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FTR #1183 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

FTR#1184 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: Har­vest­ing the lethal polit­i­cal crop risen from seeds plant­ed before, dur­ing and in the imme­di­ate after­math of World War II, this pro­gram sets forth the dynam­ics under­ly­ing the Covid-19 oper­a­tion.

Note that the Pen­ta­gon fund­ing of bat-borne coro­n­avirus research–through the WIV among oth­er institutions–took place against the back­ground of the full-court press against Chi­na, dis­cussed in numer­ous pro­grams and posts.

Cou­pled with the fact that once the genome of such a virus is pub­lished, it can be syn­the­sized and/or mod­i­fied at will using con­tem­po­rary tech­nol­o­gy, this fund­ing is sug­ges­tive of the exis­tence of a covert bio-op to cre­ate and dis­sem­ni­ate such virus­es and blame Chi­na for the result­ing pan­dem­ic.

In numer­ous pro­grams and posts, we have pre­sent­ed dis­turb­ing evi­dence that SARS CoV‑2 may well be a man-made virus, and that the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy was set up to take the fall for its cre­ation.

(We have termed that insti­tu­tion “The Oswald Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy,”–set up to take the fall for the cre­ation of the virus rather like the way Lee Har­vey Oswald was “paint­ed red” in order to set up “the Com­mu­nists” to take the fall for the assas­si­na­tion of JFK.)

Before set­ting forth the Pen­ta­gon, State Depart­ment and [prob­a­ble] CIA fund­ing for the research into bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es at the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy, it is fun­da­men­tal to an under­stand­ing of the real­iza­tion of the Covid “op” to grasp the state of the art in genet­ic engi­neer­ing of microor­gan­isms.

As detailed in a very impor­tant arti­cle from The Guardian: “ . . . 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. . . 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. . . . Today, the genet­ic code of almost any mam­malian virus can be found online and syn­the­sised. ‘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. . . .”

Also fun­da­men­tal to an under­stand­ing of the Covid “op” is the dev­as­tat­ing nature of bat-borne virus­es when intro­duced into the human body.

A lengthy excerpt of an arti­cle we will exam­ine at greater length is impor­tant to con­sid­er in this con­text: “. . . . A Google Schol­ar search pro­duced two papers Shi has pub­lished that lists DTRA as a fun­der.

To see how the first paper, ‘Com­par­a­tive Analy­sis of Bat Genomes Pro­vides Insight into the Evo­lu­tion of Flight and Immu­ni­ty,’ is rel­e­vant to bio­log­i­cal weapon­ry, it helps to under­stand the military’s inter­est in bat immu­ni­ty.

As Boston Uni­ver­si­ty micro­bi­ol­o­gist Thomas Kepler explained to the Wash­ing­ton Post in 2018, the bat’s unique approach to viral infec­tion explains why virus­es that trans­fer from bats to humans are so severe.

This was the sub­ject of a paper, ‘The Egypt­ian Rousette Genome Reveals Unex­pect­ed Fea­tures of Bat Antivi­ral Immu­ni­ty,’ that he pub­lished with mil­i­tary sci­en­tists and DTRA fund­ing.

‘A virus that has co-evolved with the bat’s antivi­ral sys­tem is com­plete­ly out of its ele­ment in the human,’ Kepler said. ‘That’s why it is so dead­ly — the human immune sys­tem is over­whelmed by the inflam­ma­to­ry response.’

The bat immune sys­tem responds very dif­fer­ent­ly from ours to viral infec­tion. Instead of attack­ing and killing an infect­ed cell, which leads to a cas­cade of inflam­ma­to­ry respons­es, the bat immune sys­tem can starve the virus by turn­ing down cel­lu­lar metab­o­lism.

The bat ori­gin of SARS-CoV­‑2 may explain the cytokine storms that are has­ten­ing some COVID-19 deaths. Accord­ing to Web­MD:

‘Cer­tain kinds of cytokines trig­ger cell death. When you have many cells doing this at the same time, a lot of tis­sue can die. In COVID-19, that tis­sue is most­ly in the lung. As the tis­sue breaks down, the walls of the lungs’ tiny air sacs become leaky and fill with flu­id, caus­ing pneu­mo­nia and starv­ing the blood of oxy­gen.’

Kepler says the mil­i­tary is using its exper­i­ments on bat immu­ni­ty to ‘devel­op drugs that damp­en down inflam­ma­tion and arrest the virus by depriv­ing it of what it needs to grow rather than try­ing to kill it out­right.’ But, it clear­ly has anoth­er objec­tive, as well: to make virus­es more dead­ly by ‘pas­sag­ing’ them through bats. . . .”

A recent arti­cle in the lib­er­al New York Mag­a­zine dis­cuss­es the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy and gain-of-func­tion exper­i­ments per­formed under the joint aus­pices of that insti­tu­tion and the Pen­ta­gon-fund­ed Eco­Health Alliance of Peter Daszak. Daszak is advised by David Franz, the for­mer com­man­der of Ft. Det­rick.

Fund­ed by USAID (a State Depart­ment sub­sidiary that serves as a cov­er for CIA covert oper­a­tions), that pro­gram saw Chi­nese researchers part­ner with, among oth­ers, Ralph Bar­ic.

In the detailed analy­sis pre­sent­ed by Nichol­son Bak­er in the arti­cle, no men­tion is made of the Pen­ta­gon fund­ing of Eco­Health Alliance, nor the dis­turb­ing infor­ma­tion about DARPA’s research into bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es detailed in the con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant arti­cle by Whit­ney Webb.

The Bak­er piece does con­clude with an oblique nod to the ease with which virus­es can be syn­the­sized and holds open the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Fort Det­rick or any oth­er place could have been the locus of syn­the­sis.

“. . . . SARS‑2 seems almost per­fect­ly cal­i­brat­ed to grab and ran­sack our breath­ing cells and choke the life out of them. ‘By the time SARS-CoV­‑2 was first detect­ed in late 2019, it was already pre-adapt­ed to human trans­mis­sion,’ Ali­na Chan and her co-authors have writ­ten, where­as SARS, when it first appeared in 2003, under­went ‘numer­ous adap­tive muta­tions’ before set­tling down. Per­haps viral nature hit a bull’s‑eye of air­borne infec­tiv­i­ty, with almost no muta­tion­al drift, no peri­od of accom­mo­da­tion and adjust­ment, or per­haps some lab work­er some­where, inspired by Baric’s work with human air­way tis­sue, took a spike pro­tein that was spe­cial­ly groomed to col­o­nize and thrive deep in the cil­i­at­ed, mucos­al tun­nels of our inner core and cloned it onto some exist­ing viral bat back­bone. It could have hap­pened in Wuhan, but — because any­one can now ‘print out’ a ful­ly infec­tious clone of any sequenced dis­ease — it could also have hap­pened at Fort Det­rick, or in Texas, or in Italy, or in Rot­ter­dam, or in Wis­con­sin, or in some oth­er citadel of coro­n­avi­ral inquiry. . . .”

The analy­sis begins with excerpt­ing of a thought-pro­vok­ing and dis­turb­ing arti­cle about DARPA research into bat-borne dis­eases, includ­ing some caused by coronaviruses–is set forth here. 

As read­ers digest this infor­ma­tion, remem­ber that DARPA can bring to bear the twined tech­nolo­gies arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and super-com­put­ers. It has the state of the art with respect to both. Com­bined with gene edit­ing, that tech­no­log­i­cal pair­ing offers the pos­si­bil­i­ty of tru­ly hor­ri­fy­ing syn­thet­ic virus­es.

In FTR #‘s 1157, 1158 and 1159, we high­light­ed very dis­turb­ing con­nec­tions between Peter Daszak and his Eco­Health Alliance and the Pen­ta­gon and USAID, a State Depart­ment sub­sidiary that serves as a fre­quent cov­er for CIA.

The Eco­Health Alliance–financed by USAID–partnered with the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy and Dr. Ralph Bar­ic of the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na at Chapel Hill to research bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es. A “chimeric” virus was cre­at­ed by Bar­ic under this pro­gram in 2015, and Bar­ic was sub­se­quent­ly select­ed to cre­ate the SARS Cov‑2 virus from scratch.

A new arti­cle adds fur­ther depth to the alarm­ing con­nec­tions of Daszak, the Eco­Health Alliance and Jef­frey Sachs. (As dis­cussed in a num­ber of pro­grams, includ­ing the above-men­tioned FTR #‘s 1157, 1158 and 1159, Sachs presided over the Har­vard Insti­tute of Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment, a US-fund­ed orga­ni­za­tion that advised Boris Yeltsin’s dis­as­trous eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy in Rus­sia.)

Many in Rus­sia view Sachs as “an emis­sary either of Satan or the CIA.” Recent polit­i­cal incar­na­tions have him as a mem­ber of the [Bernie] Sanders Insti­tute and an advi­sor to AOC.

A bril­liant, insight­ful arti­cle by Sam Hus­sei­ni on Inde­pen­dent Sci­ence News pro­vides crit­i­cal depth to our pre­vi­ous cov­er­age of Cit­i­zen Daszak.

Hus­sei­ni notes that:

1.  The Pen­ta­gon and USAID (a State Depart­ment sub­sidiary that has fre­quent­ly front­ed for CIA) are the largest fun­ders of Eco­Health Alliance, which obscures this fact: “ . . . . Daszak’s Eco­Health Alliance obscures its Pen­ta­gon fund­ing. . . . Only buried under their ‘Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy,’ under a sec­tion titled ‘Eco­Health Alliance Pol­i­cy Regard­ing Con­flict of Inter­est in Research,’ does the Eco­Health Alliance con­cede it is the ‘recip­i­ent of var­i­ous grant awards from fed­er­al agen­cies includ­ing . . . . the US Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment and the Depart­ment of Defense.’ . . . Even this list­ing is decep­tive. It obscures that its two largest fun­ders are the Pen­ta­gon and the State Depart­ment (USAID) . . . . These two sources thus total over $103 mil­lion. . . .”
2. One of the prin­ci­pal advis­ers to Eco­Health Alliance is David Franz: ” . . . . The mil­i­tary links of the Eco­Health Alliance are not lim­it­ed to mon­ey and mind­set. One note­wor­thy ‘pol­i­cy advi­sor’ to the Eco­Health Alliance is David Franz. Franz is for­mer com­man­der of Fort Det­rick, which is the prin­ci­pal U.S. gov­ern­ment biowarfare/biodefense facil­i­ty. . . .”
3. Peter Daszak has high regards for Don­ald Rums­feld, whom he enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly quotes. (Rums­feld was Chair­man of the Board of Gilead Sci­ences for many years, leav­ing that posi­tion to become Sec­re­tary of Defense for George W. Bush. Rums­feld made mil­lions on his sale of Gilead stock, which soared in val­ue fol­low­ing the Pen­tagon’s pur­chase of Gilead­’s Tam­i­flu to com­bat a feared break­out of H5N1 influen­za. Gildead Sci­ences makes remde­sivir, which was being test­ed on rhe­sus macaques at the U.S. Army’s Med­ical Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­eases at Fort Det­rick in the spring of 2019. The USAAMRIID was shut down by the CDC in ear­ly August of 2019, in part for the improp­er dis­pos­al of waste from “non-human pri­mates” infect­ed with a “select agent” which has not been dis­closed for nation­al secu­ri­ty rea­sons.) ” . . . . ‘It’s an awe­some quote! And yes, it’s Don­ald Rums­feld, Jeff, and I know he’s a Repub­li­can, but — what a genius!’ . . .”
4. The close asso­ci­a­tion of Jef­frey Sachs and Daszak: ” . . . . In Sep­tem­ber, Sachs’ com­mis­sion [on the Lancet–D.E.] named Daszak to head up its com­mit­tee on the pandemic’s ori­gins. Daszak is also on the WHO’s com­mit­tee to inves­ti­gate the pandemic’s ori­gin. He is the only indi­vid­ual on both com­mit­tees. . . .”

Cen­tered pri­mar­i­ly on the work of respect­ed Chi­nese sci­en­tist Shi Zhengli and her gain-of-func­tion exper­i­ments on bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es, anoth­er impor­tant arti­cle points out that her work is inex­tri­ca­bly-linked with the Pen­ta­gon, USAID-fund­ed Eco­health Alliance.

Although Ms. Baden-May­er’s arti­cle uncrit­i­cal­ly presents mate­r­i­al from dubi­ous sources such as The Nation­al Review, it does not shirk on cov­er­age of the impor­tance of Dasza­k’s orga­ni­za­tion and the many mil­i­tary and nation­al secu­ri­ty links to the work at the WIV per­formed by Shi Zhengli and her col­leagues.

NB: A major–albeit under­stand­able– flaw in Ms. Baden-May­er’s research is the fact that nei­ther she, nor many of the peo­ple she quotes, takes stock of the fact that ANY VIRUS CAN BE SYNTHESIZED OR ALTERED IN A LABORATORY USING CONTEMPORARY TECHNOLOGY!

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: 

1. A Nation­al Insti­tute of Health query of the work at WIV, the ques­tions in which were pre­sent­ed to Dasza­k’s Eco­Health Alliance! ” . . . . The let­ter with these demands didn’t go to Shi or WIV, it went to Eco­Health Alliance, a U.S.-based non-prof­it fund­ed by the U.S. gov­ern­ment, includ­ing [pri­mar­i­ly] the U.S. mil­i­tary, to sup­port sci­en­tists work­ing in 30 coun­tries. Eco­Health Alliance is list­ed as a fund­ing source on some of Shi’s most con­tro­ver­sial papers. And Eco­Health Alliance sci­en­tists, includ­ing its pres­i­dent Peter Daszak, often co-author, with Shi, pub­lished papers. . . .”
2. Review of the oper­a­tional rela­tion­ship between Dasza­k’s orga­ni­za­tion, and Shi Zhengli’s coop­er­a­tion with Ralph Bar­ic: ” . . . . Shi’s most infa­mous Eco­Health Alliance-fund­ed paper is, ‘A SARS-Like Clus­ter of Cir­cu­lat­ing Bat Coro­n­avirus­es Shows Poten­tial for Human Emer­gence.’ In this con­tro­ver­sial gain-of-func­tion research col­lab­o­ra­tion with U.S. sci­en­tist Ralph Bar­ic of the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na at Chapel Hill, Shi and Bar­ic used genet­ic engi­neer­ing and syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy to weaponize a bat coro­n­avirus, max­i­miz­ing its poten­tial human infec­tiv­i­ty. . . .”
3. Review of the USAID fund­ing of the Eco­Health Alliance/Shi/Baric col­lab­o­ra­tion (USAID is a State Depart­ment sub­sidiary which serves as one of CIA’s most com­mon and insid­i­ous front orga­ni­za­tions. ) ” . . . . Shi’s fund­ing for this study came through a USAID Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic Threats-PRE­DICT grant to Eco­Health Alliance—but the record for this grant appears to have been scrubbed from the U.S. government’s data­base. . . .”
4. Review of the obfus­ca­tion of the USAID fund­ing for the Eco­Health Alliance for this peri­od. “. . . . Eco­Health Alliance was a PREDICT part­ner dur­ing the 2009–2014 fund­ing cycle, but there is no record of a USAID grant to Eco­Health Alliance for this time peri­od among the $100.9 mil­lion in grants it has received from the U.S. gov­ern­ment since 2003. . . .”
5. Dis­cus­sion of Shi/Daszak col­lab­o­ra­tion on on a key sequence–the RsSh­Co14-CoV Sequence: ” . . . . Shi’s con­tri­bu­tion to the work she did with Bar­ic was the ‘RsSHC014-CoV Sequence That Was Iso­lat­ed from Chi­nese Horse­shoe Bats.’ . . . . Shi Zhengli and Peter Daszak announced their dis­cov­ery of RsSHC014 in their 2013 paper, ‘Iso­la­tion and Char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of a Bat SARS-Like Coro­n­avirus that Uses the ACE2 Recep­tor,’ and stat­ed that it was found dur­ing ‘a 12-month lon­gi­tu­di­nal sur­vey (April 2011–September 2012) of SL-CoVs in a colony of Rhi­nolo­phus sini­cus at a sin­gle loca­tion in Kun­ming, Yun­nan Province, Chi­na.’ . . . .”
6. Fund­ing for the Kun­ming virus research came from a num­ber of insti­tu­tions, includ­ing the NIH and USAID, which both have col­lab­o­rat­ed with Pen­ta­gon and CIA in the past.
7. Eco­Health Alliance helped finance Shi’s research in Mojiang: ” . . . . Shi’s paper, ‘Coex­is­tence of Mul­ti­ple Coro­n­avirus­es in Sev­er­al Bat Colonies in an Aban­doned Mine­shaft,’ was writ­ten by a team of sci­en­tists who were all Chi­nese nation­als work­ing at Chi­nese insti­tu­tions. Nev­er­the­less, in addi­tion to fund­ing from the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, the authors acknowl­edged sup­port from the U.S. Nation­al Insti­tute of Aller­gies and Infec­tious Dis­ease (R01AI110964), a $3.7‑million grant to Eco­Health Alliance for ‘Under­stand­ing the Risk of Bat Coro­n­avirus Emer­gence,’ (2014–2025). . . .”
8. Fur­ther review of Shi’s research fund­ing from the Pen­ta­gon, via Eco­Health Alliance: ” . . . . Shi Zhengli and her col­lab­o­ra­tors are also fund­ed by the U.S. mil­i­tary. Peter Daszak’s Eco­Health Alliance cur­rent­ly receives more mon­ey from the Depart­ment of Defense’s Defense Threat Reduc­tion Agency (DTRA) for Sci­en­tif­ic Research Com­bat­ting Weapons of Mass Destruc­tion than any oth­er mil­i­tary contractor—$15 mil­lion (25.575 per­cent) of the $60.2 mil­lion dis­persed in the last 6 months. . . .”
9. More about mil­i­tary col­lab­o­ra­tion with Shi: ” . . . . In addi­tion to mil­i­tary fund­ing through DTRA, Shi’s paper was co-authored by two U.S. mil­i­tary sci­en­tists, Christo­pher C. Broder and Eric D. Laing of the Uni­formed Ser­vices Uni­ver­si­ty of the Health Sci­ences, Depart­ment of Micro­bi­ol­o­gy and Immunol­o­gy. . . .”
10. The Peo­ple’s Lib­er­a­tion Army assumed con­trol of the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy on Jan­u­ary 26, 2020 at the time that the genome for the SARS Cov‑2 was pub­lished: ” . . . . The Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy is China’s only biosafe­ty lev­el 4 lab. While it has always been under the con­trol of the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, since Jan­u­ary 26, 2020, it has been under the com­mand of the People’s Lib­er­a­tion Army, specif­i­cal­ly its top bio­log­i­cal-weapons spe­cial­ist, a major gen­er­al named Chen Wei. . . .”

1.  The analy­sis begins with excerpt­ing of a thought-pro­vok­ing and dis­turb­ing arti­cle about DARPA research into bat-borne dis­eases, includ­ing some caused by coronaviruses–is set forth here. 

As read­ers digest this infor­ma­tion, remem­ber that DARPA can bring to bear the twined tech­nolo­gies arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and super-com­put­ers. It has the state of the art with respect to both. Com­bined with gene edit­ing, that tech­no­log­i­cal pair­ing offers the pos­si­bil­i­ty of tru­ly hor­ri­fy­ing syn­thet­ic virus­es.

“Bats, Gene Edit­ing and Bioweapons: Recent DARPA Exper­i­ments Raise Con­cerns Amid Coro­n­avirus Out­break” by Whit­ney Webb; The Last Amer­i­can Vagabond; 1/30/2020.

Whit­ney Webb has pro­vid­ed us with trou­bling insight into Pen­ta­gon research–some of which remains clas­si­fied:

• •  Into bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es. ” . . . . the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), began spend­ing mil­lions on such research in 2018 and some of those Pen­ta­gon-fund­ed stud­ies were con­duct­ed at known U.S. mil­i­tary bioweapons labs bor­der­ing Chi­na and result­ed in the dis­cov­ery of dozens of new coro­n­avirus strains as recent­ly as last April. Fur­ther­more, the ties of the Pentagon’s main biode­fense lab to a virol­o­gy insti­tute in Wuhan, Chi­na — where the cur­rent out­break is believed to have begun — have been unre­port­ed in Eng­lish lan­guage media thus far. . . . For instance, DARPA spent $10 mil­lion on one project in 2018 ‘to unrav­el the com­plex caus­es of bat-borne virus­es that have recent­ly made the jump to humans, caus­ing con­cern among glob­al health offi­cials.” Anoth­er research project backed by both DARPA and NIH saw researchers at Col­orado State Uni­ver­si­ty exam­ine the coro­n­avirus that caus­es Mid­dle East Res­pi­ra­to­ry Syn­drome (MERS) in bats and camels ‘to under­stand the role of these hosts in trans­mit­ting dis­ease to humans.’  . . . For instance, one study con­duct­ed in South­ern Chi­na in 2018 result­ed in the dis­cov­ery of 89 new ‘nov­el bat coro­n­avirus’ strains that use the same recep­tor as the coro­n­avirus known as Mid­dle East Res­pi­ra­to­ry Syn­drome (MERS). That study was joint­ly fund­ed by the Chi­nese government’s Min­istry of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, USAID — an orga­ni­za­tion long alleged to be a front for U.S. intel­li­gence, and the U.S. Nation­al Insti­tute of Health — which has col­lab­o­rat­ed with both the CIA and the Pen­ta­gon on infec­tious dis­ease and bioweapons research.. . . .”
  • At bio­log­i­cal research facil­i­ties ring­ing both Chi­na and Rus­sia. ” . . . .  One of those stud­ies focused on ‘Bat-Borne Zoonot­ic Dis­ease Emer­gence in West­ern Asia’ and involved the Lugar Cen­ter in Geor­gia, iden­ti­fied by for­mer Geor­gian gov­ern­ment offi­cials, the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment and inde­pen­dent, inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Dilyana Gay­tandzhie­va as a covert U.S. bioweapons lab. . . . Anoth­er U.S. gov­ern­ment-fund­ed study that dis­cov­ered still more new strains of ‘nov­el bat coro­n­avirus’ was pub­lished just last year. Titled ‘Dis­cov­ery and Char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Nov­el Bat Coro­n­avirus Lin­eages from Kaza­khstan,’ focused on ‘the bat fau­na of cen­tral Asia, which link Chi­na to east­ern Europe’ and the nov­el bat coro­n­avirus lin­eages dis­cov­ered dur­ing the study were found to be ‘close­ly relat­ed to bat coro­n­avirus­es from Chi­na, France, Spain, and South Africa, sug­gest­ing that co-cir­cu­la­tion of coro­n­avirus­es is com­mon in mul­ti­ple bat species with over­lap­ping geo­graph­i­cal dis­tri­b­u­tions.’ In oth­er words, the coro­n­avirus­es dis­cov­ered in this study were iden­ti­fied in bat pop­u­la­tions that migrate between Chi­na and Kaza­khstan, among oth­er coun­tries, and is close­ly relat­ed to bat coro­n­avirus­es in sev­er­al coun­tries, includ­ing Chi­na. . . .”
  • Net­worked with Chi­nese research facil­i­ties in Wuhan. ” . . . . The USAMRIID’s prob­lem­at­ic record of safe­ty at such facil­i­ties is of par­tic­u­lar con­cern in light of the recent coro­n­avirus out­break in Chi­na. As this report will soon reveal, this is because USAMRIID has a decades-old and close part­ner­ship with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wuhan’s Insti­tute of Med­ical Virol­o­gy, which is locat­ed in the epi­cen­ter of the cur­rent out­break. . . . Duke Uni­ver­si­ty is also joint­ly part­nered with China’s Wuhan Uni­ver­si­ty, which is based in the city where the cur­rent coro­n­avirus out­break began, which result­ed in the open­ing of the Chi­na-based Duke Kun­shan Uni­ver­si­ty (DKU) in 2018. Notably, China’s Wuhan Uni­ver­si­ty — in addi­tion to its part­ner­ship with Duke — also includes a mul­ti-lab Insti­tute of Med­ical Virol­o­gy that has worked close­ly with the US Army Med­ical Research Insti­tute for Infec­tious Dis­eases since the 1980s, accord­ing to its web­site. . . . ”
  • Into the DNA of both Russ­ian and Chi­nese pop­u­la­tions. ” . . . . Since the Pen­ta­gon began ‘redesign­ing’ its poli­cies and research towards a ‘long war’ with Rus­sia and Chi­na, the Russ­ian mil­i­tary has accused the U.S. mil­i­tary of har­vest­ing DNA from Rus­sians as part of a covert bioweapon pro­gram, a charge that the Pen­ta­gon has adamant­ly denied. Major Gen­er­al Igor Kir­illov, the head of the Russ­ian military’s radi­a­tion, chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal pro­tec­tion unit who made these claims, also assert­ed that the U.S. was devel­op­ing such weapons in close prox­im­i­ty to Russ­ian and Chi­nese bor­ders. Chi­na has also accused the U.S. mil­i­tary of har­vest­ing DNA from Chi­nese cit­i­zens with ill inten­tions, such as when 200,000 Chi­nese farm­ers were used in 12 genet­ic exper­i­ments with­out informed con­sent. Those exper­i­ments had been con­duct­ed by Har­vard researchers as part of a U.S. gov­ern­ment-fund­ed project. . . .”
  • Into “gene-driving”–a biotech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment that can per­ma­nent­ly alter the genet­ic make­up of entire pop­u­la­tion groups and lead to the extinc­tion of oth­er groups. ” . . . . Con­cerns about Pen­ta­gon exper­i­ments with bio­log­i­cal weapons have gar­nered renewed media atten­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly after it was revealed in 2017 that DARPA was the top fun­der of the con­tro­ver­sial ‘gene dri­ve’ tech­nol­o­gy, which has the pow­er to per­ma­nent­ly alter the genet­ics of entire pop­u­la­tions while tar­get­ing oth­ers for extinc­tion. At least two of DARPA’s stud­ies using this con­tro­ver­sial tech­nol­o­gy were clas­si­fied and ‘focused on the poten­tial mil­i­tary appli­ca­tion of gene dri­ve tech­nol­o­gy and use of gene dri­ves in agri­cul­ture,’ accord­ing to media reports. The rev­e­la­tion came after an orga­ni­za­tion called the ETC Group obtained over 1,000 emails on the military’s inter­est in the tech­nol­o­gy as part of a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act (FOIA) request. Co-direc­tor of the ETC Group Jim Thomas said that this tech­nol­o­gy may be used as a bio­log­i­cal weapon: ‘Gene dri­ves are a pow­er­ful and dan­ger­ous new tech­nol­o­gy and poten­tial bio­log­i­cal weapons could have dis­as­trous impacts on peace, food secu­ri­ty and the envi­ron­ment, espe­cial­ly if mis­used, The fact that gene dri­ve devel­op­ment is now being pri­mar­i­ly fund­ed and struc­tured by the US mil­i­tary rais­es alarm­ing ques­tions about this entire field.’ . . . .”
  • Into over­lap­ping tech­nolo­gies man­i­fest­ing philoso­phies of eugen­ics and eth­nic cleans­ing. ” . . . . In addi­tion, one pre­lim­i­nary study on the coro­n­avirus respon­si­ble for the cur­rent out­break found that the recep­tor, Angiotensin-con­vert­ing enzyme 2 (ACE2), is not only the same as that used by the SARS coro­n­avirus, but that East Asians present a much high­er ratio of lung cells that express that recep­tor than the oth­er eth­nic­i­ties (Cau­casian and African-Amer­i­can) includ­ed in the study. . . . the U.S. Air Force pub­lished a doc­u­ment enti­tled ‘Biotech­nol­o­gy: Genet­i­cal­ly Engi­neered Pathogens,’ which con­tains the fol­low­ing pas­sage: ‘The JASON group, com­posed of aca­d­e­m­ic sci­en­tists, served as tech­ni­cal advis­ers to the U. S. gov­ern­ment. Their study gen­er­at­ed six broad class­es of genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered pathogens that could pose seri­ous threats to soci­ety. These include but are not lim­it­ed to bina­ry bio­log­i­cal weapons, design­er genes, gene ther­a­py as a weapon, stealth virus­es, host-swap­ping dis­eases, and design­er dis­eases (empha­sis added).’ . . .”
  • Into the use of “Insect Allies” to sup­pos­ed­ly pro­vide crops with pro­tec­tion against pests and disease–a tech­no­log­i­cal pro­gram crit­ics have charged masks an offen­sive bio­log­i­cal war­fare man­i­fes­ta­tion. ” . . . . The most recent exam­ple of this involved DARPA’s “Insect Allies” pro­gram, which offi­cial­ly “aims to pro­tect the U.S. agri­cul­tur­al food sup­ply by deliv­er­ing pro­tec­tive genes to plants via insects, which are respon­si­ble for the trans­mis­sion of most plant virus­es” and to ensure “food secu­ri­ty in the event of a major threat,” accord­ing to both DARPA and media reports. How­ev­er, a group of well-respect­ed, inde­pen­dent sci­en­tists revealed in a scathing analy­sis of the pro­gram that, far from a ‘defen­sive’ research project, the Insect Allies pro­gram was aimed at cre­at­ing and deliv­er­ing ‘new class of bio­log­i­cal weapon.’ The sci­en­tists, writ­ing in the jour­nal Sci­ence and led by Richard Guy Reeves, from the Max Planck Insti­tute for Evo­lu­tion­ary Biol­o­gy in Ger­many, warned that DARPA’s pro­gram — which uses insects as the vehi­cle for as hor­i­zon­tal envi­ron­men­tal genet­ic alter­ation agents (HEGAAS) — revealed ‘an inten­tion to devel­op a means of deliv­ery of HEGAAs for offen­sive pur­pos­es (empha­sis added).’ . . .”
  • Osten­si­bly aimed at pre­vent­ing pan­demics but–very possibly–masking prepa­ra­tions for offen­sive bio­log­i­cal war­fare projects. ” . . . . Many of these recent research projects are relat­ed to DARPA’s Pre­vent­ing Emerg­ing Path­o­gen­ic Threats, or PREEMPT pro­gram, which was offi­cial­ly announced in April 2018. PREEMPT focus­es specif­i­cal­ly on ani­mal reser­voirs of dis­ease, specif­i­cal­ly bats, and DARPA even not­ed in its press release in the pro­gram that it ‘is aware of biosafe­ty and biose­cu­ri­ty sen­si­tiv­i­ties that could arise’ due to the nature of the research. . . . In addi­tion, while both DARPA’s PREEMPT pro­gram and the Pentagon’s open inter­est in bats as bioweapons were announced in 2018, the U.S. mil­i­tary — specif­i­cal­ly the Depart­ment of Defense’s Coop­er­a­tive Threat Reduc­tion Pro­gram — began fund­ing research involv­ing bats and dead­ly pathogens, includ­ing the coro­n­avirus­es MERS and SARS, a year pri­or in 2017. . . .”
  • That is heav­i­ly net­worked with the U.S. health and med­ical infra­struc­tures. ” . . . . The sec­ond phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny that was select­ed by CEPI to devel­op a vac­cine for the new coro­n­avirus is Mod­er­na Inc., which will devel­op a vac­cine for the nov­el coro­n­avirus of con­cern in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the U.S. NIH and which will be fund­ed entire­ly by CEPI. The vac­cine in ques­tion, as opposed to Inovio’s DNA vac­cine, will be a mes­sen­ger RNA (mRNA) vac­cine. Though dif­fer­ent than a DNA vac­cine, mRNA vac­cines still use genet­ic mate­r­i­al ‘to direct the body’s cells to pro­duce intra­cel­lu­lar, mem­brane or secret­ed pro­teins.’ Moderna’s mRNA treat­ments, includ­ing its mRNA vac­cines, were large­ly devel­oped using a $25 mil­lion grant from DARPA and it often touts is strate­gic alliance with DARPA in press releas­es. . . .”
  • That is heav­i­ly net­worked with firms cho­sen to devel­op vac­cines for the Covid-19. ” . . . . the very com­pa­nies recent­ly cho­sen to devel­op a vac­cine to com­bat the coro­n­avirus out­break are them­selves strate­gic allies of DARPA. . . . For instance, the top fun­ders of Inovio Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals include both DARPA and the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduc­tion Agency (DTRA) and the com­pa­ny has received mil­lions in dol­lars in grants from DARPA, includ­ing a $45 mil­lion grant to devel­op a vac­cine for Ebo­la. Inovio spe­cial­izes in the cre­ation of DNA immunother­a­pies and DNA vac­cines, which con­tain genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered DNA that caus­es the cells of the recip­i­ent to pro­duce an anti­gen and can per­ma­nent­ly alter a person’s DNA. Inovio pre­vi­ous­ly devel­oped a DNA vac­cine for the Zika virus, but — to date — no DNA vac­cine has been approved for use in humans in the Unit­ed States. Inovio was also recent­ly award­ed over $8 mil­lion from the U.S. mil­i­tary to devel­op a small, portable intra­der­mal device for deliv­er­ing DNA vac­cines joint­ly devel­oped by Inovio and USAMRIID.”
  • Into vac­cines that have not been used on human beings and that use gene-alter­ing manip­u­la­tion that alarms crit­ics. ” . . . . Not only that, but these DARPA-backed com­pa­nies are devel­op­ing con­tro­ver­sial DNA and mRNA vac­cines for this par­tic­u­lar coro­n­avirus strain, a cat­e­go­ry of vac­cine that has nev­er pre­vi­ous­ly been approved for human use in the Unit­ed States. . . . Inovio’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with the U.S. mil­i­tary in regards to DNA vac­cines is noth­ing new, as their past efforts to devel­op a DNA vac­cine for both Ebo­la and Mar­burg virus were also part of what Inovio’s CEO Dr. Joseph Kim called its ‘active biode­fense pro­gram’ that has ‘gar­nered mul­ti­ple grants from the Depart­ment of Defense, Defense Threat Reduc­tion Agency (DTRA), Nation­al Insti­tute of Aller­gy and Infec­tious Dis­eases (NIAID), and oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies.’ . . . . ”
  • The type of vac­cines that are being researched by Mod­er­na and Inovio has gen­er­at­ed alarm, which may be cir­cum­vent­ed by the fear sur­round­ing the Covid-19 out­break: ” . . . . Both DNA and mRNA vac­cines involve the intro­duc­tion of for­eign and engi­neered genet­ic mate­r­i­al into a person’s cells and past stud­ies have found that such vac­cines ‘pos­sess sig­nif­i­cant unpre­dictabil­i­ty and a num­ber of inher­ent harm­ful poten­tial haz­ards’ and that ‘there is inad­e­quate knowl­edge to define either the prob­a­bil­i­ty of unin­tend­ed events or the con­se­quences of genet­ic mod­i­fi­ca­tions.’ Nonethe­less, the cli­mate of fear sur­round­ing the coro­n­avirus out­break could be enough for the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor to devel­op and dis­trib­ute such con­tro­ver­sial treat­ments due to fear about the epi­dem­ic poten­tial of the cur­rent out­break. . . .”
  • Involv­ing the U.S. Army Med­ical Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­eases, locat­ed at Fort Det­rick, Mary­land, a facil­i­ty that was closed down in August of 2019 by the CDC for mul­ti­ple safe­ty vio­la­tions. ” . . . . The U.S. Army Med­ical Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­eases (USAMRIID) facil­i­ty at Fort Det­rick, Mary­land — the U.S. military’s lead lab­o­ra­to­ry for ‘bio­log­i­cal defense’ research since the late 1960s — was forced to halt all research it was con­duct­ing with a series of dead­ly pathogens after the CDC found that it lacked ‘suf­fi­cient sys­tems in place to decon­t­a­m­i­nate waste­water’ from its high­est-secu­ri­ty labs and fail­ure of staff to fol­low safe­ty pro­ce­dures, among oth­er laps­es. The facil­i­ty con­tains both lev­el 3 and lev­el 4 biosafe­ty labs. While it is unknown if exper­i­ments involv­ing coro­n­avirus­es were ongo­ing at the time, USAMRIID has recent­ly been involved in research born out of the Pentagon’s recent con­cern about the use of bats as bioweapons. . . .”
  • Into the appli­ca­tion of genet­ic engi­neer­ing in order to cre­ate eth­no-spe­cif­ic bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapons, as dis­cussed by the Project for a New Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry. ” . . . . In what is arguably the think tank’s most con­tro­ver­sial doc­u­ment, titled ‘Rebuild­ing America’s Defens­es,’ there are a few pas­sages that open­ly dis­cuss the util­i­ty of bioweapons, includ­ing the fol­low­ing sen­tences: ‘…com­bat like­ly will take place in new dimen­sions: in space, ‘cyber-space,’ and per­haps the world of microbes…advanced forms of bio­log­i­cal war­fare that can ‘tar­get’ spe­cif­ic geno­types may trans­form bio­log­i­cal war­fare from the realm of ter­ror to a polit­i­cal­ly use­ful tool.’ . . .”

2.  Next, the pro­gram reviews infor­ma­tion from FTR#1170.

In FTR #‘s 1157, 1158 and 1159, we high­light­ed very dis­turb­ing con­nec­tions between Peter Daszak and his Eco­Health Alliance and the Pen­ta­gon and USAID, a State Depart­ment sub­sidiary that serves as a fre­quent cov­er for CIA.

The Eco­Health Alliance–financed by USAID–partnered with the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy and Dr. Ralph Bar­ic of the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na at Chapel Hill to research bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es. A “chimeric” virus was cre­at­ed by Bar­ic under this pro­gram in 2015, and Bar­ic was sub­se­quent­ly select­ed to cre­ate the SARS Cov‑2 virus from scratch.

It is our con­sid­ered view that the WIV was set up for the blame for Covid-19, in a man­ner not unlike the “Paint­ing of Oswald Red” dis­cussed in–among oth­er pro­grams–FTR #‘s 925 and 926, as well as our series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio.

We have also not­ed the pro­found links between ele­ments of the mil­i­tary and treat­ment reg­i­mens (vac­cines and med­i­cines) for Covid-19.

A new arti­cle adds fur­ther depth to the alarm­ing con­nec­tions of Daszak, the Eco­Health Alliance and Jef­frey Sachs. (As dis­cussed in a num­ber of pro­grams, includ­ing the above-men­tioned FTR #‘s 1157, 1158 and 1159, Sachs presided over the Har­vard Insti­tute of Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment, a US-fund­ed orga­ni­za­tion that advised Boris Yeltsin’s dis­as­trous eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy in Rus­sia.)

Many in Rus­sia view Sachs as “an emis­sary either of Satan or the CIA.” Recent polit­i­cal incar­na­tions have him as a mem­ber of the [Bernie] Sanders Insti­tute and an advi­sor to AOC.

A bril­liant, insight­ful arti­cle by Sam Hus­sei­ni on Inde­pen­dent Sci­ence News pro­vides crit­i­cal depth to our pre­vi­ous cov­er­age of Cit­i­zen Daszak.

Hus­sei­ni notes that:

1.  The Pen­ta­gon and USAID (a State Depart­ment sub­sidiary that has fre­quent­ly front­ed for CIA) are the largest fun­ders of Eco­Health Alliance, which obscures this fact: “ . . . . Daszak’s Eco­Health Alliance obscures its Pen­ta­gon fund­ing. . . . Only buried under their ‘Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy,’ under a sec­tion titled ‘Eco­Health Alliance Pol­i­cy Regard­ing Con­flict of Inter­est in Research,’ does the Eco­Health Alliance con­cede it is the ‘recip­i­ent of var­i­ous grant awards from fed­er­al agen­cies includ­ing . . . . the US Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment and the Depart­ment of Defense.’ . . . Even this list­ing is decep­tive. It obscures that its two largest fun­ders are the Pen­ta­gon and the State Depart­ment (USAID) . . . . These two sources thus total over $103 mil­lion. . . .”
2. One of the prin­ci­pal advis­ers to Eco­Health Alliance is David Franz: ” . . . . The mil­i­tary links of the Eco­Health Alliance are not lim­it­ed to mon­ey and mind­set. One note­wor­thy ‘pol­i­cy advi­sor’ to the Eco­Health Alliance is David Franz. Franz is for­mer com­man­der of Fort Det­rick, which is the prin­ci­pal U.S. gov­ern­ment biowarfare/biodefense facil­i­ty. . . .”
3. Peter Daszak has high regards for Don­ald Rums­feld, whom he enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly quotes. (Rums­feld was Chair­man of the Board of Gilead Sci­ences for many years, leav­ing that posi­tion to become Sec­re­tary of Defense for George W. Bush. Rums­feld made mil­lions on his sale of Gilead stock, which soared in val­ue fol­low­ing the Pen­tagon’s pur­chase of Gilead­’s Tam­i­flu to com­bat a feared break­out of H5N1 influen­za. Gildead Sci­ences makes remde­sivir, which was being test­ed on rhe­sus macaques at the U.S. Army’s Med­ical Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­eases at Fort Det­rick in the spring of 2019. The USAAMRIID was shut down by the CDC in ear­ly August of 2019, in part for the improp­er dis­pos­al of waste from “non-human pri­mates” infect­ed with a “select agent” which has not been dis­closed for nation­al secu­ri­ty rea­sons.) ” . . . . ‘It’s an awe­some quote! And yes, it’s Don­ald Rums­feld, Jeff, and I know he’s a Repub­li­can, but — what a genius!’ . . .”
4. The close asso­ci­a­tion of Jef­frey Sachs and Daszak: ” . . . . In Sep­tem­ber, Sachs’ com­mis­sion [on the Lancet–D.E.] named Daszak to head up its com­mit­tee on the pandemic’s ori­gins. Daszak is also on the WHO’s com­mit­tee to inves­ti­gate the pandemic’s ori­gin. He is the only indi­vid­ual on both com­mit­tees. . . .”

“Peter Daszak’s Eco­Health Alliance Has Hid­den Almost $40 Mil­lion In Pen­ta­gon Fund­ing And Mil­i­ta­rized Pan­dem­ic Sci­ence” by Sam Hus­sei­ni; Inde­pen­dent Sci­ence News; 12/16/2020.

3.    Cen­tered pri­mar­i­ly on the work of respect­ed Chi­nese sci­en­tist Shi Zhengli and her gain-of-func­tion exper­i­ments on bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es, this arti­cle does points out that her work is inex­tri­ca­bly-linked with the Pen­ta­gon, USAID-fund­ed Eco­health Alliance.

Although Ms. Baden-May­er’s arti­cle uncrit­i­cal­ly presents mate­r­i­al from dubi­ous sources such as The Nation­al Review, it does not shirk on cov­er­age of the impor­tance of Dasza­k’s orga­ni­za­tion and the many mil­i­tary and nation­al secu­ri­ty links to the work at the WIV per­formed by Shi Zhengli and her col­leagues.

NB: A major–albeit under­stand­able– flaw in Ms. Baden-May­er’s research is the fact that nei­ther she, nor many of the peo­ple she quotes, takes stock of the fact that ANY VIRUS CAN BE SYNTHESIZED OR ALTERED IN A LABORATORY USING CONTEMPORARY TECHNOLOGY!

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: 

1. A Nation­al Insti­tute of Health query of the work at WIV, the ques­tions in which were pre­sent­ed to Dasza­k’s Eco­Health Alliance! ” . . . . The let­ter with these demands didn’t go to Shi or WIV, it went to Eco­Health Alliance, a U.S.-based non-prof­it fund­ed by the U.S. gov­ern­ment, includ­ing [pri­mar­i­ly] the U.S. mil­i­tary, to sup­port sci­en­tists work­ing in 30 coun­tries. Eco­Health Alliance is list­ed as a fund­ing source on some of Shi’s most con­tro­ver­sial papers. And Eco­Health Alliance sci­en­tists, includ­ing its pres­i­dent Peter Daszak, often co-author, with Shi, pub­lished papers. . . .”
2. Review of the oper­a­tional rela­tion­ship between Dasza­k’s orga­ni­za­tion, and Shi Zhengli’s coop­er­a­tion with Ralph Bar­ic: ” . . . . Shi’s most infa­mous Eco­Health Alliance-fund­ed paper is, ‘A SARS-Like Clus­ter of Cir­cu­lat­ing Bat Coro­n­avirus­es Shows Poten­tial for Human Emer­gence.’ In this con­tro­ver­sial gain-of-func­tion research col­lab­o­ra­tion with U.S. sci­en­tist Ralph Bar­ic of the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na at Chapel Hill, Shi and Bar­ic used genet­ic engi­neer­ing and syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy to weaponize a bat coro­n­avirus, max­i­miz­ing its poten­tial human infec­tiv­i­ty. . . .”
3. Review of the USAID fund­ing of the Eco­Health Alliance/Shi/Baric col­lab­o­ra­tion (USAID is a State Depart­ment sub­sidiary which serves as one of CIA’s most com­mon and insid­i­ous front orga­ni­za­tions. ) ” . . . . Shi’s fund­ing for this study came through a USAID Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic Threats-PRE­DICT grant to Eco­Health Alliance—but the record for this grant appears to have been scrubbed from the U.S. government’s data­base. . . .”
4. Review of the obfus­ca­tion of the USAID fund­ing for the Eco­Health Alliance for this peri­od. “. . . . Eco­Health Alliance was a PREDICT part­ner dur­ing the 2009–2014 fund­ing cycle, but there is no record of a USAID grant to Eco­Health Alliance for this time peri­od among the $100.9 mil­lion in grants it has received from the U.S. gov­ern­ment since 2003. . . .”
5. Dis­cus­sion of Shi/Daszak col­lab­o­ra­tion on on a key sequence–the RsSh­Co14-CoV Sequence: ” . . . . Shi’s con­tri­bu­tion to the work she did with Bar­ic was the ‘RsSHC014-CoV Sequence That Was Iso­lat­ed from Chi­nese Horse­shoe Bats.’ . . . . Shi Zhengli and Peter Daszak announced their dis­cov­ery of RsSHC014 in their 2013 paper, ‘Iso­la­tion and Char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of a Bat SARS-Like Coro­n­avirus that Uses the ACE2 Recep­tor,’ and stat­ed that it was found dur­ing ‘a 12-month lon­gi­tu­di­nal sur­vey (April 2011–September 2012) of SL-CoVs in a colony of Rhi­nolo­phus sini­cus at a sin­gle loca­tion in Kun­ming, Yun­nan Province, Chi­na.’ . . . .”
6. Fund­ing for the Kun­ming virus research came from a num­ber of insti­tu­tions, includ­ing the NIH and USAID, which both have col­lab­o­rat­ed with Pen­ta­gon and CIA in the past.
7. Eco­Health Alliance helped finance Shi’s research in Mojiang: ” . . . . Shi’s paper, ‘Coex­is­tence of Mul­ti­ple Coro­n­avirus­es in Sev­er­al Bat Colonies in an Aban­doned Mine­shaft,’ was writ­ten by a team of sci­en­tists who were all Chi­nese nation­als work­ing at Chi­nese insti­tu­tions. Nev­er­the­less, in addi­tion to fund­ing from the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, the authors acknowl­edged sup­port from the U.S. Nation­al Insti­tute of Aller­gies and Infec­tious Dis­ease (R01AI110964), a $3.7‑million grant to Eco­Health Alliance for ‘Under­stand­ing the Risk of Bat Coro­n­avirus Emer­gence,’ (2014–2025). . . .”
8. Fur­ther review of Shi’s research fund­ing from the Pen­ta­gon, via Eco­Health Alliance: ” . . . . Shi Zhengli and her col­lab­o­ra­tors are also fund­ed by the U.S. mil­i­tary. Peter Daszak’s Eco­Health Alliance cur­rent­ly receives more mon­ey from the Depart­ment of Defense’s Defense Threat Reduc­tion Agency (DTRA) for Sci­en­tif­ic Research Com­bat­ting Weapons of Mass Destruc­tion than any oth­er mil­i­tary contractor—$15 mil­lion (25.575 per­cent) of the $60.2 mil­lion dis­persed in the last 6 months. . . .”
9. More about mil­i­tary col­lab­o­ra­tion with Shi: ” . . . . In addi­tion to mil­i­tary fund­ing through DTRA, Shi’s paper was co-authored by two U.S. mil­i­tary sci­en­tists, Christo­pher C. Broder and Eric D. Laing of the Uni­formed Ser­vices Uni­ver­si­ty of the Health Sci­ences, Depart­ment of Micro­bi­ol­o­gy and Immunol­o­gy. . . .”
10. The Peo­ple’s Lib­er­a­tion Army assumed con­trol of the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy on Jan­u­ary 26, 2020 at the time that the genome for the SARS Cov‑2 was pub­lished: ” . . . . The Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy is China’s only biosafe­ty lev­el 4 lab. While it has always been under the con­trol of the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, since Jan­u­ary 26, 2020, it has been under the com­mand of the People’s Lib­er­a­tion Army, specif­i­cal­ly its top bio­log­i­cal-weapons spe­cial­ist, a major gen­er­al named Chen Wei. . . .”

A stun­ning­ly impor­tant por­tion of the paper mer­its high­light­ing at length: ” . . . . A Google Schol­ar search pro­duced two papers Shi has pub­lished that lists DTRA as a fun­der.

To see how the first paper, ‘Com­par­a­tive Analy­sis of Bat Genomes Pro­vides Insight into the Evo­lu­tion of Flight and Immu­ni­ty,’ is rel­e­vant to bio­log­i­cal weapon­ry, it helps to under­stand the military’s inter­est in bat immu­ni­ty.

As Boston Uni­ver­si­ty micro­bi­ol­o­gist Thomas Kepler explained to the Wash­ing­ton Post in 2018, the bat’s unique approach to viral infec­tion explains why virus­es that trans­fer from bats to humans are so severe.

This was the sub­ject of a paper, ‘The Egypt­ian Rousette Genome Reveals Unex­pect­ed Fea­tures of Bat Antivi­ral Immu­ni­ty,’ that he pub­lished with mil­i­tary sci­en­tists and DTRA fund­ing.

‘A virus that has co-evolved with the bat’s antivi­ral sys­tem is com­plete­ly out of its ele­ment in the human,’ Kepler said. ‘That’s why it is so dead­ly — the human immune sys­tem is over­whelmed by the inflam­ma­to­ry response.’

The bat immune sys­tem responds very dif­fer­ent­ly from ours to viral infec­tion. Instead of attack­ing and killing an infect­ed cell, which leads to a cas­cade of inflam­ma­to­ry respons­es, the bat immune sys­tem can starve the virus by turn­ing down cel­lu­lar metab­o­lism.

The bat ori­gin of SARS-CoV­‑2 may explain the cytokine storms that are has­ten­ing some COVID-19 deaths. Accord­ing to Web­MD:

‘Cer­tain kinds of cytokines trig­ger cell death. When you have many cells doing this at the same time, a lot of tis­sue can die. In COVID-19, that tis­sue is most­ly in the lung. As the tis­sue breaks down, the walls of the lungs’ tiny air sacs become leaky and fill with flu­id, caus­ing pneu­mo­nia and starv­ing the blood of oxy­gen.’

Kepler says the mil­i­tary is using its exper­i­ments on bat immu­ni­ty to ‘devel­op drugs that damp­en down inflam­ma­tion and arrest the virus by depriv­ing it of what it needs to grow rather than try­ing to kill it out­right.’ But, it clear­ly has anoth­er objec­tive, as well: to make virus­es more dead­ly by ‘pas­sag­ing’ them through bats. . . .”

“Shi Zhengli: Weaponiz­ing Coro­n­avirus­es with Pen­ta­gon Fund­ing, at a Chi­nese Mil­i­tary Lab” by Alex­is Baden-May­er; Organ­ic Con­sumers Asso­ci­a­tion; 09/24/2020.

. . . .Shi’s work involves col­lect­ing bat virus­es and using tech­niques of genet­ic engi­neer­ing and syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy to enable these virus­es to infect human beings.

Since the Bio­log­i­cal Weapons Con­ven­tion took effect, what sci­en­tists like Shi do has been called “gain-of-func­tion” research or “dual-use research of con­cern” (DURC).

In oth­er words, Shi, and oth­er sci­en­tists like her, are in the busi­ness of weaponiz­ing virus­es by genet­i­cal­ly engi­neer­ing or oth­er­wise alter­ing them to make them more lethal, and more eas­i­ly trans­mit­ted, to humans.

Did Shi have a hand in cre­at­ing the SARS-CoV­‑2 virus caus­ing the cur­rent COVID-19 pan­dem­ic?

The Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health is inves­ti­gat­ing. . . .

. . . . The let­ter with these demands didn’t go to Shi or WIV, it went to Eco­Health Alliance, a U.S.-based non-prof­it fund­ed by the U.S. gov­ern­ment, includ­ing the U.S. mil­i­tary, to sup­port sci­en­tists work­ing in 30 coun­tries. Eco­Health Alliance is list­ed as a fund­ing source on some of Shi’s most con­tro­ver­sial papers. And Eco­Health Alliance sci­en­tists, includ­ing its pres­i­dent Peter Daszak, often co-author, with Shi, pub­lished papers.

Shi’s most infa­mous Eco­Health Alliance-fund­ed paper is, “A SARS-Like Clus­ter of Cir­cu­lat­ing Bat Coro­n­avirus­es Shows Poten­tial for Human Emer­gence.” In this con­tro­ver­sial gain-of-func­tion research col­lab­o­ra­tion with U.S. sci­en­tist Ralph Bar­ic of the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na at Chapel Hill, Shi and Bar­ic used genet­ic engi­neer­ing and syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy to weaponize a bat coro­n­avirus, max­i­miz­ing its poten­tial human infec­tiv­i­ty.

Shi’s fund­ing for this study came through a USAID Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic Threats-PRE­DICT grant to Eco­Health Alliance—but the record for this grant appears to have been scrubbed from the U.S. government’s data­base.

Eco­Health Alliance was a PREDICT part­ner dur­ing the 2009–2014 fund­ing cycle, but there is no record of a USAID grant to Eco­Health Alliance for this time peri­od among the $100.9 mil­lion in grants it has received from the U.S. gov­ern­ment since 2003.

Shi’s con­tri­bu­tion to the work she did with Bar­ic was the “RsSHC014-CoV Sequence That Was Iso­lat­ed from Chi­nese Horse­shoe Bats.”

Where did RsSHC014 come from?

Shi Zhengli and Peter Daszak announced their dis­cov­ery of RsSHC014 in their 2013 paper, “Iso­la­tion and Char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of a Bat SARS-Like Coro­n­avirus that Uses the ACE2 Recep­tor,” and stat­ed that it was found dur­ing “a 12-month lon­gi­tu­di­nal sur­vey (April 2011–September 2012) of SL-CoVs in a colony of Rhi­nolo­phus sini­cus at a sin­gle loca­tion in Kun­ming, Yun­nan Province, Chi­na.”

What they don’t men­tion in their paper is that, in Kun­ming dur­ing this same peri­od (April and May of 2012), six men were hos­pi­tal­ized after remov­ing bat feces from a cave, and that the WIV was involved in their treat­ment, test­ing the patients for Serum IgM, the first anti­body the body makes when it fights a new infec­tion. . . .

. . . . Shi Zhengli told her ver­sion of the sto­ry about the min­ers to Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can:

“[In 2012] Shi’s team had been called in to inves­ti­gate the virus pro­file of a mine shaft in Yunnan’s moun­tain­ous Mojiang County—famous for its fer­ment­ed Pu’er tea—where six min­ers suf­fered from pneu­mo­nia like dis­eases and two died. After sam­pling the cave for a year, the researchers dis­cov­ered a diverse group of coro­n­avirus­es in six bat species. “In many cas­es, mul­ti­ple viral strains had infect­ed a sin­gle ani­mal, turn­ing it into a fly­ing fac­to­ry for new virus­es.

“‘The mine shaft stunk like hell,’ says Shi, who, like her col­leagues, went in wear­ing a pro­tec­tive mask and cloth­ing. ‘Bat guano, cov­ered in fun­gus, lit­tered the cave.’ Although the fun­gus turned out to be the pathogen that had sick­ened the min­ers, she says it would have been only a mat­ter of time before they caught the coro­n­avirus­es if the mine had not been prompt­ly shut.”

This incon­sis­ten­cy between Shi’s sto­ry and the master’s the­sis is hard to rec­on­cile. Con­sid­er­ing WIV’s involve­ment in the treat­ment of the min­ers, how could Shi have not known that the min­ers died of a SARS-like virus, and not a fun­gal infec­tion, as she told Scien­tif­ic Amer­i­can?

The virus Shi says she found in Mojiang was RaTG13. In a paper pub­lished on Feb­ru­ary 3, 2020, Shi announced that RaTG13 was 96 per­cent iden­ti­cal to the genom­ic sequence of the nov­el coro­n­avirus, even­tu­al­ly named SARS-CoV­‑2. [This was rough­ly a week after the genome of the virus was first pub­lished and the People’s Lib­er­a­tion Army took over the man­age­ment of the WIV—D.E.]

Here’s anoth­er trou­bling incon­sis­ten­cy: Accord­ing to the Genome Sequence Archive, RaTG13 was “was extract­ed from bron­choalve­o­lar lavage flu­id,” which sug­gests that the virus was tak­en from a sick per­son, but RaTG13 is sup­pos­ed­ly an RNA sequence tak­en from a bat fecal swab.

Daszak has his own ver­sion of the sto­ry of the dis­cov­ery of RaTG13. Daszak claims they took the virus back to the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy and left it in a freez­er for sev­en years untouched. But, as Boston Mag­a­zine report­ed, this claim was dis­cov­ered to be untrue by “sci­en­tist turned detec­tive” Ali­na Chan, who fact-checked him on Twit­ter:

Even though that virus had killed three min­ers, Daszak said it wasn’t con­sid­ered a pri­or­i­ty to study at the time. “We were look­ing for SARS-relat­ed virus­es, and this one was 20 per­cent dif­fer­ent. We thought it was inter­est­ing, but not high risk. So we didn’t do any­thing about it and put it in the freez­er,” he told a reporter from Wired. It was only in 2020, he main­tained, that they start­ed look­ing into it once they real­ized its sim­i­lar­i­ty to COVID-19. But Chan point­ed to an online data­base show­ing that the WIV had been genet­i­cal­ly sequenc­ing the mine virus in 2017 and 2018, ana­lyz­ing it in a way they had done in the past with oth­er virus­es in prepa­ra­tion for run­ning exper­i­ments with them. Diplo­mat­ic yet dead­pan, she wrote, “I think Daszak was mis­in­formed.”. . .

Why the lies? Why won’t Shi and Daszak admit that WIV took sam­ples from the hos­pi­tal­ized min­ers for diag­no­sis and study, know­ing that the patients died from a SARS-like bat coro­n­avirus? Why do they deny that the bat coro­n­avirus most like SARS-CoV­‑2 was col­lect­ed in the mine where the work­ers were exposed? Why don’t they acknowl­edge that this is a virus that was active­ly sequenced, ana­lyzed and exper­i­ment­ed on, not one that had been for­got­ten in a freez­er for sev­en years?

Are they afraid to admit that the first SARS-like coro­n­avirus­es that use the ACE2 recep­tor was dis­cov­ered in humans in a hos­pi­tal, not bats in a cave?

Do they fear the public’s reac­tion to the idea of gain-of-func­tion researchers tak­ing advan­tage of the min­ers’ grue­some deaths to har­vest a pathogen unique­ly primed to infect human cells? . . . .

. . . . Who fund­ed the Kun­ming virus hunt?

In addi­tion to fund­ing from Chi­na and Aus­tralia, the Kun­ming virus hunt report­ed in “Iso­la­tion and Char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of a Bat SARS-Like Coro­n­avirus that Uses the ACE2 Recep­tor,” was sup­port­ed by:

• Nation­al Insti­tute of Aller­gy and Infec­tious Dis­eases (NIAID) award num­ber R01AI079231, a $2.6‑million grant to Eco­Health Alliance for “Risk of Viral Emer­gence from Bats,” (2008–2013).
• NIH and Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion (NSF) “Ecol­o­gy and Evo­lu­tion of Infec­tious Dis­eases” $3.7‑million award from the NIH Fog­a­r­ty Inter­na­tion­al Cen­ter (R01TW005869) to Eco­Health Alliance for “The Ecol­o­gy, Emer­gence and Pan­dem­ic Poten­tial of Nipah Virus in Bangladesh,” (2002–2013).
• A $300,000 award from the NIH Fog­a­r­ty Inter­na­tion­al Cen­ter sup­port­ed by Inter­na­tion­al Influen­za Funds from the Office of the Sec­re­tary of the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices (R56TW009502) to Eco­Health Alliance for “Com­par­a­tive Spillover Dynam­ics of Avian Influen­za in Endem­ic Coun­tries,” (2012–2017).
• Unit­ed States Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment (USAID) Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic Threats PREDICT, amount unknown.

Who fund­ed Shi’s virus hunt­ing in Mojiang?

Shi’s paper, “Coex­is­tence of Mul­ti­ple Coro­n­avirus­es in Sev­er­al Bat Colonies in an Aban­doned Mine­shaft,” was writ­ten by a team of sci­en­tists who were all Chi­nese nation­als work­ing at Chi­nese insti­tu­tions. Nev­er­the­less, in addi­tion to fund­ing from the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, the authors acknowl­edged sup­port from the U.S. Nation­al Insti­tute of Aller­gies and Infec­tious Dis­ease (R01AI110964), a $3.7‑million grant to Eco­Health Alliance for “Under­stand­ing the Risk of Bat Coro­n­avirus Emer­gence,” (2014–2025).

Shi’s Pen­ta­gon fund­ing

Shi Zhengli and her col­lab­o­ra­tors are also fund­ed by the U.S. mil­i­tary. Peter Daszak’s Eco­Health Alliance cur­rent­ly receives more mon­ey from the Depart­ment of Defense’s Defense Threat Reduc­tion Agency (DTRA) for Sci­en­tif­ic Research Com­bat­ting Weapons of Mass Destruc­tion than any oth­er mil­i­tary contractor—$15 mil­lion (25.575 per­cent) of the $60.2 mil­lion dis­persed in the last 6 months.

A Google Schol­ar search pro­duced two papers Shi has pub­lished that lists DTRA as a fun­der.

To see how the first paper, “Com­par­a­tive Analy­sis of Bat Genomes Pro­vides Insight into the Evo­lu­tion of Flight and Immu­ni­ty,” is rel­e­vant to bio­log­i­cal weapon­ry, it helps to under­stand the military’s inter­est in bat immu­ni­ty.

As Boston Uni­ver­si­ty micro­bi­ol­o­gist Thomas Kepler explained to the Wash­ing­ton Post in 2018, the bat’s unique approach to viral infec­tion explains why virus­es that trans­fer from bats to humans are so severe.

This was the sub­ject of a paper, “The Egypt­ian Rousette Genome Reveals Unex­pect­ed Fea­tures of Bat Antivi­ral Immu­ni­ty,” that he pub­lished with mil­i­tary sci­en­tists and DTRA fund­ing.

“A virus that has co-evolved with the bat’s antivi­ral sys­tem is com­plete­ly out of its ele­ment in the human,” Kepler said. “That’s why it is so dead­ly — the human immune sys­tem is over­whelmed by the inflam­ma­to­ry response.”

The bat immune sys­tem responds very dif­fer­ent­ly from ours to viral infec­tion. Instead of attack­ing and killing an infect­ed cell, which leads to a cas­cade of inflam­ma­to­ry respons­es, the bat immune sys­tem can starve the virus by turn­ing down cel­lu­lar metab­o­lism.

The bat ori­gin of SARS-CoV­‑2 may explain the cytokine storms that are has­ten­ing some COVID-19 deaths. Accord­ing to Web­MD:

“Cer­tain kinds of cytokines trig­ger cell death. When you have many cells doing this at the same time, a lot of tis­sue can die. In COVID-19, that tis­sue is most­ly in the lung. As the tis­sue breaks down, the walls of the lungs’ tiny air sacs become leaky and fill with flu­id, caus­ing pneu­mo­nia and starv­ing the blood of oxy­gen.”

Kepler says the mil­i­tary is using its exper­i­ments on bat immu­ni­ty to “devel­op drugs that damp­en down inflam­ma­tion and arrest the virus by depriv­ing it of what it needs to grow rather than try­ing to kill it out­right.” But, it clear­ly has anoth­er objec­tive, as well: to make virus­es more dead­ly by “pas­sag­ing” them through bats.

With­out stricter enforce­ment of the Bio­log­i­cal Weapons Con­ven­tion, it is impos­si­ble to pre­vent so-called “defen­sive” pro­grams from pro­duc­ing bio­log­i­cal weapons, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing the stealth and plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty with which bio­log­i­cal weapons can be used, and how vul­ner­a­ble labs are to acci­dents and “miss­ing” agents.

The reg­u­la­to­ry chal­lenges asso­ci­at­ed with try­ing to pre­vent defen­sive bio­log­i­cal weapons research from being used offen­sive­ly were high­light­ed recent­ly in India’s reac­tion to Shi’s oth­er DTRA fund­ed paper, “Filovirus-reac­tive anti­bod­ies in humans and bats in North­east India imply zoonot­ic spillover,” pub­lished in 2019.

The study alarmed the pub­lic by find­ing “the pres­ence of filovirus (e.g. ebolavirus, mar­burgvirus and dianlovirus) reac­tive anti­bod­ies in both human (e.g. bat hunters) and bat pop­u­la­tions in North­east India, a region with no his­tor­i­cal record of Ebo­la virus dis­ease.”

The Hin­du report­ed that for­eign enti­ties oper­at­ing the study should have been required to seek spe­cial per­mis­sion to access live sam­ples of bats and human bat hunters, but they did not do so. The Indi­an Coun­cil of Med­ical Research cre­at­ed a five-mem­ber com­mit­tee to inves­ti­gate.

In addi­tion to mil­i­tary fund­ing through DTRA, Shi’s paper was co-authored by two U.S. mil­i­tary sci­en­tists, Christo­pher C. Broder and Eric D. Laing of the Uni­formed Ser­vices Uni­ver­si­ty of the Health Sci­ences, Depart­ment of Micro­bi­ol­o­gy and Immunol­o­gy.

China’s People’s Lib­er­a­tion Army con­trols the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy

The Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy is China’s only biosafe­ty lev­el 4 lab. While it has always been under the con­trol of the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, since Jan­u­ary 26, 2020, it has been under the com­mand of the People’s Lib­er­a­tion Army, specif­i­cal­ly its top bio­log­i­cal-weapons spe­cial­ist, a major gen­er­al named Chen Wei. . . .