Quote:On this day in history, July 13, 1729, Captain John Parker is born. Parker was the leader of the militiamen at Lexington, Massachusetts at the outbreak of the American Revolution. John Parker had lived in Lexington his whole life as a farmer and mechanic.

Parker had extensive military experience during the French and Indian War. He had served at the Siege of Louisbourg and the Battle of Quebec and may have been one of the famed Rogers' Rangers. The men of Lexington had enough confidence in Parker's military experience to elect him head of the local militia.

John Parker suffered from tuberculosis that was already in its advanced stages when the events of April 19, 1775 unfolded. After Paul Revere and others warned the countryside that a major British expedition was underway on the evening of the 18th, citizen-soldiers from all over Massachusetts began to gather their arms and head toward Concord, whose arms cache was the target of the British expedition.

Parker and the other local militiamen gathered on Lexington Common early on the morning of the 19th. They had already waited several hours when a scout arrived and warned that a large British force was very near. Lexington was on the road to Concord and the soldiers would be there soon. Parker instructed his men to gather on the side of the Common, but they were not blocking the road. Many of them were his own relatives. Parker was not anticipating military conflict, but he was ready for the worst.



When the British finally appeared around 5 am, the vanguard marched straight into Lexington. Thinking the gathered militia was much larger than it actually was and had hostile intent toward them, the British soldiers formed a battle line opposite the militia. Both Captain Parker and the British officer in charge gave orders to their men not to fire. Parker's alleged words have been immortalized: "Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here."

Just before the first shot was fired, Captain Parker ordered his men to disband. Some heard him, while others did not in the confusion. No one knows who fired the first shot. Most eyewitnesses believed the first shot came from somewhere away from the Common. It may have been a misfire, or a drunken militia member at nearby Buckman Tavern. Wherever the shot came from, the result was catastrophic.

Most of the militia scattered and had no chance to fire back. The British began full scale firing on the assembled militia. After the first volley, the British soldiers began chasing the militia through the town and killing those they came across until their officers were able to corral them. When it was all done, 8 militia were dead with another 10 wounded. Only 1 British soldier was even injured. In the course of the next day, however, the British would be confronted again at Concord and chased all the way back to Boston with more than 70 killed and 170 wounded.

After Lexington, Captain Parker and his militia attacked the British as they returned to Boston near Lexington in what is known as Parker's Revenge. Lexington's militiamen then joined the Siege of Boston. It is not known exactly when Parker returned home, but he was not present at the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17. John Parker passed away from complications due to his tuberculosis on September 17, 1775 at the age of 46.

Revolutionary War and Beyond - Everything you want to know about the Revolutionary War and the founding of the United States.

Quote:In the late 1940s, the Atomic Energy Commission commenced a search for a remote site in Southern California for nuclear work too dangerous to perform near populated areas. In the decades since SSFL was established, the Southern California population mushroomed, so that now more than half a million people live within ten miles of the site. Over the years, SSFL was home to ten nuclear reactors, a plutonium fuel fabrication facility, and a “hot lab” for cutting up irradiated nuclear fuel shipped in from around the country, plus over 20,000 rocket tests, as well as munitions development and “Star Wars” laser work.4 Sloppy controls, an indifference to environmental rules, and a history of spills and accidents have created a legacy of radioactive and chemical contamination. A history of broken cleanup promises has left the vast majority of that contamination still in place. The SSFL tragedy is a microcosm of the problems across the extraordinarily contaminated Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear complex nationally and a powerful warning of the risks of proceeding with a nuclear revival that threatens to repeat over and over again the atomic fiascos of the past.

Quote:To deal with these realities, the United States must put aside the counterproliferation playbook and change the subject from arms control to firepower. This is both a DoD issue and, more specifically, a Navy issue, in which the sea-launched nuclear-armed cruise missile (SLCM-N) should play an initial prominent role. The Navy’s dispersion at sea provides the best advantage in every theater, with submarines, surface warships, and aviation squadrons able to close what retired Navy Admiral Charles Richard, while commander of U.S. Strategic Command, called a serious “deterrence-assurance-escalation” gap caused by the tactical hole in U.S. nuclear capabilities and posture.

The Navy Needs Tactical Nuclear Weapons . . . Again

Quote:Jack Aeby was one of the first civilian employees on the Manhattan Project, and captured the only color photograph of the Trinity test. He worked in many areas, starting with transporting people from Lamy to 109 E. Palace Avenue in Santa Fe and then on up the Hill. He was put in charge of the chemical stockroom. Aeby moved to P-5 (Physics Group 5) with Emilio Segrè and Owen Chamberlain. He reactivated the Los Alamos Ranch School’s Boy Scout Troop 22 on demand of the school superintendent. He discusses working with Emilio Segrè at Los Alamos, and how his famous photo of the Trinity test came about.

Aeby: It wasn’t long after that General Groves, who wasn’t anywhere around, said he wanted that picture. Well, he got it [chuckle]. So it was published fairly widely once the secrecy was off and they could at least announce that they had then bombed Japan and it became public knowledge that such a weapon existed.

So then they started publishing that picture as what happened at Trinity under the auspices of the US Army photo, so my credits didn’t stop or start til later on. I was interviewed by a couple newspapers and they finally started giving me credit.

That’s where that is and that’s what I did and this is only the most important event in my life. There were other things, yes I carried water as it were, dug ditches, moved sand, ran around our bunkers and this kind of thing, but that isn’t terribly interesting.

Aeby: There was some pressure of course to get done by—there wasn’t any deadlines or any such like this except with a man like General Groves somewhere in the background always. It was like the big eye in the sky, “Hey, you aren’t doing enough” or I don’t know—there was that feeling that you could do more and you should do more.

Kelly: You mentioned General Groves, did you ever hear him speak or—

Aeby: Oh yeah. Often.

Kelly: Tell me how he came across?

Aeby: Upon various occasions, he came across like a strong leader, ambitious, and in a word: a bumptious ass upon occasion. But that’s personal opinion and I assure there are others.

Kelly: I get the sense from talking to people that he was often sort of the butt of some jokes.

Aeby: Oh yes, often.

Quote:Space: Inside the Sky (TIME, July 27, 1962)

Air Force Major Robert White piloted a black needle-nosed X-15 rocket plane to an altitude of 59.6 miles—the highest man has ever flown in a winged aircraft, and a respectable second to the hundred-mile-high orbits of U.S. and Soviet astronauts. "For the first time," said Test Pilot White, 38, "it seemed as though I was up in this dark blue sky, instead of looking up at it." Like the astronauts before him, he was overwhelmed by the "fantastic view."

White's record-breaking flight over California's Mojave Desert (highest previous flight: 47 miles) made him the fifth man to receive NASA's pilot-astronaut badge, awarded to those "qualified to operate or control a powered vehicle in flight 50 miles above the earth."

This brief extra burst added 284 m.p.h. to his speed—which reached 3,784 m.p.h. —and six miles to his maximum altitude, disrupting the carefully planned flight pattern. But since he was flying an airplane rather than a capsule, the remedy was simple. White simply maneuvered the X-15 back on course, and made a perfect touchdown practically atop the magenta-smoke landing marker on California's Rogers Dry Lake. He emerged from the plane to greet his seven-year-old son trailing his air-conditioning tube behind him like an umbilical cord.

Closest Call. The U.S.'s hottest airplane (top speed to date: 4,159 m.p.h.) has given handsome, soft-spoken Bob White fewer problems than the P-51 he flew in World War II. Early in 1945, when only 20. White led a squadron of the Eighth Air Force's 355th Fighter Group in a treetop-level attack on a Luftwaffe airstrip.

...
White spent 2½ months in Nazi prison camps. After the war, he came back home and entered New York University as a freshman. He no sooner had his degree (electrical engineering) than the Korean war broke out. He had kept up his flying in the Air Force Reserve, and in 1951 was recalled to active duty. Though White saw no combat in Korea, he decided to stay in the Air Force.

New Mystery. After the sky-stabbing record flight last week, four Xis pilots —White. Walker, North American's Scott Crossfield and Navy Commander Forrest Petersen—journeyed to Washington, where President Kennedy gave them the Robert J. Collier Trophy, presented annually since 1911 for outstanding achievement in flight. But for White and his fellow X-15 pilots, the greatest reward for their work is the satisfaction of probing the mysteries inside the sky. In last week's flight Bob White found a new mystery for scientists to puzzle over: through the X-15's thick left quartz window, he saw a strange sight. "There are things out there," he said dramatically over his voice radio. "There absolutely is." As White later described one "thing": "It looked like a piece of paper the size of my hand tumbling slowly outside the plane. It was greyish in color, and about 30 to 40 feet away. I haven't any idea what it could be."

Quote:Finland's form of government for 100 years

In June 1919, the Parliament approved Finland's republican form of government, which was confirmed by Regent Mannerheim on July 17, 1919. The form of government, as well as the previously approved parliamentary order, election law and municipal election law, are still important to Finnish democracy. These decisions have guided the structure of Finnish society and the development of Finland into a modern state governed by the rule of law.

Finland's republican form of government, the constitution enacted in 1919, turns one hundred years old this year. The form of government established as a constitution a hundred years ago is celebrated with various events during the summer and autumn.

Finish archived link

Quote:Washington, D.C., July 18, 2023 – A set of highly secret emergency action plans kept inside the closely guarded “Football” that traveled with the President at all times and that would give the federal government sweeping emergency powers were of “doubtful legality,” “badly out of date,” and “even illegal,” according to top government officials whose views are memorialized in declassified records posted today by the National Security Archive.

Since the late 1950s, U.S. military personnel traveling with the President have carried a special case known variously as the “satchel,” the “black bag,” the “emergency actions pouch” and, as it is perhaps best known, the “Football.” Epitomizing presidential control of nuclear weapons, the Football and the military aides who carry it enable the President to make decisions about the use of nuclear weapons in the event of a sudden military crisis.

While the existence of the Football has been known since the 1960s, reliable details about its contents have been relatively scarce. During the Cold War, and possibly later, they included proclamations and executive orders known as Presidential Emergency Action Documents (PEADs) for use in a national emergency. Edward A. McDermott, who led the federal Office of Emergency Planning in the 1960s, said the purpose of the documents was “to clothe the President with formal emergency powers,” although he said some were of “doubtful legality,” perhaps because they included the suspension of habeas corpus, a declaration of martial law, and the authorization of mass arrests and arbitrary detentions.

Today’s posting by the National Security Archive includes several documents about the contents of the PEADs and the Carter administration’s efforts to revise directives considered “badly out of date.” The President’s second cousin, Hugh Carter, Jr., who played a leading role in White House emergency planning, said he was “concerned that the entire PEADs series is obsolete given the total devastation which could be expected from a thermonuclear attack.” By 1980, the PEADs had been revised and updated and were ready to be placed in the President’s “emergency portfolio.”

Also included in the posting are documents on the Carter administration’s arrangements to assign a Football to Vice President Walter Mondale, with one permanently stationed at his residence. This was in keeping with Mondale's substantive and innovative role in national security policy. It remains unclear whether the four vice presidents who held the office between Johnson and Mondale were assigned Footballs, but so far there is no evidence to suggest that they were.

The posting also includes excerpts from interviews conducted by William Manchester while researching his book, The Death of a President (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), which shed light on the Football arrangements during the Kennedy administration. General Chester Clifton, one of the White House military aides who was with Kennedy in Dallas on the day he was assassinated, explained that a military aide was always near the President because the Football included "emergency war orders.”

According to Captain Tazewell Shepard, Naval Aide to President Kennedy, the military aides had responsibility for the contents of the Football “whenever and wherever the President goes.” The exception was when the President was in Washington, D.C., in which case the satchel stayed at the White House and did not “chase him around.”

More: Presidential Nuclear "Football" From Eisenhower to George W. Bush

Quote:The possibility of using the nuclear weapon first is assumed: our doctrine is neither that of no first use nor that of the sole purpose, according to which nuclear weapons are only addressed to the nuclear threat . . . Nuclear deterrence does not seek to win a war or prevent losing one” (Burkhard  2023; our translation).

Concerning the implications of the Russia-Ukraine war for the role of nuclear weapons, Burkhard said: “The war in Ukraine confirms the strategic value of nuclear deterrence and its moderating effect in any conflict involving one or more nuclear powers. Everyone has also noted a great restraint on the part of the Russian forces vis-à-vis NATO . . . The other lesson to be learned from the Ukraine war is of course the return of the balance of terror by the threat of force, a customary action during the Cold War” (Burkhard  2023; our translation).

France typically conducts four air-based nuclear exercises each year, known as “Poker.” These exercises are intended to simulate a strategic air raid and are conducted in the skies above France (see Figure 1). The “Poker” exercise involves a majority of France’s nuclear-capable Rafale aircraft, which carry simulated air-sol moyenne portée-amélioré (ASMPA) air-launched cruise missiles (Air & Cosmos International 2022; Service de l’Information Aéronautique 2022). The most recent “Poker” exercise was conducted in March 2023, and included nuclear-capable Rafale air-craft from both the Forces Aériennes Stratégiques (FAS) and the Force Aéronavale Nucléaire (FANu) (Marine Nationale 2023).

French nuclear weapons, 2023

Quote:VW responded with a $30 million damage suit against Lampoon, charging violations of trademark and copyright laws and defamation. Last week Lampoon agreed to withdraw all unsold copies of the magazine by Nov. 15 (450,000 were printed), to destroy the plate of the ad, and to run Volkswagen's statement on the incident in the magazine's January issue. It seemed only fitting that the Lampoon, which has thrived on necrological humor, would at last find itself forced to kill one of its own items.

Lampoon's Surrender (Nov 12, 1973)

Quote:Five Men Agree To Stand Directly Under An Exploding Nuclear Bomb (July 17, 2012)

Googling through the list, we quickly discovered (as did many of you) that George Yoshitake, the cameraman, was alive, at least as of two years ago. In 2010, he was interviewed in the New York Times and talked about his fellow cameramen who took pictures of atomic bombs. "Quite a few have died from cancer," he told reporter Bill Broad. "No doubt it was related to the testing." Yoshitake's nephew also wrote in and didn't mention his uncle's passing, so I'm guessing that he's now 84 years old and still with us.

    Col. Sidney C. Bruce — died in 2005 (age 86)
    Lt. Col. Frank P. Ball — died in 2003 (age 83)
    Maj. John Hughes — very common name, but I'm guessing he is Maj. John W. Hughes II (born 1919, same as the above) — died in 1990 (age 71)
    Maj. Norman Bodinger — unclear (not listed in the database), he may still be alive?
    Don Lutrel — I think this is a misspelling of "Luttrell." There is a Donald D. Luttrell in the DVA database, US Army CPL, born 1924, died 1987 (age 63). Seems like a possibility.

...

At least the folks in the films volunteered to be there (George excepted) and were given some pre-film training (not terribly useful, but still). That was not the case for a little community downwind from the Nevada Test Site, a place called St. George, Utah.

The folks in St. George were repeatedly hit by uninvited fallout. Alex wrote me that in 1953, one test, codenamed "Harry" actually deposited quite a lot of fallout on St. George, to the point where residents were forced to stay inside for many hours, and prohibited from washing their cars until they became less radioactive.
NPR article

Quote:In the article, Mosher describes several lines of reasoning, namely, that the lab is less than 10 miles away from the seafood market where a cluster of COVID-19 cases was first discovered, and that after the 2003 SARS outbreak, the SARS-CoV virus escaped from virology labs multiple times in China. He also describes how Chinese virologist and bioweapons expert Major General Chen Wei went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology with military scientists in January to study the new virus, which Mosher sees as a form of damage control.

...
Dimitrios Paraskevis, an epidemiologist at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Greece, tells The Scientist that while it’s not possible to rule out the idea of lab escape, he believes that it is unlikely. “Any person who works in a lab must follow very strict safety regulations. It sounds to me very extraordinary that something happened and nobody took care about such an accident,” he says. The World Health Organization updated SARS surveillance guidelines in 2004 after the lab-based outbreaks, urging labs to follow proper biosafety procedures, and China replaced the director of its Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
...
    I’m not saying this has been genetically engineered to be a bioweapon that’s escaped from the lab. . . . I’m just saying that [China is] collecting dangerous pathogens, [and] they have a history of letting them escape from the lab.
—Steven Mosher, Population Research Institute

Theory that Coronavirus Escaped from a Lab Lacks Evidence

Quote:Navy Raises Battle Force Goal to 381 Ships in Classified Report to Congress (July 18, 2023)

The Navy is now more than 80 ships short of the latest estimate of what the sea service thinks it needs to fulfill the Biden administration’s national security strategy.

The Battle Force Ship Assessment and Requirement, a congressionally-mandated report, requires 381 ships, up from 373 in the 2022 report, the first year it was released. As of Monday, the Navy’s battle force was 299 ships.

Quote:After indirectly denouncing his father, Granovsky was recruited into the NKVD on July 20, 1939, to spy on his acquaintances among his father's former colleagues. Following the horrifying conditions of the prisons, Granovsky was immediately given money, a salary, and exemplary treatment, including medical operations to undo the effects of illness and injury borne on him by the interrogations and imprisonment.

In spring 1945, Granovsky was assigned to begin preparing to infiltrate the West after the end of World War II, particularly the United States, by posing as a refugee with his wife, an alcoholic restaurateur whom he was to seduce and marry. The woman was eventually deemed an unreliable liability and Granovsky was reassigned to the military front.

When Berlin fell, Granovsky was one of the NKVD men who appropriated files and supplies from the Gestapo and other German agencies and sites, including the Reich Chancellery, transferring such resources back to Moscow and Kiev.

Post-World War II

Granovsky was reassigned to appear as a sympathetic Soviet war veteran "fighter-poet" on tour in London, getting acquainted with the West and spreading pro-Soviet propaganda.

Later, working in Prague, Granovsky was charged with helping ensure de-Nazification and the reliability of the local Communist Party and police apparatus.

The Americans refused to grant Granovsky asylum and he was arrested by Swedish authorities. On November 8, 1946, shortly before he was to be repatriated to Soviet authorities, which was a veritable death sentence, Granovsky was granted asylum by King Gustaf V of Sweden.

Granovsky wrote his memoirs under the title All Pity Choked [London 1955], but later paperback editions were published under the title I Was An NKVD Agent.

After moving to the United States, he died in Washington, D.C., in September 1974 at the age of 52.
Wiki

Quote:FBI HQ 100-356092, unrecorded, 7/14/61 W.A. Branigan to W.C. Sullivan on Granovsky states: “Granovsky first came to our attention in 1948 in Rio de Janeiro.  He claimed he had been forced into the Soviet Espionage Service in 1937 and that he had held positions with the Soviet Secret Police until September 1946 when he defected in Sweden.”

HQ 100-356092, #92 (10/12/62 R.W. Smith to W.C. Sullivan) reports that on page 179 of his book, Granovsky claimed that “a rich old man living in the South of the United States” had Soviet sympathies which led him to adopt a Soviet agent as his son and that son became a rich man in his own right.  Granovsky claimed the rich man died in 1942 in Texas.  Per memo “Investigation by the Bureau of all wealthy individuals who died in Texas around 1942 as well as the disposition of their fortunes failed to corroborate Granovsky’s allegation.”

His comment from 7/14/61 Washington Post article, page 1, by Rasa Gustaitis, entitled “Ex-Spy Says Anti-Reds Aid Soviet Aims in U.S.”: [reprinted in Edward Hunter’s 1961 Senate testimony on anti-anti-Communists]

“The Soviet Communists would sacrifice a thousand American Communists to save the John Birch Society, for instance.  I don’t mean the Birch Society is Communist-infiltrated.  It doesn’t have to be.  By discrediting prominent Americans, it confuses the population about whom to trust.  In socializing Czechoslovakia…we did everything to divide the armed forces units trained by the British and the Americans by spreading rumors about officers until they were so thoroughly discredited their men would not obey them and they had to be removed.”

Granovsky FBI file (Internet Archive)

Quote:Our Company was the first high-technology firm established in Huntsville Alabama to assist Wernher von Braun and his rocket team in developing the Redstone Rocket. The Company’s leadership founded Cummings Research Park the second-largest research park in the United States, where Teledyne Brown Engineering is still located today.

The Company’s doors opened as Alabama Engineering and Tool on July 1, 1953. It became Brown Engineering Company in 1956. When Teledyne Incorporated purchased Brown Engineering, the Company was renamed Teledyne Brown Engineering. During the 1990s, Teledyne merged with Allegheny Ludlum and was later made part of Teledyne Technologies Incorporated in 1999. Teledyne Brown Engineering, Inc. became the foundation of the Engineered Systems Segment of Teledyne Technologies when it was formed in 2010.

Teledyne Brown Engineering has supported essentially every major U.S. space initiative, beginning with Jupiter and extending through the Space Shuttle, International Space Station, Constellation programs, and Space Launch System (SLS). We have also provided services and specialty hardware for the European Space Agency and the Russian and Japanese space programs. We are the primary contractor supporting NASA’s critical payload operations integration function as well as ongoing microgravity research and development efforts. Today, we’re expanding the commercial side of our space business with the Multi-User System for Earth Sensing, or MUSES, an Earth-observation platform that was be installed on the exterior of the International Space Station and support up to four remote sensing instruments, or other payloads, simultaneously.
Teledyne Brown Engineering

Quote:On Sunday, September 9, 1945, Trinity Site was opened to the press for the first time. This was mainly to dispel rumors of lingering high radiation levels there, as well as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Led by General Groves and Oppenheimer, this widely publicized visit made Trinity front page news all over the country.
Project Gutenberg's Trinity [Atomic Test] Site, by The National Atomic Museum

Quote:Young teenager Barbara Kent said that several hours after the atomic bomb went off on July 16, 1945, she and some friends in Ruidoso, New Mexico—a part of Lincoln County—noticed white flakes drifting down from a big cloud in the sky. “We were grabbing the white flakes, and putting it all over ourselves, pressing it on our faces,” Kent said. “But the strange thing, instead of being cold like snow, it was hot. And we all thought, ‘Well, the reason it’s hot is because it’s summer.’ We were only thirteen; we didn’t know any better.” Kent says that this photo of her and her friends was taken that day, and that it features them playing in the fallout. Image courtesy of Barbara Kent’s daughter, Kaysie Kent.

n Sunday, July 15, 1945, at around 11 pm Mountain War Time, New York Times reporter and in-house Manhattan Project historian (or propagandist, some would say) William L. Laurence joined the project’s scientists on a caravan of buses, trucks, and cars heading out of Albuquerque. Their destination: the New Mexico desert, about 125 miles to the southeast, to witness the first atomic bomb detonation in history. None of the bomb’s creators knew whether the test—codenamed “Trinity”—would be successful. One of the scientists even speculated that the blast could ignite the nitrogen in the earth’s atmosphere and end human civilization.

When the caravan reached its destination—the Alamogordo Bombing Range in the desert basin known as the Jornada del Muerto (translated into English “dead’s man’s journey”)—the night sky was dark with black clouds, Laurence later recalled, except for an occasional, foreboding bolt of lightning. The group was given strict instructions about what to do when the bomb went off: Lie prone on the ground, face down, head facing away from ground zero. Do not look at the bomb’s flash directly. Stay on the ground until the blast wave passed. Someone produced a bottle of sunscreen, and the scientists passed it around, rubbing it into their faces and arms in the dark.

When the blast came, Laurence recalled, it felt like a biblical experience. “There rose from the bowels of the earth a light not of this world, the light of many suns in one,” he later recalled. “It was as though the earth had opened and the skies had split. One felt as though one were present at the moment of creation when God said, ‘Let there be light.’ ” (Laurence 1946) Standing nearby, the so-called “father of the bomb,” J. Robert Oppenheimer, famously likened himself in that moment to Vishnu, “the destroyer of worlds.”

The protective guidance that Laurence and the other eyewitnesses had been given was shockingly inadequate in the face of such awesome and destructive power, but at least they knew it was coming. Civilians living nearby, on the other hand, were given no advance warning of the test. Nor was any effort made by the US government to evacuate them beforehand or afterward.

Quote:Several civilians nearby—stunned by the blast—later reported that they thought they were experiencing the end of the world. A local press report stated that the flash had been so bright that a blind girl in Socorro, New Mexico—about 100 miles from the bombing range—was able to see it, and asked: “What’s that?” In Ruidoso, New Mexico, a group of teenage campers were jolted out of their bunk beds onto their cabin floor. They ran outside, worried that a water heater had exploded. Barbara Kent, one of the campers, recently recalled in an interview with National Geographic that “[A]ll of a sudden, there was a big cloud overheard, and lights in the sky. It hurt our eyes. It was as if the sun came out tremendous. The whole sky turned strange.” (Blume 2021)

A few hours later, white flakes began to fall from the sky. The campers began to play in the flurry. (See figure at top of page.)

“We were grabbing the white flakes, and putting it all over ourselves, pressing it on our faces,” Kent said. “But the strange thing, instead of being cold like snow, it was hot. And we all thought, ‘Well, the reason it’s hot is because it’s summer.’ We were only thirteen; we didn’t know any better.”
...

Barbara Kent, the teenaged camper, recalled attending an official town-square announcement soon after the blast in Ruidoso. Government officials told gathered locals that “[T]here was an explosion at a dump,’” she recalled later. “They said, ‘No one worry about anything; everything is fine.’ Some people believed it, but others couldn’t imagine that a dump explosion would do this. They lied to us. I didn’t learn the truth until years later” (Blume 2021).

*  *  *

The decision not to inform or evacuate nearby civilians about the Trinity test came from the top-down. For Manhattan Project leader Gen. Leslie R. Groves, getting the bomb ready for wartime use in near-total secrecy was crucial and trumped all other considerations. Some Manhattan Project doctors and physicists had attempted to warn Groves and Oppenheimer about the possible exposure risk for surrounding communities. Physicist Joseph Hirschfelder made preliminary calculations about possible fallout distribution, and told Oppenheimer that radiation from the active material and fission products might render up to 100 square kilometers (roughly just over 38.5 square miles) around the test site uninhabitable.

Quote:MARCH OF TIME TV SHOW EPISODE "REPORT ON THE ATOM"

Vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XrY5xDZiqE

Dating from the early atomic age, this episode of the "March of Time" TV show dates to 1952 and is hosted by Westbrook van Voorhis.  It examines the state of the atomic industry in the United States and nuclear testing, nuclear defense, atomic power, and the vital need to enhance the secrecy associated with the nuclear industry.  The film features historic footage of the University of Chicago and Dr. Enrico Fermi, and the building of the first nuclear reactor.  Dr. Robert Oppenheimer is shown in a clunky re-enactment, with the "atomic age" being born at the Trinity test site (supposedly this footage was shot in New Jersey a long time after the actual test!)  The Oak Ridge National Laboratory and other facilities are shown, including the Hanford Plant and an atomic plant being built in Ohio, as well as the Savannah River Plant.  The hunt for uranium is seen, and its testing and refining for experimentation and use.  Admiral Hyman Rickover is seen, the father of the nuclear Navy, explaining how a nuclear reactor will operate inside a submarine, and B-52s are seen carrying atomic weapons. 

One of he most fascinating parts of the film is a promotion of the "atomic cannon", which is shown being transported at about the 19 minute mark.  The M65 Atomic Cannon, often called Atomic Annie,was a towed artillery piece built by the United States and capable of firing a nuclear device. It was developed in the early 1950s, at the beginning of the Cold War, and fielded by 1953 in Europe and Korea.  The use of the cannon during the Upshot-Knothole atomic bomb test is seen at the start of the film.

(07-23-2023, 08:59 AM)BIAD Wrote: I believe we knew how to pose better for the camera back then and in any image of a crowd,
there's always those who wonder what the media are up to when one is asked to enhance
a narrative!!

Quote:Files of Chester V. Clifton, November 22, 1963–January 20, 1969

This Series contains records, none of which have been digitized.

This series consists of the working files of C. V. Clifton during his time as Military Aide to the President under President John F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson. The files reflect the subject matters for which Clifton was responsible.

Access: Partially Restricted
Access to some of these archival materials is restricted for the following reason:

    Donated - Security Classified
    Top Secret

Quote:September 16, 2015 – Today the big pooh-bahs of the security services–Fearful Leader Clapper, the Machiavellian Brennan, former SEAL chieftain Admiral McRaven, and a number of their predecessors, have gathered in Austin, Texas, at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library. Their purpose is to preside over an event at which the government agencies and the National Archives formally open for research the key intelligence reports for the ages. Today these are called the President’s Daily Briefs (PDBs). Jack Kennedy knew them as the PICKL (predictably, “pickle”), or President’s Intelligence Checklist; Dwight D. Eisenhower’s staff had even more awkward names like “Synopsis of Intelligence Items Reported to the President.” (They never could find an acronym for that one.)

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But like most things that go to presidents, the PDBs became the focus of fierce jockeying. (Still today: In an attempt to assert that it was always the oracle of the PDB, the CIA maintains that its publications Current Intelligence Bulletin and Central Intelligence Bulletin, precursors to the National Intelligence Daily, all lower-level organs, were “PDBs.”)

Responsible for the actual information utilized in the PDB the CIA sought to gain control over the drafting. They succeeded when John F. Kennedy occupied the White House. The PICKLs, as they were then known, were delivered by the president’s military aide, General Chester V. Clifton. Then a focus of infighting became who would be present when the president received his daily dollop of intel. McGeorge Bundy often attended, Walt Rostow wanted to be a recipient of the document himself, Henry Kissinger did not want the PDB delivered if he wasn’t there to hear it; Zbigniew Brzezinski, I am told, sought to prevent CIA director Stansfield Turner from delivering the document, to take over the delivery duty himself, or at least be there for the event. In Ronald Reagan’s time security advisers did not trust the president to understand the issues and were almost always in attendance.

Freeing the President’s Daily Brief