DID THE PENTAGON MANUFACTURE AIDS AS A BIOLOGICAL WEAPON?

DID THE PENTAGON MANUFACTURE AIDS AS A BIOLOGICAL WEAPON?

By David Guyatt

AIDS kills.  It does so in extremely nasty ways.  By attacking the human immune system, the disease opens the victim to any number of, otherwise, non fatal illnesses.  The result is generally a heart-rending debilitating and lingering death.

 According to some experts, AIDS - Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome - first arose in the middle to late 1970’s in Africa, when a small, infected Green Monkey, sunk its teeth into a local native.  From such humble beginnings it then exploded across the globe - as a result of sexual transmission - bringing massive death and misery in its wake.

 There are currently 30 million people - throughout the world - who have contracted the killer disease.  With a death toll already set at over 8.4 million, estimates indicate this could leap to 40 million by the year 2000.  Over 1000 people are dying from AIDS per day.  Figures provided by the United Nations show that the geographic spread is almost entirely focused on black Africa and Southeast Asia - which combined - account for almost 90% of all known cases.  In effect, AIDS/HIV fundamentally attacks the impoverished Third World.

 This geographic spread has led to spectacular charges that the rich industrialised countries secretly developed and deployed AIDS as a biological weapon aimed at decimating the “useless eaters” of the Third World.  Researchers point to a number of government documents which they claim supports this charge.  Chief amongst these is National Security Memorandum (NSSM 200) authored in the early seventies by then US National Security Adviser, Dr. Henry Kissinger.  This document, hitherto marked as top secret, was quietly de-classified in 1990 and lodged in the US National Archives.  It is a chilling, cynical document.

 “De-population should be the highest priority of US foreign policy towards the Third World.”  This sentence formed the hard backbone of NSSM 200.  The memo went on to state that “Reduction of the rate of population in these States [Third World nations] is a matter of vital US national security.”  Why?  Simply because “The US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries.”  In stating this the focus was exclusively, on the “…economic interests of the US.” 

 The arrogant and cynical mindset that underscored Kissinger’s document was nothing new.  Third World citizens merely continued to be viewed as useless, lazy degenerates.  Years earlier, in 1932, cancer experiments were undertaken by Cornelius Rhoades, then chief pathologist of the Rockerfeller Institute.  The experiments involved deliberately infecting a number of Puerto Ricans with cancer.  Thirteen died as a consequence.  Rhoades explained away the experiments with the comment: “The Porto(sic) Ricans are the dirtiest, laziest, most degenerate and thievesh race of men ever inhabiting this sphere… I have done my best to further the process of extermination by killing off eight and transplanting cancer into several more… all physicians take delight in the abuse and torture of the unfortunate subjects.”

 Amazingly, Rhoades not only escaped prosecution for this hideous admission, but was later placed in charge of a number of chemical warfare projects during WW11.  He was also given a seat on the Atomic Energy Commission and awarded the Legion of Merit.  One may also remark on the known close connections of  Henry Kissinger to the Rockerfeller family.  It was due to this close family connection that Kissinger was appointed National Security Adviser in the Nixon administration in 1971.  According to US News & World Report the appointment “was on the advice of Governor Rockerfeller, who described Mr. Kissinger as ‘the smartest guy available.’”

 When viewed in conjunction with another US government document, the underlying foreign policy aims of NSSM 200, are cause for concern in the minds of many observers.  During 1970, the US Department of Defence applied to the US Senate appropriations committee for funding to research and develop a biological weapon that would attack the human immune system.  The request was for the development of “synthetic biological agents.”  In giving testimony to the Senate committee, Dr. Donald MacArthur, a US Army biological warfare expert, stated: “Within the next 5 to 10 years, it would probably be possible to make a new infective micro-organism which could differ in certain important aspects from any known disease-causing organisms.” Dr. MacArthur then added “Most important of these is that it might be refractory to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious diseases.”  He concluded that a feasibility research programme to this end “could be completed in approximately 5 years at a cost of $10 million.” The requested sum was granted.

 Professor Jakob Segal and his wife Lilli both believe that AIDS was laboratory manufactured at Fort Detrick, Maryland - home of America’s Chemical and Biological Warfare programme.  Segal, a Russian-born Professor of biology at Humboldt University in then East Germany stated that AIDS was the result of a US germ warfare programme.  The couple published their findings in a 1986 pamphlet “AIDS: USA Home-Made Evil.  The couple set about trying to show that the AIDS virus HIV is almost identical, in some regards, to two other viruses.  These are Visna, a deadly disease that kills sheep, but is not infectious to humans, and HTLV-1 (Human T-Cell Leukemia Virus) which though not fatal is highly infectious to humans.

 Segal then went on to state that the P4 High Security laboratory at Fort Detrick, was responsible for splicing both Visna and HTLV-1 together, thus creating an artificial biological weapon that was both highly infectious and deadly to humans.  The result was HIV.  Segal maintains this virus was finally created between late 1977 and the spring of 1978.  Disparaging the then common view that AIDS had first arisen in Africa, Segal insisted that the Fort Detrick cocktail was tested on prison inmates who had volunteered to participate in experiments in exchange for their release.  Because symptoms did not show up inside six months, the convicts were released according to the prior agreement.  Since a number of them were gay, Segal claimed, they travelled to New York and unknowingly began infecting other members of New York’s gay community.  From here the first known AIDS case appeared in 1979 and soon began spreading like wildfire.

 Segal’s theory and chain of events are viewed by many medical experts as entirely fictitious.  Others believe he was a willing instrument of a Soviet KGB disinformation campaign.  As a result of these and other factors, leading medical journals refused to publish his theory and findings.  Seeking to discover more detail, The X Factor spoke to a representative of Fort Detrick, Maryland.  The spokesman confirmed that the conspiracy theory surrounding AIDS was a known KGB disinformation project.  However, they also confirmed that they had worked on AIDS as part of a biological warfare programme.  This, they said, resulted from the need to protect US military personnel posted to highly infectious regions of the world from being infected with the disease.

 Despite this, Segal is not alone in suggesting that AIDS was the result of biological warfare experiments.  Dr. William Campbell Douglas - a high profile American physician with a background in Aviation and Space medicine, and a former US Navy Flight Surgeon - also believes AIDS was man-made.  Douglas couldn’t be politically further apart from the Segal’s.  His rhetoric is noticeably right wing and he regards himself as a “dedicated anti-communist.”  During a public lecture in August 1990, he admitted the KGB disinformation programme had caught him of guard.  It was, he said, “…A clever psy-war ploy, which, for a while anyway, neutralised those of us who were saying essentially the same thing, that the AIDS virus was probably created through recombinant genetic engineering…”

 Although left-footed for awhile, as he admits, the savvy Douglas soon found an acceptable riposte to the KGB disinformation conundrum.  Soviet agents had penetrated and been working inside “our top security biological warfare laboratories for over 20 years,” Douglas claimed.  To support his argument, Douglas refers to an article in Omni Magazine dated March 1986, which reportedly quotes Nobel Peace prize Winner, Dr. Carlton Gajdusek - an official at Fort Detrick.  Gajdusek is reported as saying “In the facility I have a building where more good and loyal communists scientists from the USSR and mainland China work, with full passkeys to all the laboratories, than they are Americans.”

 Douglas firmly believes that the irruption of AIDS began in Africa, but not as a result of a green monkey biting a local native.  His theory is that the World Health Organisation surreptitiously infected the citizens of Africa with laboratory created AIDS concealed within their widespread smallpox vaccination project.  Douglas admittedly subscribes to the conspiratorial view that the World Health Organisation was an evil instrument of the former Soviet Union.  He is not alone in this regard.  Many on the political right in America, view the various offshoots of the United Nations as a communist-backed conspiracy funded by the Rockerfellers - and their banking chums - in a bid to gain control of the world via the so-called New Work Order.

 Possibly, the most enduring man-made AIDS theorist is American, Dr. Robert Strecker, M.D.  Strecker firmly believes that AIDS was manufactured in a laboratory as a biological weapon.  To back-up his argument, Strecker outlines the many hundreds of open-air biological warfare tests conducted on US citizens without their knowledge.  The idea is to show that the government wouldn’t hesitate using such a weapon if the need arose.  As an example, Strecker mentions the comments of Jay Clemenson, a world renowned epidemiologist.  In 1975, Clemenson spoke before a meeting of cancer and leukaemia experts in Tokyo.  Strecker quotes him as saying “We are in fact establishing conditions for a pandemic spread of an organic virus varying on the scale of influenza of 1918.”  This flu epidemic resulted in millions of deaths. 

 Strecker also argues that a virtual armoury of biological weapons - not just AIDS - has been developed and are in use.  Collectively, he says, these secret weapons are set to destroy mankind - or at least a significant part of it - once again evoking the fears of Third World slaughter.  He also points to the massive outbreak of bovine leukaemia in Europe in the 1950’s - which led to the wholesale slaughter of cattle herds.  The reference draws clear parallels with the recent outbreak of Mad Cow Disease.

 Unsurprisingly, the future of biological weapons occupies the minds of military strategists.  In a paper entitled “Twenty-First Century Germ Warfare” by USAF Lt. Colonel Robert P Kadlek, the author has this warning “Using biological weapons under the cover of an endemic or natural disease occurrence provides an attacker the potential for plausible denial.”  He then continues “Biological warfare can include the use of Bacteria, Rickettsia, Viruses and Toxins to induce illness or death in humans, animals and plants.”

 Whatever one may think or believe about AIDS as a biological weapon, the future clearly looks very bleak.  Because of the inherent “deniability” of these weapons bio-wars could be fought without the public ever knowing about it.  The only tell-tale sign will be more mass graves.

 Third World Sterilisation & Birth Control - a Hidden Agenda?

 The drug, Quinacrine, was widely used in third world mass sterilisation programmes - often concealed as “clinical trials.” Even though the World Health Organisation had warned the drug was unfit for humans, these trials continued with funding provided by private US foundations - concerned at the US “national security” threat of growing the third world population.  Another drug, Norplant, was similarly used as a prolonged birth control vaccine in the poorest nations of the world.  Surgically implanted beneath the skin, the drug caused serious health side effects.  This led one health worker to bitterly state “It’s cheaper for them [America] to use Third World women than to use an animal in a laboratory in the west.”

 Genetically Engineered Organisms tested in Secret

 Gary Null, host of New York’s popular Radio Station WBAI-FM broadcast a series of programmes on biological warfare in 1993.  Null revealed that the Wistar Institute - a US government funded organisation conducted secret field trials in Argentina on a new rabies virus vaccine.  Without bothering to apply for Argentinean government approval, Wistar technicians inoculated cattle with a genetically altered recombinant DNA vaccine.  This episode resulted in the infection of up to 17 farm workers, according to the Argentinean Minister of Health.  The US government responded by stating that whilst it had funded the Wistar Institute it had not provided funds for the Argentinean trip.

 The HIV Controversy - A Hoax that became a Scam

 An increasing number of medical experts have attacked the theory that HIV causes AIDS.  The most well known of these is Peter Duesberg, a Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of California.  Duesberg, moreover, has attacked the AIDS drug AZT, saying it causes AIDS not cures it - “AIDS by prescription.”  In an article in “Spin Magazine” in 1993, Duesberg said that HIV Positive patients prescribed AZT “lose weight, they become anaemic, they lose their white blood cells, they have nausea, they lose their muscles… and they die.  …That what you call AIDS by prescription.”  Duesberg, in addition, stated in his book “Inventing the AIDS Virus” that he was approached by an official of the National Institutes of Health who made him an “offer” in exchange for recanting his position on AIDS.