Did US Navy Order Dolphin Deaths?

PARIS -- In early February, dozens of dead dolphins began washing ashore along the French Mediterranean. According to Jon Henley, a reporter for London's The Observer, "Most bore an identical, and mysterious wound - a neat, fist-sized hole - on the underside of their necks."

Marine biologists were baffled but Leo Sheridan, an internationally respected accident investigator who lives in France, has proposed the only explanation that has not yet been dismissed. "I am convinced that these were dolphins trained by the US Navy and that something went badly wrong," Sheridan told The Observer.

Sheridan believes that the dolphins where part of a secret Navy experiment and that "they were disposed of to conceal the existence of the Americans' military dolphin program."

In the March 1 edition of The Observer, Sheridan explained how, in 1989, the Navy began its classified Cetacean Intelligence Mission. The San Diego-based operation involved fitting dolphins with neck harnesses that pressed small electrodes into their skin.

The animals were taught to recognize and drown enemy divers. The dolphins could be remotely monitored and controlled via electric signals transmitted through the neck harness. In order to prevent the dolphins and the Navy's technology from falling into the wrong hands, a small explosive charge was planted in the harness on the underside of the animal's neck.

Sheridan noted that 16 of the dead dolphins displayed the same kind of round puncture wound that is "consistent with a small detonation.

"It sounds incredible, but this program is quite well-known in military circles," Sheridan told The Observer. "It seems to me no accident that these dolphins first began washing up in the middle of a military crisis when American warships and submarines were en route to the [Persian] Gulf." -- GS