FTR#1191 The Oswald Institute of Virology, Part 10: “A Politically Useful Tool”

The pro­gram begins with an excerpt that comes from the con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant Whit­ney Webb arti­cle he has used on many occa­sions.

The Project For A New Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry’s Rebuild­ing Amer­i­ca’s Defens­es argues that bio­log­i­cal warfare–particularly when twined with genet­ic engineering–can become a “polit­i­cal­ly use­ful tool.”

Indeed, as we have said so many times, if one is going to detach the sec­ond-largest econ­o­my from the world and alien­ate that coun­try from oth­ers, the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic is, indeed, “a polit­i­cal­ly use­ful tool” for so doing.

(In FTR#1190, we exam­ined the PNAC agen­da, its cod­i­fi­ca­tion in nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy in a doc­u­ment large­ly craft­ed by Philip Zelikow. Zelikow head­ed the 9/11 Com­mis­sion and was cen­tral­ly involved in writ­ing its flawed report, the sys­tem­at­ic short­com­ings of which could be said to char­ac­ter­ize the com­mis­sion as “The Omis­sion Com­mis­sion.) 

Zelikow is now head­ing a com­mis­sion to exam­ine the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, includ­ing the so-called “Lab-Leak Hypoth­e­sis.”

The pro­gram ref­er­ences this excerpt, des­ig­nat­ing Covid-19 as a “polit­i­cal­ly use­ful tool.”

As seen below, there are indi­ca­tions that the DARPA pro­gram was, indeed, look­ing at the exploita­tion of genet­ics in the appli­ca­tion of bio­log­i­cal war­fare.

Next, we high­light an excerpt from an arti­cle that is fea­tured in FTR#‘s 686 and 1115. ” . . . . The pro­duc­tion of vac­cine against a stock­piled BW weapon must be con­sid­ered an offen­sive BW project Accord­ing to MIT sci­en­tists Harlee Strauss and Jonathan King, ‘These steps—the gen­er­a­tion of a poten­tial BW agent, devel­op­ment of a vac­cine against it, test­ing of the effi­ca­cy of the vaccine—are all com­po­nents that would be asso­ci­at­ed with an offen­sive BW program.’27 Clear­ly, with­out an anti­dote or vac­cine to pro­tect attack­ing troops, the util­i­ty of a stock­piled BW agent would be seri­ous­ly lim­it­ed. . . .”

We then review mate­r­i­al from FTR#1166, among oth­er pro­grams, look­ing at the devel­op­ment of Mod­er­na’s vac­cine, the drug remde­sivir and mil­i­tary dom­i­na­tion of the Oper­a­tion Warp Speed Covid vac­cine pro­gram.

They key con­sid­er­a­tion is: do these devel­op­ments indi­cate the dynam­ic Strauss and King cite above?

At a min­i­mum, they are no more than the prover­bial six degrees of sep­a­ra­tion from being part of an offen­sive bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram.

In pre­vi­ous posts and pro­grams, we have not­ed that Mod­er­na’s vac­cine work has been financed by DARPA. We have also not­ed that the over­all head of Oper­a­tion Warp Speed is Mon­cef Slaoui, for­mer­ly in charge of prod­uct devel­op­ment for Mod­er­na!

Of great sig­nif­i­cance is the cen­tral role of the mil­i­tary in the devel­op­ment of treat­ment for Covid-19:

1.–The pro­gram notes that: ” . . . . Remde­sivir pre­dates this pan­dem­ic. It was first con­sid­ered as a poten­tial treat­ment for Ebo­la, and was devel­oped through a long­stand­ing part­ner­ship between the U.S. Army and the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion. . . .”
2.–Jonathan King, who has chaired the micro­bial phys­i­ol­o­gy study sec­tion for the NIH has sound­ed the alarm about “vac­cine research” mask­ing offen­sive bio­log­i­cal war­fare research: “. . . . King, who has chaired the micro­bial phys­i­ol­o­gy study sec­tion for the NIH, believes that with­out inten­sive inde­pen­dent scruti­ny, the Pen­ta­gon is free to obscure its true goals. ‘The Defense Depart­ment appears to be pur­su­ing many nar­row, applied goals that are by nature offen­sive, such as the genet­ic ‘improve­ment’ of BW agents,’ King says. ‘But to achieve polit­i­cal accept­abil­i­ty, they mask these inten­tions under forms of research, such as vac­cine devel­op­ment, which sound defen­sive. . . .”
3.–Moderna’s vac­cine devel­op­ment was over­seen by an unnamed Pen­ta­gon offi­cial: ” . . . . Moderna’s team was head­ed by a Defense Depart­ment offi­cial whom com­pa­ny exec­u­tives described only as ‘the major,’ say­ing they don’t know if his name is sup­posed to be a secret. . . . .”
4.–The per­va­sive role of the mil­i­tary in Oper­a­tion Warp Speed (the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s vac­cine devel­op­ment pro­gram) has gen­er­at­ed alarm in civil­ian par­tic­i­pants:”. . . . Scores of Defense Depart­ment employ­ees are laced through the gov­ern­ment offices involved in the effort, mak­ing up a large por­tion of the fed­er­al per­son­nel devot­ed to the effort.  Those num­bers have led some cur­rent and for­mer offi­cials at the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion to pri­vate­ly grum­ble that the military’s role in Oper­a­tion Warp Speed was too large for a task that is, at its core, a pub­lic health cam­paign. . . .”
5.–General Gus­tave Perna–one of the prin­ci­pals in Oper­a­tion Warp Speed–has cho­sen a retired Lieu­tenant Gen­er­al to over­see much of the pro­gram: ” . . . . ‘Frankly, it has been breath­tak­ing to watch,’ said Paul Ostrows­ki, the direc­tor of sup­ply, pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion for Oper­a­tion Warp Speed. He is a retired Army lieu­tenant gen­er­al who was select­ed to man­age logis­tics for the pro­gram by Gen. Gus­tave F. Per­na, the chief oper­at­ing offi­cer for Oper­a­tion Warp Speed. . . .”
6.–The mil­i­tary will be able to trace the des­ti­na­tion and admin­is­tra­tion of each dose: ” . . . . Mil­i­tary offi­cials also came up with the clever idea — if it works — to coor­di­nate the deliv­ery of vac­cines to drug­stores, med­ical cen­ters and oth­er immu­niza­tion sites by send­ing kits full of nee­dles, syringes and alco­hol wipes. Vac­cine mak­ers will be alert­ed when the kits arrive at an immu­niza­tion site so they know to ship dos­es. Once the first dose is giv­en, the man­u­fac­tur­er will be noti­fied so it can send the sec­ond dose with a patient’s name attached sev­er­al weeks lat­er. The mil­i­tary will also mon­i­tor vac­cine dis­tri­b­u­tion through an oper­a­tions cen­ter. ‘They will know where every vac­cine dose is,’ Mr. [Paul] Man­go said on a call with reporters. . . .”

Cen­tral to the inquiry about a lab­o­ra­to­ry gen­e­sis for the virus is Ralph Bar­ic. In the con­text of some of his actions in con­junc­tion with the devel­op­ment of vac­cines and pro­phy­lac­tic mea­sures in con­nec­tion with bio­log­i­cal war­fare, we note that:

1.–Baric’s mod­i­fi­ca­tion of a horse­shoe bat virus to make it more infec­tious (in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Shi Zhengli and in an Eco­Health Alliance affil­i­at­ed project) took place in North Car­oli­na, not Wuhan. “. . . . Crit­ics have jumped on this paper as evi­dence that Shi was con­duct­ing “gain of func­tion” exper­i­ments that could have cre­at­ed a super­bug, but Shi denies it. The research cit­ed in the paper was con­duct­ed in North Car­oli­na. . . .”
2.–Baric has been using relat­ed tech­niques to text remde­sivir (in 2017) and the Mod­er­na vac­cine. This places him in a milieu inex­tri­ca­bly linked to the mil­i­tary and pre-dat­ing the pan­dem­ic. ” . . . . Using a sim­i­lar tech­nique, in 2017, Baric’s lab showed that remde­sivir — cur­rent­ly the only licensed drug for treat­ing covid — could be use­ful in fight­ing coro­n­avirus infec­tions. Bar­ic also helped test the Mod­er­na covid vac­cine and a lead­ing new drug can­di­date against covid. . . .”

The flim­sy evi­den­tiary foun­da­tion of the Trump/Biden “Oswald Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy” did it charge is evi­denced by a new alle­ga­tion com­ing from David Ash­er, senior fel­low at the right-wing Hud­son Insti­tute and the for­mer State Depart­ment advis­er who co-authored a fact sheet last Jan­u­ary on activ­i­ty inside the lab as described in Kather­ine Eban’s “Van­i­ty Fair” piece.

Note that:

1.–Asher report­ed­ly told NBC News that he is “con­fi­dent” that the Chi­nese mil­i­tary was fund­ing a “secret pro­gram” that involved Shi Zhengli’s coro­n­avirus research at the WIV.
2.–Shi report­ed­ly worked with two mil­i­tary sci­en­tists at the lab. (Not sur­pris­ing giv­en that the vast bulk of BW research is inher­ent­ly “dual-use.”
3.–Asher claims he was told this by sev­er­al for­eign researchers who worked at the WIV who saw some per­son­nel there in mil­i­tary garb.
4.–IF true, the [alleged] mem­bers of this secret Chi­nese mil­i­tary biowar­fare research team appar­ent­ly didn’t think it was impor­tant to not wear mil­i­tary cloth­ing dur­ing their secret research at a research facil­i­ty intend­ed for civil­ian use only.
5.–We aren’t told the iden­ti­ty of these for­eign researchers who alleged­ly saw this.
6.–We aren’t told if Ash­er meant “for­eign researchers”–non-Chinese researchers work­ing at the WIV (so for­eign to Chi­na) or Chi­nese researchers work­ing at the WIV (so for­eign to Ash­er). 
7.–Shi’s research could be char­ac­ter­ized as fund­ed by the US mil­i­tary through the Eco­Health Alliance col­lab­o­ra­tion. 
8.–Keep in mind that this remark­able claim is based on anony­mous sources that may not exist but are are claimed by Ash­er to exist. 

Ash­er’s anony­mous­ly-sourced alle­ga­tions con­trast with infor­ma­tion from a Bloomberg News arti­cle about Danielle Ander­son, a bat-borne virus expert who worked at the WIV as late as Novem­ber 2019

Note that:

1.–Anderson would have been at WIV dur­ing the peri­od when an out­break from the WIV would pre­sum­ably have tak­en place under a lab-leak sce­nario.
2.–Anderson is described as the only for­eign researcher work­ing at the WIV.
3.–If Ander­son was the lone for­eign researcher at the WIV, who are Ash­er’s “sev­er­al anony­mous for­eign WIV researchers?”

A chill­ing arti­cle may fore­cast the poten­tial deploy­ment of even dead­lier pan­demics, as oper­a­tional dis­guise for bio­log­i­cal war­fare and geno­cide.

Note that the sub-head­ing refer­ring to the lab-leak hypoth­e­sis is fol­lowed by no men­tion of the lab-leak hypoth­e­sis, per se.

Is this a between-the-lines ref­er­ence to impend­ing bio­log­i­cal war­fare devel­op­ment and the deploy­ment of anoth­er pan­dem­ic?

Note that the Army sci­en­tist quot­ed in the con­clu­sion offers an obser­va­tion that is very close to a Don­ald Rums­feld quote reit­er­at­ed by Peter Daszak in an arti­cle we ref­er­ence in FTR#1170.

1.–From the Defense One arti­cle: ” . . . . ‘We don’t want to just treat what’s in front of us now,’  [Dr. Dim­i­tra] Stratis-Cul­lum said. ‘I think we real­ly need to be resilient. From an Army per­spec­tive. We need to be agile, we need to adapt to the threat that we don’t know that’s com­ing.’ . . .”
2.–From the arti­cle from Inde­pen­dent Sci­ence News: ” . . . . ‘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’. . . .”

We con­clude with anoth­er “look back look­ing for­ward.”

In FTR#456, we not­ed the eerie fore­shad­ow­ing the the 9/11 attacks by Turn­er Diaries author William Luther Pierce. Key aspects of that book, in turn, fore­shad­ow aspects of the 9/11 attacks.

In 1998, the author of that tome,–William Luther Pierce–explicitly fore­shad­owed the 9/11 attacks which defined and cement­ed Dubya’s admin­is­tra­tion. “ . . . . In one chill­ing com­men­tary Pierce, (after not­ing that Bin Laden and the rest of the lost gen­er­a­tion of angry Moslem youth had it with their par­ents’ com­pro­mis­es and were hell bent on revenge against infi­del Amer­i­ca) issued this stark, prophet­ic warn­ing in a 1998 radio address titled, ‘Stay Out of Tall Build­ings.’ ‘New York­ers who work in tall office build­ings any­thing close to the size of the World Trade Cen­ter might con­sid­er wear­ing hard hats . . .’ Pierce warned.’ . . . The run­ning theme in Pierce’s com­men­taries is—to para­phrase his hero Hitler—that Osama Bin Laden’s warn­ing to Amer­i­ca is ‘I Am Com­ing.’ And so is bio-ter­ror­ism.’ . . .”

In that con­text, we note that Chi­na is dev­as­tat­ed by a WMD/Third World War in Turn­er Diaries.

FTR#1190 The Oswald Institute of Virology, Part 9: Covid-19 and The American Deep State, Part 3

Con­tin­u­ing analy­sis of the prop­a­ga­tion of the “Lab-Leak The­o­ry” of the ori­gin of Covid-19 in the con­text of what Mr. Emory calls “The Full-Court Press Against Chi­na,” this pro­gram high­lights how what the bril­liant Peter Dale Scott has termed “The Amer­i­can Deep State” is pro­ceed­ing with the insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion of the anti-Chi­na effort, blam­ing that coun­try for the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, in par­tic­u­lar.

After not­ing that the (pri­mar­i­ly Pen­ta­gon and USAID-fund­ed) Eco­Health Alliance cut-out has used Defense Depart­ment mon­ey to research organ­isms that can be used as bio­log­i­cal-war­fare weapons, we dis­cuss Steve Ban­non and Peter Thiel’s anti-Chi­nese chau­vin­ism with regard to the Sil­i­con Val­ley.

Even as lib­er­al com­men­ta­tors lament the spread of anti-Asian racism, the gen­e­sis of the phe­nom­e­non is not hard to fath­om.

Next, we review the insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion of the anti-Chi­na scare by Steve Ban­non, uti­liz­ing allies like the Falun Gong cult and Uighur jihadis, now main­stays of the Full-Court Press strat­e­gy.

Although Ban­non and com­pa­ny are now being dimin­ished as “crack­pots, xeno­phobes, extrem­ists” etc., the poli­cies they have ini­ti­at­ed are now being car­ried for­ward by the “respectable” Biden admin­is­tra­tion.

” . . . . Fear of Chi­na has spread across the gov­ern­ment, from the White House to Con­gress to fed­er­al agen­cies, where Beijing’s rise is unques­tion­ing­ly viewed as an eco­nom­ic and nation­al secu­ri­ty threat and the defin­ing chal­lenge of the 21st cen­tu­ry. . . .”

It is this con­ti­nu­ity, that illus­trates and embod­ies the func­tion­ing of the Deep State.

Return­ing to a very impor­tant (albeit heav­i­ly “spun”), mod­i­fied lim­it­ed hang­out arti­cle from Van­i­ty Fair arti­cle, we fur­ther devel­op the con­ti­nu­ity between the “extrem­ist” Trump admin­is­tra­tion and the “respectable” Biden admin­is­tra­tion.

Devel­oped by Trump nation­al secu­ri­ty aide Math­ew Pot­tinger and Mike Pompeo’s State Depart­ment, the Lab-Leak hypoth­e­sis was eclipsed by offi­cials wor­ried about expo­sure of the very Pen­ta­gon, USAID fund­ing of bat-borne coro­n­avirus research and gain-of-func­tion manip­u­la­tions at the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy and else­where in Chi­na.

As it gains momen­tum under the “respectable” Biden admin­is­tra­tion, the sup­pres­sion of the Lab-Leak hypoth­e­sis is being spun as an attempt to avoid using that hypoth­e­sis as an extrem­ist, chau­vin­ist polit­i­cal cud­gel. (This is iron­ic, because that is pre­cise­ly what it is intend­ed to be!)

Key aspects of the Van­i­ty Fair arti­cle:

1.–Pompeo State Depart­ment offi­cials pur­su­ing the lab-leak hypoth­e­sis were told to cov­er it up lest it shed light on U.S. gov­ern­ment fund­ing of research at the “Oswald Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy!”: ” . . . . In one State Depart­ment meet­ing, offi­cials seek­ing to demand trans­paren­cy from the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment say they were explic­it­ly told by col­leagues not to explore the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virology’s gain-of-func­tion research, because it would bring unwel­come atten­tion to U.S. gov­ern­ment fund­ing of it. . . . .In an inter­nal memo obtained by ‘Van­i­ty Fair’, Thomas DiNan­no, for­mer act­ing assis­tant sec­re­tary of the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Con­trol, Ver­i­fi­ca­tion, and Com­pli­ance, wrote that. . .  staff from two bureaus . . . ‘warned’ lead­ers with­in his bureau ‘not to pur­sue an inves­ti­ga­tion into the ori­gin of COVID-19’ because it would ‘open a can of worms’ if it con­tin­ued.’ . . . . As the group probed the lab-leak sce­nario, among oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties, its mem­bers were repeat­ed­ly advised not to open a ‘Pandora’s box,’ said four for­mer State Depart­ment offi­cials inter­viewed by ‘Van­i­ty Fair’. . . .”
2.–The Van­i­ty Fair arti­cle paints Trump, Ban­non and com­pa­ny as loonies, where­as they were fun­da­men­tal to the begin­ning of the full-court press against Chi­na: “. . . . At times, it seemed the only oth­er peo­ple enter­tain­ing the lab-leak the­o­ry were crack­pots or polit­i­cal hacks hop­ing to wield COVID-19 as a cud­gel against Chi­na. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s for­mer polit­i­cal advis­er Steve Ban­non, for instance, joined forces with an exiled Chi­nese bil­lion­aire named Guo Wen­gui to fuel claims that Chi­na had devel­oped the dis­ease as a bioweapon and pur­pose­ful­ly unleashed it on the world. . . .”
3.–Matthew Pot­tinger, a Chi­na hawk in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, head­ed up a team to inves­ti­gate the Wuhan lab leak hypoth­e­sis. Note that the gain-of-func­tion milieu in the U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment was a retard­ing fac­tor in the inquiry: ” . . . . By then, Matthew Pot­tinger had approved a COVID-19 ori­gins team, run by the NSC direc­torate that over­saw issues relat­ed to weapons of mass destruc­tion. A long­time Asia expert and for­mer jour­nal­ist, Pot­tinger pur­pose­ful­ly kept the team small . . . . In addi­tion, many lead­ing experts had either received or approved fund­ing for gain-of-func­tion research. Their ‘con­flict­ed’ sta­tus, said Pot­tinger, ‘played a pro­found role in mud­dy­ing the waters and con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing the shot at hav­ing an impar­tial inquiry.’  . . . .”
4.–Note that Lawrence Liv­er­more sci­en­tists were involved with the gen­e­sis of the “Chi­na did it” hypoth­e­sis, after alleged­ly being alert­ed by a for­eign source to look into their own files. ” . . . . An intel­li­gence ana­lyst work­ing with David Ash­er sift­ed through clas­si­fied chan­nels and turned up a report that out­lined why the lab-leak hypoth­e­sis was plau­si­ble. It had been writ­ten in May by researchers at the Lawrence Liv­er­more Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry, which per­forms nation­al secu­ri­ty research for the Depart­ment of Ener­gy. But it appeared to have been buried with­in the clas­si­fied col­lec­tions sys­tem. . . .”
5.–Note, also, that Chris Ford, a Chi­na hawk, was work­ing to sup­press the Wuhan lab leak hypoth­e­sis: ” . . . . Their frus­tra­tion crest­ed in Decem­ber, when they final­ly briefed Chris Ford, act­ing under­sec­re­tary for Arms Con­trol and Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty. He seemed so hos­tile to their probe that they viewed him as a blink­ered func­tionary bent on white­wash­ing China’s malfea­sance. But Ford, who had years of expe­ri­ence in nuclear non­pro­lif­er­a­tion, had long been a Chi­na hawk. . . .”
6.–Ford spins his obfus­ca­tion of the “Oswald Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy” link to the U.S. as not want­i­ng to rein­force right-wing crack­pots with­in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion: ” . . . . Ford told ‘Van­i­ty Fair’ that he saw his job as pro­tect­ing the integri­ty of any inquiry into COVID-19’s ori­gins that fell under his purview. Going with ‘stuff that makes us look like the crack­pot brigade’ would back­fire, he believed. There was anoth­er rea­son for his hos­til­i­ty. He’d already heard about the inves­ti­ga­tion from inter­a­gency col­leagues, rather than from the team itself, and the secre­cy left him with a ‘spidey sense’ that the process was a form of ‘creepy free­lanc­ing.’ He won­dered: Had some­one launched an unac­count­able inves­ti­ga­tion with the goal of achiev­ing a desired result? . . . .”
7.–The “Chi­na did it/Wuhan lab leak” hypoth­e­sis sur­vived from the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and Mike Pom­peo’s State Depart­ment to the Biden admin­is­tra­tion: ” . . . .The state­ment with­stood ‘aggres­sive sus­pi­cion,’ as one for­mer State Depart­ment offi­cial said, and the Biden admin­is­tra­tion has not walked it back. ‘I was very pleased to see Pompeo’s state­ment come through,’ said Chris Ford, who per­son­al­ly signed off on a draft of the fact sheet before leav­ing the State Depart­ment. ‘I was so relieved that they were using real report­ing that had been vet­ted and cleared.’ . . . .”
8.–Avril Haines, whom we have cit­ed in this series as a key par­tic­i­pant in the Deep State shep­herd­ing of the “Lab-Leak Hypoth­e­sis,” looms large in the inquiry into the per­pet­u­a­tion of this pro­pa­gan­da meme: ” . . . . Inside the U.S. gov­ern­ment, mean­while, the lab-leak hypoth­e­sis had sur­vived the tran­si­tion from Trump to Biden. On April 15, Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence Avril Haines told the House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee that two ‘plau­si­ble the­o­ries’ were being weighed: a lab acci­dent or nat­ur­al emer­gence. . . .”

In what may be shap­ing up to be a dis­turb­ing reprise of Philip Zelikow’s role in the events sur­round­ing the 9/11 attacks and the result­ing inva­sion of Iraq, Zelikow is posi­tioned to pre­side over a com­mis­sion to “inves­ti­gate” the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, ” . . . . an exam­i­na­tion of the ori­gins of the virus—including the con­tentious ‘lab leak’ the­o­ry. . . .”

We note that:

1.–The finan­cial back­ers of the project include: ” . . . . Schmidt Futures, found­ed by Mr. Schmidt and his wife Wendy; Stand Togeth­er, which is backed by the lib­er­tar­i­an-lean­ing phil­an­thropist Charles Koch; the Skoll Foun­da­tion, found­ed by the eBay pio­neer Jeff Skoll; and the Rock­e­feller Foun­da­tion. . . .”
2.–Former CIA and State Depart­ment chief under Trump Mike Pom­peo is a pro­tege of the Koch broth­ers.
3.–Zelikow’s 9/11 Com­mis­sion presided over sig­nif­i­cant over­sights and omis­sions: ” . . . . There is now evi­dence, much of it sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly sup­pressed by the 9/11 Com­mis­sion, that before 9/11, CIA offi­cers Richard Blee and Tom Wilshire inside the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit along with FBI agents such as Dina Cor­si, were pro­tect­ing from inves­ti­ga­tion and arrest two of the even­tu­al alleged hijack­ers on 9/11, Khalid al-Mid­har and Nawaf al-Hazmi—much as the FBI had pro­tect­ed Ali Mohamed from arrest in 1993. . . .”
4.–PNAC (The Project for a New Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry) called for Rebuild­ing Amer­i­ca’s Defens­es: ” . . . . ‘The process of trans­for­ma­tion,’ it report­ed, “even if it brings rev­o­lu­tion­ary change, is like­ly to be a long one absent some cat­a­stroph­ic and cat­alyz­ing event—like a new Pearl Har­bor.’ This was only one instance of a wide­ly accept­ed tru­ism: that it would take some­thing like a Pearl Har­bor to get Amer­i­ca to accept an aggres­sive war.  So the ques­tion to be asked is whether Cheney, Rums­feld, or any oth­ers whose projects depend­ed on ‘a new Pearl Har­bor’ were par­tic­i­pants in help­ing to cre­ate one. . . .”
5.–Zelikow helped draft the 2002 doc­u­ment that con­cretized the PNAC strate­gic goals: ” . . . . In 2002, the PNAC goals of unchal­lenged mil­i­tary dom­i­nance, plus the right to launch pre­emp­tive strikes any­where, were embod­ied in the new Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Strat­e­gy of Sep­tem­ber 2002 (known as ‘NSS 2002’). (A key fig­ure in draft­ing this doc­u­ment was Philip Zelikow, who lat­er became the prin­ci­pal author of the 9/11 Com­mis­sion Report.) . . . .”
6.–PNAC’s paper fore­shad­owed what we feel under­lies the pan­dem­ic: ” . . . . 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.’ . . .”
7.–There are indi­ca­tions that the anthrax attacks that occurred in the same time peri­od as the 9/11 attacks may well have been a provo­ca­tion aimed at jus­ti­fy­ing the inva­sion of Iraq and spurring the devel­op­ment off bio­log­i­cal weapons, as advo­cat­ed in the PNAC doc­u­ment. Ft. Det­rick insid­er Steven Hat­fill was a sus­pect in the attack, although he appears to have worn “oper­a­tional Teflon.” “. . . . Steven Hat­fill was now look­ing to me like a sus­pect, or at least, as the F.B.I. would denote him eight months lat­er, ‘a per­son of inter­est.’ When I lined up Hat­fil­l’s known move­ments with the post­mark loca­tions of report­ed bio­threats, those hoax anthrax attacks appeared to trail him like a vapor cloud. But in Feb­ru­ary 2002, short­ly after I advanced his can­di­da­cy to my con­tact at F.B.I. head­quar­ters, I was told that Mr. Hat­fill had a good ali­bi. A month lat­er, when I pressed the issue, I was told, ‘Look, Don, maybe you’re spend­ing too much time on this.’ Good peo­ple in the Depart­ment of Defense, C.I.A., and State Depart­ment, not to men­tion Bill Patrick, had vouched for Hat­fill. . . . In Decem­ber 2001, Dr. Bar­bara Hatch Rosen­berg, a not­ed bioweapons expert, deliv­ered a paper con­tend­ing that the per­pe­tra­tor of the anthrax crimes was an Amer­i­can micro­bi­ol­o­gist whose train­ing and pos­ses­sion of Ames-strain pow­der point­ed to a gov­ern­ment insid­er with expe­ri­ence in a U.S. mil­i­tary lab. . . . Hat­fill at the time was build­ing a mobile germ lab out of an old truck chas­sis, and after S.A.I.C. fired him he con­tin­ued work on it using his own mon­ey. When the F.B.I. want­ed to con­fis­cate the mobile lab to test it for anthrax spores, the army resist­ed, mov­ing the trail­er to Fort Bragg, North Car­oli­na, where it was used to train Spe­cial Forces in prepa­ra­tion for the war on Iraq. The class­es were taught by Steve Hat­fill and Bill Patrick. . . . Mean­while, friends of Fort Det­rick were leak­ing to the press new pieces of dis­in­for­ma­tion indi­cat­ing that the mailed anthrax prob­a­bly came from Iraq. The leaks includ­ed false alle­ga­tions that the Daschle anthrax includ­ed addi­tives dis­tinc­tive to the Iraqi arms pro­gram and that it had been dried using an atom­iz­er spray dry­er sold by Den­mark to Iraq. . . .”
8.–Two key Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors were tar­get­ed by weapons-grade anthrax let­ters pri­or to chang­ing their oppo­si­tion to the Patri­ot Act: “. . . . We should not for­get that the Patri­ot Act was only passed after lethal weapons-grade anthrax let­ters were mailed to two cru­cial Demo­c­ra­t­ic Senators—Senators Daschle and Leahy—who had ini­tial­ly ques­tioned the bill. After the anthrax let­ters, how­ev­er, they with­drew their ini­tial oppo­si­tion. Someone—we still do not know who—must have planned those anthrax let­ters well in advance. We should not for­get, either, that some gov­ern­ment experts ini­tial­ly blamed those attacks on Iraq. . . .”
The “Lab Leak The­o­ry” has been pro­mul­gat­ed by Michael R. Gor­don, who was instru­men­tal in advanc­ing the Sad­dam Hus­sein WMD con­nec­tion which helped lay the pro­pa­gan­da foun­da­tion for the Iraq War.

Will the “Zelikow Pan­dem­ic Com­mis­sion’s” treat­ment of the Lab-Leak The­o­ry func­tion in such a way as to pave the way for U.S. war with Chi­na, by focus­ing blame for the pan­dem­ic on what Mr. Emory has called “The Oswald Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy”?

Encore for Philip Zelikow? (UPDATED ON 6/20/2021 and 6/21/2021)

In what may be shap­ing up to be a dis­turb­ing reprise of Philip Zelikow’s role in the events sur­round­ing the 9/11 attacks and the result­ing inva­sion of Iraq, Zelikow is posi­tioned to pre­side over a com­mis­sion to “inves­ti­gate” the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, ” . . . . an exam­i­na­tion of the ori­gins of the virus—including the con­tentious ‘lab leak’ the­o­ry. . . .” Back­ers of the project include the Rock­e­feller Foun­da­tion and a David Koch NGO (Ex-CIA chief and Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo is a Koch Broth­ers pro­tege.) Zelikow’s 9/11 Com­mis­sion presided over sig­nif­i­cant over­sights and omis­sions: ” . . . . There is now evi­dence, much of it sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly sup­pressed by the 9/11 Com­mis­sion, that before 9/11, CIA offi­cers Richard Blee and Tom Wilshire inside the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit along with FBI agents such as Dina Cor­si, were pro­tect­ing from inves­ti­ga­tion and arrest two of the even­tu­al alleged hijack­ers on 9/11, Khalid al-Mid­har and Nawaf al-Hazmi—much as the FBI had pro­tect­ed Ali Mohamed from arrest in 1993. . . .” PNAC (The Project for a New Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry) called for Rebuild­ing Amer­i­ca’s Defens­es: ” . . . . ‘The process of trans­for­ma­tion,’ it report­ed, ‘even if it brings rev­o­lu­tion­ary change, is like­ly to be a long one absent some cat­a­stroph­ic and cat­alyz­ing event—like a new Pearl Har­bor.’ Zelikow helped draft the 2002 doc­u­ment that con­cretized the PNAC strate­gic goals: ” . . . . In 2002, the PNAC goals of unchal­lenged mil­i­tary dom­i­nance, plus the right to launch pre­emp­tive strikes any­where, were embod­ied in the new Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Strat­e­gy of Sep­tem­ber 2002 (known as ‘NSS 2002’). (A key fig­ure in draft­ing this doc­u­ment was Philip Zelikow, who lat­er became the prin­ci­pal author of the 9/11 Com­mis­sion Report.) . . . .” ” . . . . 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.’ . . .” There are indi­ca­tions that the anthrax attacks that occurred in the same time peri­od as the 9/11 attacks may well have been a provo­ca­tion aimed at jus­ti­fy­ing the inva­sion of Iraq and spurring the devel­op­ment off bio­log­i­cal weapons, as advo­cat­ed in the PNAC doc­u­ment. Ft. Det­rick insid­er Steven Hat­fill was a sus­pect in the attack, although he appears to have worn “oper­a­tional Teflon.” “. . . . Steven Hat­fill was now look­ing to me like a sus­pect, or at least, as the F.B.I. would denote him eight months lat­er, ‘a per­son of inter­est.’ When I lined up Hat­fil­l’s known move­ments with the post­mark loca­tions of report­ed bio­threats, those hoax anthrax attacks appeared to trail him like a vapor cloud. But in Feb­ru­ary 2002, short­ly after I advanced his can­di­da­cy to my con­tact at F.B.I. head­quar­ters, I was told that Mr. Hat­fill had a good ali­bi. . . . In Decem­ber 2001, Dr. Bar­bara Hatch Rosen­berg, a not­ed bioweapons expert, deliv­ered a paper con­tend­ing that the per­pe­tra­tor of the anthrax crimes was an Amer­i­can micro­bi­ol­o­gist whose train­ing and pos­ses­sion of Ames-strain pow­der point­ed to a gov­ern­ment insid­er with expe­ri­ence in a U.S. mil­i­tary lab. . . .Hat­fill at the time was build­ing a mobile germ lab out of an old truck chas­sis, and after S.A.I.C. fired him he con­tin­ued work on it using his own mon­ey. When the F.B.I. want­ed to con­fis­cate the mobile lab to test it for anthrax spores, the army resist­ed, mov­ing the trail­er to Fort Bragg, North Car­oli­na, where it was used to train Spe­cial Forces in prepa­ra­tion for the war on Iraq. The class­es were taught by Steve Hat­fill and Bill Patrick. . . .” Two key Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors were tar­get­ed by weapons-grade anthrax let­ters pri­or to chang­ing their oppo­si­tion to the Patri­ot Act: “. . . . We should not for­get that the Patri­ot Act was only passed after lethal weapons-grade anthrax let­ters were mailed to two cru­cial Demo­c­ra­t­ic Senators—Senators Daschle and Leahy—who had ini­tial­ly ques­tioned the bill. After the anthrax let­ters, how­ev­er, they with­drew their ini­tial oppo­si­tion. Someone—we still do not know who—must have planned those anthrax let­ters well in advance. We should not for­get, either, that some gov­ern­ment experts ini­tial­ly blamed those attacks on Iraq. . . .” The “Lab Leak The­o­ry” has been pro­mul­gat­ed by Michael R. Gor­don, who was instru­men­tal in advanc­ing the Sad­dam Hus­sein WMD con­nec­tion which helped lay the pro­pa­gan­da foun­da­tion for the Iraq War. Will Zelikow’s inves­ti­ga­tion help prime the pump for war with Chi­na? Will this be done by point­ing blame for the pan­dem­ic on what Mr. Emory has called “The Oswald Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy”?

Encore for Michael R. Gordon

The jour­nal­is­tic gen­er­a­tion of the lab-leak the­o­ry comes, in part, from Michael R. Gor­don, who has a his­to­ry of gen­er­at­ing dubi­ous jour­nal­ism to sup­port the plans of the nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment. Gor­don: A) . . . . was the same man who, along with Judith Miller, wrote the Sep­tem­ber 8, 2002 arti­cle false­ly assert­ing that Iraqi Pres­i­dent Sad­dam Hus­sein was seek­ing to build a nuclear weapon. . . The claim was a lie, fun­neled to the [N.Y.] Times by the office of US Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney. . . On May 26, 2004, the ‘Times’ pub­lished a let­ter from its edi­tors enti­tled ‘FROM THE EDITORS; The Times and Iraq,’ ‘acknowl­edg­ing that the Times repeat­ed­ly ‘fell for mis­in­for­ma­tion.’ . . . The let­ter notes: ‘But we have found a num­ber of instances of cov­er­age that was not as rig­or­ous as it should have been... On Sept. 8, 2002, the lead arti­cle of the paper was head­lined ‘U.S. Says Hus­sein Inten­si­fied Quest for A‑Bomb Parts.’ That report con­cerned the alu­minum tubes that the admin­is­tra­tion adver­tised insis­tent­ly as com­po­nents for the man­u­fac­ture of nuclear weapons fuel. … it should have been pre­sent­ed more cau­tious­ly . . . .” B) ” . . . . On April 20, 2014 . . . co-authored an arti­cle enti­tled ‘Pho­tos Link Masked Men in East Ukraine to Rus­sia,’ which claimed to iden­ti­fy masked men oper­at­ing in east­ern Ukraine in oppo­si­tion to the US-backed coup regime as active-duty Russ­ian sol­diers. . . .Four days lat­er, the ‘Times” Pub­lic Edi­tor was again com­pelled to retract the claims in Gordon’s report­ing, call­ing them ‘dis­cred­it­ed.’ . . .”

Historical Amnesia

In a pre­vi­ous post, we not­ed the “pro-Democ­ra­cy” ele­ments in Hong Kong hav­ing adapt­ed the salute of the Ukrain­ian fas­cist OUN/B (and their UPA com­bat­ant wing) “Glo­ry to Ukraine! Glo­ry to the Heroes!” to their polit­i­cal lex­i­con. This fol­lowed the decamp­ment of ele­ments of the Ukrain­ian Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion and Pravy Sek­tor (Right Sec­tor) to Hong Kong. Their East­ern sojourn was under­writ­ten by an EU NGO. Azov’s Hong Kong com­pa­tri­ots have adopt­ed the OUN/B slo­gan, now the offi­cial salute of the Ukrain­ian police and mil­i­tary. ” . . . . The inter­est has been mutu­al, with Hong Kong’s ‘democ­rats’ draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from Ukraine’s pro-West­ern Euro­maid­an ‘rev­o­lu­tion’ that has empow­ered far-right, fascis­tic forces. Hong Kong pro­test­ers have embraced the slo­gan ‘Glo­ry to Hong Kong’, adapt­ed from ‘Sla­va Ukrayi­ni’ or ‘Glo­ry to Ukraine’, a slo­gan invent­ed by Ukrain­ian fas­cists and used by Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors dur­ing WWII that was re-pop­u­lar­ized by the Euro­maid­an move­ment. . . . ” The Hong Kong iter­a­tion of the OUN/UPA salute has become an anthem. In its cov­er­age of the ban­ning of that song by the Chi­nese author­i­ties, “The New York Times” [pre­dictably] fails to dis­cuss the her­itage of the slogan/song, nor the nature of the Ukrain­ian Nazi “trou­ba­dours” who brought it to Hong Kong.

Failure in Afghanistan

A rel­a­tive­ly rare piece of qual­i­ty, inci­sive analy­sis from the Main­stream Media, Craig Whit­lock­’s “At War With The Truth” presents an hon­est, albeit atten­u­at­ed, analy­sis of the fail­ure of the war in Afghanistan. In addi­tion, this paper presents the back­ground to, and foun­da­tion of, the lat­est iter­a­tion of the Rus­sia-gate psy-op: “Boun­ty­gate.” A thought­ful piece by Scott Rit­ter in “Con­sor­tium News” pars­es the deep pol­i­tics of “Boun­ty­gate” and the real­i­ty of Russ­ian pol­i­cy vis a vis the Tal­iban and Cen­tral Asia.

Provocation: Covid-19 as a False Flag “Bio-Reichstag Fire” (Updated on 4/22/2020)

In FTR #1126, we exam­ined the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and GOP’s exploita­tion of the Covid-19 out­break as a cam­paign tac­tic and right-wing hints that the virus escaped from a Chi­nese bio­log­i­cal war­fare lab­o­ra­to­ry. Now, Ger­many, France and Britain are join­ing with the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and the GOP in hint­ing that the coro­n­avirus escaped from a Chi­nese bio­log­i­cal war­fare lab­o­ra­to­ry. As a “Ger­man For­eign Pol­i­cy” arti­cle notes, the tone of Amer­i­can, British, French and Ger­man rhetoric con­cern­ing Covid-19 is rem­i­nis­cent of the delib­er­ate dis­in­for­ma­tion that led to the inva­sion of Iraq in 2002. A) ” . . . . Last week­end, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump warned the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic that it should face con­se­quences if it was ‘know­ing­ly respon­si­ble’ for the spread of the pan­dem­ic. Wash­ing­ton is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly spread­ing delib­er­ate rumors that the virus could have orig­i­nat­ed in a Chi­nese lab­o­ra­to­ry. Where­as, sci­en­tists vehe­ment­ly refute the alle­ga­tions, Ger­man For­eign Min­is­ter Heiko Maas declared, he ‘does not want to exclude’ that the WHO will have to deal with these issues. On Mon­day, Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel called on Bei­jing to show ‘trans­paren­cy’ on the issue. . . .”; B) ” . . . . At the same time delib­er­ate rumors are being spread in the Unit­ed States that the Covid-19 virus could have orig­i­nat­ed in a Chi­nese lab­o­ra­to­ry — pos­si­bly in bioweapons lab. The US gov­ern­ment indi­cat­ed that it does not rule out this pos­si­bil­i­ty; US intel­li­gence ser­vices are cur­rent­ly inves­ti­gat­ing the issue. Par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the lie about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruc­tion, such an alle­ga­tion must be per­ceived as a threat to lend legit­i­ma­cy to new aggres­sions. . . .”; C) ” . . . . Already last week, Ger­man media organs have increas­ing­ly been call­ing Chi­na the ‘cul­prit’ behind the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic out­break. Under the head­line ‘what Chi­na already owes us,’ Ger­many’s Springer press even called for ‘repa­ra­tions.’ (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[5]) Lead­ing British and French politi­cians have expressed sim­i­lar views. British For­eign Min­is­ter Dominic Raab has repeat­ed­ly declared that Chi­na will be held respon­si­ble for the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. French Pres­i­dent Emmanuel Macron has now joined the cam­paign. Regard­ing the pan­demic’s alleged ori­gin, he declared, ‘there are clear­ly things that have hap­pened’ in Chi­na ‘that we don’t know about.’[6] It is not clear how Macron can know some­thing exists that he does not know about. It is how­ev­er clear that he seeks to impli­cate Bei­jing. . . .” In fact–as we have seen, the DARPA has been doing exten­sive research into bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es. In addi­tion, Fort Det­rick was shut down in ear­ly August of 2019 for safe­ty vio­la­tions.

Supplement to The Magic Virus Theory

As dis­cussed in FTR #1124–among oth­er programs–it is now pos­si­ble to cre­ate ANY virus from scratch, using “mail-order” or “design­er” genes. Sad­ly pre­dictable jour­nal­is­tic bro­mides that the Covid-19 coro­n­avirus could not have been/was not made in a lab­o­ra­to­ry fly in the face of bio-tech­nol­o­gy that has exist­ed for 20 years. In FTR #282–recorded in May of 2001–we not­ed the ter­ri­ble sig­nif­i­cance of the devel­op­ment of such “Design­er Gene” tech­nol­o­gy. A BBC sto­ry from 1999 high­lights the fears of experts that the advent of such tech­nol­o­gy could enable the devel­op­ment of eth­no-spe­cif­ic bio­log­i­cal weapons: ” . . . . Advances in genet­ic knowl­edge could be mis­used to devel­op pow­er­ful bio­log­i­cal weapons that could be tai­lored to strike at spe­cif­ic eth­nic groups, the British Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion has warned. A BMA report Biotech­nol­o­gy, Weapons and Human­i­ty says that con­cert­ed inter­na­tion­al action is nec­es­sary to block the devel­op­ment of new, bio­log­i­cal weapons. It warns the win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty to do so is very nar­row as tech­nol­o­gy is devel­op­ing rapid­ly and becom­ing ever more acces­si­ble. ‘Recipes’ for devel­op­ing bio­log­i­cal agents are freely avail­able on the Inter­net, the report warns. . . . The BMA report warns that legit­i­mate research into micro­bi­o­log­i­cal agents and genet­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed ther­a­peu­tic agents could be dif­fi­cult to dis­tin­guish from research geared towards devel­op­ing more effec­tive weapons. . . . Dr Vivi­enne Nathanson, BMA Head of Health Pol­i­cy Research said: . . . ‘Biotech­nol­o­gy and genet­ic knowl­edge are equal­ly open to this type of malign use. Doc­tors and oth­er sci­en­tists have an impor­tant role in pre­ven­tion. They have a duty to per­suade politi­cians and inter­na­tion­al agen­cies such as the UN to take this threat seri­ous­ly and to take action to pre­vent the pro­duc­tion of such weapons.’ . . . ”

FTR #1124 The Magic Virus Theory: The “Whole-of-Society Response”

This pro­gram takes stock of some of the remark­able fea­tures of the Covid-19 coro­n­avirus, to be seen in the con­text of a coun­try whose political/intellectual elites have accept­ed the “Mag­ic Bul­let The­o­ry.” (This is dis­cussed in–among oth­er programs–The Guns of Novem­ber, Part 2.)

It is our con­sid­ered opin­ion that the virus is part of the desta­bi­liza­tion effort against Chi­na and is found­ed upon research high­light­ed in, among oth­er pro­grams, FTR #‘s 1119 and 1120.

As high­light­ed below, all of this must be eval­u­at­ed in light of the fact that the coor­di­na­tor of the anti-Chi­na effort–former Trump cam­paign man­ag­er Steve Bannon–is a fas­cist.

In addi­tion to review­ing how the Covid-19 virus infects human lung tis­sue and both the upper and low­er res­pi­ra­to­ry tracts, we note:

1.–The virus appears to have been a bat virus and the ran­dom muta­tions seen are unlike­ly to be nat­ur­al: ” . . . . What are the odds that a ran­dom bat virus had exact­ly the right com­bi­na­tion of traits to effec­tive­ly infect human cells from the get-go, and then jump into an unsus­pect­ing per­son? ‘Very low,’ [Kris­t­ian] Ander­sen [of the Scripps Research Trans­la­tion­al Insti­tute] says . . . . ”

2.–The abil­i­ty of this bat virus to infect ACE2 was present from day one. ” . . . . . The clos­est wild rel­a­tive of SARS-CoV­‑2 is found in bats, which sug­gests it orig­i­nat­ed in a bat, then jumped to humans either direct­ly or through anoth­er species. . . . When SARS-clas­sic first made this leap, a brief peri­od of muta­tion was nec­es­sary for it to rec­og­nize ACE2 well. But SARS-CoV­‑2 could do that from day one. ‘It had already found its best way of being a [human] virus,’ says Matthew Frie­man of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land School of Med­i­cine. . . .”

3.–Indeed, why was this “sev­enth virus” the one to infect humans “. . . . This fam­i­ly, the coro­n­avirus­es, includes just six oth­er mem­bers that infect humans. . . . . Why was this sev­enth coro­n­avirus the one to go pan­dem­ic? Sud­den­ly, what we do know about coro­n­avirus­es becomes a mat­ter of inter­na­tion­al con­cern. . . .”

4.–Perhaps the most notable obser­va­tion made about this virus thus far: it doesn’t appear to be mutat­ing in evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly sig­nif­i­cant ways. Of the 100-plus muta­tions observed in the virus so far, none has emerged as evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly dominant–unusual for a virus that only recent­ly jumped to humans. and has spread pro­lif­i­cal­ly. It’s as though the virus is already evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly opti­mized for spread­ing among humans and there are no ‘gain-of-func­tion’ muta­tions left for it acquire. As Lisa Gralin­s­ki, a coro­n­avirus expert at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na Chapel Hill, described it, ‘The virus has been remark­ably sta­ble giv­en how much trans­mis­sion we’ve seen . . . . there’s no evo­lu­tion­ary pres­sure on the virus to trans­mit bet­ter. It’s doing a great job of spread­ing around the world right now.’ . . .”

5.–As dis­cussed in oth­er programs–including FTR #‘s 1117 and 1121, the “cytokine storms” that over­whelm the immune sys­tem of some Covid-19 vic­tims are symp­to­matic of oth­er virus­es that have gone either “Gain-of-Func­tion” alter­ation and/or genet­ic recov­ery and recreation–HN1 Avian Flu, SARS, and the 1918 “Span­ish Flu” virus: ” . . . . These dam­ag­ing over­re­ac­tions are called cytokine storms. They were his­tor­i­cal­ly respon­si­ble for many deaths dur­ing the 1918 flu pan­dem­ic, H5N1 bird flu out­breaks, and the 2003 SARS out­break.  . . . .”

In addi­tion, an arti­cle in Sci­ence Direct char­ac­ter­izes the advent of the furin-like cleav­age site as a “gain-of-func­tion” phe­nom­e­non. “Gain of Func­tion” is a mech­a­nism of action of an “Enhanced Poten­tial Pan­dem­ic Pathogen.” Note the use of the word “strik­ing­ly” in this oth­er­wise dry and pedan­tic aca­d­e­m­ic pre­sen­ta­tion. It is VERY sig­nif­i­cant and–we suspect–betokens aware­ness on the part of the authors that “we aren’t in Kansas, any­more, Toto!” “. . . . STRIKINGLY [caps are ours–D.E.], the 2019-nCoV S‑protein sequence con­tains 12 addi­tion­al nucleotides upstream of the sin­gle Arg↓ cleav­age site 1 (Fig. 1, Fig. 2) lead­ing to a pre­dic­tive­ly sol­vent-exposed PRRAR↓SV sequence, which cor­re­sponds to a canon­i­cal furin-like cleav­age site (Braun and Sauter, 2019; Iza­guirre, 2019; Sei­dah and Prat, 2012). This furin-like cleav­age site, is sup­posed to be cleaved dur­ing virus egress (Mille and Whit­tak­er, 2014) for S‑protein ‘prim­ing’ and may pro­vide a gain-of-func­tion to the 2019-nCoV for effi­cient spread­ing in the human pop­u­la­tion com­pared to oth­er lin­eage b beta­coro­n­avirus­es. This pos­si­bly illus­trates a con­ver­gent evo­lu­tion path­way between unre­lat­ed CoVs. Inter­est­ing­ly, if this site is not processed, the S‑protein is expect­ed to be cleaved at site 2 dur­ing virus endo­cy­to­sis, as observed for the SARS-CoV. . . .”

The arti­cle also notes that the virus dif­fers sig­nif­i­cant­ly from oth­er coro­n­avirus­es of its type. ” . . . . Based on its genome sequence, 2019-nCoV belongs to lin­eage b of Beta­coro­n­avirus (Fig. 1A), which also includes the SARS-CoV and bat CoV ZXC21, the lat­ter and CoV ZC45 being the clos­est to 2019-nCoV. . . . Since furin is high­ly expressed in lungs, an enveloped virus that infects the res­pi­ra­to­ry tract may suc­cess­ful­ly exploit this con­ver­tase to acti­vate its sur­face gly­co­pro­tein (Bassi et al., 2017; Mbikay et al., 1997). Before the emer­gence of the 2019-nCoV, this impor­tant fea­ture was not observed in the lin­eage b of beta­coro­n­avirus­es. . . .”

The fea­tures of the virus not­ed above must be seen in the con­text of the DARPA research into bat coro­n­avirus­es:

1.–” . . . . 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 Pen­tagonon infec­tious dis­ease and bioweapons research.. . . .”

2.–DARPA is doing this work, in part, 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 gov­ern­men­tand 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. . . .

The unusu­al fea­tures of the virus must also be seen in the con­text of the Steve Ban­non-led anti-Chi­na desta­bi­liza­tion effort. It is our opin­ion that the spread­ing of the virus is intend­ed to pro­voke the “Whole-of-soci­ety” response. As dis­cussed in FTR #947, the dom­i­nant intel­lec­tu­al and polit­i­cal influ­ence on Ban­non is the Ital­ian fas­cist Julius Evola. Orig­i­nal­ly a sup­port­er of Mus­soli­ni, he ulti­mate­ly decid­ed Mus­soli­ni was too mod­er­ate and in an ide­o­log­i­cal “Gain-of-Func­tion” muta­tion, asso­ci­at­ed him­self with the Nazi SS, who were financ­ing his work by the end of World War II. 

Ban­non’s assess­ment of U.S.-China rela­tions amounts to a dec­la­ra­tion of “Totaler Krieg–Total War.” ” . . . ‘These are two sys­tems that are incom­pat­i­ble,’ Mr. Ban­non said of the Unit­ed States and Chi­na. ‘One side is going to win, and one side is going to lose.’ . . . .”

The coro­n­avirus attack we believe was unleashed on the U.S. and the world as a whole (to alien­ate it from Chi­na) and Chi­na itself (to inflect eco­nom­ic dam­age and stir up domes­tic unrest) is the man­i­fes­ta­tion of what the head of the FBI expressed: ” . . . . ‘I think it’s going to take a whole-of-soci­ety response by us.’ . . .”

Of para­mount impor­tance is the fact that state­ments being issued to the effect that the virus was not made in a lab­o­ra­to­ry are not just irrel­e­vant, but absurd. ANY virus can be made in a lab­o­ra­to­ry, from scratch as is being done for the SARS-CoV­‑2 (Covid-19) virus.

The bro­mides being issued–all too predictably–that the virus could not have been/wasn’t made in a lab­o­ra­to­ry are the viro­log­i­cal equiv­a­lent of the Mag­ic Bul­let The­o­ry.

We first dis­cussed “Design­er Genes” in FTR #282.

Ralph Baric–who did the gain-of-func­tion mod­i­fi­ca­tion on the Horse­shoe Bat coro­n­avirus, has been select­ed to engi­neer the Covid-19.

” . . . . The remark­able abil­i­ty to ‘boot up’  virus­es from genet­ic instruc­tions is made pos­si­ble by com­pa­nies that man­u­fac­ture cus­tom DNA mol­e­cules, such as Inte­grat­ed DNA Tech­nol­o­gy, Twist Bio­science, and Atum. By order­ing the right genes, which cost a few thou­sand dol­lars, and then stitch­ing them togeth­er to cre­ate a copy of the coro­n­avirus genome, it’s pos­si­ble to inject the genet­ic mate­r­i­al into cells and jump-start the virus to life. The abil­i­ty to make a lethal virus from mail-order DNA was first demon­strat­ed 20 years ago. . . .”

Note what might be termed a “viro­log­ic Juras­sic Park” man­i­fes­ta­tion: ” . . . . The tech­nol­o­gy imme­di­ate­ly cre­at­ed bio-weapon wor­ries. . . . Researchers at the US Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) drove that point home in 2005 when they res­ur­rect­ed the influen­za virus that killed tens of mil­lions in 1918–1919. . . .”

A key fac­tor spurring our sus­pi­cion con­cern­ing genet­ic-engi­neer­ing of one or more vari­ant of the Covid-19 virus con­cerns a 2015 Gain-of-Func­tion exper­i­ment done by the above Ralph Bar­ic: “Ralph Bar­ic, an infec­tious-dis­ease researcher at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na at Chapel Hill, last week (Novem­ber 9) pub­lished a study on his team’s efforts to engi­neer a virus with the sur­face pro­tein of the SHC014 coro­n­avirus, found in horse­shoe bats in Chi­na, and the back­bone of one that caus­es human-like severe acute res­pi­ra­to­ry syn­drome (SARS) in mice. The hybrid virus could infect human air­way cells and caused dis­ease in mice. . . . The results demon­strate the abil­i­ty of the SHC014 sur­face pro­tein to bind and infect human cells, val­i­dat­ing con­cerns that this virus—or oth­er coro­n­avirus­es found in bat species—may be capa­ble of mak­ing the leap to peo­ple with­out first evolv­ing in an inter­me­di­ate host, Nature report­ed. They also reignite a debate about whether that infor­ma­tion jus­ti­fies the risk of such work, known as gain-of-func­tion research. ‘If the [new] virus escaped, nobody could pre­dict the tra­jec­to­ry,’ Simon Wain-Hob­son, a virol­o­gist at the Pas­teur Insti­tute in Paris, told Nature. . . .”

FTR #1119 and FTR #1120 DARPA and the Covid-19 Outbreak, Part 1 and DARPA and the Covid-19 Outbreak, Part 2

A thought-pro­vok­ing and dis­turb­ing arti­cle about DARPA research into bat-borne dis­eases, includ­ing some caused by coronaviruses–is set forth here.

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

1.– 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.. . . .”
2.–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. . . .”
3.–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. . . .”
4.–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).’ . . .”
5.–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).’ . . .”
6.–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. . . .”
7.–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. . . .”
8.–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.”
9.–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.’ . . . . ”
10.–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 borne out of the Pentagon’s recent con­cern about the use of bats as bioweapons. . . .”
11.–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.’ . . .”

The pro­gram con­cludes with a sum­ma­ry of six pan­demics that struck Chi­na with­in a peri­od of a lit­tle less than two years. Are these con­nect­ed to the many-faceted desta­bi­liza­tion of Chi­na dis­cussed in past pro­grams and/or the research pro­grams high­light­ed in the Whit­ney Webb arti­cle?: 

. . . . In the past two years (dur­ing the trade war) Chi­na has suf­fered sev­er­al pan­demics:

1.–February 15, 2018: H7N4 bird flu. Sick­ened at least 1,600 peo­ple in Chi­na and killed more than 600. Many chick­ens killed. Chi­na needs to pur­chase US poul­try prod­ucts.
2.–June, 2018: H7N9 bird flu. Many chick­ens killed. Chi­na needs to pur­chase US poul­try prod­ucts.
3.–August, 2018: out­break of African swine flu. Same strain as Rus­sia, from Geor­gia. Mil­lions of pigs killed. Chi­na needs to pur­chase US pork prod­ucts.
4.–May 24, 2019: mas­sive infes­ta­tion of army­worms in 14 province-lev­el regions in Chi­na, which destroy most food crops. Quick­ly spread to more than 8,500 hectares of China’s grain pro­duc­tion. They pro­duce aston­ish­ing num­bers of eggs. Chi­na needs to pur­chase US agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts – corn, soy­beans.
5.–December, 2019: Coro­n­avirus appear­ance puts China’s econ­o­my on hold.
6.–January, 2020:China is hit by a “high­ly path­o­gen­ic” strain of bird flu in Hunan province. Many chick­ens died, many oth­ers killed. Chi­na needs to pur­chase US poul­try prod­ucts.