FTR #899 Fara Mansoor on “The Deep October Surprise,” Part 4

This broad­cast con­cludes our review of Fara Man­soor’s hero­ic, ground-break­ing research on what we call “The Deep Octo­ber Sur­prise,” and ref­er­ences the his­tor­i­cal lessons to be drawn from the inquiry to the con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal scene. Usu­al­ly, the term “Octo­ber Sur­prise” refers to an alleged deal between the Reagan/Bush cam­paign and the Khome­i­ni regime in Iran to with­hold the U.S. hostages tak­en from the Amer­i­can Embassy until after Jim­my Carter’s humil­i­a­tion and con­se­quent elec­tion defeat were assured. Fara’s research goes far­ther and deep­er, sug­gest­ing that the CIA learned of the Shah’s can­cer in 1974 (from for­mer CIA direc­tor Richard Helms), with­held the infor­ma­tion from Jim­my Carter, installed Khome­ini’s Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ists as an anti-com­mu­nist bul­wark on the Sovi­et Union’s South­ern flank and then micro-man­aged the hostage cri­sis to insure the ascen­sion of the Reagan/Bush/Casey forces. What has become known as the Iran-Con­tra Scan­dal was an out­growth of this dynam­ic. In this pro­gram, we flesh out the net­work­ing involv­ing the Shah’s intel­li­gence spe­cial­ist Hos­sein Far­doust, who select­ed the per­son­nel for Khome­ini’s mil­i­tary gen­er­al staff and became the head of his secret police. Anoth­er of the Bush/CIA operatives–Ibrahim Yazdi–helped Khome­i­ni move from Iraq to Paris, served as his de fac­to chief of staff in Paris, served as his PR flack in the U.S., and was instru­men­tal in maneu­ver­ing Mashal­lah Khashani into place as secu­ri­ty coor­di­na­tor for the U.S. Embassy in Teheran. Pro­gram High­lights Include: Khashani’s lead­er­ship in the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Novem­ber of 1979; the par­tial dis­arm­ing of the Marine guards at the embassy pri­or to the takeover; a pri­or takeover attempt on 2/14/1979 by Khome­i­ni forces dis­guised as “left­ists;” net­work­ing between some of Far­doust’s selec­tions for Khome­ini’s gen­er­al staff and promi­nent fig­ures in the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal; the counter-ter­ror­ism back­ground of Lin­da Tripp, the Bush White House holdover who helped de-sta­bi­lize the Bill Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion; Mitt Rom­ney backer and FBI direc­tor James Comey’s ini­ti­a­tion of the inves­ti­ga­tion of Hillary Clin­ton’s e‑mail serv­er.

FTR #898 Fara Mansoor on “The Deep October Surprise,” Part 3

With the recent Iran­ian nuclear deal and the lift­ing of eco­nom­ic sanc­tions against Iran, the his­to­ry of U.S./Iranian rela­tions has attained greater rel­e­vance. In that con­text, we present the third of sev­er­al shows revis­it­ing Fara Man­soor’s land­mark research on what we have termed the “Deep Octo­ber Sur­prise.” Fara’s research sug­gests that the CIA learned of the Shah’s can­cer in 1974 (from for­mer CIA direc­tor Richard Helms), with­held the infor­ma­tion from Jim­my Carter, installed Khome­ini’s Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ists as an anti-com­mu­nist bul­wark on the Sovi­et Union’s South­ern flank and then micro-man­aged the hostage cri­sis to insure the ascen­sion of the Reagan/Bush/Casey forces. After a series of vio­lent inci­dents that sowed chaos in Iran, the Shah him­self real­ized that U.S. intel­li­gence was engi­neer­ing his removal. ” . . . . By late August [of 1977], the Shah was total­ly con­fused. U.S. Ambas­sador Sul­li­van record­ed the Shah’s plead­ings over the out­break of vio­lence: ‘He said the pat­tern was wide­spread and that it was like an out­break of a sud­den rash in the country…it gave evi­dence of sophis­ti­cat­ed plan­ning and was not the work of spon­ta­neous oppositionists…the Shah pre­sent­ed that it was the work of for­eign intrigue…this intrigue went beyond the capa­bil­i­ties of the Sovi­et KGB and must, there­fore, also involve British and Amer­i­can CIA. The Shah went on to ask ‘Why was the CIA sud­den­ly turn­ing against him? What had he done to deserve this sort of action from the Unit­ed States?’ . . . .” Pro­gram High­lights Include: the dis­ap­pear­ance and prob­a­ble assas­si­na­tion in Libya of a key Shi­ite cler­i­cal rival of Khomeini’s–Ayatollah Mosa Sadr; a provo­ca­tion in which a the­ater was burned down, killing 750 occupants–an attack blamed on the SAVAK and the Shah; an arti­cle placed in an Iran­ian paper that inflamed the pop­u­lace against the Shah and coa­lesced the Shi­ite cler­gy against him; key Shah aide Gen­er­al Hos­sein Far­doust’s author­ship of the provoca­tive arti­cle; the piv­otal role played in “the Deep Octo­ber Sur­prise” by Dr. Ibrahim Yaz­di; the Nazi intel­li­gence back­ground of Fazol­lah Zahe­di, who replaced Mohammed Mossadegh after the CIA coup in 1953.

FTR #897 Fara Mansoor on the “Deep October Surprise,” Part 2

This broad­cast is the sec­ond of sev­er­al pro­grams review­ing and high­light­ing mate­r­i­al first pre­sent­ed in ear­ly 1993, fea­tur­ing the land­mark research of Fara Man­soor, a hero­ic, long­time mem­ber of the Iran­ian resis­tance. Usu­al­ly, the term “Octo­ber Sur­prise” refers to an allege deal between the Reagan/Bush cam­paign and the Khome­i­ni regime in Iran to with­hold the U.S. hostages tak­en from the Amer­i­can Embassy until after Jim­my Carter’s humil­i­a­tion and con­se­quent elec­tion defeat were assured. Fara’s research goes far­ther and deep­er, sug­gest­ing that the CIA learned of the Shah’s can­cer in 1974 (from for­mer CIA direc­tor Richard Helms), with­held the infor­ma­tion from Jim­my Carter, installed Khome­ini’s Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ists as an anti-com­mu­nist bul­wark on the Sovi­et Union’s South­ern flank and then micro-man­aged the hostage cri­sis to insure the ascen­sion of the Reagan/Bush/Casey forces. What has become known as the Iran-Con­tra Scan­dal was an out­growth of this dynam­ic. In this pro­gram we present analy­sis of the first phase(s) of the oper­a­tion, not­ing that for­mer CIA direc­tor Richard Helms learned of the Shah’s can­cer in 1975 from Gen­er­al Hos­sein Far­doust. With­hold­ing this infor­ma­tion from Pres­i­dent Carter, the CIA fed the admin­is­tra­tion dis­in­for­ma­tion assert­ing that the Shah’s reign well into the 1980’s was assured. Mean­while, the Agency was maneu­ver­ing to install Khome­i­ni as a bul­wark against the left, and, as we shall see, a vehi­cle to desta­bi­lize the Carter admin­is­tra­tion and guar­an­tee the vic­to­ry of the Reagan/Bush team in the 1980 elec­tions. Pro­gram High­lights Include: the pres­ence in Iran in April of 1978 of George H.W. Bush, Ronald Rea­gan and Mar­garet Thatch­er; the long asso­ci­a­tion of the Shah-to-be, Richard Helms and Gen­er­al Hos­sein Far­doust dat­ing to their days togeth­er in a Swiss board­ing school; Carter’s “Hal­loween mas­sacre” in which he fired some 800 CIA covert oper­a­tors, who coa­lesced as part of the Bush team that installed Khome­i­ni and the fun­da­men­tal­ists in pow­er.

FTR #896 Fara Mansoor on “The Deep October Surprise,” Part 1

This broad­cast begins sev­er­al pro­grams review­ing and high­light­ing mate­r­i­al first pre­sent­ed in ear­ly 1993, fea­tur­ing the land­mark research of Fara Man­soor, a long­time, hero­ic mem­ber of the Iran­ian resis­tance. Usu­al­ly, the term “Octo­ber Sur­prise” refers to an alleged deal between the Reagan/Bush cam­paign and the Khome­i­ni regime in Iran to with­hold the U.S. hostages tak­en from the Amer­i­can Embassy until after Jim­my Carter’s humil­i­a­tion and con­se­quent elec­tion defeat were assured. Fara’s research goes far­ther and deep­er, sug­gest­ing that the CIA learned of the Shah’s can­cer in 1974 (from for­mer CIA direc­tor Richard Helms), with­held the infor­ma­tion from Jim­my Carter, installed Khome­ini’s Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ists as an anti-com­mu­nist bul­wark on the Sovi­et Union’s South­ern flank and then micro-man­aged the hostage cri­sis to insure the ascen­sion of the Reagan/Bush/Casey forces. What has become known as the Iran-Con­tra Scan­dal was an out­growth of this dynam­ic. In this pro­gram, we begin our analy­sis with an overview of the covert oper­a­tion, both in the U.S. and Iran, high­light­ing the key play­ers and the net­work­ing in which they engaged to ensure Carter’s down­fall and Khome­ini’s rise to pow­er. Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est is the “deep-net­work­ing” between U.S. oper­a­tives such as Richard Cot­tam and Iran­ian agents such as Gen­er­al Hos­sein Far­doust and Vial­lol­lah Qarani. Cot­tam, Far­doust and Qarani’s asso­ci­a­tion stretch from the 1953 coup that installed the Shah and the 1979 “op” that installed Khome­i­ni in Iran and the Reagan/Bush team in the U.S. The pro­gram high­lights the extent to which Amer­i­can domes­tic pol­i­tics, nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy and over­seas diplo­ma­cy are con­trolled by what amounts to a “secret state.”

FTR #735 Bay of Pigs Meets the October Surprise: Lee Harvey Obama and the Piggy Back Coup in the Middle East

U.S. backed and helped launch the over­throw of Mubarak;Operation was begun under Bush with Oba­ma poised to take the blame for “los­ing the Mid­dle East”; Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, Karl Rove, GOP, transna­tion­al cor­po­rate and Under­ground Reich ele­ments poised to take advan­tage.

Latest Patreon Uploads: The Making of Japan, Inc., Lab Leak Covid Meme, Spreading Bank Crisis, World War III, 1934 Coup Attempt Revisited

The lat­est Patre­on talks–with machine transcriptions–include top­ics such as the insti­tu­tion­al links between the 1934 Coup Attempt and the cap­i­tal­iza­tion of Japan before and after World War II; Sim­i­lar­i­ties between Japan Inc. and Amer­i­ca Inc.; Pro­pa­gan­diz­ing of the “Lab Leak” pro­pa­gan­da meme in Covid. Dr. Jef­frey Sachs “pret­ty con­vinced” Covid came from a U.S. Bio-Lab. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.

FTR #1134 Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse Now, Part 9: Covid-19 Updates

As indi­cat­ed by the title of the pro­gram, this broad­cast updates var­i­ous arti­cles and book excerpts con­cern­ing Covid-19.

A Dai­ly Mail Online [UK] arti­cle sets forth two bogus papers con­tend­ing that the SARS CoV‑2 virus was genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered by the Chi­nese as a bioweapon in a lab­o­ra­to­ry and that it “escaped.” Note the cham­pi­oning of one of the papers by a for­mer head of MI6 and the author­ship of the sec­ond by The Epoch Times, the paper of the Falun Gong cult. Linked to CIA, Steve Ban­non’s anti-Chi­na milieu and the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, the orga­ni­za­tion is a fas­cist mind con­trol cult dis­cussed in numer­ous shows, includ­ing FTR #‘s 1089 and 1090. 

1.–“A for­mer MI6 chief was yes­ter­day accused by Gov­ern­ment offi­cials of ped­dling ‘fan­ci­ful claims’ that coro­n­avirus was acci­den­tal­ly cre­at­ed in a Chi­nese lab­o­ra­to­ry. British secu­ri­ty agen­cies believe Covid-19 is not a man-made virus and is ‘high­ly like­ly’ to have occurred nat­u­ral­ly and spread to humans through ani­mals. And Health Sec­re­tary Matt Han­cock has said there is ‘no evi­dence’ to back up the the­o­ry that it orig­i­nat­ed in a lab­o­ra­to­ry. But Sir Richard Dearlove, who was head of the MI6 from 1999 to 2004, cit­ed a recent report claim­ing the dis­ease was acci­den­tal­ly man­u­fac­tured by Chi­nese sci­en­tists.
2.–“ ‘I do think that this start­ed as an acci­dent,’ Sir Richard told The Dai­ly Telegraph’s ‘Plan­et Nor­mal’ pod­cast. ‘It rais­es the issue: if Chi­na ever were to admit respon­si­bil­i­ty, does it pay repa­ra­tions? I think it will make every coun­try in the world rethink how it treats its rela­tion­ship with Chi­na.’ He added: ‘Look at the sto­ries... of attempts by the [Bei­jing] lead­er­ship to lock down any debate about the ori­gins of the pan­dem­ic and the way peo­ple have been arrest­ed or silenced.’ . . . . The paper – co-authored by Pro­fes­sor Angus Dal­gleish, a renowned oncol­o­gist and vac­cine researcher who works at St George’s Hos­pi­tal, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don, and Birg­er Sorensen, a Nor­we­gian virol­o­gist – con­tains none of the stark alle­ga­tions that orig­i­nal­ly stunned its review­ers.
3..–“The ini­tial paper that trig­gered wild rumours failed strin­gent tests of ver­i­fi­ca­tion and is under­stood to have been reject­ed in April by emi­nent inter­na­tion­al jour­nals such as Nature and the Jour­nal of Virol­o­gy. Bio­med­ical experts from the Fran­cis Crick Insti­tute and Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don are said to have refut­ed its con­clu­sions. Then one of the paper’s co-authors, Dr John Fredrik Moxnes, chief sci­en­tif­ic advis­er to the Nor­we­gian mil­i­tary, asked for his name to be with­drawn. This week, after numer­ous rewrites, the paper was pub­lished by the Quar­ter­ly Review of Bio­physics Dis­cov­ery. And those orig­i­nal world-shak­ing con­clu­sions have now with­ered to innu­en­do. No accu­sa­tion of Chi­nese manip­u­la­tion appears. . . .”
4.–”. . . . Back in April, a slick­ly pro­duced inves­tiga­tive doc­u­men­tary, Track­ing Down The Ori­gin Of The Wuhan Coro­n­avirus, was released online. It claimed con­clu­sive proof that the Covid-19 virus had been cre­at­ed as a bio­log­i­cal ‘weapon of mass destruc­tion’ in a Chi­nese lab. . . .”
5.–“At first sight, it seemed a shock­ing­ly con­vinc­ing piece of jour­nal­ism. On behalf of this news­pa­per, I cross-checked every claim: The experts it cit­ed and the fac­tu­al evi­dence unearthed. I also researched the back­grounds of its mak­ers. I then approached some of the world’s best inde­pen­dent sci­en­tif­ic author­i­ties to ask their opin­ion. They all agreed – this entic­ing­ly spicy sto­ry just did­n’t stand up.”
6.–“It had been pro­duced by a US based anti-Chi­nese gov­ern­ment media organ­i­sa­tion called the Epoch Times. Its ‘experts’ were vet­er­an hard-Right­ists. Most damn­ing­ly, its sci­en­tif­ic ‘facts’ were twist­ed out of shape.So much, then, for the Chi­nese-man­u­fac­tured coro­n­avirus con­spir­a­cy . . .”

Steve Ban­non is at the epi­cen­ter of the anti-Chi­na effort and–to no one’s surprise–never real­ly left the Trump White House.

When assess­ing Ban­non as a polit­i­cal ani­mal, one should nev­er for­get that among the impor­tant ide­o­log­i­cal influ­ences on him is Julius Evola, an Ital­ian fas­cist who found Mus­soli­ni too mod­er­ate and ulti­mate­ly took his cues from the Nazi SS, who were financ­ing his work by the end of World War II.

” . . . . Don­ald Trump’s light­ning-rod 2016 cam­paign boss and for­mer White House chief strate­gist who was ban­ished from the West Wing in 2017 has qui­et­ly crept back into 1600 Penn­syl­va­nia Ave., reestab­lish­ing ties to staffers, par­tic­u­lar­ly with regard to his pet issues of Chi­na and immi­gra­tion. . . . Anoth­er for­mer admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial told The Post that Ban­non nev­er real­ly left the White House after he was fired, main­tain­ing con­tacts and keep­ing up reg­u­lar chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tions with offi­cials there. . . .”

In addi­tion, as dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 1111 and 1112, Ban­non is part of a net­work that includes J. Kyle Bass and Tom­my Hicks, Jr. This nexus involves asym­met­ri­cal invest­ing with regard to the Hong Kong and Chi­nese economies and the inter-agency gov­ern­men­tal net­works involved in both overt and covert anti-Chi­na poli­cies imple­ment­ed by Team Trump. As will be seen below, they also are net­work­ing with the mis-named “Sci­en­tists to Stop Covid-19.” In that regard, they are also help­ing steer pol­i­cy that con­trols devel­op­ment of treat­ment and vac­cines for Covid-19. The man­age­ment of drug and vac­cine devel­op­ment, in turn, dou­bles back to mar­ket-dri­ving invest­ment dynam­ics.

An inter­est­ing sum­ma­tion of char­ac­ter­is­tics of a “delib­er­ate” epi­dem­ic are eval­u­at­ed against the find­ing that New York City was the epi­cen­ter of the U.S. Covid-19 out­break: 

Bit­ten: The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons by Kris New­by; Harper­Collins [HC]; Copy­right 2019 by Kris New­by; ISBN 9780062896728; p. 185.

Poten­tial epi­demi­o­log­i­cal clues to a delib­er­ate epi­dem­ic:

Clue no. 1–A high­ly unusu­al event with large num­bers of casu­al­ties: Check!

Clue no. 2–Higher mor­bid­i­ty or mor­tal­i­ty than is expect­ed. Check!

Clue no. 3–Uncommon dis­ease. Check!

Clue no. 4–Point-source out­break. Check!

Clue no. 5–Multiple epi­demics. Check! (Glob­al pan­dem­ic)

                      –Z. F. Dem­bek, et al., “Dis­cern­ment Between Delib­er­ate and Nat­ur­al Infec­tious Dis­ease Out­breaks”

The pre­vail­ing view of the Covid-19 out­break con­tends that the Amer­i­can out­break spread out­ward from New York City. The strain of SARS CoV‑2 that appeared in New York came, in turn, from Europe. 

This does­n’t make sense. There were con­firmed cas­es of the virus on the West Coast that did not come from New York. A Euro­pean strain of the virus trans­mit­ted to New York City would have come in via air. In such an event, there would have been a well-doc­u­ment­ed out­break of Covid-19 among flight atten­dants, who oper­ate in close con­tact with pas­sen­gers in cramped cir­cum­stances, as well as expe­ri­enc­ing jet lag, which com­pro­mis­es the immune sys­tem.

Next, we review an aspect of the 2001 anthrax attacks. We high­light­ed the 2001 anthrax attacks in con­nec­tion with the Covid-19 out­break in New York City in FTR #1128.

We note that the Anthrax attacks appear to have oper­at­ed in over­lap­ping con­texts, includ­ing jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the war in Iraq. 

The 2001 anthrax attacks appear to have served as a provo­ca­tion that jus­ti­fied a ten-fold increase in spend­ing for bio­log­i­cal war­fare devel­op­ment. The num­ber of BSL‑4 labs (hav­ing dual civil­ian and mil­i­tary use) increased from two in 2001, to a dozen in 2007.

This increase occurred while Don­ald Rums­feld was George W. Bush’s sec­re­tary of defense. He went to that posi­tion from being Chair­man of the Board of Direc­tors for Gilead Sci­ences, the man­u­fac­tur­er of remde­sivir.

We will delve into the pol­i­tics of the anthrax attacks in the future.

In the con­text of the above arti­cle, 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. Note that Europe and the U.S. have twelve BSL4 labs apiece. Tai­wan has two. Chi­na has one:

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 Stephen 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. . . .”

Piv­ot­ing to dis­cus­sion and review of the polit­i­cal, finan­cial and cor­po­rate con­nec­tions to the devel­op­ment of med­i­c­i­nal treat­ments for, and vac­cines to pre­vent, Covid-19, we recap details rel­e­vant to the extra­or­di­nary tim­ing of a 4/29 announce­ment of favor­able results for a tri­al of remde­sivir. That announce­ment drove equi­ties mar­kets high­er and was ben­e­fi­cial to the stock of Gilead Sci­ences.

We present a Stat News arti­cle on the inter­nal delib­er­a­tions behind the deci­sions to mod­i­fy the NIAID study. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the DSMB delib­er­a­tion. Note the time­line of the DSMB delib­er­a­tion, com­bined with the announce­ment on 4/29 that drove the mar­kets high­er.

1.–The deci­sion was made to cut it short before the ques­tion of remdesivir’s impact on mor­tal­i­ty could be answered: ” . . . .The Nation­al Insti­tute of Aller­gy and Infec­tious Dis­eases has described to STAT in new detail how it made its fate­ful deci­sion: to start giv­ing remde­sivir to patients who had been assigned to receive a place­bo in the study, essen­tial­ly lim­it­ing researchers’ abil­i­ty to col­lect more data about whether the drug saves lives — some­thing the study, called ACTT‑1, sug­gests but does not prove. In the tri­al, 8% of the par­tic­i­pants giv­en remde­sivir died, com­pared with 11.6% of the place­bo group, a dif­fer­ence that was not sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant. A top NIAID offi­cial said he had no regrets about the deci­sion. ‘There cer­tain­ly was una­nim­i­ty with­in the insti­tute that this was the right thing to do,’ said H. Clif­ford Lane, NIAID’s clin­i­cal direc­tor. . . .”
2.–In addi­tion, patients sched­uled to receive place­bo received remde­sivir, instead. ” . . . . Steven Nis­sen, a vet­er­an tri­al­ist and car­di­ol­o­gist at the Cleve­land Clin­ic, dis­agreed that giv­ing place­bo patients remde­sivir was the right call. ‘I believe it is in society’s best inter­est to deter­mine whether remde­sivir can reduce mor­tal­i­ty, and with the release of this infor­ma­tion doing a place­bo-con­trolled tri­al to deter­mine if there is a mor­tal­i­ty ben­e­fit will be very dif­fi­cult,’ he said. ‘The ques­tion is: Was there a route, or is there a route, to deter­mine if the drug can pre­vent death?’ The deci­sion is ‘a lost oppor­tu­ni­ty,’ he said. . . .”
3.–Steven Nis­sen was not alone in his crit­i­cism of the NIAID’s deci­sion. ” . . . .Peter Bach, the direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Health Pol­i­cy and Out­comes at Memo­r­i­al Sloan Ket­ter­ing Can­cer Cen­ter, agreed with Nis­sen. ‘The core under­stand­ing of clin­i­cal research par­tic­i­pa­tion and clin­i­cal research con­duct is we run the tri­al rig­or­ous­ly to pro­vide the most accu­rate infor­ma­tion about the right treat­ment,’ he said. And that answer, he argued, should ide­al­ly have deter­mined whether remde­sivir saves lives. The rea­son we have shut our whole soci­ety down, Bach said, is not to pre­vent Covid-19 patients from spend­ing a few more days in the hos­pi­tal. It is to pre­vent patients from dying. ‘Mor­tal­i­ty is the right end­point,’ he said. . . .”
4.–Not only was the admin­is­tra­tion of remde­sivir instead of place­bo pri­or­i­tized, but the NIAID study itself was atten­u­at­ed! ” . . . . But the change in the study’s main goal also changed the way the study would be ana­lyzed. Now, the NIAID decid­ed, the analy­sis would be cal­cu­lat­ed when 400 patients out of the 1,063 patients the study enrolled had recov­ered. If remde­sivir turned out to be much more effec­tive than expect­ed, ‘inter­im’ analy­ses would be con­duct­ed at a third and two-thirds that number.The job of review­ing these analy­ses would fall to a com­mit­tee of out­side experts on what is known as an inde­pen­dent data and safe­ty mon­i­tor­ing board, or DSMB. . . .”
5.–The per­for­mance of the DSMB for the remde­sivir study is note­wor­thy: ” . . . . But the DSMB for the remde­sivir study did not ever meet for an inter­im effi­ca­cy analy­sis, Lane said. All patients had been enrolled by April 20. The data for a DSMB meet­ing was cut off on April 22. The DSMB met and, on April 27, it made a rec­om­men­da­tion to the NIAID. . . .”
The DSMB meet­ing on 4/27 deter­mined the switch from place­bo to remde­sivir. Of para­mount impor­tance is the fact that this was JUST BEFORE the 4/29 announce­ment that drove the mar­kets high­er and the same day on which key Trump aide–and for­mer Gilead Sci­ences lob­by­ist Joe Gro­gan resigned! ” . . . . . That deci­sion, Lane said, led the NIAID to con­clude that patients who had been giv­en place­bo should be offered remde­sivir, some­thing that start­ed hap­pen­ing after April 28. . . .”
6.–Dr. Ethan Weiss gave an accu­rate eval­u­a­tion of the NIAID study: ” . . . . ‘We’ve squan­dered an incred­i­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty to do good sci­ence,’ [Dr. Ethan] Weiss said. ‘If we could ever go back and do some­thing all over, it would be the infra­struc­ture to actu­al­ly learn some­thing. Because we’re not learn­ing enough.’ . . . .”

The remark­able han­dling of the NIAID study, the tim­ing of the announce­ment of the alto­geth­er lim­it­ed suc­cess of the atten­u­at­ed tri­al and the rise in equi­ties as a result of the announce­ment may be best under­stood in the con­text of the role played in Trump pan­dem­ic deci­sion-mak­ing by an elite group of bil­lion­aires and scientists–including con­vict­ed felon Michael Milken (the “junk bond king”).

1.–” . . . . Call­ing them­selves ‘Sci­en­tists to Stop COVID-19,’ the col­lec­tion of top researchers, bil­lion­aires and indus­try cap­tains will act as an ‘ad hoc review board’ for the tor­rent of coro­n­avirus research, ‘weed­ing out’ flawed data before it reach­es pol­i­cy­mak­ers, the Wall Street Jour­nal report­ed on Mon­day. They are also act­ing as a go-between for phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies seek­ing to build a com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nel with Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials. The group . . . . has advised Nick Ayers, an aide to Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence, as well as oth­er agency heads, in the past month. Pence is head­ing up the White House coro­n­avirus task force. . . .”
2.–” . . . The brainy bunch is led by Thomas Cahill, a 33-year-old doc­tor who became a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist . . . . Cahill’s clout comes from build­ing con­nec­tions through his invest­ment firm, New­path Part­ners, with Sil­i­con Valley’s Peter Thiel, the founder of Pay­Pal, and bil­lion­aire busi­ness­men Jim Palot­ta and Michael Milken. . . .”

Note that Peter Thiel played a dom­i­nant role in bankrolling New­path Part­ners, and the oth­er finan­cial angel who ele­vat­ed Cahill–Brian Sheth–introduced him to Tom­my Hicks, Jr., the co-chair­man of the RNC. In FTR #‘s 1111 and 1112, we looked at Hicks’ net­work­ing with Steve Ban­non asso­ciate J. Kyle Bass, as well as his role in the inter-agency net­works dri­ving the anti-Chi­na effort.

” . . . . At the helm of the effort: The 33-year-old and very-much-under-the-radar ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist Tom Cahill, who leads life sci­ences-focused New­path Part­ners. Cahill com­plet­ed his M.D. and PhD at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty a mere two years ago before land­ing at blue-chip invest­ment firm Rap­tor Group through a friend. He went on to found New­path with some $125 mil­lion after impress­ing well-con­nect­ed names like ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist Peter Thiel and Vista Equi­ty Part­ners co-founder Bri­an Sheth. . . . It was through Sheth, for exam­ple, that Sci­en­tists to Stop Covid-19 con­nect­ed with the co-chair­man of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee, Thomas Hicks Jr. . . .”

The fed­er­al gov­ern­men­t’s extreme focus on remde­sivir has been shaped, in large mea­sure, by the influ­ence of “Sci­en­tists to Stop COVID-19”:

1.–“Scientists to Stop Covid-19” is shep­herd­ing remde­sivir: ” . . . . Sci­en­tists to Stop COVID-19 rec­om­mends that in this phase, the U.S. Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA) should work to coor­di­nate with Gilead phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals to focus on expe­dit­ing the results of clin­i­cal tri­als of remde­sivir, a drug iden­ti­fied as a poten­tial treat­ment for COVID-19. The group also rec­om­mends admin­is­ter­ing dos­es of the drug to patients in an ear­ly stage of infec­tion, and notes remde­sivir will essen­tial­ly be a place­hold­er until a more effec­tive treat­ment is pro­duced.
2.–The group is doing so by atten­u­at­ing the reg­u­la­to­ry process for coro­n­avirus drugs: “Gov­ern­ment enti­ties and agen­cies appear to adhere to the rec­om­men­da­tions out­lined by the group, with the Jour­nal report­ing that the FDA and the Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs (VA) have imple­ment­ed some of the sug­ges­tions, name­ly relax­ing drug man­u­fac­tur­er reg­u­la­tions and require­ments for poten­tial coro­n­avirus treat­ment drugs. . . .”

We con­clude dis­cus­sion of the remde­sivir machi­na­tions with a piece about the tim­ing of the announce­ment of Grogan’s depar­ture.

” . . . . Gro­gan has served as the direc­tor of the White House Domes­tic Pol­i­cy Coun­cil since Feb­ru­ary 2019, over­see­ing a broad array of pol­i­cy issues includ­ing health care and reg­u­la­tion. . . . Gro­gan was one of the orig­i­nal mem­bers of the White House coro­n­avirus task force launched in late Jan­u­ary. . . . Gro­gan worked as a lob­by­ist for drug com­pa­ny Gilead Sci­ences before join­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. . . .”

The depar­ture was announced in the Wall Street Jour­nal on the morn­ing of Wednes­day, April 29, the same day we got our first pub­lic reports of the NIAID clin­i­cal tri­al of remde­sivir that was pos­i­tive enough to show it short­ened the time to recov­ery and the same day the FDA grant­ed remde­sivir emer­gency use sta­tus. 

Note, again, the tim­ing of the DSM­B’s actions, as well as the influ­ence of “Sci­en­tists to Stop Covid-19.”

In FTR #1130, we not­ed that Mon­cef Slaoui–formerly in charge of prod­uct devel­op­ment for Moderna–was cho­sen to head Trump’s “Oper­a­tion Warp Speed.” He will be work­ing with Four-Star Gen­er­al Gus­tave Per­na, cho­sen by Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen­er­al Mark Mil­ley.

Even after agree­ing to sell his Mod­er­na stock, Mon­cef Slaoui’s invest­ments raise alarm­ing questions–note that he is a “ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist” and a long­time for­mer exec­u­tive at Glaxo-Smithk­line:

The cir­cum­stances of his appoint­ment will per­mit him to avoid scruti­ny: ” . . . . In agree­ing to accept the posi­tion, Dr. Slaoui did not come on board as a gov­ern­ment employ­ee. Instead, he is on a con­tract, receiv­ing $1 for his ser­vice. That leaves him exempt from fed­er­al dis­clo­sure rules that would require him to list his out­side posi­tions, stock hold­ings and oth­er poten­tial con­flicts. And the con­tract posi­tion is not sub­ject to the same con­flict-of-inter­est laws and reg­u­la­tions that exec­u­tive branch employ­ees must fol­low. . . .”
He will retain a great deal of Glaxo-Smithk­line stock: ” . . . . He did not say how much his GSK shares were worth. When he left the com­pa­ny in 2017, he held about [500,000 in West­ern Print Edi­tion] 240,000 shares and share equiv­a­lents, accord­ing to the drug company’s annu­al report and an analy­sis by the exec­u­tive com­pen­sa­tion firm Equi­lar. . . .”
Fur­ther analy­sis of Slaoui’s posi­tion deep­ens con­cern about the integri­ty of the process: ” . . . . ‘This is basi­cal­ly absurd,’ said Vir­ginia Can­ter, who is chief ethics coun­sel for Cit­i­zens for Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Ethics in Wash­ing­ton. ‘It allows for no pub­lic scruti­ny of his con­flicts of inter­est.’ Ms. Can­ter also said fed­er­al law barred gov­ern­ment con­trac­tors from super­vis­ing gov­ern­ment employ­ees. . . . Ms. Can­ter, a for­mer ethics lawyer in the Oba­ma and Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tions, the Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion and oth­er agen­cies, point­ed out that GSK’s vac­cine can­di­date with Sanofi could wind up com­pet­ing with oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers vying for gov­ern­ment approval and sup­port. ‘If he retains stock in com­pa­nies that are invest­ing in the devel­op­ment of a vac­cine, and he’s involved in over­see­ing this process to select the safest vac­cine to com­bat Covid-19, regard­less of how won­der­ful a per­son he is, we can’t be con­fi­dent of the integri­ty of any process in which he is involved,’ Ms. Can­ter said.In addi­tion, his affil­i­a­tion with Medicxi could com­pli­cate mat­ters: Two of its investors are GSK and a divi­sion of John­son & John­son, which is also devel­op­ing a poten­tial vac­cine. . . .”

Next, we turn to Mod­er­na’s ani­mal tri­al for the mes­sen­ger RNA vac­cine it is devel­op­ing. There are sev­er­al con­sid­er­a­tions to be weighed in con­nec­tion with the Mod­er­na vac­cine.

1.–Again, the chair­man of Trump’s “Warp Speed” vac­cine devel­op­ment program–Moncef Slaoui–was in charge of Mod­er­na’s prod­uct devel­op­ment oper­a­tion.
2.–Moderna’s tri­al with mice was pos­i­tive with regard to gen­er­at­ing anti­body lev­els high enough to pre­vent ADE.
3.–Antibody Depen­dent Enhance­ment (ADE),  is a phe­nom­e­na where low lev­els of inef­fec­tive anti­bod­ies latch onto the virus and exac­er­bate an over­ac­tive immune response that leads to the dead­liest symp­toms likes cytokine-storms. This dan­ger was seen with SARS and attempts to cre­ate a SARS vac­cine so it’s a rea­son­able fear with SARS-CoV­‑2.
4.–The Phase III (human) tri­al is going to be start­ed in July, involv­ing 30,000 peo­ple. Alarm­ing­ly, those 30,000 peo­ple will all be receiv­ing the exact same dosage, 100 micro­grams, and that means the phase III tri­al won’t be test­ing sub-opti­mal dosages. The big Phase III tri­al won’t be test­ing for ADE in humans. 
5.–We may have a night­mare sit­u­a­tion where polit­i­cal pres­sure gives undo weight to ani­mal safe­ty results, leapfrog­ging over the neces­si­ty of test­ing for side effects. 
6.–The ani­mal tri­als have been severe­ly crit­i­cized: ” . . . . ‘This is the barest begin­ning of pre­lim­i­nary infor­ma­tion,’ said Dr. Gre­go­ry Poland, an immu­nol­o­gist and vac­cine researcher at the Mayo Clin­ic who has seen the paper, which has yet to under­go peer-review. Poland said the paper was incom­plete, dis­or­ga­nized and the num­bers of ani­mals test­ed were small. . . . Poland, who was not involved with the research, said the paper leaves out ‘impor­tant para­me­ters’ that could help sci­en­tists judge the work. . . .”
7.–We MIGHT cre­ate a vac­cine that pro­tects those who get a strong immune response while endan­ger­ing those with sub-pro­tec­tive responses–a “eugenic” vac­cine.
8.–The ani­mal tri­als have been severe­ly crit­i­cized: ” . . . . ‘This is the barest begin­ning of pre­lim­i­nary infor­ma­tion,’ said Dr. Gre­go­ry Poland, an immu­nol­o­gist and vac­cine researcher at the Mayo Clin­ic who has seen the paper, which has yet to under­go peer-review. Poland said the paper was incom­plete, dis­or­ga­nized and the num­bers of ani­mals test­ed were small. . . . Poland, who was not involved with the research, said the paper leaves out ‘impor­tant para­me­ters’ that could help sci­en­tists judge the work. . . .”
9.–The phase II clin­i­cal tri­als on humans are still under­way and won’t be com­plet­ed before Novem­ber.  Phase III is going to be get­ting under­way in July. The Human clin­i­cal tri­als are already under­way at the same time the ani­mal safe­ty tri­als have yet to be com­plet­ed.
10.–Side effects can take a while to man­i­fest.

We pro­vid­ed detailed crit­i­cal com­ments on Mod­er­na’s Phase I tri­al in FTR #1132.

We con­clude with a New York Times arti­cle sets forth a “Vac­cine Octo­ber Sur­prise” sce­nario for this fall.

” . . . . In a des­per­ate search for a boost, he could release a coro­n­avirus vac­cine that has not been shown to be safe and effec­tive as an Octo­ber sur­prise. Oct. 23, 2020, 9 a.m., with 10 days before the elec­tion, Fox New releas­es a poll show­ing Pres­i­dent Trump trail­ing Joe Biden by eight per­cent­age points. Oct. 23, 2020, 3 p.m., at a hasti­ly con­vened news con­fer­ence, Pres­i­dent Trump announces that the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion has just issued an Emer­gency Use Autho­riza­tion for a coro­n­avirus vac­cine. Mr. Trump declares vic­to­ry over Covid-19, demands that all busi­ness­es reopen imme­di­ate­ly and pre­dicts a rapid eco­nom­ic recov­ery. Giv­en how this pres­i­dent has behaved, this incred­i­bly dan­ger­ous sce­nario is not far-fetched. In a des­per­ate search for a polit­i­cal boost, he could release a coro­n­avirus vac­cine before it had been thor­ough­ly test­ed and shown to be safe and effec­tive. . . .”

FTR #1130 Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse Now, Part 6: The Magic Virus Theory, Part 3

In addi­tion to review­ing and high­light­ing cogent argu­ments that the SARS-Cov2 (Covid-19) virus may indeed have been made in a lab­o­ra­to­ry, the pro­gram exam­ines sig­nif­i­cant aspects of the hereto­fore puz­zling epi­demi­ol­o­gy of the virus. (We do NOT believe that the virus was syn­the­sized by Chi­na, as “Team Trump” is charg­ing.)

First, how­ev­er, the broad­cast sets forth infor­ma­tion about the quest for a Covid-19 vac­cine.

The make­up of Don­ald Trump’s “Oper­a­tion Warp Speed” pro­gram to devel­op a Covid-19 vac­cine in record time is alarm­ing. (No vac­cine has ever been devel­oped for human use in less than four years.)

“Oper­a­tion Warp Speed”:

1.–Is head­ed by Mon­cef Slaoui, for­mer­ly the chair­man of Mod­er­na’s prod­uct devel­op­ment com­mit­tee: ” . . . . Dr. Slaoui served on the board of Mod­er­na, a biotech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny that has an exper­i­men­tal coro­n­avirus vac­cine that just entered Phase 2 of clin­i­cal tri­als to deter­mine if it is effec­tive. As the chair­man of the Mod­er­na board’s prod­uct devel­op­ment com­mit­tee, Dr. Slaoui might have been privy to the ear­ly indi­ca­tions of tests of whether the company’s approach appeared promis­ing, now that it is being inject­ed into human sub­jects. . . .”

2.–Is seen by Slaoui as promis­ing by Slaoui, who may well be ref­er­enc­ing tests on Mod­er­na’s mRNA vac­cine: “. . . . Dr. Slaoui, now a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist, said that he had ‘recent­ly seen ear­ly data from a clin­i­cal tri­al with a coro­n­avirus vac­cine, and these data made me feel even more con­fi­dent that we will be able to deliv­er a few hun­dred mil­lion dos­es of vac­cine’ — enough to inoc­u­late much of the Unit­ed States — ‘by the end of 2020.’ . . . .”

3.–Will be assist­ed by a four-star gen­er­al: ” . . . . . . . . Mr. Slaoui will serve as the chief advis­er on the effort, and Gen. Gus­tave F. Per­na, a four-star gen­er­al who is in charge the Army Matériel Com­mand, will be the chief oper­at­ing offi­cer. . . .”

4.–Perna was recruit­ed by the Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs: ” . . . . Gen­er­al Per­na, who runs the Army’s com­plex sup­ply chain, said that he was asked by Gen. Mark A. Mil­ley, the chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to help run the man­u­fac­tur­ing logis­tics relat­ed to the vac­cine devel­op­ment. . . .”

Note that Mon­cef Slaoui holds 10 mil­lion dol­lars worth of Mod­er­na stock, which has tripled in val­ue since the Covid-19 out­break began:” . . . . The for­mer phar­ma exec­u­tive tapped by Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump to lead the fed­er­al gov­ern­men­t’s hunt for a COVID-19 vac­cine has more than $10 mil­lion in stock options in one of the com­pa­nies receiv­ing fed­er­al fund­ing. . . . Described across four sep­a­rate fil­ings, Slaoui has 155,438 options in Mod­er­na. The stake is worth $10,366,000 at Mod­er­na’s cur­rent share price, $66.69 at the time of pub­li­ca­tion. Mod­er­na shares have almost tripled in val­ue dur­ing 2020. The $66.69 fig­ure rep­re­sents an increase of  184% from the $23.46 it was trad­ing for on Jan­u­ary 1. . . .” (The day the pro­gram was record­ed, Mod­er­na’s stock increased by 25% in val­ue, and Slaoui announced he would sell his stock.)

In past posts and pro­grams, we have not­ed the Moderna–one of the com­pa­nies select­ed to devel­op a Covid-19 vac­cine, has been sub­stan­tial­ly under­writ­ten by the Pen­ta­gon (DARPA). 

Key points of dis­cus­sion in that regard:

1.–Moderna is using nov­el vac­cine tech­nol­o­gy using the injec­tion of genet­ic mate­r­i­al to cre­ate anti­bod­ies. This tech­nol­o­gy has nev­er been used on human beings. “. . . . The sec­ond phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny that was select­ed by CEPI to devel­op a vac­cine for the new coro­n­avirus is Mod­er­na Inc., which will devel­op a vac­cine for the nov­el coro­n­avirus of con­cern in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the U.S. NIH and which will be fund­ed entire­ly by CEPI. The vac­cine in ques­tion, as opposed to Inovio’s DNA vac­cine, will be a mes­sen­ger RNA (mRNA) vac­cine. Though dif­fer­ent than a DNA vac­cine, mRNA vac­cines still use genet­ic mate­r­i­al ‘to direct the body’s cells to pro­duce intra­cel­lu­lar, mem­brane or secret­ed pro­teins.’ Moderna’s mRNA treat­ments, includ­ing its mRNA vac­cines, were large­ly devel­oped using a $25 mil­lion grant from DARPA and it often touts is strate­gic alliance with DARPA in press releas­es. . . .”

2.–The tech­nol­o­gy has alarm­ing pos­si­ble neg­a­tive side-effects. “. . . . Both DNA and mRNA vac­cines involve the intro­duc­tion of for­eign and engi­neered genet­ic mate­r­i­al into a person’s cells and past stud­ies have found that such vac­cines ‘pos­sess sig­nif­i­cant unpre­dictabil­i­ty and a num­ber of inher­ent harm­ful poten­tial haz­ards’ and that ‘there is inad­e­quate knowl­edge to define either the prob­a­bil­i­ty of unin­tend­ed events or the con­se­quences of genet­ic mod­i­fi­ca­tions.’ Nonethe­less, the cli­mate of fear sur­round­ing the coro­n­avirus out­break could be enough for the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor to devel­op and dis­trib­ute such con­tro­ver­sial treat­ments due to fear about the epi­dem­ic poten­tial of the cur­rent out­break. . . .”

3.–Looming large in the back­ground of the Mod­er­na vac­cine tech­nol­o­gy is DARPA fund­ing of “gene dri­ve” tech­nol­o­gy. “. . . . Con­cerns about Pen­ta­gon exper­i­ments with bio­log­i­cal weapons have gar­nered renewed media atten­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly after it was revealed in 2017 that DARPA was the top fun­der of the con­tro­ver­sial ‘gene dri­ve’ tech­nol­o­gy, which has the pow­er to per­ma­nent­ly alter the genet­ics of entire pop­u­la­tions while tar­get­ing oth­ers for extinc­tion. At least two of DARPA’s stud­ies using this con­tro­ver­sial tech­nol­o­gy were clas­si­fied and ‘focused on the poten­tial mil­i­tary appli­ca­tion of gene dri­ve tech­nol­o­gy and use of gene dri­ves in agri­cul­ture,’ accord­ing to media reports. . . . Co-direc­tor of the ETC Group Jim Thomas said that this tech­nol­o­gy may be used as a bio­log­i­cal weapon: ‘Gene dri­ves are a pow­er­ful and dan­ger­ous new tech­nol­o­gy and poten­tial bio­log­i­cal weapons could have dis­as­trous impacts on peace, food secu­ri­ty and the envi­ron­ment, espe­cial­ly if mis­used, The fact that gene dri­ve devel­op­ment is now being pri­mar­i­ly fund­ed and struc­tured by the US mil­i­tary rais­es alarm­ing ques­tions about this entire field.’ . . . . How­ev­er, the ther­a­pies being devel­oped by Inovio, Mod­er­na and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Queens­land are in align­ment with DARPA’s objec­tives regard­ing gene edit­ing and vac­cine tech­nol­o­gy. For instance, in 2015, DARPA geneti­cist Col. Daniel Wat­ten­dorf described how the agency was inves­ti­gat­ing a ‘new method of vac­cine pro­duc­tion [that] would involve giv­ing the body instruc­tions for mak­ing cer­tain anti­bod­ies. Because the body would be its own biore­ac­tor, the vac­cine could be pro­duced much faster than tra­di­tion­al meth­ods and the result would be a high­er lev­el of pro­tec­tion.’ . . . .”

As dis­cussed in FTR #1124–among oth­er programs–it is now pos­si­ble to cre­ate ANY virus from scratch, using “mail-order” or “design­er” genes. In FTR #282–recorded in May of 2001–we not­ed the ter­ri­ble sig­nif­i­cance of the devel­op­ment of such “Design­er Gene” tech­nol­o­gy.

A BBC sto­ry from 1999 high­lights the fears of experts that the advent of such tech­nol­o­gy could enable the devel­op­ment of eth­no-spe­cif­ic bio­log­i­cal weapons: ” . . . . Advances in genet­ic knowl­edge could be mis­used to devel­op pow­er­ful bio­log­i­cal weapons that could be tai­lored to strike at spe­cif­ic eth­nic groups, the British Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion has warned. A BMA report Biotech­nol­o­gy, Weapons and Human­i­ty says that con­cert­ed inter­na­tion­al action is nec­es­sary to block the devel­op­ment of new, bio­log­i­cal weapons.  . . . The BMA report warns that legit­i­mate research into micro­bi­o­log­i­cal agents and genet­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed ther­a­peu­tic agents could be dif­fi­cult to dis­tin­guish from research geared towards devel­op­ing more effec­tive weapons. . . . Dr Vivi­enne Nathanson, BMA Head of Health Pol­i­cy Research said:  ‘The his­to­ry of human­i­ty is a his­to­ry of war. Sci­en­tif­ic advances quick­ly lead to devel­op­ments in weapons tech­nol­o­gy. . . .‘Biotech­nol­o­gy and genet­ic knowl­edge are equal­ly open to this type of malign use. . . .”

We high­light infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed in FTR #1129, for pur­pos­es of empha­siz­ing the flim­sy nature of the argu­ment pre­sent­ed in a paper from Nature Med­i­cine.

Many sci­en­tif­ic and med­ical peo­ple dis­miss­ing the argu­ment that the Covid-19 coro­n­avirus may have been cre­at­ed in a lab­o­ra­to­ry may be act­ing out of the sin­cere desire to pre­clude a full-dress Cold War between the U.S. and Chi­na. The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has tire­less­ly flogged the “Chi­na did it and it came from a lab­o­ra­to­ry” meme. Many lib­er­als who dis­missed the obvi­ous fact that Pres­i­dent Kennedy was mur­dered by a cabal of pow­er­ful U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty inter­ests did so because of what Peter Dale Scott calls a “lev­el one cover-up”–alleged Sovi­et and/or Cas­tro Cuban manip­u­la­tion of Lee Har­vey Oswald, fab­ri­cat­ed by the exe­cu­tion­ers them­selves.

Two telling, thought­ful, sub­stan­tive cri­tiques of the Nature Med­i­cine arti­cle shed light on the flim­sy nature of its argu­ments.

It would not be unfair to char­ac­ter­ize the arti­cle as “The War­ren Report” of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic.

Genet­ic Engi­neer­ing

Like the Bible, it is open to seri­ous sci­en­tif­ic refu­ta­tion: ” . . . . To put it sim­ply, the authors are say­ing that SARS-CoV­‑2 was not delib­er­ate­ly engi­neered because if it were, it would have been designed dif­fer­ent­ly. How­ev­er, the Lon­don-based mol­e­c­u­lar geneti­cist Dr Michael Anto­niou com­ment­ed that this line of rea­son­ing fails to take into account that there are a num­ber of lab­o­ra­to­ry-based sys­tems that can select for high affin­i­ty RBD vari­ants that are able to take into account the com­plex envi­ron­ment of a liv­ing organ­ism. This com­plex envi­ron­ment may impact the effi­cien­cy with which the SARS-CoV spike pro­tein can find the ACE2 recep­tor and bind to it. An RBD select­ed via these more real­is­tic real-world exper­i­men­tal sys­tems would be just as ‘ide­al’, or even more so, for human ACE2 bind­ing than any RBD that a com­put­er mod­el could pre­dict. And cru­cial­ly, it would like­ly be dif­fer­ent in amino acid sequence. So the fact that SARS-CoV­‑2 doesn’t have the same RBD amino acid sequence as the one that the com­put­er pro­gram pre­dict­ed in no way rules out the pos­si­bil­i­ty that it was genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered. . . .”

Dr. Michael Anto­niou notes that dif­fer­ent genet­ic engi­neer­ing process­es than the one high­light­ed in the Nature Med­i­cine paper can be used: ”  . . . . There is anoth­er method by which an enhanced-infec­tiv­i­ty virus can be engi­neered in the lab. A well-known alter­na­tive process that could have been used has the cum­ber­some name of “direct­ed iter­a­tive evo­lu­tion­ary selec­tion process”. In this case, it would involve using genet­ic engi­neer­ing to gen­er­ate a large num­ber of ran­dom­ly mutat­ed ver­sions of the SARS-CoV spike pro­tein recep­tor bind­ing domain (RBD), which would then be select­ed for strong bind­ing to the ACE2 recep­tor and con­se­quent­ly high infec­tiv­i­ty of human cells. . . .”

The notion that the “Nature Med­i­cine” authors had not heard of the above process is not cred­i­ble: ” . . . . Such a direct­ed iter­a­tive evo­lu­tion­ary selec­tion process is a fre­quent­ly used method in lab­o­ra­to­ry research. So there is lit­tle or no pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Nature Med­i­cine arti­cle authors haven’t heard of it – not least, as it is con­sid­ered so sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly impor­tant that its inven­tors were award­ed the Nobel Prize in Chem­istry in 2018. . . .”

Of more than pass­ing sig­nif­i­cance is anoth­er arti­cle that finds seri­ous fault with the “Nature Med­i­cine” paper. ” . . . . Pro­fes­sor Stu­art New­man, pro­fes­sor of cell biol­o­gy and anato­my at New York Med­ical Col­lege, says that a key argu­ment used to deny that it could be a genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered strain that escaped from a lab­o­ra­to­ry actu­al­ly points to the exact oppo­site. In oth­er words, it indi­cates that SARS-CoV­‑2 could well be genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered and that it could have escaped from a lab. . . . As Adam Lau­r­ing, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of micro­bi­ol­o­gy, immunol­o­gy and infec­tious dis­eases at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan Med­ical School, has not­ed, Andersen’s paper argues that, ‘the SARS-CoV­‑2 virus has some key dif­fer­ences in spe­cif­ic genes rel­a­tive to pre­vi­ous­ly iden­ti­fied coro­n­avirus­es – the ones a lab­o­ra­to­ry would be work­ing with. This con­stel­la­tion of changes makes it unlike­ly that it is the result of a lab­o­ra­to­ry ‘escape’.‘But Pro­fes­sor New­man says that this is total­ly uncon­vinc­ing because ‘The ‘key dif­fer­ences’ were in regions of the coro­n­avirus spike pro­tein that were the sub­ject of genet­ic engi­neer­ing exper­i­ments in labs around the world (main­ly in the US and Chi­na) for two decades.’ . . .”

Pro­fes­sor New­man goes on to high­light oth­er, seri­ous flaws in the argu­ment: ” . . . In an email inter­view with GMWatch, New­man, who is edi­tor-in-chief of the jour­nal Bio­log­i­cal The­o­ry and co-author (with Tina Stevens) of the book Biotech Jug­ger­naut, ampli­fied this spec­u­la­tion by not­ing, ‘The Nature Med­i­cine paper points to vari­a­tions in two sites of the spike pro­tein of the new coro­n­avirus that the authors claim must have arisen by nat­ur­al selec­tion in the wild. How­ev­er, genet­ic engi­neer­ing of one of these sites, the ACE2 recep­tor bind­ing domain, has been pro­posed since 2005 in order to help gen­er­ate vac­cines against these virus­es (see this paper). It is puz­zling that the authors of the Nature Med­i­cine com­men­tary did not cite this paper, which appeared in the promi­nent jour­nal Sci­ence.’ More­over, New­man added, “The sec­ond site that Ander­sen et al. assert arose by nat­ur­al means, a tar­get of enzyme cleav­age not usu­al­ly found in this class of virus­es, was in fact intro­duced by genet­ic engi­neer­ing in a sim­i­lar coro­n­avirus in a paper they do cite. This was done to explore mech­a­nisms of path­o­genic­i­ty. . . . .”

Worth not­ing, again, is the British Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion’s warn­ing dis­cussed in FTR #1129, as well as above: ” . . . .The BMA report warns that legit­i­mate research into micro­bi­o­log­i­cal agents and genet­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed ther­a­peu­tic agents could be dif­fi­cult to dis­tin­guish from research geared towards devel­op­ing more effec­tive weapons. . . .”

As the GMWatch authors con­clude: ” . . . . Such ‘enhanced infec­tiv­i­ty’ research is car­ried out on virus­es all over the world (and not just in Chi­na) to inves­ti­gate their behav­iour and to devel­op vac­cines and oth­er ther­a­pies, as well as for ‘biode­fence’ pur­pos­es. . . .”

Reports are now emerg­ing of pos­si­ble Covid-19 infec­tion among ath­letes who par­tic­i­pat­ed at the Mil­i­tary World Games in Wuhan in Octo­ber 19. 

We have spec­u­lat­ed at some length about the pos­si­bil­i­ty that infect­ing those very healthy, superbly-con­di­tioned indi­vid­u­als might have been an excel­lent vehi­cle for spread­ing the virus around the world. 

Fur­ther dis­cus­sion of this can be found in FTR #‘s 1118 and 1122. We note that Chi­na has spec­u­lat­ed about the Wuhan Mil­i­tary World Games being a vehi­cle for the U.S. to spread the infec­tion.

We have not­ed that lan­guage is, past a point, inad­e­quate to ana­lyze and dis­cuss some of the major con­sid­er­a­tions in the Covid-19 “op.” A bio-weapons would require a very small num­ber of agents in order to be effec­tive­ly dis­sem­i­nat­ed. In addi­tion, we note that–in the age of mind control–an oper­a­tive can be dis­pensed to per­form a func­tion with­out their knowl­edge.

In addi­tion to French ath­letes, con­tin­gents from Swe­den, Spain and Italy appear to have become infect­ed. The appar­ent infec­tion of the French ath­letes pre-dates the first con­firmed case in Chi­na by 20 days.

A fish mer­chant who worked near Charles De Gaulle Air­port test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus on Decem­ber 27.

The appar­ent­ly infect­ed ath­letes par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Mil­i­tary World Games fur­ther com­pli­cates the puz­zling epi­demi­ol­o­gy of the virus.

Doc­tors quot­ed in a New York Times piece under­score the anom­alous epi­demi­ol­o­gy of the virus: ” . . . . In San Jose, tis­sue sam­pling from a woman who died on Feb. 6 revealed that she was prob­a­bly the first known per­son in the U.S. whose death was linked to the coro­n­avirus — a strong sign that the virus may have been cir­cu­lat­ing in that part of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia in Jan­u­ary. But was it part of a large, pre­vi­ous­ly unrec­og­nized out­break? . . .

“. . . . Dr. George Ruther­ford, a pro­fes­sor of epi­demi­ol­o­gy and bio­sta­tis­tics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San Fran­cis­co, the­o­rized that per­haps the woman, who worked for a com­pa­ny that had an office in Wuhan, was one of only a small num­ber of peo­ple who con­tract­ed the virus at that time and that trans­mis­sions prob­a­bly petered out for some rea­son. Oth­er­wise, he said, the region would have seen a much big­ger out­break. . . .

“. . . . Dr. [Trevor] Bed­ford said he also believed this was the more like­ly sce­nario, not­ing that up to half of peo­ple with coro­n­avirus infec­tions have no symp­toms. . . .

“. . . . There could have been a tiny num­ber of iso­lat­ed coro­n­avirus cas­es among trav­el­ers to the Unit­ed States in Decem­ber, Dr. Bed­ford said. But it is pret­ty clear that none of them spread.

“In part, sci­en­tists can tell that by look­ing at the genom­ic fin­ger­prints of each case. But anoth­er clue is the rapid rate at which the virus spreads, Dr. Ruther­ford said. . . . Researchers are not see­ing any chains that appear to go that far back. . . .”

Lead­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s rhetor­i­cal and polit­i­cal charge against Chi­na is Mike Pom­peo. Charg­ing that the virus “escaped” from a lab in Wuhan and equiv­o­cat­ing about whether that release was inten­tion­al, Koch broth­ers-pro­tege Pom­peo cit­ed alleged duplic­i­ty on behalf of Chi­na’s com­mu­nist par­ty in con­nec­tion with the virus. ” . . . . ‘I can tell you that there is a sig­nif­i­cant amount of evi­dence that this came from that lab­o­ra­to­ry in Wuhan,’ Pom­peo said on ABC’s ‘This Week’ Sun­day. ‘Do you think they inten­tion­al­ly released that virus, or it was an acci­dent in the lab?’ Co-Anchor Martha Rad­datz pressed. ‘I can’t answer your ques­tion about that,’ he said, ‘because the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty has refused to coop­er­ate with world health experts.’ . . .”

The Chi­nese med­ical and sci­en­tif­ic estab­lish­ment has worked close­ly with coun­ter­parts glob­al­ly in an attempt to ana­lyze and treat the virus.

The high­ly anom­alous epi­demi­ol­o­gy, the lack of symp­toms in half of infect­ed patients, the wide vari­ety of symp­toms the virus caus­es and, last­ly, the fact that this was a nov­el virus and result­ing infec­tion are all fac­tors to be con­sid­ered in eval­u­at­ing the time­li­ness of the Chi­nese response.

Pom­peo also asserts that the virus was not made in a lab­o­ra­to­ry.

Next, we high­light a mis­lead­ing sto­ry in Rupert Mur­doch’s “The Dai­ly Tele­graph” out of Syd­ney, Aus­tralia. The sto­ry alleges that the Five Eyes elec­tron­ic intel­li­gence net­work has cor­rob­o­rat­ed the “it came from a Chi­nese lab” meme.

Of more than pass­ing inter­est is the dis­clo­sure that the project on bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es con­duct­ed in the Wuhan lab­o­ra­to­ry was a joint U.S./Chinese project, and that Ralph Bar­ic was a key Amer­i­can part­ner in the project.

This is the under­tak­ing about which we have report­ed and dis­cussed exten­sive­ly in the past! ” . . . . One of Dr Shi’s co-authors on that paper, Pro­fes­sor Ralph Bar­ic from North Car­oli­na Uni­ver­si­ty, said in an inter­view with ‘Sci­ence Dai­ly’ at the time: ‘This virus is high­ly path­o­gen­ic and treat­ments devel­oped against the orig­i­nal SARS virus in 2002 and the ZMapp drugs used to fight ebo­la fail to neu­tralise and con­trol this par­tic­u­lar virus.’ . . . .”

Bar­ic was the selectee to recon­struct the SARS Cov2 virus from scratch. Note that the arti­cle below dis­cuss­es the U.S. sus­pen­sion of the “gain of func­tion” exper­i­ments and 2017 resump­tion of same, some­how spin­ning this into the “Chi­na did it” dis­in­for­ma­tion.

The mil­i­tary has links to the Wuhan lab in ques­tion: ” . . . . Fur­ther­more, DARPA and the Pentagon’s past his­to­ry with bioweapons and their more recent exper­i­ments on genet­ic alter­ation and extinc­tion tech­nolo­gies as well as bats and coro­n­avirus­es in prox­im­i­ty to Chi­na have been large­ly left out of the nar­ra­tive, despite the infor­ma­tion being pub­licly avail­able. Also left out of the media nar­ra­tive have been the direct ties of both the USAMRIID and DARPA-part­nered Duke Uni­ver­si­ty to the city of Wuhan, includ­ing its Insti­tute of Med­ical Virol­o­gy. . . .”

A “Guardian” arti­cle sources UK intel­li­gence assets claim­ing that the 15-page dossier didn’t come from a Five Eyes intel­li­gence assess­ment. They assert that it was based on open-source mate­ri­als and put for­ward by the US as “a tool for build­ing a counter-nar­ra­tive and apply­ing pres­sure to Chi­na.”

We con­clude with analy­sis of Trump’s deputy nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er.

Against the back­ground of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s anti-Chi­na cam­paign rhetoric and attempts to pin the blame for Covid-19 on a “lab­o­ra­to­ry” leak and/or delib­er­ate release, we note that the offen­sive is being pushed by The Don­ald’s deputy nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er Matthew Pot­tinger.

“. . . . Matthew Pot­tinger, the deputy nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er who report­ed on SARS out­breaks as a jour­nal­ist in Chi­na, pressed intel­li­gence agen­cies in Jan­u­ary to gath­er infor­ma­tion that might sup­port any ori­gin the­o­ry linked to a lab. . . .”

Pot­tinger is the son of for­mer Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­er­al J. Stan­ley Pot­tinger.

Pot­tinger, Senior was: Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­er­al for Civ­il Rights under Nixon and Ford; report­ed by Don­ald Freed and Fred Lan­dis (in “Death in Wash­ing­ton”) to have foiled inves­ti­ga­tions into the assas­si­na­tions of Mar­tin Luther King and Orlan­do Lete­lier; the attor­ney for the Hashe­mi broth­ers in the Octo­ber Sur­prise inves­ti­ga­tion; a close per­son­al friend of George H.W. Bush (for whom CIA head­quar­ters was named) and, last but cer­tain­ly not least, Glo­ria Steinem’s lover for nine years.

Despite the fact that Steinem tout­ed her CIA back­ground as good jour­nal­is­tic cre­den­tials in both “The New York Times” and “The Wash­ing­ton Post” (both with long-stand­ing CIA links them­selves), Pot­tinger has defend­ed her against charges that she worked for the CIA!!

Worth not­ing, as well, is the fact that the Lete­lier assas­si­na­tion was one of the mur­ders con­duct­ed under Oper­a­tion Con­dor, assist­ed by the CIA. Lete­lier was killed by a car bomb in Wash­ing­ton D.C., while J.Stanley Pot­tinger’s good friend George H.W. Bush was in charge of the CIA when Lete­lier was hit.

(We have cov­ered Oper­a­tion Con­dor in numer­ous pro­grams, includ­ing AFA #19. One of the oper­a­tional cen­ters of Con­dor was the Chilean Nazi enclave Colo­nia Dig­nidad. In FTR #839, we set forth author Peter Lev­en­da’s brave, fright­en­ing vis­it to “The Colony.” This should be digest­ed by any­one inter­est­ed in the his­to­ry of which Pot­tinger, Sr., is a part.)

One won­ders if Matthew may have fol­lowed J. Stan­ley into the CIA, if in fact Dad­dio is Agency, as Mr. Emory sus­pects.

In FTR #s 998, 999, 1000, we set forth what Mr. Emory calls “weaponized fem­i­nism.” Refash­ion­ing the doc­trine of advanc­ing the cause of women into a legal and polit­i­cal weapon for destroy­ing tar­get­ed men, dom­i­nant man­i­fes­ta­tions of the #MeToo move­ment have served the cause of the far right.

Resembling–in its essence–the “libid­i­nal McCarthy­ism” of Arthur Miller’s play “The Cru­cible,”  many high-pro­file man­i­fes­ta­tions of #MeToo have been pro­pelled by evi­den­tiary mate­r­i­al that ranges from dubi­ous to ludi­crous to non-exis­tent.

We find it more than coin­ci­den­tal that Bernie Sanders sup­port­er Tara Read­e’s shape-shift­ing accu­sa­tions against Joe Biden have sur­faced decades after the alleged incident–coinciding with Biden’s chal­leng­ing of Trump and with Pot­tinger, Jr. help­ing to direct the admin­is­tra­tion’s traf­fic.

Pottinger Agonistes: Covid-19 Disinformation Meets Weaponized Feminism

“A lib­er­al’s idea of courage is eat­ing at a restau­rant that has­n’t been reviewed yet.”–Mort Sahl. In FTR #‘s 998, 999 and 1000, we set forth what Mr. Emory calls “weaponized fem­i­nism.” Refash­ion­ing the doc­trine of advanc­ing the cause of women into a legal and polit­i­cal weapon for destroy­ing tar­get­ed men, dom­i­nant man­i­fes­ta­tions of the #MeToo move­ment have served the cause of the far right. In Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M4, we set forth Glo­ria Steinem’s work for the CIA and her nine years’ rela­tion­ship with J. Stan­ley Pot­tinger. In addi­tion to Steinem’s lover, Pot­tinger was: Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­er­al for Civ­il Rights under Nixon and Ford; report­ed by Don­ald Freed and Fred Lan­dis (in “Death in Wash­ing­ton”) to have foiled inves­ti­ga­tions into the assas­si­na­tions of Mar­tin Luther King and Orlan­do Lete­lier; the attor­ney for the Hashe­mi broth­ers in the Octo­ber Sur­prise inves­ti­ga­tion and a close per­son­al friend of George H.W. Bush (for whom CIA head­quar­ters was named). Despite the fact that Steinem tout­ed her CIA back­ground as good jour­nal­is­tic cre­den­tials in both “The New York Times” and “The Wash­ing­ton Post” (both with long-stand­ing CIA links them­selves), Pot­tinger has defend­ed her against charges that she worked for the CIA!! J. Stan­ley Pot­tinger’s son Matthew is Trump’s Deputy Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advi­sor and a point-man for the “Chi­na-did-it” Covid-19 meme. One won­ders if Matthew may have fol­lowed J. Stan­ley into the CIA, if in fact Dad­dio is Agency, as Mr. Emory sus­pects. We find it more than coin­ci­den­tal that Tara Read­e’s shape-shift­ing accu­sa­tions against Joe Biden have sur­faced decades after the alleged incident–coinciding with Biden’s chal­leng­ing of Trump and with Pot­tinger, Jr. help­ing to direct the admin­is­tra­tion’s traf­fic. Bernie Sanders sup­port­er Tara Read­e’s charge brings to mind George H.W. Bush cam­paign man­ag­er Lee Atwa­ter’s gam­bit of using Don­na Rice to destroy the Pres­i­den­tial can­di­da­cy of for­mer Sen­a­tor Gary Hart.

FTR #1026 The So-Called “Arab Spring” Revisited, Part 2

In FTR #‘s 733 through 739, we pre­sent­ed our view that the so-called Arab Spring was a U.S. intel­li­gence oper­a­tion, aimed at plac­ing the Broth­er­hood in pow­er in Mus­lim coun­tries dom­i­nat­ed either by a sec­u­lar dic­ta­tor or absolute monar­chy.

Con­tin­u­ing analy­sis from our pre­vi­ous pro­gram, this broad­cast delves fur­ther into the net­work­ing between the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and Al-Qae­da. Against the back­ground of the occu­pa­tion of Idlib Province in Syr­ia by Al-Qae­da, we high­light the appar­ent role of Mor­si’s gov­ern­ment and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the events sur­round­ing the 2012 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beng­hazi, Libya.

The over­throw of Khadafy in Libya was an out­growth of the so-called Arab Spring, as was the pre­cip­i­ta­tion of the civ­il war in Syr­ia. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the fact that the GOP-led inves­ti­ga­tions of the Beng­hazi attack led direct­ly to both the inves­ti­ga­tion of Hillary Clin­ton’s e‑mails and the deci­sive­ly sig­nif­i­cant FBI tam­per­ing with the 2016 elec­tion, as well as the alleged “hack” of Hillary’s e‑mails!

An Egypt­ian news­pa­per pub­lished what were said to be inter­cept­ed record­ings of Mor­si com­mu­ni­cat­ing con­spir­a­to­ri­al­ly with Muham­mad al-Zawahiri, the the broth­er of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the head of Al-Qae­da. Much of this checks out with infor­ma­tion that is already on the pub­lic record.

Note the net­work­ing of GOP Sen­a­tors John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham with Khairat El-Shater of the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood while he was in prison, as well as the alleged links between the Egypt­ian Broth­er­hood and the cells involved in attack­ing the U.S. Embassy in Libya.

What we may well be look­ing at is a gam­bit along the lines of what has become known as the Octo­ber Surprise–collusion between the Iran­ian Islamists and George H.W. Bush/CIA/GOP to (among oth­er things) desta­bi­lize the Carter admin­is­tra­tion and 1980 re-elec­tion cam­paign.

In addi­tion, we won­der about a deal hav­ing been struck to have Al-Qae­da fight against Bashar Assad in Syr­ia, while avoid­ing attacks inside the U.S.?

Of pri­ma­ry focus in the mate­r­i­al below is Khairat El-Shater (translit­er­at­ed spellings of his name dif­fer.) El-Shater:

1.–Was the num­ber two man in the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, though not for­mer­ly a mem­ber of Mor­si’s gov­ern­ment.
2.–Networked with U.S. Ambas­sador Anne Pat­ter­son and GOP Sen­a­tors John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham and Khairat El-Shater (alter­na­tive­ly translit­er­at­ed with two “t’s” and/or an “al”), short­ly after Mor­si was deposed. ” . . . . It is inter­est­ing to note here that, pri­or to these rev­e­la­tions, U.S. ambas­sador Anne Pat­ter­son was seen vis­it­ing with Khairat El-Shater—even though he held no posi­tion in the Mor­si government—and after the oust­ing and impris­on­ment of Mor­si and lead­ing Broth­er­hood mem­bers, Sens. John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham made it a point to vis­it the civil­ian Shater in his prison cell and urged the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment to release him. . . .”
3.–Was deeply involved in mobi­liz­ing Al-Qae­da on behalf of Mor­si and the Broth­er­hood: ” . . . . Also on that same first day of the rev­o­lu­tion, Khairat al-Shater, Deputy Leader of the Broth­er­hood, had a meet­ing with a del­e­gate of jiha­di fight­ers and reit­er­at­ed Morsi’s request that all jihadis come to the aid of the pres­i­den­cy and the Broth­er­hood. . . . ”
4.–Was the appar­ent source of a $50 mil­lion con­tri­bu­tion by the Broth­er­hood to Al Qae­da: ” . . . . That the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s inter­na­tion­al wing, includ­ing through the agency of Khairat al-Shater, had pro­vid­ed $50 mil­lion to al-Qae­da in part to sup­port the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Egypt. . . .”
5.–Had the pass­port of the alleged leader of the Beng­hazi attack in his home when he was arrest­ed: ” . . . . Most recent­ly, on July 29, 2013, Ahmed Musa, a promi­nent Egypt­ian polit­i­cal insid­er and ana­lyst made sev­er­al asser­tions on Tahrir TV that fur­ther con­nect­ed the dots. . . . Musa insist­ed that he had absolute knowl­edge that the mur­der­er of Chris Stevens was Mohsin al-‘Azzazi, whose pass­port was found in Broth­er­hood leader Khairat El-Shater’s home, when the lat­ter was arrest­ed. . . .”
6.–Epitomized the GOP-beloved, cor­po­ratist eco­nom­ic ide­ol­o­gy and lifestyle: ” . . . . Arguably the most pow­er­ful man in the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is Khairat El-Shater, a mul­ti­mil­lion­aire tycoon whose finan­cial inter­ests extend into elec­tron­ics, man­u­fac­tur­ing and retail. A strong advo­cate of pri­va­ti­za­tion, Al-Shater is one of a cadre of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood busi­ness­men who helped finance the Brotherhood’s Free­dom and Jus­tice Party’s impres­sive elec­toral vic­to­ry this win­ter and is now craft­ing the FJP’s eco­nom­ic agen­da. . . . . . . . the Brotherhood’s ide­ol­o­gy actu­al­ly has more in com­mon with America’s Repub­li­can Par­ty than with al-Qai­da. Few Amer­i­cans know it but the Broth­er­hood is a free-mar­ket par­ty led by wealthy busi­ness­men whose eco­nom­ic agen­da embraces pri­va­ti­za­tion and for­eign invest­ment while spurn­ing labor unions and the redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth. Like the Repub­li­cans in the U.S., the finan­cial inter­ests of the party’s lead­er­ship of busi­ness­men and pro­fes­sion­als diverge sharply from those of its poor, social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive fol­low­ers. . . .”

This broad­cast begins with con­clu­sion of read­ing of a key arti­cle that was fea­tured in our last pro­gram.

Key points of analy­sis in dis­cus­sion of the Morsi/Zawahiri/Brotherhood con­nec­tion include:

1.–Muhamed Zawahir­i’s promise to bol­ster Mor­si’s gov­ern­ment with mil­i­tary sup­port, in exchange for Mor­si steer­ing Egypt in the direc­tion of Sharia law. ” . . . . The call end­ed in agree­ment that al-Qae­da would sup­port the Broth­er­hood, includ­ing its inter­na­tion­al branch­es, under the under­stand­ing that Mor­si would soon imple­ment full Sharia in Egypt.  After this, Muham­mad Zawahiri and Khairat al-Shater, the num­ber-two man of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood orga­ni­za­tion, report­ed­ly met reg­u­lar­ly. . . .”
2.–Morsi’s agree­ment with Zawahir­i’s pro­pos­al. ” . . . . Zawahiri fur­ther request­ed that Mor­si allow them to devel­op train­ing camps in Sinai in order to sup­port the Broth­er­hood through trained mil­i­tants. Along with say­ing that the Broth­er­hood intend­ed to form a ‘rev­o­lu­tion­ary guard’ to pro­tect him against any coup, Mor­si added that, in return for al-Qaeda’s and its affil­i­ates’ sup­port, not only would he allow them to have such train­ing camps, but he would facil­i­tate their devel­op­ment in Sinai and give them four facil­i­ties to use along the Egypt­ian-Libyan bor­der. . . .”
3.–The net­work­ing between U.S. Ambas­sador Anne Pat­ter­son and GOP Sen­a­tors John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham and Khairat El-Shater (alter­na­tive­ly translit­er­at­ed with two “t’s”), short­ly after Mor­si was deposed. ” . . . . It is inter­est­ing to note here that, pri­or to these rev­e­la­tions, U.S. ambas­sador Anne Pat­ter­son was seen vis­it­ing with Khairat al-Shater—even though he held no posi­tion in the Mor­si government—and after the oust­ing and impris­on­ment of Mor­si and lead­ing Broth­er­hood mem­bers, Sens. John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham made it a point to vis­it the civil­ian Shater in his prison cell and urged the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment to release him. . . .”
4.–Note that Mor­si sanc­tioned and Broth­er­hood-aid­ed Al-Qae­da mil­i­tants were appar­ent­ly involved in the Behg­hazi attacks that led to the Beng­hazi inves­ti­ga­tion, the Hillary e‑mails non-scan­dal and all that fol­lowed: ” . . . . Accord­ing to a Libyan Ara­bic report I trans­lat­ed back in June 2013, those who attacked the U.S. con­sulate in Beng­hazi, killing Amer­i­cans, includ­ing Ambas­sador Chris Stevens, were from jiha­di cells that had been formed in Libya through Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood sup­port.  Those inter­ro­gat­ed named Mor­si and oth­er top Broth­er­hood lead­er­ship as accom­plices. . . . ”
5.–Khairat El-Shater was deeply involved in mobi­liz­ing Al-Qae­da on behalf of Mor­si and the Broth­er­hood: ” . . . . Also on that same first day of the rev­o­lu­tion, Khairat al-Shater, Deputy Leader of the Broth­er­hood, had a meet­ing with a del­e­gate of jiha­di fight­ers and reit­er­at­ed Morsi’s request that all jihadis come to the aid of the pres­i­den­cy and the Broth­er­hood. . . . ”
6.–Khairat El-Shater was the appar­ent source of a $50 mil­lion con­tri­bu­tion by the Broth­er­hood to Al Qae­da: ” . . . . That the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s inter­na­tion­al wing, includ­ing through the agency of Khairat al-Shater, had pro­vid­ed $50 mil­lion to al-Qae­da in part to sup­port the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Egypt. . . .”
7.–Next, we high­light anoth­er impor­tant arti­cle from Ray­mond Ibrahim about the Mor­si/Al-Qae­da con­nec­tion to the Beng­hazi attack. Sup­ple­ment­ing the infor­ma­tion about net­work­ing between U.S. Ambas­sador to Egypt Anne Pat­ter­son, John McCain, Lind­say Gra­ham and Khairat al-Shater, we note that:

1.–The Beng­hazi attack­ers were appar­ent­ly linked to Mor­si and the Broth­er­hood: ” . . . . days after the Beng­hazi attack back in Sep­tem­ber 2012, Mus­lim Broth­er­hood con­nec­tions appeared.  A video made dur­ing the con­sulate attack records peo­ple approach­ing the belea­guered U.S. com­pound; one of them yells to the besiegers in an Egypt­ian dialect, ‘Don’t shoot—Dr. Mor­si sent us!’ appar­ent­ly a ref­er­ence to the for­mer Islamist pres­i­dent. . . .”
2.–The pass­port of the alleged leader of the Beng­hazi attack was found in the home of McCain/Graham con­tact Kharat al-Shater’s home when he was arrest­ed: ” . . . . Most recent­ly, on July 29, 2013, Ahmed Musa, a promi­nent Egypt­ian polit­i­cal insid­er and ana­lyst made sev­er­al asser­tions on Tahrir TV that fur­ther con­nect­ed the dots. . . . Musa insist­ed that he had absolute knowl­edge that the mur­der­er of Chris Stevens was Mohsin al-‘Azzazi, whose pass­port was found in Broth­er­hood leader Khairat El-Shater’s home, when the lat­ter was arrest­ed. . . .”
3.–The attack on the U.S. Embassy may well have been intend­ed to take Chris Stevens hostage, in order to use him as poten­tial barter for the Blind Sheikh: ” . . . . The day before the embassy attacks, based on lit­tle known but legit­i­mate Ara­bic reports, I wrote an arti­cle titled ‘Jihadis Threat­en to Burn U.S. Embassy in Cairo,’ explain­ing how Islamists—including al-Qaeda—were threat­en­ing to attack the U.S. embassy in Cairo unless the noto­ri­ous Blind Sheikh—an Islamist hero held in prison in the U.S. in con­nec­tion to the first World Trade Cen­ter bombing—was released.  The date Sep­tem­ber 11 was also delib­er­ate­ly cho­sen to attack the embassy to com­mem­o­rate the ‘hero­ic’ Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001 al-Qae­da strikes on Amer­i­ca. . . .”
4.–The Unit­ed States: ” . . . . first with Anne Pat­ter­son, and now with Sen­a­tors John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham, keep pres­sur­ing Egypt to release Broth­er­hood lead­ers; McCain per­son­al­ly even vis­it­ed the civil­ian El-Shater, whose raid­ed home revealed the pass­port of Azzazi, whom Musa claims is the mur­der­er of Stevens. . . .”

Fol­low­ing the Beng­hazi dis­cus­sion, we recap an arti­cle about the Broth­er­hood and appar­ent Al-Qaeda/Beng­hazi col­lab­o­ra­tor Khairat El-Shater, not­ing the pow­er­ful res­o­nance between his and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s val­ues and those of the GOP and the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty:

1.–” . . . . the Brotherhood’s ide­ol­o­gy actu­al­ly has more in com­mon with America’s Repub­li­can Par­ty than with al-Qai­da. Few Amer­i­cans know it but the Broth­er­hood is a free-mar­ket par­ty led by wealthy busi­ness­men whose eco­nom­ic agen­da embraces pri­va­ti­za­tion and for­eign invest­ment while spurn­ing labor unions and the redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth. Like the Repub­li­cans in the U.S., the finan­cial inter­ests of the party’s lead­er­ship of busi­ness­men and pro­fes­sion­als diverge sharply from those of its poor, social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive fol­low­ers. . . .”
2.–” . . . . Arguably the most pow­er­ful man in the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is Khairat El-Shater, a mul­ti­mil­lion­aire tycoon whose finan­cial inter­ests extend into elec­tron­ics, man­u­fac­tur­ing and retail. A strong advo­cate of pri­va­ti­za­tion, Al-Shater is one of a cadre of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood busi­ness­men who helped finance the Brotherhood’s Free­dom and Jus­tice Party’s impres­sive elec­toral vic­to­ry this win­ter and is now craft­ing the FJP’s eco­nom­ic agen­da. . . .”

We con­clude with infor­ma­tion about the train­ing of activists in high-tech and social media in order to launch the Arab Spring.

In a remark­able and very impor­tant new book, Yasha Levine has high­light­ed the role of U.S. tech per­son­nel in train­ing and prep­ping the Arab Spring online activists.

Note while read­ing the fol­low­ing excerpts of this remark­able and impor­tant book, that:

1.–The Tor net­work was devel­oped by, and used and com­pro­mised by, ele­ments of U.S. intel­li­gence.
2.–One of the pri­ma­ry advo­cates and spon­sors of the Tor net­work is the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors. As we saw in FTR #‘s 891, 895, is an exten­sion of the CIA.
3.–Jacob Appel­baum has been financed by the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors, advo­cates use of the Tor net­work, has helped Wik­iLeaks with its exten­sive use of the Tor net­work, and is a the­o­ret­i­cal accolyte of Ayn Rand.