Suppressed Inventions and Other Discoveries (11 page)

BOOK: Suppressed Inventions and Other Discoveries
3.9Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Sciences paper examining DNA polymerase (i.e., reverse transcriptase) activity in immature normal versus acute leukemic lymph cells. To do so, they evaluated the single stranded 70S RNA retrovirus found in chickens which causes prominent features of AIDS including WBC dysfunction, sarcomas, progressive wasting and death.
16
Borrow, Smith and Gallo injected this chicken virus RNA into human WBCs to determine if the cells were prompted to produce proteins (including new viruses) encoded by the viral RNA.
17
Robert, Smith and Gallo also evaluated the neoplastic effects of single stranded 70S RNA reverse transcriptase delivered by the cat leukemia virus (FELV) and the mason-Pfizer monkey virus on normal human lymphocytes (NHL).
18

This work foreshadowed the observation made ten years later by the CDC's chief AIDS researcher, Dr. Donald Francis who noted the "laundry list" of feline leukemia-like diseases associated with AIDS.
3

Other examples are detailed by Gallo and co-workers while discussing their adapting monkey, rat, and bird leukemia and tumor viruses for experimental use in a human (NC-37) cell line.
19
Wu, Ting and Gallo
20
discussed the synthesis of new RNA tumor viruses "induced by 5-iodo-2'deoxyuridine, IdU (a constituent of RNA) in rodent cell cultures, and noted that chemotherapy might be used to halt the reverse transcriptaselinked viral reproduction.

However, had HIV been synthesized for military purposes from various species components, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to prove. As Gillespie, Gillespie and Gallo et al. noted in 1973 concerning the origin of the RD114—another cat/human bioengineered virus—"it can always be argued that" a virus which naturally jumped species (as HIV is alleged to have done from the monkey) would be expected to have antigens that differ "from the antigen found on the viruses of known" origin.
21

LITTON BIONETICS: GALLO'S LINK TO THE DOD

Four years later, during a U.S. Senate investigation of illegal "biological testing involving Senators learned Litton Bionetics—an organization which, along with the NCI, administered and provided Dr. Gallo's research funding
10,13,15,17-19,22,26
were not only acknowledged DOD biological weapons contractors, but their affiliated Litton Systems, Inc., was among the most frequently contracted institutions involved in biological weapons research and development between 1960 and 1970 (the end of the reported period).
23
Additional biological weapons contractors with whom Dr. Gallo and/or his co-workers associated during the late 1960s and early 1970s included the University of human subjects by the

that Bionetics, Bionetics Department of Defense,"

Research Laboratories, and Chicago,
24
Texas,
13
Virginia,
25
and Yale,
17
Merck and Co. Inc.,
20
and Hazelton Laboratory, site of the famous 1989 Marburg-Ebola-like (Reston) virus outbreak.
22

NCI staff reports revealed that Litton Bionetics had been granted the service contract to supply all NCI researchers, worldwide, with virtually every primate cancer research material requested, including seed viruses, viral hybrids, cell lines, experimental reagents, and African colony born monkeys including M. mulatta and C. aethiops which were associated with the major monkey AIDS virus outbreaks in California's Davis Lab, and the 1967 Marburg virus outbreaks in three European vaccine production facilities.
15-17

Litton Bionetics chief John Landon reported an experiment begun in 1965 when he inoculated 18 monkeys with rhaabdovirus simian—a rabies virus known to cause Ebola-like hemmorhagic fever in monkeys. "Nine [monkeys] died or were transferred," to allied laboratories or vaccine production facilities. This shipment was likely to have started the first hemmorhagic fever "Marburg virus" outbreak among European vaccine laboratory workers in 1967. As noted by the world's leading simian virus expert at the time, Dr. Seymour Kalter, the Marburg virus was apparently manmade.
23-25

In fact, Litton Bionetics, the chief military and industrial supplier of primates for cancer virus experimentation during the 1960s and early 1970s, also maintained the colony of the specific genus of monkeys associated with all of the major monkey AIDS virus outbreaks in the United States.
23

Through telephone interviews with Litton Bionetics and MedPath administrators, I learned that Bionetics Research Laboratories had been sold to MedPath Corporation—one of America's largest medical and blood testing laboratories—a division of Dow Corning. Dow Coming's parent, Dow Chemical Company, was also listed among the Army's chief biological weapons contractors during the 1960s and early 1970s.
26,27
Litton Bionetics, a subsidiary of Litton Industries, Inc. remains in business as a proprietor of the Frederick Cancer Research Center, a "privately owned, government contracted" facility. Bionetics, it was noted, currently acts as an agency under "contract to manage and operate the Frederick (Md.) [Fort Detrick affiliated] Cancer Research Center for the National Cancer Institute."
27
Besides administering research grants and government funds earmarked for the NCI, Litton Bionetics also developed a division which produced and marketed test kits for bloodborne, infectious diseases including mononucleosis, hepatitis B, and AIDS.
28
This division was sold to Organon Teknica in 1985.
26

Apparently, the military-medical-industrial complex was well aware of Litton Industries' service as a DOD and NATO contractor. In 1978, the company was indicted for filing false claims for $37 million in cost-overruns during the building of three nuclear submarines under one of several multi-billion dollar defense contracts.
29
'
34

ZAIRE AND ANGOLA: A CIA MILITARY ARENA

Between 1970 and 1975, the period the NAS-NCR scientific advisors informed DOD decision-makers that AIDS-like viruses could be readied,
4
American cold war efforts focused on Zaire and Angola.
33-35
Following the withdrawal of American forces in Vietnam, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger ordered the CIA to begin a major covert military operation against MPLA (communist bloc backed) "rebels" in Angola.
3637
Zaire, indebted by over $4.5 billion to the International Monetary Fund, and headed by President Mobutu—paradoxically regarded as one of the world's wealthiest men with "a personal fortune put at $2,939,200,000 [1984 estimate] banked in Switzerland—was wooed by NATO allies during the 1970s (principally the U.S.) to be a staging area for CIA backed, Portuguese, French, and mainly South African mercenaries.
38,39
"American corporate investment, notably in copper and aluminum, doubled to about $50 million following a 1970 visit by Mobutu to the United States. Major investors included Chase-Manhattan, Ford, General Motors, Gulf, Shell, Union Carbide, and several other large concerns."
43

However, in 1975 Mobutu apparently turned against NATO allies and increased negotiations with China and Russia
40
-
41
He proclaimed his intention to nationalize foreign owned enterprises.
4243
In June 1975, following the CIA's thwarted efforts to convince the U.S. Congress to appropriate more funds for Mobutu and the Angola programme (A total of $31.7 million had already been "drawn from the CIA's FY 75 contingency fund" which was "exhausted on 27 November 1975").
39
Mobutu expelled the American ambassador and arrested many of the CIA's Zairian agents, placing some under death sentences.
40,41

The following year, in October 1976, the "Ebola Zaire virus" broke-out in "fifty five villages surrounding the [Yambuku] hospital" first killing "people who had received injections." Mobutu then ordered his army to "seal off the Bumba zone with roadblocks" and "shoot anyone trying to come out" so "no one knew what was happening, who was dying, [or] what the virus was doing."
44

Shortly thereafter, Ebola victim specimens were sent to the CDC, Special (meaning "secret" within the American intelligence community) Pathogens Branch; to Porton, England's controversial c h e mi c a l and biological weapons
researchers were
(CBW) laboratories;
45
and teams of

dispatched to the Ebola region in
WHO and CDC Mobutu's private,

American supplied C-130 Buffalo troop transport plant.
44
By the end of 1976, the Zairian leader had reconciled his differences with the American intelligence and corporate communities believing that Zaire would continue to reap his non-communist allies' social and economic aid. On April 4, 1977, Mobutu suspended diplomatic relations with Cuba; on April 21, reduced ties with the Soviet Union; and on May 2, he cut ties with East Germany.
46
Meanwhile, according to John Stockwell, Former Chief of the CIA's Angola Task Force, "the United States was exposed, dishonored and discredited in the eyes of the world," as "15,000 Cubans were installed in Angola"
40
despite the CIA's best efforts and a continuing policy of lying "to State Department officials, Congressmen, American press, and world public opinion in varying degrees, depending on the need" about the CIA's covert military campaign in Angola and Zaire.
39

Throughout 1976 and 1977, Mobutu, NATO, and the CIA, constrained by the Tunney, Cranston and Clark amendment which prevented the expenditure of American funds in Zaire/Angola, except to gather intelligence,
39
remained embroiled in the "Shaba rebellion" against allegedly Russian-backed "Katangan rebels."
46

At the same time, perhaps not coincidentally, NATO ally West Germany was pouring financial aid into Zaire and white ruled South Africa.
47-49
The Northeast region of Zaire, believed to be the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic, was specifically targetted for West German economic aid and industrialization.
50

The "long tradition of friendship between Germans and South Africans" London's African Development noted, "dates back from the first waves of white immigrants to South Africa and the feeling of solidarity between Germans and Afrikaners during the Boer War, continuing throughout the First World War and then the Second World War. Many of today's Nationalist leaders in Pretoria," the paper reported, "were Nazi sympathizers: many ex-Nazis settled in South Africa after 1945 . . ."
48

THE WEST GERMAN COMPANY OTRAG

Not surprising then, on March 26, 1976 Mobutu signed what the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) reported was a "secret agreement" with the West German company OTRAG (Orbital Transport-und RaketenAktiengesellschaft) to lease 260,000 square kilometers—essentially the complete Kivu province—for military/industrial purposes for the sum of DM 800,000,000 (approximately $250 million at that time).
51
"
54
The contract "made OTRAG sovereign over territories once inhabited by 760,000 people"
54
in the Eastern and South-central portion of Zaire. The leased property positioned Southeast along the south of the Kinshasa highway—better known as the "AIDS Highway" North of the Shaba militarized region, expanded

Congo River—the countries main waterway, and which runs through Zaire's Northeast corridor and across central Africa bypassing the "Isle of Plaques," Mount Elgon and Kitum Cave allegedly by the author of The Hot Zone to be the breeding ground for the Ebola, Marburg, and AIDS viruses.
44

OTRAG was apparently authorized to conduct any "excavation and construction; including air fields, energy plants, communication systems, and manufacturing plants. All movement of people into and within the OTRAG territory was only with permission of OTRAG, [which was] absolved from any responsibility for damage caused by construction. Its people enjoy complete immunity from the laws of Zaire in the granted territory, until the year 2000."
56

Believed to be of military intelligence gathering significance to NATO
46-48,55,56
OTRAG and its principals were traced back to the West German government and "to those Nazi scientists who worked on VI and V2 rockets during World War II. For example, Dr. Kurt H. Debus, Chairman of the Board of OTRAG, once worked at the Peenemude V2 program and later, until 1975, worked as director of the Cape Canaveral (now Cape Kennedy) space program. Richard Gompertz, OTRAG's technical director and a U.S. citizen, once was a specialist on V2 engines and later presided over NASA's Chrysler space division. Lutz Thilo Kayer, OTRAG's founder and manager, when young was quite close to the Nazi rocket industry, often called 'Dadieu's young man,' a reference to Armin Dadieu, his mentor, who served as prominent SS officer and as Gorling's special representative for a research program on storing uranium. While working for OTRAG Kayser also acted as a contact for the West German government, a special advisor to the Minister of Research and Technology on matters concerning OTRAG. He was also on the ad hoc committee on . . . [America's] Apollo program."
56

Other books

Swept Away by Susan Kiernan-Lewis
Losing Ladd by Dianne Venetta
Figgs & Phantoms by Ellen Raskin
Perfect Fit by Carly Phillips
Death by Chocolate by Michelle L. Levigne
Cape Wrath by Paul Finch
Pick 'n' Mix by Jean Ure
Bound by Fate by Sherilyn Gray
Acres of Unrest by Max Brand