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­­­FTR #1215 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: This pro­gram sup­ple­ments our long series on “The Oswald Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy.”

A pair of sto­ries in The Wall Street Jour­nal yield under­stand­ing of our media land­scape and the degree of pro­pa­gan­diz­ing of same.

Reportage about the WHO’s resump­tion of its inquiry into the ori­gins of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic has­n’t received much cov­er­age in the U.S.

What cov­er­age there has been has–predictably–focused on the “lack of transparency/cooperation” by Chi­na in the probe.

(We reit­er­ate that–at this point in time and some­time before–the Chi­nese response would have be gov­erned by the dis­ci­plines war­rant­ed by a wartime inves­ti­ga­tion of an ene­my attack. In this case, a U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare attack. Some­thing of a “bio-North­woods” oper­a­tion.)

A remark­able aspect of the Jour­nal’s cov­er­age con­cerns a devel­op­ment that has been almost com­plete­ly excised from the West­ern press: ” . . . . For months, China’s gov­ern­ment has insist­ed both in pub­lic, and in pri­vate meet­ings with Dr. Tedros, that stud­ies on the ori­gins of the virus should now focus on oth­er coun­tries, such as Italy, or on a U.S. mil­i­tary biore­search facil­i­ty in Fort Det­rick, Md. Dozens of gov­ern­ments aligned with Chi­na have sent Dr. Tedros let­ters in sup­port of Beijing’s posi­tion, a per­son famil­iar with the let­ters said. . . .”

“Dozens of gov­ern­ments?” Which ones? This sounds like a major inter­na­tion­al dialogue/scandal. 

WHY aren’t we hear­ing about it?

I think it affords us some per­spec­tive on just how care­ful­ly man­i­cured the pub­lic per­spec­tive is in this coun­try.

In anoth­er arti­cle in the same issue of the Jour­nal, it was not­ed that Jef­frey Sachs is dis­band­ing the sci­en­tif­ic pan­el he over­saw on behalf of the pres­ti­gious British med­ical jour­nal The Lancet, due to the pres­ence of Eco­Health Alliance chief Peter Daszak and sev­er­al oth­er mem­bers of the pan­el asso­ci­at­ed with the orga­ni­za­tion.

” . . . . Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Jef­frey Sachs said he has dis­band­ed a task force of sci­en­tists prob­ing the ori­gins of Covid-19 in favor of wider bio-safe­ty research. Dr. Sachs, chair­man of a Covid-19 com­mis­sion affil­i­at­ed with The Lancet sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals, said he closed the task force because he was con­cerned about its links to Eco­Health Alliance. . . . Eco­Health Alliance’s pres­i­dent, Peter Daszak, led the task force until recus­ing him­self from that role in June. Some oth­er mem­bers of the task force have col­lab­o­rat­ed with Dr. Daszak or Eco­Health Alliance on projects. . . . .”

Eco­Health Alliance has been heav­i­ly involved in coro­n­avirus research–including gain-of-func­tion work–at the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy. We have not­ed that the DARPA has been heav­i­ly involved with that cat­e­go­ry of research.

As not­ed in past pro­grams and dis­cus­sion, the Eco­Health Alliance is fund­ed pri­mar­i­ly by the Depart­ment of Defense and USAID, a State Depart­ment sub­sidiary that has often served as a cov­er for CIA oper­a­tions. One of the prin­ci­pal advis­ers of the orga­ni­za­tion is David Franz, the for­mer com­mand­ing offi­cer of Fort Det­rick.

Worth not­ing is that Jef­frey Sachs–an Amer­i­can eco­nom­ics professor–was tabbed to select those per­son­nel to serve on a pan­el of experts assem­bled under the aus­pices of The Lancet–a British med­ical jour­nal.

In addi­tion to his role advis­ing both Bernie Sanders and Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez, Sachs head­ed the U.S. gov­ern­ment-fund­ed Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty con­sor­tium that advised Boris Yeltsin and, in the process, drove Rus­sia back to the stone age.

In Rus­sia, it is wide­ly believed that Sachs work for the CIA–a the­o­ry that is bol­stered by his piv­otal role in man­ag­ing the nar­ra­tive con­cern­ing the ori­gins of the pan­dem­ic.

We have done many pro­grams under­scor­ing our work­ing hypoth­e­sis that Covid-19 is a bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapon, devel­oped by the U.S. and deployed as part of the desta­bi­liza­tion pro­gram against Chi­na we have cov­ered since the fall of 2019.

(Some of those pro­grams are: FTR#‘s 1157, 1158, 1159, 1170 and FTR#‘s 1183 through 1193, inclu­sive.)

 Next, we high­light a heav­i­ly “spun” sto­ry about the Eco­Health Alliance and its involve­ment with Pen­ta­gon-linked research into bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es may well–when freed from the pre­dictably ide­ol­o­gized jour­nal­is­tic shad­ing to which it has been subjected–yield a “smok­ing genome” with regard to the SARS CoV‑2 virus caus­ing the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic.

(The Inter­cept is the spawn of Pierre Omid­yar, deeply involved in the ascent of the Nazi OUN/B milieu in Ukraine and that of the Hin­dut­va fas­cist regime of Naren­dra Modi in India. He has part­nered with U.S. intel­li­gence cutouts such as the Nation­al Endow­ment for Democ­ra­cy and USAID. Omid­yar’s pro­tege Glenn Green­wald is to be viewed with a jaun­diced eye as well.)

Key points of infor­ma­tion in the arti­cle:

• ” . . . . Last month, a grant appli­ca­tion sub­mit­ted to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) revealed that an inter­na­tion­al team of sci­en­tists had planned to mix genet­ic data of sim­i­lar strains to cre­ate a new virus. The grant appli­ca­tion was made in 2018 . . . .”

• ” . . . . The grant appli­ca­tion pro­pos­al was sub­mit­ted by British zool­o­gist Peter Daszak on behalf of a group, which includ­ed Daszak Eco­Health Alliance, the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy, the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na and Duke NUS in Sin­ga­pore, The Tele­graph report­ed. . . .”

• ” . . . . ‘We will com­pile sequence/RNAseq data from a pan­el of close­ly relat­ed strains and com­pare full length genomes, scan­ning for unique SNPs rep­re­sent­ing sequenc­ing errors. ‘Con­sen­sus can­di­date genomes will be syn­the­sised com­mer­cial­ly using estab­lished tech­niques and genome-length RNA and elec­tro­po­ra­tion to recov­er recom­bi­nant virus­es,’ the appli­ca­tion states. . . .”

• ” . . . . The WHO expert told The Tele­graph that the process detailed in the appli­ca­tion would cre­ate ‘a new virus sequence, not a 100 per cent match to any­thing.’ ‘They would then syn­the­sise the viral genome from the com­put­er sequence, thus cre­at­ing a virus genome that did not exist in nature but looks nat­ur­al as it is the aver­age of nat­ur­al virus­es. ‘Then they put that RNA in a cell and recov­er the virus from it. ‘This cre­ates a virus that has nev­er exist­ed in nature, with a new ‘back­bone’ that did­n’t exist in nature but is very, very sim­i­lar as it’s the aver­age of nat­ur­al back­bones,’ the expert said. . . .”

• ” . . . . Experts told the paper that cre­at­ing an ‘ide­al’ aver­age virus could have been part of work to cre­ate a vac­cine that works across coro­n­avirus­es. Last month, it emerged that the US had fund­ed sim­i­lar research to that out­lined in the 2018 grant pro­pos­al. . . .”

Key con­sid­er­a­tions in the con­text of which this sto­ry should be viewed:

• DARPA has been exten­sive­ly involved in research­ing bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es in, and around Chi­na.
• Note that the pro­pos­al to DARPA involved exten­sive dis­cus­sion of the genome of the virus to be syn­the­sized. Uti­liz­ing con­tem­po­rary tech­nol­o­gy, this would per­mit the syn­the­sis of the virus with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly approv­ing the pro­pos­al!
• Note that the lat­est inno­va­tions in biotech­nol­o­gy per­mit: ” . . . . Advances in the area mean that sci­en­tists now have the capa­bil­i­ty to recre­ate dan­ger­ous virus­es from scratch; make harm­ful bac­te­ria more dead­ly; and mod­i­fy com­mon microbes so that they churn out lethal tox­ins once they enter the body. . . .”
• Those inno­va­tions also per­mit: ” . . . . In the report, the sci­en­tists describe how syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy, which gives researchers pre­ci­sion tools to manip­u­late liv­ing organ­isms, ‘enhances and expands’ oppor­tu­ni­ties to cre­ate bioweapons. . . .”
• Those inno­va­tions also per­mit: ” . . . . Today, the genet­ic code of almost any mam­malian virus can be found online and syn­the­sized. ‘The tech­nol­o­gy to do this is avail­able now,’ said [Michael] Impe­ri­ale. ‘It requires some exper­tise, but it’s some­thing that’s rel­a­tive­ly easy to do, and that is why it tops the list.’ . . .”
• The chief fund­ing sources for the Eco­Health Alliance are the Pen­ta­gon and USAID, a State Depart­ment sub­sidiary that com­mon­ly serves as a cov­er for CIA. 
• One of Peter Dasza­k’s chief advis­ers is David Franz, the for­mer com­mand­ing offi­cer of Fort Det­rick.
• In FTR#1191, we not­ed that pro­duc­ing a vac­cine for an exist­ing bio­log­i­cal weapon or one under advanced devel­op­ment might well be seen as an “offen­sive” bio­log­i­cal war­fare maneu­ver.
• This arti­cle, like many oth­ers, fea­tures com­men­tary from Richard Ebright to the effect that the WIV did, in fact, syn­the­size the virus. Ebright had a long asso­ci­a­tion with the Howard Hugh­es Med­ical Insti­tute, the for­mer own­er of the Hugh­es Air­craft Com­pa­ny, a firm with pro­found nation­al secu­ri­ty con­nec­tions. It is more than a lit­tle inter­est­ing that Ebright, like almost all of the oth­er com­menters quot­ed in the U.S., does not fac­tor in the inno­va­tions in biotech­nol­o­gy high­light­ed above.
• Of inter­est, as well, is this pas­sage: ” . . . . Experts told the paper that cre­at­ing an ‘ide­al’ aver­age virus could have been part of work to cre­ate a vac­cine that works across coro­n­avirus­es. Last month, it emerged that the US had fund­ed sim­i­lar research to that out­lined in the 2018 grant pro­pos­al. . . .”
• The Pen­ta­gon has, indeed, been work­ing on such a vac­cine: ” . . . . The ser­vice is clos­ing in on a ‘pan-coro­n­avirus’ vac­cine and on syn­thet­ic anti­bod­ies that could pro­tect a pop­u­la­tion before spread. . . .”

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. . . .”

New York Times right-wing colum­nist Ross Douthat has high­light­ed the pro­pa­gan­da sig­nif­i­cance of pin­ning the “Lab Leak The­o­ry” on Chi­na.

In an iron­ic tragedy wor­thy of Aeschy­lus, Douthat has been strug­gling with Lyme Dis­ease, and has suf­fered great­ly in his attempts to nav­i­gate the Lyme Dis­ease treat­ment labyrinth. We have done many pro­grams on Lyme Dis­ease and its devel­op­ment as a bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapon.

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

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

Next, we present dis­cus­sion of Ms. New­by’s expose of the insti­tu­tion­al­ly and finan­cial­ly inces­tu­ous rela­tion­ship between bureau­crat­ic and cor­po­rate enti­ties that both reg­u­late, and prof­it from, Lyme Dis­ease. Key “experts” involved with diag­nos­ing and treat­ing the afflic­tion run inter­fer­ence for the sta­tus quo.

Legal and reg­u­la­to­ry rul­ings have enabled the patent­ing of liv­ing organ­isms and that has exac­er­bat­ed the mon­e­tiz­ing of Lyme Dis­ease treat­ment. That mon­e­ti­za­tion, in turn, has adverse­ly affect­ed the qual­i­ty of care for afflict­ed patients. ” . . . . All of a sud­den, the insti­tu­tions that were sup­posed to be pro­tec­tors of pub­lic health became busi­ness part­ners with Big Phar­ma. The uni­ver­si­ty researchers who had pre­vi­ous­ly shared infor­ma­tion on dan­ger­ous emerg­ing dis­eases were now delay­ing pub­lish­ing their find­ings so they could become entre­pre­neurs and prof­it from patents through their uni­ver­si­ty tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer groups. We essen­tial­ly lost our sys­tem of sci­en­tif­ic checks and bal­ances. And this, in turn, has under­mined patient trust in the insti­tu­tions that are sup­posed to ‘do no harm.’ . . .”

Strik­ing­ly, a FOIA suit she filed was stonewalled for five years, before final­ly yield­ing the doc­u­ments she had so long sought.

The “experts” and their agen­da were neat­ly, and alarm­ing­ly, summed up by Ms. New­by:

” . . . . The emails revealed a dis­turb­ing pic­ture of a nonof­fi­cial group of gov­ern­ment employ­ees and guide­lines authors that had been set­ting the nation­al Lyme dis­ease research agen­da with­out pub­lic over­sight or trans­paren­cy. . . . Bot­tom line, the guide­lines authors reg­u­lar­ly con­vened in gov­ern­ment-fund­ed, closed-door meet­ings with hid­den agen­das that lined the pock­ets of aca­d­e­m­ic researchers with sig­nif­i­cant com­mer­cial inter­ests in Lyme dis­ease tests and vac­cines. A large per­cent­age of gov­ern­ment grants were award­ed to the guide­line authors and/or researchers in their labs. Part of the group’s stat­ed mis­sion, culled from these FOIA emails, was to run a covert ‘dis­in­for­ma­tion war’ and a ‘sociopo­lit­i­cal offen­sive’ to dis­cred­it Lyme patients, physi­cians, and jour­nal­ists who ques­tioned the group’s research and motives. In the FOIA-obtained emails, Lyme patients and their treat­ing physi­cians were called ‘loonies’ and ‘quacks’ by Lyme guide­lines authors and NIH employ­ees. . . .”

We con­clude with review of  a chill­ing set of provo­ca­tions that were planned by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the ear­ly 1960s. Although they were not for­mal­ly insti­tut­ed at that time, Mr. Emory believes the sce­nar­ios dis­cussed below have been adapt­ed to the mod­ern, high-tech­nol­o­gy avail­able to bio­log­i­cal war­fare prac­ti­tion­ers and insti­tut­ed as the Covid-19 “op.”

1a. A pair of sto­ries in The Wall Street Jour­nal yield under­stand­ing of our media land­scape and the degree of pro­pa­gan­diz­ing of same.

Reportage about the WHO’s resump­tion of its inquiry into the ori­gins of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic has­n’t received much cov­er­age in the U.S.

What cov­er­age there has been has–predictably–focused on the “lack of transparency/cooperation” by Chi­na in the probe.

(We reit­er­ate that–at this point in time and some­time before–the Chi­nese response would have be gov­erned by the dis­ci­plines war­rant­ed by a wartime inves­ti­ga­tion of an ene­my attack. In this case, a U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare attack. Some­thing of a “bio-North­woods” oper­a­tion.)

A remark­able aspect of the Jour­nal’s cov­er­age con­cerns a devel­op­ment that has been almost com­plete­ly excised from the West­ern press: ” . . . . For months, China’s gov­ern­ment has insist­ed both in pub­lic, and in pri­vate meet­ings with Dr. Tedros, that stud­ies on the ori­gins of the virus should now focus on oth­er coun­tries, such as Italy, or on a U.S. mil­i­tary biore­search facil­i­ty in Fort Det­rick, Md. Dozens of gov­ern­ments aligned with Chi­na have sent Dr. Tedros let­ters in sup­port of Beijing’s posi­tion, a per­son famil­iar with the let­ters said. . . .”

“Dozens of gov­ern­ments?” Which ones? This sounds like a major inter­na­tion­al dialogue/scandal. 

WHY aren’t we hear­ing about it?

I think it affords us some per­spec­tive on just how care­ful­ly man­i­cured the pub­lic per­spec­tive is in this coun­try.

In anoth­er arti­cle in the same issue of the Jour­nal, it was not­ed that Jef­frey Sachs is dis­band­ing the sci­en­tif­ic pan­el he over­saw on behalf of the pres­ti­gious British med­ical jour­nal The Lancet, due to the pres­ence of Eco­Health Alliance chief Peter Daszak and sev­er­al oth­er mem­bers of the pan­el asso­ci­at­ed with the orga­ni­za­tion.

” . . . . Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Jef­frey Sachs said he has dis­band­ed a task force of sci­en­tists prob­ing the ori­gins of Covid-19 in favor of wider bio-safe­ty research. Dr. Sachs, chair­man of a Covid-19 com­mis­sion affil­i­at­ed with The Lancet sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals, said he closed the task force because he was con­cerned about its links to Eco­Health Alliance. . . . Eco­Health Alliance’s pres­i­dent, Peter Daszak, led the task force until recus­ing him­self from that role in June. Some oth­er mem­bers of the task force have col­lab­o­rat­ed with Dr. Daszak or Eco­Health Alliance on projects. . . . .”

Eco­Health Alliance has been heav­i­ly involved in coro­n­avirus research–including gain-of-func­tion work–at the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy. We have not­ed that the DARPA has been heav­i­ly involved with that cat­e­go­ry of research.

As not­ed in past pro­grams and dis­cus­sion, the Eco­Health Alliance is fund­ed pri­mar­i­ly by the Depart­ment of Defense and USAID, a State Depart­ment sub­sidiary that has often served as a cov­er for CIA oper­a­tions. One of the prin­ci­pal advis­ers of the orga­ni­za­tion is David Franz, the for­mer com­mand­ing offi­cer of Fort Det­rick.

Worth not­ing is that Jef­frey Sachs–an Amer­i­can eco­nom­ics professor–was tabbed to select those per­son­nel to serve on a pan­el of experts assem­bled under the aus­pices of The Lancet–a British med­ical jour­nal.

In addi­tion to his role advis­ing both Bernie Sanders and Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez, Sachs head­ed the U.S. gov­ern­ment-fund­ed Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty con­sor­tium that advised Boris Yeltsin and, in the process, drove Rus­sia back to the stone age.

In Rus­sia, it is wide­ly believed that Sachs work for the CIA–a the­o­ry that is bol­stered by his piv­otal role in man­ag­ing the nar­ra­tive con­cern­ing the ori­gins of the pan­dem­ic.

We have done many pro­grams under­scor­ing our work­ing hypoth­e­sis that Covid-19 is a bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapon, devel­oped by the U.S. and deployed as part of the desta­bi­liza­tion pro­gram against Chi­na we have cov­ered since the fall of 2019.

(Some of those pro­grams are: FTR#‘s 1157, 1158, 1159, 1170 and FTR#‘s 1183 through 1193, inclu­sive.)

“WHO to Resume Covid-19 Ori­gin Probe” by Drew Hin­shaw and Bet­sy McK­ay; The Wall Street Jour­nal;  9/27/2021; P. A6.

The World Health Orga­ni­za­tion is reviv­ing its stalled inves­ti­ga­tion into the ori­gins of the Covid-19 virus as agency offi­cials warn that time is run­ning out to deter­mine how the pan­dem­ic that has killed more than 4.7 mil­lion world­wide began. . . .

. . . . Biden admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials, includ­ing Sec­re­tary of State Antho­ny Blinken, have pressed WHO Direc­tor-Gen­er­al Tedros Ghe­breye­sus pub­licly and pri­vate­ly to renew the inquiry, which is like­ly to include at least one Amer­i­can. . . .

. . . . In a press con­fer­ence in August, WHO offi­cials said they were aware of new stud­ies being con­duct­ed in Chi­na, but weren’t informed about the specifics. It isn’t clear if those stud­ies will be made avail­able to the new team.

For months, China’s gov­ern­ment has insist­ed both in pub­lic, and in pri­vate meet­ings with Dr. Tedros, that stud­ies on the ori­gins of the virus should now focus on oth­er coun­tries, such as Italy, or on a U.S. mil­i­tary biore­search facil­i­ty in Fort Det­rick, Md. Dozens of gov­ern­ments aligned with Chi­na have sent Dr. Tedros let­ters in sup­port of Beijing’s posi­tion, a per­son famil­iar with the let­ters said.

A spokesman for the U.S. Army Med­ical Research Insti­tutes of Infec­tious Dis­eases didn’t respond to requests for com­ment. Few, if any, sci­en­tists out­side Chi­na see the mil­i­tary base as a plau­si­ble ground zero for the pan­dem­ic. Dr. Tedros has resist­ed the idea of inves­ti­gat­ing Fort Det­rick, a per­son with knowl­edge of those con­ver­sa­tions said. . . .

 1b.  “Sci­en­tists’ Pan­el on Virus Dis­bands” by Bet­sy Mck­ay; The Wall Street Jour­nal;  9/27/2021; P. A6.

NB: A much longer ver­sion of this sto­ry appears in the online edi­tion of WSJ. The text below was in a small, “box” sto­ry along­side the sto­ry above.

Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Jef­frey Sachs said he has dis­band­ed a task force of sci­en­tists prob­ing the ori­gins of Covid-19 in favor of wider bio-safe­ty research.

Dr. Sachs, chair­man of a Covid-19 com­mis­sion affil­i­at­ed with The Lancet sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals, said he closed the task force because he was con­cerned about its links to Eco­Health Alliance. The New York-based non-prof­it has been under scruti­ny from some sci­en­tists, mem­bers of Con­gress and oth­er offi­cials since 2020 for using U.S. funds for stud­ies on bat coro­n­avirus­es with the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy, a research facil­i­ty in the Chi­nese city where the first Covid-19 out­break occurred.

Eco­Health Alliance’s pres­i­dent, Peter Daszak, led the task force until recus­ing him­self from that role in June. Some oth­er mem­bers of the task force have col­lab­o­rat­ed with Dr. Daszak or Eco­Health Alliance on projects.

“I just didn’t want a task force that was so clear­ly involved with one of the main issues of this whole search for the ori­gins, which was Eco­Health Alliance,” Dr. Sachs said.

1c.  A heav­i­ly “spun” sto­ry about the Eco­Health Alliance and its involve­ment with Pen­ta­gon-linked research into bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es may well–when freed from the pre­dictably ide­ol­o­gized jour­nal­is­tic shad­ing to which it has been subjected–yield a “smok­ing genome” with regard to the SARS CoV‑2 virus caus­ing the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic.

(The Inter­cept is the spawn of Pierre Omid­yar, deeply involved in the ascent of the Nazi OUN/B milieu in Ukraine and that of the Hin­dut­va fas­cist regime of Naren­dra Modi in India. He has part­nered with U.S. intel­li­gence cutouts such as the Nation­al Endow­ment for Democ­ra­cy and USAID. Omid­yar’s pro­tege Glenn Green­wald is to be viewed with a jaun­diced eye as well.)

Key points of infor­ma­tion in the arti­cle:

• ” . . . . Last month, a grant appli­ca­tion sub­mit­ted to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) revealed that an inter­na­tion­al team of sci­en­tists had planned to mix genet­ic data of sim­i­lar strains to cre­ate a new virus. The grant appli­ca­tion was made in 2018 . . . .”

• ” . . . . The grant appli­ca­tion pro­pos­al was sub­mit­ted by British zool­o­gist Peter Daszak on behalf of a group, which includ­ed Daszak Eco­Health Alliance, the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy, the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na and Duke NUS in Sin­ga­pore, The Tele­graph report­ed. . . .”

• ” . . . . ‘We will com­pile sequence/RNAseq data from a pan­el of close­ly relat­ed strains and com­pare full length genomes, scan­ning for unique SNPs rep­re­sent­ing sequenc­ing errors. ‘Con­sen­sus can­di­date genomes will be syn­the­sised com­mer­cial­ly using estab­lished tech­niques and genome-length RNA and elec­tro­po­ra­tion to recov­er recom­bi­nant virus­es,’ the appli­ca­tion states. . . .”

• ” . . . . The WHO expert told The Tele­graph that the process detailed in the appli­ca­tion would cre­ate ‘a new virus sequence, not a 100 per cent match to any­thing.’ ‘They would then syn­the­sise the viral genome from the com­put­er sequence, thus cre­at­ing a virus genome that did not exist in nature but looks nat­ur­al as it is the aver­age of nat­ur­al virus­es. ‘Then they put that RNA in a cell and recov­er the virus from it. ‘This cre­ates a virus that has nev­er exist­ed in nature, with a new ‘back­bone’ that did­n’t exist in nature but is very, very sim­i­lar as it’s the aver­age of nat­ur­al back­bones,’ the expert said. . . .”

• ” . . . . Experts told the paper that cre­at­ing an ‘ide­al’ aver­age virus could have been part of work to cre­ate a vac­cine that works across coro­n­avirus­es. Last month, it emerged that the US had fund­ed sim­i­lar research to that out­lined in the 2018 grant pro­pos­al. . . .”

Key con­sid­er­a­tions in the con­text of which this sto­ry should be viewed:

• DARPA has been exten­sive­ly involved in research­ing bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es in, and around Chi­na.
• Note that the pro­pos­al to DARPA involved exten­sive dis­cus­sion of the genome of the virus to be syn­the­sized. Uti­liz­ing con­tem­po­rary tech­nol­o­gy, this would per­mit the syn­the­sis of the virus with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly approv­ing the pro­pos­al!
• Note that the lat­est inno­va­tions in biotech­nol­o­gy per­mit: ” . . . . Advances in the area mean that sci­en­tists now have the capa­bil­i­ty to recre­ate dan­ger­ous virus­es from scratch; make harm­ful bac­te­ria more dead­ly; and mod­i­fy com­mon microbes so that they churn out lethal tox­ins once they enter the body. . . .”
• Those inno­va­tions also per­mit: ” . . . . In the report, the sci­en­tists describe how syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy, which gives researchers pre­ci­sion tools to manip­u­late liv­ing organ­isms, ‘enhances and expands’ oppor­tu­ni­ties to cre­ate bioweapons. . . .”
• Those inno­va­tions also per­mit: ” . . . . Today, the genet­ic code of almost any mam­malian virus can be found online and syn­the­sized. ‘The tech­nol­o­gy to do this is avail­able now,’ said [Michael] Impe­ri­ale. ‘It requires some exper­tise, but it’s some­thing that’s rel­a­tive­ly easy to do, and that is why it tops the list.’ . . .”
• The chief fund­ing sources for the Eco­Health Alliance are the Pen­ta­gon and USAID, a State Depart­ment sub­sidiary that com­mon­ly serves as a cov­er for CIA. 
• One of Peter Dasza­k’s chief advis­ers is David Franz, the for­mer com­mand­ing offi­cer of Fort Det­rick.
• In FTR#1191, we not­ed that pro­duc­ing a vac­cine for an exist­ing bio­log­i­cal weapon or one under advanced devel­op­ment might well be seen as an “offen­sive” bio­log­i­cal war­fare maneu­ver.
• This arti­cle, like many oth­ers, fea­tures com­men­tary from Richard Ebright to the effect that the WIV did, in fact, syn­the­size the virus. Ebright had a long asso­ci­a­tion with the Howard Hugh­es Med­ical Insti­tute, the for­mer own­er of the Hugh­es Air­craft Com­pa­ny, a firm with pro­found nation­al secu­ri­ty con­nec­tions. It is more than a lit­tle inter­est­ing that Ebright, like almost all of the oth­er com­menters quot­ed in the U.S., does not fac­tor in the inno­va­tions in biotech­nol­o­gy high­light­ed above.
• Of inter­est, as well, is this pas­sage: ” . . . . Experts told the paper that cre­at­ing an ‘ide­al’ aver­age virus could have been part of work to cre­ate a vac­cine that works across coro­n­avirus­es. Last month, it emerged that the US had fund­ed sim­i­lar research to that out­lined in the 2018 grant pro­pos­al. . . .”
• The Pen­ta­gon has, indeed, been work­ing on such a vac­cine: ” . . . . The ser­vice is clos­ing in on a ‘pan-coro­n­avirus’ vac­cine and on syn­thet­ic anti­bod­ies that could pro­tect a pop­u­la­tion before spread. . . .”

“Wuhan sci­en­tists and US researchers planned to cre­ate a new coro­n­avirus in 2018: Con­sor­tium led by Brit Peter Daszak asked DARPA to fund research at lab in city where Covid pan­dem­ic began” by Char­lotte Mitchell; Dai­ly Mail [UK]; 10/05/2021.

US and Chi­nese sci­en­tists were plan­ning to cre­ate a new coro­n­avirus before the pan­dem­ic erupt­ed, leaked pro­pos­als show. 

Last month, a grant appli­ca­tion sub­mit­ted to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) revealed that an inter­na­tion­al team of sci­en­tists had planned to mix genet­ic data of sim­i­lar strains to cre­ate a new virus.

The grant appli­ca­tion was made in 2018 and leaked to Dras­tic, the pan­dem­ic ori­gins analy­sis group. 

‘We will com­pile sequence/RNAseq data from a pan­el of close­ly relat­ed strains and com­pare full length genomes, scan­ning for unique SNPs rep­re­sent­ing sequenc­ing errors.

‘Con­sen­sus can­di­date genomes will be syn­the­sised com­mer­cial­ly using estab­lished tech­niques and genome-length RNA and elec­tro­po­ra­tion to recov­er recom­bi­nant virus­es,’ the appli­ca­tion states.

This would result in a virus which had no clear ances­tor in nature, a World Health Orga­ni­za­tion (WHO) expert told The Tele­graph.

The expert, who asked the paper not to pub­lish their name, said that, if such a method had been car­ried out, it could explain why no close match has ever been found in nature for Sars-CoV­‑2.

The clos­est nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring virus is the Banal-52 strain, report­ed in Laos last month. It shares 96.8 per cent of Covid-19’s genome. 

No direct ances­tor, which would be expect­ed share around 99.98 per cent, has been found so far. 

The WHO expert told The Tele­graph that the process detailed in the appli­ca­tion would cre­ate ‘a new virus sequence, not a 100 per cent match to any­thing.’

‘They would then syn­the­sise the viral genome from the com­put­er sequence, thus cre­at­ing a virus genome that did not exist in nature but looks nat­ur­al as it is the aver­age of nat­ur­al virus­es.

‘Then they put that RNA in a cell and recov­er the virus from it. 

‘This cre­ates a virus that has nev­er exist­ed in nature, with a new ‘back­bone’ that did­n’t exist in nature but is very, very sim­i­lar as it’s the aver­age of nat­ur­al back­bones,’ the expert said.

The pro­pos­al was reject­ed and the data­base of viral strains at the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy was tak­en offline some 18 months lat­er, mak­ing it impos­si­ble to check what sci­en­tists there were work­ing on.

The insti­tute’s sci­en­tists have con­sis­tent­ly denied cre­at­ing the coro­n­avirus in their lab.

The grant appli­ca­tion pro­pos­al was sub­mit­ted by British zool­o­gist Peter Daszak on behalf of a group, which includ­ed Daszak Eco­Health Alliance, the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy, the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na and Duke NUS in Sin­ga­pore, The Tele­graph report­ed. 

Experts told the paper that cre­at­ing an ‘ide­al’ aver­age virus could have been part of work to cre­ate a vac­cine that works across coro­n­avirus­es. 

Last month, it emerged that the US had fund­ed sim­i­lar research to that out­lined in the 2018 grant pro­pos­al. 

Files obtained by The Inter­cept as part of an FOI request to drill down the pos­si­ble root of COVID and whether the US had any role in it showed that in 2014, the Nation­al Health Insti­tute (NIH) approved a five-year, year­ly grant of $666,000 a year for five years ($3.3million) for Eco­Health Alliance, a US research orga­ni­za­tion, into bat coro­n­avirus. 

Eco­Health Alliance, in its pro­pos­al to the NIH, acknowl­edged the risks involved were ‘the high­est risk of expo­sure to SARS or oth­er CoVs’ among staff, who could then car­ry it out of the lab.

The NIH gave them the mon­ey any­way — some­thing Dr Antho­ny Fau­ci was pre­vi­ous­ly forced to admit when tes­ti­fy­ing before Con­gress in May this year. Eco­Health Alliance then gave $599,000 of the mon­ey to the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy.

At the time and repeat­ed­ly since, Fau­ci has denied that the research con­sti­tut­ed what’s known as ‘gain-of-func­tion’ research. 

Gain-of-func­tion research is the sci­en­tif­ic term giv­en to research that delib­er­ate­ly changes an organ­ism to make give it new func­tions in order to test a the­o­ry. 

When applies to study­ing human virus­es, it can mean mak­ing the virus more trans­mis­si­ble and or even dead­ly in order to test what can and can’t sur­vive it. 

‘The doc­u­ments make it clear that asser­tions by the NIH Direc­tor, Fran­cis Collins, and the NIAID Direc­tor, Antho­ny Fau­ci, that the NIH did not sup­port gain-of-func­tion research or poten­tial pan­dem­ic pathogen enhance­ment at WIV are untruth­ful,’ Richard Ebright, a mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gist at Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty, tweet­ed. 

Ebright stud­ied the papers and alleged that the sci­en­tists per­formed ‘the con­struc­tion — in Wuhan — of nov­el chimeric SARS-relat­ed coro­n­avirus­es that com­bined a spike gene from one coro­n­avirus with genet­ic infor­ma­tion from anoth­er coro­n­avirus and con­firmed the result­ing virus­es could infect human cells’. 

2. 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 Lab-Leak The­o­ry: Inside the Fight to Uncov­er Covid-19’s Ori­gins” by Kather­ine Eban; Van­i­ty Fair; 6/3/2021.

. . . . 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.” . . . .

. . . . 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.” . . . . 

3. New York Times right-wing colum­nist Ross Douthat has high­light­ed the pro­pa­gan­da sig­nif­i­cance of pin­ning the “Lab Leak The­o­ry” on Chi­na:

“Why The Lab-Leak The­o­ry Mat­ters” by Ross Douthat; The New York Times; 5/29/2021.

. . . . But if we could find out the truth, and it turned out that the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy real­ly was the epi­cen­ter of a once-in-a-cen­tu­ry pan­dem­ic, the rev­e­la­tion would itself be a major polit­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic event.

First, to the extent that the Unit­ed States is engaged in a con­flict of pro­pa­gan­da and soft pow­er with the regime in Bei­jing, there’s a pret­ty big dif­fer­ence between a world where the Chi­nese regime can say, We weren’t respon­si­ble for Covid but we crushed the virus and the West did not, because we’re strong and they’re deca­dent, and a world where this was basi­cal­ly their Cher­nobyl except their incom­pe­tence and cov­er-up sick­ened not just one of their own cities but also the entire globe. . . .

4. In an iron­ic tragedy wor­thy of Aeschy­lus, Douthat has been strug­gling with Lyme Dis­ease, and has suf­fered great­ly in his attempts to nav­i­gate the Lyme Dis­ease treat­ment labyrinth. We have done many pro­grams on Lyme Dis­ease and its devel­op­ment as a bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapon.

“How I became a Sci­ence Exper­i­ment” by Ross Douthat; The New York Times; 10/30/2021.

. . . . That is part of what hap­pened to me, in the months and then years after the sud­den sum­mer-of-2015 descent into insom­nia, dis­in­te­gra­tion and blaz­ing pain that I wrote about last week­end. In that sum­mer I expe­ri­enced a trun­cat­ed form of what many peo­ple with chron­ic ill­ness expe­ri­ence over many, many years: not a med­ical sys­tem that offers answers that the patients then bull­head­ed­ly reject, but a sys­tem full of well-mean­ing doc­tors who offer you exact­ly noth­ing — no diag­no­sis what­so­ev­er, just a lot of mur­murs about stress and mys­tery when the blood tests come back neg­a­tive and a sug­ges­tion that you sim­ply wait and hope the pain some­how goes away.

In my case, and I was for­tu­nate, this changed when we moved from Wash­ing­ton, D.C., to Con­necti­cut. Soon I began see­ing doc­tors who rec­og­nized my strange sit­u­a­tion as a like­ly case of Lyme dis­ease . . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6a. Next, we present dis­cus­sion of Ms. New­by’s expose of the insti­tu­tion­al­ly and finan­cial­ly inces­tu­ous rela­tion­ship between bureau­crat­ic and cor­po­rate enti­ties that both reg­u­late, and prof­it from, Lyme Dis­ease. Key “experts” involved with diag­nos­ing and treat­ing the afflic­tion run inter­fer­ence for the sta­tus quo.

Legal and reg­u­la­to­ry rul­ings have enabled the patent­ing of liv­ing organ­isms and that has exac­er­bat­ed the mon­e­tiz­ing of Lyme Dis­ease treat­ment. That mon­e­ti­za­tion, in turn, has adverse­ly affect­ed the qual­i­ty of care for afflict­ed patients. ” . . . . All of a sud­den, the insti­tu­tions that were sup­posed to be pro­tec­tors of pub­lic health became busi­ness part­ners with Big Phar­ma. The uni­ver­si­ty researchers who had pre­vi­ous­ly shared infor­ma­tion on dan­ger­ous emerg­ing dis­eases were now delay­ing pub­lish­ing their find­ings so they could become entre­pre­neurs and prof­it from patents through their uni­ver­si­ty tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer groups. We essen­tial­ly lost our sys­tem of sci­en­tif­ic checks and bal­ances. And this, in turn, has under­mined patient trust in the insti­tu­tions that are sup­posed to ‘do no harm.’ . . .”

Strik­ing­ly, a FOIA suit she filed was stonewalled for five years, before final­ly yield­ing the doc­u­ments she had so long sought.

The “experts” and their agen­da were neat­ly, and alarm­ing­ly, summed up by Ms. New­by:

” . . . . The emails revealed a dis­turb­ing pic­ture of a nonof­fi­cial group of gov­ern­ment employ­ees and guide­lines authors that had been set­ting the nation­al Lyme dis­ease research agen­da with­out pub­lic over­sight or trans­paren­cy. . . . Bot­tom line, the guide­lines authors reg­u­lar­ly con­vened in gov­ern­ment-fund­ed, closed-door meet­ings with hid­den agen­das that lined the pock­ets of aca­d­e­m­ic researchers with sig­nif­i­cant com­mer­cial inter­ests in Lyme dis­ease tests and vac­cines. A large per­cent­age of gov­ern­ment grants were award­ed to the guide­line authors and/or researchers in their labs. Part of the group’s stat­ed mis­sion, culled from these FOIA emails, was to run a covert ‘dis­in­for­ma­tion war’ and a ‘sociopo­lit­i­cal offen­sive’ to dis­cred­it Lyme patients, physi­cians, and jour­nal­ists who ques­tioned the group’s research and motives. In the FOIA-obtained emails, Lyme patients and their treat­ing physi­cians were called ‘loonies’ and ‘quacks’ by Lyme guide­lines authors and NIH employ­ees. . . .”

Bit­ten: The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons by Kris New­by; Harper­Collins [HC]; Copy­right 2019 by Kris New­by; ISBN 9780062896728; pp. 229–230.

. . . . Think­ing back on my research for the Lyme doc­u­men­tary Under Our Skin, I con­clud­ed that there was much more mon­ey at stake with Lyme Dis­ease. It was the first major new dis­ease dis­cov­ered after the Bayh-Dole Act and the Dia­mond v. Chakrabar­ty Supreme Court deci­sion made it pos­si­ble for the NIH, the CDC, and uni­ver­si­ties to patent and prof­it from “own­er­ship” of live organ­isms. When the causative organ­ism behind Lyme dis­ease was announced, some­thing akin to the Okla­homa Land Rush of 1889 began, as sci­en­tists with­in these insti­tu­tions began furi­ous­ly fil­ing patents on the sur­face pro­teins and DNA of the Lyme spiro­chete, hop­ing to prof­it from future vac­cines and diag­nos­tic tests that used these markers–for exam­ple, an NIH employ­ee who patents a bac­te­r­i­al sur­face pro­tein used in a com­mer­cial test kit or a vac­cine could receive up to $150,000 in roy­al­ty pay­ments a year, an amount that might dou­ble his or her annu­al salary. All of a sud­den, the insti­tu­tions that were sup­posed to be pro­tec­tors of pub­lic health became busi­ness part­ners with Big Phar­ma. The uni­ver­si­ty researchers who had pre­vi­ous­ly shared infor­ma­tion on dan­ger­ous emerg­ing dis­eases were now delay­ing pub­lish­ing their find­ings so they could become entre­pre­neurs and prof­it from patents through their uni­ver­si­ty tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer groups. We essen­tial­ly lost our sys­tem of sci­en­tif­ic checks and bal­ances. And this, in turn, has under­mined patient trust in the insti­tu­tions that are sup­posed to “do no harm.”

With Lyme dis­ease, there’s no prof­it incen­tive for proac­tive­ly treat­ing some­one with a few weeks of inex­pen­sive, off-patent antibi­otics. It’s the patentable vac­cines and manda­to­ry tests-before-treat­ment that bring in the steady rev­enues year after year. . . . 

6b. Bit­ten: The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons by Kris New­by; Harper­Collins [HC]; Copy­right 2019 by Kris New­by; ISBN 9780062896728; pp. 121–124.

. . . . In the IDSA [Infec­tious Dis­eases Soci­ety of Amer­i­ca] guide­lines, chron­ic Lyme isn’t clas­si­fied as an ongo­ing, per­sis­tent infec­tion; it’s con­sid­ered either an autoim­mune syn­drome (in which a body’s immune sys­tem attacks itself) or a psy­cho­log­i­cal con­di­tion caused by “the aches and pains of dai­ly liv­ing” or “pri­or trau­mat­ic psy­cho­log­i­cal events.” These guide­lines were often used by med­ical insur­ers to deny treat­ment, and many of its authors are paid con­sult­ing fees to tes­ti­fy as expert wit­ness­es in these insur­ance cas­es. In some states, the guide­line rec­om­men­da­tions take on the force of law, so that Lyme physi­cians who prac­tice out­side them are at risk of los­ing their med­ical licens­es.

The pro­tes­tors were angry because, as part of a 2008 antitrust set­tle­ment brought by Con­necti­cut attor­ney gen­er­al Richard Blu­men­thal (now a sen­a­tor), the IDSA guide­lines were sup­posed to appoint an expert pan­el with­out bias­es or con­flicts to do a re-review of the guide­lines. In the set­tle­ment press release, Blu­men­thal had writ­ten, “My office uncov­ered undis­closed finan­cial inter­ests held by sev­er­al of the most pow­er­ful IDSA pan­elists. The IDSA’s guide­line pan­el improp­er­ly ignored or min­i­mized con­sid­er­a­tion of alter­na­tive med­ical opin­ion and evi­dence regard­ing chron­ic Lyme dis­ease, poten­tial­ly rais­ing seri­ous ques­tions about whether the rec­om­men­da­tions reflect­ed all rel­e­vant sci­ence.”

In response, the IDSA lead­er­ship select­ed a review pan­el of doc­tors and sci­en­tists, and they deter­mined that “No changes or revi­sions to the 2006 Lyme guide­lines are nec­es­sary at this time.”

Lor­raine John­son, JD, MBA, the chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of LymeDisease.org, and a cham­pi­on of the IDSA antitrust suit, main­tains that the review pan­el was stacked with like-mind­ed cronies of the orig­i­nal guide­lines’ authors and was there­fore biased. She cites the recent arti­cle by research qual­i­ty expert and Stan­ford pro­fes­sor John Ioan­ni­dis, MD, DSc, who rec­om­mends that “Pro­fes­sion­al soci­eties should con­sid­er dis­en­tan­gling their spe­cial­ists from guide­lines and dis­ease def­i­n­i­tions and lis­ten to what more impar­tial stake­hold­ers think about their prac­tices.”

Today, in 2019, these con­tro­ver­sial guide­lines and dis­put­ed tests are still influ­enc­ing Lyme patient care.

Peo­ple often ask me why the IDSA and CDC would sup­port the prob­lem­at­ic two-tier Lyme test. Dur­ing my doc­u­men­tary research, I tried to get an answer to this ques­tion with a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act (FOIA) request that solicit­ed emails between three CDC employ­ees and the IDSA guide­lines authors. For five years the CDC strung me along with friv­o­lous denials, unex­plained delays, and false promis­es. In essence, the delays became an ille­gal, off-the-books FOIA denial. Some delays were attrib­uted to under­staffing, year-end dead­lines, and CDC per­son­nel out for vaca­tion. At one point, my unan­swered calls were blamed on a phone “dead zone” in the CDC’s new FOIA office. After the Lyme doc­u­men­tary Under Our Skin was released, I decid­ed to dou­ble-down on my efforts to dis­lodge the FOIA request. My con­gressper­son sent sev­er­al let­ters to the CDC. The direc­tor of the doc­u­men­tary wrote a let­ter to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma. The FOIA ombuds­man in the Office of Gov­ern­ment Infor­ma­tion Ser­vices repeat­ed­ly pres­sured the CDC to ful­fill my request. I pub­lished blog posts about my plight and enlist­ed the sup­port of a num­ber of orga­ni­za­tions ded­i­cat­ed to ensur­ing gov­ern­ment trans­paren­cy. Final­ly, the CDC sent three-thou­sand-plus FOIA pages, and I then under­stood its moti­va­tion for hav­ing delayed their release.

The emails revealed a dis­turb­ing pic­ture of a nonof­fi­cial group of gov­ern­ment employ­ees and guide­lines authors that had been set­ting the nation­al Lyme dis­ease research agen­da with­out pub­lic over­sight or trans­paren­cy. Inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Mary Beth Pfeif­fer of the Pough­keep­sie Jour­nal was giv­en access to these emails, and on May 20, 2013. She pub­lished an expose on this group’s abuse of pow­er.

Bot­tom line, the guide­lines authors reg­u­lar­ly con­vened in gov­ern­ment-fund­ed, closed-door meet­ings with hid­den agen­das that lined the pock­ets of aca­d­e­m­ic researchers with sig­nif­i­cant com­mer­cial inter­ests in Lyme dis­ease tests and vac­cines. A large per­cent­age of gov­ern­ment grants were award­ed to the guide­line authors and/or researchers in their labs.

Part of the group’s stat­ed mis­sion, culled from these FOIA emails, was to run a covert “dis­in­for­ma­tion war” and a “sociopo­lit­i­cal offen­sive” to dis­cred­it Lyme patients, physi­cians, and jour­nal­ists who ques­tioned the group’s research and motives. In the FOIA-obtained emails, Lyme patients and their treat­ing physi­cians were called “loonies” and “quacks’ by Lyme guide­lines authors and NIH employ­ees.

Because my FOIA request end­ed up tak­ing five years to process, Under Our Skin had been made and released with­out answer­ing an impor­tant ques­tion: Were the gov­ern­ment offi­cials respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing Lyme dis­ease health pol­i­cy being inap­pro­pri­ate­ly influ­enced by out­side com­mer­cial inter­ests?

Through my FOIA request, I found that a major­i­ty of the authors of the 2006 IDSA Lyme diag­no­sis and treat­ment guide­lines held direct or indi­rect com­mer­cial inter­ests relat­ed to Lyme dis­ease. By defin­ing the dis­ease and endors­ing tests or vac­cines for which they were patent hold­ers, they and their insti­tu­tions made more mon­ey.

Yet, now Willy’s con­fes­sion had added anoth­er poten­tial dimen­sion to the sto­ry, anoth­er rea­son for the CDC to be under­count­ing Lyme cases—maybe gov­ern­ment offi­cials knew that some­thing else, a pathogen in addi­tion to Bor­re­lia, pos­si­bly a bio-weapon, was caus­ing the prob­lems, and they want­ed to keep a lid on it. . . .

7. We con­clude with review of  a chill­ing set of provo­ca­tions that were planned by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the ear­ly 1960s. Although they were not for­mal­ly insti­tut­ed at that time, Mr. Emory believes the sce­nar­ios dis­cussed below have been adapt­ed to the mod­ern, high-tech­nol­o­gy avail­able to bio­log­i­cal war­fare prac­ti­tion­ers and insti­tut­ed as the Covid-19 “op.”

Body of Secrets by James Bam­ford; Copy­right 2002 [SC]; Anchor Books [Ran­dom House]; ISBN 0–385-49907–8; pp. 82–85.

. . . . Although no one in Con­gress could have known it at the time, [Lyman] Lem­nitzer and the Joint Chiefs had qui­et­ly slipped over the edge. Accord­ing to secret and long-hid­den doc­u­ments obtained for Body of Secrets, the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most cor­rupt plan ever cre­at­ed by the U.S. gov­ern­ment. In the name of anti­com­mu­nism, they pro­posed launch­ing a secret and bloody war of ter­ror­ism against their own coun­try in order to trick the Amer­i­can pub­lic into sup­port­ing an ill-con­ceived war they intend­ed to launch against Cuba. 

Code­named Oper­a­tion North­woods, the plan, which had the writ­ten approval of the Chair­man and every mem­ber of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for inno­cent peo­ple to be shot on Amer­i­can streets; for boats car­ry­ing refugees flee­ing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of vio­lent ter­ror­ism to be launched in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., Mia­mi, and else­where. Peo­ple would be framed for bomb­ings they did not com­mit; planes would be hijacked. Using pho­ny evi­dence, all of it would be blamed on Cas­tro, thus giv­ing Lem­nitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the pub­lic and inter­na­tion­al back­ing, they need­ed to launch their war.  . . . .

. . . . Oper­a­tion North­woods called for a war in which many patri­ot­ic Amer­i­cans and inno­cent Cubans would die sense­less deaths-all to sat­is­fy the egos of twist­ed gen­er­als back in Wash­ing­ton, safe in their tax-pay­er-financed homes and lim­ou­sines. . . . 

. . . . The sug­gest­ed oper­a­tions grew pro­gres­sive­ly more out­ra­geous. Anoth­er called for an action sim­i­lar to the infa­mous inci­dent in Feb­ru­ary 1898 when an explo­sion aboard the bat­tle­ship Maine in Havana har­bor killed 266 U.S. sailors. Although the exact cause of the explo­sion remained unde­ter­mined, it sparked the Span­ish-Amer­i­can War with Cuba. Incit­ed by the dead­ly blast, more than one mil­lion men vol­un­teered for duty. Lem­nitzer and his gen­er­als came up with a sim­i­lar plan. ‘We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guan­tanamo Bay and blame Cuba,’ they pro­posed; ‘casu­al­ty lists in U.S. news­pa­pers would cause a help­ful wave of nation­al indig­na­tion.’ . . . .

. . . . There seemed no lim­it to their fanati­cism.: ‘We could devel­op a Com­mu­nist Cuban ter­ror cam­paign in the Mia­mi area, in oth­er Flori­da cities and even in Wash­ing­ton,’ they wrote. ‘The ter­ror cam­paign could be point­ed at Cuban refugees seek­ing haven in the Unit­ed States . . . We could sink a boat­load of Cubans en route to Flori­da (real or sim­u­lat­ed) . . . We could fos­ter attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the Unit­ed States even to the extent of wound­ing in instances to be wide­ly pub­li­cized.’ . . . . 

. . . . Bomb­ings were pro­posed, false arrests, hijack­ings: ‘Explod­ing a few plas­tic bombs in care­ful­ly cho­sen spots, the arrest of Cuban agents and the release of pre­pared doc­u­ments sub­stan­ti­at­ing Cuban involve­ment also would be help­ful in pro­ject­ing the idea of an irre­spon­si­ble gov­ern­ment.’. . . 

. . . . ‘Advan­tage can be tak­en of the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the Domini­can [Repub­lic] Air Force to intru­sions with­in their nation­al air space. ‘Cuban’ B‑26 or C‑46 type air­craft could make cane-burn­ing raids at night. Sovi­et bloc incen­di­aries could be found. This could be cou­pled with ‘Cuban’ mes­sages to the Com­mu­nist under­ground in the Domini­can Repub­lic and ‘Cuban’ ship­ments of arms which would be found, or inter­cept­ed, on the beach. Use of MIG type air­craft by U.S. pilots could pro­vide addi­tion­al provo­ca­tion.’ . . . . 

. . . . ‘Hijack­ing attempts against civ­il air and sur­face craft could appear to con­tin­ue as harass­ing mea­sures con­doned by the Gov­ern­ment of Cuba.’ Among the most elab­o­rate schemes was to ‘cre­ate an inci­dent which will demon­strate con­vinc­ing­ly that a Cuban air­craft has attacked and shot down a char­tered civ­il air­lin­er en route from the Unit­ed States to Jamaica, Guatemala, Pana­ma or Venezuela. The des­ti­na­tion would be cho­sen only to cause the flight plan route to cross Cuba. The pas­sen­gers could be a group of col­lege stu­dents off on a hol­i­day or any group­ing of per­sons with a com­mon inter­est to sup­port char­ter­ing a non-sched­uled flight.’. . .