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1998 - 2003© Copyright From The Wilderness Publications
FTW Special Report on SARS The 9/11 Biowarfare Trail Lengthens Combining Biological and Economic Warfare by Michael C. Ruppert and Wayne Madsen © Copyright 2003, From The Wilderness Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com. All Rights Reserved. This story may NOT be posted on any Internet web site without express written permission. Contact admin@copvcia.com. May be circulated, distributed or transmitted for non-profit purposes only. [For more than a year and a half FTW has been examining the relationships between these developments: The attacks of 9/11; Biowarfare, starting with the anthrax attacks of 2001, later proven to have used a strain of the disease developed by the CIA; The mysterious deaths of as many as 15 world-class microbiologists specializing in infectious diseases and DNA sequencing since 9/11; The rush to enact unwarranted, draconian public health measures including MEHPA, The Patriot Act, and the Homeland Security Act which have violated the constitution and given the government the right to forcibly vaccinate or quarantine American citizens and to confiscate property without due process; The documentary record of US, Israeli and South African attempts to develop gene-specific bioweapons; and The reality that an irreversible peak and decline in global oil and gas production would cause a massive overshoot of population that could not be fed or managed with rapidly disappearing, non-renewable energy supplies which no amount of demand could replace. The end game of this decline would be direct competition between the United States and China, which together are destined to consume as much as eighty per cent of the world's oil production by the middle of the century. Back in November of 2001 I had concluded, based upon scientific data, that Peak Oil was real. It was apparent that the world's population numbers had already overshot the decline of available oil and that this was going to be increasingly difficult to conceal. Events since that time, world oil production data and reports from CNNHN and the BBC, have proven this correct. I also concluded, along with several other researchers, that one possible contingency plan developed by the world's elite was consistent with an option that had been discussed by scientists looking at Peak Oil issues as long as ten years ago – reduce the world's population by as much as 4 billion people using biological warfare. Reduction to 2 billion represents sustainable food production levels demonstrated before petroleum energy and natural gas (ammonia) changed agriculture. I mentioned this likelihood in my first post-9/11 lecture at Portland State University in November of 2001. That was before most of the above events had taken place or were even known. With much of my earlier research having since been validated, it is fair to ask if the SARS virus fits into this scenario. The answer is that it does and it doesn't. It is becoming clear that economic and military stresses caused as nations position themselves for the end of the age of oil raise the possibility of a global conflict which could be just as deadly as the energy famine itself. In other words, competition for energy might be as destructive as not having enough. Full public acknowledgement by the markets of the reality of Peak Oil could produce chaos long before shortages become acute. So one requirement that must be addressed in the "management" of Peak Oil is how to reduce demand and weaken the competition without disclosing the underlying issue. In this role, SARS fits the bill perfectly because it has successfully terrified much of the world's population, weakened the Chinese economy and set the stage for more deadly diseases while avoiding the real issue. SARS serves the role of something long-practiced in covert operations and warfare – a dry run on serious population reduction and management. Ultimately something will give. And ultimately – as people begin to starve – population issues will have to be addressed, both in terms of number and in terms of maintaining order. SARS, while most likely not the agent envisioned by some scientists as the "big one," conveniently serves the dual purpose of conditioning populations for the time when forced vaccinations may accomplish the task or when they will be told to surrender all personal liberties as a more deadly disease occupies the stage. But to think of SARS only in that context is to miss a great many other "side effects" of the disease, not the least of which is the fact that it forces China to accept western medical and business practices favored by globalized financial interests and the western pharmaceutical industry. It also strengthens the political clout of China's new leader Hu Jintao as he is forced to respond decisively. As I have noted many times, US-Chinese relationships are a double-edged sword. While China will ultimately become the US's main competitor for energy, capitalism demands debt, growth and increased sales to avoid collapse. China has long been recognized as the last great market for capitalist expansion. China is the market that US corporations like Motorola, Microsoft, GM, IBM, Intel, AIG and the pharmaceutical companies need to sustain growth, support share prices and pay dividends. While SARS appears to be hurting the short-term interests of some American corporations it may ultimately prove to be a bonanza for the WTO, the World Bank and the financial engines that can use debt and "transparency" to shift some of the west's economic weakness by lending dollars and compelling China adopt western practices. The questions then are whether SARS is manmade and how it is man used. The answers, especially considering the US's history of engineering bioweapons and some very pronounced links to 9/11, are not reassuring. And there are lingering questions of the connections to the research work of the recently deceased microbiologists. To access FTW's previous reporting on these issues please visit: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/index.html and look under the headings of Oil, Biowarfare and Civil Liberties. – MCR] May 09, 2003, 1900 PDT (FTW) – Strong circumstantial evidence is mounting that the Bush administration may be engaging in a new form of warfare: bio-economic attacks against countries that either opposed the US war on Iraq or are showing signs of surpassing the United States in economic vitality and growth. Ascendancy on the global stage now would provide any nation or group of nations with the ability to successfully compete for rapidly diminishing supplies of oil and natural gas where no viable replacement energy regime has been offered or implemented. With China's robust economy reeling and Chinese prestige suffering as a result of admitted "mishandling" of the disease, the economic impacts of SARS are hard to miss. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal's web site lists 57 SARS-related stories in the 5 day period starting on May 1, 2003. But SARS, riding on the back of unprecedented media saturation for a disease that has killed fewer people than influenza will this year, is also furthering a number of other agendas which have become prominent since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. A Google news search reveals that more than 19,800 stories from recognized news outlets have been published on the disease in less than two months (330 a day) and that several hundred thousand SARS entries are available on the internet from all sources. Perhaps the most important, yet unexplained, fact about the appearance of SARS is the unquestioned reality that it is a coronavirus with a unique RNA sequence that is not directly related to known human or animal viruses. In other words, SARS is very possibly man made. Yet in all the press coverage from major media outlets we have not seen that question asked or addressed once. Reason to Be Suspicious Given the fact that the Bush administration used forged documents and falsified data to justify the Iraqi invasion; that Prime Minister Tony Blair relied upon intelligence plagiarized from an outdated graduate research paper; and that entities like the US Geological Survey and the Energy Information Administration have routinely misled the public about actual oil reserves, there is reason to be suspicious. In a climate where corporate books are cooked to boost share values and the Department of Defense acknowledges that it has "misplaced" more than $3 trillion, how can we rely totally on SARS diagnoses offered by medical research interests, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), media outlets or governments which benefit from the obvious hysteria? China – The Number One priority There are three reasons why China is the US's number-one geostrategic concern. First, within the next decade China and the United States will be the largest users and competitors for the world's rapidly diminishing oil reserves. Both the US and China will be importing as much as 80-90% of their oil within the next twenty years and together – in order to sustain their economies – will be using as much as 60-70% of all the oil that is produced globally. Second, China vehemently opposed the US invasion of Iraq. Third, the expanding Chinese economy and China's stranglehold on the US trade deficit has placed China in a position to challenge the US for global economic supremacy. The first SARS case appeared almost at the same time that Western financial institutions were forecasting a record growth in China's gross domestic product of between 7.5 and 7.6 percent. They also appeared just before the US invasion of Iraq which China was opposing. A ccording to Beijing Mayor Dr. Jiang Yangyong, the first case of S A RS was reported on March 1, 2003, when an elderly man was admitted to a Beijing military hospital with the disease. A t this time China had openly opposed the US invasion of Iraq and the military invasion itself was just eighteen days away. The outbreak was reportedly covered up in order to avoid any disruption of the Chinese National People's Congress, which began in Beijing on March 5. When the disease began spreading and Chinese officials finally scurried to deal with the virus, the economic cost to mainland China had become devastating -- $2.2 billion according to the Far Eastern Economic Review. S A RS also cost Hong Kong an additional $1.7 billion. The first public reports of the S A RS virus appeared in press stories on March 19th and 20th. The US invasion of Iraq began on March 19. Coincidence? China had been outshining the US in the eyes of the non-aligned world. For the Bush administration, in the middle of America's worst economic downturn in ten years and spending billions on the war against Iraq, the idea of a booming Chinese economy did not sit well. China was also in the final stages of planning its first manned space launch at a time when the United States had lost its second space shuttle due to incompetence. The contrast between an economically vitalized China and a United States caught in the malaise of recession, war, and technological failure could not have been more apparent. Hitting China in the Pocketbook A look at a series of stories in The Wall Street Journal shows the economic damage done to China and also that the economic impact of the disease is mutating perhaps as quickly as the virus itself. On A pril 21, 2003, in a story headlined, "China Economy to Slow as S ARS Takes Toll," the Journal described the heavy economic toll the disease was taking and observed, "But the weekend news unnerved many Chinese. Wang Haibo, a boisterous 27-year-old accountant carrying a bag full of disinfectant bottles for her office said she and her co-workers planned to lobby their bosses for a month off, even without pay." That sounds like a perfect 10 from the CIA's intended results of bioweapons as psychological terror tools. Two days later, the Journal reported on the ripple effects of SARS in a story headlined, "Foreign-Investment Worries Grow in China as SARS Impact Spreads." By this point the impact on foreign companies – especially those with heavy capital investment like Nissan -- was being felt around the world. The story reported, "DBS Bank economist Chris Leung said indirect economic losses could be large, especially if foreign direct investment inflow into China were to decelerate sharply." On the 25th, the Journal headlined one of its stories, "SARS send tremors through world economy." That story said, "A report that top Japanese car maker Toyota Motor Corp plans to withdraw most of its Japanese staff and their families from Beijing deepened the gloom… "…global commerce would be shaken if trading giant China was severely hurt by the crisis." Five days later the Journal was reporting that the crisis had become so severe, with so many corporations threatening to cut back operations, that it was threatening the stability of the regime. The heat on the new Chinese Premier Hu Jintao was being turned up. "'If the impact of the epidemic is to either slow down or collapse the high rates of economic growth [even for a quarter] or to begin to turn the psychological climate sour, in terms of the seeming invincibility of China… grave social and political consequence could follow,' says [UC Professor Orville] Mr. Schell." The story concluded by noting that the crisis was compelling China to institute reforms that were appealing to the World Trade Organization and that S A RS could be Mr. Hu's Sept. 11. Successful handling of the crisis would leave him in a stronger position both to push his domestic agenda to aid the disadvantaged and to diminish rivals. A mong the losers would be his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, who heads the military, whose hospitals were concealing hundreds of S A RS patients in the Beijing cover-up. Failure to contain S A RS could open the way for a challenge to Mr. Hu's leadership. Just a day later, on May 1st, the Journal was making Wall Street's position clear. In a Commentary headlined "SARS Playing Into Beijing's Hands" Bruce Gilley wrote that Hu was handling the crisis well, consolidating power and that: "Nor do the benefits to the new leadership from the SA RS crisis necessarily stop there. In the weeks and months to come, it is quite conceivable that international financial institutions like the World Bank and UNDP may consider increasing lending to China to help it avoid such problems in future… "All this for a death toll in China and Hong Kong which is less than that on the roads in a given day or in the factories in a given week." The very next day the headline story was "SARS Outbreak Doesn't Take Long-Term Luster Off China." That story quoted a GM spokesperson as confirming that GM invests hundreds of millions of dollars in China every year and that it was building plants or investing in other companies that were building plants to manufacture autos. China's demand for automobiles is unnerving. It realized a 50% increase in vehicle sales in 2002 alone. By the 6th of May the AP was reporting that SARS was still a threat to China's communist system, that the disease had not yet peaked, and that the disease could just as easily topple Hu as it might empower him. The implication from all of these stories seems to be that protecting foreign investment in China by making Chinese practices conform to WTO wishes would be the critical factor and that an imploded Chinese economy would be the most certain guarantee of Hu's demise. On the other hand Hu's cooperation with Western financial needs might guarantee his success. But the game is not without its risks. Economic analyst Marshall Auerback observed in The Prudent Bear on May 6: "SARS was just the last thing a teetering global economy needed at this point. The U.S. and world economy has generally been weaker this year than the consensus expected… A combination of deteriorating domestic fundamentals, coupled with the exogenous shocks engendered by the Iraqi war aftermath and the SARS epidemic, are beginning to change overseas' perceptions, refocusing attention on the increasingly tenuous nature of America's economic prosperity." And yet the message to China about how to solve the crisis was being made unmistakably clear. It was repeated by Morgan Stanley's Stephen Roach, writing in The Global Economic Forum on May 5 when he observed: "The new leadership fully recognizes the risk that SARS could turn into globalization's first epidemic. No nation has more at stake in globalization than China. As such, a rethinking of China's global role may well be central to the initiatives that are being taken on SARS."… To the extent that this response reflects a new adaptability, transparency, and "globality," the long-run case for China may well be strengthened as a result. S A RS is an admittedly painful wake-up call. But China has awakened." One sign of that awakening was that on May 6, as reported by Agence France Presse, China announced that it had contracted with a Swedish firm, Isconova, to develop a vaccine for SARS. Isconova's background has been in the development of veterinary vaccines and company officials have indicated that a practical vaccine is probably two years away. Can the pharmaceutical companies be far behind? The Rest of Asia and Canada The economies of Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia have also been extremely hard hit by SARS, yet their plight has been only marginally discussed in the A merican press. Even though S ARS has not made a forceful appearance in these countries (as of May 5 Indonesia has reported two cases and Malaysia 6) the US has little or no reason to feel sympathy for these countries. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world. Malaysia, also a Muslim nation, has been an economic pioneer, neatly avoiding the globalist traps of the IMF and the World Bank while pioneering in technology and industrial growth. Perhaps more importantly, with their large populations and increasingly industrialized economies, the projected energy demands – especially for oil – in these two countries put them squarely in competition with the two gluttons at the world energy table, the US and China. With that in mind it is doubtful if either the US or China – unless China finds it in its geostrategic interests to save its access to large Indonesian gas reserves – will lift a finger to help with S A RS in the rest of the region. Canadian officials have moved swiftly and efficiently to respond to the SARS threat and they have effectively prevented a contemplated move by the World Health Organization to issue a travel advisory urging travelers to avoid Toronto that would have devastated the city. Recent reports reveal that occurrences of the disease in Canada are decreasing and American media attention paid to SARS cases there has been decreasing both in frequency and in scope. The less press coverage, the lower the hysteria and the smaller the hit taken by business. But, as FTW noted in our October 2000 report on the RCMP's US investigation of stolen PROMIS software, used by both intelligence agencies and financial institutions, Canada remains an easily punished US stepchild that, in spite of taking occasionally courageous positions opposed to outrageous US policies, can be brought into line and muzzled. I have seen no public criticism of US policies in Iraq from Canada since the SARS outbreak was first reported. SARS has appeared and behaved on the world stage exactly as one would expect an economic weapon to behave. All warfare has its risks for both sides but the effects of S A RS have proven to be of very timely and very specific benefit to the United States. Is there reason to believe that it was manufactured for this purpose or that it is being used in that manner? CIVIL LIBERTIES IN THE US Inside the US SARS has resulted in the first moves taken under provisions of the Homeland Security Act and the Public Health Service Act to invoke new emergency powers giving the federal government the right to forcibly quarantine anyone in the country suspected of having the disease. An AP story on April 4, disclosed that President Bush "gave health officials authority to quarantine Americans sick with the highly contagious virus, though officials had no immediate plans to use the emergency powers." The telling phrase "emergency powers" indicates that the order signed by Bush was an invocation of new powers conveyed under the Homeland Security Act which pertain to and interface with the Public Health Service Act. These are the powers which, according to some lawmakers like Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, now enable the government to vaccinate or quarantine people against their will, charge them with criminal offenses for refusal to cooperate, and seize or condemn their property without due process. Interestingly, Executive Order 13295 announcing Bush's decision has not been posted to the White House web site as of this writing as are all other executive orders. In that order SARS is added to the list of diseases for which the Secretary of Health and Human Service may institute forced quarantines. The list includes: Cholera; Diphtheria; Infectious Tuberculosis; Plague; Smallpox; Yellow Fever; and Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers (Lassa, Marburg, Ebola, Crimean-Congo, South American, and others not yet isolated or named). But in wording that appears to be intentionally vague the order states, "The Secretary [HHS], in the Secretary's discretion, shall determine whether a particular condition constitutes a communicable disease of the type specified in section 1 of this order." Under this definition quarantine could conceivably be ordered for people who have SARS-like symptoms but have not been proven to have the disease itself. That is to say that people could be quarantined for a common cold or the flu. It is important to note a legal distinction which says that quarantines are measures applied to people who have been exposed to a disease and isolation describes those measures taken with people who are confirmed to have a disease. The April 4 AP story went on to note, "[Bush's] executive order adds S A RS to the list of diseases for which health authorities have the authority to involuntarily hold Americans, the first time a disease has been added to the list in two decades." On May 5, Reuters reported that the White House, with strong support from congress, was preparing a national disease reporting and tracking system that will – based upon its description – likely interface with the highly controversial Total Information Awareness program operated by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). That program, as described on a government web site, will incorporate commercial and private data bases on all Americans and will include medical records provided by medical providers and HMOs. It will also likely use the well-known PROMIS software on which FTW has reported extensively. (For more on PROMIS, please visit the FTW web site.) On May 7, the US government approved the use of force at border checkpoints to detain arriving passengers if necessary. A New York Times story reported that the Department of Homeland Security has provided masks and gloves to its airport inspectors and at border crossings and specifically linked S A RS issues to issues of bioterrorism and anticipated attacks. In the meantime, media stories are constantly reinforcing the notion that more of these genetically recombined diseases are going to appear in the near future and that some of them will likely be much more deadly than SARS. This is highly effective pre-conditioning. The net effect of the extreme publicity and the reactions provoked by this disease is apparently unjustified by the numbers of deaths caused by the disease as compared to other diseases. But the A merican public, and indeed the entire world, is being prepared to accept draconian measures that had not even been discussed before 9/11. A quote from The Wall Street Journal bears repeating, "All this for a death toll in China and Hong Kong which is less than that on the roads in a given day or in the factories in a given week." SARS – THE BIOECONOMIC WEAPON Some scientific reports assert that the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) does not occur naturally have raised eyebrows among biological warfare experts. In a highly technical paper dated April 23 from the London-based Institute for Science in Society (ISIS) Dr. Mae-Wan Ho and Professor Joe Cummins offer a case that the SARS virus is a deliberately manmade virus and that critical information about the disease has been withheld from the public. They observe that no naturally occurring coronavirus is able to do what the SARS virus is doing – mutating and reproducing in different bodily environments. They also suggest that chemical footprints left by artificial genetic manipulation can help to identify "whodunit." They write, "The complete sequence of the SARS virus is now available, confirming it as a new coronavirus unrelated to any previously known. Has genetic engineering contributed to creating it?" Later they observe: "If the SARS virus has arisen through recombination from a number of different viruses, then different parts of it would show different phylogenetic relationships. These relationships could be obscured somewhat by the random errors that an extensively manipulated sequence would accumulate, as the enzymes used in genetic manipulation, such as reverse transcriptase and other polymerases are well known to produce random errors, but the telltale signs would still be a mosaic of conflicting phylogenetic relationships, from which its history of recombination may be constructed. This could then be compared with the kinds of genetic manipulations that have been carried out in the different laboratories around the world, preferably with the recombinants held in the laboratories." The full text of the article can be read at http://www.i-sis.org.uk/SAGE.php . Aside from the scientific observations offered above, is there any reason to suspect that SARS is manmade? Some of Russia's top biological warfare experts suggest that SARS may have been created as a bio-economic weapon of mass destruction. While Russia's motives – as a continuing opponent of US foreign policy – might be suspect, the ISIS researchers reaching the same conclusion are British. And there is a documentary record from within the US to support the conclusion that the US has both the capability and the inclination to deploy such a weapon. Nikolai Filatov, the head of epidemiological services for Moscow, told Russia's Gazeta newspaper that he thought S A RS was manmade. Russian Academy of Medicine member Sergei Kolesnikov agreed with his colleague. He was quoted by the RIA-Novosti news agency that SARS is a "cocktail" of mumps and measles. He added that such a mixture could never appear naturally. The culpability of the United States government in the SARS outbreak, therefore, must be seriously considered. Official sources suggest that somehow two different organisms naturally shared genes to produce SARS. The same official explanation has been given as the origin of A IDS and that controversy is still raging as a growing body of evidence indicates that A IDS too is a product of US biowarfare research. Other researchers and biomedical researchers opt for a different viewpoint. They, like Jon Rappoport, who has spent 15 years investigating AIDS-related issues, conclude that what we are witnessing is "science by press conference" rather than science by peer review and open research. Indeed, many are quick to point out that the symptoms of SARS are indistinguishable from influenza (a far more deadly disease) or even the common cold. Usually reserved news organizations are noting incongruous developments connected to SARS, both in the timing and location of its occurrence and in the lopsided and near hysterical reactions to the disease which have been obviously overplayed by the media itself. In short, absent peer-reviewed science, those charged with diagnosing and identifying the virus might be conveniently labeling a wide variety of organisms as SARS to suit their own interests, whether they be research grants, drug sales or economic warfare. In some parts of the world people are being forcibly quarantined with no further testing after having their temperature taken and, no doubt, many cases of common colds or flu are being misdiagnosed. Yet as those inflated numbers of possible or misdiagnosed cases are presented to the public, the damage is done. Deadlier diseases do not usually prompt the reactions seen with SARS. In fact the hysteria around SARS has grown so extreme in some parts of the world that people have been murdered because of it. On April 25 the Philippine news service ABS reported that a fisherman, afraid of contracting SARS, had shot and killed a man for sneezing near him. On May 6, 2003 the University of California announced that it would not accept students from Asian countries into its summer sessions. Russia is contemplating closing its border with China. The Women's World Cup of Soccer has been moved out of China. Could SARS be both manmade and man-manipulated? This is a possibility that cannot be excluded. There may even be a connection in the mysterious deaths of as many as 15 world-class microbiologists. The SARS virus fits the textbook pattern of intended uses for bioweapons. Only the US, Russia, Israel and South Africa (under apartheid) have been known to seriously pursue such weapons or have demonstrated any serious work in that arena. Since the US has derived the most economic and political benefit from the epidemic it is reasonable to ask if the CIA has done this kind of thing before. The Record There is a thick record of CIA-run operations like those that would have been required to implement SARS as a weapon. Some have even employed diseases similar to SARS. And some of these lead ominously to an FBI "person of interest" in the 2001 anthrax cases - Mark Hatfill. The use of bio-economic warfare as a weapon was first suggested by Dr. Edgar J. DaSilva, the Director for the Division of Life Sciences of the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). DaSilva stated in a 1999 article in The Electronic Journal of Biotechnology that bio-economic warfare - "the undermining and destruction of economic progress and stability" - can be traced to "the development and use of biological agents against economic targets such as crops, livestock and ecosystems." DaSilva also noted that bio-economic warfare can often be perceived by the public as naturally-occurring because "such warfare can always be carried out under the pretexts that such traumatic occurrences are the result of natural circumstances that lead to outbreaks of diseases and disasters of either endemic or epidemic proportions." [Emphasis added] The United States, particularly the Central Intelligence Agency - through its joint efforts with the U.S. Army's biological warfare laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland - has pioneered the field of bio-economic warfare. In the 1970s, the CIA directed a bio-economic warfare campaign against Cuba. In his book, Biological Warfare in the 21st Century, author Malcolm Dando describes the Cuba campaign as involving the use of blue mold against the nation's tobacco crop, cane smut against the sugar crop, African swine fever (a relative of SARS) against the livestock population, and a hemorrhagic strain of Dengue fever against the human population. These attacks were designed to destabilize Cuba's agricultural based economy. The Cuba operations were conducted after President Richard Nixon, in a 1969 Executive Order, banned the use of biological warfare agents. Nixon's order and his 1972 signing of the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention with Britain and the Soviet Union (which outlawed bio-weapons) have been systematically ignored by the CIA and Pentagon. There have been anomalous outbreaks of the Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF) – a cousin of the hemorrhagic Dengue fever - in war zones in Pakistan and Afghanistan since 9/11. Perhaps more ominously however, SARS –a coronavirus - according to research found on the web site of the National Library of Medicine (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/) is also related to the most deadly disease ever to strike the human race, the 1918 flu, or as it is commonly called, The Spanish Flu. DNA from corpses known to have died from that disease was extracted from exhumed bodies in Britain shortly after the 9/11 attacks and reported in the British press. Thus it can clearly be said that there is a pattern of weapons research with which SARS is consistent and that SARS-related diseases have either been previously deployed or have appeared in countries known to be targets of US interests. It can also be said that SARS-like disease agents have previously been considered as weapons. Furthermore, recent research on the Spanish Flu has been conducted by personnel from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Rockville, MD. [PMID: 12368314, Indexed for MEDLINE] [For additional information on genetically engineered and gene-specific bioweapons please see: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/members/030403_genetic_p1.html] America's Shady Past In the 1970s a right-wing group known as the Minutemen planned on conducting a bio-terrorism campaign involving the distribution of an unknown virus in major airline terminals throughout the United States. A number of right-wing extremists, including those with ties to racist and religious zealot organizations, have found high-level jobs within the Bush administration. The Minutemen plot was the idea of Robert DePugh, the leader of the organization, who also happened to own a veterinary drug firm called Biolab Corporation, headquartered in Norborne, Missouri. In 1972, members of an extreme right-wing group, the "Order of the Rising Sun," were arrested in Chicago after it was discovered they were going to contaminate the water supplies of Chicago, St. Louis, and other Midwestern cities with 30 to 40 kilograms of typhoid bacteria cultures. In May 1995, Larry Wayne Harris, a member of the neo-Nazi A ryan Nations, was arrested for a probation violation when he told a police informant that he had enough anthrax to wipe out the entire population of Las Vegas. The FBI discovered that Harris's car contained several bags containing a strain of anthrax that was not dangerous to humans. CIA Connections – A Death in Orange County Another ultra-conservative, Dr. Larry Ford, a Mormon gynecologist with the University of California at Los Angeles, maintained a close relationship with the director of South A frica's bio-weapons program, Dr. Wouter Basson. According to CourtTV.com, Ford was often accompanied on his trips to South Africa by Dr, Jerry Nilsson, a fellow Mormon and UCLA colleague. A former lab assistant of Ford's told The New York Times in November 2002 that she once saw Ford carry a vial onto the plane to South Africa. She said the vial contained a deadly bacteria that could have endangered everyone on the plane had it leaked. The vial was turned over to a South A frican official. In another incident related to Ford two FBI informants reportedly attended a 1986 meeting in South Africa with South Africa's Surgeon General, Niels Knobel and Ford. The agents reported that Knobel received toxins from Ford and Nilsson. These toxins were later used in South Africa's deadly top secret bio-weapons program, code-named Project Coast. On February 28, 2000, James Patrick Riley, Ford's partner in the firm Biofem Pharmaceuticals, was shot and critically wounded at Biofem's Irvine, California, headquarters. After one of Ford's friends was charged in the shooting, Ford committed suicide at his Irvine home. Canisters later dug up in Ford's backyard were discovered to contain cultures of cholera, salmonella, botulism, and typhoid fever. When reports emerged that Ford worked for the CIA, FBI agent Doug Baker confirmed the story but later quickly recanted. Ford's CIA connections were reported and confirmed by a number of credible sources in a detailed report by Court TV's Rachel Bell in an article on the web located at: http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/terrorists/larry_ford/1.html?sect=22 An April 20, 2003 article in The Washington Post revealed that Don Mayes, a retired CIA officer, acted as a go-between for Daan Goosen, a former employee of Basson and the CIA and FBI. Goosen was trying to sell the CIA and FBI a pathogen that genetically fused the genes of ordinary intestinal bacteria with those that result in the lethal gas gangrene. Some samples of the pathogen were actually shipped to the United States via the CIA in a toothpaste tube. The tube was delivered to the FBI's Key West office by Robert Zlockie, another retired CIA officer. The CIA and FBI eventually declined Goosen's offer to sell them his deadly bugs as well as his offer to work in the United States on biowar defenses. Prior to the breakdown in negotiations between Goosen and the CIA and FBI, the Pentagon set up a meeting between Goosen and Bioport, the Michigan-based firm that provides anthrax vaccines to the military. Bioport has refused to comment on reports that The Carlyle Group, a controversial international investment firm on whose board former President George H. W. Bush sits, owns shares of stock in Bioport. The Post also reported that Zlockie was given a receipt on FBI letterhead acknowledging that it had taken custody of "one toothpaste tube containing one ampule of E. coli genetically coded with epsilon toxin." The tube was then sent to Fort Detrick, which concluded that Goosen's pathogen was a legacy from Project Coast, the same program on which Ford and Nilsson worked. A gainst the wishes of the CI A and Defense Department, the FBI declined to play ball with Goosen and it alerted the South A frican police to the fact that Goosen had attempted to sell virulent strains of bacteria and viruses to the United States. The South Africans declined to prosecute Goosen. In addition, in April, 2002, a South African court cleared Basson, Goosen's one-time boss, of 46 criminal charges, including attempted murder of anti-apartheid activists. Earlier, Basson was cleared of 15 charges, including murder and attempted murder. Steven Hatfill In October, 2002, the Sunday Mirror of Zimbabwe reported that FBI agents traveled to Zimbabwe and South Africa to examine Dr. Steven Hatfill's role during the 1970s in the Rhodesian Selous Scout's biological warfare program and South Africa's bio-war program. Hatfill, a native of Missouri who was briefly a Marine Corps reservist, emigrated to Rhodesia at a time when the United Nations and United States were imposing severe sanctions against the breakaway minority government of Ian Smith. However, Hatfill claims he served in the Army, Army Reserve, and National Guard from 1975 to 1981 at the same time that he claimed to have been in the Rhodesian military. In an article in The American Prospect, writer Laura Rosen postulates that Hatfill may have been a double agent, working for both the Selous Scouts and the U.S. A rmy Institute for Military Assistance in Fort Bragg. In fact, Hatfill reportedly bragged to his colleagues about being a double agent. The idea that the CIA and the U.S. Special Forces could have been running Hatfill as an agent in Rhodesia is all the more troubling when considering that the Rhodesian bio-war program targeted black Zimbabwean rebels with anthrax during the 1970s. Hatfill's résumé claims he served in the South African Defense Forces after leaving Rhodesia. The FBI was particularly interested in Hatfill's work for the same Project Coast that involved Zlockie, Goosen and Basson. Project Coast included a program of experiments on applying anthrax to the gummed flaps of envelopes sent through the mail. In the late 1990s, Hatfill worked at Fort Detrick as a U.S. Army employee and later as a contractor for Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a company with a number of CIA and Pentagon classified contracts. Later, Attorney General John Ashcroft called Hatfill a "person of interest" in the investigation surrounding the 2001 anthrax mailings. Hatfill graduated from the University of Zimbabwe Medical School in 1983. In July 2002, South A frica's Daily News reported that in 1987 or early 1988, Hatfill trained elite Aquila Brigade members of neo-Nazi leader Eugene Terre'blanche's A frikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB), a notorious paramilitary group. After Hatfill was identified by the FBI as a "person of interest" in the 2001 anthrax mailings, Pat Clawson became his spokesman. According to The Baltimore Sun, Clawson is a close associate of Oliver North, the right-wing politician, Fox News reporter, talk show host, and convicted Iran-contra criminal. In fact, Clawson is a program director for North's radio show. Also coming to Hatfill's defense was National Review writer Joel Mowbray, a Neocon defender of the Likud government of Ariel Sharon and Bush administration policies in Iraq. Mowbray, who is quite content with Attorney General Ashcroft's anti-Arab and anti-immigrant policies, uncharacteristically criticized A shcroft for leaks to the press about the investigation of Hatfill. Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard reported that much of the "evidence" against Hatfill emanated from the Jewish Defense Organization, a radical offshoot of the extreme right-wing Jewish Defense League. After Fort Detrick and SAIC severed their ties with Hatfill, he worked for Louisiana State University's A cademy of Counter-Terrorist Education, an entity that receives most of its funding from U.S. government grants, and, interestingly, S AIC which once employed him at Ft. Detrick. When Hatfill's name surfaced as a continuing "person of interest" for the FBI, LSU fired him. Ironically, during his stint at LSU, the state of Louisiana suffered a huge outbreak of West Nile virus, which, according to New African magazine, was one of the pathogens weaponized by South A frica's Project Coast, the program that the FBI was investigating for its prior links to Hatfill. There is definitely an element involving scientists, military, intelligence, and government contractor personnel in the study, production, and distribution of biological weapons, including anthrax, gas gangrene, Dengue fever, and other pathogens. As the Neocons in the United States call for retaliation against countries that failed to support America's war on Iraq, it may be more than coincidental that S A RS has broken out in China and that the virus has been transmitted to Canada – another US critic - via the busy travel routes existing between China, Hong Kong, and major Canadian cities like Toronto and Vancouver due to Canada's large Asian population. Not only has China's economy drastically suffered but Toronto, Canada's most populous city, is facing an economic disaster. A fter the SARS outbreak in Canada, it was also reported that an Egyptian vessel carrying bauxite from Brazil to an Alcan aluminum plant in Saguenay, Quebec, suffered the death of its first mate from anthrax just prior to departing Brazil for Canada. The Brazilian police have reported that the man contracted anthrax when he opened up a suitcase containing the bacteria. Fortunately, Canadian authorities were alerted before the ship docked in Quebec, whose majority French-speaking population has been just as outspoken against America's war policies as their kinfolk in France. Although the Bush administration contends that the anthrax mailings, like the hijacking of commercial planes and turning them into virtual cruise missiles, were unprecedented and a surprise, history refutes such claims. In 1988, the Foundation on Economic Trends warned that Fort Detrick and the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta were shipping some of the "deadliest diseases known to man" through the U.S. postal system. One such shipment in 1987 from the CDC to Fort Detrick contained the Crimea-Congo virus (see above), a deadly pathogen carried by ticks. The shipment was "lost" somewhere in the main Philadelphia post office. In 1988, Postmaster General Anthony Frank banned U.S. government bio-toxin shipments through the mail after the U.S. Army said it would increase its postal shipments to its new bio-war laboratory at Utah's Dugway Proving Grounds, a facility that has the only aerosolized anthrax laboratory in the United States. The Army also wanted to ship anthrax, botulism, Q fever, and Dengue fever through the mail, a frightening idea considering a report by John Broder in The Los Angeles Times of June 14, 1988, that Fort Detrick was missing several pathogenic strains after the commencement of the anthrax mailings. Considering that the CIA and Pentagon considered buying genetically-fused bacteria and viruses from South African freelance bio-war scientists and that Russian scientists now claim that S ARS is a similarly genetically-fused mumps and measles pathogen, an immediate investigation of Fort Detrick's stockpiles and their points of origin should be initiated. SARS has been reported to be mutating rapidly. This development is unclear in its implications. A Lycos news report from May 6 indicates that the mutations have as much chance of making the virus less deadly as they do of making it more deadly. Organisms like the coronavirus tend to adapt to keep their hosts (food sources) alive rather than killing them. The Lycos report also confirmed, however, the point made by Dr. Ho and Professor Cummins of ISIS. The mutations will provide investigators with a methodology to investigate the origins of the virus and establish how it came into being. This will lead us to re-examine the mysterious deaths of as many as 15 world-class microbiologists since 9/11. DEAD MICROBIOLOGISTS In the five-month period from Nov. 12, 2001, through March 26, 2002, ten world-class microbiologists in different parts of the world were reported dead. Nine died of "unnatural" causes, while the cause of the tenth's death is questionable. Also on Nov. 12, DynCorp, a major government contractor for data processing, military operations, and intelligence, was awarded a $322 million contract to develop, produce and store vaccines for the Department of Defense. DynCorp and Hadron, both defense contractors connected to classified research programs on communicable diseases, also have been linked to a software program known as PROMIS, which may have helped identify and target the victims. In the six weeks prior to Nov. 12, two additional Israeli microbiologists were reported dead. Some believe there were as many as five more microbiologists killed in the accidental shoot down of a Russian airliner during the period, bringing the total as high as 17. These two to seven additional deaths, however, are not the focus of this discussion. The key deaths of interest, all of which involve world-class experts in communicable diseases and DNA sequencing (the process that would have been used to manufacture SARS) include: - On Nov. 12, 2001 Benito Que, 52, was found comatose in the street near the laboratory where he worked at the University of Miami Medical School. He died on Dec. 6. Witnesses said that he was beaten by four men with baseball bats but a coroner's report showed, "no evidence of foul play." He was a microbiologist specializing in oncology and hematology with experience in DNA sequencing. - On Nov. 16, Dr. Don C. Wiley, 57, of Harvard University vanished, and his abandoned rental car was found on the Hernando de Soto Bridge outside Memphis, Tenn. His body was found on Dec. 20. The final report on Wiley's death stated that he had stopped his vehicle in a moving traffic lane on a bridge over the Mississippi river, gotten out, and suffered a rare seizure while a heavy truck passed, bouncing him into the air at the same instant that a gust of wind blew him off the bridge. Wiley was a Nobel-level award winning expert in DNA sequencing of disease organisms who also had published research papers on the swine flu – a coronavirus cousin of SARS. - On Nov. 23, Vladimir Pasechnik, 64, was found dead in Wiltshire, England, not far from his home. Details of his death were suppressed in the major media for several weeks. Pasechnik, who had defected from the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, was the former head of all Soviet biowarfare research, including diseases like anthrax and Ebola. - On Dec. 10, Robert Schwartz, 57, was found murdered in his rural home in Loudoun County, Va. He had been stabbed and sliced to death by his daughter's drug crazed boyfriend. Schwartz reportedly had connections to bioweapons research in Northern Virginia and well documented experience in DNA sequencing. - On Dec, 11, Set Van Nguyen, 44, was found dead in the airlock entrance to a walk-in refrigerator in the laboratory where he worked in Victoria State, Australia. The reported cause of death, nitrogen asphyxiation, was totally inconsistent with airlock procedures as examined by experienced researchers. Though there is debate as to whether or not Nguyen was a microbiologist or a technician, it is known that the lab where he worked had just successfully crossed the DNA of mousepox and smallpox to produce a highly virulent new disease. - On Feb. 8, Vladimir Korshunov, 56, was found dead on a Moscow street. He had been beaten to death. Korshunov had reportedly worked under Pasechnik in the Russian bioweapons program. Russian papers stated that Korshunov, head of the microbiology facility at the Russian State Medical University had developed a vaccine against bioweapons and at least one biowarfare agent. - On Feb. 11, Ian Langford, 40, was found dead in his home in Norwich, England. He had been beaten to death. Langford had specialized in studying waste water and multiple causalities of communicable diseases. He was also an expert in tracking the geographic spread of communicable diseases. - On Feb. 27, Tanya Holzmayer and Guyang "Matthew" Huang were the victims of a reported murder suicide in the San Francisco bay area. Both were experts in DNA sequencing. Both had focused on the development of genomic drugs to treat AIDS and cancer. - On March 24, Dr. Steven Mostow, a veteran pilot and Associate Dean at the University of Colorado who was an expert in infectious diseases and known as "Dr. Flu" was killed in a plane crash in western Colorado. - On March 26, British microbiologist David Wynn-Williams was killed, according to The Telegraph when he was caught while jogging in between two cars that were having a traffic accident. Williams was an expert on microbiology in the A ntarctic ecosystem and an expert in DN A sequencing. Even though The New York Times expended almost 8,000 words to refute FTW's research and chalk these deaths up to coincidence on A ug. 11, 2002, there is more than ample reason to believe them to be related homicides. The question then becomes whether there is any connection between these deaths and the creation of SARS, or the key to understanding the unnatural and artificial mutation which brought it into existence. If there is, is there reason to suspect that the murders were perpetrated in anticipation of the SARS outbreak. And finally, the big question that must be asked is whether SARS was created as a bioweapons agent to be used to kill several billion people. In lectures throughout 2002 FTW Editor Mike Ruppert was questioned as to possible motives to explain the untimely deaths of so many microbiologists with experience in DN A sequencing, communicable diseases and biowarfare. Ruppert's answers focused on two possible motives. Scientists would have been able to deconstruct the disease agent and thus determine its origin as a manmade disease. This would have led to efforts to determine the laboratory and/or microbiologists who might have contributed a small portion in a highly compartmentalized operation in the development of a virulent, new disease. There would be a strong likelihood that any one of the participating microbiologists would have recognized their own work and come forward, exposing the deliberate creation of the organism. This scenario presents a motive in keeping with the ISIS article as detailed at the beginning of this report. Ruppert has consistently favored this scenario. A second motive explaining the untimely deaths of these microbiologists lies in the search for a SARS cure. If the disease agent was intended as a bioweapon to kill several billion people, a quick cure would not be tolerated. Had the microbiologists not met with untimely deaths, their specialties in microbiology might have qualified them to effectuate a quick cure, something obviously unwanted by the disease's creators. In asking these difficult questions about S A RS it was quickly concluded that if it could be shown that there was a direct causal link between the deaths and S ARS then SARS likely was "the big one." There would have been little reason to risk so many obvious murders and attract attention for a trial run. It became necessary to look deeper into the research histories of the dead microbiologists and to seek expert analysis. Though there is not a clear trail linking all of the deaths to SARS, there are a great many connections which cannot be dismissed out of hand. Some of these connections are very disturbing. N. Renay Tanner, a biomedical researcher with degrees in both biological sciences and sociomedical sciences from Columbia University and with expertise in the human rights ramifications of ideologically driven research, had already concluded that there was a great deal about SARS that was suspicious. "SARS simply doesn't fit normal epidemiological patterns. Initially my belief was that SARS was a 'socially constructed' disease that simultaneously functioned as economic retaliation and to legitimize the placement of a repressive public health infrastructure to be used at a later date." "By 'socially constructed' we mean if it walks like a duck and coughs like a duck, we can call it SARS." Diseases ranging from the common cold to bronchial pneumonia can now be called SARS for ideological purposes. This at once permits the rush to prescribe very expensive, highly controversial and possibly harmful drugs like AZT and Interferon as a treatment and as a means of boosting corporate profits, controlling China and moving ahead toward an open police state in America. But after examining the available research histories of the dead microbiologists her position evolved to encompass new information. "This is fascinating. You were right. These guys were very compartmentalized – potentially a microbiological dream team." She continued "The best bets for work with coronaviruses are Wiley and Huang. Wiley worked with virus-building technology. Huang worked with BLAST sequences, a technology that can be used to identify genetically engineered organisms. Que worked with gene expression and inflammation. Holzmayer worked on antivirals and bacteriophages (which could produce drugs or vaccines), Nguyen worked with the now infamous mousepox team." Langford worked on disease modeling and multi-causal modeling. This would be important if one intends to obfuscate but still wants to examine or track causal factors. Wynne-Williams was an eco-biologist examining microbes under extreme conditions. Data on the research of the other microbiologists was not immediately available. Tanner warns that we must not arrive at hasty conclusions but agreed that there was a striking convergence between the complementary research histories of the dead scientists, the expertise needed to create global bio-warfare and the timely emergence of SARS. CONCLUSIONS So now the possibility that SARS was manmade for bioeconomic purposes cannot be dismissed out of hand. While alarming, the convergence of the SARS outbreaks and the known research histories of many of the dead microbiologists does not justify the conclusion that SARS is a bioweapons intended to kill four billion people. But it does not rule that possibility out either. This seemingly mutually contradictory answer is explained by the fact that some biomedical researchers interviewed by FTW have speculated that the "big one" will be a binary or a trinary agent that will combine either with vaccines or with other agents introduced into specific environments. It is also very possible, they say, that the "big one" could be presented or camouflaged as a mutation of the SARS virus and will not make its appearance for several years. That would explain the need to eliminate the scientists who participated in its creation, even before the more deadly disease – the one we are being told to expect – has arrived. By then, tracing the connection between the deaths and the appearance of the disease would have been more difficult. In that light, the sudden mysterious appearance of a new SARS-like disease in Cambodia must be viewed with caution. As reported by the Associated Press on May 8, 2003, 7 of 392 people infected with an unidentified respiratory disease have died since that disease appeared on March 2, a day after the first reported case or SARS. Unlike SARS, symptoms of the new disease also include diarrhea and a stable, rather than elevated white cell count. What are the chances that two new deadly diseases suddenly emerge within twenty-four hours of each other? And as death rates for SARS are continually revised upwards – now 15% according to a WHO statement released on May 8 - there remains the possibility that SARS, as unsettling and disturbing as it already is, may become something much more horrifying. Extremely close attention needs to be paid to future reported mutations of the virus and the incidence of any other diseases which may soon make their appearance. That SARS is being man-manipulated is beyond question. That SARS is man made is extremely likely. That SARS is only beginning to change our lives is certain. Whether or not SARS is or will become a disease killing hundreds of millions and perhaps billions of people remains to be seen. But we are right to be wary. We are justified in being distrustful of governments and corporations giving us data on SARS and how to respond to the data and the disease. And we are certainly justified in being concerned about what is coming next. -- Wayne Madsen is a Washington-based investigative journalist and former naval officer assigned to the National Security Agency. He testified before Cynthia McKinney's hearing on the genocide in the DRC in May 2001 and has worked with Bob Barr on privacy legislation in the past. He wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth. Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com Special thanks to Jon Rappoport of www.nomorefakenews.com
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