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by Al Martin Clearance Sale on High Tech Weapons: Inside the Weekly Arms Bazaar at Redstone Arsenal The Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama hosted a taxpayer-funded seafood buffet for Certification Day. The Friendly Colonel reports that "the only thing that was any good out of the buffet was the cracked crab." He also reports that he is constantly amazed at the new things he keeps finding out. What he learned this weekend is that the Redstone Arsenal, unbeknownst to the public, is the key government facility for explosives training among the federal agencies. This includes training bomb squads within the FBI, BATF, and Secret Service. There were over two thousand people taking these courses, as well as foreign military, including Chinese and Russian Army personnel. There were also Germans, Israelis, and even people with Arab headdress, who turned out to be Iranians. The Friendly Colonel asked his friend, "Why in the hell are we training Iranians in the use of explosives on a supposedly sensitive US Arsenal?" His friend replied that it was just business as usual. The Friendly Colonel was invited to an arms sale at the Redstone Arsenal. An FBI agent friend of his told him that this would be his "last weekend" since he's being transferred to "an unspecified designation." He's over the age limit for active field service, but they still won't put through his retirement papers. In fact he doesn't even know where they will be sending him. When they both arrived at the Arsenal, they found a weapons sale already in progress at one of the barracks. It was way out on the northern edge of the facility in a broken down old barracks building that was "all rusted out and leaky and the front door was kicked in." There was absolutely no security as usual. They were offering for sale every type of munition they had in inventory in that building. It's as if they were clearing out inventory -- building by building the Friendly Colonel noted. You could buy anything you wanted. Biochemical. Chemical. Thermonuclear. Energy Weapons. Anything you wanted -- you could buy. You had to have a shopping list of course. The building was full of Chinese agents who were buying. What it was supposed to be was the same old deal: ordinance and weapons systems that have been declared "obsolete." In most case, however, it was brand new. The cases hadn't even been opened. They had a display table up front. The Friendly Colonel noted that "it looked like a display table for a James Bond movie." As a sample, he was given an explosive ink pen. He was nervous about it, but it came with an instruction manual. All you have to do is twist the top off of it. It has an automatic timing device. It destroys everything within ten feet of where ever it explodes. There were no logos on it. It had a serial number but that's all. It's a metal ink pen, iodized black on iodized chrome in color. And the pen - you could actually write with it. The Friendly Colonel reports that everybody got different party favors - and he got the explosive ink pen. Other party favors included radiation detection badges, like a lapel pin. It's a strip that lets you know whether the radiation is dangerously high. In the back of the barracks was a caged off section, where you have to wear these radiation badges in order to enter. It's where nuclear weapons are stored. You have to be specially cleared to buy the nuclear weapons. The only guys the Friendly Colonel saw in there were Russians and Chinese. When he walked to the back of the building, he saw three brand new V22 Ospreys on the tarmac, next to the building. They were completely unmarked. They appeared to be civilian models, since they were not painted in military colors. They were being loaded up with crates from the back of the barracks. The crates were all marked " UNSPECIFIED WEAPONS SYSTEMS." These were not old wooden crates. They were some kind of boron or graphite high tech material with digitized letters on them. They had electro-mechanical locks on them with different colored lights on them. The Friendly Colonel actually handled one of the weapons from the crate before they auctioned them off. He described it as a shoulder fired rifle type weapon, It reminded him of a high tech version of the old Vietnam era 40mm thump guns or "thumpers." The barrel seemed to be about 40 mm. The ordinance was explained by the captain who was conducting he sale. It's a canister and he couldn't figure out the material it was made from. It was canister that was about 40 mm by 200 mm long. The weapon fires this canister. It apparently has a substantial range, several thousand meters or more. He doesn't know the contents of the canister except that the captain described it as having the explosive power to "level one city block" The Friendly Colonel is beginning to learn that conventional explosives have been developed that would astound the American people. He believes that a lot of this stuff is not nuclear, is not an energy or fusion weapon, but some sort of conventional explosive that has been developed, that the people have not been told about. That has simply tremendous destructive power. What should be again pointed out is the extraordinary lack of security in these facilities - where thermonuclear and biological and biochemical weapons are kept in dilapidated old barracks buildings with doors left open. The doors don't even lock, or they're off their hinges. There's no base security. And there's no inventory control at all. Nobody knows what in them anymore. Nobody knows how much goes out of them. It's literally -- you take what you want. Anyway these V22 Ospreys were being loaded with this new type of weapon. On the orange air freight tags, it said DESTINATION UNKNOWN. But what surprised him is that he had never even seen the new V22 Osprey. Very few people have actually seen one. And he was surprised to see three of them lined up in a row, considering it's an airplane most of which have crashed. The Friendly Colonel notes that these aircraft were used as cargo haulers. They were not samples to be sold. When he saw that it was all Chinese people in the back of the room, the first thing he thought - given the locale of Huntsville, Alabama and the range of the Osprey and given the fact that it can land and take off like a helicopter - he thought that the reason they were used is because they could land on a cargo ship. That's the only logical explanation. He remembered having heard the stories in recent weeks about the transport problems they're having, and here's an aircraft that can land on a cargo freighter at sea. What astounded him the most is that everything appeared so normal, so business as usual, that nobody was really paying attention to anything that was going on. He says that he could have picked up any weapons system, walked out and put it in his car and nobody would have said a thing -- because others were doing the same thing. Anybody could pick up anything You could drive through the base without being stopped. He's never asked who he is. He's never asked to produce identification tags. Nothing. Regarding the resignation of FBI Director Louis Freeh, the Friendly Colonel said that his source told him that Freeh was becoming overwhelmed by the FBI getting increasingly dragged into all these various investigations, by Congress, and GAO, and GSA. More of the FBI's involvement in illegal covert activities was coming to light. Freeh just wanted to get out, whilst the getting was good. As Freeh uncovered more and more of the Bureau's involvement in the egregious, surreptitious, illicit and covert acts, I think Freeh became increasingly depressed. It was well-known among the senior agents that Freeh had seen some doctor recently for depression. That's what happens in government. The FBI agents get out of Quantico They're young and they're hotshots. They're go-getters. They got their heads full of bullshit about the FBI's out there to do the right thing, enforce the law, and save the nation and all that. But once they've been in the system for a while, they understand the real situation -- that the FBI is aligned with numerous shadowy cliques and cabals. It's essentially the Party Whip for the Military-Industrial Complex. It keeps everything in line. Their job is to keep all the various components of the Great Illicit Machine in line. The FBI is simply used as a tool of enforcement to punish those who step out of line. AL MARTIN, a retired US Navy Lt. Commander and former officer in the Office of Naval Intelligence, is America's foremost whistle-blower on government fraud and corruption, having testified before Congress - the Kerry Committee and the Alexander Committee. Al Martin is the author of "The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran Contra Insider" (2001, National Liberty Press, $14.95; order line: 1-877-776-9000.) He lives at an undisclosed location, since the criminals named in the book have been returned to national power and prominence. His column "Behind the Scenes in the Beltway is published regularly on Al Martin Raw. |
