Giants of Malta

THE ALIENS BEHIND THE MEGALITHS

OPEN

In 1985, pediatrician Anton Mifsud got a frantic call from his contractor. The doctor was in the middle of excavating a site for his new medical clinic. Mifsud was hoping they didn’t need more equipment - they were isolated on Gozo, one of two main islands in the Maltese archipelago. The nearest mainland was the Italian coast, 60 miles away by boat. But Mifsud quickly realized this wasn’t about equipment. The contractor sounded worried - afraid even. Mifsud wondered if someone got hurt. He got the contractor to calm down and tell him what happened. Turns out, workers found the bones of a human in the ground. The doctor said they should just call the police. But the contractor said there was more to it. The skeleton they found was nearly ten feet in length.

The doctor said that was impossible - no human ever lived who was that enormous. Then he remembered the legend.

THE NIGHT OF SANSUNA

It was late on a Winter night, on the island of Malta, in 3600 BC. A Farmer was awakened by a strange orange glow from the entrance of his hut. His family was fast asleep along the back walls. No need to alert them - not until he figured out what this was. It should have been pitch black out there - the moon was just a sliver in the sky. But that glow was growing brighter.

The Farmer stepped through the low entrance and stood at the edge of his wheat field staring up at the stars. What he saw was incredible: a fireball slowly moving across the night sky. He’d seen meteors before. But they came in bunches. This was a single large object blazing a path through the darkness. And it was getting bigger. That’s when he had a shiver of fear. The trajectory of the thing - it was headed straight for the island. He thought about warning his family but there was no time. The fireball was going to hit. Seconds later it made impact. Just beyond the valley a bright flash lit up the island and the sea beyond. Then the darkness returned, followed by a low thunder that echoed against the sea cliffs. Then nothing.

The Farmer’s wife stepped out of the hut, afraid. He turned to comfort her: whatever it was had crashed. The danger was over. But she wasn’t looking at him. She was staring at something behind him, in the direction of the crash.

The Farmer turned around to see a huge figure rising from the woods where the fireball landed. A dark silhouette standing higher than the trees.

The Giant called Sansuna had arrived.

She claimed to be from a race of beings called the Nephilim. And despite her overwhelming size and strength, she earned the trust of the locals. There were just a few thousand people on the isolated islands. Generations before, their ancestors made the three day journey across the Mediterranean sea from Sicily. And they made a life on the rocky islands - the largest known today as Malta, the smaller called Gozo.

There was just enough grassland to raise animals and grow basic crops.

But now, with the arrival of this Giantess, the Maltese had a powerful being promising to keep them safe.

Sansura saw the land was abundant with huge limestones. To the Maltese people, the stones were too enormous to use. The biggest stones weighed 20 tons and stood 16 feet high. This was 5,000 years ago - they had no metal tools or even the wheel to help them. But Sansura was able to pick them up and carefully place them, one by one, until enormous temples were assembled, with walls three stories high.

Malta has two kinds of limestone rock: coralline, which is hard and durable, and globigerina, which is softer and more workable because it’s composed of the microscopic shells of sea life.

Sansura used the coralline to build outer walls and the softer globigerina for the interiors, where the Maltese people carved decorative designs.

As she assembled thirty different megalithic temples, Sansura fed herself on broad beans grown in the farmer’s fields. To eat her food, the Giantess carved a giant bowl from a single massive stone. The Farmer marveled at its size - his entire family could sit in it.

To show their devotion to Samsura, the locals built a statue in her honor - a ten foot high tribute.

The most impressive temple Sansura built was on the smaller island of Gozo, one of two in the isolated archipelago. The farmers named the temple Ggantija - the Maltese word for “giant”. It’s composed of two separate stone buildings, using enormous coralline limestone blocks. To this day, Ggantija still stands on Gozo.

But in the passing centuries, the work of Sansura became the stuff of myth. No one believed it. The idea of a giantess walking the islands, moving limestone around, was too fantastical.

Until they found the bones.

GIANT BONES

The megalithic temples on Malta and Gozo were left ignored for thousands of years. People assumed they were like Stonehenge or the Egyptian pyramids, other ancient monuments built with large stones - the literal meaning of “megalithic”.

The islands were not ignored at all. They had strategic value for every great civilization in world history. It makes sense. The islands are 60 miles from Italy and 180 miles from North Africa, right in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.

The Phoenicians were the first empire to claim Malta. Then the Romans. Then the Byzantines took over. The Arabs were next. Finally, in 1019, Malta was captured from the Arabs by King Roger the First of Sicily. From that point, Malta was under Christian rule. In 1530 the Holy Roman Emperor assigned the Knights of St. John to protect Malta.

And the leader of the Knights was the first person in a long time to note the islands were chock full of ancient temples.

He was a nobleman named Gian Abela. With the islands well-protected, Abela had time to investigate his surroundings. He became known for collecting archeological artifacts, and documenting the sites of the megalithic temples. Most were buried in debris from centuries of neglect. The roofs were gone. But the enormity of the sites was clear.

Abela couldn’t help but wonder - how could these oversized temples have ever been built? His ability to uncover the answers was limited. He wasn’t a true archeologist - in fact, in the early 17th century, no one knew how to properly excavate a site. If artifacts were found, it was often by accident. Which is exactly what happened to Abela.

A construction worker came to him, excited by something he found in a rock fissure. Abela went to see, and suddenly the answer of who built the giant structures was clear as day: it was a giant.

The worker handed Abela a femur bone, the largest bone in the human leg. Only the one found by the worker was twice as large as a normal human. By Abela’s calculations, a person with a femur that big would be nearly ten feet tall.

Soon, Abela had workers all over the island hunting. And by 1647, he had enough bones to publish the pioneering work that made him famous as “the Father of Maltese History”.

The book documented skull fragments, giant femurs and tibias, impossibly large vertebrae, and enormous pelvic bones. His conclusion was that the Maltese temples were built by a race of giants that inhabited the islands in prehistoric times. It only bolstered his theory that local legends also claimed the temples were the work of a giant.

Abela made the bones available for all to see. He transformed his home into Malta’s first public museum.

In 1644 Danish anatomist Thomas Bartholin visited the museum. He agreed the large bones must have belonged to “gigantic humans”.

Skeptics insisted the bones belonged to extinct animals. After all, giants didn’t exist. Mainstream scientists assumed the temples would be fully excavated someday, uncovering proof of who really built them.

And centuries later, proper archaeological excavations were done. But what they uncovered only added to the mystery.

UNCOVERING THE GIANT

In 1915, a Maltese farmer was trying to plow his field, but he kept hitting large blocks of stone. So he complained to the director of the Malta Museum, Sir Temi Zammit. Zammit examined the field, expecting more temple remains. But this new find seemed like something quite different. The farmer should have kept his mouth shut, because his complaint prompted a huge dig in his field. Zammit ordered the first excavation on Malta following standard scientific techniques of the day. That meant carefully removing dirt using trowels and brushes, one layer of soil at a time. Because each layer reveals a period in history through its contents.

After days of excavation, it became clear they found a statue. Or the remains of one. The top had been destroyed long ago. But the bottom was there: Two giant legs and feet. And there appeared to be the hem of a skirt left before the statue was damaged. Zammit recognized the design carved in the hem. It matched images of a female goddess found in ancient Maltese clay sculpture. He had many examples in his own museum. Only judging by the feet and legs, this statue must have been over ten feet tall.

Zammit had uncovered the Giantess of Malta.

* * *

Workers kept digging, and what was a buried statue turned out to be much more. The statue was in the middle of a complex group of megalithic temples. Zammit uncovered one of the most significant and impressive archaeological sites in Malta. They’re known as the Tarxien Temples - four structures in all, each with a distinctive layout.

And with every new detail they found, Zammit had a growing feeling nothing there made sense.

The temples were made from limestone blocks that weighed several tons. Even the floors were massive stone slabs aligned perfectly together.

The doorways were even more impressive: two upright stones a stunning ten feet in height were placed on either side, with a single multi-ton block placed across the top.

The obvious question plaguing Zammit: how did farmers on a remote island do this?

If it was just the Tarxien Temple Complex, the accomplishments of these ancient Maltese people would be nearly incomprehensible. But Zammit oversaw the excavation of nearly thirty different temple sites. All megalithic - all made with enormous limestone, stacked in close-fitting slabs. And arranged in cloverleaf floor plans only visible from above.

The roofs were missing, destroyed long ago - victims of all those great civilizations that ruled the island. Zammit assumed they were made of wood and grass, something the farmers could easily construct. Until he examined the walls at Tarxien and another megalithic temple excavated at Mnajdra:

Where the uppermost stones survived, they tilted inwards. Zammit felt a sharp fear in his gut - he knew what the tilt indicated. It made everything he was seeing more improbable. A normal roof supporting wood beams might slope outwards, to carry the weight of the beams. But an inward tilt suggested there was an arch, where stone blocks locked into a slope. This required stones to be placed and held until a keystone was fitted at the top of the curve. How the highest stones could possibly have been set in place by the ancient farmers, Zammit couldn’t guess.

The statue of the Giantess was looming in his mind. But he was the highly respected Museum Director. He needed a serious answer. He pushed the idea of giants out of his mind - it was absurd.

Then they found the bowl.

* * *

To this day, it’s one of the most notable artifacts from the Tarxien Temples: a bowl carved from a single block of stone. Looks like something you’d use to have some soup, maybe your morning cereal. Only it was big. Really big. Zammit stood next to it and the top of the bowl was as high as his waist. It measures four feet high and nine feet wide. If you travel to Malta, you can see it for yourself. It was recently restored and is on display in the Tarxien ruins.

No one knows what it was for. Food preparation? Grain storage? Decoration? Zammit again found himself pushing away thoughts of the Giantess. The legends were just stories.

The explanation for all the temples and artifacts must lay overseas. The megaliths were certainly part of a trend in the ancient world that gave us the Pyramids, or Stonehenge. Expert stone masons and stone cutters could easily make the short sail across the Meditteranean to the isolated islands. That would make all these structures possible. That’s what Zammit told himself.

Until he began dating the artifacts. And his whole time line blew up.

A TROUBLING TIMELINE

The Egyptian Pyramids, Stonehenge, and other known megalithic structures in Zammit’s time were built around 2600 BC. The Bronze Age. Makes sense, since the Bronze age brought on the widespread use of, well, bronze tools. Stone cutting was much improved by bronze chisels, saws, drills, hammers, and wedges. Zammit assumed these tools and the skilled men who used them found their way to Malta.

But when he examined the layers of soil in the Tarxien dig, the strata told a different story. There was a layer of soil from the Bronze Age overlying the Tarxien Megaliths. Meaning it was above it. Chronologically, that put the Megaliths some time before the Bronze age.

That simple fact changed everything. It meant the temples originated before any experts in stone cutting arrived to launch the era of temple building. Sure, the ancient Maltese farmers worked with stone to build shelters. But they had no expertise in turning huge blocks of limestone into megalithic architecture. Until they did. Something intervened.

* * *

Zammit looked for evidence in the artifacts he’d collected, mostly tools and pottery. Examining the layers of soil he put together a history of ancient Malta.

The earliest pottery had a smooth surface with bright colors - first red pigments, then blacks and yellows. This trend began with the first settlers on Malta, some time in the Neolithic period, the Stone Age. And the style lasted for two thousand years.

But then came a change. Zammit called it the Ggantija period, because it happened at the time the stone temples arrived. Zammit estimated it was around 3600 BC. Suddenly the inhabitants began to build enormous temples. And in the strata, remants of a new style of pottery suddenly showed up. The decorations on the pottery featured light, scratched lines with converging and diverging curves. Zammit immediately knew what they meant to depict. But it was one of his workers said it out loud: the design looked like a comet.

* * *

Of course, Zammit’s dating ability was limited to the science of his time. Dating artifacts based on the layers of soil is actually pretty accurate - old stuff gets buried by new stuff, hard to argue with that. But people did. Plenty of scholars at the time disagreed, placing the megalithic monuments in the Bronze Age. This made more sense given the amount of stone structures in Europe at the time. But in 1946, a revolutionary method of dating objects was developed. And the debate was ended for good.

CARBON 14

It’s a biological fact all living things absorb carbon and convert it to carbon dioxide. It happens constantly, as long as the living thing is, well, living. Once a thing is dead, no knew carbon is absorbed. The carbon remaining in the tissue is left to die as well. Only carbon decays much slower than dead animals or plants. Glacially slow. It takes 5,730 years for Carbon 14 to decay by half - known as the half life. In another 5,730 years, half of what remains is gone. After 60,000 years, there’s not enough carbon 14 left to measure. And no matter what the organic material is - dead plant, dead animal, human bones, even a piece of ancient wheat - Carbon 14 decays at exactly the same pace.

In 1949, Professor Willard Libby realized this strange fact of nature could be used to date things back 60,000 years with stunning accuracy. Which meant he could tell you how old organic material was back to the stone age. Based simply on how much carbon 14 was left compared with other forms of carbon that don’t decay. It just worked. And mainstream science jumped on it. The method spread to archaeology, geology, atmospheric science - anyone who needed to unlock the age of an object. It’s how we know the Egyptian Pharaoh Khufu was alive in 2600 BC. And it’s how we know Temi Zammit was dead-on about the megaliths on Malta.

After testing organic material and limestone in Zammit’s excavations, the Temples were confirmed to originate around 3600 BC. Before the Bronze Age, as Zammit predicted. In fact, they originated a thousand years before the Pyramids even existed. Before Stonehenge. Heck - before the wheel was used by humans.

Somehow, on this isolated island, farmers with stone age tools and no known way to move twenty-ton blocks of limestone, constructed gigantic megalithic temples for the world to see.

The mystery drove Zammit to re-read the original legends. He had them documented in the National Museum of Archaeology. The ancient settlers of Malta told of a giantess called Sansuna. They claimed she carried huge stones for miles, sometimes with an infant on her shoulder. She built the temples herself, living off wide beans and honey. Neolithic age farmers said Sansuna arrived on a blazing comet from the stars. According to folklore, the giantess said she was from another race called the Niphilim.

Now, Zammit was a well-educated man. He graduated as a Doctor from the University of Malta. He practiced in bacteriology in the great cities of Europe. Now he was Director of the National Museum.

But he wasn’t entirely sure what the Niphilim referred to - it wasn’t any culture he’d heard of before.

When he looked it up, he found himself wishing he’d never learned.

NEPHILIM RISING

They’re mentioned in the Book of Genesis. They’re described as warriors who were large and strong. That’s where Zammit first found a reference to the Nephilim. But he had to turn to a book outside the official Bible to get the full story: The Book of Enoch didn’t make it into the Catholic canon. But it was revered in Jewish communities. And in this book was a story about the origins of evil. It starts with a group of Angels called The Watchers. There were two hundred of them, led by an Angel named Semjaza. They were entrusted by God to act as heavenly overseers, ensuring order and guidance among mankind. But when they arrived and saw humanity first hand, the Watchers realized how much more powerful they were. These Angels had desires of domination. They had a streak of rebellion, tempted to take actions forbidden by divine law. They took an oath among themselves and decided they would take human wives. This turned out to be a very bad decision. The Watchers were cast out from heaven, bound in chains, and forced to live for eternity in the depths of the Earth.

But their evil lived on. The Watchers and their human wives had offspring. These hybrid beings were mighty giants. And they were left to walk the Earth. These were the Niphilim.

According to the Book of Enoch, these giants wreaked havoc on Earth, and are the true reason God created the Flood. He meant to “destroy the children of the Watchers from amongst men”.

Of course, if the Niphilim were destroyed in the Flood, they’d be long gone before the early Maltese farmers settled on the island.

But in the Book of Numbers there is another chapter in this story. Moses sends spies to explore the land of Canaan. And their report back suggests these Giants may have survived the Flood. According to Numbers, “The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim, and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”

Zammit had his answer. Sansuna was a demigod stranded on the island. A giant who survived biblical floods. Who was looking to continue its species. Luckily, it seemed the giant was unable to have more offspring. Except maybe she had — that would explain the skulls.

SANSUNA’S CHILDREN

In 1902, the British navy was expanding its base in Malta’s Grand Harbor. At the time, the island was the primary base for the British Mediterranean Fleet. Which meant it was one of Malta’s biggest employers. To accommodate all the new workers, housing developments broke ground on the island’s fields. And if it wasn’t for this construction, the best preserved temple on Malta might never have been uncovered. Because it was entirely underground.

Construction workers cutting cisterns for houses accidentally cut into the ground - and the field gave way underneath them. Suddenly they were looking into the deep darkness of an enormous chamber. Rough excavations followed, revealing a subterranean maze of burial chambers and ossuaries - containers meant for holding the bones of the dead. Ultimately, they brought in an expert to do a proper excavation. And Temi Zammit arrived on the scene.

He called the site the Hal Saflieni Hypogem. Which sounds much fancier than it is. Hal Saflieni was the ancient village that used to be on the field. Hypogem is literally “underground” in Greek.

What Zammit found in there mirrored the megolithic temples that stood on land. There were the same limestone walls and doorways, the same slate floors. The Hypogem was a series of oval chamber halls, with niches in the walls, probably space for bodies. And just as his team marveled at the size of the underground world, they discovered this was just the first level. There were two more underneath.

The above ground temples were beaten down from centuries of conquering civilizations. The Hypogem was a treasure trove of well preserved artifacts. One of the standouts was a terracotta figure of that giantess - she seemed to be everywhere on that island. But this ceramic sculpture had her sleeping, in the same fringed skirt as the ten foot statue. It remains one of the most talked about pieces in the Museum today. But the Hypogem was clearly a burial site. And that meant there would be bones.

Zammit recovered remains of more than 7,000 individuals. Some of the bodies dated back to the Neolithic period.

He methodically catalogued every bone they found. Until he got to a group of skulls he couldn’t catalogue. There were twelve of them. And they were clearly abnormal. The skulls were elongated as if the heads were a completely alien shape.

Zammit asked scientists from Italy to help examine the skulls. They confirmed the strangely long cranium was natural - not the result of bandaging or boards, or stone age medical procedures. But even stranger than the elongated shape was the absence of the median suture. Every human skull has a seam between the two parietal bones. Basically, it divides the skull in half. Except these had no seam at all. Which is impossible, if you ask anatomists. That seam is part of human development during infancy.

In 1920, National Geographic magazine reported that the first inhabitants of Malta were an alien race with elongated skulls.

Zammit would have called that crazy. Except he couldn’t explain them otherwise. Until he realized a new possibility. That maybe these skulls belonged to the offspring of that sleeping lady. Were these the children of the Giantess? Nephilim born again to wreak more havok on the world?

Zammit put the skulls on display, for all to see. Maybe he was hoping someone would see them and give him a more comforting explanation. The skulls remained there until 1985. After that, for some reason, the Heritage Foundation on Malta made them unavailable without an appointment. But they insist these elongated skulls were not alien in nature. There was even an exhibit at the National Museum called “Alien Headaches” attempting to dispel those persistent rumors.

The problem is, no one is saying what they were.

But in his heart, Zammit knew. The Giantess of Malta had plans to live on.

END

The thirty temples on Malta and Gozo remain a mystery. No one knows for sure who built these structures - or why. They remain among the earliest free-standing structures in the world. The folklore focuses on giants. But the giant bones found by Abela in the 1600’s turned out to be from dwarf elephants, not actual giants. The complexity and sheer engineering marvel of the megalithic temples is a tribute to those neolithic farmers. Because somehow, with primitive tools and ingenuity, they assembled massive buildings that still stand, 5,000 years later.

Temi Zammit still has artifacts on display at the museum he founded in Malta’s capital. The main hall of the University of Malta now bears his name. And Zammit’s likeness is depicted on two commemorative Maltese coins. In 1930 he was knighted, and he published the definitive history of Malta. Indeed, because of his hard work and passion for Malta, Zammit remains the island’s true giant.

Your Mind is Controlled by Others

HOW WE CONTROL YOUR THOUGHTS

OPEN

In August of 1990, Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait, its neighbor to the South. Suddenly the independent nation of Kuwait was no longer independent - or a nation. It was forced to become the 16th province of Iraq, along with all its valuable oil resources.

The world would not let this stand. The answer was “Shock and Awe”. The U.S. Military launched 2,000 sorties a day for 38 days, crippling Iraq’s air defense and destroying it’s air force. Iraq went from flying 200 missions a day to zero. It’s ground forces were helpless without air cover. They suffered staggering losses. Iraq now had a choice: Retreat from Kuwait or face a complete loss of their military.

That’s when they made a strange — and suicidal - move. Iraq invaded a small, abandoned border town in Saudi Arabia. A town that was now home to a U.S. Marine outpost. Why would Iraq invade another country in the face of overwhelming force?

Because there was an FM transmitter there, broadcasting U.S. propaganda into Kuwait. To most it sounded like standard “Voices of America” stuff, American music and talk. Not a concern. But Iraq was convinced there were subliminal messages hidden in the transmission. In frequencies not audible by the human ear but absorbed by the mind. And the message was causing their troops to lose hope and give up the fight. So Iraq took the bold step of crossing the border and destroying the transmitter.

The Marines at Al-Khafji thought the attack was crazy. Of course, they had no idea they were guarding an active PSYOP weapon - and the Iraqi soldiers were exactly right.

EAT MORE POPCORN

Can humans be controlled subliminally? The answer, of course, is a big yes. And who was the first to do it? The answer, of course, is advertisers.

For six weeks in 1957, families in New Jersey went to the movies, had a fun night out, and went home. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary happened. If you asked those moviegoers, it was just a normal night at the movies. They had no idea they were exposed to what Business Week later called “a startling kind of invisible advertising”.

Then the Wall Street Journal put it on the front page. And the whole world knew.

Turns out, a strange mechanism had been fitted onto the film projector. It flashed messages over the film as it was projected, once every five seconds. Each message only appeared for 1/3000th of a second - way too fast to be seen by the human eye. But that wasn’t the intent. The goal - by a new company called Subliminal Projection - was to have these messages bypass the conscious brain, and register directly in the subconscious.

The messages were calls to action. Not to make society better. But to EAT MORE POPCORN and DRINK MORE COKE. And this was no small test. Over 45,000 movie patrons were exposed, without their consent or knowledge.

But what lit up the advertising world and created a media frenzy wasn’t the ethics of controlling consumer minds. It was the fact that it worked.

Popcorn sales jumped 58 percent.

The press called it “the advertising shot heard round the world”.

Ad Agencies went into overdrive looking for ways to implement the technology.

Ad Age magazine’s 1956 issue proclaimed it was possible to shape buying behavior by external electrical penetration.

In June of that year, the BBC flashed a subliminal four-word message to five million viewers. The message was “Pirie Breaks World Record”. Pirie was a runner who, well, just broke a world record. The message was flashed during normal programming for one twenty-fifth of a second. Impossible to see by the conscious mind. The BBC asked viewers to write in if they saw anything. Astonishingly, 130 viewers wrote in with nearly the right four words. And 20 had it exactly right. There was something to this.

New companies were launched in the Subliminal space. Experimental Films announced they were building a marketing device for retail counters that flashed subliminal messages. Westin-Rush Productions began inserting subliminal scenes into their sci fi films to heighten dramatic effects.

Radio stations WAAF in Chicago and WCCO in Minneapolis tested subliminal perception commercials to see if they increased sales.

And American Television networks began figuring out how to implement the technology into their broadcasts.

That’s when the backlash hit.

Something about having your thoughts manipulated without your knowledge didn’t sit right.

An article in The Hollywood Reporter called it “rape of the mind”.

The Washington Post called it “Brainwashing”.

The LA Times warned we would all be hypnotized against our will.

By 1957, the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters banned subliminal advertising. And the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising did the same, calling subliminal ads “professionally unacceptable”.

Of course, banning flashing images wouldn’t stop consumers from being unconsciously manipulated. No one seemed to realize: this was already happening. And the fact that no one knew proved it was wildly successful.

FREUDIAN SLIP

Neurologist Sigmund Freud popularized the idea we are motived by our unconscious. He made it famous in his 1899 book “The Interpretation of Dreams”.

And in the decades since, unconscious motivation became a staple of product marketing. Because it worked.

Ernest Dichter was a pioneer in this strategy. He was known by Advertisers as the “Messiah of Marketing”. After World War II he founded the “Institute for Research for Mass Motivation” and spent decades changing the face of consumer marketing. His trick? Use Freudian word association to test consumers. Find out from the subconscious not what they bought, but why.

Dichter discovered Moms saw candy as a way to be nice to their kids, so he had grocery stores move it from food aisles to displays next to the cash registers. Candy would become an impulse buy. Exactly as it remains today.

He found consumers ate M&M’s not because they tasted good, but as a reward for doing work they didn’t want to do. So the company changed its slogan from “Everybody likes ‘em” to “Make that tough job easier”. Sales of M&M’s doubled.

Sanka was a decaffeinated coffee brand that attacked regular coffee in its ads. But Dichter discovered consumers had a deep love of coffee - they felt Sanka was insulting a favorite beverage. Sanka changed its slogan to, “Now you can drink all the coffee you want”. Again, sales went through the roof.

But changing a slogan was still out in the open - consumers were aware it was happening.

It was Edward Bernays who took this to a new level.

He set out to manipulate public opinion in ways that were entirely unconscious. Consumers never realized they were being influenced.

It makes sense he was good at talking to the subconscious - Bernays was Sigmund Freud’s nephew.

INVISIBLE ADVERTISING

His first campaign was in 1929 - and no one knew it was even a campaign.

It was noon on New York’s Fifth Avenue. And it was packed with people dressed in their best. As the New York Times put it, “Modern, prosperous New York was celebrating Easter.” The traditional parade was packed, one of the best attended in history. The event marked a modern era - the cars were new, the fashion was cutting edge, and motion picture cameras filmed the scene for the first time.

As part of this modern feel, a group of young women made a scene “smashing tradition”. They strolled along the parade route puffing cigarettes as a gesture of freedom. Hard to imagine now, but in 1929 women smoking in public was taboo. No one did it. But these suffragettes didn’t care about the taboo. They cared about freedom and equality. They showed the world women could smoke in public, just like men. Suddenly, cigarettes were “torches of freedom”.

Just weeks later, corporations opened their smoking rooms to women. The demand for cigarettes surged among females. All from a subconscious belief that cigarettes made women independent and free.

The public had no idea the whole thing was staged.

This wasn’t the case of rebellious women showing off a love of cigarettes.

The event was orchestrated by Edward Bernays for the American Tobacco Company.

He successfully persuaded people to behave irrationally by linking products to subconscious emotion. He convinced buyers they’d feel better buying what he was selling. Even if they didn’t need it. Even if it might eventually kill them.

How good was Bernays at manipulating consumers? His messages are affecting you to this day.

***

If you were alive in America in 1920, you probably ate a light breakfast. Everybody did. Toast, juice, coffee — that was considered the right way to eat. Especially for what they called “brain workers” - folks who sat in offices all day.

Then, in August of 1922, an eye-catching article appeared in the New York Times. It was picked up by hundreds of papers around the country. The headline was “Pie for Breakfast”. The message? “Physicians in all parts of the United States have united in putting the OK upon pie as a breakfast food . . . They expressed belief that a heavy breakfast was more healthful than a light one.”

The report came from a respected journal, the American Medical Review of Reviews. And the article was pretty revolutionary.

The idea of a heavy breakfast being a good thing? Well, people loved it. A paper in Upland California put it: “Sometimes health advice is pleasant, requiring no work, no self denial. Interesting sample is offered in the Medical Review of Reviews. It queried doctors in 46 states. 3 out of 4 physicians advise eating a hearty breakfast.”

The report even gave the reasoning behind the theory: “One authority says the digestive apparatus is at its best after a nights sleep. The system like a furnace is low on fuel in the morning and needs a good sized meal. The head of the Illinois State Department of health says its even safe to have pie with our bacon and eggs.”

Every Doctor quoted in the articles gave a breakfast suggestion that included “bacon and eggs”.

Seems like a normal breakfast to us. But it wasn’t then. This was a new, decadent combination - bacon and eggs? Every day? Doctors were giving consumers permission to eat big.

For the first time, this opened the door for bacon and eggs to become the default American breakfast - and it still is to this day.

Only there was no science behind the claims. No study generated the report.

The whole thing was propaganda orchestrated by Edward Bernays.

Beech-Nut Packing Company wanted to increase bacon sales. So they hired Bernays.

The standard Ad Agency solution would be to put bacon on sale. Or take out expensive full page ads telling consumers to buy more bacon.

But Bernays wasn’t about standard solutions. He set out to change people’s subconscious idea of bacon. He surveyed 5,000 doctors and asked them if a hearty breakfast was better than a light breakfast. And he published the results, making sure bacon and eggs was mentioned every time Doctors described the ideal breakfast.

Bacon sales exploded. But more than that, American culture changed.

To this day, 70% of all bacon is eaten for breakfast.

Bernays proved he could influence the masses. It was a power that had a wide range of uses.

He should have stopped with consumer products.

When a new client approached him about toppling a foreign government, he should have passed.

But Bernays took the job. And he changed history again.

OPERATION SUCCESS

Jacobo Arbenz was elected president of Guatemala in 1951. His ideas for social reform and economic development were popular. Árbenz's government implemented land reform, labor rights legislation, and infrastructure improvements. He enjoyed support from labor unions, peasant organizations, and the middle class. The people felt hope and optimism for the future.

The United Fruit Company had a very different take.

They were an American company that owned vast tracts of land in Guatemala. The local banana plantations accounted for more than a quarter of all the company’s fruit production on the continent. Guatemala land was big money for them.

Now, it’s not like Arbenz was out to take all the company’s land. His plan was to take only uncultivated land - areas deemed more than United Fruit needed for its business - and give it back to the peasants.

United Fruit wasn’t having it.

The standard solution would be to lobby the Arbenz government. But United Fruit was not after standard solutions. They would only be satisfied with a win. So they hired Edward Bernays.

And Bernays went to work, doing what he did best. American media outlets were flooded with articles - orchestrated by Bernays - describing Arbenz as a dangerous communist. It was a complete lie.

But it worked.

In the 1950’s, a communist country just 1,300 miles from America was considered a genuine threat. The American people were convinced, at least enough that Congress had to take action.

That got the CIA involved. And Operation PBSUCCESS was born.

The entire focus of PBSUCCESS was to overthrow Arbenz and his government. The CIA funded anti-Árbenz rebel groups in Guatemala. They also recruited and trained a paramilitary force, the "Liberation Army," composed of Guatemalan exiles and dissidents.

On June 18,1954, this Liberation Army launched a coup against Árbenz's government. Árbenz went into exile. A military junta took over.

What followed was tragic for the people of Guatamala: Forty years of brutal terror, political instability, and social conflict.

But United Fruit’s profits were safe. Thanks to America’s master of propaganda.

Bernays proved you could subconsciously change a person’s opinion.

Of course, this wasn’t enough for the U.S. Military.

They wanted to subconsciously change a person’s actions.

The subliminal was about to become weaponized.

APOCALYPSE NOW

PSYOPS are a standard part of military operations in the United States. The Army Field manual even calls them “vital”. The term PSYOPS sounds mysterious, but most of the time the tactics are not. We’re talking about distributing leaflets, or broadcasting propaganda over the radio. The PSYOPS goal is always to influence enemy behavior using information instead of bullets. Win the battle without actually killing anyone.

Of course, in the heat of war, where thousands of American soldiers are dying, a leaflet doesn’t quite do the trick. The Army needs something more immediate - something they can target directly on enemy troops without fail.

During the brutal Vietnam conflict, the U.S. Army experimented with a more potent PSYOPS weapon. It was called the Squawk Box. It utilized sound waves. Really loud sound waves. The Squawk Box itself was a set of speakers mounted on armored vehicles or helicopters. Did I mention it was loud? A typical stereo at the time had 30 watts of power. The Squawk Box had 350. The human ear can suffer damaged from sounds over 85 decibels. The Squawk Box delivered a shriek that topped 120 decibels, heard up to two and a half miles away.

Viet Cong troops targeted were instantly disabled by the intense sound. They experienced physical discomfort, nausea, and - in many - permanent loss of hearing. But the effect wasn’t just physical. The Army proved sound waves could effect emotions. The Squawk Box induced feelings of giddiness, distress, and confusion in the enemy. How successful was it?

In 1967 and 1968 alone, over 29,000 Veit Cong soldiers - the equivalent of 95 infantry battalions - surrendered to US Forces. The operation was a secret part of the Cheiu Hoi Amnesty program - Vietnamese for “Open Arms”.

The Sqauwk Box worked, but it was a WHITE level PSYOP. The enemy heard it coming, literally.

The Army wanted to disable troops using GREY level tactics - where they wouldn’t know what was hitting them.

Sound waves wouldn’t do it.

The answer was in the electromagnetic spectrum.

There was already evidence it was possible. In 1870, two German Doctors used electricity to turn living dogs into puppets.

THE MOTOR CORTEX

It wasn’t their goal. Doctors Hitzig and Fritsch were trying to figure out what was causing strange physical symptoms in a patient. That lead them to test the brains of live dogs to see if different parts of the cortex controlled different motor skills. They gave small levels of electrical stimulation to the dog’s exposed brain. Unexpectedly, they discovered different parts of the brain effected different muscles. Stimulate a spot in the right brain, and the doc would have muscle contractions in the left side of its face. Stimulate a different spot, the dog’s paw would move. Hitzig and Fritsch proved there was a discrete area of the cortex in charge of motor function. And logically, that meant there were other areas in charge of psychological powers.

The idea was revolutionary.

Of course, it would be unethical to do the same experiment on human brains.

That didn’t stop American Dr. Robert Bartholow, who did the same experiment on live humans four years later. And proved it was true.

By the turn of the century, Doctors had a complete electrical map of the human brain. By the 1940s, neurosurgeons discovered electric stimulation of the brain actually generated memories.

This new understanding was a tremendous benefit to patients with neurological issues.

But Dr. Russel Monroe had other plans. Because he didn’t work for patients - he was funded by the CIA and the US Military.

It wasn’t enough for Monroe to understand the brain. Beginning in 1950, he planted 125 electrodes into his subjects with the goal of stimulating different parts of the cortex on demand. He even added a pacemaker so the implants had their own power source.

The results were astounding.

Monroe went beyond making a hand move, or making subjects walk a certain direction. He could switch their emotions on and off, change their mental states, make them afraid, or deliver sexual sensations at will.

He even controlled memories and artificially induced hallucinations.

Doctor Jose Delgado at Yale perfected the process - again with funding from the CIA and the Office of Naval Intelligence. Delgado created the Stimociever - a tiny electronic device implanted in the brain that transmitted electrical impulses. He had monkeys running frantically in their cages because of electrodes stimulating their brains from a remote transmitter.

He even stopped a charging bull in its tracks through the use of an implanted radio receiver.

You’d think he would keep his work secret, but he wrote a book: Physical Control of the Mind - Toward a Psychocivilized Society.

Delgado said, “The brain is like an ocean we can navigate and reach a specific destination”.

Why did the CIA allow him to publicize his work?

Because as effective as it was at controlling minds, the Stimoceiver still had to be physically implanted.

The CIA was working on something much worse.

MICROWAVE ON HIGH

In 1961, biophysicist Alan Frey was researching the effects of microwaves on humans. At the time, the use of microwave radiation was new but growing more common. The microwave oven debuted in consumer kitchens just five years earlier. And low levels of microwaves were used in telecommunications, radar, and medical devices. Frey wanted to make sure there weren’t health risks with prolonged exposure.

Subjects were placed in a shielded room with microwave absorbing material. They sat in a chair with their back to a microwave pulse generator.

Frey exposed them to a range of microwave pulse widths, in sequences of three pulses 100 milliseconds apart.

When he reached 1310 MHz something odd happened. The subject asked, “what’s that clicking sound?”

But there was no sound in the room - it was shielded from the outside and there were no moving parts involved in the research.

Frey focused his testing on microwave auditory effects. He found subjects exposed to frequencies between 200 and 3000 MHz heard sounds. Clicks, knocking, or sometimes buzzing or chirping. And they perceived these sounds were coming from inside their own head.

Frey had accidentally uncovered a way to beam sounds into a target’s brain - with no implants at all.

Mainstream science utilized this new ability to train lab animals. They could signal a cat to cue a change direction without any electrified surface or surgical implant. It was all done through the air with microwave pulses.

But the CIA looked into other, more frightening possibilities:

The effect of pulse-modulated radiation on heart rate. Could they induce a heart attack remotely?

Frey conducted studies using isolated frog hearts and pulse modulated radiation. He synchronized the microwaves with the electrical waves in the frog’s electrocardiogram. And was somewhat disturbed to find, he was able to significantly increase the frog’s heart rate. Nothing was attached to the frog - the animal would never know what caused its racing heart.

In 1964, scientists in the Soviet Union saw similar results. Researchers exposed twelve different areas on the bodies of rabbits to a series of short microwave pulses. They were able to cause a reduced heart rate in 60% of the animals.

By 1972, the Soviets moved their testing to human beings.

A declassified report from the Department of the Army that year confirmed it: Over 500 Russian studies were completed studying microwaves effect on human behavior. The report claimed “lethal and non lethal effects have been shown to exist.” The mention of “lethal” effects was a horrifying new wrinkle. They didn’t necessarily mean to kill their subjects. But they discovered they could. Those that survived exposure could be remotely controlled. According to the report, “In certain non lethal exposures definite behavioral changes have occured.”

A reasonable person might hear this and decide it all needs to stop immediately. The Army had a different take. They immediately upped their research in microwave radiation. They ordered trucks capable of carrying microwave broadcasting equipment. The goal was to irradiate and immobilize the enemy.

In 1976, the Naval Medical Research Institute discovered the reason Soviet Scientists had lethal outcomes. The Institute was only able to replicate the Soviet results when power densities were high enough to generate a dangerous amount of heat. Soviet Scientists called it “microthermal effects”. If you own a microwave oven, you might call it “cooking”.

The bottom line: at higher power, microwaves caused significant damage.

Soon the dangers became public. The Red Cross warned against the use of microwaves as weapons. In a review of new antipersonnel weapons, they reported, “electromagnetic radiation directed against the human body may produce heat and cause serious burns or even changes in the molecular structure of the tissues they reach”.

Used at this intensity, it was no longer a PSYOPS weapon - this was a torture device.

* * *

J.F. Schapitz, a scientist working for the Department of Defense, focused on the non-lethal power of microwaves: that radiated subjects heard sounds. And they swore the sounds came from inside their head.

Schapitz was curious if he could transmit more than just clicks and chirps. He attempted to broadcast actual words. Not just any words - but the commands of a hypnotist.

Schaptiz’s subjects would sit in a chair, with no devices for receiving or transcoding messages attached to them. He used low power electromagnetic pulses to broadcast test words directly into the subject’s subconscious.

After experiments with different frequencies, he found success. The subjects could “hear” the words. As far as they could tell, it was some ghost voice inside their head.

The military pushed Schaptiz to dig further.

In a second round of experiments, one subject was bombarded with microwave radiation. And something odd happened. He got up from his chair and left. He actually left the lab. This was allowed - the subjects weren’t prisoners. But it had never happened. Not long after, the subject returned with a can of soda. Schapitz asked the subject why he abruptly left in the middle of the experiment. The subject had a clear answer. He was thirsty. And he knew the store on the corner sold cold cans of soda.

Schapitz smiled. This was a huge success.

The subject had no idea Schapitz had programmed the suggestion to get up and go to the store. It was hypnosis via microwaves. But not every subject was a candidate for hypnosis. The military needed a sure thing.

And that’s exactly what they got.

SYNCHRONICITY

In 1980, Dr. Eldon Byrd had an idea. He was in charge of the Marine Corps Nonlethal Electromagnetic Weapons project. They were investigating how to weaponize safer frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum - outside of microwaves. Change the frequency of an electromagnetic wave, you go from microwaves to xrays, to radio waves, or even visible light.

Now, Byrd knew the human brain worked on similar frequencies.

Whenever you feel an emotion, or have a thought, it’s because of neurons firing in your brain. And this generates electrical activity - or brain waves. Change the frequency of brain waves, you get different thoughts and behaviors.

High frequency brain waves - called Beta waves - are generated during active problem solving. Lower frequency Alpha waves occur when you’re relaxed. Theta, delta, and gamma waves occur during other states - sleeping, or heightened fear for example.

What if you could sync up the electromagnetic waves sent into the brain? Could you effect specific thoughts and emotions, simply by matching the frequency and increasing the power?

The answer seemed to be yes.

Byrd used very low frequency electromagnetic radiation - waves below even radio frequencies. And he discovered he could entrain animal brains - meaning, sync up with their brain waves - and induce the release of behavior-regulating chemicals.

According to Byrd, "We could put animals into a stupor. We got chick brains to dump 80 percent of the natural opiods in their brains. We got rats to release histamine.” Your body releases histamine as a response to unwanted allergens - dust, pollen, mites. The forced release of histamine would result in a cascade of inflammatory reactions. Byrd was thrilled: “In humans, this would cause instant flulike symptoms and produce nausea. You would disable a person temporarily. It would have been like a stun gun.”

Byrd used the phrase “would have been” because he never got to finish the research. The project was approved for four years, but shut down after two. At least that’s what they told him. But Byrd knew better.

He was convinced the program “went black”. Meaning it would continue in total secret. Because he was actually onto something.

And of course, he was right.

The US Air Force published a report in 1982 that contained a stunning warning. It said, “understanding the brain as an electrically-mediated organ suggests that impressed electromagnetic fields are capable of directing behavior. Further, the passage of 100 milliamperes through the myocardium can lead to cardiac standstill and death.”

Ironically, the US Air Force was one of the major sponsors continuing Byrd’s work in secret. They hired Doctor Ross Adey, a trusted veteran of Black level science research. Adey had consulted with NASA and the Department of Energy. And he led the Microwave Exposure exchange program with the Soviets in 1976.

Now he was hired to make electromagnetic wave syncing a useful weapon.

Adey started by implanting transmitters into the brains of cats and chimpanzees. Sounds like a step backward - implants were not what the military wanted. But Adey was actually breaking new ground. Because he wasn’t implanting receivers. The brain implants were sending information out. Adey had receivers that would log the brain’s frequencies and note what physical and emotional states they represented. He compiled a library of frequencies, detailing how they affected the mind and nervous system of the subjects.

Then he used that data to turn the tables. He sent radio signals back into the brains of the animals based on their own brainwaves. And by exciting key frequencies over others, he was able to modify their behavior at will.

Once he had the patterns down, Adey no longer needed implants in the process. He could move on to live human beings.

He placed his subject’s head in an active electromagnetic field. And he modulated the amplitude to mimic a specific EEG - electroencephalogram - frequency. In one instance, he imposed a 4.5 cycles per second theta rhythm on his subject. Meaning they fell asleep.

And a weapon was born. Or the technology for a weapon.

The actual device came next.

CLONING EMOTIONS

The Holy Grail of subliminal mind weapons is manipulating emotion. It’s the stuff of science fiction. A device with this capability is impossible in real life. Except it was patented.

The schematics are classified by the US Government. But Georgia Patent #5159703 - dated October 27, 1992 - describes the device. It’s called a Silent Subliminal Presentation System. And it’s the culmination of all those decades experimenting with electromagnetic pulses.

The patent is attributed to a company called Silent Sounds, Incorporated. The device utilizes computer-enhanced EEGs stored on computer servers. Emotional signal clusters are identified and replicated. Human brainwaves are cloned and stored, turned into a dictionary of emotions.

You choose the emotion you want to trigger - fear, despair, hopelessness. And the transmission can begin. Electromagnetic waves travel on the patented subliminal carrier technology - the Silent Sound Spread Spectrum. S-Quad for short. This can be very low or very high frequency. The key is it’s inaudible.

The S-Quad with the emotional cluster is transmitted on a carrier frequency. This can be an ordinary radio or television signal.

The signal sends the modified EEG wave form to its intended target. The wave form syncs with the target’s brain triggering an occurrence of the desired emotion. The modulated carriers can be transmitted in real time or recorded for delayed transmission.

The patent insists this is not a weapon, stressing the “limitless positive applications”. But it does note the waves are subliminal and undetectable, making them dangerous to the general public.

And it promises when the cloned emotional signatures land on their target, the result is “overwhelming”.

Silent Sounds Inc insists it is only interested in positive emotions.

And the company suggests its invention could be used in security systems. Maybe as part of a subliminal broadcast in shopping malls discouraging shoplifting.

But in 1996, the President of Silent Sounds couldn’t stop himself from bragging a bit about the device’s true purpose. He said, “while the schematics are classified by the US Government, we are allowed to say we work with governments around the world. The Germans, even former Soviet Union countries.” Then he let it slip. “The system was used throughout Operation Desert Storm quite successfully."

The US Military had achieved subliminal mind control.

And the Iraqi troops were going to die stopping it.

THE BATTLE OF AL-KHAFJI

Saddam Hussein had a formidable army occupying Kuwait in 1991. Nearly 500,000 soldiers in 51 divisions - including eight of the infamous Republican Guard divisions. This was a battle tested force - they’s just been through eight years of war with Iran, after invading that country.

So it sounded like wishful thinking when the Bush Administration said they expected unconditional surrender of Iraqi forces. Doubling down, officials said they preferred “a rout of men fleeing without their weapons”. They were looking for Iraqi troops to simply “lay down their arms, walk home, and start complaining”.

Why would the White House openly state these pie-in-the-sky scenarios as their goal? Because along with their own formidable force, the US Military had a secret weapon on their side. The US PsyOps team set up an FM transmitter in the deserted city of Al Khafji. They overpowered the local Iraqi station. Along with patriotic and religious music, the S-Quad subliminal emotional clusters were going wide to Iraqi troops in Kuwait. Subliminally, Iraqi troops were receiving carefully modulated electromagnetic pulses geared to entrain hopelessness. Their will to fight was being drained by the second.

And it worked.

The first American troops that rolled into Kuwait had to drive around large groups of Iraqis looking to surrender. The surprised American soldiers shouted to the Iraqis that more forces would be by soon to pick them up.

Entire Iraqi battalions surrendered to coalition forces. American officers described the new prisoners as bewildered and demoralized. Of course from 38 days of bombing by allied air power. But even then, the numbers of troops surrendering was strange. US Troops would arrive in chemical protection gear expecting fierce combat only to find legions of Iraqi forces waiting patiently to give up.

Iraqi tanks across southern Kuwait displayed white flags in their gun turrets.

The biggest issue for American commanders was what to do with the sudden surge of captives. One Marine said, “they were surrendering in droves, almost too fast for us to keep up.”

The war seemed to be racing to an end.

That’s why it was a surprise to Marines at Observation Post 6 in Al-Khafji when - in the early evening of January 29, 1991 - Iraqi’s 5th mechanized division attacked.

The town was abandoned - all 15,000 Saudi citizens had long been evacuated. And it was in Saudi Arabia. Iraq had to invade another neighbor just to attack the tiny border town. It was a suicide mission.

Yet there they were.

The battle was fierce - a defining moment of Operation Desert Storm, and the only major Iraqi offensive of the war.

If the Marines were surprised and confused about the move, the Iraqi’s were encouraged. They accomplished their goal. They occupied the town and destroyed the FM transmitter subliminally sapping their army of hope. Iraq had a much needed propaganda victory. But it only lasted two days.

In the end, the town was taken back - American air power was overwhelming. Again, it was suicide for the Iraqi troops to be there. The 5th mechanized division was completely destroyed.

And the White House was left with a big mystery on their hands, knowing their Subliminal transmitter was taken down.

How did the Iraqi’s know?

END

The existence of a mysterious FM transmitter at Al-Khafji was reported by the ITV News Bureau in March of 1991. It claimed there was a “highly classified PsyOps program utilizing silent sound techniques”. But that was the only indication the transmitter existed. Was the Iraqi surrender surprisingly easy? Yes. But it didn’t require any PsyOps to make it happen. There were at least six significant battles over the six week war. Not to mention the 38 days of air bombardment that started things off. As many as 35,000 Iraqi soldiers lost their lives. The US reported 382 combat deaths. The fact is, coalition forces did more than enough to damage to motivate Iraqi surrender. Saddam Hussein famously called his ground engagement “the mother of all battles”. Just a month into facing the American military, his General requested permission to withdraw, adding “the mother was killing her children”.

And the reality of controlling human thoughts with electromagnetic waves remains outside the realm of mainstream science. There are non-invasive medical techniques that use electromagnetic fields. Like transcranial magnetic stimulation, used to treat anxiety or bipolar disorders. But these methods are a far cry from mind control.

What remains true is how easily our thoughts are manipulated by simple things.

Like a certain combination of food we just can’t get out of our head.

Who’s ready for some bacon and eggs?

I just controlled your mind - there is no way you are not thinking about bacon right now.

Is the Bible real?

INSANE THEORIES THAT EXPLAIN THE IMPOSSIBLE

OPEN

The Bible is the most popular book of all time. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, it’s sold over 5 billion copies. Harry Potter only sold 500 million. The Bible’s collection of stories are literally ancient - they originate from the dawn of human history. The Bronze Age. When Pharaohs ruled Egypt, and Sumerians “wrote” by marking wedges on clay tablets - at the time, the most advanced form of writing the world had ever seen. 

Billions of people believe these tales reflect the word of God. But most consider them symbolic, or allegories. Only 25% believe they’re literally true. After all, the Bible describes supernatural miracles on Earth. Things that science knows to be impossible.

For example, the book of Exodus says God wrote the Ten Commandments with His own finger on stone tablets and had Moses store them in a golden Ark - which itself had magical powers. Most people don’t think that’s actually true. The Commandments provide principles to live by. But there is no actual Ark with magical tablets.

Except in the 1600’s, a theologian going through ancient manuscripts came across a note that not only claimed the Ark exists - it said exactly where it is.

RAIDERS OF THE FICTIONAL ARK

You probably saw the Ark of the Covenant in Steven Spielberg’s movie “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. In the film, the Ark is depicted as a giant wooden chest covered in gold leaf. It has two golden angels sitting on the lid, wings spread, facing each other.

The design was not the creative vision of Spielberg, or the movie’s prop master. You were seeing the work of God - if you believe in that kind of thing. Because the Ark is not just mentioned in the Bible, it’s described in great detail. And Spielberg followed the specs, right out of the Good Book. 

In the Biblical story, God commands the Ark be constructed two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high. This was during a time when people knew what a cubit was – about the length from your forearm to the tip of your middle finger. And God was very particular about the materials Moses use to build this container. He said it should be made of acacia wood and overlaid with pure gold, inside and out.

Pretty specific for something purely fictional.

In fact, for centuries, archeologists and, frankly, smugglers looking to get rich, have been searching for this relic as if it was very real.

You’d think the Bible would just say where it could be found. But God didn’t make it that easy.

When Moses led the Ancient Israelites out of Egypt, the Ark was carried with them, every step of the way. And it did much more than hold the Commandments.

According to the Bible, the Ark’s very presence caused miracles to happen. It protected the Israelites during military campaigns. It parted the waters of the River Jordan so they could cross. It caused the walls of Jericho to fall, so they could conquer the city. Ultimately, the Ark was with the Ancient Israelites when they arrived in the Promised Land.

And generations later, King Solomon built a temple to house it. The temple became a focal point of worship in the city. And King Solomon himself was buried there, along with his legendary treasures.

So the Ark ended up in Solomon’s Temple.

Except the Temple’s gone. Several centuries later, Babylonians invaded and destroyed most of Jerusalem, including the temple. Was the Ark destroyed? Well, maybe not.

When the Babylonians were preparing to attack, the Israelites built tunnels underneath the city.

Archeologists suspect the Ark itself was saved from the Babylonians in these tunnels. So it’s just a matter of digging there and maybe the Ark will be revealed. But of all the places one might find relics, this particular site is pretty much off limits to digging. 

Because it’s among the holiest pieces of land on Earth.

The area where Solomon’s Temple used to stand is known today by Jews as the Temple Mount. The same site in Jerusalem is also considered sacred among Christians, who associate the site with events in the life of Jesus, as told in the Gospels. And that’s not all. This same site is also one of the holiest places on Earth for Muslims. It’s the location of the famous Dome of the Rock, an eight-sided building on the exact spot the prophet Muhammad made his journey to heaven.

Given that the site is sacred ground to three world religions, it’s not surprising it was off-limits to Archeological digs.

In fact, it’s dangerous to even explore the place. Tourists have been shot wandering the site by devout followers offended by anyone walking on the sacred grounds.

But archaeologists were always looking for a way to dig there. Because it was the most likely spot to find the Ark - and any of King Solomon’s treasures buried with it.

In 1909, a biblical scholar from Finland named Valter Juvelias actually managed to do it. And he nearly caused a Holy war in the process.

DIGGERS OF THE MOUNT

Juvelius was obsessed with Jewish mysticism, known as Kabbalah. He became convinced he cracked a numerical code hidden in biblical text, revealing the true location of the Ark of the Covenant.

It made him curious - what would it be worth if, say, he got his hands on it? A bit of research put the estimate at over 200 million dollars. That’s when Juvelius made a horrible decision. He was going to take it.

He was no Indiana Jones — he needed help.

He recruited Captain Montagu Brownlow Parker, a British war veteran turned socialite. Parker was actively courting a wealthy divorcee, who told him, “Bring back the Ark of the Covenant and I will talk to you again.”

That was all the motivation he needed.

Parker was in.

To raise money for the venture, he sold shares to wealthy businessmen excited to be part of the quest. Soon the expedition had millions backing it.

In 1908, Parker and Juvelius visited Jerusalem to scout locations for their excavation. Of course they couldn’t dig directly on the Temple Mount. Citizens of Jerusalem would be horrified by the thought. But they identified land nearby where underground tunnels could connect them to their goal.

At this time in history, Jerusalem was controlled by the Ottomans. So the next step for the team was to go to Istanbul and bribe officials for a license to dig.

The Ottoman Governor in charge of Jerusalem was very receptive to the idea of bribes. He forced landowners near the Temple Mount to sell their plot to the Explorers. And he gave a false excuse that Parker’s team was building a hospital to hide their true intentions.

In 1909 the well-funded team arrived in Jerusalem on a luxury yacht, rented a villa, and spent time sight seeing. Locals quickly realized these were some of the oddest archaeologists to ever visit Jerusalem.

When they began their dig, locals became concerned. They were clearly excavating near the Temple Mount. Immediately they were suspected of being after Solomon’s treasures. The hospital story wasn’t working. 

So Parker added a scholar to the team, to add trusted oversight. Someone who would ensure they were treating the dig - and anything they found - with proper care.

And to better endear themselves to locals, they hired 180 workers to dig and tunnel in four hour shifts, 24 hours a day.

This became the biggest excavation Jerusalem had ever seen.

Soon enough, they uncovered underground caverns, and large tunnels long ago buried. They found ancient lamps and pottery. But after a year of back breaking labor, they found no Ark.

And no tunnels that led under the Temple of the Mount.

That’s when they should have given up.

But in 1911 a coincidence of the calendar occurred. The orthodox Easter holiday happened on the same day as an Islamic celebration of Moses. And this sparked Parker’s interest. Because both holidays required followers to leave the city for the celebrations. Jerusalem would be fairly empty.

This was Parker’s chance to do the unthinkable. He would dig on the Temple Mount. 

He led a secret team of diggers. He paid off the man in charge of the Temple Mount grounds. And they excavated the holiest site on the planet.

Nine nights into the dig, Parker’s team was working near the Dome of the Rock. A caretaker not in on the plan - or not yet bribed - happened upon the operation. And all Hell broke loose.

Word spread fast that the site was being robbed. Locals began protesting. Mobs formed. Parker escaped to his yacht as riots broke out across Jerusalem. The people were certain their sacred land had been desecrated and robbed.

on May 4th, 1911, the New York Times ran the story: “Fear Diggers Took Ark of Covenant”. The report said the Turkish governor was mobbed in the streets for allowing this. Protesters called him a pig.

The sacred site of Solomon’s Temple was closed. The man in charge of the grounds was arrested, along with Parker’s translator. The Turkish governor was removed. Luckily these moves were enough to calm tensions between Turks and Arabs. Parker escaped to England. And the scholar they hired to oversee the expedition insisted nothing of value was ever taken.

In the years after, many more expeditions searched for the ark near Solomon’s Temple. Underground chambers fifty feet long have been discovered. Even evidence of an ancient synagogue. No one ever found any sign of the Ark of the Covenant. 

And there’s a good reason. Those tunnels weren’t used to hide the Ark - they were used to move it.

THE GUARDIAN OF THE ARK 

In the 12th century, historian Abu Salih wrote descriptions of Churches and Monasteries in Egypt and other parts of Africa. His manuscripts were purchased centuries later by King Louis the fourteenth. Among the hundreds of pages of history in Salih’s writings, there was a simple claim: “the Abyssinians possess the Ark of the Covenant in which are the two tables of stone, inscribed by the finger of God with the commandments”.

Abyssinia is modern day Ethiopia. Could the Ark have been moved to this North African country? According to the Bible, the answer might be yes. The book of Kings contains the story of a Queen from Abyssinia - none other than the Queen of Sheba - who visits King Solomon. This connection is legendary in Ethiopian culture - and celebrated in Ethiopian Orthodox Christian tradition.

The Ethiopian legend is called the “Kebra Nagast” or “Glory of the Kings”. And it tells the story of the Queen of Sheba having a son with King Solomon. The son grew up and returned to Jerusalem. And before he returned home to Aksum, he secretly stole the Ark of the Covenant and replaced it with a replica. 

The real Ark was brought home to Ethiopia and enshrined in the city of Aksum. It became foundational to the country’s Christian tradition and spiritual identity.

And to this day, the St. Mary of Zion Cathedral in Aksum claims to have it.

Skeptics point out an ancient wooden box could not survive the humidity of the Ethiopian rainy season. Certainly not for thousands of years. But the stone tablets would still survive.

And it turns out, early accounts from foreign travelers to the church in Aksum refer to a Tablet, rather than an Ark. The clergy at the church also describe the great relic they hold as a “sellat”, which translates to “tablet”, not Ark. 

These wouldn’t be the first sacred tablets to be found. Stones marking the covenant between God and man have survived in Mecca for at least sixteen centuries. Specifically the Black Stone and the stone block called the Station of Abraham. There is no reason why an ancient stone tablet could not have survived at Aksum as well.

So why can’t we go see the Ten Commandments in person?

Well, the clergy at the church say only one person - the Guardian of the Ark - is allowed to see them.

* * *

It’s not so hard to imagine the Ark exists. It’s a physical object. But there are supernatural events in the Bible impossible to explain with pure science.

One of the most famous examples - also depicted in major movies - was in the story of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt.

They were being chased by the Pharaoh’s army. And their escape was stopped short at the shores of the Red Sea. They were trapped. The Egyptians were closing in.

It was a desperate moment. But they were saved by a miracle.

Moses raised his staff, and - with God’s help - the waters of the Red Sea parted. A land bridge was revealed, connecting to the other side.

The Israelites were able to cross. Once they were safe on the other side, the waters returned, destroying the attacking army in its wake.

Pretty incredible story. No way it actually happened.

Except it happened again. With modern day witnesses. And Scientists proved it could be repeated using nature alone.

THE DISAPPEARING LAKE

It was an early morning in February, 1882. Major-General Alexander Tulloch was tasked with surveying Lake Menzaleh in Northern Egypt. He could see the Mediterranean directly north of the lake. And some distance to the Southeast - separated by the Sinai Peninsula - was the famous Red Sea, where Moses made that impossible crossing.

And that morning something happened that seemed awfully familiar.

A gale of wind rose so strong from the East, Tulloch had to stop his work and seek shelter.

The wind lasted all night. Tulloch awoke to discover that Lake Menzaleh had - in his own words - “totally disappeared”. The effect of the high wind on the relatively shallow water drove it away. “Beyond the horizon” as he later described it. 

And he witnessed natives walking on mud where the day before fishing boats were floating.

It didn’t take long for Tulloch to make the connection - this natural wind effect was very similar to that biblical miracle four thousand years before.

In 2015, Scientist Carl Drews read Tulloch’s account and recognized it as a possible “Wind Setdown”. This is a known weather event. Think of it as the opposite of a storm surge. Wind stress acts on the surface of a body of water for an extended period of time. As the wind blows, water recedes from the upwind shore and exposes terrain formerly underwater.

Drews wasn’t the first scientist to suggest a Wind Setdown could explain the parting of the Red Sea. But he was the first to create a model and prove it.

He used a site in the Nile delta and conducted satellite surveys. He conducted a series of experiments attempting to prove a Wind Setdown could cause a body of water to divide under wind stress.

The results were picked up by news outlets around the world, including ABC News, MSNBC, and NPR among many others. Because Drews experiment worked. His computer simulations showed that with a sufficiently strong wind force blown steadily for a night, an area of flats would be exposed. The model resulted in a temporary land bridge where the river led into the mouth of a lake. And it was plenty big enough to hold Moses and his followers. The land bridge was nearly two miles long and 3 miles wide.

The genius of the simulation was the choice of location, using a point where a branch of the Nile flowed into the Lake of Tanis.

Because at this point, when the waters receded, they created walls of water on both sides of the land bridge.

Just like in the movie.

According to Drews, "The parting of the waters can be understood through fluid dynamics. The wind moves the water in a way that's in accordance with physical laws, creating a safe passage with water on two sides and then abruptly allowing the water to rush back in."

He was able to duplicate the story in Exodus.

And when the wind dies down in the simulation, the land bridge quickly disappears. The water returns. If pharaoh’s army was trying to cross, they would be quickly drowned.

Historians insist biblical stories have little correlation to actual events. But Science keeps finding signs the craziest tales could have actually happened.

Like when archaeologists took soil samples deep under an ancient tomb. And found a gap in the layers of clay between the evidence of human civilization. What happened to cause the gap in human history? Sure looked like there was a tremendous flood.

EVIDENCE OF THE FLOOD

The biblical flood was catastrophic. God’s intent was nothing less than destroying all life on Earth. He made it rain forty days and nights. The Earth was entirely flooded, rising higher than the highest mountains.

Only Noah and his family were spared. Along with representatives of all the animals so they could, well, start this whole humanity experiment over again.

The story of Noah serves as a powerful moral lesson about paying attention to God. But clearly it didn’t actually happen.

The highest mountain on Earth is Mount Everest at 29,032 feet - 5.5 miles above sea level. For water to cover the planet in amounts that would rise above Everest, we’re talking nearly 5 billion cubic kilometers of water. That’s 1.3 trillion gallons.

Add to that, Forty days of rain is ten times longer than the most violent rainfall ever recorded. 

If we were hit with rain this long, scientists project a rise in global sea levels of 2,600 feet. That’s a long way from covering the 29,032 feet of Everest.

The most rainfall ever recorded in a year was in India, in 1860. Incredibly, they experienced 86 feet of rain. 

You have to go back to the ice age to find the largest flood ever. 14,500 years ago when giant Mammoths walked the Earth, a massive ice dam blocked the Columbia River in Idaho. Well, what is now Idaho - there was no Idaho in the ice age. The point is, the ice dam resulted in a flood that covered the modern-day Pacific Northwest - Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. The flood was violent and fast-moving. Massive canyons were carved out from the force of the water. You can see the results along the Snake River today. 

But even the largest flood ever did not cover the Earth.

This biblical flood may be just a story.

Unless this flood wasn’t necessarily global at all.

The stories of the bible aren’t actually global in scope. They take place in the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean world.

There’s no mention of, for example, China. Or Australia - no kangaroos on Noah’s ark.

The biblical Noah lived in Mesopotamia.

And the Mesopotamian plain is one of the flattest places on earth. It’s less than 60 feet above sea level. 

And it’s famously between two giant rivers - the Tigris and Euphrates. That’s literally what the word Mesopotamia means in the original Greek: between two rivers. The water in the Tigris and Euphrates are only 8 feet above sea level. And they cut through the flat plains for hundreds of miles.

Before dams were built in the 1920’s, southern Mesopotamia actually had a “flood season”. Two-thirds of the area could be underwater at any point between March and August.

Making it worse, north and east of the plains, the land rises dramatically - over 3,000 feet in some places. So flood waters are easily trapped.

And because southern Mesopotamia is one of the flattest places on earth, floodwaters drain extremely slowly. 

To Noah, a flood in this region would appear catastrophic. He would see water covering everything from one horizon to the other.

Of course, if there was a flood of this magnitude - even one local to Mesopotamia - we’d find evidence.

And that’s exactly what happened.

It was the 1928 excavation season in southern Mesopotamia. Archaeologist Sir Charles Woolley was already celebrating tremendous success. His team uncovered Sumerian tombs deep under the ancient city of Ur. His find dated back 2500 years BCE.

Before calling his work finished, he directed the team to sink a small test shaft into the underlying soil. 

This was more than an afterthought. Soil analysis can reveal a bounty of information. Layers of deposits can indicate who occupied the site and how they lived. The order of layers reveal the sequence of events over time. And soil reveals a history of environmental conditions at the site.

So he directed the team to dig deep. They persisted through nearly eight feet of bare mud. Only then did they get to prehistoric artifacts. 

This was odd - why the layers of nothing followed by signs of civilization? 

The team all had the same thought. But it was Woolley’s wife who said the words out loud: “Well, of course, it’s the flood.”

More digs followed to verify the find. Similar flood levels were also found under the ancient city of Kish.

A few years later, at the site of a third ancient Sumerian city called Shuruppak, another flood stratum was found.

It turns out, somewhere around 2500 BCE, there was actually a catastrophic flood in Mesopotamia.

And the Bible was not the first book to mention it.

THE OTHER NOAH

In November of 1872, George Smith was volunteering at the British Museum. He was not a scientist, just a 32 year old engraver from a print shop. But his skills were useful. He was tasked with sifting through hundreds of thousands of pieces of clay tablets with ancient writing. And where he could, he was to put the pieces together.

Archaeologists brought the tablet fragments from digs in Iraq. But there were so many. Too many. No one had the time or motivation to determine which piece went with what. Most pieces had cuneiform hieroglyphs - the earliest form of writing. They depicted daily life around 700 BC. 

Smith spent his days dutifully re-assembling references to oxen and slaves and wine and legal contracts with Assyrian officials.

Smith found success on occasion - he was able to establish dates for some minor events in Israelite history. Museum officials were excited. That made Smith eager to hunt for more biblical ties.

That’s when he came across a tablet fragment that would be one of the most sensational finds in the history of archaeology.

On the tablet was writing that predated the Bible. Yet there was a story about a flood. And a ship that battled the flood and ended up on a mountain. There was even a Noah-like figure who built the ship - let’s go ahead and call it an Ark.

At that moment no one knew what he had found. Smith only had a few pieces of the story - and they were encrusted with thick, lime-like deposits. They would have to be restored by museum experts. Smith wanted to use the discovery to turn himself into an Archaeologist. Word spread of this ancient flood story - and Smith wanted to go back to the ruins and find the missing pieces. He convinced the Daily Telegraph to sponsor him on an expedition.

Smith was completely unprepared when he arrived in Iraq. He didn’t speak any of the local languages - Arabic, Turkish, or Persian. In fact, he’d never set foot outside England.

Still, he managed to get himself to the ancient city of Nineveh - one of the most important in ancient Mesopotamia. And he began searching the excavation where the flood story fragments had originally been discovered.

The idea he’d find the missing pieces of this one story among the thousands of fragments was absurd - it was a needle in a haystack.

Yet he did.

The story of this ancient flood was soon fully assembled. Smith connected it with other tablets until he realized the full breadth of his discovery.

For the first time, the modern world could read one of the earliest examples of literature created by humans: the 4,000 year old Epic of Gilgamesh.

And within this larger epic is a story strikingly similar to Noah's Ark.

In the Mesopotamian version, the Noah-like hero is Ziusudra. The gods - there were more than one back then - sent a flood to destroy humanity. Ziusudra is instructed to build an ark to save himself, his family, and - yes - various animals. The stories match that closely.

After the flood subsides, Ziusudra lands on a mountain and offers sacrifices to the gods. Exactly as Noah does in the biblical version.

The Mesopotamian flood story is the earliest known flood myth in human history.

So not only was there a flood in the region, but there is more than one ancient story referencing the family that survived the ordeal in a giant ark.

And there has been no end to the expeditions of people looking to find this iconic boat. The bible says it landed on Mount Ararat. But early on, Turkish officials kept climbers away, wanting to protect the legend from being debunked. 

Then, in 1917, a Russian aviator stationed in Turkey was testing an airplane. He and his copilot spotted something odd on the shore of a lake near Mount Ararat.

Nearly 400 miles from the nearest ocean, the pilot saw a shipwreck.

THE OTHER ARK

Like the Ark of the Covenant, the Bible provides Noah the exact dimensions for his Ark. Unlike the Ark of the Covenant, which could be hidden in tunnels, Noah’s Ark would be hard to miss.

In the Book of Genesis, God lays out his plan for this enormous boat. Noah is asked to build it 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high.

As we said earlier, a cubit is basically the length from your elbow to the tip of your middle finger. If we call it 18 inches, that makes the Ark 450 feet long.

That would be too big to fit in an NFL Stadium. It’s half the size of the HMS Titanic. And it would be a staggering four and a half stories tall.

Keep in mind, the tallest structure in Ancient Mesopotamia was likely the Great Ziggurat of Ur. This was basically a pyramid built in steps. It was a marvel of engineering at the time. And it was only 20 feet taller than the Ark Noah was asked to build.

The point is, it shouldn’t be hard to spot.

The Russian test pilot was the first Ark eye witness to get serious attention. He was stationed near Ararat near the start of the Russian Revolution. On an August test flight of a new supercharged airplane, he saw the snow-capped peak of Ararat rising above him. Knowing it had never been scaled in modern times, he decided to check it out.

According to his reports later, he circled the peak and saw a lake on the south side. And there was the hulk of a ship.

He reported this to the Czar and soldiers were sent to investigate.

Nothing more was reported from the Russian side. But an Archdeacon from Jerusalem took a team and climbed to the lake. He confirmed it was the resting place of the vessel, pronouncing, “I am very positive we are beholding the ark of Noah.”

Theologians eager to believe speculated the Ark was covered in snow most of the year. And it was only because the pilot was flying in August, he was able to spot the wreckage.

Witnesses to this day continue to claim sighting a boat-like structure on Ararat. And these claims continue to drive expeditions and searches for a sign - a piece of ancient wood, a nail - anything to confirm the Ark was there.

To-date the 13,780 foot mountain has undergone extensive searches, both on the ground and from the sky. Few places on Ararat remain to search.

This led to a theory the Ark is buried. That the remains are not in plain view. Two searches involving sub-surface radar - called GPR, or Ground Penetrating Radar - were conducted in the 1980’s. This technology allows scientists to search under the ice.

While they did not find the Ark, they did determine the ice was thick enough to hide the giant vessel.

Of course, there’s another possibility.

Theologians have pointed out the Bible’s exact language regarding the Ark’s final resting place refers to “the mountains of Ararat”. Not “Mount Ararat”. The Bible says Noah’s ship landed somewhere on the mountains or highlands of Armenia. In fact, “Ararat” can be accurately translated to mean “highlands”. In biblical times, “Ararat” was not even the name of a mountain. It was a province, or an area. Only in the eleventh century CE did focus turn to Mount Ararat as the ark’s final resting place. 

Before that time, Islamic and Christian tradition held that the landing place of the Ark was on Jabel Judi.

That’s a completely different mountain. 20 miles southeast of Mount Ararat.

And maybe the Ark’s true resting place.

PLAGUES

Some events in the Bible are beyond supernatural - they seem borderline insane.

Take the story of Moses and the Plagues.

In the Book of Exodus, God directs Moses to confront the Pharaoh - Egypts leader. Moses is told to demand the release of the Israelites from slavery.

Here the Pharaoh makes a mistake. Apparently he didn’t believe God was behind the request. Because he says no.

So, to demonstrate His power, God sends a series of plagues on Egypt. After each plague, the Pharaoh has the chance to change his answer. It took ten different and increasingly more brutal plagues before the Pharaoh was moved to let the chosen people go.

So what were these plagues?

First, the Nile river was turned from water into blood. As a result, the river could no longer sustain life. All the fish died and there was widespread suffering among Egyptians who relied on the river.

There is no scientific way a body of water could change into blood.

Yet there’s a detail in the story that suggests this might not be exactly what happened. The narrative mentions Egyptians dug wells to find drinkable water. This suggests the soil along the riverbanks was able to filter out whatever was causing the red coloring, making the water fit for consumption.

So what exactly made the water turn red?

Scientists have pointed to a bloom of “Red Algae”, or Rhodophyta, as the answer. If this microscopic algae reproduced in great enough numbers, the waters would be stained a bloody red.

But this type of algae is more suited to deeper waters - the red pigment allows the algae to better absorb blue and green light, more prominent in the depths. And they tend to bloom in calm waters, not the active river flow of the Nile.

But there is another answer.

In 1925, a Dutch geologist became convinced the plagues had a volcanic origin. 

Volcanic ash is partly made of sulfate salts - which confer a red color when they dissolve in water.

There are no volcanoes in Egypt. But with a big enough eruption, a distant volcano can still cause destruction.

In 1991 the Hudson volcano in Chili erupted. The cloud of ash that resulted was eleven miles wide and five miles thick. 

And winds carried the cloud of ash over cities 500 miles away.

Intrigued by the volcano theory, English scholar John Bennet researched possible activity around the time of the Ancient Israelites.

It turns out, 500 miles from Moses and the Nile river is the volcanic island of Thera. In the Aegean sea.

And between 2000 and 1200 BC Thera erupted. This was no small event. The Thera eruption was the most violent in the Mediterranean of the last 10,000 years.

Large quantities of ash could have polluted the waters of the Nile. And the sulfates would have turned the water red.

This would also explain how Egyptian wells could still produce drinkable water. Soil along the river would filter out the ash.

This same ash is highly acidic. Fish would not survive, as told in the bible.

This would not be the last time fish were killed by the acidification of their habitat. In the 1980s, the waters in Scandinavia were polluted by sulphate and nitrogen deposits, killing fish in their freshwater lakes.

There’s even an example of volcanic acidification of water documented in Indonesia.

Science seems to have a reasonable answer for this first plague.

But of course, this was only one of ten. Things get crazier from here.

Next, God sent an infestation of frogs. Every surface, every roof, on every bed in the land was covered in frogs.

Now, frog infestations were not unknown in Ancient Egypt. But this was beyond any normal cycle of frog over-breeding. There have even been rains of frogs recorded. Winds pick up frogs in one location and dump them elsewhere.

But this doesn’t explain frogs invading people’s homes. And even making it into the royal palace.

This was followed by an infestation of bugs. The Book of Exodus calls them “kinnim”, which scholars understand to mean mosquitos, gnats, or lice.

This kinnim attacked “animals and humans alike”.

The bugs were followed by a swarm of “arob”, which translates to flies. These flies infested the house of the Pharaoh and all his officials.

At this point in the story, Pharaoh agrees to let the Israelites go. But when the flies disappear, he changes his mind. 

So God sends more plagues.

Next is a fatal pestilence that killed most of the domestic animals. Then the Pharaoh and his servants were stricken with painful boils all over their bodies. 

For the seventh plague, hail strikes down on the crops, shattering trees. Pharaoh still refuses to budge.

And God has more devastation in store. Next he sends swarms of locusts that cover the face of the land and swallow up every crop. This is followed by complete darkness over the land for three days and nights. Egyptians had to feel their way around to survive.

Pharaoh tries to make a deal at this point - Moses and his people can go if they leave the livestock. Moses - probably feeling he’s got leverage now - refuses the deal. And God brings out the tenth and objectively worst plague yet. According to the Bible, at midnight God sent an angel through Egypt to kill every firstborn son. From the child of Pharoah himself, to “the firstborn son of the slave girl who is at her handmill.” Oddly, firstborn cattle were killed as well. 

Israelites were spared - they marked their doors with lambs blood so God knew to pass them over.

Pharaoh losing his own son was too much for him. The Israelites were finally allowed to leave.

Now, maybe Mainstream Science could offer a natural reason for each of these plagues individually.

But the chances of all ten happening one after the other are, well, zero. It’s impossible. We’re back in the world of the supernatural.

Unless this was a chain of events from a single cause.

In 2005, Professor Siro Trevisanato decided to take the volcanic theory further.

And with every new plague, the theory held.

If the river was red from acidic volcanic ash, the frogs in the river would be suddenly driven out. And they would be desperate for a source of fresh water. Buildings like the royal palace had fountains and water basins, which explains the frogs’ presence inside.

Ultimately, the frogs would die along with the fish.

And with dead animals suddenly lying everywhere, the natural next step is insects laying eggs in the decaying matter. Larvae would hatch by the millions. The land would be crawling with all manner of grubs and pests.

At the same time, the high amount of acidic ash in the air can lead to skin damage. They call it acid rain for a reason. In fact, the biblical text even references burning rain destroying the trees and killing livestock.

The boils described in the pestilence on humans and animals suddenly make perfect sense.

With a volcanic cloud this intense, weather patterns can be affected. 

When Mount Saint Helens in Washington erupted in 1980, vast parts of North America were hit with violent weather patterns.

So the idea that there would be hail and thunderstorms severe enough to take down trees and kill animals is not such a stretch.

Volcanic particles in the air also make humidity higher and increase ground moisture. Which is exactly what triggers locusts to flip from peaceful to aggressive. Mesopotamia - a breeding ground for locusts - would suddenly have the perfect environment to wake them from their sleep.

The 9th plague of darkness could be a result of the toxic volcanic air suffocating the Egyptians. In Deuteronomy, there is a description of a sky of bronze from which dust rains down making it impossible to see.

So - this one massive volcanic eruption 500 miles away could have wrought havoc on the Nile basin. The people searching to explain the destruction would feel they were under attack from God Himself.

Which leads to the sad explanation for the last plague, the death of the firstborn children. 

Scientists have suggested a black mold may have infected the grains as a result of the pestilence. And maybe this caused the death of the children. But this is a stretch - hard to imagine just the first born being impacted.

The disturbing truth is, child sacrifice was not uncommon in ancient mesopotamia. As recently as 2018, Archaeologists excavated a Bronze Age cemetery and found the bones of children, their bodies clearly positioned for a religious sacrifice.

It’s possible the ancient Egyptians were convinced God was furious at them, and feared more disasters would start.

And the solution may have been to appease God by making these horrible sacrifices. The pagan inhabitants of the Nile Delta may have brought this last “plague” on themselves.

THE END

For those living in the bronze age, all natural events had to be explained without modern science. Not surprisingly, that meant God was often used as the explanation. Of course, believers will tell you even in a natural event explained by Science, God is still somewhere behind the curtain.

For example, Astronomers confirm that on April 17, in the year 6 BC, there was an unusual alignment in the night sky. Jupiter, Saturn, the moon and the sun formed a conjunction in the early morning hours. At the time, Jupiter was in retrograde motion - meaning it appears to change direction as Earth’s orbit overtakes it. See, normally, planets move eastward if you’re following them in the sky. But that night, this unusual alignment would have appeared to be a single, bright morning star. And if you were in the Judean desert watching, maybe with two of your wise friends, you would see it move west. And come to rest over the town of Bethlehem.

Dark History of the FBI

HOW J EDGAR HOOVER HUNTED AMERICANS

OPEN

As Director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover ran a secret police force for nearly fifty years.

In the name of hunting spies and traitors, Hoover imprisoned people for saying the wrong thing, or joining the wrong group. He destroyed careers of ordinary citizens based only on the fear they might act against their country. And he brought down heroes of the civil rights movement.

This isn’t supposed to happen in America, but it did. 

Was it done with good intentions? That’s what Hoover would tell you. He was devoted to stopping anyone out to overthrow the American government. Even if it meant breaking into their home to gather evidence.

For decades he operated in secret and almost completely without accountability.

Until a young college professor had a crazy idea.

He would turn the tables on the FBI. He would break into their office. And steal their files. And he would let the American people see just what they were up to.

Of course, no one would actually do it. Except he did.

And Hoover’s secrets were blown wide open.

THE BOMB ON R STREET

From day one, J. Edgar Hoover was obsessed with hunting down communist radicals. There was a good reason. In his first year working for the Justice Department, a communist nearly blew his boss to pieces.

It happened at 11:15pm on June 2, 1919. It was a quiet night on one of the fanciest residential streets in Washington DC: the 2100 block of R Street.  Inside the multi-story brick mansions, some of the most prominent families in America were retiring to bed. 

Outside, a lone man wearing an expensive black suit and a brown fedora walked down the sidewalk. We know he was wearing a brown fedora because police found it later among pieces of body parts blown through the neighbor’s windows.

The lone man carried a black suitcase with brass clasps. Fortunately no one was out on the street to notice.

In his pocket he had leaflets explaining he was a member of “The Anarchist Fighters”. The group were communists from the Bolshevik party. They were determined to teach American capitalists a deadly lesson.

They were not kidding about the “deadly” part. Two months earlier, the Bolsheviks mailed wood boxes with nitroglycerin bombs to thirty-six American politicians and capitalists. Only one made it to its destination, the home of former Senator Thomas Hardwick. His servant opened the package and had her hands blown off.

Luckily, the other packages were discovered at the post office before they were sent to kill their targets. Had they been mailed, they would have exploded at the homes of John D. Rockefeller, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Helms, and JP Morgan, among many others. 

And one of the “many others” was Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Hoover’s boss.

Palmer was home that night with his family. At 2132 R street.

And on this night, the lone Bolshevik intended to finish the job of killing him.

He walked up the stone steps to Palmer’s home and put the black suitcase down in front of the front door.

Inside, the Attorney General was turning off the lights in his first floor library and heading upstairs for the night. Had he remained in the library, Palmer would not have survived.

At this point, officials think the Bolshevik tripped as he turned to go down the stairs and make his escape. Because his suitcase bomb exploded too early and blew the lone radical into pieces. And it destroyed the first floor of Palmer’s home along with it. 

The explosion was powerful — windows from all the neighbors shattered. 

Trees on both sides of the street were splattered with blood. Neighbors found body parts in their homes. Police found more body fragments as far as two blocks away against the wall of a private school.

Across the street, the Assistant Secretary to the Navy told police he found a leg with “cheap brown socks” in his home. His name was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, future President of the United States. On that night he was doing his best to help identify the bomber.

But the killer was no mystery. Along with the blood and gore everywhere, there were leaflets left by the radical that explained it all.

They said the Bolsheviks spoke for common workers “through the voice of dynamite”. They said they “will kill because it is necessary”. They promised to “rid the world of your tyrannical institutions.”

Palmer was terrified and furious - his wife and kids were in that house. The communists pissed off the wrong guy. Palmer wasn’t just any government official. He was Attorney General at the Department of Justice. Which meant he commanded men with guns and the power to enforce the law. Add to that, Palmer was running for President that year. He was itching to make a big splash in the media. 

The communists had terrified the nation with their mail bombs. Now Palmer would fight back. And he would take it way too far.

THE PALMER RAIDS

Palmer picked someone obsessed with crushing American traitors to lead his operation. No one complained the kid was only twenty-five years old. Because he’d more than proven himself. At only twenty-three he’d worked his way up to run the Alien Enemy Bureau in the middle of World War I. There, he oversaw 6,200 Germans interned in camps and 450,000 more under government surveillance. At twenty-four, he lead the new Radical Division of the DOJ, where he rounded up thousands of suspected radicals using no guns - only secret intelligence. At the time, it was the biggest counterterrorism operation in U.S. history. The kid was ruthless.

His name was J Edgar Hoover and he was at war with radicals day and night, weekdays and weekends, always on the job.

The term “hard worker” doesn’t quite explain it. Hoover was truly single minded.  

He would live 77 years and never have a wife, never have children, never have a known romantic relationship - let alone a hobby - outside the job. He was a machine focused entirely on ending America’s enemies.

And suddenly, he was in charge of Palmer’s operation to destroy anarchists, communists, socialists, and unionists once and for all.

The operation would become known as the Palmer Raids. But it was Hoover who organized and directed them. 

The plan was to conduct surprise sweeps of radical groups in 30 cities across 23 states. There were no warrants, no evidence of criminal activity collected. Just teams of FBI agents and police unleashed on unsuspecting citizens, about to experience a night of terror.

THE WRONG LESSON

On the night of January 2, 1920, 50 year old Mitchel Lavrowsky was on the second floor of the Russian People’s House in New York City. He was teaching algebra to his fellow Russian immigrants.

The building was a cultural and social center for Russian immigrants. It provided language classes, held social events, and provided assistance to new immigrants looking to start their lives in America.

And on this night, it was also hosting a meeting on the first floor for the Union of Russian Workers.

Which is why it was a target of Hoover’s raid.

Lavrowsky wasn’t aware the cops surrounded the building. He didn’t know they burst in the front door downstairs and rounded up everyone at the Union meeting. 

He didn’t hear the bewildered questions in Russian to the cops from immigrants who didn’t speak English. Or the blunt instructions to “shut up” as police lined up 200 men and women Union members. They were to be loaded on a bus and sent downtown for questioning and possible deportation.

But Lavrowsky certainly heard the door of his classroom slam open. Cops came in with guns pointed at him. They ordered him to remove his glasses. They hit him over the head with batons and threw him down the stairs. More police beat him on the stairs with wood blocks ripped from the bannister. They ordered him to wash away the blood before forcing him outside so reporters wouldn’t see it. 

Lavrowsky was taken to the Department of Justice office on Park Row and questioned about his political views.

He had committed no crime, so around midnight he was released. With his head, left shoulder, and left foot broken from the night’s violence.

When morning came, Americans woke to headlines bragging that over 3,000 radicals were rounded up in raids across 23 states and 30 cities. The FBI broke into political meetings, private homes, social clubs, dance halls, restaurants, and bars across America. Agents hauled people out of bookstores and bedrooms. Some were placed directly on boats back to Russia. Some were put in jail for weeks or months. Some, like Lavrowsky, were released. None were shown warrants or given any protection against unlawful search and seizure as guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.

Hoover himself later admitted there were “clear cases of brutality” in the raids.

To justify the actions, the Department of Justice claimed to have found several bombs in the searches, and showed a few iron balls to the press. But there were no bombs. Only four pistols were found.

The press was positive at first. America wanted a response to the anarchist bombings and it got a big one. Many members of Congress loved the Palmer Raids.

But the love for these unconstitutional tactics did not last. That year, the American Civil Liberties Union was founded specifically to respond to these raids. They delivered a report accusing Palmer and Hoover of torture and illegal imprisonment. The ACLU said they had mounted an “assault upon the most sacred principles of our Constitutional liberties.”

Ultimately, the courts agreed and denounced the raids. Palmer’s reputation was damaged - he lost his bid to win the nomination for President. 

But Hoover had a different takeaway. He learned the wrong lesson.

Rather than abandon unconstitutional tactics, Hoover decided this work would have to be done in secret.

For the next fifty years the FBI put on a new public face. They were crime-fighting heroes who championed the Constitution. 

This was, of course, often true. The FBI tracked down terrorists, brought mobsters to justice, foiled enemy plans in World War II, and captured dangerous spies during the Cold War.

But through it all, Hoover continued secret operations using illegal tactics. Often directed at American citizens. All in the name of stopping threats to America before they happened.

And no one would ever find out.

Except in 1970 - nearly fifty years later - an ordinary American citizen decided to try.

A CRAZY IDEA

Bill Davidon had seen enough. He was a professor at Haverford College. But more importantly, he was extremely active in the peace movement. He wanted to end the war in Vietnam so passionately he was willing to take dramatic action. He was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Harrisburg Seven case. Basically, a group of nuns and priests plotted to kidnap national security adviser Henry Kissinger, in an effort to end the war. When the case went to court, the jury decided not to charge a group of peace loving nuns and priests.

Davidon went on to work with the Catholic left to break into Selective Service offices and disrupt efforts to draft new young men into the Vietnam War.

Over 58 thousand Americans would die in Vietnam - along with 2 million Vietnamese. An entire generation of protesters felt these enormous losses were unjustified and unnecessary. 

But it was becoming very dangerous to be a protester in America.

At Kent State University the Governor of Ohio sent the National Guard in to suppress student protests. He called the protesters “the worst kind of people we harbor in America.” A day later, four students were killed and nine injured when National Guard soldiers opened fire on a peaceful student demonstration.

And Davidon couldn’t help but notice the government charged no one with the killings.

Two students were killed days later by state police at Jackson State University. The police used overwhelming force, including submachine guns and shotguns. And again, no one was ever convicted of a crime.

In the week after, scores of students protesting on Wall Street were bludgeoned by construction workers with crowbars and other heavy tools. The Wall Street Journal reported that financial workers supporting the violence threw ticker tape out their windows in celebration. Again, the construction workers were not arrested. Even worse, they were actually honored. President Nixon invited them to the White House and gave them flag lapel pins for assaulting the students. Or, as the Vice President put it, for putting on “an impressive display of patriotism”.

It was during this mad time that Davidon started hearing from various peace groups they feared FBI spies were in their midst. 

People were worried the person who stood beside them at a protest, or even a random neighbor, was really an FBI informer.

If the government’s plan was to destroy their movement from the inside, it was working.

That’s when Davidon had that crazy idea. Break into the FBI office and get the truth. Show the world what was really happening.

After months of convincing his friends, the professor managed to gather a rag tag group willing to - and convinced they had to - do the job.

The group included a professor of religion, a daycare center worker, a cab driver, a social worker, and two college dropouts working full time against the war. Not exactly Ocean’s Eleven. But the cab driver had learned how to pick locks, so he could help break into draft offices. And in 1971, if you could pick a lock, you could get in just about anywhere.

They cased the FBI office to see what they were up against. Turned out, the office in Philadelphia was across from the Delaware County Courthouse. That was bad news right off the bat. There would be a guard nearby. Bad news number two: the FBI office was on the second floor above apartments where people lived - so someone was always in the building. 

The next challenge was getting a look inside. It was easy enough to map out the exterior. But to do this right they needed the layout of the offices: what kind of locks did they have? Were the file cabinets locked? Were there alarms? What was the layout of the rooms? 

One of the women on their team volunteered for a very risky recon mission. She called the FBI office and made an appointment to go in for an interview. She said she was a student doing research on opportunities for women in the Bureau. The plan worked perfectly. The FBI agents never suspected a thing. She returned to the attic where the team secretly met. And she brought the layout of the FBI office, and confirmed there were no alarms, the doors had standard locks, and the file cabinets were unlocked.

Next, they had to figure out how to handle other people living in the building and the night watchman across the street. The team had a brilliant idea that would distract all of them. They chose the night of March 8, 1971 to break in. Because on that night, every living human being in New York would be glued to their radio, or closed circuit TV. 

That was the night of the heavyweight fight between Muhammad Ali and Walt Frazier. The Fight of the Century. It’s hard to describe how big this event was at the time. Bigger than the Super Bowl. Ali was heavyweight champion of the world - only he had his title removed when he refused to be drafted into the Vietnam war. Frazier went on to become Heavyweight Champion. And to add to the drama - Frazier supported the war. So you had two heavyweight champions - both undefeated, representing two sides of the biggest political issue of the day - facing each other. It remains the biggest boxing match in history.

Turns out, it was also the greatest distraction in history.

The first step in the plan began at 8PM sharp. The lock picking cab driver drove to the FBI building alone. 

He dressed in a nice business suit so anyone who saw him walk up to the FBI office door would figure he belonged there. But no one saw him.

He got out his homemade lock picking tools and put on rubber gloves. He started to work on the lock. And then he froze.

There was a second lock installed. The first one was a simple five-pin tumbler - he was prepared for that. But the new one must have been just installed - and it was high security, his tools wouldn’t work.

Why was there a new lock? Did someone leak their plan to the FBI?

The cab driver drove back to the attic, assuming they’d call the whole thing off.  But the woman who cased the inside said there was a second door. Maybe there was a file cabinet in front of it, but there was definitely a second entrance.

So the cab driver returned. And he found that second door. He easily picked the lock on that one. But the door still wouldn’t budge. There was a deadbolt on the top. He wasn’t going to let that stop him after all this. He went to his car and got the jack from the trunk. He used it as a crowbar to get past the deadbolt. Then he pushed on the door but - as predicted - there was something blocking it. He decided to risk making a loud noise - he was too far into this now - and he pushed against the door with all his strength.

He was in.

He alerted the other seven members of the team. They arrived in nice suits with giant suitcases. And they proceeded to fill those suitcases with over a thousand top secret FBI files. Later, FBI agents would wonder how the burglars knew to take the most sensitive documents. Truth is, they had no idea. They just took everything.

When the suitcases were overloaded with files, they packed them in their cars and drove to a remote farmhouse where they immediately began looking through the files.

Over 60% of the documents explained in detail how the FBI was spying on American citizens.

And that was just the tip of the iceberg. 

Hoover’s secret operations were about to be revealed to the world.

The group moved to the last stage of their plan. Releasing the documents to the press. They called themselves the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI.

Reporters at the New York Times, the LA Times, and the Washington Post received photocopies of the files. For the first time ever — outside the walls of the FBI - the public read instructions to agents on how to infiltrate student groups and instill paranoia. The exact quote was, “make them think there’s an FBI agent behind every mailbox”.

Document after document revealed the FBI had been actively surveilling students, peace groups, and civil rights organizations.

In one example, Hoover directed the Bureau to investigate anyone who had been in the Soviet Union for a month or more to determine if they’d been recruited as spies.

Documents identified black students as a definite threat to the nation’s stability. One college in Pennsylvania had every black student under secret surveillance. And the FBI ordered that all Black Student Unions and any other groups focused on demands of black students be under secret investigation.

The shocking details kept coming. The FBI infiltrated war resisters at colleges across the country.

The Bureau was investigating the Jewish Defense League, as well as the Ku Klux Klan. Professors suspected of harboring fugitives had their phones tapped.

Files revealed transcripts of private conversations among members of the Black Panthers.

Up until this moment, most of what the press reported about the FBI was positive. Now the press and the public would be in shock. Because it turns out, the FBI was targeting them.

COINTELPRO

Hoover was livid the files got out. Over 200 agents were assigned to the manhunt to find out who was behind the burglary. He placed security guards at all FBI offices. 

But despite the revelations, Hoover’s FBI survived the initial uproar. Some in Congress - along with every major newspaper - called for a first-ever investigation of the FBI. But Senator Sam Ervin refused. And it was his committee that would do the investigation.

It seemed like the controversy might blow over. 

Until a reporter from NBC, Carl Stern, was leafing through papers from the FBI burglary. And he noticed an odd file in the mix.

It had big block letters on the upper right hand corner. “COINTELPRO”.

He had no idea what that meant.

He asked around, but no government officials would say what the strange word stood for.

In 1973, Stern filed a Freedom of Information Act to find out. A Judge approved the release of four documents to Stern. The documents explained that COINTELPRO was the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program.

This was pretty intriguing. Even more intriguing were references to seven COINTELPRO operations. Targets included the Communist Party, the New Left, White Hate Groups, the Socialist Workers Party, and Black Extremists.

Stern filed another Freedom of Information request thinking there must be more documents.

In 1974 he received 50,000 pages.

And suddenly infiltrating student groups seemed like no big deal.

The FBI was up to much, much worse.

COINTELPRO AGAINST SWP

COINTELPRO targeting the Socialist Workers Party was authorized in a memo from Hoover in 1961. The SWP was tiny - they only had 2,500 members nationwide. But Hoover was convinced the group supported Castro’s Cuba and inflamed “integration problems arising in the South”. Of course, these causes were completely legal to support. But Hoover wasn’t having it.

Like all the COINTELPRO operations, Hoover used all the illegal tools at his disposal: Undercover informants, electronic surveillance, propaganda, and a COINTELPRO favorite: “surreptitious entries”. 

Otherwise known as “black bag jobs”.

Otherwise known as - they broke into homes and offices.

Typically, this meant three agents with no identification on them would break into the target office. One would photograph everything. The other two would search desks, files, shelves, and cabinets for any documents of interest. Often they’d have a “slugger” remain outside to deal with any unexpected visitors. If they were discovered, the FBI would deny any association with them. The black bag teams were on their own.

These break-ins happened all the time. The Socialist Workers Party national office in New York was hit 81 times in 7 years by FBI break-ins. The New York local office was hit 76 times. Nearly 10,000 documents were removed or photographed.

And who were they bringing to justice? Not mobsters or bomb makers. In almost every case, they were teachers. Sometimes highly regarded.

A black elementary school teacher in Washington DC was targeted because she was a member of the Young Socialist Alliance in college. She wasn’t a current member. Yet the FBI sent fake derogatory letters to the School Superintendent claiming the teacher was holding regular socialist meetings in her apartment. The letters claimed she was out to overthrow the government and should be fired. The letter was signed as if from a concerned neighbor.

A Scoutmaster in New Jersey was targeted. He wasn’t a party member but had attended a couple of meetings. The FBI sent a message to the Boy Scouts National Headquarters defaming the Scoutmaster as subversive, and asked he be removed. The Boy Scouts agreed not to allow the Scoutmaster to lead the troop, destroying his reputation.

In San Antonio, a teacher widely regarded as a great educator was fired because the FBI notified the school system of her Socialist Workers Party membership.

One of the worst examples was the case of Morris Starsky.

He worked his way up to become a tenured professor at Arizona State University. He had no idea he was about to have his career destroyed by the FBI.

His crime? He became involved in liberal causes, like anti-war teach-ins. And he supported the Social Workers Party.

At one point, he allowed his philosophy students to miss class so they could attend an anti war rally.

The FBI proceeded to contact the Board of Regents asking to have Starsky removed from the University payroll.

When that didn’t work, Hoover approved stronger action.

The FBI mailed anonymous letters to all five members of the faculty Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure. The letters contained a blistering attack on Starsky and his activities. It was strongly recommended he be removed from the University. The letters were signed “from a Concerned ASU Alum”.

This time it worked. The faculty committee recommended Starsky be removed. And the Board of Regents, sick of all the controversy, agreed. Even though the controversy was entirely fake.

Starsky lost his job despite being fully tenured. He was never able to get a decent job in teaching again.

Years later, Starskey would see his name on the COINTELPRO documents and learn what the FBI did to him.

A federal court awarded him $15,000 for being fired illegally. But Starsky lost decades of his career. After committing no crime whatsoever.

COINTELPRO targeting the SWP caused enormous human misery. Careers of law-abiding American citizens were destroyed. First and Fourth Amendment rights were ignored. Over 1,000 undercover informants were used at a cost of more than $300,000 to American taxpayers. Not to mention over 36,000 wire taps. 

Your government at work.

But Hoover’s most terrifying work was suppressing a movement we consider among the most important in our nation’s history.

Hoover went to great lengths to destroy the heroes of civil rights.

STING LIKE A BEE

On January 7, 1966, world heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali was in Florida for a private and personal meeting. He finalized his divorce from his first wife, Sonji Roi. He had no idea this personal event would result in a classified memo to the Director of the FBI. The memo detailed Ali’s exact alimony payments and revealed details of his testimony in the meeting. Specifically, that his wife had not lived up to his “muslim faith”. Because she did not dress modestly and wore makeup. The FBI knew because they had Ali under extensive surveillance.

How is this any business of the FBI? At the time, the boxing legend was associating with the Nation of Islam. They were a Black Nationalist group. And Hoover considered them a threat to America. It was all in the files.

One of the stated goals of COINTELPRO was to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist hate type organizations.” And the Nation of Islam was one of the groups targeted.

Hoover knew the American public would object. The COINTELPRO instructions warned, “under no circumstances should the existence of the program be made known outside the Bureau”.

In Hoover’s view, Muhammad Ali was a threat to become a charismatic leader for the Nation of Islam. Because at this moment in time, Ali was as famous as anyone on the planet.

In February of that year Ali was notified his draft status was 1-A. That was the potential death sentence every young male in the United States feared. It meant he would be drafted to fight in Vietnam. 

Ali he told the press he would not go. As a muslim, his faith wouldn’t allow him to fight in a war “not declared by Allah himself”. He famously added, “I don’t have no personal quarrel with those Viet Congs”.

Refusing to obey the draft is a felony. The Governor of Illinois called Ali disgusting. The governor of Maine said Ali should “be held in contempt by every patriotic American”. But Ali would not budge. He said, “I have searched my conscience and I find I cannot be true to my belief in my religion by accepting such a call." Ali refused to be inducted. Before the Government even charged him with a crime, the World Boxing Association stripped the 25 year old of his championship title.

Ali still didn’t budge. He told a national television audience, “whenever people want to make real progress some people have to sacrifice a lot. White America is spending 30 million dollars a day in Asia and black and white boys are dying unjustly for nothing so why should I worry about going to jail for my poor people?”

At the same time, the FBI was actively looking for ways to embarrass Ali. And disrupt his rise in the Nation of Islam. 

The COINTELPRO files revealed it all. The Bureau fed negative information to newspaper columnists. They said Ali was “a loudmouth” who was loyal to the “racist Nation of Islam”. They said he was being forced into a marriage with the Nation of Islam’s “prized show piece” - referring to .

Informants reported on all of Ali’s activities. Where he went, what he said, how much he was paid. The FBI knew who he called when he arrived at a hotel. They knew how many people were at every speech he gave. They had transcripts of conversations about who he might fight next.

But the FBI never found the one thing that would justify years of cost and effort: a crime. 

Ali took his draft objections all the way to the Supreme Court. And on June 28, 1971 Ali had his biggest win outside a boxing ring. The Supreme Court unanimously overturned Ali’s conviction. The world heavyweight champion would not be going to jail.

Hoover held back information that could have hurt Ali’s career. Bureau informants had info on championship fights allegedly being fixed. And there was a legitimate customs violation Hoover could have leaked to the press.

But the FBI Director had a different civil rights leader to worry about. Someone just as charismatic and with much more political power. One he called “dangerous”.

Hoover was going after Martin Luther King Jr.

OPERATION SOLO

Jack and Morris Childs were enemies of America for twenty-five years. The brothers were active officials of the Communist Party in the United States. Morris became editor of the Daily Worker, the U.S. newspaper dedicated to spreading communism and overthrowing the capitalist system. Jack helped move money to fund party activities. The brothers made trips to Moscow meeting directly with Communist officials. But after years of loyal service, a minority faction in the Party grew uncomfortable with their growing power. In typical Communist party fashion, the brothers were driven out in a cold-blooded coup.

That’s when the FBI knocked on their door.

The Bureau routinely contacted inactive or former Communist Party members. Mostly to get information. But in this case, they happened upon the most successful double-agents in American history.

The Childs brothers felt betrayed by the Communists after devoting their lives to the cause. So when the FBI suggested the two could work for the Bureau - reactivate themselves in the Party and pass along all the information they could - the answer was a resounding “yes”.

This was the birth of Operation Solo. Cleverly named since it involved two brothers. They’d been enemies for twenty-five years, but they would spend the next twenty-five as Hoover’s gold mine of information on Communist activity.

Almost immediately, Operation Solo went better than anyone hoped. Within three years, the Childs brothers became the crucial link used by the Soviet Union to secretly channel millions of dollars to the U.S. Which meant the brothers knew virtually everything that happened in the Communist party. Suddenly, Hoover could report to the White House every secret, every confidential detail, every move the Party made. Including contacts with foreign powers. Information on agreements between Moscow and China. Childs even met with Soviet Politburo officials and — at one point - Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung. There are reports Childs may have briefed Presidents ahead of  foreign trips. 

For Hoover’s FBI, Operation Solo was a tremendous success.

And it was Operation Solo that put a white New York legal counselor with thick glasses on the FBI’s radar.

Hoover first heard about Stanley Levison when Operation Solo identified him as a secret financial benefactor to the Communist Party. Basically, Levison helped find business partners who could fund the Party.

The Childs brothers alleged Levison was using his own business associations to launder money for the Party. When Levison got involved in a Ford dealership, took a trip to Poland, helped finance a laundromat - it was considered a possible front for the Communist Party.

In 1954, Levison made things worse. FBI’s double-agents reported Levison took an official role in the Party managing its secret funds. The Party Treasurer died and Levison agreed to take on the role. In a crazy stroke of luck, this meant Levison was the boss of Jack Childs - the FBI double-agent.

At this point, the FBI COINTELPRO machine went into high gear. Levison had constant surveillance. His hotel rooms were bugged. Transcripts of his private conversations landed on Hoover’s desk.

Then Stanley Levison did something completely unexpected.

He quit the Communist Party.

The Childs brothers no longer had regular contact with him.

The FBI’s close surveillance on his activities stopped.

Levison began working with groups raising money for other causes, including the growing civil rights groups focused on equal rights for African Americans.

By 1957, the FBI dropped Levison from its list of key Communist figures in the United States.

As the FBI did with the Childs brothers, they paid a visit to Levison to see if he might become an informant. Levison refused.

He really was moving on - he was absolutely not returning to the Communist Party.

So why do we care about Stanley Levison?

THE COMMUNIST INFLUENCER

In 1962, Hoover received a report from Operation Solo that contained information the White House would want asap.

The FBI’s double-agents had information that Mao Tse-tung and Nikita Krishchev - the leader of China and the leader of the Soviet Union - hated each other. There was a breach between the two superpowers that President Eisenhower could exploit.

The CIA had been reporting the two enemy nations were of one mind. But Hoover had the truth - and the CIA was wrong.

Operation Solo was delivering insights no eavesdropping satellite or spy plane could deliver. This was information direct from on-the-ground insider sources. Communist leaders were confused and quarreling.

And there was more.

Moscow had decided that the main goal of the Communist Party in the United States would be to “fight for Negro equality and integration”.

The Kremlin’s theory was the civil rights struggle could disrupt the U.S. government and destabilize the nation.

From that moment on, Hoover saw the civil rights movement as a dangerous arm of the Communist threat.

There was one other detail that would ignite a fever in Hoover.

Operation Solo reported the Kremlin requested a copy of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s first book. The one just published called “Stride Toward Freedom”.

The one written with the help of - you guessed it - Stanley Levison.

Turns out, when Levison left the Communist Party he found a more fulfilling role - one that would give him a front row seat to history.

He used his business skills to help a civil rights group called “In Friendship”. He became friends with one of its prominent activists, a man named Bayard Rustin. You might recognize the name. He went on to become a legend, helping to organize the March on Washington among other accomplishments in the movement. 

At the time, Rustin was concerned about an incident in Montgomery, Alabama. They had some strange rules about riding the bus if you happened to be black. You paid at the front like everyone, but you had to enter the bus from the back. And you had to stay in the back - you weren’t allowed to sit in front rows. They were reserved for white people.

A couple of times, young black women tried to sit in the “wrong” seat. One was a 15 year old girl. Claudette Colvin. She was arrested. Then 18 year old Mary Smith refused to give up her seat to another person just because they were white. She was also arrested. Police in Montgomery weren’t kidding about segregating their public buses.

But then they met their match. On December 1st, 1955 a 42 year old woman named Rosa Parks took a seat in the front of a bus. And she was arrested for it. Only Parks wasn’t some kid. She was one of the most respected women in the community. Her arrest prompted a one-day protest - 90% of all black citizens in the city stayed off the bus. And that meant the city suddenly took a financial hit. It opened some eyes. Organizers wanted to hit harder - extend the boycott.

They formed the Montgomery Improvement Association to run a mass protest that would last 13 months and go all the way to the Supreme Court. And they would win. 

A big reason for their success was the man they chose to lead it. He had a certainty in the cause that motivated his members. His speeches were beyond charismatic - they had the energy of a preacher. They gave his members courage against power. Of the bus boycott, he said:

“If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong.”

Rustin went to Alabama to help organize the boycott. And he introduced Levison to this new, inspiring leader on the scene, named Martin Luther King, Jr.

Levison and King got along great from day one. And Levison had legal and business skills King needed.

Levison quickly became a close confidant. He helped draw up the founding documents for King’s new organization that would become the heart of the civil rights movement: the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Levison helped polish speeches and drafts of books, and even did the taxes. In May of 1957, King’s focus was on removing barriers preventing African Americans to vote. On paper, they had the right. But the reality was much different. The South used poll taxes, literacy tests, and flat out violence to stop blacks from voting. Infamously, registrars would make Black voters guess the number of jelly beans in a jar before they could register to vote. It was clearly wrong, and King was going to change things.

Levison listened while King ran a speech by him. He was going to give it at the Lincoln Memorial. He would give it on the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown vs the Board of Education that said schools could not be segregated.

"Give us the ballot and we will no longer plead to the federal government for passage of an anti-lynching law ...

"Give us the ballot and we will fill our legislative halls with men of good will ...

"Give us the ballot and we will place judges on the benches of the South who will do justly and love mercy ...

"Give us the ballot and we will quietly and nonviolently, without rancor or bitterness, implement the Supreme Court’s decision of May 17, 1954.

Levison likely had no notes. It remains one of the most important speeches in American history.

A DANGER TO THE NATION

For Hoover, King’s talents to motivate his followers was a danger to the nation. When he discovered Levison - a former Communist Party member - was involved in shaping King’s message, all bets were off. Hoover let loose the full resources of his secret COINTELPRO operations on King.

On January 8, 1962 Hoover sent a letter to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy alerting him of King’s close relationship with Levison. Hoover made it sound as bad as possible. He said a Communist Leader was writing King’s speeches. Left out was the part where Levison left the Party years before. Levison was identified as a Communist controlling King. According to Kennedy, “When I heard that (King) was tied up, perhaps, with some Communists, I asked the FBI to make an intensive investigation of him.”

Kennedy authorized a wiretap on Levison’s office. Now Hoover was getting transcriptions of conversations with Levison and King - the civil rights hero called Levison constantly. They were indeed close.

Hoover sent RFK a recording from Levison’s office and got the Attorney General’s attention. There on the tape was the baritone voice of Martin Luther King, Jr. An additional tap on Levison’s home phone was authorized. Turns out, King called Levison late at night several times a week. The conversations were about their work in the civil rights movement - no dangerous communist talk was uncovered. But RFK was convinced Levison had tremendous sway on King. And Hoover was unwavering that they knew Levison was a Communist influencer. How he knew was kept secret from the White House - and so was the lack of any evidence it was still true.

FBI agents began hearing Levison and King making big plans for a March on Washington. 250,000 demonstrators would show up in front of the Lincoln Memorial. It would be the largest public protest in American history. It’s an event so important to our history as Americans we still study it in school. But to Hoover, the March was an unprecedented mobilization of black people playing right into Communist hands.

Hoover desperately wanted to wire tap King himself. He wanted damaging information that would stop King’s influence.

Hoover was relentless with memos to the Kennedys warning King was leading a Communist conspiracy against America. 

He commissioned FBI reports on the deep history of the Communist Party’s connections with the civil rights movement. 

The FBI report - delivered in August of 1963 - did not disappoint. It claimed: “The 19 million Negroes in the United States today constitute the largest and most important racial target of the Communist Party USA.” The report went on: “Since 1919 communist leaders have devised countless tactics and programs designed to penetrate and control the Negro population.” 

But the report was missing one key thing. As usual. There was no direct evidence of Communist control. 

So Hoover doubled down.

Martin Luther King’s most famous speech is obviously “I Have a Dream”. We literally have a national holiday where that speech is aired and celebrated every year. The FBI wasn’t so inspired.

The day after King made the speech during the March on Washington, the FBI sent a new memo. It was circulated widely at the White House. It said, “In the light of King’s powerful demagogic speech . . . we must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security.” The memo - prepared by FBI officials - was signed by Hoover.

Still, getting RFK to approve surveillance on the civil rights leader was a tall order. 

Because of one key thing.

While Hoover was out to destroy Martin Luther King, Jr. RFK wanted to help him.

THE KENNEDY BROTHERS

Back in 1960, King was arrested and put in jail for nothing more than a traffic violation. The charges were trumped up and designed to put King in real danger. Because the Georgia judge sentenced King to four months hard labor. Which would be done next to hardened White criminals. It was likely King would not survive the experience.

This was at the end of the Presidential campaign between Nixon and John F. Kennedy. Nixon had just been endorsed by none other than Martin Luther King Senior. But it was JFK who called Martin Luther King Jr’s wife Coretta to console her. And at the same time it was RFK who called the judge and got King released on bail.

Once in office, the Kennedy’s continued to step in and help King. Truth is, politically they hoped King would slow down his drive for change. But in the end, they always sided with King.

Like in 1961, when King organized Freedom Rides - buses with both black and white passengers - into the still segregated South. Hard to imagine now, but Southerners would beat the Freedom Riders with baseball bats and iron pipes — and throw them in jail. Simply because whites were riding with blacks. 

FBI agents infamously stood around and did nothing while Freedom Riders were beaten in the Montgomery Alabama Terminal. 

But RFK ultimately demanded the Interstate Commerce Commission comply with their own bus desecration ruling from five years earlier. Segregation wasn’t solved, but there was progress: in bus and train stations in the South White and Colored Only signs came down.

And when RFK got the reports of King associating with a Communist, he actually warned King. As did the President of the United States. King responded by lowering Levison’s public profile. But the relationship remained close. The Kennedys couldn’t go so far as telling King the FBI was listening to Levison’s phones and tapping his office.

So when Hoover was demanding Martin Luther King Jr. be made the target of secret surveillance like a suspected criminal, RFK was not eager to agree.

But RFK did agree. Because Hoover had the upper hand.

Hoover had secret information on the Kennedys.

In March of 1962, Hoover had lunch at the White House and let JFK know. The Kennedys better not cross the FBI, or the secrets would come out.

The COINTELPRO files revealed it all. Hoover knew the CIA and RFK were working to assassinate Fidel Castro, the leader of Cuba. 

He knew the plan included the participation of Mafia boss Sam Giancana.

And it got worse from there.

Hoover knew the President had slept with Judith Campbell, who was the girlfriend of the Mafia Boss.

And that JFK had several other relationships outside his marriage.

There was an allegation that as senator JFK was sleeping with his wife’s social secretary. 

When JFK was in the navy, there was an affair with a married columnist for the Washington Post. Who was suspected of being a German spy. Which is why the FBI had her hotel room bugged when she slept with JFK. 

According to a White House official, after the lunch, the president told an aide that he had to fire “that bastard” J. Edgar Hoover.

Of course, Hoover was not fired.

And now he wanted to bug Martin Luther King, Jr.

RFK later called it, “absolute blackmail.” To his staff, he said he could not, with the “flood of memos” from the FBI about King’s Communist associations, turn the Bureau down “on a tap.”

By October of 1963, King was subjected to unlimited electronic surveillance. Taps included the King home, the headquarters of the Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta and New York, and motel rooms wherever King traveled.

And Hoover’s bugs got immediate results.

Turns out, the motel rooms were an issue.

In one of the first incidents, FBI agents got word King would be staying at the Willard in Washington DC. They broke into King’s room ahead of time and planted the first of many bugs. When King arrived, the FBI was listening. They heard King thinking out loud, working out strategy and tactics. In the later hours, members of the SCLC arrived, along with two women who worked in the Philadelphia Naval Yards. There was a party. And then, after the party, they heard King having sex with one of the women.

In just this one night, the FBI produced over a dozen large reels of tape. Bureau employees transcribed the material.

The surveillance revealed nothing important to national security or communist infiltration. But it did reveal King was involved in extracurricular sexual activities. And it wouldn’t be the only time.

The FBI considered this a win. This was something they could use.

Hoover’s orders were to find information to discredit King. The stated FBI goal was to “leave negroes without a national leader of sufficiently compelling personality to steer them in the proper direction”.

The world was not helping the FBI in this devious goal. Time Magazine just announced their man of the year in 1963 was going to be King.

So when Hoover heard the tapes, he was excited. He said the tapes would, “destroy the burrhead” — Hoover’s racist nickname for King he only said in private.

They could have kept the tapes in a safe, hidden them for leverage. But the FBI did the opposite.

They immediately sent transcripts to the White House. King would be discredited as fast as possible.

Notably, they kept the tapes from RFK thinking he would simply tell King and end the operation right there.

The surveillance continued. Many nights they got nothing - not even sexual encounters. King still met with Levison. But the Bureau never uncovered anything proving communist influence or criminal intent.

There was a night King was recorded being particularly vulgar. He was having fun, giving explicit nicknames to friends, making dirty jokes about JFK. All of it went straight to the White House. King had no idea.

Then - in October of 1964 - Hoover found out King was going to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. This discrediting thing wasn’t going well.

Hoover couldn’t stand it. He decided to give an interview, complaining about comments King made insulting the FBI two years earlier. King said the FBI was ineffective in battling civil rights. Hoover insisted King told his followers never to ask the FBI for help. Of course, that was a lie. But in this interview, Hoover called King, “the most notorious liar in the country”. He was desperate to knock the man about to win a Nobel Prize off his pedestal.

The FBI went even further. In fact, they committed what would later be seen as one of the most shameful acts in its secret history.

They put the damning tapes of King’s sexual exploits - tapes King did not know they had - in a package and mailed it to King. 

Of course they hid the fact the package came from the FBI. They mailed it to Atlanta from a mailbox in Miami. The FBI labs created a dark and threatening note and added it to the package. The hope was King would open it, realize his enemies had evidence to destroy him, and step down as leader of the civil rights movement.

The letter, from an anonymous critic, read in part:

“King, look into your heart. You know you are a complete fraud and a great liability to all of us Negroes . . . You are no clergyman and you know it . . . you could not believe in God . . . Clearly you don’t believe in any personal moral principles.

King, like all frauds your end is approaching. You could have been our greatest leader. You, even at an early age have turned out to be not a leader but a dissolute, abnormal moral imbecile.”

The letter went on to not so subtly suggest King kill himself. It said, “There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.” That last part was clearly a threat that the tapes would be released to the public. It’s astounding this was a product of official FBI business. Such was the way of FBI’s COINTELPRO operations.

The package was sent to King at the SCLC office in Atlanta.

Hoover then sent the tapes to Newsweek, hoping they would print a story on King’s immoral activities. They didn’t bite.

The FBI kept trying. They gave illicit photos taken in secret of women leaving King’s motel to the Chicago Daily News. They didn’t print them.

The Bureau offered transcripts to the LA Times, the New York Times, the Atlanta Constitution. No go. The Atlanta paper said it was “not the sort of news the Constitution wanted to print”

Meanwhile, the FBI’s package arrived at SCLC headquarters. But the box was placed unopened with similar packages.

Turns out, the person who would go through packages at the Atlanta office was none other than King’s wife, Coretta. She discovered the package and read the threatening letter. She listened to a part of the tapes and was horrified. Then she called King.

The tapes did not have the effect on King intended by the FBI.

At first, he was emotionally distraught and feared he would be exposed. But in the end, he found resolve. King saw the tapes as proof outsiders were trying to intimidate him. And suddenly he regretted distancing himself from Levison.

He had allowed the FBI to drive Levison - his close friend and advisor - away for no reason.

By 1965, King resolved to correct that mistake.

The FBI kept up its surveillance to no avail.

In October, they requested another six months authorization for wiretaps on King. They insisted the electronic surveillance had “provided considerable valuable intelligence information concerning communist influence on the SCLC through King”. 

The taps would continue until 1966. And at first they were approved yet again. But at that time, Senator Edward Long began an investigation into federal agencies who used electronic surveillance techniques. Hoover never wanted any of his operations public. So he got the Senator to agree not to ask any FBI agents to testify.

And Hoover needed their operations to stop so they wouldn’t be discovered by the investigation. The request for more surveillance on King had a new note attached. It said, bluntly, “Remove this surveillance at once.”

It was just as well. After years of effort, in the end there was simply nothing to report.

Tragically, King would only live two more years. But they would be years free of FBI electronic surveillance.

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. 

There have been conspiracy theories suggesting the FBI was involved in the assassination. But in this case, that doesn’t appear to be true.

In other cases - it was absolutely true.

THE HAMPTON KILLING

William O’Neal was 17 years old and in jail on felony charges. He was caught stealing a car. And being a black kid in jail - in Chicago - in 1967 - well, his future looked bleak. Chicago cops were flat out racist at the time. Many were openly members of the Ku Klux Klan. 

O’Neal had little hope for a better life.

Until someone dropped his charges and got him released.

He thought he was the luckiest kid in the world. Someone was getting him out of jail. But unfortunately for O’Neal, that someone was an FBI Agent working for COINTELPRO secret operations. And it would lead to a horrific end.

At the time, The Black Panthers were gaining power in the city. They were different than King’s group, not so interested in non violence. Quite the opposite in fact.

They had some mainstream goals - organizing marches, fighting for equal rights, pushing for candidates that support black issues; even providing free breakfasts for poor children.

But they also believed in arming blacks so they could defend themselves against police brutality. Even more - they were in favor of proactive violence when needed. The Black Panthers openly said they were at war.

The Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers had yet another charismatic leader that motivated its members.

Fred Hampton was an impressive speaker and organizer from his high school days to his work with the NAACP to his leadership in the new Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers. Everyone in the community loved him.

This was Hoover’s nightmare come to life.

The FBI Director proclaimed the Black Panther Party the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States.

Chicago Police and FBI agents fed stories to local media to discredit the Panthers. They also shared intelligence, spied on the group’s meetings, planted informants, and proactively tried to cause friction in the Panthers. 

And now an FBI Agent was saving 17 year old William O’Neal from jail, to begin another standard COINTELPRO operation.

The Agent told O’Neal to infiltrate the Panthers. Become a trusted member. And then report back information to the FBI. Not only would O’Neal get out of jail. But he would be paid every month he stayed on the job.

O’Neal liked the idea of working for the law. Unfortunately, it was Hoover’s law.

O’Neal took the gig. He joined Fred Hampton’s Black Panthers.

First he ran errands, did minor tasks, whatever was needed.

But it turns out O’Neal was good at this infiltration thing.

He worked his way up in the group. And eventually he was put in charge of security. At every step he dutifully reported back to the FBI everything that went on.

One of Fred Hampton’s skills was coalition building. He helped create a politically powerful movement by joining poor ethnic groups of all kinds. Led, of course, by black youth. Hampton called his group the Rainbow Coalition. They fought against Chicago’s destructive urban policies and police brutality.

O’Neal would grow to admire Hampton the more he worked with him. He would later say, “they started talking about black struggle and Black rights, and their whole program seemed to make sense.”

But he still did his duty, informing the FBI.

Then Hampton raised a major red flag with the Bureau. He sought out an alliance with the Blackstone Rangers gang. This gang of black youths was extremely violent, and much bigger in number than the Panthers. The FBI was determined to stop the groups from ever working together.

The Chicago FBI office had an idea - they would send an anonymous letter to the head of the Blackstone Rangers. The letter warned Hampton’s Panthers had a hit out on the Rangers leader. And part of the plot involved the Panthers taking over the Rangers gang. Hoover signed off on the idea. So right when the two groups might work together, the Rangers were being told their leader was going to be killed by Hampton.

The FBI believed this letter would create intense animosity between the groups. And the hope was the violent Rangers would take action, and strike first. Basically they were hoping Fred Hampton would be the one killed.

The Rangers decided against an alliance with the Panthers - the letter worked that much. But Hampton remained very much alive.

That prompted a meeting between the FBI and O’Neal in November of 1969. The FBI had a new request for their loyal informant. 

They wanted a drawing. ONeal was asked to create a detailed floor pan of Fred Hampton’s apartment. The Bureau wanted to know placement of furniture, rooms, doors — and specifically where Hampton slept.

ONeal complied. If he knew why the FBI wanted it, he might have acted differently. 

The FBI took the floor plan to a special unit of the Chicago police that worked secretly under the State’s Attorney General. The inside information was extremely valuable to the unit. Because they were planning an armed raid on Fred Hampton’s apartment.

Maybe O’Neal figured out what was about to happen. Because the night of the raid, O’Neal slipped Hampton a dose of secobarbital in his drink before he went to bed. Hampton was basically comatose. 

At 4AM a 14-man police team armed with submachine guns and shotguns burst into Hampton’s home. Hampton was shot once in the chest and twice point blank in the head. Clearly an assassination. After that, all Hell broke loose. Cops let go 98 rounds, killing Mark Clark, another Panther leader, and injuring six others.

No Panther fired a shot.

All the Panthers who survived were charged with aggressive assault and attempted murder - as if they had shot back. 

A week later, FBI’s COINTELPRO Chicago section head wrote a memo bragging about the operation’s success.

In the memo, he requested a bonus for O’Neal as the informant who made it all possible. The bonus was approved for $300.

And Fred Hampton was dead.

It took over a decade of battling the courts, but the Panthers ultimately sued the Chicago police and state officials for the illegal action.

The FBI couldn’t cover it up. The operation left over 10,000 documents behind detailing every step.

In November 1982, a District Judge finally determined there was sufficient evidence of a conspiracy to deprive the Panthers of their civil rights. They were awarded $1.85 million in damages.

In January of 1990, O’Neal committed suicide. Maybe it was his guilt over helping to assassinate a man he grew to admire. But whatever the reason, he was another victim of Hoover’s secret police.

END

The COINTELPRO files reveal decades of covert action directed against domestic groups. 

By the time J. Edgar Hoover died on May 2, 1972, these secret methods had horrified enough people that Congress finally took action.

The unjustified and cruel actions taken against Martin Luther King, Jr. were an example of an FBI that had lost all sense of purpose.

Under Hoover, more than a thousand political organizations were watchlisted. At least 10,000 American homes were burglarized in "black bag jobs" for the purpose of political intelligence gathering. 500,000 investigations on so-called subversives were made without a single conviction in a court of law.

In January 1975, the Church Committee was formed in the Senate to bring new guidelines to the Bureau.

There would be no more targeting anyone unless the bureau had facts they were engaged in a crime. And the Attorney General was given approval authority on any informers, mail interceptions, or other COINTELPRO style methods.

Mark Felt became the number two man at the FBI. He knew the Bureau did a lot of good outside all the controversy. He was determined to help run the place the right way. The days of secret break-ins against American citizens were over.

Except they weren’t at all.

A former FBI agent named G. Gordon Liddy had taken a new position where his experience in black bag jobs would come in handy.

He worked for the President of the United States.

Turns out, Nixon had become a version of Hoover - he was ordering burglaries, bugging his enemies, and using the FBI and CIA to attack his political opponents. He would have gotten away with it, too.

Except someone called a reporter at the Washington Post named Bob Woodward and anonymously leaked just enough information so Woodward could find the story. And report it to the world. Nixon’s crimes were uncovered and the President was forced out of office.

Woodward called this anonymous source “Deep Throat” - an unfortunate nickname. For decades people wondered who this mystery man was that betrayed Nixon.

Turns out, his name was Mark Felt. And he worked for the FBI.

We are the Aliens

THE PANSPERMIA THEORY OF LIFE ON EARTH

INTRO

Life began on Earth around 3.8 billion years ago. Before that, no life. Then, life. Scientists call it abiogenesis. Life from non living matter. And not just any non-living matter — it had to be only stuff found on primordial Earth. How that happened is one of the greatest mysteries of all time. Generations of scientists devoted entire careers to find the answer. And here’s the surprising thing: they kind of figured it out.

The first step was breaking life down to its key building blocks.

<HECKLEFISH> Cool car, cool house, hot wife.

Of course I mean lipids, proteins, and RNA. For life to exist, you need these three things. So if you can explain how each of these elements could form and combine on Primordial Earth, you have a path to life. And here’s how it goes.

<HECKLEFISH> Wait - are you about to solve the greatest mystery of all time?

Pretty much. 

First, lipids can form if you combine carbon monoxide and hydrogen around a heat source. Turns out, all these ingredients were present on Primordial Earth. The current theory is lipids formed underwater in areas where heat from the Earth’s crust  - which contained carbon monoxide and hydrogen - escaped through hydrothermal vents.

Now this would all happen in salt water, because that’s what you have on Primordial Earth.

In salt water, lipids need amino acids to survive. And when amino acids combine, you get the second building block to life: proteins.

The formation of RNA - which would evolve into DNA - is trickier, but Scientists at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York had a break through in 2009. They showed that the elements needed for RNA could collect and combine on certain kinds of clay surfaces. 

The last piece of the puzzle is time. This didn’t happen in an instant. Nobody flipped a switch. The precursors to life developed into the first living cells over millions of years. The elements are all there. Given the right combinations and conditions, life from the primordial soup is possible.

But what if it was much simpler than that?

What if life on Earth didn’t need all those chemical and geological elements to come together in unlikely combinations? 

What if life didn’t begin on Earth at all?

THE SEEDS OF PANSPERMIA

The theory is called Panspermia, meaning the seeds of life are everywhere. And they propagate through space, from one location to another. 

It’s not a new idea. It can be traced all the way back to Ancient Greece. Around 450 BCE Greek philosopher Anaxagoras of Clazomenae suggested life came from animal and plant seeds - or in the original Greek, “spermata” - that floated everywhere in the mixture of stuff that was the Universe. 

The Panspermia theory gained support in the 18th Century. French historian Benoit de Maillet theorized the cosmos was “full of seeds of everything which can live in the Universe”. 

At the same time, the Aristotelian idea that life spontaneously arose on Earth from non-living stuff was facing some big challenges.

First, in 1796, French mathematition Pierre-Simon Laplace developed a theory that the Solar System was formed from a nebula of gas and dust orbiting the sun which became widely accepted. And if this theory was true, Primordial Earth was way too hot for the development of life as we understood it.

Then, in 1859, Darwin rocked the scientific world by publishing “On the Origin of Species”. Suddenly there was a solid theory of how life on Earth became so diverse over time. 

<HECKLEFISH> I still don’t buy that I came from a monkey.

You didn’t. That’s not what Darwin’s theory says.

<HECKLEFISH> Really? I gotta re-read that thing.

But Darwin’s theory only explained how we evolved from the first living cell. It didn’t explain what happened before that. Suddenly there was a bigger focus on that final mystery: where did life come from in the first place?

In the late 19th century, the prestigious French Academy of Sciences offered 500 francs for any scientist who could prove spontaneous generation of life was possible. 

A young, relatively unknown chemist named Louis Pasteur took the challenge. He customized flasks with tall necks, where he could store sterilized cultures without any chance of outside contamination. And nothing happened. There was no generation of new microorganisms like there would be if they were left in the air to collect contamination. That was good enough to win the contest and create serious doubt life could grow from anything but other life.

These events opened the door for Panspermia’s popularity.  After all, life was here. It had to come from somewhere. 

The first of these Panspermia theories to gain traction came from Nobel prize winning scientist Svante Arrhenius in 1908. He published an article called “Die Verbreitung des Lebens im Weltenraum” - “the Distribution of Life in Space”. His idea was that microscopic forms of life, like spores, can be propagated in space, driven by the radiation pressure from the sun, and seed life from one planet to another. His theory became known as Radiopanspermia.

For this to work, bacterial spores would need to survive long periods of time in space. But Arrhenius was encouraged by experiments done by chemist Emile Roux - one of Pasteur’s close c0llaberators. Roux proved anthrax could survive UV radiation in an airless environment.

There was only one small problem with this.

Emile Roux was wrong.

It took French plant physiologist Paul Becquerel to demonstrate Roux’s results were due to experimental error. In fact, microbes would not survive under the extreme ultraviolet radiation found in space.

For Panspermia to work, biological matter would need to hitch a ride through space on something that can survive the harsh conditions.  

Does such a vehicle exist? Turns out, the answer is yes. And they arrive on Earth all the time.

LITHOPANSPERMIA

A new theory of Panspermia took hold, expressed in a speech to the British Society for the Advancement of Science in 1871 by  scientist Sir William Thompson - better known as Lord Kelvin.

<HECKLEFISH> Why does that name sound familiar?

He ended up inventing a temperature scale.

<HECKLEFISH> The Lord scale?

I’m going to pretend you’re joking.

<HECKELFISH> Lord it’s cold. Hey - I bet that’s how it started!

Lord Kelvin suggested biological matter was buried in meteoric rock moving through space. The rock would provide protection for the microbes inside until it landed on Earth and provided the seed for life.

The process was called Lithopanspermia - adding the Greek word Litho, meaning rock.

Kelvin wrote, “Hence and because we all confidently believe that there are at present, and have been from time immemorial, many worlds of life besides our own, we must regard it as probable in the highest degree that there are countless seed-bearing meteoric stones moving about through space. If at the present instant no life existed upon this Earth, one such stone falling upon it might, by what we blindly call natural causes, lead to its becoming covered with vegetation”

Renowned physicist Hermann Helmholtz joined the growing number of scientists supporting Kelvin.

 He added that meteorites did contain organic molecules. And even at the time they had a sense comets were composed of hydrogen and carbon. It seemed like the right theory at a time when life from non-living matter seemed ridiculous.

And the promotion of Lithopanspermia continued into the modern age, most notably with Astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle. Hoyle devoted his career to proving organic matter pervades our Universe and challenging the idea life originated on Earth in a primordial soup. 

He didn’t buy the idea life originated from inorganic molecules and found it ridiculous not to think of life as everywhere in the Universe.  Hoyle was often dismissed by mainstream science, since he believed our biosphere extended well beyond our planet and into the Milky Way, and that it was impossible to prevent the exchange of biological material between star systems. 

He claimed victory when organic material was discovered in Halley’s Comet in 1986. His frequent collaborator Chandra Wickramasinghe felt vindicated again when the Rosetta Mission to Comet 67P/C-G found a mix of compounds thought to be essential precursors to life - including slats of ammonium and hydrocarbons.

But for Lithopanspermia to be the answer to life on Earth, it doesn’t matter if meteors hit the Earth today. They had to have hit the planet 4 billion years ago, before life began.

Turns out, back on Primordial Earth, there were more than a few meteorites. We had an all out bombardment.

PRIMORDIAL EARTH

They say the Universe started with a bang.

<HECKELFISH> A big one.

Exactly. But our planet had its own big bang when it formed 4.6 billion years ago. A meteor the size of the planet Mars made a direct hit.

<HECKLEFISH> No way.

It’s true.

<HECKELFISH> Must have caused serious damage.

It did. A big chunk got knocked out.

<HECKLEFISH> Wish someone had saved it in a bucket of ice or something. We could sew it back on.

Oh, it’s still there. We call it the moon.

<HECKLEFISH> Maybe just leave it, then. We need it for werewolf movies.

This big meteor impact was followed by a hailstorm of comets, which caused craters on the moon and likely on the young Earth as well.

But what about smaller meteors that might actually land safely and deliver biological matter? Seems logical they were around. 

In 2013, a team from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland found the evidence.

The Isua greenstone belt is a stretch of volcanic rock in Southwest Greenland. And it’s old. Like, really old.

Scientists divide the Earth’s live span into four Geological eons. First is the Hadean Eon, which starts at the formation of the Earth and ends 4 billion years ago. It’s named after Hades, the Greek God who was in charge of Hell, because conditions back then were, well — it wasn’t a good time to visit Earth. Next is the Archean Eon which spans 4 billion years ago to 2.5 billion years ago. This is followed by the Proterozoic and  Phanerozoic eons, but our focus is on the Archean. This is when life begins. And miraculously, the rocks on the Isua greenstone belt date all the way back to this time. 

This makes the greenstone belt a great place to gain insights into Earth’s very early history. 

The survey team visiting in 2013 took rock samples and discovered they were some of the oldest ever found — going back 4.1 billion years. That placed the rocks in the timeline after the Mars-sized meteor impact but before the barrage of comets. 

And there was something else: the rocks contained the chemical elements osmium and iridium. These elements were heavy metals, which should have disappeared into the Earth’s core when the planet was liquid. But there they were. And the team knew comets don’t contain these heavy metals. The rocks they found were meteorites.

And maybe even the exact meteorites that transported the seeds of life into Primordial Earth.

ROCKS FROM MARS

Of course, the Lithopanspermia theory isn’t about just any meteorite landing on Earth. It requires rocks with viable biological matter buried inside. These rocks have to originate from somewhere habitable. 

Throughout human history, people witnessed thousands of meteorites falling from the sky. In Ancient Greece, these sightings were often associated with supernatural events, and considered omens from the Gods. But really, they were most often pieces of an asteroid belt located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.  They were lifeless rocks, occasionally containing metallic elements - like the samples found in Greenland. They did not launch from a habitable zone abundant with the building blocks of life.

We need proof that matter from another habitable planet could make it here. 

And in 1815, that’s exactly what we got.

It was 10:00am on October 3 - yes, this was such a big deal we know the exact time. A farmer was tending to his vineyard in Chassigny, France. First he heard the terrifying “boom” in the sky, like a cannon from the Napoleonic Wars. Only there were no cannons around. It was a sonic boom, not something farmers in 1815 would know about. But very soon he would see the cause - a nine pound object falling from the sky, coming fast. And close - making impact 400 meters from where he stood.

The meteorite exploded on impact, spreading fragments everywhere, sending stones in all directions. 

Villagers collected pieces around the impact site. A larger piece was found 160 meters away. 

A doctor from Langres, Mr. Pistollet, arrived two days later to make an official field investigation of the site. He was able to retrieve 4 grams of the meteor for study. 

And it’s from examining the composition of that fragment we learned that, for the first time, we were hit with something from a planet different from our own. This rock was from Mars.

Since that time, NASA has identified over 60,000 meteorites on Earth, including 175 that originated from the planet Mars.

And one of them looked like it contained the remains of ancient life. It was a piece of a meteorite found in Antartica, labelled 84001. It remains the most well-known meteorite ever found. In fact, on August 7, 1996, President Bill Clinton announced to the world this rock may contain evidence of life on Mars. 

The President stood on the South lawn of the White House that afternoon and said, “today rock 84001 speaks to us across all those billions of years and millions of miles. It speaks of the possibility of life. If this discovery is confirmed, it will surely be one of the most stunning insights into our universe that science has ever uncovered.” He could have stopped there, but he didn’t. He went on to say, “Its implications are as far-reaching and awe-inspiring as can be imagined.”

The meteorite was found in Antartica, in the Far Western Icefield called Allan Hills. It was December 27, 1984. Scientists riding snowmobiles on their annual survey of the area took samples from a rocky outcrop protruding from the blue ice. The first spark of excitement happened when they got it back to the lab. Oxygen isotope analysis revealed a Martian origin. Scientists got more excited when they noticed unusual structures in the rock: fine-grained round areas called “rosettes”. They proposed that these structures were caused by organic matter, carbonate spheroids with a biological origin. If true, this would be the first signs ever of extraterrestrial life. 

In 1996, they published their theory in the journal Science. Word was out - we may have discovered evidence of past biological activity on Mars. The biological matter lived in the outermost black rims of the carbonate globules in rock 84001.

But after further examination, scientists did not accepted this theory as true. One key issue was the abundance of contamination from terrestrial materials - the rock had been sitting on Earth for over 30 million years. Another was the speculative nature of the inferences made from shapes in the rocks  - in other words, there was no conclusive evidence of biological matter.

 Turns out, 84001 - the world’s most famous meteorite - was probably not the ancient home to extraterrestrial life. President Clinton’s “stunning insights into our universe” would have to wait.

But the public won’t let the fascination with this meteorite die. The disproven paper has been sited more than 2,000 times.

Truth is, we have yet to find living biological matter on Mars. But we’re pretty sure it was there. We’ve discovered water in the form of ice on Mars - a requirement for life as we know it - at the poles and beneath the surface. Incredibly, in 2008 the Phoenix Lander actually dug into the Mars surface and “saw” the water-ice first hand.  

The surface suggest this water was once flowing everywhere. We’ve found ancient river valleys, lakebeds and minerals that would only form with the presense of water. Mars may not be teeming with life now, but 3.8 billion years ago it was much closer to an Earth-like environment.

So Mars is a possible source for Lithopanspermia in our Solar System. But it turns out, if you follow the water, there’s a lot more.

FOLLOW THE WATER

Around the same time the media was going crazy about alien life in meteor 84001, the Galileo mission made a much bigger discovery. Because this one was true.

In 1995, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft began its orbit around Jupiter. And for the next eight years we got stunning details about the planet. Of course, Jupiter - the largest planet in our solar system - isn’t habitable at all.  First, there’s no solid surface. It’s made of hydrogen and helium gas, with traces of methane and ammonia among other unpleasant compounds. There’s also intense heat and radiation. So not only will we not get biological matter from Jupiter, there are no rocks to break off and transport it our way.

But the Galileo spacecraft found something else during its time orbiting Jupiter. 

One of the moons, Europa, appeared to have a bright, icy crust. And the patterns of ridges and cracks on the surface were consistent with the presence of a subsurface ocean beneath the ice shell. Scientists now believe there is an ocean under that surface, a key ingredient for life.  

Turns out, moons are the most likely sources of life in our Solar System.

Saturn is another gas giant with extreme atmospheric pressures. Nothing could live there either. But similar to Jupiter, one of Saturn’s moons might be hiding its own ocean.

The moon is called Enceladus. 

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft discovered geysers erupting on Enceladus’s South Pole suggesting a subsurface ocean beneath the icy surface. And chemical analysis of the atmosphere contained complex organic molecules. Including many building blocks needed to support life, like carbon dioxide methane, ammonia, and hydrogen. Scientists think this is likely due to hydrothermal activity on the ocean floor, similar to hydrothermal vents in our oceans. 

Cassini also discovered a key molecule on Enceladus: hydrogen cyanide. Yes, that is poison to us, but scientists actually think the molecule plays a big role in the origins of life. According to Jonah Peter, a biophysicist at Harvard, “it’s sort of the Swiss Army knife of prebiotic chemistry.”

Saturn has another moon that holds possible life, it’s largest one, aptly named Titan.

The Cassini spacecraft did more than just fly by this moon. On Christmas Day in 2004 a separate lander called Huygens launched from Cassini, passed through the Titan atmosphere, and landed on the surface. So we have more than just chemical readings or atmospheric tests from Titan. We have actual pictures.

At the landing site, we can see pebbles of water ice all around. We’ve got arial photos as Huygens landed of areas consistent with large bodies of water. There appeared to be large drainage channels crossing the mainland and flowing into what might have been a dark sea. The atmosphere is rich in organic molecules and complex hydrocarbons. The surface is too cold for life, but there’s complex chemistry happening, with lakes and rivers of liquid hydrocarbons. And again, there is evidence of subsurface oceans. Of all the moons, Titan is most similar to primordial Earth.

And there is more. Jupiter has two other moons that likely have subsurface oceans: Ganymede and Callisto. 

A computer model of Ganymede’s interior created in 2014 indicated the moon’s rocky sea bottom might be in contact with salt water. This opens up the possibility of primitive life forming there.

Turns out, our Solar System is full of hidden oceans.

<HECKLEFISH> Man, I picked the wrong planet.

You’d rather be somewhere with an underground ocean?

<HECKLEFISH> Heck yeah. I may just panspermia my way over to Europa.

Well there’s one problem with that. You wouldn’t survive the trip.

<HECKELFISH> I’ll be fine. I’ll bring my tunes, I got snacks.

This actually brings up another challenge to the Lithospermia theory. In our solar system, the journey from one habitable place to another is really long. For example, the distance from Earth to Europa is about 480 million miles. If you got in a car and drove there at 100 miles an hour, it would take you over 500 years to get there.

<HECKLEFISH> Is that with or without traffic?

The point is, that’s well beyond our life span. Rocks can survive that long. But what about biologic matter?

It turns out, for certain bacteria, 500 years ain’t nothing.

ANCIENT BACTERIA

A disaster was about to happen on Lake Peigneur in southern Louisiana. 

It was 1980. The Diamond Crystal Salt Company operated a mine on the Lake to extract rock salt from the rich soil on the lake floor. 

But underground salt deposits have another characteristic - they often have large pockets of space that trap oil. So at the same time, Texaco had a drilling rig moving about the surface of the lake, trying to get at that oil. 

On the morning of November 20, the crew of the oil rig was probing the lake bed when their 14 inch drill bit got stuck at a depth of about 1,230 feet. They attempted to free the drill, and heard a series of disturbing pops from below - and then the entire rig started to tip. The crew evacuated the rig in time to watch the entire thing get swallowed up into the lake.

Turns out, they had accidentally penetrated three levels deep into the salt mine below and opened up a giant sink hole that began sucking in everything around it. No fewer than eleven barges, a tugboat, and an entire lake house were pulled into the swirling man-made vortex.

Even more spectacularly, the canal that drained the lake into the Gulf of Mexico began flowing backwards as the water level fell. So they created a 164 foot waterfall - the tallest in the State for its brief existence. 

Somehow, all 50 people working in the mine escaped before the waters flooded the tunnels.

Eventually, the whirlpool calmed down and the lake refilled itself.

But the disaster caught the attention of Dr. Russel Vreeland of the University of New Orleans. He knew that all that lake water flowing into the mine was only 2% salt. But rock salt dissolves readily in water. So inside those flooded mines was water suddenly saturated with salt. Maybe as high as 32%, higher even than our oceans. And for a biologist, this was exciting.

The disaster created an entirely new environment.

In 1987, Dr. Vreeland was allowed access to the mines. And his suspicions panned out.  Most creatures would find the concentrations of salt in those mines lethal. But he found a new species of bacteria called Halobacteriales that thrived in it. This bacteria had been trapped in water pockets in the salt crystals, set free in the oil rig disaster. 

But those weren’t just any salt crystals. The salt beneath Lake Peigneur was formed by the evaporation of a previous body of salt water some 125 million years ago. This new species of bacteria - which Dr. Vreeland was able to revive from its stasis state - came from the heyday of the dinosaurs.

How could a biological organism survive so long? The unique conditions in the salt mine ended up protecting the bacteria from elements that would normally damage an organism. Oxygen would normally be one source of damage, but that didn’t exist inside the rock-salt crystals. Ultraviolet radiation would be another danger, but none penetrated so deep in the ground. And it turns out, these extreme species of bacteria contain dan-protecting proteins of their own that prevent damage over time.

The discovery of 125 million year old halophilic bacteria was a boost to the Lithopanspermia theory. It meant biological matter was viable even on galactic time scales.

But there’s one last issue with the theory. These microbes had to travel from one habitable zone to another through space. And space is a “zone” that is not habitable at all.

EXTREMOPHILES

Space is about the harshest environment you can imagine.  

If you step out into space, you likely won’t survive even a few seconds.

First, it is mostly a vacuum, which means there is no atmosphere. With no pressure from air or other gases, water in your body quickly turns to vapor. Which leads to desiccation - the complete dehydration of all matter.

Second, it’s either really hot or really cold. The temperature can vary between -400 to +400 degrees Fahrenheit depending on if you’re facing the sun - which by the way is nearly 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit on its surface. So don’t face the sun.

Lastly, deadly radiation is everywhere. Ultra violet, cosmic rays and high-energy particles break chemical bonds and alter the structure of organic molecules. Which could really hurt.

So what biological material could possibly survive out there? And survive long enough to make a journey across the Solar System to seed new life on Earth?

Dr. Thomas Brock wasn’t trying to answer this when he lead a team of researchers into Yellowstone park in 1964. He was just fascinated by the microbes living in the hot springs. But his findings would have profound implications for the field of astrobiology. Because Brock was about to discover a new type of biological matter called the extremophile - a microbe that could exist in the harshest environments.

Brock and his team lowered microscope slides into the boiling springs. A few days later they brought the slides back to the lab. And there were living microorganisms on every one.

These would be called Thermophilic Bacterium and they thrived in boiling waters - nearly 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Once they published their seminal paper describing the find, a new world opened up to researchers. Areas that were considered uninhabitable now became worthy of study.

Microorganisms called Hyperthermophilic archaea were found that can survive up to 298 degrees Fahrenheit. And Deinococcus Geothermal were discovered, microbes able to grow at temperatures a low as -13 degrees Fahrenheit.

Of course the ultimate environment considered uninhabitable was space.

And we sent microorganisms into space every chance we got. They hitched a ride into low Earth orbit on rockets in 1965. Then in 1966,  samples of bacteriophage were attached to the Gemini IX mission and exposed to outer space for 16.8 hours. A similar experiment was done on Gemini XII, this time with an exposure of 6.5 hours. In both cases, well, not much survived. The Gemini experiments ended up proving the strong killing power of the full space environment.

But the tests continued - this time with more sophisticated exposure devices providing various levels of optical filters to protect from UV rays.

You’ve probably heard of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. But just a few years after they landed on the moon in Apollo 11, John Young and Charles Duke accomplished the same feat in Apollo 16. For supporters of panspermia, their landing was much more exciting, because they carried microorganisms outside the Earth’s magnetic shield for the first time.

Apollo 16 was outfitted with a sophisticated exposure device called the MEED (microbial ecology equipment device).   It held a tray of 798 microorganism samples mounted on the end of a TV boom on the command module. And it exposed samples to space vacuum for 1.3 hours, including direct exposure to the sun. While we learned a bit about varying levels of UV radiation, ultimately the microorganisms did not fare well.

In 1983 and then again ten years later,  the Spacelab missions launched - these were modular labs for scientific experimentation that would be launched into orbit. The mission was controlled for the first time by the German Space Operations center. Both of these missions exposed microbes to space for 10 full days. But they had a unique goal. They set out to show the implications of progressive ozone depletion for life on Earth. To simulate this process, they exposed the microbes to increasing levels of UV radiation. It gave us a look into a future with no ozone - and since the microbes didn’t survive this trip either, the future didn’t look good. Turns out we really need our ozone.

Beginning in 1994, the experiments moved onto robotic Earth-orbiting ships, including Russian made Foton satellites. And with these missions, a significant change was made to better simulate the Lithopanspermia environment: the microbes were shielded from UV rays as they would be if buried in a meteorite.

The first mission exposed the samples for 15 days. The next, in 1997, exposed them for 10 days. In 1999, the Russian Foton exposed the spores and bacteriophage for 12.7 days. And in all cases, a significant amount of  biological matter survived.

In 2005, Scientists added unique organisms called Lichens to the Russian Foton M2 mission. These creatures are actually a symbiotic combination of fungi and algae. 

<HECKLEFISH> Kinda like you and me.

Which one are you?

<HECKLEFISH> I ain’t the fungi.

In the case of Lichens, the fungal partner provides a protective structure and absorbs water and nutrients. The algae contributes photosynthesis, which makes organic compounds benefiting both partners. Scientists collected the lichen from two extreme places on Earth. Half were from 2000 meters high in the mountains of Spain. The other half were sourced from the Antarctic Dry valleys. And they proved to be nearly indestructable.

They were exposed to space for 16 days on the Russian Foton M2 satellite. The results were impressive.

All the exposed lichens showed the same photosynthetic activity after the flight as measured before the flight. The findings indicated that lichenized fungal and algal cells can survive in space after full exposure to massive UV and cosmic radiation - conditions proven to be lethal to bacteria and other microorganisms. 

The lichen upper cortex seems to provide adequate protection against solar radiation. Moreover, after extreme dehydration induced by high vacuum, the lichens were able to recover their full metabolic activity in 24 hours.

When the International Space Station became operational in 2008, the length of the testing went from days to years. A variety of biologiocal samples, from spores to microbes to viruses, were given a permanent home on the space station on a device called the EXPOSE-E. This contains one tray for experiments on prebiotic chemical evolution. Another tray tests outer space conditions like surviving the vacuum and intense solar UV spectrum. A third tray simulates the Mars surface climate. 

Through all this testing, scientists found over and over again that extraterrestrial solar UV radiation was the most dangerous factor facing microbes in their efforts to survive in space. In fact, if shielded against solar UV,  spores of  the bacterium bacillus subtitles were cabable of surviving in space for up to 6 years.

The Japanese contributed new insights in the Lithopanspermia debate with their Tanpopo project. They added their own module to the International Space Station called the Japanese Experiment Module Exposed Facility. Here they tested the effect of space exposure on microbes to test their survival time. And they found evidence that some microbes can survive for at least a year in space. In one case, the top layer of a radioactivity-resistant bacteria Deinococcus radiodurans did not survive the year long exposure, but the cells underneath this layer survived. This suggests that - in addition to meteorites - clusters of microorganisms could be a viable way for life to spread from planet to planet, if the layers of cells are thick enough.

Bottom line, given the right conditions, the strongest biological spores and lichens can survive a trip through the solar system.

But when we think of life coming to us from space, we’re probably thinking beyond the Solar System.

It’s not all that exciting to think we came from one of Jupiter’s moons.

Could life have been delivered here from somewhere further? Some Earth-like planet in the Milky Way Galaxy?

To date, we’ve discovered thousands of exoplanets - meaning planets orbiting a star other than our own sun.

And of those, at least 59 are potentially habitable. This includes 1 the size of Mars, 20 the size of Earth, and 30 that are, well, really big. And if we’ve identified 59, you know there are a lot more.

Could pieces of these planets ever travel all the way to our Solar System carrying biological matter?

Until recently, the answer was no. We logged over 750,000 known asteroids and comets, and not one of them originated outside our solar system.

Then, in 2017, that all changed.

OUMUAMUA

On October 19, 2017, the Pan-STARRS telescope on the summit of mount Haleakala on the island of Maui signaled an alert. It was in the middle of a nightly pre-programmed survey of the skies contracted by NASA. It was looking for near-Earth objects of note. Most every night, it found nothing new. But this night would be different.

Pan-STARRS was tracking an object moving rapidly west across the sky at 6.2 degrees per day.  Rob Weryk, a researcher for the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, identified the object and submitted it to the Minor Planet center. He knew right away the object was unusual. “Its motion could not be explained using a normal solar system asteroid or comet orbit.” He contacted Marco Micheli, a fellow graduate from the Institute who worked at the European Space Agency’s telescope in the Canary Islands. Marco saw the same issue with the motion. The object’s trajectory was extreme. It was not on any sort of loop that would take it around the sun. They searched the Pan-STARRS image archive and found photos of the object on previous days. And that gave them the additional data to confirm it: this object came from outside our solar system.

For the first time in recorded history, they were looking at an interstellar object.

NASA’s Center for Near Earth Objects team plotted the object’s trajectory. It came from the direction of the constellation Lyra. And it was cruising through space at 15.8 miles per second.

The object approached the solar system from “above” the elliptical. Then it did a quick plunge toward the sun before making a hairpin turn, passing Earth at a distance of 15 million miles on its way toward the constellation Pegasus.

Astronomers at the Hubble and Spitzer telescopes found that the object had an odd, cigar like shape. And it was around 400 meters long. It also sped up slightly as it left the solar system, which alarmed some who worried it was an alien spaceship. Comets can accelerate as they recoil from material they emit. But this visitor was not emitting much at all - and ultimately was classified an asteroid.

Maybe it was knocked into space by collisions of other planets, or gravitational tides. But however it got here, the fact remains, it was now feasible that interstellar objects could travel our way.

The Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts designated the object A/2017 U1. But the team on Haleakala that first discovered it gave it the name Oumuamua. Which roughly translates to “messenger from a distant past.”

Unfortunately, NASA lacks a rapid response mission team ready to investigate objects that suddenly appear. So we couldn’t get close to Oumuamua and will likely never see it again.

But in case more objects like it do appear, there is a European mission planned called Comet Interceptor. This will park itself in orbit beyond the moon, ready to investigate the next interstellar object that pays us a visit.

ONE LAST POSSIBILITY

Since the 1800’s, when the theory of Panspermia seemed like the more likely theory of life on Earth, things have shifted. We now know about DNA and RNA. The potential of combining elements to create a living cell from organic compounds on Primordial Earth is much better understood - and feels much more possible. 

Meanwhile, the reality of an interstellar rock small enough to land safely on Earth but big enough to protect living microbes inside, just randomly arriving here from a habitable world millions of miles away - well, that’s starting to feel more complicated than necessary. Space travel is long, harsh and difficult, making life transfers unlikely and complex. Most important, we have yet to actually find biological matter living in meteorites. Occam’s razor suggests the simpler answer - life originating right here - might be the right one.

Although, there is another type of Panspermia that is the simplest answer of all.

It’s called Directed Panspermia.

It was suggested by Francis Crick and Leslie Orwell - the team that co-discovered the structure of DNA with James Watson. Reputable and respected scientific minds. They put forth their theory at a conference on Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence organized by Carl Sagan in 1971. Their idea? Organisms were deliberately transmitted to the Earth by intelligent beings from another planet. 

It certainly solves all the problems of rocks randomly getting here and miraculously containing life. If intelligent beings inserted the biological matter and directed the meteorites at Earth, this avoids all the work trying to explain the Galactic-scaled logistics.

But our instinct is to dismiss the idea - it sounds like a bad science fiction movie and there’s no evidence for it.

Except . . . there is. 

Crick points out in his paper on Directed Panspermia that the chemical composition of living organisms “must  reflect to some extent the composition of the environment in which they evolved”. He goes on to point out that human beings have a trace element in their bodies called molybdenum, which is actually crucial to our organic processes, and plays an important role in enzymatic actions. But here’s the thing: molybdenum is very rare on Earth.

Maybe the origin of life did indeed begin on another planet.

Which makes us the aliens.