Recent Articles in the Creek

Cheney Directed Assassination Ring

BY MATT SULLIVAN / RCFP

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed during a talk at the University of Minnesota, March 10, that Dick Cheney orchestrated assassination squads directly out of the office of the vice president.

Here is what Hersh said: “After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet. That does happen.

“Right now, today, there was a story in The New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command — JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him [Cheney].

“Congress has no oversight of it. It’s anexecutive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leader, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.

“Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.” Interestingly, Hersh gives us two pieces of information here. First he tells us that the CIA has been “deeply involved” in domestic operations; something that is forbidden by law. And second, he reveals that the office of vice president has been directing assassination squads abroad, also clearly illegal underdomestic and international law.

It is not much of a leap of logic to put these two bits of information together and ask the question: ‘Did the CIA engage in domestic assassination as well?’ Clearly the fact that this would be illegal is no barrier; according to neocon doctrine, the unitary executive is above and beyond any law.

Let’s see if there have been any likely assassinations that may be the handiwork of the Cheney hit teams. For example:

September 9, 2001; Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance, is assassinated in Afghanistan just two days before the 9/11 attack. His death cleared the way for the Afghan invasion.

Shortly before his October 2002 death in a mysterious airplane crash, Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone met with the Vice President. Cheney was rounding up Senate support for the vote giving the administration the go ahead to invade Iraq in spite of United Nations objections. At a campaign stop in Willmar, Minn., days before his death, Wellstone told attendees that Cheney told him, “If you vote against the war in Iraq, the Bush administration will do whatever is necessary to get you. There will be severe ramifications for you and the state of Minnesota.” Senator Wellstone’s death cleared the way for the Iraq Invasion.

On February 5, 2005, Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Harari was killed in an explosion. His death was immediately blamed on Syria, but without any evidence. Within weeks Syrian peacekeeping forces which had been in Lebanon for a decade, were forced to leave. Syria’s departure cleared the way for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006.

The DC Madam, Deborah Palfrey, found dead on May Day, 2008, was very likely murdered. She had a very embarrassing little black book of clients for her prostitution service which included Washington lobbyists, defense contractors, intelligence operatives and even, reportedly, Dick Cheney himself. Before she was ‘suicided’ she made several public statements, including in radio interviews, that she had no intention of committing suicide and that if she was to be found dead, that it would be murder.

Mike Connell was a republican IT specialist: He helped the GOP orchestrate the electronic theft of the 2004 Ohio election (among others). He was scheduled to testify in a federal probe about not only the election thefts, but also about the “missing” White House e-mails. Before his death, Connell’s lawyers were on-record requesting protection for their client based on threats from Karl Rove.

Connell’s death appears to be part of a ‘clean-up’ operation.

This is but a brief list of possible, even likely, executive assassinations. Now that it has been revealed that a sophisticated covert program of assassination has been ongoing under the direction of VP Cheney, a thorough review of unsolved, politically convenient murders would seem to be in order.

Let’s start with the 3000 killed in lower Manhattan.

NY Times Complicit in FBI Anthrax Coverup

BY SHEILA CASEY / RCFP

Back in 2001, just months after the anthrax attacks that killed five people, several articles came out in mainstream newspapers that pointed clearly to the CIA and Army as the most likely sources of the weaponized anthrax. Articles in The Baltimore Sun, Miami Herald, Washington Post and New York Times laid out the facts that incriminated Battelle Memorial Labs in West Jefferson, Ohio, and the Army’s lab at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah as the only logical sources for the anthrax. These facts, as reported in 2001, include:

1. For over a decade, Army scientists at Dugway have been making weapons-grade anthrax that is “virtually identical” to the anthrax used in the attacks.

2. The anthrax used in the 2001 attacks was extremely concentrated, with a trillion spores per gram. The Dugway anthrax had a similar concentration.

3. The FBI was increasingly focused on US government bioweapons research programs as the source of the deadly anthrax.

4. Both the lab in Utah and the lab in Ohio received anthrax samples from the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, although USAMRIID deals only with wet anthrax and ships it wet.

5. The investigation was focused on the Dugway anthrax, and Dugway was described as the only facility that was known to be weaponizing anthrax.

6. One FBI official said that the CIA’s anthrax was “the best lead we have at this point.”

7. Army officials said that Fort Detrick did not have the equipment for weaponizing anthrax.

The FBI has never explained what became of this initial focus on the labs in Utah and Ohio. Instead, after the death of Fort Detrick anthrax researcher Bruce Ivins in July, 2008, the FBI attempted to make the case that Ivins was the murderer and all other suspects had been cleared of suspicion.

Since Ivins’ death, the media have, with very few exceptions, passively swallowed the line dispensed by the FBI, and have acted as little more than stenographers in parroting the hollow arguments presented by the FBI that Ivins is guilty.

On December 12, 2001, The Baltimore Sun published a seminal article by Scott Shane that clearly laid out just how strong the evidence was against the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. Subtitled “Organisms made at a military laboratory in Utah are genetically identical to those mailed to members of Congress,” Shane’s article also includes this eyebrow-raising line: “Scientists familiar with the anthrax program at Dugway described it to The Sun on the condition that they not be named.”

Apparently Shane has forgotten all that he reported seven years ago. Now with The New York Times, Shane’s latest piece, published January 4, 2009, raises troubling questions about the independence of The Times, and the memory hole that Shane must have used to shunt away all that he once knew about the case the FBI code-named Amerithrax.

Shane calls his 5,200 word article “the deepest look so far at the investigation.” Titled “Portrait Emerges of Anthrax Suspect’s Troubled Life,” it is primarily a hatchet job on Bruce Ivins. Filled with innuendo and unsubstantiated allegations, the purpose of the article is clearly to solidify the perception that Ivins was the killer, and to pooh-pooh the widely held belief that the anthrax came from a CIA or military lab in Utah or Ohio.

Shane dismisses these beliefs breezily, stating: “The Times review found that the FBI had disproved the assertion, widespread among scientists who believe Dr. Ivins was innocent, that the anthrax might have come from military and intelligence research programs in Utah or Ohio.” Not a single piece of evidence is presented to back up this sweeping claim.

Halfway through his article, Shane springs another shocker on us. “By early 2004, FBI scientists had discovered that out of 60 domestic and foreign water samples, only water from Frederick, Maryland, had the same chemical signature as the water used to grow the mailed anthrax.”

Really? Do FBI scientists think that anthrax researchers go to the kitchen sink for the water they use to grow the anthrax? According to Wikipedia, biochemistry labs use only highly purifi ed water, such as double-distilled. Distilled water is created by boiling water and collecting the steam. To obtain double-distilled water, the process is done twice, so that all impurities and minerals are removed. Distilled water has the same chemical signature, namely none, no matter where in the world it originates.

It is unprecedented to have a major development in a high profi le case go unreported for a full five years. Not only has the FBI never before mentioned this so-called discovery about the signature of the water, but when they were specifically asked if anything could be learned from the water, they said no.

The question came up on August 18, 2008, when the FBI held a science briefi ng to follow up on the highly publicized August 6 press conference by DOJ attorney Jeff Taylor. The science briefi ng was hosted by Dr. Vahid Majidi, Assistant Director of the FBI Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate.

Dr. Majidi was asked: “In your looking at the elemental and chemical properties, could you tell anything about the water that was used to fi lter this anthrax, and did that do you any good?”

Dr. Majidi replied: “No. No.”

Yet here we are, five months later, with Scott Shane telling us that the FBI has known since 2004 that the anthrax was grown near Fort Detrick, because of the chemical signature of the water.

Beyond these outrageous claims, Shane’s article is busy assassinating Bruce Ivins’ character. We have Nancy Haigwood saying of Ivins “he did it,” for no apparent reason other than she doesn’t like him and thinks he’s odd. She also thinks Ivins vandalized her house 27 years ago and impersonated her. No reason is given for why she believes these things.

Shane editorializes heavily. He charges that Ivins was “chipper” even as five people were dead or dying of anthrax inhalation, and was relishing his moment in the spotlight. No evidence is presented for how Shane reached these conclusions about Ivins.

Words Shane uses to describe Ivins (including quotes from others) are: corny, dour, scary, provocative, emotionally laden, thin-skinned, aggressive, goody two shoes, very sensitive, creepy, possessing an unnerving hubris, stressed, depressed, rude, sarcastic, nasty, devious, jumpy and agitated.

We find out that Ivins had been a nerdy, awkward teenager, was not popular in high school, and was still bitter about this.

He liked to eat a mixture of peas, yogurt and tuna for lunch and wore outdated bell-bottoms, practices that, according to Shane, got him labeled an “oddball.” The words odd, oddball or oddities appear five times in Shane’s article.

The final reference, regarding “a man whose oddities, for many people, made the FBI’s anthrax accusation more plausible,” tips Shane’s hand. His constant harping on Ivins oddness betrays the poverty of the FBI’s case, which Shane acknowledges has “yielded nothing more persuasive than a strong hunch” that Ivins was the killer.

Fortunately for many of us, being odd is not a crime.

But was Ivins odd? The Frederick News Post published a letter from Amanda Lane on August 10, 2008 that includes: “I want to shout from the mountain tops that Bruce was the kind of man we look up to … He was a decorated scientist and the humblest of men who didn’t use his title as a status symbol. He picked up a mop or emptied the trash without a moment’s hesitation. If he thought you were having a bad day he would offer candy or a catchy tune to cheer you up. If someone had to stay late to accomplish a task, Bruce would work with you so that the task would get completed faster.

“He was not the greatest athlete, but he was the best cheerleader present at every game to support his friends. I will truly miss his good humor, as there are few people in life who measure up to this man. I hope that he knew how much joy he brought to my life and others around him. If I learned anything from Bruce, it was to enjoy life and to always smile. His friendship brightened so many lives. I hope that Americans will remember Bruce for the funny and compassionate person that he was, because that is all Bruce knew how to be.”

Although Shane does mention that Ivins’ colleagues cherished him, the implication is that they didn’t really know him, as “he hid from them a shadow side of mental illness, alcoholism, secret obsessions and hints of violence.”

The New York Times has published a hit piece, devoid of incriminating facts, more gossip than journalism. Shane’s article raises disturbing questions about the relationship between The New York Times and the US government. What happened to the FBI’s original focus on the CIA and Army labs? Who is behind the drive to pin the attacks on a dead man who possessed neither the means nor the motive to carry them out? And why is The Times acting as a PR arm for those with an agenda that has nothing to do with journalism?

Sheila Casey is a DC-based journalist. Her work has been published by the Chicago Sun-Times, Reuters, the Denver Post, Dissident Voice and Common Dreams.

Top Scientists Ask Journal "Science" To Retract Original AIDS Papers

BY SHEILA CASEY / RCFP

Thirty-seven doctors, senior researchers and attorneys have asked the journal Science to retract four articles published in 1984 that supposedly established that HIV was the cause of AIDS. The articles, by a group led by Dr. Robert Gallo, have drawn criticism for some time. An investigation in the early 90s by the US Department of Health and Human Services concluded that the lead paper was “fraught with false and erroneous statements.” A Congressional Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations produced a staff report onthe papers which contains scathing criticisms of their integrity.

Now, new analysis of the documentation behind the papers has revealed even more reason to doubt Gallo’s findings. The letter refers to “recent revelation of an astonishing number of previously unreported deletions and unjustified alterations made by Gallo…”

Dr. Mikulas Popovic wrote the manuscripts while Gallo was in Europe, but Gallo made handwritten changes to the manuscripts upon his return. Popovic wrote: “Despite intensive research efforts, the causative agent of AIDS has not yet been identified.” This sentence was deleted and replaced by a statement that the findings suggest that HIV is the cause of AIDS.

Gallo submitted micrographs to Science that were identified as containing the HIV virus. But just four days before he submitted them, Dr. Matthew A. Gonda, then head of the Electron Microscopy Laboratory at the National Cancer Institute, wrote a letter to Gallo and Popovic stating that he “does not believe” that the micrographs contain images of HIV. The micrographs were published in Science on May 4, 1984 and identified as containing HIV.

These developments add to the mounting body of evidence that the original conclusion that HIV causes AIDS is deeply flawed.

Thus far there has been no response from Science regarding the request for retraction.

A Call for a Re-evaluation of the AIDS Dogma

By Matt Sullivan / RCFP

A paper about to be published in a scientific journal raises the intriguing possibility that many AIDS cases are in fact misdiagnosed cases of syphilis. The paper was authored by an International group of scientists led by National Academy of Sciences member Lynn Margulis, of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Wolfgang E. Krumbein, professor of Geo-microbiology in Oldenburg, Germany.

The paper, titled Spirochete round bodies. Syphilis, Lyme disease & AIDS: Resurgence of “the great imitator,” will be published in SYMBIOSIS V47, No.1, 2009.

John Scythes, one of the researchers on the paper, reports that he has not found a single case of an immune suppressed patient (regardless of HIV status) who has died of complications of syphilis since the discovery of AIDS in the early 80s. The implications of this are staggering. It is simply not possible that syphilis stopped being fatal just as the new disease of AIDS came on the scene.

The researchers speculate that, because of its immune suppression effect and its ability to imitate other diseases, syphilis is being missed or misdiagnosed as AIDS. Now that improved tests for syphilis infection are available, the researchers urge a large scale investigation into the extent that this is happening.

In addition to Dr. Margulis, other co-authors include Andrew Maniotis PhD. Department of Patholog, University of Illinois at Chicago, J. MacAllister, U. Mass Amherst; J. Scythes of the Community Initiative for AIDS Research, Ontario, Canada; O. Brorson, Tonsberg, Norway; J. Hall, U. Mass. Amherst; W.E. Krumbein, Carl von Ossietzky Universität, Oldenburg Germany; and M.J. Chapman, U. Mass, Amherst.

Ever since Luc Montagnier of the Institut Pasteur in Paris first described HIV virus-like particles isolated from “patient 1” in 1983, a close connection has been shown between AIDS and a history of syphilis exposure.

As with AIDS, patients infected with syphilis do not die from syphilis directly, but rather suffer from opportunistic infections such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, or dysentery.

Syphilis was once known by doctors as “the great imitator” because of its immune suppression effects and its ability to mimic the symptoms of many other diseases. If syphilis and other spirochete diseases are being misdiagnosed as AIDS, that would explain why the number of reported syphilis deaths has plummeted since the introduction of AIDS.

Many human infections such as Lyme disease, syphilis, anthrax and many others are caused by a class of bacteria called spirochetes. These bacteria are characterized by a spiral free swimming form, and by the ability to revert into a cyst form when subjected to threat such as heat, starvation or antibiotic attack. This ability to form cysts (also called “round bodies”) makes spirochete diseases extremely resistant to treatment.

Contrary to the prevailing wisdom that syphilis is easily treated with antibiotics, the disease is frequently impervious to antibiotic treatment except in its earliest stages. Far from eradicating syphilis, antibiotics have driven the disease underground.

Until recently, the only way to definitively tell if someone had the syphilis germ, was high magnification microscopy by an expert microscopist. Since this is not usually done for patients in a clinical setting, reported cures of either syphilis or Lyme disease are suspect.

Spirochetes are an ancient form of bacteria. The oldest spirochete in the fossil record was discovered in the intestine of a 20 million year old termite preserved in amber.

Scientists know that Lyme and syphilis are caused by spirochete bacteria because the spirochete is able to cause the symptoms of the disease when it is introduced into a healthy test subject. This observation is one of the steps needed to verify that an infectious agent is the cause of a disease. Called Koch’s Postulates, the four steps require that the agent must:
1. be found in all cases of the disease;
2. be isolated from the host;
3. cause the same disease when injected into a healthy host, and
4. then be found growing again in the newly infected host.

While syphilis and Lyme bacteria meet the test of Koch’s postulates, HIV fails all four.

In the case of both Lyme and syphilis, it is very likely that the disease-causing bacteria establishes a permanent human-spirochete symbiosis soon after infection. The symptoms of the disease vary greatly and may be easily overlooked or misinterpreted.

Most spirochetes are harmless, free swimming species in nature, unrelated to any disease, therefore unknown to medical science. Animals and spirochetes have co-existed for millions of years and have co-evolved to the point that they have a symbiotic relationship, a partnership. It is theorized that some components of mammalian cells such as sperm tails and cilia are descended from these ancient bacteria. If this theory is correct, spirochete remnants have dwelled in stable symbiotic partnership inside animal cells for about 1 billion years.

Over eons of time, integrated symbiotic bacteria (which include Lyme and syphilis as well as many other non-pathogenic bacteria) have lost the ability to live independently. They have shed much of their own DNA and have become dependent on the gene products of the human host.

Scientists call this relationship “cyclical symbiosis” and have shown that in this type of symbiosis, virus-like particles are created as part of the integration process between the symbiont partners. These virus-like particles are not the disease-causing agents themselves; they are simply packets of genetic information being exchanged between co-evolved symbionts. Reverse transcriptases and virus-like particles are abundant in such cyclical symbioses.

Is it possible that HIV and other retroviruses are not disease-causing agents at all, but are rather genetic messages being passed between symbiotic partner cells? If so, that would explain why AIDS vaccine trials failed so spectacularly. It would also explain why HIV fails every one of Koch’s postulates for a disease causing agent.

Is it possible that the conventional HIV-AIDS medical orthodoxy is wrong? That certainly would explain why we are no closer to a cure today than we were 25 years ago when AIDS was first discovered; nor have we experienced the long predicted “AIDS pandemic.” There were approximately 1 million AIDS cases in 1990 and there are roughly that number today.

But the implications for public health are far more serious. The ongoing disintegration of the conventional medical theories about HIV-AIDS demonstrates that the National Institute of Health and the Food and Drug Administration have failed the public spectacularly yet again. It also means that thousands of patients are being erroneously treated with toxic, potentially deadly, AIDS drugs.

The entire HIV-AIDS paradigm must be re-evaluated.

Everything You Know About AIDS is Wrong

By Sheila Casey / RCFP

On April 23, 1984, Secretary of Health and Human Services Margaret Heckler and researcher Robert Gallo from the National Cancer Institute held a press conference and announced that Gallo had found the cause of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), the retrovirus HIV. Heckler estimated that a vaccine would be available in just two years. That same day in 1984, Gallo patented the blood test to detect the HIV antibodies.

As a retrovirus researcher, Gallo had previously tried to pin the blame for Alzheimer’s, leukemia and neurological disorders on a retrovirus, all without success. Now AIDS was in his sights.

But Gallo had skipped an important step in the scientific process: his HIV research had never been subjected to peer review, and was not published until after the press conference with Heckler had already conferred legitimacy on it.

Billions of dollars poured into research programs and millions of people lined up to have their blood checked; by 2006, 72 million Americans had been tested, with a third of that number tested every year. As its creator, Gallo received a percentage of the cost of each test.

To receive a positive HIV test result was considered a death sentence: you would get AIDS and die a miserable death, sooner or later.

As the years passed, it became apparent that this was not true. Only five percent of the people who tested HIV positive went on to develop AIDS. A vaccine has never been found. And there is now a growing group of scientists who dispute that HIV causes AIDS.

Peter Duesberg is a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. Duesberg earned renown as one of the scientists to discover a cancer gene in 1970, and earned tenure at UC Berkeley at the age of 36. At 49 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and in 1986 he received a prestigious grant from the National Institutes of Health.

He was on the fast-track to receive the Nobel until he published an article in 1987 in Cancer Research challenging the consensus that HIV is the cause of AIDS. After that his funding dried up and he was dismissed as a misguided contrarian by those with careers and billions in funding riding on the view that HIV is the cause of AIDS.

The views of Dr. Duesberg, David Crowe, Dr. Charles Geshekter, and other disidents who dispute the infectious model for AIDS are summarized below.

1) All viruses are harmless after antibody immunity. Disease is caused before the antibodies are created, because it is the antibodies that neutralize the pathogen and enable the host to recover. When people test positive for the antibodies, that means they have developed resistance, ‘immunity’ to the virus. No microbe causes disease only after antibodies have appeared, as HIV is claimed to do. Why develop a vaccine for people who already have the antibodies to the disease? Duesberg: “there is no virus in AIDS patients, only antibodies.”

2) Retroviruses, which are one type of virus, do not kill T-cells. They do not kill the cell they infect—ever. (AIDS is diagnosed partly by a deficiency of T-cells.)

3) HIV does not infect enough T-cells to cause disease.

4) No retrovirus causes disease and there is no logical reason why they should.

5) Viruses replicate quickly; there is no such thing as a slow virus. If a host cannot mount an immune defense quickly enough, the virus will overwhelm and kill the host in a matter of days or weeks. Yet we are told that HIV can cause up to 30 different diseases ten years after initial infection. None of these diseases are specific to AIDS; all existed prior to the “discovery” of AIDS.

6) HIV is not a new virus. When a virus is new in a population that has never been exposed to it, it explodes exponentially. But this is not what we see with AIDS. The number of AIDS cases hasn’t changed since 1985.

7) It fails Koch’s Postulates, which require four steps to verify that an infectious agent is the cause of a disease.

1. the agent must be found in all cases of the disease;

2. it must be isolated from the host;

3. it must cause the same disease when injected into a healthy host; and

4. it must then be found growing again in the newly infected host.

HIV fails all of these tests. Although theoretically it can be found and isolated from a host, this is in practice very difficult to do, since the HIV virus is not found in humans; only antibodies to HIV are found.

The history of medicine has many examples of diseases which were assumed to be infectious but later proved not to be. Scurvy is caused by a vitamin C deficiency, Beriberi is caused by a thiamine deficiency, and pellagra is caused by a niacin deficiency. All failed Koch’s postulates and all ultimately proved to be non-infectious dietary deficiencies.

8) AIDS has remained in its original risk groups and has not broken out into the general population. Outside of Africa, 97% of AIDS patients are homosexuals, IV drug users, hemophiliacs and transfusion patients.

9) The US Army tests recruits for HIV and finds the virus evenly divided between men and woman, yet AIDS is 90% a male disease.

10) With other infectious diseases, cases are always seen among the doctors and nurses who work with infected patients—but this has not happened with AIDS. Medical workers are actually less likely to become sick with AIDS than the general population.

11) AIDS behaves differently depending on geography. African AIDS appears to be a completely different disease. In part, this is because in Africa, no HIV test is necessary for diagnosis. A patient is considered to have AIDS if he exhibits three of the 4 symptoms: persistent cough, persistent fever, persistent diarrhea and weight loss. These also happen to be the symptoms of malaria, malnutrition and tuberculosis, but there are no large funding programs for those diseases. If something is called AIDS, money pours in.

12) According to David Crowe, president of Rethinking AIDS, and founder and president of the Alberta Reappraising AIDS Society, HIV is not transmitted sexually. He quotes a study done in the 90s on seroconversion in couples where one partner was HIV positive and the other HIV negative. Not a single case was found where the HIV negative partner became positive, even after years of unprotected sex.

13) Different risk groups manifest AIDS in a different way. IV drug users get tuberculosis and wasting syndrome, gays get Kaposi’s Sarcoma. Yet these specific diseases also occur in high numbers among members of these risk groups who do not have HIV infection. If an IV drug user has tuberculosis and no HIV antibodies, he is simply diagnosed with tuberculosis. If he has tuberculosis and does have HIV antibodies, he is diagnosed with AIDS. It is this method of defining AIDS that assures a high correlation between HIV infection and the constellation of diseases defined as AIDS.

14) HIV supposedly causes 30 different diseases. All other viruses cause only one disease. Duesberg: “There is no HIV specific disease anywhere.”

15) AIDS occurs without HIV infection, and 95% of those with HIV infection never get AIDS. Despite all this, it is clear that people are sick and dying. If not HIV, what are they dying from? AIDS is a condition of suppressed immunity, and there are many things that can suppress immunity. One of the worst is the HIV drug AZT, which destroys the bone marrow and which Duesberg describes as “the most toxic drug ever licensed for long term consumption in the free world.” Many people who test positive for HIV antibodies are told they must go on these dangerous drugs—even though they are completely healthy.

In a tragic case described by Celia Farber in the March 2006 Harpers magazine, Joyce Ann Hafford, a healthy 33 year old single mother, four months pregnant, was enrolled in an HIV drug trial, put on three anti-HIV drugs in June, and was dead by August 1. Although Hafford felt completely well prior to the drug trial and the drugs immediately made her violently ill, she stayed on them in the belief that she must, at all costs, prevent passing the HIV virus on to her unborn child. Hafford had only one HIV test prior to enrolling in the study, and was never told that pregnancy can cause a false positive HIV test.

According to Duesberg, recreational drug use also suppresses immunity and the gay community has, to some degree, brought their woes upon themselves. He points out that it is common knowledge that toxic foreign substances cause disease: alcohol causes cirrhosis of the liver and smoking causes emphysema. But gay activists typically dismiss it as homophobia to point out that drug use and sexual promiscuity can result in lowered immunity.

Crowe says that gay community leaders essentially had a choice between facing up to promiscuity in the gay population, or to the rampant use of recreational drugs such as inhalant nitrate poppers. They were willing to face up to the promiscuity, but not the drug use.

Because recreational drugs such as heroin, cocaine, speed and poppers suppress immunity, many gay men use large amounts of antibiotics to combat infections. Repeated antibiotic use eventually wears down the immune system.

If a gay man with a depressed immune system develops pneumonia and is found to be HIV positive, he will be diagnosed with AIDS and put on toxic HIV drugs, which will further destroy his immune system and virtually guarantee his eventual death.

According to AIDS dissidents such as Crowe and Duesberg, gay community leaders have unwittingly contributed to prolonging the fiction of a viral cause of AIDS, due to their unwillingness to confront and change the behaviors that are destroying the immune systems of gay men. Instead, they have successfully clamored for more research dollars focusing on the infectious model, drawing a disproportionate amount of funding away from other, more prevalent diseases such as cancer and heart disease.

But what about Africa? Surely there are not large numbers of Africans inhaling poppers and overloading their immune systems with antibiotics? Yet we are told that AIDS is decimating Africa, and that Africa is teeming with AIDS orphans who have lost both parents to the disease.

Yes, say the AIDS dissidents, Africans are much sicker now than they were 25 years ago. Colonialism has destroyed traditional societies, and there is rampant malnutrition, malaria, war, poverty and a lack of clean drinking water.

According to Charles Geshekter, Ph.D., a three-time Fulbright scholar who teaches African history at California State University in Chico, the current explanation for the AIDS epidemic in Africa is based on racist beliefs about African promiscuity. In fact, says Geshekter, the European communities in South Africa are far more promiscuous than the Africans, yet AIDS is practically unknown among the Europeans, who are much richer, well-fed, and have access to clean drinking water.

Also, virtually all HIV testing in Africa is done at pre-natal clinics. Although pregnancy causes high numbers of false positives, statisticians extrapolate from the tiny numbers at the clinics to the continent at large, giving the impression of a vast epidemic. In addition to pregnancy, there are 70 different conditions—including use of cosmetics and skin lighteners—that can cause false positives for the HIV antibody.

“After 25 years of a so-called epidemic, with unlimited amounts of money being spent, there is absolutely nothing to show for it,” says Geshekter. He posits that there is not supposed to be an end to the AIDS epidemic in Africa – it is just supposed to keep going. “To ask hard questions threatens the livelihood of the thousands of AIDS researchers, as well as the journalists who have won Pulitzer Prizes for conforming to the received wisdom about AIDS in Africa,” says Geshekter.

Geshekter says that humanitarian groups have a strong incentive to hide the truth about AIDS in Africa. “All the people with money in Africa are those in AIDS programs.” He goes on to explain that there is little money for organizations helping Africans build wells and improve their nutrition and sanitation—but billions upon billions poured into programs to fight AIDS. As for journalists, Geshekter states baldly that those who report the truth about AIDS lose their jobs, while massive research organizations would shrivel up and die if it became known that HIV does not cause AIDS.

The pharmaceutical companies would be wiped out by lawsuits from the survivors of the millions of people who have died after taking toxic HIV drugs, if the truth were to come out. It seems that everyone is making money from the AIDS epidemic – all at the expense of those who suffer and die from the constellation of diseases, many of them pharmaceutically induced, we call AIDS.

In 1990, Neville Hodgkinson, then medical and science correspondent of the London Sunday Times, wrote: “If HIV does not cause AIDS, then we will have witnessed the biggest medical and scientific blunder of this century.”

Eighteen years later, it seems all but certain that Hodgkinson was right.

Sheila Casey is a DC-based journalist. Her work has appeared in The Denver Post, Reuters, Chicago Sun-Times, Dissident Voice, Common Dreams and the Rock Creek Free Press. She blogs at sheilacasey.com

A Guilty Agent: The Shadowy Role of Timothy McVeigh

On the left, McVeigh in Waco in 1993. On the right, an alleged McVeigh from recently surfaced video at Camp Grafton, North Dakota fi lmed in August 1993— well after McVeigh was honorably discharged from service in May 1992. Was McVeigh being secretly trained, as he told his sister, to be a paid government assassin? - JonesReport.com

By Wendy S. Painting
What may seem like conspiracy theories surrounding the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, have been given more credibility do to newly released internal defense memos for Timothy James McVeigh, who was convicted and executed for his role as “Mastermind” and “Lone Wolf Bomber.” McVeigh, who was said to have orchestrated the bombing with minimal help from two Army buddies, may not have been what he seemed.

A source out of Austin, Texas memorialized in the documents gives weight to previous evidence and supports the existence of a real life conspiracy theory. The source, who because of privacy concerns, will be referred to simply as “D.” D was known to have had heavy ties to U.S intelligence agencies as well as groups targeted for Federal investigation and infiltration, such as White Supremacists, Neo- Nazis and Militia members. On March 9, 1996, D gave a statement to McVeigh’s defense team, laying out several shocking details which have now, thirteen years later, been corroborated by other sources.

Immediately after the bombing many journalists put forth the story that McVeigh had flunked out of Special Forces. This is one reason often cited for his intense anger at the government, which they say, caused him to wage war on ordinary American citizens. D told the defense that Timothy McVeigh was working for the Federal government and was assigned to infiltrate the neo- Nazi Skinhead movement, yet D’s claims that McVeigh was working for the government are not made by him alone, and are supported by other internal defense memos and various other credible sources.

Another supporting memo shows that in 1991, when McVeigh applied to work for a well known security company in Buffalo, New York, he had advised his soon to be employers that he held DOD Secret Clearance. McVeigh’s military records also reflect on the fact that he held a SECRET clearance.

The fact that McVeigh was indeed accepted into Special Forces and went on the work for the government during the time leading up to the bombing is supported not only by his previous employers and military records, but by the claims of Terry Nichols, convicted co conspirator, McVeigh’s younger sister, and claims of McVeigh himself. Nichols, in 2006, stated that that in November 1992 McVeigh told him he had been recruited by the Army for an undercover mission. This is also the exact time, according to other defense records which reveal that McVeigh was suddenly able to pay off all of his credit card bills after he had accumulated an enormous debt while gambling on the Buffalo Bills. McVeigh also advised his defense team that he had been issued a DOD issued credit card in the years prior to the bombing.

Another memo dated December of 1995, states that McVeigh, who joined the National Guard in Upstate New York, after his return from the Gulf War and alleged Special Forces “flunk out,” became highly agitated and upset when his defense confronted him with some disturbing information. When McVeigh was asked by his lawyers what exactly his job had been while in the National Guard, McVeigh, the model solider, stated he did not remember, something which would have been highly uncharacteristic of him. His lawyers then confronted and questioned him as to why he told his first lawyer, immediately after the bombing, that he had been “operating within the confines of the United States Government” when he bombed the Murrah building. McVeigh had confided to his first lawyer that he had been recruited by the government while serving in the National Guard and that his job was to “search for neo-Nazis and other problem troops within the Guard,” which further corroborate D’s claims.

Additionally, he told his original council that he was only supposed to blow out a few windows of the federal building but that the truck had been switched possibly without his knowledge.” After confronting McVeigh about this, his council noted that he became highly angry, and stated that he thought he had told the previous lawyer this information in confidentiality.

That the damage to the Murrah building was much more severe than could be expected from the Lone Ryder truck bomb, is not only supported by his first defense attorney, but also by the mysterious source D himself, who says that McVeigh’s government handler instructed McVeigh on the morning of the bombing, to park the Ryder truck in front of the Murrah building and then meet him at a nearby restaurant. However, D says, things did not go according to plan, and at 9:02 A.M on the morning of April 19, 1995, the Ryder truck, which was filled with ammonium nitrate and a large amount of C-4, detonated. Immediately afterwards, D claims, “strategically placed charges” blew out the four main building supports. D’s statement also align with original media accounts, first responder transcripts, seismographs and expert witnesses who believe the destruction done that was done to the building, was caused by much more than a “Lone Ryder.”

Furthermore, D also claimed he was “convinced that the Oklahoma City bombing had international connections which included Great Britain and Germany, and that there seemed to be no doubt that Timothy McVeigh was used simply as a tool by the actual perpetrators to carry out this mission.”That other countries could have been involved is also evidenced by the involvement of another major player in the saga of the bombing, German born Andreas Strassmeir, member of the elite GS9 German Counter Terrorism unit. “Andy the German,” as he was known around gun show circuits in the 1990’s, had been part of a joint U.S- German operation to infiltrate and track the sources of banned white power literature within Germany which was thought to originate in the United States.

Andy the German first appeared within the United States in the summer of 1989 when he was seen at a KKK rally in Texas. He then went on to act as head of security at a separatist compound in Oklahoma called Elohim City where he also provided paramilitary training. Strassmeir, although having been seen with McVeigh by an ATF informant at Elohim City, was also close associates of another man, Dennis Mahon, head of the Oklahoma KKK, and was being watched by the ATF and FBI for plans to blow up federal buildings. Strassmeir was allowed to return to Germany without being questioned by the FBI concerning his knowledge of the plot. Mahon, it seems, who admitted to knowing McVeigh, was never questioned. The fact that Strassmeir appeared in the U.S in the summer of 1989 in intriguing given that this was the same time that McVeigh returned from Germany after being involved in a “Change Up Program” the with German military, during his “active” duty in the military.

D then says that certain watchdog agencies, who had been tracking McVeigh for months before the bombing, had achieved their objective because the militias and skinheads were blaming the Feds and vise versa, and that in the midst of this confusion, then President Bill Clinton was able to pass his new Anti-Terrorism bill, which had been continuously shot down prior to the bombing. This bill, when read carefully, looks like a close relative of current post 9/11 legislation, including then widely expanded and unprecedented domestic spying capabilities and the erosion of habeas corpus.

Perhaps D is correct. Regardless, the fact that there is now much evidence to show that McVeigh’s role was much more obscure and intentionally hidden than previously thought, should be a concern of students of history, as well as those who support such needless legislation, such as the current H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, also called by many a “thought crime” bill, out of fear for the next Lone Nut Domestic Terrorist. Americans now live in a strange culture of consumerism and fear, are told continuously that they must be very fearful and vigilant against all kinds of terrors, including body odor, sexual impotence, road rage, bird flu, human flu, ADD and terrorists. We often thoughtlessly accept the remedies given, even when they are not in our own best interest.

Wendy S. Painting lives in Rochester, New York. She has a Masters in Humanities, from the State University of New York at Buffalo and she is currently writing a book on the Oklahoma City Bombing

Where Was NORAD on 9/11?

By Dean M. Jackson - Washington, DC

Testifying before the 9/11 Commission General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the commission in response to a question on NORAD’s failure to anticipate the 9/11 attacks, “I can’t answer the hypothetical. It’s more - it’s the way that we were directed to posture, looking outward.” As we will see below NORAD, since its inception in 1958, was tasked with more than merely “looking outward”.

I found General Myers’ testimony on the capabilities of NORAD on 9/11 to be surprising, since it was long assumed that NORAD’s mission was more than “looking outward”. However, the 9/11 Truth Movement has been negligent in producing any documents that would confirm their suspicion that NORAD was tasked with watching over and intercepting errant aircraft in American skies before 9/11; that NORAD’s mission was more robust than “looking outward”. The following pre-9/11 citations conclusively documents the true capabilities of NORAD on the morning of 9/11.

“The NORAD mission is threefold. NORAD’s first responsibility is to provide surveillance and control of the airspace covering North America, specifically the airspace of Canada and the United States. This mission is based on agreements between the two governments….

The second part of NORAD’s mission is to provide the NCAs [National Command Authorities] with tactical warning and attack assessment of an aerospace attack against North America. This information is essential to providing those in command with information to aid them in making decisions on how to respond to an attack against North America.

NORAD’s third responsibility is to provide an appropriate response to any form of air attack. NORAD was created to provide a defense against the threat from air-breathing aircraft, specifically the threat from long-range bombers. However, over the years the threat has changed. Now NORAD must provide an appropriate response to a multitude of threats, to include the air-launched cruise missile (ALCM) and the sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM).”
— NORAD AIR DEFENSE OVERVIEW; Northeast Parallel Architectures Center, Syracuse University, pre-1995 (http://www.npac.syr.edu/projects/civ/vanguard/C2Demo/OPRef.html).

The last two missions constitute NORAD’s “outward” search for hostile aircraft approaching the North American continent. NORAD’s first mission, however, tasks the agency to monitor and control all aircraft within the United States’ and Canada’s air space. This is what NORAD calls “air sovereignty”. Let’s take a closer look at what constitutes “air sovereignty”.

As reported by the General Accounting Office in 1994 (GAO/NSIAD-94-76)

“NORAD defines air sovereignty as providing surveillance and control of the territorial airspace, which includes:
1. intercepting and destroying uncontrollable air objects;
2. tracking hijacked aircraft;
3. assisting aircraft in distress;
4. escorting Communist civil aircraft; and
5. intercepting suspect aircraft, including counterdrug operations and peacetime military intercepts.”

“NORAD defines ‘sovereign airspace’ as: the airspace over a nation’s territory, internal waters, and territorial seas. NORAD’s territorial seas extend 12 miles from the continental United States, Alaska, and Canada. Sovereign airspace above a nation’s territory is unlimited.”
— NORAD AIR DEFENSE OVERVIEW; Northeast Parallel Architectures Center, Syracuse University, pre-1995 (http://www.npac.syr.edu/projects/civ/vanguard/C2Demo/OPRef.html).

Let’s examine further citations from the 1990s that detail NORAD’s true capabilities on 9/11.

The article NORAD: Air National Guard manning stations across the country (National Guard Association of the United States, Sep. 1997) explains how NORAD’s six battle management and command centers identify commercial aircraft as these aircraft are being monitored flying through our air space, “Aircraft flying over our air space are monitored seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Much of the identifying process is done by hand.

Flight plans from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) are compiled in logs and have to be manually searched to identify aircraft.”
—(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3731/is_199709/ai_n8766326.)

.

“The Air Operations Center (AOC) (also known as the Air Defense Operations Center - ADOC) maintains constant surveillance of North American airspace to prevent overflight by hostile aircraft. It tracks over 2.5 million aircraft annually. The ADOC collects and consolidates surveillance information on suspected drug-carrying aircraft entering or operating within North America, and provides this information to counternarcotics agencies.”
— Cheyenne Mountain Complex; Federation of American Scientists, 1999 (http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/c3i/cmc.htm).

“One ongoing mission of the Battle Management Center is to coordinate “air sovereignty” efforts, monitoring every aircraft that enters U.S. or Canadian airspace — some 2.5 million a year. NORAD is asked to investigate aircraft that do not file flight plans, contact ground controllers or identify themselves with transponders.”
— Cheyenne Mountain: America’s underground watchtower; CNN Interactive, 1999 (http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/experience/the.bomb/route/01.cheyenne/).

“In 1998, Canada posses the ability to detect, identify, and if necessary intercept aircraft over Canadian territory. The “Canadianisation” of NORAD operations over Canada is complete. Though we still rely heavily on the Americans for the Integrated Tactical Warning and Attack Assessment and mutual defense, we have successfully transitioned on at least one of the three core functions of NORAD [surveillance and control of sovereign airspace].”
— Canadian Aerospace Sovereignty: In Pursuit of a Comprehensive Capability, by Maj François Malo; Department of National Defence (Canada), 1998 (http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/canada/0056.htm).

According to the article The Border Guards, NORAD: The Eyes and Ears of North America (http://www.af.mil/news/airman/0196/border.htm, 1996), in 1996 NORAD prepared and practiced “its charter through continuous training and a realistic exercise program. Probably the biggest of these exercises is Amalgam Warrior, which is held twice annually in the fall for the East Coast and in the spring for the West Coast. The five-day fall Amalgam Warrior put Americans and Canadians through their paces, challenging forces in three areas coinciding with the command’s aerospace warning, air sovereignty and air defense missions.

The exercise was conducted in real time with a fictitious world political scenario, which prompted NORAD forces to transition from a peacetime posture to a war-fighting stance. The threat escalated from tracking unknown aircraft, which filed bad flight plans or wandered off course, and in-flight emergencies [all four hijacked aircraft on 9/11 were also in-flight emergencies] to terrorist aircraft attacks and large-scale bomber strike missions.”

How important is the “air sovereignty” mission to the Air Force? Colonel Dan Navin, special assistant to the commander of 1st Air Force in 1997 speaks to this question when he commented,”…many say [it] is the most important job of the Air Force, and that is air sovereignty.”

In point of fact, not only was NORAD postured to look inward on the morning of 9/11, but not long after the ‘collapse’ of the USSR NORAD’s inward mission-air sovereignty-was to become the raison d’être

for its continued existence. A NORAD strategy review emphasized a new justification for its core forces soon after the ‘demise’ of the USSR-that of peacetime air sovereignty:

“The dramatically changed threat and . . . development of post-Cold War defense policies suggest real possibilities for shifting NORAD’s focus from deterring massive nuclear attack to defending both nations [Canada and the United States] by maintaining air sovereignty . . . . The size of the core force would equate to that required to perform the peacetime Air Sovereignty mission.”

By the mid-1990s the shift in NORAD’s focus was complete according to the GAO: “According to the Chairman [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff], the air defense force was structured to intercept the former Soviet Union’s long-range bomber force if it attacked over the North Pole. Since that threat has largely disappeared, the United States no longer needs a dedicated continental air defense force, and the force has refocused its activity on the air sovereignty mission…” We learn that by 1995 NORAD had changed its priorities. NORAD’s main mission of defending the continent against a massive nuclear attack would now take a back seat to the less glamorous inward mission of air sovereignty.

As Commander-in-Chief, North American Aerospace Defense Command from August 1998 to February 2000, General Richard Myers would have known that NORAD’s mission included surveillance and control of the territorial air space within the United States. Therefore when General Myers told the 9/11 Commission in response to NORAD’s mission, “I can’t answer the hypothetical. It’s more - it’s the way that we were directed to posture, looking outward” he knowingly committed perjury. As such, the United States Department of Justice now has the duty to charge General Richard Myers with perjury and determine why he committed perjury.

Now I understand why so many of us in the 9/11 Truth Movement seemed to remember that before 9/11 NORAD was tasked with more than just “looking outward”. That’s because before 9/11 the press, media, the government, including the militaries of both the United States and Canada, told us that one of NORAD’s responsibilities was surveillance and control of the territorial airspace above us.

The questions remain. Where was NORAD on 9/11? If they truly failed in their mission so badly on 9/11, why was no one fired or reprimanded?

Dean Jackson is a writer and 9/11 researcher in Washington, DC. His website, DNotice.org provides rigorous analysis of major issues concerning government malfeasance.

FBI Sweeps Anthrax Under the Rug

By Sheila Casey and Barry Kissin
US Attorney Jeff Taylor was sweating on August 6, as he laid out his case against the late Dr. Bruce Ivins at a news conference-and with good reason. Anyone familiar with the case is well aware that Dr. Ivins was railroaded, and that the news conference was a flimsy web of lies.

Ivins had nothing to do with the 2001 anthrax attacks. The attacks were almost certainly carried out by the only group that had the means to produce the highly weaponized anthrax in the letters: the CIA, its contractor Battelle Memorial Institute of West Jefferson, Ohio., and the Army at Dugway in Utah.

The DOJ-FBI frame-up of Ivins rests heavily upon the claim of new advances in genetic testing which supposedly prove that the killer anthrax could have come only from Ivins’ flask.

Jeff Taylor stated:

The FBI sought out the best experts in the scientific community and, over time, four highly sensitive and specific tests were developed that were capable of detecting the unique qualities of the anthrax used in the 2001 attacks.

This is an outright lie. No special tests were required to assess the genetic heritage of the Ames strain in the envelopes. The Washington Post reported on December 16, 2001 that “only five laboratories so far have been found to have spores with perfect genetic matches to those in the Senate letters.”

The distinguishing feature of the anthrax that killed five people in 2001 is not related to its genes. What made that anthrax unique was that it was highly weaponized. Anthrax is a common pathogen found in the soil in many places. It doesn’t become lethal unless produced in such a way that it behaves like a gas, floating easily in the air and deep into a victim’s lungs.

The anthrax used in the attacks was beyond cutting edge. Donald A. Henderson, former assistant secretary for the Office of Public Health Preparedness at the Department of Health and Human Services, told Science magazine: “It just didn’t have to be that good” to be lethal.

Why the killer anthrax was so deadly

1. Precisely sized particles-1.5 to 5 microns. Anything smaller is exhaled, anything larger tends to get caught either in the nose or in the cilia in the trachea.

2. Coated with silica. The silica acted as a buffer, preventing spores from adhering to one another. The silica on the attack anthrax rested on a thin layer of polymerized glass, which is a highly advanced technique for coating anthrax spores. To do this required a “spray dryer,” the cheapest of which sells for $50,000. The lyophilizer in Ivins’ lab is used to dry anthrax, but can NOT be used to coat the spores with silica. Ivins did not have a spray dryer.

3. Highly concentrated. The letter to Senator Daschle’s office contained two grams of anthrax, about the weight of a dime. Each gram contained a trillion pure spores of anthrax, or enough to kill 200 million people.

4. Electro-statically charged. The slight charge on each spore caused it to repel the other spores and spread out into the room after the envelope was opened.

It is these attributes of the anthrax-not its genetic heritage-which made it so unique and so lethal.

The source of the anthrax was clear in 2001

US Attorney Jeff Taylor characterized a flask in Dr. Ivin’s possession as “the murder weapon.” But a Dec. 12, 2001 article in the Baltimore Sun stated:

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 mail attacks that have killed five people.

The article refers to Dugway as “the only site in the United States where weapons-grade anthrax has been made in recent years,” and also includes this:

Dugway’s production of weapons-grade anthrax, which has never before been publicly revealed, is apparently the first by the U.S. government since President Richard M. Nixon ordered the U.S. offensive biowarfare program closed in 1969.

The following day, The Washington Post echoed the Sun article:

An Army biological and chemical warfare facility in Utah has been quietly developing a virulent, weapons-grade formulation of anthrax spores since at least 1992.

On Dec 16, 2001, The Washington Post corroborated the Sun report by stating that “Dugway is the only facility known in recent years to have processed anthrax spores into the powdery form that is most easily inhaled,” also stating, “Army officials in Washington said yesterday that Fort Detrick does not have the equipment for making dried anthrax spores.”

On September 4, 2001, The New York Timest explained:

“Over the past several years, the United States has embarked on a program of secret research on biological weapons … even the [Clinton] White House was unaware of their full scope. The projects, which have not been previously disclosed … have been embraced by the Bush administration, which intends to expand them.”

These projects involve the CIA, Battelle Memorial Laboratories in West Jefferson, Ohio, and the Army at Dugway in Utah.

“[T]he need to keep such projects secret was a significant reason behind President Bush’s recent rejection of a draft agreement to strengthen the germ-weapons treaty, [the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention,] which has been signed by 143 nations.”

Had the treaty been strengthened, the Dugway and West Jefferson sites would have been subject to international inspections. It is important to note that Battelle not only operates its own labs in West Jefferson, but also is contracted by the Army to operate the labs at Dugway.

The DOJ-FBI news conference on August 6, 2008 was a deliberate attempt to divert attention from the secret anthrax weaponization projects by pinning the crimes on a dead man. So far the DOJ-FBI have succeeded in covering up the real perpetrators of the crime, concealing the illegal weapons program, and persuading many that it is time to close the investigation.

Dr. Ivins was an immunologist; he had neither the knowledge nor the equipment to produce the silica-coated, electro-statically charged, 1.5 to 5 micron sized, one trillion spore per gram anthrax that was mailed to Senators Leahy and Daschle.

The DOJ has made much of the fact that Ivins worked 45 extra hours in September and October of 2001. Yet when the FBI attempted to reverse engineer the weaponized anthrax from the attacks, they admitted after a year of trying that they were unable to come up with a product as potent as that in the letters.

Scientists doubt FBI’s story

As far back as October 28, 2002, The Washington Post reported that bio-weapons experts were skeptical about the view that the anthrax in the letters could have come from a lone nut:

“In my opinion, there are maybe four or five people in the whole country who might be able to make this stuff, and I’m one of them,” said Richard O. Spertzel, former deputy commander of USAMRIID (the Army bio-defense facility at Detrick). “And even with a good lab and staff to help run it, it might take me a year to come up with a product as good.”

Writing in The New York Timest on Aug. 9, 2008, Gerry Andrews, an assistant professor of microbiology at the University of Wyoming, described the envelopes’ contents as “a startlingly refined weapons-grade anthrax spore preparation, the likes of which had never been seen before by personnel at Fort Detrick.” He continued: “It is extremely improbable that this type of preparation could ever have been produced at Fort Detrick, certainly not of the grade and quality found in that envelope.”

Abundant evidence that Ivins is innocent

Ivins passed two polygraph tests and no link was made between his handwriting and that on the anthrax letters. Investigators were so frustrated at Ivins passing the polygraph tests that they searched his house for books or articles on how to fool a polygraph, but found none.

US Attorney Jeff Taylor stated that the investigators zeroed in on Ivins when they “conducted additional investigative steps,” and thus were “able to narrow the focus even further, exclude individuals, and that left us looking at Dr. Ivins.”

Those “additional investigative steps” were polygraph tests. Where passing a polygraph test was enough to exclude certain people, it did not exclude Ivins.

Ivins’ car, work locker, safe deposit box and house were thoroughly swabbed for anthrax spores multiple times over the space of years; not a single spore was found, although the killer anthrax was so highly weaponized that it behaved like a gas and was very difficult to contain.

None of the materials in the mailings were found at his house: not the tape, the envelopes, nor the pen used to write the letters. There isn’t one piece of evidence placing him in New Jersey at the time the letters were mailed: not a credit card receipt, restaurant receipt, nor a witness.

On August 3, 2008, Glen Greenwald wrote in Salon:

It is so vital to emphasize that not a shred of evidence has yet been presented that the now-deceased Bruce Ivins played any role in the anthrax attacks, let alone that he was the sole or even primary culprit. Nonetheless, just as they did with Steven Hatfill, the media (with some notable and important exceptions) are reporting this case as though the matter is resolved.”

Bruce Ivins: juggler, Red Cross volunteer, pianist

Jeff Taylor’s case against Ivins rests heavily on claims that Ivins was mentally ill. If Ivins was truly so unhinged, why was he allowed to work with toxic substances? His security clearance was never revoked.

Certainly a brilliant homicidal serial killer who is determined to avoid detection would immediately get rid of the Ames strain with the incriminating genotype in his flask, if he had used it to make weaponized powder and kill five people. Yet seven years later, the same genotype was still in Ivins’ lab!

The DOJ and FBI ask us to believe that Ivins launched the attacks because his vaccine research was not going well and he feared he might lose his job. It’s just not a plausible motivation.

In 2003, Ivins received the Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service-the highest award given to the Defense Department’s civilian employees. He had been a respected scientist at USAMRIID for 35 years and had a very secure job.

Ivins had been married for 33 years. He played keyboard at his local church, he was a member of the American Red Cross, an avid juggler and founder of the Frederick Jugglers. He also played keyboards in a Celtic band and would often compose and play songs for coworkers who were moving to new jobs.

The FBI focused on him as a probable fall guy in 2006, and for two years was all over him, repeatedly questioning him, searching his home, car and office, and confronting him and his family in public with accusations that he had “killed people.” His daughter was shown pictures of dead anthrax victims and told “your father did this.” His son was promised $2.5 million and a sports car of his choice if he would implicate his father in the anthrax attacks. Who among us would not resort to drink, or drugs, or fantasies of revenge under those circumstances?

Who had the expertise to weaponize anthrax?

William C. Patrick III, and Ken Alibek.

William Patrick was the originator of the first anthrax weaponization process. He has five patents on anthrax weaponization and wrote a paper in 1999 setting out exactly what an anthrax attack by mail would look like.

Patrick’s scenario is very similar to what actually happened in 2001. For example, he suggests no more than 2.5 grams of anthrax per envelope; the envelopes contained two grams. One footnote in his paper reveals “we now have the ability to purify to one trillion spores per gram.” William Patrick was a consultant to the CIA, Battelle, the Army, the DIA and the FBI on bio-weapons.

Ken Alibek headed up the Soviet bio-weapon programs until defecting to the USA in 1992. He brought with him the technology that was key in the anthrax attacks: using polymerized glass to attach silica to the anthrax spores. He worked for Battelle Memorial Institute in the late 90s.

These men had to have been instrumental in developing the technology used in the 2001 anthrax attacks.

Who can control the FBI, DOJ and the media?

The significance of the railroading of the deceased Ivins cannot be overstated. This railroading is not a matter of incompetence. In detail after detail, the joint FBI-DOJ prosecution deliberately lies, evades and obfuscates in a desperate attempt to pin blame somewhere and close the case. (A transcript of the entire August 6 news conference is available on npr.org, titled “DOJ News Conference On Bruce Ivins.”)

US Attorney Jeff Taylor states at the news conference that the envelopes used in the attacks were “very likely sold at a post office in the Frederick, Md. area,” and that Ivins had a post office box there. This is another outright lie. Taylor’s own application for a search warrant stated:

…envelopes with printing defects, identical to printing defects identified on the envelopes utilized in the anthrax attacks during the fall of 2001, were collected from the Fairfax Main post office in Fairfax, Virginia, and the Cumberland and Elkton post offices in Maryland…

Taylor and his supervisors at DOJ must be hoping that no one will notice or care that they are blatantly lying about their evidence against Ivins.

Reading the transcript, it is striking how often Jeff Taylor and Joseph Persichini refuse to answer questions. They either refer reporters to the Department of Defense (which is not holding a news conference) or to the documents they have been given.

When asked when their all new, ground-breaking DNA research would be published, Taylor replies “I’m not going to comment on (that).” When asked a direct question about how many others were investigated other than Ivins, Taylor replies “I’m not going to get into the details.” Not only does he not get into the details, he doesn’t even give us the broad strokes. When asked how he can be so sure that there wasn’t another person involved, Taylor replies:

The evidence I described in my statement, and that I’ve described throughout this question-and-answer period, as I said, led us to conclude that Dr. Ivins is the person who committed this crime. We are confident, based on the evidence we have, that we could prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt.

In other words, he doesn’t answer.

Honest citizens must ask themselves: who are the FBI and DOJ protecting? Who has the ability to control and corrupt an investigation of this importance? And why, after sitting through a news conference that is obviously a hastily constructed web of lies, have so many journalists dutifully reported the story just as instructed by Jeff Taylor?

We no longer have a working government in the United States. What we have are functionaries in various departments-Congress, FBI, DOJ, CIA-who take their orders from the corporations who make vast sums of money waging war and selling vaccines. Their influence extends to the major media outlets who control the flow of information to the American people. We are increasingly enslaved, manipulated and murdered by these corporations, and very few of us seem to realize it.



Sheila Casey is a DC based journalist. Her work has appeared in The Denver Post, Buzz Flash, Common Dreams and Dissident Voice. She blogs at http://www.sheilacasey.com Barry Kissin is an attorney/peace activist based in Frederick, MD, home of Fort Detrick.