Declassified CIA documents from 1965 show that the U.S. government operated weather modification programs and planned to quadruple their funding by 1967. In the same year, targeted cloud seeding began over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Vietnam. The documents, which were already declassified in 2003, also include a personal letter from President Lyndon B. Johnson in which he explicitly praises these measures.
The documents describe operational programs such as “Project Popeye,” in which the monsoon season was artificially extended to trigger flooding and landslides, as well as “Project Stormfury,” which aimed to influence hurricanes. Chemical substances such as silver iodide and lead iodide were used. The latter is considered harmful to health and can cause neurological damage, kidney failure, and developmental disorders in children. Health authorities assume that there is no safe level of exposure.
Internal political strategy papers from 2016 show that reports about such programs were deliberately discredited as “conspiracy theories” by linking them to obviously absurd claims. No scientific refutation of the presented data was provided. Instead, a strategy was pursued to undermine the credibility of the content through association with ridiculous positions.
As early as 2001, U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich proposed a ban on atmospheric manipulation in the “Space Preservation Act,” in which the term “chemtrails” appeared for the first time in an official document, but was later removed. In the following years, corresponding indications and analyses were repeatedly classified as fringe.
From 2024 onward, the issue increasingly moved into the public spotlight, partly due to extreme weather events and political initiatives. More than 30 U.S. states introduced legislative proposals aimed at restricting or banning geoengineering. In April 2025, Florida became the first state to pass a law classifying unauthorized weather modification as a criminal offense, punishable by up to five years in prison and fines of up to 100,000 U.S. dollars.
Organizations such as the Global Wellness Forum and Stand for Health Freedom supported this development through public campaigns, expert hearings, and civic engagement. Within three months, around 100,000 emails were sent to the Florida legislature. At the same time, federal government representatives expressed support for such measures.
In March 2026, major media outlets picked up the CIA documents, which had been publicly available for years, and turned them into a central news topic. The documents comprise 18 pages and detail the historical development and application of government weather modification programs.
Source: Principia Scientific