Breaking News NY Subway Gas Attack Drill "coming soon"

[mrsat_98]

http://worldtruth.tv/nypd-will-deploy-harmless-gas-into-subway-in-terror-response-drill/

The New York City Police Department announced Wednesday that it will deploy, then track, what it calls “harmless” gases into the city’s subway system over three non-consecutive days this summer.


The plan, to be enacted in July, will investigate New York’s readiness to handle a chemical terrorist attack by dispersing the colorless gas and tracing it as it flows through the city, according to Scientific American. The test is expected to cost $3.4 million and is scheduled to be carried out in all five boroughs and dozens of stations on 21 of the city's 34 subway lines.

“The NYPD works for the best but plans for the worst when it comes to potentially catastrophic attacks such as ones employing radiological contaminants or weaponized anthrax,” police commissioner Ray Kelly said in a statement.

The police will use roughly 200 detectors to monitor the gas. Dubbed the Subway-Surface Air Flow Exchange, the test will be the largest of its kind and organized in cooperation with the energy department’s Brookhaven National Laboratory. They’ll use perfluorocarbon tracer gases (PFTs), which are frequently used to measure potential sites for underground construction.

Despite the science fiction catastrophe a plan of this magnitude naturally conjures, Fernando Ferrer, the acting chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority maintained that it will not impact commuters.


“The NYPD, in partnership with the MTA, is responsible for keeping more than 5 million daily subway customers safe and secure,” he said in a statement Wednesday. “This study will bolster the NYPD’s understanding of contaminant dispersion within the subway system as well as between the subway system and street, thereby improving its ability to better protect both customers and the city population at large.”

The scheduled gas deployment comes years after investigators foiled an Al-Qaeda terrorist plot to bomb the New York subways, the largest public transportation system in the world. Three men had planned to detonate suicide vests just days before the eighth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in what US Attorney General Eric Holder at the time called “one of the most serious threats” to the United States since 2001.

[phill4paul]

Another "drill?" Anxiously awaiting the outcome.

[fr33]

They seem to have given fair warning about it because even I've known about it for a while and it's not like I'll ever be in NYC.

[SpiritOf1776_J4]

They seem to have given fair warning about it because even I've known about it for a while and it's not like I'll ever be in NYC.

And definitely not now.

[J_White]

i have become more afraid of these "drills" compared to brown people.

[tangent4ronpaul]

Yeah, funny how bad stuff happens whenever one of these "drills" is going on. We need to ban drills!

Umm, whoopsie - now what compressed gas tank did I just attach to the dispersal unit?

Also, didn't CIA already do these tests back in the 1950's or 60's?

hmmm...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_Stat es

In 1955, the CIA conducted a biological warfare experiment where they released whooping cough bacteria from boats outside of Tampa Bay, Florida, causing a whooping cough epidemic in the city, and killing at least 12 people.[43][44][45]

In 1956 and 1957, several U.S. Army biological warfare experiments were conducted on the cities of Savannah, Georgia and Avon Park, Florida. In the experiments, Army bio-warfare researchers released millions of infected mosquitoes on the two towns, in order to see if the insects could potentially spread yellow fever and dengue fever. Hundreds of residents contracted a wide array of illnesses, including fevers, respiratory problems, stillbirths, encephalitis, and typhoid. Army researchers pretended to be public health workers, so that they could photograph and perform medical tests on the victims. Several people died as a result of the experiments.[10][46]

In 1966, the U.S. Army released the harmless Bacillus globigii into the tunnels of the New York subway system as part of a field study called A Study of the Vulnerability of Subway Passengers in New York City to Covert Attack with Biological Agents.[43][48][49][50][51] The Chicago subway system was also subject to a similar experiment by the Army.[43]

From 1963 to 1969 as part of Project Shipboard Hazard and Defense (SHAD), the U.S. Army performed tests which involved spraying several U.S. ships with various biological and chemical warfare agents, while thousands of U.S. military personnel were aboard the ships. The personnel were not notified of the tests, and were not given any protective clothing. Chemicals tested on the U.S. military personnel included the nerve gases VX and Sarin, toxic chemicals such as zinc cadmium sulfide and sulfur dioxide, and a variety of biological agents.[158]

43) ^ a b c Blum, William (2006). Rogue state: a guide to the world's only superpower. Zed Books. pp. 150–151. ISBN 978-1-84277-827-2.
48) ^ Moreno, 2001: p. 234
49) ^ Cina & Perper, 2010: p. 95
50) ^ Wheelis, Mark;Rózsa, Lajos; Dando, Malcolm (2006). Deadly cultures: biological weapons since 1945. Harvard University Press. pp. 27–28. ISBN 978-0-674-01699-6.
51) ^ "How the U.S. Government Exposed Thousands of Americans to Lethal Bacteria to Test Biological Warfare". Democracynow.org. 2005-07-13. Retrieved 2012-12-16.

-t

[tangent4ronpaul]

Big Sis Begins Releasing Biological Agents Into Boston Subway

Assures public safety, despite government history of dangerous biological testing on the American public

Aug 28, 2012

The Department of Homeland Security will begin releasing a dead bacteria into the Boston subway tomorrow in an operation it says will test sensors designed to detect biological agents that could be released as part of a terrorist attack.

Little is known about what exactly the bacteria consists of, and the DHS has not been very forthcoming with information, saying only that it is a “non-infectious” material that has been “approved as a food supplement”.

The Boston Globe reports:

The tests will begin Wednesday and will be held periodically over the next year at the Harvard and Porter Square stations in Cambridge and the Davis Square station in Somerville.

“A rapid alert from a detection system can locate and identify these materials and provide for immediate and appropriate response to protect people and contain the hazard,” stated DHS scientist Anne Hultgren in the agency’s press release.

“This detection system will be one of the first such installed in the country, and, if it proves to be effective, could serve as a model for other mass transportation venues throughout the nation and the world,” said MBTA Transit Police Chief Paul MacMillan in the joint press release Monday.

Back in May when the plan was announced, Federal officials said that they were to release a bacteria called B-subtilis, noting that it “has been rigorously tested and has no adverse health effects for low exposure in healthy people.”

What effect the tests will have on unhealthy people or those exposed to higher doses is unknown.

The DHS has released a 28-page summary entitled ‘Environmental Assessment for Bacillus subtilis Particles to Challenge Bio-Detection Sensors in Subway Stations’ (PDF).

Given the federal government’s ominous record in releasing biological agents into subway systems and other transport hubs, it’s no surprise that this latest example is sure to cause consternation.

During a Senate hearing in 1977, it was revealed that the Pentagon had conducted numerous secret germ “attacks” on cities without public knowledge in an effort to test the threat posed by biological agents. These tests “may have caused outbreaks of disease which occurred in some of the test areas,” writes Leonard A. Cole, citing the Senate inquiry.

These “attacks” included a 1964-65 program carried out by the U.S. Army which involved unsuspecting travelers being sprayed with bacteria-laden mist at Washington’s National Airport.

Another example involved light bulbs containing Bacillus globigii that were dropped in the New York Subway by government scientists and allowed to contaminate the air. Similar tests were also conducted in the Chicago subway system, but when people started falling ill the connection with the tests was fudged because the government refused to keep track of the health effects of the released substance.

The hidden U.S. history of germ testing in general also serves as a warning that allowing the government to experiment with biological agents in public which it claims are perfectly safe has not always been a wise choice.

Project SHAD, a Cold War-era Department of Defense program in which veterans were exposed to deadly chemical weapons without their knowledge or consent, also represents a dark chapter in the U.S. government’s use of dangerous biological agents against its own people.

Since the 1940′s, the military and the CIA have conducted numerous “tests” on the American people, including the release of dengue fever carrying mosquitoes in Georgia and Florida, biological warfare tests on the civilian population in Puerto Rico, the release of bacillus globigii from a submarine on the port of Oahu, Hawaii, and dozens of other incidents, most of them classified.

There are countless other examples of the US having illegally tested and used bio-weapons on its own citizens. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study and The Program F fluoride study being two more notable examples.

The Pentagon’s biowarfare program has long been in operation and US citizens have never been spared from experimentation. As we have previously noted, the government has admitted and apologized for such programs, but only after the facts are fully exposed. They are not sorry for carrying out the experiments, rather they are merely sorry for getting caught.

The history of U.S. government and military experimentation on American citizens and the innumerable deaths and illnesses that occurred as a result underscore the fact that trusting the Department of Homeland Security, which has proven itself to be one of the most corrupt and secretive federal agencies in existence, to carry out such tests in public, no matter how “safe” the DHS claims them to be, is the height of stupidity.

Indeed, the DHS also claims its naked body scanning machines are “safe” despite being linked with cancer by numerous health authorities, and refuses to allow them to be independently tested, so why on earth should the federal agency be believed when it claims the bacteria it plans to release is harmless?

http://www.infowars.com/big-sis-begins-releasing-biological-agents-into-boston-subway/

-t

[tangent4ronpaul]

Subterranean Subterfuge: An AC Experiment on Bioterrorism
http://voices.yahoo.com/subterranean-subterfuge-ac-experiment-bioterrorism-182966.html

Before anyone gets too excited, let me assure you that this article in no way is an actual bioterrorism experiment. So, you can go ahead and remove your bioweapon protective gear now. No, this article is actually an experiment meant to test the tenacity of two highly prized rights of all Americans: the right to free speech vs. the right to safety and security. What does all of this have to do with bioterrorism? It all begins, as many things do, in the New York City subway system.

At yet another desperate press conference at City Hall in November 2001, America waited to hear the results of swab tests taken along the Bronx/Manhattan No. 6 subway. The fear was that the subway system had been infected with anthrax bacteria based on the fatal case of inhalation anthrax contracted by Kathy Nguyen. The source of Ms. Nguyen's exposure to anthrax remained a mystery, however, as the preliminary swab test results revealed no growth suspicious of anthrax.

New York Health Commissioner Dr. Neil Cohen then delivered probably the least shocking news anyone had heard in the past two months. "We know the subway system is not a sterile environment. So there is a lot of biomass, or a lot of other things are growing."1

Everyone, including the mayor, laughed at the obviousness of his statement. The New York City subway system, ripe with the remnants of a century's worth of huddled masses, would surely not be characterized as sterile by even the most oblivious observer. Ironically, perhaps the most insidious substance they might have expected to find amongst the everyday muck would have been the remnants of Bacillus subtilis variant Niger, an anthrax stimulant released during secret bioweapon tests conducted during 1966 in the subway tunnels by our own government. Author Leonard Cole quotes from declassified government documents.

"The several trials were conducted as completely independent operations without the knowledge or cooperation of the New York City Transit Authority or Police Department. Dissemination of agent and collection of air samples attracted no attention, and the tests were carried out without incident. Agent was disseminated without challenge or apparent detection. Air sampling was conducted more or less openly; it elicited few inquiries and no suspicion. Test personnel were given letters identifying them as members of an industrial research organization as a cover in case they were questioned. They were not used, except by one person who smoked in a station. He used his letter to prove non-residency to a police officer. Following this, he completed sample collection without further questioning." 2

Unfortunately, it turns out that Bacillus subtilis is not a harmless stimulant and may have posed a health risk to those with weakened immune systems3.

The image of clandestine agents conducting bioweapons experiments with live bacteria on the unsuspecting public certainly paints an unflattering picture. The nastiness of the portrait is unmitigated by the revelation that the bacteria was not so harmless after all. As unethical as all this may seem, there is another ethical dilemma which surrounds this type of activity. Should the details of such an experiment be published?

Thomas Johnson, Associate Professor of Respiratory Care and Health Sciences at the School of Health Professions, wonders if the accounting of this incident in Cole's Clouds of Secrecy was read by members of cult Aum Shinrikyo as they prepared their plan to release sarin nerve gas on the Tokyo subway4.

Advocates of censorship might argue that disseminating this information poses the danger of providing terrorists with a method for their madness. Advocates against censoring the story might point out that the efficacy of a subway environment for bioweapon delivery might not have been a hypothesis unique to 1960's American scientists. Therefore, withholding the story does not necessarily prevent terrorists from arriving at the idea on their own. Further, publishing details of this type of experiment creates an opportunity for many scientists and engineers to learn of it and perhaps think of new and inventive ways to abate the danger.

The government publication Cole originally reported from is declassified. So why not write about it? The information was already available to those who would seek it anyway. Besides, I don't need to see the final results of the New York Health Department's swab tests to know that if I ride the subway, I might get infected with an unusual germ or two.

It's time for you to be the judge. So go ahead, don your bioweapon protective gear if you feel you need, and participate in this survey. The question is simple, should details of a bioweapons test conducted decades ago in the New York City subway system have been censored in order to protect national and international security? It's the age old question, freedom of speech vs. right to security. You decide. Weigh-in with your opinion in the comments section of this article.

REFERENCES
1. Eric Lipton. New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Nov 18, 2001. pg. 1B.8
2. Cole, Leonard A. Clouds of Secrecy: The Army's Germ Warfare Tests over Populated Areas, by, Rowman & Littlefield, 1988 p. 67 quoting p. 22 of A Study of the Vulnerability of Subway Passengers in New York City to Covert Attack with Biological Agent, Miscellaneous Publications 25, Department of the Army, Fort Detrick, Frederick, Maryland, January 1968.
3. Biohazard News. Bioterrorism Scenarios on Anthrax: Anthrax Test in the New York City Subway System, 1966.
4. Johnson, Thomas J. A History of Biological Warfare from 300 B.C.E. to the Present. (www.aarc.org/resources/biological/history.asp)

-t

[tangent4ronpaul]

For those that missed it, from post 7 talking about the tests carried out last year in Boston:

Back in May when the plan was announced, Federal officials said that they were to release a bacteria called B-subtilis, noting that it “has been rigorously tested and has no adverse health effects for low exposure in healthy people.”

What effect the tests will have on unhealthy people or those exposed to higher doses is unknown.

=======
From Post 8 talking about the remnant of bacterial agent from the 1966 tests:

Ironically, perhaps the most insidious substance they might have expected to find amongst the everyday muck would have been the remnants of Bacillus subtilis variant Niger, an anthrax stimulant released during secret bioweapon tests conducted during 1966 in the subway tunnels by our own government.

Unfortunately, it turns out that Bacillus subtilis is not a harmless stimulant and may have posed a health risk to those with weakened immune systems3.

-t