Much of the basic research was provided by Navy scien tists; and the seeding operationa were flown by the Air Weather Service of the Air Force:

By 1967, or possibly earlier, the Air Force flights were orig inating from a special opera tions group at Udorn air base in Thailand No more than four C‐130's, and usually only two, were assigned in the highly restricted section of the base. Each plane was capable of car rying out more than one mis sion on one flight.

One former high‐ranking of ficial said in an interview that by the end of 1971 the pro gram, which had been given at least three different code names since the middle nineteen‐six ties, was under the direct con trol of the White House.

Interviews determined that many usually well‐informed members of the Nixon Admin istration had been kept in the dark.

In the last year there have been repeated inquiries and publicly posed questions by members of Congress about the weather‐ modification programs in Southeast Asia, but no ac curate information has been provided to them by the De partment of Defense. “This kind of thing was a bomb, and Henry restricted in formation about it to those who had to know,” said one well placed Government official, re ferring to Henry A. Kassinger, the President's adviser on na tional security.

Nontheless the official said, “I understood it to be a spoil ing action—that this was de scriptive of what was going on north of the DMZ with the roads and the SAM sites.”

Another source, said that most of the weather modifica tion activities eventually were conducted with the aid and sup port of the South Vietnamese. “I think we were trying to teach the South Vietnamese how to fly the cloud‐seeding mis sions,” the source said.

It was impossible to learn where the staffing and research for the secret weather opera tion were carried out. Sources at the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories at Hans comb Field in Bedford, Mass., and at the Air Weather Service headquarters, while acknowl edging that they had heard of the secret operation, said they had no information about its research center.

One Government source did say that a group was “now evaluating the program to see how much additional rain was caused.” He would not elabo rate.