Ep. 96 | A Redacted Medical Mystery: Red Menace/Weather Warriors

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A woman in her late 20s woke up in the middle of the night with a start.

As she blinked in the darkness, it took her a moment to remember where she was, in her hospital room in San Francisco.

The woman had come in for fairly routine knee surgery, and the doctors had assured her she'd be home after only a few days of recovery.

But two weeks later, and she was still here, and she had never felt worse in her whole life.

On top of her bad leg, she now also constantly felt lightheaded and nauseous.

And on this particular day, to make things even more frustrating, she had woken up with a sudden urge to go to the bathroom.

But she didn't want to call a nurse for help.

She already relied on them so much it was kind of embarrassing.

But she also hated the idea of going in a bedpan.

So, gathering what little strength she had, the woman very gingerly got up out of bed using a crutch.

However, as soon as she got on her one good leg, she almost collapsed.

She was so dizzy she could barely stand, and it was hard to breathe.

But she was still determined to do this.

The woman hobbled her way over to the bathroom, doing her best to keep herself upright.

As she moved, her lower back pulsed with pain and this wave of nausea crashed over her.

Finally, she reached the bathroom, flipped on the light, and sat down on the toilet.

Maybe she thought if she just stayed here for a while, these awful feelings she was having would pass.

She began to relieve herself, and as she did, this sharp, blinding pain shot through her body.

But she kept going, and when she finished, she looked down into the toilet and she saw a terrifying sight.

Her urine was tinged red.

But to her, the color didn't quite look like blood.

But then the question was:

what was it?

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From Balin Studios and Wondry, I'm Mr.

Balin, and this is Mr.

Ballin's Medical Mysteries, where every week we will explore a new, baffling mystery originating from the one place place we all can't escape, our own bodies.

At Ballin Studios in Wondry, we love to tell stories about the strange, dark, and mysterious, which can manifest in a lot of different ways.

On this show, our focus is the human body and the terrifying things that can happen to it.

And it can be even scarier when these cases are not accidental.

That's why I'm so excited that today, We're crossing over with another Ballin Studios podcast called Redacted, Declassified Mysteries.

Redacted, hosted by Luke Lamana, shines a light on the shadowy corners of espionage, covert operations, and misinformation to reveal the dark secrets our governments try to hide.

So far, the show has tackled stories about coups executed by the American government, moles infiltrating intelligence agencies, and so much more.

And so today, we're going to take the essence of the Redacted show and pair it with the medical show.

And on this episode, our first story is a medical mystery that gripped a San Francisco hospital in the early 1950s.

A perplexing outbreak led the hospital staff and the victims' families on a frightening search for the truth, one whose questions wouldn't be answered until decades later.

Then, after I'm done, I'm going to pass things over to Luke, the host of Prodacted, for our second story in this episode, one whose dangerous ripple effects can still be felt today.

Both of these stories are a fascinating dive into humanity's relationship with our environment.

Whether it's in medicine or warfare, humans often push the boundaries of the natural world to further our own aims.

But sometimes, nature pushes back against us.

And now, here's our first story called Red Menace.

On October 1st, 1950, Dr.

Richard Wheat parked his car outside the Stanford University Hospital in San Francisco and walked towards the entrance.

He lingered outside just for a moment and took a deep breath of the cool, foggy morning air.

He readied himself and then headed inside.

He He weaved his way through the bustling fluorescent hallways of the recovery ward.

There were a few patients there he was eager to check on.

He made his way to the room of one of the patients he'd been keeping an eye on for the past few weeks.

It was a 75-year-old pipe fitter named Edward Nevin Sr.

Edward had been in and out of the hospital for months, but still nobody could quite figure out what was wrong with him.

However, finally, a few weeks earlier, he'd had a surgery on his prostate, and it seemed to make him feel a whole lot better.

He'd been recovering well in the hospital, and so now he was just a few days away from finally going back home to his family.

But when Dr.

Wheat opened the door to Edward's room, he was stunned by what he saw.

The skinny old man laying under the sheets in bed turned to look at the doctor blankly.

He didn't seem to recognize Dr.

Wheat.

Just a few days earlier, Edward had been lively and chatty.

Now he looked pale and feeble.

Dr.

Wheat made his way over to Edward's bedside and asked him how he was doing.

Edward groaned that he felt too weak to move.

He developed a nasty cough too.

And more than that, it really hurt when he urinated, and his urine was also bright red.

As Dr.

Wheat listened, he nodded calmly and acted like everything was fine.

But inside, he was very worried.

A little blood in the urine was not out of the ordinary for a patient suffering from a urinary tract infection or UTI, but it should not be so much that the urine was completely red.

And it wasn't even clear if Edward had a UTI at all.

So it seemed like something else must be wrong with Edward.

Dr.

Wheat knew he would need to do a thorough exam on Edward to really get a sense of what was going on here.

Clearly, his condition was deteriorating.

The doctor pulled out a stethoscope and placed the diaphragm on Edward's chest and then carefully listened to his breathing.

And what he heard was just very rough breathing every time the man inhaled and exhaled, like there was a backup of mucus.

To the doctor, it sounded like Edward had pneumonia, which is a lung infection.

Having pneumonia, in addition to whatever this infection was inside of Edward's urinary tract, was dangerous for someone in Edward's condition, potentially even deadly.

Dr.

Wheat moved his stethoscope to listen to Edward's heart, and what he heard was his heartbeat sounded muffled, which was obviously not a good sign.

This meant that maybe Edward's infection, this mystery infection, had moved through his bloodstream into his heart already, which meant there really wasn't much the doctors could do to help him.

But Dr.

Wheat didn't want to worry his patient even further, so even though he had some pretty grim news, he didn't share it.

Instead, he just promised Edward they would do everything they could to get him back on his feet.

After that, Dr.

Wheat walked out of the room with a lot on his mind.

Antibiotics could help Edward's infection, but he needed to figure out what was causing the infection to know what to prescribe.

If they wanted to cure Edward, they were going to have to act fast.

Later that night, A few floors down from where Dr.

Wheat had checked on Edward Nevin, a lab technician named Ann Zuckerman processed blood samples in the Stanford Hospital lab.

She had hoped to be home by this point, but Dr.

Wheat had asked her to stay back and check a few more tests.

Dr.

Wheat had told her all about Edward Nevin's case, how the man had an infection both in his lungs and urinary tract and his urine was bright red.

Dr.

Wheat also said he had no idea what caused this infection, and he needed Anne's help to try to figure it out.

Anne was not one to leave a mystery unsolved, so she had agreed to stay a bit longer to help Dr.

Wheat.

Anne checked the results of the test she she had performed on Edward's blood, and the sample showed only one abnormality.

Edward had tested positive for a bacteria called serratia marcesciens.

Anne thought that was odd.

She had heard about this bacteria before.

She knew it was sometimes used to conduct experiments in laboratories, but they didn't use it at this hospital.

Beyond that, she had never heard of anybody using it anywhere in the Bay Area.

And so quickly, she grabbed a medical textbook off the shelf and thumbed through it to the right page that talked about this bacteria.

It said that S.

marsetians was usually harmless.

According to the textbook, the bacteria was indeed sometimes used in classrooms for experiments, and also critically, the bacteria also produced a red pigment.

And so Anne thought that must explain our patient's bright red urine.

However, this bacteria did not explain Edward's lung infection.

It did explain the potential urinary tract infection, because basically it showed he didn't have a UTI.

Instead, the red urine was this pigment from the bacteria.

But this bacteria, S.

Marsetians, was supposed to be harmless and was not in any way tied to lung infections.

So why was this typically benign bacteria apparently making Edwards so sick?

Furthermore, how did he even come in contact with it?

Since no one in the hospital used the bacteria, like how could it have made its way into Edwards' bloodstream?

Anne wasn't sure what to make of this, but she hoped Dr.

Wheat might have some ideas.

So she hurried over to the phone and dialed his number at home.

Three weeks later, Dr.

Wheat walked quickly down the halls of the hospital.

That morning, his patient, Edward Nevin Sr., had died.

Dr.

Wheat had done everything he could to try to help Edward fight this mystery infection that was attacking his body.

He had prescribed what he thought was the correct regimen of antibiotics, but unfortunately, Edward was just too frail.

The infection eventually made its way to his already weakened heart, and it killed him.

Dr.

Wheat was crushed that he had not been able to save Edward's life, but right now, he couldn't focus on that.

Instead, he had to focus on the slew of other patients at this hospital who now also were showing all the same symptoms as Edward Nevin.

They were showing the apparent urinary tract infection mixed with pneumonia-like symptoms and also the red urine.

And also, of those new patients, of which there were eight by this point, they all tested positive for S-Marcessions.

Dr.

Wheat was baffled, as was everybody else.

How was this supposedly harmless bacteria making his patients so sick?

And where was it coming from?

And they were getting new cases every day.

And the weird thing was, this hospital was the only place that was dealing with this strange outbreak.

The patients they were getting seemingly had nothing in common except that they all lived in San Francisco and each of them had undergone a recent medical procedure at Stanford University Hospital prior to presenting with red urine.

And so now, Dr.

Wheat and Ann, the lab technician, were terrified that these infections were coming from somewhere inside the hospital.

Dr.

Wheat checked in on the youngest of the S.

Marcesians patients, a 29-year-old woman.

Originally, she had been admitted to the hospital a week earlier for a knee operation, but following the operation, she developed these mysterious symptoms.

The woman smiled weakly as Dr.

Wheat checked her vitals, but despite her smile, the doctor knew she was in a great deal of pain.

Dr.

Wheat couldn't believe that an otherwise healthy young woman was so affected by this mystery infection.

The pneumonia symptoms shared amongst the patients indicated that they may have somehow inhaled this bacteria.

But that didn't make any sense.

S.

Marsessians was not some toxic fume.

It was a harmless lab culture.

There was no reason for it to be floating around in the air, especially the air in a hospital that didn't use or study that particular bacteria at all.

which genuinely frightened Dr.

Wheat.

If they couldn't figure out where this bacteria was coming from, there'd be no way to stop it.

Almost exactly a year later, in October of 1951, Dr.

Wheat was in his office at the hospital, and he felt a strange mix of pride and anxiety as he flipped through a copy of the AMA Archives of Internal Medicine.

Inside was a report that he had co-authored with Anne Zuckerman, the lab technician, about the S.

Marcescians outbreak.

Dr.

Wheat thought back to a year earlier.

In total, they had had 11 people show up with this mystery illness.

The 11 patients ranged in age from 29 years old to 78 years old.

Despite the tragedy of Edward's death, Dr.

Wheat and Anne took solace in the fact that no other patients died.

They experienced painful, difficult symptoms, but everyone else infected with this bacteria eventually made a full recovery.

To contain the outbreak, The hospital had cleaned its equipment and kept the S.

Marsettians patients totally isolated.

Thankfully, they didn't have any more cases after that.

Dr.

Wheat actually suspected at the time that there may have been more San Francisco residents with this bacteria in their bloodstream.

However, they just never got sick enough to actually need hospitalization.

And so despite the outbreak coming to an end, Dr.

Wheat still had two big questions that were left unanswered.

How did S.

Marsessians cause these infections?

And perhaps most puzzling of all, where did the S.

Marsessions come from?

Dr.

Wheat set the medical journal back down on his desk.

He and Anne had written the article in this journal to bring these nagging questions out into the public.

Now, with their article published, he hoped that somebody would reach out and help him solve this mystery.

Unfortunately, though, nobody ever reached out.

25 years later, on December 22nd, 1976, Medical malpractice lawyer Edward Nevin III, the grandson of Dr.

Wheat's patient Edward Nevin Sr., walked into his own office in San Francisco feeling very festive.

He was eager to finish up a few last cases before the Christmas holiday.

Edward III had only just sat down when his phone rang.

He figured it was one of his clients, so he picked up.

The voice on the other end of the line introduced himself as Robert Bartlett.

He was a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle on the Local Stories Beat.

Edward was surprised by the call.

He was just a small-time lawyer.

What did a journalist want from him?

Robert asked Edward if he had read the newspaper that day.

Edward said no, he had not had time.

Robert told him to pick up the paper and look on page three.

So Edward actually reached over and grabbed a nearby newspaper, opened it up, and he saw a shocking headline.

And suddenly, a terrible clarity settled over him.

After a quarter century, Edward and his family now finally had an explanation for what actually happened to his grandfather.

The headline on page three read, Army-tested biological war in San Francisco.

Francisco.

The S.

Marsessions outbreak in San Francisco was not just some chance infection.

Edward's grandfather and the other 10 patients were the victims of a biochemical attack, and the United States Army was behind it.

On September 26th, 1950, as part of a weapons test, Army officials aerosolized the bacteria, S.

Marsetians, and sprayed it directly into the San Francisco fog near the Stanford University Hospital.

Two days later, Edward Nevin developed all of his symptoms, the first known case of an S.

Marsettians infection in the city.

At the time, America was in the midst of the Cold War, and the American government was very concerned about the threat of a Soviet biochemical weapon and were eager to test how such an attack would affect the United States.

From 1949 to 1969, the United States conducted over 200 experiments to assess the threat of biochemical weapons in highly populated areas.

Shockingly, it performed these experiments on its own people, using American citizens as unwitting guinea pigs.

Now, the Army claimed these tests would be harmless.

However, many of the substances they used to test these potential attacks had dangerous effects, like serratia Marsetians.

In San Francisco specifically, the S.

Marsetians experiment was titled Operation Sea Spray.

Army officials sprayed S.

Marsetians into the fog to see how weather might spread a weaponized bacteria.

Perhaps the thinking was that the government would be able to track how many people this affected by monitoring if anybody mentioned having bright red urine, which was alarming but not overall harmful.

However, the government did not anticipate the much more dangerous symptoms that came with S.

Marsessions infection.

The U.S.

Army scientists believed the S.

Marsessions bacteria was entirely harmless, and they chose not to report their experiments to health officials.

However, when the news broke about the S.

Marsessions outbreak and when the news broke that Edward Nebin had died as a result of it, the Army continued utilizing S.

Marsessions in dozens of tests in cities all across America.

The Army's experiments were eventually stopped in 1969, when President Nixon issued an executive order banning chemical and biological weapons testing.

In 1977, 27 years after Operation Ceasprate began, the Army finally admitted to spreading the S.

Marsettians bacteria in San Francisco.

However, they maintained that the S.

Marsettians infections that occurred during the time the experiment was happening were purely coincidental.

Now, this did not sit right with Edward Nevin's family or any of the other victims involved in the S.

Marsettians outbreak.

But Nevin's family actually sued the government for wrongful death.

Their case made it all the way to the Supreme Court.

But ultimately, the courts decided there was insufficient evidence that Nevin's death was actually caused by Operation Seaspray.

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And now, here's our next story.

Weather Warriors for Redacted.

In August 1963, a crowd of Buddhists gathered in a town square in Huei, a city in South Vietnam.

Their protest was a silent one, but there was a palpable energy in the air.

They were determined not to be beaten.

Even though Buddhists comprised over 70% of South Vietnam's population, the president, No Dinh Diem, had instituted a series of repressive policies against them.

Months earlier, during a protest against a ban on Buddhist flags, Nine unarmed protesters were killed by the army.

Since then, the Buddhists had carried out relentless, nonviolent gatherings.

A number of monks had even set themselves on fire in protest of the president.

From a fourth-floor balcony across the street, an American was keeping a close eye on the protests below.

It didn't bother him that they had assembled, but as an agent of the CIA, he had orders to disband them.

He watched as local police marched in against the protesters.

They threw tear gas canisters into the crowd, sending clouds of vapor billowing up into the square.

Many of the protesters started to cough, but most of them held their ground.

The CIA agent knew they were going to need something stronger to get the protesters to leave.

Then his radio crackled to life.

A voice came through, asking for permission to take off.

The agent picked up the receiver and gave the order.

Their mission was a go.

A few minutes later, the faint sound of an American carrier plane's engines zoomed overhead.

It had become an awfully common sound over the past few months, and no one paid it much mind, except for the CIA agent.

Gripping the receiver tightly in his fist, he looked up into the sky, his heart thrumming with nervous excitement.

The scientists who had briefed the agent on the mission assured him it was possible.

Still, until he saw it with his own eyes, it felt more like fantasy than reality.

The plane passed over the square, and moments later, the sky darkened.

The protesters looked up as the first fat drops of rain fell on them.

From there, the rain steadily grew heavier.

Within a few minutes, it was pouring and the crowds scattered.

The agent looked on, stunned by what he'd just seen.

It actually worked.

The protesters didn't respond to tear gas, but there must have been something about the rain that caused them to leave.

Whatever the reason, the United States now had control of the weather, and they could use it anytime they wanted.

The United States government has a long history of attempting to harness weather for use in warfare.

In 1871, Civil War General Edward Powers published a book speculating that large-scale battles had an impact on the climate.

The following year, Congress gave him $10,000 to fire cannons into the sky in Texas, hoping they would cause rain.

His experiments were unsuccessful, but the government never gave up its quest to control the elements.

A century later, as the Cold War simmered through the 1960s and 70s, the United States military launched a new series of experimental operations.

This story follows one of them.

It was called Operation Popeye and was used during the Vietnam War.

The U.S.

Army experimented with a scientific technique called cloud seeding to increase rainfall in areas the North Vietnamese Army traveled.

But the practice had unintended consequences for both humans and the environment.

And when the operation was leaked to the public, the military was forced to reckon with the fallout.

In early 1967, almost four years after the initial test to break up a Buddhist protest in South Vietnam, Lieutenant Colonel Ed Sauster was stuck in a stuffy meeting room at the Pentagon.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff were arguing once again about how to stop the Viet Cong.

They'd been at it for a while.

Ed sat by and held his tongue, but it wasn't easy.

As the operations officer of a battalion stationed in Vietnam, he was one of the few men in the room with on-the-ground experience during the war.

As his superiors squabbled over different strategies, All Ed could think about were the potential lives lost, the men who would die because of their plans, many who never wanted to serve in the first place.

Still, Ed was a good soldier.

He wasn't going to speak out of turn or contradict his bosses.

He would wait until they asked him for his perspective.

One of the top advisors hammered home that the military needed to target the Viet Cong supply route, the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

The trail was a network of jungle roads and tunnels that stretched a thousand miles through Vietnam and dipped into Laos and Cambodia.

It allowed the Viet Cong to move throughout the region almost undetected.

The Joint Chiefs lamented that they had tried almost everything to stop the Viet Cong from using the trail.

Deforestation, deploying Agent Orange from helicopters, even carpet bombing hadn't been effective.

They were running out of options.

There was only one thing they hadn't tried yet.

The Ho Chi Minh Trail was only accessible for part of the year.

During monsoon season, it became pure mud.

The tunnels were flooded, and the bridges would get washed out.

If they could stretch the rainy season a bit longer, it could increase their chances of crippling the Viet Cong.

And it just so happened that the U.S.

military had discovered a way to do precisely that.

The secretive program was known as Operation Popeye and it employed a new method of weather control called cloud seeding, a means of increasing atmospheric density and creating rain.

The military had already successfully tested it in South Vietnam, which meant cloud seeding was was ready for use on the battlefield.

Ed remained expressionless, but inside, his mind was reeling.

As a scientist himself, he had only heard rumors about the practice, but didn't think it was actually feasible.

After the Joint Chiefs agreed that cloud seeding was their best option, they needed to select someone dependable to execute the program, someone with a background in science.

Someone with on-the-ground experience in Vietnam.

They slowly turned to Ed Sawster.

He swallowed hard.

He'd never been put in charge of anything like this.

But he would never turn down such an important assignment, especially one that came directly from the most senior military leaders in the country.

He saluted and accepted his mission.

The weather in Vietnam was now under his command.

A few months later, in the fall of 1967, an American pilot walked down an airstrip carved out of the jungle in Thailand.

He looked up at the sky.

The sun was finally peeking through the clouds.

After months of monsoons, he was grateful to finally have a break in the weather.

He knew it wouldn't last long though, not if his orders from Lieutenant Colonel Ed Sawster were to be believed.

Because today, he wasn't going to be dropping napalm on the jungle or Agent Orange.

He was going to be dropping rain.

The pilot climbed into the cockpit of his C-130.

He turned the engines on and radioed control.

He was cleared for takeoff.

A few minutes later, he was flying over the jungles of Vietnam.

He scanned his instruments as he navigated to his drop point.

Lieutenant Colonel Soyster had been clear.

This needed to be precise.

As the pilot approached his target, he flew lower, dipping close to the trees.

Below him was nothing but thick jungle and a few wisps of clouds.

He positioned his finger on the trigger and took a deep breath.

He'd been briefed on how cloud seating worked, and it was making him more anxious than any of the bombs he'd ever dropped.

The moment arrived, and the pilot pulled the trigger.

Several metal canisters ejected from the plane.

They immediately burst into flames, spewing millions of particles of silver iodide and lead iodide into the air.

As the particles dispersed through the clouds, atmospheric water clung to them tightly.

These particles would amass more and more water, making the clouds larger and darker, and soon enough, they would be ready to burst.

The pilot veered right and turned back toward his home airstrip.

He looked behind him and could barely believe what he saw.

It was actually starting to rain.

And far below, on the jungle floor, the Ho Chi Minh Trail would soon turn to deep, impassable mud.

Operation Popeye was fully underway.

Four years later, on the morning of March 18th, 1971, Dennis J.

Doolin woke up with a headache.

As the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Doolin had a lot on his plate.

The war in Vietnam was now in its seventh year, with no signs of slowing down.

Doolin's job was to help manage the flow of resources and troops to South Vietnam.

But no matter how many bombs, weapons, or young men he sent over the Pacific, it didn't seem to be making a difference.

He sat down at the kitchen table, trying to clear his head as he ate breakfast.

It was one of the few moments each day he could take to relax.

As his wife poured him a cup of coffee, Dooland opened up the Washington Post, and his Danish dropped out of his mouth.

Jack Anderson had written a column about a secret U.S.

Army program that controlled the weather.

Anderson was a legendary reporter who had covered everything from the Chappaquittic incident where Senator Ted Kennedy accidentally killed one of his staffers to the time President Nixon invited Elvis Presley to the White House.

And now he had blown the lid off another bombshell story, Operation Popeye.

Anderson reported that the program had been running for years with unintended side effects.

The increased rainfall caused by the cloud seeding had washed away several villages in Laos.

Doolin was steaming.

He was high up in the Department of Defense, but he hadn't even known about this program.

He sipped his coffee, trying to get a grip.

As if the war wasn't going bad enough already, now he had a PR disaster on his hands.

Right on queue, the phone on the wall began to ring.

Doolin felt a pang of fear in his stomach.

It was probably one of his bosses, demanding to know how the story got out.

He marched over and picked up the receiver.

Instead, it turned out to be a reporter from the New York Times.

He asked Doolin what he thought about Anderson's story.

Through gritted teeth, Doolin replied, no comment, and hung up.

Doolin's wife asked him what was going on.

She was used to seeing him frustrated with the news, but she could tell he was more bothered than usual.

He sat back down at the kitchen table, trying to collect his thoughts.

The American public already felt lied to about what the military was doing in Vietnam.

But Operation Popeye was different.

It was going to scare people.

They were going to demand answers, which Doolin didn't have.

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On March 20th, 1974, Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell leaned forward in his chair.

He watched carefully as representatives from the Department of Defense filed into the hearing room.

His frown deepened as he saw Dennis Doolin and Ed Sawyer take their seats.

It was almost three years to the day after Jack Anderson's first article about cloud seeding was published and a year after U.S.

troops had left Vietnam.

The country wanted answers for the war and for Operation Popeye in particular.

Senator Pell wanted answers too.

This hearing, held in secret, was a first step towards getting clarity about the program.

Senator Pell adjusted the mic and launched into his questions.

He looked down sternly at Doolin and Soyster and demanded to know what the military was doing with the weather in Vietnam.

He asked why on earth newspapers like the Washington Post had a better picture of the story than the United States Senate.

Doolan shuffled uncomfortably in his seat.

He assured the senator that he also had no knowledge of Operation Popeye until the Post's article.

Pell's eyes shifted to Sauster.

He demanded to know why the Thai and Laotian governments weren't informed on specifics.

Soyster cleared his throat.

He began by assuring the committee members that the cloud seating program was both safe for the environment and effective in deterring use of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Beyond that, he only gave a vague response about the security risk of informing American allies about the cloud seeding program, and he wouldn't give specifics about why the operation had been kept under such a tight lid.

Pell shook his head.

This was typical.

As a retired naval man himself, he knew a strategic non-answer when he heard one.

He leaned into his microphone to make himself clear.

This was what scared him, not the cloud seeding, but the secrecy.

The military could have any number of programs that Congress had no idea about.

It could not operate with such little oversight.

Pell pressed on.

He asked the men if there were any other weather control operations underway.

What about hurricanes, typhoons?

Doolan shook his head.

The science to manipulate those kinds of weather events didn't exist.

And in his opinion, contrary to Sauster's account, Operation Popeye hadn't even made much of a difference during the war.

The Army's interest in controlling the weather was over.

Powell raised an eyebrow.

Doolin himself said he had no knowledge of Operation Popeye until Anderson's article was published, and his boss, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, had lied to Congress when the story broke, denying the existence of the entire operation.

So how could he possibly believe Doolin when he said that the Army had no additional projects aimed at controlling the weather?

The men did their best to assure Pell they were telling the truth, but the senator wasn't wasn't convinced.

He gave Doolin and Soyster their marching orders.

Operation Popeye needed to be declassified.

If the Army truly had nothing to hide, it was time the entire project was made public.

Doolin and Soyster nodded.

Pell called an end to the hearing, but as he got up from his chair, something still bothered him.

He felt the army was playing a dangerous game.

They seemed to have completely ignored regulations and alliances in the pursuit of a potentially hazardous new technology.

Perhaps it was time to go a step further and ban weather control as a weapon altogether, before the Army took it too far.

Operation Popeye was declassified two months after the secret Senate hearing.

The newly revealed details of the project ruffled feathers in the intelligence community.

The implications of the U.S.

military manning such a wide-reaching program without full transparency raised alarm bells.

It also worsened Americans' faith in their government, which was already low due to the Vietnam War.

Anti-war activists were shocked at how callously the military had treated American allies in the region, particularly after leaks revealed that the army had covertly bombed Cambodia and Laos.

The destruction of Laotian villages during the cloud-seeding operation was widely condemned.

and many environmental activists were disturbed by the implications of Operation Popeye.

Silver iodide and lead iodide can be potentially toxic, especially to sea animals.

Though Lieutenant Colonel Ed Soyster maintained to the Senate that the cloud seeding program was fully safe for the environment, the government had known about the negative impact that the operation could have on the region's crops.

Following the backlash, Senator Claiborne Pell helped pass a resolution urging the government to pursue an international treaty against weather modification.

In 1976, the United Nations signed the Environmental Modification Convention.

The use of weather control for any hostile purpose remains banned to this day.

When the truth about Operation Popeye came to light, the country was already deeply shaken.

The Vietnam War had been a failure.

Watergate had shattered illusions of presidential integrity.

and Richard Nixon had become the first U.S.

president to resign in disgrace.

Trust in government was in free fall, so when the public learned that the U.S.

military had been trying to manipulate the weather as a tool of war, it fit neatly into the growing sense that those in charge were willing to do anything and tell the public nothing.

The impulse to question power is healthy, even patriotic.

But when answers are withheld, suspicion and speculation fill the void.

That's how we get from cloudseeding in Vietnam to full-blown conspiracy theories about things like mind-controlling chemtrails from jet exhaust or space lasers that cause hurricanes.

Ironically, the government's efforts to conceal the truth often end up feeding the very paranoia they're meant to prevent.

The less transparent institutions are, the more room there is for wild theories to flourish.

And over time, these fantasies don't just distort reality.

They chip away at our ability to act collectively, to trust one another, and to hold power accountable in any meaningful way.

What Operation Popeye reminds us is this.

Secrecy may serve short-term goals, but in the long run, it has a cost.

Because in a system built on public trust, the truth doesn't just matter.

It's the only thing that can hold the country together.

Follow Mr.

Bollin's Medical Mysteries on the Wondery app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondry.com slash survey.

Now that you've finished this episode, I know you'll love what Luke Lamana is doing over at Redacted, Declassified Mysteries.

Go ahead and start with the episode titled America's Human Test Subjects.

It's a disturbing story story about military experiments, secret drug testing, and the soldiers who became unwitting test subjects that is perfect for medical mysteries fans just like you.

From Balin Studios and Wondry, this is Mr.

Balin's Medical Mysteries, hosted by me, Mr.

Balin.

A quick note about our stories.

They're all inspired by true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes.

And a reminder, the content in this episode is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

This episode was written by Jake Natterman.

Our editor is Heather Dundas.

Sound design is by Andre Plus.

Our senior managing producer is Callum Plus, and our coordinating producer is Sarah Mathis.

Our senior producer is Alex Benedon.

Our associate producers and researchers are Sarah Vitak and Teja Palaconda.

Fact-checking was done by Sheila Patterson.

For Ballin Studios, our head of production is Zach Levitt.

Script editing by Scott Allen and Evan Allen.

Our coordinating producer is Samantha Collins.

Production support by Avery Siegel.

Executive producers are myself, Mr.

Bollin, and Nick Witters.

For Wondry, our head of sound is Marcelino Villipando.

Senior producers are Laura Donna Palavota and Dave Schilling.

Senior managing producer is Ryan Lohr.

And our executive producers are Aaron O'Flaherity and Marshall Louie.

For Wondry.

How hard is it to kill a planet?

Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere.

When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene.

Are we really safe?

Is our water safe?

You destroyed our town.

And crimes like that, they don't just happen.

We call things accidents.

There is no accident.

This was 100%

preventable.

They're the result of choices by people.

Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime.

These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet.

Stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups that are about us and the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it.

Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad-free right now by joining Wonder Plus in the Wondry app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.