PROJECT ANTHRAX
By Alex Constantine
PROJECT ANTHRAX II
The epidemic swept through Zimbabwe, the former
British colony of Southern Rhodesia, in the late
1970s. It killed 180 people, infected over 10,000,
devastated livestock, brought on economic disaster and
widespread hunger ... but not throughout Zimbabwe
indiscriminately, as you might expect. Only in black
areas. This epidemic was respectful of gated white
communities and politely kept out.1
Stephen Hatfill signed on with the Rhodesian Special
Air Service (SAS) and the Selous Scouts, a
counter-insurgency death squad that enforced apartheid
rule, before arriving at the Godfrey Huggins School of
Medicine. Some of the faculty were curious why the
Yank would stoop to studying at a backwater academy
like Huggins.
His admission was arranged by Robert Burns Symington,
an anatomy professor and neo-Nazi. "Symington is
strongly believed to have worked with the Ian
Smith-led white supremacist regime on its biological
warfare project," Africa's Sunday Mirror reported in
2002. "The Zimbabwe authorities have since established
that [Smith's] security forces, particularly the much
feared Selous Scouts, stealthily distributed the
deadly anthrax spore among the hungry cattle of the
Rhodesian Tribal Trust Lands, where most Africans
lived, and seeded cholera into the rivers."
STURM UND DRANG (UND JURMS)
"Thirteen years after Zimbabwe's independence, a
former senior white member of the Rhodesian Security
forces admitted the use of anthrax in the war by the
military. 'It is true that anthrax was used in an
experimental role and the idea came from the Army
Psychological Operations,' he said." The psychology of
genocide isn't sophisticated - guerillas were
scapegoated for the outbreak.2
One of the Selous Scout's favored tactics was mailing
anthrax spores through the mail, embedded in the glue
on envelope flaps.3
Hatfill. You know the type. A student at the medical
school's radiation oncology department recalls that
Hatfill sported a 9mm pistol, and boasted of past
paramilitary glories in Vietnam and Zimbabwe.4
In 1984, he moved on to study at South African medical
schools, joined the military. While in the area,
Hatfill befriended Eugene Terre Blanche, leader of the
Afrikaner Resistance Movement, the South African Nazi
Party.5 After a year-long tour in Anarctica, he
pressed on to the States, and found employment at the
National Institutes of Health. "The PhD certificate he
submitted to NIH could have easily been tracked back
by authorities and exposed as a forgery," Marilyn
Thompson, author of The Killer Strain: Anthrax and a
Government Exposed, said in a blogged Q&A hosted by
UCLA's School of Public Health in 2003, "but it was
overlooked and Hatfill's credentials helped him gain
access to sensitive government agencies. USAMRIID
allowed him in as a contract researcher."6
The first casualty of the anthrax mailings was Bob
Stevens, a photo editor at a tabloid that had run an
article blasting the Saudi royals. From the CDC
report: "On October 4, 2001, we confirmed the first
bioterrorism-related anthrax case identified in the
United States is a resident of Palm Beach County,
Florida. Epidemiologic investigation indicated that
exposure occurred at the workplace through
intentionally contaminated mail..."7
It's within the realm of possibility that 911
hijackers Mohammed Atta and Ahmed Alhanzawi were the
first to contract the disease, despite FBI denials.
These have not held up well over time.
In March 2002, the New York Times reported that Atta
and his entourage "identified themselves as pilots
when they came to the emergency room of Holy Cross
Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., last June. One had
an ugly, dark lesion on his leg," and "in October, a
pharmacist in Delray Bea ch, Fla., said he had told
the F.B.I. that two of the hijackers, Mohamad Atta and
Marwan al-Shehhi, came into the pharmacy looking for
something to treat irritations on Mr. Atta's hands."
Dr. Christos Tsonas thought Alhanzawi's wound curious,
but cleaned it and prescribed medication. "After Sept.
11, when federal investigators found the medicine
among the possessions of one of the hijackers, Ahmed
Alhaznawi, Dr. Tsonas reviewed the case and arrived at
a new diagnosis. The lesion, he said in an interview
this week, 'was consistent with cutaneous anthrax.'"
Dr. Thomas Inglesby of John Hopkins, and Dr. Tara
O'Toole, assistant secretary for health and safety at
the Energy Department, sided with Dr. Tsonas.
Thompson followed every step in the Bureau's
investigation, and she finds it entirely possible that
Atta and Alhaznawi had some contact with anthrax
spores: "The FBI contends that it pursued a hijacker
connection in the early days and be ©came convinced
that they were not involved in these mailings - mainly
because the anthrax strain used was a military
research strain. Many people in Florida, however, who
know about the hijackers' movements in that part of
the country in the months before 9/11, do not believe
the FBI pursued this with enough vigor..."
The Times: "In an interview, Dr. O'Toole said that
after consulting with additional medical experts on
the Alhaznawi case, she was 'more persuaded than ever'
that the diagnosis of cutaneous anthrax was
correct..."
It was widely reported that Mohammed Atta's cell took
flight school training in Boca Raton, not far from
American Media, Inc., where Stevens worked, and rented
apartments from the wife of an editor of The Sun,
published by AMI.8
Others continued the mailings after 911. The Times:
"They would probably have needed an accomplice to mail
the tainted letters.... The four recovered anthrax
letters we re postmarked on Sept. 18 and Oct. 9 in
Trenton."9
But the mailings weren't confined by domestic borders.
In November 2001, the CDC's web site in Atlanta
confirmed that a tainted letter had been sent from
Switzerland to Chile. Dr. Antonio Banfi, a
pediatrician at a children's hospital in Santiago,
received the letter. He suspected that something was
amiss because it had been postmarked in Zurich but had
a Florida return address.10
In 2003, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports,
Maureen Stevens, the widow of the first victim, filed
a wrongful-death suit that "could embarrass the U.S.
government and provide insight into the ongoing
investigation of the fall 2001 bioterrorism attacks."
The "embarrassing" lawsuit held that spores "were
known to be missing from an Army laboratory at Fort
Detrick, Md., as early as 1992," and that the
litigants "accuse the government of failing to
adequately secure them. 'The bottom line is that a lo
t of our [FOIA] requests were not acknowledged or were
not answered or responded to.'"11
Maureen Stevens' lawsuit was filed in Palm Beach
County Circuit Court. It named Ft. Detrick-USAMRIID,
Battelle Memorial Institute and other possible sources
of the anthrax - and BioPort Corp., of Lansing, Mich.,
a vaccine manufacturer.
The name BioPort is synonymous with mismanagement and
contaminated product.
The company was founded on June 22, 1995 by Yoav
Stern, a former avionics system officer specializing
in F-15, A-4, Mirage and Kfir fighter jets for the
Israeli Air Force. He was also commander of a flight
training unit, and a deputy squadron commander. The
BioPort web site reports that one Zive R. Nedivi has
been the CEO, president and a director of the company
since June 1995. Mr. Nedivi also served in the Israeli
Air Force and was the founder "of the predecessor of
the company, an indirectly wholly-owned subsidiary of
Rada Electro £nic Industries Ltd."12
Three of BioPort's directors:
Niv Harizman: A director of the Company since December
1997. From January 1998 onward, Harizman was a
principal with BT Alex. Brown Incorporated, the
investment banking subsidiary of Bankers Trust New
York Corporation. From June 1996 until January 1998,
Mr. Harizman was a Vice President with Alex. Brown. He
started with Alex. Brown in 1995.
General William Lyon: Retired Air Force general,
currently serves as a director of Board of Fidelity
National Financial, Inc. Chairman of the Research and
Development Institute at the Air Force Academy.
Most interestingly of all, on the BioPort board sat
another Iran-contra connection:
Admiral William J. Crowe, Jr.: A director of the
company since March 1999. From 1985-89, Admiral Crowe
held the position of chairman of the Joint Chiefs
under President Reagan. After retirement from the
military in 1989, Admiral Crowe was a c eounselor at
the Center for Strategic and International Studies in
Washington. He has also served as chairman of the
notorious President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory
Board, 1993-94, and served as U.S. ambassador to the
UK and Northern Ireland, 1994-97. Admiral Crowe has
previously served as a director of Merrill Lynch,
Texaco and General Dynamics. He currently serves as a
director of Bioport, and Intervac, an investment firm.
He is a part-time senior advisor to Global Options
LLC. The admiral commanded U.S. forces in the Middle
East, was the commander-in-chief of NATO forces in
Southern Europe, and headed up the nation's largest
geographical military operation, the U.S. Pacific
Command.13
Lois Battuello dug into BioPort's financial records,
compared them with the inside-trade put option
activity preceding 911, and found a jostling for
position in financi tal circles that suggests
premeditation of 911 and the anthrax attacks: "Niv
Harizman was with Alex. Brown (BT for Bankers Trust),"
she points out. "This is the firm that executed the
'puts' prior to September 11 that plunged the stocks
of American Airlines, United Airlines, Boeing, some
brokerage houses, and several reinsurance companies
(some inter-locked) including AXA Assurance, Swiss Re
and Munich Re. These trades hubbed from Alex. Brown,
which was acquired with Deutsche Bank's acquisition of
Bankers Trust. The gent heading Alex. Brown unit,
Deutsche's trading-brokerage arm, was terminated
rather suddenly. Former director of enforcement for
SEC, Richard Walker, took a position as staff counsel
for Deutsche."
Niv Harizman "is a dark side," Battuello says, "on the
Chicago Board of Options Exchange (put into play by
First Chicago group, Robert Angelo Podesta) when Peter
G. Peterson (school under MI6) was Secretary of
Commerce in 1972-73 under Nixon. And Robert Podesta
was UnderSecretary of Commerce - both Chicago - pushed
through legislation to approve creation of Chicago
Board of Options Exchange. (Can't have options trading
as it exists in its current form without options on
equities to pair, i.e., can't have a bubble economy
without a bubble machine). Peterson, currently
chairman of the New York Fed, moved up the ranks along
notorious Chicago bank lines - 1985 sets up the
Blackstone Group and [Iran-contra's] Frank Carlucci
sets up the Carlyle Group the same year. Admiral
Crowe, following retirement in 1989, held board
positions at Merrill Lynch, General Dynamics and
Texaco, all very 'Republican' companies at the time
... "14
[TO BE CONTINUED]
NOTES
1) Meryl Nass, M.D., "Zimbabwe's Anthrax Epizoodic,"
Bioterror: Manufacturing Wars the American Way, edited
by Ellen Ray and William H g. Schaap, New York: Ocean
Press, 2003, p. 29.
2) "Zimbabwean authorities have made several reports
that indicate that Rhodesians were using biological
warfare against guerillas during the liberation war,
but these have not received international coverage." -
Innocent Chofamba-Sithole and Norman Mlambo,
"Ex-Rhodesian under probe for US anthrax attacks,"
Sunday Mirror, July 9, 2002.
http://www.africaonline.co.zw/mirror/stage/archive/020709/national8599.html
3) Wayne Madsen, "Anthrax and The Agency,"
CounterPunch.org, April 8, 2002.
4) See, "The Anthrax Letters"
http://www.monitor.net/monitor/0208a/0208a-404.html
... This site offers a description of the covert
tactics of the Selous Scouts, "a wolf pack. A handful
of fighters would drop into the back country disguised
as rebels. Living off the land for weeks without
support, they would relentlessly track d down their
opponents and kill them, even if it meant crossing
into neighboring countries in violation of
international law. Their training taught them to live
off the barren land during their long pursuit on foot,
drinking fetid water and eating carrion scraps. Some
articles claim that they were responsible for two out
of every three enemy fatalities in the civil war.
Admirers and vets boast that the Selous Scouts were
the most skilled and ruthless guerrilla warfare
fighters in history."
5) See, "The Biovangelist" web site.
http://jdo.org/hatfill.htm
6) UClA Department of Epidemiology, School of Public
Health, "Reporter Interview on Steven Hatfill
Article," September 15, 2003.
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/reporterinterview.html,"
7) Centers for Disease Control, "Bioterrorism-Related
Anthrax: First Case of Bioterrorism-Related
Inhalational Anthrax i dn the United States, Palm
Beach County, Florida, 2001."
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol8no10/02-0354.htm
8) William J. Broad and David Johnston, "Report
Linking Anthrax and Hijackers Is Investigated," New
York Times, March 23, 2002.
9) Ibid. 10) AP report, "Anthrax Case in Chile
Confirmed," November 23, 2001.
http://www.usenet.com/newsgroups/talk.environment/msg06625.html
11) Kathy Bushouse, "Security at Issue in Widow's
Case," South Florida Sun-Sentinel, September 28, 2003.
12) Alex Constantine post, "Adm. Crowe, Bioport and
the Put Option Activity," December 5, 2001.
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&frame=right&th=88439d0c0d6bf5d2&se
ekm=alexx12-65A234.12015319122000%40nntp.we.mediaone.net
13) CSIS web site:
http://www.csis.org/html/alumni/crowew.html
14) Lois Ann Battuello, e-mail exchange with author,
December 5, 2001.