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FTR #419 Looking back at the Anthrax Attacks

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This pro­gram doc­u­ments key areas of over­lap between the activ­i­ties of Aryan Nations activist Lar­ry Har­ris and Dr. Lar­ry Ford, who had worked on dead­ly bio­log­i­cal war­fare agents with, and for the CIA and the now infa­mous Project Coast in South Africa. Har­ris was arrest­ed by the FBI for pos­sess­ing weapons grade anthrax; Both Har­ris and Ford were active in the Hen­der­son, Neva­da; area; Both were strong­ly influ­enced by The Turn­er Diaries and white suprema­cist views. Har­ris and his part­ner Leav­itt were in con­trol of a bio­log­i­cal lab in Ger­many, yet the Ger­man author­i­ties could­n’t seem to locate it. That is very strange in light of the fact that the Ger­mans reg­is­ter every cit­i­zen and busi­ness in Ger­many. That they were alleged­ly unable to find the Harris/Leavitt lab­o­ra­to­ry is sim­ply not cred­i­ble. Rather, this sug­gests that the Ger­man author­i­ties were (to a cer­tain extent) com­plic­it with the activ­i­ties of Leavitt/Harris. Most of the sec­ond half of the broad­cast is a reprise of the sec­ond half of FTR#324, broad­cast on 9/9/2001. This part of the broad­cast reviews the links of Ford to ele­ments of the CIA, the South African apartheid gov­ern­ment, and an under­ground Broeder­bond (the fas­cist core group of the apartheid regime.)

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Lar­ry Ford’s high regard for The Turn­er Diaries—the appar­ent inspi­ra­tion for Tim­o­thy McVeigh & Co; Lar­ry Ford’s con­tacts with Amer­i­can white suprema­cist ele­ments; con­tin­gency plans on the part of Die Organ­isas­ie for a mas­sive bio-ter­ror attack on the Unit­ed States; the fear of many Project Coast vet­er­ans of ret­ri­bu­tion by their for­mer com­rades if they betray the under­ground orga­ni­za­tion; Lar­ry Har­ris’ sin­is­ter warn­ings of ret­ri­bu­tion if the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment retal­i­at­ed for an attempt at seces­sion by a white suprema­cist clique in the Pacif­ic North­west.

1. The first half of the broad­cast con­sists of a replay of most of FTR#89, record­ed in March of 1998. Dis­cussing the pos­ses­sion of weapons-grade anthrax by Aryan Nations asso­ciate Lar­ry Har­ris, the first ele­ment of analy­sis notes that Har­ris had dis­cussed the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Iraqi agents or, per­haps, the U.S. gov­ern­ment might spread dead­ly bio­log­i­cal weapons in a mass ter­ror attack. Har­ris him­self dis­cussed meth­ods of effect­ing such an attck using auto­mo­bile and air­craft exhaust sys­tems, while appear­ing on a Michi­gan mili­tia-linked radio pro­gram. Although Har­ris claimed to have worked for the CIA (a pos­si­bil­i­ty that can­not be dis­missed in light of the fact that white suprema­cists and neo-Nazis have been employed as mer­ce­nar­ies in covert oper­a­tions), he may have been oper­at­ing on behalf of the white suprema­cist com­mu­ni­ty and attempt­ing to deflect respon­si­bil­i­ty for any attacks on “the gov­ern­ment.” It is impor­tant to note that Lar­ry Har­ris and his asso­ciate William Job Leav­itt were caught in Hen­der­son, Neva­da, out­side of Las Vegas. Lar­ry Ford, was also active in the Hen­der­son, Neva­da, area.

(“Anthrax Sus­pect Wrote of Germ War­fare” by Michael San­gia­co­mo [Cleve­land Plain Deal­er]; San Fran­cis­co Exam­in­er; 2/20/1998.)

2. Har­ris and Leav­itt were seek­ing a glass globe (pos­si­bly for dis­trib­ut­ing plague in the New York City sub­way sys­tems.) The con­tin­gency plans they were work­ing on were intend­ed to fun­da­men­tal­ly dis­rupt Amer­i­can soci­ety, and to deflect respon­si­bil­i­ty on ele­ments of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. Both men were dis­cussing bio-ter­ror attacks on New York City, intend­ed (in part) to bank­rupt the Unit­ed States. (For more about the eco­nom­ic com­po­nent of ter­ror against the U.S., see—among oth­er programs—FTR#‘s 407, 412.) For sup­pos­ed­ly peace­ful indi­vid­u­als who claimed to be work­ing with vac­cine grade anthrax, their inter­est in police radar scan­ners and glass globes appears unusu­al.

(“Anthrax Sus­pects Appear in Court” by Robert Macy [AP]; Las Vegas Sun; 2/19/1998.)

3. More sin­is­ter, still, is the threat issued by Har­ris in which he threat­ened the destruc­tion of U.S. cities by bio­log­i­cal war­fare. This threat was made in the event of an attempt by the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment to pre­vent Aryan Nations and white suprema­cist activists from estab­lish­ing a break­away Aryan nation in the Pacif­ic North­west.

(“Anthrax Scare: 2 Held” by Kevin Fagan, Bill Wal­lace and Susan Sward; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 2/20/1998.)

4. Next, the broad­cast focus­es on the sup­port of neo-Nazi ele­ments (par­tic­u­lar­ly in Ger­many) for Sad­dam Hus­sein dur­ing the Gulf War. This is of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance since Lar­ry Har­ris had been claim­ing that Iraqi agents would be attack­ing the coun­try with var­i­ous BW agents. In that con­text, one should con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ties that Har­ris may have been seek­ing to deflect blame for the attacks on Iraqis and/or that he may have been work­ing with the Iraqis or Islamist or Islam­o­fas­cist activists. Of par­tic­u­lar note is Michael Kuh­nen, one of the more promi­nent Ger­man neo-Nazis of the 1980’s and 1990’s. Note, in this con­text, the anti-Amer­i­can and anti-Semit­ic moti­va­tion for the stance tak­en by Kuh­nen and com­pa­ny.

“As the Unit­ed States rat­tled its saber and threat­ened Bagh­dad, Michael Kuh­nen con­tact­ed the Iraqi embassy in Bonn. His over­tures cul­mi­nat­ed in a mem­o­ran­dum of agree­ment with Iraqi offi­cials, which stip­u­lat­ed that Bagh­dad would finance and equip an anti-Zion­ist legion com­posed of neo-Nazi mer­ce­nar­ies from Ger­many and oth­er coun­tries. This so-called Inter­na­tion­al Free­dom Corps was sup­posed to assist Iraq if it came under attack by the Unit­ed States. Kuh­nen, the des­ig­nat­ed com­man­der of the vol­un­teer brigade, praised Sad­dam Hus­sein as a free­dom fight­er: ‘We have com­mon ideals—the cre­ation of liv­ing spaces for dif­fer­ent peo­ple and races in accor­dance with their own cul­ture and tra­di­tion.’ Refer­ring to Kuwait as ‘the Sile­sia of Iraq,’ Kuh­nen claimed that Arabs were not Marx­ists but nation­al­ists ‘just like we are.’ More­over, they had the same enemy—‘the Unit­ed States and its back­ers, the Zion­ist forces.’ But the mar­tial prowess of the neo-Nazis, who pre­ten­tious­ly strut­ted around Bagh­dad in SS uni­forms, left much to be desired. As soon as the bombs start­ed to fall on the Iraqi cap­i­tal, Kuh­nen’s mot­ley del­e­ga­tion scur­ried back to Europe.”

(The Beast Reawak­ens; by Mar­tin A. Lee; Copy­right 1997 [HC]; Lit­tle, Brown & Co.; ISBN 0–316-51959–6; p. 249.)

5. Return­ing to the Neva­da Anthrax case, the defen­dants (Lar­ry Har­ris and William Leav­itt) claim they were mak­ing harm­less med­ical anthrax vac­cines. (The FBI con­tin­ues to main­tain that they were in pos­ses­sion of weapons-grade anthrax.) Why then did Har­ris and Leav­itt need the police scan­ners and oth­er sophis­ti­cat­ed mate­ri­als of that type? That equip­ment is the type that would be sought by some­one involved in coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence and/or ter­ror­ism.

(“False Alarm in Anthrax Arrests” by Tom Gor­man [Los Ange­les Times]; San Fran­cis­co Exam­in­er; 2/22/1998.)

6. As not­ed pre­vi­ous­ly, lab­o­ra­to­ry that can be used for mak­ing vac­cines can also be used to make bio­log­i­cal ter­ror agents. (Har­ris and Leav­itt claimed that they were mak­ing vac­cines.)

(“The Ter­rors of Tox­ins” by Jef­frey Cow­ley and Adam Rogers; Newsweek; 11/24/1997.)

7. One of the most sus­pi­cious aspects of the Harris/Leavitt anthrax con­spir­a­cy con­cerns the fact that Leav­itt had a bio­log­i­cal lab­o­ra­to­ry in Frank­furt, Ger­many. That they may have been work­ing with Ger­man neo-Nazis or white suprema­cists is not a pos­si­bil­i­ty to be too read­i­ly dis­missed. Curi­ous­ly, the Ger­man author­i­ties claimed to be unable to locate the laboratory—a strange asser­tion since all peo­ple in Ger­many must reg­is­ter their res­i­dences and busi­ness­es with the local police. Was there some con­spir­a­to­r­i­al sym­pa­thy on the part of the Ger­man author­i­ties for Har­ris and Leav­it­t’s endeav­ors?

(“Ger­man Police Work­ing with FBI in Anthrax Case”; Reuters, 2/21/1998.)

8. It appears the Dr. Lar­ry Ford had been in touch with right-wing extrem­ists in Hen­der­son (Neva­da) where Lar­ry Har­ris and Leav­itt had been appre­hend­ed with their anthrax stash. The thought of an active meet­ing between Har­ris and Ford is trou­bling to con­tem­plate.

“Per­haps the deep­est fear in the entire affair was that Dr. Ford had been work­ing with anthrax. That trail, too, has run cold.”

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

9.

“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.”

(Idem.)

10.

“In Decem­ber 2000, inves­ti­ga­tors searched a derelict gold milling site out­side Hen­der­son, Nev. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s] 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.”

(Idem.)

11. Dr. Ford was (accord­ing to an Air Force Acad­e­my report) part of an under­ground, extragov­ern­men­tal net­work that aimed at con­tin­u­ing the work of Project Coast and the goals of the apartheid regime.

“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.’ ”

(“The Med­i­cine Man;” Los Ange­les Mag­a­zine; 7/2001; pp. 8–9.)

12. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that this under­ground orga­ni­za­tion might unleash its bio­log­i­cal ter­ror on the Unit­ed States was fore­shad­owed by some of the state­ments made by Ford and his asso­ciates.

“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.’ ”

(Ibid.; p .9.)

13. Ford’s alleged par­tic­i­pa­tion in the extra-gov­ern­men­tal and appar­ent­ly fas­cist under­ground milieu assumes added sig­nif­i­cance when eval­u­at­ed against the post-apartheid “Third Force.” The “Third Force” was a pow­er­ful, dead­ly and (by those famil­iar with it) respect­ful­ly-feared under­ground exten­sion of the apartheid/Broederbond pow­er axis. (As will be seen lat­er on in this pro­gram descrip­tion, Man­de­la’s fear that Project Coast and the “Third Force” might be con­nect­ed was not with­out foun­da­tion.)

“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.”

(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; pp. 272–273.)

14. The “Third Force” was not a periph­er­al orga­ni­za­tion.

“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.”

(Ibid.; p. 266.)

15. The afore­men­tioned Nico Palm described this post-apartheid under­ground orga­ni­za­tion in more detail, refer­ring to it as “Die Organ­isas­ie” and “the Spi­der Net­work.” With the links between the Third Reich and the Broeder­bond and with the vig­or­ous post­war pres­ence of Third Reich émi­gré ele­ments in the apartheid gov­ern­ment, it seems prob­a­ble that “Die Organ­isas­ie” retains con­nec­tions to the Under­ground Reich.

“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 the 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 on the 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.”

(Ibid.; p. 250.)

16. Those famil­iar with “Die Organ­isas­ie” regard it with a mix­ture of fear and respect.

“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.”

(Ibid.; p. 254.)

17. Dr. Lar­ry Ford’s asso­ciate and super­vi­sor in Project Coast—Wouter Basson—was no stranger to “Die Organ­isas­ie.”

“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.”

(Ibid.; p. 281.)

18. The final ele­ment of dis­cus­sion con­cerns Bas­son’s appar­ent con­nec­tions to “Die Organ­isas­ie.” Juer­gen Jacomet—a for­mer Swiss intel­li­gence oper­a­tive who had worked with Basson—reflected on the motives for Bas­son’s involve­ment in an “Ecsta­sy” deal.

“So what was Bas­son up to that night? He says sim­ply that he was framed. Anoth­er ver­sion has that he did it pure­ly for per­son­al gain; there is a third expla­na­tion, that it was a mix­ture of per­son­al gain and help­ing to raise funds for the Third Force, of which Bas­son is con­sid­ered to be a mem­ber.”

(Ibid.; p. 277.)

19.

“Bas­son’s pos­si­ble con­nec­tions with the Third Force were ellip­ti­cal­ly referred to by Juer­gen Jacomet, the for­mer Swiss mil­i­tary intel­li­gence agent who worked with Bas­son on mon­ey-laun­der­ing aspects of Project Coast in Europe . . .”

(Idem.)

20. The pro­gram details Jacomet’s rela­tion­ship with Bas­son and the apartheid regime.

“In fact, back in the mid-1980s, the Swiss agent had first worked with Gen­er­al Lothar Neeth­ling, South Africa’s Police Foren­sic chief, deliv­er­ing arms to South Africa, in an exten­sive sanc­tions-bust­ing arrange­ment. Neeth­ling intro­duced Jacomet to Bas­son, and the two men became friends. Bas­son often vis­it­ed Jacomet at his Berne home. Even­tu­al­ly, Jacomet trav­eled to South Africa on sev­er­al occa­sions to help Bas­son and Neeth­ling in the dirty wars of the 1980s.”

(Idem.)

21. Jacomet hypoth­e­sizes that Bas­son would not have engaged in the Ecsta­sy deal for prof­it.

“Now, sit­ting in a qui­et West Lon­don gar­den on an ear­ly spring day in 1998, Jacomet relax­es with cof­fee and cig­a­rettes and dis­cuss­es the arrest of Bas­son and the Ecsta­sy alle­ga­tions. He scoffs at the prospect of his friend being a prof­i­teer­ing drug deal­er. ‘It makes absolute­ly no sense if you know him. It makes no sense that he would mix with street deal­ers. If it hap­pened at all, there must be a high­er inter­est.’ Such as? ‘It might be to pro­cure mon­ey to sup­port a cer­tain group which rep­re­sents the inter­ests of South Africa and wants the return of a white-dom­i­nat­ed gov­ern­ment.’ ”

(Ibid.; pp. 277–278.)

22. In dis­cussing the Third Force, Jacomet express­es the same fear of the orga­ni­za­tion that we have already wit­nessed.

“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. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.] 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.”

(Ibid.; p. 278.)

23. In dis­cussing the Third Force, Jacomet makes a ref­er­ence to “an Amer­i­can” who worked with Bas­son. This may very well be a ref­er­ence to Ford.

“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. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.] Once again, Die Organ­isas­ie is men­tioned in respect­ful tones, and, once again, the details remain scant and elu­sive. Jacomet remains silent.”

(Idem.)

24. Mr. Emory con­cludes the dis­cus­sion with rumi­na­tion about the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Under­ground Reich, uti­liz­ing some of the appar­ent con­nec­tions evi­dent in the rela­tion­ships of Dr. Lar­ry Ford, might very well launch a bio-ter­ror strike against the Unit­ed States. Once again, one should note in that con­text that this broad­cast was record­ed on 9/09/2001.

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