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Recorded less than 48 hours before the 9/11 attacks, this pro­gram eerily fore­shad­ows the anthrax attacks that fol­lowed 9/11—to date those attacks are unsolved. This broad­cast offers some pos­si­ble clues as to why. Exam­in­ing more of the polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal con­text sur­round­ing the late Dr. Larry Ford, this pro­gram pro­vides a vista onto the over­lap­ping worlds of clan­des­tine fas­cist pol­i­tics, the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity and bio­log­i­cal war­fare research.

1. The pro­gram begins with review of Dr. Ford’s work for Project Coast—an apartheid-era South African assas­si­na­tion pro­gram using chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal weapons. (It is impor­tant to remem­ber that Ford had worked with, among other ele­ments, the CIA. This makes his asso­ci­a­tion with ultra-right antigov­ern­ment and ter­ror­ist groups all the more omi­nous. The pos­si­bil­ity of a “national secu­rity coverup” is not one to be too read­ily dis­carded. His links to ele­ments of the US intel­li­gence com­mu­nity may be used to obscure some of his other activ­i­ties from pub­lic view. It is also worth not­ing that other coun­tries appeared to have uti­lized assets involved in Project Coast in a fash­ion not unlike the Amer­i­can incor­po­ra­tion of Third Reich sci­en­tists and research under Project Paperclip.)

“He [Irvine Cal­i­for­nia police detec­tive Vic­tor Ray] 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.”

(“The Med­i­cine Man” by Edward Humes; Los Ange­les Mag­a­zine; 7/2001; p. 3.)

2. Ford had links to racist orga­ni­za­tions and militia-movement ele­ments, and may have offered them chem­i­cal and/or bio­log­i­cal weapons. His “microen­cap­su­la­tion” sys­tem for a pro­phy­lac­tic vagi­nal sup­pos­i­tory he was devel­op­ing might have “dual-use” in a bio­log­i­cal war­fare application.

“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.”

(Idem.)

3. Ford had told the fam­ily of a busi­ness part­ner that his work on behalf of the US national secu­rity estab­lish­ment had included work on the Ebola and Mar­burg viruses. As will be seen later in the pro­gram, there is some sug­ges­tion that Ebola may have been uti­lized by the apartheid-era regime as part of Project Coast.

“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.)

4. Review­ing more infor­ma­tion from FTR#317, the dis­cus­sion high­lights Ford’s work on AIDS pre­ven­tion for the apartheid-era gov­ern­ment. (South Africa has one of the high­est rates of HIV infec­tion in the world and many observers feel that AIDS threat­ens the very future of the coun­try.) Sig­nif­i­cantly, research on AIDS by the Broeder­bond under­scored the pos­si­bil­ity that the dis­ease could become a vehi­cle for the restora­tion of white supremacy in South Africa

“But the AIDS pre­ven­tion pro­gram was for whites in the mil­i­tary, not blacks. A secret rightwing South African orga­ni­za­tion, the Broeder-bond, [sic] con­ducted stud­ies around this same time that sug­gested the AIDS epi­demic could make whites the major­ity in the future.”

(Ibid.; p. 8.)

5. In light of the activ­i­ties con­ducted by Ford and his com­pa­tri­ots from Project Coast, the uti­liza­tion of AIDS as a weapon of exter­mi­na­tion is not a pos­si­bil­ity to be too read­ily cast aside.

“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; [South African deputy sur­geon gen­eral Dr. Niel] 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.”

(Idem.)

6. Ford’s involve­ment with Project Coast may have bor­dered on the genocidal.

“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.”

(Idem.)

7. Next, the pro­gram sets forth more infor­ma­tion about the his­tory of Project Coast. Zimbabwe’s Health Min­is­ter had some pointed obser­va­tions about out­breaks of Ebola dur­ing that nation’s war of inde­pen­dence and his belief that they resulted from Project Coast.

“ ‘I have my sus­pi­cions about Ebola too. It devel­oped along the line of the Zam­bezi River, and I sus­pect that this may have been an exper­i­ment to see if a new virus could be estab­lished to infect peo­ple. We looked on the sero­log­i­cal evi­dence on strange cases, includ­ing a fifteen-year-old child which occurred in 1980. Noth­ing really made epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sense. Do I have evi­dence? Only cir­cum­stan­tial. In fact, the Rhode­sian secu­rity forces were more expert than the Nazis at cov­er­ing up evidence.’”

(Plague Wars: The Ter­ri­fy­ing Real­ity of Bio­log­i­cal War­fare by Tom Man­gold and Jeff Gold­berg; Copy­right 1999 [HC] by Tom Man­gold and Jeff Gold­berg; St. Martin’s Press; ISBN 0–312-20353–5; p. 220.)

8. Dr. Stamps’ obser­va­tions were sig­nif­i­cant and pre­scient, because the sub­se­quent inquiry into Project Coast revealed that the project had been active in neigh­bor­ing coun­tries that had fought against black major­ity rule at the same time as the apartheid regime.

“Stamps is speak­ing weeks before the remark­able evi­dence was pre­sented by South African sol­diers and sci­en­tists at the 1998 Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Commission’s hear­ings on South Africa’s covert bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram. The Health Min­is­ter doesn’t know just how close to the truth he is.” (Idem.)
“Stamps begins to talk gloomily about the revived epi­demic of anthrax which now stalks his land. ‘Even the wild ani­mals have been infected—antelopes, ele­phants . . .’ The voice trails off, then picks up again. ‘We’ve asked the Amer­i­can Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol to come and help us, but they work only on a cost plus basis and my bud­get is small.’”

(Idem.)

“We talk about the anthrax. ‘If you can destroy a person’s cat­tle, you can destroy his liveli­hood,’ he says. ‘If you can kill a few peo­ple in the process, then you can sub­ju­gate a large num­ber of peo­ple. And the stuff lasts for­ever. That is the evil of bio­log­i­cal war­fare.’ Who brought it in? Stamps picks up a cake knife and points to the south. ‘Where do you think? South Africa, of course.’”

(Idem.)

9. Nico Palm—a for­mer engi­neer in the South African Defense Force—provided the authors of Plague Wars with a pri­mary source. “Gert,” as he chose to be called, dis­cussed his use of bio­log­i­cal weapons dur­ing the bor­der wars of the 1980’s.

“Palm says he has a pri­mary source who used bio­log­i­cal war­fare against the ene­mies of South Africa dur­ing the covert bor­der strug­gles of the 1980’s . . . Gert teases with some hints about his per­sonal back­ground, but not enough to make an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. ‘I was recruited by [Wouter] Bas­son,’ he says casu­ally. ‘I had the same rank and sta­tus, I was a colonel.’”

(Ibid.; pp. 250–251.)

10. “Gert” dis­cussed the method­ol­ogy of covert infec­tion uti­lized by Project Coast and some of the infec­tious agents used.

“The bac­te­ria and viruses, he says, were deliv­ered in con­tain­ers and used in north­ern Namibia. Bac­te­ria were placed into a water source ‘wher­ever you iden­tify one, or wher­ever you iden­tify one des­tined for human consumption’.”

(Ibid.; p. 251.)

“ ‘When Hep. [Hepati­tis] A was used, we had to make sure that the oper­a­tors had a gamma glob­u­lin injec­tion first. Cholera was pretty widely used also. I used it. I per­son­ally was involved in the East­ern Trans­vaal against FRELIMO in Mozam­bique. We placed the cholera upstream . . . we looked for areas, and you don’t have to be a rocket sci­en­tist to work this out, where they didn’t fil­ter the water or don’t clean it—places where there was no chlo­ri­na­tion, so you drop it in and prod it.’”

(Ibid.; pp. 251–252.)

11. Accord­ing to “Gert,” the actual “homme-de-main” who was selected to do the dirty work, was usu­ally a civil­ian who was viewed as “dispensable.”

“Who did this? Sol­diers? ‘No, no, no, no. Never, never did it hap­pen by ordi­nary sol­diers. You can’t blame any of the nor­mal forces for that. Although some­times some of our own sol­diers did get infected by the cholera that we put in the water.’”

(Ibid.; p. 252.)

“ ‘This is what I’m say­ing, usu­ally the guy who did it, who placed it, was dispensable—he would have been very well selected, he’s some­one you can com­pro­mise, he’s either on drugs, or he drinks too much, or he’s got his hand in the cookie jar. That was all done here in Pre­to­ria.’ Who did the selec­tion? Bas­son him­self? ‘He selected the guy with the crim­i­nal back­ground . . . It was a crim­i­nal oper­a­tion. The guy would wear civil­ian clothes.’”

(Idem.)

12. Cor­rob­o­rat­ing some of Dr. Stamps’ sus­pi­cions con­cern­ing Ebola, “Gert” dis­cussed the use of that virus and the related Mar­burg virus in Project Coast. “Gert” also implies that US sci­en­tists from Ft. Det­rick (Dr. Ford?) were involved with a Zairian outbreak.

“ ‘Look, I know what one of the very, very, very secret spe­cial­ized units had. We had to test it. And that was viral cap­sules that were specif­i­cally related to Congo fever and the hem­or­rhagic fevers.’ Ebola? ‘Yes.’ So Gert is begin­ning to cor­rob­o­rate Dr. Stamp’s sus­pi­cions in Harare that Ebola and Mar­burg, although indige­nous, were also arti­fi­cially seeded into South­ern Africa. Bas­son, says Gert, was involved in all this. (when the last ter­ri­ble Ebola out­break occurred in Kik­wit, Zaire, as late as 1995, Gert claims that Bas­son was there, unof­fi­cially. Twenty years ear­lier, when the vil­lage of Yam­buku in north­ern Zaire wit­nessed one of the first major Ebola out­breaks, two South African sci­en­tists were there, allegedly work­ing hand in glove with US mil­i­tary per­son­nel from Fort Detrick.)”

(Ibid.; p. 253.)

13. As “Gert” made clear, these viruses were for offen­sive use by South Africa.

“Slowly, patiently, Gert con­fesses that these ter­ri­ble viruses were ‘researched’ for offen­sive use by South Africa. Next, he talks ellip­ti­cally about ‘tak­ing out’ cer­tain enemy units, even though these actions had no mil­i­tary value. It was done in order to find the one sol­dier who, accord­ing to mil­i­tary intel­li­gence, had con­tracted an hem­or­rhagic fever. These sick peo­ple would then be evac­u­ated from the bor­der areas to South Africa, ‘to see what the effect was, obvi­ously.’. You wanted to see what the effect because you had sown the dis­ease? ‘For sure . . . I can tell you that I know of this thing because I did it myself. I did the evac­u­a­tions. It was up in East­ern Angola, we’re talk­ing mid-eighties.’”

(Idem.)

14. Adding sin­is­ter depth to the back­ground of the AIDS research that Larry Ford engaged in, “Gert” dis­cusses the delib­er­ate infec­tion of human tar­gets with HIV.

“Gert lifts another veil. ‘There was some HIV tam­per­ing,’ he says. Mean­ing? ‘I mean all you have to do is get one covert guy, he’s HIV pos­i­tive, he’s of the area. You get him to infil­trate the whole town and screw the whole lot . . . get him out and shoot him.’ Was that really done? ‘If I tell you, it was obvi­ously done. Look, I was a wild guy. At one stage, I worked with the police, I worked with national intel­li­gence, I worked with mil­i­tary intel­li­gence, I worked with Sev­enth Med, I worked with every­body. I was never iden­ti­fied, because only a very few peo­ple knew where I was posi­tioned.’ Was Bas­son your boss? ‘No, it was higher up, both mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal. [sic]’”

(Idem.)

15. As set forth in FTR#317, Dr. Ford was (accord­ing to an Air Force Acad­emy report) part of an under­ground, extragov­ern­men­tal net­work that aimed at con­tin­u­ing the work of Project Coast and the goals of the apartheid regime.

“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. ‘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.’”

(“The Med­i­cine Man;” Los Ange­les Mag­a­zine; 7/2001; pp. 8–9.)

The pos­si­bil­ity that this under­ground orga­ni­za­tion might unleash its bio­log­i­cal ter­ror on the United States was fore­shad­owed by some of the state­ments made by Ford and his associates.

“They say he [South African trade attaché Gideon Bouwer] 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 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, and about get­ting out of the coun­try, it gave me chills.”

(Ibid.; p .9.)

16. Ford’s alleged par­tic­i­pa­tion in the extragov­ern­men­tal and appar­ently fas­cist under­ground milieu assumes added sig­nif­i­cance when eval­u­ated against the post-apartheid “Third Force.” The “Third Force” was a pow­er­ful, deadly and (by those famil­iar with it) respect­fully feared under­ground exten­sion of the apartheid/Broederbond power axis. (As will be seen later on in this pro­gram descrip­tion, Mandela’s fear that Project Coast and the “Third Force” might be con­nected was not with­out foundation.)

“In the end it was British rep­re­sen­ta­tives who decided to approach Pres­i­dent Man­dela, with a min­i­mum of fan­fare, to advise him that he was inher­it­ing an ugly bio­log­i­cal assas­si­na­tion pro­gram from the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tions. Mandela’s first reac­tion was: ‘Oh my God!’ He was ini­tially ter­ri­fied that the South African ‘Third Force’ ele­ments, includ­ing such orga­ni­za­tions as Eugene Terre’ Blanche’s ultra right-wing and fanat­i­cal AWB, might lay their hands on it.”

(Plague Wars; pp. 272–273.)

17. The “Third Force” was not a periph­eral organization.

“The most deter­mined of these whites came to be known as ‘The Third Force’. They com­prised not the mad neo-Nazi right, but revan­chist politi­cians and hard men in the mil­i­tary, and the mil­i­tary intel­li­gence and civil­ian intel­li­gence agen­cies, and the myr­iad covert action groups involved in fight­ing clean or dirty, inter­nally or exter­nally, to main­tain white supremacy.”

(Ibid.; p. 266.)

18. The afore­men­tioned Nico Palm described this post-apartheid under­ground orga­ni­za­tion in more detail, refer­ring to it as “Die Organ­isasie” and “the Spi­der Net­work.” With the links between the Third Reich and the Broeder­bond and with the vig­or­ous post­war pres­ence of Third Reich émigré ele­ments in the Third Reich, it seems prob­a­ble that “Die Organ­isasie” retains con­nec­tions to the Under­ground Reich.

“Palm spoke enig­mat­i­cally of ‘Die Organ­isasie,’ a pulp fic­tion nom de guerre (which he calls, even more melo­dra­mat­i­cally, the ‘Spi­der Net­work’). It is a group of white South Africans who wait patiently for he demise of the ANC gov­ern­ment and a return to the old days. They are not the mad pseudo-Nazis of the far right, but some­thing far more orga­nized, well financed, and patient. Other peo­ple know them as ‘The Third Force.’ We are to hear of them time and again from ex-soldiers like Nico Palm all the way up to South Africa’s deputy defense min­is­ter, Ron­nie Kas­rils. Sig­nif­i­cantly, files have also been opened by MI5 in poten­tially sig­nif­i­cant union of like-minded South African right-wingers. All of them are ex-pats now liv­ing in the United King­dom, who may sup­port the desta­bi­liza­tion of any black South African government.”

(Ibid.; p. 250.)

19. Those famil­iar with “Die Organ­isasie” regard it with a mix­ture of fear and respect.

“It is with in this con­text that Gert now raises the ques­tion of Die Organ­isasie. He is clearly appre­hen­sive of its power, and it is the only moment he appears truly con­cerned. ‘These are peo­ple who take no pris­on­ers,’ mut­ters Nico [Palm]. Gert grimly nods his head.”

(Ibid.; p. 254.)

20. Dr. Larry Ford’s asso­ciate and super­vi­sor in Project Coast—Wouter Basson—was no stranger to “Die Organisasie.”

“We recall there was, in the doc­u­ments found at his [Basson’s] home, a fax from Britain. It stated that should Bas­son ever find him­self in trouble—real trouble—there was a safe house ready for him not half-an-hour from Lon­don. All he had to do was to make his own way to Heathrow. The sig­na­ture on the fax had been whited out. In fact, the mes­sage had been sent by a for­mer Rhodesian/South African cit­i­zen who now lives and works in West Lon­don, who was once very close to Bas­son, and worked with him on the bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram. He is ex-Special Forces, and linked to Die Organ­isasie. Now he is a busi­ness­man, mar­ried with fam­ily, whose per­ma­nent res­i­dence is in London.”

(Ibid.; p. 281.)

21. The final ele­ment of dis­cus­sion con­cerns Basson’s appar­ent con­nec­tions to “Die Organ­isasie.” Juer­gen Jacomet—a for­mer Swiss intel­li­gence oper­a­tive who had worked with Basson—reflected on the motives for Basson’s involve­ment in an “Ecstasy” deal.

“So what was Bas­son up to that night? He says sim­ply that he was framed. Another ver­sion has that he did it purely for per­sonal gain; there is a third expla­na­tion, that it was a mix­ture of per­sonal gain and help­ing to raise funds for the Third Force, of which Bas­son is con­sid­ered to be a member.”

(Ibid.; p. 277.)

“Basson’s pos­si­ble con­nec­tions with the Third Force were ellip­ti­cally referred to by Juer­gen Jacomet, the for­mer Swiss mil­i­tary intel­li­gence agent who worked with Bas­son on money-laundering aspects of Project Coast in Europe . . .”

(Idem.)

22. The pro­gram details Jacomet’s rela­tion­ship with Bas­son and the apartheid regime.

“In fact, back in the mid-1980’s, the Swiss agent had first worked with Gen­eral Lothar Neeth­ling, South Africa’s Police Foren­sic chief, deliv­er­ing arms to South Africa, in an exten­sive sanctions-busting arrange­ment. Neeth­ling intro­duced Jacomet to Bas­son, and the two men became friends. Bas­son often vis­ited Jacomet at his Berne home. Even­tu­ally, Jacomet trav­eled to South Africa on sev­eral occa­sions to help Bas­son and Neeth­ling in the dirty wars of the 1980’s.”

(Idem.)

23. Jacomet hypoth­e­sizes that Bas­son would not have engaged in the Ecstasy deal for profit.

“Now, sit­ting in a quiet West Lon­don gar­den on an early spring day in 1998, Jacomet relaxes with cof­fee and cig­a­rettes and dis­cusses the arrest of Bas­son and the Ecstasy alle­ga­tions. He scoffs at the prospect of his friend being a prof­i­teer­ing drug dealer. ‘It makes absolutely no sense if you know him. It makes no sense tat he would mix with street deal­ers. If it hap­pened at all, there must be a higher inter­est.’ Such as? ‘It might be to pro­cure money to sup­port a cer­tain group which rep­re­sents the inter­ests of South Africa and wants the return of a white-dominated government.’”

(Ibid.; pp. 277–278.)

24. In dis­cussing the Third Force, Jacomet expresses the same fear of the orga­ni­za­tion that we have already witnessed.

“Jacomet, now ner­vous, is pressed to expand a lit­tle. ‘There is a group of peo­ple here in Lon­don, he says. ‘One could call them the friends of South Africa. They have it in mind to see a strong white South Africa again. There are Amer­i­can con­nec­tions too. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.] They need funds, and it is pos­si­ble that the drug busi­ness has helped them. You know, it would really be very fool­ish of me to talk more about this. They are seri­ous peo­ple.’ Jacomet searches for the pop­u­lar expres­sion, and, remark­ably, finds the same apho­rism used by Gert about the same peo­ple. ‘They don’t take pris­on­ers,’ he says finally.”

(Ibid.; p. 278.)

25. In dis­cussing the Third Force, Jacomet makes a ref­er­ence to “an Amer­i­can” who worked with Bas­son. This may very well be a ref­er­ence to Ford.

“And who are ‘they’? Jacomet men­tions some well-known South African names—men pre­vi­ously asso­ci­ated with Third Force activ­i­ties. He also refers to an Amer­i­can name known to Britain’s MI5 for his alleged involve­ment with Bas­son in money laun­der­ing, sanc­tions bust­ing, and bio­log­i­cal agents pro­cure­ment. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.] Once again, Die Organ­isasie is men­tioned in respect­ful tones, and, once again, the details remain scant and elu­sive. Jacomet remains silent.”

(Idem.)

26. The dis­cus­sion con­cludes with rumi­na­tion about the pos­si­bil­ity that the Under­ground Reich, uti­liz­ing some of the appar­ent con­nec­tions evi­dent in the rela­tion­ships of Dr. Larry Ford, might very well launch a bio-terror strike against the United States. Once again, one should note in that con­text that this broad­cast was recorded on 9/11/2001.