Skeletons in the closet?

I have no doubt Covid-19 was China's bioterrorism. But then why is the US seemingly colluding in the cover up?

A reader of my previous article, Pete Lincoln, commented that during SARS many Chinese speculated online that it was a US bioweapon. This may have been the Wumao pushing baseless propaganda but - as I’m known to berate others for being closed-minded towards a bioweapon scenario - it would be hypocritical not to explore this rabbit-hole too.

I’m certain that: SARS-1 was terrorism; that the cover-up was orchestrated by the PLA; and that SARS-CoV-2 was a PLA bioweapon whose release and misattribution was planned (even if not everything went according to plan). My conviction is based on hard evidence compiled over 6 years, I’m unlikely to change my mind. But while the PLA helped cover it up, there’s no hard evidence they perpetrated the SARS-1 terrorist attacks. That just seemed obvious - why would they cover up someone else’s crime? But it’s unwise to rely on intuition or assume anything about this subject, rife with disinformation and deception.

In similar vein I can’t explain why the US is avoiding a proper enquiry into the origin of SARS-CoV-2. There’s at least prima facie evidence of it being a PLA bioweapon. Why aren’t defense and national security types earnestly trying to assemble evidence for the prosecution - especially now China is recognized as the main strategic threat? Instead, US agencies seem to be actively helping China cover-up by blocking the release of information - why?

Explanations like “because the US supplied China with know-how and funding” don’t stack up. Embarrassment over the errors of judgement of a few administrators and scientists doesn’t warrant ignoring the possibility of a BW cause of a devastating pandemic. Perhaps there are some weightier considerations that aren’t being shared with the public?

Skeletons in the closet perhaps?

For this article, I’ll argue the Wumao side of the proposition that “SARS was a US bioweapon”. Even if untrue, it leads down some interesting burrows.

Anthrax Redux

As the US and its allies headed towards war with Iraq, the global public was largely unconvinced of the threat, and opposed to invasion. In the US, a majority were in favor, support had leapt after 9/11. Even so, there was scant evidence that Iraq had any involvement in 9/11. Polls also showed support would be stronger if the war had UN approval. So the Bush administration set out to make the case that Iraq was part of a global network of terror, supplying technology and know-how for WMDs including bioweapons, to be deployed by Jihadist terrorists on US soil.

One week after 9/11, the first batch of anthrax-laced letters were sent. They contained crude Jihadist tropes “DEATH TO AMERICA DEATH TO ISRAEL ALLAH IS GREAT” and had the date “09-11-01” at the top. Was this evidence a BW capable state (i.e. Iraq) was supplying Al-Qaeda with anthrax?

The first batch of letters was postmarked September 18th, 2001 and sent to various media outlets. They contained anthrax spores in a relatively coarse, unrefined form, that tended to clump together and didn’t become airborne readily. They resulted in just one death, most victims suffered cutaneous infections (through cuts and abrasions on the skin) rather than inhalational. It’s conceivable that such an attack would be within the capabilities of Jihadists acting alone. The letters included a warning to “TAKE PENACILIN [sic] NOW”, advice which seems incompatible with Al-Qaeda’s modus operandi of maximum carnage.

A later batch of letters postmarked October 9th contained a more refined grade of anthrax - so fine it was able to escape through pores in the envelope and infect postal workers. It became airborne with the slightest disturbance, and infected victims’ lungs. Initial analysis by USAMRIID suggested it had been adulterated with nanoparticles of silica. The additive kept the fine spore particles from clumping together allowing it to aerosolize more readily. This second batch seemed “weaponized” to a degree that required advanced knowledge and a well-equipped lab. Perhaps the work of a state actor working in conjunction with Jihadists? The media joined the dots, reporting rumors from “intelligence sources” about a meeting between Al-Qaeda’s Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence that took place in Prague. This rumor was later refuted by Czech President Vaclav Havel, and declassified documents show the CIA also doubted the story.

Then, a bombshell. The anthrax was sequenced and determined to have been of the same strain as that kept in US and allies’ military research institutions for vaccine development. The FBI focus immediately turned to the possibility of an inside job - perhaps a “lone wolf” rogue scientist.

A Secret US Biowarfare Program

Just one week before 9/11, journalists Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William Broad exposed a clandestine US bioweapons program in an article in the New York Times. The projects were led by the CIA, the DIA and DTRA, although implemented by security cleared employees at private contractors Battelle and SAIC. The journalists expanded on the story in a book “Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War” published six weeks later - by then the US was in the midst of the Amerithrax crisis.

They identified three projects by name:

• •Project Bacchus which simulated terrorists attempting to make an effective BW using improvised facilities and off-the shelf products. This project didn’t work with anthrax but used low-pathogenic anthrax-like simulants.

• •Project Jefferson aimed to genetically engineer a strain of anthrax that was resistant to available vaccines. Russia was already known to possess such a strain. The end goal was to develop a more broadly effective vaccine for warfighters.

• •Project Clear Vision attempted to recreate Russia’s “bomblet” delivery systems for aerosol bioweapons to study dispersal patterns under different atmospheric conditions.

The program had been initiated late in the Clinton administration, though Clinton apparently hadn’t been informed. Aspects of the projects skirted the boundaries of legality under the Bioweapons Convention (BWC), although CIA and DoD lawyers had cleared them, as they were (arguably) defensive in nature.

In July, 2001, the US abruptly withdrew from negotiations to amend the BWC to include compliance monitoring, arguing it would hinder biodefense efforts. It almost certainly would have required disclosure of this secret program, and inspections of the facilities involved.

Initially, the FBI’s main suspect was Stephen Hatfill - a colorful character who had fought in the Rhodesian civil war. It had been a war of deception fought against guerilla insurgents. Biological and chemical weapons were used - including anthrax.

Hatfill worked as a scientist at USAMRIID until 1999 when he left to join the contractor SAIC working on Project Bacchus. He commissioned a study from William C. Patrick - who had been head of “product development” at the Biological Warfare Laboratories in the era when the US still had an offensive BW program. Patrick had extensive knowledge of the weaponization of anthrax, smallpox and other pathogens. Hatfill wanted to know about the viability of various kinds of attack – one scenario being anthrax posted in a standard envelope through the mail.

The Baltimore Sun: “Scientist theorized anthrax mail attack”

Project Bacchus didn’t work with anthrax, but simulants. Curiously, two of the letters in the first batch were found to have minor contamination with a rare strain of Bacillus subtilis. This had been a commonly used simulant in earlier experiments - such as those conducted by William Patrick at Dugway Proving Ground in the 1960s.

Evidence for the Source of the 2001 Attack Anthrax

While Project Bacchus had no anthrax, its sister project Jefferson did. Project Jefferson was based at Battelle’s facilities near Columbus, Ohio. Jefferson had the exact strain that matched most closely the anthrax in the letters. It had been obtained from USAMRIID’s flask RMR 1029, a stock that was maintained by vaccinologist Bruce Ivins.

On August 23rd, 2001, Stephen Hatfill’s security clearance was revoked by DoD for unstated reasons. As this was a requirement to work on Bacchus, he lost his job 6 months later. The FBI belatedly searched his house and tapped his phone, but he was never charged. After several years under suspicion, he sued them, winning a $5.8 million payout in 2008.

By around 2006, Bruce Ivins had become the FBI’s main suspect, until his presumed suicide in 2008. After his death, a review commissioned by the National Academy of Sciences found that the FBI’s scientific evidence wasn’t conclusive that Ivins was the perpetrator. A grand jury had already failed to indict him on the strength of circumstantial evidence. Nonetheless, while the NAS review was still in progress, the Department of Justice closed the case, announcing that Ivins had been the sole perpetrator.

Some have expressed suspicion that Amerithrax had been an orchestrated false flag attack, the motive being to bolster the case for the invasion of Iraq. This seems plausible to me. The attacks - particularly the second set - appear to have been calibrated to manipulate public opinion rather than the work of a single mentally ill individual. The case was closed prematurely, with leads left unfollowed, scientific questions unresolved, and contradictory evidence overlooked.

As Fort Detrick refined its plans for a biological strike, the Pentagon also investigated how it might produce fake incidents that could create popular outrage and backing for a Cuban invasion. Castro was to be falsely blamed for such covert American acts as hijacking planes, sinking boats carrying Cuban refugees, terrorizing Miami or Washington, D.C. and even blowing up an American ship in Cuban waters. The architect of the pretext strategy was General Lemnitzer, the same man who told President Eisenhower about the military uses of incapacitating germ weapons.

Operation Northwoods: false flag attacks that may have seen Americans murdered on US soil was proposed in 1962, but rejected by President Kennedy. From: “Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War”

But what does this have to do with SARS?

Connecting dots - USAMRIID, Baric

Another present-day mystery is why Ralph Baric seems to be disingenuously denying even the possibility of an artificial origin of SARS-CoV-2. He has repeatedly used his standing as a government trusted expert to claim there’s no evidence of engineering when there clearly is - even if it is arguably not dispositive. Some have inferred from his behavior that he is responsible for engineering it, but there are other possibilities: he could be shielding others, obeying government orders, or trying to protect the reputation of his lab and his craft so as to continue working unhindered.

Richard Preston is a well-known author of both fiction and non-fiction books about bioterrorism and infectious disease. One of his fiction books “The Cobra Event” is said to have spurred Bill Clinton into taking the bioterrorism threat seriously. A non-fiction book “The Demon in the Freezer”, documents the experiences of scientists at USAMRIID during the anthrax era. One of the scientists featured in the book, Lisa Hensley, completed her PhD under Baric at UNC in 1997, before starting at USAMRIID. Preston describes her being trained in BSL-4 procedures by none other than Stephen Hatfill.

Hensley studied with Baric at the time he was conducting experiments into the cross-species transmission of mouse coronavirus MHV, using targeted recombination, and serial passaging in cell cultures. Her PhD thesis is titled “Molecular mechanisms of the cross-species transmission of mouse hepatitis virus”. She used cell cultures containing cells from more than one host species to adapt MHV so that it could infect not only mice, but hamster, primate and human cells. Using antibodies to block the usual MHV receptor, she was then able to “train” this mutant virus to switch to binding a different receptor.

This is one way that a bat virus precursor of SARS might have been “humanized”. However, there’s no record of Henley working on coronaviruses while at USAMRIID before SARS. She was focused on Ebola and smallpox - which were perceived to be the most serious bioterrorist threats.

Aerosolization is another theme of her work, specifically the different pathology of viruses with this method of inoculation:

During this period the Baric lab was developing its “No se’em” reverse genetic system (RGS) for coronaviruses. The first, for TGEV was published in 2000, then for MHV in 2002. Once the SARS coronavirus had been identified , isolated and sequenced, they were able to quickly adapt their system for it. Their SARS RGS was tested at USAMRIID, as Baric’s own BSL-3 lab at UNC was still under construction. Hensley and her supervisor Peter Jahrling are credited on the paper.

A New York Times article by William Broad of April 6th, 2003 is puzzling in that scientists seem confident dismissing bioterrorism, and declaring SARS natural - before a zoonotic host had been identified or the virus had even been sequenced. The scientists quoted include Baric’s collaborator Mark Denison, and Hensley’s boss Peter Jahrling.

Scientists may have found it easy to get coronaviruses to switch hosts in a lab, but that doesn’t imply it happens frequently in nature. Recombination requires that two different viruses infect the same host cell, so they must already be able to infect that species to some degree. Persistent infection, which gives the virus the time needed to adapt, is far easier to achieve in cell culture where there is no immune system attacking it - than in vivo. Before SARS, most coronaviruses were known to infect just one, or a small number of closely related species.

CIA Gene

Another USAMRIID alumnus, Gene Johnson, is the focus of another (non-fiction) book by Preston - “The Hot Zone”. Johnson was best known for sampling wildlife (including bats) in Africa, searching for the origin of Ebola and Marburg. Although unsuccessful in this, he is credited with discovering a related filovirus, Ravn.

In 1999, Johnson left USAMRIID to become deputy director of the CIA’s bioweapons counter-proliferation group. He led Project Clear Vision which, like Project Jefferson, was contracted to Battelle in Columbus, Ohio. Clear Vision started out trying to replicate the Soviet aerosol bomblet, work which arguably didn’t violate the BWC or need approval from the President, but the scope quickly grew - in an alarming direction.

“Although Clear Vision had initially focused on Soviet weapons, intelligence officials said its planners recognized from the start that they would have to address the military implications of gene splicing — a view reinforced by reports of such research abroad. Scientists working at the agency’s direction took the first steps to create a superbug. Intelligence officials said this work included a number of genetic manipulations to identify genes that could be moved into pathogens to make them more deadly. But that work was halted. Intelligence officials said that no target gene was ever moved into a pathogen. Even so, intelligence officials said, the agency’s lawyers remained convinced that the germ treaty allowed such research.”

From “Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War”

In early 2001, Gene Johnson left his management role to resume hand-on science (still at the CIA). There are no publications relating to his later work there. He died in 2019.

There’s no evidence that Hensley and/or Johnson had anything to do with engineering SARS, but they had the necessary skills and know-how for isolating a novel zoonotic virus and adapting it to become human infectious. As with Baric, key aspects of their work are in the public domain, allowing others with the necessary skills and facilities to adopt their techniques.

Lacking a backbone

While know-how, technology and facilities are more than adequate, access to physical samples and/or viral isolates would have been a barrier to a hypothetical American SARS engineering project in 2002.

SARS appears to be a recombinant of two geographically distinct clades of bat virus. One clade is widely distributed across Africa and Europe, perhaps into Central Asia. Agencies funded by the DoD’s GEIS program were actively sampling in Africa at the time. Bats were of enormous interest as the suspected host of Ebola, Marburg, Reston filoviruses, and the more recent discoveries Nipah and Hendra. Large fruit bats were the suspected reservoir of most, but Nipah infection had been detected in at least one small insectivorous bat. Conceivably, a sarbecov from this clade may have been discovered in the course of searching for other viruses.

But SARS’ genomic “backbone” comes from a clade that is exclusive to China and South-East Asia. Based on its phylogenetic relationship to other reliable discoveries, it originates near China’s Guanxi province, or perhaps near the border on the Vietnamese side. Although GEIS was making diplomatic inroads in South-East Asia and had engaged with Vietnam in some health projects, the US military wouldn’t have been trusted to sample wildlife unsupervised. Russia was assisting Vietnam in collecting bat specimens, while Institut Pasteur had greater freedom of movement and a local lab.

There doesn’t seem an overt pathway for the US to have acquired the SARS backbone genome. Perhaps the CIA? Ken Alibek revealed the KGB had been an important source of genetic material for the Soviet BW program. Their agents routinely brought back unusual biological samples and isolates from all corners of the world - a clandestine predecessor to today’s overt pathogen discovery programs. Given the CIA interest in emulating Russia’s BW program, it’s possible, though unlikely.

China accuses Baric

In late August 2021, China’s Ambassador to the UN in Geneva wrote to the WHO demanding that they investigate the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 was a Baric/USAMRIID collaboration - Lisa Henley was named as a link between them.

Three weeks later (September 19th-20th) three important pieces of evidence surfaced at almost the same time.

• •The Banal viruses and a pre-print published by Institut Pasteur pointed to the origin of the precursor virus being in Laos, not China.

• •A massive survey of 17,000 bats purported to show that no SARS-CoV-2 related viruses existed in China. RaTG13 could no longer be found.

• •The DEFUSE proposal was released by DRASTIC (it had been leaked to them in July by a DARPA employee, Major Joseph Murphy, who asked that they not release it until he had legal clearance).

All three superficially support China’s claim - especially in conjunction with each other. Baric could have acquired the needed backbone virus from USAMRIID - as there had been a GEIS-sponsored bat sampling expedition to Laos in 2017. Then he may have inserted an FCS, as he had expressed interest in doing in DEFUSE. It’s a remarkable co-incidence these documents were released simultaneously, and so soon after the theory was floated by China.

Is there a motive?

US-China relations early in the millennium were constructive. In the wake of 9/11, China’s accession to the WTO was expedited, joining on December 11th, 2001. Bush cultivated a personal friendship with President Jiang Zemin, seeing China as a potential ally in the Global War on Terror, who had been particularly helpful in intermediating with North Korea.

Revisiting the SARS timeline, with US-China diplomacy overlaid, it is even more remarkable that a link to terrorism was never contemplated. Terrorism wasn’t only a US preoccupation - it was central to dialog with China at the time. High level meetings and calls, workshops and conferences at lower levels - it was a busy schedule. Some highlights:

Jan 20th, 2003: John Bolton in Beijing for talks on security and counterproliferation.

Feb 4th, 2003: Secretary of State Colin Powell meets China’s foreign minister.

Feb 6th, 2003: Powell presents the case for Iraq invasion at the UN, focused on the WMD threat. He shows photos of purported mobile BW factories and holds up a vial of beige powder, pretending it is anthrax.

Feb 7th: Bush and Jiang hold call to discuss Iraq. Jiang restates China’s view that arms inspectors be given more time but accepts US concerns are valid. France and Russia are more vocal in their opposition, making it clear they will veto any UN resolution seeking to legitimize the invasion.

Feb 8th-11th: Tens of millions of text messages are sent to Guangzhou citizens, warning of a mysterious and deadly disease spreading in the city. Authorities remain silent, contributing to mounting panic.

Feb 9th: Hong Kong raises the city’s terror threat level in response to the looming war. SCMP reports police are investigating leaflets “sympathetic to Osama bin Laden, proclaiming a ‘Terrorist New Era’”.

Feb 11th: SCMP reports on the panic over the mystery disease in Guangzhou, rumor of mass infection incident at Guangzhou’s World Trade Center. Municipal and provincial health authorities hold press conference, downplaying the scale and severity of the outbreak.

Feb 11th: CIA Director George Tenet addresses a congressional hearing, claims Al-Qaeda has BW capability.

Feb 11th: State Department Policy Director Richard Haass holds talks with Chinese counterparts on global security issues.

Feb 18th: Director of State Department’s anti-terrorism office visits Beijing.

Feb 18th: Chinese intellectuals hand a petition signed by 900 academics opposing the Iraq war to the US Embassy in Beijing.

Feb 21st: Super-spreader outbreak starts from room 911 of Hong Kong’s Hotel Metropole. This incident results in SARS spreading to Vietnam, Singapore, Canada - although this will not be known for several weeks.

Feb 24th: Powell flies to Beijing for talks.

Mar 7th: Powell meets China’s FM.

Mar 10th: Bush and Jiang Zemin hold call about Iraq and North Korea. National People’s Congress begins in Beijing.

Mar 10th: Eleven healthcare workers from one ward at HK’s Prince of Wales Hospital call in sick. The cluster will soon grow to 138 SARS cases.

Mar 15th: Hu Jintao officially elected President at the National People’s Congress. Super-spreader incident on Flight CA112 carries SARS from Hong Kong to Beijing, and onward to Taiwan.

Mar 17th: Powell calls new FM Li Zhaoxing to discuss Iraq.

Mar 18th: Bush calls new President Hu Jintao. US gives Saddam Hussein 48-hour ultimatum to leave Iraq.

Mar 19th (est.): SARS super-spreader incident at Hong Kong’s Amoy Gardens. This will become the largest mass infection event with over 330 cases eventually recognized.

Mar 19th: Hong Kong authorities first recognize the epidemiological significance of the Hotel Metropole.

Mar 20th: Operation Desert Storm begins. Powell calls State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan who demands an immediate halt to military operations.

Given the flurry of US-China diplomacy focused on global terrorism, with the US still hopeful for China’s endorsement of the invasion, it seems unlikely the IC could have missed signals suggesting terrorism - some of which were printed in mainstream media.

Had SARS been attributed to terrorists perhaps it might have helped sway China’s government and people to support the Iraq invasion.

Was that the intent?

Inconclusions

As terrorist acts go, SARS wasn’t very successful - at least not immediately. The lag from infection to onset of symptoms, the difficulty diagnosing an often mild disease with symptoms common to several others, an unknown pathogen for which no test existed, added to the challenges of contact tracing across international borders. It was eradicated before much of the evidence pointing to terrorism could be revealed. Although Ainscough’s depiction of an unknown disease spreading undetected may have seemed compelling to a terrorist, a non-infectious, but deadly agent (e.g. sarin or ricin) may have had greater psychological impact. If a hotel elevator had opened to a scene of corpses strewn about the 9th floor, the significance of room 911 would have been immediately obvious - and chilling.

Ainscough’s “days to weeks later” may have been the flaw in the plot.

SARS wasn’t infectious enough to transmit far without help from “super-spreaders” (i.e. mechanical aerosolization). SARS-CoV-2 was far more successful in this respect - lessons have been learned. But more infectious also means less controllable (a lesson for next time). SARS was also not terribly lethal - for most. Like SARS-CoV-2, severity was strongly correlated with age, although some younger people died in “super-spreader” incidents. A high dose of inhaled aerosolized virus is evidently more pathogenic.

Per my previous article, The PLA’s AMMS is heavily implicated in the cover-up. If the US was the perpetrator, there must have been a quid pro quo with China to buy their co-operation. In what form? Financial? Hank Paulson (than head of Goldman Sachs, later Treasury Secretary) was quick to fly to Beijing eager to buy provincial government distressed debt. Technology? The French-backed BSL-4 lab was fast-tracked, WIV scientists were welcomed to work and train in western BSL-4 labs. Diplomatic? The US cancelled a proposed UNHCR resolution condemning China’s human rights abuses, instead wiring millions of dollars to “promote human rights”. China’s nominees became first Advisor to the Director-General, then Director-General of WHO. Beijing hosted trilateral talks with North Korea in late April 2003. US-China relations remained exceptionally cordial. This doesn’t seem consistent with China having recently been the victim of an unprovoked BW attack.

Another possibility is that the US colluded in the PLA plot and cover-up. The US would garner support for its global anti-terrorism agenda, China for its agenda of domestic repression. Xinjiang and Tibetan separatists, the Hong Kong democracy movement and Falun Gong could be painted as terrorists and subjected to harsh crackdowns. Such an arrangement would have been made while Jiang Zemin was in charge, and perhaps Hu Jintao was less supportive.

Even if the US had no foreknowledge of SARS, if Amerithrax had involved US government agencies and/or the Bush administration, China may have known this and obtained hard evidence for leverage. You don’t talk about our bioterrorism, and we won’t talk about yours.

I can only speculate, but the merit of such a theory is that it can explain the premature declaration by scientists/government/media/think-tanks that SARS was natural. It can explain the failure to properly investigate SARS-CoV-2 or to contemplate any artificial origin other than a lab accident in the course of regular civilian research. In that scenario the US assumes partial responsibility for an unfortunate mishap, but no individuals are punished. The details are never revealed due to China’s non-co-operation - excused as “political sensitivities”, “bureaucratic dysfunction” or some similar mild rebuke.

Republican firebrands who previously pushed to hold China accountable have softened their tone since gaining power under Trump. Anyone briefed in a SCIF seems to exit muttering “we may never know, time to move on”. The bioweapon taboo is evident even among China hawks. It may be that China has the US “by the balls”. Although SARS-CoV-2 far more devastating in scale than Amerithrax or SARS, the US values its reputation too highly to risk exposure of past crimes.

I’m an unrepentant supporter of liberal democracy and despise China’s totalitarian regime. Democracy’s strength is that governments are transparent and accountable - or at least they should be. We don’t expect that democracies will never make mistakes or elect foolish leaders, only that dirty laundry will be aired, governments replaced, institutions reformed, without the system collapsing. In contrast, totalitarian regimes survive only through secrecy and enforced silence. Sadly, western governments and institutions now seem to be evading transparency and accountability - at times even resorting to breaking their own laws.

It’s a slippery slope.

Former Director of National Intelligence and current CIA Director John Ratcliffe, testifying before the Covid Select Committee while between jobs.

“If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth. This is why it must be suppressed more severely than anything else.”

Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless.

In my previous article I noted the conversion of US Navy/GEIS scientist Gregory Gray, to born-again One Health evangelist. He wasn’t alone. Former USAMRIID commanders David Franz (1995-98) and Gerald Parker (1998-2000) also joined the movement, Franz becoming a director of EcoHealth Alliance. Influential biowarfare/bioterrorism think-tank Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies rebranded as the Center for Health Security, institutionalizing One Health.

How did the experts get SARS so wrong?