take a hit.
But we don't really see those kind of large-scale attacks happening anymore.
You would see more of the major sites.
Again, as in Nevada, you don't knock over the ponds, you just try and take out the major chess pieces.
Very, very relieving for you and I, sir.
Yes, thank you.
Not so relieving for the financial centers like New York, the political capital, Washington, of course.
These are still viable targets even in today's environment, yes?
Most definitely.
And places like Los Angeles and San Francisco, who are essentially representative of the goodness of our country and the tolerance and what these Islamofascists consider to be the decadence of our country.
Particularly egregious areas.
Right, for them.
And yet they still went for the eastern targets.
Yes.
Because Los Angeles would be a second tier hit, a cosmetic hit, a hit against America's spirit.
What they were trying to do, I believe, was a military hit, which was decapitation.
We always have these great terms in board games.
And so really the hope of decapitation is That again, that so much confusion reigns, that as you pointed out, you get people in bunkers, in mountains, declaring themselves president, that sort of thing.
Right.
And look at what happened to Afghanistan.
That's not out of, it's not unreasonable that it could be that bad here?
I don't believe so, that it could be that bad here.
But I'm an optimist.
I can hear that.
I'm more of an optimist than some.
You wouldn't think that kind of work would turn you into an optimist.
Quite to the contrary, you would think it would... I don't know, I would think you'd get... What's the right word?
What am I searching for?
I think you would get... Jaded or cynical?
Cynical, really cynical, yes.
Or pessimistic about the world's chances.
Absolutely.
Instead, I really felt like I was going to the phone booth and putting on my Superman costume.
I mean, by a percentage, Bonnie, how many of these war games that you played out, these real serious ones, ended up in peace and love and roses?
If you think of it as a bell curve, or a stock market curve, you start out losing most of your games, and then you start winning.
And then you plateau out.
Only the most serious situations descend into really nuclear strikes, succeeding in landing and killing people.
Most of the scenarios that we played, once we got our... I'm trying to think of a phrase that is not scatological in reference.
Once we got our manure in a group, we started winning these battles without a nuclear weapon hitting the ground.
And that includes our own.
So, yeah, it was pretty optimistic after a while.
And, you know, the occasional scenario would be run where that wouldn't happen.
I was going to ask, are there ways that we could win with first use of a nuclear weapon in a situation like, for example, Iraq?
Suppose we didn't have the thermobaric bomb, or suppose it's not considered an appropriate response to something that might yet occur.
There would be certain political pressure to use the ultimate weapon, to use nuclear weapons, wouldn't there?
You mean us using the bomb first?
Yeah, sure.
I mean, for example, if we were attacked biologically, not beyond reason at all, in fact, they seem to be expecting it to... Wouldn't there be an awful lot of political pressure not to just detonate some sort of fuel-air bomb, but to detonate the real McCoy?
Yeah, I think there would be.
And in fact, although we never played a war game where we struck first, in the military sense, in our practice war games, we'd go psycho all the time.
And the wars would start on luncheon first!
Really?
Yeah, you always win those wars.
But who wants to be the first one?
You know, in fact, that's the way to win a war.
Yeah, but you said you always win those wars.
So the first strike...
I don't know.
I've heard different rumors that we have sworn off first strike.
Yes.
And then I hear that we haven't sworn off first strike.
It is, I don't really know.
We've sworn off first strike as an offensive weapon.
What we have not sworn off is striking in a nuclear sense against a weapon of mass destruction, which is biological or chemical.
So if they hit us with a big chemical weapon... It would be a first nuclear strike.
Then, right, it would be, our response perhaps might be nuclear, but that would not be considered a first strike.
Ooh, that gets into all the little politics of words, meanings of words.
In the scenarios that you run in those cases, when you gain that, how many times, or what percentage of the time, or on your bell curve, does it get out of control, or what percentage do we win?
With first strike?
Yes, ma'am.
We never played first strike with the military, only the practice sessions.
And that's very important because it's very well known that we do not have in our options first strike nuclear weapons.
In other words, I would like to know if we're attacked biologically and we do first strike with nuclear weapons, say at Iraq, what kind of result there would be or might be?
Well, bad for the people in Baghdad, let's put it that way, good for us in the sense that it does not cascade in a situation like that.
When you're dealing with a rogue state, China looks the other way, Russia looks the other way.
Even though there's been support from both those countries?
Right, towards Iraq, yeah.
The cascading doesn't happen in the case where you've got some kind of biological weapon loose on the earth.
China doesn't want that and Russia doesn't want that any more than we do.
Alright, Bonnie, even though Russia is now what it is and that's something different than when it was the Soviet Union, they are now watching us build Uh, generation of space-based defense weapons.
And ground-based.
And ground-based.
And there's certainly a line of thinking that your weapons are about to be made, your situation is going to be made academic and moot because Because you can't hit this other country with these weapons, so there comes a sort of a strange point where you have to make a decision to either use them or lose them.
Oh, interesting point.
Yes.
And one that I would imagine you've gained?
That other countries have a missile defense system as well.
That's, gosh, that's... Now, I thought... But what if you have a country that can't afford it, like Russia can't afford it?
Really?
Yeah, and that's the point where, you know, do you trust your government or not?
Do you trust your government to have the ultimate weapon and a missile defense system and therefore to be able to say, you know, I don't know, all the beautiful Russian women, come over here or we're going to nuke you.
You would hope that our government wouldn't do that so far in our history.
We haven't.
We're not, we had our time of empire.
Where we went out and conquered territory.
But still, if we build this, there is going to come that interesting moment where the Russians, which still, after all, do pay attention to things, are going to say, look, if this goes any further at all, our weapons are useless.
We either use them now, or... Well, who's to say it isn't already built, Art?
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Bonnie Ramthon.
Hi.
I have a brief comment and a question and then a comment if I don't run too long.
I have been basically pointed at the future my entire lifetime in my late 40s now, ever since I was the Geiger counter monitor in the 6th grade.
in Southern California when we were doing these pathetic duck and cover exercises under our desks.
Oh yes, I did that.
And I had to find a small, you know, needle head of radium salts with a Geiger counter just to see if we could do it.
And I was raised in a Christian household and so I was raised on nuclear war and apocalypse.
My whole teens.
And everything I have heard tonight seems like absolute kids play.
How so, sir?
Everything in her seems absolutely like sandbox stuff.
How so?
That leads to my question.
Maybe I'll get the comment after that.
Maybe.
What is your assessment, Bonnie, of the White Plague Scenario?
White Plague?
Is that Frank Herbert's book?
Right.
Regarding making women sterile?
Is that the... Well, the concept that a rogue A genius-level molecular biologist could change the face of humanity alone.
Don't we always teeter on the edge of disaster?
There have been many disasters of many kinds that have flipped the world.
That's one of them.
Again, I'm an optimist.
I think that we face these things as they come.
The White Plague scenario is saying that one rogue scientist would do what?
Bonnie.
Oh, okay.
It's, um, and I haven't read the book, actually.
It's, um, that he creates some sort of plague that makes all women sterile.
All women.
So, therefore, that's the end of the human race.
That would be the end of the human race, wouldn't it?
Yeah.
Okay.
Bonnie, hold on.
Lots more people out there for you.
He didn't get to the comment, but it was an interesting question.
All human women sterile.
That would do it in a generation or so, eh?
You're listening to ArcBell, somewhere in time, on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM, from April 1st, 2002.
["Close My Eyes"]
So I'll set a book of believing, believing Tell me, tell me
Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies Tell me lies, tell me lies
["Tell Me Lies"]
Oh no, no, you can't disguise You can't disguise
All of times have come Here but now they're gone
Seasons don't feel the same But I'm still here
I'm still here I'm still here
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from April 1st, 2002.
Anybody out there remember the stand, Stephen King's stand in the televised version?
In the first hour, in the first part of the first hour, they played this song when it got loose.
I'll never forget it.
I stood the hair on the back of my neck right up and I've been playing it ever since and it seemed just right for
tonight.
Once again, Bonnie Rampton who is a war gamer for the Department of Defense.
Strange job.
Really strange job.
Bonnie, you have many times made an analogy between chess and wargaming.
Yes.
Do you play chess?
I used to.
I kind of gave up on it.
My life's been a little busy.
Why do you think that most chess players are men?
Well, Men are hardwired to be better at spatial relationships, just as women are hardwired in other ways to be good at other things.
They're just better at it.
We certainly had female war gamers and we had military people who played war games.
And did the female players play in a different way?
Yeah, most definitely.
Really?
Yeah.
Although, you know, they weren't saying, oh, you know, we must save the children.
They were quite willing to fight the battle, but women have different ways of looking at things, and that's why it's good to have both women and men fighting a battle.
Although I'm not a big believer of having them on the battlefield carrying guns, for example, because it's sort of a physical strength requirement out there in the field, but as far as the mental capabilities go, You need that dichotomy.
You need both men and women looking at the same problem together.
That's what parenting is all about.
So then would you or would you not be comfortable with a woman president in charge of the football?
Ah, what an interesting question that is.
I try.
As long as it was me.
That's an interesting evasion of an answer.
It would depend on the woman.
Really, I wouldn't mind if Margaret Thatcher was reincarnated as a younger woman and became the president.
She was resilient and strong and moral and all those things, but there are women I would not care to see with the football.
Anyway.
All right.
Well, to the Rockies, you're on the air with Bonnie.
Hello.
Good evening.
I had a question for you and your guest.
Yes.
March 9th, on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle, there was a article on polio vaccinations were given between 1955 and 1963.
Yeah, I took one of those.
Okay, all right.
Oh, I'm so sorry, man.
I understand they do understand and know where the territories are, but the potential, if you look at the article and give it any veracity, and they're pretty good, you know, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and University of Texas said that 42 to 43 percent of up to 30 million people Well, let me convert that unhappy little scenario to a question.
potentially have uh... non-hodgkin's lymphoma now that's that's about twelve
point nine million people potentially if that doesn't play into the same scenario
from just possibly our own blunder
i don't know what else i wanted to hear it guess was all right well let me
convert that uh... unhappy little scenario too to a question uh... bonnie uh...
when you play war games usually you're dealing with X.
Right.
Did you ever game unintentional accidents?
Yeah.
Release of this or that, or you know, kind of what the man was talking about.
Yes, actually one of the most interesting war games we played was one where some eco-terrorists took over a missile silo and launched, hoping to launch at Washington D.C., but the twist, which I thought was really amusing, was that the missile was misfired and headed toward Seattle.
It was going to take out the grunge movement.
Not Seattle.
Usually, in most war games, I have been entirely depressed to see Las Vegas usually be the first target.
Yeah, in massive attacks, that's one target.
Seattle's always the target because of Boeing.
They love Boeing, yeah.
But this was a complete accident that was happening.
They were intending to launch at Washington D.C.
and ended up aiming That's right.
at Seattle and here's a missile that's targeted or not targeted by all of our
systems because it's a friendly and that's right you know we had to the
first time we played that Seattle was posed and then we figured out a way to
save Seattle well we figured out a way to say our missiles now are bad guys
let's shoot them down with our own missile defense system and in fact we
had a situation where the incoming attack was coming We had started to, you know, the blue guys had jumped the gun again, and were launching back.
We shot down all the missiles coming in, and then we turned right around and shot down all the missiles going out.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Oh, now that's, isn't that interesting?
Isn't that an interesting scenario?
Yeah, because, you know, once those missiles impacted in the country are outgoing, then they would turn around and launch everything they had left.
Gotcha.
So, we shot them down ourselves.
To stop it.
Yes, to stop the war.
You may remember a movie in which Moscow was destroyed, essentially by accident, and then New York was destroyed to prevent what otherwise would have occurred.
Right, it was a sacrifice play.
That's right.
I just hated that.
First Time Caller line, you're on the air with Bonnie Ramfenheimer.
I was listening to a senior fellow from the War College, John Pelletier, and he said we have to be very on guard against a massive disinformation and propaganda campaign building up for a pretext to attack Iraq.
And I'd like to mention a couple of standards here where the United States government is hoarding more weapons of mass destruction than the rest of the world combined.
It's used them and others to kill millions of people around the world from Hiroshima to Vietnam to Iraq.
It has made, is making now, terrorist nuclear threats against seven countries, it supports and has installed death squad regimes around the world, and it refuses to allow weapons inspectors into the United States ever.
Yeah, but it has killed hundreds of thousands of people.
But sir, aside from all that, we're pretty nice guys.
Well, yeah, if you consider killing hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq, that has done absolutely nothing to us, and yet we turn around and hypocritically say that.
Now, now, slow down, slow down.
Who's to say they've done nothing to us?
How do you know they weren't behind Osama Bin Laden's recent action?
Well, as a matter of fact... How do you know that?
As a matter of fact, they hate each other.
How does anyone who knows that they absolutely hate each other know that Osama Bin Laden has been involved in anti-Islam?
Well, whether or not they... I don't know whether they hate each other, but the fact of the matter is they have common goals.
That would be our eradication.
They're building weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as fast as they can.
They're underground.
We all know it.
I'm sorry, but I don't buy into that man's line of reasoning.
However... I'm not a disinformation plant or anything.
I don't get paid by the government.
I have trouble buying facts.
If I were disinformation, wouldn't I be getting lots of money?
I'm an independent citizen.
In fact, I worked as a wargamer with the idea in mind That I would face whatever I had to face if there was something evil going on.
I got those clearances and if they were going to show me something that was harmful to America, I was going to expose it.
So I'm on the side of the good guys here.
Some of what he says in some ways is true.
We are an aggressive country in a lot of ways.
We have been involved in a lot of wars.
I like to think on the good side.
But we indeed have been involved, and we are sort of a warrior-like people here in the U.S.
Would you agree with that?
Yeah, only in the sense that we're the biggest kid on the block, and everybody always tries to bloody our nose.
That's right.
And sometimes you just have to keep them from punching out.
Exactly.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Bonnie Rantham.
Hi.
Is that me?
That's you.
Well, just a quick observation.
Obviously, Monty is very articulate, probably with a genius level IQ, but I can't help but wonder, Monty, I wonder if you took it into consideration.
I mean, you had people like, of course, recently Robert Hanson in the counterintelligence FBI.
You had CIA mold.
You had John Walker.
Naval code clerker was actually in the chain of communications command for the National Command Authority between them and the Ohio-class boat.
I mean, as you look at all these things you talk about, we'd shoot their missiles down if they went for Los Angeles.
Ma'am, we don't have any extra capacity.
We shoot many incoming missiles down and you should well know it.
Alright, now hold it right there.
Now, we did another test the other day.
With a launch from Vandenberg, in which we did, in fact, successfully shoot down a missile that we fired, so we knew where it was coming from and all the rest of it, but we did.
Now, the statement he made, or the challenge he gave you, was that we have no defense whatsoever to stop a missile aimed, say, at Los Angeles.
True or false?
False.
Put a carrier in the bay and turn on the Aegis Missile Defense System.
Assuming that you know it's Coming, or that you can get a carrier in place fast enough after a launch, yes?
Right.
And if it was a submarine launching against Los Angeles, which the Chinese have threatened, there's not going to be much of a way to stop that in time, is there?
Unless we have ground-based interceptors.
And I don't know that we have ground-based interceptors.
But I don't know that we don't.
I've been out of the game here for a while.
I hope they've been working hard while I've been gone.
Yeah.
East of the Rockies.
East of the Rockies.
You're on the air with Bonnie.
Good morning.
Good morning, Art.
How are you?
I'm alright, sir.
Where are you?
I'm in Omaha.
Omaha.
Well, I'm assuming there might be another Ground Zero.
Would it be, Bonnie?
Well, it sure was once.
It sure was once.
I have a curiosity question.
I hope it won't be spilling the beans, but as far as protecting ourselves, did they consider our bodies of water upstream from dams as a potential critical site to protect?
I think they are protecting them right now.
Considering what goes, look at all what could be taken out from downstream to create a lot of havoc.
Right.
Poisoning the water supplies is a most definite terrorist threat.
The other thing, an interesting sidebar to that is when September 11th happened, my brother was coming to the mountains.
He was hunting and he came home and they had shut down one bore of the Eisenhower Tunnel with tanks.
Now where were those tanks?
I mean, I drive through the Eisenhower Tunnel occasionally.
I've never seen tanks, and they were there within hours of the attack.
That's kind of a good point.
Yeah, they closed down one bore so that if there was a terrorist bomb, then there would still be one tunnel that would survive.
I've traveled through that and it's quite a lengthy tunnel and it does, it takes a period of time to get through there so I mean it could definitely go ahead and trap a lot of vehicles if it wasn't protected too closely either.
Right, and really disrupt commerce.
Sure, absolutely.
Now the question is, how did they get the tanks there so quickly?
They got the tanks there so quickly because they'd already thought of it.
They'd deemed it already.
All right, one plug.
Yes.
The CC Radio Plus.
Sure.
I've only got two words.
Totally.
Complete.
I know.
It's a whale of a machine.
I know.
Have a good morning.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
It certainly is.
Welcome to the Rockies.
You're on the air with Bonnie Rampton.
Hi.
No, I didn't press button.
Now you're on the air, I think.
Hello.
Mark?
Yes.
Hey, this is Ron from Portland, Oregon.
Yes, Ron.
Hey, I and And people that I know are completely convinced that there is foreign troop activity in the United States.
Is there any kind of a confirmation on that or what?
Well, there's foreign troop training going on here.
I'm not aware of any invasion force, although the other thing that might be argued is that there are cells here that wish us ill will and may still be here.
And I think if you listen to the government and what they're saying, Bonnie, you may agree or disagree, but there are clearly indications they are still here waiting to do something.
Right, waiting for orders.
Yeah.
Hopefully being disrupted one by one, but we don't know that.
As far as foreign troop activities in this country, that's out of my area.
Uh-huh.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Bonnie Ramthon.
Hi.
Yes, hello, Art.
Hi.
And hello, Bonnie.
Hi.
I've sometimes read in the past the safest places to live, per se.
Short of global destruction, would you, Bonnie, have any clue through all the war games that you've played, where could possibly be one of the safest places to live?
Oh, that's a good question.
Safe places.
Short of all-out nuclear war, Bonnie, where would be the safest places?
That's a really good question.
In fact, the safest place in this country is pretty much anywhere.
Even in the area of a nuclear detonation, we're still looking at a situation where the people in the blast zone would die, but we have enough infrastructure to save people out of the blast zone.
So even if you were living in the outskirts of Washington, D.C., and they got off a nuke in the center Washington, D.C.
area, Many, many people would survive and would, in fact, you know, they may be at higher risk for cancer later in life.
But you're telling me about unsafe places.
Where would be a really safe place?
All things considered.
All things considered.
Guess what I'm saying is there's no place any safer than any other place.
I was joking the other day about, you know, just because they get a missile off that's aimed for Washington, D.C., doesn't mean it's going to land there.
It may land anywhere.
So there's really no safe place, but there's no unsafe place either.
Really, we're not talking about War Day or the Final Testament or whatever it was.
Testament.
No, that was a bad one.
That was really a bad one.
This is not the end of the world.
This is a war situation like World War II.
Where was it safest to be in Europe during World War II?
Well, you know.
Not very good to be in Auschwitz, but... The movie, I mentioned earlier that I've seen every movie in the genre, including Testament, and Testament, of course, was so bad, Bonnie, and I love watching these movies, Testament was so bad, that's one that I haven't gone back to re-watch.
That's how bad it was.
Yeah, I have to agree there.
Do you think that that scenario depicted in that movie is possible, or would have been possible, in an all-out?
Yes, it would have been possible in an all-out war, and maybe that's the reason I couldn't even watch it.
I could not finish that movie.
Oh, God, it was horrible.
It was.
It was terrible.
But that kind of situation is something that people are afraid of, because they were raised with this 70s diet of nuclear destruction, nuclear winter, nothing left on Earth but cockroaches.
That's right.
And we're not looking at that situation.
We're looking at a bad, dirty bomb that goes off and kills people, and then we recover and go on.
Alright, Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Bonnie Rantham.
Hi.
And I'm on a cell phone, I know you hate that.
Where are you?
I'm calling from, if it's okay, I'll just give a general area, the Omaha area.
Okay.
Because I'm also a police officer, so I've missed quite a few of your, quite a bit of the show tonight.
I see.
And that's why I don't want to say exactly where, in case one of my supervisors is listening.
Okay.
But, Bonnie, what if there is a Some sort of attack from Iraq, and we attack back, and you brought up that cascading effect.
What possibility do you see that cascading out of control if we do use these new thermo-type bombs?
I don't think that we would see a cascade effect in those situations.
You really see a cascading effect where you're going into countries, not our country, But some other countries like India and Pakistan or China and Russia attacking each other.
What do they call that?
The bear and the dragon?
Or again, in the Middle East now, you've got to consider the possibility, Bonnie, that there's always Israel.
And if we were to move heavily against Iraq, there's no guarantee that Israel would not be attacked by any number of countries.
Right.
And then the cascading effect, I suppose, all goes right back into place?
It goes right back into play.
Although I think we're looking at a World War II situation rather than a World War III.
Again, not the end of the world nuclear destruction, but more like a massive war.
Not a good scenario anyway, but not the end of the world.
Let's try and squeeze one more in.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Bonnie Rantham.
Hi.
That's me?
That's you.
Hey, this is Ramadan here on Spaceship Earth.
Yes.
I wanted to ask her about the I'm a Christian.
I believe God's looking over me at all times, and I pray very hard all the time.
a metaphor when she said the hand of God. Do you think that God may be having a hand
in all this? Do you think there might be a lot of synchronicities in all this?
I'm a Christian. I believe God's looking over me at all times. And I pray very hard all
the time. So I'm hoping he's looking out for us.
That metaphor you used when the streaks were coming over the Arctic Circle toward us, the
us the hand of God.
The Hand of God.
Why call it the Hand of God?
We created these weapons and then in this scenario they were being used against us to destroy us.
It just seemed like an appropriate symbol, the Hand of God.
Yes, I guess.
Your books are available nationwide.
Your two books, Earthquake Games and Ground Zero, I assume in bookstores generally across America, certainly on Amazon.com, where they almost, well, they give real good deals.
Yeah.
So, listen, what can I say?
Thank you so very much for being here tonight.
You've lived up to everything that I hoped that you would be.
Thanks so much.
It was great.
Let's do it again sometime, all right?
Okay, thank you and good night.
Always wanted to interview somebody like Bonnie.
Oh my, this one will give you nightmares for a while.
I know it will me.
From the High Desert, just across from Area 51, the real High Desert, I'm Art Bell.
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