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FTR #1139 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: 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.
- As the article notes, as of 2007, the U.S. had “more than a dozen” BSL4 labs–China commissioned its first as of 2017. a tenfold increase in funding for BSL4 labs occurred because of the anthrax attacks of 2001. Those attacks might be seen as something of a provocation, spurring a dramatic increase in “dual use” biowarfare research, under the cover of “legitimate” medical/scientific research. In FTR #1128, we hypothesized about the milieu of Stephen Hatfill and apartheid-linked interests as possible authors of a vectoring of New York City with Sars COV2: ” . . . . Before the anthrax mailings of 2001, the United States had just two BSL4 labs—both within the razor-wire confines of government-owned campuses. Now, thanks to a tenfold increase in funding—from $200 million in 2001 to $2 billion in 2006—more than a dozen such facilities can be found at universities and private companies across the country. . . .”
- 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.
1a. Important background information for discussion of the anthrax attacks of 2001, the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent, exponential increase in spending for biological warfare research 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.
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.
. . . . For instance, the first outlet to report on this claim was Radio Free Asia, the U.S.-government funded media outlet targeting Asian audiences that used to be run covertly by the CIA and named by the New York Times as a key part in the agency’s “worldwide propaganda network.” Though it is no longer run directly by the CIA, it is now managed by the government-funded Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which answers directly to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was CIA director immediately prior to his current post at the head of the State Department.
In other words, Radio Free Asia and other BBG-managed media outlets are legal outlets for U.S. government propaganda. Notably, the long-standing ban on the domestic use of U.S. government propaganda on U.S. citizens was lifted in 2013, with the official justification of allowing the government to “effectively communicate in a credible way” and to better combat “al-Qaeda’s and other violent extremists’ influence.” . . . .
. . . . With Radio Free Asia and its single source having speculated about Chinese government links to the creation of the new coronavirus, the Washington Times soon took it much farther in a report titled “Virus-hit Wuhan has two laboratories linked to Chinese bio-warfare program.” That article, much like Radio Free Asia’s earlier report, cites a single source for that claim, former Israeli military intelligence biowarfare specialist Dany Shoham.
Yet, upon reading the article, Shoham does not even directly make the claim cited in the article’s headline, as he only told the Washington Times that: “Certain laboratories in the [Wuhan] institute have probably been engaged, in terms of research and development, in Chinese [biological weapons], at least collaterally, yet not as a principal facility of the Chinese BW alignment (emphasis added).”
While Shoham’s claims are clearly speculative, it is telling that the Washington Times would bother to cite him at all, especially given the key role he played in promoting false claims that the 2001 Anthrax attacks was the work of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Shoham’s assertions about Iraq’s government and weaponized Anthrax, which were used to bolster the case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, have since been proven completely false . . . .
. . . . the controversial neoconservative think tank, the now defunct Project for a New American Century (PNAC), openly promoted the use of a race-specific genetically modified bioweapon as a “politically useful tool.” In what is arguably the think tank’s most controversial document, titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” there are a few passages that openly discuss the utility of bioweapons, including the following sentences:
“…combat likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, “cyber-space,” and perhaps the world of microbes…advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.”
Though numerous members of PNAC were prominent in the George W. Bush administration, many of its more controversial members have again risen to political prominence in the Trump administration. . . .
1b. 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 . . . .”
. . . . During the evening, I was impressed with the Brain Trust. Among other subjects, they discussed the Ebola outbreak; technical details on why they believed that their colleague Bruce Ivins had been framed as the anthrax mailer; and why the commercialization of the U.S. military was bad for the country. . . .
2. Much of the program centers on the anthrax attacks of 2001 and the suspicion that focused on Steven Hatfill as a possible perpetrator of the attacks. 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.
NB: Hatfill was never tried for the attacks. Mr. Emory used the term “acquitted” a few times. The wording might be misunderstood as implying that he had been indicted.
Also: the informant who supplied disinformation concerning Saddam Hussein’s mobile biological warfare laboratories was “Curveball,” not “Softball.”
“The Message in the Anthrax” by Don Foster; Vanity Fair; October 2003; pp. 188–200.
. . . . Patrick’s B.g. sample was purified to a trillion spores per gram — near the theoretical limit — and better than anything ever produced by Iraq, South Africa, or the Soviet Union. An untrained eye could not differentiate it from the anthrax powder that Patrick had produced in 1959. The purpose of the exercise at Dugway, however, was defensive: to prepare our nation for a bioterror attack.
In April 1999, Patrick told Fox News that in two years there will be an attack with a sophisticated agent manufactured overseas. His prediction was not far off the mark.
By October 12, 2001, the press was reporting that Bob Stevens (case 5), the 63-year old tabloid photo editor at American Media Inc. in Boca Raton, Florida, who had mysteriously succumbed to inhalational anthrax on October 5, had been infected at work.(Inhalational anthrax comes from breathing in spores, and is far deadlier than the cutaneous form of the disease, which is usually contracted through cuts and scratches in the skin.) Spores were found throughout the A.M.I. building, with hot spots in the mailroom and on the victim’s keyboard. . . .
. . . . Powder samples from both the Brokaw and Daschle letters were couriered to Fort Detrick, headquarters of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), in Frederick, Maryland. The USAMRIID scientists were alarmed by what they discovered. It was the same stuff that had killed Bob Stevens, the tabloid photo editor, in Florida: the Ames strain, used in the U.S. biodefense program. The distribution of Ames, regulated by USAMRIID, was limited to about a dozen labs under tight security controls. Moreover, the anthrax had been weaponized, refined to its most lethal particle size of one to three microns. Most astonishing was its purity: the powder had been concentrated to a trillion spores per gram. . . .
. . . . New USAMRIID hires that year, following Assaad’s departure, included Steven J. Hatfill, a recruit from the National Institutes of Health. Hatfill was a concept man with a detailed vision for building mobile germ labs. Assaad, meanwhile, took a job with the Environmental Protection Agency, where he now works as a toxicologist testing pesticides. . . .
. . . . 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.
How hard, really, would it be to carry out a bio-attack? Not very, Hatfill said. Culturing bacteria is easy and almost universally understood. . . .
. . . . Searching further, I learned that the B’nai B’rith episode occurred a few months after mysterious gas incidents at Washington National Airport (now Reagan National) and Baltimore- Washington International Airport. On both occasions, passengers were overcome with noxious fumes not publicly identified by investigators. Ten months later, people again fell ill at Washington National and had to be hospitalized after reporting fumes. In January 1998, after the third airport incident in a year, The Washington Times’ magazine, Insight, published a second interview with Hatfill, who said, “These types of incidents could be a form of testing for a possible future terrorist attack — perhaps next time using anthrax.”
This ominous commentary was accompanied by a photograph of Hatfill at home, in his kitchen, wearing garbage bags, gloves, and an army-supply gas mask, illustrating how a bioterrorist might cook up bubonic plague in a private laboratory and cause havoc using a homemade spray disseminator such as the one Hatfill had designed himself. All of which seemed, to me, an unusual hobby for a virologist then employed by the National Institutes of Health.
Then I found another interesting news item. Shortly after Insight published its ghoulish photograph of Hatfill in his home laboratory, a white male, wearing a gas mask, deposited a bottle outside the U.S. Treasury Building. An anonymous call was then placed alerting the U.S. Secret Service that it contained “liquid chemical warfare agent.” The bottle, though found, was not preserved — it was, after all, just a “hoax.”
In its interview with Hatfill, Insight reported that he had worked in Zimbabwe in the late 1970s when “an epidemic of anthrax from natural causes affected 10,000 people.” In fact, Hatfill had been in apartheid Rhodesia from 1978 to 1980 (the year it was renamed Zimbabwe), and witnessed the worst outbreak of anthrax ever recorded — in a part of Africa where anthrax was rarely encountered. During the civil war to topple the apartheid government, the southern Tribal Trust Lands were ravaged by an epidemic that caused 10,738 recorded human infections in about two years. Today, black Zimbabweans and their livestock are still becoming ill and dying from the biological fallout.
That the outbreak was “natural” is debatable. In 1992, Dr. Meryl Nass, an American physician, and Jeremy Brickhill, a Zimbabwean journalist, published separate reports supporting what was already suspected: that the Rhodesian anthrax epidemic was deliberate, a biowarfare attack on the black townships, probably carried out by Rhodesia’s notorious government-backed Selous Scouts militia.
In January 2002, while compiling documents by and about Hatfill, including his unclassified scientific publications, I found a brief autobiography. In it, Hatfill, though American, boasted of having served in the late 1970s with the Selous Scouts in Rhodesia. In that same brief bio, Dr. Hatfill indicated that he had taken his medical degree from the Godfrey Huggins School of Medicine in Harare, Rhodesia, which he attended from 1978 to ’84. Next I searched the Internet for a Greendale School somewhere in Africa and discovered the Courteney Selous School, situated in the wealthy, white Harare suburb of Greendale, a mile from the medical school where Hatfill spent six years obtaining his M.D. while serving, by his own unconfirmed account, with the Selous Scouts.
Steven Hatfill was now looking to me like a suspect, or at least, as the F.B.I. would denote him eight months later, “a person of interest.” When I lined up Hatfill’s known movements with the postmark locations of reported biothreats, those hoax anthrax attacks appeared to trail him like a vapor cloud. But in February 2002, shortly after I advanced his candidacy to my contact at F.B.I. headquarters, I was told that Mr. Hatfill had a good alibi. A month later, when I pressed the issue, I was told, “Look, Don, maybe you’re spending too much time on this.” Good people in the Department of Defense, C.I.A., and State Department, not to mention Bill Patrick, had vouched for Hatfill. I decided to give it a rest. But first, I faxed a comparative-handwriting sample to F.B.I. headquarters, with examples of Hatfill’s printing on the left and printing by the anthrax offender on the right. I am not a handwriting expert, so I supplied the document without comment. A week later, I got a thank-you call.
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. That same month, from Louisiana, came a fresh batch of hoax anthrax letters. L.S.U.‘s Martin Hugh-Jones, a World Health Organization director, examined the powder they contained and found it to be nontoxic. The letters were then put into a zero file without their language being examined by a trained professional.
On the night of March 12, Ayaad Assaad received a call from a person representing himself as a Louisiana F.B.I. agent. The caller demanded to know if Assaad had been told who wrote the Quantico letter. To prove his credentials, the caller rattled off personal information from as far back as Assaad’s Egyptian high school — the Arabic name of which he pronounced correctly. Assaad believes he recognized the caller’s source of information: he was likely reading from Assaad’s confidential SF-171, a U.S.-government employment application form that had been on file at USAMRIID.
Frightened, Dr. Assaad hung up, then called me at home at 10 P.M. to tell me of the incident. I assured him the call was fraudulent. The F.B.I. does not conduct its business in that way.
There were, in my opinion, a few people whose recorded voices should be played back to Assaad to see if he recognized one of them as his anonymous caller. Though it is a felony to impersonate an F.B.I. agent, the task force decided not to investigate. According to Assaad, when he finally called the F.B.I., he was told to get caller ID.
In December 2001, Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a noted bioweapons expert, delivered a paper contending that the perpetrator of the anthrax crimes was an American microbiologist whose training and possession of Ames-strain powder pointed to a government insider with experience in a U.S. military lab. In March 2002, she told the BBC that the anthrax deaths may have resulted from a secret project to examine the practicability of sending real anthrax through the mail — an experiment that misfired despite such precautions as taped envelope seals. That surprising hypothesis made Rosenberg a target for knee-jerk criticism, but competent sources within the biowarfare establishment thought she might well be right.
In April, I met Rosenberg for lunch at an Indian restaurant in Brewster, New York, and compared notes. We found that our evidence had led us in the same direction, though by different routes and for different reasons.
The weeks dragged on. Prodded publicly by [Dr. Barbara Hatch] Rosenberg and privately by myself, the F.B.I.‘s anthrax task force nevertheless seemed stubbornly unwilling to consider the evidence pointing toward a military insider or to examine the Quantico letter or those few “hoax” biothreats that I believed, and still believe, may shed light on the anthrax murders. The additional documents that I had been expecting from the F.B.I. never arrived. S.S.A. Fitzgerald, the F.B.I.‘s top in-house text analyst, asked to examine the same set of documents and received the same answer: no. I’m not an insider, nor an old hand. I have worked with the F.B.I. for only six years, on no more than 20 investigations. But never have I encountered such reluctance to examine potentially critical documents.
Meanwhile, friends of Fort Detrick were leaking to the press new pieces of disinformation indicating that the mailed anthrax probably came from Iraq. The leaks included false allegations that the Daschle anthrax included additives distinctive to the Iraqi arms program and that it had been dried using an atomizer spray dryer sold by Denmark to Iraq.
Her patience exhausted, Dr. Rosenberg met with the Senate Judiciary Committee staff on June 18, 2002, and laid out the evidence, such as it was, hers and mine. Van Harp, head of the Amerithrax Task Force, sat in on the briefing. The senators were attentive. So, too, evidently, was Harp: exactly one week after Rosenberg’s meeting with the Judiciary Committee staff, the F.B.I. searched Hatfill’s residence. A bureau spokesman described it to The Washington Times as a “voluntary search” without a warrant, “requested” by Dr. Hatfill to clear his name.
Suddenly I was being flooded with documents from reporters and concerned scientists: letters, e‑mails, curricula vitae, handwriting samples, and original fiction by Steve Hatfill. I learned from one document that Hatfill had audited a Super Terrorism seminar in Washington, D.C., on April 24, 1997, the day of the B’nai B’rith incident. The next day, in a letter to the seminar’s organizer, Edgar Brenner, he wrote that he was “tremendously interested in becoming more involved in this area” and noted that the petri-dish scare, so soon after the seminar, showed that “this topic is vital to the security of the United States.” Hatfill’s original fiction included a cut-and-paste forgery of a diploma for a Ph.D. from Rhodes University, which he used to obtain his jobs at the N.I.H., USAMRIID, and S.A.I.C.
No less interesting to me, as a professor of English literature, was Hatfill’s unpublished novel, Emergence, which I examined in Washington at the U.S. Copyright Office. In the book, an Iraqi virologist launches a bioterror attack on behalf of an unnamed sponsor, using an identity acquired from the Irish Republican Army and a homemade sprayer like the one Steven J. Hatfill demonstrated for The Washington Times. A fictional scientist named Steven J. Roberts comes to the rescue, tracing the outbreak to Iraq. The Strangelovean novel ends with America nuking Baghdad. As the warheads fall, the pilot remarks, “Beautiful . . . just beautiful. Welcome to Fuck City, Ragheads! Let’s get the hell out of Dodge.”
I was reminded of Bill Patrick’s words in his talk at Maxwell Air Force Base: “The beauty of biological warfare, good people, is that you can pick an agent with a short period of incubation, or a moderate period of incubation, or a long period. And this, I think, would be very attractive to terrorists, because they can do their dirty work and get out of Dodge City, and you won’t know that you’re infected till they’re long gone.”
Hatfill’s novel, however, has a surprise ending. In a three-page epilogue, the narrator, a Russian mobster, reveals that his own organization, not Iraq, is responsible for the bioterror attack:
“The reaction was as great as we had hoped for the entire focus of the American F.B.I. has now shifted towards combating chemical/ biological terrorism and this is allowing us to formulate the unprecedented expansion of our organization.”
Biowarfare fiction was no mere lark for Steven Hatfill. It was his specialty. His responsibilities at USAMRIID included the writing of bioterror scenarios, at least one of which actually happened. Hatfill envisioned someone spreading a pathogen throughout several floors of a public office building. It would take only one reported illness, he predicted, “to shut down the entire building, especially if the bug had been sprayed on several .floors. Then the call comes: “Let our man loose, or we’ll do a school.” In August 1998, in Wichita, Kansas, 40 miles southeast of Southwestern College, Hatfill’s alma mater, powder was spread throughout several floors of the Finney State Office Building. Then came “the call,” in the form of a letter from a team of Christian Identity extremists and a group calling itself Brothers for Freedom of Americans.
A few days later, Hatfill and Bill Patrick arrived in San Diego for the Worldwide Conference on Antiterrorism, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense. I asked my F.B.I. contact for the Wichita documents. Again, my requests were denied.
The ink was hardly dry on Emergence when the government hired Hatfill, now working for S.A.I.C., to commission a paper from Bill Patrick focusing on how to respond to a biological terror event.
I have read Patrick’s 1999 report “Risk Assessment.” Though it’s a classified document, it contains little that he hasn’t said before elsewhere. I did, however, find in it something that surprised me: Patrick describes a hypothetical incident in which an attacker uses the U.S. mail service to deliver a business envelope containing no more than 2.5 grams of aerosolized anthrax, refined to a trillion spores per gram, in particles smaller than five microns. Patrick explains that 2.5 grams is the amount that can be placed into a standard envelope without detection. “More powder makes the envelope bulge and draws attention.”
As prophecies go, that one’s right on the money. The “DEATH TO AMERICA” letters sent two years later to Senators Daschle and Leahy contained about a gram of aerosolized anthrax, particle size one to three microns, refined to a trillion spores per gram. Bill Patrick plus the Dugway scientists make up Richard Spertzel’s short list of four U.S. experts who know how to make such a fine dry powder. The anthrax killer, whoever he may be, represents a fifth expert with Patrick’s bench skills. But until the Daschle powder appeared, every quoted expert I had seen except Patrick said it couldn’t be done at all.
After rumors broke that Bill Patrick, in a classified paper, had foreseen a bioterror attack using the mail service, a transcript of his paper was leaked to the press. The leaked version represents Patrick’s original text for S.A.I.C., typos and all, but with one critical omission: a footnote in which Patrick claims that the U.S. has refined “weaponized” powder to a trillion spores per gram has disappeared.
By midsummer 2002, the F.B.I. and even Attorney General John Ashcroft were obliged to call Steve Hatfill a “person of interest,” despite diehard assurances from other government sources that he wasn’t. That August, the F.B.I. returned to Hatfill’s Maryland apartment. Searching his refrigerator, agents found a canister of Bacillus thuringiensis, or B.t. — a mostly harmless pesticide widely used on caterpillars — which USAMRIID adopted for study in 1995, after UNSCOM discovered that B.t. was Iraq’s favored anthrax simulant. . . .
. . . . As for Hatfill, it was the F.B.I.‘s best team of trained bloodhounds, not an offender profile nor my text analysis, that finally persuaded the Amerithrax Task Force in July 2002 to associate Hatfill with the anthrax letters and put him under 24-hour surveillance. The bureau’s description of him as a “person of interest” is neither inaccurate nor unfair. (Through his lawyer, Hatfill maintained his innocence and declined to comment for this article.) . . . .
. . . . Several of America’s bioweaponeers have said, for the record, that the anthrax attack has an upside. The killings have forced long-awaited F.D.A. approval of the Bioport anthrax vaccine facility and prompted increased federal spending on biodefense — by $6 billion in 2003 alone. But the anthrax offender also diverted law-enforcement resources when we needed them most and wreaked havoc on the U.S. Postal Service. He has shown the world how to disrupt the American economy with minimal expense, and how to kill with minimal risk of being caught.
Now that it“s been done once, it seems likely to happen again. . . .
6. 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.
- 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. . . .”
- 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. . . .”
“High-Stakes Science” by Jeneen Interlandi; Newsweek; 12/05/2007.
. . . . 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. . . .
. . . . 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.” And when it comes to terrorism, Ozonoff says, more labs will only increase the threat of an attack. “There has been one serious bioterror incident,” he says. “That was anthrax, and it came from a biodefense lab.” While the university has repeatedly stated that the new facility will not house bioweapons research, that might not be a promise it can keep. 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. . . .
7. 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. The firm’s stock has been heavily invested in by hedge funds, including Robert Mercer’s Renaissance Technologies. Gilead Sciences’ stock has been a major driver of the stock market’s performance.
During the post‑9/11 period of exploding government investments in biodefense programs, 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. . . .”
“Rumsfeld’s growing stake in Tamiflu” by Nelson D. Schwartz; CNN; 10/31/2005
The prospect of a bird flu outbreak may be panicking people around the globe, but it’s proving to be very good news for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other politically connected investors in Gilead Sciences, the California biotech company that owns the rights to Tamiflu, the influenza remedy that’s now the most-sought after drug in the world.
…
The forms don’t reveal the exact number of shares Rumsfeld owns, but in the past six months fears of a pandemic and the ensuing scramble for Tamiflu have sent Gilead’s stock from $35 to $47. That’s made the Pentagon chief, already one of the wealthiest members of the Bush cabinet, at least $1 million richer.
Rumsfeld isn’t the only political heavyweight benefiting from demand for Tamiflu, which is manufactured and marketed by Swiss pharma giant Roche. (Gilead receives a royalty from Roche equaling about 10% of sales.) Former Secretary of State George Shultz, who is on Gilead’s board, has sold more than $7 million worth of Gilead since the beginning of 2005.
Another board member is the wife of former California Gov. Pete Wilson.
“I don’t know of any biotech company that’s so politically well-connected,” says analyst Andrew McDonald of Think Equity Partners in San Francisco.
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. Roche expects 2005 sales for Tamiflu to be about $1 billion, compared with $258 million in 2004.
Rumsfeld recused himself from any decisions involving Gilead when he left Gilead and became Secretary of Defense in early 2001. And late last month, notes a senior Pentagon official, Rumsfeld went even further and had the Pentagon’s general counsel issue additional instructions outlining what he could and could not be involved in if there were an avian flu pandemic and the Pentagon had to respond.
As the flu issue heated up early this year, according to the Pentagon official, Rumsfeld considered unloading his entire Gilead stake and sought the advice of the Department of Justice, the SEC and the federal Office of Government Ethics.
Those agencies didn’t offer an opinion so Rumsfeld consulted a private securities lawyer, who advised him that it was safer to hold on to the stock and be quite public about his recusal rather than sell and run the risk of being accused of trading on insider information, something Rumsfeld doesn’t believe he possesses. So he’s keeping his shares for the time being.
8a. 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 has made a killing out of bird flu. The US Defence Secretary has made more than $5m (£2.9m) in capital gains from selling shares in the biotechnology firm that discovered and developed Tamiflu, the drug being bought in massive amounts by Governments to treat a possible human pandemic of the disease.
More than 60 countries have so far ordered large stocks of the antiviral medication – the only oral medicine believed to be effective against the deadly H5N1 strain of the disease – to try to protect their people. The United Nations estimates that a pandemic could kill 150 million people worldwide.
Britain is about halfway through receiving an order of 14.6 million courses of the drug, which the Government hopes will avert some of the 700,000 deaths that might be expected. Tamiflu does not cure the disease, but if taken soon after symptoms appear it can reduce its severity.
The drug was developed by a Californian biotech company, Gilead Sciences. It is now made and sold by the giant chemical company Roche, which pays it a royalty on every tablet sold, currently about a fifth of its price.
Mr Rumsfeld was on the board of Gilead from 1988 to 2001, and was its chairman from 1997. He then left to join the Bush administration, but retained a huge shareholding .
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. Further details are not likely to become known, however, until Mr Rumsfeld makes his next disclosure in May.
The 2005 report showed that, in all, he owned shares worth up to $95.9m, from which he got an income of up to $13m, owned land worth up to $17m, and made $1m from renting it out. . . .
8b. 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 what is arguably the think tank’s most controversial document, titled ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses,’ there are a few passages that openly discuss the utility of bioweapons, including the following sentences: ‘…combat likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, ‘cyber-space,’ and perhaps the world of microbes…advanced forms of biological warfare that can ‘target’ specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.’ . . .”
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.
. . . . In what is arguably the think tank’s most controversial document, titled ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses,’ there are a few passages that openly discuss the utility of bioweapons, including the following sentences: ‘…combat likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, ‘cyber-space,’ and perhaps the world of microbes…advanced forms of biological warfare that can ‘target’ specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.’ . . .
. . . . the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), began spending millions on such research in 2018 and some of those Pentagon-funded studies were conducted at known U.S. military bioweapons labs bordering China and resulted in the discovery of dozens of new coronavirus strains as recently as last April. Furthermore, the ties of the Pentagon’s main biodefense lab to a virology institute in Wuhan, China — where the current outbreak is believed to have begun — have been unreported in English language media thus far. . . . For instance, DARPA spent $10 million on one project in 2018 ‘to unravel the complex causes of bat-borne viruses that have recently made the jump to humans, causing concern among global health officials.” Another research project backed by both DARPA and NIH saw researchers at Colorado State University examine the coronavirus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in bats and camels ‘to understand the role of these hosts in transmitting disease to humans.’ . . . For instance, one study conducted in Southern China in 2018 resulted in the discovery of 89 new ‘novel bat coronavirus’ strains that use the same receptor as the coronavirus known as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). That study was jointly funded by the Chinese government’s Ministry of Science and Technology, USAID — an organization long alleged to be a front for U.S. intelligence, and the U.S. National Institute of Health — which has collaborated with both the CIA and the Pentagon on infectious disease and bioweapons research. . . . .
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