{"id":166287,"date":"2020-08-10T12:00:12","date_gmt":"2020-08-10T11:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=166287"},"modified":"2020-08-08T10:32:35","modified_gmt":"2020-08-08T09:32:35","slug":"pandemics-corruption-profits-part-3-head-of-the-hydra-the-rise-of-robert-kadlec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/08\/pandemics-corruption-profits-part-3-head-of-the-hydra-the-rise-of-robert-kadlec\/","title":{"rendered":"Pandemics, Corruption, Profits (Part 3): Head of the Hydra–The Rise of Robert Kadlec"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A powerful network of political operatives, a global vaccine mafia and their man in Washington.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

14 May 2020 – <\/em>Last Friday [8 May], a group of Democratic Senators \u201cdemanded<\/span><\/a>\u201d that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) Robert Kadlec, \u201caccurately disclose all his personal, financial and political ties in light of new reporting that he had failed to do so previously\u201d after it was revealed that he had failed to note all \u201cpotential conflicts of interest\u201d on his nomination paperwork. <\/span><\/p>\n

The report in question, published last Monday<\/span><\/a> by The Washington Post<\/i>, detailed the ties of Kadlec to a man named Fuad El-Hibri, the founder of a \u201clife sciences\u201d company first known as BioPort and now called Emergent Biosolutions. Kadlec had previously disclosed his ties to El-Hibri and Emergent Biosolutions for a separate nomination years prior, but had failed to do so when nominated to head ASPR.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though The Post <\/i>does note Kadlec\u2019s recent failure to disclose these connections, the article largely sanitizes Kadlec\u2019s earlier yet crucial history and even obfuscates the full extent of his ties to the BioPort founder, among other glaring omissions. In reality, Kadlec has much more than his ties to El-Hibri looming large as \u201cpotential conflict of interests,\u201d as his decades-long career in shaping U.S. \u201cbiodefense\u201d policy was directly enabled by his deep ties to intelligence, Big Pharma, the Pentagon and a host of corrupt yet powerful characters. <\/span><\/p>\n

Thanks to a long and deliberate process to introduce biodefense policy, driven by Robert Kadlec and his sponsors, $7 billion dollars-worth of federally-owned vaccines, antidotes and medicines \u2013 held in strategically arranged repositories across the country in case of a health emergency \u2013 are now in the hands of one single individual. Those repositories, which compose the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS), are the exclusive domain of HHS\u2019 ASPR, a post created under Kadlec\u2019s watchful eye and tailored over the years to meet his very specific requirements.<\/span><\/p>\n

From this perch, Robert Kadlec has final say on where the stockpile\u2019s contents are sourced, as well as how, when and where they are deployed. He is the sole source procurer of medical material and pharmaceuticals, making him the best friend of Big Pharma and other healthcare industry giants who have been in his ear every step of the way. <\/span><\/p>\n

Kadlec assures us, however, that the fact that he now holds the very office he worked so long to create is merely a coincidence. \u201cMy participation in the ASPR project began at that time when I was working for the chairman of the Subcommittee on Bioterrorism and Public Health Preparedness\u2026The bill was made law and the ASPR was created. It just was a coincidence that, 12 or 14 years later, I was asked to become the ASPR,\u201d Kadlec stated<\/span><\/a> in 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was all a random twist of fate, Kadlec asserts, that saw him occupy ASPR at this crucial moment in U.S. history. Indeed, with the country now in the middle of a WHO-declared coronavirus pandemic, Kadlec now has full control over the far-reaching \u201cemergency\u201d powers of that very office, bestowed upon him by the very law that he had written.<\/span><\/p>\n

The story of how a former USAF flight surgeon<\/span><\/a> came to have the exclusive dealer license over the single biggest stash of drugs in the history of the world is as disturbing as it is significant in light of current events, particularly given that Kadlec now leads<\/span><\/a> the coronavirus response for all of HHS. Yet, Kadlec\u2019s rise to power is not a case of an evil mastermind conquering a uniquely vulnerable point of the nation\u2019s resources. Instead, it is a case of a man deeply enmeshed in the world of intelligence, military intelligence and corporate corruption dutifully fulfilling the vision of his friends in high places and behind closed doors.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this third installment of \u201cEngineering Contagion: Amerithrax, Coronavirus and the Rise of the Biotech-Industrial Complex<\/i><\/a>,\u201d Kadlec is shown to hail from a tight-knit group of \u201cbioterror alarmists\u201d in government and the private sector who gained prominence thanks to their penchant for imagining the most horrific, yet fictitious scenarios that inspired fear among Presidents, top politicians and the American public. Among those fictitious scenarios was the \u201cDark Winter\u201d exercise discussed in Part I<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some of these alarmists, among them \u201ccold warriors\u201d from Fort Detrick\u2019s days of openly developing offensive weapons, would engage in unsettling anthrax experiments and studies while developing suspect ties in 2000 to a company called BioPort. As noted in Part II<\/span><\/a> of this series, BioPort stood to lose everything in early September 2001 due to controversy over its anthrax vaccine. Of course, the 2001 anthrax attacks that followed shortly thereafter would change everything, not just for BioPort, but U.S. biodefense policy. With the stage set, Kadlec would quickly spring into action, guiding major policy changes on the heels of subsequent major events and disasters, culminating in his crowning as King of the stockpile.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Accidental Madman<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Robert Kadlec describes himself as having been an \u201caccidental tourist\u201d regarding his introduction to biological warfare. An Air Force physician who had specialized in tropical diseases, Kadlec would later say his interest in the field began when he was assigned to be a special assistant for Chemical and Biological Warfare to the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), advising<\/span><\/a> then-head of Special Operations Command Maj. Gen. Wayne Downing, on the eve of the first Gulf War. <\/span><\/p>\n

Kadlec would later state<\/span><\/a> that he had witnessed firsthand how the military, immediately prior to the Gulf War, had \u201clacked the necessary protective equipment, detectors, and medical countermeasures including vaccines and antibiotics against the immediate threats posed by Iraq,\u201d allegedly prompting him to want to better U.S. biodefense efforts.<\/span><\/p>\n

While holding this post at JSOC, Kadlec was privy to the advice of William C. Patrick III<\/span><\/a>, a veteran of the U.S.\u2019 bioweapons program who had developed the U.S.\u2019 method for weaponizing anthrax and held no less than five classified patents related to the toxin\u2019s use in warfare. Patrick, who had left government service in 1986 to become a consultant, advised the Pentagon \u2014 then headed by Dick Cheney \u2014 that the risk of a biological weapons attack by Iraq, particularly anthrax, was high. Patrick\u2019s warning prompted the U.S. military to vaccinate tens of thousands of its troops using the controversial anthrax vaccine \u201canthrax vaccine adsorbed (AVA).\u201d Kadlec would personally inject<\/span><\/a> AVA into around 800 members of the U.S. Armed Forces.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kadlec would later note<\/span><\/a> in Congressional testimony that no definitive proof of an alleged Iraqi biological weapons program was found during the war or afterwards, but nevertheless claimed elsewhere that \u201cthe Iraqis later admitted they had procured large quantities of a biological agents-anthrax and botulism toxin,\u201d suggesting that Patrick\u2019s warnings had had some basis in reality. <\/span><\/p>\n

However, Kadlec failed to point out that these anthrax and botulism samples had been sold, with the U.S. government\u2019s full approval, to Iraq\u2019s Ministry of Education by a U.S. private non-profit called the American Type Culture Collection. Donald Rumsfeld, who was then an envoy for the Reagan administration and running a pharmaceutical company later sold to Monsanto,<\/span> would also be involved<\/span><\/a> <\/span>in the shipment of these samples to Iraq.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Joshua Lederberg<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Following the war, American microbiologist Joshua Lederberg was tasked by the Pentagon to head the investigation into \u201cGulf War Syndrome,\u201d a phenomenon that studies later linked<\/span><\/a> <\/span>to the adverse effects of the anthrax vaccine. Lederberg\u2019s task force argued that evidence regarding an association between the symptomology and the anthrax vaccine was insufficient. However, he would later come under fire after it was reported that he sa<\/span>t on the board<\/span><\/a> <\/span>of the American Type Culture Collection, the very company that had shipped anthrax to Iraq\u2019s government between 1985 and 1989 with the U.S. government\u2019s blessing. Lederberg later admitted<\/span><\/a><\/span> that the investigation he led had not spent enough \u201ctime and effort digging out the details\u201d. The taskforce\u2019s findings were later harshly criticized<\/span><\/a><\/span> by the Government Accountability Office. <\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Lederberg would prove to be an early, if not seminal, influence on Robert Kadlec\u2019s outlook regarding the subject of biowarfare. The Nobel Laureate and long-time president of Rockefeller University was one of the fathers of bioterror alarmism in the United States, alongside William C. Patrick III and other members of a tight-knit group of \u201ccold warrior\u201d microbiologists. Kadlec and Lederberg would go on<\/span><\/a> to collaborate on several books<\/span><\/a> and policy studies<\/span><\/a> throughout the late 1990s and into 2001.<\/span><\/p>\n

Years later, at a Congressional hearing, Kadlec<\/span> would say<\/span><\/a> <\/span>that Lederberg\u2019s words \u201cresonate constantly with me and serve as a practical warning.\u201d Aside from Lederberg, Kadlec was also writing numerous books and articles with Randall Larsen, who would later hire<\/span><\/a> the Medical doctor to teach \u201cmilitary strategy and operations\u201d at the National War College, where Larsen\u2019s close friend<\/span><\/a> \u2013 William C. Patrick III \u2013 also taught<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

A Poisoned Oasis <\/span><\/h3>\n

Many of Kadlec\u2019s bioterror ravings have been preserved in 25-year old textbooks, like a U.S. Air War College textbook entitled \u201cBattlefield of the Future<\/span><\/a>\u201d where Kadlec calls on the government to create a massive stockpile of drugs and vaccines to protect the population from a biological weapons attack, particularly anthrax or smallpox. In one chapter, Kadlec argued that<\/span><\/a><\/span> stockpiles of necessary antibiotics, immunoglobulins and vaccines would have to be procured, maintained, and be readily available to administer within hours.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Kadlec\u2019s views on the matter at the time of writing were greatly influenced by his first tour as a UNSCOM weapons inspector in Iraq in 1994, where he was accompanied by William Patrick, among others. Kadlec would later return to Iraq in the same capacity in 1996 and 1998 in search of Iraq\u2019s alleged stores of weaponized anthrax that Patrick had been so sure were there, but had never materialized. <\/span><\/p>\n

After three visits, Kadlec would later confess that, despite what Kadlec called<\/span><\/a> \u201cthe most intrusive inspection and monitoring regime ever conceived and implemented\u201d by the UN, the UNSCOM weapons inspectors, including himself and William Patrick, \u201cfailed to uncover any irrefutable evidence of an offensive BW program.\u201d Kadlec would later return<\/span><\/a> to Iraq on two separate occasions following the 2003 U.S. invasion of country, again finding no proof of the program\u2019s existence.<\/span><\/p>\n

By 1995, Kadlec was already imbued with the bioweapons alarmism that had been championed by Lederberg and Patrick. That year, he fleshed out<\/span><\/a> several \u201cillustrative scenarios\u201d regarding the use of \u201cbiological economic warfare\u201d against the United States. One of these fictional scenarios, titled \u201cCorn Terrorism,\u201d involves China planning \u201can act of agricultural terrorism\u201d by clandestinely spraying corn seed blight over the Midwest using commercial airliners. The result of the \u201cCorn Terrorism\u201d scenario is that \u201cChina gains significant corn market share and tens of billions [of] dollars of additional profits from their crop,\u201d while the U.S. sees its corn crop obliterated, causing food prices to rise and the U.S. to import corn. Another scenario, entitled \u201cThat\u2019s a \u2018Lousy\u2019 Wine,\u201d involves \u201cdisgruntled European winemakers\u201d covertly releasing grape lice they have hidden in cans of pat\u00e9 to target California wine producers. <\/span><\/p>\n

Around this same time, in 1994, the relatively young<\/span> Congressional Office of Technology Assessment or OTA<\/span><\/a><\/span>, which informed policy decisions around questions of technological and scientific complexity on matters of national security, was cut by the new Republican majority that took both houses in the pivotal 1994 midterms elections. At the time of its defunding, Lederberg sat on the OTA\u2019s Technology Assessment Advisory Council (OTA-TAAC), along with<\/span><\/a> pharma industry insiders from Bristol-Myers Squibb, Lilly Research Labs and pre-merger Smith-Kline, and chaired one of its last study panels.<\/span><\/p>\n

In OTA\u2019s place, an independent, non-profit entity called The Potomac Institute for Policy Studies (PIPS) was co-founded by Special Consultant to President H.W. Bush\u2019s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) and a former CIA program monitor, Michael S. Swetnam, who was reportedly \u201ctasked with profiling Osama Bin Laden before the September 11th attacks were enacted<\/span><\/a>.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

The defunding of the OTA and subsequent creation of PIPS transferred policy-making on what are, perhaps, the most sensitive issues of national security away from Congress and into a private foundation teeming with operators from the vast underbelly of the military industrial complex (MIC). Former military officers,<\/span> DARPA scientists<\/span><\/a><\/span>, NASA policy experts,<\/span> FBI<\/span><\/a> <\/span>agents, CIA operatives and defense contractors like Northrop Grumman can all be found on their member rolls and in their boardrooms. <\/span><\/p>\n

PIPS and its sponsors would shadow Robert Kadlec\u2019s career in government from the very beginning and remain in close proximity to him today. One PIPS-linked individual would work particularly closely with Kadlec, Tevi Troy \u2013 a senior fellow at PIPS and an adjunct fellow at the much more polished Hudson Institute, itself a major funder of PIPS. Troy has long been integral in shaping Kadlec\u2019s biodefense policy agenda, which would remain conspicuously static and unchanging throughout the career he was just beginning. <\/span><\/p>\n

Pox Americana<\/span><\/h3>\n
\"\"<\/a>
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 William C. Patrick III<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By 1996, talks had begun<\/span><\/a> within military leadership regarding what would become the Pentagon\u2019s mandatory anthrax vaccination program, a policy tirelessly promoted by Joshua Lederberg, who was involved in \u201cinvestigating\u201d the links between the anthrax vaccine and Gulf War Syndrome. The private talks took place in parallel with a public push to bring biological warfare to the forefront of American public consciousness. One particularly egregious example occurred when then-Secretary of Defense William Cohen went on ABC News<\/i><\/span><\/a> with a five-pound bag of sugar, stating that \u201cthis amount of anthrax could be spread over a city\u2014let\u2019s say the size of Washington. It would destroy at least half the population of that city.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

At the same time, Joshua Lederberg was also advocating for the stockpiling of a smallpox vaccine, which the U.S. military also took to heart, giving a company called DynPort<\/span><\/a> an exclusive multi-million dollar contract to produce a new smallpox vaccine in 1997. Soon after, BioPort, DynPort\u2019s sister company<\/span><\/a>, was formed and would soon come to monopolize the production of that vaccine.<\/span><\/p>\n

By the time BioPort (now known as Emergent Biosolutions) had controversially gained control over this lucrative Pentagon contract in 1998, then-President Bill Clinton was publicly warning<\/span><\/a> that the U.S. must \u201cconfront the new hazards of biological and chemical weapons,\u201d adding that Saddam Hussein specifically was \u201cdeveloping nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them.\u201d However, there was no intelligence to back up these claims, especially after the failed attempts by weapon inspectors, like Robert Kadlec and William Patrick, to find any evidence of an Iraqi biological weapons program.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the lack of evidence regarding Iraq\u2019s alleged \u201cWMD\u201d programs, Clinton\u2019s concern over a biological weapons threat was said to have been<\/span><\/a> the result of his reading of \u201cThe Cobra Event\u201d, a novel about how a genetically-modified pathogen called \u201cbrainpox\u201d ravages New York City. The novel\u2019s author, Richard Preston, had been advised<\/span><\/a> on biowarfare and genetically-modified pathogens by none other than William Patrick. Patrick, then an adviser<\/span><\/a> to the CIA, FBI and military intelligence, also participated<\/span><\/a> in closed door meetings with Clinton on biological weapons, claiming that their use was inevitable and that the deadliest of pathogens could easily be made in a \u201cterrorist\u2019s garage.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is also likely that Clinton\u2019s alarmism over biological and chemical weapons had been informed, in part, by a roundtable hosted at the White House on April 10, 1998. This \u201cWhite House Roundtable on Genetic Engineering and Biological Weapons<\/span><\/a>,\u201d included a group of \u201coutside experts\u201d spear-headed by<\/span><\/a> Joshua Lederberg and included several other bioterror alarmists, such as: Jerome Hauer, then-serving as Director of New York City\u2019s Office of Emergency Management (who also was advised by<\/span><\/a> William Patrick III) and Thomas Monath, a vaccine industry executive and <\/span>chief science advisor<\/span> to CIA director George Tenet. <\/span><\/p>\n

Discussed in-depth at the roundtable were \u201cboth the opportunities and the national security challenges posed by genetic engineering and biotechnology\u201d as well as<\/span><\/a> \u201cclassified material relating to threat assessments and how the United States responds to particular scenarios.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Robert Kadlec, despite being a Republican, remains very fond of Bill Clinton, perhaps because the former president was so attentive to the dire predictions of the \u201cbiodefense experts\u201d who shadowed Kadlec\u2019s own career. Kadlec credits the former president with doing a \u201clot of good things\u201d and making important contributions<\/span><\/a> to the advancement of the biotech industrial complex\u2019s policy agenda.<\/span><\/p>\n

Clinton would issue several executive orders and Presidential Decision Directives (PDDs) during this period, such as PDD-62, which specifically addressed preparations for a \u201cWMD\u201d attack on the U.S. and called for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), then-led by Donna Shalala, to lead the national response to a WMD attack. Fortuitously for Kadlec, PDD-62 also called for the construction of a national stockpile of vaccines, antibiotics and other medical supplies. <\/span><\/p>\n

At the time, Kadlec was already evangelizing the public about a seemingly imminent, doomsday anthrax attack he was certain would strike at any second. As quoted in a 1998 article<\/span><\/a> from the Vancouver Sun<\/i>, Kadlec speculated: <\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cIf several kilograms of an agent like anthrax were disseminated in New York City today, conservative estimates put the number [of] deaths occurring in the first few days at 400,000. Thousands of others would be at risk of dying within several days if proper antibiotics and vaccination were not started immediately. Millions of others would be fearful of being exposed and seek or demand medical care as well. Beyond the immediate health implications of such an act, the potential panic and civil unrest would create an equally large response.\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Kadlec\u2019s doomsday speculations about biological weapons attacks had caught the attention of Randall Larsen, the then-director<\/span><\/a> of the National War College\u2019s Department of Military Strategy and Operations, who hired Kadlec<\/span><\/a> because he \u201chad become convinced that the most serious threat to national security was not Russian or Chinese missiles, but a pandemic \u2013 either man-made or naturally occurring.\u201d Soon after, Kadlec and Larsen would collaborate closely<\/span><\/a>, co-authoring several studies together. <\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, their colleague at the National War College, William Patrick III was simultaneously working for the U.S. military and intelligence contractor, the Battelle Memorial Institute, where he was secretly developing a genetically-modified, more potent form of anthrax for a classified Pentagon program.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Bioterror Intelligentsia <\/span><\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A year after hiring Robert Kadlec to teach at the National War College, Randall Larsen was also involved in the creation of a new organization called the ANSER Institute for Homeland Security (ANSER-IHS), and served as its director. This Institute for Homeland Security, first initiated and funded in October 1999, was an extension of the ANSER Institute, which itself had been spun off from the RAND Corporation in the late 1950s. The RAND Corporation is a national security-focused \u201cthink tank\u201d with long-standing ties to the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and the Carnegie Corporation.<\/span><\/p>\n

ANSER\u2019s expansion through ANSER-IHS was foreshadowed by the entry of \u201chomeland defense\u201d into popular political discourse within the Washington Beltway. The term is alleged to have first originated<\/span><\/a> from a National Defense Panel report submitted in 1997 and is credited to Defense Panel member and former CIA officer with ties to the agency\u2019s Phoenix program, Richard Armitage. Armitage was part of the group known as the \u201cVulcans<\/span><\/a>,\u201d who advised George W. Bush on foreign policy matters prior to the 2000 presidential election.<\/span><\/p>\n

As journalist Margie Burns pointed out in a 2002 article<\/span><\/a>, the need for \u201chomeland defense\u201d as a major focus of U.S. government policy, including the push to create a new \u201chomeland security\u201d agency, was dramatically amplified following its alleged coining by Armitage in 1997. This was thanks, in part, to a web of media outlets owned by South Korean cult leader and CIA asset<\/span><\/a> Sun Myong Moon, including the Washington Times, Insight Magazine<\/i> and UPI<\/i>, all of which published numerous articles penned by ANSER analysts or that heavily cited ANSER reports and employees regarding the need for a greatly expanded \u201chomeland security\u201d apparatus.<\/span><\/p>\n

One such article, published by Insight <\/i>Magazine in May 2001 and entitled \u201cPreparing for the Next Pearl Harbor<\/span><\/a>,\u201d heavily cites ANSER and its Institute for Homeland Security as being among \u201cthe nation\u2019s top experts\u201d in warning that a terrorist attack on the U.S. mainland was imminent. It also stated that \u201cthe first responders on tomorrow\u2019s battlefield won\u2019t be soldiers, but city ambulance workers and small-town firefighters.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

ANSER-IHS was created at the behest of ANSER\u2019s CEO<\/span><\/a>, Dr. Ruth David, who became ANSER\u2019s top executive after leaving a lengthy career at the CIA, where she had served as the agency\u2019s Deputy Director for Science and Technology. On ANSER-IHS\u2019s board<\/span><\/a> at the time, alongside David, were Joshua Lederberg and Dr. Tara O\u2019Toole, then-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Bio-defense Studies who would later co-write the Dark Winter exercise<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though first created in 1999, ANSER-IHS did not officially launch until April 2001. That same month, Robert Kadlec, at the National War College, sponsored the paper \u201cA Micro-threat with Macro-Impact:\u00a0 <\/span>The Bio-Threat and the Need for a National Bio-Defense Security Strategy<\/span><\/a>.\u201d That paper starts by citing several former CIA officials as well as Dr. O\u2019Toole (who now works for the CIA\u2019s venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel) as proof that a bioterrorist attack is \u201cperhaps the greatest threat the U.S. faces in the next century\u201d and that such an attack would inevitably target \u201cAmericans on American soil.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

This Kadlec-sponsored report also called for the creation of the National Homeland Security Agency (NHSA), the framework for which was contained in H.R. 1158, introduced a month prior in March 2001. The paper urged that the creation of this new cabinet-level agency be enacted \u201cquickly, so the resulting single executive agent (identified from here on as the NHSA) can begin its critical work.\u201d It also argued that this agency include \u201ca deputy director position \u2026 specifically responsible for preparing and responding to a bio-attack.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Other measures recommended in the paper included greatly expanding the national defense stockpile; creating a national disease reporting system; and the creation of real-time, automated bio-threat detectors. The latter would be initiated soon after the publication of this paper, resulting in the controversial Biological Aerosol Sentry and Information Systems (BASIS). BASIS was discussed in Part I<\/span><\/a> of this series, particularly its role in \u201cinduc[ing] the very panic and social disruption it is intended to thwart\u201d during and after the 2001 anthrax attacks that would occur months later. BASIS was developed largely by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, whose national security fellow<\/span><\/a> \u2013 former Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) director Jay Davis, was then-chairman<\/span><\/a> of ANSER\u2019s board of directors.<\/span><\/p>\n

Also notable is the fact that Kadlec\u2019s April 2001 report cites the largely discredited<\/span><\/a> yet still influential Ken Alibek on several occasions, including his allegation that anyone with internet access and a few bucks could produce and unleash weapons-grade anthrax with ease. Some of the nation\u2019s top anthrax experts would discredit<\/span><\/a> this claim, with the exception of William C. Patrick III. <\/span><\/p>\n

This is likely because it was Patrick who had been asked by the CIA<\/span><\/a> to \u201cvet\u201d Alibek after he had first defected from the Soviet Union 1992, making Patrick responsible for determining the credibility of Alibek\u2019s controversial claims, including his incorrect assertions<\/span><\/a> that Saddam Hussein had overseen a massive biological weapons program. Regarding their meeting, Patrick would later say<\/span><\/a> \u201cI won\u2019t say we fell in love, but we gained an immediate respect for one another.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

At the time of Alibek\u2019s defection, Robert Kadlec \u2013 who had been assigned to the Pentagon\u2019s Office of the Secretary of Defense for Counter-proliferation policy after the Gulf War \u2013 would later recall during 2014 Congressional testimony<\/span><\/a> having \u201cwitnessed the efforts to ascertain the truth behind the former Soviet Union\u2019s BW [biological weapons] effort\u201d that had intimately involved Alibek and Patrick. Kadlec would also note that \u201cthe fate of these agents [related to the Soviet Union\u2019s BW program] and associated weapons,\u201d including those described by Alibek, \u201cwas never satisfactorily resolved.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Alibek\u2019s shocking yet dubious claims were often used and promoted by<\/span><\/a> Joshua Lederberg (who had debriefed<\/span><\/a> other Soviet bioweapons researchers after their defections), Patrick and others to support their favored \u201cbiodefense\u201d policies as well as the need for \u201cdefensive\u201d bioweapons research, including clandestine efforts to genetically-engineer anthrax on which Patrick and Alibek would later collaborate.<\/span><\/p>\n

Setting the Wheels in Motion<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"NTI\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Just a few months before ANSER-IHS\u2019 \u201cofficial\u201d launch, another organization with a related focus was launched \u2014 the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). Created by media mogul Ted Turner and former Senator Sam Nunn in January 2001, NTI aimed not only to \u201creduce the threat\u201d posed by nuclear weapons, but also chemical and biological weapons. <\/span><\/p>\n

In announcing NTI\u2019s formation on CNN<\/i>, the network Turner had founded, Nunn stated<\/span><\/a> that while \u201cnuclear weapons pose the gigantic danger, but biological and chemical weapons are the most likely to be used. And there are thousands of scientists in the former Soviet Union that know how to make these weapons, including chemical, biological and nuclear, but don\u2019t know how to feed their families.\u201d Nunn continued, stating that NTI hoped \u201cto begin to help, some hope for gainful employment for people that we don\u2019t want to end up making chemical and biological and nuclear weapons in other parts of the world.\u201d NTI\u2019s mission in this regard likely came as welcome news to Joshua Lederberg, who had long advocated<\/span><\/a> that the U.S. offer employment to bioweapons researchers from the former Soviet Union to prevent their employ by \u201crogue regimes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Alongside Nunn and Tuner on NTI\u2019s board was William Perry, a former Secretary of Defense; former Senator Dick Lugar, for whom the alleged U.S. bioweapons lab in Georgia<\/span><\/a> is named; and Margaret Hamburg, who was NTI\u2019s Vice President overseeing its work on biological weapons. Margaret Hamburg\u2019s father, David Hamburg, a long-time president of the Carnegie Corporation, was also an advisor and \u201cdistinguished fellow\u201d<\/span><\/a> at NTI. David Hamburg was a longtime close advisor<\/span><\/a>, associate<\/span><\/a>, and friend of<\/span><\/a> Joshua Lederberg.<\/span><\/p>\n

Both Sam Nunn and Margaret Hamburg of NTI, as well as top officials from ANSER, would come together in June 2001 to participate in an exercise simulating a bioweapons attack called \u201cDark Winter.\u201d Nunn would play the role of president in the exercise and Hamburg played the head of HHS in the fictional scenario. Jerome Hauer, then-managing director<\/span><\/a> of the intelligence-linked outfit Kroll Inc. and a Vice President at the military-intelligence contractor Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC), played the head of FEMA. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Dark Winter exercise itself was largely written by Tara O\u2019Toole (ANSER-IHS board member) and Thomas Inglesby of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Bio-defense Studies as well as Randall Larsen of ANSER-IHS. Robert Kadlec also participated in the creation of the script and appears in the fictional, scripted news clips used in the exercise.<\/span><\/p>\n

As detailed in Part I<\/span><\/a> of this series, the Dark Winter exercise eerily predicted many aspects of what would follow just months later during the 2001 anthrax attacks, including predictions that threatening letters would be sent to members of the press with the promise of biological weapons attacks involving anthrax. Dark Winter also provided the initial narrative for the 2001 anthrax attacks, which held that Iraq and Al Qaeda had been jointly responsible. However, soon after the attacks, evidence quickly pointed to the anthrax having originated from a domestic source linked to military experiments. In addition, several Dark Winter participants and authors either had apparent foreknowledge of those attacks (especially Jerome Hauer) and\/or were involved in the FBI\u2019s controversial investigation into the attacks (including Robert Kadlec).<\/span><\/p>\n

On the day of September 11, 2001, Kadlec and Randall Larsen were set to begin co-teaching a course on \u201cHomeland Security\u201d<\/span><\/a> at the National War College. It\u2019s course syllabus draws from quotes on the imminent threat of bioterrorism from Joshua Lederberg as well as Dark Winter participant and former CIA director James Woolsey, who called a biological weapons attack \u201cthe single most dangerous threat to U.S. national security in the foreseeable future.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

The course was also set to include its own lengthy use of the Dark Winter exercise, where students would re-enact the June 2001 exercise as part of an end-of-semester research project. However, given the events that took place on September 11, 2001, Kadlec never went on to teach that course, as he instead went to the Pentagon to focus on the \u201cbio-terror threat\u201d in the weeks that preceded the 2001 anthrax attacks.<\/span><\/p>\n

The After (Anthrax) Party<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"Rumsfeld\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Immediately after the events of September 11, 2001, Kadlec became a special advisor<\/span><\/a> on biological warfare to then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz. In the days that followed, Rumsfeld openly and publicly stated<\/span><\/a> that he expected America\u2019s enemies, specifically Saddam Hussein, to aid unspecified terrorist groups in obtaining chemical and biological weapons, a narrative that was analogous to that used in the Dark Winter exercise that Kadlec had helped create.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the immediate aftermath of 9\/11, Dark Winter\u2019s other co-authors \u2014 Randall Larsen, Tara O\u2019Toole and Thomas Inglesby \u2014 personally briefed Dick Cheney on Dark Winter, at a time when Cheney and his staff had been warned by another Dark Winter figure, Jerome Hauer, to take the antibiotic Cipro to prevent anthrax infection. It is unknown how many members of the administration were taking Cipro and for how long.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hauer, along with James Woolsey and New York Times<\/i> reporter Judith Miller (who also attended Dark Winter), would spend the weeks<\/span><\/a> between 9\/11 and the public disclosure of the anthrax attacks making numerous media appearances (and, in Miller\u2019s case, writing dozens of reports) regarding the use of anthrax as a biological weapon. Members of the controversial think thank the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), which included Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld among its ranks, also warned that a biological weapons attack was set to follow on the heels of 9\/11. These included<\/span><\/a> Richard Perle, then advising the Rumsfeld-led Pentagon, and Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard<\/i>. <\/span><\/p>\n

One would think that all of these well-timed warnings would have left this clique of government insiders the least surprised once the anthrax attacks were publicly disclosed on October 4, 2001. However, despite constantly warning of doomsday anthrax attack scenarios for a decade and advising the Pentagon on this very threat immediately beginning just weeks prior, Robert Kadlec would<\/span><\/a> <\/span>subsequently claim to have yelled,<\/span> \u201cYou gotta be sh*ttin\u2019 me!\u201d when he first learned of the attacks. <\/span><\/p>\n

Another pre-attack anthrax prophet, Judith Miller, would recall becoming distraught and despondent upon receiving a letter that appeared to contain anthrax. Her first reaction was to call<\/span><\/a> William C. Patrick III, who calmed her down and told her that the anthrax powder contained in the letter \u201cwas most likely a hoax.\u201d Indeed, Patrick would prove correct in his analysis as the powder in the letter Miller had opened was, in fact, harmless.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kadlec quickly began contributing to the FBI\u2019s controversial investigation into the attacks, known by its case name \u201cAmerithrax.\u201d Kadlec was tasked with<\/span><\/a> following up on the alleged presence of bentonite in the anthrax used in the attacks. Bentonite was never actually found in any of the anthrax samples tested by the FBI, but claims that it had been found were used to link the anthrax used in the attacks to Iraq\u2019s alleged use of bentonite in its biological weapons program, the very existence of which still lacked conclusive evidence. <\/span><\/p>\n

This erroneous claim was first mentioned<\/span><\/a> to Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz by Peter Jahrling, a Fort Detrick scientist, who claimed during a briefings that the spores \u201cappeared to have been treated\u201d with a \u201cparticular chemical additive\u201d resembling bentonite. Jahrling then added that Iraq\u2019s government had used bentonite to \u201csuspiciously\u201d produce bacillus thuringiensis<\/i> (Bt), a \u201cnonlethal cousin\u201d of anthrax widely used<\/span><\/a> in agriculture. \u201cEveryone grabbed on to that,\u201d Kadlec would later remember of Jahrling\u2019s haphazard link between bentonite and a harmless, distant cousin of anthrax.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tasked by Wolfowitz with shoring up evidence for the bentonite \u201csmoking gun,\u201d Kadlec would contact<\/span><\/a> a Navy scientist that had accompanied him and William Patrick to Iraq in their unsuccessful efforts to find proof of Iraq\u2019s biological weapons back in 1994, James Burans. Burans was unconvinced of the bentonite connection and other government scientists soon agreed. <\/span><\/p>\n

Nonetheless, media outlets continued to play up the bentonite-anthrax claim as proving Iraq\u2019s role in the anthrax attacks, despite findings to the contrary. By late October 2001, one nationwide poll found that<\/span><\/a> 74% of respondents wanted the U.S. to take military action against Iraq, despite a lack of evidence connecting the country to either 9\/11 or the anthrax attacks. A month later, Rumsfeld would draw up plans<\/span><\/a> in consultation with Wolfowitz regarding justifications for initiating war with Iraq, including discovering links between Saddam Hussein and the anthrax attacks and initiating disputes with Iraq over WMD inspections. <\/span><\/p>\n

While the Kadlec-advised Pentagon was seeking to link the anthrax attacks to Iraq, the NTI \u2013 headed by Dark Winter \u201cpresident\u201d Sam Nunn \u2013 kicked its agenda into over-drive, earmarking<\/span><\/a> \u201c$2.4 million in initial grants to finance scientific collaboration with scientists who once worked in the former Soviet Union\u2019s covert biological weapons program.\u201d NTI also set aside millions more for transforming former Soviet Union bioweapons labs into \u201cvaccine production facilities\u201d and \u201chelping identify Western drug companies willing to work with former Soviet bioweaponeers on commercial ventures.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Closed Door Investigation<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

William C. Patrick III would also become involved the FBI\u2019s Amerithrax investigation, even though he was initially suspected of involvement in the attacks. However, after having passed a lie detector test, he was added to<\/span><\/a> the FBI\u2019s \u201cinner circle\u201d of technical advisors on the Amerithrax case, despite the fact that Patrick\u2019s protege<\/span><\/a>, Stephen Hatfill, was the FBI\u2019s top suspect at the time. Hatfill was later cleared of wrongdoing and the FBI eventually blamed a Fort Detrick scientist named Bruce Ivins for the crime, hiding a \u201cmountain\u201d of evidence exonerating Ivins to do so, according<\/span><\/a> <\/span>to<\/span> the FBI\u2019s former lead investigator.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the 1990s, Patrick had told associates of his desire to find someone who would carry on his work, eventually finding this person in Stephen Hatfill. Hatfill and Patrick\u2019s friendship was close, with one bioterror expert calling them<\/span><\/a> \u201clike father and son.\u201d Hatfill traveled together often and, on occasion, Hatfill would drive Patrick to his consulting jobs at the military and intelligence contractor SAIC. In 1999, Patrick would return the favor by helping Hatfill score a job at SAIC. A year later, Jerome Hauer, a friend to both Hatfill and Patrick, would join SAIC<\/span><\/a> as a Vice President.<\/span><\/p>\n

That same year, Hatfill offered Patrick another consulting job at SAIC and commissioned Patrick to perform a study describing \u201ca fictional terrorist attack in which an envelope containing weapons-grade anthrax is opened in an office.\u201d The Baltimore Sun<\/i><\/span><\/a> would later report that Patrick\u2019s study for SAIC discussed the \u201cdanger of anthrax spores spreading through the air and the requirements for decontamination after various kinds of attacks\u201d as well as how many grams of anthrax would need to be placed within a standard business envelope in order to conduct such an attack.<\/span><\/p>\n

Patrick\u2019s involvement in this SAIC study is particularly interesting given that he was also involved in another project involving anthrax at the time, this one managed by Battelle Memorial Institute. In 1997, the Pentagon created plans to genetically engineer a more potent variety of anthrax, spurred by the work<\/span><\/a> of Russian scientists who had recently published a study that found that a genetically engineered strain of anthrax was resistant to the standard anthrax vaccine, at least in animal studies.<\/span><\/p>\n

The stated goal of the Pentagon\u2019s plan, per a 2001 report in The New York Times<\/i><\/span><\/a>, was \u201cto see if the [anthrax] vaccine the United States intends to supply to its armed forces is effective against that strain.\u201d Battelle\u2019s facility at West Jefferson, Ohio was contracted by the Pentagon to create the genetically-modified anthrax, a task that was overseen by Battelle\u2019s then-program manager<\/span><\/a> for all things bioweapons, Ken Alibek. A 1998 article<\/span><\/a> in the New Yorker<\/i> noted that William Patrick, also a consultant for Battelle and Alibek\u2019s \u201cclose friend,\u201d was working with Alibek on a project involving anthrax at the time. It would later be revealed that access to the very anthrax strain used in the attacks, the Ames strain, was controlled by Battelle. <\/span><\/p>\n

In addition, the FBI\u2019s supposed \u201csmoking gun\u201d used to link Bruce Ivins\u2019 to the anthrax attacks was the fact that a flask in Ivins\u2019 lab labeled RMR-1029 was determined to be its \u201cparent\u201d strain. Yet, it would later be revealed<\/span><\/a> that portions of RMR-1029 had been sent by Ivins to Battelle\u2019s Ohio facility prior to the anthrax attacks. An analysis of the water<\/span><\/a> used to make the anthrax also revealed that the anthrax spores had been created in the northeastern United States and follow-up analyses narrowed down the only possible sources as coming from one of three labs<\/span>:<\/span> Fort Detrick, a lab at the University of Scranton, or Battelle\u2019s West Jefferson facility.<\/span><\/p>\n

After Ivins\u2019 untimely \u201csuicide\u201d in 2008, Department of Justice civil attorneys would publicly challenge<\/span><\/a> the FBI\u2019s assertions that Ivins had been the culprit and instead \u201csuggested that a private laboratory in Ohio\u201d managed by Battelle \u201ccould have been involved in the attacks.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Patrick\u2019s work with Battelle on creating a more potent form of anthrax, as well as his work with SAIC in studying the effect of anthrax sent through the mail, began around the same time that BioPort had secured a monopoly over the production of the anthrax vaccine, recently made mandatory for all U.S. troops by the Pentagon. As detailed in Part II<\/span><\/a> of this series, BioPort\u2019s facility that produced its anthrax vaccine was, at the time, rife with problems and had lost its license to operate. Despite the Pentagon having given BioPort millions to use for renovations of the factory, much of that money instead went towards senior management bonuses and redecorating executive offices. Millions more simply \u201cdisappeared.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

In 2000, not long after receiving its first Pentagon bail-out, BioPort contracted<\/span><\/a> none other than Battelle Memorial Institute. The deal gave Battelle \u201cimmediate exposure to the vaccine\u201d it was using in connection with the genetically-modified anthrax program that involved both Alibek and Patrick. That program then began using the BioPort-manufactured vaccine in tests at its West Jefferson facility. At the time, Battelle was also lending \u201ctechnical expertise\u201d to BioPort and hired 12 workers to send to BioPort\u2019s troubled Michigan facility \u201cto keep the operation running.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

At the time, a BioPort spokeswomen stated \u201cWe have a relationship with Battelle to extend our reach for people we are trying to attract for critical positions on our technical side. They\u2019re also assisting with our potency testing as really sort of a backup. They\u2019re validating our potency tests.\u201d Reports on the BioPort-Battelle contract stated that<\/span><\/a> the terms of their agreement were not publicly disclosed, but also noted that the two companies had \u201cpreviously worked together on an unsuccessful bid to make other vaccines for the government.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

As previously noted in Part II<\/span><\/a> of this series, BioPort was set to lose its contract for anthrax vaccine entirely in August 2001 and the entirety of its anthrax vaccine business was rescued by the 2001 anthrax attacks, which saw concerns over BioPort\u2019s corruption replaced with fervent demands for more of its anthrax vaccine.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rumsfeld Saves BioPort<\/span><\/h3>\n

One of the post-attack advocates for salvaging the BioPort anthrax vaccine contract was Donald Rumsfeld, who stated<\/span><\/a> after the attacks that, \u201cWe\u2019re going to try to save it, and try to fashion some sort of an arrangement whereby we give one more crack at getting the job done with that outfit [BioPort]. It\u2019s the only outfit in this country that has anything under way, and it\u2019s not very well under way, as you point out.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

While Rumsfeld and others worked to salvage the troubled BioPort-anthrax vaccine deal, another recurrent figure in this sordid saga, Jerome Hauer, would also play a key role<\/span><\/a> in pushing for increased purchases of BioPort\u2019s most lucrative and most controversial product. In addition to being managing director of Kroll Inc. and a Vice President at SAIC, Hauer was also a national security advisor to HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson on September 11, 2001. It was also this same day that Hauer would also tell top administration officials to take Cipro to prevent anthrax infection. <\/span><\/p>\n

Hauer played a key role advising HHS leadership as the anthrax attacks unfolded. After the attacks, Hauer pushed Thompson<\/span><\/a> to create the Office of Public Health Preparedness (OPHP) within HHS, which was created later that year. It was first headed by D.A. Henderson, a close associate of Joshua Lederberg and the original founder of<\/span><\/a> the Johns Hopkins Working Group on Civilian Biodefense, which included Jerome Hauer and Henderson\u2019s protege Tara O\u2019Toole. Hauer himself would come to replace Henderson as OPHP just a few months later.<\/span><\/p>\n

Subsequent legislation, shaped in part by Robert Kadlec, would see OPHP give way to the position of Assistant Secretary for Public Health Emergency Preparedness (ASPHEP), a position Hauer would also fill. Hauer would use this post to push for the stockpiling of vaccines, including BioPort\u2019s anthrax vaccine. Hauer and his deputy, William Raub, would then help push<\/span><\/a> the Pentagon to restart vaccinating the troops, despite long-standing concerns over the vaccine\u2019s safety. Soon after leaving HHS in 2004, Hauer would quickly be added to the board of directors of BioPort under its new name Emergent Biosolutions, a post he still holds today.<\/span><\/p>\n

All Systems Go <\/span><\/h3>\n

In the aftermath of the anthrax attacks, Robert Kadlec\u2019s doomsday predictions for bioterror incidents went into over-drive. \u201cIt\u2019s not your mother\u2019s smallpox,\u201d Kadlec would tell the LA Times<\/i><\/span><\/a> in late October 2001, \u201cIt\u2019s an F-17 Stealth fighter \u2013 it\u2019s designed to be undetectable and to kill. We are flubbing our efforts at biodefense. We don\u2019t think of this as a weapon \u2013 we look naively at this as a disease.\u201d As the article notes, this \u201cstealth fighter\u201d strain of smallpox did not exist. Instead, Kadlec \u2013 who now had Rumsfeld\u2019s ear on issues of biodefense \u2013 expected that such a strain might soon be genetically engineered.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, at the time, the only government known to be genetically engineering a pathogen was the U.S., as reported by the New York Times<\/i>\u2019 Judith Miller<\/span><\/a>. Miller reported in October 2001 that the Pentagon, in the wake of the anthrax attacks, had approved \u201ca project to make a potentially more potent form of anthrax bacteria\u201d through genetic modification, a project that would be conducted by the Battelle Memorial Institute. <\/span><\/p>\n

This was the continuation of the project, which had involved William Patrick and Ken Alibek, and the Pentagon moved to restart it after the attacks, though it is unclear if either Patrick or Alibek continued to work on the subsequent iteration of Battelle\u2019s efforts to produce a more virulent strain of anthrax. That project was paused a month prior when Miller and other journalists disclosed the existence of the program in an article<\/span><\/a> published on September 4, 2001.<\/span><\/p>\n

After news broke of the Pentagon\u2019s plans to again begin developing more potent anthrax strains, accusations were made<\/span><\/a> that the U.S. was violating the bioweapons convention. However, the U.S. narrowly avoided having to admit it had violated the convention given that, just one month after the Dark Winter exercise in July 2001, the U.S. had rejected an agreement<\/span><\/a> that would have enforced its ban on biological weapons. <\/span><\/p>\n

The New York Times <\/i>noted specifically<\/a> that the genetically-modified anthrax experiments being performed by Battelle\u2019s West Jefferson facility were a \u201csignificant reason\u201d behind the Bush administration\u2019s decision to reject the draft agreement and the U.S. government had argued at the time that<\/span><\/a> \u201cunlimited visits to pharmaceutical or defense installations by foreign inspectors could be used to gather strategic or commercial intelligence.\u201d Of course, one of those \u201cpharmaceutical or defense installations\u201d was ultimately the source of the anthrax used in the attacks. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Groundwork <\/span><\/h3>\n

\"Robert<\/a><\/p>\n

On the heels of the chaos of late 2001, Kadlec\u2019s vision for U.S. biodefense policy was rapidly coming to fruition before his very eyes. The first enabling statute for the SNS was the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness Act of 2002, largely motivated by the anthrax attacks, which directed the Secretary of HHS to maintain a \u201cStrategic National Stockpile<\/span><\/a> (SNS).\u201d The legislation had been the direct result of a process begun years earlier when Congress earmarked funding for the CDC to stockpile pharmaceuticals in 1998. The program was originally called the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile (NPS) program.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kadlec\u2019s role in directing subsequent developments in the SNS and other related legislative developments was considerable given that, in 2002, he became director<\/span><\/a> for biodefense on the recently created Homeland Security Council. His work on the council, which he left in 2005, resulted in the Bush administration\u2019s \u201cNational Biodefense Policy for the 21st Century,\u201d which unsurprisingly echoed the recommendations of the paper Kadlec had sponsored at the National War College. <\/span><\/p>\n

On March 1, 2003, the NPS became the Strategic National Stockpile program and was managed jointly by DHS and HHS after George W. Bush issued Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD-5). Two days before, Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge and then Secretary of HHS Tommy Thompson had presented the Project BioShield Act to Congress. It was a sweeping piece of legislation that established what would become a government money teller-window for Big Pharma, called the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), among other entities and powers, not least of which was moving control of the SNS away from DHS and closer to HHS. <\/span><\/p>\n

Soon after BioShield was signed into law, BioPort\/Emergent BioSolutions co-founded a lobby group<\/span><\/a> called the Alliance for Biosecurity as part of its strategy to easily secure lucrative BioShield contracts. That lobby group saw Emergent BioSolutions join forces with the University of Pittsburgh\u2019s Center for Biosecurity, which was<\/span><\/a> <\/span>then-led by<\/span> Tara O\u2019Toole and advised by Randall Larsen. <\/span><\/p>\n

With this framework in place, the Kadlec-drafted National Biodefense Policy for the 21st Century was used as the framework for Bush\u2019s Homeland Security Presidential Directive 10 (HSPD-10<\/span><\/a>), which further expanded BioShield, the SNS and other controversial programs. Project BioShield was made law in 2004 and, one year later, Kadlec joined Senator Richard Burr\u2019s subcommittee on bioterrorism and public health. There, Kadlec served as staff director on the committee that drafted the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA), containing the specific policy directives for the roll out of Project BioShield and creating Kadlec\u2019s future position at HHS.<\/span><\/p>\n

PAHPA was passed the following year in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and established the statutory relationship between the various agencies enacted or included in the BioShield legislation<\/span><\/a>. This includes delegating to the newly creation position of HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) to \u201cexercise the responsibilities and authorities of the Secretary [of HHS] with respect to the coordination of \u201dthe stockpile and to oversee the advanced research and development of medical counter-measures funded by BARDA, but conducted by Big Pharma. ASPR was also given the leadership role in directing HHS\u2019 response to a national health emergency.<\/span><\/p>\n

Serving alongside Kadlec in the White House throughout this entire process was Tevi Troy, a Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy; a role which made him the White House\u2019s lead adviser on health care, labor, education and other issues with a special focus on crisis management<\/span><\/a>. Troy, who had come up through the department of labor as deputy assistant for policy<\/span><\/a><\/span> was already a Senior fellow at both the Hudson Institute and its satellite think tank, the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies (PIPS), where the real policy development work was undertaken.<\/span><\/p>\n

Both Troy and Kadlec would exit the administration at the end of Bush\u2019s first term and not return until the latter half of his second term. In the meantime, the wheels had been set in motion with the passing of Project BioShield and PAHPA and, soon after their passage, panic over a \u201cBird flu\u201d outbreak began, which had spread first in 33 cities in Vietnam and then led to an outbreak of the poultry-killing disease that affected all of Eurasia, Africa and the Middle East. The outbreak sparked panic<\/span><\/a> in the U.S. in late 2005, thanks in large part to over-the-top warnings<\/span><\/a> made by Tommy Thompson\u2019s successor as head of HHS, Michael Leavitt.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the fact that Leavitt\u2019s claims were wildly inaccurate, some administration officials benefited financially from the fear-mongering, such as Donald Rumsfeld, whose stock holdings in the pharmaceutical company Gilead netted him $5 million<\/span><\/a> once the scare had ended. Part of the reason for Gilead\u2019s jump in profitability resulted from the decision of the Pentagon and other U.S. government agencies to stockpile 80 million doses of Tamiflu, a drug promoted to treat the Bird Flu that was originally developed by Gilead. Rumsfeld had been the top executive at Gilead before joining the George W. Bush administration. Aside from those who benefited monetarily, the Bird Flu scare also gave a considerable boost to the biodefense \u201cstockpile\u201d agenda that Kadlec and other insiders supported.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kadlec would return to the White House as Special Assistant for Homeland Security and Senior Director for Biological Defense Policy in 2007 to further solidify his eventual grip on the Strategic National Stockpile and the office of ASPR, along with his Hudson Institute\/PIPS sidekick, Tevi Troy, concurrently appointed Deputy Director of HHS. This put Troy in charge of implementing the very policies enshrined in PAHPA and the departmental changes enacted as part of Project BioShield.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Bush administration came to its inevitable conclusion as Barack Obama was elected and sworn in, early 2009. Kadlec and Troy, once again, left their government posts and disappeared into their private sector lairs. But, that same year, the first practice run for Kadlec\u2019s freshly retrofitted SNS took place when the \u201cSwine Flu\u201d (H1N1) pandemic triggered<\/span><\/a> its \u201clargest deployment\u201d ever, distributing nearly 13 million antiviral regimens, as well as medical equipment and other drugs nationally and internationally in conjunction with BARDA<\/a>. <\/span>Gilead (and Rumsfeld) again profited<\/span><\/a> handsomely, as did other large pharmaceutical companies, which were eager to restock the SNS after its large-scale deployment. <\/span><\/p>\n

The virus\u2019 origins have been a matter of controversy for several years, alternatively identified as having sprung from pigs in Mexico or Asia. One of the last studies<\/span><\/a> conducted in 2016 claims to have definitively traced the source to hogs in Mexico. Regardless of its true origins, interested observers<\/span><\/a> were able to glean vital data from the exercise to prepare for the \u201cnext one.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Troy\u2019s Horses<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"Tevi<\/a><\/p>\n

Departing HHS Deputy Director Tevi Troy soon took a gig as a high-powered lobbyist for the JUUL e-cigarette company<\/span><\/a>, which had run into some regulatory barriers as a result of the Tobacco Control Act, which had just been signed by then-President Obama. Margaret Hamburg,<\/span> founding member<\/span><\/a><\/span> of the NTI, was then Commissioner of the FDA and stalled<\/span><\/a> enforcement of the new regulations; a tacit non-enforcement policy had persisted at the FDA until the recent vaping flavor ban, which followed renewed health concerns raised by a 2018 NIH report<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

Why a former HHS official would take up the mantle to promote the use of a product known to be injurious to health can be answered by looking at Dr. Troy\u2019s close links with PIPS and the Hudson Institute. Couched in free-market rhetoric, these institutions are vehicles for the policy initiatives their billionaire funders want to see implemented, with its subsidiary think tanks, like PIPS, serving as satellites orbiting closer to the center of power.<\/span><\/p>\n

As an adjunct fellow of the Hudson Institute<\/span><\/a> and senior fellow at PIPS, Tevi Troy appears to play a pivotal role coordinating between the two. The Hudson Institute was founded in 1961 by former RAND military strategist, systems theorist and Dr. Strangelove inspiration Herman Kahn. After Kahn\u2019s passing in 1983, the Institute was \u201cheavily recruited\u201d by the Lilly Endowment \u2013 the largest private foundation in the United States<\/span><\/a>, by far \u2013 and became a magnet for the same radical conservative billionaire networks that patronize it today.<\/span><\/p>\n

Among its biggest donors are familiar names like Microsoft, Lockheed Martin Corporation, The Charles Koch Foundation, Boeing and Emergent BioSolutions. In 2004, Lilly Endowment returned to Washington D.C., announcing it would \u201creturn to its roots of national security and foreign policy<\/span><\/a>\u201d as a result of the war on terror becoming an \u201coverarching national concern\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

PIPS and the Hudson Institute would come to play a central role in Kadlec\u2019s upcoming efforts to make biodefense a national priority with him at the helm of a vastly expanded office of ASPR. But, it would be a few years yet. Meanwhile, there was more to be done in the area of legislation, not to mention private enterprise.<\/span><\/p>\n

Building on all previous versions of Kadlec\u2019s original PAHPA, the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Reauthorization Act (PAHPRA) of 2013 established two more instruments that strengthened his ultimate goal. First, the PHEMCE Strategy and Implementation Plan (SIP) was codified into law, which formalized the original legislation\u2019s ties to the budget office and secondly, it streamlined the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) facility for the FDA to fast-track drug approvals.<\/span><\/p>\n

Show Me the Money<\/span><\/h3>\n

Soon upon returning to the private sector, Robert Kadlec helped found a new company in 2012 called \u201cEast West Protection,\u201d which develops and delivers \u201cintegrated all-hazards preparedness and response systems for communities and sovereign nations.\u201d The company also<\/span><\/a> \u201cadvises communities and countries on issues related to the threat of weapons of mass destruction and natural pandemics.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Kadlec formed the company<\/span><\/a> with W. Craig Vanderwagen, the first HHS ASPR after the post\u2019s creation had been largely orchestrated by Kadlec. The other co-founder<\/span><\/a> of East West Protection was Fuad El-Hibri, the founder of BioPort\/Emergent Biosolutions, who had just stepped down as Emergent\u2019s CEO earlier that year. <\/span><\/p>\n

El-Hibri has numerous business connections to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where he and his father, Ibrahim El-Hibri, had once sold<\/span><\/a> stockpiles of anthrax vaccine to the Saudi government for an exorbitant price<\/span><\/a> per dose. East West Protection chased after the opportunity to fit the Kingdom with a custom-built biodefense system, but ultimately failed to finalize the deal despite El-Hibri\u2019s connections. Instead, East West Protection sold its products<\/span><\/a> to a handful of U.S. states.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kadlec was the firm\u2019s director<\/span><\/a> from its founding until at least 2015<\/span><\/a>, later selling his stake in the company to El-Hibri. Upon being nominated to serve as ASPR in the Trump administration, Kadlec failed to disclose his ties to East West Protection and El-Hibri and he has since claimed to only have been involved in the founding of the firm, despite evidence<\/span><\/a> to the contrary<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

Robert Kadlec\u2019s forays into the private sector during this period went far beyond East West Protection. Kadlec\u2019s consultancy firm, RPK Consulting, netted him $451,000 in 2014 alone, where he directly advised<\/span><\/a> Emergent Biosolutions as well as other pharmaceutical companies like Bavarian Nordic. Kadlec was also a consultant<\/span><\/a> to military and intelligence contractors, such as the DARPA-backed firm<\/span><\/a> Invincea and NSA contractor Scitor, which was recently acquired<\/span><\/a> by SAIC.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kadlec\u2019s consulting work for intelligence-linked companies earned him the praises of spooks turned entreprenuers, including Steve Cash \u2013 a former CIA officer and founder of Deck Prism<\/span><\/a>, itself a consultancy firm that retained Kadlec. Cash recently told<\/span><\/a> The Washington Post<\/i> that \u201cEverybody loves Dr. Bob [Kadlec],\u201d adding that he was a \u201cnational treasure.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

On Biowarfare\u2019s Eve<\/span><\/h3>\n

Kadlec had certainly been accumulating a treasure chest of power aided by some very cozy relationships in the consulting business and, by now, the stage had been set for a big push to create an official body within the halls of the legislature; an embedded consultancy firm, of sorts, to promote the designs of the biowarfare clique.<\/span><\/p>\n

That year, Robert Kadlec put together a Blue Ribbon Study Panel sponsored jointly by the Hudson Institute and a PIPS subsidiary institution called the Inter-University Center for Terrorism Studies (IUCTS<\/span><\/a>), managed by Dr. Yonah Alexander. <\/span>Kadlec\u2019s Blue Ribbon Panel was chaired by Senator Joe Lieberman and included the indispensable input of Tom Daschle, Donna Shalala and other members of the biowarfare policy club.<\/span><\/p>\n

The study panel issued a report in late 2015 entitled \u201cA National Blueprint for Biodefense<\/span><\/a>\u201d calling for 33 specific initiatives, such as the creation of a \u201cbiodefense hospital system<\/span><\/a>\u201d and implementing a \u201cmilitary-civilian collaboration for biodefense.\u201d In addition, the panel recommended that the office of the Vice President lead a White House \u201cCoordination Council\u201d to oversee and guide biodefense policy. <\/span><\/p>\n

An official body called the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense<\/span><\/a> would be formed shortly thereafter with all the Blue Ribbon Panel members and many others like Commission co-chair Tom Ridge and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Tevi Troy and Yonah Alexander, who serve as Ex-officio members. Alongside them is Lewis \u201cScooter\u201d Libby, former Chief of Staff to Dick Cheney and Senior Vice President of the Hudson Institute, which also happens to be the fiscal sponsor of the Commission.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the acknowledgements<\/span><\/a>, the panel\u2019s 2015 report includes an homage to Robert Kadlec to whom they bestow credit for the achievement, which only \u201cexists because of the foresight, forbearance, and perpetual optimism of Dr. Robert Kadlec. Bob understood that as much progress as had been made in the national effort to prevent and prepare for biological threats, it is not yet enough. He knew that with the right impetus, we could do much more, and he envisioned this Panel as a means to that end. We are glad he did.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Kadlec mounted this last offensive while serving as Deputy Staff Director for Senator Richard Burr\u2019s Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a position he would hold until the eve of Donald Trump\u2019s election in 2016. Trump would then nominate him to the office of the ASPR and Kadlec would be confirmed in early August of the following year.<\/span><\/p>\n

Only one piece of the puzzle was left, but it wouldn\u2019t be very long before Robert Kadlec would become the biggest capo of them all with a subtle change that was introduced in the 2018 PAHPRA<\/span><\/a>: <\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Title III \u2013 Sec 301<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

1) DELEGATION TO ASPR.\u2014Subsection (a)(1) of section 319F\u20132 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 247d\u20136b) is amended by striking \u2018\u2018in collaboration with the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u2019\u2019 and inserting \u2018\u2018acting through the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response.\u2019\u2019<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

____________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Whitney Webb is a staff writer for <\/em>The Last American Vagabond. She has previously written for <\/em>Mintpress News, Ben Swann’s Truth In Media. Her work has appeared on <\/em>Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and <\/em>21st Century Wire, among others. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 thelastamericanvagabond.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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