By Dr. Pedro Ynterian, President, GAP Project International

Forty years ago, U.S. Air Force devised a top secret project called X. The project was assembled at Air Force Base in Lockridge, Florida, in a Research Centre of Strategic Arms.

At that time  U.S. military wanted to know how much a pilot of a fighter jet would resist after exposure to radiation weapons or a nuclear explosion.

In the center of simulated test flights, along with the simulated flight controls, a nuclear reactor was set up, which detonated, at a certain time, a radioactive forcing equivalent to a nuclear device that would reach the pilot and plane.

As expected, the pilots would not be humans, but almost humans. Chimpanzees assume this role. More than a dozen chimpanzees recruited from various sources, including babies hunted in Africa, were placed in a “nursery” to begin the training.

Firstly, chimpanzees were taught to fly in various existing flight simulators, to master all the commands and be able to take off, making a journey and return. Each chimpanzee was living alone in a kind of cage, and had handlers and trainers who related to them.

The end  of those chimps was just one: DEATH. When they mastered the controls, they were placed in the main testing room, with radiation leak proof, and were left alone, flying at their will. In a certain time of the flight, the nuclear reactor appeared on their back and practivally incinerated them. The simian pilot would never know what happened, he would continue flying on his imagination until death. The Air Force computed this time, possible to measure the resistance of a human pilot to a nuclear event.

In 1987, the Project “Secret” X was taken to the movies, and the world got to know the “insanity” of that plan, which possibly sacrificed a number so far not accounted of chimpanzees.

At a cost of $ 18 million, director Jonathan Kaplan gave life to that infamous experience, with the participation of actor Matthew Broderick as the character of Jimmy Garrett, who ended up falling by the apes, and Helen Hunt as psychologist Teresa MacDonald, who taught sign language to Virgil, an infant chimpanzee who was taken from his habitat at a high price, and was sent to an unknown destination.

Ten chimpanzees participated of the film, making the story much more real.  Chimp Willie, who played the role of Virgil, knew how to communicate and could lead the rebellion that ended with the kidnapping of a small plane, which, commanded by the apes, ended in a swamp in Florida, achieving the desired freedom.

Virgil discovered the truth when his partner Bluebeard (played by Luke chimp) did not return from the training of simulated flights. His name was taken from the cage, which remained empty. Bluebeard was nearly burned by the reactor in a flight simulation. In a lack of attention of Garret, Virgil ran away and found Bluebeard dead in a bed of the laboratory. Then he realized that they never would come out of there alive. At this moment, using sign language, he asked Garrett to let him leave.

Garrett ends up making contact with Teresa MacDonald, who takes a plane and goes to Lockridge. There she  discovered that Virgil was not sent to the Houston Zoo, as people had told her, but to a secret project in an Air Force base.

Despite being threatened by the martial court and losing the right to be pilot, as he always wanted, Garret allowed the rebellion of the apes, already in progress, when Goofy (Chimp Okko) stole the key of his cage, opened it and released his other eight companions,  allowing them to attend the rebellion.

Despite the happy ending of the film, with a part of the group being free in the woods of Florida and the project being blocked, it was of public knowledge what happened on the secret project at that base.  At the time, PETA and other organizations have condemned the project and the use of chimpanzees in the movie, but having shown to the public the project was perhaps a greater good, since a few years later Air Force canceled all projects, including the spatial ones that used great apes.

Ttoday Willie seems to be at a sanctuary called “Primarily Primates,” in Texas, which has been terminated for keeping chimpanzees in their field in terrible living conditions.

Willie, who spoke by signs such as Washoe, was the precursor to, more than two decades later, the creation of a virtual chimp, named Caesar, who led the final rebellion in the film “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” and, with a cry of “No”, rebelled against other humans who abused of great apes.

Those who wish can watch this movie by downloading in the Internet. We have a copy in Spanish, that our GAP representative of Argentina, Alejandra Juarez, was able to find and sent to us, as well as a copy in English.

After watching the movie, you may understand why apes need to have their rights recognized in our society, so that, NEVER, no human, no government and no organization, would exploit and sacrifice great apes on behalf of humans interests.

Project X – Simian characters

Director: Jonathan Kaplan

Writer: Stanley Weiser

Twenty Century Fox, 1987