8 ms·

I’m having a hard time seeing how pneumonia and stroke could be inflicted on a person as part of a cover up. Seems like this was just unfortunate illness.

smsm42 2y ago
Pneumonia is just a lung infection, so I imagine there's a number of ways you can make a person to unknowingly inhale something. However, it looks way too complicated for a plot. There are many tried and proven methods of getting rid of people. Spooks aren't actually that good in hiding their works - we know about a lot of cases where people were assassinated (of course, we may also not know about many, but I think we have a good sample). Among those, we have a lot of ways it can be done - shootings, stabbings, explosions, poisons, drownings, falling from heights, whatever - but I can't remember any case where a biological agent were used. And thinking about it - biological agents are hard to produce, hard to handle, unstable, unpredictable in use, can't be properly targeted, why would anyone use that instead of dozens of easier and more common methods? So while it does look suspicious on its face, I'd have hard time believing it's an example of an assassination.
- RamiAwar 2y ago
  kind of the point though
- candiodari 2y ago
  "Something?". Having them inhale oil or dirt will do it. Pneumonia is usually caused by a bacteria that's just everywhere (though usually on the skin), that's too simple. If it starts growing in your lungs, you can try antibiotics. If that doesn't work, well, nice knowing you. We are surrounded by lethal bacteria. That humans survive depends on the immune system having a 100% success rate preventing bacteria from forming even a small colony in the lungs (and several other places, like the teeth, where infections can rapidly and surprisingly turn deadly) This is why people cough so extremely hard when inhaling solid or liquid stuff in their windpipes. Also this happens all the time. That someone dies from pneumonia is not uncommon (though for oil it's usually someone who manages to spray themselves with aerosolized oil at work). So even if an autopsy found a few specs of dirt in the lungs, and even if they actually trace that to be the cause, that's not extremely suspicious. (Plus why would they check? Obviously with a pneumonia patient you know the cause of death)
- matsemann 2y ago
  This sounds a bit like the toupee fallacy - you have never seen a good toupee, because the good ones you don't recognize as anything other than normal hair.
- prmph 2y ago
  > why would anyone use that instead of dozens of easier and more common methods? So that you will think it is not suspicious
- generalizations 2y ago
  > Spooks aren't actually that good in hiding their works This is pretty similar to the old argument about why mass surveillance is unlikely to be happening - we're just not that good at keeping secrets. Seems like a pretty safe bet that there's good spooks who are good at hiding their works. > we know about a lot of cases where people were assassinated (of course, we may also not know about many, but I think we have a good sample). Among those, we have a lot of ways it can be done Let's not forget about survivorship bias. You only know about the assassinations you know about. You don't know about the assassinations that were successfully kept secret.
  - snowwrestler 2y ago
    > This is pretty similar to the old argument about why mass surveillance is unlikely to be happening - we're just not that good at keeping secrets. Not a great example since we know for a fact that mass surveillance is happening. The U.S. Congress just voted to extend and expand it.
    - zarzavat 2y ago
      I believe that was indeed their point. People used to dismiss mass surveillance of the US on its people as a crackpot conspiracy theory, until the full extent of it was revealed by Snowden. Some conspiracy theories turn out to be true. Just a handful though.
      - rootusrootus 2y ago
        By "people" you mean "some people" and there are always some people. For as long as I've been alive the predominant public opinion has been that mass surveillance does take place. We've had evidence for that decades before Snowden got specific about the NSA's abilities.
      - snowwrestler 2y ago
        Snowden is a great example of how hard it is to keep things secret when they are real.
  - 2y ago
- coldtea 2y ago
  >Spooks aren't actually that good in hiding their works That's because it's the failures we learn about. Which could be 90% or 5% of "their works". But never mind the spooks. We are also told "there's no perfect crime". Yet, less than half the murders get solved in the US, for example: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/29/1172775448/people-murder-unsolved-killings-record-high https://www.npr.org/2023/04/29/1172775448/people-murder-unso...
  - generalizations 2y ago
    Similar - the average IQ of prison inmates is lower than the general population. Which can be taken to imply that we only catch the dumb ones.
    - epiccoleman 2y ago
      That only really holds if you assume criminal behavior is evenly distributed among the bell curve of IQ, which is is a fairly large assumption!
      - Paul-Craft 2y ago
        Not really. It depends more on how you interpret the phrase "the dumb ones." It's clear that if the IQ distribution of prisoners skews lower than the general population, then we only catch "the dumb ones" with respect to the general population. What isn't necessarily clear is that we only catch "the dumb ones" with respect to the IQ distribution of all criminals. (I don't think we even know or have any good way of determining what the IQ distribution of all criminals even is, do we?) It's just another instance where plain language can fail to be precise.
      - coldtea 2y ago
        You believe that its some inferior genetically people doing the crimes?
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    The Russians want you to know they did it; just with plausible deniability. They brought back the time-tested art of defenestration.
- rising-sky 2y ago
  > why would anyone use that instead of dozens of easier and more common methods? Like... head shot in an alley? suffocating them in their sleep? drowning them in a body of water? I think you can probably answer your question yourself if you think about it
- ksherlock 2y ago
  If you're a spook for an authoritarian government, it's probably better for your work to be somewhat visible to keep the serfs in line.
- pazimzadeh 2y ago
  > why would anyone use that instead of dozens of easier and more common methods? Ask Suge Knight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxPTtFv4AkM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxPTtFv4AkM You can assume criminals have gotten better at this type of thing since 1995
- ekianjo 2y ago
  ricin was used BY the Soviet Union and Russia also used radioactive agents to kill someone not super long ago. And a nerve agent was used to kill someone close to Kim too https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Kim_Jong-nam https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Kim_Jong-na...
- Aeolun 2y ago
  Isn’t that kind of what they’d have developed COVID for?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
mattmaroon 2y ago
I figure there's like a 99% chance it happened naturally, and a 1% chance it was the most brilliant assasination of all time specifically because any rational person would think it's unlikely to have been one.
ReptileMan 2y ago
I think there were some heavy metal poisons (not Alice Cooper or Bret Michaels) that had symptoms of pneumonia, and the treatment for pneumonia fucked up the patient a bit.
sunshine_reggae 2y ago
[flagged]
normalaccess 2y ago
Running someones immune system or poisoning them is a fantastic way to get plausible deniability. No smoking gun... Plausible Deniability is when a person's involvement or culpability in an event might be denied, or at least mitigated, by creating a situation where they can claim ignorance or an inability to act.
jmcgough 2y ago
There are a lot of easy ways to give someone pneumonia, like aspiration.
lubesGordi 2y ago
Agreed. Being a whistleblower is probably very stressful.
alex_lav 2y ago
Not to say that I believe it happened, but there is a difference between actual cause of death and reported cause of death. As in, just because it was written down that pneumonia and stroke were involved doesn't necessarily make it true. Again, I do not believe this happened, but that's probably how you'd do it.
walterbell 2y ago
In 2020 and 2021, there was endless online discussion of airborne pathogen distribution, measurement and defense.
dyauspitr 2y ago
I don’t think too many spooks want to handle something as dangerous as MRSA. How do you even infect someone with that without infecting yourself in the process.
autoexec 2y ago
He had a sudden mysterious illness that caused him to have problems breathing. If this were a cover up, that illness would have been the cover up attempt, not the pneumonia. The breathing problems required the whistleblower to be intubated and he later developed pneumonia, and later still MRSA. The pneumonia and MRSA were certainly just an unfortunate illness. The more conspiratorial can debate over if the original breathing difficulties that brought him into the hospital were the result of an assassination attempt or not. For all we know he just had Covid.
gitaarik 2y ago
Just because you don't know how it's done or aren't aware of methods for it doesn't mean it isn't possible to do for other people.
hnarn 2y ago
[flagged]
outime 2y ago
I have no idea but if many decades ago they revealed this [1], at this point it's safe to assume there are much better things. [1] https://www.military.com/video/guns/pistols/cias-secret-heart-attack-gun/2555371072001 https://www.military.com/video/guns/pistols/cias-secret-hear...
- pazimzadeh 2y ago
  Do you know what the toxin was?
erikerikson 2y ago
I once worked with a researcher who was apparently the world's expert on giving mice strokes. Pneumonia seems more difficult.
- stusmall 2y ago
  What a business card
- 2-3-7-43-1807 2y ago
  certainly not out of reach for a determined and powerful adversary. infecting someone with a respiratory virus isn't exactly rocket science. just spraying a subperceptibly thin aerosol into someone's face should do it.
  - dyauspitr 2y ago
    You’re putting yourself at a massive risk though. This is an airborne bacteria, the “assassin” is probably going to get infected too.
  - siamesedream 2y ago
    Or putting black mold in the air ducts in their home. Easy to pass off as just poor home maintenance.
echelon 2y ago
MRSA [1], though? He could have been inoculated with it. MRSA is awful, difficult or impossible to clear, and can certainly be fatal. This could be a very diabolical way to assassinate someone. How would you be able to trace it? It could have been laced in his food or drink. Or simply transfered by touch (got on his hands, then wiped on his face or nose). Or aerosolized as he walked by. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methicillin-resistant_Staphylococcus_aureus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methicillin-resistant_Staphylo...
- kube-system 2y ago
  There are 3 million Americans unknowingly walking around with MRSA in their nose right now, all around us. It is so common I'm not sure it would be a good assassination weapon even if you tried.
  - echelon 2y ago
    It matters where the infection takes hold. If it's in the respiratory system, that's a much different disease than surface legions and boils.
- chasil 2y ago
  Up to 30 of us carry staph variants in our noses. https://now.uiowa.edu/news/2013/06/be-gone-bacteria https://now.uiowa.edu/news/2013/06/be-gone-bacteria
- cogman10 2y ago
  MRSA is fairly common especially in hospital settings. After all, you have a setting where people are coming in sick with a disease that is hard to kill and resistant to antibiotics.
- foxyv 2y ago
  It's also trivially easy to culture MRSA. A lot of university micro-bio classes induce anti-biotic resistance in e-coli as an experiment for under graduates.
peteradio 2y ago
Guy comes in with routine influenza, transfer him to emergency, pacify him and forcibly intubate him with MRSA infected tube. The rest happens as if by mistake.
- kodt 2y ago
  So now Boeing and the hospital staff are in on the conspiracy. This place is turning into reddit.
  - aaomidi 2y ago
    Historically companies have not shyed away from killing people for profit. Boeing is a very very well connected company, and it can barely be considered a truly private company to begin with anyway.
    - kodt 2y ago
      So now the US government is involved too :) It seems the risks of murdering whistleblowers, especially after they have already testified, is too great. They just want revenge here?
      - g00gler 2y ago
        Just pointing out, now these guys will never be on 60 minutes or giving interviews to popular mechanics, Rogan or Lex Friedman. Whatever testimony is made available will be all that we have on the topic.
        kodt 2y ago
        And that is better for Boeing than people believing they were murdered by Boeing?
        g00gler 2y ago
        One guy killed himself and the other got MERSA. Only kooks believe that Boeing killed them!
highcountess 2y ago
Que the leaked pentagon briefing from … what was it, 12 years ago … about the use of “vaccines” to alter the brain chemistry of people with “extremist” views, so they too may benefit from approved values.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  There's a long history of zany ideas being looked at. I'm not inclined to conclude it's technologically feasible just from that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_bomb, for example.
2-3-7-43-1807 2y ago
both is very easy to achieve and also kind of medically obvious
ghusto 2y ago
I'm not at all inclined to believe this is anything more than a co-incidence, but those things can definitely be induced in a way that's difficult to detect.
RobotToaster 2y ago
The US military used to have a stockpile of Q-fever bioweapons, that they claim to have destroyed. Q-fever can cause pneumonia.
- dralley 2y ago
  A fucking cold can also cause pneumonia. There are thousands of things that cause pneumonia. WTF are you talking about.
  - coldtea 2y ago
    He talks about a historical factoid. He also talks about something that can induce pneumonia that's deadly, not just waiting for some common cold to turn to pneumonia in an off chance. WTF about what he is talking about was difficult to parse?
- dudeinjapan 2y ago
  Doubt Boeing or its spook going to use a bioweapon to off a whistleblower. Too complex, too many parties involved, too much of a trail, too high consequences if caught (i.e. terrorism), too high survival % vs. the panoply of less exotic options. It’s a Wile E. Coyote-level plot.

smsm42 2y ago

Pneumonia is just a lung infection, so I imagine there's a number of ways you can make a person to unknowingly inhale something. However, it looks way too complicated for a plot. There are many tried and proven methods of getting rid of people. Spooks aren't actually that good in hiding their works - we know about a lot of cases where people were assassinated (of course, we may also not know about many, but I think we have a good sample). Among those, we have a lot of ways it can be done - shootings, stabbings, explosions, poisons, drownings, falling from heights, whatever - but I can't remember any case where a biological agent were used. And thinking about it - biological agents are hard to produce, hard to handle, unstable, unpredictable in use, can't be properly targeted, why would anyone use that instead of dozens of easier and more common methods? So while it does look suspicious on its face, I'd have hard time believing it's an example of an assassination.

RamiAwar 2y ago
kind of the point though
candiodari 2y ago
"Something?". Having them inhale oil or dirt will do it. Pneumonia is usually caused by a bacteria that's just everywhere (though usually on the skin), that's too simple. If it starts growing in your lungs, you can try antibiotics. If that doesn't work, well, nice knowing you. We are surrounded by lethal bacteria. That humans survive depends on the immune system having a 100% success rate preventing bacteria from forming even a small colony in the lungs (and several other places, like the teeth, where infections can rapidly and surprisingly turn deadly) This is why people cough so extremely hard when inhaling solid or liquid stuff in their windpipes. Also this happens all the time. That someone dies from pneumonia is not uncommon (though for oil it's usually someone who manages to spray themselves with aerosolized oil at work). So even if an autopsy found a few specs of dirt in the lungs, and even if they actually trace that to be the cause, that's not extremely suspicious. (Plus why would they check? Obviously with a pneumonia patient you know the cause of death)
matsemann 2y ago
This sounds a bit like the toupee fallacy - you have never seen a good toupee, because the good ones you don't recognize as anything other than normal hair.
prmph 2y ago
> why would anyone use that instead of dozens of easier and more common methods? So that you will think it is not suspicious
generalizations 2y ago
> Spooks aren't actually that good in hiding their works This is pretty similar to the old argument about why mass surveillance is unlikely to be happening - we're just not that good at keeping secrets. Seems like a pretty safe bet that there's good spooks who are good at hiding their works. > we know about a lot of cases where people were assassinated (of course, we may also not know about many, but I think we have a good sample). Among those, we have a lot of ways it can be done Let's not forget about survivorship bias. You only know about the assassinations you know about. You don't know about the assassinations that were successfully kept secret.
- snowwrestler 2y ago
  > This is pretty similar to the old argument about why mass surveillance is unlikely to be happening - we're just not that good at keeping secrets. Not a great example since we know for a fact that mass surveillance is happening. The U.S. Congress just voted to extend and expand it.
  - zarzavat 2y ago
    I believe that was indeed their point. People used to dismiss mass surveillance of the US on its people as a crackpot conspiracy theory, until the full extent of it was revealed by Snowden. Some conspiracy theories turn out to be true. Just a handful though.
    - rootusrootus 2y ago
      By "people" you mean "some people" and there are always some people. For as long as I've been alive the predominant public opinion has been that mass surveillance does take place. We've had evidence for that decades before Snowden got specific about the NSA's abilities.
    - snowwrestler 2y ago
      Snowden is a great example of how hard it is to keep things secret when they are real.
- 2y ago
coldtea 2y ago
>Spooks aren't actually that good in hiding their works That's because it's the failures we learn about. Which could be 90% or 5% of "their works". But never mind the spooks. We are also told "there's no perfect crime". Yet, less than half the murders get solved in the US, for example: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/29/1172775448/people-murder-unsolved-killings-record-high https://www.npr.org/2023/04/29/1172775448/people-murder-unso...
- generalizations 2y ago
  Similar - the average IQ of prison inmates is lower than the general population. Which can be taken to imply that we only catch the dumb ones.
  - epiccoleman 2y ago
    That only really holds if you assume criminal behavior is evenly distributed among the bell curve of IQ, which is is a fairly large assumption!
    - Paul-Craft 2y ago
      Not really. It depends more on how you interpret the phrase "the dumb ones." It's clear that if the IQ distribution of prisoners skews lower than the general population, then we only catch "the dumb ones" with respect to the general population. What isn't necessarily clear is that we only catch "the dumb ones" with respect to the IQ distribution of all criminals. (I don't think we even know or have any good way of determining what the IQ distribution of all criminals even is, do we?) It's just another instance where plain language can fail to be precise.
    - coldtea 2y ago
      You believe that its some inferior genetically people doing the crimes?
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  The Russians want you to know they did it; just with plausible deniability. They brought back the time-tested art of defenestration.
rising-sky 2y ago
> why would anyone use that instead of dozens of easier and more common methods? Like... head shot in an alley? suffocating them in their sleep? drowning them in a body of water? I think you can probably answer your question yourself if you think about it
ksherlock 2y ago
If you're a spook for an authoritarian government, it's probably better for your work to be somewhat visible to keep the serfs in line.
pazimzadeh 2y ago
> why would anyone use that instead of dozens of easier and more common methods? Ask Suge Knight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxPTtFv4AkM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxPTtFv4AkM You can assume criminals have gotten better at this type of thing since 1995
ekianjo 2y ago
ricin was used BY the Soviet Union and Russia also used radioactive agents to kill someone not super long ago. And a nerve agent was used to kill someone close to Kim too https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Kim_Jong-nam https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Kim_Jong-na...
Aeolun 2y ago
Isn’t that kind of what they’d have developed COVID for?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

mattmaroon 2y ago

I figure there's like a 99% chance it happened naturally, and a 1% chance it was the most brilliant assasination of all time specifically because any rational person would think it's unlikely to have been one.

ReptileMan 2y ago

I think there were some heavy metal poisons (not Alice Cooper or Bret Michaels) that had symptoms of pneumonia, and the treatment for pneumonia fucked up the patient a bit.

sunshine_reggae 2y ago

[flagged]

normalaccess 2y ago

Running someones immune system or poisoning them is a fantastic way to get plausible deniability. No smoking gun... Plausible Deniability is when a person's involvement or culpability in an event might be denied, or at least mitigated, by creating a situation where they can claim ignorance or an inability to act.

jmcgough 2y ago

There are a lot of easy ways to give someone pneumonia, like aspiration.

lubesGordi 2y ago

Agreed. Being a whistleblower is probably very stressful.

alex_lav 2y ago

Not to say that I believe it happened, but there is a difference between actual cause of death and reported cause of death. As in, just because it was written down that pneumonia and stroke were involved doesn't necessarily make it true. Again, I do not believe this happened, but that's probably how you'd do it.

walterbell 2y ago

In 2020 and 2021, there was endless online discussion of airborne pathogen distribution, measurement and defense.

dyauspitr 2y ago

I don’t think too many spooks want to handle something as dangerous as MRSA. How do you even infect someone with that without infecting yourself in the process.

autoexec 2y ago

He had a sudden mysterious illness that caused him to have problems breathing. If this were a cover up, that illness would have been the cover up attempt, not the pneumonia. The breathing problems required the whistleblower to be intubated and he later developed pneumonia, and later still MRSA. The pneumonia and MRSA were certainly just an unfortunate illness. The more conspiratorial can debate over if the original breathing difficulties that brought him into the hospital were the result of an assassination attempt or not. For all we know he just had Covid.

gitaarik 2y ago

Just because you don't know how it's done or aren't aware of methods for it doesn't mean it isn't possible to do for other people.

hnarn 2y ago

[flagged]

outime 2y ago

I have no idea but if many decades ago they revealed this [1], at this point it's safe to assume there are much better things. [1] https://www.military.com/video/guns/pistols/cias-secret-heart-attack-gun/2555371072001 https://www.military.com/video/guns/pistols/cias-secret-hear...

pazimzadeh 2y ago
Do you know what the toxin was?

erikerikson 2y ago

I once worked with a researcher who was apparently the world's expert on giving mice strokes. Pneumonia seems more difficult.

stusmall 2y ago
What a business card
2-3-7-43-1807 2y ago
certainly not out of reach for a determined and powerful adversary. infecting someone with a respiratory virus isn't exactly rocket science. just spraying a subperceptibly thin aerosol into someone's face should do it.
- dyauspitr 2y ago
  You’re putting yourself at a massive risk though. This is an airborne bacteria, the “assassin” is probably going to get infected too.
- siamesedream 2y ago
  Or putting black mold in the air ducts in their home. Easy to pass off as just poor home maintenance.

echelon 2y ago

MRSA [1], though? He could have been inoculated with it. MRSA is awful, difficult or impossible to clear, and can certainly be fatal. This could be a very diabolical way to assassinate someone. How would you be able to trace it? It could have been laced in his food or drink. Or simply transfered by touch (got on his hands, then wiped on his face or nose). Or aerosolized as he walked by. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methicillin-resistant_Staphylococcus_aureus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methicillin-resistant_Staphylo...

kube-system 2y ago
There are 3 million Americans unknowingly walking around with MRSA in their nose right now, all around us. It is so common I'm not sure it would be a good assassination weapon even if you tried.
- echelon 2y ago
  It matters where the infection takes hold. If it's in the respiratory system, that's a much different disease than surface legions and boils.
chasil 2y ago
Up to 30 of us carry staph variants in our noses. https://now.uiowa.edu/news/2013/06/be-gone-bacteria https://now.uiowa.edu/news/2013/06/be-gone-bacteria
cogman10 2y ago
MRSA is fairly common especially in hospital settings. After all, you have a setting where people are coming in sick with a disease that is hard to kill and resistant to antibiotics.
foxyv 2y ago
It's also trivially easy to culture MRSA. A lot of university micro-bio classes induce anti-biotic resistance in e-coli as an experiment for under graduates.

peteradio 2y ago

Guy comes in with routine influenza, transfer him to emergency, pacify him and forcibly intubate him with MRSA infected tube. The rest happens as if by mistake.

kodt 2y ago
So now Boeing and the hospital staff are in on the conspiracy. This place is turning into reddit.
- aaomidi 2y ago
  Historically companies have not shyed away from killing people for profit. Boeing is a very very well connected company, and it can barely be considered a truly private company to begin with anyway.
  - kodt 2y ago
    So now the US government is involved too :) It seems the risks of murdering whistleblowers, especially after they have already testified, is too great. They just want revenge here?
    - g00gler 2y ago
      Just pointing out, now these guys will never be on 60 minutes or giving interviews to popular mechanics, Rogan or Lex Friedman. Whatever testimony is made available will be all that we have on the topic.
      - kodt 2y ago
        And that is better for Boeing than people believing they were murdered by Boeing?
        g00gler 2y ago
        One guy killed himself and the other got MERSA. Only kooks believe that Boeing killed them!

highcountess 2y ago

Que the leaked pentagon briefing from … what was it, 12 years ago … about the use of “vaccines” to alter the brain chemistry of people with “extremist” views, so they too may benefit from approved values.

ceejayoz 2y ago
There's a long history of zany ideas being looked at. I'm not inclined to conclude it's technologically feasible just from that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_bomb, for example.

2-3-7-43-1807 2y ago

both is very easy to achieve and also kind of medically obvious

ghusto 2y ago

I'm not at all inclined to believe this is anything more than a co-incidence, but those things can definitely be induced in a way that's difficult to detect.

RobotToaster 2y ago

The US military used to have a stockpile of Q-fever bioweapons, that they claim to have destroyed. Q-fever can cause pneumonia.

dralley 2y ago
A fucking cold can also cause pneumonia. There are thousands of things that cause pneumonia. WTF are you talking about.
- coldtea 2y ago
  He talks about a historical factoid. He also talks about something that can induce pneumonia that's deadly, not just waiting for some common cold to turn to pneumonia in an off chance. WTF about what he is talking about was difficult to parse?
dudeinjapan 2y ago
Doubt Boeing or its spook going to use a bioweapon to off a whistleblower. Too complex, too many parties involved, too much of a trail, too high consequences if caught (i.e. terrorism), too high survival % vs. the panoply of less exotic options. It’s a Wile E. Coyote-level plot.