Dark Winter: Event 101
… and the Origins of the ‘Covid-19 Response’
Following on from earlier DemocracyManifest coverage, a new series of (non-continuous) posts will look at Dark Winter and its significance with respect to ‘Covid-19’ two decades later, with the benefit of others’ insights (and more hindsight).
We are well into Year Five of the great ‘Covid-19 pandemic’ fraud that was foisted upon the world.
The (intended) havoc and harm in the wake of this manufactured event continue to play out.
But what was the origin of ‘the Covid-19 response’ in terms of the politics at play - from the prepping to the policies?
Where did the plan - for the ‘lockdowns’ of people and economies, and the ‘mass-vaccination’ of citizens - originate?
There’s ample evidence that the USA has led the way in the crisis-dependent constructs known as ‘biodefense’ and ‘health security’ over the last quarter century.
Exhibit A is Dark Winter — the original ‘pandemic simulation’ that took place at a military base in Washington DC in June 2001.
“Essentially a conspiracy within the government…”
During the first months of ‘Covid’, investigative journalist Whitney Webb drew public attention to a pivotal ‘tabletop exercise’, as alluded to in previous posts on this substack…
Whitney Webb… outlined the various “prescient simulations” - among them Dark Winter, hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in June 2001. She used this as the starting point for identifying a cast of characters and various powerful entities that “profit off of pandemic situations and the fear of bioterror” in the private sector by leveraging their influence on government via “…guiding the [U.S.] legislation and policy related to biodefense and pandemic preparedness".
(Webb also delved into related details of ‘Amerithrax’ - the anthrax letter attacks which followed 9/11.)
In a podcast interview in May 2020, Webb agreed with fellow journalist and host, Robbie Martin, about the decades-long U.S. bipartisan “pandemic response racket”, which the latter summarized as…
…essentially a conspiracy within the [U.S.] government to fearmonger not only the public but also policy makers into creating these unnecessary positions that ultimately didn't amount to stopping or helping anything with this Covid-19 “pandemic”.
Post-Covid - in keeping with Whitney Webb’s analysis! - Dr Julie Gerberding (ex-CDC director and former Merck executive) reflected on the utility of twenty years of pandemic tabletop exercises fearmongering in terms of U.S. Government impact (in 30 seconds):
I think another dimension of that were the tabletop exercises when we brought members of Congress to participate, and what would it be like if we had a very deadly respiratory infection rapidly move through our communities.
And that was kind of a wake up call.
It led to some broader interest and hopefully some support for the authorizing legislation. It doesn't always translate to the budget, but it does translate to the authorities - which are necessary.
-Julie Gerberding for CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Security)
16 April 2024
Hmm. Alternatively…
“What would it be like if we orchestrated a very damaging ‘response’ to a fake pandemic?”
‘Dark Winter’: Where Washington and Hollywood Merge
Event 201 - the Covid rehearsal held in October 2019 in NYC - is familiar to many.
Dark Winter - one of the first ‘tabletop exercises’ of this type, held in June 2001 in Washington DC - is less well-known, but actually more explicit and instructive in terms of the ‘objectives’ (underpinning the ‘response’) and the real-life positions held by ‘players’ (in politics and the press).
Like Event 201 nearly two decades later, this ‘biothreat’ panic performance was developed and hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies, as it was then known: Key academic staff who ‘produced’ the simulation exercise included Tara O'Toole, MD (then Deputy Director) and Thomas Inglesby, MD (then Senior Fellow).
Dark Winter is perhaps the clearest and earliest template for a ‘biodefense’ response to an infectious disease ‘Outbreak’… aside from the 1990s action movie!
(Note: Inglesby rose to be front row at Event 201 in October 2019 as Director of the re-named Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security - and a star performer with that organization during Covid and beyond. O’Toole - after serving as Under Secretary for Science and Technology at the Department of Homeland Security from 2009-2013 - joined (the CIA’s) In-Q-Tel in the role of Executive Vice President in 2014 where her focus on “biotechnologies relevant to national security” continues, a decade later. )
From the website of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security:
The Dark Winter exercise, held at Andrews Air Force Base, 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.
A month after Dark Winter - in late July 2001 - a Congressional hearing was conducted with the Subcommittee on National Security “to explore the lessons learned by the key participants”. Representative Chris Shays summed up the simulation in his opening statement:
The focus of our hearing today is a recent terrorism response exercise ominously named Dark Winter during which the unimaginable had to be imagined: a multi-site smallpox attack on an unvaccinated American populace.
The scenario called upon those playing the president, the National Security Council and state officials to deal with the crippling consequences of what quickly became a massive public health and national security crisis.
So… a very effective ‘wake up call’ for the USG back in 2001 - to quote Dr Gerberding in 2024!
Panic-profit partnerships
In retrospect, Dark Winter highlights how the modern-day use of mass ‘quarantines’ and mass ‘vaccines’ as ‘emergency measures’ in response to ‘outbreaks’ was part of a diabolical plot by the U.S. security state and assorted ‘stakeholders’ - long before ‘Covid-19’.
With ‘Dark Winter’ at the turn of the 21st century, the long game was just beginning…
The single biggest threat to man's continued dominance on the planet is the virus.
— Joshua Lederberg, Ph.D., Nobel laureate, Film introduction: Outbreak (1995)