Dead Scientists

Nov. 21, 2003
By Gordon Thomas

MI6 are spearheading a global investigation into the mysterious death of a top microbiologist, Vladimir Pasechnik with close links to Porton Down, Britain’s ultra secret bio-defence establishment.

Four other high-ranking scientists who ha d close ties to him have also died mysteriously in the past four months. Like Pasechnik, all worked in the doomsday world of bio-chemical weapons.

Colleagues of Pasechnik had confirmed that in Russia he had been working on “bio-weapons which could wipe out a third of the world’s population.”

After he defected to Britain in 1989, Pasechnik told his MI6 debriefing officer, Christopher Davis, - now retired and living in Virginia in the US – that went to Porton Down and had been trying to produce defences against the bio-chemical weapons he had been producing in Russia.

When he first came to England, Pasechnik was given a job at the Center for Applied Microbiology and Research, run by the Department of Health in Salisbury.

In February 2000, he founded a company called Regman Biotechnologies Ltd, based in the town. Its articles of association described the privately-owned company as “ a new drug company working to provide powerful alternatives to antibiotics.”

That did not stop him continuing his secrets to Porton Down.

It is those visits and the sudden death of the 64-year-old Pasechnik that have led to the secret investigation into his death – and the deaths of others in the United States and Australia. All were closely associated with the kind of highly-specialised work Pasechnik was doing at Porton Down.

So secret was his work that few knew of his visits to the facility – and its most restricted labs where other scientists are working to find bio-defences against the threat to Britain of nerve agents.       

Intelligence sources have told me that Pasechnik often visited Porton Down at a weekend or late in the evening.

To do so he had signed the Official Secrets Act forbidding him to speak to anybody about what he was doing.

But those intelligence sources have confirmed he was working in the labs with some of the most lethal nerve agents known to man.

He was a leading specialist in the field of DNA sequencing – sophisticated research which is a vital element in developing biological weapons –and defences against them.

 On November 2, shortly after he had again visited Porton Down, Pasechnik was found dead in his village home outside Salisbury.

The cause of the death was certified as a stroke.

But it has now emerged that a pathologist attached to MI5, Britain’s internal security service, examined the body. His findings are not known.

“There are a number of nerve agents that can mimic a stroke and leave no traces,” said Dr. Leonard Horowitz, a US specialist in the field of toxic poisons.

For a full week news of his death did not appear in the media.

It was not until Christopher announced in Virginia that Pasechnik was dead, did a brief obituary appear in the Daily Telegraph. It did not give the date of the scientist’s death. It merely stated that he died “of a stroke.”

Only a handful of colleagues attended his funeral.

The secret of the work Pasechnik had been doing at Porton Down died with him.

After he defected to Britain, Pasechnik told Christopher Davis that he had been approached by China to work for them.

Instead MI6 helped him defect from Paris –where he was attending a science conference. He brought to Britain highly secret documents which showed how advanced the Russians were in bio-chemical weapons.

The documents also contained evidence of China’s effort to become the world leader in the field.

MI6, the CIA, and the intelligence services of Canada, Australia and Europe are combining all their resources to establish if China has sent killer squads from its own secret service (CSIS) to murder all those scientists it had approached – and who had declined to work for China.

Dr. Ken Alibek, another Russian defector, who is now a consultant to the Pentagon, has confirmed China “very probably is not yet fully advanced in that area.”

Defence Analyst, David Jensen, said:

“It would be logical for China to want Pasechnik on board. When he refused it would be equally logical to eliminate him. That’s how China handles competition. Kills it off.”

By the time Pasechnik was dead, other scientists had met sudden deaths.

*Dr. Benito Que was a cell biologist working on how infectious diseases, like the HIV virus, could be genetically engineered into a bio-warfare program. He worked in a restricted Lab in the Miami Medical School, Miami, Florida. He was a careful, meticulous man, who ran his life with a clockwork precision.

For some reason he left his lab early on the afternoon of November 12, 2001. As he reached his car four men with baseball bats clubbed him to death. They were never traced.

Dr. Que had met Vladimir Pasechnik on several occasions at bio-medical conferences.

*Dr. Don C. Wiley, 46, was one of America’s foremost molecular biologist researchers into infectious diseases – all with a capability to be used as biological weapons. He was found dead in a rental car in Memphis, Tennessee. His research at America’s prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which has contracts with the US bio-defense program, had included working with Ebola, Marburg Virus, Q Fever.

All these are germs that Chinese scientists are known to be working on.

In the past he had shared some of his research with Vladimir Pasechnik.

Wiley’s body was found on December 21, 2001. He appeared to have driven 300 miles to park his rental car on a Mississippi River bridge.

Local police chief, Walter Crews, at Memphis, said he was exploring several theories – including murder. To date he had arrested no one.    

 *Dr. Robert M. Schwartz, 53, a distinguished bio-physicist who had worked closely with Pasechnik on DNA sequencing, was found murdered at his remote farmhouse near Deesburg, Virginia, on December 12, 2001.

The local sheriff said, “it appears he was stabbed. The only evidence of theft was that the victim’s papers had been disturbed. We do not know what is missing.”

*Dr. Set Van Nguyen, 44, worked as a microbiologist at Australia’s Animal Health Laboratory ay Geelong. He had been part of the team which had created a new variant of mousepox, a cousin of smallpox. Mousepox could become an unstoppable killer once unleashed.

*Like the others Van Nguyen had kept abreast of the research Pasechnik was doing at Porton Down.

On December 13, 2001, he was found dead in an air-lock chamber that gave access to the biological samples he worked with. Deadly liquid nitrogen had seemingly, accidentally, leaked from a bottle of liquid nitrogen in the chamber.

MI6, and the other intelligence services are also looking into the backgrounds of five microbiologists who died on October 4, 2001. They were passengers on a commercial flight from Tel Aviv to Novosbirsk in Siberia. The aircraft of Air Sibit was “accidentally shot down” by a Ukrainian surface to air missile. The subsequent investigations found that the missile was 100 miles off course.

Siberia has over 50 research centers working on bio-chemical weapons.

But the prime intelligence focus is on the use China may have made of a sophisticated computer program, Promis, that was stolen from the Washington company that created it, Inslaw.

Inslaw’s president, Bill Hamilton, said “ the theft of our software would give any country a flying start in keeping track of just about anybody’s work. It is capable of integrating a wide number of data bases.”

Both MI6 and CIA sources have told me that Promis has now been modified by Chinese intelligence, CSIS, to allow it to tap into the databases of all the mysteriously dead scientists and identify their line of research – one that almost certainly threatened to leave China’s own work in bio-chemical weaponry behind.

That may turn out to be the most logical explanation for their deaths. That they were murdered to allow China to steal their research – and to ensure they would do no more work for Britain and the United States.

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