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Operation Popeye

During the Vietnam War, the agency launched Operation Popeye (1967–1972), a covert cloud-seeding campaign designed to extend monsoon seasons, wash out supply routes, and turn the Ho Chi Minh Trail into a swamp.

Long before DARPA and the HAARP facility became lightning rods for theories about government weather control—claims ranging from engineered hurricanes to ionosphere-powered earthquake beams—the CIA had already taken its first real step into weaponizing the sky. During the Vietnam War, the agency launched Operation Popeye (1967–1972), a covert cloud-seeding campaign designed to extend monsoon seasons, wash out supply routes, and turn the Ho Chi Minh Trail into a swamp of mud and landslides. Their chilling slogan, later revealed through declassified documents, summed up the strategy: “Make Mud, Not War.” Using aircraft loaded with silver iodide flares, the United States successfully increased rainfall in targeted regions—a fact later confirmed by a Pentagon briefing and subsequent reporting (U.S. Department of Defense; New York Times, 1974). Far from the speculative whispers around HAARP’s ionospheric experiments or DARPA’s cutting-edge weather research, Operation Popeye is the rare case where a weather-modification conspiracy actually happened, documented and acknowledged decades later. Today, many who believe the government manipulates storms, droughts, and climate patterns point to Popeye as the smoking gun—the moment America not only dreamed of controlling nature, but tried it, proving the storm may not always be an act of God.


📚 Sources Follow the Rabbit

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