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Ancient Evils

Anthrax, Greed, and Deceit (Part I of II)

By Cheryl Seal
16 August 2001

PART ONE
aking a Killing: the Dark and Ongoing Story of BioPort and the Anthrax Vaccine

The anthrax was released by a US insider as part of a covert plan to restrict civil liberties, increase pharmaceutical profits and fulfil military and political objectives. -Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz
Throughout out all of the past year, since the first anthrax attack, one story has been notably absent from the mainstream press -and it is a biggie...perhaps the biggest of all in terms of its importance to a real investigation (unlike the one now being conducted).

It is also a story that should be pushed front and center onto the public stage along with Enron, WorldCom and the rest of the "glowing examples" of corporate greed and extortion from the public.

It is the story of BioPort, a modest-sized maker of vaccines in Lansing, Michigan that is owned in large part by the Carlyle Group. As you may (or should) know, the Carlyle Group is the 11th largest "defense contractor" in the US -at least that is how it prefers to be billed. It is a haven for ex-government power mongers like George H. Bush, James Baker III, and Frank Carlucci, who use their connections in Washington to channel billions of dollars into their own coffers in the name of "government contracts."

What it really amounts to is a slick money laundering operation: the Group's contacts in the Pentagon (right now their best friend is Donald Rumsfeld) steal money from the tax payer and funnel it into Caryle's various operations and call it a "contract." Case in point: when the Carlyle cartel helped take over the Lansing lab, within three weeks, they had been handed a government contract in which the price per dose of vaccine was tripled over what it had been the day before BioPort took over. If that ain't theft, then the Pope ain't Polish!

But, fortunately for the public, since last fall, more and more info on BioPort has shown up on the web -despite the company's extreme secretiveness (they bar any employee from speaking to anyone outside about anything to do with the company). Below is a timeline mapping out the BioPort story, supplemented by links to the most reliable articles on the subject. In this format, the reality of the whole slime bag operation out to jump out and hit you between the eyes.

September 1998: A small government-owned lab in Michigan engaged in developing an anthrax vaccine is bought for $24.8 million by a secretive group of "investors" calling themselves BioPort. BioPort investors include George Bush Sr, James Baker III, and Frank Carlucci under the name of the Carlyle Group. It also includes Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., former chair of the joint chiefs of staff under Reagan who also served as US ambassador to Britain under President Clinton. According to Maj. Glenn MacDonald USAR, Crowe was one of the thugs back in the Reagan dark ages who sold Saddam Hussein anthrax warfare technology in the hopes Iraq would unleash the disease on Iran.

Another major BioPort stockholder is ex-Prime Minister of the UK John Major. We bet Tony Blair knows all about it -if indeed he isn't a silent stock partner. And then there's Fuad El-Hibril, a man who is close to the bin Laden family and who in the past has expressed sympathy for OBL. El-Hibril became BioPort's CEO. El-Hibri was based in England in the 1990s, where he operated a vaccine manufacturing company called Porton Products International of Porton Down, in the UK. One of the anthrax strains originating from Ft. Detrick and related to the isolates used in the anthrax attacks is called the Porton strain for the Porton lab. In a chart in Timothy Read's article in Science, one of the possible routes shown for the anthrax that ended up in the attacks was via Porton Down.

Two weeks later: (Still Sept. 1998): BioPort lands exclusive Departmentartment of Defense contract worth $45 million to produce an anthrax vaccine. The DOD agrees to pay three times the cost of the original contract, upping payment for vaccine from $3.50 a dose to $10 a dose.
November, 1998: Crowe and Bush, Sr. travel to Saudi Arabia where they meet with members of the bin Laden family.

Ongoing, from 1997 through Oct. 2001: BioPort repeatedly fails to pass FDA inspections. These inspections were described by one critic as "an unmitigated disaster," revealing contamination, inadequate record-keeping and unapproved procedures. Several vaccine batches failed sterility tests and were quarantined (by the way, the Bush administration later gave BioPort permission to administer vaccines from these contaminated batches to the American public -see below). The company had to subcontract Hollister-Stier Laboratories in Spokane, Wash., to fill the vaccine vials when its own procedures kept failing. Yet though Hollister-Stier has been the second hand supplier of the vaccine now for many months and has passed its FDA inspections, the DOD continued to pump millions into keeping BIOPORT artificially resuscitated. So quality in this man's government is not only NOT rewarded, it is exploited to keep the evil-and-or-inept propped up.

March 1999: A statement on anthrax vaccine presented to Congress reveals the outrageous history of BioPort, an Army cover-up of negative reactions to the vaccine, and that at least 50 different types of adverse reactions associated with the vaccine. The report also reveals (a finding also reported in European medical journals, including the "Lancet") that the ONLY population of veterans engaged in the Gulf War action who were not afflicted by any cases of Gulf War Syndrome were the French -who were also the ONLY population of GW soldiers who did not receive the vaccine. Now has anyone ever investigated THAT smoking gun? Yeah, right, and the Pope's a Fiji Islander.
Statement to Congress: Gulf War vets page:

February 17, 2000: Congressional report recommends terminating anthrax vaccine program due to BoPort's mismanagement and injury reports.

July 2000: Two Congressional hearings are held on BioPort, including one conducted by the House Armed Services Committee It is revealed that the company has engaged in Enron-style bookkeeping, manipulating earnings projections while having money funneled to them from the Pentagon against recommendations.

November, 2000: The Hartford Courant reveals that BioPort has failed to track deadly reactions in people receiving its anthrax vaccine, including deaths. Approximately 1,200 servicemen and women have had severe reactions, with some deaths traceable to the vaccine. US Rep. Christopher Shays of Ct. accuses BioPort of indifference to the dangers of its product: "Good men and women willing to serve and die for their country are being made needlessly ill."

July 2001: FDA gives BioPort the go-ahead to use quarantined lots of anthrax vaccine on the public in the event of an attack -in essence, giving the company permission to dump potentially dangerous vaccines that had failed to pass inspections on Americans, and pocketing otherwise lost profits. Petition started to demand BioPort destroy these potentially lethal vaccines.

August 2001: White house starts passing out Cipro to staff. Recipients reportedly include Cheney and Bush

September 2001: Associated Press suggests that Battelle Memorial Institute in West Jefferson, Ohio is engaged in "Operation Jefferson," a secret project in which "a new and highly lethal strain of anthrax" was being developed at its labs. Around this same time, Battelle hired an anthrax expert, William C. Patrick III, to determine the ways, means, and results of mailing powdered anthrax through the post. Battelle is reputed to have a "working relationship" with BioPort. Battelle and Bioport , who have a "working relationship" are considered the real "chief suspects" by some.

September 2001: The first anthrax attack occurs, striking down a man in Florida.

October 2001: BioPort fails yet another FDA inspection.

October 2001: Bush sends national guard to "protect" BioPort round the clock -while failing to deploy any troops to protect nuclear power plants or other facilities engaged in biological warfare research.

October 2001: Donald Rumsfeld pushes to get BioPort approved over FDA objections...he's an expert, of course. He forced the approval of aspartame while CEO of Searle over FDA objections, a move that ultimately made billions for the corporation. Today, complaints of health problems related to aspartame account for more than half of all health-related adverse product complaints made to the FDA.
Falsification of aspartame results Rumsfeld and Conlon's role in the deception

December 2001: Manuals from BioPort are discovered in an Al Queda hideout in Afghanistan -the report disappears from mainstream news within 24 hours.

January 2002: Bush administration gives BioPort green light to start shipping anthrax vaccine.

March 2002: Pentagon announces that the vaccine has been declared safe by the Institute of Medicine. However, this is the same "Institute" that was investigated by the Department of Health and Human Services for serious conflict of interest when it cranked out another vaccine "study for hire" during the Reagan years -this one on the safety of the pertussis/rubella vaccines. Now here we are in another corporate rightwing administration and the Institute is back to its old modus operandi. Several members of the committee that slapped together the report the Bush folks wanted to see on anthrax have (and I quote from the study intro: "worked for, or are currently receiving funding from, pharmaceutical companies that make vaccines other than the anthrax vaccine". We are supposed to believe that because they aren't right this minute working for BioPort or on anthrax vaccine that there is no conflict of interest here. But anyone who knows anything at all about the ongoing vaccine controversy knows that the vaccine industry itself -not just a specific vaccine- is under fire. In the committee's findings, they specifically say, not once but a few times that the anthrax vaccine does not cause any more reactions that ANY OTHER TYPE OF VACCINE. In other words, the bogus study amounts to free validation/advertising for ANY OTHER TYPE OF VACCINE.

It should also be noted here that the anthrax vaccine flap is not the first time that a vaccine "crisis" was created for political reasons with disastrous results:

Another case of "chilling deja vu"? An anatomy of the swine flu scare. Gerald Ford was up for reelection and failing in the polls when he called for ALL Americans to be vaccinated with a similarly dubious vaccine that ended up killing and disabling thousands.

August 2002: After forensic biologist Timothy Read reveals that the anthrax isolated from the terror attack victim can be differentiated from other known strains by dozens of genetic markers, the Justice Department suddenly makes a show of rounding up suspects, especially focusing on Stephen J. Hatfill who was associated with Fort Detrick. Why? Because Hatfill filled the emergency bill nicely: he is big and tough and faintly menacing looking, not to mention almost swarthy -makes good press. Also, he didn't even work with anthrax -he was a virologist. So the administration knows the charges are unlikely to stick for long. But the flurry of press and apparent activity will, they hope, take the heat off until an exit strategy can be devised for the real perpetrators.

I just can't wait for the next act.

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