Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

Search Results

Your search for 'biological warfare' returned 213 results.

Patreon Talk, 4/23 Plus Update: Birds of War–More (and Terrifying) Detail on Apparent U.S. Biological Warfare Labs in Ukraine

The lat­est Patre­on talk high­lights the 4/6/2022 UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil dis­cus­sion, boy­cotted by the U.S. and U.K. and blacked out in West­ern media, at which Rus­sia detailed its appar­ent dis­cov­er­ies of U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­grams in Ukraine. Some of the most star­tling infor­ma­tion con­cerned “dig­i­tized,” satel­lite-mon­i­tored migra­to­ry birds fit­ted with cap­sules of dead­ly pathogens. When the birds are over a tar­get­ed coun­try, they can be killed and the pathogens spread, pre­cip­i­tat­ing an epi­dem­ic. A 1960s pro­gram run by the U.S. Army and involv­ing migra­to­ry birds at an Indi­an bird sanc­tu­ary may have been a pre­cur­sor to this pro­gram. Ukrain­ian tele­vi­sion anchor quotes Adolf Eich­mann ver­ba­tim in this video from UKRAINE 24. 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.

Hunter Biden and Biological Warfare Research in Ukraine: Metabiota Meets EcoHealth Alliance

As dis­cussed in FTR#1235, doc­u­ments removed by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine–but archived by the Way­back Machine–confirm that the DTRA is among the sources of fund­ing for DOD-financed bio-labs in Ukraine. We present that infor­ma­tion here. We note that there are sig­nif­i­cant con­nec­tions between the agency over­see­ing the Ukrain­ian projects and insti­tu­tions impli­cat­ed in the appar­ent “bio-skull­dug­gery” sur­round­ing the U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare gam­bit involv­ing what Mr. Emory has termed “The Oswald Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy.” This is dis­cussed in: FTR#‘s 1157–1159, 1170, 1183 through 1193, and 1215. Hunter Biden was deeply involved in the real­iza­tion of Depart­ment of Defense con­tracts for dual-use, poten­tial bio­log­i­cal war­fare research projects in Ukraine. ” . . . . emails from Hunter’s aban­doned lap­top show he helped secure mil­lions of dol­lars of fund­ing for Metabio­ta, a Depart­ment of Defense con­trac­tor spe­cial­iz­ing in research on pan­dem­ic-caus­ing dis­eases that could be used as bioweapons. . . .” There are strong areas of over­lap with the research con­duct­ed in the “Oswald Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy”: ” . . . . Metabio­ta also has close ties to the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy (WIV) . . . Researchers from the Wuhan insti­tute, Metabio­ta and Eco­Health Alliance pub­lished a study togeth­er in 2014 on infec­tious dis­eases from bats in Chi­na, which notes that tests were per­formed at the WIV. . . .” Ukrain­ian tele­vi­sion anchor quotes Adolf Eich­mann ver­ba­tim in this video from UKRAINE 24. 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 #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.

FTR #1137 Lyme Disease and Biological Warfare, Part 3

Fur­ther devel­op­ing the links between bio­log­i­cal war­fare research and the Lyme Dis­ease estab­lish­ment, we review infor­ma­tion from FTR #585.

At every turn, Lyme dis­ease research is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research. Divid­ed into the “Steere” and “ILADS” camps, the Lyme dis­ease research com­mu­ni­ty is split between the view that the dis­ease is “hard-to-catch, easy-to-cure” and the dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed view that the dis­ease is very seri­ous and pro­duces long-term neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­der. The Steere camp dimin­ish­es the sig­nif­i­cance of the dis­ease and is close­ly iden­ti­fied with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research. At the epi­cen­ter of Lyme dis­ease research (and the Steere camp) are mem­bers of the Epi­dem­ic Intel­li­gence Ser­vice, or EIS. EIS per­son­nel are to be found at every bend in the road of Lyme dis­ease research.

The Bor­re­lia genus has long been researched as a bio­log­i­cal war­fare vec­tor. Note that Unit 731 per­son­nel and their files were put to work for the Unit­ed States after World War II, much like the Project Paper­clip sci­en­tists from Ger­many. ” . . . bor­re­lia were known for their abil­i­ty to adopt dif­fer­ent forms under con­di­tions of stress (such as expo­sure to antibi­otics). Shed­ding their out­er wall, (which is the tar­get of peni­cillin and relat­ed drugs), they could ward off attack and con­tin­ue to exist in the body.  . .”

Much of the pro­gram is devot­ed to excerpt­ing and analy­sis of a 2013 post­ing by Ele­na Cook. This dis­cus­sion of “Spiro­chete War­fare,” in turn, makes lib­er­al use of mate­r­i­al from a 1944 text about Japan’s bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram. This book “Japan’s Secret Weapon,” con­tains a great deal of infor­ma­tion about Japan­ese pio­neer­ing of the use of spiro­chetes as bio­log­i­cal war­fare organ­isms.

This mate­r­i­al is to be con­sid­ered in the his­tor­i­cal and polit­i­cal con­text of the incor­po­ra­tion of the key per­son­nel and files of the noto­ri­ous Japan­ese Unit 731 bio­log­i­cal war­fare divi­sion into the U.S. BW pro­gram after World War II.

Appar­ent­ly decades ahead of their Allied coun­ter­parts, Japan­ese use of spiro­chetes encom­passed a num­ber of impor­tant points to con­sid­er.

1.–The Japan­ese under­stood that “cell-wall defi­cient spiro­chetes, ” “gran­ule” and “L‑forms” had tremen­dous sig­nif­i­cance for bio­log­i­cal war­fare. ” . . . This WW2-era book helps to con­firm what some inves­ti­gat­ing the his­to­ry of Lyme dis­ease have long sus­pect­ed; that the offi­cial denial of the dev­as­tat­ing path­o­gen­ic nature of the gran­ule and oth­er ‘L‑forms’(1) of Lyme-caus­ing Bor­re­lia, is relat­ed to their bio­log­i­cal war­fare sig­nif­i­cance. . .”
2.–” . . . To put it blunt­ly, New­man’s book pro­vides cogent cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence that many Cell-wall defi­cient forms of Bor­re­lia are in fact weaponized spiro­chetes, nur­tured, cul­tured and opti­mized for aerosol deliv­ery. . .” 
3.–According to author Bar­clay New­man, a com­bined Japan­ese and Nazi bio­log­i­cal war­fare offen­sive against Hawaii using the spiro­chetal dis­ease lep­tospiro­sis against Hawaii two or three years before the attack on Pearl Har­bor: ” . . . . ‘Nazi and Japan­ese sci­en­tists coop­er­at­ed in war­fare against or with spiro­chetes — in Hawaii.’ (orig­i­nal author’s ital­ics). What he is refer­ring to is an excep­tion­al­ly vir­u­lent out­break of the spiro­chetal dis­ease lep­tospiro­sis, also known as Weil’s dis­ease, and known at the time in Ger­many as ‘slime fever’. With offi­cial reports of 44% mor­tal­i­ty from the out­break, New­man states: Con­sult the author­i­ties, and you will find out that, very def­i­nite­ly, so high a mor­tal­i­ty is attained only by Japan­ese strains of spiro­chetes of slime fever. . . .”
4.–According to New­man, the Japan­ese had con­clud­ed that spiro­chetes, although very close to bac­te­ria in form, were not actu­al­ly bac­te­ria and there­fore: ” . . . . a spiro­chete can also break itself into many tiny gran­ules, each as small as the invis­i­ble mol­e­cule of a virus, and each capa­ble of recre­at­ing a new spiro­chete. . . .”
5.–Again, accord­ing to New­man: ” . . . The Japan­ese have report­ed that you can increase the vir­u­lence, or killing pow­er, of these spi­rals by grow­ing them in flesh and blood, of guinea pig or man. . .” This is inter­est­ing to con­sid­er in light of the evi­dence of Lyme Dis­ease as the prod­uct of bio­log­i­cal war­fare. Might some of the “tests” have had the goal of “grow­ing” such organ­isms in humans? ” . . . The resis­tance of many spiro­chetes, includ­ing bor­re­lia, to cul­ture in vit­ro remains a prob­lem for lab sci­en­tists even today. . .”
6.–The “gran­ule” spiro­chete form was found by the Japan­ese to have great val­ue for aerosolized BW appli­ca­tions: ” . . . Ina­da has report­ed that the Japan­ese know how to get virus-like, quite invis­i­ble par­ti­cles or spiro­chete-frag­ments from spe­cial cul­tures of spiro­chetes of infec­tious jaun­dice. The Japan­ese say that such infin­i­tes­i­mals can be used to infect ani­mals and men, by spray­ing droplets con­tain­ing these spiro­chete-cre­at­ing bits into the air, or spread­ing them through water, or scat­ter­ing them in mud or damp soil. . . .”
7.–The above-men­tioned lep­tospiro­sis or “slime fever” may have been used as a “soft­en­ing-up” agent pri­or to Japan­ese inva­sions in World War II” ” . . . ‘Imme­di­ate­ly before the Japan­ese inva­sions of Chi­na, Indo-Chi­na, the Dutch East Indies, and the Malay States, and short­ly before the Japan­ese inva­sion of India and the Japan­ese strokes at Aus­tralia, the very first out­breaks of slime fever were report­ed from every one of these areas’ . . .”
8.–The Japan­ese had dis­cov­ered the appli­ca­tion of infec­tion via mul­ti­ple pathogens. This may have fig­ured into the devel­op­ment of Lyme Dis­ease as well. ” . . . Fuji­mori (sic) was test­ing out the effects of spread­ing two dif­fer­ent par­a­sites into the same guinea pig at the same time. The Japan­ese dis­cov­ered that one par­a­site pro­motes the lethal action of the oth­er. . . .”
9.–The Japan­ese devel­oped with spread­ing spiro­chetal dis­ease via spray­ing droplets into the eyes of tar­gets. We won­der if Willy Burgdor­fer­’s pos­si­ble Lyme infec­tion from dis­eased Rab­bit-urine may have stemmed from this tech­nol­o­gy? This is dis­cussed below. ” . . . ‘Some­times the Japan­ese think up the damnedest exper­i­ments, such as the trans­mis­sion of syphilis by spray­ing the spiro­chetes into the air or into the eyes of ani­mals or vol­un­teers. Infec­tion is thus accom­plished. . . . if you want to spec­u­late fur­ther about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of spiro­chete war­fare, you can be sure that the Japan­ese know how to spread any spiro­chete dis­ease . . . by spray­ing droplets laden with spe­cial­ly cul­tured spiro­chetes. . . .”
10.-Among the dis­eases appar­ent­ly har­nessed for BW use by the Japan­ese was African relaps­ing fever. Willy Burgdor­fer did his grad­u­ate the­sis about this tick-borne spiro­chetal dis­ease and it was researched at length by his men­tor Rudolf Geigy. (Geigy’s pos­si­ble role as an I.G. Far­ben intel­li­gence agent and Paper­clip recruiter is dis­cussed in FTR #1135. Note that some forms of Bor­re­lia Burgdorferi–a pri­ma­ry causative agent of Lyme Disease–resemble the spiro­chete that caus­es relaps­ing fever. ” . . . Relaps­ing fever is caused by the Bor­re­lia genus of bac­te­ria, and is gen­er­al­ly trans­mit­ted to man either by lice, or by the bite of a tick. It is worth not­ing, too, that recent inves­ti­ga­tions into the genet­ic make-up of Lyme bor­re­lia have found some strains appar­ent­ly more close­ly relat­ed to relaps­ing fever Bor­re­lia than to Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri, long con­sid­ered the only bor­re­lia capa­ble of caus­ing Lyme dis­ease. . . .”

Next, the pro­gram details Rudolf Geigy’s work on relaps­ing fever. We sus­pect that his inter­est in such afflic­tions was not as benign and altru­is­tic as his defend­ers main­tain. As men­tioned above, Lyme Dis­ease “dis­cov­er­er” and bio­log­i­cal war­fare vet­er­an Willy Burgdor­fer did his grad­u­ate the­sis on relaps­ing fever.

Again, as men­tioned above, Willy Burgdor­fer con­tract­ed what he felt was Lyme Dis­ease after urine from an infect­ed rab­bit splashed into his eyes. We won­der if some of the tech­niques of using aerosolized spiro­chete gran­ules might have been involved in Willy’s acci­den­tal infec­tion? ” . . . .While he was rins­ing off one of the trays in the sink, Lyme-infect­ed rab­bit urine splashed into his eyes. A few weeks lat­er, on April 13, he noticed five Lyme bul­l’s-eye rash­es under his armpit and on his tor­so. . . .”

In an unpub­lished man­u­script, Willy Burgdor­fer not­ed not only the per­sis­tence of Lyme Dis­ease but its abil­i­ty to remain dor­mant in the ner­vous sys­tem: “. . . . It is now clear that Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri can per­sist with­in the ner­vous sys­tem for years, caus­ing pro­gres­sive ill­ness, and increas­ing evi­dence sug­gests also that the spiro­chete can remain latent there for years before pro­duc­ing clin­i­cal symp­toms. . . .”

Lyme dis­ease is dif­fi­cult to diag­nose, anoth­er fac­tor that makes it ide­al for BW use. Might the Japan­ese Unit 731 research into spiro­chetal war­fare described by Bar­clay New­man have fig­ured into some of the boil­er-plate research that went into the devel­op­ment of Lyme Dis­ease? ” . . . Lyme’s abil­i­ty to evade detec­tion on rou­tine med­ical tests, its myr­i­ad pre­sen­ta­tions which can baf­fle doc­tors by mim­ic­k­ing 100 dif­fer­ent dis­eases, its amaz­ing abil­i­ties to evade the immune sys­tem and antibi­ot­ic treat­ment, would make it an attrac­tive choice to bioweaponeers look­ing for an inca­pac­i­tat­ing agent. Lyme’s abil­i­ties as ‘the great imi­ta­tor’ might mean that an attack could be mis­in­ter­pret­ed as sim­ply a rise in the inci­dence of dif­fer­ent, nat­u­ral­ly-occur­ring dis­eases. . . .”

There is exper­i­men­tal evi­dence that infec­tion with Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri can pro­duce the amy­loid plaques symp­to­matic of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease. ” . . . Here is hypoth­e­sized a tru­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary notion that round­ed cys­tic forms of Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri are the root cause of the round­ed struc­tures called plaques in the Alzheimer brain. Round­ed “plaques’ in high den­si­ty in brain tis­sue are emblem­at­ic of Alzheimer’s dis­ease (AD). . . .”

The pro­gram con­cludes with more exper­i­men­tal evi­dence of the pro­duc­tion of amy­loid deposits char­ac­ter­is­tic of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease: ” . . . To deter­mine whether an anal­o­gous host reac­tion to that occur­ring in AD could be induced by infec­tious agents, we exposed mam­malian glial and neu­ronal cells in vit­ro to Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri spiro­chetes . . . Mor­pho­log­i­cal changes anal­o­gous to the amy­loid deposits of AD brain were observed fol­low­ing 2–8 weeks of expo­sure to the spiro­chetes. . . These obser­va­tions indi­cate that, by expo­sure to bac­te­ria or to their tox­ic prod­ucts, host respons­es sim­i­lar in nature to those observed in AD may be induced. . . .”

FTR #1136 Lyme Disease and Biological Warfare, Part 2

A recent book about Lyme Dis­ease sets forth cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion that the dis­ease is an out­growth of U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare research.

Bit­ten, The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons chron­i­cles the career of Willy Burgdor­fer, a Swiss-born expert on tick and flea-borne dis­eases who spent most of his career research­ing those areas as a U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare sci­en­tist.
” . . . . if Willy’s claim was true, a crime against human­i­ty had been com­mit­ted by the U.S. gov­ern­ment, and then cov­ered up. . . ” “Bit­ten,” p. 103.

Lis­ten­ers are emphat­i­cal­ly encour­aged to pur­chase and read this book, as well as shar­ing it with oth­ers.

Author Kris New­by presents sub­stan­tive evi­dence that the dis­ease stems from BW research done by Burgdor­fer and asso­ciates. (Burgdor­fer was the sci­en­tist who “dis­cov­ered” the organ­ism that caus­es Lyme Dis­ease.)

 NB: The mate­r­i­al in this broad­cast is delib­er­ate­ly over­lapped with that in the last pro­gram.

In this post, we high­light infor­ma­tion about what Willy termed “the Swiss Agent”–a rick­ettsia that was present in the vast major­i­ty of Lyme suf­fer­ers test­ed ear­ly in research into the dis­ease.

Even­tu­al­ly, dis­cus­sion of the pos­si­ble role of Swiss Agent dropped out of dis­cus­sion. The dis­ap­pear­ance of the Swiss Agent from the sci­en­tif­ic ana­lyt­i­cal lit­er­a­ture coin­cid­ed with Willy’s tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research vet­er­ans.

Key points of dis­cus­sion:

1.–” . . . . I would engage the sci­en­tif­ic part of his brain in answer­ing my two ques­tions: why the Lyme dis­cov­ery files were miss­ing from the Nation­al Archives, and why images of the organ­ism labeled ‘Swiss Agent’ were locat­ed in the archive fold­ers in the time-frame where one would expect the Lyme spiro­chete pic­tures to be. . . .”
2.–” . . . . He told me that in late 1979, he had test­ed ‘over one hun­dred ticks’ from Shel­ter Island, locat­ed about twen­ty miles from the Lyme out­break, and all but two had an uniden­ti­fied rick­ettsial species inside. It looked like Rick­ettsia mon­tana (now called Rick­ettsia mon­ta­nen­sis) under a micro­scope, a non-dis­ease-caus­ing cousin of the dead­ly Rick­ettsia rick­et­sii, but it was a dif­fer­ent species. . . .”
3.–” . . . .‘You say they’re not look­ing for it any­more?’ I asked. ‘They prob­a­bly paid peo­ple off,’ he said. ‘There are folks up there who have a way to enable that.’ . . .”
4.–” . . . . Next, I showed Willy an unla­beled image of a microbe and asked him what it was. ‘That is a Swiss Agent,’ said Willy. I asked him a series of ques­tions on this microbe and he recit­ed what seemed like well-rehearsed lines: the Swiss Agent is a Rick­ettsia mon­tana-like organ­ism found in the Euro­pean sheep tick, Ixodes Rici­nus, and it doesn’t cause dis­ease in humans. . . .”
5.–” . . . . Then I asked him why he brought sam­ples of it from Switzer­land back to his lab. He replied with the response that he often used when he seemed to know the answer but wasn’t going to divulge it: ‘Ques­tion mark.’. . .”
6.–” . . . . The real ‘smok­ing gun,’ though, was Willy’s hand­writ­ten lab notes on the patient blood tests from the dis­ease out­break in Con­necti­cut. These tests showed the proof-of-pres­ence of what I named ‘Swiss Agent USA,’ the mys­tery rick­ettsia present in most of the patients from the orig­i­nal Lyme out­break, a fact that was nev­er dis­closed in jour­nal arti­cles. It didn’t take a PhD in micro­bi­ol­o­gy to see that almost all the patient blood had react­ed strong­ly to an anti­gen test for a Euro­pean rick­ettsia that Willy had called the Swiss Agent. . . .”
7.–” . . . . In March, he wrote to Ander­son and Steere again: ‘Most spec­i­mens, with a few excep­tions, react­ed only against anti­gens pre­pared from the Swiss Agent.’ In short, the dis­ease clus­ters in Con­necti­cut and Long Island seemed to have been caused by Swiss Agent USA. Then, in April, the Swiss Agent USA rick­ettsia van­ished. It was nev­er again men­tioned in talks, let­ters, inter­views, or jour­nal arti­cles. . . .  There is, with­out a doubt, some­thing sus­pi­cious about the sud­den dis­ap­pear­ance of the Swiss Agent USA from all cor­re­spon­dence. . . .”
8.–The dis­ap­pear­ance of the Swiss Agent USA from the lit­er­a­ture on Lyme Dis­ease cor­re­spond­ed with an impor­tant con­ver­sa­tion that Willy had: ” . . . . It was in the begin­ning of 1980—two years before the first Lyme spiro­chetes were found—that the Swiss Agent USA dis­ap­peared. This about-face coin­cid­ed with a series of dis­cus­sions Willy had with old bioweapons devel­op­ers on the Rick­ettsial Com­mis­sion of the Armed Forces Epi­demi­o­log­i­cal Board, as record­ed in his per­son­al phone log. These sci­en­tists were most cer­tain­ly famil­iar with the secret his­to­ry of inca­pac­i­tat­ing rick­ettsial and viral agent test­ing, and they may have dis­cussed with Willy the pos­si­bil­i­ty of there hav­ing been an undis­closed field test in the Long Island region. . . .”
9.–Roundworms sim­i­lar to organ­isms stud­ied by Willy at the Naval Research Unit in Cairo turned up in some of the ticks: ” . . . . That’s when Willy found par­a­sitic round­worm lar­vae in the main body cav­i­ty of two of the ticks. They were sim­i­lar to the deer worms he’d found in ticks on his 1978 trip to Switzer­land, and sim­i­lar to the round­worms that he, Sonen­shine, and the Naval Research Unit in Cairo had worked with for a project explor­ing the ‘rel­a­tive­ly new field of endo-par­a­sitic trans­mis­sion of dis­ease agents.’ In these exper­i­ments, mul­ti­ple dis­ease agents were put inside mos­qui­to-borne round­worms, accord­ing to an NIH research report from 1961. . . .”
10.–Numerically, it appears that the Swiss Agent rick­ettsias out­num­bered the spiro­chetes that ulti­mate­ly were tabbed as the causative agent for Lyme Dis­ease: ” . . . . When Willy dis­sect­ed 124 more Shel­ter Island deer ticks, 98 per­cent had the new rick­ettsias in them and only 60 per­cent car­ried the new spiro­chetes. Willy thought that either microbe might be caus­ing Lyme dis­ease, but, for unknown rea­sons, this alter­na­tive the­o­ry fell into a black hole. . . .”

Piv­ot­ing to dis­cus­sion of the pol­i­tics of Lyme Dis­ease treat­ment, we note that legal and reg­u­la­to­ry rul­ings have enabled the patent­ing of liv­ing organ­isms and that has exac­er­bat­ed the mon­e­tiz­ing of Lyme Dis­ease treat­ment. That mon­e­ti­za­tion, in turn, has adverse­ly affect­ed the qual­i­ty of care for afflict­ed patients. As we will see lat­er, Willy Burgdor­fer was not the only Lyme Dis­ease researcher to become involved with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research. ” . . . . All of a sud­den, the insti­tu­tions that were sup­posed to be pro­tec­tors of pub­lic health became busi­ness part­ners with Big Phar­ma. The uni­ver­si­ty researchers who had pre­vi­ous­ly shared infor­ma­tion on dan­ger­ous emerg­ing dis­eases were now delay­ing pub­lish­ing their find­ings so they could become entre­pre­neurs and prof­it from patents through their uni­ver­si­ty tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer groups. We essen­tial­ly lost our sys­tem of sci­en­tif­ic checks and bal­ances. And this, in turn, has under­mined patient trust in the insti­tu­tions that are sup­posed to ‘do no harm.’ . . .”

Ms. New­by went up against the “Lyme Dis­ease estab­lish­ment” in an attempt to find out why the dis­ease was being mis-diag­nosed and inef­fec­tive­ly treat­ed. Strik­ing­ly, a FOIA suit she filed was stonewalled for five years, before final­ly yield­ing the doc­u­ments she had so long sought.

The “experts” and their agen­da was neat­ly, and alarm­ing­ly, summed up by Ms. New­by: ” . . . . The emails revealed a dis­turb­ing pic­ture of a nonof­fi­cial group of gov­ern­ment employ­ees and guide­lines authors that had been set­ting the nation­al Lyme dis­ease research agen­da with­out pub­lic over­sight or trans­paren­cy. . . . Bot­tom line, the guide­lines authors reg­u­lar­ly con­vened in gov­ern­ment-fund­ed, closed-door meet­ings with hid­den agen­das that lined the pock­ets of aca­d­e­m­ic researchers with sig­nif­i­cant com­mer­cial inter­ests in Lyme dis­ease tests and vac­cines. A large per­cent­age of gov­ern­ment grants were award­ed to the guide­line authors and/or researchers in their labs. Part of the group’s stat­ed mis­sion, culled from these FOIA emails, was to run a covert ‘dis­in­for­ma­tion war’ and a ‘sociopo­lit­i­cal offen­sive’ to dis­cred­it Lyme patients, physi­cians, and jour­nal­ists who ques­tioned the group’s research and motives. In the FOIA-obtained emails, Lyme patients and their treat­ing physi­cians were called ‘loonies’ and ‘quacks’ by Lyme guide­lines authors and NIH employ­ees. . . .”

Fur­ther devel­op­ing the links between bio­log­i­cal war­fare research and the Lyme Dis­ease estab­lish­ment, we review infor­ma­tion from FTR #585.

At every turn, Lyme dis­ease research is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research. Divid­ed into the “Steere” and “ILADS” camps, the Lyme dis­ease research com­mu­ni­ty is split between the view that the dis­ease is “hard-to-catch, easy-to-cure” and the dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed view that the dis­ease is very seri­ous and pro­duces long-term neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­der. The Steere camp dimin­ish­es the sig­nif­i­cance of the dis­ease and is close­ly iden­ti­fied with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research. At the epi­cen­ter of Lyme dis­ease research (and the Steere camp) are mem­bers of the Epi­dem­ic Intel­li­gence Ser­vice, or EIS. EIS per­son­nel are to be found at every bend in the road of Lyme dis­ease research.

The Bor­re­lia genus has long been researched as a bio­log­i­cal war­fare vec­tor.

” . . . . The Bor­re­lia genus of bac­te­ria, which encom­pass­es the Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri species-group (to which Lyme dis­ease is attrib­uted), was stud­ied by the infa­mous WW2 Japan­ese biowar Unit 731, who car­ried out hor­rif­ic exper­i­ments on pris­on­ers in Manchuria, includ­ing dis­sec­tion of live human beings. [iii] Unit 731 also worked on a num­ber of oth­er tick-borne pathogens. . . . . bor­re­lia were known for their abil­i­ty to adopt dif­fer­ent forms under con­di­tions of stress (such as expo­sure to antibi­otics). Shed­ding their out­er wall, (which is the tar­get of peni­cillin and relat­ed drugs), they could ward off attack and con­tin­ue to exist in the body. . . .”

Note that Unit 731 per­son­nel and their files were put to work for the Unit­ed States after World War II, much like the Project Paper­clip sci­en­tists from Ger­many.

Lyme Disease and Biological Warfare, Part 4: Physicians [Financially] Healing Themselves

“Bit­ten, The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons” chron­i­cles the career of Willy Burgdor­fer, a Swiss-born expert on tick and flea-borne dis­eases who spent most of his career research­ing those areas as a U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare sci­en­tist. Author Kris
New­by presents sub­stan­tive evi­dence that the dis­ease stems from BW research done by Burgdor­fer and asso­ciates. Lis­ten­ers and read­ers are emphat­i­cal­ly encour­aged to pur­chase and read her book. In this post, we present dis­cus­sion of Ms. New­by’s expose of the insti­tu­tion­al­ly and finan­cial­ly inces­tu­ous rela­tion­ship between bureau­crat­ic and cor­po­rate enti­ties that both reg­u­late, and prof­it from, Lyme Dis­ease. Key “experts” involved with diag­nos­ing and treat­ing the afflic­tion run inter­fer­ence for the sta­tus quo. The “experts” and their agen­da were neat­ly, and alarm­ing­ly, summed up by Ms. New­by: ” . . . . The emails revealed a dis­turb­ing pic­ture of a nonof­fi­cial group of gov­ern­ment employ­ees and guide­lines authors that had been set­ting the nation­al Lyme dis­ease research agen­da with­out pub­lic over­sight or trans­paren­cy. . . . Part of the group’s stat­ed mis­sion, culled from these FOIA emails, was to run a covert ‘dis­in­for­ma­tion war’ and a ‘sociopo­lit­i­cal offen­sive’ to dis­cred­it Lyme patients, physi­cians, and jour­nal­ists who ques­tioned the group’s research and motives. In the FOIA-obtained emails, Lyme patients and their treat­ing physi­cians were called ‘loonies’ and ‘quacks’ by Lyme guide­lines authors and NIH employ­ees. . . .”

FTR #‘s 1135, Lyme Disease and Biological Warfare, Part 1

” . . . . if Willy’s claim was true, a crime against human­i­ty had been com­mit­ted by the U.S. gov­ern­ment, and then cov­ered up. . . ” Bit­ten, p. 103.

A recent book about Lyme Dis­ease sets forth cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion that the dis­ease is an out­growth of U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare research.

Bit­ten, The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons chron­i­cles the career of Willy Burgdor­fer, a Swiss-born expert on tick and flea-borne dis­eases who spent most of his career research­ing those areas as a U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare sci­en­tist.

Author Kris New­by presents sub­stan­tive evi­dence that the dis­ease stems from BW research done by Burgdor­fer and asso­ciates. (Burgdor­fer was the sci­en­tist who “dis­cov­ered” the organ­ism that caus­es Lyme Dis­ease.)

In past dis­cus­sion of Lyme Dis­ease, we have explored the incor­po­ra­tion of Nazi sci­en­tists via Oper­a­tion Paper­clip into the Amer­i­can bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram and pos­si­ble links between their work and the spread of the dis­ease in Con­necti­cut, across Long Island Sound from Plum Island.

(FTR #‘s 480 and 585 high­light dis­cus­sion about Lyme Dis­ease and bio­log­i­cal war­fare.)

Burgdor­fer­’s entree into the Amer­i­can bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram result­ed from his pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ship with long time men­tor and patron Rudolf Geigy. Geigy belonged to a fam­i­ly whose busi­ness, J.R. Geigy AG, was a Swiss chem­i­cal firm mar­ket­ing dyes and insec­ti­cides.

Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, J.R. Geigy, Ciba and San­doz com­prised a Swiss chem­i­cal car­tel formed in the after­math of World War I to com­pete with the I.G. Far­ben car­tel.

(Today, the three com­pa­nies have coa­lesced as the Swiss phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal giant Novar­tis.)

Even­tu­al­ly, the Swiss con­sor­tium was absorbed into, and became a key com­po­nent of, the I.G. Far­ben car­tel. They read­i­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Third Reich:

1.–” . . . . The chap­ters on Switzer­land’s chem­i­cal indus­try are the most embar­rass­ing sec­tion of the com­mis­sion’s report. It is now clear that the direc­tors of Swiss com­pa­nies in Basel were very well aware what was going on at the time in Ger­many and had knowl­edge of the coerced employ­ment of forced labor­ers in their branch plants in Ger­many as well as of the fact that forced labor­ers died as a result of the con­di­tions in which they were held. . . .”
2.–” . . . . sev­er­al lead­ing Swiss chem­i­cal firms — includ­ing JR Geigy, Ciba, San­doz and Hoff­mann-La Roche — put their own inter­ests ahead of human­i­tar­i­an con­cerns in their deal­ing with the Nazis. . . .”
3.–” . . . .The ICE [Inde­pen­dent Com­mis­sion of Experts] con­clud­ed that the chem­i­cal firms’ boss­es in Switzer­land ‘pos­sessed a high lev­el of detailed knowl­edge about the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion in Nazi Ger­many... [and] incor­po­rat­ed their knowl­edge... into their eco­nom­ic plan­ning and used it as a basis for deci­sion-mak­ing’ . . . .”
4.–” . . . . ‘Geigy main­tained par­tic­u­lar­ly good rela­tions with Claus Unge­wit­ter, the Reich com­mis­sion­er for chem­i­cals.’ . . .”
5.–” . . . . Dur­ing the war, it [Geigy] pro­duced insec­ti­cides and, most notably, the icon­ic ‘polar red’ dye that col­ored the back­ground of Nazi swasti­ka flags. . . .”

All three Swiss firms [Geigy, San­doz and Ciba] were indict­ed in the Unit­ed States in 1942 because of their col­lab­o­ra­tion with I.G. Far­ben and the Third Reich.

1.–” . . . . Those indict­ed includ­ed duPont; Allied Chem­i­cal and Dye; and Amer­i­can Cyanamid; also Far­ben affil­i­ates the Amer­i­can Ciba, San­doz and Geigy. . . .”
2.–” . . . . A long list of oth­er co-con­spir­a­tors includ­ed the Swiss Ciba, San­doz and Geigy com­pa­nies with Cincin­nati Chem­i­cal works, their joint­ly owned Amer­i­can con­cern . . . .”
3.–” . . . . When Sec­re­tary of War Stim­son and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bid­dle agreed to post­pone the tri­al until it would not inter­fere with war pro­duc­tion, one Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cial was quot­ed as say­ing sourly, ‘First they hurt the war effort by their restric­tive prac­tices, and then if caught they use the war effort as an excuse to avoid pros­e­cu­tion.’ . . .”

Use­ful back­ground research with which to flesh out under­stand­ing of the tit­il­lat­ing infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed by Ms. New­by con­cern­ing Geigy and his activ­i­ties can be obtained by read­ing some of the many books avail­able for down­load on this web­site.

Numer­ous pro­grams present research on the top­ic, includ­ing FTR #511.

A key foun­da­tion­al ele­ment for the dis­cus­sion of Bit­ten is the Pen­tagon’s decades-long research into the genet­ic manip­u­la­tion of micro­bial pathogens.

1.–Nobel Prize win­ner Joshua Leder­berg warned of the con­se­quences for human­i­ty of this work: ” . . . .‘The large-scale deploy­ment of infec­tious agents is a poten­tial threat against the whole species: mutant forms of virus­es could well devel­op that would spread over the earth’s pop­u­la­tion for a new Black Death,’ said Leder­berg in a Wash­ing­ton Post edi­to­r­i­al on Sep­tem­ber 24, 1966. He added, ‘The future of the species is very much bound up with the con­trol of these weapons. Their use must be reg­u­lat­ed by the most thought­ful recon­sid­er­a­tion of U.S. and world pol­i­cy.’ . . .”
2.–The Pen­ta­gon was dis­mis­sive of the warn­ing: ” . . . . A month lat­er, the army’s Bio­log­i­cal Sub­com­mit­tee Muni­tions Advi­so­ry Group thumbed its nose at this ‘nation­al pro­nounce­ment made by promi­nent sci­en­tists.’ . . . The advi­so­ry group then con­tin­ued dis­cussing its plans for genet­ic manip­u­la­tion of microbes, new rick­ettsial and viral agents, and the devel­op­ment of a bal­anced pro­gram for both inca­pac­i­tat­ing and lethal agents. . . .”
3.–By 1962, the mil­i­tary’s plans for devel­op­ment of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied microbes were devel­op­ing in earnest. ” . . . . Fort Detrick’s direc­tor of bio­log­i­cal research, Dr. J.R. Good­low, on Feb­ru­ary 16, 1962 . . . added, ‘Stud­ies of bac­te­r­i­al genet­ics are also in progress with the aim of trans­fer­ring genet­ic deter­mi­nants from one type of organ­ism to another.‘The goal of these exper­i­ments was to make bio­log­i­cal agents more vir­u­lent and resis­tant to antibi­otics. . . .”

The Pen­tagon’s genet­ic manip­u­la­tion of microor­gan­isms for bio­log­i­cal war­fare pur­pos­es involved the Rocky Moun­tain Lab and Willy Burgdor­fer.

1.–” . . . . Bioweapons researchers such as Willy knew that infect­ing large pop­u­la­tions would require expos­ing peo­ple to agents for which they had no nat­ur­al immu­ni­ty. And to do this, researchers would have to import and/or invent new microbes. They were, in essence, play­ing God, cre­at­ing ‘bac­te­ri­o­log­i­cal freaks or mutants,’ by using chem­i­cals, radi­a­tion, ultra­vi­o­let light, and oth­er agents, wrote mod­ern inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism pio­neer Jack Ander­son in a Wash­ing­ton Post col­umn on August 27, 1965. . . .”
2.–” . . . . Willy had already been con­duct­ing a tri­al-and-error style of genet­ic manip­u­la­tion in the same way that a corn farmer or a hog grow­er selec­tive­ly breeds strains that result in desired out­comes. He was grow­ing microbes inside ticks, hav­ing the ticks feed on ani­mals, and then har­vest­ing the microbes from the ani­mals that exhib­it­ed the lev­el of ill­ness the mil­i­tary had request­ed. . . .”
3.–” . . . . He was also simul­ta­ne­ous­ly mix­ing bac­te­ria and virus­es inside ticks, lever­ag­ing the virus’s innate abil­i­ty to manip­u­late bac­te­r­i­al genes in order to repro­duce, and thus accel­er­at­ing the rate of muta­tions and desir­able new bac­te­r­i­al traits. In 1966, Fort Detrick’s Bio­log­i­cal Sub­com­mit­tee Muni­tions Advi­so­ry Group put this emerg­ing research area at the top of its pri­or­i­ties, describ­ing it as ‘Research in micro­bial genet­ics con­cerned with aspects of trans­for­ma­tion, trans­duc­tion, and recom­bi­na­tion.’ . .”

 Inter­viewed by an indie film­mak­er named Tim Grey, Willy Burgdor­fer dis­cussed the devel­op­ment of Lyme Dis­ease as a bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapon. It was Burgdor­fer who “dis­cov­ered” the spiro­chete that caused Lyme Dis­ease in 1982. As we will see lat­er, it appears that more than one organ­ism is involved with Lyme Dis­ease.

1.–” . . . . Willy paused, then replied, ‘Ques­tion: Has [sic] Bor­re­lia Burgdor­feri have the poten­tial for bio­log­i­cal war­fare?’ As tears welled up in Willy’s eyes, he con­tin­ued, ‘Look­ing at the data, it already has. If the organ­ism stays with­in the sys­tem, you won’t even rec­og­nize what it is. In your lifes­pan, it can explode . . . We eval­u­at­ed. You nev­er deal with that [as a sci­en­tist]. You can sleep bet­ter.’ . . .”
2.–” . . . . Lat­er in the video, Grey cir­cled back to this top­ic and asked, ‘If there’s an emer­gence of a brand-new epi­dem­ic that has the tenets of all of those things that you put togeth­er, do you feel respon­si­ble for that?’ ‘Yeah. . . .’ ”
3.–” . . . . Grey asked him the one ques­tion, the only ques­tion, he real­ly cared about: ‘Was the pathogen that you found in the tick that Allen Steere [the Lyme out­break inves­ti­ga­tor] gave you the same pathogen or sim­i­lar, or a gen­er­a­tional muta­tion, of the one you pub­lished in the paper . . . the paper from 1952?’ ”
4.–” . . . . The left side of his mouth briefly curled up, as if he is think­ing, ‘Oh, well.’ Then anger flash­es across his face. ‘Yah,’ he said, more in Ger­man than Eng­lish. . . .”
5.–” . . . . It was a stun­ning admis­sion from one of the world’s fore­most author­i­ties on Lyme dis­ease. If it was true, it meant that Willy had left out essen­tial data from his sci­en­tif­ic arti­cles on the Lyme dis­ease out­break, and that as the dis­ease spread like a wild­fire in the North­east and Great Lakes regions of the Unit­ed States, he was part of the cov­er-up of the truth. . . It had been cre­at­ed in a mil­i­tary bioweapons lab for the spe­cif­ic pur­pose of harm­ing human beings. . . . ”

To con­clude the pro­gram, we high­light infor­ma­tion about what Willy termed “the Swiss Agent”–a rick­ettsia that was present in the vast major­i­ty of Lyme suf­fer­ers test­ed ear­ly in research into the dis­ease. Note that this ele­ment of analy­sis will be con­tin­ued in our next pro­gram.

Even­tu­al­ly, dis­cus­sion of the pos­si­ble role of Swiss Agent dropped out of dis­cus­sion. The dis­ap­pear­ance of the Swiss Agent from the sci­en­tif­ic ana­lyt­i­cal lit­er­a­ture coin­cid­ed with Willy’s tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research vet­er­ans.

Key points of dis­cus­sion:

1.–” . . . . I would engage the sci­en­tif­ic part of his brain in answer­ing my two ques­tions: why the Lyme dis­cov­ery files were miss­ing from the Nation­al Archives, and why images of the organ­ism labeled ‘Swiss Agent’ were locat­ed in the archive fold­ers in the time-frame where one would expect the Lyme spiro­chete pic­tures to be. . . .”
2.–” . . . . He told me that in late 1979, he had test­ed ‘over one hun­dred ticks’ from Shel­ter Island, locat­ed about twen­ty miles from the Lyme out­break, and all but two had an uniden­ti­fied rick­ettsial species inside. It looked like Rick­ettsia mon­tana (now called Rick­ettsia mon­ta­nen­sis) under a micro­scope, a non-dis­ease-caus­ing cousin of the dead­ly Rick­ettsia rick­et­sii, but it was a dif­fer­ent species. . . .”
3.–” . . . .‘You say they’re not look­ing for it any­more?’ I asked. ‘They prob­a­bly paid peo­ple off,’ he said. ‘There are folks up there who have a way to enable that.’ . . .”
4.–” . . . . Next, I showed Willy an unla­beled image of a microbe and asked him what it was. ‘That is a Swiss Agent,’ said Willy. I asked him a series of ques­tions on this microbe and he recit­ed what seemed like well-rehearsed lines: the Swiss Agent is a Rick­ettsia mon­tana-like organ­ism found in the Euro­pean sheep tick, Ixodes Rici­nus, and it doesn’t cause dis­ease in humans. . . .”
5.–” . . . . Then I asked him why he brought sam­ples of it from Switzer­land back to his lab. He replied with the response that he often used when he seemed to know the answer but wasn’t going to divulge it: ‘Ques­tion mark.’. . .”
6.–” . . . . The real ‘smok­ing gun,’ though, was Willy’s hand­writ­ten lab notes on the patient blood tests from the dis­ease out­break in Con­necti­cut. These tests showed the proof-of-pres­ence of what I named ‘Swiss Agent USA,’ the mys­tery rick­ettsia present in most of the patients from the orig­i­nal Lyme out­break, a fact that was nev­er dis­closed in jour­nal arti­cles. It didn’t take a PhD in micro­bi­ol­o­gy to see that almost all the patient blood had react­ed strong­ly to an anti­gen test for a Euro­pean rick­ettsia that Willy had called the Swiss Agent. . . .”

Lyme Disease and Biological Warfare, Part 3: The “Swiss Agent”

“Bit­ten, The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons” chron­i­cles the career of Willy Burgdor­fer, a Swiss-born expert on tick and flea-borne dis­eases who spent most of his career research­ing those areas as a U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare sci­en­tist. Author Kris
New­by presents sub­stan­tive evi­dence that the dis­ease stems from BW research done by Burgdor­fer and asso­ciates. Lis­ten­ers and read­ers are emphat­i­cal­ly encour­aged to pur­chase and read her book. In this post, we high­light infor­ma­tion about what Willy termed “the Swiss Agent”–a rick­ettsia that was present in the vast major­i­ty of Lyme suf­fer­ers test­ed ear­ly in research into the dis­ease. The dis­ap­pear­ance of the Swiss Agent USA from the lit­er­a­ture on Lyme Dis­ease cor­re­spond­ed with an impor­tant con­ver­sa­tion that Willy had: ” . . . . It was in the begin­ning of 1980—two years before the first Lyme spiro­chetes were found—that the Swiss Agent USA dis­ap­peared. This about-face coin­cid­ed with a series of dis­cus­sions Willy had with old bioweapons devel­op­ers on the Rick­ettsial Com­mis­sion of the Armed Forces Epi­demi­o­log­i­cal Board, as record­ed in his per­son­al phone log. These sci­en­tists were most cer­tain­ly famil­iar with the secret his­to­ry of inca­pac­i­tat­ing rick­ettsial and viral agent test­ing, and they may have dis­cussed with Willy the pos­si­bil­i­ty of there hav­ing been an undis­closed field test in the Long Island region. . . .”

Lyme Disease and Biological Warfare, Part 2

“Bit­ten, The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons” chron­i­cles the career of Willy Burgdor­fer, a Swiss-born expert on tick and flea-borne dis­eases who spent most of his career research­ing those areas as a U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare sci­en­tist. Author Kris
New­by presents sub­stan­tive evi­dence that the dis­ease stems from BW research done by Burgdor­fer and asso­ciates. Lis­ten­ers and read­ers are emphat­i­cal­ly encour­aged to pur­chase and read her book. A key foun­da­tion­al ele­ment for the dis­cus­sion of “Bit­ten” is the Pen­tagon’s decades-long research into the genet­ic manip­u­la­tion of micro­bial pathogens. Nobel Prize win­ner Joshua Leder­berg warned of the con­se­quences for human­i­ty of this work: ” . . . .‘The large-scale deploy­ment of infec­tious agents is a poten­tial threat against the whole species: mutant forms of virus­es could well devel­op that would spread over the earth’s pop­u­la­tion for a new Black Death,’ said Leder­berg in a Wash­ing­ton Post edi­to­r­i­al on Sep­tem­ber 24, 1966. . . .” Dr. Leder­berg’s warn­ing went unheed­ed: ” . . . . Fort Detrick’s direc­tor of bio­log­i­cal research, Dr. J.R. Good­low, on Feb­ru­ary 16, 1962 . . . added, ‘Stud­ies of bac­te­r­i­al genet­ics are also in progress with the aim of trans­fer­ring genet­ic deter­mi­nants from one type of organ­ism to another.‘The goal of these exper­i­ments was to make bio­log­i­cal agents more vir­u­lent and resis­tant to antibi­otics. . . .” Lyme Dis­ease “dis­cov­er­er” Willy Burgdor­fer focused on genet­ic manip­u­la­tion: ” . . . . He was also simul­ta­ne­ous­ly mix­ing bac­te­ria and virus­es inside ticks, lever­ag­ing the virus’s innate abil­i­ty to manip­u­late bac­te­r­i­al genes in order to repro­duce, and thus accel­er­at­ing the rate of muta­tions and desir­able new bac­te­r­i­al traits. In 1966, Fort Detrick’s Bio­log­i­cal Sub­com­mit­tee Muni­tions Advi­so­ry Group put this emerg­ing research area at the top of its pri­or­i­ties, describ­ing it as ‘Research in micro­bial genet­ics con­cerned with aspects of trans­for­ma­tion, trans­duc­tion, and recom­bi­na­tion.’ . .”

Lyme Disease and Biological Warfare

“Bit­ten, The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons” chron­i­cles the career of Willy Burgdor­fer, a Swiss-born expert on tick and flea-borne dis­eases who spent most of his career research­ing those areas as a U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare sci­en­tist. Author Kris
New­by presents sub­stan­tive evi­dence that the dis­ease stems from BW research done by Burgdor­fer and asso­ciates. Lis­ten­ers and read­ers are emphat­i­cal­ly encour­aged to pur­chase and read her book. Inter­viewed by an indie film­mak­er named Tim Grey, Willy Burgdor­fer dis­cussed the devel­op­ment of Lyme Dis­ease as a bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapon. It was Burgdor­fer who “dis­cov­ered” the spiro­chete that caused Lyme Dis­ease in 1982. As we will see lat­er, it appears that more than one organ­ism is involved with Lyme Dis­ease. ” . . . . Final­ly, after three hours and four­teen min­utes, Grey asked him the one ques­tion, the only ques­tion, he real­ly cared about: ‘was the pathogen that you found in the tick that Allen Steere [the Lyme out­break inves­ti­ga­tor] gave you the same pathogen or sim­i­lar, or a gen­er­a­tional muta­tion, of the one you pub­lished in the paper . . . the paper from 1952?’ In response, Willy crossed his arms defen­sive­ly, took a deep breath, and stared into the cam­era for forty-three seconds—an eter­ni­ty. Then he looked away, down and to the right; he appeared to be work­ing through an inter­nal debate. The left side of his mouth briefly curled up, as if he is think­ing, ‘Oh, well.’ Then anger flash­es across his face. ‘Yah,’ he said, more in Ger­man than Eng­lish. . . . It was a stun­ning admis­sion from one of the world’s fore­most author­i­ties on Lyme dis­ease. . . . He seemed to be say­ing that Lyme wasn’t a nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring germ. . . .”

Custom Search

FROM THE LECTURE SERIES