Satellite Images from the Gwynne Roberts' story

One of the essential elements of the Leone story is that a military base at Lake Rezzaza was the location of the testing preparations for the nuclear bomb. The article has an accompanying photo that it claims is the facility described by Leone. Leone said some of the buildings were blown up to conceal the evidence. That is matched by the satellite image. Using a new satellite imaging program called Goggle Earth I have been able to verify that this military facility does exist just south of Lake Rezzaza. Here is the image from the article as posted on Global Security .

Here is the image from Google Earth. Note that the Lat/Long is visible. You can easily verify this by installing Google Earth and going to this L/L.

So this essential element of Leone's story is easily verifiable. My request to you the reader is to help me look for the tunnel pictured in the article. I am not sure if the resolution of Google Earth can acquire this site (if it even exists). But I would appreciate help looking for it.

Update:
scudwatch.org editor andrew showed it to me on a map. Here is the google earth image:

   I invite you to go look at google for yourself. This appears to be a truly unique feature in the area. It seems similar to the satellite image from the story. It does look like a tunnel under the ground and the earth has settled on top to create a flat rectangle.  Of course I am no expert on imagery analysis.  Anyone out there that is want to comment?

Update: Science news article on hiding a nuclear explosion from July 2001

" Even though scientists can distinguish between the ground waves caused by earthquakes and those from explosions, it's often difficult if not impossible to tell a nuclear blast from a chemical  explosion, such as one caused by TNT. Murphy notes also that it's particularly difficult to analyze small seismic signals because the characteristics that distinguish one type of vibration source from another can be overwhelmed by background noise.      

   There are additional complications. Ground motions can appear small  to detectors because the source is far away. However, says Murphy, such  vibrations can also seem small because they come from a blast set off in a large, empty cavern. A bomb far from the walls of the cavern doesn't shatter the surrounding rock, a process that would send out distinctive seismic vibrations. The energy from the explosion is instead  transferred gradually to the walls of the cavern, which then vibrate in  ways that can mimic an earthquake. Scientists say that such explosions  have been decoupled from the cavity they're in.   

   Not only does cavity-decoupling remove a nuclear explosion's fingerprint, but it also sends out ground vibrations much smaller than  expected. For example, a cavity-decoupled nuclear explosion in a cavern  of salt would seem as small as one-seventieth its actual power. In other  words, someone conducting a clandestine nuclear test in a large enough  cavity could make a 1-kiloton nuclear bomb appear as if it were only 14  tons of a chemical explosive.      

   The size of the cavity needed to fully decouple a nuclear explosion  depends on the size of the bomb, the depth of the cavern, and the  material into which the cavity has been mined. For a small nuclear  explosion in hard rock, such as granite, a 20-meter-diameter spherical cavity would do the job, says William Leith, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Va.

   A spherical cavity is more difficult to dig out than an oblong one. However, calculations say an oblong cavity of similar volume will cloak a nuclear explosion as well as a spherical cavern will, Leith says.      

Digging large oblong cavities is quite doable. To house hydroelectric turbines, engineers in Japan and Indonesia have excavated such caverns in rock with unsupported roof spans of 35 m. The Chinese have built an underground aircraft hangar in rock whose ceiling spans 42 m." 

Update: Arms control association

"Verification, of course, can never be achieved with 100-percent confidence. There will always be some level of nuclear testing below which the United States will not be able to monitor with high confidence using seismic means alone. Discovery of very small tests below the seismic threshold would depend on unquantifiable information from human or signal intelligence or photo reconnaissance. Although, the possibility of such information provides a further deterrent to the clandestine testing of low-yield nuclear devices, our ability to enforce the objectives of the treaty is measured by the efficacy of the monitoring system."

"The network is expected to detect all seismic events anywhere in the world of magnitude 4 or larger on the Richter scale, and to locate those events within a 1,000-square-kilometer error ellipse, the maximum area permitted for an on-site inspection under the terms of the treaty."

Also: FAS

"Finally, it is impossible to verify a ban that extends to very low yields. The likelihood of cheating is high. "Trust but verify" should remain our guide. Tests with yields below 1 kiloton can both go undetected and be militarily useful to the testing state. Furthermore, a significantly larger explosion can go undetected -- or mistaken for a conventional explosion used for mining or an earthquake -- if the test if "decoupled." Decoupling involves conducting the test in a large underground cavity and has been shown to dampen an explosion's seismic signature by a factor of up to 70. The United States demonstrated this capability in 1966 in two tests conducted in salt domes at Chilton, Miss"

Respectfully,

James R. Schlesinger, Richard B. Cheney, Frank C. Carlucci, Caspar W. Weinberger, Donald H. Rumsfeld and Melvin R. Laird"

Comments

[Baldy]

Not specific to whether a test was conducted, but I remember vividly the yearly protests, here in Pittsburgh, of people against the sanctions. They said children were dying, they couldn't afford meds & food. I Googled "Iraq" + "cancer" - I got 35 million hits. The leftists & the media did a good job on this. Here, Saddam's henchman show US media the lies, a few months before the (current one) war: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/95178_du12.shtml They buy it completely...

[Scott Malensek]

http://www.hyoken.co.jp/gisjapan/j02/j02_056.html

note the pics

[Ray Robison]

Scott, looking at those pics this is definately the correct site, don't know if it is a tunnel or not. I think the pointer showing the suspected opening needs to move north to where the dry area meets the water, maybe 100 yards up.

[Sam Pender]

Interesting....just found an Iraqi doc citing the very nuclear article:
http://70.168.46.200/released%5C04-18-06/CMPC-2003-015757.pdf