Former Naval Physicist: Government Can Control Hurricanes

Prison Planet
Oct. 14, 2005

Former Vet 'Made it Rain' During Vietnam War

Steve Watson & Paul Joseph Watson | 14 Oct 2005

Alex Jones was joined on air yesterday by weather modification expert Ben Livingston.

Livingston discussed in detail proven evidence of hurricane control and his research and experiences with cloud seeding and weather weapons used in the Vietnam war.

Many scoff at the possibility of weather control and simply refuse to believe it exists. Attempting to even engage such people in conversation on the subject is fruitless because their mind is set. Yet the reality is that weather modification has been in operation and continual development since the 1960s.

Livingston, now 77, has a master's degree in cloud physics from the Naval Weapons Center and Navy Post Graduate School in California, a degree he later used in the battlefields.

According to a recent report "He seeded clouds and dramatically increased rainfall in his theater of war, creating impassably muddy roads, slowing down the Vietnamese and Korean troops, and saving lives and entire towns from occupation."

Livingston was even invited to the White House where he briefed President Lyndon B. Johnson on the effectiveness of weather control activities. Livingston asserts that hurricane control was a national priority of the government in the 60s and they had the ability to do it at that time. That was 40 years ago.

He now works with scientists and pilots at Weather Modification Inc., in Fargo, N.D. His research of hurricane control has been confirmed by the Stanford Research Institute.

He has personally flown on 265 missions into the eyes of hurricanes and has gone on record as "most disgusted" with Hurricane Katrina because he knows that the storm itself could have been minimized.

Livingston revealed that to reduce or redirect a category 4 hurricane would not be that difficult:

"A hurricane is made up of energy sails and each of those sails adds to the ferocity of it. It was proven in 1974 by an international project that these energy sails exist and that they are the reason that hurricanes can develop and grow move and cause damages. So there's no reason to attack the hurricane in total but just to fly in to the right front quadrant primarily relative to the direction the storm is moving in and seed those energy sails that are converging and making the rain and wind velocity increase in the front part of a hurricane." Livingston asserted.

He went on to explain exactly how to minimize and control the hurricane:

" We would be trying to destroy or at least grossly reduce the velocity in these individual energy sails by seeding the clouds with silver iodide in the top part of the cloud... and those tops would then have so many small droplets in them that the prevailing wind just blows them away and so an energy sail would be neutralized until it can regroup which may be several hours later."

The seeding process may sound complicated but it is not at all. There would be no need for more than two small aircraft at a time to safely fly upwards into the hurricane.

"We're carrying more cloud seeding material on one airplane now, over 800% more on each plane than we had during Project Storm Fury" (The project set up by the US Government to discover how to control hurricanes in the 60s). Livingston added.

Alex put the question to Livingston, if it is so simple to do and the government knows how to do it and has been doing it since the 60s then why did they not attempt to minimize hurricane Katrina?

"This is a long story with a deep history. Back in the mid 50s, 1954 or so, the government allotted the first amount of money for weather modification and weather control practices to the US weather Bureau to the tune of about 30 million dollars." Livingston said.

"Their charge was to employ the most brilliant scientists around the world, and meteorologists and physicists, to work out a concept for reducing damages from hurricanes. What brought that on was that we had three tremendous hurricanes in 1953 and '54 that affected the twelve northeastern states... Basically The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was formed to take that responsibility." He went on to say.

Mr Livingston went on to describe how Project "Storm Fury" of which he was a national director was then set up in the mid 60s. Much of the research was carried out on hurricanes in the Atlantic at that time.

Project Storm Fury was shut down on the logic that the data was not good enough to use in statistical studies. Many believe that the research then became part of a black operation on weather modification.

Upon recently writing to verify what the national policy is on hurricane research, Livingston received the following response:

"The approach of NOAA with regard to minimizing the impact of hurricanes on US citizens is to improve our forecast on the tracking and intensity of storms and to better warn those in harm's way. It is no longer the policy of NOAA to support or conduct weather modification research."

So there is effectively no official government budget for weather modification of any kind. This would not however prevent the hiring of private companies such as Weather Modification, Inc. to carry out the relatively simple work for around $25 million for the hurricane season. This is a small amount when considering the billions spent on rebuilding and clearing up after hurricanes.

"The situation is as I see it that the Federal Government and NOAA have a tremendous job to do and they're doing a tremendous job. But their interest is in statistical data...where as people who are concerned about hurricane damages are interested more in results or empirical data." Livingston added.

Dr Livingston went on to read a statement from the Stanford research Institute who were brought into Project Storm Fury in the late sixties as a third party, which stated conclusively that knowledge of how to stop hurricanes had been uncovered and that they would be directly liable should a hurricane hit and cause extensive damage and loss of life.

Livingston revealed that on the 18th August 1969, five seedings at two hour intervals on Hurricane Debbie, researchers deduced that the wind speed had decreased from 115mph to 80 mph. That is a 30% reduction and a 45% reduction in damages. On August 20th a second seeding decreased the wind speed again to just under 100 mph, a reduction of around 15%. Some scientists involved wanted more research and to uncover clearer patterns so they brought in Stanford as a third party, who determined that more seeding should be done for damage reduction.

Of course, during the Vietnam war the goal for Livingston and his colleagues was to actually strengthen adverse weather, to inflate and exacerbate the monsoon season in order that the Vietnamese get bogged down. So not only is prevention possible, but also creation of harsh weather conditions.

Dr Livingston was assigned in 1966 from the Naval weapons research Laboratory to a marine fighter squadron in Vietnam. Instead of guns, the aircraft under Livingston's control were fitted with cloud seeding equipment.

"My mission was to find clouds and seed them for maximum precipitation value" he commented.

Cloud seeding is the process of spreading either dry ice (or more commonly, silver iodide aerosols) into the upper part of clouds to try to stimulate the precipitation process and form rain. Since most rainfall starts through the growth of ice crystals from super-cooled cloud droplets (droplets colder than the freezing point, 32 deg. F) in the upper parts of clouds, the silver iodide particles are meant to encourage the growth of new ice particles.

Check Out this local Government web page on Weather Modification. It's Amazing how people still believe that this science does not exist!

Airborne hygroscopic flares emit water-attracting particles into cloud updrafts during a recent cloud-seeding project in Mexico.

Alex went on to ask Dr Livingston whether it was dangerous flying into hurricanes, and whether that was a factor that could have prevented operations going ahead.

"A good part of the time you're out in the most beautiful VFR weather you've ever seen. If it's night you can see the stars, the moon, if it's daytime the sun or whatever. So you can not only see what you're going to seed, you can analyze it on your radar... generally speaking its not very hazardous flying." Livingston answered.

Dr Livingston puts beyond doubt the reality of weather modification. His take on Hurricane Katrina is that it was not prevented for political reasons.

Related: Ben Livingston: Cloud physicist has eye on hurricane control