The Ruthless Truth blog

by Tom Burghardt

Global Research, December 20, 2009

Antifascist Calling… - 2009-12-19

 

The Obama administration’s recent declaration on bioweapons would simply be another run-of-the-mill example of our "change" president’s duplicity were it not such an unmitigated disaster.

Recapitulating sinister Cold War practices that informed American ruling class consensus when it came to secretly toying with nature’s most deadly pathogens, (a) because they could, (b) because it was, and is, highly profitable and (c) because they got with it, the profound failure by the administration to rein-in out-of-control corporate grifters, militarists and scientists thirsting after an endless flow of taxpayer dollars, have put us all on a potential glide path towards the abyss.

Since the roll-out of the Obama product-line January 21, on issues ranging from war and peace to economic justice and from civil liberties to healthcare, the "change" team exhibit the same callous disregard for disarmament proposals that characterized their Bushist predecessors in the Oval Office.

Nowhere is this reality so transparently delineated than by the administration’s continuing efforts to derail plans to revitalize the moribund Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), rejecting binding verification protocols that would finally give the 1972 treaty teeth.

"Strengthening" the BWC: Killing it with Kindness

From her perch as U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Ellen Tauscher, a former Democratic congresswoman from the San Francisco Bay Area (in other words, a feckless "liberal" who spent her career paying lip-service to the antiwar sentiments of her constituents–and then voting in favor of every blood-soaked imperialist adventure undertaken by the Bush regime) rejected international monitoring of military and pharmaceutical sites that might employ research for illicit purposes, e.g., the fabrication of banned biological weapons.

"The Obama administration will not seek to revive negotiations on a verification protocol to the convention," Tauscher told delegates December 9 at the annual meeting of the States Parties to the Biological Weapons Convention in Geneva.

The position outlined last week by the administration eerily follows in the footsteps of the previous government. In 2001, there was broad support internationally for revitalizing the BWC draft Protocol; a long, circuitous process undertaken back in 1991.

But during these earlier negotiations, the U.S. Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) released a position paper opposing the routine inspection of laboratories and other research facilities on the grounds of safeguarding "confidential business information," a position they have reiterated today.

This, along with U.S. Defense Department opposition killed the deal after the American delegation, under instructions from arch neocon John Bolton who then held Tauscher’s brief, argued that an international inspections regime would put U.S. "national security" at "risk" by allowing spot checks of suspected U.S. weapons sites.

Revealing a warmer and fuzzier, though no less obstructionist side than blustery Bolton, the Undersecretary mounted a charm offensive in Geneva, touting the National Security Council’s (NSC) "National Strategy for Countering Biological Threats" as a major transformation of the U.S. position. It wasn’t. Tauscher told delegates: "The United States intends to implement this [NSC] strategy through renewed cooperation and more thorough consultations with our international counterparts in order to prevent the misuse and abuse of science while working together to strengthen health security around the world."

However, not a single word in the 23-page NSC document addresses the vital issue of verification. Indeed, while no-holds-barred inspections of nuclear weapons’ facilities undergird international treaties governing the destruction of warheads and missiles, thus ensuring compliance with treaty obligations by states, when it comes to biological weapons the "National Strategy" skirts the question entirely. Why?

While the United States claims that it will "advance policies and practices that establish and reinforce norms against the misuse of the knowledge and capabilities that arise from the life sciences while encouraging their free and open availability for peaceful and beneficial use," a call to "develop and employ complementary and multi-layered systems for influencing, identifying, inhibiting, and interdicting biological threats" does nothing to constrain state or corporate actors from exploiting the life sciences for nefarious ends, to wit, work with dual use select agents that can be diverted into surreptitious weapons’ programs.

This is crucial. While the document asserts that America’s "relationships with the United Nations, international organizations, foreign governments, and the private sector are critical to the success of our efforts" the fact is, the "private sector" and the secret state’s own Defense Department are dead-set against any initiative that give international arms’ control monitors access to their facilities.

Claiming that the United States "has carefully reviewed previous efforts to develop a verification protocol," the administration has "determined that a legally binding protocol would not achieve meaningful verification or greater security."

Echoing Tauscher and the NSC’s lame reasoning, Barry Kellman, president of the International Security and Biopolicy Institute told The Hill he "agreed," and told the publication "that given the rapid evolution of the biological market, technologies that once could only be made in a laboratory can now be made anywhere, so it would be impossible to verify that a country is holding true to the convention protocols."

Really? Perhaps then, Mr. Kellman would care to enlighten us as to which select agent was used in the first and to date, only, bioterrorist attack of the 21st century, and where pray tell it might have come from.

Editing Out the Secret State: The 2001 Anthrax Attacks

As has generally been accepted by scientific experts and as The Baltimore Sun revealed back in 2001, "for nearly a decade, U.S. Army scientists at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah have made small quantities of weapons-grade anthrax that is virtually identical to the powdery spores used in the [October 2001] mail attacks."

Investigative journalist Scott Shane disclosed that Dugway’s Life Sciences Division "made hundreds of kilograms of anthrax for bombs designed to kill enemy troops over hundreds of square miles" during the Cold War.

Indeed, the "extraordinary concentration" of the finely-milled powdered anthrax mailed to the media and members of Congress was "in the range of 1 trillion spores per gram" which "meant that the letter could have contained 200 million times the average dose necessary to kill a person."

Researchers at Northern Arizona University determined that "the genetic fingerprint of the mailed anthrax is indistinguishable from that of the Ames ‘reference strain,’ which is the strain used most often at Fort Detrick and Dugway, according to a scientist familiar with the genetic work," the Sun reported.

Years later, former Ft. Detrick deputy commander Richard Spertzel told investigative journalists Bob Coen and Eric Nadler that "the material that was in the Daschle/Leahy letter was "1.5 to 3 microns in particle size" and characterized the refinement "as super sophisticated … phenomenal." When investigators attempted to examine samples under a microscope, "it readily floated off the slides."

In other words, the "genetic fingerprint" and "extraordinary concentration" of the weaponized anthrax used in the attack would require a team of individuals, and not a proverbial "lone nut" to produce a biotoxin possessing such exquisitely lethal characteristics. The inescapable conclusion is that the anthrax used to murder five people, sicken dozens of others and terrorize the rest of us, could only have come from a state program or one operating under contract to a government agency.

Could the deadly biotoxin have been diverted from a U.S. defense facility or corporate lab by a group of "black box" scientists operating under the radar for their own nefarious ends, i.e. strengthening the state’s repressive hand within the social-political context of the 9/11 attacks? It is certainly possible and cannot be ruled out.

As I previously reported, Global Security Newswire (GSN) disclosed in June that "a recently completed inventory at a major U.S. Army biodefense facility found nearly 10,000 more vials of potentially lethal pathogens than were known to be stored at the [Ft. Detrick] site."

According to reporter Martin Matishak, the 9,220 samples discovered "included the bacterial agents that cause plague, anthrax and tularemia; Venezuelan, Eastern and Western equine encephalitis viruses; Rift valley fever virus; Junin virus; Ebola virus; and botulinum neurotoxins."

While Ft. Detrick’s deputy commander Col. Mark Kortepeter claimed there are "multiple layers of security" and that "a lot of buffers [would] prevent anyone who shouldn’t be in the laboratory from getting in in the first place and then preventing them taking something out with them," this dodges the question of whether someone who was authorized to be inside Ft. Detrick or any of the other 400 U.S. facilities that have Biosafety Level-3 or Biosafety Level-4 laboratories, could smuggle out deadly toxic substances.

The New York Times reported December 9, that Tauscher rejects a strict regulatory regimen that would monitor state bioweapons research and development because of the "regulatory burdens that verification would place on the American pharmaceutical industry and on the military’s bio-defense research activities."

Given the available facts surrounding the 2001 anthrax terrorist incident and the FBI’s subsequent cover-up, Tauscher’s fear of "regulatory burdens" on the "pharmaceutical industry" and the state’s own "bio-defense research activities" are certainly misplaced and should be viewed with suspicion.

Big Pharma and Congress: Best Friends Forever!

While journalists and researchers have explored ethically-challenged relationships amongst former Defense Department officials and the weapons’ industry, most recently by USA Today, and have described the oft-cited revolving door as entrée to an exclusive and highly lucrative good ‘ol boys club; call it a Beltway version of a retirement village for Pentagon clock-punchers.

Inquiring minds can’t help but wonder: does the same clubby atmosphere pervade, and inform, the policy decisions made by denizens of the Bioweapons-Industrial-Complex? Let’s take a look!

Take the Alliance for Biosecurity, a Big Pharma lobby shop aligned with the Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), as a starting point. Self-described as "a collaboration among the Center for Biosecurity and 13 pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies," one "whose mission is to work in the public interest to improve prevention and treatment of severe infectious diseases–particularly those diseases that present global security challenges," one discovers that similar relationships between academia, industry and government abound.

Since Antifascist Calling first reported on Alliance efforts to increase state funding of biotechnology and "biodefense" research in August, all references to the Alliance for Biosecurity have been scrubbed from UPMC’s web site. Indeed, all traces of the lobby shop’s activities, including group policy statements and testimony before relevant congressional committees have simply vanished.

But why, pray tell, would they take evasive action in the first place? And more importantly, what do they have to hide? As it turns out, quite a lot.

According to The Washington Times, when the Center for Biosecurity’s director, Dr. Tara O’Toole, was nominated for her current post as Undersecretary of Science and Technology at the Department of Homeland Security, she had "served as a key adviser for a lobbying group funded by the pharmaceutical industry that has asked the government to spend more money for anthrax vaccines and biodefense research."

Reporter Tim McElhatton disclosed that O’Toole "never reported her involvement with the lobbying group called the Alliance for Biosecurity in a recent government ethics filing." The Washington Times further reported that the Alliance "has spent more than $500,000 lobbying Congress and federal agencies–including Homeland Security–since 2005, congressional records show."

"In written testimony to Congress" according to McElhatton, "Dr. O’Toole said the alliance was ‘created to protect the Center for Biosecurity’s status as an honest broker between the biopharma companies and the U.S. government’." As is well known, $500,000 buys much in the way of "honesty" in the halls of Congress!

In an October 31 letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) "signed by Dr. O’Toole and two other alliance officials, the group called on Congress to include more than $900 million for the ‘advanced development of medical countermeasures’ to be administered by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority."

The Washington Times revealed that the letter was also "signed by the chief executive officer of member company PharmAthene, David Wright, who was one of the two first co-chairmen for the alliance after its creation in 2005."

McElhatton reported that according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing "Mr. Wright’s company has a big financial interest in securing work from the authority," and that "PharmAthene has been trying to win a contract administered by the authority to supply 25 million doses of an anthrax vaccine to the national stockpile."

According to a press release, the firm announced that PharmAthene "will participate in and present data at the HHS Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise (PHEMCE) workshop and BARDA Industry Day taking place in Washington, DC Dec. 2-4, 2009."

Indeed, the PHEMCE work shop "will bring together public and private sector stakeholders for a dynamic dialogue on the current state of medical countermeasure preparedness, PHEMCE initiatives in the past year, and plans for moving forward to enhance national capabilities to respond to a public health emergency."

When "moving forward" entails the expenditure of nearly one billion dollars for "countermeasure preparedness," one can be sure that companies on the make will be all ears!

Former Bushist Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson, averred that the PHEMCE workshop "is very timely given the WMD Commission’s conclusion that terrorists are much more likely to attack America with a biological weapon than a nuclear weapon."

Despite the fact that weapons’ experts have not reached a consensus on the Commission’s alarmist report, given the extreme difficulty faced by "terrorists" to fabricate biotoxins into an effective weapon, Thompson claims, "now that our national experts have made this warning clear, we need to take the immediate steps necessary to protect against potential biological attacks against the U.S. homeland. In particular, we need to move forward efforts to build and stockpile appropriate biological countermeasures, such as next-generation anthrax vaccines, recombinant influenza vaccines, and novel antivirals."

Among the "experts" consulted by the WMD Commission were none other than Dr. O’Toole’s Center for Biosecurity who have called for the expenditure of some $3.4 billion annually on "countermeasure development to reach 90 percent chance of success defending the country against bioterrorism threats."

Nowhere however, in the PharmAthene press release is it disclosed that the former HHS Secretary has a proprietary interest in securing federal dollars allegedly to "enhance national capabilities" to better respond "to a public health emergency." Currently, Thompson is the President of Logistics Health, Inc., a firm that does extensive business with the U.S. Department of Defense for what it euphemistically calls "military readiness."

Craig Holman, the legislative director of the watchdog group Public Citizen, said that O’Toole’s lack of transparency "definitely and clearly runs counter to the intent of the law."

What was the response by Senate Democrats, quick to denounce the "culture of corruption" of their coconspirators across the aisle? According to The New York Times, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid "slammed Republicans for slowing down, and in some cases, blocking the confirmation of nominees for various posts in the Obama administration."

Neither Reid, nor for that matter the Times, breathed a word about O’Toole’s obvious conflict of interest and cosy relationships with biodefense firms she would presumably oversee from her perch at DHS.

Instead, we are lavished with empty rhetoric from Reid who told the Times: "’For that position, [DHS Undersecretary] President Obama nominated an expert in combating both pandemics and bioterror attacks,’ Mr. Reid said, adding: ‘Imagine that: Americans are bracing against a flu epidemic here at home and threats of terrorism from abroad, the President nominated someone highly experienced in both of those areas, and Republicans are saying no’."

Despite revelations of serious ethical breaches, O’Toole was confirmed by the Senate November 4.

The Ties that Bind (And Pay Handsomely!)

The close proximity of O’Toole, the Center for Biosecurity and now, the Department of Homeland Security to Alliance members such as Bavarian Nordic; Cangene Corporation; DOR BioPharma, Inc.; DynPort Vaccine Company LLC; Elusys Therapeutics, Inc.; Emergent BioSolutions; Hematech, Inc.; Human Genome Sciences, Inc.; NanoViricides, Inc.; Pfizer Inc.; PharmAthene; Siga Technologies, Inc.; Unither Virology LLC, , as well as associate Alliance member, the spooky, CIA-connected Battelle Memorial Institute, might just help explain the Obama administration’s opposition to strengthening the BWC.

According to the Center for Responsive Politic’s OpenSecrets.org database, the Alliance for Biosecurity have contributed some $600,000 to congressional grifters since 2005 through the Philadelphia law firm Drinker, Biddle & Reath.

While chump change when it comes to assuring that the best congresspeople money can buy stay "on-message," OpenSecrets reports that since 1990, Big Pharma and their allies in the health products industry have spent a whopping $177,030,005 on "influence and lobbying." Breaking down the numbers, the watchdog group avers that the bulk of contributions have benefited Republicans ($111,405,078 or 63%) vs. Democrats ($65,056,643 or 37%).

In The Washington Times piece cited above, ethics groups have said that the Alliance’s set-up "is an example of what critics call "stealth lobbying," in which like-minded companies form a loosely knit compact and spend lots of money lobbying the government. The arrangement is legal, but it exposes loopholes that prevent the public from finding out how much money each company pays and whether one business exerts more control over the others."

Alliance legal counsel Anita Cicero told the paper, "the group is complying with all applicable federal laws" and that the group "does not generate income, does not have a bank account and does not owe taxes." She told the paper the organization "was formed so companies, academic institutions and the government" could work together to "accelerate the development of therapeutic and vaccine countermeasures."

"Countermeasures" that markedly add to the corporatist bottom line.

As Antifascist Calling previously reported, the National Biodefense Science Board (NBSB), chock-a-block with industry insiders and academic shills, posted an August 11 notice buried in the Federal Register.

Rescued from oblivion by the whistleblowing intelligence and security web site Cryptome, we were informed that NBSB’s "Market & Sustainability Work Group" seek to hand over even more cash to industry partners.

Seeking public comment on the group’s working document, "Inventory of Issues Constraining or Enabling Industry Involvement in Medical Countermeasure Efforts," NBSB is seeking to further "streamline" the Food and Drug Administration’s already lax review process in a move meant to further "incentivize" industry by "increased federal funding for advanced development, in the form of cost-reimbursement contracts and rewarding private-capital investments with milestone payments at procurement."

Under NBSB’s proposal, the drug industry stands to grab "reimbursement of development costs + 15%, with return-on-working-capital at 22%, and cost-of-money-for-capital at 15%."

If said corporate patriots swing into action during a national emergency, then "compensation if commercial product(s) during emergencies (e.g., lost sales, market share, delayed licensing" are fully paid by the federal government. Talk about a robust "public-private partnership" in action!

But wait, there’s more!

GSN reported in October that Alliance member Human Genome Sciences Inc. had earned $160 million from the federal government for sales of its ABthrax vaccine, despite a Food and Drug Administration report that stated although the product performed better than a placebo (!) "it is still unknown how well these models and results predict efficacy in humans." Despite these equivocal findings, "Washington has placed an order for 65,000 doses of ABthrax for the country’s emergency medicines reserve."

Now that’s what I call a streamlined review process!

Earlier in October, GSN disclosed that Alliance member Emergent BioSolutions won $4.9 million in funding from the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a branch of the National Institutes of Health, "for the development of a new anthrax vaccine that could require only two doses to provide protection."

As investigative journalists and filmmakers Bob Coen and Eric Nadler revealed in Anthrax War and a companion book, Dead Silence: Fear and Terror on the Anthrax Trail, Emergent BioSolutions has a very interesting pedigree indeed.

When the State of Michigan auctioned off the Michigan Biological Products Institute (MBPI) in 1998, standing in the wings with a check for $24 million were Lebanese financiers Ibrahim El-Hibri and son Fuad, "an international telecom magnate" according to Coen and Nadler. During this period, the firm the El-Hibri’s had founded after scooping-up MBPI for a song, BioPort, "held the exclusive contract to provide the U.S. government with the anthrax vaccine, and that in addition to the physical plant, the Michigan sale included $130 million in contracts with the Department of Defense."

During their investigation, Coen and Nadler learned "that the El-Hibris had participated in the privatization of portions of the United Kingdom’s leading biodefense facility, Porton Down, a decade earlier" and that "with the acquisition of the Michigan plant, the family had planted stakes in the only two leading anthrax vaccine producers in the West." What makes this particularly troubling according to Coen and Nadler, is the fact that the "El-Hibri’s did not have science backgrounds or biotech business experience before the Porton takeover–but were clearly canny investors."

Alarmingly, "the troubling fact [was] that the sale of MBPI to BioPort had transferred control of a sensitive government program to a network of companies, one of which was headquartered in the Dutch Caribbean."

Indeed, "Fuad El-Hibri himself informed Congress in 1999 that the controlling shareholder in BioPort–Intervac LLC–was partly owned by I and F Holdings NV, a Netherlands Antilles investment company owned by his father."

None of this troubled Congress in the least since, as Coen and Nadler relate "no one on the House Committee on Government Reform asked him if El-Hibri senior had any partners in I and F Holdings." These disturbing facts led the investigative journalists to wonder: "Who actually owned the largest anthrax vaccine manufacturing plant in the West, if not the world? Who really knew."

Fast forward a decade and according to GSN BioPort, now Emergent BioSolutions, "is the producer of BioThrax, the only vaccine licensed by the Food and Drug Administration for the prevention of anthrax disease. The company is also developing other anthrax treatments and countermeasures against diseases such as botulism and hepatitis B." Funds for developing the vaccine were provided "through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009."

Last month, GSN revealed that Alliance member, Danish firm Bavarian Nordic will receive some $40 million for a freeze-dried version of the firm’s Imvamune vaccine for smallpox. GSN reported that "Bavarian Nordic has received $680 million in contracts for Imvamune from the U.S. government. Washington has ordered 20 million doses of the vaccine in its liquid-frozen form and has the option of buying another 60 million," according to a company press release.

This, despite the fact that smallpox has disappeared as an international public health threat. However as the Sunshine Project’s Edward Hammond revealed in Emerging Technologies: Genetic Engineering and Biological Weapons, when a U.S. research team at the State University of New York in Stony Brook synthesized poliovirus "from scratch," the responsible bioresearch community were alarmed.

Hammond commented that "the experiment exemplifies possibilities that generate real problems if similar techniques become applicable to agents such as smallpox. Today it is unlikely (though not completely impossible) that countries apart from Russia and the USA have access to smallpox virus. This is the basis of the current threat assessments with regard to smallpox, which rate the likelihood of a smallpox attack very low. Should it become possible in a few years to build smallpox virus in the laboratory, the situation would be turned upside down. The relative security that can be assumed today (at least for most countries in the world) will evaporate."

Since Hammond’s piece first appeared in 2003, is it plausible that synthetic smallpox could have been ginned-up in a top secret U.S. research facility, hence contingency planning by secret state officials to have a freeze-dried, hence longer-lived vaccine on hand? We don’t know.

Examining only the three above-named firms, OpenSecrets reports that since 2000, Human Genome Sciences has expended some $24 million since 2002 for lobbying; Emergent BioSolutions has spent some $10.9 on lobbying efforts since 2003, and Bavarian Nordic has spent some $21.7 lobbying Congress since 2002.

Given the enormous outlay of taxpayer largesse to firms that have profited handily under the Project BioShield Act of 2004, a grotesque piece of Bushist legislative flotsam, and the nearly $60 billion dollars reported by the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation spent on so-called biodefense by the federal government, one can only conclude that lobbying activities by Big Pharma is an investment well-spent!

Keep in mind too, that the expenditure of federal dollars for Project BioShield and related programs do not include black budget allocations concealed by the CIA and Pentagon under a welter of above top secret Special Access Programs, a subject that Antifascist Calling will explore in future reports.

Conclusion

As the Sunshine Project’s Edward Hammond has warned: "Rapid developments in biotechnology, genetics and genomics pose a variety of environmental, ethical, political, and social questions. And because they open up tremendous new possibilities for biological warfare, these technological developments have grave implications for peace and security."

We must view the Obama administration’s cynical opposition to strengthening the Biological Weapons Convention because of the "regulatory burdens that verification would place on the American pharmaceutical industry and on the military’s bio-defense research activities" as a dire international public health emergency, one which University of Illinois constitutional law professor Francis Boyle, the author of the 1989 Bioweapons Anti-Terrorism Act, has called "a catastrophe waiting to happen."

We proceed blindly along this path at our own peril.

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press, Uncommon Thought Journal, Information Clearing House and the whistleblowing website Wikileaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.

Tom Burghardt is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Tom Burghardt

Agence France-Presse
Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:49 EST

Bioweapons Sound familiar? US refuses to allow UN inspectors to investigate its WMDsThe United States said Wednesday that it remained opposed to international inspections of biological weapon sites, even though it stressed its commitment to a UN treaty covering such arms and invaded Iraq in part over its alleged stalling of — UN weapons inspectors.
"When it comes to the proliferation of bio weapons and the risk of an attack, the world community faces a greater threat," Ellen Tauscher, US Under Secretary of State on arms control and international security told state members of the Biological Weapons Convention.
"While the United States remains concerned about state-sponsored biological warfare and proliferation, we are equally, if not more concerned, about an act of bioterrorism, due to the increased access to advances in the life sciences," she added, stressing the importance of bolstering the treaty.
However, the new US administration is still against an additional protocol that would authorize international inspections of biological weapons sites.
"The Obama Administration will not seek to revive negotiations on a verification protocol to the Convention," said Tauscher.
"We have carefully reviewed previous efforts to develop a verification protocol and have determined that a legally binding protocol would not achieve meaningful verification or greater security," she added.
At BWC talks in 2001, the Bush administration scuttled negotiations for such a protocol, saying that intrusive checks could compromise US security and trade secrets.
Outlining the new US administration’s strategy on the issue, Tauscher said Washington believed that compliance to the treaty could be encouraged through "enhanced transparency… and pursuing compliance diplomacy to address concerns."
The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, signed by 163 countries, bans the development, production and reserves of biological weapons.

 

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/198727-Sound-familiar-US-refuses-to-allow-UN-inspectors-to-investigate-its-WMDs

 

Weapons of mass destruction

Bolton was instrumental in derailing a 2001 biological weapons conference in Geneva convened to endorse a UN proposal to enforce the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. "U.S. officials, led by Bolton, argued that the plan would have put U.S. national security at risk by allowing spot inspections of suspected U.S. weapons sites, despite the fact that the U.S. claims not to have carried out any research for offensive purposes since 1969."^[24]

Also in 2002, Bolton is said to have flown to Europe to demand the resignation of Jose Bustani, head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), and to have orchestrated his removal at a special session of the organization.^{[citation needed]} The United Nations’ highest administrative tribunal later condemned the action as an "unacceptable violation" of principles protecting international civil servants. Bustani had been unanimously re-elected for a four-year term — with strong U.S. support — in May 2000, and in 2001 was praised for his leadership by Colin Powell.^[25]

He also pushed for reduced funding for the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program to halt the proliferation of nuclear materials.^[26] At the same time, he was involved in the implementation of the Proliferation Security Initiative, working with a number of countries to intercept the trafficking in weapons of mass destruction and in materials for use in building nuclear weapons.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Diplomacy

According to an article in the The New Republic, Bolton was highly successful in pushing his agenda, but his bluntness has won him many enemies. "Iran‘s Foreign Ministry has called Bolton ‘rude’ and ‘undiplomatic’".^[27] In response to critics, Bolton states that his record "demonstrates clear support for effective multilateral diplomacy." Bush administration officials have stated that his past statements would allow him to negotiate from a powerful position. "It’s like the Palestinians having to negotiate with [Israeli Prime Minister] Ariel Sharon. If you have a deal, you know you have a deal," an anonymous official told CNN.^[28] He also "won widespread praise for his work establishing the Proliferation Security Initiative,^[29] a voluntary agreement supported by 60 countries".^[30]

He was part of the State Department‘s delegation to six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear program in 2003. He was removed from the delegation after describing Kim Jong-il as a "tyrannical dictator" and saying that, for North Koreans under Kim’s rule, "life is a hellish nightmare."^[31] In response, a North Korean spokesman said "such human scum and bloodsucker is not entitled to take part in the talks."^[32] Congressional Democrats argued that Bolton’s words at the time were undiplomatic and endangered the talks. Critics argued that Bolton’s record of allegedly politicizing intelligence would harm U.S. credibility with the United Nations^[33] President Bush said he wanted John Bolton because he "can get the job done at the United Nations."^[34]. Bolton recalls that his ‘happiest moment at State was personally ‘unsigning’ the Rome Statute,’ which had set up the International Criminal Court.^[35]

John R. Bolton – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

by Tom Burghardt

Global Research, July 29, 2009

Antifascist Calling… – 2009-07-26

The dystopian British sci-fi film 28 Days Later opens with animal rights activists breaking into the Cambridge Primate Research facility to free chimpanzees used in a secret weapons program.
Terrified by the intrusion, a scientist warns the raiders that the chimps are infected with a genetically-modified pathogen. Ignoring his admonition, the chimps are let loose from their cages and immediately attack everyone in sight, unleashing a plague of unimaginable proportions.
Despite the film’s fanciful scenario (with animal rights’ campaigners clearly focused in the cross-hairs) this grim, cautionary tale does contain a kernel of truth. While marauding gangs of flesh-eating zombies haven’t invaded our cities, a subtler threat looms on the horizon.
The sixth anniversary of the murder of British bioweapons expert Dr. David Kelly on July 17, 2003, lifted the lid on more than government lies that smoothed the way for the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq; it exposed the shadowy world of germ warfare research in Britain and the United States.
Along with the 2001 anthrax attacks in America that murdered five people and exposed some 10,000 others to a weaponized form of the bacteria, Kelly’s death under highly questionable circumstances focused attention on the West’s bioweapons establishment. For a fleeting instant, all eyes were trained on an international network of medical researchers, corporate grifters and Pentagon weaponeers busy as proverbial bees experimenting with deadly microorganisms.
And then as they say, things went dark; as more bodies piled up, cases were "closed" and the money kept on flowing…
An Expansive Bioweapons-Industrial Complex
The production of biological weapons were ostensibly banned when the United States signed the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) in 1975. However, the absence of any formal verification regime limited, some would argue purposely so, the effectiveness of the treaty from the get-go.
Indeed, a giant loop hole in the BWC allows for the production of "small quantities" of pestilential agents "for medical and defensive purposes." Note however, it is is not the production of said agents that are prohibited as such but rather, their transformation into "weapons, equipment or means of delivery … for hostile purposes or in armed conflict."
And with the September 11 and anthrax attacks as a pretext, the United States embarked on a systematic and reckless program to expand research into the creation of prohibited weapons systems. Along with renewed interest in these dodgy projects, now euphemistically dubbed "biodefense" to avoid breaching the BWC, came a huge increase in funding as new facilities are built and older ones "upgraded." A May 2009 report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) estimates that overall government spending has "increased from $690 million in FY2001 to $5.4 billion in FY2008."
According to the Washington D.C.-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation since the 2001 terrorist attacks "the U.S. government has spent or allocated nearly $50 billion among 11 federal departments and agencies to address the threat of biological weapons. For Fiscal Year 2009 (FY2009), the Bush Administration proposes an additional $8.97 billion in bioweapons-related spending, approximately $2.5 billion (39%) more than the amount that Congress appropriated for FY2008."
The bulk of these funds according to the Center have gone to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA ($31.5 billion), the Defense Department ($11.8 billion), Department of Homeland Security ($3.3 billion) and Project BioShield ($5.5 billion).
Yet according to numerous studies, deadly pathogens are far more likely to spread like wildfire as the result of a laboratory accident than an attack by germ-wielding terrorists. As I write, labs with Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) and Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) facilities are sprouting up like poisonous mushrooms across the United States.
A BSL-3 lab designation means that a facility is equipped to handle indigenous or exotic agents that may cause serious or potentially lethal disease after inhalation. Examples of substances handled by a BSL-3 lab include tuberculosis, anthrax, West Nile virus, SARS, salmonella, and yellow fever.
On the other hand, a BSL-4 lab handles the most deadly pathogens known to humankind; in other words, aerosol-transmitted infectious agents that cause fatal diseases for which no known treatments are available. Examples of substances handled by a BSL-4 lab include: Marburg virus, Ebola virus, Lassa fever and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever.
CRS researchers reported that "Non-federal entities have also expanded or constructed additional high-containment laboratories. In addition to the threat of bioterrorism, an increasing awareness of the threat posed by emerging and re-emerging diseases has led to the proliferation of high-containment laboratories internationally, as the technologies used are widely available."
Shockingly, CRS was unable to determine the exact number of BSL-3 laboratories currently operating in America. However Congress’ research arm said that "the total amount of planned or existent BSL-4 space in the United States has increased by an estimated twelve-fold since 2004."
Much of this work, conveniently, is being contracted out to private corporations with little or no effective oversight. Among the more prominent firms to have received the federal government’s largesse for BSL-3 and BSL-4 work according to CRS, one finds the "Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute, Battelle Memorial Institute, Southern Research Institute, and others." Indeed, much can be hidden here, including outsourced secret weapons research, under the rubric of "proprietary information" and "intellectual property" of course!
During 2007 hearings before Congress’ Committee on Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, committee Chairman Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) said:

These BSL–3 and 4 labs are the facilities where research is conducted on highly infectious viruses and bacteria that can cause injury or death. Some of the world’s most exotic and most dangerous diseases are handled at BSL–3 and 4 labs, including anthrax, foot-and-mouth disease and Ebola fever. The accidental or deliberate release of some of the biological agents handled at these labs could have catastrophic consequences. Yet, as we will hear from the Government Accountability Office, GAO, no single Government agency has the ultimate responsibility for ensuring the safety and securing of these high-containment labs. However, GAO states there is a major expansion of the number of BSL laboratories is occurring both in United States and abroad but the full extent of that expansion is unknown. ("Germs, Viruses and Secrets: The Silent Proliferation of Bio-Laboratories in the United States," Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, U.S. House of Representatives, October 4, 2007, Serial No. 110-70, pp. 1-2)

The hearings revealed that no one "in the Federal Government even knows for sure how many of these labs there are in the United States, much less what research they are doing or whether they are safe and secure." Neither "safe" nor "secure" such facilities however, are highly profitable.
During 2007 alone, some 100 "incidents" were reported; however, "there are indications that the actual number of incidents may be much higher," according to Rep. Stupak. Reporting guidelines are so lax that dangerous pathogens such as hantavirus, SARS and dengue fever "are not on the select agent list" nor are there requirements "that the theft, loss or release of these agents … be reported to Federal officials."
According to Edward Hammond, director of the now-defunct Sunshine Project, some 20,000 people working at more than 400 sites in the U.S. conduct research on organisms that can be used as bioweapons. This represents a tenfold increase in employment at such facilities since the 2001 anthrax attacks.
Using the Freedom of Information Act to pry data from the federal government, Hammond obtained records from a score of university biosafety committees. What he discovered was disturbing to say the least. Plague, anthrax, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, tularemia, brucellosis and Q fever; these are some of the deadly pathogens that escaped containment through poor safety practices and resulted in the inadvertent sickening of lab workers.
Scientists have warned for years that the more people who handle these toxic substances, the higher the probability that mishaps will occur. Among the more well-publicized incidents, Hammond reported the following:

* Texas A&M University: workers were exposed to Q fever when it escaped containment;
* University of New Mexico: one worker was jabbed with an anthrax-laden needle while another was stuck with a syringe filled with an undisclosed, genetically altered microbe;
* University of Ohio Medical Center: workers are exposed to and infected with Valley Fever;
* University of Chicago: a syringe puncture of a lab worker with an undisclosed substance that required heavy containment, most likely anthrax or plague;
* University of California at Berkeley: workers handled the air-borne toxin Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever without containment. It had been mislabeled as "harmless".

More recently, Global Security Newswire reported in June that an inventory at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Md., "found nearly 10,000 more vials of potentially lethal pathogens than were known to be stored at the site."
Claiming that there are "multiple layers of security," Ft. Detrick’s deputy commander Col. Mark Kortepeter said it was "extremely unlikely" that any of the center’s samples had been smuggled out. "Unlikely," but not impossible.
Amongst the 9,200 extra samples uncovered during the inventory were "bacterial agents that cause plague, anthrax and tularemia; Venezuelan, Eastern and Western equine encephalitis viruses; Rift valley fever virus; Junin virus; Ebola virus; and botulinum neurotoxins." So much for a "culture of safety"!
Any one of these pathogens should they escape or made to "disappear," could be transformed into a doomsday weapon.
Designer Genes, Designer Weapons
In Emerging Technologies: Genetic Engineering and Biological Weapons, researcher Edward Hammond described how "Genetic engineering can contribute to offensive BW programs in a variety of ways. With genetic manipulation, classical biowarfare agents such as anthrax or plague may be made more efficient weapons. Barriers to access to agents such as smallpox, Ebola or the Spanish flu are being lowered by genetic and genomic techniques."
No longer the province of science fiction, recombinant DNA research is being exploited by enterprising corporate grifters for decidedly sinister purposes. Hammond writes that while "access to highly virulent agents and strains is increasingly regulated and restricted," with lethal toxins such as the smallpox virus "eradicated outside the laboratory more than 20 years ago … it is only a question of time before the artificial synthesis of agents or agent combinations becomes possible."
The available evidence suggests such work, alarmingly, is advancing at a rapid rate.
In 2002, poliovirus was synthesized by a research team at the University of New York in Stony Brook. Hammond writes that "researchers built poliovirus ‘from scratch’ through chemical synthesis. Starting with the gene sequence of the agent, which is available online, the researchers synthesized virus sequences in the lab and ordered other tailor-made DNA sequences from a commercial source. They then combined them to form the full polio genome. In a last step, the DNA-sequence was brought to life by adding a chemical cocktail that initiated the production of a living, pathogenic virus. The experiment was funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)."
While poliovirus is not "well suited" as a bioweapon, "the experiment exemplifies possibilities that generate real problems if similar techniques become applicable to agents such as smallpox." Hammond averred that in 2002 "such a technique was demonstrated." Indeed, "the full sequences of at least two different smallpox strains are available in the internet, and most recently a new internet site dedicated to poxvirus genomic sequences has been launched."
As frightening as the potential for genetically engineering smallpox as a bioweapon, U.S. researchers, led by a Pentagon pathologist "recently began to genetically reconstruct" the dangerous influenza strain responsible for the 1918-1919 pandemic. "In one experiment" Hammond informs us, "a partially reconstructed 1918 virus killed mice, while virus constructs with genes from a contemporary flu virus had hardly any effect." During the 1918-1919 outbreak some 40 million people died in the global pandemic.
Hammond reports that a sample of lung tissue from a 21-year-old soldier who died in 1918 at Ft. Jackson in South Carolina "yielded what the Army researchers were looking for: intact pieces of viral RNA that could be analysed and sequenced. In a first publication in 1997, nine short fragments of Spanish flu viral RNA were revealed. Due to the rough tissue preparation procedure in 1918, no living virus or complete viral RNA sequences were recovered."
But far from inhibiting Pentagon researchers, biowarfare proponents were jumping for joy when Army scientists recovered intact pieces of viral RNA that were then subsequently pulled apart and analyzed. By 2002 according to Hammond, "four of the eight viral RNA segments had been completely sequenced, including the two segments that are considered to be of greatest importance for the virulence of the virus."
Which leads to a queasy sense that perhaps the current outbreak of the H1N1 strain of swine flu may be the result of some mad experiment gone awry. Adrian Gibbs, a prominent Australian scientist who collaborated on research that led to the development of the Tamiflu drug, told Bloomberg News "the new strain may have accidentally evolved in eggs scientists use to grow viruses and drugmakers use to make vaccines. Gibbs said he came to his conclusion as part of an effort to trace the virus’s origins by analyzing its genetic blueprint."
"The sooner we get to grips with where it’s come from, the safer things might become," Gibbs told Bloomberg. "’It could be a mistake’ that occurred at a vaccine production facility or the virus could have jumped from a pig to another mammal or a bird before reaching humans, he said."
Gibbs is no crank and his claims, at least initially, were taken seriously by the World Health Organization (WHO). Kenji Fukada, WHO’s assistant director-general of health security and environment said the agency is reviewing Gibbs’ report. On the other hand, the American Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta dismissed the findings, deciding there is "no evidence" to support the scientist’s conclusions.
His research is considered credible and the scientist said his analysis is supported by other researchers, including Richard Webby, a virologist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis who found "the new strain is the product of two distinct lineages of influenza that have circulated among swine in North America and Europe for more than a decade."
Gibbs told the financial publication he saw no evidence that "the swine-derived virus was a deliberate, man-made product." The researcher said, "I don’t think it could be a malignant thing. It’s much more likely that some random thing has put these two viruses together."
Fukada later said that Gibbs’ proposition "didn’t fit the evidence." The WHO official added that the organization will need to review Gibbs’ research article when it is published, but he indicated that "it is unlikely to change the experts’ conclusions."
Perhaps Gibbs is wrong and his findings will be relegated to the sidelines. Having said that however, the danger that H1N1 or some derivative might be weaponized cannot be dismissed out of hand.
Indeed, the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine was so-alarmed by the prospect that in 2003 they commented, "the possibility for genetic engineering and aerosol transmission [of influenza] suggests an enormous potential for bioterrorism." Unsaid, of course, was the gravest threat posed by such dark research may be state terrorism, more specifically, American state terrorism.
Plum Island
If past is prologue, it might be an instructive exercise to take a short detour down memory lane.
One spooky facility that played a key role in America’s Cold War bioweapons programs is the 840-acre Plum Island Animal Disease Center (PIADC). Under the nominal control of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Plum Island shared close ties with the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Md.
According to a series of striking reports by researcher Mark Sanborne, Plum Island’s "spiritual godfather" was none other than one Dr. Erich Traub, "a Nazi scientist with a fascinating history." Traub spent the pre-war years as a scientific fellow at the Rockefeller Institute in Princeton, N.J., "studying bacteriology and virology, while still finding time to hang out at Camp Sigfried, headquarters of the American Nazi movement in Yaphank, Long Island, 30 miles west of Plum Island."
Citing evidence uncovered by researcher by Michael Christopher Carroll in his exposé Lab 257, when war broke out, Traub returned to Germany and became the head of Insel Riems, the Nazi state’s secret biological warfare research facility located on an island in the Baltic Sea. A fanatical Nazi, Traub tested germ and viral sprays over the occupied Soviet Union "while reporting directly to Heinrich Himmler."
With a CV such as this one would have expected Traub to have landed in prison or at the end of a rope. Think again!

After the war Traub worked briefly for the Soviets before escaping into the embrace of Operation Paperclip, Washington’s covert employment program for useful Nazi scientists. As Werner von Braun was to rockets, Traub was to germs: He promptly went to work for the Naval Medical Research Institute and gave operational advice to the CIA and the biowarriors at Fort Detrick. Indeed, his detailed description of his work at Insel Riems probably helped inspire the selection of Plum Island by the Army: both the German and U.S. facilities were situated on islands where the prevailing winds blew (mostly) out to sea. (Mark Sanborne, "’Bionoia’ Part 3: The Mystery of Plum Island: Nazis, Ticks and Weapons of Mass Infection," World War 4 Report, No. 121, May 1, 2006)

But that’s all in the past, right? Well, not entirely…
Carroll builds a compelling case that the 1975 outbreak and subsequent pandemic spread of Lyme Disease, a tick-borne pathogen first identified in Old Lyme, Connecticut "just 10 miles across Long Island Sound from Plum Island," may have originated when a secret bioweapons experiment went awry.

Since its 1975 appearance nearly 300,000 cases have been reported in 49 states, although given its mimetic abilities and confusing, multi-symptom manifestations, the CDC estimates that only one in 10 cases are recognized as such, which means potentially some three million Americans may have been infected by the pathogen.
Indeed, what makes Lyme the perfect cover as a bioweapon is its capacity as "a devious, multi-systemic, inflammatory syndrome that mimics other illnesses by encompassing a range of afflictions, including chronic and crippling pain and fatigue that untreated can spread to organs and the central nervous system, causing depression, palsy, memory loss, psychosis, and even encephalitis and death," Sanborne grimly informs us.
Why then, would America’s biowarriors concern themselves with a disease that "incapacitates but rarely kills" its victims? According to Sanborne, "the logic is brutally simple." Drawing an analogy between how a wounded soldier puts greater stress on an army than a dead one, "gradually sickening a population places greater economic and social stress on a society than simply killing a limited number of people with a more direct and virulent attack."
And if such a disease can be transmitted via a natural vector like ticks or mosquitoes that already possess built-in plausible deniability so to speak "and can confuse medical authorities by presenting a broad array of symptoms that mimic other conditions (Bb, like its more famous relative syphilis, has been called the ‘Great Imitator’), then so much the better," Sanborne wrote.
Carroll discovered during his research that entomologist Dr. Richard Endris and African swine fever team leader Dr. William Hess, traveled to Cameroon and other parts of Africa on "tick-hunting safaris." By the time the pair had finished their collection, they had reared "over 200,000 hard and soft ticks of multiple species."
Lab containment practices were cited as "unsafe" by outside consultants who "strongly recommended" the construction of a "modern, approved insectory be undertaken for future research." (emphasis in original) The pair were fired in 1988 and the tick colony destroyed, but the question remains: were the ticks already out of the bag?
There is also evidence that Plum Island researchers experimented with more than ticks. Carroll averred,

Dr. Endris also conducted experiments with sand flies on Plum Island in 1987 to test transmission of leishmaniasis, a bacterial ailment that if left untreated, has a human mortality rate of almost 100 percent. It is characterized by irregular bouts of fever, substantial weight loss, and swelling of the spleen and liver. The work was performed under contract for Fort Detrick, and serves as another example of a deadly germ warfare agent worked on at Plum Island for the Army, with no public knowledge or public safety precautions taken. (Michael Christopher Carroll, Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government’s Secret Germ Laboratory, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005, p. 24)

Like other parts of America’s bioweapons-industrial complex, disease outbreaks and subsequent cover-ups go hand in hand. The New York Times reported in 2004 that "the highly contagious foot and mouth virus had briefly spread within the Plum Island Animal Disease Center in two previously undisclosed incidents earlier this summer."
Fear not, lab spokesperson Donald W. Tighe told the paper "the virus had remained within the laboratory’s sealed biocontainment area. He said there had been no risk to humans or animals inside or outside the laboratory." An investigation "is continuing." Alarmingly, in 1991, Hurricane Bob knocked out power on the island for several hours and disabled the air pressure systems that contained the viruses. At the time, lab spokespersons assured the public "they were safe."
Plans are afoot to close the facility. Global Security Newswire reported in February that the Department of Homeland Security is planning a new, $450 million facility to be built on the Kansas State University campus.
However, The New York Times revealed that "additional costs" would bring the total to about $630 million." The National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBADF) would have "safety built into every square inch," DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano assured critics.
Coming to a City Near You!
Despite lax oversight and a veritable $50 billion ocean of cash washing over universities, corporations and the military, since 2002 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has spent billions on the construction of new BSL-3 and BSL-4 facilities. More are planned, including those already under construction in major U.S. cities.
One Boston resident, alarmed by the prospect that Boston University Medical Center officials were building "a biological defense laboratory in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods" told the Los Angeles Times, "We heard anthrax and Roxbury-South End," she recalled. "Then we heard Ebola. The last thing we heard was bubonic plague. We looked at each other and said, ‘No way are they bringing that … into our community.’"

Seven years later, the $198-million lab complex stands completed between an apartment building and a flower market. But state and federal lawsuits by anxious residents, backed by skeptical scientists, have blocked the opening until late next year at the earliest.
The battle marks the first major setback in the vast growth since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks of labs authorized to research the world’s most dangerous diseases. It also underscores a growing debate over the safety and security of such labs–and whether so many are needed. (Bob Drogin, "Biodefense Labs Make Bad Neighbors, Residents Say," Los Angeles Times, May 17, 2009)

Working class Boston residents aren’t the only people alarmed by the explosive growth of such facilities.
According to a 2008 University of California budget document the Board of Regents recommended the allocation of $3,998,000 for a project to renovate and "upgrade" the existing laboratory facility "for programs that require Bio-safety Level 3 (BSL3) containment" on the U.C. Davis campus.
With students and workers reeling under draconian state budget cuts, out-of-control fee hikes and mass layoffs, why would the State of California waste nearly $4 million for such a facility? "The BSL3 space is needed" we are informed, "for research programs utilizing infectious and pathogenic organisms." Indeed, "the facility would be designed to accommodate research studies involving in-vitro experimentation utilizing infected avian, murine, arthropod hosts, and the development of genetic markers for a wide range of disease agents that require BSL3 containment."
But as with most of America’s bioweapons-industrial complex, illicit and illegal research is carried out with little or no oversight.
The antinuclear Bay Area watchdog group Tri-Valley CAREs (TVC), has been monitoring and protesting the expansion of America’s nuclear weapons complex for decades, with a particular focus on the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).
An ubiquitous "public-private partner" of the U.S. national security state, LLNL is a "limited liability corporation" comprised of five partners: the University of California, Bechtel, BWX Technologies, Washington Group International and Battelle–all heavy-hitters in the biotech, construction, defense, energy, nuclear and security worlds.
According to TVC, the group obtained government documents as a result of Freedom of Information Act litigation demonstrating that LLNL had violated federal regulations and had carried out "restricted experiments" that were discovered by the Centers of Disease Control inspection in August 2005. CDC, the Department of Energy and LLNL covered up the inspector’s report.

Restricted experiments are experiments utilizing recombinant DNA that involve the deliberate transfer of a drug resistance trait to select agents that are not known to acquire the trait naturally. Select agents, which include anthrax and plague, are biological agents and toxins having the potential to pose a severe threat to public health and safety.
Because of the dangers involved in transferring drug resistance to select agents, restricted experiments require approval from the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Livermore Lab did not have that approval, but ran the experiments anyway. ("Livermore Lab Caught Conducting Illegal Restricted Bio-Experiments," Tri-Valley CAREs, Press Release, May 26, 2009)

According to the watchdog group, the experiments were carried out by the lab at the same time of the accidental release of anthrax in August-September 2005. Five individuals were exposed to the deadly pathogen and a $450,000 fine was levied against the facility. TVC noted that "the relevant details of the 2005 anthrax accident were kept from the public at the time, just as happened with the illegal experiments that are coming to light today."
LLNL has opened a BSL-3 facility and is planning to experiment with pathogens that can be used as offensive weapons. Activities contemplated include, "aerosolizing (spraying) pathogens such as plague, tularemia and Q fever, in addition to anthrax. Moreover, government documents disclose that planned experiments in the BSL-3 include genetic modification and potentially novel manipulation of viruses, prions and other agents."
What of LLNL’s close partner, Battelle Memorial? According to a blurb on their web site, the firm’s national security brief includes what they euphemistically call "vaccine and therapeutic product development." Battelle "specialists" at their Aberdeen, Maryland research facility (adjacent to USAMRIID’s Ft. Detrick bioweapons complex) "study aerosolized microorganisms that may be possibly used in terrorist attacks."
Indeed, Ft, Detrick is currently undergoing the largest expansion in its history. Investigative journalists Bob Coen and Eric Nadler revealed in Dead Silence: Fear and Terror on the Anthrax Trail that the recently-opened "National Biodefense Analysis Countermeasures Center … contains heavily guarded and hermetically sealed chambers in which scientists will simulate terrorist attacks and use lethal germs and toxins."
Coen and Nadler aver, "this, remember, is the facility that officialdom claims was the source of the only significant germ war attack on US soil." Conveniently enough, "Battelle has the $250 million contract to manage the operation."
But the journalists uncovered more, much more than insipid government pronouncements on "biodefense." During a interview with constitutional law scholar Francis Boyle, a University of Illinois professor and acknowledged expert on the Biological Weapons Convention, Boyle told the investigative sleuths that the "Pentagon is ready to wage anthrax war."
"Look at the Department of Defense’s Chemical and Biological Defense Program Report to Congress, April 2007, page 22, Table 2-5. Information Systems Modernization Strategy, Mid FY09-13," Boyle told Coen and Nadler.
"Here you find a study" Boyle asserted, that estimates the "human effects from a 5,000 weapon worldwide strike; to predict fatalities and incapacitation, both initial and delayed and to accommodate population moves including area evacuations or sheltering in place. Now how does that strike you?"
Sounds like business as usual!

Tom Burghardt is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Tom Burghardt

by Stephen Lendman

 

Global Research, July 8, 2009

Although international law prohibits the use of chemical and bacteriological weapons, America has had an active biological warfare program since at least the 1940s. In 1941, it began secret developmental efforts using controversial testing methods. During WW II, mustard gas was tested on about 4000 servicemen. Biological weapons research was also conducted. Human subjects were used as guinea pigs in various other experiments, and numerous illegal practices continued to the present, including secretly releasing toxic biological agents in US cities to test the effects of germ warfare.

The Hague Convention of 1907 banned chemical weapons usage, and the 1928 Geneval Protocol prohibited gas and bacteriological warfare. The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) "Prohibit(ed) the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and Their Destruction." The 1989 Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act "implement(ed the) Prohibition of the Development, Production, and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and Their Destruction…."

In 2001, the Bush administration rejected the 1972 BWC, took advantage of a loophole allowing "prophylactic, protective or other peaceful uses," continued a secret Clinton administration bioweapons initiative, and asserted its right to spend multi-billions illegally to develop, test and stockpile "first-strike" chemical and biological weapons that potentially can kill millions.

In his August 14, 2008 article titled, "The Pentagon’s alarming project: Avian Flu Biowar Vaccine," F. William Engdahl cited:

"alarming evidence accumulated by serious scientific sources that the US Government is about to or already has ‘weaponized’ Avian Flu. If reports are accurate, this could unleash a new pandemic on the planet that could be more devastating than the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic which killed an estimated 30 million people worldwide before it eventually died out. Pentagon and NIH experiments with remains in frozen state of the 1918 virus are the height of scientific folly" unless something more nefarious is afoot in collaboration with Big Pharma to produce weaponized viruses and/or dangerous mandatory vaccines that, at the least, can cause serious autoimmune diseases or, as some allege, a Swine Flu or other viral pandemic.

Alarming News about Baxter International

On February 27, 2009, various news agencies including Helen Branswell in the Canadian Press, reported:

Baxter International that "released contaminated flu virus material from a plant in Austria confirmed (today) that the experimental product contained live H5N1 avian flu viruses." The WHO said the incident occurred at the company’s research facility in Orth-Donau, Austria, but claimed "that public health and occupational risk is minimal" thus far. What’s not known, however, "are the circumstances" behind the incident that, according to some, raise suspicions while others call it a willful criminal act. More on that below.

The contaminated product, "a mix of H3N2 seasonal flu viruses and unlabelled H5N1 (Avian Flu) viruses, was supplied to an Austrian research company….Avir Green Hills Biotechnology." It then "sent portions of it to sub-contractors in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany."

The problem was discovered when The Czech Republic company discovered that ferrets innoculated with the product died. "Ferrets shouldn’t die from exposure to human H3N2 flu viruses." Public health authorities called it a "serious error" that showed "the H5N1 virus in the product was live." But Baxter "has been parsimonious about the amount of information it has released about the event." Christopher Bona, the company’s global bioscience communications director, did confirm that the material was a "live….experimental virus" made at the Orth-Donau research laboratory.

Security experts expressed alarm that something this serious could happen, calling the co-mingling (or reassortment) of human H3N2 with H5N1 avian viruses a dangerous practice that should never occur because of the potentially devastating effects to human health. "If someone exposed to a mixture of the two had been simultaneously infected with both strains, he or she could have served as an incubator for a hybrid virus able to transmit easily to and among people," who, in turn, could transmit it to enough others to potentially cause a pandemic. So far, nothing this extreme has happened, but a future threat remains.

As Medical Director of the Natural Solutions Foundation, Dr. Rima Laibow warns about dangerous, toxic drugs and vaccines. On March 6, 2009, she posted a "Pandemic Flu Emergency Action eAlert on her healthfreedomusa.org web site stating:

"World media (outside America) are reporting that Baxter Pharmaceuticals has admitted that it ‘accidently’ contaminated various vaccine batches with Avian Flu viruses. These batches were shipped to 18 countries. Clearly, either 1. stupidity and incompetence (are to blame) or 2. intentional contamination of flu vaccine lots was at work."

Many Avian Flu vaccines compete with each other, yet they’re "profitable ONLY if used in huge numbers." Although "Avian Flu has been slow to be become pandemic by ‘jumping the species barrier’ to humans in large numbers," might Baxter’s "accident" be a way to do it? If so, Big Pharma will score "One of the biggest wins in history."

In fact, it already has after the Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy (CIDRAP) reported that Congress (in mid-June) "approved $7.65 billion for battling pandemic influenza, more than three times what the House and Senate had earlier proposed." Unsurprisingly, it was part of "a $106 billion (Iraq and Afghanistan war) supplemental appropriation bill" to open a new front at home in the form of dangerous vaccines – perhaps to be mandated for everyone.

Laibow sees a "manipulated disaster of unprecedented magnitude precipitated by unprecedented avarice and greed," and adds that "Baxter International Inc. is no stranger to recalls and lethal contaminations." Its record includes producing faulty infusion and volumetric pumps, HIV-2 tainted Albumin Buminate 5 percent, faulty dialysis machine tubing and blood-cleaning filters, and various other products that should make everyone leery of its soon-to-be-released Swine Flu vaccine. Along with similar ones from other pharmaceutical companies, these drugs cause serious autoimmune diseases and absolutely should be avoided, even if mandated.

Laibow expresses great alarm in stating:

"Baxter mixed a virus which has a hard time infecting people (H5N1 Avian flu) with one that infects them easily ("Seasonal Flu") in a medium which can promote mutations of the H5N1 virus into a type which can infect us easily. What will be in the vaccine you are forced/coerced/threatened into allowing into your body? Who knows?"

What is known are our constitutional and Nuremberg Code rights. The Fifth Amendment protects against abusive government authority in stating that "No person shall….be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…." The Eight Amendment prohibits "cruel and unusual punishments." Depriving someone of health is tantamount to the latter as well as life by harming and potentially shortening it.

The Nuremberg Code requires voluntary consent of human subjects without coercion, fraud, deceit, and with full disclosure of known risks. It also affirms that experiments should avoid "all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury," and should never be conducted if there’s "an a priori reason to believe death or disabling injury will occur" or harm to human health.

The FDA as an Industry Front Group

As stated on its web site, the FDA is mandated to protect human health and well-being.

As an agency in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), "The FDA is responsible for protecting the public health by assuring the safety, efficacy, and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, medical devices, our nation’s food supply, cosmetics, and products that emit radiation."

Run by officials of the industries it "regulates," it fails on all counts. Byron J. Richards is a clinical nutritionist and founder of Wellness Resources. In his book "Fight for Your Health: Exposing the FDA’s Betrayal of America," he discusses FDA complicity with Big Pharma, dangerous drugs worth billions of dollars to the industry, and the serious risks to people who use them. He states:

"The FDA has put into mothballs its federal mandate to protect the public. In order to foster drug sales, the FDA hides important medical data from the public and from doctors, including the risks of heart attacks, suicide, seizures, and serious mental-health debility. Even worse, the FDA has changed sides. They are actively undermining the rights of citizens to claim damages if injured by drugs. And they are seeking to remove safety barriers to drug testing. They are planning to expose many individuals to unproven drugs, a new form of human experiment" that may rise to a higher level if HHS mandates dangerous Swine Flu vaccines for all Americans despite no forensic evidence of an outbreak or even a single proved death attributable to H1N1.

Yet, in advance of what looks to be coming, on June 11, the WHO declared that "The world is now at the start of the 2009 influenza pandemic (in) decid(ing) to raise (its) influenza pandemic alert from phase 5 to (its highest) phase 6" level.

Dr. Laibow advises that everyone has a "right to say "NO!" to vaccinations and other treatments that (they) do not want. The Police Power of the State ENDS at my skin and yours!" If a pandemic erupts, as a longtime natural health practitioner, she advises what she’ll use herself – Nano Silver as well as vitamins, minerals, and herbs like echinacea that boost the immune system, unlike dangerous vaccines that destroy it. For more information, she directs individuals to the web site: www.nutronix.com/naturalsolutions.

WHO, CDC, and Canada’s Public Health Agency (PHAC) Fearmongering Misinformation

Besides declaring its highest Level 6 influenza pandemic alert on June 11, the BBC reported on July 3 that WHO’s Director-General, Dr. Margaret Chan, warned that the spread of swine flu is "unstoppable" while admitting that most cases are mild and many people recover unaided.

On June 25, Daniel DeNoon in WebMD Health News reported that CDC’s influenza surveillance chief, Dr. Lyn Finelli, said: "Right now, we are estimating over 1 million (Swine Flu) cases in the US" in 2009 affecting about 6% of households in major cities. She, too, admitted that the vast majority of cases have been mild but avoided the fundamental issue – that no forensic evidence attributes a single death globally to Swine Flu and all or most known instances may be ordinary viral influenza or common colds, bad enough to cause fever (at times high) and discomfort, last several days and then pass for most people.

With no proof, Finelli cited 3065 Swine Flu hospitalizations and 127 deaths. In a June 26 telebriefing, Dr. Anne Schachat, CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases director, cited no verifiable forensic documentation in saying:

"The novel H1N1 (Swine Flu) influenza is continuing to spread here in the United States and around the globe. The key point is that this new infectious disease is not going away. In the US, we’re still experiencing a steady increase in the number of reported cases (and they’re just) the tip of the iceberg." She added that vaccines are being hurriedly produced. No decisions have been made about "which populations" will need them, but "it’s very important for states and communities to begin intensifying their efforts on planning to administer a vaccine should such be necessary in the fall," especially for "young people including school children, pregnant women, babies, and adults, particularly younger adults with those underlying conditions…." That said, it "doesn’t mean we’ve finalized any vaccine recommendations."

On June 21, Canada’s National Post published Sharon Kirkey’s Canwest News Service report headlined, "Vaccinate Canadians under 40 and (aboriginal) natives first: experts." She added that "Under Canada’s official pandemic plan, the entire population would ultimately be immunized against H1N1 swine flu," but not at once as vaccines will only be available in batches.

Canada’s Public Health Agency (PHAC) "is working on a priority list," effective for all provinces and territories. Gymnasiums will be used for mass vaccinations of school children, but no final decisions have been made.

In a June 26 news release, PHAC reported that "The Government of Canada today launched a three-year public education campaign to encourage parents to have their children immunized against certain diseases before the age of two. The Honorable Leona Aglukkaq, Minister of Health, made the announcement at the annual meeting of the Canadian Paediatric Society" saying that "Immunization is one of the best tools we have to protect the health of our children."

In fact, all vaccines are dangerous and should be avoided. They contain squalene-based adjuvants that cause a menu of autoimmune diseases in test subjects. In humans they include chronic fatigue, various type rashes, chronic headaches, anemia, aphthous ulcers, seizures, weakness, neuropsychiatric problems, ALS, Raynaud’s phenomenon, and multiple sclerosis, among other illnesses and diseases, some causing death.

It’s why Dr. Laibow says "No insurance company in the world will insure against" their risks. In America, a special fund "has paid out over 2 billion dollars to parents of children killed or maimed by vaccinations." However, the vast majority of those harmed are never compensated, and US law ‘immunizes’ drug companies from lawsuits.

Laibow adds:

"In fact, vaccines are explicitly acknowledged NOT to protect against diseases they supposedly are designed to prevent (read the Package Inserts for vaccines, available on line and in your doctors’ offices if you doubt that) and often" cause them.

Yet they continue in use because they’re so "immensely, enormously and hideously profitable," and Big Pharma has enough clout to proliferate products that "in a rational society (should) be banned forever."

Bioterrorism Criminal Charges Filed

On June 10, Austrian journalist Jane Burgermeister filed sweeping criminal charges with the FBI in addition to earlier ones on April 8 with the Vienna State Prosecutor’s Office against Baxter AG, Baxter International and Avir Green Hill Biotechnology AG, "for manufacturing, disseminating, and releasing a biological weapon of mass destruction on Austrian soil between December 2008 and February 2009 with the intention of causing a global bird flu pandemic virus and of intending to profit from that same pandemic in an act that violates laws on international organised crime and genocide."

Baxter operates Biosafety Level 3 (BLS-3) labs that take strict precautions to assure no possibility of accidental H3N2 and H5N1 co-mingling contamination unless something more nefarious is afoot.

BLS-3 personnel are trained in handling pathogenic and potentially lethal agents and are supervised by competent scientists with extensive experience with them. In addition, these labs have specially engineered design features for added safety.

On its web site, CDC lists four biosafety levels:

– BLS-1 labs are "suitable for work involving well-characterized agents not known to consistently cause disease in healthy adult humans, and (pose) minimal potential hazard to laboratory personnel and the environment."

– BLS-2 labs are "similar to Biosafety Level 1 and (are) suitable for work involving agents of moderate potential hazard to personnel and the environment. It differs from BLS-1 in that (lab personnel) have specific training in handling pathogenic agents," and are "directed by competent scientists." In addition, access to the labs are limited, and "extreme precautions are taken with contaminated sharp items…."

– BLS-3 labs work with "indigenous or exotic agents which may cause serious or potentially lethal disease as a result of exposure by the inhalation route. Laboratory personnel have specific training in handling pathogenic and potentially lethal agents, and are supervised by competent scientists who are experienced in working with these agents." Labs also have "special engineering and design features," and follow strict procedures. In addition, protective clothing, equipment, and other extreme precautions are taken.

– BLS-4 labs are for the most highly toxic and dangerous agents – ones "that pose a high individual risk of aerosol-transmitted laboratory infections and life-threatening disease." As a result, the strictest possible procedures and precautions are always taken.

By combining human influenza H3N2 with bird flu H5N1 virus in its BLS-3 lab, "Baxter produced a highly dangerous biological weapon with a 63 per cent mortality rate. The H5N1 virus is restricted in its human-to-human transmissibility, especially because it is less airborne."

"However when….combined with seasonal flu viruses (easily transmitted by air), a new flu virus is created which is unknown to the human immune system and which will have a severe impact on an unprotected population. A deadly virus of this kind could spread around the world in a short time and (potentially) infect millions and even billions of people."

Baxter (via Avir) "distributed (72 kilos of) contaminated (live bird flu) vaccines using false concealment and a false labels to 16 laboratories in Austria and….other countries at the end of January/beginning of February, potentially infecting at least 36-37 laboratory staff, who (were) treated preventively for bird flu and ordinary flu." On the same day, 18 Avir employees were as well at Vienna’s Otto Wagner Hospital.

Burgermeister cited a Baxter-Avir 2006 contract with Austria’s Health Ministry for 16 million vaccine doses in case a bird flu pandemic was declared. She maintains that this "laboratory incident shows that national and international authorities are not able to fulfill their obligations to ensure the safety of the Austrian people" and claims that authorities were engaged in a cover-up.

"If a pharmaceutical company can breach laws – and almost trigger a bird flu pandemic, which (potentially could spread worldwide) – without being made accountable for it….then there is, de facto, no rule of law on Austrian territory."

She also contends that Baxter’s production system, "namely, the use of 1200 liter bioreactors and vero cell technology," meets "the technical criteria to be classified as a secret dual purpose large-scale bioweapon production facility (able to produce) a huge amount of contaminated vaccine material….rapidly."

"If (this) material were added to the 1200 liter bioreactors, it would replicate and infect the entire batch of vaccine material in (it). Contaminated material could (then) be distributed among sections of the population using false labels and secretly marked batches (able to) infect millions of people."

Burgermeister accused high-level Austrian Health and other Ministry officials of knowledge and support of this practice. Otherwise, controls would have been in place to prevent it. In June, she named drug producers Baxter, Novartis and Sanofi Aventis, world agencies, including the WHO, UN, and CDC, and high-level officials in Austria, other European countries, and America.

Whether or not there’s enough evidence to substantiate her charges, her case is vital to alert people globally to the potential health threat they face because inadequate controls are in place if the worst occurs.

It highlights the importance of being alert to this and other potential health hazards given lax government regulations and public complicity with powerful corporate interests, that in alliance show a disturbing indifference to public safety and well-being – worse still because dominant print and broadcast media stoke fear by reporting misinformation to convince people to use dangerous drugs and vaccines they should avoid.

As they say, forewarned is forearmed. Better be safe than sorry. Something nefarious may or may not be afoot, but it’s vital to learn the truth, know the risks, and assert your legal right to refuse all dangerous vaccines and other medications, even if mandated.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre of Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday – Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listing.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14148

Stephen Lendman is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Stephen Lendman