Bush developing illegal bioterror weapons

Bush developing illegal bioterror weapons for offensive use, book says
Sherwood Ross
Middle East Times
December 19, 2006

WASHINGTON -- In violation of the US Code and international law, the Bush administration is illegally developing offensive germ warfare capabilities on an unprecedented scale. In fact, it is spending more on such weapons (in inflation-adjusted dollars) than the $2 billion spent on the "Manhattan Project" that made the atomic bomb in World War II.

So says Francis Boyle, the professor of international law who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 enacted by Congress. He states the Pentagon "is now gearing up to fight and 'win' biological warfare" pursuant to two Bush national strategy directives adopted without "public knowledge and review" in 2002.

The Pentagon's Chemical and Biological Defense Program was revised in 2003 to implement those directives, endorsing "first-use" strike of chemical and biological weapons (CBW) in war, says Boyle, who teaches at the University of Illinois, Champaign.

Terming the action "the proverbial smoking gun," Boyle said the mission of the controversial CBW program "has been altered to permit development of offensive capability in chemical and biological weapons!"

The same directives, Boyle writes in his book Biowarfare and Terrorism, "unconstitutionally usurp and nullify the right and the power of the United States Congress to declare war in gross and blatant violation of Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 of the United States Constitution."

For fiscal years 2001-04, the Federal government funded $14.5 billion "for ostensibly 'civilian' biowarfare-related work alone," a "truly staggering" sum, Boyle wrote. Another $5.6 billion was voted for "the deceptively-named 'Project BioShield,'" under which Homeland Security is stockpiling vaccines and drugs to fight anthrax, smallpox, and other bioterror agents, Boyle wrote. Protection of the civilian population is, he said, "one of the fundamental requirements for effectively waging biowarfare."

The Washington Post reported December 12 both houses of Congress this month passed legislation "considered by many to be an effort to salvage the two-year-old Project BioShield, which has been marked by delays and operational problems." When President Bush signs it, the law will allocate $1 billion more over three years for new research "to pump more money into the private sector sooner."

"The enormous amounts of money" purportedly dedicated to "civilian defense" that is now "dramatically and increasingly" being spent, Boyle writes, "betrays this administration's effort to be able to embark on offensive campaigns using biowarfare."

Boyle said Federal spending has co-opted and diverted the US biotech industry to biowarfare, pouring huge sums into university and private sector laboratories. According to Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright, over 300 scientific institutions and 12,000 individuals today have access to pathogens suitable for biowarfare and terrorism. At the same time, Ebright found, the number of grants by the National Institute of Health to research infectious diseases with biowarfare potential has shot up from 33 in the 1995 to 2000 period to 497.

Academic biowarfare participation involving the abuse of DNA genetic engineering since the late 1980s has become "patently obvious," Boyle said. "American universities have a long history of willingly permitting their research agendas, researchers, institutes, and laboratories to be co-opted, corrupted, and perverted by the Pentagon and the CIA."

He continued, "These despicable death-scientists were arming the Pentagon with the component units necessary to produce a massive array of DNA genetically engineered biological weapons."

In a forward to Boyle's book, Jonathan King, a professor of molecular biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote "the growing bioterror programs represent a significant emerging danger to our own population" and "threatens international relations among nations." King said that while such programs "are always called defensive," in fact, "with biological weapons, defensive, and offensive programs overlap almost completely."

The US is "in breach" of the Biological Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and US domestic criminal law, Boyle writes. In February 2003, for example, the US granted itself a patent on an illegal long-range biological weapons grenade.

Boyle said other countries grasp the military implications of US germ warfare actions and will respond in kind. "The world will soon witness a de facto biological arms race among the major biotech states under the guise of 'defense,' and despite the requirements of the Biological Warfare Convention."

"The massive proliferation of biowarfare technology, facilities, as well as trained scientists and technicians all over the United States courtesy of the neocon Bush Jr. administration will render a catastrophic biowarfare or bioterrorist incident or accident a statistical certainty," Boyle warned.


Sherwood Ross is a Virginia-based freelance writer on political and military issues

Anthrax attack on US Congress made by scientists and covered up by FBI, expert says

Sherwood Ross

Middle East Times
December 11, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The terrorists who perpetrated the 2001 anthrax attack on Congress likely were US government scientists at the army's Ft. Detrick, MD., bioterrorism lab having access to "moonsuits" that enabled them to safely process and manufacture super-weapons-grade anthrax, an eminent authority on the subject says.

Although only a "handful" of scientists had the ability to perpetrate the crime, the culprit among them may never be identified as the FBI ordered the destruction of the anthrax culture collection at Ames, IA., from which the Ft. Detrick lab got its pathogens, the authority said.

This action makes it impossible "to pin-point precisely where, when, and from whom these bio-agents had originated," said Dr. Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois at Champaign.

Boyle, who drafted the US Biological Weapons Convention of 1989 enacted by Congress, said destruction of the Ames anthrax "appears to be a cover-up orchestrated by the FBI."

If impartial scientists could have performed genetic reconstruction of the anthrax found in letters mailed to Senators Daschle (D-S.D.) and Patrick Leahy, (D -Vt.), "the trail of genetic evidence would have led directly back to a secret but officially-sponsored US government biowarfare program that was illegal and criminal" in violation of biological weapons conventions and US laws, Boyle said.

"I believe the FBI knows exactly who was behind these terrorist anthrax attacks upon the United States Congress in the Fall of 2001, and that the culprits were US government-related scientists involved in a criminal US government biowarfare program," Boyle said.

The anthrax attacks killed five people, including two postal workers, injured 17 others, and shut down the operations of the US Congress.

Boyle, a leading American authority on international law, said after the attacks he contacted senior FBI official Marion "Spike" Bowman, who handles counter-terrorism issues, and provided him with the names of the scientists working with anthrax. Boyle told Bowman the Ft. Detrick scientists were not to be trusted.

In addition to then destroying the anthrax, the FBI "retained every independent life-scientist it could locate as part of its fictitious investigation, and then swore them all to secrecy so that they cannot publicly comment on the investigation or give their expert opinion," Boyle said.

Boyle pointed out that Bowman is the same FBI agent "who played a pivotal role in suppressing evidence which in turn prevented the issuance of a search warrant for the computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged 20th Al Qaeda hijacker on 11 September 2001, which might otherwise have led to foreknowledge and therefore prevention of those terrorist attacks in the first place."

A self-confessed Al Qaeda operative, Moussaoui was detained on immigration three weeks before 9/11 when a Minnesota flight school reported he was acting suspiciously.

Boyle asked if Bowman received an FBI award in December 2002, for "exceptional performance" because of his capacity "to forestall investigations, because of where they may lead?" He went on to inquire, "Could the real culprits behind the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, and the immediately following terrorist anthrax attacks upon Congress ultimately prove to be the same people?"

Because of its "bogus investigation," Boyle said, "the greatest political crime in the history of the United States of America since its founding on 4 July, 1776 - the anthrax attacks on Congress, which served not only to deliver a terrorist threat on its members, but actually to close it down for a period - may remain officially unresolved forever."

"Could it truly be coincidental," he continued, "that two of the primary intended victims of the terrorist anthrax attacks - Senators Daschle and Leahy - were holding up the speedy passage of the pre-planned USA Patriot Act ... an act which provided the federal government with unprecedented powers in relation to US citizens and institutions?"

Leahy is incoming Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and may have a personal interest in holding hearings to learn who tried to kill him. He recently said President George W. Bush should be "terrified" that he will be the new Chair.

Boyle's views are contained in his book Biowarfare and Terrorism, published by Clarity Press, Inc., of Atlanta, GA. His previously published titles include, Foundations of World Order, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, and Destroying World Order. Dr. Boyle holds a Doctor of Law Magna Cum Laude and a Ph.D. in political science, both from Harvard.

In a forward to the book, Dr. Jonathan King, Professor of Molecular Biology at M.I.T. and a founder of the Council for Responsible Genetics, said the government's "growing bioterror programs [described by Professor Boyle] represent a significant emerging danger to our own population."

A harsh critic of Pentagon biowarfare activities, Boyle pointed out in inflation-adjusted dollars the US spends more on them today than it did on the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb in World War II. He has accused the Bush administration of diverting the bio-tech industry "towards biowarfare purposes" and of making corrupting payoffs to Academia to turn university scientists to the pursuit of biowarfare work.

Sherwood Ross is an American journalist who writes on military and political topics. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com