Those with an interest should check out the library of US Army CBR-D field manuals I have assembled, detailing tactics, techniques, and procedures for reconnaissance, avoidance, detection, and decontamination, of nuclear, biological, and chemical war agents, and treatment of exposed personnel, all in PDF format.

``I was a 25 year veteran, highly decorated international deep cover agent, who witnessed, first hand, how the CIA, State Department and the Department of Justice teamed up to kill every major international drug case I was involved in, for political and economic reasons. At the same time our politicians and bureaucrats lied to the American people and taxed them hundreds of billions of dollars to fight drugs. I was a witness to the highest kind of treason imaginable committed by our government's covert agencies, politicans and bureaucrats, against their own people. After my brother, a heroin addict for 25 years, committed suicide and my son, a highly decorated New York City police officer was killed by crack addicts during a holdup, I had experienced enough. I decided I would use whatever talents God gave me and training the government gave me, against the criminals responsible for the immense and deadly fraud known as "The War on Drugs." You can read the truth in my books, my articles and hear it on my radio show.''
-Mike Levine, star of The Expert Witness Show

The Coming Plague

Bad policies deliver their disasters when overtaken by events. A peace-in-our-time narcotic stupefied democracies for years while Hitler seized power and built Panzers. We are now four decades into another self-induced daze that will end in another great spasm of death.

When Jonas Salk announced his polio vaccine in 1955, humanity's century-long war against germs seemed all but over. Public sanitation had driven them out of the water supply. Vaccines and antibiotics had then chased them out of the lungs, fluids and intestines of the public itself. "The time has come to close the book on infectious disease," our surgeon general would announce in 1967. "We have basically wiped out infection in the United States."

Viewed in that context, the FDA amendments that President Kennedy signed into law in 1962, to regulate drugs in the peaceful, germ-free future, seemed to make good scientific sense. Cholera had indeed given way to cigarettes and cholesterol. The diseases of the future would be choreographed by lifestyle and genes, not germs. The drugs of the future would target cancer, arthritis and other problems rooted in human chemistry. The new killers would creep up rather predictably and evenly, on adults, not children. Widely prescribed, pill-a-day treatments might easily cause more harm than good. Just months earlier, a horrified world had discovered that one drug of the future -- thalidomide -- relieved morning sickness and helped people fall asleep; but it also halted the growth of a baby's limbs in the womb.

Before thalidomide, when microbes were still the enemy, drugs got the benefit of the doubt. After, the unknown cure was officially more dangerous than the known disease. And thus, going forward, all new medicines would have to be examined very closely. There was no need to rush. Medicine didn't need Texas-Ranger drugs any more. The stunningly fast, violent and random bandits of disease -- smallpox, cholera, tuberculosis, typhoid and the rest -- were history.

But they weren't.

Germs are always future, always reinventing themselves in their ingeniously stupid and methodically random way. They have also contrived, of late, to get human sociopaths to add thought and order to the reinventing. When they get lucky, we won't be ready; for all practical purposes, getting ready was outlawed in 1962.

Scientists can now see a lot of bad germ chemistry coming over the horizon, because they understand how genes mix, match and change. Drug companies are extremely good at concocting me-too variations on basic chemical themes -- drugs mutate to evade patents just as germs mutate to evade drugs. Cut loose, these skills would give us in-depth protection against the real threat -- not yesterday's germs but tomorrow's. But "safe" and "effective," the two key standards in the 1962 drug law, have intelligible meaning only with a germ to fight, and infected patients in which to fight it.

The FDA positively requires real, live germs -- to supply the patients that can supply FDA-caliber evidence that the drug safely kills real germs in real patients. The agency also needs political support, which requires a germ-fearing culture. But when a good vaccine wipes out the disease that it targets, the disease can easily end up eclipsed by the vaccine's side effects, however rare or even imaginary.

Tort law compounds the problem. In 1958, a California court discovered that every vaccine is sold with an implied guarantee of safety and sound design -- another stew of words that have meaning only in context. To give jurors that context -- to give them a good sense of perspective -- an antibiotic needs what it eliminates: cankers, pustules, sputum, fevers, diarrhea, dementia and emaciation.

In the years since, grand new principles of freedom, privacy and personal autonomy have emerged to protect septic suicide and homicide. An infectious lifestyle, once a crime, is now a constitutional right. The bag lady sleeps next to the sewer. The mainliner shares needles in the abandoned row house. Prisons, tattoo parlors, foul locker rooms, drug dens, brothels, bathhouses and other sepulchers of freedom now incubate drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis, staph bacteria, gonorrhea and syphilis. Those germs are now drifting into rundown urban hospitals whose emergency rooms often provide primary care to the septic underclass.

To crown it all, government procurement and insurance programs establish de facto price caps, and neuter patents, on almost all important germ-fighting drugs. After the 2001 anthrax attacks, federal authorities scrambled to stockpile Cipro, demanded an excellent price, and made clear they would breach Bayer's patents on the antibiotic if push came to shove. The Canadian government initiated its price negotiations by announcing it would ignore Bayer's patents and order a million tablets of a generic version of the drug from another company. Just two years earlier, it was the Pentagon that had pressed Bayer to get the antibiotic officially approved for the treatment of inhalational anthrax.

With the anthrax attacks in mind, Congress did pass the 2004 BioShield law. The measure (to simplify only a bit) rescinds the 1962 FDA amendments completely -- but only when the Pentagon says it needs the drug, and accepts full responsibility for prescribing it to whoever needs it, in uniform or out.

The development, composition, performance, manufacture, price and marketing of germ-killing drugs are now controlled as tightly as shoulder-mount missiles. The manufacturers operate like big defense contractors, mirror images of the insurers, regulatory agencies and tort-litigation machines that they answer to. And as a result, the germ side of the pharmaceutical industry has lost its dynamism, flexibility, resilience and reserve capacity. The whole edifice leans sharply toward the past. Insurers favor yesterday's drugs because the patents have expired. FDA licensing gives the licensed status quo a decade-long lead, at the very minimum, over anything now emerging from the lab.

Germs no longer need to be smarter than our scientists, just faster than our lawyers. Public authorities are ponderous, rigid and slow; the new germs are nimble, flexible and fast. Drug regulators are paralyzed by the knowledge that error is politically lethal; the new germs make genetic error -- constant mutation -- the key to their survival. Germs use pigs, bacteria and each other as genetic mixing bowls. They discover ways (as one strain of HIV has apparently now done) to use our drugs as food. And they celebrate our Constitution. People as negligent with pills as they are with germs have already helped spawn drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis, by taking enough medicine to kill weaker strains, while leaving hardy mutants alive to take over the business. HIV patients who don't strictly follow the complex, unpleasant drug regimen used to suppress the virus become human petri dishes, in which microbes multiply and evolve to resist the fistfuls of antibiotics prescribed as a last resort.

Pentagon-scale government has trouble enough dealing with car bombers; government contractors will never be agile enough to keep up with germs. What we need is a robust, flexible, innovative, diverse and fragmented portfolio of drug companies, sinking a lot of new capital into highly speculative ventures, almost all of which will lose money, with just one or two ending up waved through by regulators, eagerly paid for by insurers, vindicated every time by judges and juries, lauded in the mass media, and so spectacularly profitable for investors that they crowd in to fund more.

It is hard to see how we will get there without a revival of our germ-fearing culture, and it may well take a horrible germ to revive it. How horrible? What might it look like?

Ponder this question. What would a watchmaker have done -- not a blind one, but one with keen eyes and an excellent loupe -- if called upon to design a microbe that would thrive among people so fortified by so many vaccines, and armed with such a potent array of antibiotics, that their surgeon general, black umbrella in hand, had actually signed the articles of surrender on behalf of all the germs? Nature got there without the loupe.

It cooked up an all-purpose anti-vaccine, so tiny and gentle that it spread unnoticed for decades, and so innocuous that it never quite gets around to killing you at all. It leaves that to the old guard -- the bacteria, protozoa and viruses that invade when your immune system shuts down, and feast on your brain, lungs, blood, liver, heart, bone marrow, guts, skin and the surface of your eyes. In its final stages, AIDS is truly horrible.

When a watchmaker has been pulling such stunts for four billion years, it is reckless to suppose that HIV was its last or worst. When sociopaths are most certainly now scheming to add malignant human vision to the random walk, it is criminally irresponsible for people in authority to assume anything but the opposite. HIV has been detected in human plasma collected from a patient who died in 1959. We would be far safer today if the people preparing to rewrite the drug laws as he lay dying had been more frightened of viruses they could scarcely imagine, than of thalidomide, tragically visible though it was.

Mr. Huber is a fellow of the Manhattan Institute. This op-ed is adapted from an article in the Spring 2007 issue of City Journal.

from Edward Jay Epstein's Web Log, 2009-Dec-21, by Edward Jay Epstein:

The Anthrax Case Falls Apart

The vast anthrax investigation, code-named Amerithrax, ended as far as the public knew on July 29 2008 with the death of Dr. Bruce Ivins, a microbiologist at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Maryland, at the nearby Frederick Memorial Hospital. The proximate cause of death was an overdose of the pain-killer Tylenol. No autopsy was performed, and there was no suicide note. Less than a week after his apparent suicide, the FBI declared Dr. Ivins to have been the sole perpetrator of the 2001 Anthrax attacks, and the person who mailed deadly anthrax spores to the NBC, the New York Post, and Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy accompanied by a photo-copied warning. These attacks killed 5 people, closed down the Senate's Office Building, caused a national panic, and nearly paralyzed the postal system. The FBI's 6 year investigation of it was the largest inquest in its history, involving 9000 interviews by its agents, the issuance of 6000 subpoenas, and the examination of tens of thousands of photo-copiers, typewriters, computers, and mail-boxes.

But., as massive as it was, it failed to find a shred of evidence that identified the Anthrax killer– or even a witness to the mailings. With the help of a task force of scientists, it found a flask of anthrax that closely matched through its genetic markers the attack anthrax. This flask had been in the custody of Dr. Ivins, a senior biological warfare researcher, who had published no less than 44 scientific papers over three decades, and who was working on developing vaccines against anthrax. As custodian, he provided samples of it to other scientists at Fort Detrick, the Battelle Memorial Institute, and other facilities involved in Anthrax research. According to the FBI's reckoning, over 100 scientists had been given access to it. Any of these scientists (or their co-workers) could have stolen a minute quantity of this anthrax and, by mixing it into a media of water and nutrients, used it to grow enough spores to launch the anthrax attacks. Consequently, Dr. Ivins, who was assisting the FBI with its investigation, as well as all the scientists who had access to it, became suspects in the investigation. In what approached an inquisition, they were intensely questioned, given polygraph examinations, and played off against one another in variations of the prisoner's dilemma game. And their labs, computers, phones, homes, and personal effect were scrutinized for possible clues.

As the Amerithrax proceeded over more than a half a decade, the FBI ran into frustrating dead ends, such as its relentless 5 year pursuit of Steven Hatfill, that ended with his exoneration in 2007 and his receiving a $5.8 million settlement from the US government as compensation for the damage inflicted on him. Another scientist became so stressed by the FBI's games that he began to drink heavily and died of a heart attack. Eventually, the FBI zeroed-in on Dr. Ivins. Not only did he have access to the anthrax, but FBI agents suspected he had subtly misled them into their Hatfill fiasco. A search of his email turned up pornography and bizarre emails which,, though unrelated to anthrax, suggesting that he was a deeply disturbed individual. As the FBI turned the pressure up on him, isolating him at work, and forcing him to spend what little money he had on lawyers to defend himself. He became increasingly stressed. His therapist reported that Ivins seemed obsessed with the notion of revenge and even homicide. Then came his suicide (which as Eric Nadler and Bob Coen show in their documentary The Anthrax War was one of four suicides among bio-warfare researcher.) Since Dr. Ivins odd behavior closely fit the FBI's profile of the mad scientist it had been hunting, his suicide provided an opportunity to finally close the case. So it pronounced Dr. Ivins the anthrax killer.

But there was still a vexing problem– Silicon.

Silicon was used in the 1960s to weaponize anthrax. Through an elaborate process, anthrax spores were coated with silicon to preventing them from clinging together so as to create a lethal aerosol. But since weaponization was banned by international treaties, research anthrax no longer contains silicon, and the flask at Fort Detrick contained none. Yet, the anthrax grown from it had silicon, according to the US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. This silicon explained why when the letters to Senators Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle were opened, the anthrax vaporized into an aerosol. If so, then somehow silicon was added to the anthrax. But Dr. Ivins, no matter how weird he may have been, had neither the set of skills nor the means to deliberately attach silicon to anthrax spores. At minimum, such a process would require highly-specialized equipment, such as a jet mill, that did not exist in Ivins' lab– or, for that matter, anywhere at the Fort Detrick facility. As Richard O. Spertzel, a former bio-defense scientist who worked with Ivins, explained, the lab didn't even deal with anthrax in powdered form, adding "I don't think there's anyone there who would have the foggiest idea how to do it." So while Dr. Ivins' death provided a convenient fall guy, the silicon content still had somehow to be explained.

The FBI's answer was that the anthrax contained only traces of silicon and those, it theorized, could have been accidently absorbed by the spores from the water and nutrient in which they were grown. No such nutrients were ever found in Ivins' lab, nor, for that matter, did anyone ever see Dr. Ivins attempt to produce any unauthorized anthrax (a process which would have involved him using scores of flasks.) But since no one knew what nutrients had been used to grow the attack anthrax, it was at. least possible that they had traces of silicon in them which accidently contaminated the anthrax.

Natural contamination was an elegant theory that ran into problems after Congressman Jerry Nadler pressed FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III in September 2008 to provide the House Judiciary Committee with a missing piece of data: the precise percentage of silicon contained in the anthrax used in the attacks. The answer came seven months later. According to the FBI lab, 1.4% of the powder in the Leahy letter was Silicon. "This is a shockingly high proportion," explained Dr. Stuart Jacobson, an expert in small particle chemistry. "It is a number one would expect from the deliberate weaponization of anthrax, but not from any conceivable accidental contamination." Nevertheless, in an attempt to back up its theory, the FBI contracted scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Labs in California to conduct experiments in which anthrax is accidently absorbed from a media heavily-laced with silicon. When the results were revealed to the National Academy Of Science in September 2009, they effectively blew the FBI's theory out of the water. The Livermore scientists had tried 56 times to replicate the high silicon content without any success whatsoever. Even though they added increasingly high amounts of silicon to the media, they never even came close to the 1.4 percent in the attack anthrax. Most results were indeed an order of magnitude lower, with some as low as .001 percent. What these tests inadvertently demonstrated is that the anthrax spores could not have been accidently contaminated by the nutrients in the media. " If there is that much silicon , it had to have been added, " Jeffrey Adamovicz, who supervised Ivins work at Fort Detrick, wrote to me. He added that the silicon signature in the attack anthrax could have been added via a large fermerntor– which Battellle and other labs use" but "we did not use a fermentor to grow anthrax at USAMRIID [and] We did not have the capability to add silicon compounds to anthrax spores."

If Dr. Ivins had neither the equipment or skills to weaponize anthrax with silicon, then some other party, with access to the anthrax, must have done it. Even before these startling results, Senator Leahy had told Mueller , "I do not believe in any way, shape, or manner that [Ivins] is the only person involved in this attack on Congress." So, even though the public believed that the Anthrax case had been closed more in 2008, the FBI investigation was back to square one in late 2009.

from Reuters, 2005-Apr-13, by Richard Waddington:

Scientists Rush to Destroy Killer Flu Virus

GENEVA - The killer "Asian" flu virus, sent to laboratories around the world as part of routine test kits, could trigger a pandemic if it escapes, but the chances of that are low, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

Senior WHO scientist Dr. Klaus Stohr said the virus, which killed between 1 million and 4 million people in 1957, had gone to about 3,700 laboratories, nearly all in the United States.

"The virus could cause a global (flu) outbreak. It was an unwise decision to send it out," said Stohr, who heads the United Nations health agency's influenza program.

But the laboratories, which are sent viruses to test their ability to detect strains, are experienced in handling such material and most had already been alerted to the danger, so there was little chance of anyone catching it, he added.

"It is a risk, but it is considered low. It should not lead to a big scare," Stohr told Reuters.

The U.S. firm that sent out the virus, the College of American Pathologists (CAP), has issued instructions for all samples to be destroyed and would report to the WHO and U.S. health authorities by Friday on the response, he said.

"By Friday we may be through with this," Stohr said.

Such tests normally involve viruses that are in circulation among the world's population, of which there are thousands. It was not immediately clear why the U.S. concern had opted to take a lethal strain out of cold storage.

The latest alert comes as the WHO is already sounding the alarm over influenza because it fears that a continuing outbreak of bird flu in Asia, if not contained, could eventually trigger a human pandemic.

NO IMMUNITY

But Stohr said that the laboratory scare was a one-off because there were no other such lethal flu viruses being preserved by medical institutions.

The bug that may have killed up to 40 million people in 1918 -- the so-called Spanish flu -- had long since disappeared and the virus of the last great influenza epidemic of 1968 was still in circulation, meaning that people had natural resistance.

The problem with the 1957 H2N2 virus was that nobody born after 1968 would have much immunity to it.

The microbes went to some 61 laboratories outside North America, all of which had been contacted, Stohr said.

But it was not certain that all U.S. recipients had been located yet, Stohr said. "There is more detective work to be done there," he added.

He noted that the first batches had been delivered as long ago as last October and the fact that no infections had been reported was a good sign.

The H2N2 virus -- which was considered "mild" as pandemics go -- had mainly attacked people over 60 and it would have been quickly picked up by health authorities if there had been any contagion, Stohr told a news conference.

"We are a little bit fortunate this has not gone worse. But then fortune sometimes goes along with proficiency," he added, noting that all involved had responded quickly to the threat.

SPREAD EASILY

The virus, whose appearance nearly 40 years ago coincided with the so-called Asian influenza pandemic, is spread easily between humans.

It continued to cause annual epidemics for a decade, when it vanished with the emergence of a new virus. As a result, it was no longer considered necessary to include it in vaccines.

The United Nations health agency was first alerted on March 26 by the Canadian Public Health Agency to the fact that the H2N2 virus had been detected.

It was found because there had been cross-contamination with other flu samples in a Canadian laboratory, but the source was only identified as being the proficiency kit last Friday.

Countries outside the United States that had received samples for testing included Saudi Arabia, Jamaica, Mexico, Lebanon, Brazil, Hong Kong and Italy, Stohr said.

In order to receive such samples, laboratories would have had to have had the approval of their governments.

The WHO said that it had delayed going public with the news about the virus for security reasons, so that laboratories could have time to make the samples safe.

So far laboratories in Canada, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore had reported back that all the virus received had been destroyed, Stohr said.

from the Central Intelligence Agency, 2003-Nov-3:

UNCLASSIFIED

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

DIRECTORATE OF INTELLIGENCE

The Darker Bioweapons Future

3 November 2003

This report was prepared by the Office of Transnational Issues. Comments and queries are welcome and may be directed to the Chief, Strategic Assessments Group, OTI, on (703) 874-0527 or 70549 secure. (U)

A panel of life science experts convened for the Strategic Assessments Group by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that advances in biotechnology, coupled with the difficulty in detecting nefarious biological activity, have the potential to create a much more dangerous biological warfare (BW) threat. The panel noted:

• The effects of some of these engineered biological agents could be worse than any disease known to man.


• The genomic revolution is pushing biotechnology into an explosive growth phase. Panelists asserted that the resulting wave front of knowledge will evolve rapidly and be so broad, complex, and widely available to the public that traditional intelligence means for monitoring WMD development could prove inadequate to deal with the threat from these advanced biological weapons.


• Detection of related activities, particularly the development of novel bioengineered pathogens, will depend increasingly on more specific human intelligence and, argued panelists, will necessitate a closer--and perhaps qualitatively different-- working relationship between the intelligence and biological sciences communities.

The Threat From Advanced BW

In the last several decades, the world has witnessed a knowledge explosion in the life sciences based on an understanding of genes and how they work. According to panel members, practical applications of this new and burgeoning knowledge base will accelerate dramatically and unpredictably:

• As one expert remarked: "In the life sciences, we now are where information technology was in the 1960s; more than any other science, it will revolutionize the 21st century."

Growing understanding of the complex biochemical pathways that underlie life processes has the potential to enable a class of new, more virulent biological agents engineered to attack distinct biochemical pathways and elicit specific effects, claimed panel members. The same science that may cure some of our worst diseases could be used to create the world's most frightening weapons.

The know-how to develop some of these weapons already exists. For example:

• Australian researchers recently inadvertently showed that the virulence of mousepox virus can be significantly enhanced by the incorporation of a standard immunoregulator gene, a technique that could be applied to other naturally occurring pathogens such as anthrax or smallpox, greatly increasing their lethality.


• Indeed, other biologists have synthesized a key smallpox viral protein and shown its effectiveness in blocking critical aspects of the human immune response.


• A team of biologists recently created a polio virus in vitro from scratch.

According to the scientists convened, other classes of unconventional pathogens that may arise over the next decade and beyond include binary BW agents that only become effective when two components are combined (a particularly insidious example would be a mild pathogen that when combined with its antidote becomes virulent); "designer" BW agents created to be antibiotic resistant or to evade an immune response; weaponized gene therapy vectors that effect permanent change in the victim's genetic makeup; or a "stealth" virus, which could lie dormant inside the victim for an extended period before being triggered. For example, one panelist cited the possibility of a stealth virus attack that could cripple a large portion of people in their forties with severe arthritis, concealing its hostile origin and leaving a country with massive health and economic problems.

According to experts, the biotechnology underlying the development of advanced biological agents is likely to advance very rapidly, causing a diverse and elusive threat spectrum. The resulting diversity of new BW agents could enable such a broad range of attack scenarios that it would be virtually impossible to anticipate and defend against, they say. As a result, there could be a considerable lag time in developing effective biodefense measures.

However, effective countermeasures, once developed, could be leveraged against a range of BW agents, asserted attendees, citing current research aimed at developing protocols for augmenting common elements of the body's response to disease, rather than treating individual diseases. Such treatments could strengthen our defense against attacks by ABW agents.

Implications for Warning

The experts emphasized that, because the processes, techniques, equipment and know-how needed for advanced bio agent development are dual use, it will be extremely difficult to distinguish between legitimate biological research activities and production of advanced BW agents.

• The panel contrasted the difficulty of detecting advanced bioweapons with that of detecting nuclear weapons, which has always had clear surveillance and detection "observables," such as highly enriched uranium or telltale production equipment.

Consequently, most panelists argued that a qualitatively different relationship between the government and life sciences communities might be needed to most effectively grapple with the future BW threat.

They cited the pace, breadth, and volume of the evolving bioscience knowledge base, coupled with its dual-use nature and the fact that most is publicly available via electronic means and very hard to track, as the driving forces for enhanced cooperation. Most panelists agreed that the US life sciences research community was more or less "over its Vietnam-era distrust" of the national security establishment and would be open to more collaboration.

• One possibility, they argued, might be early government assistance to life sciences community efforts to develop its own "standards and norms" intended to differentiate between "legitimate" and "illegitimate" research, efforts recently initiated by the US biological sciences community.


• A more comprehensive vision articulated by one panelist was for the bioscience community at large to aid the government by acting as "a living sensor web"--at international conferences, in university labs, and through informal networks--to identify and alert it to new technical advances with weaponization potential. The workshop did not discuss the legal or regulatory implications of any such changes.

Here is the report in its original PDF format.

from the Associated Press via the Washington Post, 2003-Nov-14, by John J. Lumpkin:

Panel Warns CIA of Future Bioweapons

WASHINGTON - Advances in biotechnology could lead to a generation of biological weapons far more dangerous than those currently known, scientists have told the CIA.

The life sciences experts, convened by the agency's Office of Transnational Issues, raised fears of genetically engineered diseases that "could be worse than any disease known to man," according to the CIA's unclassified report on their conference.

The report, "The Darker Bioweapons Future," speaks only generally of the dangers of newly created diseases and does not specify countries that could use them to threaten the United States.

"The same science that may cure some of our worst diseases could be used to create the world's most frightening weapons," the report says.

The report, dated Nov. 3, was posted this week on the Web site of the Federation of American Scientists, a government watchdog group. The group said the scientists met with the CIA in January.

Some advanced bioweapons already are possible to make, the scientists noted. They pointed to researchers in Australia who accidentally enhanced the mousepox virus by adding an immunoregulator gene, using a technique that could be applied to anthrax or smallpox, two diseases potentially capable of conversion into biological weapons.

The report also speaks of the possibility of designer diseases that would be immune to treatment, or that linger would inactivated in the body until the passage of a certain amount of time passes or until a specified second substance had entered the body.

Part of the danger of biological weapons, unlike conventional bombs or nuclear weapons, is their use might not be immediately obvious. Without a claim of responsibility or a lucky break by law enforcers, only when medical experts had traced an outbreak to its source would authorities learn that an attack had taken place.

"One panelist cited the possibility of a stealth virus attack that could cripple a large portion of people in their forties with severe arthritis, concealing its hostile origin and leaving a country with massive health and economic problems," the report says.

With so many potential threats, the experts proposed developing defenses aimed at strengthening the body's resistance to all disease, rather than creating treatments for individual diseases.

from the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com, 2001-Oct-19, by Scott Gottlieb:

Ammo for the War on Germs
We have drugs to fight bioterrorism, if only the FDA will let us use them.

Last Friday, it was unusually busy in my hospital's emergency room as worried but well people came in to be ruled out for anthrax. Doctors created a special "anthrax evaluation room" and set aside a half-dozen respiratory isolation beds. The fear was sparked by news that evening that a case of skin anthrax was diagnosed in Tom Brokaw's assistant at NBC.

Underscoring the risk of this pathogen was news Tuesday that roughly 30 people who work in Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's office have tested positive for exposure to anthrax. A letter sent to his office Monday contained weapons-grade anthrax, material that officials say was likely produced by a state-run biowarfare program. Anthrax was also discovered in the office of New York Gov. George Pataki.

---

But as nasty as this bug is, anthrax is still a one-time agent. It doesn't spread from person to person. To catch it you need to come directly in contact with the spores. And the first thing we do in the hospital is wash down suspected victims. The real test for our nation will come when a communicable disease like smallpox crops up, as some, including former Sen. Sam Nunn in a recent doomsday scenario dubbed Dark Winter, are speculating is highly possible.

Smallpox spreads rapidly from person to person, primarily by aerosols expelled from the throats of those infected and by direct contact. An attack would likely consist of a few suicide bioterrorists self-infecting themselves and walking around New York City. While the infectious dose is unknown, it's believed to be only a few virus particles, compared to thousands of spores in the case of anthrax. Historically, each case of smallpox triggers from 10 to 20 new infections.

The government is starting to take notice. On Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson asked Congress for $500 million to pay for smallpox vaccine stockpiles, enough for every American, although even a crash program could take at least a year. And President Bush's new director of homeland defense, Tom Ridge, announced the government would consider reinstituting vaccination programs in children. Even a few reported cases could be enough to cripple our economy. In 1972, a single case of smallpox in Yugoslavia touched off an outbreak that required 20 million vaccinations and mass quarantines.

Smallpox can be personally devastating. After a 14-day incubation period, patients experience high fevers, headaches, and sometimes severe abdominal pain. A rash resembling chicken pox appears in the mouth and throat, face, and forearms, and spreads to the trunk and legs. As patients recover, scabs break and pitted scars appear. Mortality is as high as 60%.

We're going to have to prepare for these scenarios. The good news is that our biotechnology industry has come a long way since 1972, and, unencumbered, has scores of agents that could be effective against communicable diseases such as smallpox. The availability of these agents would help quell public fears over smallpox, the same way Cipro has helped mitigate concern over anthrax. The bad news is that regulatory requirements have hobbled the development and marketing of these agents and made it expensive to produce effective vaccines.

In the case of anthrax, Sen. Chuck Schumer's suggestion that the U.S. invoke emergency measures to allow manufacturers to mass produce generic versions of Cipro not only fails to address the current woes but doesn't redress the underlying problems: that every step of the process is so tightly regulated it could take years to bring new production facilities online. Even retrofitting a new facility can take several months to fulfill FDA requirements. A process that should take a week takes a year.

In the case of smallpox, there are at least a half-dozen new antivirals, designed to treat HIV and hepatitis, that work well against models of pox virus. Some can be used as post-exposure prophylaxis. Many of these drugs grew out of research into treatments for AIDS, but are still mired in preclinical and clinical trials aimed at proving they work for their primary indication. Right now, doctors couldn't even try them out by prescribing them off label in the event of an attack. New mechanisms need to be devised when it comes to drugs that might protect against these rare agents that are the weapons of terrorist warfare, for which no clinical trial can reasonably be constructed.

This probably means approving promising drugs for use in bioterrorism after they're tested for safety in healthy college kids in phase I trials, waiving costly and lengthy phase II or phase III trials of infected people. It also means approving drugs that have demonstrated effectiveness in animal and laboratory studies, and theoretical efficacy in human models. After all, there are no human trials demonstrating Cipro works in anthrax. With so few cases, how can there be? In the case of tularemia, smallpox, plague and other likely weapons, we can't wait for clinical trials, since that will mean we've already been attacked.

The Food and Drug Administration streamlined approval processes in the early 1990s to get HIV drugs to the market early, allowing drugs to be approved out of phase II trials, and approving them based on evidence that they benefited certain surrogate markers like blood counts of virus levels, rather than the more difficult-to-prove increases in life expectancy. The FDA needs to do the same thing here.

FDA approval times for vaccines also need to be rapidly compressed. The sole maker of the anthrax vaccine, BioPort Corporation of Lansing, Mich., has been battling the FDA for 20 months to get approval for a new facility that would produce it, reflecting paranoid regulatory requirements for approval of renovated manufacturing facilities, particularly in the vaccine industry. The agency needs to get out of the way.

---

And if people want to stash away a starter dose of drugs aimed at providing prophylaxis against anthrax or smallpox, doctors and politicians shouldn't stop them. We've been scared from using antibiotics and antivirals out of some kind of weird sense of communal responsibility to keep bugs naive to our powerful weapons. As long as consumers are willing to pay for their own medications and not pass the cost onto their insurers, they should be able to buy peace of mind if it's going to help them go to work in the morning.

This fight is playing out in our cities, with ordinary office workers on the front lines, and panic and fear the real instruments of war. These troops need to know that antibiotics, antivirals and vaccines are available, so that they can confidently carry out their daily missions. Dr. Gottlieb, a resident in internal medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, is editor of the Gilder Biotech Report.

from the Associated Press via Fox News, 2003-May-16:

WHO: Leaky Pipes, Fans and Diarrhea Caused SARS Outbreak at Hong Kong Apartments

HONG KONG -- Leaky sewage pipes and bathroom ventilation fans carried contaminated droplets through parts of a Hong Kong apartment complex, causing one of the world's worst outbreaks of SARS, World Health Organization investigators said Friday.

More than 300 people came down with the illness at the Amoy Gardens apartment complex in late March, and 35 people died. The speed of the infection amazed health experts, who at the time believed the disease was spread mainly by person-to-person contact.

A report written by a team of WHO investigators blamed an "unlucky" combination of circumstances -- a patient with diarrhea, seeping pipes and drafty air shafts.

"It's just an accumulation of events," team leader Dr. Heinz Feldmann told a news conference. Feldmann said there was no way to guarantee against a repeat but that another such outbreak seems "unlikely."

When the WHO investigators went to Amoy Gardens to collect samples, they found no live coronaviruses -- the family of virus believed to cause severe acute respiratory syndrome -- and no remaining genetic material from the virus, Feldmann said. The WHO's findings largely confirm an earlier report by Hong Kong officials.

The WHO team is still conducting lab tests on samples collected from another housing development, the Tung Tau Estate, that suffered a minor outbreak. Feldmann said preliminary findings showed the sewage system did not appear to be the cause, but he did not elaborate.

The disease was brought to the Block E building of Amoy Gardens by a sick man visiting his brother, the Hong Kong government said earlier. The man had diarrhea and others who caught SARS in the building also developed diarrhea, spreading the virus in the sewage system.

Droplets containing the virus apparently got into some apartment units through dried-out drain traps -- the U-shaped pipes that are supposed to keep gases and waste from coming up back up. Exhaust fans in the bathrooms sucked the droplets into apartments, the WHO report said.

The exhaust fans could also have moved contaminated droplets into a light and air shaft, where wind moved it into other apartments through open windows.

Feldmann said there was no evidence the virus itself was airborne, but small droplets can travel up to five feet through the air, perhaps further if helped by a strong wind.

A break in a pipe shut down the water used to flush toilets at one point, which may have trapped some infected sewage in place and allowed the virus to multiply, the team said.

Feldmann said an earlier outbreak of SARS at Hong Kong's Metropole Hotel appears to have been caused by close person-to-person contact.

An ill mainland Chinese medical professor visiting the Metropole in late February infected 16 people who spent time on the ninth floor. They in turn spread SARS throughout Hong Kong and to three other places that suffered fatal outbreaks: Vietnam, Canada and Singapore.

Feldmann said the investigators did not find any problem with the sewage or ventilation systems at the hotel.

"We think people were safe in their rooms," he said.

People probably caught the virus in common areas like hallways, he said.

SARS has infected 1,703 people in Hong Kong and killed 234.

In China, officials on Friday began to punish people for violating SARS-related restrictions. One woman was given a one-year sentence for leading protesters who vandalized a building being turned into a quarantine center.

Two school principals in the northeastern Chinese city of Harbin were fired for holding entrance tests in defiance of orders to postpone them, the official China Youth Daily reported.

Singapore remained hopeful that its outbreak could be declared over, after 15 of the more than 40 people showing SARS symptoms at its largest mental hospital tested negative for the virus.

Japan, which has had no reported cases of SARS, announced a $13 million emergency aid package to help China fight the disease. It also will donate 20,000 protective suits.

SARS has killed at least 605 people worldwide and infected more than 7,700 since emerging in southern China in November.

Air travelers have been instrumental in its spread to more than 30 countries, and Asian airport officials meeting in the Philippines on Friday adopted more measures to contain the illness.

The officials agreed to have standardized health declaration cards for departing passengers by June 15 and temperature screening for departing travelers implemented by Aug. 15.

Representatives from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations were joined by airport officials from China, Japan and South Korea. They agreed that passengers suspected of SARS would be quarantined and placed under medical care but that they would not be denied entry into any country in the region.

Ireland, which is hosting next month's Special Olympics, on Thursday told delegations from China, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan that they should not attend the mid-June event. Organizers condemned the decision as discrimination against handicapped people.

from the Washington Post, 2001-Oct-23, p.A1, by Justin Blum with Dan Eggen, Avram Goldstein, Ellen Nakashima and Dale Russakoff:

Workers Question Response; CDC Says Policy Evolving

When a letter containing anthrax spores turned up in the offices of Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) on Oct. 15, workers at a Northeast Washington postal facility grew worried. Because the Brentwood Road center processes letters destined for Congress, the workers wondered whether they should take antibiotics and other precautions.

Their bosses told them that the risk of exposure to the bacteria was minimal and that there was no need for antibiotics. Underscoring the point, the nation's postmaster general held a news conference at the facility Thursday and said there was little chance that spores had escaped from the Daschle letter.

"That letter was extremely well-sealed, and there is only a minute chance that anthrax spores escaped from it into this facility," Postmaster General John E. "Jack" Potter said at the time.

But in the end, the workers' fears were justified.

Yesterday, two Brentwood postal workers were dead, probably because they had inhaled anthrax spores. At least nine other Brentwood employees are infected or have shown symptoms. More than 2,000 workers were offered screening and antibiotics, and the facility was closed for environmental testing and cleanup.

The problems in assessing the threat at Brentwood -- and at a mail processing facility near Trenton, N.J. -- show how health officials' assumptions about anthrax have been shaken by events. Officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged yesterday that their recommendations for postal workers are still evolving.

"We're dealing with something that up until two or three weeks ago we had not dealt with before," said CDC spokesman Tom Skinner.

"What to do is still sort of a work in progress. . . . We're making decisions based on the best scientific information we have at the time."

The outbreak at Brentwood caught federal health officials by surprise, because it did not fit the pattern established in earlier anthrax incidents in Florida and New York.

In those cases, the most severe form of anthrax afflicting the postal workers who handled contaminated letters was the skin form of the disease, which is far less serious than inhalation anthrax and more easily treated.

Based on that record, and on the absence of evidence of contamination inside the Brentwood building, CDC officials advised the U.S. Postal Service that the workers there did not need to take antibiotics.

They reversed that advice on Sunday, when the first Brentwood employee was diagnosed with the inhaled form of anthrax.

"Previous investigations in Florida and New York did not identify that the postal workers were at risk," said Mitchell L. Cohen, a bacterial disease specialist for the CDC.

"The effort is to identify risk and to intervene by using prophylaxis to prevent disease, but not to use drugs that may be unnecessary, which could cause further problems," he said.

For the affected postal workers, those risk calculations were flawed.

Local postal union leaders said the two deaths might have been prevented if officials had respected workers' requests for earlier testing and antibiotic distribution.

"I think this whole thing could have been avoided," said Patricia A. Johnson, president of the local chapter of the American Postal Workers Union. "If I was a family member, I'd sue the Postal Service. . . . When it comes to postal employees, we are the last in any government agency that they care about."

Deborah K. Willhite, senior vice president for government relations and public policy at the Postal Service, yesterday reiterated her agency's position that postal officials relied on the advice of the CDC.

In New Jersey, postal workers also complained that health officials did not deal with the threat of anthrax quickly enough.

Postal authorities learned Oct. 13 that a letter to NBC's Tom Brokaw containing anthrax spores had passed through the Hamilton Township, N.J., central processing facility, where 900 postal workers are stationed.

Soon after, according to George DiFerdinando, the acting state health commissioner, two private physicians called to report that they were treating Trenton area postal workers for skin conditions that could be anthrax.

But postal officials told employees at a meeting Oct. 15 that the Hamilton building was safe, according to Martin D'Autrechy, of the National Postal Mail Handlers Union.

DiFerdinando said he assumed that the building was safe because the Brokaw letter was postmarked Sept. 18, which was 27 days earlier. If more workers were going to contract anthrax, they would already have symptoms from handling the Brokaw letter, he said.

But officials learned later on Oct. 15 that the Hamilton facility also had handled the letter to Daschle. Still, the building remained open.

On Thursday, officials announced that a mail carrier who worked on a route in nearby West Trenton had the skin form of anthrax and that an employee at the Hamilton building was suspected of having the same condition.

That day, state health officials shut down the facility. On Friday, they recommended that all its employees start taking Cipro as a precaution.

"What we're finding is that they're learning on the fly," said Richard McClellan, chief of staff for the township's mayor.

Yesterday, it remained uncertain whether the letter addressed to Daschle caused the Brentwood workers to become infected or whether another letter spread spores in the facility.

Tom Ridge, director of the Office of Homeland Security, said officials think the Daschle letter is the source but cannot be sure.

When the Daschle letter was first identified as containing anthrax spores last week, congressional staffers immediately were placed on antibiotics and were tested for exposure.

Postal workers at Brentwood said they should have received the same treatment.

But health officials said yesterday that the congressional workers were at greater risk because the letter was opened in their offices, creating a much greater likelihood of infection.

At Brentwood, epidemiologists from the CDC said that until evidence of actual exposure to anthrax was available, "it was not necessary to test our workers," Willhite said.

On Thursday, the Postal Service hired a company to do limited environmental testing at Brentwood to ensure that the facility was safe.

Test results released last night showed widespread contamination.

On Sunday, officials announced that Leroy Richmond, who handled express mail at the Brentwood facility, had been admitted to Inova Fairfax Hospital and had tested positive for inhalation anthrax.

That prompted health officials to call for testing and distribution of antibiotics for the more than 2,000 employees at the Brentwood site and for 150 at a facility in Linthicum, where Richmond also worked.

Another Brentwood worker was being treated for inhalation anthrax at Inova Fairfax yesterday.

Potter, the postmaster general, said yesterday that health and postal officials did their best.

"This is not a situation where America should be pointing fingers at anyone else other than the terrorists," he said.

from MSNBC, combining Associated Press and Reuters articles with MSNBC extensions, 2001-Oct-23:

Postal deaths catch officials off guard
CDC under attack for slow response to anthrax threat

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 - The deaths of two Washington, D.C., postal workers and hospitalization of two others from inhaled anthrax have taught officials a disturbing lesson: Even an unopened envelope containing anthrax can be sufficiently potent to infect people with the disease's deadliest form. That new revelation along with the overall slowness of the federal response to the outbreaks led members of a Senate panel to accuse the nation's public health agency of underestimating and responding poorly to this growing biological health threat.

Senators said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was too slow to test postal workers when it became known an anthrax-laced letter they had sorted at the Brentwood mail facility turned up in the office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.

Capitol Hill staff were tested immediately last week for the deadly bacteria and 28 were found to have been exposed to anthrax. But it took five days before mass testing began on postal workers who sorted the mail for Capitol Hill.

"I am very concerned about what the CDC is doing and how they are operating," said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, at a bioterror hearing. "Maybe I'm wrong, but it just seems to me that something broke down here. People are getting sick and people are dying."

CDC Director Dr. Jeffrey Koplan said the agency never suspected that anthrax could leak out of a sealed letter.

"We had had no cases of inhalation anthrax in a mail sorting facility," he said.

"There was no reason to think this was a possibility."

Koplan said the CDC is relying on its experiences with epidemics and acted based on what it knew at the time. But he said the CDC is learning as it goes about how to deal with what he calls "an ongoing malevolent force."

White House spokesman Ari Fleisher defended health authorities at a press briefing. "The president believes the cause of death was not the treatment made by the federal government or the local officials, or anyone else, but the cause of death was the attack made on our nation by people mailing anthrax," he said.

h4>POSTAL WORKERS ANGRY

Employees at Brentwood were angry they were not warned and tested sooner. They were told to stay at work and informed that they need not wear protective clothing nor take antibiotics.

"If we knew then what we know now we would have acted earlier," said Washington, D.C., Mayor Anthony Williams Tuesday at a news conference announcing that the deaths of two postal workers were confirmed as resulting from anthrax.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said that if additional tainted letters are found, officials would move more aggressively to test and treat any workers at postal facilities that handled them.

Although Tuesday's hearing produced the sharpest criticism of the Atlanta-based agency, questions about the CDC's response to bioterror had been mounting since the first anthrax death in Florida on Oct. 5.

Public health experts outside the government said the agency was slow to alert doctors to the threat of other bioterror agents and didn't do enough to calm a jittery nation ill-informed on the particulars of anthrax.

MORE SERIOUS THREAT

The anthrax problem, bioterrorism experts say, has turned out to be more serious than anyone thought at first and should be forcing health officials to rethink how they respond to reports of a letter laced with anthrax.

C.J. Peters, a former head of special pathogens for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and now head of a new bioterrorism center at the University of Texas, said he would have predicted, as the CDC and postal officials did, that workers might be at risk of an anthrax skin infection.

Such skin infections are not especially dangerous and are easy to see and treat with antibiotics.

Peters, who also once worked with U.S. Army biological weapons experts, said he would not have predicted that anthrax spores could get out of a letter and into a person's lungs, where they cause an especially deadly and hard-to-diagnose form of disease.

"What this is telling us is that this stuff is either extra easy to get up in the air or it is in extremely small particles," Peters said.

Peters said when experts drew up biological attack scenarios, they equated an envelope full of anthrax with someone not terribly skilled in processing it. "We always figured a guy who was a kind of klutz would end up making a larger particle size."

Attackers who had the skills to mill the clumps of spore down to a very fine size would have been expected to use a more sophisticated delivery method, Peters said.

RED FLAGS

Nonetheless, there were clues that investigators should not have missed, Peters said. Inhalation anthrax kills 90 percent of victims and by the time they are seriously ill, it is too late to treat them. But quick use of antibiotics can save a life. The window of opportunity is small.

"When they had the first inhalation case in the mailroom, they should have told people, `if you have a fever, hop to it'," he said. They should have been told to seek immediate medical attention.

The officials who inspected Congressional offices contaminated with anthrax should have analyzed the size of the particles and then told other health officials - because postal workers who handled the letters would be at risk.

"They should have been thinking in terms of particle size," Peters said. That information is vital to understanding how dangerous the spores were. "If they know this is a 1 to 5 micron size, I think they ought to be telling people."

Peters said people may also have been misled by news reports that said anthrax starts out looking like a cold or the flu, because colds usually start with a stuffy nose.

"I don't think this starts with sniffles," Peters said.

"Inhaled anthrax starts with fever, myalgia (muscle aches) malaise. They feel really bad," he added.

Mike Osterholm, a bioterrorism expert at the University of Minnesota, said officials may now have to act more quickly to close off areas and give out antibiotics when anthrax is found.

from Fox News, 2002-Jul-30, by Carl Cameron and the Associated Press:

Feds Arrest Al Qaeda Suspects With Plans to Poison Water Supplies

WASHINGTON - Federal officials have arrested two Al Qaeda terror suspects in the U.S. with documents in their possession about how to poison the country's water supplies, Fox News has learned.

The first case involves James Ujaama, 36, who surrendered to the FBI last week in Denver. Sources say they found documents about water poisoning among several other terrorism-related documents in his Denver residence.

Sources say the government has additional evidence that prior to Sept. 11 James Ujaama acted as a courier delivering laptop computers to the Taliban. Federal agents seized two computers and two floppy disks from the house where James Ujaama had been staying when he was arrested as a material witness to terrorist activity, his brother said.

James Ujaama's brother is Mustafa Ujaama, the founder of the now-closed Dar-us-Salaam mosque in Seattle. The FBI has been investigating activities and officials from the former mosque for several months.

Investigators believe officials and members of the mosque were trying to establish a terrorist training camp in Bly, Ore., Fox News has confirmed. Investigators say there is evidence that Mustafa Ujaama visited Bly to check it out as a possible facility location.

The Ujaama brothers are also known to have helped establish several Web sites for radical Islamic clerics worldwide.

Another former member of the mosque is also now in custody and suspected of plotting terrorist attacks. His name is Semi Osman and he too is accused of having documents about poisoning water supplies in his possession when he was arrested.

Sources say the Ujaama brothers and Osman are all tied to a prominent radical Muslim cleric in London named Sheikh Abu Hamza Al-Masri. Al-Masri is a one-eyed mullah who is often seen preaching at Finsbury Park's North London Central Mosque and is wanted in Yemen on terrorism charges.

Investigators say they have evidence indicating that Al-Masri supplied the information about poisoning water supplies to both James Ujaama and Semi Osman.

Furthermore, sources say Al-Masri's Web site was designed by the Ujaama brothers.

James Ujaama was arrested Monday at his grandmother's home. Mustafa Ujaama said he did not know what was on the disks that were taken from the home. One of the computers belonged to Mustafa Ujaama and the other was his son's, he said.

FBI spokesman John Lipka confirmed that agents went to the grandmother's house but would not say why. "We are in furtherance of an active investigation," he said.

Holding a person as a material witness - someone believed to have important information - allows federal authorities to keep him in custody indefinitely.

Federal authorities speaking on condition of anonymity have said authorities believe James Ujaama took computer equipment to an Al Qaeda terrorist camp in Afghanistan. They said authorities also were investigating whether James Ujaama trained at the camp.

Earlier news reports said James Ujaama was taken to Virginia after his arrest, but his lawyer, Daniel J. Sears, said he was jailed in Denver. Justice officials have refused to confirm where he was being held.

Sears said James Ujaama had not been charged with any crime. He said a hearing has been scheduled to review the legality of the detention, but he could not say where or when. He said his client is outspoken and has publicly disagreed with the government on Middle East issues.

"I hope we have not advanced to the point in this country where we are jailing people because the government may disagree with their beliefs," Sears said.

Agents arrived at the home at about 5 p.m. and spent about two hours inside. Mustafa Ujaama said they had a warrant.

The brothers moved to Denver this month from Seattle. Mustafa Ujaama was detained briefly on Monday when his brother was arrested.

Their aunt, Robin Thompson, stood outside the home during the search.

"They could have done this in Seattle. We are Americans. I don't know why they're doing this," she said.

The brothers were born James Ernest Thompson and Jon Thompson and grew up in Seattle. Some community leaders there have credited them with helping to rid their poor, black neighborhood of drugs and prostitution by recruiting former gang members and others into the Dar-us-Salaam mosque.

from the Associated Press via MSNBC, 2001-Oct-23:

New push for `nuclear pills'
Fears of more attacks spark demand for potassium iodide

Mary Lampert keeps a single potassium iodide pill in her medicine cabinet and another in the glove compartment of her car. When you live seven miles from a nuclear plant, she says, you can't be too safe.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, people who live near nuclear plants have been buying the pills, which can help protect against cancer from radiation exposure.

"The terrorist doesn't make an announcement ahead of time, `We are going to attack the nuclear power plant,"' said Lampert, who lives in Duxbury, across Kingston Bay from the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth. "How long would it take the radioactive iodine to make it across to my house? In less than an hour, it's here."

Such fears are sending sales of potassium iodide through the roof at the Starke, Fla.-based American Civil Defense Association, which sells bottles of 200 tablets at $19.95 each. Before Sept. 11, sales topped 15 bottles in a good month. Since then, more than 500 bottles have been sold.

"That is our No. 1 item. We can't hardly keep it in," said spokesman Alex Coleman.

Iodine is one of about 200 radioactive elements created when the uranium atom splits, as occurs in a nuclear reactor.

Potassium iodide, if taken shortly after exposure to radiation, blocks the thyroid gland's intake of radioactive iodine, providing some protection against thyroid cancer and certain other diseases.

It proved effective in preventing thyroid cancer among adults and children in the path of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

However, officials in Massachusetts and other states worry that stockpiling the pills would make people less likely to evacuate in the event of a nuclear accident.

Also, potassium iodide will not protect people from radiation burns, radiation sickness and other forms of cancer in a nuclear accident.

"The public tends to look at potassium iodide as the magic bullet to protect them, but that's really not what it is," said Dr. Kenneth Miller, professor of radiology and director of health physics at the Penn State Hershey Medical Center in Pennsylvania. He lives 6&onehalf; miles from the Three Mile Island plant, the site in 1979 of the nation's worst commercial nuclear accident.

Still, momentum for distribution of the tiny white pills seems to be building.

In January, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission adopted a rule that encourages states to consider giving out potassium iodide as part of their nuclear accident strategy.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has until now left it to states to decide whether to stockpile the pills, is holding a meeting this week with representatives of 16 other federal agencies to begin drafting a new potassium iodide policy.

Last month, a group of North Carolina elected officials in three counties asked the owner of the Shearon Harris nuclear plant to distribute the pills to neighbors.

And Tuesday, a bill to require Massachusetts health officials to make potassium iodide pills available to people living or working within 10 miles of nuclear plants passed a key legislative committee.

"All one would have to imagine is a plane crashing into that reactor," said state Rep. John Binienda, chairman of the Joint Energy Committee, which approved the bill. "You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know what the end result would be."

The bill would apply to more than 300,000 people who live or work near Pilgrim Station, Seabrook Station in Seabrook, N.H., or Vermont Yankee in Vernon, Vt., or are on Cape Cod, Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, which are downwind from the Plymouth plant.

Massachusetts already stockpiles potassium iodide for emergency workers as well as prisoners, nursing home patients and other institutionalized people.

from TPDL 1999-Sep-24, from the Wall Street Journal:

The Cokeheads' Country

If it weren't for the fact that so many Americans working for Fortune 1000 companies think the most important thing in life is sucking cocaine up their noses, nobody in the U.S. would much care about Colombia. But the reality is that tens of thousands of Colombians -- peasants, judges, mayors, journalists--have died with bullets in their heads so that American office workers could feel unusually good about themselves for a few hours. Until George Soros spends enough money to make recreational drugs legal at corporate lunches, it will be America's problem that the sovereign nation of Colombia is on its way to becoming the world's first drug republic.

Alas, Colombia is a case study in how U.S. policy makers fail at what they get paid to do.

Colombia is a nation of 38 million people, where a homicidal guerrilla movement's modus operandi is to invade a town, murder the mayor, open the jails and start taxing the peasantry who raise coca plants for the drug lords. The heavily armed guerrillas then protect everybody in the production line from the Colombian military and police. Because of the resulting stalemate, Colombia's hapless president has effectively ceded control of an area about the size of Switzerland to the guerrillas and their drug-gangster partners. In short, rural Colombia is close to what a country will look like, say Russia, when the law finally loses for good and the criminals win.

Colombia's President, Andres Pastrana, has been in the U.S. this week to plead his case to the United Nations and to meet with President Clinton and members of Congress. He wants $3.5 billion in international aid. Colombia is the U.S.'s number one supplier of cocaine. While coca cultivation is down in neighboring South American countries, Colombia now reportedly looks like the coca equivalent of a Nebraska cornfield.

So what have we done about all this?

In 1993, the Clinton administration shifted the emphasis of drug control policy away from attacking drug traffickers along their transit routes in favor of moving the anti-drug offensive into the source countries. The weapon of choice is crop eradication. Not surprisingly, Colombia since has grown increasingly violent. Indeed, thanks to the healthy cocaine export market (that is, American users) and a stepped-up effort to eradicate the plants, guerrilla tax coffers are brimming. As a consequence of this fiscal surplus, the gangsters are able to buy plenty of weapons.

In other words, with Colombia's guerrilla-gangster army armed to the teeth, it is U.S. policy to fight them with herbicide. How did U.S. policy arrive at such a dead-end?

Step one was to reach an American political consensus that Colombia should be forbidden to use its army to fight back. The Colombian army was portrayed in the U.S. and Europe as a "human rights violator." The existing, largely incompetent army has long been weakened by its own historic isolation from the civilian government. But the U.S. Army program at Fort Benning, Ga., which teaches Latin American officers how to behave like professionals, has cut funding for students and is under pressure to close.

Working out of this mindset, Congress says it is in favor of sending military funds to Colombia to fight the drug lords, but it can't be used to violate the human rights of the guerrillas. So what's left? The U.S. exhorts Colombia to bomb the fields!

Without a modern, efficient army, Colombia can never establish law and order outside the big cities. As a result of U.S. policy, drug money from our value-free yuppies fuels a law-of-the-jungle rural society in Colombia, where the winners rob, kill, kidnap, maim, and extort the weak. This is the manifesto of both the Marxist guerrillas and their enemies, the vigilante paramilitary. Millions of peasants are caught in this crossfire.

This thriving criminal underworld threatens to destabilize the entire Andean region. Guerrillas are now popping up in Ecuador; and they have long taken advantage of the wild, untamed Venezuelan border area. The U.S. military withdrawal from the Panama Canal also weakens the region.

With no upside in sight, President Pastrana wants to strike some kind of a peace deal with the guerrillas, though they've virtually made double-crossing his overtures an entertaining national sport. Still, even the white-flag-waving president now seems to recognize that reasonable negotiations require that the state regain some control and that to do so Colombia is going to need a strong, modern, professional army. We should help them acquire it.

For now, though, it is de facto U.S. policy to deprive the people of Colombia of any such ability to clean up their own mess. So long as the Clinton administration and Congress are willing to hold this position, they should stop whining all the time about our drug problem with Colombia. America's cokehead population may be irresponsibly narcissistic, but on this subject, their political leadership is hardly less self-indulgent.

from TPDL 2000-Mar-14, from Arianna Online, 2000-Mar-13, by Arianna Huffington:

Colombia: The Drug War's Latest Perverse Priority

On Thursday, March 16, the House of Representatives will vote on a $1.7 billion emergency-aid package to escalate the war on drugs in Colombia. Initiated by the White House and enthusiastically backed by the House Republican leadership, it is a product of the drug war's perverse priorities and another example of the disturbing link between campaign cash and public policy.

Let's start with the cash being spread around Washington to help grease the wheels for the aid bonanza. The Colombian government hired Vernon Jordan's law firm -- Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld -- which he has since left, to stump for it on The Hill. Indeed, when the House Appropriations Committee met last week to consider the White House proposal, a member of the committee, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), noticed that an Akin, Gump lobbyist was in attendance. He must have gone away happy because the committee not only approved the president's $1.2 billion request but added another $500 million to the pot.

The Colombians have other powerful allies in Washington. Most persistent has been a collection of multinational corporations with operations in Colombia -- including Occidental Petroleum, BP Amoco and Enron -- that has been lobbying both Congress and the administration for a big-buck package that would serve their business interests there.

And speaking of business interests, more than $400 million of the aid will be spent on the purchase of 63 helicopters manufactured by two U.S. firms -- Sikorsky Aircraft, a subsidiary of United Technologies, and Bell Helicopter Textron -- that have also been playing the Capitol Hill money game. In the last two election cycles, Textron and its employees donated close to a million dollars to both Republicans and Democrats, and United Technologies gave more than $700,000. "It's business for us, and we are as aggressive as anybody," one Bell Helicopter lobbyist told the Legal Times. "I'm just trying to sell helicopters."

Underscoring the incestuous relationship between commerce and drug policy, Tom Umberg, the architect of the administration's Colombian initiative, is now moving from the White House Office of Drug Control Policy to the law firm of Morrison & Foerster where he will represent Colombia and other Latin American countries on trade issues. It seems that in Colombia, as in Washington, no good deed goes unrewarded.

Unfortunately, some good deeds have deadly consequences. Colombia is in the midst of a protracted three-way civil war, pitting the Colombian army, which has one of the worst human-rights records in the Western Hemisphere, against leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitary groups, both largely funded by the drug trade. It is the army that will receive the lion's share of the U.S. money -- prompting senior defense officials to express privately their fear that our military's expanding role in fighting the war on drugs could draw the United States into another Vietnam.

Maybe that's why the Clinton administration decided to introduce the Colombian aid as part of a larger emergency-spending package -- bundling the potentially controversial measure with proposals only a cold-hearted misanthrope would oppose. Aong with the money for Colombia, the bill includes $2.2 billion for relief from natural disasters such as Hurricane Floyd and $854 million for military health care. It's an old legislative ploy designed to squelch debate and force politicians to vote for wasteful -- or even terrible -- measures just because they don't want to be painted as being against God, country and disaster relief. And we just saw how George W. Bush was able to twist John McCain's opposition to such legislative chicanery into an attack ad portraying him as somehow pro-breast cancer.

Jackson is one of the members who will nevertheless vote against the bill. "It's absurd," he told me. "There wasn't even any language added tying the aid to human-rights concerns. And (Rep.) Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) amendment to spend equivalent amounts of money on the demand side was defeated during the Appropriations Committee mark-up -- even though treatment has been proven to be 23 times more cost-effective than eradication of crops and 11 times more cost-effective than interdiction."

The cost of the helicopters alone would provide treatment for almost 200,000 substance users or drug-prevention services for more than 4 million Americans. We're about to spend close to $2 billion on Colombia, while here at home we have 3.6 million addicts not receiving the treatment they need. This despite the fact that drug czar Barry McCaffrey's budget is expected to rise to a proposed $19.2 billion next year.

When Richard Nixon -- hardly one to be accused of being soft on crime -- declared a war on drugs in 1971, he directed more than 60 percent of the funds into treatment. Now, we're down to 18 percent. Since 1980, through both Republican and Democratic administrations, the emphasis has turned to interdiction, crop eradication, border surveillance and punishment.

The evidence is clear that it's been a misguided use of resources. But putting $1.7 billion into Colombia, in the middle of a civil war, is more than misguided -- it's nuts. And if it's not voted down in the House on Thursday, it needs to be stopped in the Senate.

from the "De-Centralized Intelligence Agency," from http://www.dcia.com/doping.html:

DOPING AND DUPING AMERICA

by Brian Downing Quig quig@dcia.com

This article presumes that readers are acquainted with the role Lt. Colonel James Bo Gritz has played in exposing Theodore Shackley, formerly #2 man at CIA as one of the world's largest purchasers of Golden Triangle heroin. I produced and edited the 2 hour VHS video of this episode, THE HEROIN HIGHWAY which is available c/o PRIMARY RESEARCH, P.O. Box 58, Tempe, Arizona 85280 for $24.95.

After pondering the "big picture" for two years, I would like to offer this analysis which I believe penetrates not only our government's phoney "war on drugs" but the fraud of the international communist conspiracy as well. When Theodore Shackley became CIA station chief in Miami in 1962 he inherited the CIA's "executive action" program. "Executive action" is the CIA's euphemism for the assassination of foreign leaders. In 1975 the Church committee investigated this matter and identified the riflemen assigned to Shackley in this program. To identify the more recent assignments of these gunmen is to indicate the ongoing importance of this assassins group in U.S. foreign policy. Chi Chi Quintero was the base commander of the Contra air base, Santa Elena, in Costa Rica and Felix Roderguez was base commander of the lIapango resupply base north in Honduras. Frank Sturgis and Rolando Martinez, two other executive action gunman in Shackley's program, along with their supervisor, E. Howard Hunt were Nixon "plumbers" caught burglarizing the Watergate Hotel. Theodore Shackley and his deputy, Tom Clines, were the higher ups of the Iran/Contra scandal --- Shackley handling the Iran arms side and Clines the Contra end. The fingerprints of Shackley's people were all over the John Kennedy assassination.

While the propaganda instruments of communist and non-communist governments extol their peoples to hate and fear their "opposites", there is clearly an established pattern of covert coordination and cooperation between the two forms of government. This is nowhere better illustrated than in the drug trade of the Golden Triangle. In the late 60's/early 70's CIA station chief in Laos and Viet Nam, Theodore Shackley, under the direction of Nelson Rockefeller's former professor, Henry Kissinger, systematically hollowed out the leadership infrastructure of whole countries in southeast Asia's Golden Triangle only to have this richest poppy real estate turned over to communists. Now the Burmese communists, who our government supports, restrict all their territories to Westerners except for short visas to Rangoon. The same for Laos, Cambodia and Viet Nam. The poppies are grown in the restricted communist nations only for export to the West. How convenient.

As clearly documented by Alfred McCoy, author of THE POLITICS OF HEROIN IN SOUTHEAST ASIA, our CIA organized the heroin trade in the Golden Triangle by militarily suppressing all traffickers in each area except its chosen agent and by providing product transport via AIR AMERICA, Gen. Richard Secord. These U.S. government conferred monopolies transcended the communist takeovers. In the heroin trade of the Golden Triangle we see communist and non communist governments working together like a hand and a glove.

I have long maintained that the same individuals who pull the strings on the National Security Council also pull the strings on the Politburo. Reference page 163 of Anthony Sutton's scholarly work, WALL STREET AND THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION. After meticulously documenting the long concealed fact that the richest men of the world financed the Bolshevik revolution ( Rockefeller, Morgan, Du Pont, Mellon etc. ) Sutton reveals how this same group created UNITED AMERICANS a virulent anti Soviet organization which loudly stated that the Reds were going to come and cut our throats in the night. Sutton concludes that to create world communism and then create and control the propaganda instruments and paramilitary organizations to "fight" communism suggests utter moral depravity.

Would not control of both the eastern and western bloc nations give total world domination? Is the underlying motive of all these phoney communistic wars the maintenance of billionaire wealth and privilege?

In Sutton's work WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER declassified State Department cable traffic clearly documents the simultaneous financial backing and military arming of both the leftist Bolsheviks and the rightist Nazis by this same group of the world's richest men and the clashing of these super states for profit and control. Foremost among this group were John D. Rockefeller, grandfather of David Rockefeller, and Prescott Bush, father of George Bush.

Because the CIA's involvement in the heroin trade transcends many presidencies it is necessary to look beyond presidents for the real power behind this heroin atrocity. There is a saying in Washington, "The presidents come and go but the Rockefellers are forever". The central role of Rockefeller operative, Henry Kissinger, in Southeast Asia makes it tempting to ask if perhaps David Rockefeller and the very power elite which he represents may in the final analysis be at the center of this vile narcotics trade.

Perhaps this article is beginning to shed some light on the meaning of our government's habit of building up our nation's enemy states. The Carter government provided the fledgling Sandinista government with $118 million in aid which was more than Samosa got in the preceding 10 years. CIA associate and business partner of Ted Shackley and Tom Clines, Edwin Wilson, shipped 42,000 lbs of C-4 plastic explosives and 200,000 miniature detonators to Libya and trained Khadafi's terrorists. Wilson's CIA associate Frank Terpil provided similar services to Uganda's brutal Ide Amin. The U.S. financed the Kama River truck plant to supply the Afghan invasion, arms to Iran --- the examples are endless.

What hope is there? The current activities of James Bo Gritz are the stuff of which legends and hopeful futures are made. As the DIGEST has informed, the Feds have tried to silence Gritz with a passport violation charge which effectively pinned him inside this country for the last two years. After 6 government postponements Gritz was finally acquitted in June of 1989. The U.S. attorney trying his case said afterwards in a televised interview "George Bush called me personally and told me to get Bo Gritz".

Until these manipulators of the world drug trade and these phoney communistic wars are pulled from power, for the common people of this earth, insanity will rule the world.

excerpt from The Order of Skull and Bones:

[...]

Vice-President George Bush, as Chairman of President Reagan's cabinet-level working group and as Director of the National Narcotics Interdiction System, was the highest U. S. governmental official involved in the "war on drugs".

Frances Mullen, Jr., former head of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), called Bush's efforts "an intellectual fraud" and "a liability rather than an asset". Soon after these statements, Mullen resigned and the resultant General Accounting Office (GAO) report was buried.

In July, 1985, the suppressed GAO paper reported that there were "no benefits from the National Narcotics Border Interdiction System, directed by George Bush. In fact, the overall effect was to encourage supply...."

Monika Jensen-Stevenson, a "60 Minutes" producer, quit her job after the CBS news program refused to air the story she had uncovered relating to the covert drug trade. Her book, "Kiss The Boys Goodbye", details how our intelligence community used the apparatus of the POW/MIA governmental agencies as a cover for the trafficking of opiates from the "Golden Triangle".

President Reagan appointed Reform Party founder and Texas billionaire Ross Perot to the President's Advisory Council on Foreign Intelligence. Reagan made Perot a special presidential investigator, looking into America's POW and MIAs from the Vietnam "War".

Ross took the job to heart and spent considerable time and money in pursuit of the quest. He was given special clearance and access. He asked questions and interviewed everyone he could find.

From "Kiss The Boys Goodbye":

"Relations between Bush and Perot had gone downhill ever since the Vice-President had asked Ross Perot how his POW/MIA investigations were going.

'Well, George, I go in looking for prisoners,' said Perot, 'but I spend all my time discovering the government has been moving drugs around the world and is involved in illegal arms deals.... I can't get at the prisoners because of the corruption among our own people.'

"This ended Perot's official access to the highly classified files as a one-man presidential investigator. 'I have been instructed to cease and desist,' he had informed the families of missing men early in 1987."

The wholesale importation of cocaine into the U.S. during "Iran/Contra" is also well documented. George Bush, is known "to be in the loop" with many of the players keeping in contact directly with his office.

Also, there has been much speculation as to the use of the off-shore rigs, pipelines and other assets of Zapata Offshore being used for narcotic trans-shipments.

Narcotics such as cocaine and heroin cannot be manufactured without the precursor chemicals. The largest maker of these precursor chemicals is the Eli Lilly Company of Indianapolis, Indiana. The Quayle family is a large stockholder, and George Bush has been on the Board of Directors. Eli Lilly is also the company that first synthesized LSD for the CIA.

7. George Bush, Skull & Bones and the JFK Assassination

Rodney Stich's book "Defrauding America" tells of a "deep-cover CIA officer" assigned to a counter-intelligence unit, code-named Pegasus. This unit "had tape-recordings of plans to assassinate Kennedy" from a tap on the phone of J. Edgar Hoover. The people on the tapes were "[Nelson] Rockefeller, Allen Dulles, [Lyndon] Johnson of Texas, George Bush and J. Edgar Hoover."

[...]

[...] There are also some who theorize that the covert drug trade fits with plans to destabilize American families and society. Through demoralizing and fracturing the body politic, they can impose their will using psychological warfare and the political alchemy of the Hegellian dialectic.

James Shelby Downard's article, "Sorcery, Sex, Assassination and the Science of Symbolism ," an underground classic, links American historical events with a wild, numerological, grand occult plan "to turn us into cybernetic mystery zombies". [Downard is a schizophrenic fruitcake, though this does not discount the following theory as such. -Ed.] The assassination of JFK, this article contends, was the performance of a public occult ritual called The Killing of the King, designed as a mass-trauma, mind-control assault against our U.S. national body-politic.

But wait, there's more. The Clinton debacle is also staged, and is the Debasement of the Divine King.

modtime 1998-Aug-22, from http://www.radio4all.org/expert/ryan.html:

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN by Michael Levine
August 1998

 I sat in the darkness and cried throughout the movie, Saving Private Ryan, as  did a lot of people who felt the pain of their own losses - young men and women  killed long before their time by enemies so evil that they border on cartoon  characters.  But anyone who has ever met the real thing knows that these human  cancer cells can never be exaggerated nor must they ever be underestimated;  that they still exist around us everywhere and with little very encouragement  will once again metastisize as virulently as ever.

 My son Keith, a New York City police officer killed at age 27 by crack  addicts during a robbery and my brother David who committed suicide at age 34  after 19 years of heroin addiction, leaving a note that said "I can't stand  the drugs any more"  were just two of the millions of young "Ryans" who died  on the streets of our cities during the past three decades of our so-called  drug war.  And the fact that evidence that our nation's covert agencies aided  and supported the most evil of the Nazis like Klaus Barbie and Auguste Josef  Ricord to escape prosecution and to set up international criminal  organizations that supported themselves by pouring illegal drugs onto American  streets is something that I, a 25 year veteran federal agent who personally  confronted and gathered some of this evidence,  find difficult to live with.

It no longer matters that our CIA's support of Nazis and other mass  murderers, rapists, thieves and drug dealers was "a poor choice in foreign  policy" as some apologists would say, or that it was just another example of  the massive ineptitude that has apparently plagued them throughout their  history.  What is important now is that they be stopped from hiding the truth  of these matters from us behind the now throughly discredited defense of  "national security" so that we can make whatever changes in law and  bureaucratic structure we deem necessary to insure  that we are served by a  government "of the people, by the people and for the people," and not a self  interested bureaucracy that may be responsible for more damage to America than  any of our traditional enemies.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., who is now sponsoring legislation that would  force our covert agencies to open secret files concerning secret US support of  Nazi fugitives,  now held shrouded under the pretext of "national security"  for more than fifty years, said, ``If countries like Russia, Argentina and  Lithuania are opening their war crime files, how can the United States, the  country with democratic roots, be the last to lift the shroud of secrecy?''

from TPDL 2000-Aug-7, from the Washington Times, by Tom Carter:

Cocaine furthers setbacks

Operation Restore Democracy, a 1994 invasion of Haiti by 20,000 American troops, had another key objective - to stop the flow of U.S.-bound cocaine through what was then becoming a premier Caribbean drug hub.

Six years later, drug shipments through Haiti have soared to unprecedented levels, the latest in a series of setbacks to buffet the desperately poor nation that has seen U.S. troops depart and its fledgling democracy wither with a series of fraud-tainted elections.

"Haiti is a narco-state, no different than Panama was under [Manuel] Noriega, when the state powers, the banks and the police were either acquiescing or actively participating in narco-trafficking," said one U.S. official, who asked not to be named.

Haiti's emergence as a major player in the drug trade marks yet another blemish on the $2-billion-plus invested by the United States on the U.S. intervention that was once hailed by President Clinton as one of his administration's greatest foreign-policy achievements.

Now, international observers refuse to recognize the results of recent parliamentary elections, and, without a functioning democracy, hundreds of millions of dollars in international aid remains frozen.

Haiti's growing drug trade gives rise to suspicions that cash earned by helping satisfy America's appetite for cocaine has become a quasi-substitute for missing foreign aid.

"I've seen no interest anywhere in the Haitian government about getting the international aid unfrozen," said a foreign diplomat in Haiti during a discussion on drug profits.

No one compares former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the ousted leader who returned with American GIs six years ago, with Noriega, the former president of Panama captured in a 1989 U.S. invasion and subsequently sentenced to 40 years in a Florida prison on drug charges.

U.S. officials say they have no evidence to implicate Mr. Aristide in the movement of an estimated 7 tons of cocaine each month through Haiti, a transshipment point midway between Colombia and the United States.

Much of the suspicion instead focuses on Danny Toussaint, a confidant of Mr. Aristide's who won a Senate seat in May elections. Mr. Toussaint has long been known to U.S. authorities.

U.S. police arrested him during his 1997 visit to Miami, believing he had been involved in a series of political assassinations in Haiti.

Released a few days later on a technicality - the U.S. intelligence community declined to share its evidence with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) - throngs of chanting supporters lifted him on their shoulders when he returned to Port-au-Prince.

Today, Mr. Toussaint leads a classified list, now circulating in the Clinton administration and on Capitol Hill, of five prominent Haitians believed involved in drug trafficking.

Others on the five-man list include:

Medard Joseph, a former major in the Haitian army and, like Mr. Toussaint, a leader of Mr. Aristide security detail. Also like Mr. Toussaint, Mr. Joseph was elected to Haiti's Senate in May.

Jean-Marie Fourel Celestin, was elected senator as well. Mr. Fourel Celestin gained notoriety outside Haiti in 1995 when Mr. Aristide nominated him to be the nation's chief of police. Parliament rejected the nomination, believing him tainted by drug trafficking and corruption.

Cocaine comes to the southern coast of the impoverished island on a 430-mile trip from Colombia, often by decrepit fishing boats and lately in shiny speedboats.

It moves through Haiti, either overland on trucks that navigate around axle-deep potholes, or by planes that readily turn rare strips of good roads into nighttime runways.

The white powder sealed in plastic either leaves Haiti's north coast, bound for Miami 600 miles away, or moves through the neighboring Dominican Republic en route to Puerto Rico.

Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill are especially concerned.

"The drug situation in Haiti continues to get worse," said Sen. Mike DeWine, Ohio Republican.

Mr. DeWine, who has made numerous trips to Haiti and has been briefed by U.S. intelligence officials regarding Haiti's drug situation, declined to discuss names on the list. But his frustration with Haiti's present rulers was evident.

"My position for some time has been that we need to bypass the [Haitian] government," he said.

The present government, led by Mr. Aristide's handpicked successor, Rene Preval, adamantly denies any involvement in drug trafficking.

Burton Wides, a legal representative in Washington for the Haitian government, calls the charges "pure bunk."

"So there is a list. Anyone can make a list. But where is the evidence? Show me the evidence," Mr. Wides said.

He added that U.S. hostility toward the three senators dates to their opposition to the military junta that drove Mr. Aristide into exile in 1991, a band of rulers that maintained close, if back-channel contacts with Washington during a particularly brutal three-year rule.

Apart from their suspected involvement in drugs, the three senators also share something else in common: Even before talk of drug links surfaced, the U.S. government had banned them from official person-to-person contact with American diplomats and officials because of their involvement in human rights violations that included "extrajudicial killings."

Others on the list are accused of facilitating drug smuggling through corruption - looking the other way and taking bribes, U.S. officials said.

They are:

The chief of Haiti's national police, Pierre Denize, who makes less than $20,000 a year, but owns an airline and lives in the air conditioned comfort of a huge mansion.

Haiti's justice minister, Camille LeBlanc, who is believed to have profited handsomely since Mr. Aristide's return by freeing Colombian drug traffickers from Haitian jails.

Rep. Benjamin A. Gilman, New York Republican and chairman of the House International Relations Committee, expressed his concern by describing Haiti as "an increasingly repressive and authoritarian narco-state" in remarks made shortly after the May 21 elections.

While acknowledging that Haiti is awash with drug money and its attendant corruption, another U.S. official also said there is no evidence that the "executive branch," or President Rene Preval, is either involved or condones the situation.

Nor is there any indication that Mr. Preval's mentor, Mr. Aristide, is involved, the official said. "I do not believe that the next president of Haiti will be a drug thug," the official said, referring to Mr. Aristide's anticipated election this December to another term as president. First elected in 1990, Mr. Aristide handed power to Mr. Preval after elections in 1995.

The growing drug trade makes the historic divisions between rich and poor more pronounced, with new mountain-top mansions being built on the peaks that tower above the slums of Port-au-Prince.

Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Most people survive on less than a dollar a day.

Yet shiny new gas stations with shotgun-toting guards cater to a growing lot of polished, new sport utility vehicles.

Apart from building a democracy, one justification President Clinton gave for dispatching U.S. troops in 1994 was to stem the flow of drugs through Haiti.

Billions of dollars later, Haiti is in a state of "near-anarchy," said one U.S. academic, who has visited the nation regularly for more than two decades.

"Drugs follow the path of least resistance," added a senior U.S. defense official. "Haiti presents no obstacles to traffickers. Whether this is by incompetence or design, I don't know. My sense is that it is a combination of the two."

According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, 14 percent of the cocaine entering the United States last year - an estimated 67 tons - passed through Haiti,a 40 percent rise from the previous year.

Dozens of Haitian police and security officials - often those who dared to look into the nation's drug trade - have gone into exile, provided they were not assassinated first.

They include Robert Manuel, secretary of state for public security, who fled to Guatemala last October. Jean Lamy, who was picked to take his place, was killed the next day.

Jean Dominique, Haiti's most prominent radio journalist, who had denounced corruption and drug involvement among Haiti's ruling elite, specifically naming Mr. Toussaint, was gunned down in front of his radio station in April.

In the past year, U.S. Customs in Miami confiscated nearly 6,000 pounds of cocaine.

At best, U.S. officials now estimate that just 10 percent of the cocaine that leaves Haiti fails to make it to the United States.

Ships from Haiti that have been seized by the United States for drug smuggling and sold at auction have been seized again later for bringing in still more cocaine.

Haiti lacks any legal constraints against money laundering, which may explain why the U.S. Customs found more than $1 million in neatly bundled bills packed in handyman toolboxes bound for Haiti in February.

Just seven U.S. anti-drug officials currently work in Haiti. They help support the Unified Caribbean On-Line Regional Network (UNICORN), set up by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to share intelligence with Caribbean nations, including Haiti, regarding drug targets and money laundering.

The United States and Haiti have also joined in several enforcement operations to seize drugs and improve communications between police in the Caribbean.

In a lengthy statement from the Haitian Embassy to the U.S. Congress in April, the Haitian government bitterly protested being characterized as a haven for narcotics trafficking.

Haiti's drug problem existed long before Mr. Aristide was restored to power six years ago, the embassy statement said.

Haiti said that it is doing what it can - cooperating with U.S. officials and rooting out tainted police - but that it lacks the resources, the police or intelligence information to adequately combat drugs.

Tainted police have been investigated, fired and imprisoned as appropriate, the embassy said. It adamantly denied any sanctioned collusion.

U.S. officials are not unsympathetic to Haiti's difficulties.

"There is corruption within the police force, but they are trying to deal with it," said Michael Vigil, the DEA's special agent responsible for the Caribbean, who is based in Puerto Rico.

Others cite the willingness of Haitian officials to work with the DEA.

"I do not minimize the drug problem in any way," Rep. John Conyers Jr., Michigan Democrat, told a recent forum on Haiti sponsored by TransAfrica, a Washington-based think tank, "but there has been tremendous cooperation between our two governments."

He pointed out that the U.S. Coast Guard has publicly praised the Haitian government for its cooperation with the United States on drug interdiction.

"We are a law enforcement agency working in a foreign arena. A lot of rumors are brought forward," said the DEA's Mr. Vigil.

"We don't have anything concrete on any of these individuals, nothing we can sink our teeth into," he said when asked about the list of five.

The State Department was equally cautious.

"Certain individuals were brought into the government, and we cannot work with them, but that was for human rights violations," said the second U.S. official.

The official said that he had heard of drug allegations regarding the Haitian officials on the list, but that a State Department investigation had not produced anything "we could take into court."

In April, Rep. John L. Mica, Florida Republican and chairman of the Government Reform subcommittee on criminal justice, drug policy and human resources, held a hearing on Haiti's drug woes.

"Despite years of U.S. assistance totaling billions, Haiti is now the major drug transshipment country of the entire Caribbean, funneling huge shipments of cocaine from Colombia to the United States," Mr. Mica said at the time.

In the April hearing, Mr. Gilman, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, asked the Clinton administration's special adviser on Haiti, Donald Steinberg, about Colombian drug links to the Haitian government. Mr. Gilman even mentioned Mr. Toussaint by name.

Mr. Steinberg declined to discuss individuals publicly, saying instead: "We, indeed, have identified that a number of individuals who were suspected of illicit activities are not to have a formal role if the United States is going to be able to support those activities."

When pressed, Mr. Steinberg offered to go into greater detail in a "closed setting."

One preferred route into the United States is from Haiti, through the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic, and on to Puerto Rico.

"Once a shipment of cocaine whether smuggled from Haiti or the Dominican Republic by maritime, air or commercial cargo reaches Puerto Rico, it is unlikely to be subjected to further United States Customs inspections en route to the continental U.S.," said Mr. Vigil.

John Varrone of the U.S. Customs Service told the congressional hearing that Haitian authorities rarely present an obstacle to drug traffickers.

"The success rate for importations of cocaine to Haiti is virtually 100 percent," Mr. Varrone said. "Those deliveries not successful are due almost exclusively to mechanical failures of aircraft or vessels and not Haitian law enforcement activities."

To that, the Haitian government complains that the United States could do more if it wanted.

"The United States put boats around Haiti and stopped all the boat people from coming into the United States," said Mr. Wides, Haiti's Washington representative.

"It could stop the drugs if it wanted to," Mr. Wides said, recalling a period earlier this decade when the Coast Guard captured tens of thousands of Haitian boat people.

from PDL 1999-Mar-3, from the Wall Street Journal, by Micah Morrison, editorial page writer:

A Place Called Mena -- Just Some Facts

Reacting to the Juanita Broaddrick story, White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said the Journal editorial page "lost me after they accused the president of being a drug smuggler and a murderer." We made no such charges, of course. But we'll give Mr. Lockhart a pass on the grounds of hyperbole; we have indeed reported stories about the seamy side of Bill Clinton's Arkansas.

Most of our stories--as opposed to gamier Arkansas tales traded on the Internet--have revolved around Mena Intermountain Regional Airport in western Arkansas. Even as careful an observer as David Frum, writing in Commentary, criticizes "wild charges" including "drug-smuggling via Mena airport." Since drug smuggling at Mena is established beyond doubt, a brief review of some facts seems in order:

Mena was a staging ground for Barry Seal, one of the most notorious drug smugglers in history. He established a base at Mena in 1981, and according to Arkansas law-enforcement officials, imported as much as 1,000 pounds of cocaine a month from Colombia. In 1984 he became an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration, flying to Colombia and gathering information about leaders of the Medellin cartel. He testified in several high-profile cases, and was assassinated in Baton Rouge, La., in 1986.

Two investigators probing events at Mena say they were closed down--William Duncan, a former Internal Revenue Service investigator, and Russell Welch, a former Arkansas State Police detective. They fought a decade-long battle to bring events at Mena to light, pinning their hopes on nine separate state and federal probes. All failed. And Messrs. Welch and Duncan were stripped of their careers.

In 1986, Dan Lasater, Little Rock bond daddy and an important Clinton campaign contributor, pleaded guilty to cocaine distribution. The scheme also involved Mr. Clinton's brother, Roger. Both Mr. Lasater and Roger Clinton served brief prison terms. Gov. Clinton later issued a pardon to Mr. Lasater.

On Aug. 23, 1987, teenagers Kevin Ives and Don Henry were run over by a northbound Union Pacific train near Little Rock in an area reputed to be a haven for drug smugglers. Gov. Clinton's state medical examiner, Fahmy Malak, quickly ruled the deaths accidental, saying the two boys had fallen into a deep sleep side by side on the railroad tracks after smoking too much marijuana. A second autopsy concluded the boys had been murdered and their bodies placed on the tracks. Despite public outcry, Dr. Malak remained medical examiner until just before Mr. Clinton's presidential campaign.

In 1990 Jean Duffey, the head of a newly created drug task force, began investigating a possible link between the train deaths and drugs. Her boss, the departing prosecuting attorney for Arkansas's Seventh Judicial District, gave her a direct order: "You are not to use the drug task force to investigate public officials." In a 1996 interview with the Journal, Ms. Duffey said: "We had witnesses telling us about low-flying aircraft and informants testifying about drug pick-ups."

Dan Harmon, who had earlier been appointed special prosecutor for the train deaths, took office in 1991 as seventh district prosecutor. Ms. Duffey was discredited, threatened, and ultimately forced to flee Arkansas. In 1997, a federal jury in Little Rock found Mr. Harmon guilty of five counts of drug dealing and extortion, and sentenced him to eight years in prison for using his office to extort narcotics and cash.

Mr. Lockhart to the contrary, we have never accused Mr. Clinton of a direct role in these events. Obviously, as governor for 12 years, he was ultimately responsible for Arkansas law enforcement. As president, he has commented only once about events at Mena. Asked about it during a 1994 press conference, he said that it was "primarily a matter of federal jurisdiction" and "they didn't tell me anything about it."

In 1984, Seal flew his C-123K to Nicaragua in a Central Intelligence Agency drug sting of Sandinista officials. The CIA rigged a hidden camera in the plane, enabling him to snap photos of several men--including a high-ranking Sandinista--loading cocaine aboard the aircraft. In 1986, eight months after Seal's death, his plane was shot down over Nicaragua with an Arkansas pilot at the wheel and a load of ammunition and contra supporter Eugene Hasenfus in the cargo bay.

Three days after the 1996 presidential election, the CIA issued a brief report saying it had engaged in "authorized and lawful activities" at the airfield, including "routine aviation-related services" and a secret "joint-training operation with another federal agency." The agency said it was not "associated with money laundering, narcotics trafficking, arms smuggling, or other illegal activities" at Mena.

The statement was issued in response to a probe by investigators for the House Banking Committee, directed by Chairman Jim Leach. His report has been often promised and often delayed. Yesterday Leach spokesman David Runkel said that Banking Committee investigators are "putting the finishing touches" on their report. "While there is an extraordinary story to be told, it's unlikely that the president is going to be too severely embarrassed."

Whatever Mr. Clinton's involvement as governor, something singular was going on at Mena. Perhaps Mr. Leach will yet shed some light on the mystery.

from TPDL 2000-Jun-10, from Insight Magazine, by J. Michael Waller:

Mexican Candidate Hires Clinton Team

Democratic political flacks James Carville and Stanley Greenberg are working as consultants for a Mexican presidential candidate with ties to narcotraffickers.

The world's longest-reigning political party, which has ruled Mexico for seven corrupt decades and faces the specter of its first-ever defeat in the July 2 presidential elections, is depending on a bizarre coalition of forces to get its man in office. Those forces, Mexican political observers are saying, include some of the country's most powerful narco-oligarchs and political enforcers. And operating out of a war room in a glitzy Mexico City hotel, an imported team of U.S. campaign consultants - including longtime Clinton strategist James Carville, Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg and the daughter of Gore campaign chief Tony Coelho - are working feverishly to persuade Mexicans to elect Francisco Labastida president.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Janet Reno has issued a report to try to exonerate one of the key forces behind Labastida - tycoon Carlos Hank Gonzalez, who is waging his own campaign in the United States to resist allegations by U.S. counternarcotics agencies that he and his sons control some of Mexico's most powerful drug cartels (see ``Reno Contradicts U.S. Drug Report,'' p. 20). That has some analysts in Washington asking if U.S. drug policy is being unduly influenced by Clinton-Gore political operatives.

The Party of the Institutional Revolution, known as the PRI, has Carville on a ``multimillion-dollar contract'' to offer ``strategic advice,'' according to Mexican newspapers. Separately, the PRI has rolled out its own hacks who far surpass even Carville's legendary nastiness. Shadowy figures from the PRI's discredited past - including a figure tied to a major drug cartel and a political fixer who rigged past PRI electoral victories and is tied to the murder of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent - have taken over the campaign.

President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore have done their part, too. Mexico's respected El Financiero newspaper reported in February that PRI secretary-general and Labastida campaign manager Esteban Moctezuma made a ``clandestine'' visit to Washington where he met with the president and Carville and Greenberg, while the latter were serving as paid PRI advisers. Coincidentally, perhaps, Clinton ``closed the doors'' on Labastida's main challenger, Vicente Fox, when the charismatic, center-right candidate tried to see him that same year. Gore's staff also refused to permit a courtesy visit from Fox, according to sources close to the Mexican candidate.

Carville did not return calls about these matters to El Financiero and was out of town when Insight attempted to speak with him. El Financiero quoted him as saying last year, ``I won't comment about what I do outside the United States.'' But Carville's Website says he ``is currently a consultant for the campaign of Francisco Labastida Ochoa,'' whom it calls ``Mexico's former interior secretary.'' Carville did tell the Mexican newspaper Milenio Diario in late April that ``the PRI contracted me'' to advise Labastida, and said that the Labastida campaign ``would begin to intensify'' in the 60 days before the election.

For Labastida, according to Mexican columnist Raymundo Riva Palacio, ``damage control is a strategic priority.'' Weighed down by the PRI's decades-old baggage of corruption, incompetence, brutality and lawlessness, the candidate is dogged by constant questions about allegations of ties to corrupt figures and to Mexico's powerful drug cartels. Many of the allegations concern his six-year term as governor of Sinaloa, a Pacific coast state that has been a drug-producing and trafficking center since the 1920s.

The Clinton-Gore political connections, however loose they may be, lend the impression that the United States tacitly is backing Labastida, as it did the reelection of Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1996. The rationale behind such support is fear of instability that a democratic transition might bring, and that in geopolitical terms Labastida might suit Washington's interests. Some skeptics fear that generous amounts of PRI lobbying and consulting money might be part of the equation.

Though Labastida casts himself as the leader of a ``new PRI,'' he ``is the product of the longest-ruling one-party system in the world,'' a Mexican political analyst, who asked not to be named, tells Insight. ``But unlike his three Harvard- and Yale-trained predecessors [including the well-regarded current president, Ernesto Zedillo], he is a throwback to a PRI notorious for drug-dealing, fraud, murder and other crimes, practices for Mexico's abysmal levels of poverty, crime and corruption.''

Nobody has presented solid evidence that Labastida personally has been involved in drug trafficking, and the candidate strongly denies any connection. To the contrary, he portrays himself as a fighter against corruption. He angrily disputes reports that he was at all tolerant of drug trafficking when he served as governor of Sinaloa from 1987 to 1993, as Insight has reported (see ``The Narcostate Next Door,'' Dec. 27, 1999).

The daily La Jornada newspaper reports that when an Insight story was read to Labastida on a radio talk show, he went ``out of control.'' According to the independent weekly La Crisis, Labastida campaign communications director Emilio Gamboa Patron, a member of the PRI old guard who once headed a government agency that conducted censorship, stopped publication in Mexico of a Spanish translation of the Insight article.

The Mexican government routinely pressures and censors the press. Freedom House, in its annual survey of world freedom, ranks Mexico as only ``partly free,'' and calls it ``one of the most dangerous countries in the world for reporting.'' A good understanding of Labastida's record on drug trafficking is therefore lacking for want of reportage. What is known is that he reportedly was shepherded into the governorship of Sinaloa with the election-rigging help of then-incumbent governor Antonio Toledo Corro in 1986. Former U.S. Customs chief William von Raab, in congressional testimony, linked Toledo with regional drug lords. The leftish opposition magazine Proceso reported that lieutenants of one of Mexico's most notorious drug-cartel chiefs, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, openly boasted that their boss helped finance Labastida's gubernatorial campaign.

But Labastida is credited with cleaning up the narco-infested Sinaloa police. He was subjected to death threats and two of his closest aides were killed. One, a bodyguard, died in a 1990 shootout with federal police he believed to be protecting another drug trafficker, according to local journalist Ignacio Ramirez. Another, the state attorney general who prosecuted a former federal police official for drug activity and murder, was assassinated in 1993. Labastida and his family fled the country until things cooled down and he became ambassador to Portugal.

On the other hand, in 1989, on a day Labastida was away vacationing with Carlos Hank Gonzalez, the Mexican army rounded up the entire police force of Culiacán, the state capital, and arrested state and local police leaders whom Labastida had appointed, alleging that they were protecting drug baron Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo. Labastida has called it a setup, claiming he did all he could under very adverse conditions. Others have termed the operations little more than gang warfare between drug factions. A Mexican political analyst who pleaded for anonymity tells Insight, ``Labastida often cites the murder of his bodyguard by Federal Judicial Police units in 1990 as proof that he was innocent and that federal antidrug agents - and their bosses in Mexico City - were to blame for protecting drug traffickers.

The Mexican source says that this argument fails to take note of two key facts: First, the Mexican antidrug czar at that time was Jorge Carillo Olea, who was widely accused of having narco-links and a thriving kidnapping industry when he later became governor of the southern state of Morelos in 1994. ``However, when the Carillo scandal broke out in early 1998, Labastida was by that time head of Gobernación, the ministry responsible for political compliance by PRI governors. Labastida attempted in vain to protect the governor and keep him in power - the same man whose forces Labastida had accused in Sinaloa of protecting drug traffickers and of murdering his bodyguard,'' says the analyst.

A second fact that ``sheds doubt on Labastida's self-anointed innocence and victimization,'' according to the analyst, ``is that he was also widely tied with Sinaloa's equally notorious nondrug violence, mostly targeted against his political opponents.'' That violence includes electoral fraud in four state and municipal elections, documented in El Norte; the beating of nonviolent protesters in an October 1989 municipal campaign, in which Labastida's forces pummeled an opposition candidate unconscious; and a mysterious Reichstag-style fire in a municipal-government building in the state capital. A charred body was found inside the ruins, and Labastida accused the opposition PAN party of being behind the death. However, an ensuing investigation, according to Noroeste, found that the deceased had died elsewhere and the body was moved into the building shortly before the fire.

During Labastida's governorship, Sinaloa was the state with the highest number of murdered journalists in Mexico, a country already dangerous for investigative and political reporters. None of the crimes was solved. The editor of El Debate de Sinaloa suggested that some of the journalists were murdered for their investigations of PRI corruption.

And Sinaloa also was the location of some of Mexico's most prominent political assassinations during the Labastida administration. The PAN party's 1988 presidential candidate, Manuel Clouthier, was killed in a suspicious highway accident in October 1989 as he was organizing volunteers to guard against fraud in that month's municipal elections, and as Labastida was directing violent police repression of opposition activists.

Clouthier had been Labastida's opponent in the 1986 gubernatorial election. His daughter, Tatiana, nearly suffered a fatal accident on the same highway in November 1992 as she was organizing PAN electoral observers for upcoming gubernatorial elections. Ducking for refuge in a restaurant saved her from a car that was trying to force her off the road.

Labastida, claims his left-wing rival Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, ``had much to do with the fact that they didn't fight narcotrafficking'' in Sinaloa. U.S. law-enforcement sources tell Insight they have nothing conclusive on Labastida, but they are cautious. And the Los Angeles Times cited a U.S. official with access to intelligence as saying, ``We don't have strong stuff on him. It could go either way. You can't form a definite opinion.''

But even fellow PRI members blame Labastida for drug corruption. ``For several decades, a lamentable culture of excessive tolerance toward the production and consumption of drugs has become deeply rooted among us,'' current Sinaloa Gov. Juan Millan, a PRI member, stated in a July 1999 speech. ``For years we allowed drug trafficking to grow in our social fiber and to penetrate the most diverse strata of our public life.'' In the political culture of the PRI, Mexican analysts say, Millan was alleging all his predecessors in recent decades were guilty of complicity.

Now analysts claim there is no doubt that Labastida has cast his lot with some of the most powerful PRI figures whom U.S. officials believe are at the core of Mexico's drug-trafficking operations. U.S. and Mexican authorities have singled out three of Labastida's top campaign officials for alleged drug ties. Campaign communications chief Emilio Gamboa Patron, a longtime PRI functionary who held various high-level posts, was fingered by a former senior Mexican antidrug official, Eduardo Valle Espinoza, who later fled to the United States, for links with powerful narcotrafficker Juan Garcia Abrego, then chief of the Gulf drug cartel. Gamboa was in charge of Mexico's air strips at the time.

U.S. authorities also want to question Labastida deputy campaign manager Manuel Bartlett Diaz in connection with the murder of a Drug Enforcement Administration agent. Bartlett Diaz is accused of helping drug traffickers in the 1980s when he was chief of the powerful Gobernación ministry that controls the secret political police and enforces party control among the PRI governors. From that post he helped Labastida win the Sinaloa governorship.

The PRI presidential candidate has renewed his on-again, off-again friendship with billionaire PRI power-broker Carlos Hank Gonzalez. Independent Mexican journalists say that the recent surfacing of Hank Gonzalez in the presidential campaign after a public falling out with Labastida is a signal that the PRI will ensure the candidate's win by any means necessary. Proceso magazine recently featured Labastida and Carlos Hank Gonzalez on its cover, with the caption, ``Panic in the PRI.''

Meanwhile, the Carville-Clinton-Coehlo-Gore campaign connection to Labastida is raising questions about U.S. antidrug policy. Mexican newspapers put the pieces together recently after the Wall Street Journal reported that Reno had issued a statement that appeared to exonerate Carlos Hank Gonzalez and his sons of narcotrafficking allegations leveled by the Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center, or NDIC. La Jornada reported that Reno ``never denies the information in the NDIC analysis and only affirms that it has not been adopted as the official position.''

El Financiero wrote, ``Reno now fears that the [Wall Street] Journal interpretation will be used by the Republicans to accuse her of being soft in the fight against narcocorruption in Mexico. Publication of the Journal report coincides with a multimillion-dollar campaign by the Hanks ... to try to demonstrate that they are innocent and that the accusations against them (including by the Federal Reserve) are the product of a `great conspiracy' of police agents and `racist' bureaucrats, academics, bankers and journalists.''

The Mexican press has subtle ways of helping the public read between the lines. In an article featuring Carville, Milenio Diario illustrated the story with a photo of Labastida with Hank.

from TPDL 2000-Jun-10, from Insight Magazine, by Jamie Dettmer:

Reno Contradicts U.S. Drug Report

U.S. drug warriors say Justice has undermined a key drug probe and fear that the department will prove weak in enforcing a new law aimed at squeezing narcotraffickers.

The wording could not have been more direct and yet within weeks of the highly classified National Drug Intelligence Center, or NDIC, report being leaked to the media - first to Insight in March 1999 and then later to the Washington Post - the allegations it contained against Mexico's powerful Hank family were being ``discredited'' by Attorney General Janet Reno.

Despite detailed allegations contained in the report, Reno dismissed it, writing in a March letter: ``The analysis and any conclusions and inferences contained in the report have not been adopted as official views and positions of the NDIC, the Department of Justice, or the various federal, state and local law-enforcement and regulatory authorities that may have provided information to the drafters of the report.''

The Hank family greeted Reno's statement as amounting to having been given a clean bill of health. For a year the family has been fighting the NDIC claim that they pose a ``significant criminal threat to the United States.''

For years lawmen on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border frequently had been confronted with information suggesting that billionaire Mexican power broker Carlos Hank Gonzalez and his two sons were using their political and financial muscle to protect Mexico's major narcotraffickers, including the Arellano-Felix brothers in Tijuana as well as the Juarez drug cartel. But dozens of probes launched by U.S. and Mexican law-enforcement authorities, including one mounted in 1996 by Mexican Attorney General Jorge Madrazo, went nowhere. They were doomed from the start say investigators, who claim they were unable to cut through webs of intrigue and patronage surrounding the family.

But there was cautious optimism among agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA, and the U.S. Customs Service when ``Operation White Tiger'' was launched in 1997 amid much secrecy. Their mission: to pull together as much data as they could on the Hank family and to expose a key relationship underpinning Mexico's narcotrafficking - the alleged association between the country's drug barons and top Mexican politicians, including former Mexican Cabinet minister Hank and his sons, Carlos Hank Rhon and Jorge Hank Rhon.

Leaks south of the border imperiled the chances of Operation White Tiger being successful; so, too, did nervousness in Washington among federal agency heads, who learned in the 1990s to step gingerly with drug investigations that could have a political impact on U.S.-Mexican relations and might anger the White House.

And so frustrated agents released dozens of pages of their intelligence analysis on the Hanks' businesses, sweetheart deals, political strokes and alleged links with drug barons. A year later law-enforcement frustration has grown, say U.S. drug warriors, who declined to go on the record for this article.

They also question whether a new drug-kingpin law that obliges the federal government annually to name the world's top suspected narcotraffickers and to seize their assets in the United States, as well as those of their business associates, will be as effective as it could if the Justice Department is unprepared to put the war against drugs ahead of politics.

For them, the Hank case and the demise of Operation White Tiger is instructive when assessing the prospects of the Foreign Drug Kingpin Designation Act, which was approved last year and requires the administration to provide Congress with an annual list of the suspected top foreign drug traffickers.

In early June, the Clinton administration sent Congress the first annual blacklist under the act, naming a dozen suspected drug barons, including six Mexicans: Ramon and Benjamin Arrellano-Felix, Jose de Jesus, Luis Ignacio Amexcua-Contreras, Rafael Caro-Quintero and Vicente Carrillo-Fuentes.

Following the media revelations about Operation White Tiger, the Hank family, which has denied it is linked to or protecting top Mexican narcotraffickers, lobbied the Justice Department. With the assistance of Republican former U.S. senator Warren Rudman, whom Carlos Hank Rhon hired to represent his interests in Washington, Hank secured from Reno the March letter contradicting the NDIC analysis.

``It was determined that the subject matter of the report was beyond the substantive expertise and area of responsibility for the NDIC, and the project was terminated,'' Reno wrote.

The attorney general's retraction of an intelligence analysis based on dozens of past investigations on the Hank family and on new lines of inquiry came as a bitter disappointment to members of the San Diego-based Operation White Tiger Task Force.

The Hanks and their supporters insist that Reno's intervention was just and that they have been victims of innuendo spread by their political and business rivals.

From the get-go agents involved in the probe feared that Washington would conclude that Operation White Tiger was too controversial and potentially too disruptive to Mexican-American relations for it to continue. They suspected it would go the way of previous investigations of top Mexican politicians. In their minds was a series of probes launched by individual DEA special agents in charge before the signing of the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement. Those investigations encountered strong Washington disapproval, say former agents Phil Jordan and Hector Berrellez.

Far from lacking substance, agents involved in the inquiry say that financial investigations and information supplied by confidential sources established that Hank family ``businesses, corporations and entities, are linked to the major drug-trafficking organizations.''

The task force scrutinized an array of business dealings as well as every tie the Hanks ever had with convicted or suspected narcotraffickers - from friendships to joint ownership of businesses, including the suspected drug-linked commercial airline Taesa and the cargo-shipping firm Transportacion Maritima Mexicana, or TMM.

According to Operation White Tiger documents, agents also explored allegations made by confidential sources of Carlos Hank's laundering money through two family-owned Texas banks - the Laredo National Bank and the South Texas National Bank of Laredo - and allegations that Jorge Hank Rhon is ``providing the service of laundering narcotics proceeds'' via the family-owned Agua Caliente Racetrack in Tijuana and off-track gaming interests on both sides of the Southwest border. ``Through Jorge Hank Rhon's gambling casino and satellite wagering operations the AFO [Arellano Felix organization] is able to effectively launder [sic] millions of cash dollars made from the narcotics trade,'' states one document.

The Hank family's response to the allegations against it was immediate and furious and has been unrelenting. At least one major Mexican daily newspaper spiked a follow-up article written by its Washington correspondent after the family intervened with the paper's owner. Other publications were threatened with legal action, including a small California-based Latino magazine, El Andar, which several months after Insight's exposé also secured copies of the NDIC report and published a major article. An attorney acting for the Hank-owned Laredo National Bank of Texas demanded a retraction, an apology and $10 million for legal fees and expenses.

Even so, Rudman is adamant the report is ``hogwash.'' Explaining that Carlos Hank Rhon is a friend of his, the former senator, who is on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, says he was asked to take a look at it to see what he thought. ``I told them I thought it was spurious. I did a lot of due diligence on it and I can tell you Carlos Hank Rhon is not a drug smuggler.'' He added: ``My representation was very narrow, I looked at it, thought it was dubious and wrote to Reno asking her what she thought. Three months later she released her letter discrediting the report. I am pleased at what I did. You know the sections dealing with the Texas banks, for example, were drawn from open sources down in Mexico where a lot of people have an axe to grind. I think this report was a misuse of the process.''

Both in Mexico and the United States the Hank family has lobbied hard, denying the allegations against them and claiming someone is out to get them. Rudman told Copley News Service recently that he is conducting his own investigation into the leak of the NDIC report, which Justice Department officials claim was written by an NDIC official who eventually was fired after it was disclosed to someone at the Army War College and then leaked to the media. In fact, the analysis was based on the work of many hands and several agencies. Asked by Insight whether there were factual error in the analysis, Justice Department spokesman Chris Whatney said: ``The letter speaks for itself.''

Now both the Hank family and the Mexican government are targeting the new drug-kingpin law, coauthored by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, arguing that the administration could declare erroneously that certain individuals are doing business with drug cartels and freeze their assets. Feinstein disputes this, explaining that a special commission will monitor the law as it is enforced.

But some veteran U.S. drug warriors, dismayed by the whole Hank case, say Justice has been hoodwinked and fear that it may prove timid when it comes to enforcing the new law on foreign kingpins.

NutraSweet^tm, the NutraPoison by Alex Constantine explores the dark roots of aspartame:

[...]

Aspartame is an rDNA derivative, a combination of two amino acids (long supplied by a pair of Maryland biotechnology firms: Genex Corp. of Rockville and Purification Engineering in Baltimore.) The Pentagon once listed it in an inventory of prospective biochemical warfare weapons submitted to Congress. But instead of poisoning enemy populations, the "food additive" is currently marketed as a sweetening agent in some 1200 food products.

[...]

Internally, aspartame breaks down into its constituent amino acids and methanol, which degrades into formaldahyde.

[...]

Even more daunting are the findings of Dr. Paul Spiers, a neuropsychologist at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital, that aspartame use can depress intelligence. For this reason, he selected experimental subjects with a history of consuming it but unaware that they might be suffering ill effects. The subjects were given NutraSweet in capsules of the FDA's allowable limit. Spiers was alarmed to discover that they developed "cognitive deficits." One of the tests required recall of square patterns and alphabetical sequences, becoming increasingly more difficult. The test is challenging, but most people improve as they learn how it is done. The aspartame users, however, did not improve. "Some frankly showed a reverse pattern," said Spiers."

Aspartame has been shown to erode short-term memory. At the May, 1985 hearings on NutraSweet, Louisiana Senator Russell Long related a bizarre anecdote:

SENATOR LONG: I have received a letter recently from a person who is well known to me and whose word is impeccable, as far as I am concerned.

This person told me that she had been dieting and she had been using diet drinks with aspartame in it.

She said she found her memory was going. She seemed to be completely losing her memory. When she would meet people whom she knew intimately, she could not recall what their name was, or even who they were.

She could not recall a good bit of that which was going on about her to the extent that she was afraid she was losing her mind. . . In due course, someone suggested that it might be this NutraSweet, so she stopped using it and her memory came back and her mind was restored.

Senator Howard Metzenbaum replied that he had received "a number of letters from doctors reporting similar developments. . . There have been hundreds of incidents of people who have suffered loss of memory, headaches, dizziness, and other neurological symptoms which they feel are related to aspartame."

[...]

from the Sunday Times, 2000-Feb-27, by Jonathan Leake, Science Editor:

Top sweetener condemned by secret report

BRITAIN'S bestselling sweetener was condemned as dangerous and potentially toxic in a report compiled by some of the world's biggest soft drinks manufacturers - who now buy tons of it to add to diet drinks.

Coca-Cola, Pepsi and other manufacturers produced the report in the early 1980s before the sweetener, aspartame, had been approved for use in America. It warns that it can affect the workings of the brain, change behaviour and even en-courage users to eat extra carbohydrate, so destroying the point of using diet drinks.

The documents were un-earthed last week under freedom of information legislation. It follows a decision by re-searchers at King's College in London to study suspected links between aspartame intake and brain tumours.

Britons drink more than 9 billion cans or bottles of pop a year, of which about half contain artificial sweeteners. Aspartame, made by Monsanto and also marketed under the name NutraSweet, is 200 times sweeter than normal sugar and is used in many popular low-calorie foods and drinks. It has been declared safe in a number of studies and has been approved for use in both America and Europe.

There has, however, always been concern at its tendency to break down, producing methanol, which is both toxic in its own right and which breaks down further to produce formic acid and formaldehyde. Phenylalanine, another breakdown product of aspartame, is also dangerous to people with phenylketonuria, a common enzyme deficiency.

The 30-page aspartame report was drawn up under the auspices of America's National Soft Drinks Association (NSDA), whose governing body at the time included senior Coca-Cola and Pepsi executives. It says: "We object to the approval of aspartame for unrestricted use in soft drinks." It then lists ways in which aspartame was believed directly to affect brain chemistry, including the synthesis of vital neurotransmitters such as serotonin.

Other papers obtained with the NSDA documents show the Food and Drug Administration also had misgivings. Despite this, it approved aspartame.

Dick Adamson, of the NSDA, said that, in l983, it evaluated the data on aspartame and posed a number of questions. Once they were answered, it no longer had concerns about the safety of aspartame in carbonated drinks.

Ben Deutsch, a spokesman for Coca-Cola, referred questions to the NSDA.

from http://www.serv.net/~spencer/octopus/FASCIST/barbie.html:

KLAUS BARBIE, the Butcher of Lyon, was not only smuggled out of Europe by the OSS but actually hired by the US government. Later he was moved to South America, where he served as liaison between US intel, the Nazi diaspora, and drug lords. A key player in the 1980 "Cocaine Coup" in Bolivia.

from http://www.tiac.net/users/ddiam/Q/CIA.html:

OUTLAW THE CIA, DECRIMINALIZE DRUGS

by Kevin Sanders

It's time to get the CIA off drugs. Then get rid of the CIA. The ongoing investigation into CIA involvement in smuggling cocaine into Los Angeles during the Iran-Contra scandal is part of a much longer history of CIA drug activities. Indeed, drugs have been a form of international currency for the CIA for more than thirty years. With its lack of accountability, massive secret budget, international reach, private airlines, secret bank accounts and links with the Mafia, the CIA is ideally placed to become the world's biggest drug smugglers.

The corruption of the CIA is almost complete. From being a gathering of the best and brightest brought together as the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) to help the U.S. fight and win World War II, the CIA began its decline almost immediately after the war when it imported and absorbed into its leadership the remnants of Hitler's spy organization under Nazi spy master Reinhardt Gehlin. When protests were raised, Nelson Rockefeller, who had been the major force in urging the CIA to put the former Nazis on the CIA payroll, dismissed concerns, saying "They're on our side now." In the name of protecting the world from godless communism the CIA became another government, more powerful than most.

Over the years the CIA has used all manner of treachery to overthrew regimes it didn't like (including ASSASSINATION). The CIA has secretly funded preferred candidates. It used paid spies in high government positions to topple elected administrations. Whenever the CIA thought necessary, it simply arranged for the assassination of elected leaders. After it conspired in the death of President Allende in Chile, Henry Kissinger commented, "We cannot allow a nation to go communist through the irresponsibility of its own people."

Within the United States itself the CIA has bribed or blackmailed politicians and journalists and infiltrated student organizations. Around the world the CIA has helped set up and train terrorist and torture squads in Latin America, supported tyrants in Africa, and fomented wars in Asia. Is it surprising that the CIA would use laundered drug money to finance its operations?

Yet it is these allegations (now contested) in the San Jose Mercury News concerning cocaine smuggling that have sparked the most vehement popular outrage ever against the CIA. Evidence accumulates in the form of continuing reports, affidavits, suppressed documents, and a better informed re-examination of earlier evidence including the diaries of Oliver North and the transcripts of Senator John Kerry's commission on Iran-Contra drug activities. The investigations may have become unstoppable - even for the CIA.

Hooked on Drugs

In the 1950s the CIA collaborated with Corsican drug gangs to fight communist influence on the Marseilles waterfront. The Corsicans were thus able to become the main suppliers of heroin to America. As part of the CIA's war against "Red China" it helped the deposed Chinese Nationals boost their economy by developing Burma as the world's biggest opium producers. During the war in Vietnam, the CIA discovered a lucrative source of income in heroin. Bodies of unidentified American soldiers were filled with bags of heroin and sent to funeral homes in the U.S. run by organized crime families with close links to the CIA.

After Vietnam, the CIA shifted its drug activities to Latin America where the main drugs were marijuana and cocaine. With its highly developed skills in drug smuggling the CIA naturally turned to drugs as a hidden source of funding for its arms to the Contras after Congress had ruled such arms supplies illegal. How this worked is best seen in the continuing disclosures about Mena airport in Arkansas where hundreds of tons of marijuana and cocaine were flown into the U.S. by CIA-supported airlifts. The famous Hasenfauss plane crash in Nicaragua during the Reagan years that uncovered the secret arms shipments to the Contras was part of the Mena drugs and arms run. Hassenfaus was revealed to be a CIA pilot and the plane was found to have been used to carry guns to the Contras and drugs back to Mena. All efforts by police and drug enforcement agencies were thwarted by the intervention of Oliver North, John Secord, William Barr and others, allegedly acting under the authority of then-Governor Clinton and then-President Bush.

Some of these drugs made their way from Mena to the big dealers in California. The controversial reports in the the San Jose Mercury suggest that CIA intervention prevented any action to obstruct the dealers. These reports indicate that even when the dealers were caught red handed, they were not arrested, and the CIA stepped in to seize the evidence and destroy it or return it to the dealers. Los Angeles police involved in the cases have now signed affidavits asserting that CIA agents took possession of drugs and documents and told police not to proceed with investigations. As researcher Peter Dale Scott has shown in a series of books and articles, the most important role the CIA played in the spread of drugs into the U.S. was to protect the flow from intervention by police and drug enforcement officials. With the relentless investigations now underway, and more police and drug enforcement officials telling what they know, we are likely to learn more about the CIA drug trail from Latin America to Florida and Mena and other U.S. landing sites, all the way to Los Angeles and the other big cities where poor communities provided lucrative markets.

Ironically, the greatest threat to the CIA's drug trafficking would be legalization of drugs. In countries like the Netherlands where drugs are now effectively decriminalized, the problem of illegal smuggling and distribution with all its attendant gang warfare, corruption of police and government, and prisons full of otherwise law-abiding citizens who have puffed a marijuana cigarette or sniffed cocaine, have simply vanished.

Other countries are now moving in the direction of the Netherlands; Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Columbia are considering decriminalization. In America, a number of big city mayors, police chiefs, and establishment commentators such as William F. Buckley, George Shultz and Milton Freidman have joined the call for legalization. And the multi-billionaire social activist George Soros has donated five million dollars to study drug legalization. The recent approval by voters in California and Arizona for legalization of medical use of marijuana - in reality one of nature's wonder drugs - is a major step toward general decriminalization. Other states are sure to follow.

The move toward drug legalization promises a safer world. Legalization of drugs would put the CIA out of what has become its biggest and most profitable criminal activity. No longer would it have secret ways to fund its secret wars.

Lost in the Wash

Where all the money has gone will probably remain a mystery. A lot of the CIA's drugs and drug money have "fallen off the truck" on the way through, and will never be traced--not unlike the S&L debacle. It is unlikely we will ever know the full story of the CIA's Iran-Contra drug dealings or where the money went. But the present investigations have revived the issue and raised the right questions.

As we go to press, the mainstream media is challenging some of the claims made by the Mercury-News. Indeed it may be that the CIA did not attempt to fuel the crack epidemic in inner cities. But in the continuing investigations it is clear that the long-ignored 1989 Senate report on the Iran-Contra drug connections was correct when it concluded that there was "substantial evidence" that the CIA knew of the Contra's drug links.

The best that can be hoped in the present investigations is that public disclosure of the true depth of corruption of the CIA will strengthen the move to close down the CIA altogether. This has actually been proposed to congress by Senator Daniel Moynihan in a bill (S.126) to have all intelligence activities transferred to the Secretary of State. Moynihan argues that for thirty years the CIA misinformed presidents on the extent of the Soviet military threat and has maintained a level of secrecy that has impaired U.S. analytic capacity. "Secrecy is a disease," Moynihan warns. "It causes hardening of the arteries of the mind. It hinders true scholarship and hides mistakes."

In an editorial entitled, "Time to Abolish the CIA," In These Times recently asserted, "The list of crimes committed by the CIA is almost endless. And the damage the agency has done to the stability and well-being of other nations and our own is incalculable."

The latest CIA scandal concerns its cover-up of dozens of classified documents confirming that ten of thousands of American soldiers were exposed to chemical weapons during the Gulf War. Three hundred secret documents confirming the CIA's involvement in the cover-up are now on display on the Internet at http://www.insigniausa.com or try http://ns.w3concepts.com.

Indeed the Internet might prove to be the death knell not just of the CIA but of all 19th century-style authoritarian structures of "Statecraft" which depend on treachery and secrecy. The age of transparency is upon us, ready or not. [BWAHAHAHA -Ed.]

The determined investigations now underway offers the best hope yet that America will finally be moved to rid itself of the corrupt and corrupting influence of the CIA. And save $30-billion dollars in the bargain.

For more on the CIA - Cocaine link, see WeThePeople. or this excellent cite [sic].

from http://www.ndsn.org/MARAPR98/CIA.html (the National Drug Strategy Network):

CIA Inspector Acknowledges CIA-Crack Connection

CIA-DRUG ALLEGATIONS

March-April 1998

CIA Inspector General Frederick R. Hitz told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on March 16 that there were ties between the CIA and Central American drug dealers who supported Nicaraguan contra rebels in the 1980s (Walter Pincus, "Inspector: CIA Kept Ties With Alleged Traffickers," Washington Post, March 17, 1998, p. A12; "CIA Official Defends Paper's Allegations," Orange County Register, March 17, 1998, p. 9).

Hitz said, "There are instances where CIA did not, in an expeditious or consistent fashion, cut off relationships with individuals supporting the contra program who were alleged to have engaged in drug-trafficking activity or take action to resolve the allegations." Hitz reiterated the CIA's denial of connections to two Nicaraguan drug dealers in the 1980s alleged in a 1996 San Jose Mercury News report (see "CIA Allegedly Linked to Crack Epidemic in Los Angeles," NewsBriefs, October 1996). Reps. Norman D. Dicks (D-WA), ranking democrat on the committee, and Maxine Waters (D-CA) called for the committee to launch its own investigation of the allegations.

CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz - CIA, Inspector General, Room 2X3L, Washington, DC 20505, Tel: (202) 874-2553, Fax: (202) 734-9649.

Rep. Norman Dicks - 2467 RHOB, Washington, DC 20515, Tel: (202) 225-5916, Fax: (202) 226-1176.

Rep. Maxine Waters - 2344 RHOB, Washington, DC 20515, Tel: (202) 225-2201, Fax: (202) 225-7854.

Read Gary Webb's Dark Alliance series.

modtime 1998-Jul-22, from http://www.radio4all.org/expert/webb.html:

IS ANYONE APOLOGIZING TO GARY WEBB? by Michael Levine
July, 1998  

 Gary Webb, just in case you've already forgotten him, was the journalist who,  in a well researched, understated article entitled "The Dark Alliance,"  linked the CIA supported Contras to cocaine and weapons being sold to a  California street gang and  ended up literally being hounded out of journalism  by every mainstream news peddling organization in the Yellow Pages.  Even his own employer The San Jose Mercury piled on for the kill.

 And guess what?  The CIA finally admitted, yesterday, in the New York Times  no less,  that they, in fact,  did "work with" the Nicaraguan Contras while  they had information that they were involved in cocaine trafficking to the  United States. An action known to us court qualified experts and federal agents as Conspiracy to Import and Distribute Cocaine - a federal felony  punishable by up to life in prison.

To illustrate how us regular walking around, non CIA types are treated when  we violate this law, while I was serving as a DEA supervisor in New York City,  I put two New York City police officers in a federal prison for Conspiracy to  distribute Cocaine when they looked the other way at their friend's drug  dealing.  We could not prove they earned a nickel nor that they helped their  friend in any way, they merely did not do their duty by reporting him.  They  were sentenced to 10 and 12 years respectively, and one of them, I was recently told, had committed suicide.

I have spent three decades as a court qualified expert and federal agent and  am not aware of any class of American Citizen having special permission to  violate the law that we have been taxed over $1 trillion in the past two  decades to enforce; the law that every politician, bureaucrat and media pundit  keeps telling us protects us against the most serious danger to American  security in our history.

The interesting thing to me, about the Webb article is that the CIA is  provably  (and now admittedly) responsible for much larger scale drug  trafficking than Webb alleged or even imagined in his report.   In fact, according to a confidential DEA report entitled "Operation Hun, a  Chronology" that I used as part of the proof to back up the undercover  experiences  detailed in my book The Big White Lie, (optioned for a movie by  Robert Greenwald Productions)  the CIA was actively blocking DEA from  indicting many members of the ruling government of Bolivia, from,  1980-83 - during a time period that these same people were responsible for  producing more than 90 percent of the cocaine consumed in the United States.

 As CIA Inspector General Hitz himself stated before congress, it was during  this time period that Nicraguan Contra supporters were buying large amounts of  cocaine from these same CIA protected Bolivians.

Do you think Congress wants to see this proof?

The gang that can't spy straight, as they are known to my listeners and about  whom President Lyndon Johnson once said, "When Rich folks don't trust their sons with the family money they send them on down to the CIA," certainly did a  lot more damage to this nation than, for example, computer company owner Will  Foster who was sentenced to 93 years in prison for possession of 70 marijuana  plants for medicinal use.

Of course, true to their shifty, sleazy form, while admitting that they did  aid and abet Contra drug trafficking, they are now refusing to release their  own final investigative report which details the damning proof.  The same  report that CIA Inspector General Fredrick Hitz, during February, 1998,  had  promised congress and the American people was forthcoming "shortly", because, as CIA Director George Tenet now claims, CIA does not have enough money in its  budget to properly classify it.

You believe that then I know an old guy with a beard named Fidel,  wandering  the streets of South Miami with an Island about 90 miles off the coast for  sale.  He says the money is for his retirement. How, you ask, do they get away with it?

Well for one thing,  mainstream media, the so-called Fourth Estate, does all  it can to help.  During the Iran-contra hearings, when Senators Kerry and D'amato were making  pronouncements before the Senate indicating that the CIA was involved with  drug trafficking, Katherine Graham the owner of The Washington Post addressed  a class of CIA recruits at CIA's Langley headquarters in Novemeber, 1988,  by  saying:

 "There are some things the general public does not need to know and  shouldn't.  I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take  legitimate steps to keep its secrets, and when the press can decide whether to  print what it knows.."

Apparently CIA protection of drug trafficking was among those secrets  Thus,  it should have been no surprise to those CIA agent recruits when  Washington Post reporter and drug expert Michael Itsikoff wrote that there was  "no credible evidence" linking the CIA supported contras to cocaine trafficking at the same time very credible evidence was being heard by Senator  Kerry's committee indicating that the Contras may have been the top purveyors  of drugs to Americans in our history.

Neither should it have been a surprise to anyone who heard her statement when  mainstream media refused to print the news that Oliver North, US Ambassador to  Costa Rica, Lewis Tambs and various top level CIA officers were banned from  ever entering Costa Rica by Nobel Prize winning President Oscar Arias, for  drug running.  The drugs, by the way, all going to us.

Nor should it have been a surprise when Gary Webb was destroyed by mainstream  media, for doing nothing more or less than telling the truth as he found it.   And now, while CIA admits their felonies to the press but refuses to release  the proof,  and, Janet Reno, the head of the Obstruction of Justice Department  has done the unprecedented by classifying her own department's investigation into CIA drug trafficking, the partnership for a Drug Free America is spending  $2 billion of our tax money on already-proven-fruitless anti-drug ads.

And where do you think the money goes?

Answer:  to every major media corporation on the big board.

Gary Webb, my friend, you are owed a huge apology.  But I doubt that you'll  get it.  Not in this lifetime.

Chemicals Called Main Cause of Parkinson's Disease discusses how black market drugs and herbicides/pesticides are known or suspected to cause this devastating disease.

from http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/3761/drugs.html:

The War on Drugs

The Drug War Industrial Complex
High Times Interview with Noam Chomsky, April 1998
by John Veit
transcribed by Paul Freedom

HT: You've defined the War on Drugs as an instrument of population control. How does it accomplish that?

CHOMSKY: Population control is actually a term I borrowed from the counterinsurgency literature of the Kennedy years. The main targets at the time were Southeast Asia and Latin America, where there was an awful lot of popular ferment. They recognized that the population was supporting popular forces that were calling for all kinds of social change that the United States simply could not tolerate. And you could control people in a number of ways. One way was just by terror and violence, napalm bombing and so on, but they also worked on developing other kinds of population-control measures to keep people subjugated, ranging from propaganda to concentration camps. Propaganda is much more effective when it is combined with terror.

You have the same problem domestically, where the public is constantly getting out of control. You have to carry out measures to insure that they remain passive and apathetic and obedient, and don't interfere with privilege or power. It's a major theme of modern democracy. As the mechanisms of democracy expand, like enfranchisement and growth, the need to control people by other means increases.

So the growth of corporate propaganda in the United States more or less parallels the growth of democracy, for quite straightforward reasons. It's not any kind of secret. It is discussed very frankly and openly in business literature and academic social-science journals. You have to "fight the everlasting battle for the minds of men," in their standard phraseology, to indoctrinate and regiment them in the way that armies regiment their bodies. Those are population control measures. This engineering or manufacture of consent is the essence of democracy, because you have to insure that ignorant and meddlesome outsiders -- meaning we, the people -- don't interfere with the work of the serious people who run public affairs in the interests of the privileged.

HT: How does the War on Drugs fit into this?

CHOMSKY: Well, one of the traditional and obvious ways of controlling people in every society, whether it's a military dictatorship or a democracy, is to frighten them. If people are frightened, they'll be willing cede authority to their superiors who will protect them: "OK, I'll let you run my life in order to protect me," that sort of reasoning.

So the fear of drugs and the fear of crime is very much stimulated by state and business propaganda. The National Justice Commission repeatedly points out that crime in the United States, while sort of high, is not off the spectrum for industrialized societies. On the other hand, fear of crime is far beyond other societies, and mostly stimulated by various propaganda. The Drug War is an effort to stimulate fear of dangerous people from who we have to protect ourselves. It is also, a direct form of control of what are called "dangerous classes," those superfluous people who don't really have a function contributing to profit-making and wealth. They have to be somehow taken care of.

HT: In some other countries you just hang the rabble.

CHOMSKY: Yes, but in the U.S. you don't kill them, you put them in jail. The economic policies of the 1980's sharply increased inequality, concentrating such economic growth as there was, which was not enormous, in very few hands. The top few percent of the population got extremely wealthy as profits went through the roof, and meanwhile median-income wages were stagnating or declining sharply since the '70's. You're getting a large mass of people who are insecure, suffering from difficulty to misery, or something in between. A lot of them are basically going to be arrested, because you have to control them.

HT: It's absolutely true, but how do you prove it?

CHOMSKY: Just by looking at the trend lines for marijuana. Marijuana use was peaking in the late '70's, but there was not much criminalization. You didn't go to jail for having marijuana then because the people using it were nice folks like us, the children of the rich. You don't throw them into jail any more than you throw corporate executives into jail -- even though corporate crime is more costly and dangerous than street crime. But then in the '80's the use of various "unhealthy" substances started to decline among more educated sectors: marijuana and tobacco smoking, alcohol, red meat, coffee, this whole category of stuff. On the other hand, usage remained steady among poorer sectors of the population. In the United States, poor and black correlation -- they're not identical, but there's a correlation -- and in poor, black and hispanic sectors of the population the use of such substances remained steady.

So take a look at those trends. When you call for a War on Drugs, you know exactly who you're going to pick up: poor black people. You're not going to pick up rich white people: you don't go after them anyway. In the upper-middle class suburb where I live, if somebody goes home and sniffs cocaine, police don't break into their house.

So there are many factors making the Drug War a war against the poor, largely poor people of color. And those are the people they have to get rid of. During the period these economic policies were being instituted, the incarceration rate was shooting up, but crime wasn't, it was steady or declining. But imprisonment went way up. By the late '80's, in terms of imprisoning our population, we were way ahead of the rest of the world, way ahead of any other industrial society.

HT: Who benefits from incarcerating young black males?

CHOMSKY: A lot of people. Poor people are basically superfluous for wealth production, and therefore the wealthy want to get rid of them. The rich also frighten everyone else, because if you're afraid of these people, then you submit to state authority. But beyond that, it's a state industry. Since the 1930's, every businessman has understood that a private capitalist economy must have massive state subsidies; the only question is what form that state subsidy will take? In the United States the main form has been through the military system. The most dynamic aspects of the economy -- conputers, the Internet, the aeronautical industry, pharmaceuticals -- have fed off the military system. But the crime-control industry, as it's called by criminologists, is becoming the fastest-growing industry in America.

And it's state industry, publicly funded. It's the construction industry, the real estate industry, and also high tech firms. It's gotten to a sufficient scale that high-technology and military contractors are looking to it as a market for techniques of high-tech control and surveillance, so you can monitor what people do in their private activities with complicated electronic devices and supercomputers: monitoring their telephone calls and urinalyses and so forth. In fact, the time will probably come when this superfluous population can be locked up in private apartments, not jails, and just monitored to track when they do something wrong, say the wrong thing, go the wrong direction.

HT: House arrest for the masses.

CHOMSKY: It's enough of an industry so that the major defense-industry firms are interested; you can read about it in The Wall Street Journal. The big law firms and investment houses are interested: Merrill Lynch is floating big loans for prison construction. If you take the whole system, it's probably approaching the scale of the Pentagon.

Also, this is a terrific work force. We hear fuss about prison labor in China, but prison labor is standard here. It's very cheap, it doesn't organize, the workers don't ask for rights, you don't have to worry about health benefits because the public is paying for everything. It's what's called a 'flexible' workforce, the kind of thing economists like: you have the workers when you want them, and you throw them out when you don't want them.

And what's more it's an old American tradition. There was a big industrial revolution in parts of the South in the early part of this century, in northern Georgia and Kentucky and Alabama and it was based mostly around prison labor. The slaves had been technically freed, but after a few years, they were basically slaves again. One way of controlling them was to throw them in jail, where they became a controlled labor force. That's the core of the modern industrial revolution in the South, which continued in Georgia to the 1920's and to the Second World War in places like Mississippi.

Now it's being revived. In Oregon and California there's a fairly substantial textile industry in the prisons, with exports to Asia. At the very time people were complaining about prison labor in China, California and Oregon are exporting prison-made textiles to China. They even have a line called "Prison Blues."

And it goes all the way up to advanced technology like data processing. In the state of Washington, Boeing workers are protesting the exports of jobs to China, but they're probably unaware that their jobs are being exported to nearby prisons, where machinists are doing work for Boeing under circumstances that the management is delighted over, for obvious reasons.

HT: And most of these prisoners are nonviolent drug offenders.

CHOMSKY: The enormous rate of growth of the prison population has been mostly drug related. The last figures I saw showed that over half the federal prison population, and maybe a quarter in state prisons, are drug offenders. In New York State, for example, a twenty-dollar street sale or possession of an ounce of cocaine will get you the same sentence as arson with intent to murder. The three-strikes legislation is going to blow it right through the sky. The third arrest can be for some minor drug offense, and you'll go to jail forever.

HT: The Drug Czar's office estimates that Americans spend $57 billion annually on illegal drugs. What effect does this have on the global economy?

CHOMSKY: Well, the United Nations tries to monitor the international drug trade, and their estimates are on the order of $400 to $500 billion -- half a trillion dollars a year -- in trade alone, which makes it higher than oil, something like 10 percent of the world trade. Where this money comes and goes to is mostly unknown, but general estimates are that maybe 60 percent of it passes through US banks. After that, a lot goes to offshore tax havens. It's so obscure that nobody monitors it, and nobody wants to. But the Commerce Department every year publishes figures on foreign direct investment -- where US investment is going -- and through the '90s the big excitement has been the " new emerging markets " like Latin America. And it turns out that a quarter of US foreign direct investment is going to Bermuda, another 15 percent to the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands, another 10 percent to Panama, and so on. Now, they're not building steel factories. The most benign interpretation is that it's just tax havens. And the less benign interpretation is that it's one way of passing illegal money into places where it will not be monitored. We really don't know, because it is not investigated. This is not the task of the Justice Department, which is to go after a black kid in the ghetto who has a joint in his pocket.

HT: What do you think of the US policy of offering trade and aid favors to countries who promulgate so-called antidrug initiatives?

CHOMSKY: Actually, US programs radically increase the use of drugs. Look at the big growth in cocaine production that has exploded in the Andes over the last few years, in Columbia and Peru and Bolivia. Why are Bolivian peasants, for instance producing coca? The neoliberal structural-adjustment policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, which are run by the US, try to drive peasants into agro-export, producing not for local consumption but for sale abroad. They want to reduce social programs, like spending for health and education, cutting government deficits by increasing exports. And they cut back tariffs so that we can pour our highly subsidized food exports into their countries, which of course undercuts peasant production. Put all that together and what do you get? You get a huge increase in Bolivian coca production, as their only comparative advantage.

The same is true in Columbia, where US "food for peace" aid, as it is called, was used to destroy wheat production by essentially giving food---at what amounts to US taxpayer expense---through US agro-exporters to undercut wheat production there, which later cut coffee production and their ability to set prices in any reasonably fashion.

And the end result is they turn to something else, and one of the things they turn to is coca production. In fact, if you look at the total effect of US policies, it has been to increase drugs.

HT: Well, anybody who looks into the history of American drug policies in this century...

CHOMSKY: I'm putting aside another factor altogether, namely clandestine warfare. If you look into the history of what is called the CIA, which means the US White House, it's secret wars, clandestine warfare, the trail of drug production just follows. It started in France after the Second World War when the United States was essentially trying to reinstate the traditional social order, to rehabilitate Fascist collaborators, wipe out the Resistance and destroy the unions and so on. The first thing they did was reconstitute the Mafia, as strikebreakers or for other such useful services. And the mafia doesn't do it for fun, so there was tradeoff: Essentially they allowed them to reinstitute the heroin-production system, which had been destroyed by the Fascists. The Fascists tended to run a pretty tight ship; they didn't want any competition, so they wiped out the Mafia. But the US reconstituted it, first in southern Italy, and then in southern France with the Corsican Mafia. That's where the famous French Connection comes from.

That was the main heroin center for many years. Then the US terrorist activities shifted over to Southeast Asia. If you want to carry out terrorist activities, you need local people to do it for you, and you also need secret money to pay for it, clandestine hidden money. Well if you need to hire thugs and murderers with secret money, there aren't many options. One of them is the drug connection. The so-called Golden Triangle around Burma, Laos and Thailand became a big drug-producting area with the help of the United States, as part of the secret wars against those populations.

In Central America, it was partly exposed in the Contra hearings, though it was mostly suppressed. But there's no question that the Reagan administration's terrorist operations in Central America were closely connected with drug trafficking.

Afghanistan became one of the biggest centers of drug trafficking in the world in the 1980s, because that was the payoff for the forces to which the US was contributing millions of dollars: the same extreme Islamic fundamentalists who are now tearing the country to shreds.

It's been true throughout the world. It's not that the US is trying to increase the use of drugs, it's just the natural thing to do. If you were in a position where you had to hire thugs and gangsters to kill peasants and break strikes, and you had to do it with untraceable money, what would come to your mind?

HT: Where do you stand on drug legalization?

CHOMSKY: Nobody knows what the effect would be. Anyone who tells you they know is just stupid or lying., because nobody knows. These are things that have to be tried, you have to experiment to see what the effects are.

Most soft drugs are already legal, mainly alcohol and tobacco. Tobacco is by far the biggest killer among all the psychoactives. Alcohol deaths are a little hard to estimate, because an awful lot of violent deaths are associated with alcohol. Way down below come "hard" drugs, a tiny fraction of the deaths from alcohol and tobacco, maybe ten or twenty thousand deaths per year. The fastest growing hard drugs are APS, amphetamine-type substances, produced mostly in the US.

As far as the rest of the drugs are concerned, marijuana is not known to be very harmful. I mean, it's generally assumed it's not good for you, but coffee isn't good for you, tea isn't good for you, chocolate cake isn't good for you either. It would be crazy to criminalize coffee, even though it's harmful.

The United States is one of very few countries where this is considered a moral issue. In most countries it's considered a medical issue. In most countries you don't have politicians getting up screaming about how tough they're going to be on drugs. So the first thing we've got to do is move out of the phase of population control, and into the sphere of social issues. The Rand Corporation estimates that if you compare the effect of criminal programs versus educational programs at reducing drug use, educational programs are way ahead by about a factor of seven.

HT: But alarmist drug-propaganda programs like DARE and the Partnership for a Drug-Free America's TV ads have been found to increase experimentation among teenagers.

CHOMSKY: The question is, what kind of education are you doing? Educational programs aren't the only category. Education also has to do with the social circumstances in which drugs are used. The answer to that is not throwing people in jail. The answer is to try and figure what's going on in their lives, their family, do they need medical care and so on? This very striking decline in substance abuse among educated sectors, as I said, goes across the spectrum -- red meat, coffee, tobacco, everything. That's education. It wasn't that there was an educational program that said to stop drinking coffee, it's just that attitudes toward oneself and towards health, how we live and so on, changed among the more educated sectors of the population, and these things went down. And none of it had to do with criminalization. It just had to do with a rise in the cultural and educational level, which led to more care for oneself.

Go to The Noam Chomsky Archive

from TPDL 1999-Feb-6, from Insight, by Timothy W. Maier:

Mexican Hit Man Teams Up With Citibank

It pays to know your banker. Mexican hit man and drug trafficker Raul Salinas certainly did.

Salinas, who was sentenced Jan. 21 to 50 years in prison without parole for an assassination attempt on a Mexican political leader, laundered about $100 million from Mexico into foreign accounts through Citibank and its affiliates, according to a General Accounting Office report. He accomplished this by disguising the origin and destination of funds and used his wife, Patricia, who offered up a phony name to distance herself from her husband.

The GAO report says Citibank violated its own "Know-Your-Customer" policy. The controversial policy is supposed to ensure banks will have a reasonable amount of information about a client before they are allowed to conduct business. While it is a voluntary policy now, it soon could be the standard for all banks under a proposed rule by the Federal Reserve (see "Snoops and Spies," Feb. 22). "A Citibank representative stated that the division's vice president's failure to complete a financial profile verifying Mr. Salinas' financial history and the source of his wealth or to request a waiver of this requirement violated Citibank's know your customer policy," according to the GAO report.

Salinas, the brother of Mexico's former president Carlos Salinas, is serving his prison term in Mexico for attempted murder. He remains under an FBI investigation involving money-laundering.

Citibank since has revised its Know-Your-Customer policies, but the bank itself may not be out of the woods yet. FBI money-laundering chief John Kingston would not talk specifically about this case. But he warns that two American Express bankers recently were convicted under the willful-blindness theory -- turning a blind eye toward a money-launderer.

But what actually might help Citibank is the backlash about the Federal Reserve proposal to make Know Your Customer a uniform policy. While privacy advocates cry foul, banks generally oppose the universal plan -- albeit for financial reasons. That's not surprising, considering Citibank earned about $1.1 million for handling Salinas' accounts; if Citibank had enforced its own policy, Salinas would not have been a customer.

modtime 1998-Aug-22, from http://www.radio4all.org/expert/obstruction.html:

The Obstruction of Justice Department Strikes Again
by Mike Levine
July 1998  

 The recent barrage of news releases indicating that the Justice Department has "cleared the CIA of links to Contra cocaine trafficking," are too ludicrous for a government trained conspiracy expert to spend too much time commenting on, but I cannot resist.  The DOJ report, which I have just read,
seems to do all it can to avoid an enormous amount of very pertinent pieces of information and evidence, the following of which is only a sampling:

First,  John Senator Kerry in his recent book took full credit for "discovering the CIA cocaine connection."

Second, Frederick Hitz, the (now ex) CIA Inspector General gave astounding evidence in his public statement (on C-Span)  that revealed CIA complicity in drug trafficking including the fact that a CIA attorney tried to obtain the return of drug funds from an ongoing justice department drug smuggling case, because the money allegedly belonged to the CIA supported Contras.

Unfortunately, according to the now departed Hitz, the CIA attorney "does not recall why [he made the illegal request]."  Powerful evidence of conspiracy to any professional investigator, yet apparently meaningless to inexperienced, untrained and/or naive mainstream journalists.

Third, subsequent press releases and statements issued by the CIA themselves, indicated that the second part of their long promised report includes admissions that the agency looked the other way at Contra drug dealing (a federal felony). It is important to note here that this report is now being
withheld from the public, incredibly,  because, as CIA Director George Tenet now claims "..we do not have sufficient resources [to declassify the report].."

$26 billion a year budget (that we know of) and not enough money to declassify the report?  And mainstream media swallows this without a comment? 

Fourth, In my own book, THE BIG WHITE LIE (optioned for a movie by Robert Greenwald Productions), we used an official DEA report entitled "OPERATION HUN, A CHRONOLOGY" to prove that CIA was obstructing justice between 1979-82 by blocking indictments of the Bolivian government drug traffickers, then supplying 90 percent of the world's cocaine.  You cannot do much more damage to the American people than that, nor can you find better evidence of conspiracy than an official government report.

 Fifth  (and finally, for this short piece), Ollie North, the lynch pin in the CIA's Contra support effort, in his own diary and in his own handwriting, had hundreds of notes indicating Contra involvement in drug trafficking, including straight forward evidenciary statements like : "[aircraft needed, go to
Bolivia [pick up cocaine] paste."  Pure conspiracy "gold" for a trained investigator.

I can go on for many, many more pages.  But the point is that Deputy Attorney General Michael Bromwich, with whom I worked in Manhattan when he was a lowly prosecutor and I an even "lowlier" undercover agent, now states that he can find no evidence of a CIA-Contra cocaine link?

And we taxpayers paid for this report?

Do we want a refund, or what?

Is it any wonder that street cops now refer to Janet Reno's mob as the "Obstruction of Justice Department?"

And how dare our bureaucrats and politicians hold local law enforcement to a higher standard of honesty than their own?

And why is mainstream media, our so-called Fourth Estate,  accepting this without even a whimper?

from http://www.pir.org, by Daniel Brandt and Steve Badrich, from NameBase NewsLine, No. 16, January-March 1997, c/o David Diamond 1997-Feb-3:

Pipe Dreams: the CIA, Drugs, and the Media

Like some Russian high official come to treat with Chechen rebels, CIA Director John Deutch arrived in force -- by heavily-armed motorcade, and with helicopter cover. SWAT teams swarmed over the building that was Deutch's destination.

But on November 15, 1996, Deutch's destination was in fact only the auditorium of Locke High School in the beleaguered South Central neighborhood of Los Angeles: for a U.S. public servant, not officially enemy territory at all. Still, the citizens who showed up to hear and question Deutch were searched with a metal detector in return for the privilege.

And privilege it was. The post-Cold-War world had become so threatening to the CIA that Deutch was taking the unprecedented step of showing up in public -- of walking, in fact, directly into a popular firestorm. That evening, Deutch emphatically claimed that the CIA had no involvement whatsoever with the crack-cocaine epidemic that is battering South Central. It was a message Deutch's audience wasn't buying.

This event and its aftermath are well worth reflecting upon. Unfortunately, the defense of Deutch and his agency by major U.S. media has proved far less illuminating than the narrow and ahistorical way these same media have defined and framed the relevant issues. The ability of well-paid media people to vaporize the known history of the CIA, to turn this history into a non-issue, is scary -- scarier, almost, than the long, lamentable, but extremely well-documented story of CIA involvement with drug traffickers on four continents.

This essay will attempt to say something, yet again, both about the major media and about some of the many mind-bending episodes, already on the public record, of CIA-drug-trafficker complicity.

The CIA's latest trials on this issue began in August 1996 with the now-notorious series on crack cocaine in the San Jose Mercury News. In this series, reporter Gary Webb made the case that the CIA, through the actions of several drug-dealing Nicaraguan contras it had funded, was involved in the introduction of crack into Los Angeles during the 1980s.

Parallel stories have appeared in provincial papers before, and been ignored. But San Jose isn't in Silicon Valley for nothing; the Mercury News boosted Webb's stories with its state-of-the-art website, and a popular firestorm ensued. Soon Maxine Waters of the Congressional Black Caucus was calling for an investigation, and the Senate Intelligence Committee had scheduled hearings.

Belatedly, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and New York Times all recognized that, this time around, they couldn't ignore the story. But instead of investigating the CIA, they investigated their fellow journalists at the Mercury News. Quoting each other's stories to strengthen their common case, editorialists, reporters, and columnists from all three papers attacked Webb's reporting -- or what they claimed Webb had reported -- as well as his ethics, his talk-show appearances, his book proposal, his movie deal, his editors, and even a graphic on his newspaper's website. Gary Webb, after all, is neither a Washingtonian nor a New Yorker.

There was nothing casual or accidental about this bashing. The L.A. Times had 25 reporters on the story. The Post refused to print a reasoned letter from Mercury News editor Jerry Ceppos defending the series, even after Ceppos provided a requested revision. Perhaps the low point of this campaign was a story by Tim Golden of the New York Times, which explained that African-Americans are more susceptible than their fellow citizens to conspiracy theories and paranoia.

But it's not necessarily paranoid to note what crack has done to our cities, or that the U.S. prison population has tripled over the past 14 years, or that California now spends more on prisons than it does on colleges and universities. And as the Mercury News noted: in 1993, snorters of powdered cocaine drew an average sentence of three months, whereas crack smokers got an average of three years. And 83 percent of those sent to prison for crack trafficking were African-American. If present trends were to continue for another 14 years, a majority of African-American males between the ages of 18 and 40 would be locked up.

Deutch's audience at Locke High, furthermore, had a more appropriate response than the Washington Post did to Deutch's promise that the CIA would investigate itself: hoots and howls. After all, the last internal CIA report on contras and drugs, completed in 1988, is still secret. "I don't know why [Rep. Julian] Dixon is saluting Deutch's courage for coming here today," someone from the audience complained at the floor microphone, "when everybody knows this building's got hundreds of pigs in it. There's pigs behind those curtains, there's pigs on top of the roof. We're not going to get no justice here today -- we're going to need a revolution."

And it's the major media, rather than the folks who turned out at Locke High, that are guilty of what amounts to suppression of evidence on this issue. Consider media treatment of Jack Blum, former special counsel to John Kerry's Senate subcommittee that investigated the CIA-contra-drug connection. If senators will listen to anyone who can speak authoritatively on this issue, it's Blum. On October 23, 1996, Blum told the Senate Intelligence Committee that although the CIA had not itself sold crack in the inner city, it had "ignored the drug problem and subverted law enforcement to prevent embarrassment and to reward our allies in the contra war.... A careful review of covert operations in the Caribbean and South and Central America shows a forty-year connection between crime and covert operations that has repeatedly blown back on the United States.... I would hope that this inquiry goes beyond the narrow questions posed in the San Jose Mercury News story."

Blum's statement reviewed the same history of CIA complicity with drug traffickers that will be touched on in this essay: CIA ties to the Mafia during World War II; its role in Burma in the 1950s; in Laos in the 1960s; in Argentina and Bolivia in the 1970s; and in Central America and Afghanistan in the 1980s. But Blum's 3,700 words of historical perspective raised the specter of exactly the kind of inquiry that the major media don't want. ABC's Peter Jennings crunched Blum's reflections down to a single sound bite, perversely out of context, in which Blum absolved the CIA of directly selling drugs in Los Angeles. The two sentences on CNN's U.S. News Story Page on their website were equally shameless: "Jack Blum, a former Senate investigator who looked into the matter during the 1980s, defended the CIA. 'No members of the staff of the CIA ... (were) in the cocaine business,' he said."

In fairness we may note that the media were only following the government's lead on this issue. CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz lacks subpoena power and must produce a declassified report; for additional powers, he must petition Congress. But Congressional "oversight" over the CIA is unfortunately just that. The House Intelligence Committee is now chaired by Porter Goss (R-FL), a former CIA operations officer who still hangs out with Agency friends. Its Senate counterpart is under Arlen Specter (R-PA), whose major contribution to investigative history to date is the Warren Commission's "magic bullet" theory.

Put simply, neither the major media nor Congress has the will, perhaps not even the power, to pursue the real history of CIA activity. Maxine Waters (D-CA) fears that the investigations now in train will fade away unless public pressure is maintained. To this end, Waters plans teach-ins on California campuses this spring. A fourth contra-crack investigation is being conducted by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich, a former narcotics prosecutor. But even though Bromwich's intentions seem good, he can subpoena only Justice Department documents, and cannot compel witnesses to testify.

Jack Blum is surely right to want to pursue all CIA-drugs investigations within the framework of the larger history of the CIA -- even though one must surely question Blum's assumption that established agencies are capable of doing this. Since the 1960s, evidence of corruption and official lies has periodically made it onto the public record, but the worse the news, the more intense official resistance has become.

What follows, nevertheless, is a quick sketch of what all such investigators -- and the public -- ought to have firmly in mind. A variety of sources have been assembled here into a rough chronological narrative. But the scope of this narrative is so great that only major chapters in the CIA's long association with drugs can be mentioned. Still, as a big picture, it's better than nothing -- which is what official sources and investigations, and well-heeled publishers and producers, threaten to give us.

Back in 1936, Lucky Luciano, the boss of Mafia drug and prostitution rackets in New York City, was finally convicted as a result of Thomas Dewey's prosecution, and sentenced to thirty to fifty years. But in 1942 the Office of Naval Intelligence asked Meyer Lansky to seek Luciano's assistance in getting New York waterfront workers to watch out for enemy agents and activity. Soon Luciano's friends in Sicily, who had been severely repressed by Mussolini, were helping with the American invasion there. In 1946 the ONI appealed to Luciano's parole board. He was released from prison and deported to Italy -- where he built up a heroin syndicate.

The immediate postwar problem in places like Italy and France, from the point of view of both the CIA and entrenched interests such as the Mafia, was that many Communists had been anti-fascist Resistance fighters, and as such were attractive to voters. The Marshall Plan aimed not merely to rebuild a war-torn Europe; it aimed to rebuild Europe in such a way that no Communists could ever win an election. To this end, the CIA played a major role in administering Marshall Plan aid.

In Italy the CIA spent money to deny the 1948 elections to the Communists. By 1950 the Mafia again controlled Sicily. The CIA was also paying the Corsican Mafia in Marseilles to undermine Communist influence with striking workers. These Mafia syndicates were sufficiently well-protected that in 1951 they opened their first heroin lab. By 1965 there were two dozen labs in Marseilles, which together exported nearly five tons of heroin to the U.S. during that year.¹

Heroin trafficking shifted in the 1960s and 1970s from the Turkey-Marseilles connection to the Asian connection. For decades until the 1950s, the opium trade was sanctioned by colonial administrations in Asia. By the early 1960s, the mountain areas of Southeast Asia -- the Golden Triangle region -- produced most of the world's opium. Northeastern Burma was particularly productive.

In the case of Burma, production before 1945 was insignificant -- as a province of India under the British, most of the opium traded in Burma was produced in India. But in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Forces retreated from Mao's army to the mountains of northeast Burma. The CIA helped maintain these troops, and sponsored two invasions of China. During their stay in Burma, the Nationalist Chinese exacted opium quotas from Burma's peasants; failure to pay was punished by the cutting off of fingers, hands, and feet. By the time the Nationalists fled in 1961, Burma had gone from producing about seven tons of opium per year to producing as much as a thousand tons, or about sixty percent of the world's production.²

In French-occupied Indochina, meanwhile, the Corsican syndicates were operating the opium trade out of Saigon under the protection of French military intelligence. When France withdrew in 1955, the U.S. inherited France's colonial politics and infrastructure. The U.S. worked with the same peoples -- the Hmong in Laos -- that the French had used. And again, the American Mafia was involved through their Corsican contacts. From Tampa, Florida, Santo Trafficante ran the Marseilles connection in Cuba during the 1950s. In 1968 he visited Saigon to meet with Corsican syndicate leaders. After 1970, Asian heroin began showing up in the U.S.

After the Cuban revolution, Trafficante's Mafia foot soldiers were mainly Cuban exiles.³ In a 1982 interview, former CIA commando leader Grayston Lynch described what had once been the largest CIA station in the world, located south of Miami from 1961-1964. This station issued orders to 400 case officers and 2,000 exiles, dispersed in "safe houses" from Miami to Tampa. Lynch concedes that after the CIA cut off support, many of these exiles, trained in covert operations and smuggling, turned to narcotics trafficking.⁴ Given that the CIA had worked with Trafficante to assassinate Castro in 1961,⁵ the agency lacked sufficient ethical intelligence to worry that these Trafficante-associated exiles might pose a criminal problem. They were considered merely a "disposal problem," an institutional nuisance.

At the time all of these events were unfolding, they were secret history, unavailable in books and newspapers. Then one day in 1970, the poet Allen Ginsberg stumbled onto the CIA-heroin connection while sorting his files of clippings. He noticed that when sorted chronologically, U.S. advances into the opium-producing areas of the Golden Triangle were followed, a few months later, by clippings that reported a rise in heroin overdose deaths in American cities. The alternative press fleshed out Ginsberg's insight, and the May 1971 Ramparts magazine featured a cover story on South Vietnam's "Marshal Ky: The Biggest Pusher in the World." The major media ignored everything until Sen. Ernest Gruening, a maverick from Alaska, opened hearings. At that point the Washington Post and NBC News "discovered" this story, but soon buried it. Only the alternative press kept it alive.⁶

South Vietnam was completely corrupted by a heroin trade whose immediate origin was in Laos. The Hmong culture in Laos provided 30,000 men for the CIA's secret Laotian army under General Vang Pao. But in the process, opium production took over Hmong culture; the Hmong grew only enough rice for subsistence. To support the Hmong economy, the CIA's Air America transported raw opium out of the Laotian hills to the labs. At this point the CIA begged off, and let the syndicates and South Vietnamese officials take care of distribution. Double UOGlobe no.4 heroin, produced at a Laotian lab owned by Gen. Ouane Rattikone, became particularly famous. By mid-1971, Army medical officers estimated that fifteen percent of American GIs were addicted.

Veterans of Vietnam and Laos with intelligence connections, men such as Theodore Shackley (former chief of the Miami station), his deputy Thomas Clines, Richard Secord, Oliver North, and Felix Rodriguez, later became familiar names during the Iran-contra scandal of the 1980s. More obscure was one Michael Hand, who had been a CIA contract agent in Laos. In 1973, Hand and his partner Frank Nugan established the Nugan Hand Bank in Sydney.

A slew of top-level retirees from the CIA and U.S. military intelligence were associated with this bank; William Colby served as its attorney. Nugan Hand collapsed spectacularly in 1980. After three major investigations, Australian officials concluded that the bank had been primarily involved in laundering money for arms and drug traffickers.⁷ Apparently the CIA's infamous "disposal problem" -- what to do with those nasty, well-trained former assets -- extends to its top-level former executives and administrators.

Then there is the horrible tale of Afghanistan. Heroin there was also a well-kept secret, at least until the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. Then the Washington Post was free to "discover" that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the CIA's favorite guerrilla leader, had commanders under him who worked with Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency to run heroin labs in southwest Pakistan. "Since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, U.S. narcotics policy in Afghanistan has been subordinated to the war against Soviet influence there.... In 1989, Afghanistan was second only to Burma as a producer of opium, growing 650 tons, nearly all of which was intended for heroin manufacturing, a State Department report said."⁸

When Allen Ginsberg was sorting his clippings about heroin, his discovery of a correlation with CIA activity in the Golden Triangle must have seemed dismaying enough, almost unbelievable. Fortunately for Ginsberg, a proponent of LSD, he had no evidence that the CIA may have also been behind the expansion of LSD distribution within the counterculture. But such evidence later came to light.

Ginsberg, like most of the counterculture, saw LSD as a liberating experience. The drug was nonaddictive, although it could be dangerous in the case of an overdose. A safe dosage, however, was entirely an individual phenomenon, and could not even be objectively established. And it soon became clear that LSD dramatically amplified tendencies that were already present in the individual and the immediate environment. The exact dosage that might have seemed liberating in 1967 might have been debilitating when ingested by the same individual in 1969, a banner year for agents provocateurs and bad vibes.

In 1975, the Rockefeller Commission reported that the CIA had been testing LSD since the 1950s -- only to discover that the drug's effects were too unpredictable to make it a reliable tool for mind control. Still, given what the CIA knew about LSD at this early date, it doesn't seem inconceivable that the CIA may have hoped that greater availability of the powerful drug would undermine the political effectiveness of the student movement and counterculture.

Evidence of the possible strategic use of LSD emerged in 1979, when Italian magistrate Giorgio Floridia issued a report on the case of Ronald Stark, who had been arrested in Bologna for drug trafficking in 1975. The magistrate ordered Stark's release on the grounds that he had been working for U.S. intelligence since 1960. From 1969-1974, Stark was a major producer of LSD, with factories first in Paris, then in Belgium and California, and a pipeline into the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the world's largest distributor.

Floridia cited Stark's frequent prison visits from Wendy M. Hansen at the U.S. consulate in Florence, "Dear Ron" letters from Charles C. Adams at the U.S. embassy in London, addressed to Stark's LSD lab in Brussels (these were seized by Italian police after his arrest), and his links with Philip B. Taylor III at the U.S. consulate in Rome. (Taylor is now in Sao Paulo, Brazil.) According to Floridia, Stark had done secret work for the Defense Department from 1960 to 1962, and had received "periodic payments to him from Fort Lee, known to be the site of a CIA office." On his release, Stark was ordered to report in to Italian police twice a week. But within days, Stark had left the country. Bologna police believe that Stark was secretly flown from a NATO air base in Pisa or Vicenza.

In 1984 an Italian parliamentary commission issued a report on domestic terrorism that included a section on Ronald Stark. They concluded that Stark was an adventurer who was used by the CIA, but were unable to determine when the association began. In 1982, Stark was arrested in Holland. Charges were dropped the following year, and Stark was deported to a San Francisco jail, where pending federal charges were dropped by the Justice Department. When Italy requested extradition in 1984, U.S. officials sent a death certificate indicating that Stark had died of a heart attack.

Way back in 1969, Stark first approached the Brotherhood, wowing them with a kilogram of pure LSD (more than they had ever seen), and claiming that he had a new, efficient production method. Stark's lab in France was already a going concern, and the Brotherhood agreed to distribute his product. When Stark shut down this lab in 1971 and opened a better one in Brussels, he boasted that he had done so because of a timely tip from the CIA. In all, Stark made 20 kilograms of LSD, enough for 50 million doses. Most of it was sold in the U.S. There's no proof that Stark was anything more than an adventurer and an opportunist. But Carl Oglesby, former national president of Students for a Democratic Society, sums up the Stark phenomenon as follows:

What we have to contemplate nevertheless is the possibility that the great American acid trip, no matter how distinctive of the rebellion of the 1960s it came to appear, was in fact the result of a despicable government conspiracy.... If U.S. intelligence bodies collaborated in an effort to drug an entire generation of Americans, then the reason they did so was to disorient it, sedate it and de-politicize it.⁹

Currently it's cocaine in the form of crack that's a major problem in the inner cities of America. Coca leaf is grown on the high Andean plateaus of Bolivia and Peru, and until 1980 it was generally refined in Colombia. After the Bolivian "cocaine coup," refinement of coca paste into cocaine became more of a local affair, while Peru and Paraguay also increased their production. New smuggling routes were established, and new strains of coca were bred that could thrive in the lowlands of the Amazon basin. Cocaine soon glutted the market. Prices dropped dramatically during the first half of the 1980s, which saw the appearance of crack -- a condensed, rock-like substance that can be produced by cooking cocaine with water and baking soda on a kitchen stove. Crack is smoked rather than snorted, a process which absorbs more of the drug into the body with less effort.

The 1980 cocaine coup in Bolivia was arranged by the Argentine military, which in 1976 seized power in Argentina and proceeded to "disappear" about 11,000 of the country's own citizens. Michael Levine, who was the DEA's country attache to Argentina and Uruguay in 1980, discovered that the high-level Argentine military officers he was trying to bust for trafficking were well-connected in Bolivia, and that the entire bunch were protected by the CIA. Some of the bloodiest coup-makers in Bolivia were recruited by Klaus Barbie, a fugitive Nazi war criminal and long-time CIA asset.¹⁰

Confirmation of the CIA's role came from testimony taken by the Kerry subcommittee in a closed hearing on July 23, 1987. Leandro Sanchez Reisse was assigned by the Argentine military to set up a money laundering front in Florida in 1977. He said that these fronts ran operations for and with the CIA, including weapons shipments to Argentine personnel in Central America. In 1980, funds from a major Bolivian trafficker were funneled to the Argentine military, which then sent ambulances loaded with weapons to Bolivia. These were used in the 1980 coup engineered by Luis Arce Gomez and Luis Garcia Meza, both of whom were connected to traffickers.¹¹

The CIA, claiming that the Sandinistas in Nicaragua were sending arms to guerrillas in El Salvador, paid Argentina to provide military training to contras in Central America. This arrangement ended in 1982, when the military government in Argentina lost power after the Falklands debacle. Within several years, however, the contra war developed into a major CIA operation involving Cuban exiles from Miami; former Nicaraguan guardsmen who fled during the 1979 revolution and regrouped in Honduras; and assorted CIA adventurers with drug- and arms-trafficking connections.

Celerino Castillo fought in Vietnam from 1971-1972, where he saw the effects of drugs on U.S. troops. By 1975 he was a Texas cop, later a detective working drug cases. In 1980, Castillo joined the DEA and worked the streets of New York. He worked in Peru in 1984-1985, and Guatemala from 1985-1990. While stationed in Guatemala, Castillo was the DEA agent in charge of anti-drug operations in El Salvador from 1985-1987. During this period, he discovered that Oliver North's contras were running cocaine from El Salvador's Ilopango airport.

Castillo did his best to bust them, but soon learned that the traffickers were protected by the CIA. "By the end of 1988," he writes, "I realized how hopelessly tangled DEA, the CIA, and every other U.S. entity in Central America had become with the criminals. The connections boggled my mind."¹² Feeling his life was in danger, Castillo got out in a hurry in 1990. The DEA, meanwhile, was increasing the pressure with an internal investigation of Castillo. His career was over and he resigned. Lawrence Walsh's office extensively debriefed Castillo, but when Walsh released his massive report in 1993, the narcotics connection was nowhere to be found. The combined House and Senate Iran-contra hearings in 1987 also ignored the drug issue. Instead, investigators granted immunity to Oliver North.

John Kerry's subcommittee, the "Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations," began its investigations in 1987, held hearings in 1988 and 1989, and issued a 144-page report on April 13, 1989.¹³ At one point, the subcommittee took testimony from the head of the Honduran DEA office, who described how it was closed down in June 1983, at a time when the CIA station was doubling in size. Honduras was a major transit station for cocaine, thanks to their corrupt military. It was clear to the CIA and Pentagon that the contra effort required the support of Honduras, and that the price for this support was to overlook the cocaine traffic.

"I watched the CIA protect drug traffickers throughout my career as a DEA agent," says Michael Levine. "I have put thousands of Americans away for tens of thousands of years for conspiracy with less evidence than is available against Ollie North and CIA people."¹⁴ Tom Cash, a former top DEA official in Miami, agrees: "When you have those types of political upheavals and foreign policy considerations of the President to start with, and at the same time have a drug prosecution to contend with, drugs are going to be second. It is something we grappled with on a daily basis."¹⁵

One could, arguably, defend the mainstream press for refusing to follow up on stories as improbable, and characters as fringey, as some of those we've considered here: an iconoclast poet like Ginsberg, a shapeshifter like Stark, a low-level Serpico like Castillo. But the real indictment of the major media on the CIA-drugs question is their inability to follow up on obvious leads occurring in major stories taking place under floodlights in their own backyard.

Consider the case of Oliver North, known associate of drug traffickers. Oliver North's conviction for three felonies (lying, cheating, and stealing) was reversed in 1990 because his case was muddied by the Congressional grant of immunity. This meant that he could run for office, and in 1994 he was nearly elected to the U.S. Senate. North's infamous notebooks, however, may yet return to haunt him.

Ten months after the Kerry subcommittee subpoenaed these notebooks, they still lacked clean, unexpurgated copies. Nevertheless, these notebooks contain dozens of references to contra drug trafficking. In an e-mail message about General Jose Bueso Rosa from Honduras, who was involved in a conspiracy to import 345 kilos of cocaine into Florida, North noted that U.S. officials would "cabal quietly to look at options: pardon, clemency, deportation, reduced sentence." Even after Panama's Manuel Noriega was exposed in the U.S. press as a drug runner, North met with him because Noriega wanted help to "clean up his image." In exchange, Noriega offered North some helpful anti-Sandinista sabotage.

Or consider the decision by the Post and other major media to throw away a truly sensational story: the official declaration by Costa Rica, Central America's one shining light of democracy, that it considered a number of major U.S. officials to be drug traffickers, and as such was barring them from entering the country. The list here is nothing short of amazing: Oliver North himself, retired air-force major general Richard Secord, Reagan's former national security advisor John Poindexter, former U.S. Ambassador Lewis Tambs, and former CIA station chief Joseph Fernandez.

On July 22, 1989, the Associated Press ran this story, but they were virtually alone; some major media buried this story, and the rest resolutely ignored it. When asked why, Post reporter Walter Pincus gave a revealing response: "Just because a congressional commission in Costa Rica says something, doesn't mean it's true."¹⁶ (Before he joined the Post in the 1960s, Pincus traveled abroad on a CIA subsidy to spy on student leaders from other countries.¹⁷ Unsurprisingly, Pincus was out in front of the pack of reporters that attacked the recent Mercury News story.)

When the major media turn aside from stories so sensational, and so easy to pursue, it's unlikely to be an accident. And given that stories so high-profile go nowhere, it's not surprising that the same thing happens to countless lower-profile stories that lack immediately-recognizable American names. Space prevents giving even a "bullet" version of many stories that could be adduced here, but consider the following items, at least:

• Medellin trafficker Carlos Lehder testified at Noriega's 1991 trial that the Medellin cartel gave $10 million to the contras.
• FBI informant Wanda Palacio told the Kerry subcommittee that she saw cocaine being loaded onto pilot Wallace Sawyer's plane in Barranquilla, Colombia in 1985. (Sawyer and his Southern Air Transport L382, carrying guns this time, were shot down over Nicaragua one year later. The flight logs from the plane, recovered by the Sandinistas, substantiated Palacio's story.)
• George Morales, a major cocaine trafficker, offered planes and cash to the contras; when contra leader Adolfo Chamorro checked with the CIA, they said Morales was fine and to go ahead with the deal.
• Ramon Milian Rodriguez, the chief accountant for the Medellin cartel, testified to the Kerry subcommittee that he transferred money to the contras and laundered more than $3 million for the CIA, even after his indictment on drug charges in 1983.
• In what was known as the Frogman Case, the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco, Joseph Russoniello, returned $36,000 to an arrested cocaine dealer after contra leaders stipulated that the money was earmarked for weapons. The Justice Department foiled Kerry's attempts to investigate this. (Russoniello, by the way, is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.)
• Recently a Venezuelan, Gen. Ramon Guillen Davila, was indicted in Miami for smuggling tons of cocaine. This is the only instance in which the CIA has acknowledged responsibility for drugs being imported into the U.S. One CIA officer resigned and another was recalled to Washington, but no CIA officials have been charged.

Or consider the blatant attempt by the Washington Post and its corporate sibling Newsweek to bury the inconvenient results of Congressional investigations into CIA complicity with drug traffickers, and then smear the investigators. On July 22, 1987, the Post ran an article whose headline seemed perfectly clear: "Hill Panel Finds No Evidence Linking Contras to Drug Smuggling."

But Charles Rangel (D-NY), chairman of the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control, wrote to the Post and complained, "Your headline says we drew one conclusion, while in fact we reached quite a different one." Rangel's letter ended up buried in the Congressional Record (August 6, 1987), because the Post refused to publish it. Two years later, when the Kerry subcommittee report was released, the Post buried it on a back page, and devoted most of the short article to Republican criticisms of Kerry. Newsweek called Kerry a "randy conspiracy buff."

When our major media behave more irresponsibly than Congress, and frequently only a few members of Congress deserve our support, it's easy to see that we have a problem. The 1980s were a repeat performance of the 1970s, when the stakes were larger. At that time it was a question of organized assassinations and secret wars of aggression. Both Congress and the media were interested, at least initially. But our media establishment took one look into the abyss and decided that investigative journalism was not so profitable after all. Without the support of the media, Congress quickly lost interest.¹⁸

Is it even necessary to write a conclusion to this tragic but also farcical story? Confronting his outraged fellow citizens in South Central, CIA Director John Deutch thought he was offering a reasonable extenuation when he remarked at one point: "Our case officers deal with bad people, very bad people." But a moment's thought reveals the utter vacuity of this remark. The Cold War is over. For the young, even its memory is fading away. What should fade away now are the rationalizations that once led men like Deutch to justify cutting deals with tinhorn dictators and smack dealers.

Unfortunately, as Deutch's audience knew, the evil these men did lives after them -- on the streets of South Central, and all over our unhappy global village. It's still going on. Why can't our press report it?

1. Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade (Brooklyn NY: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991), pp. 29-63. This book is an expanded edition of Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (New York: Harper & Row, 1972).

2. David Barsamian, "The Politics of Drugs: An Interview with Alfred McCoy," Z Magazine, January 1991, pp. 64-74.

3. Henrik Krueger, The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence, and International Fascism (Boston: South End Press, 1980), pp. 142-43.

4. Gary Moore, "The exiles who turned to drugs," St. Petersburg Times, 30 May 1982, pp. 1-A, 14-A.

5. Central Intelligence Agency, Report on Plots to Assassinate Fidel Castro, 25 April 1967, pp. 19-20, 25-31.

6. Chip Berlet, "How the Muckrakers Saved America," Alternative Media, Vol. 11, No. 1 (1979), pp. 5-7.

7. Jonathan Kwitny, The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1987), 424 pages; McCoy, The Politics of Heroin, pp. 461-78.

8. James Rupert and Steve Coll, "U.S. Declines to Probe Afghan Drug Trade," Washington Post, 13 May 1990, pp. A1, A29.

9. Carl Oglesby, "The Acid Test and How It Failed," The National Reporter, Fall 1988, p. 10. The information on Ronald Stark comes from three sources: Jonathan Marshall, "The Strange Career of Ronald Hadley Stark," Intelligence/Parapolitics, November 1984, pp. 15-18; Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD and the Sixties Rebellion (New York: Grove Press, 1985), pp. 248-51, 279-82, 286-87; Philip Willan, Puppetmasters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy (London: Constable and Company, 1991), pp. 308-16.

10. Michael Levine, The Big White Lie: The CIA and the Cocaine/Crack Epidemic (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1993), 472 pages.

11. David Corn, "The CIA and the Cocaine Coup," The Nation, 7 October 1991, p. 404-6.

12. Celerino Castillo III and Dave Harmon, Powderburns: Cocaine, Contras and the Drug War (Oakville, Ontario: Mosaic Press -- Sundial, 1994), p. 208.

13. The most comprehensive discussion of the details in this report can be found in Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 279 pages.

14. Geraldo Rivera Show, CNBC-TV, 9 October 1996, with guests Jack Blum, Michael Levine, and Maxine Waters.

15. Warren Richey, "CIA Under Pressure to Divulge Info on Contras," Christian Science Monitor, 20 September 1996, p. 3.

16. "Censored News: Oliver North & Co. Banned from Costa Rica," Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, Extra!, October/November 1989, pp. 1, 5. See FAIR's website (http://www.fair.org/fair) for more about major media and the CIA-cocaine story.

17. Walter Pincus, "How I Traveled Abroad On CIA Subsidy," San Jose Mercury, 18 February 1967, p. 14.

18. Kathryn S. Olmsted, Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI (Chapel Hill NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 255 pages.

For references to more information on this topic, search for the proper names found in this essay by using NameBase from our home page, a cumulative name index of 500 investigative books, plus 20 years of assorted clippings.

from http://www.tiac.net/users/ddiam/Q/CIA.html:

Date: Sun, 25 May 1997 19:12:23 -0400 (EDT)
From: David Diamond
X-URL: http://www.livelinks.com/sumeria/politics/cia-coke.html

British Media Exposes
CIA-Cocaine Links

By Norman Solomon

Shock waves should have jolted America when the news broke in England a few weeks ago [early in 1997]: "The CIA actively encouraged drug-trafficking in order to fund right-wing contra rebels in Nicaragua during the 1980s, and a CIA agent in Nicaragua was employed to ensure the money went to the contras and not into the pockets of drug barons."

That's how a London-based daily newspaper, The Independent, summarized the conclusions of investigative journalists working for Britain's ITV television network. Their findings aired Dec. 12 on a highly regarded program called "The Big Story."

It certainly was a big story -- on that side of the Atlantic. But on this side, it was no story at all.

The British news reports included statements by Carlos Cabezas, who was a pilot for the Nicaraguan Air Force before the Sandinistas came to power in 1979. During the early 1980s, Cabezas transported cocaine from Central America to California. He ended up spending six years in prison after the 1983 seizure of 430 pounds of cocaine in the San Francisco Bay.

Interviewed for the ITV documentary, Cabezas said that he delivered cocaine proceeds to contra leaders in Miami and Costa Rica. Cabezas told the journalists that in Costa Rica he met CIA agent Ivan Gomez, who was responsible for overseeing the transfer of drug profits to the contras.

You might think that news media in the United States would be quick to report on ITV's scoop. No such luck.

The new year began with Americans still unaware of information that became common knowledge in Britain weeks ago. Our country's most influential big-city dailies -- The Washington Post, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times -- haven't even mentioned the ITV story.

In sharp contrast, last fall those papers devoted enormous resources and much newsprint to attacking a series in the San Jose Mercury News that linked the CIA-backed contras to the spread of crack cocaine in urban America. Those "debunking" efforts were quite shoddy.

For instance, all three papers presented the CIA as a touchstone for veracity. They relied heavily on official sources while straining to downplay the ties between the CIA and the contras -- and between the contras and cocaine trafficking.

New York Times reporting was so eager to distance the CIA from the contras that it ventured into absurdity. On Oct. 21, the Times noted that pro-contra cocaine traffickers Norvin Meneses and Danilo Blandon "traveled once to Honduras to see the (contra) military commander, Enrique Bermudez." But the Times quickly added: "Although Mr. Bermudez, like other contra leaders, was often paid by the CIA, he was not a CIA agent."

The Washington Post's newsroom culture of denial got so bad that one news article referred to "the supposed CIA-contra connection." It didn't seem to matter that the contra army was formed at the instigation of the CIA, its leaders were selected by -- and received salaries from -- the agency, and CIA officers controlled day-to-day battlefield strategies.

Last October, the Los Angeles Times joined the other two dailies in belittling the importance of crack dealer Ricky Ross. Yet on Dec. 20, 1994 -- before publicity about his partnership with Meneses and Blandon -- a long news article in the L.A. Times had described Ross as the "king of crack" whose "coast-to-coast conglomerate" was responsible for "a staggering turnover that put the drug within reach of anyone with a few dollars."

George Orwell had such mental gymnastics in mind when he described doublethink as willingness "to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed."

(In recent months, I've worked with a team of researchers at the media watch group FAIR to evaluate the attacks on the Mercury News series by the three big dailies. Our report, titled "Snow Job", is available without charge on the World Wide Web.)

Ironically, the evidence that surfaced in British media last month indicates that the Mercury News series actually understated the extent of CIA involvement in the cocaine trade. But American media powerhouses that have done their best to discredit the Mercury News series are now ignoring the unpleasant news from overseas.

The Atlantic Ocean has never seemed wider.

---

The above article appeared in "Media Beat" syndicated column by Norman Solomon. "Media Beat" appears in about 20 daily newspapers around the country and on CompuServe.

If you like what you read, please contact the editorial page editors at newspapers in your area and urge them to carry the column! (It's distributed to daily papers by Creators Syndicate.) Suggestions from readers have been very effective in getting newspapers to publish "Media Beat" on a regular basis.

For more information, send e-mail to mediabeat-info@igc.org.

The CIA cocaine smuggling on behalf of the Contras through Mena, Arkansas corrupted the Presidencies of Bill Clinton, George Bush and Ronald Reagan. For details, see: ftp://pencil.cs.missouri.edu/pub/mena/

Paul Wolf's War on Drugs pages expose the underlying imperialistic motivations of the War on Drugs. The Slippery Slope: U.S. Military Moves Into Mexico is particularly illuminating.

from the New York Times, 2001-Apr-1, by Michael Ignatieff:

What Did the C.I.A. Do to Eric Olson's Father?

For a quarter of a century, a close friend of mine, a Harvard classmate, has believed that the Central Intelligence Agency murdered his father, a United States government scientist. Believing this means, in my friend's words, "leaving the known universe," the one in which it is innocently accepted that an agency of the American government would never do such a thing. My friend has left this known universe, even raising his father's body from the grave where it had lain for 40 years to test the story the C.I.A. told him about his death. The evidence on the body says that the agency may have lied. But knowing this has not healed my friend. When I ask him what he has learned from his ordeal, he says, "Never dig up your father." Then he laughs, and the look on his face is wild, bitter and full of pain.

On Nov. 28, 1953, around 2 a.m., Armand Pastore, night manager at the Statler Hotel opposite Penn Station in New York, rushed out the front door on Seventh Avenue to find a middle-aged man lying on the sidewalk in his undershirt and shorts. "He was broken up something awful," Pastore told reporters many years later, flat on his back with his legs smashed and bent at a terrible angle. Looking up, Pastore could see a blind pushed through an empty window frame high up in the Statler. The man had fallen from the 10th floor -- apparently after crashing through a closed window -- but he was alive. "He was trying to mumble something, but I couldn't make it out. It was all garbled, and I was trying to get his name." By the time the priest and the ambulance came, the stranger on the sidewalk was dead.

When Pastore went up to the stranger's room -- 1018A -- with the police, they found a man who gave his name as Robert Lashbrook sitting on the toilet with his head in his hands. Down at reception, Pastore asked the hotel telephone operator whether she had overheard any calls from 1018A. Two, she said. In one, a voice had said, "He's gone." The voice on the other end replied, "That's too bad." Lashbrook admitted making two calls but has denied saying anything of the sort.

The high trees over the family house in Frederick, Md., were still in darkness when Eric Olson was woken by his mother, Alice, and taken into the living room. Upstairs, his younger sister, Lisa, and brother, Nils, slept undisturbed. Lt. Col. Vincent Ruwet, his father's boss at the Army research establishment at Fort Detrick, told Eric something bad had happened. "Fallen or jumped" and "accident" were the words he heard as he looked across the room at his mother, frozen and empty-eyed, on the sofa opposite. "In that moment when I learned that my father had gone out a window and died," Eric later wrote, "it was as if the plug were pulled from some central basin of my mind and a vital portion of my consciousness drained out." He was 9 years old.

*

When I first met Eric Olson in 1974, both of us were working on doctorates at Harvard. Mine was in history, his in clinical psychology. What I liked about him was his maniacal cackle. One minute he would be laboring some abstruse point in his Southern drawl, the next his face would be alight with a snaggle-toothed grin, and his body would be electrified by the joke he had just slipped by me, deadpan. The laugh was an attractive and alarming trait, because sometimes he would laugh about things that weren't funny at all.

His Harvard research was about how to help people recover from trauma. With the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, he had been to Man, W.Va., to interview survivors of a disaster in which 125 people had been killed and 4,000 people made homeless when a dam burst and a wall of black water containing coal waste swept down Buffalo Creek. He and Lifton wrote a paper that spoke of the way sudden, violent loss left people imprinted with death anxiety and long-term psychic numbing.

I remember Eric talking for hours in his Cambridge apartment about a technique he had been using to help the people of Buffalo Creek. It was called the "collage method," and it involved getting survivors to paste together pictures, using anything they felt like clipping out of newspapers and magazines. It seemed childish to me at first, but Eric said that for people whose lives were in pieces anyway, collage was mysteriously satisfying. They would work for hours in silence, he said, moving about the floor, sticking things down, and sometimes when they had finished, they would contemplate what they had done and start to cry.

After 75 years of psychoanalysis -- the talking cure -- here was a therapy, Eric believed, that didn't start from words but from images. It seemed to unfurl the winding processes of a person's unconscious and lay them out flat on paper. Eric had been playing around with his father's camera and making photomontages since childhood. But he didn't stumble on the power of collage until he was in his 20's. One stoned night, he and a girlfriend got down on their knees in her apartment and began cutting pictures out of magazines and gluing them down. When Eric finished, the central image of his collage was a grainy picture of a man falling head first out of a window.

*

On June 11, 1975, The Washington Post revealed that a commission led by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller had discovered that "a civilian employee of the Department of the Army unwittingly took LSD as part of a Central Intelligence Agency test" and "developed serious side effects." After being sent to New York with a C.I.A. escort for psychiatric treatment, the employee jumped from a hotel window and died as a result. The Rockefeller report added a footnote: "There are indications in the few remaining agency records that this individual may have had a history of emotional instability."

Back in Frederick, Lisa Olson confronted Vincent Ruwet, her father's old boss at Detrick. He had regularly visited Alice Olson, shared a drink with her, become a trusted friend of the children. Ruwet stalled at first but eventually confirmed that the man in the story was Frank Olson and that he had known the details in The Post story all along.

If Ruwet had known all along, then the family had lived for 22 years in a community of lies: families of government scientists who had kept the truth away from a family dying from the lack of it. This culture of secrecy had also contaminated the family from within. Alice Olson covered the whole subject of Frank's death with a silence that was both baffling and intimidating. Her mantra, whenever Eric would ask what really happened in Room 1018A, was, "You are never going to know what happened in that room."

Maintaining stoic silence took its toll. By the 1960's, Alice Olson was routinely drinking on the quiet, locking herself in the bathroom and then coming out mean and confused. One time, when Eric returned from a year away in India, he walked right past her in the airport. The drinking had left her so thin and wasted that he didn't recognize her. All the time, Ruwet had been there for her, keeping her company. It later turned out that he had received orders from the C.I.A.'s director, Allen Dulles, to keep in touch with her.

With their mother locked in silence, the children were left alone with their own sense of shame about their father's death. Eric told other children that his father had suffered "a fatal nervous breakdown," without knowing what that could possibly mean. Thanks to The Post's revelations, the summer of 1975 was the family's "Copernican Revolution." They gave the exclusive on their personal story to Seymour Hersh of The New York Times, and when he came through the door of the house in Frederick, his first words were: "This must be the most uncurious family in the United States. I can't believe you fell for that story for 22 years." Later, at a news conference in the backyard at Frederick, under the big trees, the family announced that they were going to sue the government for wrongful death. Their ultimate purpose, they said, was to imprint what had happened to their father in "American memory."

The news conference had immediate results. On July 21, 1975, Alice, Eric, Nils, Lisa and Lisa's husband, Greg Hayward, were invited to the White House. In the Oval Office, according to newspaper accounts, President Gerald Ford expressed "the sympathy of the American people and apologized on behalf of the U.S. government." There is a photograph of Alice shaking the president's hand. Her face is glowing. Even so, catharsis was brief. The meeting with the president lasted 17 minutes.

A week or so later, Eric, Lisa, Nils and two lawyers met the C.I.A.'s director, William Colby, at the agency's headquarters in Langley, Va. In his memoirs, Colby remembered the lunch as "one of the most difficult assignments I have ever had." At the end of the lunch, Colby handed the family an inch-thick sheaf of declassified documents relating to Frank Olson's death. What Colby did not tell them -- did not reveal until he published his memoirs just three years later -- was that Frank Olson had not been a civilian employee of the Department of the Army. He had been a C.I.A. employee working at Fort Detrick.

The Colby documents were photocopies of the agency's own in-house investigation of Olson's death and like Eric's collages: a redacted jumble of fragments, full of unexplained terms like the "Artichoke" and "Bluebird" projects. These turned out to be the precursors of what became known as MK-ULTRA, a C.I.A. project, beginning in the Korean War, to explore the use of drugs like LSD as truth serums, as well as botulism and anthrax, for use in covert assassination.

The documents claimed that during a meeting between the C.I.A. and Fort Detrick scientists at Deep Creek Lodge in rural Maryland on Nov. 19,1953, Sidney Gottlieb of the C.I.A. slipped LSD into Olson's glass of Cointreau. After 20 minutes, Olson developed mild symptoms of disorientation. He was then told the drink had been spiked. The next day, Olson returned home early and spent the weekend in a mood that Alice remembered as withdrawn but not remotely psychotic. He kept saying he had made a terrible mistake, but she couldn't get him to say what it was.

On Sunday night, they went to see a film about Martin Luther. It followed the young Luther to the moment of spiritual crisis -- Here I stand, I can do no other" -- when he decided to take on the might of the Catholic Church. The next day, Olson went straight to Ruwet's office and said he wanted to resign. Ruwet told him to calm down. The next morning, he returned to Ruwet's office and insisted that his resignation be accepted. While Alice's memory was of Frank being in the grip of an ethical dilemma, Ruwet told C.I.A. investigators that Olson "appeared to be greatly agitated and in his own words, 'all mixed up."'

Ruwet and Robert Lashbrook, a C.I.A. liaison at Fort Detrick, took Olson to New York -- ostensibly to seek psychiatric advice. But the doctor Olson saw, an allergist named Harold Abramson, was receiving C.I.A. financing to experiment with LSD, and his sole exercise of therapeutic attention was to prescribe Nembutal and bourbon to help Olson sleep.

Olson was also taken to see John Mulholland, a New York magician on the C.I.A. payroll, who may have tried to hypnotize him. Ruwet told C.I.A. investigators that in Mulholland's presence, Olson became highly agitated. "What's behind this?" he kept asking his friend Ruwet. "Give me the lowdown. What are they trying to do with me? Are they checking me for security?" "Everyone was in a plot to 'get' him," he told Lashbrook. He begged them to "just let me disappear."

According to the documents Colby had given the family, Olson spent an agonized night wandering the streets of New York, discarding his wallet and identification cards. He said he was too ashamed to go home to his wife and children, so he and Lashbrook ate a cheerless Thanksgiving dinner at a Horn & Hardart automat in Midtown.

Late the next day, according to the C.I.A. story, it was decided that Olson needed to be institutionalized. Yet when Olson phoned Alice that night, he said that he felt "much better" and "looked forward to seeing her the next day." That night, in Room 1018A, with Lashbrook in the bed by the door, Olson was calm: he washed out his socks and underwear and went to sleep. Four hours later, Armand Pastore found him lying on his back on Seventh Avenue.

The C.I.A.'s general counsel, called in immediately in 1953 to investigate Olson's death, noted that the official story -- that LSD "triggered" the suicide -- was "completely inconsistent" with the facts in the case. Disciplinary action was recommended against Gottlieb and Lashbrook, but the agency's director, Allen Dulles, delivered only a mild reprimand. Lashbrook left the agency, but Gottlieb remained in senior positions for 20 more years. He told the internal inquiry that Olson's death was "just one of the risks running with scientific experimentation." Far from ending with Olson's death, the LSD experiments continued for two decades.

The Colby documents left the family marooned, no longer believing that Frank's death was a simple suicide but not knowing what to believe instead. A photograph in People magazine in July 1975 shows each of them in the living room in Frederick, unsmiling and not looking at one another. In 1976, after negotiations in which they traded away their right to further civil or criminal proceedings against the government, the family received a total of $750,000, half a million less than originally recommended by the White House and even the C.I.A. itself.

If this was "closure," it was of an especially cursed kind. Shortly after receiving her portion of the money, Eric's sister, together with her husband and their 2-year-old son, Jonathan, set off by small plane from Frederick to a destination in the Adirondacks, where they were going to invest the money in a lumber mill. The plane crashed, and everyone on board was killed.

*

In the aftermath of Lisa's death, Eric took his portion of the money and went to Sweden to escape the accursed story. In Stockholm, he read intensively, exploring the connection between his spatial, collage-based theory of the mind and linguistic accounts of mental processes. He also had a son, Stephan, by a woman he never married. If distance was supposed to heal him, however, the cure didn't work. He "smoldered" in Stockholm and in 1984 returned to the States determined, he said, to find out the truth "once and for all."

"Once and for all" meant returning to the hotel and checking into Room 1018A. He recalls this strange night now as a revelation. "It just hit you," he says. The room was simply too small for his father to have gained the speed to take a running plunge through the window. The sill was too high and too wide -- there was a radiator in front of it -- for him to have dived through a closed window and a lowered blind in the dark.

Eric, Nils and Alice, now recovered from alcoholism, tracked down Sidney Gottlieb in his ecologically correct home in Culpeper, Va., where the retired spymaster was raising goats, eating yogurt and preaching the values of peace and environmentalism. He received them pleasantly but conceded nothing. "I was outclassed," Eric remembers. "This was a world-class intelligence." They also found Lashbrook, at his vine-covered stucco house in Ojai, Calif., where they watched him twitch in his seat as he told his version of what happened in room 1018A -- that he was awakened by a crash, saw a broken window and an empty bed and concluded that Frank Olson had jumped to his death.

From these encounters, Eric realized that he was up against a brotherhood of silence and that his father had once belonged to it. It was, as one former Detrick employee called it, "a community of saints" dedicated to using the most fearful and secret science to defend the republic.

*

Frank Olson's specialty, it turned out, had been the development of aerosols for the delivery of anthrax. With the discovery in the 1950's that the North Koreans were brainwashing American prisoners, the Special Operations Division at Detrick became the center for the development of drugs for use in brainwashing and interrogation. LSD emerged as one of the interrogation drugs of choice. Alice Olson never knew exactly what her husband was doing -- he was, in fact, working for the C.I.A. by this time -- but she did know that whenever his lab tested chemical or biological compounds on monkeys and the monkeys died, her husband would bring a testy silence home.

One mystery -- entry and exit stamps in Frank Olson's passport, indicating that he had been to Sweden, Germany and Britain in the summer of 1953 -- seemed to offer a crucial clue to his state of mind in the months before his death. Through Gordon Thomas, a British journalist and author of numerous books on intelligence matters, Eric learned that during a trip to London his father had apparently confided in William Sargant, a consultant psychiatrist who advised British intelligence on brainwashing techniques.

According to Thomas, who was a lifelong friend of Sargant's, Olson told Sargant that he had visited secret joint American-British testing and research installations near Frankfurt. Thomas's hypothesis is that the C.I.A. was testing interrogation and truth serums there -- not on monkeys but on human subjects, "expendables," captured Russian agents and ex-Nazis. Thomas says that Olson confessed to Sargant that he had witnessed something terrible, possibly "a terminal experiment" on one or more of the expendables. Sargant heard Olson out and then reported to British intelligence that the young American scientist's misgivings were making him a security risk. He recommended that Olson be denied further access to Porton Down, the British chemical-weapons research establishment.

A document Eric later saw from his father's personnel file confirmed that doubts had been raised about Olson's security clearance before his death, possibly because of Sargant's warning. Alice Olson, who knew nothing about the nature of his visit, did recall that when he returned from Europe that summer, Frank was unusually withdrawn.

Olson, a scientist by training, would have known that he was working for a government that had put Nazi scientists on trial at Nuremberg for immoral experiments on human beings. Now, in the late summer of 1953, his son says he believes, a naive American patriot faced up to the possibility that his own government was doing the same thing. If the C.I.A. was in fact experimenting with "expendables" in Germany, and if Olson knew about it, Eric reasoned, then it would not be enough to hospitalize him, discredit him with lies about his mental condition and allow him to slip back into civilian life. It would be better to get rid of him altogether but make it look like suicide. This was the truth, Eric came to believe, that lay hidden in the collage of the Colby documents.

If Eric is right, slipping LSD into Olson's Cointreau was not an experiment that went wrong: it was designed to get him to talk while hallucinating. The trip to New York was not to manage and contain his incipient psychosis. It was intended to assess what kind of risk he posed and then eliminate him if necessary. Housing a possibly deranged and desperate man in a hotel room high above Seventh Avenue was not a regrettable error of judgment. It was the prelude to murder. If Frank Olson had realized this, his son could now read his father's last words ("Just let me disappear") as a cry for help.

In 1997, after the C.I.A. inadvertently declassified an assassination manual dating from late 1953, Eric Olson was able to read the following: "The most efficient accident, in simple assassination, is a fall of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface. Elevator shafts, stairwells, unscreened windows and bridges will serve. . . . The act may be executed by sudden, vigorous [excised] of the ankles, tipping the subject over the edge." The manual went on to recommend a blow to the temple to stun the subject first: "In chase cases it will usually be necessary to stun or drug the subject before dropping him."

Reading this passage at the kitchen table in Frederick, Eric realized that the word he had been looking for all his life was not "fallen" or "jumped" but "dropped." It was, he recalled, one of the few moments when, after nearly 50 years, he actually experienced his father's death, when the truth he had been seeking finally took hold of him.

In allowing the Olson family to receive the ultimate sacrament of American healing -- a formal apology from the president in the Oval Office -- the C.I.A. tacitly acknowledged that it had committed a sin against the order that holds citizens in allegiance to their government. Now, it seemed to Eric Olson, that apology had been a cynical lie. It enabled the C.I.A. to hide, forever, a perfect murder.

It is one thing to believe in a truth as painful as this. It is another to prove it. In 1994, Eric had his father's casket raised from the ground. At the funeral in 1953, the coffin was shut because the family had been told that the body was broken up and that there were extensive cuts and lacerations to the face caused by the fall through the glass. In fact, the body had been embalmed, and it was in nearly perfect condition.

Eric stared down at a face he had last seen 41 years before. There were no lacerations consistent with damage by glass. On further examination, the forensic team, led by James Starrs of George Washington University, discovered a blow to Olson's temple, on the left side, which caused a fist-size bleed under the otherwise unbroken skin. It could not have occurred, the pathologists agreed, after he went out the window because the velocity of his descent would have caused more extensive trauma. While one team member thought it could have occurred as the head hit the window frame on the way out, Starrs and the others were certain it had been inflicted before that. The conclusion that both Starrs and Eric drew was that someone had knocked Olson out, either while he slept or after a struggle, and then thrown him out the window.

Since the autopsy, Eric has pursued leads to find out who actually carried out "the wet work" on his father. H.P. Albarelli, a writer-researcher with contacts among retired C.I.A. agents in Florida, has found agents who say they know the identity of the men who went into Room 1018A that night in November 1953, supposedly to tip Olson through the window. They were not C.I.A. men, they say, but contract killers associated with the Trafficante mob family hired by the C.I.A. But none of the retired C.I.A. agents, men now in their 70's and 80's, are about to come forward unless they are released from their confidentiality agreements with the agency.

In 1996, Olson approached Manhattan's district attorney, Robert Morgenthau, to see if his office would open a new investigation into the Olson case. Stephen Saracco and Daniel Bibb of Morgenthau's "cold case" unit have deposed Lashbrook in Ojai; they have followed up a few of the hundreds of leads that Eric Olson besieges them with almost daily. But the Manhattan D.A., while probably agreeable to immunity for Albarelli's sources in Florida, has not pursued the confidentiality releases. If you talk to Saracco and Bibb in the Italian restaurant in lower Manhattan where they hang out after-hours, you get the impression that they don't think there's a case to send to a grand jury. If you ask them why they don't go down to Florida to talk to Albarelli's jealously guarded sources, they look at you as if to say, "How do you know these people exist?"

If there isn't enough for the Manhattan D.A. to take to a jury, Eric and his lawyer, Harry Huge, will have to bring a civil suit of their own, claiming that the C.I.A. lied in 1976 when it secured the family's agreement to waive further legal proceedings. Eric says he knows the truth, but it is not the "smoking gun" kind of forensic truth that will force the agency to go to court and be put through the discovery process. And if you lack provable truth, you do not get justice. Without justice, there is no accountability, and without accountability there is no healing, no resolution.

*

Last autumn, after nearly 25 years of our lives going in different directions, I went to see Eric in Frederick. The family home, a ranch house, is in a decayed state of suspended animation -- seemingly the same carpets, same couches, same dusty jar of Vaseline in the bathroom cabinet that were there the night Frank Olson died. Living there is worst at Thanksgiving, the time of his death.

Eric has taken a break from his work on the collage method, and the huge books of patients' collages now lie shut up in storage nearby. The house is full of drafts of books on collage, as well as books about his father's story that remain unfinished because the story itself lacks an ending. Eric lives on foundation grants, book advances and some help from his brother and others. He spends his days hounding journalists, the Manhattan D.A., anyone who will listen, with a steady stream of calls and e-mail messages from an office just feet away from the same living room, the same chair, the very spot where he was told by Ruwet that his father had "fallen or jumped." That he is convinced that the word was neither "fallen" nor "jumped," but "dropped," does not heal. Indeed, his story makes you wonder about that noble phrase "The truth shall make you free." As it happens, that phrase is inscribed in the entry hall of the C.I.A.'s headquarters.

Eric knows that to charge the most secretive agency of American government with murder is to incur the suspicion that you have become deranged by anger, grief, paranoia, greed or a combination of all four. "Eric is crazy, Eric is obsessed," he says, mimicking his accusers. "Fine. I agree." A maniacal cackle. "But it's not the point. The point is" -- and here his eyes go flat and cold and relentless -- what happened in the damned room."

Just before I left, we went to the graves of his mother, sister and brother-in-law and their child, the place where he wants his father to be buried. When I asked him when the reburial will happen, he paused to think. "When we know what to say," he said finally, looking down at the spare piece of grass beside his mother's grave. "When it is over. When we can do it right."

It takes me a while after I leave Eric to grasp one salient fact that may make resolution difficult. For seven years, his father's bones have lain in a filing cabinet in James Starrs's office. Only the bones -- and not all of them -- remain intact. To get at the truth of what happened to Frank Olson, the pathologists had to rip the skin off his limbs and tear his body apart, macerate it and send it in chunks to various labs for analysis. In the search for truth, Eric had to tear his father's body limb from limb.

The fact is, it will never be possible to bury all of Frank Olson again. Now I understand why, when I asked Eric what he had learned from his 25-year ordeal, he told me that no one should ever dig up his father's body. Now I know why my friend's wild laugh is so full of pain.

Michael Ignatieff is the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

The following article demonstrates the grand interrelation of the conspirators, spanning decades and surviving very much to the present day. Note that some of the contents of the article may evidence incoherence and uncoordination within the conspiracy. The article also gives an overview of a critical dimension of the Intelligence Axis' tactical and strategic palette.

The next article is about Terry Lenzner. As an aside, consider that Terry Lenzner has worked as a detective for the National Enquirer, and David Kendall works as a vetting lawyer for the National Enquirer.

from TPDL 1998-Nov-19, from WorldNetDaily, by Sarah Foster:

Terry Lenzner's CIA connection

Watergate attorney shielded agency's 'Dr. Strangelove'

President Clinton relies so much on private investigators to dig up dirt on political enemies, it's said he has his own private CIA. But an offhand remark by Terry Lenzner -- the super-sleuth most often hired by Clinton's attorneys to do the dirt-digging -- reveals there's more than a little truth to that quip.

In a sworn deposition, the former Senate Watergate Committee attorney turned gumshoe admitted at least one significant connection to the Central Intelligence Agency. Lenzner is apparently so well-connected to the CIA that, in an hour of need, the agency turned to him for help in shielding one of its most notorious employees from public scrutiny.

On March 13, Lenzner was deposed by Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch in connection with Filegate: the White House confiscation of over 900 FBI files on Bush and Reagan administration employees.

Lenzner is the founder and president of Investigative Group International, a blue-chip detective firm headquartered in Washington, D.C. He's reputed to have done so much work for the White House he's been dubbed the "president's private eye," a sobriquet he disavows.

Through most of the deposition Lenzner dodged questions that might come back to haunt him later in court if he answered yes or no. On his attorney's advice he neither admitted nor denied if his firm carried out the highly intrusive investigations of Judge Robert Bork and Justice Clarence Thomas after they had been nominated to a place on the Supreme Court. Lenzner also refused to say whether or not he had ordered his gang of snoops to dig up dirt on Linda Tripp, Paula Jones, Pat Robertson, Kenneth Starr and members of his independent counsel team. Nor would he admit to having investigated reporters at Newsweek, the American Spectator and other publications.

But when asked if he were currently doing any work for the CIA, he volunteered information beyond the question.

"No," said Lenzner. "I think the only work I've ever done with the CIA was, I represented two or three former CIA employees during the Church Senate hearings (in 1975), including the former head of the Technical Services Division, Sidney Gottlieb. And, indeed, I sued the Senate committee to keep his name out of the assassination report on the grounds that it might endanger his life and his family's life." Sidney Gottlieb. There's a name from the past. The fact that Terry Lenzner represented him and actually sued a Senate committee on his behalf speaks volumes.

Gottlieb was the CIA's real-life Dr. Strangelove -- a brilliant chemist who headed MK-ULTRA, the agency's most far-reaching drug and mind-control program at the height of the Cold War.

MK-ULTRA was the brainchild of Richard Helms, then assistant deputy director for plans within the CIA's Clandestine Services ("dirty tricks") section. Helms later became CIA director.

In April 1953, Helms proposed a "program for the covert use of biological and chemical materials" for the control of human behavior. CIA Director Allen Dulles quickly gave his approval, and the program was set up in the chemical division of the technical services staff. Gottlieb -- who was 33 when he joined the agency in 1951 -- was put in charge of coordinating the projects. Several already existing, smaller mind-control programs, like Operation Artichoke and Bluebird, were brought under the MK- ULTRA umbrella, which grew exponentially into a mammoth enterprise.

The CIA, a relatively new agency (it was established in 1947), asked a lot of questions, and the supersecret MK-ULTRA program, with Gottlieb at the controls, was designed to provide answers and develop ways to make them happen. Some examples:

Could a person be turned into a "Manchurian Candidate" -- someone programmed to kill a "target" on a subliminal command? Is there a substance -- a truth drug -- or a technique (hypnosis perhaps?) that would enable CIA operatives to wrest information from someone against his will? Is there a sure and certain way to render a crowd of people -- or an entire society -- totally helpless so it can be controlled? Or, conversely, easily provoked to riot and lawlessness? Could germs be engineered that would affect only members of a targeted group? How about a poison or toxin that could kill a person but not be detected in an autopsy?

To find the answers, millions of dollars were funneled through MK-ULTRA to universities and other institutions in this country and abroad for research in bacteriology, chemistry, drugs, hypnosis, radiation, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, psychosurgery and electro-shock -- anything and everything that could conceivably be of use in the shadow world of espionage.

Eventually there were 149 MK-ULTRA projects and 33 additional projects funded through MK-ULTRA, but these had nothing to do with behavioral modification, toxins or drugs.

There was no congressional oversight -- and often no formal contract. Qualified individuals, said Helms, "are most reluctant to enter into signed agreements of any sort which connect them with this activity since such a connection would jeopardize their professional reputations."

For experimental subjects, researchers often used mental patients, ethnic minorities, drug addicts, prisoners and those who were in a weak position when it came to defending their rights.

"I toiled wholeheartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun. ... Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the all-highest," George White wrote in a letter to Gottlieb.

White had come into the CIA from the Office of Strategic Services, America's wartime intelligence agency.

For years White was in charge of MK-ULTRA's Operation Midnight Climax, a project set up to study the effects of LSD on sex. CIA-run brothels were maintained in San Francisco, New York and Marin County; drug-addicted prostitutes were paid $100 a night to bring their johns to these "safehouses," where they spiked the drinks with LSD. CIA personnel watched the action from behind one-way mirrors. The johns were never told they had been unwitting subjects in drug studies.

MK-ULTRA was ended in 1964, but a streamlined version with fewer projects was continued until 1972 under the name MK- SEARCH. Gottlieb was in charge of both for the entire 20-year span. Agency officials later denied using unwitting or unwilling human subjects in their experiments.

However, Gottlieb ordered all MK-ULTRA and MK-SEARCH files destroyed in 1973. There was a "burgeoning paper problem," he said. Only a few boxes escaped the shredder.

As MK-SEARCH was being put to rest, the Watergate hearings in the Senate and the impeachment proceedings in the House were being geared up.

Terry Lenzner was hired in April 1973 as an assistant counsel by Sam Dash, chief counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee chaired by Sen. Sam Ervin, D-NC.

Lenzner had been a civil rights attorney for the Justice Department, then had a position as director of legal services with the Office of Economic Opportunity. He was fired by President Nixon in 1970 for, allegedly, funneling public monies to the Black Panthers and other militant groups.

That year he joined the defense team of Father Philip Berrigan who -- with a group of nuns and priests -- was charged with planning to kidnap Henry Kissinger, blow up heating tunnels and destroy draft records. Ramsey Clark, former attorney general was the lead counsel. Berrigan and his associates were acquitted.

The Watergate and impeachment hearings ended when Nixon resigned in August 1974.

That December, New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh ignited public interest in intelligence agencies with a front-page article on how the CIA had illegally spied on domestic anti-war activists and other political dissidents during the Johnson and Nixon administrations.

In January, President Ford appointed a commission headed by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller to investigate past CIA abuses.

The Senate followed suit and, that same month, a special committee chaired by the late Sen. Frank Church, D-ID, began investigations. Officially named the Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, it was known as the "Church Committee."

Among the first things the Church Committee looked at were allegations of attempted "executive actions" -- that is, assassinations -- against foreign leaders during the early 1960s. Gottlieb was called out of retirement to explain MK-ULTRA's role in assassination attempts against Patrice Lumumba, prime minister of Zaire (formerly the Belgian Congo), and Cuba's Fidel Castro.

The former civil rights attorney Terry Lenzner -- now in private practice -- saw to it that a man who admitted heading projects to terminate two communist leaders could use an assumed name.

He testified as Joseph Scheider, but revealed his true name in later hearings on MK-ULTRA.

Gottlieb told the panel how, in 1960, he had developed a way of transporting bacteria, choosing "one that was supposed to be indigenous to that area (of Africa) and that could be fatal." He personally carried the bacteria and hypodermics to Leopoldville, the capital of Zaire, and handed the package along to operatives with instructions for injecting it into Lumumba's food or toothpaste.

The plot fell through, but Lumumba was killed in 1961. The CIA denies responsibility for the successful termination.

Also unsuccessful was Gottlieb's work against Castro. A box of Castro's favorite cigars was contaminated with botulinum toxin -- a deadly poison. That plot, too, collapsed when no one could figure a way to deliver them.

The Church Committee was unable to link the United States to any successful assassination. But Sen. Church made a disturbing observation:

"For years we tried unsuccessfully to assassinate Castro, Lumumba and Trujillo. These men were no menace to the United States. The only time Castro was a menace in any physical sense was when he let Russian missiles in. Ironically, that was the only time when clandestine operations against his life were halted."

Pending legal actions promise to bring Gottlieb's name back in the news in the near future. He's named as a defendant in a civil suit involving the drugging of a young artist with LSD in Paris in 1952. Also, a grand jury is re-examining circumstances surrounding the death of army biochemist Frank Olson, who allegedly jumped to his death from a hotel window some 45 years ago this month.

Contacted for comments and information, neither Lenzner nor a spokesperson responded to WorldNetDaily phone calls.

WorldNetDaily Exclusive 1998-Nov-19, By Sarah Foster:

Meet Sidney Gottlieb -- CIA dirty trickster

He's the target of more than one lawsuit

It seemed Stanley Glickman had everything going for him. An American, Glickman was young, living in Paris, and busy carving out a successful career for himself as an artist.

Then one evening in late October 1952, his world crashed to an end. He accepted an invitation from an acquaintance to join him and some fellow Americans at the Cafe Select, a popular spot among writers and artists. There, the conversation turned into a heated political debate lasting several hours. When Glickman decided it was time to leave, one of the men offered to buy him a drink to soothe any hard feelings.

Rather than ask the waiter, the man himself went to the bar and brought drinks back to the table. Glickman noticed he had a club foot.

Thirty years later he learned this was a physical characteristic of Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, who headed the chemical division of the technical services staff with the Central Intelligence Agency.

In an affidavit filed in court, Glickman recalled that halfway through his drink he "began to experience a lengthening of distance and a distortion of perception" and saw that "the faces of the gentlemen flushed with excitement as they watched the execution of the drink."

One of the men told him he'd be capable of "working miracles." No miracles occurred, but as Glickman left the cafe he "experienced distortions of color and other hallucinations." He believed he had been poisoned. Next morning, he was "hallucinating intensely." For the next two weeks he "wandered in the pain of madness, delusion and terror."

On Nov. 11, he returned to the Cafe Select, where he sat and simply waited -- with his eyes closed -- until someone noticed him, and he was driven by car to the American Hospital of Paris. He was there over a week, during which time he was given electroshock and, he believed, additional hallucinatory drugs. Finally a friend came, helped him sign out, and took him to his studio where he remained, a virtual recluse, for the next 10 months -- living in a psychedelic nightmare of terror and hallucinations.

When friends of his brother-in-law's family saw him on the street and realized the condition he was in, they contacted his family, who made arrangements for him to be brought back to the United States in July 1953.

Glickman never painted again.

He held odd jobs and regained his physical strength, but his mental powers were never the same; his artistic talents were destroyed. Nor was he able to lead a normal social life.

If Glickman's story is true, he would have been one of the earliest victims of the MK-ULTRA project, one program of which involved slipping d-lysergic acid diethylamide -- better known as LSD -- to persons without their knowledge or consent, then watching their reactions. The CIA's secret project was not formally initiated until April 1953, but there are accounts of earlier experimentation.

When the public learned of these experiments over 20 years later, Glickman realized he had been one of the victims.

In 1977, Glickman's sister, Gloria Kronisch, sent her brother an article she had read about how the CIA had experimented with LSD on unsuspecting people in foreign countries during the 1950s. At this time, the Senate Committee on Human Resources, chaired by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-MA, began holding hearings on CIA experimentations on humans, and the CIA was asked to identify its victims.

The CIA identified 16 unwitting subjects of LSD tests in the United States, but denied conducting such experiments overseas.

Watching the hearings, Glickman knew that's what happened to him, no matter what the CIA claimed. A friend traveled to Washington to gather information about the agency's drug experiments. Most of the records had been destroyed, at Gottlieb's orders, in 1973.

Glickman sued the CIA in 1981, charging not only the agency itself with invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress, but Gottlieb, who directed the MK-ULTRA projects and who, Glickman claimed, had personally slipped him the drug, and Richard Helms, then the CIA's assistant deputy director for plans, who allegedly initiated and authorized the program.

The case languished in the courts for more than 17 years, being denied status on various technical grounds, but on July 9, the U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, ruled that the suit against Gottlieb could proceed to a jury. The claim against Helms was denied on grounds that he was not actually the person alleged to have drugged Glickman and the statute of limitations for his less-direct involvement had expired.

Unfortunately Glickman will never know the outcome. He died in 1992. His sister Gloria Kronisch is continuing with the suit as executor of his estate.

Attorney Sidney Bender, who is handling the suit for Kronisch, told WorldNetDaily he is optimistic about the outcome.

"I think we will prevail," he said. "It is a circumstantial case, but it is a very strong one, and the Appeals Court unanimously ruled that it has merit and should go to a jury. The fact that the Appeals Court unanimously reversed a lower court denial is significant."

If Gottlieb is found guilty, it would be a real first. The agency has protected its own very well -- not only Gottlieb but the others who were part of MK-ULTRA.

The trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 3.

Glickman's case isn't the only one where the CIA and Gottlieb will be called to account. A grand jury in New York is looking into the strange death of Dr. Frank Olson, a top-level army biochemist from Fort Detrick.

About a week before Thanksgiving 1953, Olson left his home in Frederick, Maryland, for a three-day retreat with colleagues in a remote part of the state. Olson, 43, was a specialist in biological warfare, specifically the delivery of airborne diseases; he had a Q clearance -- the highest security level. Twice a year, CIA scientists from the chemical division of the technical services staff and their Army counterparts from the Army Chemical Corps' Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick met at these top-secret retreats for seminars and to swap information in an informal setting.

Olson never came back from the retreat. Not really. Not the man his family had known. That Frank Olson had been gregarious, fun-loving and devoted to his wife and their three children. "Remarkably stable," is how his wife, Alice, described him. The man who returned seemed disturbed and withdrawn.

"He was uncharacteristically moody and depressed. He was in great distress and in obvious need of help," recalled Alice Olson, describing her husband's changed behavior. Her remarks are in an affidavit filed years later on behalf of plaintiffs who were suing Gottlieb and his colleagues in a separate case.

Olson reportedly told his wife he had made "a terrible mistake" and wanted to quit his work in germ-warfare. He said his colleagues had laughed at him and tried to "humiliate" him.

Mrs. Olson tried to assure him that he was mistaken, that everyone liked him, but it was no use. He was convinced people -- in particular those in the CIA -- were out to get him.

Nine days later, he was dead -- having plunged to his death from a window of a room on the 13th floor of the Statler Hotel in Manhattan where he had been taken by Vincent Ruwet, his boss in Army Special Operations, and Robert Lashbrook, Gottlieb's deputy.

Though suicide has always been the official explanation for Olson's death, his sons -- Eric, 54, and Nils, 49 -- never believed it; and as the story unfolded in segments over the years, they have become increasingly convinced their father was murdered and that his death is at the center of a massive cover-up in which Dr. Sidney Gottlieb plays a major role.

Evidence uncovered in the last few years suggests they are right. Moreover, it may well be that the generally accepted account of CIA skullduggery -- bad as it is -- may itself be a screen shielding acts that are even more unspeakable.

Alice Olson was never given the full story of her husband's death. An inquest determined the death to be a suicide, with no explanation of why.

The official account put out over two decades later is that Gottlieb had decided to use the army scientists from Fort Detrick as unwitting guinea pigs in an LSD experiment -- an extension of an on-going experiment at technical services, where it had become routine for the spooks to slip each other LSD.

According to his testimony presented in 1973, after dinner on Nov. 19, the second day of the retreat, Gottlieb directed Robert Lashbrook to spike the after-dinner Cointreau with a "very small dose" of LSD -- then 20 minutes after everyone had finished their drink, told them what he had done. Olson was not amused. He became "agitated" and couldn't sleep. Next day, although he seemed fatigued, Gottlieb said he "observed nothing unusual in (Olson's) actions, conversation, or general behavior." Still, no one wanted to work; the retreat ended early.

The next few days Olson remained despondent. On Tuesday he talked at length with his supervisor Vincent Ruwet, who had been at the retreat. Olson agreed to seek medical help. But rather than admit him to a sanitarium or the base hospital, Gottlieb persuaded Ruwet to pack him off to New York for an examination and treatment by Dr. Harold Abramson, an allergist with no formal training in psychiatry, but who did have a top-secret clearance from the CIA and worked with the agency on its LSD experiments.

Apparently he had one session with Abramson, but on Thursday, which was Thanksgiving, the three men returned to Bethesda. Olson didn't go to Frederick for Thanksgiving dinner with his family as planned -- allegedly he told Ruwet he'd harm his children -- but returned to New York with Lashbrook for another session with Abramson. Ruwet went on to Frederick to explain things to Mrs. Olson.

Olson -- according to CIA accounts -- became more depressed and wandered the streets, and it was finally decided to admit him to a hospital in Maryland. He and Lashbrook were to leave New York on Nov. 28. But at 2:30 in the morning, Olson ran across the room he and Lashbrook were sharing, and hurled himself through the blind and the closed window.

At least, that's what Lashbrook reported. He told the police he hadn't any idea why his friend had committed suicide, but knew he "suffered from ulcers."

Olson's body was given a cursory autopsy with no X-rays taken or graphs made detailing injuries. The body was placed in a sealed casket, and Mrs. Olson was advised not to have it opened since it had been horrifically damaged by glass cuts and the effects of the fall.

Fast forward 22 years.

It is 1975, and the commission appointed by President Ford and chaired by then-Vice President Nelson Rockefeller is investigating past CIA abuses. Included in the report is a section about an unnamed Army man who had jumped out a hotel window after being slipped LSD in a CIA experiment.

The story drew nationwide attention. And that was how his family learned Olson had been drugged without his knowledge or consent. It was accepted that this precipitated his suicide. As a settlement Congress awarded the family $750,000, and President Ford invited Eric -- who was now a man in his 30s and a practicing psychologist -- and Mrs. Olson to the White House where he personally apologized to them for the drugging.

CIA Director William Colby had lunch with Mrs. Olson and Eric, and gave them the CIA file on the case.

According to the file, Olson suffered a "chemically-induced psychotic flashback" a week after being given LSD. Robert Lashbrook, the CIA doctor and Gottlieb's assistant, had been assigned the task of looking after him until he was back to normal. Lashbrook reportedly was awakened when he heard the sound of breaking glass and saw Olson crashing out the window.

Eric didn't believe that version either, not even the part about the chemically induced flashback, but kept his views to himself to avoid distressing his mother.

Another fast forward to 1994.

Mrs. Olson died in 1993, and her sons, who live in Frederick, decided to rebury their father beside her in another cemetery. At the same time they wanted to settle the questions surrounding his death once and for all. They obtained a court order to have a second autopsy performed. When Olson's body was exhumed in June 1994, the truth began to dawn.

"When he was buried, the coffin had been sealed," Eric Olson told Kevin Dowling and Phillip Knightley of the London Daily Mail, for an article published August 28.

"They said he had been so badly mutilated in the fall that it wouldn't be right for the family to see him. But when we opened the casket a lifetime later, I knew Daddy at once. He had been embalmed, and his face was unmarked and untroubled. He hadn't been hurt the way they said he had."

The second autopsy was performed by a team led by James Starrs, professor of law and forensic science at the National Law Center, George Washington University. It could find no sign of the cuts and abrasions the first autopsy said were caused by the crash through the glass window.

"Besides that, there was the positive finding -- a haematoma above the left eye which the forensic team said in all probability was the result of a blow with a blunt instrument of some kind," Eric Olson explained to WorldNetDaily in a telephone interview.

The forensic report discounts the likelihood that the blow could have resulted from a fall, he said.

"There was no fracture, that's part of the reason why they think it was a blow to the head," said Olson. "A fractured skull would have probably happened in the fall, but it didn't go that deep. That means it looks very likely it occurred in the room."

Not one to mince words, Olson dismisses the official scenario as a "fairy tale."

First, he pointed out, "There was no place to get a run in the room. He (Frank Olson) is supposed to have run, vaulted over a radiator, gone through a closed window with a drawn blind, in a dark room, with a CIA guy asleep in the next bed whose whole job is to keep track of you."

Eric Olson persuaded New York public prosecutor Stephen Saracco to look into the matter. Saracco decided there was enough evidence to convene a grand jury for an investigation into the death.

On April 27, 1996, shortly after the grand jury was convened, former CIA Director Colby disappeared suddenly from his Maryland home 40 miles south of Washington. He left a glass of wine on the table, a computer running, the lights and radio turned on. His canoe was found next day, empty, swamped on a sand bar -- his body was found five days later.

His death by drowning was ruled a boating accident, but the Daily Mail raises the possibility that it is linked to the grand jury investigation -- he "realized that he would be forced to give evidence," the article states.

Asked if he thinks there's a connection, Olson told WorldNetDaily that he views the Colby incident as "extremely suspicious."

"I don't know if it's related to this (the grand jury investigation), but I do think it's related to something. It's really crazy," he said. "And the way the press moved away from it so quickly: It was reported initially as being very strange, then they said it wasn't strange -- and then there's been silence."

Colby isn't the only witness who won't be able to give testimony. Frank Olson's old boss Vincent Ruwet, who was with him at both the retreat and for part of the time in New York, died just days after the district attorney interviewed him in 1996.

"He died of a heart attack, but he was about 90 years old," said Olson. "He did a preliminary interview, but nothing was recorded. He was going to be called later."

Before her death in 1993, Ruwet frequently visited Mrs. Olson in her home. She accepted him as a friend, but recently discovered documents reveal that he had been assigned by the CIA to keep track of her.

The big question is, why? If Frank Olson was murdered, as his sons believe, could he have known something that would panic the agency to commit murder and then engage in a huge cover-up?

Eric Olson thinks he may have found a clue in his father's personnel file at Fort Detrick, which he obtained after the exhumation. This was a document that referred to "a possible breach of security after a trip to Paris and Norway" in the summer of 1953.

"I had asked his boss [Ruwet] and other people if there had ever been a security question about him before or after the drugging," says Olson. "They all said no. But then I find a document that says there was."

From various sources it's been learned that during the late 1940s and 1950s, the CIA used German SS prisoners and Norwegian collaborators taken from jails and detention centers to test various mind control drugs. These experiments were sometimes fatal.

Olson told the Daily Mail, "At the time we had no idea what that (document) might have referred to, but now, knowing my father's temperament better, I can imagine his reaction if he saw experiments being conducted on human beings."

Whatever the reason, Frank Olson was regarded as a security risk. And his son Eric, just as he dismisses the suicide scenario as a "fairy tale," discounts the now official story that Gottlieb and Lashbrook spiked the drinks at the retreat as a kind of ill-conceived experiment that got out of control.

As Olson sees it: "I think they (the Army and the CIA) were concerned about where my father stood on certain issues, particularly after that trip to Europe. We know they thought that one of the purposes LSD could be used for was as a truth serum. The European trip really seems a motivator here. The idea that they were slipping LSD to their colleagues and observing the reactions has always seemed to me to be vague and nonsensical.

"No. I think they drugged him to find out where he stood and what he knew, and maybe they found out he really was critical of what was going on. Perhaps he reacted badly. Next week he said, 'I want out; I want to leave.' He was planning to quit his job. So they said, 'Look, you're feeling bad, you had a bad reaction. We'll take you to New York to get some help.' And they did. We never saw him again."

Olson also discounts the account of his father becoming unstable from a chemically induced flashback to the point where he'd commit suicide. Frank Olson certainly didn't suffer the hallucinatory experiences that Glickman did.

"He was despondent that weekend," his son recalls, "But there were no indications of any psychotic tendencies -- no delusions or anything like that."

To Olson, the "incredible thing" is that though people deplore the covert drugging, they accept the CIA's explanation of his father's death and look for motives as to why he took his own life.

"But what were the motives for the CIA to commit murder?" he asks -- then answers his own question. "They not only had motives -- if he was a security risk -- they had ways to do it. His death didn't create a problem for them -- it solved one. They could manage a death. They could say, 'We didn't see it, we were asleep.' So we have this story about him wandering around the night before -- but if these actions point to suicidal tendencies and if they are true, why didn't they watch him?

"MK-ULTRA was a secret program. It was to the Cold War what the Manhattan (atom bomb) Project was to World War II. And the fact is that in this whole MK-ULTRA program, they (the CIA) never took care of anybody who was ever the subject of an experiment. My father would have been the only person who ever received medical attention for anything resulting from MK-ULTRA testing. And that's absurd. He'd have been the last one they would have wanted to take care of.

"They couldn't afford to take the risk of letting my father continue to be involved or, considering all he knew, allow him to quit. So he was terminated.

"My father's murder crossed a line in the sand which the U.S. government has always publicly respected," Olson says. "But the guilty ones aren't going to get away with it."

from the Los Angeles Times, 1999-Apr-4, by Elaine Woo, Staff Writer:

CIA's Gottlieb Ran LSD Mind Control Testing
Scientist, who died at 80, oversaw invention of devices for assassination and gave 'acid' to human guinea pigs.

James Bond had Q, the scientific wizard who supplied 007 with dazzling gadgets to deploy against enemy agents. The Central Intelligence Agency had Sidney Gottlieb, a Bronx-born biochemist with a PhD from Caltech whose job as head of the agency's technical services division was to concoct the tools of espionage: disappearing inks, poison darts, toxic handkerchiefs.

Gottlieb once mailed a lethal handkerchief to an Iraqi colonel and personally ferried deadly bacteria to the Congo to kill Prime Minister Patrice Lamumba. It wasn't his potions that eventually did in the two targets, but Gottlieb, once described by a colleague as the ultimate "good soldier," soldiered on.

Poisons and darts were not his sole preoccupation during 22 years with the CIA. He labored for years on a project to unlock and control the mysterious powers of lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD. Could it be a potent spy weapon to weaken the minds of unwilling targets? In the 1950s and 1960s, answering that question was one of Gottlieb's missions in MKULTRA, the code name for the agency's secret experiments to probe the effects of mind-altering drugs. Chief among them was LSD, discovered by Dr. Albert Hofman, a Swiss chemist, in 1943.

By the early 1950s, the CIA, fearful of LSD falling into Soviet hands, had cornered the market on the drug, which in minute doses could produce overwhelming sensations ranging from kaleidoscopic acuity to temporary insanity. The agency also started to fund research, covertly funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to academics in prestigious institutions around the country who tried the drug themselves and reported the results to Gottlieb.

Gottlieb and his associates in MKULTRA also took LSD "trips," although the concept of tripping would not enter the American lexicon for another decade. They laced coffee with LSD and served it to each other without warning, then observed each other's reactions. Later Gottlieb expanded the field tests to subjects outside the agency -- drug addicts, prostitutes, prisoners, mental patients -- people who were unlikely to complain and even less likely to be believed if they did. Among the dosed were hookers and their clients in a CIA-sponsored brothel in San Francisco, later the epicenter of the LSD explosion.

One human guinea pig was subjected to an astounding 77-day trip. Some subjects suffered chronic mental problems after being dosed. One person -- an Army germ warfare researcher -- sank into dark depression and paranoia, leaping to his death from the 10th floor of a New York hotel several days after being slipped an LSD Mickey Finn at a CIA retreat. The CIA covered up its role in his demise for two decades, and barely reprimanded Gottlieb.

In the early 1960s, Gottlieb was promoted to the highest deputy post in the technical services operation. By 1967, he had risen to the top of the division, guided by his longtime CIA mentor, Director Richard Helms. At that time, LSD was not a secret anymore. While the CIA was still examining the drug's possibilities as a means of mind control, many young Americans were dropping the hallucinogen as a vehicle of mind expansion and recreation. America was tuning in, turning on and dropping out, thanks, in part, to the CIA's activism in the '50s in the name of national security.

It was not until 1972 that Gottlieb called a halt to the experiments with psychedelics, concluding in a memo that they were "too unpredictable in their effects on individual human beings . . . to be operationally useful."

He retired the same year, spending the next few decades in eclectic pursuits that defied the stereotype of the spy. He went to India with his wife to volunteer at a hospital for lepers. A stutterer since childhood, he got a master's degree in speech therapy. He raised goats on a Virginia farm. And he practiced folk dancing, a lifelong passion despite the handicap of a clubfoot.

A malignant, real-life Q, or an eccentric genius whose intentions were honorable and just? Gottlieb led the agency in 149 mind control experiments, of which about 25 were conducted on unwitting subjects. According to the survivor of one victim, the way Gottlieb duped American citizens was nothing but despicable.

Less black and white in his assessment is John Marks, author of the definitive book on the CIA's mind control programs, "The Search for the 'Manchurian Candidate.' " Marks sees Gottlieb as an unabashed patriot who nonetheless "crossed the same ethical lines we hanged German doctors in World War II for."

There is also the view of former CIA psychologist John Gittinger, who says his close friend was a gentle man whose actions were widely misunderstood. The agency's LSD experiments bloomed in the era of Josef Stalin and Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and "during that time of Cold War," Gittinger said recently from his home in Norman, Okla., "the attitude we had and the agency had was we were still fighting a war. And when you are fighting a war, you do things you might not ordinarily do."

Gottlieb died on March 7 in Washington, Va. He was 80. His family did not divulge the cause of his death.

Notes on following: Laurance S. Rockefeller is David Rockefeller's brother, and Dennis McKenna is brother of Terrence McKenna, disciple of Timothy Leary and New Age Crowleyite.

from the New York Times, 2001-Mar-13, by Sandra Blakeslee:

Scientists Test Hallucinogens for Mental Ills

Hallucinogenic drugs like LSD and peyote - derided as toys of the hippie generation - are increasingly drawing the interest of neurologists and psychiatrists who want to test the idea that they may be valuable tools in treating a range of mental disorders.

Although there are anecdotal reports that psychedelic drugs can help some people with mental illness, the idea has never been substantiated by mainstream psychiatry and remains highly controversial - some would say outlandish.

And even the researchers involved in the new work are not suggesting that people start medicating themselves with hallucinogens.

But researchers like Dr. David E. Nichols, a professor of pharmacology and medicinal chemistry at Purdue, believe the drugs' potential should be investigated.

For example, Dr. Nichols, an expert on hallucinogenic drugs, said there were reports that symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder, like washing one's hands dozens of times a day, subside under the influence of psilocybin, a hallucinogen derived from mushrooms.

Dying patients given LSD have reported less pain and less fear, he said. Ayahuasca (a Brazilian plant extract) and peyote (derived from cactus) have reportedly helped alcoholics stay sober.

"We now know a lot about how they work in the brain, but we have not begun to investigate their potential for treating brain disorders," he said.

Dr. Nichols is the founder of the Heffter Research Institute, begun in 1993 and named for Arthur Heffter, a 19th-century chemist who was the first person to identify a hallucinogenic molecule, mescaline, which he extracted from peyote. Backed by private donors like Laurence S. Rockefeller and Bob Wallace, a Microsoft millionaire, the institute is financing clinical trials with LSD, psilocybin and other hallucinogens to treat phobias, depression, obsessive compulsive disorders and substance abuse, said James Thornton, its executive director.

Dr. Nichols said trials were under way or planned in Switzerland, Russia and the United States. Most of the work is being done overseas, he said.

Dr. Janet Woodcock, director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at the Food and Drug Administration, said that any proposal to study the medical use of a hallucinogen must meet the same rigorous medical and scientific standards used to evaluate any other unapproved drug.

Furthermore, because hallucinogens are controlled substances, the investigator will need a license from the Drug Enforcement Agency to use such a substance in a clinical trial.

The D.E.A. classifies hallucinogens as drugs with no known medical value - purely "drugs of abuse." But if a valid medical use is found for hallucinogens, Dr. Woodcock said, the F.D.A. has safeguards to prevent the drugs from being diverted and used for unapproved purposes.

Separating a drug's beneficial effects from the harm it can cause is possible, said Dr. Alan Leshner, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. "Morphine works for pain, but it's horrendous when used in an addictive way," he said. "The same may or may not be true for hallucinogens. It's a mistake to confuse the two issues."

Much has changed in the half-century since LSD was first used by psychiatrists and then found widespread recreational use in the 1960's and 70's. Modern psychiatry has embraced drugs that affect the same brain molecules that are tweaked by hallucinogens. Tools for studying the brain's neurochemistry and response to drugs like LSD are far more advanced than they were in the 1960's and 70's.

Moreover, many of the people who hold political and scientific power today came of age during the 1960's, and they, unlike their parents, are not as afraid of hallucinogens, Dr. Nichols said.

By definition, hallucinogens are drugs that produce bizarre sights, sounds and feelings that appear to have no basis in reality. All work by changing levels of a brain chemical called serotonin, a substance involved in the modulation of many brain states, including depression, euphoria and appetite.

While antidepressants like Prozac work by making the neurotransmitter serotonin linger in the gaps between brain cells, hallucinogens have a different mechanism of action. They are what are called serotonin agonists - molecules that are very similar to the body's natural serotonin and, when taken in large doses, push the serotonin system into overdrive, making many brain systems more sensitive, Dr. Nichols said. "It's like turning up the volume on your radio. Suddenly you can hear very weak stations."

Thus, for example, hallucinogens amplify signals in the visual system to produce distortions of form and size. Instead of seeing one object, a person sees many copies of that object, he said. Perceived motion is similarly distorted. People begin to "hear" colors and "see" sounds or have out-of-body experiences. Some are so disoriented they experience a terrifying "bad trip."

But very little is known about how hallucinogens can be used therapeutically, Dr. Nichols said. "The first thing we want to know is, Are they safe?"

Dr. John H. Halpern, a psychiatrist at McLeans Hospital in Boston, is looking at this question in a study financed by the Heffter Research Institute and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The study will involve members the Native American Church who, as part of their religious rituals, take peyote in a group setting but use no other drugs, not even alcohol.

Using a battery of tests for mental and social health, three groups of Native Americans - 70 church members, 70 alcoholics and 70 people from local communities in the Southwest - are being followed and compared for two to three years. The goal is to see whether peyote users are healthier or less healthy than the others.

Similar studies in Brazil showed that violent alcoholics who took hallucinogens in a ritualistic context often stopped drinking and had higher blood levels of serotonin, said Dr. Dennis McKenna, Heffter's director of ethnopharmacology.

Those changes may reflect an increase in their brain levels of serotonin, added Dr. McKenna, who is also a lecturer at the University of Minnesota Center for Spirituality and Healing, which seeks to integrate cultural and spiritual aspects of care with the biomedical aspects.

Dr. Francisco Moreno, a psychiatrist at the University of Arizona, and his colleagues there have permission from their hospital review board and expect final approval from the F.D.A. soon to carry out a study on obsessive compulsive disorder and psilocybin.

"We want to know if psilocybin can reduce symptoms, and if so, how much do you need to take?" Dr. Moreno said. Subjects will be closely supervised while under the influence of the drug and kept in the hospital overnight as a precaution.

At the University of Zurich in Switzerland, Dr. Franz Vollenweider has permission from his government to explore hallucinogens in treating depression and schizophrenia. "We are interested in the nature of the human experience, of the subjective me-ness or self that guides our behavior," Dr. Vollenweider said.

He wonders whether a medically facilitated experience in which the self temporarily "dissolves" might reduce the symptoms of a clinical depression.

With money from the Heffter Institute, Dr. Vollenweider and his colleagues are conducting a three-year study of 64 depressed patients treated with psilocybin.

In related research, Dr. Vollenweider plans to continue brain imaging studies of healthy volunteers who have taken psilocybin and LSD.

"We can tease out specific brain regions responsible for hallucinations and ego boundaries," he said in a telephone interview.

At Harvard, Dr. Harrison Pope, a professor of psychiatry, is planning to carry out a study to see whether LSD can alleviate fear and anxiety in dying patients. Studies in the 1960's suggested that the drug reduced pain and improved mood, he said, but they were not done under rigorous standards.

Eighty patients would be given an "active placebo," a drug that has physiological effects but is not hallucinogenic, or LSD under close supervision of a psychiatrist or trained mental health worker, Dr. Pope said.

And in St. Petersburg, Russia, Dr. Evgeny Krupitsky, chief of the research laboratory at the Leningrad Regional Center of Addictions, is administering ketamine, an anesthetic with strong hallucinogenic properties, to alcoholics and heroin addicts, as they are treated with talk therapy.

One day, advocates of this research say, their results will be valuable.

"If hallucinogens ever find their way into mainstream medicine - and I am convinced they will - they will never be handed out like Prozac," said Dr. George Greer, Heffter's medical director and a psychiatrist in private practice in Santa Fe, N.M. "People will need guidance. These are not drugs you administer every day."

from the New York Times, 2001-Mar-13, by Sandra Blakeslee:

This Is the Brain on Hallucinogens

Albert Hoffman, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD in 1943 and was the first person known to have taken an acid trip, described his experience as having two parts: "On the way home, my condition began to assume threatening forms," he wrote in his journal. "My surroundings had now transformed themselves in more terrifying ways. Everything in the room spun around, and the familiar objects and pieces of furniture assumed grotesque, threatening forms."

But after a while, "the horror softened and gave way to a feeling of good fortune and gratitude."

"Kaleidoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me, alternating, variegated, opening and then closing themselves in circles and spirals, exploding in colored fountains, rearranging and hyridizing themselves in constant flux," he wrote. "Every sound generated a vividly changing image, with its own consistent form and color."

Users of LSD and many psychiatrists who have used the drug in therapy sessions say that these kinds of effects provide a window into the human unconscious. When people let go of the past in an altered state, they can dredge material from the deep within themselves.

Or can they? To Dr. Jack Cowan, a mathematician at the University of Chicago and a number of other scientists who study the architecture of the brain's visual areas, the dancing geometical patterns observed by Dr. Hoffman are not in the least mysterious. Cells in primary visual areas are specialized for detecting edges and contours in normal vision, he said.

When these cells are stimulated by a hallucinogen, they automatically produce visions of spirals, pinwheels, tunnels, funnels, spirals, honeycombs, checkerboards and cobwebs. As the brain struggles to make sense of these images, it may make up a story to explain what it is happening, he said.

People may find the results helpful or insightful, he said, but they flow not from some mysterious netherworld world but from the architecture of their own brains.

from the New York Post, 1999-Jan-20, by Gregg Birnbaum:

GOV SAYS HE'S ALL EARS IN DRUG-TESTING FUROR

ALBANY - Gov. Pataki vowed yesterday that state health officials will "listen very carefully" to critics of a plan that would allow experiments on people who are unable to give their consent.

In his first public comments on the uproar over a Health Department task force's report on experiments on incapacitated adults, Pataki said he welcomed comments on the panel's recommendations.

"The Health Department is going to listen very carefully to any comments and any criticisms ... before even considering what the final policy is going to be," Pataki said.

"We will look at their comments and take their comments very seriously. What the ultimate decision will be, I can't tell you.

"I believe that the Health Department will act responsibly and will listen very carefully, not just to the panel that recommended this but to the critics of the panel as well."

The Post reported exclusively on Sunday that among the task force's recommendations is a controversial proposal to permit experiments that pose a slight risk to be performed on mentally ill and severely disabled adults who are not capable of giving consent.

Under that proposal, experiments such as testing new drugs on Alzheimer's victims or schizophrenics could be performed even if they offer no direct benefit to the patient.

Non-consenting patients, including those at state-run facilities, could be enrolled in the studies by family members, courts, guardians or close friends.

"I'm pleased to hear that they're seriously considering our concerns," said Cliff Zucker, of Disability Advocates, which opposes some of the proposals. "We intend to give our input."

John Cardinal O'Connor, evoking Nazi Germany, warned on Sunday that the recommendations were dangerous. Advocates for the mentally ill vowed to go to court if necessary to block them.

And Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) has launched an investigation into the Health Department's oversight of human experiments.

"This is a total violation of people's rights and an invasion of their life," Silver said.

The Health Department is accepting public comments on the task force's recommendations until March 1 before making any decisions on which regulations to put into effect.

The 13-member task force, organized by the Health Department, was headed by Dr. Herbert Pardes, dean of the faculty of medicine at Columbia University and was made up of psychiatrists, researchers, ethicists and others.

from CNN, modtime 1998-Jan-4, by CNN Medical Correspondent Dan Rutz:

Ritalin comes under scrutiny after cancer found in mice

(CNN) -- Researchers for the U.S. government have found signs that Ritalin might cause cancer in mice. The scientists quickly add that there is no evidence that the drug, which is commonly prescribed for hyperactive children, causes any human cancers. But parents and experts say there are other reasons to reconsider its use.

Close to 2 million American children, and possibly more, take Ritalin to help them in school. The drug is prescribed to make it easier for students to pay attention and concentrate on their studies.

Many teachers, parents and even children swear by Ritalin as an essential aid to academic success. "It helps me sit down and read a book and it also helps me to stay calm," Zachary Borschuk says.

Zachary's mother, Linda, says that her child behaves well when he takes the Ritalin. "But when he's off of it, he's so unable to control any kind of stimulation coming to him. He's just nasty and frustrated," Borschuk says.

The drug that helps so many overcome family turmoil is under scrutiny as federal investigators report an increased incidence of cancer in mice given 30 times the usual human dose of Ritalin.

A spokesperson for the Food and Drug Administration says that the experiment is not so convincing that children should be taken off of the drug. "We felt physicians and parents should know this and have a right to know this," a statement from the FDA says.

The two year-experiment comes amid a growing trend to diagnose more children with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and to place them on Ritalin. "The real question that I have and that other researchers have is, are the right kids getting medication," child psychologist Stephen Garber says. Neither Garber nor most other experts worry about the safety of stimulant medication but some question the quick-fix mentality that can make Ritalin the cornerstone of treatment for ADD. "So, if you have an organizational problem as a child, then you, even if the medication makes you feel better, you have to go back and be taught how to organize," Garber says.

Some parents have opted to take their children off of the drug because of such concerns as allergic reactions.

The Drake Institute of Los Angeles is among several in the country treating ADD without medicine. Instead, a form of bio feedback is used to teach children how to control their runaway thoughts. "I'm very concerned about how many children are medicated so aggressively today for this disorder. And everything in my medical intuition tells me it's wrong. We don't have long term studies on the effectiveness and safety of these drugs," Dr. David Velkoff, of the Drake Institute, says.

The nation's largest support group for families with children suffering from ADD endorses Ritalin use. CHADD, Children with ADD, also encourages parents not to quit medicating their children with Ritalin without consulting their doctor.

A drug company spokesperson points out that while there are many drugs that produce liver cancer in mice, Ritalin has never been linked to a single human liver tumor in the 40 years it's been used.

from Quest IV Health Products, Inc., from http://www.quest-iv-health.com/articles/ritalin2.html:

1996 Updates - Ritalin Causes Cancer!

Government scientists have uncovered a sign that the widely used children's drug Ritalin may cause cancer in mice. But in their infinite wisdom, the FDA decided that it's no big deal and this medicine should be prescribed to children anyway.

"We felt physicians and parents should know this and have a right to know this (that Ritalin causes cancer)," gushes Dr. Murray Lumpkin, the Food and Drug Administration's deputy drug director. Thank you, Mr. Lumpkin. When will you decide that the public has a "have a right to know" that Ritalin causes cancer in humans. In twenty years or fifty years, or ever?

Ritalin is widely prescribed to treat the spindrome called Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD, a neurological condition that affects 2.5 million children. It is more common in boys than girls and sometimes persists to adulthood.

Ritalin is the brand name of the brain stimulant methylphenidate. About 6 millions prescriptions for the generic and brand name versions were filled in 1993, the latest data available.

Mice were fed doses of methylphenidate for two years. Four of the male mice who got the highest doses developed cancerous liver tumors, called hepatoblastomas, when statistically no more than one of the extremely rare tumors should have formed, the study found. The laboratory mice also had somewhat elevated levels of a non-cancerous liver tumor called hepatocellular adenoma.

The drug manufacturer, Ciba Geigy Corp. mailed letters in January, 1996 to 100,000 doctors who prescribe methylphenidate. Needless to say, Ciba Geigy downplayed the cancer risk to protect their bottom line. A scientist was quoted off the record as stating, "Ciba Geigys history of distributing hazardous medicine is terrible. They would do anything and have done anything to protect their profits, including promoting well-known toxic drugs to adults and children." Again, Established Medicine have shown that ethics takes a poor back seat to profits."

1997 Updates - Ritalin more dangerous than originally thought

RITALIN STUDIES

FDA has taken steps to alert the health care community that an animal study of Ritalin, a stimulant widely prescribed for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), has produced a "weak signal" that the drug may have the potential to cause cancer.

The agency continues to regard Ritalin as a safe and effective drug. However, the signal indicates a potential risk that needs to be considered and further studied because of the increasing and often long-term use of Ritalin in children. In the last five years, the use of the product has increased approximately two-to-threefold. The agency's actions are based on findings in a draft report on two two-year studies by the National Toxicology Program (NTP) on cancer-causing potential of Ritalin in mice and rats.

The study in rats revealed no cancer-causing activity. The findings in mice included increased rates of a non-cancerous liver tumor (hepatocellular adenomas) and, in males only, the occurrence of malignant liver tumor (hepatoblastomas). FDA considers the results of the studies a signal of a weak cancer-causing potential for this drug, based on the following:

• The positive findings were seen in one species of rodent (the mouse) and in only one organ -- the liver -- which is known to be particularly likely to develop tumors to a wide variety of stimuli.
• The increased rates were seen primarily in non-malignant tumors.
• There was no increase in mortality associated with the tumors.

The agency also noted that animal studies do not necessarily reflect human findings. The kind of liver tumor found in mice is extremely rare in people, and its occurrence in recent years has not increased despite the increased use of Ritalin.

The agency has asked the drug's sponsor to include the positive findings in the labeling for Ritalin, and to alert prescribers to the "weak signal" by sending them a Dear Doctor letter. FDA also plans to initiate additional followup studies, including both animal tests and epidemiological studies in humans using Ritalin. Ritalin is manufactured by Ciba Pharmaceuticals, division of Ciba-Geigy Corp. in Summit, N.J.

---

1998 Updates - United Nations Warning on Ritalin

UN - The United Nation's International Narcotics Council Board has warned that US doctors are over prescribing Ritalin (methylphenidate) to treat hyperactive children. The US consumes 90 percent of the world's Ritalin supply. In 1995, US doctors prescribed 350 million doses of the drug to as many as 5 percent of US school kids (up 50 percent over the previous year). The UN has asked the US to investigate the pro-Ritalin activities of an unnamed "parents association" financially backed by Ciba, Ritalin's manufacturer.

[The association is CHADD. -Ed.]

from Reuters 1998-Apr-16, from New Scientist:

Ritalin 'Cocaine Properties' May Lead To Later Drug Abuse

LONDON (Reuters) - A medicine regularly taken by millions of hyperactive children has similar properties to cocaine and could encourage drug abuse in later life, New Scientist magazine said Thursday.

Methylphenidate, better known as Ritalin, is the leading treatment for a neurological condition known as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which prevents children from concentrating on a task for more than a few seconds. New Scientist said growing concerns over the long-time effects of the drug, a stimulant that works by making the neurotransmitter dopamine more available in the brain, have put it on the agenda for the U.S. National Institutes of Health conference on ADHD, scheduled for November.

A 1995 study by Nora Volkow, director of nuclear medicine at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, found that Ritalin's properties were very similar to cocaine. Volkow said there was no evidence of a link between Ritalin and cocaine abuse but added 10 to 30 percent of cocaine addicts take it because they have ADHD.

"When we give them Ritalin, the cocaine problem is resolved,'' she told New Scientist. Another study by Susan Schenk, a psychopharmacologist at Texas A&M University in College Station, and Nadine Lambert, a developmental psychologist at the University of California at Berkeley, followed the progress of 5,000 children with ADHD from adolescence into early adulthood.

In a paper to be published in October, Lambert argues that children on Ritalin are more likely to smoke as adults. Other data presented by Schenk suggested that they are three times more likely to develop a taste for cocaine. Other experts were sceptical. Alan Zametkin, a psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental Health near Washington D.C., said he believed stimulants actually reduce the risk of drug addiction.

"My theory is that stimulant use allows kids to be more successful and therefore they develop fewer antisocial behaviors,'' Zametkin told New Scientist. "So it's less likely they'll become drug addicts.''

from TPDL 2000-Jun-10, from Insight Magazine, by Sean Paige:

Bring Us Your Huddled Medflies Seeking to Breathe Free

Not only is the United States constantly facing an invasion of human illegal aliens, but of exotic animals, plants and pests from foreign shores as well which, once ensconced in their adopted home, dramatically can alter the physical landscape, undermine and attack U.S. agricultural assets and cost the taxpayers millions of dollars to combat.

In theory, the first line of defense against such threats is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's, or USDA's, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS, which is charged with watching over major U.S. ports of entry and intercepting such invaders before they get loose on the rest of America. But in practice, APHIS may be a laughable Maginot Line, according to a new report, through or around which the exotic invaders are passing with ease.

An investigation of Plant Protection and Quarantine, or PPQ, inspections and procedures at ports of entry in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., by the USDA's Office of Inspector General, or IG, ``identified vulnerabilities and weaknesses which increased the risk of prohibited agricultural products entering the United States,'' according to a summary of the report. Investigators found that PPQ inspectors ``did not inspect cargo ships timely upon arrival'' in port, failed to inspect the arriving baggage of 75 percent of incoming airline passengers and 99 percent of arriving cruise-ship passengers, rarely assessed fines or penalties when arriving airline or cruise-ship passengers were found to be carrying prohibited items and left the selection of imported perishable food-item samples that they did inspect to the food brokers bringing them in. The IG also reports that cargo inspections performed during overtime work (which accounted for more than 50 percent of all cargo inspections that occurred) were completely unsupervised.

Also adding to the impression of laxity, if not outright slovenliness, that the report conveys, the IG says that PPQ employees at Miami International Airport consistently reported late for duty and were using government-owned vehicles for unauthorized purposes and that at least one employee made ``questionable charges'' to a government account. None of these conditions were identified or corrected, however, because of ``weak supervisory oversight and control over employee time and attendance and vehicle operations,'' according to the report.

On second thought, maybe the canker to fear most is the one apparently eating away at the heart of APHIS.

from NBC News, 1999-Sep-22, by Robert Windrem:

U.S. to launch war on `agro-terror'
N.Y. laboratory will study diseases aimed at crops, livestock

Sept. 22 - In an effort to counter so-called ``agro-terror'' weapons, the U.S. Agriculture Department is looking into upgrading a suburban New York animal disease center into a top security laboratory that would study some of the most dangerous biological diseases and pests known to humankind.

THE PLAN for the laboratory at New York's Plum Island, located a mile away from some of Long Island's poshest properties in the Hamptons, is the result of intelligence gathered by U.N. weapons inspectors and CIA officers, say U.S. officials.

Plum Island is a highly secure area east of Long Island where the Department of Agriculture has long operated a research program aimed at thwarting animal and crop disease.

Under a proposal advocated by the White House and Agriculture Department, $215 million would be spent to upgrade the island's facilities in an effort to study biological weapons aimed at crops and livestock.

THREATS FROM ROGUE STATES

While working in Iraq, UNSCOM inspectors learned the rogue state had developed at least one biological weapon aimed at agriculture and was investigating several others, including two aimed at livestock.

The United States was especially concerned that Iraq appeared to be targeting wheat crops in its research. There is very little wheat grown in the Middle East and it is likely the weapons were for use outside the region.

The United States believes that, in addition to Iraq, North Korea could pose a significant threat as well. Iran, Syria and Libya could also develop such weapons, although information about their programs is sketchy. But only North Korea and Iraq have the indigenous capability to develop such weapons without ``significant foreign assistance,'' say U.S. officials.

The United States believes Russia retains Soviet know-how and technology in this area and that China, too, has such a program. Much of the Soviet program was uncovered at the end of the Cold War when CIA officers debriefed defecting biologists who had worked on such weapons.

AFLATOXIN A DANGER

One weapon Iraq developed and produced in large quantities was aflatoxin, a bacterial by-product known to destroy wheat crops. The United States believes the Iraqis produced 2,200 liters of aflatoxin - a significant amount - and had developed means of launching it on missile warheads. Some of Iraq's supply of aflatoxin still remains unaccounted for.

Aflatoxin has severe long-term effect on human beings if taken in large doses. In particular, it can lead to liver damage.

The other Iraqi biological weapons aimed at crops and livestock include hoof-and-mouth disease, wheat cover smut, and camel pox. Inspectors learned that the Iraqi hoof-and-mouth disease research center at Doura was also used as a cover for other biological weapon research.

Meanwhile, Russia had an entire biological weapons infrastructure based in Siberia and Kazakhstan that was targeted at crops and livestock. According to defectors debriefed by the CIA, Russia was involved in developing weapons against U.S. cereal crops, including wheat, as well as viruses that effect cattle, swine, chickens, goats and horses.

Key Russian facilities in the development of those weapons have been decommissioned and, in some cases, torn down. However, ``remnants of that program'' still exist, say U.S. officials, who note that ``the know-how and technology of developing and producing biological weapons cannot be unlearned.''

Ken Alibek, the Deputy Director of the Soviet biological weapons program, told NBC News that the agricultural weapon research and development program was run by the Soviet Ministry of Agriculture.

``A great number of biological weapons were developed by the Minister of Agriculture,'' added Alibek, who now lives in suburban Virginia.

A U.S PROGRAM?

Three years ago, a Florida university professor told the CIA that a Florida citrus canker outbreak was the result of a Cuban biological weapons program. Although the CIA could not substantiate the claim, it did investigate the case.

The CIA was particularly interested in the charges because at the time, Cuba was claiming that an outbreak of thrips palmi disease on the island was biological warfare introduced by the United States. In fact, the Cubans asked the United Nations in 1997 to investigate U.S. use of biological weapons, claiming an American plane had flown over the island sprayed the thrips palmi. The United States has denied the claim.

from Reuters, 1999-Oct-27, by Randy Fabi:

U.S. crops, animals vulnerable to biological warfare

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States lacks the technology to adequately defend its food supply if attacked by biological warfare, government officials told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee on Wednesday.

"There is tremendous potential for surprise here and it's entirely possible that a biological event could occur without us knowing it because we don't really have the tools in place to detect (bioterrorism)," said U.S. Department of Agriculture administrator Floyd Horn.

In more than a dozen countries, including Russia, Iraq and North Korea, the intelligence community has discovered that scientists have made it possible to use as weapons a range of agricultural biological warfare agents including crop and livestock diseases such as wheat stem rust, rice blast, rinderpest and anthrax.

At least 10 biological warfare agents that could be used against agriculture have been identified by federal agencies.

"I am concerned that Russian scientists, many of whom are unemployed or have not been paid regularly, may be recruited by states such as Iran and Iraq or individuals who are trying to establish their own BW programs," said Senator Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican and chairman of the subcommittee.

As recently as this week, seed companies and researchers at universities and the Agriculture Department braced for possible attacks after receiving anonymous threats.

"In terms of a foreign terrorist threat, there is significant information ... suggesting an attempt to attack agriculture at some point in time," Horn said. "But, we do not have any strong evidence of such an attack at the moment."

U.S. armed forces have special forces trained for biological warfare, such as Chemical Biological Incident Response Force of the Marine Corps and the U.S. Army's Technical Escort Unit.

However, Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Robert Newberry said these forces are trained primarily for biological threats to humans and not agriculture.

Representatives from the Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation also testified in front of the subcommittee in a closed-door session.

from WorldNetDaily, 2000-Feb-26, by Paul Sperry, Washington bureau chief:

Clinton donor's biowarfare deal
Trie helped Chinese government to set up germ weapons operation

WASHINGTON -- In 1991, when Bill Clinton let on he was running for the White House, Arkansas fund-raiser Yah Lin "Charlie" Trie tried to develop a sister city relationship between Little Rock and Changchun, China -- a key biowarfare research hub, sources say.

While visiting the Chinese city, where he eventually bought a home, Trie brokered deals to export biotech equipment to a Changchun lab suspected of being a Chinese army front for the manufacture of agents used in biological weapons. Changchun is in Jilin province, which borders North Korea. It's also near Harbin, China's new propaganda center for biowarfare.

"During one of his early visits to Changchun, Trie met with Zhang Jianming, director of the Changchun Biological Products Institute," according to a copy of FBI summaries of interviews with Trie obtained by WorldNetDaily. The lab, a unit of the Public Health Ministry, is run by the Chinese communist government.

The news of a major Clinton donor transferring dual-use biotechnology to China comes as Beijing is "investing huge resources" in its biological warfare program, a source in China told WND.

Trie, convicted last year of breaking campaign-finance laws, was given no jail time in exchange for his cooperation in an ongoing investigation by the Justice Department's campaign-finance task force.

In 1996, he gave close to $1 million to the Clinton-Gore reelection effort and Clinton's Legal Expense Trust. His money had to be returned. Some gifts were laundered through Chinese sources, the FBI report shows.

Justice has agreed to let Trie testify under a grant of immunity before the House Government Reform Committee. He's scheduled to appear Wednesday and Thursday.

Trie formed a close bond with the bio lab chief while in Changchun, where Trie and his late wife bought a home for $20,000.

"Trie provided a letter of invitation for Zhang to use in obtaining a visa to the United States," the 150-page FBI reports says. "Once in the United States, Trie accompanied Zhang on his travels."

Zhang visited Little Rock and, in November 1992 -- after Clinton was elected president -- he and Trie set up what appears to be a shell company called United Biotech. The company had a bank account and a Little Rock address, but no business plan or real income. The firm was dissolved a year later.

But in that time, Trie helped Zhang procure a 132-gallon "medical fermentation tank" from a New York-based manufacturer, according to the FBI.

"He got them the fermenting equipment to grow the bugs" used in germ warfare, a senior Pentagon official told WorldNetDaily. Special agents worry that the Chinese government may have used the apparent shell company to acquire other biotech equipment.

"Trie was asked if he thought it possible, considering the high priority the People's Republic of China gave to acquiring advanced biotechnology, that the United Biotech corporate name and address may have been used by PRC purchasing agents to make purchases (from manufacturers) elsewhere in the U.S.," FBI agents said in the report. Though Trie denies that happened, United Biotech isn't the only trading company he has set up.

A search of Arkansas secretary of state records for DBAs, sole proprietorships and incorporations registered under Trie's name turns up no less than six import-export or international consulting businesses. They include Jesco International Inc., Asian Pacific International Inc., Daihatsu International Trading Inc., Premier International Investment Inc. and T&L International Inc. At least one, Jesco International, traded with China before going out of business.

According to the FBI report, the 50-year-old Trie had an ethnic-Chinese "silent partner" -- Dr. Peter P. Fu -- who invested in Daihatsu International. An FDA toxicologist, Fu met Chinese scientist Zhang in Little Rock after Clinton was elected. Fu works for the National Center for Toxicological Research in Jefferson, Ark., which is about halfway between Little Rock and Pine Bluff, Ark.

The federal lab, on a 496-acre campus, conducts experiments in biochemical toxicology, genetic toxicology, neurotoxicology, microbiology and molecular epidemiology, its website says. Some pathology labs do studies of "microorganisms multiplying and producing infections." The center has an active lab-to-lab scientific exchange program with a medical institution in China. And in 1993, it hosted an "international group of inspectors interested in Biological Weapons Treaty issues."

Trie told FBI agents he didn't think Fu, 58, had any ties to Beijing. At that, agents produced one of Fu's business cards "indicating that Dr. Fu has ties with two institutions managed by the PRC government."

The biotech equipment transfer opens up a new and dangerous front in the mushrooming Chinagate scandal, in which China's People's Liberation Army spies conspired with Clinton-Gore bagmen to illegally sway the election and influence White House trade and military policy. The PLA is frantically trying to modernize its weapons systems, and needs U.S. military technology to do it.

Despite the Clinton administration's portrayal of China as a benign "strategic partner," Beijing has targeted Taiwan -- and its military ally by law, the U.S. -- for missile attack. It's also threatening information warfare, or IW, such as hacking into U.S. computers to create chaos and shorting communications with electronic pulses.

A former Brookings Institution defense analyst who's now a consultant in Beijing warns that Americans are worrying about the wrong kind of unconventional warfare. Biowarfare, not IW, is the real threat, he says.

"Americans have focused on the computer virus attack stuff because that's particularly interesting to us, but the Chinese have actually invested huge resources into uninhibited biotech," the Beijing source said. "They may be picking up some Soviet research into biowarfare as well."

He added that the PLA, through its front companies, is interested in acquiring U.S. biotech equipment for use in "precisely this area."

In Harbin, just North of Changchun in Manchuria, the Chinese government has erected a museum on the former grounds of a Japanese biowarfare testing center that used Chinese as subjects during WWII, the source says. The museum is an important propaganda mill for the new Beijing line that the U.S. used biological weapons against the Chinese during the Korean War.

Even though China joined the Biological Weapons Convention in 1984, it has violated the pact and maintained an offensive germ-warfare program, according to a 1997 report by the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. That year, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had to concede to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that classified reports show Chinese firms have shipped biowarfare equipment to Iran.

Clinton has maintained for years that biowarfare is a top national security concern. "We've got to continue to meet the new security challenges of the 21st century, especially the challenges of terrorism and biological and chemical weapons," he said Feb. 8.

from Salon magazine, 1997-Mar-21, from http://www.salonmagazine.com/march97/news/news2970321.html:

X stands for eXtinction

A prominent physician warns that we could go the way of the dinosaurs if we don't face up to the threat of killer viruses.

---

BY LORI LEIBOVICH

AIDS, Ebola, Mad Cow Disease, "flesh-eating" disorders, "superviruses," antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Just when modern science thought it had defeated most life-threatening plagues, new ones -- the stuff of nightmares and Hollywood movies -- are emerging. Even old epidemics, like tuberculosis, malaria and bubonic plague, are making a comeback.

How much is hype, how much is real? In "Virus X: Tracking the New Killer Plagues" (Little, Brown), Frank Ryan says there really is reason to be concerned. Ryan, a fellow of Britain's Royal College of Physicians, wrote about the return of tuberculosis in his previous book, "The Forgotten Plague." In "Virus X," Ryan warns of the possibility of lethal new viruses breaking out of a particular geographical "hot zone" and aggressively spreading across the world.

Salon corresponded with Dr. Ryan via e-mail from his home in Sheffield, England.

There have been a slew of scary "virus books" published recently -- Richard Preston's "The Hot Zone," Laurie Garrett's "The Coming Plague," Richard Rhodes' "Deadly Feasts" and your "Virus X." Are we unnecessarily scaring ourselves?

It's true that there is a degree of "viral fatigue" caused by all these books and films like "Outbreak." But there really is a problem out there. I'm afraid there really are new plagues on the way.

And "Virus X" is one of them? What is "Virus X"?

The title of my book, "Virus X," means a virus that threatens human extinction. The X stands for "eXtinction." I should add that most of the book is devoted to less terrible, scary but interesting, scenarios. But it would be foolish not to face the worst-case scenario, which I discuss in the book.

There were fears that AIDS might fit that description. Is it because of international transportation and ease of travel that these viruses have become so threatening?

Yes. Human behavior has greatly changed the natural goal posts with regard to the threat of new plague viruses. Take AIDS, for example. According to my hypothesis, in the past a band of hunters might have been bitten or scratched by chimpanzees harboring the virus; the result would have been a lethal attack localized to the hunter band -- or at worst their home village.

Today, thanks to the global village, a new plague virus could perambulate the globe at the speed of a passenger jet. Then a new step in the plague scenario would take place in the massively populated cities -- they would become viral "amplification zones."

So it's modern civilization -- jet planes and big cities -- that will spread the killer virus.

It's important for Americans to realize how an airborne plague would actually evolve. If a deadly virus arrived in American cities and towns, it would be too late at this stage to stop it; can you imagine the spread of pandemic flu without a vaccine? Since the advent of the "global village," some of the most deadly viruses known to science have emerged -- but none of them, thank God, have spread by the airborne route. The future is threatened by plagues. Maybe in time science can treat any viral illness or very quickly produce a vaccine for any new virus. But as we have seen with AIDS, this is not now the case.

You use the term "aggressive symbiosis" to describe how these viruses become so virulent. What does the term mean?

Viruses cannot be thought of merely as predators acting on their own. I collected evidence that points to the fact that viruses "co-evolve" with a "host" species in nature -- whether animal or plant -- and over time create an evolutionary paradigm where each contributes to the survival of the other. A mutual benefit of this kind is termed "symbiosis." The contribution made by the host is obvious -- it gives the virus a niche in which to survive and replicate.

But what does the virus do for the host in return? I believe there is a natural selection pressure for viral strains that not only co-evolve toward an utterly benign relationship toward the host but also an extremely aggressive behavior toward evolutionary rivals of the host. If I am right -- and fellow scientists are already agreeing with me -- then the potential for new plagues is much greater than was hitherto thought. For example, a species such as chimpanzees are likely to harbor many different strains of immunodeficiency virus, just as the host of Ebola (probably a bat or a rodent) will be harboring many new strains of Ebola viruses. In fact, every species of life on earth is harboring one or more symbiotic viruses.

Are they also harboring new strains of tuberculosis, cholera and malaria -- which were supposed to have been wiped out years ago but are coming back to haunt us?

No, it's quite different. Bacterial plagues are returning for a number of complex and interrelated reasons. Firstly, we became complacent and abused the miracle of the antibiotic discoveries. The result was the emergence of antibiotic-resistant germs. Secondly, we ignored the anguish of the developing world, so we are now importing their problems. Thirdly, we compartmentalized microbes, expecting they would never change, when in fact they are the oldest forms of life on earth.

Bacteria were the first age of life on earth -- some 3 billion years ago -- and unlike the dinosaurs they never became extinct. The reason is they have a fantastic capacity to change in response to environmental stress. Antibiotics and our disease control measures are interpreted by the bacteria's "genomic intelligence" -- a term I conceived -- as environmental stresses, and they have fought back in time-honored ways, through mutation, hybridization and a number of other mechanisms.

That sounds almost as threatening as a new virus.

Bacterial diseases are the ones we meet every day in hospitals, so antibiotic resistance is the most important problem doctors face in their day-to-day management. In terms of a global -- or species -- threat, new plague viruses, or "emerging viruses," are the bigger problem. The reason is they usually have no treatment and no vaccine. Therefore they pose a potential global disaster.

Are we doomed -- or is there anything we can do to protect ourselves?

There are a lot of things we can do to reduce the risk. The single most vital thing is awareness. I mean public and media awareness. This will force politicians to pay for the next most vital step -- global surveillance. And unless something is done about this -- and done soon -- the risk is serious.

So, "virus X" may be a political issue as much as a scientific one?

Protecting society from the threat of new plagues goes beyond the ambit of scientists. You want an example? When AIDS began in America, two scientists at the Centers for Disease Control, Jim Curran and Don Francis, tried to get a small amount of money to study its means of spreading. If they had gotten that money, the spread of AIDS by blood products and sexual intercourse, whether homosexual or heterosexual, would have been documented long before it actually was. Politicians refused them the money. The result was the AIDS epidemic as we know it. Scientists do not control the money, but they do need it for what is essentially "insurance" against new scenarios.

I see my book, and this article, as trying to educate the public in this light. I am afraid that I, too, am likely to be equally unsuccessful.

from Boston Magazine, 2000-Feb, by Mark Leccese:

A Bug's Life

Influenza changes its genetic makeup over time just enough to render previous vaccines ineffective. This year's bug is only a slight variation, but in the long run, a fatal flu pandemic is inevitable.

A highly contagious virus, in a form unknown to medical science, sweeps through Massachusetts. As many as 6,000 people die. Four times that number are hospitalized. A million people seek medical care, but doctors, nurses, and others on the front lines of treatment fall ill themselves. Patients overwhelm hospitals, emergency rooms, and clinics. Hotels and schools become makeshift hospitals.

Fear of contagion empties offices, malls, movie theaters, restaurants. Workers providing public services - police officers, bus drivers, utility company employees - succumb to the illness. Daily life deteriorates into confusion. Across the United States and around the world, people become infected by the millions and die by the hundreds of thousands.

This isn't the plot summary from a new Robin Cook novel - it's a scenario for a pandemic, and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health are already planning for it, with the certainty that it is coming.

The viral culprit will be that most familiar of afflictions: the flu.

"It's not a question of if, but of when," says Massachusetts State epidemiologist Alfred DeMaria, an infectious disease expert who heads the state Department of Public Health's Bureau of Communicable Disease Control.

It's happened before, and it's happened here - but not this year. Despite a higher than average rate of influenza cases this season, this year's bug is only a slight variation on a virus vaccine-makers have seen before. So making a new vaccine presented little problem. But when a never-before-seen strain of the flu hits, as in 1918, a vaccine offers scant protection. The worst wave of the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 began on Boston's waterfront among soldiers en route to and from the battlefields of Europe. At the start of September, Boston health officials were shocked by three influenza deaths among civilians; by the month's end, more than 1,000 Bostonians had died.

At Fort Devens in Ayer, Surgeon General of the Army Victor Vaughn, dispatched by Washington, took in the scene and wrote: "I saw hundreds of young stalwart men in uniform coming into the wards of the hospital. Every bed was full, yet others crowded in. Their faces wore a bluish cast; a cough brought up the blood-stained sputum. In the morning, the dead bodies are stacked about the morgue like cordwood."

That pandemic claimed an estimated 500,000 lives in the United States alone. Across the world, more people died from influenza in one year than died from in the 14th century outbreak of the bubonic plague, also known as the Black Death. State epidemiologist Alfred DeMaria says that in the 1918 pandemic, "people woke up in the morning with mild symptoms and were dead by midnight."

University of Texas professor Alfred W. Crosby, author of America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918, calls influenza "one of God's cleverest tricks . . . The Deity, jaded with omnipotence, seems to have posed Himself a paradoxical problem: Just how deadly a disease can I create that humans will barely notice?"

There have been two other influenza pandemics in this century: the "Asian flu" of 1957, which killed 70,000 in the United States, and 1968's "Hong Kong Flu," which claimed 34,000 Americans. In a "normal" nonpandemic year, somewhere between 250 and 1,000 otherwise healthy Massachusetts residents (mostly 65 and older) die from influenza-related complications; across the country, the figure is near 20,000.

What makes influenza so potentially dangerous is that its genetic makeup changes slightly from year to year as it makes its way through birds, animals, and humans. That slight change is known as "drift" and is why a new vaccine is developed annually. For reasons still not entirely clear, the virus occasionally undergoes a "shift"-a radical change in its genetic structure. The human immune system has little defense against a virus it has never encountered.

Birds are the principal host of the influenza virus and certain animals, such as pigs, have "receptor sites" for both the avian and human strains of influenza, according to Carolyn Buxton Bridges, a medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control. "You may have a mixing of those two viruses in that intermediate host, and you may get a new virus," Bridges says. A second theory holds that the flu is directly passed from birds to humans and others mammals - horses, whales, and seals get the flu too.

Still, interspecies transmission alone isn't enough to create a killer virus. ("There is more transmission among species than we are aware of, but most of it is a dead end," Bridges says.) The virus must assume a form that is extremely infectious and to which humans have no previous exposure.

Case in point: the "chicken Flu" outbreak two years ago in Hong Kong.

In May 1997, a three-year-old Hong Kong boy contracted a flu-like illness and died 12 days later. By August, scientists had determined the child had died from a never-before-seen strain of influenza believed to have started in chickens. A total of 18 cases of the chicken flu were confirmed; six people died. In December, officials began the slaughter of all 1.6 million of Hong Kong's chickens. A potential outbreak, they believe, was contained. For a time, public health officials did not know if the chicken flu was their greatest fear: a highly virulent new influenza strain. But the chicken flu apparently wasn't virulent enough to spread quickly among humans.

When another "novel" influenza virus does appear in humans, we'll hear news reports of its discovery - on CNN, from the wire services, and so on. Let's say its first identification is in Country A. It won't be that big a story, since Country A will likely be halfway around the world, and the reports of symptoms will be familiar: fever, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, headache, muscle aches, extreme fatigue. If it's a highly virulent virus, however, and spreads quickly to people in neighboring Countries B and C, it will start to top the newscasts and appear on the front pages of daily newspapers.

"In the context of the current information age, people are going to know about this well ahead of time," DeMaria says. "In 1918, nothing moved faster than the flu. Today, nothing moves faster than information."

The first reports of the new virus hop-scotching to Country H and Country Q - in the modern age of travel, any potentially deadly virus is no more than a plane ride away - will make the incipient pandemic big news everywhere.

Still, when the pandemic hits home in Massachusetts, we are unlikely to see a repeat of the horrors of 1918. Most influenza-related deaths are the result of "secondary" pneumonic infections, pneumonia itself being the most common. Since World War II, antibiotics, pneumococcal vaccines, and other new ways of treating secondary infections have lessened the death toll of influenza. "Secondary infections were managed much better in 1957 and 1968," DeMaria says, and adds that the next pandemic "will be less severe than the 1918 flu, because people are intrinsically healthier."

Ironically, the transformation of health care into a lean, cost-effective business will make the commonwealth less able to cope with a pandemic, DeMaria fears. In 1968, Massachusetts had more than 120 hospitals - today there are fewer than 80. In a pandemic, the supply of antibiotics would become dangerously low, or perhaps even exhausted. "There's no surge capacity anymore," DeMaria says. "We may run out, because everything is 'inventory on demand' and we don't stockpile anymore."

There is also the question of who would pay for the making of influenza vaccine. The federal government is committed to its research and development, but not to its manufacture and distribution; that would require an effort and commitment on behalf of Washington and co-operative pharmaceutical companies.

What the Centers for Disease Control have done, though, is provide states with a blueprint for creating a pandemic response plan. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health-working with the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, the Massachusetts College of Emergency Physicians, and other government and private groups - was scheduled to have a plan completed by the beginning of this year.

No easy task, that. For one, unlike natural disasters such as hurricanes or floods, the effects of an infectious disease pandemic last for weeks or months, not hours or days. And since it has been so long since we have experienced a pandemic in this country, it's difficult to get businesses and government agencies to make planning for one a priority. "It takes people a while to realize that this would affect them," says Susan Lett, medical director of the Department of Public Health's immunization program.

Any plan must answer a array of difficult questions: How would one track the progress of the flu through the state's cities and towns? How will the public be kept informed without being panicked? If supplies of vaccine or antibiotics run low, who gets the scarce doses? Where will we find enough refrigerated trucks to transport vaccine and other medicines? At what point in the pandemic should schools be closed? And who'll make these decisions?

Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control continues to stand watch, tracking influenza by gathering weekly reports from hospitals and doctors' offices around the country and by laboratory diagnosis of samples taken from flu sufferers. The World Health Organization does the same thing globally. (Check out the CDC's Influenza home page at www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/flu/fluvirus.htm.)

Here's a scary fact: Many researchers estimate flu pandemics take place in 10-to-30-year cycles, which would leave us overdue for the next one. The CDC's Bridges, for one, disagrees strongly with the 10-to-30-year postulate. "It's just impossible to know," she says. But State Epidemiologist DeMaria says, "It's not a hard and fast rule, but, on the other hand, it is an historical trend."

He adds an ominous warning: "And the longer you go between pandemics, the greater the likelihood it's going to be a novel virus to which few people have been exposed."

from Reuters, 1998-Apr-14, by Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent:

More Deadly Superbugs On The Way Disease Experts Say

[Washington] New drug-resistant "superbugs", bacteria that defy all known antibiotics, are virtually certain to pop up soon unless doctors and hospitals crack down on procedures, health experts said Tuesday. Careless use of antibiotics and slipshod hygiene were almost certainly responsible for the rise of bacteria that resist the last-defense drugs - methicillin and vancomycin - they told a news briefing sponsored by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. "We've seen dramatic increases...in the past decade," Dr. William Jarvis, acting director of the hospital infections program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, told the briefing. "Some infections are virtually untreatable." Bacteria that resist penicillin are old hat, but when an infection does not respond to something as strong as vancomycin, doctors get scared. Vancomycin-resistant enterococci, which cause intestinal infections, are fairly common and three cases of vancomycin-resistant staphylococcus have been reported.

This is unsettling as staphylococcus, known generally as staph, is the number one cause of infection in the United States. It can cause anything ranging from a pimple to deadly septic shock, when the bloodstream becomes infected. "I think vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (VRSA) is going to become more widespread," said Dr. Richard Duma, director of infectious diseases at the Halifax Medical Center in Daytona Beach, Florida. "We were all shocked" when the first case of VRSA in people was reported in Japan in July of last year, Jarvis said. Two more cases followed in the United States within weeks. Luckily, they all responded to a cocktail of older drugs including ampicillin. "We may not be so fortunate in the future," Jarvis said.

"Bacteria are very smart - they learn to develop resistance," he added. All of the patients had been very ill, had developed methicillin-resistant staph infections, and been given vancomycin over a period of weeks. Such misuse and overuse of antibiotics virtually guaranteed the emergence of resistant bacteria, Jarvis said.

Vancomycin should be used only sparingly he added. "It's one of our precious miracles." The appearance of bacteria resistant to first methicillin and then vancomycin scared the drug companies into action after years of complacency in which no new antibiotics had been developed. But it would be years before anything as strong and and wide-acting as vancomycin was on the market, Jarvis said. Dr William Scheckler, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin and member of a national panel on the spread of infections in hospitals, said hospitals did not always do enough to prevent their spread.

Doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers had to be urged to wash their hands before and after visiting each patient - a basic rule that many forget - and all employees should be vaccinated against flu and other diseases. Scheckler said each hospital should have access to epidemiologists - experts who monitor the spread of disease across populations. This was becoming more important, as minor diseases were being treated at home, with hospitals reserved for the sickest people.

"The patients in hospitals are older and sicker and we are doing more things to them than we used to," Scheckler said. Duma said drug-resistant superbugs were not the only frightening thing waiting to surprise the American people. He predicted more exotic diseases, such as the mysterious Ebola virus which has killed several hundred people in Africa, would arrive in the United States via an infected airline passenger. "I think it's going to happen sooner or later and it's going to scare the dickens out of everybody," he said.

from WorldNetDaily 1999-Feb-22, by Jon E. Dougherty:

Are U.S. planes spraying chemicals?
Widespread illnesses reported in wake of contrails

Some people have respiratory problems. Others have mouth blisters. Still others are chronically tired. Many people are suffering from a combination of these illnesses, coupled with weight loss, burning mouths and noses, hoarseness, dizziness and disorientation. And they say their symptoms can last for days and even weeks.

Reports say hospital emergency rooms in some areas of the country have been flooded with such patients, while talk radio programs have begun to discuss the phenomenon at length. The Internet is abuzz with theories, counter-theories, and any measure of explanation. But no matter what aspect of the story is debated, more and more people are beginning to dismiss the naysayers who insist it is nothing more than an elaborate hoax. It's real, say the infected and affected -- and it's getting worse. But what is going on?

Specifically, the focus of this mysterious "sickness" is centered around the observance of contrails -- trails of gaseous substances -- left in the wake of jet planes flying high above certain areas of the country. Observers on the ground have discovered, after several "patterns" of contrails have been produced by numerous planes making dozens of passes over an area, that a colorless web-like sticky substance falls from the sky, often generating sickness for many who come in contact with it. In other areas no such substance is reported, but scores of people have become ill nonetheless, presumably because the planes forming the contrail patterns are literally spraying some sort of chemical in the air.

Sources who have followed the phenomenon for over a year have claimed that the planes likely belong to the U.S. Air Force because of their type. Those planes -- KC-135s and KC-10 aerial tankers -- have been spotted "seeding clouds" -- a term used by the Air Force in ongoing weather modification research. Officially the Air Force denies it is involved in anything associated with the sightings, but some residents who have seen the contrails have reported changes in the weather (such as heavy rains) after the "seeding" is complete and the planes retire.

No one knows where the planes are coming from or where they land when they're finished. However, one man says he is certain the phenomenon is weather-modification related, and is equally sure the Air Force is behind the testing.

Tommy Farmer, a former engineering technician with Raytheon Missile Systems, has been studying the jet contrail phenomenon for over a year, and he recently confirmed the number of reports coming in all over the country to the Environmental News Service. In a recent article, "Farmer said he has collected samples of what he calls 'angel hair' sprayed by the mystery aircraft on six occasions since February 1998. Four samples have been taken since November 1998."

According to one source, who requested anonymity, one sample taken supposedly contained elements of JP-8 -- jet fuel -- and Ethel Dibromide (EDB), a pesticide which was banned years ago because research showed prolonged exposure caused carcinogenic effects on humans. The source also said that another reportedly contained non-specific bacterial groups, but neither of these could be confirmed independently by WorldNetDaily

Other researchers have speculated that the epicenter of the "sky seeding" phenomenon is linked to an ongoing research project on weather-modification techniques funded by the Air Force. The project focuses on weather modification research and development, and the Air Force says the military can find ways to "own the weather by the year 2025." According to that report, Air Force researchers said that the United States military already retained the ability to control weather patterns "to some degree" with a technique known as "cloud seeding" -- the dissipation of chemical elements into the sky in an effort to produce a certain weather affect.

Continued research has shown that there may be a link between that project and the High Altitude Auroral Research Project (HAARP) project located in Alaska. The HAARP array, according to the Air Force and the Navy, which is co-developing the project, "is not weather modification," but is designed to influence jet streams and air patterns, and theoretically could be used in conjunction with sky seeding technology to produce a desired weather affect. According to one published report, HAARP "has for the past several years been using phased array antennas to steer powerful beams of tightly-focused radio waves to 'stimulate,' heat and steer sections of the upper atmosphere."

Reports have generated from Texas, New Mexico, Washington, Tennessee, and some other states -- all reporting similar contrail patterns in the sky and all reporting near-identical symptoms, suffered by a number of people in the area, accompanied by the sticky web-like residue.

One observer who contacted WorldNetDaily by email wrote, "We have been bombarded almost everyday with jets leaving contrails grids in the sky above us. I have never seen the spider web stuff really thick. It is just really constant; it is always around us. In the sky and all over the fences and trees."

Observers mostly report that jets make "X" patterns in the sky, sometimes dozens of them, often causing near zero-visibility in the sky and, in one case, "massive fog" on the ground. The planes are almost always described as jets, but one observer said the jets in an area in Texas were followed by "a smaller, thicker plane with propellers; flying at a considerably lower altitude."

Debra Mahon spoke with WorldNetDaily by telephone from her home about 35 miles north of Dallas, Texas. She said she became ill earlier this week with many of the same symptoms reported by others. Though her voice was hoarse and labored -- effects of the sudden illness -- she said the contrail phenomenon has been occurring in her area "for quite awhile."

She also reported seeing "thousands" of web-like strands falling from the sky after each "seeding." She described them as looking like "spider webs in the spring, but they disintegrate into nothing in your hand. They're not nearly as strong as real spider webs."

On a recent day, she and a friend were watching planes laying contrail patterns when suddenly "one plane we were watching just disappeared. We don't know where it went."

"I asked (my friend) if she had seen it too, and she told me she had but also couldn't explain it. I was almost afraid to bring it up. It is just so weird."

She said there was speculation among some who are analyzing these incidents that perhaps the government is releasing a certain biotoxin "in the hopes that you can build up an immunity against it, as if they're expecting it to be spread by some other method -- like a terrorist attack or something." She freely admitted she had no proof of "any of this," but said she and many others she has been in contact with "sure would like some answers."

She is not alone, but the phenomenon has not been officially acknowledged by any service branch of the military, or by the U.S. government. Calls to the Air Force were not returned.

from Nature online, 1999-Jul-29, by Hannah Wunsch, from http://helix.nature.com/nsu/990729/990729-7.html:

Creating human tumor cells

Just how much abuse can a cell take before it becomes tumorigenic? This question is easier to answer for a mouse cell, as opposed to a human cell. Researchers have long been able to manipulate mouse cells -- making only two alterations -- to cause them to replicate forever. However, human cells have remained surprisingly resistant to this type of alteration, stubbornly dying after dividing only a few times.

Robert Weinberg from the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and colleagues finally report success in creating human tumour cells. The group introduced just three proteins into human cells in the laboratory that altered a number of molecular pathways. The results, reported in the 29 July issue of Nature, were cells that could keep growing and dividing, as do tumour cells in the body.

Why, exactly, were human cells so resistant to this type of manipulation, when researchers have been able to do it with mouse cells for so long? Part of the answer seems to be that mice have an active form of a n enzyme called telomerase, which adds telomeres -- bits of DNA -- onto the ends of genes. The number of times a cell can divide before dying is at least partly dictated by the number of telomeres on the DNA. In human cells this machine tends not to be active; without an active telomerase, the cells would divide a few times and then conk out.

To combat this problem, one of the proteins Weinberg's group added to the human cells was a portion of telomerase called the "telomerase catalytic subunit". This made the human cells more like their mouse counterparts, and seemed to be a key to allowing the human cells to replicate for longer periods of time. The re-introduction of this protein also made the human cells more like real tumour cells found in the body, almost all of which have an active telomerase.

However, just turning on telomerase was not enough to make a cell tumorigenic; cells have many safety mechanisms to keep them from spinning out of control and dividing forever. The final product required the introduction of a total of three proteins -- disrupting at least that many pathways.

This engineering triumph provides valuable information about the importance of telomerase for allowing cells to become tumorigenic. As well, the success offers some answers to researchers about the number of steps that exist between normal health in a cell, and the sick state of uncontrolled replication that leads to cancer.

from the New York Times, 1999-Mar-4, by Ralph Blumenthal with Judith Miller:

Japanese Germ-War Atrocities: A Half-Century of Stonewalling the World

More than 50 years after the Japanese army attacked China with germ weapons and conducted gruesome experiments on thousands of human beings, Japan is resisting demands that it compensate the victims or make records of the atrocities public.

The Japanese government has declined to cooperate with efforts by the Justice Department to put the names of several hundred surviving veterans of the germ warfare operations on a list of suspected war criminals barred from entering the United States, U.S. officials say.

It has also rebuffed researchers seeking access to a vast archive of military documents in Tokyo that detail the World War II activities of the Japanese Imperial Army, including its chief biological warfare arm, known as Unit 731.

The American authorities seized the archive after World War II but returned it to Japan in 1958 after only a small number of documents were copied.

Japan's approach stands in contrast to that of Germany, which has paid about $80 billion to war victims and their families. Private industries and banks in Germany and Switzerland plan to pay billions more.

Despite the refusal of the Japanese government to release information, new details are emerging about the scope of the biological program. Research by scholars, campaigns by the Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles and the Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia, and a lawsuit in Japan by Chinese plaintiffs have unleashed a flood of new accounts that substantially expand the historical record.

The accounts have heightened tensions between Japan and its neighbors. They suggest that Japan's World War II germ attacks were even more widespread than first thought, stretching from Burma (now Myanmar), Thailand, Singapore and the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) to Russia and Chinese cities and hamlets.

The death toll from Japan's biological warfare remains in dispute. Some scholars assert that several hundred thousand people died, mostly in China. Others say the casualties were far lower. Scholars estimate that an additional 10,000 prisoners were killed in experiments, perhaps a dozen times the number who died at the hands of Dr. Josef Mengele and other Nazi scientists.

Eli M. Rosenbaum, director of the Office of Special Investigations in the Justice Department, said the dispute between Tokyo and Washington over suspected war criminals has been quietly building for three years.

The Justice Department's worldwide list of war crimes suspects now includes the names of about 60,000 Germans and other Europeans, including Kurt Waldheim, the former U.N. secretary-general, president of Austria and wartime intelligence officer in Hitler's army.

By contrast, Rosenbaum said the United States had dates of birth and other identifying data on fewer than 100 suspected Japanese war criminals. The Justice Department has hundreds of names to add to the "watch list," but it cannot do so until Japan confirms basic information like dates of birth.

"For a friendly government to deny us access is astonishing, beyond the pale," Rosenbaum said. "Most outrageous of all is that the Japanese government will not provide the dates of birth of war crimes suspects identified by OSI so that they can be barred from the United States. They won't even tell us if they will ever assist us."

A Japanese Embassy press spokesman in Washington, Tsuyoshi Yamamoto, said his government would have no comment because the issue concerned "the specifics of Japanese cooperation with the United States, which are of a diplomatic nature."

Little was publicly known about Japan's germ operations until the 1980s, when scholars published their first accounts. More recently, veterans of Unit 731 have been speaking publicly in Japan about their misdeeds, seeking expiation.

According to participants, victims and records, the unit mounted widespread germ attacks with anthrax, typhoid and other pathogens. Among other experiments, its doctors infected prisoners with disease germs, removed organs and blood and withheld water to collect data on how the human body copes with illness and deprivation. Many victims were then dissected alive.

Only one former member of the unit was ever turned away from entering the United States: Yushio Shinozuka, who arrived last summer to join a forum and publicly express anguish over having prepared victims for vivisection.

Rather than fading with time, diplomats and scholars say, sensitivities over the issue are becoming sharper as new generations re-examine wartime events, as they have with the Holocaust in Europe.

Complicating the issue is the complicity of American officials in shielding from prosecution top Japanese scientists who turned over their data to the United States, which was developing its own germ warfare program.

Among the questions that remain unresolved is whether doctors working with Unit 731 experimented on American prisoners of war.

"The cover-up continues," said Sheldon H. Harris, emeritus professor of history at California State University in Northridge and the author of "Factories of Death" (Routledge, 1994), an account of the Japanese germ warfare program and the American hunger for its secrets. The book is scheduled for publication in Japan this spring.

Harris said in an interview that while he had unearthed American translations of three Japanese autopsy reports comprising nearly 1,000 pages recounting wartime medical experiments on dead and living prisoners, 17 other reports were missing, along with some 8,000 photographic slides documenting the experiments.

The origins of Unit 731 go back to 1930 and the Tokyo laboratory of an ultranationalist surgeon and microbiologist, Shiro Ishii, who was later made a general. Within two years, after Japanese troops overran Manchuria in northeast China, Ishii, using the cover of a sanitation unit, set up the first of several large biological warfare and human research centers in Ping Fan and other areas around Harbin, a heavily Russian city near the Soviet border.

Over the next decade, scholars and researchers say, the Japanese attacked hundreds of heavily populated communities and remote regions with germ bombs. Evidence of the attacks continues to emerge.

"There appears to have been a massive germ war campaign in Yunnan Province bordering Burma," said Daniel Barenblatt, a graduate psychologist and New York City researcher who has been assembling material for five years for a documentary with the film director David Irving, chairman of the undergraduate film and television department at New York University.

"They seem to have been killing ethnic minorities in a jungle campaign," Barenblatt said.

Many questions remain unanswered.

It is still not established, for example, whether American prisoners of war were among those experimented on. Some Americans have said they were sickened by contaminated feathers in their food, and Japanese accounts tell of jars containing body parts labeled American among other nationalities.

Frank James, 77, a survivor of the Bataan Death March, ended up in 1942 at a Japanese prison camp in Mukden, Manchuria, where, he said, he became a 70-pound living skeleton.

"They gave us shots, sprays in the face," he recounted in a telephone interview from his home in Redwood City, Calif., where he is confined with diabetes and lung disease.

He said one of his jobs at Mukden was to retrieve for dissection frozen corpses that he was certain were American. "They opened them up so they could look into the lining of the stomach," he recalled. "The light pink icicles in the stomach weren't thawed."

A new hourlong documentary to be broadcast on Sunday on the History Channel, "Unit 731: Nightmare in Manchuria," features interviews with several other surviving American war prisoners who say they were victimized by Japanese experiments.

But records of their debriefings by American officials remain unavailable. Harris, the author, said he applied for the records under the Freedom of Information Act several years ago and was told by the Veterans Administration that they had been destroyed in a fire in St. Louis.

After the war, American interest in prosecuting members of Unit 731 for war crimes faded fast. While Germany was split in a four-power occupation, the United States had a largely free hand in rebuilding Japan and was forging close ties to the new government.

In addition, Harris said, American scientists were "salivating" over the chance to obtain the forbidden secrets of Japan's human experiments. The American authorities granted Ishii and his associates immunity from prosecution and in exchange received detailed information about the germ warfare program.

The Allies did prosecute 5,570 Japanese, none for biological warfare. Nine Japanese medical school professionals were convicted, and some executed, for vivisecting eight captured American fliers in 1945.

Toshimi Mizobuchi makes no secret of his years with Unit 731. A vigorous 76-year-old real estate manager living outside the Japanese city of Kobe, Mizobuchi is organizing this year's reunion for the several hundred surviving veterans of Unit 731. He says he did not take part in experiments on humans, though he knew of them and argues that they were justifiable.

In a recent interview at home near Kobe with Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center that was recorded and transcribed through an interpreter, Mizobuchi said he still regarded the victims of the experiments as "maruta," or logs.

"They were logs to me," said Mizobuchi, a training officer with the unit. "Logs were not considered to be human. They were either spies or conspirators." As such, he said, "they were already dead. So now they die a second time. We just executed a death sentence."

He said about 30 other veterans of the unit were living near him and that a reunion was held almost every year, drawing 40 or 50. Mizobuchi said he had never visited the American mainland. But in follow-up questions he said he had been to Hawaii twice for sightseeing.

"It's a stain on history," said Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center, founded in 1977 in the name of the Viennese concentration camp survivor and Nazi-hunter to keep alive the memory of the genocide of the Jews and to campaign for tolerance and human rights.

Cooper said he had interviewed former germ war soldiers and others last month in Japan and planned to present Congress and the White House with evidence he had gathered.

"This blanket amnesty can't stand," he said.

Nearly 60 years later, Ada Pivo of Los Angeles is still looking for the truth about Unit 731's operations.

During the war, she said in an interview, she lived with her family in Harbin, where the unit made its headquarters. In 1940 her 17-year old sister, Leah, was one of two members of a Jewish youth group who contracted typhoid and died after an outing. Mrs. Pivo believes that her sister was infected by a bottle of lemonade spiked with bacteria by Japanese scientists.

It is known that food and drink and even children's sweets were sometimes laced with pathogens. But without access to Japanese wartime records, it may never be possible to establish the link to a particular operation in Harbin.

Japan has long restricted access to military records, which were in the hands of the American authorities for nine years after the war.

The documents, first screened by the CIA, include hundreds of thousands of pages of War Ministry records from 1868 to 1942, Naval Ministry records from 1868 to 1939 and operational records of many units throughout the war.

In 1948 the CIA turned over the records to the National Archives, with no indication of what, if anything, had been removed. In 1957 the collection was ordered returned to Japan.

Concerned over the potential loss, a group of scholars including Edwin O. Reischauer of Harvard University and John Young of Georgetown University, obtained a Ford Foundation grant to hurriedly microfilm what they could.

In February 1958, after about 5 percent of the records were copied, Young recalled in an interview, the documents were sent to Baltimore and and loaded aboard a ship for Japan. "There was no way we could read them all," said Young, who deplored the loss.

In any case, Young, who assisted Allied war crimes investigators in China after the war, compiled a 144-page index to the pages that were microfilmed.

A microfilm set was presented to the National Diet Library in Tokyo, an irony, Young said, considering that Japan has now closed off the collection. "I can tell you frankly, the militarists felt relieved," Young said. "As a historian I couldn't stand it."

Japanese bioweapon timeline, from http://www.cnd.org/njmassacre/recent-news2.html:

Germ warfare timeline

Published: Aug. 13, 1995

1925 -- Geneva Convention governing wartime conduct bans biological weapons. Japan refuses to approve treaty.

1932 -- Japanese troops invade Manchuria. Shiro Ishii, a physician and army officer who was intrigued by germ warfare, begins preliminary experiments.

1936 -- Unit 731, a biological-warfare unit disguised as a water-purification unit, is formed. Ishii builds huge compound -- more than 150 buildings over six square kilometers -- outside the city of Harbin. Some 9,000 test subjects, which Ishii and his peers called ''logs,'' eventually die at the compound.

1942 -- Ishii begins field tests of germ warfare on Chinese soldiers and civilians. Tens of thousands die of bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax and other diseases. U.S. soldiers captured in Philippines are sent to Manchuria.

1945 -- Japanese troops blow up the headquarters of Unit 731 in final days of Pacific war. Ishii orders 150 remaining ''logs'' killed to cover up their experimentation. Gen. Douglas MacArthur is named commander of the Allied powers in Japan.

1946 -- U.S. coverup of secret deal with Ishii and Unit 731 leaders -- germ warfare data based on human experimentation in exchange for immunity from war-crimes prosecution -- begins in earnest. Deal is concluded two years later.

1981 -- John Powell, a former publisher of a Shanghai magazine who was unsuccessfully tried for sedition in the early 1950s after accusing the United States of using germ warfare in Korea, exposes immunity deal in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

1985 -- Dr. Murray Sanders, a former lieutenant colonel who was a U.S. adviser on biological warfare, claims that he persuaded MacArthur to approve the immunity deal in the fall of 1945.

1986 -- Congressional subcommittee holds one-day hearing in Washington, called by Rep. Pat Williams of Montana, aimed at determining whether U.S. prisoners of war in Manchuria were victims of germ-warfare experimentation. Hearing is inconclusive.

Sources: ''Factories of Death,'' by Sheldon H. Harris (Routledge, 1994); and ''Prisoners of the Japanese: POWS of World War II in the Pacific,'' by Gavan Daws (William Morrow, 1994).

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News provided by Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia

from http://home.earthlink.net/~bkonop/GermWarfare.html:

GERM WARFARE

The History

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In 1977 the United States reached a significant turning point in its history. For the first time, the U.S. Army admitted carrying out hundreds of chemical and biological warfare tests, including at least 25 that targeted civilian populations. Previously classified records show that between 1951 and 1967, on at least 48 occasions, the Army used disease causing microbes in open air tests and, that on at least 31 other occasions, anti-crop substances were knowingly discharged into the environment.

Of course, all of this was done in the name of National Security. However, a more disturbing element was thrown into the mix with a 1985 U.S. Supreme Court decision. That decision essentially absolved the U.S. military from any liability in cases where the military might be caught experimenting on unknowing and unwilling human subjects. In fact, the Court's decision did not differentiate between the case of a single experiment, which was at the heart of the case under review, and broader actions which military commanders might determine to undertake under the terms of liberally interpreted orders.

In its decision, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Court determined that actions against the military would tend to disrupt the military chain of command. This element was the key point of concern rather than any legal foundations which might have been espoused. Thus, anything which military commanders ordered, which might even remotely be covered by the broader umbrella of the scope and authority of the military mission, was not redressable in the courts. In fact, the military was essentially absolved from all past wrongdoing while at the same time being given a green light to undertake new activities so long as such actions did not violate their orders. It was a decision which shocked fellow conservative, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor who, in an impassioned dissent, cited the principles of fundamental human rights, and the concepts formulated after the Nuremberg War Crime Tribunals, as ample reason to hold military commanders culpable for their misdeeds.

We should already know, however, that human experimentation in the United States is not news. The infamous Tuskegee Study, where 400 black men with syphilis were left untreated, some for as long as 40 years, was only discontinued after it became public. More recently, we have seen that many more people were victims of radiation experiments which were conducted without required disclosure by our own Atomic Energy Commission. However, one of the most disturbing experiments was undertaken during the 1930's where a single pathologist undertook studies in which he knowingly infected his human subjects with cancer. This physician, Dr. Cornelious Rhoads of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Investigations, undertook his experiments with little concern for his patients. In fact, Dr. Rhoads' attitude about his subjects was chronicled in a letter which later served as the basis for a criminal investigation. With regard to the subjects and location of his experiments in Puerto Rico, Dr. Rhoads wrote:

"What the island needs is not public
health work, but a tidal wave or something
to totally exterminate the population."

A criminal investigation, however, exonerated Dr. Rhoads in the deaths of his patients. The prosecutor appointed by the North American governor of the island dismissed the case, calling Rhoads merely "a mentally ill person or a man of few scruples." Interestingly enough, Dr. Rhoads went on to direct the establishment of U.S. Army chemical warfare laboratories in Maryland, Utah, and the Panama Canal Zone. This "mentally ill" doctor was subsequently awarded 'The Legion of Merit', and was appointed to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.

It was the work and influence of Dr. Cornelius Rhoads which serves as the foundation for the film ENEMIES WITHIN. This suspense/mystery simply takes a look at a similar situation, and updates the time and place. Where some might see great conspiracies rising from governmental abuses, ENEMIES WITHIN examines a system which makes it possible for a few people to have a drastic impact on society. ENEMIES WITHIN looks at a man such as Dr. Rhoads, who with a little power and influence, might be able to spread diseases which target narrow groups. It examines the way in which our own loyalties can be used against us.

In the case of Dr. Rhoads, the man revealing the charges against him later claimed that he was being subjected to radiation experiments after his arrest during the Puerto Rican Nationalists insurrection in 1950. Subsequent to his release from prison, the man's health deteriorated, and he died a short time later. It has only been within the last few years that we've learned that the Atomic Energy Commission did indeed experiment on unwitting prisoners, hospital patients, and soldiers. Dr. Rhoads achieved his revenge for the charges made against him. But the question remains, how many other 'like thinking' individuals do we have defending our National Security? How many others may have been placed in positions of trust and power without oversight to prevent their abuse of power? The Supreme Court may have given some a way to fulfill their own visions, just as it appears Dr. Rhoads was able to do.

from http://home.earthlink.net/~bkonop/GermIncidents2.html:

GERM WARFARE

The Hall of Shame

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The United States has a long history of experimentation, on unwitting human subjects, which goes back to the beginning of this century. Both private firms and the military have used unknowing human populations to test various theories. However, the extent to which human experimentation has been a part of the U.S. Biological Weapons programs will probably never be known. The following examples are taken from information declassified in 1977, and from other private source accounts. Several involve incidents which are still of unknown origins and which cannot be fully explained:

1900:

A U.S. doctor doing research in the Philippines infected of number of prisoners with the Plague. He continued his research by inducing Beriberi in another 29 prisoners. The experiments resulted in two known fatalities.

1915:

A doctor in Mississippi produced Pellagra in twelve white Mississippi inmates in an attempt to discover a cure for the disease.

1931:

The Puerto Rican Cancer Experiment was undertaken by Dr. Cornelius Rhoads. Under the auspices of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Investigations, Rhoads purposely infected his subjects with cancer cells. Thirteen of the subjects died. When the experiment was uncovered, and in spite of Rhoads' written opinions that the Puerto Rican population should be eradicated, Rhoads went on to establish U.S. Army Biological Warfare facilities in Maryland, Utah, and Panama. He later was named to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and was at the heart of the recently revealed radiation experiments on prisoners, hospital patients, and soldiers.

1932:

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study began. Two hundred (200) poor black men with syphilis began a long term experiment in which those men were to be studied. They were never told of their illness, and treatment was denied them. As many as 100 of the original 200 died as a direct or indirect result of the illness. The wives and children of the subjects also suffered as a result of the disease. (The government office supervising the study was the predecessor to today's Centers for Disease Control (CDC)).

1940's:

In a crash program to develop new drugs to fight Malaria during World War II, doctors in the Chicago area infected nearly 400 prisoners with the disease. Although the Chicago inmates were given general information that they were helping with the war effort, they were not provided adequate information in accordance with the later standards set by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. Nazi doctors on trial at Nuremberg cited the Chicago studies as precedents to defend their own behavior in aiding the German war effort.

1950:

The U.S. Navy sprayed a cloud of bacteria over San Francisco. The Navy claimed that the bacteria was harmless, and used only to track a simulated attack, but many San Francisco residents became ill with pneumonia-like symptoms, and one is known to have died.

1950 - 1953:

An array of germ warfare weapons were allegedly used against North Korea. Accounts claim that there were releases of feathers infected with anthrax, fleas and mosquitoes dosed with Plague and Yellow Fever, and rodents infected with a variety of diseases. These were precisely the same techniques used in immunity from prosecution in exchange for the results of that research. The Eisenhower administration later pressed Sedition Charges against three Americans who published charges of these activities. However, none of those charged were convicted.

1952 - 1953:

In another series of experiments, the U.S. military released clouds of "harmless" gases over six (6) U.S. and Canadian cities to observe the potential for similar releases under chemical and germ warfare scenarios. A follow-up report by the military noted the occurrence of respiratory problems in the unwitting civilian populations.

1955:

The Tampa Bay area of Florida experienced a sharp rise in Whooping Cough cases, including 12 deaths, after a CIA test where a bacteria withdrawn from the Army's Chemical and Biological Warfare arsenal was released into the environment. Details of the test are still classified.

1956 - 1958:

In Savannah, Georgia and Avon Park, Florida, the Army carried out field tests in which mosquitoes were released into residential neighborhoods from both ground level and from aircraft. Many people were swarmed by Mosquitoes, and fell ill, some even died. After each test, U.S. Army personnel posing as public health officials photographed and tested the victims. It is theorized that the mosquitoes were infected with a strain of Yellow Fever. However, details of the testing remain classified.

1965:

In a three year study, 70 volunteer prisoners at the Holmesburg State Prison in Philadelphia were subjected to tests of dioxin, the highly toxic chemical contaminant in Agent Orange. Lesions which the men developed were not treated and remained for up to seven months. None of the subjects was informed that they would later be studied for the development of cancer. This was the second such experiment which Dow Chemical undertook on "volunteers" who did not receive the information which the world proclaimed was necessary for "informed consent" at Nuremberg.

1966:

The U.S. Army dispensed a bacillus throughout the New York City subway system. Materials available on the incident noted the Army's justification for the experiment was the fact that there are many subways in the (former) Soviet Union, Europe, and South America. Although there are no harmful effects known for this release, details of the experiment are still classified.

1968 - 1969:

The CIA experimented with the possibility of poisoning drinking water by injecting a chemical substance into the water supply of the Food And Drug Administration in Washington, D.C.. There were no harmful effects noted from this experiment. However, none of the human subjects in the building were ever asked for their permission, nor was anyone provided with information on the nature or effects of the chemical used.

1969:

On June 9, 1969, Dr. D.M. McArtor, then Deputy Director of Research and Technology for the Department of Defense, appeared before the House Subcommittee on Appropriations to request funding for a project to produce a synthetic biological agent for which humans have not yet acquired a natural immunity. Dr. McArtor asked for $10 million dollars to produce this agent over the next 5-10 years. The Congressional Record reveals that according to the plan for the development of this germ agent, the most important characteristic of the new disease would be "that it might be refractory [resistant] to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease". AIDS first appeared as a public health risk ten years later.

1972:

President Nixon announced a ban on the production and use of biological (but not chemical) warfare agents. However, as the Army's own experts reveal, this ban is meaningless because the studies required to protect against biological warfare weapons are generally indistinguishable from those for chemical weapons [I think the author means offensive biological weapons here -Ed.].

1977:

Ray Ravenhott, director of the population program of the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), publicly announced the agency's goal to sterilize one quarter of the world's women. In reports by the St Louis Post-Dispatch, Ravenhott in essence cited the reasoning for this being U.S. corporate interests in avoiding the threat of revolutions which might be spawned by chronic unemployment.

1980-1981:

Within months of their incarceration in detention centers in Miami and Puerto Rico, many male Haitian refugees developed an unusual condition called "gynecomasia". This is a condition in which males develop full female breasts. A number of the internees at Ft. Allen in Puerto Rico claimed that they were forced to undergo a series of injections which they believed to be hormones.

1981:

More than 300,000 Cubans were stricken with dengue hemorrhagic fever. An investigation by the magazine 'Covert Action Information Bulletin', which tracks the workings of various intelligence agencies around the world, suggested that this outbreak was the result of a release of mosquitoes by Cuban counterrevolutionaries. The magazine tracked the activities of one CIA operative from a facility in Panama to the alleged Cuban connections. During the last 30 years, Cuba has been subjected to an enormous number of outbreaks of human and crop diseases which are difficult to attribute purely natural causes.

1982:

El Salvadoran trade unionists claimed that epidemics of many previously unknown diseases had cropped up in areas immediately after U.S. directed aerial bombings. There is no hard evidence to support these charges. However, the pattern and types of outbreaks are consistent with the claims.

1985:

An outbreak of Dengue fever strikes Managua Nicaragua shortly after an increase of U.S. aerial reconnaissance missions. Nearly half of the capital city's population was stricken with the disease, and several deaths have been attributed to the outbreak. It was the first such epidemic in the country and the outbreak was nearly identical to that which struck Cuba a few years earlier (1981). Dengue fever variations were the focus of much experimentation at the Army's Biological Warfare test facility at Ft. Dietrick, Maryland prior to the 'ban' on such research in 1972.

1985:

In ruling on a case in which a former U.S. Army sergeant attempted to bring a lawsuit against the Army for using experimental drugs on him, without his knowledge, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that allowing such an action against the military would disrupt the chain of command. Thus, nearly all potential actions against the military for past, or future, misdeeds have been barred as have actions aimed at the release of classified documents on the subject.

1987:

As the result of a lawsuit by a public interest group, the Department of Defense was forced to reveal the fact that it still operated Chemical and Biological Warfare (CBW) research programs at 127 sites around the United States.

1996:

Under pressure from Congress and the public, after a 60 Minutes segment, the U.S. Department of Defense finally admits that at least 20,000 U.S. servicemen "may" have been exposed to chemical weapons during operation 'Desert Storm'. This exposure came as a result of the destruction of a weapons bunker. Causes of the similar illnesses of other troops, who were not in this area, have not yet been explained, other than as post traumatic stress syndromes. Veterans groups have released information that many of the problems may be a result of experimental vaccines and innoculations which were provided troops during the military buildup.

What follows is a topic I have, until today (1999-Jan-20), shied away from: the origin and spread of AIDS. This is a real hot potato, politically. I explored the periphery of the subject when Vince Foster's involvement in the Arkansas prison blood trafficking operation became a topic of litigation and journalistic investigation.

I personally think it most likely that HIV-1 has a non-human, non-technological origin. The regulatory and policy environment was designed to maximize the likelihood that target populations would be exposed to exotic bloodborne pathogens. This is genocide by bureaucrat, in which the murderers don't even know the exact weapon in advance. This strategy is particularly appealing to the perpetrators since it is so easy to attribute such regulations and policies to incompetence and error. Moreover, there is no more efficient politically viable mechanism by which bloodborne pathogens present in the wild can be transmitted to target populations. The malicious policies remain politically feasible so long as the public is not aware of broad alarm among the specialists who implement the policies. It is a ``neat'' system. The perpetrators - the conspirators - substantially control the supervisory apparatus of the specialists, and the mass media by which the public hears about the spread of a plague. Currently, the preeminent examples of malicious policies maintained too long to retain plausible deniability are President Reagan's refusal to mention the plague for many years after it had grown to epidemic proportions, and the continuation of the Arkansas prison blood trafficking operation long after it was known that it would spread AIDS.

I concede the possibility that HIV-1 is a technological virus, but the guilt of the perpetrators is similar whether or not such is the case. Genocide was the intention and is the actual result, and morally, the means is just a detail.

from Health Freedom Watch, 1999-Mar/Apr, from the Institute for Health Freedom

Why Did U.S. FDA Approve Sale of Prison Blood?
. . . And Why Did Canada Buy It?

On February 24, a group of Canadians held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., to ask the United States government to investigate the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approval of the sale of prison blood to Canada in the 1980s.

Canadian Victims Speak from the Heart

"Many Canadian hemophiliacs, infected with the horrible viruses that cause AIDS and hepatitis C, were exposed to high-risk prison plasma from the United States," said Michael McCarthy, a Canadian hemophiliac who was infected by the prison blood products.

He explained that between 1980 and 1985, over 1,000 hemophiliacs in Canada were exposed to U.S. prison plasma, which was collected from convicts who were known to be at high risk for hepatitis and, by implication, AIDS.

"By 1982, your FDA decided that this prison plasma wasn't suitable for American domestic production of [a] hemophilia product. Unbelievably, the FDA allowed this high-risk plasma to be exported to Canada to be put in the veins of innocent Canadians.

"Why, if this dangerous plasma wasn't safe enough for American use, was it suitable for your neighbors?" asked McCarthy. "The result of your country's [FDA] failure to protect us from this lethal plasma is that half of the thousand Canadian hemophiliacs who were exposed to this plasma are now dead.

"Scientific and medical knowledge in the early eighties were advanced enough to understand the threat of hepatitis and AIDS in the blood system. Officials at the FDA knew that prisons were considered dangerous areas to collect plasma from," continued McCarthy.

"They knew that one infected prison donation would contaminate huge lots of plasma that would be made into hemophilia product. They knew that testing for AIDS and hepatitis was crude and subject to error. Why on earth then did they allow this unsavory practice to continue?" asked McCarthy.

FDA Could Have Prevented Tragedy

"In 1984 the FDA investigated the Arkansas prison system plasma program and revoked the operating license for the Cummins prison programs," he said. According to McCarthy, the FDA cited a litany of problems:

1. Disqualified donors were allowed to continue to donate.
2. Plasma was inadequately stored, allowing it to be contaminated.
3. Records were altered.
4. There were instances of intentional and willful disregard of standards.
5. Plasma center staff were inadequately supervised.
6. People in management positions at the center attempted to hide the fact that they were either initiating or condoning the destruction or alteration of records concerning these activities.

"The tragedy is that they could have done something to stop it. But the FDA turned a blind eye and allowed money to be made on the backs of the dying. The FDA should not have reinstated the prison's plasma license. This prison was the last place on earth that should have been allowed to collect plasma," said McCarthy.

Call for U.S. Investigation

He continued by calling for the U.S. Justice Department and FBI to investigate why Canadians were given high-risk tainted plasma collected from U.S. prisons. "Do we have to dig up our dead and rebury them on American soil to get a criminal investigation into this cloaked and deadly practice?" asked McCarthy.

Canadian Government Owned Forty Percent of Blood Product Company

Grant Hill, M.D., a member of the Canadian Parliament, explained that a special commission was established in Canada to investigate the tainted-blood issue.

According to Dr. Hill, the Krever Commission (named after Justice Horace Krever) was thorough, but some important documents were withheld from it. "I couldn't understand, as a politician, why the government was so restrictive of some of the documents that they turned over to Krever," said Hill. "It wasn't until fairly late on in the game that I found out the Connaught Laboratories, the laboratories that actually spread this blood through the [Canadian] system, was 40 percent owned by the Canadian government."

Canada Compensates Some Tainted-Blood Victims

"Last year, thousands of victims of tainted Canadian Red Cross blood staged angry protests in Ottawa, Canada's capital, forcing the government to agree to a compensation plan totaling $1.1 billion Canadian," reports Reuters News Service.

However, compensation covers only those infected with hepatitis C between 1986 and 1990, since blood wasn't screened for that disease and HIV before 1986. Yet those who were exposed before 1986 feel that the cutoff date is unfair and are suing for compensation.

Class-Action Lawsuits

Dave Harvey, the Canadian group's attorney, announced that "On the 28th of January, we filed a $1.1 billion dollar Canadian lawsuit against the federal government, blood brokers who purchased plasma from American prisons and brought it into Canada, and the pharmaceutical company in Canada who processed it into the products that these gentlemen took.

"At the moment, we are working with a team of lawyers in the United States, all of them veterans of the tainted blood litigation. And we are putting together a lawsuit to parallel what we're doing in Canada in the United States. We're focusing on the federal Food and Drug Administration, on the states of Arkansas and Louisiana, and on the companies who were operating plasma collection sites within prisons in those states," said Harvey.

He continued, "When you ask, and I hope you do, these defendants what they were doing and what their justification was, I can tell you what their defense is going to be. They are going to say, 'This was the early 80's, we didn't know, we couldn't test for AIDS, we couldn't test for hepatitis C.' Don't let them get away with it!

"Let's focus on what they did know. Hepatitis and AIDS were running in the same circles. What were those circles? People with tattoos, people engaged in homosexual sex, people using IV drugs. Where could you find a better collection of those three groups than in a prison?

"The second point, which is essential here, is that blood donor screening relies on the honesty of the donor in answering screening questions. Again, how can you place a life and death system, based on honesty, inside a prison?

"These are people who have already showed a willingness to break the law. When inside a prison, and their only source of income is donating plasma, how can you be sure that they're going to be honest about their eligibility to donate plasma? Don't let those simple defenses stand up. Ask the tough questions!" stressed Harvey.

FDA's Regulatory Role

In the United States, the FDA is the government agency in charge of overseeing the safety of the blood supply through licensure and registration of blood collection facilities, development of policies and regulations for the manufacture of blood products, and surveillance and enforcement of regulations.

Manufacturers wishing to ship blood or blood products in interstate commerce and abroad must obtain a U.S. license. To obtain a license, the centers collecting the blood and blood components must submit applications and demonstrate that they operate according to product standards. They must also show that they follow current good manufacturing practices defined in the regulations.

U.S. Blood-Shield Laws

Was the FDA negligent for licensing the sale of high-risk prison blood? That question, hopefully, will be answered by the forthcoming class-action lawsuit. However, "The Canadian hemophiliacs face an uphill battle. Half of those infected have already died and too much time may have elapsed since the alleged offences occurred to make a claim stick," reports Barrie McKenna, the Washington bureau reporter for the Globe and Mail, a major Canadian newspaper.

According to McKenna, "The hemophiliacs also face a hostile legal environment. The U.S. government has never compensated U.S. tainted-blood victims and has steadfastly refused to investigate the tragedy.

"Nearly all states, including Arkansas, have so-called blood-shield laws, which provide extensive legal protection to the people running the blood system. An official with the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA, said the government would not comment on pending litigation," reports McKenna.

For a complete version of the Canadian government's Krever Commission Report, see the following website: http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/english/krever/#Table The lead plaintiff in the lawsuits, Michael McCarthy, can be reached at (519) 274-4178; and Canadian attorney David Harvey at (416) 595-2482.

from http://www.spr.org/docs/stats.html:

Rape of Incarcerated Americans: A Preliminary Statistical Look

by Stephen Donaldson 7th edition, July 1995

Note: The extrapolations to the national incarcerated population contained herein are necessarily rough and subject to criticism. Their objective is less to provide a precise number than to alert readers to the gigantic dimensions of the problem, and for that purpose it makes little difference if they are off by a substantial margin; it's their order of magnitude that counts.

Adult Male Jails

The only known data on sexual assault in adult jails (short-term pre-trial, pre-sentencing, and misdemeanor sentence facilities) derives from a 1968 thorough survey of the Philadelphia jails by Chief Asst. District Attorney Alan J. Davis with the help of the police department, originally reported in Transaction and reprinted in Scacco's Male Rape (1982, AMS Press). Davis believed his study underreported victimization for a number of reasons.

Davis reported that 3.3% of all males who "passed through the Philadelphia jails" were sexually assaulted; of them raped (penetrated). He noted that only 3.2% of the rapes his investigators uncovered were ever mentioned in official jail records. The true big-city jail incidence rate is probably twice as large as Davis' figure, but we'll be conservative and use it for national extrapolation. The latest data for jail populations reported by the U.S. Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) indicates 435,000 adult males in 3,300 jails in mid-1994, with 8.8 million adult male "new admissions" per year. Applying the Davis percentage, we estimate that in 1994 there were 14,300 victims in the jails at any time and that 290,000 males were victimized in jail every year, 192,000 of them penetrated. Once "turned out," a victim is earmarked for constant further assaults. With a repeat rate very conservatively estimated at every other day, and counting gang-rapes as a single incident, this gives at least 7,150 sexual victimizations a day in jails.

Overall, half of all jail residents in 1994 were unconvicted; 44% were black, 39% white, 15% Hispanic (state prison residents were reported in 1991 as 46% black, 35% white, 17% Hispanic); in 1989 34% were 24 or younger and 43% between 25 and 34 (a median age of 25 was also reported); median schooling was 10 years. In 1994 only 22.5% were charged with violent offenses; 90.0% of all jail prisoners were male; average maintenance cost per day was $14,700 (nearly $30,000 in New York State). Sexual abuse victimization prior to incarceration was admitted by 4.6% of males in jail in 1989 (BJS).

Davis reported that the average age of jail rape victims was 21, of rapists 24 (all prisoners in the jails: 28); avg. weight of victims 141 lbs., of rapists 157 lbs.; avg. height of victims 5'8¼", of rapists 5'9"; 38% of victims were charged with serious felonies, compared to 68% of rapists. Interracial rapes were 56% of the total. Groth reported that 80% of his small sample of incarcerated rapes involved gang-rape. All these figures are consistent with descriptive literature and my own observation.

Victims are more likely to be young, small, non-violent, first offenders, middle-class, not "streetwise," obviously homosexual, not gang-affiliated, not part of the dominant ethnic group in that jail, without major fighting experience, and held in big-city jails. The more of these factors apply, the more likely the victimization. If most apply, rape becomes a probability.

Adult Male Prisons

The most recent and comprehensive data on prisons resulted from a 1994 survey of the entire Nebraska prison system by Cindy Struckman-Johnson (CSJ), reported in the Journal of Sex Research 33:1 (1996). Of 452 male respondents in 3 prisons, 101 or 22% indicated they had been "pressured or forced to have sexual contact against your will." Of these, 72 added written descriptions of the worst incident to their answers to the standard questions. Results were close to the estimates made by both prisoners and staff. Rates at the medium/maximum prisons were estimated to be 2-3 times the rate at the minimum security prison. Regarding frequency, a third of targets said they were victimized once only, 38% 2-5 times,14% said 11 or more times; average was 9 times; average number of different perpetrators involved was 4.4. On the most serious act involved in the worst incident, 52% of the males indicated anal sex, 8% oral sex, 14% genital contact, and 14% attempts. A single perpetrator was involved in half of the most serious cases; about 10% involved groups of six or more; average number involved in the most serious incident was 3. They were about equally divided between strangers and acquaintances. Of those who wrote out descriptions, 42% were victims of gang rape. Prison staff were reported as perpetrators in 18% of the incidents. Over three-quarters of these "most serious" incidents involved force tactics, the remainder pressure or unknown; the victim was injured in 32% of cases and a weapon was used in 27%.

The victims were 78% white (compared to 62% of Nebraska's prison population) and 18% black (33% of the population); 70% heterosexual, 26% bisexual, and 2% homosexual. All but 13% of the victims reported serious bad effects on them, including 57% with depression, 37% with flashbacks or nightmares, 36% with suicidal thoughts, and physical injuries in 16%. Half told noone about the incident; 23% told outsiders, 18% counselors/clergy, 10% medical staff, and 16% told administrative prison staff. Apparently few of these verbal reports to staff were passed up the chain of command. The main reasons given for non-reporting were fear of retaliation, staff attitudes, shame, and fear of "protective custody."

Asked about solutions, prisoners (mostly non-targets) favored keeping likely targets segregated from predators, followed by sexual visits, teaching rape avoidance, more staff, penalties for perpetrators, and single cells; staff favored more staff hiring, followed by separation of targets from predators, single cells, better communication, penalties, avoidance training. Prisoners did not list protective custody as a solution, though many staff did.

Prior to CSJ, the best systematic survey of a prison was Wayne Wooden and Jay Parker's 1979-80 survey of a medium-security California prison, reported in Men Behind Bars (1982, Plenum Press, recently reissued in paperback). They reported that 14% of all prisoners had been "pressured into having sex against their will" in that prison (prisoners who had learned as a result of rape in jail or other prisons to pair off with a "protector" as soon as they got to prison were probably not counted even though they were engaged in continuous unwanted sex). This 14% figure, which the authors also believed to be an underestimate, broke down into 9% of heterosexuals (4% of blacks, 17% of whites, and no Hispanics) and 41% of homosexuals (27% of blacks, 65% of whites, and 35% of Hispanics). Average age of heterosexual victims was 23, compared to 29 in the prison at large.

A 1974-75 study by Daniel Lockwood of six New York State prisons found that 28% of the prisoners (half the whites and a fifth of blacks and Hispanics) had been targets of sexual aggressors, though only one admitted suffering a completed rape to the interviewer. In Coxsackie, a state youth prison, Lockwood reported that 71% of the white youths had been targets (he did not report figures for other Coxsackie groups). Targets weighed an average of 15 lbs. less than aggressors. Other studies which attempted to measure the incidence of sexual assault suffer from serious methodological problems and are of little use. According to all observers, the incidence rate is highest in maximum security institutions.

As of June 1994 there were 931.076 males in (1992) 889 adult male-only and 77 mixed-gender prisons in the USA (BJS). The prison incarceration rate (combining sexes) in June 1994 was 373 per 100,000, the second highest rate in the world. Only 28% of 1992 court commitments were for violent offenses; 22% of prison residents were 24 or under in 1991.

In order to estimate victimization in prisons, I have applied the estimated CSJ rates for minimum security (9% victimization, 2.8% penetration) and maximum security (23% and 15% penetration), and the CSJ total victimization (23%) and the Wooden-Parker figure (14%, which did not include attempts) for penetration for medium security. In 1990, 37.3% of male prison residents were in maximum, 49.4% in medium, 13.2% in minimum security (BJS). Taking the same security level percentages to the 1994 prisoner levels and factoring in Wooden-Parker's adjusted rate as noted, this gives us 80,000 adult male victims a year in maximum (52,000 penetrated); 106,000 in medium (64,400 penetrated), and 11,000 in minimum (3,500 penetrated), for a total of 197,000 adult male victims in prison (119,900 penetrated).

Few survivors manage to avoid becoming perpetual sexual targets once "turned out"; most end up protected by another male or a group in return for sexual and other services, often forced into prostitution. As none of this "survival-driven" sexuality is truly consensual, all such acts can be considered unwanted. Many victims, especially in jails and juvenile institutions, are in fact raped more than once a day until released. I have therefore been very conservative in assigning a repeat rate of every third day, and assume that a victim remains in the prison system for the whole year and that a vicim of past years continues to be so, which yields an estimate of 65.000 male sexual victimizations a day in prisons.

Female Adult Prisons

The only data on sexual assault against female prisoners derives from the CSJ survey of a women's prison. She found that 7.7% of the women (3 of 39) had been "pressured or forced...to have sexual contact...against your will" in that prison. Of the 3 victims, 1 reported an attempt and 2 reported "genital touching;" 1 reported a male perpetrator and 2 reported female perpetrators. In 1992 there were 46,595 female sentenced prisoners and in 1994 48,879 females in jails. Extrapolation suggests 3,600 female victims now in prison. Of course, many more female prisoners have probably been sexually victimized prior to confinement.

Juvenile Centers

No survey of sexual assault in all-male juvenile facilities has ever been published. There is, however, a consensus that victimization rates are higher than in adult institutions, and probably dramatically so. A study of 6 coeducational training schools by Clemens Bartollas and Christopher Sieverdes (1989) reported that "almost 10% of the residents are identified as sexual victims" on site. "They are usually 14- or 15-year-olds." It is in these "gladiator schools" that impressionable boys learn to think of rape as simply the way of life behind bars, the way to "prove your manhood" or "lose it."

In 1990 there were 3,300 boy juveniles (under 18) in adult prisons and 10,800 boy admissions (applying 93% male percentage from 1987); 6,100 boys in adult jails (1994, using 90% male) and 53,000 boy admissions (1991). In 1989 there were 1,076 public juvenile facilities housing in 1991 51,282 boys (88% of the total were male); about 23,600 of these kids were in 199 long-term state juvenile facilities, which saw nearly 50,000 annual admissions. Of these "juvenile prison" residents, 27% were held for a violent offense. Their average age was 15.7. Another 11,500 kids were in long-term local juvenile centers, with 44,500 annual admissions. Short-term centers held 16,000 juveniles, with 433,600 admissions a year. Average stay for juveniles in 1978 was 40 days for juvenile facilities, 15 days for adult facilities. In addition, 25,800 boys were held in privately-operated juvenile detention homes (1991).

I would estimate from these bases in the area of 15,000 annual rapes of boys in adult institutions and at least 30,000 in juvenile centers for a total of 45,000 boys a year. A stab at a daily rate would be 3,000 in adult facilities and 8,000 in juvenile centers for a total of 11,000 boys a day.

Summation

Adding all these figures together, we get a conservative estimate of 530,000 male victims behind bars annually, incl. 242,000 penetrated (plus around 5,000 female victims), and over 83,000 a day. This estimate for incarcerated male victims may be compared with a BJS estimate of 160,000 annual rapes of unincarcerated persons of both sexes, and 152,000 attempts; and 173,000 other sexual assaults in 1993, based on household interviewing and no doubt also an underestimate.

from Stop Prisoner Rape, 1996-Jul-23, from http://www.igc.org/spr/donny/spr-obit.html:

Stephen Donaldson, 49 -- Led Reform Movement Against Jailhouse Rape

Stephen Donaldson, president of Stop Prisoner Rape, Inc., an organization dedicated to ending the rape of prisoners and assisting survivors of jailhouse rape, died on Thursday, July 18 in New York City, where he lived. He would have been 50 on July 27. The cause of death was a indeterminate virulent infection complicated by an AIDS-defining condition. Mr. Donaldson was infected with HIV as a result of having been raped in prison.

Born Robert A. Martin, Jr., in Norfolk, Virginia, he started using the name Stephen Donaldson in the late 1960's, originally as a pseudonym for his involvement in the gay liberation movement. Under both identities, Mr. Donaldson had numerous "firsts" to his name: he was the founder in 1966 of the world's first gay student organizations (at Columbia University), and was the first sailor to publicly fight discharge from the U.S. Navy for "homosexual behavior." His defenders included New York State Representatives Ed Koch and Bella Abzug. In 1977, he became the first U.S. Navy veteran to have a homosexual discharge upgraded to fully Honorable Discharge under President Jimmy Carter.

But it was another first -- a brutal episode in a Washington, D.C. jail -- that catapulted Donaldson to national prominence in 1973, as the first survivor of jailhouse rape to discuss the issue publicly. He called a press conference to describe his experience after being jailed for trespass at the White House during a peaceful Quaker protest against the bombing of Cambodia. His jailhouse experience was at first relatively innocuous until the warden of the jail, suspecting that Donaldson, a former Associated Press reporter, might be writing an expose of brutal prison conditions. The warden transferred him to a cellblock with violent offenders, where he was gang-raped approximately 60 times over a two-day period. Upon being released, he underwent rectal surgery at a Veteran's Administration hospital. He later testified about his experience at a Washington, D.C. city council hearing. The Washington Star-News, calling for the resignation of the head of the D.C. jail, called Mr. Donaldson "a man of uncommon understanding."

Mr. Donaldson went on to become a prominent spokesman on the issue of prison rape. In 1984 he became Eastern regional director for Stop Prisoner Rape (then called "People Organized to Stop Rape of Imprisoned Persons") and was named president of the organization in 1988, a position he held at the time of his death.

As director of SPR, Mr. Donaldson wrote op-eds that appeared in The New York Times and USA Today Magazine and was the subject of numerous interviews and news articles, including profiles in The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe and Penthouse magazine. Most recently, Mr. Donaldson was featured in a widely publicized segment on prison rape on CBS' "Sixty Minutes."

His advocacy work included authorship of an influential U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief in Farmer v. Brennan outlining the current state of knowledge on prisoner rape. While he lectured widely on this issue, Mr. Donaldson continued his own education. In 1984 he underwent training at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York City as a male rape crisis counselor. He subsequently served as co-chair of the Men's Counselors Group of the Center and organized and chaired the Committee of Male Survivors of Rape as part of New York City's Task Force Against Sexual Assault.

Under Mr. Donaldson's leadership, SPR established a World Wide Web site www.spr.org with information about the organization, including descriptions of his own and others' experiences of prison rape. In April 1996, concerned that his website might be censored under the recently enacted Communications Decency Act, Mr. Donaldson testified as a plaintiff in ACLU v. Reno, the landmark challenge to the CDA. Mr. Donaldson told a three-judge panel in Federal District Court in Philadelphia that the information he provided included "patently offensive" descriptions of prison sexual victimization. If the law were upheld, he told the judges, he would face the threat of jail for refusing to remove what he considered valuable and possibly life-saving information from the Internet. On June 26 of this year the judges ruled in favor of Mr. Donaldson and 19 other plaintiffs, granting a motion for a preliminary injunction against the law. The case is expected to reach the Supreme Court in the October 1996 term.

Mr. Donaldson earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Columbia University. He held a presidential appointment as University Seminar Associate at Columbia University, where he lectured on prisoner sexuality. He also lectured at the New York University Law School and Fordham University Law School on prisoner rape, and was a junior author (with Cindy Struckman-Johnson) of "Prison Sexual Coercion," reporting results of a survey of the Nebraska prison system.

Other "firsts" include being the first native-born American ordained in the orthodox (Theravada) Buddhist Order on American Soil , and the first ethnically non-Indian American to be initiated into the Veerashaiva sect of Shaivite Hinduism in Bangalore, India in 1988.

As Donny the Punk, he was also a respected writer and personality in the punk rock and anti-racist skinhead movements.

Mr. Donaldson requested that no funeral services be held. A Quaker memorial meeting will be scheduled after one month. Donations in lieu of flowers may be made to Stop Prisoner Rape, P.O. Box 286, Village Station, New York, NY 10014. More information about Stop Prisoner Rape is available on the World Wide Web at .

Mr. Donaldson is survived by his stepmother, Brigitte, by three brothers, Paul, Bruce and Rolf and by his lifetime companion Judith Jones and his lover Tony Santiago.

from the Evening/Electronic Telegraph 1999-Feb-9, by Susannah Herbert in Paris, from http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac=000271261842766&rtmo=Q3eLekQR&atmo=999999d9&P4_FOLLOW_ON=/99/2/9/wfra09.html&pg=/et/99/2/9/wfra09.html:

Fabius on trial over AIDS deaths

LAURENT FABIUS, the former prime minister of France, and two of his cabinet colleagues will be tried today for manslaughter, 14 years after the state-sanctioned distribution of contaminated blood left about 4,000 people infected with the Aids virus.

More than 1,000 of the victims are now dead, including five of the seven people behind the charges. The trial will investigate claims that the French political and official classes were part of a criminal conspiracy to sacrifice haemophiliacs and other blood transfusion patients to the interests of the French pharmaceutical industry.

It will also establish whether politicians can be held responsible for the actions of their subordinates, which the French establishment fears could open the way to the systematic prosecution of public figures.

Fabius, his health minister Edmond Hervé and his social affairs minister Georgina Dufoix face fines of up to 500,000 francs (£54,000) and five years in prison if convicted. They are accused of delaying the introduction of screening of donated blood for several months in 1985 "for commercial reasons". All three deny the charges.

Their accusers say that approval of the American-developed Abbott test for the presence of HIV in blood - available from March 1985 - was withheld until August of that year to allow French scientists from the Pasteur Institute to develop a rival test.

Hervé and Dufoix are also accused of delaying the heat treatment of blood products given to haemophiliacs and of authorising the distribution of untreated blood products until October 1985 in order to use up existing stocks.

French medical experts knew from November 1984 that the state-approved blood products were tainted with HIV and that safe - though more expensive - products were available. Hervé is further charged with negligence in failing to stop the collection of blood from France's prison population, known at the time to include a high proportion of high-risk HIV carriers such as drug users and homosexuals.

Although public opinion is overwhelmingly against the politicians, the trial is a first for the Court of Justice of the Republic, an institution created in 1993 simply to try politicians for alleged offences committed while in office. The judges include six MPs and six senators, prompting fears that the French political class may acquit its peers out of solidarity.

The untried court has been heavily criticised for procedural anomalies: survivors of the contaminated blood scandal and their lawyers are not allowed to participate in the case as civil parties but will appear only as witnesses.

Stranger still, many of the officials most closely involved in decisions over blood screening have announced that they will not attend the trial. The officials - including advisers to all three politicians - are to appear shortly as defendants in a separate but related case and, under French law, they cannot be forced to incriminate themselves in the witness box.

Fabius, who has temporarily stepped down as speaker of the National Assembly to fight the case, has claimed to be a victim. Some of his supporters have compared the trial to the Dreyfus case, alleging that the former premier, a Jew, is a victim of anti-semitism.

Fabius himself has expressed "deep compassion" for the victims of the tainted blood scandal, but has also insisted that he acted correctly at all times, even claiming to have saved "hundreds of lives" because of his rapid response to the crisis.

He has stressed that little was known of HIV at the time, that he was not fully informed of the urgency of the public health threat and that France was one of the first countries to test blood stocks.

from Reuters via the New York Times, 2001-Mar-8:

AIDS Drugs Land in South Africa Amid Patent Dispute

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (Reuters) - AIDS drugs donated by U.S. drug giant Pfizer Inc. arrived in South Africa Thursday as the government and pharmaceutical industry faced off over the right of the world's poor to cheap drugs.

The 95,000 bottles of Pfizer's anti-AIDS drug Diflucan are to be distributed to public hospitals and clinics overburdened by an AIDS epidemic that affects 4.2 million South Africans out of a total population of about 43.4 million.

The South African government and the drug industry are locked in a legal dispute over whether developing countries can import generic versions of patented drugs.

A court action brought by the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of South Africa (PMA), representing 39 leading drug firms, is defending cherished patent rights. The action was postponed Tuesday until April to allow testimony on the misery caused by the killer disease.

Aid groups have criticized the PMA action as putting profits before lives and accused the drug industry of reaping excessive profits from abusing their monopolies on patents while more than 25 million Africans live with HIV-AIDS.

The drug industry has argued that the South African government has failed to take up offers of discounted AIDS drugs under U.N. programs.

Merck and Co. became the latest industry representative to offer cheaper drugs when it announced Wednesday it was slashing the price of two key AIDS drugs, Crixivan and Stocrin, in developing countries.

South Africa gave that offer a guarded welcome Thursday.

``There has been no communication of this matter from Merck to my office. ... Even if a satisfactory agreement could be concluded with Merck or any other company, this would not erase the need for this country to ensure access to affordable medicines,'' said Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.

``We cannot rely forever on the begging bowl, aid programs and charitable gestures,'' she said.

Tshabalala-Msimang also confirmed that Indian generic drug-maker Cipla had approached the South African patents office to seek licenses to import eight generic AIDS drugs, including Merck's Crixivan and Stocrin.

Landmark Deal

Pfizer and South Africa signed an unprecedented agreement last December for the free distribution of Diflucan in the public health sector for an initial two years.

The deal followed pressure from AIDS rights campaigners in South Africa and abroad for Pfizer to make one of its best- selling drugs available to the world's poor.

``We remain committed to the program's success and to bringing Diflucan to HIV-AIDS patients with life-threatening infections who need the medicine but cannot afford it,'' said Pfizer spokesman Konji Sebato.

The deal represents the first significant decision by South Africa to take up an offer by a major drug firm on discounted AIDS drugs. Pfizer is not part of the PMA legal action.

President Thabo Mbeki has caused international outrage by questioning the link between HIV and AIDS and by denying the use of antiretroviral drugs such as AZT on cost and safety grounds.

Diflucan, which treats AIDS-related fungal infections of the brain and throat, is already sold in the South African private sector in capsule form.

Health officials said last month they aimed to start distributing Diflucan by early April.

``We will be monitoring the process carefully to ensure that there are no delays or disappointments,'' said Sibani Mngadi, spokesman for the Ministry of Health.

from Reuters via the New York Times, 2001-Mar-4:

Patients Versus Profits in South African Court Case

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The global drug industry goes to battle in a South African court Monday to defend billion-dollar patent rights against a government demanding cheaper medicines to fight a runaway AIDS plague.

The action filed by 39 of the world's leading firms led by Britain's GlaxoSmithKline is seen as a landmark in the ability of the developing world to import or make generic versions of medicines developed and patented by the drug firms.

For aid and charity organizations, the case is a fundamental test of whether powerful pharmaceutical firms will put profits ahead of lives as the developing world struggles to deal with an AIDS catastrophe and rising poverty.

``This case has got much wider implications than dealing with a staggeringly large public health crisis. It's about the pharmaceutical companies belligerently and aggressively defending their monopolies around the world,'' said Belinda Coote, regional director of London-based charity Oxfam.

Seven days of high court hearings in the capital Pretoria will determine whether South Africa can enforce legislation that would enable its health minister to consider shopping around for the cheapest drugs available, particularly antiretroviral drugs used to treat HIV-AIDS.

Pretoria insists its Medicines and Related Substances Control Amendment Act is fundamental to its constitutional duty to provide health care to millions marginalized under apartheid.

With more than four million South Africans already living with HIV-AIDS, observers are waiting to see if Pretoria declares the extent of the epidemic a national emergency, which would allow them to legally import massive quantities of generics.

Groups To Protest

Drug firms insist that the powers given to the minister under the act are too broad and arbitrary.

They also warn that imports of generic drugs run counter to international trade agreements and accuse Pretoria of shunning standard tender systems and offers of reduced prices from the firms under a United Nations program.

``The law as it is worded is wide, arbitrary and unclear in a number of its provisions. It allows unfettered discretion on the part of the minister on whether patent acts offer protection,'' said a spokeswoman for the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of South Africa, which will lead the case on behalf of the drug firms.

AIDS campaign groups are set to protest outside the court to draw attention to what they say is abuse by the drug firms whom they charge with abusing their patents and failing to deliver on promises of cheaper drugs.

``This case is one of the most important things that will happen in Africa, Asia and Latin America...Governments have been intimidated by the drug companies, not only in South Africa but in the U.S. and Europe,'' said Zackie Achmat of the Treatment Action Campaign which has been at forefront of attempts to bring AIDS generics into South Africa.

The TAC has imported generic versions of Pfizer's fluconazole drug which is used to treat opportunistic diseases associated with HIV-AIDS at greatly reduced cost.

``They have abused their patent,'' said Achmat.

from Reuters via the New York Times, 2001-Mar-6:

South African AIDS Drug Case Postponed Until April

PRETORIA, March 6 (Reuters) - A court action brought by the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies to stop South Africa importing cheaper AIDS drugs was postponed on Tuesday to allow testimony on the misery caused by the killer disease.

The delay until April 18 was ordered to enable the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of South Africato prepare a response to the unexpected testimony offered by the country's leading AIDS pressure group, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC).

The TAC will give evidence intended to show that drug companies abuse their patents in the way they price medicines in different markets. TAC testimony is also expected to graphically show the misery caused by HIV-AIDS in the developing world.

``For the first time, the pharmaceutical industry will have to justify to South Africa and the world why their drug prices are so high and why their patents should be so aggressively protected when millions of people are dying and cheaper drugs exist,'' said TAC chairman Zackie Achmat, who is himself infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS.

TAC member Mark Heywood said the decision to hear evidence about the disease had made the case broader than just a dispute about international patent law.

``The judge is now saying it's an issue of public health,'' he said. ``The judge and the world are convinced this is a moral argument.''

Some 4.2 million South Africans are infected with HIV and an estimated seven million are expected to die from the disease within a decade.

AIDS ACTIVISTS ARRESTED

The emotional court case drew thousands of protesters into the streets of Pretoria on Monday to demand that drug companies put lives ahead of profits.

Twenty AIDS activists were arrested on Tuesday after they forced their way onto the grounds of the PMA's offices north of Johannesburg.

Police Superintendent Eugene Opperman said the activists forced open a security gate after the association refused to accept a memorandum demanding that it withdraw from the case. The activists were charged with trespassing.

South Africa has launched a handful of pilot schemes to give HIV drugs to pregnant women and rape victims, but the state does not routinely provide the expensive ``triple therapy'' drug cocktail to people infected with HIV.

Using drugs from the major pharmaceutical firms, the therapy currently costs about $5,000 a year, more than most South African families earn. AIDS activists say the drugs could be bought from alternative sources for as little as a dollar a day.

If the South African government wins the legal case it could import equivalent generic drugs from India or Brazil, which have become producers and exporters of generics despite strong opposition from the drug companies.

The PMA's case seeks to strike down the Medicines and Related Substances Control Act, which it argues infringes intellectual property rights, breaks international trade agreements and contravenes the constitutional protection of property rights by allowing the import and manufacture of AIDS drugs and other medicines.

The TAC plans to describe to the court the desperate lives of a dozen poor South Africans who cannot afford the treatment, like the vast majority of AIDS sufferers in the developing world with no access to antiretroviral drugs.

Justify Pricing Policies

Many AIDS patients in Africa die in abject poverty, often ostracised by communities in which AIDS still carries deep stigma.

Relief and charity organisations, which have accused the major drug firms of putting profits before lives at a time when the developing world is racked by an AIDS epidemic, welcomed the judge's decision.

``This is the first time that the industry will have to justify their pricing policies and justify their patents process,'' said Matt Grainger, spokesman for London-based charity Oxfam.

The PMA said the postponement by Judge Bernard Ngoepe was disruptive but did not change its contention that Pretoria would be breaking the law if it imported or manufactured generics.

``The decision is disruptive as we were on the second day of our case,'' said PMA head Mirryena Deeb.

from the Associated Press via the New York Times, 2001-Mar-7:

WHO Retracts AIDS Lawsuit Statement

GENEVA (AP) -- The United Nations health body on Wednesday retracted a statement backing the South African government in a court battle with pharmaceutical companies.

The World Health Organization said there had been a ``mistake'' when a spokesman said Tuesday that the agency believed South Africa's law did not break international rules. ``The WHO reiterates that it has a general policy not to take position in litigation in member states,'' it said.

``What we meant to say was that we had provided technical assistance to South Africa on issues that were being addressed in this court case.''

A group representing many of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies has filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn a law that would allow the South African government to import cheap generic medications in an emergency.

Drug companies argue that the Medicines Control Act -- signed into law in 1997 but never put into force because of the court challenge -- undermines their patents on medications.

The law could affect any pharmaceutical, but it is primarily aimed at providing cheaper sources of AIDS drugs.

More than 25 million of the 36 million people infected with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa. In South Africa, a nation of 45 million, about 10 percent of people are HIV positive -- and few can afford treatment.

from New Jersey Medicine (the journal of the Medical Society of New Jersey) 1996-Aug (V93N8), p.55-56, from The Dogwood Center, from http://www.safeworks.org/Dogwood/needle.html:

Do you support a government-sanctioned needle exchange program?

Dawn Day

[To the best of my knowledge, when this article was originally published, it was the first time, in a medical journal, that the parallel was drawn between the denial of access to sterile needles and the denial of treatment for syphilis in the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.]

A major cause of the spread of HIV/AIDS is dirty needles. Making it possible for injecting drug users to get access to sterile needles would save thousands of lives and uncountable human misery. A happy, additional consequence would be that hundreds of millions of dollars in medical treatment costs would also be avoided.

So why do we in New Jersey make it difficult or impossible for persons who inject drugs to get sterile needles? Some people, including Governor Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, say they are concerned about sending a double message. But a double message is unavoidable. When a person is suffering from an overdose, we rush that person to a hospital and give them the best medical care we can. We do not say to the drug user's family and friends, "Sorry, we cannot give your family member life-saving medical care because it would send the wrong message."

Getting sterile needles to persons who inject drugs is about medical care and saving lives. In fact it is about sending the message that human life is valuable. In our society, medical interventions go way beyond pills, bandages, and surgery. In the name of public health we remove asbestos, cover over lead-based paint, and purify water. Given the medical consensus that has emerged on the effectiveness of sterile needles as a way of avoiding the spread of drug-related HIV/AIDS, it is difficult to see the denial of access to sterile needles as anything other than the denial of access to a lifesaving medical intervention.

In the history of modern medicine in the United States, I am aware of only one other instance where a life-saving medical intervention involving a deadly infectious disease was deliberately denied to a group of people. That instance is the now infamous case of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. The originators of the "experiment" justified their activity by saying they wanted to study the course of untreated syphilis. The unfortunate victims of this study were 400 black men in Tuskegee County, Alabama, who were denied medical treatment for their syphilis from 1932 when the study began until they died or, if they lived, until 1972, when the "experiment" was exposed and stopped.

In the age of AIDS, people who advocate the denial of access to sterile needles should give careful thought to what they are saying and the company they are keeping.

The nature of the argument used to deny federal funding for needle-exchange programs is also worth exploring. According to federal law, needle exchanges and other programs that would make sterile needles available to injecting drug users cannot be financed by federal dollars until it has been shown that such programs do not encourage the use of illegal drugs.

Since 1991, six different US government-funded reports have concluded that needle-exchange programs do not increase drug use. In the face of this overwhelming evidence, the federal government still refuses to release funds for sterile needle programs. Ignoring their scientific advisors, key officials assert that not all the evidence is in. Examining this situation, it is hard to escape the unpleasant conclusion that some misguided political consideration and not scientific evidence is governing federal decision making in this life-and-death situation.

Having informed the reader of the massive scientific evidence showing that the distribution of sterile needles does not increase drug use, my presentation as a social scientist is at an end. But as a religious person, I must raise a question about the morality behind the criteria being applied.

How can it be ethical to deny life-saving medical care to one person in an attempt to influence the behavior of another? Would we ever consider denying medical treatment to John, an alcoholic, until we could prove that John's treatment for kidney disease will not cause someone else to become an alcoholic? Would we ever consider denying medical care to Mary, a smoker, until we could prove that Mary's treatment for lung cancer will not cause someone else to start smoking?

The fact that drug use is illegal cannot be used to justify this strange federal criteria. Under criminal law, we punish people for the crimes they themselves have committed sometime in the past. We do not punish people for crimes someone else might commit sometime in the future.

Clean needle programs save lives. We must make it possible for such programs to exist. The people of America favor clean needle programs. A recent national survey funded by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that two-thirds of Americans favor needle exchange as a means of slowing the spread of HIV/AIDS.

The Medical Society of New Jersey and the many other medical professional organizations that have passed resolutions in favor of clean needle programs need to continue to speak out forcefully. Together we can make the thin strata of political leaders who oppose needle exchange realize that they are out of step both with the common sense of the American people and the scientific research of the US and international medical communities.

REFERENCES Jones J. H. Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. New York: The Free Press. 263pp. 1981.

National Commission on AIDS. The Twin Epidemics of Substance Use and HIV. Washington, DC. 1991.

General Accounting Office. Needle Exchange Programs: Research Suggests Promise as an AIDS Prevention Strategy. Report Number GAO/HRD-93-60. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. 1993.

University of California. Lurie P, Reingold AL, Bowser B, et al. The Public Health Impact of Needle Exchange Programs in the United States and Abroad. University of California, San Francisco. Summary, Vol I and II. Available from the National AIDS Clearinghouse, PO Box 6003, Rockville, MD 20848-6003; phone 800-458-5231. 1993.

Centers for Disease Control. Satcher D. Note to Jo Ivey Boufford. Dec. 10,1993. The Clinton Administration's Internval Reviews of Research on Needle Exchange Programs. Available from the Drug Policy Foundation, 4455 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite B-500, Washington, DC 20008. phone 202-537-5005. 1993.

National Research Council/Institute of Medicine. Normand J, Vhahov D, Moses LE. Preventing HIV Transmission: the Role of Sterile Needles and Bleach. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. 1995.

Office of Technology Assessment of the US Congress. The Effectiveness of AIDS Prevention Efforts. PB96107529. Springfield, VA: National Technical Information Service. phone 703-487-4650. 1995.

Drug Policy Foundation. Day D. Health Emergency: The Spread of Drug-Related AIDS Among African Americans and Latinos. Washington, DC. 1995.

[Originally published under the title "Do you support a government-sanctioned needle exchange program?" in New Jersey Medicine, Aug. 1996, Vol. 93, No. 8, pp. 55-59. New Jersey Medicine is the journal of the Medical Society of New Jersey. Later published under the title "Clean needle programs are needed," the Home News and Tribune, New Brunswick, NJ, Sept. 3, 1996, p. A7.]

excerpt from Give them their pills, the fuddled masses (from the Economist 1998-May-2):

[...]

Skirmishes, however, are a different matter, especially for a man who was the American army's most decorated combat officer. Last week he was denounced by black members of Congress; indeed, he was allegedly called ``a skunk'' by Eleanor Holmes Norton, the delegate to Congress from Washington, DC. His offence was to convince Mr Clinton not to allocate federal money to needle-exchange programmes, despite the recommendations of Donna Shalala, the health and human services secretary, and David Satcher, the new surgeon-general, and despite academically respectable studies showing that the provision of free, and so clean, syringes to drug addicts saves some 30 people a day from contracting HIV. General McCaffrey's argument, made all the more persuasive by the approach of this year's congressional elections, was that aiding the programmes would send ``the wrong message'' about the administration's drugs policy.

So what is the right message? This week the general defended himself with an address to the American Bar Association. The outcome of the needle-exchange quarrel is ``a democratic solution of tremendous cunning'' (others would call a solution that encourages such programmes but refuses to finance them a fudge). A judicial system that holds 1.7m Americans in prison at any one time, half of them for drug-related offences, does indeed (said the general) bear disproportionately on blacks. It would certainly be better to make greater use of supervised drug-treatment programmes rather than long prison stretches. And it is wrong that a trafficker of just five grams of crack cocaine (usually caricatured as a black street hustler) should face a mandatory minimum prison sentence of five years while the threshold quantity of powder cocaine (the form preferred by rich whites) for such a sentence is 500 grams. As to the medical use of marijuana, ``Come on!'' is the general's first reaction, but he is prepared to change his mind if the drug that Mr Clinton failed to inhale in his student days can eventually ``pass medical and scientific scrutiny''.

[...]

from the Evening/Electronic Telegraph 1999-Feb-1, by Charles Clover and Roger Highfield:

Aids started by humans eating chimps

SCIENTISTS have discovered that HIV-1, the virus which causes Aids in humans, has its origin in an endangered sub-species of chimpanzee found in the central African rainforest.

The discovery that the Central chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes troglodytes, is a natural reservoir of HIV-1 solves a 20-year-old puzzle over the beginnings of the AIDS pandemic which now afflicts 30 million people.

The study shows that the transmission of Aids from apes to humans is linked to the destruction of the rainforest by logging firms and the "bushmeat" trade, the hunting of chimpanzees for human consumption, which has grown greatly as logging roads have been driven into remote jungle.

The study's authors hope that the discovery will renew international conservation efforts to save the species, as it holds the key to discovering why the HIV virus causes disease in humans but not in chimpanzees. The discovery of the origin of HIV-1 resulted from a genetic genealogy exercise conducted by Dr Beatrice Hahn, of the University of Alabama, who presented the study at a conference in Chicago last night, and Prof Paul Sharp, at Nottingham University.

They traced the Aids family tree by comparing genetic codes of the various types of virus and their equivalents in apes and compared the genetic make up of the chimps the ape viruses infect.

Dr Feng Gao, of Alabama University, another of the paper's authors, said: "We have long suspected a virus from African primates to be the cause of human Aids, but which animal species was responsible was unknown."

Viruses related to HIV-1 had previously been found in chimpanzees and were described as SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus) but only three infected animals were identified and one harboured a virus so different from HIV-1 that scientists questioned a direct relationship to the human virus.

Now it is realised that the form of SIV depended on the chimpanzee sub-species it infected, a find that has allowed scientists to link HIV-1 with only one subspecies of chimp, according to a forthcoming edition of the journal Nature. The advance came when the team identified another infected chimpanzee, used for space research by the US Air Force, and analysed all four viruses and the animals from which they were derived.

Three of the four SIV strains came from chimpanzees that belonged to the sub-species Pan troglodytes troglodytes, native to Cameroon, Gabon, the People's Republic of Congo and Equatorial Guinea. The fourth strain, genetically distinct from the other three, came from a different East African sub-species, which was why it did not fit the picture of HIV-1's origins.

The discovery that all known strains of HIV-1 were only related to SIV strains infecting Pan troglodytes troglodytes was supported by the realisation that the natural habitat of this chimpanzee sub-species overlaps precisely with the region of west-central Africa where HIV-1 was first recognised.

Chimpanzees are identical to humans in more than 98 per cent of their genome, or hereditary material, yet they appear to be resistant to the damaging effects of the Aids virus on their immune system. By studying the biological reasons for this difference, scientists may be able to find better ways of treating Aids, said Prof Sharp.

Though the origin of Aids has now been discovered, the reason why the epidemic arose in the mid-20th century, and not before, remains a matter of speculation. Dr Hahn believes that HIV-1 was introduced into the human population through exposure to blood while hunting and butchering the animals and may have occurred throughout history. The breakdown of traditional lifestyles, increasing urbanisation, civil unrest and sexual promiscuity after the Second World War are likely to have speeded up the transmission of the virus and triggered the pandemic.

Dr Hahn said the transmission of SIV could still be going on as a result of the bushmeat trade to loggers. He added: "Subsistence hunting has always been part of west-central African culture, but logging activities have provided unprecedented access to remote forest regions and have led to the commercialised killing of thousands of chimpanzees, gorillas and monkeys. It took us 20 years to find where HIV-1 came from, only to realise that the very species that harbours it is at the brink of extinction. We cannot afford to lose these animals, either from a conservation or a medical investigative standpoint." The annual chimpanzee kill is estimated in thousands, unsustainable as the population is put at 80,000.

A report by the Rainforest Foundation, financed by the rock star Sting, disclosed that the European Union had funded a road through chimpanzee territory in Cameroon without an environmental assessment. The road, which Clare Short, International Development Secretary, criticised in opposition, and the World Bank refused to fund on environmental grounds, led to logging in the Dja reserve, a world heritage site, and a rise in hunting. French, German and Italian loggers are reported to be in the area.

Simon Counsell, of the foundation, said: "These findings about HIV bring added urgency to efforts to protect the central African forests and wildlife. Logging must be controlled."

from Reuters via the Boston Globe, 2000-Feb-1:

Computer traces AIDS origin to 1930

SAN FRANCISCO -- Researchers using one of the most powerful computers in the world said Tuesday they had traced the origin of the AIDS virus, dating it to around 1930.

Bette Korber and colleagues at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico used a computer model to calculate the mutations found in the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and estimate when it would have jumped from chimpanzees to humans.

"We estimated the time of origin of the HIV-1 main group to be near 1930," they said in a written statement at the 7th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections.

This fits in with previous estimates.

"It is important to establish the onset of the AIDS epidemic in order to better understand the possible routes and circumstances of zoonotic (animal-to-human) transmission, as well as how rapidly HIV-1 evolves in human populations," Korber's group said.

Scientists believe HIV, which has infected nearly 40 million people worldwide, began after an ape and monkey version known as simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) jumped from chimpanzees to human beings in western central Africa.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says it probably occurred during the slaughter of chimpanzees as early as the 1930s.

VIRUS SPREAD FROM BLOOD

People in some parts of Africa often hunt and kill chimpanzees, and a virus can easily spread from blood during butchering.

There is a second strain of HIV that infects people, known as HIV-2. It is believed to have started out in a monkey known as a sooty mangabey.

Last year Dr. Beatrice Hahn of the University of Alabama at Birmingham told the same meeting that her team had confirmed this chimp-to-human jump by analyzing a virus that infected a lab chimp named Marilyn after she died at the age of 26.

The oldest specimen of HIV was found in blood collected in 1959 from an adult Bantu man in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Much attention was given this year to a book written by British journalist Edward Hooper, who suggests that batches of polio vaccine may been made from chimp kidneys and tainted with SIV.

It was tested in the United States and given orally to hundreds of thousands of children during trials in the then Belgian Congo, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, during the 1950s.

Scientists at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia who worked on the vaccine deny they used chimpanzee kidneys to produce the vaccine.

from The Boston Globe:

AIDS in the Hispanic community
While only a small percentage of the MA population is made up of Hispanic residents... 1997 Racial Breakdown:		... a large percentage of reported AIDS cases in the state are those of Hispanic patients. 1999 Reported AIDS cases:
SOURCE: Mass. Institute for Social and Economic Research

What follows is coverage of the artificial genesis hypothesis, which is almost certainly false, with other material which is useful, not speculative, and relevant to my own hypothesis (explained above). If one considers the possibility that the facilities discussed below did not invent, but only discovered the AIDS virus, a more plausible - if still likely untrue - theory emerges.

excerpt from Michael Morrissey's "Was There an AIDS Contract?":

[...]

This was the first discussion of the origins question I had heard or read in the media in years, outside of the Rote Fahne, and here it was on CNN! I was astounded. This theory was considerably less explosive than Segal's, but the essential implication was not that different: AIDS was created by human error. Someone was responsible. Maybe not the US government, but someone.

A couple of weeks later there was another interesting news item. MacNeil-Lehrer reported on 3/25/92 that nearly 50% of the 210,000 documented AIDS cases in the US were blacks, Hispanic, native, Americans or Asians--blacks forming 31% of the new cases, although they are only 12% of the population. Blacks and minorities, then,are clearly getting hit disproportionately hard by AIDS, just as gays, intravenous drug users and prostitutes are.

These figures referred only to the US. Worldwide, given the proliferation of the disease in Africa and the rest of the Third World, the disproportion of non-whites getting the disease is much greater. Surveys reported at the 4th International Conference on AIDS in Africa, held in Marseilles on Oct. 18-20, 1989, gave the percentage of HIV infections ranging from 10% to 60%, depending on the population tested. The percentage for the US as a whole is only 0.4% (about 1 million in a population of 250 million).

The effect of the disease, in other words, regardless of the causes, is genocidal. The non-white populations of Africa, India and Asia are being decimated while the predominately white populations of Europe and the US are escaping relatively unscathed. The same is true of the people living under Third World conditions within the US, who are mostly non-white. Steven Thomas, a public health researcher at the University of Maryland who researched 1000 blacks in five cities, said on the MacNeil-Lehrer program:

"Consistently, people wanted to know, was it man-made, was it a form of genocide? Are the numbers from the government true? We now have sufficient data to demonstrate that mistrust of government reports on AIDS is real, and that the belief that AIDS is a form of genocide is real."

Robert MacNeil commented:

"Thomas says that mistrust of government springs in part from blacks' lasting memories of incidents like the Tuskegee syphilis study (Condemned to Die for Science) undertaken by the federal government in 1932. 400 Alabama black who had syphilis were studied and later deprived of penicillin, decades after it became the standard treatment."

And Thomas continued:

"It is part of the subconscious history that all black people carry, in terms of their mistrust of those who come into their communities offering help, because that's how the Tuskegee study began, with an effort to improve health care delivery to blacks in the deep rural south."

Again, I was astounded. I hadn't heard of this. Nobody was talking about Segal, but apparently millions of black Americans suspected that AIDS was a form of genocide! This went a lot further than Segal had gone.

The year that Robert MacNeil had mentioned, 1932, the year of the Tuskegee syphilis study, struck me, because that was also the year of the Third International Conference of Eugenics, which I had recently read about. It's sponsors included some famous names: Mrs. H. B. Dupont, Col. William Draper (an investment banker associated with the Harriman interests), Mrs. Averell Harriman (mother of Democratic Party leader Averell Harriman), Dr. J. Harvey Kellog (of Kellog's cereals), Major Leonard Darwin (son ofCharles Darwin), Mrs. John T. Pratt and Mrs. Walter Jennings (both of Standard Oil), Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland H. Dodge (of Phelps-Dodge mining interests). Henry Fairchild Osborn, a nephew of J. P. Morgan and vice-president of the conference, opened it by saying:

"I have reached the opinion that over-population and underemployment may be regarded as twin sisters. From this point of view I even find that the United States [then with a population of 112 million] is overpopulated at the present....In nature the less fitted individuals would gradually disappear, but in civilization we are keeping them in the community in the hopes that in brighter days they may find employment. This is only another instance of humane civilization going directly against the order of nature and encouraging the survival of the unfittest."

This seems less than innocuous considering that the conference unanimously elected Dr. Ernst Rudin as President of the International Federation of Eugenics Organizations. Rudin became the architect of Hitler's "racial hygiene" policies and trained the medical personnel who conducted the Nazis' first extermination program, killing 40,000 mental patients. The Nazi "eugenics" (i.e. racist) policies were supported until the late 1930's by the Eugenics Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, which had been founded and endowed by the Harriman family in 1910. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, today a major center of molecular biological research (headed by James Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA), had itself been founded six years earlier under the name "Station for Experimental Evolution" by similarly elite financial interests: the J. P. Morgan, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Carnegie families.

Obviously, the power elite has been interested in eugenics, now known as genetic engineering, for a long time.

[...]

from http://www.trufax.org/research/horodet.html:

Chapter by Chapter Summary of "Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola--Nature, Accident or Intentional?" (Tetrahedron Press, 1996; 592 pp.; hardcover, $29.95; E-mail orders: Tetra@Tetrahedron.org)

Chapter 1. "The World Health Organization Theory" of AIDS--

During the past decade, at least six internationally known authorities advanced theories that the AIDS virus (HIV) was developed by biological weapons researchers and either accidentally or intentionally transmitted with the help of the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) and the World Health Organization (WHO). A document like that obtained by one investigator, through the Freedom of Information Act, is shown here--a DOD appropriations request for $10 million for the development of AIDS-like viruses. "Within the next 5 to 10 years, it would probably be possible to make a new infective microorganism which could differ in certain important aspects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most important of these is that it might be refractory to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease."

Chapter 2. WHO Plays in the Big Leagues--

Begins Dr. Horowitz's search for the origin of AIDS. Archival WHO documents are explored along with links to American health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National Cancer Institute (NCI). These institutions played leading roles in the WHO's early viral research network. During the 1960s and early 1970s the WHO served as the omnipotent supplier of the world's pharmaceutical, bacteriological, and viral test reagents. Investigations revealed the NCI, a branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), functioned as the WHO's chief distributor of viruses and viral testing reagents during the late 1960s. By 1968, the WHO had provided technical advisors and supplies of "prototype virus strains" for more than "120 laboratories in 35 different countries." By 1969, this number increased to "592 virus laboratories." In this one year, four of the most active centers, including the NCI and CDC, distributed 2,514 strains of viruses, 1888 ampoules of experimental vaccines, and about 100 samples of cell cultures throughout the network. 70,000 virus isolations were reported by 1970.

Chapter 3. Cold War, Biological Weapons and World Health--

The international scientific community's efforts to stop biological warfare and biological weapons (BW) research and development are reviewed here. The chapter reveals how, why, and to what extent U. S. biological weapons research continued despite staunch foreign and domestic opposition. President Nixon's false claims that BW research and development ceased after signing the Geneva Accord in 1969 are documented, as are the WHO's objections to safeguarding genetic engineering of mutant viruses for biological warfare and cancer research. In March of 1970, WHO consultants noted that it was "possible that biological agents may be used . . . to achieve the simultaneous infection of key groups of people, and the military consequences might well be of major importance. . . ." They noted the "calculated risk that a virulent mutant might appear and spread rapidly to produce an uncontrollable epidemic on a large scale. In addition, if mutants are deliberately produced in the laboratory," they wrote, "there is the ever-present risk of an accidental escape."

The consultants also predicted that as a consequence of a biological attack, "mass illnesses, deaths, and epidemics" would require the WHO to furnish supplies and personnel to deal with the medical emergencies. These contingencies and more are documented and discussed.

Chapter 4. The Road to Fort Detrick Runs Through Bethesda--

The first viruses and retroviruses used for biological weapons research passed through the NCI. This chapter reviews the massive chemical and biological war research campaign centered in Frederick (Fort Detrick), Maryland, and chronicles the viral research that was ongoing here and in surrounding labs. A premier lab, specifically researching, developing, and testing immune system destroying viruses, was the Cell Tumor Biology Laboratory at the NCI. This was headed by Dr. Robert Gallo--the co-discoverer of the AIDS virus. The chapter ends by asking, "When did Gallo discover HIV? In 1984, as reported, or in 1970?"

Chapter 5. The Emperor's New Virus--

Provides an expose on the suspicious behavior of Dr. Robert Gallo as chronicled by bestselling author Randy Shilts and others. The chapter also begins a critical evaluation of the information, discrepancies, and apparent disinformation in Shilts's book And the Band Played On. The French/American AIDS fracas is reconsidered. Discussions also focus on how and why Gallo and his NCI colleagues attempted to block others from discovering the AIDS virus.

The stage is set for the next chapter which reviews Gallo's research from 1967-1974. Readers learn that every step needed to create and test the AIDS virus was conducted in Gallo's lab by 1971.

Chapter 6. Gallo's Research Anthology: The AIDS Buck and Virus Stops Here--

Gallo's early publications document his intimate association with Litton Bionetics--a subsidiary of the leading military contracting firm, Litton Industries. Through Litton Bionetics, a major biological weapons contractor, Gallo engineered simian (monkey) viruses to cause a variety of cancers; especially leukemias, sarcomas, and wasting diseases in humans. This chapter documents the incredible fact that Gallo's team extracted the nucleic acids from humanly benign simian viruses, and then infused the empty monkey virus shells with cat leukemia RNA and chicken leukemia-sarcoma RNA to produce mutants that could produce the laundry list of diseases seen in AIDS patients. Then, to enable the virus to infect humans, Gallo and company cultured these germs in human white blood cells so they could "jump species." Most astonishing, this chapter documents that Gallo presented this research, and the protocol for developing AIDS-like viruses, to NATO's military scientists in Mol, Belgium in 1970.

Chapter 7. An Interview with Dr. Robert Strecker--One of the half dozen physician/researchers throughout the world who alleged the military's involvement in the creation of AIDS, Strecker explains his theory on: How and why the AIDS virus was synthetically manufactured; Why the "green monkey theory" and the "patient zero theory" is nonsensical; and What AIDS experts have said about his thesis that AIDS was a military development designed for use as a biological weapon for population control.

Chapter 8. HIV-1, HIV-2, and the "Big Bang"-- The scientific literature is reviewed here in an effort to critically evaluate the man-made theory of HIV-1, HIV-2, and allegations that HIV had been found in tissues of people who had died during the 1950s and 1960s. The analysis identifies both inconsistencies in these conclusions, along with little known evidence that HIV emerged during the early 1970s. The association of early cancer virus network associates of Dr. Gallo, including Drs. Luc Montagnier (Institute Pasteur), Donald Francis (CDC), Peter Duesberg (U. of C.), and Max Essex (Harvard), and their activities, is examined in contrast to circulating disinformation. HIV-2, discovered by Max Essex, is examined as both the purported "missing link" to HIV-1, and the monkey virus laboratory contaminant it was ultimately determined to be. Clearly, molecular genetics shows that something major happened in the early 1970s to convert HIV-2 or similar simian immunodeficiency viruses into HIV-1.

The discussion focuses on how HIV-2, a known monkey virus laboratory contaminant, not found in monkeys in the wild, could be circulating, in the wild, primarily in African women? Vaccines, tainted by monkey virus mutants produced accidentally or intentially, appear to be the only plausible explanation. Most astonishing, chimpanzees - carriers of SIVcpz, the closest primate relative to HIV-1, were used to develop the earliest hepatitis B vaccines tested in New York City and Central Africa in 1973-1974. The chapter then advances a new, more rational, and scientific, theory on the iatrogenic (man-made) origin of AIDS. Clearly, viruses such as these emerged from the laboratory, but the question of accidental versus genocidal transmission remained to be explored.

Chapter 9. Early Targeting of Minority America--The targeting of gay rights leaders and groups at home and abroad by the FBI and CIA during and after the McCarthy era is documented and discussed. The gay rights movement was seen by most conservative lawmakers and public officials as communist inspired. The chapter also reviews the targeting of civil rights groups by the CIA from the late 1960s through the 1980s in their efforts to: 1) Prevent the coalition of militant black nationalist groups and the beginning of a "true black revolution;" and 2) Prevent the rise of a black "messiah." The chapter also discusses the development of 360 disruptive American intelligence operations under the COINTELPRO Black Nationalist Hate Group's umbrella, including "Operation Chaos" which ran from 1966 until 1974. The pivotal role of National Security Advisor, Dr. Henry Kissinger, who during the Nixon era personally oversaw major CIA and FBI intelligence operations and directed the military chiefs of staff, is considered.

Chapter 10. African Foreign Policy and Population Control--

Only days after the DOD requisitioned $10 million from Congress to fund the development of AIDS-like viruses, on July 29, 1969, the House Republican committee, chaired by the Honorable George Bush of Texas, cited the urgent need for population control activities to fend off "a growing Third World crisis." This chapter documents and discusses "American displeasure with Black African culture," and "the roots of Third World foreign policy." Intriguing revelations here include:

Nixon's special presentation before the Population Conference in which he appealed for urgent action; Economic, military, and "humanitarian" policies and projects implemented under Nixon and Carter; Subsequent World Bank, NASA, and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) activities in Africa; Henry Kissinger's leading role in establishing and directing African foreign policy and "diplomatic" affairs; USAID and WHO sponsored immunization programs in central Africa; and American intelligence connections to USAID and African health care initiatives.

Chapter 11. Henry Kissinger's "New World Order"-- This fascinating chapter tracks Henry Kissinger's rise to prominence in America's intelligence community. Details about Kissinger's relationships with the Rockefellers, Richard Nixon, Alexander Haig, and other Nixon White House officials are examined along with Kissinger's leading role in the development of nuclear and biological weapons. The philosophy and purpose of the "New World Order," as articulated by President Bush, and advanced in Kissinger's 1955 Harvard Ph.D. thesis, "The Meaning of History", is reviewed. Kissinger argued that there will never be peace on earth. Instead, he called for a stable economic order of nations which could be maintained by creating ongoing ``small wars,'' with financial advantages for weapons developers.

This chapter also documents: Kissinger's appointment by Nelson Rockefeller to head the nuclear weapons study group of the nongovernmental Council on Foreign Relations; Kissinger's appointment as National Security Advisor--the most influential position in the Nixon White House--instead of Roy Ash, the President of Litton Industries; Litton military contracts, during the first Nixon administration, exceeding $5 billion; $10 million of which went to Litton Bionetics, the BW contractor with whom Robert Gallo worked to develop AIDS-like viruses at that time; Kissinger's "Great Power Grab" as director of national security, and his ordering of Alexander Haig and J. Edgar Hoover to wiretap Nixon and others to produce the infamous "White House tapes"; Kissinger's control over The Defense Program Review Committee, which considered the funding requests for biological weapons; and The 40 Committee which authorized covert actions by the CIA in Central Africa in the vicinity where AIDS and Ebola first broke out.

Chapter 12. Silent Coup in American Intelligence--Reviews increasing evidence that the CIA not only co-opted the Executive Branch of the U.S. Government while being directed by Dr. Henry Kissinger during the Nixon era, but apparently carried out efforts to replace J. Edgar Hoover. This, at the time Kissinger directed the CIA to continue escalating foreign and domestic espionage operations under COINTELPRO against black Africans and American homosexuals.

Chapter 13. USAID and New York Blood-- Under Kissinger's national security council directives, USAID began focusing vast resources on controlling Third World populations. A computer search of "USAID," "Population Control" "Vaccines," and "World Health Organization" literature between 1970 and 1975 revealed 733 "USAID-Population Control" studies. The same search after 1975 found none. The entire field of "Population Control" had vanished from Medlar! The subject heading had been terminated and replaced with the more comforting "maternal and child health." A review of Department of State Bulletins revealed that by 1976 Joseph Califano, who had advised Kissinger to appoint Alexander Haig as his White House assistant, took the lead in attacking "rapid population growth" in the Third World. His subsequent policies are discussed as are Califano's links to Merck, Sharp and Dohme (MSD)--the world's largest supplier of AIDS-related drugs. Had Califano authorized USAID funds for Merck related hepatitis B vaccine studies in central Africa during his stint as secretary of DHEW? Apparently so.

Moreover, Chapter 13 examines a paper trail in the scientific literature linking MSD investigators with viral researchers who conducted hepatitis B vaccine studies on retarded children and gay volunteers in NYC. Through the New York City Blood Bank (NYCBB) and the biological weapons contractors at the New York University Medical Center (NYUMC), as early as 1969, that is, shortly after Kissinger became NSC director, the first humans were inoculated with experimental vaccines composed of live or attenuated viruses that had only been tested on monkeys. Moreover, the viruses had been grown in chimpanzees likely infected with a varity of other viruses with similarities to HIV. Most astonishing, the text documents that MSD researchers worked in cooperation Gallo's group at the NCI and Litton Bionetics, and that combined, they conducted similar studies in Central Africa under U. S. Army and USAID contracts. Moreover, the "Drug Development Branch" of the NCI served as a conduit of experimental viruses, vaccines, and drugs between Gallo and company and MSD. Thus, the alleged channel through which HIV tainted hepatitis B vaccines passed between the NCI and MSD was operating by 1970.

Chapter 14. Central African Vaccine Trials--Documents the specific African vaccine studies and immunization campaigns waged by the suspected scientific network in an effort to investigate the accidental and intentional theories of AIDS. The text details the: 20 country immunization program supported by USAID, the CDC, the WHO and MSD; The NCI's method of turning taxpayer funded research dollars into private enterprise profits; Obvious conflicts of interest and scientific misconduct demonstrated when CDC and MSD authorities attempted to rebut widespread allegations that the spread of AIDS followed Merck hepatitis vaccine study routes; The support Gallo received from at least a third of the Army's top eighteen biological weapons contractors including Bionetics, Hazleton, and Dow Chemical; Plans to prompt Congressional legislation freeing MSD and other vaccine producers from liability and costly litigation from personal injury claims; Protocol for administering African "jet gun" immunization programs and documented propaganda campaigns;The view of leading government scientists that race, class, and "national security" is the principle motive behind Third World immunization practices.

Chapter 15. The CIA/Detrick Operation: In 1975, following the storm of public outrage over the CIA's involvement in Watergate, the agency was investigated and chastised by the Rockefeller Commission and two Congressional committees. That year, word had leaked from the Army's Special (that is, secret)Operations Division at Fort Detrick, that the CIA was illegally stockpiling deadly bacteria, viruses, and other toxins.

As a result, a Select Committee To Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities met to investigate. Senator Frank Church presided. The Church hearings exposed much about the illegal storage of BW by the CIA, and their intended use in covert operations. Unfortunately, the American news media failed to report the most incriminating testimonies. The testimonies implicated congressional investigators as Dr. Kissinger was shielded from indictments along with other chief decision makers.

Chapter 16. The CIA's Top Secret PROJECT: MKNAOMI - Discusses the CIA's BW operation. CIA Director William Colby's admission that the agency's interest in BW was for offensive uses during covert operations at the time the CIA was operating at full force in Zaire, Angola, and Sudan--ground zero for the AIDS and Ebola outbreaks--is documented. Nathan Gordon, Chief of the chemistry branch of the Technical Services Division of the CIA gave additional testimony of the agency's possible use of extensive virus stockpiles to assistant intelligence agency scientists in their work on mass immunization projects, vaccine development, and cancer research--exactly the work conducted by scientists at the NCI, including Robert Gallo, in association with Litton Bionetics in Bethesda and their affiliates in Uganda, and in cooperation with MSD, CDC, and New York collaborators.

Moreover, discussions focus on congressional testimony which documented that the CIA had, in fact, been receiving "deadly poison[s]" manufactured by the USPHS and delivered to Fort Detrick for use in human experiments and covert operations.

Chapter 17. The CIA's Human Experiments - Reviews an extensive array of illegal, unethical, immoral, and racist CIA BW experiments conducted on unsuspecting human populations.

Chapter 18. Nazi Roots of American Central Intelligence: The Biological Warfare Industry--This chapter delivers an eye-opening exposé on the Nazi medical officers who escaped prosecution through their service to American intelligence under a top secret "Project Paperclip." The "excessive zeal" with which U. S. Army intelligence and later CIA personnel protected war criminals, including the infamous "Angel of Death" Joseph Mengele; his assistant, "the butcher of Lyon," Klaus Barbie; Walter Rauff, the SS mobile gas chambers supervisor; Friederich Schwend, another mass murderer, and others including Erich Traub, in charge of biological warfare for the Reich Research Institute, where his research specialty was viral diseases.

Of the approximately 2,000 Nazis drafted into American military service by intelligence officers including Henry Kissinger under General Bolling--the "Godfather" of "Project Paperclip"--many went on to become the leaders of America's military-medical industrial complex (MMIC).

This chapter discloses the ties between the CIA and the two powerful organizations which gave rise to Nazi intelligence and Hitler's SS--The Gehlen Organization and Merck Network. These links are discussed with regard to the initial development of the CIA under Truman, and the post-WWII boom of the MMIC. The CIA, initially established as a cover and oversight agency for the Gehlen Organization, was thus rooted in racism and white supremacist ideology.

Further investigation revealed how the Gehlen Organization and CIA were able to launder approximately $300 million from the Third Reich's war chest through the Paris branch of Rockefeller's Chase Manhattan Bank. This money was ultimately used to fuel the Kissinger-Rockefeller directed MMIC and possibly MSD's pharmaceutical empire.

Chapter 19. The CIA in Africa-- Between 1970 and 1975, American cold war efforts focused on Zaire and Angola. Following the withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam, Henry Kissinger ordered the CIA to begin a major covert military operation against MPLA (communist bloc backed) "rebels" in Angola. Indebted by over $4.5 billion to the International Monetary Fund, Zaire, headed by President Mobutu--paradoxically regarded as one of the world's richest men with "a personal fortune put at $2,939,200,000 [1984 estimate] banked in Switzerland,"--was wooed by NATO allies during the 1970s, to be a staging area for CIA backed, Portuguese, French, and South African mercenaries. American corporate investment, notably in copper and aluminum, doubled following a 1970 visit by Mobutu to the United States. Major investors included Rockefeller's Chase-Manhattan Bank.

This chapter details how, in 1975, Mobutu turned against NATO allies, proclaimed his intention to nationalize foreign owned enterprises, expelled the American ambassador, and arrested most of the CIA's Zairian agents, placing some of them under death sentences. The following year, in October 1976, the Ebola virus broke-out in fifty five Zairian villages, first killing people who had received injections. Mobutu then ordered his army to seal off the Bumba Zone with roadblocks and shoot anyone trying to leave.

By the end of 1976, the Zairian leader had reconciled his differences with American intelligence and, thereafter, continued to reap his western allies' economic and "humanitarian" aid.

This chapter details these events along with the CIA's covert operations in the region.

Chapter 20. OTRAG: Links to Nazis, NATO, NASA, the NCI and AIDS--This chapter provides astonishing information regarding a "secret agreement" between NATO and a Nazi-linked West German company--OTRAG (Orbital Transport-und Raketen-Aktiengesellschaft)--and Zaire's president Mobutu. This company leased 260,000 square kilometers of eastern Zaire for military/industrial purposes in 1975. The contract gave OTRAG sovereign rights to territories inhabited by 760,000 people, not far from what is now called "The AIDS Highway," and the region in which Ebola erupted.

Said to be of military and intelligence gathering significance to NATO, OTRAG's principals included several Nazi scientists including Dr. Kurt H. Debus, who worked as director of the Cape Canaveral space program until 1975 before transferring to Zaire. Richard Gompertz, OTRAG's technical director, presided over NASA's Chrysler space division. Lutz Thilo Kayser, OTRAG's founder and manager, when young was quite close to the Nazi rocket industry, often called "Dadieu's young man," a reference to Armin Dadieu, his mentor, who served as prominent SS officer and as Goring's special representative for a research program on storing uranium.

According to United States Army reports, the "outlandish claim" that the AIDS virus was developed as a biological weapon for the Pentagon was communist propaganda. Recently, however, a high ranking Soviet press official, Boris Belitskiy, offered an alternative account regarding the origin of the AIDS virus--Both OTRAG and the Pentagon were implicated by his revelations.

In 1977, at the height of OTRAG's activity in Zaire, Litton Industries received $5 million for medical electronic equipment from its Hellige division, in Freiburg, West Germany. Much of Litton's NATO and West German sales during this period appear to have been earmarked for OTRAG.

Concurrently, the chapter discusses cooperative ventures between NATO and the World Health Organization with regard to the international control of pharmaceuticals, and preparations for facing possible outbreaks from biological warfare. More revelations point to the fact that the recent outbreaks of the world's most feared and deadly viruses--Marburg, Ebola, Reston, and AIDS--share the dubious distinction of breaking out in or around areas of CIA/NATO operations.

Chapter 21. Marburg, Ebola, and Chilling Propaganda in The Hot Zone--Discloses the scientific facts about the dreaded Ebola and Marburg viruses, in contrast to the New York Times bestselling "nonfiction" book The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. Critical examination in this chapter reveals Preston's book is undoubtedly counterintelligence propaganda seemingly intended to prepare the world for future epidemics and additional virus outbreaks.

Chapter 22. The Special Virus Cancer Program-- Highly incriminating documents published in 1971 and 1972 by the NIH were serendipitously discovered by Dr. Horowitz. These NCI "Summary Reports," unavailable at most medical libraries including the NCI's library at Fort Detrick, describe the network's earliest efforts to find a cure for cancer by first creating thousands of mutant viruses capable of jumping from animals into humans. These "cancer models" were used by researchers who believed that viruses were responsible for most cancers. Thus, viruses were tracked, isolated, and genetically modifed to produce a variety of cancers in the hope of discovering a vaccine. This rationale was used by BW developers to defend their work, and the entire NCI program was administered by Litton Bionetics. This chapter reviews what was done to produce AIDS, Ebola, Marburg and Reston-like viruses, where and when the experiments took place, who was involved, and even how much they were paid. This chapter uncloaks the NCI's "special virus" research network and the horrifying experiments they conducted "in the name of medical science."

Chapter 23. The Man-Made Origin of Marburg and Ebola--Presents startling evidence that the Hazleton monkey house, site of the Reston virus outbreak,was intimately involved in creating cancer viruses similar to those produced by Robert Gallo and coworkers at Litton Bionetics. Moreover, scientific documents revealed the unreported source of Hazleton's Reston virus contaminated monkeys was apparently Litton Bionetics. Additional documents reveal a specific experiment conducted by Litton Bionetics chief Dr. John Landon as the most plausible source of the original Marburg virus outbreak in Europe. Most astonishing, in an obscure scientific report, Dr. Seymour Kalter, the NCI's chief simian virus expert in charged of classifying newly developed viruses that emerged during laboratory experiments, stated for the record that the Marburg hemorrhagic fever virus was man-made.

Chapter 24. Ebola Kikwit and the Sloan/Hot Zone/Plague Connection--This concluding chapter critically examines the 1995 Ebola virus outbreak in Kikwit, Zaire. Apparently, contrary to popular belief and news coverage, the virus was too similar to the 1976 strain to have emerged naturally.

A final serendipitous discovery identified The Hot Zone's Richard Preston, as the recipient of a $20,000 literary grant from the Sloan Foundation. Further investigation revealed the foundation: (1) supported black educational initiatives consistent with the COINTELPRO Black Nationalist Hate Group campaign; (2) administered "public management" research and mass-media-public-persuasion experiments completely consistent with the CIA's Project MKULTRA; (3) funded many of the earliest cancer research experiments involving the genetic engineering of mutant viruses; (4) funded population control studies by Planned Parenthood-World Population, New York, N.Y.; (5) funded the Community Blood Council of Greater New York, Inc., the "council of doctors" who established the infamous New York City Blood Bank; (6) maintained Laurance S. Rockefeller, the director of the Community Blood Council of Greater New York and the president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, as chairman of the board of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and a trustee for the Foundation; (7) gave in excess of $20,000 annually to the Council on Foreign Relations; and (8) maintained among its "marketable securities," 16,505 shares of Chase Manhattan Bank stock (in 1967) along with 24,400-53,000 shares issued by Merck & Co., Inc. (at least until 1973).

In the end, Litton Bionetics and Hazleton Research Labs were sold to a subsidiary of Dow-Corning, whose president, Richard Hazleton, is currently seeking congressional approval for legislation aimed at freeing corporations from product liability claims, such as those caused by immune-system-ravaging silicon breast implants [it's "silicone" and last I heard the scientific jury is still out on whether the alleged damage of the implants is actually due to the implants -Ed.] and Norplant for population control.

In addition, it was also learned that Laurie Garrett, author of The Coming Plague, also received major financial support from The Sloan Foundation.

Chapter 25. Smoking Guns and Conclusions--The book closes by questioning the covert operations of the military-medical-industrial complex and its effect on America's health and democracy, but not before revealing "a smoking gun."

Maurice Hilleman, in charge of MSD's hepatitis B vaccine experiments in New York and Central Africa, admits to having been intimately involved importing AIDS infected monkeys into his labs at Merck, and thus beginning the North American AIDS epidemic, just as Dr. Horowitz concluded from the scientific evidence presented in chapter 13.

Most troubling, hard evidence is presented that NCI and NIH insiders knew, as early as 1961, that MSD's polio (and later, hepatitis B) vaccines were laced with live simian lentiviruses that would likely produce human cancer epidemics for decades to come. Even more incredible, many monkey viruses are still being spread to humans by currently administered vaccines, while the FDA, by law, cannot do anything about it! For political and financial reasons, those who knew about such risks simply remained silent, or actively blocked efforts to alert the public. The result is just about everyone is at greater risk today of developing cancer, and a host of other illnesses, or passing these cancer genes, or active viruses, on to their children for generations to come.

Readers are encouraged to help make a difference by contacting their congressional representatives to urge an independent investigation of current live viral vaccine contaminants along with the FDA regarding their role in developing the hepatitis B vaccine and keeping the public misinformed. In addition, the tainted vaccine lots allegedly in safe keeping at the FDA should be evaluated and may hold the keys to discovering the whole true story of the origin of AIDS.

"Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola--Nature, Accident or Intentional?" (Tetrahedron Press, 1996; $29.95) May be ordered through bookstores throughout North America, and by calling toll-free 800-336-9266. The book may also be ordered through the internet at http://www.tetrahedron.org in the catalog section of the web site.

from http://www.tetrahedron.org/horowitz.htm:

Dr. Leonard Horowitz is an internationally known speaker, author, educator, and health researcher. His areas of specialty include public health, behavioral science, and health practice management.

He received his doctorate from Tufts University and was awarded a fellowship in behavioral research at the University of Rochester. Dr. Horowitz earned a master's degree in public health and behavioral science from Harvard University. He also holds a master's degree in health education from Beacon College.

For more than a decade, Dr. Horowitz directed a multidisciplinary health center. He served on the faculty at Tufts University, Harvard University, and the Leslie College Institute for Arts and Human Development. Dr. Horowitz currently serves as president of Tetrahedron, Inc.

Dr. Horowitz has authored more than ten books and numerous audiotapes, videos, and publications. Two of his most recent projects include, "Emerging Viruses, AIDS & Ebola, Nature, Accident or Intentional?" and "Gulf War Syndrome Cover-up: The Spreading Epidemic."

from http://www.trufax.org/research/kissrock.html (involves much repetition of above material):

"Kissinger and Rockefeller Connections to American Central Intelligence and the Origins of AIDS and Ebola" A Speech Before the Citizens Against Legal Loopholes Rally

The Capitol Mall, Washington, D.C.

Labor Day Weekend, 1996

By Leonard G. Horowitz

President, Tetrahedron Incorporated, a nonprofit educational corporation P. O. Box 402, Rockport, Massachusetts 01966

Copyright © 1996, Leonard G. Horowitz. All rights reserved.

Dear Friends and Patriots,

My name is Dr. Len Horowitz, and some time ago, probably like many of you, I considered myself a lifelong liberal democrat. Fortunately, or unfortunately, that part of me died. When I realized the forces behind so-called liberal democracy were the flip side of the same corrupt coin as the republican political establishment, that is, I opened my eyes to witness a shadow government of military-medical-industrial dictators, the naive person I was had a stroke, keeled over, and praise the lord, died. And I didn't need to call Dr. Jack Kevorkian in to let it rest in peace. What brought me to this realization and this meeting today is a unique story.

Six years ago, most of you can recall, the highly publicized case of the Florida dentist who infected his patients with AIDS-- the case of, the beautiful teenager, Kimberly Bergalis, who died shortly after testifying before Congress in a wheel-chair. At the time I was serving as the chief professional advisor to the largest dental and medical catalog supply company in the world. The day the story broke I was assigned to develop patient and professional educational materials to help allay the public's growing fear of visiting dental and medical offices in the age of AIDS. You may recall how terrified most people became about a routine trip to the dentist at that time. So I began by investigating the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDCs) official investigation reports on the case. And to make a long story short, I found the reports to be scientifically bogus. I later learned that the government had covered-up key evidence in the tragedy in an effort the maintain the case an "unsolvable mystery."

In essence they had committed scientific fraud and misconduct and, in the process, concealed the most incriminating evidence against the dentist--a very bright, scientifically trained, ex-military dentist, who believed he was dying of a virus that the government had created. Yes, you heard me correctly, a virus that the government had created.

Now, the problem I had was reconciling the fact that the dentist, though a psychopath, was no fool. And he held in his possession one of the most incriminating documents I had ever seen. A 1970 Department of Defense Appropriations request for $10 million for the development of immune system ravaging viruses for germ warfare. In fact, the document, which I lay before you today, reads like this:

"Within the next 5 to 10 years, it would probably be possible to make a new infective microorganism which could differ in certain important aspects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most important of these is that it might be refractory to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease. . . A research program to explore the feasibility of this could be completed in approximately 5 years at a total cost of $10 million. . . . It is a highly controversial issue and there are many who believe such research should not be undertaken lest it lead to yet another method of massive killing of large populations."

In fact it was the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council (NAS-NRC) that had informed the Defense Department that this research was possible.

Now, according to legal testimony given to government officals, this knowledge enraged the Florida dentist so much it moved him to intentionally inject his patients with HIV-tainted anesthetics. In essence, he did what all organized serial killers love to do, express a vendetta, like the mail-bomber, play games with the authorities, trap them in a catch-22, whereby they'd be damned if they told the truth, and called him a serial killer, because the whole world would want to know motive, and every reporter would ultimately find out as I did, what drove him crazy and who he really hated and ultimately attacked. And if they told a lie, or maintained the case, as they did, a mystery, it would hold America and all of health care hostage to irrational fear of routine health care in the age of AIDS.

Now all of this I documented in three published scientific reports and my last book "Deadly Innocence: The Kimberly Bergalis Case-- Solving the Greatest Murder Mystery in the History of American Medicine." I present these publications and documents here for your critical examination.

So Dr. Acer created a crime, a mystery, that couldn't be solved, without implicating the government and causing a larger mystery to be investigated. That is, the origin of AIDS and Ebola--the subject of my last three years of research, and why I have come before you today. In fact, I investigated the Department of Defense's germ warfare appropriations request and learned that the option to develop synthetic biological agents--bioweapons as alternatives to nuclear weapons--came from Dr. Henry Kissinger, who was gradually placed in his position of authority as National Security Advisor under Richard Nixon, the most powerful man in government, by Nelson Rockefeller and his affiliates at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Moreover, I traced where the money went. It went, in fact, to a firm called Litton Bionetics, a subsidiary of the mega-military contractor Litton Industries, whose President, Roy Ash, was being considered as an alternate to Henry Kissinger for the National Security Advisor post. Instead, Roy Ash became Richard Nixon's chairman of the Presidents Advisory Council on Executive Organizations, and "Assistant to the President of the United States." Litton Industries was given over $5 billion in military contracts during the first term of the Nixon administration, $10 million of which went towards the development of AIDS-like viruses. A mere drop in the bucket.

But before I tell you exactly what was done with your $10 million of taxpayer money, some background on Kissinger and Rockefeller's influence is in order.

Among Henry Kissinger's most influential patrons as he worked his way up the ladder of success to become Nixon's ``Deputy to the President for National Security,'' was Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, the son of Standard Oil, that is Exxon, heir John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

The Rockefeller family's involvement in the medical-industrial complex, health science research, and American politics is clearly important.

Before World War II, major administration of medical research, or financing by federal agencies, had been generally opposed by America's scientific community. In fact, it was only during times of war that organizations like the NAS or the NRC received major funding. Both the NAS, established during the Civil War, and the NRC, set up during the First World War, were largely ignored in times of peace.

Between 1900 and 1940, private foundations and universities financed most medical research. According to Paul Starr, author of The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The rise of a sovereign profession and the making of a vast industry, ``the most richly endowed research center, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research was established in New York in 1902 and by 1928 had received from John D. Rockefeller $65 million in endowment funds.'' In contrast, as late as 1938, as little as $2.8 million in federal funding was budgeted for the entire U.S. Public Health Service. Therefore, it is easy to see that Rockefeller family investment in health science research predated, and far surpassed, even the federal government's.

More than the New Deal, the Second World War created the greatest boom in federal government and private industry support for medical research. Prior to the war, American science and medicine was heavily influenced by German models. This precedent was bolstered during the 1930s when the Nazis purged Jewish scientists from German universities and biological laboratories. These changes, according to Starr, significantly altered the course of American health science and medicine. Many of Germany's most brilliant researchers emigrated to the United States just as the movement burgeoned to privatize war related biological and medical research.

At this time, the Rockefeller led medical-industrial complex was fully poised to influence, and take advantage of, Congress's "first series of measures to promote cancer research and cancer control." In 1937, the new federal legislation authorized the establishment of the National Cancer Institute under the National Institutes of Health, and, for the first time, ``the Public Health Service to make grants to outside researchers.'' The Rockefellers exercised significant control over the outcomes of these grants and research efforts through the foundations they established.

Following the war, Henry Kissinger, who had become General Alexander Bolling's German translator and principle assistant (Bolling, of course, was the "Godfather" to the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency that ran "Project Paperclip," the secret exfiltration of approximately 2,000 high level Nazi's, about 900 of whom were military scientists and medical researchers, including Erich Traub, Hitler's top biological weapons developer and virus expert. Bolling also served as a high ranking member of the Inter-American Defense Board, a Washington based group that delivered Walter Emil Schreiber, Hitler's chief medical scientist, the "Angel of Death" Joseph Mengele, and his assistant, "the butcher of Lyon," Klaus Barbie, among others, to safe havens in South America where they worked on CIA projects.)

In fact it was Henry Kissinger's job to seek and find such Nazi's that might be of service to America, and Kissinger became the chief of Army Counter-Intelligence in this regard. He trained other agents to hunt down Nazi's at the European Command Intelligence School in Oberammergau, not to be tried for war crimes necessarily, but rather to serve U.S. military rather than Russian interests.

It was this operation that principally spirited the creation of the CIA as a cover agency for the powerful Gehlen Org, the German intelligence agency run by Reinhard Gehlen--an organization whose power superseded even the Nazi SS because of its prewar connections with German military intelligence.

After Hitler, Gehlen served Allen Welsh Dulles, whose "Operation Sunshine" brought Nazis into the U.S. spy service.

You may be interested to know who paid for the importation of Nazis into American central intelligence, the military, and industry? Three groups: The first was "The Sovereign Military Order of Malta" (SMOM), perhaps the most powerful reactionary segment of European aristocracy, that for almost a thousand years, starting with the crusades in the Twelfth Century, funded military operations against countries and ideas considered a threat to its power; Second was the Nazi war chest that was largely funneled through the Vatican and the Rockefeller owned Chase Manhattan Bank, whose Paris branch conducted business as usual throughout the Nazi occupation of France, and thirdly, some of us and our parents--American taxpayers.

Moreover, during this period, the Council on Foreign Relations, along with the CIA, grew in power under the leadership of Nelson Rockefeller, and in 1955, while serving as President Eisenhower's assistant for international affairs, Rockefeller invited Kissinger to discuss national security issues at the Quantico (Virginia) Marine Base. Following their meeting, according to Walter Isaacson's biography of Kissinger, the diplomat became Rockefeller's "closest intellectual associate," and soon after, Kissinger authored several military proposals for Eisenhower to consider. Unimpressed, Eisenhower turned them down.

As a result, Rockefeller sent Eisenhower his resignation and then launched a Special Studies Project that explored the "critical choices" America faced militarily in the coming years. Kissinger agreed to direct this new project and published a 468-page book on his findings. The treatise proposed that tactical nuclear weapons be developed and "a bomb shelter [be built] in every house" in preparation for limited thermonuclear war. "The willingness to engage in nuclear war when necessary is part of the price of our freedom,"Kissinger argued.

So those of you my age can recall the anxiety grade school students felt while drilling for possible nuclear attacks.

You can thank Kissinger and the Rockefeller-led military- industrialists for this "price for freedom."

Eisenhower, you may remember, warned America that the gravest threat to world security, democracy, and even spirituality, was the growing military-industrial complex. And the Rockefellers and Kissinger played leading roles in its evil expansion. Bent on creating what President Bush openly heralded as a "New World Order," few people realize the current international alignment of economic powers is a direct result of actualizing Henry Kissinger's contemporary manifesto--a tribute to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta--entitled "The Meaning of History." In this Kissinger 1955 Harvard doctoral thesis he argues that the concept of peace on earth is naive. Peace must be secured by the creation of small wars around the planet on a continuing basis so as to maintain an international order of economic powers, and of course, keep the military industrialists happy.

In my latest book, "Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola--Nature, Accident, or Intentional?", I traced Dr. Erich Traub's movements to the U.S. Naval Medical Research Institute, where he conducted experiments on animals to determine the lethal doses of more than forty strains of highly infectious viruses. Within ten years, the Navy's Biomedical Research Laboratory, in association with the University of California, along with Litton Bionetics, became a chief supplier of viruses and cell cultures for NCI researchers throughout the world. Funding for this work was largely controlled by the NCI, Rockefeller and Sloan Foundations.

A search through Sloan Foundation's annual reports, on file in Manhattan's New York Public Library, revealed nine ghastly and incriminating reasons that, most incredibly, tied all the elements of my "Emerging Viruses" investigation together. The Sloan Foundation:

(1) supported black educational initiatives consistent with the COINTELPRO Black Nationalist Hate Group campaign (you may recall reports last year that in surveys of 1,000 Southern Christian African Americans, two-thirds reported their belief that the AIDS epidemic may be genocide, while one-third was convinced it was; (2) the Sloan Foundation administered mass-media- public-persuasion experiments completely consistent with the CIA's Project MKULTRA efforts to develop brainwashing technologies and drugs to affect large populations; (3) funded much of the earliest cancer research involving the genetic engineering of mutant viruses; (4) began major funding of the National Academy of Sciences, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (for "neuroscience" and molecular genetics research), the Salk Institute (for viral research), and the Scientists' Institute for Public Information between 1968 and 1970; (5) funded population control studies by Planned Parenthood-World Population, New York, N.Y.; (6) funded the Community Blood Council of Greater New York, Inc., the "council of doctors" who established the infamous New York City Blood Bank which allowed more than 10,000 hemophiliacs and countless others to become infected with HIV because they allegedly didn't want to spend $150 million to screen the blood; (7) maintained Laurence S. Rockefeller, the director of the Community Blood Council of Greater New York,"the international blood bankers",and the president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, as chairman of the board of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and a trustee for the Sloan Foundation; (8) gave in excess of $20,000 annually to the Council on Foreign Relations; and (9) maintained among its "marketable securities," 16,505 shares of Chase Manhattan Bank stock (in 1967, which it apparently sold by 1970 probably to avoid conflict of interest charges) along with 53,000 shares issued by Merck & Co., Inc. (the company whose President, George W. Merck, was director of America's biological weapons industry, and whose hepatitis B and polio vaccines most plausibly transmitted AIDS throughout the world).

Also in "Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola," you will learn exactly what was done with the $10 million Congress gave the DOD for the development of AIDS-like viruses, because I published the relevant contracts. You will learn that Dr. Robert Gallo, the famous NCI molecular biologist, pardoned by President Clinton last year for scientific fraud and misconduct, and credited with the discovery of the AIDS virus, set about to develop immune system ravaging, AIDS-like viruses, along with other Litton Bionetics researchers.

You will learn that they took monkey viruses that were humanly benign, recombined them with DNA, RNA, and enzymes from other animal viruses that caused leukemias, lymphomas, and sarcomas, and then to get them to jump species, they cultured these new mutant viruses in human white blood cells in some studies, and human fetal tissue cells in other studies, to produce immune-system-destroying, cancer-causing viruses that could enter humans and produce virtually identical effects to what the AIDS virus is currently doing in people around the world.

Indeed, it was contaminated live viral vaccines that spread this disease and likely others, including chronic fatigue, certain leukemias, and possibly Gulf War Syndrome as well, to vast populations. In fact, today's live viral vaccines, including the oral polio vaccine required by law be given to our children, are still litered with simian (monkey) virus contaminants since they are developed in monkey kidney cells, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration turns a blind eye to as many as 100 live monkey virus contaminants per vaccine dose, and is barred from telling health professionals and even health scientists this truth because of pharmaceutical industry dictated proprietary laws and non-disclosure agreements.

In the end, the research question I asked, "Did these viruses, AIDS and Ebola, evolve naturally, were they accidentally produced, or were they intentionally created and deployed?" I conclude, unquestionably, they are not natural. I leave you the reader, and concerned citizens of America and the world, to decide whether it was a horrible accident or treacherous covert population control experiment.

I ask all of you to consider the pain and cost of the current and coming plagues,including the escalating rates of virus-linked cancers like prostate and breast cancer, certain leukemias and lymphomas, and other vaccine contaminant related illnesses including hyperactivity disorders in children and escalating sudden infant death rates. I believe you will realize that the pain and cost of denial and indifference to this horrible reality is far greater than the toll your political action might cost. I therefore urge you to join our growing grassroots network of health consumers, professionals, scientists, patriots, and concerned citizens in our search for answers and solutions. I urge you to help us pressure Congress for a full investigation of these published facts, and to allocate the funding needed to effect appropriate solutions to these urgent health care problems.

Let me end by giving you, and our home viewers, two resources to contact in this effort. The first is Tetrahedron's toll free citizen action and document order hotline 800-336-9266. And the other is our Internet web site address where you can link to various supporting organizations and individuals. That address is http://www.tetrahedron.org

Thank you very much, and God bless.

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Next Chapter: Manufacturing Madness

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