Part 1 47:33 | Part 2 47:35 | Part 3 47:27 | Part 4 47:22 | Part 5 46:35
(Record­ed April 23, 1986)

NB: Much of the print­ed source mate­r­i­al for AFA #16, as well as crit­i­cal sup­ple­men­tal doc­u­men­ta­tion is avail­able in the descrip­tion for FTR #606. FTR #686 fea­tures detailed infor­ma­tion about the NCI/Ft. Det­rick con­nec­tion.

For all of the media atten­tion devot­ed to the AIDS epi­dem­ic, com­par­a­tive­ly lit­tle notice has been giv­en to very dis­turb­ing evi­dence sug­gest­ing that the dis­ease is man-made. Record­ed in April of 1986, this pro­gram set forth this evi­dence, antic­i­pat­ing a path of inquiry fol­lowed by numer­ous researchers in the years since it was record­ed.

Begin­ning with Amer­i­can post-war shep­herd­ing of the per­son­nel and files of Unit 731 (a noto­ri­ous Japan­ese bio­log­i­cal war­fare cen­ter that spe­cial­ized in exper­i­ment­ing on POW’s, includ­ing Amer­i­cans), the broad­cast doc­u­ments a his­to­ry of U.S. chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal war­fare exper­i­ments on unwit­ting human sub­jects. In par­tic­u­lar, the Amer­i­can CBW research pre­cip­i­tat­ed joint U.S./British exper­i­ments on Third World pop­u­la­tions, includ­ing peo­ple in areas where AIDS first appeared.

One of the prob­lems bedev­il­ing bio­log­i­cal war­fare researchers was that infec­tious micro-organ­isms don’t dis­tin­guish between “friend­ly” and “unfriend­ly” tar­gets — they are like­ly to infect one’s own per­son­nel, as well as the ene­my. To cor­rect this, Amer­i­can researchers focused on bio­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences between pop­u­la­tion groups that could be exploit­ed for BW pur­pos­es. By 1962, the Pen­ta­gon employed 40 full-time geneti­cists.

In 1969, a Dr. MacArthur addressed a con­gres­sion­al sub-com­mit­tee prepar­ing the defense bud­get for the next fis­cal year. In his address, Dr. MacArthur sug­gest­ed that advances in genet­ic engi­neer­ing could per­mit the cre­ation of immune-destroy­ing bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapons “with­in the next 5 to 10 years.” Most of AFA-16 con­sists of explo­ration of evi­dence that AIDS result­ed from the suc­cess­ful real­iza­tion of the project envi­sioned by MacArthur.

Par­tic­u­lar empha­sis is on the Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute’s rela­tion­ship to Fort Det­rick (the Army’s top BW research facil­i­ty), as well as NCI’s research into viral caus­es of can­cer. Hav­ing alleged­ly “dis­cov­ered” the HIV, the Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute has co-habit­ed Ft. Det­rick, along with the Army, since 1971. Tabbed by Nixon to lead his “war on can­cer,” the NCI req­ui­si­tioned Lit­ton Bio­net­ics to admin­is­ter its Ft. Det­rick facil­i­ty. Orig­i­nal­ly chris­tened as Bio­net­ics Research Sys­tems Incor­po­rat­ed, Lit­ton Bio­net­ics was a sub­sidiary of Lit­ton Indus­tries, a major defense con­trac­tor with sig­nif­i­cant ties to the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion. (Bio­net­ics Research Sys­tems Inc. had been involved with research­ing viral can­cers in con­junc­tion with NCI for sev­er­al years.)

Short­ly after the “dis­cov­ery” of the AIDS virus was announced in the spring of 1984, the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency reclas­si­fied the NCI’s files “Top Secret.” No sat­is­fac­to­ry expla­na­tion was giv­en for the deci­sion.

A crit­i­cal por­tion of the pro­gram high­lights the research of doc­tors and oth­er med­ical pro­fes­sion­als who share the belief that genet­ic engi­neer­ing tech­niques may have been employed to cre­ate AIDS. The broad­cast includes sev­er­al sup­ple­ments, record­ed since the orig­i­nal 1986 record­ing.

Pro­gram high­lights include: AIDS “dis­cov­er­er” Dr. Robert Gal­lo’s work on immune-sup­pres­sant retro-virus­es, under­tak­en on behalf of Bio­net­ics Research Sys­tems in the late 1960’s (this work was done in con­junc­tion with Ft. Det­rick vet­er­ans as part of the NCI’s research into can­cer-caus­ing virus­es); con­nec­tions between the NCI’s viral can­cer research pro­gram and the Naval Bio­sciences Lab­o­ra­to­ry in Oak­land; the pos­si­bil­i­ty that AIDS may have been dis­trib­uted in Africa via the small­pox vac­ci­na­tion pro­gram; pos­si­ble con­nec­tions between AIDS and Swine Fever (alleged­ly used as a BW weapon against Cuban live­stock dur­ing U.S. attempts to oust Cas­tro); the hypoth­e­sis that AIDS may result from “cross-vec­tor­ing” (simul­ta­ne­ous infec­tion with dif­fer­ent path­o­gen­ic organ­isms); the pos­si­bil­i­ty that AIDS may have been dis­trib­uted in the U.S. via an exper­i­men­tal Hepati­tis B vac­ci­na­tion pro­gram; the appar­ent intel­li­gence back­ground of Dr. Wolf Szmuness (who super­vised the exper­i­men­tal Hepati­tis B vac­cine pro­gram); the fascis­tic use of AIDS to stig­ma­tize and oppress those who suf­fer from the dis­ease.