Bioweapons protested at environmental hearing

On the evening of Aug. 30 the spin doctors of bioweaponry brought their slideshow of charts, maps and false promises of safety to a public Environmental Impact Statement hearing about the proposed expansion of biomilitary research facilities at Fort Detrick. As they entered Gov. Thomas Johnson High School, they were met by picketers from frederickpac .org, All Peoples Congress and the Barry Kissin campaign.

U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases spokeswoman Caree Vander Linden introduced Cols. Gina Deutsch, George Korch and Donald Archibald. The three colonels rattled off their obligatory “minor impact” and “negligible impact” assessments of the environmental effects of BSL-3 containments for such pathogens as Coxiella burnetii (CQ fever) and BSL-4 containments for Ebola virus and other diseases for which no vaccine or treatment exist.

The public wasn’t buying any of it. After the Army’s dog and pony show was over and the floor microphone was opened to those in attendance, not one single speaker rose to speak in favor of the expansion of facilities at Fort Detrick. A wide spectrum of objections based on past accidents and probable future accidents came from the audience of about 80 people.

Several speakers pointed out that the only two uses of bioterrorism in the United States have been smallpox-infected blankets used by the U.S. Army against Native nations, and the anthrax letters containing Ames-strain anthrax that killed postal workers in October 2001. The Ames strain was invented at the U.S. Army’s USAMRIID facility at Fort Detrick.

Anti-bioweapons activist and researcher Richard Oakes noted that these letters, addressed to the two U.S. Senate leaders who at the time were leading the opposition to the Patriot Act, had the effect of shutting down both houses of Congress, and that a false anthrax threat also closed the Supreme Court.

The effect was similar to the 1933 Reichstag fire in Germany, paving the way for passage of repressive laws. The Democratic Party leaders who initially opposed the Patriot Act then capitulated.

Any new forms of pathogens Fort Detrick invents can immediately be produced in mass quantities in the four large fermen ters that have been installed at Dugway Proving Grounds, according to a report in the Feb. 24 issue of Salt Lake Weekly.

Oakes concluded, “The weaponry research planned is in violation of the Bio logical Weapons Convention, and these hear ings are a charade.” Oakes has made many important documents relating to Fort Detrick available at www.freefrom terror.net

Green Party senatorial candidate Kevin Zeese and Democratic Party congressional candidate Barry Kissin both voiced opposition to the expansion and to the existing bioweapons programs. Kissin, a longtime peace activist, is running as a peace candidate supporting immediate withdrawal from Iraq and an end to funding the Israeli military. His opponent, Maj. Andrew Duck—a retired Army intelligence officer—plans to “win the war” with “hundreds of thousands of more troops.”

According to Kissin, Ebola virus is not spread by exhaled droplets. If its genetic make-up were only very slightly different, so that it had what biologists call a “respiratory component,” it would be a potential bioweapon. Transforming Ebola into a weapon is being explored in U.S. laboratories in direct violation of the Biological Weapons Convention.

There was also some very personal testimony. Elizabeth Landru, a parent raising a two-year-old next to the fort, was in tears over the threat to her child’s health, saying, “I don’t want my child to be a ‘soft target’ or ‘collateral damage.’” She concluded, “Employees I’ve spoken to won’t even drink the water there.”

Engineer Jason Kray said that “as an engineer I would expect to be fired” for the EIS document the Army produced. “The more blatant your crimes, the more citizens wake up.”