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FTR #1135 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment. 

” . . . . if Willy’s claim was true, a crime against human­i­ty had been com­mit­ted by the U.S. gov­ern­ment, and then cov­ered up. . . ” Bit­ten, p. 103.

Intro­duc­tion: A recent book about Lyme Dis­ease sets forth cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion that the dis­ease is an out­growth of U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare research.

Bit­ten, The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons chron­i­cles the career of Willy Burgdor­fer, a Swiss-born expert on tick and flea-borne dis­eases who spent most of his career research­ing those areas as a U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare sci­en­tist.

Author Kris New­by presents sub­stan­tive evi­dence that the dis­ease stems from BW research done by Burgdor­fer and asso­ciates. (Burgdor­fer was the sci­en­tist who “dis­cov­ered” the organ­ism that caus­es Lyme Dis­ease.)

Lis­ten­ers are emphat­i­cal­ly encour­aged to pur­chase and read this book, as well as shar­ing it with oth­ers.

In past dis­cus­sion of Lyme Dis­ease, we have explored the incor­po­ra­tion of Nazi sci­en­tists via Oper­a­tion Paper­clip into the Amer­i­can bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram and pos­si­ble links between their work and the spread of the dis­ease in Con­necti­cut, across Long Island Sound from Plum Island.

(FTR #‘s 480 and 585 high­light dis­cus­sion about Lyme Dis­ease and bio­log­i­cal war­fare.)

Burgdor­fer­’s entree into the Amer­i­can bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram result­ed from his pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ship with long time men­tor and patron Rudolf Geigy. Geigy belonged to a fam­i­ly whose busi­ness, J.R. Geigy AG, was a Swiss chem­i­cal firm mar­ket­ing dyes and insec­ti­cides.

Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, J.R. Geigy, Ciba and San­doz com­prised a Swiss chem­i­cal car­tel formed in the after­math of World War I to com­pete with the I.G. Far­ben car­tel.

(Today, the three com­pa­nies have coa­lesced as the Swiss phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal giant Novar­tis.)

Even­tu­al­ly, the Swiss con­sor­tium was absorbed into, and became a key com­po­nent of, the I.G. Far­ben car­tel. They read­i­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Third Reich:

1. ” . . . . The chap­ters on Switzer­land’s chem­i­cal indus­try are the most embar­rass­ing sec­tion of the com­mis­sion’s report. It is now clear that the direc­tors of Swiss com­pa­nies in Basel were very well aware what was going on at the time in Ger­many and had knowl­edge of the coerced employ­ment of forced labor­ers in their branch plants in Ger­many as well as of the fact that forced labor­ers died as a result of the con­di­tions in which they were held. . . .”
2. ” . . . . sev­er­al lead­ing Swiss chem­i­cal firms — includ­ing JR Geigy, Ciba, San­doz and Hoff­mann-La Roche — put their own inter­ests ahead of human­i­tar­i­an con­cerns in their deal­ing with the Nazis. . . .”
3. ” . . . .The ICE [Inde­pen­dent Com­mis­sion of Experts] con­clud­ed that the chem­i­cal firms’ boss­es in Switzer­land ‘pos­sessed a high lev­el of detailed knowl­edge about the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion in Nazi Ger­many... [and] incor­po­rat­ed their knowl­edge... into their eco­nom­ic plan­ning and used it as a basis for deci­sion-mak­ing’ . . . .”
4. ” . . . . ‘Geigy main­tained par­tic­u­lar­ly good rela­tions with Claus Unge­wit­ter, the Reich com­mis­sion­er for chem­i­cals.’ . . .”
5. ” . . . . Dur­ing the war, it [Geigy] pro­duced insec­ti­cides and, most notably, the icon­ic ‘polar red’ dye that col­ored the back­ground of Nazi swasti­ka flags. . . .”

All three Swiss firms [Geigy, San­doz and Ciba] were indict­ed in the Unit­ed States in 1942 because of their col­lab­o­ra­tion with I.G. Far­ben and the Third Reich.

1. ” . . . . Those indict­ed includ­ed duPont; Allied Chem­i­cal and Dye; and Amer­i­can Cyanamid; also Far­ben affil­i­ates the Amer­i­can Ciba, San­doz and Geigy. . . .”
2. ” . . . . A long list of oth­er co-con­spir­a­tors includ­ed the Swiss Ciba, San­doz and Geigy com­pa­nies with Cincin­nati Chem­i­cal works, their joint­ly owned Amer­i­can con­cern . . . .”
3. ” . . . . When Sec­re­tary of War Stim­son and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bid­dle agreed to post­pone the tri­al until it would not inter­fere with war pro­duc­tion, one Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cial was quot­ed as say­ing sourly, ‘First they hurt the war effort by their restric­tive prac­tices, and then if caught they use the war effort as an excuse to avoid pros­e­cu­tion.’ . . .”

Use­ful back­ground research with which to flesh out under­stand­ing of the tit­il­lat­ing infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed by Ms. New­by con­cern­ing Geigy and his activ­i­ties can be obtained by read­ing some of the many books avail­able for down­load on this web­site.

Numer­ous pro­grams present research on the top­ic, includ­ing FTR #511.

A key foun­da­tion­al ele­ment for the dis­cus­sion of Bit­ten is the Pen­tagon’s decades-long research into the genet­ic manip­u­la­tion of micro­bial pathogens.

1. Nobel Prize win­ner Joshua Leder­berg warned of the con­se­quences for human­i­ty of this work: ” . . . .‘The large-scale deploy­ment of infec­tious agents is a poten­tial threat against the whole species: mutant forms of virus­es could well devel­op that would spread over the earth’s pop­u­la­tion for a new Black Death,’ said Leder­berg in a Wash­ing­ton Post edi­to­r­i­al on Sep­tem­ber 24, 1966. He added, ‘The future of the species is very much bound up with the con­trol of these weapons. Their use must be reg­u­lat­ed by the most thought­ful recon­sid­er­a­tion of U.S. and world pol­i­cy.’ . . .”
2. The Pen­ta­gon was dis­mis­sive of the warn­ing: ” . . . . A month lat­er, the army’s Bio­log­i­cal Sub­com­mit­tee Muni­tions Advi­so­ry Group thumbed its nose at this ‘nation­al pro­nounce­ment made by promi­nent sci­en­tists.’ . . . The advi­so­ry group then con­tin­ued dis­cussing its plans for genet­ic manip­u­la­tion of microbes, new rick­ettsial and viral agents, and the devel­op­ment of a bal­anced pro­gram for both inca­pac­i­tat­ing and lethal agents. . . .”
3. By 1962, the mil­i­tary’s plans for devel­op­ment of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied microbes were devel­op­ing in earnest. ” . . . . Fort Detrick’s direc­tor of bio­log­i­cal research, Dr. J.R. Good­low, on Feb­ru­ary 16, 1962 . . . added, ‘Stud­ies of bac­te­r­i­al genet­ics are also in progress with the aim of trans­fer­ring genet­ic deter­mi­nants from one type of organ­ism to anoth­er.‘The goal of these exper­i­ments was to make bio­log­i­cal agents more vir­u­lent and resis­tant to antibi­otics. . . .”

The Pen­tagon’s genet­ic manip­u­la­tion of microor­gan­isms for bio­log­i­cal war­fare pur­pos­es involved the Rocky Moun­tain Lab and Willy Burgdor­fer.

1. ” . . . . Bioweapons researchers such as Willy knew that infect­ing large pop­u­la­tions would require expos­ing peo­ple to agents for which they had no nat­ur­al immu­ni­ty. And to do this, researchers would have to import and/or invent new microbes. They were, in essence, play­ing God, cre­at­ing ‘bac­te­ri­o­log­i­cal freaks or mutants,’ by using chem­i­cals, radi­a­tion, ultra­vi­o­let light, and oth­er agents, wrote mod­ern inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism pio­neer Jack Ander­son in a Wash­ing­ton Post col­umn on August 27, 1965. . . .”
2. ” . . . . Willy had already been con­duct­ing a tri­al-and-error style of genet­ic manip­u­la­tion in the same way that a corn farmer or a hog grow­er selec­tive­ly breeds strains that result in desired out­comes. He was grow­ing microbes inside ticks, hav­ing the ticks feed on ani­mals, and then har­vest­ing the microbes from the ani­mals that exhib­it­ed the lev­el of ill­ness the mil­i­tary had request­ed. . . .”
3. ” . . . . He was also simul­ta­ne­ous­ly mix­ing bac­te­ria and virus­es inside ticks, lever­ag­ing the virus’s innate abil­i­ty to manip­u­late bac­te­r­i­al genes in order to repro­duce, and thus accel­er­at­ing the rate of muta­tions and desir­able new bac­te­r­i­al traits. In 1966, Fort Detrick’s Bio­log­i­cal Sub­com­mit­tee Muni­tions Advi­so­ry Group put this emerg­ing research area at the top of its pri­or­i­ties, describ­ing it as ‘Research in micro­bial genet­ics con­cerned with aspects of trans­for­ma­tion, trans­duc­tion, and recom­bi­na­tion.’ . .”

 Inter­viewed by an indie film­mak­er named Tim Grey, Willy Burgdor­fer dis­cussed the devel­op­ment of Lyme Dis­ease as a bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapon. It was Burgdor­fer who “dis­cov­ered” the spiro­chete that caused Lyme Dis­ease in 1982. As we will see lat­er, it appears that more than one organ­ism is involved with Lyme Dis­ease.

1. ” . . . . Willy paused, then replied, ‘Ques­tion: Has [sic] Bor­re­lia Burgdor­feri have the poten­tial for bio­log­i­cal war­fare?’ As tears welled up in Willy’s eyes, he con­tin­ued, ‘Look­ing at the data, it already has. If the organ­ism stays with­in the sys­tem, you won’t even rec­og­nize what it is. In your lifes­pan, it can explode . . . We eval­u­at­ed. You nev­er deal with that [as a sci­en­tist]. You can sleep bet­ter.’ . . .”
2. ” . . . . Lat­er in the video, Grey cir­cled back to this top­ic and asked, ‘If there’s an emer­gence of a brand-new epi­dem­ic that has the tenets of all of those things that you put togeth­er, do you feel respon­si­ble for that?’ ‘Yeah. . . .’ ”
3. ” . . . . Grey asked him the one ques­tion, the only ques­tion, he real­ly cared about: ‘Was the pathogen that you found in the tick that Allen Steere [the Lyme out­break inves­ti­ga­tor] gave you the same pathogen or sim­i­lar, or a gen­er­a­tional muta­tion, of the one you pub­lished in the paper . . . the paper from 1952?’ ”
4. ” . . . . The left side of his mouth briefly curled up, as if he is think­ing, ‘Oh, well.’ Then anger flash­es across his face. ‘Yah,’ he said, more in Ger­man than Eng­lish. . . .”
5. ” . . . . It was a stun­ning admis­sion from one of the world’s fore­most author­i­ties on Lyme dis­ease. If it was true, it meant that Willy had left out essen­tial data from his sci­en­tif­ic arti­cles on the Lyme dis­ease out­break, and that as the dis­ease spread like a wild­fire in the North­east and Great Lakes regions of the Unit­ed States, he was part of the cov­er-up of the truth. . . It had been cre­at­ed in a mil­i­tary bioweapons lab for the spe­cif­ic pur­pose of harm­ing human beings. . . . ”

To con­clude the pro­gram, we high­light infor­ma­tion about what Willy termed “the Swiss Agent”–a rick­ettsia that was present in the vast major­i­ty of Lyme suf­fer­ers test­ed ear­ly in research into the dis­ease. Note that this ele­ment of analy­sis will be con­tin­ued in our next pro­gram.

Even­tu­al­ly, dis­cus­sion of the pos­si­ble role of Swiss Agent dropped out of dis­cus­sion. The dis­ap­pear­ance of the Swiss Agent from the sci­en­tif­ic ana­lyt­i­cal lit­er­a­ture coin­cid­ed with Willy’s tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research vet­er­ans.

Key points of dis­cus­sion:

1. ” . . . . I would engage the sci­en­tif­ic part of his brain in answer­ing my two ques­tions: why the Lyme dis­cov­ery files were miss­ing from the Nation­al Archives, and why images of the organ­ism labeled ‘Swiss Agent’ were locat­ed in the archive fold­ers in the time-frame where one would expect the Lyme spiro­chete pic­tures to be. . . .”
2. ” . . . . He told me that in late 1979, he had test­ed ‘over one hun­dred ticks’ from Shel­ter Island, locat­ed about twen­ty miles from the Lyme out­break, and all but two had an uniden­ti­fied rick­ettsial species inside. It looked like Rick­ettsia mon­tana (now called Rick­ettsia mon­ta­nen­sis) under a micro­scope, a non-dis­ease-caus­ing cousin of the dead­ly Rick­ettsia rick­et­sii, but it was a dif­fer­ent species. . . .”
3. ” . . . .‘You say they’re not look­ing for it any­more?’ I asked. ‘They prob­a­bly paid peo­ple off,’ he said. ‘There are folks up there who have a way to enable that.’ . . .”
4. ” . . . . Next, I showed Willy an unla­beled image of a microbe and asked him what it was. ‘That is a Swiss Agent,’ said Willy. I asked him a series of ques­tions on this microbe and he recit­ed what seemed like well-rehearsed lines: the Swiss Agent is a Rick­ettsia mon­tana-like organ­ism found in the Euro­pean sheep tick, Ixodes Rici­nus, and it doesn’t cause dis­ease in humans. . . .”
5. ” . . . . Then I asked him why he brought sam­ples of it from Switzer­land back to his lab. He replied with the response that he often used when he seemed to know the answer but wasn’t going to divulge it: ‘Ques­tion mark.’. . .”
6. ” . . . . The real ‘smok­ing gun,’ though, was Willy’s hand­writ­ten lab notes on the patient blood tests from the dis­ease out­break in Con­necti­cut. These tests showed the proof-of-pres­ence of what I named ‘Swiss Agent USA,’ the mys­tery rick­ettsia present in most of the patients from the orig­i­nal Lyme out­break, a fact that was nev­er dis­closed in jour­nal arti­cles. It didn’t take a PhD in micro­bi­ol­o­gy to see that almost all the patient blood had react­ed strong­ly to an anti­gen test for a Euro­pean rick­ettsia that Willy had called the Swiss Agent. . . .”

1a. A New York Times arti­cle notes that there are super­fi­cial sim­i­lar­i­ties in the symp­toms of both Covid-19 and Lyme Dis­ease.

“Anoth­er Dis­tanc­ing Chal­lenge for Your Lock­down Walk­a­bouts: Ticks” by Zoe Schlanger; The New York Times; 5/28/2020; p. A28 [West­ern Edi­tion.]

. . . . Some of the basic symp­toms of a Lyme infec­tion — fever, malaise, fatigue — can resem­ble Covid-19. That’s a wor­ry nobody needs. . . .

1b. A recent book about Lyme Dis­ease sets forth cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion that the dis­ease is an out­growth of U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare research.

Bit­ten, The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons chron­i­cles the career of Willy Burgdor­fer, a Swiss-born expert on tick and flea-borne dis­eases who spent most of his career research­ing those areas as a U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare sci­en­tist.

Author Kris New­by presents sub­stan­tive evi­dence that the dis­ease stems from BW research done by Burgdor­fer and asso­ciates. (Burgdor­fer was the sci­en­tist who “dis­cov­ered” the organ­ism that caus­es Lyme Dis­ease.)

In past dis­cus­sion of Lyme Dis­ease, we have explored the incor­po­ra­tion of Nazi sci­en­tists via Oper­a­tion Paper­clip into the Amer­i­can bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram and pos­si­ble links between their work and the spread of the dis­ease in Con­necti­cut, across Long Island Sound from Plum Island.

(FTR #‘s 480 and 585 high­light dis­cus­sion about Lyme Dis­ease and bio­log­i­cal war­fare.)

Burgdor­fer­’s entree into the Amer­i­can bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram result­ed from his pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ship with long time men­tor and patron Rudolf Geigy. Geigy belonged to a fam­i­ly whose busi­ness, J.R. Geigy AG, was a Swiss chem­i­cal firm mar­ket­ing dyes and insec­ti­cides.

The pos­si­bil­i­ty that Geigy was an oper­a­tive of the far-flung I.G. Far­ben espi­onage appa­ra­tus is one to be seri­ous­ly con­tem­plat­ed. His role in plac­ing young sci­en­tists in orga­ni­za­tions that were part of the U.S. BW pro­gram also sug­gests a pos­si­ble role as an agent of Paper­clip. ” . . . . ‘The Swiss are above sus­pi­cion,’ said Geigy, who lat­er in his life wrote a thin­ly fic­tion­al­ized novel­la, Siri, Top Secret, that describes the spy activ­i­ties he observed dur­ing his trav­els. It’s not known if Geigy par­tic­i­pat­ed in these activ­i­ties, but he did help place young researchers in insti­tu­tions that sup­port­ed the U.S. bioweapons pro­grams. . . .”

Bit­ten: The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons by Kris New­by; Harper­Collins [HC]; Copy­right 2019 by Kris New­by; ISBN 9780062896728; pp. 25–27.

. . . . Willy’s aca­d­e­m­ic advis­er, Rudolf Geigy, was born in 1902 to a wealthy, upper-class fam­i­ly that found­ed what would become J.R. Geigy AG, a chem­i­cal com­pa­ny that start­ed as a fam­i­ly busi­ness in 1758. The company’s Basel head­quar­ters were on the Rhine Riv­er, in the region where the bor­ders of Switzer­land, France, and Ger­many meet. Dur­ing World War II, the com­pa­ny was per­fect­ly sit­u­at­ed to sell goods to both the Allies and Ger­many. The orig­i­nal Geigy com­pa­ny start­ed off as a tex­tile dye man­u­fac­tur­er and then moved into chem­i­cals. Dur­ing the war, it pro­duced insec­ti­cides and, most notably, the icon­ic “polar red” dye that col­ored the back­ground of Nazi swasti­ka flags.

Ear­ly in life, Geigy opt­ed for adven­ture and a jun­gle hel­met over a tra­di­tion­al posi­tion in his family’s firm. With the help of his family’s wealth, he ded­i­cat­ed his life to min­i­miz­ing the human toll of trop­i­cal dis­eases, many of which were trans­mit­ted by arthro­pods. To sup­port this mis­sion, he estab­lished the Swiss Trop­i­cal Insti­tute Field Lab­o­ra­to­ry in Tan­ganyi­ka (part of present-day Tan­za­nia) in 1949 and the Cen­tre Suisse de Recherch­es Sci­en­tifiques in Cote d’Ivoire in 1951. Even dur­ing the war, his cit­i­zen­ship in a neu­tral coun­try enabled him to trav­el freely.

“The Swiss are above sus­pi­cion,” said Geigy, who lat­er in his life wrote a thin­ly fic­tion­al­ized novel­la, Siri, Top Secret, that describes the spy activ­i­ties he observed dur­ing his trav­els. It’s not known if Geigy par­tic­i­pat­ed in these activ­i­ties, but he did help place young researchers in insti­tu­tions that sup­port­ed the U.S. bioweapons pro­grams. . . .

2. Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, J.R. Geigy, Ciba and San­doz com­prised a Swiss chem­i­cal car­tel formed in the after­math of World War I to com­pete with the I.G. Far­ben car­tel.

(Today, the three com­pa­nies have coa­lesced as the Swiss phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal giant Novar­tis.)

Even­tu­al­ly, the Swiss con­sor­tium was absorbed into, and became a key com­po­nent of, the I.G. Far­ben car­tel. They read­i­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Third Reich:

” . . . . The chap­ters on Switzer­land’s chem­i­cal indus­try are the most embar­rass­ing sec­tion of the com­mis­sion’s report. It is now clear that the direc­tors of Swiss com­pa­nies in Basel were very well aware of what was going on at the time in Ger­many and had knowl­edge of the coerced employ­ment of forced labor­ers in their branch plants in Ger­many as well as of the fact that forced labor­ers died as a result of the con­di­tions in which they were held. . . .”

  “Hitler’s Indus­tri­ous Silent Helpers” by Eli­ahu Salpeter; Haaretz; 9/11/2001.

. . . . The heads of Swiss indus­try, espe­cial­ly Swiss chem­i­cal firms that oper­at­ed branch plants in Ger­many — across the Swiss-Ger­man bor­der just oppo­site Basel — lost no time, after Hitler’s rise to pow­er, in arrang­ing meet­ings with the lead­ers of the new Nazi regime in order to dis­cuss con­tin­ued coop­er­a­tion between Switzer­land and Ger­many. These heads of indus­tries were also quick to fire Jew­ish work­ers, even before the Nurem­berg Laws went into effect.

The chap­ters on Switzer­land’s chem­i­cal indus­try are the most embar­rass­ing sec­tion of the com­mis­sion’s report. It is now clear that the direc­tors of Swiss com­pa­nies in Basel were very well aware what was going on at the time in Ger­many and had knowl­edge of the coerced employ­ment of forced labor­ers in their branch plants in Ger­many as well as of the fact that forced labor­ers died as a result of the con­di­tions in which they were held.

Swiss chem­i­cal com­pa­nies also knew that their prod­ucts were being used for med­ical exper­i­ments car­ried out on pris­on­ers of war and on con­cen­tra­tion camp inmates. Roche, for exam­ple, actu­al­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in research stud­ies con­duct­ed by the Ger­man navy, while San­doz was aware of the research stud­ies car­ried out on epilep­tic patients mur­dered by the Nazis.

Ciba knew that its prod­ucts were being employed in exper­i­ments con­duct­ed on young women, who were con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with var­i­ous infec­tions and who were exposed to dis­in­fec­tant mate­ri­als in order to test the effec­tive­ness of those mate­ri­als. Some of these vic­tims died in the course of the exper­i­ments, while the oth­ers were exe­cut­ed at a lat­er stage. . . .

3. More about the “Swiss I.G.” and the Third Reich.

1. ” . . . . sev­er­al lead­ing Swiss chem­i­cal firms — includ­ing JR Geigy, Ciba, San­doz and Hoff­mann-La Roche — put their own inter­ests ahead of human­i­tar­i­an con­cerns in their deal­ing with the Nazis. . . .”
2. ” . . . .The ICE [Inde­pen­dent Com­mis­sion of Experts] con­clud­ed that the chem­i­cal firms’ boss­es in Switzer­land ‘pos­sessed a high lev­el of detailed knowl­edge about the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion in Nazi Ger­many... [and] incor­po­rat­ed their knowl­edge... into their eco­nom­ic plan­ning and used it as a basis for deci­sion-mak­ing’ . . . .”
3. ” . . . . ‘Geigy main­tained par­tic­u­lar­ly good rela­tions with Claus Unge­wit­ter, the Reich com­mis­sion­er for chem­i­cals.’ . . .”
4. ” . . . . Dur­ing the war, it [Geigy] pro­duced insec­ti­cides and, most notably, the icon­ic ‘polar red’ dye that col­ored the back­ground of Nazi swasti­ka flags. . . .”

 “Chem­i­cal Firms Exploit­ed Nazi Links, Probe Found;” swissinfor.ch; 8/30/2001.

The ICE [Inde­pen­dent Com­mis­sion of Experts] sin­gled out the Basel chem­i­cal com­pa­nies Ciba and San­doz (now merged into Novar­tis), which imple­ment­ed the Nazis’ Aryani­sa­tion poli­cies in a bid to win lucra­tive sup­ply con­tracts from the Third Reich.

It found that Ciba’s Berlin branch in 1933 fired its Jew­ish board of direc­tors and super­vi­so­ry board mem­bers and replaced them with “Aryan” Ger­mans. At the same time, the report said, San­doz replaced the Jew­ish chair­man of its Ger­man sub­sidiary with an “Aryan” busi­ness­man.

The find­ings are part of eight stud­ies released this week by the ICE, which says sev­er­al lead­ing Swiss chem­i­cal firms — includ­ing JR Geigy, Ciba, San­doz and Hoff­mann-La Roche — put their own inter­ests ahead of human­i­tar­i­an con­cerns in their deal­ing with the Nazis.

The ICE con­clud­ed that the chem­i­cal firms’ boss­es in Switzer­land “pos­sessed a high lev­el of detailed knowl­edge about the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion in Nazi Ger­many... [and] incor­po­rat­ed their knowl­edge... into their eco­nom­ic plan­ning and used it as a basis for deci­sion-mak­ing”.

All the com­pa­nies con­cerned owned fac­to­ries in Ger­many between 1933 and 1945, as well as in wartime-occu­pied Poland, and were impor­tant sup­pli­ers of chem­i­cals, dyes and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals for the Third Reich.

The ICE found the firms also had exten­sive con­tacts among the Nazis: “Geigy main­tained par­tic­u­lar­ly good rela­tions with Claus Unge­wit­ter, the Reich com­mis­sion­er for chem­i­cals... Roche had good con­tacts with the Wehrma­cht (armed forces)....”

The report also sin­gled out Geigy and Roche for using forced labour at their plants in Ger­many. It said at least 33 Dutch and French labour­ers were forced to work for Geigy between 1943 and 1945, while at least 61 pris­on­ers-of-war and 150 for­eign labour­ers were forced to work at the Roche plant. . . .

4. All three Swiss firms [Geigy, San­doz and Ciba] were indict­ed in the Unit­ed States in 1942 because of their col­lab­o­ra­tion with I.G. Far­ben and the Third Reich.

1. ” . . . . Those indict­ed includ­ed duPont; Allied Chem­i­cal and Dye; and Amer­i­can Cyanamid; also Far­ben affil­i­ates the Amer­i­can Ciba, San­doz and Geigy. . . .”
2. ” . . . . A long list of oth­er co-con­spir­a­tors includ­ed the Swiss Ciba, San­doz and Geigy com­pa­nies with Cincin­nati Chem­i­cal works, their joint­ly owned Amer­i­can con­cern . . . .”
3. ” . . . . When Sec­re­tary of War Stim­son and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bid­dle agreed to post­pone the tri­al until it would not inter­fere with war pro­duc­tion, one Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cial was quot­ed as say­ing sourly, ‘First they hurt the war effort by their restric­tive prac­tices, and then if caught they use the war effort as an excuse to avoid pros­e­cu­tion.’ . . .”

Use­ful back­ground research with which to flesh out under­stand­ing of the tit­il­lat­ing infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed by Ms. New­by con­cern­ing Geigy and his activ­i­ties can be obtained by read­ing some of the many books avail­able for down­load on this web­site.

Numer­ous pro­grams present research on the top­ic, includ­ing FTR #511.

Treason’s Peace–German Dyes and Amer­i­can Dupes by Howard Wat­son Ambruster; Beechurst Press; [HC] 1947; pp. 337–338.

. . . . Anoth­er indict­ment accus­ing Gen­er­al Ani­line and Gen­er­al Dyestuff of con­spir­a­cy in the dye indus­try was filed in the New Jer­sey Dis­trict Court on May 14, 1942; but in this instance Far­ben (local address still unknown) was named only as a co-con­spir­a­tor. Those indict­ed includ­ed duPont; Allied Chem­i­cal and Dye; and Amer­i­can Cyanamid; also Far­ben affil­i­ates the Amer­i­can Ciba, San­doz and Geigy. Some twen­ty offi­cers of the cor­po­rate defen­dants, includ­ing Ernest K. Hal­bach and two of his Far­ben pals were also indict­ed in this case.

The alleged con­spir­a­cy includ­ed world-wide restric­tions in the man­u­fac­ture, dis­tri­b­u­tion, import and export of dyestuffs stem­ming out of the inter­na­tion­al car­tel set-up in 1928 in which co-con­spir­a­tor Far­ben was the dom­i­nant influ­ence. A long list of oth­er co-con­spir­a­tors includ­ed the Swiss Ciba, San­doz and Geigy com­pa­nies with Cincin­nati Chem­i­cal works, their joint­ly owned Amer­i­can con­cern; Impe­r­i­al Chem­i­cal Indus­tries and its Cana­di­an sub­sidiary; the French Kuhlmann; Japan’s Mit­sui; and duPont‑I.C.I. branch­es in Brazil and the Argen­tine. In this case antitrust spread its largest net and land­ed speck­led fish of many vari­eties and many nations. All had been gath­ered in Farben’s net of the world’s dye indus­try.

When Sec­re­tary of War Stim­son and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bid­dle agreed to post­pone the tri­al until it would not inter­fere with war pro­duc­tion, one Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cial was quot­ed as say­ing sourly, “First they hurt the war effort by their restric­tive prac­tices, and then if caught they use the war effort as an excuse to avoid pros­e­cu­tion.” A tug of war went on under cov­er over whether to com­pro­mise, dis­miss or for­get this case. Final­ly com­pro­mise won. In April 1946, after Tom Clark had become Attor­ney Gen­er­al, the indict­ments were com­plete­ly dis­missed as to eleven of the defen­dants, includ­ing Gen­er­al Dyestuff’s cel­e­brat­ed Hal­bach, and were par­tial­ly dis­missed as to four of the cor­po­ra­tions and eight of the oth­er indi­vid­u­als named. At the same time pleas of nolo con­tendere (which is equiv­a­lent to guilty) were entered and the Jus­tice Depart­ment noti­fied the court that under these cir­cum­stances it would not be in the pub­lic inter­est to stage a tri­al. No decree was entered by the court, so the con­tracts were not offi­cial­ly abro­gat­ed. . . .

4. Entree into our dis­cus­sion of Ms. New­by’s reveal­ing, vital­ly impor­tant book is pro­vid­ed by the insight of Nobel Prize win­ner Dr. Joshua Leder­berg, who warned about genet­ic manip­u­la­tion, bio­log­i­cal war­fare and the dan­gers to humankind pre­sent­ed by the com­bi­na­tion of these two activ­i­ties.

As will be seen below, genet­ic manip­u­la­tion of microor­gan­isms was in full swing by 1966, when Leder­berg issued his state­ment.

Bit­ten: The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons by Kris New­by; Harper­Collins [HC]; Copy­right 2019 by Kris New­by; ISBN 9780062896728; pp. 159–160.

. . . . One of the most vocal crit­ics was Joshua Leder­berg, PhD, a 1958 Nobel Prize recip­i­ent for his pio­neer­ing work on bac­te­r­i­al genet­ics while at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin. After he moved to Stan­ford, Leder­berg began ear­ly research on gene splic­ing, and start­ed to under­stand the respon­si­bil­i­ties that can come with cre­at­ing new life forms. This con­cern moti­vat­ed him to start lob­by­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers to draft a treaty to ban bio­log­i­cal weapons.

“The large-scale deploy­ment of infec­tious agents is a poten­tial threat against the whole species: mutant forms of virus­es could well devel­op that would spread over the earth’s pop­u­la­tion for a new Black Death,” said Leder­berg in a Wash­ing­ton Post edi­to­r­i­al on Sep­tem­ber 24, 1966. He added, “The future of the species is very much bound up with the con­trol of these weapons. Their use must be reg­u­lat­ed by the most thought­ful recon­sid­er­a­tion of U.S. and world pol­i­cy.“
A month lat­er, the army’s Bio­log­i­cal Sub­com­mit­tee Muni­tions Advi­so­ry Group thumbed its nose at this “nation­al pro­nounce­ment made by promi­nent sci­en­tists.” Down­play­ing the sci­en­tists’ con­cerns, Fort Detrick’s sci­en­tif­ic direc­tor, Riley House­wright, said that “such pub­lic­i­ty would prob­a­bly best be con­sid­ered to be an annoy­ance.” The advi­so­ry group then con­tin­ued dis­cussing its plans for genet­ic manip­u­la­tion of microbes, new rick­ettsial and viral agents, and the devel­op­ment of a bal­anced pro­gram for both inca­pac­i­tat­ing and lethal agents. . . .

5. In 1962, the mil­i­tary’s plans for devel­op­ment of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied microbes were devel­op­ing in earnest. ” . . . . Fort Detrick’s direc­tor of bio­log­i­cal research, Dr. J.R. Good­low, on Feb­ru­ary 16, 1962 . . . added, ‘Stud­ies of bac­te­r­i­al genet­ics are also in progress with the aim of trans­fer­ring genet­ic deter­mi­nants from one type of organ­ism to anoth­er.‘The goal of these exper­i­ments was to make bio­log­i­cal agents more vir­u­lent and resis­tant to antibi­otics. . . .”

Bit­ten: The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons by Kris New­by; Harper­Collins [HC]; Copy­right 2019 by Kris New­by; ISBN 9780062896728; p. 77.

. . . . An inter­view with Fort Detrick’s direc­tor of bio­log­i­cal research, Dr. J.R. Good­low, on Feb­ru­ary 16, 1962, how­ev­er, sug­gests one pos­si­ble research agen­da: “Research on new agents has tend­ed to con­cen­trate on viral and rick­ettsial dis­eases. . . with major effort direct­ed at increased first-hand knowl­edge of these so-called arbo (i.e., arthro­pod-borne) virus­es.”

The Unit­ed States had also begun basic research on the genet­ic manip­u­la­tion of microor­gan­isms. In that same report, Good­low added, “Stud­ies of bac­te­r­i­al genet­ics are also in progress with the aim of trans­fer­ring genet­ic deter­mi­nants from one type of organ­ism to anoth­er.” The goal of these exper­i­ments was to make bio­log­i­cal agents more vir­u­lent and resis­tant to antibi­otics. . . .

6. The Pen­tagon’s genet­ic manip­u­la­tion of microor­gan­isms for bio­log­i­cal war­fare pur­pos­es involved the Rocky Moun­tain Lab and Willy Burgdor­fer.

1. ” . . . . Bioweapons researchers such as Willy knew that infect­ing large pop­u­la­tions would require expos­ing peo­ple to agents for which they had no nat­ur­al immu­ni­ty. And to do this, researchers would have to import and/or invent new microbes. They were, in essence, play­ing God, cre­at­ing ‘bac­te­ri­o­log­i­cal freaks or mutants,’ by using chem­i­cals, radi­a­tion, ultra­vi­o­let light, and oth­er agents, wrote mod­ern inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism pio­neer Jack Ander­son in a Wash­ing­ton Post col­umn on August 27, 1965. . . .”
2. ” . . . . Willy had already been con­duct­ing a tri­al-and-error style of genet­ic manip­u­la­tion in the same way that a corn farmer or a hog grow­er selec­tive­ly breeds strains that result in desired out­comes. He was grow­ing microbes inside ticks, hav­ing the ticks feed on ani­mals, and then har­vest­ing the microbes from the ani­mals that exhib­it­ed the lev­el of ill­ness the mil­i­tary had request­ed. . . .”
3. ” . . . . He was also simul­ta­ne­ous­ly mix­ing bac­te­ria and virus­es inside ticks, lever­ag­ing the virus’s innate abil­i­ty to manip­u­late bac­te­r­i­al genes in order to repro­duce, and thus accel­er­at­ing the rate of muta­tions and desir­able new bac­te­r­i­al traits. In 1966, Fort Detrick’s Bio­log­i­cal Sub­com­mit­tee Muni­tions Advi­so­ry Group put this emerg­ing research area at the top of its pri­or­i­ties, describ­ing it as ‘Research in micro­bial genet­ics con­cerned with aspects of trans­for­ma­tion, trans­duc­tion, and recom­bi­na­tion.’ . .”

Bit­ten: The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons by Kris New­by; Harper­Collins [HC]; Copy­right 2019 by Kris New­by; ISBN 9780062896728; pp. 70–71.

. . . . Advances in micro­bial genet­ics had opened up the poten­tial of manip­u­lat­ing virus­es and rick­ettsias to cre­ate more pow­er­ful weapons, both lethal and inca­pac­i­tat­ing. The per­fect inca­pac­i­tat­ing agent was one that made a large per­cent­age of a pop­u­la­tion mod­er­ate­ly ill for weeks to months. The ill­ness it caused would have to be hard to diag­nose and treat, and under the best cir­cum­stances, the tar­get pop­u­la­tion shouldn’t even be aware they’d been dosed with a bioweapon. This would make it eas­i­er for invad­ing, vac­ci­nat­ed sol­diers to take over cities and indus­tri­al infra­struc­ture with­out much of a fight or the destruc­tion of prop­er­ty.

Bioweapons researchers such as Willy knew that infect­ing large pop­u­la­tions would require expos­ing peo­ple to agents for which they had no nat­ur­al immu­ni­ty. And to do this, researchers would have to import and/or invent new microbes. They were, in essence, play­ing God, cre­at­ing “bac­te­ri­o­log­i­cal freaks or mutants,” by using chem­i­cals, radi­a­tion, ultra­vi­o­let light, and oth­er agents, wrote mod­ern inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism pio­neer Jack Ander­son in a Wash­ing­ton Post col­umn on August 27, 1965.

Willy had already been con­duct­ing a tri­al-and-error style of genet­ic manip­u­la­tion in the same way that a corn farmer or a hog grow­er selec­tive­ly breeds strains that result in desired out­comes. He was grow­ing microbes inside ticks, hav­ing the ticks feed on ani­mals, and then har­vest­ing the microbes from the ani­mals that exhib­it­ed the lev­el of ill­ness the mil­i­tary had request­ed. He was also simul­ta­ne­ous­ly mix­ing bac­te­ria and virus­es inside ticks, lever­ag­ing the virus’s innate abil­i­ty to manip­u­late bac­te­r­i­al genes in order to repro­duce, and thus accel­er­at­ing the rate of muta­tions and desir­able new bac­te­r­i­al traits. In 1966, Fort Detrick’s Bio­log­i­cal Sub­com­mit­tee Muni­tions Advi­so­ry Group put this emerg­ing research area at the top of its pri­or­i­ties, describ­ing it as “Research in micro­bial genet­ics con­cerned with aspects of trans­for­ma­tion, trans­duc­tion, and recom­bi­na­tion.”

The admin­is­tra­tors at Rocky Moun­tain Lab need­ed a share of this mil­i­tary fund­ing to stay open, so they took on some of the projects, includ­ing the devel­op­ment of dry Q fever inca­pac­i­tat­ing agent and pre­lim­i­nary research on the bioweapon poten­tial of Rick­ettsia rick­ettsii [the microbe that pro­duces Rocky Moun­tain Spot­ted Fever], the Rift Val­ley fever virus (a Phle­bovirus), and two rick­ettsias that caused flea-borne and lice-borne typhus. . . .

7. Inter­viewed by an indie film­mak­er named Tim Grey, Willy Burgdor­fer dis­cussed the devel­op­ment of Lyme Dis­ease as a bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapon. It was Burgdor­fer who “dis­cov­ered” the spiro­chete that caused Lyme Dis­ease in 1982. As we will see lat­er, it appears that more than one organ­ism is involved with Lyme Dis­ease.

1. ” . . . . Willy paused, then replied, ‘Ques­tion: Has [sic] Bor­re­lia Burgdor­feri have the poten­tial for bio­log­i­cal war­fare?’ As tears welled up in Willy’s eyes, he con­tin­ued, ‘Look­ing at the data, it already has. If the organ­ism stays with­in the sys­tem, you won’t even rec­og­nize what it is. In your lifes­pan, it can explode . . . We eval­u­at­ed. You nev­er deal with that [as a sci­en­tist]. You can sleep bet­ter.’ . . .”
2. ” . . . . Lat­er in the video, Grey cir­cled back to this top­ic and asked, ‘If there’s an emer­gence of a brand-new epi­dem­ic that has the tenets of all of those things that you put togeth­er, do you feel respon­si­ble for that?’ ‘Yeah. . . .’ ”
3. ” . . . . Grey asked him the one ques­tion, the only ques­tion, he real­ly cared about: ‘Was the pathogen that you found in the tick that Allen Steere [the Lyme out­break inves­ti­ga­tor] gave you the same pathogen or sim­i­lar, or a gen­er­a­tional muta­tion, of the one you pub­lished in the paper . . . the paper from 1952?’ ”
4. ” . . . . The left side of his mouth briefly curled up, as if he is think­ing, ‘Oh, well.’ Then anger flash­es across his face. ‘Yah,’ he said, more in Ger­man than Eng­lish. . . .”
5. ” . . . . It was a stun­ning admis­sion from one of the world’s fore­most author­i­ties on Lyme dis­ease. If it was true, it meant that Willy had left out essen­tial data from his sci­en­tif­ic arti­cles on the Lyme dis­ease out­break, and that as the dis­ease spread like a wild­fire in the North­east and Great Lakes regions of the Unit­ed States, he was part of the cov­er-up of the truth. . . It had been cre­at­ed in a mil­i­tary bioweapons lab for the spe­cif­ic pur­pose of harm­ing human beings. . . . ”

Bit­ten: The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons by Kris New­by; Harper­Collins [HC]; Copy­right 2019 by Kris New­by; ISBN 9780062896728; pp. 100–101.

. . . . “Let’s take your sci­en­tif­ic work, stud­ies that I have dis­cov­ered that were pub­lished in 1952 and 1956,” Grey said. “One being the inten­tion­al infect­ing of ticks. The sec­ond being the recom­bi­na­tion of four dif­fer­ent pathogens, two being spiro­chetal and two being viral. From a sim­ple pro­ce­dur­al stand­point, I think it’s safe to assume that the pur­pose of those stud­ies, at the height of the Cold War, on the heels of World War II, was to ensure that we were able to keep up with the rest of the world from a bio­log­i­cal war­fare stand­point . . . . Did you ques­tion that?”

Willy paused, then replied, “Ques­tion: Has [sic] Bor­re­lia Burgdor­feri have the poten­tial for bio­log­i­cal war­fare?” As tears welled up in Willy’s eyes, he con­tin­ued, “Look­ing at the data, it already has. If the organ­ism stays with­in the sys­tem, you won’t even rec­og­nize what it is. In your lifes­pan, it can explode . . . We eval­u­at­ed. You nev­er deal with that [as a sci­en­tist]. You can sleep bet­ter.”

Lat­er in the video, Grey cir­cled back to this top­ic and asked, “If there’s an emer­gence of a brand-new epi­dem­ic that has the tenets of all of those things that you put togeth­er, do you feel respon­si­ble for that?”

“Yeah. It sounds like through­out the thir­ty-eight years, I may have . . . The [lab] direc­tor tele­phoned me, ‘This is direc­tor so and so. I got some­body here from the FBI. Will you come down and we will ask a few ques­tions?’ Exact­ly the same thing. I recall all these dis­cus­sions,” Willy said.

Final­ly, after three hours and four­teen min­utes, Grey asked him the one ques­tion, the only ques­tion, he real­ly cared about: “Was the pathogen that you found in the tick that Allen Steere [the Lyme out­break inves­ti­ga­tor] gave you the same pathogen or sim­i­lar, or a gen­er­a­tional muta­tion, of the one you pub­lished in the paper . . . the paper from 1952?”

In response, Willy crossed his arms defen­sive­ly, took a deep breath, and stared into the cam­era for forty-three seconds—an eter­ni­ty. Then he looked away, down and to the right; he appeared to be work­ing through an inter­nal debate. The left side of his mouth briefly curled up, as if he is think­ing, “Oh, well.” Then anger flash­es across his face. “Yah,” he said, more in Ger­man than Eng­lish.

It was a stun­ning admis­sion from one of the world’s fore­most author­i­ties on Lyme dis­ease. If it was true, it meant that Willy had left out essen­tial data from his sci­en­tif­ic arti­cles on the Lyme dis­ease out­break, and that as the dis­ease spread like a wild­fire in the North­east and Great Lakes regions of the Unit­ed States, he was part of the cov­er-up of the truth. He seemed to be say­ing that Lyme wasn’t a nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring germ, one that may have got­ten loose and been spread by glob­al warm­ing, an explo­sion of deer, and oth­er envi­ron­men­tal changes. It had been cre­at­ed in a mil­i­tary bioweapons lab for the spe­cif­ic pur­pose of harm­ing human beings. . . .

8. Ms. New­by inter­viewed Burgdor­fer six months after Tim Grey. He dis­cussed work­ing on a Col­orado tick fever virus, which, in addi­tion to caus­ing pathol­o­gy with var­ied symp­toms, masked the anti­gens for infec­tion. This made it impos­si­ble for the tar­get­ed pop­u­la­tion to test for the infect­ing organ­ism.

” . . . . ‘The virus low­ers the anti­gen.’ Anti­gens are mol­e­cules on the out­er sur­face of an invad­ing microbe that the body rec­og­nizes as for­eign, pro­vid­ing a sig­nal that an inva­sion is under way. The­o­ret­i­cal­ly, if a vir­u­lent bacteria’s genet­ic code were mixed with a virus that caus­es a mild infec­tion, or if both microbes were loaded into a sin­gle tick, physi­cians wouldn’t rec­og­nize the phys­i­cal symp­toms of this nov­el infec­tion, and it might not show up on stan­dard anti­body-based screen­ing tests. . . ‘So, are you say­ing, if you infect­ed an ene­my pop­u­la­tion, they wouldn’t be able to fig­ure out what was wrong?’ . . . ‘Yeah.’ . . .”

Willy also dis­cussed work­ing at a Naval lab­o­ra­to­ry in Cairo [Egypt], where he worked on load­ing fleas with plague, in order to deliv­er the dis­ease as a weapon. ” . . . .‘I was doing things that the Nazis used to be doing,’ Willy said. . . .”

Bit­ten: The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons by Kris New­by; Harper­Collins [HC]; Copy­right 2019 by Kris New­by; ISBN 9780062896728; pp. 115–117.

. . . . I shift­ed to dis­cussing the research he’d super­vised at Naval Med­ical Research Unit Three, called NAMRU‑3, in Cairo, Egypt, a facil­i­ty that worked on tick-and bioweapons-relat­ed research.

“I was doing things that the Nazis used to be doing,” Willy said.

“What kind of stuff?”

“Work­ing on the sus­pen­sion for fleas. Deter­min­ing how many of the quan­ti­ty of the genet­ic mate­r­i­al in fleas that can be used . . . .”

Willy paused, unable to find the words to fin­ish.

“So, you’re putting plague in fleas then?”

“Yeah.”

What else were you doing?” I asked . . . .

. . . . “Col­orado tick fever virus, a mild dis­ease. They found it pro­duces mild infec­tion.”

If this virus was being devel­oped as a bioweapon, it couldn’t have been harm­less. Its ini­tial symp­toms includ­ed fever, chills, headache, pain behind the eyes, light sen­si­tiv­i­ty, mus­cle pain, gen­er­al­ized malaise, abdom­i­nal pain, hepatosplenomegaly (swollen liv­er and spleen), nau­sea and vom­it­ing, and a flag or pim­ply rash. Com­pli­ca­tions could include menin­gi­tis, encephali­tis, and hem­or­rhag­ic fever, but these were rare. Still, it didn’t sound “mild” to me.

I then asked him what the goal of these tests was.

“The virus low­ers the anti­gen.”

Anti­gens are mol­e­cules on the out­er sur­face of an invad­ing microbe that the body rec­og­nizes as for­eign, pro­vid­ing a sig­nal that an inva­sion is under way. The­o­ret­i­cal­ly, if a vir­u­lent bacteria’s genet­ic code were mixed with a virus that caus­es a mild infec­tion, or if both microbes were loaded into a sin­gle tick, physi­cians wouldn’t rec­og­nize the phys­i­cal symp­toms of this nov­el infec­tion, and it might not show up on stan­dard anti­body-based screen­ing tests.

I checked with Willy to see if my the­o­ry was cor­rect: “The virus low­ers the anti­gen, so you can’t test for it?”

“That is it,” he said.

“So, are you say­ing, if you infect­ed an ene­my pop­u­la­tion, they wouldn’t be able to fig­ure out what was wrong?”

“Yeah.” . . . .

9. Before return­ing to the sub­ject of the devel­op­ment of Lyme Dis­ease as a bio­log­i­cal weapon and the pres­ence of “Swiss Agent” as a pos­si­ble co-vec­tor for the dis­ease, we note bio­log­i­cal war­fare expert Bill Patrick­’s dis­cus­sion of a lethal bioweapon. The ide­al weapon would be a com­bi­na­tion of two dis­eases and would not be imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able as a dis­ease.

Bit­ten: The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons by Kris New­by; Harper­Collins [HC]; Copy­right 2019 by Kris New­by; ISBN 9780062896728; pp. 145–146.

. . . . [Bill] Patrick on to say that if a lethal, non­con­ta­gious bioweapon had been need­ed, the Unit­ed States’ first choice would have been a mix­ture of tularemia with SEB tox­in, deployed in a small, dry par­ti­cle. This mix­ture deliv­ered in mas­sive, or “over­whelm­ing” dos­es would shrink the incu­ba­tion time for both agents and cre­ate an inflam­ma­to­ry storm with­in a body, one that would kill those at the cen­ter of the deliv­ery with­in eigh­teen hours. He stressed that such a com­bi­na­tion weapon would not man­i­fest as an imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able dis­ease. . . .

10. Next, we begin dis­cus­sion and analy­sis of the mys­te­ri­ous “Swiss Agent” and its appar­ent cousin “Swiss Agent USA.”

1. ” . . . . I would engage the sci­en­tif­ic part of his brain in answer­ing my two ques­tions: why the Lyme dis­cov­ery files were miss­ing from the Nation­al Archives, and why images of the organ­ism labeled ‘Swiss Agent’ were locat­ed in the archive fold­ers in the time-frame where one would expect the Lyme spiro­chete pic­tures to be. . . .”
2. ” . . . . He told me that in late 1979, he had test­ed ‘over one hun­dred ticks’ from Shel­ter Island, locat­ed about twen­ty miles from the Lyme out­break, and all but two had an uniden­ti­fied rick­ettsial species inside. It looked like Rick­ettsia mon­tana (now called Rick­ettsia mon­ta­nen­sis) under a micro­scope, a non-dis­ease-caus­ing cousin of the dead­ly Rick­ettsia rick­et­sii, but it was a dif­fer­ent species. . . .”
3. ” . . . .‘You say they’re not look­ing for it any­more?’ I asked. ‘They prob­a­bly paid peo­ple off,’ he said. ‘There are folks up there who have a way to enable that.’ . . .”
4. ” . . . . Next, I showed Willy an unla­beled image of a microbe and asked him what it was. ‘That is a Swiss Agent,’ said Willy. I asked him a series of ques­tions on this microbe and he recit­ed what seemed like well-rehearsed lines: the Swiss Agent is a Rick­ettsia mon­tana-like organ­ism found in the Euro­pean sheep tick, Ixodes Rici­nus, and it doesn’t cause dis­ease in humans. . . .”
5. ” . . . . Then I asked him why he brought sam­ples of it from Switzer­land back to his lab. He replied with the response that he often used when he seemed to know the answer but wasn’t going to divulge it: ‘Ques­tion mark.’. . .”

Bit­ten: The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons by Kris New­by; Harper­Collins [HC]; Copy­right 2019 by Kris New­by; ISBN 9780062896728; pp. 114–115.

. . . . I would engage the sci­en­tif­ic part of his brain in answer­ing my two ques­tions: why the Lyme dis­cov­ery files were miss­ing from the Nation­al Archives, and why images of the organ­ism labeled “Swiss Agent” were locat­ed in the archive fold­ers in the time-frame where one would expect the Lyme spiro­chete pic­tures to be. Could this mys­te­ri­ous Swiss Agent, which was nev­er men­tioned in any pub­li­ca­tions asso­ci­at­ed with the Lyme out­break, also be a bio­log­i­cal weapon?

After a few warm-up ques­tions, I start­ed ask­ing specifics about the ticks and the patient blood sam­ples col­lect­ed around the time of the dis­cov­ery. He told me that in late 1979, he had test­ed “over one hun­dred ticks” from Shel­ter Island, locat­ed about twen­ty miles from the Lyme out­break, and all but two had an uniden­ti­fied rick­ettsial species inside. It looked like Rick­ettsia mon­tana (now called Rick­ettsia mon­ta­nen­sis) under a micro­scope, a non-dis­ease-caus­ing cousin of the dead­ly Rick­ettsia rick­et­sii, but it was a dif­fer­ent species. He said that a sim­i­lar rick­ettsia had also been found in the lone star ticks, and that there was quite a bit of “excite­ment” over that dis­cov­ery.

I kept ask­ing Willy about the mys­tery rick­ettsia, but his answers were gar­bled, and all I could glean from him was that he had stopped inves­ti­gat­ing it for rea­sons unknown.

“You say they’re not look­ing for it any­more?” I asked.

“They prob­a­bly paid peo­ple off,” he said. “There are folks up there who have a way to enable that.”

Next, I showed Willy an unla­beled image of a microbe and asked him what it was.

“That is a Swiss Agent,” said Willy.

I asked him a series of ques­tions on this microbe and he recit­ed what seemed like well-rehearsed lines: the Swiss Agent is a Rick­ettsia mon­tana-like organ­ism found in the Euro­pean sheep tick, Ixodes Rici­nus, and it doesn’t cause dis­ease in humans.

Then I asked him why he brought sam­ples of it from Switzer­land back to his lab.

He replied with the response that he often used when he seemed to know the answer but wasn’t going to divulge it: “Ques­tion mark.”. . .

11. Sup­ple­ment­ing dis­cus­sion of the Swiss Agent is what Ms. New­by called “The real ‘smok­ing gun’ . . .Willy’s hand­writ­ten lab notes on the patient blood tests from the dis­ease out­break in Con­necti­cut. . . .”

” . . . . The real ‘smok­ing gun,’ though, was Willy’s hand­writ­ten lab notes on the patient blood tests from the dis­ease out­break in Con­necti­cut. These tests showed the proof-of-pres­ence of what I named ‘Swiss Agent USA,’ the mys­tery rick­ettsia present in most of the patients from the orig­i­nal Lyme out­break, a fact that was nev­er dis­closed in jour­nal arti­cles. It didn’t take a PhD in micro­bi­ol­o­gy to see that almost all the patient blood had react­ed strong­ly to an anti­gen test for a Euro­pean rick­ettsia that Willy had called the Swiss Agent. . . .”

Bit­ten: The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons by Kris New­by; Harper­Collins [HC]; Copy­right 2019 by Kris New­by; ISBN 9780062896728; pp. 130–131.

. . . . For two days, we dug through box­es of Willy’s lab note­book slides, research report, and a tat­tered brown file fold­er labeled “Det­rick 1954–56.” The fold­er was stuffed with fad­ed car­bon copies of let­ters doc­u­ment­ing Willy’s bioweapons work infect­ing fleas, mos­qui­toes, and ticks with lethal agents. There were reports on his plague-laden flea exper­i­ments, and they con­firmed what Willy had told me in our last (2013) inter­view. Let­ters and reports detailed his efforts to infect mos­qui­toes to deliv­er lethal dos­es of the “Trinidad Agent,” a dead­ly strain of yel­low fever virus extract­ed from the liv­er of a deceased per­son. Lin­dorf had also found some deposit slips from two dif­fer­ent Swiss bank accounts, tucked into a stack of unre­lat­ed doc­u­ments.

The real “smok­ing gun,” though, was Willy’s hand­writ­ten lab notes on the patient blood tests from the dis­ease out­break in Con­necti­cut. These tests showed the proof-of-pres­ence of what I named “Swiss Agent USA,” the mys­tery rick­ettsia present in most of the patients from the orig­i­nal Lyme out­break, a fact that was nev­er dis­closed in jour­nal arti­cles. It didn’t take a PhD in micro­bi­ol­o­gy to see that almost all the patient blood had react­ed strong­ly to an anti­gen test for a Euro­pean rick­ettsia that Willy had called the Swiss Agent. Even more sur­pris­ing, all this work was done in 1978, about two years before Willy, the lead author, pub­lished the arti­cle report­ing that a spiro­chete was the only cause of Lyme dis­ease. . . .