The U.S. State Department, far from being an instrument of American diplomacy, is a boiling cauldron of neo-conservative impudence and arrogance unmatched since the days of the German Third Reich's Foreign Ministry. The State Department called charges from government, military, and political leaders around the world that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias fell victim to one of the many stockpiled CIA cancer weapons "absurd."
What is absurd is the State Department's selective use of recent American history. The historical record shows that the Central Intelligence Agency continued to possess and develop biological warfare weapons, including miniaturized weapons for political assassinations, long after the United States signed and ratified the 1972 Biological Warfare Convention banning the possession and research on such weaponry.
Violating the Biological Weapons Convention
Perhaps the State Department should brush up on the history of international conventions the United States has secretly broken. The following August 23, 1975 memo from CIA Deputy Director for Plans Thomas Karamessines to CIA director William Colby outlines how the CIA's Special Operation Division, a joint U.S. Army-CIA element at Fort Detrick, Maryland, was instructed to maintain a supply of toxins not included on the official Fort Detrick inventory list that was subject to President Richard Nixon's disposal order pursuant to the biological warfare convention agreement. The memo was provided to the Senate Church Committee investigating the abuses of the U.S. Intelligence Community. Concerned that Nixon's order might result in the destruction of the CIA's "germ supply," a contingency plan was developed to ship the CIA's toxins to Huntingdon Research Center at the Becton-Dickinson Company in Baltimore, a firm established in 1897 by Maxwell W. Becton and Fairleigh S. Dickinson. The company, now known as BD, specializes in injection and infusion products, including needles and syringes. One might wish to ask the State Department why the CIA, anxious to hide its supply of dangerous toxins, would select a firm that produces needles and syringes. The answer is quite simple, the CIA continued to develop toxic warfare weapons after the ratification of the treaty prohibiting their possession and use. The memo states that the "stockpile capability plus some research effort in delivery systems is funded at $75,000 per annum."
Since the 1970s, the bio-warfare capabilities of the United States, including the covert introduction of cancer-causing pathogens into targeted persons has mushroomed in cost and effectiveness. The use of nano-technology and micro-mechanical flying and crawling insects, coupled with bio-toxin payloads, is no longer in the realm of science fiction but is scientific fact.
Not only are cancer-causing biological toxins used for cancer weapons but inorganic elements are also employed. Only a few micrograms of beryllium and polonium-210 are required to cause the development of fibrotic tumors that result in lung cancer.
Among the "germs" in the CIA's bag of tricks were anthrax, tuberculosis, encephalitis, small pox, snake venom, and food poisoning, including salmonella.
Targeting Latin Aemrican leaders
In July 2006, during the MERCOSUR (Southern Cone Common Market) summit in Cordoba, Argentina, three leaders held a concurrent "People's Summit," which lambasted U.S. foreign and economic policy in Latin America. Attending the People's Summit were Cuba's Fidel Castro, Venezuela's Chavez, and Argentine President Nestor Kirchner. Shortly after returning to Havana from Cordoba, Castro fell violently ill with a mysterious gastrointestinal ailment. Castro recovered but CIA-linked media outlets in Miami's Cuban exile community began to falsely report that Castro died. In November 2006, Kirchner was diagnosed with an advanced form of colon cancer. However, Kirchner, who gave up the presidency in favor of his wife, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, in 2007, died from a sudden heart attack after it was revealed he was running to succeed her. In 2012, Cristina was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Chavez was first diagnosed with cancer that first appeared in his pelvic region in June 2011.
A July 26, 2006 Confidential cable from the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires complained about the People's Summit, decrying the fact that "Chavez and Castro dominated" and that the U.S. was trying to drive a wedge between Chavez and Castro on one hand and Kirchner and Brazil's Ignacio Lula da Silva on the other. The American scheming failed to work. Another, more sinister effort to derail Chavez, Castro, and Kirchner was needed.
Venezuela's acting President Nicolas Maduro; the head of the Venezuelan presidential guard, General Jose Ornella; Bolivian President Evo Morales, and Russian Communist Party leader all stated that they believed Chavez was slowly assassinated with a secret cancer weapon developed by Venezuela's enemies (they are primarily the United States and Canada). Maduro said Venezuela will set up a scientific commission to investigate the cause of Chavez's death.
Chavez said that Castro once told him: “Chavez take care. These people [the Americans] have developed technology. You are very careless. Take care what you eat, what they give you to eat . . . a little needle and they inject you with I don’t know what.” Another translation had Castro stating, "Chavez be careful, they’ve developed technology, be careful with what you eat, they could stick you with a small needle." Chavez passed Castro's warning on to Bolivian President Evo Morales and Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, both allies of Chavez. There have been rumors that Morales had a cancerous tumor removed from his nasal tract.
From La Paz, Morales said, "I am almost certain that this is a poisoning of Chavez."
The Bolivian leader likened the death of Chavez to the poisonings of Palestinian President Yasir Arafat and Latin American liberator Simon Bolivar.
Maduro called the Chavez's cancer a "scientific attack." In addition to all the other progressive Latin American leaders who developed cancer within a few years, Paraguay's former President Fernando Lugo (ousted in a 2012 CIA-backed coup) was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma; Brazil's former President Lula da Silva with throat cancer; and Brazil's current President Dilma Rousseff with axillar lymphoma, cancer of the lymphatic system. After Colombia's conservative president Juan Manuel Santos began peace talks with the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), via the offices of Chavez, Santos was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
History of U.S. cancer and other bio-weapons
One does not have to go back to the early days of the CIA to discover that Latin America has, since the 1930s, been a testing ground for American cancer weapons targeting human beings.
In 1931, Dr. Cornelius P. Rhoads, a white racist and anti-Latin American scientist with the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Investigations in San Juan, subjected 13 Puerto Ricans to experiments by injecting them with cancer-causing biological agents. The head of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, Pedro Albizu Campos, known as “El Maestro” to his followers, obtained a letter from Rhoads to a friend in which Rhoads wrote of Puerto Ricans:
“I can get a damn fine job here and am tempted to take it. It would be ideal except for the Porto [sic] Ricans. They are beyond doubt the dirtiest, laziest, most degenerate and thievish race of men ever inhabiting this sphere. It makes you sick to inhabit the same island with them. They are even lower than Italians. What the island needs is not public health work but a tidal wave or something to totally exterminate the population. It might then be livable. I have done my best to further the process of extermination by killing off 8 and transplanting cancer into several more. The latter has not resulted in any fatalities so far . . . The matter of consideration for the patients' welfare plays no role here - in fact all physicians take delight in the abuse and torture of the unfortunate subjects.”
Albizu complained to the League of Nations but it came to no avail. In 1950, Albizu was arrested in a crackdown on Puerto Rican nationalist activities on the island and Albizu was subjected to radiation burns and poisoning. There is little doubt that Rhoads, who directed the Army’s chemical and biological weapons programs at Fort Detrick, the Dugway Proving Ground and Deseret Test Center at Fort Douglas in Utah, and the Panama Canal Zone, subjected Albizu to revenge medical experimentation. Rhoads then went on to the senior staff of the Atomic Energy Commission, which also subjected American citizens to dangerous radiation tests.
The CIA's and Pentagon's cancer weapons research was largely based out of Fort Detrick, Maryland.
There is an unsettling footnote to the story of Albizu's death as a result of medical experiments. In 1957, a year after he suffered a stroke in prison, the CIA's favorite vendor for syringes and infusion devices, Becton-Dickinson, opened a manufacturing facility in Juncos, Puerto Rico. By the 1970s, when the CIA transferred its bio-weapon stockpile to Becton-Dickinson, the firm had established a major bio-science presence in Puerto Rico. Today, the firm partners with the William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation to provide HIV/AIDS testing in developing countries.
Puerto Rican Nationalist leader Pedro Albizu Campos was one of America's first victims of a bioweapons assassination.
Modern bio-warfare
AIDS first appeared during the Angolan civil war in the 1970s when Cuban troops fighting CIA- and South African-backed guerrillas came into contact with the disease. In the 1960, the CIA's Technical Services Department chief, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, born Joseph Scheider, came up with a exotic weapon that was to be used to poison Congolese nationalist prime minister Patrice Lumumba. It was never used but the CIA station chief in Leopoldville, Larry Devlin, was told to somehow slip the toxin, contained in a vial, to Lumumba. The toxin was never used and Devlin said he tossed the vial into the Congo River. Gottlieb had come up with other ingenious ways to kill Fidel Castro and Iraq's dictator Abdul Karim Kassem. It was none other than the CIA's loyal agent, Saddam Hussein, who tried but failed to kill Kassem on October 7, 1959.
The Clark Amendment of 1976 banned U.S. aid to military or paramilitary forces fighting in the post-independence civil war in Angola. Never deterred by the law, the CIA began to use intermediaries, including Israel and South Africa, to support pro-U.S. guerrillas fighting the central government of Marxist president Agostinho Neto. The CIA had rejected Neto's approach to the John Kennedy administration in 1962 to support the cause of Angolan independence from Portugal. Neto was seen by Langley as too pro-Communist and decided to back the weakest and most unpopular of the Angolan independence movements.
In 1976, the CIA and Pentagon continued their bio-weapons research at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectuous Diseases at Fort Detrick and Edgewood Arsenal, also in Maryland. Other parts of the Fort Detrick complex were turned over to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), which continued to conduct a liaison with the CIA and Pentagon elements at the facility. The CIA's research into cancer-causing agents centered on the Viral Cancer Program (VCP) of the NCI. One of the cancer weapon projects, funded by the NCI and Office of Naval Research, the latter a favorite research pass-through for the CIA, was called "Aerosol Properties of Potentially Oncogenic Viruses." The clear intent for the interest of the Navy and CIA was the delivery of cancer-causing weapons by aerosolized means. Most of the aerosolized cancer-causing efforts had been conducted from the 1960s to 1972 at the University of Ohio and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In addition to biological cancer-causing agents, research was also conducted on the production of carcinogenic chemicals.
A number of private pharmaceutical companies were also identified with the clandestine bio-war research, including Pfizer, Sandoz, Litton-Bionetics, and Hoffman-Laroche. The research also involved the secretive Department of Agriculture research center on Plum Island off the tip of Long Island.
Neto, who was targeted by the CIA in violation of congressional prohibitions, quickly developed cancer in 1979 and died in a Moscow hospital before the age of 57. Shortly thereafter, Cuban troops fighting in Angola for Neto's government began returning home suffering from HIV/AIDS. Just as with the cancers that have struck Latin American leaders, the CIA and State Department brushed off reports that the CIA created HIV/AIDS to infect Cuban troops a "Soviet disinformation" campaign.
In 1989, the General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches, Reverend Frank Chikane, fell extremely ill while on a visit to the United States. The FBI later concluded that Chikane had been exposed to an organophosphate toxin. The CIA was aware that the origin of the substance was the South African intelligence service. Furthermore, the CIA was aware of the Suoth African operation to kill Chikane.
Primary U.S. targets: Caribbean leaders
The CIA's bio-weapons may not have been trained only on nationalistic Latin American and black African leaders but also Afro-Caribbean leaders of islands the U.S. considers to be quasi-protectorates of Washington.
The United States has always considered Barbados as its number one willing ally among the English-speaking islands of the Caribbean. With its high per capita income and advanced infrastructure, Barbados was the Ronald Reagan administration's primary local water-carrier for the U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983. The pretext for the invasion was to "rescue" a number of American medical students from the St. George's University School of Medicine but in reality the invasion was to expel Cubans and other nationals of communist countries after a Marxist coup ousted the leftist Prime Minister Maurice Bishop. Bishop had long contended the medical school was a CIA front. In fact, its director, Sir Geoffrey Bourne, whose son, Peter Bourne, served in the U.S. Special Forces and was President Jimmy Carter's health policy adviser, may have served as the inspiration behind Robert Ludlum's "Bourne Identity" series of novels about CIA mind-controlled assassin Jason Bourne. After the Jonestown massacre in 1978, some of the CIA interlocutors for the Reverend Jim Jones's People's Temple operation in Guyana escaped to Grenada and were in contact with the St. George's Medical School.
During the next three decades, three Barbadian Prime Ministers who showed a tendency to question U.S. hegemony in the region all died very suddenly. The first was the backer of Reagan's invasion of Grenada, Prime Minister Tom Adams. Adams grew uneasy when the U.S. requested that the St. George's Medical School be moved to Barbados. A relative of Adam's told this reporter that Adams had been contacted by a representative of Soviet intelligence who briefed him on the role of the St. George's Medical School in carrying out inhumane CIA experiments that were follow-ons to the CIA's MKNAOMI and MKULTRA programs. MKNAOMI involved biological assassination weapons and MKULTRA was an umbrella program that involved psychologically-programmed assassins. Adams began to sent messages to the Reagan administration that he was no longer interested in hosting the St. George's Medical School in Barbados. On March 11, 1985, Adams died at the age of 53 from a sudden heart attack at his official residence. The CIA spun the story in the local press that Adams had been killed by the KGB in retaliation for his support for the U.S. invasion of Grenada.
The following year, former Prime Minister Errol Barrow, once again, became Prime Minister in a landslide election for his opposition party. Barrow was a bitter opponent of the U.S. invasion of Grenada and referred to Reagan as the "cowboy in the White House" and declared that Reagan was a programmed zombie and a very dangerous person.
On June 1, 1987, Barrow collapsed at his home and died. He was 66.
David Thompson became Prime Minister in 2008. At first, Washington believed him to be a bulwark against Chavez's growing popularity in the English-speaking Caribbean but soon, St. Vincent's leftist Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, who once preached radical politics at the University of the West Indies campus in Barbados, began to convince Thompson that Chavez was beneficial to the Caribbean Common Market (CARICOM) nations. Thompson showed signs of interest in two of Chavez's major projects, the
Bolivarian Initiative for the Americas (ALBA), a counterweight to Washington's Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), and PetroCaribe, which supplied inexpensive oil and gasoline to the CARICOM nations. Although Barbados, unlike St. Vincent, was not a member of ALBA, Gonsalves kept Thompson apprised of ALBA developments
According to a February 1, 2008 Confidential cable from U.S. ambassador to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean Mary Ourisman, she and U.S. embassy staff were concerned about Gonsalves initial meeting with Thompson concerning ALBA. Ourisman, whose foreign policy experience consisted of hosting GOP fundraisers with her wealthy Republican husband, the owner of automobile dealerships in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, was concerned about February 2008 visits planned by Chavez and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega to Antigua, Dominica, and St. Vincent. There was a fear by the CIA stations in the Eastern Caribbean that Chavez would convince other English-speaking nations like Barbados to join ALBA in return for reduced price fuel from Venezuela. For that reason, Washington was trying to exacerbate an old maritime boundary dispute between Barbados and Venezuela.
Thompson also incurred Washington's wrath over his growing ties with China and Cuba. Ourisman's cable warned: "Thompson continues Barbados' aversion to being seen as too close a friend of the U.S. and has rebuffed appeals for closer cooperation on UN human rights issues." Barbados rejected Washington's demands that it be more forceful in the United Nations against alleged human rights violations in Iran, Cuba, and other countries.
In March 2010, Thompson began complaining of stomach pains. In October, Thompson was dead from pancreatic cancer. He was 48.
In 2011, the Caribbean press began to openly worry about cancer striking Gonsalves after Chavez was diagnosed with the disease and Thompson died from it.
Dominica's Prime Minister Roosevelt "Rosie" Douglas had long been a thorn in the side of the United States. A conservative-turned-radical, Douglas was an outspoken opponent of Prime Minister Eugenia Charles's support for Reagan's invasion of Grenada. Douglas also nurtured close ties with Fidel Castro, Muammar Qaddafi, and Venezuela's Chavez. After years in the opposition, Douglas became Prime Minister of Dominica in January 2000. On October 2 later that year, Douglas was found dead at 10 am in his home 30 miles from the capital Roseau of unknown causes. He had returned the previous day from a CARICOM summit in Jamaica. Douglas was 58. His successor and fellow leftist, Pierre Charles, became ill in Febriary 2003 and had to undergo angioplasty surgery. He died while returning from a Cabinet meeting from a heart attack. He was 49.
Designer bio-weapons in the hands of the neo-cons
In 1986, the deputy assistant Secretary of Defense for policy testified before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that the Pentagon had the capability to develop "designer" biological weapons for specific military purposes. The official who ecstatically showed a keen interest in designer biological warfare weapons was Douglas J. Feith, who, during the George W. Bush administration was one of the neo-conservative architects of the ill-fated invasion and occupation of Iraq. Feith, the son of the former President of the Zionist Organization of America, is also known to be a cipher for Israeli intelligence.
Over the years, the CIA and Pentagon developed various methods to infect their enemies with toxins. They ranged from the simple -- syringes, toxin-tipped needles, and ingesting tainted food and drink to the more sophisticated, including transmission from clothing, especially underwear; inhalation; and even the poisoning of toothpaste, the latter one of the many MKNAOMI plans to kill Fidel Castro. Although the United States and Britain ratified the 1972 Biological Warfare Convention, both nations cooperated on bio-warfare agents long after the ratification. Detrick and Edgewood in the United States and Porton Down and Nancecuke in the United Kingdom jointly cooperated in research, development, and possession of bio-warfare agents.
Over the years, the United States also reportedly maintained covert biological weapons facilities in Lahore, Pakistan; Môle St. Nicholas, Haiti; Jakarta, Indonesia; Cairo, Egypt; Lima and Iquitos, Peru; Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; Bangkok, Thailand; Camp Zama, Japan; Enoggera, Australia; Warsaw, Poland; Kamina airfield, Zaire; and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
In 1981, Cuba and many Caribbean islands reported outbreaks of dengue fever linked to a CIA operation to sicken the Cuban population. In May 1981, a sharp increase in cases of dengue fever, known to be transmitted by mosquitoes carried by tropical storm winds for hundreds of miles, began appearing all over the Caribbean, but particularly in Havana, Camaguey, and Cienfuegos. In August, cases in Cuba spiked to well over 330,000. But "collateral damage" of dengue infections was also visited upon Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Guatemala, Trinidad and Tobago, St. Lucia, Anguilla, Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, and Florida.
Dominica's Rosie Douglas, one of many Caribbean and Latin American leaders suspected of being assassinated by bio-weapons, courtesy of the CIA.
Cancer warfare
If, as the State Department and Obama administration officials proclaim, it is absurd to suggest the United States can infect someone with cancer cells or viruses, why did Drs. Lawrence Loeb and Kenneth Tartof of the Institute for Cancer research in Philadelphia, writing in the July 23, 1976 issue of Science magazine, call for an immediate ban on "all experiments involving co-cultivation of known oncogenic viruses with primate viruses" because, as they further wrote, "the production of malignant tumors in a variety of primate species suggests the possibility of creating viruses that are oncogenic for humans?" Some of the U.S. government's primate cancerous tumor research was conducted at Tulane University's Delta Regional Primate Research Center in cooperation with Tulane's Dr. Alton Ochsner. a top cancer researcher who also maintained links with the CIA.
When the Venezuelan government begins its investigation of how Chavez was infected with aggressive cancer, it should begin by translating the wealth of documents on U.S. cancer weaponry available from the CIA's own historical record, as well as records from dozens of research laboratories, archives, and universities across the United States. Venezuela can then begin to trace back Chavez's activities and match them with known methods used by the CIA top infect their victims. Depositions from the doctors who have attended to cancer patients Neto, Thompson, Lugo, both Kirchners, Lula, Santos, Rousseff, Morales, Castro, as well as former Croatian Socialist Prime Minister Ivica Racan, dead at 63 from kidney cancer; ABC News anchor Peter Jennings, dead at 67 from lung cancer; Jamaican singer Bob Marley, dead at 36 from skin cancer; former Finnish Prime Minister Ahti Karjalainen, dead at 67 from pancreatic cancer; Senator Frank Church (who investigated the CIA's use of cancer-causing weapons), dead at 59 from pancreatic cancer; Canadian New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton at 61 from prostate cancer; and CBS newsman and author of Charlie Wilson's War George Crile III, dead at 61 from pancreatic cancer.
Other U.S. victims?
Controversy surrounds the deaths of a number of other political leaders who stood in the way of America's imperialistic designs. They include Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser (heart attack at 52), former Indonesian President Sukarno (kidney failure at 69), Danish Social Democratic Prime Ministers Hans Hedtoft and his successor Hans Christian Hansen (Hedtoft of a sudden heart attack at 51 and Hansen of cancer at 52), leftist New Zealand Prime Minister Norman Kirk ("heart problems" at age 51), Jamaican Prime Minister Donald Sangster (subarachnoid hemorrhage at 55), Cypriot President Archbishope Makarios (heart attack, age 63), Palestinian President Yasir Arafat (possibly poisoned by thallium, age 75), former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook (heart attack at 59), Norwegian Foreign Minister Johan Jorgen Holst (stroke at 56) and his wife, Dr. Marianne Heiberg, director of UNRWA, UN agency for Palestinian refugees (heart attack at 58), Eritrean Foreign Minster Ali Said Abdela (heart attack at 56), Algerian President Houari Boumediene (rare
Waldenström's macroglobulinemia blood disease at 46), St. Kitts-Nevis Prime Minister Robert Bradshaw (prostate cancer at 61) and his successor Paul Southwell of heart failure at 65, Guinean leftist President Ahmed Sekou Toure while undergoing heart surgery in Cleveland at age 62, Guyana President Forbes Burnham while undergoing routine throat surgery at age 62, Brazilian President-elect Tancredo Neves, age 75, on eve of inauguration of sudden abdominal disease -- like Chavez he could never be sworn into office and died a month later with his vice president, Jose Sarney, taking over as acting president -- this may be the CIA template for the assassination of Chavez), former Brazilian President Joao Goulart (heart attack at age 57), former Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz, drowned in bathtub at age 57), former Chilean President Frei (septicemia while undergoing routine hiatal hernia operation at age 71), Chilean poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda (heart attack, possible poisoning, at 69), Grenada Prime Minister Herbert Blaize (prostate cancer at age 71), Guyana President and former Marxist leader Cheddi Jagan while undergoing heart surgery at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, at age 78), Nigerian President Sani Abacha (heart attack reportedly caused by poisoning after drink laced with poison was provided by prostitutes imported from Dubai), Nigerian opposition leader Moshood Abiola, heart attack at 60, while meeting alone with two U.S. representatives, Thomas Pickering and Susan Rice), Kyrgyz Prime Minister Jumabek Ibraimov (stomach cancer at age 55), Somaliland President Mohammad Ibrahim Egal (while undergoing surgery at South African military hospital age 73), Nauruan President Bernard Dowiyogo (heart attack while dining in Washington, DC, died in surgery at George Washington University Hospital, age 57), Armenian Prime Minister Andranik Margaryan, heart attack, age 55, Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa (stroke at age 59), Turkish President Turgut Ozal, heart attack due to poison in lemonade, 65, Nigerian President Umaru Musa Yar-Adua (pericarditis at age 58), and Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika, sudden heart attack at 78).
If Hugo Chavez's death uncovers the deep dark secrets of the CIA's bio-murder weaponry and past bio-assassinations, he will not have died in vain.
President Obama has proclaimed himself the final arbiter -- in effect judge, jury, prosecutor, and executioner -- for non-Americans and Americans around the world. Obama is merely publicly stating what powers recent Presidents of the United States believed they were entitled to and possessed. With such self-appointed powers comes accountability. Anytime anyone of note who has challenged American supremacy dies suddenly or suspiciously or both, the President of the United States is an instant suspect until the facts prove differently.
