“Warning! Armageddon Is Coming!”

Born on November 9, 1934, in Brooklyn, New York, Carl Sagan was an undoubted prime mover in a number of highly significant and important NASA operations and projects designed to explore the planets of our solar system. And, for his many achievements and contributions to the world of space exploration, Sagan was justifiably honored and rewarded. He became the recipient of NASA medals for Exceptional Scientific Achievement and for Distinguished Public Service, as well as the NASA Apollo Achievement Award. In other words, not only was Sagan a brilliant thinker and a true visionary, but he was an integral player in the fast paced race for outer space.

In the early 1980s, Sagan became the subject of a secret, 33-page FBI file, and related investigation, after he became involved in a very strange affair, part of which was focused upon NASA’s ultimately ill fated Columbia Space Shuttle. On November 16, 1983, the FBI’s Special Agent in Charge at Cleveland, Ohio contacted the Washington, D.C. offices to report a very odd and sinister development in the life and career of Carl Sagan. The Cleveland Office ultimately recorded the following in a short memorandum to the Director of the FBI:

“On November 15, 1983, Dr. Carl Sagan, Space Sciences Building, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York received a handwritten envelope postmarked Cleveland, Ohio, Nov 10 1983, containing a two page typewritten letter. Letter comprised of cover page dated November 9, 1983 stating it was an open letter directed to various news publishers and identifying Sagan as an influential person to convince others veracity [sic] of message. Both message and cover letter bear typed name of author as M. Springfield.”

The letter to Sagan from the mysterious M. Springfield was very brief in content, but was, without doubt, highly unusual, to say the very least. And it read like something straight out of just about the wildest science-fiction story, too: “The message is so important that I want you to witness that you have received it before November 22 1983. You have been chosen because of your standing in the community. I believe you are a person of integrity with the ability to convince others that this message is true,” the letter began.

From there onwards, the communication to Sagan went distinctly downhill. Springfield summed up the allegedly dire situation in an extremely weird rant that began thus:

“An Open Letter to All. Warning! Armageddon is coming!” On November 22, 1983, Springfield told Sagan, terrorists would explode a bomb in either a warehouse or a market that was providing free food to impoverished people in San Salvador, but which, in reality was designed to divert people away from a planned attack on a nearby fuel storage installation. Then, suddenly moving on to a completely unconnected topic, Springfield added that if the next launch of the Columbia Space Shuttle went ahead on schedule, there would be a catastrophic explosion in the rocket, “due to a fuel leak.”

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