Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #606 Project Paperclip and AIDS

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NB: This descrip­tion con­tains a great deal of mate­r­i­al added after the broad­cast was orig­i­nal­ly made. Listeners/readers are emphat­i­cal­ly encour­aged to pur­sue oth­er pro­grams deal­ing with this sub­ject, espe­cial­ly AFA #16.

Intro­duc­tion: For more than two decades, Mr. Emory has pre­sent­ed pro­grams indi­cat­ing that AIDS is a man-made dis­ease. Sup­ple­ment­ing that body of work, this pro­gram sets forth cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence indi­cat­ing that AIDS may have been cre­at­ed on a foun­da­tion of research done by the Nazis in con­cen­tra­tion camps dur­ing the Sec­ond World War. Under a pro­gram named Project Paper­clip, Nazi scientists—many of them war criminals—were recruit­ed to do research for the U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment.

Among the war crim­i­nals so recruit­ed was Erich Traub, who was one of the prin­ci­pals in charge of bac­te­ri­o­log­i­cal and viro­log­i­cal war­fare for the Third Reich. After test­ing dead­ly dis­eases and tox­ins on apes pro­cured from Africa, the Nazis pro­gressed to test­ing lethal ill­ness­es on con­cen­tra­tion camp inmates. Note that HIV is an African simi­an virus, mutat­ed in such a way as to infect and kill humans.

Among the Nazi oper­a­tives sought by the U.S. after the war was Franz Liesau Zacharias, who pro­cured the apes in Africa for use in devel­op­ing dis­eases to be test­ed on con­cen­tra­tion camp inmates—among the dis­eases test­ed in the camps was the plague. Recent med­ical research indi­cates the exis­tence of a genet­ic trait that affords immu­ni­ty to both AIDS and the infec­tions that have come to be known as “plague.”

This gene—the CCR5 delta-32 muta­tion—is only car­ried by the white race and [accord­ing to some sources] only by peo­ple of North­ern Euro­pean extrac­tion. Did the Nazis note [in their exper­i­ments] that some peo­ple appeared to be immune to infec­tion with plague? Were tis­sue sam­ples tak­en and pre­served for fur­ther study? Was this in any way con­nect­ed to the even­tu­al evo­lu­tion of the CCR5-delta 32 gene as a hered­i­tary pro­tec­tion against infec­tion by HIV?

In June of 2009, it emerged that CCR5 delta-32 was used in trans­plant ther­a­py admin­is­tered by a Ger­man doc­tor to an HIV-pos­i­tive leukemia patient. It appears that the patient was cured of HIV! The Ger­man doc­tor delib­er­ate­ly select­ed a CCR5 delta-32 pos­i­tive donor for the stem cells used for the trans­plant.

Is it pos­si­ble that Liesau Zacharias was actu­al­ly tar­get­ed for recruit­ment by the U.S. for Project Paper­clip, like Erich Traub? This pro­gram explores that pos­si­bil­i­ty.

In the con­text of the “eth­no-spe­cif­ic” nature of HIV, this descrip­tion also con­tains infor­ma­tion from late 2008 about a height­ened phys­i­cal sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty of the African race to HIV infec­tion. Tak­en in con­junc­tion with the CCR5 delta-32 muta­tion that affords “Aryans” immu­ni­ty to infec­tion by HIV, this is as reveal­ing as it is fright­en­ing.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Zacharias’ found­ing of a com­pa­ny in Spain in 1944; Zacharias’ company’s long­stand­ing rela­tion­ship with the secu­ri­ty ser­vices of fas­cist dic­ta­tor Fran­cis­co Fran­co; the pro­found rela­tion­ship between the Under­ground Reich and the Span­ish intel­li­gence ser­vices; review of tes­ti­mo­ny before a House sub­com­mit­tee in 1969 that direct­ly fore­shad­owed the appear­ance of AIDS; review of the back­ground of Dr. Wolf Szmuness—the cre­ator of the exper­i­men­tal hepati­tis B vac­cine that appears to have been a major vec­tor for delib­er­ate­ly infect­ing peo­ple with AIDS; Szmuness’ long­stand­ing friend­ship with Pope John Paul II; the South African back­ground of Rod­er­ick Mur­ray—a key offi­cial with the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health; review of the Nazi her­itage of the apartheid regime of South Africa; this descrip­tion con­tains a con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant review of the use of can­cer research pro­grams as cov­er for bio­log­i­cal war­fare both in Nazi Ger­many and in the Unit­ed States; indi­ca­tions that what was known as bubon­ic plague may well have been a vari­ety of hem­or­rhag­ic fever, per­haps native to a Mid­dle East­ern of African prin­ci­pal­i­ty.

1. The pro­gram begins with a look at an excerpt from tes­ti­mo­ny before a House appro­pri­a­tions sub­com­mit­tee that was draw­ing up the defense bud­get for the fol­low­ing year. (The hear­ings were in 1969.) The tes­ti­mo­ny dis­cuss­es the pos­si­bil­i­ty of using genet­ic engi­neer­ing to pro­duce a dis­ease that would be “refrac­to­ry” to the immune sys­tem. This is vir­tu­al­ly the clin­i­cal def­i­n­i­tion of AIDS. It is worth not­ing that the project was fund­ed, and just such a disease—AIDS—appeared in just the time frame posit­ed. It is also worth not­ing that, in the 2002 edi­tion of A High­er Form of Killing, this pas­sage is omit­ted!!

“. . . As long ago as 1962, forty sci­en­tists were employed at the U.S. Army bio­log­i­cal war­fare lab­o­ra­to­ries on full-time genet­ics research. ‘Many oth­ers,’ it was said, ‘appre­ci­ate the impli­ca­tions of genet­ics for their own work.’ The impli­ca­tions were made more spe­cif­ic that genet­ic engi­neer­ing could solve one of the major dis­ad­van­tages of bio­log­i­cal war­fare, that it is lim­it­ed to dis­eases which occur nat­u­ral­ly some­where in the world. ‘With­in the next 5 to 10 years, it would prob­a­bly be pos­si­ble to make a new infec­tive micro-organ­ism which could dif­fer in cer­tain impor­tant respects from any known dis­ease-caus­ing organ­isms. Most impor­tant of these is that it might be refrac­to­ry to the immuno­log­i­cal and ther­a­peu­tic process­es upon which we depend to main­tain our rel­a­tive free­dom from infec­tious dis­ease.’ [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.] The pos­si­bil­i­ty that such a ‘super germ’ may have been suc­cess­ful­ly pro­duced in a lab­o­ra­to­ry some­where in the world in the years since that assess­ment was made is one which should not be too read­i­ly cast aside. . .”

(A High­er Form of Killing; Robert Har­ris and Jere­my Pax­man; Hill and Wang [SC]; ISBN 0–8090-5471‑X; p. 241.)

2. Next, the pro­gram reviews dis­cus­sion of the gene pro­vid­ing peo­ple of the white race [and—according to some sources—primarily those of North­ern Euro­pean extrac­tion] with immu­ni­ty from the AIDS virus. The pro­gram high­lights that gene’s role in pro­vid­ing some peo­ple with immu­ni­ty from the plagues that rav­aged Europe cen­turies ago. (The gene is CCR5 delta32.)

“ . . . In Sep­tem­ber 1665, George Vic­cars, a tai­lor in the small, cen­tral-Eng­land vil­lage of Eyam, received a par­cel of cloth rid­den with plague-infect­ed fleas from Lon­don. Four days lat­er, Vic­cars died. By the end of the month, five more vil­lagers had suc­cumbed to the plague. The pan­icked town turned to their rec­tor, William Mom­pes­son, who per­suad­ed them to quar­an­tine the entire vil­lage to pre­vent the bac­teri­um from spread­ing through­out the region. It seemed like sui­cide. A year lat­er, the first out­siders ven­tured into Eyam, expect­ing a ghost town. Yet, mirac­u­lous­ly, half the town had sur­vived. How did so many vil­lagers live through the most dev­as­tat­ing dis­ease known to man?”

(“Secrets of the Dead—Case File: Mys­tery of the Black Death; Back­ground”; Secrets of the Dead.)

3. “Local Eyam lore tells befud­dling sto­ries of plague sur­vivors who had close con­tact with the bac­teri­um but nev­er caught the dis­ease. Eliz­a­beth Han­cock buried six chil­dren and her hus­band in a week, but nev­er became ill. The vil­lage gravedig­ger han­dled hun­dreds of plague-rav­aged corpses, but sur­vived as well. Could these peo­ple have some­how been immune to the Black Death?”

(Idem.)

4. “Dr. Stephen O’Brien of the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health in Wash­ing­ton D.C. sug­gests they were. His work with HIV and the mutat­ed form of the gene CCR, called ‘delta 32,’ led him to Eyam. In 1996, research showed that delta32 pre­vents HIV from enter­ing human cells and infect­ing the body. O’Brien thought this prin­ci­ple could be applied to the plague bac­te­ria, which affects the body in a sim­i­lar man­ner. To deter­mine whether the Eyam plague sur­vivors may have car­ried delta 32, O’Brien test­ed the DNA of their mod­ern-day descen­dents. What he found out was star­tling . . .”

(Idem.)

5. “For a dis­ease-caus­ing microor­gan­ism to infect the human body there must be a gate­way or por­tal through which it enters into human cells. The plague bac­teri­um works this way, hijack­ing the white blood cells sent to elim­i­nate it. Trav­el­ing inside the white blood cells to the lymph nodes, the bac­te­ria break out and attack the focal point of the human immune sys­tem. Dr. Stephen O’Brien felt that the mutat­ed CCR5 gene, delta 32, may have pre­vent­ed the plague from being able to enter its host’s white blood cells.”

(“Secrets of the Dead—Case File: Mys­tery of the Black Death; Clues and Evi­dence”; Secrets of the Dead.)

6. “Eyam pro­vid­ed O’Brien an ide­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to test this the­o­ry. Specif­i­cal­ly, Eyam was an iso­lat­ed pop­u­la­tion known to have sur­vived a plague epi­dem­ic. Every­one in the town would have been exposed to the bac­teri­um, so it’s like­ly that any life-sav­ing genet­ic trait would have been exposed to the bac­teri­um, so it’s like­ly that any life-sav­ing genet­ic trait would have been pos­sessed by each of these sur­vivors. ‘Like a Xerox machine,’ says O’Brien, ‘their gene fre­quen­cies have been repli­cat­ed for sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions with­out a lot of infu­sion from out­side,’ thus pro­vid­ing a viable pool of sur­vivor-descen­dants who would have inher­it­ed such a trait. . . .”

(Idem.)

7. “ . . . DNA sam­ples could only be col­lect­ed from direct descen­dents of the plague sur­vivors. DNA is the prin­ci­ple com­po­nent of chro­mo­somes, which car­ry the genes that trans­mit hered­i­tary char­ac­ter­is­tics. We inher­it our DNA from our par­ents, thus Eyam res­i­dent Joan Plant, for instance, may have inher­it­ed the delta 32 muta­tion from one of her ancient rel­a­tives. Plant can trace her mother’s lin­eage back ten gen­er­a­tions to the Black­well sib­lings, Fran­cis and Mar­garet, who both lived through the plague to the turn of the cen­tu­ry. The next step was to har­vest a DNA sam­ple from Joan and the oth­er descen­dants. DNA is found in the nuclei of cells. The amount is con­stant in all typ­i­cal cells, regard­less of the size or func­tion of that cell. One of the eas­i­est meth­ods of obtain­ing a DNA tis­sue sam­ple is to take a cheek or buc­cal swab.”

(Idem.)

8. Note that no oth­er eth­nic groups or races have the delta 32 gene that pre­vents infec­tion by HIV.

“After three weeks of test­ing at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege in Lon­don, delta 32 had been found in 14% of the sam­ples. This is a genet­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age, yet what, real­ly, did it mean? Could the vil­lagers have inher­it­ed delta 32 from else­where, res­i­dents who had moved to the com­mu­ni­ty in the 350 years since the plague? Was this real­ly a high­er per­cent­age than any­where else? To find out, O’Brien assem­bled an inter­na­tion­al team of sci­en­tists to test for the pres­ence of delta 32 around the world. ‘Native Africans did not have delta 32 at all,’ O’Brien says, ‘and when we looked at East Asians and Indi­ans, they were also flat zero.’ In fact the lev­els of delta 32 found in Eyam were only matched in regions of Europe that had been affect­ed by the plague and in Amer­i­ca, which was, for the most part, set­tled by Euro­pean plague sur­vivors and their descen­dants.”

(Idem.)

9a. “Mean­while, recent work with anoth­er dis­ease strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar to the plague, AIDS, sug­gests O’Brien was on the right track. HIV, the virus that caus­es AIDS, tricks the immune sys­tem in a sim­i­lar man­ner as the plague bac­teri­um, tar­get­ing and tak­ing over white blood cells. Virol­o­gist Dr. Bill Pax­ton at the Aaron Dia­mond AIDS Research Cen­ter in New York City noticed, ‘the cen­ter had no study of peo­ple who were exposed to HIV but who had remained neg­a­tive.’ He began test­ing the blood of high-risk, HIV-neg­a­tive indi­vid­u­als like Steve Crohn, expos­ing their blood to three thou­sand times the amount of HIV nor­mal­ly need­ed to infect a cell. Steve’s blood nev­er became infect­ed. ‘We thought maybe we had infect­ed the cul­ture with bac­te­ria or what­ev­er,’ says Pax­ton. ‘So we went back to Steve. But it was the same result. We went back again and again. Same result.’ Pax­ton began study­ing Crohn’s DNA, and con­clud­ed there was some sort of block­ing mech­a­nism pre­vent­ing the virus from bind­ing to his cells. Fur­ther research showed that that mech­a­nism was delta 32. Sci­en­tists study­ing HIV first learned about the gate­way-block­ing capac­i­ty of the CCR5 muta­tion in 1996. Sev­er­al drug com­pa­nies, then, quick­ly began explor­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of devel­op­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals that would mim­ic delta 32 by bind­ing to CCR5 and block­ing the attach­ment of HIV. . . .”

(Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

9b. In June of 2009, it emerged that CCR5 delta-32 was used in trans­plant ther­a­py admin­is­tered by a Ger­man doc­tor to an HIV-pos­i­tive leukemia patient. It appears that the patient was cured of HIV! The Ger­man doc­tor delib­er­ate­ly select­ed a CCR5 delta-32 pos­i­tive donor for the stem cells used for the trans­plant. Dr. Gup­ta, quot­ed in the fol­low­ing arti­cle, won­ders why more pub­lic­i­ty was­n’t afford­ed this event. Why indeed?

A Foley [Alaba­ma] physi­cian said what appears to be the first case of HIV/AIDS cure in the world is get­ting lit­tle men­tion in the media.

Dr. Awad­hesh K. Gup­ta, med­ical direc­tor at Foley Walk-In Med Care, said he first heard of the med­ical break­through in April when he attend­ed the Annu­al Con­fer­ence of the Amer­i­can Col­lege of Physi­cians in Inter­nal Med­i­cine in Philadel­phia.

It’s a con­fer­ence Gup­ta tries to attend every year.

“This is the most pres­ti­gious orga­ni­za­tion of physi­cians in Inter­nal Med­i­cine and is respon­si­ble for cer­ti­fy­ing post grad­u­ate train­ing in Inter­nal Med­i­cine. It is also one of the old­est,” he said.

Accord­ing to Gup­ta, who has been prac­tic­ing med­i­cine in the South Bald­win area since 1997, the cure was first report­ed in ear­ly 2008 by a group of physi­cians from Ger­many at the annu­al con­fer­ence on “Retro­virus­es and Oppor­tunis­tic Infec­tions” in Boston. The New Eng­land Jour­nal of Med­i­cine, one of the most pres­ti­gious med­ical jour­nals in the world, final­ly pub­lished the report in its Feb. 12, 2009, issue, Gup­ta said.

So why has the news of the first case of HIV/AIDS cure received so lit­tle atten­tion where the pub­lic is con­cerned?

“I can’t be sure as to why so lit­tle pub­lic­i­ty,” Gup­ta said recent­ly.

“My guess is that most sci­en­tif­ic researchers are some­what stunned that a clin­i­cian — not a research sci­en­tist — has been able to come up with the cure. Most of the big research mon­ey and big name Amer­i­can insti­tu­tions are some­what embar­rassed to acknowl­edge that the very first case of HIV cure is not com­ing from their insti­tu­tions.”

The cure, instead, is com­ing from Char­i­ty Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tal in Berlin, Ger­many, and the doc­tor is Gero Huet­ter, who works in the Depart­ment of Hema­tol­ogy, Oncol­o­gy and Trans­fu­sion Med­i­cine at the same hos­pi­tal.

Asked about the reac­tion of atten­dees at the med­ical con­fer­ence in Philadel­phia as regard­ed the news of an HIV/AIDS cure, Gup­ta said, “Unfor­tu­nate­ly, because of the hec­tic sched­ule, I did not try to engage too many physi­cians. How­ev­er, the doc­tor pre­sent­ing this infor­ma­tion seemed extreme­ly excit­ed about it.”

As Gup­ta explains the case and cure in ques­tion, a 40-year-old Amer­i­can work­ing in Berlin had been HIV-pos­i­tive for 10 years. The patient’s HIV infec­tion had been under con­trol for four years with “con­ven­tion­al HAART treat­ment reg­i­men” (High­ly Active Anti-Retro­vi­ral Ther­a­py).

When the patient devel­oped leukemia, how­ev­er, a bone mar­row trans­plant of stem cells was done using stan­dard pro­to­col, which Gup­ta said includes radi­a­tion ther­a­py and chemother­a­py pri­or to the trans­plant.

“Remem­ber, once you stop HIV drugs, the HIV viral count ris­es very rapid­ly, usu­al­ly with­in a few days to a week,” Gup­ta said.

Accord­ing to Gup­ta, Huet­ter, the Ger­man physi­cian treat­ing the Amer­i­can, delib­er­ate­ly chose a stem cell donor who had a gene muta­tion known as “CCR‑5 Delta- 32,” rather than using the best matched donor.

Gup­ta said Huet­ter remem­bered research first observed in 1996 — research Gup­ta said is well known in the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty. That research found that cer­tain gay men in the San Fran­cis­co area remained unin­fect­ed with HIV in spite of engag­ing in risky sex­u­al activ­i­ties. As it was lat­er dis­cov­ered, those men had the CCR‑5 Delta-32 gene muta­tion.

As it turned out, the patient’s stem cell trans­plant was a suc­cess, Gup­ta said, even though the patient had to have a sec­ond stem cell trans­plant (from the same donor) when his leukemia relapsed.

“This patient has been off all his HIV drugs for two years now,” Gup­ta said. “He con­tin­ues to show no detectable signs of HIV in all the known places HIV is detect­ed — no signs of HIV in his blood, bone mar­row, lymph nodes, intestines or brain.” Also, the patient’s T‑cell count remains nor­mal.

Thus, accord­ing to Gup­ta, with­in the lim­its of sci­en­tists’ abil­i­ty to detect HIV, it appears this patient’s HIV has been “erad­i­cat­ed.”. . .

“Local Physician:HIV/AIDS Cure Get­ting Lit­tle Pub­lic­i­ty” by Bob Mor­gan; baldwincountynow.com; 5/27/2009.

10. The dev­as­tat­ing impli­ca­tions of the find­ings dis­cussed above were elo­quent­ly pre­sent­ed in an online edi­to­r­i­al:

“This is the night­mare of AIDS no one wants to believe. As we come clos­er to cel­e­brat­ing, on Decem­ber 1, yet anoth­er World AIDS Day, let’s take a good hard look at what’s real­ly going on before we pour more of our ever dimin­ish­ing hard earned mon­ey down yet anoth­er hor­ren­dous sink­hole. It has been found that some Cau­casians who have test­ed pos­i­tive for the HIV virus were found to take a very long time to actu­al­ly devel­op ‘full-blown’ AIDS (as they call it). It has since been dis­cov­ered (since 1997) that 20% of Euro­pean Cau­casians have the so-called ‘Aryan’ genet­ic dis­po­si­tion. If both your par­ents, in oth­er words, are of Aryan descent, it appears you can nev­er die of AIDS even though you might be infect­ed.”

(“Aryan Genes Immune to Death from AIDS” by geminiwalker_ink; p. 1.)

11. “The rea­son for this is in the genet­ic cod­ing of the killer T‑cells, which are part of the body’s immune sys­tem pro­tec­tive shield. These are the cells that are attacked by the HIV retro­virus. The loca­tion of the attack has been dis­cov­ered. It is on the CCR5 gene in the 3rd DNA gene pair. The par­tic­u­lar loca­tion is the Delta 32 RECEPTOR SITE. If either of your DNA pairs (from either your moth­er or your father) is DELTA 32 POSITIVE then the HIV virus can attach itself at that point. If you are DELTA 32 NEGATIVE then HIV just floats around in your blood harm­less­ly for you.”

(Idem.)

12. “But even though you may be DELTA 32 NEGATIVE at both sites, you can sup­pos­ed­ly still spread the virus. What has been dis­cov­ered is that these 20% of Euro­pean Cau­casians are mem­bers of the Aryan gene pool. Also it has been dis­cov­ered that the far­ther north you go in Europe, say in Nor­way, Fin­land, Swe­den, etc., you find the high­est per­cent­age of peo­ple that are DELTA 32 NEGATIVE at the CCR5 gene allele.”

(Idem.)

13a. “That this would be a sim­ple coin­ci­dence is beyond all human rea­son. To say that HIV sud­den­ly crawled out of the wood­work in Cen­tral Africa by some­one being bit­ten by a green tree mon­key is one thing. But then to say that the only human gene pool on Earth that is immune to HIV is the Aryan Race is a coin­ci­dence that even Howdy Doo­dy wouldn’t buy.”

(Idem.)

13b.The pro­gram presents infor­ma­tion about a hered­i­tary sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to HIV infec­tion among peo­ple of African extrac­tion. For more about AIDS as a prod­uct of bio­log­i­cal war­fare research, see–among oth­er programs–FTR#’s 16, 19, as well as AFA#16. (Note: this was insert­ed into the post on 6/11/2009.)

“An inter­na­tion­al team of AIDS sci­en­tists has dis­cov­ered that a gene vari­ant com­mon in blacks pro­tects against cer­tain types of malar­ia but increas­es sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to HIV infec­tion by 40 per­cent.

Researchers, keen to find some bio­log­i­cal clues to explain why peo­ple of African descent are bear­ing a dis­pro­por­tion­ate share of the world’s AIDS cas­es, sus­pect this sub­tle genet­ic trait — found in 60 per­cent of Amer­i­can blacks and 90 per­cent of Africans — might part­ly explain the dif­fer­ence.

Ten per­cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion lives in sub-Saha­ran Africa, but that region accounts for 70 per­cent of the men, women and chil­dren liv­ing with HIV infec­tion. In the Unit­ed States, African Amer­i­cans make up 12 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion but account for half of new­ly diag­nosed HIV infec­tions. . . .”

“New­found Genet­ic Clue to HIV Rate Among Blacks” by Sabin Rus­sell; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 7/17/08; p. A1.

14. Clar­i­fy­ing and refin­ing the dis­cus­sion about CCR5-delta 32, this descrip­tion presents infor­ma­tion from an arti­cle not includ­ed in the orig­i­nal broad­cast. Note that this sto­ry claims that 10%–not 20%–of North­ern Euro­peans car­ry that gene. The arti­cle also asserts that what has become known as “the plague” that rav­aged Europe cen­turies ago was actu­al­ly a series of epi­demics of a viral hem­or­rhag­ic fever, not the “Bubon­ic Plague.”

“Sci­en­tists have known for some time that these indi­vid­u­als car­ry a genet­ic muta­tion (known as CCR5-delta 32) that pre­vents the virus from enter­ing the cells of the immune sys­tem but have been unable to account for the high lev­els of the gene in Scan­di­navia and rel­a­tive­ly low lev­els in areas bor­der­ing the Mediter­ranean. They have also been puz­zled by the fact that HIV emerged only recent­ly and could not have played a role in rais­ing the fre­quen­cy of the muta­tion to the high lev­els found in some Euro­peans today. Pro­fes­sor Christo­pher Dun­can and Dr Susan Scott from the Uni­ver­si­ty’s School of Bio­log­i­cal Sci­ences, whose research is pub­lished in the March edi­tion of Jour­nal of Med­ical Genet­ics, attribute the fre­quen­cy of the CCR5-delta 32 muta­tion to its pro­tec­tion from anoth­er dead­ly viral dis­ease, act­ing over a sus­tained peri­od in bygone his­toric times. Some sci­en­tists have sug­gest­ed this dis­ease could have been small­pox or even bubon­ic plague but bubon­ic plague is a bac­te­r­i­al dis­ease rather than a virus and is not blocked by the CCR5-delta 32 muta­tion. Pro­fes­sor Dun­can com­ment­ed: ‘The fact that the CCR5-delta 32 muta­tion is restrict­ed to Europe sug­gests that the plagues of the Mid­dle Ages played a big part in rais­ing the fre­quen­cy of the muta­tion. These plagues were also con­fined to Europe, per­sist­ed for more than 300 years and had a 100% case mor­tal­i­ty.’”

(“Biol­o­gists Dis­cov­er Why 10 Per­cent Of Euro­peans Are Safe From HIV Infec­tion” [Uni­ver­si­ty of Liv­er­pool]; Sci­ence Dai­ly; 4/3/2005.)

15. The pas­sage that fol­lows fur­ther clar­i­fies the nature of the epi­demics that dec­i­mat­ed the pop­u­la­tion of Europe. Accord­ing to the authors, the the­o­ry that the “plagues” were actu­al­ly Bubon­ic Plague gained accep­tance around 1900. Pri­or to that, the hem­or­rhag­ic fever the­o­ry was pre­dom­i­nant.

“Around 1900, his­to­ri­ans spread the idea that the plagues of Europe were not a direct­ly infec­tious dis­ease but were out­breaks of bubon­ic plague, over­turn­ing an accept­ed belief that had stood for 550 years. Pro­fes­sor Dun­can and Dr Scott illus­trat­ed in their book, Return of the Black Death (2004, Wiley), that this idea was incor­rect and the plagues of Europe (1347–1660) were in fact a con­tin­u­ing series of epi­demics of a lethal, viral, haem­or­rhag­ic fever that used the CCR5 as an entry port into the immune sys­tem. Using com­put­er mod­el­ing, they demon­strat­ed how this dis­ease pro­vid­ed the selec­tion pres­sure that forced up the fre­quen­cy of the muta­tion from 1 in 20,000 at the time of the Black Death to val­ues today of 1 in 10. . . .”

(Idem.)

16. Next, the pro­gram turns to dis­cus­sion of the intro­duc­tion into the Unit­ed States of Erich Traub, accord­ing to cred­i­ble sources one of the prin­ci­pal direc­tors of bac­te­ri­o­log­i­cal and viro­log­i­cal war­fare for Nazi Ger­many. In order to under­stand how Erich Traub came to the Unit­ed States, it is impor­tant to under­stand Project Paper­clip. The pro­gram begins with a syn­op­tic account of that project and how its pros­e­cu­tion led to Traub’s entry to the Unit­ed States and his involve­ment with the fed­er­al Plum Island ani­mal research lab­o­ra­to­ry:

“Near­ing the end of World War II, the Unit­ed States and the Sovi­et Union raced to recruit Ger­man sci­en­tists for post­war pur­pos­es. Under a top-secret pro­gram code-named Project PAPERCLIP, the U.S. mil­i­tary pur­sued Nazi sci­en­tif­ic tal­ent ‘like for­bid­den fruit,’ bring­ing them to Amer­i­ca under employ­ment con­tracts and offer­ing them full U.S. cit­i­zen­ship. The recruits were sup­posed to be nom­i­nal par­tic­i­pants in Nazi activ­i­ties. But the zeal­ous mil­i­tary recruit­ed more than two thou­sand sci­en­tists, many of whom had dark Nazi par­ty pasts.”

(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. 7.)

17. It is inter­est­ing to note that the Third Reich’s bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram had the cov­er name of “Can­cer Research Pro­gram.” (In AFA#16—avail­able from Spitfire—as well as FTR#’s 16, 73, we look at the Nation­al Can­cer Institute’s Spe­cial Viral Can­cer Research Pro­gram and the evi­dence sug­gest­ing that the project was actu­al­ly a front for the con­tin­u­a­tion of bio­log­i­cal war­fare research. Erich Traub appears to have been involved with the projects relat­ed to the SVCRP.)

“ . . . Every­body seemed will­ing to for­get about Erich Traub’s dirty past—that he played a cru­cial role in the Nazis’ ‘Can­cer Research Pro­gram,’ the cov­er name for their bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram, and that he worked direct­ly under SS Reichs­fuhrer Hein­rich Himm­ler. They seemed will­ing to over­look that Traub in the 1930’s faith­ful­ly attend­ed Camp Sigfried. In fact, the USDA liked him so much, it glossed over his dubi­ous past and offered him the top sci­en­tist job at the new Plum Island Laboratory—not once, but twice. Just months after the 1952 pub­lic hear­ings on select­ing Plum Island, Doc Sha­han dialed Dr. Traub at the naval lab­o­ra­to­ry to dis­cuss plans for estab­lish­ing the germ lab­o­ra­to­ry and a posi­tion on Plum Island.”

(Ibid.; p. 10.)

18. Turn­ing to a pri­ma­ry area of the­o­ret­i­cal inquiry, the pro­gram notes that the Nazis began research­ing tox­ic agents on apes and then moved on to humans—inmates in con­cen­tra­tion camps. AIDS results from a mon­key virus that even­tu­al­ly jumped to humans as well. Does the pro­gres­sion in the Nazi death camps of test­ing on apes to test­ing on humans have any rela­tion­ship with the pro­gres­sion of a simi­an virus to infec­tion of humans? Might the cre­ation of AIDS have stemmed from Nazi research? Is it an acci­dent that the hered­i­tary immu­ni­ty from HIV infec­tion is only present in the white race, and [accord­ing to some sources] North­ern Euro­peans in par­tic­u­lar?

“Guinea pigs and white rats, ani­mals tra­di­tion­al­ly used for test­ing pur­pos­es, were deemed inad­e­quate for mea­sur­ing the effect of the nerve gas­es on humans. Ear­ly in the war, it was decid­ed to sub­sti­tute apes, whose bio­log­i­cal reac­tions to such gas­es were believed to be more like those of human beings. How­ev­er, apes were not read­i­ly avail­able in Ger­many, and Speer’s office sup­plied 200,000 Swiss francs, a pre­cious for­eign cur­ren­cy, to buy them in Spain. They were trans­port­ed to Ger­many with great dif­fi­cul­ty; many died before the exper­i­ments were con­clud­ed (TWC I, p. 351, Brandt Doc­u­ment Book 12, Defense Exhib­it 11). Even­tu­al­ly it was decid­ed to exper­i­ment on con­cen­tra­tion camp Jews. It is sus­pect­ed that the test­ing of I.G.‘s poi­son gas­es on humans was known in the high­est ech­e­lons of I.G. After the war, Georg von Schnit­zler swore that Ambros, Schmitz, and Ter Meer were aware of these activ­i­ties. Accord­ing to British intel­li­gence, one of them was report­ed to have ‘jus­ti­fied the exper­i­ments not only on the grounds that the inmates of con­cen­tra­tion camps would have been killed any­way by the Nazis, but also on the grounds that the exper­i­ments had a human­i­tar­i­an aspect in that the lives of count­less Ger­man work­ers were saved there­by’ (Hear­ings before a Sub­com­mit­tee of the Com­mit­tee on Mil­i­tary Affairs, U.S. Sen­ate, 79th Con­gress, 1st Ses­sion (1945), pur­suant to S. Res. 107 and 146, Elim­i­na­tion of Ger­man Resources for War, part X, p. 1276)”

(The Crime and Pun­ish­ment of I.G. Far­ben; Joseph Borkin; Copy­right 1978 [HC] by The Free Press [a divi­sion of MacMil­lan]; ISBN 0–02-904630–0; p. 132.)

19. Turn­ing to a pri­ma­ry ele­ment of analy­sis, the pro­gram sets forth the career of an inter­est­ing and [pos­si­bly] very sig­nif­i­cant indi­vid­ual. Franz Liesau Zacharias was a Ger­man intel­li­gence agent sta­tioned in Spain. Among the duties he per­formed for the Nazis was obtain­ing ani­mals, includ­ing apes, for exper­i­men­tal pur­pos­es. Note that the ani­mals were to be used in exper­i­ments used for devel­op­ing dis­eases for test­ing on con­cen­tra­tion inmates.

“One tor­tured French cit­i­zens in ice baths. Anoth­er was a Gestapo agent who packed bombs into crates of Span­ish oranges bound for Eng­land. They were just two of 104 Nazi secret agents in Spain whom the Allies sought near the end of World War II. But Span­ish dic­ta­tor Fran­cis­co Franco—Adolf Hitler’s ally—refused to hand them over, accord­ing to an inves­tiga­tive report by El País, a Madrid news­pa­per. . . .Anoth­er agent was Franz Liesau Zacharias, whose job fori Hitler’s Abwehr spy agency was to obtain mon­keys and oth­er ani­mals from Spain’s colonies in Africa. The ani­mals used for exper­i­ments in Ger­many aimed at man­u­fac­tur­ing killer dis­eases that were to be unleashed on con­cen­tra­tion camp inmates, El Pais report­ed. . . .”

(“Report: Spain Pro­tect­ed Under­cov­er Nazis from Allies” by Cia­ran Giles [AP]; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 3/31/1997.)

20. Among the dis­eases that Liesau Zacharias’ ani­mals were used for test­ing was “the plague”! Did the Nazis note that some peo­ple appeared to be immune to infec­tion with plague? Were tis­sue sam­ples tak­en and pre­served for fur­ther study? Was this in any way con­nect­ed to the even­tu­al evo­lu­tion of the CCR5-delta 32 gene as a hered­i­tary pro­tec­tion against infec­tion by HIV? Is it pos­si­ble that Liesau Zacharias was actu­al­ly tar­get­ed for recruit­ment by the U.S. for Project Paper­clip, like Erich Traub?

“ . . . Anoth­er ‘Ger­man on the list is Franz Liesau Zacharias, who died in Madrid in 1992 at the age of 84. A mem­ber of the Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence agency, the Abwehr, he had been in charge of obtain­ing ani­mals in Span­ish ter­ri­to­ries in Africa for exper­i­ments in Ger­many, the allies said. These exper­i­ments includ­ed ‘spread­ing hor­rif­ic dis­eases, such as the plague, in con­cen­tra­tion camps,’ the news­pa­per said. . . . It added that man of those on the list start­ed up busi­ness­es in Spain after the war, main­ly in the Basque coun­try. . . .”

(“Span­ish News­pa­per Pub­lish­es List of Nazis Pro­tect­ed by Fran­co”; Agence France Presse [Eng­lish]; 3/30/1997.)

21. Of con­sid­er­able inter­est is the fact that Zacharias found­ed a com­pa­ny that sold elec­tron­ic eaves­drop­ping equip­ment to the Span­ish intel­li­gence ser­vice of Fran­cis­co Fran­co, a doc­tri­naire fas­cist and admir­er of Hitler. This is sig­nif­i­cant for our pur­pos­es, because this indi­cates that Zacharias remained active in a reac­tionary polit­i­cal capac­i­ty for decades after the end of the war. Note that Zacharias’ sons took over his busi­ness and were inves­ti­gat­ed by the inter­na­tion­al­ly famous Span­ish jurist Balthasar Gar­zon (known for indict­ing both Chilean dic­ta­tor Augus­to Pinochet and Hen­ry Kissinger.) The sons pro­vid­ed an alto­geth­er unsat­is­fac­to­ry expla­na­tion for their pres­ence at the scene of the shoot­ing of a cou­ple of “par­lia­men­tar­i­ans.”

“A pre­sumed agent of Nazi intel­li­gence was the pres­i­dent of the com­pa­ny that pro­vid­ed to the Cesid [Span­ish intel­li­gence ser­vice] all of its eaves­drop­ping equip­ment. Franz Liesau Zacharias was pres­i­dent of the com­pa­ny. . . (SIAISA) until his death in Decem­ber of 1992. Since then the com­pa­ny has been presided over by his son Chris­t­ian Liesau Von Let­tow and the vice-pres­i­dent is his oth­er son Fran­cis­co Ger­ald. . . Also on the company’s reg­istry is the Nazi’s daugh­ter Cori­na and his wid­ow Sit­ta Von Let­tow Vor­beck. . . . When World War II fin­ished, the Fran­co regime pro­tect­ed [him] and pre­vent­ed his deliv­ery to the Allies. Now, the World has doc­u­men­ta­tion that demon­strates that, dur­ing the ‘80’s, it main­tained its rela­tion­ship with the Span­ish secret ser­vices. In par­tic­u­lar, his [Zacharias’] com­pa­ny was its main sup­pli­er of lis­ten­ing equip­ment and main­tained mag­nif­i­cent rela­tions with the then head of the Span­ish secret ser­vices, gen­er­al Alon­so Manglano. . . Chris­t­ian Liesau Von Let­tow Vor­beck, son of the pre­sumed Nazi agent and present [1997] pres­i­dent of SIAISA, had to tes­ti­fy before judge Balthasar Gar­zon in 1989. And accord­ing to the doc­u­men­ta­tion that now is in pos­ses­sion of the World, he did not tes­ti­fy hon­est­ly. Chris­t­ian Liesau was, on the night of Novem­ber 20, 1989, in the Basque restau­rant on Alcala street in Madrid. While he dined with friends, with­in a few meters of the office of the com­pa­ny that his father and pre­sumed Nazi agent presided over, two indi­vid­u­als shot at sev­er­al elect­ed par­lia­men­tar­i­ans of Her­ri Bata­suna, killing Josu Mugu­ruza and severe­ly wound­ing Ina­ki Esnao­la. . . . The indus­tri­al­ist [Chris­t­ian Liesau] declared he was acci­den­tal­ly on the premis­es and that his com­pa­ny was ded­i­cat­ed to mak­ing clocks, omit­ting the fact that the com­pa­ny was the sup­pli­er of equip­ment for the Span­ish secret ser­vices and State Secu­ri­ty Forces . . . espe­cial­ly those of the Depart­ment of the Inte­ri­or, such as the Nation­al Police and the Civ­il Guard.”

(“A Pre­sumed Nazi Agent Direct­ed the Com­pa­ny that Pro­vid­ed the Lis­ten­ing Devices to the Cesid” by Fer­nan­do Garea and Fer­nan­do Lazaro; El Mun­do; 4/13/1997.)

22. It is also sig­nif­i­cant that Siaisa was begun in 1944, as the Third Reich was prepar­ing to go under­ground. Tak­en in com­bi­na­tion with the company’s work with Span­ish intel­li­gence, this sug­gests that Siaisa was part of the Under­ground Reich. (For more about the Third Reich’s prepa­ra­tions to go under­ground, see both Paul Manning’s Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile and Curt Reiss’ The Nazis Go Under­ground, avail­able on this web­site.

“Grupo Siaisa con­sists of two main com­pa­nies: Siaisa and Trade­se­gur. Siaisa is a com­pa­ny that was estab­lished in 1944. . . .”

(“[New] Cus­tomers; accessed at: http://www.watermark.eu/pt/pages/customers/profiles/siaisa.html.)

23. The pro­found rela­tion­ship between the post­war Nazi under­ground and the Span­ish intel­li­gence ser­vices is exem­pli­fied by the influ­ence of ODESSA king­pin Otto Sko­rzeny on the DGS. It is in this con­text that one should view Siaisa’s rela­tion­ship with Span­ish intel­li­gence. (For more about Sko­rzeny, his rela­tion­ship with the Rein­hard Gehlen spy out­fit and the post­war Nazi under­ground, see—among oth­er programs—FTR#558.)

“ . . . Gehlen sang to the tune of more than one piper, hav­ing remained in touch with the old Nazi hier­ar­chy, relo­cat­ed in Latin Amer­i­ca, whose coor­di­na­tor, Otto Sko­rzeny, was in Spain. Sko­rzeny had infil­trat­ed the Span­ish intel­li­gence agency DGS, and effec­tive­ly con­trolled it sin­gle hand­ed­ly. . . .”

(The Great Hero­in Coup: Drugs, Intel­li­gence and Inter­na­tion­al Fas­cism; by Hen­rik Kruger; South End Press [SC]; Copy­right 1980 by South End Press; ISBN 0–89608-031–5 [paper]; p. 205.)

24. Next, the show exam­ines the polit­i­cal his­to­ry of Dr. Wolf Szmuness, the devel­op­er of the exper­i­men­tal Hepati­tis B vac­cine that appears to have been a major vec­tor for the delib­er­ate spread­ing of the AIDS virus.

“Szmuness, a Jew born in Poland in 1919, was a young med­ical stu­dent in Lublin in east­ern Poland when the Nazis attacked that coun­try in the sum­mer of 1939. When Poland was quick­ly par­ti­tioned by Ger­many and Rus­sia, Szmuness was sent to Siberia as a pris­on­er. His fam­i­ly in west­ern Poland were all mur­dered by the Nazis in the Holo­caust. Szmuness’ years in exile in Siberia were ‘a long, dark peri­od that he was most reluc­tant to talk about.’”

(AIDS and the Doc­tors of Death; by Dr. Alan Cantwell; Aries Ris­ing Press [HC]; Copy­right by Alan Cantwell; ISBN 0–917211-00–6; p. 102.)

25. A care­ful exam­i­na­tion of Szmuness’ cur­ricu­lum vitae sug­gests very strong­ly that he was a crea­ture of the intel­li­gence agen­cies. Such is the case with the Pope as well.

“After release from deten­tion in 1946, he was some­how allowed to fin­ish his med­ical edu­ca­tion in Tom­sk in cen­tral Rus­sia. While a stu­dent, he mar­ried a Russ­ian woman. He spe­cial­ized in epi­demi­ol­o­gy, and when his wife con­tract­ed a near­ly fatal case of hepati­tis, Szmuness decid­ed that the study of that dis­ease would be his life’s work. In 1959, the Sovi­ets allowed him and his fam­i­ly to return to Poland ‘where he held a series of minor posi­tions as an epi­demi­ol­o­gist in munic­i­pal and region­al health depart­ments.’”

(Idem.)

26. A fas­ci­nat­ing con­nec­tion con­cerns Szmuness’ life-long friend­ship with Car­ol Wojty­la, the Pol­ish priest who became Pope. Note that John Paul’s polit­i­cal his­to­ry sug­gests very strong­ly that he, too, was an oper­a­tive of the Under­ground Reich.)

“Dur­ing this time, he told Kell­ner ‘an inter­est­ing sto­ry.’ Due to exhaus­tion and stress from work, he applied to the author­i­ties for a vaca­tion at a rest home. Szmuness was allowed to share a room with a Catholic priest. A remark­able friend­ship devel­oped and the two men cor­re­spond­ed ‘for a long time there­after.’ The Pol­ish priest even­tu­al­ly became the first Pol­ish Pope in Catholic his­to­ry: the cur­rent, anti-com­mu­nist and anti-gay Pope John Paul II.”

(Ibid.; pp. 102–103.)

27. “In 1969, in anoth­er strange twist of fate, the com­mu­nists allowed Szmuness and his wife and daugh­ter to attend a sci­en­tif­ic meet­ing in Italy. While there, he and his fam­i­ly defect­ed to the West. . . . He arrived in Man­hat­tan with $15 in his pock­et. Through the inter­ven­tion of Walsh McDer­mott, Pro­fes­sor of Pub­lic Health at New York Hospital—Cornell Med­ical Cen­ter, Szmuness mirac­u­lous­ly secured a posi­tion as a ‘lab tech’ at the New York City Blood Cen­ter.”

(Ibid.; p. 103.)

28. “With­in a few years, Szmuness was giv­en his own lab, and a sep­a­rate depart­ment of epi­demi­ol­o­gy at the Cen­ter was cre­at­ed for him. ‘In what must be record time, he was leap-frogged to full Pro­fes­sor­ship at the Colum­bia School of Pub­lic Health.’”

(Idem.)

29. “By the mid-70’s, he was a world author­i­ty on hepati­tis and ‘trans­fu­sion med­i­cine.’ In anoth­er unbe­liev­able occur­rence, he was invit­ed back to Moscow in 1975 to give a sci­en­tif­ic pre­sen­ta­tion. As a defec­tor he was ter­ri­fied to set foot in the Sovi­et Union, but his col­leagues assured him he would have the full pro­tec­tion of the State Depart­ment. He final­ly agreed to go, and his return to Russ­ian was a sci­en­tif­ic tri­umph.”

(Idem.)

30. Szmuness’ hepati­tis B vac­cine was admin­is­tered in South Africa, one of the areas most severe­ly rav­aged by AIDS.

“By the late 1970’s, he had been award­ed mil­lions of dol­lars in grant mon­ey and was ‘phe­nom­e­nal­ly suc­cess­ful’ in his hepati­tis work which had tremen­dous ‘glob­al impli­ca­tions.’ Szmuness’ mete­oric and unprece­dent­ed rise to world promi­nence was halt­ed by his death from can­cer in 1982. (A 1983 paper pub­lished after his death detailed a new exper­i­men­tal hepati­tis B vac­cine pro­gram in Kang­wane that would use Black South African infants as exper­i­men­tal sub­jects.)”

(Ibid.; pp. 103–104.)

31. “As a defec­tor, could Szmuness have been a Russ­ian agent? Or could he have been play­ing both sides of the field by work­ing as a ‘dou­ble-agent’ for Amer­i­can and the Sovi­et Union? His life sto­ry was proof that he was hon­ored by both coun­tries. Although the sci­en­tif­ic world would undoubt­ed­ly laugh at these ques­tions, Szmuness’ pro­fes­sion­al life in the com­mu­nist and the free-world was filled with the odd­est of cir­cum­stances and coin­ci­dences.”

(Ibid.; p. 104.)

32. “As a pre­cau­tion against escape, it is my under­stand­ing that poten­tial defec­tors from com­mu­nist coun­tries are nev­er allowed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to trav­el out­side the coun­try with their entire fam­i­ly. Yet, Szmuness defect­ed with his fam­i­ly in tow. After defect­ing, how was it pos­si­ble to arrange his safe return to Rus­sia ‘to present a sci­en­tif­ic paper.’ Undoubt­ed­ly, coop­er­a­tion at the high­est lev­els of both gov­ern­ments was nec­es­sary to accom­plish this feat.”

(Idem.)

33. In a spec­u­la­tive note, the broad­cast high­lights the fact that a native of South Africa was in charge of the reg­u­la­to­ry stan­dards for Amer­i­can vac­cine man­u­fac­ture. It is against the back­ground of viral con­t­a­m­i­na­tion (delib­er­ate and acci­den­tal) of vac­cines that Mr. Emory has set forth spec­u­la­tive inquiries into the ori­gins of both AIDS and a soft-tis­sue can­cer epi­dem­ic [appar­ent­ly] gen­er­at­ed by a can­cer-caus­ing mon­key virus, SV-40. In FTR 225, we not­ed the Nazi ori­gins of the Broeder­bond, the fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion that was the epi­cen­ter of polit­i­cal pow­er in South Africa’s apartheid era. In effect, the apartheid regime of South Africa was an exten­sion of the Third Reich. Is there any link between Mr. Murray’s pres­ence in a key posi­tion at the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health, the Nazi/apartheid regime of South Africa, the Under­ground Reich, the cre­ation of AIDS and/or the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the polio and oth­er vac­cines with SV-40?

“ . . . The bureau­crat­ic makeover occa­sioned by the Cut­ter inci­dent extend­ed deep into the NIH. In mid­sum­mer, the Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Bio­log­ics Con­trol was dis­man­tled and revamped as the Divi­sion of Bio­log­ic Stan­dards (or ‘DB S’); the new agency had near­ly triple the num­ber of staff mem­bers as the old LBC. . . Work­man, even though he had been per­sis­tent­ly skep­ti­cal of Salk’s vac­cine, was not named as head of the DBS. He was, instead, oust­ed in favor of his for­mer assis­tant Rod­er­ick Mur­ray. Mur­ray, a native of South Africa, was a tac­i­turn, inscrutable, and exceed­ing­ly cau­tious leader; under his direc­tion the DBS con­tin­ued to live under the cloud of Cut­ter and proved unwilling—some crit­ics would say afraid—to make most any changes in gov­ern­ment poli­cies regard­ing polio vac­cine reg­u­la­tion for his entire decade-and-a-half tenure. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’.] As a result, the Unit­ed States would lag far behind West­ern Europe in adopt­ing advances in vac­cine safe­ty. . .”

(The Virus and the Vac­cine; Deb­bie Bookchin and Jim Schu­mach­er; St. Martin’s Press [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Deb­bie Bookchin and Jim Schu­mach­er; ISBN 0–312-27872–1; p. 56.)

34. In the suc­cess­ful flight cap­i­tal pro­gram of the Nazis, Reich­sleit­er Matin Bor­mann set up 750 cor­po­ra­tions in neu­tral coun­tries, and these became repos­i­to­ries for the liq­uid wealth of the Third Reich. Over­seas sub­sidiaries of key Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions were also cen­tral to the real­iza­tion of the Bor­mann assets. Note that the Mer­ck firm was one of these com­pa­nies.

Although the Ger­man Mer­ck firm tech­ni­cal­ly sep­a­rat­ed from the Amer­i­can Mer­ck at the end of World War I, the two com­pa­nies remained close. The Amer­i­can Mer­ck was very much involved with the man­u­fac­ture of the exper­i­men­tal hepatitis‑B vac­cine that appears to have been a major vec­tor for the delib­er­ate spread­ing of AIDS. The Ger­man Mer­ck is an inte­gral part of the Under­ground Reich.

“The move­ment of Ger­man assets into Switzer­land had also gone well, Bor­mann not­ed from his reports. Flight cap­i­tal invest­ments had been accom­plished prin­ci­pal­ly through the estab­lish­ment of sub­sidiaries of pow­er­ful Ger­man firms. Over half of the total Ger­man cap­i­tal in Switzer­land was used in set­ting up hold­ing com­pa­nies rep­re­sent­ing I.G. Far­ben, Mer­ck, Siemens, Osram, Henkel, and oth­ers. A hold­ing com­pa­ny may not trade in any form. It may only hold stock in oth­er com­pa­nies, but through this device the exist­ing Ger­man firms, and the 750 new cor­po­ra­tions estab­lished under the Bor­mann pro­gram, gave them­selves absolute con­trol over a post­war eco­nom­ic net­work of viable, pros­per­ous com­pa­nies that stretched from the Ruhr to the ‘neu­trals’ of Europe and to the coun­tries of South Amer­i­ca; a con­trol that con­tin­ues today and is eas­i­ly main­tained through the bear­er bonds or shares issued by these cor­po­ra­tions to cloak for real own­er­ship. Bear­er shares require no reg­is­tra­tion of iden­ti­ty, for such shares are exact­ly what they mean; the bear­er of the major­i­ty shares con­trols the com­pa­ny with­out need­ing a ves­tige of proof as to how he acquired them. Thus the Ger­mans who par­tic­i­pat­ed as a silent force in Bormann’s post­war com­mer­cial campaign—which is some­times referred to by aging nazis as ‘Oper­a­tion Eagle’s Flight’ or ‘Aktion Adlerflug’—insured their com­mand over the indus­tri­al and finan­cial insti­tu­tions that were to move the new Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many back into the fore­front of world eco­nom­ic lead­er­ship.”

(Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; pp. 134–135.)

35. Added to this descrip­tion in August of 2009 are a series of excerpts from a vital­ly impor­tant Covert Action Infor­ma­tion Bul­letin arti­cle dis­cussing the close rela­tion­ship between the Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute’s Viral Can­cer Research Pro­gram and indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions involved with bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram. The epi­cen­ter of AIDS research and the “dis­cov­ery” of HIV is the Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute’s Viral Can­cer Pro­gram. In addi­tion to the NCI’s 1971 takeover of Ft. Det­rick (for­mer­ly the Army’s top bio­log­i­cal war­fare facil­i­ty), the NCI’s VCP uti­lized the Naval Bio­sciences Lab­o­ra­to­ry in Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia.

In 1969, Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon ordered a halt to offen­sive bio­log­i­cal war­fare (BW) research and weapons stock­pil­ing by the Unit­ed States. The U.S. Army destroyed its tox­ins, virus­es, and bac­te­ria with heat and dis­in­fec­tants by May 1972; the dis­pos­al of the sci­en­tif­ic per­son­nel was not so sim­ple. Some of these biowar­riors went to the CIA.2 Oth­ers quick­ly found new sup­port from the Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute, par­tic­u­lar­ly in its Virus Can­cer Pro­gram (VCP).3 The NCI fund­ed and super­vised some of the same sci­en­tists, uni­ver­si­ties, and con­tract­ing corporations—ostensibly for can­cer research—which had con­duct­ed bio­log­i­cal war­fare research. Some of these med­ical research con­tracts ran simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with the U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram. When the mil­i­tary work end­ed, the civil­ian pro­grams con­tin­ued to expand on the same crit­i­cal areas out­lined by Colonel Tigertt.

The NCI’s Viral Can­cer Program—a high­ly politi­cized pub­lic rela­tions effort—was launched in 1971 with great fan­fare as part of Nixon’s War on Can­cer. The stat­ed aim of the pro­gram was to orga­nize exper­i­ments aimed at find­ing can­cer-caus­ing virus­es.

Appar­ent­ly this agen­da was com­pat­i­ble with the incor­po­ra­tion into var­i­ous units of the VCP of pos­si­bly dozens of for­mer U.S. BW researchers who con­tin­ued to study top­ics with poten­tial mil­i­tary appli­ca­tion. Poten­tial can­cer-caus­ing virus­es were col­lect­ed, grown in huge amounts, and dis­trib­uted through the thou­sands of ani­mals were infect­ed exper­i­men­tal­ly, and the aerosol dis­tri­b­u­tion of car­cino­genic virus­es was stud­ied.

Two for­mer BW facil­i­ties would play a large part in VCP. The U.S. Army’s Fort Det­rick in Fred­er­ick, Mary­land had been the ‘par­ent research and pilot plant cen­ter for bio­log­i­cal warfare.‘4 Dur­ing the ear­ly 1960s, the CIA paid the facil­i­ty $100,000 a year for BW and chem­i­cal agents and their deliv­ery sys­tems. In Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia, the Naval Bio­sciences Lab­o­ra­to­ry was involved in ear­ly exper­i­ments with the plague and col­lab­o­rat­ed in mas­sive open-air tests of bio­log­i­cal war­fare ‘sim­u­lants’ in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area in the 1950s. For­mer bio­log­i­cal war­fare spe­cial­ists from both of these cen­ters were deeply involved in all aspects of the VCP. . .”

“Can­cer War­fare: Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute and the Fort Det­rick Link” by Richard Hatch; Covert Action Infor­ma­tion Bul­letin Num­ber 39 (Win­ter 1991–92).

36. The arti­cle details the work done on can­cer-caus­ing and immuno­sup­pres­sive virus­es at the Naval Bio­sciences Lab­o­ra­to­ry, par­tial­ly financed by the Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute and man­aged by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia. Note that the research also involved bubon­ic plague, of great sig­nif­i­cance to the CCR5-delta 32 gene and HIV immu­ni­ty. Might this have had impli­ca­tions for the devel­op­ment of AIDS?

. . . Less well-known is the fact that UC Berke­ley also helps man­age the Naval Bio­sciences Lab­o­ra­to­ry (NBL) — ear­li­er called the Naval Bio­log­i­cal Lab­o­ra­to­ry. This con­nec­tion became cen­tral to the VCP and con­tin­ued after the ban on offen­sive BW work.

Well before Pres­i­dent Nixon ordered the con­ver­sion of the U.S. Army BW cen­ter at Fort Det­rick to civil­ian uses in 1971, this mil­i­tary facil­i­ty was coop­er­at­ing close­ly with UC.

From 1953 to 1968, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, while man­ag­ing the NBL, now at the Naval Sup­ply Cen­ter, also had BW con­tracts with the U.S. Army.5 After U.S treaty oblig­a­tions would have pre­vent­ed open research on mass pro­duc­tion of dan­ger­ous virus­es with­out a med­ical ‘cov­er’; the VCP pro­vid­ed an ide­al excuse to study “scale-up” problems.6

One of the first new pri­or­i­ties of the Fort Det­rick facil­i­ty after the ban was “the large scale pro­duc­tion of onco­genic [can­cer-caus­ing] and sus­pect­ed onco­genic viruses.“7 With­in a year, the NCI began mass pro­duc­tion and with­in one fif­teen month peri­od end­ing in June 1977, the VCP pro­duced 60,000 liters of can­cer-caus­ing and immuno­sup­pres­sive virus­es. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.]

Through­out the 1970s, U.S. “defen­sive” BW efforts were increas­ing­ly aimed at the research and devel­op­ment of viral dis­ease agents.8

The ‘seed stocks’ for this mas­sive pro­duc­tion of virus­es came from the Cell Cul­ture Lab­o­ra­to­ry (CCL); the CCL was ‘phys­i­cal­ly locat­ed at the Naval Bio­sciences Lab­o­ra­to­ry (NBL)’ in Oak­land, California.9 Because this lab­o­ra­to­ry was financed in part by the NCI and linked to UC, it would become a clear­ing­house and cen­tral repos­i­to­ry for vast quan­ti­ties of poten­tial­ly can­cer-caus­ing tis­sues and the tis­sues that might con­tain them. Thus, after the ban, the Naval Bio­sciences Lab at UC con­tin­ued exper­i­men­ta­tion on bio­log­i­cal agents, but under the guise of ‘defen­sive’ research.

The VCP con­tract ran con­cur­rent­ly with the NBL’s work on bubon­ic plague, Rift Val­ley and menin­gi­tis. . . .

Idem.

37. The Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute’s Viral Can­cer Research Pro­gram main­tained its Cell Cul­ture Lab­o­ra­to­ry under the aus­pices of the Naval Bio­sciences Lab­o­ra­to­ry, super­vised by two vet­er­ans of Fort Det­rick!

The NBL/Cell Cul­ture Lab­o­ra­to­ry project was super­vised for the VCP by Drs. James Duff and Jack Gruber.12 Duff had been at Fort Det­rick for 12 years join­ing the NCI. His biog­ra­phy lists research into clostrid­i­um bot­u­linum toxins.13 Bot­u­linum tox­ins cause bot­u­lism and are among the most tox­ic sub­stances known. It was dur­ing Duf­f’s tenure at Fort Det­rick that the U.S. Army stock­piled bot­u­linum tox­in weapons.14 There, too, the inten­sive study of psit­ta­co­sis, or “par­rot fever,” result­ed in the acci­den­tal infec­tion of at least 12 workers15 while Duff was work­ing there. After serv­ing for eight years at Fort Det­rick, Gru­ber moved to the NCI. His biog­ra­phy lists work on “arthro­pod-borne viruses.“16 The U.S. stock­piled BW weapons based on one arthro­pod-borne virus and stud­ied many oth­ers. He soon became Chair of the Pro­gram Resources and Logis­tics Advi­so­ry Group of the VCP, where he helped coor­di­nate projects involv­ing pro­duc­tion of virus­es, pro­vi­sion of test ani­mals and the ‘bio­haz­ard safe­ty pro­gram.’ 17 In 1984, Gru­ber became head of the Can­cer Eti­ol­o­gy Divi­sion of the NIH. . . .

Idem.

38. Anoth­er bio­log­i­cal war­fare vet­er­an who was involved with the NCI’s Viral Can­cer Research Pro­gram.

. . . The NCI project offi­cer and for­mer U.S. Air Force virol­o­gist, Dr. Alfred Hell­man, worked with Mark Chatigny, a research engi­neer at NBL and mem­ber of the NCI bio­haz­ards work group from the NBL. 19 Hell­man also over­saw the 1971 $100,000 NBL study on the “phys­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of viral aerosols..” In 1961, the NBL had done sim­i­lar research for Fort Det­rick on the “sta­bil­i­ty and vir­u­lence of BW aerosols.“20 Chatigny’s NBL research into aerosol dis­tri­b­u­tion of virus­es would con­tin­ue into the 1980s. . .

Idem.

39. In addi­tion to Duff, Gru­ber and Hell­man, Dr. Richard Griese­mer was anoth­er bio­log­i­cal war­fare research vet­er­an who went to work for the Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute.

. . . Before he worked with UC, Dr. Hell­man super­vised an NCI con­tract for Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty. Designed to study the aerosol trans­mis­sion of can­cer-caus­ing virus­es, this research start­ed in 1965 and con­tin­ued at least until 1972. The prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tor for this work, Dr. Richard Griese­mer, would even­tu­al­ly suc­ceed in giv­ing tumors to mice and mon­keys. Griese­mer then went to work briefly at the Oak Ridge Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry, part of the U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy nuclear research sys­tem. After his stint at Oak Ridge, Griese­mer returned to NCI, where he head­ed the NCI Bioas­say pro­gram, which test­ed chem­i­cals sus­pect­ed of caus­ing can­cer. . .

Idem.

40. Of con­sum­mate impor­tance for our pur­pos­es here is the fact that Ft. Det­rick­’s con­sign­ment to the osten­si­bly civil­ian Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute for its Viral Can­cer Research pro­gram entailed the use of a mil­i­tary con­trac­tor to man­age the facil­i­ty! That mil­i­tary con­trac­tor was Lit­ton-Bio­net­ics, a biotech­nol­o­gy sub­sidiary of Lit­ton Indus­tries, a major mil­i­tary con­trac­tor and also some­time vehi­cle for covert oper­a­tions.

Lit­ton-Bio­net­ics employed Dr. Robert Gal­lo in the 1970’s–Gallo was to become [arguably] the most impor­tant ear­ly Amer­i­can AIDS researcher, cred­it­ed by many with the “dis­cov­ery” of HIV! Gal­lo worked close­ly with the above-men­tioned Jack Gru­ber at Lit­ton-Bio­net­ics. Note, also that Lit­ton-Bio­net­ics heav­i­ly rearched the Mason-Pfiz­er mon­key virus, a simi­an immuno­sup­pres­sive virus.

. . . Pres­i­dent Nixon’s 1971 announce­ment that Fort Det­rick would be con­vert­ed to a cen­ter for can­cer research could not be imme­di­ate­ly imple­ment­ed. First, BW agents stored there, such as the anti-crop agent rice blast, had to be destroyed. The build­ings were then decon­t­a­m­i­nat­ed and the facil­i­ties were turned over to the NCI, which renamed the facil­i­ty the Fred­er­ick Can­cer Research Cen­ter; Lit­ton-Bio­net­ics was named as the prime con­trac­tor. A major play­er in the mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al com­plex, the cor­po­ra­tion worked exten­sive­ly on the dis­per­sion of BW agents from planes, and includ­ed U.S. Air Force con­tracts for “the super­son­ic deliv­ery of dry bio­log­i­cal agents.“28 From 1966 to 1968, Bio­net­ics Research Lab­o­ra­to­ries (which became Lit­ton-Bio­net­ics in 1973) held two con­tracts with the U.5. Army BW program.29 At the same time, it held major con­tracts with the NCI.30

One of Bio­net­ics Research Lab­o­ra­to­ries’ most impor­tant NCI con­tracts was a mas­sive virus inoc­u­la­tion pro­gram that began in 1962 and and ran until at least 1976, and used more than 2,000 mon­keys. Dr. Robert Gal­lo, the con­tro­ver­sial head of the cur­rent U.S. AIDS research pro­gram at NCI and the chief of its tumor cell biol­o­gy lab­o­ra­to­ry, and Dr. Jack Gru­ber, for­mer­ly of VCP and then NIH, were project offi­cers for the inoc­u­la­tion pro­gram. The mon­keys were inject­ed with every­thing from human can­cer tis­sues to rare virus­es and even sheep­’s blood in an effort to find a trans­mis­si­ble can­cer. Many of these mon­keys suc­cumbed to immuno­sup­pres­sion after infec­tion with the Mason-Pfiz­er mon­key virus, the first known immuno­sup­pres­sive retrovirus,31 a class of virus­es that includes the human immun­od­e­fi­cien­cy virus. . .

Idem.

41. Among the most alarm­ing aspects of the NCI link to bio­log­i­cal war­fare research con­cerns recom­bi­nant DNA work that pro­duced virus­es capa­ble of break­ing the species bar­ri­er. Bear in mind in this con­text that HIV is a mutat­ed mon­key virus that jumped from apes to humans.

. . . In 1976, Dr. Sey­mour Kalter, a promi­nent NCI sci­en­tist and for­mer mil­i­tary med­i­cine expert, report­ed on exper­i­ments so dan­ger­ous that oth­er sci­en­tists pub­licly asked for an end to such work.32 By blend­ing the genet­ic mate­r­i­al of virus­es caus­ing can­cers in mice and baboons, he cre­at­ed a new virus which could cause can­cer in dogs, mon­keys and even chim­panzees. Because it could attack chim­panzees, oth­er sci­en­tists feared it could spread to genet­i­cal­ly sim­i­lar human beings. The new virus was a prod­uct of some of the first crude genet­ic “recom­bi­na­tion” exper­i­ments.

Lawrence Loeb and Ken­neth Tartof of the Insti­tute for Can­cer Research in Philadel­phia, Penn­syl­va­nia, went even fur­ther in call­ing for change and called for a ban on such poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous exper­i­men­ta­tion.

The pro­duc­tion of malig­nant tumors in a vari­ety of pri­mate species sug­gests the pos­si­bil­i­ty of cre­at­ing virus­es that are onco­genic for humans... There­fore, we urge that all exper­i­ments involv­ing co-cul­ti­va­tion of known onco­genic virus­es with pri­mate virus­es be imme­di­ate­ly halt­ed until the safe­ty of such exper­i­ments are [sic] exten­sive­ly evaluated.33

Exper­i­ments per­formed under NCI con­tract includ­ed many dan­ger­ous viral inoc­u­la­tion pro­grams, like the pri­mate inoc­u­la­tion pro­gram run by Gal­lo and Gru­ber. So-called “species bar­ri­ers” were rou­tine­ly breached in efforts to find or cre­ate infec­tious can­cer virus­es. Virus­es native to one species were inject­ed into ani­mals from anoth­er species in hope of trig­ger­ing can­cers. Often the recip­i­ent ani­mal would be immuno­sup­pressed by radi­a­tion, drugs, or oth­er treat­ments. NIH pri­mate researchers were well aware that “the eco­log­i­cal nich­es of man and ani­mal cross with increas­ing fre­quen­cy, and this undoubt­ed­ly will cre­ate or uncov­er new problems.“34

At a 1975 NCI sym­po­sium, a par­tic­i­pant, Dr. J. Moor-Janows­ki admit­ted that “envi­ron­men­tal-moti­vat­ed, we moti­vat­ed groups begin to con­sid­er pri­mate lab­o­ra­to­ries as being a source of dan­ger.” He con­tin­ued to com­ment that “a [Euro­pean] pri­mate cen­ter was not able to begin oper­a­tions as a result of adverse pub­lic­i­ty they obtained because of Mar­burg dis­ease” The speak­er was refer­ring to a 1967 out­break in Yugoslavia and West Ger­many of this viral dis­ease, which killed sev­er­al peo­ple. Tis­sues obtained from African Green mon­keys used in bio­med­ical work were the source of the mini-epi­dem­ic. Dr. Moor-Janows­ki sug­gest­ed that researchers should fight against tighter restric­tions on pri­mate exper­i­ments. . .

Idem.

Discussion

2 comments for “FTR #606 Project Paperclip and AIDS”

  1. Inter­est­ing the­o­ry on Delta-32. The “plague” the­o­ry of HIV/AIDS has been mod­i­fied since the 1990’s. “the bubon­ic plague” is now most prob­a­bly HFRS, which is a hem­or­rhag­ic dis­ease that has appeared in Rus­sia since the 1890’s and hit Ger­man troops in 1941–1942 in Fin­land. The Nazis were brought to Paper­clip at the same time as the Japan­ese because they saw the dis­ease in the 1930’s in Manchuria.Sweden saw it in 1934 and they have the high­est rate of Delta-32 at 18%, with N. Ger­many and N. Rus­sia. The for­mer Sovi­et Union test­ed it as a bio­log­i­cal weapon in the 1970’s cod­ed as dis­ease No. 10. Actu­al­ly the only two places that have the orig­i­nal recom­bi­nant strains of HIV/AIDS, clade A/B are Liberia in Africa and Kalin­ingrad in the for­mer Sovi­et Union. The pre­cur­sor gly­co­pro­teins of of SIV, Ebo­la, and Crimean-Con­go are gp 160 and 140. Ebo­la and CCHF were all weaponized by the for­mer Sovi­et Union.

    Posted by Frank | February 28, 2010, 5:09 pm
  2. i believe i read the delta 32 muta­tion was caused or found in per­sons that had a cer­tain type of hap­at­i­tus . any­one know of this ?

    Posted by al7 | November 23, 2011, 1:51 pm

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