April 22, 2003

Interesting times continue

According to a piece in the Christian Science Monitor, the trend towards more decentralized terrorism against American multinational targets continues. Small bombings, but there is potential for escalation. The reducttion of state sponsors of terrorism means suviving terror groups must organize locally to get funding and arms.

Admittedly these are petty attacks for now, but how long until one of these independent groups ramps up its expertise and organization? How long until one of these groups manages to get hold of biological weapons left over from South Africa's Project Coast, which have apparently escaped into private hands?

Posted by at April 22, 2003 01:43 AM | TrackBack

From Cryptome
http://cryptome.org/fi2-anthrax.htm

2. Failure to consider those engaged in the development and use of lethal biological agents – Despite the plethora of media and investigative inquiries, no attention has been given to obvious intelligence clues. Close sources indicate that no investigator or official inquiry has followed up on these few examples:

In early March 2000 at his home in Irvine, Orange County, California, Larry C. Ford, M.D., died of a shotgun blast. His death was later ruled a suicide, notwithstanding the fact that his firearms had supposedly been confiscated by the police several days before, after the attempted murder of his business partner, a crime for whichhe was a principal suspect. Only later was it revealed that Ford had served as a consultant to both the CIA and the chemical- and biological-weapons program of the South African Defense Forces, headed by Wouter Basson. Ford’s contributions to Basson’s program included lecturers on converting ordinary items into lethal biological weapons. After Ford’s death his Irvine neighborhood was evacuated for several days as federal authorities excavated a weapons’ bunker in Ford’s yard and removed samples of various toxic biological agents found in Ford’s refrigerators. The specific biological agents found in Ford’s home have never been identified by the authorities, nor have they reported if any toxic agents were found in the university and other laboratories used by Ford. An initially frenzied FBI investigation quickly became quiescent. One Ford associate reports that Ford had been in contact with BioPort Corporation, sole U.S. manufacturer of anthrax vaccine. Recently discovered evidence indicates that, shortly before his death, Ford was actively preparing to move his medical-scientific work abroad. Close Ford associates expected a revival of the investigation after the onset of the recent anthrax incidents but have observed no evidence of any current Ford-related activity on the part of the FBI or other agencies.8

____________________

8 Ford is of particular interest because of the plausibility of his association with persons placed at risk by the Oklahoma businessman, X, referenced in an earlier footnote. Among those whose interests were threatened by X’s discovery of public corruption and other crimes was X’s erstwhile Oklahoma partner, Y, who has substantial business interests in Orange County, California; Ford and X’s former partner were prominent members of the same church. After X’s death, Y, who had had no biotechnology experience, formed a biotechnology company, just as Ford was seeking a new corporate umbrella which would permit him to evade obligations to his then-partner in California (the target of the attempted murder in February 2000).

Ford’s colleague Wouter Basson, M.D., headed the South African biowarfare program from its inception in the late 1970s until it was nominally abandoned in 1993. Arrested in 1997 on charges of murder, embezzlement and drug violations, Basson’s trial commenced in 1999 and continues today. Sessions of Basson’s South African trial were held in Florida in January 2000 to hear testimony of attorney David R. Webster, who had created a complex of off-shore companies and accounts through which Basson operated.9 Revelations in the course of his trial include: Basson claims to have enjoyed access to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases [AMRIID] and Porton Down, respectively the principal U.S. and U.K. chemical-biological warfare establishments. Basson was involved in several undertakings (of an undetermined nature) with Libyans and made numerous trips to Libya, continuing after his program was terminated (leading to successful British and U.S. demands that he be reemployed, and controlled, by the South African government). He also had established relationships in the U.S.S.R. and in a number of eastern and western European countries. South African responsibility for a major anthrax outbreak in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1979 is currently being investigated. Basson is alleged to have developed such means of delivery of biological agents as, e.g., anthrax-laced cigarettes.

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