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Is an Airborne Biological Weapons Release Imminent?

Janet Phelan, August 14

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  • A surprise drill in New York City has the authorities scrambling to address an anthrax attack. MERS is reported to have mutated and is now airborne. Ebola is now being discussed as a major airborne threat to the US population

These stories hit the news during the past week. All three issues highlight enhanced structured and established concerns about the possibility for an airborne pandemic—launched either through a natural occurring disease agent or a biological weapons attack.

But are these concerns realistic?

Since the anthrax attacks of September 2001, the US has pumped over 70 billion dollars into what is being termed a “defensive” biological weapons program–ostensibly to protect civilians and soldiers from the devastating potential of an airborne disease agent. These programs include Project BioShield, which provided funding for eight medical countermeasures, to address smallpox, botulinum toxin and radiological contamination. Plans for a second generation anthrax vaccine by VaxGen ran into multiple complications and the company did not fulfill its contract. Funding was therefore allocated to stockpiling more of the original vaccine, which has been thought to cause Gulf War Syndrome.

At the same time as these highly publicized and staggeringly expensive programs were launched, the US government was also covertly funding “black” projects involving the construction of covert and top secret delivery systems, which could deploy either a bio or chemical weapons attack—selectively—potentially devastating the target populations within the borders of the US.

Sounds like science fiction? Three such delivery systems are now known. One has been extensively documented in a series of articles concerning the covert reconfiguration of water systems in the US, a reconfiguration that appears to have been launched in the early 1970’s. Interestingly, this massive countrywide project, which involved the placement of a double line water system enabled by remote controlled water valves, began under the administration of President “Tricky” Dick Nixon. Nixon concurrently declared to the world that the US had ceased all work of an offensive biological weapons nature.

The second delivery system involves the production of “dirty” vaccines, an issue which has been to some degree documented in the press and the third, which neatly dovetails with the other two projects, involves the production of “imposter” pharmaceuticals, which kill rather than cure. The unsuspecting recipients will die of a heart attack of stroke. Again, these are all “black” projects.

Also alarming are the stats put out by the CDC on the numbers of the “biodefense” labs. The CDC, which is mandated to keep track of the labs which work with dangerous microbes, has consistently spewed out misinformation, providing figures which only account for about one third of the existing labs.

Further fueling concerns is an unconfirmed report from an intelligence source claiming the existence of secret and unaccounted for labs hidden in below-ground facilities in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and several other states. The confidential source states that these secret labs are occupying former nuclear silos, and are disguised by the presence of civilian businesses, such as feed stores, on the ground level.

The predictive programming inherent in a movie such as Contagion, released in theatres worldwide in 2011, coupled with the consistent placement of news stories, such as the recent NYC drill and the possible mutation of MERS into an airborne contagion, reinforce and actually direct attention towards airborne and away from the possibility of other delivery systems, such as water, such as pharmaceuticals.

Ken Alibek, who was a Soviet bioweapons scientist who defected to the US in 1992, has discussed three main delivery systems for biological weapons, which include water and food, air, and also the release of infected insects. As a consumable, pharmaceuticals might well be added to this list.

However, the US has studiously ignored the potential for water or pharmaceuticals as delivery systems, and instead allocated funding to highly public programs, such as Project Biowatch, which involves the placement of sensors in major metropolitan areas to detect airborne toxins.

At the same time as the funding for “biodefense” was ramping up, the US Congress began passing a series of alarming laws, ostensibly circling the wagons around any disclosures that might point to waterborne.

In the USA PATRIOT Act, Section 817 (The Expansion of the Biological Weapons Statute), the US gave itself and its agents immunity from violating its own biological weapons laws, in the disturbing and underreported caveat that “the prohibitions in this section shall not apply to any duly authorized US governmental activity.” As previously reported, the US subsequently failed to comply with a politically binding mandate to report changes in its domestic biological weapons laws to the international treaty organization, the Biological Weapons and Toxins Convention. This omission could be considered tantamount to an international snow-job.

In quick succession, the US Congress then passed the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act of 2002, which made the public release of information pertaining to “protected infrastructure” punishable by time in the federal pen. Through a series of public information act requests, this reporter noted that “protected infrastructure” pertaining to water involved details about the existence of a second, parallel water line. The relevance of the second line to a bio/chem delivery system has been discussed here and here.

Just months before the anthrax attacks of 2001, the US delegation walked out of the adhoc Biological Weapons Convention committee, unilaterally boycotting the committee’s efforts to institute a verification protocol for the BWC. Due to this, the treaty remains a rather useless piece of paper, toothless and without any way to verify compliance or to cope with violations.

The package has been well constructed: a biological weapons attack blamed on a conveniently dead scientist, used to pump up a program wherein billions of dollars fund secret labs; removal of legal culpability by the violating state party; virtually undetectable delivery systems; the failure to inform the international treaty organization that a party to the Convention has effectively signed off the treaty through its (unreported) domestic legislation; and a proliferation of labs since the anthrax attacks which has prompted one observer to note that “These labs are almost as prevalent now as 711’s.” You see any loose ends here?

Back to Ebola. Does all the above mean that the US government is well on its way to releasing airborne Ebola, as some commentators are now stating?

It would appear not.

First of all, Ebola is not an airborne disease. It does not attack the respiratory system. It is rather transmitted through contact with body fluids. As pointed out by Dr. Hildegarde Stanninger, a toxicologist and integrative medicine doctor, “you can make anything airborne.” But that does not mean that the disease can therefore be contracted in this manner.

Secondly, one has to look at the intentionality behind all this hush- hush biological weapons research. The obvious eugenics focus on the creation of DNA-specific weapons reveals an interest in selectivity. Put simply, eugenics asks the following questions: What kinds of people do we want inhabiting planet earth, and what kinds of people are dispensable? These are basic considerations behind eugenics.

Given the billions of dollars that has been invested in creating delivery systems which would selectively deliver toxins or a disease agent and given all the interest in genetic weapons, it appears that the widespread release of an airborne disease agent—such as Ebola–could be counterproductive to the interests which can be inferred from the existing projects and research– at least in the First World. A shift of the wind and a perpetrator could find himself in the path of the release. Airborne is not controllable.

Selective delivery through dirty vaccines, imposter pharmaceuticals and a double line water system is quite controllable, however, and as such fits the requirements of a eugenics program.

In “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” a paper produced by the think tank Project for a New American Century, just such a focus was announced. “New methods of attack — electronic, ‘non-lethal’, biological — will be more widely available … combat likely will take place in new dimensions, in space, cyberspace, and perhaps the world of microbes … advanced forms of biological warfare that can ‘target’ specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.”

Some commentators are now scrambling to hype up an Ebola-doomsday scenario. Allegations of an Ebola-cure cover-up are also emerging. While the nature of activities being conducted in all those secret labs should realistically be of concern, some sectors are becoming so overwhelmed by escalating world events that they are acting twitchy and every spot of bad news brings on apocalyptic fears.

It may be cold comfort, but the manifest aggression of some Western leaders, as distressing as their actions may be, does not yet appear to have graduated to killing themselves off through the release of an incurable airborne microbe.

Janet C. Phelan, investigative journalist and human rights defender that has traveled pretty extensively over the Asian region, an author of a tell-all book EXILE, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.