Webb is brilliant. If he ever gets a major league platform he will be heard by many more than those few of us now.
CIA.
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2022/02/24/us-bioweapons-labs-in-ukraine-what-will-russia-find-in-the-labs/ Georgia is a testing ground for bioweapons:
below is a long clip from the piece:
The Lugar Center is the Pentagon bio laboratory in Georgia. It is located just 17 km away from the US Vaziani military airbase in the capital Tbilisi. Tasked with the military program are biologists from the US Army Medical Research Unit-Georgia (USAMRU-G) along with private contractors. The Bio-safety Level 3 Laboratory is accessible only to US citizens with security clearance. They are accorded diplomatic immunity under the 2002 US-Georgia Agreement on defense cooperation.
The Pentagon Bio-Weapons
The Pentagon Bio-Weapons
The USA-Georgia agreement accords diplomatic status to the US military and civilian personnel (including diplomatic vehicles), working on the Pentagon program in Georgia.
Information obtained from the US federal contracts registry clarifies some of the military activities at The Lugar Center – among them research on bio-agents (anthrax, tularemia) and viral diseases (e.g. Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever), and the collection of biological samples for future experiments.
Pentagon contractors produce bio agents under diplomatic cover
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has outsourced much of the work under the military program to private companies, which are not held accountable to Congress, and which can operate more freely and move around the rule of law.
US civilian personnel performing work at The Lugar Center have also been given diplomatic immunity, although they are not diplomats. Hence, private companies can perform work, under diplomatic cover, for the US government without being under the direct control of the host state – in this case, the Republic of Georgia. This practice is often used by the CIA to provide cover for its agents.
The Pentagon Bio-Weapons
Three private American companies work at the US bio-laboratory in Tbilisi – CH2M Hill, Battelle, and Metabiota. In addition to the Pentagon, these private contractors perform biological research for the CIA and various other government agencies.
CH2M Hill has been awarded $341.5 million DTRA contracts under the Pentagon’s program for bio-laboratories in Georgia, Uganda, Tanzania, Iraq, Afghanistan, South East Asia. Half of this sum ($161.1 million), being allocated to The Lugar Center, under the Georgian contract.
According to CH2M Hill, the US Company has secured biological agents and employed former bio warfare scientists at The Lugar Center. These are scientists who are working for another American company involved in the military program in Georgia – Battelle Memorial Institute.
Battelle as a $59 million subcontractor at Lugar Center has extensive experience in research on bio-agents, as the company has already worked on the US Bio-weapons Program under 11 previous contracts with the US Army (1952-1966).
The Pentagon Bio-Weapons
Source: US Army Activities in the US, Biological Warfare Programs, vol. II, 1977, p. 82
The private company performs work for the Pentagon’s DTRA bio laboratories in Afghanistan, Armenia, Georgia, Uganda, Tanzania, Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam. Battelle conducts research, development, testing, and evaluation using both highly toxic chemicals and highly pathogenic biological agents for a wide range of US government agencies. It has been awarded some $2 billion federal contracts in total and ranks 23 on the Top 100 US government contractors list.
The CIA-Battelle Project Clear Vision
Project Clear Vision (1997 and 2000), a joint investigation by the CIA and the Battelle Memorial Institute, under a contract awarded by the Agency, reconstructed and tested a Soviet-era anthrax bomblet in order to test its dissemination characteristics.
The project’s stated goal was to assess bio-agents dissemination characteristics of bomblets.
The clandestine CIA-Battelle operation was omitted from the US Biological Weapons Convention declarations submitted to the UN.
The Pentagon Bio-Weapons
Anthrax spores under a microscope
Top Secret Experiments
Battelle has operated a Top Secret Bio laboratory (National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center – NBACC) at Fort Detrick, Maryland under a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) contract for the last decade. The company has been awarded a $344.4 million federal contract (2006 – 2016) and another $17.3 million contract (2015 -2026) by DHS.
The Pentagon Bio-Weapons
NBACC is classified as a US Top Secret facility. Photo Credit: DHS
Amongst the secret experiments, performed by Battelle at NBACC, are Assessment of powder dissemination technology; Assessment of hazard posed by aerosolized toxins, and the Assessment of virulence of B. Pseudomallei (Melioidosis) as a function of aerosol particles in non-human primates.
Melioidosis has the potential to be developed as a biological weapon, hence, it is classed as a category B. Bioterrorism Agent. B. pseudomallei was studied by the US as a potential bioweapon in the past.
The Pentagon Bio-Weapons
Besides the military experiments at the Lugar Center in Georgia, Battelle has already produced bioterrorism agents at the Biosafety Level 4 NBACC Top Secret Laboratory at Fort Detrick in the US. An NBACC presentation lists 16 research priorities for the lab.
Amongst them to characterize classically, emerging, and genetically engineered pathogens for their BTA (biological threat agent) potential; assess the nature of the nontraditional, novel, and non-endemic induction of disease from potential BTA and expand aerosol-challenge testing capacity for non-human primates.
The Pentagon Bio-Weapons
Scientists engineer pathogens at the NBACC lab. Source: NBACC Pentagon Biolabs at the epicenter of the Ebola crisis
The US Company Metabiota Inc. has been awarded $18.4 million federal contracts under the Pentagon’s DTRA program in Georgia and Ukraine for scientific and technical consulting services.
Metabiota services include global field-based biological threat research, pathogen discovery, outbreak response, and clinical trials.
Metabiota Inc. had been contracted by the Pentagon to perform work for DTRA before and during the Ebola crisis in West Africa and was awarded $3.1 million (2012-2015) for work in Sierra Leone – one of the countries at the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak.
The Pentagon Bio-Weapons