SAY NO TO THE COVID VAXX!

"...And they really have no earthly idea what this vaccine will do. They have no idea of the long term consequences. If you vaccinated everybody in the United States by force and five years later you find out large numbers of them are going to have MS, large numbers are going to develop transverse myelopathy, auto immune diseases, you could cripple this nation. And people would not be able to work. Their lives would be ruined forever. So this is something that is of such enormous consequences, we must absolutely stop any idea of a mandatory vaccination program."

- Dr. Russell Blaylock, MD -

The Great American Mask Rip Off | Technocracy News & Trends | Oct 7, 2020

- RESIST THE TECHNOCRATIC TAKEOVER -

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Operation Warp Speed is Using a CIA-Linked Contractor to Keep Covid-19 Vaccine Contracts Secret
https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/operation-warp-speed-is-using-a-cia-linked-contractor-to-keep-covid-19-vaccine-contracts-secret/

October 6, 2020 Author Whitney Webb

$6 billion in Covid-19 vaccine contracts awarded by Operation Warp Speed have been doled out by a secretive government contractor with deep ties to the CIA and DHS, escaping regulatory scrutiny and beyond the reach of FOIA requests.

Last Tuesday, while most Americans were distracted by the first US presidential debate, NPR quietly reported that the US government’s Operation Warp Speed, a public-private partnership launched by the Trump administration to rapidly develop and distribute a Covid-19 vaccine, had taken the unusual step of awarding contracts to vaccine companies, not directly, but through a secretive defense contractor.

Though NPR named the defense contractor—South Carolina–based Advanced Technology International—they declined to explore the company’s deep ties to the CIA, Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense and how ATI is helping to lead those agencies’ efforts to militarize health care and create a surveillance panopticon that not only monitors the world around us but our physiology as well.

The “secret” vaccine contracts awarded through ATI as part of Warp Speed total approximately $6 billion, accounting for the majority of Operation Warp Speed’s $10 billion budget. Both Paul Mango, Health and Human Services’ deputy chief of staff for policy, and Robert Kadlec, HHS assistant secretary for preparedness and response (ASPR), personally signed off on the contracts.

Operation Warp Speed, which officially involves the combined efforts of HHS and the military to deliver over 300 million Covid-19 vaccines to Americans by next January, is a highly secretive program dominated by military personnel, most of whom have no experience in health care or vaccine production. The Trump administration has often compared Warp Speed to the Manhattan Project, which produced the atomic bomb.

Several very unsettling revelations about the true nature and scope of Warp Speed, including the out-sized role of ATI, began to emerge starting last Monday. Yet, most of this new information was not covered by US news outlets due to the media frenzy surrounding the first presidential debate and the subsequent news that President Trump and several other politicians and White House officials had tested positive for Covid-19.

NPR noted that the decision to use a nongovernment intermediary like ATI to issue the coronavirus vaccine contracts, as opposed to the government itself directly awarding those contracts, allows Operation Warp Speed to “bypass the regulatory oversight and transparency of traditional federal contracting mechanisms.” This means that, among other things, the vaccine contracts awarded under Operation Warp Speed are unlikely to be publicly released in the near future, if ever.

The report from NPR also noted that the Congressional Research Service reported just last year that using such intermediaries to award contracts can result in “significant risks, including potentially diminished oversight and exemption from laws and regulations designed to protect government and taxpayer interests.” Proponents of this unorthodox way of issuing contracts, known as “other transaction agreements” (OTAs), often argue that utilizing this alternative method for awarding contracts significantly hastens the process. However, the Congressional Research Service also noted that the Department of Defense, which has been increasingly relying on OTAs in recent years, has never tracked the information necessary to determine if OTAs are actually faster than traditional contracting methods. This suggests that claims regarding the alleged “speed advantage” of OTAs are based on assumptions rather than data-based evidence.

Johnson & Johnson, Novavax, Pfizer, and Sanofi are among the companies that have received these covert vaccine contracts through the OTA authorized by Operation Warp Speed and managed by ATI. Many of these companies, particularly Johnson & Johnson, have been involved in scandals related to selling and marketing products they knew to be unsafe to the public. This makes the lack of oversight and their exemption from federal regulations (including safety regulations) an issue of concern regarding their participation in Warp Speed.

This concern is further compounded by the fact that, on September 21, HHS Secretary Alex Azartold FOX Business that all Operation Warp Speed vaccine manufacturers would be exempt from liability for any damages their vaccines may cause and that those who administer their vaccines would also not be liable for damages. “Under the PREP Act, which is a provision in Congress, any treatment or vaccine for purposes of a national emergency pandemic like this actually comes with liability protection. Both the product as well as those who administer it or provide it,” Azar stated during the televised interview. The PREP Act that Azar referenced was originally signed into law in 2005 but was updated this past April, a few weeks before Operation Warp Speed was announced, so that vaccine and therapeutic manufacturers “cannot be sued for money damages in court” over injuries caused by medical countermeasures for Covid-19.

WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 02: Flanked by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence (L) and Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, U.S. President Donald Trump leads a meeting with the White House Coronavirus Task Force and pharmaceutical executives in Cabinet Room of the White House on March 2, 2020 in Washington, DC. President Trump and his Coronavirus Task Force team met with pharmaceutical companies representatives who are actively working to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Notably, the architect of that controversial April update to the PREP Act, HHS ASPR Kadlec, is intimately involved in deciding who is awarded Operation Warp Speed contracts. STAT News reported last week, citing senior HHS officials, that Kadlec “personally signs off” on every business agreement made on behalf of HHS for Operation Warp Speed. In addition to his past activities in lobbying for intelligence and defense contractors, Kadlec also previously worked as a lobbyist for the scandal-ridden biodefense company Emergent Biosolutions, which is also a major player in Operation Warp Speed as well as the manufacturer of the controversial anthrax vaccine BioThrax.

Despite top HHS officials allegedly overseeing every single one of these business agreements, NPR was told by HHS that the department has “no records” of the $1.6 billion Operation Warp Speed contract with Novavax, which was awarded through ATI. This is a strange response given that HHS is supposedly the lead agency overseeing Operation Warp Speed, yet they somehow lack a copy of a massive vaccine contract at the heart of the operation. NPR also asked the DoD for a copy of the Novavax contract and have yet to receive a response.

At a press conference in mid-September, Lt. Gen. Paul Ostrowski, a key figure in Operation Warp Speed, told reporters: “With respect to the contracts, the contracts are between ourselves, the United States government and private entities, and they are releasable to an extent. Obviously everything cannot be released, but they are releasable to an extent and they will be made available at some point in time.” Ostrowski declined to elaborate on when that “point in time” would be.

Also odd is that ATI told NPR that, at the time they were awarding these secretive vaccine contracts, it was never explicitly told by the Department of Defense that these contracts were part of Operation Warp Speed, with a former ATI executive describing that key fact as “invisible” to the company.

Spooks and Skunkworks

Advanced Technology International (ATI) is a nonprofit company that organizes consortia of public, private, and academic organizations that perform research and development (R&D) on behalf of the US government. ATI mostly manages R&D consortia for the Department of Defense for things like weapons manufacturing, metal casting and forging, ship production, and technology aimed at countering so-called weapons of mass destruction. They also manage the Border Security Technology Consortium (BSTC) for the Department of Homeland Security, primarily surveillance technology companies, among other DHS research projects.

ATI only currently manages two consortia that have any relationship to health care, the Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium (MTEC) and the Medical CBRN Defense Consortium (MCDC). The MTEC, operating on behalf of the US Army Medical Research and Development Command, aims to “accelerate the development of revolutionary medical solutions,” which include gene editing, nanotechnology, “telehealth solutions,” artificial limbs, and brain implants. They are also currently developing a wearable device that would diagnose individuals with Covid-19 before symptoms appear.

The other ATI-managed “health-care” consortia, the MCDC, is focused on “advanced development efforts to support the Department of Defense’s (DoD) medical pharmaceutical and diagnostic requirements to counter Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) threat agents.”

They are specifically involved in “enabling prototype technologies for therapeutic medical countermeasures targeting viral, bacterial and biological toxin targets of interest to the DoD,” including the development of vaccines. ATI told NPR that they were contacted by the DoD sometime between March and April, before Warp Speed was announced in May, and asked to issue requests for proposals related to Covid-19 from MCDC members.

MCDC members include Emergent Biosolutions as well as DoD/CIA contractor Battelle Memorial Institute, with both of those companies having unsettling ties to the 2001 anthrax attacks. Another member of the MCDC is CIA/NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton and weapons manufacturer General Dynamics. MCDC’s membership has expanded significantly following ATI’s acquisition by Analytic Services Inc. (ANSER), the principal sponsor of the Dark Winter bioterror simulation, with eighteen new members added just three months after the acquisition had concluded.

In addition, there is considerable overlap between the MCDC and the vaccine companies that have been awarded secretive contracts through ATI as part of Operation Warp Speed. Sanofi, Novavax, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson are all MCDC members as well as recipients of Warp Speed vaccine contracts. In addition, Emergent Biosolutions, another MCDC member, was awarded a major Warp Speed contract to manufacture Covid-19 vaccines, but that contract was awarded through HHS Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), not ATI.

ANSER’s Rise, Its Fall, and Its Saving Grace

In February 2017, ATI was acquired by Analytic Services Inc. ANSER, like ATI, manages R&D projects for the federal government, historically for DHS, with ANSER being the long-time manager of one of the two DHS federally funded research and development centers. However, ANSER also provides services to the DoD, NASA, the State Department, and the US intelligence community.

ANSER was originally founded as a spin-off from the RAND Corporation in the late 1950s, but it became a much larger part of government operations, particularly in the realm of Homeland Security, after Ruth David became its president and CEO in 1998. Prior to becoming ANSER’s CEO, David had been the deputy director for science and technology at the CIA, where, among other things, she laid the groundwork for what would become In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital arm responsible for the rise of several Silicon Valley behemoths such as Google and Palantir. David led ANSER until 2015. After David took charge, ANSER became an early leader in promoting the use of biometric and facial recognition software by US law enforcement agencies and became a key driver in pivoting the government toward “homeland defense” and “homeland security” in the years leading up to the events of September 11, 2001.

As journalist Margie Burns noted in a 2002 article, the rise of “homeland defense” as a centerpiece of US government policy, including the push to create a new “homeland security” agency, began with former State Department official Richard Armitage’s alleged coining of the term in 1997 in a National Defense Policy document. In the years that followed, this pivot toward seeing the American homeland as a future battlefield was heavily promoted by a web of media outlets owned by South Korean cult leader and CIA asset Sun Myong Moon, including the Washington Times, Insight Magazine, and UPI. All published numerous articles either penned by ANSER analysts or that heavily cited ANSER reports and employees regarding the need for a greatly expanded “homeland security” apparatus.

Lt. Gen. Paul A. Ostrowski, deputy commander at Army Futures Command under commanding general Mike Murray.
(Photo by Catherine DeRan/U.S. Army)

In October 1999, at David’s behest, ANSER created the Institute for Homeland Security (ANSER-IHS). Though fully funded and established at that time, but for reasons still unclear, the ANSER-IHS was not formally launched until April 2001. The Institute’s first director was Randall Larsen, who was at that time—and still is today—a close associate of current HHS ASPR Robert Kadlec. Though ANSER has never explained the reason behind the lengthy delay in officially launching ANSER-IHS, it is possible that the timing was related to the introduction of H.R.1158 in March 2001. That bill called for the creation of the National Homeland Security Agency, which was the foundation of the later Department of Homeland Security.

One month after ANSER-IHS was created, Insight Magazine published an article in May 2001 entitled “Preparing for the Next Pearl Harbor,” which heavily cited ANSER and its Institute for Homeland Security as being among “the nation’s top experts” in warning that a terrorist attack on the US mainland was imminent. It also stated that “the first responders on tomorrow’s battlefield won’t be soldiers, but city ambulance workers and small-town firefighters.”

The following month, ANSER-IHS cohosted the Dark Winter exercise, with two top ANSER-IHS officials, Mark DeMier and Randall Larsen, cowriting the exercise with Tara O’Toole and Thomas Inglesby of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies (now the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security). O’Toole, at the time, was on the ANSER-IHS board of advisers.

As previously detailed in theEngineering Contagion series, several of those involved in Dark Winter had foreknowledge of the 2001 anthrax attacks, and Dark Winter itself originated what became the initial, yet false, narrative for those attacks—that Iraq and Al Qaeda were working together to conduct acts of bioterrorism on US soil. However, the anthrax used in the attacks was quickly determined to have either originated from a US military lab or a US defense contractor.

ANSER’s convenient gamble that the US government would imminently pivot toward homeland security soon after April 2001 paid off tremendously. Thanks largely to the fear stoked by 9/11 and the 2001 anthrax attacks, the Department of Homeland Security was created, and ANSER-IHS quickly became the first government think tank, that is, federally funded research and development center.

Not long after its formal creation as an agency, DHS established its Science and Technology (S & T) Directorate in 2003 with the mission “to protect the homeland by providing . . . officials with state-of-the-art technology.” DHS later announced in 2004 that it had “selected [ANSER] to operate the Homeland Security Institute . . . [f]ollowing a full and open competition procurement process conducted by [DHS] Science and Technology.” This is despite this very institute having already been funded and established by ANSER in 1999 and then launched in 2001.

From 2009 to 2013, the head of DHS Science and Technology Directorate was Dark Winter coauthor and bioterror alarmist Tara O’Toole, who had long-standing, close ties to ANSER-IHS, as previously mentioned. With O’Toole at the helm, DHS focused on “more robust public-private sector partnerships” and “increasing the budget for innovative, longer-term technology projects,” such as those overseen by ANSER on the behalf of DHS. She also made it her mission to model the S & T Directorate more closely after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

During her tenure, DHS also claimed to be “unaware” of how the department’s multibillion dollar research expenditures were being used, suggesting a lack of oversight in the millions of dollars DHS S & T was funneling to the ANSER-run research center and the other DHS research center, which is run by the equally shady MITRE Corporation.

Unexpectedly for ANSER, DHS declined to renew ANSER’s federally funded research and development center contract in October 2016. They instead awarded that contract to the RAND Corporation, which created a new research and development center with “a different set of focus areas, aligned more closely with current DHS priorities.” ANSER’s apparent plans for restructuring following the loss of this critical contract included its decision to acquire ATI, which took place just a few months later in February 2017.

The acquisition of ATI gave ANSER access to the key OTA research consortia that ATI manages, ensuring that ANSER’s board of former intelligence officials, military officers, and defense-industry executives continued to wield considerable influence over the direction of government-funded research projects. Per the press release, the acquisition was aimed at combining ANSER’s “government problem-solving heritage with ATI’s technical expertise,” allowing ANSER to continue to execute “thought leadership independent of commercial influences” over the “important defense technology developments” being overseen by ATI. Thus, whatever decisions are being made by ATI with respect to these secretive Operation Warp Speed vaccine contracts, it is ultimately ANSER that is signing off on them.

Mess Hall

Given that Operation Warp Speed’s official purpose is to use taxpayer funds to produce, accelerate, and distribute a medical treatment (i. e., vaccine) to Americans, there is no reason for such extreme secrecy and also no reason for the excessive role of the military and secretive contractors like ATI and ANSER in the execution of this “public health” effort.

While the officially stated purpose of Warp Speed makes the extreme secrecy involved seem not just unnecessary but absurd, it is worth noting that several recent revelations regarding Warp Speed’s structure, strategy, and execution strongly suggest that the reason for the operation’s covert nature is because its scope goes well beyond its publicly stated purpose.

For instance, Stat News noted last week that Operation Warp Speed “looks a lot more like a military operation than a science project,” adding that “roughly 60 military officials—including at least four generals—are involved in the leadership of Operation Warp Speed, many of whom have never worked in health care or vaccine development.” That report also pointed out that “just 29 of the roughly 90 leaders on the chart aren’t employed by the Department of Defense.”

Though the military’s initial justification for playing such a major role in Warp Speed was related to its “expertise” in logistics and supply chains, the recent release of the operation’s vaccine distribution strategy makes no direct mention of the military’s role in those aspects of Warp Speed. So noticeable was the disconnect that, soon after the release of the official distribution strategy, the Department of Defense “clarified” the military’s role in the operation by publishing an interview on its website with Lt. Gen. Ostrowski, who is leading Warp Speed’s efforts to supply, produce, and distribute vaccines. Per Ostrowski, the reason the military is playing such an outsize role in Warp Speed is because of the military’s “program management and contracting expertise.”

Yet, as this article has shown, Warp Speed contracts are being funneled through secretive contractors to avoid scrutiny and are apparently not being made available to HHS, the civilian agency supposedly “co-leading” Warp Speed alongside the military.

Such examples of extreme secrecy and conflicting statements appear to be just scratching the surface of what Operation Warp Speed truly aims to accomplish. An upcoming series of investigative reports produced by this author in collaboration with Ryan Cristián and Derrick Broze of The Last American Vagabond will explore in depth this operation and the individuals leading it in order to expose Operation Warp Speed as the most clandestine, and arguably most dangerous, US military operation in decades. Unlike such well-funded and secretive military operations of years past, this one is aimed directly at the American people.

THE CIA

An independent agency of the United States government responsible for collecting and coordinating intelligence and counterintelligence activities abroad in the national interest; headed by the Director of Central Intelligence under the supervision of the President and National Security Council...There has been considerable criticism of the CIA relating to security and counterintelligence failures, failures in intelligence analysis, human rights concerns, external investigations and document releases, influencing public opinion and law enforcement, drug trafficking, and lying to Congress. In 1987, the former CIA Station Chief in Angola in 1976, John Stockwell, said the CIA is responsible for tens of thousands of covert actions and destablization programs since it was created by Congress with the passage of the National Security Act of 1947. At the time, Stockwell estimated that over 6 million people had died in CIA covert actions.

LINK: C.I.A.

Operation Warp Speed
- Interview with Whitney Webb -

Mercola | First published at 01:36 UTC on October 30th, 2020

In this interview, investigative journalist Whitney Webb, who does both independent work and collaborations with The Last American Vagabond, discusses the little-known details of Operation Warp Speed, a joint operation between U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Defense to produce a fast-tracked COVID-19 vaccine and other therapeutics.

- Many of the same surveillance initiatives proposed after 9/11 have been resurrected, with updated technology, under the guise of combating COVID-19
- Operation Warp Speed, the White House Administration’s effort to produce a fast-tracked COVID-19 vaccine and other therapeutics, is almost entirely funded and operated by the CIA and the U.S. military
- Operation Warp Speed is supporting the creation of several COVID-19 vaccines, all of which will be deployed, but to different “critical populations”
- Operation Warp Speed is shrouded in secrecy that makes it difficult to ascertain the true agenda, but part of the plan is to monitor vaccine recipients for 24 months after the first dose using biosensors that record and share biological data
- Like 9/11, the COVID-19 pandemic is being used as justification for the implementation of more tyrannical controls. It appears they’re laying down the infrastructure for a totalitarian control system set to be fully deployed later

Read full article here https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/11/01/operation-warp-speed.aspx?cid_source=bitchute&cid_medium=video&cid=articles_operation-warp-speed-interview-with-whitney-webb

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TAKE ACTION  BY GETTING THE WORD OUT! - SPREAD AWARENESS BY HANDING OUT & POSTING THESE FLYERS - LAWFULLY POST THEM WHERE PEOPLE TRAFFIC AND CONGREGATE
link: https://www.docdroid.net/732luaB/beware-of-mrna-covid-vaxx-color-pdf	link: https://www.docdroid.net/ZP96pPO/beware-of-mrna-covid-vaxx-bw-pdf

Source Article:

www.nvic.org

Go to the National Vaccine Information Center and choose
from a variety of informational tools you can use to spread
vaccine awareness to those around you.

https://www.nvic.org/vaccine-information-kiosk.aspx

Welcome to NVIC’s information kiosk! This section of our website will direct you to referenced information and a variety of materials designed to educate you about vaccines, diseases and how to make informed vaccination choices. You can download posters and brochures to share with others or send an ecard to family and friends. You can also post or read personal vaccination experiences on this website.

The National Plan
To Vaccinate Every American

NVICstandup | Mar 23, 2020

Co-founder and president of the non-profit National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) Barbara Loe Fisher outlines the history of the National Vaccine Plan developed by the U.S. government since 1994 in partnership with the pharmaceutical industry to ensure all Americans receive every federally recommended vaccination. Also included is a review of major types of vaccine-related legislation pending in states to eliminate or restrict voluntary vaccine decision-making.

To read and view this referenced commentary visit https://www.nvic.org/NVIC-Vaccine-New...

To learn more about government police powers related to vaccines visit https://www.nvic.org/Vaccine-Laws/gov...

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Company Set to Manufacture COVID-19 Vaccine for US Intentionally Sold Faulty Biodefense Products
https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/company-set-manufacture-covid-19-vaccine-for-us-intentionally-sold-faulty-biodefense-products/

August 20, 2020 Author Whitney Webb

Evidence of the corruption of the company Emergent BioSolutions has emerged yet again as the firm, set to play a key role in the manufacture of four leading COVID-19 vaccine candidates, has been caught selling the US government a biodefense product it knew was non-functional.

Internal documents and e-mails from the “life sciences” company Emergent BioSolutions reveal that the company was aware that its biodefense product for the treatment of nerve gas exposure, sold under the brand name Trobigard, was both non-functional and untested for safety or efficacy while it was actively marketing the product to the U.S. government.

The firm was well aware of the fact that Trobigard’s functionality and safety in humans had never been tested several months before it was awarded a no-bid $25 million contract in October 2017 and a subsequent $100 million contract in 2019 to supply troves of the product to the State Department. Indeed, the results of the company’s first study on Trobigard’s efficacy in treating exposure to nerve gas were not even available until six weeks after Emergent had won the contract with the State Department and, even then, those results could “not be directly extrapolated to the human situation,” per the study’s authors.

According to internal company records and emails from Emergent employees and government officials obtained by The Washington Post, Emergent’s director of regulatory affairs, Brenda Wolling, stated in July 2017 that “functionality testing has not been successful in this device [Trobigard]” and that even describing Trobigard as “a treatment of nerve agent poisoning” was inaccurate because that claim “implies that we have efficacy data showing it works.”

Emergent BioSolutions declined to answer if the inaccurate marketing claims that Trobigard had been tested for safety and efficacy had been made to State Department officials prior to the awarding of the first contract for Trobigard in October 2017. The company did, however, state that Wolling’s claims had been “taken seriously” but that they did “not necessarily represent the company’s position.”

Notably, Wolling had sent internal warnings about Trobigard to colleagues a year prior, in 2016, telling Emergent salespeople to “exclude efficacy claims” about the biodefense product when marketing it to potential buyers. She specifically stated that “we have not substantiated that this co-formulated product is efficacious or safe, and have never tested against nerve agents as an antidote.” Also in 2016, a former Emergent executive, Dan Mallon, was also found to have admitted to Emergent employees that “Emergent sales representatives had made unsupported claims about Trobigard to clients.”

Even Emergent’s spokeswoman Nina DeLorenzo has since openly acknowledged that “Emergent has not tested the safety or efficacy of atropine and obidoxime co-formulated,” meaning that the combination of the two drugs that compose Trobigard has never been found to be safe or even work.

“Emergent made clear to government agencies interested in procuring Trobigard that they were doing so based on their own determination of need, without this type of safety or efficacy data from Emergent,” DeLorenzo told The Washington Post, essentially declaring that Emergent’s policy with respect to Trobigard is that of “buyer beware.”

Yet, some of Trobigard’s issues were so glaring and obvious that they resulted in public recalls, with the company recalling 61,000 units that had been sold to the United Arab Emirate in January 2019. While Emergent’s contract with the State Department obligated them to report “any issues with the safety and efficacy of delivered or ordered products and/or manufacturing or quality of the production lines” in a timely manner, the company argued that the recall in the UAE was unrelated to the State Department’s orders of Trobigard because they were different production batches. A similar recall was later made with units of Trobigard that had been sold to Italy’s government and Emergent chose to notify the State Department on that occasion. Trobigard had also been plagued with production issues, such as that which resulted in the discoloration of Trobigard injectors following sterilization, referred to as the “red spots” issue in company records.

The end result of Trobigard’s troubles was ultimately Emergent’s quiet decision to re-list it as a product in development as opposed to a marketable product on its website and to require that all future sales of Trobigard be approved by Emergent’s medical, legal and regulatory departments. However, Emergent has maintained that the Trobigard injectors sold to the State Department are safe, despite having admitted that no safety or efficacy tests of the product in humans have ever been conducted. The company has continued to receive payments from their multi-million dollar contracts with the State Department, the last of which was made last September.

Trobigard’s numerous issues appear to be precisely why Emergent sought to market the troubled product to the State Department in the first place, as marketing the product for use by U.S. diplomats overseas allowed Emergent to avoid needing the approval of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is necessary for the product’s sale within the United States. In order to facilitate Trobigard’s sale without FDA approval, Emergent sold Trobigard to the State Department through a subsidiary based in the U.K. and had the injectors assembled in Europe where the finished product was then sent to U.S. embassies around the world. Trobigard is not currently approved for use by the health authorities of any nation.

An Abysmal Track Record Gets Worse

Despite Emergent’s rather nefarious efforts to duplicitously market faulty and untested biodefense products, the Department of Defense recently awarded them a contract worth up to $75 million to “develop other injectors for potential use by troops to counter certain kinds of chemical attacks.” Emergent BioSolutions, particularly before the company restructured and changed its name from BioPort in 2004, has long been notorious for its close “revolving door” ties to the Pentagon as well as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in addition to its intimate involvement in the Anthrax vaccine scandal where the Pentagon was found guilty in 2004 of illegally using Emergent’s anthrax vaccine in an “experimental” and “off-label” way on U.S. troops.

That 2004 ruling focused on the Pentagon’s mandatory anthrax vaccination campaign for U.S. troops, which began in the late 1990s, and the fact that Emergent BioSolution’s anthrax vaccine, marketed as BioThrax, had never been subjected to either safety tests or tests that proved its efficacy per its intended use, i.e. protecting troops from the inhalation of weaponized anthrax. The ruling was essentially circumvented by the Pentagon in 2006, when the military decided to resume mandatory anthrax immunizations among U.S. servicemen soon after the FDA approved BioThrax as a treatment for anthrax inhalation, despite no in-depth studies on BioThrax’s efficacy or safety being conducted following the 2004 ruling.

The recent revelations about Emergent’s biodefense product Trobigard show that the company continues to follow the same corrupt playbook, with the firm relying on their connections to government officials thanks to the public-private “revolving door” and their own veritable army of lobbyists to sell untested and unsafe products to the federal government.

One of Emergent’s greatest enablers in the U.S. government today is HHS’ Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR), Robert Kadlec. Kadlec, once a lobbyist for Emergent who also co-founded a biodefense company with Emergent’s founder Fuad El-Hibri, had informed one of Emergent’s top lobbyists, Christopher Frech, about a “potential opportunity in Japan” after an official visit to the country in 2019. A spokeswoman for Kadlec later stated that “Dr. Kadlec was contacted by Japanese senior government officials asking for American suppliers of medical countermeasures in preparation for the Olympic Games, and Kadlec provided them contacts with multiple suppliers.”

During Kadlec’s tenure at HHS, Emergent BioSolutions has become the largest contractor to the HHS office he oversees, which also now exercises complete control over the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS). Kadlec spent the better part of his lengthy career orchestrating both the creation of the SNS and the consolidation of its control by a single office (HHS’ ASPR). It is partially thanks to Kadlec, whose office is also in charge of major aspects of the U.S. government’s COVID-19 response, that Emergent BioSolutions is set to play a key role in the manufacture of at least four of the leading COVID-19 vaccine candidates, despite Emergent’s abysmal track record involving the sale of untested, unsafe and non-functional products.

As the race to bring the first COVID-19 vaccine to market has heated up, Emergent BioSolutions has forged partnerships with the companies creating most of the leading COVID-19 vaccine candidates, including Johnson & Johnson, Vaxart, Novavax and AstraZeneca. Per these partnerships, Emergent BioSolutions will be the main manufacturer for the vaccine candidates developed by the aforementioned companies, some of which are developing their vaccines with explicit U.S. government support.

In addition, the U.S. government itself has awarded Emergent a $628 million contract by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), a division of HHS overseen by Robert Kadlec’s office. Per an Emergent press release, this BARDA contract builds off of an existing contract between BARDA and Emergent and “secures, on behalf of leading COVID-19 vaccine innovators that are supported by the government, capacity for drug substance manufacturing at the company’s Baltimore Bayview facility and for drug product manufacturing at the Baltimore Camden and locations.” In other words, the contract essentially ensures that Emergent will be involved in manufacturing the U.S. government’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate of choice in spite of their horrendous track record on product testing and product safety.

'Your Body Is The Battlefield' In The War On COVID & NIH, DARPA Focus On Digital/Predictive Health

The Last American Vagabond | First published at 06:19 UTC on October 9th, 2020.

Welcome to The Daily Wrap Up, a concise show dedicated to bringing you the most relevant independent news, as we see it, from the last 24 hours.

***Due To YouTube Censorship, All Video Source Links Can Be Found At The Last American Vagabond Here After The Show: https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/

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Use our new P.O. box:
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Video Source Links:

https://www.statnews.com/2020/10/08/trumps-treatment-puts-a-spotlight-on-regeneron-and-the-pugnacious-pair-who-run-it/

https://www.statnews.com/2020/09/08/operation-warp-speed-promised-to-do-the-impossible-how-far-has-it-come/

https://www.regeneron.com/genetics-center

https://www.regeneron.com/collaborations

https://ir.intelliatx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/intellia-therapeutics-names-moncef-slaoui-phd-and-frank-verwiel

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-30943377

https://twitter.com/TruNews/status/1313992009535848449

https://www.statnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Slide1_WarpSpeed-1600×1189.jpg

https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/strategy-for-distributing-covid-19-vaccine.pdf

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcolepsy-flu.html

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/guillain-barre-syndrome.html

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2010/04/new-canadian-studies-suggest-seasonal-flu-shot-increased-h1n1-risk

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2010/09/pending-injury-claims-over-2009-h1n1-vaccine-increase

https://www.google.com/search?q=pharmacovigilance&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS717US719&oq=pharmacovigilance&aqs=chrome..69i57.13j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/imz-managers/downloads/COVID-19-Vaccination-Program-Interim_Playbook.pdf

https://media.defense.gov/2020/Sep/16/2002498504/-1/-1/1/OWS-VACCINE-DISTRIBUTION-GRAPHIC.pdf

https://www.defense.gov/Explore/Spotlight/Coronavirus/Operation-Warp-Speed/

https://www.medtechintelligence.com/news_article/nih-awards-seven-contracts-for-covid-19-digital-health-technologies/

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-awards-contracts-develop-innovative-digital-health-technologies-covid-19

https://www.massdevice.com/nih-awards-contracts-to-develop-digital-health-technologies-for-covid-19/

https://www.medtechdive.com/news/nih-awards-up-to-23m-to-fund-digital-health-responses-to-covid-19/585309/

https://www.biospace.com/article/releases/darpa-awards-inflammatix-up-to-1-1-million-to-develop-diagnostic-that-predicts-covid-19-severity-risk/

https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/expose-warp-speed-whitney-webb-chips-gels-sensors-trump-covid-psyop/

https://unlimitedhangout.com/2020/10/uncategorized/secretive-hhs-ai-platform-to-predict-us-covid-19-outbreaks-weeks-in-advance/

https://gcn.com/articles/2020/09/25/covid-wastewater-testing.aspx

https://publicintegrity.org/health/coronavirus-and-inequality/secretive-data-system-shaping-pandemic-response-hhs-protect/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8796375/amp/Bomb-sniffing-robot-redesigned-smell-coronavirus-breath.html?__twitter_impression=true

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/23/world/europe/finland-dogs-airport-coronavirus.html

https://breakingdefense.com/2020/08/dod-needs-new-policies-ethics-for-brain-computer-links-jacked-in-troops/

https://twitter.com/jonrappoport/status/1313917254657081345

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4420971/

https://www.globalresearch.ca/medical-doctor-warns-bacterial-pneumonias-rise-mask-wearing/5725848

https://www.newsweek.com/over-6000-scientists-sign-anti-lockdown-petition-saying-its-causing-irreparable-damage-1537047

https://twitter.com/TLAVagabond/status/1314204019728936960

5 NIH studies from 2004-2020 all finding verifiable health effects from wearing a face mask, including scientifically verified reduction is blood oxygen level:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29395560/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32590322/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15340662/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26579222/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31159777/

Cloth Mask Study

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4420971/

COVID Cover Up w/ Dr. Judy Mikovits:
The BioSecurity State Illusion That Led To Your "New Normal"

The Last American Vagabond | First published at 00:48 UTC on October 25th, 2020.

Joining me today is someone you are all very familiar with, and that's in large part due to the unjust suppression and censorship of her work and her efforts to expose the truth, and this speaks to the overwhelming desire for the unvarnished truth that is bubbling up in the masses as we speak. They now seek out exactly what they are told not to look at, at a level never before seen. We all at some level feel what a dangerous path we are on; we all feel to one degree or another the dishonestly, the lies, the tyrannical pressure building in our lives at very this moment, and this is why we are not just thirsty for, but bone dry parched and burning for the truth. So I am honored to be yet again be speaking with, researcher, scientist & medical professional, Dr. Judy Mikovits, who has made it her life mission to fight for that truth.

Video Links:
thelastamericanvagabond.com/covid-coverup-dr-judy-mikovits-biosecurity-state-illusion-that-led-to-your-new-normal/

Your Guide to the Great Reset

The Corbett Report | First published at 15:13 UTC on October 16th, 2020.

SHOW NOTES AND MP3: https://www.corbettreport.com/greatreset/

You've all heard by now that The Great Reset is upon us. But what is The Great Reset, exactly, and what does it mean for the future of humanity? Join James for this in-depth exploration of the latest rebranding of the New World Order agenda and its vision of a post-human Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The Great Reset:
Where Do We Go From Here?

The Conscious Resistance Network | First published at 03:45 UTC on August 16th, 2020.

The Great Reset: Where Do We Go From Here?

It's time to step past the 24 hour fear porn news cycle and ask where we are headed. It's time to Understand The Great Reset.

Source: https://wp.me/paT9J6-31o

Testing the Most Effective Method to Manipulate Minds
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/08/joseph-mercola/testing-the-most-effective-method-to-manipulate-minds/

By Joseph Mercola | August 14, 2020 | www.mercola.com

By the looks of it, we are about to face one of the most aggressive vaccine campaigns ever created. According to Reuters,¹ the U.S. government is planning to launch an “overwhelming” COVID-19 vaccine campaign come November, provided the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gives one or more vaccine candidates the green light.

Considering former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb² is now on Pfizer’s board of directors,³ and Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is one of the lead candidates, jaded minds might assume the FDA isn’t going to put up any significant roadblocks.

According to Reuters, the COVID-19 vaccine campaign “will likely be compressed into a short period of time, around four to six weeks, to eliminate any lag between when Americans are alerted to the vaccine and then they can get vaccinated.” An unnamed “senior White House administration official” is quoted saying:⁴

“The fine line we are walking is getting the American people very excited about vaccines and missing expectations versus having a bunch of vaccines in the warehouse and not as many people want to get it. You may not hear a lot about promoting vaccines over the airwaves in August and September but you’ll be overwhelmed by it come November.”

It’s still unclear exactly when a vaccine will be available, but it could be as early as October, or as late as January 2021. According to the administration official, the advertising campaign for the vaccine will be tailored to specific subsets of the population, depending on the people the vaccine is likely to benefit the most. Such details are expected to be teased out during ongoing clinical trials.

Study Underway to Identify Most Effective Messaging

The idea that the vaccine promotion might be more “overwhelming” than what we’re used to is further supported by a clinical study⁵ on ClinicalTrials.gov, the aim of which is to identify the most “persuasive messages for COVID-19 vaccine uptake.”

The study, conducted by Yale University, will test “different messages about vaccinating against COVID-19 once the vaccine becomes available.”

A total of 4,000 participants will be randomized to receive one of 12 different messages (10 messaging variations, one control message and one baseline message), after which they will “compare the reported willingness to get a COVID-19 vaccine at three and six months of it becoming available.” The messaging slants under investigation include:⁶

Personal freedom message — A message about how COVID-19 is limiting people’s personal freedom, and how society, by working together to get enough people vaccinated, can preserve its personal freedom.

Economic freedom message — A message about how COVID-19 is limiting people’s economic freedom, and how society, by working together to get enough people vaccinated, can preserve its economic freedom.

Self-interest message — A message that COVID-19 presents a real danger to one’s health, even if one is young and healthy, and how getting vaccinated against COVID-19 is the best way to prevent oneself from getting sick.

Community interest message — A message about the dangers of COVID-19 to the health of loved ones: The more people who get vaccinated against COVID-19, the lower the risk that one’s loved ones will get sick. Society must work together and all get vaccinated.

Economic benefit message — A message about how COVID-19 is wreaking havoc on the economy and the only way to strengthen the economy is to work together to get enough people vaccinated.

Guilt message — A message is about the danger that COVID-19 presents to the health of one’s family and community. Therefore, the best way to protect them is not only by getting vaccinated, but to get society to work together to get enough people vaccinated. Then a test question asks the participant to imagine the guilt they will feel if they don’t get vaccinated and then spread the disease.

Embarrassment message — A message is about the danger that COVID-19 presents to the health of one’s family and community: The best way to protect them is by getting vaccinated and by working together to make sure that enough people get vaccinated. Then it asks the participant to imagine the embarrassment they will feel if they don’t get vaccinated and spread the disease.

Anger message — The message is about the danger that COVID-19 presents to the health of one’s family and community. The best way to protect them is by getting vaccinated and by working together to make sure that enough people get vaccinated. It then asks the participant to imagine the anger they will feel if they don’t get vaccinated and spread the disease.

Trust in science message — A message about how getting vaccinated against COVID-19 is the most effective way of protecting one’s community, that vaccination is backed by science: If one doesn’t get vaccinated that means that one doesn’t understand how infections are spread or you are one who ignores science.

Not brave message — A message which describes how firefighters, doctors and front line medical workers are brave: Those who choose not to get vaccinated against COVID-19 are not brave.

While the study was completed July 8, 2020, results have yet to be publicly posted. Clearly, this is not the first time researchers have investigated the most effective propaganda angles, but the types of messages listed above really demonstrate just how insidious these types of campaigns can be.

It’s really all about manipulation — pushing the right mental and emotional hot-buttons to fire up a desired response, all while overriding more logical thought processes.

The propaganda push has already started, it seems, with USA Today publishing an article⁷ titled “Defeat COVID-19 by Requiring Vaccination for All. It’s Not Un-American, It’s Patriotic.” This is precisely the kind of PR we can expect more of in the months to come.

The manipulation aspect is equally if not more evident in the listed secondary outcome measures, which include:

• Participants’ confidence in the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine
• Participants’ willingness to persuade others to get vaccinated
• Their fear of those who have not been vaccinated
• The social judgment of those who choose not to vaccinate

Effective Totalitarianism Relies on You Enjoying Servitude

A quote from Aldous Huxley’s dystopian 1932 book, “Brave New World,” reads:

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.”

Huxley’s quote starts off a thought-provoking article⁸ on The Burning Platform that reviews the rise of totalitarianism and parallels presented in popular works of fiction. The author notes Huxley’s book came on the heels of Edward Bernays’ 1928 book, “Propaganda” — a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the historical foundations of modern public relations. The article points out that, in his book, Bernays:⁹

“… revealed the existence of an invisible government who used propaganda to manipulate the minds of the public to insure those controlling the levers of power were able to engineer their desired outcomes.”

A contemporary to Huxley and Bernays was George Orwell, who wrote the cult classic “1984.” In 1949, Huxley reportedly wrote to Orwell, stating he believed the world’s rulers would soon “discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient as instruments of government than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.”¹⁰

At its heart, technocracy is an economic system, not a political one. The system also hinges on the skillful implementation of social engineering.

Huxley believed the nightmarish existence presented in “1984” was “destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in ‘Brave New World'” and that this transition would be the result of “a felt need for increased efficiency.” While Huxley did not use the word “technocracy,” that’s essentially what he was talking about.

Technocracy 101

Technocracy is an economic and social engineering system that got started in the 1930s during the height of the Great Depression, when scientists and engineers got together to solve the nation’s economic problems.

The Trilateral Commission’s co-founder Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Columbia University professor, brought the concept of technocracy into the Commission in 1973, with the financial support of David Rockefeller. Technocrats have silently and relentlessly pushed forward ever since, and their agenda is now becoming increasingly visible.

At its heart, technocracy is an economic system, not a political one. It actually calls for, indeed demands, the total dismantling of the political system, which includes the U.S. Constitution. In fact, the Constitution is the only thing that has kept technocracy at bay this long in the U.S.

The system also hinges on the skillful implementation of social engineering. Once fully implemented, people won’t have the ability to effectively fight it, but until then, through peaceful civil disobedience, the sharing of information and the exercise of political power, we still have a chance to prevent it.

Time is running short, however. As noted by The Burning Platform,¹¹ “Since 9/11, the United States has unequivocally moved in the direction of Orwell’s 1984 vision,” and “We are now experiencing a dystopian amalgamation of the worst of both novels,” referring to “1984” and “Brave New World.”

Unfortunately, many still cannot see the full picture, nor understand the ultimate real-world danger of unquestioning compliance with ever-more illogical and freedom-quenching recommendations and mandates.

Technocracy Demands the Abolishment of Political Systems

Under technocratic rule, nations are to be led by unelected leaders who decide which resources companies can use to make certain products, and which products consumers are ultimately allowed to buy. Technocracy is essentially a resource-based economic system in which energy and social engineering run the economy rather than pricing mechanisms such as supply and demand.

Patrick Wood — an economist, financial analyst and American constitutionalist — has devoted a lifetime to uncovering the mystery of what is controlling most of the craziness we’re currently seeing, and which has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. I go into more details on technocracy in my interview with Patrick Wood.

His two books, “Technocracy Rising: The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation” and “Technocracy: The Hard Road to World Order” delve into this new world order in greater depth. You can listen to our interview below.

Download Interview Transcript 

Science Has Been Misused for Decades

Importantly, science is a primary tool used to manipulate society and keep the economic engine running under the technocratic system. As explained by Wood, technocracy uses science to issue suggestions, to start. But those suggestions rapidly turn into mandates, which is precisely what we’ve been seeing during this pandemic. We’ve also seen this with vaccines in general.

But the COVID-19 pandemic has also revealed there’s a much larger plan that includes implantable digital identifications, medical records and vaccine passports, digital currency and banking — all of which will ultimately be tied together so that algorithms and automation will be able to keep everyone in line, everywhere, all the time.

Rule by Algorithm

An important tool used to drive the technocratic agenda forward is what Huxley pointed out, namely efficiency. In the name of efficiency and convenience, we are being inundated with an ever-increasing amount of “smart” technology that tracks everything everyone says and does, and artificial intelligence that sorts, interprets and spits out recommendations based on all that data.

This technological infrastructure is crucial for the technocracy, as the ultimate goal is to essentially automate slavery. The idea is that society will be ruled by automated algorithms, thus rendering a political structure irrelevant. Everyone will be automatically kept in line by technology.

For example, you might be told via text message that it’s time to get your annual vaccination. You go there, get the shot, and receive a digital vaccine certificate. Should you get the bright idea to refuse, your bank accounts get automatically frozen, the electronic door pass to your office won’t work, and you won’t be allowed to pass through the electronic check point at the grocery store.

No human authority is required in that system. There won’t be anyone to complain to or debate with. You’re herded into compliance by the fact that you have to do certain things in order to be allowed to participate in society. It sounds crazy, but if you look around, you’ll see clear evidence that this system has been slowly implemented all around us, for decades.

And, when you look at the statements from people like Bill Gates, in conjunction with the technologies he and others are implementing in various parts of the world (such as digital identification, currency, vaccine certificates and medical records, along with implantable chips to track employee attendance, smart appliances and entire smart cities, just to name a few), you can begin to see how the control loop is closing in around us.

In her book, “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,” professor Shoshana Zuboff exposes the stunning capacities currently available to surveil, analyze and manipulate our behavior. It’s crucial to realize that as bad as it is today, the predictive power of technology is advancing at an exponential rate, which means their ability to manipulate behavior is increasing at a pace we cannot fully comprehend.

Regaining Control of Local Government Is Key

Importantly, technocrats are currently making an end run around national sovereignty. Rather than a frontal assault on the system, which has never been successful, they’ve simply eroded national sovereignty piece by piece. What can we can do to thwart the steady march of technocracy?

As explained by Wood, the most effective way is through local activism. The technocratic system was built from the bottom up, so we cannot tear it down from the top down. They’re already far too powerful for that. So, to begin the dismantling process, we must regain control of our local governments, and work our way up from there.

One of the most important elected local officials that you should concern yourself with is your sheriff. Sheriffs are responsible for enforcing tyrannical edicts from local, state and federal government, and if they choose not to, government has no power. City councils also have a lot of power. They can pass binding resolutions to protect citizens against the technocratic agenda.

1 Person in 40 Is Injured by Vaccines

Getting back to the issue of the COVID-19 vaccine, I urge you to keep a cool head once the PR machine gains speed. Read through the propaganda messages again (above) and familiarize yourself with them so you can identify the buttons they’re trying to push.

Remember, the COVID-19 vaccines currently leading in development have never before been licensed for human use, and there’s no possible way to ascertain what the long-term ramifications might be when you turn your body into a viral protein factory. I’ve discussed the theory behind mRNA vaccines in several previous articles, including “Gates Tries to Justify Side Effects of Fast-Tracked Vaccine.”

Coronavirus vaccine efforts gained speed in early 2002, following three SARS epidemics. However, such efforts have proven highly problematic as coronavirus vaccines have a stubborn tendency to trigger paradoxical immune responses.

In my interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who chairs the board of directors of the Children’s Health Defense,¹² he reviewed some of the failed efforts to produce a viable coronavirus vaccine and highlighted the dangers of vaccine exaggeration of the immune response:

“The Chinese, the Americans, the Europeans all got together and said, ‘We need to develop a vaccine against coronavirus.’ Around 2012, they had about 30 vaccines that looked promising. They took the four best of those and … gave those vaccines to ferrets, which are the closest analogy when you’re looking at lung infections in human beings.

The ferrets had an extraordinarily good antibody response, and that is the metric by which FDA licenses vaccines … The ferrets developed very strong antibodies, so they thought, ‘We hit the jackpot.’ All four of these vaccines … worked like a charm.

Then something terrible happened. Those ferrets were then exposed to the wild virus, and they all died. [They developed] inflammation in all their organs, their lungs stopped functioning and they died.”

So please, review ALL the vaccine studies BEFORE you get the COVID vaccine because as far as I have read, this essential part of the study — ensuring that no paradoxical immune enhancement will occur — has not yet been done.

Even with conventionally manufactured vaccines, data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Agency for Healthcare Research Quality suggests vaccine damage occurs in 2.6% of all vaccinations. This means 1 in 40 people — not 1 in 1 million, which is what we’ve been repeatedly told — is injured by vaccines. Kennedy Jr. reviewed this data in a recent online vaccine debate¹³ with attorney and legal scholar Alan Dershowitz.

The U.S. Vaccine Court has also paid out $4 billion to patients permanently damaged or killed by vaccines, and that’s just a small portion of all the cases filed. According to Kennedy, less than 1% of people who are injured ever get to court, due to the high bar set for proving causation.

Will the novel mRNA COVID-19 vaccines be more dangerous than conventional vaccines, or will they be safer? Considering these vaccines are being fast-tracked and are forgoing all traditional animal testing and long-term evaluation, I suspect they may end up having far more unanticipated complications.

So, as the vaccine campaign rolls out, remember to weigh whatever potential risks and benefits that might apply in your particular situation, and avoid falling for emotional triggers.

Regardless of what you decide, also try to accept the personal decisions of others. The PR campaign will clearly try to manipulate you into fearing those who chose not to vaccinate, and trigger you into condemning them. Hopefully, knowing that you are being manipulated will help ease these tendencies.

Sources and References

• ^1, 4 Reuters July 30, 2020 
• ² FDA.gov Scott Gottlieb 
• ³ Pfizer June 27, 2019 
• ^5, 6 Clinicaltrials.gov COVID-19 Vaccine Messaging, Part 1, Identifier: NCT04460703 
• ⁷ USA Today August 10, 2020 
• ^{8, 9, 10, 11} The Burning Platform, Are You Loving Your Servitude? 
• ¹² Children’s Health Defense Board of Directors 
• ¹³ YouTube Vaccine Debate — Kennedy Jr. vs Dershowitz, July 23, 2020 

The Best of Joseph Mercola 

How To Deal With Vocal Vaccine Deniers
- #PropagandaWatch -

The Corbett Report | First published at 09:55 UTC on August 18th, 2020

SHOW NOTES: https://www.corbettreport.com/?p=37320

The WHO has made a handy-dandy guide on how to debate vaccine deniers. Today on #PropagandaWatch,
James delves into the document and examines its ideas.
 

The Pandemic is a Test Run
- #PropagandaWatch -

The Corbett Report | First published at 11:40 UTC on September 23rd, 2020

SHOW NOTES AND MP3: https://www.corbettreport.com/the-pandemic-is-a-test-run-propagandawatch

The death cult that wants to suppress humanity has issued their warning: the lockdown of the world in the name of the global scamdemic is not the end of this madness. It is only the beginning. Join James for this week's edition of #PropagandaWatch as he dissects the latest attempt to leverage the climate scam on the back of the COVID scam, and how both of these distractions are being used to indoctrinate the public into the death cult.

"Corona World"
Video Game Lets You Kill the Covidiots!
- #PropagandaWatch -

The Corbett Report | First published at 06:36 UTC on September 1st, 2020

SHOW NOTES: https://www.corbettreport.com/?p=37586

Have you played Corona World yet? It's the hot new online game from German public broadcasters ARD and ZDF where you play a nurse who has to go shopping while being assaulted by joggers, party people, preppers and highly contagious children. So what do you do? You stomp them to death, of course! Fun for all ages!

LINK: Propaganda History

Will Genetically Modified Humans Be Patented?
- Questions For Corbett #064 -

The Corbett Report | First published at 06:36 UTC on July 15TH, 2020

SHOW NOTES AND MP3: https://www.corbettreport.com/?p=37090

Will the genetically modified humans of our dystopian future be patented by corporations? Join James for this week's Question For Corbett where he explores the very real legal precedents for what many would dismiss as science fiction fantasy.

The Future of Health Care Is Wearable Tech, Biosensors, and Injectables

The Conscious Resistance Network | First published at 03:45 UTC on October 15th, 2020.

Derrick Broze breaks down his latest article for The Last American Vagabond, U.S. Government Awards Contracts to Seven Organizations with Ties to Gates Foundation, DARPA, Big Tech.

Source:
https://wp.me/paT9J6-357

U.S. Government Awards Contracts to Seven Organizations with Ties to Gates Foundation, DARPA, Big Tech
https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/u-s-government-awards-contracts-to-seven-organizations-with-ties-to-gates-foundation-darpa-big-tech/

October 13, 2020 Author Derrick Broze

The National Institutes of Health has awarded contracts to seven organizations working on digital health solutions for COVID-19 involving smartphones and wearable “biosensors” – so who are these companies?

On September 15, the National Institutes of Health announced that they had awarded contracts to seven companies developing digital health solutions for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), part of the NIH, selected the seven projects put forth by the organizations. The contracts are worth up to $22.8 million and will focus on using artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and other methods, combined with smartphone apps, wearable devices, and software “that can identify and trace contacts of infected individuals, keep track of verified COVID-19 test results, and monitor the health status of infected and potentially infected individuals.” These organizations include:

iCrypto, Inc. (Santa Clara, California)
Shee Atiká Enterprises, LLC (Sitka, Alaska)
University of California, San Francisco
physIQ, Inc. (Chicago)
Vibrent Health (Fairfax, Virginia)
IBM (Armonk, New York)
Evidation Health, Inc. (San Mateo, California)

The NIH also noted that another company, CareEvolution, LLC (Ann Arbor, Michigan), was awarded a contract by the NIBIB.

NIBIB Director Bruce J. Tromberg, Ph.D., stated that digital health technologies built around smartphones and wearable devices will help guide the public through the COVID-19 pandemic by gathering and analyzing large amounts of data from many different sources.

“When this information is analyzed using cutting-edge computational and machine learning methods, everyone will have access to powerful new tools for reducing the risk of infection and returning to normal activities,”  Tromberg said.

The news of the NIH contracts provoked few media reports about the latest development in the fight against COVID-19. However, there was no scrutiny of the companies themselves. This piece is a brief examination of the connections between the companies pushing smartphone apps and wearable technologies, and the individuals and institutions who stand to benefit from the advancement of this biosecurity focused, technocratic reality. A study of these organizations reveals connections to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Apple, and Google.

iCrypto, Inc.

Let’s start with the organization of which we know the least about – iCrypto, Inc. The NIH awarded digital firm iCrypto, Inc. a contract for “developing a smartphone-based platform to provide proof of testing, serologic, and vaccination status.” Beyond that single line there are not many details available regarding the “smartphone-based platform” iCrypto is commissioned to build.

The company’s LinkedIn page says iCrypto provides “a scalable, customizable, SaaS solution with capabilities including amongst others Mobile-Centric ID Aggregation, strong Mobile-Centric (biometric) Authentication across the organization, Verifications, Authorizations, and Attestations (immutable audit trails), thus assisting with all-around accountability, governance & audit compliance, non-repudiation, increased productivity and profitability.”

ICrypto’s website describes itself as a “Trust and Digital ID / Attestation platform that enables businesses to transact faster (minimize friction) with increased trust, accountability and profitability.” Beyond this brief description and a mention of 3 employees, the website is barren and offers little details on the companies history.

Similarly, the twitter account for iCrypto has only 2 tweets from 2018. A list of press releases from the company make no mention of the NIH contract, but one press release from 2019 states that iCrypto has an “extensive offering that encompasses multiple authentication factors such as fingerprint scans, photographs, facial recognition, user behaviour, and PINs, iCrypto is the most comprehensive solution of its kind in the market today.”

Further investigations are needed to come to arrive at a fuller understanding of iCrypto’s “smartphone based platform” and how it will interact with the population.

CareEvolution

CareEvolution received a contract for their tool SAFER-COVID, which they describe as “a digital health solution that integrates self-reported symptoms, data from consumer wearable devices, electronic health record and claims data, and COVID-19 test results to indicate whether users are ready to return to work and normal activities during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

CareEvolution says that the SAFER-COVID self-assessment tool “helps you make decisions about when, if, and how to safely return to regular daily activities such as work and other social interactions.” The tool is designed to use available research from the CDC, NIH, and other organizations to give the user “guidance” on what they can do “to be more confident that you are not infectious to others.”

CareEvolution has yet to provide specifics on what type of wearable devices they are gathering data from, but the use of wearable devices is a central component to the NIH contracts.

Shee Atiká Enterprises, LLC

Shee Atiká Enterprises is tasked with “developing a smartphone-based platform aimed at supporting individuals in low-resource settings with a Bluetooth-enabled thermometer and pulse oximeter.” Shee Atiká is specifically focused on a platform to “monitor and support individuals with COVID-19 symptoms (who may need testing) and those who have already tested positive.”

The company says their app will integrate a Bluetooth-enabled thermometer and pulse oximeter into an approach “uniquely designed for low-resource settings and underserved populations.” How the technology will function and how exactly it is suited for “underserved populations” is not explained.

Once again, there is not much information about the company itself or the nature of the technology being designed by Shee Atiká Enterprises and their parent company Shee Atiká Incorporated.

However, we do know that Shee Atiká Incorporated is also the parent company of INDHA Health Solutions, an Alaskan company that specializes in creating healthcare solutions for clients to improve healthcare management. INDHA says it “turns biometric patient information into usable knowledge for participants, employers and healthcare providers.” This is done by smart devices and wearables which are currently used to detect blood sugar and blood pressure.

According to Alaska Northstar Resources, LLC, another one of Shee Atiká’s subsidiaries, Shee Atiká, Inc., and its subsidiaries, have performed close to $1 billion in U.S. government contracts. With this history of government contracts it should be no surprise that the relatively unknown company has been chosen to create the next wave of digital health tools aimed at tracking those who may have COVID-19.

We should also noted that Shee Atiká and private military contractors TigerSwan were both implicated in a scheme involving disgraced international corporation DynCorp.

University of California, San Francisco

The NIH granted the University of California, San Francisco a contract to investigate a GPS-based “retroactive contact-tracing tool for COVID-19.” Researchers with UC San Francisco have been actively developing contact tracing technology in response to COVID-19. Contact tracing is a process of identifying individuals who may have come into contact with an infected person, collecting information about their contacts, and then tracing the contacts of infected individuals. All persons who may have come into contact with an infected individual are tested for infection, treated for the infection, and their contacts traced as well.

The NIH contract is the latest step in UCSF efforts to create a contact tracing tool that not only tracks an individual’s current and future movements, but looks to “recreate people’s movements.”

In September, UCSF researchers invited the public to share their location data – which is collected by Google – via their smartphones and mobile devices. The data sharing and monitoring is part of a new study called Covidseeker, ostensibly aimed at improving contact tracing efforts and helping scientists understand how the coronavirus is spreading from person to person.

“The UCSF project takes a different approach from the one that Google and Apple are using in their contact tracing apps,” the university wrote. “Those apps use Bluetooth beacons to detect phones that are nearby in real time, sending alerts whenever users come near someone who reported having tested positive. By contrast, Covidseeker looks back in time. With enough participants, it may be able to recreate people’s movements when infection rates were rising and falling in the spring and summer of 2020.”

The grant from the NIH is not unusual given that two organizations have a longstanding relationship. For example, in 2019, for the 13th year in a row, UCSF claimed the top spot among public institutions in funding from the NIH. “The NIH has been behind many of the biggest breakthroughs that UCSF scientists have made over the decades,” UCSF wrote.

On September 30, UC San Francisco students, faculty and staff began  participating in a trial of the COVID Notify software. They were invited to activate COVID Notify on their smartphones to be the first Californians to test the tool as part of a limited pilot. California lawmakers are hoping to use the tool to learn how best to reopen their state. The technology powering COVID Notify was developed by Google and Apple. The developers claim the software is anonymized and does not use GPS and never collects, stores, or transmits personal information and location data.

UC San Francisco has also briefly received funds the Gates Foundation for malaria and “global health drugs”.

PhysIQ, Inc.

The digital medicine company Physiq Inc. has received a contract from the NIH to “develop an artificial intelligence (AI)-based index that can provide an early warning that a patient with COVID-19 is in decline and needs medical treatment.”

The NIH is asking Physiq to use their COVID-19 Decompensation Index (CDI) Digital Biomarker, which is described as a personalized AI-based algorithm that will run on Physiq’s existing AccelerateIQ computing platform. The company markets their AccelerateIQ platform as an effective tool for collecting and organizing data from wearable biosensors. Their platform works with a chest-worn disposable sensor patch product called VitalPatch from Vital Connect, Inc.

PhysIQ describes their work as “applying artificial intelligence to wearable sensor data” using the only FDA-cleared “personalized analytics platform” designed to process multiple vital signs from wearable sensors to create a “personalized dynamic baseline” for each individual. Essentially, they aim to map your vital signs while you are healthy and use their analytics platform to detect “subtle deviations” that could be the early warning signs of disease or other changes in health.

In May, PhysIQ partnered with the U.S. Department of Defense, and The Henry M. Jackson Foundation on an initiative to use physIQ’s platform to collect and analyze wearable sensor data to better understand the pathophysiology of COVID-19. This project called for “continuous monitoring” of COVID-19 patients using a wearable biosensor in an attempt to predict disease progression and early signs of infection. The plan is to send the platform to “individuals associated with military hospitals in the U.S., as well as across sites in Southeast Asia.”

Vibrent Health

The NIH awarded Vibrent Health a $4.23 million contract on the promise of developing “mobile applications, data integrations, and validated machine learning algorithms to identify COVID-19 and differentiate it from influenza, and to perform contact tracing using Wi-Fi technologies.”

Praduman Jain, Founder and CEO of Vibrent Health, noted that his company was working on “Wi-Fi-enabled contact tracing” using smartphones and wearable devices to “assist society with the return to normalcy.” Jain and Vibrent Health believe this method of using wi-fi enabled contract tracing could “identify outbreaks” and “advise actions to protect individuals from COVID-19 exposure.” Vibrent will do so by “expanding” and “enhancing” its Digital Health Solutions Platform. The platform allows researchers to “rapidly deploy standardized measures from survey systems they use for everyday research into their own research programs.”

Vibrent claims their technology will be able to differentiate COVID-19 from the Flu, as well as inform users if they should seek medical attention.

In June, Vibrent announced they had developed a “rapid deployment solution” for a COVID-19 survey. Vibrent Health currently serves as the Participant Technology Systems Center for NIH’s All of Us Research Program. Vibrent responded to the program’s need to gather data by rapidly developing and deploying a COvid-19 Participant Experience (COPE) Survey. The survey asked more than 325,000 participants to share their social distancing experiences, COVID-19 symptoms, COVID-19 testing, mood, stress, loneliness, discrimination, anxiety and other aspects of physical and mental health.

IBM

IBM has been contracted to test an “integrated solution to support contact tracing and verifiable health status reporting.” There are currently no further details on the specifics of this project, but IBM has been heavily involved in the effort to use digital technology as a method for combating COVID-19.

IBM recently announced it was partnering with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the U.S. Department of Energy to use supercomputers to launch the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium, which is reported to be “an unprecedented amount of computing power—16 systems with more than 330 petaflops, 775,000 CPU cores, 34,000 GPUs, and counting.”

IBM has also been offering artificial intelligence powered technology and an AI assistant to answer citizens’ questions.

Of course, supercomputing and AI are nothing new for one of the world’s oldest computer technology and consulting firm. More than a decade ago, IBM was working on a computer system that stimulates and emulates the brain’s abilities for sensation, perception, and cognition. IBM claimed they had made advances in simulating the behavior of the cerebral cortex and created an algorithm that could “synthesize” neurological data.

In 2017, IBM announced they were partnering with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) on a “first-of-a-kind brain-inspired supercomputing system powered by a 64-chip array of the IBM TrueNorth Neurosynaptic System.” The platform was designed to “enable deep neural-network learning and information discovery.” IBM said the systems pattern recognition and sensory processing power is equivalent of 64 million neurons and 16 billion synapses while only consuming 10 watts of power.

The IBM TrueNorth Neurosynaptic System was originally developed under the auspices of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) program in collaboration with Cornell University.

Whitney Webb has reported extensively on DARPA’s dark agenda and how it relates to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Evidation Health, Inc.

Evidation Health is tasked with “investigating a health measurement platform to analyze self-reported and wearable device data to both detect COVID-19 and differentiate it from influenza.” Evidation has a history of working with smart devices and other wearable technology.

The U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and the Gates Foundation also recently backed Evidation for the purpose of developing a “COVID-19 detection algorithm.” Evidation is to work with 4YouandMe – a nonprofit that helps individuals share their health data for medical research – to collect self-reported and wearable-collected data from 300 participants.

Evidation previously partnered with pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Apple on research into whether consumer gadgets like smartwatches and sleep trackers could be used to spot early signs of dementia. The man behind the research, Dr. Andrew Trister, was hired by the Gates Foundation in 2019.

In August 2018, Evidation launched a data platform that could reportedly process data from more than 100 sources ranging from Apple Health to Fitbit, Epic, Blue Button, and Dexcom. Evidation stated that the platform can analyze individual behavior and health in real time.

Evidation also has a history of collaborating with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the U.S. government. In May, the Gates Foundation invested in Evidation to develop a “digital biomarker of COVID-19 and understand an individual’s susceptibility to infection and cascading effects of disease.”

The reason I make note of the investments from the Gates Foundations is because of the mammoth influence that Bill Gates and his Foundation have on international health organizations and the policies they propose. In part 2 of my investigation into Gates, I detailed how the Gates Foundation is connected to nearly every U.S. institution involved in the fight against COVID-19, as well as international organizations and governments. From the World Health Organization to universities and private companies, Bill Gates is able to shape the direction of health policy.

Exposing Operation Warp Speed

The NIH contracts are part of a broader effort by the U.S. government to combat COVID-19 and expand the biosecurity state. In addition to the eight companies mentioned here, there are also efforts for immunity passports and contract tracing apps. These include the CommonPass, a project with support from the World Economic Forum; CovidCheck, an app with backing from the CDC and the Clinton Health Initiative; and CommonHealth, another contact tracing app developed with help from UCSF and the Rockefeller Foundation.

These contracts are also one aspect of Operation Warp Speed, the public-private partnership launched by the Trump administration to rapidly develop and distribute a Covid-19 vaccine. The Trump admin has previously promised to deliver 100 million doses by October 2020, 200 million by December, and 300 million doses by January. As Whitney Webb has recently shown, the Trump administration is awarding contracts to vaccine manufacturers in a way that allows the agreements to remain hidden from the public.

An organizational chart for OWS dated July 30, 2020 includes the names of several organizations involved in the recent NIH contracts. U.S. government officials from the NIH, BARDA, and Health & Human Services are involved in the contracts and OWS. As I have previously written, Dr. Moncef Slaoui, the head of OWS, is the epitome of a Big Pharma lobbyist.

Following his education, Slaoui joined the pharmaceutical industry, serving on the board of Directors of GlaxoSmithKline between 2006 through 2015. Slaoui served in several senior research & development (R&D) roles with GlaxoSmithKline during his time with the company, including Chairman of Global Vaccines. GSK has a history of working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on projects such as the development of a malaria vaccine and anti-HIV compounds used as microbicides. In fact, Dr. Slaoui worked for 27 years on the malaria vaccine, ultimately partnering with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a $600 million malaria vaccine. When Slaoui took over at GSK, his predecessor, Tachi Yamada, joined the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

More recently, Slaoui sits on the boards of pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology organizations. He is also partner at MediciX investment firm,chairman of the board at Galvani Bioelectronics, chairman of the board at SutroVax and sits on the boards of Artisan Biosciences, Human Vaccines Project and Moderna Therapeutics. Each of these companies is involved in vaccine development and the emerging field of bioelectronics.

In the next part of the #ExposeWarpSpeed investigation we will explore the role of Moncef Slaoui as Chief Advisor of Operation Warp Speed and his history of involvement in bioelectronics and implantable devices. We will also show how the Gates Foundation is funding “vaccine patches” in the United States and Australia as part of the COVID-19 recovery.

The Technocracy is Rising, Stand and Fight!

The Conscious Resistance Network | First published at 04:54 UTC on November 3rd, 2020.

The Technocracy is Rising, Stand and Fight!

Derrick breaks down an important update about the push for a cashless society and offers some words of inspiration!

From TCR Live #114: #ExposeWarpSpeed, Expose Gates, Expose Syria F Flag

Massive New Report Exposes Bill Gates'
Global Control Grid

The Conscious Resistance Network | First published at 00:07 UTC on November 2nd, 2020.

Massive New Report Exposes Bill Gates' Global Control Grid

Derrick Broze breaks down a new report on Bill Gates massive international influence and control grid. Share this with anyone who doubts his influence!

Operation Warp Speed and Gates Foundation
Are Pushing Vaccine Patches

The Conscious Resistance Network | First published at 11:40 UTC on October 30th, 2020.

Derrick Broze breaks down the truth about Operation Warp Speed and how the people at the helm of the push for a COVID-19 vaccine are connected to the Gates Foundation.

Who Is Bill Gates?
(Full Documentary, 2020)

Corbett Report Extras

TRANSCRIPT AND DOWNLOAD: https://www.corbettreport.com/gates/

Just in time for #ExposeBillGates Global Day of Action, The Corbett Report is releasing the full Who Is Bill Gates? documentary in a single upload. Please help to spread the word about this documentary, including the audio and video downloads and hyperlinked transcript at corbettreport.com/gates
 

All Roads Lead to Dark Winter
https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/all-roads-lead-dark-winter/

April 1, 2020 Author Whitney Webb & Raul Diego

The leaders of two controversial pandemic simulations that took place just months before the Coronavirus crisis – Event 201 and Crimson Contagion – share a common history, the 2001 biowarfare simulation Dark Winter. Dark Winter not only predicted the 2001 anthrax attacks, but some of its participants had clear foreknowledge of those attacks.

During the presidency of George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s, something disturbing unfolded at the U.S.’ top biological warfare research facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Specimens of highly contagious and deadly pathogens – anthrax and ebola among them – had disappeared from the lab, at a time when lab workers and rival scientists had been accused of targeted sexual and ethnic harassment and several disgruntled researchers had left as a result.

In addition to missing samples of anthrax, ebola, hanta virus and a variant of AIDS, two of the missing specimens had been labeled “unknown” – “an Army euphemism for classified research whose subject was secret,” according to reports. The vast majority of the specimens lost were never found and an Army spokesperson would later claim that it was “likely some were simply thrown out with the trash.”

An internal Army inquiry in 1992 would reveal that one employee, Lt. Col. Philip Zack, had been caught on camera secretly entering the lab to conduct “unauthorized research, apparently involving anthrax,” the Hartford Courant would later report. Despite this, Zack would continue to do infectious disease research for pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and would collaborate with the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) throughout the 1990s.

The Courant had also noted that: “A numerical counter on a piece of lab equipment had been rolled back to hide work done by the mystery researcher [later revealed to be Zack], who left the misspelled label ‘antrax’ in the machine’s electronic memory.” The Courant’s report further detailed the extremely lax security controls and chaotic disorganization that then characterized the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) lab in Fort Detrick.

This same lab would, a decade later, be officially labeled as the source of the anthrax spores responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks, attacks which are also officially said to have been the work of a “deranged” USAMRIID researcher, despite initially having been blamed on Saddam Hussein and Iraq by top government officials and mainstream media. Those attacks killed 5 Americans and sickened 17.

Yet, as the investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks unfolded, accusations from major U.S. newspapers soon emerged that the FBI was deliberately sabotaging the probe to protect the Anthrax attacker and that the CIA and U.S. military intelligence had refused to cooperate with the investigation. The FBI did not officially close their investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks, nicknamed “Amerithrax,” until 2010 and aspects of that investigation still remain classified.

More recently, this past July, the same Fort Detrick lab would be shut down by the CDC, after it was found that researchers “did not maintain an accurate or current inventory” for toxins and “failed to safeguard against unauthorized access to select agents.” The closure of the lab for its numerous breaches of biosafety protocols would be hidden from Congress and the facility would controversially be partially reopened last November before all of the identified biosafety issues were resolved.

The same day that the lab was controversially allowed to partially reopen, which was the result of heavy lobbying from the Pentagon, local news outlets reported that the lab had suffered “two breaches of containment” last year, though the nature of those breaches and the pathogens involved were redacted in the inspection findings report obtained by the Frederick News Post. Notably, USAMRIID has, since the 1980s, worked closely with virologists and virology labs in Wuhan, China, where the first epicenter of the current novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) cases emerged. The Chinese government has since alleged that the virus had been brought to China by members of the U.S. military, members of which attended the World Military Games in the country last October.

Such similarities among these Fort Detrick lab breaches, from the early 1990s to 2001 to the present, may be nothing more than unfortunate coincidences that are the result of a stubborn federal government and military that have repeatedly refused to enforce the necessary stringent safety precautions on the nation’s top biological warfare laboratory.

Yet, upon examining not only these biosafety incidents at Fort Detrick, but the 2001 Anthrax attacks and the current Covid-19 outbreak, another odd commonality stands out — high-level war games exercise took place in June 2001 that eerily predicted not only the Anthrax attacks, but also the initial government narrative of those attacks and much, much more.

That June 2001 exercise, known as “Dark Winter,” also predicted many aspects of government pandemic response that would later re-emerge in last October’s simulation “Event 201,” which predicted a global pandemic caused by a novel Coronavirus just months before the Covid-19 outbreak. In addition, the U.S. government would lead its own multi-part series of pandemic simulations, called “Crimson Contagion,” that would also predict aspects of the Covid-19 outbreak and government response.

Upon further investigation, key leaders of both Event 201 and Crimson Contagion, not only have deep and longstanding ties to U.S. Intelligence and the U.S. Department of Defense, they were all previously involved in that same June 2001 exercise, Dark Winter. Some of these same individuals would also play a role in the FBI’s “sabotaged” investigation into the subsequent Anthrax attacks and are now handling major aspects of the U.S. government’s response to the Covid-19 crisis. One of those individuals, Robert Kadlec, was recently put in charge of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) entire Covid-19 response efforts, despite the fact that he was recently and directly responsible for actions that needlessly infected Americans with Covid-19.

Other major players in Dark Winter are now key drivers behind the “biodefense” mass surveillance programs currently being promoted as a technological solution to Covid-19’s spread, despite evidence that such programs actually worsen pandemic outbreaks. Others still have close connections to the insider trading that recently occurred among a select group of U.S. Senators regarding the economic impact of Covid-19 and are set to personally profit from lucrative contracts to develop not just one, but the majority, of experimental Covid-19 treatments and vaccines currently under development by U.S. companies.

This investigative series, entitled “Engineering Contagion: Amerithrax, Coronavirus and the Rise of the Biotech-Industrial Complex,” will examine these disturbing parallels between the 2001 anthrax attacks and the current scandals and “solutions” of the Covid-19 crisis as well as the simulations that eerily preceded both events. By tracing key actors in Dark Winter from 2001 to the present, it is also possible to trace the corruption that has lurked behind U.S. “biodefense” and pandemic preparedness efforts for decades and which now is rearing its ugly head as pandemic panic distracts the American and global public from the fundamentally untrustworthy, and frankly dangerous, individuals who are in control of the U.S. government’s and corporate America’s response.

Given their involvement in Dark Winter and, more recently, Event 201 and Crimson Contagion, this series seeks to explore the possibility that, just like the 2001 anthrax attacks, government insiders had foreknowledge of the Covid-19 crisis on a scale that, thus far, has gone unreported and that those same insiders are now manipulating the government’s response and public panic in order to reap record profits and gain unprecedented power for themselves and control over people’s lives.

A Dark Winter Descends

In late June 2001, the U.S. military was preparing for a “Dark Winter.” At Andrews Air Force Base in Camp Springs, Maryland, several Congressmen, a former CIA director, a former FBI director, government insiders and privileged members of the press met to conduct a biowarfare simulation that would precede both the September 11 attacks and the 2001 Anthrax attacks by a matter of months. It specifically simulated the deliberate introduction of smallpox to the American public by a hostile actor.

The simulation was a collaborative effort led by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies (part of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security) in collaboration with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Analytic Services (ANSER) Institute for Homeland Security and the Oklahoma National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism. The concept, design and script of the simulation were created by Tara O’Toole and Thomas Inglesby of the Johns Hopkins Center along with Randy Larsen and Mark DeMier of ANSER. The full script of the exercise can be read here.

The name for the exercise derives from a statement made by Robert Kadlec, who participated in the script created for the exercise, when he states that the lack of smallpox vaccines for the U.S. populace means that “it could be a very dark winter for America.” Kadlec, a veteran of the George W. Bush administration and a former lobbyist for military intelligence/intelligence contractors, is now leading HHS’ Covid-19 response and led the Trump administration’s 2019 “Crimson Contagion” exercises, which simulated a crippling pandemic influenza outbreak in the U.S. that had first originated in China. Kadlec’s professional history, his decades-old obsession with apocalyptic bioweapon attack scenarios and the Crimson Contagion exercises themselves are the subject of Part III of this series.

The Dark Winter exercise began with a briefing on the geopolitical context of the exercise, which included intelligence suggesting that China had intentionally introduced Foot and Mouth disease in Taiwan for economic and political advantage; that Al-Qaeda was seeking to purchase biological pathogens once weaponized by the Soviet Union; and that Saddam Hussein of Iraq had recruited former biowarfare specialists from the Soviet Union and was importing materials to create biological weapons. It further notes that a majority of Americans had opposed a planned deployment of U.S. soldiers to the Middle East, which was also opposed by Iraq, China and Russia. The script also asserts that the soldiers were being deployed to counter and potentially engage the Iraqi military. Later, as the exercise unfolds, many of those Americans once skeptical about this troop deployment soon begin calling for “revenge.”

Amid this backdrop, news suddenly breaks that smallpox, a disease long eradicated in the U.S. and globally, appears to have broken out in the state of Oklahoma. The participants in Dark Winter, representing the National Security Council, quickly deduce that smallpox has been deliberately introduced and that this is the result of a “bioterrorist attack on the United States.” The assumption is made that the attack is “related to decisions we may make to deploy troops to the Mid-East.”

Not unlike what is unfolding currently with the Covid-19 crisis, in Dark Winter, there is no means of rapid diagnosis for smallpox, no treatments available and no surge capacity in the healthcare system. The outbreak quickly spreads to numerous other U.S. states and throughout the world. Hospitals in the U.S. soon face “desperate situations” as “tens of thousands of ill or anxious persons seek care.” This is compounded by “grossly inadequate supplies” and “insufficient isolation rooms,” among other complications.

Since this exercise occurred in June 2001, the heavy hinting that Saddam Hussein-led Iraq and Al Qaeda are the main suspects is notable. Indeed, at one point in one of the fictional news reports used in the exercise, the reporter states that “Iraq might have provided the technology behind the attacks to terrorist groups based in Afghanistan.” Such claims that Iraq’s government was linked to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan would re-emerge months later in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, and would be heavily promoted by several Dark Winter participants such as former CIA Director James Woolsey, who would later swear under oath that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11. It would, of course, later emerge that Iraq’s connections to Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks were nonexistent as well as the fact that Iraq did not possess biological weapons or other “weapons of mass destruction.”

Notably, this insertion into one of the Dark Winter news clips was not the only part of the exercise that sought to link Saddam Hussein and Iraq to biological weapons. For instance, during the exercise, satellite imaging showed that a “suspected bioresearch facility” in Iraq appeared to be expanding an “exclusionary zone” in order to limit civilian activity near the facility as well as a “possible quarantine” area in the same area as this facility. Previously in the exercise, Iraq was one of three countries, along with Iran and North Korea, who were “repeatedly rumored” to have illicitly obtained Soviet smallpox cultures from defecting scientists and Iraq was alleged to have offered employment to a leading smallpox scientist who had worked on the Soviet bioweapons program.

Then, at the end of the exercise, a “prominent Iraqi defector” emerges who claims Iraq had arranged the bioweapons attack “through intermediaries,” which is deemed “highly credible” even though “there is no forensic evidence to support this claim.” Iraq officially denies the accusation, but vows to target the U.S. in “highly damaging ways” if the U.S. “takes action against Iraq.” It is thus unsurprising that, as will be shown later in this report, key participants in Dark Winter would heavily promote the narrative that Iraq was to blame for the 2001 Anthrax attacks. Other participants, including Robert Kadlec, would then become involved in the FBI’s “sabotaged” investigation once the Bureau began to focus on a domestic, as opposed to an international source.

In addition, as part of Dark Winter, mainstream media outlets, including the New York Times and others, were sent anonymous letters that threatened renewed attacks on the U.S., including anthrax attacks, if the U.S. did not withdraw its troops from the Middle East. In this simulation, those letters contained “a genetic fingerprint of the smallpox strain matching the fingerprint of the strain causing the current epidemic.” During the Anthrax attacks that would occur just a few months after Dark Winter, Judith Miller – who participated in Dark Winter – and other U.S. reporters would receive threatening letters with a white powder presumed to be Anthrax. In Miller’s case, the powder turned out to be harmless.

Other aspects of Dark Winter appear more notable now than ever, particularly in light of recent pandemic simulations that were conducted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (Event 201) and the Trump administration (Crimson Contagion) in 2019, as well as the federal government’s current options for responding to Covid-19.

For instance, Dark Winter warns of “dangerous misinformation” spreading online selling “unverified” cures and making similarly “unverified” claims, all of which are deemed as posing a threat to public safety. Such concerns over online misinformation/disinformation and narrative control have recently surfaced in connection with the current Covid-19 crisis. Notable, however, is the fact that the “Event 201” simulation held last October, which simulated a global pandemic caused by a novel coronavirus, also greatly emphasized concerns about such misinformation/disinformation and suggested increased social media censorship and “limited internet shutdowns” to combat the issue. That simulation was co-hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, which is currently led by Dark Winter co-author Thomas Inglesby.

Dark Winter further discusses the suppression and removal of civil liberties, such as the possibility of the President to invoke “The Insurrection Act”, which would allow the military to act as law enforcement upon request by a State governor, as well as the possibility of “martial rule.” The Dark Winter script also discusses how options for martial rule “include, but are not limited to, prohibition of free assembly, national travel ban, quarantine of certain areas, suspension of the writ of habeas corpus [i.e. arrest without due process], and/or military trials in the event that the court system becomes dysfunctional.”

The exercise later includes “credible allegations” that those deemed “suspicious for smallpox” by authorities were illegally arrested or detained and that these arrests largely targeted low income individuals or ethnic minorities. In terms of current events, it is worth pointing out that U.S. Attorney General William Barr and the Department of Justice he leads have recently requested new “emergency powers” that are allegedly related to the current Covid-19 outbreak. That request specifically references the ability to indefinitely detain Americans without right to a free trial.

Weaving a narrative

After examining Dark Winter, it then becomes important to examine the events the exercise seemingly predicted, namely the 2001 anthrax attacks. This is particularly crucial for two reasons: first, that the source of the anthrax was later traced to a domestic source, allegedly the USAMRIID lab in Fort Detrick; and second, the mode of attack and the initial narrative of those attacks were straight out of the Dark Winter playbook. Furthermore, key players in the government response to the anthrax attacks, including those with apparent foreknowledge of the attacks, as well as those who sought (falsely) to link those attacks to Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were also participants in Dark Winter.

Weeks before the first Anthrax case would be discovered, on the evening of September 11, 2001, then-Vice President Dick Cheney’s staff was told to start taking injections of the antibiotic Cipro in order to prevent Anthrax infection. In addition, at least one member of the press, journalist Richard Cohen – then at the Washington Post – had also been told to take Cipro soon after September 11 after receiving a tip “in a roundabout way from a high government official.” Who exactly in the Bush administration and in the Beltway began taking Cipro weeks prior to the anthrax attacks and for how long? Unfortunately, the answer to that question remains unanswered. Yet, it has since been revealed that the person who had told these officials to take Cipro was none other than Dark Winter participant Jerome Hauer, who had previously served for nearly 8 years at the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC), which oversees the USAMRIID lab at Fort Detrick.

Hauer, on September 11, 2001, was the managing director of Kroll Inc., a private intelligence and security company informally known as the “CIA of Wall Street,” a company that French intelligence had accused of acting as a front for the actual CIA. Kroll Inc., at the time of the attacks was responsible for security at the World Trade Center complex, yet Hauer was conveniently not present at his World Trade Center office on the day of the attacks, instead appearing on cable news. More on the series of “conveniences” that have followed Hauer throughout his career, especially over the course of 2001, and the massive amounts of money he stands to make off of the current Covid-19 epidemic will be discussed in detail in Part II of this series.

Then, on September 12, Donald Kagan of the neoconservative think tank the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), whose members populated key posts in the Bush administration, made an odd comment (for the time, anyway) about the September 11 attacks and anthrax. Speaking on Washington DC radio, Kagan – after suggesting that the U.S. should invade Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine in retaliation for September 11 – asks “What would have happened if they had anthrax on that plane?” That same day, James Woolsey, himself a PNAC member and also a Dark Winter participant, claimed that Iraq was to blame for September 11 during a cable news interview.

A week later, another PNAC member and advisor to the Bush White House– Richard Perle – told CNN that the next terror attack is likely to involve “chemical or biological weapons.” Soon after, Jerome Hauer re-emerges, claiming that the government now has a “new sense of urgency” regarding bioterrorist threats and asserts that “Osama Bin Laden wants to acquire these [biological] agents and we know he has links to Saddam and Saddam Hussein has them.” Of course, Saddam Hussein did not actually possess these biological weapons, although he did during the fictional Dark Winter exercise in which Hauer had actively participated. Just days after Hauer made these bold claims, ABC News reported that the alleged 9/11 hijackers may have intended to modify crop dusters to disperse Anthrax.

All of this took place several days before the first anthrax victim, photojournalist Bob Stevens, would even begin to show symptoms and over a week before doctors would even begin to suspect that his condition had been caused by anthrax poisoning.

On October 2, as Stevens’ health began to rapidly deteriorate, a new book co-written by journalist Judith Miller of the New York Times was released. Entitled “Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War,” the book asserted that the U.S. faced an unprecedented bioterrorism threat from terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. It further alleged that such groups may have teamed up with countries such as Iraq and Russia. Miller, who had participated in Dark Winter months prior, had conducted numerous interviews with senior White House officials for the book, particularly Dick Cheney’s chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

Libby, although he had not personally attended Dark Winter, was greatly impacted by the exercise when he learned of it, so much so that he had personally arranged for Cheney to watch the video of the entire Dark Winter exercise on September 20, 2001. Cheney took the contents of Dark Winter to the National Security Council the very next day. It would later be reported in New York magazine that, “a few days after 9/11,” the principal authors of Dark Winter – Randall Larsen, Tara O’Toole and Thomas Inglesby – would personally meet with Cheney and members of the administration’s national security staff about the exercise.

Larsen, who worked closely with Robert Kadlec throughout the 1990s, allegedly smuggled a test tube of weaponized Bacillus globigii, “almost genetically identical to anthrax,” into the meeting, according to that report. It is unclear when this meeting took place in relation to when Cheney had watched the video of the Dark Winter exercise.

The same day that Miller’s “Germs” was released, October 2, another odd occurrence took place. A former scientist at the USAMRIID lab at Fort Detrick, Dr. Ayaad Assaad, received a call from the FBI after someone who intimately knew Assaad’s work history and career in great detail (and who also claimed to have previously worked with Assaad) had anonymously accused him of being a “potential biological terrorist” with a deep-seated hatred of the U.S. government. At the time the letter was received by the FBI, neither the public nor the FBI were aware of any anthrax cases. Assaad, who was then working for the Environmental Protection Agency, told the FBI that he believed he was being framed by former co-workers. The FBI deemed this to be credible and never contacted Assaad in connection with the case again.

It later emerged in the Hartford Courant that Assaad had been the target of extensive harassment by a clique of co-workers at the USAMRIID lab in the early 1990s. One of those co-workers who had harassed Assaad would leave the lab disgruntled as a result of the controversy over Assaad’s harassment allegations. He would later return to the lab to conduct unauthorized, late night research on anthrax and be tied to several missing specimens of anthrax and other pathogens – Lt. Col. Philip Zack.

Zack, in 2001, was working for the U.S. biotechnology company Gilead Sciences. Though he first began working for Gilead in 1999, he was “handpicked” in 2001 to lead the establishment of “a new Project Management Department in conjunction with a complete restructure of R&D [Research and Development].” Donald Rumsfeld, another member of PNAC, became the chairman of Gilead Sciences in 1997 and he served as chairman of that company up until he became George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense in early 2001.

Rumsfeld would later announce on September 10, 2001 that $2.3 trillion had gone “missing” from the Pentagon’s budget. The Pentagon’s accounting office, whose staff was attempting to locate these missing trillions, would be destroyed on September 11, 2001. Though planes being flown into the Pentagon would later be described by government officials as “unimaginable” and “unthinkable” after the attacks, a simulation of planes being flown into the Pentagon had been conducted less than a year prior to September 11.

Terror Redux

On October 4, 2001, Bob Stevens’ anthrax poisoning diagnosis was made known to the FBI and CDC and the public was then informed via a press conference. The second anthrax case was declared soon after and was a co-worker of Stevens’, who had worked for the Florida-based newspaper, the Sun.

A day later, White House officials began to immediately pressure then-FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove that the anthrax attacks were linked to Al Qaeda, despite there being no evidence to make such a link. “They really wanted to blame somebody in the Middle East,” a then-senior FBI official would later tell the New York Daily News of the meetings.

Over the next few weeks, suspicious letters containing fine, white powder were sent to well-known American journalists, including NBC’s Tom Brokaw and The New York Times’ Judith Miller, though the powder in the letter addressed to Miller was found to be harmless. Notably, Miller and other New York Times journalists wrote a total of 27 articles specifically about anthrax and its potential use as a bioweapon between September 12, 2001 and the day before Stevens was diagnosed with anthrax poisoning.

Letters containing anthrax were also received by Senators Tom Daschle, Russ Feingold and Patrick Leahy, all of whom were – at the time – preventing the US Patriot Act from quickly passing through the Senate and who were resisting administration attempts to ram the legislation through with little to no debate. Several of the letters included the date “9-11-01” and the phrases “Death to America, Death to Israel, Allah is great” in neatly-printed block letters.

Soon after, a suspicious letter was found in the office of then-Congressman and current Vice President Mike Pence. Media Roots noted the following about Pence’s subsequent press conference in a 2018 podcast that examined the timeline of the 2001 anthrax attacks:

   “…Mike Pence, who once hosted an AM talk show describing himself as ‘Rush Limbaugh on decaf,’ conducts a press conference outside the Capitol proclaiming revenge and biblical style justice to whoever conducted the anthrax attacks. His family–with news cameras in tow–gets tested for anthrax at the hospital after it is allegedly found in his office.

  No news outlets questioned his grandstanding or odd performance of going to the hospital with his family, and unlike Senators Daschle and Leahy in their press appearances, Mike Pence alluded to the anthrax letters being connected to the larger ‘war on terror.’”

As public panic swelled, more letters continued to be found, not just in the United States but around the world, with anthrax and/or hoax letters being found in Japan, Kenya, Israel, China and Australia, among others. Simultaneously, efforts to link the anthrax attacks to Saddam Hussein and Iraq began to emerge and quickly grew in intensity and number.

The media push to link the attacks to Iraq began first with The Guardian and then was followed by U.S. media outlets like The Wall Street Journal. Those early reports cited unnamed “American investigators” and defense officials and largely centered on the false claim that alleged 9/11 mastermind Mohammad Atta had met with an Iraqi diplomat in Prague in late 2000 as well as similarly false allegations that members of Al Qaeda had recently obtained vials of anthrax in the Czech Republic.

A key person in disseminating that false Prague story was Dark Winter participant and PNAC member James Woolsey. It was also revealed in late October 2001 that Woolsey was serving as the personal emissary of Paul Wolfowitz, Iraq War “architect” and then-Deputy Secretary of Defense, in “investigating Iraqi involvement in the September 11 attacks and anthrax outbreaks.”

Beyond the Pentagon, foreign “experts” soon began to assert that there was a link between the anthrax attacks and Iraq, including former Israeli military intelligence officer Dany Shoham. Shoham recently resurfaced this past January after claiming that Covid-19 was developed by the Chinese government as a bioweapon.

These assertions were soon followed by a report from ABC News’ Brian Ross, who (again falsely) claimed that some of the anthrax used in the attacks had contained bentonite. Ross claimed that bentonite “is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program” and that “only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons.” Ross asserted this information had come from three “well-placed but separate sources,” which later grew to four. Yet, no tests conducted during the Anthrax investigation ever found any bentonite at all, meaning the story was an invention from the very start. ABC and Brian Ross never retracted the story.

Glenn Greenwald, then writing at Salon, would state the following about Ross’ sources in 2008:

Ross’ allegedly four separate sources had to have some specific knowledge of the tests conducted and, if they were really “well-placed,” one would presume that meant they had some connection to the laboratory where the tests were conducted — Ft. Detrick. That means that the same Government lab where the anthrax attacks themselves came from was the same place where the false reports originated that blamed those attacks on Iraq.

It’s extremely possible — one could say highly likely — that the same people responsible for perpetrating the attacks were the ones who fed the false reports to the public, through ABC News, that Saddam was behind them. What we know for certain — as a result of the letters accompanying the anthrax — is that whoever perpetrated the attacks wanted the public to believe they were sent by foreign Muslims. Feeding claims to ABC News designed to link Saddam to those attacks would, for obvious reasons, promote the goal of the anthrax attacker(s).”

Soon, media reports began noting the contradictory messaging of the U.S. government with regards to the anthrax attacks, messaging which has striking parallels to the Trump administration’s messaging on Covid-19. In one such report, written by Matthew Engel for The Guardian, states:

“Those in charge have compounded the problems by sending out confused messages. Was the anthrax weapons-grade or not? Should Americans be alarmed or relaxed? Has President Bush himself been tested? The signals keep changing. Mr. Thompson suggested early on that Bob Stevens, the first anthrax victim, might have drunk from an infected stream.”

During the 2001 anthrax attacks, there was no shortage of contradictory actions either, such as the government’s failure to mandate that postal workers take Cipro or even take the simplest precautions even though members of the Bush administration had been taking Cipro weeks before the anthrax attacks were known to the FBI and the public. Even worse, the Bush administration waited an extremely long time to close post offices for anthrax testing, waiting until numerous postal workers had already become infected and some had already died. In addition, Ernesto Blanco – a Florida mail room worker who later recovered from Anthrax poisoning – and his family were left confused about the refusal of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to diagnose him with anthrax poisoning while he was in dire condition. Blanco’s family later claimed that his diagnosis had been kept a secret for political reasons.

BASIS for surveillance and control

The contradictory response of the Bush administration to the anthrax attacks and the panic that ensued was also paralleled by an equally contradictory sensor system, one which had been installed just a few months before the anthrax attacks in thirty cities throughout the U.S. despite a dubious record of accuracy.

Just as the fictional scenarios proposed in Dark Winter were being written, American scientists were developing a sensor system for the detection of anthrax and botulinum toxin called BASIS (Biological Aerosol Sentry and Information Systems). Months before anthrax would cause extreme panic and target American Senators, scientists from Los Alamos and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory were testing the biological sensing device at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, inside the Special Programs Division of what was once the site of the U.S. biological weapons program and where anthrax samples used at Fort Detrick are often produced.

It is worth noting that Dugway, not unlike Fort Detrick, has a longstanding issues with biosafety lapses that have resulted in numerous mishaps, such as their accidental shipment of live anthrax over 70 times to 86 different labs throughout the world from 2005-2015. Independent analyses conducted after the FBI closed its investigation into the attacks have suggested that Dugway may have been the source of the anthrax used in the attacks, as opposed to Fort Detrick.

Returning to BASIS, the results of the tests conducted on this new sensor system in 2001 showed that it was highly prone to generating false positives and was, therefore, worthless beyond the ability to “induce the very panic and social disruption it is intended to thwart“, according to the Livermore Laboratory, which nevertheless marketed BASIS as a tool to “guard the air we breathe.” Vice President Cheney, following his September 2001 briefing on Dark Winter, decided to install the system in the White House.

Days after Senator Tom Daschle’s press conference that revealed he had been targeted by the anthrax attacker, President Bush was in Shanghai attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit when he received a call from Dick Cheney on Airforce Two. Cheney delivered a chilling message — the President and Secretaries Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, who were with Bush in China, might have been exposed to the ultra-lethal botulinum toxin at the White House.

BASIS had returned two positive results for the deadly neurotoxin and – if the tests held true – three of the U.S.’ highest ranking officials were “toast.” Yet, once again, BASIS had lived up to its reputation as a great panic-inducing mechanism when the supposed botulinum toxin hits were determined to have been false positives. Apparently, this “unintended” feature was a real selling point, as proven by George W. Bush’s subsequent deployment of the system in thirty cities throughout the country under the auspices of the newly-minted Department of Homeland Security as part of a program called Bio-Watch.

Given the events described, it is noteworthy that BASIS relies on the CDC’s Laboratory Response Network (LRN) to identify the biological agents trapped by its sensors. The 150 state and local laboratories that make up the LRN use a polymerase chain reaction (PCR-based) analysis, which is ill-equipped to detect the aforementioned botulinum toxin. In addition, the Bio-Watch program is plagued by bureaucratic and logistical problems, which further undermine any potential public health benefits.

DHS was fully aware of the program’s limitations from the start and issued requests for proposals (RFPs) for the development of autonomous sensor technology that would eliminate the need for manual sample collection. The Bioagent Autonomous Networked Detector (BAND) program was then initiated by HSARPA (Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency) in September of 2003 and, in 2008, awarded a multi-year contract for its development to MicroFluidic Systems, Inc., a company founded by Allen Northrup. Northup is also co-founder of Cepheid, a diagnostic testing company that received FDA approval for a 45-minute Covid-19 test less than two weeks ago.

In tandem with the development of BASIS shortly before 9/11 and the 2001 anthrax attacks, DARPA was sponsoring a surveillance program to collect data on U.S. citizens without their knowledge or consent by using their medical records. The ostensible purpose of that program was to develop algorithms that could detect a bioweapons attack based on real-time data input. The Bio-Event Advanced Leading Indicator Recognition Technology, or Bio-ALIRT, is at the heart of what Dark Winter co-author, Dr. Tara O’Toole, calls the “information supply chain.”

“We need to have a disciplined flow of information during epidemics that goes to the people who need to know what they need to know,” O’Toole recently told Ira Pastor in an interview. “That’s different from this cosmic surveillance system, that captures all the possible information all the time and tells us, in advance when an epidemic is coming. We need a supply chain of information to manage the epidemic.” O’Toole, who now works for the CIA’s venture capital arm In-Q-Tel, and her longstanding promotion of mass surveillance in the name of “public health” will be discussed in a subsequent installment of this series.

DARPA’s partners in this Orwellian endeavor were, perhaps unsurprisingly, recurring actors in the arena of biological attack simulations, from Johns Hopkins to the University of Pittsburgh – the Biosecurity centers of which were both previously run by O’Toole – and defense industry giants, General Dynamics and IBM.

Hovering over these draconian innovations floats the overarching narrative, which the 2001 anthrax attacks were supposed to activate in popular consciousness. Though the attacks would be pinned on USAMRIID scientist Bruce Ivins, the highly questionable investigative and prosecutorial methods employed in Ivins’ case, not to mention his timely pre-trial suicide, may instead offer clues regarding a botched false flag operation that had originally been designed to bolster the creation of a new geopolitical chessboard pitting the U.S. against its same perpetual enemies.

Covering up the real conspiracy

From its earliest moments, the FBI’s “Amerithrax” investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks was clearly botched, sabotaged and even farcical. For instance, the letter sent to Dr. Ayaad Assaad would obviously have been a clear starting point for any honest investigation, as whoever wrote it had obvious foreknowledge of the attacks, connections to USAMRIID and was attempting to frame someone else for a crime that – at the time it was sent – had yet to be committed. Yet, The Hartford Courant noted in late 2001 that “the FBI is not tracking the source of the anonymous letter, despite its curious timing, coming a matter of days before the existence of anthrax-laced mail became known.” Why would the FBI not be interested in who wrote that letter, when it presents a clear lead on someone who, at the very least, knew a bioterrorism attack would soon take place and that the attacker’s profile would fit that of Assaad (i.e. Muslim and a former USAMRIID scientist).

In addition, in the early days of the investigation on October 12, 2001 – just one week after the attacks had claimed their first victim, the FBI called the University of Iowa and demanded that they destroy their entire database on the Ames strain of anthrax, the strain that would later be revealed to have been the very strain used in the attacks.

Both the FBI and the university officially claimed that the database’s destruction was ordered in order to prevent its potential use by terrorists in the future and was thus a “precaution,” despite greatly hampering the capacity of the investigation to determine the origins of the anthrax used in the attacks. Dr. Francis Boyle, an American law professor who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, later asserted that the FBI’s decision to order the destruction of the Ames strain database was an “obstruction of justice, a federal crime,” adding that “…That collection should have been preserved and protected as evidence. That’s the DNA, the fingerprints right there.”

Can the destruction of the Ames strain database and the decision to not pursue any leads related to the anonymous letter framing Dr. Assaad be written off as merely “missteps” made in the earliest and arguably most crucial days of the investigation? The fact that the Bush administration, as previously mentioned, was strongly pressuring then-FBI Director Robert Mueller to find a connection to “someone in the Middle East” at the same time these decision were made instead suggests that the investigation was highly politicized and manipulated by top government officials from the very beginning.

The FBI investigation continued to be marred by similarly obstructive actions. For instance, the anthrax sample that was in the envelope addressed to Senator Patrick Leahy had been found to contain traces of human DNA, a crucial finding that the FBI laboratory deliberately concealed from the agency’s own investigators. The FBI lab then declined to search for a match to this human DNA sample, despite the fact that doing so would – in all probability – lead to the actual attacker.

Due to all the obstruction and deliberate sabotage that took place, the investigation progressed slowly as crucial clues were ignored or outright discarded, apparently in order to keep FBI investigators off of the real trail. After coming under political and media pressure at least name a suspect, the FBI began to focus on former USAMRIID researcher Stephen Hatfill.

Despite lacking any good reason to pursue Hatfill, the FBI – accompanied by TV crews – raided Hatfill’s apartment in biohazard suits and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft later publicly named him a “person of interest” in the case. The FBI pressured Hatfill’s then-employer to fire him and refused to clear his name years after the Bureau knew full well that he had no connection to the crime. Hatfill first sued the government in 2003 and the Department of Justice settled with Hatfill five years later, paying him $4.6 million in damages.

Though it was eventually settled, Hatfill’s lawsuit initially resulted in some odd claims from FBI investigators, with Richard Lambert – the FBI official in charge of the Amerithrax investigation, claiming that the lawsuit “could jeopardize the probe and expose national secrets related to U.S. bioweapons defense measures.” He also claimed it would “make public the vulnerabilities and capabilities of U.S. government installations to bioweapons attacks and expose sensitive intelligence collection sources and methods.” Lambert would later file a federal whistleblower lawsuit where he accused the Bureau’s Washington field office and FBI headquarters of having “greatly obstructed and impeded the investigation.”

The Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI, would make a similar argument when Maureen Stevens, the wife of the first anthrax victim Bob Stevens, sued the federal government over the lax security measures in place at the USAMRIID lab where the anthrax used in the attacks was alleged to have originated. Stevens’ lawyer said the lawsuit was also filed due to “the government’s stonewalling tactics,” which included “taking months to turn over an autopsy report, denying them access to DNA tests and even denying them money from the Sept. 11 Victims Compensation Fund.” Citing “national security concerns,” federal attorneys sought to delay Stevens’ lawsuit, arguing that the litigation “would pose a significant risk of disclosing classified or sensitive information relating to the acquisition, development and use of weapons of mass destruction such as anthrax.”

In 2008, soon after Hatfill was cleared and the lawsuit with him settled, the FBI began to focus on another USAMRIID researcher, Dr. Bruce E. Ivins. Ivins, who had previously helped the FBI analyze the anthrax used in the letters sent to politicians, journalists and others, was aggressively targeted by the FBI through aggressive surveillance and what can only be described as extreme harassment.

As Glenn Greenwald noted in Salon in 2008, “the FBI investigation was so heavy-handed that it actually entailed showing gruesome photographs of the anthrax victims to Ivins’ adult children, telling them that their father is the one who did that, while trying to entice them to turn on him with promises of a reward.” It was also revealed that addiction counselor Jean Duley, whose restraining order against Ivins was used by the media as “proof” that he was deranged and a likely “lone wolf” terrorist, had actually been egged on by none other than the FBI to seek that very restraining order.

The FBI, as it ramped up its targeting of Ivins, leaked much of its evidence to media outlets, which – for the most part – uncritically reported it. However, it eventually became clear that the case was shoddy and would never hold up in court as it was built on circumstantial evidence and questionable scientific analyses.

It was then announced on July 29, 2008 that Ivins, whose life and career had been left in ruins by the FBI’s aggressive tactics, had committed suicide just as the federal government was set to charge him as the sole culprit behind the Anthrax attacks. Few chose to question the suicide narrative despite there being legitimate reasons to do so, such as the lack of a suicide note at the scene and the fact that no autopsy was ever performed on Ivins’ corpse.

Former FBI agent Richard Lambert’s whistleblower lawsuit would later reveal that the FBI had intentionally withheld a “wealth” of evidence that proved Ivins’ innocence and further charged that the DOJ and FBI had “crafted an elaborate perception management campaign to bolster their assertion of Ivins’ guilt” that included “press conferences and highly selective evidentiary presentations which were replete with material omissions.”

After Ivins’ suicide, questions continued to arise regarding the FBI’s case against the deceased scientist, with several journalists and even Senator Patrick Leahy – who had been sent an Anthrax letter – insisting that the FBI’s case against Ivins, particularly the charge that he had acted alone, was implausible. A former co-worker of Ivins and one of the country’s top biowarfare experts, Richard Spertzel, asserted in The Wall Street Journal that Ivins couldn’t have been the culprit because Ivins did not know how to make anthrax of the quality used in the attacks as only 4-5 people in the entire country, Spertzel being one of them, knew how to do so. Spertzel asserted that one of those 4-5 people would have needed at least a year as well as a full lab and a staff dedicate to the task in order to produce the Anthrax used.

In an attempt to mollify mounting criticism, Mueller announced in September 2008 that a panel from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) would independently review the FBI’s “smoking gun” scientific analyses that had led them to accuse Ivins. However, the FBI abruptly closed the case in 2010, well before the panel could conclude its review, and stood by its controversial assertion that Ivins had acted as a “lone wolf” and that anthrax from a flask in Ivins’ lab was “conclusively identified as the parent material to the anthrax powder used in the mailings.”

When the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) did release its review of the FBI’s scientific findings a year later in 2011, it found that the Bureau’s “smoking gun” scientific evidence against Ivins was actually very inconclusive and they also identified several still, unresolved issues with the FBI’s analyses for which the Bureau could not provide an explanation.

However, because Ivins had died before the FBI’s scientific case could go to trial, the FBI’s claims would never be challenged in court. David Relman, vice chairman of the National Academy study committee, later told ProPublica that Ivins’ trial would have been the only way the FBI’s claims “could have been weighed and challenged by experts.”

The NAS study was not the only independent report that challenged the FBI’s case against Ivins after his apparent suicide. In 2014, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released its own analysis of the FBI investigation and concluded that the FBI’s approach lacked consistency, adequate standards and precision. The GAO report ultimately supported the NAS’ conclusion that the scientific evidence did not definitely prove Ivins to be the culprit.

The conclusions of both the NAS and GAO reports show that the FBI’s “smoking gun” against Ivins – its scientific analyses – were hardly a smoking gun as they were just as circumstantial as the rest of the Bureau’s evidence against the scientist. This, of course, makes the timing of the FBI’s decision to close the case, a year before any independent analysis of its evidence against Ivins could be completed, significant.

A familiar cast of characters

Key players in Dark Winter would also end up playing a role in the FBI Amerithrax investigation and Bush administration efforts to link them to a foreign, rather than a domestic, source. For instance, as increasingly desperate efforts were made to link the anthrax attacks to Al Qaeda in early 2002, an “independent” team from the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies argued that the anthrax attackers were linked to Al Qaeda, citing a diagnosis made by a Florida doctor in June 2001 that alleged 9/11 hijacker Ahmed al-Haznawi had a skin lesion that was “consistent with cutaneous anthrax.”

Yet, this team from Johns Hopkins was – in reality — far from independent, as it was led by Dark Winter co-authors Tara O’Toole and Thomas Inglesby. However, their association with Dark Winter and their September 2001 meeting with Dick Cheney went unmentioned as media outlets ran with O’Toole and Inglesby’s assertion that al-Haznawi’s allegedly anthrax-related lesion “raises the possibility that the hijackers were handling anthrax and were the perpetrators of the anthrax letter attacks.” Other scientists and analysts as well as the FBI challenged and rejected their claims.

Another Dark Winter figure involved in the Amerithrax case was current Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert Kadlec, who became an adviser on biological warfare to the Rumsfeld-led Pentagon in the days after 9/11. Kadlec’s official biography states that he “contributed to the FBI investigation of the anthrax letter attacks,” though it’s unclear exactly what those contributions were, beyond having met at least once with scientists at Fort Detrick in November 2001. Whatever his contributions were, Kadlec has long been an emphatic supporter of the official narrative regarding Bruce Ivins, who he has referred to as a “deranged scientist” and the sole culprit behind the attacks. Kadlec has also used the official narrative about Ivins to assert that bioweapons have been “democratized,” which he argues means that weaponized pathogens can be wielded by essentially anyone with “a few thousand dollars” and enough time on their hands.

Notably, Kadlec isn’t the only key figure in the current U.S. government response to Covid-19 to have ties to the botched FBI investigation as current HHS Secretary Alex Azar was also involved in the FBI investigation. In addition, Azar stated at a White House press briefing in 2018 that he had been “personally involved in much of managing the response [to the anthrax attacks]” as then-General counsel to HHS.

Yet, given that the FBI investigation into the anthrax attacks and the government response to them were so disastrous and heavily criticized by independent and mainstream media alike, it is surprising that Azar and Kadlec would so proudly tout their involvement in that fiasco, especially considering that the scientific analyses used in that investigation were fatally flawed and, by all indications, led to the death of an innocent man.

While such credentials in a “normal” world would be grounds for exclusion from public service, they apparently have the opposite effect when it comes to post-2001 HHS policy and U.S. biodefense policy, which – especially following 2001 – has championed the interests and profits of corporate pharmaceutical companies and the apocalyptic vision of bioweapons held by war hawks and perpetual Cold Warriors. This latter category, of course, includes members of the now-defunct PNAC, who infamously referred to racially-targeted bioweapons as a “politically useful tool” in a now infamous 2000 document, and their ideological descendants.

As the next installment of this series will show, Dark Winter participant and 2001 anthrax attack insider Jerome Hauer epitomizes this merging of perpetual hawkishness and corporate pharmaceutical interests, as he has long held (and continues to occupy) key board positions of the very pharmaceutical company that not only sold tens of millions of anthrax vaccine doses to HHS following the 2001 anthrax attacks, but is now a partner in the development of the majority of vaccines, drugs and experimental treatments currently under development in the United States for the treatment of Covid-19.

Read Part II Here

Head of the Hydra:
The Rise of Robert Kadlec
https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/head-hydra-rise-robert-kadlec/

May 14, 2020 Author Whitney Webb & Raul Diego

A powerful network of political operatives, a global vaccine mafia and their man in Washington.

Last Friday, a group of Democratic Senators “ demanded” that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) Robert Kadlec, “accurately disclose all his personal, financial and political ties in light of new reporting that he had failed to do so previously” after it was revealed that he had failed to note all “potential conflicts of interest” on his nomination paperwork.

The report in question, published last Monday by The Washington Post, detailed the ties of Kadlec to a man named Fuad El-Hibri, the founder of a “life sciences” company first known as BioPort and now called Emergent Biosolutions. Kadlec had previously disclosed his ties to El-Hibri and Emergent Biosolutions for a separate nomination years prior, but had failed to do so when nominated to head ASPR.

Though The Post does note Kadlec’s recent failure to disclose these connections, the article largely sanitizes Kadlec’s earlier yet crucial history and even obfuscates the full extent of his ties to the BioPort founder, among other glaring omissions. In reality, Kadlec has much more than his ties to El-Hibri looming large as “potential conflict of interests,” as his decades-long career in shaping U.S. “biodefense” policy was directly enabled by his deep ties to intelligence, Big Pharma, the Pentagon and a host of corrupt yet powerful characters.

Thanks to a long and deliberate process to introduce biodefense policy, driven by Robert Kadlec and his sponsors, $7 billion dollars-worth of federally-owned vaccines, antidotes and medicines – held in strategically arranged repositories across the country in case of a health emergency – are now in the hands of one single individual. Those repositories, which compose the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS), are the exclusive domain of HHS’ ASPR, a post created under Kadlec’s watchful eye and tailored over the years to meet his very specific requirements.

From this perch, Robert Kadlec has final say on where the stockpile’s contents are sourced, as well as how, when and where they are deployed. He is the sole source procurer of medical material and pharmaceuticals, making him the best friend of Big Pharma and other healthcare industry giants who have been in his ear every step of the way.

Kadlec assures us, however, that the fact that he now holds the very office he worked so long to create is merely a coincidence. “My participation in the ASPR project began at that time when I was working for the chairman of the Subcommittee on Bioterrorism and Public Health Preparedness…The bill was made law and the ASPR was created. It just was a coincidence that, 12 or 14 years later, I was asked to become the ASPR,” Kadlec stated in 2018.

It was all a random twist of fate, Kadlec asserts, that saw him occupy ASPR at this crucial moment in U.S. history. Indeed, with the country now in the middle of a WHO-declared coronavirus pandemic, Kadlec now has full control over the far-reaching “emergency” powers of that very office, bestowed upon him by the very law that he had written.

The story of how a former USAF flight surgeon came to have the exclusive dealer license over the single biggest stash of drugs in the history of the world is as disturbing as it is significant in light of current events, particularly given that Kadlec now leads the coronavirus response for all of HHS. Yet, Kadlec’s rise to power is not a case of an evil mastermind conquering a uniquely vulnerable point of the nation’s resources. Instead, it is a case of a man deeply enmeshed in the world of intelligence, military intelligence and corporate corruption dutifully fulfilling the vision of his friends in high places and behind closed doors.

In this third installment of “Engineering Contagion: Amerithrax, Coronavirus and the Rise of the Biotech-Industrial Complex,” Kadlec is shown to hail from a tight-knit group of “bioterror alarmists” in government and the private sector who gained prominence thanks to their penchant for imagining the most horrific, yet fictitious scenarios that inspired fear among Presidents, top politicians and the American public. Among those fictitious scenarios was the “Dark Winter” exercise discussed in Part I.

Some of these alarmists, among them “cold warriors” from Fort Detrick’s days of openly developing offensive weapons, would engage in unsettling anthrax experiments and studies while developing suspect ties in 2000 to a company called BioPort. As noted in Part II of this series, BioPort stood to lose everything in early September 2001 due to controversy over its anthrax vaccine. Of course, the 2001 anthrax attacks that followed shortly thereafter would change everything, not just for BioPort, but U.S. biodefense policy. With the stage set, Kadlec would quickly spring into action, guiding major policy changes on the heels of subsequent major events and disasters, culminating in his crowning as King of the stockpile.

The Accidental Madman

Robert Kadlec describes himself as having been an “accidental tourist” regarding his introduction to biological warfare. An Air Force physician who had specialized in tropical diseases, Kadlec would later say his interest in the field began when he was assigned to be a special assistant for Chemical and Biological Warfare to the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), advising then-head of Special Operations Command Maj. Gen. Wayne Downing, on the eve of the first Gulf War.

Kadlec would later state that he had witnessed firsthand how the military, immediately prior to the Gulf War, had “lacked the necessary protective equipment, detectors, and medical countermeasures including vaccines and antibiotics against the immediate threats posed by Iraq,” allegedly prompting him to want to better U.S. biodefense efforts.

While holding this post at JSOC, Kadlec was privy to the advice of William C. Patrick III, a veteran of the U.S.’ bioweapons program who had developed the U.S.’ method for weaponizing anthrax and held no less than five classified patents related to the toxin’s use in warfare. Patrick, who had left government service in 1986 to become a consultant, advised the Pentagon — then headed by Dick Cheney — that the risk of a biological weapons attack by Iraq, particularly anthrax, was high. Patrick’s warning prompted the U.S. military to vaccinate tens of thousands of its troops using the controversial anthrax vaccine “anthrax vaccine adsorbed (AVA).” Kadlec would personally inject AVA into around 800 members of the U.S. Armed Forces.

Kadlec would later note in Congressional testimony that no definitive proof of an alleged Iraqi biological weapons program was found during the war or afterwards, but nevertheless claimed elsewhere that “the Iraqis later admitted they had procured large quantities of a biological agents-anthrax and botulism toxin,” suggesting that Patrick’s warnings had had some basis in reality.

However, Kadlec failed to point out that these anthrax and botulism samples had been sold, with the U.S. government’s full approval, to Iraq’s Ministry of Education by a U.S. private non-profit called the American Type Culture Collection. Donald Rumsfeld, who was then an envoy for the Reagan administration and running a pharmaceutical company later sold to Monsanto, would also be involved in the shipment of these samples to Iraq.

 
Joshua Lederberg 

Following the war, American microbiologist Joshua Lederberg was tasked by the Pentagon to head the investigation into “Gulf War Syndrome,” a phenomenon that studies later linked to the adverse effects of the anthrax vaccine. Lederberg’s task force argued that evidence regarding an association between the symptomology and the anthrax vaccine was insufficient. However, he would later come under fire after it was reported that he sat on the board of the American Type Culture Collection, the very company that had shipped anthrax to Iraq’s government between 1985 and 1989 with the U.S. government’s blessing. Lederberg later admitted that the investigation he led had not spent enough “time and effort digging out the details”. The taskforce’s findings were later harshly criticized by the Government Accountability Office.

Dr. Lederberg would prove to be an early, if not seminal, influence on Robert Kadlec’s outlook regarding the subject of biowarfare. The Nobel Laureate and long-time president of Rockefeller University was one of the fathers of bioterror alarmism in the United States, alongside William C. Patrick III and other members of a tight-knit group of “cold warrior” microbiologists. Kadlec and Lederberg would go on to collaborate on several books and policy studies throughout the late 1990s and into 2001.

Years later, at a Congressional hearing, Kadlec  would say that Lederberg’s words “resonate constantly with me and serve as a practical warning.” Aside from Lederberg, Kadlec was also writing numerous books and articles with Randall Larsen, who would later hire the Medical doctor to teach “military strategy and operations” at the National War College, where Larsen’s close friend – William C. Patrick III – also taught.

A Poisoned Oasis

Many of Kadlec’s bioterror ravings have been preserved in 25-year old textbooks, like a U.S. Air War College textbook entitled “Battlefield of the Future” where Kadlec calls on the government to create a massive stockpile of drugs and vaccines to protect the population from a biological weapons attack, particularly anthrax or smallpox. In one chapter, Kadlec argued that stockpiles of necessary antibiotics, immunoglobulins and vaccines would have to be procured, maintained, and be readily available to administer within hours.”

Kadlec’s views on the matter at the time of writing were greatly influenced by his first tour as a UNSCOM weapons inspector in Iraq in 1994, where he was accompanied by William Patrick, among others. Kadlec would later return to Iraq in the same capacity in 1996 and 1998 in search of Iraq’s alleged stores of weaponized anthrax that Patrick had been so sure were there, but had never materialized.

After three visits, Kadlec would later confess that, despite what Kadlec called “the most intrusive inspection and monitoring regime ever conceived and implemented” by the UN, the UNSCOM weapons inspectors, including himself and William Patrick,“failed to uncover any irrefutable evidence of an offensive BW program.” Kadlec would later return to Iraq on two separate occasions following the 2003 U.S. invasion of country, again finding no proof of the program’s existence.

By 1995, Kadlec was already imbued with the bioweapons alarmism that had been championed by Lederberg and Patrick. That year, he fleshed out several “illustrative scenarios” regarding the use of “biological economic warfare” against the United States. One of these fictional scenarios, titled “Corn Terrorism,” involves China planning “an act of agricultural terrorism” by clandestinely spraying corn seed blight over the Midwest using commercial airliners. The result of the “Corn Terrorism” scenario is that “China gains significant corn market share and tens of billions [of] dollars of additional profits from their crop,” while the U.S. sees its corn crop obliterated, causing food prices to rise and the U.S. to import corn. Another scenario, entitled “That’s a ‘Lousy’ Wine,” involves “disgruntled European winemakers” covertly releasing grape lice they have hidden in cans of paté to target California wine producers.

Around this same time, in 1994, the relatively young Congressional Office of Technology Assessment or OTA, which informed policy decisions around questions of technological and scientific complexity on matters of national security, was cut by the new Republican majority that took both houses in the pivotal 1994 midterms elections. At the time of its defunding, Lederberg sat on the OTA’s Technology Assessment Advisory Council (OTA-TAAC), along with pharma industry insiders from Bristol-Myers Squibb, Lilly Research Labs and pre-merger Smith-Kline, and chaired one of its last study panels.

In OTA’s place, an independent, non-profit entity called The Potomac Institute for Policy Studies (PIPS) was co-founded by Special Consultant to President H.W. Bush’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) and a former CIA program monitor, Michael S. Swetnam, who was reportedly “tasked with profiling Osama Bin Laden before the September 11th attacks were enacted.”

The defunding of the OTA and subsequent creation of PIPS transferred policy-making on what are, perhaps, the most sensitive issues of national security away from Congress and into a private foundation teeming with operators from the vast underbelly of the military industrial complex (MIC). Former military officers, DARPA scientists, NASA policy experts, FBI agents, CIA operatives and defense contractors like Northrop Grumman can all be found on their member rolls and in their boardrooms.

PIPS and its sponsors would shadow Robert Kadlec’s career in government from the very beginning and remain in close proximity to him today. One PIPS-linked individual would work particularly closely with Kadlec, Tevi Troy – a senior fellow at PIPS and an adjunct fellow at the much more polished Hudson Institute, itself a major funder of PIPS. Troy has long been integral in shaping Kadlec’s biodefense policy agenda, which would remain conspicuously static and unchanging throughout the career he was just beginning.

Pox Americana

 

William C. Patrick III 

By 1996, talks had begun within military leadership regarding what would become the Pentagon’s mandatory anthrax vaccination program, a policy tirelessly promoted by Joshua Lederberg, who was involved in “investigating” the links between the anthrax vaccine and Gulf War Syndrome. The private talks took place in parallel with a public push to bring biological warfare to the forefront of American public consciousness. One particularly egregious example occurred when then-Secretary of Defense William Cohen went on ABC News with a five-pound bag of sugar, stating that “this amount of anthrax could be spread over a city—let’s say the size of Washington. It would destroy at least half the population of that city.”

At the same time, Joshua Lederberg was also advocating for the stockpiling of a smallpox vaccine, which the U.S. military also took to heart,giving a company called DynPort an exclusive multi-million dollar contract to produce a new smallpox vaccine in 1997. Soon after, BioPort, DynPort’s sister company, was formed and would soon come to monopolize the production of that vaccine.

By the time BioPort (now known as Emergent Biosolutions) had controversially gained control over this lucrative Pentagon contract in 1998, then-President Bill Clinton was publicly warning that the U.S. must “confront the new hazards of biological and chemical weapons,” adding that Saddam Hussein specifically was “developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them.” However, there was no intelligence to back up these claims, especially after the failed attempts by weapon inspectors, like Robert Kadlec and William Patrick, to find any evidence of an Iraqi biological weapons program.

Despite the lack of evidence regarding Iraq’s alleged “WMD” programs, Clinton’s concern over a biological weapons threat was said to have been the result of his reading of “The Cobra Event”, a novel about how a genetically-modified pathogen called “brainpox” ravages New York City. The novel’s author, Richard Preston, had been advised on biowarfare and genetically-modified pathogens by none other than William Patrick. Patrick, then an adviser to the CIA, FBI and military intelligence, also participated in closed door meetings with Clinton on biological weapons, claiming that their use was inevitable and that the deadliest of pathogens could easily be made in a “terrorist’s garage.”

It is also likely that Clinton’s alarmism over biological and chemical weapons had been informed, in part, by a roundtable hosted at the White House on April 10, 1998. This “ White House Roundtable on Genetic Engineering and Biological Weapons,” included a group of “outside experts” spear-headed by Joshua Lederberg and included several other bioterror alarmists, such as: Jerome Hauer, then-serving as Director of New York City’s Office of Emergency Management (who also was advised by William Patrick III) and Thomas Monath, a vaccine industry executive and chief science advisor to CIA director George Tenet.

Discussed in-depth at the roundtable were “both the opportunities and the national security challenges posed by genetic engineering and biotechnology” as well as “classified material relating to threat assessments and how the United States responds to particular scenarios.”

Robert Kadlec, despite being a Republican, remains very fond of Bill Clinton, perhaps because the former president was so attentive to the dire predictions of the “biodefense experts” who shadowed Kadlec’s own career. Kadlec credits the former president with doing a “lot of good things” and making important contributions to the advancement of the biotech industrial complex’s policy agenda.

Clinton would issue several executive orders and Presidential Decision Directives (PDDs) during this period, such as PDD-62, which specifically addressed preparations for a “WMD” attack on the U.S. and called for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), then-led by Donna Shalala, to lead the national response to a WMD attack. Fortuitously for Kadlec, PDD-62 also called for the construction of a national stockpile of vaccines, antibiotics and other medical supplies.

At the time, Kadlec was already evangelizing the public about a seemingly imminent, doomsday anthrax attack he was certain would strike at any second. As quoted in a 1998 article from the Vancouver Sun, Kadlec speculated:

“If several kilograms of an agent like anthrax were disseminated in New York City today, conservative estimates put the number [of] deaths occurring in the first few days at 400,000. Thousands of others would be at risk of dying within several days if proper antibiotics and vaccination were not started immediately. Millions of others would be fearful of being exposed and seek or demand medical care as well. Beyond the immediate health implications of such an act, the potential panic and civil unrest would create an equally large response.”

Kadlec’s doomsday speculations about biological weapons attacks had caught the attention of Randall Larsen, the then-director of the National War College’s Department of Military Strategy and Operations, who hired Kadlec because he “had become convinced that the most serious threat to national security was not Russian or Chinese missiles, but a pandemic – either man-made or naturally occurring.” Soon after, Kadlec and Larsen would collaborate closely, co-authoring several studies together.

Meanwhile, their colleague at the National War College, William Patrick III was simultaneously working for the U.S. military and intelligence contractor, the Battelle Memorial Institute, where he was secretly developing a genetically-modified, more potent form of anthrax for a classified Pentagon program.

The Bioterror Intelligentsia

A year after hiring Robert Kadlec to teach at the National War College, Randall Larsen was also involved in the creation of a new organization called the ANSER Institute for Homeland Security (ANSER-IHS), and served as its director. This Institute for Homeland Security, first initiated and funded in October 1999, was an extension of the ANSER Institute, which itself had been spun off from the RAND Corporation in the late 1950s. The RAND Corporation is a national security-focused “think tank” with long-standing ties to the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and the Carnegie Corporation.

ANSER’s expansion through ANSER-IHS was foreshadowed by the entry of “homeland defense” into popular political discourse within the Washington Beltway. The term is alleged to have first originated from a National Defense Panel report submitted in 1997 and is credited to Defense Panel member and former CIA officer with ties to the agency’s Phoenix program, Richard Armitage. Armitage was part of the group known as the “Vulcans,” who advised George W. Bush on foreign policy matters prior to the 2000 presidential election.

As journalist Margie Burns pointed out in a 2002 article, the need for “homeland defense” as a major focus of U.S. government policy, including the push to create a new “homeland security” agency, was dramatically amplified following its alleged coining by Armitage in 1997. This was thanks, in part, to a web of media outlets owned by South Korean cult leader and CIA asset Sun Myong Moon, including the Washington Times, Insight Magazine and UPI, all of which published numerous articles penned by ANSER analysts or that heavily cited ANSER reports and employees regarding the need for a greatly expanded “homeland security” apparatus.

One such article, published by Insight Magazine in May 2001 and entitled “Preparing for the Next Pearl Harbor,” heavily cites ANSER and its Institute for Homeland Security as being among “the nation’s top experts” in warning that a terrorist attack on the U.S. mainland was imminent. It also stated that “the first responders on tomorrow’s battlefield won’t be soldiers, but city ambulance workers and small-town firefighters.”

ANSER-IHS was created at the behest of ANSER’s CEO, Dr. Ruth David, who became ANSER’s top executive after leaving a lengthy career at the CIA, where she had served as the agency’s Deputy Director for Science and Technology. On ANSER-IHS’s board at the time, alongside David, were Joshua Lederberg and Dr. Tara O’Toole, then-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Bio-defense Studies who would later co-write the Dark Winter exercise.

Though first created in 1999, ANSER-IHS did not officially launch until April 2001. That same month, Robert Kadlec, at the National War College, sponsored the paper “A Micro-threat with Macro-Impact: The Bio-Threat and the Need for a National Bio-Defense Security Strategy.” That paper starts by citing several former CIA officials as well as Dr. O’Toole (who now works for the CIA’s venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel) as proof that a bioterrorist attack is “perhaps the greatest threat the U.S. faces in the next century” and that such an attack would inevitably target “Americans on American soil.”

This Kadlec-sponsored report also called for the creation of the National Homeland Security Agency (NHSA), the framework for which was contained in H.R. 1158, introduced a month prior in March 2001. The paper urged that the creation of this new cabinet-level agency be enacted “quickly, so the resulting single executive agent (identified from here on as the NHSA) can begin its critical work.” It also argued that this agency include “a deputy director position … specifically responsible for preparing and responding to a bio-attack.”

Other measures recommended in the paper included greatly expanding the national defense stockpile; creating a national disease reporting system; and the creation of real-time, automated bio-threat detectors. The latter would be initiated soon after the publication of this paper, resulting in the controversial Biological Aerosol Sentry and Information Systems (BASIS). BASIS was discussed in Part I of this series, particularly its role in “induc[ing] the very panic and social disruption it is intended to thwart” during and after the 2001 anthrax attacks that would occur months later. BASIS was developed largely by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, whose national security fellow – former Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) director Jay Davis, was then-chairman of ANSER’s board of directors.

Also notable is the fact that Kadlec’s April 2001 report cites the largely discredited yet still influential Ken Alibek on several occasions, including his allegation that anyone with internet access and a few bucks could produce and unleash weapons-grade anthrax with ease. Some of the nation’s top anthrax experts would discredit this claim, with the exception of William C. Patrick III.

This is likely because it was Patrick who had been asked by the CIA to “vet” Alibek after he had first defected from the Soviet Union 1992, making Patrick responsible for determining the credibility of Alibek’s controversial claims, including his incorrect assertions that Saddam Hussein had overseen a massive biological weapons program. Regarding their meeting, Patrick would later say “I won’t say we fell in love, but we gained an immediate respect for one another.”

At the time of Alibek’s defection, Robert Kadlec – who had been assigned to the Pentagon’s Office of the Secretary of Defense for Counter-proliferation policy after the Gulf War – would later recall during 2014 Congressional testimony having “witnessed the efforts to ascertain the truth behind the former Soviet Union’s BW [biological weapons] effort” that had intimately involved Alibek and Patrick. Kadlec would also note that “the fate of these agents [related to the Soviet Union’s BW program] and associated weapons,” including those described by Alibek, “was never satisfactorily resolved.”

Alibek’s shocking yet dubious claims were often used and promoted by Joshua Lederberg (who had debriefed other Soviet bioweapons researchers after their defections), Patrick and others to support their favored “biodefense” policies as well as the need for “defensive” bioweapons research, including clandestine efforts to genetically-engineer anthrax on which Patrick and Alibek would later collaborate.

Setting the Wheels in Motion

Just a few months before ANSER-IHS’ “official” launch, another organization with a related focus was launched — the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). Created by media mogul Ted Turner and former Senator Sam Nunn in January 2001, NTI aimed not only to “reduce the threat” posed by nuclear weapons, but also chemical and biological weapons.

In announcing NTI’s formation on CNN, the network Turner had founded, Nunn stated that while “nuclear weapons pose the gigantic danger, but biological and chemical weapons are the most likely to be used. And there are thousands of scientists in the former Soviet Union that know how to make these weapons, including chemical, biological and nuclear, but don’t know how to feed their families.” Nunn continued, stating that NTI hoped “to begin to help, some hope for gainful employment for people that we don’t want to end up making chemical and biological and nuclear weapons in other parts of the world.” NTI’s mission in this regard likely came as welcome news to Joshua Lederberg, who had long advocated that the U.S. offer employment to bioweapons researchers from the former Soviet Union to prevent their employ by “rogue regimes.”

Alongside Nunn and Tuner on NTI’s board was William Perry, a former Secretary of Defense; former Senator Dick Lugar, for whom the alleged U.S. bioweapons lab in Georgia is named; and Margaret Hamburg, who was NTI’s Vice President overseeing its work on biological weapons. Margaret Hamburg’s father, David Hamburg, a long-time president of the Carnegie Corporation, was also an advisor and “distinguished fellow” at NTI. David Hamburg was a longtime close advisor, associate, and friend of Joshua Lederberg.

Both Sam Nunn and Margaret Hamburg of NTI, as well as top officials from ANSER, would come together in June 2001 to participate in an exercise simulating a bioweapons attack called “Dark Winter.” Nunn would play the role of president in the exercise and Hamburg played the head of HHS in the fictional scenario. Jerome Hauer, then-managing director of the intelligence-linked outfit Kroll Inc. and a Vice President at the military-intelligence contractor Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC), played the head of FEMA.

The Dark Winter exercise itself was largely written by Tara O’Toole (ANSER-IHS board member) and Thomas Inglesby of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Bio-defense Studies as well as Randall Larsen of ANSER-IHS. Robert Kadlec also participated in the creation of the script and appears in the fictional, scripted news clips used in the exercise.

As detailed in Part I of this series, the Dark Winter exercise eerily predicted many aspects of what would follow just months later during the 2001 anthrax attacks, including predictions that threatening letters would be sent to members of the press with the promise of biological weapons attacks involving anthrax. Dark Winter also provided the initial narrative for the 2001 anthrax attacks, which held that Iraq and Al Qaeda had been jointly responsible. However, soon after the attacks, evidence quickly pointed to the anthrax having originated from a domestic source linked to military experiments. In addition, several Dark Winter participants and authors either had apparent foreknowledge of those attacks (especially Jerome Hauer) and/or were involved in the FBI’s controversial investigation into the attacks (including Robert Kadlec).

On the day of September 11, 2001, Kadlec and Randall Larsen were set to begin co-teaching a course on “Homeland Security” at the National War College. It’s course syllabus draws from quotes on the imminent threat of bioterrorism from Joshua Lederberg as well as Dark Winter participant and former CIA director James Woolsey, who called a biological weapons attack “the single most dangerous threat to U.S. national security in the foreseeable future.”

The course was also set to include its own lengthy use of the Dark Winter exercise, where students would re-enact the June 2001 exercise as part of an end-of-semester research project. However, given the events that took place on September 11, 2001, Kadlec never went on to teach that course, as he instead went to the Pentagon to focus on the “bio-terror threat” in the weeks that preceded the 2001 anthrax attacks.

The After (Anthrax) Party

Immediately after the events of September 11, 2001, Kadlec became a special advisor on biological warfare to then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz. In the days that followed, Rumsfeld openly and publicly stated that he expected America’s enemies, specifically Saddam Hussein, to aid unspecified terrorist groups in obtaining chemical and biological weapons, a narrative that was analogous to that used in the Dark Winter exercise that Kadlec had helped create.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Dark Winter’s other co-authors — Randall Larsen, Tara O’Toole and Thomas Inglesby — personally briefed Dick Cheney on Dark Winter, at a time when Cheney and his staff had been warned by another Dark Winter figure, Jerome Hauer, to take the antibiotic Cipro to prevent anthrax infection. It is unknown how many members of the administration were taking Cipro and for how long.

Hauer, along with James Woolsey and New York Times reporter Judith Miller (who also attended Dark Winter), would spend the weeks between 9/11 and the public disclosure of the anthrax attacks making numerous media appearances (and, in Miller’s case, writing dozens of reports) regarding the use of anthrax as a biological weapon. Members of the controversial think thank the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), which included Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld among its ranks, also warned that a biological weapons attack was set to follow on the heels of 9/11. These included Richard Perle, then advising the Rumsfeld-led Pentagon, and Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard.

One would think that all of these well-timed warnings would have left this clique of government insiders the least surprised once the anthrax attacks were publicly disclosed on October 4, 2001. However, despite constantly warning of doomsday anthrax attack scenarios for a decade and advising the Pentagon on this very threat immediately beginning just weeks prior, Robert Kadlec would subsequently claim to have yelled, “You gotta be sh*ttin’ me!” when he first learned of the attacks.

Another pre-attack anthrax prophet, Judith Miller, would recall becoming distraught and despondent upon receiving a letter that appeared to contain anthrax. Her first reaction was to call William C. Patrick III, who calmed her down and told her that the anthrax powder contained in the letter “was most likely a hoax.” Indeed, Patrick would prove correct in his analysis as the powder in the letter Miller had opened was, in fact, harmless.

Kadlec quickly began contributing to the FBI’s controversial investigation into the attacks, known by its case name “Amerithrax.” Kadlec was tasked with following up on the alleged presence of bentonite in the anthrax used in the attacks. Bentonite was never actually found in any of the anthrax samples tested by the FBI, but claims that it had been found were used to link the anthrax used in the attacks to Iraq’s alleged use of bentonite in its biological weapons program, the very existence of which still lacked conclusive evidence.

This erroneous claim was first mentioned to Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz by Peter Jahrling, a Fort Detrick scientist, who claimed during a briefings that the spores “appeared to have been treated” with a “particular chemical additive” resembling bentonite. Jahrling then added that Iraq’s government had used bentonite to “suspiciously” produce bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a “nonlethal cousin” of anthrax widely used in agriculture. “Everyone grabbed on to that,” Kadlec would later remember of Jahrling’s haphazard link between bentonite and a harmless, distant cousin of anthrax.

Tasked by Wolfowitz with shoring up evidence for the bentonite “smoking gun,” Kadlec would contact a Navy scientist that had accompanied him and William Patrick to Iraq in their unsuccessful efforts to find proof of Iraq’s biological weapons back in 1994, James Burans. Burans was unconvinced of the bentonite connection and other government scientists soon agreed.

Nonetheless, media outlets continued to play up the bentonite-anthrax claim as proving Iraq’s role in the anthrax attacks, despite findings to the contrary. By late October 2001, one nationwide poll found that 74% of respondents wanted the U.S. to take military action against Iraq, despite a lack of evidence connecting the country to either 9/11 or the anthrax attacks. A month later, Rumsfeld would draw up plans in consultation with Wolfowitz regarding justifications for initiating war with Iraq, including discovering links between Saddam Hussein and the anthrax attacks and initiating disputes with Iraq over WMD inspections.

While the Kadlec-advised Pentagon was seeking to link the anthrax attacks to Iraq, the NTI – headed by Dark Winter “president” Sam Nunn – kicked its agenda into over-drive, earmarking “$2.4 million in initial grants to finance scientific collaboration with scientists who once worked in the former Soviet Union’s covert biological weapons program.” NTI also set aside millions more for transforming former Soviet Union bioweapons labs into “vaccine production facilities” and “helping identify Western drug companies willing to work with former Soviet bioweaponeers on commercial ventures.”

Closed Door Investigation

William C. Patrick III would also become involved the FBI’s Amerithrax investigation, even though he was initially suspected of involvement in the attacks. However, after having passed a lie detector test, he was added to the FBI’s “inner circle” of technical advisors on the Amerithrax case, despite the fact that Patrick’s protege, Stephen Hatfill, was the FBI’s top suspect at the time. Hatfill was later cleared of wrongdoing and the FBI eventually blamed a Fort Detrick scientist named Bruce Ivins for the crime, hiding a “mountain” of evidence exonerating Ivins to do so, according to the FBI’s former lead investigator.

In the 1990s, Patrick had told associates of his desire to find someone who would carry on his work, eventually finding this person in Stephen Hatfill. Hatfill and Patrick’s friendship was close, with one bioterror expert calling them “like father and son.” Hatfill traveled together often and, on occasion, Hatfill would drive Patrick to his consulting jobs at the military and intelligence contractor SAIC. In 1999, Patrick would return the favor by helping Hatfill score a job at SAIC. A year later, Jerome Hauer, a friend to both Hatfill and Patrick, would join SAIC as a Vice President.

That same year, Hatfill offered Patrick another consulting job at SAIC and commissioned Patrick to perform a study describing “a fictional terrorist attack in which an envelope containing weapons-grade anthrax is opened in an office.” The Baltimore Sun would later report that Patrick’s study for SAIC discussed the “danger of anthrax spores spreading through the air and the requirements for decontamination after various kinds of attacks” as well as how many grams of anthrax would need to be placed within a standard business envelope in order to conduct such an attack.

Patrick’s involvement in this SAIC study is particularly interesting given that he was also involved in another project involving anthrax at the time, this one managed by Battelle Memorial Institute. In 1997, the Pentagon created plans to genetically engineer a more potent variety of anthrax, spurred by the work of Russian scientists who had recently published a study that found that a genetically engineered strain of anthrax was resistant to the standard anthrax vaccine, at least in animal studies.

The stated goal of the Pentagon’s plan, per a 2001 report in The New York Times, was “to see if the [anthrax] vaccine the United States intends to supply to its armed forces is effective against that strain.” Battelle’s facility at West Jefferson, Ohio was contracted by the Pentagon to create the genetically-modified anthrax, a task that was overseen by Battelle’s then-program manager for all things bioweapons, Ken Alibek. A 1998 article in the New Yorker noted that William Patrick, also a consultant for Battelle and Alibek’s “close friend,” was working with Alibek on a project involving anthrax at the time. It would later be revealed that access to the very anthrax strain used in the attacks, the Ames strain, was controlled by Battelle.

In addition, the FBI’s supposed “smoking gun” used to link Bruce Ivins’ to the anthrax attacks was the fact that a flask in Ivins’ lab labeled RMR-1029 was determined to be its “parent” strain. Yet, it would later be revealed that portions of RMR-1029 had been sent by Ivins to Battelle’s Ohio facility prior to the anthrax attacks. An analysis of the water used to make the anthrax also revealed that the anthrax spores had been created in the northeastern United States and follow-up analyses narrowed down the only possible sources as coming from one of three labs: Fort Detrick, a lab at the University of Scranton, or Battelle’s West Jefferson facility.

After Ivins’ untimely “suicide” in 2008, Department of Justice civil attorneys would publicly challenge the FBI’s assertions that Ivins had been the culprit and instead “suggested that a private laboratory in Ohio” managed by Battelle “could have been involved in the attacks.”

Patrick’s work with Battelle on creating a more potent form of anthrax, as well as his work with SAIC in studying the effect of anthrax sent through the mail, began around the same time that BioPort had secured a monopoly over the production of the anthrax vaccine, recently made mandatory for all U.S. troops by the Pentagon. As detailed in Part II of this series, BioPort’s facility that produced its anthrax vaccine was, at the time, rife with problems and had lost its license to operate. Despite the Pentagon having given BioPort millions to use for renovations of the factory, much of that money instead went towards senior management bonuses and redecorating executive offices. Millions more simply “disappeared.”

In 2000, not long after receiving its first Pentagon bail-out, BioPort contracted none other than Battelle Memorial Institute. The deal gave Battelle “immediate exposure to the vaccine” it was using in connection with the genetically-modified anthrax program that involved both Alibek and Patrick. That program then began using the BioPort-manufactured vaccine in tests at its West Jefferson facility. At the time, Battelle was also lending “technical expertise” to BioPort and hired 12 workers to send to BioPort’s troubled Michigan facility “to keep the operation running.”

At the time, a BioPort spokeswomen stated “We have a relationship with Battelle to extend our reach for people we are trying to attract for critical positions on our technical side. They’re also assisting with our potency testing as really sort of a backup. They’re validating our potency tests.” Reports on the BioPort-Battelle contract stated that the terms of their agreement were not publicly disclosed, but also noted that the two companies had “previously worked together on an unsuccessful bid to make other vaccines for the government.”

As previously noted in Part II of this series, BioPort was set to lose its contract for anthrax vaccine entirely in August 2001 and the entirety of its anthrax vaccine business was rescued by the 2001 anthrax attacks, which saw concerns over BioPort’s corruption replaced with fervent demands for more of its anthrax vaccine.

Rumsfeld Saves BioPort

One of the post-attack advocates for salvaging the BioPort anthrax vaccine contract was Donald Rumsfeld, who stated after the attacks that, “We’re going to try to save it, and try to fashion some sort of an arrangement whereby we give one more crack at getting the job done with that outfit [BioPort]. It’s the only outfit in this country that has anything under way, and it’s not very well under way, as you point out.”

While Rumsfeld and others worked to salvage the troubled BioPort-anthrax vaccine deal, another recurrent figure in this sordid saga, Jerome Hauer, would also play a key role in pushing for increased purchases of BioPort’s most lucrative and most controversial product. In addition to being managing director of Kroll Inc. and a Vice President at SAIC, Hauer was also a national security advisor to HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson on September 11, 2001. It was also this same day that Hauer would also tell top administration officials to take Cipro to prevent anthrax infection.

Hauer played a key role advising HHS leadership as the anthrax attacks unfolded. After the attacks, Hauer pushed Thompson to create the Office of Public Health Preparedness (OPHP) within HHS, which was created later that year. It was first headed by D.A. Henderson, a close associate of Joshua Lederberg and the original founder of the Johns Hopkins Working Group on Civilian Biodefense, which included Jerome Hauer and Henderson’s protege Tara O’Toole. Hauer himself would come to replace Henderson as OPHP just a few months later.

Subsequent legislation, shaped in part by Robert Kadlec, would see OPHP give way to the position of Assistant Secretary for Public Health Emergency Preparedness (ASPHEP), a position Hauer would also fill. Hauer would use this post to push for the stockpiling of vaccines, including BioPort’s anthrax vaccine. Hauer and his deputy, William Raub, would then help push the Pentagon to restart vaccinating the troops, despite long-standing concerns over the vaccine’s safety. Soon after leaving HHS in 2004, Hauer would quickly be added to the board of directors of BioPort under its new name Emergent Biosolutions, a post he still holds today.

All Systems Go

In the aftermath of the anthrax attacks, Robert Kadlec’s doomsday predictions for bioterror incidents went into over-drive. “It’s not your mother’s smallpox,” Kadlec would tell the LA Times in late October 2001, “It’s an F-17 Stealth fighter – it’s designed to be undetectable and to kill. We are flubbing our efforts at biodefense. We don’t think of this as a weapon – we look naively at this as a disease.” As the article notes, this “stealth fighter” strain of smallpox did not exist. Instead, Kadlec – who now had Rumsfeld’s ear on issues of biodefense – expected that such a strain might soon be genetically engineered.

Of course, at the time, the only government known to be genetically engineering a pathogen was the U.S., as reported by the New York Times’ Judith Miller. Miller reported in October 2001 that the Pentagon, in the wake of the anthrax attacks, had approved “a project to make a potentially more potent form of anthrax bacteria” through genetic modification, a project that would be conducted by the Battelle Memorial Institute.

This was the continuation of the project, which had involved William Patrick and Ken Alibek, and the Pentagon moved to restart it after the attacks, though it is unclear if either Patrick or Alibek continued to work on the subsequent iteration of Battelle’s efforts to produce a more virulent strain of anthrax. That project was paused a month prior when Miller and other journalists disclosed the existence of the program in an article published on September 4, 2001.

After news broke of the Pentagon’s plans to again begin developing more potent anthrax strains, accusations were made that the U.S. was violating the bioweapons convention. However, the U.S. narrowly avoided having to admit it had violated the convention given that, just one month after the Dark Winter exercise in July 2001, the U.S. had rejected an agreement that would have enforced its ban on biological weapons.

The New York Times noted specifically that the genetically-modified anthrax experiments being performed by Battelle’s West Jefferson facility were a “significant reason” behind the Bush administration’s decision to reject the draft agreement and the U.S. government had argued at the time that “unlimited visits to pharmaceutical or defense installations by foreign inspectors could be used to gather strategic or commercial intelligence.” Of course, one of those “pharmaceutical or defense installations” was ultimately the source of the anthrax used in the attacks.

The Groundwork

On the heels of the chaos of late 2001, Kadlec’s vision for U.S. biodefense policy was rapidly coming to fruition before his very eyes. The first enabling statute for the SNS was the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness Act of 2002, largely motivated by the anthrax attacks, which directed the Secretary of HHS to maintain a “Strategic National Stockpile (SNS).” The legislation had been the direct result of a process begun years earlier when Congress earmarked funding for the CDC to stockpile pharmaceuticals in 1998. The program was originally called the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile (NPS) program.

Kadlec’s role in directing subsequent developments in the SNS and other related legislative developments was considerable given that, in 2002, he became director for biodefense on the recently created Homeland Security Council. His work on the council, which he left in 2005, resulted in the Bush administration’s “National Biodefense Policy for the 21st Century,” which unsurprisingly echoed the recommendations of the paper Kadlec had sponsored at the National War College.

On March 1, 2003, the NPS became the Strategic National Stockpile program and was managed jointly by DHS and HHS after George W. Bush issued Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD-5). Two days before, Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge and then Secretary of HHS Tommy Thompson had presented the Project BioShield Act to Congress. It was a sweeping piece of legislation that established what would become a government money teller-window for Big Pharma, called the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), among other entities and powers, not least of which was moving control of the SNS away from DHS and closer to HHS.

Soon after BioShield was signed into law, BioPort/Emergent BioSolutions co-founded a lobby group called the Alliance for Biosecurity as part of its strategy to easily secure lucrative BioShield contracts. That lobby group saw Emergent BioSolutions join forces with the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Biosecurity, which was then-led by Tara O’Toole and advised by Randall Larsen.

With this framework in place, the Kadlec-drafted National Biodefense Policy for the 21st Century was used as the framework for Bush’s Homeland Security Presidential Directive 10 (HSPD-10), which further expanded BioShield, the SNS and other controversial programs. Project BioShield was made law in 2004 and, one year later, Kadlec joined Senator Richard Burr’s subcommittee on bioterrorism and public health. There, Kadlec served as staff director on the committee that drafted the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA), containing the specific policy directives for the roll out of Project BioShield and creating Kadlec’s future position at HHS.

PAHPA was passed the following year in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and established the statutory relationship between the various agencies enacted or included in the BioShield legislation. This includes delegating to the newly creation position of HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) to “exercise the responsibilities and authorities of the Secretary [of HHS] with respect to the coordination of ”the stockpile and to oversee the advanced research and development of medical counter-measures funded by BARDA, but conducted by Big Pharma. ASPR was also given the leadership role in directing HHS’ response to a national health emergency.

Serving alongside Kadlec in the White House throughout this entire process was Tevi Troy, a Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy; a role which made him the White House’s lead adviser on health care, labor, education and other issues with a special focus on crisis management. Troy, who had come up through the department of labor as deputy assistant for policy was already a Senior fellow at both the Hudson Institute and its satellite think tank, the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies (PIPS), where the real policy development work was undertaken.

Both Troy and Kadlec would exit the administration at the end of Bush’s first term and not return until the latter half of his second term. In the meantime, the wheels had been set in motion with the passing of Project BioShield and PAHPA and, soon after their passage, panic over a “Bird flu” outbreak began, which had spread first in 33 cities in Vietnam and then led to an outbreak of the poultry-killing disease that affected all of Eurasia, Africa and the Middle East. The outbreak sparked panic in the U.S. in late 2005, thanks in large part to over-the-top warnings made by Tommy Thompson’s successor as head of HHS, Michael Leavitt.

Despite the fact that Leavitt’s claims were wildly inaccurate, some administration officials benefited financially from the fear-mongering, such as Donald Rumsfeld, whose stock holdings in the pharmaceutical company Gilead netted him $5 million once the scare had ended. Part of the reason for Gilead’s jump in profitability resulted from the decision of the Pentagon and other U.S. government agencies to stockpile 80 million doses of Tamiflu, a drug promoted to treat the Bird Flu that was originally developed by Gilead. Rumsfeld had been the top executive at Gilead before joining the George W. Bush administration. Aside from those who benefited monetarily, the Bird Flu scare also gave a considerable boost to the biodefense “stockpile” agenda that Kadlec and other insiders supported.

Kadlec would return to the White House as Special Assistant for Homeland Security and Senior Director for Biological Defense Policy in 2007 to further solidify his eventual grip on the Strategic National Stockpile and the office of ASPR, along with his Hudson Institute/PIPS sidekick, Tevi Troy, concurrently appointed Deputy Director of HHS. This put Troy in charge of implementing the very policies enshrined in PAHPA and the departmental changes enacted as part of Project BioShield.

The Bush administration came to its inevitable conclusion as Barack Obama was elected and sworn in, early 2009. Kadlec and Troy, once again, left their government posts and disappeared into their private sector lairs. But, that same year, the first practice run for Kadlec’s freshly retrofitted SNS took place when the “Swine Flu” (H1N1) pandemic triggered its “largest deployment” ever, distributing nearly 13 million antiviral regimens, as well as medical equipment and other drugs nationally and internationally in conjunction with BARDA. Gilead (and Rumsfeld) again profited handsomely, as did other large pharmaceutical companies, which were eager to restock the SNS after its large-scale deployment.

The virus’ origins have been a matter of controversy for several years, alternatively identified as having sprung from pigs in Mexico or Asia. One of the last studies conducted in 2016 claims to have definitively traced the source to hogs in Mexico. Regardless of its true origins, interested observers were able to glean vital data from the exercise to prepare for the “next one.”

Troy’s Horses

Departing HHS Deputy Director Tevi Troy soon took a gig as a high-powered lobbyist for the JUUL e-cigarette company, which had run into some regulatory barriers as a result of the Tobacco Control Act, which had just been signed by then-President Obama. Margaret Hamburg, founding member of the NTI, was then Commissioner of the FDA and stalled enforcement of the new regulations; a tacit non-enforcement policy had persisted at the FDA until the recent vaping flavor ban, which followed renewed health concerns raised by a 2018 NIH report.

Why a former HHS official would take up the mantle to promote the use of a product known to be injurious to health can be answered by looking at Dr. Troy’s close links with PIPS and the Hudson Institute. Couched in free-market rhetoric, these institutions are vehicles for the policy initiatives their billionaire funders want to see implemented, with its subsidiary think tanks, like PIPS, serving as satellites orbiting closer to the center of power.

As an adjunct fellow of the Hudson Institute and senior fellow at PIPS, Tevi Troy appears to play a pivotal role coordinating between the two. The Hudson Institute was founded in 1961 by former RAND military strategist, systems theorist and Dr. Strangelove inspiration Herman Kahn. After Kahn’s passing in 1983, the Institute was “heavily recruited” by the Lilly Endowment – the largest private foundation in the United States, by far – and became a magnet for the same radical conservative billionaire networks that patronize it today.

Among its biggest donors are familiar names like Microsoft, Lockheed Martin Corporation, The Charles Koch Foundation, Boeing and Emergent BioSolutions. In 2004, Lilly Endowment returned to Washington D.C., announcing it would “return to its roots of national security and foreign policy” as a result of the war on terror becoming an “overarching national concern”.

PIPS and the Hudson Institute would come to play a central role in Kadlec’s upcoming efforts to make biodefense a national priority with him at the helm of a vastly expanded office of ASPR. But, it would be a few years yet. Meanwhile, there was more to be done in the area of legislation, not to mention private enterprise.

Building on all previous versions of Kadlec’s original PAHPA, the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Reauthorization Act (PAHPRA) of 2013 established two more instruments that strengthened his ultimate goal. First, the PHEMCE Strategy and Implementation Plan (SIP) was codified into law, which formalized the original legislation’s ties to the budget office and secondly, it streamlined the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) facility for the FDA to fast-track drug approvals.

Show Me the Money

Soon upon returning to the private sector, Robert Kadlec helped found a new company in 2012 called “East West Protection,” which develops and delivers “integrated all-hazards preparedness and response systems for communities and sovereign nations.” The company also “advises communities and countries on issues related to the threat of weapons of mass destruction and natural pandemics.”

Kadlec formed the company with W. Craig Vanderwagen, the first HHS ASPR after the post’s creation had been largely orchestrated by Kadlec. The other co-founder of East West Protection was Fuad El-Hibri, the founder of BioPort/Emergent Biosolutions, who had just stepped down as Emergent’s CEO earlier that year.

El-Hibri has numerous business connections to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where he and his father, Ibrahim El-Hibri, had once sold stockpiles of anthrax vaccine to the Saudi government for an exorbitant price per dose. East West Protection chased after the opportunity to fit the Kingdom with a custom-built biodefense system, but ultimately failed to finalize the deal despite El-Hibri’s connections. Instead, East West Protection sold its products to a handful of U.S. states.

Kadlec was the firm’s director from its founding until at least 2015, later selling his stake in the company to El-Hibri. Upon being nominated to serve as ASPR in the Trump administration, Kadlec failed to disclose his ties to East West Protection and El-Hibri and he has since claimed to only have been involved in the founding of the firm, despite evidence to the contrary.

Robert Kadlec’s forays into the private sector during this period went far beyond East West Protection. Kadlec’s consultancy firm, RPK Consulting, netted him $451,000 in 2014 alone, where he directly advised Emergent Biosolutions as well as other pharmaceutical companies like Bavarian Nordic. Kadlec was also a consultant to military and intelligence contractors, such as the DARPA-backed firm Invincea and NSA contractor Scitor, which was recently acquired by SAIC.

Kadlec’s consulting work for intelligence-linked companies earned him the praises of spooks turned entreprenuers, including Steve Cash – a former CIA officer and founder of Deck Prism, itself a consultancy firm that retained Kadlec. Cash recently told The Washington Post that “Everybody loves Dr. Bob [Kadlec],” adding that he was a “national treasure.”

On Biowarfare’s Eve

Kadlec had certainly been accumulating a treasure chest of power aided by some very cozy relationships in the consulting business and, by now, the stage had been set for a big push to create an official body within the halls of the legislature; an embedded consultancy firm, of sorts, to promote the designs of the biowarfare clique.

That year, Robert Kadlec put together a Blue Ribbon Study Panel sponsored jointly by the Hudson Institute and a PIPS subsidiary institution called the Inter-University Center for Terrorism Studies (IUCTS), managed by Dr. Yonah Alexander. Kadlec’s Blue Ribbon Panel was chaired by Senator Joe Lieberman and included the indispensable input of Tom Daschle, Donna Shalala and other members of the biowarfare policy club.

The study panel issued a report in late 2015 entitled “A National Blueprint for Biodefense” calling for 33 specific initiatives, such as the creation of a “biodefense hospital system” and implementing a “military-civilian collaboration for biodefense.” In addition, the panel recommended that the office of the Vice President lead a White House “Coordination Council” to oversee and guide biodefense policy.

An official body called the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense would be formed shortly thereafter with all the Blue Ribbon Panel members and many others like Commission co-chair Tom Ridge and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Tevi Troy and Yonah Alexander, who serve as Ex-officio members. Alongside them is Lewis “Scooter” Libby, former Chief of Staff to Dick Cheney and Senior Vice President of the Hudson Institute, which also happens to be the fiscal sponsor of the Commission.

In the acknowledgements, the panel’s 2015 report includes an homage to Robert Kadlec to whom they bestow credit for the achievement, which only “exists because of the foresight, forbearance, and perpetual optimism of Dr. Robert Kadlec. Bob understood that as much progress as had been made in the national effort to prevent and prepare for biological threats, it is not yet enough. He knew that with the right impetus, we could do much more, and he envisioned this Panel as a means to that end. We are glad he did.”

Kadlec mounted this last offensive while serving as Deputy Staff Director for Senator Richard Burr’s Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a position he would hold until the eve of Donald Trump’s election in 2016. Trump would then nominate him to the office of the ASPR and Kadlec would be confirmed in early August of the following year.

Only one piece of the puzzle was left, but it wouldn’t be very long before Robert Kadlec would become the biggest capo of them all with a subtle change that was introduced in the 2018 PAHPRA:

Title III – Sec 301

  1) DELEGATION TO ASPR.—Subsection (a)(1) of section 319F–2 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 247d–6b) is amended by striking ‘‘in collaboration with the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’’ and inserting ‘‘acting through the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response.’’

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