Are there American funded biolabs in the Ukraine?
The hostile witness is the most important witness in any fact check. The hostile witness is someone who is motivated to deny the claim, but cannot. 19 March 2022.
The claim that there are US funded biolabs in the Ukraine certainly has a lot of evidence to back it up.
THE CLAIM: THERE ARE AMERICAN FUNDED BIOLABS IN THE UKRAINE THAT THE RUSSIANS WERE TARGETING IN THEIR INVASION
This article on Alex Jones infowars seems to have been the first news organisation to make this claim on February 24th 2022, saying that the Russians may have been targeting the sites where the American funded biolabs in Ukraine were.
A site called strangesounds.org upped the stakes on February 27th 2022 when they claimed some pdfs linked to on the US embassy in Ukraine's website disappeared; the actual links were still there on the page, but they caused errors; the pdf documents they referenced had disappeared. This was true, I checked it myself.
Archive.org’s internet wayback machine, however, had saved screenshots of these pdf documents before they were deleted; strangesounds.org mentioned this in their article.
The US donors to these Ukrainian labs are worth noting.
The links were still there on the side of the page, but they were dead links, until Victoria Nuland confirmed the claims in a Senate hearing on March 8th; during the week after this, the pdf target documents returned. This small incident raised the suspicion that the documents were removed in order to hide the existence of these biolabs and the fact that they were funded by the US; this is a surmisal. Perhaps it was just a broken link and someone made a mistake; the timing is suspicious, that’s all.
Around this time, various fact checkers claimed that there are no US funded biolabs in the Ukraine and that this was Russian disinformation.
Various figures in politics and defence in the US also debunked the claims, including Robert Pope, director of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program at the DOD's Threat Reduction Agency, Andy Weber former assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs, is now a board member of the Arms Control Association Board, Jen Psaki the Whitehouse Press secretary, who wrote, "The United States is in full compliance with its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention and does not develop or possess such weapons anywhere.”
THE HOSTILE WITNESS TELLS US IT IS TRUE
The hostile witness is the most important witness in any fact check. The hostile witness is someone who is motivated to deny the claim, but for some reason cannot.
The hostile witness in this case is the Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland.
When being questioned by Senator Marco Rubio in the US Senate hearing on Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine on Tuesday, March 8, 2022, under oath (note that the penalty for lying to Congress is five years in gaol) Nuland admitted the existence of the US funded biolabs in Ukraine and that the contents would be a danger to Ukrainians and others if the Russians captured them.
The testimony of the hostile witness is the strongest testimony and both confirms the existence of the US funded biolabs in Ukraine and confirms that they contain dangerous pathogens.
Here is my transcript of the short interchange:
Senator Marco Rubio: “I only have a minute let me ask you. Um. Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?”
Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland: “Ukraine has um… biological research facilities. Which we are in fact now quite concerned Russian troops Russian forces may be seeking to ah gain control of so we are working with the Ukrainians on how they may prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.”
Senator Marco Rubio: “I am sure you are aware that the Russian propaganda groups are already putting out there all kinds of information about how they’ve uncovered a plot by the Ukrainians to release biological weapons in the country and with NATO’s coordination. If there’s a biological weapons incident or attack inside of Ukraine is there any doubt in your mind that the Russians would be behind of it?”
Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland: “There is no doubt in my mind Senator and it is classic Russian ah technique to blame on the other guy what they’re planning to do themselves.”
VIDEO OF THE SENATE HEARING ON RUSSIA’S INVASION OF UKRAINE
I first heard of this interview on Jo Nova’s blog, where she included a link to Tucker Carlson Tonight’s video about Nuland’s admissions.
Below is the video from C-Span, the not for profit cable television service that publishes videos of Congress, as shared by Glenn Greenwald, and the video of the Senate Hearing on the Reuters youtube page, set to start at Senator Rubio’s question.
MORE INFORMATION COMES TO LIGHT
Since I wrote this post, more information has come to my attention, via a post on Jo Nova’s blog. Firstly, the US-Ukraine cooperation in terms of bioweapons research has been going for a long time, since at least 2005, says the Washington Post. This agreement between the two nations was announced by Senators Richard G. Lugar and Barack Obama (then Democrat Senator for Illinois.)
One lab to receive funding is the LL Mechnikov Antiplague Scientific and Research Institute, in the Black Sea port city of Odessa. The institute was part of a Cold War network of “antiplague” stations that supplied highly lethal pathogens to Soviet bioweapons factories.
“This agreement will allow us to begin addressing the problems faced by the Odessa antiplague institute and places like it,” said Mark Helmke, a staff member for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which Lugar chairs. Under the pact, the United States will fund security upgrades at key Ukrainian biological institutes…
DEBORAH G ROSENBAUM ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE SAYS NO, THERE ARE NO OFFENSIVE BIOWEAPONS.
US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological defense programs (ASD(NCB)), Deborah G Rosenbaum, testified to the House subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations on April 1, 2022, that “I can say to you unequivocally there are no offensive biologic weapons in the Ukraine laboratories that the United States has been involved with.” We see here what certainly looks like it could well be the self-qualifying statement of a liar. If there were actually no biological weapons in the Ukraine, surely she would say simply “there are no biological weapons in Ukraine”, instead of qualifying it with the word ‘offensive’? Since the Department of Defense was funding the biolabs, perhaps they were defensive bioweapons, at least in their funding descriptions, not offensive.
Robert Malone, who worked in the bioweapons industry, in his interesting substack post points out that the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction (BWC) has a loophole so big that you could drive a bus full of bioweapons through it (my term).
While Article 1 of the BWC outlaws offensive bioweapons, it actually seems that the wording allows them for defensive purposes when not in an armed conflict:
Article I. Each State Party to this Convention undertakes never in any circum stances to develop, produce, stockpile or otherwise acquire or retain: (1) microbial or other biological agents, or toxins whatever their origin or method of production, of types and in quantities that have no justification for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes; (2) weapons, equipment or means of delivery designed to use such agents or toxins for hostile purposes or in armed conflict.
It seems that this article allows them to be stockpiled and used when it’s not for hostile purposes (i.e. defensive purposes) as Robert Malone’s article points out. There is also another qualification too: or not in armed conflict i.e. when you are not in an open, declared war with the nation you are using them against. This might mean a nation could use it against its own citizens or against a nation they are not presently at war with and would not be breaking the treaty. Hopefully no nation does this, or has done, that has signed this treaty.
Note - what is even more suspicious is that the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was indeed a signatory to this convention but the present government is two revolutions removed from that government. Can the present government be bound by the treaties of the Soviet Ukraine? The law of Succession of States seems to be very much a grey area in this respect, one that Ukraine has already waded into with the intention of taking some of Russia’s territory away. Could this be why the USA set up their biolabs in Ukraine?
No ôffensive biological weapons - this kind of sneaky wordplay is becoming so common with politicians and bureaucrats in the West - this was exactly the kind of hypocrisy condemned by Jesus in the New Testament - it is the breaking of the spirit of an agreement whilst keeping to the letter of it.
This is very similar to Fauci saying that gain of function from animal-human is not gain of function. I think that this habit of politicians and bureaucrats has gotten so bad that many of us immediately suspect something is up when anyone modifies any statement with a qualifier (no offensive bioweapons). I remember reading somewhere about the Jesuits in South America who said it’s not a lie if you say something, knowing that you mean one thing and your hearer thinks you mean another - of course it is a lie. (We need truthful hearts first of all, all of us including me. This is something only God can do, change a heart.)
The purpose of modifying bat viruses in Wuhan by adding the Spike protein that infects human ACE2 receptors was supposedly so that the scientists might better understand how these viruses can infect humans; a supposedly benign purpose, much like building a gun to better understand how guns might accidentally go off and kill people; see the abstracts for this 2015 Wuhan study and this one in 2017. Both studies were funded in part by Fauci’s NIH including the latter (conducted during Obama’s supposed ban on gain of function; see the abstracts.)
Robert Malone, who himself has worked in the biodefense industry, did not really meditate about these contradictions apparently until he was no longer working in the industry.
Malone points out that Deborah Rosenbaum herself clearly has experience in the bioweapons industry: at the NTI (Nuclear Threat Initiative) she led the creation of the “Connecting Organizations for Regional Disease Surveillance (CORDS) - an independent, self-sustaining global network of regional disease surveillance groups”, an organisation that might well be worth looking into, if we want to have a good idea of where all the biolabs are.
Malone also lists fact checking sites that have failed to report on the fact that there certainly are bioweapons in the Ukraine that were for defensive purposes, or for use in peacetime. I have added them to the Uncorrected Hall of Fame below.
HUNTER BIDEN’S ROLE IN GETTING FUNDING FOR UKRAINIAN BIOLABS
Gateway Pundit identified through the wayback machine that Hunter Biden’s company in Ukraine, Rosemount Seneca, was raising capital for MetaBiota, a Ukrainian biolab company developing ‘systems to mitigate microbial threats’.
Gateway Pundit also identified an American company called Black and Veatch that funded DOD bioweapons research projects: see the contractor team in the scribd document below.
Metabiota advertised a similar partnership with Black & Veatch in August 2018 and the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency, in Iraq and Senegal.
Today, Metabiota, the pioneer in epidemic risk modeling, announced it has been awarded a subcontract from Black & Veatch (B&V) to support the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s (DTRA) Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (CBEP) in Iraq under the Biological Threat Reduction Integrating Contract (BTRIC). Metabiota has also partnered with B&V on DTRA’s recently awarded Cooperative Threat Reduction Integrating Contract (CTRIC) III with an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (ID/IQ) contract ceiling of $970M….
Under the CTRIC III Task Order 02, Metabiota will support efforts to strengthen laboratory capacity at the National Public Health Laboratory (NPHL) in Thiès, Senegal. Metabiota will further help develop and institutionalize BS&S Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) in the laboratory environment. Senegalese Task Order has potential to drive $600,000 in revenue for Metabiota, with a 12-month option
The Daily Mail confirmed from emails found on Hunter Biden’s laptop that Hunter Biden’s firm Rosemount Seneca invested $500,000 in Metabiota.
Metabiota announced in 2018 that, with the help of the World Bank’s Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (PEF) and the large insurance company Marsh they were preparing for a pandemic, to ‘commercialise that business interruption product’.
“We’re hoping that we can build an insurance market for those types of companies that already have some exposure. That can be resorts out in Asia that have felt the effect of SARS to those that are operating large theme parks in Florida and felt the impact from Zika.
“What we’re doing at the moment to try and commercialise that business interruption product.”
EcoHealth Alliance, the American company that funded the Wuhan lab and whose director, Peter Straszak tried to hide that connection early in the pandemic, collaborated with Metabiota and the Wuhan lab responsible for the Coronavirus leak on this 2014 paper, Evidence for Retrovirus and Paramyxovirus Infection of Multiple Bat Species in China.
EcoHealth Alliance and Metabiota also collaborated on this 2015 paper, Spillover and pandemic properties of zoonotic viruses with high host plasticity.
UNCORRECTED FACT CHECK HALL OF INFAMY
Below are some of the fact check sites that still have not corrected this story, as well as political figures who have not walked back their statements. They have earned a place in the Uncorrected Fact Check Hall of Infamy.
Please contact me by putting something in the comments if you notice that any of these fact check sites have changed their conclusions and admitted they were wrong, or indeed, if any of the public figures who were wrong admit it, and as soon as I see the correction I will immediately add them to the Corrected Fact Check Hall of Fame, above this.
https://factcheck.thedispatch.com/p/fact-check-no-there-are-no-us-funded
https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/02/24/us-biolabs-ukraine-russia/
Robert Pope, director of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program at the DOD's Threat Reduction Agency.
Andy Weber board member of the Arms Control Association Board
Jen Psaki the Whitehouse Press Secretary.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/mar/18/ukrainian-bioweapons-labs-qanon-fox-news
BBC - Ukraine war: Fact-checking Russia's biological weapons claims
https://theintercept.com/2022/03/17/russia-ukraine-bioweapons-misinformation/
https://www.politifact.com/article/2022/apr/01/facts-behind-russian-right-wing-narratives-claimin/ Somehow this is a “Russian right wing narrative” - essentially this is an ad hominem attack, using an insult to discredit a claim, rather than data.
As I find more mainstream media articles denying this claim I will add them here.
GOOGLE IS NOTABLE FOR EDITING OUT MAINSTREAM MEDIA ACCOUNTS OF DEBORAH ROSENBAUM’S STATEMENT FROM ITS FIRST PAGE
https://www.google.com/search?q=bioweapons+in+Ukraine+-+Pentagon+no+offensive+bioweapons
https://www.google.com/search?q=bioweapons+in+Ukraine+-+Deborah+G+Rosenbaum+no+offensive+bioweapons
CORRECTED FACT CHECK HALL OF FAME.
~EMPTY FILE~
REFERENCES
https://www.infowars.com/posts/russian-strikes-targeting-us-run-bio-labs-in-ukraine/
Reuters - Senate hearing on Russia's invasion of Ukraine
Hunter Biden’s company Rosemount Seneca was raising capital for MetaBiota, a Ukrainian biolab company developing ‘systems to mitigate microbial threats’.
https://web.archive.org/web/20140315054242/http://www.rstp.com/companies/
Robert Malone’s substack on the bioweapons convention
https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/the-biological-weapons-convention
PENALTIES FOR LYING TO CONGRESS:
Section 1621 Perjury Generally. Whoever has taken an oath before a competent tribunal, officer or person…. who willfully and contrary to such oath states or subscribes any material matter which he does not believe to be true is guilty of perjury… and shall be fined or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
Section 1001 whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully— (1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact; (2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or (3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry; shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or both…
LINKS TO STUDIES MENTIONED
Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus Ben Hu ,Lei-Ping Zeng ,Xing-Lou Yang ,Xing-Yi Ge,Wei Zhang,Bei Li,Jia-Zheng Xie,Xu-Rui Shen,Yun-Zhi Zhang,Ning Wang,Dong-Sheng Luo,Xiao-Shuang Zheng,Mei-Niang Wang, [ ... ],Zheng-Li Shi [ view all ] PLOS Pathogens: November 30, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1006698
A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence Vineet D Menachery 1, Boyd L Yount Jr 1, Kari Debbink 1 2, Sudhakar Agnihothram 3, Lisa E Gralinski 1, Jessica A Plante 1, Rachel L Graham 1, Trevor Scobey 1, Xing-Yi Ge 4, Eric F Donaldson 1, Scott H Randell 5 6, Antonio Lanzavecchia 7, Wayne A Marasco 8 9, Zhengli-Li Shi 4, Ralph S Baric 1 2 NIH National library of medicine 2015 PMID: 26552008 PMCID: PMC4797993 DOI: 10.1038/nm.3985 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26552008/
REVISION HISTORY
27 March 2022 Revised and added new information from Washington Post 2005 and the Hunter Biden connection.
24 Apr 2022 Added section about Deborah G Rosenbaum. Corrected 2020 to 2022.
24 April 2022 7:52pm softened the statement saying Deborah Rosenbaum’s statement was the self-qualifying statement of a liar - I don’t know that for certain - so I changed it to, what looks like the self-qualifying statement of a liar.