Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00789~P013001000ol-A.' P 7' SECRET/NOFORN PROJECT SUN ST*f'%'EAK WAF-*@jq@I,IqG lq(-)*]"1(::,E,- IN-11-1.1 AjqT.) jvjj:,-,*j-j..4(:)[),:,: 1: NVOI V E D ........... ................. ............ ... ....... ................... ... ......... ..... ... ...... .... ...... ........ *@ .. ..... .................. ............. ...................................... ...................... ......................... ----------------------------- PROJECT NUMBER: 1:32 ----------------- SESSION NU1111FqER-. 1. DATE OF SESSION-. @,:3CKA3,:% START-. C):*..", 6 METHODOL.OGY: ("T"I'V DATE (IF" REPORTP 13C) CA3 C) END.- :1. C)C)C.) VIEWER IDEN'T*IFIE:-:*R.- 1. (S/NF/SK) MISSION: t r-aii rii. i i(,::,i te-m-ge-t-, *1: 227, '1'*ui 1c:tt..u:zJ::a 2. (S/NF/SK) VIEWER TASKING: C.22'7/1,1*20f-.3. 3. 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SECRET/NOFORN CL ASSIFIED BY- D I A -(DT) DECLASSIFY ON: OADF:Z Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00789ROO1300100003-4 Approved For Release 2001/03/07 CIA-RDP96-00789ROO1300100003-4 T 0 Approved For Release 2001/03/07 CIA-RDP96-00789ROO1300100003-4 Approved For Release 2001/03/07 C IA-RDP96-00789 ROO 13001 C@@ Approved For Release 2004MN7L-.1-fAA4RDP96-OO789 ROO 1300100003-4 i@) Approved For Release 2001/03/07 - CIA-RDP96-00789ROO1300100 Approved For Release 2001/03/07 CIA-RDP96-00789RO Approved For Release 2001/03/07 CIA-RDP96-00789ROO130 AWO- Approved For Release 2001/03/07 CIA-RDP96-00789ROO1300100003-4 Approved For Release 2001/03/07 CIA-RDP96-00789ROO130010000 Approved For Release 2001/03/07 CIA-RDP96-00789ROO1300100003-4 Approved For Release 2001 ffljt@@ C IA-RDP96-00789 ROO 1 300100W003-4 Approved For Release 2001/03/07 CIA-RDP96-00789ROO1300100003-4 to 'fir. i @Jv k!%@- @v PM 1.5 r, Nj@.77 vE' 7%@-z I ,Tr 71Z Aw- .f.-,A F16 ML Or" 'A, 74:- nz IA-RD, Approved W19*@s9P_-PP%VJP1V- 1C11A-M6C*W9 BANG IN RECORDED HISTORY? Shortly after 7 A.M. on June 30, 1908, early rising farmers, herdsmen, and trappers in the sparsely settled vastness of the central Siberia Plateau watched in awe as a cylindrical object, glowing with an intense bluish-mhitt- light and trailing it fiery tail, tat cd across a clear blue sky toward (Joe northern hori2,on, At 7.17, over it tlc@- olate region of bogs and low, phiv. covered hills traversed by thc Stotiv Tunguska River, it disappenied; iw itantly, a "pillar of fire" leaped Ay. ward, so high it was seen hundic,li, id miles away-, the earth shuddered mili,f the impact of a titanic explosioii, dii air was wracL-cd by thunderom kii-q-k, and a supci-heated wind rusla-d t@m ward, setting parts of the taiga ov tit v At a trading post forty miles fjow i1w blast, a man sitting on the steps id Its; house saw the blinding flash amt ii@,, ered his eyes; lie felt scorched, A t it i tit shirt on his back were burniniz, is , 0 0- next momenr be was buried fr,@-i zfm steps by a shock wave and knoc 1 i 1 1 i conscious. Four hundred milt. south the ground heaved un tracks of the recently coi-, Trans-Siberian Railway, thremi derail an vxptcss. And sho Tunguska relion a mass is( t, clouds, piling up to a height of ii I miles, durnpird a shower of"bho on the < mjnity@ide --dirt iiiiLl sucked Up by the eXpJ0Si0D 7A." rumblings like beavy artillety f,it t@ verherared thiougliout cuniml Pt.-- Since seismiographs and baj,:@S-aDL_i. everywhere had recorded thic r, i - - the entire world knew,that s(m@Lo -@s- extraordinary had occurred in it i ber'@.n wilderness. But kvitare St i i. conjectured iliat a. giant mcfc.! I must have 611crt, exploding fimi, 0. intense beat its impaci genel-Aluff I lo@@ hitting the ground, suea a:bod@ theoretically, bave 'blown out t. f crater like the one in JACizona, -4, t quarters of a infle s .qua're, left 1,s to @i@r teorite that fell fifty ithousand It ago, bur the Siberian "impak I tiff turned out to be a dismal swanip, v;tli no trace of a meteortte to Itc oiriii Nevertheless, for want of a better ex- planation, scientists continued to ascribe the cataclysm to a meteorite, and Leonid Kulik, a mineralogist who headed government-sponsored ex- peditions to the Tunguska in the early 1920s and again in 1938-39, searched for evidence to support cbis view. Although this search proved fruit- less, Kulik uncovered a wealth of in- foirriation about the blast. Near the swamp into which the meteorite had 1,Upp0sedly plummeted, scorched 1-es, striped ofbranches, still stood, but around this weird forest, except where intervening hills liid shielded them, every tree within. fifty miles had been 'blown flat, its tkink pointing away from the swamp. I-Lorn this-and from his failure to find , , en a small impact crater- Kulik con- @1%idecl that the meteorite had never j, itched the ground but had exploded iv!o or three miles up in the air. The iest*-rnony of local herdsmen yielded aber -curious details: the blast's in- -ise beat had melted the permafrost, tousing water trapped underground t', or tens of thousands of years to gush - oith in fountains, and those reindeer r @tt had not been killed had developed @-%ysterious blisters and scabs on theii I Mes. Stranger still, examination of the es that had been germinating in )08 revealed that they had then it,'Own at several times the normal rate. During World War 11 Kulik was -ptured by the Germans and died a prisoner. The riddle he bad worked to 3 Plve was forgotten. In August 1945, t,owever, certain Russian scientists cre abruptly reminded of it by the Orn-bombings of Hiroshima and ','agasaki, events which seemed uncan -Jy familiar in both their manifesta, toms fthe fireball, the searing thermal 4 itrrent, the towering @@)ud) and their effects (the instanta- rous and near-total destrucrion, the. adiation burns on living flesh, the ac- i Aerated, growth of new plant life, i ven tb.e_"telegraph-pole-' appearance i of scorched and branchless trees stand-,- bomb was detonated). Could the Siberian blast have been atomic? In 1958 a Russian engineer- turned-writer, Aleksander Kazantsev, published a story-article pinning that disaster on Martians killed on their way to Earth by cosmic rays or meteor- ite bombardment; their ship, with no ,, at the controls, hurtles into our at- mc,sphere at unreduced speed and burns up from friction, triggering a chain reaction in its aromic fuel that sets off the explosion. Few informed readers by then still accepted the me- teorite theory, and some, particularly younger men and women, found Ka- zan[sev's hypothesis persuas'ive, but others rejected it in favor of an earlier alternate explanation, according to which the head of a comet had pene- trated the atmosphere at such high ve- locity that the beat thus generated bad cau sed the comet to blowup. (Skeptics pointed out, however, that a comet could hardly have a,nproached Earth without beirip, seen.) Two furchut involving natural causes K,-, heen advanced. The first is lb,il a iwi "black hole"-a cbunkofniatwi sjili,j ed to minuscule dimensions Hild tit tivilhe that its grav- ity suck& up tvc-ii liptit -hitSiberiaand passed in itti itisivit through Earth, emerging in ihr Atlantic. The second ii%wiia ol-i s-t "anti-rock" of antiniatici it 111to the atmos- phere and typh,,lid tin contact with 2tornsofordmitil i,tAi ter, producing a fireball of gamma rays. While this would account Far the absence of residual maturia) at tLe site, it is not, most experts spy. ii- @ patible with ob- serval.4 liliviti, ol i @1; , tfi of the blast. In the* viid, it r 0, @ mot know what caused ib( I WA I. t- tit Siberia. We may tievul I + P Vil today, fewe scientists tlioi 0 ati i -ime in the past would Ist- ieceive a MeS- sage licitintil It- w it P v corner of the universe inilulitio- i to the fate of certain spit(c i @ @t op - who vanished on out platirt tit it, I-Pi we call the yea 1908. mg be4ow the point at whiA* an atom 2591 CPYRGH