After listening to several online interviews with Dr. Francis Boyle, I decided I needed to know more about the issues he was discussing. So I purchased this book, which opened my eyes to some extremely important matters about which the average American is typically in the dark. Although the book was written in 2005, the information contained within is most important in the present time with the issues we are facing; certainly, it would be prudent to update the book or to release a companion volume, but even as it stands, the book is a highly instructive page turner.
Before going further into this review, it was very important to me to find out more about the author. Who is he? Is he someone trustworthy? Does he have the knowledge, background and credentials needed to write and speak authoritatively on the issue of government sanctioned testing, genetically modifying and even weaponizing dangerous micro-organisms?
So let me start with an explanation of who Dr. Boyle is. Dr. Francis Boyle is a professor of international law at the University Of Illinois College Of Law. For many years, he has been a public watchdog regarding the government's research, development and stockpiling of bio-weapons. Dr. Boyle evidently had a strong desire to stop the insanity of a national and international biological weapons arms race. So, while serving on the Advisory Board for the Council for Responsible Genetics, he drafted the U.S. domestic legislation for the Biological Weapons Convention, known as the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, which was approved unanimously by both Houses of the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. This Act made it illegal in the U.S. to develop and stockpile bio-weapons. (We will see in a moment Dr. Boyle’s opinion as to whether or not this law has been heeded.) So the evidence is that Dr. Boyle is, in fact, a reliable source, and that what he writes and speaks about, should be listened to carefully.
This book is not expensive and I recommend that people purchase and read the book. I am now going to summarize the book chapter by chapter. Buy the book, and as you read it, compare each chapter to each synopsis I’m writing here, to ask yourself if you see what he writes in the way I’ve described it. Here goes:
Chapter 1: The Biological Weapons Convention
The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) was an international treaty established in the early 1970s which ostensibly banned countries from creating bio-weapons. The US and most of the nations of the world signed it. Nixon evidently took it seriously and significantly diminished the bio-weapons arms race in the US, by apparently sincerely attempting to comply with the BWC. Nonetheless, on a lesser level, the CIA continued to research and develop bio-weapons, by exploiting various “loopholes” in the BWC.
Then in the Reagan administration, the development of bio-weapons expanded beyond the CIA to include the Pentagon, due to the influence of Neo-Con hawks. Ultimately, the US resumed the same annual fiscal expenditure on bio-weapons that had been engaged in prior to Nixon’s attempted curtailment of the program, but now including gene splicing and genetic engineering of microorganisms for the creation of new bio-weapons. Even though all such work was a violation of the BWC (but justified because it was supposedly “defensive” work, instead of “offensive”.)
Chapter 2: Making Biological Weapons
Through DNA genetic engineering, scientists have been creating “novel offensive biological agents”, useful for causing the death and suffering of opposing forces. They then develop the vaccine for each new agent. Scientists aerosolize the new micro organism. The government then mass-produces (and stockpiles) aerosolized canisters of these biological warfare agents. The vaccines are for the troops on the side that is disseminating the bio-weapons: if the germs blow back on them, they will supposedly be protected.
This lovely, humanitarian work (NOT!) was engaged in by government-owned biolabs (such as Fort Detrich in Maryland) as well by large U.S. universities with government contracts through the Reagan pentagon, and has continued (at the time of this books writing) under the Bush Junior administration.
Chapter 3: U.S. Government Biowarfare Contracts
In the late 1980s, Dr. Boyle was asked by the Council for Responsible Genetics to submit a comprehensive analysis of how the Department of Defense was engaging in all the previously described activities.
His analysis was very eye-opening. He read the contracts between the government and the universities that were involved in this “research”. He concludes that the scientists involved had to have known that they were engaging in illegal activities. But the lure of big money was too great. Large numbers of pigs and monkeys were hideously gassed to death in the continuance of their “research”.
Dr. Boyle talks about how they (the CRG) tried to expose these contracts and stop this work. To no avail. American universities such as the University of Illinois were feeding at the government trough. Ethics be Damned - the money was too great.
Dr. Boyle states his opinion that these issues of huge consequence to humanity, present and future, are being carried out without any real laws or regulations. There is no one to speak for the public interest and no means to prevent an almost inevitable future biological warfare catastrophe, was Dr. Boyle’s opinion in 2005.
Chapter 4: The Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989.
The Council for Responsible Genetics conducted a Congressional briefing in 1985, to explain to US lawmakers the malevolent things that were going on, with regard to the development and stockpiling of these bio-weapons. Dr. Francis Boyle was the speaker. He concluded his remarks calling for legislation that would make it a serious federal crime to engage in this bio warfare research and development.
Dr. Boyle gives some history of the changing emphases of biotechnology firms. In the early ‘80s, the thrust of their research was on GM (genetically modified) food, with the belief that this was the key to a better and more lucrative (for them) future. Bio-weapons were not, at that time, a main thrust and emphasis.
But as time went by, the DOD (Department of Defense) slowly pushed bio-weapons contracts on biotechnology firms, creating a greater emphasis on this nefarious aspect (as if GMO foods aren’t nefarious) of the work they do. September 11, 2001 (and the subsequent anthrax attacks) really cemented the all out commitment to the development of DNA genetically engineered agents of death, disease and destruction, as Congress appropriated billions of dollars towards this end.
But back to the Reagan administration. The Council for Responsible Genetics pushed for a law with teeth that would severely punish those engaged in the research, development and testing of bio-weapons. But of course, the Reagan administration would have none of it! In fact, they were already shipping weapons grade biological agents to our ally, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, with the expectation that he would use them them in bio-weapons against our enemies in Iran! What the Reagan Neo-Cons were doing was in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC.)
Then, the Bush Sr. Administration came into power and was fortunately willing to take a better approach to bio-weapons research. Through means both wise and lucky, the Council for Responsible Genetics got the US government to ratify their legislation severely limiting research into bio-weapons, called the “Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989.”
So now the law of the land was changed! The BWC (Biological Weapons Convention international treaty) combined with the US Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, were setting the US onto a road of sanity and safety! Weren’t they?
Chapter 5: U.S. Biowarfare-Related Violations of International Law
Francis Boyle asserts that prior to the passage of the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act, the Reagan administration had illegally (according to the terms of the BWC) shipped weapons specific biological agents (anthrax and botulin toxin) to Saddam Hussain in Iraq for the purpose of using them against Iran.
Dr. Boyle states that later on, during the Bush Senior regime, under the authority of Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. ordered the vaccination of a half million of our troops with illegal and unapproved experimental anthrax and botulin toxin vaccinations, which subsequently induced death and suffering in the majority of these troops, due to the side effects of the experimental vaccinations.
Then, Bill Clinton’s team reactivated huge Pentagon funding for genetic engineering biowarfare contracts, exactly as Reagan’s team had done ten years earlier. Virulent strains of Anthrax like nothing that had ever existed before were cultivated and produced in large quantities! These Clinton initiatives clearly violated both the BWC and the anti-terrorism act.
Then, the second Bush administration pretty much repudiated the tenets of the BWC. Furthermore, they worked to sabotage the International Criminal Court! The “American Power Elite” demonstrated through both the Clinton and Bush 2 administrations, a disregard for national and international law governing the development and creation of bio-weapons.
Chapter 6: Domestic Terrorism: The Anthrax Attacks on the U.S. Congress
Dr. Boyle gives a multiplicity of evidence that the Anthrax used in the attacks immediately after 9/11 had to have come from government contract labs within the United States, probably from the government owned biological weapons and defense lab Fort Detrick in Maryland. The perpetrators therefore had to have been current or possibly former government scientists.
Dr. Boyle had been disheartened in the early days of the Anthrax investigation, when he contacted the top FBI terrorism official, to tell him of the evidence of the domestic sourcing of the anthrax. And that official told him that the FBI was coordinating its investigation with Fort Detrick. A typical example of the fox guarding the hen house!
And sure enough, as time went by, the investigation was yielding very little. The FBI seemed to be getting nowhere, the media very quickly stopped pushing for information about that attack, and Congress didn’t show any desire to truly push for a comprehensive investigation into this egregious situation.
The author states that perhaps the suspicious death of Senator Paul Wellstone had an effect of dampening a desire for answers.
(This was news to me, so I investigated and found that Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone had been asked by vice President Dick Cheney to, quote, “stop sticking his nose into 9/11”; plus, he was a holdout against the Iraq war, to which Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were fervently committed. Senator Wellstone, his wife and his daughter all perished in a small plane accident in 2002. According to those who wrote a book and created a movie about all this, the accident was very mysterious; the plane manifested weird fuselage damage unexplainable by normal means, but which could be accounted for by the use of directed energy weapons against the airplane. [Donald Rumsfeld had admitted publicly in a news conference, still viewable at YT, that the Pentagon was, in fact, working on directed energy weapons, the details of which he couldn't go into, he said, due to national security. ] This incident makes me think of Dr. Judy Wood’s book “Where Did the Towers Go?” But these are entirely different matters. I write all this simply because of Dr. Boyle’s mentioning the suspicious death of Wellstone possibly dampening the desire of congress to press for the complete truth.)
The two Senators who were the intended victims of the anthrax attacks were holdouts against the passage of the so-called Patriot Act, which was obviously prepared well in advance of 9/11. And this Patriot Act gave tremendous power and control to the federal government, and a huge loss of privacy and freedom for private citizens.
Dr. Boyle argues that the evidence points to the likelihood that the same people who were behind the anthrax attacks were the same people that were behind 9/11. He gives very specific and detailed information including the names and the questionable actions of top FBI officials, to demonstrate his hypothesis. For example, he gives evidence that, prior to 9/11, the FBI and the Pentagon knew precisely who the Saudis were that were entering the United States with evidence of suspicious intent and the desire to learn to fly (but not take off or land) airplanes. He names the officials who chose to suppress that information and to not act upon it.
Dr. Boyle wrote this book in 2005; he does not mention the name of the director of the (demonstrably corrupt) FBI during 9/11, but I’m compelled to note here that the director then was none other than Robert Mueller! How about that!
He finishes this chapter by noting a recent (for when he wrote the book) Washington Post article discussing how the Pentagon had, as of late, developed extensive plans relating to the imposition of martial law in the U.S.; conditions were listed where this could be considered, including the release of a deadly biological agent. (Bear in mind that Dr. Boyle documented the work the Pentagon had been engaging in regarding the development of multiple deadly biological agents, in violation of national and international law. Does it seem suspicious that now the Pentagon has developed a plan to impose martial law if such deadly biological agents were to be released? Which raises the question, if the government wanted to impose martial law, wouldn’t they now have an effective means for doing so? I am being very clear and specific with these questions, which were only implied by Dr. Boyle with the information he imparts.)
The book continues on for several more chapters, but look at the bombshell information contained so far: government owned and government contracted private laboratories have for years been using genetic engineering to create “super-bugs”. Stockpiles of these aerosolized super-bug weapons have been built up. Some were given by our government to Saddam Hussein. The government then used his ownership of such bio-weapons as an excuse to go to war with him, conveniently forgetting to tell the public that we gave him those weapons in the first place. The U.S. anthrax attacks give evidence of their creation and dissemination by scientists associated with our government bio-weapons labs. The FBI (led by Mueller) did not properly investigate the anthrax attacks and suppressed evidence regarding the perpetrators of 911. The Pentagon develops a contingency for enacting martial law in the event of the release of a deadly biological agent.
And none of this is written by some fringe character. This all comes from a highly reputable source, with a history of intimate knowledge of the events and circumstances surrounding biological engineering, bio-warfare, US and international law, and terrorism. Clearly, there is a lot to ponder in Dr. Boyle’s book!
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rolando medina.
It is important to separate fake from truth
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 15, 2020