Breaking/Exclusive: CIA’s COVID 19 Weaponization Program Outed in Long-buried NY Times Expose

VT: In an article, published September 4, 2001, the Times outlined how the US broadly violated the 1972 treaty prohibiting biological weapons:

“Over the past several years, the United States has embarked on a program of secret research on biological weapons that, some officials say, tests the limits of the global treaty banning such weapons.

The 1972 treaty forbids nations from developing or acquiring weapons that spread disease, but it allows work on vaccines and other protective measures. Government officials said the secret research, which mimicked the major steps a state or terrorist would take to create a biological arsenal, was aimed at better understanding the threat.

The projects, which have not been previously disclosed, were begun under President Clinton and have been embraced by the Bush administration, which intends to expand them.

Earlier this year, administration officials said, the Pentagon drew up plans to engineer genetically a potentially more potent variant of the bacterium that causes anthrax, a deadly disease ideal for germ warfare.”

Part of the longterm goals of the project, goals now falsely attributed by Trump and his cohorts to Bill Gates, was an effort to examine how vaccines might be used as weapons.

“The experiment has been devised to assess whether the vaccine now being given to millions of American soldiers is effective against such a superbug, which was first created by Russian scientists. A Bush administration official said the National Security Council is expected to give the final go-ahead later this month.

Two other projects completed during the Clinton administration focused on the mechanics of making germ weapons.”

The programs maintained cover under the CIA who built sample weapon deployment systems, pretending to be researching others while, in actuality, developing a massive capability which exists to this day.

“In a program code-named Clear Vision, the Central Intelligence Agency built and tested a model of a Soviet-designed germ bomb that agency officials feared was being sold on the international market. The C.I.A. device lacked a fuse and other parts that would make it a working bomb, intelligence officials said.

At about the same time, Pentagon experts assembled a germ factory in the Nevada desert from commercially available materials. Pentagon officials said the project demonstrated the ease with which a terrorist or rogue nation could build a plant that could produce pounds of the deadly germs.

Both the mock bomb and the factory were tested with simulants — benign substances with characteristics similar to the germs used in weapons, officials said.

The treaty, another administration official said, allows the United States to conduct research on both microbes and germ munitions for ”protective or defensive purposes.’ “

What happened, according to the Times, is that all powerful Battelle Corporation, that runs the labs Russia alleges build bioweapons in Tblisi, Georgia and elsewhere, went rogue when Bush 43 decided to secretly break the treaty and unleash a program that the White House would maintain plausible deniability for.

“Administration officials said the need to keep such projects secret was a significant reason behind President Bush’s recent rejection of a draft agreement to strengthen the germ-weapons treaty, which has been signed by 143 nations.

The draft would require those countries to disclose where they are conducting defensive research involving gene-splicing or germs likely to be used in weapons. The sites would then be subject to international inspections.

Many national security officials in both the Clinton and Bush administrations opposed the draft, arguing that it would give potential adversaries a road map to what the United States considers its most serious vulnerabilities.

Among the facilities likely to be open to inspection under the draft agreement would be the West Jefferson, Ohio, laboratory of the Battelle Memorial Institute, a military contractor that has been selected to create the genetically altered anthrax.

Several officials who served in senior posts in the Clinton administration acknowledged that the secretive efforts were so poorly coordinated that even the White House was unaware of their full scope.”

The Pentagon’s project to build a germ factory was not reported to the White House, they said. President Clinton, who developed an intense interest in germ weapons, was never briefed on the programs under way or contemplated, the officials said.”

The CIA and USAID, which now funds the new secret labs outside the US, during the Clinton administration, had already tested bio-warfare “germ bombs” in direct violation of treaty.

“The C.I.A.’s tests on the bomb model touched off a dispute among government experts after the tests were concluded in 2000, with some officials arguing that they violated the germ treaty’s prohibition against developing weapons.

‘It was pressing how far you go before you do something illegal or immoral,’ recalled one senior official who was briefed on the program.

Public disclosure of the research is likely to complicate the position of the United States, which has long been in the forefront of efforts to enforce the ban on germ weapons. (Which has since exposed the COVID 19 programs)”

Background, from the NY Times article: Addendum I

During the Clinton administration, the CIA began researching biowarfare capabilities of what it considered “rogue actors.”  This WMD emphasis, would, quite obviously, backfire during the Bush administration when the CIA’s fake data would send the US into Iraq searching for the non-existent, looking for weapons and only finding oil.

“In the mid-1990’s, the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies stepped up their search for information about other nations’ biological research programs, focusing on the former Soviet Union, Iran, Iraq and Libya, among others. Much of the initial emphasis was on the germs that enemies might use in an attack, officials said.

But in 1997, the agency embarked on Clear Vision, which focused on weapons systems that would deliver the germs.

Intelligence officials said the project was led by Gene Johnson, a senior C.I.A. scientist who had long worked with some of the world’s deadliest viruses. Dr. Johnson was eager to understand the damage that Soviet miniature bombs — bomblets, in military parlance — might inflict. (Weapons now delivered by Drones/VT)

The agency asked its spies to find or buy a Soviet bomblet, which releases germs in a fine mist. That search proved unsuccessful, and the agency approved a proposal to build a replica and study how well it could disperse its lethal cargo.

The agency’s lawyers concluded that such a project was permitted by the treaty because the intent was defensive. Intelligence officials said the C.I.A. had reports that at least one nation was trying to buy the Soviet-made bomblets.

A model was constructed and the agency conducted two sets of tests at Battelle, the military contractor. The experiments measured dissemination characteristics and how the model performed under different atmospheric conditions, intelligence officials said. They emphasized that the device was a ”portion” of a bomb that could not have been used as a weapon.

The experiments caused concern at the White House, which learned about the project after it was under way. Some aides to President Clinton worried that the benefits did not justify the risks. But a White House lawyer led a joint assessment by several departments that concluded that the program did not violate the treaty, and it went ahead.

The questions were debated anew after the project was completed, this time without consensus. A State Department official argued for a strict reading of the treaty: the ban on acquiring or developing ”weapons” barred states from building even a partial model of a germ bomb, no matter what the rationale.

”A bomb is a bomb is a bomb,” another official said at the time.

The C.I.A. continued to insist that it had the legal authority to conduct such tests and, intelligence officials said, the agency was prepared to reopen the fight over how to interpret the treaty. But even so, the agency ended the Clear Vision project in the last year of the Clinton administration, intelligence officials said.

Bill Harlow, the C.I.A. spokesman, acknowledged that the agency had conducted ”laboratory or experimental” work to assess the intelligence it had gathered about biological warfare.

”Everything we have done in this respect was entirely appropriate, necessary, consistent with U.S. treaty obligations and was briefed to the National Security Council staff and appropriate Congressional oversight committees,” Mr. Harlow said.”

Then the US entered into the Anthrax business, culminating in attacks inside the US and Colin Powell taking a vial of Anthrax to the UN, offering to save the world from Saddam.

“Breeding More Potent Anthrax

In the 1990’s, government officials also grew increasingly worried about the possibility that scientists could use the widely available techniques of gene-splicing to create even more deadly weapons. (Which Bush era research, ending in Trump era University of North Carolina development of COVID 19, has now written into the annals of history)

Those concerns deepened in 1995, when Russian scientists disclosed at a scientific conference in Britain that they had implanted genes from Bacillus cereus, an organism that causes food poisoning, into the anthrax microbe.

The scientists said later that the experiments were peaceful; the two microbes can be found side-by-side in nature and, the Russians said, they wanted to see what happened if they cross-bred.

A published account of the experiment, which appeared in a scientific journal in late 1997, alarmed the Pentagon, which had just decided to require that American soldiers be vaccinated against anthrax. According to the article, the new strain was resistant to Russia’s anthrax vaccine, at least in hamsters.

American officials tried to obtain a sample from Russia through a scientific exchange program to see whether the Russians had really created such a hybrid. The Americans also wanted to test whether the microbe could defeat the American vaccine, which is different from that used by Russia.

Despite repeated promises, the bacteria were never provided.

Eventually the C.I.A. drew up plans to replicate the strain, but intelligence officials said the agency hesitated because there was no specific report that an adversary was attempting to turn the superbug into a weapon.

This year, officials said, the project was taken over by the Pentagon’s intelligence arm, the Defense Intelligence Agency. Pentagon lawyers reviewed the proposal and said it complied with the treaty. Officials said the research would be part of Project Jefferson, yet another government effort to track the dangers posed by germ weapons. (It was this project that was used inside the US against political targets)

A spokesman for Defense Intelligence, Lt. Cmdr. James Brooks, declined comment. Asked about the precautions at Battelle, which is to create the enhanced anthrax, Commander Brooks said security was ”entirely suitable for all work already conducted and planned for Project Jefferson.'” (Work now done in Tblisi, Georgia)

Were it not for 9/11, this article may have had impact.  However, with the Bush administration claiming it was searching for WMD’s, a search still ongoing nearly two decades later, there would never be a time to question the United States.

When the programs until the CIA began moving overseas, to Libya, Romania and new nations bordering Russia and strange new diseases began killing off chickens and swine in China, diseases that moved thousands of miles with no vector, there was no one left to ask the questions.

Even when people living around Battelle facilities became ill.  From a 2016 article written for the Russian Academy of Science by Jeffrey Silverman and this author: (Addendum II)

“Today people are getting sick with Swine Flu and Zika all over the world, with Ebola hanging back while we await the next outbreak. Diseases occur naturally, but since World War II governments have spent billions weaponising different viruses to be used alongside the usual crop of diseases, the old bacterial standbys like anthrax or smallpox and train loads of poison gas.

A bio-chemical warfare “medical research” facility, like the one in Tbilisi, is almost exactly the same as a fully-fledged bio-chemical warfare production facility. All that would be required is to use one portion of a research facility for this purpose, maybe a few secret labs and underground or outbuilding production facilities which are easy to hide. How you tell one from the other is by examining the plans, the security protocols and the budget. You then look at the management of the facility, its history and examine what diseases it “researches.”

What we have in Tbilisi is as clear as a bell on all counts. This $30 million dollar facility actually cost more than $100 million, houses a network of secret labs and closed areas and is protected by very high security—it was set up by researchers, but now run by the secret police. Then we have its history, the trail of sick employees and the well-timed outbreaks of “researched diseases,” as the bacteria which cause them are “weaponised,” across the region.

We also have a history of Turkish and Ukrainian security service personnel treating the Lugar lab like a WMD “cash and carry,” to service their terrorist clients in Syria and Iraq. It also appears never to have produced a single peer reviewed academic research paper, but is allowed to continue working regardless.

We also have copies of the plans.”

Addendum I

The Original Treaty (NY Times 2001)

During the cold war, both the United States and the Soviet Union produced vast quantities of germ weapons, enough to kill everyone on earth.

Eager to halt the spread of what many called the poor man’s atom bomb, the United States unilaterally gave up germ arms and helped lead the global campaign to abolish them. By 1975, most of the world’s nations had signed the convention.

In doing so, they agreed not to develop, produce, acquire or stockpile quantities or types of germs that had no ”prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes.” They also pledged not to develop or obtain weapons or other equipment ”designed to use such agents or toxins for hostile purposes or in armed conflict.”

There were at least two significant loopholes: The pact did not define ”defensive” research or say what studies might be prohibited, if any. And it provided no means of catching cheaters.

In the following decades, several countries did cheat, some on a huge scale. The Soviet Union built entire cities devoted to developing germ weapons, employing tens of thousands of people and turning anthrax, smallpox and bubonic plague into weapons of war. In the late 1980’s, Iraq began a crash program to produce its own germ arsenal.

Both countries insisted that their programs were for defensive purposes.

American intelligence officials had suspected that Baghdad and Moscow were clandestinely producing germ weapons. But the full picture of their efforts did not become clear until the 1990’s, after several Iraqi and Soviet officials defected.

Fears about the spread of biological weapons were deepened by the rise of terrorism against Americans, the great strides in genetic engineering and the collapse of the Soviet Union, which left thousands of scientists skilled in biological warfare unemployed, penniless and vulnerable to recruitment.

The threat disclosed a quandary: While the United States spent billions of dollars a year to assess enemy military forces and to defend against bullets, tanks, bombs and jet fighters, it knew relatively little about the working of exotic arms it had relinquished long ago.

Designing a Delivery System

Addendum II

Lugar Bio Laboratory in Tbilisi Latest: It’s Getting Worse by the Day

Introduction by Gordon Duff, Editor of VT

Today people are getting sick with Swine Flu and Zika all over the world, with Ebola hanging back while we await the next outbreak. Diseases occur naturally, but since World War II governments have spent billions weaponising different viruses to be used alongside the usual crop of diseases, the old bacterial standbys like anthrax or smallpox and train loads of poison gas.

A bio-chemical warfare “medical research” facility, like the one in Tbilisi, is almost exactly the same as a fully-fledged bio-chemical warfare production facility. All that would be required is to use one portion of a research facility for this purpose, maybe a few secret labs and underground or outbuilding production facilities which are easy to hide. How you tell one from the other is by examining the plans, the security protocols and the budget. You then look at the management of the facility, its history and examine what diseases it “researches.”

What we have in Tbilisi is as clear as a bell on all counts. This $30 million dollar facility actually cost more than $100 million, houses a network of secret labs and closed areas and is protected by very high security—it was set up by researchers, but now run by the secret police. Then we have its history, the trail of sick employees and the well-timed outbreaks of “researched diseases,” as the bacteria which cause them are “weaponised,” across the region.

We also have a history of Turkish and Ukrainian security service personnel treating the Lugar lab like a WMD “cash and carry,” to service their terrorist clients in Syria and Iraq. It also appears never to have produced a single peer reviewed academic research paper, but is allowed to continue working regardless.

We also have copies of the plans.

Poison gas attacks in Syria, influenza in Russia, Ukraine and Georgia, and the secret Bechtel-built biological research facility in Tbilisi, Georgia

Some things are best explained by the breaking news, as we have seen in the saga of Georgia and its bio weapons labs, which has been intensively covered over several years in the online publications New Eastern Outlook (NEO) and VT (VT). Whenever the usual US Embassy and Georgian government denials start going around another revelation appears which casts yet more doubt on what this lab is doing and why.

Two weeks ago week, Jeffrey Silverman, the VT Bureau Chief in Tbilisi, gave an interview to the Georgian press in which he alleged that workers at this American funded laboratory had been poisoned and hospitalised. This has now been confirmed by others, including former Georgian Minister of Internal Affairs Valeri Khaburdzania. Another allegation in the interview was also given swift confirmation by the press: one of the biological agents present in the lab is the H1N1 flu strain, and at least three persons have died from it in Georgia, with at least 9,000 more now officially infected, an amazing increase, of 6,000 people, on the week before, with the number still increasing.

H1N1 was a new virus when it emerged, and most people had little or no immunity to it, giving it pandemic potential. We know from history that influenza pandemics can kill millions, and that there is no effective vaccine for new pandemic strains. According to Georgia’s National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) the spread of the virus has not yet reached the level of an epidemic, but scores of deaths have also been reported in Armenia.

Amiran Gamkrelidze, head of the NCDC, is still in denial. He says that, “during the last three years the number of people infected by the virus has increased, [but still] within reasonable limits.” However he also added that the number of people infected per 100,00 of population had risen from 240-248 to 332 in a week, and that more people, and especially children, are being hospitalised.

In addition to the three H1N1 deaths, another person has died from H3N2, another agent present in the lab. But according to Gamkrelidze, there is nothing to be concerned about, no need to panic and “now it is January, everybody has the flu and we have to take care of ourselves and get though this situation with a minimum of losses.” Really?

Not all are buying flu outbreaks

Russia seems to be pretty concerned with an impending European apocalypse that will supposedly occur as a result of the United States Army contracting with 17 companies, including major corporations, to spend $900 million on logistical and service support for biological and chemical warfare projects.

All these projects are on Russia’s doorstep, Ukraine and Georgia, like so many military bases and missile systems, despite there being vast areas of the globe where the West can do what it likes. This is not a coincidence, and we may already be seeing the consequences. Similarly, diseases related to the biological agents used in chemical weapons, such as Sarin Gas, do not emerge in the general population, or get released to the general population, by chance, given the security surrounding the purported “research institutes” where they are stored.

Tell us we’re lying

This story was originally broken by VT in 2011 and then carried by Russia Today in 2012 and 2013.  VT’s Tbilisi Bureau Chief Jeffrey Silverman has been responsible for most of the revelations, which are backed up by, amongst other things, the plans for the bio weapons facility, which were abandoned in a briefcase by Bechtel employees who were using a local bordello staffed by VT friends and informants.

On the basis of the evidence gathered by Silverman, work which has seen him assaulted and tortured by US Embassy staff in the Georgian Ministry of Counterintelligence and attacked by an American “journalist” working with Saakashvili, who like him has Bechtel connections, we maintain that the Richard E. Lugar lab in Tbilisi is the possible source of the viral pathogen which is now killing people in the South Caucasus, Ukraine and the Russian Federation.

We also maintain that there are ties between this facility and the Georgian intelligence services, and that these services work directly with US groups that back the Kiev regime and have “accidentally” armed al-Nusra and ISIS. We also suspect that what is happening in Georgia now is part of a regional pattern, established through America’s attempts to stage false flag chemical attacks in Syria and blame them on Assad, as what is happening now is consistent with other CIA operations dating back to at least the late 1950s, such as Operation Paperclip, in which the US imported Nazi and Imperial Japanese scientists to develop crop diseases and other pathogens which were subsequently released on Russia and Cuba.

We believe that, having conducted its “preliminary research” by treating the Georgian population as white rats without their knowledge, the US is about to use the Tbilisi lab to mount a deadly chemical or biological release, covering a wide area, which will be of such importance that it will provide the US with enough excuse to get out of Syria and Turkey. The consequences may well be severe, for health, international relations, trade, and many other things. But the US only cares about getting caught, not what it does to people, and that isn’t going to change unless we make it.

As it stands

The following interview with Jeffrey Silverman appeared in the Georgia and the World magazine.

“I have accessed information provided by hospital staff; they were threatened not to say anything about this case.”

Jeffrey Silverman, long-time Georgian resident and Bureau Chief for the US Military Journal, VT, explains that most of the information that he has about the laboratory was provided by its staff, despite the fact that they were threatened not to speak about it, and especially about an incident that took place several years ago. Mr. Silverman is a former adviser to Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and one of the first to speak openly about the Lugar laboratory and its real mission. Information about the laboratory is still a poorly kept secret.

Not many people are aware of it. Georgia and the World contacted him and other experts to learn more about it.

The Richard Lugar Central Reference Public Health Laboratory at the Alekseevka settlement in Tbilisi has been a subject of great public interest from the date of its establishment. Why?

The laboratory is thought to have close ties with the US-based Walter Reed Military Hospital. You might be surprised, but this hospital doesn’t have a medical profile, it has a military mission.

In your interview with our newspaper several weeks ago you declared that about two years ago, some staff at the Lugar Laboratory were poisoned and taken to the Tbilisi No.1 Clinic Hospital for treatment, however, this information is still a close secret. What happened in this incident, and can you name the persons infected and give further details?

All the information I have was provided by the staff. They were threatened, i.e. “strongly warned”, not to speak out about it. But even if I knew their exact names, I would never share them—as a matter of confidentiality. The only thing I can say is that several individuals became ill and were transported to the hospital for urgent treatment. They had some breathing problems as a result of a faulty ventilation system. Luckily nobody died. Even the hospital administration was “warned” not to say anything about this case.

Let me share this much: I am sure that this laboratory was not established to be operated by Georgians or for them to work there.

Why do you think the government wants to keep this information secret? What are they afraid of? Were they threatened?

The laboratory has had to be reconstructed several times, because American-based Bechtel National decided to increase its bottom line (profit) by contracting out the work to a Turkish company to cut expenses. But the work done by the Turks was of very low quality, and there were many delays and cost overruns. It is worth noting that trying to save money on materials and labour has not only proved a threat to those working in the laboratory but to Georgia and the region as a whole.

The United States continues to spend more than 12 million dollars per year to operate it. Bechtel International has close connections with the American government; it was the company that supplied the gas that killed the Kurds. One of the former heads of the company was former US Secretary of State George Schulz.

Do you know where those who were poisoned are right now?

I doubt that most of them are still working in the laboratory; some might be, but if they were smart they would never return to the laboratory having left the hospital.

Valeri Khaburdzania, the former Minister of State Security, has said that he also knew about the poisoning of the people in laboratory, but what actually happened is still secret, at least for the public.

He told us that there are many legends about the Lugar Laboratory and nobody really knows what goes on inside it. We don’t know when and how it was contracted to be built. We have our doubts, as its functional purposes lie beyond reasonable limits, which is why doubts continue to exist.

Do you have any more information about the workers who were poisoned?

Of course I do, but according to my information no one knows exactly what happened there. The main question for me is why the Americans would be willing to spend so much money on this laboratory? Setting up a laboratory, a scientific research centre, or an educational institution is not a bad thing in itself. But, in this case, the operations conducted in the laboratory are dubious, we do not see a real product, a real benefit, so it is natural that the Georgian public has reasonable grounds for questions.

What do you mean?

One question is why the Americans needed such a laboratory in Georgia – what purpose would it serve? Nobody knows what kind of research is being done there—breeding new strains, conducting experiments, observing old strains that already exist, or what?

The Americans did not invest even one dollar in the Georgian economy, but instead spent millions on this laboratory. This means they have very serious interests there, it much have a very special purpose. It is located very close to the conflict regions of the Middle East, but let us hope for now that this is just a coincidence.

There are a few more points which need to be made. This laboratory was opened with lot of pomp and ceremony in 2011. Ex-President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili and the ex-Ambassador of the USA attended. A total of approximately 300 million has been spent on its construction, under a US Pentagon programme.

Most Georgians do not know anything about the laboratory or have minimal information. In reality, there are many aspect of particular interest.  For instance, in 2013 it had 50 employees, of which 6 were Georgians. It was run by Giorgi Maglaperidze, a graduate of the veterinary institute, but we have no information about his scientific work.

It had previously been run by Ana Zhvania, the former head of the Foreign Intelligence Department. The US Embassy in Georgia sent a rather good report about her to the US State Department, which was subsequently published by Wikileaks. The original Deputy Director was Vakhtang Beriashvili, who graduated from Caucasus University which has been funded by the US State Department. He had previously worked for the Open Society Foundation – Georgia. The cozy relationship between his former and subsequent position is obvious.

We know that the Lugar Laboratory cooperates with the Walter Reed and other centres/universities in the US, including the former US bio weapons project at Fort Dix in Maryland. Thus the Lugar lab has a military profile rather than a scientific one. But there is no public information to be found about this connection, despite the fact that in the 21st century almost everything is accessible. This is one more question regarding the Lugar Laboratory and other bio labs in the region.

Henry Kamens, columnist, expert on Central Asia and Caucasus, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.