SHUTTLE ASTRONAUT WAS ON A SECRET MISSION ON COLUMBIA

ISRAEL’S

SHUTTLE ASTRONAUT WAS ON A SECRET MISSION ON COLUMBIA
by Gordon Thomas
Astronaut
Ilon Ramon was conducting secret experiments on the Columbia to discover new
ways to beat Saddam’s threat to use biological and chemical weapons against
Israel.
For most of

his 16 days on board the Columbia, he had been using cameras linked directly to

the Israeli Space Agency to study desert dust and wind-drifts emanating from the

deserts of Iraq.
The
information was fed to the Institute for Biological Research – the ultra-secret

establishment that is at the cutting edge of Israel’s multi-layered defence
system.
The
Institute’s scientists constantly study how contaminants can drift into Israel
from Iraq.
“Ramon’s
work was regarded as a priority among his fellow astronauts – because of the
fear that Saddam will launch a pre-emptive strike against Israel”, said an
intelligence source in Tel Aviv.
Ramon, 48,

was already a hero in Israel because of his role in flying one of the eight F-16

fighters which destroyed Saddam’s nuclear reactor in 1981 – the same year
Columbia made its first flight.
At the time

the plant was ready to go online to produce weapons grade
plutonium.
Ramon’s
task was to send out a signal to fool Iraqi radar that the fighter formation was

a commercial Jumbo jet.
After the
raid, he said: “It was no big deal”.
It was that

can-do philosophy which made him not only a born leader, but popular with all
his fellow fliers. He had flown his first mission at 18 in the Yom Kippur
War
against the Egyptians. Later he had commanded Israel’s nuclear bomb
squadron.
For the
past five years, he had been at the NASA training school in Texas preparing for

last Saturday’s mission.
He went to

his death carrying a small pencil drawing titled, Moon Landscape. It had
originally been drawn by a 14 year old Jewish boy, Peter Ginz, who had died at
Auschwitz.
“For Ramon

the flight was a chance to honour in the heavens all the victims of the
Holocaust”, Ilon’s father, Eliezer, said yesterday.
For the
scientists at the Biological Research Institute, to the very end his work proved

invaluable.
Within its

laboratories and workshops are manufactured a wide range of chemical and
biological weapons. The Institute’s chemists – some of whom once worked
for the
Soviet KGB or East German Stasi intelligence service – create the Institute’s
current research programs.
Founded in

1952 in a small concrete bunker, today the Institute sprawls over ten
acres.
The fruit trees have long gone, replaced by a high concrete wall topped with
sensors. Armed guards patrol the perimeter. Long ago, the Institute

disappeared from public scrutiny. Its exact address in the suburbs of Nes
Ziona
has been removed from the Tel Aviv telephone book. Its location is erased
from
all maps of the area. No aircraft is allowed to over-fly the
area.
Only Dimona

in the Negev Desert is surrounded by more secrecy. In the classified
directory
of the Israeli Defence Force, the Institute is only listed as “providing
services to the defence Ministry”. Like Dimona, many of the Institute’s
research and development laboratories are concealed deep underground.
Housed
there are the biochemists and genetic scientists with their bottled agents of
death: toxins that can create crippling food poisoning and lead to death; the
even more virulent Venezuelan equine encephalomyelitis and
anthrax.
In other
laboratories, reached through air locks, scientists work with a variety of nerve

agents: choking agents, blood agents, blister agents. These include Tabun,

virtually odourless and invisible when dispensed in aerosol or vapour
form.
Soman, the last of the Nazi nerve gases to be discovered, is also invisible in
vapour form but has a slightly fruity odour. The range of blister agents
include chlorine, phosgene, and diphosgene which smells of new-mown grass.
The
blood agents include those with a cyanide base. The blister agents are
based
upon those first used in World War I.
Outwardly
featureless, with few windows in its dun-coloured concrete walls, the
Institute’s interior has state-of-the-art security. Code words and visual

identification control access to each area. Guards patrol the
corridors.
Bomb-proof sliding doors can only be opened by swipe cards whose codes are
changed every day.
All
employees undergo health checks every month. All have been subject to
intense
screening. Their families have also undergone similar
checks.
Within the

Institute is a special department that creates lethal toxic weapons for the use

of Mossad to carry out its state-approved mandate to kill without trial the
enemies of Israel. Over the years, at least six workers at the plant have
died,
but the cause of their deaths is protected by Israel’s strict military
censorship.
The first
crack in that security curtain has come from a former Mossad officer, Victor
Ostrovsky. He claims “we all knew that a prisoner brought to the Institute

would never get out alive. PLO infiltrators were used as guinea
pigs. They
could make sure the weapons the scientists were developing worked properly and
make them even more efficient”.
Israel has

so far issued no denial of these allegations.
ends
-----------------------
Books by
Gordon Thomas:

Robert Maxwell: Israel's Superspy: The...

Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of
the Mossad

Seeds of Fire: China And The Story.Behind The Attack on America
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