Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'Iraq' is associated with 107 posts.

FTR#‘s 1292 and 1293 The Oswald Institute of Virology, Part 14: The Northwoods Virus, Part 2 and Apocalypse, The Satanic Presidency of Joe Biden

This descrip­tion opens with an unchar­ac­ter­is­tic qual­i­fi­ca­tion and apol­o­gy: There are two ele­ments of the titles of each of these pro­grams that were not ade­quate­ly explained in the broad­casts them­selves, although they are implic­it in the sub­ject mate­r­i­al.

The term “North­woods Virus” is more com­plete­ly pre­sent­ed in FTR#1215. Among the appar­ent goals of the “Covid Oper­a­tion” that pro­duced SARS CoV‑2 is the turn­ing of Amer­i­can pub­lic opin­ion against Chi­na. Oper­a­tion North­woods was a plan hatched by the Join Chiefs of Staff in the ear­ly 1960’s to stage appar­ent ter­ror­ist inci­dents against Amer­i­can civil­ian and mil­i­tary per­son­nel and infra­struc­ture in order to manip­u­late pub­lic opin­ion in this coun­try and gen­er­ate sen­ti­ment for an inva­sion of Cuba.

The sec­ond pro­gram refers to the Biden Pres­i­den­cy as “Satan­ic,” because behind a stu­dious­ly con­struct­ed façade of iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics, “Team Biden” is pur­su­ing an overt­ly war­like, impe­ri­al­ist agen­da that was accu­rate­ly char­ac­ter­ized by writer Hen­ry Miller in his nov­el Trop­ic of Can­cer: “Amer­i­ca is the very incar­na­tion of doom, and she will lead the rest of the world into the Bot­tom­less Pit.”

Per­haps the most insid­i­ous of Biden’s pro­grams is his “Can­cer Moon­shot.”

Omi­nous­ly, it may well be the suc­ces­sor to Richard Nixon’s “War on Can­cer,” which did not defeat can­cer, but did serve as the appar­ent plat­form for the devel­op­ment of bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapons, AIDS in par­tic­u­lar.

Mod­eled after DARPA, head­ed by a DARPA alum­na whose CV inter­sects with that Agency’s appar­ent involve­ment with the devel­op­ment of Covid-19 and with an act­ing direc­tor who is also a for­mer employ­ee of that benight­ed orga­ni­za­tion, this new “health agency–ARPA‑H”, this agency will employ new, syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy tech­nol­o­gy.

Although that devel­op­ment is rep­re­sent­ed as human­i­tar­i­an, the struc­ture of the agency and the nation­al secu­ri­ty back­grounds of its lead­ing per­son­nel sug­gest strong­ly that this agency, too, will serve as a clan­des­tine plat­form for the next gen­er­a­tion of bio­log­i­cal weapon­ry.

We begin FTR#1292 with a reprise of the audio from a (now delet­ed) 55-sec­ond video of Dr. Jef­frey Sachs sum­ma­riz­ing his two-year stew­ard­ship of The Lancet’s com­mis­sion inves­ti­gat­ing the ori­gins of SARS CoV‑2.

Sachs stat­ed that he is “pret­ty con­vinced” it came from a U.S. bio­log­i­cal lab­o­ra­to­ry.

Next, we recap a study released by US Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences at the request of the Depart­ment of Defense about the threats of syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy con­clud­ed that the tech­niques to tweak and weaponize virus­es from known cat­a­logs of viral sequences is very fea­si­ble and rel­a­tive­ly easy to do.

One of the cen­tral points Mr. Emory has made about the gen­e­sis of the coro­n­avirus con­cerns the legal prin­ci­ple of “con­scious­ness of guilt.”

Going a long way toward prov­ing con­scious­ness of guilt are:

1.–The clas­si­fi­ca­tion of infor­ma­tion about the nature of the bio­log­i­cal agents involved with the CDC’s clo­sure of the Unit­ed States Army’s Med­ical Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­ease in ear­ly August of 2019, on the eve of the pan­dem­ic.
2.–The behav­ior of Peter Daszak and col­leagues in “gam­ing” the Lancet state­ment on the “nat­ur­al” ori­gin of the coro­n­avirus (Dasza­k’s Eco­Health Alliance–funded and advised by the nation­al secu­ri­ty establishment–is impli­cat­ed in the cre­ation of the SARS COV‑2.) Note that the Eco­Health Alliance was syn­the­siz­ing “nov­el coro­n­avirus­es” at this point in time, an impor­tant fac­tor to remem­ber when eval­u­at­ing the Metabiota/Munich Re busi­ness mod­el being pre­sent­ed in 2018. (See #4 pre­sent­ed below.)
3.–The reac­tion of gov­ern­ment offi­cials to Trump admin­is­tra­tion fig­ures into the ori­gins of the virus, advis­ing would be inves­ti­ga­tors that such inquiries would open a “can of worms,” or “a Pan­do­ra’s Box” because it would should light on U.S. fund­ing of the projects.
4.–Metabiota–partnered with Eco­Health Alliance–was net­worked with In-Q-Tel (the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty’s ven­ture cap­i­tal arm) and Munich Re to pro­vide pan­dem­ic insur­ance. Their 2018 busi­ness mod­el direct­ly fore­shad­owed the pan­dem­ic. “ . . . . Just two years ear­li­er, the com­pa­ny had run a large set of sce­nar­ios fore­cast­ing the con­se­quences of a nov­el coro­n­avirus spread­ing around the globe. . . . Mea­sures that decreased per­son-to-per­son con­tact, includ­ing social dis­tanc­ing, quar­an­tine, and school clo­sures, had the great­est cost per death pre­vent­ed, most like­ly because of the amount of eco­nom­ic dis­rup­tion caused by those mea­sures . . . .”  In 2018, as well, Eco­Health Alliance pro­posed a “nov­el coro­n­avirus” for syn­the­sis by DARPA. Although there is no evi­dence that DARPA syn­the­sized the virus, the U.S. did syn­the­size close­ly relat­ed virus­es. With the genome of that nov­el virus hav­ing been pub­lished, it may well have been syn­the­sized either by DARPA or some­one else, giv­en the con­tem­po­rary tech­nol­o­gy. Again, this, also was in 2018.
5.–Many aspects of the SARS COV‑2 virus, includ­ing its curi­ous FCS site and insti­tu­tion­al­ized obfus­ca­tion of aspects of the pan­dem­ic it caused sug­gest delib­er­ate cov­er-up. Why would the NIH redact 290 pages of a doc­u­ment request­ed by an FOIA suit!! Why were sequences of bat coro­n­avirus genomes removed from pub­lic view.

The pro­gram fea­tures a recap of some of the more impor­tant arti­cles in the long series on the coro­n­avirus, fol­lowed by dis­cus­sion of the Ener­gy Department’s con­clu­sion that the coro­n­avirus escaped from a Chi­nese lab­o­ra­to­ry.

Excel­lent analy­sis pre­sent­ed by the Moon of Alaba­ma blog notes that the Wall Street Jour­nal arti­cle break­ing the “news” about the Ener­gy Department’s con­clu­sion was co-authored by Michael R. Gor­don, who trum­pet­ed the “Lab Leak” meme in the spring of 2021.

In a pre­vi­ous jour­nal­is­tic incar­na­tion, Gor­don helped gen­er­ate enthu­si­asm for the inva­sion of Iraq by par­rot­ing the dis­in­for­ma­tion about Sad­dam Hus­sein hav­ing WMD’s.

Sur­pris­ing to Moon of Alaba­ma but not to us is Edward Snowden’s endorse­ment of the Lab Leak Hypoth­e­sis.

Far from being the “hero” Snow­den has made out to be, Snow­den is an extreme right-winger, whose work on cyber-secu­ri­ty appears to be the work of a con­scious dou­ble agent. (We have cov­ered Snowden’s escapades in numer­ous pro­grams over the years, par­tic­u­lar­ly FTR#’s 1078–1081.)

For the con­ve­nience of the lis­ten­er, we recap a 2001 arti­cle dis­cussing the all-encom­pass­ing scope of U.S. elec­tron­ic snooping—an arti­cle that reveals the depth of Snowden’s duplic­i­ty.

In addi­tion to touch­ing on a sto­ry of a recent­ly-released book about the Coro­n­avirus being syn­the­sized as part of a U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram, the pro­gram recaps the Biden administration’s cre­ation of a “Med­ical DARPA.”

Fol­low­ing dis­cus­sion of Moderna’s delib­er­ate with­hold­ing of data from reg­u­la­tors about its new biva­lent mRNA vac­cine, we note a study that indi­cates that new, dead­ly vari­ants of Covid that could over­whelm the health­care sys­tem are a dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty.

Of great sig­nif­i­cance is analy­sis of a diplo­mat­ic break­through engi­neered by Chi­na. Bro­ker­ing a rap­proche­ment between Iran and Sau­di Ara­bia in the Mid­dle East, Chi­na has helped to re-set the polit­i­cal land­scape of the Mid­dle East.

As not­ed by M.K. Bhadraku­mar, the realign­ment may sig­nal a demise of the dol­lar as the glob­al reserve cur­ren­cy of choice. IF such a devel­op­ment ensues, it will prove dev­as­tat­ing to America’s impe­r­i­al sta­tus, cur­tail­ing the mil­i­tary indus­tri­al com­plex in par­tic­u­lar.

Mr. Emory express­es his great fear that this will not be allowed to develop—the above-men­tioned “Can­cer Moon­shot” and lethal, syn­the­sized micro-organ­isms and pan­demics will very like­ly be the Amer­i­can answer to the long-term eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions of the Chi­nese diplo­mat­ic coup.


FTR#1221 War Games, Part 3 (Rittenhouse Nation)

In these pro­grams, we con­tin­ue our dis­cus­sion of Nick Turse’s 2008 tome The Com­plex: How the Mil­i­tary Invades Our Every­day Lives.

Writ­ing in his nov­el Trop­ic of Can­cer, Hen­ry Miller wrote: ” . . . . Amer­i­ca is the very incar­na­tion of Doom. And she will lead the rest of the world into the Bot­tom­less Pit. . . .”  (The quote was includ­ed in his For­give My Grief  books by pio­neer­ing JFK assas­si­na­tion researcher Penn Jones.

Epit­o­miz­ing Miller’s obser­va­tion is what Mr. Emory terms the res­o­nant syn­the­sis of video games and mil­i­tary train­ing and train­ing tech­nol­o­gy:

“. . . . Cer­tain­ly, the day is not far off when most poten­tial U.S. troops will have grown up play­ing com­mer­cial video games that were cre­at­ed by the mil­i­tary as train­ing sim­u­la­tors; will be recruit­ed, at least in part, through video games; will be test­ed, post-enlist­ment, on advanced video game sys­tems; will be trained using sim­u­la­tors, which will lat­er be turned into video games, or on recon­fig­ured ver­sions of the very same games used to recruit them or that they played kids; will be taught to pilot vehi­cles using devices resem­bling com­mer­cial video game con­trollers; and then, after a long day of real-life war-gam­ing head back to their quar­ters to kick back and play the lat­est PlaySta­tion or Xbox games cre­at­ed with or spon­sored by their own, or anoth­er, branch of the armed forces.

More and more toys are now poised to become clan­des­tine com­bat teach­ing tools, and more and more sim­u­la­tors are des­tined to be tomorrow’s toys. And what of America’s chil­dren and young adults in all this? How will they be affect­ed by the daz­zling set of mil­i­tary train­ing devices now land­ing in their liv­ing rooms and on their PCs, pro­duced by video game giants under the  watch­ful eyes of the Pen­ta­gon? After all, what these games offer is less a mat­ter of sim­ple mil­i­tary indoc­tri­na­tion and more like a near immer­sion in a vir­tu­al world of war, where armed con­flict is not the last, but the first—and indeed the only—resort. . . .”

A con­crete exam­ple of that “res­o­nant syn­the­sis” is the bat­tle of 73 East­ing:

“. . . . Just days into the ground com­bat por­tion of the Gulf War, the Bat­tle of 73 East­ing pit­ted Amer­i­can armored vehi­cles against a much larg­er Iraqi tank force. The U.S. troops, who had trained using the SIMNET sys­tem, rout­ed the Iraqis. With­in days, the mil­i­tary began turn­ing the actu­al bat­tle into a dig­i­tal sim­u­la­tion for use with SIMNET. Inten­sive debrief­ing ses­sions with 150 vet­er­ans of the bat­tle were under­tak­en. Then DARPA per­son­nel went out onto the bat­tle­field with the vet­er­ans, sur­vey­ing tank tracks and burned-out Iraqi vehi­cles, as the vet­er­ans walked them through each indi­vid­ual seg­ment of the clash. Addi­tion­al­ly, radio com­mu­ni­ca­tions, satel­lite pho­tos, and ‘black box­es’ from U.S. tanks were used to gath­er even more details. Nine months after the actu­al com­bat took place, a dig­i­tal recre­ation of the Bat­tle of 73 East­ing was pre­miered for high-rank­ing mil­i­tary per­son­nel. Here was the cul­mi­na­tion of Thorpe’s efforts to cre­ate a net­worked sys­tem that would allow troops to train for future wars using the new tech­nol­o­gy com­bined with accu­rate his­tor­i­cal data. . . .”

Plac­ing Hen­ry Miller’s quote into an iron­i­cal­ly-rel­e­vant con­text, a pop­u­lar video game “Doom” quick­ly was adapt­ed to Mar­tine Corps train­ing pur­pos­es:

“. . . . In late 1993, with the green glow of Gulf War vic­to­ry already fad­ing, id Soft­ware intro­duced the video game Doom. Gamers soon began mod­i­fy­ing share­ware copies of this ultra­vi­o­lent, ultra­pop­u­lar first per­son shoot­er, prompt­ing id to release edit­ing soft­ware the next year. The abil­i­ty to cus­tomize Doom caught the atten­tion of mem­bers of the Marine Corps Mod­el­ing and Sim­u­la­tion Man­age­ment Office who had been tasked by the corps’ Com­man­dant Charles Kru­lak with uti­liz­ing “‘com­put­er (PC)-based war games”‘to help the marines ‘devel­op deci­sion mak­ing skills, par­tic­u­lar­ly when live train­ing time and oppor­tu­ni­ties are lim­it­ed.’

“Act­ing on Krulak’s direc­tive, the marines’ mod­el­ing crew nixed Doom’s fan­ta­sy weapons and labyrinthine locale and, in three months’ time, devel­oped Marine Doom, a game that includ­ed only actu­al Marine Corps weapon­ry and real­is­tic envi­ron­ments. Kru­lak liked what he saw and, in 1997, approved the game. . . .”

Next, Turse dis­cuss­es Pen­ta­gon plans to oper­ate in urban slums in the Third World. Mr. Emory notes that many com­bat vet­er­ans of this coun­try’s long counter-insur­gency wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are join­ing the increas­ing­ly mil­i­ta­rized police forces in this coun­try.

Pen­ta­gon strat­e­gy as dis­cussed here by Turse may, even­tu­al­ly be real­ized, to an extent, in the U.S., par­tic­u­lar­ly in the event of an eco­nom­ic col­lapse.

More about Pen­ta­gon plans for urban war­fare in slums, osten­si­bly in the devel­op­ing world:

” . . . . As both the high-tech pro­grams and the pro­lif­er­at­ing train­ing facil­i­ties sug­gest, the for­eign slum city is slat­ed to become the bloody bat­tle­space of the future. . . . For exam­ple, the U.S. Navy/Marine Corps launched a pro­gram seek­ing to devel­op algo­rithms to pre­dict the crim­i­nal­i­ty of a giv­en build­ing or neigh­bor­hood. The project titled Find­ing Repet­i­tive Crime Sup­port­ing Struc­tures, defines cities as noth­ing more than a col­lec­tion of ‘urban clut­ter [that] affords con­sid­er­able con­ceal­ment for the actors that we must cap­ture.’ The ‘hos­tile behav­ior bad actors,’ as the pro­gram terms them, are defined not just as ‘ter­ror­ists,’ today’s favorite catch-all bogey­men, but as a panoply of night­mare arche­types: ‘insur­gents, ser­i­al killers, drug deal­ers, etc.’. . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Dis­cus­sion of Colonel Dave Gross­man­’s book On Killing against the back­ground of the res­o­nant syn­the­sis of video games and mil­i­tary train­ing; analy­sis of the use of gam­ing apps by Nazi ele­ments to cel­e­brate school shoot­ings and encour­age them; dis­cus­sion of school shoot­er Niko­las Cruz of Park­land high and his Nazi, white suprema­cist and Trumpian influ­ence; dis­cus­sion of alt-right use of web­sites cater­ing to peo­ple suf­fer­ing from depres­sion for recruit­ing pur­pos­es.


FTR#1219 and FTR#1220 War Games, Part 1 and War Games, Part 2

In these pro­grams, we con­tin­ue our dis­cus­sion of Nick Turse’s 2008 tome The Com­plex: How the Mil­i­tary Invades Our Every­day Lives.

In this pro­gram, we exam­ine how the mil­i­tary exerts dom­i­nant influ­ence over our enter­tain­ment activ­i­ties and how that, in turn, both affects and bol­sters the Pen­ta­gon.

We begin by “going to the movies.”

The syn­the­sis of Hol­ly­wood and “The Com­plex” is sum­ma­rized by Nick Turse in the pas­sage below. It should be not­ed that the meld­ing of Hol­ly­wood and the mil­i­tary is a foun­da­tion of the deriv­a­tive syn­the­sis of the mil­i­tary and the video-gam­ing industry–the focus of the bulk of these pro­grams.

“. . . . As David Robb, the author of Oper­a­tion Hol­ly­wood: How the Pen­ta­gon Shapes and Cen­sors the Movies, observed: ‘Hol­ly­wood and the Pen­ta­gon have a col­lab­o­ra­tion that works well for both sides. Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­ers get what they want—access to bil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of mil­i­tary hard­ware and equipment—tanks, jet fight­ers, nuclear sub­marines and air­craft carriers—and the mil­i­tary gets what it wants—films that por­tray the mil­i­tary in a pos­i­tive light; films that help the ser­vices in their recruit­ing efforts.’. . .”

Indeed, the very gen­e­sis of video games in deriv­a­tive of the defense indus­try: ” . . . . In 1951, Ralph Baer, an engi­neer work­ing for defense con­trac­tor Loral Elec­tron­ics (today part of Lock­heed Mar­tin) on ‘com­put­er com­po­nents for Navy RADAR sys­tems,’ dreamed up the idea of home video games, which he termed ‘inter­ac­tive TV-based enter­tain­ment.’. . . .”

The Hollywood/Pentagon/gaming indus­try syn­the­sis is epit­o­mized by the Insti­tute of Cre­ative Tech­nolo­gies:

” . . . . The answer lies in Mari­na Del Rey, Cal­i­for­nia, at the Insti­tute for Cre­ative Tech­nolo­gies (ICT), a cen­ter with­in the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia (USC) sys­tem. There, in 1999, the military’s grow­ing obses­sion with video games moved to a new lev­el when Sec­re­tary of the Army Louis Caldera signed a five-year, $45-mil­lion con­tract with USC to cre­ate ICT, says the center’s Web site, ‘to build a part­ner­ship among the enter­tain­ment indus­try, army and acad­e­mia with the goal of cre­at­ing syn­thet­ic expe­ri­ences so com­pelling that par­tic­i­pants react as if they are real.’. . .”

The video game/Pentagon rela­tion­ship has evolved into a fusion of the two: “. . . . The rest fol­lowed, lead­ing to the cur­rent con­tin­u­ous mil­i­tary gaming/simulation loop where com­mer­cial video games are adopt­ed as mil­i­tary train­ing aids and mil­i­tary sim­u­la­tors are reengi­neered into civil­ian gam­ing mon­ey mak­ers in all sorts of strange and con­fus­ing ways. . . .”

Author Turse looked ahead (in 2008) and fore­saw a future that, to a dis­turb­ing extent, has become real­i­ty: ” . . . . Cer­tain­ly, the day is not far off when most poten­tial U.S. troops will have grown up play­ing com­mer­cial video games that were cre­at­ed by the mil­i­tary as train­ing sim­u­la­tors; will be recruit­ed, at least in part, through video games; will be test­ed, post-enlist­ment, on advanced video game sys­tems; will be trained using sim­u­la­tors, which will lat­er be turned into video games, or on recon­fig­ured ver­sions of the very same games used to recruit them or that they played kids; will be taught to pilot vehi­cles using devices resem­bling com­mer­cial video game con­trollers; and then, after a long day of real-life war-gam­ing head back to their quar­ters to kick back and play the lat­est PlaySta­tion or Xbox games cre­at­ed with or spon­sored by their own, or anoth­er, branch of the armed forces. . . .”


FTR#1191 The Oswald Institute of Virology, Part 10: “A Politically Useful Tool”

The pro­gram begins with an excerpt that comes from the con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant Whit­ney Webb arti­cle he has used on many occa­sions.

The Project For A New Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry’s Rebuild­ing Amer­i­ca’s Defens­es argues that bio­log­i­cal warfare–particularly when twined with genet­ic engineering–can become a “polit­i­cal­ly use­ful tool.”

Indeed, as we have said so many times, if one is going to detach the sec­ond-largest econ­o­my from the world and alien­ate that coun­try from oth­ers, the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic is, indeed, “a polit­i­cal­ly use­ful tool” for so doing.

(In FTR#1190, we exam­ined the PNAC agen­da, its cod­i­fi­ca­tion in nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy in a doc­u­ment large­ly craft­ed by Philip Zelikow. Zelikow head­ed the 9/11 Com­mis­sion and was cen­tral­ly involved in writ­ing its flawed report, the sys­tem­at­ic short­com­ings of which could be said to char­ac­ter­ize the com­mis­sion as “The Omis­sion Com­mis­sion.) 

Zelikow is now head­ing a com­mis­sion to exam­ine the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, includ­ing the so-called “Lab-Leak Hypoth­e­sis.”

The pro­gram ref­er­ences this excerpt, des­ig­nat­ing Covid-19 as a “polit­i­cal­ly use­ful tool.”

As seen below, there are indi­ca­tions that the DARPA pro­gram was, indeed, look­ing at the exploita­tion of genet­ics in the appli­ca­tion of bio­log­i­cal war­fare.

Next, we high­light an excerpt from an arti­cle that is fea­tured in FTR#‘s 686 and 1115. ” . . . . The pro­duc­tion of vac­cine against a stock­piled BW weapon must be con­sid­ered an offen­sive BW project Accord­ing to MIT sci­en­tists Harlee Strauss and Jonathan King, ‘These steps—the gen­er­a­tion of a poten­tial BW agent, devel­op­ment of a vac­cine against it, test­ing of the effi­ca­cy of the vaccine—are all com­po­nents that would be asso­ci­at­ed with an offen­sive BW program.’27 Clear­ly, with­out an anti­dote or vac­cine to pro­tect attack­ing troops, the util­i­ty of a stock­piled BW agent would be seri­ous­ly lim­it­ed. . . .”

We then review mate­r­i­al from FTR#1166, among oth­er pro­grams, look­ing at the devel­op­ment of Mod­er­na’s vac­cine, the drug remde­sivir and mil­i­tary dom­i­na­tion of the Oper­a­tion Warp Speed Covid vac­cine pro­gram.

They key con­sid­er­a­tion is: do these devel­op­ments indi­cate the dynam­ic Strauss and King cite above?

At a min­i­mum, they are no more than the prover­bial six degrees of sep­a­ra­tion from being part of an offen­sive bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram.

In pre­vi­ous posts and pro­grams, we have not­ed that Mod­er­na’s vac­cine work has been financed by DARPA. We have also not­ed that the over­all head of Oper­a­tion Warp Speed is Mon­cef Slaoui, for­mer­ly in charge of prod­uct devel­op­ment for Mod­er­na!

Of great sig­nif­i­cance is the cen­tral role of the mil­i­tary in the devel­op­ment of treat­ment for Covid-19:

1.–The pro­gram notes that: ” . . . . Remde­sivir pre­dates this pan­dem­ic. It was first con­sid­ered as a poten­tial treat­ment for Ebo­la, and was devel­oped through a long­stand­ing part­ner­ship between the U.S. Army and the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion. . . .”
2.–Jonathan King, who has chaired the micro­bial phys­i­ol­o­gy study sec­tion for the NIH has sound­ed the alarm about “vac­cine research” mask­ing offen­sive bio­log­i­cal war­fare research: “. . . . King, who has chaired the micro­bial phys­i­ol­o­gy study sec­tion for the NIH, believes that with­out inten­sive inde­pen­dent scruti­ny, the Pen­ta­gon is free to obscure its true goals. ‘The Defense Depart­ment appears to be pur­su­ing many nar­row, applied goals that are by nature offen­sive, such as the genet­ic ‘improve­ment’ of BW agents,’ King says. ‘But to achieve polit­i­cal accept­abil­i­ty, they mask these inten­tions under forms of research, such as vac­cine devel­op­ment, which sound defen­sive. . . .”
3.–Moderna’s vac­cine devel­op­ment was over­seen by an unnamed Pen­ta­gon offi­cial: ” . . . . Moderna’s team was head­ed by a Defense Depart­ment offi­cial whom com­pa­ny exec­u­tives described only as ‘the major,’ say­ing they don’t know if his name is sup­posed to be a secret. . . . .”
4.–The per­va­sive role of the mil­i­tary in Oper­a­tion Warp Speed (the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s vac­cine devel­op­ment pro­gram) has gen­er­at­ed alarm in civil­ian par­tic­i­pants:”. . . . Scores of Defense Depart­ment employ­ees are laced through the gov­ern­ment offices involved in the effort, mak­ing up a large por­tion of the fed­er­al per­son­nel devot­ed to the effort.  Those num­bers have led some cur­rent and for­mer offi­cials at the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion to pri­vate­ly grum­ble that the military’s role in Oper­a­tion Warp Speed was too large for a task that is, at its core, a pub­lic health cam­paign. . . .”
5.–General Gus­tave Perna–one of the prin­ci­pals in Oper­a­tion Warp Speed–has cho­sen a retired Lieu­tenant Gen­er­al to over­see much of the pro­gram: ” . . . . ‘Frankly, it has been breath­tak­ing to watch,’ said Paul Ostrows­ki, the direc­tor of sup­ply, pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion for Oper­a­tion Warp Speed. He is a retired Army lieu­tenant gen­er­al who was select­ed to man­age logis­tics for the pro­gram by Gen. Gus­tave F. Per­na, the chief oper­at­ing offi­cer for Oper­a­tion Warp Speed. . . .”
6.–The mil­i­tary will be able to trace the des­ti­na­tion and admin­is­tra­tion of each dose: ” . . . . Mil­i­tary offi­cials also came up with the clever idea — if it works — to coor­di­nate the deliv­ery of vac­cines to drug­stores, med­ical cen­ters and oth­er immu­niza­tion sites by send­ing kits full of nee­dles, syringes and alco­hol wipes. Vac­cine mak­ers will be alert­ed when the kits arrive at an immu­niza­tion site so they know to ship dos­es. Once the first dose is giv­en, the man­u­fac­tur­er will be noti­fied so it can send the sec­ond dose with a patient’s name attached sev­er­al weeks lat­er. The mil­i­tary will also mon­i­tor vac­cine dis­tri­b­u­tion through an oper­a­tions cen­ter. ‘They will know where every vac­cine dose is,’ Mr. [Paul] Man­go said on a call with reporters. . . .”

Cen­tral to the inquiry about a lab­o­ra­to­ry gen­e­sis for the virus is Ralph Bar­ic. In the con­text of some of his actions in con­junc­tion with the devel­op­ment of vac­cines and pro­phy­lac­tic mea­sures in con­nec­tion with bio­log­i­cal war­fare, we note that:

1.–Baric’s mod­i­fi­ca­tion of a horse­shoe bat virus to make it more infec­tious (in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Shi Zhengli and in an Eco­Health Alliance affil­i­at­ed project) took place in North Car­oli­na, not Wuhan. “. . . . Crit­ics have jumped on this paper as evi­dence that Shi was con­duct­ing “gain of func­tion” exper­i­ments that could have cre­at­ed a super­bug, but Shi denies it. The research cit­ed in the paper was con­duct­ed in North Car­oli­na. . . .”
2.–Baric has been using relat­ed tech­niques to text remde­sivir (in 2017) and the Mod­er­na vac­cine. This places him in a milieu inex­tri­ca­bly linked to the mil­i­tary and pre-dat­ing the pan­dem­ic. ” . . . . Using a sim­i­lar tech­nique, in 2017, Baric’s lab showed that remde­sivir — cur­rent­ly the only licensed drug for treat­ing covid — could be use­ful in fight­ing coro­n­avirus infec­tions. Bar­ic also helped test the Mod­er­na covid vac­cine and a lead­ing new drug can­di­date against covid. . . .”

The flim­sy evi­den­tiary foun­da­tion of the Trump/Biden “Oswald Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy” did it charge is evi­denced by a new alle­ga­tion com­ing from David Ash­er, senior fel­low at the right-wing Hud­son Insti­tute and the for­mer State Depart­ment advis­er who co-authored a fact sheet last Jan­u­ary on activ­i­ty inside the lab as described in Kather­ine Eban’s “Van­i­ty Fair” piece.

Note that:

1.–Asher report­ed­ly told NBC News that he is “con­fi­dent” that the Chi­nese mil­i­tary was fund­ing a “secret pro­gram” that involved Shi Zhengli’s coro­n­avirus research at the WIV.
2.–Shi report­ed­ly worked with two mil­i­tary sci­en­tists at the lab. (Not sur­pris­ing giv­en that the vast bulk of BW research is inher­ent­ly “dual-use.”
3.–Asher claims he was told this by sev­er­al for­eign researchers who worked at the WIV who saw some per­son­nel there in mil­i­tary garb.
4.–IF true, the [alleged] mem­bers of this secret Chi­nese mil­i­tary biowar­fare research team appar­ent­ly didn’t think it was impor­tant to not wear mil­i­tary cloth­ing dur­ing their secret research at a research facil­i­ty intend­ed for civil­ian use only.
5.–We aren’t told the iden­ti­ty of these for­eign researchers who alleged­ly saw this.
6.–We aren’t told if Ash­er meant “for­eign researchers”–non-Chinese researchers work­ing at the WIV (so for­eign to Chi­na) or Chi­nese researchers work­ing at the WIV (so for­eign to Ash­er). 
7.–Shi’s research could be char­ac­ter­ized as fund­ed by the US mil­i­tary through the Eco­Health Alliance col­lab­o­ra­tion. 
8.–Keep in mind that this remark­able claim is based on anony­mous sources that may not exist but are are claimed by Ash­er to exist. 

Ash­er’s anony­mous­ly-sourced alle­ga­tions con­trast with infor­ma­tion from a Bloomberg News arti­cle about Danielle Ander­son, a bat-borne virus expert who worked at the WIV as late as Novem­ber 2019

Note that:

1.–Anderson would have been at WIV dur­ing the peri­od when an out­break from the WIV would pre­sum­ably have tak­en place under a lab-leak sce­nario.
2.–Anderson is described as the only for­eign researcher work­ing at the WIV.
3.–If Ander­son was the lone for­eign researcher at the WIV, who are Ash­er’s “sev­er­al anony­mous for­eign WIV researchers?”

A chill­ing arti­cle may fore­cast the poten­tial deploy­ment of even dead­lier pan­demics, as oper­a­tional dis­guise for bio­log­i­cal war­fare and geno­cide.

Note that the sub-head­ing refer­ring to the lab-leak hypoth­e­sis is fol­lowed by no men­tion of the lab-leak hypoth­e­sis, per se.

Is this a between-the-lines ref­er­ence to impend­ing bio­log­i­cal war­fare devel­op­ment and the deploy­ment of anoth­er pan­dem­ic?

Note that the Army sci­en­tist quot­ed in the con­clu­sion offers an obser­va­tion that is very close to a Don­ald Rums­feld quote reit­er­at­ed by Peter Daszak in an arti­cle we ref­er­ence in FTR#1170.

1.–From the Defense One arti­cle: ” . . . . ‘We don’t want to just treat what’s in front of us now,’  [Dr. Dim­i­tra] Stratis-Cul­lum said. ‘I think we real­ly need to be resilient. From an Army per­spec­tive. We need to be agile, we need to adapt to the threat that we don’t know that’s com­ing.’ . . .”
2.–From the arti­cle from Inde­pen­dent Sci­ence News: ” . . . . ‘There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns — there are things we don’t know we don’t know.’ (This Rums­feld quote is in fact from a news con­fer­ence) . . . . In the sub­se­quent online dis­cus­sion, Daszak empha­sized the par­al­lels between his own cru­sade and Rumsfeld’s, since, accord­ing to Daszak, the ‘poten­tial for unknown attacks’ is ‘the same for virus­es’. . . .”

We con­clude with anoth­er “look back look­ing for­ward.”

In FTR#456, we not­ed the eerie fore­shad­ow­ing the the 9/11 attacks by Turn­er Diaries author William Luther Pierce. Key aspects of that book, in turn, fore­shad­ow aspects of the 9/11 attacks.

In 1998, the author of that tome,–William Luther Pierce–explicitly fore­shad­owed the 9/11 attacks which defined and cement­ed Dubya’s admin­is­tra­tion. “ . . . . In one chill­ing com­men­tary Pierce, (after not­ing that Bin Laden and the rest of the lost gen­er­a­tion of angry Moslem youth had it with their par­ents’ com­pro­mis­es and were hell bent on revenge against infi­del Amer­i­ca) issued this stark, prophet­ic warn­ing in a 1998 radio address titled, ‘Stay Out of Tall Build­ings.’ ‘New York­ers who work in tall office build­ings any­thing close to the size of the World Trade Cen­ter might con­sid­er wear­ing hard hats . . .’ Pierce warned.’ . . . The run­ning theme in Pierce’s com­men­taries is—to para­phrase his hero Hitler—that Osama Bin Laden’s warn­ing to Amer­i­ca is ‘I Am Com­ing.’ And so is bio-ter­ror­ism.’ . . .”

In that con­text, we note that Chi­na is dev­as­tat­ed by a WMD/Third World War in Turn­er Diaries.


FTR#1190 The Oswald Institute of Virology, Part 9: Covid-19 and The American Deep State, Part 3

Con­tin­u­ing analy­sis of the prop­a­ga­tion of the “Lab-Leak The­o­ry” of the ori­gin of Covid-19 in the con­text of what Mr. Emory calls “The Full-Court Press Against Chi­na,” this pro­gram high­lights how what the bril­liant Peter Dale Scott has termed “The Amer­i­can Deep State” is pro­ceed­ing with the insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion of the anti-Chi­na effort, blam­ing that coun­try for the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, in par­tic­u­lar.

After not­ing that the (pri­mar­i­ly Pen­ta­gon and USAID-fund­ed) Eco­Health Alliance cut-out has used Defense Depart­ment mon­ey to research organ­isms that can be used as bio­log­i­cal-war­fare weapons, we dis­cuss Steve Ban­non and Peter Thiel’s anti-Chi­nese chau­vin­ism with regard to the Sil­i­con Val­ley.

Even as lib­er­al com­men­ta­tors lament the spread of anti-Asian racism, the gen­e­sis of the phe­nom­e­non is not hard to fath­om.

Next, we review the insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion of the anti-Chi­na scare by Steve Ban­non, uti­liz­ing allies like the Falun Gong cult and Uighur jihadis, now main­stays of the Full-Court Press strat­e­gy.

Although Ban­non and com­pa­ny are now being dimin­ished as “crack­pots, xeno­phobes, extrem­ists” etc., the poli­cies they have ini­ti­at­ed are now being car­ried for­ward by the “respectable” Biden admin­is­tra­tion.

” . . . . Fear of Chi­na has spread across the gov­ern­ment, from the White House to Con­gress to fed­er­al agen­cies, where Beijing’s rise is unques­tion­ing­ly viewed as an eco­nom­ic and nation­al secu­ri­ty threat and the defin­ing chal­lenge of the 21st cen­tu­ry. . . .”

It is this con­ti­nu­ity, that illus­trates and embod­ies the func­tion­ing of the Deep State.

Return­ing to a very impor­tant (albeit heav­i­ly “spun”), mod­i­fied lim­it­ed hang­out arti­cle from Van­i­ty Fair arti­cle, we fur­ther devel­op the con­ti­nu­ity between the “extrem­ist” Trump admin­is­tra­tion and the “respectable” Biden admin­is­tra­tion.

Devel­oped by Trump nation­al secu­ri­ty aide Math­ew Pot­tinger and Mike Pompeo’s State Depart­ment, the Lab-Leak hypoth­e­sis was eclipsed by offi­cials wor­ried about expo­sure of the very Pen­ta­gon, USAID fund­ing of bat-borne coro­n­avirus research and gain-of-func­tion manip­u­la­tions at the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy and else­where in Chi­na.

As it gains momen­tum under the “respectable” Biden admin­is­tra­tion, the sup­pres­sion of the Lab-Leak hypoth­e­sis is being spun as an attempt to avoid using that hypoth­e­sis as an extrem­ist, chau­vin­ist polit­i­cal cud­gel. (This is iron­ic, because that is pre­cise­ly what it is intend­ed to be!)

Key aspects of the Van­i­ty Fair arti­cle:

1.–Pompeo State Depart­ment offi­cials pur­su­ing the lab-leak hypoth­e­sis were told to cov­er it up lest it shed light on U.S. gov­ern­ment fund­ing of research at the “Oswald Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy!”: ” . . . . In one State Depart­ment meet­ing, offi­cials seek­ing to demand trans­paren­cy from the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment say they were explic­it­ly told by col­leagues not to explore the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virology’s gain-of-func­tion research, because it would bring unwel­come atten­tion to U.S. gov­ern­ment fund­ing of it. . . . .In an inter­nal memo obtained by ‘Van­i­ty Fair’, Thomas DiNan­no, for­mer act­ing assis­tant sec­re­tary of the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Con­trol, Ver­i­fi­ca­tion, and Com­pli­ance, wrote that. . .  staff from two bureaus . . . ‘warned’ lead­ers with­in his bureau ‘not to pur­sue an inves­ti­ga­tion into the ori­gin of COVID-19’ because it would ‘open a can of worms’ if it con­tin­ued.’ . . . . As the group probed the lab-leak sce­nario, among oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties, its mem­bers were repeat­ed­ly advised not to open a ‘Pandora’s box,’ said four for­mer State Depart­ment offi­cials inter­viewed by ‘Van­i­ty Fair’. . . .”
2.–The Van­i­ty Fair arti­cle paints Trump, Ban­non and com­pa­ny as loonies, where­as they were fun­da­men­tal to the begin­ning of the full-court press against Chi­na: “. . . . At times, it seemed the only oth­er peo­ple enter­tain­ing the lab-leak the­o­ry were crack­pots or polit­i­cal hacks hop­ing to wield COVID-19 as a cud­gel against Chi­na. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s for­mer polit­i­cal advis­er Steve Ban­non, for instance, joined forces with an exiled Chi­nese bil­lion­aire named Guo Wen­gui to fuel claims that Chi­na had devel­oped the dis­ease as a bioweapon and pur­pose­ful­ly unleashed it on the world. . . .”
3.–Matthew Pot­tinger, a Chi­na hawk in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, head­ed up a team to inves­ti­gate the Wuhan lab leak hypoth­e­sis. Note that the gain-of-func­tion milieu in the U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment was a retard­ing fac­tor in the inquiry: ” . . . . By then, Matthew Pot­tinger had approved a COVID-19 ori­gins team, run by the NSC direc­torate that over­saw issues relat­ed to weapons of mass destruc­tion. A long­time Asia expert and for­mer jour­nal­ist, Pot­tinger pur­pose­ful­ly kept the team small . . . . In addi­tion, many lead­ing experts had either received or approved fund­ing for gain-of-func­tion research. Their ‘con­flict­ed’ sta­tus, said Pot­tinger, ‘played a pro­found role in mud­dy­ing the waters and con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing the shot at hav­ing an impar­tial inquiry.’  . . . .”
4.–Note that Lawrence Liv­er­more sci­en­tists were involved with the gen­e­sis of the “Chi­na did it” hypoth­e­sis, after alleged­ly being alert­ed by a for­eign source to look into their own files. ” . . . . An intel­li­gence ana­lyst work­ing with David Ash­er sift­ed through clas­si­fied chan­nels and turned up a report that out­lined why the lab-leak hypoth­e­sis was plau­si­ble. It had been writ­ten in May by researchers at the Lawrence Liv­er­more Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry, which per­forms nation­al secu­ri­ty research for the Depart­ment of Ener­gy. But it appeared to have been buried with­in the clas­si­fied col­lec­tions sys­tem. . . .”
5.–Note, also, that Chris Ford, a Chi­na hawk, was work­ing to sup­press the Wuhan lab leak hypoth­e­sis: ” . . . . Their frus­tra­tion crest­ed in Decem­ber, when they final­ly briefed Chris Ford, act­ing under­sec­re­tary for Arms Con­trol and Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty. He seemed so hos­tile to their probe that they viewed him as a blink­ered func­tionary bent on white­wash­ing China’s malfea­sance. But Ford, who had years of expe­ri­ence in nuclear non­pro­lif­er­a­tion, had long been a Chi­na hawk. . . .”
6.–Ford spins his obfus­ca­tion of the “Oswald Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy” link to the U.S. as not want­i­ng to rein­force right-wing crack­pots with­in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion: ” . . . . Ford told ‘Van­i­ty Fair’ that he saw his job as pro­tect­ing the integri­ty of any inquiry into COVID-19’s ori­gins that fell under his purview. Going with ‘stuff that makes us look like the crack­pot brigade’ would back­fire, he believed. There was anoth­er rea­son for his hos­til­i­ty. He’d already heard about the inves­ti­ga­tion from inter­a­gency col­leagues, rather than from the team itself, and the secre­cy left him with a ‘spidey sense’ that the process was a form of ‘creepy free­lanc­ing.’ He won­dered: Had some­one launched an unac­count­able inves­ti­ga­tion with the goal of achiev­ing a desired result? . . . .”
7.–The “Chi­na did it/Wuhan lab leak” hypoth­e­sis sur­vived from the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and Mike Pom­peo’s State Depart­ment to the Biden admin­is­tra­tion: ” . . . .The state­ment with­stood ‘aggres­sive sus­pi­cion,’ as one for­mer State Depart­ment offi­cial said, and the Biden admin­is­tra­tion has not walked it back. ‘I was very pleased to see Pompeo’s state­ment come through,’ said Chris Ford, who per­son­al­ly signed off on a draft of the fact sheet before leav­ing the State Depart­ment. ‘I was so relieved that they were using real report­ing that had been vet­ted and cleared.’ . . . .”
8.–Avril Haines, whom we have cit­ed in this series as a key par­tic­i­pant in the Deep State shep­herd­ing of the “Lab-Leak Hypoth­e­sis,” looms large in the inquiry into the per­pet­u­a­tion of this pro­pa­gan­da meme: ” . . . . Inside the U.S. gov­ern­ment, mean­while, the lab-leak hypoth­e­sis had sur­vived the tran­si­tion from Trump to Biden. On April 15, Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence Avril Haines told the House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee that two ‘plau­si­ble the­o­ries’ were being weighed: a lab acci­dent or nat­ur­al emer­gence. . . .”

In what may be shap­ing up to be a dis­turb­ing reprise of Philip Zelikow’s role in the events sur­round­ing the 9/11 attacks and the result­ing inva­sion of Iraq, Zelikow is posi­tioned to pre­side over a com­mis­sion to “inves­ti­gate” the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, ” . . . . an exam­i­na­tion of the ori­gins of the virus—including the con­tentious ‘lab leak’ the­o­ry. . . .”

We note that:

1.–The finan­cial back­ers of the project include: ” . . . . Schmidt Futures, found­ed by Mr. Schmidt and his wife Wendy; Stand Togeth­er, which is backed by the lib­er­tar­i­an-lean­ing phil­an­thropist Charles Koch; the Skoll Foun­da­tion, found­ed by the eBay pio­neer Jeff Skoll; and the Rock­e­feller Foun­da­tion. . . .”
2.–Former CIA and State Depart­ment chief under Trump Mike Pom­peo is a pro­tege of the Koch broth­ers.
3.–Zelikow’s 9/11 Com­mis­sion presided over sig­nif­i­cant over­sights and omis­sions: ” . . . . There is now evi­dence, much of it sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly sup­pressed by the 9/11 Com­mis­sion, that before 9/11, CIA offi­cers Richard Blee and Tom Wilshire inside the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit along with FBI agents such as Dina Cor­si, were pro­tect­ing from inves­ti­ga­tion and arrest two of the even­tu­al alleged hijack­ers on 9/11, Khalid al-Mid­har and Nawaf al-Hazmi—much as the FBI had pro­tect­ed Ali Mohamed from arrest in 1993. . . .”
4.–PNAC (The Project for a New Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry) called for Rebuild­ing Amer­i­ca’s Defens­es: ” . . . . ‘The process of trans­for­ma­tion,’ it report­ed, “even if it brings rev­o­lu­tion­ary change, is like­ly to be a long one absent some cat­a­stroph­ic and cat­alyz­ing event—like a new Pearl Har­bor.’ This was only one instance of a wide­ly accept­ed tru­ism: that it would take some­thing like a Pearl Har­bor to get Amer­i­ca to accept an aggres­sive war.  So the ques­tion to be asked is whether Cheney, Rums­feld, or any oth­ers whose projects depend­ed on ‘a new Pearl Har­bor’ were par­tic­i­pants in help­ing to cre­ate one. . . .”
5.–Zelikow helped draft the 2002 doc­u­ment that con­cretized the PNAC strate­gic goals: ” . . . . In 2002, the PNAC goals of unchal­lenged mil­i­tary dom­i­nance, plus the right to launch pre­emp­tive strikes any­where, were embod­ied in the new Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Strat­e­gy of Sep­tem­ber 2002 (known as ‘NSS 2002’). (A key fig­ure in draft­ing this doc­u­ment was Philip Zelikow, who lat­er became the prin­ci­pal author of the 9/11 Com­mis­sion Report.) . . . .”
6.–PNAC’s paper fore­shad­owed what we feel under­lies the pan­dem­ic: ” . . . . In what is arguably the think tank’s most con­tro­ver­sial doc­u­ment, titled ‘Rebuild­ing America’s Defens­es,’ there are a few pas­sages that open­ly dis­cuss the util­i­ty of bioweapons, includ­ing the fol­low­ing sen­tences: ‘…com­bat like­ly will take place in new dimen­sions: in space, ‘cyber-space,’ and per­haps the world of microbes…advanced forms of bio­log­i­cal war­fare that can ‘tar­get’ spe­cif­ic geno­types may trans­form bio­log­i­cal war­fare from the realm of ter­ror to a polit­i­cal­ly use­ful tool.’ . . .”
7.–There are indi­ca­tions that the anthrax attacks that occurred in the same time peri­od as the 9/11 attacks may well have been a provo­ca­tion aimed at jus­ti­fy­ing the inva­sion of Iraq and spurring the devel­op­ment off bio­log­i­cal weapons, as advo­cat­ed in the PNAC doc­u­ment. Ft. Det­rick insid­er Steven Hat­fill was a sus­pect in the attack, although he appears to have worn “oper­a­tional Teflon.” “. . . . Steven Hat­fill was now look­ing to me like a sus­pect, or at least, as the F.B.I. would denote him eight months lat­er, ‘a per­son of inter­est.’ When I lined up Hat­fil­l’s known move­ments with the post­mark loca­tions of report­ed bio­threats, those hoax anthrax attacks appeared to trail him like a vapor cloud. But in Feb­ru­ary 2002, short­ly after I advanced his can­di­da­cy to my con­tact at F.B.I. head­quar­ters, I was told that Mr. Hat­fill had a good ali­bi. A month lat­er, when I pressed the issue, I was told, ‘Look, Don, maybe you’re spend­ing too much time on this.’ Good peo­ple in the Depart­ment of Defense, C.I.A., and State Depart­ment, not to men­tion Bill Patrick, had vouched for Hat­fill. . . . In Decem­ber 2001, Dr. Bar­bara Hatch Rosen­berg, a not­ed bioweapons expert, deliv­ered a paper con­tend­ing that the per­pe­tra­tor of the anthrax crimes was an Amer­i­can micro­bi­ol­o­gist whose train­ing and pos­ses­sion of Ames-strain pow­der point­ed to a gov­ern­ment insid­er with expe­ri­ence in a U.S. mil­i­tary lab. . . . Hat­fill at the time was build­ing a mobile germ lab out of an old truck chas­sis, and after S.A.I.C. fired him he con­tin­ued work on it using his own mon­ey. When the F.B.I. want­ed to con­fis­cate the mobile lab to test it for anthrax spores, the army resist­ed, mov­ing the trail­er to Fort Bragg, North Car­oli­na, where it was used to train Spe­cial Forces in prepa­ra­tion for the war on Iraq. The class­es were taught by Steve Hat­fill and Bill Patrick. . . . Mean­while, friends of Fort Det­rick were leak­ing to the press new pieces of dis­in­for­ma­tion indi­cat­ing that the mailed anthrax prob­a­bly came from Iraq. The leaks includ­ed false alle­ga­tions that the Daschle anthrax includ­ed addi­tives dis­tinc­tive to the Iraqi arms pro­gram and that it had been dried using an atom­iz­er spray dry­er sold by Den­mark to Iraq. . . .”
8.–Two key Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors were tar­get­ed by weapons-grade anthrax let­ters pri­or to chang­ing their oppo­si­tion to the Patri­ot Act: “. . . . We should not for­get that the Patri­ot Act was only passed after lethal weapons-grade anthrax let­ters were mailed to two cru­cial Demo­c­ra­t­ic Senators—Senators Daschle and Leahy—who had ini­tial­ly ques­tioned the bill. After the anthrax let­ters, how­ev­er, they with­drew their ini­tial oppo­si­tion. Someone—we still do not know who—must have planned those anthrax let­ters well in advance. We should not for­get, either, that some gov­ern­ment experts ini­tial­ly blamed those attacks on Iraq. . . .”
The “Lab Leak The­o­ry” has been pro­mul­gat­ed by Michael R. Gor­don, who was instru­men­tal in advanc­ing the Sad­dam Hus­sein WMD con­nec­tion which helped lay the pro­pa­gan­da foun­da­tion for the Iraq War.

Will the “Zelikow Pan­dem­ic Com­mis­sion’s” treat­ment of the Lab-Leak The­o­ry func­tion in such a way as to pave the way for U.S. war with Chi­na, by focus­ing blame for the pan­dem­ic on what Mr. Emory has called “The Oswald Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy”?


Encore for Philip Zelikow? (UPDATED ON 6/20/2021 and 6/21/2021)

In what may be shap­ing up to be a dis­turb­ing reprise of Philip Zelikow’s role in the events sur­round­ing the 9/11 attacks and the result­ing inva­sion of Iraq, Zelikow is posi­tioned to pre­side over a com­mis­sion to “inves­ti­gate” the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, ” . . . . an exam­i­na­tion of the ori­gins of the virus—including the con­tentious ‘lab leak’ the­o­ry. . . .” Back­ers of the project include the Rock­e­feller Foun­da­tion and a David Koch NGO (Ex-CIA chief and Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo is a Koch Broth­ers pro­tege.) Zelikow’s 9/11 Com­mis­sion presided over sig­nif­i­cant over­sights and omis­sions: ” . . . . There is now evi­dence, much of it sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly sup­pressed by the 9/11 Com­mis­sion, that before 9/11, CIA offi­cers Richard Blee and Tom Wilshire inside the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit along with FBI agents such as Dina Cor­si, were pro­tect­ing from inves­ti­ga­tion and arrest two of the even­tu­al alleged hijack­ers on 9/11, Khalid al-Mid­har and Nawaf al-Hazmi—much as the FBI had pro­tect­ed Ali Mohamed from arrest in 1993. . . .” PNAC (The Project for a New Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry) called for Rebuild­ing Amer­i­ca’s Defens­es: ” . . . . ‘The process of trans­for­ma­tion,’ it report­ed, ‘even if it brings rev­o­lu­tion­ary change, is like­ly to be a long one absent some cat­a­stroph­ic and cat­alyz­ing event—like a new Pearl Har­bor.’ Zelikow helped draft the 2002 doc­u­ment that con­cretized the PNAC strate­gic goals: ” . . . . In 2002, the PNAC goals of unchal­lenged mil­i­tary dom­i­nance, plus the right to launch pre­emp­tive strikes any­where, were embod­ied in the new Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Strat­e­gy of Sep­tem­ber 2002 (known as ‘NSS 2002’). (A key fig­ure in draft­ing this doc­u­ment was Philip Zelikow, who lat­er became the prin­ci­pal author of the 9/11 Com­mis­sion Report.) . . . .” ” . . . . In what is arguably the think tank’s most con­tro­ver­sial doc­u­ment, titled ‘Rebuild­ing America’s Defens­es,’ there are a few pas­sages that open­ly dis­cuss the util­i­ty of bioweapons, includ­ing the fol­low­ing sen­tences: ‘…com­bat like­ly will take place in new dimen­sions: in space, ‘cyber-space,’ and per­haps the world of microbes…advanced forms of bio­log­i­cal war­fare that can ‘tar­get’ spe­cif­ic geno­types may trans­form bio­log­i­cal war­fare from the realm of ter­ror to a polit­i­cal­ly use­ful tool.’ . . .” There are indi­ca­tions that the anthrax attacks that occurred in the same time peri­od as the 9/11 attacks may well have been a provo­ca­tion aimed at jus­ti­fy­ing the inva­sion of Iraq and spurring the devel­op­ment off bio­log­i­cal weapons, as advo­cat­ed in the PNAC doc­u­ment. Ft. Det­rick insid­er Steven Hat­fill was a sus­pect in the attack, although he appears to have worn “oper­a­tional Teflon.” “. . . . Steven Hat­fill was now look­ing to me like a sus­pect, or at least, as the F.B.I. would denote him eight months lat­er, ‘a per­son of inter­est.’ When I lined up Hat­fil­l’s known move­ments with the post­mark loca­tions of report­ed bio­threats, those hoax anthrax attacks appeared to trail him like a vapor cloud. But in Feb­ru­ary 2002, short­ly after I advanced his can­di­da­cy to my con­tact at F.B.I. head­quar­ters, I was told that Mr. Hat­fill had a good ali­bi. . . . In Decem­ber 2001, Dr. Bar­bara Hatch Rosen­berg, a not­ed bioweapons expert, deliv­ered a paper con­tend­ing that the per­pe­tra­tor of the anthrax crimes was an Amer­i­can micro­bi­ol­o­gist whose train­ing and pos­ses­sion of Ames-strain pow­der point­ed to a gov­ern­ment insid­er with expe­ri­ence in a U.S. mil­i­tary lab. . . .Hat­fill at the time was build­ing a mobile germ lab out of an old truck chas­sis, and after S.A.I.C. fired him he con­tin­ued work on it using his own mon­ey. When the F.B.I. want­ed to con­fis­cate the mobile lab to test it for anthrax spores, the army resist­ed, mov­ing the trail­er to Fort Bragg, North Car­oli­na, where it was used to train Spe­cial Forces in prepa­ra­tion for the war on Iraq. The class­es were taught by Steve Hat­fill and Bill Patrick. . . .” Two key Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors were tar­get­ed by weapons-grade anthrax let­ters pri­or to chang­ing their oppo­si­tion to the Patri­ot Act: “. . . . We should not for­get that the Patri­ot Act was only passed after lethal weapons-grade anthrax let­ters were mailed to two cru­cial Demo­c­ra­t­ic Senators—Senators Daschle and Leahy—who had ini­tial­ly ques­tioned the bill. After the anthrax let­ters, how­ev­er, they with­drew their ini­tial oppo­si­tion. Someone—we still do not know who—must have planned those anthrax let­ters well in advance. We should not for­get, either, that some gov­ern­ment experts ini­tial­ly blamed those attacks on Iraq. . . .” The “Lab Leak The­o­ry” has been pro­mul­gat­ed by Michael R. Gor­don, who was instru­men­tal in advanc­ing the Sad­dam Hus­sein WMD con­nec­tion which helped lay the pro­pa­gan­da foun­da­tion for the Iraq War. Will Zelikow’s inves­ti­ga­tion help prime the pump for war with Chi­na? Will this be done by point­ing blame for the pan­dem­ic on what Mr. Emory has called “The Oswald Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy”?


FTR#1189 The Oswald Institute of Virology, Part 8: Covid-19 and The American Deep State, Part 2 (The Cover-Up Obviates the Conspiracy)

This pro­gram con­tin­ues our series ana­lyz­ing the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy as hav­ing been set up to take the fall for the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, which–in our con­sid­ered opinion–is a covert oper­a­tion by the U.S. as part of the full-court press against Chi­na.

Under­scor­ing a point of analy­sis from pre­vi­ous broad­casts, we note that, of para­mount impor­tance in this con­text, is the fact that ANY virus can be made in a lab­o­ra­to­ry, from scratch as is being done for the SARS-CoV­‑2 (Covid-19) virus.

Ralph Baric–who did the gain-of-func­tion mod­i­fi­ca­tion on the Horse­shoe Bat coro­n­avirus, has been select­ed to engi­neer the Covid-19.

Note what might be termed a “viro­log­ic Juras­sic Park” man­i­fes­ta­tion: ” . . . . The tech­nol­o­gy imme­di­ate­ly cre­at­ed bio-weapon wor­ries. . . . Researchers at the US Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) drove that point home in 2005 when they res­ur­rect­ed the influen­za virus that killed tens of mil­lions in 1918–1919. . . .”

Cen­tral to the inquiry about a lab­o­ra­to­ry gen­e­sis for the virus is Ralph Bar­ic. We note that:

1.–Baric’s mod­i­fi­ca­tion of a horse­shoe bat virus to make it more infec­tious (in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Shi Zhengli and in an Eco­Health Alliance affil­i­at­ed project) took place in North Car­oli­na, not Wuhan. “. . . . Crit­ics have jumped on this paper as evi­dence that Shi was con­duct­ing “gain of func­tion” exper­i­ments that could have cre­at­ed a super­bug, but Shi denies it. The research cit­ed in the paper was con­duct­ed in North Car­oli­na.
2.–Baric has been using relat­ed tech­niques to text remde­sivir (in 2017) and the Mod­er­na vac­cine. This places him in a milieu inex­tri­ca­bly linked to the mil­i­tary and pre-dat­ing the pan­dem­ic. ” . . . . Using a sim­i­lar tech­nique, in 2017, Baric’s lab showed that remde­sivir — cur­rent­ly the only licensed drug for treat­ing covid — could be use­ful in fight­ing coro­n­avirus infec­tions. Bar­ic also helped test the Mod­er­na covid vac­cine and a lead­ing new drug can­di­date against covid. . . .”

Next, we present analy­sis of a very impor­tant, albeit slant­ed Van­i­ty Fair arti­cle:

1.–Pompeo State Depart­ment offi­cials pur­su­ing the lab-leak hypoth­e­sis were told to cov­er it up lest it shed light on U.S. gov­ern­ment fund­ing of research at the “Oswald Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy!”: ” . . . . In one State Depart­ment meet­ing, offi­cials seek­ing to demand trans­paren­cy from the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment say they were explic­it­ly told by col­leagues not to explore the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virology’s gain-of-func­tion research, because it would bring unwel­come atten­tion to U.S. gov­ern­ment fund­ing of it. . . . . In an inter­nal memo obtained by Van­i­ty Fair, Thomas DiNan­no, for­mer act­ing assis­tant sec­re­tary of the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Con­trol, Ver­i­fi­ca­tion, and Com­pli­ance, wrote that. . .  staff from two bureaus . . . “warned” lead­ers with­in his bureau ‘not to pur­sue an inves­ti­ga­tion into the ori­gin of COVID-19’ because it would ‘open a can of worms’ if it con­tin­ued.’ . . . . As the group probed the lab-leak sce­nario, among oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties, its mem­bers were repeat­ed­ly advised not to open a ‘Pandora’s box,’ said four for­mer State Depart­ment offi­cials inter­viewed by Van­i­ty Fair. . . .”
2.–Setting the ortho­doxy in ear­ly 2020 with a Lancet arti­cle rul­ing out a lab­o­ra­to­ry ori­gin for the virus was Peter Daszak, with approval from Ralph Bar­ic: ” . . . . It soon emerged, based on emails obtained by a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion group called U.S. Right to Know, that Daszak had not only signed but orga­nized the influ­en­tial Lancet state­ment, with the inten­tion of con­ceal­ing his role and cre­at­ing the impres­sion of sci­en­tif­ic una­nim­i­ty. . . .”
3.–” . . . . In late March, for­mer Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol direc­tor Robert Red­field received death threats from fel­low sci­en­tists after telling CNN that he believed COVID-19 had orig­i­nat­ed in a lab. . . . ”
4.–Matthew Pot­tinger, a Chi­na hawk in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, head­ed up a team to inves­ti­gate the Wuhan lab leak hypoth­e­sis. Note that the gain-of-func­tion milieu in the U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment was a retard­ing fac­tor in the inquiry: ” . . . . By then, Matthew Pot­tinger had approved a COVID-19 ori­gins team, run by the NSC direc­torate that over­saw issues relat­ed to weapons of mass destruc­tion. A long­time Asia expert and for­mer jour­nal­ist, Pot­tinger pur­pose­ful­ly kept the team small . . . . In addi­tion, many lead­ing experts had either received or approved fund­ing for gain-of-func­tion research. Their ‘con­flict­ed’ sta­tus, said Pot­tinger, ‘played a pro­found role in mud­dy­ing the waters and con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing the shot at hav­ing an impar­tial inquiry.’  . . . .” 
5.–Note that Lawrence Liv­er­more sci­en­tists were involved with the gen­e­sis of the “Chi­na did it” hypoth­e­sis, after alleged­ly being alert­ed by a for­eign source to look into their own files. ” . . . . An intel­li­gence ana­lyst work­ing with David Ash­er sift­ed through clas­si­fied chan­nels and turned up a report that out­lined why the lab-leak hypoth­e­sis was plau­si­ble. It had been writ­ten in May by researchers at the Lawrence Liv­er­more Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry, which per­forms nation­al secu­ri­ty research for the Depart­ment of Ener­gy. But it appeared to have been buried with­in the clas­si­fied col­lec­tions sys­tem. . . .”
6.–Note, also, that Chris Ford, a Chi­na hawk, was work­ing to sup­press the Wuhan lab leak hypoth­e­sis: ” . . . . Their frus­tra­tion crest­ed in Decem­ber, when they final­ly briefed Chris Ford, act­ing under­sec­re­tary for Arms Con­trol and Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty. He seemed so hos­tile to their probe that they viewed him as a blink­ered func­tionary bent on white­wash­ing China’s malfea­sance. But Ford, who had years of expe­ri­ence in nuclear non­pro­lif­er­a­tion, had long been a Chi­na hawk. . . .”
7.–The “Chi­na did it/Wuhan lab leak” hypoth­e­sis sur­vived from the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and Mike Pom­peo’s State Depart­ment to the Biden admin­is­tra­tion: ” . . . .. . . . The state­ment with­stood ‘aggres­sive sus­pi­cion,’ as one for­mer State Depart­ment offi­cial said, and the Biden admin­is­tra­tion has not walked it back. ‘I was very pleased to see Pompeo’s state­ment come through,’ said Chris Ford, who per­son­al­ly signed off on a draft of the fact sheet before leav­ing the State Depart­ment. ‘I was so relieved that they were using real report­ing that had been vet­ted and cleared.’ . . . .”
8.–Avril Haines, whom we have cit­ed in this series as a key par­tic­i­pant in the Deep State shep­herd­ing of the “Lab-Leak Hypoth­e­sis,” looms large in the inquiry into the per­pet­u­a­tion of this pro­pa­gan­da meme: ” . . . . Inside the U.S. gov­ern­ment, mean­while, the lab-leak hypoth­e­sis had sur­vived the tran­si­tion from Trump to Biden. On April 15, Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence Avril Haines told the House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee that two ‘plau­si­ble the­o­ries’ were being weighed: a lab acci­dent or nat­ur­al emer­gence. . . .”
9.–The arti­cle con­cludes with the inter­est­ing use of the term “cut-out” to describe the Eco­Health Alliance. The term gen­er­al­ly refers to an intel­li­gence-com­mu­ni­ty front orga­ni­za­tion. Is the author hint­ing at more? Did her edi­tor take infor­ma­tion out? ” . . . . The Unit­ed States deserves a healthy share of blame as well. Thanks to their unprece­dent­ed track record of men­dac­i­ty and race-bait­ing, Trump and his allies had less than zero cred­i­bil­i­ty. And the prac­tice of fund­ing risky research via cutouts like Eco­Health Alliance enmeshed lead­ing virol­o­gists in con­flicts of inter­est at the exact moment their exper­tise was most des­per­ate­ly need­ed. . . .”

We con­clude with two impor­tant points from an arti­cle used ear­li­er in the pro­gram.

1.–Shi Zhengli has not­ed that open­ing up the WIV’s records is unac­cept­able: ” . . . . That demand is ‘def­i­nite­ly not accept­able,’ respond­ed Shi Zhengli, who directs the Cen­ter for Emerg­ing Infec­tious Dis­eases at the Wuhan Insti­tute. ‘Who can pro­vide evi­dence that does not exist?’ she told MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review. Shi has said that thou­sands of attempts to hack its com­put­er sys­tems forced the insti­tute to close its data­base. . . .”
2.–The U.S. would not be accept­able to such a propo­si­tion, if the Chi­nese demand­ed access to Ft. Det­rick (part of which was shut down by the CDC in ear­ly August of 2019 on the eve of the pan­dem­ic). A com­menter also not­ed the Rocky Moun­tain lab in his analy­sis, which we not­ed was one of the areas where Willy Burgdor­fer appears to have worked on the devel­op­ment of Lyme Dis­ease.) ” . . . . If a dis­ease had emerged from the U.S. and the Chi­nese blamed the Pen­ta­gon and demand­ed access to the data, ‘what would we say?’ [Dr. Getrald] Keusch asked. ‘Would we throw out the red car­pet, ‘Come on over to Fort Det­rick and the Rocky Moun­tain Lab?’ We’d have done exact­ly what the Chi­nese did, which is say, ‘Screw you!’’ . . . .”


FTR#1188 The Oswald Institute of Virology, Part 7: Covid-19 and The American Deep State

This pro­gram con­tin­ues our series ana­lyz­ing the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy as hav­ing been set up to take the fall for the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, which–in our con­sid­ered opinion–is a covert oper­a­tion by the U.S. as part of the full-court press against Chi­na.

As the “Lab Leak Hypoth­e­sis” of the pan­demic’s ori­gins moves toward becom­ing a main­streamed pro­pa­gan­da theme, we note that:

1.–Anthony Fau­ci him­self set forth the “lab leak” sce­nario in his 2012 endorse­ment of a mora­to­ri­um on gain-of-func­tion manip­u­la­tions, set­ting the intel­lec­tu­al stage for the “gam­ing” of just such a sce­nario. In FTR#1187, we not­ed that Fau­ci’s NIH NIAID was among the insti­tu­tions that presided over Eco­Health Alliance’s fund­ing of exper­i­men­ta­tion on bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es at the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy. ” . . . . In 2012, Dr. Antho­ny Fau­ci, who leads NIH’s Nation­al Insti­tute of Aller­gy and Infec­tious Dis­eases, came out in sup­port of a mora­to­ri­um on such research, pos­ing a hypo­thet­i­cal sce­nario involv­ing a poor­ly trained sci­en­tist in a poor­ly reg­u­lat­ed lab: ‘In an unlike­ly but con­ceiv­able turn of events, what if that sci­en­tist becomes infect­ed with the virus, which leads to an out­break and ulti­mate­ly trig­gers a pan­dem­ic?’ Fau­ci wrote. . . .”
2.–USAID’s PREDICT project trained many of the sci­en­tists at the WIV.  From the stand­point of covert oper­a­tions, this would afford the oppor­tu­ni­ty to place one or more oper­a­tives inside that appar­ent­ly tar­get­ed insti­tu­tion: [USAID is a State Depart­ment sub­sidiary that is one of the largest fun­ders of  the Eco­Health Alliance and a fre­quent cov­er for CIA activ­i­ty.] ” . . . . . . . . Many of the sci­en­tists at the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy have been trained by the U.S. government’s PREDICT project. . . .”
3.–The jour­nal­is­tic gen­er­a­tion of the lab-leak the­o­ry comes, in part, from Michael R. Gor­don, who has a his­to­ry of gen­er­at­ing dubi­ous jour­nal­ism to sup­port the plans of the nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment. Gor­don: ” . . . . was the same man who, along with Judith Miller, wrote the Sep­tem­ber 8, 2002 arti­cle false­ly assert­ing that Iraqi Pres­i­dent Sad­dam Hus­sein was seek­ing to build a nuclear weapon. . . The claim was a lie, fun­neled to the Times by the office of US Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney. . . On May 26, 2004, the Times pub­lished a let­ter from its edi­tors enti­tled ‘FROM THE EDITORS; The Times and Iraq,’ ‘acknowl­edg­ing that the Times repeat­ed­ly ‘fell for mis­in­for­ma­tion.’ . . . The let­ter notes: ‘But we have found a num­ber of instances of cov­er­age that was not as rig­or­ous as it should have been... On Sept. 8, 2002, the lead arti­cle of the paper was head­lined ‘U.S. Says Hus­sein Inten­si­fied Quest for A‑Bomb Parts.’ That report con­cerned the alu­minum tubes that the admin­is­tra­tion adver­tised insis­tent­ly as com­po­nents for the man­u­fac­ture of nuclear weapons fuel. … it should have been pre­sent­ed more cau­tious­ly . . . .”
4.–Gordon: ” . . . . On April 20, 2014 . . . co-authored an arti­cle enti­tled ‘Pho­tos Link Masked Men in East Ukraine to Rus­sia,’ which claimed to iden­ti­fy masked men oper­at­ing in east­ern Ukraine in oppo­si­tion to the US-backed coup regime as active-duty Russ­ian sol­diers. . . .Four days lat­er, the Times Pub­lic Edi­tor was again com­pelled to retract the claims in Gordon’s report­ing, call­ing them ‘dis­cred­it­ed.’ . . .”
5.–New York Times right-wing colum­nist Ross Douthat has high­light­ed the pro­pa­gan­da sig­nif­i­cance of pin­ning the “Lab Leak The­o­ry” on Chi­na: ” . . . . to the extent that the Unit­ed States is engaged in a con­flict of pro­pa­gan­da and soft pow­er with the regime in Bei­jing, there’s a pret­ty big dif­fer­ence between a world where the Chi­nese regime can say, We weren’t respon­si­ble for Covid but we crushed the virus and the West did not, because we’re strong and they’re deca­dent, and a world where this was basi­cal­ly their Cher­nobyl except their incom­pe­tence and cov­er-up sick­ened not just one of their own cities but also the entire globe. . . .”
6.–Pompeo State Depart­ment offi­cials pur­su­ing the lab-leak hypoth­e­sis were told to cov­er it up lest it shed light on U.S. gov­ern­ment fund­ing of research at the “Oswald Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy!”: ” . . . . In one State Depart­ment meet­ing, offi­cials seek­ing to demand trans­paren­cy from the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment say they were explic­it­ly told by col­leagues not to explore the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virology’s gain-of-func­tion research, because it would bring unwel­come atten­tion to U.S. gov­ern­ment fund­ing of it. . . . .In an inter­nal memo obtained by Van­i­ty Fair, Thomas DiNan­no, for­mer act­ing assis­tant sec­re­tary of the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Con­trol, Ver­i­fi­ca­tion, and Com­pli­ance, wrote that. . .  staff from two bureaus . . . “warned” lead­ers with­in his bureau ‘not to pur­sue an inves­ti­ga­tion into the ori­gin of COVID-19’ because it would ‘open a can of worms’ if it con­tin­ued.’ . . . . As the group probed the lab-leak sce­nario, among oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties, its mem­bers were repeat­ed­ly advised not to open a ‘Pandora’s box,’ said four for­mer State Depart­ment offi­cials inter­viewed by Van­i­ty Fair. . . .”
7.–Setting the ortho­doxy in ear­ly 2020 with a Lancet arti­cle rul­ing out a lab­o­ra­to­ry ori­gin for the virus was Peter Daszak, with approval from Ralph Bar­ic: ” . . . . It soon emerged, based on emails obtained by a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion group called U.S. Right to Know, that Daszak had not only signed but orga­nized the influ­en­tial Lancet state­ment, with the inten­tion of con­ceal­ing his role and cre­at­ing the impres­sion of sci­en­tif­ic una­nim­i­ty. . . .”
8.–” . . . . In late March, for­mer Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol direc­tor Robert Red­field received death threats from fel­low sci­en­tists after telling CNN that he believed COVID-19 had orig­i­nat­ed in a lab. . . . ”


Encore for Michael R. Gordon

The jour­nal­is­tic gen­er­a­tion of the lab-leak the­o­ry comes, in part, from Michael R. Gor­don, who has a his­to­ry of gen­er­at­ing dubi­ous jour­nal­ism to sup­port the plans of the nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment. Gor­don: A) . . . . was the same man who, along with Judith Miller, wrote the Sep­tem­ber 8, 2002 arti­cle false­ly assert­ing that Iraqi Pres­i­dent Sad­dam Hus­sein was seek­ing to build a nuclear weapon. . . The claim was a lie, fun­neled to the [N.Y.] Times by the office of US Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney. . . On May 26, 2004, the ‘Times’ pub­lished a let­ter from its edi­tors enti­tled ‘FROM THE EDITORS; The Times and Iraq,’ ‘acknowl­edg­ing that the Times repeat­ed­ly ‘fell for mis­in­for­ma­tion.’ . . . The let­ter notes: ‘But we have found a num­ber of instances of cov­er­age that was not as rig­or­ous as it should have been... On Sept. 8, 2002, the lead arti­cle of the paper was head­lined ‘U.S. Says Hus­sein Inten­si­fied Quest for A‑Bomb Parts.’ That report con­cerned the alu­minum tubes that the admin­is­tra­tion adver­tised insis­tent­ly as com­po­nents for the man­u­fac­ture of nuclear weapons fuel. … it should have been pre­sent­ed more cau­tious­ly . . . .” B) ” . . . . On April 20, 2014 . . . co-authored an arti­cle enti­tled ‘Pho­tos Link Masked Men in East Ukraine to Rus­sia,’ which claimed to iden­ti­fy masked men oper­at­ing in east­ern Ukraine in oppo­si­tion to the US-backed coup regime as active-duty Russ­ian sol­diers. . . .Four days lat­er, the ‘Times” Pub­lic Edi­tor was again com­pelled to retract the claims in Gordon’s report­ing, call­ing them ‘dis­cred­it­ed.’ . . .”


FTR #1139 The Anthrax Attacks, the Invasion of Iraq and Expansion of Biological Warfare Capabilities

As the title indi­cates, this pro­gram presents polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal foun­da­tion for the expo­nen­tial expan­sion of Amer­i­can bio­log­i­cal war­fare infra­struc­ture fol­low­ing the 2001 anthrax attacks.

Impor­tant back­ground infor­ma­tion comes from the Whit­ney Webb arti­cle about DARPA spend­ing on bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es.

The Broad­cast­ing Board of Governors–a CIA “derivative”–and The Wash­ing­ton Times (owned by the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church) helped devel­op dis­in­for­ma­tion about SARS CoV‑2 com­ing from a Chi­nese Bio­log­i­cal War­fare lab. Both were instru­men­tal in hyp­ing the anthrax attacks as authored by Sad­dam Hus­sein, as well. The Wash­ing­ton Times also pre­sent­ed infor­ma­tion float­ed by Steven Hat­fill that fore­shad­owed sub­se­quent charges that Sad­dam Hus­sein was devel­op­ing bioweapons and was behind the 2001 anthrax attacks.

In addi­tion, the Project For a New Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry was advanc­ing an agen­da in which genet­i­cal­ly-engi­neered bio­log­i­cal war­fare tech­nol­o­gy as essen­tial to con­tin­ued Amer­i­can glob­al dom­i­nance.

As will be seen below, a key func­tionary in the PNAC milieu was for­mer Sec­re­tary of Defense Don­ald Rums­feld, for­mer chair­man of the board of Gilead Sci­ences.

In FTR #‘s 1135, 1136 and 1137, we relied heav­i­ly on the Kris New­by’s Bit­ten: The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons. In that book, Ms. New­by net­worked with a group of expe­ri­enced, Cold War bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­fes­sion­als whom she termed “the Brain Trust.” They were con­vinced that Fort Det­rick sci­en­tist Bruce Ivins–the “lone nut” who con­ve­nient­ly com­mit­ted sui­cide and was fin­gered as the sole per­pe­tra­tor of the 2001 anthrax attacks–was framed. ” . . . . Among oth­er sub­jects, they dis­cussed  . . . tech­ni­cal details on why they believed that their col­league Bruce Ivins had been framed as the anthrax mail­er . . . .”

Much of the pro­gram cen­ters on the 2001 attacks and the sus­pi­cion that focused on Steven Hat­fill as a pos­si­ble per­pe­tra­tor of them. Although exon­er­at­ed in the attacks, Hat­fill was the focal point of con­sid­er­able sus­pi­cion in con­nec­tion with the event. Our sus­pi­cion is that he is an oper­a­tive of one or anoth­er intel­li­gence agency, CIA being the most prob­a­ble.

We sus­pect that the anthrax attacks were a provo­ca­tion aimed at jus­ti­fy­ing the inva­sion of Iraq and spurring devel­op­ment of the U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare capa­bil­i­ty.

Of par­tic­u­lar note is the appar­ent “oper­a­tional Teflon” worn by Hat­fill. Although cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence point­ed in his direc­tion, he appeared to be alto­geth­er “off lim­its” to inves­tiga­tive ele­ments of Alpha­bet Soup. Don Fos­ter not­ed the unusu­al treat­ment accord­ed to Hat­fill by the pow­ers that be.

Of sig­nif­i­cance, as well, are the numer­ous exam­ples of fore­shad­ow­ing of the foren­sic cir­cum­stances of the anthrax attacks, as well as oth­er “false alarm” inci­dents that occurred before and after the fatal attacks. It requires lit­tle to see state­ments and arti­cles by nota­bles such as Bill Patrick and the seem­ing­ly ubiq­ui­tous Steven Hat­fill as lay­ing a foun­da­tion of cred­i­bil­i­ty for sub­se­quent events.

Note that the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health have also part­nered with CIA and the Pen­ta­gon, as under­scored by an arti­cle about a BSL‑4 lab at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty.

1.–As the arti­cle notes, as of 2007, the U.S. had “more than a dozen” BSL4 labs–China com­mis­sioned its first as of 2017. a ten­fold increase in fund­ing for BSL4 labs occurred because of the anthrax attacks of 2001. Those attacks might be seen as some­thing of a provo­ca­tion, spurring a dra­mat­ic increase in “dual use” biowar­fare research, under the cov­er of “legit­i­mate” medical/scientific research. In FTR #1128, we hypoth­e­sized about the milieu of Steven Hat­fill and apartheid-linked inter­ests as pos­si­ble authors of a vec­tor­ing of New York City with Sars COV2: ” . . . . Before the anthrax mail­ings of 2001, the Unit­ed States had just two BSL4 labs—both with­in the razor-wire con­fines of gov­ern­ment-owned cam­pus­es. Now, thanks to a ten­fold increase in funding—from $200 mil­lion in 2001 to $2 bil­lion in 2006—more than a dozen such facil­i­ties can be found at uni­ver­si­ties and pri­vate com­pa­nies across the coun­try. . . .”
2.–The Boston Uni­ver­si­ty lab exem­pli­fies the Pen­ta­gon and CIA pres­ence in BSL‑4 facil­i­ty “dual use”: ” . . . . But some sci­en­tists say that argu­ment obscures the true pur­pose of the cur­rent biode­fense boom: to study poten­tial bio­log­i­cal weapons. ‘The uni­ver­si­ty por­trays it as an emerg­ing infec­tious dis­ease lab,’ says David Ozonoff, a Boston Uni­ver­si­ty epi­demi­ol­o­gist whose office is right across the street from the new BSL4 facil­i­ty. ‘But they are talk­ing about study­ing things like small pox and inhala­tion anthrax, which pose no pub­lic health threat oth­er than as bioweapons.’ . . . The orig­i­nal NIH man­date for the lab indi­cat­ed that many groups—including the CIA and Depart­ment of Defense—would be allowed to use the lab for their own research, the nature of which BU might have lit­tle con­trol over. . . .”

As not­ed in past pro­grams, Gilead Sci­ences is very well-con­nect­ed pro­fes­sion­al­ly, with for­mer Sec­re­tary of Defense Don­ald Rums­feld (among oth­er polit­i­cal lumi­nar­ies) serv­ing on its board of direc­tors. Rums­feld was chair­man of the board from 1997 until he left in 2001 to become George W. Bush’s Sec­re­tary of Defense.

Rums­feld was Sec­re­tary of Defense dur­ing the peri­od in which the 2001 anthrax attacks occurred.

Dur­ing the post‑9/11 peri­od of explod­ing gov­ern­ment invest­ments in biode­fense pro­grams, Sec­re­tary of Defense Don­ald Rums­feld was still hold­ing onto mas­sive amounts of Gilead stock, which was increas­ing in val­ue dra­mat­i­cal­ly. What kind of rela­tion­ship did Gilead devel­op with the US biode­fense nation­al secu­ri­ty state dur­ing this peri­od? That seems like a pret­ty impor­tant ques­tion at this point in time.

The U.S. gov­ern­ment was among the cus­tomers whose pur­chas­es drove up the Gilead earn­ings and stock price: ” . . . . What’s more, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is emerg­ing as one of the world’s biggest cus­tomers for Tam­i­flu. In July, the Pen­ta­gon ordered $58 mil­lion worth of the treat­ment for U.S. troops around the world, and Con­gress is con­sid­er­ing a mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar pur­chase. . . .”

Sev­er­al years into his tenure at the Pen­ta­gon, Rums­feld made a killing on the sale of Gilead Sci­ences’ stock, which rose expo­nen­tial­ly in val­ue fol­low­ing its devel­op­ment of Tam­i­flu as a treat­ment for H5N1 avian flu.” . . . . The firm made a loss in 2003, the year before con­cern about bird flu start­ed. Then rev­enues from Tam­i­flu almost quadru­pled, to $44.6m, help­ing put the com­pa­ny well into the black. Sales almost quadru­pled again, to $161.6m last year. Dur­ing this time the share price tre­bled. Mr Rums­feld sold some of his Gilead shares in 2004 reap­ing – accord­ing to the finan­cial dis­clo­sure report he is required to make each year – cap­i­tal gains of more than $5m. The report showed that he still had up to $25m-worth of shares at the end of 2004, and at least one ana­lyst believes his stake has grown well beyond that fig­ure, as the share price has soared. . . .”

Don­ald Rums­feld was a sig­na­to­ry to the 1998 let­ter to Pres­i­dent Clin­ton by the Project for a New Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry. That let­ter advo­cat­ed a hard­er line against Iraq. ” . . . . Rums­feld has strong ties to the Intel­li­gence Com­mu­ni­ty, as well as to the Atlantic Insti­tute, and is a mem­ber of the Bilder­berg group. He is a finan­cial sup­port­er for the Cen­ter for Secu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy. Rums­feld was one of the sign­ers of the Jan­u­ary 26, 1998, Project for the New Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry (PNAC) let­ter sent to Pres­i­dent William Jef­fer­son Clin­ton. . . .”

DARPA and the Pen­ta­gon have into the appli­ca­tion of genet­ic engi­neer­ing in order to cre­ate eth­no-spe­cif­ic bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapons, as dis­cussed by the Project for a New Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry.

In past pro­grams and posts, we have not­ed that DARPA was research­ing  bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es.  One can but won­der to what extent the PNAC doc­trine helped spawn the DARPA research into coro­n­avirus­es and, pos­si­bly, the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic.