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REALAUDIO

Recorded on 7/29/2001

Intro­duc­tion: Recorded about six weeks before 9/11, this broad­cast (along with FTR#324) fore­shad­ows (to a cer­tain extent) the anthrax attacks that fol­lowed shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Cen­ter and the Pen­ta­gon. The story of Dr. Larry Creed Ford, his life’s activ­i­ties and the many con­nec­tions that he main­tained illus­trates the dif­fi­culty in accu­rately con­cep­tu­al­iz­ing and prop­erly inves­ti­gat­ing the anthrax attacks. Cen­tral to the pre­sen­ta­tion of the events in, and around, Sep­tem­ber 11 is Mr. Emory’s view that the fate­ful day was the begin­ning of World War III and, in turn, an exten­sion of World War II. In his view, a Third Reich gone under­ground (a con­cept doc­u­mented at length in many of the For The Record pro­grams) is “mak­ing its move,” so to speak. (For more on the Under­ground Reich and its core ele­ment the Bor­mann Orga­ni­za­tion, see, among other pro­grams, FTR#‘s 283, 305 and RFA#37, avail­able from Spit­fire. World con­quest by the Reich depends on the eco­nomic and /or phys­i­cal sub­ju­ga­tion and/or destruc­tion of the United States. It is Mr. Emory’s view that this effort is now under­way, with the efforts of an Under­ground Reich Fifth Col­umn at the core of the enter­prise. (FTR#‘s 344–346, 365–367, 372 are the best illus­tra­tions of this admit­tedly com­plex con­tention.) The com­par­i­son of the US to France in the pre-World War II period (see FTR#372) is the clos­est one can come to cit­ing an his­tor­i­cal prece­dent for what is now under­way. It is Mr. Emory’s view that the anthrax attacks were per­pe­trated by this Under­ground Reich-an ele­ment inside of (but not syn­ony­mous with) the gov­ern­ment. One should not lose sight of the fact that the attacks were directed against the news media and key sen­a­to­r­ial Democ­rats. It is inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate the pri­mary focal point of this broadcast-Dr. Larry Creed Ford-in the con­text of the anthrax attacks. (For more about Ford, see FTR#‘s 522, 419, 324 and 386. For more about the anthrax attacks, see, among other pro­grams, FTR#‘s 331, 335.)

1. The pro­gram begins with the sub­ject of the US rejec­tion of the inter­na­tional con­ven­tion on bio­log­i­cal weapons. (For more about the Bush administration’s poli­cies in that regard, see FTR#287.)

“Lab­o­ra­to­ries devel­op­ing and pro­duc­ing such weapons look no dif­fer­ent from facil­i­ties pro­duc­ing legit­i­mate prod­ucts such as vac­cines. The US says the [pro­posed] inspec­tion regime would give ample time for those guilty of pur­su­ing bio­log­i­cal war­fare to destroy the evi­dence and mask their activ­i­ties. ‘You could pro­duce bio­log­i­cal weapons in this office and you could get rid of the evi­dence in five min­utes,’ said one admin­is­tra­tion official.”

“To under­line their con­cerns, US offi­cials point to the fail­ure of United Nations weapons inspec­tors in Iraq to detect Sad­dam Hussein’s bio­log­i­cal weapons oper­a­tions.” Against that, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion says the pro­posed inspec­tions would under­mine its own biotech and drugs indus­tries. By impos­ing reg­u­lar site vis­its, it says, trade secrets would be com­pro­mised under the guise of arms control.”

It is inter­est­ing that the rejec­tion of this con­ven­tion occurred just a few months before the first cer­ti­fi­able bio­log­i­cal war­fare attack on the United States. “Offi­cials also claim inspec­tions would com­pro­mise US efforts to defend itself against a bio­log­i­cal attack, as US defense facil­i­ties would come under scrutiny.”

“How­ever, other coun­tries have taken the view that while the draft pro­to­col would be no guar­an­tee against cheat­ing, it would enhance secu­rity by act­ing as a fur­ther deter­rent to the use or pro­duc­tion of bio­log­i­cal weapons. Dis­ar­ma­ment cam­paign­ers point out that many of the defi­cien­cies in the inspec­tion regime were put there at the insis­tence of the US, con­cerned to pro­tect mil­i­tary and com­mer­cial secrets . . . ”

(“US Says Bio-Warfare Deal is Unwork­able” by Richard Wolffe and Frances Williams; Finan­cial Times; 7/26/2001; p. 5.)

2. The bulk of the pro­gram con­sists of pre­sen­ta­tion and analy­sis of a vitally impor­tant arti­cle about Dr. Larry Ford from the sum­mer of 2001. Be sure to visit Edward Humes’ web­site in order to view the arti­cle in its entirety. (“The Med­i­cine Man” by Edward Humes; Los Ange­les Mag­a­zine; July, 2001; access the arti­cle at: http://www.edwardhumes.com/articles/medicine.shtml .)

3. Sub­stan­tive dis­cus­sion of Dr. Ford begins with an account of FBI-informant Peter Fitzpatrick’s sur­veil­lance of Ford dur­ing the 1980’s, when Ford was work­ing on behalf of Project Coast-a bio­log­i­cal war­fare devel­op­ment pro­gram under­taken by the Apartheid gov­ern­ment of South Africa.

“The meet­ing at the Bev­erly Hills man­sion of the South African trade attaché was unusu­ally secre­tive, but Peter Fitz­patrick still man­aged to wit­ness it, peer­ing from an adja­cent room through a mas­sive shared fire­place. He watched as Niel Kno­bel, deputy sur­geon gen­eral of South Africa — the white-ruled, apartheid South Africa of 1986 — met Larry Ford, a noted Los Ange­les gyne­col­o­gist and infec­tious dis­ease spe­cial­ist with an unof­fi­cial sub­spe­cialty: bio­log­i­cal and chem­i­cal war­fare. The two spoke in hushed tones, then Ford, a devout Mor­mon who vol­un­teered his ser­vices to mis­sion­ar­ies and Boy Scout troops, passed over a hefty black satchel. The meet­ing came to a close. Later Fitz­patrick sat down with the bois­ter­ous trade attaché, Gideon Bouwer, who could not resist explain­ing in his thick Afrikaans accent what had just happened.”

“The white minor­ity gov­ern­ment of South Africa was in those years in a bloody strug­gle with its black cit­i­zens, will­ing to do any­thing to stay in power. Bouwer’s role was to thwart the U.S. trade embargo on locked tech­nol­ogy and exper­tise cov­eted by the apartheid regime; Fitz­patrick, a young actor, glib and per­son­able, was part of Bouwer’s infor­mal embargo-busting team, mak­ing sure the par­ties at the man­sion were well attended by the well-connected.”

(Ibid.; p. 1.)

4. Ford’s efforts on behalf of the apartheid regime entailed the secur­ing of deadly agents, includ­ing “designer” bio­log­i­cal weapons-genetically engi­neered path­o­genic agents. It appears that his activ­i­ties had at least the tacit sup­port of ele­ments within the U.S. gov­ern­ment, judg­ing from the fail­ure to inter­dict what Ford was doing. “Larry Ford was a reg­u­lar at those gath­er­ings, and the tech­nol­ogy he handed over that day, Bouwer chor­tled, could prove invalu­able: a sam­pler of vir­u­lent, designer strains of cholera, anthrax, bot­u­lism, plague, and malaria, as well as a bac­te­ria he claimed had been mutated to be ‘pig­ment spe­cific.’ ‘Kaffer-killing germs,’ Bouwer con­fided, using the deroga­tory Afrikaans term for blacks. ‘Dr. Ford has done my coun­try a great service.’”

“Fitz­patrick clinked glasses with Bouwer and left, then called his han­dler at the FBI, where he served as one of two infor­mants planted at South Africa’s Los Ange­les con­sulate. He told the FBI every­thing; yet, he says, noth­ing was done. Accord­ing to Fitz­patrick, the deputy sur­geon gen­eral flew off with his suit­case full of death. ‘Why didn’t you guys stop him?’ he later asked his han­dler. The agent just stared at him.”

(Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

5. After Ford’s sui­cide fol­low­ing dis­clo­sures of the doctor’s spon­sor­ship of an attempt on the life of his busi­ness part­ner, James Patrick Riley, Fitzpatrick’s path crossed Ford’s once again. Note that Ford’s claim of con­nec­tions to the CIA proved to be valid.

“Fif­teen years passed. Apartheid was dead. the FBI had long since lost inter­est in its old infor­mant, and Peter Fitz­patrick was sit­ting on his couch talk­ing with his wife, the tele­vi­sion set muted as the evening flashed by. Then some­thing on the screen caught his eye: a grainy photo of a jut-jawed, narrow-eyed, round-shouldered man he hadn’t seen in years — Dr. Larry Ford. He turned up the vol­ume and heard a reporter explain how Ford, co-owner of an up-and-coming biotech firm, had become a prime sus­pect in the attempted mur­der of his busi­ness part­ner. That stunned Fitz­patrick, but what had him scram­bling to his feet and reach­ing for the phone were images that fol­lowed Ford’s photo: police­men search­ing the doctor’s Irvine home — unprotected.”

“‘Oh my God, they have no idea what they’re get­ting into,’ Fitz­patrick exclaimed. It all came back to him then: Ford’s talk of bio-weapons and booby traps, his hoard of guns and explo­sives, not to men­tion the doctor’s claims of doing dirty work for the CIA — sto­ries Fitz­patrick had once dis­missed as a nerd’s Wal­ter Mitty fan­tasies until he noted the FBI’s offi­cial hands-off pol­icy with the suit­case of germs. ‘I’ve got to warn them,’ he told his wife.”

It would appear that Fitzpatrick’s alarm­ing dis­clo­sures to the FBI about Ford con­tin­ued to be viewed with dispassion.

“So for the first time in many years, Fitz­patrick called the FBI. And once again, no one there seemed inter­ested in what he had to say.”

(Ibid.; p. 2.)

6. Next, the pro­gram details the assas­si­na­tion attempt on Ford busi­ness part­ner Riley, and Biofem, the com­pany they had launched to develop a pro­phy­lac­tic vagi­nal sup­pos­i­tory to pro­tect women against infec­tion by HIV.

“WHEN A MASKED ASSASSIN PUT A BULLET into James James Patrick Riley’s head in front of his office on Feb­ru­ary 28. 2000, the case at first unfolded as a clas­sic story of greed and envy, a cor­po­rate power strug­gle between Riley, the vol­u­ble CEO and mar­ket­ing whiz, and his part­ner, Dr. Larry Creed Ford, the vision­ary with big ideas and the sci­en­tific skills to carry them out.”

“Ford was work­ing on a com­bi­na­tion con­tra­cep­tive and micro­bio­cide he and Riley named Inner Con­fi­dence,” a sup­pos­i­tory that promised not only to rev­o­lu­tion­ize birth con­trol but also to pre­vent HIV infec­tion, AIDS, and almost every other sex­u­ally trans­mit­ted dis­ease. Ford liked to say they were going to save the world — and get rich in the process. Their Irvine com­pany, Biofem Inc., could cap­ture annual sales worth some $400 mil­lion. Riley told investors. The prof­its, in turn, would fund Ford’s true pas­sion of the past 12 years, a secret Biofem project to develop a super antibi­otic derived from what he called ‘Uniden­ti­fied Amni­otic Fluid Sub­stance.’ He believed it was nature’s way of pro­tect­ing embryos from dis­ease, the rea­son HIV-negative babies can be born to HIV-positive moth­ers. Ford hoped to syn­the­size the sub­stance, sav­ing count­less lives, and earn­ing him a Nobel Prize along the way . . . . ”

(Idem.)

7. An Irvine police detec­tive (Vic­tor Ray) pur­sued the inves­ti­ga­tion of Dr. Ford. Alarm­ingly, it appeared that Ford’s bioweapons skills may have been put to work on behalf of right-wing extrem­ist groups and terrorists.

“The Biofem case might have made the back burner then and there had Irvine police detec­tive Vic­tor Ray quit when his depart­ment and the FBI warned him to. But Ray, a for­mer sonar tech­ni­cian on navy sub­marines, a job that requires patience and per­sis­tence, would not give up. He steered the inves­ti­ga­tion to Ford’s back­yard, where men in Androm­eda Strain suits would evac­u­ate a neigh­bor­hood and haul away an arse­nal of tox­ins, germs, plas­tic explo­sives, and guns. In the process they unearthed a trail that stretched all the way from the CIA to apartheid-era South Africa and Dr. Wouter Bas­son, the man who ran the country’s clan­des­tine bioweapons program.”

Par­tic­u­larly dis­turb­ing is an alter­nate appli­ca­tion of the benign “microen­cap­su­la­tion” tech­nique devel­oped for the Biofem sup­pos­i­tory. Appar­ently it could be used as a deliv­ery sys­tem for bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapons.

“The ques­tion still plagu­ing fed­eral, state, and local inves­ti­ga­tors is a sim­ple but urgent one: What was Ford plan­ning to do with his germs and bioweapons exper­tise? The dis­cov­ery of militia-movement and racist lit­er­a­ture among Ford’s papers has raised the pos­si­bil­ity that he offered bio­log­i­cal or chem­i­cal weapons to ter­ror­ist groups. Con­cerns have also mounted over a patented fea­ture of his Inner Con­fi­dence sup­pos­i­tory: the microen­cap­su­la­tion of ben­e­fi­cial bac­te­ria. It turns out this archi­tec­ture could dou­ble as an ideal deliv­ery sys­tem for bioweapons, allow­ing oth­er­wise frag­ile dis­ease organ­isms to be seeded vir­tu­ally any­where. Ford, in essence, had patented the pre­scrip­tion for a per­fect micro­scopic time bomb.” ‘That,” says Ray, “scares the hell out of everyone .’”

(Ibid.; p. 3.)

8. The broad­cast details some of Ford’s account of the devel­op­ment of his rela­tion­ship with ele­ments of the mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence community.

“The invi­ta­tion to work in the gov­ern­ment lab­o­ra­tory had come from a man Ford iden­ti­fied only as Gen­eral Wyman. He liked to show peo­ple a framed photo of the gen­eral and him­self (with Ford in an army uni­form, though records show he was never in the mil­i­tary). This offer to an 18-year-old about to enter col­lege did not seem all that unusual to Ford or his blue-collar par­ents. He had, after all, earned lab priv­i­leges at Brigham Young Uni­ver­sity in his home­town of Provo, Utah, at age 12, accord­ing to Riley.”

“Ford told the Rileys and oth­ers his sub­se­quent work for the mil­i­tary and the CIA included research on bio­log­i­cal and chem­i­cal weapons, con­sult­ing on Iraqi capa­bil­i­ties dur­ing the Gulf War, and sneak­ing into epi­demic hot zones in Africa to gather sam­ples of such killer organ­isms as the Ebola and Mar­burg viruses . . . .”

(Idem.)

9. A friend of Ford’s was arrested for the attempt on Riley’s life.

“Police traced the plates and the van to an old friend of Ford’s with a vio­lent past, Dino D’Saach, who was arrested that night as the get­away dri­ver and has since been con­victed of attempted mur­der and con­spir­acy, crimes car­ry­ing a manda­tory 26-year sen­tence. His cell phone records showed him talk­ing to Ford imme­di­ately before and after the hit from a cell loca­tion near Biofem. (Biofem’s recep­tion­ist remem­bers see­ing Ford on the phone at his office win­dow just before the shoot­ing, with a per­fect view of Riley’s park­ing space.) Police found pri­vate Biofem cor­re­spon­dence fixed from Ford to D’Saach’s South-Central Los Ange­les tax prepa­ra­tion busi­ness, along with hit-man man­u­als, pho­tos of Riley’s park­ing spot, and a crude home­made silencer . . . . ”

(Ibid.; p. 4.)

10. Boast­ing impres­sive aca­d­e­mic cre­den­tials, Ford devel­oped an ob-gyn patient list that included Mar­gaux Hem­ing­way, who died of an over­dose of bar­bi­tu­rates that Ford pre­scribed. This last detail is par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing in light of the fact that Ford appar­ently didn’t hes­i­tate to exper­i­ment on his patients, some­times with extremely neg­a­tive effects.

“Ford grad­u­ated magna cum laude from BYU, pub­lished more than 65 arti­cles, held numer­ous patents in med­i­cine and bio­chem­istry, had an inter­na­tional ob-gyn award named for him, and bulk a patient list that included doc­tors and a smat­ter­ing of celebri­ties (although one, the late Mar­gaux Hem­ing­way, over­dosed on bar­bi­tu­rates Ford provided) .”

(Idem.)

11. Next, the pro­gram begins explo­ration of Ford’s “dark side”-his asso­ci­a­tion with sin­is­ter indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions. One of the most intim­i­dat­ing and unsa­vory of those was a Dr. Nils­son, who appar­ently sparked Ford’s affin­ity for work on behalf of apartheid.

“Only after Ford’s sui­cide did infor­mants start com­ing for­ward. Ray and his sergeant, Tom Lit­tle, began hear­ing about an entirely dif­fer­ent Larry Ford, a man who cheated on his wife, betrayed his part­ner, and bred super-germs and was will­ing to use them. This was the Larry Ford who formed a close bond with Dr. Jerry D. Nils­son, a gifted Ana­heim gen­eral sur­geon with extreme views and a pen­chant for trou­ble that quickly made him a sus­pect in the Riley shoot­ing. Nils­son, who boasted of hav­ing worked as a spe­cial forces physi­cian for the white minor­ity gov­ern­ment of Rhode­sia, now Zim­babwe, appears to have kin­dled Ford’s inter­est in sup­port­ing apartheid. At the time of Ford’s sui­cide, Nils­son was in the process of los­ing his license for sex­ual mis­con­duct with patients, one of them a 14-year-old who allegedly became his lover for the next 15 years.”

“When­ever the two doc­tors were together, it was the charis­matic Nils­son who made the most last­ing impres­sion. Now 72, the sur­geon was a for­mi­da­ble pres­ence even in late mid­dle age. Tom Byron worked with Fitz­patrick as an FBI infor­mant in the South African Con­sulate in the 1980s and spent time with both doc­tors. He describes Nils­son as ‘the mon­ster with mir­a­cle hands,’ a tow­er­ing fig­ure with a shaved head — Jesse Ven­tura as a skilled sur­geon. ‘He was very fit, very mus­cu­lar, the kind of guy who could knock you out with one punch,’ Byron says. ‘He told me, ‘I’ve killed peo­ple in my life­time, and I have no qualms about killing again.’ I would never cross that man.’ Nils­son was not avail­able for comment.”

Ford and Nils­son worked together on bio­log­i­cal weapons and both stock­piled them in their homes.

“Nils­son had long worked with Ford to amass bio­log­i­cal and chem­i­cal weapons, and both doc­tors stored them openly in their homes, his ex-lover told the FBI. She sued Nils­son and won a con­fi­den­tial set­tle­ment after accus­ing him of per­form­ing unnec­es­sary surg­eries on her, includ­ing cos­metic enhance­ment, with­out her per­mis­sion. She was also treated by Ford and was one of sev­eral for­mer patients who told Ray that the gyne­col­o­gist used them as lab rats, delib­er­ately mak­ing them ill in order to test his reme­dies. ‘If tak­ing a life advances sci­en­tific knowl­edge,’ Ford would tell her, ‘the sac­ri­fice is well worth it.’” (Ibid.; p. 5.)

12. Ford may have exper­i­mented on friends and acquain­tances, uti­liz­ing them as human guinea pigs. Some of the dis­eases that he may have given to unsus­pect­ing asso­ciates may have involved genetically-engineered organ­isms. “The detec­tive spoke with a Los Ange­les gun-shop man­ager, a long­time friend of Ford’s, who devel­oped a com­plex of rare dis­eases, among them a chronic lung and immune sys­tem dis­ease, sar­coido­sis, that is extremely uncom­mon in every racial group but one: African Amer­i­cans. The man is white, and he is con­vinced Ford had a hand in his ail­ment. There was a woman with cer­vi­cal can­cer whom Ford treated with an exper­i­men­tal drug that didn’t work; she later required emer­gency surgery to save her life. Other women, Ray learned, had been given pro­to­types of Inner Con­fi­dence that were never intended for human use. All of them fell ill with a vari­ety of vagi­nal infec­tions, he says.”

“‘Riley was told there was no prod­uct, that it was still being devel­oped, but I have one in a jar sit­ting in my office that Ford gave to a patient,’ Ray says. ‘He was experimenting.’”

“More peo­ple came for­ward. A for­mer busi­ness asso­ciate of Ford’s said that when a mis­tress broke up with Ford in the early 1980s, the doc­tor vowed to infect her with an ‘alpha bug,’ promis­ing ‘she will never be healthy or nor­mal again.’ Author­i­ties talked to the woman and learned that she suf­fered from a mys­te­ri­ous and incur­able mal­ady that has caused debil­i­tat­ing ver­tigo for the past 14 years. She’s under­gone two brain surg­eries just to ease the symp­toms. At least one other woman, who main­tains that Ford drugged her against her will dur­ing a busi­ness lunch, has reported sim­i­lar prob­lems with chronic ver­tigo and com­plained of symp­toms that resem­ble Gulf War Syn­drome, except she was nowhere near the war.” (Idem.)

“State and county health offi­cials, with help from the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol in Atlanta, inter­viewed many of these patients, but their inves­ti­ga­tion was lim­ited to whether there was a pub­lic health risk, such as the threat of an epi­demic. They found none and closed their inquiry, though the FBI still makes at a point to ask for­mer patients of Ford’s if they were ever uncon­scious in his pres­ence, some­thing the com­plain­ing patients all have in common.”

” ‘We started to real­ize there was a lot more to Dr. Ford than we had first thought,’ says Ray. ‘It began to look like there might be some­thing to the sto­ries he told, and that the attempt on Mr. Riley’s life was just the tip of the ice­berg . . .’” (Ibid.; p. 6.)

13.

“One of the most chill­ing sto­ries Ray heard came from the owner of Chan­tal Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals of Los Ange­les, a com­pany that devel­oped an anti­wrin­kle cream with Ford’s help. She told the FBI that Ford, angry with one of her part­ners, went into the man’s office car­ry­ing a card­board box with a rab­bit inside. He put the box on the man’s desk, pulled on latex gloves, removed a syringe from his pocket, and squirted two drops of a vis­cous amber liq­uid onto the rabbit’s shoul­der. It imme­di­ately con­vulsed and died, blood pour­ing out of its nose and ears. Ford, never utter­ing a word, turned and left, the box still sit­ting on the desk.”

(Idem.)

14. Ford’s behav­ior is par­tic­u­larly alarm­ing in light of his doc­u­mented ties to the CIA, among other institutions.

“Ray got con­fir­ma­tion of the doctor’s gov­ern­ment ties three days after the case was opened and a few hours after Ford’s sui­cide. He had picked up Valerie Kesler, Ford’s research assis­tant at Biofem, for ques­tion­ing. She met Ford while an under­grad at UCLA, and the two had been lovers for most of the past 18 years. The night of the shoot­ing, she spent hours delet­ing Ford’s files from Biofem com­put­ers, accord­ing to James Riley’s wife, Pam, who is the company’s busi­ness man­ager. (Kesler’s attor­ney, John Kre­mer, says that any files that may have been deleted had noth­ing to do with the shooting.)”

“Kesler denied know­ing any­thing about the attempt on Riley’s life. Later, how­ever, her lawyer sug­gested offi­cers exer­cise cau­tion open­ing up a gym bag in the trunk of her car, which Ray had impounded. Kre­mer had been told that it might con­tain firearms and a knife dipped in ricin, a deadly toxin syn­the­sized from cas­tor beans. A drop in the blood­stream was all it took to kill. Ray and his supe­ri­ors called in the FBI, whose Weapons of Mass Destruc­tion Response Team is charged with deal­ing with bio­log­i­cal and chem­i­cal threats.”

(Idem.)

15. Ini­tial skep­ti­cism of Ford’s alleged CIA ties on the part of an FBI inves­ti­ga­tor gave way to respect­ful acknowledgement.

“Accord­ing to Ray, the agent in charge of the team mocked the notion that Ford was con­nected to bioweapons research and the CIA. But with Ray insist­ing that the infor­ma­tion seemed good, that it matched other accounts, the agent agreed to con­tact the FBI liai­son to the intel­li­gence agency. In about ten min­utes a call came back: The CIA knew of Ford.”

(Idem.)

“The CIA knows a lot of peo­ple, the agent laughed. They prob­a­bly know my grand­mother. But ten min­utes later the liai­son called again and said there was ‘high con­fi­dence’ that Ford had bio­log­i­cal– and chemical-weapons knowl­edge and did, in fact, have the capa­bil­ity to coat the knife with a deadly toxin. Shortly after that a third call came in: Ford did work for the CIA, the chas­tened FBI offi­cial told the room full of cops.”

“There was no more laugh­ing after that. The men in space suits took over. Searchers found an Uzi and another ille­gal firearm in the gym bag; the knife was plunged into decon­t­a­m­i­nat­ing fluid before it could be tested, which allowed the author­i­ties to make the calm­ing announce­ment that they had found no dan­ger­ous sub­stances in the car. But a jar of ricin turned up later in Ford’s home.”

(Ibid.; p. 7.)

16. For­mer FBI infor­mant Peter Fitz­patrick con­tin­ued to expe­ri­ence frus­tra­tion in his attempts to warn of the seri­ous­ness of Ford’s involve­ment in sin­is­ter activ­i­ties in con­nec­tion with the for­mer apartheid regime in South Africa.

“While this drama unfolded in Irvine, Peter Fitz­patrick was try­ing to get through to some­one, any­one, at the FBI who would lis­ten to his rec­ol­lec­tions of Ford’s involve­ment with biowar­fare in South Africa. No one was avail­able, so he went to the FBI’s bureau in West L.A., where he was turned away by the recep­tion­ist. ‘Basi­cally,’ says Fitz­patrick, ‘they said they didn’t know who the hell I was and that I should go.’ Next he called the Orange County Dis­trict Attorney’s Office and asked for the pros­e­cu­tor assigned to the Ford case, but ended up trapped in voice mail. He left an exas­per­ated mes­sage, then hung up.”

“The next day, to Fitzpatrick’s sur­prise, two FBI agents met at length with him to dis­cuss his infor­ma­tion about Ford, bioweapons, and South African sur­veil­lance. Then two things hap­pened: First, the weapons team showed up to do another high-risk search and exca­va­tion of Ford’s home. They uncov­ered nearly a hun­dred firearms, most of them shot­guns and rifles, 17 of them ille­gal auto­matic or semi­au­to­matic weapons, includ­ing four Uzis, an M16, and a gangster-era Thomp­son sub­ma­chine gun.”

In addi­tion to large quan­ti­ties of ille­gal firearms, Ford had secreted a siz­able quan­tity of C-4-a pow­er­ful plas­tic explo­sive that is extremely dif­fi­cult to obtain.

“Ford had stowed the ille­gal weapons in six large plas­tic cylin­ders buried in his back­yard, along with thou­sands of rounds of ammu­ni­tion — some­thing his fam­ily appar­ently did not con­sider unusual, though they were unaware that one can­is­ter con­tained a large sup­ply of the pow­er­ful mil­i­tary explo­sive C-4. The plas­tic explo­sives were packed with blast­ing caps and secreted dan­ger­ously close to elec­tri­cal wires. Some 52 homes and sev­eral hun­dred peo­ple had to be evac­u­ated to the Hyatt Regency for three days (it was, after all, Irvine — no Red Cross sleep­ing bags in the school gym for this crowd).”

(Idem.)

17. As the inves­ti­ga­tion pro­gressed, the South African con­nec­tions of Ford con­tin­ued to loom large-convicted gun­man Dino D’Saach appar­ently was involved with Ford, Nils­son and the South Africans.

“At the same time, Detec­tive Ray expressed inter­est in talk­ing to Fitz­patrick and Byron in order to explore the South African angle, but he and his part­ner, Sergeant Lit­tle, were for­bid­den to do so by the bureau and for­bid­den to come near Ford’s house. Their depart­ment pulled the reins even tighter. ‘[They thought] we were crazy, we were imag­in­ing things,’ Ray says. ‘They said we had been work­ing too long with­out enough sleep. It stunk. But we were off the case . . .’”

(Idem.)

“Both infor­mants say that Ford, Nils­son, and Ford’s mis­tress, Kesler, were reg­u­lar guests at Bouwer’s man­sion, and Byron remem­bers encoun­ter­ing Dino D’Saach, the get­away dri­ver, at sev­eral gath­er­ings. Indeed, Ford and Nilsson’s con­nec­tion to South Africa ran deep. The two doc­tors went on big-game hunts begin­ning in the early 1980s — about 20 stuffed tro­phies lined the walls of Ford’s home — and, as Ford and Nils­son told it, they did char­ity med­ical work there.”

“Later Ford began smug­gling into the U.S. dis­tilled human amni­otic fluid col­lected by South African doc­tors for Ford’s antibi­otic research. They would hide the bio­log­i­cally haz­ardous body flu­ids in wine and liquor bot­tles to avoid impound­ment. Riley, in tes­ti­mony in the D’Saach trial, described one trip in which a bot­tle of amni­otic fluid broke inside a suit­case while in flight, cre­at­ing a nox­ious odor that per­me­ated the aircraft.”

(Ibid.; p.8.)

18. One of the most sig­nif­i­cant and chill­ing aspects of the arti­cle con­cerns Ford’s research into AIDS, con­ducted in con­junc­tion with the apartheid regime. AIDS has rav­aged the pop­u­la­tion of South Africa. The Broeder­bond was the rul­ing core group of South Africa, struc­tured along the lines of the Ger­man Nazi Party dur­ing World War II and allied with it dur­ing that con­flict. The pos­si­bil­ity that the research into AIDS con­ducted by Ford, Project Coast, the Broeder­bond and com­pany may have been con­ducted for the explicit pur­pose of con­duct­ing geno­cide is not one to be too read­ily dis­missed. Such a pos­si­bil­ity would not be far removed from the appar­ent pur­poses and appli­ca­tions of Project Coast. (For more about the Broeder­bond, see Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M8-available from Spitfire–and FTR#225. For more about evi­dence that AIDS was devel­oped as a bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapon, see RFA#16-available from Spitfire-as well as FTR#‘s 16, 19, 225, 269, 282, among other programs.)

“Ford and Nils­son were befriended by South African deputy sur­geon gen­eral Dr. Niel Kno­bel. Ford began advis­ing him on pro­tect­ing troops from bio­log­i­cal attack, as well as sug­gest­ing AIDS pre­ven­tion pro­grams in a coun­try that today has the worst AIDS infec­tion rate on earth — benign and praise­wor­thy endeav­ors that Kno­bel main­tains had ‘no polit­i­cal agenda.’ But the AIDS pre­ven­tion pro­gram was for whites in the mil­i­tary, not blacks. A secret right-wing South African orga­ni­za­tion, the Broeder-bond, con­ducted stud­ies around this same time that sug­gested the AIDS epi­demic could make whites the major­ity in the future.”

“Since then, through the new government’s Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Com­mis­sion, which was formed to probe the abuses of apartheid, infor­ma­tion has sur­faced about a secret South African bioweapons pro­gram. Code-named Project Coast, it was run by another Ford friend and finan­cial bene­fac­tor, Dr. Wouter Bas­son; Kno­bel had admin­is­tra­tive over­sight. Basson’s alleged ties to hun­dreds of poi­son­ings and assas­si­na­tions in South Africa and in the neigh­bor­ing coun­tries of Angola and Zim­babwe earned him the nick­name Dr. Death in the South African press. Doc­u­ments indi­cat­ing he had arranged an off­shore bank account for Ford were found in Ford’s papers after his death.”

“The com­mis­sion uncov­ered evi­dence that whole vil­lages, includ­ing an Angolan set­tle­ment of sev­eral hun­dred peo­ple sus­pected of har­bor­ing rebels, may have been dec­i­mated by Project Coast weapons. This find­ing par­al­lels infor­ma­tion Nilsson’s ex-girlfriend pro­vided: She said Ford more than once boasted of wip­ing out an entire Angolan vil­lage dur­ing a civil war. (She claimed Ford had been talk­ing with Nils­son in 1996 about obtain­ing a mis­sile or bomb­ing sys­tem from for­mer Soviet bloc nations that might be used to deliver bio­log­i­cal weapons.)”

“Project Coast sci­en­tists called to tes­tify against Bas­son have said Ford was brought in to brief them on the use of bio­log­i­cal weapons in mass attacks and dis­crete assas­si­na­tion, the lat­ter through the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of ordi­nary items such as Play­boy mag­a­zines and tea bags. One sci­en­tist involved with South African bioweapons devel­op­ment noted that Ford’s ideas — and arro­gance — were not well received, and that his work was given lit­tle cre­dence in the Project Coast lab. How­ever, Ford con­tin­ued to work with Bas­son and Kno­bel, who had a pic­ture of him hang­ing in his den at the time of the suicide.”

(Idem.)

19. The alarm­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties of Dr. Ford’s “post-regime” activ­i­ties were under­scored by a report indi­cat­ing that the Broeder­bond milieu has gone under­ground in order to con­tinue its activ­i­ties. (For more about this post-apartheid “under­ground Broeder­bond,” see FTR#324.)

“Accord­ing to a recent U.S. Air Force Acad­emy report on South Africa’s bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram, Ford was part of a global net­work of sci­en­tists that Bas­son assem­bled to assist Project Coast. Whether that meant cre­at­ing — or receiv­ing and stor­ing — tox­ins pro­duced by the pro­gram is a mat­ter of con­jec­ture, the report sug­gests, as South African offi­cials have been unable to account for all of the dan­ger­ous mate­r­ial pro­duced over the years. The Air Force report quotes tes­ti­mony from a Swiss intel­li­gence agent who laun­dered money for Bas­son and who describes a world­wide con­spir­acy involv­ing unnamed Americans.”

(Idem.)

“‘The death of Dr. Ford and rev­e­la­tions of his South African involve­ment,’ the report states, ‘[raises] the pos­si­bil­ity of a right-wing inter­na­tional net­work, [still] united by a vision of South Africa once again ruled by whites.’”

(Ibid.; p. 9.)

The decline of the apartheid regime does not appear to have broad­ened the hori­zons of pub­lic dis­clo­sure con­cern­ing Ford’s activ­i­ties dur­ing the hey­day of that regime.

“In the wake of Ford’s sui­cide Fitz­patrick and Byron reminded a new set of FBI agents about the meet­ing between Ford and Deputy Sur­geon Gen­eral Kno­bel, in which the satchel of deadly germs was allegedly passed over to the South African — and about the fact that noth­ing was done to inter­cept Kno­bel as he returned to South Africa. Once again no expla­na­tion was offered. Byron sug­gested review­ing the sur­veil­lance record­ings from the bugs he and Fitz­patrick helped plant so long ago. ‘You can get a block­buster out of those, I’m sure.’”

“‘Not even we can get those tapes,’ he remem­bers the agent respond­ing. ‘They’re sealed. National security.’”

“Matthew McLaugh­lin, spokesman for the FBI in Los Ange­les, says the bureau’s poli­cies bar him from con­firm­ing or deny­ing Byron’s and Fitzpatrick’s accounts. Nor will he com­ment on their alle­ga­tion that the gov­ern­ment per­mit­ted Ford to ille­gally develop and traf­fic in bioweapons. McLaugh­lin does cau­tion, how­ever, that there are often rea­sons crim­i­nal activ­ity is allowed to go on in order to pre­serve an inves­ti­ga­tion, and that no infor­mant in any case has the whole pic­ture. ‘We com­part­men­tal­ize peo­ple we work with, and they are not privy to the breadth and width of a case,’ he says. ‘They see the elephant’s toenail.’”

(Idem.)

20. Another truly ter­ri­fy­ing pos­si­bil­ity is that Ford & company’s bioweapons capa­bil­i­ties could be used on the United States. In the wake of 9/11, this pos­si­bil­ity seems even more chilling.

“Of course, Byron and Fitz­patrick say trade attache Gideon Bouwer was clear in their con­ver­sa­tions 16 years ago about what had hap­pened in the meet­ing with Ford. They say he raved about the abil­ity to keep whites in power through bio­log­i­cal war­fare, and he hinted at being part of a sep­a­rate agenda — some sort of extragov­ern­men­tal con­spir­acy, like the one described in the Air Force report, that had plans to unleash bio­log­i­cal agents world­wide on South Africa’s ene­mies if the need should ever arise.”

“‘Just be ready,’ Fitz­patrick remem­bers Bouwer warn­ing him cryp­ti­cally, then ask­ing, ‘How fast could you get your daugh­ter out of the coun­try if you had to?’”

“I have to be hon­est,” Fitz­patrick says. “Gideon could be a great guy. But there was some­thing dan­ger­ous about him. And when he started talk­ing about that mas­ter plan, about what a great ser­vice Ford had done for his coun­try, about get­ting out of the coun­try, it gave me chills.’”

(Idem.)

21. It would appear that the inves­ti­ga­tion is con­tin­u­ing, albeit with a veil of offi­cial pub­lic secrecy.

“Niel Kno­bel has admit­ted meet­ing with Ford at the attache’s home in the period Fitz­patrick and Byron describe but denies any involve­ment with bio­log­i­cal weapons.”

“The infor­mants never found out what hap­pened after that meet­ing between Ford and Kno­bel. Bouwer fell from favor less than a year later, appar­ently con­sid­ered a secu­rity risk by his own gov­ern­ment. He was recalled, and the vis­its by Ford and Nils­son to the con­sulate ended, as did Byron’s and Fitzpatrick’s work there. Bouwer died ten years ago in South Africa.”

“Look­ing for answers, Fitz­patrick recently used the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act to obtain his FBI file. All but the cap­tions were redacted from the small ream of reports detail­ing his infor­ma­tion about Ford and the South Africans. But those cap­tions clearly show one thing: What­ever Fitz­patrick told his han­dler was imme­di­ately for­warded to FBI head­quar­ters in Wash­ing­ton, and then it was dis­patched to the CIA.”

“Vic­tor Ray was brought back on the Ford case after a week, once it became clear that he had not been off-base about a pos­si­ble CIA con­nec­tion and that he had devel­oped sources the FBI wanted — sources he wasn’t going to give up unless there was mutual cooperation.”

(Idem.)

22. A detail that lends cre­dence to the spec­u­la­tion that Ford’s activ­i­ties in recent years were con­ducted in con­junc­tion with some sort of under­ground (and poten­tially deadly) right-wing appa­ra­tus con­cerns the con­tin­ued ret­i­cence of Dino D’Saach to tes­tify in con­junc­tion for lenience. It would also appear that the author­i­ties con­tinue to be reluc­tant to expand the investigation.

“After some ini­tial tug-of-war the Irvine police and the FBI are work­ing well together, Ray says, but there have been dis­agree­ments. He could only get to Byron and Fitz­patrick through an L.A. Times reporter whom Fitz­patrick had called, rather than through the FBI, which declared them off-limits. And it is Ray, not the FBI, who has kept push­ing to widen the inves­ti­ga­tion, expand­ing it to other sus­pects and states, secur­ing out-of-town search war­rants the FBI said couldn’t be obtained, locat­ing a key wit­ness the FBI believed to be dead. It appears that Irvine’s small police depart­ment is the main rea­son an inter­na­tional inves­ti­ga­tion is now under way, one that started with an Orange County grand jury probe and that now appears headed for a fed­eral grand jury.”

(Ibid.; pp. 9–10.)

“So far the only pub­lic charges have revolved around Riley’s shoot­ing. Besides D’Saach’s attempted-murder con­vic­tion, Kesler has been charged with weapons vio­la­tions for the guns found in her car. She remains a sus­pect in the shoot­ing, as does Nils­son, whose home was searched but who has not been charged. The gun­man remains unidentified . . . .”

(Idem.)

23. Attempts to reas­sure the pub­lic con­cern­ing the poten­tial threat posed by Ford’s clan­des­tine arse­nal appear to have been moti­vated, in part, by attempts at avoid­ing wide­spread alarm.

“The search of Ford’s house unearthed more than 260 con­tain­ers of bio­log­i­cal mate­r­ial, most of it in a refrig­er­a­tor in Ford’s garage, along with the jar of ricin, the sub­stance Kesler said the knife had been dipped in. Author­i­ties found it in his fam­ily room. Bot­u­lism, which pro­duces one of the dead­liest tox­ins known, was recov­ered from a refrig­er­a­tor at Biofem, stored by Ford next to a bot­tle of ranch dressing.”

“These dis­cov­er­ies were fol­lowed by reas­sur­ing state­ments to the pub­lic that the doctor’s ille­gal brew of germs was aged and posed lit­tle dan­ger. But inter­nal FBI reports state there was a gen­uine pub­lic health haz­ard, and Dr. Mark Hor­ton, head of pub­lic health ser­vices for Orange County, con­cedes that, had the mate­ri­als been han­dled with­out great care, they could have imper­iled the community.”

“It turns out that the assur­ances were based on the test­ing of only 16 of the sam­ples — there has been no offi­cial account­ing of what was in the rest. The pub­lic state­ments did not even men­tion the botulism.”

“Ray has no doubt that the dan­ger was severe. He notes that many of the bio­log­i­cal sam­ples in Ford’s home were stored next to a jar of what was sus­pected to be old and chem­i­cally unsta­ble ether. ‘If that ether had been exposed to a higher tem­per­a­ture, it would have exploded,’ he says, ‘and Larry Ford’s chem­istry set would be blown all over Irvine.’”

“His dis­gust over the case almost led him to leave it for good last sum­mer. He was away all the time, his wife was com­plain­ing; the stress was enor­mous. ‘It really made me think ... what in the hell was going on and how could the gov­ern­ment have stood by while Ford ... did these things? . . .’”

(Idem.)

24. Addi­tional per­spec­tive on the story of Dr. Ford comes from some mus­ings from a recent arti­cle on the dan­gers of bioterrorism.

“Were a ter­ror­ist to dis­perse the small­pox virus, for exam­ple, pop­u­la­tions that were once uni­ver­sally vac­ci­nated would now be hor­ri­bly vul­ner­a­ble. Today, the U.S. gov­ern­ment stows only about 15.4 mil­lion doses of the small­pox vaccine-enough for less than seven per­cent of the Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion. The World Health Orga­ni­za­tion (WHO) keeps another 500,000 doses in the Nether­lands, and other national stock­piles total about 60 mil­lion more doses of vary­ing qual­ity and potency. If the small­pox virus were released today, the major­ity of the world’s pop­u­la­tion would be defense­less, and given the virus’ 30 per­cent kill rate, nearly two bil­lion peo­ple could die.”

(“The Night­mare of Bioter­ror­ism”) by Lau­rie Gar­rett; For­eign Affairs; January/February 2001; p. 77.)

25.

“The world is thus com­pletely vul­ner­a­ble to a small­pox attack. The last time a mass emer­gency vac­ci­na­tion took place in the United States was 1947, when a trav­eler from Mex­ico spread small pox to New York City. Vac­cines were then read­ily avail­able, and 6.35 mil­lion New York­ers were immu­nized in less than four weeks. In 1961, a sim­i­lar vac­ci­na­tion cam­paign was admin­is­tered fol­low­ing a small pox out­break in Eng­land: 5.5 mil­lion peo­ple were immu­nized in a month’s time. A decade late, small pox cases in Yugoslavia prompted the rapid vac­ci­na­tion of 20 mil­lion peo­ple in that coun­try. Were a small pox cri­sis to emerge today, none of these efforts could be repeated.”

“Even in large stock­piles of the small­pox vac­cine could be col­lected imme­di­ately, they would be of lim­ited value for two rea­sons: only sev­eral days after infec­tion would indi­vid­u­als develop rec­og­niz­able symp­toms, by which time thousands-even millions-would have been exposed; and only sev­eral days or weeks after vac­ci­na­tion would indi­vid­u­als develop suf­fi­cient anti­bod­ies to stave off infection.”

(Ibid.; p. 78.)

26.

“In a large urban cen­ter, the true costs of a bioter­ror­ist attack might be the con­se­quences of panic, such as a stock mar­ket col­lapse in New York or a com­modi­ties mar­ket crash in Chicago. At a 1998 Sen­ate hear­ing on bioter­ror­ism, then Min­nesota State Epi­demi­ol­o­gist Michael Oster­holm warned against under­es­ti­mat­ing the degree of panic such an event would pro­voke: ‘[A] sin­gle case of menin­gi­tis in a local high school causes enough fear and panic to bring down a whole com­mu­nity . . . . Now imag­ine you’re telling peo­ple, ‘This is going to unfold for eight weeks, and I can’t tell you if you’re going to die.’ And with every symp­tom . . . real or imag­ined, [peo­ple are] going to think, ‘I’ve got it! I’m going to die!’”

(Ibid.; p. 79)

27. The degree of over­lap between the highly-skilled Dr. Ford and other right-wing extrem­ists is under­scored by author Garret’s account of the activ­i­ties of the mili­tia milieu.

“Although most peo­ple remain igno­rant of the issues raised in that sce­nario, hand­fuls of Internet-hooked extrem­ists, right-wing mili­tia mem­bers, psy­cho­log­i­cally imbal­anced bel­liger­ents, and post­mod­ern fas­cists are well versed in the fine points of bioter­ror­ism. Recipes for pro­duc­ing bot­u­linum and anthrax are posted on the Web. Books describ­ing biological-warfare assas­si­na­tion tech­niques are read­ily avail­able. Some pri­vate mili­tia groups train to use bio­log­i­cal weapons.”

(Ibid.; p. 81.)

28. Note that the use of ricin is advo­cated by one of the fas­cist activists cited by Gar­rett. As noted above, ricin is one of the deadly agents stock­piled (and, pos­si­bly used) by Dr. Ford.

“Per­haps it is the tone of some mil­i­tants’ rhetoric that sparks the most con­cern. In The Poisoner’s Hand­book, for exam­ple, Maxwell Hutchkin­son sug­gests that read­ers poi­son or kill Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice work­ers by fill­ing out phony tax-return forms and lac­ing them with a mix­ture of ricin (a poi­so­nous pro­tein) and dimethyl­sul­fox­ide (DMSO)-a con­coc­tion Hutchkin­son claims is 10 per­cent lethal. ‘The pur­pose of all this is to dis­rupt the oper­a­tions’ of the IRS, Hutchkin­son writes. ‘If done on a large enough scale, it would serve two purposes-it would make it more dif­fi­cult for the IRS to oper­ate effi­ciently, thus help­ing tax cheats and tax pro­test­ers. It might also awaken the politi­cians to the depth of resent­ment felt by the tax­pay­ing public.’”

“For­tu­nately, Hutchkin­son is a lousy chemist: only sim­ple chemicals-not pro­teins such as ricin-can dis­solve in DMSO. But the depth of Hutchkinson’s antag­o­nism is unmis­tak­able: he sug­gests that read­ers kill Catholics by soak­ing their rosary beads in phy­to­toxin abrin, a toxin derived from a rare bean; he writes that bot­u­linum is ‘fun and easy to make’; and he urges sur­vival­ists around the world to hone their skills, ready­ing them­selves for bio­log­i­cal war­fare in the com­ing Armageddon.”

(Ibid.; p. 82.)

29.The pro­gram con­cludes with some inter­est­ing quotes from for­mer CIA direc­tor William Colby (quoted from a right-wing book about alleged Bush fam­ily involve­ment in orga­nized vice activ­i­ties). In the book, Colby expresses his fear that the mili­tia move­ment could be taken advan­tage of by a hos­tile for­eign power, in order to do harm to the United States-a poten­tially sig­nif­i­cant obser­va­tion by the late William Colby when taken in the con­text of the activ­i­ties of Larry Creed Ford. (The Franklin Cover-Up; by John W. De Camp; Copy­right 1992 [SC}; AWT, Inc.; ISBN 0–9632158-0–9.)