Authorities in Georgia recently arrested two men who said they were planning to attack the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) facility near Gakona, Alaska. Michael Vickers, a detective with the Coffee County Sheriff’s Office, told Alaska Dispatch News that the pair explained to authorities “that God told them to go and blow this machine up that kept souls, so souls could be released.”

“Yes, that news caused a bit of a stir,” said Chris Fallen, KL3WX, a faculty member at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks (UAF), which now operates the HAARP facility. “I can also confirm that no souls are stored at HAARP.”

Long of interest to the Amateur Radio community as well as a target of various mind and weather-control conspiracies, HAARP is now operated as an ionospheric research facility by the UAF, which took it over last year from the US Air Force.

Police also seized a “massive” arsenal of weapons the individuals had apparently planned to use in attacking the remote facility. According to a WALB TV news account, investigators discovered the plot after they began looking into possible drug sales by one of the men. A local gun shop also alerted authorities that the same individual was attempting to buy a large number of weapons. The two men, who face domestic terrorism charges, also were charged with selling drugs, and they could face other charges. 

UAF spokesperson Marmian Grimes told Alaska Dispatch News that HAARP has been the target of previous threats, and she thanked the Georgia authorities for heading off this one. At an August open house at HAARP, Sue Mitchell of UAF’s Geophysical Institute said they hoped, among other things, “to show people that [HAARP] is not capable of mind control and not capable of weather control and all the other things it’s been accused of.”

Opened in 1960, HAARP is capable of generating extremely high-power signals in the HF range, aimed at the ionosphere. It has run listening tests in the past for the Amateur Radio community. — Thanks to Alaska Dispatch News and other media