Schmidt cleared his throat.
“After the war, the U.S. approached me about moving to the United States to continue my work, which I jumped at. I spent the next forty years in its biological weapons program, first working at Camp Detrick, in Maryland, and then later at a number of other facilities, including Plum Island and Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where I was primarily working on lethal viruses, including viruses that could destroy the immune system. Even though—”
“You mean to say…” Jeffrey couldn’t help interrupting. “You mean, after all… well, after the Nuremberg trials, our government actually hired you to—”
“Yes, yes, they contacted me. They wanted my expertise. Does that surprise you? The important thing is that, even though your President Nixon officially ended offensive efforts in 1969, the clandestine agencies continued to secretly fund offensive programs that showed promise. So while the programs were supposedly finished, and everyone made a big deal out of signing the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972 banning bio-weapons research, the truth was that select experimentation went on. I continued my work, and perfected a number of different agents before turning to retroviruses.”
Jeffrey’s ears perked up.
“The cattle mutilation period was when we were testing a variety of pathogens, specifically trying to synthesize a variant of bovine leukemia and splice it with simian immunodeficiency virus. We already knew from experimentation that we could make diseases jump species — that was a major thrust of our research. In 1972, we were able to infect chimps with leukemia and destroy their immune systems by causing bovine leukemia virus to cross to chimps. The subjects died of Pneumocystis pneumonia, and there was great excitement at the time because we’d created not one, but two new diseases never before seen in chimps — leukemia and Pneumocystis. We did it by having them drink milk from cows with bovine leukemia. Anyway, the findings were later duplicated and written up in 1974 in Cancer Research. This was extremely exciting in my circle because it presented a whole new approach to bio-weapons — the ability to create a contagious immuno-suppressive agent that would kill targeted populations.”
“Wait a minute. I recognize the second cause of death — the Pneumocystis pneumonia. Isn’t that one of the primary complications from…” Jeffrey paused.
“Yes. Exactly. It’s one of the leading causes of death from AIDS.”
Both men were silent for several moments.
“Wait a minute. You’re not saying…”
“I will tell you this much: I was working on a contagious bio-weapon that could cause catastrophic damage to the human immune system. Through most of the early and mid-seventies. I was part of a team — one of several teams, as a matter of fact, that had been integrated under the umbrella of the NCI — the National Cancer Institute.”
“But… where do the cattle come in?”
“We needed hosts we could use to culture our little germs. And we wanted to see how they would spread in the wild — in populations that were interacting normally, not lab animals in pens.”
“Back to Pneumocystis pneumonia… and AIDS.”
“Yes. And now we get to the real meat — the reason anyone will care about my sordid history. I’m an expert on retroviruses, and as such, I’m one hundred percent convinced that HIV is a lab-created pathogen, an engineered variant of simian immunodeficiency virus, and that AIDS is a man-made disease. I worked on similar pathogens. I should know.”
Jeffrey was speechless. In his wildest dreams, he’d never thought the cattle mutilations would lead to… this. His mind raced as he fought to find words.
“But why? Why would a lab-created bio-warfare virus be released into the world?”
“Ah. Finally, a good question. The answer to that, my friend, has nothing whatsoever to do with science, and everything to do with politics and social engineering.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“One of the problems we had should be obvious from the cattle mutilations: We needed real-world data on how our creations would spread, and how lethal they would be in humans. Sure, we had models, and we could extrapolate, but that’s not the same — one mistaken assumption and all the models turn out wrong. It’s always an issue. A big one. I believe that HIV was deliberately introduced in Africa in order to obtain data on how a new weaponized retrovirus would mutate and flourish in a general population, and at the same time potentially solve, or at least moderate, the global overpopulation problem.”
“In America, it served a dual purpose. It was inserted into a control group that could be easily followed and that was a troublesome minority, so data could be obtained on its spread in that community; a cohort group that didn’t seem to be at risk of transmitting it to the general population. Also, though, it was a group that was emerging as a troubling political force based in sexuality — sexuality that was not just dangerous on a political level, but also threatened to undermine the values of conservative America.”
“You’re saying that HIV was deliberately spread in the U.S. to decimate the gay community? And that Africa was some kind of population control exercise?”
“There’s no other explanation for how it was released in both the U.S. and Africa around the same time—”
“Well,” corrected Jeffrey, “it started in Africa first, so that—”
“Is that what you think?” Schmidt chuckled slightly. “Well, of course. That’s what you’ve been told so many times you accept it as fact. But actually, it appeared in Africa after it did in the U.S.” He held up a hand to silence Jeffrey’s objections before continuing.
“And there’s no question that it was released. The explanations about cross-species jumping from monkeys to humans in Africa via bush meat was always ludicrous, and was first advanced by a scientist who falsely claimed to have discovered the virus, and whose staff were later shown to be perpetrators of fraud. It was a stupid theory that stretched the limits of scientific credulousness to new levels, and relied upon hypothesis on top of speculation on top of guess — never mind that AIDS is a disease of the cities in Africa, and hardly ever occurs in the bush, where bush meat is made and consumed. But it was a convenient bit of theater that took the focus off a lab-created possibility.”
The German stared at a faraway spot on the wall for a moment, and then returned to the discussion as though he hadn’t missed a beat. “Through repetition, it became the prevailing accepted explanation, which is now trumpeted and repeated as fact — with the original green monkeys now changed to chimps after the Japanese proved that HIV wasn’t closely related to the monkey virus. That HIV came from chimps or gorillas, jumping species in the wild, is repeated like gospel, with the weight of fact. Only it isn’t fact. It’s an invention. A post hoc explanation designed to befuddle and confuse. Because the other explanation is too horrible to contemplate — that factions within the U.S. government singled out whole populations based on race or sexuality, and earmarked them as expendable, part of a big experiment that was both financially and ideologically driven.” Schmidt glowered at Jeffrey, and then a tight smile cracked his sagging face.