Page 190 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

gets, and dispersing bomb plumes in case of an attack on our own cities. In his
view, waging weather warfare by producing both droughts and floods was well
within the realm of possibility. 21
Because of the terrifying implications of the new technology, Senator Clinton
P. Anderson (D-New Mexico) proposed federal regulation of rainmaking and
related weather activities and introduced a bill in 1951 to provide for studies of the
possible use of weather control in military operations. The Department of Defense
viewed this idea as a threat to its autonomy and categorically opposed any new
laws or agencies. In this, the department found strong support from the Ameri-
can Meteorological Society and the U.S. Weather Bureau. Meteorologist Horace
Byers pointed out how unfortunate the analogy between weather modification
and atomic weapons was at the time, since the weather bureau “was in the midst
of a difficult task of assuring the public that atomic explosions were not changing
22
and could not change large-scale weather.” As the agency responsible for guiding
public policy in such matters, “it was forced into the unpleasant position of trying
to restrain Langmuir who, because of his high standing in the scientific commu-
nity, had strong support from scientists and the general public alike” (13).

military research
Cloud-seeding technology seemed to have such great military potential that, at
the urging of Langmuir and Teller, Vannevar Bush, an MIT-trained engineer and
a Washington insider, brought the issue to the attention of Secretary of Defense
George C. Marshall and General omar Bradley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff. This was in 1951. Bradley immediately convened a “cushion committee” con-
sisting of an admiral, a general, and weather bureau chief Francis Reichelderfer,
which in turn appointed the special scientific Ad Hoc Committee on Artificial
Cloud Nucleation (ACN), chaired by meteorologist Sverre Petterssen, direc-
tor of scientific weather services for the U.S. Air Force. In his memoirs, Petters-
sen referred to the ACN as an innocuous-sounding name “that did not suggest
23
interest in secret weapons.” To add camouflage (Petterssen’s words), Dr. Alan T.
Waterman, director of the NSF, was appointed a member.
At the direction of General Bradley, and with the hope that a secret weapon
might emerge from this technology, Petterssen’s ACN conducted a brief sur-
vey of the state of the field and recommended a program of technology devel-
opment and statistically controlled experiments “to clarify major uncertain-
24
ties.” The U.S. Air Force, working with the University of Chicago, tried

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