The origins of Be Dope go back to 1962, when a spacecraft of unknown origin crashed outside of East Hartland, CT in a heavily wooded area. Government agents from a nearby naval base confiscated the wreckage and bribed the town of seventeen people to keep quiet.

The spacecraft was turned over to to the agents of the NSA, who assigned it to a top secret lab under New York's Hudson River. The project was unofficially known as "Project BE". Exactly what the "BE" originally stood for is a matter of debate. The most widely accepted explanation is "Burning Enigma", however evidence exists for at least a half dozen other explanations, including "Better Explain" and "Beer Energy".

Although no life was found aboard, the remarkably intact craft was a treasure trove of advanced technology. Nine people were killed in various spectacular ways in the first month as scientists worked to penetrate the first security level. This gave the project a rather sexy edge, and attracted a great number of the supposedly best minds of the time. Those who actually possessed the absolutely best minds distinguished themselves by not ending up dead.

BE DOPE came two months later, in the form of an internal newsletter designed to keep the various teams informed of what the other teams were working on. The project developed its own internal lingo over the years, which the newsletter adopted, effectively encrypting it to anyone outside the project.

Data and technology gleaned from the craft was first put towards the government's most vital mission at the time: harnessing television as a massive mind-altering medium. After that, they focused on incorporating the technology into the space program. The 1969 moon landing served as an effective distraction while they focused on advanced quantum physics and gravity wave experiments.

Shortly after, the NSA decided to radically reduce the number of personnel directly involved in the project, as they were really getting into the juicy stuff and needed tighter security. Most of the team was reassigned to other government projects, but a small number were allowed to emigrate to such private institutions as Bell Labs, MIT and Xerox PARC to implement new technologies on a tightly controlled schedule. At this time, BE DOPE was put on hiatus since the small group of scientists were for the most part working together in the same building.

Not much can be said about the work done for the next twenty-five years or so. Mostly because anyone who said it would shortly find themselves no longer alive.

In the late eighties, the NSA decided to bring some of their work into the light of day, and contacted Jean-Louis Gassée, a deep cover operative working in France who had consulted on Project BE over the years. He began assembling his team and in the early 1990s formed Be, Incorporated, naming the company after the project's unofficial code name. Thus began a broad range of new experiments involving many geek minds from the private sector, Silicon Valley and lots of chinese food.

In 1998 the BE DOPE newsletter was reborn as bedope.com, a website reporting on various experiments involving computer technology (usually, but not always, in the form of BeOS) taken from the mysterious craft and the company. Employing the same internal jargon developed by the first group of Project BE researchers this website publishes stories that both inform those working on the project and/or directs the public's attention in the desired direction without compromising the security of the project.

Be Dope will remain operational in its website form until Project BE comes to its logical and inevitable conclusion.

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