Black helicopter

Black helicopter  (Airplane,  military)
Interest of	• Jim Keith • Harry Martin
Black helicopters that have been spotted in different circumstances in the skies above the US, but also the UK.

Black helicopters or Unmarked Helicopters are terms that gained popularity in the United States militia movement and associated political groups in the 1990s as a symbol and warning sign of an alleged conspiratorial military takeover of the United States. Sometimes these helicopters have been described as "silent running" and sightings have been also been connected to instances of cattle mutilations and the appearance of UFOs. At some point a division of an American militia connected to Calvin Greenup wanted to shoot down an National Guard helicopter gunship (an AH-64 Apache). Multiple US Agencies including the CIA have admitted to using these unmarked helicopters, with some of their personnel even facing trial acquiring them from countries painted as "enemies" in the CCM, such as Russia.

Official Narrative

Black Helicopters - Why Do They Appear? Who Sends Them? - The Odd Side - a short video with many different theories and reports about the helis.

Black or unmarked helicopters have been reported to have been utilized by secretive government agencies. These helicopters without any markings of the operator or owner of the plane have been spotted over the US in particular. Over the years, several uses of unmarked helicopters have been reported, including in Vietnam, retrieving shot down UFOs and in the killing of Osama Bin Laden.

Admissions by Government Agencies

The following agencies and military operators have admitted to using unmarked helicopters;

UK

In an incident in 2020, British Royal Air force said two helicopters were training standard operating procedures and new personnel. In another incident in South England, a black helicopter was used to chase a drone, not explaining why the helicopter was the first responder.

US Border Patrol

U.S. Customs and Border Protection operates a dozen black-and-gold UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters according to a congressional hearing involving old US Congressman Hastert. Hastert led a border tour and was some sort of spokesperson or liaison for the helicopter lobbyists, including the notorious Colombian Anti-Narcotics Police. In 2006, Sibel Edmonds named him one of her "Dirty Dozen", listing members of congress who "by their action or inaction, have stood against real investigations, hearings, and legislation dealing with government whistleblowers who have exposed waste, fraud, abuse, and or criminal activities within government agencies." In May 2015, Hastert was indicted on financial charges. This was 10 years after a Vanity Fair report already naming his as criminal kingpin.

US Cities

The U.S. Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment uses helicopters primarily painted black and other U.S. military branches operate helicopters painted in black or dark colors, particularly the Sikorsky MH-53, which was optimized for long-range stealthy insertion and extraction of personnel, including combat search and rescue. The U.S. Army regularly conducts both exercises and operational missions in American airspace. Some of these exercises have taken place in densely populated cities, including Los Angeles, New York, Detroit, San Francisco, New Orleans, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. Some were alleged to have been used by narcotics divisions of big cities their police departments. Black Helicopters were used at the siege in Ruby Ridge.

Cold War

In the early 1970s, Air America (a CIA front airline dealing drugs and covertly transporting all kinds of nefarious personnel) conducted test flights of two highly modified black Hughes OH-6 Cayuse helicopters at Culver City, California. The plane was used for mass surveillance during the Vietnam War and was transported for use by a small Washington Sheriff Office thereafter.

Bosnia

Many of the combatants in the war in Bosnia painted their helicopters to look like those of organizations authorized to fly in restricted space of the UN. The Republika Srpska painted a Red Cross logo on their helicopters, and Croatian helicopters just pained themselves in UN humanitarian aid helicopters. After the 1994 Black Hawk incident, NATO became very reluctant to shoot any airplane down, resulting in countries using all kinds of unmarked helicopters, NATO recording at least 5711 incidents themselves.

Reporting

CIA-9/11

In 2009 the NYP reported a very peculiar case where 7 American spooks bought Russian black helicopters under executive order, going around congress for clandestine use in Afghanistan after 9-11 under CIA supervision.. The group got double-crossed and multiple army officials in charge got convicted. What the NYT and Foreign Policy magazine also reported, was that this appeared to be quite normal in the CIA, and that several similar deals where Russian Helis were bought were researched by Wired and the NYT, and at least one for over $320.000.000 of US taxpayers dollars never appeared under registration of any US agency". The unnamed judge ruled that no classified information could be used at the trial of the group: meaning no mention of the CIA, Afghanistan, or even “9/11.” .

“More than seven years ago a group of Americans traveled to Siberia to buy a pair of Russian Mi-17 helicopters for the CIA's post-9/11 clandestine operations in Afghanistan. As with many "black" programs, the contract had elements of craziness: Contracting officials paid the multimillion-dollar contract on a credit card at a local El Paso bar and then used the credit card rebate to redecorate their office; the team traveled under the guise of being private contractors; and the charter crew transporting the group abandoned the team in Russia in the middle of the night.

Ultimately, a five-year investigation into the mission led to the conviction of the Army official in charge and the contractor who bought the helicopters on charges of corruption. The two men, currently in federal prison, are appealing their convictions.

At first glance, it's a simple case: A few days after returning from Russia, the contractor paid off the second mortgage of the Army official in charge of the mission. Prosecutors argued that the contractor, Maverick Aviation, was unprepared for the mission, and the Army official helped cover up the problems in exchange for a payoff. The defendants at trial were barred from mentioning the CIA, Afghanistan or even 9/11.

In an article for The New York Post, this author looks at what really happened in Siberia based on over two dozen interviews with people involved in the mission and trial. It's a story, that in some respects, is very different than the portrait painted by the government at trial.

One interesting comparison not mentioned in the article is worth noting in light of recent purchases of Russian helicopters: In 2001, Maverick Aviation was paid $5 million for two freshly overhauled Mi-17s and spare parts, as well as travel and logistics for team of Army/CIA personnel, and got the helicopters out of Russia in under 30 days. In 2008, ARINC, a major U.S. defense contractor, was paid $322 million dollars to buy 22 Russian helicopters under a U.S. foreign military sales contract.

Guess how many helicopters ARINC has delivered to Iraq after 18 months? Zero.”
Sharon Weinberger,  Wired (2009) 

Jim Keith wrote articles and two books on the subject: Black Helicopters Over America: Strikeforce for the New World Order (1995), and Black Helicopters II: The End Game Strategy (1998).

Harry V. Martin, who wrote articles about sightings for the Napa Sentinel in the 90s connected some of the air traffic to construction of INTELSAT installations and wrote that these helicopters are in part operated by Wackenhut. At one point he also wrote or claimed that black helicopters have been spotted "coming out of caves on Oakville Grade".

Popularization

Helen Chenoweth-Hage, as U.S. Representative for Idaho, was giving nationwide publicity to the sightings of black helicopters in her district.

A photo of a helicopter that is flying over private property in the US (possibly 1990s).

Mrs. Chenoweth has repeatedly insisted, for example, that Federal Fish and Wildlife agents are using helicopters to work in Idaho, a mountain state with millions of acres of public land. In paramilitary and survivalist circles, helicopters have particular resonance; they are viewed as stealth agents of a global martial force.

But the wildlife agency says it has no helicopters in the gem state, or anywhere else in the West -- and has asked Mrs. Chenoweth to prove her assertion.

"I have never seen them," Mrs. Chenoweth said. "But enough people in my district have become concerned that I can't just ignore it. We do have some proof." (NYT, January 15, 1996)

Mark Koernke and Linda Thompson also have been observed to have played primary roles in the popularization. Thompson made a film in 1994, America Under Siege, in which she accused the government of using black helicopters against patriots, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of establishing concentration camps which were built to prevent people in opposition from interfering with plans to establish a "New World Order".

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.