The scientists of Earth Friendly Futures were working as fast as they could to complete tests on the soil and water samples they'd gathered from around the U.S. during 2004 and 2005. Then they started on samples that were being sent to them from other environmentalists around the world through the IOPF.
Most of the next few years would be spent doing nothing but testing and analyzing and comparing the results of the analyses with test results from as far back as they could find records. The initial findings were not good... the results the EPA had hoped to achieve with the regulations they had imposed on industrial chemical and fossil fuel emissions over the last thirty years had not been realized.
Air, soil and water quality in areas heavily populated and surrounded by industrial emissions and runoff was even worse than when EPA regulations had been imposed. Nothing had improved... everything was worse. Which must've meant that either none of the EPA's regulations had been enforced or were just ineffective and the test results they'd gotten over the years had to have been falsified...
And the test results from other parts of the world were no better. All of the scientists and all of the environmentalists who'd been pushing for years to make everyone understand that they were literally "killing" the planet, were shocked to find that almost everything they'd tried to do had been undermined. Most of their work and their suggestions for halting the destruction of the environment had been thwarted...
It was no wonder the climate changes were getting worse and worse every year... including volcanic and seismic activity! The planet itself was probably trying to destroy this infestation of human parasites...
We were sucking it dry... killing all the vegetation by contaminating the ground with nuclear waste and non-degradable petroleum by-products... clogging the air with toxic chemicals and carbon emissions and poisoning the waters with industrial waste. The Garden of Eden would not be restored...
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By the end of 2006, so many environmentalists were pushing the issue that the U.S. government finally had to act like it was paying attention. All of a sudden, they made it sound like they were ready to jump on the "green technology" bandwagon and they were going to push whatever they could to start saving the environment.
They started talking about looking more into the possibility of investing federal funds in solar and wind power technology. There was talk of setting up huge solar arrays in desert regions and erecting wind turbine farms in many areas, especially coastal areas that benefited from steady ocean breezes... until some rich, snotty bastards started yelling nimby...
not in my back yard!!!
And some filmmaker had made an independent expose' on what had happened to the EV-1 electric vehicle, posing the question,
Who Killed The Electric Car?
Megan Richards-North had so wanted to be involved with that film, but she could not in light of her husband's position with the FBI. But she had made sure to anonymously pass along all the information she had dug up over the years...
Interestingly enough, no automakers even brought up the idea of bringing back an all-electric vehicle. They were only coming out with hybrids... gasoline engines with electric/battery back-up power sources, which gave slightly better fuel-efficiency and slightly less emissions. Megan still smelled the putrid, oily fumes of OPEC's control...
Over the next few years, the IOPF continued to thwart as many of the planned major terrorist activities they could without tipping off OPEC that most of their terrorist cells were being monitored from the inside. The only thing that was frustrating OPEC was the fact that every single major strike they tried to plan against U.S. and other major world targets were always discovered before they could pull them off...
And that's when they made their most crucial mistake... they pressured their U.S. government contacts to start leaking intelligence from the various investigative branches. That way OPEC figured they would be able to learn how the CIA and the FBI were discovering their plans and how they were being thwarted.
The first few times some Senators and Congressmen requested intel information, no one thought anything about it. But when some IOPF members reported to their CIA contacts that the information was being discussed among some terrorist cells several weeks later, the Agencies sat up and paid attention. It had alerted the U.S. intelligence community to the fact that some government officials may have leaked the information...
Anyone who had requested the intel reports were immediately put under surveillance by the FBI. Phones were tapped, cell phones were traced, calls were recorded and many of them were followed. By the end of 2008, there were at least 12 known U.S. Senators and Congressmen who were in direct contact with members of OPEC from time to time. But the requests for further digging into other means of communications between them were denied.
There was no apparent cause for alarm... most of those U.S. government officials had participated in many talks and negotiations with the members of OPEC over the years. There were any number of reasons why they would still be in touch... keeping the lines of communication open in order to ensure friendly relations, for one.
However, a couple of the Senators had no known reasons to be in contact with anyone from OPEC... So why were they? The Senator from New York claimed that she'd met one of the ministers on a diplomatic tour of Kuwait after the Iraqi invasion had ended in 2003 and they'd been in friendly contact ever since. The Senator from Michigan had a similar plausible explanation.
And none of the phone calls between the U.S. officials and their OPEC contacts had included any discussions of the intel information. They'd just sounded like friendly conversations in which they'd all joked about how it was time for OPEC to stabilize the price of gas again... which they did during 2009 when the U.S. and several other large national economies were on the verge of collapse due to a banking industry crisis.
But OPEC had done that only to lull the U.S. and other world leaders into trusting them. The price of oil had been so high ever since Hurricane Katrina had struck that OPEC was raking in billions and they had managed to amass over half of the world's supply of gold as well as some of the massive debts of the U.S. and other first-world nations whose economies were in turmoil.
While the cost of oil dropped again and stabilized during 2009, the cost of gold was spiking and the ministers were advising those governments suffering massive deficits to put their cash reserves into gold in order to recoup their country's monetary value. Once those countries started trying to amass gold reserves again, it would drive the price even higher and that's when OPEC would flood the market with their huge stockpile, causing the value of gold to tumble and virtually bankrupt most of the world's leading economic nations...
When Yosef, Nuri and Jonathan learned of this from the Sheikh, they decided it was time to alert the U.S. government and the other leading nations as to OPEC's "master plan"... At the end of 2009, the IOPF was planning a massive coordinated worldwide covert operation. They were going to "visit" the leaders of the major world nations and "enlighten" them as to how naïve they'd been for far too long...
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The weeks leading up to December 28th were busy for all of the "chosen ones," for they would be the leaders of these covert operations. Their special "abilities" would be instrumental in ensuring the success of the missions and ninja-style uniforms with head coverings and the special dark night-vision glasses that the IOPF had acquired would protect their identities.
Senior FBI Coordinator and Instructors Jonnie North, Brad Seldon and Jay Hanson had gathered up the necessary information to formulate the plan for intercepting the President while he was in Hawaii for the holidays. They had accessed the security details for the location of the home where the President and his family would be staying.
The North, Seldon, Hanson and Richards families had rented a large estate near that property for the holidays from which to launch the mission. Jonnie and Megan, Brad and Barbie, Jay and Didi and Charlie and Lily would stay on the estate premises only as back ups if anything went wrong. Their kids would be carrying out the mission but they would be monitoring everything that happened.
Everyone had agreed that Robbie, Crystal and Lana and Wayne and Jada Seldon would not be involved in any way for their protection and that of EFF. Lana had been upset that she was held back. She'd been in training ever since she was raped... to learn how to fight with her body as well as her mind. She was involved with IOPF like everyone else and had wanted to help with the mission.
A few nights before everyone was scheduled to leave for Hawaii, she was having another one-on-one session with the man who'd been teaching her combat fighting techniques for the past four years. He was a former Navy SEAL but had been working as one of the physical training instructors at the FBI Academy for the past several years and was great friends with her Uncle Brad, also an Academy instructor.
He was a very compassionate and understanding man and he'd offered his services to Lana when he'd seen how angry, frightened and confused she'd felt after her abduction and rape. He'd helped her to channel her feelings into her physical training... he'd helped her to heal... and he'd made her feel safe again. He was about 40 and had never been married... and Lana had been in love with him for the past three years... but too afraid to tell him because she didn't think he felt the same.
