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FTR#1277 and FTR#1278 Pandemics, Inc., Parts 9 and 10

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“Polit­i­cal language…is designed to make lies sound truth­ful and mur­der respectable, and to give an appear­ance of solid­i­ty to pure wind.”

— George Orwell, 1946

EVERYTHING MR. EMORY HAS BEEN SAYING ABOUT THE UKRAINE WAR IS ENCAPSULATED IN THIS VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24 [5]

ANOTHER REVEALING VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24 [6]

Mr. Emory’s research into the ori­gins of Covid-19 should check out the 55 sec­ond Twit­ter video embed­ded in this post. [7] 

Mr. Emory has launched a new Patre­on site. Vis­it at: Patreon.com/DaveEmory [8]

FTR#1277 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment [9].

FTR#1278 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment [10].

Intro­duc­tion: Focus­ing pri­mar­i­ly on an extreme­ly omi­nous devel­op­ment, these pro­grams set forth a new “War on Can­cer,” launched by the Biden admin­is­tra­tion. The pri­ma­ry ratio­nale for the devel­op­ment of a new fed­er­al agency [11], this new orga­ni­za­tion appears to be a medical/scientific iter­a­tion of DARPA—the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Omi­nous­ly, it may well be the suc­ces­sor to Richard Nixon’s “War on Can­cer,” [12] which did not defeat can­cer, but did serve as the appar­ent plat­form for the devel­op­ment of bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapons, AIDS in par­tic­u­lar.

The Third Reich’s bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram [13] was masked as a can­cer research facil­i­ty [14].

Mod­eled after DARPA, head­ed by a DARPA alum­na whose CV [15] inter­sects with that Agency’s appar­ent involve­ment [16] with the devel­op­ment of Covid-19 and with an act­ing direc­tor [11] who is also a for­mer employ­ee of that benight­ed orga­ni­za­tion, this new “health agency [17]ARPA‑H [18]”, this agency will employ new, syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy tech­nol­o­gy.

Although that devel­op­ment is rep­re­sent­ed as human­i­tar­i­an, the struc­ture of the agency and the nation­al secu­ri­ty back­grounds of its lead­ing per­son­nel sug­gest strong­ly that this agency, too, will serve as a clan­des­tine plat­form for the next gen­er­a­tion of bio­log­i­cal weapon­ry.

The sec­ond pro­gram begins with a sig­na­ture point of information—a brief Twit­ter video [19] of Pro­fes­sor Jef­frey Sachs opin­ing that SARS Cov‑2 orig­i­nat­ed from a U.S. bio­log­i­cal lab­o­ra­to­ry. His frankly oblig­a­tory qual­i­fi­ca­tion that it was a “blun­der” is best under­stood as “busi­ness as usu­al” for a rel­a­tive­ly high-pro­file pub­lic fig­ure.

Were he to say oth­er­wise, he would be sub­ject to ret­ri­bu­tion, pos­si­bly dead­ly.

As it is now, he will sim­ply be ignored.

Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: An update [20] on Philip Zelikow’s over­lap­ping roles [21] in the 9/11 “inves­ti­ga­tion,” the real­iza­tion of PNAC’s defense rec­om­men­da­tions, as well as the “inquiry” into Covid-19; Review of Peter Thiel’s and Trump’s appar­ent­ly suc­cess­ful attempt [22] at kneecap­ping the FDA; The numer­ous CIA and reac­tionary links to the devel­op­ment of Mod­er­na’s mRNA Omi­cron boost­er [23]; A jel­ly­fish [24] whose genome may very well yield infor­ma­tion for a syn­thet­ic biology/life exten­sion eugenic man­i­fes­ta­tion of inter­est to “Team Thiel;” The career [25] of Antho­ny Fau­ci and its “bookends”–AIDS and Covid-19.

1.“Biden Picks Biotech Exec­u­tive to Lead New Bio­med­ical Research Agency” By Sheryl Gay Stol­berg; The New York Times; 09/12/2022 [11]

 . . . . Dr. Renee Wegrzyn is Pres­i­dent Biden’s choice to lead the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, which is aimed at dri­ving bio­med­ical inno­va­tion.

Pres­i­dent Biden, sketch­ing out a vision for “bold approach­es” to fight­ing can­cer and oth­er dis­eases, announced on Mon­day that he had select­ed Dr. Renee Wegrzyn, a Boston biotech exec­u­tive with gov­ern­ment expe­ri­ence, as the direc­tor of a new fed­er­al agency aimed at pur­su­ing risky, far-reach­ing ideas that will dri­ve bio­med­ical inno­va­tion.

Mr. Biden made the announce­ment at the John F. Kennedy Pres­i­den­tial Library and Muse­um in Boston, on the 60th anniver­sary of the for­mer president’s “moon­shot” speech that ush­ered in an era of space trav­el. He used the occa­sion to reit­er­ate his call to “end can­cer as we know it” — the tag line for his own “can­cer moon­shot” ini­tia­tive. . . .

. . . . Mod­eled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the new agency is known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. (In the argot of Wash­ing­ton, where every agency has an acronym, the defense research agency is called DARPA and the health agency [17] is ARPA‑H [18].) . . . .

. . . . Dr. Wegrzyn is a vice pres­i­dent for busi­ness devel­op­ment at Gink­go Bioworks and the head of inno­va­tion at Con­cen­tric by Gink­go, the company’s ini­tia­tive to advance coro­n­avirus test­ing and track the spread of the virus. She also worked at DARPA and its sis­ter agency, the Intel­li­gence Advanced Research Projects Activ­i­ty. . . .

. . . . The agency already has an act­ing deputy direc­tor, Adam H. Rus­sell [26], also a DARPA alum­nus, who has been lay­ing the tech­ni­cal infra­struc­ture and oth­er ground­work to get the new agency off the ground. . . .

. . . . In addi­tion to announc­ing his intent to appoint Dr. Wegrzyn, Mr. Biden issued an exec­u­tive order on Mon­day estab­lish­ing a biotech­nol­o­gy and bio­man­u­fac­tur­ing ini­tia­tive intend­ed to posi­tion the Unit­ed States as a leader in the field and to cen­ter drug man­u­fac­tur­ing in the coun­try. . . .

2a. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renee_Wegrzyn [15]

. . . . From 2003 to 2006, Wegrzyn worked as a post-doc­tor­al research fel­low at the Euro­pean Mol­e­c­u­lar Biol­o­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry [27]. From 2006 to 2008, she worked as the assay devel­op­ment group leader for Adlyfe, a biotech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny based in Que­bec [28]. In 2009, she was a senior sci­en­tist at Meso Scale Dis­cov­ery and in 2012, she was a fel­low at the Johns Hop­kins Cen­ter for Health Secu­ri­ty [29]. From 2009 to 2016, she worked as a senior lead tech­nol­o­gist at Booz Allen Hamil­ton [30]From 2016 to 2020, she served as a pro­gram man­ag­er in the Bio­log­i­cal Tech­nolo­gies Office [31] of DARPA [32], where she spe­cial­ized in syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy and biose­cu­ri­ty [33]. Since 2018, she has been a senior advi­sor to the Nuclear Threat Ini­tia­tive [34].[3] [35] In 2020, she joined Gink­go Bioworks [36] as vice pres­i­dent of busi­ness devel­op­ment.[4] [37]. . . .

2b. An encore–perhaps–for Philip Zelikow is brack­et­ed by 9/11 and Covid-19 [21]

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: Zelikow’s role in lead­ing the “Omis­sion Com­mis­sion” on the 9/11 attacks; Zelikow’s role in craft­ing the NSS paper for 2002, which insti­tu­tion­al­ized many of PNAC’s rec­om­men­da­tions; the rec­om­men­da­tion in PNAC’s “Rebuild­ing Amer­i­ca’s Defens­es” paper for build­ing up Amer­i­ca’s BW capa­bil­i­ties; The role of the anthrax attacks in upgrad­ing Amer­i­ca’s BW capa­bil­i­ties; Dis­cus­sion of Steven Hat­fil­l’s prox­im­i­ty to the anthrax attacks of 2001; The tar­get­ing of Sen­a­tors Leahy and Daschle with anthrax letters–they were balk­ing at autho­riz­ing the Patri­ot Act.

“Chances Fad­ing For An Inquiry on Covid Effort” by Sheryl Gay Stol­berg. The New York Times; 12/13/2022. [20]

. . . . Mr. [Philip] Zelikow now leads the Covid Com­mis­sion Plan­ning Group, a pri­vate­ly fund­ed effort involv­ing about three dozen inde­pen­dent experts who have spent the bet­ter part of the past two years con­duct­ing research to lay the ground-work for a nation­al inquiry. The group, which has held sev­er­al hun­dred inter­views, grew tired of wait­ing for Con­gress and plans to pub­lish its find­ings in a book this spring, Mr. Zelikow said. He declined to dis­cuss details. . . .

. . . . “Nine-eleven was a nation­al con­vul­sion that was shared with vary­ing inten­si­ty across the coun­try, and every­body basi­cal­ly agreed it was shock­ing and ter­ri­ble,” said Tara O’Toole, a for­mer offi­cial in the Home­land Secu­ri­ty Depart­ment who is a senior fel­low at In-Q-Tel, a ven­ture fund backed by the C.I.A. . . . . 

3. “RNA for Moderna’s Omi­cron Boost­er Man­u­fac­tured by CIA-Linked Com­pa­ny” by Whit­ney Webb; Unlim­it­ed Hang­out; 08/17/2022 [23]

RNA for Moderna’s Omi­cron Boost­er Man­u­fac­tured by CIA-Linked Com­pa­ny
Since late last year, mes­sen­ger RNA for Moderna’s COVID-19 vac­cines, includ­ing its recent­ly refor­mu­lat­ed Omi­cron boost­er, has been exclu­sive­ly man­u­fac­tured by a lit­tle known com­pa­ny with sig­nif­i­cant ties to US intel­li­gence.

Ear­li­er this week, the Unit­ed King­dom became the first coun­try to approve Moderna’s refor­mu­lat­ed ver­sion of its COVID-19 vac­cine, which claims to pro­vide pro­tec­tion against both the orig­i­nal form of the virus and the sig­nif­i­cant­ly less lethal but more trans­mis­si­ble Omi­cron vari­ant. The prod­uct was approved by [38] the UK’s Med­i­cines and Health­care Prod­ucts Reg­u­la­to­ry Agency (MHRA) with the sup­port of the UK government’s Com­mis­sion on Human Med­i­cines.

Described by UK offi­cials as a “sharp­ened tool [38]” in the nation’s con­tin­ued vac­ci­na­tion cam­paign, the refor­mu­lat­ed vac­cine com­bines the pre­vi­ous­ly approved COVID-19 vac­cine with a “vac­cine can­di­date [38]” tar­get­ing the Omi­cron vari­ant BA.1. That vac­cine can­di­date has nev­er been pre­vi­ous­ly approved and has not been the sub­ject of inde­pen­dent study. The MHRA approved the vac­cine based on a sin­gle, incom­plete human tri­al cur­rent­ly being con­duct­ed by Mod­er­na. The com­pa­ny pro­mot­ed incom­plete data from that tri­al in com­pa­ny press releas­es in June [39] and July [40]. The study has yet to be pub­lished in a med­ical jour­nal or peer reviewed. No con­cerns have been raised by any reg­u­la­to­ry agency, includ­ing the MHRA, regard­ing Moderna’s past his­to­ry [41] of engag­ing in sus­pect and like­ly ille­gal activ­i­ty in past prod­uct tri­als, includ­ing for its orig­i­nal COVID-19 vac­cine.

How­ev­er, unlike the company’s orig­i­nal COVID-19 vac­cine, the genet­ic mate­r­i­al, or mes­sen­ger RNA (mRNA), for this new vac­cine, includ­ing the new­ly for­mu­lat­ed genet­ic mate­r­i­al meant to pro­vide pro­tec­tion against the Omi­cron vari­ant, is being man­u­fac­tured, not by Mod­er­na, but by a rel­a­tive­ly new com­pa­ny that has received hard­ly any media atten­tion, despite its overt links to US intel­li­gence. Last Sep­tem­ber, it was qui­et­ly announced [42] that a com­pa­ny called Nation­al Resilience (often referred to sim­ply as Resilience) would begin man­u­fac­tur­ing the mRNA for Mod­er­na COVID-19 vac­cine prod­ucts. Under the terms of the mul­ti-year agree­ment, “Resilience will pro­duce mRNA for the Mod­er­na COVID-19 vac­cine at its facil­i­ty in Mis­sis­sauga, Ontario, for dis­tri­b­u­tion world­wide.”

“Rein­vent­ing Bio­man­u­fac­tur­ing”

Nation­al Resilience was found­ed rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly, in Novem­ber 2020, and describes itself [43] as “a man­u­fac­tur­ing and tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny ded­i­cat­ed to broad­en­ing access to com­plex med­i­cines and pro­tect­ing bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sup­ply chains against dis­rup­tion.” It has since been build­ing “a sus­tain­able net­work of high-tech, end-to-end man­u­fac­tur­ing solu­tions with the aim to ensure the med­i­cines of today and tomor­row can be made quick­ly, safe­ly, and at scale.” It fur­ther [43]plans [43] to “rein­vent bio­man­u­fac­tur­ing” and “democ­ra­tize access to med­i­cines,” name­ly gene ther­a­pies, exper­i­men­tal vac­cines and oth­er “med­i­cines of tomor­row.”

In pur­suit of those goals, the com­pa­ny announced it would “active­ly invest in devel­op­ing pow­er­ful new tech­nolo­gies to man­u­fac­ture com­plex med­i­cines that are defin­ing the future of ther­a­peu­tics, includ­ing cell and gene ther­a­pies, viral vec­tors, vac­cines, and pro­teins.” It was found­ed with the report­ed inten­tion [44] “to build a bet­ter sys­tem for man­u­fac­tur­ing com­plex med­i­cines to fight dead­ly dis­eases” as a way to improve post-COVID “pan­dem­ic pre­pared­ness.”

The com­pa­ny ini­tial­ly mar­ket­ed its man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­i­ties [45] as “the Resilience plat­form”, and offers prin­ci­pal­ly “RNA Modal­i­ties”, includ­ing RNA devel­op­ment for vac­cines, gene edit­ing and ther­a­peu­tics; and “Virus Pro­duc­tion”, includ­ing viral vec­tors, oncolyt­ic virus­es (i.e. a virus engi­neered to pref­er­en­tial­ly attack can­cer cells), virus­es for use in vac­cine devel­op­ment and gene-edit­ed virus­es for unspec­i­fied pur­pos­es. It is worth not­ing that, to date, many con­tro­ver­sial “gain-of-func­tion” exper­i­ments have jus­ti­fied mod­i­fy­ing virus­es for the same pur­pos­es as described by Nation­al Resilience’s Virus Pro­duc­tion capa­bil­i­ties. In addi­tion, Nation­al Resilience offers prod­uct for­mu­la­tions and oth­er modal­i­ties, such as bio­log­ics and cell ther­a­pies, to its clien­tele and the “Virus Pro­duc­tion” of its web­site has since been removed.

Nation­al Resilience, being such a young com­pa­ny, has very few clients and there is lit­tle pub­licly avail­able infor­ma­tion on its man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­i­ties aside from the company’s web­site. The firm only acquired its first com­mer­cial man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in March 2021, locat­ed in Boston, MA and pur­chased from Sanofi, fol­lowed short­ly there­after by the acqui­si­tion of anoth­er sep­a­rate plant locat­ed in Mis­sis­sauga, Ontario, Cana­da. Makeovers were announced for the plants, but lit­tle is pub­licly known about their progress. Pri­or to the acqui­si­tions, the com­pa­ny had been sub­leas­ing [46] a Bay area facil­i­ty in Fre­mont, Cal­i­for­nia. Reporters were puz­zled [47] at the time as to why a com­pa­ny with rough­ly 700 employ­ees at the time had acquired a total of 599,00 square feet of man­u­fac­tur­ing space after hav­ing only emerged from stealth less than 6 months pri­or.

In April 2021, Nation­al Resilience acquired [48] Olo­gy Bioser­vices Inc., which had received a $37 mil­lion con­tract from the US mil­i­tary the pre­vi­ous Novem­ber to devel­op an advanced anti-COVID-19 mon­o­clon­al anti­body treat­ment. This acqui­si­tion also pro­vid­ed Nation­al Resilience with its first Biosafe­ty Lev­el 3 (BSL‑3) lab­o­ra­to­ry and the abil­i­ty to man­u­fac­ture cell and gene ther­a­pies, live viral vac­cines and vec­tors and oncolyt­ic virus­es.

Despite being in the ear­li­est stages of devel­op­ing its “rev­o­lu­tion­ary” man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­i­ties, Nation­al Resilience entered into a part­ner­ship [44] with the Gov­ern­ment of Cana­da in July of last year. Per that agree­ment, the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment plans to invest CAD 199.2 mil­lion (about $154.9 mil­lion) into Nation­al Resilience’s Ontario-based sub­sidiary, Resilience Biotech­nolo­gies Inc. Most of those funds are des­tined for use in expand­ing the Ontario facil­i­ty that Resilience acquired last March and which is now man­u­fac­tur­ing the mRNA for Moderna’s COVID-19 prod­ucts. Canada’s Min­is­ter of Inno­va­tion, Sci­ence and Indus­try, François-Philippe Cham­pagne, assert­ed at the time that the invest­ment would “build future pan­dem­ic pre­pared­ness” and help “to grow Canada’s life sci­ence ecosys­tem as an engine for our eco­nom­ic recov­ery.” More recent­ly, in 2022, the com­pa­ny has announced a few new clients [43] – Take­da, Opus Genet­ics and the US Depart­ment of Defense.

Accord­ing to Nation­al Resilience’s exec­u­tives, the company’s ambi­tions appar­ent­ly go far beyond man­u­fac­tur­ing RNA and virus­es. For instance, Resilience CEO Rahul Singhvi has claimed that the com­pa­ny is seek­ing to build “the world’s most advanced bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing ecosys­tem [44].” Yet, Singhvi has declined to offer much in the way of specifics when it comes to exact­ly how the com­pa­ny plans to become the planet’s most elite bio­man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny.

In an inter­view [47] with The San Fran­cis­co Busi­ness Times, Singhvi states that Resilience is look­ing to fill its mas­sive man­u­fac­tur­ing plants with “tech­nolo­gies and peo­ple that can set and apply new stan­dards for man­u­fac­tur­ing cell ther­a­pies and gene ther­a­pies as well as RNA-based treat­ments.” Pri­or to Resilience [49], Singhvi was CEO of NovaVax and an oper­at­ing part­ner at Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing, which played a major role in the cre­ation and rise of Mod­er­na.

Singhvi has fur­ther insist­ed that [47] Nation­al Resilience is “not a ther­a­peu­tics com­pa­ny, not a con­trac­tor and not a tools com­pa­ny” and instead aims “to boost pro­duc­tion using the new ther­a­peu­tic modal­i­ties” such as RNA-based treat­ments, which have become nor­mal­ized in the COVID-19 era. Where­as con­tract man­u­fac­tur­ers “are like kitchens, with pots and pans ready for any recipe,” “what we’re try­ing to do is fix the recipes,” Singhvi has explained. One mem­ber of Resilience’s board of direc­tors, for­mer FDA Com­mis­sion­er and Pfiz­er Board mem­ber Scott Got­tlieb, has described [50] the com­pa­ny as seek­ing to act as the equiv­a­lent of Ama­zon Web Ser­vices for the biotech­nol­o­gy indus­try.

Essen­tial­ly, Resilience bills itself as offer­ing solu­tions that will allow “futur­is­tic” med­i­cines, includ­ing mRNA vac­cines, to be pro­duced more quick­ly and more effi­cient­ly, with the appar­ent goal of monop­o­liz­ing cer­tain parts of the bio­man­u­fac­tur­ing process. It also appears poised to become the man­u­fac­tur­er of choice for mRNA vac­cines and exper­i­men­tal ther­a­peu­tics in the event of a future pan­dem­ic, which some pub­lic health “phil­an­thropists” like Bill Gates have said is immi­nent.

Per­haps the company’s most note­wor­thy ambi­tion relates to their claims that they sup­port clients through the gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­to­ry process. Giv­en the company’s empha­sis on speedy mass pro­duc­tion of exper­i­men­tal gene ther­a­pies, its stat­ed inten­tion of get­ting the “futur­is­tic” med­ical prod­ucts it man­u­fac­tures to mar­ket as quick­ly as pos­si­ble seems at odds with the slow­er, tra­di­tion­al reg­u­la­to­ry process­es. Indeed, one could eas­i­ly argue that the approvals of mRNA vac­cines for the first time in human his­to­ry dur­ing the COVID-19 cri­sis were only pos­si­ble because of the major relax­ing of reg­u­la­to­ry pro­ce­durse and safe­ty test­ing due to the per­ceived urgency of the sit­u­a­tion.

Resilience seems intent on see­ing that phe­nom­e­non repeat itself. As pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned, the com­pa­ny claims to allow [47] for the set­ting and appli­ca­tion of “new stan­dards for man­u­fac­tur­ing cell ther­a­pies and gene ther­a­pies” and also says it plans to become a “tech­nol­o­gy-aggre­gat­ing stan­dards bear­er that helps ther­a­pies come to mar­ket more effi­cient­ly.” It pre­vi­ous­ly offered [45] on its web­site “reg­u­la­to­ry sup­port” and “strat­e­gy con­sult­ing” to clients, sug­gest­ing that it would seek to medi­ate between clients and gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tors in order to ful­fill its goal of hav­ing the prod­ucts it man­u­fac­tures tak­en to mar­ket more quick­ly. In addi­tion, upon launch, the com­pa­ny claimed [50] it planned to obtain unspec­i­fied “reg­u­la­to­ry capa­bil­i­ties.” If so, it is cer­tain­ly notable that for­mer top Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA) offi­cials are either on the company’s board or, as will be not­ed short­ly, played a major role in the company’s cre­ation.

The Peo­ple Behind Resilience

Resilience was co-found­ed by Biotech ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist Robert Nelsen, who is known for [51] lis­ten­ing “to science’s ear­li­est whis­pers, even when data are too ear­ly for just about any­one else.” Nelsen was one of the ear­li­est investors in Illu­mi­na, a Cal­i­for­nia-based gene-sequenc­ing hard­ware and soft­ware giant that is believed to cur­rent­ly dom­i­nate the field of genomics. As men­tioned in a pre­vi­ous Unlim­it­ed Hang­out inves­ti­ga­tion [52], Illu­mi­na is close­ly tied to the DARPA-equiv­a­lent of the Well­come Trust known as Well­come Leap, which is also focused on “futur­is­tic” and tran­shu­man­ist “med­i­cines.” Nelsen is now chair­man of Nation­al Resilience’s board, which is a “Who’s Who” of big play­ers from the US Nation­al Secu­ri­ty State, Big Phar­ma and Phar­ma-relat­ed “phil­an­thropy.”

How­ev­er, while Nelsen has been giv­en much of the cred­it for cre­at­ing Resilience, he revealed in one inter­view that the idea for the com­pa­ny had actu­al­ly come from some­one else – Luciana Borio. In July of last year, Nelsen revealed that [53] it was while talk­ing to Borio about “her work run­ning pan­dem­ic pre­pared­ness on the NSC [Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil]” that had “helped lead to the launch of Nelsen’s $800 mil­lion bio­log­ics man­u­fac­tur­ing start­up Resilience.”

At the time of their con­ver­sa­tion, Borio was the vice pres­i­dent of In-Q-tel [54], the ven­ture cap­i­tal arm of the CIA that has been used since its cre­ation in the ear­ly 2000s to found a num­ber of com­pa­nies, many of which act as Agency fronts. Pri­or to In-Q-Tel, she served as direc­tor for med­ical and biode­fense pre­pared­ness at the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil dur­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and had pre­vi­ous­ly been the act­ing chief sci­en­tist at the FDA from 2015 to 2017.

Borio is cur­rent­ly [54] a senior fel­low for glob­al health at the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions, a con­sul­tant to Gold­man Sachs, a mem­ber of the Bill Gates-fund­ed vac­cine alliance CEPI, and a part­ner at Nelsen’s ven­ture cap­i­tal firm ARCH Ven­ture Part­ners, which funds Resilience. Nelsen’s ARCH pre­vi­ous­ly fund­ed [55] Nanosys, the com­pa­ny of the con­tro­ver­sial sci­en­tist Charles Lieber [56]. Around the time of her con­ver­sa­tion with Nelsen that led to Resilience’s cre­ation, Borio was co-writ­ing a pol­i­cy paper [57] for the Johns Hop­kins Cen­ter for Health Secu­ri­ty that rec­om­mend­ed link­ing COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus with food stamp pro­grams and rent assis­tance as a pos­si­ble means of coerc­ing cer­tain pop­u­la­tions to take the exper­i­men­tal vac­cine.

Borio is hard­ly Resilience’s only In-Q-Tel con­nec­tion, as the CEO of In-Q-Tel, Chris Dar­by, sits on the company’s board of direc­tors. Dar­by is also on the board of direc­tors of the CIA Offi­cers Memo­r­i­al Foun­da­tion. Dar­by was also recent­ly a mem­ber of the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Com­mis­sion on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (NSCAI), where mem­bers of the mil­i­tary, intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and Sil­i­con Valley’s top firms argued for the need [58] to reduce the use of “lega­cy sys­tems” in favor of AI-focused alter­na­tives as a nation­al secu­ri­ty imper­a­tive. Among those “lega­cy sys­tems” iden­ti­fied by the NSCAI [58] were in-per­son doc­tor vis­its and even receiv­ing med­ical care from a human doc­tor, as opposed to an AI “doc­tor.” The NSCAI also argued for the removal of “reg­u­la­to­ry bar­ri­ers” that pre­vent these new tech­nolo­gies from replac­ing “lega­cy sys­tems.”

Anoth­er notable board mem­ber, in dis­cussing Resilience’s intel­li­gence ties, is Drew Oet­ting. Oet­ting works for Cer­berus Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, the firm head­ed by [59] Steve Fein­berg who pre­vi­ous­ly led the President’s Intel­li­gence Advi­so­ry Board under the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. Cer­berus is notably the par­ent com­pa­ny of Dyn­Corp, a con­tro­ver­sial US nation­al secu­ri­ty con­trac­tor tied to numer­ous scan­dals, includ­ing scan­dals relat­ed to sex traf­fick­ing in con­flict zones [60]. Oet­ting is also part of the CIA-linked Thorn NGO osten­si­bly focused on tack­ling child traf­fick­ing that was the sub­ject of a pre­vi­ous Unlim­it­ed Hang­out inves­ti­ga­tion [61].

Oet­ting is also the co-founder of 8VC, a ven­ture cap­i­tal firm that is one of the main investors in Resilience. 8VC’s oth­er co-founder is Joe Lons­dale and Oet­ting “start­ed his career” as Lonsdale’s chief of staff. Lons­dale is the co-founder, along­side Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, of Palan­tir, a CIA front com­pa­ny [62] and intel­li­gence con­trac­tor that is the suc­ces­sor to DARPA’s con­tro­ver­sial Total Infor­ma­tion Aware­ness (TIA) mass sur­veil­lance and data-min­ing pro­gram. In addi­tion, Oet­ting pre­vi­ous­ly worked for Bill Gates’ invest­ment fund.

Also worth not­ing is the pres­ence of Joseph Robert Ker­rey [63], for­mer US Sen­a­tor for Nebras­ka and a for­mer mem­ber of the con­flict-of-inter­est-rid­den 9/11 Com­mis­sion, on Resilience’s board. Ker­rey is cur­rent­ly man­ag­ing direc­tor of Allen & Co., a New York invest­ment bank­ing firm which has host­ed an annu­al “sum­mer camp for bil­lion­aires [64]” since 1983. Allen & Co. has long been a major play­er in net­works where orga­nized crime and intel­li­gence inter­sect, and is men­tioned repeat­ed­ly through­out my upcom­ing book One Nation Under Black­mail [65]. For instance, Charles and Her­bert Allen, who ran the firm for decades, had con­sid­er­able busi­ness deal­ings with orga­nized crime king­pins and front­men for noto­ri­ous gang­sters like Mey­er Lan­sky, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Bahamas. They were also busi­ness part­ners of Leslie Wexner’s men­tors A. Alfred Taub­man and Max Fish­er as well as asso­ciates of Earl Bri­an, one of the archi­tects of the PROMIS soft­ware scan­dal – which saw orga­nized crime and intel­li­gence net­works coop­er­ate to steal and then com­pro­mise the PROMIS soft­ware for black­mail and clan­des­tine intel­li­gence-gath­er­ing pur­pos­es. Allen & Co. was a major investor in Brian’s busi­ness inter­ests in the tech­nol­o­gy indus­try that Bri­an used in attempts to bank­rupt the devel­op­ers of PROMIS, Inslaw Inc. and to mar­ket ver­sions of PROMIS that had been com­pro­mised first by Israeli intel­li­gence and, lat­er, the CIA.

In addi­tion to these intel­li­gence-linked indi­vid­u­als, the rest of Resilience’s board includes the for­mer CEO of the Bill & Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion, Susan Desmond-Hell­mann; for­mer FDA Com­mis­sion­er and Pfiz­er board mem­ber, Scott Got­tlieb; two for­mer exec­u­tives at John­son & John­son; for­mer pres­i­dent and CEO of Teva Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals North Amer­i­can branch, George Bar­rett; Cal­Tech pro­fes­sor and board mem­ber of Alpha­bet (i.e. Google) and Illu­mi­na, Frances Arnold; for­mer exec­u­tive at Genen­tech and Mer­ck, Patrick Yang; and Resilience CEO Rahul Singhvi./b>. . . .

To Boost or Not to Boost

It is cer­tain­ly telling that the nor­mal­ly pub­lic­i­ty hun­gry Mod­er­na has said so lit­tle about its part­ner­ship with Resilience and that Resilience, despite its ambi­tious plans, has also avoid­ed the media lime­light. Con­sid­er­ing Moderna’s his­to­ry and Resilience’s con­nec­tions, there may be more to this part­ner­ship that meets the eye and con­cerned mem­bers of the pub­lic would do well to keep a very close eye on Resilience, its part­ner­ships, and the prod­ucts it is man­u­fac­tur­ing.

4a. “This Jel­ly­fish Can Live For­ev­er. Its Genes May Tell Us How.” by Veronique Green­wood; New York Times; 9/106/2022. [24]

Fleets of tiny translu­cent umbrel­las, each about the size of a lentil, waft through the waters of the Mediter­ranean Sea. These minia­ture jel­ly­fish, known as Tur­ri­top­sis dohrnii, wave and grasp with their pale ten­ta­cles, bring­ing plank­ton to their mouths like many oth­er jel­ly­fish species adrift in the glow­ing water.

But they have a secret that sets them apart from the aver­age sea crea­ture: When their bod­ies are dam­aged, the mature adults, known as medusas, can turn back the clock and trans­form back into their youth­ful selves. They shed their limbs, become a drift­ing blob and morph into polyps, twig­gy growths that attach to rocks or plants. Grad­u­al­ly, the medusa buds off the polyp once again, reju­ve­nat­ed. While a preda­tor or an injury can kill T. dohrnii, old age does not. They are, effec­tive­ly, immor­tal.

Now, in a paper pub­lished Mon­day in The Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences [66], sci­en­tists have tak­en a detailed look at the jellyfish’s genome, search­ing for the genes that con­trol this remark­able process. By exam­in­ing the genes active at dif­fer­ent phas­es of the life cycle, the researchers got a glimpse of the del­i­cate orches­tra­tion of the jellyfish’s reju­ve­na­tion.

Gath­er­ing enough T. dohrnii to study their genomes can be dif­fi­cult. Only one sci­en­tist, Shin Kub­o­ta at Kyoto Uni­ver­si­ty in Japan, has suc­cess­ful­ly main­tained a colony in the lab over the long term. (He has also writ­ten [67] and per­formed songs [68] inspired by his tiny sub­jects.)

4b. Peter Thiel favored “kneecap­ping the FDA” in order to bring Big Phar­ma’s prod­ucts to mar­ket soon­er, in full aware­ness of the col­lat­er­al dam­age that would result from this.

” . . . . For Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion com­mis­sion­er, he [Thiel] attempt­ed to nom­i­nate can­di­dates who shared his belief that the FDA’s main role—regarding tri­als for drugs—was unnec­es­sary. One of Thiel’s allies in this cru­sade, and his top pick to lead the FDA, was Bal­a­ji Srini­vasan, the Stan­ford com­put­er sci­ence lec­tur­er and cryp­tocur­ren­cy entre­pre­neur who’s invest­ed along­side Thiel in Cur­tis Yarvin’s com­pa­ny and shared Thiel’s views. . . . ‘For every thalido­mide,’ he tweet­ed, “many dead from slowed approvals.” . . . . Thiel had argued much the same. . . .”

Note that the FDA’s reg­u­la­to­ry “red light” on the use of thalido­mide saved the U.S. from the birth defects night­mare expe­ri­enced by Europe.

We note in that regard that Thiel comes from an “I.G.” back­ground, to coin a term. As not­ed in FTR #718 [69], Thiel’s father was a chem­i­cal engi­neer from Frank­furt, the cap­i­tal of I.G.

The Con­trar­i­an by Max Chafkin; Pen­guin Press [HC]; Copy­right 2021 by Max Chafkin; ISBN 9781984878533; p9. 253–254. [22]

. . . . For Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion com­mis­sion­er, he [Thiel] attempt­ed to nom­i­nate can­di­dates who shared his belief that the FDA’s main role—regarding tri­als for drugs—was unnec­es­sary.

The con­sen­sus view among drug devel­op­ers, even many in Sil­i­con Val­ley, has been that “you don’t want to put indi­vid­u­als at risk,” said Zach Wein­berg, the cofounder of Flat­iron Health, a Sil­i­con Val­ley-backed med­ical research firm that is now owned by the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal giant Roche. “Peter Thiel’s view is that will slow things down. His whole game is if a few peo­ple get hurt and that cre­ates progress, he’s will­ing to take that trade.” 

One of Thiel’s allies in this cru­sade, and his top pick to lead the FDA, was Bal­a­ji Srini­vasan, the Stan­ford com­put­er sci­ence lec­tur­er and cryp­tocur­ren­cy entre­pre­neur who’s invest­ed along­side Thiel in Cur­tis Yarvin’s com­pa­ny and shared Thiel’s views. . . . 

 . . . . “For every thalido­mide,” he tweet­ed, “many dead from slowed approvals.” . . . .

Thiel had argued much the same. . . .

. . . . the agency’s [FDA] refusal in the ear­ly 1960’s to approve thalido­mide, a sleep­ing pill, is regard­ed as one of the great admin­is­tra­tive suc­cess sto­ries. In Europe, where a less-reg­u­lat­ed mar­ket allowed thalido­mide to be pre­scribed to preg­nant women, thou­sands of babies were born with­out ful­ly formed limbs. . . .

. . . . Thiel’s oth­er choice to run the FDA was Jim O’Neill, who’d run the Thiel Foun­da­tion and had since worked as an investor at Mithril, Ajay Royan’s ven­ture cap­i­tal firm . . . . He also believed in rolling back the FDA man­dates about drug effi­ca­cy. . . .

5. After the pan­dem­ic, Thiel seemed pleased at that event, main­tain­ing that it had pro­ject­ed us into the future. ” . . . . ‘COVID-19 cre­at­ed a shift. There used to be this feel­ing that the future was being held back some­how. Changes that should have tak­en place long ago did not come because there was resis­tance. Now the future is set free.’ He was, it seemed, wel­com­ing the pan­dem­ic as a chance to reset soci­ety accord­ing to his ideals and plans. . . .”

The Con­trar­i­an by Max Chafkin; Pen­guin Press [HC]; Copy­right 2021 by Max Chafkin; ISBN 9781984878533; pp. 327–328. [22]

. . . . How could any­one devot­ed to life exten­sion not be moved by so many pre­ventable deaths? By late March more than 550,000 Amer­i­cans had died from Covid, mak­ing the pan­dem­ic dead­lier than U.S. casu­al­ties in World War I and World War II com­bined. The Unit­ed States has suf­fered one of the worst per-capi­ta mor­tal­i­ty rates in the world. How had those grim fig­ures not moved him to break with Trump or to at last spend more ambi­tious­ly to help? . . . .

. . . . Thiel spoke to Die Welt­woche, a Swiss news­pa­per whose edi­tor Roger Kop­pel is a mem­ber of the country’s nation­al-con­ser­v­a­tive People’s Par­ty. Dur­ing an inter­view with Kop­pel, Thiel char­ac­ter­ized the dis­ease as a men­tal pathol­o­gy rather than a phys­i­cal one. “I see it as a psy­cho­log­i­cal indi­ca­tor that peo­ple know deep down: There is no way back to the old nor­mal,” he said.

He con­tin­ued: “COVID-19 cre­at­ed a shift. There used to be this feel­ing that the future was being held back some­how. Changes that should have tak­en place long ago did not come because there was resis­tance. Now the future is set free.” He was, it seemed, wel­com­ing the pan­dem­ic as a chance to reset soci­ety accord­ing to his ideals and plans. . . .

7c. “A Mes­sage to the Next Gen­er­a­tion of Sci­en­tists” by Antho­ny Fau­ci; The New York Times; 12/11/2022. [25]

7d. We Can Edit a Per­son­’s DNA. So Why Don’t We? by Fyo­dor Urnov; The New York Times [70]; 12/11/2022.

7e. The pro­gram presents a sum­ma­ry intro­duc­tion of the pri­ma­ry sub­ject. After the [offi­cial] aban­don­ment by the U.S. of offen­sive bio­log­i­cal war­fare research, the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion declared a “war on can­cer” in 1971. As part of the War on Can­cer Nixon turned Fort Det­rick (the Army’s top BW research cen­ter) over to the Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute for its Viral Can­cer Project. The Viral Can­cer Project was inex­tri­ca­bly linked with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research and may well have served as a cov­er for ongo­ing BW work.

For the pur­pos­es of the present dis­cus­sion, it is worth not­ing that it was the Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute’s VCP that was at the epi­cen­ter of AIDS research in the Unit­ed States.

“Can­cer War­fare: Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute and the Fort Det­rick Link” by Richard Hatch; Covert Action Infor­ma­tion Bul­letin Num­ber 39 (Win­ter 1991–92). [71]

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

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

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

8. The VCP/NCI bio­log­i­cal war­fare con­nec­tion uti­lized strong con­nec­tions to uni­ver­si­ty research facil­i­ties. The Naval Bio­sciences Lab­o­ra­to­ry (man­aged by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia), as well as Fort Det­rick were pro­found­ly involved with the NCI’s VCP. The Cell Cul­ture Lab­o­ra­to­ry at the Naval Bio­sciences Facil­i­ty pro­vid­ed the seed stock for the pro­duc­tion of vast quan­ti­ties of car­cino­genic and immuno­sup­pres­sive virus­es that were gen­er­at­ed by the Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute.

The pro­duc­tion of those virus­es for the NCI was over­seen by Drs. James Duff and Jack Gru­ber, both long­time vet­er­ans of Fort Det­rick and its bio­log­i­cal war­fare research.

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

Reflect­ing a com­mon pat­tern of coop­er­a­tion, much of the mil­i­tary-relat­ed research took place at insti­tu­tions con­nect­ed with or direct­ly part of U.S. uni­ver­si­ties. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia is well known for its role in man­ag­ing the two main U.S. nuclear weapons lab­o­ra­to­ries, the Los Alam­os and Lawrence Liv­er­more Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ries. Less well-known is the fact that UC Berke­ley also helps man­age the Naval Bio­sciences Lab­o­ra­to­ry (NBL) — ear­li­er called the Naval Bio­log­i­cal Lab­o­ra­to­ry. This con­nec­tion became cen­tral to the VCP and con­tin­ued after the ban on offen­sive BW work.

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

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

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

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

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

The VCP con­tract ran con­cur­rent­ly with the NBL’s work on bubon­ic plague, Rift Val­ley and menin­gi­tis. The NBL did oth­er research for the Fort Det­rick, before the 1972 ban on offen­sive work. The NBL also per­formed “much of the orig­i­nal research into bio­log­i­cal war­fare dur­ing World War II.” At some NBL work was “list­ed only in Pen­ta­gon research bulletins.“11

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

Idem. [71]

9. The aer­i­al trans­mis­sion of dead­ly path­o­gen­ic agents was a major focal point of the NCI’s VCP, appar­ent­ly over­lap­ping BW research projects. Two oth­er key researchers for the NCI, Drs. Alfred Hell­man and Mark Chatigny also had bio­log­i­cal war­fare research back­grounds, includ­ing work with aer­i­al trans­mis­sion of path­o­gen­ic agents.

The field of “aer­o­bi­ol­o­gy,” or the trans­mis­sion of dis­ease organ­isms through the air, is essen­tial­ly an out­growth of BW research. The mil­i­tary objec­tive of expos­ing many peo­ple to a bio­log­i­cal war­fare agent and the ready sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to infec­tion by inhal­ing these agents make aerosol weapons the most prac­ti­cal form of trans­mis­sion. The NCI also stud­ied aerosol trans­mis­sion of virus­es inten­sive­ly. One such study, FS-57 “Aerosol Prop­er­ties of Onco­genic Virus­es,” was fund­ed at more than $100,000 a year. After the ban on offen­sive BW research, the NCI and the Office of Naval Research joint­ly spon­sored NBL exper­i­ments on the “Aerosol Prop­er­ties of Poten­tial­ly Onco­genic Viruses.“18 The NCI jus­ti­fied its aerosol research because its sci­en­tists often han­dled sus­pect can­cer virus­es in a high­ly con­cen­trat­ed form. A lab acci­dent could release a mist of virus; NCI need­ed to under­stand and antic­i­pate the dan­ger. How the Navy jus­ti­fied its inter­est is unknown, but if a new can­cer-caus­ing BW agent was dis­cov­ered, it would like­ly be deliv­ered as an aerosol.

The line between aerosol and bio­log­i­cal war­fare research was often fine. The NCI project offi­cer and for­mer U.S. Air Force virol­o­gist, Dr. Alfred Hell­man, worked with Mark Chatigny, a research engi­neer at NBL and mem­ber of the NCI bio­haz­ards work group from the NBL.19 Hell­man also over­saw the 1971 $100,000 NBL study on the “phys­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of viral aerosols..” In 1961, the NBL had done sim­i­lar research for Fort Det­rick on the “sta­bil­i­ty and vir­u­lence of BW aerosols.“20 Chatigny’s NBL research into aerosol dis­tri­b­u­tion of virus­es would con­tin­ue into the 1980s. Such over­lap­ping of pur­pos­es rais­es seri­ous ques­tions about the wis­dom of plac­ing con­trol of VCP virus­es under the NBL.

Idem. [71]

10. More about the aerosol stud­ies, over­lap­ping the NCI VCP and involv­ing research done by uni­ver­si­ties:

While UC Berke­ley appears to have been at the heart of aerosol BW research, it was by no means alone. Oth­er uni­ver­si­ties col­lab­o­rat­ed with the BW effort while work­ing on the VCP in par­al­lel. From 1955 to 1965, the Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege of Med­i­cine con­duct­ed research for Fort Det­rick into the aerosol trans­mis­sion of BW agents includ­ing tularemia and Q fever.21 In some of these stud­ies, pris­on­ers from the Ohio State Pen­i­ten­tiary were used as guinea pigs. Between 1952 and 1969, the affil­i­at­ed Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty Research Foun­da­tion had eight con­tracts with the U.S. Army for BW research. Tularemia (“rab­bit fever”) and Q fever were ulti­mate­ly stock­piled by the U.S. Army.22

Before he worked with UC, Dr. Hell­man super­vised an NCI con­tract for Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty. Designed to study the aerosol trans­mis­sion of can­cer-caus­ing virus­es, this research start­ed in 1965 and con­tin­ued at least until 1972. The prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tor for this work, Dr. Richard Griese­mer, would even­tu­al­ly suc­ceed in giv­ing tumors to mice and mon­keys. Griese­mer then went to work briefly at the Oak Ridge Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry, part of the U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy nuclear research sys­tem. After his stint at Oak Ridge, Griese­mer returned to NCI, where he head­ed the NCI Bioas­say pro­gram, which test­ed chem­i­cals sus­pect­ed of caus­ing can­cer. This mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar pro­gram was so bad­ly man­aged that epi­demics forced the killing of near­ly 90,000 test ani­mals and test­ing of sus­pect­ed car­cino­genic chem­i­cals fell far behind schedule.23

Many oth­er uni­ver­si­ties promi­nent in the U.S. BW pro­gram, such as Johns Hop­kins, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta, were also heav­i­ly involved in the VCP. Since the BW work per­formed by these uni­ver­si­ties remains clas­si­fied, the exact rela­tion between VCP and bio­log­i­cal war­fare research remains murky.

Idem. [71]

11. Yet anoth­er com­po­nent of the NCI/VCP/BW con­nec­tion was the incor­po­ra­tion of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies in the research pro­grams. The Pfiz­er com­pa­ny pro­duced virus­es for the NCI’s VCP, includ­ing the immuno­sup­pres­sive Mason-Pfiz­er mon­key virus dis­cussed in the next major sec­tion of the pro­gram.

The pat­tern of over­lap­ping mil­i­tary BW and NCI work was par­al­leled by the rela­tion­ship between indus­tri­al con­trac­tors and the VCP. Charles Pfiz­er and Com­pa­ny, Inc., a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal firm, had a con­tract with the NCI which includ­ed pro­duc­tion of “a large quan­ti­ty of a vari­ety of virus­es” for the VCP.24 The immuno­sup­pres­sive Mason-Pfiz­er mon­key virus was grown in large quan­ti­ty, and oth­er ani­mal can­cer virus­es were adapt­ed to grow in human cell lines. Dur­ing the same time period—1961 to 1971—the NCI con­trac­tor, Pfiz­er, con­duct­ed a secret study for the U.S. Army “into the growth and cul­ture media for unspec­i­fied... bio­log­i­cal agents.“25

In addi­tion, from 1968 to 1970, Pfiz­er had a con­tract for Scale Pro­duc­tion and Eval­u­a­tion of Staphy­lo­coc­cal Entero­tox­oid B” for the U.S. Army BW program.26 Staphy­lo­coc­cal entero­tox­oid is a pro­tec­tive vac­cine against a bac­te­r­i­al tox­in which was part of the U.S. arse­nal. The pro­duc­tion of vac­cine against a stock­piled BW weapon must be con­sid­ered an offen­sive BW project Accord­ing to MIT sci­en­tists Harlee Strauss and Jonathan King, “These steps—the gen­er­a­tion of a poten­tial BW agent, devel­op­ment of a vac­cine against it, test­ing of the effi­ca­cy of the vaccine—are all com­po­nents that would be asso­ci­at­ed with an offen­sive BW program.“27 Clear­ly, with­out an anti­dote or vac­cine to pro­tect attack­ing troops, the util­i­ty of a stock­piled BW agent would be seri­ous­ly lim­it­ed.

Idem. [71]

12. Among the most sig­nif­i­cant and alarm­ing aspects of the NCI’s VCP pro­gram is the fact that, when Fort Det­rick was con­vert­ed to the Fred­er­ick Can­cer Research Cen­ter, it was admin­is­tered by Lit­ton Bio­net­ics, a biotech­nol­o­gy sub­sidiary of Lit­ton Indus­tries. Lit­ton was a major defense con­trac­tor and a fre­quent vehi­cle for covert oper­a­tions.

Pri­or to assum­ing stew­ard­ship of Fort Det­rick for the NCI, Lit­ton Bio­net­ics had employed Dr. Robert Gal­lo (the “dis­cov­er­er” of HIV).

 . . . One of Bio­net­ics Research Lab­o­ra­to­ries’ most impor­tant NCI con­tracts was a mas­sive virus inoc­u­la­tion pro­gram that began in 1962 and and ran until at least 1976, and used more than 2,000 mon­keys. Dr. Robert Gal­lo, the con­tro­ver­sial head of the cur­rent U.S. AIDS research pro­gram at NCI and the chief of its tumor cell biol­o­gy lab­o­ra­to­ry, and Dr. Jack Gru­ber, for­mer­ly of VCP and then NIH, were project offi­cers for the inoc­u­la­tion pro­gram. . . .”

Among the pri­ma­ry focal points of Lit­ton Bio­net­ics’ research was the Mason-Pfiz­er mon­key virus, a simi­an retro­virus that induces immuno­sup­pres­sion in pri­mates. HIV is a retro­virus.

Pres­i­dent Nixon’s 1971 announce­ment that Fort Det­rick would be con­vert­ed to a cen­ter for can­cer research could not be imme­di­ate­ly imple­ment­ed. First, BW agents stored there, such as the anti-crop agent rice blast, had to be destroyed. The build­ings were then decon­t­a­m­i­nat­ed and the facil­i­ties were turned over to the NCI, which renamed the facil­i­ty the Fred­er­ick Can­cer Research Cen­ter; Lit­ton-Bio­net­ics was named as the prime con­trac­tor. A major play­er in the mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al com­plex, the cor­po­ra­tion worked exten­sive­ly on the dis­per­sion of BW agents from planes, and includ­ed U.S. Air Force con­tracts for “the super­son­ic deliv­ery of dry bio­log­i­cal agents.”28 From 1966 to 1968, Bio­net­ics Research Lab­o­ra­to­ries (which became Lit­ton-Bio­net­ics in 1973) held two con­tracts with the U.5. Army BW program.29 At the same time, it held major con­tracts with the NCI.30 One of Bio­net­ics Research Lab­o­ra­to­ries’ most impor­tant NCI con­tracts was a mas­sive virus inoc­u­la­tion pro­gram that began in 1962 and and ran until at least 1976, and used more than 2,000 mon­keys. Dr. Robert Gal­lo, the con­tro­ver­sial head of the cur­rent U.S. AIDS research pro­gram at NCI and the chief of its tumor cell biol­o­gy lab­o­ra­to­ry, and Dr. Jack Gru­ber, for­mer­ly of VCP and then NIH, were project offi­cers for the inoc­u­la­tion pro­gram. The mon­keys were inject­ed with every­thing from human can­cer tis­sues to rare virus­es and even sheep’s blood in an effort to find a trans­mis­si­ble can­cer. Many of these mon­keys suc­cumbed to immuno­sup­pres­sion after infec­tion with the Mason-Pfiz­er mon­key virus, the first known immuno­sup­pres­sive retro­virus  one of a class of virus­es that includes the human immun­od­e­fi­cien­cy virus.

Idem. [71]

13. Of para­mount impor­tance in this inves­ti­ga­tion is the fact that the NCI’s VCP pro­gram involved numer­ous exper­i­ments and oper­a­tions designed at get­ting organ­isms to “jump species.” Promi­nent researchers famil­iar with these efforts expressed alarm and the con­vic­tion that such work should be out­lawed, lest it lead to the cre­ation of new, dead­ly organ­isms that would infect humans.

Obvi­ous­ly, this broad­cast and the line of inquiry approached in Mr. Emory’s decades-long inves­ti­ga­tion of AIDS as a man-made dis­ease high­light the possibility/probability/near cer­tain­ty that HIV is just such an organ­ism.

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

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

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

At a 1975 NCI sym­po­sium, a par­tic­i­pant, Dr. J. Moor-Janows­ki admit­ted that “envi­ron­men­tal-moti­vat­ed, we moti­vat­ed groups begin to con­sid­er pri­mate lab­o­ra­to­ries as being a source of dan­ger.” He con­tin­ued to com­ment that “a [Euro­pean] pri­mate cen­ter was not able to begin oper­a­tions as a result of adverse pub­lic­i­ty they obtained because of Mar­burg dis­ease.” The speak­er was refer­ring to a 1967 out­break in Yugoslavia and West Ger­many of this viral dis­ease, which killed sev­er­al peo­ple. Tis­sues obtained from African Green mon­keys used in bio­med­ical work were the source of the mini-epi­dem­ic. Dr. Moor-Janows­ki sug­gest­ed that researchers should fight against tighter restric­tions on pri­mate exper­i­ments. 35

Idem. [71]

14. In addi­tion, the NCI’s VCP was the foun­da­tion for pro­fes­sion­al inter­ac­tion between civil­ian med­ical and sci­en­tif­ic researchers and their coun­ter­parts in the mil­i­tary. One obvi­ous out­growth of this would be enhance­ment of the mil­i­tary per­son­nel’s knowl­edge and pro­fes­sion­al capa­bil­i­ties.

A major focal point of this military/civilian sym­po­sium was “Zoonoses”–diseases that jump from ani­mals to humans. The pro­gres­sion of HIV from mon­key virus to mutat­ed mon­key virus that attacks humans should be eval­u­at­ed in this con­text.

Under the Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute aegis, VCP pro­vid­ed many oppor­tu­ni­ties for con­tact between for­mer BW spe­cial­ists and oth­ers in the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty. For­mer BW spe­cial­ists Drs. Peter Gerone and Arnold Wedum were promi­nent mem­bers of the Bio­haz­ard Con­trol and Con­tain­ment Seg­ment of the VCP. Their posi­tions allowed them fre­quent con­tact with lab­o­ra­to­ries han­dling haz­ardous virus­es. Gerone and Wedum both worked for many years at Fort Det­rick; they were both spe­cial­ists in the air­borne trans­mis­sion of dis­eases. In the 1950s, Wedum was in charge of U.S. Army tests of tularemia (“rab­bit fever”) on human “vol­un­teers.” In Gerone’s BW research, he used pris­on­ers from the Fed­er­al Prison Camp at Eglin Air Force Base in Flori­da. This group of human guinea pigs was more for­tu­nate than Dr. Wedum’s; they were exposed only to cold virus­es. Gerone was award­ed the Army’s Mer­i­to­ri­ous Civil­ian Ser­vice Award for his efforts at Fort Det­rick.

The 1975 NCI spon­sored sym­po­sium on “Bio­haz­ards and Zoonot­ic Prob­lems of Pri­mate Pro­cure­ment, Quar­an­tine, and Research“36 illus­trates anoth­er aspect of NCI-mil­i­tary coop­er­a­tion. Zoonoses—diseases that can be trans­mit­ted from ani­mals to humans—make up the major­i­ty of BW agents. The meet­ing brought togeth­er NCI researchers, nine mil­i­tary offi­cers from Major to Colonel and a civil­ian from the Edge­wood Arse­nal, a U.S. chem­i­cal war­fare facil­i­ty, also in Mary­land. The offi­cers were from the U.S. Army Med­ical Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­eases, the Defense Nuclear Agency and the Armed Forces Insti­tute of Pathol­o­gy. In addi­tion, Drs. Wedum, Duff, Gru­ber, and Gerone were all in atten­dance.

Gerone pre­sent­ed a paper on the “Bio­haz­ards of Exper­i­men­tal­ly Infect­ed Pri­mates”; he now head­ed Tulane Uni­ver­si­ty’s Delta Region­al Pri­mate Research Cen­ter. In pass­ing, he men­tioned aerosol haz­ards and rec­om­mend­ed “expos­ing ani­mals so that only the head is in con­tact with the aerosol” rather than using “whole body expo­sure.” Wedum had pre­vi­ous­ly briefed him on BW tests involv­ing just such expo­sure of mon­keys to aerosolized staphy­lo­coc­cal entero­tox­in; in these tests four Fort Det­rick work­ers still became ill through expo­sure to the ani­mals. Pre­sum­ably Gerone was also aware of a 1964 acci­dent when 15 Fort Det­rick work­ers inhaled aerosolized staphy­lo­coc­cal entero­tox­in B, “mil­ligram for mil­ligram, one of the most dead­ly agents ever studied.“37

In addi­tion to sym­posia which brought togeth­er mil­i­tary and civil­ian spe­cial­ists, the VCP uti­lized con­sul­tants with strong bio­log­i­cal war­fare back­grounds. At times, Dr. Stu­art Madin and Mark Chatigny from the NBL, Peter Gerone, and Arthur Brown were all list­ed as con­sul­tants to the NCI. Brown, the for­mer head of the Virus and Rick­ettsia Divi­sion of Fort Det­rick, had already been involved in a bla­tant instance of attempt­ed covert recruit­ment of micro­bi­ol­o­gists for BW research.

In 1966, Brown signed a let­ter solic­it­ing research.38 It asked sci­en­tists to sub­mit pro­pos­als to study the recom­bi­na­tion of bac­te­ria, but tried to dis­guise the true source of fund­ing-the Depart­ment of Defense. NCI sci­en­tist Karl Habel also signed the let­ter; Habel was “con­nect­ed with viral research at the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health.“39 The attempt to recruit micro­bi­ol­o­gists to work on recom­bi­na­tion of bac­te­ria fiz­zled after the fund­ing source was pub­licly exposed. That it was attempt­ed at all, shows that NIH sci­en­tists were will­ing to team up with the Fort Det­rick spe­cial­ists in covert oper­a­tions and that some were also will­ing to deceive their col­leagues into col­lab­o­rat­ing with them.

Idem. [71]

15. The arti­cle con­cludes by sum­ma­riz­ing the pro­found and sus­pi­cious degree of over­lap between mil­i­tary BW research projects and the NCI’s VCP:

Research into virus­es dur­ing the War on Can­cer pro­vid­ed an ide­al cov­er for con­tin­u­ing bio­log­i­cal war­fare research. As Colonel Tigertt advised, the NCI project allowed the mass pro­duc­tion of virus­es, the devel­op­ment of means to enhance vir­u­lence, explo­ration of aerosol trans­mis­sion, and the pro­duc­tion of new recom­bi­nant dis­ease agents. These “civil­ian” projects ran con­cur­rent­ly with “mil­i­tary” projects in many cas­es. When polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy dic­tat­ed an end to overt U.S. BW research, the Viral Can­cer Pro­gram pro­vid­ed a means to con­tin­ue exper­i­ments that would oth­er­wise be dif­fi­cult to jus­ti­fy.

That the U.S. would covert­ly con­tin­ue a BW pro­gram should not be quick­ly dis­count­ed. Right up to the start of the VCP, U.S. covert oper­a­tors con­duct­ed clan­des­tine tests sim­u­lat­ing aerosol BW attacks. The NBL sup­plied per­son­nel, lab facil­i­ties, and equip­ment for a secret 1950 aerosol attack on San Fran­cis­co which result­ed in dos­ing almost every­one in the city with a BW agent “simulant.“40 Oth­er mil­i­tary exper­i­ments used spe­cial­ized cars and suitcases.41 The Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Divi­sion of the CIA, which oper­at­ed from Fort Det­rick, engaged in sim­i­lar covert tests using LSD and oth­er chem­i­cal under the MK-ULTRA pro­gram. Anoth­er CIA-SOD pro­gram, MK-NAOMI, col­lect­ed bio­log­i­cal tox­ins and disease.42

While Nixon ordered a sup­posed end to BW offen­sive efforts in 1969, the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency retained a secret BW and tox­in weapon capability.43 Giv­en this record of decep­tion in the U.S. BW pro­gram, the Viral Can­cer Pro­gram may well have used the search for a cure for can­cer as a cov­er to con­tin­ue its exper­i­ments on bio­log­i­cal war­fare.

Idem. [71]