FTR #1115 Review of Some Information about AIDS as a Biological Warfare Agent

Against the back­ground of our dis­cus­sion of the Covid-19 out­break as what Mr. Emory has termed a “Bio-Psy-Op,” we present archival mate­r­i­al about the devel­op­ment of AIDS as a bio­log­i­cal war­fare agent.

(Pro­grams con­tain­ing infor­ma­tion on AIDS as a BW weapon include: AFA #s 16 and 39, as well as FTR #‘s 16, 19, 63, 317, 324, 557, 597, 606, 642, 644, 682, 820, 912, 1012.)

The pro­gram begins with review of an inter­view with Dr. Wilbert Jor­dan of Mar­tin Luther King Hos­pi­tal in Los Ange­les (from AFA 16.) Done in Decem­ber of 1984, it gives per­spec­tive on the epi­demi­o­log­i­cal aspects of AIDS–information that under­mines the pre­vail­ing the­o­ries at the time con­cern­ing the ori­gins of the dis­ease.

Not­ing that a dis­ease as lethal as AIDS was at the time (before anti-virals devel­oped to treat HIV infec­tion), Dr. Jor­dan is dis­mis­sive of the notion that such a lethal ail­ment could have been present in either Zaire or Haiti and then ret­ro­spec­tive­ly traced there after being dis­cov­ered in the U.S.

The notions of Haiti and/or Zaire being the point of ori­gin of the dis­ease played into the anti-immi­grant/xeno­pho­bic dynam­ic that has become preva­lent in the era of Don­ald Trump.

Dr. Jor­dan con­cludes by hypoth­e­siz­ing that the dis­ease was cre­at­ed in a lab­o­ra­to­ry, in all prob­a­bil­i­ty in the Unit­ed States.

Next, the pro­gram high­lights infor­ma­tion from FTR #686, set­ting forth infor­ma­tion about the Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute’s Spe­cial Viral Can­cer Research Project.

After the [offi­cial] aban­don­ment by the U.S. of offen­sive bio­log­i­cal war­fare research, the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion declared a “war on can­cer” in 1971. As part of the War on Can­cer Nixon turned Fort Det­rick (the Army’s top BW research cen­ter) over to the Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute for its Viral Can­cer Project. The Viral Can­cer Project was inex­tri­ca­bly linked with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research and may well have served as a cov­er for ongo­ing BW work. (Lis­ten­ers inter­est­ed in this mate­r­i­al are encour­aged to check out, among oth­er pro­grams, FTR #‘s 606, 682.)

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

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

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

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

Yet anoth­er com­po­nent of the NCI/VCP/BW con­nec­tion was the incor­po­ra­tion of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies in the research pro­grams. The Pfiz­er com­pa­ny pro­duced virus­es for the NCI’s VCP, includ­ing the immuno­sup­pres­sive Mason-Pfiz­er mon­key virus, like HIV, a retro­virus.

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

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

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

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

The pro­gram con­cludes with review of an excerpt from tes­ti­mo­ny before a House appro­pri­a­tions sub­com­mit­tee that was draw­ing up the defense bud­get for the fol­low­ing year. (The hear­ings were in 1969.) The tes­ti­mo­ny dis­cuss­es the pos­si­bil­i­ty of using genet­ic engi­neer­ing to pro­duce a dis­ease that would be “refrac­to­ry” to the immune sys­tem. This is vir­tu­al­ly the clin­i­cal def­i­n­i­tion of AIDS. It is worth not­ing that the project was fund­ed, and just such a disease—AIDS—appeared in just the time frame posit­ed. It is also worth not­ing that, in the 2002 edi­tion of A High­er Form of Killing, this pas­sage is omit­ted!!

A High­er Form of Killing; Robert Har­ris and Jere­my Pax­man; Hill and Wang [SC]; ISBN 0–8090-5471‑X; p. 241 (p. 266 in e‑book).

. . . As long ago as 1962, forty sci­en­tists were employed at the U.S. Army bio­log­i­cal war­fare lab­o­ra­to­ries on full-time genet­ics research. ‘Many oth­ers,’ it was said, ‘appre­ci­ate the impli­ca­tions of genet­ics for their own work.’ The impli­ca­tions were made more spe­cif­ic that genet­ic engi­neer­ing could solve one of the major dis­ad­van­tages of bio­log­i­cal war­fare, that it is lim­it­ed to dis­eases which occur nat­u­ral­ly some­where in the world. ‘With­in the next 5 to 10 years, it would prob­a­bly be pos­si­ble to make a new infec­tive micro-organ­ism which could dif­fer in cer­tain impor­tant respects from any known dis­ease-caus­ing organ­isms. Most impor­tant of these is that it might be refrac­to­ry to the immuno­log­i­cal and ther­a­peu­tic process­es upon which we depend to main­tain our rel­a­tive free­dom from infec­tious dis­ease.’ [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.] The pos­si­bil­i­ty that such a ‘super germ’ may have been suc­cess­ful­ly pro­duced in a lab­o­ra­to­ry some­where in the world in the years since that assess­ment was made is one which should not be too read­i­ly cast aside. . . .

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Lit­ton Bio­net­ics’ work on the Mason-Pfiz­er mon­key virus while under con­tract to the NCI and when it employed Dr. Robert Gal­lo; research empha­sis on “zoonoses” (dis­eases that jump from ani­mals to humans) by the joint military/civilian con­sor­tium; Gal­lo’s work with NCI VCP/Ft. Det­rick vet­er­an Dr. Jack Gru­ber in a mass viral inoc­u­la­tion pro­gram under­tak­en by Lit­ton Bio­net­ics; the use of the Mason-Pfiz­er mon­key virus in the Lit­ton Bio­net­ics mass inoc­u­la­tion pro­gram.

FTR #287 Don’t Put Your Foot In Your Mouth When You Are Talking About Mad Cow Disease, and That’s No Bull!

Pos­si­bil­i­ty that recent out­breaks of foot-and-mouth dis­ease and “mad cow dis­ease” (Creutzfeld & Jakob Dis­ease) result­ed from bio­log­i­cal war­fare.

FTR #199 The Politics of SV40

Michele Car­bone on polio vac­cine con­t­a­m­i­nant SV40’s role on mesothe­lioma.