High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program

200 miles northeast of Anchorage, there’s a massive military facility tucked deep in the black pine. What goes on at the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (Haarp) depends on who you ask. Self-directed “researchers” like Nick Begich say the collection of transmitters and receivers is conducting secret tests of monstrous weapons for the Defense Department: mind control, weather manipulation, long-distance spying. The military scientists in charge of this military installation insist that Haarp has absolutely no direct military applications whatsoever. It “is and always was and was planned to be a research facility,” says Dr. Paul Kossey, the Air Force’s program manager. Haarp’s antennas are being used to study the ionosphere, the electrically charged layer of Earth’s atmosphere, by pumping it full of energy. That’s why Haarp’s scientists are creating artificial Northern Lights, beaming radio waves into the crevasses of nearby Mt. Wrangell, and bouncing signals off of the Moon. Naturally.

Last year, I got a rare chance to see Haarp for myself. Here’s what I found.

Above: To get to Haarp, drive 200 miles northeast of Anchorage. Then take the Tok Cutoff for 11.3 miles, and turn onto an unmarked road. You’ll be met by this sign, at the facility’s front gates.

Photo: Noah Shachtman