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Subject: Is NYC being used for bio-warfare experiments? 9/22/99 NY Times
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 20:25:50 -0500 (CDT)
Why does the Federal government want to expand an existing
bio-warfare research lab right off the coast of NYC, the most
populated area in the U.S.? Have 8 million New Yorkers been
chosen as the lab rats in an ongoing bio-medical research
project? Is Mayor Giulianiis bizarre mass daily spraying of toxic
pesticides on NYC part of an experiment or a response to a virus
that already escaped from the lab? Is the mosquito epidemic
merely an excuse to get people used to being sprayed with
chemicals from the air? Is the timing of todayis NY Times and
yesterdayis Daily News articles on this lab setting us up for some
bad news about what is really behind the encephalitis scare?
Please note: birds are a major part of the experimenting that goes
on at the lab right now. Birds are also exactly where mosquitoes
get the encephalitis virus. While a mosquito may not easily fly
from Plum Island to Queens a bird can do it without any
problem. Do the people of NY deserve answers before any more
spraying is undertaken? The NYC Dept. of Health, the Dept. of
Environmental Protection and the Mayoris Emergency
Management Services team are unable to explain their total lack
of air sampling on the distribution of Malathion and the other
two poison gasses being used. They claim they are using three
ounces of Malathion per acre yet the planes make repeated
passes over the same area meaning they have no idea how much
of the chemical is being dropped per City block. Last Saturday
my home in Park Slope was sprayed nine times by the same
helicopter. Is Mayor Giuliani bravely trying to protect public
health or is he the Mengele for the New World Order?
-Robert Lederman
NY Times 9/22/99
U.S. Would Use Long Island Lab to Study Food Terrorism
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related Article
i At Bleak Asian Site, Killer Germs Survive (June 2, 1999)
By JUDITH MILLER
PLUM ISLAND, N.Y. -- Alarmed at what the Clinton
Administration views as the growing threat of biological
terrorism to America's food supply, the Agriculture Department
is seeking money to turn the Plum Island Animal Disease Center,
one mile off Long Island, into a top security laboratory where
some of the most dangerous diseases known to man or beast can
be studied.
The Agriculture Department already operates here at Plum Island,
just across Gardiners Bay from the wealthy Hamptons, a
laboratory where such dreaded foreign animal diseases as
foot-and-mouth and African swine fever are examined. But the
department is seeking $75 million this year and $140 million
over the next two years to upgrade the center to handle even more
dangerous animal diseases that can affect humans.
While there are four civilian and military laboratories in America
equipped to study such diseases -- technically known as
Biosafety Level Four facilities -- their work is focused on germs
that primarily affect humans, not domestic animals or plants.
Officials say the proposed expansion and upgrading of Plum
Island is part of a new effort by the Clinton Administration to
deter terrorists who might spread germs to destroy American
crops or livestock for political purposes or financial gain, a threat
they now see as equal to that of terrorist attacks aimed at people.
"Given the contribution of crop and animal exports to the
nation's prosperity, we must do far more to protect our plant and
animal resources," said Senator Richard G. Lugar, the Indiana
Republican and co-author of legislation in 1991 and 1996 that
provided money to bolster defenses against unconventional
terrorism and stop the proliferation of such weapons.
"This is not about food per se; Americans would not go hungry if
we were attacked," said Floyd P. Horn, the administrator of the
Agricultural Research Service, who helped persuade the
Administration to include his agency in January in its
counter-terrorism plans and programs. "But such an attack, or
even a credible threat, would severely disrupt America's
economic and social infrastructure for weeks, if not months or
years."
Plum Island, which was once operated by the United States Army
Chemical Corps, was designated as an animal-disease research
center and transferred to the Agriculture Department in the early
1950's. It is already what scientists call an agricultural "Biosafety
Level Three" center, which means that its containment areas,
which hold germs dangerous to animals, have filtered air, sealed
doors and negative air pressure that prevents germs from leaking
out of the labs. Liquid waste is decontaminated.
All who enter the labs wear white lab coats and slippers. After
leaving the containment areas, they are required to shower,
shampoo their hair, scrub their nails and rinse their mouths, since
lethal germs can live in human throats and infect animals up to
two days later. To stop viruses or microbes from escaping to the
mainland, no clothing or articles, even eyeglasses, are permitted
to leave the labs without being soaked in disinfectant, said Dr.
Alfonso Torres, the deputy administrator of the Agriculture
Department's Veterinary Services Division and former director of
the center, who conducted this reporter on a tour.
The building's perimeter is also tightly guarded. While Dr. Torres
declined to discuss specific security measures, the shores of this
pork-chop-shaped, 840-acre island are said by Federal officials
to be monitored by electronic sensors and patrolled by boats and
helicopters. Once a year, deer and other animals that have swum
across to the island are killed in what island officials call a
controlled hunt.
Despite an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease on the island in
1978, which led Plum scientists to abandon their holding areas
for large animals, "there has never been a leak of a dangerous
pathogens to the mainland from Plum Island," Dr. Torres said.
Moving to the next level of bio safety would require that
scientists working with dangerous pathogens wear the protective
decontaminated suits portrayed in movies like "Outbreak," and
breathe only filtered air pumped into their hoods. Such
precautions would allow scientists to work with even more
dangerous animal pathogens that can affect humans, like the
Hendra virus, which afflicts horses, and the Nipah pig virus,
named for the Malaysian village in which it was first isolated this
year. The virus has already killed more than 100 people.
"We intend to work closely with local officials and community
groups to allay any concerns about safety," said Dr. Horn, who
acknowledges that Plum Island has long been shrouded in
mystery and plagued by what he and Dr. Torres call unfounded
rumors and fears.
The 850-acre island was opened to news organizations only in
1992 in response to concerns about safety at the center. In 1995,
the Department of Agriculture was fined $111,000 for illegally
storing hazardous chemicals here.
Since then, the agency has changed the contractor who operates
the island, and there have been no violations.
The extent of the threat posed by agro-terrorism remains in
dispute, even within the Clinton Administration. Some scientists
and terrorism analysts argue that there is little reason to believe
that terrorists would attack American agriculture or livestock.
But intelligence reports increasingly conclude that several
countries, including Iraq, have developed germs to attack the
food supplies of their adversaries. And senior American officials
now believe that an outbreak of screwworm, a parasite that
afflicts animals and people, was spread deliberately 14 years ago
in Mexico less than 50 miles from the Texas border by workers
who were employed in a screwworm eradication program and
feared the loss of their jobs.
Although no one was ever arrested or charged in the incident,
John Wyss, an Agriculture Department veteran of 25 years who
supervised the project from Washington, said that the agency's
investigations showed that the outbreak, given its nature and
location, had to have been deliberate.
In recent interviews in Russia and Kazakhstan, former Soviet
scientists also disclosed that they had developed weapons
specifically aimed at crops and livestock. Sadigappar
Mamadaliyev, the director of the Scientific Agricultural Research
Institute, now in the Republic of Kazakhstan, said that in Soviet
times, his was one of four centers dedicated to developing lethal
germs as weapons against foreign crops and animals.
"The Soviets here concentrated on cow and sheep pox and blue
tongue," he said. "We also cooperated closely with the
All-Russian Institute of Animal Health in Vladimir, Russia,
which worked on foot-and-mouth disease, and with the Pokrov
Institute of Veterinary Virology, which specialized in African
swine and horse fevers."
Dr. Mamadaliyev said he had more than 200 strains of dangerous
animal pathogens at his institute, whose former scientific staff of
150 has shrunk by half from budget cuts and which is struggling
to survive.
There were more than 10,000 Russians working on plant and
animal pathogens in the former Soviet germ warfare program,
said Ken Alibek, a senior germ researcher who defected to the
United States in 1992 and who recently wrote a book,
"BioHazard" (Random House), in which he describes the vast
scale and depth of the Soviet Union's illegal germ offensive
warfare program. Many of those scientists are now without jobs.
Several Russian scientists said that Iranians had visited their
institutes, some offering huge salaries to work in Teheran and
specifically expressing interest in research on animal and plant
microbes.
Fueled by growing concern about the proliferation of such
expertise and such dangerous germs, President Clinton ordered
the Government last year to prepare defenses against germ and
other unconventional attacks on the nation's plants and animals.
In January, Dr. Horn recruited four former Pentagon intelligence
analysts and terrorism experts to form the Agricultural Research
Services' first unit to evaluate such threats. In April, the White
House formally included the Agriculture Department in the group
of agencies that meet regularly under National Security Council
aegis to weigh plans to deter or respond to unconventional
terrorism, a $2.8 billion effort.
At a public meeting in September in Washington, Dr. Horn
discussed his concern about the nation's growing vulnerability to
agro-terrorism, mentioning his desire to upgrade Plum Island and
make it a centerpiece of the Government's effort to protect the
nation's food supply.
Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, who is chairman of
the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats
and Capabilities, plans to hold hearings on agro-terrorism in
October that will explore the Administration's plans for Plum
Island.
Plum Island has 300 employees, 60 of whom are scientists, 70
buildings, many of them closed or deteriorating, independent
power and water treatment plants, and a fleet of four boats. Dr.
Torres calls the $14.5 million that the Government spends a year
on Plum Island a "small investment" in the nation's food security
given the $140 billion earned from commodities exports.
As disease after disease has been eradicated, Dr. Torres said,
Washington has reduced the budget for veterinary services,
which now stands at $116 million a year. Yet demand keeps
growing. Agriculture scientists now conduct about 500
investigations of foreign animal diseases a year, more than half of
them in birds brought back to the country by the millions of
American travelers each year. "Our emergency response systems
are becoming very, very thin," Dr. Torres said.
David R. Franz, a vice president of the Southern Research
Institute and former director of the United States Army Medical
Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, a Biosafety Level Four
center, maintains that recent changes in the structure of American
agriculture have heightened vulnerability. Increased trade and
international travel, reduced genetic diversity in farm animals and
the high concentration of animals in yards have increased the risk
that highly infectious diseases will emerge and spread, "be they
naturally or deliberately introduced, " Dr. Franz said.
The changing nature of terrorism also heightens the threat, says
Thomas W. Frazier, president of a consortium of private
companies called GenCon.
"There are now hundreds of attacks a year on agricultural targets
in the United States, Canada and Britain as a form of violent
protest by extremist environmental protection or animal rights
groups," he said. Plus, the nation's intelligence analysts expect
increased assaults by state-sponsored bioterrorists, militant
religious cults and other extremist groups on such targets as food
and agriculture.
The largest animal disease outbreak in America in recent history,
wrote Corrie Brown, the head of the pathology department at the
University of Georgia's College of Veterinary Medicine, was one
caused by avian influenza that erupted in Pennsylvania some 15
years ago. A deadly viral variant spread quickly, prompting
Agriculture officials to kill all exposed chickens at a cost of $63
million to the Federal Government. Economists estimated that
had they not been killed, the cost to United States agriculture
would have been as high as $5.6 billion. Even so, Dr. Brown
concluded, the six-month outbreak caused poultry prices to rise
by $349 million.
Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T.
(Artistsi Response To Illegal State Tactics)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (718) 369-2111
http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html
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