A biowarfare scientist with a link to Dr. David Kelly died unexpectedly at home last Sunday.

[GliderGuider]

His name was Jonathan Tucker. Like Kelly, he was a biological weapons expert.

Biological, chemical weapons expert dead

WASHINGTON, Aug. 4 (UPI) -- The body of Jonathan B. Tucker, an expert on biological and chemical weapons, was found in his home in Washington, D.C., officials said. The District's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said the cause of death was so far unknown, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

Tucker's body was found July 31. He was 56.

Tucker was often turned to as a source for journalists writing about biological and chemical weapons.

Tucker served as a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq in 1995 and used his knowledge of Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons program to advise the U.S. government before its invasion of Iraq in early 2003.

His link to Dr. Kelly is mentioned in a comment here:

The Victoria Roddam emails

One of the contacts David Kelly gives Victoria Roddam is Jonathan Tucker at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.(Mai Pederson was attached to the Defense Language Institute in the same town)

Jonathan Tucker gives an interesting interview with CNN on 21 July 2003.
He has recently written on gene synthesis regulation

In the emails with Roddam, Kelly gives Tucker's name as a "colleague or acquaintance" from the Monterey Institute. It's reasonable to assume that Kelly would have met Tucker when he visited the Institute during his trip to Monterey as part of his conversion to Baha'i.

It's nothing conclusive, but Dr. Tucker is the latest in a long and distinguished line of microbiologists and biowarfare specialists who have died fairly early in life under odd or unexplained circumstances - up to a hundred of them since 1996.

[valerief]

1. Isn't life unusually convenient for the guilty? nt

[Dappleganger]

2. Was he suicided?

[GliderGuider]

3. No cause of death yet. nt

[valerief]

4. Yes, well-off 56-year-olds die of all kinds of crazy things all the time.

Has nothing to do with WMD. (Is the sarcasm tag really needed here?)

[Horse with no Name]

5. It is surreal

but when you pay off law enforcement (on both sides of the pond)...things just get overlooked, darnit.

[hootinholler]

6. Microbiology does seem to be a dangerous occupation.

:shrug:

I wonder if there's a paper akin to the monty python skit "The world's funniest joke."

If it weren't for the documents on the old PNAC website that suggested how useful it would be to target specific genomes with bioweapons, I would pay much less attention to these coincidences.

-Hoot

[GliderGuider]

7. I just finished a Pulitzer-winning book called "Dead Hand"

One of the things it lays out is the Soviet research into genetically-targeted bioweapons. They weren't successful, but genetic engineering has come a loooong way since the 1980s.

One of my biggest nightmares is that every nation with a relatively genetically homogeneous population and a biowarfare capability is probably working on the idea. And if anyone succeeds, they will know a) that it's possible and b) that someone else (possibly an enemy) will eventually succeed. Those two ideas are very powerful motivators for a first strike.

[hootinholler]

10. The PNAC did not couch the notion in a defensive posture...

When I read it, I immediately thought about genocide of entire ethnic groups, something which the teabaggers could get behind for sure.

-Hoot

[GliderGuider]

12. There is no defensive justification for biowarfare, period.

The problem is, biowarfare development is so cheap to do and so easy to conceal. Even if there's an an accidental release it's easy to cover up - the Soviets successfully denied the 1979 Sverdlovsk anthrax leak as food contamination for many years.

If someone develops an effective genetically targeted microbe, I would expect the geopolitical calculus to support an immediate first strike. If these "Microbiologist Murders" are more than a statistical chimera, I would expect to find programs like that driving them.

[hootinholler]

13. No I mean that they spoke about it as a useful thing

Rather than something that needs study so it can be defended against, which is the entire justification of our Bio war program.

I totally agree that there is zero justification (maybe negative) for NBC warfare.

-Hoot

[woodsprite]

8. I googled Jonathan B Tucker and John P. Wheeler III

Wheeler was the guy they found in the dump in DE. I know - tin foil hat - but they both served on the Council for Foreign Relations and may have other connections. Just something to look at.

[GliderGuider]

9. I wonder how much there is to these connections. I have to admit

As I Google into various clusters of unexplained deaths, my hair stands up and I get a bit nervous. There are so many of them with links back to intelligence/security/governmental activities in one way or another. Just coincidences, right?

[Pooka Fey]

11. Holy shit. n/t