Unexplained Missile Launched Off LA

[LWM]

By Bill Van Auken
16 November 2010

The New York Times carried its first article Monday on what appeared to be an unexplained missile launch off the coast of southern California. The article, buried at the bottom of page 16, came a full week after the event itself.


While the spectacular video of a giant contrail off the coast of southern California was shown by all of the major television networks, and the story was widely covered in most of the media, the Times maintained a discreet silence.


The article that finally appeared on November 14, entitled “How Smoky Plume in Sky Drew the Eyes of the World”, was more of a whimsical background piece than a hard news story.

Tucked within its fourth paragraph was the Pentagon’s vague explanation—delivered two days after the filming of the apparent missile launch by a television station helicopter—that “there is no evidence to suggest that this is anything other than a condensation trail from an aircraft.” This is followed by the Times’ observation: “Some experts chastised media outlets for running with a half-baked, whole-hyped story.”


The only expert cited was John E. Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, who offered an interesting explanation for the prolonged silence of the US military in the face of media demands for an explanation of the massive plume over the Pacific.


“I think it temporarily confused the Pentagon,” said Pike. “They had to triple-check to see if they actually did have something going on out there, to see if there was some black [top secret] program they should not talk about.”


This explanation of the Pentagon’s silence could be applied with equal validity to that of the New York Times itself. Either it suspected, or it knew, that there was something involved that it should not talk about.


When it comes to issues of “national security”—that is, the secret operations and crimes of the US military-intelligence apparatus—the New York Times will not be counted among those “chastised” for irresponsible journalism.


On the contrary, it has a well-established modus operandi, which was undoubtedly employed in relation to the mystery missile story. The paper’s motto, “All the news that’s fit to print” has been amended in practice to read “All the news deemed fit to print after consultation with the White House, the Pentagon and the CIA.”


This approach was certainly in evidence in relation to the greatest exposure of state secrets in the recent period, the release of the Afghanistan and Iraq documents by WikiLeaks.


In the case of the Afghanistan documents, the editors of the Times cleared its coverage in advance with both the White House and the Pentagon, earning the praise of both for its “responsible” journalism. This responsibility was manifested in a deliberate effort to bury the revelations contained in the mass of military logs on the killing of Afghan civilians and other war crimes. The paper even served as a conduit for the US government’s demand that WikiLeaks remove the primary documents from its web site.


In explaining its decision to report on the Iraq war logs made public by WikiLeaks, the newspaper’s public editor, Arthur S. Brisbane, said that, despite its disdain for the work of WikiLeaks, it had decided to “use its resources to organize and filter material that was going public, one way or another.”


In other words, if it had been up to the Times editors, the secret documents would have never seen the light of day. Given that they were going to be made public, the newspaper volunteered its services in presenting them in a manner that would be least damaging to the interests of the US ruling elite.


Six years earlier, the supposed newspaper of record rendered similar services to the administration of George W. Bush. At the request of the White House, it suppressed for over a year a story exposing the National Security Agency’s secret and illegal domestic spying operation, which placed telephone conversations and emails of American citizens under surveillance. Times editor Bill Keller, who personally went to the White House to discuss the story, agreed with others in the paper’s top management to withhold it until after the November 2004 presidential election, an action which may well have proved decisive in giving Bush a second term.


The Times’ prolonged silence on the missile story—which echoed the disturbing silence of the Pentagon itself—was in all probability the product of discussions between the paper’s editors and senior military and political officials. The decision was taken to wait until the proper authorities had come up with a plausible explanation.


Both the extraordinary length of this delay in covering the story, as well as the content of the article itself, make clear that this plausible explanation has not been forthcoming.


The Pentagon’s announcement that it was “satisfied” that what appeared to many scientists and experts on missile technology to have been the launch of an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile was nothing more than the contrail (condensation trail) of a jet airplane was less than convincing.


The military has yet to explain why it took two days to reach this conclusion, and why, if this is indeed the case, it is unable to specify what airplane produced the contrail. With the vast amounts of money that are poured into multiple agencies—the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD), the US Northern Command (NORTHCOM), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and others—to monitor US airspace, it is inconceivable that such information would be unavailable.


The most interesting information contained in the Times article came from Gil Leyvas, the photojournalist who shot the video of what the paper acknowledges “looked to him like the launching of a missile.”


According to the Times: “Mr. Leyvas said there were two copies of the unedited videotape of the Nov. 8 contrail, one that he has and one at the station. He and Scott Diener, the news director at KCBS, said there had been no effort by any government entity to obtain the unedited videotape, perhaps as part of an investigation into the incident.”


“The media are the only people begging for the video,” Diener told the Times.


In other words, there has been no investigation of the incident by the military, the civilian authorities or anyone in positions of governmental authority. What this suggests is that elements within the military and intelligence apparatus know very well what caused the plume and have no need to conduct such a probe. The airplane contrail explanation would appear to be not the product of objective evidence, but rather a useful alibi.


The original and highly disturbing questions raised by this incident remain in full force. Is the US military in control of its nuclear forces? And is the Obama administration in control of the military?

[LWM]

Pentagon calls mystery missile 'unexplained,' cannot rule out threat

THE Pentagon said a missile launch off the southern coast of California remained "unexplained" and that its mysterious origins meant that it was not possible to rule out any threat to the homeland.

Earlier yesterday (11/12/10), NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) and NORTHCOM (United States Northern Command) officials told Fox there was no threat.

However, Pentagon Spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan would not confirm that because the military does not know what the missile was or where it came from.

Col Lapan added that the incident did not appear to be a regularly scheduled test, as no warnings to mariners or airmen appeared to be issued ahead of its launch.

The contrail was caught on camera by a KCBS news helicopter at around sunset Monday evening, approximately 50km out to sea and west of Los Angeles.

The missile appeared to be launched from the water, and not from US soil, Col Lapan added.

The military was trying to solve the mystery using the video from KCBS as there was no indication that NORAD and NORTHCOM were able to detect it independently.

According to Fox News, NORAD and NORTHCOM would only say they were aware of the launch.

However one unnamed senior defense official added: "There was no threat to the homeland."

A navy spokesperson previously told KCBS that no navy activity was reported in the region.

A sergeant at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County said a Delta II rocket was launched from the base last Friday, but insisted there were no launches since then.

On viewing the footage, former deputy defense secretary Robert Ellsworth speculated on KCBS that the launch could be a show of military muscle.

"It could be a test-firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile from a submarine ... to demonstrate, mainly to Asia, that we can do that," Mr Ellsworth said

[LWM]

Canadian government can't explain photos of missiles launched from sea near Newfoundland

Kind of hard to explain this photo of unexplained missile sighting in New Foundland as a ‘jet contrail’

We put this story in an update on a recent post of a news helicopter video shot in the skies of Manhattan the morning after the mysterious missile video was shot in southern California. The Manhattan news report dubbed by the press, “Fire in the Sky’, the report from CBS 2 News, an ‘unnamed top astronomer’ said the object was a jet contrail. The same official explanation from the Pentagon, the mystery ‘missile’ in southern California, ‘most likely’ a jet contrail. Also in our post, a news report from Canada’s CTV, NASA was investigating mysterious ‘fire balls’ sighted over Canada and the U.S..

Based on the above photo, it’d be a pretty hard sell the object, one of three sighted by two women in Newfoundland, was a jet contrail. The news report from CTV, extraordinary.

CTV:

No one seems to know what two neighbors saw off the coast of Newfoundland earlier this week, but the two are convinced three large bullet-like objects were missiles. And they have photos they say prove it.

It all began around 5 p.m. Monday when Darlene Stewart of Harbour Mille, N.L., was outside snapping photos of a sunset, when she saw a long, thin glimmering object in the sky that appeared as if it came out of water.

The photos she took show a thin object shooting into the air, with a tail of fire and smoke.

She called her neighbour Emmy Pardy, who went to get binoculars for a closer look.

“I went out on the patio and I zoomed in and I saw a humungous bullet, silver-grey in colour and it had flames coming out of the bottom and a trail of smoke,” Pardy told CTV.ca.

“I said to Darlene my God, this looks like it’s a missile or something.”

Stewart and Pardy said the objects were visible in the sky for about 15 minutes.

The women say they watched in fear and thought that a missile could be heading their way.

“I was sick to my stomach,” Stewart said. “If it was a missile, what goes up does come down, but where is it going to land?”

“If I hadn’t taken the pictures, they’d figure it was just another UFO sighting.”

Darlene was partially right, if she hadn’t taken the photos, they (the government) wouldn’t have had to respond to the media ‘firestorm’ which erupted after Darlene’s photos were viewed. Photos which included a clear shot of what seems to be a missile. The response from the government:

A spokesman for the Canadian Forces said they there have been no planned missile exercises off the seaboard.

“There’s no threat to the security of Canada,” Maj. Jason Proulx said from Ottawa.

Dimitri Soudas, a spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, said in an email that “there is no indication that there was ever a rocket launch.”

Gerry Byrne, the MP for Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte, is demanding to know if the objects were, in fact, missiles.

He wants to know whether the government knew about it and failed to inform residents, or was simply not told.

“The RCMP provided an initial report that it was some sort of rocketry that initiated from France,” he said.

“They subsequently retracted that story.”

Does part of the quote seem familiar? It should, as immediately after the footage of the California mystery missile footage was aired on KCBS News, citizens of the U.S. were told by NORAD, ‘There’s not threat to the U.S.’ while the Pentagon scrambled for 36 hours to come up with, ‘it’s most likely a jet contrail’. Case closed, end of media story. By November 11, two days after the southern California incident, the day New York City’s CBS 2 aired their ‘Fire in the Sky’ report–footage of an object streaking across the Manhattan skyline at dawn, less than 24 hours after the California ‘missile’ incident–CBS News 2 contacted an ‘unnamed top astronomer’ to get the official verdict of ‘jet contrail!’.

CBS News 2:

‘CBS 2 reached out to a top astronomer who looked at the video. He said it looks beautiful, but that is was like nothing more than what’s known as a “contrail” — condensation from a commercial or military jet.’

Back to the missile story out of Canada.

According to the report, the Newfoundland government initially claimed the missiles were fired from territory owned by the French:

Liberal Sen. George Baker said that the direction of the objects suggests a launch from nearby St-Pierre-Miquelon, which is French territory.

If true, Baker said such a launch could contravene international sovereignty rules. He added that Ottawa should be treating the situation seriously.

“Knowing that France has territory within our 200 mile (320 kilometre) zone in Canada, they should at least ask the French, ‘Look, are you launching these missiles?’ Because if they are, (and) everybody is denying knowledge of it, then the laws have been broken.”

Agence France Presse reported that France fired a missile on Wednesday – not Monday – and it was launched from Bay of Audierne in Northwestern France.

In a statement, the French Defence Ministry said the missile was fired from the submarine “Le Terrible.”

The report the government ‘retracted’ their France claim then dubbed the incident….. ‘unexplained’. An incident which happened to occur in area of a ‘major flyway for transatlantic aircraft’.

[LWM]

THE TRIDENT NUCLEAR MISSILE SYSTEM
The Trident missile, named after the trident, is an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) which is armed with nuclear warheads and is launched from submarines (SSBNs), making it a SLBM.

The Trident was built in two variants: the I (C4) UGM-96A and II (D5) UGM-133A. The C4 and D5 designations put the missiles within the "family" that started in 1960 with Polaris (A1, A2 and A3) and continued with the 1971 Poseidon (C3).

Both Trident versions are three-stage, solid-propellant, inertially guided missiles whose range is increased by an aerospike, a telescoping outward extension that halves frontal drag.

The Trident is carried by fourteen active US Ohio class submarines and (with British warheads) four UK Vanguard class submarines.

The launch from the submarine occurs below the ocean surface. The missiles are ejected from their tubes by gas pressure created by a "gas generator", a solid-fuel rocket motor attached to the bottom of the missile tube which heats a pool of water creating steam. After the missile leaves the tube and rises through the water over the submarine, the first stage motor ignites, the aerospike extends, and the boost stage begins. Ideally, the missile is "sheathed" in gas bubbles for its entire time in the water, so liquid never touches its fuselage. Within about two minutes, after the third stage motor fires, the missile is traveling faster than 20,000 ft/s (6,000 m/s).

Trident I (C4) was deployed in 1979 and phased out in the 1990s and early 2000s. Trident II (D5) was deployed in 1990; it is planned to be in service past 2020. As of 2005, a decision is expected soon about whether or not to replace the UK's missiles and submarine fleet. Critics from the peace movement and within the military establishment have questioned the usefulness of such a weapon in the current military climate. The use of (or threat of use of) such weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, according to an Advisory Opinion issued by the International Court of Justice in 1996.