FTR#1308 Interview with Dean McLeod and Peter Vogel About Port Chicago (A Reprise of FTR#605 Because of the Interest Generated by the Movie “Oppenheimer”)

Revis­it­ing a sub­ject Mr. Emory has researched for years, this pro­gram sup­ple­ments Peter Vogel’s hero­ic research on the Port Chica­go explo­sion of July 17th of 1944. For decades, Peter has researched that event, devel­op­ing a com­pelling body of evi­dence that the explo­sion was actu­al­ly the test of an ear­ly atom­ic bomb—the Mark II. (Peter’s research is avail­able in an online book: The Last Wave from Port Chica­go.) In this broad­cast, author Dean McLeod, whose book Images of Amer­i­ca: Port Chica­go is due for release on 9/15/2007, joins him. (An advance look at the con­tents of his book, includ­ing some very impor­tant doc­u­ments that com­ple­ment and rein­force Peter’s work on the explo­sion, are avail­able on DEAN’S WEBSITE.) After a syn­op­sis of the Port Chica­go explo­sion, inves­ti­ga­tion and mutiny, Dean sum­ma­rizes the his­to­ry of the town of Port Chica­go, includ­ing the fact that the town was relo­cat­ed in its entire­ty dur­ing the Viet­nam War, in order (osten­si­bly) to safe­guard the res­i­dents in the event of a future explo­sion like the one at Port Chica­go. Dean notes that, dur­ing the Cold War, Port Chica­go became a major trans­ship­ment point for nuclear weapons bound for the Pacif­ic the­ater. The sec­ond half of the pro­gram sum­ma­rizes Peter’s inves­ti­ga­tion into the explo­sion itself and the evi­dence that the blast was a test of an atom­ic bomb. Dean presents doc­u­ments that he has uncov­ered which strong­ly rein­force Peter’s argu­ment.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The neg­a­tive reac­tions of Edward Teller (father of the H‑bomb) and Don­ald Kerr (direc­tor of Los Alam­os Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry) to Peter’s inquiries about Port Chica­go; the tremen­dous inter­est of the Los Alam­os Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry in this (sup­pos­ed­ly con­ven­tion­al) explo­sion; the back­ground of Cap­tain William Par­sons (the point man for the Los Alam­os research on Port Chica­go); Par­sons’ role as bomb­ing offi­cer aboard the Eno­la Gay—the plane that dropped the first atom­ic bomb on Hiroshi­ma; the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the explo­sion that pin­point it as being a nuclear fis­sion blast; an August, 1944 mem­o­ran­dum con­grat­u­lat­ing par­tic­i­pants in the inves­ti­ga­tion for advanc­ing a “high­ly clas­si­fied and urgent project.” It is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine that the inves­ti­ga­tion of the explo­sion of an ammu­ni­tion ship would be con­sid­ered “high­ly clas­si­fied and urgent!”

Latest Patreon Talks: Port Chicago; Philippines History; JFK Assassination Suit; Operation Northwoods

In addi­tion to peri­od­ic appear­ances by oth­er researchers and authors on the Zoom Q & A talks, Mr. Emory’s Patre­on site has cov­ered the deep polit­i­cal his­to­ry of the Philip­pines, the Port Chica­go explo­sion, the law­suit against the Biden admin­is­tra­tion to force the release of doc­u­ments about the JFK assas­si­na­tion, pos­si­ble false flag in Ukraine pri­or to the U.S. midterms. Ukrain­ian tele­vi­sion anchor quotes Adolf Eich­mann ver­ba­tim in this video from UKRAINE 24. This video of Ukraine’s top mil­i­tary med­ical offi­cer dis­cussing an order to cas­trate Russ­ian males is an eye-open­er. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.

Do Black Lives Matter at Port Chicago?

In Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M23, we explored Peter Vogel’s hypoth­e­sis that the July 17, 1944 explo­sion of the ammu­ni­tion ship E.A. Bryan was the det­o­na­tion of an atom­ic bomb. In FTR #444, Peter sup­ple­ment­ed his research, devel­op­ing infor­ma­tion that the Port Chica­go explo­sion was a test of an ear­ly atom­ic weapon–the auto­cat­alyt­ic ura­ni­um hydride lat­er­al implo­sion exper­i­men­tal device—named the Mark II. (His­to­ri­ans of the atom­ic era have often won­dered why the Hiroshi­ma weapon–“Little Boy”–was clas­si­fied as the Mark I, while the Nagasa­ki weapon–“Fat Man”–was the Mark III. Peter’s dis­cov­ery explains the “absence” of the Mark II from the record.) Sub­se­quent­ly, he and author Dean McLeod sup­ple­ment­ed that work, fur­ther rein­forc­ing the hypoth­e­sis that Port Chica­go was the test of the Mark 2. Peter’s work has also been sum­ma­rized in a book. To date, we have heard no com­men­tary on the delib­er­ate sac­ri­fice of the lives of scores of African-Amer­i­can sailors.

“They Are All Bound on The Wheel . . . .” Reflections on The Death of George Floyd and Its Aftermath

My feel­ings about the George Floyd killing and its after­math are best expressed in a poem I have read on a num­ber of pro­grams. In FTR #46, I detailed the assas­si­na­tion of Mar­tin Luther King. The research in FTR #46, in turn, updat­ed infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed on the 17th anniver­sary of the assas­si­na­tion of Dr. King more than a decade ear­li­er. Two years ago, when doing ten hours of pro­gram­ming about Dr. King’s mur­der on the 50th anniver­sary of that event, I was struck by the utter pas­siv­i­ty and silence, not just on the part of the main­stream media, but on the part of the African-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty, as well as the so-called “pro­gres­sive sec­tor.” How can peo­ple who have acqui­esced in the cold-blood­ed assas­si­na­tion of Amer­i­ca’s most promi­nent civ­il rights leader at the hands of pow­er­ful ele­ments of gov­ern­ment man­i­fest sur­prise or out­rage at Floy­d’s death? Per­haps it is because “They are all bound on the wheel . . . .”

Blast from the Past: Reagan, George H.W. Bush Administrations Aided Secret Japanese Nuclear Weapons Program

Rea­gan, Bush I admin­is­tra­tions secret­ly armed Japan with weapons-grade plu­to­ni­um. Space explo­ration projects a cov­er for Japan­ese nuclear arms devel­op­ment. How far do these ten­ta­cles reach?

FTR #163 Interview with Peter Vogel: Update on Port Chicago

Peter Vogel high­lights the issue of resid­ual radi­a­tion at the Port Chica­go site.

FTR #129 Interview with Peter Vogel

Lis­ten: MP3 Side 1 | Side 2 Much has been writ­ten and said about the devel­op­ment of nuclear weapons. Per­haps the most intrigu­ing chap­ter in the devel­op­ment of the bomb was revealed by researcher Peter Vogel, who devel­oped com­pelling infor­ma­tion that the 1944 explo­sion of an ammu­ni­tion ship was, in fact, the explo­sion and prob­a­ble […]