Part II
One of the things that I indicated at the beginning is that I'm not going to concentrate past a point on medical and scientific evidence. I have had people whose opinions I trust advise me in some of these matters. But as I indicated before, it would be pretentious and intellectually dishonest for me to hold forth on medical and scientific evidence past a certain point.
By the way, for those of you taking notes, Radio Free America #16 has most, not all, of the information. There are some things I have not had a chance to put in there, but most of it is. But this lecture is being taped. Paul will have tapes of this lecture at Archives on Audio. So you can always get a hold of the tapes and peruse them at your will. [Archives on Audio, Post Office Box 170023, San Francisco, California 94117-0023; telephone (415) 346-1840; e-mail <archives@igc.apc.org>.]
One of the major factors that I think may, and other scientific people think may loom in the consideration of AIDS is what is known as cross-vectoring. A lot of people have asked why is it that people can become HIV infected and some people will get sick and some people don't. AIDS related complex, Kaposi's Sarcoma , AIDS related pneumonia, it appears to be really a series of different diseases. The only common denominator is the HIV.
One of the things that's been suggested is that AIDS really results from cross-vectoring. In other words you don't get AIDS or some of the AIDS related diseases unless you are infected with several different organisms, including HIV. That obviously would be quite utilitarian from the standpoint of biological warfare. Just say arbitrarily, if you need five organisms to get a particular disease or the interaction of three, you could infect the population with one or two of these and then when you want to get rid of someone or a group of people, then you give them the magic bullet or the magic virus, no pun intended here. You give them HIV and out they go. That is one of the things that has been suggested in connection with AIDS.
Another major factor, one of the scientific aspects that I think is most compelling, and it's the one I'm going to discuss at greatest length this evening, is the epidemiology of AIDS. That is to say, the study of how the disease is spread. The single most compelling piece of information from a medical and scientific standpoint, and again the relationship between SIV and HIV2 is something that I believe is very significant. But not being qualified in genetics or biotechnology, I cannot critically evaluate that past a point. But the epidemiology of AIDS makes no sense. We have been told that the disease has existed as far back as 1959 and that it wasn't discovered until 1981. That is absolutely incredible. We are told that the disease appeared in Great Britain in 1959 and in the United States in 1969.
The study of diseases, epidemiology, is such that if it appeared in the third world, anywhere in the third world, even areas where public health care is not good, it would have been detected. You are going to hear a talk in just a second by a fellow named Dr. Wilbert Jordan of Martin Luther King Hospital in Los Angeles. Dr. Jordan is an epidemiologist. He is going to talk about some of the profound anomalies and some of the contradictions in the official version of the epidemiology of AIDS.
As he pointed out, loss of fever, which occurred in Nigeria, I believe it was in 1969, at the time there were something like a half dozen cases of it. Every airport in the United States was on alert, was on quarantine for this disease. Other diseases have appeared in the third world and after only a few cases, the diseases were identified and people were on alert for them.
He points out that in most places in the third world, due to poor nutrition and also due to the fact that there are other infectious organisms which have compromised the immune systems of those people, a disease like AIDS which is incredibly deadly would have spread very, very quickly and very noticeably.
Again, we have also been told that AIDS came from the Green Monkey, that supposedly a monkey bit someone and this is how the disease got started. Well, the Green Monkey has been eaten as a staple of the natives where it lives. The notion that a monkey could have bitten somebody and given it to them that way when the people have been eating the monkey all this time, it's actually sort of a man bites dog situation. It is a little bit too much to believe. It should also be noted that AIDS when it first got going, and this information is somewhat dated now, was heterosexual in Africa, heterosexual in Haiti, and yet it effected primarily gays in the United States. Another thing which is not covered by Dr. Jordan in the discussion that you are going to hear, is that another group which has suffered very, very heavily from AIDS are Native Americans, American Indians on reservations. Now that just doesn't compute. If you know anything about Native Americans on the reservation, it's not considered all that cool for a white person to be caught on a reservation after dark. This is in no way to cast aspersions on Indians or Native Americans. But the fact of the matter is because of the legacy of oppression that the Native Americans have experienced at the hands of the white race, they are not really crazy about it. It's not advisable for the average white person to get caught on a reservation after dark.
The epidemiology of this country just doesn't compute. How do we have heterosexuals in Africa, heterosexuals in Haiti, and homosexuals and Native Americans in the United States? This is basically, or so we've been told, a venereal disease, basically. I just don't see a whole lot of American gays flocking to Native American reservations in order to have sex with Indians. It just doesn't compute. And how come it's heterosexual in Africa?
One of the things I've learned as a political researcher over the years is that basically the story of the Emperor's New Clothes is a very important consideration. You all know the story of the Emperor's New Clothes. The Emperor wanted an outfit of magnificent clothes and basically was fooled by the local tailor. He was told that he had a marvelous suit. But in fact he was wearing nothing. He was walking around buck naked. The fact of the matter is nobody would say that the guy was naked, because it was just too embarrassing.
The same basic thing holds true with political research. People are afraid to use common sense. But the fact of the matter is that the principle of the Emperor's New Clothes applies. People are told that the Emperor has this marvelous new ermine cape, then they're not going to ask about that thing hanging down there. They're going to be told that's an ermine tail and they'll believe it, too.
It's basically worth noting the principle from the Wizard of Oz: Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. You want to pay attention to the man behind the curtain.
The epidemiology of AIDS as we have been told it exists just doesn't compute. I would note that the three countries in the third world that first became seriously infected with AIDS were Zaire in Africa, Haiti, and Granada in the Caribbean, all of which are U.S. sponsored dictatorships. Now it has since spread much farther in the third world, as it has in the United States. But that is worth noting.
I would also underscore a point that Dr. Jordan makes which is that Haiti is on the same island as the Dominican Republic, which did not at least at first experience a major AIDS outbreak. Both countries are on the island of Hispanola, separated by a mountain chain. But how can you have AIDS ravaging Haiti, but you don't have AIDS ravaging the Dominican Republic?
The third section of the lecture this evening, I am going to talk about some of the motivational factors that I believe propelled this disease and propelled the people who developed it to develop it. Racism and extermination have a great deal to do with it. It's worth noting that the epidemiology just doesn't compute with AIDS.
Having said that, I'm going to play a tape now. By the way, this information is also in Radio Free America #16. This is a discussion that was originally conducted on KPFA radio station by Rayna Cowan. She interviewed Dr. Wilbur Jordan, again an epidemiologist with Martin Luther King Hospital in Los Angeles about AIDS.
The following was taped off of KPFA's Traffic Jam program on Monday, December 16, 1984 between the hours of 4:30 PM and 5:15 PM, Pacific Standard Time:
Rayna Cowan (RC): "The reason why I played that song is because 'Some Day My Prince Will Come' is not actually something you can look forward to. One of the growing diseases in the United States today is AIDS. With me on the phone right now I have a person who is an expert in many different aspects of AIDS. He is the director of graduate medical education at Martin Luther King Hospital in Los Angeles. He is the former Public Health Chief for the Southern Area of Los Angeles County. He has had training in infectious diseases. I want to welcome Dr. Wilbur Jordan to the airwaves. Good afternoon, Doctor.
Dr. Wilbur Jordan (WJ): Thank you. Good afternoon.
RC: I had heard about you originally from a friend of mine who
was in UCLA Medical School who studied with you. You had done a lot of research on infectious diseases. Right now we have more and more information coming out about infectious diseases, where they come from and how they start. I am especially interested in AIDS. I wanted to get the information of somebody who is an expert in epidemiology. Why don't you begin telling me exactly what epidemiologists study and how this relates to learning about AIDS.
WJ: Epidemiology is the study of diseases and disease trends, and trying to determine where the disease comes from, how long it takes it to go through a complete cycle, its virulence, how potent it can be, etc. So an epidemiologist really studies the causes and effects of the disease. He or she doesn't necessarily treat the disease. Some are also medically trained, as I am. Many have a Master's in Public Health or a Doctorate in Public Health and may not necessarily be physicians. But they study disease trends, disease outbreaks and not treat the individual. They look at the overall disease in a cluster, rather than individual cases.
RC: Well, I can't really say what kind of diseases you have studied. But your expertise, what has it proved about certain diseases, especially in the past few years? Diseases like AIDS or the Legionnaire's Disease are considered new diseases and we've never experienced them before.
WJ: Right.
RC: What does that actually mean? How can a disease really come
out of nowhere.
WJ: Well, it isn't that it comes out of nowhere. We have to
explain where it comes from. We see Swine Flu develop. We have the flu vaccine every year. And it changes all the time. Influenza is a changing virus, which is why we give it names like Hong Kong, Brazil, Tokyo, Influenza A Tokyo, because a new strain is found in that area and we always name it for that. So that is nothing new. We have diseases that are developing all the time.
Some of the things that are interesting about AIDS, though, to me is the lack of attention as to where it has come from. We tend to keep looking outside of the United States shores. I personally, as your friend may have told you, question some of the present theories as to where AIDS comes from just using common sense. One doesn't have to be an epidemiologist. Just look at what we see and ask some questions.
This is a disease. It has a high morbidity. It is deadly. It is the most impressive and critical crisis we have had in public health in any of our generations, whether you are seventy or whether you are seven. This is worse than polio. Even Small Pox, I would dare say, was not as critical as this is right now.
But I don't think we are really looking at some of the very simple questions in terms of where did this come from. And that is where I disagree with some other people.
RC: When you mention where it comes from, I have heard stories that it comes from rabbits from Southern Japan. I've heard it comes from monkeys from Haiti. I've heard that it started in Haiti or Zaire. There are many theories about where it started.
WJ: That's one thing about the American personality. We think of ourselves as being better than everybody else. So whenever something bad happens, we say, 'Where did it come from?' assuming it couldn't have come from here. I think the Haitian theory was really ridiculous. It's a disease that is basically effecting Americans. Over eighty-five percent of all cases in the world still, and we are now in the sixth year of this disease, is American. It is an American disease. Most of the cases in Europe or outside of this country, you can trace back to having had contact with someone in this country. The only atypical ones are the ones in France that can be traced back to Zaire, which has been different. But for the most part, the European cases were traced back to the United States.
So you have a disease that is effecting a reasonably large number of people with a very high mortality rate. At this point those who even live to get out of the hospital the first time have a life expectancy of about two years. The overwhelming majority in the United States, three main areas particularly, New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. That's unusual. Viruses, bacteria don't do that.
Diseases don't create themselves, don't become born in one country, get on a plane or a boat, go to a second country, become epidemic for two or three years, and then be found retrospectively in the first country. And I say this because of what was said about Haiti. The first five hundred cases we knew about in this country, there were no cases in Haiti. And those persons who had it hadn't been to Haiti, hadn't been around any Haitians. San Francisco is epidemic right now. You don't have many Haitians there. In fact, if you have any cases, I think it's been one or two who are Haitians. In American cities that have large numbers of Haitians, i.e., Washington, D. C., Boston, Philadelphia, you don't have many cases of AIDS. Miami is a port that has them and so does New York, but your other major cities that have large Haitian populations, don't have large cases of AIDS.
RC: So where do you think AIDS does come from?
WJ: I think we have to look at our own forty-eight states to ask
where did it come from. I say that because if you look at Haiti again. Let's look at Haiti. If we accept that theory, that means either someone from here went there and got it and brought it back, or someone from there brought it to this country. Right?
RC: Yes.
WJ: Well, if you accept someone from here went there, the first
cases were in white homosexual males, the majority. Then, I would have to ask, one, why only white homosexual males from New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Frankly, those white homosexual males who travel to Haiti for an adventurous trip don't tend to get involved with a dirty looking native boy, to sound very whatever. Certainly a large number of white homo- and heterosexual from Europe also go to Haiti. If it was from someone going to Haiti from this country, then, one, why the predominance in those three cities; and two, why didn't we see it also in Europe since you have whites from Europe also going to Haiti and no one there took it back. I have to postulate that the virus only liked white homosexual males from New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. That's a very, very particular virus. I don't buy that.
If you tell me that someone from Haiti brought it over here, I say one, it's interesting. We never heard of it being in Haiti until we had the Haitians put in concentration camps in Florida. Then suddenly it was backtracking and cited in Haiti. Two, the average Haitian and the above- and below-average Haitian who come to the United States move into a black Haitian community, which intermingles more with the routine black community, which has some association with the white community, and will finally find its way to the white gay community. Haitians do not have a strong association with white male homosexuals. So again, how does it get from the boat to the white gay male community in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York and bypassing the Haitian community and the black community, particularly in Los Angeles, where we've had no cases of it. That just makes no sense.
You have a disease that is predominantly in Americans. There are other cities, Chicago, New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans, with very large gay populations, larger in number than San Francisco, but are not at all effected with this number of cases. So it is not just numbers of homosexuals. It is not just promiscuity.
What is unique about those three cities is the fact that they have a very structured gay community, more than any other city. I think that's interesting. I think we need to be asking 'Is there an association with that fact?' The three cities that we have rampant cases, a really high number of cases, and if you can rate it, these three cities have a more structured gay community. Washington, D. C. has a very, very large gay community, but it's a very integrated gay community. So does Chicago. So does New Orleans. But those three cities have a very identifiable gay communities. Is that by accident or is that also coincidental?
I mean there are too many coincidences here for me to accept. To me it points to this being a disease that is an American disease. Now where it came from, one can speculate and go from one extreme to the other. But I personally think it was something that we created in some kind of laboratory here.
RC: I think it's interesting that researchers are spending a lot of time trying to figure out where it came from. And not that much money is being spent on research. Some people are speculating on the idea that why is it certain gay populations. You just mentioned that it's three urban centers that seem to be the ones that are getting it. And the news media is playing up the fact of lifestyle. There are other reasons. Well, you mentioned earlier the unification of these particular gay communities. How do you think that could be used in some way, both to fight the disease and for somehow the disease to be brought in?
WJ: Well, I hope I can speak freely without offending someone. What is unique about white homosexual males, and I would separate them from black homosexual males, particularly is that they have tried to portray themselves as an ethnic group. You have now a new ethnic group with no international ties. It is an American ethnic group.
You really can't say that about black homosexuals because black homosexuals haven't been in the closet to come out of. They've been out of the closet. You can go to any black church in any major city and you will find people who everyone knows is gay, who is functioning, who has a very established role in churches and other organizations, too. This again, to me, is a white male homosexual phenomena.
The best way I can explain it is to give an example. If I were to have or you were to give me a virus that had an effect on skin color and we said that this virus would make black people sterile, but it may turn white people green. But, we need to test this. We've seen it in rats. We've seen it in monkeys. Let's see if it will do what we think it will do in black people. Well, I know there are certain places I can go in the black community where the people are basically total association, total lifestyle of black people. I wouldn't go to Second Baptist Church in Los Angeles. I wouldn't go to [unclear] Baptist Church in New York. I don't know any names of the major churches in San Francisco, but my point, I wouldn't go to a place that had a very middle class type of black audience because those people would have contact the next day with whites. So you would have an overflow into the white community right away.
I do know where there are clubs. I do know where there are [unclear] churches. I do know where there are places I can go to in the black community where the people go first, second, third, and go probably four generations, their contacts are all black. I don't know that about the gay community. I think you have that same counterpart in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. You don't have it as much in Washington, Chicago, and other cities, but you have the numbers. So somebody else may know what places they can go that you could do the same thing.
In some of the early cases of the disease you have a lot of interesting shows, particularly in San Francisco where there were nine people, all had been at one bar at a table. One physician in San Franciso knew twenty of the first forty-five cases. That's atypical. There's no one physician in any city, even if he was himself a gay doctor or just served in the gay community, would know that just by accident. That's strange.
There have been too many sort of strange things happen with this disease. And one still can't account for the fact that now in 1984, we're going into 85, this disease started in 79, you still are seeing the same percentages stay in the same three cities. No other disease does that. Hepatitis didn't do that. [unclear] didn't do that.
San Francisco is probably the gay capital of the U.S. in terms of somebody in Des Moines, Iowa or Little Rock deciding where to go. They go to San Francisco, New York, or Los Angeles. Still in a lot of those cases that you've had in those cities have been people who have come to San Francisco, or went to Los Angeles or New York and got infected and came back. But you haven't had it set up that much there and started spreading. That's interesting. You don't have in many cities with reasonable and sizeable gay communities an ongoing epidemic, like you have in San Francisco, which is now really out of hand.
RC: That's interesting, because I think the doctors around here are talking about AIDS as being a social phenomena versus a disease phenomena.
WJ: Well, you know when you say social, homosexuals today are not doing anything they weren't doing in the times of Rome. Their bodies haven't changed. There is still the same anatomy. Nothing is new. The most new things are basically the cosmetics one uses. That has not been before. But certainly the sex acts aren't new. Men do one particular sex act that is strictly a male act that you don't find women and women doing or men and women doing. From my reading, I haven't heard of it being that long. I would say that's the only new sex act that involves using the fist. But other than that, sex acts per se is nothing new.
So it can't just be the sex act. It can't be promiscuity. We've had promiscuous heterosexuals, homosexuals for years. That's nothing new. In San Francisco, and in Little Rock, and in Oklahoma City, you've had promiscuity for years in terms of one individual being promiscuous, in terms of a lot of individuals being promiscuous. Gay bath houses, you've had them for years. At least twenty years you've had bath houses. So that's nothing new.
I've had fifty-six cases, most of whom, in terms of their sexual contact, you really can find it being two to six months. With some saying four years, I don't believe that. Most of the patients I've had, their contact trail was relatively two to four month incubation period. If that is the case, this is something new.
Now when Lot's Fever, if you remember in 72, 73, became known in Africa before the first case got out, we knew about it. Quarantine stations at all of our major ports were on alert. We kept everyone. Small Pox, if someone got a fever on the plane from any country that had Small Pox, you knew about it. We knew how many cases of Small Pox were in the deepest part of Ethiopia, Somalia, and India. [another disease, unclear], we knew, we caught it. Now I'm expected to believe that this virus, which is so much deadlier, which wipes you out in America, which is among the healthiest persons in the world, I'm now expected to believe it existed in Haiti, which is the poorest country in this hemisphere so the average person's system is already compromised. If AIDS began in Haiti, Haiti wouldn't have any people. And if AIDS began in Haiti, why don't we see it in the Dominican Republic, which is the same island with a mountain that separates the two countries. It makes no sense.
RC: We're speaking with Dr. Wilbur Jordan. He is the Director of Graduate Medical Education at Martin Luther King Hospital in Los Angeles. He is the former Public Health Chief for the Southern Area of Los Angeles County. He has had training in infectious diseases. We're almost running out of time, Dr. Jordan. It seems to me that you're building up to say something. From what you're saying, it seems to me that there's some type of testing going on. Maybe I'm at liberty to say that. But, what do you think? Why are these certain populations getting it? I wish we had more time to talk. In the future we can do a longer interview.
WJ: I don't think I want to say why. I think we need to ask ourselves why. Pick up any book and look at any other disease. You would see it is extremely difficult for any other disease, Hepatitis B, which we feel is being transmitted the same way. It has not stayed strictly within the gay male community in the three cities. All I'm really suggesting is that we start asking ourselves, one, why do we continue to look outside of these shores for the cause of it or the origin of this disease. And why does it tend to stay in three metropolitan areas when there are many other cities in this country that have very large gay populations?
This is not the first time we've had some kind of "germ warfare." I mean San Francisco was sprayed with seratia bacteria, as you know. We did see black soldiers with syphilis and didn't treat them. They are having other kinds of experiments. Whether this is one of them, I don't know. But I think one has to look at something from these shores, or at least entertain that idea to see, if in fact, it is not there, rather than trying to assume it comes from an underdeveloped country.
If you've seen patients with the disease, you see it's devastating. If this disease began in any underdeveloped country, there is no way in this world it could have began there and us not know about it before it got here. Of all diseases, this, I mean we even knew about Cooper Gonorrhea in the Philippines. And it did not kill anyone. How in the world could you have a disease like this that has at this point a fifty percent mortality in two years. And hope we can find some treatment. Those people who have the disease have a two-year life expectancy. This is the most deadly disease we have created that we've known about in our lifetime. How could we have possibly have had it in a underdeveloped country where the average person is malnourished, already susceptible, and not see any cases until you've had over five hundred in the United States, and then you go back retroactively and find it in Zaire? That makes no sense.
RC: Well, I want to thank you very much for your time and all the information you gave to the KPFA listening audience. I would like to do a longer interview with you at some time. Thank you very, very much.
WJ: Thank you.
RC: Coming up next on Traffic Jam, we are going to be speaking
with...."
I'm going to give Doc a chance to change the tapes here. Okay. The sound quality was a little fuzzy. It's actually a little better on Radio Free America #16. Once again, if you want to go over this material, you can obtain Radio Free America #16 from Archives on Audio. Also, again, this lecture will be on file with Archives on Audio, so you can obtain a tape of that.
Now I thought Dr. Jordan, perhaps the sound quality, again, was not that clear, I thought Dr. Jordan made some very excellent and telling points. And frankly, there were some of the same things that had led me to sniff the air when AIDS first came about or when it was first announced.
Again, there have been homosexuals since Biblical times. Nothing's changed in this regard. The sex act has not changed. Why is this disease appearing in this way at this time. Again, although AIDS in the interim has spread since this tape was made, since AIDS has now spread considerably in the third world, we should note that the first three third world countries to have serious AIDS infection were Zaire, Haiti, and Granada, all U.S. sponsored dictatorships. Also Uganda had very high incidents of AIDS and we actively supported Idi Amin. In fact, Idi Amin was very close to Frank Terpel of the Terpel-Wilson operation. Terpel had had a lot to do with training Idi Amin's security forces. So there is a very strong American connection there as well.
Now there are a number of physicians who have come forward and discussed AIDS as a biological warfare weapon, suggesting that AIDS was deliberately created by the United States. The aforementioned Dr. Yakov Siegel, an East German physician, which now, I guess, a German physician, which casts a certain amount of aspersions on what he has to say, but his paper was drawn almost exclusively from Western medical sources. There is something like seventy-seven footnotes, and only two of them come from non-Western sources.
There is a Dr. Seale from Great Britain. Dr. John Seale, he is almost at the opposite end of the political spectrum from Dr. Yakov Siegel. He is a far right winger and has close association with the La Rouche organization, not close association, but has hob-nobbed with them. There is also a Dr. Robert Strecker in Southern California.
Also Dr. Alan Cantwell, which to me sounds like a very bad name for a doctor, you know, can't well. But he has written a book called AIDS and the Doctors of Death, which was published by the Aries Press in 1989. So if you would like to pursue Dr. Cantwell's information, it is in book form.
Also, as I mentioned, Dr. Ann Bailey, a Ugandan Carposi's Sarcoma expert, had theorized in an article in the New York Times in 1985 that in fact AIDS, she speculated that it was a genetic engineering accident. I don't think it was an accident. You can pursue the scientific information from that particular standpoint.
There is also another interesting theory which has arisen, which has it that AIDS may very well be somehow connected with Swine Fever. Now, Cuba was deliberately infected with Swine Fever in order to wipe out its porcine population and put the island in economic distress. That was done by the CIA. Some physicians from Boston who had been doing research on the incidents of Swine Fever in American pigs and also pigs which had found their way, had been slaughtered, butchered, and found their way to the dinner table.
It's also been found that Swine Fever Virus often lives on even after the pork has been cooked. But it was his theory that somehow Swine Fever might be connected with AIDS. I'm not in a position to comment on that directly. But it's worth noting, and this is covered also in Radio Free America #16, that when this doctor began publicizing his findings, he not only couldn't get a research grant, but he also was discouraged by the Department of Agriculture from spreading this particular piece of information.
Now this was carried in a Jack Anderson column in the San Francisco Chronicle. That is in Radio Free America #16. However, the same version, the same Jack Anderson column in the Monterey Herald had a very interesting piece of information which the Chronicle left out. That is that the Department of Agriculture were urging these researchers not to publicize their findings "for national security reasons." That was left out of the Anderson column in the San Francisco Chronicle.
National security generally means defense or defense-related matters. So make of that what you will.
The thought obviously occurs why. If, in fact, AIDS was developed as a biological warfare weapon, why? I think again we go back to the period immediately following the second World War when we not only incorporated Unit 731, the Japanese biological warfare research unit, the most advanced of its kind, basically we took in the war criminals. We took in their files. We did this same thing with the Project Paper Clip scientists. We did the same thing with the Gehlen people and the thousands of SS and Gestapo officers that served under Gehlen. And they jumped to CIA.
It should also be noted that American industrialists and financiers, many of them, many of the top industrialists and financiers in this country were openly pro-fascist prior to and during World War II. And they didn't change their stripes. They simply got a little more PR conscious.
In fact, in Radio Free America #10 there is a discussion of an attempted fascist coup in the United States in 1934. A group of American industrialists and financiers grouped around the House of Morgan, primarily the DuPonts, attempted to overthrow President Roosevelt, because they did not like his New Deal policies, and set up a corporate state along the lines of Mussolini's fascist state in Italy.
It is worth noting again that there are very powerful interests in our country, not only within the national security establishment proper, but within our American financial and industrial structure who openly favor fascism. They liked Hitler. They like Mussolini. And they damn bloody well vowed to do the same thing here at some point.
And I think to understand why AIDS may have been created, and I am convinced that it was, I think we need to take a look at some of the features of fascism in Germany to understand that those features may very well be being applied in the United States today.
It should be noted that, and this is covered in a book called The Pink Triangle by Richard Plant, much of that book, the most important parts of that book are also accessed in a miscellaneous Archive show, available from Archives on Audio, called The Pink Triangle. There was, as I touched on earlier in the lecture, a very strong gay rights movement in Weimar Germany. The chief figure in that gay rights movement was a fellow named Magnus Herschfeld. The issue of homosexuality, the issue of gay rights was used very effectively and very vitriolically by the Nazis to tar progressive politics, to stigmatize progressive politics in Weimar Germany. Their political opponents were seen as being "homo lovers" and that this was basically a way of tarring the opposition.
We're seeing much the same kind of tactic being used by the American far right today. The Democratic Party, if it favors gay rights, is termed immoral or licentious. It's also worth noting that the religious right is making tremendous propaganda gains by portraying AIDS as God's visitation upon the immoral. You know, if you're a drug user or a homosexual or if you're promiscuous, God has stricken you with this plague. It melds very effectively with Christian right wing propaganda.
It should be noted, too, that AIDS is obviously wiping people out. It began with black heterosexuals in Zaire and Haiti, homosexuals in the United States. It has spread to intravenous drug users who are out-groups. All of these groups are out-groups with the U.S. national security establishment and the far right. It has spread to American Indians, Native Indians, Native Americans. It has spread, of course, through blood transfusions to hemophiliacs. Well, hemophiliacs, because of their disorder, make poor laborers and they cannot go into the military. Ultimately the goal of the Third Reich was to eliminate what they saw as "useless bread gobblers," people who couldn't work or serve in the military, particularly industrial laborers. Hemophiliacs cannot do hard labor because of their situation and obviously cannot go into the military.
One of the things that I think we need to look at in connection with AIDS is basically AIDS as a manifestation of extermination. A lot of people have become alarmed about the possibility of over-population in the world. It is my belief that AIDS may very well be being deliberately disseminated in the third world in order to control the population, to hold down the population, in particular, in Africa. I don't think one need be a conspiracy theorist to understand the deep racism which effects and has always effected the United States. Mercifully David Duke has been defeated in Louisiana, according to my understanding. However, I do not think we should overlook David Duke or others like him.
One of the things I am going to be talking about on the radio program tomorrow is David Duke's probable background with the intelligence community. He worked for the State Department, or by his own account, the Agency for International Development in Laos in the early 1970s. That was a front for intelligence activity to a large extent. Duke in his campaign is claiming to have flown for Air America in Laos. Well, Air America is a CIA airline.
In the late 1970s as I am going to cover tomorrow, the British Scotland Yard, the federal police of Great Britain, tried to bar David Duke from entering Britain in order to promote his Ku Klux Klan activities. They had people at airports to see to it that he didn't land. Somehow, David Duke was able to get into Great Britain despite the fact that he was barred by Scotland Yard. Scotland Yard are pretty good at what they do. If Dave Emory or if one of you had wanted to get into Great Britain and Scotland Yard didn't want you going, then you damn bloody well would not have gotten in. David Duke somehow did.
It's also worth noting that in the early 1980s there was an abortive Ku Klux Klan and Nazi Party coup on the Caribbean Island of Dominica. A group of American and Canadian Klansmen and Neo-Nazis were arrested, I believe it was just outside of New Orleans, as they were going to invade the island of Dominica, a very small island, and take it over. It's worth noting that these people were trained on a mercenary training camp run by Frank Camper, a fellow who was an FBI informant the whole time. The Grand Jury investigation into this event found that David Duke was one of the conspirators who arranged this particular attempted coup. Yet he was never indicted, suggesting that he had friends in high places.
Finally, in the mid 1980s David Duke was working to raise money for the Contras with a fellow named Dr. Arnold Ochsner. Dr. Arnold Ochsner is the son of Dr. Alton Ochsner, an American far right wing activist with very strong connections to the U.S. intelligence community. It was Dr. Alton Ochsner who made a recording of Lee Harvey Oswald, talking about what a great communist he was, how he was a Castro sympathizer, and how he had been to the Soviet Union. This was played all over the United States the evening of President Kennedy's assassination to show that the person who had killed Kennedy was a communist.
It is my belief that many of the liberals who might have spoken up about President Kennedy's assassination declined to do so primarily for one reason. Basically the liberals, I suspect, thought that if the American people believed that a popular American president had been killed by a communist, it could have led to a Third World War. Kennedy was very popular with everybody but the military and industrialists. He was not popular in the South to a large extent because of his support for civil rights, but he was a very popular president.
Dr. Alton Ochsner's son, Arnold Ochsner, raising money for the Contras with David Duke, obviously that also smacks of intelligence. Now I go into David Duke, and I'm going to be covering this at greater length on the program tomorrow evening, I believe. I might bump it in favor of Zodiac material, but we will see. The thing that's worth noting is that there is an ominous parallel between David Duke's probable status, either as an agent or as an agency asset, a U.S. intelligence agency asset of some kind, and the career of Adolph Hitler.
Adolph Hitler got his start in government life as an undercover agent for the political department of the Reichsfare, the German Army under General Von Lossow. Hitler was used to infiltrate an abortive socialist revolution in Bavaria, specifically in Munich. He pretended to be one of the Marxists who had staged this abortive revolution. Then after the German Army put down the rebellion, he fingered all of the top conspirators, the leaders of the rebellion, who were then promptly taken out and shot.
Hitler's next assignment as an undercover agent for the German Army was to infiltrate a moribund political party, the German Socialist Workers Party, which was then renamed the German National Socialist Workers Party. Hitler and a number of other undercover agents for the German Army were infiltrated into it. The German Nazi Party in its inception was a front for Reichsfare intelligence, literally a vehicle for fomenting political reaction in Germany.
I see an ominous parallel between David Duke and Hitler, not that Duke himself will ever become President, but I wouldn't absolutely rule that out in the event of an economic collapse. But the point is that David Duke is essentially espousing theories which are very similar to those and views very similar to those of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, and George Bush.
When Ronald Reagan would make the statement that we've got to hold down government spending, the fact is that people think that Ronald Reagan was the greatest government spender of all time. He spent two and a half times as much as all of the previous presidents in American history put together from George Washington through Jimmie Carter. He turned the United States from being the world's biggest creditor nation, which we had been since the end of World War I right up to 1980.
We were owed more money by other nations than any nation on earth. We are now the world's biggest debtor nation. We owe more money than all of the third world countries combined. The savings and loan industry is gone with the bail out figures to cost roughly a trillion dollars or maybe even more. The commercial banks are in very bad shape. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is bankrupt, nine billion dollars in debt and the bail out bill has just been turned down. It should also be noted that the insurance companies are in very bad shape. Most money market funds are privately insured. So if the insurance companies are in bad shape, that means your money isn't safe in a money market fund either.
Now it's also worth noting that there is enormous corporate debt. The leveraged buy-outs of the 1980s, the go-go financing of the 1980s, has left us with a legacy of enormous corporate debt. There also is enormous consumer debt as well. We should also note that America's industrial base is being badly eroded. U.S. corporations are moving manufacturing facilities abroad to take advantage of cheap labor, primarily the third world. And, of course, the Japanese and Europeans led by Germany are making strong inroads not only into American markets abroad that had been our particular province, but also, obviously, domestic markets as well. Sooner or later the economic chickens are going to come home to roost. I expect it is rather sooner than later.
When Ronald Reagan says we've got to hold down government spending, people should have rushed the stage and hang the old fart in his garters, but the fact of the matter is they didn't for the simple reason that his words were very well understood. When he talks about holding down government spending, he is not talking about spending billions and billions of dollars on trident submarines or nuclear bombers or missiles. He's talking about, and if you'll pardon my use of strong language, "Let's get those s----- and n------ off of welfare so they don't spend our hard-earned tax dollars." That was well understood by Joe and Jane Sixpack. That's well understood by Reagan's constituency out in cracker America. And that's why he's still been able to get away with that. That's why George Bush can sound the same theme.
It's worth noting that poor people, people of color in particular, are already being scape-goated for America's economic problems. If those economic problems get more severe, and I would be willing to be they get much more severe, then it figures that the degree of scape-goating also is going to get more severe. I think we must take very seriously the possibility of a "final solution to the Negro problem" in this country in the event of an economic collapse.
One of the things that made the German people much more willing to accept the holocaust, the liquidation of the Jews, than they might have been was the fact that as the war developed and the economic pressure on the German population developed, the liquidation of the Jewish population and the Aryanization of their property basically went to economically benefit the non-Jewish population. One of the darker aspects of the holocaust that has not received the publicity it deserves is that many non-Jewish professionals, non-Jewish doctors, non-Jewish lawyers, would turn in their Jewish compatriots and then take over their clientele. This was very, very common.
I think as the economic crunch worsens in this country, excess population groups are going to be gotten rid of. I think the groups currently most affected with AIDS are those groups that are going to be gotten rid of, people of color, Black people in particular, homosexuals, intravenous drug users, Native Americans, and poor people in general. I think in the third world, the Black population faces a very, very serious threat from the United States and from the national security establishment.
It should also be noted that in addition to being a vehicle of liquidation, and it is my belief that it is being deliberately promoted in that regard and used in that way, AIDS itself has a very, very powerful psychological component. Wilhelm Reich, a very skilled though very controversial psychologist, published a book called The Mass Psychology of Fascism in which he theorized, he stated that there was a very strong connection between the degree of sexual repression in a society and that society's inclination to fascism. Certainly AIDS with its deadliness makes sex a threat. It is an intimidating factor vis a vis sex and in that regard, I think, it is going to lead to more sexual repression. If Reich's theories are correct, that is going to propel people in the direction of fascism.
I would also note, too, that there is a very strong connection between male aggressive behavior and sexual deprivation. The males of all species become more aggressive during mating season. The male of the human species does not have a mating season, but when, and this is an established fact, when there are higher levels of testosterone in males, they become as a rule more aggressive. It's common knowledge in the military, basically, that when soldiers go on leave, either they get laid or they get into a fight. This is very well established.
But if you can set up a society of economically deprived, horny males running around, you are going to have a war. I think ultimately this benefits the military establishment in this country. I'm afraid that if things continue as they are with the spread of AIDS, the threat it presents to having sex, and with the growth of the right wing, with all of its strictures against having sexual relations, that we are going to have a society full of damn celibates from hell straining at the leash in anticipation of a blood meal. That's basically what we face. That is in my opinion one of the things they are working toward.
I also think, and this is a matter of established record, that AIDS is being used to justify the restriction of civil liberties, basically your right to privacy. When people can go into your veins and your blood stream, you have no privacy whatsoever. It should also be noted at least for the time being that AIDS is being dealt with in a relatively intelligent fashion. People are not being locked up because of AIDS. In the 1980s, however, there was a lot of propaganda being generated by the far right and elements associated with the military that AIDS could be casually transmitted and this meant that people who had AIDS or who were at high risk for AIDS should be put into concentration camps, basically, or otherwise incarcerated.
I'm going to play for you a section of a tape from Radio Free America #16. You are going to hear an article from February 9, 1986 in which people from the American far right with strong connections not only to the military, but to the biological warfare research are proposing basically a "Star of David" concept, in other words, the yellow star that Jews had to wear. But basically people at high risk for AIDS or people who were HIV positive had to be incarcerated. This represented a significant strategic engine, at least at the time, for justifying the restriction of civil liberties and the implementation of fascism:
Dave Emory (DE): "Okay, now one of the reasons that AIDS is such a very, very important subject to study, in particular, the possibility that it may have been manufactured by our own government and is being deliberately used for whatever reason, is that in order to combat, aside from the basic issue of the fact that many, many people are being killed and sickened by this disease, in order to prevent the spread of AIDS a number of far right wing sources, various reactionary elements, have proposed a number of very draconian measures in the recently much publicized primary elections at the La Rouche organization. The La Rouchies centered their campaign in considerable measure on confining people who were potentially at risk for AIDS. I guess they are proposing quarantining AIDS patients.
The religious right, the Jerry Falwells, the Moral Majority, and so forth, have been very, very active in proposing anti-gay legislation and suggesting that basically AIDS is the visitation of the Lord on sinners and sodomizers and fornicators and so forth. The point is that AIDS is being used as a major political tool by the far right in this country. Perhaps the most dramatic and potentially alarming use of AIDS by the far right or potential use of AIDS by the far right was covered in the San Francisco Sunday Examiner on February 9, 1986. This is an article headlined, 'Extreme Proposal by AIDS Researcher.' It's by David L. Kirp. It is a special to the Examiner. It reads as follows:"
Examiner Article (EA): "The military is seriously considering spending $12.5 million to fund a study aimed at proving AIDS is casually transmitted and at devising methods to control the disease that appear to be Constitutionally questionable. The proposal which contradicts established scientific data on AIDS contemplates forbidding association between service men and members of high risk groups and quarantining those who have been exposed to AIDS."
DE: "Now it doesn't say what 'exposed to AIDS,' whether that means basically someone who tests positive for antibodies to the HTLV3 or whether someone has actually contracted the disease. Because a lot of people, as pointed out, have antibodies to the HTLV3 virus and do not have AIDS. Continuing with the article:"
EA: "'Extreme public health measures' may be necessary says the proposal by San Francisco based scientists seeking funding for the study. 'Some of these measures would be in direct conflict with the Constitution,' the researchers concede. The drastic measures are not only spelled out in the proposal sent to the military, but a memo circulated among those working on the project mentions, 'mandatory and overt identification of AIDS victims,' however loathsome a Star of David concept. The reference is to the symbol Nazis used to publicly identify Jews.
Initiators of the proposal are two scientific research organizations with a long history of work for the military. One has conducted biological and chemical warfare research. They are backed by a stellar list of collaborators, including scholars of the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, a conservative think-tank that lists President Reagan as an Honorary Fellow, and SRI [Stanford Research Institute] International of Menlo Park.
The proposal's premise runs counter to overwhelming scientific opinion on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome by asserting that the fatal disease will be proven communicable by touch or even by close proximity to people with AIDS. It suggests the disease will be proven transmissible through tears, saliva, feces, urine, or sweat, and that infection can follow a sneeze or cough, a mosquito bite or something as simple as touching a doorknob or toilet handle used by someone with the disease."
DE: "I would interrupt here that in much of the other literature it is pointed out that although mosquitoes communicate malaria in places like Africa, there is no indication that insects can communicate this disease. Continuing with the article:"
EA: "It projects a catastrophic epidemic within a decade. Infection of 10% of the population of the United States and 68.2% of the military. A copy of the proposal marked confidential by its authors was obtained by the Examiner. It says, 'Consistent with the need to be conservative in avoiding undue alarm until all the facts are in, the prevalence of published and express medical opinion is that AIDS infection cannot occur through casual transmission of the virus. However, the non-medical public and an increasing number of medical scientists are fearful that AIDS may be spread through various forms of casual contact. Because it is a slow virus and the evidence is that the incubation period is dosage related, illness may not become manifest until many years after casual infection occurs. It can therefore be argued that AIDS cases resulting from low dosage casual contact infection are not yet appearing on a widespread basis, but that many cases could surface in the years ahead.'
Both the premise and research agenda of the proposal, which has passed an initial screening by the U.S. Army's Medical Research and Development Command at Fort Detrick, Maryland, drew strong criticism from public health officials, leading medical researchers, and politicians with expertise on AIDS."
DE: "Of course we know that that is now the National Cancer Institute, which discovered the AIDS virus. Skipping down in the article:"
EA: "The initiators of the proposal are AIMS, Advanced Investigation of Medical Science Group, and the Institute for Cancer Research, both housed at the Pacific Prebyterian Medical Center. Both have done research for the military previously. Since 1962, the AIMS Group has done classified work on biological and chemical warfare.
Two of the senior Hoover Institution scholars who will do economic and political analyses for the study are Rita Ricardo-Campbell, who was a leading contender to succeed Margaret Heckler as Secretary of Health and Human Services last year, and Richard Star, a specialist on the Soviet Union who headed America's delegation to the mutual and balanced force reduction talks between 1981 and 1983. Glen Campbell, Director of the Hoover Institution and Ricardo-Campbell's husband, denies that the Institution is formally involved with the project."
DE: "So there are a couple of things to contemplate here. Well, there are a lot of things to contemplate here in connection with this article. Obviously, the fact that the military, and this is primarily a military-associated group of people here, and also, incidentally, people very close to the Reagan administration, the links between the Hoover Institute and the Reagan administration are very close and of long standing, but basically this group is saying, and whether they know something we don't or whether it is being done for psychological reasons, that AIDS may very well be casually transmitted. They are proposing essentially tossing the Constitution down the drain in order to deal with this. Now, Nip is going to embellish on this in just a second. But one of the things to take note of here, of course, aside from the Fort Detrick connection, which is front and center with regard to AIDS, it's worth noting that the Reagan administration has been very, very quick to propose restrictions on our civil liberties, and obviously many of them unconstitutional.
It's worth thinking about the possibility that if AIDS has been deliberately spread by our government, whether perhaps a restriction of the Constitution was one of the things they had in mind as part of this program. Again, the Hoover Institute, Army's Medical Research and Development Command at Fort Detrick, these two groups, the Pacific Presbyterian Medical Center and AIMS, both involved with chemical and biological warfare research for the Army, that and the Hoover Institute very close to Ronald Reagan, proposing, basically, chucking the Constitution in order to deal with AIDS."
Nip Tuck (NT): "Yeah, exactly. The point that I wanted to make, Dave, is basically made. But let me embellish it a little bit. What we have here is a direct circuit of cause and effect or apparently a direct circuit of cause and effect, directly through the military from one end to the other.
We talked earlier, of course, about all the biological warfare being under the military. What we have in this case is a plan that has been essentially put forward by military bacteriological contractors, has been preliminarily approved by the military's bacteriological and chemical research center, which is housed in the same building with the National Cancer Institute, which presumably has the cutting edge of medical information on hand, which at this point suggests that everything that these people are saying is incorrect. So not only do we have these military people, but then we have the plan proposed by a couple of Hoover Fellows, one of whom is an expert in Soviet affairs, which one has to wonder what this man is doing."
DE: "And also who is involved in arms talks. I mean he was one of our delegates to Strategic Arms Limitations Talks."
NT: "Indeed. So, what we have here is a very strange cycle coming, emanating from and returning directly to the military. One has to ask, in this case, if we have supposedly, as we are constantly being told, the best scientists in the country working on this, and things of this nature. But, basically, from the most absolute fundamental point of view, what is the military doing involved with AIDS and the prevention of the spread of AIDS and the quarantining of AIDS victims without any kind of Congressional or even Executive initiative, at least overt Executive initiative whatsoever. It is very bizarre and very fishy."
DE: "And, again, consider that this one fellow, Richard Star, is not only an expert on the Soviet Union, but one of our representatives to Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. What intersection could there be between AIDS and strategic arms, something we should think about perhaps."
NT: "Yes, and let's think about, again, self-admittedly, they said the 'Star of David concept.' And again, remember that not only in Germany were the Jews forced to go around with yellow Stars of David pinned to their clothes, but the gays wore pink triangles and were separated out. Many of them, hundreds of thousands, in fact, died alongside the Jews and the Slavs and the Gypsies and the other groups, intellectuals, and communists, in the extermination camps. So there are certain people who have had the gays on their agenda for some time."
DE: "It's worth noting that the idea of getting rid of various groups who were in the way was made a lot easier, a lot more palatable for the German public, those who were aware of it, by the fact that gays who were traditionally an outcast group were the first to go. It made it much easier to accept the later exterminations on the part of the Nazis. It's a tactic the Nazis refer to as salami tactic, literally just like slicing a sausage. Before you know it, the whole thing is gone. That is something to think about."
All right, that information hopefully spoke for itself. One of the reasons I allowed the interpolative discussion afterward to allow people to think about the cause and effect from the military to the military. We see the same people implicated and the same elements implicated in these drastic proposals for reducing civil liberties as loom in the background, in my opinion, of the creation of AIDS itself. Now for the time being anyway, draconian measures like this have been shunted aside, have been successfully defeated by progressive political activists and by the public as a whole. But if my theories concerning AIDS are correct, who knows what else they have in mind. It may be that a more casually communicable type of AIDS will, if not be created, will be publicized or propagandized and that this will serve as a pretext for confining people in the future.
It's worth noting too the reaction of the population to neighbors who have AIDS. There have been a number of well publicized cases in which children with AIDS were horribly abused by their neighbors. I remember reading about a little boy, I believe it was in Pinole or somewhere in Contra Costa County. He had AIDS and his neighbors kept trying to drive the family out of the neighborhood. They would break his toys. They would steal his tricycle. That's a pretty cruel thing to do to a kid with AIDS. Yet, the disease has a capacity to panic people that is worth noting as a strategic device or as a possible tool of psychological warfare.
There was a well publicized case in Florida where a little boy with AIDS was horribly oppressed by his neighbors. The family had their home burned down. I think this is indicative of the power of this disease, the psychological power and its ability to motivate people in a reactionary or fascistic direction. One of the things that I see very possibly is that this might be being deliberately manipulated in that regard.
Basically that concludes the lecture. What we are going to do now is take a break. Then for the rest of the evening, I am going to take your questions.
Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"