I am sure I have read about HAARP in the past, but at this point I don't remember anything I knew back when. What I can say is the federal government is much like my ex wife, you can not take anything they say at face value. They claimed this was studying of the ionosphere, which may have been part of what they were doing, but there was certainly a hidden agenda.
In the 1930s the government sent doctors to Tuskegee under the guise of providing free healthcare to the black men. They injected them with various STDS. In the 50s they put U.. S. soldiers at varying distances from nuclear blast being totally exposed to the radioactive fallout, knowing full well they were sending those men to their deaths. They certainly did not explain to those men they were doomed guinea pigs being used to study the effects of radioactive sickness on humans. In the 60s they went into various cities around the country pretending to study atmospheric conditions but were actually spraying radioactive particles into the air then watching the hospitals to monitor how the prevailing winds would spread radioactive fallout in a nuclear strike. In the 60s they dosed basic trainees at Fort McClellan with LSD telling them it was special vitamins they were testing meant to help keep soldiers in the battlefield healthy.
There are so many examples of the feds dealing from the bottom of the deck one can not lay them out here. The point being they admitted they had such a program, the BIG question is was it actually about what they claimed? The follow up being, if it was what else was being done at the same time?