10 June 1998

    Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1998 15:52:20 -0600
    From: Gomez
    To: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
    CC: Tim Skorick <tskorick@hotmail.com>
    Subject: Re: Ramparts Article

    I got to thinking about that article this morning, and re-reading my
    comments I realized there was something I left out.  Fellwock refers
    to large antenna arrays which he called by some name [Feranine] I didn't
    recognize.  (I've left the article at home, so I can't look it up).

    I wonder if he was referring to the Wullenweber array (also called a
    Circularly Disposed Dipole Array - CDDA.), what we used to call "The
    Elephant Cage." I'm not entirely sure his terminology is incorrect,
    since he might be referring to the other commonly used listening post
    antenna, the  rhombic.

    Giant arrays of rhombics (some small, some quite large) are used all
    over the the world.  They are very low-noise, highly directional,
    tunable, and you can even change the resonance bandwidth!

    But if he was referring to the CDDA, then the proper name he used was
    the wrong one.

    There is one of these arrays at the Denver Federal Center in Colorado, a
    large Federal reservation which, among other agencies, also shelters a
    large facility of FEMA.

    At one time, there was a windowless building with a small white sign
    that said "NSA" (and nothing else) near the antenna field.  I always
    wondered about that - thought it was someone's idea of a joke - it seems
    just a wee bit too obvious.  Anyway, the sign is gone now, but the
    building and antennas remain.

    Some other fascinating installations in Colorado, which may or may not
    have anything to do with intel, but are interesting nevertheless.  I should
    point out that, under the circumstances, and considering where we worked and
    what we did at the time, we felt we would likely have heard about these two
    places before, but we hadn't.  And were never able to find anyone who would
    admit to knowing anything about them.

    Thing One:

    About 25 miles north east of Buckley ANGB, is an antenna farm that went
    up almost over night.  The antenna farm contains four tallish towers, about
    100 ft each, in a square array.  Each tower has a box-like truss surmounted
    by many small antennas.  I've seen this sort of installation many times on
    military bases.

    Anyway, this installation appeared almost overnight, as I say, about
    eight years ago.  That was my last year in the USAF.  I noticed their
    appearance because Buckley, where I worked, was way out in the boonies, east
    of the suburbs of Denver (then), and I routinely drove home at night.  I
    knew the skyline well.  One night, I saw a whole slew of new flashing red
    tower clearance lights off to the north/north-east.

    An AF buddy of mine and I decided (foolishly, as it turned out) to go
    investigate.  We drove out that direction during the day, and spotted
    the towers.  When we got closer, we found _three_ barbed wire fences on the
    perimeter, and a "Controlled Area" sign with the "Lethal Force Authorized"
    language at the bottom.

    Now this last part is very unusual.  As a general rule, "Controlled
    Access Areas" exist only within "Restricted Access Areas".  There were no
    resources within the fence other than a small equipment building and the
    antennas.

    Lethal Force being authorized (the same lingo is on the fence around the
    place where I worked at Buckley) means that the military has designated
    the area a Priority-A Resource.  As soon as we figured this out, we started
    to high-tail it out of there, but we were soon blocked (on a public,
    country road mind you) by a blue USAF pickup full of Security Police (SP),
    who wanted to know what we were doing snooping around that site.

    We told them we were just curious about it, and we thought that this was a
    public road (it was).  By our haircuts, it was probably obvious we were
    military, but they didn't ask for our ID's, which is fortunate.  If word
    had gotten back to our squadron security officer, our clearances would have
    been pulled, and we'd have been turned into cooks or something!

    My buddy went back a week later, although he didn't approach as closely,
    and found to his astonishment that this public, county road was now gated
    with a sign proclaiming it a US Gov't installation, etc.

    Story Two:

    A fellow co-worker of mine told me this tall tale of a site not far from
    the "Magic Antenna Site," as we'd begun to call it, that he had seen from the
    air, while tooling around in one of the local flying clubs Piper
    Cherokees.

    What he described sounded unlikely- large metal buildings, like small
    airplane hangars, but painted to look like barns, houses, and farm sheds.
    He said he'd never have noticed that they weren't farmhouses, except that
    he was looking through binoculars at parts of the old Lowry Bombing Range,
    just out of curiosity.  These buildings were adjacent to the bombing range.

    I was skeptical, but I agreed to go take a look.  My other friend from the
    (first adventure) went along.  Sure enough, we found the buildings right
    where my friend had said they were, about 100 yards behind a double-barbed-
    wire fence which had an obvious 30-foot cleared zone in front of it (which
    usually means buried line-intrustion detections systems).

    Once again, there was a "Controlled Area / Lethal Force Authorized" sign,
    on an outside area.  Very unusual.  Note that a Restricted area can only
    be entered by people wearing the right badge (the badge having certain
    security features), but a Controlled Area can only be entered by people on
    a list of authorized persons, and everyone who enters has to be positively
    identified (by a  variety of means) before they are allowed in.

    While anyone entering a Restricted Area can be searched, they usually
    aren't, except during heightened security periods.  Persons and their
    vehicles entering a Controlled Area are always searched and wanded.  And it
    is not uncommon for their vehicles to be left outside.  If the area is
    large enough to warrant it, there may be vehicles inside the area which you
    can use and which have been thoroughly searched, radios and other
    electronics equipment removed, and in some cases, specially equipped so as
    not to interfere with sensitive electronic equipment.

    Anyway, we hadn't been looking at this gate for more than thirty seconds
    when another of the ubiquitous SP trucks roars up, out pours about five or
    six SP's, looking all excited, and they run us through the ringer again.

    This time, they did ask us for our military ID's, then asked us where
    we worked.  We told them "on Lowry AFB" (which is where some of us lived,
    in base housing, at the time).   This wasn't entirely untrue, as there was a
    facility on Lowry where two of us occasionally worked for short periods.
    They also asked what we did, and we told them (truthfully) that they didn't
    have the need to know, and we weren't allowed to tell them.  Apparently,
    they assumed that we were instructors, since Lowry was a tech school base.
    I fully expected them to ask us next for the names of our CO's and First
    Seargents, but they didn't. They seemed really eager to get rid of us,
    rather than stand around and ask us questions.  Fortunately, they told us
    to shove off and didn't ask too many pointed questions.

    I've always wondered what the hell those buildings were, why they had to
    be above-ground if they were so damned secret, and why they were
    camouflaged so artfully.

    -Gomez