From Tehran to Managua to South Central The Cold War, CIA, Science and African Americans The Nuremburg Trials
The Legacy of Eugenics in Postwar America The CIA and the African American Community through the Cold War
The CIA and the African American Community MKUltra Paul Robeson LSD and Psychosurgery Experiments Assassination Attempt on Patrice Lumumba AIDS and Africa The Contra-Crack Connection
Genealogy of Eugenics Policies All children born, beyond what would be required to keep up the population to a desired level, must necessarily perish, unless room is made for them by the deaths of grown persons. We should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality. - Thomas Robert Malthus • Sterilization Programs, 1907-1975, 70,000+ Americans of Color Involuntarily Sterilized • Puerto Rico Cancer Experiment, 1931 • Tuskegee Experiment, 1932-1974 • Pellagra Incident, 1935: Toll Unknown (100,000+) • Margaret Sanger’s Negro Project,1939 • We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members . - Margaret Sanger, on use of black clergy to shield program • Chicago Malaria Incident,1940 • 1951 Test of Aspergillus fumigatus on 400 unwitting African Americans in North Carolina
The CIA and Science in the Cold War Era • “Necessity” through and ideological lens • The Technical Services Division • Operation Bluebird and Operation Artichoke • MKULtra • Violating the Nuremberg Code of Ethics • Sidney Gottlieb, head of TSD, Personally tried to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, President of the Republic of the Congo
MkUltra and African Americans • Sidney Gottlieb provided 800 drugs to be tested • Dr. Harris Isbell, Lexington, Lexington Narcotics Hospital in Kentucky • Experimented on Hundreds of Black and Poor White Inmates between 1956-1965, funded by the CIA • Six black prisoners give psylocybin and strapped for hours to gurneys with rectal thermometers inserted to check temperature changes • 8 Black prisoners given LSD for 77 straight days at up to 4X the “normal” dose • The doctor marveled at the men's apparent tolerance to these remarkable amounts of LSD. Isbell wrote in his notes that "this type of behavior is to be expected in patients of this type." • Prisoners given a “bank account” of morphine and heroin as reward for participating • Prisoners at Texas Correctional Facilities subjected to radiation tests, biological warfare agent tests • During World War II 60 Black prisoners injected with Yellow Fever to track symptoms and course of disease
Paul Robeson: “Neutralized” • A man you should know as well as Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks
Paul Robeson • Father escaped out of slavery, graduated college and became a minister • Only black student at Rutgers at the time, accepted into Phi Beta Kappa, valedictorian of graduating class • Letters in baseball, football, track and basketball • First Team All-American (football) 1917-18 • Columbia Law School, 1923 • Paid way through school by performing and playing a short time in pro football before it segregated • Hired by top law firm in New York; quits after white secretary refuses to work for him • Opera and Broadway Career • Appeared in 11 movies (all British) • Spoke 20 Languages • Toured Spain during Spanish Civil War, performing for troops • NBC refuses to allow Eleanor Roosevelt to have him on her show in 1950 • International Civil Rights/anti-lynching Organizer • Toured Europe criticizing both Western European and Soviet Racial Policies • Investigate by HUAC and FBI; 1951 assassination attempt • Trip to Soviet Union in 1961
COUNTERINTELLIGENCE PROGRAM BLACK NATIONALIST - HATE GROUPS RACIAL INTELLIGENCE 3/4/68 [...] GOALS ~~~~~ For maximum effectiveness of the Counterintelligence Program, and to prevent wasted effort, long-range goals are being set. 1. Prevent the COALITION of militant black nationalist groups. In unity there is strength; a truism that is no less valid for all its triteness. An effective coalition of black nationalist groups might be the first step toward a real "Mau Mau" [Black revolutionary army] in America, the beginning of a true black revolution. 2. Prevent the RISE OF A "MESSIAH" who could unify, and electrify, the militant black nationalist movement. Malcolm X might have been such a "messiah;" he is the martyr of the movement today. Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael and Elijah Muhammed all aspire to this position. Elijah Muhammed is less of a threat because of his age. King could be a very real contender for this position should he abandon his supposed "obedience" to "white, liberal doctrines" (nonviolence) and embrace black nationalism. Carmichael has the necessary charisma to be a real threat in this way. 3. Prevent VIOLENCE on the part of black nationalist groups. This is of primary importance, and is, of course, a goal of our investigative activity; it should also be a goal of the Counterintelligence Program to pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them before they exercise their potential for violence.
4. Prevent militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining RESPECTABILITY, by discrediting them to three separate segments of the community. The goal of discrediting black nationalists must be handled tactically in three ways. You must discredit those groups and individuals to, first, the responsible Negro community. Second, they must be discredited to the white community, both the responsible community and to "liberals" who have vestiges of sympathy for militant black nationalist [sic] simply because they are Negroes. Third, these groups must be discredited in the eyes of Negro radicals, the followers of the movement. This last area requires entirely different tactics from the first two. Publicity about violent tendencies and radical statements merely enhances black nationalists to the last group; it adds "respectability" in a different way. 5. A final goal should be to prevent the long-range GROWTH of militant black organizations, especially among youth. Specific tactics to prevent these groups from converting young people must be developed. [...] TARGETS ~~~~~~~ Primary targets of the Counterintelligence Program, Black Nationalist-Hate Groups, should be the most violent and radical groups and their leaders. We should emphasize those leaders and organizations that are nationwide in scope and are most capable of disrupting this country. These targets, members, and followers of the: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) NATION OF ISLAM (NOI) [emphasis added] Offices handling these cases and those of Stokely Carmichael of SNCC, H. Rap Brown of SNCC, Martin Luther King of SCLC, Maxwell Stanford of RAM, and Elijah Muhammed of NOI, should be alert for counterintelligence suggestions. [...]
COUNTERINTELLIGENCE PROGRAM BLACK NATIONALIST - HATE GROUPS INTERNAL SECURITY [...] The purpose of this new counterintelligence endeavor is to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or OTHERWISE NEUTRALIZE [emphasis added] the activities of black nationalist hate-type organizations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership, and supporters, and to counter their propensity for violence and civil disorder. The activities of all such groups of intelligence interest to the Bureau must be followed on a continuous basis so we will be in a position to promptly take advantage of all opportunities for counterintelligence and inspire action in instances where circumstances warrant. The pernicious background of such groups, their duplicity, and devious maneuvers must be exposed to public scrutiny where such publicity will have a neautralizing effect. Efforts of the various groups to consolidate their forces or to recruit new or youthful adherents must be frustrated. NO OPPORTUNITY SHOULD BE MISSED TO EXPLOIT THROUGH COUNTERINTELLIGENCE TECHNIQUES THE ORGANIZATIONAL AND PERSONAL CONFLICTS OF THE LEADERSHIPS OF THE GROUPS AND WHERE POSSIBLE AN EFFORT SHOULD BE MADE TO CAPITALIZE UPON EXISTING CONFLICTS BETWEEN COMPETING BLACK NATIONALIST ORGANIZATIONS. [emphasis added] When an opportunity is apparent to disrupt or NEUTRALIZE [emphasis added] black nationalist, hate- type organizations through the cooperation of established local news media contacts or through such contact with sources available to the Seat of Government [Hoover's office]*, in every instance careful attention must be given to the proposal to insure the targeted group is disrupted, ridiculed, or discredited through the publicity and not merely publicized... You are also cautioned that the nature of this new endeavor is suchthat UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD THE EXISTENCE OF THE PROGRAM BE MADEKNOWN OUTSIDE THE BUREAU [emphasis added] and appropriate within-office security should be afforded to sensitive operations and techniques considered under the program.
American Civil Rights Activist,1945-1960 • Early Civil Rights March in the South
1961: Target of MKultra? • FOIA Files Reveal CIA and FBI Cointelpro Agents Both Tracking Robeson’s Movements • Trip to Soviet Union and planned trip to Cuba two months before the Bay of Pigs • Party thrown by known CIA agents in Moscow • - Hallucinations, Sudden Anxiety and Depression • Suicide Attempt the next day • Two years in British Mental Hospital / receives electroshock 54 times • “ Depatterning” – Ewen Cameron
Lexington Drug Rehabilitation Center, 1957-1964 • Dr. Harris Isbell • Trading consent to experiments for opiates to prisoners • LSD experiment: administering LSD to eight prisoners for 77 straight days • Strapping prisoners face down on gurneys and inserting rectal thermometers to track body temperature changes under mescaline for 8-16 hours. • Just a couple of examples!
Holmesburg Prison Tests, 1951-74Albert Kligman and Prisoner Experiments • Kligman tested everything from skin creams, to dioxyn to mind altering drugs for the US Government and Private Corporations. • "The prison population at that point was overwhelmingly African American--about 85 per cent--and the education level was pitiful. You didn't have to be a bioethicist to know this is a recipe for disaster." • “When they put the chemicals on me, my hands swelled up like eight-ounce boxing gloves, and they’ve never gone back to normal,” said Edward Anthony, 62, a former inmate who took part in Holmesburg experiments in 1964. “We’re still pushing the lawsuit because the medical bills are still coming in for a lot of us.” • Researchers told inmates little about the experiments. So prisoners quizzed fellow inmates who worked with the doctors in order to learn which tests were safest. Word on the prison grapevine was that Kligman's most dangerous studies took place inside the trailers parked at the prison. There, Kligman tested mind-altering drugs for the U.S. Army--even though this was far outside his specialty of dermatology. • The University of Pennsylvania released a statement defending Kligman's work, which read in part, "In the 1950s and 1960s, the use of willing, compensated prisoners for biomedical research was a commonly accepted practice by this nation's scientists."
Psychosurgery: Tulane, 1964-72 • Experimental Brain Surgery done on Louisiana State Prisoners, sometimes without anesthetic and often while the prisoners were conscious. • The experiments were conducted by psychiatrist Dr. Robert Heath from Tulane University and an Australian psychiatrist, Dr. Harry Bailey, who boasted in a lecture to nurses 20 years later that the two psychiatrists had used blacks because it was "cheaper to use Niggers than cats because they were everywhere and cheap experimental animals."
The Debate over the Origin of AIDS in Africa “The properties of viruses are seemingly ideal for producing immunopathological damage. “ – WHO, 1972 • Researchers had originally proposed that AIDS was an "old disease of Africa" that had reached the West via recent intercontinental travel, a rather curious notion given the forced intercontinental travel of up to 100 million African slaves in previous centuries(32).
Theory: HIV evolves into AIDS over what usually takes 10-20 years in HIV-1 and a shorter time in cases of HIV-2. • HIV-1 breaks out in the United States in 1981-82 • HIV-2 breaks out in Africa in 1984-85 • Hunt for the origins of AIDS almost immediately turns to Africa for origins of the virus
AIDS, the CIA and Africa • "It's true that there are some people who create agents to wipe out other people. If there were no such people, we could have not have invaded Iraq," she said. • "We invaded Iraq because we believed that Saddam Hussein had made, or was in the process of creating agents of biological warfare," said Ms Maathai. • "In fact it (the HIV virus) is created by a scientist for biological warfare," she added. • "Why has there been so much secrecy about AIDS? When you ask where did the virus come from, it raises a lot of flags. That makes me suspicious," • Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize Recipient, 2004
What is the closest zoonotic virus to HIV-1 in genetic structure? Visna is 97% Identical to HIV-1, but not contagious to humans; feline leukemia, being worked on at Fort Detrick was consistent with the other 3% of HIV-1 and may be contagious to human beings. SIVcpz is only 67-83% identical to HIV.
AIDS: Medical Mistake or Bioweapon? • Consensus has been steadily growing over the years that AIDS is likely a man-made virus – hybrid of a brucella cattle bacterium and/or feline leukemia and a mutated sheep (Visna) retrovirus • The pure toxin (mycoplasma) was extracted and crystallized for use as a biowarfare agent. • Mycoplasma lacks a cell wall, making it difficult or impossible for the immune system to recognize and combat it. • Theories differ on how it was released into the environment ranging from an accidental contamination of vaccine to a genocidal policy of population control. • In either case, the victims are disproportionately “undesirables” in the eyes of society and the US Gov’t, and effective aid was delayed by US Gov’t. agencies.
Military Review Journal, 1970 From mind control (left) to the basics of AIDS (right)
The Origins of AIDS Theories • 1959 Bantu Man Sample • Essex Labs and the Congo Samples • Essex also produced the Green Monkey Theory • Oldest Proposed Case: 1930 • Based on 1959 sample and theorized mutation rate / problem is evidence drawn from contaminated specimens • 1987 - Oldest US Case: 1969 St. Louis Teenager? • 1981-2 Cases of US Epidemic • Outbreak in Africa in 1980s • The enduring questions: How do viruses jump species and continents?
IS AIDS AFRICAN?By Rosalind Harrison-ChirimuutaDissonance 22 May, 1997 • If the evidence for an African origin is contradictory or insubstantial, are there any credible alternatives? One possibility that has been given scant attention in the vast scientific literature about HIV and AIDS is an artificial origin of a mutant virus. This would seem rather surprising, as the risks of mutant viruses emerging from laboratories has been widely debated for many years. In the early 1970's several molecular biologists also expressed concern at the risks of molecular biology, and published a book Biohazards in Biological Research. (38) In February 1975, at Asilomar in California, an international conference of molecular biologists agreed a policy of self-regulation that included "appropriate safeguards, principally biological and physical barriers adequate to contain the newly created organisms, [should be] employed", and "certain experiments . . . ought not to be done with presently available containment facilities." In the following years the debate entered the body politic, and by 1976 the National Institutes of Health released guidelines for research on recombinant DNA molecules, and the following year the Federal Interagency Committee on Recombinant DNA Research issued an interim report on Suggested Elements for Legislation that was subsequently enacted by the US government. (39)
What’s the Point? • The point is that hundreds of thousands of African Green Monkeys and Chimpanzees have been the staple test animals in US and European biogenetic and biowarfare labs since the 1950s. Conversely thousands of these have been released back into the wild in Africa from Western Test labs because of storage problems of test animals once their use has ended. Whether by accident or design, it is possible that AIDS, a disease first manifest in the USA is a backflow to Africa and not of African origin.
Overlap with Eugenics Margaret Sanger Style? • The subtext of AIDS Discourse on Africa is that Africans are more sexually active and promiscuous than Europeans • There are other reasons to dispute the scale of the African AIDS epidemic. In the West, progression from HIV infection to AIDS is reported to be from 5 to 7% annually. (32) This ratio is a function of the rate of progression from infection to manifest disease. If the huge number of reported seropositive Africans are seropositive for the same reasons as their counterparts in the West, then they should be developing AIDS and dying at a comparable rate and the continent should be witnessing a death rate far in excess of that which is occurring. Seropositive Africans do have a higher death rate than non-seropositive Africans, but this would be the case even if the majority of the seropositives were false positives suffering from chronic malaria, tuberculosis or other diseases. (33) A further difficulty with the African epidemic is the equal or near equal sex incidence of seropositivity found in population studies. It is claimed that this is due to the heterosexual transmission of HIV in Africa. (34, 35) Studies in the West have shown repeatedly that HIV positivity is far more likely to be transmitted from semen donor to semen recipient (whether the latter is male or female) than the reverse, and there is no reason why this should be different in Africa. (36, 37) If heterosexual intercourse is the major means of transmission of HIV in Africa, HIV seropositivity and AIDS should disproportionately affect women. An equal sex ratio implies not sexual transmission but the converse, non-sexual transmission, and one obvious explanation would be that the large majority of seropositives in Africa are false positives due to malaria, tuberculosis and other infections that affect men and women equally.
Cast of Characters in the Controversy • Dr. Boyd Graves, JD • Alan Cantwell, MD • Robert Strecker, MD, PhD (no picture available) • Robert Gallo, PhD • National Cancer Institute • Special Virus Cancer Program, Biowarfare, Fort Detrick, Maryland "The link between the WHO program and the epidemic is an interesting and important hypothesis. I cannot say that it actually happened, but I have been saying for some years that the use of live vaccines such as that used for smallpox can activate a dormant infection such as HIV (the AIDS virus)."
Did AIDS Originate as a Bioweapon? “Reduction of the rate of population in these states [developing countries] is a matter of vital U.S. national security.” - Henry Kissinger, NSSM #200 1974 "Within the next 5 to 10 years it would probably be possible to make a new infective micro-organism which could differ in certain important respects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most important of these is that it might be refractory to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease." - Dr D.M. Macarthur, Congressional Subcommitee,1969 Polio Vaccine, 1957-1960, The Edward Hooper Smallpox Vaccine in Central/South Africa: Late 1972-78, Cantwell and Strecker Hepatitis B Vaccine, New York, LA, SF: 1978-1979 First AIDS Cases; “Discovery” of AIDS at Fort Detrich: 1981 by Joseph Gallo of the Special Virus Cancer Program under Contract to US Army Counterevidence: St. Louis Teenager, 1969/Bantu Man 1959
Areas of Highest AIDS Concentration / late 1970s Smallpox Vaccine Distribution
AIDS vaccine may have worsened risk of HIV infection • October 26, 2007 • Hundreds of South Africans who received an experimental AIDS vaccine have been warned that it may have increased their risk of HIV infection. The study, which began in January, was meant to establish whether a product made by the pharmaceutical company Merck could protect people from HIV. It was stopped last month after researchers found no evidence of effectiveness. • Now it has been revealed that the infection rate was higher among people who received the vaccine than among those given a placebo. Nineteen vaccinated volunteers acquired HIV, compared to eleven in the placebo half of the study. Every trial participant is now being told whether they received the vaccine or the placebo, and is being warned of the possible consequences. • Merck's vaccine candidate was separately trialed in 3,000 volunteers from the USA, Canada, Australia, Peru and the Caribbean. That study, which began in 2004, was halted at the same time as the South African trial. The ethics board has yet to decide whether to inform the participants - mostly gay men - if they received the vaccine or the placebo. Experts say the vaccine itself could not have caused HIV infection, but it may have increased the risk of transmission by affecting immune responses. "Given the complexity of the issue, we feel the best conclusions will be reached when all the data are analyzed in their entirety," said Mark Feinberg, vice president for medical affairs and policy for Merck. • More details are likely to emerge when vaccine researchers meet in Seattle early next month. • Not only is this outcome a major disappointment for researchers, but it may also affect people's willingness to take part in similar trials in the future. A trial of an HIV microbicide was stopped in January after it too found more infections in the treated group compared to those who received a placebo.
Gangs, Crack and the CIA The African American Community has long been accused of being conspiracy theorists. Want to know why?
"I have never seen an entire race labeled as conspiracy theorists before. This was really -- that's when I thought they had really gone off the deep end, when they were trying to convince everybody that, well, you know, these black people, you know, they believe anything they're told, which was when you boil it down, that's exactly what the articles [debunking his series] were saying." Gary Webb Conspiracy Theories: Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
The Great Communicator and the 1980 Election “We don’t negotiate with terrorists.” – Ronald Reagan
Congress cuts off funding to Contras coming out of 1987 hearings on the Iran-Contra Affair
So where do you go to fund your black ops when Congress puts a stop on your checks? In 1970, Air America, run by the CIA was smuggling heroin into Europe and the United States. In, the 1980s, they discovered Crack was more profitable.
Throughout the '80s, Blandon and his cohort, Nicaraguan mega drug dealer Norwin Meneses, reportedly flew thousands of kilos of cocaine into California. DEA records show that Blandon was dealing an average of 100 kilos a week to the Crips and the Bloods. But it's not so much a conspiracy as a chain reaction. And that's what my whole book is about, this chain reaction. - Gary Webb
"Places like the L.A. Times and The Sacramento Bee do these long-winded, computer-assisted, sociological surveys that answer questions such as, 'Why to we act like we do?'" says Webb. "There's nobody to blame when you're all done, and nobody wants to finger anybody as a culprit any more. Investigative journalism is all but dead. To journalists, it's just amorphous social institutions that are to blame. You know, it's just the way we live. That's the mantra. "But the crack cocaine explosion in the West and Midwest was born from the relationship of two guys--one who wanted to be rich and one whose job it was to finance a Central American war. It damn sure wasn't caused by declining American morals.“ - Gary Webb
The Effect of Crack on Urban Communities of Color Since 1985, over 20,000 people have died from Gang-related shootings.
Crack and Mandatory Minimums Guidelines assign a 78-97 month sentence for distributing between 20 and 35 grams of crack cocaine and a 78-97 month sentence for distributing between 2 kilograms and 3.5 kilograms of powder cocaine. This 100-1 ratio is based on the 1986 mandatory minimum sentencing scheme. Under the change, there would be no difference between crack and powder cocaine weights for determining a sentence. In the Sentencing Commission's report on the crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity released in February, it pointed to the racial impact of this law. The report finds that over 88% of those sentenced for crack offenses are black , while only 4.1% of those sentenced for that offense are white. Most crack users, however, are white (52% of reported crack users are white, 38% black)
Epilogue: The Connections Continue • One last thing I want to mention -- Bob Parry, who is a fine investigative reporter, he runs a magazine in Washington called I.F. Magazine, and he's got a great website, check it out -- he did a story about two weeks ago about some of the stuff that was contained in the CIA report that we didn't get to see. And one of the stories he wrote was about how there was a second CIA drug ring in South Central Los Angeles that ran from 1988 to 1991. This was not even the one I wrote about. There was another one there. This was classified. • The interesting thing is, it was run by a CIA agent who had participated in the contra war, and the reason it was classified is because it is under investigation by the CIA. I doubt very seriously that we'll ever hear another word about that. • – Gary Webb
The CIA and Dark Alliance One out of four black men will spend sometime in prison in their lifetime. In some southern states, 40% have been disenfranchised. • Gary Fox’s career was ruined by the CIA’s alliance with the mainstream media (established through Operation Mockingbird – the placing of agents in mainline and alternative newspapers). In 2002, after completing a book on the subject which reinforced the arguments made in the series. He was found dead in his apartment in Sacramento. The coroner would label his death as suicide from two shots from .38 revolver to his head, the first one ripping off half his jaw. He would make the statement that, “while it is unusual for someone to kill himself with two shots to the head, it is possible.” Rest in Peace Gary, The beat goes on . . .
Two April Fourths • We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world -- a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight. • Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world. This is the callling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history. • Martin Luther King, April 4, 1967; Beyond Vietnam
Martin Luther King, Jr.The Legend and the Man There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society, with a large segment of people in that society, who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that they have nothing to lose. People who have a stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don't have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it.