THREAT SCENARIO 

CIA Microbiologist Larry Harris: "In the very near future we can almost certainly expect biological weapons to be used by various terrorist organizations. This makes it imperative that the citizens of North America obtain the necessary knowledge and skills to protect themselves against this emerging threat." -  Former CIA microbiologist Larry Harris

Former CIA microbiologist has probably done more than anyone man to alert citizens to the growing likelihood of a terrorist biological attack against U.S. cities. His reward? Ridicule by the controlled U.S. press, and an arrest on trumped up charges by his own government. Yet today, the U.S. government is preparing for the very terrorist attacks Harris has been warning about since 1996. Here is his frightening story ...

Question: Larry,  I want to ask you right out the gate, between January 1985 to August of 1991, what were you doing?

Answer: I am a certified microbiologist, and at that time I was working in a covert CIA laboratory .My specialty field is defence - how to defend against biological warfare. But often I worked in conjunction with offensive teams, and I was many times working on mycoplasma ferrnentens incognitos, which is a simple soil bacteria that is normally harmless - until the genetic engineers working in those laboratories took it and spliced in part of the AIDS capsule, the DNA that codes for the AIDS capsule. And this turned a harmless soil micro organism into an absolute ravaging killer.

Question: Why would they do it?

Answer: Basically money. This micro organism was then sold to foreign government for huge amounts of money.  Miriam Arif, a young Iraqi woman I knew for some time, told me fifty million dollars worth of this material was sold to Saddam Hussein.

Question: Tell us a little about Miriam Arif.

Answer: In September of 1991 I left the CIA and went back to Ohio State University to take some more advanced courses in microbiology. I was 40 years old then. I very soon got into a clique of non-traditional students, and in that clique was a very delightful young lady named Miriam Arif. She had an unusual background. One of her close relatives was the President of Iraq back in the 1960's. He was killed in a helicopter crash in 1966. Then there was a long series of coups until finally Saddam Hussein and the Republican Guard came into power.  Miriam said her family had not fared very well during all of this - some of them had even been hanged. She felt she would be safer here in the U.S., so she came here from Iraq as a student to study microbiology.

Miriam further said she would stay here in the U.S. until she could do something that would allow her to return to her beloved Iraq without the stigma of her family's past political beliefs. She told me she would one day do something that would make her very famous in her home country, and then she could return. She and I and the clique of microbiology students we were in all became very close friends. We studied together, laughed together, etc.

But the Monday after the World Trade Centre had been blown up [the first time in 1993], I got to the college a little early to get a good parking spot, and down in the Med Tech building where the microbiology courses were taught was small vending area, and Miriam was there by herself when I arrived. She was all glassy-eyed, looking as if she had not had any sleep, very disturbed and nervous, and claimed to be worried that she could be arrested at any moment. Her speech was rambling and incoherent at first. Then she became very silent for a few minutes before speaking again.

When she did speak, she said to me, "Larry, you are a dear and trusted friend. What I am about to tell you, you can use to protect yourself and a few friends. When it is my time to act, I do not want your death to be on my conscience. "  She said, " You obviously do not know the danger your country is .facing from Iraq in terms of emerging biological warfare as a major threat against North America. A. few  hours ago a band of fanatics blew up the World Trade Centre. I am sure my beloved Iraq did not do this thing. For when payback comes, I am sure Iraq will demand at least one American life, for every one of my countrymen that you butchered during Desert Storm. We would not settle for some silly old building. "

She then went on to state that nearly all of the emerging countries, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea, etc., were actively pursuing a Germ Warfare programme and scrapping their nuclear programme. She said there were two primary reasons for this shift. The first is that the acquisition cost of a sufficiently large nuclear stockpile to be effective is excessively high. The second reason is that germ warfare is antipersonnel warfare, not anti-material warfare. Housing, buildings, factories, and machinery remain intact and can be made useful in a short time.

At that point I asked her had she ever seen Saddam Hussein's germ warfare programme, and she said yes, that she had actually worked in the germ warfare programme before coming to the U.S. to study advanced microbiology. So I asked her how Iraq's biological warfare programme worked, and she said that basically, Iraq uses a 'plain Jane' approach. They have two separate areas of operation, one being continental (meaning in the Middle East) and one being foreign (meaning inside the United States).   Miriam said that trained Iraqi agents used a product called a chemostat, which is purchased from Germany. This is a large tank that can be sterilized that has a mixer in the bottom of the tank that very efficiently mixes solutions. What you do is you put in the nutrient media that the bacteria grow on along with sterile water and sterile air, and to that you add your "starter culture," a microbe such as anthrax. This microbe is so small - about one twenty five thousandths of an inch long - which means you have to have a microscope to see it. And each one of them produces spores, which are like seed. They are difficult to destroy, very, very resistant to everything, having a shelf life of up to 5,000 years.

Anyway, what they do in a chemostat, they put the starter culture in there and basically it will start growing. After a few days this culture will reach what we call critical density, and then you add fresh nutrient media as you steadily draw off the top layer of the growing bacteria. So it's a continuous process, you keep putting in food, and you keep getting bacteria out. The bacteria then are basically chilled, and are transferred either freeze-dried into a powder, or, as in the case of a terrorist attack against an enemy target, they are transferred into a specially designed aircraft - single engine turbo props that have spraying apparatuses under each wing. It's basically a spray plane.

Question: You've said in the past that Miriam Ariftold you the Iraqi's have smuggled hundreds of vials of these deadly pathogens back into this country to be unleashed at a predetermined signal.

Answer: That's right.  Miriam confirmed that Iraqi cell teams have brought in many hundreds of these vials. Miriam herself told me she had brought in three or four of these vials. Every time a female Iraqi agent posing as a student comes into this country, they smuggle these vials in, full of the deadly pathogens that have been grown in chemostats in Iraq. These women smuggle these vials into the U.S. in their body cavities, in their vaginas.

Question: How many of these Iraqi agents are in the United States? 

Answer: Miriam told me that she knew of over l00 Iraqi cell teams, with 11 members to each team, positioned strategically across the United States in various major cities. There is usually one female in each team she is the carrier or smuggler. The other 10 are men who will carry out the operations once the deadly pathogens have been re-hydrated, and sufficient amounts grown to mount an attack.

Question: Did you ever ask Miriam what the most likely targets in the U .S. would be?

Answer: Yes. I asked her what the most likely targets would be here in the U .S., and what she told me was very disturbing. She said, " For one thing, it will not be a single target, but rather many hundreds of targets simultaneously across the country. For example, subway systems in major cities. Air ducts of large office buildings. Large gatherings of people at stadiums. Crowded streets during rush hour traffic. Also, our cell groups stationed in over 100 major U.S. cities will be using aircraft venturies, like the ones that are used to drive the vacuum instruments on airplanes. These will be mounted underneath cars and trucks. The spray tank goes inside with tubing going to the venturi. When the vehicle is going 60 miles per hour one simply opens the valve and a fog of  death will be coming out behind the car. Other cell teams across the U.S. will simultaneously be using these same venturies mounted on light aircraft, from which they will be able to spray whole cities at a time. They will also spray the major  farmlands of this country. Anyone eating the crops will come down with gastrointestinal anthrax, which is 100% .fatal. "

Question: How deadly are these microbes if they are breathed in and an infection take place?

Answer: They are extremely deadly. In fact, once the symptoms show you are pretty much dead. Even if I pumped you full of antibiotics and killed every single microbe in you, the poisons that those microbes release as they burst inside you are still going to kill you. They are going to cause every blood vessel in your body to lyse, and you're going to die from massive hemorrhagic shock. Just about every blood vessel through your body will lyse -- that is, they will dissolve.

Question: How effective are these spraying devices used by the Iraqi terrorists?

Answer: We've done the math, and it turns out that one single container of these biological agents sprayed from a venturi over a major city like New York City, at the very lowest body count there will be a minimum of 400,000 dead almost immediately. If they spray over a larger area and are effective at their spraying technique, we are talking as much as 25 to 26 million dead.

Question: Did you ask Miriam if there is a schedule for these attacks?

Answer: Indeed. She told me, " The attacks will begin sometime in the next few years. The attacks are cantered on Muslim holy days that occur in the next few years. There is one in 1999, and one in 2004. One thing is certain, before the year 2004 the population of the United Slates will be reduced to less than 50 million. "

Question: What's stopping the Iraqi's from unleashing their terrorist germ warfare attacks in the U.S. right now?

Answer: The Muslim holy days I just mentioned. You see, the great Muslim sufis, that is, the Muslim holy men, have for 20 some years predicted that "the Great Satan" - their term for the U.S. - would strike "the heel of Allah" sometime in 1991, and that would set off a timetable based upon the Koran. The "heel of Allah" by the way, is Kuwait. And we struck Kuwait in 1991, thus fulfilling the prophesy.  That started a timetable ticking down toward those Muslim holy days in 1999 and 2004 when the revolt against "the Great Satan" is to begin. The Muslim holy men predict that by 2001 the Muslims will rule the world.

Question: Have you ever been debriefed on all of this by the government?

Answer: Yes. The military, DOD, Department of Defence, finally took me in for debriefing. They knew I had talked with Miriam.  And they and the NSC took me in for debriefing. When they take you in, they use a voice stress analyzer to see if you are lying. And they asked me a long series of questions, and had me go into great detail as to everything Miriam Arif told me down to the finest detail. This went on for six hours. But about the fifth hour the secretary who was watching the voice stress analyzer got up and had to go puke.

And literally, after the debrief, we took the information I gave them and fed into a computerized simulation model they use. It showed that if we do not know the exact date of the coming attacks, we are going to lose approximately 230 million people.

And if we knew the exact day, hour and minute of the attacks, and they are successful, we would still lose 180 million people. By hitting a single major city like New York City first, they would strip the nation of its entire antibiotic supply. There would be none left for anyone else, anywhere else in the United States. Furthermore, that one attack alone would fill up every known hospital bed in the continental United States.

Question: What ever happened to Miriam Arif? Do you know?

Answer: Yes. Actually, CNN came in to interview me just before the Atlanta Olympics in April 1977 and again they were using voice stress analysis too, and they found out I was telling the truth. And they got me to give an extremely accurate description of  Miriam, very detailed. By this time, the government had over 12,000 U.S. agents looking for her. She was finally apprehended on May the 16th in Atlanta. The cell she was with were in preparation for carrying out a germ warfare attack on the Olympic games. If that attack had taken place, we probably would have lost anywhere from 20 to 25 million people, and there would have been a zone of death about 80 miles wide, from Atlanta, depending upon how the wind was blowing, all the way to the sea. So they did apprehend her. I didn't see it, but I am told CNN showed a brief piece on her arrest with the 10 other members of her cell team, but then nothing else has been said of the arrest since.

Question: How can people protect themselves?

Answer: It is best to have a good supply of antibiotics on hand. Tetracycline or oxytetracycline is very effective against anthrax, if you are able to start using it before you contract a serious infection from these biological agents. This means to start using it the moment you know of a germ warfare attack against your area …

Question: What about natural substances? Are there any that can help protect you?

Answer: The only natural substance I know of that is effective against these microbes is colloidal silver. I tested that myself when 1 was with the CIA, and found it effective against both anthrax and the bubonic plague pathogen.

Question: You realize, of course, how frightening everything you have been telling us is?

Answer: This is the world of biologicals. It is frightening world. And it is a world I have worked in for 20 some years. I have seen this disaster coming. And I have seen every person I have ever talked to in key positions of power who have tried to get a decent civil defence organization into operation get fired from their jobs, or worse. This is for real folks. It is not a game. It is not Sunday school. It is not the Twilight Zone.  It is real.

Biological Agents

The most threatening biological agents change over time. Technology allows for some pathogens, which in their natural state pose only minimal dangers, to be genetically engineered into more threatening forms. Their availability in nature also changes and science continues to discover new pathogens. The United States Center for Disease Control  compiled a list of the most dangerous biological agents. They are segregated into three categories, depending on a variety of factors.

• Category A agents are given highest priority regarding the need for public health preparedness. They are agents that pose a threat to national security due to ease of dissemination and transmission from person to person, result in high mortality rates, have the potential for a major impact on public health, may cause public panic and social disruption, and require special action for public health preparedness. Category A includes anthrax, botulism, plague, smallpox, tularemia, and viral hemorrhagic fevers.
• Category B agents are considered second highest priority. They pose a risk to national security because they are moderately easy to disseminate and result in moderate mortality rates. Category B includes brucellosis, epsilon toxin of clostridium perfringens, food safety threats (salmonella, escherichia coli, shigella), glanders, melioidosis, psittacosis, Q- fever, ricin toxin, staphylococcal enterotoxin B, typhus fever, viral encephalitis, and water safety threats (vibrio cholerae, crytosporidium parvum).
• Category C agents are given third highest priority. They are a threat to national security due to their availability, ease of production and dissemination, potential for high mortality rates, and impact on public health. This category includes agents that are emerging pathogens that could be engineered for mass dissemination such as the nipah virus and hantavirus.

Category A Agents