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FTR #1128 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: This pro­gram explores an inter­roga­to­ry con­sid­er­a­tion, borne out of crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion of epi­demi­o­log­i­cal infor­ma­tion about Covid-19 in New York City.

The recent dis­clo­sure that ran­dom test­ing of res­i­dents of New York City indi­cat­ed that rough­ly one fifth of that munic­i­pal­i­ty’s res­i­dents may have had Covid-19 and recov­ered rais­es seri­ous epi­demi­o­log­i­cal impli­ca­tions. If the report is remote­ly accu­rate, it is epi­demi­o­log­i­cal­ly absurd to sup­pose the virus orig­i­nat­ed in Chi­na.

(The 1984 inter­view with Dr. Wilbert Jor­dan about the anom­alous epi­demi­o­log­i­cal infor­ma­tion about the spread of AIDS, reprised in FTR #1115, should be reviewed for depth and back­ground to this dis­cus­sion.)

In addi­tion, we spec­u­lat­ed in FTR #1127 that New York City MAY have been delib­er­ate­ly vec­tored with the virus. The report cit­ed above makes lit­tle sense if that were not the case. 

In this dis­cus­sion, we col­late a num­ber of items from past pro­grams, con­sid­er­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that some of the ele­ments we dis­cuss MIGHT have fig­ured in a hypo­thet­i­cal vec­tor­ing of New York City:

1. We note in that regard that New York City was delib­er­ate­ly tar­get­ed for test­ing of bio­log­i­cal war­fare agents in the mid-1960’s. ” . . . . In the sum­mer of 1965, Spe­cial Oper­a­tions men walked into three New York City sub­way sta­tions and tossed light­bulbs filled with Bacil­lus sub­tilis, a benign bac­te­ria, onto the tracks. The sub­way trains pushed the germs through the entire sys­tem and the­o­ret­i­cal­ly killed over a mil­lion pas­sen­gers. . . .”
2. For con­sid­er­a­tion in this con­text is the doc­u­ment­ed record of the use of Nazis, fas­cists and white suprema­cists in the Amer­i­can bio­log­i­cal war­fare devel­op­ment over the decades–not all of it in the after­math of World War II and Project Paper­clip.
3. We review infor­ma­tion about Dr. Lar­ry Ford, an acolyte of “The Turn­er Diaries,” who had worked for the CIA assist­ing the apartheid regime’s Project Coast bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram. Ford was inves­ti­gat­ed for pos­si­ble involve­ment with the milieu behind the anthrax attacks after 9/11. ” . . . . he had held extreme racist views and had once told a girl­friend that to under­stand him, she should read ‘The Turn­er Diaries,’ the anti-Semit­ic and white suprema­cist nov­el, pop­u­lar among far-right groups, that pros­e­cu­tors say inspired the Okla­homa City bomb­ing . . . .”
4. Ford oper­at­ed in con­junc­tion with Project Coast under the aus­pices of CIA: ” . . . . But ten min­utes lat­er the liai­son called again and said there was ‘high con­fi­dence’ that Ford had bio­log­i­cal- and chem­i­cal-weapons knowl­edge and did, in fact, have the capa­bil­i­ty to coat the knife with a dead­ly tox­in. Short­ly after that a third call came in: Ford did work for the CIA, the chas­tened FBI offi­cial told the room full of cops. . . .”
5.  An Air Force Acad­e­my report on Project Coast dis­cussed an inter­na­tion­al right-wing net­work that  grew out of the South African bio-weapons pro­gram: ” . . . . Accord­ing to a recent U.S. Air Force Acad­e­my report on South Africa’s bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram, Ford was part of a glob­al net­work of sci­en­tists that Bas­son assem­bled to assist Project Coast. Whether that meant cre­at­ing — or receiv­ing and stor­ing — tox­ins pro­duced by the pro­gram is a mat­ter of con­jec­ture, the report sug­gests, as South African offi­cials have been unable to account for all of the dan­ger­ous mate­r­i­al pro­duced over the years. The Air Force report quotes tes­ti­mo­ny from a Swiss intel­li­gence agent [Juer­gen Jacomet?] who laun­dered mon­ey for Bas­son and who describes a world­wide con­spir­a­cy involv­ing unnamed Amer­i­cans. ‘The death of Dr. Ford and rev­e­la­tions of his South African involve­ment,’ the report states, ‘[rais­es] the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a right-wing inter­na­tion­al net­work, [still] unit­ed by a vision of South Africa once again ruled by whites.’ . . . .”
6. Steven Hat­fill–anoth­er long­time, intel­li­gence-con­nect­ed bio­log­i­cal war­fare expert–has worked with white suprema­cists in both the for­mer Rhode­sia (now Zim­bab­we) and South Africa. He, too, was inves­ti­gat­ed in con­nec­tion with the anthrax attacks.
7. About Hat­fil­l’s CV: ” . . . . Here is a fel­low [Hat­fill] with a fake Ph.D. who posed for The Wash­ing­ton Times as a bioter­ror­ist with a home­made plague dis­sem­i­na­tor, and who boast­ed as recent­ly as last year of hav­ing served with the apartheid gov­ern­men­t’s noto­ri­ous Selous Scouts dur­ing the Rhode­sian anthrax epi­dem­ic. I have three dif­fer­ent edi­tions of his cur­ricu­lum vitae . . . How did such a ras­cal come to be instruct­ing the C.I.A., F.B.I., Defense Intel­li­gence Agency, army, navy, Marines, U.S. mar­shals, and State Depart­ment on such mat­ters as the han­dling of dead­ly pathogens and of bioter­ror inci­dents ? . . .”
8. About the inves­ti­ga­tion into Hat­fill in con­nec­tion with the 2001 anthrax attacks and his asso­ci­a­tion with the Afrikan­er Resis­tance Move­ment (AWB): ” . . . . The FBI’s inves­ti­ga­tion [of the anthrax attacks] this time focused on Dr. Steven J. Hat­fill, who once worked as a research sci­en­tist at the U.S. Army Med­ical Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­ease at Fort Det­rick, Mary­land. Hat­fill had spent con­sid­er­able time in South Africa, and was affil­i­at­ed with the Afrikan­er Resis­tance Move­ment (AWB). How­ev­er, after a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion, the FBI even­tu­al­ly cleared Hat­fill of any con­nec­tion to the anthrax attacks. . . .”
9. Of sig­nif­i­cant inter­est in that regard is Hat­fil­l’s close pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ship with fel­low bio­log­i­cal war­fare expert Bill Patrick, who direct­ed the above experiment/attack on the New York City sub­way: “. . . . Then there’s the 1965 sim­u­lat­ed attack on the New York City sub­way. On June 8 of that year, under Bill Patrick­’s direc­tion, the sub­way was tar­get­ed with the anthrax sim­u­lant B.g. Light­bulbs, each con­tain­ing 87 tril­lion spores, were dropped onto the tracks. Trains then sucked the clouds of live bac­te­ria into the sub­way sys­tem. C.I.A. and mil­i­tary sci­en­tists, bear­ing fake ID’s, were on loca­tion to count the spores. More than a mil­lion rid­ers were exposed to B.g. that day; many inhaled more than a mil­lion spores per minute. Patrick, when telling this sto­ry, still chuck­les about how ‘we clob­bered the Lex­ing­ton line with B.g.’. . . .”
10. Despite the age dif­fer­ence, Patrick and Hat­fill became close: ” . . . . The most curi­ous piece of field­work not­ed on Steven Hat­fil­l’s most recent C.V. is that of  ‘open air test­ing and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty tri­als.’ In a 2001 paper, ‘Bio­log­i­cal War­fare Sce­nar­ios,’ Bill Patrick called the 1965 sim­u­lat­ed attack on the New York sub­way ‘one of the most impor­tant vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty stud­ies’ of the 70 he con­duct­ed. . . . By 1998, Hat­fill was Patrick­’s side­kick in what one col­league has described as a ‘Bat­man and Robin’ team. But it is from USAMRIID that Hat­fill claims to have acquired his work­ing knowl­edge of army-spon­sored ‘vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty’ tri­als. . . .”
11. Hat­fill has net­worked with Steve Ban­non, appear­ing on his pod­cast. (Hat­fill threw cold water on the sug­ges­tion that Covid-19 may have been man­u­fac­tured in a lab­o­ra­to­ry. A high­ly intel­li­gent, vet­er­an covert oper­a­tor, Hat­fill would have cer­tain­ly done this, IF he had knowl­edge of, or involve­ment with, ele­ments that had authored such an event. Giv­en Hat­fil­l’s affil­i­a­tion with groups like the Rhode­sian Selous Scouts and White Afrikan­er Resis­tance, we won­der if Hat­fill or a like-mind­ed indi­vid­ual may have pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion for and/or impe­tus to, a vec­tor­ing of New York City with a rel­a­tive­ly mild Covid-19 strain? Might Hat­fil­l’s work on “four lev­els of bio­log­i­cal attack” been an inspi­ra­tional or oper­a­tional basis for a “lev­el four” attack?: ” . . . . The fourth lev­el con­sists of a self-sus­tain­ing, unstop­pable epi­dem­ic. . . .”
12. In FTR #324, we not­ed that the Broeder­bond orga­ni­za­tion had appar­ent­ly per­pet­u­at­ed itself in an alto­geth­er lethal form as “Die Organ­isas­ie” or “Third Force.” Might such a group have links to Steve Ban­non and/or Trump’s milieu? Might they have been con­nect­ed to a hypo­thet­i­cal vec­tor­ing of New York City? There are Amer­i­cans involved with “Die Organ­isas­ie.” We won­der if this might be linked to the orga­ni­za­tion con­tained in the Air Force Acad­e­my report men­tioned in the arti­cle about Lar­ry Ford?
13. About “Die Organ­isas­ie”: “. . . . [Nico] Palm spoke enig­mat­i­cal­ly of ‘Die Organ­isas­ie,’ a pulp fic­tion nom de guerre (which he calls, even more melo­dra­mat­i­cal­ly, the ‘Spi­der Net­work’). It is a group of white South Africans who wait patient­ly for he demise of the ANC gov­ern­ment and a return to the old days. They are not the mad pseu­do-Nazis of the far right, but some­thing far more orga­nized, well financed, and patient. Oth­er peo­ple know them as ‘The Third Force.’ We are to hear of them time and again from ex-sol­diers like Nico Palm all the way up to South Africa’s deputy defense min­is­ter, Ron­nie Kas­rils. Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, files have also been opened by MI5 in poten­tial­ly sig­nif­i­cant union of like-mind­ed South African right-wingers. All of them are ex-pats now liv­ing in the Unit­ed King­dom, who may sup­port the desta­bi­liza­tion of any black South African gov­ern­ment. . . .”
14. About Amer­i­cans in Die Organ­isas­ie: “. . . . [for­mer Swiss intel­li­gence agent Juer­gen] Jacomet, now ner­vous, is pressed to expand a lit­tle. ‘There is a group of peo­ple here in Lon­don, he says. ‘One could call them the friends of South Africa. They have it in mind to see a strong white South Africa again. There are Amer­i­can con­nec­tions too. . . .”
15. More about the Amer­i­can links to Die Organ­isas­ie” ” . . . . Jacomet men­tions some well-known South African names—men pre­vi­ous­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Third Force activ­i­ties. He also refers to an Amer­i­can name known to Britain’s MI5 for his alleged involve­ment with Bas­son in mon­ey laun­der­ing, sanc­tions bust­ing, and bio­log­i­cal agents pro­cure­ment. [Empha­sis added.] Once again, Die Organ­isas­ie is men­tioned in respect­ful tones, and, once again, the details remain scant and elu­sive. Jacomet remains silent . . . .”
16. When informed by the British about Project Coast (the apartheid BW pro­gram) and Die Organ­isas­ie (or ‘Third Force’), Man­dela feared that the weapons would fall into the hands of the Afrikan­er Resis­tance Move­ment (AWB) with which Hat­fill is con­nect­ed: ” . . . . In the end it was British rep­re­sen­ta­tives who decid­ed to approach Pres­i­dent Man­dela, with a min­i­mum of fan­fare, to advise him that he was inher­it­ing an ugly bio­log­i­cal assas­si­na­tion pro­gram from the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tions. Mandela’s first reac­tion was: ‘Oh my God!’ He was ini­tial­ly ter­ri­fied that the South African ‘Third Force’ ele­ments, includ­ing such orga­ni­za­tions as Eugene Terre Blanche’s ultra right-wing and fanat­i­cal AWB, might lay their hands on it. . . .”
17. Ebo­la was appar­ent­ly the focal point of some of Lar­ry Ford’s work: ” . . . . Ford told the Rileys and oth­ers his sub­se­quent work for the mil­i­tary and the CIA includ­ed research on bio­log­i­cal and chem­i­cal weapons, con­sult­ing on Iraqi capa­bil­i­ties dur­ing the Gulf War, and sneak­ing into epi­dem­ic hot zones in Africa to gath­er sam­ples of such killer organ­isms as the Ebo­la and Mar­burg virus­es. . . .”
18. Dr. Stamps–Zimbabwe’s Health Min­is­ter–had some point­ed obser­va­tions about out­breaks of Ebo­la dur­ing that nation’s war of inde­pen­dence and his belief that they result­ed from Project Coast. Note that Hat­fill was involved with the Rhode­sian Selous Scouts: “ . . . . ‘I have my sus­pi­cions about Ebo­la too. [Dr. Stamps is quoted–the Health Min­is­ter of Zim­bab­we] It devel­oped along the line of the Zam­bezi Riv­er, and I sus­pect that this may have been an exper­i­ment to see if a new virus could be estab­lished to infect peo­ple. We looked on the sero­log­i­cal evi­dence on strange cas­es, includ­ing a fif­teen-year-old child which occurred in 1980. Noth­ing real­ly made epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sense. Do I have evi­dence? Only cir­cum­stan­tial. In fact, the Rhode­sian secu­ri­ty forces were more expert than the Nazis at cov­er­ing up evi­dence.’ . . .”
19. Cor­rob­o­rat­ing some of Dr. Stamps’ sus­pi­cions con­cern­ing Ebo­la, “Gert” (a pseu­do­nym for a vet­er­an of Project Coast) dis­cussed the use of that virus and the relat­ed Mar­burg virus in Project Coast. “Gert” also implies that US sci­en­tists from Ft. Det­rick (Dr. Ford? Steven Hat­fill) were involved with a Zairi­an out­break. “ . . . . ‘Look, I know what one of the very, very, very secret spe­cial­ized units had. We had to test it. And that was viral cap­sules that were specif­i­cal­ly relat­ed to Con­go fever and the hem­or­rhag­ic fevers.’ Ebo­la? ‘Yes.’ So Gert is begin­ning to cor­rob­o­rate Dr. Stamp’s sus­pi­cions in Harare that Ebo­la and Mar­burg, although indige­nous, were also arti­fi­cial­ly seed­ed into South­ern Africa. Bas­son, says Gert, was involved in all this. (when the last ter­ri­ble Ebo­la out­break occurred in Kik­wit, Zaire, as late as 1995, Gert claims that Bas­son was there, unof­fi­cial­ly. Twen­ty years ear­li­er, when the vil­lage of Yam­buku in north­ern Zaire wit­nessed one of the first major Ebo­la out­breaks, two South African sci­en­tists were there, alleged­ly work­ing hand in glove with US mil­i­tary per­son­nel from Fort Det­rick.) . . . . ”
20. In numer­ous pro­grams and posts, we have cov­ered the Gilead Sci­ences drug remde­sivir, now approved for treat­ing Covid-19, despite luke­warm infor­ma­tion from tri­als. Remde­sivir is made by Gilead Sci­ences, a major hold­ing of Robert Mer­cer’s Renais­sance Tech­nolo­gies. (Mer­cer, of course, was Steve Ban­non’s finan­cial angel.) Note that Remde­sivir was ini­tial­ly devel­oped to fight Ebo­la, and “fiz­zled.” Again, might there be a link to Project Coast, the late Dr. Lar­ry Ford, Steven Hat­fill, Ft. Det­rick, “Die Organ­isas­ie” or some com­bi­na­tion there­of?
21. We also note that Chi­na has been mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant inroads into Africa, a devel­op­ment that has been a major focal point of activ­i­ty by Mike Pom­peo’s State Depart­ment. It is worth remem­ber­ing, in this con­text, that such a devel­op­ment MIGHT make Chi­na a focal point of activ­i­ty by Die Organ­isas­ie, per­haps as part of a covert oper­a­tion over­seen by Ban­non. Again, might there be a link to Project Coast, the late Dr. Lar­ry Ford, Steven Hat­fill, Ft. Det­rick, “Die Organ­isas­ie” or some com­bi­na­tion there­of? Cer­tain­ly, sig­nif­i­cant Chi­nese influ­ence in Africa would be seen as an imped­i­ment to a return to dom­i­nance in the region by apartheid/white suprema­cist inter­ests.

1. Lab 257: the Dis­turb­ing Sto­ry of the Government’s Secret Plum Island Germ Lab­o­ra­to­ry; by Michael Christo­pher Car­roll; Copy­right 2004 by Michael Christo­pher Car­roll; Harper­Collins [HC]; p. 14.

. . . . In the sum­mer of 1965, Spe­cial Oper­a­tions men walked into three New York City sub­way sta­tions and tossed light­bulbs filled with Bacil­lus sub­tilis, a benign bac­te­ria, onto the tracks. The sub­way trains pushed the germs through the entire sys­tem and the­o­ret­i­cal­ly killed over a mil­lion pas­sen­gers. . . .

2.  “The Mes­sage in the Anthrax” by Don Fos­ter; Van­i­ty Fair; Octo­ber 2003; pp. 188–200.

. . . . It was while look­ing for infor­ma­tion on the B’nai B’rith inci­dent that I found a Wash­ing­ton Times inter­view with Steven Hat­fill, then a virol­o­gist with the N.I.H., who was said to have “thought care­ful­ly about bioter­ror­ism.” The Times para­phrased Dr. Hatfill“s expla­na­tion of the “four lev­els” of pos­si­ble bio­log­i­cal attack:

The first is the B’nai B’rith vari­ety, in which no real organ­isms are used. (“Hel­lo. This is Abdul. We have put anthrax in the food at Throck­mor­ton Mid­dle School.” In fact, Abdul has­n’t.) We emp­ty pub­lic build­ings for bomb threats, how about for anthrax threats” After all, soon­er or lat­er, one might be real.

The sec­ond lev­el con­sists in the release of real bac­te­ria, but with­out the inten­tion of infect­ing many peo­ple. Prob­a­bly only a few peo­ple would get it, and per­haps none would die.

The third lev­el con­sists in try­ing to get a lot of peo­ple sick, and maybe dead. Anthrax spores put into the ven­ti­la­tion sys­tem of a movie the­ater would do the trick. The result would be hor­ren­dous pan­ic even if only 100 peo­ple got sick or died. 

The fourth lev­el con­sists of a self-sus­tain­ing, unstop­pable epi­dem­ic. . . .

. . . . In 1999, Hat­fill was fired by USAMRIID. He was then hired at Sci­ence Appli­ca­tions Inter­na­tion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (S.A.I.C.), a con­trac­tor for the Depart­ment of Defense and the C.I.A., but he depart­ed S.A.I.C. in March 2002, a month after he took a poly­graph con­cern­ing the anthrax mat­ter that he says he passed. Hat­fill at the time was build­ing a mobile germ lab out of an old truck chas­sis, and after S.A.I.C. fired him he con­tin­ued work on it using his own mon­ey. When the F.B.I. want­ed to con­fis­cate the mobile lab to test it for anthrax spores, the army resist­ed, mov­ing the trail­er to Fort Bragg, North Car­oli­na, where it was used to train Spe­cial Forces in prepa­ra­tion for the war on Iraq. The class­es were taught by Steve Hat­fill and Bill Patrick.

In March 2002, as the F.B.I. con­tin­ued to inves­ti­gate, Hat­fill moved on to a $150,000- a‑year job in Louisiana, fund­ed by a grant from the Depart­ment of Jus­tice. . . .

. . . . Then there’s the 1965 sim­u­lat­ed attack on the New York City sub­way. On June 8 of that year, under Bill Patrick­’s direc­tion, the sub­way was tar­get­ed with the anthrax sim­u­lant B.g. Light­bulbs, each con­tain­ing 87 tril­lion spores, were dropped onto the tracks. Trains then sucked the clouds of live bac­te­ria into the sub­way sys­tem. C.I.A. and mil­i­tary sci­en­tists, bear­ing fake ID’s, were on loca­tion to count the spores. More than a mil­lion rid­ers were exposed to B.g. that day; many inhaled more than a mil­lion spores per minute. Patrick, when telling this sto­ry, still chuck­les about how “we clob­bered the Lex­ing­ton line with B.g.” . . . .

. . . . It is not my job to indict or to try my own sus­pect for the anthrax mur­ders. And even if the F.B.I. should find hard evi­dence link­ing Hat­fill to a crime, he will remain inno­cent until proved guilty. But all Amer­i­cans have a right to know more about the sys­tem that allowed Steven Hat­fill to become one of the nation’s lead­ing bioter­ror experts. Here is a fel­low with a fake Ph.D. who posed for The Wash­ing­ton Times as a bioter­ror­ist with a home­made plague dis­sem­i­na­tor, and who boast­ed as recent­ly as last year of hav­ing served with the apartheid gov­ern­men­t’s noto­ri­ous Selous Scouts dur­ing the Rhode­sian anthrax epi­dem­ic. I have three dif­fer­ent edi­tions of his cur­ricu­lum vitae . . . How did such a ras­cal come to be instruct­ing the C.I.A., F.B.I., Defense Intel­li­gence Agency, army, navy, Marines, U.S. mar­shals, and State Depart­ment on such mat­ters as the han­dling of dead­ly pathogens and of bioter­ror inci­dents” How did he hap­pen to acquire, to quote from his résumé, a “work­ing knowl­edge of the for­mer U.S. and for­eign BW [biowar­fare] pro­grams, wet and dry BW agents, large scale pro­duc­tion of bac­te­r­i­al, rick­ettsial, and viral BW pathogens and tox­ins, sta­bi­liz­ers and oth­er addi­tives, for­mer BG sim­u­lant pro­duc­tion meth­ods, open air test­ing and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty tri­als, sin­gle and 2 flu­id noz­zle dis­sem­i­na­tion, [and] bomblet design?” How did he obtain clear­ance to oper­ate in top mil­i­tary labs on exot­ic viral pathogens, such as Ebo­la, and on Lev­el 3 pathogens such as bubon­ic plague and anthrax?

In August 2000, Hat­fill trained forces at MacDill Air Force Base, in Tam­pa, using a makeshift bioter­ror “kitchen” lab that he built him­self out of scav­enged parts, as well as biosafe­ty cab­i­nets tak­en from USAMRIID. The bor­rowed cab­i­nets, suit­able for turn­ing germs into weapons, are still miss­ing and are said to have been destroyed. Hat­fill, a cer­ti­fied scu­ba div­er, once spoke of how to use a pond in the Fred­er­ick Munic­i­pal For­est a few miles from his for­mer res­i­dence in Mary­land” to dis­pose of tox­ins. On that infor­ma­tion, the F.B.I. searched Whiskey Springs Pond and found a home­made biosafe­ty cab­i­net. The pond, when lat­er drained, dis­closed a rusty bicy­cle and a street sign but no new evi­dence.

This sum­mer, The New York Times, The Wash­ing­ton Post, and the Asso­ci­at­ed Press ran sto­ries on Hat­fil­l’s activ­i­ties as a design­er of sim­u­lat­ed bioter­ror labs. None men­tioned that Hat­fill sprayed his trainees with sam­ples of aerosolized B.g. When ques­tioned about these activ­i­ties, Hat­fill, in appar­ent con­tra­dic­tion of his 2002 résumé, denied hav­ing knowl­edge of how to refine a dry bac­te­r­i­al pow­der to the lev­el achieved by army sci­en­tists.

The most curi­ous piece of field­work not­ed on Steven Hat­fil­l’s most recent C.V. is that of ‘open air test­ing and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty tri­als.’ In a 2001 paper, ‘Bio­log­i­cal War­fare Sce­nar­ios,’ Bill Patrick called the 1965 sim­u­lat­ed attack on the New York sub­way ‘one of the most impor­tant vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty stud­ies’ of the 70 he con­duct­ed. In 1969, when the army’s biowar­fare pro­gram was offi­cial­ly ter­mi­nat­ed, Steven Hat­fill was still in fifth grade. By 1998, Hat­fill was Patrick­’s side­kick in what one col­league has described as a ‘Bat­man and Robin’ team. But it is from USAMRIID that Hat­fill claims to have acquired his work­ing knowl­edge of army-spon­sored ‘vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty’ tri­als. . . .

3.  “The Med­i­cine Man” by Edward Humes; Los Ange­les Mag­a­zine; July, 2001.

The meet­ing at the Bev­er­ly Hills man­sion of the South African trade attaché was unusu­al­ly secre­tive, but Peter Fitz­patrick still man­aged to wit­ness it, peer­ing from an adja­cent room through a mas­sive shared fire­place. He watched as Niel Kno­bel, deputy sur­geon gen­er­al of South Africa — the white-ruled, apartheid South Africa of 1986 — met Lar­ry Ford, a not­ed Los Ange­les gyne­col­o­gist and infec­tious dis­ease spe­cial­ist with an unof­fi­cial sub­spe­cial­ty: bio­log­i­cal and chem­i­cal war­fare. The two spoke in hushed tones, then Ford, a devout Mor­mon who vol­un­teered his ser­vices to mis­sion­ar­ies and Boy Scout troops, passed over a hefty black satchel. The meet­ing came to a close. Lat­er Fitz­patrick sat down with the bois­ter­ous trade attaché, Gideon Bouw­er, who could not resist explain­ing in his thick Afrikaans accent what had just hap­pened.”

The white minor­i­ty gov­ern­ment of South Africa was in those years in a bloody strug­gle with its black cit­i­zens, will­ing to do any­thing to stay in pow­er. Bouw­er’s role was to thwart the U.S. trade embar­go on locked tech­nol­o­gy and exper­tise cov­et­ed by the apartheid regime; Fitz­patrick, a young actor, glib and per­son­able, was part of Bouw­er’s infor­mal embar­go-bust­ing team, mak­ing sure the par­ties at the man­sion were well attend­ed by the well-con­nect­ed.

Fitz­patrick clinked glass­es with Bouw­er and left, then called his han­dler at the FBI, where he served as one of two infor­mants plant­ed at South Africa’s Los Ange­les con­sulate. He told the FBI every­thing; yet, he says, noth­ing was done. Accord­ing to Fitz­patrick, the deputy sur­geon gen­er­al flew off with his suit­case full of death. ‘Why did­n’t you guys stop him?’ he lat­er asked his han­dler. The agent just stared at him. . . .

. . . . One of the most chill­ing sto­ries Ray heard came from the own­er of Chan­tal Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals of Los Ange­les, a com­pa­ny that devel­oped an anti­wrin­kle cream with Ford’s help. She told the FBI that Ford, angry with one of her part­ners, went into the man’s office car­ry­ing a card­board box with a rab­bit inside. He put the box on the man’s desk, pulled on latex gloves, removed a syringe from his pock­et, and squirt­ed two drops of a vis­cous amber liq­uid onto the rab­bit’s shoul­der. It imme­di­ate­ly con­vulsed and died, blood pour­ing out of its nose and ears. Ford, nev­er utter­ing a word, turned and left, the box still sit­ting on the desk. . . .

. . . . Accord­ing to Ray, the agent in charge of the team mocked the notion that Ford was con­nect­ed to bioweapons research and the CIA. But with Ray insist­ing that the infor­ma­tion seemed good, that it matched oth­er accounts, the agent agreed to con­tact the FBI liai­son to the intel­li­gence agency. In about ten min­utes a call came back: The CIA knew of Ford.

The CIA knows a lot of peo­ple, the agent laughed. They prob­a­bly know my grand­moth­er. But ten min­utes lat­er the liai­son called again and said there was ‘high con­fi­dence’ that Ford had bio­log­i­cal- and chem­i­cal-weapons knowl­edge and did, in fact, have the capa­bil­i­ty to coat the knife with a dead­ly tox­in. Short­ly after that a third call came in: Ford did work for the CIA, the chas­tened FBI offi­cial told the room full of cops. . . .

. . . . Ford told the Rileys and oth­ers his sub­se­quent work for the mil­i­tary and the CIA includ­ed research on bio­log­i­cal and chem­i­cal weapons, con­sult­ing on Iraqi capa­bil­i­ties dur­ing the Gulf War, and sneak­ing into epi­dem­ic hot zones in Africa to gath­er sam­ples of such killer organ­isms as the Ebo­la and Mar­burg virus­es. . . .

. . . . While this dra­ma unfold­ed in Irvine, Peter Fitz­patrick was try­ing to get through to some­one, any­one, at the FBI who would lis­ten to his rec­ol­lec­tions of Ford’s involve­ment with biowar­fare in South Africa. No one was avail­able, so he went to the FBI’s bureau in West L.A., where he was turned away by the recep­tion­ist. ‘Basi­cal­ly,’ says Fitz­patrick, ‘they said they did­n’t know who the hell I was and that I should go.’ Next he called the Orange Coun­ty Dis­trict Attor­ney’s Office and asked for the pros­e­cu­tor assigned to the Ford case, but end­ed up trapped in voice mail. He left an exas­per­at­ed mes­sage, then hung up.

The next day, to Fitz­patrick­’s sur­prise, two FBI agents met at length with him to dis­cuss his infor­ma­tion about Ford, bioweapons, and South African sur­veil­lance. Then two things hap­pened: First, the weapons team showed up to do anoth­er high-risk search and exca­va­tion of Ford’s home. They uncov­ered near­ly a hun­dred firearms, most of them shot­guns and rifles, 17 of them ille­gal auto­mat­ic or semi­au­to­mat­ic weapons, includ­ing four Uzis, an M16, and a gang­ster-era Thomp­son sub­ma­chine gun.

Ford had stowed the ille­gal weapons in six large plas­tic cylin­ders buried in his back­yard, along with thou­sands of rounds of ammu­ni­tion — some­thing his fam­i­ly appar­ent­ly did not con­sid­er unusu­al, though they were unaware that one can­is­ter con­tained a large sup­ply of the pow­er­ful mil­i­tary explo­sive C‑4. The plas­tic explo­sives were packed with blast­ing caps and secret­ed dan­ger­ous­ly close to elec­tri­cal wires. Some 52 homes and sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple had to be evac­u­at­ed to the Hyatt Regency for three days (it was, after all, Irvine — no Red Cross sleep­ing bags in the school gym for this crowd). . . .

. . . . Ford and Nils­son were befriend­ed by South African deputy sur­geon gen­er­al Dr. Niel Kno­bel. Ford began advis­ing him on pro­tect­ing troops from bio­log­i­cal attack, as well as sug­gest­ing AIDS pre­ven­tion pro­grams in a coun­try that today has the worst AIDS infec­tion rate on earth — benign and praise­wor­thy endeav­ors that Kno­bel main­tains had ‘no polit­i­cal agen­da.’ But the AIDS pre­ven­tion pro­gram was for whites in the mil­i­tary, not blacks. A secret right-wing South African orga­ni­za­tion, the Broeder­bond, con­duct­ed stud­ies around this same time that sug­gest­ed the AIDS epi­dem­ic could make whites the major­i­ty in the future.

Since then, through the new gov­ern­men­t’s Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Com­mis­sion, which was formed to probe the abus­es of apartheid, infor­ma­tion has sur­faced about a secret South African bioweapons pro­gram. Code-named Project Coast, it was run by anoth­er Ford friend and finan­cial bene­fac­tor, Dr. Wouter Bas­son; Kno­bel had admin­is­tra­tive over­sight. Bas­son’s alleged ties to hun­dreds of poi­son­ings and assas­si­na­tions in South Africa and in the neigh­bor­ing coun­tries of Ango­la and Zim­bab­we earned him the nick­name Dr. Death in the South African press. Doc­u­ments indi­cat­ing he had arranged an off­shore bank account for Ford were found in Ford’s papers after his death.

The com­mis­sion uncov­ered evi­dence that whole vil­lages, includ­ing an Angolan set­tle­ment of sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple sus­pect­ed of har­bor­ing rebels, may have been dec­i­mat­ed by Project Coast weapons. This find­ing par­al­lels infor­ma­tion Nilsson’s ex-girl­friend pro­vid­ed: She said Ford more than once boast­ed of wip­ing out an entire Angolan vil­lage dur­ing a civ­il war. (She claimed Ford had been talk­ing with Nils­son in 1996 about obtain­ing a mis­sile or bomb­ing sys­tem from for­mer Sovi­et bloc nations that might be used to deliv­er bio­log­i­cal weapons.)

Project Coast sci­en­tists called to tes­ti­fy against Bas­son have said Ford was brought in to brief them on the use of bio­log­i­cal weapons in mass attacks and dis­crete assas­si­na­tion, the lat­ter through the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of ordi­nary items such as Play­boy mag­a­zines and tea bags. One sci­en­tist involved with South African bioweapons devel­op­ment not­ed that Ford’s ideas — and arro­gance — were not well received, and that his work was giv­en lit­tle cre­dence in the Project Coast lab. How­ev­er, Ford con­tin­ued to work with Bas­son and Kno­bel, who had a pic­ture of him hang­ing in his den at the time of the sui­cide. . . .

. . . . Accord­ing to a recent U.S. Air Force Acad­e­my report on South Africa’s bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram, Ford was part of a glob­al net­work of sci­en­tists that Bas­son assem­bled to assist Project Coast. Whether that meant cre­at­ing — or receiv­ing and stor­ing — tox­ins pro­duced by the pro­gram is a mat­ter of con­jec­ture, the report sug­gests, as South African offi­cials have been unable to account for all of the dan­ger­ous mate­r­i­al pro­duced over the years. The Air Force report quotes tes­ti­mo­ny from a Swiss intel­li­gence agent who laun­dered mon­ey for Bas­son and who describes a world­wide con­spir­a­cy involv­ing unnamed Amer­i­cans.

‘The death of Dr. Ford and rev­e­la­tions of his South African involve­ment,’ the report states, ‘[rais­es] the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a right-wing inter­na­tion­al net­work, [still] unit­ed by a vision of South Africa once again ruled by whites.’ . . . .

. . . . They say he [South African trade attaché Gideon Bouw­er] raved about the abil­i­ty to keep whites in pow­er through bio­log­i­cal war­fare, and he hint­ed at being part of a sep­a­rate agenda—some sort of extragov­ern­men­tal con­spir­a­cy, like the one described in the Air Force report, that had plans to unleash bio­log­i­cal agents world­wide on South Africa’s ene­mies if the need should ever arise. ‘Just be ready,’ Fitz­patrick remem­bers Bouw­er warn­ing him cryp­ti­cal­ly, then ask­ing, ‘How fast could get your daugh­ter out of the coun­try if you had to?’ ‘I have to be hon­est,’ Fitz­patrick says. ‘Gideon could be a great guy. But there was some­thing dan­ger­ous about him. And when he start­ed talk­ing about that mas­ter plan, about what a great ser­vice Ford had done for his coun­try, and about get­ting out of the coun­try, it gave me chills.’ . . .

4. “Cal­i­for­nia Doctor’s Sui­cide Leaves Many Trou­bling Mys­ter­ies Unsolved” by Jo Thomas; New York Times; 11/3/2002.

. . . . What the searchers did not find was anthrax, and the fear of what remained unfound, along with dozens of oth­er ques­tions, set off inves­ti­ga­tions that ranged from Bev­er­ly Hills to South Africa and back to the Neva­da desert . . . .

. . . . . . . After his [Ford’s] death, Detec­tive Ray said, the author­i­ties learned that Dr. Ford had been a con­sul­tant to Project Coast, which has been accused of cre­at­ing weapons for use against ene­mies of apartheid. They also dis­cov­ered that he had held extreme racist views and had once told a girl­friend that to under­stand him, she should read “The Turn­er Diaries,” the anti-Semit­ic and white suprema­cist nov­el, pop­u­lar among far-right groups, that pros­e­cu­tors say inspired the Okla­homa City bomb­ing . . . .

. . . . Per­haps the deep­est fear in the entire affair was that Dr. Ford had been work­ing with anthrax. That trail, too, has run cold. After Dr. Ford’s sui­cide, the police got tips that he had buried anthrax in a gold mine. They searched fruit­less­ly in Cal­i­for­nia. Four months lat­er, doc­u­ments in a Neva­da trash dump showed that Dr. Ford had been in touch with peo­ple involved in anti-tax and antigov­ern­ment groups. Some of them had tried to use bac­te­ria to extract gold from dirt.

In Decem­ber 2000, inves­ti­ga­tors searched a derelict gold milling site out­side Hen­der­son, Nev. They found a sep­a­ra­tor fun­nel, a white liq­uid and Dr. Ford’s busi­ness card. A fed­er­al agent said they also found direc­tions for mak­ing chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal weapons, includ­ing anthrax. But that was all. The site’s pro­pri­etor had recent­ly died of unre­lat­ed caus­es.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6. The Ene­my of My Ene­my; by George Michael; Copy­right 2006 by the Uni­ver­si­ty Press of Kansas; ISBN 0–7006-1444–3; p. 111.

. . . Short­ly after 9/11, the Unit­ed States was beset with a sec­ond round of ter­ror­ist attacks in the form of anthrax-laden let­ters sent to Sen­a­tor Tom Daschle and var­i­ous rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the media. Accord­ing to one account, sev­er­al top lev­el CIA and FBI offi­cials sus­pect­ed that domes­tic extrem­ists were respon­si­ble for the anthrax attacks. Per­haps the chief rea­son for this sus­pi­cion was that sev­er­al years ear­li­er, Lar­ry Wayne Har­ris, a micro­bi­ol­o­gist by train­ing and reput­ed extreme right sym­pa­thiz­er, had pre­vi­ous­ly been arrest­ed for pos­sess­ing what author­i­ties believed was the anthrax agent. The FBI’s inves­ti­ga­tion this time focused on Dr. Steven J. Hat­fill, who once worked as a research sci­en­tist at the U.S. Army Med­ical Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­ease at Fort Det­rick, Mary­land. Hat­fill had spent con­sid­er­able time in South Africa, and was affil­i­at­ed with the Afrikan­er Resis­tance Move­ment (AWB). How­ev­er, after a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion, the FBI even­tu­al­ly cleared Hat­fill of any con­nec­tion to the anthrax attacks. . . .