Bill Sykes' Newsletter
from America.
(October 2003)
An ex-Brit gives his views-(without fear
or favor)---of the American Scene
The next diabolical step in the use of WMDs.
Much of the research information used in the following
paragraphs is readily available within the public domain,
and can be found on the Internet and is even available
for purchase on video tapes, issued by one of the leading
TV Public Broadcast Stations. (PBS).
Biological Warfare.
Now we come to
the horror of horrors. Let us take a brief look at the
history of "biological" weapon programs.
Primitive biological weapons have been around since
the 14th century, where contaminated carcasses of animals
and even human cadavers infected with bubonic plague,
or some other dreadful disease such as smallpox, were
catapulted over castle walls with the idea that the stench
of the rotting bodies would contaminate the enemy.
 During the American Revolution it was alleged that British
soldiers deliberately forced smallpox injections upon
American civilians fleeing from conquered cities, with
the idea that they would contract and spread the disease.
In 1925, (the year of my birth), a Geneva Protocol was issued prohibiting the
use of chemical and biological agents but did not prohibit research and development
of these agents. Even though the signatories pledged to stop the producing
of these weapons I would suspect that very few adhered to their pledge and
continued with business as usual.
During World War One, poisonous gasses were used in
trench warfare in France. This of course comes under
chemical warfare, which may be the subject of future
discussion.
As early as 1936 the Japanese used bio-warfare tactics in Manchuria against
the Chinese.
By the end of World War Two, America, Russia, and other nations were developing
biological weapons and during the "Cold War" that followed America and
Russia explored the use of different biological toxins and methods of dispersing
such toxins.
In 1972 another attempt was made to ban biological weapons at a Convention
where at least one hundred nations signed an agreement to ban possession of
deadly biological agents except for defensive research.
I'm sure that there was no means at that time of verifying compliance or enforcing
the treaty
In today's world let us examine what has been happening
in our own backyard.
In 1991 at the time of the ceasefire in the American/Iraqi
Gulf War it was suggested that Iraq had several lethal
biological weapons under development. In fact it was
well known that Iraq had used such weapons in the 1980s,
both during the Iran/Iraq war and also against the
Kurds who were rebelling in northern Iraq.
 When trying to determine where Saddam Hussein procured
the biological germs from - surprise, surprise, the trail
lead to Manassas, Virginia, where the "American Type
Culture Collection" is located.
Apparently, receipts from the 1980s show that the Iraqi Technical and Scientific
Import Division was able to order dangerous pathogens through the mail from
this repository. One particularly dangerous, and deadly military strain of
anthrax, reported to have been developed by the United States Army germ warfare
base at Fort Detrick in Maryland, apparently found its way to Iraq. It was
also reported that United States biological weapons programs started around
1943 and continued for the next twenty six years, and that twenty eight biological
weapons grade agents, including anthrax, were tested by the United States Army.
In 1969 President Richard Nixon renounced germ warfare and invited the rest
of the world to follow suit.
President Nixon was said to have stated that instead of designing biological
weapons of mass destruction, scientists of this world should devote their time
and energy working towards developing cures for diseases that plague mankind.
The Russians were very active during the late 1980s
in the biological weapons field and had one of the largest
biological weapons plants in the world located at a facility
in Stepnogorsk, Kazakhstan. (The facility and the city
did not appear on any maps.) At its peak the facility
employed in excess of nine hundred  scientists and engineers
on very secret military programs. The Director of programs
at Stepnogorsk was Gennady Lepyoshkin, (1987-2001), who
was said to have stated that the facility had produced
enough biological weapons to kill the population of the
world ten times over.
Please read the words of the last
sentence for a second time, and read them very carefully,
as the thought of those weapons of mass destruction lying
dormant in unprotected and decaying laboratories in Russia,
which may be made readily available to the highest bidder,
haunts me.
For over two decades bio-terrorism experts had warned
America that it was vulnerable to a biological attack
by terrorist groups and a week after the September eleventh
terrorist attacks, anthrax spores were sent by mail to
the offices of NBC News, the New York Post and Senatorial
offices in Washington DC. The House of Representatives
on Capital Hill was shut down when 34 people tested positive
for anthrax exposure, but luckily the people did not
show any signs of infection.
Eighteen people, mainly mail handlers were infected by anthrax and contracted
the deadly disease, which killed five of the people infected. The source has
never been published and it was widely suggested that it was the work of a
local person or persons with a scientific background who probably were employed
by one of the United States biological laboratories.
 Some of the above mentioned scenarios, have been around
for many years and have been discussed and debated at
length on TV and on the Internet in a much more factual
and succinct manner than I could ever achieve, but even
so I think that it is about time that we the people came
to recognize the dangers that lurk within some of the
world's laboratories which are still working to achieve
the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.
Amazing story.
Bubonic plague broke out in the late 1320s in the Chinese
Gobi desert and was spread quickly by flea-infested
rats to Europe. The plague, characterized by chills,
fever, vomiting, diarrhoea, and the formation of black
boils in the areas of the armpits, neck, and groin
became to be known as "Black Death", a name which
was derived from dried blood that gathered under the skin and turned black.
The
Black Plague spread to Great Britain in 1348 and some 7,000 people died each
week, and as many as 100,000 died before the English winter killed the fleas
which were transmitting the deadly disease and the epidemic tapered off.
Now we come to the amazing part. In September 1665,
George Viccars, a tailor in the small central-England
village of Eyam, received a parcel of cloth from London,
which was ridden with plague-infected fleas. George and
several villagers died within days and it was decided
to quarantine the whole village---no one in, no one out.
A year later the first outsiders to venture into the
village found that at least half the people of the village
had survived. It is still not known how so many people
survived the ravages of this most deadly disease known
to man.
Even the village gravedigger, who handled hundreds of the disease ravaged corpses
survived.
The question that still puzzles scientists is how the survivors became immune
to the Black Death epidemic.
We welcome feedback about any of the contents
of these newsletters. Please send all correspondence to
bill_sykes@huddersfield1.co.uk
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