It was a particularly windy and wet spring of 1993 according to many residents of the Four Corners area, which includes the states of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. The sprawling Navajo Indian Reservation sits on much of this beautiful land . Also, situated right in the heart of the Navajo Nation is the now de-commissioned army-munitions base, Fort Wingate, just 30 miles east of Gallup, New Mexico.

However, 1993's spring weather blew in much more than was expected this particular season, especially in eastern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico. The dry, arid and sparsely populated land became front-page news locally and around the world in April of 1993 when the first victims, a young Navajo woman and then her fiance'e, died of what was called at first a mysterious flu-like illness. What would happen from April, the time of the first death, to July of 1993 when the epidemic subsided considerably, would become a nightmare for all who lived in the area, but especially for the Navajo people.

Mindless reporters called it the "Navajo Flu" or the "Navajo Disease." The Navajo Reservation was inundated with reporters from all over the United States, often treading on sacred property and asking questions, prying into the lives of a proud and private peoples. What could possibly be causing normally healthy individuals to die within days of contacting this mysterious virus? Why did it so quickly strike down Merrill Bahe, a Navajo Indian track star at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe?

These questions and many more linger in the minds of not only those families touched by the tragedy but also in the minds of many concerned citizens who don't believe the official version of the epidemic as propagated by the media as well as the medical and military establishment. The answers, as in many publicized cases of mysterious deaths like the Legionnaires' disease case in Philadelphia in the late '70s, are proving to be elusive.

THE EPIDEMIC'S TOLL

By the end of the summer of 1993 13 people had died from this mysterious illness, which featured symptoms of fever, headache and cough, myalgias (tenderness or pain in the muscles) followed by rapid respiratory failure. The illness occurred predominantly in young, previously healthy persons. It took on the average from 12 hours to several days for the people to succumb from the illness.

By the end of the year 27 people, some not in the Four Corners area, had died from this mysterious illness. Once intense protest from the Navajo Tribal Council forced the local and national press to rename the epidemic, the disease then became called "The Mystery Illness", "Four Corners Disease" or the medical term for such similar cases, ARDS (Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome).

The investigation began locally, at the spot where the first people died, the Indian Medical Center in Gallup, which is run by the Indian Health Service, a part of the U.S. government Health Department. In fact, the first two deaths might have never been reported if the victims were not brought into the government-funded health center as the Navajo Nation is sovereign and self-governing and does not have to report deaths on Indian land to the Office of the Medical Investigator. Then, officially, the New Mexico State Department of Health (NMDH) in cooperation with medical laboratories at the University of New Mexico got involved when they announced on May 28th that they had discovered this new epidemic. Soon after, the presence of a new entity arrived in force in New Mexico to take over the investigation, the Centers for Disease Control for Infectious Diseases (CDC), based in Atlanta, Lucida Grande.

Press conferences were held daily at the New Mexico Department of Health Building in Santa Fe starting on May 30th with both national and local media in attendance. State epidemiologist Dr. Mark Sewell announced at the first press conference that the investigation was in the beginning stages and that much data needed to be acquired. Only five days later on June 4th, according to the CDC at a press conference at the New Mexico Department of Health, the cause of the disease was announced as being caused by the Hantavirus, an Arbovirus of the family of Bunya virus..

The hantavirus that killed the first 13 people was now officially called by the CDC the "Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome" (HPS). The CDC told the public that the disease was a deadlier form of the Haantan Virus, a virus named after the Haantan River where it was discovered in South Korea in the 1950s. The hantavirus was also called Hemorrhagic Fever with Renal Syndrome (HFRS), Epidemic Hemorrhagic Fever (EHF), Congo Fever and many others. It affected many U.S. soldiers in Korea during the war. The CDC said that it was being carried and spread here by the deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus). Humans, the first reports said, got the new strain of the hantavirus by breathing in the dried feces of the deer mouse.

Due to the heavy rainfall and bumper pinon crops, the CDC said, there was also an overabundance of deer mice. The proposed theory was that spring cleaning and other household chores caused these people to die when they inhaled these mice droppings.

Native American traditions also began playing a part in this scenario as Navajo medicine men were quoted in newspaper stories connecting mice with disease on the reservation. When CDC researchers first appeared on the reservation, traditional healers, or hataalis, quickly alerted them to the presence of burgeoned rodent populations following a mild, wet winter. Immediately, the CDC in cooperation with the local health authorities began disseminating information on how to avoid contact with mice feces.

The epidemic decreased rapidly in July of 1993. As of April of 1994, according to the New England Journal of Medicine, 53 cases of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome in 14 states had been confirmed. More cases have been cited by the CDC later in 1994, seemingly about one every two or three weeks, even widening the disease-map boundary.

According to the latest statistics released on August 15, 1994, the CDC said that a "total of 83 cases of Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome were identified in the United States. The mortality rate was 54 percent and 96 percent of the case involved people west of the Mississippi" (Albuquerque Journal, August 15, 1994). The Journal article also mentioned that the virus had been renamed Muerto Canyon Virus and that the CDC had proposed it to be renamed Sin Nombre Virus.

THE FIRST THEORY

The key to CDC's theory was that the hantavirus was a much more potent strain of the original Haantan Virus. The public was told to believe that these people fell victim to a suddenly new version of what were being called a newer more deadlier class of viral mutations. Everyone was told by June 5th that the CDC had "found evidence of antibody proteins directed against the virus in the blood of three of the survivors of the illness. The patients had begun generating the antibodies in large quantities days after falling ill, indicating their immune system were trying to fend of the pathogen" (New York Times June 5, 1993).

The article also explained that the CDC had found the antibodies in the autopsy material of several people who died from the disease. Without any meaningful questions from the local media about the speed with which the CDC came up with a cause, that hantavirus became the "official" explanation. Explanations also were also tossed out by other theorists of the CDC and other virus specialists that many new viruses were emerging from the shadows around the world caused by such things as overpopulation and destruction of the rainforests.

PUBLIC DOUBTS

No matter what the CDC was calling it, doubts about this epidemic arose with both professional and public citizens of New Mexico and elsewhere. However solid the pitch made by the CDC, Governor Bruce King and University of New Mexico medical researchers, there were lingering doubts to what was being sold to the public as the cause. The first sign of doubt came from the far too little criticism or skepticism from the mainstream media. It started to look like maybe the victims were pawns in a much larger game.

Many concerned citizens like this writer and other alternative media (most notable radio stations KUNM-FM in Albuquerque and KSFR-FM in Santa Fe) representatives who attended the official press conferences at the New Mexico Department of Health were some of the first to notice a concerted effort to cover up any serious investigation of the epidemic.

Reporters and investigators witnessed a major sign of impropriety and possible cover-up when all questions about the hantavirus directed at the New Mexico Department of Health were being re-routed to John McKean, Press Secretary of Governor King. The major concern of the state government seemed to be whether tourism would be affected. Most of the doubts from investigators were being aimed directly at the CDC. Which is not unusual considering the lack of public faith in anything our government tells us is true.

The CDC, after all, took over the investigation swiftly and within 19 days of the first death, putting the finger on a newly discovered and more deadly strain of the hantavirus. And, most glaringly, with the news that the CDC was blaming it on a mutation of the original Haantan Virus.

Many suspicions immediately rose because of a difference of symptoms from the original hantavirus and what was happening in the Four Corners. The original Haantan Virus finished off its victims with internal hemorrhaging that ended in renal (kidney) failure. This contradicted the fact that the Four Corners victims died of hemorrhaging in the lungs.

These facts and other questionable research conclusions by the CDC, which are discussed later in the article, have led many to question an ulterior motive for the CDC in naming the cause of the virus and their attempts to rule out any other possibilities. Many more doubts would come later; most of them would surround the possibility of a possible cover-up of classified military operations in the area and a possible biological warfare-research connection.

Also, reports came out of the closing and decommissioning of Fort Wingate and possible accidental spills of biological weapons, notably anthrax, which had been stored there for many years. Nationally, other views and opinions were expressed in the underground press, which ranged from the possible to the absurd, everything from "secret government" or "military bio-warfare" conspiracies involving military testing on human subjects of new, more deadly strains of the hantavirus and other unknown bacteria to one proposed by Richard Hoagland (Monument on Mars researcher) and his belief that the epidemic was caused by a biological warfare agent genetically engineered to kill American Indians.

Also when it was discovered, thanks to a January 27, 1993, article by Jim Wolfe in the Salt Lake City Tribune, "Army Resumes Biological Warfare Tests At Dugway (Proving Ground) After 10-Year Cessation," that the US Army had resumed open-air biological warfare testing across the border in Utah, didn't alleviate further suspicions. All in all, things just didn't add up to a solid cut-and-dried case. Given the history of the government's involvement with the AIDS controversy, the infamous Legionnaires' Disease case in Philadelphia in which the CDC was also involved, the military's continual denial and cover-up of the effects of Agent Orange sprayed in Vietnam, and the Gulf War illnesses that veterans of that conflict have been getting and the military's history of testing biological warfare agents, drugs like LSD in the MK-Ultra program of the Ô60s and effects of radiation on unsuspecting human beings, made this issue.

A CONCERNED CITIZEN AND M.D. SPEAKS OUT

One of the first concerned citizens of New Mexico to raise a cautionary flag about the actual cause of the death of the victims was Santa Fe physician, Dr. Matthew Kelly. A general practitioner, Kelly became interested in the mysterious illness not only because of the news reports but a rise in some of his own patients' respiratory problems that spring. He began attending the news conferences, which were being held almost daily at the New Mexico Department of Health Building in Santa Fe with Bill Dunning, the program director at Santa Fe's Community College radio station KSFR-FM.

There were even KSFR-FM "Roundtable" radio programs that involved discussion of the epidemic. Dr. Kelly, who has written a well-researched and documented, but as-yet unpublished, article entitled, "An Epidemic of Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome in the Southwestern United States: A Challenge to the Official Explanation", is an outspoken critic of the official explanation.

"I looked at this whole thing first from a journalistic point of view because I was interested in getting more talk on KSFR as well as being interested at what was happening,'' Dr. Kelly said from his office during a recent interview. ''The first key, for me as a doctor, however, was that there were no pulmonary symptoms (coughing and lung-hemorrhaging difficulties) in the many documented cases of the original hantavirus, yet this was the final cause of death in these people who died in the Four Corners area."

Kelly says in his research paper, "This New Mexico/Arizona epidemic does not resemble the hantavirus syndrome. Hemorrhage is not a common problem and the kidneys are not involved. This epidemic is dominated by the sudden onset of lung failure, but the hantavirus has rarely caused pulmonary problems."

Kelly is backed up by many articles on the Four Corners disease in publications ranging from Scientific Review, Science, Discovery to Time and Newsweek. "The CDC says that there are 50,000 cases per year of people who die from unexplained respiratory disease (Science Magazine)," Kelly said. " The point I'm making is that it's conjecture, on technical grounds, that a hantavirus would do something like this. As a physician, I would have wanted a lot more information on what kind of ARDS this was. The outbreak of something this deadly in such a sparsely populated area was also highly unusual." Kelly pointed to the map that was distributed by the New Mexico State Health Department on where the people died.

To this day, Kelly believes that the deaths were caused by anthrax. "As a physician, and from reading about anthrax and other ARDS-type diseases, it began to look more like anthrax poisoning than anything else," Kelly said. "My suspicion is that it was probably an accidental release of some sort in or around Ft. Wingate." Dr. Kelly even began conducting his own independent research to see if he could find some evidence of anthrax poisoning. He had one patient who swore he got sick after flying into Window Rock Airport.

"The frustrating thing about trying to do my own research into this was when I thought about trying to get some anthrax antibodies out of some patients who also complained about respiratory problems that spring. I found out that you simply cannot get testing done on anthrax antibodies by any local or state laboratories. There are no independent laboratories who can do it. You must submit your tissue samples to the CDC I find that amazing and highly suspicious."

Kelly also observed the suspicious behavior by public health officials at the news conferences. "What I saw at the news conferences was the CDC throwing its weight around," Kelly said. "I asked Max Sewell of the New Mexico State Health Department if it was a biological weapons test or accident, could you tell us. He assured us that he himself didn't have a clearance."

ANTHRAX AND BIO-WARFARE ACCIDENTS

Anthrax, according to Dr. Kelly's research paper, is an infection described by ancients, with many manifestations. The bacteria was first isolated by Robert Koch in 1877, and was the first infection to fulfill his Nobel Prize-winning (1905) postulates.

"The skin is the most common site of infection of anthrax, and the disease is life threatening and disabling. But the most dangerous site of anthrax infection is through the lungs." This kind of inhalational anthrax is called wool sorter's disease and attacks the lungs causing acute respiratory failure. Anthrax has also been used to create a popular and deadly biological weapon. The bacteria "Bacillus Anthracis" is strong, easy to cultivate, store and disseminate.

Kelly cites the case of an anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk, Russia, in April 1979, at first denied by Soviet government officials, but later determined to be caused by a biological weapons accident at an area laboratory. "A notable part of the Russian epidemic was the extent of the denial by officials that there had been an epidemic at all, and then the extent of the cover-up of the exact nature of the accident that caused the epidemic," Kelly said. Science Magazine ran an article "Sverdlovsk: Anthrax Capital?" in it's March 19, 1988, issue in which the first detailed pathological evidence that the "lethal agents indeed were inhaled (as from a military aerosol)."

Kelly believes that the Fort Wingate scenario of a toxic spill of anthrax is a much more likely scenario for what happened in the Four Corners area. "Look at the map of the area,'' Kelly notes. "It's right in the middle of where the deaths occurred. When I began hearing about KGAK-AM radio reports of the cleanup and de-commissioning of Ft. Wingate and reading the New Mexico magazine article about the closing as well as hearing rumors of a helicopter accident at Ft. Wingate in January, I began thinking that this might be the cause of this."

FT WINGATE

Kelly's suspicions about the possible involvement of Fort Wingate, located just east of Gallup, arose from the proximity of the base to the location of the people who died from the epidemic. Fort Wingate began as a cavalry post in 1860 to keep the Navajo Indians under control. Since World War I until it was recently closed, Fort Wingate was a US Army munitions-storage depot. There are 731 buildings, which were filled with all types of weapons. There are 70 miles of roads leading to these weapon warehouses. The US Army, to this day, denies that any biological weapons were stored there, although it was common knowledge that the Fort was involved in chemical and biological weapon storage (Scientific American November 1993).

According to an Albuquerque Journal article of April 4, 1992, there is a large contaminated area within the post, but the nature of the contamination is not available to the public. The base was officially closed in January of 1993. Reports, although still unconfirmed, that there was a major spill during the base closing of some toxic biological warfare weapon material.

Dr. Kelly points out in his research paper that, "Many involved with the closing felt that it (the closing) had been done too rapidly, and public health safeguards became lax. There was a spill of a large amount of toxic materials during the closing. At the news conference of June 4, 1993, Dr. Norton Kalishman verified that the State Health Department's investigation of a spill of toxic materials at Fort Wingate had 'gone forth.' The exact dialogue was: Reporter: Are you investigating the reported leaks of toxic materials from Fort Wingate? Kalishman: That effort has gone forth, the contacts have been made. Obviously all information isn't available, but once you get this kind of lab result we're trying to move forward."

This information was never investigated further by anyone in the local press or any further reports published about this possibility. Nor was any evidence presented to back up the claims by the US Army that no spill had indeed taken place. The windy conditions of the spring of 1993, based on the proximity of the base to where the people died, raises instant suspicions about a possible military accident and subsequent cover-up.

THE HANTAVIRUS EXPLANATION And How The CDC Came up with It.

How did the CDC come up with the new hantavirus explanation? Were they given a perfect cover by the Navajo medicine men when they told the first CDC researchers that it was probably due to the mice and the increase of mice and pinon crop due to the wet spring? Dr. Kelly's biggest suspicion of the CDC's explanation is how they came about determining that it was conclusively the hantavirus. Dr. Kelly pointed out that he picked up a lot of clues of a cover-up from the New England Journal of Medicine's extensive article in their April 7, 1994, issue entitled "Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome: A Clinical Description Of 17 patients With A Newly Recognized Disease."

"In the description of their methods of testing it reads, 'Serum samples were tested for antibodies against a panel of heterologous hantaviral antigens and tissue samples were tested for evidence of hantavirus infection by means of the polymerase chain reaction in frozen lung-tissue specimens or immune-histo-chemical straining of formalin-fixed specimens.'" "But the key is the words in "CDC unpublished data".

"Again this same scenario shows up later in the article when they quote, 'An immunohistochemical analysis revealed widespread endothelial distribution of viral antigen in the lungs, kidneys, heart, pancreas, adrenal glands and skeletal muscle once again tagged with 'CDC unpublished data'.' My question is why isn't this published? This is the most significant data that should be made to outside scientists to determine if this thing called the hantavirus really was the cause." How are viruses determined to be the cause of death in epidemics like this?

Dr. Kelly pointed out that there is a universal standard for determining the causes of epidemics. It's called Koch's Postulates, from the man who discovered anthrax. "Epidemic diseases like typhoid, influenza and tuberculosis were thought to be from all manner of causes, but we know now they are caused by infectious organisms that people acquire from their environment. This was elucidated by Edward Koch (1843-1910), working with anthrax. We still use Koch's postulates today as the standard of causality of infectious disease. Koch received the Nobel prize in 1905 for this work."

Koch's postulates are:

1. The parasite occurs in every case of the disease in question and under circumstances that can account for the pathological changes and clinical course of the disease.

2. It occurs in no other disease as a fortuitous and nonpathogenic parasite.

3. After being fully isolated from the body and repeatedly grown in pure culture, it can induce the disease anew. "We are a long way from fulfilling Koch's Postulates and therefor we have not established that this epidemic is caused by hantavirus," Dr. Kelly said.

"The hantavirus explanation appeared less than three weeks after the epidemic was noted, and that suggests that this interpretation was a political response to a medical problem." As well as Dr. Kelly's questions about the hantavirus, there was evidence that there were other military health officials who couldn't believe that it was a mutant strain of hantavirus that was causing all of the damage.

Natalie Angier's story in the New York Times (June 5, 1993) raised serious doubts about the CDC's findings. "Some scientists who study hantaviruses, while express interest in the latest results, said that they have yet to be persuaded. Nobody would be more surprised than me if this turns out to be a hantavirus," said Dr. Connie Schmaljohn, chief of molecular biology at the United States Army Medical Research of Infectious Diseases at Fort Dietrick, Maryland. "We've isolated this virus all over the country from rodents, but it's never been associated with acute disease here. I still have my doubts."

"In earlier work different strains of hantaviruses had been detected in rats and mice in Baltimore, Houston, New Orleans, Philadelphia and several other areas," said Dr. George W. Korch, chief of rapid diagnosis at the Fort Dietrick center. But to my knowledge they've never been found before in the southwest. Nor has any type of hantavirus been associated with the most outstanding symptom seen in the latest epidemic, in which the lungs fill up with fluid, causing death by asphyxiation."

Also, according to the New England Journal of Medicine article, only "30 to 40 percent of patients who contacted the original form of hantavirus had minimal illness, and in only 20 to 30 percent is the illness moderate or severe. Respiratory symptoms are generally not pronounced, and pulmonary involvement has not been a prominent feature of the known hantaviral syndromes. Several species of rodents in the US have been shown to be infected with hantaviruses. Although seroprevalence studies have detected antibodies to hantaviruses in a small percentage of people in the US, there were no reports of acute illness resulting from hantavirus infections acquired in North America before the outbreak of cases described in this report."

Just these facts alone would raise a red flag upon any serious investigation of an illness, yet the public was told that the CDC had solid facts supporting their conclusions. The level of this outbreak, the speed by which it struck and the sudden decrease of cases immediately after the initial outbreak have given skeptics much more ammunition for doubt. The CDC explains in every article written about the subject that the only firm data they have was detecting antibody proteins directed against the virus in the blood of three survivors of the illness. The patients, the CDC said, began generating the antibodies in large quantities days after failing ill, indicating their immune systems were trying to fend off the pathogen.

First of all, all autopsies were performed by the CDC on 9 of the 13 deceased patients at the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator. Autopsies were performed in 12 patients elsewhere and the histopathological findings reviewed at the CDC. Most interestingly, all of this data is classified and stored on Epi-Info 5.01 system at the CDC and the World Health Organization computers in Atlanta (New England Journal of Medicine). None of this information has ever been made public.

(END of Pt. 1)

"Deadly Deceit"

Pt. 2 (Feb. 1995)

QUESTIONS PERSIST OVER DEADLY EPIDEMIC

This story is a follow-up to the original Crosswinds investigation (October 1994), which explored alternative explanations for the hantavirus.

By Dwight Loop

Developing a plausible explanation for the mysterious hantavirus has remained an elusive quest for medical researchers. While most remain confident that the official diagnosis for the hantavirus, now renamed the Sin Nombre Virus (No Name), is a respiratory ailment linked to mouse droppings, enough skepticism is emerging from informed sources to continue to cast severe doubts.

While most of the New Mexico press remains wedded to the official story line, recent articles appearing in Scientific American and letters to the New England Journal of Medicine and the Lancet Journal reveal that, as least for some, the official diagnosis rests on shaky evidence.

Now nearly two years after the mysterious illness swiftly killed 13 victims in the Four Corners region within a few days in 1993, and with a total 101 cases in 23 states attributed to Sin Nombre, the lack of hard medical evidence remains frustrating for both researchers and those who criticize the CDC for grasping at fast and flimsy answers.

Particularly challenging in this instance is that the type of illness that caused the deaths in the Four Corners area, namely Adult Respiratory Disease Syndrome (ARDS), is so prevalent. Over 150,000 people die every year from various respiratory illnesses; of these 50,000 are never properly explained. Therefore, it's no surprise that Sin Nombre would also remain shrouded by shadowy diagnosis.

Contributing to the air of skepticism about official explanations is that most CDC evidence remains unpublished and unavailable to independent researchers. There also remains nettlesome questions about how the known use of Fort Wingate near Gallup for storing bio-warfare weapons may have resulted in an accident while the facility was being decommissioned in the early 1990s. (Confirmation in November by The New York Times of a 1979 epidemic of anthrax in Russia linked to a bio-warfare materials accident has provided further reason for concern.)

THE SKEPTICS

Two important critics of the official dogma are Wilfred F. Denetclaw, a cell biologist, and his wife Tina Harrah Denetclaw, a pharmacologist, both workers at the University of California in San Francisco. The pair wrote two letters that appeared in major scientific journals in the last year, the first in Lancet and the other in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Denetclaw attended the Navajo Community College in Shiprock and received his bachelor's degree from Fort Lewis Collage in Durango, Colorado. Thereafter he studied zoology and cell-development biology at the University of California at Berkeley for his Ph.D. and is currently a post-doctor fellow at the Department of Anatomy at UC San Francisco.

Writing to Lancet, the couple puzzled why, "if this were a new hantavirus strain, why does it produce a disease that differs so greatly from the clinical presentation of other known severe hantavirus infectious? Other hantavirus strains cause severe disease, those found in the USA rarely cause illness." The Denetclaws suggested a far different reason for death in their letter as well. "The rapid onset of HPS and its progression from fast symptoms to death, sometimes within 24 hours, suggests a chemical toxin. Environmental chemical toxins deserve further storage."

Wilfred Denetclaw's skepticism remained intact during a recent telephone interview. For him, the story was close to his heart and home.

"I grew up in the Navajo Reservation and when the outbreak occurred I was concerned for my family's safety," Denetclaw said. "From the friends in the tribe I heard that they were mystified by it all, unable to assess what was going on, there was no education there to understand this kind of research. I at first believed what the CDC was saying, but I decided to see for myself by reading their in-house publication MMWR (Morbidity Mortality Weekly Reports). I didn't believe it (the medical evidence) from the very first reading.

"Like all Navajos, having grown up in an environment with rodents everywhere in the open, nothing like this has ever happened before," he continued. "Many things concerned me, and one of the was the story of the excess rain, which they say caused a larger mouse population as well as the presence of high winds. First of all, New Mexico in the Four Corners Area is not a barren desert. It has lots of vegetation. There is plenty of irrigation going on. A wet year, a dry year the pinon crop--just isn't going to make that much difference. The mice are everywhere and we never saw this kind of thing before. That, in my opinion, is all baloney. Also, if here were so many mice and rats, why weren't there more instances of the plague? The fact that this information was totally ignored by the people investigating it and allowed to stand, I find amazing. There were just too many fast answers."

ELVIS SIGHTED AT FORT WINGATE

Investigative reporter John Hogan's articles about the hantavirus mystery have caused the biggest stir among those supporting the CDC researchers because they've been publishing in the reputable Scientific American magazine.

The first "Were Four Corners Victims Bio-Warfare Casualties-aw?" (October 1993), mentioning possible ties to biological warfare weapons testing as a cause, and the second, "The No-Name Virus-Questions Linger After the Four Corners Outbreak" (December, 1994), noted the many unresolved questions.

The first article triggered a reaction from U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM.) who condemned it as tabloid journalism. Bingaman mocked Horgan saying, "I would suggest that if all of these possibilities (Ft. Wingate bio-warfare connection) are in fact what occurred, we should likewise assume that Elvis is alive and well in one of the abandoned bunkers at Fort Wingate."

During an interview from his home in New York, Horgan expressed his own reasons for skepticism. "I was looking at Fort Dugway in Utah and all of their open air testing, and certainly military involvement in the Four Corners incident didn't seem crazy after what I had found," he said.

"One former congressional staffer told me that Fort Wingate was used periodically as a target for bio-warfare test rockets shot from Fort Dugway in Utah. I also have a letter from the Army concerning the movement of a large shipment of bio-warfare weapons munitions to a base in Mammoth Lake, California fairly soon before the outbreak. That was a big reason to look into this.

"Again, I thought of the history of Fort Dugway, the deceptions that had tone on there and the outdoor experiments. But in this case, there is really no hard evidence, yet on this being the cause of the Four Corners area. It just shows the need for more openness. I think that this biological warfare and weapons stuff should immediately be put under some kind of civilian control."

In the December Scientific American Horgan examined the disputed evidence. "Some victims seen to have contracted the illness after little or no contact with rodent carriers," Horgan writes. "One Rhode Island man who died this past January of HPS was initially thought to have contracted the virus a month earlier while sweeping out a warehouse in Queens, New York. Yet a recent report in the Journal of American Medicine Association noted that none of the rodents trapped in that location or any others where the victim had been during the two months before his death had positive results for hantavirus.

"Laurie R. Armstrong of the CDC recently tested more than 900 pest-control workers and others who frequently handle deer mice and other rodents known to carry hantavirus. Only eight, less than one percent, were positive for Sin Nombre. The CDC has analyzed blood samples taken from some 500 Navajos in the Four Corner Areas before the outbreak. One percent of that group had antibodies to the Sin Nombre Virus, but none of those reported having an illness resembling HPS."

James E. Childs of the CDC acknowledged in Horgan's article that the link between rodents and victims remains unclear. "We do not know why some people become infected and others don't', Childs said.

One of the most disturbing questions for Horgan is that people have exhibited symptoms of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, but showed negative results for the virus. According to Bruce Tempest of the Indian Health Service, at least one such case has occurred recently in New Mexico. Even Clarence Peters, chief of the CDC's hantavirus task force, now confirms that only 25 percent of the cases of suspected HPS reported in the Four Corners area by this past January had been linked to the Sin Nombre Virus.

The University of New Mexico's biological research facility is one of the principal sites of hantavirus investigation. Dr. Frederick Koster, a professor of medicine at UNM, claims medical researchers have made significant progress. "Research on the Sin Nombre virus has shown it is easily detectable now." He said. "I can pick it out easily. As far as being able to grow the virus, two groups at the Army at Fort Dietrick, Maryland have grown the virus and later they did it in the CDC lab."

But has the CDC and UNM been able to do anything other than merely identify this new form of hantavirus, grow it in the lab and give it a name? How could the CDC say, with only this evidence, that it was this hantavirus that caused the deaths?

Koster replied that he agreed "that Koch's Postulates (standards to ascertain a virus) were not fulfilled. "The only way to test his third postulate is to test it on humans and that wouldn't be ethical. I do believe that testing on monkeys is only in the planning stages."

Koster also stated that "we don't know precisely why this hantavirus attacks different organs (than other known hantaviruses) and why they don't attack in the same way as other hantaviruses."

Another UNM researcher, Steven Jenison, has no doubts they have accurately identified the source of the virus. "In terms of what causes the disease," he says, "there's absolutely no question it's coming from the mice." Although he admits they still don't understand how it's transmitted.

Horgan and Denetclaw both cite one intriguing circumstance that has emerged. According to Horgan, "I think that one of the most interesting aspects of this story which hasn't been looked at is the evidence published in Science article in 1993 in reference to the fact that the genetic sequence of the Sin Nombre Virus is near match for the 'Prospect Hill' hantavirus detected in mice in Fredericksburg, Maryland, right next to Fort Dietrick." Fort Dietrick is the site where the nation's most highly toxic biological and chemical weapons were developed and stores.

Horgan claims, "I'm not sure the people at Fort Dietrick would tell you that they're worked on hantaviruses for a long time. I do have some documents on that as well."

Military research of hantaviruses may have a long history. According to a book "Unit 731-Japan's Secret Biological Warfare in World War II" (Free Press, 1989), the authors Peter Williams and David Wallace assert that the Japanese definitively studied the original Haantan Virus in Korea.

FORT WINGATE REVISITED

Fort Wingate, located in the middle of the Navajo Reservation in western New Mexico, was decommissioned as a military base in January 1993, with all 700 of its ammunition bunkers cleaned out and emptied.

Conflicting evidence on Horgan's claim that he has evidence of bio-weapons storage and movement at Fort Wingate comes from Malcolm Walden, the Transition Coordinator for Fort Wingate.

Walden said during a recent interview that "no chemical or biological weapons or radioactive material were removed during the decommissioning of the base. There are hot spots where contamination from munitions as well as asbestos wrapping in pipes, and pesticides, which were used on the rodent population."

Walden was told by the Army that according to an "extensive records research", no chemical or biological weapons were stored at the base. According to Larry Fisher, the Environmental Coordinator of the base closure, "We're still looking at landfills and dong some work on what's been buried for years. The Army records were not very good concerning the ammunition storage. We investigated 40 areas of environmental concern and cleaned up areas that we felt needed to be cleaned up. Some were lead contamination from unexploded ordinances, PDB from a spill near the administration building and the TNT washout facility."

As to possible chemical weapons on the base, Fisher said, "The old-timers will tell you that they used to run mustard gas through on the trains here during the war, but that's about it."

Since the Army did not maintain accurate records of what was stored at Fort Wingate, there remains uncertainty whether chemical or biological weapons were ever stored or passed through the complex. However, a Pentagon report released in 1993 disclosed that 215 sites nationwide, including Fort Wingate, held containers of nerve agents, mustard gas and other chemical weapons.

A NEED FOR BETTER SCIENCE?

With more loose ends than a Sherlock Holmes mystery, no wonder persistent questions refuse to fade away in this case.

Both Horgan and Denetclaw maintain that they don't really know or necessarily think there is a conspiracy by the military to cover up reasons behind the Four Corners outbreak.

"I think the CDC did a lot of good work very fast," Horgan aid. "It's just that they, for whatever reason, might have closed the door a little too fast."

"I originally thought the CDC knew what they were doing, but after reading the material, I wasn't convinced. "Denetclaw said. "I mean, you can show anything you want with those tests. I think that they are holding back information because they can't really show that they have the answers. We (Tina and I) don't believe there is a cover-up because so far there isn't any real evidence of it. They (the CDC) are operating legitimately and there's no linkage as far as we can see. At issue, however, is that we feel the science can be better and we are wondering why it isn't better. The cause and effect, that's our problem here."

Crosswinds Magazine, Santa Fe, NM.

© 2020 Dwight Loop, writer/researcher.