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AMERICA’S SECRET ISLANDBy Peter E. Newell

Andros

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America’s Secret Island, Submarines, and other military bases

By Peter E. Newell

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PHOENIX COURT17 Ash Way,Colchester, EssexCO3 9FN

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By the same author –Fighting the Revolution: Makhno-Durruti-Zapata (London,

England, 1972)Zapata of Mexico (Sanday, Scotland, 1979; reprinted: Montréal,

Canada, 1997; reprinted: London, England, 2005)Stamps of Alderney (Chippenham, England, 1982; reprinted and

enlarged: Brighton, England, 1988)Symond Newell and Kett’s Rebellion in Norfolk (London,

England, 2007)The Impossibilists – A Brief Profile of the Socialist Party of

Canada (Twickenham, England, 2008)

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I give permission, in advance, to anyone wishing to reproduce or store the following in any form, or transmit it by any means – electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise.

Further information, particularly on or about AUTEC and Andros, will be welcome.PEN, 2014www.americassecretisland.com

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AcknowledgementsThanks are due to Admiral Emile Chaline of Brest in France, who interested me in the mainly French naval matters and who, during the Second World War, spent much of his time on Atlantic convoys evading German U-boats; Linda Featheringill of Cleveland, Ohio, USA, who was the first to give me information on AUTEC in Andros; Steve Shannon of Toronto, Canada, who provided a number of interesting facts on Andros; David Sapsford of Colchester, England, who did likewise; and Keith Scholey of Todmorden, Yorkshire, England, who gave me numerous internet printouts of AUTEC. I particularly thank Julian Vein of London, England, for deciphering my scribble and converting it into what you will read!

I am responsible for the photographs of Bay Street, Nassau, and of Paradise Island. The US Naval Undersea Warfare Center is responsible for all the photographs of AUTEC on Andros.PEN (August, 2014)

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ContentsAcknowledgements.........................................................................................7

Contents...........................................................................................................8

Chapter I.......................................................................................................10

Chapter II.....................................................................................................22

Chapter III....................................................................................................39

CHAPTER IV...............................................................................................47

SECRET ISLAND OR ISLAND SECRETS?.......................................47

APPENDIX...................................................................................................64

Andros, Area 51 and Diego Garcia.........................................................64

NOTE 2.....................................................................................................68

NOTE 3.....................................................................................................69

NOTE 4.....................................................................................................69

ADDITIONAL NOTE.............................................................................69

DIEGO GARCIA.....................................................................................71

Appendix Sources.....................................................................................76

Postscript.......................................................................................................78

BIBLIOGRAPHY, SOURCES and picture credits..................................79

ODD FOOTNOTE.......................................................................................82

FLYING SAUCERS................................................................................83

DRONES – Murder by Remote Control................................................84

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Andros – America’s secret Island

Chapter IMYSTERY ISLAND

It was October 1977. I was in Nassau, on New Providence Island, in the Bahamas. I had just returned from Freeport on Grand Bahama; and my friends, Dominique Letessier and Jacqueline Devallois, had decided to visit San Salvador, where Christopher Columbus allegedly landed in 1492.

It was hot and humid; and a hurricane was reported to have struck Haiti to the south, and was coming in the direction of Nassau and New Providence Island. On Paradise Island, across the narrow strait from Nassau, the hoteliers were preparing for the worst. The hurricane, however, did not materialise. It had passed us by. The following evening my friends and I had a meal in the restaurant of the South Ocean Beach Hotel, with the then acting President of the Bacardi rum company who, apparently, had fled from Cuba where Castro’s government had nationalised it. Our companion was a Cuban by then living in the Bahamas.

Since the early 1960s, the former owners of the Bacardi company had waged an undeclared war on the Castro régime, in alliance with American intelligence agents, various exiled Cubans and the Mafia.

Later that week, my friends departed for San Salvador. I remained in Nassau. For some reason I became interested in, and thought I might visit, the island of Andros to the west of New Providence Island. I remember mentioning this to one or two local people. Whilst standing on Nassau’s Bay Street a few days later, an elderly English man, almost certainly an expatriate, approached me and, in conversation, advised me that it would not be a good idea for me to attempt to go to Andros, or investigate the island. There was nothing there, he said. About the same time I heard rumours that submarines had been sighted in the waters between New Providence Island and Andros.

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That was all. (A cousin of mine served in a British Navy submarine throughout most of the Second World War. I have only been in a submarine once, a French one, in an old German U-boat pen, in Saint-Nazaire harbour; and just for one hour. I felt quite claustrophobic. Imagine being submerged in a submarine for up to three months. I would go mad! I consider submarines to be quite sinister. I digress…)

Some years later, when I again became interested in Andros Island, I thought that maybe the gentleman on Bay Street was, or had been, a British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) agent. Up to the early 1960s British intelligence had a number of agents in the area; and following the Second World War British Intelligence had assisted the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the Caribbean. But later, as British influence declined, the Americans with their almost unlimited funds, largely took over in the area, as elsewhere. Nevertheless, I asked myself: “Why should this man warn me against visiting an island called Andros?” It was true, however, that the previous week the Queen of England, Elizabeth II, and Prince Philip, had visited Nassau in the Royal yacht Britannia; and security had been particularly tight.

NOTE: During the war, Colonel W.T. Wren represented British security, doubling SIS Section V and Defence Security Officer in the Caribbean, first in Trinidad and then in Bermuda and Nassau, in the Bahamas, and looking after MI5’s interests. He was assisted by Lord Harry Tennyson. One of Wren’s tasks was protecting and “keeping an eye” on the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

Interestingly, sequences from a number of James Bond, 007, films, including Dr. No, For Your Eyes Only and Thunderball, were shot on location in the waters, and on the coral reefs around Andros, New Providence Island and the Exuma Cays. Bond (Sean Connery) is seen playing baccarat in the gaming rooms of Paradise Island. And Nassau’s Bay Street and Paradise Island are featured in scenes, played by Daniel Craig and Eva Green, in the 2006 Bond movie Casino Royal.

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Andros is almost certainly named after Sir Edmund Andros, Commander of British forces in Barbados in 1672, and successively governor of New York, Massachusetts, and the Dominion of New England until deposed during the upheavals of the “Glorious Revolution”. It was first permanently settled by the British in 1787. Andros lies 30 miles to the west of Nassau on New Providence Island, 170 miles southeast of Miami in Florida, and about 100 miles north of the north coast of Cuba. The southernmost tip of Andros (Water Cays) is just north of the Tropic of Cancer.

It is by far the largest of the 700 islands and cays of the Bahamas. In fact, Andros is actually composed of three major islands (North Andros, Mangrove Cay and South Andros) and hundreds of tiny cays.

In the words of Paul Albury:“Andros occupies forty-three per cent of all Bahamian land. But there are several channels, navigable by small vessels, that pass right through the island, and future enumerators will have to decide whether to consider it a single island, or a cluster of islands” (The Story of the Bahamas, p.6).

It is approximately 105 miles long from north to south, and 40 miles wide at its widest. It is roughly 2300 square miles in area. It has no land higher than 75 feet.

When I was in the Bahamas, much of Andros had not been explored, at least officially. In the 1960s a few unauthorised adventurers had penetrated some of the interior. More recently, when a friend in Toronto asked a local travel agent what he knew about Andros, the travel agent replied: “Only billionaires go there.” In fact few billionaires, or millionaires, go to Andros. They prefer Paradise Island!

Andros is low and generally sandy. It is serrated by numerous channels, or rivulets, known as “bights”, of which some are navigable. These include Goose River, which is 15 miles long and the only river in the Bahamas, North Bight, Middle Bight and South Bight, and a number of small lakes. It has thousands of miles of freshwater

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channels that come from rainwater collected in the numerous caves in the interior of the island.

Andros (as well as Abaco, Grand Bahama and a number of other smaller islands) has scores of “Blue Holes” or caverns and cave systems, often joined by subterranean waterways or tunnels. Some have both stalactites and stalagmites. A few, such as Stargate on southeast Andros, Sanctuary and Little Frenchman, have been much explored in recent years; others in the interior less so, or not at all. Many are too dangerous. Although many are filled with fresh water, others contain poisonous hydrogen sulphide gas. Cave divers have been attracted to one or two of them, such as Stargate. Nicolas and Dragan Popou, in their The Bahamas Rediscovered (pp.80-81), note that Andros has approximately 400 inland and ocean holes.

“Ocean holes, as the name indicates, are found in the sea while the inland holes are completely surrounded by land and at the base are separated from the sea. Ocean holes are also found in the extensive creek system of Andros, and differ from inland holes in that there is a very strong current flow…certain ocean holes [are] impenetrable…the inland holes have a fresh water layer at the top which is non-existent in ocean holes.”

There are also “boiling holes” on Andros. These are entrances to subterranean cave systems. They differ from “blue holes”, since the water coming out of them is under pressure and appears to be boiling. According to local legends monsters and evil spirits called luca, resembling octopi, live in some blue and boiling holes, lying in wait to pull individuals as well as small boats down to the depths. They are definitely considered “off-limits” by some Androsians.

The eastern side of Andros is famous for its bonefishing.

The western shore of Andros is utterly barren, whilst the lush, green interior is covered with dense subtropical jungles or forests of lignum, pine and mahogany; and on its western fringes by mangrove swamps. Not surprisingly, the humidity can be overpowering, unless one is accustomed to it, and the mosquitoes are not friendly! There are,

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however, refreshing breezes along the east coast.

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The end of the 19th century witnessed a sisal-planting boom in the Bahamas, including Andros. Sisal was looked upon as a magic plant which would transform the Bahamian economy. The Chamberlain family invested £50,000 in a plantation in northeast Andros. Joseph Chamberlain sent his son, Neville, later to be Prime Minister of Great Britain, to supervise his Andros Fibre Company. Planning began in 1892; and, according to Paul Albury, by April 1895, 6,000 acres of former pine and scrub had been brought into cultivation. But by 1896, when the plants should have shown long dark-green leaves, ready for cutting, they were yellow and stunted. Sisal would not grow in the rock and sand of Andros.

In the late 1960s, and the 1970s, an American-owned company, Owen’s Lumber Company, established a mill on northern Andros for the production of timber. But the company deforested large areas of the indigenous pineyards, resulting in dense overcrowded forests later, of mainly young trees, caused by poor or non-existent planning for re-growth. It was not a success.

In more recent times, some quite large farms were developed; and okras, tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries and papayas were grown. They too were not successful, partly due to the thin and difficult soil.

Not surprisingly, there are no highways, towns or settlements on the island except along the east coast.

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The earliest known inhabitants of Andros, as elsewhere in the Bahamas, were the Lucayan Indians (Island People), who generally thrived from the 6th century AD to the 16th century, when they were wiped out mainly by exposure to disease following the arrival of the Spaniards in the 1550s. Skeletons, including skulls, of the Lucayans

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have been found in caves and Blue Holes on Andros.

When the Spaniards discovered the island, they called it La Isla del Espiritu Santo – the Island of the Holy Spirit. But they did not stay there long. During the 18th century, pirates occupied parts of Andros; Morgan’s Bluff and Morgan’s Cave on North Andros are named after the notorious pirate, Henry Morgan. On South Andros, pirates are said to have had an elaborate fortification, complete with a harem and preyed on Spanish commerce between Florida and Cuba.

In the late 18th or early 19th century, a small tribe of Seminole Indians, former slaves who had escaped from the Florida Everglades, together with a handful of their former owners, settled on the northern tip of Andros; they remained hidden from the outside world until a few decades ago, where they continued to live as a tribal society, in and around a village called Red Bay. The Seminole Indians are credited with originating the myth of the island’s legendary, and elusive, chickcharnies – red-eyed, bearded, green-feathered creatures with three fingers and three toes that hang upside down by their tails from pine trees. These creatures supposedly lurk deep in the forest, and then vent their mischief on travellers. Not surprisingly, Andros has retained an eerie mystique.

Iguanas, dragon-like reptiles up to six feet in length, are found on Andros. They are, however, extremely shy. The forests provide nesting grounds for parrots, partridges, quail, white-crowned pigeons – and whistling ducks. There are also said to be 50 species of orchids on Andros.

Sponges proliferate in the Bahamas. They are creatures, often dark purple, which anchor themselves to the sea-floor of the shallow banks west of Abaco, around Bimini, and particularly in the vast area southwest of Andros, known as “the mud”. The gathering of sponges by Androsians was, at one time, quite extensive.

The permanent, indigenous population of Andros is less than 8,000 (it was officially 7,800 in December 2010), of whom most live in settlements on, or near, the east coast of the island. The only real towns or settlements are Nicholl’s Town, at the northeast corner with

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fewer than 1,000 inhabitants; Andros Town about 35 miles to the south, with a population of 2,318 (in December 2010), and Driggs Hill on South Andros, halfway between Andros Town and the extreme southern tip of the island. Also on the east coast, south of Driggs Hill are the settlements of Congo Town, The Bluff and Kemps Bay.

Rooted in Andros is what is known as Obeah, a quasi-religion which originated in West Africa. It is not a cult, as Obeah has no priests, collective rituals, gods or saints. It is more a blending of African religions and mere superstitions.

Its practitioners claim to render evil into good, make dreams come true, bring wealth or poverty, or even cause death. Obeah does not have ceremonies found in voodoo or Haitian vodou. Nevertheless an Obeah believer may chant, sing or go into a trance to give an impression, or gain special powers. Some Christian ministers may practice a form of Obeah; but most Christian revivalists in the Bahamas are not involved in its practice. To orthodox Christians, Obeah believers are “evil doers” engaged in magic. While Andros has strong historical roots in Obeah, its beliefs can be found in other, mainly Out Islands, such as Eleuthra.

There are four small airports: at San Andros at the north near Nicholl’s Town, at Andros Town (International Airport), Mangrove Cay (for the centre), and Congo Town in the south of Andros. There are flights to and from Nassau and Miami in the United States.

If the island of Andros is something of an oddity, the waters between it and New Providence Island to the west are even more so.

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To the west of Andros is the Great Bahama Bank. To the east, within a mile of the shore, and all along the coasts and beyond for more than 150 miles, is the Andros Barrier Reef, said to be the third longest coral reef in the world. The average depth of the waters within the reef and the shore are only between 5 and 15 feet. To the east of the Andros Barrier Reef, however, (“over the wall”) lies the Tongue of

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the Ocean, or TOTO as it is generally called. It wasn’t until about 1960 that what has been described as “an incredible natural wonder” and “an inky black abyss” of coral forests, was fully discovered and explored.

TOTO is probably unique; a deepwater basin, 110 miles long and 20 miles wide, with a vertical drop to the east of the Barrier Reef, varying in depth from 700 to 1,800 fathoms. In one or two places, it is more than two miles deep. The floor basin is fairly smooth, and quite soft, with very gradual depth changes. It is bounded to the south and east by a large expanse of very shallow banks that are almost non-navigable; and to the north by the Northwest Providence Channel, a shallow-water plateau adjacent to the Berry Islands, a dozen or so tiny cays which are largely uninhabited. All of which results in little vessel traffic, an absence of large ocean swells, and very slight currents.

The seas in the vicinity of Andros are well-known for their sponges. A creature of shallow banks, they grow in abundance in the large underwater area to the southwest of Andros known as “the mud”, and on the Little Bahama Bank to the north.

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The Bahamas became a British colony in 1783. For three centuries, an entrenched white colonial elite dominated the commercial and political life of the islands, maintaining a colour bar over the majority, black population. They were known as the “Bay Street Boys”, named after the capital’s main business street in Nassau. Most of them were members of local Masonic lodges. Corruption was rife. They were also involved with the Mafia, particularly before the early 1930s. The Bahamas was a smugglers and bootleggers’ paradise. But it did not last. By the end of 1933, with the end of Prohibition in America, and the deepening of the worldwide depression, the economy of the Islands likewise suffered. Nevertheless, as elsewhere, the economic situation improved in the Bahamas with the outbreak of the Second World War.

Following the Fall of France in 1940, and subsequent occupation by Nazi Germany, the British government exiled the pro-Nazi former

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King Edward VIII, by then Duke of Windsor, to the Bahamas, as Governor. Not surprisingly, the Duke was involved in controversies, and particularly the brutal murder of multi-millionaire, Harry Oaks, in Nassau in 1943, and the subsequent cover-up. Windsor was well aware that Oaks was killed by Harold Christie, and not the playboy Alfred de Marigny. Oaks and the Duke were involved in a deal to smuggle millions of dollars out of the Bahamas and into a Mexican bank which money-laundered for the Nazis. I digress…

Before the 1960s, the constitution of the Bahamas remained in the 18th century. Patronage, gerrymandering, and grossly unequal electoral districts ensured the regular return of the Bay Street oligarchs to the House of Assembly in Nassau. There were septennial parliaments; and a limited franchise which excluded women. Indeed, it was not until 1962 that a number of older, white women got the vote. There was a company vote, as well as a property vote, which excluded most of the black (male) citizens – a majority of the population, mainly descended from slaves.

During the Second World War, on the 2nd of September 1940, United States President Roosevelt announced a deal with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to trade 50 old, mainly First World War, destroyers to the United Kingdom in exchange for ninety-nine-year leases on eight bases on British territories in the Western Hemisphere, from Newfoundland down to Trinidad in the Caribbean. These included one at Man-O-War Cay, Abaco, to the east of Grand Bahama; and the other in the Bahamas, on Great Exuma Island, about 100 miles to the southeast of Andros. On Exuma, the Americans built a sea-plane base near George Town. The purpose of the installation was to provide aerial surveillance of maritime shipping and activity in the Crooked Island Passage, and its approaches between Long Island and Crooked Island, approximately 100 miles northeast of the northern coast of Cuba.

On a deserted part of western New Providence Island opposite Andros, the British and United States High Command decided to construct an enormous pilot training centre. Dissatisfied with their wages, political and economic conditions and racial discrimination, black workers on two sites went on strike. Others looted properties in

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Bay Street. Rioting lasted several days, but abated following the increasing of the black workers’ wages.

In July 1950, the British government gave the United States base rights for a new Long Range Guided Missile Proving Ground in the Bahamas close to Andros, which subsequently became NASA’s launching centre at Cape Canaveral in Florida. Later, as well as in Andros, a number of underwater listening stations were constructed in the Caribbean area, including in Antigua and the Virgin Islands; as well as a listening station at Daniels Head in Bermuda. Previously in 1946, the British Labour government of Clement Attlee secretly ordered the production of 10,000 biological cluster bombs, to carry disease-carrying bomblets to be aimed at Soviet targets. They were intended to “contain the most effective biological agents for incapacitating Soviet workers”. The project was to be named Red Admiral. The biological weapons were due to be ready by 1957; but the project was, in fact, cancelled in 1954 before any of the bomblets were actually manufactured.

There were, however, extensive trials of toxins and various highly infectious viruses carried out on live animals. Called Planning Operation Ozone, viruses were released in trials in the Bahamas in 1954, off the east coast of Andros about 60 miles south of Nassau on New Providence Island. The crews of the British Navy vessels involved were not told that they would be, or were, involved in biological warfare tests until some time later. According to Dr. Brian Balmer of University College in London, a test rig was made of 35 linked dinghies, each with a crate containing live sheep, a box for monkeys and a carrier for three guinea pigs. During the preparations, two of the dinghies, presumably containing animals, were eaten by sharks! And one technician caught brucellosis from test samples; but his family was informed by the Navy that this disease was “frequently contracted in tropical climates”.

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For more than 30 years, Lynden Oscar Pindling dominated politics in the Bahamas. He was born in 1930 to a Bahamian mother and a retired Jamaican policeman. His wife, Marguerite, was born on

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Andros.

Pindling was a charismatic, populist, reformist black politician who played the race card against the Bay Street Boys as well as American imperialism – when it suited him. Yet he encouraged capitalist investment in the Bahamas from both Britain and the United States. He was known as the Black Moses.

In the election of 1956, Lynden Pindling, representing the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP), which he had joined soon after its formation in 1953, was elected on the limited franchise to the House of Assembly as junior member for the Southern District of New Providence Island, which included the capital, Nassau. He was elected leader of the PLP parliamentary caucus of six members. The racial composition of the House was in inverse proportion to that of the population.

Tourism, some light industry, and banking, encouraged many black workers to form, and join, trade unions. And, in January 1957, there was a general strike in Nassau and on New Providence Island. Pindling supported the strike, gaining the PLP considerable working-class support. The Bay Street Boys panicked; and the following year, in an attempt to widen their appeal, they formed the United Bahamian Party (UBP) to counter Pindling and the Progressive Liberals. Surprisingly, however, the PLP won the 1962 election. Pindling advocated universal suffrage for all Bahamian adults, despite some gerrymandering by the UBP. Four extra seats were created in the “black belt” of New Providence Island. The Bahamas achieved independence from the United Kingdom, following the 1972 election, in July 1973.

At the 1967 election, Pindling switched his electoral base from New Providence Island to Kemps Bay on Andros, where he defeated the sole representative of the tiny Negro Labour Party. By a whisker, the PLP became the government and Lynden Pindling premier of the Bahamas, despite the Bay Street Boys and the UBP pouring large sums of money into their campaign, and using American political consultants against Pindling and the PLP.

American involvement, official and unofficial, continued and still

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continues in Bahamian affairs, including Andros Island. Indeed, when I was leaving the South Ocean Beach Hotel one morning, to go into Nassau Old Town, an American man offered me a lift in his car, a large Cadillac if I remember. The Bahamas had been nominally independent for 15 years; but there were, it seemed to me, to be many Americans in Nassau and on New Providence Island. I do not know if the American who gave me a lift was employed locally, or if he had come over from AUTEC on Andros. (Previously, when I was in Freeport, on Grand Bahama, I got a lift from an English expat engineer – in a Mini!…)

By 1970, the United Bahamian Party had largely collapsed, and was replaced by the Free National Movement (FNM). But the United States became increasingly critical of Lynden Oscar Pindling. So, the Central Intelligence Agency decided in 1982 to act, prior to the Bahamian election of 1983. The CIA sent one of its agents, Lestor K. Coleman, to the Bahamas on his first operation, to interfere in the islands’ election. Pindling had already incurred U.S. displeasure by offering sanctuary to a runaway financier, Robert Vesco, wanted by the Americans. Coleman fed Pindling’s opponents, and in particular the Free National Movement, with disinformation and “dirt” on Pindling, whom the American media accused of money-laundering and drug-trafficking. But no direct evidence was found against him, although it was proved he had received a loan of $2.8 million, as well as various gifts. Nevertheless, Pindling and the PLP continued to win elections. By the early 1990s, however, it was the beginning of the end for Pindling. Unemployment and crime were increasing in the Bahamas; and in 1992, the Free National Movement swept into power with 32 seats to the PLP’s 17 in the National Assembly.

After a quarter of a century, Lynden Oscar Pindling’s power was broken. He died in August 2000.

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AUTEC

Chapter IINot only is Andros the subject of “mysterious” happenings; it is at the apex of the supposed Bermuda Triangle, also the subject of alleged mysterious happenings during the last 75 or more years. The Bermuda Triangle allegedly covers an area from Bermuda in the north, Puerto Rico to the south, and the apex just west of Andros at the tip of Florida. Over the years, there have been many disappearances in, or over, the Atlantic Ocean between Bermuda and the tip of Florida. Stories of ships disappearing in boiling seas, and of aeroplanes sucked out of the sky, were numerous.

For example, at 2.00 pm on 5 December 1945, Flight 19, comprising five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo bombers, took off from Fort Lauderdale Naval Air Station, 150 miles northwest of Andros, on a routine patrol over the Bahamas and into the Western Atlantic. Two hours later, the patrol leader radioed the station, saying that his compass had failed, and the patrol had lost sight of land. Control ordered him to fly due west, into the sun, until he saw land. He again radioed control to say he thought they were over the Florida Keys. The Controller ordered him to take the patrol north. They were by then convinced they were over the Gulf of Mexico, and turned east. They were running out of fuel, and now out of radio range. The five planes disappeared, never to be seen again. At 7.30 pm, a rescue plane was dispatched from the Air Sea Rescue Station at Banana River. It was due to call the station at 8.30 pm. It did not. It, too, disappeared. The captain of a ship patrolling the area, reported seeing a plane explode and catch fire. No debris was ever found of any of the planes in the sea. It is possible that they may have come down in the jungles of Andros. And, at that time, there were no airfields or airstrips on the island.

The story is often told as a classic Bermuda Triangle mystery. Over Fort Lauderdale the weather was fine, and visibility good; yet over Andros and the Bahamas, particularly as it was getting dark, it was

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bad, with storms and rough seas. Over the following years, there were many such mysterious disappearances in the area.

During the 1970s, oceanographers puzzled over strange sonar readings, from hydrophones, which suggested a second Atlantic seabed below the first one. Test drillings, however, revealed evidence of abundance of methane hydrate. Aircraft were also said to be affected.

Of the “mysteries”, Nigel Cathorne, writing in the X Factor magazine (no.24) explains:

“To this day, craft continue to go missing in the general area of the Bermuda Triangle, but this is inevitable when human error is given the opportunity to combine with equipment failure, appalling weather, murderous currents, some deepest waters on the planet, and one of nature’s deadliest tricks. The idea that the area is home to some mysterious ‘dark force’ which swallows up aircraft and ships alike provides a great story, but it appears the facts are far less sinister.”

Mysterious plane crashes, and vanishings, also continue to occur to the south of Puerto Rico and the Bermuda Triangle, between the Caribbean archipelago of Los Roques and the north coast of Venezuela. Known as the “Los Roques curse”, there have been more than 15 incidents between the mid-1990s and 2013. In January 2013, a plane carrying 6 passengers, including the Italian fashion executive Vittorio Missoni and the crew, disappeared on a flight to Caracas. No wreckage has been located. Speculation for the “curse” has included the release of methane hydrates from the sea floor, whilst a local pilot spoke of seeing the plane being swallowed up “by a huge cumulus cloud”.

The area, and beyond, is of course prone to violent storms, hurricanes and earthquakes such as the one, in 2010, in Haiti. Indeed, hurricanes occur on average every two-and-a-half years in Andros. It is no mystery to the Americans on the island. Under Hurricane Conditions of Readiness (COR), they remind Program Managers that the hurricane season can run from the beginning of June through to the end of November. (I heard warnings of one such hurricane in

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October.) Due to varying characteristics of each storm, AUTEC (of more later) implements appropriate plans and guidance. For latest information of what impact a hurricane presents, computers provide readings from the Naval Maritime Forecast Center Updates, and National Hurricane Center Information.

The waters around Andros, and indeed other islands of the Bahamas, are, however, strewn with the wrecks of ships and boats, large and small. One site includes the wreck of the Potomac, which ran aground off Andros in 1952, and is now split in two, 600 feet apart, with both the sections visible at low tide.

According to Lesley Gordon (Bahamas, p.110), “wrecks liberally sprinkled throughout the islands give mute testimony to the extensive – and potentially dangerous – coral reef system that surrounds them. The history of the Bahamas is written in them…Some wrecks date from the two centuries when the islands were a refuge for pirates. Rumors of hidden treasures abound in the southern Bahamas”.Interestingly, on 1st April 2013, TV Channel 5 broadcast, and featured, a fascinating documentary entitled Bermuda Triangle: The Mystery Revealed. As previously noted by other investigators, the TV programme stated that many aircraft and surface vessels have vanished within the 4,000 square miles of what has been termed the Bermuda Triangle. It claimed that there have been, since the 1920s, more than 250 disappearances, with the loss of 5,000 lives. Mention is made of the disappearance of the U.S.S. Cyclops and the British H.M.S. Tarta. Of the aircraft lost without trace, emphasis was unsurprisingly focused on the mysterious disappearance of the five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo bombers which vanished without trace in December 1945. Known as Flight 19, the Navy said the aircraft disappeared in “unknown circumstances”. Each had a crew of three. The planes had a range of about 1,000 miles. The TV documentary states that their compasses failed during a violent storm. According to one theory, the aircraft may have come down, not in the Bahamas, but in southern Georgia. This, however, is most unlikely. They apparently crossed Andros, where they may have come down, or to the north near the Berry Islands. Great Stirrup Cay Island, the most northerly of the Berry Islands, was mentioned.

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What, then, is the cause of the numerous disappearances of aircraft and ships? The TV investigation argues that there is no simple explanation. Bermuda is, like the Bahamas and areas to the south, subject to violent storms. It rises in the sea, in the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean. It, also like the Bahamas, is affected by the Gulf Stream (of warm air at an altitude of about 10km, running from west to east, thus increasing the speed of aircraft), which, incidentally, passes between the west coast of Andros and the east coast of Florida. The area, particularly to the south of Andros, is subject to earthquakes, with the inevitable movement of tectonic plates. Solar storms may also affect the area. One rather far-fetched theory, according to the TV documentary, is the speculation that the Triangle is affected by Dark Energy – whatever that is!

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In 1966 the United Kingdom signed a secret defence agreement with the United States, leasing to it the newly-created British Indian Ocean Territories (BIOT) for 50 years, with an option of a further 20, to use and occupy the main island, Diego Garcia, as a military base for, among other uses, intelligence gathering, a fuelling point for B-Stealth bombers and the storing of nuclear weapons.

But what of Andros in the Bahamas?

In November 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. A few weeks previously, in October, the United Kingdom, which at that time still ruled the Bahamas, signed a lease agreement with the United States to establish an underwater testing centre on Andros, close to Fresh Creek north of Andros Town, to be known as the Atlantic Underwater Test and Evaluation Center (AUTEC). In reality, according to Gene Wheaton in an article in the Portland Free Press (July-October 1996) entitled “Secret Island Spy Base 110 miles from Florida”, the “Bahamian government politicians and bureaucrats were bribed into turning over control of Andros Island for this purpose”. It was, he claimed “…a sophisticated underground/undersea computerized center for tracking Soviet (and friendly) ships and submarines”. Paul Albury noted (The Story of the Bahamas, p.245) that AUTEC is an ideal site for testing [its]

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underwater weapons and protective devices”.

Of course, the local politicians had no choice but to agree. Nevertheless, the bribes would have been acceptable. Unlike in Diego Garcia, there was not a large indigenous population to expel from Andros. A few were found employment working on the construction of AUTEC, which commenced in 1964. I have been told that the initial cost of the construction of AUTEC was $150m. Whether that included bribes, I have no idea.

It became operational in 1968, and was officially certified in 1969 by the U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) War Center. In theory, AUTEC “is operated jointly by the UK as well as the US, with some participation from Canada and New Zealand” (DMS Market Report, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1980). In fact, the U.S. runs AUTEC. TOTO is indeed a prime location for littoral warfare training exercises. It is, however, affiliated with the NATO FORACS (Fleet Operational Readiness Accuracy Check Site) programme, in which the participating NATO member nations are said to be Canada, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom and, of course, the United States.

At some time in 2011 or 2012, not-so-open verbal warfare broke out between NATO/FORACS members, Greece and Germany, with another NATO member, Turkey, allegedly involved.

Following a private meeting of European trade union leaders, summoned by the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, in Berlin, at which the Greek union leader Yiannis Panagopoulos brought up the subject of Greek weapons expenditure, rumours of submarines became the “talk of Athens”. Merkel said that Greece owed Germany payment on submarines for over a decade. But, apparently, Greece had paid Germany more than €2bn for submarines that were faulty, and which were not needed. Yet it admitted that it required, not just submarines, but French Mirage jets and other weapons from Germany and the U.S., because of the risks of attack by fellow-NATO member, Turkey. Although not publicised, it is almost certain that Greek submarines have visited AUTEC on Andros, probably to check their performance.

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I can reveal however that AUTEC has been increasingly used by the British Royal Navy to test their most advanced, secret, anti-submarine weapons.

The primary mission of AUTEC’s Check Site (later known as Naval Forces Sensor and Weapons Check Site) is, according to NAVSEA, “…to perform precision measurements of accuracy of target and navigation sensors installed on surface ships, submarines and helicopters”:

“The mission of AUTEC is to support the full spectrum of undersea warfare by providing accurate three-dimensional tracking, performance measurement, and data collection resources to satisfy Research, Development, Test and Evaluation requirements, and for assessment of Fleet Training, tactical and material readiness.”

AUTEC had, and has, other functions as well. It has been reported that underwater, unmanned robotic vehicles (UUVS) are tested by AUTEC.+ + + + +

Various buildings were constructed, the main one (referred to as Site 1) being the Command Central Building and Range Support Facility, which houses the computer centre, communications centre, the photo laboratory and central timing system. The Range Support Facility houses extensive technical laboratory facilities; a complete electronics maintenance shop, as well as a torpedo post-run workshop. At the site, six Range User buildings (RUBs), including gantry cranes, were constructed.

A 285-foot-long concrete pier, and an adjacent wharf 240 feet-long were built, together with marine overhaul shops. Offshore, two Range towers were also erected. A channel was cut out of the reef so that submarines could dock.

AUTEC had its own airstrip constructed. It provides both fixed-wing

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and rotary-winged aircraft to support test operations. Helicopters are equipped to provide mobile target launch and torpedo recovery services on the ranges. They are available to act as airborne targets for tracking system tests and calibration; and for surveillance, photographic and other test and training-related missions.

Fixed-wing aircraft are available for transporting personnel and equipment between the AUTEC Airport Terminal at West Palm Beach, Florida and Andros. AUTEC’s main administrative and technical support offices are located in West Palm Beach. According to Gene Wheaton in his 1996 Portland Free Press article, “Security at the AUTEC facility is enhanced by divers and swimmers being moved in and off the island via underwater locks accessible to submarines.” Nosy journalists were not welcome, he says. And, indeed, yachtsmen are warned not to approach AUTEC or its harbour. In 1985, Queen Elizabeth II paid an official visit to Fresh Creek on Andros, her first visit to any of the Out Islands. She did not, however, just go, or was permitted to go, to AUTEC just a few miles to the southeast.

The AUTEC base on Andros Island is almost self-sufficient. Housing is available with transient quarters and messing facilities. “Off-duty” facilities include: cable television, a library, cocktail lounges, a snack bar, retail store; a variety of recreational and sports activities, including basketball, racquetball, and volleyball courts, a softball field, tennis court, fitness track, a beach house – and the inevitable chapel! It is not “all work and no play” at AUTEC. Nevertheless, personnel are warned that the off-base amenities on Andros are very limited indeed.

But all is not lost for those who have the time and inclination for extra-curricular activities elsewhere. Nassau on New Providence Island is but a short 15-minute flight from the main AUTEC base. And AUTEC provides, for a small fee before departure, daily flights to Nassau International Airport, where taxis are available for transportation to Old Town. There is not a lot to interest AUTEC personnel in Nassau itself, although there is an excellent golf course at the South Ocean Beach Hotel, where I have stayed. But Paradise Island, linked to Old Town by 2 bridges, is a different world,

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however. There are hotels, restaurants, bars, shops and, of course, other forms of entertainment. It is not quite Havana pre-Castro, but it is not called Paradise Island for nothing. And, anyway, the fleshpots of Havana are no longer available to upstanding American servicemen.

Indeed, both the Mafia and former President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, were at one time closely connected to Paradise Island. And Nixon was not known as “the Syndicate’s President” for nothing! He was a business associate of Mafia financier, Bebe Rebozo, who was also heavily involved in Mafia-sponsored activities against Fidel Castro. Both Nixon and Rebozo had a number of murky deals in Florida and the Bahamas, including Paradise Island, where Reboza’s Key Biscayne Bank was a conduit for dollars skimmed from the Paradise Island Casino. In January 1968, Nixon was a guest at the opening of the casino, controlled by mobster Meyer Lansky. At the 1968 Republican Party national convention in Miami, the Paradise Island Casino’s company yacht was put at Nixon’s disposal.

According to Dr. John Coleman (The Conspirators’ Hierarchy: The Committee of 300), not necessarily a reliable source, Meyer Lansky “used respectable fronts associated with the British higher-ups, in bringing gambling to Paradise Island in the Bahamas under cover of the Mary Carter Paint Company, a joint Lansky-British MI6 venture” (p.193). The Lansky organisation proved to be one of the best vehicles for drug-peddling, he says.

+ + + + +

The Atlantic Underwater Test and Evaluation Center provides a wide and bewildering range of capabilities, products, services and assets, many of which mean little or nothing to anyone other than submariners. Nevertheless, I will list most of AUTEC’s capabilities; then its products and services and, importantly, its assets. In the next chapter, I will describe and discuss the United States Navy Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS), of which few are aware.

AUTEC provides:Active Acoustic Target Strength

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Active Sonar Detection AssessmentAcoustic Beam PatternsAcoustic ShieldingAcoustic Signature Noise FloorAcoustic SimulationAcoustic Source LevelsAcoustic StimulationADCAP Torpedo Firing AssessmentAmbient Noise MeasurementAir-launched Torpedo TestingAutonomous Underwater Vehicle PerformanceBuoyant Ascent Vehicle MeasurementCounterdetectability AnalysisDeep Water Acoustic MeasurementsHydroacoustic Noise MeasurementIn-Water TrackingA Joint Special Warfare Operations AssessmentLittoral Warfare TestingLow Frequency Ambient Noise MeasurementMagnetic Anomaly Detection (MAD) TestingMobile Sea Target Launch and RecoveryMk 30 Mobile Target MiniwarsMk 48 Torpedo SimulationMobile Sea Target Launch and RecoveryNATO FORACOS SupportNoise Augmentation SystemsNonacoustic Sensor TestsOver-the-Horizon Targeting (OTH-T)Passive Signature EnhancementPassive Sonar Performance MeasurementPeriscope Detection AssessmentPropagation Loss MeasurementShallow Water Acoustic MeasurementsShallow Water MinefieldShip Navigation Accuracy MeasurementShip Performance Maneuvering TrialsShip Sensor Performance Assessment and CalibrationSloping TopographySonar Acoustic Target Source

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Sonar System CalibrationSonar System Performance AssessmentSonobuoy TrackingSubmarine Target Strength MeasurementTarget Motion AnalysisTarget StrengthTorpedo Launch and RecoveryUnderwater Acoustic MeasurementUnderwater CountermeasuresUnderwater Systems Performance AssessmentUnderwater Weapons SystemsWeapons Systems Accuracy Trials

Additionally, AUTEC also provides a full range of technical services, and infrastructure, from pre-test operations planning to post-test data analysis, including:

Air Support ServicesData Acquisition/Processing/AnalysisEngineering/Fabrication Support ServicesLand-based Exercises and Situational TrainingLogistic and Supply ServicesMarine and Airport ServicesMine Warfare TestsOceanographic Research, Studies, and Hardware Systems Development TestsRange Intervention Development TestsResearch and Development Testing of Advanced Undersea Warfare Combat SystemsSea- and Air-launched weapon EvaluationsShip Performance and Maneuvering Standardization TrialsSingle POC for Test Planning, Coordination, and Fleet LiaisonSurface-Ship, Submarine, and Aircraft Sensor Performance and Calibration TestsTest Conduct/ExecutionUnmanned Vehicles, Weapons, Surface Ships, Submarines, Acoustic Measurements, and Performance EvaluationWeapon/Target/Instrumentation Support Services

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AUTEC’s assets include:A precision 3-dimensional in-water and in-air tracking range in both deep and shallow environmentsA Range User, Support Compound with extensive technical laboratory facilitiesA tracking system for deployed sonobuoysAndros and West Palm Beach Real-Time Displays CentersBuoyant vehicle, deep-water haul down site with data collection capabilityComputerized Mk 46 and Mk 48 torpedo simulators to minimize Fleet training costsDifferential GPS Tracking Systems for off-range tests, including a Large Area tracking Range (LATR)Exercise Weapon and test vehicle post-run and turnaround capabilitiesExtensive data reduction and data processing systems and facilitiesFixed, mobile and deployable targets, noise sources, and transpondersHelicopters and fixed-wing aircraftLarge pier and wharf to accommodate vessels with up to a 20-foot (6-meter) draftMk 46/Mk 50 REXTORP Intermediate Maintenance Activity (IMA) FacilityMk 48 R & D Turnaround FacilityOpen-ocean research vessels, range craft and small boatsPrecisely located target for platform sensory accuracy testingPost-test debrief/replay display systemsRemote and Portable Real-Time Range Display Systems and Software (PARGOC/PCARGOS)Self-deployable systems for gathering radiated noise and acoustic signature data from torpedoesVarious Range User Buildings (RUBs), including a helicopter hangar.

Probably the most important AUTEC facility is the Weapons Range, which is primarily used to gather highly accurate positional data, to analyse and assess the performance of undersea warfare weapons, weapons systems and component subsystems.

The Weapons Range is parallel to the east coast of Andros Island. It is the largest of the AUTEC ranges; about 10 miles wide and 35 miles long. It is said to be able to track 9 objects simultaneously. It is

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supported by the Main Base (Site 1), and various smaller sites located along the east coast of the Island to the south. There is both In-air tracking up to 70,000 feet (21,000 meters) over the Range, and In-Water tracking. Surveillance radars are provided.

As well as the main test sites east of Andros in TOTO, there is in the southern boundary of the Northwest Providence Channel, between the Berry Islands and Bimini, a shallow-water plateau which can be used for littoral warfare tests. Also available, there are test sites (for small unmanned submarines?) off the east coast of Florida, and west of Andros, by the Cay Sal Bank. Submarines, as well as other vessels from America, can proceed from the Straits of Florida into the Northeast Providence Channel, and directly to AUTEC’s pier.

+ + + + +

Towards the end of 2012, it was reported that the British Ministry of Defence will commit an additional £2.7bn to the Royal Navy’s troubled, and generally agreed wasteful, hunter-killer submarine programme that has been beset by delays, overspend and other problems since it was first commissioned in 1997. The Royal Navy plans to have seven Astute-class boats, three of which are completed and are undergoing trials. Ultimately, the British government expects to spend at least £10bn on a fleet of submarines which is many years late. According to the Guardian (31 January 2013) altogether £35.8bn will be spent over 10 years on submarines for the British Navy, including the seven Astute-class attack vessels, plus a completely new fleet of Vanguard nuclear ballistic missile submarines, all built at Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, in northern England. Critics have said that the programme should have been scrapped, although Rear-Admiral Simon Lister, the MoD’s Director of Submarines, claimed that “These boats provide optimum capability that a submarine can offer in land strike, strategic intelligence gathering, anti-submarine and surface ship warfare, and protection of the strategic deterrent.” The Astute would “become the jewel in the crown,” he said.

Nevertheless, the first H.M.S. Astute cannot reach the top speed that the MoD claimed it could; a lead-lined water jacket, which

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surrounded the submarine’s nuclear reactor, was constructed with the wrong (inferior?) quality metal; and the crew’s living quarters are said to be more cramped than in submarines made more than 50 or 60 years ago. The electrical circuit boards failed the Navy’s safety standards and, presumably, had to be replaced.

Apparently, during trials in the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere east of the United States, H.M.S. Astute experienced a leak; there was some flooding during a routine dive, but it survived an emergency surfacing. A small part of the submarine had corroded. Whether it had undertook trials at AUTEC is not known, at least to me. In 2010, it ran aground, and its commander was removed from command.

In an interview with the Guardian newspaper (27 December 2012), Lister admitted that there had been design faults, technical problems and construction flaws of the Astute-class boats. Lessons were being learned, he said. Hopefully, Astute will be brought into service. The programme was first commissioned back in 1997. Admiral Lister also admitted that Astute will not be a fast-speed submarine; but “fast enough”. Further boats, such as Ambush, should have fewer problems. But it is unlikely to achieve the maximum 30 knots, previously claimed by the Ministry of Defence. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, Russia Today TV news (on Wednesday, 15 May 2013) gave considerable prominence, reporting design and other failures, to Britain’s Astute submarines.

The MoD has, however, awarded a £600m contract to the French defence and security company, Thales, to service the “electronic eyes and ears” of the British Royal Navy’s fleet of submarines (and other ships), including the maintenance of the sensory systems of the Astute, Trafalgar and Vanguard class submarines. Furthermore, until 2023, Thales will provide support and repairs for the British Navy’s sonars, periscopes and electronic surveillance equipment. Whether Thales is involved with AUTEC is not known, at least to me.

In late 2011, a British submariner petty officer, Edward Devenny, who had been in the Royal Navy for 12 years, and had worked on a number of Trident submarines, attempted to give away allegedly secret information to the Russians. He phoned the Russian embassy,

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and set up what he thought was a meeting with a couple of Russian embassy officials. However, GCHQ had monitored his calls, and MI5 agents posed as the Russian officials at two meetings with Devenny. At the meetings, he gave MI5’s “Russians” secret information about operations by H.M.S. Trafalgar and H.M.S. Vengeance. And he discussed the sailing dates of H.M.S. Vigilant to the “west Atlantic for missile testing”. I would guess that this may have been at AUTEC, on Andros, in the Tongue of the Ocean, as one of AUTEC’s functions includes “missile testing”. Petty officer Edward Devenny was found guilty of “misconduct in a public office”, and sent to jail for eight years.

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Cuban InterludeTo the south of Andros, on the 8th of January 1959, Fidel Castro’s “army”, which never numbered 2,000 men, entered Havana, the capital of Cuba. They were unopposed. By the end of the year, Castro had full control. About 100,000, mostly wealthy Cubans left the country.

The United States was quick to respond to the events in Cuba. The National Security Council, meeting on the 10th of March, had on its agenda “the bringing of another government to power in Cuba”. And even before the Castro government had nationalised any U.S. properties (such as sugar plantations and hotels), CIA Director Allen Dulles declared that “an invasion of Cuba is necessary”. President Eisenhower agreed. Shortly after, the Mafia departed the island. Bombing attacks on Cuba in October 1959 began by planes based in Florida. The CIA, together with the Mafia, made numerous attempts to assassinate Castro. They all failed. Cuba was blockaded; and preparations for an invasion were begun. Anti-Castro émigrés were trained by the CIA.

Castro nationalised the entire Cuban sugar industry by the end of 1960. The United States embargoed all trade with Cuba. The U.S. broke off all diplomatic relations with the Castro regime on the 3rd of January 1961; and on the same day John F. Kennedy took his oath of

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office, replacing Eisenhower as President of the United States. Kennedy was now lumbered with the CIA-organised invasion of Cuba – Operation Pluto.

Not surprisingly, Fidel Castro looked for an ally. The choice was obvious, the Soviet Union. A trade pact was agreed to buy Cuban sugar. Castro received technical assistance, and sought to purchase Soviet oil and petrol. In May 1960, Cuba and the Soviet Union exchanged diplomats.

The CIA continued its preparations for the invasion of Cuba. The date was to be the 5th of March, 1961, but had to be delayed until the 17th of April. The story of the invasion – the Bay of Pigs attack – has been told many times and in great detail. It is not necessary here. Suffice it to say it was a complete and absolute failure, a fiasco!

The Russians began re-equipping Cuban armed forces, which included 40 MIG fighters. And, then in July the same year, the U.S. air force together with U-2 observation planes, watched and photographed Soviet ships sailing to Cuba with large crates on their decks. From the same month, an increasing number of young men (20,000 all told) were seen arriving from the Soviet Union, all wearing similar suits and walking stiffly. They didn’t look much like tourists!

+ + + + +

The Kremlin decided it had to take a strategic gamble, and install nuclear missiles and bases in Cuba. Khruschev had two motives: One to deter another, but successful, invasion of Cuba and, two, to create a nuclear balance between the U.S. and the USSR. The United States had surrounded the Soviet Union with military bases, armed with nuclear warheads capable of wiping out all Soviet cities, including Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev, within a few minutes. Those based in Turkey were of particular concern to the Soviets. So, argued Khruschev on a visit to Bulgaria: why not install missiles with nuclear warheads in Cuba?

He also decided to send anti-aircraft missiles to the island. It was a

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risk worth taking, he felt. He didn’t ask permission from Castro, however, although Fidel claimed later that he had given Khrushchev permission.

According to the CIA, by mid-August, there were 65 Soviet ships heading towards Cuba, of which 10 were carrying military equipment. A U-2 flight over the island noted anti-aircraft construction sites.

On the 8th of September, the Russian cargo ship Omsk docked at Havana at night, and unloaded a cargo of medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs). One week later, the CIA reported a second shipment of SS-4 missiles, with a range of 600-1,000 miles, arriving in Cuba. Such missiles could reach Washington, as well as 40-50 per cent of U.S. Strategic Air Command bomber bases. Moreover, the American radar early-warning system was useless, as it was facing the Soviet Union – not Cuba. It was the beginning of the hurricane season. Poor weather had forced the grounding of U-2 spy flights; and, indeed, on the 27th of October, a U-2 plane was lost over Cuba, probably shot down by the Cuban air force. A missile site near San Cristóbal was in construction by mid-October.

For more than a week, news was kept from the American people; and Britain, America’s client state in Europe, was not informed until the 21st of October, either. Already, four of the sites in Cuba were operational.

What would the United States do? Bomb Cuba? Destroy all the Soviet missile bases? This was ruled out. Appeal to the United Nations? This was ruled out as taking too much time; and it might fail anyway. A full-scale invasion of Cuba? Possibly. The final option, which was acted upon, was a naval blockade of the island, and an ultimatum to the Soviets that the nuclear missiles be withdrawn.

Legally (in international law), the United States did not have a strong case. Fidel Castro asserted that there was nothing illegal if a sovereign state invited an ally, or any other country, to install nuclear weapons and establish bases on its territories. The United States had such bases all over the world, he said.

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The situation was, however, critically dangerous. There were a number of Soviet submarines, with nuclear torpedoes already armed, prowling the area around Cuba and to the south of Andros. The captain of one such submarine, being depth-charged by U.S. warships, assumed that the Third World War had commenced, and ordered the use of nuclear weapons. It was only the opposition of the second-in-command, Vasili Arkipov, whose consent was required, that prevented a catastrophe.

The Americans established a “quarantine” line. On the 27th of October, the Soviet vessel Grozny steamed towards this line. But on the same day Khrushchev offered President Kennedy a deal: “We will remove our weapons from Cuba, and you will evacuate yours from Turkey.” Kennedy reluctantly accepted; and he promised not to invade Cuba. Both kept their word. But on the 22nd of November 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. That is another story…

+ + + + +

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Chapter IIISOSUS

As previously noted, the AUTEC base had, and presumably still has, other functions besides those described and listed above. Andros provided an important base for the United States and NATO’s Sound Surveillance System – SOSUS, known as ACOUSTINT, or acoustic intelligence.

Jeffrey Richelson, in his American Espionage and the Soviet Target (p.l53) notes that all Soviet Russian naval movements – both military and commercial – were considered targets for US intelligence collection. “A major role in that monitoring was played by a set of passive listening devices installed at selective locations on the sea floor.” By the early 1950s, American undersea intelligence expanded fast. Richard J. Aldrich, citing W. Packard’s A Century of U.S. Naval Intelligence (Office of Naval Intelligence, Washington D.C., p.51, 1996), states:

“In Washington, the Hoover Commission Report on American Intelligence Activities, completed in 1956, recommended that the US Navy expand the collection effort. This included the highly secret SOSUS project – Sound Surveillance Stations – which involved placing undersea microphones into the Atlantic. Using high-frequency radio direction-finders, contacts could be quickly co-ordinated and plotted. By the 1960s, with vast new resources authorised, the Americans were to launch a new wave of audacious operations” (The Hidden Hand, p.528).

SOSUS consists of an array of hydrophones attached to the ocean floor to detect submarines. But it is more than that. Arrays were first laid in 1950 along the east coast continental shelf of the United States as far south as the Bahamas. They were originally codenamed CEASAR, and were completed by 1954.

SOSUS is based upon a discovery about the nature of sound. In depths of the ocean of about 2,000 feet, there is a layer of water which holds,

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and protects, sounds entering it, carrying them for thousands of miles. Of the SOSUS system, the Stockholm Peace Research Institute (SIRRI) comments:

“Each SOSUS installation consists of an array of hundreds of hydrophones laid out on the sea floor, or moored at depths most conducive to sound propagation, and connected by submarine cables for transmission of telemetry. In such an array a sound wave arriving from a distant submarine will be successively detected by different hydrophones according to their geometric relationship to the direction from which the wave arrives. This direction can be determined by noting the order in which the wave is detected at different hydrophones” (quoted in American Espionage and the Soviet Target by Jeffrey Richelson, pp.168-169).

The hydrophones were sealed in tanks, approximately 24 to a tank, with the cables transmitting the data to shore facilities, as on Andros. The data collected about each submarine detected, such as its sonar echo, the noise of its engine, cooling system, and the movement of its propellers, can be translated into a recognisable signal, or “signature”.

The United States, and to a much lesser extent the United Kingdom, developed a global network of large, fixed sea-bottom arrays that listened passively for the sounds of, mostly Soviet, submarines. Variants, code-named COLOSSUS, were constructed along the Pacific coast of the United States, the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) Gap, Norway, and in the Pacific and Indian oceans.

Surprisingly, in May (2nd, 1977), Gerry Gable, at the time a producer for London Weekend Television, but later owner and editor of Searchlight magazine, in a “strictly secret” memo, notes that Duncan Campbell, an investigative journalist, was asking commercial companies “who work on top security contracts” for “information on top secret work, including that on under-water detection hardware, which he clearly knows is beyond the pale”. That is the SOSUS system.

+ + + + +

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In September 1968, construction of a large fixed underwater system, known as the Azores Fixed Acoustic Range (AFAR), began off Santa Maria, the southernmost island of the group; and was commissioned by NATO in May 1972.

The largest underwater monitoring station outside the U.S. located at St. Brides Bay, near Pembroke in West Wales, began operations in 1973. This is located at the RAF base. It is operated by the U.S. Navy Facility, or NAVFAC. According Richard J. Aldrich (GCHQ, p.377):

“A joint UK/US project team had identified RAF Brawdy on the coast of Wales as the ideal site for an additional SOSUS centre. Britain provided the land and the capital costs, while the United States contributed the personnel and the equipment for the intelligence analysis.”

In January 1982, U.S. Naval Investigative Service special agents raided the SOSUS underwater station at Brawdy, and discovered that of the 281 personnel with Top Secret clearance more than 45 were on drugs, and were then charged.

Brawdy was part of “Project Caesar”, began in 1954, with NAVAC stations sited along the United States eastern coast. It was officially described as an oceanographic research facility. By 1980, Brawdy NAVAC had 300 U.S. officers and other ranks on site. Altogether, it covers more than four acres of buildings, housing computers and other electronic equipment.

Interestingly, in 1967, the British government Joint Intelligence Committee’s report on where, in the event of war, Russian nuclear missiles were likely to land on the United Kingdom, listed under “26 RAF BOMBER BASES”, Brawdy (ANNEX A TO COS 1929/2/11/67). According to Hugh Lanning and Richard Norton-Taylor in their book, A Conflict of Loyalties GCHQ 1984-1991 (pp59-60), the United States National Security Agency (NSA) and the British government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) have a presence at Brawdy. The base is, or was, home to 14 Signals Regiment (Electronic Warfare). Britain, Canada and the U.S. have established intelligence, air and naval facilities in Bermuda, all linked

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to AUTEC on Andros. A SOSUS base was later established on the Caribbean island of Antigua (see map of the Atlantic Ocean).+ + + + +

Over the years, SOSUS has been upgraded a number (at least four) of times. As early as 1962, the capabilities of the SOSUS system were demonstrated during the Cuban missile crisis, when every Soviet submarine approaching the area was said to have been located, and then trailed. When two Russian submarines moved close to the East Coast of the United States, north of the Bahamas in April 1978, they were detected and tracked by SOSUS. The Brawdy-Azores and east of the Bahamas arrays were commissioned mainly to track Soviet submarines moving towards the Cape of Good Hope, the South Atlantic and the Caribbean.

In February 1983, Portugal began renegotiating its leases to the U.S. of its bases in the Azores, including the SOSUS underwater tracking facility at Santa Maria Island. But they were not, at the time, renewed by Portugal’s government. Nevertheless, U.S. forces remained in situ whilst new terms were considered.

While SOSUS capabilities have proved to be more than satisfactory generally, the system was vulnerable and fallible. Cables have been cut by Russian ships. Soviet trawlers hooked cables; and undersea midget submarines have located the hydrophone arrays. Of SOSUS, Professor R.V. Jones in his Reflections on Intelligence (pp.96-97) notes that, in 1979, the arrays of hydrophones were reported to be capable of detecting the location of Russian submarines at a range of 3,000 miles. But:

“Since then, though, the Russians have acquired the necessary knowledge and techniques to reshape their propellers in American and British standards which give less noise; and so the detection range of SOSUS may have been reduced, unless detection sensitivity has advanced in the meantime.”

Professor Jones added later (p.166), that the key problem is to locate a submarine in salt water, almost impenetrable to light or radio waves. “Sound waves, which are much more effectively transmitted by water

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offered almost the only hope…the noise of the submarine’s engines and propellers could be detected, or pulses of higher frequency sound waves bounced off its hull, the acoustic forerunner of radar now known as SONAR and formerly as ASDIC”. (During the Second World War, I worked on ASDIC in a drawing office in Westminster.) ASDIC (Anti-Submarine Detection & Identification Committee).

The signals from U.S. hydrophones are transmitted by satellites for correlation to shore bases, which are processed automatically by computers at numerous stations (such as Brawdy and Andros, certified in 1969). Further data from these shore facilities are transmitted to acoustic research centres in California and Nevada.

Interestingly, it has been stated that one of Britain’s Royal Marines Special Boat Section’s (SBS) intelligence-related functions was, or is, to check sections of the SOSUS array system. Also SBS divers used Royal Navy submarines, such as the nuclear-powered Triumph, to get close to their targets, exiting the vessels under water via escape chambers.

Towards the end of the last century an advanced version of the U.S. system was the Fixed Distributed Surveillance (FDS) system, which was intended to counter quieter Russian submarines, noted by Professor Jones. The FDS system integrates large-scale, sea-bottom-mounted acoustic sensor arrays on a single fibre-optic cable system.

During the 1980s, there was a growing use of fibre-optics in global communications, particularly by the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as Russia. East and West attacked each others’ cable traffic. Naval security experts were concerned about devices deposited on the seabed, monitoring the movement of submarines. In 1995, Rear-Admiral Michael Cramer, the U.S. Director of Naval Intelligence, commented that post-Soviet Russia was continuing to construct miniature submarines capable of exploiting “things on the bottom of the sea”, i.e. SOSUS and other cables. By that date, it was estimated that there were probably 100 billion under-sea fibre-optic channels in use around the world. It was a whole new ballgame!

Nevertheless, modern nuclear submarines (British, American,

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Russian, French etc) are increasingly difficult to locate (witness the collision of the French Le Triomphant and HMS Vanguard on 6 February 2009, in the Atlantic), because they are very much quieter than in the past.

Commodore Stephen Saunders, editor of Jane’s Fighting Ships, noted that “The modus operandi of nuclear submarines is to operate as stealthily as possible. All submarines are making less noise now.”

The U.S. Trident submarines have exceptionally quiet engines, and an overall shape which makes them very difficult to pick up on radar, except by satellites, where water disturbance can be seen caused by submarines at certain depths. What these submarines do not do is go round very quickly, as propeller or propulsion noise could give them away.

To maintain their low sonic profiles, they do not use active sonar, which involves using “pings” to detect other vessels and submarines, but rely on passive sonar. Indeed, Britain’s Royal Navy nuclear Trident-class submarines – 16,000 tons and 450-feet long – are covered on their black hulls with sonar-absorbing anechoic (low-degree sound reverberation) “tiles”.

It is government intention, however, to replace the present missile system of nuclear-deterrent submarines by 2028. The new submarines would replace the Vanguard-class submarines that currently carry the United Kingdom’s deterrent. It is claimed that Vanguard submarines cannot be detected at sea; and can launch missiles at a range of 6,000 miles.

NOTEIn the summer of 2010, the British lost sight of a Russian nuclear submarine. Surveillance was lost as it departed from its base in Severomorsk, near Murmansk. It was finally located – through SOSUS? – three weeks later on patrol, probably west of the Azores and east of the U.S.. Said the MoD: “We play a cat and mouse game with the Russians; when they move out of their northern base, we track their submarines. Part of this is done by our Nimrods.”

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Surveillance will also continue, according to the MoD, “by using other equipment, with the help of our allies,” primarily the United States.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Russian nuclear submarines were mothballed or just abandoned; and have rusted away, often dangerously. Consequently, the Russian submarine fleet was, and is, much reduced.

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Whether the U.K., or society at large, will require or want armed submarines by 2028 is, to say the least, problematic. Humankind may, hopefully have moved on by then.

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Additional Note: The United Kingdom has collaborated with the United States for decades in what has been euphemistically described as “defence”. And this has included AUTEC on Andros.

An important aspect of this “defence” is Electronic Warfare (EW), largely developed in Britain by Marconi Defence systems, including Marconi Underwater Systems, based at Croxley Green and at Portsmouth. Since 1968, Marconi has been part of the General Electric-Plessey organisation.

Involved, particularly for “defence”, is computer simulation. This is used to test torpedoes. Such computers, according to Marconi, “…embody the operational software, and control hardware identical to that being used in weapons being developed”, such as for Sting Ray and Spearfish torpedoes. Also involved in EW and submarine stealth technology, is the British Ministry of Defence’s Admiralty Research Establishment.

It was claimed in the 1990s, that Britain led the world in underwater warfare technology, although the Americans (at AUTEC?) might

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dispute that. The U.K.’s anti-submarine sonar weapons were regarded as some of the most advanced. The Marconi group of companies specialised in those areas.

An important, but secretive, company within the General Electric (GEC) “empire”, is – or was – Elliot Automation Space and Advanced Military Systems Limited (EASAMS), founded in 1962. EASAMS, apparently specialises in the field of testing by “simulation modelling” of computer-based “defence” projects, according to Tony Collins (Open Verdict, p.81). Its Underwater Group carries out studies into sensors, torpedoes and various acoustic countermeasures. One of its publicity leaflets states that EASAMS “has a wide experience in the performance assessment of radars, missiles, decoys and jammers”.

According to Collins (pp.140 and 143), the proliferation of electronically controlled weapons has caused a rapid expansion in the field of EW “to the extent that it can be a decisive factor in a war”. Missiles can be made to miss their target by being subjected to EW. Submarine commanders can use EW technology “to seduce an attacking torpedo into chasing the wrong target, or into ‘seeing’ or ‘hearing’ a target that does not exist”. EW plays a critical role in underwater warfare, as AUTEC is well-aware.

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CHAPTER IV

SECRET ISLAND OR ISLAND SECRETS?

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) do not always see eye-to-eye. Often, there has been conflict between the domestic agency and the so-called overseas organisation.

As previously noted, in 1987, the CIA acted against Lynden Pindling, partly because Pindling had granted sanctuary to the financier, Robert Vesco, wanted by the FBI. In September 1983, however, according to Time (19 September, “Vesco Redux”, p.25), a dispute developed between a proposed covert FBI operation and the CIA. Since 1972, the FBI had been investigating the activities of Vesco and Bahamian officials allegedly involved in illegal drug-smuggling into the U.S.. They intended to set up a “sting operation” to catch the officials taking bribes. But the CIA station chief in Nassau successfully opposed the FBI operation on the grounds that it would jeopardise the continued use by the United States of AUTEC and other activities on Andros including, presumably, the global submarine surveillance system. Richelson and Ball (The Ties That Bind, p.248) add: “AUTEC at Andros in the Bahamas includes one of the largest sea-bottom arrays in the US global submarine surveillance system.”

What were the Americans hiding on Andros? Why the secrecy? Why was the CIA so concerned? Was it another Area 51?

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Paul Albury, in his The Story of the Bahamas (p.245), mentions that to the east of Andros, there is a great submarine canyon called the Tongue of the Ocean, which was selected by the United States as an ideal site for testing its underwater weapons and protective devices. It is, he writes, close to Fresh Water Creek, and work commenced in 1964. Wikipedia merely notes that “The Atlantic testing and Evaluation Center Deep Water Weapons Range runs parallel to the

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east coast of the island, and operates a base on North Andros.”

In an article, “Secret Island Spy Base 110 miles from Florida”, published in the Portland Free Press of July-October 1996, Gene Wheaton asserts that the most closely-guarded secret of the U.S. covert operators is located on Andros Island in the Bahamas; and is controlled by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps. “The cover under which this domestic intelligence operation is buried,” says Wheaton, “is a U.S. Navy facility called AUTEC, a sophisticated underground/undersea computerized center for tracking Soviet (and friendly) ships and submarines.”

However, continues Wheaton, the compartmentalized, illegal secret operation, buried within the AUTEC complex, is a covert intelligence project and operation directed against the civilian population of the United States. The reason for setting up the operation at Andros Island was to take it “off shore”, outside the boundaries of the United States, and bury it under the sea in a foreign country. Bahamian government politicians and bureaucrats were bribed into turning over control of Andros Island for this purpose, he claims, as previously noted.

In Wheaton’s view, this secret facility was central to Theodore “Ted” Shackley’s “Third Option”; and the project to create domestic unrest, chaos, and the illusion of a domestic terrorist threat within America. According to the Portland Free Press, the operation was controlled by the same group of CIA covert operators who were running the Jupiter, Florida-based Continental Shelf Associates/ANV (“acta non verba” – action not words), and the New Orleans-based Pacific Gulf Marine; the same “lunatic fringe” of the intelligence community who were investigated by the Pike and Church Congressional committees in the mid-1970s, and Senator John Kerry’s Guns, Drugs and Covert Operation Committee in the late 1980s, related to the Iran-Contra scandal.

Alleged to be involved was George Bush senior, who became CIA Director and, later, President of the United States, Theodore Shackley who was formerly CIA chief of station in Miami, Richard Helms, Robert Stevens, James A. Cunningham, Jr., and an élite inner circle of

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OSS and CIA veterans, Ray Clines, William Casey, Geoffrey M.T. Jones, et al. Incidentally, the Bush family oil company, Zapata Offshore, an off-shoot of the Zapata Petroleum Company, was allegedly used by the CIA as a cover in the planning of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba (see The Last Supper, 1988 by Philip Willan, p.294). The Andros Island covert operations evolved from the mid-1970s intelligence scandals surrounding CIA officer Edwin P. Wilson, Jr. and the creation of Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) Task Force 157, Consultants International and several “front” companies. At the time Theodore Shackley was CIA Deputy Director of Operations, involving illegal gun-running, money-laundering and assassinations. Such operations were allegedly planned, launched and controlled out of Andros Island under the secrecy, unofficially, of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). Wheaton says he “has reason to believe several questionable deaths are related to illegal covert operations under the secrecy of [the] NRC, and were planned and launched out of Andros Island”. He alleges that the deaths included Prime Minister Olaf Palme of Sweden, Bill Casey, and Jim Cunningham, a friend of his who was the former head of the CIA’s Air America in Laos; and a number of other individuals, although he does not give any evidence. Gene Wheaton died shortly after. The late investigative journalist, Danny Casolaro, who died under mysterious circumstances in August 1991, associated former presidents Reagan and Bush Snr., and sources within the CIA and the Mafia, of being part of much the same secret group of conspirators which he named “The Octopus”. How much of this is true, I have no idea.

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The National Reconnaissance Office was classified secret from its establishment on 25 August 1960. It was not supposed to exist. It was not until 1973 that its existence became public knowledge, due to an error made in a Senate committee report, which mentioned its existence. Yet its early budget was – maybe still is – probably far more than that of the CIA. It was, apparently, created in August 1960 after lengthy debates within the White House, the Department of Defence (DOD), the Air Force and the CIA. Its creation was in

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response to problems plaguing the missile and satellite programmes in general, and the shooting down of a U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union in particular, earlier in the year. Annie Jacobsen, in her Area 51 (pp.168-169), states:

“President Kennedy…created a protocol that required the CIA deputy director and the undersecretary of the Air Force to co-manage all space reconnaissance and aerial espionage programs together as the National Reconnaissance Office, a classified agency within Robert McNamara’s Department of Defence. A central headquarters for NRO was established in Washington, a small office with a limited staff but a number of empire-size egos vying for power and control. The organization maintained a public face, an overt identity at the Pentagon called the Office of Space Systems, but no one outside a select few knew of NRO’s existence until 1992.”

The NRO manages all U.S. satellite reconnaissance for the entire intelligence system, which involves the collection of photographic and signals (SIGINT) intelligence. Its main objective during the Cold War was to monitor Soviet ships and submarines, other than those monitored by SOSUS and ship-based operations.

The NRO is directly supervised by an executive committee chaired by the Director of Intelligence; that is the CIA. Generally, the Under-Secretary of the Air Force has served as the Director of the National Reconnaissance Office, but there have been exceptions. The CIA’s component of the NRO is, or was, headed by its Deputy Director for Science and Technology. The naval component used to be the Navy Space Project of Naval Electronics System Command (NAVALEX); but it later became part of the Space and Sensor Systems Program Directorate of Naval Space and Warfare Command (NAVSPAWAR). The NRO would, therefore, have had particular interest in Andros.

At the head of naval intelligence is, or was, the Assistant Chief of Naval Operations for Intelligence, who is simultaneously the Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), a supervising organisation which directs the various naval intelligence operating agencies. Directly subordinate to the Director of ONI are: the Security of

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Military Information Division, and the Plans and Programs Division. There are other naval intelligence, security, investigative and technical organisations, too numerous to list here, but also including the Anti-Submarine Warfare/Ocean Surveillance Division, and the Undersea Surveillance Project which includes SOSUS and, presumably, AUTEC on Andros.

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According to Gene Wheaton, when George Bush Snr. was running illegal covert operations out of the White House, he moved his mother’s retirement home to Jupiter, Florida, primarily: (a) to place her under the intelligence protection and support of the covert operators of Jupiter-based Continental Shelf Associates and its agency ANV Limited; (b) to give a legitimate-looking cover for Bush and his associates to visit Jupiter without rousing suspicions and questions from the media, and (c) to give them close proximity to various CIA covert air operations in the area, run by Air America’s “front”, Southern Air Transport (SAT) out of Florida. (see Robbins, pp 68-74).

In his Portland Free Press article, Wheaton calls the CIA “spooks” a “lunatic fringe”. He claims to have come across what he says was “the Andros conspiracy”, in the mid-1980s, while investigating unsolved murders of some U.S. military and CIA intelligence officers connected with the National Reconnaissance Office. He travelled to Jupiter, and then Andros, on this investigation. He mentions that among insiders, the “assassination network” was called the “Fish Farm”. Wheaton also claims to have been employed by some of the covert-operations “front” companies; and was being groomed to be part of the inner circle, until he realised how dangerous and unstable these people were. Says Wheaton:

“I have reason to believe several questionable deaths are related to illegal covert operations under the secrecy of the NRO, and were planned, launched and controlled out of Andros Island.”

Security at the AUTEC facility is enhanced by divers and swimmers being moved on and off the island via underwater locks accessible to submarines, says Wheaton.

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(In February 1998, Ace Hayes, the editor of the Portland Free Press died; and in 2000 his widow, Janet, passed some of my observations regarding Andros onto Gene Wheaton.)

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In his book, The Killing of Karen Silkwood, Richard Rashke briefly mentions Andros regarding the use of the island for training recruits in counter-insurgency, torture and assassinations. It, and such other Bahamian islands as Great Inagua (and, of course, Florida) were also used by CIA-trained Cuban exiles to infiltrate, and attack targets, on the northern coast of Cuba in small, but fast, boats. Indeed, Andros is ideal for guerrilla warfare training.

In the 1960s, the United States International Police Academy (IPA) trained foreign (mostly Cuban and other Latin American) police, intelligence, military and security officers in surveillance skills; and recruited promising students in counter-insurgency, and as CIA informers and operatives. Congress, however, closed the IPA down, notes Rashke, when the public learned that it had trained men who turned out to be assassins and torturers. In fact, the United States has been notorious, not just for using torture against alleged and actual terrorists (that is anti-American, not pro-American ones!), but for teaching torture techniques at the International Police Academy, as well as the infamous School of the Americas located in fort Benning, Georgia, later to become the Western Hemisphere Institute of Security Cooperation. In October 1984, it was disclosed that the CIA had prepared a manual of instructions of torture and violence against civilian populations, in its war with the Sandinistas of Nicaragua. Following Fidel Castro’s takeover of Cuba, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, CIA Chief of its Technical Services Division, wrote an 88-page handbook for the use of CIA personnel, titled Assassination Methods in which he advised “decision and instructions should be confined to an absolute minimum of persons, and ideally only one person will be involved whose death provides positive advantage” for the Agency. (Quoted in Inside British Intelligence by Gordon Thomas, pp.147-148.)

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In 1973, a certain Jack Holcomb founded, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) as a replacement for the IPA. The CIA was in on it from the beginning, says Richard Rashke. It was a top-secret operation with CIA connections. Howard Osborn, the CIA Director of Security, was present when Holcomb and his colleague, Leo Goodwin Jr., drew up the plans. The local Florida police were informed of the NIA’s CIA connections – and agreed to co-operate in any way they could.

The National Intelligence Agency was housed in a separate wing of the Audio Intelligence Devices Corporation (AID), another CIA “asset”, next to the Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport, where AID/NIA owned two heliports and a private airstrip long enough to land a 727 aircraft. AID paid the rent. Goodwin, and his foundation, put more than three million dollars into the project.

According to Richard Rashke, the Audio Intelligence Devices Corporation became the largest private company to design and sell high-grade wiretapping, bugging, tracking and other surveillance equipment in the United States.

The NIA offered two-week courses on the state-of-the-art in electronic surveillance. The students, who stayed at the Tradewinds Hotel owned by Goodwin, were taught how to bug a room, and tap a phone, in five minutes in the NIA’s secret classroom containing a fully-equipped telephone “city” with nearly every kind of indoor and outdoor terminal used by telephone companies. Potential CIA agents, double agents and informants were recruited at the NIA, and sent to Andros for more sophisticated training, according to Rashke in his book, The Killing of Karen Silkwood.

Security was tight. There were armed guards at the building and the airstrip, television cameras, and roving patrols who watched the roads around the building. CIA-owned airlines, like Air America, used the airstrip; and there were 13 flights a day to and from Andros. A private investigator, William Taylor, secretly spent four days snooping, having been dropped by helicopter, into the island’s interior jungle areas. He said he saw that Andros was full of underground facilities.

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The bases and jungle were, he claimed, used for specialised training of some kind. He also said that the CIA and British intelligence had command posts on Andros Island. Not surprisingly, the CIA agent, Lester K. Coleman, who was sent to the Bahamas to “dish the dirt” on Lynden Pindling, was later loaned to the National Intelligence Agency at Fort Lauderdale, as Director of Video Operations, at the time housed on the premises of Technos International, also known as AID.

In October 2012, Steve Shannon of Mississauga, Ontario, told me that a guy he recently met, said that in 1988 he sailed a 35-foot yacht from Canada to the Bahamas. All you could see near Andros, presumably from the sea, he continued, were black helicopters with no markings. He added that the island was a base for drug smuggling. He thought, at that time, it was also a CIA base. Shannon felt that the U.S. authorities may have put out the story of a drug smugglers’ hang-out to keep people away from Andros Island. It always was notorious for smuggling, however. But not just Andros.

In 1984, a Royal Commission may have cleared Lynden Pindling of drug smuggling: nevertheless, since the early 1970s, the smuggling of drugs has been a considerable problem for the Bahamian authorities, particularly South American cocaine. The close proximity of the United States makes the Bahamas a natural base of operations for the drugs’ trade, with hundreds of islands and cays, many uninhabited.

On Norman’s Cay in the Exumas during the 1970s, the notorious Colombian trafficker, Carlos Enrique Lehder, established a base of a powerful drug-smuggling ring. He was deported from the Bahamas in 1982.

The Bimini Islands are approximately mid-way between the northwest coast of Andros and Miami in Florida. They are less than 50 miles from the coast of Florida; and on a clear night you can see the glow of Miami’s lights. It is said that there is money on Bimini – and there is no secret from where it comes! North Bimini has a narrow creek leading from the open sea to a natural harbour, which is even depicted on maps as Drugs Channel. Fast boats can carry cargoes of cocaine and marijuana to America in a matter of a few hours. Not surprisingly, some local men spend their “vacations” in a Miami jail. Large

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American cars abound on the tiny islands.

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Jonathan Kwitny, in his The Crimes of Patriots, confirms my view that, for at least three decades, most of the leading members of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency were quite mad, and that the Agency was out of control. It has been suggested that, for example, had Theodore “Ted” Shackley been working for the Soviet KGB, he could not have done more damage to American interests in Cuba and elsewhere.

Kwitny notes that Shackley, as CIA Chief of Station in Miami, was running an “anti-Castro” terror program called JM/WAVE” of assassinations and illegal attacks on Cuba. Indeed in South Florida, by the 1970s, the police could scarcely arrest a dope dealer or illegal weapons trafficker without encountering the claim, generally true, that the subject had CIA connections. The CIA’s anti-Castro operations, some of which certainly were organised from Andros and elsewhere in the Bahamas, were distinguished by the seemingly endless number of thugs and dope dealers, on whom the Agency had bestowed the legitimacy of U.S. government service, states Kwitny. He details Shackley’s activities, in collaboration with another career CIA officer, Edwin P. Wilson, and two CIA field officers, Patny E. Loomis and William Weisenburger, in a CIA unit inside the Naval Task Force 157, set up under the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), originally in the mid-1960s.

According to the Wall Street Journal (11 November 1982), Wilson infiltrated (on behalf of the CIA) first the American Longshoremen’s Union, and, then moving to London, the docks’ section of the Transport and General Workers Union (the TGWU). From there he moved to the Netherlands, where he regularly sent a courier to Britain with CIA funds, with which to pay off agents and informers recruited in the TGWU.

Edwin Wilson allegedly retired from the CIA in 1971, and went to work as a civilian employee of Naval Task Force 157, but he continued to liaise regularly with Shackley, Loomis and

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Weisenburger. The Task Force was supposedly created to provide the United States government with low-profile, workaday spies that the CIA was originally founded for, but did not always provide. So, it was set up under the cover of the Office of Naval Intelligence. Wilson was “planted” by the CIA or, at least, Shackley, as a “mole” inside the Task Force 157.

Task Force 157 gathered information on maritime affairs worldwide; it paid particular attention, however, to the activities of the Soviet Navy and the movement of its nuclear cargoes. To facilitate Task Force 157’s intelligence work, ONI permitted staff who did the spying to set up their own business “fronts”, and to recruit foreign nationals as agents, a normal procedure of intelligence agencies I would add.

According to Jonathan Kwitny, there is no record of Task Force 157 ever engaging in covert operations to actually change events on which its agents reported. It was the very model of an intelligence agency the United States considered it required – until Edwin P. Wilson joined it! Unlike other Task Force 157 agents, who operated from ports worldwide, Wilson was able to set up an office in downtown Washington; and with financial support from a number of mainly Republican politicians, he founded a variety of shipping companies and international consulting firms. These were bigtime.

Wilson only occasionally visited Task Force 157’s head office; and his salary was officially only $35,000 a year; yet he owned an estate in Virginia valued at the time at $4 million where he regularly entertained numerous senators, congressmen, and military and intelligence officers including Shackley. Wilson, it has been said, was a specialist in procuring unusual spy gear, unusual boats, and electronic equipment for Task Force 157 and the CIA. According to Kwitny, Wilson “was selling his services for high fees to companies or foreign governments that wanted government contracts or weapons”. This has become public knowledge. In 1975, Senator Frank Church, chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, likened the CIA to a “rogue elephant on the rampage” (Covert Action, p.5).

By 1976, however, Vice-Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, then Director of

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Naval Intelligence, who discovered what was going on at Task Force 157, ordered Wilson’s contract not to be renewed; and when later the Task Force’s budget came up for renewal Inman, by then Director of the National Security Agency (NSA), closed down the operation. Nevertheless, Wilson continued his business activities, worked with Shackley who was still a CIA employee, and hired some other CIA personnel. He exported explosives and weapons, as well as ground-to-air missiles to foreign countries including Libya.

Together with another former CIA agent, Frank Terpil, Wilson not only supplied President Muammar Qaddafi of Libya with sophisticated assassination gear and bombs, he also hired anti-Castro Cubans from Shackley’s old JM/WAVE programme to carry out murders against Qaddafi’s opponents in various countries. Wilson hired U.S. Green Berets, with CIA blessing, for the Libyans.

For years, the American government took no action against Wilson. Theodore Shackley “was retired” from the CIA in 1979. And Edwin P. Wilson? He was eventually convicted and sentenced in the U.S. to a 52-year prison term for conspiring to trade arms with Libya; and for conspiring to murder two American prosecutors and six other people. The Wilson case resulted in several dismissals and resignations from the CIA.

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From 29 November 2005, a number of participants briefly discussed AUTEC on the Above Top Secret (ATS) website, under the title of “Area 51 and other Facilities: A.U.T.E.C. The Naval Area 51?”

“Shadow XIX” began by noting that AUTEC maybe is not as secret as Area 51, as it has its own website, although it is still hard to say for sure what is going on there. Testing new types of sonar, torpedoes or unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs)? This seems to be the place where the Navy “test its new underwater toys as Area 51 is a test bed for the Air Force”.

“Esoteric Teacher” replied that he/she was under the impression that AUTEC was one of the top (U.S.) bases for the practical application

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of experimental Naval technologies, as well as for sub-contractors.

Two other contributors, besides “Shadow XIX”, and I previously, found it especially interesting that AUTEC is located within the Bermuda Triangle. “Shadow XIX” pointed out that the U.S. is just waiting for Castro “to kick the bucket”, so that it could take over Cuba. And “Since we aren’t allowed to officially search their waters, AUTEC is the perfect launchpoint to do just that.” The Navy knows what is exactly down there.

Interestingly, four other contributors appear to have been in, or have worked in, AUTEC. “JIMC 5499” claims to have been there several times. “AUTEC is just Top Gun for ASW.” (ASW – anti-submarine warfare.) There are ranges there that create sonar targets, and other ranges where live torpedoes are dropped. “We would fly down there several times a year. I used to jump at the chance to go because of the snorkelling on the reefs,” he noted.

“Alan II”, who was in the British Royal Navy for 12 years, and was an ASW operator, went to AUTEC on a number of occasions. “Super 70” spent a week at AUTEC. He was more concerned with the mosquitoes (“you can’t step outside without getting covered with them”), which infested Andros, than anything else. Outside of AUTEC there were few people. “The water was clear and the snorkelling fantastic, if you don’t mind the schools of barracuda and a few friendly sharks. If there is anything bizarre going on there, they sure hide it well.”

In the view of “orangetom 1999”, there is nothing mysterious about AUTEC. It is merely a sound testing range, although “A certain amount of security is necessary there because of the state of the art applications.” The geography, location, helps. “orangetom” continues:

“I know this place because when we deliver a new submarine there are a certain number of sea trials which take place before acceptance. During one or more of the sea trials the boat will be taken to this range to do a sound signature on it to check for quietness levels. Various speeds and depths are run on this course. She is then brought back into port, and changes or adjustments are

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made for problems identified. I am speaking of a new boat here. Obviously boats already in service will be run occasionally through this course as modifications and changes to them are made.”

“Orangetom” says that the military has lots of real estate like AUTEC. Such as Diego Garcia. “No big mystery here outside of certain work being done which is not open to the public for security reasons.” Quite. According to “Shedinja 726”, who claimed to “live at AUTEC”, there is no conspiracy regarding AUTEC. “All we do here is test sonar, do test recoveries (recovering fake bombs from the seafloor), and stuff like that.” Furthermore, the canal they cut into the harbour is 25 feet deep at most, he says. Submarines can’t fit into it. Apparently it was made for the Hammerhead boat, and the barge that ships in supplies for AUTEC. “And the reason the security is so tight is because it’s a NAVY base. There isn’t a single NAVY base that doesn’t have strict security.” Contributor “Anonymous ATS”, who also claimed to work there, adds: “It’s a Government Naval base. Of course there are going to be secrets, for god sake. The government keeps everything a secret.” He says that AUTEC was built in 1966; and he was employed there from 1975 to 1976, working on the main base and down the test range which consists of five test sites, the last four only being accessible by boat or a “chopper”. Sometimes the systems would go down in the middle of the night during a test, and “we’d have to show up at the main test building and get things cooling again”, continues “Anonymous ATS”. Apparently, Navies “from the free world would come to test their ships and play wargames with dummy torpedoes, etc.”. There was nothing mysterious about it. He was stationed at AUTEC as base communications and security officer, and later in the weapons department.Another contributor, “Zemouk” (in April 2010), commented that there were cables going from AUTEC directly down in the ocean, “so deep as you can’t see where they go”. On 31 August the same year, “hardeeboy” asserted that the U.S. Navy “mostly conduct joint exercises with the British Navy”. Replying to “hardeeboy”, another contributor was not so sure that nothing secret “is going on”, adding: “Many crafts have been known to plunge into the Atlantic Ocean down there and not resurface.” AUTEC may be another, underwater, Area 51. And it is within the

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Bermuda Triangle.

Indeed, “Access to Andros Island is limited and must be arranged through the Commander, Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division in Newport, Rhode Island” (see Global Security.org).

NOTEThe Above Top Secret website, according to Annie Jacobsen, is the most popular conspiracy website in America (see Area 51, p.332).

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SUMMING UPAndros was, and is, uniquely situated for clandestine, covert and secret activities, particularly against Cuba. It is less than 100 miles from the United States, to the west, and about the same distance from the north coast of Cuba. Yet it is part of a nominally independent country – the Bahamas.

It is hot and humid, and subject to hurricanes. Much of the island is covered with forests, jungles and swamps, interspersed with channels. It was, and still is, sparsely populated, with only a few small settlements entirely on the east side of the island; and with few roads also to the east. The waters, particularly towards the Florida Keys, are shark-infested; and it is just within what is termed the Bermuda Triangle, of which over the years, considerable mystery has, quite deliberately, been fostered, thus keeping hoards of tourists away, except for a handful of cavers and bone fishermen towards the southeast coast of the island.

The Tongue of the Ocean is an added bonus for the use of mainly U.S. submarines by AUTEC. Nosy journalists and investigators have not been welcome. Andros is, indeed, America’s Secret Island.

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‘More dirty work – in the Atlantic’Between 1965 and 1972, the British government expelled, deported or forced out the indigenous people of the Chagos Islands, and particularly, Diego Garcia, known as the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). This was because it had signed a “defence” agreement with the United States, leasing the islands to the US for an intelligence, military and naval base and, later, a nuclear and fuelling depot for long-range bombers. The BIOT is located strategically in the centre of the Indian Ocean, so controlling it provides power and influence in the whole of Southern Asia and much of the Middle East. (See “Dirty Work in the Indian Ocean”, Socialist Standard, September 1996.)

History may never actually repeat itself exactly, but the present situation on island of Ascension, midway between Africa and South

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America in the Atlantic Ocean, is very similar.

In 1956, the British government leased to the United States Wakefield Airfield, now a top-secret base on Ascension. According to the Observer (12.02.06), it is one of the Pentagon’s most important military communications hubs; and is also used for troop deployments. Cable & Wireless, GCHQ and the BBC also have facilities on the island. Furthermore, Ascension is 1,000 miles off the oil-rich coast of West Africa.

About 1,100 people live on Ascension Island, some indigenous, many of them from St. Helena 750 miles to the south and most of them British citizens. According to the Observer of the same date, after the Human Rights Act was adopted by the British government in 1998, the then Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, published a White Paper with the aim of bringing democracy, as well as establishing a right of permanent abode, and full property rights, for all residents. Previously, although many of the islanders were born there, they were, and still are, only allowed to remain as long as they have jobs. In 1999, the British government pledged that this would change. Following Ascension’s first general election in 2002, a local council was formed which went on to create a national park on the extinct volcano in the centre of the island. There was a plan to encourage eco-tourism to take advantage of the unique plant and seabird species, first discovered by Charles Darwin in 1844. Many of the islanders bought shops and other small businesses. But it was all to no avail.

In January 2006 the Foreign Office minister, one Lord Triesman, wrote to the Islanders informing them that the government had changed its plans, and that “they would not have a right of abode or right of tenure”. They would be thrown out if necessary. Says the Observer:

“The Foreign Office is accused of covering up the true reason for its change in heart. Many blame the Pentagon for pressuring Britain. They believe the US wants to expand its military operations on the island and objected to plans to increase tourism. Washington does not want its activities to be subject to unwanted scrutiny. The west African coast has become of increasing

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strategic interest to the US, with discoveries of oil that have turned countries such as Equatorial Guinea into wealthy trading partners.”

And Lord Triesman, who has allegedly bowed to the Pentagon’s wishes, or dictates? He is better known as David Triesman who, as a sociology student at the University of Essex in the summer term of 1968, was suspended, but was later reinstated following a student occupation of the university. And who wrote an essay ‘”The CIA and Student Politics”, in a Penguin Special book, Student Power, Problems, Diagnosis, Action, in which he exposed the CIA for financing and largely controlling the International Student conference and British NUS, adding: “The generation developing in this country will not want to pay mere lip service to the international struggle against imperialism, colonialism and racism; it will be in conflict with capitalism as the parent of these enemies.” (p. 157) It would seem that the good Lord Triesman has since changed his mind regarding American imperialism, the CIA and capitalism. (“American Imperialism, the CIA and capitalism”, as I wrote in the Socialist Standard, April 2006)

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APPENDIX

Andros, Area 51 and Diego Garcia

Andros has been likened to Area 51 and Diego Garcia. Are they similar?

Area 51 is in Nevada, high up in the desert, ringed by mountains, and 75 miles north of Las Vegas. To the northwest of Area 51 is the almost 5,000 square miles of the Nevada Test and Training Range; and to its south is the Nellis Air Range and Creech Air Force Base. Area 51’s various facilities are constructed by, and over, a dry lakebed known as Groom Lake. It is, however, only one of a number of similar areas which are, or have been, used by such government organisations as the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), the Air Force and Navy, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC), the National Reconnaissance Officer (NRO). The AEC is now called the Department of Energy.

The area in Nevada, generally known as the Nevada Test Site (now known as the Nevada National Security Site), was first established by the Atomic Energy Commission in 1951 on the orders of President Truman. Between 1951 and September 1992, more than 100 nuclear devices and weapons above-ground, and 830 underground in tunnels and vertical shafts, were detonated and exploded at the Nevada Test Site, many as near as five miles northwest of Area 51. Originally an animal sanctuary, the site became contaminated with plutonium-239; despite efforts at cleaning up the site by thousands of Army personnel, one of the “dirty” bombs exploded in 1957, is reported to have a half-life of 20,000 years. (By 1955, the United States already had a stockpile of 2,280 nuclear bombs.) Altogether, the United States is said to have constructed more than 75,000 nuclear bombs!

+ + + + +

In 1954, President Eisenhower directed Richard Bissell, Assistant

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Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, to find a secret location to assemble and construct new spy planes, in co-operation with the Lockheed Corporation, to investigate, and spy on the Soviet Union’s own nuclear weapons programme.

And, so in the winter of 1955, Bissell together with CIA colleague Herbert Miller, and Lockheed Corporation aerodynamist Clarence Johnson, flew over Area 51 in search of a dry lakebed called Groom Lake.

Under extreme secrecy, Area 51 was established in which the CIA, in co-operation with the Air Force and the Lockheed Corporation, could develop, assemble and test reconnaissance spy planes originally called Utility-2 (or just U-2). A hangar, and later various buildings, were constructed on the site. The U-2s were transported to Groom Lake runway, in sections, inside giant C-124 transport planes and then assembled on site. According to Jeffrey Richelson in his The U.S. Intelligence Community (p.157), more than 55 U-2s in various versions are known to have been built, all presumably at Area 51. There were numerous crashes. By 1956, the CIA deployed three U-2s, known as Detachment A, to fly over the Soviet Union from the RAF airbase at Lakenheath, in Suffolk, in England. (See also Ranelagh.) And, by July 1958, five RAF pilots, working undercover of the Meteorological Office in London, and paid through a SIS secret bank account, were sent to America to train as U-2 pilots in Nevada. One of them, Squadron-Leader Christopher Walker, was killed in a crash during training over Area 51 (see Dorril, p.659).

Soviet MIG fighter jets could climb to a maximum of 45,000 feet; the U-2s flew to more than 60,000 feet (Guardian, 4 August 1997). They flew at about 500 miles per hour, and had a range of around 4,000 miles.

+ + + + +

By 1960, the CIA and Air Force had produced, assembled and tested 12 airplanes (A-12) which for some perverse reason they codenamed Oxcart, at Area 51 which could fly five times as fast as the U-2s, at 2,300 miles per hours, at an altitude of almost 100,000 feet, and had a

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range of more than 4,000 miles. Jacobsen comments (pp.205-206):

“In total, 2,850 Oxcart flights would be flown out of Area 51 over a period of six years. Exactly how many of these flights generated UFO reports is not known, but the ones that prompted UFO sightings created the same kinds of problems for the CIA as they had in the previous decade with the U-2, only with elements that were seemingly more explicable. With Oxcart [A-12], commercial airline pilots flying over Nevada or California would look up and see the shiny, reflective bottom of the Oxcart whizzing by high overhead at triple-sonic speeds and think, UFO. When the Oxcart flew at 2,300 miles per hour, it was going approximately five times as fast than a commercial airplane…Seventeen miles higher up the sun was shining brightly on the Oxcart.”

Not surprisingly, they were thought to be from outer-space.

In 1962, Lockheed secured a contract to develop unmanned vehicles, or drones, Remotely Piloted Vehicles (RPVs) to give them their correct name, called Tagboard, which were tested at Area 51. Drones were first launched from an aircraft, already moving faster than sound. Updated, and tested at Area 51, pilotless drones have been used, first for reconnaissance and later for attacking specific targets in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iran, Kosovo, Niger, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, as well as Libya. Controlled by so-called pilots, sitting more than 8,000 miles away in front of computers at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, south of Area 51, both the U.S. and Britain’s RAF have caused considerable damage, as well as killing and injuring many people. Although the drones’ programmes are still classified, the CIA and US Air Force, and RAF, have been concerned with what they term “collateral damage”. Many drones go astray. The U.S. has about 8,000 drones.

According to the Times (29 October 2011), United States MQ9 Reaper drones, armed with Hellfire missile and satellite-guided bombs, and with a range of 1,150 miles, are based at, and operating from, an airfield at Arba Minch, a remote mountain area in southwest Ethiopia, as well as at bases in Oman and the United Arab Emirates

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(UAE). The Americans also have their largest permanent base at Camp Lemonnier, in Djibouti, at the entrance to the Gulf of Aden,

The operation of drones is, however, not simple. Each aircraft requires a team of more than 150 personnel, maintaining and repairing it, as well as the collection of radio signals (SIGINT), videos and “voluminous intelligence necessary to prompt a single strike” (International Herald Tribune, 3 October 2011). Indeed, the US Air Force spends at least $5billion a year just on its remotely piloted drone systems.

Writing in the Guardian (3 April 2012), Richard Norton-Taylor notes that “Drones, armed with cameras, and increasingly with bombs and missiles, are fast becoming a key weapon of modern warfare.” The CIA has dramatically increased the use of drones along the Afghan-Pakistan borders, as well as in Somalia and Yemen. Israel is in at the forefront of drone technology, says Norton-Taylor. He continues:

“The US-manufactured General Atomics MQ-Reaper is at the moment the RAF’s only armed unmanned aircraft. It can fly for more than 18 hours, has a range of 3,600 miles, and can operate at up to 15,000 meters (50,000 ft).

The Reapers, armed with Paveway bombs and four Hellfire missiles, are operated by RAF personnel based at Creech [Air Force Base] in Nevada. They are controlled by satellite datalink.”

Unlike the submarines tested at AUTEC/TOTO in Andros, the drones are not – as yet! – nuclear-powered, as they are prone to crash.

+ + + + +Also tested at Area 51 were the F-117 Stealth bombers, developed and produced by Lockheed, and first named Nighthawk. Planned in the early 1970s, they were flight-tested, at night, during the 1980s for bomb-testing; an area designated Area 52, northwest of Area 51 was used. According to Annie Jacobsen (Area 51, p.343), Areas 51 and 52 worked in tandem.

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Public access to Area 51 (as with AUTEC on Andros) is strictly forbidden. One notice states: “Photography of this area is prohibited. 18 U.S.C. 795”. Another, ominously, says: “WARNING. Restricted Area. It is unlawful to enter this area without permission of the Installation Commander. See Internal Security Act of 1950. U.S.C. 795. While on this Installation all personnel and the property under their control are subject to search. Use of deadly force authorized.” Indeed, trespassers have been arrested, put in leg-irons, strip-searched, heavily fined and even jailed for ignoring the warnings.

Not surprisingly, ever since the Area 51 base was established, people have reported seeing odd-looking objects in the sky. At first, both the U-2s and the Stealth bombers’ silver bodies reflected the rays of the sun, encouraging the sightings of “fiery objects”. Later, they were painted black to reduce so-called UFO sightings. Rumours of alien spacecraft – and little grey or green men from Mars – abounded. Originally, the CIA rubbished such claims. There were no flying saucers or aliens from outer space. No little men. They were not from Mars, or outer space. But they did, and do, exist.

In a report, “The CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90”, published on the 3rd of August 1997, the Agency admitted it had lied about the real nature of UFOs in the vicinity of Area 51 and elsewhere, to preserve secrecy during the Cold War. It admitted the validity of hundreds of sightings from the public, aviation experts and pilots. Initially, they were U-2s and Stealth bombers and, later, drones.

Commenting on the CIA report, the Guardian (4 August 1997) said: “The planes were built at Area 51, or Dreamland base in Nevada, whose existence the Pentagon still denies. The U-2s flew to more than 60,000 ft. and the Blackbird to 80,000 ft.”

NOTE 2

The SR71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft was a futuristic aircraft

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which flew “on the edge of space”. Unfortunately, however, its weakness was that at top speed, it burned up more than 8,000 gallons of fuel every hour. On some flights, it had to be refuelled at least 5 times by 16 tankers!

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NOTE 3Way back in 1974, Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks in their book, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (p.67), revealed that CIA technicians worked with Lockheed at a secret site in Nevada, to develop the A11 and later the SR-71, although they did not locate the site at Area 51.

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NOTE 4There is, as I have already mentioned, the Bermuda Triangle, an area which includes Andros Island. There is, however, also the Nevada Triangle, located by Reno and the Sierra Nevada mountains to the northwest, Schell Creek to the northeast, and Spring Mountain and Las Vegas to the south. Area 51, Canyon Park and Bishops Airport are apparently within the Nevada Triangle, which comprises deserts, pine forests and, of course, mountains.

ADDITIONAL NOTE

Timothy Good, in his Beyond Top Secret, writes:

“Area 51 at Groom Dry Lake (also called ‘Dreamland’) has been America’s most secret installation since the early 1950s, where many spy planes (such as the U-2, SR71, and the Aurora aircraft) as well as stealth aircraft

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(such as F-117A) were test-flown. There is also allegedly a super-secret site – S-4 – at Papoose Dry Lake in the Nevada Test Site, 10 to 15 miles south of Groom Lake. Both sites have been mentioned in connection with recovered alien vehicles…Mike Hunt, for example, who held an Atomic Energy Commission ‘Q’ clearance and an inter-agency Top Secret Clearance, claims to have seen a disc-shaped aircraft on the ground at Area 51 during the early 1960s, and to have been present during take-offs and landings (though he was not allowed to observe these). Hunt believed that a highly secret programme connected with these discs – known as Project Red Light – was in operation at Area 51 at the time” (p.492).

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DIEGO GARCIA

Compared to Area 51 in Nevada, Diego Garcia is tiny. It is, however, the largest of 64 coral islands and atolls of the Chagos Archipelago, in the Indian Ocean, south of the Maldive Islands and 2,000 miles east of Africa. Diego Garcia is an irregular U-shaped or distorted horseshoe-shaped atoll 40 miles from end to end, but less than one mile wide except for a small area in the northwest corner. It surrounds a coral-studded lagoon. It has been said that he who controls Diego Garcia, controls the Indian ocean and most of southern Asia.

Around the middle of the last century about 2,000 people lived on the islands of the Chagos Archipelago, of whom around 1,800 lived on Diego Garcia. They were the indigenous Ilois, first brought in as slaves, by the French, in the 18th century, from Mozambique and Madagascar, to work on a coconut plantation; and then by the British, in the mid-19th century, as indentured labourers from India. Most of the Chagossians were fourth and fifth generation islanders. They supplemented their living by fishing, as well as growing tomatoes, chillies and aubergines. They kept chickens and ducks; and their main pets were dogs. Their language is Creole French.

Some time in 1961, two Americans secretly arrived at the jetty on Diego Garcia. One of them was Rear-Admiral Grantham of the U.S. Navy, whose objective was to locate a suitable island in the middle of the Indian Ocean for a military and naval base. Together with a number of British government officials, they first chose Aldebra, but after their decision leaked out, they chose Diego Garcia. Apparently, the U.S. military was first interested in establishing a base in the Chagos Archipelago in 1959. In February 1964, a secret Anglo-American conference, on the subject, was held in London.

In 1965, Britain granted Mauritius, a British colony, independence on the condition that the United Kingdom be permitted to purchase Diego Garcia and most of the Chagos islands, which were formerly included in the colony, and create a new British colony or Dependency to be called the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT),

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which included some other islands detached from the Seychelles. The Labour government of Harold Wilson paid Mauritius a mere £3m for the islands. Indeed, the BIOT is the only British colony created since the end of the Second World War, on 8 November 1965, almost certainly on American insistence. John Pilger says it was a fake. It still is!

On 3 November 1966, Britain signed a defence agreement, entitled “Availability at Certain Indian Ocean Islands for Defence Purposes (TIAS 6169)”, with the United States, leasing the BIOT to America for 50 years, with an option of a further 20. In December, the agreement was witnessed by Lord Chalfont, a British Foreign Office minister, in Washington.

There was only one fly in the ointment: The Americans insisted that there were to be no inhabitants on Diego Garcia or any of the other islands; they had to be expelled or as one U.S. official put it, “the islands were to be swept and sanitized”. And what did the British government get from the agreement? In 1975, a U.S. Senate committee revealed that the British government had secretly been compensated with a discount of $14m off the price of a Polaris nuclear submarine. Neither the British Parliament nor Congress were informed of the deal.

And the inhabitants of the Chagos Islands?

The evacuation, or to be more accurate, the deportation of the Ilois began as early as 1965, and was finally completed before the end of 1972, despite Britain’s violation of United Nations articles IX and XIII, which state that “no one should be subjected to arbitrary exile”. The British government assigned the task of resettling the islanders to the Chagos-Apalega Company, coconut exporters and the only employer on Diego Garcia. They were deported to Mauritius. And they were only permitted to take with them “a minimum of possessions in one small crate”. The few last remaining islanders were told: “If you don’t leave you will not be fed.” The only ship arriving at Diego Garcia, brought no food. All their pet dogs were killed by gassing or poisoning by U.S. naval personnel. By 1975, almost all of the former islanders were existing in shacks, in gross poverty, in the

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slums of Mauritius. Some of the older ones soon died.

In 1978, the British government gave the Ilois £650,000 in compensation, but only on condition that they renounced their rights to return to the islands. In 1982, the government gave them a further £4m as a “full and final settlement”. The government of Mauritius was paid £12m. The money then disappeared! A joint UK-US memorandum stated: “There is no native population on the Islands.” The Ilois had become unpeople. They still are.

+ + + + +

In December 1970, the British and United States governments agreed to establish a communications facility on Diego Garcia, which was a secure, and far more secretive, alternative to the former NSA facility at Kagnew Station Asmara, in Ethiopia.

The first American contingent arrived, with a construction team on 20 March 1971; a radio receiver site was established in July, and a transmitter site in August. Equipment was moved from Kagnew. By 1973, the U.S. established a naval Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) station to monitor radio signals throughout the Indian Ocean. With British Royal Navy participation, the U.S. National Security Group set up its monitoring station. It became a “ground control” base for the U.S-British-Australian CLASSIC WIZARD Ocean Surveillance Satellite System network for electronic satellites, controlled by the NRO. By 1974, Diego Garcia became a major GCHQ/NSA Signals Intelligence station, manned by 200 US and 30 British personnel. Jeffrey Richelson and Desmond Ball comment:

“Although the station is officially described as a ‘joint US-British’ facility, US officials have testified that normal day-to-day operations are ‘conducted simply on the basis of the US military commander on the island informing his British counterpart’. That is all that is required” (p.205).

+ + + + +

Diego Garcia soon developed as a military base. Port facilities were

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constructed; the coral reef was blasted, and the lagoon dredged. Writing in the Times (2 June 2011), Philippa Gregory noted that an “armada of massive cargo ships the size of the Empire State Building were parked, filled with tanks, helicopters, ammunition and fuel, together with an aircraft carrier and nuclear submarines”.

An airstrip was developed on the northwest of the island, together with an airbase to the north. In 1976, a UK-US treaty regularised the construction of an “anchorage, airfield, support and supply elements, and ancillary services”. Access to Diego Garcia was then restricted to American and British military personnel, and construction workers, brought in from outside.

Aircraft using the base have included RAF Hawker Siddeley MR2 marine reconnaissance aircraft, Lockheed p-3 Orion transport aircraft and anti-submarine aircraft capable of patrolling for up to four hours; USAAF Boeing B-52 Stratofortress heavy bombers, capable of carrying nuclear devices stored on the island. During both wars against Iraq, U.S. B-52 bombers were used in attacks, and Diego Garcia was used as a refuelling point for such bombers. It was also used against Afghanistan.

It has, again, been widely reported, and since confirmed by members of the British government, that the island base has been used to hold “terrorist suspects”, and as a stop-over, prior to them being “rendered” (known as “extraordinary rendition”) to other countries for torture. (See Guardian, 1 November 2011, 9 April 2012 and 10 October 2012). These have included Libya, Morocco, the United States and the Yemen.

A particularly notorious example was Britain’s role in the rendition of the Libyan dissident, Abdel Hakim Belhaj, his pregnant wife and two children, to Muamma Gaddafi’s not-very-secret police, and their subsequent torture. Apparently the CIA’s plane carrying the family refuelled on Diego Garcia on its way to Libya.

On the 13th of December 2005, however, Britain’s foreign secretary Jack Straw, told the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee: “Unless we all believe in conspiracy theories, and that the officials are

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lying, and that I am lying, that there is some kind of secret state which is in league with the United States, there is simply no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition, full stop, as we have never been” (See Guardian, 10 March 2013).

However, Sir Mark Allen, SIS/MI6 former head of counterterrorism, stated that rendering the Libyan dissidents to Gaddifi’s intelligence chief, Moussa Koussa, “was the least we (the U.K.) could do for you to demonstrate the remarkable relationship we have built up over the years. I am so glad”. Either Mr. Straw has, or had, a very poor memory, or he was being “economical with the actualité”, with the truth! Indeed, Seumas Milne, writing in the Guardian (24 April 2013), says:

“The scale of torture, kidnapping and detention without trial unleashed by the US government after 9/11 is, as the US Constitution Project reports found ‘indisputable’. And at every stage, it’s been backed and emulated by its closest allies. At least 54 states, including Britain and 24 others in Europe, took part in the CIA’s secret ‘extraordinary rendition’ programme. And British forces have carried out plenty of beatings and torture in Afghanistan and Iraq, either on their own or in cahoots with US and local forces, as multiple reports and inquiries have now made clear.”

It has also been reported (The Guardian, 10 July, 2014) that “a US senate report will identify Diego Garcia as a location where the CIA established a secret prison as part of its extraordinary rendition programme. According to one report, classified CIA documents say it was established with the 'full cooperation' of the UK government” in which the UK is in breach of “a raft of international and domestic laws”. (see also the Observer, 13 July, 2014) And also “How we torture our own ...

At the end of 2012, the Obama administration nominated its top counter-terrorism adviser, and 25-year CIA veteran, John Brennan, to be a key architect of its secret drone programme. Previously, in 2008, Brennan had, in the words of the Guardian (8 January 2013), faced vocal objections for “his support for the torture policy of the then

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president George W. Bush”.

See also “How we torture our own citizens” (Guardian Weekend, 20 October 2012). This is an edited extract from Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture, by Ian Cobain. Portobello Book, London, November 2012.

Furthermore, analysts of the United States Space Surveillance Network (USSSN) on Diego Garcia, almost certainly with British assistance, track 24-hours-a-day, 365-days-a-year, more than 8,000 man-made objects now orbiting the Earth. The USSSN is responsible for detecting, tracking, cataloguing and identifying all artificial objects, including active, spent inactive, rockets and debris orbiting Planet Earth.

Of course, all attempts by the Chagossians to return to Diego Garcia and the other islands have been blocked by both the British and American governments.

+ + + + +

Appendix SourcesArea 51: Annie Jacobsen, Area 51; The X Factor (magazine), No.36; Jeffrey Richelson, The U.S. Intelligence Community; Guardian (4 August 1997); The CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-909, CIA Report (3 August 1997). Diego Garcia: Desmond Ball and Jeffrey Richelson, The Ties That Bind; Mark Curtis, The Ambiguities of Power; Guardian (23 November 1998, 1 November 2002, 17 June 2004, 2 October 2004, 7 January 2005, 8 November 2005, 26 May 2006, 7 June 2011); Socialist Standard (May 1998); Times (2 June 2011, 29 October 2011, 11 November 2011), International Herald Tribune (3 October 2011), Guardian (18 April 2012), The Observer (29 June 2014).

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AUTEC on Andros, Area 51 in Nevada and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, have much in common – and some differences. All three are intelligence, military and/or naval bases. AUTEC and the TOTO, together with Andros Island, are fairly extensive; Area 51, and the other facilities in the Nevada desert, are vast; but the island of Diego Garcia is minuscule. All three were established and developed, in extreme secrecy, without any Parliamentary or Congressional oversight or knowledge. More than one president of the United States is said to have had no knowledge of what went on at Area 51 (or Andros and Diego Garcia?) before taking office. Most people in America or the United Kingdom, know nothing or very little of any of them, yet Andros was and Diego Garcia still is, a British territory. More is known about Diego Garcia than Andros because of the plight of the former islanders, the lying of British government ministers (mostly Labour) and, subsequent court decisions in the Chagossians’ favour. But to no avail.

In Andros, there were few people and no deportations. Nobody, except one old miner lived in Area 51. AUTEC is conveniently located in a nominally foreign country, the Bahamas; Area 51 is located in a desert surrounded by mountains, and Diego Garcia is located thousands of miles from both Britain and America, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Independent observers and investigative journalists are more than unwelcome in all three areas and bases. They have much to hide. Andros, in particular, is America’s Secret Island.

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PostscriptAny further information on Andros and AUTEC will be welcome. Corrections will also be welcome.PEN

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BIBLIOGRAPHY, SOURCES and picture credits

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Secret Military Base, London, 2011.Jones, R.V., Reflections On Intelligence, London, 1989.Jungk, Robert, Brighter Than 1000 Suns, Harmondsworth, 1960 ed..Kwitny, Jonathan, The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA, New York, 1987.Lanning, Hugh and Norton-Taylor, Richard, A Conflict of Loyalties: GCHQ 1984-1991, Cheltenham, 1991.Marchetti, Victor and Marks, John D., The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, New York, 1980 ed..Paine, Lauran, The Technology of Espionage, London, 1978.Pendleton, Steve, Power base, British Indian Ocean Territory Report (Stamp Magazine, November 2013).Popov, Nicolas and Dragan, The Bahamas Rediscovered, London, 1992.Prados, John, The Soviet Estimate: U.S. Intelligence Analysis and Soviet Strategic Forces, Princeton, New Jersey, 1986 ed..Prados, John, Presidents’ Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations from World War II through Iranscam, New York, 1986.Rashke, Richard, The Killing of Karen Silkwood: The Story Behind the Kerr-McGee Plutonium Case, London, 1983.Ranelagh, John, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA, London, 1988 ed..Richelson, Jeffrey and Ball, Desmond, The Ties That Bind, Boston, Mass, 1985.Richelson, Jeffrey, American Espionage and the Soviet Target, New York, 1987.Richelson, Jeffrey, The U.S. Intelligence Community, New York, 1989 (2nd ed.).Richelson, Jeffrey, A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century, New York, 1995.Robbins, Christopher, The Invisible Air Force: The True Story of the CIA’s Secret Airlines, London, 1979.Smith, Helena, “How arms spending broke Greece” (Guardian, 20 April 2012).Thomas, Gordon, Inside British Intelligence. 100 Years of MI5 and MI6, London, 2009.Times, The, “Sir Lynden Pindling” (obituary), London 28.08.2000.Treverton, Gregory F., Covert Action: The Limits of Intervention in the Postwar World, New York, 1987.

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Urban, Mark, UK Eyes Alpha, London, 1996.Vernier, Anthony, Through The Looking Glass: British Foreign Policy in an Age of Illusions, London, 1982.West Australian, The, “UK rearms with new-generation nuclear weapons” (18 June 2012).Wheaton, Gene, Secret Island Spy Base 110 Miles from Florida, (Portland Free Press, July-October 1996).William, Philip, The Last Supper, London, 1988X Factor, The (magazine), No.36, pp.1000-1004, “Cruel Sea”, London, 1998.

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http://www.andros-bahamas.com/overtext.htmhttp://www.bonefishandros.comhttp://www.navsea.navy.mil/nvwc/default.aspxhttp://www.nato.int/related/foracs/mission.htmhttp://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/assets.htmhttp://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/as.htmhttp://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/base.htmhttp://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/cap.htmhttp://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/environ.htmhttp://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/esm01.htmhttp://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/flights.htmhttp://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/foracs.htmhttp://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/hurricane.htmhttp://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/mbs.htmhttp://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/map.htmhttp://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/nassau.htmhttp://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/ohdf.htmhttp://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/oparea.htmhttp://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/products.htmhttp://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/st.htmhttp://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/sitemap.htmhttp://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/targets.htmhttp://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/tongue.htmhttp://www.npt.navy.mil/autec/wt.htmNATO FORACS Mission; Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NAVSEA); AUTEC, Copyright ©. All rights

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Reserved; NAVSEA Warfare Centers, Newport (Connecticut). Includes photographs nos. 7 to 17, ©.http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread184817/ pg 1 to 7 (Area 51 and other facilities).“Andros” http://www.bahamas.com/bahamas/islands/introduction.aspx/island=andros).ATS Server: www2. the theaovenetwork.comSee also: AUTEC. Google. 500m/1000 ft http://wikimapia.org/ and:http://www.,globalsecurity.org/military/facility/autec.htm

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The Mystery of the Nevada Triangle. More4 channel TV. 9.00 pm, repeat programme, 27 March 2013.Bermuda Triangle: The Mystery Revealed. Channel 5 TV. 8.00 pm, repeat programme 1 April 2013

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A “More4” TV channel programme on Wednesday evening, March 27, 2013, entitled The Mystery Of The Nevada Triangle, investigated the 2007 disappearance of aviator Steve Fossett, and “…how hundreds of aircraft go missing in a part of the US’s Sierra Nevada Mountains”. The Civil Air Patrols have found the wreckage of aircraft. And there have been the usual stories of “aliens” within the Nevada Triangle, of course – presumably from Outer Space!

Also, within the same area, in or near the Hawthorne Army Depot, about 95 miles southeast of Reno (Area 20?) in the western Nevada desert, it was reported that seven US marines from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, were killed in an explosion in the middle of March 2013. Other marines were injured and flown to the Renown Regional Medical Center in Reno, according to Reuters.

ODD FOOTNOTE

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FLYING SAUCERS

Flying Saucers did not come from Mars or Outer Space. Nor did they originate in America or Russia, although both countries ultimately developed them, using captured German Nazi scientists.

In the early 1940s, the Nazi German Air Ministry and Air Force researched and developed Delta, triangular and circular flying discs or saucers, up to 45 meters wide.

Designed and developed by the specialists, Schriever, Habermahl and Miethe, the first flight over Prague reached almost a height of eight miles, flying at a speed of 1,250 mph. Later, in subsequent tests, the speed was double. After the end of the War, Habermahl was said to have “fallen into Russian hands”. Miethe later developed similar flying saucers at A.V. Roe and Company, for the U.S. government. Many Nazi scientists worked in the United States.(Source: Brighter Than 1000 Suns, by Robert Jungk. Penguin Special, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1960 ed., p.87, footnote.)

According to German post-war accounts, Rudolph Schriever designed and tested, in June 1942, and in August 1943, a circular “flying saucer” or disc. Furthermore, after the war, a full-scale prototype was discovered in the Hartz Mountains which had been secretly flown on 14th February 1945, despite its imminent defeat of the Nazi regime.

Schriever originally believed that all his papers, and plans, as well as the prototype, had been destroyed to stop them falling into the hands of the Allies. But, later, right up to his death in 1950, he wondered if that was true because by then there were persistent sightings of disc-like UFOs which presumably were the result of secret developments – in America and Russia – of this invention. This was confirmed, in U. S. archives, in September 1992. In fact, there were two such craft originally constructed in the Hartz Mountains, 138 feet in diameter.

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DRONES – Murder by Remote ControlAccording to a study by Drone Wars UK, the United Kingdom has spent more than £2bn on buying and developing military drones between 2007 and the end of 2012; and plans to commit a further £2bn for new unmanned military aircraft in the immediate future. Britain has been flying armed drones in Afghanistan since 2009. The study states that 76 countries have UAVs, but only Britain, the United States and Israel have used armed drones in military operations up to the end of 2012.

The UK purchased six Reaper drones from the United States in October 2007 for future use in Afghanistan. One, at least, is known to have crashed. Hitherto, it had flown them from Creech US Airbase in Nevada, south of Area 51. the United Kingdom’s Reaper UAVs in Afghanistan use laser-guided Hellfire missiles and bombs. The Americans, it would seem, concentrated their attack on Pakistan.

By the time this is published a squadron of Reapers will have been stationed in the UK at RAF Wallington in a purpose-built base and headquarters in Lincolnshire.

The Americans consider that Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or Remotely Piloted Vehicles (RPVs), have been an unqualified success in their war in Afghanistan – if by “success” means lots of people getting killed and injured with no risks to the so-called pilots sitting thousands of miles away, and relatively cheaply! According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the United States has over the past eight years, up to November 2012, killed about 3,400 people in Pakistan alone. How many have been killed and injured in Afghanistan and elsewhere is not known. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (Guardian, 13 April 2013), US drones have killed 2,772 people in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, presumably in the previous 12 months. The U.S. also makes drone strikes against Somalia and the Yemen from a secret base in the tiny east African state of Djibouti. Drones it seems are everywhere!

Surprisingly – or maybe not – the U.S. use of drones soared during Obama’s presidency, compared with that of George W. Bush. Up to

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the beginning of 2013, the CIA and the military undertook more than 400 drone strikes in Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan and Yemen, killing about 3,500-4,000 people and an unknown number of injured. Michael Boyle, who was a member of Obama’s counter-terrorism group prior to 2008, wrote in the Chatham House journal, International Affairs, that the reliance on drones was “having adverse strategic effects that have not been properly weighed against the tactical gains associated with killing terrorists. It encouraged a new, increasingly violent, arms race, commented Boyle (Guardian, 8 January 2013).

In May 2013, President Obama, who at least in theory “signs off” on targeted drone strikes, in an address to the National Defence University, appeared to bow to increasing pressure to curtail such strikes, while at the same time justifying them. He promised greater transparency on America’s “war on terror” (that is anti-U.S. terror, of course!). He proposed that future drone attacks should be controlled by the military, and the Pentagon, rather than CIA; and be subjected to Congressional scrutiny. Nevertheless, the President of the United States supported all previous strikes, as they were “more discriminating than other military options such as aerial bombing”. And, he could have added that using drones is probably somewhat cheaper!

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The British government has funded the development of drones at BAE Systems, and has also leased, for use in Afghanistan, drones from Israel when awaiting a new surveillance drone named Watchkeeper, produced jointly by the Israeli company, Elbit, and Thales UK.

In May 2013 (Guardian, 7 May), Nick Hopkins published a Special Report, “Journey towards drone revolution takes shape at a tiny Welsh airfield”, in which he revealed that a former RAF base, now a privately-owned airfield by Ray Mann, near Aberporth in West Wales, Cardiganshire, is used by the Ministry of Defence to test Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) – drones. Apparently, it is the only air space in Europe where drones can be flown alongside

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conventional aircraft.

The MoD surveillance and targeting drone, the Watchkeeper, has undergone trials at Aberporth’s West Wales Airport (WWA) for some time. Also using the base is UAW manufacturers, who fly their Delta 201 and 202, and which cover 2,000 sq miles over the sea, and 500 sq miles over, presumably, Wales.+ + + + +

The first UAV was flown from Aberporth in 2004. Since then, Mann’s team has overseen the flights of more than 1,000 UAVs at the base. By May 2013, Watchkeeper has undertaken 260 test flights, supervised by a MoD team of technicians, who have built and maintained the UAVs from a hangar, surrounded by barbed wire. The MoD already have more than 600 drones – and intend to acquire many more in the coming decades. Indeed, at least 35 per cent of the Royal Air Force’s planes are planned to be remotely controlled by 2023 – the latest generation drone, known as Taranis, can be sent to targets at long range, and defend itself against attacks by hostile aircraft. Like the U.S. Navy X-47B, it has weapons bays.

In 2014, the British Ministry of Defence admitted that a US Global Hawk reconnaissance “unmanned aerial vehicle” - a drone – flew through UK airspace on at least three occasions, during NATO exercise, from a base in Italy, before returning. The drone flew over Britain at approximately 50,000ft. The trials were codenamed “Unified Vision.” (The Guardian, 30 May, 2014)

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List of maps and photographs

Androsian ChickcharnieNew Providence Island, NassauBay Street, NassauA Blue HoleBay Street, NassauBay Street, Nassau

Bay Street, NassauParadise IslandBeach, Northwest AndrosMain Base Site 1, AUTEC, AndrosLynden Oscar PindlingAnother BUILDING, AUTEC, AndrosMain Base Site 1, AUTEC, AndrosAnother building, AUTEC, AndrosCommand Central Building and Range Support Facility, AUTEC, AndrosSite 1, Range User Building, AUTEC,AndrosU.S. submarineParadise IslandParadise IslandAUTEC fixed-wing and rotary-winged aircraft at West Palm Beach, Florida airfieldBay Street, Nassau

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Ocean Haul Down Facility, AUTEC, AndrosElectronic Warfare Threat Simulator (EWTS), AUTEC, AndrosMobile Acoustic TrainingUnmanned MQ1 Predator drone on a test flightUK Reaper Drone

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Figure 1, Main Base Site 1, AUTEC, Andros

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Figure 2, Another Building, AUTEC, Andros

Figure 3, Androsian Chickcharnie

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Figure 4, U.S. Submarine

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Figure 5, New Providence Island, Nassau

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Figure 6, Bay Street, Nassau

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Figure 7, Bay Street, Nassau

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Figure 8, A Blue Hole

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Figure 9, Bay Street, Nassau

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Figure 10, Paradise Island

Figure 11, Beach, Northwest Andros

Figure 12, Lynden Oscar Pindling

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Figure 13, Command Central Building and Range Support Facility, AUTEC, Andros

Figure 14, Site 1, Range User Building, AUTEC, Andros

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Figure 15, Paradise Island

Figure 16, AUTEC fixed-wing and rotary-winged aircraft at West Palm Beach, Florida airfield

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Figure 17, Ocean Haul Down Facility, AUTEC, Andros

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Figure 18, Electronic Warfare Threat Simulator (EWTS), AUTEC, Andros

Figure 19, Mobile Acoustic Training

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Figure 20, Unmanned MQ1 Predator drone on a test flight

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Figure 21, UK Reaper Drone

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