Assassination of foreign nationals designated as enemy combatants was stated policy of the Bush administration since the issuance of several executive orders since late 2001.  Assassination [a Shoot to Kill kind of policy] of citizens has not been acknowledged, but there are ominous cases suggesting the possibility that people not involved in armed struggles have been targeted for assassination.  I would have reckoned you’d have more chance being struck down by lighting in the same spot three consecutive times, than there was the chance of being assassinated whilst working [under normal conditions] as a Microbiologists at a rate of three times a month for five consecutive months and only two months following 9/11. – In November of 2001, a series of mysterious deaths of renowned microbiologists started.  Sixteen died within five months, most having been murdered or killed under unusual circumstances.  On November 12, 2001, Dr. Benito Que, 52, was killed in a carjacking, later deemed a possible stroke. Que was an expert in infectious diseases and cellular biology at the Miami Medical School. On November 16, Don Wiley’s body was found in the Mississippi River. Wiley, 57, was one of the world’s leading researchers of deadly viruses.  On November 21, Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik, 64, was killed by a stroke. He was an expert in the weaponisation of germs and viruses.  On November 24, three microbiologists died when a Swissair flight from Berlin to Zurich crashed. Dr. Yaakov Matzner, dean of the Hebrew University school of medicine; Amiramp Eldor, head of the hematology department at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv and a world-recognised expert in blood clotting; and Avishai Berkman, director of the Tel Aviv public health department and businessman.  On December 10, Dr. Robert Schwartz, 57, was stabbed and slashed with what police believe was a sword in his farmhouse in Leesburg, Virginia. Schwartz worked at Virginia’s Centre for Innovative Technology on DNA sequencing and pathogenic microorganisms.  On December 14, Nguyen Van Set, 44, died in an airlock in his lab. His organization had just discovered a virus which can be modified to affect smallpox.  In January, 2002, Ivan Glebov was killed in a bandit attack and Alexi Brushlinski was killed in Moscow. Both were world-renowned and members of the Russian Academy of Science.  On February 9, Victor Korshunov, 56, was killed by a cranial injury.  He was the head of the microbiology sub-faculty at the Russian State Medical University.  On February 11, Ian Langford, 40, was murdered in his home. He was one of Europe’s leading experts on environmental risk.  On February 28, Tanya Holzmayer, 46, and Guyang Huang, 38, were killed in an alleged murder/suicide incident. Holzmayer helped create drugs that interfere with replication of the HIV virus, and Huang was a highly-regarded scholar in genetics.  On March 24, David Wynn-Williams, 55, was killed while jogging. He was an astrobiologist with NASA Ames Research Centre.  On March 25, Steven Mostow, 63, was killed in a private plane crash. He was an expert on bioterrorism threats. – 24/12/2002- Iran, Tehran;- A commuter plane carrying Ukrainian and Russian aerospace scientists crashed in central Iran, killing all 46 people aboard, Iranian officials and the state-run television said.   The passengers were travelling to Iran to witness the maiden flight of a joint Ukrainian-Iranian built passenger plane, according to the television report.   The plane crashed near the village of Baqerabad while preparing to make a scheduled landing at its destination – an airport near the central Iranian city of Isfahan, some 250 miles south of Tehran, Iran.   Reza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman at the state-owned Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industries in Isfahan told The Associated Press that all the Ukrainian and Russian aerospace scientists were on board. – Hit list names hundreds of Iraqi scientists. – Iraqi assassins are being asked to take aim at hundreds of intellectuals whose names appear on a hit list circulating in the country by an unknown group.  The list’s existence suggests that the ongoing assassination of Iraqi academics is more organised and systematic than previously thought.  Leaflets calling for the murder of 461 named individuals were described in an article published by the newspaper Az-Zaman.  The US-based magazine Science reported that it had obtained a copy of the list, verified as authentic by several Iraqi scientists.  It names scientists, university officials, engineers, doctors and journalists in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities.  Since the invasion of Iraq in April 2003, the number of attacks on academics has risen steadily.  The death toll is difficult to determine, but estimates range from 200 to over 1,000. The authors of the hit list are unknown.  Iraqi investigators are looking at claims that Iranian intelligence agents are involved, reports Science.  Also unknown are the motives for the killings, but religious and political sectarianism appear to be playing a significant role. – Haaretz Correspondent – Yossi Melman has reported that Israel is assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists as part of a covert war against the Islamic Republic’s illicit weapons program; The Daily Telegraph quoted Western intelligence analysts as saying.  The British daily said Israel’s Mossad espionage agency was rumoured to be behind the death of Ardeshire Hassanpour, a top nuclear scientist at Iran’s Isfahan uranium plant, who died in mysterious circumstances from reported gas poisoning in 2007.  Other recent deaths of important figures in the procurement and enrichment process in Iran and Europe have been the result of Israeli hits, intended to deprive Tehran of key technical skills at the head of the program, according to the analysts. The Telegraph also quoted United States intelligence sources as saying Israel is using sabotage, front companies and double agents to disrupt the regime’s illicit weapons project as an alternative to direct military strikes.  Nevertheless, it should be noted that Israel has been carrying out similar covert activities for about a decade, ever since Iran was first suspected of seeking nuclear weapons.  The U.S. journalist James Risen has written that the CIA and the Mossad have planned together a number of sabotage operations against the Iranian program, including damaging power lines to nuclear sites in order to cause harm to computer systems and equipment.  The Telegraph also quoted Israeli officials as privately acknowledging the new U.S. administration is unlikely to sanction an air attack on Iran’s nuclear installations and that President Barack Obama’s offer to extend a hand of peace to Tehran puts any direct military action beyond reach for now.  As such, the reported goal of Israel’s covert campaign is to delay or interrupt the Iranian research program, without engaging in a direct confrontation that could lead to a wider war.  Disruption is designed to slow progress on the program, done in such a way that they don’t realise what’s happening. You are never going to stop it – a former CIA officer on Iran was quoted as saying.  The goal is delay, delay, delay until you can come up with some other solution or approach [no doubt a war], he added.  We certainly don’t want the current Iranian government to have those weapons. It’s a good policy, short of taking them out militarily, which probably carries unacceptable risks. Reva Bhalla, a senior analyst with Stratfor, the U.S. private intelligence company with strong government security connections, was quoted by the paper as saying the strategy was to take out key people. – With co-operation from the United States, Israeli covert operations have focused both on eliminating key human assets involved in the nuclear programme and in sabotaging the Iranian nuclear supply chain, she was quoted as saying.  As US-Israeli relations are bound to come under strain over the Obama administration’s outreach to Iran, and as the political atmosphere grows in complexity, an intensification of Israeli covert activity against Iran is likely to result. Now is it any wonder as to why the number of students wanting to become scientists has been declining in the past years!

Trapped in a Masonic World.