The False Tale of TWA 800
Tales of the American Empire | March 16, 2023
Those who control the United States government also control the major media and educational institutions so often create false realities. Anyone who questions obvious lies is demeaned and branded a conspiracy theorist. The best example in modern times occurred in 1996 when a US Navy missile accidentally shot down a huge airliner killing 230 people. The federal government and its lapdog media managed to suppress what happened despite overwhelming physical evidence and hundreds of eyewitnesses.
_________________________________________________
“Allegations that a missile hit Flight TWA 800”; Pierre Salinger news conference; March 13, 1997; 
• France-Allegation…
“Flight TWA 800 Independent Investigation”; C-SPAN; August 27, 1999; • TWA Flight 800 In…
“TWA 800 – with former CBS news producer Kristina Borjesson”; Democracy Now; PBS; June 20, 2013; https://www.democracynow.org/embed/st…
“Silenced: Flight 800 and the Subversion of Justice”; July 24, 2013; • Feature Documenta…
“TWA 800: The Crash, the Cover up, and the Conspiracy”; Jack Cashill; 2016; • Video
“TWA flight 800 NTSB investigator Hank Hughes”; News 12 Long Island; November 24, 2018; • TWA flight 800 NT… T
“A Policy Error of Historic Proportions”
1997 letter to President Clinton by US cold warriors who opposed Nato expansion
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | March 17, 2023
When Dr. McCullough and I started this Substack, we agreed that he would primarily focus on COVID-19 scientific-medical scholarship, and I would investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic response is related to other major public policy issues. Occasionally, some of our readers have exhorted me to “stay in our lane”—that is, to remain focused on matters pertaining to the COVID-19 fiasco.
Because Substack is a free speech platform, and because we welcome critical opinions, I have never felt compelled to respond to these exhortations to “stay in our lane.” To some degree, I consider my critics to have a valid point. As Fitzgerald elegantly put it in The Great Gatsby, “Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window.”
On the other hand, I believe my critics are overlooking a point so obvious that it might as well strike them in the head with a baseball bat—namely, the same corrupt government nincompoops responsible for the COVID-19 fiasco are also responsible for every other catastrophic policy blunder they are currently afflicting on mankind.
For example, let’s take the U.S. government’s catastrophic mismanagement of its relations with Russia for the last thirty years. I have closely observed this disaster in the making since I moved to Vienna, Austria for an academic fellowship in 1996. On the plane to Vienna I read the July 15, 1996 Time Magazine cover story about how secret American advisors helped Boris Yeltsin to win that year’s presidential election.
Even at the time I remember thinking it was a bit presumptuous to think that it was perfectly okay for American agents to meddle in a Russian election, and I wondered how Americans would feel if it were reported that Russian agents had provided clandestine assistance to Bill Clinton in his 1996 presidential campaign against Bob Dole.
I read the Time cover story with keen interest, because for many years I’d been an avid student of 20th century Russian history. Yeltsin’s presidency marked the total triumph of American interests with respect to Russia, which had suffered a decisive loss of the Cold War. As I saw it—living in Austria, whose neutrality the Soviets had recognized and respected since 1955—in 1996 it was up to the Americans to welcome and assist Russia in becoming a partner with the West.
The following year, I read the news of how the Clinton Administration had decided to expand NATO membership to the east, ever closer to Russia’s border, and I wondered about the rationale for doing this. Though I’d never really known what to make of Henry Kissinger, I found his “Balance of Power” thesis compelling.
We humans are constantly making assurances of our good will and altruism, but it’s a rare man or woman indeed who doesn’t press his or her advantage if a disagreement arises. This is why the Soviet Premier Khrushchev refused to tolerate U.S. nuclear missiles in Turkey, and why President Kennedy refused to tolerate Soviet missiles in Cuba.
I therefore believed I understood why 50 major U.S. foreign policy experts—including top cold warriors such as Robert McNamara, Paul Nitze, Richard Pipes, and Stansfield Turner—wrote a letter to President Clinton on June 26, 1997, stating the following:
We, the undersigned, believe that the current U.S.led effort to expand NATO, the focus of the recent Helsinki and Paris Summits, is a policy error of historic proportions. We believe that NATO expansion will decrease allied security and unsettle European stability for the following reasons:
In Russia, NATO expansion, which continues to be opposed across the entire political spectrum, will strengthen the nondemocratic opposition, undercut those who favor reform and cooperation with the West, bring the Russians to question the entire post-Cold War settlement, and galvanize resistance in the Duma to the START II and III treaties; In Europe, NATO expansion will draw a new line of division between the “ins” and the “outs,” foster instability, and ultimately diminish the sense of security of those countries which are not included;
In NATO, expansion, which the Alliance has indicated is open-ended, will inevitably degrade NATO’s ability to carry out its primary mission and will involve U.S. security guarantees to countries with serious border and national minority problems, and unevenly developed systems of democratic government;
In the U.S., NATO expansion will trigger an extended debate over its indeterminate, but certainly high, cost and will call into question the U.S. commitment to the Alliance, traditionally and rightly regarded as a centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy.
Because of these serious objections, and in the absence of any reason for rapid decision, we strongly urge that the NATO expansion process be suspended while alternative actions are pursued. These include:
—opening the economic and political doors of the European Union to Central and Eastern Europe;
—developing an enhanced Partnership for Peace program;
—supporting a cooperative NATO-Russian relationship; and
—continuing the arms reduction and transparency process, particularly with respect to nuclear weapons and materials, the major threat to U.S. security, and with respect to conventional military forces in Europe.
Russia does not now pose a threat to its western neighbors and the nations of Central and Eastern Europe are not in danger. For this reason, and the others cited above, we believe that NATO expansion is neither necessary nor desirable and that this ill-conceived policy can and should be put on hold.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This post is the first in a series about the war in Ukraine.
US and its ‘horrible’ leaders are greatest threat to Western civilization – Trump
RT | March 17, 2023
Former US president Donald Trump slammed “globalists” and the American neoconservative establishment in a video posted to his social media accounts on Thursday, declaring that the US and “some of the horrible, USA-hating people that represent us” are the “greatest threat to Western civilization today.”
“These globalists want to squander all of America’s strength, blood and treasure, chasing monsters and phantoms overseas while keeping us distracted from the havoc they’re creating right here at home,” the 2024 presidential candidate explained. “These forces are doing more damage to America than Russia and China could ever have dreamed.”
Trump warned that the Biden administration had brought the world closer to the brink of nuclear catastrophe than ever before by pouring money and weapons into Ukraine. “Every day this proxy battle continues, we risk global war,” he insisted, arguing that a “total cessation of hostilities” should be the “central issue” for the nation.
The next order of business under a second Trump presidency would be a complete overhaul of the State Department, Pentagon, intelligence services, and other key agencies to “fire the Deep Staters and put America first” – followed by “fundamentally reevaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission.” Trump has long argued for European countries to shoulder more of the costs and responsibilities associated with the military bloc and recently described the Ukraine conflict as a “vital concern for Europe, but not for the United States.”
Trump reassured his supporters that he was ready to dismantle “the entire globalist neocon establishment that is perpetually dragging us into endless wars pretending to fight for freedom and democracy abroad while they turn us into a third world country, and a third world dictatorship, here at home.” While the 45th president did not name any of the globalists or neocons who have placed highly on his enemies list since taking office in 2016, he insisted that he alone knew “exactly what to do to get the job done.”
Trump is polling neck to neck for the Republican nomination with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has not yet officially declared his 2024 candidacy. DeSantis recently told Fox News host Tucker Carlson that supporting the Ukrainian military was not a “vital interest” of the US. Other presumed Republican candidates, including former UN envoy Nikki Haley and former national security adviser John Bolton, have embraced the Biden administration’s bottomless aid to Kiev.
Twitter directed to censor ‘factually correct stories’ on Covid
RT | March 17, 2023
A government-linked academic group pushed Twitter to censor factually correct stories about Covid-19 if they risked “fueling hesitancy” about vaccines, according to the latest batch of internal documents released by the platform’s new owner, Elon Musk.
Published by journalist Matt Taibbi on Friday, the documents show that from February 2021 onwards, senior Twitter management – including former trust and safety chief Yoel Roth – signed up to a Stanford University initiative that would alert them to the latest “vaccine-related disinformation narratives” spreading on the platform.
Titled ‘The Virality Project,’ the initiative was led by a former CIA employee and comprised academics from several universities, as well as researchers from organizations funded by the Pentagon, the National Science Foundation, and the US State Department. The Virality Project also stated on its website that it “built strong ties” with the Office of the Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Department of Homeland Security, among other agencies and departments.
In its briefings to Twitter, the Virality Project recommended that “true content which might promote vaccine hesitancy” – such as stories of side effects and certain vaccines being banned abroad – be censored. Posts raising concern about vaccine mandates were viewed as “anti-vax” misinformation, while “just asking questions” was deemed “a tactic commonly used by spreaders of misinformation,” and posting about the “surveillance state” was deemed a bannable “conspiracy” theory.
It is unclear how often Twitter acceded to the Virality Project’s demands, though Taibbi said that within a month, the platform’s staff began using the project’s recommendations when evaluating content to censor.
At the time, Twitter’s rules on Covid-19 “misinformation” required a specific post to be “demonstrably false,” while permitting “strong commentary,” opinion writing, and satire. The Virality Project, however, urged Twitter management to ban “repeat offenders” before they even made new posts.
Sharing the leaked emails of White House coronavirus czar Anthony Fauci could “exacerbate distrust in Dr. Fauci and in US public health institutions,” the Virality Project warned in a June 2021 briefing, while a follow-up report highlighted the spread of “worrisome jokes” about harassing the door-to-door vaccine promoters deployed by the administration of US President Joe Biden.
“As Orwellian proof-of-concept, the Virality Project was a smash success,” Taibbi wrote on Friday. “Government, academia, and an oligopoly of would-be corporate competitors organized quickly behind a secret, unified effort to control political messaging.”
Since purchasing Twitter in October and installing himself as the platform’s new CEO, Musk has been releasing regular batches of internal documents and communications in a bid to shed light on its previously opaque censorship policies. A tranche of files released in December revealed that Twitter censored “legitimate content” on Covid-19 at the direct request of the White House.
US Changed UAVs Flight Routes After MQ-9 Incident: Tracks Analysis
Sputnik – 17.03.2023
The United States changed the flight routes of its strategic unmanned aerial vehicles Global Hawk after the incident with the MQ-9 Reaper drone that fell into the Black Sea, according to data from the Flightradar24 portal analyzed by Sputnik.
According to information on the portal, one of the US strategic drones, which regularly carry out reconnaissance missions from a base in Sicily to the region of Russia’s Crimea peninsula, once again arrived in the airspace over the Black Sea. This is the first flight of the Global Hawk over the Black Sea since the Reaper incident, and this time the route of the drone has been significantly changed.
As follows from the flight tracks, today, before entering the airspace over the Black Sea, the Global Hawk preliminarily performed barrage over the eastern part of Romania. Previously, Global Hawk had not performed such maneuvers. Then the drone went to the airspace over the Black Sea, where these aircraft are usually on duty in the air abeam the southern tip of the Crimea, sometimes up to 24 hours. However, this time the distance of the drone route from the southernmost point of Crimea has increased significantly. Earlier, these aicraft flew past the peninsula at a minimum distance of 80-100 kilometers (50-62 miles), today the drone passed the southern coast of Crimea at a minimum distance of 150 kilometers (93 miles).
The main loitering area over the Black Sea was also changed — in the current flight of the US drone, it was not abeam the southern coast of Crimea, but much to the east, closer to Novorossiysk and Sochi.
Currently, the Global Hawk continues to fly over the Black Sea towards Romania.
US blackmails Switzerland to boost military support to Ukraine
By Lucas Leiroz | March 17, 2023
The US is apparently blackmailing Switzerland to force the country to play a more active role in the Ukrainian conflict. The American embassy in Switzerland suggests that neutrality would no longer be a possible path for the European country, which sounds like a kind of threat if the Swiss government does not adopt an anti-Russian military policy.
In a recent interview, the American ambassador in Switzerland Scott Miller stated that Switzerland was going through a serious crisis, in which the country would need to decide on what “neutrality” means. Miller claims that the US supports Swiss neutrality but does not consider this principle to be “static”, believing in a Swiss obligation to help the West as much as possible to tighten sanctions against Moscow.
There is currently a huge debate among Swiss parliamentarians over whether to allow the shipment of Swiss-made weapons to the Kiev regime. NATO enthusiasts support the measure as a form of military aid to Ukraine against the Russians. On the other hand, more conservative politicians are against changes in legislation as they understand that this would affect the country’s historical neutrality. Under current law, there is a ban on all forms of re-export of Swiss-made weapons. This means that non-neutral countries are not able to buy Swiss weapons and ship them to Kiev. This law deeply irritates the member states of NATO, since, according to Scott Miller, it “benefits the aggressor, who violates all principles of international law.”
However, Ambassador Miller went beyond what was expected in his demands. In addition to banning the anti-re-export law, he openly demanded the freezing of all Russian assets in Swiss financial institutions. According to him, this is a way for Switzerland to endorse the sanctions and help Ukraine more actively.
“Switzerland is in the most serious crisis since the Second World War. It is confronted with what neutrality means (…) We understand and respect it. But it is not a static construct. Switzerland can’t call itself neutral and allow one or both sides to exploit its laws to their own advantage (…) I think we still have a lot of work to do (…) Sanctions are only as strong as the political will behind them. We need to find as many assets as possible, freeze them and, if necessary, confiscate them in order to make them available to Ukraine for reconstruction”, he said.
The spokeswoman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova understood the words of the American diplomat as a real threat. According to her, there is a parallel between Miller’s suggestions and the recent crisis at Credit Suisse, an important local financial institution that went into deep debt and requested tens of billions in loans from the Central Bank to continue working. Zakharova also recalled the American banking crisis and suggested that Miller could be blackmailing the Swiss into serving US interests – possibly in exchange for some help to prevent local banks from going the same way as the American ones, or, in the worst case, this could even be a direct threat of sabotage.
“Considering that the second-largest Swiss bank plunged right after three American banks went bust, such a statement looks like direct blackmail”, she said, adding that the essence of Miller’s message is: “drop neutrality and start sending weapons to the Kiev regime, and you’ll keep living full-bellied and lavishly; refuse – and bad days are in order”.
Recently, blackmail and threats have become America’s main methods in foreign policy. Furthermore, the country has already demonstrated that it has no respect for its partners and allies, considering that illegal and even terrorist acts have been carried out to force them to meet US interests – such as what was seen in the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines in Germany. So, it is possible that Miller’s message consists of a warning that either Switzerland changes its policy of neutrality, or it will be the target of American reprisals – certainly in the banking sector, which is the central part of the Swiss economy.
The Swiss government bears no responsibility for the Ukrainian conflict. As an historically neutral country, it is under no obligation to send weapons to Kiev and would be breaking with its own diplomatic tradition if it bans the anti-export law. Furthermore, as a country with a bank-centered economy, freezing all Russian assets does not sound strategic for Switzerland. Taking the measures demanded by the US would be disastrous for the country, both in terms of economy and defense.
Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
The AUKUS nuclear submarine deal is part of an imperialist crusade against China
By Timur Fomenko | RT | March 17, 2023
Earlier this week, a trilateral summit was held with the leaders of Australia, the United Kingdom and the US in San Diego to flesh out the details of an AUKUS deal providing Canberra with nuclear-powered submarines, with the intention of containing China in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
The pact will also create a rotational presence of UK and US nuclear submarines near Perth, Western Australia, starting from 2027. The goal is to integrate the US and UK’s nuclear sub fleet while Australia “builds the necessary operational capabilities” of its own.
It is no coincidence that the deal was announced on Commonwealth Day, an annual celebration of the former dominions of the British Empire. On the same day, the UK government released its “integrated review,” whereby it vowed to increase defense spending. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak then proceeded to describe China as an “epoch-defining challenge,” framing the UK, and the AUKUS alliance at large, as a benevolent force dedicated to keeping the Indo-Pacific open and free. China reacted by harshly condemning the meeting, decrying it for a “typical Cold War mentality” that “will only exacerbate [an] arms race, undermine the international nuclear non-proliferation regime and hurt regional peace and stability.”
China’s interpretation of the AUKUS submarine deal is correct. The Biden administration is aggressively expanding its alliance system in a bid to militarily contain Beijing. Along with the AUKUS pact, it is also pushing for trilateral cooperation with South Korea and Japan, something South Korean President Yoon Seok Yeol is open to, expanding its military presence in the Philippines, and taking part in other regional groups such as the Quad. However, AUKUS is unique because it consists solely of Anglosphere nations, and as such, embodies the neo-imperialist sentiment of Anglophone exceptionalism.
The UK’s decision to pursue an increasingly anti-China foreign policy is, of course, influenced by the US and against Britain’s best interests. However, its foreign policy narrative, especially in light of Brexit, is clothed in imperial nostalgia, which reflects back on the British Empire as a “force for good.” It drums up not memories of enslavement, exploitation, or aggression against other countries, but the idea of Britain as a “benevolent” empire which enforced the “rules of the world” acting as a “global policeman,” using its unmatched naval power to beat back aggressors and enforce its will.
Anyone who knows a thing or two about history will be aware that this is an idealistic and revisionist view, and that China was subjected to extreme aggression as Britain sought to forcibly open the country, seize ports and annex territory in the name of Hong Kong, giving way to what Beijing describes as “the century of humiliation.” Although the British Empire no longer exists, the country’s leaders continue to live in the past and the legacy of British Imperialism lives on through the hegemony of the United States and the countries the Empire gave birth to, such as Australia. These offspring continue to “carry the baton” through what they now proclaim to be the “rules-based order.” As a result, they frame continued military expansionism against Beijing as a morally, ideologically, and justified cause.
In reality, AUKUS is a destabilizing force in the Asia-Pacific region, inducing arms races and raising tensions. Neutral countries, who the West would normally hope to align with, such as Indonesia, are wary about AUKUS. This is because it threatens the strategic balance of the region. Moreover, while AUKUS claims to prevent war, it in fact encourages it. As scholar Adam Ni aptly described “it’s like paying insurance premium to increase the likelihood of a car crash.” China is now forced to respond to AUKUS by increasing its own defense spending and military presence and more deeply aligning with countries such as Russia. This plays into US hands by creating a vicious circle, further increasing the likelihood of war.
AUKUS is a post-Imperialist crusade, part of the Biden administration’s multi-faceted campaign to upend peace in Asia and transform the region into a military arena. It is a bid to create a NATO-like system in the Pacific which may be expanded in the future. It is not a commitment to peace, but a commitment to war and destabilization, with an explicit intention to target China. The alliance is laden with the identity, ideology and nostalgia of British imperialism, which shows no respect for the region, its history or its people, and as such peace-loving nations should reject it. Although it is likely to be years before any practical results are seen from this alliance, the projected tensions and political sentiment are going to be felt immediately and abruptly.
FDA authorizes 4th booster for babies…
… while data from the UK and Germany suggest you cause 22 serious injuries with the shot in order to prevent a single child’s hospitalization
By Meryl Nass | March 15, 2023
We need to start charging the individual public health officials with crimes for acting outside their legal authority — where is the US’ Pascal Najadi?
On December 8, 2022 the FDA authorized bivalent COVID boosters for children as young as 6 months old.
“More children now have the opportunity to update their protection against COVID-19 with a bivalent COVID-19 vaccine, and we encourage parents and caregivers of those eligible to consider doing so – especially as we head into the holidays and winter months where more time will be spent indoors,” said FDA Commissioner Robert M. Califf, M.D.
Yesterday, the FDA authorized a 4th dose of mRNA COVID vaccine for children aged 6 months to 5 years of age.
Risk-benefit assessment used to be the foundation of public health practice. Let’s look at some recent data on vaccine risk and vaccine benefit.
The German Minister of Health, Dr. Karl Lauterbach, admitted that 1 in 10,000 COVID vaccine doses leads to a serious adverse event. He also appears to be building his alibi, claiming he did not sign the vaccine contract. Yet he did promote, cajole and enforce the vaccinations, nonetheless.
Family physician Dr. Scott Jensen, former Minnesota State Senator, noted that the number of mRNA vaccine doses needed to vaccinate young children to prevent one hospitalization for severe illness is over 224,000 doses. (Listen at 19 minutes; data came from the official UK health data agency.)
Assuming the risk of injury due to the vaccine for children is similar to the population risk the German health minister informed us of, you would have to vaccinate over 112,000 five through eleven year old children with two shots and seriously injure 22 of them as a result, in order to prevent one serious COVID hospitalization.
Remember, these are official data released by the UK and German governments. These data suggest you are twenty-two times as likely to injure a child with an mRNA vaccine than to benefit them.
Any government official who is cognizant of these data and recommends mRNA COVID vaccines for children is, in my view, guilty of professional malfeasance, a crime, and should be charged in civil court, while we await an Attorney General to charge them in criminal court as well.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/malfeasance
Malfeasance is an act that is illegal and causes physical or monetary harm to someone else. Malfeasance is intentional conduct that is wrongful or unlawful, especially by officials or public employees…
- In the context of criminal law, “malfeasance” can apply to cases that cause financial damage or physical injury to another person. Malpractice is an example of criminal malfeasance.”
BTW, according to the UK’s Office of National Statistics, “From March 2020 to October 2022, there are 88 deaths registered as due to COVID-19 in England and Wales (population 59 million). This is for the age under 1 to age 18 age band.” This is a much lower rate of deaths in children from COVID than has been alleged by the US CDC.
The UK stopped advising vaccines for healthy kids aged 11 and under last September.
The reason for this was that the UK statisticians calculated the NNV—Number Needed to Vaccinate to prevent a death or hospitalization in all age groups, and could not avoid what they found—the vaccines were doing more harm than good in most age groups, since efficacy was poor. They had to vaccinate huge numbers to prevent one hospitalization or death. So where can we find these numbers/
Here is where I first saw these numbers 2 months ago:
“Revised estimates of the number needed to vaccinate (NNV) to prevent one hospitalisation during the Omicron era indicate that 800 persons aged 70 years and above would need to be given a booster in autumn 2022 (a fourth dose) to prevent one hospitalisation from COVID-19. The corresponding NNV for persons aged 50 to 59 years is 8,000 and for persons aged 40 to 49 years who are not in a clinical risk group is 92,500 (Appendix 1).”
But where are the data fro the younger age groups, which I remembered seeing and Dr. Scott Jensen was citing? According to the above, they are found in Appendix 1. But guess what? Appendix 1 of the document above no longer exists. If you find it, please let me know!
Bill Passed by House and Senate to Declassify COVID Origins Documents May Be Attempt to ‘Frame’ China
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | March 13, 2023
Lawmakers and media misrepresented a bill requiring the declassification of documents related to the origins of COVID-19, according to several experts who warned that contrary to what the public was told, the legislation limits the types of documents the government must declassify — raising questions about the bill’s real intent.
According to the sponsors of the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023 — which sailed through the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives and is awaiting President Biden’s signature — the bill requires the government to declassify all documents pertaining to COVID-19.
But experts interviewed by The Defender said the bill requires the declassification only of documents related to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China — the epicenter of the “lab leak theory.”
They suggested the limitations may be intended to reduce the culpability of U.S. and private actors in the potential leak of — or development of — COVID-19, by placing full blame on China and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Bill’s backers made ‘false claims’
Independent journalist Sam Husseini said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), the Senate’s co-sponsor of the COVID-19 Origin Act, made “claims about the bill which are false.”
Hawley, on March 1, tweeted:
Speaking to Fox News March 2, Hawley made similar claims, saying, “My bill … will declassify all of the information the federal government has on COVID origins.”
Hawley later followed up his statements with a letter addressed to Chinese President Xi Jinping, informing him of the bill’s passage. This prompted a response from the Chinese government, according to The Gateway Pundit.
Another of the bill’s Senate co-sponsors, Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), said in a statement:
“The American people deserve transparency, free from censorship or spin. It’s time to declassify everything we know about COVID’s origins and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, now.”
Braun also tweeted:
Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, told the House:
“The American public deserves answers to every aspect of COVID-19 pandemic including how this virus was created, and specifically whether it was a natural occurrence or was the result of a lab related event.”
Statements like these led media outlets, including The Defender, to report that if passed, the will would trigger the release of all documents — not just those related to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Bill ‘dubiously named’
On his blog, Husseini said the COVID-19 Origin Act is “dubiously named” and instructs Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines only to:
“Declassify any and all information relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), including (A) activities performed by the Wuhan Institute of Virology with or on behalf of the People’s Liberation Army [of China].”
“This means that information not related to the Wuhan Institute of Virology is not being requested and would almost certainly therefore remain classified,” Husseini wrote.
The bill also states:
“There is reason to believe the COVID-19 pandemic may have originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology …
“… the Director of National Intelligence should declassify and make available to the public as much information as possible about the origin of COVID-19 so the United States and like-minded countries can —
“(A) identify the origin of COVID-19 as expeditiously as possible, and
“(B) use that information to take all appropriate measures to prevent a similar pandemic from occurring again.”
The bill requires Haines to turn over the declassified evidence “no later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act” and to submit to Congress an unclassified report containing all the documents requested in the bill, with “only such redactions as the Director determines necessary to protect sources and methods.”
Husseini noted that parts of the bill are unusually specific, focusing “on one strain of alleged evidence” by calling for Haines to turn over classified documents pertaining to “researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who fell ill in autumn 2019.”
“Now, that could be very important,” Husseini wrote. “But why is this legislation limiting disclosures?”
A ‘classic Nixonian limited hangout’?
Husseini suggested some members of Congress may not have been fully aware that the bill they were voting for does not appear to, in fact, fully declassify all documents related to the origins of COVID-19.
“I have no idea if members of Congress have actually read the legislation and realize how limited it is,” wrote Husseini, who, in another post, called Hawley’s public rhetoric regarding the bill “false and misleading.”
Husseini told The Defender the bill may be acting as a “limited hangout” with the purpose of acknowledging the “lab leak theory” on the one hand, but via legislation that “makes us accept half of the truth.”
Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., professor of international law at the University of Illinois, told The Defender, “I’m afraid this [bill] is going to be a classic Nixonian limited hangout” that “does not call for the declassification of all those sources [that] should be declassified and/or released.”
Boyle said any information that is declassified “is going to be helpful,” but that the bill’s provision allowing redactions raises concern.
“Who knows what Avril Haines is going to knock out of this report,” he said.
Husseini noted that the bill also makes no provisions for providing information that several groups, including U.S. Right to Know and some media organizations, have requested — but not yet received — via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) submissions. Husseini said this information “is not classified but is being withheld.”
Husseini cited Gary Ruskin, executive director and co-founder of U.S. Right to Know, who said:
“Much of the federal government’s information related to the origins of Covid-19 is not classified, or likely not classified. We just haven’t been able to access much of it yet via FOIA/FOIA litigation.
“The NIH’s [National Institutes of Health] conduct in stonewalling FOIAs is especially outrageous. It’s time for the Biden administration to tell NIH to comply with the FOIA.”
At a March 9 U.S. Department of State press conference, Ned Price, the agency’s spokesperson, appeared to stonewall Husseini when he asked why the government hasn’t responded to U.S. Right to Know’s FOIA requests related to government funding of bioweapons agents’ discovery research, including the funding of such research in China.
“We can respond in writing on a question that specific,” Price replied. When further pressed by Husseini, Price said, “I would ask that you be respectful of your colleagues.”
An attempt to blame the virus exclusively on China?
There has been a flurry of news reports in recent weeks originating from various branches of the U.S. government indicating broader acceptance of the “lab leak theory.”
The U.S. Department of Energy said it now believes COVID-19 most likely emerged from the Wuhan lab — a position subsequently adopted publicly by FBI Director Christopher Wray.
On March 8, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic heard the testimony of experts who also accepted the “lab leak theory.”
“All this — the recent hearings, the Hawley legislation, the WSJ piece — seem part of a coordinated effort on the part of the ‘intelligence community’ to own the pandemic story and use it for their purposes,” Husseini wrote.
Boyle shared similar concerns with The Defender :
“I am concerned that this [bill] is only going to get a part of the truth. Certainly not the full truth of what really happened here with COVID-19, which we need to get at.
“My concern is that all that’s going to get out of this report … will implicate the Wuhan BSL4 [biosafety level 4 lab] in COVID-19. Well, that’s fine with me. But what about the American involvement here?
“And this was funded by Tony Fauci and Francis Collins at NIAID [National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases] and NIH. Those should be in this legislation too, if we really wanted to get to the bottom of what happened here.”
Boyle and Husseini told The Defender there are numerous government and private entities whose classified documents should be declassified.
Boyle said these include the University of North Carolina, the National Center for Toxicological Research, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard Medical School, the U.S. Agency for International Development, EcoHealth Alliance and the Integrated Research Facility at Fort Detrick.
Husseini noted that state governments and private institutions also are likely to possess important information that the COVID-19 Origin Act does not cover. These include Scripps Research, Tulane University and the Wellcome Trust.”
The Wellcome Trust is headed by Jeremy Farrar, now chief scientist for the World Health Organization. “Farrar played a central role in disseminating the propaganda line that COVID could not have lab origins in early 2020,” Husseini said.
U.S. Right to Know sued the University of North Carolina, which is publicly owned, after it failed to respond to the watchdog group’s FOIA requests.
Husseini said the COVID-19 Origin Act “doesn’t even instruct the DNI [Director of National Intelligence] to declassify what it knows about other Chinese government institutions like the Chinese CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention].”
Husseini told The Defender :
“Since [Fauci] retired, the system has seemingly skillfully tried to put the deranged stance of the last three years into the rearview mirror hoping people will forget the massive propaganda.”
Boyle told The Defender that “from this legislation, it does appear they’re trying to pin it all on China.”
Husseini, noting that “China may well have major culpability,” said this is not the same as full or exclusive culpability, which is what the U.S. government may now be attempting to establish.
Husseini wrote that “a general anti-China agenda, has taken primacy and is part of a dynamic which ‘ultimately lets’ U.S. institutions and ‘U.S. biowarfare off the hook.’”
He told The Defender :
“There are two pillars of the U.S. establishment here — one wants to polarize at some level with China and the other wants to ensure the U.S. government continues its discovery of bioweapons agents.
“For the establishment to be maintained, both those strains need to be maintained.”
According to Husseini, this may explain why the bill passed both houses with seemingly little debate. It passed the Senate with “unanimous consent,” and subsequently passed the House in a unanimous vote.
Husseini noted that Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a member of the House Rules Committee, even put forth a rule “to ensure passage of Hawley’s bill.”
Husseini said Biden, who hasn’t yet said if he will sign the bill, has a few options he may be considering, telling The Defender :
“I see no sign of actual opposition from the Biden administration and I suspect this is all being done in coordination with the director of National Intelligence, as were the reports in the Wall Street Journal that drove this narrative.
“It’s possible Biden wants to appear reluctant on this and I suppose Biden could veto it and get an override so he could pose as being conciliatory to the Chinese or the like.”
Husseini said that “with the collapse of the completely fictional Daszak narrative in the late Spring and Summer of 2021 … a backup narrative has been put forward, especially through the Wall Street Journal,” whose report on the Department of Energy pivoting toward the “lab leak theory” was co-written by Michael Gordon, “who with Judy Miller perpetrated the Iraq weapons of mass destruction fraud on the U.S. public.”
He also blamed wide swaths of the independent media, particularly left-leaning outlets, for going along with establishment efforts to discredit the theory that COVID-19 emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“Much of ‘the Left’ has basically done everything to kill lab origin — and effectively made it a right-wing issue,” Husseini said.
According to Husseini, those who long promoted the Chinese response to COVID-19 and who now are supporting the push to frame China, are pushing for a world “that combines the worst aspects of the U.S. — corrupt corporate capitalism — with the worst aspects of Chinese society: explicit authoritarianism.”
“The pandemic, it can hardly be ignored, helped isolate people from one another, helped restrict borders, was an excuse for massive civil liberties restrictions — all things useful to the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’ agenda,” said Husseini. “This is another reason that intentional release should be seriously examined.”
Lab leak or lab origin?
Husseini said he prefers the term “lab origin theory” over “lab leak theory.”
“I see no good reason to make assumptions,” Husseini said. “‘Leak’ assumes a mistake. It could have been a mistake, but why presume it?”
Boyle adopted a similar view, although he noted that the language of the COVID-19 Origin Act does not mention either term.
“It does not refer to a lab leak,” he said. “It doesn’t say ‘leak’ at all. It says ‘originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.’ Obviously, there could be different interpretations of why it originated there. I still believe it was a leak, but this does leave open why it might have originated there.”
Boyle reiterated his longstanding belief that “COVID-19 is an offensive biological warfare weapon with gain-of-function properties” and called for the halting of gain-of-function research.
According to Boyle, who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, Congress’ reluctance to declassify documents that may implicate U.S. government entities in the origins of COVID-19 is reflective of the massive amounts of federal money spent on biological weapons research.
“They’re not doing that because the U.S. government agencies and scientists involved in the development of COVID-19 [have received] massive sums of money,” Boyle said. “We’ve been devoted to developing offensive biological warfare programs since after Sept. 11, 2001 … I’ve been speaking out about this publicly for years.”
Husseini told The Defender :
“Biowarfare is a deniable weapon, which makes disclosure of documents key. Another reason why the Hawley bill limiting disclosure may well signal a massive coverup in plain sight.”
In a pair of tweets Sunday, British Member of Parliament Andrew Bridgen said he received information from U.S. government sources indicating that the U.S. Department of Defense and the Fort Detrick research facility “were responsible for both the virus and the vaccines” and that “criminal proceedings” may follow.
Bridgen did not clarify which sources provided him with this information or who might face such criminal proceedings. At the March 8 Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic hearing, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Dr. Robert Redfield said COVID-19 was “engineered” and blamed gain-of-function research for “the greatest pandemic our world has seen.”
However, Redfield stopped short of explicitly calling for a full ban on such activities, calling instead for a moratorium.
Boyle told The Defender “all this gain-of-function so-called ‘research’ has to be terminated immediately with legislation by Congress … The only way to protect ourselves is to terminate it immediately. No moratorium.”
“There was a moratorium” during the Barack Obama presidency, said Boyle, “and Fauci undermined the moratorium by outsourcing the work through the EcoHealth Alliance to the Wuhan BSL4 [laboratory]. So, a moratorium is worthless. We have to terminate all gain-of-function research everywhere. It has to be prohibited, to be made criminal.”
The Defender reached out to the offices of Hawley and Braun, Turner and Bridgen for comment, but did not receive a response as of press time.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
FTC faces ethics complaint after alleged retaliation against Twitter over censorship revelations
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | March 14, 2023
America First Legal (AFL) has filed federal ethics and Inspector General complaints and launched a probe into the Federal Trade Commission’s retaliation against Twitter owner Elon Musk and Twitter for exposing the Biden administration and federal agencies for pressuring Twitter to censor content.
Last week, the House’s Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released a report detailing how the FTC has been harassing Musk and Twitter over the past few months.
Read the FOIA request, IG investigative request, and Senate ethics request here, here, and here.
AFL filed a complaint with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics requesting an investigation into several Democratic senators, including Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal, for violating Senate Rule 43, which prohibits partisan communications in an unconcluded federal proceeding. AFL accuses these senators of encouraging the FTC to investigate Musk and Twitter, which further solidifies conservatives’ claims of the Biden administration weaponizing federal agencies.
AFL filed another complaint with the FTC’s Inspector General requesting an investigation into the agency’s chair Lina Khan and other officials for abusing power.
The organization also filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records that would reveal the reasons for the FTC’s abuse of power.
“The Biden Administration is steadfastly focused on weaponizing the federal government to advance its radical, left-wing political agenda,” said AFL’s general counsel Gene Hamilton. “Most Americans are now aware of politicization at the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Homeland Security. And now, the Biden Administration has turned to the Federal Trade Commission to exact harm on those who oppose their radical agenda–particularly regarding free speech on social media platforms. Weaponizing the FTC to retaliate against Elon Musk and Twitter for exposing the truth about Deep State censorship is reprehensible, and we will not stand by idly.”
Featured Video
Seyed M. Marandi: US-Iran War Inevitable: Kuwait and Bahrain May Fall
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Oil and the Israel Lobby
Reknowned economist M. Shahid Alam offers this excellent critique of Noam Chomsky’s defective analysis of the relative influence of Oil versus the Israel lobby over US foreign policy: … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- ICC ignored ‘very well-documented’ NATO crimes – ex-Libyan minister
- SNSC secretary dismisses US response to Iran’s conditions as ‘inadequate’
- Sanaa says Taiz roads open, secure for residents, warns Saudi forces
- Iraqi resistance group urges Saudi leadership to admit defeat, lift Yemen siege
- Trump’s Retreat: How Al-Aqsa Flood Took Down the US Empire
- Israel’s Military Actions in Lebanon Grossly Violate International Law — Lavrov
- Seyed M. Marandi: US-Iran War Inevitable: Kuwait and Bahrain May Fall
- Leaders Condemn Ansarallah Attack on Saudi Arabia While Ignoring Illegal War Against Yemen
- Leaked: Britain’s Covert Iraqi Psyops Network
- Yemeni Armed Forces Warn Airlines Against Using Saudi Airports, Exempt Mecca and Medina
- If Americans Knew
- After Oct 7, IDF policy allowed civilian casualties for even the lowest-ranking targets
- Israel’s Destruction of Southern Lebanon Intensified After the Cease-Fire
- The Last-Minute Decision That Gave Israel Its Name
- The American Conservative: How Trump Made the World Go Nuclear
- Meet the US generals and admirals advancing Israeli policy
- Opinion: Why news organizations should boycott Israel
- The Israeli witch hunt of Sami Abu Shehadeh exposes the lie of the ‘Jewish and democratic’ state
- No state has a ‘right’ to exist – least of all Israel
- Testimonies about Gaza’s civilian death toll expose Israel’s atrocities – Daily Update
- How Israel Conquered the Latin American Right
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
