- FTW Special
Report on SARS
- The
9/11 Biowarfare Trail Lengthens
Combining
Biological
and Economic Warfare
by Michael
C. Ruppert and Wayne Madsen
© Copyright
2003, From The Wilderness Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com. All Rights
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[For more
than a year and a half FTW has been examining the relationships
between these developments:
- The
attacks of 9/11;
- Biowarfare,
starting with the anthrax attacks of 2001, later
proven to have used a strain of the disease developed
by the CIA;
- The
mysterious deaths of as many as 15 world-class microbiologists
specializing in infectious diseases and DNA sequencing
since 9/11;
- The
rush to enact unwarranted, draconian public health
measures including MEHPA, The Patriot Act, and the
Homeland Security Act which have violated the constitution
and given the government the right to forcibly vaccinate
or quarantine American citizens and to confiscate
property without due process;
- The
documentary record of US, Israeli and South African
attempts to develop gene-specific bioweapons; and
- The
reality that an irreversible peak and decline in
global oil and gas production would cause a massive
overshoot of population that could not be fed or
managed with rapidly disappearing, non-renewable
energy supplies which no amount of demand could replace.
The end game of this decline would be direct competition
between the United States and China,
which together are destined to consume as much as
eighty per cent of the world's oil production by
the middle of the century.
Back in
November of 2001 I had concluded, based upon scientific
data, that Peak Oil was real. It was apparent that
the world's population numbers had already overshot
the decline of available oil and that this was going
to be increasingly difficult to conceal. Events since
that time, world oil production data and reports from
CNNHN and the BBC, have proven this correct. I also
concluded, along with several other researchers, that
one possible contingency plan developed by the world's
elite was consistent with an option that had been discussed
by scientists looking at Peak Oil issues as long as
ten years ago – reduce the world's population by as
much as 4 billion people using biological warfare.
Reduction to 2 billion represents sustainable food
production levels demonstrated before petroleum energy
and natural gas (ammonia) changed agriculture. I mentioned
this likelihood in my first post-9/11 lecture at Portland
State University in November of 2001. That was before
most of the above events had taken place or were even
known.
With much
of my earlier research having since been validated,
it is fair to ask if the SARS virus fits into this
scenario. The answer is that it does and it doesn't.
It is becoming clear that economic and military stresses
caused as nations position themselves for the end of
the age of oil raise the possibility of a global conflict
which could be just as deadly as the energy famine
itself. In other words, competition for energy might
be as destructive as not having enough. Full public
acknowledgement by the markets of the reality of Peak
Oil could produce chaos long before shortages become
acute. So one requirement that must be addressed in
the "management" of Peak Oil is how to reduce
demand and weaken the competition without disclosing
the underlying issue.
In this
role, SARS fits the bill perfectly because it has successfully
terrified much of the world's population, weakened
the Chinese economy and set the stage for more deadly
diseases while avoiding the real issue. SARS serves
the role of something long-practiced in covert operations
and warfare – a dry run on serious population reduction
and management. Ultimately something will give. And
ultimately – as people begin to starve – population
issues will have to be addressed, both in terms of
number and in terms of maintaining order. SARS, while
most likely not the agent envisioned by some scientists
as the "big one," conveniently serves the
dual purpose of conditioning populations for the time
when forced vaccinations may accomplish the task or
when they will be told to surrender all personal liberties
as a more deadly disease occupies the stage.
But to
think of SARS only in that context is to miss a great
many other "side effects" of the disease,
not the least of which is the fact that it forces China
to accept western medical and business practices favored
by globalized financial interests and the western pharmaceutical
industry. It also strengthens the political clout of China's
new leader Hu Jintao as he is forced to respond decisively.
As I have
noted many times, US-Chinese relationships are a double-edged
sword. While China will
ultimately become the US's
main competitor for energy, capitalism demands debt,
growth and increased sales to avoid collapse. China has
long been recognized as the last great market for capitalist
expansion. China is the market that US corporations
like Motorola, Microsoft, GM, IBM, Intel, AIG and the
pharmaceutical companies need to sustain growth, support
share prices and pay dividends. While SARS appears
to be hurting the short-term interests of some American
corporations it may ultimately prove to be a bonanza
for the WTO, the World Bank and the financial engines
that can use debt and "transparency" to shift
some of the west's economic weakness by lending dollars
and compelling China adopt western practices.
The questions
then are whether SARS is manmade and how it is man
used. The answers, especially considering the US's
history of engineering bioweapons and some very pronounced
links to 9/11, are not reassuring. And there are lingering
questions of the connections to the research work of
the recently deceased microbiologists.
To access FTW's
previous reporting on these issues please visit:
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/index.html and
look under the headings of Oil, Biowarfare and Civil
Liberties. – MCR]
May 09, 2003, 1900 PDT (FTW) – Strong circumstantial evidence is mounting that the Bush administration
may be engaging in a new form of warfare: bio-economic
attacks against countries that either opposed the US
war on Iraq or are showing signs of surpassing the United
States in economic vitality and growth. Ascendancy on
the global stage now would provide any nation or group
of nations with the ability to successfully compete for
rapidly diminishing supplies of oil and natural gas where
no viable replacement energy regime has been offered
or implemented. With China's robust economy reeling and
Chinese prestige suffering as a result of admitted "mishandling" of
the disease, the economic impacts of SARS are hard to
miss. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal's web site
lists 57 SARS-related stories in the 5 day period starting
on May 1, 2003.
But SARS, riding on the back of unprecedented
media saturation for a disease that has killed fewer
people than influenza will this year, is also furthering
a number of other agendas which have become prominent
since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. A Google news search
reveals that more than 19,800 stories from recognized
news outlets have been published on the disease in less
than two months (330 a day) and that several hundred
thousand SARS entries are available on the internet from
all sources.
Perhaps the most important, yet unexplained,
fact about the appearance of SARS is the unquestioned
reality that it is a coronavirus with a unique RNA sequence
that is not directly related to known human or animal
viruses. In other words, SARS is very possibly man made.
Yet in all the press coverage from major media outlets
we have not seen that question asked or addressed once.
Reason to Be Suspicious
Given the fact that the Bush administration
used forged documents and falsified data to justify the
Iraqi invasion; that Prime Minister Tony Blair relied
upon intelligence plagiarized from an outdated graduate
research paper; and that entities like the US Geological
Survey and the Energy Information Administration have
routinely misled the public about actual oil reserves,
there is reason to be suspicious. In a climate where
corporate books are cooked to boost share values and
the Department of Defense acknowledges that it has "misplaced" more
than $3 trillion, how can we rely totally on SARS diagnoses
offered by medical research interests, the Centers for
Disease Control (CDC), media outlets or governments which
benefit from the obvious hysteria?
China – The
Number One priority
There are three reasons why China is
the US's number-one
geostrategic concern. First, within the next decade China and
the United States will
be the largest users and competitors for the world's
rapidly diminishing oil reserves. Both the US and China
will be importing as much as 80-90% of their oil within
the next twenty years and together – in order to sustain
their economies – will be using as much as 60-70% of
all the oil that is produced globally. Second, China vehemently
opposed the US invasion
of Iraq. Third,
the expanding Chinese economy and China's
stranglehold on the US trade
deficit has placed China in
a position to challenge the US for
global economic supremacy.
The first SARS case appeared almost
at the same time that Western financial institutions
were forecasting a record growth in China's
gross domestic product of between 7.5 and 7.6 percent. They also appeared just before the US invasion of Iraq which China was opposing. According to Beijing Mayor Dr. Jiang Yangyong, the first case of SARS was reported on March 1, 2003, when an elderly man was admitted to
a Beijing military hospital with the disease. At this time China had openly opposed the US invasion of Iraq and the military invasion itself was just eighteen
days away.
The outbreak
was reportedly covered up in order to avoid any disruption
of the Chinese National People's Congress, which began
in Beijing on March 5. When the disease began spreading
and Chinese officials finally scurried to deal with
the virus, the economic cost to mainland China had
become devastating -- $2.2 billion according to the Far
Eastern Economic Review. SARS
also cost Hong Kong an additional $1.7 billion. The
first public reports of the SARS virus appeared in press stories on March 19th and
20th. The US invasion of Iraq began on March 19.
Coincidence?
China had been outshining the US in the eyes of the non-aligned world. For
the Bush administration, in the middle of America's worst economic downturn in ten years
and spending billions on the war against Iraq, the idea of a booming Chinese economy
did not sit well. China was also in the final stages
of planning its first manned space launch at a time
when the United States had lost its second space shuttle
due to incompetence. The contrast between an economically
vitalized China and a United States caught in the malaise of recession, war,
and technological failure could not have been more
apparent.
Hitting China in
the Pocketbook
A look at a series of stories in The
Wall Street Journal shows the economic damage done
to China and also that the economic impact of the disease
is mutating perhaps as quickly as the virus itself.
On April 21, 2003, in a story headlined, "China Economy to Slow as SARS Takes Toll," the Journal described
the heavy economic toll the disease was taking and
observed, "But the weekend news unnerved many
Chinese. Wang Haibo, a boisterous 27-year-old accountant
carrying a bag full of disinfectant bottles for her
office said she and her co-workers planned to lobby
their bosses for a month off, even without pay." That
sounds like a perfect 10 from the CIA's intended results
of bioweapons as psychological terror tools.
Two
days later, the Journal reported on the ripple
effects of SARS in a story headlined, "Foreign-Investment
Worries Grow in China as SARS Impact Spreads." By this point
the impact on foreign companies – especially those
with heavy capital investment like Nissan -- was being
felt around the world. The story reported, "DBS
Bank economist Chris Leung said indirect economic losses
could be large, especially if foreign direct investment
inflow into China were to decelerate sharply."
On the 25th, the Journal headlined
one of its stories, "SARS send tremors through world
economy." That story said, "A report that top
Japanese car maker Toyota Motor Corp plans to withdraw
most of its Japanese staff and their families from Beijing
deepened the gloom…
"…global
commerce would be shaken if trading giant China was severely hurt by the crisis."
Five days later the Journal was
reporting that the crisis had become so severe, with
so many corporations threatening to cut back operations,
that it was threatening the stability of the regime.
The heat on the new Chinese Premier Hu Jintao was being
turned up. "'If the impact of the epidemic is to
either slow down or collapse the high rates of economic
growth [even for a quarter] or to begin to turn the psychological
climate sour, in terms of the seeming invincibility of
China… grave social and political consequence could follow,'
says [UC Professor Orville] Mr. Schell."
The
story concluded by noting that the crisis was compelling China to institute reforms that were appealing
to the World Trade Organization and that
SARS
could be Mr. Hu's Sept. 11. Successful handling of
the crisis would leave him in a stronger position
both to push his domestic agenda to aid the disadvantaged
and to diminish rivals. Among the losers would be his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, who
heads the military, whose hospitals were concealing
hundreds of SARS
patients in the Beijing cover-up. Failure to contain SARS
could open the way for a challenge to Mr. Hu's leadership.
Just a day later, on May 1st,
the Journal was making Wall Street's position
clear. In a Commentary headlined "SARS Playing Into
Beijing's Hands" Bruce Gilley wrote that Hu was
handling the crisis well, consolidating power and that:
"Nor do the benefits
to the new leadership from the SARS crisis necessarily stop there. In the weeks and months to
come, it is quite conceivable that international
financial institutions like the World Bank and UNDP
may consider increasing lending to China to help
it avoid such problems in future…
"All this for a death
toll in China and Hong Kong which is less than that
on the roads in a given day or in the factories in
a given week."
The very next
day the headline story was "SARS Outbreak Doesn't
Take Long-Term Luster Off China." That story quoted
a GM spokesperson as confirming that GM invests hundreds
of millions of dollars in China every year and that it was building plants or investing
in other companies that were building plants to manufacture
autos. China's demand for automobiles is unnerving. It realized a 50%
increase in vehicle sales in 2002 alone.
By the 6th of
May the AP was reporting that SARS was still a threat
to China's communist
system, that the disease had not yet peaked, and that
the disease could just as easily topple Hu as it might
empower him. The implication from all of these stories
seems to be that protecting foreign investment in China
by making Chinese practices conform to WTO wishes would
be the critical factor and that an imploded Chinese
economy would be the most certain guarantee of Hu's
demise. On the other hand Hu's cooperation with Western
financial needs might guarantee his success.
But the game is not without its risks.
Economic analyst Marshall Auerback observed in The
Prudent Bear on May 6:
"SARS
was just the last thing a teetering global economy
needed at this point. The U.S. and
world economy has generally been weaker this year
than the consensus expected… A combination of deteriorating domestic fundamentals,
coupled with the exogenous shocks engendered by the
Iraqi war aftermath and the SARS epidemic, are beginning
to change overseas' perceptions, refocusing attention
on the increasingly tenuous nature of America's economic
prosperity."
And yet the message to China about how to solve the crisis was being made unmistakably
clear. It was repeated by Morgan Stanley's Stephen
Roach, writing in The Global Economic Forum on May
5 when he observed:
"The
new leadership fully recognizes the risk that SARS
could turn into globalization's first epidemic. No
nation has more at stake in globalization than China.
As such, a rethinking of China's
global role may well be central to the initiatives
that are being taken on SARS."… To the extent that this response reflects a new adaptability, transparency,
and "globality," the long-run case for China may well be strengthened as a result. SARS is an admittedly painful
wake-up call. But China has awakened."
One
sign of that awakening was that on May 6, as reported
by Agence France Presse, China announced that it had contracted with a
Swedish firm, Isconova, to develop a vaccine for SARS.
Isconova's background has been in the development of
veterinary vaccines and company officials have indicated
that a practical vaccine is probably two years away.
Can the pharmaceutical companies be far behind?
The Rest of Asia and Canada
The
economies of Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia have also been extremely hard hit by SARS,
yet their plight has been only marginally discussed
in the American press. Even though SARS has not made a forceful appearance
in these countries (as of May 5 Indonesia has reported two cases and Malaysia 6) the US has little or no reason to feel sympathy
for these countries. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the
world. Malaysia, also a Muslim nation, has been an economic
pioneer, neatly avoiding the globalist traps of the
IMF and the World Bank while pioneering in technology
and industrial growth. Perhaps more importantly, with
their large populations and increasingly industrialized
economies, the projected energy demands – especially
for oil – in these two countries put them squarely
in competition with the two gluttons at the world energy
table, the US and China.
With
that in mind it is doubtful if either the US or China – unless
China finds it in its geostrategic interests to save
its access to large Indonesian gas reserves – will
lift a finger to help with SARS in the rest of the region.
Canadian
officials have moved swiftly and efficiently to respond
to the SARS threat and they have effectively prevented
a contemplated move by the World Health Organization
to issue a travel advisory urging travelers to avoid
Toronto that would have devastated the city. Recent
reports reveal that occurrences of the disease in Canada are decreasing and American media attention
paid to SARS cases there has been decreasing both in
frequency and in scope. The less press coverage, the
lower the hysteria and the smaller the hit taken by
business.
But,
as FTW noted in our October
2000 report on the RCMP's US investigation of
stolen PROMIS software, used by both intelligence agencies
and financial institutions, Canada remains an easily
punished US stepchild that, in spite of taking occasionally
courageous positions opposed to outrageous US policies,
can be brought into line and muzzled. I have seen no
public criticism of US policies in Iraq from Canada since the SARS outbreak was first reported.
SARS
has appeared and behaved on the world stage exactly
as one would expect an economic weapon to behave. All
warfare has its risks for both sides but the effects
of SARS
have proven to be of very timely and very specific
benefit to the United States. Is there reason to believe that it was
manufactured for this purpose or that it is being used
in that manner?
CIVIL
LIBERTIES IN THE US
Inside the US SARS has resulted in the
first moves taken under provisions of the Homeland Security
Act and the Public Health Service Act to invoke new emergency
powers giving the federal government the right to forcibly
quarantine anyone in the country suspected of having
the disease. An AP story on April 4, disclosed that President
Bush "gave health officials authority to quarantine
Americans sick with the highly contagious virus, though
officials had no immediate plans to use the emergency
powers."
The telling phrase "emergency powers" indicates
that the order signed by Bush was an invocation of new
powers conveyed under the Homeland Security Act which
pertain to and interface with the Public Health Service
Act. These are the powers which, according to some lawmakers
like Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, now enable the government
to vaccinate or quarantine people against their will,
charge them with criminal offenses for refusal to cooperate,
and seize or condemn their property without due process.
Interestingly, Executive Order 13295
announcing Bush's decision has not been posted to the
White House web site as of this writing as are all other
executive orders. In that order SARS is added to the
list of diseases for which the Secretary of Health and
Human Service may institute forced quarantines. The list
includes: Cholera; Diphtheria; Infectious Tuberculosis;
Plague; Smallpox; Yellow Fever; and Viral Hemorrhagic
Fevers (Lassa, Marburg, Ebola, Crimean-Congo, South American,
and others not yet isolated or named).
But in wording that appears to be intentionally
vague the order states, "The Secretary [HHS], in
the Secretary's discretion, shall determine whether a
particular condition constitutes a communicable disease
of the type specified in section 1 of this order."
Under this definition quarantine could
conceivably be ordered for people who have SARS-like
symptoms but have not been proven to have the disease
itself. That is to say that people could be quarantined
for a common cold or the flu.
It is important to note a legal distinction
which says that quarantines are measures applied to people
who have been exposed to a disease and isolation describes
those measures taken with people who are confirmed to
have a disease.
The
April 4 AP story went on to note, "[Bush's] executive
order adds SARS to the list of diseases for which health authorities have
the authority to involuntarily hold Americans, the first time a disease has
been added to the list in two decades."
On May 5, Reuters reported that the
White House, with strong support from congress, was preparing
a national disease reporting and tracking system that
will – based upon its description – likely interface
with the highly controversial Total Information Awareness
program operated by the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA). That program, as described on a government
web site, will incorporate commercial and private data
bases on all Americans and will include medical records
provided by medical providers and HMOs. It will also
likely use the well-known PROMIS software on which FTW has
reported extensively. (For more on PROMIS, please visit
the FTW web site.)
On
May 7, the US government approved the use of force at
border checkpoints to detain arriving passengers if
necessary. A New York Times story reported that
the Department of Homeland Security has provided masks
and gloves to its airport inspectors and at border
crossings and specifically linked SARS issues to issues of bioterrorism and anticipated attacks.
In the meantime, media stories are constantly
reinforcing the notion that more of these genetically
recombined diseases are going to appear in the near future
and that some of them will likely be much more deadly
than SARS. This is highly effective pre-conditioning.
The
net effect of the extreme publicity and the reactions
provoked by this disease is apparently unjustified
by the numbers of deaths caused by the disease as compared
to other diseases. But the American
public, and indeed the entire world, is being prepared
to accept draconian measures that had not even been
discussed before 9/11. A quote from The Wall Street Journal bears repeating, "All this for a death toll in China and
Hong Kong which is less than that on the roads in a
given day or in the factories in a given week."
SARS – THE
BIOECONOMIC WEAPON
Some scientific reports assert that
the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) does not
occur naturally have raised eyebrows among biological
warfare experts. In a highly technical paper dated April
23 from the London-based Institute for Science in Society
(ISIS) Dr. Mae-Wan Ho and Professor Joe Cummins offer
a case that the SARS virus is a deliberately manmade
virus and that critical information about the disease
has been withheld from the public. They observe that
no naturally occurring coronavirus is able to do what
the SARS virus is doing – mutating and reproducing in
different bodily environments. They also suggest that
chemical footprints left by artificial genetic manipulation
can help to identify "whodunit."
They write, "The complete sequence
of the SARS virus is now available, confirming it as
a new coronavirus unrelated to any previously known.
Has genetic engineering contributed to creating it?" Later
they observe:
"If
the SARS virus has arisen through recombination from
a number of different viruses, then different parts
of it would show different phylogenetic relationships.
These relationships could be obscured somewhat by
the random errors that an extensively manipulated
sequence would accumulate, as the enzymes used in
genetic manipulation, such as reverse transcriptase
and other polymerases are well known to produce random
errors, but the telltale signs would still be a mosaic
of conflicting phylogenetic relationships, from which
its history of recombination may be constructed.
This could then be compared with the kinds of genetic
manipulations that have been carried out in the different
laboratories around the world, preferably with the
recombinants held in the laboratories."
The full text of the article can be
read at http://www.i-sis.org.uk/SAGE.php .
Aside
from the scientific observations offered above, is
there any reason to suspect that SARS is manmade? Some
of Russia's top biological warfare experts suggest
that SARS may have been created as a bio-economic weapon
of mass destruction. While Russia's motives – as a continuing opponent of US foreign policy – might be suspect, the
ISIS researchers reaching the same conclusion are British.
And there is a documentary record from within the US to support the conclusion that the US has both the capability and the inclination
to deploy such a weapon.
Nikolai
Filatov, the head of epidemiological services for Moscow,
told Russia's Gazeta newspaper that he thought
SARS was manmade. Russian Academy of Medicine member Sergei
Kolesnikov agreed with his colleague. He was quoted
by the RIA-Novosti news agency that SARS is a "cocktail" of
mumps and measles. He added that such a mixture could
never appear naturally.
The
culpability of the United States government in the SARS outbreak, therefore,
must be seriously considered.
Official
sources suggest that somehow two different organisms
naturally shared genes to produce SARS. The same official
explanation has been given as the origin of AIDS and that controversy is still raging as a growing body
of evidence indicates that AIDS too is a product of US biowarfare research.
Other researchers and biomedical researchers
opt for a different viewpoint. They, like Jon Rappoport,
who has spent 15 years investigating AIDS-related issues,
conclude that what we are witnessing is "science
by press conference" rather than science by peer
review and open research.
Indeed, many are quick to point out
that the symptoms of SARS are indistinguishable from
influenza (a far more deadly disease) or even the common
cold. Usually reserved news organizations are noting
incongruous developments connected to SARS, both in the
timing and location of its occurrence and in the lopsided
and near hysterical reactions to the disease which have
been obviously overplayed by the media itself. In short,
absent peer-reviewed science, those charged with diagnosing
and identifying the virus might be conveniently labeling
a wide variety of organisms as SARS to suit their own
interests, whether they be research grants, drug sales
or economic warfare.
In some parts of the world people are
being forcibly quarantined with no further testing after
having their temperature taken and, no doubt, many cases
of common colds or flu are being misdiagnosed. Yet as
those inflated numbers of possible or misdiagnosed cases
are presented to the public, the damage is done. Deadlier
diseases do not usually prompt the reactions seen with
SARS. In fact the hysteria around SARS has grown so extreme
in some parts of the world that people have been murdered
because of it. On April 25 the Philippine news service
ABS reported that a fisherman, afraid of contracting
SARS, had shot and killed a man for sneezing near him.
On May 6, 2003 the University of California announced
that it would not accept students from Asian countries
into its summer sessions. Russia is
contemplating closing its border with China.
The Women's World Cup of Soccer has been moved out of China.
Could SARS be both manmade and man-manipulated?
This is a possibility that cannot be excluded. There
may even be a connection in the mysterious deaths of
as many as 15 world-class microbiologists.
The SARS virus fits the textbook pattern
of intended uses for bioweapons. Only the US, Russia, Israel and South
Africa (under apartheid) have been
known to seriously pursue such weapons or have demonstrated
any serious work in that arena. Since the US has
derived the most economic and political benefit from
the epidemic it is reasonable to ask if the CIA has done
this kind of thing before.
The
Record
There is a thick record of CIA-run operations
like those that would have been required to implement
SARS as a weapon. Some have even employed diseases similar
to SARS. And some of these lead ominously to an FBI "person
of interest" in the 2001 anthrax cases - Mark Hatfill.
The use of bio-economic warfare as a
weapon was first suggested by Dr. Edgar J. DaSilva, the
Director for the Division of Life Sciences of the UN
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
DaSilva stated in a 1999 article in The Electronic
Journal of Biotechnology that bio-economic warfare
- "the undermining and destruction of economic progress
and stability" - can be traced to "the development
and use of biological agents against economic targets
such as crops, livestock and ecosystems." DaSilva
also noted that bio-economic warfare can often be perceived
by the public as naturally-occurring because "such
warfare can always be carried out under the pretexts
that such traumatic occurrences are the result of natural
circumstances that lead to outbreaks of diseases and
disasters of either endemic or epidemic proportions." [Emphasis
added]
The United States,
particularly the Central Intelligence Agency - through
its joint efforts with the U.S. Army's biological warfare
laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland - has pioneered
the field of bio-economic warfare. In the 1970s, the
CIA directed a bio-economic warfare campaign against Cuba.
In his book, Biological Warfare in the 21st Century,
author Malcolm Dando describes the Cuba campaign
as involving the use of blue mold against the nation's
tobacco crop, cane smut against the sugar crop, African
swine fever (a relative of SARS) against the livestock
population, and a hemorrhagic strain of Dengue fever
against the human population. These attacks were designed
to destabilize Cuba's
agricultural based economy. The Cuba operations
were conducted after President Richard Nixon, in a 1969
Executive Order, banned the use of biological warfare
agents. Nixon's order and his 1972 signing of the Biological
and Toxic Weapons Convention with Britain and
the Soviet Union (which outlawed bio-weapons) have been
systematically ignored by the CIA and Pentagon.
There have been anomalous outbreaks
of the Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF) – a cousin
of the hemorrhagic Dengue fever - in war zones in Pakistan and Afghanistan since
9/11. Perhaps more ominously however, SARS –a coronavirus
- according to research found on the web site of the
National Library of Medicine (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/)
is also related to the most deadly disease ever to strike
the human race, the 1918 flu, or as it is commonly called,
The Spanish Flu. DNA from corpses known to have died
from that disease was extracted from exhumed bodies in Britain shortly
after the 9/11 attacks and reported in the British press.
Thus it can clearly be said that there
is a pattern of weapons research with which SARS is consistent
and that SARS-related diseases have either been previously
deployed or have appeared in countries known to be targets
of US interests. It can also be said that SARS-like disease
agents have previously been considered as weapons. Furthermore,
recent research on the Spanish Flu has been conducted
by personnel from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology
in Rockville, MD. [PMID: 12368314, Indexed for MEDLINE]
[For additional information on genetically
engineered and gene-specific bioweapons please see:
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/members/030403_genetic_p1.html]
America's Shady Past
In
the 1970s a right-wing group known
as the Minutemen planned on conducting a bio-terrorism
campaign involving the distribution of an unknown virus
in major airline terminals throughout the United States. A number of right-wing extremists, including those with ties to racist
and religious zealot organizations, have found high-level
jobs within the Bush administration. The Minutemen
plot was the idea of Robert DePugh, the leader of the
organization, who also happened to own a veterinary
drug firm called Biolab Corporation, headquartered
in Norborne, Missouri. In 1972, members of
an extreme right-wing group, the "Order of the
Rising Sun," were arrested in Chicago after it
was discovered they were going to contaminate the water
supplies of Chicago, St. Louis, and other Midwestern
cities with 30 to 40 kilograms of typhoid bacteria
cultures. In May 1995, Larry Wayne Harris, a member
of the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations, was arrested for a probation violation when he
told a police informant that he had enough anthrax
to wipe out the entire population of Las Vegas. The FBI discovered that Harris's car contained several bags
containing a strain of anthrax that was not dangerous
to humans.
CIA Connections – A Death in Orange County
Another
ultra-conservative, Dr. Larry Ford, a Mormon gynecologist
with the University of California at Los Angeles, maintained
a close relationship with the director of South Africa's bio-weapons program, Dr. Wouter Basson.
According to CourtTV.com, Ford was often accompanied
on his trips to South Africa by Dr, Jerry Nilsson, a fellow Mormon and
UCLA colleague. A former lab assistant of Ford's told The
New York Times in November 2002 that she once saw
Ford carry a vial onto the plane to South Africa. She said the vial contained a deadly bacteria
that could have endangered everyone on the plane had
it leaked. The vial was turned over to a South African official.
In
another incident related to Ford two FBI informants
reportedly attended a 1986 meeting in South Africa with South Africa's Surgeon General, Niels Knobel and Ford.
The agents reported that Knobel received toxins from
Ford and Nilsson. These toxins were later used in South Africa's deadly top secret bio-weapons program,
code-named Project Coast. On February 28, 2000, James Patrick Riley,
Ford's partner in the firm Biofem Pharmaceuticals,
was shot and critically wounded at Biofem's Irvine,
California, headquarters. After one of Ford's friends
was charged in the shooting, Ford committed suicide
at his Irvine home. Canisters later dug up in Ford's
backyard were discovered to contain cultures of cholera,
salmonella, botulism, and typhoid fever. When reports
emerged that Ford worked for the CIA, FBI agent Doug
Baker confirmed the story but later quickly recanted. Ford's
CIA connections were reported and confirmed by a number of credible sources
in a detailed report by Court TV's Rachel Bell
in an article on the web located at:
http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/terrorists/larry_ford/1.html?sect=22
An
April 20, 2003 article in The Washington Post revealed
that Don Mayes, a retired CIA officer, acted as a go-between
for Daan Goosen, a former employee of Basson and the
CIA and FBI. Goosen was trying to sell the CIA and
FBI a pathogen that genetically fused the genes of
ordinary intestinal bacteria with those that result
in the lethal gas gangrene. Some samples of the pathogen were actually
shipped to the United States via the CIA in a toothpaste tube. The tube
was delivered to the FBI's Key West office by Robert Zlockie, another retired
CIA officer. The CIA and FBI eventually declined Goosen's
offer to sell them his deadly bugs as well as his offer
to work in the United States on biowar defenses. Prior to the breakdown
in negotiations between Goosen and the CIA and FBI,
the Pentagon set up a meeting between Goosen and Bioport,
the Michigan-based firm that provides anthrax vaccines
to the military. Bioport has refused to comment on
reports that The Carlyle Group, a controversial international
investment firm on whose board former President George
H. W. Bush sits, owns shares of stock in Bioport.
The Post also
reported that Zlockie was given a receipt on FBI letterhead
acknowledging that it had taken custody of "one
toothpaste tube containing one ampule of E. coli genetically
coded with epsilon toxin." The tube was then sent
to Fort Detrick, which concluded that Goosen's pathogen
was a legacy from Project
Coast, the same program on which Ford and Nilsson
worked. Against
the wishes of the CIA and
Defense Department, the FBI declined to play ball with
Goosen and it alerted the South African
police to the fact that Goosen had attempted to sell
virulent strains of bacteria and viruses to the United States. The South Africans declined to prosecute
Goosen. In addition, in April, 2002, a South African
court cleared Basson, Goosen's one-time boss, of 46
criminal charges, including attempted murder of anti-apartheid
activists. Earlier, Basson was cleared of 15 charges,
including murder and attempted murder.
Steven Hatfill
In
October, 2002, the Sunday Mirror of Zimbabwe reported that FBI agents traveled to Zimbabwe and South Africa to examine Dr. Steven Hatfill's role during
the 1970s in the Rhodesian Selous Scout's biological
warfare program and South
Africa's bio-war program. Hatfill, a native of
Missouri who was briefly a Marine Corps reservist,
emigrated to Rhodesia at a time when the United
Nations and United States were
imposing severe sanctions
against the breakaway minority government of Ian Smith.
However, Hatfill claims he served in the Army, Army Reserve, and National Guard
from 1975 to 1981 at the same time that he claimed
to have been in the Rhodesian military. In an article
in The American
Prospect,
writer Laura Rosen postulates that Hatfill may have
been a double agent, working for both the Selous Scouts
and the U.S. Army Institute for Military Assistance in Fort Bragg. In fact, Hatfill
reportedly bragged to his colleagues about being a
double agent.
The
idea that the CIA and the U.S. Special Forces could
have been running Hatfill as an agent in Rhodesia is all the more troubling when considering
that the Rhodesian bio-war program targeted black Zimbabwean
rebels with anthrax during the 1970s. Hatfill's résumé claims
he served in the South African Defense Forces after
leaving Rhodesia. The FBI was particularly interested in
Hatfill's work for the same Project
Coast that involved Zlockie, Goosen and Basson.
Project Coast included a program of experiments on
applying anthrax to the gummed flaps of envelopes sent
through the mail.
In
the late 1990s, Hatfill worked at Fort Detrick as a
U.S. Army employee and later as a contractor for Science
Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a company
with a number of CIA and Pentagon classified contracts.
Later, Attorney General John Ashcroft called Hatfill
a "person of interest" in the investigation
surrounding the 2001 anthrax mailings. Hatfill graduated
from the University of Zimbabwe Medical School in 1983.
In July 2002, South Africa's
Daily News reported that in 1987 or early 1988, Hatfill
trained elite Aquila Brigade members of neo-Nazi leader
Eugene Terre'blanche's Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB), a notorious paramilitary group.
After
Hatfill was identified by the FBI as a "person
of interest" in the 2001 anthrax mailings, Pat
Clawson became his spokesman. According to The Baltimore
Sun, Clawson is a close associate of Oliver North,
the right-wing politician, Fox News reporter, talk
show host, and convicted Iran-contra criminal. In fact,
Clawson is a program director for North's radio show.
Also coming to Hatfill's defense was National Review writer
Joel Mowbray, a Neocon defender of the Likud government
of Ariel Sharon and Bush administration policies in Iraq. Mowbray, who is quite content with Attorney
General Ashcroft's anti-Arab and anti-immigrant policies,
uncharacteristically criticized Ashcroft for leaks to the press about the investigation of Hatfill. Bill
Kristol's Weekly Standard reported that much
of the "evidence" against Hatfill emanated
from the Jewish Defense Organization, a radical offshoot
of the extreme right-wing Jewish Defense League.
After
Fort Detrick and SAIC severed their ties with Hatfill,
he worked for Louisiana State University's Academy of Counter-Terrorist Education, an entity that receives
most of its funding from U.S. government grants, and,
interestingly, SAIC which once employed him at Ft. Detrick.
When Hatfill's name surfaced as a continuing "person
of interest" for the FBI, LSU fired him. Ironically,
during his stint at LSU, the state of Louisiana suffered
a huge outbreak of West Nile virus, which, according
to New African magazine, was one of the pathogens weaponized
by South Africa's Project Coast, the program that the FBI
was investigating for its prior links to Hatfill.
There
is definitely an element involving scientists, military,
intelligence, and government contractor personnel in
the study, production, and distribution of biological
weapons, including anthrax, gas gangrene, Dengue fever,
and other pathogens. As the Neocons in the United States
call for retaliation against countries that failed
to support America's war on Iraq, it may be more than
coincidental that SARS
has broken out in China and that the virus has been
transmitted to Canada – another US critic - via the
busy travel routes existing between China, Hong Kong,
and major Canadian cities like Toronto and Vancouver
due to Canada's large Asian population.
Not
only has China's economy drastically suffered but Toronto, Canada's most populous city, is facing an economic
disaster. After
the SARS outbreak in Canada, it was also reported that an Egyptian vessel carrying bauxite from Brazil to an Alcan aluminum plant in Saguenay,
Quebec, suffered the death of its first mate from anthrax
just prior to departing Brazil for Canada. The Brazilian police have reported that
the man contracted anthrax when he opened up a suitcase
containing the bacteria. Fortunately, Canadian authorities
were alerted before the ship docked in Quebec, whose
majority French-speaking population has been just as
outspoken against America's war policies as their kinfolk in France.
Although
the Bush administration contends that the anthrax mailings,
like the hijacking of commercial planes and turning
them into virtual cruise missiles, were unprecedented
and a surprise, history refutes such claims. In 1988,
the Foundation on Economic Trends warned that Fort
Detrick and the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta
were shipping some of the "deadliest diseases
known to man" through the U.S. postal system.
One such shipment in 1987 from the CDC to Fort Detrick
contained the Crimea-Congo virus (see above), a deadly
pathogen carried by ticks. The shipment was "lost" somewhere
in the main Philadelphia post office. In 1988, Postmaster General
Anthony Frank banned U.S. government bio-toxin shipments
through the mail after the U.S. Army said it would
increase its postal shipments to its new bio-war laboratory
at Utah's Dugway Proving Grounds, a facility that has
the only aerosolized anthrax laboratory in the United
States. The Army also wanted to ship anthrax, botulism,
Q fever, and Dengue fever through the mail, a frightening
idea considering a report by John Broder in The
Los Angeles
Times of
June 14, 1988, that Fort Detrick was missing several
pathogenic strains after the commencement of the anthrax
mailings.
Considering
that the CIA and Pentagon considered buying genetically-fused
bacteria and viruses from South African freelance bio-war
scientists and that Russian scientists now claim that SARS is a similarly genetically-fused mumps
and measles pathogen, an immediate investigation of
Fort Detrick's stockpiles and their points of origin
should be initiated.
SARS has been reported to be mutating
rapidly. This development is unclear in its implications.
A Lycos news report from May 6 indicates that the mutations
have as much chance of making the virus less deadly as
they do of making it more deadly. Organisms like the
coronavirus tend to adapt to keep their hosts (food sources)
alive rather than killing them. The Lycos report also
confirmed, however, the point made by Dr. Ho and Professor
Cummins of ISIS. The mutations will provide investigators
with a methodology to investigate the origins of the
virus and establish how it came into being.
This will lead us to re-examine the
mysterious deaths of as many as 15 world-class microbiologists
since 9/11.
DEAD
MICROBIOLOGISTS
In the five-month period from Nov. 12,
2001, through March 26, 2002, ten world-class microbiologists
in different parts of the world were reported dead. Nine
died of "unnatural" causes, while the cause
of the tenth's death is questionable. Also on Nov. 12,
DynCorp, a major government contractor for data processing,
military operations, and intelligence, was awarded a
$322 million contract to develop, produce and store vaccines
for the Department of Defense. DynCorp and Hadron, both
defense contractors connected to classified research
programs on communicable diseases, also have been linked
to a software program known as PROMIS, which may have
helped identify and target the victims.
In the six weeks prior to Nov. 12, two additional Israeli microbiologists
were reported dead. Some believe there were as many as five more microbiologists
killed in the accidental shoot down of a Russian airliner during the period,
bringing the total as high as 17. These two to seven additional deaths, however,
are not the focus of this discussion. The key deaths of interest, all of
which involve world-class experts in communicable diseases and DNA sequencing
(the process that would have been used to manufacture SARS) include:
- On Nov. 12, 2001 Benito Que, 52, was found comatose in the street near
the laboratory where he worked at the University of Miami Medical School.
He died on Dec. 6. Witnesses said that he was beaten by four men with baseball
bats but a coroner's report showed, "no evidence of foul play." He
was a microbiologist specializing in oncology and hematology with experience
in DNA sequencing.
- On Nov. 16, Dr. Don C. Wiley, 57, of Harvard University vanished, and his
abandoned rental car was found on the Hernando de Soto Bridge outside Memphis,
Tenn. His body was found on Dec. 20. The final report on Wiley's death stated
that he had stopped his vehicle in a moving traffic lane on a bridge over
the Mississippi river, gotten out, and suffered a rare seizure while a heavy
truck passed, bouncing him into the air at the same instant that a gust of
wind blew him off the bridge. Wiley was a Nobel-level award winning expert
in DNA sequencing of disease organisms who also had published research papers
on the swine flu – a coronavirus cousin of SARS.
- On Nov. 23, Vladimir Pasechnik, 64, was found dead in Wiltshire, England,
not far from his home. Details of his death were suppressed in the major
media for several weeks. Pasechnik, who had defected from the Soviet Union
in the late 1980s, was the former head of all Soviet biowarfare research,
including diseases like anthrax and Ebola.
- On Dec. 10, Robert Schwartz, 57, was found murdered in his rural home in
Loudoun County, Va. He had been stabbed and sliced to death by his daughter's
drug crazed boyfriend. Schwartz reportedly had connections to bioweapons
research in Northern Virginia and well documented experience in DNA sequencing.
- On Dec, 11, Set Van Nguyen, 44, was found dead in the airlock entrance
to a walk-in refrigerator in the laboratory where he worked in Victoria State,
Australia. The reported cause of death, nitrogen asphyxiation, was totally
inconsistent with airlock procedures as examined by experienced researchers.
Though there is debate as to whether or not Nguyen was a microbiologist or
a technician, it is known that the lab where he worked had just successfully
crossed the DNA of mousepox and smallpox to produce a highly virulent new
disease.
- On Feb. 8, Vladimir Korshunov, 56, was found dead on a Moscow street. He
had been beaten to death. Korshunov had reportedly worked under Pasechnik
in the Russian bioweapons program. Russian papers stated that Korshunov,
head of the microbiology facility at the Russian State Medical University
had developed a vaccine against bioweapons and at least one biowarfare agent.
- On Feb. 11, Ian Langford, 40, was found dead in his home in Norwich, England.
He had been beaten to death. Langford had specialized in studying waste water
and multiple causalities of communicable diseases. He was also an expert
in tracking the geographic spread of communicable diseases.
-
On Feb. 27, Tanya Holzmayer and Guyang "Matthew" Huang
were the victims of a reported murder suicide in the San Francisco bay area. Both were experts in DNA sequencing.
Both had focused on the development of genomic drugs
to treat AIDS and cancer.
- On March 24, Dr. Steven Mostow, a
veteran pilot and Associate Dean at the University of
Colorado who was an expert in infectious diseases and
known as "Dr. Flu" was killed in a plane crash
in western Colorado.
-
On March 26, British microbiologist David Wynn-Williams
was killed, according to The Telegraph when
he was caught while jogging in between two cars that
were having a traffic accident. Williams was an expert
on microbiology in the Antarctic ecosystem and an expert in DNA sequencing.
Even
though The New York Times expended almost 8,000
words to refute FTW's research and chalk these deaths
up to coincidence on Aug. 11, 2002, there is more than ample reason to believe them to be related
homicides.
The question then becomes whether there
is any connection between these deaths and the creation
of SARS, or the key to understanding the unnatural and
artificial mutation which brought it into existence.
If there is, is there reason to suspect that the murders
were perpetrated in anticipation of the SARS outbreak.
And finally, the big question that must be asked is whether
SARS was created as a bioweapons agent to be used to
kill several billion people.
In
lectures throughout 2002 FTW Editor
Mike Ruppert was questioned as to possible motives
to explain the untimely deaths of so many microbiologists
with experience in DNA sequencing,
communicable diseases and biowarfare. Ruppert's answers
focused on two possible motives. Scientists would have
been able to deconstruct the disease agent and thus
determine its origin as a manmade disease. This
would have led to efforts to determine the laboratory
and/or microbiologists who might have contributed a
small portion in a highly compartmentalized operation
in the development of a virulent, new disease. There
would be a strong likelihood that any one of the participating
microbiologists would have recognized their own work
and come forward, exposing the deliberate creation
of the organism. This scenario presents a motive in
keeping with the ISIS article as detailed at the beginning
of this report. Ruppert has consistently favored
this scenario.
A second motive explaining the untimely
deaths of these microbiologists lies in the search for
a SARS cure. If the disease agent was intended
as a bioweapon to kill several billion people, a quick
cure would not be tolerated. Had the microbiologists
not met with untimely deaths, their specialties in microbiology
might have qualified them to effectuate a quick cure,
something obviously unwanted by the disease's creators.
In
asking these difficult questions about SARS it was quickly concluded that if it could be shown that
there was a direct causal link between the deaths and
SARS then SARS likely was "the big
one." There would have been little reason to risk
so many obvious murders and attract attention for a
trial run. It became necessary to look deeper into
the research histories of the dead microbiologists
and to seek expert analysis.
Though there is not a clear trail linking
all of the deaths to SARS, there are a great many connections
which cannot be dismissed out of hand. Some of these
connections are very disturbing.
N. Renay
Tanner, a biomedical researcher with degrees in both
biological sciences and sociomedical sciences from
Columbia University and with expertise in the human
rights ramifications of ideologically driven research, had
already concluded that there was a great deal about
SARS that was suspicious. "SARS
simply doesn't fit normal epidemiological patterns. Initially
my belief was that SARS was a 'socially constructed'
disease that simultaneously functioned as economic
retaliation and to legitimize the placement of a repressive
public health infrastructure to be used at a later
date."
"By 'socially constructed' we mean
if it walks like a duck and coughs like a duck, we can
call it SARS." Diseases ranging from the common
cold to bronchial pneumonia can now be called SARS for
ideological purposes. This at once permits the
rush to prescribe very expensive, highly controversial
and possibly harmful drugs like AZT and Interferon as
a treatment and as a means of boosting corporate profits,
controlling China and
moving ahead toward an open police state in America.
But after examining the available research
histories of the dead microbiologists her position evolved
to encompass new information. "This is fascinating. You were right. These guys
were very compartmentalized – potentially a microbiological
dream team."
She
continued "The
best bets for work with coronaviruses are Wiley and
Huang. Wiley worked with virus-building
technology. Huang worked with BLAST sequences,
a technology that can be used to identify genetically
engineered organisms. Que worked with gene expression
and inflammation. Holzmayer worked on antivirals and
bacteriophages (which could produce drugs or vaccines),
Nguyen worked with the now infamous mousepox team." Langford
worked on disease modeling and multi-causal modeling.
This would be important if one intends to obfuscate
but still wants to examine or track causal factors. Wynne-Williams
was an eco-biologist examining microbes under extreme
conditions. Data on the research of the
other microbiologists was not immediately available.
Tanner warns that we must not arrive
at hasty conclusions but agreed that there was a striking
convergence between the complementary research histories
of the dead scientists, the expertise needed to create
global bio-warfare and the timely emergence of SARS.
CONCLUSIONS
So now the possibility that SARS was
manmade for bioeconomic purposes cannot be dismissed
out of hand. While alarming, the convergence of the SARS
outbreaks and the known research histories of many of
the dead microbiologists does not justify the conclusion
that SARS is a bioweapons intended to kill four billion
people. But it does not rule that possibility out either.
This seemingly mutually contradictory
answer is explained by the fact that some biomedical
researchers interviewed by FTW have
speculated that the "big one" will be a binary
or a trinary agent that will combine either with vaccines
or with other agents introduced into specific environments.
It is also very possible, they say, that the "big
one" could be presented or camouflaged as a mutation
of the SARS virus and will not make its appearance for
several years. That would explain the need to eliminate
the scientists who participated in its creation, even
before the more deadly disease – the one we are being
told to expect – has arrived. By then, tracing the connection
between the deaths and the appearance of the disease
would have been more difficult.
In that light, the sudden mysterious
appearance of a new SARS-like disease in Cambodia must
be viewed with caution. As reported by the Associated
Press on May 8, 2003, 7 of 392 people infected with an
unidentified respiratory disease have died since that
disease appeared on March 2, a day after the first reported
case or SARS. Unlike SARS, symptoms of the new disease
also include diarrhea and a stable, rather than elevated
white cell count. What are the chances that two new deadly
diseases suddenly emerge within twenty-four hours of
each other?
And as death rates for SARS are continually
revised upwards – now 15% according to a WHO statement
released on May 8 - there remains the possibility that
SARS, as unsettling and disturbing as it already is,
may become something much more horrifying. Extremely
close attention needs to be paid to future reported mutations
of the virus and the incidence of any other diseases
which may soon make their appearance.
That SARS is being man-manipulated is
beyond question. That SARS is man made is extremely likely.
That SARS is only beginning to change our lives is certain.
Whether or not SARS is or will become a disease killing
hundreds of millions and perhaps billions of people remains
to be seen. But we are right to be wary. We are justified
in being distrustful of governments and corporations
giving us data on SARS and how to respond to the data
and the disease. And we are certainly justified
in being concerned about what is coming next.
--
Wayne Madsen is a Washington-based investigative
journalist and former naval officer assigned to the
National Security Agency. He testified before Cynthia
McKinney's hearing on the genocide in the DRC in
May 2001 and has worked with Bob Barr on privacy
legislation in the past. He wrote the introduction
to Forbidden Truth. Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com
Special thanks to Jon Rappoport of www.nomorefakenews.com
