Exactly one year after Americans in 48 states began noticing an abrupt increase in unusual aerial activity and sickness on the ground, "flu-like" ailments are once again up sharply as eyewitnesses describe multiple broad white plumes being laid by tanker-type aircraft in Xs and grid patterns over the U.S. and central and western Canada.

Unlike normal contrails formed when icy water vapor condenses around hot engines at high altitudes, "chemtrails" do not dissipate quickly, but broaden for hours, turning clear blue skies into hazy overcast - even in areas remote from heavily trafficked air routes.

"The Air Force doesn't do anything that emits anything other than a normal contrail, which is vapor," U.S. Air Force spokeswoman Margaret Gidding told Spokane's The Spokesman-Review from the Pentagon.

But a lab test done in September, 1997 on a sample of JP-8 jet fuel by Aqua Tech Environmental Labs in Ohio found 51 toxic substances - including ethylene dibromide (EDB). Banned in 1983 by the Environmental Protection Agency in a rare emergency order, EDB is a potent pesticide, chemical irritant and known carcinogen. Air Force planes routinely jettison JP-8 to lower aircraft weight for safe landings.

A U.S. Air Force study - "Weather as A Force Multiplier: Owning The Weather In 2025" - also describes how jet tankers are deployed to spray chemicals that form "cirrus shields" capable of hiding aerial activity from observers on the ground.

Two Congressional investigations and recently declassified British defense documents detail 50 years of "open air" testing that used ships and spray-equipped aircraft to spread biological warfare simulants on hundreds of cities across the U.S., Canada and the U.K.

Last winter, patients flooded emergency rooms across the U.S. at up to double the rates usually seen in peak flu season. Often degenerating into double-pneumonia or asthma, their severe "flu-like" symptoms lingered for months.

This November, Americans in heavily sprayed areas are also complaining of extremely severe headaches, stiff necks and joint pain.

One mother whose white blood count is down by half says, "I live in a rural community and most of these people work outside and have their whole lives and have never experienced these kind of symptoms till the contrails started showing up last fall. We live in no flight area, yet it is not uncommon for us to see up to 50 contrails a day...flying the multiple line pattern and the X pattern."

Referring to the resulting illness, she added, "Not just the usual sicknesses... ones that doctors have no idea what is causing them and have no cure for. We had two children die here from totally unexplained illnesses when the contrails were flying all the time. We have dead birds in our yards...we have dead animals. The livestock are sick. Suddenly last winter my nine year old daughter came down with an asthma problem out of the blue. My uncle died of respiratory problem, again, out of the blue."