Posted on 11/04/2002 10:12:20 PM PST by Sabertooth
The General Accounting Office reported last week that 16 percent of our National Guard and reserve pilots and aircrew have transferred out of their combat positions. An additional 18 percent of those surveyed have stated their intent to transfer or leave. Did they suddenly lose their zeal for flying? Are they fatigued after years of service? Are they avoiding possible deployment for an invasion of Iraq? None of the above; the pilots' departure has nothing to do with flying or with war. The GAO discovered that those pilots departed because the Clinton administration ordered them to receive the anthrax vaccine, and 86 percent of those who did take the shots reported adverse side effects. Now, after scores of resignations and hundreds of careers destroyed by court-martial, we discover that our brave servicemen and women were right to resist the anthrax orders, and the government was fatally and corruptly wrong. A lawsuit filed by two Connecticut Air Force Reserve pilots asserted that the vaccine used on the military was never properly tested, and the Food and Drug Administration's recent response was to halt use of existing stocks of the vaccine. Several months earlier, the FDA had ordered that a warning be included on the vaccine's package insert stating that the vaccine can harm people with immunity disorders, can cause a host of serious long-term adverse reactions, and could already be responsible for six deaths and a number of birth defects. These warnings were based on complaints by military vaccine users since 1998 and show an injury rate that far exceeds casualty rates in combat. The FDA warning also states that adverse reactions are expected in 5 percent to 35 percent of people who get the injection. That is an absolutely shocking danger difference from the advertised 0.2 percent rate when Clinton ordered everyone in the military to be given the vaccine. Clinton saw in the anthrax vaccine a way to stick it to the military he "loathed," literally, while handing a pot of gold to an important political ally. It was win-win for the Clintonistas, but lose-lose for our finest servicemen and women. The biggest beneficiary of the order to force the anthrax vaccine on the military was Adm. William Crowe, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had provided political "cover" for Clinton at a key moment during his bid for the presidency in 1992. Crowe personally vouched for Clinton against charges that he was a draft dodger. A grateful President Clinton rewarded Crowe with the plum appointment as Ambassador to England. But even that was not enough; Clinton handed BioPort, a corporation where Crowe was a director and a stockholder, an exclusive multimillion-dollar contract to supply 2.4 million servicemen with the anthrax vaccine. Crowe reportedly received substantial stock in BioPort's parent company without paying for it. A Pentagon audit in April 2000 revealed that BioPort wasted funds on "excessive travel costs, excessive severance pay and unsubstantiated consulting costs," including $1.28 million in "unreasonable" bonuses for senior management. About a year after BioPort contractually obligated itself to supply the anthrax for $25.7 million, the Clinton administration nearly doubled its promised payments to $49.8 million, even though the FDA repeatedly cited BioPort for quality deficiencies and BioPort failed federal inspections again and again. BioPort was even indemnified against all liability from adverse reactions to the vaccine, which Army Secretary Louis Caldera admitted was "unusually hazardous" for certain recipients. An emergency medicine physician at Keesler Air Force base in Mississippi, Capt. John Buck, chose to face a court-martial rather than be injected with the vaccine. "A red lump on the arm is not something that scares me," Buck said, "but an autoimmune disorder for the rest of my life is." The Clinton administration cruelly court-martialed hundreds of servicemen for declining the unsafe, untested vaccine. The anthrax vaccine, which was imposed on servicemen and women alike, was never tested for harm to unborn children. Clinton's feminist advisors would never permit treating women differently from men, even for the sake of avoiding birth defects. The number of deaths that the FDA now concedes could have been caused by the anthrax vaccine exceeds the casualties from the anthrax itself when the mails and office buildings were contaminated last year. The postal workers showed good common sense when 98 percent of them rejected the government's hard sell to be voluntarily injected with the vaccine. We are waiting for the Department of Defense to do the right thing: restore the careers, with rank and pay, of the hundreds of servicemen and women who were punished for refusing a corrupt order to be injected with the unsafe, untested and unnecessary vaccine. One reason we elected George W. Bush was to remedy Bill Clinton's mistakes, and this is a good place to start.
Contact Phyllis Schlafly | Read her biography
©2002 Copley News Service
Hell, that may have been his (and her) objective all along...
Clinton saw in the anthrax vaccine a way to stick it to the military he "loathed," literally, while handing a pot of gold to an important political ally. It was win-win for the Clintonistas, but lose-lose for our finest servicemen and women.
The biggest beneficiary of the order to force the anthrax vaccine on the military was Adm. William Crowe, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had provided political "cover" for Clinton at a key moment during his bid for the presidency in 1992. Crowe personally vouched for Clinton against charges that he was a draft dodger.
My Marine jet-jockey brother terminated his service rather than take the anthrax shots. And folks called us tin-foilers back then for not trusting our benevolent gummint.
BioPort Corporation was founded in 1998 for the sole purpose of acquiring the assets of the Michigan Biologic Products Institute from the State of Michigan. For seventy years prior to 1998, the State of Michigan, through various agencies, had manufactured vaccines.
In 1996, Michigan Governor John Engler created a new state agency, the “Michigan Biologics Products Institute.” This new agency was limited to a two-year term of existence. This action, along with the creation of a three-person commission (Michigan Biologics Products Commission) was the beginning of the privatization of Michigan’s vaccine facility.
Because the anthrax vaccine is important to the National Defense, the Department of Defense agreed in 1997 to fund much-needed improvements to the facilities used in the production, testing, and storage of the vaccine.
Following the State of Michigan’s decision to privatize the facility and after an extensive open bid process, BioPort Corporation acquired the assets of Michigan Biologics Products Institute on September 4, 1998. In addition to Anthrax Vaccine Adsorbed, there were three other products manufactured by the State: Rabies Vaccine, Human Albumin, and Intra-Muscular Immune Globulin.
After the purchase, BioPort Corporation signed a new contract with the Department of Defense to produce the anthrax vaccine. Since that time, BioPort has performed the necessary renovations of its manufacturing facility, gaining FDA approval in late 2001.
Admiral William J. Crowe Jr., former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is making a lot of money selling anthrax vaccine. If it smells fishy, it isn't because the Admiral spent so much time at sea. He mostly steered his career from desk to desk, as an aide to admirals, a White House assistant, a staff officer, an Ambassador, graduate student, Pentagon planner, and the top dog at JCS.
Intervac L.L.C., of which Retired Adm William J. Crowe Jr. is director--a pharmaceutical investment firm in Maryland--under the newly formed BioPort Inc. bid $25 million to buy the Michigan Biologic Products Institute. The offer included $3.25 million in cash at closing, $12.1 million in secured notes, $4.6 million in rabies vaccine and immune globulin donations to the state and $5 million in royalties over five years. Adm. William J. Crowe Jr. was the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Reagan administration.
BioPort has negotiated with the DoD to make enough anthrax vaccine to inoculate everyone in the military. You figure it out. There are 2.4 million U.S. military personnel. That translates into millions of dollars (about $130 mil.) and they have to be revaccinated on an annual basis. Nice job if you can get it.
The lab he bought, opened in 1926 is the ONLY SOURCE OF ANTHRAX VACCINE IN THE NATION. By the way, it was a state-owned lab, which the Admiral acquired. A real sweet deal.
It is Intervac that has the most interesting history. According to Crowe’s associate and spokesman, Jay Coupe, Crowe owns 22.5 percent of Intervac shares, though he hasn’t “invested a penny” in the venture. Another 30 percent of Intervac shares are owned by Nancy El-Hibri, a mother and homemaker in suburban Maryland and the rest of the company is in the hands of “I&F Holdings,” a company directed by Nancy El-Hibri’s father-in-law, Ibrahim El-Hibri, a Venezuelan citizen, and her husband, Fuad El-Hibri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent.
Fuad El-Hibri appears to be the real day-to-day director of Intervac and is listed by Dun & Bradstreet as the “chief executive” of Bioport. Mrs. El-Hibri laughed when questioned by a reporter for ABC about Intervac and referred the network to her husband who did not return a call.
Experts in defense policy suggested that the Pentagon would be highly unlikely to approve the sale to a foreign national of a company that is the sole manufacturer of a vaccine considered vital to national security.
Indeed, Coupe stresses that between Mrs. El-Hibri and Admiral Crowe, the majority of the stock in Intervac is held by Americans, since Mrs. El-Hibri is a U.S.-born citizen, her husband Fuad was educated at Yale and has applied for U.S. citizenship and Admiral Crowe “served this country for 51 years” including two terms as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Reagan administration and as ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1994-1997.
According to Coupe, when Crowe returned from England in 1997, he was approached by Fuad El-Hibri’s father, Ibrahim El-Hibri. The elder El-Hibri, whom the admiral had met a decade before, invited Crowe to serve on the board of Intervac.
ABC News - 20/20 Investigation
According to Fuad, "Three companies currently hold voting equity in BioPort: Intervac LLC and Intervac Management LLC, which are both Maryland limited liability companies, and Michigan Biologic Products, Inc., a Michigan corporation.
"Intervac LLC is the controlling shareholder. Intervac LLC is owned by Admiral Crowe, my wife Nancy and me, and I and F Holdings N.V., a Netherlands Antilles investment company owned by my father Ibrahim El-Hibri ...
"Admiral Crowe and I are the controlling members of Intervac LLC.”
Other links:
"FACA: Conflicts of Interest and Vaccine Development
Investigation Into Vaccine Maker For Anthrax
Questionable sources...
Adm. Crowe, Bioport and the Put Option Activity Before 9-11
***GASP***...He is a CFR member!
In the mid-1980’s, El Hibri had also engineered a private buyout of Britain’s secret lab involved in production of vaccines and experimentation with chemical and biological weapons materials. The ownership was split among three El Hibri controlled entities; Porton Products, Porton Instruments and Porton International. The Porton laboratory was the sole source of anthrax vaccine used on British troops during the Gulf War.
What was even more intriguing is that around 1994 Bioport President and CEO Fuad El-Hibri managed the takeover of the plant in the UK that manufactured our ally's anthrax vaccine. Interestingly, this company's name was Porton International. This obviously served as the inspiration for the Michigan facility's current name, Bioport. Now, I will mention that Mr. El-Hibri personally assured me that he has 'no equity interest with Porton.' One more piece of information I found intriguing is that Porton International, now under different management, struck a deal with DynCorp, a billion dollar government contractor. The new partnership was named, predictively enough, DynPort. This new entity was recently awarded a billion dollar-plus contract with the Department of Defense to investigate, research, and develop a list as long as 17 new 'experimental' biological and chemical warfare vaccines (ie. botulism toxoid, small pox, etc.) The government refers to this initiative as the Joint Vaccine Acquisition Program (JVAP). Of which, the anthrax vaccine is the prototype.
Somebody make the ex-CIC pay. Let's start by injecting HIM with it.
WHO CONTROLS ANTHRAX VACCINE BOTTLER?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/616797/posts
Sole Source of Anthrax Vaccine Isn't a Source at All
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/543113/posts
I know there were several others about this -- they are probably still archived at the *Anthrax_Scare_List, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/involved?group=78
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.