City to Consider ‘Secret Squirrel’ Projects in Closed Session

SAN ANGELO, TX — When the San Angelo City Council meets on Tuesday, it will discuss in closed session items named as if they were Department of Defense combat operations.

The named projects, like “Project New Wave” are listed in the executive session agenda under the heading, “Business prospect negotiations.”

In addition to “Project New Wave,” the City Council will hear about “Project Monet,” “Project Stockpile,” “Rosenberger,” and “Project BESS.” We have inquired about what all of the secret project names are but so far no answers. We can only guess.

Council meets on Tuesday in secret executive session to presumably first learn about these mysterious things, too. We inquired with several people in the know. The only response we received was, “We have some fun with these names when we can.”

We highly suspect these are economic development projects being managed through the annual $262,500 contract the City of San Angelo has with the San Angelo Chamber of Commerce. The city council wants to know what the status is of these business recruitment projects.

The term “Secret Squirrel” comes from a Hanna-Barbara character in the 1965 cartoon series named The Secret Squirrel Show. Later, a secret military operation that created a context for the modern lexicon and that was the opening missile strikes of Operation Desert Storm on January 16, 1990. Officially called “Operation Senior Surprise,” seven B-52G Stratofortresses launched from Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport, Louisiana and flew 14,000 miles to Saudi Arabia and back to launch missiles at Iraqi air defense and communications systems. This was the first launch of Conventional Air Launched Cruise Missiles in combat. The missiles were also the first kind to use guidance from the Global Positioning System or GPS. The aircrews were sworn to secrecy for months afterwards even though everyone knew about the mission, hence the mocking nickname Secret Squirrel... and the patch: