_-=Coup d'état_The Unspoken of War=-_
ANTHRAX
Some-not nearly enough-are concerned about the abolition of the Bill of
Rights in the U.S. Constitution that the "detention" of U.S. citizen Jose
Padilla represents. However, as serious as this is (what could be more
important then the loss of the "Bill of Rights"?) there is something far
more sinister, far more lethal going on that is connected with the anthrax
attacks which have been removed from the news.
The following articles are from the Toronto Globe and Mail, New York
Times, ABC News (U.S.) web site, and Los Angeles Magazine. The last is the
longest, and possibly the most important. Many of you have never heard of
the subject of this article either. You might ask yourself why.
Scientists' deaths are under the microscope
By ALANNA MITCHELL, SIMON COOPER AND CAROLYN ABRAHAM
COMPILED BY ALANNA MITCHELL
Saturday, May 4, 2002 – Print Edition, Page A1
It's a tale only the best conspiracy theorist could dream up.
Eleven microbiologists mysteriously dead over the span of just five
months. Some of them world leaders in developing weapons-grade biological
plagues. Others the best in figuring out how to stop millions from dying
because of biological weapons. Still others, experts in the theory of
bioterrorism.
Throw in a few Russian defectors, a few nervy U.S. biotech companies, a
deranged assassin or two, a bit of Elvis, a couple of Satanists, a subtle
hint of espionage, a big whack of imagination, and the plot is complete,
if a bit reminiscent of James Bond.
The first three died in the space of just over a week in November. Benito
Que, 52, was an expert in infectious diseases and cellular biology at the
Miami Medical School. Police originally suspected that he had been beaten
on Nov. 12 in a carjacking in the medical school's parking lot. Strangely
enough, though, his body showed no signs of a beating. Doctors then began
to suspect a stroke.
Just four days after Dr. Que fell unconscious came the mysterious
disappearance of Don Wiley, 57, one of the foremost microbiologists in the
United States. Dr. Wiley, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at
Harvard University, was an expert on how the immune system responds to
viral attacks such as the classic doomsday plagues of HIV, ebola and
influenza.
He had just bought tickets to take his son to Graceland the following day.
Police found his rental car on a bridge outside Memphis, Tenn. His body
was later found in the Mississippi River. Forensic experts said he may
have had a dizzy spell and have fallen off the bridge.
Just five days after that, the world-class microbiologist and high-profile
Russian defector Valdimir Pasechnik, 64, fell dead. The pathologist who
did the autopsy, and who also happened to be associated with Britain's spy
agency, concluded he died of a stroke.
Dr. Pasechnik, who defected to the United Kingdom in 1989, played a huge
role in Russian biowarfare and helped to figure out how to modify cruise
missiles to deliver the agents of mass biological destruction.
The next two deaths came four days apart in December. Robert Schwartz, 57,
was stabbed and slashed with what police believe was a sword in his
farmhouse in Leesberg, Va. His daughter, who identifies herself as a pagan
high priestess, and several of her fellow pagans have been charged.
Dr. Schwartz was an expert in DNA sequencing and pathogenic
micro-organisms, who worked at the Center for Innovative Technology in
Herndon, Va.
Four days later, Nguyen Van Set, 44, died at work in Geelong, Australia,
in a laboratory accident. He entered an airlocked storage lab and died
from exposure to nitrogen. Other scientists at the animal diseases
facility of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research
Organization had just come to fame for discovering a virulent strain of
mousepox, which could be modified to affect smallpox.
Then in February, the Russian microbiologist Victor Korshunov, 56, an
expert in intestinal bacteria of children around the world, was bashed
over the head near his home in Moscow. Five days later the British
microbiologist Ian Langford, 40, was found dead in his home near Norwich,
England, naked from the waist down and wedged under a chair. He was an
expert in environmental risks and disease.
Two weeks later, two prominent microbiologists died in San Francisco.
Tanya Holzmayer, 46, a Russian who moved to the U.S. in 1989, focused on
the part of the human molecular structure that could be affected best by
medicine.
She was killed by fellow microbiologist Guyang (Matthew) Huang, 38, who
shot her seven times when she opened the door to a pizza delivery. Then he
shot himself.
The final two deaths came one day after the other in March. David
Wynn-Williams, 55, a respected astrobiologist with the British Antarctic
Survey, who studied the habits of microbes that might survive in outer
space, died in a freak road accident near his home in Cambridge, England.
He was hit by a car while he was jogging.
The following day, Steven Mostow, 63, known as Dr. Flu for his expertise
in treating influenza, and a noted expert in bioterrorism, died when the
airplane he was piloting crashed near Denver.
So what does any of it mean?
"Statistically, what are the chances?" wondered a prominent North American
microbiologist reached last night at an international meeting of
infectious-disease specialists in Chicago.
Janet Shoemaker, director of public and scientific affairs of the American
Society for Microbiology in Washington, D.C., pointed out yesterday that
there are about 20,000 academic researchers in microbiology in the U.S.
Still, not all of these are of the elevated calibre of those recently
deceased.
She had a chilling, final thought. When microbiologists die in a lab,
there's a way of taking note of the deaths and adding them up. When they
die in freakish accidents outside the lab, nobody keeps track.
Suspicious deaths
The sudden and suspicious deaths of 11 of the world's leading
microbiologists.
Who they were:
1. Nov. 12, 2001:
Benito Que was said to have been beaten in a Miami parking lot and died
later.
2. Nov. 16, 2001:
Don C. Wiley went missing. Was found Dec. 20. Investigators said he got
dizzy on a Memphis bridge and fell to his death in a river.
3. Nov. 21, 2001:
Vladimir Pasechnik, former high-level Russian microbiologist who defected
in 1989 to the U.K. apparently died from a stroke.
4. Dec. 10, 2001:
Robert M. Schwartz was stabbed to death in Leesberg, Va. Three Satanists
have been arrested.
5. Dec. 14, 2001:
Nguyen Van Set died in an airlock filled with nitrogen in his lab in
Geelong, Australia.
6. Feb. 9, 2002:
Victor Korshunov had his head bashed in near his home in Moscow.
7. Feb. 14, 2002:
Ian Langford was found partially naked and wedged under a chair in
Norwich, England.
8. 9. Feb. 28, 2002:
San Francisco resident Tanya Holzmayer was killed by a microbiologist
colleague, Guyang Huang, who shot her as she took delivery of a pizza and
then apparently shot himself.
10. March 24, 2002:
David Wynn-Williams died in a road accident near his home in Cambridge,
England.
11. March 25, 2002:
Steven Mostow of the Colorado Health Sciences Centre, killed in a plane he
was flying near Denver.
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/printarticle/gam/20020504/UMURDN
--------------------
December 2, 2001
THE INVESTIGATION
Anthrax Inquiry Looks at U.S. Labs
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and JUDITH MILLER
The F.B.I. has expanded its investigation of the deadly anthrax attacks to
include the laboratories of the government and its contractors as a
possible source of the anthrax itself or the knowledge to make it,
scientists and law enforcement officials say.
While theories about the attacker have focused mainly on domestic loners
and foreign states or terrorists, law enforcement officials are now also
examining the possibility that the criminal may be a knowledgeable
insider.
Asked if the Federal Bureau of Investigation was investigating American
military and nonmilitary laboratories that have had the powdery anthrax
strain used in the attacks and individuals associated with such centers, a
law enforcement official replied, "Certainly." The official said, "We are
aggressively investigating every possible lead and every possible avenue,"
adding it was logical.
Few details of the insider investigation are known. But federal agents are
already interrogating people in the military establishment that replaced
the old program for making biological weapons. The facilities for that
effort, in western Maryland, are major repositories of the Ames strain of
anthrax, the particularly virulent form that federal officials have
identified as the type used in the attacks that killed five people.
Col. Arthur M. Friedlander, the senior research scientist at the Army's
biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., said in an interview on Friday
that officials there were cooperating with federal investigators.
"They've asked us about personnel who had access," he said, speaking
reluctantly.
"They didn't talk to me about my personal experience," said Colonel
Friedlander, a physician and leading anthrax expert. "They asked me about
other personnel."
He went on to dismiss the insider idea as improbable. Whoever made the
killer anthrax, he said, "clearly knew what they were doing."
"But to make the leap that this came out of a government lab is somewhat
large," he added.
He emphasized that no one in his organization, the Army Medical Research
Institute of Infectious Diseases, a leader in developing germ defenses,
even knew how to make dry anthrax, as was found in the letters used in the
attacks. Instead, he said, scientists there used wet anthrax, which is far
easier to make. It is used in developing vaccines and testing their
effectiveness.
"We haven't had an offensive program for a long time," Colonel Friedlander
said. Nobody at the Army's laboratory, he added, "has that kind of
expertise."
A dozen or two American laboratories are said to have the Ames strain,
though no one knows for sure because researchers over the decades have
informally shared pathogens like anthrax. Military laboratories like the
one at Fort Detrick, as well as military contractors, are central to the
Ames network, as they have often pioneered the nation's research on
vaccines and other defenses against germ weapons.
The United States began its military program to make germ weapons during
World War II and over the decades developed many ways to spread many
diseases. A top agent was anthrax, a gallon of which was strong enough to
kill eight billion people. President Richard M. Nixon, after renouncing
germ weapons in 1969, championed a global treaty that, starting in 1975,
banned such arms.
Since the start of the anthrax attacks, federal officials, scientists and
amateur sleuths have scrambled to identify the source. Some see the
attacker as home-grown — perhaps a disaffected scientist or a militia
group — while others discern a conspiracy by a state like Iraq or a
foreign terrorist group. In the United States, there are probably scores
of laboratories and contractors and hundreds of people who have access to
essential anthrax ingredients and recipes.
The insider avenue of inquiry is consistent with the official profile of
the suspect, released on Nov. 9 by the F.B.I. The profile describes a man
with a strong interest in science who is comfortable working with
hazardous material and has "access to a source of anthrax and possesses
knowledge and expertise to refine it."
Separately, a private expert in biological weapons, Barbara Hatch
Rosenberg, has recently published a paper contending that a government
insider, or someone in contact with an insider, is behind the attacks.
Though not an expert on criminal profiling, Dr. Rosenberg, a molecular
biologist at the State University of New York, has testified on biological
weapons before Congress, advised Bill Clinton when he was president and
made addresses to international arms control meetings, including one a few
days ago in Geneva.
Law enforcement officials said Dr. Rosenberg's assertion might turn out to
be well founded, though they emphasized that the investigation was still
broadly based. One official close to the federal investigation called the
Rosenberg theory "the most likely hypothesis."
Referring to her paper, the official said, "I might not have put it so
strongly, but it's definitely reasonable."
Other analysts, including some scientists and experts in germ weapons,
expressed more skepticism of the theory that it had to be an insider,
contending that the skills and knowledge needed to produce the type of
anthrax in this attack were widely available.
The paper laying out Dr. Rosenberg's thesis was distributed on Thursday by
the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, an arms control
group. Dr. Rosenberg, who is chairwoman of an arms control panel at the
Federation of American Scientists, a private group in Washington, has
argued repeatedly that states, not individuals, tend to have the
wherewithal to make advanced biological weapons. International treaties
that prohibit that work, she believes, are thus critical.
Dr. Rosenberg contends that the Ames strain probably did not originate in
1980 or 1981, as is often asserted, but arose decades earlier and was used
in the secret American program to make biological weapons.
She agrees with a conclusion, reached by some experts knowledgeable about
the investigation, that the anthrax powder distributed in the attacks by
letter was treated in a sophisticated manner so it floated easily, as was
done in the old American offensive weapons program, unlike Colonel
Friedlander's defensive program, which uses the wet anthrax.
"All the available information," she said, "is consistent with a U.S.
government lab as the source, either of the anthrax itself or of the
recipe for the U.S. weaponization process." Dr. Rosenberg contended that
the anthrax used in the attacks either originated in the weapons program
itself or was made by someone who had learned the recipe.
The killer, Dr. Rosenberg concludes, is "an American microbiologist who
had, or once had, access to weaponized anthrax in a U.S. government lab,
or had been taught by a U.S. defense expert how to make it. Perhaps he had
a vial or two in his basement as a keepsake."
The paper, "A Compilation of Evidence and Comments on the Source of the
Mailed Anthrax," dated Nov. 29, is based on interviews with federal and
private experts, published reports and scientific articles.
Richard H. Ebright, a microbiologist at Rutgers University who has
followed the anthrax case and has read the Rosenberg paper, said he found
it provocative but unconvincing.
"This is one extreme in the theorizing," Dr. Ebright said. "There are
elements that are reasonable, but elements that are not. I'm confident
that she started with the insider conclusion and then selected the facts."
Even so, he said, American foes seem likely to seize on the paper and
amplify the provocative thesis.
"Every state that's hostile to the United States is going to pick up on
this," Dr. Ebright said. "They'll say it was an orchestrated government
attack, which I don't believe for a second. But you can see people
believing it."
Dr. Rosenberg's theory is getting attention in Europe, where the
environmental group Greenpeace Germany is citing it as credible.
An American official sympathetic to her thesis said the Ames strain might
have come from a place other than a military laboratory.
"There are other government and contractor facilities that do classified
work with access to dangerous strains," the official said. "But it's
highly likely that the material in the anthrax letters came from a person
or persons who really had great expertise. We haven't seen any other
artifacts that point us elsewhere."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/02/national/02POWD.html
--------------------------
Book: U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S. Cities to Provoke War
With Cuba
By David Ruppe
N E W Y O R K, May 1 — In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders
reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of
terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.
Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the
possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees
on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even
orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.
The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the
international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new
leader, communist Fidel Castro.
America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military
casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and
blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful
wave of national indignation."
Details of the plans are described in Body of Secrets (Doubleday), a new
book by investigative reporter James Bamford about the history of
America's largest spy agency, the National Security Agency. However, the
plans were not connected to the agency, he notes.
The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and
were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara,
in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian
leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years.
"These were Joint Chiefs of Staff documents. The reason these were held
secret for so long is the Joint Chiefs never wanted to give these up
because they were so embarrassing," Bamford told ABCNEWS.com.
"The whole point of a democracy is to have leaders responding to the
public will, and here this is the complete reverse, the military trying to
trick the American people into a war that they want but that nobody else
wants."
Gunning for War
The documents show "the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans
for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S.
government," writes Bamford.
The Joint Chiefs even proposed using the potential death of astronaut John
Glenn during the first attempt to put an American into orbit as a false
pretext for war with Cuba, the documents show.
Should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, they wrote, "the objective is to
provide irrevocable proof … that the fault lies with the Communists et all
Cuba [sic]."
The plans were motivated by an intense desire among senior military
leaders to depose Castro, who seized power in 1959 to become the first
communist leader in the Western Hemisphere — only 90 miles from U.S.
shores.
The earlier CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles had
been a disastrous failure, in which the military was not allowed to
provide firepower.The military leaders now wanted a shot at it.
"The whole thing was so bizarre," says Bamford, noting public and
international support would be needed for an invasion, but apparently
neither the American public, nor the Cuban public, wanted to see U.S.
troops deployed to drive out Castro.
Reflecting this, the U.S. plan called for establishing prolonged military
— not democratic — control over the island nation after the invasion.
"That's what we're supposed to be freeing them from," Bamford says. "The
only way we would have succeeded is by doing exactly what the Russians
were doing all over the world, by imposing a government by tyranny,
basically what we were accusing Castro himself of doing."
'Over the Edge'
The Joint Chiefs at the time were headed by Eisenhower appointee Army Gen.
Lyman L. Lemnitzer, who, with the signed plans in hand made a pitch to
McNamara on March 13, 1962, recommending Operation Northwoods be run by
the military.
Whether the Joint Chiefs' plans were rejected by McNamara in the meeting
is not clear. But three days later, President Kennedy told Lemnitzer
directly there was virtually no possibility of ever using overt force to
take Cuba, Bamford reports. Within months, Lemnitzer would be denied
another term as chairman and transferred to another job.
The secret plans came at a time when there was distrust in the military
leadership about their civilian leadership, with leaders in the Kennedy
administration viewed as too liberal, insufficiently experienced and soft
on communism. At the same time, however, there real were concerns in
American society about their military overstepping its bounds.
There were reports U.S. military leaders had encouraged their subordinates
to vote conservative during the election.
And at least two popular books were published focusing on a right-wing
military leadership pushing the limits against government policy of the
day. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee published its own report on
right-wing extremism in the military, warning a "considerable danger" in
the "education and propaganda activities of military personnel" had been
uncovered. The committee even called for an examination of any ties
between Lemnitzer and right-wing groups. But Congress didn't get wind of
Northwoods, says Bamford.
"Although no one in Congress could have known at the time," he writes,
"Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs had quietly slipped over the edge."
Even after Lemnitzer was gone, he writes, the Joint Chiefs continued to
plan "pretext" operations at least through 1963.
One idea was to create a war between Cuba and another Latin American
country so that the United States could intervene. Another was to pay
someone in the Castro government to attack U.S. forces at the Guantanamo
naval base — an act, which Bamford notes, would have amounted to treason.
And another was to fly low level U-2 flights over Cuba, with the intention
of having one shot down as a pretext for a war.
"There really was a worry at the time about the military going off crazy
and they did, but they never succeeded, but it wasn't for lack of trying,"
he says.
After 40 Years
Ironically, the documents came to light, says Bamford, in part because of
the 1992 Oliver Stone film JFK, which examined the possibility of a
conspiracy behind the assassination of President Kennedy.
As public interest in the assassination swelled after JFK's release,
Congress passed a law designed to increase the public's access to
government records related to the assassination.
The author says a friend on the board tipped him off to the documents.
Afraid of a congressional investigation, Lemnitzer had ordered all Joint
Chiefs documents related to the Bay of Pigs destroyed, says Bamford. But
somehow, these remained.
"The scary thing is none of this stuff comes out until 40 years after,"
says Bamford.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/jointchiefs_010501.html
Book and reviews:
-------------------------
THE MEDICINE MAN
By Edward Humes
From Los Angeles Magazine
July, 2001
LARRY FORD WAS A BRILLIANT SCIENTIST BENT ON SAVING THE WORLD FROM DISEASE
AND MISERY BUT IT WASN'T THE IRVINE DOCTOR'S LAB WORK THAT SPARED THE MOST
LIVES. IT WAS HIS SUICIDE
THE MEETING AT THE BEVERLY HILLS MANSION OF THE SOUTH African trade
attache was unusually secretive, but Peter Fitzpatrick still managed to
witness it, peering from an adjacent room through a massive shared
fireplace. He watched as Niel Knobel, deputy surgeon general of South
Africa--the white-ruled, apartheid South Africa of 1986--met Larry Ford, a
noted Los Angeles gynecologist and infectious disease specialist with an
unofficial subspecialty: biological and chemical warfare. The two spoke in
hushed tones, then Ford, a devout Mormon who volunteered his services to
missionaries and Boy Scout troops, passed over a hefty black satchel. The
meeting came to a close. Later Fitzpatrick sat down with the boisterous
trade attache, Gideon Bouwer, who could not resist explaining in his thick
Afrikaans accent what had just happened.
The white minority government of South Africa was in those years locked in
a bloody struggle with its black citizens, willing to do anything to stay
in power. Bouwer's role was to thwart the U.S. trade embargo on technology
and expertise coveted by the apartheid regime; Fitzpatrick, a young actor,
glib and personable, was part of Bouwer's informal embargo-busting team,
making sure the parties at the mansion were well attended by the
well-connected.
Larry Ford was a regular at those gatherings, and the technology he handed
over that day, Bouwer chortled, could prove invaluable: a sampler of
virulent, designer strains of cholera, anthrax, botulism, plague, and
malaria, as well as a bacteria he claimed had been mutated to be "pigment
specific." "Kaffer-killing germs," Bouwer confided, using the derogatory
Afrikaans term for blacks. "Dr. Ford has done my country a great service."
Fitzpatrick clinked glasses with Bouwer and left, then called his handler
at the FBI, where he served as one of two informants planted at South
Africa's Los Angeles consulate. He told the FBI everything; yet, he says,
nothing was done. According to Fitzpatrick, the deputy surgeon general
flew off with his suitcase full of death. "Why didn't you guys stop him?"
he later asked his handler. The agent just stared at him.
FIFTEEN YEARS PASSED. APARTHEID WAS DEAD. THE FBI HAD long since lost
interest in its old informant, and Peter Fitzpatrick was sitting on his
couch talking with his wife, the television set muted as the evening
flashed by. Then something on the screen caught his eye: a grainy photo of
a jut-jawed, narrow-eyed, round-shouldered man he hadn't seen in
years--Dr. Larry Ford. He turned up the volume and heard a reporter
explain how Ford, co-owner of an up-and-coming biotech firm, had become a
prime suspect in the attempted murder of his business partner. That
stunned Fitzpatrick, but what had him scrambling to his feet and reaching
for the phone were images that followed Ford's photo: policemen searching
the doctor's Irvine home--unprotected.
"Oh my God, they have no idea what they're getting into," Fitzpatrick
exclaimed. It all came back to him then: Ford's talk of bio-weapons and
booby traps, his hoard of guns and explosives, not to mention the doctor's
claims of doing dirty work for the CIA--stories Fitzpatrick had once
dismissed as a nerd's Walter Mitty fantasies until he noted the FBI's
official hands-off policy with the suitcase of germs. "I've got to warn
them," he told his wife.
So for the first time in many years, Fitzpatrick called the FBI. And once
again, no one there seemed interested in what he had to say.
WHEN A MASKED ASSASSIN PUT A BULLET into James Patrick Riley's head in
front of his office on February 28. 2000, the case at first unfolded as a
classic story of greed and envy, a corporate power struggle between Riley,
the voluble CEO and marketing whiz, and his partner, Dr. Larry Creed Ford,
the visionary with big ideas and the scientific skills to carry them out.
Ford was working on a combination contraceptive and microbicide he and
Riley named Inner Confidence," a suppository that promised not only to
revolutionize birth control but also to prevent HIV infection, AIDS, and
almost every other sexually transmitted disease. Ford liked to say they
were going to save the world--and get rich in the process. Their Irvine
company, Biofem Inc., could capture annual sales worth some $400 million.
Riley told investors. The profits, in turn, would fund Ford's true passion
of the past 12 years, a secret Biofem project to develop a superantibiotic
derived from what he called "Unidentified Amniotic Fluid Substance." He
believed it was nature's way of protecting embryos from disease, the
reason HIV-negative babies can be born to HIV-positive mothers. Ford hoped
to synthesize the substance, saving countless lives, and earning him a
Nobel Prize along the way.
But Ford had come to resent his decade-long partnership with Riley, who
had final say in every Biofem decision and who had the physician bound to
a contract so sweeping--giving him a 50 percent share of any idea or
product Ford might conceive--that one lawyer likened it to indentured
servitude. The agreement snuffed out Ford's attempts to make lucrative
outside deals, and so, police and prosecutors have alleged, he decided
Riley had to die.
Riley had just emerged from his blue Audi and was walking to Biofem's
offices on a Monday morning when the gunman approached and fired. A chance
turn of the businessman's head sent the bullet through his left cheek
instead of his brain. "I have no doubt I would be dead if not for that,"
Riley said recently, a faint, nickel-sized scar marking the bullet's point
of entry. After crumpling to the hot asphalt, he staggered back to his
feet, blood gushing, pulled out his cell phone, and called the one person
he knew could help--his friend and partner, Dr. Larry Ford. The doctor ran
outside and applied pressure to the gaping hole in the side of the CEO's
face as they awaited an ambulance.
Within three days, however, Riley's savior had become a prime suspect.
After the first of several searches of his house--which turned up only
documents--the 49-year-old gynecologist met for five hours with his
lawyer, scribbling notes throughout the discussion. Then he returned home
and retreated to his bedroom, where he carefully laid out a selection of
firearms from his collection. He put a double-barreled shotgun in his
mouth and pulled both triggers. His wife, Diane, heard the blast and the
thump of his body on the floor and knew; she called the lawyer and the
police without going up to see her husband. The authorities found beside
him a rambling, nearly illegible five-page note--what he had been writing
in the lawyer's office--protesting his innocence. He had six different
antidepressants in his system.
The Biofem case might have made the back burner then and there had Irvine
police detective Victor Ray quit when his department and the FBI warned
him to. But Ray, a former sonar technician on navy submarines, a job that
requires patience and persistence, would not give up. He steered the
investigation to Ford's backyard, where men in Andromeda Strain suits
would evacuate a neighborhood and haul away an arsenal of toxins, germs,
plastic explosives, and guns. In the process they unearthed a trail that
stretched all the way from the CIA to apartheid-era South Africa and Dr.
Wouter Basson, the man who ran the country's clandestine bioweapons
program.
The question still plaguing federal, state, and local investigators is a
simple but urgent one: What was Ford planning to do with his germs and
bioweapons expertise? The discovery of militia-movement and racist
literature among Ford's papers has raised the possibility that he offered
biological or chemical weapons to terrorist groups. Concerns have also
mounted over a patented feature of his Inner Confidence suppository: the
microencapsulation of beneficial bacteria. It turns out this architecture
could double as an ideal delivery system for bioweapons, allowing
otherwise fragile disease organisms to be seeded virtually anywhere. Ford,
in essence, had patented the prescription for a perfect microscopic time
bomb.
"That," says Ray, "scares the hell out of everyone."
ONE OF LARRY FORD'S FAVORITE STORIES ABOUT himself dated back to his
teenage years, after he won first place in the International Science Fair
in 1966 for his studies of radiation exposure. Awards from the Atomic
Energy Commission and the defense department followed. Next came an
invitation to continue his research in a government laboratory.
So there was young Larry in his buzz cut, canvas low-tops, and high-water
pants in a military lab back east, starting a new set of experiments. He
was giddy about the turn his life had taken--until he walked in one
morning and found that, overnight, he had accidentally killed every lab
animal in the facility.
"I thought I was in for it then, that I would be washing dishes the rest
of my life," Ford would say. "But when the general called me in, all he
asked was, `Can you do it again?" Ford did it again, and a longstanding
affiliation with the government had begun.
The invitation to work in the government laboratory had come from a man
Ford identified only as General Wyman. He liked to show people a framed
photo of the general and himself (with Ford in an army uniform, though
records show he was never in the military). This offer to an 18-year-old
about to enter college did not seem all that unusual to Ford or his
blue-collar parents. He had, after all, earned lab privileges at Brigham
Young University in his hometown of Provo, Utah, at age 12, according to
Riley.
Ford told the Rileys and others his subsequent work for the military and
the CIA included research on biological and chemical weapons, consulting
on Iraqi capabilities during the Gulf War, and sneaking into epidemic hot
zones in Africa to gather samples of such killer organisms as the Ebola
and Marburg viruses.
Victor Ray, a compact man with thinning hair who has been on the Irvine
police force for ten years, initially discounted most of Ford's claims as
the nutty imaginings of an unbalanced genius. It's not that Ray hadn't
handled unusual cases in the past. He was the detective assigned to the
headline-grabbing case in which an "evil twin" allegedly plotted to murder
her sister and take over her life.
But the bungled attempt on Riley's life suggested something far more
mundane, and quite a bit less, than the work of a CIA-trained operative.
Almost any other time and place for a hit would have been better than the
crowded commercial parking lot in front of Biofem's offices in the Irvine
Spectrum, which sits wedged in the busy "golden triangle" where the Santa
Ana and San Diego freeways merge. An experienced hit man might have simply
pulled up next to Riley's car in an isolated location and opened fire on a
caged target, Ray suggests. This guy, in his black clothes and mask,
waited in a public place at ten in the morning for Riley to get out of his
car, then shot him with a $70 Russian-made semiautomatic known for
jamming, which probably explains why only one round was fired.
The hit man, described by witnesses as a slim and athletic man with blond
hair peeking out of his ski mask, sprinted across the office plaza
brandishing his gun, running directly in front of the Spectrum Bank branch
below Biofem's second-floor suite. Suspecting a robbery, bank employees
locked their doors and watched the man jump through the side door of a
silver Aerostar van.
Police traced the plates and the van to an old friend of Ford's with a
violent past, Dino D'Saach, who was arrested that night as the getaway
driver and has since been convicted of attempted murder and conspiracy,
crimes carrying a mandatory 26-year sentence. His cell phone records
showed him talking to Ford immediately before and after the hit from a
cell location near Biofem. (Biofem's receptionist remembers seeing Ford on
the phone at his office window just before the shooting, with a perfect
view of Riley's parking space.) Police found private Biofem correspondence
fixed from Ford to D'Saach's South-Central Los Angeles tax preparation
business, along with hit-man manuals, photos of Riley's parking spot, and
a crude homemade silencer.
If the crime wasn't enough to reject the CIA stories, Ray figured, there
was Ford himself. Disheveled and disorganized, known for his painful lack
of conversational skills ("He could light up a room just by leaving,"
Fitzpatrick says), Ford came off as both a brilliant researcher and a
childish eccentric. The only shoes he wore were black Converse All-Stars,
no matter the occasion, and he was known to skip through hospital
hallways, pepper his speech with expressions like yippee and okeydokey,
and issue prescriptions with a trademark cliche, "Better living through
chemistry!"
None of his friends or family, not even Riley, sitting in a hospital bed
with his face a swollen pumpkin, thought Ford capable of murdering anyone.
His wife and three college-age children--who declined to be interviewed
for this article--saw only a devoted family man whose worst "sin" was a
fondness for diet cola, a violation of Mormon prohibitions against
imbibing caffeine.
"Everyone who knows him knows who he really was," Ford's eldest son, Larry
Jr., told the Deseret News in Utah shortly after the suicide. "He was the
most loving, giving, loyal person." Larry Jr. suggested that his father
killed himself not out of guilt but "out of love, because he wanted to
protect his family from what was eventually coming."
Ford graduated magna cum laude from BYU, published more than 65 articles,
held numerous patents in medicine and biochemistry, had an international
ob-gyn award named for him, and bulk a patient list that included doctors
and a smattering of celebrities (although one, the late Margaux Hemingway,
overdosed on barbiturates Ford provided).
"Look at his background," says Dr. Hunter Hammill, an associate clinical
professor at Baylor College of Medicine and a Biofem consultant, who
served his medical residency with Ford at UCLA. "He was the chief
resident. He was good. He was so bright, you'd ask him about a compound,
he could describe for you the whole formula, how to build it, its
structure--he had it memorized. He was the golden boy."
But during his residency there was at least a hint that all was not quite
right in Ford's life. One night in a campus parking lot in 1978, a gunman
opened fire on him. He let off five rounds, though only one struck Ford,
square in the chest. He was saved by several cassette tapes he had stuffed
into his breast pocket, just enough to deflect the small-caliber bullet,
leaving only a bruise over his heart. There had been no robbery attempt.
The doctor was evasive when questioned by police, and no one was ever
arrested.
ONLY AFTER FORD'S SUICIDE DID INFORMANTS START coming forward. Ray and his
sergeant, Tom Little, began hearing about an entirely different Larry
Ford, a man who cheated on his wife, betrayed his partner, and bred
super-germs and was willing to use them. This was the Larry Ford who
formed a close bond with Dr. Jerry D. Nilsson, a gifted Anaheim general
surgeon with extreme views and a penchant for trouble that quickly made
him a suspect in the Riley shooting. Nilsson, who boasted of having worked
as a special forces physician for the white minority government of
Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, appears to have kindled Ford's interest in
supporting apartheid. At the time of Ford's suicide, Nilsson was in the
process of losing his license for sexual misconduct with patients, one of
them a 14-year-old who allegedly became his lover for the next 15 years.
Whenever the two doctors were together, it was the charismatic Nilsson who
made the most lasting impression. Now 72, the surgeon was a formidable
presence even in late middle age. Tom Byron worked with Fitzpatrick as an
FBI informant in the South African Consulate in the 1980s and spent time
with both doctors. He describes Nilsson as "the monster with miracle
hands," a towering figure with a shaved head--Jesse Ventura as a skilled
surgeon. "He was very fit, very muscular, the kind of guy who could knock
you out with one punch," Byron says. "He told me, `I've killed people in
my lifetime, and I have no qualms about killing again.' I would never
cross that man." Nilsson was not available for comment.
Nilsson had long worked with Ford to amass biological and chemical
weapons, and both doctors stored them openly in their homes, his ex-lover
told the FBI. She sued Nilsson and won a confidential settlement after
accusing him of performing unnecessary surgeries on her, including
cosmetic enhancement. without her permission. She was also treated by Ford
and was one of several former patients who told Ray that the gynecologist
used them as lab rats, deliberately making them ill in order to test his
remedies. "If taking a life advances scientific knowledge," Ford would
tell her, "the sacrifice is well worth it."
The detective spoke with a Los Angeles gun-shop manager, a longtime friend
of Ford's, who developed a complex of rare diseases, among them a chronic
lung and immune system disease, sarcoidosis, that is extremely uncommon in
every racial group but one: African Americans. The man is white, and he is
convinced Ford had a hand in his ailment. There was a woman with cervical
cancer whom Ford treated with an experimental drug that didn't work; she
later required emergency surgery to save her life. Other women, Ray
learned, had been given prototypes of Inner Confidence that were never
intended for human use. All of them fell ill with a variety of vaginal
infections, he says.
"Riley was told there was no product, that it was still being developed,
but I have one in a jar sitting in my office that Ford gave to a patient,"
Ray says. "He was experimenting."
More people came forward. A former business associate of Ford's said that
when a mistress broke up with Ford in the early 1980s, the doctor vowed to
infect her with an "alpha bug," promising "she will never be healthy or
normal again." Authorities talked to the woman and learned that she
suffered from a mysterious and incurable malady that has caused
debilitating vertigo for the past 14 years. She's undergone two brain
surgeries just to ease the symptoms. At least one other woman, who
maintains that Ford drugged her against her will during a business lunch,
has reported similar problems with chronic vertigo and complained of
symptoms that resemble Gulf War Syndrome, except she was nowhere near the
war.
State and county health officials, with help from the Centers for Disease
Control in Atlanta, interviewed many of these patients, but their
investigation was limited to whether there was a public health risk, such
as the threat of an epidemic. They found none and closed their inquiry,
though the FBI still makes at a point to ask former patients of Ford's if
they were ever unconscious in his presence, something the complaining
patients all have in common.
"We started to realize there was a lot more to Dr. Ford than we had first
thought," says Ray. "It began to look like there might be something to the
stories he told, and that the attempt on Mr. Riley's life was just the tip
of the iceberg."
In 1997 Ford's long association with UCLA, the school where he had been a
clinical professor and director of research for the Center for Ovarian
Cancer, abruptly ended. He had been caught disposing of blood samples in a
trash can in the middle of a chemistry lab instead of taking the biohazard
precautions required by the university. Later he was spotted scraping
petri dishes into a toilet, another health hazard. The school asked him to
vacate the lab and never come back, according to Rick Greenwood, director
of UCLA's Office of Environment, Health, and Safety.
Greenwood, who knew Ford in graduate school, describes him as an arrogant,
single-minded know-it-all incapable of admitting mistakes, as when he
accidentally killed two rabbits while trying to extract blood from them,
then insisted that it was the animals' fault.
A biochemist who worked with Ford at both UCLA and Biofem says Ford also
faked research results--what the science community calls "dry-labbing." "I
could never replicate his results when I would repeat his procedures," he
says. To be associated with Ford now, he explains, would be professional
suicide, and he is unwilling to be identified in this article. "The
sloppiness was unbelievable. His technique was awful. I ended up deciding
I didn't want anything to do with him."
One of the most chilling stories Ray heard came from the owner of Chantal
Pharmaceuticals of Los Angeles, a company that developed an antiwrinkle
cream with Ford's help. She told the FBI that Ford, angry with one of her
partners, went into the man's office carrying a cardboard box with a
rabbit inside. He put the box on the man's desk, pulled on latex gloves,
removed a syringe from his pocket, and squirted two drops of a viscous
amber liquid onto the rabbit's shoulder. It immediately convulsed and
died, blood pouring out of its nose and ears. Ford, never uttering a word,
turned and left, the box still sitting on the desk.
RAY GOT CONFIRMATION OF THE DOCTOR'S GOVERNMENT ties three days after the
case was opened and a few hours after Ford's suicide. He had picked up
Valerie Kesler, Ford's research assistant at Biofem, for questioning. She
met Ford while an undergrad at UCLA, and the two had been lovers for most
of the past 18 years. The night of the shooting, she spent hours deleting
Ford's files from Biofem computers, according to James Riley's wife, Pam,
who is the company's business manager. (Kesler's attorney, John Kremer,
says that any files that may have been deleted had nothing to do with the
shooting.)
Kesler denied knowing anything about the attempt on Riley's life. Later,
however, her lawyer suggested officers exercise caution opening up a gym
bag in the trunk of her car, which Ray had impounded. Kremer had been told
that it might contain firearms and a knife dipped in ricin, a deadly toxin
synthesized from castor beans. A drop in the bloodstream was all it took
to kill. Ray and his superiors called in the FBI, whose Weapons of Mass
Destruction Response Team is charged with dealing with biological and
chemical threats.
According to Ray, the agent in charge of the team mocked the notion that
Ford was connected to bioweapons research and the CIA. But with Ray
insisting that the information seemed good, that it matched other
accounts, the agent agreed to contact the FBI liaison to the intelligence
agency. In about ten minutes a call came back: The CIA knew of Ford.
The CIA knows a lot of people, the agent laughed. They probably know my
grandmother. But ten minutes later the liaison called again and said there
was "high confidence that Ford had biological- and chemical-weapons
knowledge and did, in fact, have the capability to coat the knife with a
deadly toxin. Shortly after that a third call came in: Ford did work for
the CIA, the chastened FBI official told the room full of cops.
There was no more laughing after that. The men in space suits took over.
Searchers found an Uzi and another illegal firearm in the gym bag; the
knife was plunged into decontaminating fluid before it could be tested,
which allowed the authorities to make the calming announcement that they
had found no dangerous substances in the car. But a jar of ricin turned up
later in Ford's home.
While this drama unfolded in Irvine, Peter Fitzpatrick was trying to get
through to someone, anyone, at the FBI who would listen to his
recollections of Ford's involvement with biowarfare in South Africa. No
one was available, so he went to the FBI's bureau in West L.A., where he
was turned away by the receptionist. "Basically," says Fitzpatrick, "they
said they didn't know who the hell I was and that I should go." Next he
called the Orange County District Attorney's Office and asked for the
prosecutor assigned to the Ford case, but ended up trapped in voice mail.
He left an exasperated message, then hung up.
The next day, to Fitzpatrick's surprise, two FBI agents met at length with
him to discuss his information about Ford, bioweapons, and South African
surveillance. Then two things happened: First, the weapons team showed up
to do another high-risk search and excavation of Ford's home. They
uncovered nearly a hundred firearms, most of them shotguns and rifles, 17
of them illegal automatic or semiautomatic weapons, including four Uzis,
an M16, and a gangster-era Thompson submachine gun.
Ford had stowed the illegal weapons in six large plastic cylinders buried
in his backyard, along with thousands of rounds of ammunition--something
his family apparently did not consider unusual, though they were unaware
that one canister contained a large supply of the powerful military
explosive C-4. The plastic explosives were packed with blasting caps and
secreted dangerously close to electrical wires. Some 52 homes and several
hundred people had to be evacuated to the Hyatt Regency for three days (it
was, after all, Irvine--no Red Cross sleeping bags in the school gym for
this crowd).
At the same time, Detective Ray expressed interest in talking to
Fitzpatrick and Byron in order to explore the South African angle, but he
and his partner, Sergeant Little, were forbidden to do so by the bureau
and forbidden to come near Ford's house. Their department pulled the reins
even tighter. "[They thought] we were crazy, we were imagining things,"
Ray says. "They said we had been working too long without enough sleep. It
stunk. But we were off the case."
NOW A CLERICAL WORKER FOR A Beverly Hills law firm and an aspiring
screenwriter, Peter Fitzpatrick was a television and stage actor in the
mid 1980s when he struck up a friendship with Gideon Bouwer, the South
African trade attache in Los Angeles. He had written Bouwer asking for
help financing a hearing aid that Tom Byron, an out-of-work engineer
friend, had thought up. The attache, always in the market for any piece of
new technology to squeeze past the trade embargo, agreed to meet them.
Early into the meeting, Bouwer, an imposingly large man, began spouting
racist rhetoric. Fitzpatrick didn't blink, sensing this was a test of
sorts. He leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, and smiled at Byron.
"You're among friends," he told Bouwer, and just like that, they were in.
The pair became regulars at the consulate and at the attache's home, where
senior officials from local defense contractors and pharmaceutical
companies, along with minor celebrities, would frequent the parties,
barbecues, and dinners Bouwer hosted to forge informal ties to get around
the embargo. Each man was recruited independent of the other to feed
information to the FBI but eventually learned of their mutual mission.
Byron helped plant electronic surveillance devices for the bureau.
Both informants say that Ford, Nilsson, and Ford's mistress, Kesler, were
regular guests at Bouwer's mansion, and Byron remembers encountering Dino
D'Saach, the getaway driver, at several gatherings. Indeed, Ford and
Nilsson's connection to South Africa ran deep. The two doctors went on
big-game hunts beginning in the early 1980s--about 20 stuffed trophies
lined the walls of Ford's home--and, as Ford and Nilsson told it, they did
charity medical work there.
Later Ford began smuggling into the U.S. distilled human amniotic fluid
collected by South African doctors for Ford's antibiotic research. They
would hide the biologically hazardous body fluids in wine and liquor
bottles to avoid impoundment. Riley, in testimony in the D'Saach trial,
described one trip in which a bottle of amniotic fluid broke inside a
suitcase while in flight, creating a noxious odor that permeated the
aircraft.
Ford and Nilsson were befriended by South African deputy surgeon general
Dr. Niel Knobel. Ford began advising him on protecting troops from
biological attack, as well as suggesting AIDS prevention programs in a
country that today has the worst AIDS infection rate on earth--benign and
praiseworthy endeavors that Knobel maintains had "no political agenda."
But the AIDS prevention program was for whites in the military, not
blacks. A secret right-wing South African organization, the Broeder-bond,
conducted studies around this same time that suggested the AIDS epidemic
could make whites the majority in the future.
Since then, through the new government's Truth and Reconciliation
Commission, which was formed to probe the abuses of apartheid, information
has surfaced about a secret South African bioweapons program. Code-named
Project Coast, it was run by another Ford friend and financial benefactor,
Dr. Wouter Basson; Knobel had administrative oversight. Basson's alleged
ties to hundreds of poisonings and assassinations in South Africa and in
the neighboring countries of Angola and Zimbabwe earned him the nickname
Dr. Death in the South African press. Documents indicating he had arranged
an offshore bank account for Ford were found in Ford's papers after his
death.
The commission uncovered evidence that whole villages, including an
Angolan settlement of several hundred people suspected of harboring
rebels, may have been decimated by Project Coast weapons. This finding
parallels information Nilsson's ex-girlfriend provided: She said Ford more
than once boasted of wiping out an entire Angolan village during a civil
war. (She claimed Ford had been talking with Nilsson in 1996 about
obtaining a missile or bombing system from former Soviet bloc nations that
might be used to deliver biological weapons.)
Project Coast scientists called to testify against Basson have said Ford
was brought in to brief them on the use of biological weapons in mass
attacks and discrete assassination, the latter through the contamination
of ordinary items such as Playboy magazines and tea bags. One scientist
involved with South African bioweapons development noted that Ford's
ideas--and arrogance--were not well received, and that his work was given
little credence in the Project Coast lab. However, Ford continued to work
with Basson and Knobel, who had a picture of him hanging in his den at the
time of the suicide.
According to a recent U.S. Air Force Academy report on South Africa's
biological warfare program, Ford was part of a global network of
scientists that Basson assembled to assist Project Coast. Whether that
meant creating--or receiving and storing--toxins produced by the program
is a matter of conjecture, the report suggests, as South African officials
have been unable to account for all of the dangerous material produced
over the years. The air force report quotes testimony from a Swiss
intelligence agent who laundered money for Basson and who describes a
worldwide conspiracy involving unnamed Americans.
"The death of Dr. Ford and revelations of his South African involvement,"
the report states, "[raises] the possibility of a right-wing international
network, [still] united by a vision of South Africa once again ruled by
whites."
In the wake of Ford's suicide Fitzpatrick and Byron reminded a new set of
FBI agents about the meeting between Ford and Deputy Surgeon General
Knobel, in which the satchel of deadly germs was allegedly passed over to
the South African--and about the fact that nothing was done to intercept
Knobel as he returned to South Africa. Once again no explanation was
offered. Byron suggested reviewing the surveillance recordings from the
bugs he and Fitzpatrick helped plant so long ago. "You can get a
blockbuster out of those, I'm sure."
"Not even we can get those tapes," he remembers the agent responding.
"They're sealed. National security."
Matthew McLaughlin, spokesman for the FBI in Los Angeles, says the
bureau's policies bar him from confirming or denying Byron's and
Fitzpatrick's accounts. Nor will he comment on their allegation that the
government permitted Ford to illegally develop and traffic in bioweapons.
McLaughlin does caution, however, that there are often reasons criminal
activity is allowed to go on in order to preserve an investigation, and
that no informant in any case has the whole picture. "We compartmentalize
people we work with, and they are not privy to the breadth and width of a
case," he says. "They see the elephant's toenail."
Of course, Byron and Fitzpatrick say trade attache Gideon Bouwer was clear
in their conversations 16 years ago about what had happened in the meeting
with Ford. They say he raved about the ability to keep whites in power
through biological warfare, and he hinted at being part of a separate
agenda--some sort of extragovernmental conspiracy, like the one described
in the air force report, that had plans to unleash biological agents
worldwide on South Africa's enemies if the need should ever arise.
"Just be ready," Fitzpatrick remembers Bouwer warning him cryptically,
then asking, "How fast could you get your daughter out of the country if
you had to?"
"I have to be honest," Fitzpatrick says. "Gideon could be a great guy. But
there was something dangerous about him. And when he started talking about
that master plan, about what a great service Ford had done for his
country, about getting out of the country, it gave me chills."
Niel Knobel has admitted meeting with Ford at the attache's home in the
period Fitzpatrick and Byron describe but denies any involvement with
biological weapons.
The informants never found out what happened after that meeting between
Ford and Knobel. Bouwer fell from favor less than a year later, apparently
considered a security risk by his own government. He was recalled, and the
visits by Ford and Nilsson to the consulate ended, as did Byron's and
Fitzpatrick's work there. Bouwer died ten years ago in South Africa.
Looking for answers, Fitzpatrick recently used the Freedom of Information
Act to obtain his FBI file. All but the captions were redacted from the
small ream of reports detailing his information about Ford and the South
Africans. But those captions clearly show one thing: Whatever Fitzpatrick
told his handler was immediately forwarded to FBI headquarters in
Washington, and then it was dispatched to the CIA.
VICTOR RAY AND TOM LITTLE WERE BROUGHT BACK on the Ford case after a week,
once it became clear that he had not been off-base about a possible CIA
connection and that he had developed sources the FBI wanted--sources he
wasn't going to give up unless there was mutual cooperation.
After some initial tug-of-war the Irvine police and the FBI are working
well together, Ray says, but there have been disagreements. He could only
get to Byron and Fitzpatrick through an L.A. Times reporter whom
Fitzpatrick had called, rather than through the FBI, which declared them
off-limits. And it is Ray, not the FBI, who has kept pushing to widen the
investigation, expanding it to other suspects and states, securing
out-of-town search warrants the FBI said couldn't be obtained, locating a
key witness the FBI believed to be dead. It appears that Irvine's small
police department is the main reason an international investigation is now
under way, one that started with an Orange County grand jury probe and
that now appears headed for a federal grand jury.
So far the only public charges have revolved around Riley's shooting.
Besides D'Saach's attempted, murder conviction, Kesler has been charged
with weapons violations for the guns found in her car. She remains a
suspect in the shooting, as does Nilsson, whose home was searched but who
has not been charged. The gunman remains unidentified.
Biofem, meanwhile, is still trying to recover from the loss of Ford. The
Unidentified Amniotic Fluid Substance project, which Riley only
reluctantly admitted existed when called to testify against D'Saach, may
well die without Ford. Inner Confidence is moving forward, but FDA
clinical trials, which were supposed to have begun by now, have been
postponed. Investors can't be happy about the revelations concerning Ford,
and Riley fears the delay has opened a window to rival products, since
interest in microbicides as a means of battling HIV has grown intense in
the last year or two.
The search of Ford's house unearthed more than 260 containers of
biological material, most of it in a refrigerator in Ford's garage, along
with the jar of ricin, the substance Kesler said the knife had been dipped
in. Authorities found it in his family room. Botulism, which produces one
of the deadliest toxins known, was recovered from a refrigerator at
Biofem, stored by Ford next to a bottle of ranch dressing.
These discoveries were followed by reassuring statements to the public
that the doctor's illegal brew of germs was aged and posed little danger.
But internal FBI reports state there was a genuine public health hazard,
and Dr. Mark Horton, head of public health services for Orange County,
concedes that, had the materials been handled without great care, they
could have imperiled the community.
It turns out that the assurances were based on the testing of only 16 of
the samples--them has been no official accounting of what was in the rest.
The public statements did not even mention the botulism.
Ray has no doubt that the danger was severe. He notes that many of the
biological samples in Ford's home were stored next to a jar of what was
suspected to be old and chemically unstable ether. "If that ether had been
exposed to a higher temperature, it would have exploded," he says, "and
Larry Ford's chemistry set would be blown all over Irvine."
His disgust over the case almost led him to leave it for good last summer.
He was away all the time, his wife was complaining; the stress was
enormous. "It really made me think ... what in the hell was going on and
how could the government have stood by while Ford ... did these things? I
really wondered if there was anything that I could or should do."
He took two trips to Washington, D.C., that summer, the first to wander
alone among the monuments, the Arlington cemetery, the Vietnam and police
officers' memorials, looking for inspiration. During their second trip,
Ray and his wife decided he should continue the case. "It's hard to stand
among so much his, tory of personal sacrifice and say, `I'm more
important,'" he says.
But reality was not far behind. While at the capital, he tried to make
contact with officials at the South African embassy, to pass on his
information about Ford and Dr. Death's financial dealings and offshore
accounts. Prosecutors in South Africa had been desperately trying to hold
their case together, Ray knew, and the records he had found could have
helped. But no one, he sighs, was the least bit interested.
WhiteDragonŽ
"ANTHRAX" <Ant...@pentagon.gov> wrote in message
news:f9rsgu4vrjgbed5uh...@4ax.com...
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------
>
>
> Some-not nearly enough-are concerned about the abolition of the Bill of
> Rights in the U.S. Constitution that the "detention" of U.S. citizen Jose
> Padilla represents. However, as serious as this is (what could be more
> important then the loss of the "Bill of Rights"?) there is something far
> more sinister, far more lethal going on that is connected with the anthrax
> attacks which have been removed from the news.
>
> The following articles are from the Toronto Globe and Mail, New York
> Times, ABC News (U.S.) web site, and Los Angeles Magazine. The last is the
> longest, and possibly the most important. Many of you have never heard of
> the subject of this article either. You might ask yourself why.
>
>
> Scientists' deaths are under the microscope
>
>
> By ALANNA MITCHELL, SIMON COOPER AND CAROLYN ABRAHAM
>
> COMPILED BY ALANNA MITCHELL
>
> group - while others discern a conspiracy by a state like Iraq or a
> Cuba [sic]."
>
> The plans were motivated by an intense desire among senior military
> leaders to depose Castro, who seized power in 1959 to become the first
> shores.
>
> The earlier CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles had
> been a disastrous failure, in which the military was not allowed to
> provide firepower.The military leaders now wanted a shot at it.
>
> "The whole thing was so bizarre," says Bamford, noting public and
> international support would be needed for an invasion, but apparently
> neither the American public, nor the Cuban public, wanted to see U.S.
> troops deployed to drive out Castro.
>
> Reflecting this, the U.S. plan called for establishing prolonged military
Intresting reading indeed.
~wd
Dark Tyger
>Intresting reading indeed.
Alright, you blithering idiot, you quoted *1200* lines of text to add
A ONE BLOODY FREAKING LINE RESPONSE?!
Not to mention crossposting it into 5 frelling newsgroups, maybe 2 of
which it was even remotely on-topic in.
*plonk*
--
Dark Tyger, the slightly eccentric, railgun-toting kitty kat
Email me at comcast.net
=^..^=
"This is espresso, kid. It's, like, coffee-zilla"
-Dean, The Iron Giant
http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=133230
Quad City Chess
news:f9rsgu4vrjgbed5uh...@4ax.com...
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------
> Rights in the U.S. Constitution that the "detention" of U.S. citizen Jose
> Padilla represents. However, as serious as this is (what could be more
> important then the loss of the "Bill of Rights"?) there is something far
> more sinister, far more lethal going on that is connected with the anthrax
> attacks which have been removed from the news.
<Graciously SNIPPED diatribe>
You're right -- "detention" for Jose Padilla is wrong. That cocksucker just
needs a bullet in his head. Even making a JOKE on an airplane or in an
airport about anthrax, a bomb, whatever, is just plain stupid and those who
think it's funny just need to eat some high-velocity buckshot fired from
close range.
How many oxygen-thieves will we need to kill for them dumbasses to realize
we're not fucking around?
Regards,
Matt
EZoto
wrote:
You have too much time on your hands. Take a stress pill and some
warm milk and just go to sleep and when you wake up it will all just
be a bad dream. You'll realize that you didn't post all this drivel
here in a chess newsgroup.
EZoto
Cam
--
"Do not try to interject logic into my rambling."
-Ethan Hammond from the PS NG
~Only the ignorant man becomes angry, the wise man understands.~
"EZoto" <ez...@bellatlantic.net> wrote in message
news:3d0e978...@News5.bellatlantic.net...
Jim R Feliciano
murder conspiracies. This is how it is done. Back in the fifties movie
companies tried to do subliminal suggestions in movies. They would put a few
images on a few frames hoping that it would make the audience feel a certain
way. People got outraged and the practice "ended." However, what was not
noticed by many was that a very small percentage of viewers had interestingly
strong reactions to the subliminal messages. In a group of 100,000 maybe two
or three would react to the suggestion. One subject bought Coca Cola everytime
it rained. He would become almost frantic until the purchase was made. So the
government found out that a very few people will do exactly what the subliminal
messages tell them to do. Then the government went into business. When they
need something done, like a murder, or an "accident" all they have to do is put
the right message where they want it. The gov is not that dumb so they put the
message in the right place. If they want the murdered caught they show it on a
movie or a TV show that looney's watch (like public access shows). They put
the messages on for a set amount of time and wait for the reactions to kick in.
Sometimes this has results they don't expect. Sometimes wives and lovers get
killed by mistake. For special assignments the gov likes to use corporate
training films. If your company makes you go to some training thing and during
that training thing you have to watch a video, it is probably a certainty that
there is a message in that video. Look at all the people the have done
interesting things like Hinckley, and McVeigh. Now look at their resume and
see that they worked for a company with the word "General" in its title. This
is not a coincidence. The gov has gotten better at this project. They know
how to be precise (they want to make sure the right person gets killed) and
they also know how to give the "subjects" the freedom to devise their "own"
plan. Sometimes the gov gets sloppy and shows themselves. Remember when all
those kids started having seizures after watching a cartoon with a strobe
effect. The gov was trying a new method and it didn't work the way they
wanted, but they did note a few exceptional cases, that required more study.
The gov has not tried to profile the recipients so that they can pick them out
of a crowd. The gov is just relying on numbers and they know that all they
have to do show the messages and it will strike a chord with someone. There
are some in the gov that think the project is having unforseen outcomes. A
couple of gov guys have found that some of our radical leaders are actually
message receivers that didn't get the whole message for some reason. The gov
has gotten so good at this, that if you were to do a frame by frame analysis
unless you knew what you were looking for, you would not see the message. Once
someone tells you how to see the message it is easy to see, but they are good
at hiding the message because they only want one or two people to get the
message. Killing of key biologists is what this project was designed to do.
No problem.
--
Sincerely from,
Jim R Feliciano
jfe...@muse.sfusd.edu
Hey!!! Buy My Book
"The Guys" it's a fun Book.
http://www.publishamerica.com
you need IE 5 or Netscape 6 to make publishamerica work, or go to
http://amazon.com
enter my name Jim R Feliciano to get it quickly and at a cheaper price.
Buy My Book. Thank You!!!
Hey my site Take your sense of humor with you.
http://www.fortunecity.com/lavender/banzai/834/shake1.html
ANTHRAX
wrote:
>Me and some friends have determined how the government is able to do these bold
>murder conspiracies. This is how it is done.
No that's not how they do it.
On Tue, 18 Jun 2002 01:23:15 -0600, Anon <not.among....@aol.com>
wrote:
>
>Basically, I'm much more concerned with the attacks on liberties and on
>the U.S. Constitution by the U.S. government than I am about "terrorist
>attacks" on civilians. If the govt needs to shred the Constitution in
>order to protect me from the bad guys, then the bad guys have won. I'd
>really much prefer a strategy in which the bad guys are the losers...
>
>I am not impressed by the fact that Padilla has a criminal background,
>or even that he may have met with terrorists, or may even be one. What
>impresses me is that my government assured me that such heavy-handed
>treatment would be reserved for non-US-citizens (not that that made it
>any more right; but it does prove that the the US government still
>cannot be trusted to act as it claims/pretends/promises to).
They moved onto the next step in obliterating the constitution very
quickly. Now they can declare anyone to be an "enemy combatant" and they
are disappeared as the "war on terror" will not end any sooner than the
thirty year old "war on drugs". Why a "democracy" and the "shining light
of freedom" should always be fighting "wars" within and without is never
discussed.
The same liars on TV who continue to claim that Oswald acted alone, and
for more than six years have insisted that John Doe II never existed, now
they tell us that Jose Padilla may have been the phantom himself, even
though those who know about Tim McVeigh know that he would never have
anything to do with a Jose Padilla.
The real John Doe II was a German national, Andreas Strassmeir. Andreas is
the son of Gunther Strassmeir, former Secretary of State under Helmut
Kohl. Andreas was working for the FBI as their plant at Elohim City in
Oklahoma.
The FBI had a plant among the first World Trade Center bombers in 1993.
That plant helped stir the explosive mixture. This was reported in the Los
Angeles Times, but like so many golden nuggets of information such as
this, it was never again mentioned.
I have no doubt that a "dirty bomb" will be exploded in this country in
the near future. The U.S. government will see to that. I also believe that
this country will then be assaulted with a biological attack within a year
later. This will result in soldiers in the streets as we saw at the
airports following 9/11, and a total lockdown dictatorship. All of this
will likely happen within two years.
There is no need to worry about how the vote count will go down in Florida
or anywhere else in the future.
sanjian
news:udxP8.229979$352.16755@sccrnsc02...
Didn't realize it, until I saw which news groups this was cross posted to.
This is from the bigot that hit us a few months back. Good to know.
sanjian
news:aenl8r$8bvre$1...@ID-115442.news.dfncis.de...
> plan. Sometimes the gov gets sloppy and shows themselves. Remember when
all
> those kids started having seizures after watching a cartoon with a strobe
> effect. The gov was trying a new method and it didn't work the way they
You mean a -Japanese- cartoon was a U.S. government ploy? I wonder who they
were assasinating -in Japan-, since the Porygon episode was only shown over
there.