The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups

Alexander Litvinenko and Yuri Felshtinsky, Blowing Up Russia: The Secret Plot to Bring Back KGB Terror, 2004

David Satter, Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State, 2003

Chemtrails

The last decade has seen a dramatic rise in the number of planes in our skies. No-frills airlines, cheap seats and the lure of ever more exotic destinations have put more jumbos over our cities and countryside. To some people, though, there’s something a lot more sinister behind the streams of white cloud subdividing our aerial space than the obvious concerns about increased global warming and the widening of carbon footprints.

«Contrail» is the name given to the white plume of cloud which can be seen following a jet plane through the sky. For a contrail to form, the plane must be flying above 33,000 feet (10,000m), at which altitude the hot engine exhaust condenses into ice crystals to form a pencil-thin vapour trail that (relatively) quickly vanishes. Chemtrails, observers claim, are very evidently different. These appear much thicker and extend across the sky, often in criss-cross patterns, grids or parallel lines. The trails do not dissipate quickly but persist, expanding slowly into feathers and mares’ tails until they form wispy white veils or «fake cirrus-type» clouds that last for hours.

Reports of chemtrails have come from many, mostly highly developed countries, including France, Britain, Canada, Germany and New Zealand, but the most activity appears to be centred on the United States. One video produced by seasoned chemtrail campaigner Clifford Carnicom warns people to make the most of blue skies now — blue skies, he believes, will become a thing of the past once chemtrails have become so prevalent they obscure the sun permanently from view.

The real question, though, is: what’s in those chemtrails that makes them behave so differently from the innocent contrail?

The answer is that no one really knows for sure. Concerned activists say they cannot raise enough funds to hire a plane at short notice to fly up to high altitudes and capture some of the chemtrail vapour to conduct a proper analysis, nor do they believe they would be given flight clearance to do so. Some claim to have collected solid matter fallen from a chemtrail-filled sky which reputedly contains high bacterial numbers, but other samples have been mysteriously mislaid, or their existence has been denied following their arrival at official government laboratories.

One amazed Californian says he noted no more than the usual amount of chemtrails over his property one morning but this was followed several hours later by skeins of white, waxy material falling on to trees, pavements and so on, where it slowly dissolved. He collected some of the strange material and placed it in a sealed jar, but within 24 hours over half of it had disappeared. He sealed the jar more closely, but when he opened it some days later he was, he said, overwhelmed by a noxious gas that stung his throat and burned his lips. Somehow he managed to preserve some of the material. Under the microscope it appeared fibrous and sticky, but it has remained unidentified. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reportedly no longer accepts any such samples for testing even though its stated remit is to protect the American people from possible sources of contamination.

Just what the purpose is behind chemtrails and (according to the theorists) other covert tinkering with the atmosphere is unclear, but the US government, backed up by its «shadowy» masters, seems top of the list of perpetrators. In typical conspiracy mode, leading chemtrail researcher Clifford Carnicom maintains that the subject «is a managed and controlled topic of discussion in the United States. It must be assumed now in this country that communication on this topic is monitored.»

The most probable constituent of the chemtrails would seem to be aluminium. Documented aerial tests have been carried out to test a theory perpetrated by Dr Edward Teller (one of the creators of the hydrogen bomb) that aluminium particles seeded into the atmosphere would reflect sunlight back out into space and reduce the effects of global warming. There is no indication how much aluminium it would actually take to affect global warming rates and what proportion of the world’s atmosphere would have to be treated. Naturally human health and the natural environment could be threatened by the dispersion of large quantities of aluminium (Alzheimer’s, here we come!), making it a rather heavy-handed solution, but the US government has recently publicly stated its intention to research physical methods of reducing warming rather than relying wholly on the reduction of carbon emissions to halt a rise in worldwide temperatures.