Origin: SNET - 0002 - CONSPIRACY From: TOP@TEZCAT.COM Public To: ALL Date: 12/18/94 at 12:27 Re: Schr0dinger's Radio v. 01 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Xref: world alt.activism:78980 alt.conspiracy:70574 alt.mindcontrol:1835 alt.zines:7548 Path: world!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!uhog.mit.edu!sgiblab!swrinde!pipex!uunet!tezcat.com!tezcat.com!not-for-mail From: top@tezcat.com (Tezcat Online Publishing) Newsgroups: alt.zines,alt.conspiracy,alt.activism,alt.mindcontrol Subject: Schr0dinger's Radio v.3 Date: 18 Dec 1994 12:27:03 -0600 Organization: Tezcat.COM, Chicago Lines: 1408 Message-ID: <3d1utn$gsv@xochi.tezcat.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: xochi.tezcat.com Summary: new issue - biological warfare Keywords: biological warfare, CBW, conspiracy, zines X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] } _CUT HERE_ { --[1]- / \ * | * * +----------------------+ |................... | | SCHR0DINGER'S RADIO | ~ |^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | ~ | | +----------------------+ * * | * \ / [ v.03 ] [7 DEC 94] - narrowcasting at 60 Hz. - "we are everywhere, and yet not" +++++++++++ STAFF Editor: Bler DeVista Contributing Editors: Lou Menotti Beebo Ezekiel Rothios + + + + + + = = = = = + v.03 : BIOLOGICAL WARFARE The editor wishes to strongly recomend the book "A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret Story of Chemical and Biological Warfare" by Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman (NY: Hill and Wang/Noonday Press, 1982) ISBN 0-8090-5471-X, which is extensively excerpted herein. This book by a pair of British journalists is a superb history of CBW from its infancy into the 1980s. In an area where authoritative histories are rare, "A Higher Form of Killing" is simply indispensible. CONTENTS srch-Ln#- title *1 -115- OPERATION ANTHROPOID: THE GERM-BOMB ASSASSINATION OF REINHARD HEYDRICH *2 -315- U.S. & BRITISH BIO-WAR TESTING ON CIVILIAN POPULATIONS *3 -631- U.S. POLITICS, PRAGMATISM, AND BIOLOGICAL WAR *4 -744- U.S. ARMY QUIETLY RESUMES BIOWARFARE TESTING AFTER 10-YEAR HIATUS *5 -932- STRANGE FRUIT & THE ZOMBIE BUG: Is the 'Flesh-Eating Bug' Bio Warfare? (by Lou Menotti) *6 -1150- CHEM WAR IN SAN FRAN? (Feb. 1994) *7 -1170- BACTERIA ADDED TO FORMULA MAY BECOME BABY'S FRIEND *8 -1221- SCIENTIST GETS RARE DISEASE FROM VIRUS HE WAS STUDYING *9 -1263- U.S. & CHINA CONDUCT JOINT B.W. TESTING *10 -1309- Schr0dinger's Blab *11 -1369- Directory --- * File ends with "-endfile." Check for truncation. * [Remarks in brackets are by the editor(s) of this publication.] --- * ^ * --- This is v.03, 7 DEC 94. Published at whim. N 1994 Lobe Hatch. Permission to reproduce and distribute granted for non-commercial purposes only. See SCHR0DINGER'S BLAB at end for detailed information, plus info on subscriptions and archives. The ideas and opinions expressed within do not necessarily belong to anyone. * - | - * In the current political atmosphere, the free exchange of information is vital. In this spirit, it is the goal of SCHR0DINGER'S RADIO to serve as a research resource, providing interesting information on a wide range of subjects. Unless otherwise noted, copyright resides with the author or their agent. SCHR0DINGER'S RADIO does not operate for commercial gain, and all labor is donated. * | * * CONTACTING US We are able to accept correspondance either via email or post. Our email address is: Also, our snail address is: We can't always promise a reply, but we'll do the best we can! (Sorry, but we cannot return originals sent by post.) _________________________________________________________________________ ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| SCHR0DINGER'S RADIO v.03 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| + + + + + + + + + + ------------------------------------------------------------------------- *1 OPERATION ANTHROPOID: THE GERM-BOMB ASSASSINATION OF REINHARD HEYDRICH [Excerpted and condensed from "A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret Story of Chemical and Biological Warfare" by Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman (NY: Hill and Wang/Noonday Press, 1982), pp. 88-94.] According to his own account, Paul Fildes made his most spectacular contribution to the Second World War on 27 May 1942 on a street corner in Prague in Czechoslovakia. Ever since the establishment of the bacteriological warfare wing at Porton [Down], Fildes had been working on 'B T X' - the botulinal toxins, recently described in a World Health Organization report as 'being among the most toxic substances known to man.' BTX, more commonly known as botulism, generally appears as a particularly virulent form of food poisoning, with an average mortality rate of 60 per cent. Although there is no official confirmation, by 1941 it appears that Fildes had succeeded in turning BTX into a weapon; the British code-named it 'X'. Chemical and biological weapons have long been favourite tools of spies: the ties between Porton, Camp Detrick in America, and the wartime Special Operations Executive (SOE) and Office of Stregic Services [OSS] were extremely strong... Both Polish and Russian partisans used biological weapons in sabotage operations against the Germans. In December 1942, for example, the Gestapo discovered a germ warfare arsenal in a four-roomed Warsaw house used by the Polish underground. They reported to Himmler the discovery of 'three flasks of typhus bacilli.' 20 lb of arsenic had also passed through the house. A few days later, Himmler showed Hitler a captured NKVD order instructing the Russian partisans to use arsenic to poison German occupation troops. The raids on the Warsaw house apparently failed to prevent the Poles from continuing to use germ weapons. The Combined Chiefs of Staff learned from the Polish Liaison Officer in Washington, Colonel Mitkiewiczm, that in the first four months of 1943 426 Germans had been poisoned by the Polish underground; that seventy-seven 'poisoned parcels' had been sent to Germany; and that 'a few hundred' Nazis had been assassinated by means of 'typhoid fever microbes and typhoid fever lice.' Against this background it is therefore not surprising that the British Secret Service should have turned to Fildes for help when, in October 1941, they began to plan Operation Anthropoid. Its object: the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. It was an almost suicidal mission for those who undertook it, but one which the British regarded as of overriding importance. Heydrich had already acquired a fearsome reputation as the ruthless head of the SICHERHEITSDIENST (S.D.), the Nazi security service, through which he ran the counter-intelligence operation against British agents in occupied Europe. He was said to be Hitler's personal choice as the man to succeed him as Fuhrer, and in September 1941 he appointed him REICHSPROTECHTOR of Bohemia and Moravia... The British Secret Service decided to have Heydrich killed. At ten o'clock on the night of 29 December 1941, a four-engined Halifax bomber took off from Tempsford aerodrome. To help it make the long, hazardous flight over occupied Europe, the RAF laid on a diversionary bombing raid to draw off German radar and fighter squardons. Four and half hours after take-off, seven Czechs, in semi-moonlight, parachuted into the snow-covered hills near the small Bahemian town of Lidice. The men had all trained at Cholmondely Castle in Cheshire and in an SOE Special Training School in Scotland. With them they carried British arms, wireless and cipher equipment. Two weapons in particular were handled with extra care. They were British No. 73 Hand Anti-tank grenades. Normally these were 9 1/2 inches long and weighed 4 pounds. The grenades the Czechs carried were special conversions, consisting of the top third of the grenade, with adhesive tape thickly binding the open end. The grenades each weighed just over 1 pound. It now seems likely that they had been personally prepared by Fildes at Porton Down, and each contained a lethal filling of X. The 'Anthropoids', led by Jan Kubis and Josef Gabcik, went to earth with the help of the Czech underground for five months, building up a detailed picture of Heydrich's movements. Astonishingly for so high a Nazi leader he rarely travelled with an armed escort. On 23 May 1942, by a stroke of good fortune, the Anthropoids learned where Heydrich would be in four days' time. At 9:30 AM on the morning of the 27th they took up positions on a hairpin bend near the Troja Bridge in a suburb of Prague on the busy route to Heydrich's fortress HQ at Hardcany Castle. Precise details of what followed differ, but in all there were probably six assassins: four men armed with sub-machine guns and grenades, one with a mirror to flash a signal when Heydrich's car rounded the bend, and Rela Fafek, Gradcik's girlfriend, who was to drive a car ahead of Heydrich: if he was coming along unescorted she would wear a hat. At 10:31, complete with hat, she drove round the corner. Seconds later came the mirror signal. Grabcik strode into the middle of the road and aimed his sub-machine gun at the bend. Heydrich's open-topped green Mercedes came sailing round the corner, but as Grabcik tried to open fire his gun jammed. As the car slowed, Herdrich screamed at his chauffeur to put his foot on the accelerator, but the driver, a last-minute replacement, kept slamming on the brakes. It was at this point that Kubis hurled one of Fildes' grenades. Heydrich had just risen to his feet in the now-stationary car when the grenade exploded with a force powerful enough to shatter all the windows in a passing tram. Although it missed the Mercedes, the blast tore off the door. Splinters from the grenade embedded themselves in Heydrich's body. Like 'the central figure in a scene out of any Western' Heydrich leapt into the road, shouting and screaming, then suddenly dropped his revolver. Clutching his right hip he staggered backwards and collapsed. The gunmen escaped. Heydrich, in considerable pain and bleeding from his back, was driven, fully conscious, in a commandeered van to the nearby Bulovka Hospital. The doctor on duty in the surgery department was Vladimir Snajdr. At first sight the wound did not seem dangerous... [he recalled] Professor Dick hurried in. He was a German doctor whom the Nazis had appointed to our hospital... He tried to see whether the kidney was touched: no, all seemed well for Heydrich. And the same applied to his spinal column... The X-ray showed something in the wound, perhaps a bomb splinter. Or a piece of coachwork... The patient's state called for a full-scale surgical operation: one rib was broken, the thoracic cage was open, a bomb splinter was in the spleen, the diaphragm was pierced... I did not see him again. But Dr. Dick said that he was coming along very well. His death surprised us all... Heydrich's sudden collapse--from apparently only minor injuries to coma and subsequent death--may have baffled the doctors, but in retrospect matches completely the symptomology of BTX poisoning. After an initial period of calm, lasting perhaps for a day or so, the victim lapses into a progressive paralysis which fails to respond to treatment. As X went to work on Heydrich's central nervous system, the doctors could only stand by helplessly as their famous patient succumbed to the clasic symptoms of poisoning by BTX: a combination of extreme weakness, malaise, dry skin, dilated and unresponsive pupils, blurred vision, dry coated tongue and mouth, and dizziness when upright. As the patient becomes worse, he develops a progressive muscular weakness with facial paralysis, and weakness of arms, legs and repiratory muscles. He may die of respiratory failure unless artifical respiration is applied. There may be associated cardiac arrest or complete vasomotor collapse. The patient generally either dies or recovers within seven days. A week after the ambush, on 4 June 1942, Heydrich died. Dr. Snajdr recalled that the offical diagnosis of the cause of Heydrich's death was septicaemia. Blood transfusions could do nothing. Professor Hamperl, head of the German Institute of Pathology, and Professor Weyrich, head of the German Institute of Forensic Medicine, drew up a joint report on their medical conclusions. Among other things it said, 'Death occurred as a consequence of lesions in the vital parenchymatous organs caused by _bacteria_and_possibly_ _by_poisons_carried_into_them_by_the_bomb_splinters_ [author's italics] and desposited chiefly in the pleura, the diaphragm and the tissues in the neighborhood of the spleen, there agglomerating and multiplying.' That is all I can tell you. Heydrich's coffin was borne in state in a black-creped train into Berlin, escorted by Adolf Hitler's SS guard. The Fuhrer laid a wreath on the grave of 'the man with the iron heart'. 'The German intelligence service,' one historian has written, 'would never really recover from the murder of Heydrich.'... The Germans launched a period of terror. The entire town of Lidice was razed in reprisal: its male population shot, its women and children carried away in trucks. 10,000 Czechs were arrested. The Anthropoids were hunted down and eventually trapped in the crypt of a Greek Orthodox Church in Prague. Kubis and Gabcik were both killed. Yet, wrote General Moravec, one of the planners of the mission, 'our hope that the Czech people would react to German pressure with counter-pressure did not materialise...' On the day that Heydrich died 'fifty thousand Czech workers demonstrated against the British-inspired act in Prague.' ...There is no *written* evidence of Fildes' involvement in Heydrich's death. The relevant official files are still closed. When asked to comment, Porton Down could only reply that they had no record of this incident; if Fildes was involved, they added, they thought it highly unlikely that any record would have been made. [FN: Authors' interview with Dr. Rex Watson, 21 July 1981.] We have therefore only the circumstantial evidence which points to the use of biological weapon--and the claims of Fildes himself. The secret of X in Heydrich's murder might have died with the Anthropoids themselves had it not been for Fildes. The Times [of London] was right when it spoke of a streak of vanity in his character: he made a point of telling a number of colleagues what he had done. Two senior scientists involved in Allied germ warfare have privately confirmed that Fildes told them he 'had a hand' in the death of Heydrich. To a young American biologist, Alvin Pappenheimer--later Professor of Microbiology at Harvard--Fildes was even more melodramatic. Heydrich's murder, he told Pappenheimer, 'was the first notch on my pistol.' --30- *2 ////////S/C/H/R/0/D/I/N/G/E/R/S//////R/A/D/I/O//////// U.S. & BRITISH BIO-WAR TESTING ON CIVILIAN POPULATIONS [Excerpted and condensed from "A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret Story of Chemical and Biological Warfare" by Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman (NY: Hill and Wang/Noonday Press, 1982), pp. 155-171.] [In the late 1940s and early 1950s, to discover whether attacks of gas sprayed from ships or aircraft] were practical propositions, the British, Canadians and Americans collaborated in a succession of experiments. After preliminary meterological research to discover how clouds of bacteria might behave at altitude, they began a series of mock attacks. The details of many of the experiments, which effected the lives of millions of peole, are still classified. It is known, however, that in 1948 the British War Office conducted an exercise known as Operation Pandora, to determine the vulnerability of the United Kingdom to 'weapons of mass destruction', the now accepted form of words for atomic and biological weapons. In the winter of the same year ships of the Royal Navy carrying British, Canadian and American microbiologists were sent to the Caribbean for Operation Harness. Over thirty years later, the results of Operation Harness are said to contain 'information, the disclosure of which is presumed to cause identifiable damage to national security.' Operations Harness is commonly thought to have been an exercise in which harmless bacteria were released to simulate a germ attack. In fact real germ weapons were used. Nor was Operation Harness unique. There were at least two other exercises in the Caribbean in which real diseases were tested. They were code-named Operations Ozone and Negation and took place in the winters of 1953 and 1954. Several thousand animals were brought from Porton Down [the British CBW facility first opened during World War I] and tethered to rafts at sea some miles off the Bahamas, which was then a British colony. The microbiologists watched through binoculars, as from upwind clouds of bacteria were released to drift over the animals. The diseases tested are thought to have included anthrax, brucellosis and tularemia. The corpses of the infected animals were burned at sea. While these tests showed the relative virulence of the diseases under examination, they did not solve the central problem of how easy it would be to attack a large city or military base. Experiments with harmless bacteria soon after the war had shown how easy it was for germs to penetrate the interior of a sealed ship, but now attacks were needed against civilian targets. Over the next two decades there would be over 200 experiments in the United States alone in which military and civilian targets, including whole cities, would be attacked with imitation biological weapons. The tests were conducted in total secrecy. If inquisitive officials asked questions they were told the army was conducting experiments with smokescreens to protect the city from radar detection. The targets of the attacks ranged from isolated rural communities to entire cities, including New York and San Francisco. One of the earliest experiments took place in San Francisco in 1950. The Pentagon believed it might be possible for a Soviet submarine to slip into an American harbour, release a cloud of bacteria, and disappear before the victims of the attack had even begun reporting to hospital. San Francisco, the headquarters of the Sixth Army and much of the Pacific fleet, seemed a likely target for such an attack. Between 20 and 26 September 1950, the theory was tested by two US Navy minesweepers steaming up and down outside the Golden Gate Bridge. On board the naval vessels' crewmen released clouds of a spray contaminated with BACILLUS GLOBIGII and SERRATIA MARCESCENS, two supposedly harmless bacteria. The Serratia marcescens strain, code-named '8 UK' had been developed at Porton Down during the Second World War because when incubated it turned red, making it very easily identifiable when used in biological warfare experiments. There were six mock attacks on the city. In their report later the scientists concluded that 117 square miles of the San Francisco area had been contaminated, and that almost everyone in the city had inhaled the bacteria. 'In other words,' they wrote, 'nearly every one of the 800,000 people in San Francisco exposed to the cloud at normal breathing rate...inhaled 5000 or more particle. Any other area having a steady wind and a degree of atmospheric stability comparable to San Francisco is vulnerable to a similar type of atack, and there are many such areas in the US and elsewhere.' The point had been proved. But the San Francisco test was only one of many. In 1951, American Navy personnel deliberately contaminate ten wooden boxes with Serratia marcescens, Bacillus globigii and ASPERGILLUS FUMIGATUS before they were shipped from a supply depot in Pennsylvania to the navy base in Norfolk, Virginia. The tests were designed to establish how easily disease might be spread among the people employed to handle the boxes atthe supply depot. Of the three infectious bacteria, Aspergillus fumigatus had been specificaly chosen because black workers at the base would be particularly susceptible to it. In 1953, after further tests spraying supposedly harmless chemicals and bacteria off the United States coast, the Chemical Corps travelled north to spray the Canadian city of Winnepeg. City officials were told that 'an invisible smokescreen' was being laid over the city. (A similar excuse had been used in tests in Minneapolis, where councillors were told that a smokescreen was being laid to protect the city from radar detection.) There were further tests at Stony Mountain Manitoba, where the experimenters ran into unexpected problems. According to their report, 'cattle in the area levelled many of the sampler stakes, and considerable time was lost in relocating them...(and) there was no adequate defense against the hoardes of mosquitoes present in this rural area.' How the scientists survived this biological attack is not recorded. The British contribution to an understanding of how germ attacks might be carried out was considerable, although Porton Down carried out far fewer such tests. Much of the early American work on how clouds might drift over cities was based on the results of experiments conducted by Porton scientists in which they released smoke clouds in built up areas of Salisbury, Wiltshire, just down the road from the Microbiological Research Establishment, and at Southampton in Hampshire. The extreme secrecy which characterizes British defense matters makes it impossible at this stage to build up a full picture of British tests, since many are still classified. However, it is known that in 1952 ships of the Royal Navy released clouds of bacteria off the west coast of Scotland... During the summer of 1952, and again during 1953, the Ben Lomond, a Royal Navy tank transport vessel based in the port of Stornaway on the Isle of Lewis, regularly set off for a point some six miles off the coast. But unlike the San Francisco experiments in which supposedly harmless bacteria were used, the Ben Lomond carried canisters of disease. The patterns of the Scottish tests, code-named Operations Cauldron and Hesperus, was similar to those carried out in the Bahamas [i.e.-using animals on rafts]... Several thousand guinea-pigs, mice, rabbits, and about one hundred monkeys were killed during these tests, which continued for weeks at a time... Details of these experiments are still not publicly available, and so nothing is known of the particular diseases under investigation... In the United States similar experiments continued throughout the sixties. Perhaps the most spectacular simulated attack took place in 1966 when the Chemical Corps Special Operations Division [based at Fort Detrick] decided to mount a biological attack on New York City. The attack was carried out in strictest secrecy, the experimenters carrying false letters certifying that they represented an industrial research organization. The plan was to discover how easy it would be to poison a city by releasing germs into the underground railway tunnels. Army agents positioned themselves on the pavement above the gratings in the roofs of the New York Subway and sprayed 'harmless bacteria' into the stations. Occassionally the clouds would fall onto passengers waiting for trains, but 'when the clouds engulfed people, they brushed their clothes, looked up at the grating, and walked on', one of the agents recalled [FN: Documents quoted in Washington Post, 23 April 1980.] The army agents concentrated on the Seventh Avenue and Eighth Avenue subway lines, while other team members were sent with sampling devices to the extremities of the underground railway network. Within minutes the turbulence caused by the trains would carry the bacteria thorughout the tunnel system. Another technique used by the Special Operations menwas to travel on sobway trains carrying an apprently normal light bulb which was in fact filled with bacteria. When no-one was looking, the light bulb would be dropped onto the tracks in the middle of a darkened tunnel. They reported later that this was 'an easy and effective method for covert contamination of a segment of a subway line.' the research team concluded that if anyone chose to carry out such an attack on New York, or any of the cities of the Soviet Union, Europe or South America with an underground railway network, thousands, possibly millions would swamp the hospitals and bring the health service to a standstill... The last tests took place in November 1969. During their entire twenty year duration, little or nothing had been admitted about their true purpose. ...In October 1950 the Secretary for Defense accepted a proposal to build a factory to manufacture disease. Congress secretly voted ninety million dollars, to be spent renovating a Second World War Arsenal near the small cotton town of Pine Bluff, in the mid-west [sic] state of Arkansas. The new biological warfare plant had ten storeys, three of them built underground. It was equipped with ten fermentors for the mass production of bacteria at short notice, although the plant was never used to capacity. Local people in the town of Pine Bluff had some idea of the purpose of the new army factory being built down the road, but in general there was, as the Pentagon put it later, 'a reluctance to publicize the program.' The first biological weapons [to be produced there] were ready the following year, although they were designed to attack not humans but plants... The United States had established the first peace-time biological weapon production line... [T]he main objective was the development of a weapon to kill people. The ideal biological agent had changed little from the days of Allied research during the Second World War. It should be a disease against which there is no natural immunity. It should be highly infectious, and yet the enemy should not be able to produce the enemy should not be able to produce a vaccine against it or be able to cure the disease with the medical facilities available to him. And from a military point of view, it should be a disease which was easy to reproduce, yet hardy enough to survive and reproduce itself outside the laboratory. Four diseases looked the most suitable as weapons: ANTHRAX: The wartime tests carried out by the Britsh and Americans had shown anthrax to be an extremely hardy agent: the entire island of Gruinard [site of wartime testing of British anthrax bombs] was likely to be contaminated for the rest of the century. Although not necessarily fatal, there was still no effective immunization available. Originally coded 'N'. BRUCELLOSIS: Otherwise known as Undulant Fever, by the end of the war, Brucellosis had been in advanced stages of development. Since it was rarely fatal, it was now considered as a possible 'humane' biological weapon. Orginally coded 'US'. TULAREMIA: Like Brucellosis, which primarily affects cattle, tularemia (also known as 'rabbit fever') is not normally fatal to humans. It was considered, however, that the chills, fever and general weakness the disease produced would disable an enemy for two to three weeks. Orginally code-named 'UL'. PSITTACOSIS: Sometimes known as 'parrot fever', this disease was considered the most powerful of the 'incapacitant' weapons, since it would produce a high fever, rather like typhoid fever, which could later develop into pneumonia. Death could be expected in about 20 per cent of those afflicted. Originally coded 'SI'. Later many other diseases would be developed for use as weapons, including plague, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Rift Valley fever, Q fever and various forms of encephalomyelitis. But in 1950 these four looked the most promising potential germ weapons. During the next two decades over seven hundred million dollars would be spent on the development of such weapons on the United States, and hundreds of millions more in research and testing projects in America, Britain and Canada. As to how these disease were to be used in a future war, the Chemical Corps had a list of targets for the Strategic Air Force. The first priority should be major cities. 'The morale of the people in these targets is an all important factor, and will certainly affect a nation's will to fight. Attack on these targets should be directed toward achieving maximum anti-personnel effect with the least amount of destruction.' The attacks should be carried out on a massive scale, to saturate enemy medical facilities. The element of surprise would be enhanced, the Chemical Corps had decided, by the 'insidious nature of the attack as regards detection, and the period of incubation before symptoms appear.'... [By the late 1950s, U.S. CBW scientists] had tested the [primary CBW] diseases on laboratory animals, but soon the scientists needed to discover whether what killed a mouse or a monkey would also kill a human. Many of them believed thatthe Russians might already be testing *their* biological weaons on people, and the Chemical Corps were keen to do likewise. During the Vietnam War, the Fort Detrick [Maryland] researchers found a ready source of human subjects for their experiments in Seventh Day Adventist soldiers, who, because of their conscientious objections, served in the United States army as non-combatants. In one series of tests Seventh Day Adventist soldiers were exposed to airborne tularemia. According to one report, 'all control subjects developed acute tularemia between two to seven days after exposure', although all were said to have recovered later. This experiment was unusual in that it was written up for public consumption. But the willingness of some at least of the Seventh Day Adventists to take part in such tests was beyond doubt... Numerous other experiments took place with volunteers, and although little is known about their nature, it seems fair to assume that many were more concerned with developing effective vaccines than with testing the power of the bacteriological weapons themselves. Evidence as to the use of human volunteers in experiments at Porton Down is harder to come by. Service volunteers were regularly requested during the fifties and sixties, but they are said to have been used only for the testing of defensive precautions like vaccines. However, between 1960 and 1966 scientists from the Porton Down Microbiological Research Establishment took part in a series of tests in which terminal cancer patients were treated with two rare viruses, at least one of which was then being considered as a possible biological weapon. The experiments took place at St. Thomas's Hospital, one of London's leading medical schools. According to a report which later appeared in the British Medical Journal, terminal cancer patients were infected with Langat Virus and Kyasanur Forest Disease Virus by two doctors from St. Thomas's Hospital and two scientists from Porton Down. The interest appears to have been in developing a potential vaccine against other diseases transmitted by ticks. The scientists reported that all thirty-three patients died, two of them after contracting encephalitis, an infection causing inflammation and swelling of the brain. 'Transient therapeutic benefit was observed in only four patients', they reported... [FN: Webb, Wetherley-Mein, Gordon Smith and McMahon "Leukaemia and Neoplastic Proces treated with Langat and Kyasanur Forest Disease Viruses: a clinical and laboratory study of 28 patients", British Medical Journal (29 January 1966), pp. 258-66.] ...[I]n the United States, the biological warfare work continued unabated. To many military scientists there the very arguments which made the idea of protecting the population impossible made bacteria increasingly attractive weapons for use against an enemy. At the start of the so-called 'Camelot' era of the presidency of John F. Kennedy, a thorough-going review of 150 areas of American defense was ordered. Project 112 arrived in the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in May 1961, requesting an assessment of American preparations for biological and chemical warfare. ...Not surprisingly their report found that American preparations were inadequate, but that with the expenditure of four thousand million [four billion] dollars, they could be improved... An initial twenty million dollars was immediately set aside for expanding the biological weapons plant in Arkansas [Pine Bluff Arsenal]. A new testing center was established. [The Deseret Test Center in Utah.] Money was spent developing new weapons to attack plants. And two new debilitating diseases, Q-fever and tularemia, entered the inventory of American biological weapons.... The results of the continuing research could be seen in the maps of Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, parts of which were marked 'permanent bio-contaminated area', after anthrax experiments in the mid-sixties. In the Pacific more tests were carried out with 'hot' agents--the jargon for real biological weapons--on a number of deserted islands. The results of these tests are still classified on the grounds that they reveal weaknesses in American defenses. By March 1967 Fort Detrick had developed a bacteriological warhead for the Sergeant missile, capable of delivering disease up to 100 miles behind enemy lines. ---30-- *3 \\\\\\\\S\C\H\R\0\D\I\N\G\E\R\S\\\\\\R\A\D\I\O\\\\\\\\ U.S. POLITICS, PRAGMATISM, AND BIOLOGICAL WAR by Terry Allen [From CovertAction Quarterly N. 43 (Winter 1992-93), p. 14.] When the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) came into force, the whole world should have issued a collective sigh of relief. It was, after all, a "model treaty," the first international agreement to ban to possession, as well as the use, of a whole class of weapons of mass dectruction. The BWC was completed in 1972. By 1991, 114 countries, including the US, were parties and an additional 23 had signed but not yet ratified. The treaty categorized biological warfare (CBW) as "repugnant to the conscience of mankind."[1] But as the possible use of anthrax as a weapon in Zimbabwe only three years later illustrates, the conscience of the world is flexible. After all, the sheer cost-effective utility of CBW agents for spreading death, economic devastation, intimidation, and terror is hard to resist. And, truth be told, from the beginning, the banning of CBW has less to do with morality than with the fact that this class of weapons is cheap, deadly, and within the technological and economic reach of the less, as well as the more, technically developed nations. On November 26, 1969, while using napalm and Agent Orange in Indochina, the US suddenly began advocating a ban on BW. "Biological weapons,"[2] said President Nixon, "have massive, unpredictable, and potentially uncontrollable consequences. They may produce global epidemics and impair the health of future generations."[3] It is likely that the Nixon declarations against CBW were made less from humanitarian concern than from reasons of military strategy.[4] In the 1970s, the Pentagon was advancing the doctrine that while these agents were not militarily useful to the United States, they could proliferate to become the "poor man's atomic bomb." In ther words, Third World nations could produce biological weapons of mass destruction more cheaply than nuclear, chemical, or even many conventional weapons. Recent advances in technology have increased the danger of BW. Genetic engineering provides the potential to develop highly sophisticated biological agents, possibly including organisms with specific racial predilections.[5] "It is now possible to synthesize BW agents tailored to military specification. The technology that makes possible 'designer drugs' also makes possible 'designer BW,'" testified Douglas J. Feith, deputy assistant secretary of defense for negotiations policy, to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in 1986.[6] Recognizing the potential threat to its national security, the US has become increasingly concerned that other countries might be conducting prohibited research and developing new genetically engineered organisms or toxins. The political selectivity of this concern was evident during the Gulf War when the US launched a major propaganda campaign against possible Iraqi use of both chemical and biological weapons, including anthrax, against US troops. When chemical attacks had been aimed at unarmed Kurdish villages by Iraq, the US had remained virtually silent. But after "US ally Saddam" was transformed overnight into "another Hitler Saddam," the use of chemical weapons "against his own people" became an issue. Assessing charges--including those lodged by Cuba and Nicaragua against the US--of biological weapons use are problematic since the agents cause naturally-occurring diseases. Cuba charged that the US used various biological warfare agents against it, including dengue fever against humans, other agents against the tobacco and sugar crops, and African swine fever against pigs--500,000 of which had to be slaughtered in 1971 to prevent spread of the disease. Several unnamed CIA employees and Cuban refugees provided details of the transfer of Swine Fever from the US into Cuba.[7] In 1985, Nicaragua claimed the US had deliberately spread dengue fever virus as part of its war effort.[8] In the case of the 1978-80 Zimbabwe anthrax epidemic, there exists a highly sugestive body of evidence supported by epidemiological research, and by the logic of the historical and political context. It points to an extensive, coordinated campaign of anthrax dissemination by the Zimbabwean government. If this conclusion is correct, the sigh of relief from those around the treaty table will be lost once again in the cries of those who succumbed no less horribly because the cause of death was a violation of international standards. NOTES: [1] From the text of Biological Warfare Convention, completed on April 10, 1972, and signed and ratified by the US and dozens of other nations in 1975. [2] The use of living organisms or their biologically active products to cause illness or death in humans, animals, or plants. [3] W.J. Stoessel, et al., "Report of the Chemical Warfare Commission," Appendix E (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office,1985), pp. 90-91. [4] Raymond Zilinskas, "Verification of the Biological Weapons Convention," in Ernhard Geissler, "Biological and Toxic Weapons Today," (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 87. [5] Charles Piller and Keith Yamamoto, "Gene Wars: Military Control Over the New Genetic Technologies," (New York: Beech Tree Books, 1988), pp. 99-100; Carl A. Larson, "Ethnic Weapons," Military Review (Fort Leavenworth, Kan.), November 1970, pp. 3-11; and Tim Beardsley, "New View From the Pentagon," Nature, September 4, 1986, p. 5. [6] Piller and Yamamoto, op. cit., p. 16. [7] Drew Featherston and John Cummings, "CIA Linked to 1971 Swine Virus in Cuba," Washington Post, January 9, 1977 p. 2; and Piller and Yamamoto, op. cit. pp. 49-50, 72. [8] Jeanne McDermott, "The Killing Winds," (New York: Arbor House, 1987), pp. 16, 17, 155-56. ---30- *4 ////////S/C/H/R/0/D/I/N/G/E/R/S//////R/A/D/I/O//////// U.S. ARMY QUIETLY RESUMES BIOWARFARE TESTING AFTER 10-YEAR HIATUS [From "Censored: The News That Didn't Make the News--And Why", The 1994 Project Censored Yearbook (NY: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1994) pp. 63-67] SOURCES: The Salt Lake City Tribune Dates: 1/27/93; 7/28/93 Titles: "Army Resumes Biological-Agents Tests at Dugway After 10-Year Cessation"; "Duway to test disease-causing agents at remote lab". Author: Jim Woolf [Name of paper obscured] Date: 9/21/93 Title: "Dugway Base Cited for 22 Waste Violations" Author: Laurie Sullivan High Country News Date: 8/9/93 Title: "Biowarfare is back" Author: Jon Christensen High Desert Advocate Date: 9/15/93 Title: "Utah biowarfare oversight group wants to do its work behind closed doors" SYNOPSIS: Although few people outside of Dugway, Utah, are aware of it, the US Army has brought biological warfare back to a site it declared unsafe a decade earlier. Ten years ago, residents of western Utah breathed a healthy sigh of relief when the Army discontinued testing biological warfare agents at its Dugway Proving Ground. The reason given was that the Army's testing facility was getting old, and its safety--its ability to prevent potentially deadly diseases from escaping into the air outside the facility and thence to the rest of the world--could no longer be guaranteed. Now the deadly bugs are back. Military scientists are testing a device called the Biological Integrated Detection System (BIDS) at the renovated Dugway facility. BIDS is described as a defensive weapon, designed to detect the presence of biological agents in time to allow soldiers to put on protective clothing. A Dugway representative said the tests, which include organisms such as anthrax, botulism, and the plague, would initially be liquid, not aerosol, tests. Aerosol tests are the most hazardous form of testing because they involve spraying biologicl agents into the air inside a sealed chamber. One tiny air leak could result in a catastrophic release of deadly diseases. It was precisely this hazard that led to the closing of the Dugway facility in 1983. The biowarfare lab has been renovated since then and Army experts claim their elaborate safety precautions will prevent such a leak. Nonetheless, new safety concerns were raised in September 1993, when the Dugway Proving Ground was cited for 22 violations of state hazardous-waste regulations, ranging from inadequate record-keeping to improper dumping of poisonous chemicals. Notices of violations and orders for compliance were issued to the Army base by the Utah Department of Environmental Quality. Critics also point out that it was the Army that denied for a year that it was responsible for the 1968 accidental release of nerve gas from Dugway that killed some 6,000 sheep in the area. Finally, public information about what was happening at Dugway suffered a serious setback in September 1993, when the biowarfare oversight committee that advises the governor of Utah on biological defense testing matters at Dugway voted to make itself off-limits to the public. Reasoning that they could obtain more information from the Army if confidentiality could be assured, the oversight group also voted to disengage from its parent organization, the State Advocacy Council on Science and Technology. The committee had been frustrated by its inability to get timely information from Dugway. Critics doubt the committee will have access to any more information than it has received in the past and that the net result only further distances the Army from accountability and the public from the truth. [By] SSU Censored Researcher: Jesse Boggs COMMENTS: Jim Woolf, environmental writer for The Salt Lake Tribune, said he was surprised by the lack of attention this story generated. "It was treated as a local story that had little significance to the general public," Woolf said, adding, "I disagree." Woolf felt the general public should know more about this story for at least three reasons: "1. This is an important local story. Military scientists near my home are conducting tests with some of the most deadly disease causing organisms and natural toxins ever identified. What if some of these 'bugs' escape into the environment or are carried by workers into my community? Are local doctors trained to recognize and deal with this threat? Has the Army taken all prudent steps to reduce the risk? Has the public been told the full scope of testing being carried out by the Army? "2. Biological and chemical weapons have been described as the 'poor man's atomic bomb.' They are relatively easy to produce and could have devastating consequences in battle. Several of our enemies are known or suspected t ohave these weapons. All announced testing at Dugway focuses on developing systems to protect America troops from these weapons. (The development or testing of OFFENSIVE biological or chemical systems is prohibited under international treaties.) Work in this field would be of general interest to military families and others who may feel threatened by this category of weapon. "3. The resumption of testing and plans to build an upgraded research laboratory at Dugway could have important consequences for America's international relations. Critics claim there is no clear line dividing defensive from offensive testing--the scientific knowledge gained at Dugway can be used for either good or bad. Does the resumption of this testing send a message to other ocuntries that the United States is interested in bio-chem warfare? Will it prompt other countries to upgrade their test facilities and lead to an escalation in the race to produce ever-more-deadly weapons?" Woolf felt the interests of several groups were served by thelimited coverage given the resumption of biowarfare testing. "The Army was pleased. Military scientists want freedom to study whatever they want, no matter how dangerous or far-fetched the potantial threat may be. The last thing they want are questions from the public or elected officials. "Congress was served because members were not required to confront another potentially controversial issue. A handful of members interested in military issues are responsible for most of the funding decisions in this area. If there is no controversy, no one else has to confront the difficult questions surrounding this topic. "Certain economic interests in Utah and elsewhere were served. Dugway provides jobs in a remote area of the state. If biological testing were eliminated or scaled back, the Army would have fewer reasons to maintain the base. Also, a handful of comapanies are developing products and services related to biological-defense. None would like to see their income potential reduced." Woolf notes that the resumption of biological testing has been a difficult issue in Utah and concludes with a chilling question. "The presence of these deadly agents so close to our community is a source or concern, but we watched on CNN the terror in Israel during the Iraq war when no one knew whether the bombs that were falling contained chemical or biological weapons. We understand the need to improve our defenses, but wonder why it has to be done in our backyard, whether there are safer alternatives, and whether all safety precautions have been taken. "We're also frightened that the Army may not be telling the whole truth-- that in times of emergency they will cover their operations with the national security veil and do whatever they think is right, regardless of the threat to their neighbors. Utahns learned this lesson living downwind from the nuclear-weapons tests at the Nevada Test Site. "Will the clouds of radioactive material be followed by the plague?" Jon Christensen, Great Basin Regional Editor for the High Country News, areed that there hadn't been sufficient coverage of this issue. "The only papers to cover the story adequately were The Salt Lake tribune and the High Desert Advocate, in Wendover, Nevada." Without their coverage, Christensen felt that we all might have missed this story about the resumption of biowarfare testing at Dugway, Utah. He feels it is important for people to know about this issue since they "might better understand the domestic costs and risks of preparing for war, many of which are borne by remote, rural Western communities (among others). Also, our stockpile of dangerous chemical weapons and biological agents must be stored and destroyed safely. The public needs to know how." Christensen emphasized that "The regional media deserve credit for following this story. Without them, we would all be in the dark about this?" ---30-- *5 \\\\\\\\S\C\H\R\0\D\I\N\G\E\R\S\\\\\\R\A\D\I\O\\\\\\\\ STRANGE FRUIT & THE ZOMBIE BUG Is the "Flesh-Eating Bug" Bio Warfare? by Lou Menotti [Editor's Note: Though this article was written in June of this year, recent events have brought the Flesh Eating Bug back into the public eye. Canada's Prime Minister contracted the disease within the last few weeks. Doctors had to amputate nearly his entire left leg in a desperate attempt to stop the spread of the horrific disease. They then discovered the bacteria was also present in his chest. At press time, it is unclear what his exact prognosis is, although Canadian officials are trying to put a hopeful face on the story. In view of these events, and the thesis of Menotti's article, we decided it was high time to run it.] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In May 1994, press reports began to emerge in the British press about 12 cases of the "Flesh Eating Bug". The victims, all British nationals, had contracted a "mutant strain" of the strep bacteria which ate their flesh and muscle. All of the victims died within 2-3 weeks of contracting the strep. Strep is one of the most common bacteria found on or in the human body. One strain of strep causes the common sore throat. The highest concentrations are in the throat, although 45% of pregnant women have strep bacteria in their vaginas. For this very reason, health officials, including the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Ga., were quick to say that these cases were freak incidents and most people need not even worry about contracting it. They did, however, concede that the growing number of mutant strep cases were a source of mystery. A wave of public concern naturally swept the US and Britain (although there was no major reporting from the rest of Europe, or the former Soviet Block and Asia). As news coverage continued, little new information emerged, and health officials continued to push their "don't worry" message. SUPPRESSED CASES What has not been widely reported is that there have been at least six (possibly more) cases of the Flesh-Eating Strep in the US. National news coverage has been highly selective and strangely compartmentalised on the matter. For example, a New York Times summary article on the mutant strep published June 8, 1994 (a few weeks into the coverage) neglected to mention no less than four cases of Flesh Eating Strep which had apparently been SUCCESSFULLY TREATED. The four cases were all treated at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, WA. It had been front page news there, complete with color photograph. In odd parallel, an edited version of the same NYT wire story which appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on the same day omitted case reports from Michigan and Connecticut. These omissions show peculiar editorial judgement. Why would the New York Times, probably -the- paper of record, not include in an article summarizing the latest developments at least a passing mention of four cases which had all been successfully treated when up to then had no known cure? A desire to minimize national panic might explain the obscurity of the Michigan and Connecticut cases. However this would not explain the lack of Seattle coverage. A closer look at the strange strep mutation, its symptoms and epidemiology raises only further questions. There are also odd and disturbing parallels to other "superbugs", such as HIV, which some have claimed are actually germs engineered for use in biological warfare. EPIDEMILOGY There are two strains of strep which eat human tissue, and it is mutant strains of these which have suddenly appeared in the news. These two germs, each favoring a different kind of tissue, are a type of Group A Strep. (There are several classes of streptococcus bacteria: Groups A, B, C, D, and E.) *Necrotising fasciitis* strep eats flesh. *Myositis* eats muscle tissue. As gruesome as that sounds, these Group A Strep (GAS) germs are usually fairly harmless to humans under normal conditions. Symptoms of infection by mutant GAS germs typically include a fatal drop in blood pressure, toxic shock and organ failure, plus special symptoms specific to each strain of GAS (such as the eating of flesh and muscle). The New york Times reported that "Thirty to fifty percent of those infected with the severe, invasive GAS die... (O)thers who survive often require amputations or the removal of large areas of flesh to stop the bacteria's spread." [Gina Kolata, "Bacteria strain makes a deadly comeback"; New York Times, 6/8/94.] The CDC in Atlanta reported that five years ago the flesh eating strain of GAS "was almost nonexistent." The lethal variety of GAS first appeared in 1987. There was a drop in cases during 1991 and 1992 for unknown reasons. There has been an equally inexplicable jump in deadly GAS cases in the last year or so. But the rash of recent deaths has been caused by a mutant strain of necrotising fasciitis and myositis. The bacteria have themselves become infected with a virus. The New York Times reported "The bacteria that cause the disease resemble the common strep that live in almost everyone's throat... But the deadly strains of these bacteria are infected with a virus that directs them to make a toxin. And it is the toxin that converts the strep bacteria from fairly benign to deadly." [Gina Kolata, "Bacteria strain makes deadly comeback"; NYT wire story, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 6/8/94, p. A3.] A virus can be likened to a sort of microscopic mosquito which, instead of drawing blood, injects copies of its own DNA into the nucleus of the target cell. The invading viral DNA literally takes over the resident DNA of the infected cell. The cell is thus forced to make more copies of the virus, whose population in the host body explodes exponentially. This writer has yet to locate accurate information on the incidence of such viral infections of bacteria (especially in bacteria which is already hostile to the human system), though it seems rather freakish. But there is evidence that the mutant necrotising fasciitis and myositis is more widespread than government and health officials would have us believe. The CDC estimates that 25-50% of GAS patients have Necrotising fasciitis (the flesh eating strep). The CDC's figures show 10-15,000 cases of GAS in the United States last year. This would mean a total of 2,500 - 7,500 cases of the flesh eating strep alone. (This does not include myositis, the muscle eating strep. Figures on the incidence of myositis have not been published in the press as of this writing.) Two thousand and five hundred cases in a year is a great deal more than the 18 cases reported in the press. Yet health officials, via the mainstream press, are at the very least tacitly endorsing this widespread dissemination of false information. Why? MAD DOCTORS? Two figures have emerged as quoted experts on the killer strep: DR. PATRICK SCHLIEVERT heads the "national testing" site for strep at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. "A lab in Minnesota" played a key role in the Yellow Rain biowarfare hoax. The lab, along with the biowarfare (BW) lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland (which is sardonically known as "Camp Health") provided the first (and ultimately false) evidence of what the Pentagon claimed was the use of tricothecenes by the Soviets in Southeast Asia. [Edward S. Herman, "The Wall Street Journal as Propaganda Agency: Yellow Rain and the El Mazote Massacre", CovertAction Quarterly, No. 43, Winter 1992-93, p. 39.] Allegedly, the Yellow Rain was actually a carrier for the deadly toxin. Tricothecenes are a type of mycotoxin (poison from a fungus). Samples of water, rock and soil allegedly were covered with fusaria, a white fungus which contains three such mycotoxins. The labs (and the government) maintained that the tricothecenes appeared in concentrations "up to twenty times higher than any recorded natural outbreak". [Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman "A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret Story of Chemical and Biological Warfare", NY: Noonday Press, 1982, p. 236.] Tricothecenes are known in BW circles as T2 toxins. They had been studied since the 1930s. Published Russian accounts spoke of victims suffering from a burning feeling in the mouth and stomach, followed by headaches, dizziness and convulsions before they began to spew blood from every orifice. [Ibid.] That a secret Minnesota lab provided test results relating to BW, especially evidence so perfectly tailored to Pentagon specifications, indicates that there is BW being done in the state. Indeed, the entire city of Minneapolis had been subjected to a BW test during the 1950s. A chemical and bacteria cloud was sprayed over the city, although the US Navy's Chemical Corp lied to councillors, telling them that a "smokescreen" was being laid to protect the city form radar detection. The BW test was just one of over 200 ultra-secret experiments conducted over two decades in the US alone in which military and civilian targets (including San Francisco, New York City, and Winnepeg, Canada) were attacked with "imitation" biological weapons. The University of Minnesota is almost certainly involved with current secret US BW research. Dr. Schlievert would be a strong candidate for such a program. DR. DENNIS STEVENS at the University of Washington in Seattle is "a leading expert on the disease and heads the infectious disease section at Veterans Affairs Hospital in Boise (Idaho)." [Seattle Post- Intelligencer] Boise is only a few hours by car from the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah. Itself only 60 some miles southwest of Salt Lake City, Dugway Proving Grounds is a bio-chemical warfare testing area for the US military, nestled alongside two other massive military proving grounds. The Dugway facility is over 40 times the size of the British CBW lab at Porton Down. During WWII, replicas of German and Japanese houses were constructed and caves dug into the mountains to see how well they could withstand CBW attack. Experiments in high altitude spraying of mustard gas from the air were also conducted by the US Army Air Force. [Richard Harris and Jeremy Paxman, op. cit., p. 117.] Members of the military have long been used as guinea pigs in lethal experiments by the Pentagon. Thousands of soldiers have been exposed to high doses of radiation, chemical weapons, and military biological agents in a litany of experiments spanning decades. Most recently, veterans of the Gulf War have had to struggle for official recognition of "Gulf War Syndrome", which some theorize may have been at least partially caused by exposure to biological weapons of some sort. Interestingly enough, although the Pentagon has begrudingly