CIA-RDP96-00789R001200060008-5

F
1
Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00789R001200060008-5 /
!
1 5 mars,
SECRET/NOFORN
PROJECT SUN STREAK
WARNING NOTICE: INTELLIGENCE SOURCES AND METHODS INVOLVED
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PROJECT NUMBER:
0227 (Tng)
SESSION NUMBER:
1
DATE OF SESSION:
02 MAR 90
DATE OF REPORT:
05 MAR 90
START:
0907
END:
0922
METHODOLOGY:
CRV
VIEWER IDENTIFIER: 052
--
1.
(S/STD)
MISSION:
To describe the target site (The air explosion in
Tunguska, Siberia) in Stage 2 terminology.
2.
(S/STD)
VIEWER TASKING:
Encrypted coordinates not set, so target
number was used. No other cueing given.
3.
(S/STD)
COMMENTS:
No Physical Inclemencies.
052 accessed the site
quickly in Stage 1 and proceeded through Stage 2 quickly and efficiently.
052 has had problems getting sound perceptions in the past, but this has
evidently been resolved. 052 needs a little more practice in dimensional ---
perceptions, and will be ready to proceed into Stage 3 training.
4.
(S/STD) EVALUATION:
3
5.
(S/STD) SEARCH EVALUATION:
N/A
MONITOR:
018
HANDLE VIA STIPPLE CHANNELS ONLY
SECRET/NOFORN
CLASSIFIED BY:
DIA (DT)
DECLASSIFY:
DADR
Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00789R001200060008-5

Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00789R001200060008-5
052
2 march 9C
Ft. Meade
PI: none
Av: none
0907
018
0227
O A. stopping up
peak hard
Down
B. Mountain
AOL BIC
Mount Everest
0227
A. Big Waves Access
hard
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D.
17/11

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Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00789R001200060008-5
S2
( Black
0
Blue
Brown
Rumbling sound
1 Red
U/I Smell
looking smell
0
1
AI BK
Bad Smell
-
( ULI Taste
Smooth
Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00789R001200060008-5

S
Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00789R001200060008-5
Bright
Conf GIK
Can't make out
that smell
:
AI BY
Bad Strell
1
AOL DK
0
Burning Rubber
heaving
AIBK
-
feel like heaving
Rumbling
AOL BK
starts low but gets bigger
Approved For Release 2001/03/07/CCIA-RDP9600789R001200060008-5
060008-

.
7.0
Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00789R001200060008-5
0
Blue
Arte 0922
Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00789R001200060008-5

CPYRGHT
Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00789R001200060008-5
WHAT SET OFF THE BIGGEST
38
BANG IN RECORDED HISTORY?
Shortly after 7 A.M. on June 30, 1908, Nevertheless, for want of a better ex- "bomb was detonated).
early rising farmers, herdsmen, and planation, scientists continued to
trappers in the sparsely settled
Fascribe the cataclysm to a meteorite,
and Leonid Kulik, a mineralogist who
headed government-sponsored. ex-
peditions to the Tunguska in the early
1920s and again in 1938-39, searched
for evidence to support this view.
-vastness of the central Siberia Plateau
watched in awe as a cylindrical object,
glowing with an intense bluish-white
light and trailing a fiery tail, raced .
across a clear blue sky toward the
Although this search proved fruit-
less, Kulik uncovered a wealth of in-
formation about the blast. Near the
swamp into which the meteorite had
supposedly
plummeted,
scorched
trees, striped of branches, still stood,
but around this weird "telegraph-pole"
forest, except where intervening hills
had shielded them, every tree within
fifty miles had been 'blown flat, its
trunk pointing away from the swamp.
From this-and from his failure to find
even a small impact crater - Kulik con-
cluded that the meteorite had never
reached the ground but had exploded
two or three miles up in the air. The
testimony of local herdsmen yielded
other curious details: the blast's in-
tense heat had melted the permafrost, ')
causing water trapped underground
for tens of thousands of years to gush
forth in fountains, and those reindeer
.that had not been killed had developed
mysterious blisters and scabs on their
hides. Stranger still, examination of the
trees that had been germinating in
1908 revealed that they had then
-grown at several times the normal rate.
northern horizon. At 7:17, over a des-
olate region of bogs and low, pine-
covered hills traversed by the Stony
Tunguska River, it disappeared; in-
stantly, a "pillar of fire" leaped sky-
ward, so high it was seen hundreds of
miles away; the earth shuddered under
the impact of a titanic explosion; the
air was wracked by thunderous claps;
and a superheated wind rushed out-
ward, setting parts of the taiga on fire.
At a trading post forty miles from the
blast, a man sitting on the steps of his
house saw the blinding flash and cov-
ered his eyes; he felt scorched, as if the
shirt on his back were burning, and the
next moment he was hurled from the
steps by a shock wave and knocked un-
conscious. Four hundred miles to the
south the ground heaved under the.
tracks of the recently completed
Trans-Siberian Railway, threatening to
derail an express. And above the
Tunguska region a mass of black
clouds, piling up to a height of twelve
miles, dumped a shower of "black rain"
on the countryside -dirt and debris
sucked up by the explosion - while
rumblings like heavy artillery fire re-
verberated throughout central Russia. ... captured by .the Germans and died a
Could the Siberian blast have been
atomic? In 1958 a Russian engineer-
: turned-writer, Aleksander Kazantsev,
published a story-article pinning that
disaster on Martians killed on their
way to Earth by cosmic rays or meteor-
ite bombardment; their ship, with no
one at the controls, hurtles into our at-
mosphere at unreduced speed and
burns up from friction, triggering a
chain reaction in its atomic fuel that
sets off the explosion. Few informed
readers by then still accepted the me-
teorite theory, and some, particularly
younger men and women, found Ka-
zantsev's hypothesis persuasive, but
others rejected it in favor of an earlier
alternate explanation, according to
which the head of a comet had pene-
trated the atmosphere at such high ve-
locity that the heat thus generated had
caused the comet to blow up. (Skeptics
pointed out, however, that a comet
could hardly have approached Earth
without being seen.)
Two further explanations involving
: natural causes have been advanced.
The first is that a tiny "black hole"-a
- chunk of matter collapsed to minuscule
dimensions and so dense that its grav-
ity sucks up even light - hit Siberia and
passed in an instant through Earth,
emerging in the North Atlantic. The
second asserts that an "anti-rock" of
antimatter plunged into the atmos-
During World War II Kulik was
-prisoner. The riddle he had worked to
solve was forgotten. In August 1945,
however, certain Russian scientists.
were abruptly reminded of it by the
atom-bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, events which seemed uncan- . :
phere and exploded on contact with
atoms of ordinary matter, producing a
Since seismographs and barographs
everywhere had recorded the event,
the entire world knew that something
extraordinary had occurred in the Si-
ber'in wilderness. But what? Scientists
conjectured that a giant meteorite
must have fallen, exploding from the
intense heat its impact generated. On
hitting the ground, such a body would,
fireball of gamma rays. While this
would account for the absence of
residual material at the site, it is not.
most experts say, compatible with ob-
servable physical effects of the blast.
-In the end, we do not know what
nily familiar in both their manifesta- caused the cataclysm in Siberia. We
tions (the fireball, the searing thermal may never know. But today, fewer
current, the towering "mushroom" .: . scientists than at any time in the past
.. theoretically, have blown out a huge""cloud) and their effects (the instanta- would be astounded to receive a mes-
. neous and -near-total destruction, the .sage beamed from some corner of the
-quarters of a mile square, left by a me- . radiation burns on living flesh, the ac- - universe inquiring into the fate of
... teorite that fell fifty thousand years". celerated_growth of new plant life, _certain space voyagers who vanished
, ago, but the Siberian "impact site": even the "telegraph-pole" appearance ; on our planet in what we call the year
of scorched and branchless trees stand: 1908.
... crater like the one in Arizona, three-
" turned out to be a dismal swamp, with
no trace of a meteorite to be seen. ing below the point at which an atom
259
Approved

-
.
P.S.
A Guest from
the Universe?
The stage was being set for a world-shaking drama that
was rushing to its fiery climax near the cold and sluggish
Yenesei River of Siberia.
The date: June 30, 1908.
Out in space, miles from the earth, a gigantic object
was rushing to destruction, headed for a thinly populated
area near the Yenesei. Its speed was probably in excess of
thirty thousand miles an hour. It was only seconds from
destruction, trailing long streams of fire behind it as it en-
tered the atmosphere.
On the river a fisherman tugged at the ropes leading to
his nets. He paused in his work long enough to return the
wave of a friend who sat on the shore, sheltered fortu-
nately by a steep overhang. His friend on the bank was the
last thing the fisherman would ever see.
He had less than five seconds to live.
A few miles from the river a herdsman, driving several
hundred reindeer across the grassy flats, paused 'to fill his
leather water bag at a shallow well. The bag fell into the
water and he climbed down to retrieve it.
It was the luckiest move of his life.
Across the river, at the edge of a small grove of trees,
a woodchopper and his two grown sons took time out from
their labors to smoke their pipes, their axes leaning against
the log on which they were sitting.
The stage was set.
The gigantic thing that was plunging to earth exploded
with a fury that was recorded around the globe. Of those
in the immediate area, only the herdsman in the well and
the man sheltered by the river bank survived. The fisher-
man was swept away. The woodchoppers were never found;
but one of their axes was finally picked up a mile and a
half from where they had been smoking their pipes. The
herd of reindeer vanished in the twinkling of an eye. When
the bewildered herdsman climbed out of the shallow well
that had saved his life, he found himself in the midst of
a charred and smoking world; he was scorched and penni-
less, bry alive.
explosions ever recorded on earth. Something weighing
thousands of tons had exploded into a great ball of seething
fire that climbed into the clouds in a matter of minutes,
leaving below. it a stunned earth that sent its quivers to
seismographs in many lands.
i
World War I spread even greater havoc of a different
sort and scientists almost forgot the strange explosion in
Siberia, which they had assumed to be some sort of huge
meteorite. It was not until 1927 that a scientific study group
reached the scene. They found a scorched and barren spot
that showed plainly the effects of incalculable heat and pres-
sure; trees brushed flat to earth for miles around the center
of the blast, their trunks charred by its remarkable temper-
ature. They found a few witnesses, including the herds-
man and the man on the river bank, and some villagers
who had seen the catastrophe from a vantage point miles
away. After examining the scene and interviewing the wit-
nesses, the scientists went away. They had determined that
something from outer space had struck in those lonely
reaches of the Yenesei, something that scorched and blasted
- but something that left no craters in the earth to mark
its collision. For want of a better name it went down in the
records as the Tunguska Meteorite, and there it remained
for more than thirty years.
A Russian scientist, Dr. Alexander Kazentsev, was a mem-
ber of the Soviet team that spent considerable time investi-
gating the scene of the Tunguska explosion. Like their prede:
cessors, they were puzzled by what they found and puz-
zled even more by what they did not find. No craters. No
logical, acceptable explanation for the recorded fury of the
explosion.
Fortunately for science, Dr. Kazentsev was also a mem-
ber of the Russian team that went to Hiroshima to study the
effects of the atomic bomb which had obliterated that hap-
less city and most of its people.
Dr. Kazentsev was particularly impressed by a peculi-
arity of the blast; directly beneath the center of the air-
borne explosion the tops of the trees had been snapped off,
while the trees remained standing. Somewhere, he had seen
something like that before-but where?
Suddenly he remembered. At the scene of the "Tunguska
Meteorite" in Siberia! Tree tops snapped off in one area,
while for miles around the trees were brushed flat to earth,
Approved For Release 2001/03/07-CIA-RDP06-00789R001200060008-5: Hiroshimal But that phenomenon was
known to be a characteristic of only nuclear devices. Did it
mean that a nuclear explosion had taken place over that
lonely Siberian terrain almost half a century before?
There was a relatively simple way to check the suspicion.
If the explosion had been nuclear, there would be radio-
activity in measurable quantities in the earth. And Ka-
zentsev knew that when Professor Kulik had made the orig-
inal investigation of the Tunguska blast in 1927, no check
had been made for radioactivity; he also knew that Kulik
had been disturbed by the complete absence of meteoric
fragments.
A new expedition, headed by Professor Liapunov and in-
cluding Dr. Kazentsev, was dispatched to the scene of the
so-called Tunguska Meteorite. They spent months tracking
out the radioactive pattern in the soil that sent their Geiger
counters chattering; they interviewed an eyewitness who
still recalled vividly the great ball of fire that rolled into
the heavens and the strange mushroom cloud from which
it stemmed. They dug up tons of soil to collect a scant hand-
ful of metal fragments. Then they went home to evaluate
and study what they had found.
Dr. Kazentsev and most of his colleagues came to the
conclusion that some sort of atomic-powered device of tre-
mendous size had exploded over the earth at an altitude of
1.2 miles on the morning of June 30, 1908. He calls it a
space ship.
In his official report filed with the Soviet government
agency which directed the expedition, Dr. Kazentsev says
that the blast damage and the radioactivity charts enabled
the scientists to locate the point directly beneath the blast
and to trace out the familiar atomic cone. Sifting the soil
around the edges of this "cone" produced tiny bits of metal,
some of which were not of any known meteoric nature and
some of which seemed to be alloyed. Tie eyewitness ac-
counts all agreed on the seething fireball and the mush-
room cloud, which we now know to be characteristic of
nuclear explosions. And exhumation of some of the long-
dead residents of the area indicated that they had died of a
"strange malady" indeed, for they were victims of excessive
radioactivity.
Says Kazentsev, "The weight of evidence clearly places
the explosion slightly more than (a mile) above the center of
the destruction. The damage is identical to that produced
by man-made atomic devices under similar conditions. The
lingering radioactivity, the mixed metals, the descriptions
of the explosion itself all coincide with an atomic explosion.
-
CPYRGHT
Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00789R001200060008-5

CDVDOUT
Release.200 1/03/0
ERD
`20006000845