vault backup: 2026-09-23 21:00:44

60 - PLACES/CITIES/Baton Rouge, Louisiana.md

@@ -1,9 +1,11 @@
----
+---
 category: "City"
 tags:
   - geography
   - contra-war
 summary: Baton Rouge, Louisiana was the base of CIA-DEA contract agent Barry Seal, whose farm served as a cocaine drop site connected to both the Medellín cartel and Contra supply operations.
+alias:
+  - "Baton Rouge"
 ---
 [[Baton Rouge]], Louisiana was the base of [[Central Intelligence Agency]]-[[DEA]] contract agent [[Barry Seal]], whose farm served as a [[Cocaine]] drop site connected to both the [[Medellin Cartel|Medellín Cartel]] and Contra supply operations. Seal moved from Baton Rouge to Mena, [[Arkansas]], in 1982, but his Louisiana connections remained central to the drug trafficking network.[^1]
 

60 - PLACES/CITIES/Fort Lauderdale.md

@@ -1,9 +1,11 @@
----
+---
 category: "City"
 tags:
   - geography
   - contra-war
 summary: Fort Lauderdale, Florida was where George Morales had his offices and where Contra representatives approached him to contribute to the war effort.
+alias:
+  - "Fort Lauderdale, Florida"
 ---
 Fort Lauderdale, [[Florida]] was where [[George Morales]] had his offices and where Contra representatives approached him to contribute to the war effort. [[Marcos Aguado]] and [[Felipe Vidal]] met with Morales at his Fort Lauderdale offices and asked him to contribute to [[Eden Pastora|Pastora]]'s army.[^1]
 

60 - PLACES/MILITARY_INSTALLATIONS/Aberdeen Proving Ground.md

@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
+---
+category: "Military Installation"
+tags:
+  - Place
+  - USArmy
+  - Maryland
+  - EdgewoodArsenal
+  - ChemicalWarfare
+  - GrillFlame
+  - ENIAC
+alias:
+  - APG
+summary: "The Army's oldest proving ground, on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland since 1917, which absorbed Edgewood Arsenal in 1971 and housed the Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity's Grill Flame trials."
+start: 1917-10-20
+location: "Maryland"
+relations:
+  - type: owned
+    with: "[[U.S. Army]]"
+    reverse: true
+    start: 1917-10-20
+    fn: 1
+created: 2026-09-24
+updated: 2026-09-24
+---
+
+Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) is the [[U.S. Army]]'s oldest proving ground, on the western shore of the [[Chesapeake Bay]] near the city of [[Aberdeen, Maryland|Aberdeen]], [[Maryland]]. After the [[United States]] entered [[World War I]] in April 1917 the Army needed a larger and less populated testing site than [[Sandy Hook Proving Ground]] at Fort Hancock, [[New Jersey]]. "It took an act of Congress and two presidential proclamations, providing financial compensation for the 35,000 acres of upland and 34,000 acres of swamp and tidal lands, to persuade the farmers to leave their property." The government took formal possession on October 20, 1917, and from January 1918 the post proof-tested field artillery, ammunition, trench mortars, air defense guns and railway artillery.[^1]
+
+### Ballistics and the laboratories
+
+After the war the post's mission shifted to research and development of munitions: powders, projectiles, bombs, and interior and exterior ballistics. [[Phillips Army Air Field]], named for the post's second commander, served aircraft that supported the preparation of bombing tables. Building 328 was completed in 1941 for the new [[Ballistic Research Laboratory]] (BRL). Seven thousand acres were added in 1942 and 1,800 more with the acquisition of Spesutie Island in 1945. Wartime strength peaked at 27,185 military personnel and 5,479 civilians. The post credits its wartime work with the [[ENIAC]] (the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator), the [[Bazooka]] and "the first system-wide practical applications of Statistical Quality Control." The [[Human Engineering Laboratory]] was established there in 1952, and in the 1950s and early 1960s the BRL took up electronic computers, space study and satellite tracking. The [[Test and Evaluation Command]] (TECOM), created at APG in 1962, managed ten test installations and activities across the country.[^1]
+
+The [[Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity]] (AMSAA) was formed at APG in 1968 from the BRL's Weapon Systems Laboratory as a separate reporting activity of the [[Army Materiel Command]].[^2] In the late 1960s the post was home to the Decision Information Distribution System of the Army's Office of Civil Defense, designed to warn the public of a nuclear attack, and in the early 1970s it tested [[NASA]]'s Lunar Roving Vehicle.[^1]
+
+### Edgewood Arsenal
+
+"A significant change was made on July 1, 1971, when [[Edgewood Arsenal]], the former chemical center and current chemical research and engineering center for the U.S. Army, was merged into APG. From this point on, APG was the common identifier for both areas."[^1] [[Martin A. Lee]] and [[Bruce Shlain]] wrote that the [[Army Chemical Corps]] tests of [[LSD]], code-designated EA-1729, took place at Aberdeen Proving Ground, [[Fort Benning]], [[Fort Leavenworth]], [[Dugway Proving Ground]] and Edgewood Arsenal as well as in war games at [[Fort Bragg]], with nearly 1,500 military personnel tested by the mid-1960s.[^3] The Army's chemical demilitarization program was activated at APG in 1986, and in 1994 the storage of chemical agent and munitions at APG passed from TECOM to the Chemical Biological Defense Command.[^1]
+
+### Grill Flame
+
+In 1978 and 1979 AMSAA ran twenty sessions of its own at APG to test "confirmation and/or rejection of the SRI remote viewing protocol" of [[Stanford Research Institute]], reporting that "our replication of the protocol did not result in statistical significance."[^4] [[John Kramar]], who had moved with his parents to Edgewood at fourteen, was chief of AMSAA's Ground Warfare Division and its Grill Flame project officer.[^5] Major [[Murray Watt]] and Lieutenant [[Frederick Atwater]] of [[United States Army Intelligence and Security Command|INSCOM]] visited AMSAA at Aberdeen on January 12, 1979.[^6] The [[Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee]] recommended in December 1979 that "the current AMSAA effort should also be terminated."[^7]
+
+### Later reorganizations
+
+In 1992 the Laboratory Command at [[Adelphi, Maryland]], was redesignated the [[Army Research Laboratory]], and the BRL and the Human Engineering Laboratory were renamed and transferred to it. The Combat Systems Test Activity became the Aberdeen Test Center in 1995. The [[Research, Development and Engineering Command]] (RDECOM), created in 2004, took in the Army Research Laboratory, AMSAA, the [[Edgewood Chemical Biological Center]] and the RDECOM Acquisition Center. Under the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure law, [[Fort Monmouth]] closed and its command, control, communications, computers, intelligence and reconnaissance organizations moved to APG with others from [[Fort Belvoir]], [[Redstone Arsenal]] and [[Fort Huachuca]]; the [[Army Test and Evaluation Command]], the [[Defense Threat Reduction Agency]], the [[Walter Reed Army Institute of Research]] and the [[Army Research Institute]] also moved there, while the Ordnance Center and Schools went to [[Fort Lee]]. The realignment was completed by September 2011. The post describes itself as the Defense Department's center of excellence for C4ISR, chemical and biological defense, research and development, test and evaluation, public health and personnel security investigation, with more than 18,000 civilians and soldiers.[^1]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: U.S. Army Aberdeen Proving Ground, "History," home.army.mil, page last modified October 10, 2018. https://home.army.mil/apg/about/history
+[^2]: U.S. Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity, "History," amsaa.army.mil, archived November 23, 2016. http://web.archive.org/web/20161123141731/https://www.amsaa.army.mil/History.html
+[^3]: Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, *Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond*. Grove Press, 1985. Chapters 1 and 2.
+[^4]: US Army Intelligence and Security Command, "The US Army's Interest in Psychoenergetics," undated, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100370005-6; US Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity, "Project Grill Flame AMSAA Phase I Efforts," Interim Note No. 15, July 1979, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100080005-8. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
+[^5]: "John Winston Kramar," obituary, McComas Family Funeral Homes, January 20, 2026. https://www.mccomasfuneralhome.com/obituaries/john-kramar; Kramar, John W., AMSAA Grill Flame Project Officer, memorandum for record, "Scientific Evaluation Committee (SEC) GRILL FLAME Report, Dated November 1979," February 13, 1980, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230026-7. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
+[^6]: US Army Intelligence and Security Command, "INSCOM Project Grill Flame: Progress Report #1," February 21, 1979, with enclosures, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100070001-3. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
+[^7]: *Report by the Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee,* December 1979, Manfred Gale, chairman, CIA-RDP96-00788R001300120001-5. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.

60 - PLACES/MILITARY_INSTALLATIONS/Camp Peary.md

@@ -0,0 +1,64 @@
+---
+category: "Military Installation"
+tags:
+  - Place
+  - CIA
+  - Virginia
+  - Seabees
+  - YuriNosenko
+  - Counterintelligence
+alias:
+  - Armed Forces Experimental Training Activity
+  - AFETA
+summary: "Navy Seabee training camp on the York River near Williamsburg, Virginia, established in 1942, reopened in 1952 as the Defense Department's Armed Forces Experimental Training Activity and known locally as a CIA training camp."
+start: 1942-11-04
+location: "York County, Virginia"
+relations:
+  - type: owned
+    with: "[[U.S. Navy]]"
+    reverse: true
+    role: "Seabee training center"
+    start: 1942-11-04
+    end: 1944-06-10
+    fn: 1
+  - type: owned
+    with: "[[Department of Defense]]"
+    reverse: true
+    role: "Armed Forces Experimental Training Activity"
+    start: 1952-01-22
+    fn: 2
+  - type: employed_by
+    with: "[[Philip R. Houston]]"
+    reverse: true
+    role: "security chief and spokesman"
+    fn: 2
+created: 2026-09-24
+updated: 2026-09-24
+---
+
+Camp Peary is a closed government installation on the [[York River]] in [[York County, Virginia]], near [[Williamsburg, Virginia|Williamsburg]]. It was built in the Second World War as a training center for the [[Seabees]], the Navy's construction battalions, and has been since 1952 the Defense Department's Armed Forces Experimental Training Activity, a facility that local residents have long taken to be one of the [[Central Intelligence Agency]]'s main training camps.[^1][^2]
+
+### Seabee training center
+
+By August 1942 the Navy judged its Seabee camps Allen, Bradford and Endicott too small for the expanding force, and it decided "to build a new camp on the York River, near Williamsburg, Va., to house 50,000 men. This vast training activity was officially established on November 4, 1942, and was called Camp Peary in honor of Rear Admiral [[Robert E. Peary]], CEC officer of polar-expedition fame." The camp covered about 11,000 acres, with an administrative area, four regimental areas of ten battalions each and an officers' training area. Through 1943 and the first half of 1944 Seabee recruits received their primary training there before technical training at Camp Endicott; officer training moved to Camp Peary when the Naval Construction Training Center at [[Norfolk, Virginia|Norfolk]] was disestablished.[^1]
+
+Special stevedoring battalions, recruited from the country's steamship and stevedore companies, trained at a stevedore school at the camp on a mock Liberty ship built on dry ground; the mock-up was later moved to Davisville. A demolition unit practiced landing operations at the camp, and many of the construction detachments sent to relieve or reinforce battalions in the field were formed there. "Due to decreases in recruiting, Camp Peary was abandoned as a Seabee training center on June 10, 1944," and all Seabee training passed to Camp Endicott.[^1]
+
+### Armed Forces Experimental Training Activity
+
+Camp Peary reopened in 1952. Press inquiries were for years referred among Defense Department offices until a spokesman read a statement, "or something similar": "The unit there is the Armed Forces Experimental Training Facility. It was established 22 January 1952. Its mission is to provide DoD-designated classified and closed training facilities to develop prototype training programs for military and civilian elements of the federal government." An environmental impact report dated April 1993 gave its area as about 9,275 acres, 8,000 of them unimproved or partly improved, and described its principal function as "a training and exercise facility to the combined Armed Forces," requiring "an austere environment for all Administration and Training Facilities." A new 9 million dollar training school was finished in February 1991, and a 5.2 million dollar, 105-room dormitory was planned at Powell Lake near the river. Construction and major maintenance over five years came to more than 15.7 million dollars, including 943,000 dollars to repave its restricted-access airport, with the work overseen by the Atlantic Division of the [[Naval Facilities Engineering Command]].[^2]
+
+The Associated Press reported in 1994 that Camp Peary, "referred to on area maps as a Navy or a Defense Department installation," "for years has been accepted by locals as one of the CIA's main training camps." Its security chief and spokesman, [[Philip R. Houston]], answered a written request for comment: "We appreciate your interest in Camp Peary, but hope you understand that due to the classified nature of our role in national defense, we cannot be more forthcoming with details of our mission."[^2]
+
+### Yuri Nosenko
+
+[[John D. Marks]] placed the confinement of the Soviet defector [[Yuri Nosenko]], from April 1964 to October 1967, in a specially constructed cell at Camp Peary, on the judgment of [[James Jesus Angleton]] and the defector [[Anatoliy Golitsyn]] that Nosenko was a false defector sent to mislead the [[Warren Commission]].[^3] [[John Clement Hart]], a CIA officer who had retired in 1972 and studied the Nosenko case from mid-June to late December 1976, testified to the [[HSCA|House Select Committee on Assassinations]] on September 15, 1978, as the Agency's official representative, on guidance from [[Director of Central Intelligence]] [[Stansfield Turner]], that Nosenko "remained in solitary confinement, under constant visual observation, until, if my memory serves me correctly, August 1967. There was a change of the location, but that bore no particular significance because he was treated approximately the same way in both locations."[^4]
+
+Hart testified that the conditions were modeled on the confinement of the American professor [[Frederick Barghoorn]] in Moscow in 1963: the original plan for the cell provided no heat, a boarded window and "one 60-watt bulb burning all night," with rising at six and bed at ten, and a diet of weak tea, porridge, watery soup and macaroni. Nosenko "was incarcerated for 1,277 days, on only 292 days was he in part questioned"; for 77 percent of the time "he was left entirely unoccupied." On August 23, 1966, Director [[Richard Helms]] "set a limit of 60 days" to resolve the case; in September 1966 he refused a proposal to interrogate Nosenko under sodium amytal, and a second polygraph series followed from October 19 to 28, 1966. Hart read to the committee a document, mostly in the handwriting of the deputy chief of the Soviet Bloc Division, on the aims of the 1966 polygraphs: "To gain more insight into points of detail which we could use in fabricating an ostensible Nosenko confession, insofar as we could make one consistent and believable even to the Soviets, a confession would be useful in any eventual disposal of Nosenko." Helms then took the case from the Soviet Bloc Division and the Counterintelligence Staff and gave it to his deputy, Admiral [[Rufus Taylor]], who brought in the [[CIA Office of Security|Office of Security]].[^4] Its officer [[Bruce Solie]] re-examined the case and concluded that the defection was genuine.[^3]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: United States Bureau of Yards and Docks, *Building the Navy's Bases in World War II: History of the Bureau of Yards and Docks and the Civil Engineer Corps, 1940-1946,* vol. 1, ch. 6. Government Printing Office, 1947. HyperWar Foundation transcription. https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/Building_Bases/bases-6.html
+[^2]: Associated Press, "Expansion Plans Permit Small Peek into Secretive Camp Peary," *The Virginian-Pilot,* September 5, 1994, p. B5. https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/VA-Pilot/issues/1994/vp940905/09050031.htm
+[^3]: John D. Marks, *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate*. Times Books, 1979, Chapters 8 and 11.
+[^4]: House Select Committee on Assassinations, *Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: Hearings,* vol. II, testimony of John Clement Hart, September 15, 1978, pp. 487-504. https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol2/pdf/HSCA_Vol2_0915_3_Hart.pdf

60 - PLACES/MILITARY_INSTALLATIONS/Los Alamos.md

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
----
+---
 category: "Military Installation"
 tags:
   - MilitaryInstallation
@@ -6,10 +6,12 @@ tags:
   - CIA
   - Intelligence
   - Espionage
-summary: "Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is the birthplace of the atomic bomb (Manhattan Project) and remains one of the primary U.S. nuclear weapons design facilities; it appears in this vault through nuclear intelligence subjects, espionage cases, and figures who worked at the lab and appear in Cold War intelligence contexts."
+summary: "Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where the Manhattan Project built the first atomic bomb, and one of the primary U.S. nuclear weapons design facilities."
 created: 2026-05-14
 updated: 2026-05-14
 location: "Los Alamos, New Mexico, United States"
+alias:
+  - "Los Alamos National Laboratory"
 ---
 
 Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory located on a mesa in the Jemez Mountains of northern [[New Mexico]], approximately 35 miles northwest of [[Santa Fe]]. Established as the Manhattan Project's weapons design laboratory (Project Y) in 1943 under scientific director J. Robert Oppenheimer, Los Alamos designed and built the first nuclear weapons, including "Little Boy" (uranium gun-type) and "Fat Man" (plutonium implosion) that were used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The laboratory continues to design and certify nuclear weapons for the U.S. stockpile.[^1]