“America’s Pandemic War Games…”
The fix was in - twenty years before ‘Covid’
LARP-ing and the Long Game
Following on from the previous post…
A quick recap of the militarized pandemic tabletop exercise, ‘Dark Winter’, from the website of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security:
The Dark Winter exercise, held at Andrews AFB, Washington, DC, June 22-23, 2001, portrayed a fictional scenario depicting a covert smallpox attack on US citizens. The scenario is set in 3 successive National Security Council (NSC) meetings… that take place over a period of 14 days.
Former senior government officials played the roles of NSC members responding to the evolving epidemic; representatives from the media were among the observers of these mock NSC meetings and played journalists during the scenario's press conferences.
We’ll return soon to the who’s who of role-playing at this seminal ‘pandemic’ rehearsal.
But first, to put ‘Dark Winter’ and other simulations in context with respect to Operation Covid-19…
On April 1st, 2020 - as 15 Days to Slow the Spread turned to weeks - “Foreign Policy” magazine dredged up Dark Winter, adding to the escalating climate of ‘Covid’ fear-mongering:
This part of the April Fools’ analysis is noteworthy:
These lessons [from ‘Dark Winter’ in June 2001] rippled out into the policymaking community, particularly after its participants and designers briefed key figures in the Bush administration and members of Congress on their findings. Included in the briefing was a series of grimly realistic videotapes of the exercise that dramatized its likely effects. “It is not pleasant,” CSIS’s John Hamre told members of Congress in introducing the videos.
One of those who agreed, according to retired Air Force Col. Randall Larsen (who co-designed the simulation for CSIS), was Vice President Dick Cheney, who sat through the presentation (just nine days after 9/11) in his office at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building before offering his own judgment. “This is terrifying,” he said.
So within days of 9/11, the ‘producers’ of the pandemic tabletop exercise showed the Vice President a few video clips - presumably to frighten the pants off him.
Imagine think tank types having that level of access to the inner circle of power in Washington…
Whoops! That’s ‘Outbreak’ — not the Dark Winter tabletop exercise!
The “grimly realistic videotapes of the exercise” - shown to members of Congress and Cheney - don’t appear to be on the public record.
But here’s a thought: Was Donald Trump shown these “terrifying” videotapes of Dark Winter in early 2020 by the aforementioned Col. Randall Larsen, USAF (Ret) - twenty years after he showed them to Dick Cheney?
(We’ll come back to Randall Larsen - the current ‘National Security Advisor’ at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, and founding director of the ANSER Institute for Homeland Security (in 2000) - in another post.)
“A full-scale national emergency was practised”
Returning to June 2001 and Dark Winter…
The parts played by members of the cast overlapped to varying degrees with “real-life” professional roles held in politics and the press at that time - mainly inside the Beltway.
Journalist Paul Schreyer - in his excellent March 2021 presentation on the history of pandemic simulations - made this observation about the participants in Dark Winter (30 seconds):
Similarly, the other positions were occupied by high-ranking officials.
You can truly say, a full-scale national emergency was practised. […]
The media were a vital part of this exercise… [including] nationally known journalists.
Below is a selection of some of the original presentation slides from the event, which are worth a look.
The “key players” included some of the biggest names in national security and intelligence during that era.
The “members of the press” - and their part in “information management” - were central to the script.
Dark Winter put everyone in the hot seat, from the “President” on down…
The stated goals and objectives of this exercise in mid-2001?
Namely: “Handle ethical, political, cultural, operational and legal challenge”… induced by the ‘reaction’ to the ‘crisis’.
And what happened in this ‘pandemic’ fiction - aside from riots?
We’ll look at more slides in the next post, but let’s cut to the chase - per the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security webpage.
‘Dark Winter’: plot spoiler!
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security alludes to the apparent inspiration for Dark Winter…
In 1972, after disappearing from Yugoslavia for four decades, a single case of smallpox emerged.
Got that? A single ‘case’.
Furthermore…
There are two ways to control a smallpox epidemic – vaccine and isolation.
Ok… So they isolated and vaccinated the single ‘case’? And ‘close contacts’. Right?
Nope. Here’s the kicker:
Yugoslavia’s Communist leader, Josip Tito, used both.
He instituted a nation-wide quarantine, and immunized the entire country of 20 million people using vaccine supplied by the World Health Organization.
And who helped the WHO in 1972? According to Wikipedia…
Leading experts on smallpox were flown in to help, including [American physicians] Donald Henderson and Don Francis.
That would be (the late) D.A. Henderson - founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense, as it was originally known.
So… in mid 2001, we have a bunch of influential Americans going full dictator in a militarized ‘tabletop exercise’ under the guise of a ‘public health emergency’ on ‘national security’ grounds.
Fast forward to 2021, and Paul Schreyer - channeling fellow journalist, Whitney Webb - summarized the history of U.S-driven biothreat alarmism as follows:
Political decisions during the Corona crisis did not come out of the blue. The "war on viruses" began back in the 1990s as the "war on bioterror".
Research shows: For more than twenty years since then, pandemic scenarios have been repeatedly rehearsed in simulation exercises, first in the U.S., later coordinated internationally. […] High-ranking government representatives as well as well-known journalists were involved, most recently, at "Event 201" in October 2019, also board members of large global corporations.
After the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a coronavirus pandemic in 2020, many of the measures that had been rehearsed and discussed for years were implemented globally.
Paul Schreyer - “Pandemic simulation games – Preparation for a new era?”
(March 2021)
Indeed.
Stay tuned - more to come on the ‘measures’ that were part of the ‘Dark Winter’ plot!
Postscript: related post on Australia’s ‘Pandemic’ games…
