Such training is undertaken at the RAF Police School. Prospective candidates for counterintelligence work are required to take specialized courses in subjects such as computer security and surveillance. Before being considered for C/I work, personnel have to attain the rank of corporal within the RAF Police. C/I investigators are responsible for issues affecting the security of the RAF, which can include the loss and theft of classified documents, matters pertaining to espionage cases, and the protection of royalty and VIP’s when visiting RAF stations.
Also situated within the headquarters of the P&SS is a division known as the Flying Complaints Flight, which primarily investigates complaints of low-flying military aircraft in Britain. In addition, on October 17, 1996, a member of the British Parliament, Martin Redmond, who had a personal interest in the UFO puzzle and was fully aware of the rumors linking Rudloe with aliens, asked a number of questions in Parliament that revealed further data on the workings of the Rudloe installation. Eleven days later, Redmond was informed by then-Defense Minister Nicholas Soames that RAF Rudloe Manor was home to a parent unit and five lodger units. Specifically, these were:
1. The Detachment of 1001 Signals Unit, which operated the British military’s communications satellite system.
2. No. 1 Signals Unit, which provided voice and data communications for the entire RAF, Royal Navy, Army, and Ministry of Defense.
3. The HQ of the P&SS.
4. The HQ of the P&SS Western Region.
5. The Controller Defense Communications Network (DCN), a tri-service unit controlling worldwide communications for the military. The DCN was situated 120 feet underground and was capable of housing no fewer than 55,000 people in the event of a national emergency.
Soames very carefully refrained from mentioning anything relative to UFOs. So much for the official story.
But what else was, or is, possibly going on at Rudloe? Is the base really the British equivalent of the infamous Area 51?
In 1987, Timothy Good, a dedicated UFO researcher and author, revealed how, after having been tipped off that something strange — unidentified and flying — was afoot at Rudloe, he visited the base and spent some time strolling around taking photographs. Unsurprisingly, Good was later detained by the local police and asked specifically what he was up to and what his intentions were. Good duly revealed the truth: He had heard the UFO rumors and was determined to uncover the facts for himself. He was later released by somewhat bemused police officers clearly unaware of Rudloe’s UFO connection, with a warning to take extreme care when walking around the perimeter of a sensitive British military base in the future.
That was the last UFO enthusiasts heard about Rudloe for a time. In 1991, Timothy Good revealed the account of a former special investigator with the P&SS who claimed specific knowledge of its involvement with UFOs, chiefly with respect to the Flying Complaints Flight. Further corroboration came from a former counterintelligence investigator who informed Good’s source that he had access to just about every Top Secret file held there—except those relative to low-flying issues; it was his understanding that those files dealt with UFOs. Stressing that he could get in pretty much anywhere at the time, the informant added, “…but not in that department. I remember they used to have an Air Ministry guard in the passage — you couldn’t get past them. We could see the Provost Marshal’s Top Secret files but yet I couldn’t get into the place dealing with UFOs.”[8]
In 2000, Rudloe Manor was placed under the control of the Defense Communications Service Agency, which was later replaced by the Information Systems and Services, itself a part of the Ministry of Defense’s Defense Equipment and Support organization. A few of its underground areas have since been sold off, and some are now decommissioned. Notably, other areas, extending to significant depths, remain solidly in the hands of officialdom, and are out of bounds to just about everyone else.
The British government’s UFO secrets, it appears, are deemed important enough to be held under lock and key at all times — whether at secret facilities like RAF Rudloe Manor, or possibly within fantastic, cavernous underworlds of the type to which Bill Maguire and Larry Warren were taken, in September 1952 and December 1980, respectively. As in The-X-Files, when FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder was most keen to stress that “The truth is out there,” perhaps we should amend those now-famous words to: “The truth is under there.”
C-3
Digging into Dugway
In the latter part of January 2011, an event described as a serious mishandling of a highly toxic nerve agent led to the temporary but complete lockdown of a Top Secret facility deep within the deserts of Utah. For a tense (but fortunately brief) period, the nation’s media reported on the mysterious affair, until assurances came from officialdom that all was well, everything had just been a big misunderstanding, and the good folks of the Beehive State were not about to be infected by some nightmarish cocktail conjured up in a dark underground lab.
We will return to this particularly controversial story in good time, but before we do so, we have to first go back to the dawning of the 1940s, when that same Top Secret facility — known today as the Dugway Proving Ground, or DPG — first reared its head.
Located 85 miles from Salt Lake City, the enormous DPG sits squarely within Utah’s Great Salt Lake Desert, and is shielded by a huge expanse of mountains that dominate the landscape. Its creators chose their location well — but not quite well enough to avoid attracting publicity, controversy, and even outrage on more than one occasion.
A History of Chemical Warfare
One of the unfortunate side effects of the human race’s advancing technology is the ability this technology gives us to kill each other. Such is the case with the development and potential usage of extremely toxic substances that may be derived from living organisms: a.k.a. biological and chemical warfare. Make no mistake: The history of chemical warfare is long and dark. For example, during the First World War, from 1914 to 1918, German forces unleashed a terrifying onslaught of mustard gas upon unsuspecting Allied troops at Ypres, Belgium. The result: thousands of agonizing deaths under truly horrific circumstances. Sarin gas has also proved to be a cold-hearted player in chemical-warfare tragedies: In 1995, numerous people were injured and 13 died when Sarin vapor was released into the winding depths of Tokyo’s underground rail system by the apocalypse-obsessed Aum Shinrikyo cult — an event that briefly plunged Japan’s capital city into chaos as people scrambled to flee the jammed tunnels of death. Chemical warfare, then, is a highly dangerous game.
Death Needs a New Home
Prior to the early years of the Second World War, the U.S. military was pretty much reliant upon the expertise of the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland for researching, understanding, developing, and offering protection from chemical-warfare agents. The biggest problem for military strategists of the time was that Aberdeen was hardly remote, let alone inaccessible, to theoretical invading hordes. After all, its northernmost tip practically sits on top of the Chesapeake Bay. So, to ensure that the United States’s research programs into chemical warfare could advance in a place that would offer personnel — as well as their deadly creations — protection from potential hostile nations and foreign spies, plans were made to build a new installation situated far away from prying eyes, in an area as remote as it would be secured.