by Donald S. McAlvaney, Editor,
McAlvaney Intelligence Advisor (MIA), August 1996
Governments are instituted to lie to the greatest number of people the greater amount of the time.— Machiavelli
To my mind, there is no more serious crime than an official military cover-up of facts that could prevent more effective diagnosis and treatment of sick U.S. veterans. It is an astonishing example of the lengths to which the U.S. Department of Defense is going to deny reality . . . These are horrendous statistics that show the time scale of the problem and the heartlessness and irresponsibility of a military bureaucracy that gives every sign of wanting to protect itself more than the health and well-being of our servicemen and women who actually go and fight our wars.— Senator Don Riegle (D-MI)
The biggest cover-up of what may turn out to be the biggest scandal in U. S. history is underway. The U.S. Defense Dept. and the Veterans Administration are deliberately or intentionally overlooking, hiding or destroying evidence that the U.S. sold biologicals to Iraq, that Iraq used those germ warfare agents on U.S. Desert Storm troops. Tens of thousands of those troops are now sick, dying, or dead, and they are denying desperately needed medical treatment to tens of thousands of sick Desert Storm veterans and their families.
Since World War II, the American people have been subjected to numerous massive cover-ups by the U.S. government. Among them the JFK assassination, the VietNam War POW & MIA scandals, Iran-Contra, federal government involvement in drug smuggling, the Waco Holocaust, the Oklahoma City bombing, and now the Desert Storm germ warfare cover-up.
As London’s Sunday Times recently wrote: Some urgent questions for the Ministry of Defense in London and the Department of Defense in Washington: If there is no such thing as Gulf War Syndrome, WHY – – five years after the war’s end – – are so many formerly healthy soldiers now in wheelchairs? If there is no such thing as Gulf War Syndrome, WHY are so many wives of so many Gulf War veterans sick? If there is no such thing as Gulf War syndrome, WHY are so many parents who no history of genetic problems producing deformed and damaged babies? If none of the above is connected with the inoculations and pills issued to Desert Storm troops, WHY are so many veterans discovering that their records are missing? WHY are some units rumored to have been warned not to conceive children for at least a year after taking the drugs? If no chemical or biological weapons were deployed in the Gulf, WHY were chemical agent alarms triggered on almost a daily basis during the war? WHY are the symptoms being suffered by so many veterans identical with those associated with exposure to low-level chemical and blistering agents? These are all questions which cry out for answers!
A. THE ANATOMY OF THE GERM WARFARE COVER-UP
The Dept. of Defense continues to publicly claim: There were no confirmed detections of any chemical or biological agents at any time during the entire conflict. This was the sworn statement of Mr. Edwin Dorn, Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. This statement disputes what Under Secretary of Defense Dr. John M. Deutch (now head of the CIA) told U.S. senators during questioning (1/9/93).
Deutch told senators: The Dept. of Defense is withholding classified information on the exposure of U.S. forces to biological materials during the Gulf War. Army Chief of Staff John Shalikashvili and Secretary of Defense William J. Perry testified to the senators on the same day: There is no information, classified or unclassified, that indicates that chemical or biological weapons were used in the Persian Gulf. As late as March 1996, the Associated Press released another Dept. of Defense damage control report stating: Previous VA and Defense Dept. studies have looked at possible links to chemical, biological, or environmental factors but have failed to find any single cause of the health problems.
[ED. NOTE: How about multiple causes!]
On April 3, 1996, The Dallas Morning News carried an article entitled: “Pentagon Study Discounts Gulf Syndrome” which stated: There is no such thing as Persian Gulf Syndrome, the Pentagon concluded Tuesday… We have found no indication of a unique illness or a Persian Gulf Syndrome or a single entity that would account for illness on a large number of people, said Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, Stephen Joseph. The article went out to quote Joseph that the primary veteran problems were psychological. [ED. NOTE: And this, from the “honorable” men who brought us Agent Orange and LSD-laced cocktails and then lied about these actions for over 20 years].
On April 26, 1996, The Hartford Courant carried an article entitled: “Critics Contend U.S. Mishandled Gulf Data”, which wrote: Tuite worked for former U.S. Sen. Donald Riegle, the Michigan Democrat whose inquiry first linked soldiers’ Gulf War Illnesses to chemical and biological agents. During a congressional hearing in 1993 and 1994, Riegle said: We experienced a consistent effort to withhold factual information from the beginning and its continuing up to the present day. Medical records, showing when veterans took controversial medications, or periods they complained of illness, are hard or impossible to locate, veterans say. Some Gulf War nuclear, biological and chemical incident logs, giving times when chemical alarms sounded, or when oil well fires blackened Gulf War skies, are still classified. The U.S. Army has acknowledged that it destroyed other logs in violation of its own regulations.
[ED. NOTE: Joyce Riley, in numerous conversations with Gulf War vets, has concluded that approximately 70% of there medical records are missing. It is also rumored that many of these records were stored in the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and were destroyed in the 1995 bombing. This rumor has been difficult to confirm since the DOD remains silent on the subject].
Veterans are trying to get as much information as they can including wartime medical records, combat logs and operations reports disclosing Gulf War hazards. In a tragic comedy of errors, the Intelligence Community has declassified and reclassified the same documents after their release on the Internet, including several that have drawn attention to serious shortcomings in our chemical warfare defense capabilities. James Tuite, a former U.S. Senate investigator, wrote recently. Since the war, the Dept. of Defense has been under fire from veterans’ groups, doctors and government agencies complaining that more than 90,000 sick Gulf War veterans need care before they get worse. In all, 690,000 military personnel served in the war. An unknown number of veterans’ family members, and civilians who served in the war are also reported ill with similar symptoms. The department has denied hat any veterans were harmed by chemical or biological warfare, or by oil well fires, pesticides, or drugs used to protect soldiers from chemical and biological warfare.
[ED. NOTE: An August ’95 Pentagon study, according to Life (11/95) concluded that neither the vets nor their loved ones showed signs of any new or unique illnesses].
Paul E. Wallner, staff director and administration oversight panel on Gulf War veterans’ illnesses, was criticized at a presidential committee hearing on Gulf War Illnesses last week for a controversial memo he authored last November. It said release of bombshell reports on the Gulf War should be set aside until officials were ready to respond to them; and until they could warn the White House and two high Pentagon officials about their implications. Documents Wallner said needed special attention included those conforming the use of chemical and biological weapons; those relating to a Life Magazine story saying veterans’ babies were born deformed from their parents’ wartime chemical exposures; and documents embarrassing the government.
[ED. NOTE: Wallner’s memo suggested that these documents and articles be withheld from the Internet until the Dept. of Defense could modify, censor, or do damage control on them. Is this a cover-up? Is this censorship? The Life article (11/95) on the deformed Gulf War babies is not missing from the Internet!]
Paul Sullivan, an officer of Persian Gulf War Veterans of Georgia, said: The cat is out of the bag. The veterans now have enough evidence to conclusively state chemicals were used in the Gulf War. The Dept. of Defense is still involved in rear action activities trying to deny that there was a cat, or there was a dog, or that the cat is out of the bag.
[ED. NOTE: In the Life (11/95) article which Wallner wanted to censor, and which appears to be have been censored on the internet, West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) said: When you send a veteran off to do dangerous work, I think his complaints deserve respect. The phrase I’ve used is reckless disregard. There’s a pattern of Defense Dept. recklessness].
On April 3, 1996, the American Legion, the nation’s largest veterans’ group, criticized the Defense Dept. for misleading reports, self-serving studies and shoddy science about the mystery illness afflicting thousands of Gulf War Veterans. After defeating the world’s fourth largest army with lightening speed during the Gulf War, the men and women of the U.S. military continue to be under attack from the Pentagon, said Daniel A. Ludwig, national commander of the American Legion. Ludwig’s criticism was aimed at a Defense Dept. announcement 4/2/96 that claimed no mystery illnesses were discovered during physical examinations given to more than 19,000 Gulf War veterans on active duty. The report was compiled by many of the same senior Dept. of Defense health affairs leaders who pressured the Food and Drug Administration to authorize mass inoculations of troops with experimental vaccines during the war. 1. THE NICOLSONS UNDER PRESSURE
Drs. Garth and Nancy Nicolson are receiving tremendous pressure from on high to shut them up and shut down their work on GWI and Mycoplasma fermentans (incognitus). As Garth Nicolson has said – we have uncovered one of the messiest controversies and cover-ups since Watergate – – this one makes Watergate look like a tea party. Nicolson said the U.S. government has stifled their efforts to reveal their findings, other than a brief paper published in 1995 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). This is now apparently changing, however, and the Nicolsons have published six peer-reviewed articles in medical journals in the last year on GWI.
Since I have been working on Desert Storm health issues, he explained, I have encountered numerous attempts to prevent us from continuing our work on Gulf War illnesses (GWI). I have suffered attempts to block my papers and journal articles from publication, my grant applications have been tampered with, and my mail, phone, and fax have all been repeatedly intercepted. In a lengthy interview with The Spotlight, Mrs. Nicolson said she is certain their efforts are being stifled due to business links that current or former high government officials have with U.S. firms that have developed chemical and biological warfare (CBW) agents. She mentioned specifically former President George W. Bush, former Secretary of State James A. Baker, III, and current CIA director John Deutch.
Administrators at my own institution (M.D. Anderson Center in Houston] who are close personal friends of James A. Baker III, Garth Nicolson said, have also attempted to discredit me as a scientist and prevent us administratively from working on GWI. In addition, they have attacked academic colleagues who came to our defense in the name of academic freedom. For example, Nicolson continued, I was called to a meeting with our institutional president and his four vice presidents, where they attempted to prevent or limit our access to facilities and materials necessary to conduct research on GWI or collect data on soldiers who are ill. They also indicated that I cannot be involved in any professional or public discussion of our research without first having a special committee appointed by the administration review the contents of such research. (This is the first time that such a tactic has ever been used in the history of my institution)… Obviously, this is a gross distortion of academic freedom and a crude attempt to prevent us from continuing our research and discussing it publicly.
The reason for such highly unusual events, he explained, is probably due to the fact that former President Bush and former Secretary of State James Baker, as well as the president of UTMDACC [the Anderson Cancer Center], have financial interests in the local biotechnology companies that we strongly suspect were selling illegal biological weapons to Iraq which were subsequently used against our soldiers in Desert Storm.
[ED. NOTE: Dr. Garth Nicolson told this writer on 8/9/96 that the M.D. Anderson Center in Houston (where the Nicolson’s have worked for many years) has been directly involved in biological weapons research and testing since the late 1970s and that he recently discovered that M.D. Anderson had been doing research on Mycoplasma fermentans (incognitus) as a chemical/biological warfare agent. This would seem to be another strong reason why the Nicolsons were forced out of M.D. Anderson].
In addition, we have been visited at our hospital by armed Defense Intelligence agents and warned not to continue our research. The DIA agents entered the MD Anderson Cancer Center and threatened the Administration not to allow the Nicolsons to continue their research on GWI, nor to allow them to talk about it publicly.
[ED. NOTE: What has happened to academic freedom and our First Amendment free speech rights in America?]
Dr. Charles Hinshaw, a past president of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, who has treated a number of GWI veterans, said recently: I’ve seen the pressure Dr. Nicolson has been under from the government and the academic world since he first began his research on GWI. But his shocking findings should be investigated immediately. He is one of the top cancer researchers in the country and I support him all the way.
[ED. NOTE: In July ’96, Drs. Garth and Nancy Nicolson were forced out of M.D. Anderson Hospital and are at this writing, beginning their move to the Institute for Molecular Medicine in Irvine, California. Their testing of Gulf War Veterans’ blood has accordingly been halted for the moment. The Nicolsons are not the only doctors to be pressured regarding GWI. It has become a politically incorrect illness to discuss, acknowledge its existence, or to treat. According to the Nicolsons and Joyce Riley, doctors around the country who have treated GWI, where it has become known, are being put under tremendous pressure from on high to stop treating it all together! Does that make you mad?] 2. GOVERNMENT PRESSURE AGAINST THE NICOLSONS’ SEARCH FOR THE CAUSE OF GWI
The Houston Press (8/4/95) wrote in an article entitled: “The Case for GulfWar Gate”. In 1991, Garth Nicolson learned of a mystery illness spreading among the employees of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in Huntsville. The symptoms were the same again. We knew right away what the problem was, he says. He contacted the prison system, he says, and once again, doxycycline cured much of what ailed them. Their experience with Gulf War soldiers convinced the Nicolsons that biological weapons were employed in the war; their experience with the prison system convinced them that one of these weapons originated in Texas. Taking blood samples from soldiers and Texas correctional employees, the Nicolsons examined them using a technique called gene tracking – – which they originally developed to study cancer cells. They discovered both populations (i.e. military and prison) had been infected by mycoplasma equipped with an HIV gene, which made it more invasive and deadly. It’s absolute diabolical, Garth Nicolson says. The likelihood of a single gene being transferred naturally into a mycoplasma is vanishingly small.
[ED. NOTE: The Nicolsons now believe that 1/2 of the Desert Stormers are positive for Mycoplasma fermentans (incognitus)].
With the help of their intelligence sources, the Nicolsons concluded that the biological weapons were being studied by Tanox Biosystems of Stella Link (in Houston), a company with close ties to Baylor, that it was tested on inmates at the Walls Unit in Huntsville; and that it was sold to Saddam Hussein. Books were burned and records were destroyed in Huntsville. A massive cover-up was underway, in part because George Bush and Jim Baker were Tanox investors. Thereafter, Garth Nicolson devoted a lab in his department to mycoplasma research. As they began studying the microorganisms, the espionage community began studying us, the Nicolsons say. Faxes and letters were intercepted, and the phone company said they’d never seen so many taps on a phone, Nancy Nicolson recalls. Nancy Nicolson claims to have endured a number of attempts on her life… Garth Nicolson believes Baker and Bush are friends with M.D. Anderson president Charles LeMaistre and pressured him to interfere with their work.
[ED. NOTE: LeMaistre forced Garth Nicolson out in July’ 96 and terminated all M.D. Anderson blood testing and research on Mycoplasma fermentans (incognitus). Obviously, some very powerful people want this thing to go away. Hence, the cover-up described above and the pressure and ostracizing of the Nicolsons].
Meanwhile, Nancy and Garth Nicolson believe that Mycoplasma fermentans (incognitus) is a deadly contagion and has begun to spread rapidly into the general population.
This entire report is available for $5 from McAlvany Intelligence Advisor, P. O. Box 84904, Phoenix, AZ 85071 Phone 1-800-528-0559. The Copyright has been lifted from this report so that it can be distributed widely – especially to Gulf War Veterans, physicians and health care providers.