reSee.it Podcast Summary
Whitney Webb opens Unlimited Hangout’s first episode, introducing an investigative thread with Raul Diego’s series about engineering contagion, a Merithrax-era framing, and the biotech imperial complex, and invites Robbie Martin to discuss his two-part miniseries on the Committee on the Present Danger China and its links to a broader neocon apparatus and the Dark Winter milieu.
Robbie Martin explains that the Committee on the Present Danger China is a revived neocon group targeting China with trade, cyber, and geopolitical pressure, echoing older anti-China narratives and reusing a playbook that includes pressuring for accountability over COVID-19’s origins. He notes ties between this new apparatus and the old Dark Winter crowd, including individuals associated with Project for the New American Century. He highlights Steve Bannon’s role in relaunching the think tank and observes how some figures—like James Woolsey, Frank Gaffney, William Bennett—reappear alongside others more recently associated with anti-China discourse, such as Bannon, and how the anti-China push intersects with claims that COVID-19 is a Chinese bioweapon or lab-origin narrative. The discussion stresses that the narrative push relies on familiar tropes about state bioweapons programs and lab accidents, referencing prior actors and outlets that helped seed similar claims.
Webb and Martin pivot to all roads leading to Dark Winter. They summarize the June 2001 Dark Winter biowarfare simulation at Andrews Air Force Base, with participants including Jerome Hauer (FEMA), James Woolsey (CIA), Judith Miller (New York Times), Sam Nunn, Margaret Hamburg, and other prominent security figures. They point out that the exercise was drafted by Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies (led by Tara O’Toole and now Thomas Inglesby), the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Analytics Services Institute for Homeland Security, with RAND Larson connecting Kadlik and others. The live briefing involved actors in some public clips, while many real participants attended behind the scenes. Kadlik, a biodefense insider with ties to Larson, appears in the exercise’s echoing news clips, including a line about a “dark winter” related to a hypothetical Chinese corn/pork bioterror scenario.
The conversation emphasizes the Dark Winter narrative’s alignment with a Gulf War–era frame: Iraq, Saddam Hussein, and Al Qaeda are repeatedly linked; grainy satellite “intel” photos of a suspected Iraqi bio facility surface; the exercise contemplates a bioweapons threat from Iraq via intermediaries and even contemplates a possible infection that could justify troop deployments to the Middle East. They note the use of a grainy, “defector”–style intelligence thread, similar to later real-world assertions that Iraq had Soviet-era bioweapons programs, even as no forensic evidence supported those links. The dialogue also highlights a 2005 Atlantic Storm sequel and the broader theme of biowarfare democratization.
Webb and Martin discuss the end of Dark Winter, where a defector in the exercise claims Iraq’s involvement with the smallpox outbreak, a claim deemed highly credible despite lacking forensic proof. They note the exercise’s parallel to contemporary debates about China and the Wuhan lab, and the recurrent motif of satellite imagery and dubious “forensic” assertions fueling public fear. They also touch on how Dick Cheney was briefed on Dark Winter, and how Tara O’Toole and Inglesby briefed Cheney after the exercise, underscoring the intimate policy-to-scenario feedback loop.
They transition to the anthrax attacks (Amerithrax). Bob Stevens’ death on October 5 marks the first fatal case, followed by five deaths and multiple infections from four letters to Leahy, Daschle, the New York Post, and Tom Brokaw. They discuss weaponized, finely milled anthrax in Leahy and Daschle’s offices versus inert powder in Judith Miller’s letter, the global reach of letters, and how the letters’ messaging tied to September 11 through “Death to America, Death to Israel, Allah is great.” They critique the FBI’s handling: destruction of the Ames strain’s database, early misdirections, and later debates over Bruce Ivins’ guilt, the NAS review, and Lambert’s whistleblower claims that evidence was stovepiped. They recount the crop-duster rumors, Atta’s potential attempts to access agricultural aircraft, and the broader media climate that amplified fear around bioterrorism.
The conversation closes with reflections on how biodefense programs—BASIS, BioWatch, and post–9/11 stockpiling—transformed national security, often with questionable safety outcomes and expensive, sometimes ineffective, programs. They signal ongoing inquiries into Fort Detrick, Dugway, and the Pentagon’s handling of biosafety, while acknowledging that the Amerithrax case remains contested, with exculpatory evidence reportedly withheld and investigations intermittently politicized. The episode ends with acknowledgments of Patreon support and a tease toward future installments.