NASA

I once held a SECRET Clearance

/ Doreen Stratton / 10 Comments

During the mid-1960s I was employed at Explosive Technology (ET) an R&D company in Fairfield, California with Security-based contracts awarded from NASA and the Department of Defense. ET, designated as a SECRET facility, was located on the grounds of a dismantled Nike missile station. Employees were either granted SECRET or CONFIDENTIAL Clearances.

My SECRET Clearance included responsibility as Assistant Security Officer, protecting the CONFIDENTIAL and SECRET documents secured in a combination-locked single drawer filing cabinet next to my desk. A cardboard sleeve with the word LOCKED rested in the cabinet’s handle and if the cabinet was not locked, on the other side of the card, was the word OPENED. I was authorized to record the names of employees (also with clearances) whenever they requested access to any document. Each document inside the cabinet was listed in a log with a number that tracked the activity of any specific document when handled and/or read by a cleared employee.

On occasion we were visited by a DOD Security Inspector who would review my log’s register or question me about anything pertaining to the classified documents under ET’s control. We were not authorized to declassify any document; however on some visits the Inspector ordered me to declassify an item which he then instructed me to burn and record its demise next to its title in the register.

If I had ever left a classified document on my desk, I would’ve been fired on the spot!

A FAILED KINGMAKER

Yesterday, August 3 #TFG appeared in US Federal Court, Washington, DC. Also yesterday I finished reading the #Indictment detailing the allegations filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith, United States Department of Justice in the United States District Court, Southern District of Florida. The #Indictment is against former president Donald J. Trump and his personal aide, Waltine Nauta. Wow, what a read!

From the first page to the last, the #Indictment depicts the perfidious activity in words and photographs of #TFG and his flunky shuffling highly classified documents around as if engrossed in a game of musical chairs. Some of the images in the #Indictment displayed boxes stacked on boxes, with some lids rumpled and torn. I gasped in anger viewing those photographs; and infuriated when reading the #Indictment which listed documents marked either:

CONFIDENTIAL//SECRET//TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN //SPECIALHANDLING//ORCON

If you’re curious about those acronyms, google them. I shudder imagining the “visitors” who had possibly walked or roamed throughout the halls and rooms of Mar-a-Lago and out of curiosity, opened then rummaged through any of those boxes containing highly classified documents.

#TFG has been charged with 37 Counts that fall under Sections of U.S.C. 18. All of them are related to Concealing, Withholding, Obstructing, Conspiring, Making False Statements and Retaining National Defense Information associated with Classified Documents.

Waltine Nauta’s Counts also fall under Sections of U.S.C. 18: Concealing, Withholding, Scheming, Conspiring and Making False Statements. Prison time for Nauta and/or #TFG Counts is 20 years each; a few are 5 years. And each Count carries hefty fines.

Please Dear Followers, download the #Indictment. It’s a good read and will take about an hour out of your day.

WHAT IS RULE 53?

The talking heads on cable have begun discussing the #TFG possibly never spending one day in prison and the need to televise his trial. Unfortunately Federal trials are not allowed to be televised. Rule 53 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure prohibits the photographing or broadcasting of judicial proceedings in criminal cases in Federal courts.

Only *John Roberts*  Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, can lift the Rule, allowing this trial to be seen by all of America.

Time to petition Chief Justice John Roberts!

Stay #Woke because this will be The Trial to #SaveAmericanDemocracy.

Racing to the Moon

/ Doreen Stratton / 2 Comments

Heard that Newt Gingrich was in Doylestown couple weeks ago–this his second visit to our sweet hamlet. Reminds me of the prophetic statement he made during his failed 2012 campaign for President. He announced that by the end of his second term (2016) that  ” … we will have the first permanent base on the Moon and it will be American”. Then he declared that the Moon would become “… our 51st state.”

Moving past Newt’s second visit to Doylestown takes me back to 1967–which now seems like a lifetime ago. I was living in Fairfield, California and working at a company called Explosive Technology, Inc., known by its acronym “E.T.”. A search on the internet won’t bring up E.T. because it’s no longer in business. During the mid-60s through early 70s this R&D manufacturing company, located on the grounds of a dismantled Nike missile station, contracted with NASA and the Defense Department.

A product they delivered to the Defense Department was an explosive device that ejected the pilot’s cockpit seat thereby parachuting him safely to the ground.

E.T.’s contributions to the space industry are lost among America’s Right Stuff legacy about the first manned flight brilliantly celebrated in the film of the same name. E.T. designed and manufactured an explosive cord that separated the Saturn rocket stages as they blasted into space.

moonwalk82820125[1]I was among millions who remember being glued in front of our TVs during the July 29, 1969 Apollo Space Program’s first  successful Moon landing. Having worked at one of several sub-contracting companies that produced this historical technology, it was thrilling television. There they were–two American Astronauts bounding weightlessly across the Moon’s gravity-defying surface.

At the completion of their experiments the two Astronauts re-entered the LEM (Lunar Excersion Module). Safely latched inside the LEM one of the Astronauts flipped a switch that triggered an explosive charge that rapidly snapped together two razor sharp blades that cut the cables that attached the LEM to their small rocket craft. That rocket lifted off from the LEM blasting upwards to rendezvous with the Mother Craft circling the Moon above them. The device that separated the Astronauts from the LEM  was an explosively charged unit called the LEM Guillotine Cutter. Brilliantly designed by an E.T. engineer, it was about the size of a two-hole punch. It was the fail-safe unit that safely carried the explorers off the Moon

Some of our Moon hardware did not return to the circling Mother Ship. Besides the American flag that they firmly planted into Moon’s silky soil also left behind were pieces of discarded materials no longer useful but critical during the Astronauts’ lunar survey experiments.

My best friend who also worked with me at E.T. often joked how the USA was the first country  to leave Trash On The Moon.a12_ls3_lg[1]

Newt’s empty vision of a USA Moon colony never happened. Yet I still get excited when the media announces new discoveries from outer space. Our space explorations and technology continue to bring breathtaking photographs from our solar system including those  explosions happening on the sun, along with those craggy craters, dry river beds and mysterious images transmitted back to Earth from moons circling those far-away planets beyond Mother Earth.

NASA predicts Lunar excursion rovers will be dropped on the moon by 2020. Not sure if I’ll be above ground to witness those images. But–I remain hopeful that China and Russia–already with their own flags planted on other parts of the Moon will not start a ‘conflict’ up there.

May Science and Technology Always Be With Us.

And not war.