The Why Files: Operation Podcast - 130: The Horrors of Plum Island | Hybrids, Human Experiments and Weaponized Killer Insects

Episode Date: September 29, 2023

In July 2008, the carcass of an animal washed up on the beach at Montauk Point Long Island. Local beachcombers are used to seeing dead animals. Seagulls, fish, crabs, even the occasional whale. But they had never seen anything like this. Animal experts were brought in to identify it. They were stumped. It looked like part dog, part reptile and part rodent - with the beak of a bird. This animal, whatever it was, became known as the Montauk Monster. But where did the Monster come from? There could be only one answer. Plum Island. Plum Island is just a few miles from where the monster was found. Locals had heard rumors that this was a top-secret government facility that created bioweapons, engineered animal hybrids and maybe even experimented on people. Sounds like a wild theory. But then another animal washed up on the beach. Again, it couldn't be identified. And then another animal. And then two more. In 2010, the *rumors* about Plum Island seemed to be true when something else was found on the beach. This time it wasn't a strange animal. It was a body. A human body. Well... it was almost human. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thewhyfiles/support

You sailed beyond the horizon in search of an island scrubbed from every map. You battled krakens and navigated through storms. Your spade struck the lid of a long-lost treasure chest. While you cooked a lasagna. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover best-selling adventure stories on Audible. In July 2008, the carcass of an animal washed up on the beach at Montauk Point, Long Island. Local beachcombers are used to seeing dead animals.

Seagulls, fish, crabs, even the occasional whale. But they had never seen anything like this. Animal experts were brought in to identify it. They were stumped. It looked like part dog, part reptile, and part rodent with the beak of a bird. This animal, whatever it was, became known as the Montauk Monster. But where did the monster come from? There could be only one answer. Plum Island. Plum Island is just a few miles from where the monster was found. Locals heard rumors that this was a top-secret government facility that created bioweapons, engineered animal hybrids, and maybe even experimented on people. Sounds like a wild theory.

But then another animal washed up on the beach. Again, it couldn't be identified. And then another animal. And then two more. In 2010, the rumors about Plum Island seemed to be true when something else was found on the beach. This time it wasn't a strange animal. It was a body. A human body. Well, almost human. Less than two miles off the coast of Long Island and about 85 miles from New York City

is a small island owned by the U.S. government and unidentified on most maps. It's only accessible by ferry or by helicopter, but don't try visiting. Even if you have top-secret clearance, access to Plum Island is invitation only. Boats that wander too close are quickly chased away by armed military personnel. Officially, the island is home to the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, a federal research facility that studies livestock-related diseases, specifically foot and mouth disease and African swine fever. These are highly contagious diseases that affect cows, pigs, sheep, and goats.

The Plum Island Animal Disease Center is the only lab in the U.S. authorized to work with live FMD samples. If these samples escape the island, it could devastate the country's food supply in a matter of weeks. Foot-and-mouth is so contagious that if a single case is found in imported meat, all meat imports from that country are instantly banned. In 2001, the UK had an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease that resulted in a loss of almost $10 billion and the slaughter of more than 6 million animals, whether they were infected or not. The center also studies African and classical swine fevers as well as avian flu. Now, there's no question that since the 1950s, Plum Island has studied diseases that affect livestock. But Plum Island's true history is

much darker. For years, stories circulated that Plum Island was conducting genetic experiments on animals and possibly on people. So when the bodies of strange animals began washing up on beaches around the Long Island Sound, it could mean only one thing. The rumors about Plum Island were true. The Manhattan Monster was found along the East River. Then another creature washed up. And this one kind of looked like a pig, but you don't see a lot of those running around New York City. Besides, pigs have four toes on each foot that ends in a hoof.

The Manhattan Monster's feet had five toes that ended in what looked like claws. Ooh, did it have the body of a crab and the head of a cat? No, it had a... That would be a crab cat. I know, but it... See you in a crab cat! Some thought it could be a huge rat. Now, I'm from New York, and I've seen some huge rats.

Oh, especially under the F train at West 4th Street, eh? They get big down there. But not this big. Plus, rats have four toes on their back feet. Again, this thing had five. Then another unrecognizable animal appeared. Then another. And another.

Plum Island is supposed to be a medical research facility, originally under the purview of the Department of Agriculture. But Plum Island is actually part of Homeland Security. Why? In 2008, an al-Qaeda operative named Ayifa Siddiqui was captured. She was in possession of handwritten notes with possible sites for a mass casualty attack in the United States. One of the sites listed was Plum Island. Again, why? Well, Plum Island research wasn't always about curing diseases. When it opened, Plum Island was about creating them. In 1952, Plum Island was used to research anti-animal biological warfare.

Specifically, it focused on weaponizing foot and mouth disease against enemy livestock to disrupt their food supply. But there's evidence that the bioweapons developed on Plum Island weren't only targeting animals, but targeting humans. In January 2010, a human body was found on Plum Island by a local security guard. It was described as a six foot tall black male with no obvious signs of trauma. But there were a few strange details about this man. One is that his fingers were described as abnormally large.

Some news agencies reported that his hands seemed mutated. But the scariest detail of all, his skull had five holes drilled into it, indicating invasive brain surgery or experimentation. And that's where Plum Island's dark history becomes even darker. Because when the United States wanted to create one of the deadliest germ labs on Earth, it brought in elite personnel to build it. To build Plum Island, the U.S. brought in bioweapon scientists with experience in human experimentation.

To build Plum Island, the U.S. brought in bioweapon scientists with experience in human experimentation to build Plum Island the U.S. brought in the Nazis. Why couldn't the Montauk monster be some critter that they were tinkering with that somehow went into the water and got swept by that outgoing tide? Montauk is south and east of Plum Island, not that far, maybe 10 miles as the crow flies, maybe less even. Why couldn't it be that? Reims Island, Germany is home to the oldest virological institution in the world. Reims was founded in 1910 to research foot and mouth disease, but during World War II, it became ground zero for Hitler's biowarfare program. Reams was run by scientist Erich Traub, who reported directly to

Heinrich Himmler, who reported directly to Hitler. Traub experimented with unique forms of biological warfare. He specialized in biting and stinging insects. He discovered that if you infect beetles and ticks with a deadly disease, you can drop them on enemy troops and theiringing insects. He discovered that if you infect beetles and ticks with a deadly disease, you can drop them on enemy troops and their food supplies. You can devastate an entire army without firing a single shot. Ticks were considered an ideal weapon

for biological warfare. They're small, making them hard to detect. They're resilient, making them hard to kill. And they feed on human blood, making them motivated to spread disease. The tick is the perfect germ vector, which is why it has long been fancied as a germ weapon by early bio-warriors, from Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan to the Soviet Union and the United States.

After the war, there was no Nazi Germany. There was no Empire of Japan. But the Soviet Union and the United States were still very interested in using poison ticks in warfare, except now they would be used on each other. So now the two allies became enemies, and competition for German technology was fierce. The United States launched Operation Paperclip, a secret program that recruited German scientists, engineers, and technicians. The U.S. gave German scientists a choice. Work for us and your war crimes are forgiven. Not a difficult decision

for most. Even if German scientists refused to work for the U.S., they could still find themselves swept up in Operation Osloavikim. This was the Soviet counterpart to Operation Paperclip, but where the U.S. gave scientists a choice, the Soviets took them by force. Eric Traub was one of the scientists forced to work for the Soviets from his lab on Reims Island. But in 1948, British intelligence got him out and brought him to the States. Soon, he was working at Fort Detrick, the Army's biological warfare headquarters. And based on the design of Traub's Island in Germany, the United States built their own lab off the coast of New York. So the Plum Island Animal Disease Laboratory opened its doors

in 1954. A source who worked on Plum Island in the 1950s recalls that animal handlers and a scientist released ticks outdoors on the island. They called him the Nazi scientist. In 1951, they were inoculating these ticks. It would take years before residents in the area would learn what was happening on Plum Island. And when locals found out, tensions were high. Nobody wanted a bioweapons lab in their backyard. Moral issues aside, what if some disease made it to the mainland? After all, about 10 million people live within 100 miles of the island. A lab leak would be catastrophic. But even when the government finally acknowledged the facility, they said that one, it wasn't researching bioweapons, and two, there's no way anything could escape the island. But here's the thing. Those were both lies.

You sailed beyond the horizon in search of an island scrubbed from every map. You battled krakens and navigated through storms. Your spade struck the lid of a long-lost treasure chest. While you cooked a lasagna.

There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover best-selling adventure stories on Audible. You searched for your informant, who disappeared without a trace. You knew there were witnesses, but lips were sealed. You swept the city, driving closer to the truth. While curled up on the couch with your cat. There's more to imagine when you listen.

Discover heart-pounding thrillers on Audible. You sailed beyond the horizon. In search of of an island scrubbed from every map. You battled krakens and navigated through storms. Your spade struck the lid of a long-lost treasure chest. While you cooked a lasagna. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover best-selling adventure stories on Audible. This animal facility, since 1954, when it was actually inaugurated as a biological warfare facility

by Nazi Germany's top germ-wear officer, warfare officer that we secretly imported to the United States. The goal was germ warfare. Is that true? It really was a Nazi, a Nazi ran the place, an ex-Nazi? Yeah, his name was Eric Traub. We can find him in the depths of the National Archives and Record Administration where I found him. In 1971, a mysterious virus began decimating Cuba's pig population, threatening a major food source. Within two years, over 500,000 pigs had died or been slaughtered. The cause was African swine fever, a highly contagious and usually fatal virus.

This was the first and only outbreak of swine fever in the Western Hemisphere. As a result of the epidemic, Cuba was forced to slaughter every pig on the island. How African swine flu got onto the island was a mystery. Well, a mystery to everyone except the Cubans. The Cuban government blamed the United States, specifically the CIA. After all, Operation Mongoose was well known to the Cubans. This was a covert operation initiated by the CIA in the early 1960s. Its primary objective

was to remove Fidel Castro from power. And although they were never implemented, biological weapons were a part of this plan. The CIA had planned to spray botulinum toxin on the island. The justification for this is that it would save the lives of thousands of American soldiers. Cuban civilians wouldn't be so lucky. Botulinum toxin

is one of the most potent toxins on earth. Estimates put the casualty count at somewhere between one and two percent of the Cuban civilian population. We're talking hundreds of thousands dead. Now luckily Operation Mongoose ended and this never came to pass. But when a disease landed on Cuba out of nowhere, all signs pointed to the CIA. In 1977, Long Island newspaper Newsday reported two Cuban exiles admitted they were part of the plot. They said in early 1971, they were part of the plot. They said in early 1971, they were given the virus at Fort Gulick in Panama. They then traveled to Navassa Island near Cuba and smuggled the virus to the island. Now, there is proof that the U.S. Navy

was on Navassa Island in early 1971, but they claim this was a scientific mission. But the science they were researching was looking for animal diseases that could jump to humans. Now that might be a coincidence, but there's only one place in the Western Hemisphere that has live African swine flu. That's Plum Island. And the way African swine flu is transmitted? Through ticks. This was the exact method of biological attack that Eric Traub specialized in. Of course, the CIA

denied all of this, and still does, but it has to. Why does the CIA have to deny this? Well, this attack happened in 1971. President Richard Nixon ordered all bioweapon research to stop in 1969. So there's no way the CIA could have been involved, right? Oh, I know where this is going. But in 1975, a congressional report revealed that the CIA continued to maintain a stockpile of biological weapons, lots of them in violation of the order. The CIA doesn't like to follow orders. No, they don't. And this was a terrifying prospect. Who was in charge of these dangerous bioweapons?

With no oversight, there's a high risk that one of these diseases could infect the population and we'd never see it coming. Turns out, that's exactly what happened. In 1975, Ronnie was working a security detail for a warehouse in Connecticut. During his shift, he walked the building, the parking lot, and the fence around the property. During one of his rounds, he felt a pinch on his ankle.

He was breaking in a new pair of boots, and he knew he'd spend the next few nights nursing sore feet. When he got home, the first thing he did was strip off those damn boots, and sure enough, he had a small red welt on his ankle. When he woke up the next morning, the small red welt had ballooned

into a painful blister shaped like a bullseye. When he rubbed it, he felt a bump. He looked more closely. The bump was a bug, and it was alive. Ronnie grabbed a pair of tweezers, and when he pulled the bug out, it broke apart. A few days later, his joints started to ache, and he felt sick. He thought he had caught the flu, but it wasn't the flu. In 1975, the small town of Old Lyme, Connecticut experienced an outbreak of a devastating new

disease. Some people got rashes, some ran high fevers, others had painful swollen joints. Some people had all these symptoms, as well as headaches, dizziness, and shortness of breath. In severe cases, people were becoming delusional, experiencing psychosis, and becoming paralyzed. At first, doctors misdiagnosed the condition as a type of arthritis. They named it Lyme arthritis after the town that had the first outbreak. Two years later, scientists finally connected Lyme arthritis to the bite of a deer tick.

A type of single-cell bacteria called Borrelia was to blame for what's now known as Lyme disease. As the reports of symptoms came in, these cases were placed on a map. A disturbing picture started to appear. Ground zero was Plum Island. This was another disease spread by ticks. This also has Eric Traub's fingerprints all over it.

But was the outbreak an accident? Or is the government conducting a test on the population without their knowledge? If it was a test, it wouldn't be the first time. In the 1930s, the Tuskegee experiment infected 400 men with syphilis to see how the disease affected black males. They were denied treatment. The U.S. government has infected prisoners with cow blood and exposed people to plutonium. It really was the Kmart of human experimentation from 1951 to 1974.

Operation Sea Spray was a secret test in 1950 where the government dropped bacteria on the entire city of San Francisco. In 1966, the Army released bacteria into the New York subway to simulate a biological attack. Hey, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. Project 112 and Project Shad infected thousands of military personnel with biological agents like BZ and nerve toxins like sarin gas. The tests themselves were a lot of smoke. The planes would let out a, like a smoke or gas type of thing, and it would also cover the ship. The crew was given gas masks and told not to worry.

They were exposed to toxic nerve gas at least 46 times. Nobody knows how many people were killed. The records are still mostly classified. And there are more. Lots more. Tests without consent have been conducted as recently as the 1990s, many involving children.

And that's just what's been exposed. Who knows how many more tests are still classified or if tests are still taking place. We do know that some civilians were exposed in tests that occurred in Hawaii, possibly in Alaska, and possibly in Florida. The military and intelligence community, of course, continue to deny any wrongdoing. They deny that bioweapon research was done at Plum Island, and they deny that Lyme disease was artificially created and released to the public.

But denial is not good enough. We know the CIA and military violate orders time and time again. And we know they lie when they do it. So in 2019, Congressman Christopher Smith from New Jersey proposed an amendment to the 2020 defense bill. For years, Mr. Speaker, books and articles have been written credibly asserting that significant research at Fort Detrick and Plum Island and elsewhere was conducted to turn ticks into bioweapons. Mr. Speaker, with Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases exploding in the United States, an estimated 300,000 to 427,000 new cases each year. And 10 to 20% of those people with chronic Lyme,

Americans have a right to know whether or not any of this is true. But what prompted this? Well, the bacteria that causes Lyme disease is called Borrelia burgdorferi, after Willy Burgdorfer, who discovered it. Now, Burgdorfer was widely known as a leading researcher in the scientific study of insects, and his discovery of Lyme disease was historic. But what's not widely known about Bergdorfer is that early in his career, he developed biological weapons for the U.S. military.

Specifically, he weaponized ticks. And between 1966 and 1969, almost 300,000 research ticks, they got out. Dr. Willie Bergdorfer, the researcher who was credited with discovering Lyme disease, turns out that Dr. Bergdorfer was a bioweapons specialist. The interviews combined with access to Dr. Bergdorfer's files reveals that he and other bioweapons specialists

stuffed ticks with pathogens in a quest to cause disability, disease, and death. You sailed beyond the horizon in search of an island scrubbed from every map. You battled krakens and navigated through storms. Your spade struck the lid of a long-lost treasure chest.

While you cooked a lasagna. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover best-selling adventure stories on Audible. Between 1966 and 1969, government researchers released 300,000 ticks into the wild. The ticks were irradiated so they could be tracked. 300,000 irradiated ticks. What could possibly go wrong? Oh, plenty. One of the species released were Lone Star ticks.

Lone Star ticks are especially aggressive. Most tick species wait for prey by attaching to a blade of grass. When an animal brushes against it, the tick latches on. This is called questing. Lone Star ticks are different. They don't wait. They actively hunt. They can smell the ammonia and sweat and the carbon dioxide from breath.

They're the only ticks with eyes. Unlike other ticks, the L lone star can bite multiple times. Even their young, called nymphs, can feed on humans. Lone star ticks can go months without food. They can absorb water from the air. They can survive underwater. They can be frozen. Female lone star ticks lay hundreds of thousands of eggs at a time.

And scariest of all, Lone Star ticks swarm. They'll ball themselves up in groups of almost 10,000 ticks. And when an animal or person brushes up against a group, it means thousands of tick bites. And these ticks carry a lot of diseases. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Ehrlichiosis, tularemia, heartland virus, and on and on. A bite from a Lone Star tick can even trigger a delayed allergic reaction to meat. That tick bite leads to an allergic response to the alpha-gal sugar that's found in red meat. I wish they would invent a tick that gives you an allergic reaction to fish, huh?

Now, forever, the Lone Star tick was confined to the Southeast United States, but thousands were released in Virginia in the late 1960s. Since then, they've expanded to the entire eastern half of the United States, from Minnesota to Maine, down to Florida, and all the way across Texas. And they're still moving. I was called to investigate an outbreak and I was horrified. I've studied ticks for 10 years and the number of lone star larvae I found was just astonishing. They're everywhere. Every property that we have gone to, we found lone star ticks. They're literally every place. I hope this isn't the new normal, but I fear that they're exploding in numbers. The CDC says alpha-gal syndrome,

traditionally found in mid-Atlantic states, is spreading. 110,000 suspected cases have been identified since 2010, but experts estimate the true number affected is closer to 450,000. Plum Island boasted how it was considered the safest virus lab in the world. Until it wasn't. In 1978, foot and mouth disease did get out. Every animal on the island had to be cremated. But not before lunch. Wait, wait, wait. Did you just say lunch?

Well, hey, even scientists working at a top-secret government germ lab gotta eat. On kill day, the guys upstairs would carve up steaks from sirloins to pork chops, not USDA grade A, but USDA grade V for virus. Everyone, to a man, would deny it. But we did it. We ate the meat. Ugh, I don't feel well. Yeah, not only is it gross to eat meat infected with foot and mouth disease, it's a little irresponsible. Now, FMD isn't dangerous to humans, but this speaks to shoddy conditions at Plum Island. After the foot and mouth breakout, the USDA inspected the facility. They wrote a 190-page report detailing how mismanaged it was. They found leaking roofs, leaking walls, steel beams rusted through. They found an incinerator lying in a ditch half-filled with dirty water.

And soon after this, there was an outbreak of Rift Valley Fever on the island. Weaponized RVF was being tested by infecting mosquitoes. Some mosquitoes got out and bit the scientists. Now luckily, they knew how to treat it. But if those mosquitoes got off the island and made it to shore, Rift Valley Fever presents like the flu, but if you don't treat it, it kills you. In 2002, 76 Plum Island workers went on strike. Scabs were brought in to replace them, and it did not go well.

The FBI conducted an investigation and found all kinds of issues. A 600-gallon container of liquid nitrogen somehow fell off one of the island's ferries. Hundreds of gallons of oil and chemicals were spilled all over the island. Two workers drove off with a minivan and didn't come back. The van was later found, but whatever was in it was gone. And failing to learn from their mistakes, two years later, there were two more outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease on Plum Island. In New Haven, Connecticut, a worker at Yale University's Arbovirus Lab became infected with Sabia virus. This virus causes extremely high fevers and internal bleeding. So he got infected, went home, and took a trip to Boston. If anyone got sick,

that information is not public. More recently, a Fort Detrick researcher accidentally stuck herself with a needle containing Ebola. These breakdowns in security of facilities like Plum Island prompted a nationwide investigation. But a 2007 report revealed that 113 bioweapon-capable labs around the United States refused to comply with inspections. And this is not just a violation of federal law. It's a violation of the Geneva Conventions. But President George W. Bush granted the facilities amnesty from inspections, and Congress agreed. Wait, wait, wait, wait. The United States can decide when it doesn't want to follow the Geneva Conventions? No.

But it decides anyway? Yes. And other countries don't complain? Oh, they complain, but... But if you want those billions of financial aid to keep flowing, shut your yap. Bingo. Biological weapons were banned in 1925 by the Geneva Protocol, but the United States refused to sign it. It wasn't until Richard Nixon banned bioweapons research that the U.S. agreed to a worldwide ban. The U.S. finally signed the Geneva Protocol in 1975. Somebody let the CIA know.

These scary events happened in relatively small labs around the country with maybe a few dozen to a few hundred employees. Can you imagine what would happen if there was a leak at the CDC with 10,000 employees? Whoa, whoa, whoa. The CDC had a leak? A leak? No. Oh, thank God.

They've had dozens. Oh, no! In May 2012, 24-year-old Amy Copeland and a few friends were ziplining near the Tallapoosa River in Georgia. During one of Amy's runs, she heard a snap. The zipline broke and she fell into the creek below. She landed on sharp rocks and cut her leg pretty badly. She went through routine surgery, but over the next two days developed a fever and severe pain. Amy was infected with Aeromonas hydrophila, a rare type of flesh-eating bacteria. This bacteria moves faster than antibiotics can work, so the only way to remove it is to remove the limbs it infects, so you have to move fast.

Amy survived, but lost both hands, both feet, and her entire left leg. But suddenly, more cases of this rare disease were popping up. Georgia, South Carolina, Northern Florida. When looking at these cases on a map, people started asking, how secure is the CDC building in Atlanta? Well, not as secure as you'd hope. In June of 2012, just weeks after Amy Copeland's accident, it was reported that the CDC building in Atlanta had an airflow problem. Rather than drawing clean air into a contaminated lab,

it was blowing contaminated air out. Dirty germy air? Yep. In that building, they study SARS, monkeypox, and anthrax. Oh, the heavy metal band? The disease. Ah, that makes more sense. Live anthrax? So you mean like, in constant? Ah, right. was storing anthrax in unlocked refrigerators in unrestricted areas. At least five times the CDC improperly handled and shipped deadly pathogens to different labs around the country. Anthrax, botulism, and bird flu. About a week after this report, old vials of smallpox were discovered in a building on the Bethesda campus of the National Institutes of Health. And this was after the NIH promised to do better. Better than what?

Well, about a year before, a deadly bacteria got out and 12 people died. In 2016, investigations show more CDC safety lapses with storing and handling anthrax and Ebola, from software errors to power outages to sealing doors with duct tape. Did you just say they use duct tape to keep in deadly viruses? Yep. And this goes on and on. And these are just the instances we know about. It's not like the CDC issues a press release every time there's a security failure.

Most of these discoveries were made with freedom of information requests from citizens. These types of leaks and failures do happen, and they happen more frequently than most people think. These safety problems are at the CDC in Atlanta, one of the most secure facilities on the planet. If a leak can happen there, they can happen in other places. Yeah, Chinese places. Well, let's not single out any specific country.

Sheep. Look, just because that rare flesh-eating bacteria is not so rare anymore, I'm not saying it came from the CDC. And Lyme disease probably wasn't created on Plum Island because there's evidence it existed for a long time. You know Otzi, the 5,000-year-old mummy who was found in the Alps? Well, his DNA showed evidence of Lyme disease. But the outbreak of Lyme disease does coincide with research into weaponizing ticks. And the expansion of Lone Star ticks does coincide with the uncontrolled releases of thousands of them in the late 1960s. Dr. Willie Bergdorfer, before he died, did kind of say that Lyme disease was a research experiment gone wrong.

Maybe. He had advanced Parkinson's, so it's really hard to tell what he was saying. But there are people who believe that there's no question about it. Books like Lab 257 by Michael Christopher Carroll and Bitten by Chris Newby lay out a very convincing case. Now, there's plenty of evidence, but evidence isn't proof. And researching this episode was stressful. The idea that the government has tested bioweapons on its citizens is upsetting enough. But what's really scary is how sloppy the security is in our labs. I had no idea it was this bad.

And given what's happened over the past couple of years, we need to pay attention. If you have one of these labs near you, get to know your congressman. Demand that lab safety protocols are made public. Demand to know the result of any safety investigations. Now, they're not going to tell you any of that, but if they know we're watching, they'll pay closer attention to safety procedures. We hope. And look, if you're in the New York or Boston area, you can stop worrying about Plum Island. It's scheduled to be closed at the end of this year, but the work currently being performed there will continue. It'll just take place at a new facility in Kansas, at the end of this year. But the work currently being performed there will continue.

It'll just take place at a new facility in Kansas, in the middle of the country, in the middle of America's food supply. Bon appétit. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. My name is AJ. That's Hecklefish. Yeah, let's track it. This has been the Y-Files. If you had fun or learned anything and you're not too scared to death, do us a favor and like, subscribe, comment, and share. That stuff really helps us out. And like most topics we cover on the channel,

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Grab yourself a Hecklefish coffee mug, and then put on one of these Hecklefish t-shirts, and then grab a Hecklefish talking plushie stuffed animal talking dogfish toy. That's going to do it. Until next time, be safe, be kind, and know that you are appreciated. Oh, oh, oh, yeah I played Philippians and Area 51 A secret code inside the Bible said I was I love my UFOs and paranormal fun As well as music, so I'm singing like I should

But then another conspiracy theory Becomes the truth, my friends And it never ends No, it never ends I feel the crab cat and I got stuck inside Mel's home With MKUltra being only two away Did Stanley Kubrick fake the moon landing alone On a film set with the shadow people there

The Roswell aliens just fought the smiling man I'm told, and his name was cold And I can't believe I'm dancing with the fish Head to fish on Thursday nights with AJ2 And the white box of the heat all through the night All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth So the world falls on my feet all through the night The Mothman sightings and the solar storm still come To have got the secret city underground

Mysterious number stations, planets are foe to Project Stargate, and what the Dark Watchers found In a simulation, don't you worry though The Black Knight said a lot, he told me so I can't believe I'm dancing with the fish And the fish are Thursday nights with AJ too And we'll bounce off the beat all through the night All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth

So we'll bounce off the beat all through the night And we'll fish on Thursday, next Wednesday, J.J. And the wild boars have to beat all through the night All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth So the wild boars have to beat all through the night Gertie loves to dance, Gertie loves to dance, Gertie loves to dance, Gertie loves to dance, Gertie loves to dance. Gertie loves to dance on the dance floor, because she is a camel. Camels love to dance when the feeling is right on wasting time. And cameras love to dance. And cameras love to dance.