You can subscribe to e‑mail alerts from Spitfirelist.com HERE.
You can subscribe to RSS feed from Spitfirelist.com HERE.
You can subscribe to the comments made on programs and posts–an excellent source of information in, and of, itself, HERE.
Mr. Emory’s entire life’s work is available on a 32GB flash drive, available for a contribution of $65.00 or more (to KFJC). Click Here to obtain Dave’s 40+ years’ work, complete through Fall of 2020 (through FTR #1156).
Note: This website is licensed for Fair Use under Creative Commons. No money whatsoever is, has been, or will be made from this website by Mr. Emory.
FTR #1190 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
CORRECTION: Philip D. Zekikow’s last name was mis-pronounced. It is pronounced Zeli-KO.
Introduction: Continuing analysis of the propagation of the “Lab-Leak Theory” of the origin of Covid-19 in the context of what Mr. Emory calls “The Full-Court Press Against China,” this program highlights how what the brilliant Peter Dale Scott has termed “The American Deep State” is proceeding with the institutionalization of the anti-China effort, blaming that country for the Covid-19 pandemic, in particular.
After noting that the (primarily Pentagon and USAID-funded) EcoHealth Alliance cut-out has used Defense Department money to research organisms that can be used as biological-warfare weapons, we discuss Steve Bannon and Peter Thiel’s anti-Chinese chauvinism with regard to the Silicon Valley.
Even as liberal commentators lament the spread of anti-Asian racism, the genesis of the phenomenon is not hard to fathom.
Next, we review the institutionalization of the anti-China scare by Steve Bannon, utilizing allies like the Falun Gong cult and Uighur jihadis, now mainstays of the Full-Court Press strategy.
Although Bannon and company are now being diminished as “crackpots, xenophobes, extremists” etc., the policies they have initiated are now being carried forward by the “respectable” Biden administration.
” . . . . Fear of China has spread across the government, from the White House to Congress to federal agencies, where Beijing’s rise is unquestioningly viewed as an economic and national security threat and the defining challenge of the 21st century. . . .”
It is this continuity, that illustrates and embodies the functioning of the Deep State.
Returning to a very important (albeit heavily “spun”), modified limited hangout article from Vanity Fair article, we further develop the continuity between the “extremist” Trump administration and the “respectable” Biden administration.
Developed by Trump national security aide Mathew Pottinger and Mike Pompeo’s State Department, the Lab-Leak hypothesis was eclipsed by officials worried about exposure of the very Pentagon, USAID funding of bat-borne coronavirus research and gain-of-function manipulations at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and elsewhere in China.
As it gains momentum under the “respectable” Biden administration, the suppression of the Lab-Leak hypothesis is being spun as an attempt to avoid using that hypothesis as an extremist, chauvinist political cudgel. (This is ironic, because that is precisely what it is intended to be!)
Key aspects of the Vanity Fair article:
- Pompeo State Department officials pursuing the lab-leak hypothesis were told to cover it up lest it shed light on U.S. government funding of research at the “Oswald Institute of Virology!”: ” . . . . In one State Department meeting, officials seeking to demand transparency from the Chinese government say they were explicitly told by colleagues not to explore the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s gain-of-function research, because it would bring unwelcome attention to U.S. government funding of it. . . . .In an internal memo obtained by ‘Vanity Fair’, Thomas DiNanno, former acting assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, wrote that. . . staff from two bureaus . . . ‘warned’ leaders within his bureau ‘not to pursue an investigation into the origin of COVID-19’ because it would ‘open a can of worms’ if it continued.’ . . . . As the group probed the lab-leak scenario, among other possibilities, its members were repeatedly advised not to open a ‘Pandora’s box,’ said four former State Department officials interviewed by ‘Vanity Fair’. . . .”
- The Vanity Fair article paints Trump, Bannon and company as loonies, whereas they were fundamental to the beginning of the full-court press against China: “. . . . At times, it seemed the only other people entertaining the lab-leak theory were crackpots or political hacks hoping to wield COVID-19 as a cudgel against China. President Donald Trump’s former political adviser Steve Bannon, for instance, joined forces with an exiled Chinese billionaire named Guo Wengui to fuel claims that China had developed the disease as a bioweapon and purposefully unleashed it on the world. . . .”
- Matthew Pottinger, a China hawk in the Trump administration, headed up a team to investigate the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis. Note that the gain-of-function milieu in the U.S. national security establishment was a retarding factor in the inquiry: ” . . . . By then, Matthew Pottinger had approved a COVID-19 origins team, run by the NSC directorate that oversaw issues related to weapons of mass destruction. A longtime Asia expert and former journalist, Pottinger purposefully kept the team small . . . . In addition, many leading experts had either received or approved funding for gain-of-function research. Their ‘conflicted’ status, said Pottinger, ‘played a profound role in muddying the waters and contaminating the shot at having an impartial inquiry.’ . . . .”
- Note that Lawrence Livermore scientists were involved with the genesis of the “China did it” hypothesis, after allegedly being alerted by a foreign source to look into their own files. ” . . . . An intelligence analyst working with David Asher sifted through classified channels and turned up a report that outlined why the lab-leak hypothesis was plausible. It had been written in May by researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which performs national security research for the Department of Energy. But it appeared to have been buried within the classified collections system. . . .”
- Note, also, that Chris Ford, a China hawk, was working to suppress the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis: ” . . . . Their frustration crested in December, when they finally briefed Chris Ford, acting undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security. He seemed so hostile to their probe that they viewed him as a blinkered functionary bent on whitewashing China’s malfeasance. But Ford, who had years of experience in nuclear nonproliferation, had long been a China hawk. . . .”
- Ford spins his obfuscation of the “Oswald Institute of Virology” link to the U.S. as not wanting to reinforce right-wing crackpots within the Trump administration: ” . . . . Ford told ‘Vanity Fair’ that he saw his job as protecting the integrity of any inquiry into COVID-19’s origins that fell under his purview. Going with ‘stuff that makes us look like the crackpot brigade’ would backfire, he believed. There was another reason for his hostility. He’d already heard about the investigation from interagency colleagues, rather than from the team itself, and the secrecy left him with a ‘spidey sense’ that the process was a form of ‘creepy freelancing.’ He wondered: Had someone launched an unaccountable investigation with the goal of achieving a desired result? . . . .”
- The “China did it/Wuhan lab leak” hypothesis survived from the Trump administration and Mike Pompeo’s State Department to the Biden administration: ” . . . .The statement withstood ‘aggressive suspicion,’ as one former State Department official said, and the Biden administration has not walked it back. ‘I was very pleased to see Pompeo’s statement come through,’ said Chris Ford, who personally signed off on a draft of the fact sheet before leaving the State Department. ‘I was so relieved that they were using real reporting that had been vetted and cleared.’ . . . .”
- Avril Haines, whom we have cited in this series as a key participant in the Deep State shepherding of the “Lab-Leak Hypothesis,” looms large in the inquiry into the perpetuation of this propaganda meme: ” . . . . Inside the U.S. government, meanwhile, the lab-leak hypothesis had survived the transition from Trump to Biden. On April 15, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told the House Intelligence Committee that two ‘plausible theories’ were being weighed: a lab accident or natural emergence. . . .”
In what may be shaping up to be a disturbing reprise of Philip Zelikow’s role in the events surrounding the 9/11 attacks and the resulting invasion of Iraq, Zelikow is positioned to preside over a commission to “investigate” the Covid-19 pandemic, ” . . . . an examination of the origins of the virus—including the contentious ‘lab leak’ theory. . . .”
We note that:
- The financial backers of the project include: ” . . . . Schmidt Futures, founded by Mr. Schmidt and his wife Wendy; Stand Together, which is backed by the libertarian-leaning philanthropist Charles Koch; the Skoll Foundation, founded by the eBay pioneer Jeff Skoll; and the Rockefeller Foundation. . . .”
- Former CIA and State Department chief under Trump Mike Pompeo is a protege of the Koch brothers.
- Zelikow’s 9/11 Commission presided over significant oversights and omissions: ” . . . . There is now evidence, much of it systematically suppressed by the 9/11 Commission, that before 9/11, CIA officers Richard Blee and Tom Wilshire inside the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit along with FBI agents such as Dina Corsi, were protecting from investigation and arrest two of the eventual alleged hijackers on 9/11, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi—much as the FBI had protected Ali Mohamed from arrest in 1993. . . .”
- PNAC (The Project for a New American Century) called for Rebuilding America’s Defenses: ” . . . . ‘The process of transformation,’ it reported, ‘even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.’ This was only one instance of a widely accepted truism: that it would take something like a Pearl Harbor to get America to accept an aggressive war. So the question to be asked is whether Cheney, Rumsfeld, or any others whose projects depended on ‘a new Pearl Harbor’ were participants in helping to create one. . . .”
- Zelikow helped draft the 2002 document that concretized the PNAC strategic goals: ” . . . . In 2002, the PNAC goals of unchallenged military dominance, plus the right to launch preemptive strikes anywhere, were embodied in the new National Security Strategy of September 2002 (known as ‘NSS 2002’). (A key figure in drafting this document was Philip Zelikow, who later became the principal author of the 9/11 Commission Report.) . . . .”
- PNAC’s paper foreshadowed what we feel underlies the pandemic: ” . . . . In what is arguably the think tank’s most controversial document, titled ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses,’ there are a few passages that openly discuss the utility of bioweapons, including the following sentences: ‘…combat likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, ‘cyber-space,’ and perhaps the world of microbes…advanced forms of biological warfare that can ‘target’ specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.’ . . .”
- There are indications that the anthrax attacks that occurred in the same time period as the 9/11 attacks may well have been a provocation aimed at justifying the invasion of Iraq and spurring the development off biological weapons, as advocated in the PNAC document. Ft. Detrick insider Steven Hatfill was a suspect in the attack, although he appears to have worn “operational Teflon.” “. . . . Steven Hatfill was now looking to me like a suspect, or at least, as the F.B.I. would denote him eight months later, ‘a person of interest.’ When I lined up Hatfill’s known movements with the postmark locations of reported biothreats, those hoax anthrax attacks appeared to trail him like a vapor cloud. But in February 2002, shortly after I advanced his candidacy to my contact at F.B.I. headquarters, I was told that Mr. Hatfill had a good alibi. A month later, when I pressed the issue, I was told, ‘Look, Don, maybe you’re spending too much time on this.’ Good people in the Department of Defense, C.I.A., and State Department, not to mention Bill Patrick, had vouched for Hatfill. . . . In December 2001, Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a noted bioweapons expert, delivered a paper contending that the perpetrator of the anthrax crimes was an American microbiologist whose training and possession of Ames-strain powder pointed to a government insider with experience in a U.S. military lab. . . . Hatfill at the time was building a mobile germ lab out of an old truck chassis, and after S.A.I.C. fired him he continued work on it using his own money. When the F.B.I. wanted to confiscate the mobile lab to test it for anthrax spores, the army resisted, moving the trailer to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where it was used to train Special Forces in preparation for the war on Iraq. The classes were taught by Steve Hatfill and Bill Patrick. . . . Meanwhile, friends of Fort Detrick were leaking to the press new pieces of disinformation indicating that the mailed anthrax probably came from Iraq. The leaks included false allegations that the Daschle anthrax included additives distinctive to the Iraqi arms program and that it had been dried using an atomizer spray dryer sold by Denmark to Iraq. . . .”
- Two key Democratic Senators were targeted by weapons-grade anthrax letters prior to changing their opposition to the Patriot Act: “. . . . We should not forget that the Patriot Act was only passed after lethal weapons-grade anthrax letters were mailed to two crucial Democratic Senators—Senators Daschle and Leahy—who had initially questioned the bill. After the anthrax letters, however, they withdrew their initial opposition. Someone—we still do not know who—must have planned those anthrax letters well in advance. We should not forget, either, that some government experts initially blamed those attacks on Iraq. . . .”
- The “Lab Leak Theory” has been promulgated by Michael R. Gordon, who was instrumental in advancing the Saddam Hussein WMD connection which helped lay the propaganda foundation for the Iraq War.
Will the “Zelikow Pandemic Commission’s” treatment of the Lab-Leak Theory function in such a way as to pave the way for U.S. war with China, by focusing blame for the pandemic on what Mr. Emory has called “The Oswald Institute of Virology”?
1a. We begin with a reminder–the EcoHealth Alliance projects have focused on Pentagon research on potential biological warfare pathogens.
. . . . The more than $50 million EcoHealth Alliance had received in U.S. funding since 2007 includes contracts and grants from two NIH institutes, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as Pentagon funds to look for organisms that could be fashioned into bioterror weapons. . . .
1b. There has been much commentary about anti-Asian racism in the U.S. following numerous, sometimes lethal attacks on Asian-Americans in the wake of the pandemic.
Aside from the full-court press against China that we have covered extensively–including and especially the disturbing evidence that the Covid-19 pandemic was deliberately engineered by the U.S.–this should come as no surprise.
Peter Thiel–lynchpin of power in the Trump administration, the top dog in Palantir (the alpha predator of the electronic surveillance milieu), a key player in Facebook–has disseminated anti-Chinese vitriol about the “yellow peril” in Silicon Valley.
He has been joined in that effort by Steve Bannon, a coordinator of anti-China activity in Washington D.C.
” . . . . The billionaire investor Peter Thiel has accused Google of “treason” and called for a law enforcement investigation of the search engine’s parent company. He speculated that the Chinese government has invaded its employee ranks. A German immigrant via South Africa, Thiel is not alone; his remarks echo the repeated assertions of the rabble rouser Steve Bannon that there are too many Asian CEOs in Silicon Valley. These claims, combined with similar charges of wrongdoing against students and professors of Chinese origin on campuses across the country, are as ominous as they are lurid. While Thiel presents no evidence, Bannon displays ample prejudice. They are inspiring paranoia about everyone of Chinese heritage. . . .”
The billionaire investor Peter Thiel has accused Google of “treason” and called for a law enforcement investigation of the search engine’s parent company. He speculated that the Chinese government has invaded its employee ranks. A German immigrant via South Africa, Thiel is not alone; his remarks echo the repeated assertions of the rabble rouser Steve Bannon that there are too many Asian CEOs in Silicon Valley.
These claims, combined with similar charges of wrongdoing against students and professors of Chinese origin on campuses across the country, are as ominous as they are lurid. While Thiel presents no evidence, Bannon displays ample prejudice. They are inspiring paranoia about everyone of Chinese heritage.
At a Sunday appearance which opened the National Conservatism Conference in Washington DC followed by an appearance with the Fox TV host Tucker Carlson, Thiel, the founder of the PayPal financial service, relied on rhetorical questions. He asked Google who was working on artificial intelligence, whether “senior management considers itself to have been thoroughly infiltrated” and if the Chinese would steal the information anyway.
Google answered by reiterating that “we do not work with the Chinese military”.
Thiel left Silicon Valley last year in protest over its liberalism. He is also behind Palantir, the secretive surveillance firm, and has been a supporter of tariffs. Google had been reported to be developing a China-compatible search engine codenamed Dragonfly. They stopped due to employee objections.
The open hostility to Chinese people, as distinct from the Chinese government, violates norms integral to America itself. On the face of these utterances is the identification of a community, named by ancestry, as a problem. Last year, the FBI director, Christopher Wray, characterized it as a “whole of society” threat to American values.
Guilt by association is not what the American dream has promised to those who have sacrificed everything for that proverbial opportunity. Whatever the Chinese government may be up to, their policies should not compromise the status of Chinese people, almost all of whom are ordinary folks, not spies, “sleepers”, agents of influence or otherwise conspirators.
Although in this new Yellow Peril, a specific ethnicity is targeted as a group, no line is drawn between citizens and foreigners. The original Yellow Peril was the notion, promoted by Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II in the late 19th century and by the American author Jack London, that Asians might contend against Europeans and white Americans in a contest of racial superiority. Propagandists such as Lothrop Stoddard wrote titles that would summarize the thesis: The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy was a 1920 bestseller.
Nowadays as earlier, the people who fear an Asian takeover of Silicon Valley do not bother to add that Asians who become Americans are acceptable. They cannot distinguish by looking at a lineup of random Asians, whether the one is a visiting scholar “fresh off the boat” in that pejorative phrase being reappropriated, the other a sixth-generation Californian “banana” (yellow on the outside, white on the inside, in another derogatory term). If they did clarify that they meant no disparagement of those whose families came before their own, at least they would be pure nativists rather than also racists.
The confusion of Asians overseas and “Asian Americans” (a concept coined during the social justice movements circa 1968) has been a recurring theme throughout history. Demagogues succeeded in persuading Congress to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. They argued the “Orientals” would outcompete Occidental rivals but remain loyal to a foreign empire. The prohibition was then expanded to an Asiatic Barred Zone intended to maintain ethnic proportions favoring white Anglo-Saxon Protestants in the American population (even Catholics, Jews and Europeans too southern and eastern were to be limited albeit not as strictly). Japanese Americans were locked up during the second world war no matter that they were bona fide United States citizens two generations removed from Tokyo and baseball-playing Christians.
…
Civil rights and national interest are compatible. For those who fear Chinese will help China in achieving global dominance, there is a remedy: turn those Chinese into Chinese Americans who will contribute to the United States, or who will embrace a conception of belonging that is cosmopolitan instead of nationalistic. There could be no greater gift for Shenzhen and Shanghai, the perceived usurpers of western centers of technology and finance, respectively, than to drive out Chinese who otherwise would be stakeholders on this side of the Pacific Ocean.
Google relies on Chinese, Chinese immigrants and Chinese American engineers, alongside numerous Indians and other Asians, as do other technology firms. Only a few of those experts are promoted to executives.
So it is true that there are many Chinese, Indians, other Asians and entrepreneurs from the world over who are attracted to these shores. That is to be celebrated. If they were to leave, however voluntary their departure, that would ruin the economy. Thiel and Bannon expose the real conflict: between those who value democracy and diversity and those who do not.
1c. Steve Bannon–one of the luminaries of the “Alt-Right” and a former key Trump aide, was centrally involved in the anti-China effort. This suggests that the presence of Pepe the Frog’s image in the Hong Kong protests might have something to do with the “Alt-Right” after all.
Note Bannon and company’s networking with the Falun Gong cult and “Chinese Muslim Freedom Fighters”–read “Uighurs.”
The Bannon-led anti-China effort has now become U.S. doctrine: ” . . . . Fear of China has spread across the government, from the White House to Congress to federal agencies, where Beijing’s rise is unquestioningly viewed as an economic and national security threat and the defining challenge of the 21st century. . . .”
“A New Red Scare Is Reshaping Washington” by Ana Swanson; The New York Times; 7/20/2019.
In a ballroom across from the Capitol building, an unlikely group of military hawks, populist crusaders, Chinese Muslim freedom fighters [Uighurs–D.E.] and followers of the Falun Gong has been meeting to warn anyone who will listen that China poses an existential threat to the United States that will not end until the Communist Party is overthrown.
If the warnings sound straight out of the Cold War, they are. The Committee on the Present Danger, a long-defunct group that campaigned against the dangers of the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, has recently been revived with the help of Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist, to warn against the dangers of China.
Once dismissed as xenophobes and fringe elements, the group’s members are finding their views increasingly embraced in President Trump’s Washington, where skepticism and mistrust of China have taken hold. Fear of China has spread across the government, from the White House to Congress to federal agencies, where Beijing’s rise is unquestioningly viewed as an economic and national security threat and the defining challenge of the 21st century.
“These are two systems that are incompatible,” Mr. Bannon said of the United States and China. “One side is going to win, and one side is going to lose.” . . . .
2. Next, we review parts of a Vanity Fair article featured in FTR#‘s 1188 and 1189.
Of particular interest is how Bannon and Trump are now marginalized and ideologically scapegoated as “bomb-throwers.” The Lab-Leak meme was generated by Pompeo’s State Department and Trump National Security aide Matthew Pottinger and has been carried over by the Deep State into the Biden administration.
Now, it is considered “respectable.”
- Pompeo State Department officials pursuing the lab-leak hypothesis were told to cover it up lest it shed light on U.S. government funding of research at the “Oswald Institute of Virology!”: ” . . . . In one State Department meeting, officials seeking to demand transparency from the Chinese government say they were explicitly told by colleagues not to explore the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s gain-of-function research, because it would bring unwelcome attention to U.S. government funding of it. . . . .In an internal memo obtained by ‘Vanity Fair’, Thomas DiNanno, former acting assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, wrote that. . . staff from two bureaus . . . ‘warned’ leaders within his bureau ‘not to pursue an investigation into the origin of COVID-19’ because it would ‘open a can of worms’ if it continued.’ . . . . As the group probed the lab-leak scenario, among other possibilities, its members were repeatedly advised not to open a ‘Pandora’s box,’ said four former State Department officials interviewed by ‘Vanity Fair’. . . .”
- The Vanity Fair article paints Trump, Bannon and company as loonies, whereas they were fundamental to the beginning of the full-court press against China: “. . . . At times, it seemed the only other people entertaining the lab-leak theory were crackpots or political hacks hoping to wield COVID-19 as a cudgel against China. President Donald Trump’s former political adviser Steve Bannon, for instance, joined forces with an exiled Chinese billionaire named Guo Wengui to fuel claims that China had developed the disease as a bioweapon and purposefully unleashed it on the world. . . .”
- Matthew Pottinger, a China hawk in the Trump administration, headed up a team to investigate the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis. Note that the gain-of-function milieu in the U.S. national security establishment was a retarding factor in the inquiry: ” . . . . By then, Matthew Pottinger had approved a COVID-19 origins team, run by the NSC directorate that oversaw issues related to weapons of mass destruction. A longtime Asia expert and former journalist, Pottinger purposefully kept the team small . . . . In addition, many leading experts had either received or approved funding for gain-of-function research. Their ‘conflicted’ status, said Pottinger, ‘played a profound role in muddying the waters and contaminating the shot at having an impartial inquiry.’ . . . .”
- Note that Lawrence Livermore scientists were involved with the genesis of the “China did it” hypothesis, after allegedly being alerted by a foreign source to look into their own files. ” . . . . An intelligence analyst working with David Asher sifted through classified channels and turned up a report that outlined why the lab-leak hypothesis was plausible. It had been written in May by researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which performs national security research for the Department of Energy. But it appeared to have been buried within the classified collections system. . . .”
- Note, also, that Chris Ford, a China hawk, was working to suppress the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis: ” . . . . Their frustration crested in December, when they finally briefed Chris Ford, acting undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security. He seemed so hostile to their probe that they viewed him as a blinkered functionary bent on whitewashing China’s malfeasance. But Ford, who had years of experience in nuclear nonproliferation, had long been a China hawk. . . .”
- Ford spins his obfuscation of the “Oswald Institute of Virology” link to the U.S. as not wanting to reinforce right-wing crackpots within the Trump administration: ” . . . . Ford told ‘Vanity Fair’ that he saw his job as protecting the integrity of any inquiry into COVID-19’s origins that fell under his purview. Going with ‘stuff that makes us look like the crackpot brigade’ would backfire, he believed. There was another reason for his hostility. He’d already heard about the investigation from interagency colleagues, rather than from the team itself, and the secrecy left him with a ‘spidey sense’ that the process was a form of ‘creepy freelancing.’ He wondered: Had someone launched an unaccountable investigation with the goal of achieving a desired result? . . . .”
- The “China did it/Wuhan lab leak” hypothesis survived from the Trump administration and Mike Pompeo’s State Department to the Biden administration: ” . . . .The statement withstood ‘aggressive suspicion,’ as one former State Department official said, and the Biden administration has not walked it back. ‘I was very pleased to see Pompeo’s statement come through,’ said Chris Ford, who personally signed off on a draft of the fact sheet before leaving the State Department. ‘I was so relieved that they were using real reporting that had been vetted and cleared.’ . . . .”
- Avril Haines, whom we have cited in this series as a key participant in the Deep State shepherding of the “Lab-Leak Hypothesis,” looms large in the inquiry into the perpetuation of this propaganda meme: ” . . . . Inside the U.S. government, meanwhile, the lab-leak hypothesis had survived the transition from Trump to Biden. On April 15, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told the House Intelligence Committee that two ‘plausible theories’ were being weighed: a lab accident or natural emergence. . . .”
- The article concludes with the interesting use of the term “cut-out” to describe the EcoHealth Alliance. The term generally refers to an intelligence-community front organization. Is the author hinting at more? Did her editor take information out? Note, again, the characterization of Trump and company as extremists/crackpots: ” . . . . The United States deserves a healthy share of blame as well. Thanks to their unprecedented track record of mendacity and race-baiting, Trump and his allies had less than zero credibility. And the practice of funding risky research via cutouts like EcoHealth Alliance enmeshed leading virologists in conflicts of interest at the exact moment their expertise was most desperately needed. . . .”
. . . . At times, it seemed the only other people entertaining the lab-leak theory were crackpots or political hacks hoping to wield COVID-19 as a cudgel against China. President Donald Trump’s former political adviser Steve Bannon, for instance, joined forces with an exiled Chinese billionaire named Guo Wengui to fuel claims that China had developed the disease as a bioweapon and purposefully unleashed it on the world. As proof, they paraded a Hong Kong scientist around right-wing media outlets until her manifest lack of expertise doomed the charade. . . .
. . . . On February 19, 2020, The Lancet, among the most respected and influential medical journals in the world, published a statement that roundly rejected the lab-leak hypothesis, effectively casting it as a xenophobic cousin to climate change denialism and anti-vaxxism. Signed by 27 scientists, the statement expressed “solidarity with all scientists and health professionals in China” and asserted: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.”
The Lancet statement effectively ended the debate over COVID-19’s origins before it began. To Gilles Demaneuf, following along from the sidelines, it was as if it had been “nailed to the church doors,” establishing the natural origin theory as orthodoxy. “Everyone had to follow it. Everyone was intimidated. That set the tone.” . . . .
. . . . It soon emerged, based on emails obtained by a Freedom of Information group called U.S. Right to Know, that Daszak had not only signed but organized the influential Lancet statement, with the intention of concealing his role and creating the impression of scientific unanimity.
Under the subject line, “No need for you to sign the “Statement” Ralph!!,” he wrote to two scientists, including UNC’s Dr. Ralph Baric, who had collaborated with Shi Zhengli on the gain-of-function study that created a coronavirus capable of infecting human cells: “you, me and him should not sign this statement, so it has some distance from us and therefore doesn’t work in a counterproductive way.” Daszak added, “We’ll then put it out in a way that doesn’t link it back to our collaboration so we maximize an independent voice.”
Baric agreed, writing back, “Otherwise it looks self-serving and we lose impact.” . . . .
. . . . A months long Vanity Fair investigation, interviews with more than 40 people, and a review of hundreds of pages of U.S. government documents, including internal memos, meeting minutes, and email correspondence, found that conflicts of interest, stemming in part from large government grants supporting controversial virology research, hampered the U.S. investigation into COVID-19’s origin at every step.In one State Department meeting, officials seeking to demand transparency from the Chinese government say they were explicitly told by colleagues not to explore the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s gain-of-function research, because it would bring unwelcome attention to U.S. government funding of it.
In an internal memo obtained by Vanity Fair, Thomas DiNanno, former acting assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, wrote that staff from two bureaus, his own and the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, “warned” leaders within his bureau “not to pursue an investigation into the origin of COVID-19” because it would “‘open a can of worms’ if it continued.” . . . .
. . . . But for most of the past year, the lab-leak scenario was treated not simply as unlikely or even inaccurate but as morally out-of-bounds. In late March, former Centers for Disease Control director Robert Redfield received death threats from fellow scientists after telling CNN that he believed COVID-19 had originated in a lab. . . .
. . . . In the words of David Feith, former deputy assistant secretary of state in the East Asia bureau, “The story of why parts of the U.S. government were not as curious as many of us think they should have been is a hugely important one.” . . . .
. . . . By then, Matthew Pottinger had approved a COVID-19 origins team, run by the NSC directorate that oversaw issues related to weapons of mass destruction. A longtime Asia expert and former journalist, Pottinger purposefully kept the team small, because there were so many people within the government “wholly discounting the possibility of a lab leak, who were predisposed that it was impossible,” said Pottinger. In addition, many leading experts had either received or approved funding for gain-of-function research. Their “conflicted” status, said Pottinger, “played a profound role in muddying the waters and contaminating the shot at having an impartial inquiry.” . . . .
. . . . Believing they had uncovered important evidence in favor of the lab-leak hypothesis, the NSC investigators began reaching out to other agencies. That’s when the hammer came down. “We were dismissed,” said Anthony Ruggiero, the NSC’s senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense. “The response was very negative.” . . . .
. . . . By the summer of 2020, Gilles Demaneuf was spending up to four hours a day researching the origins of COVID-19, joining Zoom meetings before dawn with European collaborators and not sleeping much. He began to receive anonymous calls and notice strange activity on his computer, which he attributed to Chinese government surveillance. “We are being monitored for sure,” he says. He moved his work to the encrypted platforms Signal and ProtonMail. . . .
. . . . As officials at the meeting discussed what they could share with the public, they were advised by Christopher Park, the director of the State Department’s Biological Policy Staff in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, not to say anything that would point to the U.S. government’s own role in gain-of-function research, according to documentation of the meeting obtained by Vanity Fair.
Only two other labs in the world, in Galveston, Texas and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, were doing similar research. “It’s not a dozen cities,” Dr. Richard Ebright said. “It’s three places.”
Some of the attendees were “absolutely floored,” said an official familiar with the proceedings. That someone in the U.S. government could “make an argument that is so nakedly against transparency, in light of the unfolding catastrophe, was…shocking and disturbing.”
Park, who in 2017 had been involved in lifting a U.S. government moratorium on funding for gain-of-function research, was not the only official to warn the State Department investigators against digging in sensitive places. As the group probed the lab-leak scenario, among other possibilities, its members were repeatedly advised not to open a “Pandora’s box,” said four former State Department officials interviewed by Vanity Fair. The admonitions “smelled like a cover-up,” said Thomas DiNanno, “and I wasn’t going to be part of it.” . . . .
. . . . In the first year of the Trump administration, the moratorium was lifted and replaced with a review system called the HHS P3CO Framework (for Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight). It put the onus for ensuring the safety of any such research on the federal department or agency funding it. This left the review process shrouded in secrecy. “The names of reviewers are not released, and the details of the experiments to be considered are largely secret,” said the Harvard epidemiologist Dr. Marc Lipsitch, whose advocacy against gain-of-function research helped prompt the moratorium. (An NIH spokesperson told Vanity Fair that “information about individual unfunded applications is not public to preserve confidentiality and protect sensitive information, preliminary data, and intellectual property.”)
Inside the NIH, which funded such research, the P3CO framework was largely met with shrugs and eye rolls, said a longtime agency official: “If you ban gain-of-function research, you ban all of virology.” He added, “Ever since the moratorium, everyone’s gone wink-wink and just done gain-of-function research anyway.” . . . .
. . . . By the summer of 2020, the State Department’s COVID-19 origins investigation had gone cold. Officials in the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance went back to their normal work: surveilling the world for biological threats. “We weren’t looking for Wuhan,” said Thomas DiNanno. That fall, the State Department team got a tip from a foreign source: Key information was likely sitting in the U.S. intelligence community’s own files, unanalyzed. In November, that lead turned up classified information that was “absolutely arresting and shocking,” said a former State Department official. Three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, all connected with gain-of-function research on coronaviruses, had fallen ill in November 2019 and appeared to have visited the hospital with symptoms similar to COVID-19, three government officials told Vanity Fair.
While it is not clear what had sickened them, “these were not the janitors,” said the former State Department official. “They were active researchers. The dates were among the absolute most arresting part of the picture, because they are smack where they would be if this was the origin.” The reaction inside the State Department was, “Holy shit,” one former senior official recalled. “We should probably tell our bosses.” The investigation roared back to life.
An intelligence analyst working with David Asher sifted through classified channels and turned up a report that outlined why the lab-leak hypothesis was plausible. It had been written in May by researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which performs national security research for the Department of Energy. But it appeared to have been buried within the classified collections system.
Now the officials were beginning to suspect that someone was actually hiding materials supportive of a lab-leak explanation. “Why did my contractor have to pore through documents?” DiNanno wondered. Their suspicion intensified when Department of Energy officials overseeing the Lawrence Livermore lab unsuccessfully tried to block the State Department investigators from talking to the report’s authors.
Their frustration crested in December, when they finally briefed Chris Ford, acting undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security. He seemed so hostile to their probe that they viewed him as a blinkered functionary bent on whitewashing China’s malfeasance. But Ford, who had years of experience in nuclear nonproliferation, had long been a China hawk. Ford told Vanity Fair that he saw his job as protecting the integrity of any inquiry into COVID-19’s origins that fell under his purview. Going with “stuff that makes us look like the crackpot brigade” would backfire, he believed.
There was another reason for his hostility. He’d already heard about the investigation from interagency colleagues, rather than from the team itself, and the secrecy left him with a “spidey sense” that the process was a form of “creepy freelancing.” He wondered: Had someone launched an unaccountable investigation with the goal of achieving a desired result?
He was not the only one with concerns. As one senior government official with knowledge of the State Department’s investigation said, “They were writing this for certain customers in the Trump administration. We asked for the reporting behind the statements that were made. It took forever. Then you’d read the report, it would have this reference to a tweet and a date. It was not something you could go back and find.”
After listening to the investigators’ findings, a technical expert in one of the State Department’s bioweapons offices “thought they were bonkers,” Ford recalled.
The State Department team, for its part, believed that Ford was the one trying to impose a preconceived conclusion: that COVID-19 had a natural origin. A week later, one of them attended the meeting where Christopher Park, who worked under Ford, advised those present not to draw attention to U.S. funding of gain-of-function research. . . .
. . . . The statement withstood “aggressive suspicion,” as one former State Department official said, and the Biden administration has not walked it back. “I was very pleased to see Pompeo’s statement come through,” said Chris Ford, who personally signed off on a draft of the fact sheet before leaving the State Department. “I was so relieved that they were using real reporting that had been vetted and cleared.” . . . .
Inside the U.S. government, meanwhile, the lab-leak hypothesis had survived the transition from Trump to Biden. On April 15, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told the House Intelligence Committee that two “plausible theories” were being weighed: a lab accident or natural emergence. . . .
. . . . China obviously bears responsibility for stonewalling investigators. Whether it did so out of sheer authoritarian habit or because it had a lab leak to hide is, and may always be, unknown.
The United States deserves a healthy share of blame as well. Thanks to their unprecedented track record of mendacity and race-baiting, Trump and his allies had less than zero credibility. And the practice of funding risky research via cutouts like EcoHealth Alliance enmeshed leading virologists in conflicts of interest at the exact moment their expertise was most desperately needed.
3a. In what may be shaping up to be a disturbing reprise of Philip Zelikow’s role in the events surrounding the 9/11 attacks and the resulting invasion of Iraq, Zelikow is positioned to preside over a commission to “investigate” the Covid-19 pandemic, ” . . . . an examination of the origins of the virus—including the contentious ‘lab leak’ theory. . . .”
We note that:
- The financial backers of the project include: ” . . . . Schmidt Futures, founded by Mr. Schmidt and his wife Wendy; Stand Together, which is backed by the libertarian-leaning philanthropist Charles Koch; the Skoll Foundation, founded by the eBay pioneer Jeff Skoll; and the Rockefeller Foundation. . . .”
- Former CIA and State Department chief under Trump Mike Pompeo is a protege of the Koch brothers.
- Zelikow’s 9/11 Commission presided over significant oversights and omissions: ” . . . . There is now evidence, much of it systematically suppressed by the 9/11 Commission, that before 9/11, CIA officers Richard Blee and Tom Wilshire inside the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit along with FBI agents such as Dina Corsi, were protecting from investigation and arrest two of the eventual alleged hijackers on 9/11, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi—much as the FBI had protected Ali Mohamed from arrest in 1993. . . .”
- PNAC (The Project for a New American Century) called for Rebuilding America’s Defenses: ” . . . . ‘The process of transformation,’ it reported, “even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.’ This was only one instance of a widely accepted truism: that it would take something like a Pearl Harbor to get America to accept an aggressive war. So the question to be asked is whether Cheney, Rumsfeld, or any others whose projects depended on ‘a new Pearl Harbor’ were participants in helping to create one. . . .”
- Zelikow helped draft the 2002 document that concretized the PNAC strategic goals: ” . . . . In 2002, the PNAC goals of unchallenged military dominance, plus the right to launch preemptive strikes anywhere, were embodied in the new National Security Strategy of September 2002 (known as ‘NSS 2002’). (A key figure in drafting this document was Philip Zelikow, who later became the principal author of the 9/11 Commission Report.) . . . .”
- PNAC’s paper foreshadowed what we feel underlies the pandemic: ” . . . . In what is arguably the think tank’s most controversial document, titled ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses,’ there are a few passages that openly discuss the utility of bioweapons, including the following sentences: ‘…combat likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, ‘cyber-space,’ and perhaps the world of microbes…advanced forms of biological warfare that can ‘target’ specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.’ . . .”
- There are indications that the anthrax attacks that occurred in the same time period as the 9/11 attacks may well have been a provocation aimed at justifying the invasion of Iraq and spurring the development off biological weapons, as advocated in the PNAC document. Ft. Detrick insider Steven Hatfill was a suspect in the attack, although he appears to have worn “operational Teflon.” “. . . . Steven Hatfill was now looking to me like a suspect, or at least, as the F.B.I. would denote him eight months later, ‘a person of interest.’ When I lined up Hatfill’s known movements with the postmark locations of reported biothreats, those hoax anthrax attacks appeared to trail him like a vapor cloud. But in February 2002, shortly after I advanced his candidacy to my contact at F.B.I. headquarters, I was told that Mr. Hatfill had a good alibi. A month later, when I pressed the issue, I was told, ‘Look, Don, maybe you’re spending too much time on this.’ Good people in the Department of Defense, C.I.A., and State Department, not to mention Bill Patrick, had vouched for Hatfill. . . . In December 2001, Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a noted bioweapons expert, delivered a paper contending that the perpetrator of the anthrax crimes was an American microbiologist whose training and possession of Ames-strain powder pointed to a government insider with experience in a U.S. military lab. . . . Hatfill at the time was building a mobile germ lab out of an old truck chassis, and after S.A.I.C. fired him he continued work on it using his own money. When the F.B.I. wanted to confiscate the mobile lab to test it for anthrax spores, the army resisted, moving the trailer to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where it was used to train Special Forces in preparation for the war on Iraq. The classes were taught by Steve Hatfill and Bill Patrick. . . . Meanwhile, friends of Fort Detrick were leaking to the press new pieces of disinformation indicating that the mailed anthrax probably came from Iraq. The leaks included false allegations that the Daschle anthrax included additives distinctive to the Iraqi arms program and that it had been dried using an atomizer spray dryer sold by Denmark to Iraq. . . .”
- Two key Democratic Senators were targeted by weapons-grade anthrax letters prior to changing their opposition to the Patriot Act: “. . . . We should not forget that the Patriot Act was only passed after lethal weapons-grade anthrax letters were mailed to two crucial Democratic Senators—Senators Daschle and Leahy—who had initially questioned the bill. After the anthrax letters, however, they withdrew their initial opposition. Someone—we still do not know who—must have planned those anthrax letters well in advance. We should not forget, either, that some government experts initially blamed those attacks on Iraq. . . .”
- The “Lab Leak Theory” has been promulgated by Michael R. Gordon, who was instrumental in advancing the Saddam Hussein WMD connection which helped lay the propaganda foundation for the Iraq War.
Will the “Zelikow Pandemic Commission’s” treatment of the Lab-Leak Theory function in such a way as to pave the way for U.S. war with China, by focusing blame for the pandemic on what Mr. Emory has called “The Oswald Institute of Virology”?
The lawyer who led the inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks has quietly laid a foundation for a nonpartisan commission to investigate the coronavirus pandemic, with financial backing from four foundations and a paid staff that has already interviewed more than 200 public health experts, business leaders, elected officials, victims and their families.
The work, which has attracted scant public notice, grew out of a telephone call in October from Eric Schmidt, the philanthropist and former chief executive of Google, to Philip D. Zelikow, who was the executive director of the commission that investigated Sept. 11. . . .
. . . . In the meantime, the Covid Commission Planning Group, directed by Mr. Zelikow, is forging ahead on a separate track that might at some point, merge with a congressionally appointed panel. It has financial support from Schmidt Futures, founded by Mr. Schmidt and his wife Wendy; Stand Together, which is backed by the libertarian-leaning philanthropist Charles Koch; the Skoll Foundation, founded by the eBay pioneer Jeff Skoll; and the Rockefeller Foundation. . . .
. . . . With more than two dozen expert advisers from across the political spectrum, including two former Food and Drug Administration commissioners and a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the group has made detailed notes of these sessions and drafted a blueprint for a wide-ranging inquiry that would include, but hardly be limited to, an examination of the origins of the virus—including the contentious “lab leak” theory. . . .
. . . . Mr. Zelikow, a national security expert and former diplomat, is now a history professor at the University of Virginia. His group operates out of the university’s Miller Center for Public Affairs, in cooperation with Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security and Bloomberg School of Public Health. . . .
. . . . Morgenthau’s hypothesis that the CIA was protecting Saudi criminal assets received further corroboration in the wake of 9/11. There is now evidence, much of it systematically suppressed by the 9/11 Commission, that before 9/11, CIA officers Richard Blee and Tom Wilshire inside the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit along with FBI agents such as Dina Corsi, were protecting from investigation and arrest two of the eventual alleged hijackers on 9/11, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi—much as the FBI had protected Ali Mohamed from arrest in 1993. . . .
. . . . The 9/11 Commission Report, overruling FBI reports, simply denied that Saudi embassy money had supported the two hijackers. . . .
. . . .Their ideology was summarized in a major position paper Rebuilding America’s Defenses, in September 2000. This document advocated a global Pax Americana unrestrained by international law and spoke frankly of the need to retain forward-based troops in the Middle East, even if Saddam Hussein were to disappear. . . .
. . . . In other words, Cheney and Rumsfeld had by the summer of 2001 set up both the goals and the implementation agencies for a war in Iraq. The course was set, and it became abundantly clear in time that the administration was prepared to lie and distort in order to maintain it. But it was clear from polls taken both before and after the Iraq invasion that for the American people to support this course of action, they had to believe they had been attacked. The Bush agenda, in other words, depended on 9/11, or something like it.
The PNAC study, Rebuilding America’s Defenses, had itself foreseen the need for such a belief. “The process of transformation,” it reported, “even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.” This was only one instance of a widely accepted truism: that it would take something like a Pearl Harbor to get America to accept an aggressive war. So the question to be asked is whether Cheney, Rumsfeld, or any others whose projects depended on “a new Pearl Harbor” were participants in helping to create one. . . .
. . . . In 2002, the PNAC goals of unchallenged military dominance, plus the right to launch preemptive strikes anywhere, were embodied in the new National Security Strategy of September 2002 (known as “NSS 2002”). (A key figure in drafting this document was Philip Zelikow, who later became the principal author of the 9/11 Commission Report.) . . . .
PNAC advocated research into the application of genetic engineering in order to create ethno-specific biological warfare weapons, as discussed by the Project for a New American Century’s Rebuilding America’s Defenses. ” . . . . In what is arguably the think tank’s most controversial document, titled ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses,’ there are a few passages that openly discuss the utility of bioweapons, including the following sentences: ‘…combat likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, ‘cyber-space,’ and perhaps the world of microbes…advanced forms of biological warfare that can ‘target’ specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.’ . . .”
3f. “The Message in the Anthrax” by Don Foster; Vanity Fair; October 2003; pp. 188–200.
. . . . Steven Hatfill was now looking to me like a suspect, or at least, as the F.B.I. would denote him eight months later, ‘a person of interest.’ When I lined up Hatfill’s known movements with the postmark locations of reported biothreats, those hoax anthrax attacks appeared to trail him like a vapor cloud. But in February 2002, shortly after I advanced his candidacy to my contact at F.B.I. headquarters, I was told that Mr. Hatfill had a good alibi. A month later, when I pressed the issue, I was told, ‘Look, Don, maybe you’re spending too much time on this.’ Good people in the Department of Defense, C.I.A., and State Department, not to mention Bill Patrick, had vouched for Hatfill. . . . In December 2001, Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a noted bioweapons expert, delivered a paper contending that the perpetrator of the anthrax crimes was an American microbiologist whose training and possession of Ames-strain powder pointed to a government insider with experience in a U.S. military lab. . . .Hatfill at the time was building a mobile germ lab out of an old truck chassis, and after S.A.I.C. fired him he continued work on it using his own money. When the F.B.I. wanted to confiscate the mobile lab to test it for anthrax spores, the army resisted, moving the trailer to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where it was used to train Special Forces in preparation for the war on Iraq. The classes were taught by Steve Hatfill and Bill Patrick. . . .
. . . . We should not forget that the Patriot Act was only passed after lethal weapons-grade anthrax letters were mailed to two crucial Democratic Senators—Senators Daschle and Leahy—who had initially questioned the bill. After the anthrax letters, however, they withdrew their initial opposition. Someone—we still do not know who—must have planned those anthrax letters well in advance. We should not forget, either, that some government experts initially blamed those attacks on Iraq. . . .
Martin Borman, Nazi in Exile
There’s an interesting new allegation coming from David Asher, a senior fellow at the right-wing Hudson Institute and the former State Department adviser who co-authored a fact sheet last January on activity inside the lab as described in Katherine Eban’s Vanity Fair piece. Asher reportedly told NBC News that he is “confident” that the Chinese military was funding a “secret program” that involved Shi Zhengli’s coronavirus research at the WIV. Shi reportedly worked with Ton Yigang, a military scientist, on coronavirus research in 2018 and then with Zhou Yusen, another military scientist in December 2019. It’s also reported that Zhou died in 2020, although the causes haven’t been confirmed.
What makes Asher so confident this secret research was taking place? He claims he was told this by several foreign researchers who worked at the WIV who saw some researchers there in military garb. So the members of this secret Chinese military biowarfare research team apparently didn’t think it was important to not wear military clothing during their secret research at a research facility intended for civilian use only. We aren’t told the identity of these foreign researchers who allegedly saw this. We also aren’t told if Asher meant “foreign researchers” as in non-Chinese researchers working at the WIV (so foreign to China) or Chinese researchers working at the WIV (so foreign to Asher). Does Asher have three Chinese researchers at the WIV as his sources?
Either way, it’s quite a claim. Sort of. Let’s keep in mind that Shi’s research could arguably be characterized as funded by the US military through the EcoHealth Alliance collaboration. But let’s also keep in mind that this remarkable claim based on anonymous sources we don’t know exist but are assured by Asher do exist. And that brings us to a second interesting recent article. It’s an interview by Bloomberg News of Danielle Anderson, a bat-borne virus expert who worked at the WIV as late as November 2019, so Anderson would have been at the WIV right during the period when an outbreak from the WIV would presumably have taken place under a WIV lab-leak scenario. And part of what makes this interview so interesting with respect to Asher’s claims is that Anderson is described as the only foreign researcher working at the WIV. The only one. So if Anderson was the lone foreign researcher at the WIV, where exactly did Asher come up with several anonymous foreign WIV researchers? Are Asher’s “foreign researcher” sources actually WIV Chinese researchers?
“But the network reported that it uncovered evidence linking Shi to military scientists. She collaborated with Ton Yigang, a military scientist, on coronavirus research in 2018 and then with Zhou Yusen, another military scientist in December 2019. Zhou who was listed as deceased in the footnote of an article published in 2020, the report said. The report said it could not confirm the cause of his death.”
Did Shi’s lab work with these military scientists? That’s what we’re told by Asher, who claims he was himself told this by several foreign researchers inside the lab who saw other researchers there in military garb. Again, we don’t know if the “foreign researchers” Asher was referring to were Chinese researchers or non-Chinese researchers allegedly working at the WIV:
So we have to ask, did anyone else spot military researchers at the WIV? Unfortunately, there aren’t many people available to ask. Only one foreign researcher, in fact. Danielle Anderson, who is described as a bat-borne virus expert and the lone foreign researcher who was working at the WIV in the lead up to the outbreak:
“An expert in bat-borne viruses, Anderson is the only foreign scientist to have undertaken research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s BSL‑4 lab, the first in mainland China equipped to handle the planet’s deadliest pathogens. Her most recent stint ended in November 2019, giving Anderson an insider’s perspective on a place that’s become a flashpoint in the search for what caused the worst pandemic in a century.”
If anyone had been in a position to observe dangerous coronavirus research taking place at the WIV in the lead up to the outbreak, Danielle Anderson would have been that person. It’s notable that she was appointed to the Lancet’s international taskforce to study the originals of the outbreak. Recall how Peter Daszak was recently forced to recuse himself from that commission. So Anderson’s experiences at the WIV are presumably being incorporated into the Lancet’s investigation. And what she describes is a stark contrast to what depiction we’ve heard elsewhere of a sloppy dangerous facility conducting dangerous research under dangerous conditions. In fact, when comparing the WIV to other BSL‑4 facilities she’s worked at, Anderson was so impressed the method of daily disinfections that it inspired her to implement a similar system into her own lab:
Now, regarding the reports of the three sick researchers who went to the hospital in November of 2019 with symptoms consistent with the coronavirus, note how Anderson was in the position to have daily interactions with exactly the kinds of researchers who would be the most likely people to get sick from a virus in a lab. Her collaborators at the WIV even all met in Singapore in December with no sign of an outbreak. And, again, Anderson worked on bat-borne coronaviruses at the WIV and she is aware of the published research out of the WIV involving testing viruses for their ability to infect human cells. So if the three WIV researchers who went to the hospital in November 2019 were bat-borne virus researchers, Anderson probably would have heard about it:
Also note how Anderson has been visiting the WIV’s maximum biocontainment lab since before it formally opened in 2018. So this is someone presumably quite familiar with the facility’s safety measures:
Now, we should point out that when Anderson dismisses the capabilities of people to design viruses that can infect humans, some of what she’s saying doesn’t quite make sense. Like when she argues that gain-of-function research is exceedingly difficult to use to create a new virus because key facets of how SARS-CoV‑2 functions wouldn’t be known by researchers. The whole point of gain-of-function research is to learn about these key facets of how viruses function on a mechanistic level. So if you’re going to design a virus you would obviously be working from that existing and growing knowledge base. A knowledge base that grows with every publication on new gain-of-function research. So that part of Anderson’s story sounds somewhat self-defensive:
Finally, note another key fact about the WIV: it’s the only known institute in China that specializes in specialize in virology, viral pathology and virus technology. So if the virus did spill out of a lab in China, it almost certainly would have had to have been the WIV, making the claims of secret military involvement in the research there all the more tantalizing to those who want to pin the blame for the pandemic on China:
So we’ll see if David Asher ever ends up providing more information on the three foreign researchers who allegedly worked at the WIV and witnessed people in military garb engaged in dangerous research. Danielle Anderson, the only known foreign researcher to work at the WIV, clearly isn’t one of them. So either Asher is making up these sources, or maybe there were foreigners secretly working at the WIV which seems utterly implausible. Spies among the domestic research staff? We don’t know, but it’s a scenario that’s starting to sound much more plausible. And would be quite a twist, all things considered.
@Pterrafractyl–
In regard to Hudson’s claim:
Don’t forget this:
USAID’s PREDICT project trained many of the scientists at the WIV. From the standpoint of covert operations, this would afford the opportunity to place one or more operatives inside that apparently targeted institution: [USAID is a State Department subsidiary that is one of the largest funders of the EcoHealth Alliance and a frequent cover for CIA activity.] ” . . . . . . . . Many of the scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology have been trained by the U.S. government’s PREDICT project. . . .”
Keep up the great work!
Relating to the claims of former State Department analyst David Asher about secret gain-of-function research on bat borne coronaviruses carried out by the Chinese military with Shi Zhengli’s lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), here’s a story from back in May that appears to be one the first report publicly discussing these allegations. Notably, this ‘exclusive’ report was published by the Sinclair Broadcasting Group, a media giant that’s now arguably even more committed to peddling right-wing narratives that even Fox News.
The article discusses a report issued for the US government on May 27 2020 by the intelligence unit at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that concluded the coronavirus may have emerged from a Chinese lab. The report was labeled “Top Secret” and its existence was previously undisclosed. Sinclair got the scoop.
And part of what makes this article so interesting is that it’s paired with commentary from unnamed experts who keep emphasizing that while this secret gain-of-function research could be characterized as defensive in nature, there is simply no way to disentangle the dual-use nature of this kind of research. It’s implicitly defensive and offensive in nature. It’s a fun fact about this kind of research is obviously a highly sensitive topic for the US ongoing international pressure campaign against China because the goal isn’t to ban dual-use research. The goal is a ban dual-use research for China. Somehow the the message needs to be conveyed to the public that China engaged in very dangerous biological warfare research without acknowledging that much of this research was sponsored by the US via the EcoHealth Alliance and that similar research takes place in biological research facilities across the West. It’s a propagandistic conundrum that can really only be overcome with more obfuscation and misdirection, enough to ensure the public never really understands the topic:
“Researchers at Livermore’s “Z Division,” the lab’s intelligence unit, issued the report May 27, 2020, classified “Top Secret.” Its existence is previously undisclosed. The Z Division report assessed that both the lab-origin theory and the zoonotic theory were plausible and warranted further investigation. Sinclair has not reviewed the report but confirmed its contents through interviews with multiple sources who read it or were briefed on its contents.”
So we now know that the there was a top secret report circulating DC raising the possibility of a lab leak. But it was reportedly squashed by senior officials at the Energy And State Department, prompting some Trump administration officials to seek other intelligence source on the topic. If would be interesting to know if the senior Energy and State Department officials who squashed the Z Division report were also involved with seeking out those alternative intelligence assessments:
Another question is how much of a role did this Z Division assessment play in the January 15, 20221 State Department report led by David Asher that talked about secret military gain-of-function research on RaTG13 at the WIV. Recall how, as we’ve seen, there did indeed appear to be gain-of-function research conducted by Shi Zhengli’s lab on the RaTG13 virus. But did not appear to be done in secret. It’s one of the interesting things to watch as this story plays out: how the claims of secret gain-of-function research square with the non-secret gain-of-function research that’s demonstrably publicly available:
Also note the obvious potential for dual-use research being conducted by the same LLNL team that issued the Z Division report: according to Dr. David J. Rakestraw, “We’ve been putting a large amount of focus for the last six years on using the computational resources at LLNL to try to accelerate the timescales for developing a response to an emerging biological threat.” Now, that’s the kind of statement that could mean A LOT of different things. Computational resources could be used to accelerate the timescale for developing a response to an emerging biological threat in all sorts of different ways. They could be used in a biosurveillance aspect trying to identify emerging threats. Was that what Radestraw was referring to? Or might he have been referencing some sort of computational method for understanding the structure and function of novel viruses for the purpose of rapidly designing new vaccines for them? We have no idea of that’s what Rakestraw was referring to but computational virology is a thing. A thing with obvious dual-use capabilities. It’s why one of the interesting questions here is just how much dual use research has been taking place at the various agencies that are currently raising alarms about Chinese dual-use research:
It’s a real challenge: How can the US and its allies make the case that China needs to be globally punished for developing and releasing the SARS-CoV‑2 virus and sanctioned from future gain-of-function dual use research without simultaneously putting a crimp on all of the dual-use research taking place in the West? That’s the challenge at hand. A challenge that’s primarily propagandistic in nature. The challenge of actually balancing legitimate biodefense needs and valid application of dual use activities with inherent risks that come with these activities is clearly way beyond humanity’s pay grade at this point.
Stories about the deeply unethical behavior militaries engage in when no one is watching are nothing new. It’s part of what makes covert operations so potent. The more covert they are, the more potential there is for unethical the means to achieve the desired ends. So when we read about the highly unethical nature of following secret Pentagon-run covert psychological operation revealed last week, it’s worth keeping in mind that, on some levels, none of this is new. There’s a disturbingly robust history of wildly unethical covert military programs.
But at the same time, it’s hard to read about this operation without arriving at the conclusion that this is bad even by the disturbing standards of covert psychological operations. So bad, in fact, that we never actually get a coherent justification for the program: It turns out the Pentagon ran multiple psychological operations via social media from the spring of 2020 to the summer of 2021 designed to convinced global audiences that the Chinese Sinovac COVID vaccine was dangerous and should be avoided. And in the case of Muslims, there was a special message about how China’s vaccine was made with pork gelatin (it’s not).
Beyond that, suspicions about the safety of face masks, testing kits, and other resources to fight the COVID pandemic donated by China to developing countries were similarly targeted in the operation. Yep, for over a year as the pandemic was unfolding, the Pentagon was secretly trying to convince populations across Asia that they were better off without the Chinese masks, test kits, and vaccines. Which seems like a massive wildly unjustifiable crime.
So what’s the explanation for this policy? Well, we are told that the initial impetus was anger over the suggestions Chinese officials made back in March of 2020 that the SARS-CoV‑2 virus actually came from the US and was trafficked to the Wuhan via infected military athletes in Wuhan in October of 2019. A scenario that, as we’ve seen, has been buttressed by the claims of numerous athletes from multiple countries who competed at the games. But even if China had made entirely baseless claims, it’s hard to see how anger over China’s accusations in any way justifies a pan-Asia covert campaign to discourage the use of Chinese vaccines or supplies.
And then we get to a more cynical explanation: intense concern over the diplomatic goodwill China was generating throughout the region with its pledges to provide its vaccine to developing countries along with other supplies like masks and test kits. It was a generous policy that, as we’ll see, stood in stark contrast to the approach the US took with the US-developed mRNA vaccines where the pharmaceutical companies were allowed to “play hardball” with developing countries and try to extract as high a price as they could get away with.
The Philippines, in particular, became a point of palpable US concern, especially after a July 2020 speech by President Duterte when he shared that he has made “a plea” to President Xi that the Philippines be at the front of the line for accessing China’s vaccine when it became available. In the same speech, he vowed that the Philippines would no longer challenge China’s in the South China Sea. Days later, China announced that it would prioritize the Philippines for the vaccine as part of a “new highlight in bilateral relations.” As one senior US officer put it, “We didn’t do a good job sharing vaccines with partners. So what was left to us was to throw shade on China’s.”
Keep in mind that, while the US did eventually make vaccines available to the Philippines, it wasn’t really available there until early 2022. China’s Sinovac, on the other hand, was made available to the Philippines in March of 2021. So there was close to a year when that was the only option for the country. And as we’re going to see, the psyop turned out to be pretty effective. Despite its early access to China’s vaccine, the Philippines had one of the lowest vaccination rates in the world. Mission accomplished?
And while that grossly cynical and unethical explanation of opposing China’s diplomatic pandemic overtures does go further in explaining the motive for this covert policy, there are some other highly troubling policies that pre-date the COVID pandemic that should be kept in mind. First, then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper signed a secret order in 2019 that elevated the Pentagon’s competition with China and Russia to the priority of active combat. In addition, 2019 was also the year when a congressional Pentagon spending billed explicitly authorized the military to conduct clandestine influence operations against other countries, even “outside of areas of active hostilities.” Finally, 2019 was also the year Trump authorized the CIA to launch a clandestine campaign on Chinese social media designed to turn public opinion against the government. So in the months leading up to the emergence of the pandemic in Wuhan, the US effectively declared a kind of covert regime change policy against China. And then, just months into the pandemic, we find this grossly unethical psyop designed to encourage people across Asia to turn away Chinese pandemic assistance. Global public health was an afterthought, which is important to keep in mind when asking the “could they really have done something that evil?” question regarding the accusations about the US deliberating trafficking the virus to China. There was a secret regime change war afoot.
Another aspect of that secret 2019 order by Esper is that it removed the State Department’s check on psychological operations, allowing the Pentagon to override State Department concerns. That’s notable given that we are told at least six senior State Department officials responsible for the region objected to the psyop. Which is also notable in that it indicates the State Department was well aware of it at the time.
Another interesting aspect ot all of this is that it appears that a contractor, General Dynamics IT, was used alongside psychological warfare soldiers at the base in Tampa, Florida, where these operations were conducted. It also turns out General Dynamics IT just want a new $493 million contract back in February of this year to continue providing clandestine influence services for the military.
The Biden administration formally ended the program in early 2021. Disturbingly, and in a story we first saw back in September of 2022, after the Pentagon decided to finally audit this social media covert influencing program, its primary complaint appeared to be sloppy tradecraft that allowed journalists and social media companies to identify the fake accounts.
Also note that we are getting hints in this report that there is a lot more under this rock. Like vague statements about how when the Biden administration ended this anti-vax psyop, the order also included ended the campaigns against the vaccines of “other rivals”. We have no idea who those other rivals may have been, but it’s not hard to imagine the anti-vax campaign extending to Russia.
Finally, it’s important to keep in mind another dimension to this story: this trashing of a rival vaccines was taking place at the same time the US was effectively backing what was still a highly experimental new form of mRNA vaccines under woefully inadequate safety testing conditions. The kind of vaccine that not only could end up making companies like Moderna billions of dollars in profits directly from the vaccine but had the potential to launch a whole now multi-trillion dollar mRNA-based field of medicine. The stakes in the global ‘vaccine race’ went far beyond diplomacy and geopolitics.
So that’s the incredibly disturbing update we got on the US’s secret war to destabilize the Chinese government. A secret war launched in 2019, months before the pandemic officially started, that soon enveloped all of Asia in a campaign to encourage the spread of the virus as China’s diplomatic cost. A secret war many would consider utterly unthinkable if the Pentagon wasn’t openly admitting it at this point. Which makes it the kind secret war where scenarios involving the intentional release of the virus in China are kind of the next logical ‘unthinkable’ step:
“The U.S. military’s anti-vax effort began in the spring of 2020 and expanded beyond Southeast Asia before it was terminated in mid-2021, Reuters determined. Tailoring the propaganda campaign to local audiences across Central Asia and the Middle East, the Pentagon used a combination of fake social media accounts on multiple platforms to spread fear of China’s vaccines among Muslims at a time when the virus was killing tens of thousands of people each day. A key part of the strategy: amplify the disputed contention that, because vaccines sometimes contain pork gelatin, China’s shots could be considered forbidden under Islamic law.”
A military psychological operation launched in the spring of 2020, just months into the pandemic, targeting multiple regions of the world, from Southeast and Central Asia to the Middle East, tailored to convince local populations NOT to take the Chinese COVID vaccine. And also to mistrust face masks, test kits, and other materials donated by China. Whether or not exacerbating spread of COVID was the intent, it was obviously a consequence for targeted populations, especially since China’s Sinovac vaccine was frequently the first COVID vaccine available for a number of nations, including the Philippines. But as the article hints, China’s vaccine wasn’t the only vaccine targeted in this psyop. We’re told that the anti-vax effort disparaged vaccines “produced by other rivals” too. It’s the kind of detail that hints as as much bigger and darker scandal than what is being revealed in this report. Even worse, it apparently worked, as evidenced by the deep Filipino mistrust of Sinovac when the vaccine was finally made available in March of 2021. The Philippines end up with one of the worst vaccination rates in Southeast Asia:
So what was the justification for this dangerous psyop? Well, we’re given a number of different motives. For starters, we’re told that the operation was a response to China’s speculation in March of 2020 that the COVID virus was brought to China by infected military athletes. Which is a pretty awful explanation for a covert anti-vax campaign across Asia. But that’s what we’re being told:
But then we get to another motive for the psyop: China’s generosity with its vaccine was in stark contrast to the approach taken by the US, where pharmaceutical companies were allowed to “play hardball” with developing countries. By My of 2020, Xi announced the Chinese vaccine would be made available as a “global public good” and would ensure “vaccine accessibility and affordability in developing countries.” By July of 2020, Duterte publicly pleaded with Xi to grant access to the vaccine to the Philippines first, while vowing that the Philippines would no longer challenge Beijing’s in the South China Sea. China’s generosity and the diplomatic wins that followed simply couldn’t be tolerated. As one anonymous senior U.S. military officer put it, “We didn’t do a good job sharing vaccines with partners. So what was left to us was to throw shade on China’s.” It’s a plausible motive. But an awful one:
But as we can see, the motives wasn’t just preventing diplomatic wins for China. Ensuring ‘the region understood the origin of COVID’ was also part of the motive. In other words, ensuring China is seen as the definitive source of the virus. That was the approach proposed by Special Operations Command Pacific General Jonathan Braga. An approach opposed by at least six senior State Department officials responsible for Southeast Asia. Opposition Braga could ignore thanks to a 2019 pre-COVID secret order elevating the Pentagon’s competition with China and Russia to the priority of active combat. A move that allowed commands to ignore State Department opposition when conduction psyops against Russia and China. On top of that, Congress passed a last that year explicitly authorizing covert military influence operations against other countries, even “outside of areas of active hostilities.” Which is pretty remarkable timing. Months after these rule changes that elevated the Pentagon’s competition with China to the priority of active combat, COVID breaks out soon to be followed by this insidious anti-China/anti-vax campaign:
But then we get this other piece of the puzzle: in 2019 Trump authorized the CIA to launch a clandestine social media campaign to to turn Chinese citizens against the government. Month later, COVID strikes. Again, what a remarkable coincidence:
But General Braga’s operations in Southeast Asia was just one of the military psychological operations launched at this time. By the summer of 2020, similar operations were targeting the Middle East and Central Asia, including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Which, sure, is an ‘anti-China’ operation, but it’s also a operation seemingly designed to exacerbate the impact of COVID around the world. The kind of psychological operation that seemingly justified promoting the spread of this illness by rationalizing that the worse the pandemic is for the world, the worse of a public relations disaster it will be for China:
Also note the use of military contractors from General Dynamics IT working alongside psychological-warfare soldiers in this setup. And as we saw, when the Pentagon did finally audit this program after rescinding parts of Mark Esper’s 2019 secret order elevating the Pentagon’s competition with China and Russia to the priority of active combat, the primary complaint found in the audit is the sloppy tradecraft making their fake accounts easy to spot and a lack of control over the contractors:
This is also a good time to keep in mind that, should we see Donald Trump returning to the White House, we’re probably going to be seeing a substantial increase in all these covert regime change programs. It would be odd if that wasn’t the case. So if you’re wondering about what kind ‘services’ General Dynamics IT will be providing going forward, ‘finishing the job’ against China is presumably going to be one of them.
Following up on that profoundly disturbing Reuters report about the pan-Asian anti-vax campaign the CIA was conducting from the spring of 2020 to the summer of 2021, here’s a pair of articles fleshing out the dramatic expansion of powers and authorities granted to the CIA in the two years leading up to the pandemic. As we’re going to see, the Trump administration more or less gave the CIA the kinds of powers it couldn’t get under Barak Obama or even George H.W. Bush, especially when it came to offensive operations against Russian, China, Iran, and North Korea. Offensive operations that ranged from covert propaganda designed to undermine support for rival governments to Stuxnet-style cyberattacks on critical infrastructure.
First, recall how that recent Reuters report referred back to a secret 2019 authorization allowing the CIA to launch a clandestine campaign on Chinese social media designed to turn public opinion against the government. That was alongside a secret order signed that by then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper that elevated the Pentagon’s competition with China and Russia to the priority of active combat and a congressional spending bill that explicitly authorized the military to conduct clandestine influence operations against other countries, even “outside of areas of active hostilities.” As we’re going to see in the following Reuters piece from back in March, that secret 2019 authorization allowing the CIA to launch a clandestine anti-China campaign wasn’t limited to China. The CIA was actually authorized to take action in countries around the world where the US and China were competing for influence. Which, if you think about it, is an authorization anti-China actions everywhere. A global anti-China covert influence campaign was greenlit by the Trump administration months before the COVID pandemic exploded onto the scene.
Oh, and guess which NSC official actually crafted the secret authorization: Matthew Pottinger. As we seen, it was Pottinger who was aggressively pushing for the promotion of the Wuhan ‘lab leak’ narrative back in January of 2020. So the guy who crafted the authorization of what amounted to a global covert anti-China influence operation was the same guy aggressively pushing the Wuhan lab leak narrative weeks into the pandemic. On the one hand, if the virus did just coincidentally happen to leak from that Wuhan lab months into this anti-China influence operation, of course we would expect Pottinger to be pushing a lab leak narrative at that point. But on the other hand, one has to marvel at the remarkable coincidence here. Months after this secret global anti-China influence campaign is launched, we get the emergence of the ‘China virus’ in Wuhan.
But that secret 2019 authorization for a CIA anti-China influence operation was just one of the major secret authorizations for aggressive action against China during the Trump administration. As the second article, from July of 2020, describes, the Trump administration authorized the CIA to carry out shockingly aggressive cyberoperations against China that included Stuxnet-style attacks on critical infrastructure and even Wikileaks-style hack-and-dump operations. “This has been a combination of destructive things — stuff is on fire and exploding — and also public dissemination of data: leaking or things that look like leaking,” according to one former official.
And it wasn’t just China. The same ‘usual suspects’ (Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea) could be targeted, although we’re told it wasn’t limited to them. Which other countries may have been targeted remains unclear.
But it wasn’t just countries either. Media outlets, other private entities, and even individuals suspected of working for any of these governments could also be targeted. With a much, much lower bar for getting authorizations. We’re told covert cyber operations in the past were rigorously vetted through the NSC, with sometimes years-long gaps between formulation and execution. But after authorization, the CIA could go “from idea to approval in weeks.”
And then we get to this extra disturbing chapter of this secret campaign: as a former official described at the time, the CIA was experience “classic mission creep” when it came to its how this authorization was being interpreted with respect to Iran. What started off as plans to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon (Stuxnet 2.0?) ended up becoming plans for destabilization that amount to regime change. As the former official put it, “We’re playing semantics — destabilization is functionally the same thing as regime change. It’s a deniability issue.” What are the odds Iran was the only country to become the target of this secret mission creep?
Finally, keep in mind that the ongoing threat of Trump resuming his presidency next year includes the amplified threat coming from the Schedule F/Project 2025 planning to purge the federal government of all non-Trump loyalists. And we can be confident the intelligence community and military will be ground zero for that bureaucratic coup. What will a CIA packed with Trump-loyalist do with these kinds of covert powers? It’s one of the many highly disturbing questions raised by this pair of reports, along with the general question of “what are the odds COVID just happened to appear in Wuhan months into this covert global war on China”?:
“The CIA operation came in response to years of aggressive covert efforts by China aimed at increasing its global influence, the sources said. During his presidency, Trump pushed a tougher response to China than had his predecessors. The CIA’s campaign signaled a return to methods that marked Washington’s struggle with the former Soviet Union. “The Cold War is back,” said Tim Weiner, author of a book on the history of political warfare.”
The Cold War is back. That’s the message we got from this report a few month ago describing the mentality embraced by the national security community under the Trump administration. A mentality that only deepened with a secret 2019 authorization for the formation of CIA team dedicated to spreading damaging narratives about the Chinese government. We’re told the goal of the campaign was to foment paranoia among China’s top leadership and undermining support for China’s Belt and Road Initiative. But it seems pretty obvious that the full scope of the goals would include more than just that. The destabilization of China would have been the overarching objective here. And as the article reminds us, when it came to the covert propaganda battles of the Cold War, that’s a battle fought in the media, with the CIA planting 80 to 90 stories a day at the height of the Cold War. So while we are told this covert campaign was focused on using fake internet personas to spread narratives, it would be a mistake to assume media manipulation and planted stories aren’t also part of the plan. In other words, we should expect the planting of negative stories about China in the media as part of this overall agenda:
Also note how this story we are getting about how the focus on this covert campaign was just fomenting paranoia among China’s leadership ignores the fact that this secret 2019 authorization included the authorization to promote these anti-China narratives in any country where the US and China were completing for influence. Which is basically everywhere if you think about it. Which is another hint that there’s much more to this 2019 authorization than we are being told at this point:
And note the individual who issued that 2019 authorization to the CIA to wage this anti-China online campaign: Mathew Pottinger, the same NSC member who was aggressively pushing for the promotion of the Wuhan ‘lab leak’ narrative back in January of 2020. So the guy in the Trump administration most aggressively pushing for the ‘China lab leak’ narrative also happened to issue an authorization for the CIA to secretly promote narratives that might destabilize China. What a coincidence:
It’s unclear at this point if this secret authorization has actually been rescinded. Keep that in mind the next time you read about the latest report based on US government sources pushing the Wuhan lab leak narrative:
Finally, keep in mind a key part of the context of this secret 2019 authorization: the secret 2018 authorization granting the CIA even greater powers to conduct offensive cyber operations against the US’s adversaries:
So let’s take a closer look at the July 2020 report describing that secret 2018 authorization by NSC granting the CIA new powers to conduct offensive cyber operations. And not just spreading nasty memes and narratives. According to this authorization, the CIA was free to engage in Stuxnet-style attacks on the critical infrastructure of adversaries, along with Wikileaks-style hack-and-dump operations. And as the article warned, while the operations didn’t explicitly have regime change as their goal, that’s more or less the goal the CIA arrived at when it came to Iran. “Classic mission creep,” as one former official described it. In other words, the CIA was authorized to unofficially engage in regime change initiatives in the years leading up to the COVID pandemic:
“The CIA’s new powers are not about hacking to collect intelligence. Instead, they open the way for the agency to launch offensive cyber operations with the aim of producing disruption — like cutting off electricity or compromising an intelligence operation by dumping documents online — as well as destruction, similar to the U.S.-Israeli 2009 Stuxnet attack, which destroyed centrifuges that Iran used to enrich uranium gas for its nuclear program.”
A 2018 secret authorization for CIA Stuxnet-like attacks on the critical infrastructure of the US’s adversaries. That’s what we got to learn about back in July of 2020. An authorization crafted by the CIA that more or less unleashes the agency’s offensive cyber operations to operate without oversight. And while Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea were explicitly mentioned as targets of this policy, note how it wasn’t actually limited to those nations. Also note how we are told at least a dozen operation on the CIA’s ‘wish list’ had been carried out in the two year since the authorization. And that was as of July of 2020. How many more ‘wish list’ items has the CIA enjoyed over the last four years since?
But beyond the Stuxnet-style attacks on physical infrastructure, there’s apparently been Wikileaks-style hack-and-dump operations that included the mass dumping of financial information linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. 15 million debit card numbers. It’s the kind of attack that, if responded to in kind, could result in a major disruption of the financial system. But these are risks that can be ignored by the CIA thanks to that authorization:
And that brings us to what is arguably the most chilling detail in this report: the lines between ‘stopping Iran from getting a nuclear bomb’ and regime change were increasingly blurred to the point where regime change became the CIA’s de facto unstated policy against Iran. How many more examples of ‘regime change mission creep’ are there at this point? Did the CIA have a regime change policy targeting China too?
And that mission creep risk brings us to the observation that the CIA was more or less granted a green light by the Trump administration to be as aggressive as it wanted to be, at least when it came to China:
Keep in mind this report was from almost four years ago. And while it sounded like the Biden administration at least partially rolled back some of this covert policy in 2021, we can be pretty confident the CIA has continued with its regime change planning, whether it had the authorization to carry out the plans or not. Which means a renewed secret regime change campaign against China could be less than a year away. Look out world.