The Truth About the Montauk Project

Article Jointly Written By Sean Rubinstein and Jonathan Kostecky

Part I by Jonathan Kostecky

The series of books about the Montauk Project has gathered unto itself a cult following whch has spread far past the borders of Long Island. The base has also attracted believers and non believers alike with many attempts in mind. Some go to still a maddening curiosity about the story, others to find evidence of truth to the story, or even to disprove it.

From the visits we have made to the base, we have found absolutely no evidence what so ever that will support the story, and from joint research about the history of the base and the nature of that area of Long Island, the story seems to be nothing more than an elaborate fantasy.

The Montauk Underground

Many people have become so enthralled with the stories of the Montauk underground that it draws them like a magnet to the base in an attempt to find it. According to the statements made by Mr. Nichols in the book "Pyramids of Montauk"; the underground is a vast multileveled labarynth of military cavernous rooms going down many hundreds of feet. Undoubtably this was inspired by the legends of Area 51 in the Nevada desert where it was said that most of the Groom Lake base was located beneath the Earths surface.

While the possibility for this in that region has a certain limited degree of plausibility, it is unfortunatly impossible for something such as that to exist out at Montauk.

Under the Departement of Environmental Conservation, Montauk was located within the zoning of the Pine Barrens. The Pine Barrens are an extremely valuble environmental resource because it is an aquifer. An aquifer is a permeable area of land or rock that both stores and transports ground water. The aquifer of Montauk is basically composed of unconsolidated sand and gravel and jointed limestones, and as such it is an unconfined aquifer which lies very near the water table. This in and of itself makes a huge underground facility impossible, for there would be no way to sustein it without upsetting the water table and flooding the underground permanently.

The other supposition which Mr. Nichols offers to support this theory is that he claims that Montauk is basically the tip of an undersea mountain, something along the lines of the Hawiian Islands. This is not true, for as having noted above, such a structure would not permit an unconfined aquifer, and it is impossible for another reason.

A professor of geology, Dr. Lewis, was in contact with another professor of geology who was working for the Long Island Lighting Co. in the late 80's. He reported that the basic problem facing them during drilling operations was that there was no bedrock anywhere on Long Island. The entire island is the product of glacial debris which was pushed south from the northern Canadian regions during the last ice age. So being glacial debris, and an aqifer as well simply makes it geologically impossible to have this reputed underground out at Montauk.

I'm personally inclined to believe the evidence above and will say that as far as I have been able to ascertain- there is no underground at Montauk, nor was there ever. In all probability, there was never any Montauk Project which took place out at Camp Hero. As noted in the first and third articles of this page- "The History of Camp Hero", and "Beyond the Legends; Montauk Today", the entire time scale for Mr. Nichols story is simply not so. The base was not deactivated and mothballed before 1969, it was in a sense "demilitarized" as it was no longer necessary as an early warning coastal defense station, and it was simply kept around as long as it did not cost too much to maintain. By the time that the Airforce had submitted its proposal to the Carter administration (the late 1970's), the maintenance costs for the base were out weighing the practical usage factor.

Of course there are still the questions- what about those who say they saw mysterious things in and around Camp Hero? What of the Acid House? Why does power still run through the electrical lines strung around the base? Why do the State Park Police use the small building next to the FAA tower erected on the base? The first question can almost be discarded. The second might take some serious thorough investigation to come up with a satisfactory explaination. The third and fourth questions are really not all that difficult to find simply reasons for that are not of a suspiscious nature.

The questions that really count are what of the suspiscions that Camp Hero was used as a chemical weapons training facility, and, what is this persistent interest that the government still seems to have in Camp Hero..... Are these speculatory questions, or is there somewhere a hint of truth in them? Only Time will tell.