4.7 KiB
| created | updated | title | tags | description | category | summary | start | location | relations | |||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-07-23 | 2026-10-08 | Project Pandora |
|
Project Pandora was a classified U.S. research program initiated by ARPA to duplicate the effects of the Moscow Signal and study the biological effects of microwave radiation. | Intelligence Operation | Project Pandora was a classified program of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (now DARPA), run from 1965 to March 1970, that irradiated primates to duplicate the Soviet Moscow Signal aimed at the U.S. Embassy. | 1965 | Walter Reed Army Institute of Research |
|
Project Pandora was a classified U.S. research program initiated by DARPA (now DARPA) in response to the Moscow Signal, a microwave beam directed at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow by the Soviet Union. The project's primary goal was to duplicate the effects of the Moscow Signal and study the biological effects of microwave radiation.1
Scientists with Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory were assigned to oversee the research. Experiments were conducted inside an anechoic chamber at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, where primates were irradiated with microwave beams similar to the Moscow Signal. Richard S. Cesaro, in charge of Project Pandora, became convinced of the harmful nature of the signal, believing it adversely affected the internal organs of primates, including the brain, and could cause Alzheimer's disease.1
In 1969, Project Pandora was quietly expanded to include human subjects, with highly classified studies code-named Big Boy and Project Bizarre projecting microwave beams at unwitting sailors stationed in the Philadelphia Naval Yard. These experiments remained secret for seven years.1
The 1967 Bizarre memorandum
A memorandum of September 27, 1967, ARPA-AS-TS-67-20, "Project BIZARRE," from the agency's acting director of Advanced Sensors, Richard S. Cesaro, to the Director of Defense Research and Engineering, reports that the central nervous system of primates "was disrupted directly or indirectly" after exposure to low-level modulated S band microwave radiation for periods between 10 and 19 days, and that unmodulated radiation at the same level did not disrupt it for test periods up to 30 days. It states that "The ARPA BIZARRE program will establish methods which should permit us to relate the behavior of sub-human primates to man under conditions of microwave exposure. This may require direct testing with humans under controlled conditions." It concludes: "The potential of exerting a degree of control on human behavior by low level selectively modulated microwave radiation should be investigated for potential weapon applications."2
Classification, cost and termination
A DARPA letter of September 15, 1977 to Senator Warren G. Magnuson, chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, answering his letter of August 12, states that Pandora was classified at the direction of the Department of State and the United States Intelligence Board "because of the sensitivity of the radiation problem of the United States Embassy in Moscow at that time." It gives the total cost as $4,615,000, and states that "Project Pandora was terminated by DARPA in March 1970 and all assets were transferred to Walter Reed Army Institute for Research (WRAIR) for disposition." It states that "classification of Project Pandora was a foreign relation rather than a national security matter," that DARPA is "not aware of any research projects, classified or unclassified, conducted under the auspices of the Defense Department" that probed microwave radiation as a form of "mind control," and that with the exception of Pandora the agency "has not sponsored any research projects, either classified or unclassified, on the biological or behavioral effects of non-ionizing radiation."3
Footnotes
-
Jacobsen, Annie. Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis. Little, Brown and Company, 2017. ↩︎
-
ARPA memorandum ARPA-AS-TS-67-20, "Project BIZARRE," September 27, 1967, signed Richard S. Cesaro, Acting Director, Advanced Sensors, declassified copy, National Security Archive. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/rhwvuj-tzy4b/08.pdf ↩︎
-
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, letter to Senator Warren G. Magnuson, September 15, 1977, National Security Archive. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/rhwvuj-tzy4b/14.pdf ↩︎