"Man to Man is so unjust. You never know just who to trust."
Bob Marley, Who Da Cap Fit

Part 3 of a series excerpted from the Conscious Rasta Report entitled
HIGH CRIMES OF MURDER (©1998/$10.00)
Footnoted documentation can be found on page 76 of the report.
(Take me to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 of "The CIA & Reggae)

DID THE CIA CAUSE MARLEY'S DEATH IN 1981 FROM CANCER? Since Bob Marley's death in 1981 from melanoma cancer there has been a swirl of speculation that his political enemies induced the disease. Among those who were close to him during his lifetime there is divergence on whether this is a fact or not. While I cannot say definitively whether or not Bob Marley was the victim of a murder plot that involved cancer, I can point to indicators that would hold out the very real possibility that it could have been so.

In a murder case where direct, concrete evidence of guilt is absent, a good prosecutor must establish three things in order to secure a conviction: 1) motivation, 2) capability and 3) opportunity. As revealed throughout this chapter, the motivation for removing Bob Marley and Peter Tosh from the international political scene is incontestable. They had become revolutionary cultural icons whose profound influence on young people worldwide had presented a direct challenge to the self-interests of the Western security establishments.

For evidence of the capability of inducing cancer by method of injection or other means of directly introducing cancer into an individual, we again can look to America's secret defense establishment for what could be considered clear cut evidence of the desire to develop such a capability. Among our favorite research journals is CovertAction Quarterly. The Winter 1991-92 issue featured an exposé written by Richard Hatch entitled "Cancer Warfare." In the article, Hatch examines the history of research into possibly cancer-causing agents during the years immediately after then-President Richard Nixon's 1969 order to halt U.S. offensive weapons research and stockpiling of biological warfare (BW) agents. The government extracted big propaganda over the destruction of the Army's BW stocks of toxins, viruses and bacteria that had been developed as weapons of mass destruction. Less-known at the time was that certain of the stored materials, along with a number of BW researchers, went to work for other branches of the government, including the CIA and the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The NCI, a wing of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), subsequently embarked upon "a highly politicized public relations effort" as part of Nixon's "War on Cancer." According to Hatch's article, the "stated aim of the program was to organize experiments aimed at finding cancer-causing viruses." Hatch described the program as such:

Potentially cancer-causing viruses were collected, grown in huge amounts, and distributed through the VCP; thousands of animals were infected experimentally, and the aerosol distribution of carcinogenic viruses was studied.

As a key component of the NCI's Viral Cancer Program (VCP), the government enlisted the assistance of what Hatch calls "The Military-University Complex." Chief among the numerous universities which became a part of this vast pseudo-biowarfare network are some of this country's most prestigious research colleges including Johns Hopkins University, University of Maryland, University of Minnesota, Ohio State University and UC Berkeley (which helps manage the U.S. Naval Biosciences Laboratory). Some of this university-based research is quite alarming in its broad implications. Hatch continues:

While UC Berkeley appears to have been at the heart of aerosol BW research, it was by no means alone. Other Universities collaborated with the BW effort while working on the VCP in parallel. From 1955 to 1965, the Ohio State University College of Medicine conducted research for Fort Detrick into the aerosol transmission of BW agents including tularemia and Q fever. In some of these studies, prisoners from the Ohio State Penitentiary were used as guinea pigs. Between 1952 and 1969, the affiliated Ohio State University Research Foundation had eight contracts with the U.S. Army for BW research. [Tularemia ("rabbit fever") and Q fever were ultimately stockpiled by the U.S. Army.]

Before he worked with UC, Dr. [Alfred] Hellman supervised an NCI contract for Ohio State University. Designed to study the aerosol transmission of cancer-causing viruses, this research started in 1965 and continued at least until 1972. The principal investigator for this work, Dr. Richard Griesemer, would eventually succeed in giving tumors to mice and monkeys.

If the aforementioned success of Richard Griesemer is accurate, we could determine that at least 9 years before Bob Marley's death to melanoma cancer, the capability of induced cancer in laboratory animals is reported to have been a fate accompli.

In addition, there was cooperation between the military research community and numerous corporations, including two major defense biosciences contractors: Charles Pfizer & Co. and Litton-Bionics. A number of notable researchers evolved from this network, some of which are associated with some of America's more sinister and secretive research. These include: Robert Gallo (NCI), Jack Gruber (NIH), Alfred Hellman (US Air Force), James Duff (US Army), Richard Griesemer (Department Of Energy-the agency exposed in 1993 for its involvement in widespread human radiation experiments) and Seymour Kalter (NCI). Throughout my extensive research into some of the greatest conspiracies of our time, certain of these names appear in the midst of some disturbing activities.

It serves us well to remember the names of such individuals and to remain vigilant to their activities In addition, this secret research into cancer-causing agents partially overlapped with the CIA's projects MK-ULTRA (covert human experimentation with psychedelic drugs and "other chemical agents") and MK-NAOMI (the agency's managing of biological toxins and diseases, some of which, as revealed in congressional hearings, were utilized in attempted assassinations of foreign leaders). This becomes highly relevant when we consider that it is the CIA that is most suspected as having a clandestine influence in the lives and deaths of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh.

In so far as the opportunity to have attacked Bob Marley with a potentially cancer-causing agent, there has been speculation that, during the time Marley was initially being treated for the foot injury which is believed to be the beginning of the cancer in his body, Bob was given some kind of an injection by a French doctor. Later Marley did travel to the Federal Republic of Germany to undergo radical naturopathic cancer treatments by one Bavarian Dr. Issels, who is revealed to have had former Nazi SS and intelligence connections. This area of research remains somewhat vague on Marley's life.

Six years following the death of Bob Marley, the murder of reggae's then most powerful voice, Peter Tosh took place. Shortly after settling a protracted lawsuit against his distributor, EMI Records, for unreported foreign sales, Tosh was gunned down in an "apparent robbery." The beloved reggae superstar was killed along with 2 others, Jamaican Broadcasting Corporation deejay Jeff "Free-I" Dixon and Wilton "Doc" Brown, on Friday September 11, 1987 in Kingston, Jamaica. The third surviving member of the original Wailers triumvirate, Bunny Livingston, has lived in virtual rural isolation since Bob was still alive.

In the wake of the deaths of Bob and Peter, a new set of Jamaican reggae artists has risen to prominence whose ideologies run counter to the revolutionary music of the Wailers and their contemporaries. Chief among these include Yellowman (described by noted reggae historian L.A.-based Rojah Stephans as a "salacious, foul-mouthed rapper"), Shaggy, Shabba Ranks and grind-queen Patra, nearly all of whose artistic merits center around their own sexual prowess. As Rojah Stephans explained on a recent television program, even if the CIA wasn't directly responsible for the deaths of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, the shift in cultural focus of reggae music since these men's deaths has accomplished the very goal of Western intelligence establishments.

(Take me to Part 5 of "The CIA & Reggae")