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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

ANOTHER REVEALING VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24

Dave Emory has launched a Patre­on Site: www.patreon.com/DaveEmory

COMMENT: Some arti­cles in FTR#1243 war­rant clos­er scruti­ny. 

In that pro­gram, as well as FTR#‘s 12351238 and 1239, we have high­light­ed indi­ca­tions that Rus­sia has uncov­ered U.S.-funded bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­grams in Ukraine.

One of the most impor­tant of these involves a firm called Metabio­ta, net­worked with Eco­Health Alliance and with a pres­ence expe­dit­ed by Hunter Biden.

Although heav­i­ly spun–as would be expect­ed from a Dai­ly Mail article–this sto­ry not only has impor­tant impli­ca­tions for the war in Ukraine, but also res­onates with our long series on “The Oswald Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy.”

We note that there are sig­nif­i­cant con­nec­tions between the agency over­see­ing the Ukrain­ian projects and insti­tu­tions impli­cat­ed in the appar­ent “bio-skull­dug­gery” sur­round­ing the U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare gam­bit involv­ing what Mr. Emory has termed “The Oswald Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy.” This is dis­cussed in: FTR#‘s 1157–1159, 1170, 1183 through 1193, and 1215.

The essence of the “Oswald Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy” gam­bit con­cerns the DTRA and Pen­ta­gon fund­ing of bat-borne coro­n­avirus research at the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy, much of it through Peter Dasza­k’s Eco­Health Alliance. Once the research was com­plete, it result­ed in pub­li­ca­tion which includ­ed the genome of the bat virus­es being researched. Using tech­nol­o­gy dis­cussed below, the virus­es were then syn­the­sized from scratch and pop­u­la­tion groups were vec­tored with the same viral strains being researched by the WIV. 

It turns out that Hunter Biden–a mem­ber of the board of direc­tors at Burisma–was instru­men­tal in secur­ing fund­ing for Eco­Health Alliance part­ner Metabio­ta, described in a screen shot of an e‑mail as being “to the DOA what Palan­tir is to CIA.”

Both Eco­Health Alliance and Metabio­ta have been involved with bat-borne coro­n­avirus at the WIV.

Note that–” . . . . ‘His [Hunter Biden’s] father was the Vice Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States and in charge of rela­tions with Ukraine.’ . . .”

Pre­vi­ous­ly we have not­ed then Vice-Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s close rela­tion­ship with U.S. Ambas­sador Geof­frey Pyatt and Ukraina­ian fas­cist Andriy Paru­biy dur­ing the Maid­an coup, which cen­tered on false-flag sniper killings from build­ings con­trolled by Svo­bo­da (for­mer­ly the Social Nation­al Par­ty of Ukraine, found­ed by Paru­biy.)

High­lights of the Dis­cus­sion:

  • ” . . . . The com­man­der of the Russ­ian Nuclear, Bio­log­i­cal and Chem­i­cal Pro­tec­tion Forces, claimed there was a ‘scheme of inter­ac­tion between US gov­ern­ment agen­cies and Ukrain­ian bio­log­i­cal objects’ and point­ed to the ‘financ­ing of such activ­i­ties by struc­tures close to the cur­rent US lead­er­ship, in par­tic­u­lar the invest­ment fund Rose­mont Seneca, which is head­ed by Hunter Biden.’. . .”
  • ” . . . . Moscow’s claim that Hunter Biden helped finance a US mil­i­tary ‘bioweapons’ research pro­gram in Ukraine is at least par­tial­ly true, accord­ing to new emails obtained exclu­sive­ly by DailyMail.com. . . .”
  • ” . . . . emails from Hunter’s aban­doned lap­top show he helped secure mil­lions of dol­lars of fund­ing for Metabio­ta, a Depart­ment of Defense con­trac­tor spe­cial­iz­ing in research on pan­dem­ic-caus­ing dis­eases that could be used as bioweapons. . . .”
  • ” . . . . Metabio­ta has been an offi­cial part­ner of Eco­Health Alliance since 2014, accord­ing to its web­site. . . .”
  • ” . . . . He also intro­duced Metabio­ta to an alleged­ly cor­rupt Ukrain­ian gas firm, Buris­ma, for a ‘sci­ence project’ involv­ing high biose­cu­ri­ty lev­el labs in Ukraine . . . .”
  • ” . . . . Emails and defense con­tract data reviewed by DailyMail.com sug­gest that Hunter had a promi­nent role in mak­ing sure Metabio­ta was able to con­duct its pathogen research just a few hun­dred miles from the bor­der with Rus­sia. . . .”
  • ” . . . . Metabio­ta has worked in Ukraine for Black & Veatch, a US defense con­trac­tor with deep ties to mil­i­tary intel­li­gence agen­cies, which built secure labs in Ukraine that ana­lyzed killer dis­eases and bioweapons. . . .”
  • ” . . . . Hunter was also par­tic­u­lar­ly involved in Metabio­ta’s oper­a­tions in Ukraine. Hunter’s pitch­es to investors claimed that they not only orga­nized fund­ing for the firm, they also helped it ‘get new cus­tomers’ includ­ing ‘gov­ern­ment agen­cies in case of Metabio­ta’. . . .”
  • ” . . . . For­mer senior CIA offi­cer Sam Fad­dis, who has reviewed emails on Hunter’s lap­top, told DailyMail.com that the offer to help assert Ukraine’s inde­pen­dence was odd for a biotech exec­u­tive [Metabio­ta vice-pres­i­dent Mary Gut­tieri]. ‘It rais­es the ques­tion, what is the real pur­pose of this ven­ture? It’s very odd,’ he said. . . .”
  • ” . . . . Gut­tieri had a lead­ing role in Metabio­ta’s Ukraine oper­a­tions, meet­ing with oth­er com­pa­ny exec­u­tives and US and Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary offi­cials in Octo­ber 2016 to dis­cuss ‘coop­er­a­tion in sur­veil­lance and pre­ven­tion of espe­cial­ly dan­ger­ous infec­tious dis­eases, includ­ing zoonot­ic dis­eases in Ukraine and neigh­bor­ing coun­tries’ accord­ing to a 2016 report by the Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­ter in Ukraine. . . .”
  • ” . . . . Four days after Gut­tier­i’s April 2014 email, Buris­ma exec­u­tive Vadym Pozharskyi wrote to Hunter reveal­ing that the then-Vice Pres­i­den­t’s son had pitched a ‘sci­ence project’ involv­ing Buris­ma and Metabio­ta in Ukraine. ‘As I under­stand the Metabio­ta was a sub­con­tract to prin­ci­pal con­tac­tor of the DoD B&V [Black & Veatch]. . . .”
  • ” . . . . Fad­dis told DailyMail.com that the attempt to get Metabio­ta to form a part­ner­ship with Buris­ma was a per­plex­ing and wor­ry­ing rev­e­la­tion. His father was the Vice Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States and in charge of rela­tions with Ukraine. So why was Hunter not only on the board of a sus­pect Ukrain­ian gas firm, but also hooked them up with a com­pa­ny work­ing on bioweapons research?’ Fad­dis said. . . .”
  • ” . . . . ‘The DoD posi­tion is that  . . . . this is pan­dem­ic ear­ly warn­ing research. We don’t know for sure that’s all that was going on. . . .”
  • ” . . . . Gov­ern­ment spend­ing records show the Depart­ment of Defense award­ed an $18.4million con­tract to Metabio­ta between Feb­ru­ary 2014 and Novem­ber 2016, with $307,091 ear­marked for ‘Ukraine research projects’. . . .”
  • ” . . . . The US Defense Threat Reduc­tion Agency (DTRA) also com­mis­sioned B&V to build a Bio­log­i­cal Safe­ty Lev­el 3 lab­o­ra­to­ry in Odessa, Ukraine in 2010, which ‘pro­vid­ed enhanced equip­ment and train­ing to effec­tive­ly, safe­ly and secure­ly iden­ti­fy espe­cial­ly dan­ger­ous pathogens’ accord­ing to a com­pa­ny press release. Such labs are used to ‘study infec­tious agents or tox­ins that may be trans­mit­ted through the air and cause poten­tial­ly lethal infec­tions,’ the US Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices says. . . .”
  • ” . . . . In anoth­er sign of the deep ties between Metabio­ta and the Depart­ment of Defense, Hunter’s RSTP busi­ness part­ner Rob Walk­er said he would ‘have a friend reach out to DoD on the down low’, in order to prove the com­pa­ny’s bona fides to top prospec­tive investors Gold­man Sachs and Mor­gan Stan­ley in Octo­ber 2014. . . .”
  • ” . . . . Metabio­ta also has close ties to the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy (WIV), sus­pect­ed to be the source of the COVID-19 out­break. WIV was a hotspot for con­tro­ver­sial ‘gain of func­tion’ research that can cre­ate super-strength virus­es. Chi­nese sci­en­tists per­formed gain of func­tion research on coro­n­avirus­es at the WIV, work­ing along­side a US-backed orga­ni­za­tion Eco­Health Alliance that has since drawn intense scruti­ny over its coro­n­avirus research since the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Researchers from the Wuhan insti­tute, Metabio­ta and Eco­Health Alliance pub­lished a study togeth­er in 2014 on infec­tious dis­eases from bats in Chi­na, which notes that tests were per­formed at the WIV. Shi Zhengli, the WIV Direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Emerg­ing Infec­tious Dis­eases who became dubbed the ‘bat lady’ for her cen­tral role in bat coro­n­avirus research at the lab, was a con­trib­u­tor to the paper. . . .”

An alarm­ing devel­op­ment in the inves­ti­ga­tion of the Ukraine/BW con­nec­tion is a devel­op­ment blacked out in West­ern media: dis­clo­sures in a UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil pro­ceed­ing on 4/6/2022.

M.K. Bhadraku­mar under­scores some ter­ri­fy­ing aspects of the appar­ent B.W. pro­gram, includ­ing “dig­i­tized” migra­to­ry birds, tracked by satel­lite and fit­ted with cap­sules of dead­ly microbes. When the birds are over a tar­get­ed coun­try, they can be killed, trig­ger­ing a pan­dem­ic.

” . . . . A mind-bog­gling ‘dis­cov­ery’ that Russ­ian forces in Ukraine stum­bled upon is the use of num­bered birds by the Pen­ta­gon-fund­ed labs. . . . On the basis of this data, groups of migra­to­ry birds are caught, dig­i­tized and cap­sules of germs are attached to them that car­ry a chip to be con­trolled through com­put­ers. . . . Dur­ing the long flight of the birds that have been dig­i­tized in the Pen­ta­gon bio-labs, their move­ment is mon­i­tored step by step by means of satel­lites and the exact loca­tions are deter­mined. . . . Dur­ing the long flight of the birds that have been dig­i­tized in the Pen­ta­gon bio-labs, their move­ment is mon­i­tored step by step by means of satel­lites and the exact loca­tions are deter­mined. . . . The idea is that if the Biden Admin­is­tra­tion (or the CIA) has a require­ment to inflict harm on, say, Rus­sia or Chi­na (or India for that mat­ter), the chip is destroyed when the bird is in their skies.  Plain­ly put, kill the bird car­ry­ing the epi­dem­ic. . . . once the ‘dig­i­tized’ bird is killed and the cap­sule of germs it car­ries is released, the dis­ease spreads in the ‘X’ or ‘Y’ coun­try. It becomes a high­ly cost-effec­tive method of harm­ing an ene­my coun­try with­out any need of war or coup d’état or col­or rev­o­lu­tion. The Rus­sians have made the shock­ing claim that they are actu­al­ly in pos­ses­sion of such migra­to­ry birds dig­i­tized in the Pentagon’s bio-labs. . . .”

A 2014 blog post details a 1960’s pro­gram in India that may have been a pre­cur­sor to the appar­ent “digitized/weaponized” migra­to­ry birds pro­gram in Ukraine. 

” . . . . It appeared that a unit of the U.S. Army called Migra­to­ry Ani­mal Patho­log­i­cal Sur­vey was inter­est­ed in the project. The Army’s inter­est lay in know­ing whether bac­te­ria were being trans­mit­ted by the migrat­ing birds. The project offered an excel­lent means of inves­ti­ga­tion and there­fore had acquired an omi­nous sig­nif­i­cance. . . .”   

Anoth­er pos­si­ble 1960’s pre­cur­sor of the “migra­to­ry birds of mass destruc­tion” in Ukraine was a pro­gram to place vora­cious, dis­ease-car­ry­ing Lone Star ticks in the Atlantic Fly­way, through which migra­to­ry birds trav­el from Latin Amer­i­ca through to the Amer­i­can North­east.

” . . . . The sites were locat­ed on the Atlantic Fly­way, the migra­to­ry bird super­high­way that runs along the east­ern South Amer­i­can and North Amer­i­can coasts. . . . . . . . Lone star ticks have sev­er­al sur­vival advan­tages over their deer tick cousins. They don’t wait patient­ly on a stalk of grass for pass­ing prey; they are active hunters that crawl toward any car­bon diox­ide-emit­ting ani­mal, includ­ing birds. . . . But in the 1970s, these ticks began rapid­ly expand­ing their range. 7 The first lone star tick observed on Mon­tauk, Long Island, was in 1971, and as of 2018, estab­lished pop­u­la­tions have been observed as far north as Maine. 8 . . . .  All this begs the ques­tion: What is dri­ving this mass migra­tion of the lone star tick and its dis­ease-caus­ing hitch­hik­ers north­ward? . . . .”

1. M.K. Bhadraku­mar under­scores some ter­ri­fy­ing aspects of the appar­ent B.W. pro­gram, includ­ing “dig­i­tized” migra­to­ry birds, tracked by satel­lite and fit­ted with cap­sules of dead­ly microbes. When the birds are over a tar­get­ed coun­try, they can be killed, trig­ger­ing a pan­dem­ic.

” . . . . A mind-bog­gling ‘dis­cov­ery’ that Russ­ian forces in Ukraine stum­bled upon is the use of num­bered birds by the Pen­ta­gon-fund­ed labs. . . . On the basis of this data, groups of migra­to­ry birds are caught, dig­i­tized and cap­sules of germs are attached to them that car­ry a chip to be con­trolled through com­put­ers. . . . Dur­ing the long flight of the birds that have been dig­i­tized in the Pen­ta­gon bio-labs, their move­ment is mon­i­tored step by step by means of satel­lites and the exact loca­tions are deter­mined. . . . Dur­ing the long flight of the birds that have been dig­i­tized in the Pen­ta­gon bio-labs, their move­ment is mon­i­tored step by step by means of satel­lites and the exact loca­tions are deter­mined. . . . The idea is that if the Biden Admin­is­tra­tion (or the CIA) has a require­ment to inflict harm on, say, Rus­sia or Chi­na (or India for that mat­ter), the chip is destroyed when the bird is in their skies.  Plain­ly put, kill the bird car­ry­ing the epi­dem­ic. . . . once the ‘dig­i­tized’ bird is killed and the cap­sule of germs it car­ries is released, the dis­ease spreads in the ‘X’ or ‘Y’ coun­try. It becomes a high­ly cost-effec­tive method of harm­ing an ene­my coun­try with­out any need of war or coup d’état or col­or rev­o­lu­tion. The Rus­sians have made the shock­ing claim that they are actu­al­ly in pos­ses­sion of such migra­to­ry birds dig­i­tized in the Pentagon’s bio-labs. . . .”

“Migra­to­ry birds of mass destruc­tion” by M.K. Bhadraku­mar; Indi­an Punch­line; 4/21/2022.

The UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil held an extra­or­di­nary event on April 6 under the rubric Arria For­mu­la Meet­ing on Bio­log­i­cal Secu­ri­ty regard­ing the bio­log­i­cal activ­i­ties in coun­tries includ­ing Ukraine. Pre­dictably, the US and UK rep­re­sen­ta­tives didn’t show up at the event and the west­ern media also blacked out the pro­ceed­ings. But that does not detract from the pro­found sig­nif­i­cance of what tran­spired. 

The high­light of the Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil pro­ceed­ings last­ing over two hours was the dis­clo­sure by Gen­er­al Igor Kir­illov, chief of the Radi­a­tion, Chem­i­cal and Bio­log­i­cal Defense Forces of the Russ­ian Armed Forces, that Wash­ing­ton is cre­at­ing bio­log­i­cal lab­o­ra­to­ries in dif­fer­ent coun­tries and con­nect­ing them to a uni­fied sys­tem.

He said the US has spent more than $5 bil­lion on mil­i­tary bio­log­i­cal pro­grams since 2005 and detailed that in ter­ri­to­ries bor­der­ing Rus­sia and Chi­na alone, about 60 facil­i­ties have been mod­ern­ized dur­ing this peri­od. The Ukrain­ian net­work of lab­o­ra­to­ries is designed to con­duct research and mon­i­tor the bio­log­i­cal sit­u­a­tion con­sist­ing of 30 facil­i­ties in 14 pop­u­lat­ed loca­tions.

High­ly sen­si­tive mate­ri­als from the Ukrain­ian bio­log­i­cal lab­o­ra­to­ries were export­ed to the US in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary just before the Russ­ian spe­cial oper­a­tion began, and the rest were ordered to be destroyed lest they fell into Russ­ian hands. But the cov­er-up was only par­tial­ly suc­cess­ful. Indeed, Rus­sia is in pos­ses­sion of high­ly incrim­i­nat­ing evi­dence. 

Pre­vi­ous­ly also, Rus­sia had released a num­ber of doc­u­ments relat­ed to the bio­log­i­cal mil­i­tary activ­i­ties of the Pen­ta­gon, which point­ed toward a world­wide project to set up bio­log­i­cal lab­o­ra­to­ries in rival coun­tries with the goal of devel­op­ing tar­get­ed viral weapons against those coun­tries. 

The pro­ceed­ings of the Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil con­fer­ence on April 6 are in the pub­lic domain and are acces­si­ble. See the video below: 

Rus­sia has made spe­cif­ic alle­ga­tions, point­ing fin­ger at: 

  • Pen­ta­gon fund­ing for the bio-labs in Ukraine; 
  • Loca­tion of these bio-labs (not only in Ukraine but in 36 coun­tries around the world); 
  • Dis­eases and epi­demics on which research work is going on, focus­ing on the means for their release, the coun­tries where they are being test­ed (even with­out the knowl­edge of the gov­ern­ments of these coun­tries); and, of course, 
  • Exper­i­ments relat­ing to coro­n­avirus (and bats used to trans­mit this virus). 

How­ev­er, the US has so far point-blank refused to accept any super­vi­sion and ver­i­fi­ca­tion of such incrim­i­na­to­ry evi­dences and has stonewalled the demand for a ver­i­fi­ca­tion mech­a­nism. It is unlike­ly that the US will per­mit an inter­na­tion­al ver­i­fi­ca­tion process that holds the poten­tial to expose it as indulging in crimes against human­i­ty — although there are appro­pri­ate frame­works in place includ­ing the Bio­log­i­cal Weapons Con­ven­tion (BWC) and the UN, to hear the clar­i­fi­ca­tions from the rel­e­vant coun­try in a fair and impar­tial man­ner. 

A mind-bog­gling “dis­cov­ery” that Russ­ian forces in Ukraine stum­bled upon is the use of num­bered birds by the Pen­ta­gon-fund­ed labs. This almost falls out of sci­ence fic­tion and Sir Alfred Hitch­cock could have made an epic movie out of it where decep­tion mix­es with inno­cence and man’s cru­el­ty to nature becomes unbear­ably grotesque. The project works like this: 

To begin with, the Pen­ta­gon access­es the sci­en­tif­ic data avail­able with envi­ron­men­tal spe­cial­ists and zool­o­gists after study­ing the migra­tion of birds and observ­ing them through­out the sea­sons, relat­ing to the path these birds take each year on their sea­son­al jour­ney from one coun­try to anoth­er and even from one con­ti­nent to anoth­er. 

On the basis of this data, groups of migra­to­ry birds are caught, dig­i­tized and cap­sules of germs are attached to them that car­ry a chip to be con­trolled through com­put­ers.  They birds are then released to the flock of the migra­to­ry birds in those tar­get coun­tries toward which the US intel­li­gence has malev­o­lent inten­tions. 

Of course, these migra­to­ry birds trav­el great dis­tances. The wan­der­ing alba­tross, for instance, is known to migrate at least 8500 km east­ward across the South Pacif­ic to the coast of South Amer­i­ca, and many shy alba­tross­es migrate west­ward across the Indi­an Ocean to the coast of South Africa.

Dur­ing the long flight of the birds that have been dig­i­tized in the Pen­ta­gon bio-labs, their move­ment is mon­i­tored step by step by means of satel­lites and the exact loca­tions are deter­mined.  The idea is that if the Biden Admin­is­tra­tion (or the CIA) has a require­ment to inflict harm on, say, Rus­sia or Chi­na (or India for that mat­ter), the chip is destroyed when the bird is in their skies.  

Plain­ly put, kill the bird car­ry­ing the epi­dem­ic. Sad­ly, my mind goes back to the nov­el by the Amer­i­can author Harp­er Lee To Kill a Mock­ing Bird, the haunt­ing sto­ry of inno­cence destroyed by evil. 

To return to real­i­ty, once the “dig­i­tized” bird is killed and the cap­sule of germs it car­ries is released, the dis­ease spreads in the “X” or “Y” coun­try. It becomes a high­ly cost-effec­tive method of harm­ing an ene­my coun­try with­out any need of war or coup d’état or col­or rev­o­lu­tion.

The Rus­sians have made the shock­ing claim that they are actu­al­ly in pos­ses­sion of such migra­to­ry birds dig­i­tized in the Pentagon’s bio-labs. 

Inter­na­tion­al law express­ly for­bids the num­ber­ing of migra­to­ry birds because they freely criss-cross the blue sky and air of oth­er coun­tries.  By sup­ply­ing them with germs, these birds become weapons of mass destruc­tion. What human inge­nu­ity! But the US enjoys total immu­ni­ty from inter­na­tion­al law.

The bot­tom line is that only the US intel­li­gence — and Pres­i­dent Biden, per­haps, if he remem­bers — would know where all humans have been infect­ed so far in this cen­tu­ry by the Birds of Mass Destruc­tion. Was Ebo­la that dev­as­tat­ed Africa a test case and pre­cur­sor of things to come?

What about Covid-19, which is known to have orig­i­nat­ed from fund­ed lab­o­ra­to­ries that were admin­is­tered by the US? It is very like­ly that the US might have used migra­to­ry birds to kill Chi­nese cit­i­zens. Clear­ly, the US in its des­per­a­tion to reverse its glob­al decline is pulling out all the stops to restore its hege­mo­ny in a world order that is inex­orably mov­ing toward mul­ti­po­lar­i­ty.

4. A 2014 blog post details a 1960’s pro­gram in India that may have been a pre­cur­sor to the appar­ent “digitized/weaponized” migra­to­ry birds pro­gram in Ukraine. 

” . . . . It appeared that a unit of the U.S. Army called Migra­to­ry Ani­mal Patho­log­i­cal Sur­vey was inter­est­ed in the project. The Army’s inter­est lay in know­ing whether bac­te­ria were being trans­mit­ted by the migrat­ing birds. The project offered an excel­lent means of inves­ti­ga­tion and there­fore had acquired an omi­nous sig­nif­i­cance. . . .”           

“The Birds of Bharat­pur” by N.R. Krish­nan; The Hin­du; 11/8/2014.

. . . . At Bharat­pur in Rajasthan is the Keo­ladeo Ghana Bird Sanc­tu­ary, the win­ter sojourn of thou­sands of birds from far and near. They come from the icy wastes of Siberia and the cold sands of Cen­tral Asia, Europe, and the west­ern and north­ern regions of Chi­na. In win­ter it is a bird-watcher’s par­adise, with the long-necked Sarus cranes cap­ti­vat­ing vis­i­tors with their courtship dance.

An Indi­an ornitho­log­i­cal out­fit was inter­est­ed in study­ing the migra­to­ry paths of the win­ter­ing birds. They want­ed to catch a num­ber of birds, put col­lars around their necks with iden­ti­fi­ca­tion marks and release them. The idea was to keep track of the birds wher­ev­er they rest­ed along their routes and on their return to Bharat­pur the next win­ter. Finan­cial sup­port came from the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion. . . .

. . . . One after­noon, the young offi­cer had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have tea with a vet­er­an sci­en­tist-cum-admin­is­tra­tor in the Coun­cil of Sci­en­tif­ic and Indus­tri­al Research. The elder­ly man was all warmth and friend­li­ness and enquired of the offi­cer how things were. The young man poured out his tale of woe in fail­ing to con­vince the pow­ers-that-be of the gen­uine request of the ornithol­o­gists and how much nat­ur­al sci­ences research would be affect­ed sans assis­tance. The man laughed, and asked, “Do you know the back­ground of this project and the peo­ple who were inter­est­ed in it?”, and pro­ceed­ed to pro­vide enlight­en­ment.

It appeared that a unit of the U.S. Army called Migra­to­ry Ani­mal Patho­log­i­cal Sur­vey was inter­est­ed in the project. The Army’s inter­est lay in know­ing whether bac­te­ria were being trans­mit­ted by the migrat­ing birds. The project offered an excel­lent means of inves­ti­ga­tion and there­fore had acquired an omi­nous sig­nif­i­cance. For the novice Deputy Sec­re­tary, unused to such inter­na­tion­al cloak-and-dag­ger stuff, it was all like a John Le Carre nov­el with the field agent not know­ing whether he was the hunter or the hunt­ed. The man’s words explained the cau­tion on the part of the offi­cers he met and were ter­ri­fy­ing. . . .

3. Anoth­er pos­si­ble 1960’s pre­cur­sor of the “migra­to­ry birds of mass destruc­tion” in Ukraine was a pro­gram to place vora­cious, dis­ease-car­ry­ing Lone Star ticks in the Atlantic Fly­way, through which migra­to­ry birds trav­el from Latin Amer­i­ca through to the Amer­i­can North­east.

” . . . . The sites were locat­ed on the Atlantic Fly­way, the migra­to­ry bird super­high­way that runs along the east­ern South Amer­i­can and North Amer­i­can coasts. . . . . . . . Lone star ticks have sev­er­al sur­vival advan­tages over their deer tick cousins. They don’t wait patient­ly on a stalk of grass for pass­ing prey; they are active hunters that crawl toward any car­bon diox­ide-emit­ting ani­mal, includ­ing birds. . . . But in the 1970s, these ticks began rapid­ly expand­ing their range. 7 The first lone star tick observed on Mon­tauk, Long Island, was in 1971, and as of 2018, estab­lished pop­u­la­tions have been observed as far north as Maine. 8 . . . .  All this begs the ques­tion: What is dri­ving this mass migra­tion of the lone star tick and its dis­ease-caus­ing hitch­hik­ers north­ward? . . . .”

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

. . . . For the New­port News study [in 1968 in Virginia—D.E.], he [Daniel E. Sonen­shine] plant­ed poles to par­ti­tion the woods into forty-sev­en equi­lat­er­al squares, plac­ing live-ani­mal traps cov­ered with sticky tape at even­ly spaced loca­tions. One thou­sand lone star lar­vae were then released inside each square. Over the next few months, Sonen­shine and his helpers would return to the woods to col­lect ticks from cap­tured ani­mals, cloth flags dragged along the ground, and the sticky tape. Each har­vest­ed tick was placed in a vial labeled with the loca­tion of the square in which it had been cap­tured. Back at the lab, a tech­ni­cian would place the vials under a “scin­til­la­tion detec­tor” to mea­sure how many orig­i­nal-release, radioac­tive lar­val ticks were in the batch. Adult and nymph-stage ticks were marked with col­ored enam­el paint and then released into the square where they had been cap­tured. The paint would allow them to be tracked as they migrat­ed.

Over the three years, 194,150 radioiso­tope-tagged lone star tick lar­vae were released at the two Vir­ginia sites. (See appen­dix 2: “Uncon­trolled Tick Releas­es, 1966–1969.”) The sites were locat­ed on the Atlantic Fly­way, the migra­to­ry bird super­high­way that runs along the east­ern South Amer­i­can and North Amer­i­can coasts.

On the face of it, there were clear pub­lic health ben­e­fits to these tick field tests. The lone star tick had been mov­ing north­ward in the last few years, and it would be use­ful for the pest con­trol peo­ple to know the rate at which the species was migrat­ing. But the stud­ies were also use­ful to the U.S. mil­i­tary plan­ners at Fort Det­rick who want­ed to know how far lone star ticks might spread when released into ene­my ter­ri­to­ry. . . .

. . . . The lone star tick is a “vicious biter, attack­ing man read­i­ly and vora­cious­ly,” said Glen Kohls, the tick zookeep­er who worked with Willy [Burgdor­fer] when he first arrived in Mon­tana. 5 The Rocky Moun­tain Lab occa­sion­al­ly sent batch­es of lone star ticks to Fort Det­rick. . . .

. . . . Lone star ticks have sev­er­al sur­vival advan­tages over their deer tick cousins. They don’t wait patient­ly on a stalk of grass for pass­ing prey; they are active hunters that crawl toward any car­bon diox­ide-emit­ting ani­mal, includ­ing birds. They swarm. And unlike deer ticks, they have prim­i­tive eyes that help them creep toward prospec­tive prey. . . .

. . . . Even more wor­ri­some, lone star ticks are on the move, replac­ing long stand­ing native tick pop­u­la­tions. After World War II, lone stars were fair­ly con­cen­trat­ed in a region south of the Mason-Dixon line, bound­ed on the west by Texas and on the east by the Atlantic coast. But in the 1970s, these ticks began rapid­ly expand­ing their range. 7 The first lone star tick observed on Mon­tauk, Long Island, was in 1971, and as of 2018, estab­lished pop­u­la­tions have been observed as far north as Maine. 8 . . . .

 All this begs the ques­tion: What is dri­ving this mass migra­tion of the

lone star tick and its dis­ease-caus­ing hitch­hik­ers north­ward? . . . .

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