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Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance: Largest Funders Are Pentagon, USAID (State Department, CIA)

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COMMENT: In FTR #‘s 1157, 1158 and 1159 [5], 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 [6] under this pro­gram in 2015, and Bar­ic [7] was sub­se­quent­ly select­ed [8] 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.

We have also not­ed the pro­found links [9] 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 [5], 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 [10] and an advi­sor to AOC [11].

A bril­liant, insight­ful arti­cle by Sam Hus­sei­ni on Inde­pen­dent Sci­ence News [12] 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,’ [13] 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 [14] for many years, leav­ing that posi­tion to become Sec­re­tary of Defense for George W. Bush. Rums­feld made mil­lions [14] 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 [14] 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 [14] 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. This invalu­able arti­cle by Hus­sei­ni notes the close asso­ci­a­tion of Jef­frey Sachs and Daszak: ” . . . . In Sep­tem­ber, Sachs’ com­mis­sion [on the Lancet–D.I.] named Daszak to head up its com­mit­tee [15] on the pandemic’s ori­gins. Daszak is also on the WHO’s com­mit­tee to inves­ti­gate the pandemic’s ori­gin [15]. 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. [12]

“Pan­demics are like ter­ror­ist attacks: We know rough­ly where they orig­i­nate and what’s respon­si­ble for them, but we don’t know exact­ly when the next one will hap­pen. They need to be han­dled the same way — by iden­ti­fy­ing all pos­si­ble sources and dis­man­tling those before the next pan­dem­ic strikes.”

This state­ment was writ­ten in the New York Times ear­li­er this year by Peter Daszak. Daszak is the long­time pres­i­dent of the Eco­Health Alliance [16], a New York-based non-prof­it whose claimed focus is pan­dem­ic pre­ven­tion. But the Eco­Health Alliance, it turns out, is at the very cen­tre of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic in many ways.

To depict the pan­dem­ic in such mil­i­ta­rized terms is, for Daszak, a com­mon­place. In an Oct. 7 online talk orga­nized by Colum­bia University’s School of Inter­na­tion­al and Pub­lic Affairs [17], Daszak pre­sent­ed a slide titled “Don­ald Rumsfeld’s Pre­scient Speech.”:

“There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns — there are things we don’t know we don’t know.” (This Rums­feld quote is in fact from a news con­fer­ence)

In the sub­se­quent online dis­cus­sion, Daszak empha­sized the par­al­lels between his own cru­sade and Rumsfeld’s, since, accord­ing to Daszak, the “poten­tial for unknown attacks” is “the same for virus­es”.

Daszak then pro­ceed­ed with a not ter­ri­bly sub­tle pitch for over a bil­lion dol­lars. This mon­ey would sup­port a fledg­ling virus hunt­ing and sur­veil­lance project of his, the Glob­al Virome Project [18] — a “doable project” he assured watch­ers — giv­en the cost of the pan­dem­ic to gov­ern­ments and var­i­ous indus­tries.

Also on the video was Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Jef­frey Sachs [19]. Sachs is a for­mer spe­cial advi­sor to the UN, the for­mer head of the Mil­len­ni­um Vil­lages Project, and was recent­ly appoint­ed Chair of the new­ly-formed EAT Lancet Com­mis­sion on the pan­dem­ic [20]. In Sep­tem­ber, Sachs’ com­mis­sion named Daszak to head up its com­mit­tee [15] on the pandemic’s ori­gins. Daszak is also on the WHO’s com­mit­tee to inves­ti­gate the pandemic’s ori­gin [15]. He is the only indi­vid­ual on both com­mit­tees.

These lead­er­ship posi­tions are not the only rea­son why Peter Daszak is such a cen­tral fig­ure in the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, how­ev­er. His appoint­ment dis­mayed many [21] of those who are aware that Daszak’s Eco­Health Alliance fund­ed bat coro­n­avirus research, includ­ing virus col­lec­tion, at the Wuhan Insti­tute for Virol­o­gy (WIV) and thus could them­selves be direct­ly impli­cat­ed in the out­break [22].

For his part, Daszak has repeat­ed­ly dis­missed [23] the notion that the pan­dem­ic could have a lab ori­gin [24]. In fact, a recent FOIA by the trans­paren­cy group U.S. Right To Know [25] revealed that Peter Daszak draft­ed an influ­en­tial mul­ti-author let­ter [26] pub­lished on Feb­ru­ary 18 in the Lancet. That let­ter dis­missed lab ori­gin hypothe­ses as “con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry.” Daszak was revealed to have orches­trat­ed the let­ter such as to “avoid the appear­ance of a polit­i­cal state­ment.”

Sachs for his part seemed sur­prised by Daszak’s depic­tion of Rums­feld but Daszak reas­sured him. “It’s an awe­some quote! And yes, it’s Don­ald Rums­feld, Jeff, and I know he’s a Repub­li­can, but — what a genius!”

Fol­low­ing the Eco­Health Alliance’s mon­ey trail to the Pen­ta­gon

Col­lect­ing dan­ger­ous virus­es is typ­i­cal­ly jus­ti­fied as a pre­ven­tive and defen­sive activ­i­ty, get­ting ahead of what “Nature” or “The Ter­ror­ists” might throw at us. But by its nature, this work is “dual use”. “Biode­fense” is often just as eas­i­ly biowar­fare since biode­fense and the prod­ucts of biowar­fare are iden­ti­cal. It’s sim­ply a mat­ter of what the stat­ed goals are.

This is open­ly acknowl­edged [See below] by sci­en­tists asso­ci­at­ed with Eco­Health Alliance when talk­ing about alleged pro­grams in oth­er coun­ties — like Iraq.

For much of this year, Daszak’s Eco­Health Alliance gar­nered a great deal of sym­pa­thet­ic media cov­er­age after its $3.7 mil­lion five-year NIH grant was pre­ma­ture­ly cut when the Trump admin­is­tra­tion learned that Eco­Health Alliance fund­ed bat coro­n­avirus research at the WIV.

The tem­po­rary cut was wide­ly depict­ed in major media [27] as Trump under­min­ing the Eco­Health Alliance’s noble fight against pan­demics. The ter­mi­na­tion was reversed by NIH in late August, and even upped to $7.5 mil­lion [28]. But entire­ly over­looked amid the claims and counter-claims was that far more fund­ing for the Eco­Health Alliance comes from the Pen­ta­gon than the NIH.

To be strict­ly fair to the media, Daszak’s Eco­Health Alliance obscures its Pen­ta­gon fund­ing. On its web­site Eco­Health Alliance states that “A copy of the EHA Grant Man­age­ment Man­u­al is avail­able upon request to the EHA Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer at finance ( at ) ecohealthalliance.org”. But an email to that address and numer­ous oth­ers, includ­ing Peter Daszak’s, request­ing that Man­u­al, as well as oth­er finan­cial infor­ma­tion, was not returned. Nei­ther were repeat­ed voice­mails.

Only buried under their “Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy,” [13] 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 Nation­al Insti­tute of Health, the Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion, US Fish and Wildlife Ser­vice, and 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); where­as the US Fish and Wildlife Ser­vice, which accounts for a minus­cule $74,487, comes before either.

Metic­u­lous inves­ti­ga­tion of U.S. gov­ern­ment data­bas­es reveals that Pen­ta­gon fund­ing for the Eco­Health Alliance from 2013 to 2020, includ­ing con­tracts, grants and sub­con­tracts, was just under $39 mil­lion. Most, $34.6 mil­lion, was from the Defense Threat Reduc­tion Agency (DTRA), which is a branch of the DOD which states it is tasked to “counter and deter weapons of mass destruc­tion and impro­vised threat net­works.” [29]

Most of the remain­ing mon­ey to EHA was from USAID (State Dept.), com­pris­ing at least $64,700,000 (1). These two sources thus total over $103 mil­lion.

Anoth­er $20 mil­lion came from Health and Human Ser­vices ($13 mil­lion, which includes Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health and Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol), Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion ($2.6 mil­lion), Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty ($2.3 mil­lion), Depart­ment of Com­merce ($1.2 mil­lion), Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture ($0.6 mil­lion), and Depart­ment of Inte­ri­or ($0.3 mil­lion). So, total U.S. gov­ern­ment fund­ing for EHA to-date stands at $123 mil­lion, approx­i­mate­ly one third of which comes from the Pen­ta­gon direct­ly. The full fund­ing break­down is avail­able here and is sum­ma­rized by year, source, and type, in a spread­sheet for­mat [30].

Pdf ver­sions of this the spread­sheet are avail­able to down­load. The sum­ma­ry is here [31] and all Fed­er­al grants and con­tracts are here. [32]

More mil­i­tary con­nec­tions

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.

David Franz was part of UNSCOM which inspect­ed Iraq for alleged bioweapons — what were con­stant­ly referred to as WMDs or Weapons of Mass Destruc­tion by the U.S. gov­ern­ment and the media. Franz has been one of those eager to state, at least when dis­cussing alleged Iraqi pro­grams, that “in biol­o­gy … every­thing is dual use — the peo­ple, the facil­i­ties and the equip­ment.” (NPR, May 14, 2003; link no longer avail­able).

Just this year Franz wrote a piece with for­mer New York Times jour­nal­ist Judith Miller, whose sto­ries of Iraqi WMDs did much to mis­in­form the US pub­lic regard­ing the case for the 2003 inva­sion of Iraq. Their joint arti­cle, “A [33] Biose­cu­ri­ty Fail­ure: America’s key lab for fight­ing infec­tious dis­ease has become a Pen­ta­gon back­wa­ter [33],” urges more fund­ing for Fort Det­rick.

Miller and Franz are long-time asso­ciates. Miller co-wrote the book Germs, released amid the 2001 false flag anthrax attacks [34], which repeat­ed­ly quotes Franz. Miller at the time received a hoax let­ter with a harm­less white pow­der, increas­ing her promi­nence.

Franz con­tin­ued hyp­ing the exis­tence of Iraqi WMDs even after the inva­sion of Iraq. While she was still with the Times, Miller quot­ed him in a sto­ry “U.S. Ana­lysts Link Iraq Labs To Germ Arms [35]” on May 21, 2003 push­ing the the­o­ry that Iraq had mobile bio­log­i­cal WMD units. (This the­o­ry was debunked [36] by the British sci­en­tist Dr David Kel­ly, who would die, appar­ent­ly by sui­cide, soon there­after.

Four sig­nif­i­cant insights emerge from all this. First, although it is called the Eco­Health Alliance, Peter Daszak and his non-prof­it work close­ly with the mil­i­tary. Sec­ond, the Eco­Health Alliance attempts to con­ceal these mil­i­tary con­nec­tions. Third, through mil­i­taris­tic lan­guage and analo­gies Daszak and his col­leagues pro­mote what is often referred to as, and even then some­what euphemisti­cal­ly, an ongo­ing agen­da known as “secu­ri­ti­za­tion [37]“. In this case it is the secu­ri­ti­za­tion of infec­tious dis­eases and of glob­al pub­lic health [38]. That is, they argue that pan­demics con­sti­tute a vast and exis­ten­tial threat. They min­i­mize the very real risks asso­ci­at­ed with their work, and sell it as a bil­lion dol­lar solu­tion. The fourth insight is that Daszak him­self, as the God­fa­ther of the Glob­al Virome Project, stands to ben­e­fit from the like­ly out­lay of pub­lic funds.

Acknowl­edge­ments

Thanks to James Barat­ta and Mari­amne Everett for research­ing the fund­ing sources.

Foot­note

  1. The fig­ure for EHA’s USAID fund­ing was obtained from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Davis, a major grantee of PREDICT funds, which EHA has been a major sub-grantee of Davis con­firmed that EHA’s fund­ing from PREDICT totaled $64,722,669 (PREDICT‑1: 2009 to 2014: $19,943,214; PREDICT‑2: 2014 to present (2020) $44,779,455)