DOD chemical and biological warfare program: herd-culling plus stockpile disposal in one tidy package

NOTE: This report is a rough-cut subject to correction and clarification after further research; there are several strands I haven’t fully tracked down yet.

Specifically, I need to untangle the differences, overlaps and current status (in force or repealed) between DOD-to-Congress reporting laws, including 50 USC 1511, which was added November 1969, amended 1977 and 1982, repealed 1996; 50 USC 1523, added November 1993, amended 1997 and 2006, possibly repealed in 2017 effective Dec. 31, 2021; and any other chemical and biological weapons program reporting laws that might exist under other sections of the United States Code.

I’m posting it anyway.

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Reader comment on yesterday’s post:

"Even if such a bill got through Congress with a veto-proof majority, the biomedical police state laws on the books specifically exclude Congressional and court review of HHS declarations and actions. (See, for example, 42 USC 247d-6d(b)(7), as amended in 2005 by PREP Act, blocking court review.) "

So let me get this straight - A law is passed that prevents the checks and balances of the Constitution from being in force and allowing the courts to review it? And nobody sued because it was unconstitutional?

I can get Congress giving away their own power, but they can’t give away the power of the courts.

My reply, revised and expanded:

Yup: totally insane abdication of power by Congress, and usurpation of the third branch.

Most of the men and women who voted for these things had no idea what they were doing.

My current larger project is drafting a federal complaint under 18 USC 2333 that explicitly shifts the whole argument out of the public health emergency civil law framework, and into the bioterrorism and mass murder criminal framework.

I’m thinking about putting together a Proposed Joint Stipulation as to Material Facts, which would offer the courts a statutory chronology, and propose that the US government defendants stipulate that Congress passed these laws, with these effects, whether or not any individual Congress member who voted on each one had any idea what it said and did.

Among other things, I’ve also pieced together that in the 1969-2023 timeframe that’s most relevant, the changing relationships between DOD, Congress, chemical and biological weapons testing on human subjects, and informed consent can be broken up into phases.

In November 1969, President Richard Nixon issued a (false) statement that the US was getting out of the chemical and biological weapons development business, six days after Congress authorized DOD to conduct such programs.

• Full text of 50 USC Title 32, Chemical and Biological Warfare Program, Sections 1511-1528, as established in 1969 and amended since.

The 1969 Congressional act pulled off the sleight of hand by (falsely) classifying the DOD conduct and program purpose as “defensive,” and through a sequence of provisions prohibiting certain conduct “until” or “unless” DOD said it really needed or wanted to engage in the conduct.

Under the 1969 law at Section 409, DOD had a legal obligation to report annually to Congress on “expenditures for research, development, test, and evaluation of all lethal and nonlethal chemical and biological agents,” codified at 50 USC 1511.

In 1975, Senator Frank Church led a commission, which published a Report on the Foreign and Military Intelligence Activities of the United States in April 1976.

The Church Report included, at Chapter 15-F, information about chemical and biological activities, and at Chapter 17, information about “Testing and Use of Chemical and Biological Agents by the Intelligence Community.” It reported on Project Chatter, Project Bluebird/Artichoke, MK-ULTRA, MK-NAOMI and other programs through which the US Government conducted experiments on human subjects against their will and to their detriment.

I haven’t confirmed, but it’s plausible that the Church Report influenced Congress to update laws governing chemical and biological experiments on human subjects, including DOD-Congressional reporting requirements, in 1977, through Section 808 of the NDAA, codified at 50 USC 1520.

50 USC 1520 was amended in 1982 and then repealed and replaced by 50 USC 1520a in 1997 and 1998, alongside the transfer of the program from DOD to HHS under the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) program covered below and previously.

And so the US Government, through the DOD, continued testing all sorts of sickening, sterilizing and lethal agents on soldiers and prisoners throughout the 1970s and 1980s, leading to the swine flu outbreak in 1976, HIV outbreak shortly after, and on into the Gulf War.

Perhaps reporting to Congress about its chemical and biological human testing projects. Maybe not.

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In 1990, Congress passed the Biological Weapons Antiterrorism Act, to give the public appearance of bringing the US into compliance with the 1975 UN convention prohibiting biological weapons.

As I wrote at the top, I still need to dig into 50 USC 1523, which was passed in November 1993 as part of the FY1994 NDAA, amended in 1997 and 2006, and possibly repealed in 2017, effective Dec. 31, 2021.

At this time, my understanding is that the 1993 law set up a parallel reporting requirement that the Defense Secretary include, in his or her general annual report to Congress, “a report on chemical and biological warfare defense,” including at Paragraph (9):

A description of any program involving the testing of biological or chemical agents on human subjects that was carried out by the Department of Defense during the period covered by the report, together with— (A) a detailed justification for the testing; (B) a detailed explanation of the purposes of the testing; (C) a description of each chemical or biological agent tested; and (D) the Secretary’s certification that informed consent to the testing was obtained from each human subject in advance of the testing on that subject.

In 1994, a Senate committee led by John D. Rockefeller of West Virginia looked at DOD abuse of military men and women under chemical and biological warfare programs: Is Military Research Hazardous to Veterans Health? Lessons Spanning Half a Century: A Staff Report Prepared for the Committee on Veterans Affairs.

The 1994 Rockefeller committee issued a list of “Findings and Conclusions,” including:

• For at least 50 years, DOD has intentionally exposed military personnel to potentially dangerous substances, often in secret

• DOD has repeatedly failed to comply with required ethical standards when using human subjects in military research during war or threat of war

• DOD incorrectly claims that since their goal was treatment, the use of investigational drugs in the Persian Gulf War was not research

• DOD used investigational drugs in the Persian Gulf War in ways that were not effective

• DOD did not know whether pyridostigmine bromide would be safe for use by U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf War…

• The safety of the botulism vaccine was not established prior to the Persian Gulf War…

• Records of anthrax vaccinations are not suitable to evaluate safety…

• Army regulations exempt informed consent for volunteers in some types of military research…

• DOD and DVA have repeatedly failed to provide information and medical followup to those who participate in military research or are ordered to take investigational drugs

• The Federal Government has failed to support scientific studies that provide information about the reproductive problems experienced by veterans who were intentionally exposed to potentially dangerous substances

• The Federal Government has failed to support scientific studies that provide timely information for compensation decisions regarding military personnel who were harmed by various exposures

• Participation in military research is rarely included in military medical records, making it impossible to support a veteran's claim for service-connected disabilities from military research

• DOD has demonstrated a pattern of misrepresenting the danger of various military exposures that continues today

The Rockefeller committee also made recommendations, including:

• Congress should deny the DOD request for a blanket waiver to use investigational drugs in case of war or threat of war

• FDA should reject any applications from DOD that do not include data on women, and long-term followup data

• Congress should authorize a centralized database for all federally funded experiments that utilize human subjects

• Congress should mandate all Federal agencies to declassify most documents on research involving human subjects

• Congress should reestablish a National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects…

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In November 1996, Congress repealed the 50 USC 1511 DOD reporting requirement, through the FY1996 NDAA at Section 1061(k).

In November 1997 — through the FY1998 NDAA and the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act — Congress and President Clinton set up the Emergency Use Authorization program, accomplishing two things.

The amendments and additions transferred the DOD chemical and biological weapons research and development program to the Health and Human Services Department under the Food and Drug Administration, and expanded the pool of humans subject to experimentation without informed consent from military personnel and prisoners, to the whole American population.

In October 1998, Congress and President Clinton passed the Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act.

Title II established the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile, later renamed the Strategic National Stockpile, and appropriated $51 million (regularly topped up in subsequent appropriations) “to remain available until expended…for pharmaceutical and vaccine stockpiling activities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

Division I of the same 1998 bill — the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act of 1998 — established prohibitions on chemical weapons, to give the appearance of US compliance with the terms of the 1997 UN Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction.

The 1998 dual-use legislation accomplished another key US Government objective: it rendered the DOD’s illegal stockpile of biological and chemical agents into a ‘legal’ stockpile of pharmaceutical products and vaccines.

Same deadly toxins.

Different labels.

Just as the 1997 dual-use legislation continued to support and fund the same unethical human testing program, on a larger human test subject population.

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As far as I can tell right now (subject to change with more research), DOD has had minimal or no statutory obligation to report on chemical and biological weapons programs to Congress since the mid-1990s, partially on the (false) basis that no such programs exist.

And as of Dec. 31, 2021 — based on provisions of the NDAA for FY 2017 — the last Congressional reporting requirement is now gone.

This conclusion is supported by Senator Rand Paul’s recent comments that nobody in Congress is allowed to know about Gain of Function or Dual Use Research of Concern projects.

It also aligns with DOD’s continued claim, at its health.mil Chemical and Biological Exposures webpage, that the US Government hasn’t conducted any biological weapons testing on humans since 1969, and hasn’t conducted any chemical weapons testing on humans since 1975.

Duh.

There’s no need to report to Congress on chemical and biological weapon human trials that you’re not conducting.

And in a way, DOD isn’t lying.

Since the mid-1990s, the US Government’s illegal chemical and biological warfare program has all been operated under HHS public health frameworks, by relabeling weapons as prophylactics and treatments.

Since then, the US government has only developed, produced and deployed FDA-authorized bioweapons.

Note, though, that FDA authorization doesn’t mean that the products comply with any FDA consumer-protection regulations on clinical trials, manufacturing, distribution, labeling or administration. Or safety and efficacy. Or recalls.

They don’t comply with any of those legal standards, and there’s no legal reason why they should comply.

Compliance would be silly, because they’re weapons, not medicines, and they’re shot into targeted enemies (everyone on the planet) to kill them, not offered to patients to protect or heal them.

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The DOD/HHS/DARPA/BARDA program isn’t just a great way to cull and control the herd though.

Turns out, shoving biochemical weapons at needlepoint into the arms of hundreds of millions of people is also a great way to dispose of illegal stockpiles and destroy evidence of US violation of international treaties.

See 50 USC 1524, also added to the Chemical and Biological Warfare Program (50 USC 32) by Congress in 1993:

Agreements to provide support to vaccination programs of Department of Health and Human Services…

The Secretary of Defense may enter into agreements with the Secretary of Health and Human Services to provide support for vaccination programs of the Secretary of Health and Human Services in the United States through use of the excess peacetime biological weapons defense capability of the Department of Defense….

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St. Wenceslaus.