WASHINGTON, June 24— The National Cancer Institute named a contractor yesterday to operate its newly acquired facilities at Fort Detrick, Md., and predicted that, by fall, the former biological warfare lab oratories would be fully at work toward the conquest of cancer.

The contract, for renovation, management and operation of the facilities, goes to Litton Bionetics, a division of Litton Industries, Inc. The first‐year contract is for $6.8‐million. At a news conference today, [Dr. Frank Joseph Rauscher II (born 1931)], director of the cancer institute, said it was the largest single contract ever awarded by any of the National Institutes of Health.

Use of the facilities is part of the expanded national re search effort against cancer Fort Detrick is believed to have some of the world's best facili ties for research with hazardous chemicals and infectious agants.

Dr. Rauscher said the insti tute's work at Fort Detrick would include research on known cancer viruses of ani mals as well as some of the viruses suspected of roles in human cancer. The program will also include studies of chemicals capable of causing cancer and research on poten tial anticancer drugs.

Viruses to Be Made

Viruses and special biologi cal materials will be produced in large quantities for use, not only at Fort Detrick, but also at other laboratories doing cancer research.

Large numbers of small ani mals, mostly rats and mice, will be maintained for the re search at the newly acquired laboratories in Maryland. By the end of the second year of op eration, 30,000 laboratory ani mals will be maintained at the facilities for studies of the life time effects of hazardous chem icals and other potentially dangerous substances. Presum ably, this will be only part of the animal population.

Dr. Rauscher said the agree ment with Litton Bionetics of Bethesda, Md., was an award fee contract, meaning that the contractor has no guaranteed, profit. Only if the Government finds that the company's pro gress warrants it, will the con tractor be premitted some percenage or profit up to a possi ble maximum of 10 per cent, he said.

The over‐all operational con tract is expected to expand in future years, perhaps reaching a legal level as high as $20‐ million a year.

Fast Action Planned

At the news conference to day James C. Nance, president of Litton Bionetics, said the company planned to go into operation rapidly with an esti mated 75 persons on duty by the end of next week; 150 by the end of July and approach ing 300 by 1973.

Bionetics, which became a division of Litton Industries in 1968, has been active as a commercial biological research laboratory since 1961 and has done a substantial amount of previous contract work for the cancer institute. Litton Indus tries has come under sharp criticism recently for its per formance in ship‐building con tracts for the Navy.

While Fort Detrick has been a largely secret facility while it was working on biological war fare research, it will now be open to scientists from the United States and abroad, in cluding some from the Soviet Union and, probably, from mainland China.

Dr. Rauscher said that some virus experts from the Soviet Union might be invited to tour the Fort Detrick facilities as early as this fall.

The cancer institute's opera tion at Fort Detrick will be located primarily in the “high security area” of the former biological warfare research fa cility.

Hazleton Laboratories Corp. has acquired the animal and molecular toxicology units of Litton Bionetics from Litton Industries Inc. for an undisclosed amount.

Hazleton, based in Vienna, provides biological and chemical research services, manufactures laboratory and medical products, and is a major supplier of research animals. Litton Bionetics, based in Kensington, provides biomedical research and testing services and sells diagnostic products.

Litton Industries said recently that it had agreed to sell 50 percent of its Bionetics subsidiary to a Dutch company, Akzo N.V., and 25 percent to MetPath Inc., a subsidiary of Corning Glass Works. Hazleton said last week that it has agreed to buy the remaining 25 percent by leasing the facilities and paying cash for the assets, with the sale to be completed by Sept. 1.

Bionetics's toxicology units conduct tests of new substances for manufacturers that plan to use them in food, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. The Food and Drug Administration requires such substances undergo tests to determine whether they have toxic effects, cause cancer or genetic mutations or have other dangerous properties. Both Litton Bionetics and Hazleton test effects of substances on laboratory animals.

The toxicology units employ about 200 workers and together generate annual sales of about $10 million.

Hazleton recently reported earnings of $2.2. million on sales of $55.9 million for its fiscal year, ended June 30.

AIDS and Ebola: Where Did They Really Come Prom?

Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz

During the 1960s and early 1970s the World Health Organization functioned as the omnipotent supplier and standardizing authority of the world's experimental pharmaceuticals. In the field of virology, the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) directed the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to become, along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) the WHO's chief distributor of viruses and antiviral vaccines. The WHO Chronicle noted by 1968—ten years into the WHO's viral research program—"WHO virus reference centres" had served as authorized technical advisors and suppliers of "prototype virus strains, diagnostic and reference reagents (e.g., antibodies), antigens, and cell cultures" for more than "120 laboratories in 35 different countries." Within a year of this announcement, this number increased to "592 virus laboratories . . . [and] only 137 were outside Europe and North America." Over these 12 months, the NCI and CDC helped the WHO distribute 2,514 strains of viruses, 1,888 ampoules of antisera mainly for reference purposes, 1,274 ampoules of antigens, and about 100 samples of cell cultures. More than 70,000 individual reports of virus isolations or related serological tests had been transmitted through the WHO-NCI network. 1 '2

At the NCI in Bethesda, Maryland, from the late 1960s to the present, the chief retrovirus research laboratory was associated with the Department of Cell Tumor Biology, and chaired by Dr. Robert Gallo—an esteemed member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) who was hailed by the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Margaret Heckler in 1984 as the discoverer of the AIDS virus, HTLV-m. LAV, identical to HTLV-m had been isolated by Montagnier's French team and allegedly forwarded to Gallo in 1983.3

MILITARY ORDERS FOR AIDS-LIKE VIRUSES: THE BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS CONTRACTORS

As early as 1970, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) appropriated at least $10 million to "initiate an adequate program through the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council (NAS-NRC)" to make a new infective microorganism which could differ in certain important aspects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most important of these [aspects] is that it might be refractory to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease. Members of the NAS-NRC had instructed scientific leaders in the DOD this work might be accomplished "within 5 years."4 This research was then carried out by American defense contractors despite the authorization and signing of the Geneva accord by Dr. Henry Kissinger and President Nixon outlawing the production and testing of such biological weapons.5

Also in 1970 Gallo and his co-workers presented research describing the experimental entry of bacterial ribonucleic acid (RNA) into human white blood cells (WBCs) before a special symposium sponsored by NATO.6 The paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences discussed several possible mechanisms prompting the "entry of foreign nucleic acids" into lymphocytes—the cells principally attacked by HTV. Prior to this, Gallo et al. had published studies identifying:

1. mechanisms responsible for reduced amino acid and protein synthesis by T-lymphocytes required for immunosuppression;7

2. specific enzymes required to produce such effects along with a “base pair switch mutation” in the genes of WBCs to create immune system dysfunction;8 and

3. methods by which WBC “DNA degradation” and immune system decay may be prompted by the “pooling” of purine bases and/or the addition of specific reagents.9

Subsequent studies published in 1970 by Gallo and co-workers identified “RNA dependent DNA polymerase” (i.e., the unique AIDS-linked enzyme, reverse transcriptase) responsible for “gene amplification ... biochemical cytodifferentiation,” (i.e., the development of unique WBC characteristics including cancer cell production) and “leukaemogenesis”; 10 and identified L-Asparaginase synthetase—a key enzyme that, if repressed, will induce treatment resistant leukemias and other cancers. 11

The year following the $10 million appropriation by the DOD for AIDS-like biological weapons research, the NCI acquired the lion's share of the facilities at America's premier biological weapons testing center, Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland. 12 Perhaps not coincidentally, the Cell Tumor Biology Laboratory's output increased in 1971 as measured by the publication of eight scientific articles by Gallo and co-workers compared to at most four in previous years. These reports included Gallo's discovery that by adding a synthetic RNA and feline (i.e., cat) leukemia virus (FELV) "template" to "human type C" viruses (associated with cancers of the lymph nodes), the rate of DNA production (and subsequent provirus synthesis) increased as much as thirty times. The NCI researchers reported that such a virus may cause many cancers besides leukemias and lymphomas including sarcomas. 13

In this 1971 report Gallo et al. also reported modifying simian (i.e., monkey) viruses by infusing them with cat leukemia RNA to make them cause cancers as seen in AIDS patients. 13

Furthermore, Fujioka and Gallo concluded from studies conducted in late 1969 or early 1970 that they would need to further "evaluate the functional significance of tRNA changes in tumor cells," by designing an experiment in which "specific tumor cell tRNAs" would be "added directly to normal cells." They explained that one way of doing this was to use viruses to deliver the foreign cancer producing tRNA to normal cells. The viruses which were then employed to do this, the researchers noted, were the simian virus (SV40) and the mouse parotid tumor (polyoma) virus. 14

Such experiments clearly advanced immunodeficiency virus technology and even provided a model for the development of HTV, the AIDS virus—allegedly of simian virus descent—which similarly delivered unique enzymes and a foreign RNA to normal cells necessary to cause an acquired immunodeficiency syndrome in animals and humans.

DEVELOPING MORE AIDS-LIKE VIRUSES

In 1972, Gallo, his superiors and inferiors studied portions of simian viruses to determine differences in RNA activity between infected versus uninfected cancer cells, and whether the differences could be ascribed to the infection and related DNA alterations. 15 They stated that "by studying viral or cellular mutants or cell segregants . . . which have conditional variations in virus-specific cellular alterations, it should be possible to more precisely determine the biological significance of the RNA variation reported here."

Clearly, the group was working to determine the relevance of various viral genes on the development of human cancers and immune system collapse. They reported their desire to use this information to find a cure for cancer, but at this time their activity was more focused on creating various cancers as well as new carcinogenic viruses which could infect humans.

For example, Smith and Gallo published another National Academy of Sciences paper examining DNA polymerase (i.e., reverse transcriptase) activity in immature normal versus acute leukemic lymph cells. To do so, they evaluated the single stranded 70S RNA retrovirus found in chickens which causes prominent features of AIDS including WBC dysfunction, sarcomas, progressive wasting and death. 16 Borrow, Smith and Gallo injected this chicken virus RNA into human WBCs to determine if the cells were prompted to produce proteins (including new viruses) encoded by the viral RNA.17 Robert, Smith and Gallo also evaluated the neoplastic effects of single stranded 70S RNA reverse transcriptase delivered by the cat leukemia virus (FELV) and the mason-Pfizer monkey virus on normal human lymphocytes (NHL). 18

This work foreshadowed the observation made ten years later by the CDC's chiefAIDS researcher, Dr. Donald Francis who noted the "laundry - list" of feline leukemia-like diseases associated with AIDS.3

Other examples are detailed by Gallo and co-workers while discussing their adapting monkey, rat, and bird leukemia and tumor viruses fQr experimental use in a human (NG-37) cell line. 19 Wu, Ting and Gallo20 discussed the synthesis of new RNA tumor viruses "induced by 5-iodo-2'-deoxyuridine, IdU (a constituent of RNA) in rodent cell cultures, and noted that chemotherapy might be used to halt the reverse transcriptase-linked viral reproduction.

Howeyer, had HTV been synthesized for military purposes from various species components, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to prove. As Gillespie, Gillespie and Gallo et al. noted in 1973 concerning the origin of the RD114—another cat/human bioengineered virus—"it can always be argued that" a virus which naturally jumped species (as HIV is alleged to have done from the monkey) would be expected to have antigens that differ "from the antigen found on the viruses of known" origin.21

LITTON BIOHETICS: GALLO 'S LINK TO THE DOD

Four years later, during a U.S. Senate investigation of illegal "biological testing involving human subjects by the Department of Defense," Senators learned that Bionetics, Bionetics Research Laboratories, and Litton Bionetics—an organization which, along with the NCI, administered

and provided Dr. Gallo's research funding (10, 13, 15, 17-19, 22, 26) were not only acknowledged DOD biological weapons contractors, but their affiliated Litton Systems, Inc., was among the most frequently contracted institutions involved in biological weapons research and development between 1960 and 1970 (the end of the reported period).23 Additional biological weapons contractors with whom Dr. Gallo and/or his co-workers associated during the late 1960s and early 1970s included the University of Chicago,24 Texas,13 Virginia,25 and Yale,17 Merck and Co. Inc., 20 and Hazelton Laboratory, site of the famous 1989 Marburg-Ebola-like (Reston) virus outbreak.22

NCI staff reports revealed that Litton Bionetics had been granted the service contract to supply all NCI researchers, worldwide, with virtually every primate cancer research material requested, including seed viruses, viral hybrids, cell lines, experimental reagents, and African colony born monkeys including M. mulatta and C. aethiops which were associated with the major monkey AIDS virus outbreaks in California's Davis Lab, and the 1967 Marburg virus outbreaks in three European vaccine production facilities. 15"17

Litton Bionetics chief John Landon reported an experiment begun in 1965 when he inoculated 18 monkeys with rhaabdovirus simian—a rabies virus known to cause Ebola-like hemmorhagic fever in monkeys. "Nine [monkeys] died or were transferred," to allied laboratories or vaccine production facilities. This shipment was likely to have started the first hemmorhagic fever "Marburg virus" outbreak among European vaccine laboratory workers in 1967. As noted by the world's leading simian virus expert at the time, Dr. Seymour Kalter, the Marburg virus was apparently manmade.23-25

In fact, Litton Bionetics, the chief military and industrial supplier of primates for cancer virus experimentation during the 1960s and early 1970s, also maintained the colony of the specific genus of monkeys associated with all of the major monkey ADDS virus outbreaks in the United States.23

Through telephone interviews with Litton Bionetics and MedPath administrators, I learned that Bionetics Research Laboratories had been sold to MedPath Corporation—one of America's largest medical and blood testing laboratories—a division of Dow Corning. Dow Coming's parent, Dow Chemical Company, was alsp listed among the Army's chief biological weapons contractors during the 1960s and early 1970s.2627 Litton Bionetics, a subsidiary of Litton Industries, Inc. remains in business as a proprietor of the Frederick Cancer Research Center, a "privately owned, government contracted" facility. Bionetics, it was noted, currently acts as an agency under "contract to manage and operate the Frederick (Md.) [Fort Detrick affiliated] Cancer Research Center for the National Cancer Institute." 27 Besides administering research grants and government funds earmarked for the NCI, Litton Bionetics also developed a division which produced and marketed test kits for bloodborne, infectious diseases including mononucleosis, hepatitis B, and AIDS.28 This division was sold to Organon Teknica in 1985.26

Apparently, the military-medical-industrial complex was well aware of Litton Industries' service as a DOD and NATO contractor. In 1978, the company was indicted for filing false claims for $37 million in cost-overruns during the building of three nuclear submarines under one of several multi-billion dollar defense contracts.29"34

ZAIRE AND ANGOLA: A CIA MILITARY ARENA

Between 1970 and 1975, the period the NAS-NCR scientific advisors informed DOD decision-makers that AIDS-like viruses could be readied,4 American cold war efforts focused on Zaire and Angola.33"35 Following the withdrawal of American forces in Vietnam, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger ordered the CIA to begin a major covert military operation against MPLA (communist bloc backed) "rebels" in Angola.36,37 Zaire, indebted by over $4.5j billion to the International Monetary Fund, and headed by President Mobutu—paradoxically regarded as one of the world's wealthiest men with "a personal fortune put at $2,939,200,000 [1$84 estimate] banked in Switzerland—was wooed by NATO allies during the 1970s (principally the U.S.) to be a staging area for CIA backed, Portuguese, French, and mainly South African mercenaries.38'39 "American corporate investment, notably in copper and aluminum, doubled to about $50 million following a 1970 visit by Mobutu to the United States. Major investors included Chase-Manhattan, Ford, General Motors, • Gulf, Shell, Union Carbide, and several other large concerns."43

However, in 1975 Mobutu apparently turned against NATO allies and increased negotiations with China and Russia40,41 He proclaimed his intention to nationalize foreign owned enterprises 42,43 In June 1975, following the CIA's thwarted efforts to convince the U.S. Congress to appropriate more funds for Mobutu and the Angola programme (A total of $3 1 .7 million had already been "drawn from the CIA's FY 75 contingency fund" which was "exhausted on 27 November 1975").39 Mobutu expelled the American ambassador and arrested many of the CIA's Zairian agents, placing some under death sentences.40,41

The following year, in October 1976, the "Ebola Zaire virus" broke-out in "fifty five villages surrounding the [Yambuku] hospital" first killing "people who had received injections." Mobutu then ordered his army to "seal off the Bumba zone with roadblocks" and "shoot anyone trying to come out" so "no one knew what was happening, who was dying, [or] what the vilrus was doing."44

Shortly thereafter, Ebola victim specimens were sent to the CDC, Special (meaning "secret" within the American intelligence community) Pathogens Branch; to Porton, England's controversial chemical and biological weapons (CBW) laboratories;45 and teams of WHO and CDC researchers were dispatched to the Ebola region in Mobutu's private, American supplied C-130 Buffalo troop-transport plane.44

By the end of 1976, the Zairian leader had reconciled his differences with the American intelligence and corporate communities believing that Zaire would continue to reap his non-communist allies' social and economic aid. On April 4, 1977, Mobutu suspended diplomatic relations with Cuba; on April 21, reduced ties with the Soviet Union; and on May 2, he cut ties with East Germany.46 Meanwhile, according to John Stockwell, Former Chief of the CIA's Angola Task Force, "the United States was exposed, dishonored and discredited in the eyes of the world," as "15,000 Cubans were installed in Angola"40 despite the CIA's best efforts and a continuing policy of lying "to State Department officials, Congressmen, American press, and world public opinion in varying degrees, depending on the need" about the CIA's covert military campaign in Angola and Zaire.39

Throughout 1976 and 1977, Mobutu, NATO, and the CIA, constrained by the Tunney, Cranston and Clark amendment which prevented the expenditure of American funds in Zaire/Angola, except to gather intelligence, 39 remained embroiled in the "Shaba rebellion" against allegedly Russian-backed "Katangan rebels."46

At the same time, perhaps not coincidentally, NATO ally West Germany was pouring financial aid into Zaire and white ruled South Africa.47-49 The Northeast region of Zaire, believed to be the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic, was specifically targetted for West German economic aid and industrialization.50

The "long tradition of friendship between Germans and South Africans" London's African Development noted, "dates back from the first waves of white immigrants to South Africa and the feeling of solidarity between Germans and Afrikaners during the Boer War, continuing throughout the First World War and then the Second World War. Many of today's Nationalist leaders in Pretoria," the paper reported, "were Nazi sympathizers: many ex-Nazis settled in South Africa after 1945 . . ,"48

THE WEST GERMAN COMPANY OTRAG

Not surprising then, on March 26, 1976 Mobutu signed what the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) reported was a "secret agreement" with the West German company OTRAG (Orbital Transport-und Raketen-Aktiengesellschaft) to lease 260,000 square kilometers—essentially the complete Kivu province—for military/industrial purposes for the sum of DM 800,000,000 (approximately $250 million at that time).51"54 The contract "made OTRAG sovereign over territories once inhabited by 760,000 people"54 in the Eastern and South-central portion of Zaire. The leased property positioned North of the Shaba militarized region, expanded Southeast along the Congo River—the countries main waterway, and south of the Kinshasa highway—better known as the "AIDS Highway" which runs through Zaire's Northeast corridor and across central Africa bypassing the "Isle of Plaques," Mount Elgon and Kitum Cave allegedly by the author of The Hot Zone to be the breeding ground for the Ebola, Marburg, and AIDS viruses.44

OTRAG was apparently authorized to conduct any "excavation and construction; including air fields, energy plants, communication systems, and manufacturing plants. All movement of people into and within the OTRAG territory was only with permission of OTRAG, [which was] absolved from any responsibility for damage caused by construction. Its people enjoy complete immunity from the laws of Zaire in the granted territory, until the year 2000."56

Believed to be of military intelligence gathering significance to NATO46"48 ' 55> 56 OTRAG and its principals were traced back to the West German government and "to those Nazi scientists who worked on VI and V2 rockets during World War n. For example, Dr. Kurt H. Debus, Chairman of the Board of OTRAG, once worked at the Peenemude V2 program and later, until 1975, worked as director of the Cape Canaveral (now Cape Kennedy) space program. Richard Gompertz, OTRAG's technical director and a U.S. citizen, once was a specialist on V2 engines and later presided over NASA's Chrysler space division. Lutz Thilo Kayer, OTRAG's founder and manager, when young was quite close to the Nazi rocket industry, often called 'Dadieu's young man,' a reference to Armin Dadieu, his mentor, whaserved as prominent SS officer and as Gorling's special representative for a research program on storing uranium. While working for OTRAG Kayser also acted as a contact for the West German government, a special advisor to the Minister of Research and Technology on matters concerning OTRAG. He was also on the ad hoc committee on . . . [America's] Apollo program."56

In 1979, under pressure from the Soviet Union and Zaire's neighboring countries, Mobutu announced OTRAG would "halt its rocket testing" program. It was clear, however, strong diplomatic, military, and economic ties between West Germany, the U.S. and Zaire continued 49,57

COLD WAR PROPAGANDA VERSUS THE HARD CORE PACTS

According to the latest United States Army (USA) report, the "outlandish claim" that the AIDS virus was developed as a biological weapon for the Pentagon was communist propaganda "disavowed in 1987 by then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who apologized to President Ronald Reagan for the accusation."58 However, more recently, the high ranking Soviet press official Boris Belitskiy, offered an alternative account regarding the origin of such "propaganda."59

"Several U.S. Administration officials such as USIA [CIA] Director Charles Wick, have accused the Soviet Union of having invented this theory for propaganda purposes. But actually, it is not Soviet scientists at all who first came up with this theory," Belitskiy reported. "It was first reported in Western journals by Western scientists, such as Dr. John Seale, a specialist on venereal diseases at two big London hospitals.

"Just recently a Soviet journalist in Algeria, Aleksandr Zhukov, managed to interview a European physician at the Moustapha Hospital there, who made some relevant disclosures on the subject. In the early seventies, this physician, an immunologist, was working for the West German OTRAG Corporation in Zaire. His laboratory had been given the assignment to cultivate viruses ordinarily affecting animals but constituting a potential danger to man. They were particularly interested in certain unknown viruses isolated from the African green monkey, and capable of such rapid replication that they could completely destabilize the immune system. These viruses, however, were quite harmless for human beings and the lab's assignment was to develop a mutant virus that would be a human killer." 711 ' 13 22

"Did they succeed?" the announcer asked. 'To a large extent, yes," Belitskiy replied. "The lab was ordered to wind up the project and turn the results over to certain U.S. researchers, who had been following this work with keen interest, to such an extent that some of the researchers believed they were in reality working not for the West German OTRAG Corporation but for the Pentagon."59

Two years after Belitskiy's announcement, in 1991, Dr. Jacobo Segal, professor emeritus of Berlin's Humboldt University told the international press that the Pentagon theory of AIDS made sense. He alleged the virus was likely developed "through gene technology" as a result of Pentagon sponsored animal research, "to permit the attack on human immune cells." Furthermore, he reported this theory is "supported by many European scientists and has not been refuted."60

In 1977, at the height of OTRAG's Zairian missile testing phase, Litton Industries units received contracts worth: $5 million for medical electronic equipment from its Hellige division, in Freiburg, West Germany;61 $19.8 million worth of missile fire-control equipment from the Army;62 $32.9 million for electronic reconnaissance sensor equipment from the Air Force;63 and in 1978 $11.3 million worth of computerized communications systems for NATO.64 Some of these military supplies may have been earmarked for OTRAG.65

Moreover, given the "cooperation between NATO and the World Health Organization with regard to the control and regulation of the international exchange of pharmaceutical products, [and] the possible necessity of facing the dangers created by the use of chemickl or bacteriological weapons"66 It appears noteworthy that the outbreaks of the world's most feared and deadly viruses Marburg, Ebola, Reston, and AIDS—share the dubious distinction of breaking out in or around zones of U.S. and West German, NATO-allied, military experimentation at the height of the cold war; increased political/military interest in Central Africa, and a burgeoning of WHO and NCI contracts for the supply of simians for "defensive" research.44

AIDS, GAYS, BLACKS AHD THE CIA

It is also noteworthy that in 1975, five years following the signing of the Geneva accord by Nixon, congressional records revealed that the USPHS through the Special (i.e., covert) Operations Division of the Army continued to supply biological weapons including deadly neurotoxins and viruses to the CIA which illegally stored them in their Fort Detrick facility for future unsanctioned uses 67 Though records of who initiated and directed this covert activity were destroyed by the CIA, along with the famous Watergate tapes,68 Mr. Nathan Gordon, Former Chief of the CIA's Chemistry Branch, Technical Services Division confessed knowledge that some of the stored substances were to be used to "study immunization methods for diseases vis-a-vis—who knows, cancer."69 . Furthermore, following Nixon's resignation, President Ford and Henry Kissinger were made aware that the CIA maintained a residual supply of biological weapons, but neither ordered their destruction according to testimony provided by Former CIA Director Richard Helms.70

In subsequent congressional hearings before the Senate Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research, it was revealed that George W. Merck, "of the prominent Merck pharmaceutical firm," directed America's biological weapons manufacturing industry for decades following World War

II 71 Merck & Company, Inc. was also listed among the DOD biological weapons contractors.72 Merck, Sharp and Dohme provided major financial support for the earliest hepatitis B vaccination studies conducted simultaneously in Central Africa and New York City during the early 1970s. Several authorities have argued these vaccine trials might best explain the unique and varying epidemiological patterns of HIV/AIDS transmission between the U.S. and Africa. "The vaccine was prepared in the laboratories of the Department of Virus and Cell Biology Research, Merck Institute for Therapeutic Research, West Point, Pennsylvania. The placebo, [was] also prepared in the Merck Laboratories."72

During the holocaust, Nazi scientists assayed non-Arian blood to determine race specific disease susceptibilities. Blacks and homosexuals, along with Jews, were persecuted by the Nazis. Over 10,000 gay men were murdered. 3

Similarly, U.S. intelligence agencies have been targeting blacks and gays for assassinations, harassment, illegal wire taps, and counterintelligence campaigns from the McCarthy era in the 1950s through the Reagan era in the 1980s. American black and gay civil rights groups and their leaders were considered communist threats during the cold war years — particularly during the late 1960s and early 1970s when Nixon, Kissinger, and Hoover supported COINTELPRO funding for covert FBI and CIA activities aimed at neutralizing all such domestic and foreign black and homosexual threats. 74-78

The use of Third World people and American, blacks and prisoners for unconscionable pharmaceutical experimentation and covert economic, social, and environmental exploitation by the U.S. and other western countries has been repeatedly alleged by reputable sources.79

A former longtime deputy to AIDS researcher Dr. Robert Gallo has been charged with stealing $25,000 that a German pharmaceutical firm paid the U.S. government for biological research in the Gallo laboratory.

The former deputy, Dr. Prem Sarin, 57, was charged by a federal grand jury here last week with embezzlement and three other violations of federal law, including two felony charges of making false statements on financial disclosure forms.

Sarin is the second scientist from the Gallo lab to have been charged with criminal offenses by the U.S. attorney`s office here. Last year, Syed Salahuddin, another longtime Gallo aide, pleaded guilty to accepting illegal gratuities from a Maryland company that supplied the Gallo lab with services and materials.

Ties between that company, Pan-Data Systems, and another Gallo assistant, Dr. Dharam Ablashi, are being investigated by Richard Kusserow, inspector-general of the Department of Health and Human Services, according to sources familiar with that investigation.

Kusserow`s investigators are also conducting an inquiry into possible perjury and false statements by Gallo himself in connection with his prize-winning AIDS research at the National Cancer Institute in suburban Bethesda, Md., just outside Washington.

The cancer institute is part of the National Institutes of Health, which is an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. Kusserow, who previously headed the white-collar fraud unit in the Chicago office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has oversight responsibility at HHS.

According to federal court files in the Sarin case, Sarin had tentatively agreed to plead guilty earlier this month to two lesser offenses. When that deal fell through, federal prosecutors asked the grand jury to charge the scientist with four violations of law, including embezzlement.

The offenses to which Sarin had agreed to plead guilty carry a maximum penalty of six years in prison and a $350,000 fine. The maximum for the four offenses with which he is now charged is 21 years in prison and a fine of $850,000.

Asked why his client had chosen to stand trial, Sarin`s attorney, W. Neil Eggleston, said only, ''He`s innocent.'' Eggleston declined to confirm reports that Sarin had repaid the $25,000 that is the focus of the alleged embezzlement.

Other sources close to the case suggested that Sarin had withdrawn from the deal because of prosecutors` insistence that any plea bargain include some jail time.