In an era of fake news, fake security threats By The Wayne Madsen Report

In an era of fake news, fake security threats

By The Wayne Madsen Report

Fake air travel security threats have joined the current fake news fad. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Transportation Security Administration, as well as their British counterparts, have announced a ban on laptop computers, tablets, cameras, Kindles and other e-readers, DVD players, and game consoles in carry-on baggage on the flights of certain airlines originating from or destined to a series of predominantly Muslim nations. Passengers flying from or the designated airports are required to pack laptops and tablets in their check luggage. The decision has resulted in criticism from technical experts in the fields of communications, information technology, and improvised explosive devices or IEDs. Unlike the American ban, the British ban on carry-on items includes certain types of cell phones.

The British ban applies to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, and Saudi Arabia. The U.S. ban applies to Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. While the British include Tunisia and Lebanon on their list, the U.S. does not. On the other hand, while the U.S. list includes Morocco, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE on its list, the British do not. U.S.-flag carriers are not affected by the ban, which is unusual since the threats are said to be with the particular airports of departure and destination. American, United, and Delta, which all fly to some of the airports subject to the ban, remain free of the device ban in passenger cabins. Some air travel industry experts believe the Trump administration has imposed the ban as a method of giving the U.S. carriers an advantage over Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar, which all receive subsidies from the governments of Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar, respectively. Canada may initiate a similar ban in coming days.

The airports covered by the U.S. ban are Queen Alia International Airport in Amman; Cairo International Airport in Egypt; Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul; King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah and King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Kuwait International Airport; Mohammed V International Airport in Casablanca, Morocco; Hamad International Airport in Doha, Qatar; and Dubai International Airport and Abu Dhabi International Airport in the UAE. The British ban applies to Ataturk in Istanbul, Rafik Hariri International in Beirut, Lebanon; Queen Alia in Amman, Cairo International, Jeddah and Riyadh airports, and Tunis-Carthage International Airport in Tunis.

The ban does not apply to crew members and it exempts medical devices.

The ban was initiated as a result of some unspecified threats picked up by U.S. and British intelligence from the Middle East, particularly on alleged newer and stealthier explosive device capabilities developed by Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, the chief bomb-maker of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Some intelligence sources claim the ban arose from the detonation of a laptop computer bomb aboard a Somali-flag carrier, Daallo Airlines. The plane managed to land safely and the only casualty was the terrorist. However, that explosion occurred over a year ago, in February 2016.

What makes no sense about the ban is that it assumes that a dedicated trained terrorist could not take advantage of on board WiFi networks to link from a smart phone to a WiFi- enabled component in a laptop or tablet contained in checked bags sitting practically below him or her in an aircraft's luggage compartment. An anonymous senior security official with an international travel organization was reported in the March 21 Washington Post as saying, "Why should I feel safer if the laptop is stowed in the belly of the plane and the perpetrator can use his iPhone to set it off? . . . I’m not personally privy to what the TSA or DHS has, but I just don’t get it."

WMR surveyed the airlines affected by the laptop/tablet ban and discovered which of them offer in-flight WiFi connectivity. Of the 15 air carriers covered by the U.S. and U.K. ban, nine offer in-flight WiFi connectivity.

Airline	WiFi Service
Emirates	Yes
Turkish Airlines	Yes
Royal Jordanian	Yes
EgyptAir	Yes
Etihad Airways	Yes
Qatar Airways	Yes
Royal Air Maroc	No
Kuwait Airways	Yes
Saudi Arabian Airlines	Yes
British Airways	Yes
EasyJet	No
Jet2	No
Monarch Airlines	No
Thomas Cook	No
Thomson	No

Plum Island, Nazi scientists, and the CIA by Wayne Madsen

Plum Island, Nazi scientists, and the CIA

WMR has uncovered a Central Intelligence Agency document that reveals that the mysterious Plum Island Animal Disease Center, located off Montauk, Long Island in eastern Long Island Sound, has maintained a strong link to the CIA since the early 1950s. Once part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Plum Island facility, which supposedly studies animal diseases, particularly foot-and-mouth disease in cattle, has been part of a secret U.S. biological warfare program that once included the use of Nazi scientists. The facility was transferred in 2002 to the Department of Homeland Security's Directorate for Science and Technology. Plans by Homeland Security to transfer the research center to Manhattan, Kansas are on hold amid safety concerns.

Plum Island is the counterpart of a similar Nazi facility located on Riems Island in the Baltic. In fact, Nazi veterinarian Dr. Erich Traub, who was a leading scientist at the Reich Research Institute for Virus Diseases of Animals on Riems Island. While at Riems, Traub developed a project to infect Soviet livestock with foot-and-mouth disease by dropping infected ticks over Russia. Exfiltrated by British intelligence from the Soviet zone in Germany after the war and provided safe passage to America as part of Operation Paperclip, Traub was placed in charge of the new Plum Island facility in 1952. Among the scientists recruited by Traub and his CIA bosses were Japanese veterans of Unit 731, the Imperial Japanese biological warfare research center that was located in Harbin in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo during World War II. Traub worked with U.S. biological warfare experts from Fort Detrick, Maryland in developing some of America's most lethal bio-warfare weapons. The Department of Agriculture affiliation of Plum Island was merely a cover established by the CIA to mask the facility's actual work.

Using Google Earth-supplied satellite imagery, WMR discovered a strange helicopter landing pad on the highly-secure Plum Island that resembles a German Iron Cross.



Plum Island's Iron Cross chopper pad [top] and the Iron Cross [bottom] awarded to many Nazi scientists who worked on Plum Island's Nazi counterpart of Riems Island.

Traub, a virologist, was an expert on using insect vectors to spread various diseases in livestock, other animals, and humans. Traub's pioneering work on tick-born disease vectors is believed to have resulted in the 1975 outbreak of Lyme Disease in nearby Connecticut.

According to CIA director Allen Dulles's log of March 23, 1954, the Agriculture Department Agricultural Research Center deputy administrator, M.R. Clarkson, requested that Dulles authorize a CIA representative to work with Plum Island "advisors" in April 1954 to determine the "material to be screened" by the Plum Island scientists and the "kinds of tests to be used." The lead scientist of Plum Island was Traub who was largely exfiltrated from Germany by the chief facilitator of Paperclip, Dulles.

Plum Island largely replaced a biological warfare research center active during World War II. It was located on Horn Island, off of Biloxi, Mississippi. In 1942, the Army Chemical Warfare Service evicted the 26 inhabitants of Horn Island, which was 12 miles off the coast of Mississippi in the Gulf of Mexico.

Plum Island serves as a major research center in a bio-warfare network that includes Fort Detrick, the Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah; the Joint Pathology Center in Silver Spring, Maryland; the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta; and the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

Plum Island is believed to store cultures of smallpox, Lassa fever and an artificially-derived variant of it known as "Legionnaire's Disease, Rift Valley fever, and malaria.