The CIA and the West Nile Virus
What New Viruses' Vaccines & 'Chemtrails' Have in Common
By Leonard G. Horowitz, D.M.D., M.A, M.P.H. President, Tetrahedron Publishing Group
8-11-00
There is a three letter common denominator underlying: the West Nile
Virus (WNV) outbreak in New England, the controversial spraying of malathione-a known
human chemical carcinogen related to agent orange-over American cities, the growing threat
of anthrax or other biological weapons attacks, vaccination policies that are risky and
questionable, if not downright deadly, the mysterious chemtrails overcasting previously
blue skies across North America, and an avalanch of sophisticated counterintelligence
propaganda concerning vaccinations and bioterrorist threats eminating from our nation's
primary news sources. The C.I.A. (Central Intelligence Agency) is implicated in every
regard. As a principle perpetrator of all these threats, and a primary purveyor of
propaganda in these domains, America's leading military intelligence and corporate
espionage agency is suspect in what amounts to global genocide being carried out in the
name of public health and national security.
As an investigative journalist who routinely travels across the western hemisphere, I
get my homework assignments from airport newstands. Since 1990, I've been tracking U.S.
government cover-ups in the health science domain. My special interests lie in emerging
viruses, bioterrorism, and media propaganda. As a graduate of Harvard School of Public,
and post-doctoral researcher in media persuasion technologies, I have, for the past five
years, conducted highly controversial investigations, published stunningly incriminating
documents, and exposed the purveyors of propaganda surrounding today's deadliest microbes,
along with the agents and agencies directly responsible for bioengineering and
transmitting designer viruses and bacteria to grossly unwitting populations. My job has
been to raise public awareness regarding these covert operations, to help a tiny
intelligent minority survive the current and coming plagues.
Having spent most of my adult life residing in Boston, the news of massive malathione
spraying for disease and mosquito control in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, as was done
months earlier in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey, grabbed my attention.(') Sketchy
reports, issued by The Massachusetts Department of Public Health, alleged the discovery of
the WNV in an adult dead crow found July 22 in a wooded area near Willow Pond in Jamaica
Plain (adjacent Roxbury), Massachusetts - a predominantly African American Boston suburb
and home to one of America's largest Nation of Islam communities.
Odd, I thought, of all the places in Massachusetts it could have landed, the dead crow
dropped on a Black community.
The official press notice cited the alleged need to deliver ground or aerial larvacide
and ground adulticide treatments around positive WNV findings. Thus, the extensive lethal
spraying of immune system ravaging malathione began.
That same week, with heightened fear of a biological apocalypse at hand, on Friday,
July 28, 2000, the Reuters news agency in Washington announced that the U.S. military's
use of anthrax vaccine had come under intense scrutiny and additional fire.(2) Dr. David
A. Ashford, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was quoted as stating
we do not have any specific information on the efficacy of the existing vaccine for the
prevention of inhalational anthrax and we probably never will. The article suspiciously
recalled the largely ignored report of findings by Dan Burton's congressional
investigating committee issued six months earlier. The February 2000 report by the House
of Reporesentatives' Committee on Government Reforms called for the suspension of the
anthrax vaccine program. Not only was the vaccine's inefficacy determined by the
committee, but the risk of side effects was found to be '75 times greater than defense
department officials initially assured the FDA and military personnel receiving the
vaccine.
Suddenly, this Reuters report previewed the likelihood that the FDA would approve an
obscure antibiotic, ciprofloxacin, over better known penicillins and doxycyclines to
prevent deaths from anthrax inhalations. These standard antimicrobials, the article
speculated, might be less effective than ciprofloxacin, due to the development of
antiobiotic resistant strains of anthrax. According to the Physician's Desk Reference, the
risks of ciprofloxacin administration are numerous and severe.
The very next day, Saturday, July 29, 2000, the nation's principle news agency, the
Associated Press (AP), announced the unprecidented move by the FDA to legislate
ciprofloxacin as the drug of choice against anthrax. This synchronous announcement was
said to help the Bayer Corporation of West Haven Connecticut market its product.
Conveniently, for the corporation, the FDA's action was said to be part of an organized
effort by federal agencies to prepare the nation to respond to biological attack. FDA
committee chairman, Dr. L. Barth Reller of Duke University, said the unanimous vote of the
committee 'is clearly linked' to the unusual circumstances of preparing for a possible
terrorist attack. . . . The CDC also is poised to stockpile the drug, AP reported.
Background on the CIA, the West Nile Virus, and Industrial Espionage.
Hints of CIA involvement, and a darker side to this virus's evolution, came less than a
year earlier with the publication of Richard Preston's New Yorker feature on the West Nile
[Virus] Mystery: How did it get here? The CIA would like to know.(4) Then, the alleged
outbreak of WNV, more commonly termed Eastern Equine Encephilitis (EEE) virus, provided an
excuse to spray millions of mostly Jewish, Black, and Hispanic mosquitos in the tri-state
region with malathion. Preston, whose propagandist nature and associations I exposed in my
national best-seller, Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola-Nature, Accident or Intentional?
(Tetrahedron Publishing Group, 1997),(5) is the author of the New York Times best-seller,
The Hot Zone.(6) This work catapulted him to national acclaim and his current status as
the chief voice in mainstream media bent on broadcasting immanent biological attacks by
terrorists, primarily depicted as Arabs, Blacks, and/or Muslims.
It should be realized, however, that the word bioterrorism, reflects a broader sense of
the word, including the frightening of Americans into accepting virtually any official
bioactive prescription, including experimental and risky vaccinations. In the case of
malatione spraying, this carcinogenic and lethal intoxication is deemed appropriate to
allegedly protect citizens against hypothetical biological attacks, man-made or natural.
For the propagandist purpose of fear induction, Preston's prose is best suited.
I first linked Richard Preston to CIA counterintelligence activities through my
independent investigation into the origin of the Ebola virus. Ebola, the ideal biological
weapon that kills nine-out-of-ten humans within three weeks of infection, emerged first in
three European vaccine production laboratories virtually simultaneously in 1967. Then
named the Marburg virus (after one of the vaccine maker's Marburg, Germany, address),
consensus held that this virus arrived in Europe in a shipment of nearly 500 African
monkeys. The scientific literature, mainstream media, and Richard Preston, never once
disclosed the name of the infamous monkey supplier-Litton Bionetics. Bionetics is cited in
the US Congressional Record as a leading biological weapons contractor and nonhuman
primate supplier for the US military. Rather than reporting the obvious association
between the ideal biological weapon and a top biological weapons contractor, Preston
instead advanced a theory on Ebola's origin totally void of scientific evidence, support,
or merit. Ebola, he claimed came from the deep dark Kitum Cave near the West Nile region
of Central Africa. Kitum Cave, according to repressed National Cancer Institute (NCI)
documents, is Preston's metaphor for Litton Bionetics's research lab. Here, in the West
Nile region of Central Africa, currently the heart of the African AIDS belt, Bionetics
collaborated, during the early 1960s through mid 1970s, with the International Association
for Research in Cancer (IARC). (Suspiciously, given the history of the cancer industry,
the IARC was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, but centered in France!)
Near the actual Kitum Cave, and the West Nile Valley of Northwest Uganda, Litton Biontics
and NCI scientists experimented on non-human primates and apparently African villagers
too, according to eyewitness tesimony.(7)
Relatedly, Bionetics was a medical subsidiary of the mega-military weapons contractor,
Litton Industries. Their president, Roy Ash, oversaw all of American industry during the
first Nixon administration beginning in 1969. That year, Henry Kissinger received the post
Nixon also considered for Roy Ash-National Security Advisor overseeing CIA, FBI, and
foreign policy.
George Bush, at that time, was a Texas congressman. He, along side his father's friend,
William Draper III, warned legislators about the immenant national security threat of
burgeoning Third World populations particularly in Africa. This and other warnings
prompted Henry Kissinger to begin writing the infamous National
Security Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and
Overseas Interests submitted before he left his NSA advisor post in 1974. The
document, declassified December 31, 1980, called for massive Third World depopulation and
related activities. While NSM 200 was being prepared, George Bush was appointed to serve
as CIA director.
According to two other CIA directors-Richard Helms and William Colby-as published in US
Congressional Records, Dr. Kissinger oversaw the development of biological weapons for
covert operations and depopulation programs.
Additionally incriminating is past CIA director James Woolsey's testimony before a
congressional investigating committee in 1993 concerning the agency's French operations.
He stated, With the end of the Cold War, the CIA must enter the era of economic espionage.
In the language of espionage, a French columnist explained, this meant that the CIA will
henceforth do many services for American enterprises which take the trouble to ask it for
'help' in both counterespionage and espionage itself.
Obviously, then, considering these powerful people and their positions, it is not
unreasonable to suspect a conspiracy to direct, at minimum, propaganda, if not global
genocide in the name of population control.
This later consideration might seem unconscionable were it not for the definitive links
between Litton, the CIA, and the Nazi-linked I.G. Farben Company-the global chemical and
pharmaceutical cartel that came to prominance in the early 1900s.(5) The building that
housed Germany's leading industrial organization prior to World War II, and for all
practical purposes the Third Reich during the war, became CIA European headquarters
immediately following the war. The marble decorated I.G. Farben building was intentionally
spared from allied bombing runs. It was largely built by the Bayer Pharmarceutical
consortium that included the distributors of aspirin and heroin to U.S. markets by the
Farbenfabriken of Elberfeld Co., 40 Stone Street, New York according to a 1906 Medical
Observer advertisement.(5,8) It is no secret that the CIA, with involvement by the Bush
family in America, has been very active in illicit drug running operations for the last
several decades.(9)
Origin of the West Nile Virus?
In his pre-Halloween DISPATCH in The New Yorker , Richard Preston treated us to another
trick. Concerning at least five people who died in the New York City vicinity from WNV,
Preston reported the CIA's concern was that the outbreak might have been a bioterrorist
attack. How else did it get to America, he asked. Then he explained, The West Nile virus
was first identified by virologists in 1937 in the West Nile district of Uganda.
Reading between the lines, Preston neglected to explain where these pioneering
virologists came from and who funded them. The answer is very easily found in a review of
the scientific and historic literature.
Beginning in the 1920s, the fields cancer, virology, and public health were virtually
entirely funded by the Rockefeller family in cooperation with Alfred P. Sloan, chief
benefactors and directors of the later developed Sloan-Kettering Memorial Cancer Research
Center.
By 1930, John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company, had married the German
chemical/pharmaceutical cartel known as I.G. Farben. Farben, Germany's leading industrial
organization, managed Hilter's rise from ruin to riches as leader of the Nazi party.
Farben's directors-the cream of the SS and Third Reich-decided that Jewish people would
best serve as slave labor in their corporate concentration camps. Hitler's racial hygiene
program, historic documents proved, evolved from the scientific eugenics efforts of the
Rockefeller family, the British Royal Family, and other powerful political notables
including Prescott Bush, George Bush's father! At that time, primarily Rockefeller money
built the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Eugenics, Anthropology and Human Heredity in
pre-Nazi Germany. Then, Rockefellers and friends instilled Ernst Rudin, as the institute's
director. He later became Hitler's chief racial hygienist. Margaret Sanger, the grand
matriarch of family planning, and world population control, worked vigorously, at that
time, to herald the necessary elimination of dysgenic people-mainly Blacks.
Erich Traub, a world class virologist who became Hitler's biological weapons chief, and
following World War II came to work for the US Navy under the top secret CIA Project
Paperclip, likely received Rockefeller support before, as well as after, the war. A covert
operation, Paperclip was largely administered by Henry Kissinger with full knowledge and
support from the Rockefellers and their business managers, John Foster and Allen Dulles of
the OSS/CIA. Thus, Erich Traub's early work was likely being funded by the
Rockefeller-Sloan cancer directorship by 1937. Subsequents efforts in the West Nile
district of Uganda by virologists working for this cancer consortium also included the
testing of the first cancer chemotherapeutic. A derivative of mustard gas used during
World War I, the chemical toxin, Sloan investigators claimed, was highly effective in
stopping the growth of cancer (as well as dysgenic people).
Furthermore, a Litton Bionetics report to the NCI in 1971 listed virtually every virus,
viral recombinant, and infectious agent under study by the world's leading cancer
researchers, vaccine developers, and biological weapons contractors. It lacked mention of
WNV. Instead, the only encephalitis virus cited was called Dawson's encephalitis virus,
likely deriving its name not from the West Nile district of Uganda, but from a
Rockefeller-linked cancer investigator by the name of Dawson who was clearly affiliated,
by NCI contract, with Litton, the IARC laboratory, and by association to the CIA.
Unfortunately, Preston did not relay this politically incorrect background in The New
Yorker-Rockefeller home turf.
Burried Intelligence Between Propaganda Lines.
Throughout his article, Preston weaved a web of paranoia-inciting intrigue regarding
the mysterious New York outbreak. People are bystanders, he claimed, caught in the
crossfire-bitten by chance by an infected mosquito.
Ironically, in 1975, according to the Congressional Record, during Frank Church's
investigation of the CIA for illegally storing and testing biological weapons, CIA
officials testified that they had development a weapon to administer toxins, including
infectious biologicals, that fired a micro-dart. It felt like a mosquito bite when it hit.
Later, in the article, Preston advanced an alternative bioterrorist hypothesis by
articulating the suspicions of Ken Alibek, a Russian biological weapons ace. Alibek had
conveniently defected to America just in time to join Preston and a cadre of CIA bioterror
propagandists currently at the forefront of what amounts to a full-fledged attack on the
public's mind, as well as U.S. National Security. After all, Preston quoted Secretary of
the Navy, Richard Danzig (a good German name) as saying bioterrorists could easily get
away with an outbreak that appears natural. He then relayed what a top scientist who
advises the FBI, had told him. This person who has been deeply involved with bioterror
planning explained, If I was planning a bioterror event, I'd do things with subtle
finesse, to make it look like a natural outbreak. That would delay the response and lock
up the decision-making process. Interesting that Preston's prose is unique in American
journalism and US military history, if not treasonous-delivering attack strategies to
potential enemies.
Preston, in a previous New Yorker article (Mar. 9, 1999), bragged about getting insider
information regarding biological warfare and bioterrorism even before CIA chiefs. He said
CIA officials have relied on him for information! Regarding the West Nile story, however,
Preston risked losing even lay reader credibility by providing an inane argument amid more
of the steady stream of anti-Iraqi propaganda familiar to intelligence observers. An
alleged Iraqi dissident author in hiding, Mikhael Ramadan, a Saddam Hussein look-alike,
Preston wrote, had predicted 3that Saddam would unleash a virus just months before the
same one broke out unexpectedly in New York . . . It was enough to make any bioweapons
analyst at the CIA feel uneasy. Citing Saddam's alleged interest in a West Nile virus
strain, and conveniently omitting American contractors' more voluminous contribution to
Iraqi biological weapons arsenals, after a lengthy and frightening discussion, he admitted
that this prospect of using the West Nile encephalitis virus in New York for bioterrorism
was absolutely stupid. The fact is, it only killed five people and a lot of crows. He did
not rule out, however, the great likelihood that this was a CIA brokered event,
orchestrated for propaganda purposes to prepare the public's mind to willingly accept
malathione sprayings.
Veteran observers will recall such propaganda tactics successfully used in recent years
concerning such threats of bioterrorism aimed at Muslim's or Iraqi nationals. Two years
ago, a man claiming to be a CIA microbiologist set the internet abuzz with claims that
Muslim women were bringing vials full of anthrax into the United States in their crotches.
Weeks later, the man, Larry Wayne Harris, was observed at a national Preparedness Expo
demonstrating microbial incubators and spraying devices that, he said, could be used for
bioterrorism.
Further investigation by this author, including interviews with some of Harris's
intimates, revealed that he had most likely been mind-manipulated by CIA controllers for
counterintelligence purposes. Even without this knowledge, I was able to predict, six
months in advance, Mr. Harris's use in bioterroristic counterintelligence at a critical
time-on the eve of the Clinton administration's announcment threatening renewed war with
Iraq. As United Nations Secretary Kofi Anan was making a final bid with Hussein to avert
further conflict, Harris was being set up for arrest in Las Vegas on possession of what
was thought to be anthrax. His arrest made front page news as did the CIA's message that
bioterrorists are everywhere, particularly in the Arab world. (For more information see
Larry Wayne Harris articles posted on the internet in the FTP archives at
www.tetrahedron.org.)
Dr. Alibek later stated that he had informed people on Capitol Hill that the West Nile
outbreak was suspicious. I told them, 'It will not be possible to say whether or not it is
terrorism unless we have a thorough study.' We need to take these situations with a high
degree of seriousness, he cautioned.
Congressional Dysfunction.
Indeed, further study by congressional investigators is indicated. In fact, when
Congressman Dan Burton's (R-Indiana) Government Reforms Committee met later that month to
examine suspicious ties between biological weapons contractors, defense department
contracts, and vaccine industry practices, they decided not to examine the documents I was
officially requested to send Beth Clay, the hearings coordinator. The reprinted contracts
in Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola linking Litton Bionetics to the first Ebola virus,
and the Merck pharmaceutical company contract in which hepatitis B vaccines were
administered to gay men in New York City and Blacks in Central Africa, apparently tainted
with HIV, were too controversial for their focus. Burton's committee was apparently
unwilling to air the facts in light of the fiction regarding ongoing biological assaults
on American taxpayers, Third World populations, and global genocide.
As Secretary of the Navy, Richard Danzig, admitted in Preston's spoof, Even if you
suspect biological terrorism, it's hard to prove. It's equally hard to disprove. This is
more illuminating of my prediction that we won't necessarily know when bioterror has
occurred than it is illuminating of . . . potential bioterrorists.
Thus, congressional investigators need not risk their careers unearthing fundamentally
objectionable truths about covert US military biological warriors like Secretary Danzig.
Forget that his department has been at the forefront of biological weapons research and
development since Erich Traub, Hitler's top biological weapons developer was drafted into
the Navy by Henry Kissinger during the late 1940s. Since then, the Navy has been at the
helm of research and development in ways to disseminate lethal biologicals for the CIA and
British MI6 black ops.
Foreshadowing Chemtrail Technology and the Rise of the Forth Reich.
Revolting as it may seem, the CIA and US Navy, working in tandem with the Army, haven1t
spared military, or civilian populations, from germ warfare experiments or outright
biological attacks. Frank Church's investigating committee learned, for instance, that the
USS Coral Sea anchored in Kampton Roads, and the USS F.D. Bailey at sea off [the] entrance
to Kampton . . . had been sprayed at least seventeen times with biological agents ranging
from strains of Bacillus (physically similar to anthrax) to E. coli. (Mutant strains of E.
coli had been prepared possibly leading to the development of severly lethal varieties of
bioweapons including strain 157 reponsible for dozens of deaths and the suspicious
takeover of the Hudson Beef Company by Clinton family friend, Don Tyson, and his
Springdale, Arkansas-based Tyson Foods Company.)(10) Civilians in the New York subway
system, under the skies of San Francisco, and in the tunnels of the Pennsylvania Turnpike,
had been sprayed likewise with biological inhalants. Similarly, U.S. legislators learned
in 1999 the little reported fact that Gulf War troops, as many as 200,000, were
unwittingly used in AIDS vaccine experiments wherein portions of the AIDS virus, HIV, were
recombined with a pathogenic mycoplasma, isolated, tested, and then patented by Dr.
Shyh-Ching Lo of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology for the American Registry of
Pathology in Washington, D.C. The patent is reprinted and discussed in this authors book,
Healing Codes for the Biological Apocalypse (Tetrahedron Publishing Group, 1999).
Therefore, it is no wonder, regarding the 1999 West Nile virus outbreak, Richard
Preston concluded, This valley in New Jersey reminded me in a strange way of Kitum Cave, .
. . a haunting place I'd seen some years ago. Much like the chemtrails containing ethylene
dibromide-another human chemical carcinogen and immune system destroyer-being sprayed by
high flying military aircraft in recent months, such outbreaks are hauntingly reminicent
of a litany of crimes against humanity, violations of the Nuremberg Code, by secret agents
effecting depopulation for global colonialists, (often called the oligarchy or illuminati)
that many fear is the rising Forth Reich.
Summary and Conclusions.
It is known, in military circles, as the Russian biological cocktail. I suppose it's so
named by the Americans who invented it. This method of choice of incapacitating and
eliminating excess or targeted populations calls for the delivery of combinations of
biological and chemical agents-so called co-factors. This makes diagnosis and treatment of
these multiple simultaneous exposures/intoxications/infections difficult, if not
impossible. Thus waged, biochemical warfare cannot be traced to its source, and affords
the ability to deliver economic and non-lethal substitutes for traditional warfare, while
creating a dependance among those attacked on the stealth aggressors for their
ameliorative products and services. The full benefits of this military option are
discussed at length elsewhere.(9)
Given this background, it is absurd to believe, as many foolish internet surfers
apparently do, that chemtrail sprayings represent an earnest effort to immunize mass
populations against anthrax attack. Such deceptive reasoning and communications merely
serve a Hegelian dialectic-to confuse the issues and shield the perpetrators of ongoing
atrocities.
In short, what is being conducted in the name of public health, and national security,
are biological and chemical weapons applications reminicent of Nazi atrocities, and the
propaganda mechanisms used to disguise them. These are apparently ongoing to fulfill
economic, political, and ideological objectives. Who, in essence, makes more money by
waging war and delivering disease and death to Americans than the Rockefeller family? Who,
in the US has recognized the urgent need to reduce native and world populations, and has
put their money to this task, more than the Rockefellers? Finally, who believes more
firmly that useless eaters, including dysgenic races of humans, should be shepparded to
extinction more than those who intiated the eugenics movement-the world's first racial
hygiene program-on American soil. Indeed, no one embraces these concerns more vigorously
than the Rockefeller family, the Royal Family of England, and America's royalty-the Bush
family. As media outlets herald the completion of the Human Genome Project,-the
contemporary name substitute for eugenics-those that initiated global efforts to control
populations and human evolution almost a century ago, are on the verge of achieving in
Past President George Bush's words, a kinder and friendlier . . . New World Order.
About the author
Leonard G. Horowitz, D.M.D., M.A., M.P.H. is a Harvard graduate, independent investigator,
and an internationally recognized authority in public health and AIDS education. The 1999
Author of the Year award recipient from the World Natural Health Organization, and one of
American healthcare's most captivating speakers, his tenth book, Emerging Viruses: AIDS
& Ebola-Nature, Accident or Intentional? become a national best-seller in 1998. This
work is largely responsible for public health and vaccine policy changes in at least three
Third World nations. For more information regarding Dr. Horowitz's many books, videotapes,
and audio health programs, call toll free 1-888-508-4787, or contact www.tetrahedron.org
on the internet. Please address communications to Dr. Horowitz by way of his publisher:
Tetrahedron Publishing Group, P. O. Box 2033, Sandpoint, Idaho, 83864.
References
1) The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services,
Department of Public Health. West Nile Virus Detected in Massachusetts. Press release
issued by MDPH on July 26, 2000. Available from
http://www.state.ma.us/dph/media/pr0726.htm.
2) Bussey E and Stern P. U.S. military use of anthrax vaccine under fire. Reuters news
service. Friday, July 28, 2000. Available from Associated Press. FDA advisory panel urges
approval of anthrax drug. Las Vegas Review-Journal. Saturday, July 29, 2000 p. 6A.
4) Preston R. West Nile [Virus] Mystery: How did it get here? The C.I.A. would like to
know. The New Yorker, Oct. 18 & 25, 1999. pp. 90-108.
5) Horowitz L and Martin J. Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola-Nature, Accident or
Intentional? Rockport, Masssachusetts: Tetrahedron Publishing Group, 1997.
6) Preston R. The Hot Zone. New York: Random House, 1994.
7) Eye witness testimony that African villagers were used in lethal vaccine experiments
during the 1950s to early 1960s in this precise area, home to an American medical research
laboratory, was provided by C. Sally, M.D., an African physician and post-doctoral
laboratory assistant who worked there at that time. According to Dr. Sally, mosquitos were
blamed, then as well, for spreading Burkitt1s lymphoma to Black children, though, he said,
his colleagues new better. The truth was that experimental vaccines had delivered the
cancer virus through the mothers to their infants. Dr. Sally1s audiotaped testimony is
included in: Horowitz 'On Vaccines1 from Tetrahedron Publishing Group (1-888-508-4787),
1998, by this author.
8) Horowitz L and Emory D. The Nazi-American Biomedical Biowarfare Connection. Sandpoint,
Idaho: Tetrahedron Publishing Group (1-888-508-4787), 1998.
9) Blum W. The CIA & Drugs. Prevailing Winds: The Journal of Current Events, Politics,
History and Health, Number Six, January-April, 2000.
10) Horowitz L and Puleo J. Healing Codes for the Biological Apocalypse. Sandpoint, Idaho:
Tetrahedron Publishing Group, 1999. pp. 251-253.
Was There an AIDS Contract?
I heard about Jakob Segal's theory that the AIDS virus originated in a US government
biological warfare research laboratory in early 1989. After some preliminary research, I
was amazed to find that this shocking theory had received no attention whatsoever in the
mainstream American press, and almost none in Europe.
The questions this theory raised were a matter of pure science, or so it seemed to me.
There were only three possibilities: 1) Segal was wrong; 2) he was right; 3) it could not
be determined either way. I resolved to find out which of these was true.
1. Informing the press.
My first thought was to notify the press. Perhaps, by some fluke, they had not heard of
Segal, just as I hadn't, though he had been publishing his conclusions since 1986. Surely
American journalists would be as anxious as I was to find out and expose the truth.If
Segal was wrong, it would be one's patriotic duty to say so.If he was right, or even might
be right, the same principle would hold. In the land of the free and the home of the
brave, one does not shirk from the truth. Remember Watergate! So I wrote the following
article and sent it off in September 1989 to a couple of dozen US journals and newspapers:
Is AIDS Man-Made?
The theory that AIDS originated in the laboratory has been circulating in Europe,
particularly in West Germany, since late 1986.
The theory hinges on the claim that the AIDS virus (HIV) is virtually identical to two
other viruses: Visna, which causes a fatal disease in sheep but does not infect humans,
and HTLV-I (Human T-Cell Leukemia Virus), which infects humans but is seldom fatal.
Prof. Jakob Segal, the author of the theory, says that structural analysis using genome
mapping proves that HIV is more similar to Visna than to any other retrovirus. The portion
(about three percent) of the HIV genome which does not correspond structurally to Visna
corresponds exactly to part of the HTLV-I genome.
This similarity, says Segal, cannot be explained by a natural process of evolution and
mutation. It can only have resulted from an artificial combination of the two viruses.
He notes that the symptoms of AIDS are consistent with the complementary effects of two
different viruses. AIDS patients who do not die of the consequences of immune deficiency
show the same damage to the brain, lungs, intestines, and kidneys that occurs in sheep
affected with Visna. Combining Visna with HTLV-I would allow the virus to enter not only
the macrophages of the inner organs but also the T4 lymphocytes and thus cause immune
deficiency, which is exactly what AIDS does.
As further evidence that HIV is a construct of Visna and HTLV- I, Segal cites studies
which show that the reverse transcription process in HIV has two discrete points of peak
activity which correspond, respectively, to those of Visna and HTLV-I.
AIDS is thus, according to Segal, essentially a variety of Visna. This has important
implications for research, since a cure or vaccine might be found sooner by studying Visna
in sheep than by concentrating, as at present, on monkeys.
The theory of the African origin of AIDS, that it developed in African monkeys and was
transferred to man, has been abandoned by most researchers. All of the known varieties of
SIV (Simian Immunodeficiency Virus) are structurally so dissimilar to HIV (much less
similar than HIV and Visna) that a common origin is out of the question. Furthermore, even
if such a development by natural mutation were possible, it would not explain the sudden
outbreak of AIDS in the early 1980s, since monkeys and men have been living together in
Africa since the beginning of human history.
The "Africa Legend," as it is called in a 1988 West German (Westdeutscher
Rundfunk) television documentary, is further debunked by the epidemiological history of
AIDS. There is no solid evidence of AIDS in Africa before 1983. The earliest documented
cases of AIDS date from 1979 in New York.
In addition to the WDR documentary and occasional mention in magazines like Stern and
Spiegel, Segal's work has been published in West Germany (AIDS-Erreger aus dem Gen-Labor?
[AIDS-Virus from the Gene Laboratory?], Kuno Kruse, ed., Berlin: Simon & Leutner,
1987) and India (with Lilli Segal, The Origin of AIDS, Trichur, India: Kerala Sastra
Sahitya Parishad, 1989). He has also been conducting lecture tours in West Germany.
Scientific journals, Segal says, have refused to publish or discuss his theory. This is
difficult to understand. If he is wrong, he should certainly be refuted. The cornerstone
of the theory is that HIV is a combination of Visna and HTLV-I. Segal claims that any
trained laboratory technician could produce AIDS from these components, today, in less
than two weeks. If this is true, it should be demonstrable by experiment.
The next question is, if it is possible to produce HIV from Visna and HTLV-I now, was
it also possible in 1977, when Segal claims the AIDS virus was created? He says it was, by
use of the less precise "shotgun" method of gene manipulation available then,
though it would have taken longer--about six months. If this is true, it should also be
demonstrable.
The final question would be: Was it produced in a laboratory? Segal believes he has
shown that it was, but he goes further than that. He also believes he knows who produced
it and why. Segal quotes from a document presented by a Pentagon official named Donald
MacArthur on June 9, 1969, to a Congressional committee, in which $10 million is requested
to develop, over the next 5 to 10 years, a new, contagious micro- organism which would
destroy the human immune system.
Whether such research is categorized as "offensive" or
"defensive"is immaterial: in order to defend oneself against apossible new
virus, so the reasoning goes, one must first develop the virus.
Since the Visna virus was already well known, Segal continues, the problem was to find
a human retrovirus that would enable it to infect humans. Scrutiny of the technical
literature, Segal says, reveals that Dr. Robert Gallo isolated such a virus, HTLV-I, by
1975, though it was not given this name until later.
1975 was also the year the virus section of Fort Detrick (the US Army's center for
biological warfare research in Frederick, Maryland) was renamed the Frederick Cancer
Research Facilities and placed under the supervision of the National Cancer Institute,
Gallo's employer.
It was there, in the P4 (high-security) laboratory at Fort Detrick, according to Segal,
where the AIDS virus was actually created, between the fall of 1977 and spring of 1978.
Six months is precisely the time it would have taken, using the techniques available then,
to create the AIDS virus from Visna and HTLV-I.
Segal claims that the new virus was then tested on convicts who volunteered for the
experiment in return for their release from prison. Failing to show any early symptoms of
disease, the prisoners were released after six months. Some were homosexual, and went to
New York, where the disease was first attested in 1979.
The researchers had not counted on creating a disease with such a long incubation
period. (One year is relatively short for AIDS, but would not be unusual if the infection
was induced by high- dosage injections.) If the researchers had kept their human guinea
pigs under observation for a longer time, they would have detected the disease and been
able to contain it.
In other words, Segal claims that AIDS is the result of a germ warfare research
experiment gone awry.
In an interview on April 18, 1987, published in the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant, Dr.
Gallo describes Segal's theory as KGB propaganda.
Segal, who is Russian (Lithuanian Jewish) but has been a professor of biology (now
emeritus) at Humboldt University in East Berlin since 1953, is a bit old (78) to be
starting a career as a propagandist. Soviet and East German officials, for their part,
have maintained a discreet silence on the matter, for reasons of realpolitik, Segal
believes.
The question of whether AIDS is man-made or not cannot be answered by dismissing it as
propaganda.
Segal believes he has answered the question. We do not have to believe him, but we do
have to believe that the following questions are answerable:
1) Can HIV be produced by combining Visna and HTLV-I in the laboratory now?
2) Can it be produced using the techniques available in 1977?
3) What did go on at Ft. Detrick between 1969 and 1978? What were the results of the
$10 million Pentagon research project announced on June 9, 1969?
I didn't get a single reply--not even a form-letter rejection. Later I rewrote the
article, concentrating on the MacArthur testimony and the fact that neither it nor Segal
had ever been discussed in the press. This much was certain. The MacArthur testimony was
authentic, and part of the public record. I had seen and photocopied it myself in the
Library of Congress. On June 9, 1969, Dr. D. M. MacArthur, then Deputy Director of
Research and Technology for the Dept. of Defense, told the House Subcommittee on
Appropriations:
"Molecular biology is a field that is advancing very rapidly, and eminent
biologists believe that within a period of 5 to 10 years it would be possible to produce a
synthetic biological agent, an agent that does not naturally exist and for which no
natural immunity could have been acquired...a new infective microorganism which could
differ in certain important aspects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most
important of these is that it might be refractory [resistant] to the immunological and
therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from
infectious disease...A research program to explore the feasibility of this could be
completed in approximately 5 years at a total cost of $10 million."
This was scandal enough. It does not mean that Segal is right, but it does mean the US
government wanted, and considered it feasible, to create an AIDS-like virus as early as
1969.
It would not be surprising if the government wanted to keep this quiet, but what about
the press? I could find only two references to MacArthur's testimony, in a book by Robert
Harris and Jeremy Paxman (_A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret Story of Chemical &
Biological Warfare_, NY: Hill & Wang, 1982), and in a couple of articles by Robert
Lederer and Nathaniel S. Lehrman in _Covert Action Information Bulletin_ (28, summer 1987,
and 29, winter 1988).
Segal had been similarly ignored. Through the Amerika Haus library in Frankfurt I ran a
DIALOGUE search of the indexes of major US newspapers, magazines and journals for the name
Jakob Segal, and it came up negative. At least he had been mentioned a couple of times in
_Der Spiegel_. In America he was apparently completely unknown.
I found this intolerable.I did not agree with Segal; I only wanted to see his arguments
discussed by people competent to make a judgement. Then I and the rest of the reading
public could decide which arguments were more convincing. I thought that was the way free
speech worked. Here was a guy saying the US government created AIDS, and claiming to have
proved itscientifically, and he was being ignored.
By contrast, I had read about the storm of controversy that Peter Duesberg's theory had
caused. He suggested in 1987 that AIDS is not caused by a virus at all--certainly at least
as speculative a thesis as Segal's. But there is a significant difference. If Duesberg is
right and HIV does not cause the disease, the question of whether the virus originated in
the laboratory is irrelevant. In that sense, it is the antithesis of Segal's theory. Was
that why it received so much attention, while Segal was completely ignored?
I also wanted to call attention to Segal's new book (_AIDS: Die Spur fuehrt ins
Pentagon_, Essen: Neuer Weg, 1990), which had not (and still has not) appeared in English.
I sent the revised version of my article out to a number of journals, but the only
reply I received was from a "radical" leftist editor, who wrote:
"We have real problems with the Segal material....There was a logical fallacy in
Lehrman's reliance [on Segal's theory], too, because he used Segal's theories to bolster
his notion that the release of AIDS was deliberate, even though Segal believes that it was
accidentally released....The issue is further complicated by the recent retraction of the
current Soviet government of the allegations of CBW connections they had made, undoubtedly
another of Bush's little quid pro quos. A further difficulty is that the most credible
critic in this country of the standard medical establishment line is Dr. Peter Duesberg,
who argues (and Lehrman agrees) that AIDS is caused toxically, not simply virally. The
synthesis of all this might be that if AIDS is toxically triggered, even if it requires
some viral precondition, the trigger could be caused either environmentally or
deliberately or both.
"In any event, although we believe that the issue of the cause of AIDS is an
incredibly significant one (and certainly do not think you or any other the other critics
of the Establishment) are lone nuts, we don't think that the issue is anything near so
clear-cut that the failure to give significant coverage to Segal is "the biggest
coverup since JFK.
"We would be interested in a general piece on the failure of the media (U.S. and
Western Europe) to cover alternative theories in general, which would not have to accept
any particular theory, but would show how conferences which take the establishment line
get considerable coverage whereas those which do not are barely, if at all, covered. Ditto
for the personalities involved.
"Anyway, these are some of the reasons why we do not feel like running with the
ball right now."
I replied: "I wanted to focus on the 1969 MacArthur testimony--a scandal in
itself--and what Segal makes of that. You probably have Segal's English monograph of 1986,
which he wrote before he knew about the MacArthur testimony. (He got it from Rifkin).
Since then he has been much more specific about tracing what he considers to be the exact
course of development of the virus, i.e. Gallo's execution of that 1969 contract.
"This--Gallo's role--may not be provable, but the heart of Segal's thesis, namely
that VISNA + HTLV-I = HIV-I, is testable, as I pointed out. There is no scientific
explanation for why it has not been tested, which leaves the political one. The theory is
very clear and precise. If Segal is wrong, he could easily be proved wrong.
"This is not the case with Duesberg or any of the other theories. The effect of
the Duesberg theory, as I pointed out in the article, is to remove the entire question of
the origin of the virus from the debate, which then becomes dissipated in the probably
unresolvable question of environmental triggers, susceptibility, etc.
"The question we should ask is this: Why has Duesberg's theory, which is not
testable, been given so much attention, while Segal's theory, which is testable, has been
completely ignored? I did a national (US) magazine and newspaper database search
(DIALOGUE), and if it is accurate, the name Jakob Segal has never appeared in a major US
newspaper or any scientific journal.
"If Duesberg is the most credible critic in the US of the medical establishment,
as you say, he serves (willy nilly) the coverup admirably, for the reason I have
described. As we well know, mind control involves control of the offense as well as the
defense (Gallo, Essex). The parallel here with the JFK case is the Blakey Mafia theory.
That, as Garrison says, is a red herring. It doesn't matter who pulled the triggers, and
it doesn't matter what 'triggers' AIDS, if we are trying to find out the whole truth.
Blakey will have us tracking down Mafiosi for the next hundred years, and Duesberg will
have us searching for non-viral AIDS 'triggers' for another hundred.
"It's hard to say what the biggest coverup up will turn out to be (if anyone ever
finds out). AIDS can never be as 'clear-cut' as JFK, in terms of evidence ignored,
suppressed, and distorted, because there are not enough microbiologists around who are
capable or willing to do the private research. In terms of lives lost and money spent,
though, AIDS will be near the top. In another sense, too, this is as big as JFK, because
if Segal is right it means that 'science' is just as corrupt and manipulable as the press
and the government. This will come as a great shock to many who believe that questions of
'pure science' are immune to political manipulation.
"You are probably right about a deal with the Russians. In fact, Segal says they
talked about AIDS at Reykjavik. Maybe that's what Reagan was really upset about, rather
than SDI. I wouldn't be surprised if he heard the truth about AIDS at that conference for
the first time. In any case, Segal was told subsequently by East German and Soviet
authorities that he could continue to publish and speak on the subject (mainly in West
Germany--the East Germans gave him no opportunities), as long as he did not explicitly
associate himself with the East German or Soviet governments. Now there is the question.
They could have stopped him whenever they wanted to, but they didn't. Do you think they
would have allowed him to continue to publish and give lectures in the West if they
thought he was wrong? If he was a KGB agent, as some people have said, would they have
been stupid enough to let him make such monstrous allegations if there was nothing to
them, and if they could easily be proved false?
"I will think about your suggestion for a more general approach, but are you sure
that another consideration of alternative theories would be productive? CAIB did a good
job on that. To make the analogy with JFK again, what good is rehash of the 'alternative'
assassination theories? It just perpetuates the confusion and plays right into the hands
of those who want to avoid, most of all, clear questions and clear answers. I tried to
word my article so as not to imply acceptance of Segal's theory. I do not accept it. I
think it should be discussed. My point was that Segal has posed a clear, testable
hypothesis which, despite the importance of its implications, has been completely ignored.
That point would be considerably diluted if Segal's theory were treated as just another
crazy (and untestable) theory, like Duesberg's.
There was no response. I was getting nowhere.
2. Talking to the experts.
My next tack was to try to pursue the science of the matter. This was difficult, since
my last foray into the natural sciences was in 1968, when I took the general biology
course at college which was also required for humanities majors. Still, as a linguist I
felt I was a scientist of a sort, and I felt that with a reasonable effort I should at
least be able to inform myself enough to answer my basic question: Was Segal right, wrong,
or is it impossible to know?
In the summer of 1989 I had seen a reference in Time magazine to someone I had known as
a teenager who had become a well-known cancer and AIDS researcher--a virologist and a
viral surgeon. If anybody could answer my questions it would be Tony. (The name is
fictitious; I see no reason to personalize the issue.) I found his address in Who's Who
and wrote to him, enclosing a copy of my unpublished article and a longer article written
by Segal that had been published by a left-wing (Marxist) West German newspaper. An
exchange of letters followed, which I reproduce here.
Pass this on if you like. RSVP , because I don't read all the newsgroups it may appear
on.
Sept. 14, 1989
Dear Tony,
...My main reason for writing is to ask what you think of the enclosed. My article has
not been published. Segal's article is from the Rote Fahne, a Marxist weekly, which I know
doesn't exactly enhance its credibility, but nobody else will publish him. That shouldn't
affect the science of the matter. I hope your German is up to it. I think you'll find
Segal's style clear and non-convoluted, which is more than I can say for most German
academicians--or American ones, for that matter.
Let me be honest. I'm quite aware that you might be the last person who might tell me
anything, even if you could, about this,but the thing really bothers me, and a lot of
other people too, at least in this country. If Segal is wrong, he sure as hell ought to be
proved wrong. Would be great to hear from you, in any case.
Best,
Mike Morrissey
*
September 21, 1989
Dear Mike,
Your question is one that has come up many times before. The answer is simple. The
virus is not man-made. Segal gives us too much credit since this is the most complex virus
we have seen. We can't even make a simple one. If it were as he says we would also have
the technology to eliminate it and we do not, as yet.
We don't know where it actually comes from but the best guess is from a non-human
primate from Africa. This is because very similar viruses cause AIDS-like diseases in
these animals. However, the "missing link" has not been found, but it may turn
up at any time as more studies are done.
You may also have heard that AIDS is not caused by the virus HIV. More nonsense. The
evidence that it does is overwhelming and this will become clearer to the public as
specific drugs and vaccines are developed. To get a better view of all of this let me
refer you to the October 1988 issue of Scientific American.
Yours sincerely,
Antonio L. DiAngelo
*
Oct. 6, 1989
Dear Tony, I'm afraid I don't understand your comments on AIDS. Of course we cannot
make a horse or a donkey, but if we put them together we can "make" a mule.
Segal says the horse and the donkey were Visna and HTLV- 1. Nor do I see why, if this is
what happened, the virus should be any more defeatable than any other.
I don't know if you have actually read Segal's work, but it is very convincing and
simply cannot be dismissed out of hand. He has countered every even halfway
"scientific" argument--it would appear--with success. What the public cannot
understand or accept is why, if he is wrong, he cannot be refuted with scientific
arguments, and why his arguments are simply ignored. If he is right, of course, everything
is all too clear.
Segal deals at length with Essex's Africa hypothesis, and points out that even he
(Essex) has retracted it, although it continues to be propagated in the media. Nor can I
understand why researchers seem to be ignoring the possibility that AIDS is a Visna
variety and might be more amenable to prevention or cure if treated as such. That means
that they should be working with sheep, not monkeys.
Sincerely,
Mike
*
Oct. 17, 1989
Dear Mike,
This is hard to do by letter, but here goes. Visna + HTLV-1 could never be crossed to
give HIV-1. HIV-1 has things in it that neither of the others have.
HIV-1 is a member of the same family as Visna but more complex. Indeed, much of what is
known about Visna is used to further our knowledge of HIV-1.
The Africa hypothesis is not that of Essex. What he has retracted is something that
relates to HIV-2, an HIV of West African origin. Max detected the presence of this virus
in man but when he isolated it, a contamination occurred in his lab with SIV-1 (a simian
AIDS virus). This was not found out until later. The real HIV-2 exists and is a second
human virus.
You need to read much more than Segal and I suppose I should read more abut him. I
finally stopped some time ago when I concluded he was on the wrong track. I can imagine
how difficult it is for you, though, with all of this controversy about. It is a very
strange time in science.
Best regards,
Antonio L. DiAngelo
*
Oct. 29, 1989 Dear Tony,
I know I'm in way over my head, but all I can do, like everyone else, is try to
evaluate somehow or other the opinions of experts, which is very difficult when they
contradict each other.
I don't know if you are referring to the tat genes when you say HIV-1 has things that
Visna and HTLV-1 do not, but if so Segal responds to this objection in his book as
follows:
"As early as June 1986 Gonda et al. (Proceedings of the Nat. Academy of Sciences
83, 4007-4011) published a comparative study of the HIV and Visna virus genomes ... The
result was that both genomes were highly similar, and that all structural elements were
shared by both of them, except for a small segment of 300 nucleotide pairs with an
exceptionally high genetic instability, nearly identical to a section of the HTLV-1
genome. That means that all the new structural elements first described in the HIV genome,
such as the tat-genes complex, also exist in the Visna virus genome."
Segal has a whole chapter based largely on this study by Gonda and an earlier one
published in Science 227, 173-177 (1985).The 60% homology Gonda found between Visna and
HIV-1 in 1986, with the latter varying by mutation at abut 10% every 2 years (Hahn et al.,
Science 232, 1548-1553, 1986), would point to near identity around early 1978, when Segal
claims that a section of a genome originating from HTLV-1 was added to Visna by gene
surgery to produce HIV-1.
In another chapter, Segal suggests that HIV-2 is a manipulated SIV virus, made
pathogenic possibly by the surgical insertion of an orf-A gene.
Other microbiologists I have talked to do not dispute Segal's thesis that AIDS is a
laboratory product, though there is disagreement as to exactly how it might have happened
and from precisely what components. I have also been referred to an article by Julie
Overbaugh et al. in Nature 332, 731-734 (1988), which apparently demonstrates that it is
possible to produce a new virus in the laboratory which is more pathogenic than its
components. This means that Segal's scenario is at least not to be ruled out by any
fundamental law of nature.
Certainly Dr. MacArthur did not believe this in 1969, when he made the statement to
Congress that Segal quotes in the article I sent you. Jeremy Rifkin's petition of Feb. 10,
1988 (appended to Segal's book) to disclose what became of this project yielded nothing,
of course. It's a secret! Perhaps the scientists themselves are our best hope. Segal feels
that Gonda may have tried indirectly to point to the truth by calling attention to the
similarity between Visna and HIV--if so, more power to him.
The worst thing about Segal's theory is not that it may be correct, bad as that would
be, but that it is being, as the Germans say, "tot geschwiegen." Of that there
can be no doubt, and the implications are dismal. Sincerely,
Mike
*
Nov. 20, 1989
Dear Mike,
I can sympathize with your confusion and let me state that it is Segal that is over his
head. He doesn't understand the words homology or mutation rates. He creates new viruses
by splicing in genes (which is possible) without understanding the outcome. It is all
nonsense.
Surely we can switch genes between HIV and HTLV-1 and make them work. It could also be
done between Visna and HTLV-1, in theory. But, I repeat, Visna plus HTLV-1 in any
arrangement does not make HIV-1 now or in 1970. 60% homology is a very distant
relationship. If Segal is so convinced, why doesn't he make the construct and see what
kind of virus it makes. Would it infect human cells? Would it kill T cells (Visna does
not)?
Moreover, HTLV-1 was discovered as a virus in 1978 but its genes were not defined until
the 1980s, certainly the ones Segal talks about. For that matter, the Visna genes were
also not well established until the 80s and perhaps even later than HTLV-1. I envision it
to be almost totally impossible that the chemical equation he speaks about could have
taken place even in 1978. Add to that the likelihood that HIV-1 was present in man before
then, probably as far back as 1959 and you now reach absurdity. It just does not add up.
Where he is correct is that HIV-2 and SIV are very similar, one perhaps deriving from
the other. You don't need a surgical insertion to visualize that.
Sincerely,
Antonio L. DiAngelo
*
He had finally said it: Nonsense! So it is possible to "make" new viruses.
That much, at least, was clear. Segal doesn't understand homology and mutation rates? What
doesn't he understand, exactly? He doesn't understand "the outcome"? He says in
this case the outcome was AIDS. Segal should do an experiment and find out? Why should an
experiment be necessary, if Tony is so sure that Segal is wrong?
Is he sure? First he says "Visna plus HTLV-1 in any arrangement does not make
HIV-1 now or in 1970." Then he says he "envisions it to be almost totally
impossible." Not so sure, after all.
Tony must know that Segal doesn't say that Visna kills T-cells. Sheep with Visna die
because the macrophages, the large whiteblood cells, become infected in the earliest
stage, not the T-4 cells. The infected macrophages then eventually destroy the thymus
gland, which prevents the further development of T-4 cells and destroys the immune system.
This is why HIV-infected chimpanzees do not develop AIDS. The T-4 cells in the monkeys are
infected, but the macrophages remain healthy. In humans, the macrophages are infected, as
in sheep. If Segal is right, then, the key to therapy is not in preventing the infection
of the T-4 cells but in preventing the infected macrophages from destroying the thymus.
Not a word about the tat-genes. Why? It's an important point. Does HIV- 1 have things
that neither Visna nor HTLV-1 have or not? Segal says no, Tony says yes, then drops the
point. Not a word about the MacArthur testimony, either.
I saw no point in continuing. Tony wasn't going to say more than he had, and I was not
impressed. In fact, it was hard to believe he was being honest. He seemed to be dodging
every point. Every time I threw him the ball, he just stepped out of the way and threw
another ball back. What was a "simian AIDS virus"? Monkeys don't get AIDS. Tony
never responded to my point about "making" the AIDS virus. Had this been a
misunderstanding, a question of semantics?
I couldn't help remembering this a year and a half later, in March 1991, when I saw an
interview on WorldNet, the USIA's satellite television network, with a chap named Todd
Lowenthal, who looked a little like a llama and had an equally exotic job title, something
like "Chief for Countering Soviet Disinformation." He used the Segal theory to
explain what "disinformation" is. The theory was obviously false, said
Lowenthal, because everybody knows that the AIDS virus is "far too complex to have
been made by a scientist."
That was exactly what Tony had said. He had also said that if "we" had made
it, we would be able to destroy it. But why should this be so?
Segal had dealt with all of the other points Tony brought up, as Tony presumably knew.
What I wanted was a rebuttal to Segal, not simply a repetition of the claims that Segal
had (seemingly) refuted, including the claim that there is evidence of AIDS before 1979.
Segal has consistently argued that this evidence is inconclusive.
Almost a year later after Tony's last letter, Segal published a short article in the
Rote Fahne (Aug. 25, 1990) responding to the latest claim of evidence for AIDS before
1979. I sent a copy of the article to The Lancet, Science, Nature, and Scientific
American, along with a cover letter asking for a response. Not one responded. I also
decided to try Tony once more:
Sept. 3, 1990
Dear Tony,
Enclosed is an article by Segal published here re. the Corbitt et al. study published
in The Lancet (336, 51f., 1990), which I guess you know is a respected English medical
journal. Corbitt et al.claim to show that a British sailor died indisputably of AIDS in
1959. Segal challenges this claim, as he has all the purported evidence of AIDS before
1979, saying they proved only that the sailor was infected with a retrovirus, not
necessarily one that causes AIDS, it being now known that many people, perhaps half the
population, are carriers of non- pathogenic retroviruses which have nothing to do with
AIDS. What do you think?
Segal was in Kassel for a talk in February, and I asked him the same question you ask
in your letter of last November: If Visna + HTLV-1 = HIV-1, why doesn't he do an
experiment and prove it? He said he would like to but it's not that simple. You need a P-4
laboratory and the virus specimens, and no one is about to make those available to him.
An equally good question is, if he is wrong, why doesn't someone with the requisite
facilities (e.g. the U.S. government) do the experiment and prove it? He could be invited
as an observer to make sure he was convinced, then forced to retract his allegations.
Just to say it's nonsense, even if nearly everyone who should know something about the
matter says it, is not enough. Remember the Warren Commission? Besides, even crazier
theories, e.g. the Duesberg idea that HIV does not cause AIDS at all, get plenty of
exposure and debate. There is absolutely no reason why Segal has not been discussed with
equal fervor in the scientific community-- unless that reason is political. This is the
sad thing, because it shows that science stops where politics begins.
I guess I have been naive, but I have always wanted to believe that science had a
special status and was somehow immune (to use a fateful word) to political pressures. Yes,
that really was naive, I'm afraid. No one is more subject to pressure and manipulation
than high tech scientists, who can work only in dependence on complicated (and all-
powerful) institutional and financial structures.
In short, I have no doubt that--if Segal is right--enough pressure could be brought to
bear, all over the world, to keep the lid on. There are plenty of examples of that.
I'm quite aware that having worked at the Frederick Cancer Research Facilities under
Gallo, formerly the virus section at Ft. Detrick, you probably know a lot more about these
things than you could admit. That too is very sad. I wish you could find some way to tell
me what you really know.
All the best,
Mike
*
Sept. 11, 1990
Dear Mike,
I have never worked under Bob Gallo nor in Gallo's laboratory atthe Frederick Cancer
Research Facilities. There is also nothing secret or occult. Strike all of that from your
mind.
Your apparent obsession with Segal is difficult to comprehend. There are many more
important things to do than to rebut a theory that makes no scientific sense. Our focus is
on a vaccine for AIDS and other measures that will help eradicate the disease and relieve
suffering. This requires all of our attention, energy and skills. Scientific truth lies in
reproducible experiments, which automatically means that these must fall in the public
domain.
With best wishes,
Antonio L. DiAngelo
Never worked directly under Gallo? He had worked as a consultant to Frederick--that was
in Who's Who. Not a word about Segal's article in The Lancet. Nothing secret or occult?
Science always in the public domain? Who did he think he was kidding?
I felt there was nothing more I could say to Antonio L. DiAngelo. I wished that just
once he had signed his name "Tony."
Tony wasn't the only scientist I talked to. One German researcher said sure, it was
possible to mix viruses together. Yes, he had heard of Segal, but he didn't know a lot
about it. In fact, he said, only scientists doing AIDS research would be able to answer my
questions. But he didn't think Visna + HTLV-1 would make HIV- 1. Why not? He couldn't
explain.
Another scientist, a woman who is also an environmental activist, said she thought it
was possible that the AIDS virus was produced by mistake in a laboratory, most likely in
experiments with monkeys, but that Segal's particular theory was wrong. Why? She couldn't
explain. She was no longer pursuing the origin of AIDS question. She had butted her head
against stone walls for a while and finally just gave up. I was beginning to see what she
meant.
I talked with one of the representatives of the Greens in the European Parliament in
Strasbourg. He wasn't interested. There were more important concerns than the origins of
AIDS, he said. People were more concerned about the dangers of applying genetic
engineering to agriculture, for example. Really? How could they expect to find out the
truth about agricultural products if we can't find out the truth about AIDS? How did he
know what people were concerned about? Here was one person who was concerned--me. What did
he know but what he read in the press, just like the rest of us? Segal did not appear in
the press (except occasionally in the Rote Fahne), so as far as this supposedly
progressive politician was concerned, the origin of AIDS was not a public issue. I thought
he might be interested in making it a public issue, but I was wrong.
Segal was scheduled to give a talk at the university in Kassel in September 1990. By
then I knew his arguments, and I also knew that the problem for me--as well as for
him--was to find someonewilling and qualified to debate with him. I called the director of
a German AIDS research institute, introduced myself and asked him if he would be willing
to answer some questions. He was willing, and friendly enough, but that was all. Our
telephone conversation went as follows (again, the name is fictitious):
Hoffmann: "Ok, shoot."
MM: "Have you heard of a man called Jacob Segal, from Humboldt University in
Berlin?"
Hoffmann: "Yes, I've heard of him."
MM: "Well, I'm not a biologist, but the reason I'm calling is that he's coming
here to Kassel the day after tomorrow to give a lecture. You probably know that his work
is very controversial..."
Hoffmann (chuckling): "That's putting it mildly!" MM: "From what I've
heard, he can't even get people to debate with him. That's why I'm calling. He's giving a
speech here at the university next week, and I don't know anyone in Kassel involved in
AIDS research, but a friend of mine told me you are one of the most competent men in the
field, and I wanted to know if you or anybody at your institute could come to Kassel as a
kind of counterpoint. Not necessarily to debate with him, but I think it would be good if
a different point of view could be presented too."
Hoffmann: "I'll tell you, unless Segal has something new, it would be a waste of
time. I remember a lecture he gave in Aachen. He claimed the AIDS virus was created in
American biological warfare laboratories and set loose in order to get rid of homosexuals
and control the overpopulation problem in Africa."
This was wrong, but I didn't correct him. Segal says the virus escaped accidentally,
with prisoners who had been inoculated with it in an experiment, in return for their
freedom. When no symptoms of disease showed up after six months, they were released
prematurely, since no one knew the disease would have such a long incubation period. Some
of the ex-prisoners joined the gay scene in New York, whence it spread. Segal has never
implied that it was anything but an accident, an experiment gone awry.
But Hoffmann's inaccuracy was interesting. It showed how closely linked the two
thoughts are, and how easily Theory A, that AIDS is laboratory product (which Segal
endorses), leads to Theory B, that AIDS is biological warfare (which Segal does not
endorse). If Theory A is correct, Theory B is at least conceivable.
Hoffmann: "Segal's first mistake was that he claimed it happened in 1976. That's
completely impossible, from a bio-engineering point of view. Nobody could have spliced
genes together with that result then, and I doubt that it's possible today."
He doubts that it's possible? He doesn't know? Has he tried it? If not, how can he be
so sure?
Hoffmann: "But the most important proof that his theory is absolute nonsense is
the fact that we have evidence of AIDS infections long before 1976."
1979, I corrected him silently. That was when the first AIDS case was documented in New
York, which Segal still insists was in fact the first case, despite the so-called evidence
(which Segal disputes) to the contrary.
Hoffmann: "That takes care of Mr. Segal. It's a completely idiotic hypothesis, and
I hope that Segal, who has done some reasonable work in other areas, has found something
else to spend his time on. Or how do you see it?"
MM: "I'm not in a position to judge, as a layman. That's just the point. I've read
his book and I must say his arguments are plausible, but I have no way to evaluate them
scientifically. I do know that he has counterarguments to what you've just said. I can't
explain it in detail, but he says what other researchers have considered evidence of AIDS
before 1979 is inconclusive, that there may be evidence of retroviruses, but not of AIDS
in particular."
Hoffmann: "Nonsense. I saw cases myself in the sixties in Africa, even
photographed them, and there are blood samples which have been preserved and documented.
If Segal still wants to stick to the 1979 in New York thesis, he really ought to hang it
up."
MM: "He puts a lot of faith in the gene-sequencing analysis or gene- mapping and
Chandra's work showing the electro-focusing of the reverse transcription."
I had no idea what I was talking about, but I trusted that Hoffmann did.
MM: "Segal says this kind of analysis proves conclusively that the similarity of
Visna and HTLV-1 with HIV-1 is so great that it could not have occurred otherwise, that
is, naturally--that it must have resulted from gene-splicing. So there we are. He says the
degree of similarity proves it beyond the shadow of a doubt, and other scientists say it
proves nothing at all. What is the layman supposed to think?"
Hoffmann: "As far as I'm concerned, Segal is just being stubborn. The whole thing
is very far-fetched. Of course you can talk forever about something, but in the scientific
world you can't just go to a university somewhere and give a lecture and expect other
people to jump to defend themselves or even respond. We have no time for that. Segal's
theory is pass. The best you can say is that it was an idea once, a suspicion, but there
isn't the slightest proof of it, never has been."
MM: "Still, it's a horrific accusation, and I don't say that just because I'm an
American and it's my government that's being accused of being responsible for AIDS. I
would think someone, not the least the American government, would want to prove him wrong.
What he says sounds scientific enough to me, but of course I'm no judge. Aren't there any
serious scientific rebuttals to Segal's theory?"
Hoffmann: "Serious scientists haven't dealt with it for the simple reason that it
is ridiculous."
MM: "Yes, but it continues to circulate, and if it is nonsense it's not doing
anybody any good. I'm not a superpatriot, in fact I'm pretty critical of my government,
but I don't want to think of it as responsible for creating AIDS if it's not true. I hope
it's not, but I just can't be as sure of that as you are. That's my problem. How can I
convince myself that it's nonsense? I need to have a counterargument that makes at least
equally good sense. Isn't there some way to prove that he's wrong--by experiment, for
example? He says any trained laboratory technician could make HIV-1 out of Visna and
HTLV-1 in less than two weeks. Why not try that and see?"
Hoffmann: "Such nonsense! Look, I have a young biochemist sitting here next to me.
Let me repeat that for his benefit. [To his colleague] Segal claims any lab technician
could produce HIV- 1 from Visna and something else in two weeks."
A loud guffaw could be heard in the background.
Hoffmann (chuckling): "He just fell off his chair! Absolutely ridiculous! You
know, one thing really irritates me a bit. How can a German university invite someone like
this to give a talk? Who's behind it? These are really stupid, completely outdated
ideas."
MM: "I think someone in the public health office organized it."
Hoffmann: "Are you sure it wasn't one of the leftist student groups? You know who
publishes his book, don't you--the MLPD, the Marxist- Leninist Partei Deutschlands. Maybe
it was the Stasi [East German intelligence]. That's a joke, of course."
MM: "I don't know. But why should it matter? This is supposedly a question of
science."
Hoffmann: "You should look into it, because I have good contacts with the Federal
Ministry of Health, and I can tell you that we dismissed the Segal theory from the very
beginning as totally absurd. The lecture in Aachen that I attended some years ago was
organized by the Greens, whose environmental ideas aren't bad, but they're terribly
left."
MM: "My problem is simply that I would like for Segal to be wrong, but I can't
convince myself of that without counterarguments in some form or other, in a debate or a
scientific journal, or whatever. As long as his ideas are not discussed, and as you say
simply dismissed out of hand, I can't resolve it in my mind."
Hoffmann: "What do your American friends and colleagues think of all this?"
MM: "They don't even know about it. Segal's book hasn't been published in
English." Hoffmann: "Well, that should tell you something. You have to remember
that we--at least at my institute--are underfinanced, understaffed, and we have a lot more
important things to spend our time on than Mr. Segal's silly theories. We think the best
thing is to ignore him completely. You can lose months trying to refute whatever crackpot
claims he might make. He has no proof at all, but the other guy, he has to have proof!
That stuff about anybody being able to make HIV in the laboratory, for instance. Totally
impossible."
Why months? I thought. Segal says it can be done easily, in two weeks, by anybody with
access to the component viruses and research facilities. Hoffmann had such access,
presumably. He could do the experiment, and if it was negative, it would be good
publicity. I could picture the headline: "Hoffmann Proves Segal a Quack--U.S.
Government Not Guilty." Wouldn't that be worth a few days' work?
MM: "There's also that Pentagon document from 1969. I know that's authentic,
because I've seen it. That proves that the government did want to create an AIDS-like
virus, and considered it feasible, as early as 1969."
Hoffmann (ignoring this point): "I suspect my American colleagues think the same
way I do, that the best way to handle such nonsense is to ignore it. Let it play itself
out, die a natural death, which it will because there's nothing to sustain it. Just wild
hypotheses. That's why he goes to universities like Kassel, which doesn't have a medical
school and might have a strong leftist contingent, so he thinks he can get away with
it."
Handle it? This didn't sound very scientific. I didn't want him to handle it, I wanted
him to refute it, if he could.
MM: "That's why I'd like to get someone like you or somebody from your institute
to come here and debate with him."
Hoffmann: "No, I'm sorry, absolutely not. We really have better things to do.
There's a saying: The more water you pour on the wheel, the more it turns. The best thing
is just to let Segal run himself out. There are plenty of idiotic theories that can't be
scientifically disproved. We can't spend our time refuting every ideologue that comes
along. Maybe philosophers have time for that, but we don't. If I refute him it means I
take him seriously, and I don't. I think he's a nut."
MM: "All right, Professor, I guess I'll just have to see how it goes. I mean, I
don't have that much time either. Certainly not enough to try to become a microbiologist
at this stage of the game. There must be a better way, but I don't know what it is."
Hoffmann: "Why bother with it then? Who's forcing you to go to this lecture?"
MM: "Well, nobody, of course. I'm just interested. Thank you very much for your
time, Professor Hoffmann."
Hoffmann: "Not at all."
*
I was getting pretty discouraged. Another year went by, and I decided to make one more
stab at the "science" question. I made up the following questionnaire and sent
it to all the AIDS researchers whose addresses I could find: I am a layman who has been
trying for years, without success, toget a straightforward answer to a straightforward
question on a matter of science. Hence this survey, which I hope you will help me with,
because whatever the results, it should show something.
1) Is it possible to produce HIV-1 or HIV-2 in the laboratory (by manipulating or
combining other organisms or substances by gene surgery or other means)?
____ Yes.
____ No.
____ I don't know, because
____ no one has done the work to find out.
____ it is not scientifically possible to find out.
____ the information cannot be divulged for security
reasons.
____ I have not looked into the question.
____ (other reasons--use reverse side if necessary):
If the answer to 1) is "Yes":
2) With what components?
3) Since what year has this been possible (using either "shotgun" --
trial -and-error--methods or more precise methods)?
In any case, bibliographical references and/or comments will be
appreciated (use reverse side if necessary):
The information below will be kept strictly confidential.
Name:
Address:
Professional position:
Would you like to receive the results of this survey?
Name and address of others who could respond to this survey: In April 1992 I received
what I expect will be the last reply tomy questionnaire, unless I send it out again. It
was from an American professor of pharmacology, whom I'll call Professor Smith. I had not
sent the questionnaire to him, so someone had forwarded it. Here is my reply to him:
June 6, 1992
Dear Prof. Smith,
Thank you very much for responding to my questionnaire. Your reply is in fact the most
important one I have received, and I've been walking around with it now in my briefcase
ever since I got it, not quite sure what to do next. Perhaps you can help me.
Let me first tell the results so far (without mentioning names, since I promised not
to). Of the couple of dozen people I sent the questionnaire to, 8 people have replied. 5
said "No" (not possible to produce HIV-1 or -2 in the laboratory).
2 (one was you) said "Yes." Another person said "Yes--in theory, but not
practical."
The other unequivocal "Yes" came from someone who is apparently
"only" a secondary school science teacher, but he is writing a book on the
subject and enclosed an extensive bibliography. His answer to "With what
components?" was:
"HIV-1: Visna, CAEV, BVV + minor component, either from another virus, or picking
segments of original human DNA. HIV-2: SIV (SMM) + minor segments picked after selection
from human cell culture (evolution in test tube)--the reverse may also be true."
His answer to "Since what year has this been possible?" was:
"HIV-1: trial-and-error, since ca. 1970. HIV-2: since the exploration of the SIVs,
ca. 1985, by mistake probably earlier." The "theoretically Yes" answer was
from an American researcher and professor, whose answer to "With what
components?" was:
"One could provide equivalent genes from other retroviruses and then synthesize
those unique to HIV."
His answer to "Since what year has this been possible?" was:
(underlining "possible"): "Mid-1980s."
The other 5 respondents--a couple of whom are "heavyweights" in the field
(since even I have heard of them)--said "No" categorically, without further
comments, except for one person, (professor, MD, public health scientist), who added to
his "No":
"I'm not a molecular biologist etc. but am virtually certain, from reading and
discussions, that HIV-1 and HIV-2 arose from "wild" viruses and that when they
arose we did not have the technology to create them. We may however be developing the
technology which could allow us to produce "new" or modified dangerous viruses
in the future. (But if we use the technology reasonably we can use it against
disease.)"
I think from these results you can see why your response strikes me as extremely
significant. Even if it had been only 1 out of 100, it would have been significant.
What I would like to do now is write back to the other respondents and see if I can
elicit a response to what you have said. I will not identify you, of course, unless you
wish, but if there is anything you can add to what you wrote on the questionnaire (further
remarks, bibliographical references), I would like to include it.
You wrote, in case you don't recall, in answer to "With what components?":
"Ribonucleotide triphosphates, enzymes, salts & buffer, RNA synthesizing
machine."
In answer to "Since what year has this been possible?," you wrote:
"HIV-1 1985; HIV-2 1986 (once the nucleotide sequence of the viruses was
known)."
I find it very difficult to understand, if this is only a matter of science, why even
my little survey has produced such different answers.
I purposely limited my question and treated it as a purely scientific one, because I
know that the further questions and implications are highly political and sensitive (to
put it mildly). I don't want to ask you to comment on any of that, but if you wish to
(just for my information, not for the letter I'm thinking of sending to the other
respondents), of course I would be very interested to know your opinion.
I assume that you know what I'm talking about: the question of an artificial origin of
AIDS has been around for some time, though ignored by the mass media. There are the recent
polio (and earlier smallpox) vaccine theories, the theories of Jakob Segal, John Seale,
Robert Strecker, etc. If the viruses cannot be produced artificially now, however, the
question of an (accidental) artificial origin some years ago, though it does not
disappear, is more speculative. If the viruses can be produced in the laboratory now, as
you say they can, the next question is clear: How can one be sure that this capability did
not exist prior to 1985-86 (e.g. in secret military research, the results of which can
remain unpublished and unknown even in the "scientific community" for years)? (I
don't know if you are aware that the DOD wanted, considered it possible, and asked
Congress for the money to create an AIDS-like virus--though the term "AIDS" was
not used--as early as 1969. I have the documentation if you'd like to see it.)
But as I said, I don't want to ask you to speculate on thesequestions. My primary
purpose is still to get a reasonably satisfying "scientific" answer to the
question I have posed. You have said the viruses can be made in the laboratory today, and
that is certainly reason enough to wonder why the others say no. No one said they didn't
know, that the answer is not yet known, unknowable, etc., although I specifically
mentioned these possibilities. So I am left with flatly contradictory opinions by
presumably equally qualified experts. Though obviously this may happen on many questions,
I don't see how it is possible on this particular question, because it is testable by
experiment.
What would be necessary to prove that what you say is correct-- which would mean, of
course, that the others are wrong? Has anyone actually made HIV-1 or -2 in the lab? Would
that be the only incontrovertible proof that it is possible? Would it be difficult?
Time-consuming? Legal? Would you need access to controlled substances or special
facilities (e.g. a P-4 lab)? Sincerely,
Michael Morrissey
*
I did not hear from Professor Smith again.
3. Conspiracy theories.
I felt that I had given it my best shot. I hadn't heard much lately from Segal, either,
but after all, he was in his eighties. He published another book in 1991 called
AIDS--Zellphysiologie, Pathologie und Therapie (Essen: Neuer Weg), but it is a highly
technical work and I haven't read it, nor have I heard of any reactions to it. He doesn't
discuss the question of origin in this book, but since it is based on the thesis that
HIV-1 is essentially a form of Visna, if this work is scientifically sound it will support
his origins thesis. But how, if ever, will I know that?
In January 1992 a German television program repeated the old accusation that Segal had
developed his origins theory for the Stasi, the (former) East German intelligence service.
Segal responded as follows (my translation):
Public Statement by Prof. Jakob Segal
On January 28, 1991, the German television program "Panorama" claimed the
theory that the AIDS virus HIV-1 was developed for military purposes by the Pentagon was
an invention of the (former) East German intelligence service (Stasi). The writers Stefan
Heym (East) and Mario Simmel (West) were said to have fallen for this lie and helped to
spread it further.
This claim is completely false. The suspicion that HIV-1 originated in the laboratory
was discussed as early as 1984 at the annual meeting of the American Academy for the
Advancement of Science. Then the American researchers Robert Gallo and Max Essex launched
a counter-theory suggesting an African origin, which was publicly described by the World
Health Organization asscientifically untenable. This theory contained such obvious errors
that I became curious and joined the discussion in 1985. By careful analysis of molecular
genetic and immunological data I was able to prove that the AIDS virus in fact resulted
from splicing part of the human-cancer-causing virus HTLV-1 into the virus that causes the
fatal sheep disease known as Visna.
In the meantime official documentation has been discovered which proves that the
Pentagon requested 10 million dollars as early as 1969 for the purpose of developing a
virus that would destroy the human immune system, i.e. a synthetic AIDS-like virus. My
theory is thus supported by the documentary record, and no convincing scientific arguments
have appeared to refute it. Nevertheless, for reasons that are all too clear, no reputable
scientific journal will publish my work.
The first non-scientific journal to publish my theory, along with the similar ones of
John Seale of Great Britain and the American Robert Strecker, was the London Sunday Times
in the fall of 1986. On the basis of comprehensive materials I distributed, some African
scientists then put together a brochure which was distributed at the Conference of Non-
Aligned Nations in Harare. After that my theory began to arouse some interest in official
circles. Representatives from the US embassy, the East German Ministry of Health and the
Stasi talked with me. I was invited to give a series of lectures in West Germany with
well-qualified discussion partners, but I had much worse luck in my own country of East
Germany. There I was not allowed to present my views in any journals, and the only lecture
I gave to a sizeable audience was organized by a dissident church group.
In view of this history, it is ridiculous to claim that the Stasi thought up this
theory and ordered me to propagate it. Nobody in the Stasi had the technical expertise to
have produced such a theory. It was my work and mine alone, and I refuse to allow a few
sensation-hungry journalists to deprive me of the credit for it.
January 30, 1992
Prof. Dr. sc. Jakob Segal
Leipziger Str. 43
O-1080 Berlin, Germany
(End of Part 3.) ttal to Segal, not simply a repetition of the claims that Segal had
(seemingly) refuted, including the claim that there is evidence of AIDS before 1979.Segal
has consistently argued that this evidence is inconclusive.
This had no discernible consequences. It seemed the question of the origin of AIDS was
taboo, and had been for several years. Segal could be denounced, but not discussed.
Then, on March 3, 1992, I saw a surprising report on CNN, which I had recorded and was
thus able to transcribe:
CNN: A Texas researcher has a new theory about how the AIDS virus developed. He says it
mutated from a virus that causes an AIDS- like disease in monkeys and that humans were
inoculated with it. His claim is detailed in Rolling Stone magazine. "The Origin of
AIDS" proposes a shocking theory: that the AIDS virus, now known to have existed in
monkeys, may have spread to humans through, of all things, experimental polio
vaccinations. Tom Curtis (freelance writer): The polio vaccine did great things in terms
of sparing us, you know, the dreaded scourge of that period, but it would be a terrible
irony to find that it brought another scourge. I sort of hope against hope that this
hypothesis is wrong, but it is testable.
CNN: Curtis found that a quarter million people in Africa were inoculated by American
doctors with an experimental polio vaccine. That vaccine was produced using the kidney
tissues of monkeys. More recent research has shown that some monkeys carry a virus similar
to the one that now causes AIDS.
Curtis: "If those monkey kidneys were contaminated, it would be an efficient way
to spread the disease, that is to say, the disease of AIDS."
CNN: Far-fetched? Yes, according to the polio-pioneering doctors quoted in Curtis's
story. One is quoted as saying, "You're beating a dead horse. It does not make sense.
But one AIDS researcher is not dismissing the theory.
Dr. Robert Bohannon (AIDS researcher): Nobody will ever know unless those stocks are
turned over for analysis.
CNN: Dr. Robert Bohannon has done AIDS research at Baylor and M.D. Anderson. He has
requested samples of the original polio vaccines so that he can test them for AIDS-related
viruses. One researcher has sent him some very early vaccine, another has not responded.
The federal government, which also holds some of the original vaccines, is considering his
request. If he does find the AIDS-related virus in the vaccines, he says the polio
researchers themselves should not be faulted.
Bohannon: If they had known that there was anything like HIV or SIV in those, I'm sure
they would not have used them. They would have found something else.
CNN: So for now Bohannon continues to wait for more samples to come from the government
and from polio researchers--samples of polio vaccine that could help to answer the
question, Where did AIDS come from? Elsewhere, Dr. Bohannon's theory of how AIDS developed
has not yet been reviewed by other scientists or appeared in scientific journals.
*
This was the first discussion of the origins question I had heard or read in the media
in years, outside of the Rote Fahne, and here it was on CNN! I was astounded. This theory
was considerably less explosive than Segal's, but the essential implication was not that
different: AIDS was created by human error. Someone was responsible. Maybe not the US
government, but someone.
A couple of weeks later there was another interesting news item. MacNeil-Lehrer
reported on 3/25/92 that nearly 50% of the 210,000 documented AIDS cases in the US were
blacks, Hispanic, native, Americans or Asians--blacks forming 31% of the new cases,
although they are only 12% of the population. Blacks and minorities, then,are clearly
getting hit disproportionately hard by AIDS, just as gays, intravenous drug users and
prostitutes are.
These figures referred only to the US. Worldwide, given the proliferation of the
disease in Africa and the rest of the Third World, the disproportion of non-whites getting
the disease is much greater. Surveys reported at the 4th International Conference on AIDS
in Africa, held in Marseilles on Oct. 18-20, 1989, gave the percentage of HIV infections
ranging from 10% to 60%, depending on the population tested. The percentage for the US as
a whole is only 0.4% (about 1 million in a population of 250 million).
The effect of the disease, in other words, regardless of the causes, is genocidal. The
non-white populations of Africa, India and Asia are being decimated while the
predominately white populations of Europe and the US are escaping relatively unscathed.
The same is true of the people living under Third World conditions within the US, who are
mostly non-white. Steven Thomas, a public health researcher at the University of Maryland
who researched 1000 blacks in five cities, said on the MacNeil-Lehrer program:
"Consistently, people wanted to know, was it man-made, was it a form of genocide?
Are the numbers from the government true? We now have sufficient data to demonstrate that
mistrust of government reports on AIDS is real, and that the belief that AIDS is a form of
genocide is real."
Robert MacNeil commented:
"Thomas says that mistrust of government springs in part from blacks' lasting
memories of incidents like the Tuskegee syphilis study (Condemned to Die for Science)
undertaken by the federal government in 1932. 400 Alabama black who had syphilis were
studied and later deprived of penicillin, decades after it became the standard
treatment."
And Thomas continued:
"It is part of the subconscious history that all black people carry, in terms of
their mistrust of those who come into their communities offering help, because that's how
the Tuskegee study began, with an effort to improve health care delivery to blacks in the
deep rural south."
Again, I was astounded. I hadn't heard of this. Nobody was talking about Segal, but
apparently millions of black Americans suspected that AIDS was a form of genocide! This
went a lot further than Segal had gone.
The year that Robert MacNeil had mentioned, 1932, the year of the Tuskegee syphilis
study, struck me, because that was also the year of the Third International Conference of
Eugenics, which I had recently read about. It's sponsors included some famous names: Mrs.
H. B. Dupont, Col. William Draper (an investment banker associated with the Harriman
interests), Mrs. Averell Harriman (mother of Democratic Party leader Averell Harriman),
Dr. J. Harvey Kellog (of Kellog's cereals), Major Leonard Darwin (son ofCharles Darwin),
Mrs. John T. Pratt and Mrs. Walter Jennings (both of Standard Oil), Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland
H. Dodge (of Phelps-Dodge mining interests). Henry Fairchild Osborn, a nephew of J. P.
Morgan and vice-president of the conference, opened it by saying:
"I have reached the opinion that over-population and underemployment may be
regarded as twin sisters. From this point of view I even find that the United States [then
with a population of 112 million] is overpopulated at the present....In nature the less
fitted individuals would gradually disappear, but in civilization we are keeping them in
the community in the hopes that in brighter days they may find employment. This is only
another instance of humane civilization going directly against the order of nature and
encouraging the survival of the unfittest."
This seems less than innocuous considering that the conference unanimously elected Dr.
Ernst Rudin as President of the International Federation of Eugenics Organizations. Rudin
became the architect of Hitler's "racial hygiene" policies and trained the
medical personnel who conducted the Nazis' first extermination program, killing 40,000
mental patients. The Nazi "eugenics" (i.e. racist) policies were supported until
the late 1930's by the Eugenics Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, which had
been founded and endowed by the Harriman family in 1910. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory,
today a major center of molecular biological research (headed by James Watson, the
co-discoverer of DNA), had itself been founded six years earlier under the name
"Station for Experimental Evolution" by similarly elite financial interests: the
J. P. Morgan, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Carnegie families.
Obviously, the power elite has been interested in eugenics, now known as genetic
engineering, for a long time.
The 1932 Tuskegee syphilis study was not the first time blacks have been
disproportionately affected by diseases which the government wilfully neglected. In the
early years of this century, hundreds of thousands of Americans died every year from
pellagra and related opportunistic diseases. Almost all the deaths occurred in the rural
south, and 50% of the victims were black. Although the cause of pellagra--niacin
deficiency, which can be cured by a balanced diet--was discovered in 1915 by Dr. Joseph
Goldberger of the US Public Health Service, these findings were not accepted and acted
upon until the mid-1930s.
During these two decades, in which 6 million people died of the disease, the Eugenics
Record Office conducted a massive campaign to discredit Goldberger's work and continue the
idea that pellagra resulted from a hereditary defect. Charles Davenport, the Office
director and chairman of the National Pellagra Commission, continued to argue that
susceptibility to pellagra was inherited, just as the susceptibility to tuberculosis was
among Irish Americans was, so that all attempts to improve dietary or sanitary conditions
among the affected groups were futile.
4. The "population bomb".
"Eugenics" today, of course, is a taboo concept, since Hitlershowed us all
too clearly what could be made of it. Since the war, however, the closely related question
of "population control" has been very much a part of elite agendas: e.g., the
Population Council, founded by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1952; the Population Crisis
Committee, founded by General Draper in 1966, which included Gen. Maxwell Taylor, McGeorge
Bundy and Robert McNamara; the Office of Population Affairs, founded by Henry Kissinger in
1966 as part of the State Department.
The importance of population control to the US government is well illustrated by a
secret document prepared under the direction of Henry Kissinger in 1974 called
"National Security Study Memorandum 200."It was not declassified until 1989 and
finally released by the National Archives in 1990--16 years after completion (12/10/74).
The very fact that this document was classified is a good example of how fascistic the
notion of "national security"has become. How could such a document endanger
national security, and why shouldn't American citizens have a right to read it?
The answer is stated clearly in the document itself. The government's concern with
Third World population growth might be interpreted as "imperialistic":
"The US can help to minimize charges of an imperialist motivation behind its
support of population activities by repeatedly asserting that such support derives from a
concern with (a) the right of the individual to determine freely and responsibly their
number and spacing of children...and (b) the fundamental social and economic development
of poor countries..." (p. 115).
In other words, propaganda must be used to disguise the true nature of US interest in
population control, and for the same reason the American people were not allowed to know
what policies their "democratic" government was implementing in their name. The
real government interest in population control was, and is, not humanitarian at all but
political and economic:
"The political consequences of current population factors in the LDCs [Less
Developed Countries]--rapid growth, internal migration, high percentages of young people,
slow improvement in living standards, urban concentrations, and pressures for foreign
migration--are damaging to the internal stability and international relations of countries
in whose advancement the US is interested, thus creating political or even national
security problems for the US (p. 10).
"If these [adverse socio-economic] conditions result in expropriation of foreign
interests, such action,from an economic viewpoint,is not in the best interests of either
the investing country or the host government (p. 11).
"While specific goals in this are difficult to state, our aim should be for the
world to achieve a replacement level of fertility, (a two- child family on the average),
by about the year 2000.This will require the present 2% growth rate to decline to 1.7%
within a decade and to 1.1% by 2000. Compared to the UN medium projection, this goal would
result in 500 million fewer people in 2000 and about 3 billion fewer in 2050. Attainment
of this goal will require greatly intensified population programs. A basis for developing
national population growth control targets to achieve this world target is contained in
the World Population Plan of Action.
"The World Population Plan of Action is not self-enforcing and will require
vigorous efforts by interested countries, UN agencies and other international bodies to
make it effective. US leadership is essential.The strategy must include the following
elements and actions:
"(a) Concentration on key countries. "Assistance for population moderation
should give primary emphasis to the largest and fastest growing developing countries where
there is special US political and strategic in terests. Those countries are:India,
Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, the Philippines, Thailand,Egypt,
Turkey, Ethiopia and Colombia. Together,they accountfor 47% of the world's current
population increase. (It should be recognized that at present AID bilateral assistance to
someof these countries may not be acceptable.) Bilateral [US] assistance, to the extent
that funds are available, will be given to other countries, considering such factors as
population growth, need for external assistance, long-term US interests and willingness to
engage in self-help....At the same time, the US will look to the multilateral
agencies--especially the UN Fund for Population Activities which already has projects in
over 80 countries--to increase population assistance on a broader basis with increased US
contributions" (p. 14-15).
In other words, food and economic assistance will be used to blackmail countries the US
considers overpopulated--especially the 13 "key" countries named--into reducing
their population growth. Otherwise these superfluous populations might cause
"interruptions of supply," since "the US economy will require large and
increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries"
(p. 43). For example,
"Bangladesh is now a fairly solid supporter of Third World positions, advocating
better distribution of the world's wealth and extensive trade concessions to poor nations.
As its problems grow and its ability to gain assistance fails to keep pace, Bangladesh's
positions on international issues likely will become radicalized, inevitably in opposition
to US interests on major issues as it seeks to align itself with others to force adequate
aid" (p. 80).
Heaven forbid that the starving millions in Bangladesh should become so
"radicalized" as to question the right of Americans, who constitute 6% of the
world population, to consume 33% of the world's goods!
The answer to this threat is not only economic blackmail but energetic assistance in
family planning, though one must be careful to avoid "charges of an imperialist
motivation" by emphasizing that it is all for their own good and working through
national leaders and international institutions:
"Beyond seeking to reach and influence national leaders,improved worldwide support
for population-related efforts should be sought through increased emphasis on mass media
and other population education and motivation programs by the UN, USIA and USAID. We
should give higher priorities in our information programs worldwide for this area and
consider expansion of collaborative arrangements with multilateral institutions in
population education programs" (p. 117).
Nevertheless, "some controversial, but remarkably successful, experiments in India
in which financial incentives, along with other motivational devices, were used to get
large numbers of men to accept vasectomies" (p. 138). In Brazil, too, extraordinary
"success" has been achieved in persuading women to practice birth control,
primarily with the pill and sterilization, a success many attribute to the unspoken
pressures of the IMF and the World Bank. Indeed, such achievements are quite in line with
the thinking of Robert McNamara, who became president of the World Bank (1968-81) after
presiding over the Vietnam War as Secretary of Defense (1961-68).
On October 2, 1979, McNamara told a group of international bankers:
"We can begin with the most critical problem of all, population growth. As I have
pointed out elsewhere, short of nuclear war itself, it is the gravest issue that the world
faces over the decades immediately ahead...If current trends continue, the world as a
whole will not reach replacement-level fertility--in effect, an average of two children
per family--until about the year 2020. That means that some 70 years later the world's
population would finally stabilize at about 10 billion individuals compared with today's
4.3 billion.
"We call it stabilized, but what kind of stability would be possible? Can we
assume that the levels of poverty, hunger, stress, crowding and frustration that such a
situation could cause in the developing nations--which by then would contain 9 out of
every 10 human beings on earth--would be likely to assure social stability? Or political
stability? Or, for that matter, military stability? It is not a world that any of us would
want to live in.
"Is such a world inevitable? It is not, but there are only two possible ways in
which a world of 10 billion people can be averted. Either the current birth rates must
come down more quickly. Or the current death rates must go up. There is no other way.
"There are, of course, many ways in which the death rates can go up. In a
thermonuclear age, war can accomplish it very quickly and decisively. Famine and disease
are nature's ancient checks on population growth, and neither one has disappeared from the
scene."
This Malthusian point of view is obviously deeply entrenched among the governing elite.
Although "population control" sounds different from "eugenics," it
amounts to the same thing. Thepopulations that are being controlled, that supposedly need
to be controlled, are not those of Europe and the United States but those of the
"LDCs"--exactly the same populations that the eugenicists would consider less
productive, less civilized and less worthy of proliferation.
This is of course a philosophy that dares not speak its name, hence the secrecy of
documents such as NSSM 200. The facts are clear. Birth control is not sufficient to
achieve the "stabilization" goals that McNamara, Kissinger et al. have set.
Overpopulation remains "life- threatening," an opinion confirmed by many
supposedly politically neutral organizations such as World Watch and the Club of Rome.
Since it is impolitic to speak of the "population problem" in plain
words--that is, too many poor people--in recent years it hasbecome integrated within a
complex of problems called "development" and "the environment." Again,
commentators are chary of formulating their thoughts on the relationship between
population growth and development, and between population growth and pollution, in plain
terms, but the implications are always clear.
"There is no doubt that population growth is inextricably linked to
development," says the Washington Post ("Forge a Population Plan,"
reprinted in the International Herald Tribune, 6/8/92:6). "International efforts to
help countries out of poverty founder when very high rates of population growth outstrip
progress." The link, clearly, is that overpopulation causes poverty and hinders
development. "But this truth, so obvious to economists and other planners, cannot be
presented as a demand or used as a threat. Language matters....In fact, the debate should
be framed in terms of 'family planning'..." In other words, the victims are to blame,
but we shouldn't tell them that in so many words.
The poor are not only responsible for their own poverty because they reproduce too
fast, they are also responsible for pollution. This logic seems compelling when we see the
pictures of teeming multitudes living in squalor. There are too many of them, we think, so
they are poor and forced to live in their own dirt. Herein lies the fallacy: it is their
dirt, not ours.
Pollution in a global sense has little to do with poverty and everything to do wealth,
but the contradictory assumption persists. In covering the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio,
Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post writes that the "ranks of the have-nots
continue to grow rapidly," and "UN demographers expect global population to
double to more than 10 billion by the middle of the next century, with most of the
increase coming in the poorest countries" ("One Summit, Differing Goals,"
reprinted in the International Herald Tribune 6/2/92:1). Robinson laments that "while
the population boom has an impact on the whole range of environmental
concerns--carbon-dioxide emissions, deforestation, water pollution, extinction of plant
and animal species--the Rio summit is expected to skirt the people issue." It is the
"people issue"-- population growth--according to William Stevens of the New York
Times, that "lies at the root of the global environmental problem" (6/15/92:2),
meaning poor people, since they are the ones with the population boom, "along with
rich countries' wastefulconsumption patterns."
It may be true that overpopulation causes pollution, but it is the ranks of the haves,
not of the have-nots, who are the problem. The same IHT article just quoted (6/2/92:1)
acknowledges that "23% of the world's people receive 85% of its income." This
same fifth of the population constitutes the industrialized world, which, as we can also
read in the IHT, produces 80% of the pollution that (probably) causes global warming
(5/21/92:3). The same is true of deforestation, water pollution, and species extinction.
The rain forest is not being cut down to feed or house the indigenous population, but to
satisfy the consumer demands and capitalist greed of the First World. As Paul Ehrlich said
in a Newsweek interview, "the most serious population problem is in the United
States" (5/25/92:56, international edition). The real threat to the environment is
posed not by the poor but by the rich, as "aproduct of population and per-capita
consumption."
Why are these facts consistently turned on their head? Because the burgeoning ranks of
the poor threaten not the environment but the wealth, power, and "national
security" of the ruling elite. The real problem, for the haves, is that too many
have-nots leads to political instability, as NSSM 200 makes clear.
The propaganda is designed to disguise this truth. Who does not say to himself, seeing
the pictures on TV of starving multitudes, "If only there weren't so many of
them!" Who stops to think that they could say the same thing, with more
justification, about us? Who is reminded that a fraction of the energy and funds our
governments spend on weaponry could feed and house the entire world? The conclusion is
taken for granted, though it is false: there's not enough to go around; there are too many
people; we can't help them all without hurting ourselves; they want what we've got. Thomas
Malthus elevated these principles of greed to economic "law": The population
will always outgrow its ability to feed itself; therefore, control by war and natural
catastrophe (famine, disease) is not only natural but necessary. We can assuage our
consciences by donating to the Red Cross, but the poor bastards, most of them, will die
anyway. It's in the nature of things. Nothing can be done.
Darwin contributed the doctrine of the survival of the fittest to this view of
"natural order." If white Europeans survive at the expense of black Africans, if
the rich survive at the expense of the poor, it's only "natural." Wars, too, are
"natural." Men fight because only the fittest are destined to survive. Let the
best men win. Death in battle is quicker and less painful, after all, than death by
disease, starvation or natural catastrophe, which are the only alternatives for the
"less fit" populations of the planet.
Malthus wrote at the beginning of the 19th century and Darwin somewhat later. Neither
could have foreseen the technological achievements that have been made since. Few of us
realize, either, the full potential of these achievements. When someone like Buckminster
Fuller comes along and tells us we have the technological capability of providing the
basic necessities of life to every human being on earth, with plenty of room to spare, we
call him an eccentric, a hopeless dreamer, without bothering tofind out if he is correct.
Our view of reality has been conditioned by elite spokesmen like Robert McNamara, who
envision a world of 10 billion people as unliveable, a horror second only to nuclear
holocaust. We do not stop to calculate that even with 10 billion people, the average
population density worldwide would be less than one-third that of former West Germany.
The greatest fallacy in the elitist Malthusian scenario, however, is the assumption
that overpopulation causes poverty. The reverse is true: poverty causes overpopulation.
Poverty can be reduced, of course, by reducing the number of poor people, which is what we
really mean by "population control." It can also be reduced, however, by
development, that is, by humane development, designed to eliminate rather than exploit
poverty, which automatically reduces population growth. This is another much-disguised
fact, but we need only look around us to see the proof. The mostdeveloped countries, and
the ones with the highest level of equality in the distribution of wealth, are the ones
whose populations have stabilized (Scandinavia, Germany). This is "natural," if
anything is. Reproducing in quantity has always been the peasant's way of surviving from
one generation to the next. It is nature's way of compensating the poor and oppressed.
And they know it! As Steven Thomas says, it is part of their "subconscious
history." Of course "family planning" is doomed to fail when their
subconscious history warns them to beware of "those who come into their communities
offering help." The logic of having fewer children so as to be able to take better
care of them doesn't work with them. They have nothing, so what can they give to two
children that they cannot give to ten or twenty? The two would probably die, but of ten or
twenty some would survive and perhaps improve their lot. This is the logic of the poor,
learned and confirmed throughout history and applied instinctively.
The most effective method of birth control, therefore, is to fight poverty. The better
off people are, the less they reproduce. As the standard of living improves, the birth
rate decreases. This is confirmed by history and observation of the world around us.
Malthus and Darwin's contemporaries did not have the technological means for doing this,
but we do. We have the means to produce and distribute the necessities of life for every
person on the planet, without anyone having to give up his TV set, car, house, etc. I
suspect the Rockefellers and the Harrimans and the DuPonts could even keep their billions.
I don't have the figures to prove it, but I'm sure one could produce them. The idea only
seems so crazy because we have absorbed the propaganda to the contrary so thoroughly.
The rich, who disseminate the propaganda, are not interested in fighting poverty
because they fear a redistribution of wealth. But they are in part victims of their own
propaganda. Their fears are exaggerated: there is enough to go around. The world could
remain as undemocratic as it is, with the same class differences, but the underclass could
be lifted to a considerably less miserable state. This would also be a safer world for the
privileged, because the ranks of the have-nots, having a little more, would be less prone
to revolt. The rich would still have their slaves--to fight their wars, run their
factories, build their roads, make their Porsches and Lear jets and yachts and Rolexes,
etc.--but they would be happier slaves.
Unfortunately, I doubt that this attitude is widespread on Wall Street or among the
Fortune 500 or Social Register types. As I said, in part they are victims of their own
propaganda. It wouldn't work, they would say. They would have to sacrifice too much. And
who said happy slaves are good slaves? Give an inch, they'll take a mile. Feed, clothe and
house them, and pretty soon they'll want leisure time. The idle mind being the devil's
workshop, they'll soon start thinking, and then we'll really be in trouble. But the more
important point, quite simply, is why should the rich and powerful give a hoot about the
poor? Why should they care more than the rest of us? Given the choice--and we do have the
choice--of letting the poor die off or eliminating poverty, the former solution is by far
the easier and more practical one.
Still, it is not all that simple to let Malthus' and Darwin's "nature" take
its course, because "nature" is not what it was a hundred years ago. Modern
technology and medicine have changed things. The poor do not die fast enough anymore.
There are not enough natural disasters, fewer fatal diseases. Nuclear war, as McNamara
said, would solve the problem, but it is impractical. Family planning isn't effective
enough. Mandatory birth control, as in China, is incompatible with the tenets of a
democratic society. Famine is not effective in the long run, because societies that like
to think of themselves as humane cannot tolerate pictures of starving babies forever. That
leaves conventional warfare and disease as "natural" inhibitors of population
growth.
War has always been an effective agent for population reduction in the Third World, but
it is dangerous. Proxy wars have an insidious tendency to involve their sponsors, in one
way or another. There is always the danger of their getting out of hand, especially with
more and more nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in the hands of poor countries.
There is the threat to Third World resources, such as oil, on which the rest of the world
depends. Finally, there is the danger that the rich countries may get directly involved in
the fighting--as in Vietnam.
Limited warfare (an oxymoron) is a compromise solution. It is true that nine years of
war in Vietnam reduced the population of Southeast Asia by several million people, and the
underclass population of the US also by tens of thousands. The point is made with unusual
clarity in an early, excellent film about the JFK assassination called Executive Action
(1973). In the film, Big Oil (Will Geer) pulls the strings from the top, and Burt
Lancaster plays the role equivalent to General Y (Lansdale) in Oliver Stone's JFK, i.e.
the operational head of the assassination project. Another character, played by Robert
Ryan, is the middleman, apparently a media mogul (shown a number of times in what appears
to be a television studio). Big Oil and his cohorts are greatly troubled by the test ban
treaty, Kennedy's support of the civil rights movement, etc., and finally gives the
go-ahead for the assassination when the White House announces the withdrawal plan on Oct.
2, 1963. This much is in line with the Stone movie, but the following brief dialogue
between Ryan and Lancaster introduces a further dimension:
Ryan: The real problem is this, James. In two decades there'll be 7 billion human
beings on this planet, most of them brown, yellow or black, all of them hungry, all of
them determined to love and swarm out of their breeding grounds into Europe and North
America. Hence Vietnam. An all-out effort there will give us control of south Asia for
decades to come, and with proper planning we can reduce the population to 550 million by
the end of the century. I know, I've seen the data.
Lancaster: We sound rather like gods reading the Doomsday Book, don't we?
Ryan: Well, someone has to do it. Not only will the nations affected be better off, but
the techniques developed there can be used to reduce our own excess population--blacks,
Puerto Ricans, Mexican-Americans, poverty-prone whites, and so forth.
But eventually, as Vietnam demonstrated, people get tired of war. Furthermore,
conventional warfare does not kill enough people to make a significant difference in the
population figures. What's a few million here, a few million there? These figures don't
make a dent in the projections of population growth that have the power elite so worried.
5. AIDS as genocide?
McNamara spoke to his fellow bankers in 1979 of a world populated by 10 billion people
by the year 2090 as "not a world that any of us would want to live in." If this
is a horror vision, what must he think in 1992, when the projections are considerably more
alarming? "UN demographers expect global population to double to more than 10 billion
by the middle of the next century, with most of the increase coming in the poorest
countries," says Eugene Robinson (op. cit.). McNamara's unliveable world is only 58
years away! This leaves us with the last of the Malthusian alternatives to nuclear war:
disease.
Enter AIDS, in the same year (1979) that McNamara was describing Third World population
growth as the greatest threat to mankind "short of nuclear war itself" and four
years after the secret Kissinger study described it as a national security threat.
Technology, in the form of modern medicine, has the troublingly "unnatural"
tendency to keep more people alive longer than was possible in Malthus' day, but AIDS,
almost miraculously, has solved the problem. Provided a cure remains elusive for another
decade or so, the population bomb will be totally defused. For the elite, given the choice
between an "unliveable world" of 10 billion people and AIDS, the latter must
come as a godsend.
The International AIDS Center at the Harvard School of Public Health has predicted 120
million AIDS infections by the year 2000 ("Grim Global Outlook on AIDS," IHT,
6/4/92:1). Even this doesn't seem like much compared to global population figures
(currently 5.4 billion; cf. IHT 6/1/92:2). But the increase in infections since 1981 has
been more than 100-fold: from 100,000 infections in 1981 to 12.9 million in 1992 (2.5
million deaths). The increase from 1992 to 2000, according to the Harvard AIDS Center,
will be almost ten-fold. Even if the disease continues to spread at a much slower
rate--say, one-tenth as fast--the number of infections would double every ten years. Let
us compare these projections with the estimates of population growth that have been made
without the AIDS factor:
AIDS Infections Global Population (without counting
deaths from AIDS)
1992 12,900,000 5,400,000,000
2000 120,000,000
2010 240,000,000
2020 480,000,000 "replacement-level fertility" (1)
2025 8,500,000,000 (2)
2030 960,000,000
2040 1,920,000,000
2050 3,840,000,000
2060 7,680,000,000
2070 15,360,000,000
2090 10,000,000,000 (1)
2100 14,000,000,000 (3)
(1) McNamara's 1979 estimates
(2) Population Reference Bureau, IHT 5/22-23/93:3
(3) Greenpeace Magazin 1/93:19
According to these figures, the human race will become extinct sometime between 2060
and 2070!
Surely no one is counting on such a grim scenario, but it is clear that population
growth estimates will have to be drastically revised to take account of the AIDS toll,
unless a cure is found soon. By the same token, McNamara's horror vision of a 10-billion
global population will be easily averted.
In other words, AIDS may solve the "population problem." Not only will the
"death rates" rise significantly, but they will rise in the right places, namely
in the Third World. Since the populations being decimated by AIDS are the same ones
suffering most from overpopulation, it is hard to see how anyone who considers the latter
the "gravest issue" facing mankind "short of nuclear war itself" could
be unhappy about AIDS. Obviously, no one is going to admit this publicly--unless he is as
stupid as Prince Philip, who said in 1988 that if he were reborn he would like to return
as a deadly virus in order to help solve the population problem--but the logic, if
unspeakable, is inescapable.
The logic has not escaped those who are directly affected, as Steven Thomas' research
showed. The New York Times, however, finds it "bizarre" that blacks think AIDS
is a form of genocide ("AIDS and Black America," reprinted in the IHT,
5/13/92:6). According to the polls they quote, 35% of blacks think AIDS is a form of
genocide, 10% believe it was created in a laboratory deliberately to infect blacks, and
20% think it might have been. This is "paranoia," says the NYT, based on
"pernicious and dispiriting rumors" which "black leaders and public figures
with high credibility like Magic Johnson could do much to discredit." Dispiriting,
yes, but why pernicious? Whom do they threaten? Who is the NYT protecting? The words
"paranoia" and "rumor" presume that the rumors are unfounded, but what
is the basis of this presumption? The only theories of the origin of AIDS that have proven
to be unfounded, though they still circulate in the press, are the ones about green
monkeys and isolated African villages. The NYT quotes a black health worker who testified
to the National Commission on AIDS that "until it was proved otherwise she considered
AIDS a man-made disease." This is not paranoia, but common sense. The best
explanation for the known facts can be considered true until a better explanation comes
along.
What are the facts? Here are five, as I see them: 1. No socially transmitted disease
has ever appeared so suddenly and spread so rapidly as AIDS.
2. It is possible to create pathogenic viruses by genetic engineering. The crucial, and
as yet unanswered, questions are: a) is it possible to create HIV this way now; b) if so,
exactly when did this become possible; c) when did the first case of AIDS in fact appear?
3. Plausible scientific arguments have been made to support various theories of an
artificial origin of AIDS, though these arguments have been suppressed in both the
mainstream press and in scientific literature.
4. The Pentagon thought it possible and wanted to create an AIDS- like virus in 1969
and asked Congress for the money to do so (MacArthur's testimony before the House
Subcommittee, July 9, 1969).
5. Neither the government nor the press nor the scientific community has made any
effort to bring the above facts to the attention of the public, much less investigate
their possible significance.
Given these facts, it demands a huge leap of faith not to suspect the worst. I don't
recall anyone calling Anita Bryant and the clean- thinking crowd paranoid because it
occurred to them that AIDS was God's scourge upon the wicked. Why is it paranoid to
suspect human beings of genocide, but not to suspect God? Why blame God? God has never
been convicted of persecuting or killing blacks, homosexuals, drug addicts or prostitutes.
Human beings have. We have a rich historical record to demonstrate the horrors which man
is quite able and willing to inflict on his fellow man. AIDS could be another one.
It is not difficult to imagine that if our worst suspicions are correct, those
responsible have convinced themselves that they are doing God's work. If one accepts the
Malthusian premise, AIDS may appear to be the only feasible way to keep the world from
becoming unliveable, which would make its inventor a hero! Is it not worth sacrificing a
few billion lives to disease, if it means saving the human species as a whole and
preserving the earth as a "liveable place"? Are these not exactly the same
grandiose strategic terms, the same philosophy, that our rulers use to justify all the
wars they force us to endure? The relative few must be sacrificed for the greater good. A
few million to save South Vietnam, a few billion to save the world.
Of course, the catch is that the "relative few" are always the relatively
poor and powerless. It is the underclass who are the grunts in the AIDS war, just as they
were in Vietnam and in all wars. Naturally, a portion of the middle class, and perhaps
even a tiny fraction of the upper class, get caught under the wheels too, but this is a
numbers game. And the numbers speak for themselves. They tell us that in the
industrialized countries, it is non-whites, homosexuals, drug addicts and prostitutes who
are getting hit disproportionately by AIDS. The NYT says more than half the AIDS cases are
non-whites (31% blacks, according to the MacNeil-Lehrer report quoted above), and more
than half the cases in women and children are blacks. Given the rate of spread of the
disease in Africa and Asia, the percentage of non-whites who will be killed worldwide is
much higher.
This does not necessarily add up to genocide, or to an artificial origin of the AIDS
virus. It does add up to a lot of questions which, despite the New York Times, are neither
"bizarre" nor "paranoid," and are not being asked. The answers may not
be forthcoming, but if we do not ask the questions, we have no one to blame for the
consequences but ourselves.
After posting what I have written so far (AIDS Contract 1-5) to the Internet, I carried
on a discussion with several biologists that led me to the following additional
conclusions:
1. I am convinced that the published genetic sequences (PGS) show greater similarity
between HIV and SIV than between HIV and visna.
2. I am not convinced that the greater similarity between HIV and SIV would be
confirmed by analysis of ANY sample of HIV. Segal says the early similarity of HIV and
visna (and dissimilarity of HIV and SIV), confirmed by the first PGS, was simply forgotten
after other analyses were published. If he is right, one would think there would be HIV
samples around that do NOT conform to the PGS. But the onus must be on him (or someone
else who suspects this) to prove it.
3. I am not convinced that there is any conclusive evidence of HIV before the first
diagnosis in 1981. Segal attempts to debunk much of this evidence in his book (AIDS: Die
Spur fuehrt ins Pentagon, Verlag Neuer Weg, Kaninenberghoehe 2, 45136 Essen, Germany,
1990), which unfortunately has still not appeared in English.
4. I am not convinced that AIDS began anywhere but in New York, because of 3.
5. Because of 3 and 4, I think it is correct to assume that AIDS is an entirely new
disease -- not a new outbreak of an old disease. The analogies with bubonic plague and
syphilis are false. Segal's suspicion that lyme disease may also be a product of military
laboratories deserves a response.
6. I am certainly not convinced by the argument that secret (military, CIA) scientific
research is only on "applications" and never fundamentally ahead of published
research. Therefore, it seems quite possible to me that SIV, for example, was discovered
long before 1985, and could have been one of the original components (rather than visna,
as Segal contends) of an artifically produced HIV. At least one of the microbiologists I
corresponded with admits that such a synthesis would have been possible by 1980, so we are
only talking about a difference of a year or two, since Segal says it was made in late
1978. And we should not forget that "eminent scientists" (and the Pentagon)
believed in 1969 that it would be possible in 5 to 10 years to make a "new infective
microorganism" that would be "refractory to the immunological and therapeutic
processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious
disease" (MacArthur testimony).
7. From what all my correspondents have said, I am convinced that HIV can be
synthesized in the laboratory NOW. This seems to be generally known by experts, but it is
still a secret, I think, as far as the public is concerned. That was the first question in
the questionnaire I sent out in late 1991 to a number of well- known AIDS researchers:
"Is it possible to produce HIV-1 or HIV-2 in the laboratory (by manipulating or
combining other organisms or substances by gene surgery or other means)?" Since most
of these researchers answered a flat "No" to this question, I must conclude that
they were being disingenuous, and that their failure to answer the second question and
third questions ("If so, since when has this been possible?" and "With what
components?") was equally disingenuous.
When I published the above "amended" conclusions on the Internet, I again
received responses, which I will quote briefly.
Re 2, one correspondent wrote:
"I've seen hundreds of HIV sequences, from all over the world, sequenced by many
different people. Basically all you have to do is get a blood sample from someone, purify
it, and run it through a sequencer. There's no way the "bad guys" could
interfere with this.
"Segal's claims that HIV and visna were originally reported similar and that this
has been covered up are unfounded. There is no coverup of the fact that HIV is a
lentivirus and is related to visna. However, SIV is also a lentivirus and is closer to HIV
than visna is.
"In conclusion, I've read the papers Segal referenced, but I couldn't find
anything to support his theory that new sequences replaced the old ones. From the first,
visna was suspected to be close to HIV, and it still is. The only thing that changed is
visna used to be the closest known virus to HIV; when SIV was discovered, visna lost that
role."
This is a pretty convincing challenge to Segal's argument that the similarity of visna
and HIV was discovered early and then inexplicably ignored in favor of the new discovery
of the similarity of HIV and SIV. I would like to have Segal's response, but since he is
old and quite ill, I am afraid it will not be forthcoming.
Re 7, the same person wrote:
"I think this is an unfair interpretation. You asked a bunch of people, one said
yes, so you're assuming the "yes" is right and everyone else is lying. I think
the proper explanation is: a) this question can be interpreted several different ways; b)
people can honestly give different answers on this question.
"I'll go into a bit more detail. First, when you ask is it possible to produce HIV
in the laboratory, this can be interpreted as: i) Before HIV was discovered, would it be
possible to deliberately design HIV and then produce it?
ii) Before HIV was discovered, would it be possible to produce HIV by trial-and-error?
iii) After HIV was discovered, analyzed and sequenced, would it be possible to make HIV
from scratch?
"I think everyone would agree that (i) is impossible. My reason is that even after
a decade of intensive research, nobody understands the details of some of the genes of HIV
or how exactly HIV works. Thus, I consider it impossible for someone to sit down and
design HIV even now, much less 10 years ago.
"The yes answer you received is clearly an answer to (iii), since he says it was
possible with a RNA synthesizing machine "once the nucleotide sequence of the viruses
was known". This is not an interesting answer from your point of view, since it
assumes someone already has HIV. I would also say he's probably wrong in terms of it being
possible in practice: in the 1970's, the longest piece of RNA synthesized was about 150
bases long; in the mid 1980's, the longest piece was about 1000 bases long, but HIV is
about 10000 bases long.
"That leaves (ii), which is the question you're interested in. I would say that
(ii) is possible in theory, but not possible in practice. Theoretically it is possible to
form HIV from SIV by trial-and-error, since it is generally believed to have formed by
evolution. However, since this is estimated to have taken hundreds or thousands of years
and millions and millions of monkeys, it is not practical.
"In the lab, the changes you can make to a virus by trial-and- error are rather
small. In the 1970's, there was a lot of work in modifying the virus used to infect E.
Coli, to give it improved properties. These involved small changes to single genes, and
the viruses could be tested immediately, but it still took years of effort. In the case of
HIV, the virus is significantly different from SIV and contains an entirely new gene. In
addition, if scientists wanted to check their progress, they would have to infect humans
and wait years to see what happens, rather than hours for E. Coli viruses. Thus, I
conclude that even if evil scientists had SIV and wanted to create a human version of it,
it would probably take them hundreds of years to do it even if they had a good idea of how
to check their progress. And this neglects the fact that SIV wasn't discovered until HIV
was discovered, because after HIV scientists checked thousands of monkeys to find
something related. Before HIV, nobody had any reason to look for SIV."
Another correspondent wrote:
"Another, far more true-to-life hypothesis is that most scientists are quite
conservative about making off-the-wall, unorthodox predictions in any contexts. You may be
familiar with Arthur C. Clarke's First Law: "When an elderly but eminent scientist
says something is possible, he is almost certainly right; when he says something is
impossible, he is almost certainly wrong." This is, in my experience, a very general
phenomenon that readily accounts for the refusal of established biologists to consider the
synthesis of HIV.
"I would also like to set you straight about my time predictions. I held 1980 as
the earliest possible date at which HIV could begin to be synthesized in the best
pure-research labs in the world. You seem to take this as meaning that HIV could be
completed in non-specialized labs by 1978. This is a misrepresentation of my
position."
My answer was as follows: Question 1 in my questionnaire, to which almost all the
researchers who replied answered a flat "No," was: "Is it possible to
produce HIV-1 or HIV-2 in the laboratory (by manipulating or combining other organisms or
substances by gene surgery or other means)?" I don't see how this could have been
(mis)interpreted as "After HIV was discovered, analyzed and sequenced, would it be
possible to make HIV from scratch?" I was clearly not asking about making viruses
"from scratch." You do not need to make a mule "from scratch." All you
need is a horse and a donkey. Segal says the horse and donkey were visna and HTLV-1,
though I purposely avoided being that specific.
Interpretation ii) also assumes that we are talking about "synthesizing"
(i.e., making the virus "from scratch"), rather than gene-splicing
(hybridization). Why should "the changes you can make to a virus by
trial-and-error" be "rather small" if we are talking about hybidization? As
for testing, that is precisely what Segal says the origin of AIDS was -- an accidental
breakout of the virus from an experiment conducted on prisoners who volunteered as guinea
pigs.
The argument that it would not have been "practical" to develop HIV from SIV
because it would have taken "thousands of years and millions and millions of
monkeys" begs the question. The question is: Did HIV evolve in nature, or did it come
from a laboratory? If the latter is true, the discussion of evolution is entirely
irrelevant.
Ditto the argument that HIV cannot have been made from SIV because "SIV wasn't
discovered until HIV was discovered" (both in 1985, I think). The question is whether
SIV was really discovered when it is thought to have been discovered, and whether the
"discovery" of HIV was not the public discovery of a virus created some years
earlier by secret biowarfare research.
Question 1 in my questionnaire says, quite clearly: Suppose you are one of the best
virologists around, with all possible facilities, including samples of all kinds of
viruses. Can you put a combination of them together that will end up looking like HIV, or
something close to it? With genetic sequencing available now to compare the results, this
question should be precisely answerable.
"Yes" to this question, of course, would lead to Questions 2 and 3 (since
when has this been possible and with what components?). Again, I am not talking about
making viruses "from scratch" or "by design" in the sense of
constructing them according to genetic blueprints. I'm talking about mixing things
together to see what you come up with. You don't need to know precisely what you're going
to end up with beforehand.
For example, if you've got an immune deficiency virus that only attacks monkeys, you
try adding things to it (like HTLV-1) to see if you can make it pathogenic to humans. How
do you know if it's pathogenic to humans? You inject it in massive doses (to speed up the
onset of disease) in various animals and human cell cultures, and when you've got
something that looks promising, you test it on humans. (Segal is not the first person to
note that prisoners -- and others -- have been used as guinea pigs in government-
sponsored experiments.)
Does anyone really want to deny that the technology for doing this (making hybrid
viruses) was available in the 1970s? Why else would "eminent biologists" have
assured the Pentagon in 1969 that they could create a "new synthetic biological
agent" ("synthetic" meaning simply "man-made," "not
naturally occurring") between 1974 and 1979 that would attack the human immune system
(MacArthur testimony)?
Biological warfare researchers would not have needed to create HIV from scratch or
re-create it from a blueprint. They would not have needed RNA synthesizing machines
(which, whatever they are, I assume were not around in the 70s), and they would not have
needed hundreds of years to find out what the effects of their nasty products were. All
they would have needed was the ability to make hybrid viruses, standard facilities for
experiments with animals and human cell cultures, and, ultimately, a few human guinea
pigs.
Perhaps the difficulty is that "normal" scientists simply cannot conceive of
anyone TRYING to produce a disease agent. But that is precisely what biological and
chemical warfare researchers do. That much is no secret."
My correspondent replied to this as follows:
"I've looked at the gene sequences carefully, with an open mind, and I can't see
any way you could splice together known viruses (including SIV) to form HIV. (I've sent
you the sequences; you can try yourself to cut and paste the viruses together to form
HIV.)
"I've read the MacArthur testimony. It says they were looking for an agent
refractory to immunological processes; this means something resisting immunological
processes. The quoted testimony and other parts of the testimony state they are looking
for a new agent for which people do not have natural immunity; this is entirely different
from an agent that destroys the immune system. It is also much easier than producing
something like HIV.
"I've read about the research into disease agents. I know roughly what sorts of
problems they were looking at and hoped to solve with genetic engineering: making an agent
without natural immunity, improving the virulence of agents, making agents more infective,
and making agents more stable for distribution as aerosols and at high temperatures. They
were looking at using raw nucleic acids rather than normal protein encapsulated viruses,
in order to evade the immune system. They were also looking at more hypothetical
possiblities such as splicing a toxin gene (e.g. botulism) into an infective virus. These
are the sorts of new agents refractory to immunological and therapeutic processes that
were being considered in the 1970's.
"Based on how recent genetic engineering was developed, the immense effort that
academia and industry has poured into research, the comparatively limited amount of
research by the military, the published reports of what the military was looking at, and
the government support for academic research into genetic engineering, I don't think that
there is any significant basic military research in genetic engineering ahead of what is
publicly known. The MacArthur testimony makes it pretty clear that the military wasn't
doing genetic engineering research in 1969, but based on what was happening outside they
thought there might be military applications and they would like to start investigating
this. I don't see when they would have had the time between 1969 and the mid 70's to get
years ahead of public genetic engineering in fundamental research, even if they
tried."
My reply:
I don't see why you can't cut and paste viruses together to get HIV. I too looked again
at the sequences you sent me, and drew lines between the letters that were the same (and
in the same positions) in SIV and HIV. These identities amounted to about 70%, as you
said. Certainly I could cut out the 30% of the SIV sequence that doesn't match and paste
in sequences from other viruses (like HTLV-1?), until I have even greater similarity with
HIV.
But I am not at all sure the "cut-and-paste" analogy is valid for the
"shotgun" method of hybridization Segal says created HIV. This would have been a
matter of putting viruses together to achieve not a 100% pre-determined sequence, but just
enough identity with the component viruses to produce the desired pathogenic effects. A
certain percentage of HIV's genetic makeup may have been "born" quite randomly,
and thus not traceable to any other virus. This would be more like shuffling a deck of
cards. Each time you shuffle, you will retain some percentage of sequential identity,
depending on how carefully you shuffle, but the rest of the deck will be a random
distribution. Similarly, HIV contains large chunks identical with visna and SIV, and
smaller chunks identical with other viruses (HTLV-1?), but the rest of the genome may be a
random (and thus unrecognizable) recombination of whatever the original components were. I
could not expect, then, to "cut and paste" or map the *entire* HIV genome onto a
combination of known viruses. Indeed, because of mutations, I suspect that it is difficult
or impossible to match even various samples of HIV -- the "same" virus -- with
100% success.
In other words, HIV does not have to be completely identical with any combination of
other viruses to have been made from them. It need only have retained enough identity with
SIV or visna, for example, to cause immune deficiency, and enough identity with another
virus or viruses (HTLV-1?) to make it pathogenic to humans. The rest of the genome may be
unique.
Thus the argument that there is no "way you could splice together known viruses
(including SIV) to form HIV" -- that is, 100% of HIV -- does not preclude the
possibility that HIV was created this way. Part of the genome may have been
"born" by a random combination of genes.
Let's try another analogy. Can you map the genome of a mule *exactly* onto a
combination of the genomes of a horse and a donkey? I don't think so. Part of the mule is
mule. But the mule still came from the horse and donkey.
As for the MacArthur testimony, According to my dictionary, "refractory"
means "not responsive to treatment, e.g. a refractory disease." HIV is
unresponsive -- resistant -- to the human immune system. Certainly this sentence refers to
something more fundamentally dangerous than "a new agent for which people do not have
natural immunity," as my correspondent puts it. They wanted an agent "for which
no natural immunity *could* have been acquired," a completely new kind of *synthetic*
microorganism, different from *any known* cause of disease. Not just an agent that could
penetrate the immune system, but one that would *not respond* (be "refractory")
to it, one that would beat the entire system, all "the immunological and therapeutic
processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious
disease." This is not different from "an agent that destroys the immune
system," as my correspondent says. It is precisely that. An agent that will defeat
the immune system *must* be able to destroy it. In short, MacArthur's description of the
"new infective microorganism" he wanted to make fits HIV quite well.
As for the history of secret biowar research, scant as it is, if the government was
looking at splicing toxin genes into infective viruses in the 70s, why shouldn't they have
been looking at splicing infective viruses into deadly sheep viruses, as Segal says? Since
it is secret, how can my correspondent presume to know that military research has been
"comparatively limited"? Why does he assume there is no "significant basic
military research in genetic engineering ahead of what is publicly known"? We are not
talking about soldiers playing scientists, but about top scientists doing top secret work
funded directly or indirectly (through foundations, grants, private organizations, etc.)
by the government, which they would not be allowed to talk or write about even if they
wanted to. When he says "government support for academic research into genetic
engineering," surely my corresondent realizes that this includes millions or billions
of dollars in the "black budget" that is totally unaccounted for and can be
allocated for secret projects through any number of channels. There is nothing new about
this. If the government wants the science, and they want it secret, they can get it.
The MacArthur testimony makes it quite clear that the military was working very
closely, and certainly secretly, with "eminent biologists" in 1969, and they
were far beyond just "starting" to investigate the military applications of
genetic engineering. They would not have asked for $10 million (equivalent to 25-30
million in 1993 dollars, I would estimate), and commit themselves to a timetable
("within the next 5 to 10 years") if they weren't pretty far along already. I
haven't looked at the technical journals of the period -- and wouldn't understand much in
them if I did -- but I would be very surprised to find anything published by "eminent
biologists" at the time equivalent to what is in the MacArthur testimony. (I suspect
that the failure to classify this testimony was a major screw-up, though so far it has
been effectively kept under wraps. Not another word since then has leaked about that $10
million project. Jeremy Rifkin's 1988 petition to find out what happened to it hit a stone
wall.)
Furthermore, the distinction between "fundamental" and "applied"
research is not clear-cut. One might not consider inventing a new disease-agent
"fundamental." One might not consider looking for, and finding, animal viruses
(like visna or SIV) that could be converted into pathogenic human viruses
"fundamental research." What difference does it make what we call it? The
question is whether the research -- "fundamental" or "applied" --
produced AIDS.
In sum, much as I would like to have been convinced by my interlocutors that my
conclusions are wrong, I'm afraid they stand. Whether Segal is right about the components
or not, his theory that AIDS originated in a biowarfare laboratory remains plausible, and
much too disturbing to ignore. As long as long the question remains unanswered, I cannot
help coming to a further conclusion: Whoever it was that said, "Science stops where
politics begins," was right.
Michael Morrissey
Pass this on if you like. RSVP , because I don't read all the newsgroups it may appear
on.
Message-ID: <Pine.3.89.9407041143.A10968-0100000@netcom12>
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
From: m.morrissey@asco.ks.open.de (Mike Morrissey)
Subject: AIDS Contract
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 1994 03:51:21 GMT
The Secret Origin of AIDS & HIV
by Alan Cantwell Jr., MD.
Many people have heard the theory that AIDS is man-made.
Thirty percent of New York City blacks polled by The New York Times (October 29, 1990)
actually believe AIDS is an “ethnic weapon” designed in a laboratory to infect
and kill black people. Some people even think the AIDS conspiracy theory is more plausible
than the African Green monkey theory promoted by the leading AIDS scientists.
Actually, the monkey theory was proven wrong by researchers as far back as 1988, but
most AIDS educators continued to promote it to the public until recently.
In a media blitz in 1999, the green monkey theory was totally replaced by the
chimpanzee “out of Africa” theory, and the chimp origin of AIDS was fully
accepted by the scientific community.
A phylogenetic “family tree” of primate viruses (which few people could
understand) was presented to prove that HIV was descended from a primate virus in the
African bush.
Analysis of virus genetic data performed by the “supercomputer” at Los Alamos
in New Mexico indicated that HIV had “jumped species” from a chimp to a human
around the year 1930 in Africa.
(Los Alamos is the official home of nuclear bomb-building, alleged Chinese spies, and
the laboratory which directed secret human radiation experiments on unsuspecting civilians
from the 1940s up to the beginning of the AIDS epidemic.)
At the international AIDS conference held in 2000 in South Africa, one scientist
claimed the chimpanzee virus (SIVcpz) was “ancient” and jumped species as early
as 1675 but didn’t establish itself in the human population until 1930. This was
dutifully reported by science writer Laurie Garrett, who give all the time-honored reasons
for the rapid spread of AIDS in Africa: non-sterile needles, non-sterile blood products
and widespread promiscuous sexual behavior.
The Special Virus Cancer Program (1962-1977)
Conveniently forgotten by scientists and medical journalists was the fact that surgeons
had been transplanting chimpanzee parts into human beings for decades.
When Keith Reemtsma died in June 2000, at age 74, he was hailed as a pioneer in
cross-species organ transplants (now known as xenotransplantation). By 1964 he had already
placed six chimpanzee kidneys into six patients. All his patients died, but eventually
Reemtsma succeeded in many successful human-to-human organ transplants.
Much more likely to have spread animal viruses to human beings is the largely forgotten
Special Virus Cancer Program (SVCP). This research program was responsible for the
development, the seeding, and the deployment of various animal viruses, which were capable
of producing cancer and immune system damage when transferred between animal species and
into human cells and tissue.
The SVCP began in 1964 as a government-funded program of the National Cancer Institute
(NCI) in Bethesda, Maryland. Originally designed to study leukemia and lymphoma forms of
cancer, the program was soon enlarged to study all forms of cancer.
The SVCP marshalled many of the nation’s finest virologists, biochemists,
immunologists, molecular biologists, and epidemiologists, at the most prestigious
institutions in a coordinated attempt to assess the role of viruses in causing human
cancer. Many of the top AIDS scientists, including Dr. Robert Gallo (the co-discoverer of
HIV), Myron (Max) Essex (of “cat AIDS” fame), and Peter Duesberg (who claims HIV
is not the cause of AIDS), were connected with the Program.
The scope of the program was international and included scientists from Japan, Sweden,
Italy, the Netherlands, Israel, and even Uganda, Africa. A main mission of the SVCP was to
collect various human and animal cancers from around the world and to grow large amounts
of cancer-causing viruses. In the process, many animal viruses were adapted to human
cells. These cultured viruses would then be shipped to researchers throughout the world.
An annual report of the accomplishments of the SVCP was published by the NCI. The 1971
SVCR report indicates a mouse leukemia virus had been adapted to grow in human cells. A
hybrid virus a mixture of a mouse sarcoma and a cat (feline) leukemia virus was engineered
and grown in cat cells. Chicken and feline retroviruses produced cancer in monkeys.
Mouse-cat virus hybrids and feline leukemia virus were adapted to human cells in tissue
culture. Thus, species jumping was a common occurrence in these experiments. Biological
Warfare, Primate Research and the SVCP. Also joining forces with the SVCP at the NCI were
the miltary’s biological warfare researchers.
On October 18, 1971, President Richard Nixon announced that the army’s biowarfare
laboratories at nearby Fort Detrick, Maryland, would be converted to research on the
cause, prevention, and treatment of cancer.
As part of Nixon’s so-called War on Cancer, the military biowarfare unit was
retitled the new Frederick Cancer Research Center.
Litton Bionetics was named as the military’s prime contractor for this project.
The 1971 annual report noted that one of the primary tasks of the now jointly connected
National Cancer Institute-Frederick Cancer Research Center was “the large scale
production of oncogenic (cancer-causing) and suspected oncogenic viruses to meet research
needs on a continuing basis.” Special attention was given to primate viruses (the
alleged African source of HIV) and “the successful propagation of significant amounts
of human candidate viruses.”
Candidate viruses were animal or human viruses that might be capable of intiating human
cancers. And primate cancer-causing viruses were adapted to ‘normal’ human
cells.
A steady supply of research animals (monkeys, chimpanzees, mice, and cats) was
necessary, which resulted in the establishment of breeding colonies for the SVCP. Healthy
animals were shipped in from various parts of the world for breeding purposes and
experimentation; and virus-infected animals were shipped out again to various labs.
By 1971, a total of 2,274 primates had been inoculated at Bionetics Research
Laboratories, under contract to Fort Detrick. Over 1000 of these monkeys had already died
or had been transferred to other primate centers. (Some animals were eventually released
back into the wild). By this time, experimenters had spread lymphoma-producing viruses
into several species of monkeys, and had also isolated a monkey virus (Herpesvirus
saimiri) that would have a close genetic relationship to a new Kaposi’s sarcoma virus
that produced the “gay cancer” of AIDS a few years later.
In order to prime primates and other research animals to acquire cancer, their immune
system was deliberately suppressed by drugs, radiation, or cancer-causing chemicals or
substances. The thymus gland and/or the spleen was removed, and viruses were injected into
newborn animals or into the womb of pregnant animals. Some animals were also injected with
malaria to keep them chronically sick and immunodepressed.
Primates (especially newborn and baby chimpanzees) were the most favored lab animals
because they were most similar biochemically and immunologically to human beings, and
because there would be no official testing of these lab viruses on humans. An irradiated
rhesus monkey colony supplied animals for transplantation experiments.
Robert Gallo was a project officer of a primate study contracted by Bionetics that
pumped cancerous human tissue, as well as a variety of chicken and monkeys viruses into
newborn macaques (a small species of monkey). This 1971 SVCP report (NIH-71-2025)
declared: “Inasmuch as tests for the biological activity of candidate human viruses
will not be tested in the human species, it is imperative that another system be developed
for these determinations and, subsequently for the evaluation of vaccines or other measure
of control. The close phylogenetic relationship of the lower primates of man justifies
utilization of these animals for these purposes.”
Researchers at Bionetics evaluated the long-term cancer effects of injecting human and
animal cancer material into various species of monkeys. Newborn monkeys, irradiated
monkeys, and monkeys primed with cancer-causing chemicals, were injected with blood (“using
multiple sites and volumes as large as possible”) taken from various forms of human
leukemia. In other studies, tissue cultures infected with various animal viruses were
inoculated into primates. Many kinds of human cancer tissue were injected into the
animals. How many “new” and “emerging” viruses were created and
adapted by the SVCP is not known. And it is unlikely that complete records of this animal
cancer virus experimentation will ever be examined.
Cats were also bred for leukemia and sarcoma cancer studies. An inbred germfree colony
of mice was established. Mouse cancer viruses were manipulated to produce resistant and
non-resistant strains. These adapted viruses would be employed in the 1980s in human gene
replacement experiments. Such experiments utilized a weakened strain of the mouse leukemia
virus to infect and “taxi-in” the missing genes to genetically-defective human
cells.
The End of the SVCP and the Birth of AIDS.
By 1977 the SVCP came to a inglorious end. According to Gallo, “Scientifically,
the problem was that no one could supply clear evidence of any kind of human tumor virus,
not even a DNA virus, and most researchers refused to concede that viruses played any role
in human cancers.
Politically, the Virus Cancer Program was vulnerable because it attracted a great deal
of money and attention and had failed to produce dramatic, visible results.”
Despite all this, the SCVP was the birthplace of genetic engineering, molecular
biology, and the human genome project. More than any other program it built up the field
of animal retrovirology, which led to the vital understanding of cancer and
immunosuppressive retroviruses in humans. Like manna from heaven, AIDS in gays put the
virologists back in business. And HIV, a cancer-causing and immunosuppressive retrovirus,
would make Robert Gallo the most famous scientist in the world.
Few people understand clearly that AIDS is a new form of cancer, and this aspect of
AIDS has not been publicized for obvious reasons. Physicians have always told their
patients that cancer is not contagious or sexually transmitted. Virologists wanted AIDS
and “gay cancer” to be a new disease because HIV was supposedly brand new. It
was easier to blame gays for initiating this new disease with their sexual lifestyle than
it was to point the finger at scientists. And if AIDS was connected to animal cancer
research, some people might wonder if the new disease had anything to do with all those
species jumping experiments in the 1970s. Making people understand that AIDS is cancer
would only confuse them.
And so, instead of looking for the source of HIV in the thousands of animal cancer
experiments performed througout the world, the virologists insisted on looking for the
source of the virus in primates in the African rainforest.
The Pre-AIDS Gay Hepatitis B Experiments (1978-1981)
As the SVCP was winding down, thousands of gay men were signing up as guinea pigs for
government-sponsored hepatitis B vaccine experiments in New York, Los Angeles, and San
Francisco. In a few years these cities would become the epicenters for “gay-related
immune deficiency syndrome, ” later known as AIDS.
Could virus-contaminated vaccines lie at the root of AIDS?
In the early 1970s the hepatitis B vaccine was developed in chimpanzees, now widely
accepted as the animal from which HIV supposedly evolved. To this day, some people are
fearful about taking the hepatitis B vaccine because of its original connection to gay men
and AIDS; and older physicians remember the original experimental hepatitis vaccine was
made from the pooled blood serum of hepatitis-infected homosexuals.
Was HIV "introduced" into gays during these vaccine trials when thousands of
homosexuals were injected in New York beginning in 1978, and in the West Coast cities in
1980-1981?
AIDS first erupted in gays living in New York City in 1979 a few months after the
experiment began in Manhattan. The astounding and statistically significant fact is that
20% of the gay men who volunteered for the hepatitis B experiment in New York were
discovered to be HIV-positive in 1980 (a year before AIDS became “official” in
1981). This would mean that Manhattan men had the highest incidence of HIV anywhere in the
world, including Africa, the supposed birthplace of HIV and AIDS. The fact is that
definite, proven cases of AIDS in Africa would not appear until 1982.
Some researchers are convinced that these vaccine experiments served as the vehicle
through which HIV was “introduced” into the gay population in America.
Nevertheless, AIDS scientists have downplayed any connection of AIDS with the vaccine.
My own extensive research into the hepatitis B experiments is presented in AIDS and the
Doctors of Death: An Inquiry into the Origin of the AIDS Epidemic, published in 1988. Also
included in this book is evidence suggesting patient Zero” story of 1987, which
claimed a promiscuous gay Canadian airline steward brought AIDS to America. Montagnier
“is doubtful that the American epidemic could have developed from a single patient.”
Montagnier admits that he stands apart from Robert Gallo on many matters. In a
mind-blowing statement he declares “Gallo was not a medical doctor, but rather a
biochemist by training. His limited experience with viruses at the time perhaps explains
his misinterpretations and the contaminations that occurred in his laboratory.” (
Gallo has always declared himself as a physician. If he is not, then we certainly do have
a conspiracy problem on our hands.)
What is obvious from their authored books is that while the continent of Africa dies,
these two top scientists in AIDS research continue their vendetta in print, and continue
to promote their own pet theories on the origin of HIV and AIDS to an adoring scientific
community.
“Gay and Straight” Strains of HIV and Sexual Preference.
It is common knowledge that AIDS is a heterosexual disease in Africa,and that AIDS
started exclusively as a gay disease in the United States.
Although the public was told early on that “no one is immune from AIDS”, the
fact remains that even now (20 years after the first AIDS cases) 80% of the new AIDS cases
in America are gay men, IV drug addicts, and their sexual partners. Why is this? Certainly
HIV does not discriminate between sexual preference and race! Or does it?
In the mid-1990s molecular biologists identified at least 8 different subtypes (or
“clades” or “strains”) of HIV that were infecting various people
around the world. Remarkably, it turns out that the “B” strain is the
predominant strain infecting gays in the U.S. Even more remarkable is that this strain of
HIV has an “affinity” to infect rectal tissue, thus explaining why gays are more
likely to get AIDS than straights. In contrast, the HIV strains common in Africa have an
affinity for vaginal and cervical cells, as well as for cells of the foreskin of the
penis. Thus, HIV is more likely to infect heterosexuals in Africa.
How do we know this? Max Essex (a Harvard veterinarian who performed pre-AIDS
experiments transferring feline leukemia virus between cat populations) tested subtype E
strains of HIV from Thailand. He discovered that this Asian strain readily infected women’s
genital cells of the vagina and cervix. But the “gay” B strain of HIV did not
infect them as easily.
AIDS experts tell us American AIDS came from Africa, but the strain of HIV prevalent in
gay men is almost never seen in Africa! How is this possible?
Were strains of HIV engineered to adapt easily to cells likely to be infected in gay
sex? Or adapted to genital cells involved in vaginal sex?
We know scientists in the SVCP were able to adapt certain retroviruses to infect
specific kinds of cells. As early as 1970 biowarfare scientists were learning to design
certain infectious agents (particularly viruses) that would attack the cells of certain
racial groups.
More recently, in 1997, Stephen O’Brien and Michael Dean of the Laboratory of
Genomic Diversity at the National Cancer Institute have shown that one out of ten white
people have AIDS-resistant genes, whereas blacks in Africa have none.
Is this simply another peculiarity of a virus that jumped species in the African bush?
Or is HIV a designer virus, specifically adapted in its subtypes to infect certain racial
groups and gay people?
When AIDS appeared in 1981, health officials assured the “general public”
that there was nothing to fear. “AIDS is a gay disease” was the phrase repeated
over and over again in a media blitz. As late as 1987, Robert Gallo told Playboy reporter
David Black, “I personally don’t know of a single case (in America) of a man
getting the (AIDS) virus from a woman through heterosexual intercourse.”
In Africa, where AIDS affects men and women in equal numbers, Gallo’s explanation
to Black was: “It happens, but that may be due to differences in sexual practices,
more promiscuity or to a greater incidence of venereal disease.” Gallo give Playboy
his reassurance of the future of heterosexual AIDS in America: “AIDS will never
become an overwhelming danger to the general public.”
Solving the Mystery of the Origin of AIDS.
The pre-AIDS species jumping experiments of the Special Virus Cancer Program (SVCP)
have been largely expunged from the history of HIV and AIDS. The viral contamination
problems inherent in viral research have also been downplayed. As a result, the origin of
HIV and AIDS has been distorted and obscured.
A serious examination of the SVCP provides “missing links” to the possible
laboratory origin of HIV. The ability of SVCP scientists to produce “new”
diseases with cancer-causing animal viruses is a matter of record. The ability of animal
viruses to easily contaminate laboratory experiments and vaccine manufacture is also well
known. All these factors make the man-made theory of AIDS rational and compelling.
Some areas of HIV/AIDS history that require further analysis are:
The connection between AIDS and cancer
The connection of HIV to known (pre-AIDS) animal cancer lab viruses
The connection of the SVCP to the outbreak of AIDS
The connection of vaccine programs to the outbreak of AIDS
The connection of biological warfare research to the outbreak of AIDS
The disinformation surrounding the origin of AIDS
The disinformation blaming the “victims” of AIDS for the disease
The total secrecy of biological warfare and its implications for science
The wedding of cancer and AIDS scientists to biological warfare scientists
The “sworn to secrecy” problem of the government/military scientists
The wedding of government to medical science for military b/w purposes
The long history of secret medical experiments on unsuspecting citizens
All these factors need to be explored more fully and impartially in order to more fully
elucidate the man-made, laboratory origin of HIV and AIDS.
To continue to ignore these issues is to ignore the fate of countless millions who will
die from AIDS and other “emerging viruses” in the future.
The Special Virus Cancer Program (and biowarfare experimentation worldwide) has forever
changed the course of history of medical science, resulting in the current dangers of
biological terrorism and the fear of newly emerging man-made viruses and other infectious
agents.
To study the theories of origin of HIV/AIDS and to ignore the SVCP with its biowarfare
implications is like studying the Holocaust and failing to mention the Nazis. Some readers
may find this analogy offensive, but in light of the close connection of the SVCP with the
outbreak of HIV and AIDS, it is suggested that final judgement be reserved until all the
pertinent facts are ascertained.
The SVCP and “the hand of man” lie at the root of HIV. The flowering of the
worldwide epidemic of AIDS is proof that the seeds were well planted.
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and Company, 1999
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Group, 1996.
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1997, pp 28-35.
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Health, July 1971.
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Health, July 1972.
Stevens CE, Taylor PE, Zang EA, et al: Human T-cell lymphotropic virus type III infection
in a cohort of homosexual men in New York City. JAMA 255;2167-2172, 1986.
Quinnan GV Jr (Ed): Vaccinia Viruses as Vectors for Vaccine Antigens. New York: Elsevier,
1985.
Related Websites:
AIDS: An
Explosion of the Biological Timebomb?.
QUIRK OF NATURE OR MASS
MURDER?
Gay Today's AIDS
Series.
Acknowledgement: I am grateful to Robert E Lee, Vincent Gammill, Billi Goldberg, and
Boyd “Ed” Graves, for their contributions of research material for this study.
[Dr. Cantwell is a medical researcher and author of AIDS & The Doctors of Death,
and Queer Blood, both published by Aries Rising Press, PO Box 29532,Los Angeles, CA 90029,
USA. These books are available on the Internet at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, or
through mail order at Book Clearing House @ 1-800-431-1579. ]
The United States and Biological Warfare.
by Uri Dowbenko.
CIA "legends" die hard.
A "legend" is a cover story concocted by the CIA to cover-up US
state-sanctioned criminality. During the Korean War, CIA operative Colonel Edward Hunter
created the "legend" that US airmen were "brainwashed" by the Red
Chinese to make false confessions about engaging in germ warfare.
"The popularization of the idea that the flyers were 'brainwashed' grew out of a
widely read book of the time by Edward Hunter titled Brainwashing in Red China
(1951)," write Toronto's York University historians Stephen Endicott and Edward
Hagerman in their fascinating book, The United States and Biological Warfare.
"A few years later, after the results of a mammoth US Army study were known, the
US Defense Department concluded that US POWs had not been subject to brainwashing, merely
hardship, stress and duress," they continue.
The CIA's disinformation campaign, however, took on a life of its own. This
"legend" has become a myth of 20th century history, further enshrined in movies
like The Manchurian Candidate.
The CIA promoted the idea that American soldiers were coerced through mind control to
confess to imaginary crimes. And the fact that they had actually engaged in
"germ" warfare during the Korean War was effectively covered-up.
Roosevelt's Biological Warfare Program.
And how did US biowarfare get started? Under Roosevelt, during World War Two.
"Begun with an inital grant of $250,000, modest by wartime standards, the biological
warfare program quickly grew to be one of the largest wartime scientific projects in
American history, second only to the Manhattan Project, which created the atomic
bomb," write Endicott and Hagerman.
"Granted top priority status, the program employed approximately four thousand
people by the end of the war. The center of activity was the Special Projects division of
the Chemical Warfare Service and its new research and development center located in Camp
Detrick, Maryland," they continue.
The Pentagon and its devil's workshop was a busy place. "The Detrick scientists
cast a wide experimental net. They studied anthrax, brucellosis (undulant fever),
botulinus toxin, plague, ricin, southern blight of grains, potatoes and sugar beets
(Sclerotium rolfoil), late blight, late blast, brownspot of rice, plant growth inhibitors,
rinderpest, glanders and melioidosis..., tularemia (Rabbit fever), mussel poisoning,
coccidioidomycosis, rickettsia, psittacosis, neurotropic encephalitis, Newcastle disease
and fowl plague," write the authors.
"The first to receive concentrated attention were anthrax and botulinus toxin...
It also was Detrick's mission to mass produce agents for operational use."
Meanwhile the Detrick scientists, among them George Merck, head of the pharmaceutical
giant Merck & Co., was recruited by the FDR administration to head the War Research
Service (WRS) Committee. However, because of internal ethical arguments by Admiral William
D. Leahy and others, "there remained certain constraints in the use of biological and
chemical weapons. One was the lingering fear that US and world opinion would morally
condemn this extension of the limits of war. The burden of using chemical weapons was
politically great because the United States had ratified the 1925 Geneva Protocol against
chemical weapons. Its failure, along with Japan, to ratify the protocol banning biological
weapons relieved the US from arms-limitation obligations in that direction, but it raised
nagging questions about US intentions before the international community."
The Lucky Accident.
It wasn't until 1980 that American journalist John William Powell discovered the
"smoking gun" of US biological warfare. "In one of those lucky accidents
that sometimes befall researchers," write the authors, "he uncovered evidence of
the US deal with the Japanese biological warfare criminals by getting his hands on an
exchange of memoranda involving General MacArthur, his intelligence chief General Charles
Willoughby" and others. Powell's exposure of the cover-up appeared first in the
Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars and, later in abbreviated form, in the Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists, according to the authors.
"The US government continued to make denials, but two years later Japan officially
acknowledged its World War II biological warfare program, as well as the fact that General
Ishii [its head] had received a large retirement pension."
Continuous lying by successive administrations, denials of wrongdoing, and complicity
with Nazi and Japanese war criminals has contributed enormously to the current distrust of
the US government. Ironically, lying to the American public is called "psychological
warfare" (PsyWar). Directed at not only so-called enemies but the public in general,
PsyWar has historically included biological warfare.
The Psychological Warfare Division was assigned to "integrate capabilities and
requirements for BW [biological warfare] and CW [chemical warfare] into war plans,"
write the authors.
"The innocuous sounding rubric 'psychological warfare' concealed the fact that
this division had a special responsibility to direct and supervise covert operations in
the scope of unconventional BW and CW operations and programs, warfare that went beyond
normal propaganda activities."
"Psychological warfare included a host of activities aimed at creating delays,
confusion, fear, anxiety and panic among the enemy," write Endicott and Hagerman.
"It employed a variety of means including a mandate to use atomic,
bacteriological, chemical and radiological warfare."
Leaflets Loaded with Bios.
"And not to be forgotten with respect to the Psychological Warfare Division's
responsibility for determining munitions requirements for bacteriological warfare -- the
most advanced propaganda weapon of psychological warfare units, the leaflet bomb, was
adapted as a standard bacteriological munition," write Endicott and Hagerman.
What does that mean? Leaflets dropped on enemy targets were used as carriers for germ
warfare, imbedded with bacteria. Also the practice of using "chaff," bundles of
tin foil to confuse enemy radar, or chopped up bits of grass straw and leaves, were also
used for spreading bacteria against enemy troops during the Korean War.
"Chaff was one of several unusual things that the North Koreans and Chinese
reported falling on their heads in 1952," write the authors. Combined with reports of
disease epidemics, there is enough evidence that germ warfare during the Korean War was a
fact, and not communist propaganda.
"The 581st ARC Wing operating in Asia under cover of a transportation service as a
means to carry out its mandate" is an example of covert warfare by the CIA, an
example of using a "cutout," or a third-party, to distance itself from illegal
or compromising activities.
When American fliers captured in Korea subsequently revealed that they were engaged in
biowarfare, the CIA denied everything. The Department of Defense characterized the flights
as "routine" while "some American congressmen worked themselves in to a
fury against the hated Chinese who supposedly were able to brainwash their captives in to
making false confessions."
Charges by the Chinese were dismissed "despite the fact that to there was
considerable overlap between the kinds of diseases that the United States was preparing
for its biological warfare program and those which the Chinese claim followed attacks by
US aircraft in the spring of 1952."
"With respect to methods of delivering infected insects, feathers, bacteria,
viruses, fungi and other materials, according to the Chinese and North Koreans'
observations, the most important were spraying, non-exploding objects and paper packets,
air-bursting leaflet bombs, cardboard cylinders with silk parachutes..."
"The US archives show that spray methods and the leaflet bomb were part of the
covert biological warfare program during 1952-53," conclude the authors.
Plausible Deniability & Media Hacks.
"Another aspect of the CIA office of Policy Coordination activity came under the
heading of psychological warfare," write the authors. "The National Security
Council gave the CIA responsibility for covert psychological warfare in 1947 and 1948, and
the agency somewhat ironically spent much of its time and money in propaganda activities
to refute enemy claims and in covering up traces of US covert activities so as to avoid
scrutiny by the American people and allies abroad. The CIA had to make good the
government,s demand for plausible deniability of questionable or illegal acts, such as
using biological warfare."
"To accomplish its propaganda objectives, the CIA infiltrated news agencies,
established radio networks, gave money to journalists, financed student organizations,
subsidized academic journals and influenced publishers. All this was done through a web of
fictitious corporate structures, sham cultural foundations and financial arrangements that
cost up to $200 million annually by 1953," write Endicott and Hagerman.
What makes this history so deliciously ironic is that CIA disinformation through the
media seems to be alive and well. Two months prior to the publication of this book, US
News and World Report (November 16, 1998) published an article by Bruce B. Auster called
"Unmasking an old lie: The Korean War charge is exposed as a hoax."
Without even the pretense of "objectivity," Auster parrots the CIA legend
that germ warfare during the Korean War was a hoax, pointedly ignoring the book by
Endicott and Hagerman.
In a brief telephone interview with Auster, he denied being paid by the CIA to continue
its disinformation. He also denied having seen or read the book. When asked if he received
payment for his "services" by the CIA in an offshore account, he said he
"resented" any such inference. His disingenuous response belies the curious
synchronicity of the book,s release and his own article which ignores evidence of US germ
warfare.
In an interview with Hagerman, the book's author said that "just before he
[Auster] wrote that story, he called me one late Friday afternoon, with a message that he
had to go to press immediately."
Hagerman said, "if I could contact him in two hours, he'd like my opinion on the
Soviet documents which purport that the biowarfare story was disinformation concocted by
the Soviets. So I called him back the next Monday, after the story had gone, and I
suggested that he read our book, perhaps balancing the story somewhere down the line. He
said 'he'd think about it.' "
The presumption is that Auster is still thinking. Ignoring the real news is a standard
modus operandi by Big Media, and media hack Auster seems to be no exception.
"I offered to have a book sent to him," says Hagerman. "He said that if
he was interested, he would let me or the publisher know, but he has not in fact asked for
a book."
The United States and Biological Warfare is a premier analysis of America,s secret
history. Deconstructing reality, buried by disinformation, is an awesome task. This
carefully documented, well-referenced, and highly readable work will remain an important
contribution to its understanding.
The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea,
by Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman, University of Indiana Press, 1999, 273 pp. ISBN:
025334721.