Bioweapons: 

     The Silent Assassins

Bioweapons: The Silent Assassins

Of Microbes and Mock Attacks:
Years Ago, The Military Sprayed Germs on U.S. Cities

Anthrax bacteria likely to be US military strain

ANTHRAX – KEYSTONE KOPS OR DENIABILITY? By Jim Rarey

Re: Investigation into Responsibility for Recent Anthrax Incidents

GERM WARFARE  The Hall of Shame

Could the Anthrax Mailings Be Military-Industrial Espionage? A Special Report By Leonard G. Horowitz, D.M.D., M.A., M.P.H.

The Very Mysterious Deaths Of Five Microbiologists By Ian Gurney

    Bioweapons: The Silent Assassins

      by Scott G. Ewan

          http://news.bmn.com/hmsbeagle/107/notes/feature1 

        Posted July 20, 2001 · Issue 107

Abstract

In terms of their destructive potential, biological weapons have the edge over conventional and chemical weapons. In this article, the author examines why these "silent assassins" may no longer be restricted to the latest box-office blockbuster.

Picture the scene . . .

We've seen the same scene over and over in the movies. The evil megalomaniac has trapped our agent in the island fortress. The camera pans to the ventilation system as greenish fumes begin to billow into his cell. We know that without an ingenious plan, our hero will certainly succumb to the noxious vapors and suffer an agonizing last few moments. Amazingly, he always escapes.

Real life is a bit different from this fictitious scene. But nerve gases and other chemical weapons, in reality, have been used to terrifying effect in all of the world's major conflicts from this century. Such agents have proved to be available to extreme factions and have been used in terrorist attacks - exemplified by the attack by the Aum Shinrikyo cult on the Tokyo subway. These products, from the best researchers in chemistry of the twentieth century, have gained for their creators the same notoriety that Albert Einstein earned for the atomic bomb.

Recent years, however, have seen the focus shift from the physical, tangible world of chemical warfare to a far more insidious and lethal form of aggression. Now it's biologists whose talents have been exploited for their destructive potential.

Historical Hysteria

Biological weapons, curiously, are nothing new. Examples have been cited from before biblical times of water being poisoned with herbs. And history tells us that plague victims were thrown over the walls of besieged Kaffa in Crimea in an attempt to force the inhabitants out. The novelty of late-20th- century biological agents is in their directed development, potency, and deployment.

Mother Nature's Edge

Biological weapons have the edge over conventional and chemical weapons in a number of ways. A biological attack could be difficult to prove. Biological agents, by their very nature, are difficult to recognize as illicit, as they are derived from endogenous flora and fauna. So if a positive identification were obtained, the agent conceivably could have originated from quite an innocent source. Also, it can take days, even weeks, for these agents to take effect, by which time the aggressors would have had plenty of opportunity to flee and cover their tracks.

A biological attack, then, could appear to be nothing more than an isolated natural outbreak, perhaps at worst caused by carelessness rather than deliberate subterfuge.

Name Them - Shame Them

So what exactly are we talking about? What are biological weapons? When talking about biological agents, we generally are referring to bacteria, viruses, and toxins extracted or derived from biological sources such as bacteria, plants, and marine animals.

Biological toxins may be up to 100,000 times stronger than chemical agents.

Toxins have been grouped, in the past, with chemical weapons, but they are now recognized as a distinct grouping. For example, toxins are natural, difficult to make (even on a small scale), and relatively toxic; they are odorless and tasteless; and they actually have legitimate medical uses. All of these properties are in stark contrast to modern chemical weapons.

In claiming a relatively high toxicity, the "top" biological toxin - botulinum toxin - boasts an LD50 (in mice) of 0.001 mg/kg, compared with the chemical warfare agents sarin and soman, which can only claim 100 and 64 mg/kg. Indeed, the most potent chemical weapons still can't get their LD50s below the mg/kg range.

Toxins, like chemical weapons, effect their lethal results immediately. Unlike chemical weapons, though, toxins are difficult to disseminate. Due to their complicated production, they are available in only small quantities. Although effective as tools for close-quarter assassinations, they are not an efficient choice as tools of mass destruction.

Latent, still relatively potent, and available in larger quantities are the far more frightening agents - those that might be used in a real war or terrorist attack. These silent assassins are the bacteria and viruses.

Dead Before You Know It

It's too late once the symptoms appear.

Viral and bacterial infections take time to show their presence. Often, by the time they do, it's too late.

For example, the virus that causes Ebola is a particularly nasty one. It kills more than 90 percent of those infected - in a quite horrific manner. It liquefies the internal organs and connective tissues, and blood seeps from every orifice. The victim's death is painful, with violent convulsions. Currently there is no cure for Ebola, nor is there any effective treatment. It is not even very well understood how the disease is spread - possibly through contaminated blood, possibly just from breathing the same air. Linking back to the Aum Shinrikyo attack on the Tokyo subway, 40 devotees traveled to Zaire ostensibly with the intention of securing a supply of the virus, potentially for use in a similar attack.

Ebola, anthrax, plague, smallpox - any of these could be used as a weapon.

Thankfully, not all of these weapons are quite so virulent. Examples of agents that can be used as biological weapons include the bacteria that cause anthrax (Bacillus anthracis), plague, tularemia, and brucellosis. Common viral agents cause Q fever, smallpox, encephalitis, and hemorrhagic fever.

Anthrax spores, when inhaled, initially produce symptoms common in less severe infections, such as headache, sore throat, and coughing. But in less than a week, respiratory failure has resulted in death.

And this is where the "beauty" of biological warfare comes to the fore.

Only a few kilos would be required.

A possible scenario could include an anthrax attack on a small- to medium-size city. A few kilograms is all that would be required, released downwind by aerosol dispersion.

A matter of days after the initial attack, unwitting victims are incubating the disease. Believing they are suffering from nothing more than a cold, they seek no further treatment until the more severe symptoms appear, by which time it may be too late. Even if they seek medical help in time, there may already be many thousands more suffering from the same symptoms. With hospitals soon filled to the bursting point, intensive care is impossible to maintain, and many thousands ultimately die as a result of the attack.

The perpetrators have the advantage.

The perpetrators, though, have given themselves a lot of breathing room. By ensuring that their deployment would take a number of days to be recognized, they could have left the country with little, if anything, linking them to the attack. And there is one other benefit to the aggressor in this scenario. Biological weapons do exist naturally in our environment. It is feasible that no evidence will remain to fix conclusively the outbreak as deliberate.

Defense

Defense against a biological attack could present further concerns for a group or nation under threat. Chemical and conventional weapons - even nuclear warfare - have relatively predictable effects. Biological weapons, on the other hand, have widely varying effects. Prevention by vaccination, for example, is therefore very difficult to manage. Many armed forces often vaccinate their troops against common agents such as anthrax prior to, or during, conflicts. Clearly, though, this approach only addresses one disease at a time. To attempt to vaccinate against all biological agents would be impractical, as well as futile. The development of novel biological weapons will always outstrip the development of preventative programs.

Economic Effects

People are not the only targets.

People are not the only targets for biological agents, as they usually are with chemical weapons. The direct destruction of life is not the only choice for a terrorist. Looking to the longer term, an effective alternative to attacks on people is one that has a devastating effect on the economy of the unwary victims. For example, a would-be attacker could hire a crop sprayer to spray wheat stem rust fungus over a few fields in the American Midwest. The effect might not be obvious immediately, but certainly by harvest time most of the country - and the world - would be aware that a considerable portion of America's grains were spoiled. The long- term effect would be disastrous. Not only would America's wheat sales be lost for that particular harvest, but the spores produced during infection would cause a domino effect that could have an impact on farming across states for many years to come.

Today and Tomorrow

Unfortunately, biological weapons have a bright future ahead of them. Although banned by innumerable treaties and protocols, the proliferation of these agents is sure to continue as long as there are individuals, groups, or nations willing to consider their use. Indeed, it is likely that more biological weapons will be developed. The expansion of genetic technologies permits an increase in the effectiveness and potency of novel biological agents. Alas, it is legitimate laboratories that do the hard work. The knowledge gleaned from them is used, lacking the discipline it took to achieve it, by those bent on destruction. New biological weapons could, even now, be under development. Weapons with increased effectiveness and ease of manufacture, decreased visibility, and with enhanced dissemination properties could soon hold the world for ransom. This is no film fantasy - the potential is already here.

Scott G. Ewan is a biochemist working for a multinational health-care firm in a support role in pharmaceutical manufacture.

Susan Wolsborn is Web designer of HMS Beagle.

Endlinks

Strengthening the Biological Weapons Convention and Implications on the Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Industry - a review of global efforts to eliminate biological weapons. From Current Opinion in Biotechnology, 1998, 9:312-318. Full text available from BioMedNet.

Facing the Global Challenges Posed by Biological Weapons - examines the threat posed by biological weapons, historical attempts to control them, and emerging policy. From Microbes and Infection, 1999, 1:12:1059-1066.

The Threat of Smallpox and Bioterrorism - argues for the destruction of smallpox stocks. From Trends in Microbiology, 2001, 9:1:15-18. Full text available from BioMedNet.

Nuclear Biological and Chemical Medical - a source of medical documentation, training material, audio and video clips, and current news about biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons.

Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Project - offers a collection of articles from the Henry L. Stimson Center.

Chemical and Biological Terrorism: Research and Development to Improve Civilian Medical Response - a 1999 National Academies report.

Chemical and Biological Weapons Resource Page - provides extensive news and information related to chemical and biological weapons. From the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

Cal Poly CBW Page - offers an overview of the history of chemical and biological weapons and the efforts to eliminate them.

Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies - an informative site with online publications, news, and meeting information.

Related HMS Beagle articles:

A New Strategy for Fighting Biological Terrorism - Donald A. Henderson argues that the United States is ill-prepared to fight biological terrorism.

Reprieve for a Killer: Saving Smallpox - examines why the United States opted not to destroy its store of smallpox virus.

Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World by the Man Who Ran It - a review of the book by Ken Alibek with Stephen Handelman.

Chemical and Biological Warfare Online - a review of online resources.

Biological Weapons and Warfare

Of Microbes and Mock Attacks:
Years Ago, The Military Sprayed Germs on U.S. Cities

By JIM CARLTON

SAN FRANCISCO – Fifty-one years ago, Edward J. Nevin checked into a San Francisco hospital, complaining of chills, fever and general malaise. Three weeks later, the 75-year-old retired pipe fitter was dead, the victim of what doctors said was an infection of the bacterium Serratia marcescens.

Decades later, Mr. Nevin’s family learned what they believe was the cause of the infection, linked at the time to the hospitalizations of 10 other patients. In Senate subcommittee hearings in 1977, the U.S. Army revealed that weeks before Mr. Nevin sickened and died, the Army had staged a mock biological attack on San Francisco, secretly spraying the city with Serratia and other agents thought to be harmless.

The goal: to see what might happen in a real germ-warfare attack. The experiment, which involved blasting a bacterial fog over the entire 49-square-mile city from a Navy vessel offshore, was recorded with clinical nonchalance: "It was noted that a successful BW [biological warfare] attack on this area can be launched from the sea, and that effective dosages can be produced over relatively large areas," the Army wrote in its 1951 classified report on the experiment.

Now, with anthrax in the mail and fear mounting of further biological attacks, researchers are again looking back at the only other time this country faced the perils of germ warfare – albeit self-inflicted. In fact, much of what the Pentagon knows about the effects of bacterial attacks on cities came from those secret tests conducted on San Francisco and other American cities from the 1940s through the 1960s, experts say.

"We learned a lot about how vulnerable we are to biological attack from those tests," says Leonard Cole, adjunct professor of political science at Rutgers University in New Jersey and author of several books on bioterrorism. "I’m sure that’s one reason crop dusters were grounded after Sept. 11: The military knows how easy it is to disperse organisms that can affect people over huge areas."

In other tests in the 1950s, Army researchers dispersed Serratia on Panama City, Fla., and Key West, Fla., with no known illnesses resulting. They also released fluorescent compounds over Minnesota and other Midwestern states to see how far they would spread in the atmosphere. The particles of zinc-cadmium-sulfide – now a known cancer-causing agent – were detected more than 1,000 miles away in New York state, the Army told the Senate hearings, though no illnesses were ever attributed to them as a result.

Another bacterium, Bacillus globigii, never shown to be harmful to people, was released in San Francisco, while still others were tested on unwitting residents in New York, Washington, D.C., and along the Pennsylvania Turnpike, among other places, according to Army reports released during the 1977 hearings.

In New York, military researchers in 1966 spread Bacillus subtilis variant Niger, also believed to be harmless, in the subway system by dropping lightbulbs filled with the bacteria onto tracks in stations in midtown Manhattan. The bacteria were carried for miles throughout the subway system, leading Army officials to conclude in a January 1968 report: "Similar covert attacks with a pathogenic [disease-causing] agent during peak traffic periods could be expected to expose large numbers of people to infection and subsequent illness or death."

Army officials also found widespread dispersal of bacteria in a May 1965 secret release of Bacillus globigii at Washington’s National Airport and its Greyhound bus terminal, according to military reports released a few years after the Senate hearings. More than 130 passengers who had been exposed to the bacteria traveling to 39 cities in seven states in the two weeks following the mock attack.

The Army kept the biological-warfare tests secret until word of them was leaked to the press in the 1970s. Between 1949 and 1969, when President Nixon ordered the Pentagon’s biological weapons destroyed, open-air tests of biological agents were conducted 239 times, according to the Army’s testimony in 1977 before the Senate’s subcommittee on health. In 80 of those experiments, the Army said it used live bacteria that its researchers at the time thought were harmless, such as the Serratia that was showered on San Francisco. In the others, it used inert chemicals to simulate bacteria.

Several medical experts have since claimed that an untold number of people may have gotten sick as a result of the germ tests. These researchers say even benign agents can mutate into unpredictable pathogens once exposed to the elements.

"The possibility cannot be ruled out that peculiarities in wind conditions or ventilation systems in buildings might concentrate organisms, exposing people to high doses of bacteria," testified Stephen Weitzman of the State University of New York, in the 1977 Senate hearings.

For its part, the Army justified its experiments by noting concerns during World War II that U.S. cities might come under biological attack. To prepare a response, the Army said, it had to test microbes on populated areas to learn how bacteria disperse.

"Release in and near cities, in real-world circumstances, were considered essential to the program, because the effect of a built-up area on a biological agent cloud was unknown," Edward A. Miller, the Army’s secretary for research and development at the time, told the subcommittee.

But in at least one case – the bacterial fogging of San Francisco – the research may have gone awry. Between Sept. 20 and Sept. 27 of 1950, a Navy mine-laying vessel cruised the San Francisco coast, spraying an aerosol cocktail of Serratia and Bacillus microbes – all believed to be safe – over the famously foggy city from giant hoses on deck, according to declassified Army reports. According to lawyers who have reviewed the reports, researchers added fluorescent particles of zinc-cadmium-sulfide to better measure the impact. Based on results from monitoring equipment at 43 locations around the city, the Army determined that San Francisco had received enough of a dose for nearly all of the city’s 800,000 residents to inhale at least 5,000 of the particles.

Two weeks after the spraying, on Oct. 11, 1950, Mr. Nevin checked in to the Stanford Hospital in San Francisco with fever and other symptoms. Ten other men and women checked in to the same hospital – which has since been relocated to Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. – with similar complaints. Doctors noticed that all 11 had the same malady: a pneumonia caused by exposure to bacteria believed to be Serratia marcescens. Mr. Nevin died three weeks later. The others recovered. Doctors were so surprised by the outbreak that they reported it in a medical journal, oblivious at the time to the secret germ test.

After the Army disclosed the tests nearly three decades later, Mr. Nevin’s surviving family members filed suit against the federal government, alleging negligence. "My grandfather wouldn’t have died except for that, and it left my grandmother to go broke trying to pay his medical bills," says Mr. Nevin’s grandson, Edward J. Nevin III, a San Francisco attorney who filed the case in U.S. District Court here.

Army officials noted the pneumonia outbreak in their 1977 Senate testimony but said any link to their experiments was totally coincidental. No other hospitals reported similar outbreaks, the Army pointed out, and all 11 victims had urinary-tract infections following medical procedures, suggesting that the source of their infections lay inside the hospital.

The Nevin family appealed the suit all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to overturn lower court judgments upholding the government’s immunity from lawsuits.

Today, the U.S. military is again patrolling San Francisco’s coastline, guarding against someone who might try to copy the Army tests of half a century ago. Local officials say such an attack is unlikely, given the logistical problems of blasting the city without Navy ships.

Partly as a result of Mr. Nevin’s death, says Lucien Canton, director of San Francisco’s emergency services, "one thing we now know is that it takes an awful lot of stuff to produce casualties, especially in a place like San Francisco that always has a stiff breeze."

Copyright 2001 Wall Street Journal

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991473 

Anthrax bacteria likely to be US military strain

19:00 24 October 01 Debora MacKenzie

The bacteria used for the anthrax attacks in the US is either the strain the US itself used to make anthrax weapons in the 1960s, or close to it. It is not a strain that Iraq, or the former Soviet Union, mass-produced for weapons.

There have been charges over the past week that the sophistication of the anthrax suggests that it was produced with the backing of some government, such as Iraq. But neither the strain nor the physical form of the anthrax is particularly sophisticated, say bioweapons specialists.

Last week, Tom Ridge, President Bush's Homeland Security adviser, stated that the anthrax sent to Florida, NBC and Senator Tom Daschle were all the same strain. An FBI spokesman in Florida confirmed that this was the Ames strain.

But there has been confusion over what Ames means. The scientists analysing the anthrax are comparing its DNA with a library of strains collected from all over the world. In this collection, the standard Ames strain is the one the US used when it produced anthrax weapons, a programme which ended in 1969.

To be identified as Ames in the studies currently underway, the anthrax must either be the American military strain or one that's very similar.

Hundreds of strains

It is a good choice for a terrorist. Ames is more likely than other strains of anthrax to cause disease in animals immunised with the standard US anthrax vaccine, which is now being given to US troops. It also has proven virulence and is not traceable to one particular country, says Ken Alibek, former deputy head of the Soviet bioweapons programme.

The Soviets did not mass-produce Ames, says Alibek. Iraq favoured the Vollum strain, which has been identified in samples from its Al Hakam bacterial fermentation plant. The anthrax mass-produced for weapons in the US was destroyed after 1969.

But samples were kept in the US and elsewhere. "The South African collection had hundreds of different strains," Alibek points out. And Wouter Basson, former head of the South African bioweapons programme, reportedly visited Libya after the fall of the apartheid government in 1994.

Not rocket science

As for the size of the anthrax particles used in the attacks, they were reportedly milled down to a few micrometres, optimal for inhalation. This has been cited as evidence of state involvement.

But "you can use readily available equipment to do this," says Alibek. "It isn't rocket science." The attacks have caused relatively few inhalation cases so far, which suggests that the spores were not blended with anti-caking chemicals to promote airborne spread, which Alibek calls the real secret of weaponising anthrax. He suspects the attackers don't have much material to work with.

Frequent mutations

We could soon know. Paul Keim's team at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff has pioneered the genetic analysis of anthrax bacilli. Team member Kimothy Smith says they have found that some DNA regions mutate frequently, as often as once in every 1000 cell divisions.

By comparing the amount of mutation, says Smith, "you can say with a high degree of confidence how many bacterial generations separate an unknown strain from closely related reference strains". This can help pinpoint the exact strain the unknown anthrax came from.

It is also a way of counting the number of cell divisions the bacilli have been through since they parted company with the most closely related strain. And a small batch of anthrax will have undergone many fewer cell divisions than a big batch.

So the analysis could reveal whether the anthrax came from a 50-litre fermenter, such as a small-scale terrorist could obtain, or the huge vats of a state-sponsored bioweapons facility.

MEDIUM RARE

By Jim Rarey

October 26, 2001

ANTHRAX – KEYSTONE KOPS OR DENIABILITY?

With the release this week of a General Accounting Office (GAO) report on anthrax vaccine and the recent publicity given a California lawsuit filed last year, an incredible series of bureaucratic blunders has been exposed both in handling of the anthrax vaccine and the drug used to treat anthrax exposure.

Major players involved in "looking the other way" (or not looking at all) are; the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the Center for Disease Control (CDC).

Also involved are Bioport in Michigan (and its predecessor organizations) and the giant German drug company Bayer.

The Michigan Department of Public Health received a license from the FDA to produce anthrax vaccine used primarily to inoculate animals and veterinarians and others coming into close contact with animal products. The license was subsequently transferred to the Michigan Biologic Products Institute (MBPI). The giant Merck pharmaceutical company produced the vaccine that had been tested by the FDA for human use in a study from 1955-1959.

In the late 1980’s the DOD requested larger amounts of the vaccine in anticipation of encountering biological anthrax attacks from Iraq because the U.S. had sold anthrax spores, equipment and technology to the Iraqis.

In order to meet the increased demand, the MBPI changed the process and chemical composition of its vaccine The FDA was not notified of the change, as required by law, and according to the GAO report claims it did not learn of the change until notified by the GAO ten years later.

As early as 1985, the DOD realized that the vaccine had not been approved for use in combating inhalation anthrax. In 1984 a group of military experts recommended that an application to FDA be made to obtain that approval. The FDA claims it was not aware of the Pentagon report until notified by the GAO on October 15^th of this year.

In 1996, after the license had been transferred to the MBPI, the institute filed the application for such a license change. To date, no action has been taken by the FDA on the application. Processing of the application would have automatically thrown the vaccine back into the category of experimental or "investigational" drugs, which have to have the (informed) consent of the person getting the inoculation. Only the president can waive the informed consent requirement, which the first President Bush did in the Gulf War.

Over four hundred military personnel have either had to resign or face disciplinary action for refusing to take the vaccine which was made mandatory in 1998 by then Defense Secretary William Cohen. Thousands of others who took the vaccine claim debilitating diseases have resulted and at least two deaths have been attributed to it.

As the GAO disclosed before a congressional subcommittee this week, The FDA had uncovered serious problems at the MBPI and Bioport in earlier inspections, including contamination of the vaccine and serious falsification of records.

Bioport is controlled by a Company named Intervac owned by Admiral William Crowe (23%) Nancy El-Hibri, wife of the Bioport Chairman of the Board (30%), and the remaining 47% by I & F Holdings controlled by Fuad El-Hibri (husband of Nancy) and his father Ibrihim El-Hibri. At the time of acquisition of Bioport, Fuad was a German citizen. Ibrihim is Lebanese. Their company is incorporated in the Netherlands Antilles.

The treatment of those exposed to anthrax (both the cutaneous or skin contact kind and the inhaled variety) is just as muddled as the vaccine issue.

Until last week (October 15, 2001) the only drug recommended by the CDC for anthrax treatment was "Cipro" manufactured by the German company Bayer. This despite warnings by medical experts of severe side effects from the drug (too numerous to list here).

The FDA had ordered Bayer and other drug manufacturers to withdraw similar drugs given to animals to fight anthrax and other diseases. Abbot Laboratories voluntarily withdrew its product but Bayer is fighting the order in court.

In August, Bayer was forced to withdraw its anti-cholesterol drug "Baycol", admitting it might have killed 52 people and potentially crippled another 1,000. Several lawsuits are pending.

Bayer has a patent on its Cipro drug that expires in early 2003. It has dominated the market for this, one of the strongest anti-bacterial agents on the market. The problems of which experts warn, is that the active ingredient not only destroys the anthrax bacteria, but other (good) bacteria needed by humans’ gastro-intestinal tract to function properly.

As of last week, the CDC finally added to its list for effective anthrax treatment other antibiotics that do not have the same dangerous side effects.

Earlier this week, Tommy Thompson, Secretary of HHS, renegotiated a contract with Bayer cutting the government’s price per dose nearly in half to $095 each. Apparently ignoring the proven side effects of Cipro, the government intends to still make it its sole medication for use in anthrax cases.

Bayer has been charging the American public nearly $3.00 each for doses of Cipro. The recommended treatment is two pills per day for 60 days bringing the total cost up to about $350. In India, a comparable generic drug costs an individual about $10.00 for the full treatment. In Africa, Bayer has been charging up to double the amount paid by Americans.

What the government is not telling the public is why Bayer was able to charge such prices having a virtual monopoly on the drug. In November of last year, a California company filed a lawsuit against Bayer and five producers of the generic equivalent of Cipro. It charges that Bayer had signed marketing agreements in 1997 with those companies to pay them $26 to $30 million per year to keep their products off the market.

Earlier this week, on Fox Cable News, the CEO of one of the generic manufacturers (under sharp questioning by broadcaster Neil Cavuto) admitted to the arrangement with Bayer. However, he said, the company had the option of buying Cipro from Bayer and marketing it. He said his company could make a reasonable profit selling the drug for less than $1.00 per dose.

As for testing for the presence of Anthrax, Dr. Scott Lillibridge, the Anti-Terrorism coordinator for HHS dropped a bombshell during testimony before the House Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Relations last Tuesday. He stated that there is no present technology that can detect the presence of anthrax spores in the air.

To make sure they had heard right, the question was repeated with the same reply. HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson confirmed the statement. This certainly brings in to question how effective is the testing in areas where anthrax spores have been detected on the surface of objects.

This article was not written to add to the mounting apprehensions the public has about anthrax. This writer believes most of the American public is capable of handling the truth, no matter how unsettling it may be. Evidently, the government does not share that view.

Permission is granted to reproduce this article in its entirety.

The author is a free lance writer based in Romulus, Michigan. He is a former newspaper editor and investigative reporter, a retired customs administrator and accountant, and a student of history and the U.S. Constitution.

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Re: Investigation into Responsibility for Recent Anthrax Incidents

From:

http://home.earthlink.net/~bkonop/GermIncidents2.html 

GERM WARFARE

The Hall of Shame

The United States has a long history of experimentation, on unwitting human subjects, which goes back to the beginning of this century. Both private firms and the military have used unknowing human populations to test various theories. However, the extent to which human experimentation has been a part of the U.S. Biological Weapons programs will probably never be known. The following examples are taken from information declassified in 1977, and from other private source accounts. Several involve incidents which are still of unknown origins and which cannot be fully explained:

1900: A U.S. doctor doing research in the Philippines infected of number of prisoners with the Plague. He continued his research by inducing Beriberi in another 29 prisoners. The experiments resulted in two known fatalities.

1915: A doctor in Mississippi produced Pellagra in twelve white Mississippi inmates in an attempt to discover a cure for the disease.

1931: The Puerto Rican Cancer Experiment was undertaken by Dr. Cornelius Rhoads. Under the auspices of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Investigations, Rhoads purposely infected his subjects with cancer cells. Thirteen of the subjects died. When the experiment was uncovered, and in spite of Rhoads' written opinions that the Puerto Rican population should be eradicated, Rhoads went on to establish U.S. Army Biological Warfare facilities in Maryland, Utah, and Panama. He later was named to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and was at the heart of the recently revealed radiation experiments on prisoners, hospital patients, and soldiers.

1932: The Tuskegee Syphilis Study began. Two hundred (200) poor black men with syphilis began a long term experiment in which those men were to be studied. They were never told of their illness, and treatment was denied them. As many as 100 of the original 200 died as a direct or indirect result of the illness. The wives and children of the subjects also suffered as a result of the disease. (The government office supervising the study was the predecessor to today's Centers for Disease Control (CDC)).

1940's: In a crash program to develop new drugs to fight Malaria during World War II, doctors in the Chicago area infected nearly 400 prisoners with the disease. Although the Chicago inmates were given general information that they were helping with the war effort, they were not provided adequate information in accordance with the later standards set by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. Nazi doctors on trial at Nuremberg cited the Chicago studies as precedents to defend their own behavior in aiding the German war effort.

1950: The U.S. Navy sprayed a cloud of bacteria over San Francisco. The Navy claimed that the bacteria was harmless, and used only to track a simulated attack, but many San Francisco residents became ill with pneumonia-like symptoms, and one is known to have died.

1950 - 1953: An array of germ warfare weapons were allegedly used against North Korea. Accounts claim that there were releases of feathers infected with anthrax, fleas and mosquitoes dosed with Plague and Yellow Fever, and rodents infected with a variety of diseases. These were precisely the same techniques used in immunity from prosecution in exchange for the results of that research. The Eisenhower administration later pressed Sedition Charges against three Americans who published charges of these activities. However, none of those charged were convicted.

1952 - 1953: In another series of experiments, the U.S. military released clouds of "harmless" gases over six (6) U.S. and Canadian cities to observe the potential for similar releases under chemical and germ warfare scenarios. A follow-up report by the military noted the occurrence of respiratory problems in the unwitting civilian populations.

1955: The Tampa Bay area of Florida experienced a sharp rise in Whooping Cough cases, including 12 deaths, after a CIA test where a bacteria withdrawn from the Army's Chemical and Biological Warfare arsenal was released into the environment. Details of the test are still classified.

1956 - 1958: In Savannah, Georgia and Avon Park, Florida, the Army carried out field tests in which mosquitoes were released into residential neighborhoods from both ground level and from aircraft. Many people were swarmed by Mosquitoes, and fell ill, some even died. After each test, U.S. Army personnel posing as public health officials photographed and tested the victims. It is theorized that the mosquitoes were infected with a strain of Yellow Fever. However, details of the testing remain classified.

1965: In a three year study, 70 volunteer prisoners at the Holmesburg State Prison in Philadelphia were subjected to tests of dioxin, the highly toxic chemical contaminant in Agent Orange. Lesions which the men developed were not treated and remained for up to seven months. None of the subjects was informed that they would later be studied for the development of cancer. This was the second such experiment which Dow Chemical undertook on "volunteers" who did not receive the information which the world proclaimed was necessary for "informed consent" at Nuremberg.

1966: The U.S. Army dispensed a bacillus throughout the New York City subway system. Materials available on the incident noted the Army's justification for the experiment was the fact that there are many subways in the (former) Soviet Union, Europe, and South America. Although there are no harmful effects known for this release, details of the experiment are still classified.

1968 - 1969: The CIA experimented with the possibility of poisoning drinking water by injecting a chemical substance into the water supply of the Food And Drug Administration in Washington, D.C.. There were no harmful effects noted from this experiment. However, none of the human subjects in the building were ever asked for their permission, nor was anyone provided with information on the nature or effects of the chemical used.

1969: On June 9, 1969, Dr. D.M. McArtor, then Deputy Director of Research and Technology for the Department of Defense, appeared before the House Subcommittee on Appropriations to request funding for a project to produce a synthetic biological agent for which humans have not yet acquired a natural immunity. Dr. McArtor asked for $10 million dollars to produce this agent over the next 5-10 years. The Congressional Record reveals that according to the plan for the development of this germ agent, the most important characteristic of the new disease would be "that it might be refractory [resistant] to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease". AIDS first appeared as a public health risk ten years later.

1972: President Nixon announced a ban on the production and use of biological (but not chemical) warfare agents. However, as the Army's own experts reveal, this ban is meaningless because the studies required to protect against biological warfare weapons are generally indistinguishable from those for chemical weapons.

1977: Ray Ravenhott, director of the population program of the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), publicly announced the agency's goal to sterilize one quarter of the world's women. In reports by the St Louis Post-Dispatch, Ravenhott in essence cited the reasoning for this being U.S. corporate interests in avoiding the threat of revolutions which might be spawned by chronic unemployment.

1980-1981: Within months of their incarceration in detention centers in Miami and Puerto Rico, many male Haitian refugees developed an unusual condition called "gynecomasia". This is a condition in which males develop full female breasts. A number of the internees at Ft. Allen in Puerto Rico claimed that they were forced to undergo a series of injections which they believed to be hormones.

1981: More than 300,000 Cubans were stricken with dengue hemorrhagic fever. An investigation by the magazine 'Covert Action Information Bulletin', which tracks the workings of various intelligence agencies around the world, suggested that this outbreak was the result of a release of mosquitoes by Cuban counterrevolutionaries. The magazine tracked the activities of one CIA operative from a facility in Panama to the alleged Cuban connections. During the last 30 years, Cuba has been subjected to an enormous number of outbreaks of human and crop diseases which are difficult to attribute purely natural causes.

1982: El Salvadoran trade unionists claimed that epidemics of many previously unknown diseases had cropped up in areas immediately after U.S. directed aerial bombings. There is no hard evidence to support these charges. However, the pattern and types of outbreaks are consistent with the claims.

1985: An outbreak of Dengue fever strikes Managua Nicaragua shortly after an increase of U.S. aerial reconnaissance missions. Nearly half of the capital city's population was stricken with the disease, and several deaths have been attributed to the outbreak. It was the first such epidemic in the country and the outbreak was nearly identical to that which struck Cuba a few years earlier (1981). Dengue fever variations were the focus of much experimentation at the Army's Biological Warfare test facility at Ft. Dietrick, Maryland prior to the 'ban' on such research in 1972.

1985: In ruling on a case in which a former U.S. Army sergeant attempted to bring a lawsuit against the Army for using experimental drugs on him, without his knowledge, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that allowing such an action against the military would disrupt the chain of command. Thus, nearly all potential actions against the military for past, or future, misdeeds have been barred as have actions aimed at the release of classified documents on the subject.

1987: As the result of a lawsuit by a public interest group, the Department of Defense was forced to reveal the fact that it still operated Chemical and Biological Warfare (CBW) research programs at 127 sites around the United States.

1996: Under pressure from Congress and the public, after a 60 Minutes segment, the U.S. Department of Defense finally admits that at least 20,000 U.S. servicemen "may" have been exposed to chemical weapons during operation 'Desert Storm'. This exposure came as a result of the destruction of a weapons bunker. Causes of the similar illnesses of other troops, who were not in this area, have not yet been explained, other than as post traumatic stress syndromes. Veterans groups have released information that many of the problems may be a result of experimental vaccines and innoculations which were provided troops during the military buildup.

***

Could the Anthrax Mailings Be Military-Industrial Espionage?

Dear Friends, You will find this report absolutely stunning and urgent. Please print it and critically consider it. Then send it to everyone you know, every way possible. Our great nation, and embattled world needs your help in illuminating the darkness with the light of this truth.

Dr. Horowitz has done a brilliant job in preparing this document. Please forward this report to members of Congress and your local law enforcement and emergency management workers, your local newpaper editors and reporters, talk show hosts and producers, and librarians. Your support is critically needed and greatly appreciated. This report holds great power to cure what ails America and the world today!

Sincerely and lovingly yours, Ingri Cassel, Tetrahedron Publishing Group

Could the Anthrax Mailings Be Military-Industrial Espionage?

A Special Report

By

Leonard G. Horowitz, D.M.D., M.A., M.P.H.*

Abstract

On October 1, 2001—approximately two weeks prior to the first publicly announced anthrax mailing—FBI officials received an urgent warning from this author. Investigators were directed to consider certain pharmaceutical and/or military contractors as suspects in anthrax-related psychological operations (PSYOPs) and bioterro-linked espionage. Near the time of this writing, some of my critical pronouncements have appeared in national news reports. On November 26, 2001, concerns regarding the Bayer Corporation’s Cipro were featured by the Washington Times. (1) On December 2 and 3, 2001, the New York Times focused on U.S. military biological weapons contractors as the source of the anthrax-mailings.(2,3) This report relays additional evidence that these criminal offenses, classically called serial murders by the FBI, are best explained by a relatively new treasonous form of military–industrial espionage. This conclusion is supported by the public access reports cited herein, and issued by scientific and military officials alike, as presented by the mainstream media. Amazingly, despite generally perceived limitations on freedom of the press, enough truths are still told today to allow determined investigators and journalists to piece little known facts together to reflect broad, sociopolitical criminal realities. The following report provides important background on the suspects implicated in the anthrax mailings. As with every official FBI investigation of suspects in serial slayings, a review of the developmental histories of chief suspects was conducted while considering military–industrial espionage as a possible motive for the crime of sending anthrax through the mail. From this knowledge, chief suspects were identified, and a determination of the sole source of the mailed anthrax was made. The evidence strongly suggests a conspiracy to commit espionage and treason against America involving anthrax developers at the Battelle Memorial Institute, and agents within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and/or national security system.

Introduction

On April 24, 1997, a package containing a Petri dish labeled “anthrachs” was received by the B’nai B’rith in Washington, D.C. According to researchers reporting in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists this triggered a new era in mailed anthrax hoaxes and threats. (4)

By February 1999, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that seven major anthrax threats were recorded during a three month period in 1998. Perhaps not coincidentally, the same day this report was issued, the media reported four more incidents.(4)

Among the first to suspect military–industrial espionage involving anthrax scares was Leonard A. Cole, a political scientist at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. He recalled that the letters claimed to contain anthrax, much like the recent mailings to news sources, “arrived at the Washington Post and . . . at an NBC news office in Atlanta.”

He, like many political observers, balked at the unprecedented announcement by Defense Secretary William Cohen on national television concerning a “5-pound bag of Domino sugar” the military official likened to powdered anthrax. Mr. Cole wrote that the “military’s controversial decision to vaccinate U.S. troops against anthrax,” gave the anthrax threat a “special cachet.” I wrote, at that time, Mr. Cohen’s behavior was virtually treasonous. After all, when in America’s history had our military leader(s) publicized our nation’s greatest attack vulnerabilities? A new military mentality, if not a form of psychological warfare, had obviously foreshadowed current events. In Death in the Air: Globalism, Terrorism and Toxic Warfare(5) published Spring 2001, the use of such “PSYOPs”— psychological operations—was predicted to facilitate severe curtailments of American civil liberties. Professor Cole editorialized that such threats of bioterrorism, “reportedly brandished by an assortment of ‘rogue states,’ helped the Pentagon, justify its still sizable post-Cold War military budget.”

Might all of this reflect the officially heralded, though mostly classified, “Revolution in Military Affairs”?(6)

Within days of the anthrax hoax at the B’nai B’rith, FBI director Louis Freeh suddenly offered a very different view from that which had been previously expressed by leading military and intelligence officials regarding the risk of bioterrorism. The acquisition or use of biological weapons by individuals or terrorist groups, he stated, constituted “one of the gravest threats to the United States.”(4)

Discerning the change in official policy and its economic ramifications, Professor Cole lamented over the soaring bioterrorism budget—$1.4 billion at that time. “Even bioscientists who think the threat is exaggerated are reluctant to contradict officials who say it is ‘only a matter of time’ before one of the many anthrax alarms turns out to be real,” he wrote.(4)

Background

In a related article, Jonathan B. Tucker, director of the Chemical and Biological Weapons (CBW) Nonproliferation Project at Monterey Institute of International Studies, and his associate Amy Sands, director of the Monitoring Proliferation Threats Project at that Institute, discussed anthrax-related hysteria. They reflected on “the tendency of U.S. government officials to exaggerate the threat of chemical and biological terrorism” which they wrote was “reinforced by sensational reporting in the press and an obsessive fascination with catastrophic terrorism in Hollywood films, best-selling books, and other mainstays of pop culture.” Had their writing not preceded the Hollywood production called “Wag the Dog” they might have modified their dismal view of “Tinseltown” truth- tellers.(7)

Likewise, in the Washington Post (March 16, 1999), science policy analyst Daniel S. Greenberg criticized what he called “a whiff of hysteria-fanning and budget opportunism in the scary scenarios of the saviors who have stepped forward against the menace of bioterrorism. . . . While a gullible press echoes [their] frightening warnings, there are no independent assessments of the potential for terrorist attacks or the practicality of the proposed responses.”(7)

Indeed, these scholarly assessments foreshadowed today’s news headlines concerning the official origin of the mailed anthrax— reports that seriously implicate military defense contractors, if not government officials themselves. What many may wish to believe is an appropriate National Security response to threatened bioterrorist attacks, is best explained by the words on the back of every dollar bill—“Novo Ordo Seclorum.” Without entertaining broad conspiracy theories, current events demonstrate a “New World Order” is certainly evolving from militarily managed chaos.

Investigating the Primary Suspects:

(Numbers correspond to those on the attached flow chart.)

Background on the Anthrax Vaccine Maker—Bioport

1. In March 16, 1999, Robert C. Myers, DVM, Chief Operating Officer of BioPort—America’s only anthrax vaccine maker—appealed to a Senate Appropriations Committee for urgent funding for both anthrax and smallpox vaccines. In 1996, in his own words, he “was part of a team of organizations, led by Battelle Memorial Institute, which came together to compete for the [Department of Defense’s Joint Vaccine Acquisition Program] JVAP. Despite there being dozens of potential bioterrorist threats, Dr. Myers stated these two threats were the greatest since anthrax is easy to handle and “because smallpox is highly contagious and probably most of the world is now susceptible. . . .” He also testified, “Suppose we have a smallpox vaccine stockpile and a manufacturing capability. . . . Funding for adequate security must be included in this program if the threat is to be optimally minimized. Included in these security measures and to prevent against natural disaster, there should be two or more geographical separate manufacturing facilities and two or more facilities for storage of the manufactured vaccine.” He further stated that few companies wished to become involved in the production of anthrax and smallpox vaccines due to the high expense and risks involved in research and development. Today, the only other companies linked to smallpox vaccine production include Baxter, Aventis (Hoechst–Rhone Poulenc subsidiary) OraVax/Acambis, and Fort Dodge Animal Health as detailed in the accompanying flow chart.(8)

2. The preceding year (September 1998), Bioport Corporation took over a failing anthrax vaccine business from state-owned Michigan Biologic Products Institute. Less than a month later, the company landed an exclusive $29 million contract with the Department of Defense to “manufacture, test, bottle and store the anthrax vaccine.” Admiral William J. Crowe, Jr., a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and close personal aid to President Clinton, with no financial investment of his own, received 22.5% of Bioport’s stock to promote, secure, and manage military anthrax vaccine contracts. (9)

3. Bioport’s principal investor was Saudi business man Fuad El-Hibri—a close friend of the bin Laden family, and a previous merger and acquisitions manager for the Rockefeller- linked Citigroup in New York.(9,10)

4. Bioport shares were also held by The Carlyle Management Group—America’s 11th leading defense contractor largely directed by past CIA director Frank Carlucci, James Baker III, and George H.W. Bush, according to several investigators.(11)

5. According to the Associated Press, Past President George H.W. Bush acts as a business agent for the Carlyle Group and wealthy Saudi families including the bin Ladens.(12)

6. Between 1998 and 2000, Bioport successfully negotiated through a steady storm of controversy and illegalities to secure ongoing defense contracts for anthrax vaccine.(9,10,13)

Background on Anthrax Antiobiotic Maker—Bayer

7. July, 2000— Germany’s Bayer AG negotiated an unprecedented sole endorsement by the FDA of the antibiotic Cipro for anthrax, despite the drug’s high risk, high price, and largely untested status.(1)

8. During the 1980s, Bayer AG and Baxter Healthcare both marketed blood clotting factor VIII. Both firms were found guilty of knowingly transmitting the AIDS virus (HIV) to more than 7,000 American hemophiliacs. Both firms settled out of court for what amounted to economically motivated genocide.(14)

9. World War II military background on Bayer: Company President, Hermann Schmitz, also directed Germany’s leading industrial organization—I.G. Farben. He was found guilty at Nuremberg trials for running Nazi concentration labor camps. He merely served four years in prison. According to CBS News war correspondent Paul Manning, Schmitz held more shares of Rockefeller Standard Oil Co. stock than the Rockefellers. Farben’s principle partner, the Rockefellers, profited greatly from World War II. A Federal Court judgment cited the Standard Oil Co. as America’s “Enemy National,” that is, a “traitor.” Bayer was blacklisted at that time by the U.S. Federal Government.(15)

10. During the late 1940s, I.G. Farben was “decartelized” by the Allied High Commission led by America’s John J. McCloy—a Philadelphia banker and lawyer with intimate ties to Rockefeller oil and banking interests. Farben stockholders received equal shares of Bayer, Hoechst, and BASF stock. (5,15,16)

Related Smallpox Vaccine Makers—American Home Products/Baxter and Fort Dodge, Hoechst/Aventis/Oravax-Acambis

11. American Home Products (AHP) was formed in 1926 but evolved largely under the same direction as Bayer, Hoechst and BASF, that is, from I.G. Farben/Rockefeller financial interests according to cancer investigator and author G. Edward Griffin. (17) During WWII, Ayerst Laboratories joined AHP and Wyeth International Limited was formed. This company went on to “perfect” the smallpox vaccine according to company promotions.(18)

12. The Genetics Institute, an offshoot of the Rockefeller initiated and dominated genetics industry, is a biotech research unit of AHP/Wyeth-Ayerst. The Institute contributes to Baxter’s product line of genetically engineered products, as does AHP, including the smallpox vaccine.(5,19,20)

13. Aventis Pharma, with headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany—coincidentally the home of I.G. Farben and the post-war CIA—was formed by Hoechst AG and Rhone-Poulenc S.A. during their merger in 1999. American headquarters of the company not far from Trenton, NJ in Bridgewater.(21)

14. The politically powerful Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA) is directed by Aventis’s CEO Richard Markham. Mr. Markham is also Chairman of the Task Force on Emergency Preparedness that meets regularly with Bush administration officials. The Bayer and Merck companies are also heavily represented in PhRMA and its bioterrorism task force.(21) (Merck should be recalled as the primary recipient of the Nazi “flight capital” on August 10, 1944 at the time the company’s president, George W. Merck, was America’s biological weapons industry director.(22) According to Paul Manning, who credited CIA director Allen Dulles for his intelligence and guidance in Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile, the “flight capital scheme” assured the rise of the Fourth Reich, alternatively called the “Neuordnung”—New Order, for the global petrochemical– pharmaceutical and banking cartels, according to Farben documents discussed by Manning and others.(15,23)

15. One example of the steady stream of incestuous mergers and acquisitions within the IG Farben/Rockefeller cartel, is American Cyanamid’s purchase by AHP in 1994. American Cyanamid is infamous for producing, through Lederle Labs, monkey cancer virus contaminated poliovaccines linked to several contemporary human cancer epidemics.(22) AHP then sold its Cyanamid Agricultural Products business, including carcinogenic pesticides said to reduce the spread of the West Nile virus, to BASF Aktiengesellschaft in June 2000.(25)

Current Events Potentially Impacting the Anthrax Mailing Investigation

16. PhRMA officials have met regularly and illegally with Bush administration officials under the auspices of “emergency preparedness” according to The Public Citizen in November, 2001. Multi-million dollar drug and vaccine contracts have emerged from these mostly secret meetings that violate the Federal Advisory Committee Act—a transparency law enacted to protect consumers against closed-door dealings between government and special interests.(26)

17. The BBC and London’s leading Sunday newspaper, The Guardian, reported Nov. 7, 2001 that the Bush administration, through the CIA, hog-tied the FBI in their investigations linking Bush family and bin Laden family investments, including commonly held stock in the Carlyle Management Group. This may have profoundly suppressive implications affecting the indicated investigations of Bioport and Battelle Labs for this and other reasons cited below.(27)

18. Based in Bridgewater, New Jersey, Aventis Pharma AG sought and received a lucrative smallpox vaccine order from the U.S. government. Along with Bayer, Hoechst, and Merck & Co. all four firms have major plants within 45-minutes drive of Trenton, NJ where most of the anthrax mailings originated. Aventis’s European operations are jointly (50:50) owned by Merck & Co.(28)

19. Aventis collaborates with Oravax/Acambis to produce enough smallpox vaccine for the federal government’s large order, and fulfills Bioport’s Chief Operating Officer, Robert Myers’s recommendations to the U.S. Congress that his company, and at least one other, be able to produce critical anthrax and smallpox vaccines. The Aventis/Acambis 20-year contract, awarded by the CDC, is worth approximately $343 million for a 40-million dose stockpile.(8, 28, 29)

20. Acambis—evolved from OraVax—allied with Baxter Heathcare to produce smallpox and West Nile virus vaccines. Aventis fully funds the OraVax/Acambis dengue fever vaccine and subsidizes other joint ventures. Months before 9-11, the CDC awarded Acambis a 20-year contract to develop a new smallpox vaccine.(30)

Apparent Origin of the Weaponized Anthrax—The Chief Suspects

21. In April, 1998, OraVax/Acambis Vice President, Dr. Thomas Monath met with President Clinton, New York’s Emergency Management Director, Jerry Hauer, Rockefeller University president emeritus and American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) curator, Dr. Joshua Lederberg, CIA Director John Deutsch, and government biological weapons expert William C. Patrick, III, to discuss/negotiate the first of several multimillion dollar anthrax, smallpox and West Nile virus vaccine contracts. According to New York Times reporters William Broad and Judith Miller, (31) “seven scientists endorsed the stockpile….” These included “two men who stood to gain financially from the decision. . . .” These men included Dr. Monath and Dr. J. Craig Venter, president of The Institute for Genomic Research near Washington working on anthrax genetics. “The apparent consensus on acquiring vaccines masked deep divisions among scientists and military officials,” according to reporters Broad and Miller.(5,31)

22. Around the same time, according to New York Times reporter William Broad,(2) William C. Patrick, III, was commissioned to compile a report for an undisclosed government contractor concerning the ramifications of mailing aerosolizable anthrax. In an earlier report,(3) investigators Broad and Miller cited the published paper of Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a “private expert in biological weapons,” in which she contended “that a government insider, or someone in contact with an insider, . . .” was responsible for the mailed anthrax. “One official close to the federal investigation called the Rosenberg theory ‘the most likely hypothesis,’” according to the New York Times article. Given this most credible theory, obvious suspects among the government “insiders” with economic and/or political motives to mail anthrax for military–industrial espionage related outcomes are Bioport—sole maker of the anthrax vaccine; allied smallpox vaccine makers OraVax/Acambis, Baxter, and Aventis, Bayer—the anthrax antibiotic profiteer; and most importantly the principle government and U.S. military contractor—Batelle Memorial Institute’s Chemical and Biological Information Analysis Center with bioweapons research, development, and testing labs in West Jefferson, Ohio. (See http://www.nbcindustrygroup.com/battel.htm for Battelle’s CBW operations summary and http://www.nrel.gov/surviving_disaster/fema2000/Cbiac/sld016.htm for pictures of the facilities.)(32,33)

23. Most heavily implicated is Batelle and Bioport, both of which maintain financial and administrative links to highest level U.S. National Security officials and agencies and the DoD’s Joint Vaccine Acquisition Program. Based on a September 7, 2001 Associated Press report, a “new strain” of extremely lethal anthrax had been under development before September 2001, by an unnamed U.S. biological weapons contractor. This fit William Patrick’s report in which he “said the American program had achieved a concentration of one trillion spores per gram.” How was William Patrick privy to this classified intelligence unless he had consulted, or worked, on the development? To date, according to William Broad’s New York Times article, (2) this concentration of the Ames, IA strain of anthrax is unprecedented throughout the world. Even the Soviets were unable to produce weaponized anthrax concentrated beyond 500 billion spores per gram according top Russian anthrax expert (currently employed by the CIA) Dr. Kanatjan Alibekov (alias, “Ken Alibek”). No one else has come close to describing such concentrated anthrax powder. Given this astonishing difference alone, the FBI should have been able to quickly determine the few, if not single, U.S. military bioweapons contractor(s) capable of this unprecedented feat simply by interrogating William Patrick. This tip may be worth $1 million according to the New York Times.(34)

24. Keenly related, First Amendment Press investigator Christopher Williams, determined that a recent U.S. military project to develop this advanced type of weapons-grade anthrax was reported by the Associated Press. In the article, Russian munitions expert Alexander Gorbovsky voiced his government’s concerns regarding the increased threat posed by the obviously active U.S. biological weapons program—a program that according to all mainstream media reports has been dead since President Nixon’s signing of the 1925 Geneva Accord in 1969. So much for accurate reporting! An anonymous source at the Pentagon told Mr. Williams that this program was referred to as “Project Jefferson.” Further research by Williams revealed Battelle Memorial Institute’s laboratories in West Jefferson, Ohio had been contracted to complete this project.(35)

This operation was ongoing around the same time U.S. military anthrax specialist William Patrick’s report on the ramifications of mailed anthrax powder, commissioned by an unidentified “contractor”—apparently Battelle—was being completed.(2) In other words, that is why Patrick was privy to this intelligence.

25. According to admitted CIA consultant and author Richard Preston, William Patrick and “Ken Alibek” were very “close friends!” (36) Moreover, both leading anthrax experts held classified consulting contracts with the CIA. In this article, Preston revealed that Alibek, besides using CIA provided VISA cards, was then working at the Battelle Memorial Institute (BMI).

BMI, according to its website (  http://www.battelle.org/nationsecurity/   ), is a virtual one- stop-shopping-center for U.S. and foreign militaries, the Department of Energy, the national security industries and the agencies, organizations, and institutions evaluating every major aspect of modern methods of population and environmental control and warfare. With nearly $1 billion of business volume annually, Battelle’s 7,500 scientists, engineers and support specialists, have designed and developed a wide variety of innovations from the uranium used in the top secret “Manhattan Project” of WWII to the Xerox copying process. In addition to their voluminous research, development, and testing activities, this private institute co-manages America’s most secret enterprises including the DoE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Oak Ridge Laboratory, and fully manages several others including the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory . Their two biological level-3 “Aerosol Engineering & Biological Sciences Facilities” in West Jefferson, Ohio appear in photographs on a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) promotions slide at http://www.nrel.gov/surviving disaster/fema2000/cbiac/sld016.htm   .(37)

The BMI/Department of Energy combined web page explained (on 12/7/01 at http://hattelle.org/doe/natsecurity.stm ; get it while you can!) that Battelle’s “National Security” contract called for the administration of Brookhaven’s “chemical/biological stand-off detection technology” for which New York City was selected for an “interagency chemical exercise.” Moreover, this test was conducted sometime prior to the new Millennium. Therefore, it would have involved Jerry Hauer, additionally linking Battelle’s chemical and biological warfare testing program to the military industrialists that met in the Clinton White House in 1998.(34)

Battelle’s “Aerosol Engineering and Biological Defense Science” description relays their unequaled ability to develop, test, evaluate, and modify a variety of biological agent detection systems, as well as the agents themselves. This is done, they say, “for the Joint Services including BL-3 [i.e., biological safety level of containment] operations.” While superficially publicizing their unique qualifications and activities in the realm of chemical and biological weapons “defense,” detailed disclosures here are classified. Relating to their apparent development of the highly weaponized strain of anthrax in question, they reported their “Aerosol Science and Technology (AS&T) group develops lab experimental and field test procedures for . . . point-source emissions and the transport and atmospheric fate of aerosols by means of modeling and field assessments for industrial process.” Thus, the government “contractor” for whom anthrax expert William Patrick wrote his mailed anthrax aerosol dispersal assessment could have only been Battelle for whom “Ken Alibek” worked; Robert Myers, Bioport’s Chief Operating Officer affiliated; and Jerry Hauer in New York’s emergency management helped facilitate tests. All of these suspects (except Alibek), played roles in the Department of Defense’s Joint Vaccine Acquisition Program that was accelerated due to the anthrax mailings and national fright they apparently caused.

In summary, there are several serious indicators that the source of the anthrax weapon used in the mailings was the Ames, Iowa strain of silica-impregnated and electro-statically charged anthrax produced by the Battelle Institute under their classified Defense Department “Project Jefferson.” This hyper- weaponized germ was likely produced with the help (or under the direction) of Dr. Alibekov and/or Dr. Patrick. The fact that these Battelle agents and affiliated agencies gained notoriety, if not financially, as a result of the anthrax mailings and fright fits the parameters of organized conspiracy to commit military–industrial espionage and serial homicide approaching economic genocide.

Additional Suspects and/or Accessories to the Crime

26. Another vaccine producer, located in Ames, Iowa—Fort Dodge Animal Health (FDAH)—must not be overlooked. (Again, the Ames, Iowa strain of anthrax was determined to be the specific type of anthrax, super-weaponized at apparently Battelle Labs, then transported to, and mailed from, New Jersey by someone who held high level U.S. National Security clearance.) Originally called the Ames Vaccine Company, the firm was acquired by American Home Products (AHP) in 1945, suggesting at this time the company’s evolution and/or financing, like Bayer, Hoechst, Baxter, and Aventis, from the I.G. Farben/Rockefeller cartel’s “flight capital.” Ames’s FDAH developed numerous “first” animal vaccines including Lyme, parvovirus, feline leukemia, Mycoplasma, and suspiciously the West Nile virus vaccine falsely reported by the media to have been solely produced by OraVax/Acambis. FDAH is the third largest animal health products manufacturer in the U.S.(38)

27. The National Veterinary Services Laboratory (NVSL), also uniquely located in Ames, Iowa, is a USDA administered entity linked by unique location and common interest in West Nile virus and anthrax research and developments to the FDAH. The NVSL reported the first West Nile virus infection in a horse in Florida. Subsequent investigations showed no infected mosquitoes or “WNV-positive pools” by Florida investigators. (39,40) Nonetheless, the news media “wagged the dog” for West Nile vaccine sales once again benefiting FDAH and the Aventis and OraVax/Acambis partnerships.(39)

28. The NY Times reported on 11-9-01 that the FBI investigation of anthrax mailings was stymied.(41) What else might be expected given the classified nature of this work and its operatives? Most are afforded protection by the National Security Agency and the CIA. Yet, stunningly, the FBI and CDC were blamed for destroying critical evidence. According to the report, the Ames, Iowa strain of anthrax, determined to be the one mailed from Trenton to Florida and Washington’s capitol, had been suspiciously selected for destruction.(41) Iowa State officials suddenly confessed that they were ordered by CDC and FBI officials to destroy all of the remaining Ames, Iowa anthrax strain on or about October 8-9. The strain archive was then “destroyed on Oct. 10 and 11.” That means, as national attention was first focusing on the American Media, Inc.’s initial anthrax cases in Florida (October 7), the orders to destroy that particular strain was given. More incriminating is the fact that this one strain, of more than 1,000 anthrax strains available, had been used in various labs for decades. Allegedly by mistake, these two agencies—the FBI and CDC— simultaneously urged/approved the strain’s destruction. It should be recognized that by April, 2000, the CIA assumed all oversight at the CDC, and other health science agencies, concerning HIV/AIDS (42) and other infectious diseases considered national security risks, which following 9-11 clearly included anthrax and smallpox. Again, according to FBI and military officials interviewed by the BBC and The Guardian’s Greg Palast (27), Bush administration officials and the CIA had blocked FBI investigations involving terror group financiers with ties to the Bush family and by extension certain vaccine makers.

29. The NYTimes (11-09-01) also reported that FBI investigators in search of anthrax mailing clues were refused access to certain pharmaceutical companies. These undisclosed companies were said to require court orders for official access to their facilities. No such court orders were subsequently reported.(41)

30. The American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) supplies most of the anthrax globally for research and biological weapons development. They supplied Saddam Hussein with 19 shipments of anthrax in the years leading up to the Gulf War. Their V.P., Nancy Wysocki, reported working closely with the FBI on their investigation (41) Dr. Joshua Lederberg, previously reported to have met with Bioport, their consultants, and Clinton administration officials regarding anthrax and smallpox risks and vaccine policies and purchases, was ATCC’s director during the time anthrax was shipped to Iraq. He is also the bioterrorism study group leader for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and President emeritus of Rockefeller University.(5)

The CFR is a chief U.S. Government policy analysis and advisory organization composed of 3,600 mostly wealthy industrialists led by international banking representatives. In his Farewell Address to the Nation, on January 17, 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s counsel was highly relevant to this discussion. He warned: “In the councils of Government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.”(5)

31. All findings have pointed to anthrax mailings being a “white collar crime”—a military–industrial conspiracy involving chief biological weapons “preparedness” firms and the CIA. This conclusion is evidenced by the highly weaponized nature of the silica powdered anthrax that required a bioweapons savvy microbiologist and expensive equipment to produce. Also, mailed anthrax letters originated from Trenton, New Jersey, St. Petersburg, Florida and Malaysia—also reflecting international financial motive(s). Additional support for this hypothesis comes from an Atlanta package shipped to Kenya on Oct. 9.(43) The sender was not implicated. Apparently, an agent with access to this private mail, and Battelle’s classified military grade anthrax preparation, somehow inoculated the parcel. Again, Atlanta is home to the CIA-officiated CDC.

32. Bayer AG posted $165 million in losses during the third quarter of 2001, according to the Associated Press.(44) Was this sufficient motive for the “wag the dog Cipro sales scam” reported by this author and published by the Washington Times?(1) Probably not, because there was far more money and political concessions to be made from the anthrax fright than this.(26)

33. On November 9, 2001, The Guardian reported that U.S. health secretary Tommy Thompson asked Congress for $500 million for enough smallpox vaccine “so every American will be assured there is a dose with his or her name on it if it is needed.” Only weeks earlier the HHS secretary said he had worked a “special” deal with Bayer to purchase 100 million tablets of Cipro for 95 cents each.(45) This, despite equally effective and better tested alternatives, such as doxycyclines, were more readily available for less than five cents each.(46)

A week later the New York Times announced that between $1.5-3.2 billion was to be spent “largely on drugs and vaccines” to fight bioterrorism in the United States.(47)

Finally, on November 23, 2001, the New York Times reported that Aventis Pharma of Frankfurt, Germany had developed a promising pharmaceutical formula for smallpox—“cidofovir and a chemical known as S2242.” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), “told a Senate committee last month that ‘the animal model data are very impressive. . .” (48) Dr. Fauci is America’s AIDS czar, under direct oversight by the CIA. He was heavily implicated by this author in Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola—Nature, Accident or Intentional? (Tetrahedron Press, 1998) for having helped suppress awareness that the NIAID helped Germany’s Merck pharmaceutical company develop the 1974 hepatitis B vaccine given to gay men in NYC and Blacks in Central Africa that according to much scientific evidence was the specific vaccine that triggered the international AIDS pandemic.

Summary and Closing Questions

“One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything,” urged William of Occam in providing his “Razor” analysis. This report seeks to do the same by simplifying the correlates and antecedents to serial homicide in the anthrax mailing mystery. This analysis is based on the FBI’s official model of analyzing suspects’ developmental histories and potential motives in such cases. (49)

The foregoing analysis recognizes the highly unsavory developmental histories of central suspects in this case—those who stood to gain most by the extensive news coverage of the anthrax crimes—investors in pharmaceutical and vaccine firms.

In conclusion, this report characterizes the unique U.S. military weapons grade of anthrax developed from the Ames, Iowa strain that was used in the mailings and the organization most capable of making it. Given several incriminating associations and documented testimonies published in reputable periodicals, the logical origin of this extraordinarily deadly form of aerosolizable anthrax is the Battelle Memorial Institute—a major global “defense” contractor employing affiliated anthrax experts additionally linked to the implicated drug and vaccine companies.

Although several contractors are implicated in what might best be called “military–industrial espionage,” the accompanying flow chart depicts the primary suspects are linked to the highest levels of government and to the Central Intelligence Agency both of which operate with little to no effective oversight or judicial regulation. This, then, is the likeliest explanation as to why the FBI has been unable to determine what seems obvious to many and heavily supported—a conspiracy to commit military–industrial espionage.

Perhaps economic incentives were not the only motive for the targeted anthrax mailings. On October 31, 2001, The Boston Globe heralded an unprecedented

CDC initiative that might dramatically suspend civil rights in the event of a declared biological emergency. The "Model State Emergency Health Powers Act," it was reported, would give public health officials and states governors the power to arrest, transport, quarantine, drug, and vaccinate anyone suspected of carrying a potentially infectious disease. The plan (available for downloading from www.publichealthlaw.net/MSEHPA/MSEHPA.pdf .) is precisely the type of document that Battelle Memorial Institute’s social service providers and leading academic consultants periodically compose. The fact that their website promotes the institute’s pioneering role in marshalling America’s upcoming public health response to future outbreaks is chillingly Machiavellian. (See: http://www.battelle.org/hhs/default.stm .)

Based on the above information, basic questions for serious investigators might include:

1) Who in the Battelle Institute’s Jefferson labs had access to the optimally concentrated aerosolized, silica-based, Ames strain of anthrax, and who transported it to Trenton, New Jersey and elsewhere to be mailed?

2) Who in the CIA was assigned to oversee this classified biological weapons, or bioterrorism, “defense” operation, and who, if anyone in the agency (as with Battelle personnel), had the wherewithal and matching itinerary to effect the anthrax mailings in Trenton, St. Petersburg, Atlanta, and Malaysia.

3) Who in the Bush administration ordered, according to the BBC and The Guardian, the CIA to clamp down on FBI investigations linking bin Laden family assets to Bush family investments, and finally,

4) Is America at risk and under attack from within our own secretive national security system, possibly more than it is from foreign entities and terrorist groups?

If we were able to accurately answer these questions, the revelations—no less extraordinary than the data and conclusions presented in this report—might serve as a basis upon which to rethink and redirect our “War on Terrorism,” defense initiatives, and public health policies to honestly safeguard the American people in service to freedom and the free world.

Copyright © 2001 by Leonard G. Horowitz. All rights reserved though may be recopied, distributed, or posted on the worldwide web for non-profit purposes only. For more information visit: www.tetrahedron.org .

* Leonard G. Horowitz, D.M.D., M.A., M.P.H. is a Harvard trained expert in public health and social and behavioral science.

This work is dedicated to the recently disappeared Professor Don C. Wiley of Harvard whose case remains a solvable mystery. Dr. Horowitz may be contacted through Tetrahedron Publishing Group.

The author would like to especially acknowledge the collaborative efforts of two heroic individuals: Chris Williams of the First Amendment Press in Denton, Texas (chris.williams73@verizon.net)and independent biomedical investigator Patricia Doyle  http://goddess-of-fire.tripod.com/index-1.html 

For more information written by Dr. Horowitz on this subject, read "Death in the Air: Globalism, Terrorism and Toxic Warfare" (Tetrahedron Publishing Group, June 2001; $29.95; 1-888-508- 4787, available from www.deathintheair.com  and www.tetrahedron.org  ).

*For more information about Dr. Horowitz link to:

http://www.tetrahedron.org/aboutus.html 

For free information regarding the 9-11 attacks, link to the Apocalypse Prevention Project at:

http://www.tetrahedron.org/articles/apocalypse/index.html 

For information about Dr. Horowitz’s American bestseller, "Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola—Nature, Accident or Intentional?" link to:

http://www/tetrahedron.org 

For Dr. Horowitz’s speaking schedule and services call 1-800- 336-9266.

Courtesy of Tetrahedron Publishing Group 206 North 4th Avenue, Suite 147 Sandpoint, Idaho 83864 http://www.tetrahedron.org  Toll free order line: 888-508-4787; Office telephone: 208-265-2575; FAX: 208-265-2775 E-mail: pr@tetrahedron.org 

If you would like to order audiotapes of this special report for distribution to those who prefer audio education, please call toll free 1-888-508-4787

References:

1) O’Meara K. Drug deal: Investigative report. Washington Times, Insight Magazine. November 26, 2001, pp. 24-25.

2) Broad WJ. Terror anthrax lined to type made by U.S. New York Times. December 3, 2001. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/03/national/03POWD.html 

3) Broad W. and Miller J. Anthrax inquiry looks at U.S. labs. New York Times, December 2, 2001. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/02/national/02POWD.html 

4) Cole LA. Anthrax hoaxes: hot new hobby? Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 1999 (July/August);55;4:7-13. Available at: http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1999/ja99/ja99bulletins.html 

5) Horowitz LG. Death in the Air: Globalism, Terrorism and Toxic Warfare. Sandpoint, ID: Tetrahedron Publishing Group, 2001.

6) Begich N and Burke K. New non-lethal weapons systems may be used against U.S. citizens. Report presented to the World Foundation for Natural Sciences on October 17, 1998, Interlaken, Switzerland. Published by The Leading Edge. Available from www.earthpulse.com .

7) Tucker J and Sands A. An unlikely threat. Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 1999 (July/August);55;4:46-52. Available at: http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1999/ja99/ja99tucker.html )

8) Bioport was originally purchased by majority shareholder Intervac, a Maryland-based biotech firm owned by Admiral William J. Crowem Jr., but purchased by Fuad El Hibri, the general manager of Intervac. Mr. El Hibri directed the buyout as he had previously done with Porton Products Ltd., a Cambridge, England company apparently linked to Porton Down, England’s top biological weapons development and testing facility. (See: U.S. Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs, and International Relations. June 30, 1999, available from http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b12516e4594.htm ; See also: http://search.lycos.com/main/default.asp?lpv=1&loc-- searchhp3&query=Faud+El-Hibri& ... [see #10-Lansing State Journal]. In August 2001, the BBC reported that 20,000 “so called human guinea pigs went to Porton Down between 1939 and the 1960s” for various illegal chemical and biological weapons tests. Thousands were harmed or killed as a result. See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/uk/newsid_1506000/1506968.stm . For Robert Myers, Battelle Memorial Institute and the DoD’s Joint Vaccine Acquisition Program data see: Myers RC. Chief Operating Officer and Director, BioPort Corporation, The a joint meeting of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies of the Senate Appropriations Committee, March 16, 1999. Available from: http://www.senate.gov/~appropriations/old/labor/myrs3_16.htm .

9) Department of Defense. Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program: Unproven Force Protection. February 17, 2000, p. 13

10) Irvine R and Kincaid C. Another leftover scandal from Clinton: Background of Anthrax vaccine manufacturer BioPort. Free Republic. May 22, 2001. Available from: http://freerepublic.com/forum/a3b12516e4594.htm .

11) Skolnick SH. Overthrow of the American republic: The anthrax commissars. Citizen’s Committee to Clean Up the Courts. The primary source wished to remain anonymous. Mr. Skolnick relayed to this author by direct communication that he personally interviewed the source. For more information contact: Sherman H. Skolnick, 9800 South Oglesby Avenue, Chicago, IL 60617-4870. (773) 375-5741; E-mail skolnick@ameritech.net; See also Menchken HL. The great anthrax stock swindle. Available from: http://www.whatareweswallowing.freeserve.co.uk/anthrax.htm .

12) Associated Press. Bin laden cutting Carlyle Ties. October 26, 2001. Available at: http://hoovnews.hoovers.com/fp.asp?layout=query_displaynews&q=Carlyle+Group&so=&dc=&ro= ...; see also: Newsweek MSNBC investigation 11-11-2001

13) Staff. Vaccine bailout: DoD to bail out anthrax vaccine maker. Washington Times, Insight Magazine. October 20, 2001. Available from: http://www.insightmag.com/cgi-bin/ViewNews.cfm ? Item=334.

14) Massie RK. Blood feud: A mother takes the hemophilia tragedy to court. New Yorker. June 16, 1997, pp. 98-102.

15) Manning P. Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile. Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, Inc., 1981.

16) Borkin J. The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben: The Unholy Alliance Between Hitler and the Great Chemical Combine. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1997.

17) Griffin GE. World Without Cancer: The Story of Vitamin B17. Westlake, CA: American Media, 1997.

18) American Home Products development of earliest smallpox vaccine is available at: http://www.ahp.com/history.asp . For strategic alliance between Baxter and Acambis to make the smallpox vaccine see Acambis’s website www.biotechshares.com/acambis.htm 

19) Wyeth Genetics Institute information is available from: http://www.wyeth.com/randd/gi/ 

20) American Home Products Company profile and affiliations are available at: http://www.ahp.com/companies.asp 

21) Aventis announces support for government emergency preparedness efforts: Company to offer vaccines and antibiotic manufacturing capacity for protecting country against bioterrorism. October 26, 2001. Company press release at: http://www.aventispharma-us.com/pressreleases/10_26_01.html 

22) Horowitz LG and Martin WJ. Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola— Nature, Accident or Intentional? Rockport, MA: Tetrahedron Press, 1998, pp. 37-38.

23) Manning P. op cit., pp. 29 and 56.

24) Horowitz and Martin. op cit., p. 492.

25) CNNfn. BASF boosts agro unit. News release available at: http://money.cnn.com/2000/03/21/europe/basf/ 

26) Staff. Industry role in bioterrorism response planning must be open to the public. The Public Citizen, Nov. 8, 2001. Available from: http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?  ID=901; See also: Claybrook J. Drug companies wage war on consumer. The Public Citizen, Nov. 30, 2001. Available at: http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=953.27 ) Palast G and Pallister D. FBI and US spy agents say Bush spiked bin Laden probes before 11 September. The Guardian (London). November 7, 2001. Available from: http://www.grepalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=103&row=0 .

28) Aventis Media Center. Aventis Announces Support for U.S. Government emergency preparedness efforts. October 26, 2001. Available from Frankfurt, Germany, http://www.aventis.com/main/0,1003,EN-XX-10590-45781--,FF.html ; For Merck partnership see: http://www.aventis.com/main/0,1003,EN-XX-27211-44441--,FF.html 

29) The reference for the Hoechst-Rhone Poulenc’s Aventis (Merck partnered) and Acambis “strategic alliance” with AHP’s Baxter Healthcare Corporation to produce the smallpox vaccine is available at http://www.biotechshares.com/acambis.htm .

30) Information regarding the CDC’s vaccine award to Acambis is available at: http://company.monster.com/oravax/; For Oravax, Inc. name change to Acambis, Inc. see: http://www.oravax.com/ 

31) Broad W and Miller J. Germ defense plan in peril as its flaws are revealed. New York Times, August. 7, 1998.

32) Battelle’s nuclear biological and chemical group is described on their website at: http://www.nbcindustrygroup.com/battel.htm .

33) Battelle’s West Jefferson, Ohio BL-3 laboratory may be viewed at: http://www.nrel.gov/surviving_disaster/fema2000/Cbiac/sld016.htm  . 34) Stout D. U.S. offers $1 million for anthrax attacker’s capture. New York Times, October 18, 2001. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/ 

35) Isachenkov V. Germ warfare plans worry Russia, September 7, 2001. This information was relayed to the author by e-mail from Christopher Williams, Dec. 5, 2001. Contact: chris.williams73@verizon.net 

36) Preston R. Annals of Warfare—The Bioweaponeers. New Yorker, March 9, 1998.

37) To access this slide click on: at http://www.nrel.gov/survivingdisaster/fema2000/Cbiac/sld016.htm .

38) American Home Products Corporation: Fort Dodge Animal Health. About AHP at: http://www.ahp.com/fort_dodge/for_dodge.asp . Some of Fort Dodge Laboratories historic data is held by Iowa State University. For this see: http://www.lib.iastate.edu/spcl/manuscripts/MS019.html 

39) Environmental News Network. West Nile virus strikes Florida horses. Tues, July 24, 2001. Available from:  http://www.enn.com/news/enn- stories/2001/07/07242001/virus_44396.asp   

40) National Veterinary Services Laboratory (NVSL) general description is available from: http://www.aphis.usda.gov/mds/eng-nvsl.html .

41) Purdum TS. Anthrax checks widen as officials admit error. New York Times, October 25, 2001. Available from: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/25/national/25ANTH.html? todaysheadlines; See also: Broad WJ, Johnston D, Miller J and Zielbauer P. Experts see F.B.I. missteps hampering anthrax inquiry. New York Times, November 9, 2001 http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/09/national/09INQUI.html ? pagewanted =1&todaysheadlines  .

42) Gellman B. AIDS is declared threat to security. Washington Post, Online, April 30, 2000. The CIA sponsored article is available for downloading at: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/nie/report/nie99-17d.html . The Post’s article may be obtained at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A40503-2000Apr29  

43) Associated Press. U.S. anthrax letter mailed to Kenya. New York Times, Oct. 18, 2001. Available from http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Anthrax-Overseas.html 

44) McHugh D. Bayer posts $165 million Q3 loss. Associated Press. November 14, 2001. Available from: http://www.news.excite.com/news/ap/011114/08/germany-bayer .

45) Bradsher K. Bayer agrees to charge government a lower price for anthrax medicine. New York Times. October 25, 2001. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/25/business/25BAYE.html ; See also: The Guardian, HHS Secretary buys $500 smallpox vaccine with name on it.

46) Abelson R and Pollack A. Other drugs to combat anthrax are in ample supply. October 23, 2001. New York Times. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/23/business/23DRUG.html ; See also: Pear R. In anthrax crisis, health secretary finds unsteady going. New York Times, October 25, 2001. Available from http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/25/national/25THOM.html ; See also: Bradsher K. New York Times, Oct. 25, 2001. Other antibiotics than Cipro.

47) Stolberg SG. Senators seek $3.2 billion to fight germ threats, doubling bush plan. New York Times, Nov. 16, 2001. Available from: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/politics/16BIO.html ? todaysheadlines .

48) Wade N. A nation challenged: Drug research; U.S. hunting antiviral drug to use in case of smallpox. New York Times, November 23, 2001. Available from NYTimes online archives

49) Horowitz LG. Murder and cover-up could explain the Florida dental AIDS mystery. British Dental Journal. 1994 10;24:423- 327; This report was based on: Hartman AW, Ressler RR, Douglas JE and McCormack A. Sexual homicide: a motivational model. In: Criminal Investigatory Analysis of Sexual Homicide. National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, United States Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, pp. 39- 60, 1990.

50) Horowitz LG. Polio, Hepatitis B and AIDS: An integrative theory on a possible vaccine induced pandemic. J Medical Hypothesis 2001;56;5:677-686.

The Very Mysterious Deaths Of Five Microbiologists 

By Ian Gurney

www.caspro.com 

12-20-1

It is a story worthy of a major conspiracy theory, the script for a Mel Gibson "Who dunnit?" action movie, or a blueprint for a contrived and unbelievable episode of "The X Files". Except the facts surrounding this story are just that. Facts. The Truth. Five eminent microbiologists, leaders in their particular field of scientific research, either dead or missing in the last eight weeks, and a bizarre connection between one of the dead scientists and the mystery surrounding the death by Anthrax inhalation of a sixty one year old female hospital worker in New York. Sounds far fetched? Read on.

Over the past few weeks several world-acclaimed scientific researchers specializing in infectious diseases and biological agents such as Anthrax, as well as DNA sequencing, have been found dead or have gone missing.

First, on November 12th, was Dr. Benito Que, a cell biologist working on infectious diseases like HIV, who was found dead outside his laboratory at the Miami Medical School. Police say his death was possibly the result of a mugging. The Miami Herald reported that:

"The incident, whatever it may have been, occurred on Monday afternoon as the scientist left his job at University of Miami's School of Medicine. He headed for his car, a white Ford Explorer parked on Northwest 10th Avenue. The word among his friends is that four men armed with a baseball bat attacked him at his car."

On November 16th, within of week of Dr. Que's assault, Dr. Don C Wiley, one of the United States foremost infectious disease researchers was declared missing. Bill Poovey, a journalist with Associated Press wrote:

"His rental car was found with a full tank of petrol and the keys in the ignition. His disappearance looked like a suicide, but according to colleagues and Dr. Wiley's family, the Harvard Scientist associated with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute would NEVER commit suicide. Associates who attended the St. Jude's Children Research Advisory Dinner with Dr. Wiley, just hours before he disappeared, said that he was in good spirits and NOT depressed. He was last seen at the banquet at the Peabody Hotel in downtown Memphis the night he vanished. Those who saw him last say he showed no signs of a man contemplating his own death."

Wiley left the hotel around midnight. The bridge where his car was found is only a five-minute drive away and in the wrong direction from where he was staying, leaving authorities with a four-hour, unexplained gap until his vehicle was found.

Now Memphis police are exploring several theories involving suicide, robbery and murder.

"We began this investigation as a missing person investigation," said Walter Crews of the Memphis Police Department. "From there it went to a more criminal bent."

Dr. Wiley was an expert on how the human immune system fights off infections and had recently investigated such dangerous viruses as AIDS, Ebola, herpes and influenza.

From the United States, the story moves to England. On November 23rd, Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik, a former microbiologist for Biopreparat, the Soviet biological-weapons production facility was found dead. The Times was the only newspaper to provide an obituary for Dr. Pasechnik, and said:

"The defection to Britain in 1989 of Vladimir Pasechnik revealed to the West for the first time the colossal scale of the Soviet Union's clandestine biological warfare programme. His revelations about the scale of the Soviet Union's production of such biological agents as anthrax, plague, tularaemia and smallpox provided an inside account of one of the best kept secrets of the Cold War. After his defection he worked for ten years at the U.K. Department of Health's Centre for Applied Microbiology Research before forming his own company, Regma Biotechnics, to work on therapies for cancer, neurological diseases, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. In the last few weeks of his life he had put his research on anthrax at the disposal of the Government, in the light of the threat from bioterrorism."

Back to the United States, and on December 10th, Dr. Robert M. Schwartz was found murdered in Leesberg, Virginia. Dr. Schwartz was a well-known DNA sequencing researcher. He founded the Virginia Biotechnology Association where he worked on DNA sequencing for 15 years.

On Wednesday, December 12th the Washington Post reported:

"A well-known biophysicist, who was one of the leading researchers on DNA sequencing analysis, was found slain in his rural Loudoun County home after co-workers became concerned when he didn't arrive at work as expected. Robert M. Schwartz, 57, a founding member of the Virginia Biotechnology Association, was found dead in the secluded fieldstone farmhouse southwest of Leesburg where he lived alone. Loudoun sheriff's officials said it appeared that Schwartz had been stabbed."

And so to Victoria State, Australia, where, on December 14th, a skilled microbiologist was killed at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation's animal diseases facility in Geelong, Australia. This is the same facility that, as the journal Nature announced in January this year:

"Australian scientists, Dr Ron Jackson and Dr Ian Ramshaw, accidentally created an astonishingly virulent strain of mousepox, a cousin of smallpox, among laboratory mice. They realised that if similar genetic manipulation was carried out on smallpox, an unstoppable killer could be unleashed."

The microbiologist who died had worked for 15 years at the facility. His name was Set Van Nguyen. Victoria Police said:

"Set Van Nguyen, 44, appeared to have died after entering an airlock into a storage laboratory filled with nitrogen. His body was found when his wife became worried after he failed to return from work. He was killed after entering a low temperature storage area where biological samples were kept. He did not know the room was full of deadly gas which had leaked from a liquid nitrogen cooling system. Unable to breathe, Mr. Nguyen collapsed and died."

Now for the intriguing part of this story. On Friday, November 2nd, the Washington Post reported:

"Officials are now scrambling to determine how a quiet, 61-year-old Vietnamese immigrant, riding the subway each day to and from her job in a hospital stockroom, was exposed to the deadly anthrax spores that killed her this week. They worry because there is no obvious connection to the factors common to earlier anthrax exposures and deaths: no clear link to the mail or to the media."

The name of this quiet 61 year old hospital worker was Kathy Nguyen.

Copyright Ian Gurney, December 2001. Ian Gurney is the author of "The Cassandra Prophecy" www.caspro.com 

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