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As the war fever against Iraq mounts, this broad­cast exam­ines some of the unan­swered ques­tions about the sit­u­a­tion. In par­tic­u­lar, this pro­gram exam­ines the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Iraq (or an inter­locu­tor, per­haps anoth­er ele­ment of the Under­ground Reich) may have authored bioter­ror­ist acts against the Unit­ed States and/or Great Britain. It should be stressed that this is not yet known to be the case. This broad­cast will ask that ques­tion and present the rea­sons for con­sid­er­ing if that is the case. Some of the cru­cial ques­tions about the Iraqi sit­u­a­tion will be asked in the next two For The Record pro­grams.

1. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of a report on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of “agro-ter­ror­ism” against the Unit­ed States, the pro­gram takes up the issue of whether such a sce­nario may, in fact, be under­way. In this con­text, one should bear in mind that Osama Bin Laden called for Mus­lims to strike Amer­i­can tar­gets that would max­i­mize eco­nom­ic dam­age. “In a report so sen­si­tive that an entire chap­ter was removed before pub­li­ca­tion, a pan­el of gov­ern­ment sci­en­tists said Thurs­day that the Unit­ed States was ill-pre­pared to detect and con­tain poten­tial bioter­ror attacks on the nation’s agri­cul­tur­al sys­tem. The Nation­al Research Coun­cil report, ‘Con­tain­ing Agri­cul­tur­al Ter­ror­ism,’ offers no guess about how like­ly it is that ter­ror­ists might try to infect crops or ani­mals with insect, bac­te­r­i­al or viral pests. . . . Moon said a poten­tial ter­ror­ist could under­mine pub­lic con­fi­dence in U.S. agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts, and even if it posed only a lim­it­ed dan­ger to human life, it could cause enor­mous eco­nom­ic dis­rup­tions. . . .The com­mon theme run­ning through Cal­i­for­ni­a’s proac­tive response and the somber Nation­al Research Coun­cil report is that the best way to defend U.S. farms against poten­tial ter­ror is to beef up the sys­tems already in place to keep for­eign pests from acci­den­tal­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing crops or farm ani­mals. For instance when foot-and-mouth dis­ease broke out in the Unit­ed King­dom in 2001, Cal­i­for­nia state vet­eri­nar­i­an Bre­it­mey­er is cred­it­ed with insti­tut­ing mea­sures that pro­tect­ed the state’s cat­tle and dairy indus­tries. . . .‘When we start­ed, this was some­thing we thought of as a dis­tant future threat,’ Moon said, adding that ‘9/11 told us on the com­mit­tee that the clock we had in our minds might not be advanced enough.” (“U.S. Not Ready for Agro-Ter­ror­ism, Report Finds” by Tom Abate; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle, 9/20/2002; p. A16.)

2. Not­ing that Iraq’s bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram was known as “the Gen­er­al Direc­torate of Vet­eri­nary Affairs” the pro­gram revis­its the issue of the foot and mouth dis­ease out­break in the Unit­ed King­dom in 2001. Whether or not this out­break was nat­ur­al, it is impor­tant to con­tem­plate that the dis­ease had been cul­ti­vat­ed by the Iraqis as a bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapon. In the con­text that fol­lows, one should remem­ber that the dis­tinc­tion between offen­sive and defen­sive bio­log­i­cal war­fare research is large­ly aca­d­e­m­ic. Vac­cine research can be used for offen­sive pur­pos­es. “It has con­tin­ued to devel­op a foot and mouth dis­ease vac­cine plant at Dau­ra, which had pro­duced bot­u­linum tox­in and anthrax.” (“Dead­ly Agents Dif­fi­cult to Defend Against;” Finan­cial Times; 9/10/2002; p. 2.)

3. Anoth­er dis­ease that is asso­ci­at­ed with cat­tle (E. coli) was among the bio­log­i­cal war­fare agents giv­en to Iraq by the Unit­ed States. (The arm­ing of Iraq was accom­plished under the aus­pices of the elder George Bush.) “Also on the list: Escherichia coli (E. coli), genet­ic mate­ri­als, human and bac­te­r­i­al DNA, and dozens of oth­er path­o­gen­ic bio­log­i­cal agents. ‘These bio­log­i­cal mate­ri­als were not atten­u­at­ed or weak­ened and were capa­ble of repro­duc­tion,’ the Sen­ate report stat­ed. ‘It was lat­er learned that these microor­gan­isms export­ed by the Unit­ed States were iden­ti­cal to those the Unit­ed Nations inspec­tors found and removed from the Iraqi bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram.’ ” (“Anthrax for Export” by William Blum; The Pro­gres­sive; April/1998; p. 2.)

4. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of mask­ing an “agro-ter­ror” attack as a nat­ur­al occur­rence should not be over­looked. Care­less pro­cess­ing of beef can lead to E. coli con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. As one con­sid­ers the fol­low­ing item of dis­cus­sion, bear in mind that Con-Agra itself has an inter­est­ing back­ground. It is deriv­a­tive of a com­pa­ny found­ed by an SS offi­cer from funds loot­ed from Holo­caust vic­tims. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that ele­ments of the Under­ground Reich could launch an agro-ter­ror attack in such a way as to make it appear that Iraq was involved is not one to be too read­i­ly dis­missed. “ConA­gra Beef Co., of Gree­ley, Colo., is vol­un­tar­i­ly recall­ing approx­i­mate­ly 354, 200 pounds of fresh and frozen ground beef prod­ucts that may be con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with E. coli bac­te­ria, the U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture’s Good Safe­ty and Inspec­tion Ser­vice announced Sun­day.” (“Con-Agra Recalls Ground Beef;” Chan­nel 7 News [ABC affil­i­ate in Den­ver]; 7/1/2002.)

5. Anoth­er dis­ease that is a “vet­eri­nary affair” but can also infect humans is the West Nile fever virus, cur­rent­ly mov­ing across the Unit­ed States. Sen­a­tor Patrick Leahy of Ver­mont is ask­ing whether this out­break might be a bioter­ror inci­dent. “Sen­a­tor Patrick Leahy, D‑Vt., said Thurs­day that the author­i­ties should exam­ine whether the spread of the West Nile virus in this coun­try is a result of bio­log­i­cal ter­ror­ism. ‘Is it a coin­ci­dence that we are see­ing such an increase in West Nile virus, or is that some­thing that is being test­ed as a bio­log­i­cal weapon against us?’ Leahy, chair of the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee, said in a radio inter­view in Water­bury. ‘There are some peo­ple, cred­i­bly, who feel that it is a test of our defens­es and is a bio­log­i­cal weapon or some­body doing this for com­mer­cial pur­pos­es.’ ” (“Sen­a­tor Asks if Ter­ror Is Linked to West Nile Virus;” San Jose Mer­cury News; 9/13/2002; p. 6A.)

6. In the con­text of Leahy’s remarks, it is inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate the reports that Iraq has stock­piled West Nile fever virus, first detect­ed in New York City in 1999. “An inci­dent that occurred in New York in August 1999, and which has con­tin­ued through the present, is a good indi­ca­tion of what a ter­ror­ist threat of this kind might be like. It was the episode of the West Nile virus, which began to cre­ate pan­ic in New York health ser­vices after five deaths had occurred. Ampli­fied by the media, the epi­dem­ic was even char­ac­ter­ized on sev­er­al occa­sions as a ter­ror­ist attack, on the basis of infor­ma­tion from sev­er­al secu­ri­ty ser­vices. Accord­ing to researchers, the symp­toms of infec­tion by the West Nile virus area slight fever and nau­sea last­ing for three to six days, and the infect­ing agents are mos­qui­toes. In chil­dren and peo­ple with a weak­ened immune sys­tem, such as those who are HIV pos­i­tive, the West Nile virus can cause fatal encephali­tis. This virus is not a new­com­er either. It has a place in the his­to­ry of virol­o­gy; it was dis­cov­ered in 1937 in the West Nile dis­trict of Ugan­da. Car­ried by mos­qui­toes and birds, the virus is a great trav­el­er, fol­low­ing the sea­son­al migra­tion of birds to Europe-some strains have been found in Vol­gograd and Ros­tov-on-Don.” (In the Name of Osama Bin Laden; by Roland Jacquard; Copy­right 2002 [SC] Duke Uni­ver­si­ty Press; ISBN# ‑0–8223-2991–3; p. 149.)

“The virus made its first appear­ance in New York in August 1999, but no one knows what vehi­cle it used to cross the Atlantic. Con­sid­er­ing the date at which the first infect­ed patients appeared, experts think that the infect­ing agent, per­haps a bird trav­el­ing on a freighter, arrived in late June or ear­ly July in north­ern Queens and south­ern Bronx. N sup­port of this hypoth­e­sis, a curi­ous phe­nom­e­non occurred in the area around the Bronx Zoo. Around the mid­dle of August, dozens of crows clear­ly suf­fer­ing from neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­tur­bances and the loss of spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion could no longer fly and crashed to the ground. Autop­sies led experts to con­clude that they had died from encephali­tis. In the fol­low­ing days, the epi­dem­ic struck cor­morants, flamin­gos, and eagles in and around the Bronx. And at the same time, two elder­ly peo­ple died from a strange encephali­tis caused by a still unknown virus in a Queens hos­pi­tal a few miles away. The brain sam­ples from the two vic­tims ana­lyzed by the experts of the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol in Atlanta demon­strat­ed, after a first misiden­ti­fi­ca­tion as Saint Louis virus, that it was in real­i­ty a virus close to the West Nile virus that had caused the car­nage among birds.” (Ibid.; pp. 149–150.)

“May­or Rudolph Giu­liani then had heli­copters spray tons of insec­ti­cide over Queens, accord­ing to munic­i­pal author­i­ties, almost all Amer­i­can stocks of insec­ti­cides were used up by the city of New York in a few days, more than a mil­lion con­tain­ers. The New York epi­dem­ic again raised the ques­tion of the abil­i­ty of the health ser­vices to respond to a bac­te­ri­o­log­i­cal threat. In this par­tic­u­lar case, the reac­tion was sat­is­fac­to­ry, but the threat was on a small scale.” (Ibid.; p. 150.)

“Sev­er­al Amer­i­can intel­li­gence agents had already informed the White House of a plan by Sad­dam Hus­sein that they had learned of a few months ear­li­er from a rene­gade in direct con­tact with the dic­ta­tor. Accord­ing to the source, Sad­dam Hus­sein had tri­umphant­ly announced to him in one of the secret offices in Bagh­dad that he had giv­en orders to devel­op a bio­log­i­cal weapon using strain SV1417 of the West Nile virus in April 1999, and that he planned to use it against a tar­get known to him­self alone.” (Idem.)

7. One of the con­sid­er­a­tions to be eval­u­at­ed in con­nec­tion with the geopo­lit­i­cal maneu­ver­ing between the U.S. and Iraq is the effec­tive pro­pa­gan­diz­ing that has been real­ized among the Arab pop­u­la­tions of the Mid­dle East. The long-term goals of the Under­ground Reich-pre­cip­i­tat­ing war between the U.S., Israel and the Muslim/Arab pop­u­la­tions of the world for the pur­pose of effect­ing their mutu­al destruc­tion-should be borne in mind. This con­cept will be more ful­ly explored in future broad­casts. “A major­i­ty of peo­ple polled in a recent sur­vey of opin­ion on the Arab street believed that a Zion­ist con­spir­a­cy was behind the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks: Giv­en such sen­ti­ment, it would be naïve to assume that a U.S.-led over­throw of Mr. Hus­sein would be hailed with gen­er­al relief.” (“War on Iraq: A Blun­der and a Crime” by Michael Quin­lan; Finan­cial Times; 8/7/2002; p. 11.)