BY JEREMY LYBARGER “If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.” — Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

PART I: If you ask him the million-dollar question — Why are they spraying WARRIORS FOR THE DEEP chemtrails? — his stock answer is: “Be- BLUE SKY cause they’re assholes.” “They” could refer to several nefar- Patrick Roddie films the sky every ious actors: the U.S. government, the day. Two years ago, he rigged a camera military-industrial complex, renegade on the roof of his apartment building scientists, old-money foundations, the in Lower Pacific Heights to record U.N., or, most sinister and enigmatic of timelapses of the sun’s dawn-to-dusk all, the New World Order. “It’s a huge arc, along with the sky’s usual bland program,” Roddie says, adding that “it” traffic of birds, airplanes, and clouds. probably encompasses every airline in Many of Roddie’s timelapses — the world. which he uploads to YouTube — cap- A thumbnail sketch of the science ture something else, too: hazy, white behind chemtrails is difficult because threads that thicken in the wake of there are competing theories about airplanes and sometimes tattoo the what that science entails. But most sky in grids. To the uninitiated, these activists, including Roddie, agree that are contrails, the harmless water vapor curbing global warming seems to be that commercial planes spume as they the purpose. In layman’s terms, chem- track across the sky at 30,000 feet. To trails are believed to be an aerosol that Roddie and his followers, however, contains aluminum (which deflects these are chemtrails, the toxic signa- sunlight), as well as a cocktail of other ture of a covert government program toxic elements such as barium and to slow global warming and control strontium. According to Roddie, this the weather. aerosol has insidious side effects, in- Roddie knows this sounds like boil- cluding Alzheimer’s, autism, asthma, erplate conspiracy theory. “Don’t trust respiratory failure, pulmonary failure, me,” he says. “Assume I’m full of crap. and stroke. I’m just some Irish guy.” Another major side effect: Califor- Roddie, who was born in Belfast, nia’s historic drought. has the beard of a Confederate general “It’s like putting a Brawny towel and the doggedness of a street preach- over the sky,” Roddie says. “Any time er. His day job is photographing por- there’s a storm approaching the Cal- traits, mostly of weddings and children ifornia coast and you look on NASA’s (he also has a Burning Man portfolio EOSDIS Worldview satellite, you can dating back to 1998), but his passion see a checkerboard of lines ahead of is cataloging and protesting “the global and on top of any storm coming in.” chemtrails program.” Mainstream scientists reject the Roddie runs a website, Stop “chemtrails conspiracy” — if they en- Mainstream America considers chemtrails Spraying Us - SF, helps admin a Face- tertain it at all. Ken Caldeira, a climate book group called California - Bay scientist at the Carnegie Institute for another crazy conspiracy theory, but activists in Area Residents Against Chemtrails/ Science at Stanford University who Geoengineering that has more than studies climate change, is barraged the Bay Area say the effects are real — and deadly. 2,000 members, manages a YouTube with chemtrails inquiries so often account that’s 200 videos strong (with that he created a pro forma response. most view counts in the low hun- “Please do not be one of these people dreds), leads small monthly rallies at with no scientific literacy and who City Hall and the Ferry Building, and believe stupid stuff they read on the travels widely to speak out against Internet,” reads a sample line. chemtrails. Roddie estimates that “I feel sorry for these people be- over the course of his three-year cause they have no real way of finding chemtrails activism career he’s burned out the truth for themselves. They and distributed more than 30,000 in- trust people who believe false things,” formational DVDs. Caldeira says. Last month, he raised $5,000 on R. John Hansman, Professor of GoFundMe to fly to Paris, where he Aeronautics & Astronautics at MIT, presented a paper to climate scientists offers a no-nonsense definition of about the health effects of geoengi- those lines in the sky: “[They] are neering. And this month, he addressed primarily water and are due to con- a public Environmental Protection densation of the jet exhaust when the Agency hearing in Washington about relative humidity is high in the upper the dangers of aircraft pollution. atmosphere.” >> p14

12 | AUGUST 20-26,2015 | LETTERS NEWS COVER STORY THE CALENDAR ARTS & CULTURE EAT MUSIC SFWEEKLY.COM Fear From Above from p12 She also mentions Morgellons, a nology. To me, those are the scariest young, only 25, so it’s hard to face this Tribune. On October 21, 2005, barely controversial condition — classified words I’ve ever heard in my life.” is your world.” two months after his story appeared, And the U.S. Air Force has also pub- by most physicians as a delusional Marsha Dawson, a North Bay Dawson first learned of chemtrails Dalton was fired, and the notice in the licly denied the existence of a chem- parasitosis — in which people devel- activist who works with Roddie and in February 2014. She had recently Tribune announcing his termination trails program. In the early aughts, the op sores they believe to be caused by Hall, agrees that chemtrails exact a retired as an administrative assistant, indicated that his wife, who sometimes agency’s website featured a notice de- parasites, insects, or invasive synthetic disastrous human toll. She says she and with spare time on her hands, contributed business articles to the pa- claring, “The Air Force is not conduct- fibers. In 2008, the Centers for Disease experiences “memory problems” and began sitting on her deck in Marin per, had also “been asked not to write ing any weather modification experi- Control and Prevention investigated lung pain because of her exposure. County. One day she noticed contrails anymore.” All mention of Dalton and ments or programs and has no plans Morgellons among patients in North- Dawson drinks Fiji and Volvic water runnelling across the sky. As Hall did his articles has since been scrubbed to do so in the future. The ‘chemtrail’ ern California, a hotbed of self-report- constantly because both contain silica three years before, Dawson turned to from the Tribune’s website. hoax has been investigated and refuted ed Morgellons diagnoses, and conclud- that, she claims, loosens the aluminum the Internet for answers. High Strangeness, a blog about by many established and accredited ed there was “no infectious cause and particles in her body. She also finds “That opened a door that I wish mysterious phenomena, posted an universities, scientific organizations, no evidence of an environmental link.” relief in black cherry bark syrup from many times I could close,” Dawson says. email purportedly sent by Dalton on and major media publications.” Hall is unconvinced. “All of us have Whole Foods. She joined Roddie’s Facebook November 18, 2005, in which he con- Nonetheless, Roddie has attracted a fibers in us because they spray them “I’ll call my daughter to warn her, group. And later that month, during a firmed his dismissal was unrelated to following of devout chemtrails believ- in the sky, and they’re all over the ‘It’s a heavy spray day, please don’t trip to the San Joaquin Valley, she says the chemtrails story. “I moved away ers in the Bay Area. Fifty-three-year ground, and they’re in the soil, and go outside,’” Dawson says. “And she she awoke in a little town to see planes from Las Vegas,” he wrote. But that old Val Hall is one of them. A landscape they’re in the water,” she says. “These doesn’t argue. She doesn’t want to spraying and chemtrails swelling like hasn’t dissuaded chemtrails believ- gardener from Richmond, Hall first fibers are self-replicating nanotech- talk about it, but she’ll say okay. She’s varicose veins across an ashen sky. ers from anointing him a martyr to learned of chemtrails from a young their cause. (As of press time, Dalton man who’d joined her work crew at a couldn’t be located, and neither his ex- job in Point Richmond in May 2006. wife nor the Las Vegas Tribune returned “While we were working, a jet put requests for comment.) a persistent contrail all the way across Roddie believes that whatever dark the sky, and the kid showed me,” Hall bureaucracy is behind the spraying says. “I’d never seen a jet put a line like program conditioned the public to that all the way across the sky in my accept chemtrails by foreshadowing life. Some of my crewmembers looked them in pop culture. He calls this “the at him and thought, ‘This guy’s crazy,’ revelation of the method,” a term pop- but I didn’t think he was crazy.” ularized by the revisionist historian The kid gave Hall a name for what (and Holocaust denier) Michael A. she’d witnessed — chemtrails — and Hoffmann. Roddie considers the body explained the various poisons strafing scanners in Total Recall an example people in the Bay Area. Hall never saw of how the government introduces the kid again after that day, but she provocative technology under the began watching the sky closely, and in guise of commercial entertainment. 2011 she went online to do her own re- “We’re living in a script,” Roddie search. That’s when she found Roddie. says. Hall echoes him, noting, “Life “I never wanted to be an activist in seems to be like a scary science fiction my life, but all of a sudden I had to be movie now.” an activist,” Hall says. She calls herself a “warrior for the deep blue sky,” an allusion to her childhood in the Bay PART II: Area when the sky was a lush, cinemat- ic blue instead of the “chalkboard” it SPECIAL REPORT NO. 142 is today. Hall now admins 15 different The chemtrails conspiracy sounds Facebook groups devoted to exposing like an extravagant X-Files episode, but chemtrails. so does the government’s history of She’s a valuable activist partly civilian defense experiments. The most because she claims to suffer health ef- haunting local example is the Army’s fects as a result of chemtrails. Hall has biological warfare trials in San Francis- Lyme Disease, for example, which she co in September 1950. says worsens on heavy spray days. (A According to the Army’s Special 2007 article in the New England Jour- James Hosking Report No. 142, drafted in 1951 but nal of Medicine disputed the existence unpublicized until the mid-1970s, the of chronic Lyme Disease and concluded (Top) Patrick Roddie on the roof of Army unleashed six “experimental that such a diagnosis “is a misnomer, his building in Lower Pac Heights. biological warfare attacks” upon the and the use of prolonged, dangerous, (Left) Roddie holds satellite Bay Area during one week in late Sep- and expensive antibiotic treatments imagery of contrails. tember 1950. for it is not warranted.”) As Leonard A. Cole writes in Clouds Hall says she protects herself as best To make matters worse, Dawson of Secrecy: The Army’s Germ Warfare she can, but as a gardener, she works believes there’s a media blackout Tests Over Populated Areas, the tests outside every day and is vulnerable. around chemtrails. The Weather consisted of “generating bacterial She no longer drives with her windows Channel, she says, is owned by the aerosols from a ship located at various down, she says, and she bought a water same corporation that holds pat- distances offshore.” The two bacterial filter to sift out impurities. Occasional- ents for weather control. (In reality, aerosols deployed — Bacillus globigii ly, she detoxes from the heavy metals The Weather Channel is owned by a and Serratia marcescens — were consid- in her blood by taking supplements consortium that is itself owned by ered nonpathogenic, so the Army didn’t such as chlorella, zeolite powder, and NBCUniversal, The Blackstone Group, bother to notify San Franciscans that bentonite clay. She also eats as much and Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital.) their city was being treated as a Petri cilantro as she can, which assuages me- She notes that the Marin Independent dish in the name of national security. tallic contamination, she claims. Journal and the San Francisco Chronicle Cole notes that everybody in San Rumors of sickness and bodily never publish stories about chemtrails. Francisco during that week in Sep- mutation run rampant through the Many activists contend that jour- tember 1950 inhaled 5,000 airborne chemtrails community. Hall mentions nalists who investigate the spraying particles per minute. In the days after a fellow activist who tested her dog’s program risk being blacklisted. A case the tests, 11 people came down with blood for heavy metals and discovered in point is Marcus K. Dalton, who in mysterious infections at the Stanford thorium, a radioactive element that August 2005 published a two-part Hospital in San Francisco. One of them has been used as nuclear fuel. story about chemtrails in the Las Vegas was 75-year-old Edward J. >> p16

14 | AUGUST 20-26,2015 | LETTERS NEWS COVER STORY THE CALENDAR ARTS & CULTURE EAT MUSIC SFWEEKLY.COM Fear From Above from p14 bune and the San Diego Reader to no avail. Like Roddie and his followers, Nevin, a pipefitter retired from PG&E. Herndon is convinced the media is col- Nevin had been in the hospital to have laborating on a chemtrails cover-up. his prostate removed, but in the first In June, Herndon published a week of October, he developed a sud- chemtrails paper in a minor Indian den fever. Doctors discovered Serratia journal called Current Science. In it, he marcescens in his urine culture. argued that chemtrails are coal fly ash, A month later, Nevin was dead. the toxic waste from coal-burning pow- An autopsy concluded that he’d er plants. Planes spray this into the died of bacterial endocarditis, or in- troposphere, Herndon wrote, hoping flammation of the heart. And while metallic particles in the ash will deflect Nevin’s infection was never conclu- sunlight and reduce global warming. sively traced back to the Army’s tests, “It’s all a beautiful idea if, number the fact that serratia infections had one, this stuff wasn’t toxic, and num- never been reported at the hospital ber two, they’re weren’t spraying it before raised suspicions. into the troposphere,” he says. The Army kept mum about its exper- The scope of the program Herndon iment, and it wasn’t until a Newsday re- envisions is mind-boggling. According porter uncovered Army memos in 1976 to him, the fly ash is transported on that the public learned of the secret railways that connect coal plants to germ tests. Nevin’s family sued the U.S. military and civilian airports across the government for $11 million in 1977, country. The ash is loaded onto a fleet arguing the Army’s test was unlawful of 1,000 or more planes, he estimates, and caused Nevin’s death. The family all of which fly off-the-radar, often at lost the trial. Judge Samuel Conti (an night, without transponders or flight appointee of Richard Nixon) ruled that plans. These ghost planes, Herndon the Army tests were part of national says, have poisoned the country and planning and thus exempt from prose- induced California’s drought. He alleges cution. Further, the Army had exercised that certain leafy plants in the Golden caution in selecting which aerosols to State now exhibit high concentrations disperse, Conti declared. Photographs by James Hosking of thallium — Saddam Hussein’s favor- The legacy of the 1950 germ test ite poison for political assassinations. — and the Nevin family’s trial — reso- (Top) Marsha Dawson watches the “It’ll end up destroying the agri- nates among contemporary chemtrails sky in San Francisco. culture or make a lot of people sick. activists. Wanttoknow.info, a website (Left) Dawson holds a chemtrails There’ll be a lot of neurological diseas- that documents alleged cover-ups, flyer. es,” Herndon says. features a prominent link to a 2001 He adds, “It’s also destroying some- Wall Street Journal article discussing Herndon was a postdoctoral stu- thing else: It’s destroying democracy.” the Nevin case. And imagery from the dent at UC San Diego from 1975 Herndon bristles at being labeled Army’s 1950 test is recycled in new through 1978, studying under chemist a “conspiracy theorist.” Like many be- fears of government malfeasance. Val and Nobel laureate Harold Urey. Hern- lievers, he’s wary of what he calls “the Hall, for example, claims that ships don claims that around the time he shills,” secret agents on the govern- trawl the ocean between Japan and the published his paper, the government ment payroll tasked with infiltrating West Coast, pumping deadly aerosols grants funding his research dried up and undermining activist groups. into the clouds. without explanation. He quotes from “Countering Crit- “I grew up in the Bay Area, and we “I realized then I had to make a icism of the Warren Commission Re- always had fog,” Hall says, “but it’s not decision,” Herndon says, “whether to port,” a 1967 CIA dispatch that explains the same fog anymore. The stuff that stay in the academic business and howl how to disarm conspiracy theorists: comes in now is gray and not very driz- with the wolves, or do it on my own.” zly. It seems full of chemicals.” Herndon went rogue, and since ...our ploy should point out, as ap- The 1950 San Francisco experiment his self-described “excommunication” plicable, that the critics are (I) wedded is only one of the secret civilian tests from academia, he’s lurked on the to theories adopted before the evi- the government conducted. In a 1977 fringes of accepted science. In 1993, he dence was in, (II) politically interested, Senate subcommittee hearing, the published a paper that theorized a gi- (III) financially interested, (IV) hasty Army disclosed that 239 biological field ant nuclear fission reactor at the center and inaccurate in their research, or (V) tests occurred in 66 locations between of the earth. And last year, he self-pub- infatuated with their own theories. 1941 and 1969. That most of these lished Herndon’s Earth and the Dark tests were top secret only strengthens Side of Science, a textbook-cum-mani- Roddie, too, is vigilant about outing activists’ conviction that Washington festo revealing the “malevolent politi- shills. His website links to a purported experiments on innocent people with cal agenda” that has hijacked science. “shill handbook,” part of which adapts impunity. If the government treated “Virtually every scientist thinks COINTELPRO techniques for the Inter- us like guinea pigs before, the thinking Whether that extends to spraying was born, or from his days as a Ph.D. [Herndon’s] theory is nonsense,” geo- net. (The FBI launched COINTELPRO goes, who’s to say they’re not doing the nerve gas over ballparks is debatable. student in nuclear chemistry at Texas physicist Gillian Foulger told the San in 1956 to subvert Communists in the same now? Roddie, weaned on the cynicism of A&M University. Scarcely five minutes Francisco Chronicle in 2004, referring U.S.; the program later expanded to “We could hire a helicopter, fill it Jello Biafra and the Dead Kennedys, into our phone call, he says he can’t to the idea of a nuclear reactor inside include the KKK, the Socialist Workers full of nerve gas, fly over wherever the has a stark view of society’s food chain: name the journal due to publish his the earth. Party, and the Black Panther Party.) Giants are playing, and gas everybody,” “The people who are most powerful latest chemtrails research because A year and a half ago, Herndon no- Per the handbook, one classic shill Roddie says. “As long as we call it re- will collaborate to screw everybody else “there are people who listen, if you un- ticed contrails above his house in San technique is topic dilution. search, it’s legal.” over. I can’t imagine another system derstand my drift.” Diego. “They shouldn’t have sprayed “By implementing continual and Roddie is referring to U.S. Code 50, that would work at a global level.” In 1979, Herndon published a paper that crap over my head,” he says, his non-related postings that distract and which outlines war and national secu- in the Proceedings of the Royal Society drawl dropping an octave into John disrupt (trolling) the forum readers rity protocol. Specifically, Section 2791 of London in which he argued that the Wayne parody. they are more effectively stopped from defines acceptable laboratory-directed PART III: earth’s inner core is composed of nickel Herndon emailed city officials in anything of any real productivity,” research and development as “work of silicide (most geologists believe the San Diego for answers, but the only re- the handbook states. In other words, a creative and innovative nature” that’s VIGILANTE SCIENCE inner core to be an iron-nickel alloy). sponse he got was from a lieutenant in Reddit flame wars could actually be Big undertaken “for the purpose of main- J. Marvin Herndon speaks with a According to Herndon, the idea was so SDPD internal affairs who called to see Brother trying to put the kibosh on taining the vitality of the laboratory in crunchy Southern drawl, perhaps a heretical that the scientific community if Herndon was “a nutcase.” Herndon citizen action. defense-related scientific disciplines.” relic from South Carolina where he wouldn’t acknowledge it. also contacted the San Diego Union-Tri- Roddie claims that during >> p18

16 | AUGUST 20-26,2015 | LETTERS NEWS COVER STORY THE CALENDAR ARTS & CULTURE EAT MUSIC SFWEEKLY.COM Fear From Above from p16 creased over the last 20 years because more airlines now fly local routes rath- the Iraq War, the government inundat- er than from hub city to hub city. ed domestic groups with undercover This isn’t accurate. The Wall Street agents. “They had agents in knitting Journal reported in July that U.S. air- groups,” he says. “And they were just lines have cut the number of domestic knitting! It wasn’t like Knitters Against flights nationwide. In fact, the reduc- the Iraq War.” (Which may not be as tion is so severe that the Justice De- implausible as it sounds. Tove Herman- partment is investigating whether “air- son, formerly of the Costume Society lines colluded to shrink flight schedules of America, wrote a paper in 2012 en- in unison so they could boost prices.” titled “Knitting as Dissent,” which out- Local routes have been hardest hit. lines knitting’s long political history.) Still, West makes a valid point: con- Herndon is unfazed by reports of firmation bias is real. “People don’t no- government intimidation. He says he tice things, don’t remember things, if recently submitted a paper about chem- they’re not paying attention to them,” trails to a peer-reviewed journal called he says. “If you ask people when they Environmental Health Perspectives, pub- first noticed chemtrails, a lot of them lished by the National Institute of Envi- will say it was within the last year or ronmental Health Sciences. The journal so.” (Herndon and Dawson both be- rejected the paper without comment. came aware of chemtrails in the last “I went back several times asking two years; Roddie has been involved in them for more detailed information, chemtrails activism for the last three.) and, of course, they had no legitimate West’s second argument is that the basis for rejecting it,” he says. He can DIY science behind chemtrails is bogus. only conclude that because NIEHS is a The presence of aluminum and other government agency, it can’t also be a contaminants in water and soil tests, chemtrails whistleblower. which chemtrails believers submit as In an email to SF Weekly, Jane Schro- proof of toxic spraying, is normal. eder, interim Editor-in-Chief of EHP, “In California, soil is about ten per- says that “the vast majority of papers ... cent aluminum,” West says. “So if you submitted to EHP are not accepted for take a pound of soil, about an ounce publication, so that fact that this paper and a half of that is going to be alumi- was rejected was not at all exceptional.” num, in the form of aluminum oxide, She adds that 70 percent of manu- so it’s like dust. The dust that’s in the scripts are rejected without peer review. air from the ground drying out and the Despite his distrust of government, wind blowing has a lot of aluminum Herndon once made a living from in it, so when it rains you see a lot of government contracts. His website aluminum in the rain.” — which recalls the Netscape era of He adds, “They’re testing dirt, fluorescent text and animated GIFs they’re finding stuff that’s in dirt, and — lists him as President and CEO of they’re finding it in about the concen- Transdyne Corporation in San Diego. trations you’d expect.” Herndon started Transdyne, a defense Indeed, a 2003 EPA report states contracting company that provides that “aluminum is the most commonly software management services, in occurring metallic element, com- 1981 to “keep the wolf from the door” prising eight percent of the earth’s while doing his own research. He says crust” and that the “typical range of he hasn’t sought government contracts aluminum in soils is from 1 percent to since the 1980s, although he’s still reg- 30 percent.” By this measure, the pres- istered with the government. ence of aluminum in rainwater, soil, or “Mostly, I do research and even plants would be uncontroversial development,” he says. “Sometimes, — except to chemtrails believers, who for example, a mining company will Courtesy of Patrick Roddie think the EPA is a clearinghouse for get in trouble and I’ll take over their ously, he suggests, and why politicos [had] always been a hobby.” City Hall on a “heavy spray day.” government propaganda. operations, change their technology, or in California aren’t scrambling to host He traces that hobby to a childhood West often advises would-be chem- fix their management to get them out townhalls about toxic spraying. infatuation with The Unexplained, earned many enemies in the chemtrails trails believers to seek information of trouble.” “When they can put toxic chemicals a short-lived British magazine that community, including Herndon, who offline. “If you show someone an If Herndon is evasive about Trans- in the air we breathe, there’s no free- investigated paranormal phenomena. accuses him of spreading “disinfor- old library book that’s dogeared and dyne’s relationship with the Defense dom,” Herndon says, sounding every As West matured, his interest shift- mation.” West, in turn, charges that stamped, then it’s more real, and people Department, he’s grandiloquent about bit his 71 years. “I’m worried that ed from strange phenomena to the Herndon’s research “doesn’t really say are less likely to think it’s fake,” he says. the threat chemtrails pose. He com- young people are just more interested pseudoscience behind them. He first anything at all.” Yet, West has been accused of print- pares the spraying program to the Ho- in video games.” learned of chemtrails while editing “Look, he’s the best qualified scien- ing dummy books and distributing locaust, both in terms of its barbarity Wikipedia articles, another of his tist the chemtrails community has right them via secondhand markets such and its ability to proceed unchecked. hobbies. Shortly after, he launched now,” West concedes, “but he’s been as eBay. He’s also been the target of But even Hitler, he says, never PART IV: Contrail Science to highlight the over- taken in by this [chemtrails] theory. All personal attacks on Twitter, Facebook, had the audacity to gas people with whelming “bad evidence” buoying the of the scientists in the world are in on and YouTube, some of which link him airplanes. THE DISINFORMATIONIST chemtrails conspiracy. this conspiracy except one guy: Marvin to The Illuminati, the secret cabal sup- “Something I’ve noticed over a life- Mick West is a retired video game “Pretty much one hundred percent Herndon. It doesn’t make sense.” posedly masterminding the world. time,” Herndon adds, “is that people consultant in California. He’s also a of people who believe in chemtrails will As West points out, the scope of “There was even an article about have an inherent resistance to change. shill, according to Herndon and Roddie. believe that 9/11 was an inside job and the program that Herndon suggests how I’m actually a Mossad agent,” There’s a chemical analog to that: Le West runs two blogs: Contrail the World Trade Center was pre-rigged would implicate every meteorologist, West laughs. “Somebody found one of Chatelier’s Principle. If you try to Science and Metabunk. The former with explosives,” West says. (In fact, airline pilot, and climate scientist in my photos that’s got some hills in the change one of the components of a re- refutes chemtrails, while the latter re- prior to becoming a chemtrails activist, the world, plus a significant chunk of background, which they say proves I’m action, the reaction operates to oppose futes chemtrails, 9/11 truthers, Char- Roddie was involved in We Are Change, the Pentagon, Congress, Cabinet, and from Jerusalem.” that change. Many people don’t receive lie Hebdo truthers, UFO chasers, and a “nonpartisan, independent media or- White House — and numerous other So far, the chemtrails movement new ideas very readily.” assorted other conspiracy theorists. ganization” that promotes the idea of a governments and industries worldwide. hasn’t recruited credible, mainstream This obstinance is why academia West began blogging in 2007 because 9/11 cover-up.) West is methodical in his refuta- spokespeople. As West says, Herndon doesn’t take Herndon’s research seri- “debunking and skeptical investigation West’s outspoken skepticism has tions. First, he says, contrails have in- is perhaps their leading scientific ally,

18 | AUGUST 20-26,2015 | LETTERS NEWS COVER STORY THE CALENDAR ARTS & CULTURE EAT MUSIC SFWEEKLY.COM Courtesy of Patrick Roddie but his decades-long ostracism from A chemtrails rally at the Ferry academia is a liability. Most other Building. chemtrails “experts” are also estranged from whatever agency or university mento and D.C. However, Supervisor would lend them authority. An August Bill Schappel cautioned his colleagues 14 “chemtrails education event” in against relying on federal studies. Redding, for example, featured tes- “Any federal information will be timony from a former California Fish skewed. We need a local study, then and Game biologist, a former US Forest take the results to the feds and say, Service biologist, a former US Depart- ‘What about this?’” he said. ment of Agriculture farm specialist, Whether this represents a break- a former defense industry technician, through for the chemtrails movement, and a US Navy veteran. or just a moment of fleeting paranoia “I’m constantly second guessing if among the bigwigs in rural, conserva- I’m effective on a larger scale,” West tive Shasta County, remains to be seen. says, “but my work doesn’t just help Roddie, Hall, Dawson, and Herndon people get out of the rabbit hole, it agree that the spraying program is so helps [them] from falling into it in the vast, and the cover-up so entrenched, first place.” that progress is best measured in spoonfuls, like bitter medicine. Watching the sky from his sixth- PART V: floor apartment in San Francisco, Rod- die recites a parable that illustrates the THE SCORPION position he and his followers are in: AND THE FROG Once upon a time, a frog and a scorpion sat on a riverbank, watching Redding is an auspicious setting for a grassfire burn towards them. The a chemtrails event. Last year, Shasta terrified scorpion asked the frog, “Can County, of which Redding is the coun- I hitch a ride on your back across the ty seat, became one of the few local water?” governments in the nation to not only “No,” the frog said, “you’re a scorpi- hold a public hearing on chemtrails, on. You’ll sting me.” but to unanimously approve investi- “No, no, I swear I won’t,” the scorpi- gating them further. on said. “My life is in danger.” In a record turnout, more than 400 The frog and the scorpion haggled concerned citizens crammed in front as the fire inched closer. Finally, feeling of the county Board of Supervisors heat from the flames, the frog agreed to hear testimony about chemtrails’ to ferry the scorpion across the water. deleterious effects. One by one, activ- “But remember, you promised not to ists — including an airline pilot, a neu- sting me,” he told his passenger. rologist, and an attorney — delivered They jumped into the river and earnest speeches about the horror un- swam to the other side, to safety. As folding above us. Rather than applaud, soon as they made landfall, the scorpi- audience members were instructed to on hopped off and stung the frog. signal their support by waving their “What did you expect?” he asked. hands in the air, evoking a roomful of “I’m a scorpion.” people politely drowning. Like the frog, Roddie and his fol- “How did Monsanto know to create lowers just want to save people, but aluminum-resistant plants?” an activ- they feel they’re up against the scorpi- ist named Allan Buckmann asked, to ons of the world. appreciative nods. “Getting this published without At the end of the hour-long meet- making me look crazy is going to be ing, the supervisors voted to evaluate difficult,” Roddie says, then adds, “If Shasta County’s current monitoring you see me on television, know that program and to forward the video- I’ve been gotten to.” taped testimony to officials in Sacra-

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