As I was sorting through my books earlier this year, identifying a tiny percentage to keep while recycling the great majority of them, one slender volume caught my eye:
"Clouds of Secrecy: The Army's Germ Warfare Tests Over Populated Areas" by Leonard A. Cole, a bioterrorism expert.and author based at Rutgers.
I reviewed Cole's book for The New York Times when it appeared in 1988. His work was based on previously classified material that documented how the U.S. government deliberately exposed our population to viruses on a mass basis to gauge how vulnerable this country could be should an enemy launch a bioterrorism attack.
At the time, it was a shocking revelation, though the context included other government-sanctioned experiments such as administering LSD to unsuspecting American citizens.
These dark chapters in our government's history remain somewhat shrouded in mystery; any conscientious person wold hope such episodes ended log ago.
The problem is that ours is not the only government capable of this kind of abhorrent behavior. China's government certainly is. Might there be bioterrorism labs say in the Wuhan region of China? I do not know.
I want to be crystal clear and explicit here about what I am proposing. I am *not* suggesting that COVAD-19 is the result of a rogue government experiment somewhere in the world. I have no evidence of that and frankly I doubt it is the case.
But to ignore history is to risk repeating it -- a cliche that like many cliches has more than a germ of truth.
What I am proposing is that journalists with sources in the military and intelligence agencies should dig into the hypothesis that COVAD-19 may have been tested by governments as a possible agent for germ warfare.
The cover story for such experimentation is always to help a nation to prepare its defenses against attack. But when it comes to a runaway virus that spreads throughout the human population, there is no defense.
It can't be stopped.
I've been dismissive in my essays of the 30 percent of the American population who believe that COVAD-19 was created in a lab. That's because I hate conspiracy theories -- they are the opposite of what I believe journalism should be -- they are preposterous fictions that feed on fear and paranoia.
We are seeing the worst of fear and paranoia swirling around this pandemic, as demagogues exploit the moment in a quest to consolidate their power and manipulate vulnerable populations.
Yet that cannot prevent us, as journalists, from checking out every lead, however tenuous, about what is actually happening here.
As far as I can tell, scientists have no concrete evidence on why this particular virus suddenly and virulently attacked us. Millions of people have become sick and many have died. It seems clear that the pandemic has not yet run its course.
If there is any evidence that something untoward is afoot here, it remains confined to the classified realm of information. It would take an exceptionally brave whistle-blower to come forward and disclose such information.
This has all happened before, of course, in the U.S.,with the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, and the germ warfare tests described by Professor Cole.
I desperately hope this is not one of those scandals, that in fact COVAD-19 will be found to have mutated in the natural progression of things as the world's creatures, including the tiniest ones, continue the unending battle of survival of the fittest.
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In the meantime, and hoping we do not have to wait decades to learn the truth, this pandemic continues to bring out the best in people. In San Jose and elsewhere, people are putting home-made paper hearts in their windows. Out for daily walks, maintaining social distance and other protocols such as face coverings, children including my grandsons in San Jose, are counting those hearts.
The very best of our spirit is our compassion for one another. Some are old, some are young; some are weak, some are strong; some have vast resources while others have none. But we are all suffering a common fate, one way or another.
Stories reach me every day of people helping each other -- sharing garden foods, baked bread, supplies, masks, and the all-important sense of hope.
This too shall pass; we know that. And our bonds will grow stronger as a result.
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