Part 1

by Chris Oakley

From an AP dispatch out of Rome dated February 25^th, 1964:

From the February 27^th, 1964 New York Times:

From a BBC Radio Home Service broadcast dated March 1^st, 1964:

of an apparent epidemic in Rome, Italy. Italian health officials are still

uncertain as to how and when the illness was introduced to the city, but

it has already become clear that the course of the disease, first diagnosed

among guests at a local hotel, is swift and lethal....

From a dispatch by the American ambassador in Rome to US Secretary of State Dean Rusk, dated March 4^th, 1964:

armed escorts to pick up new cases of what they’re calling "the hotel virus",

and with ten to fifteen new victims becoming infected every day you can be

sure those ambulances are kept busy...

From NBC’s Today show for March 7^th, 1964:

From the March 8^th, 1964 New York Daily News:

From a British Foreign Office travel advisory dated March 11^th, 1964:

Italy are cautioned to avoid Rome and Genoa at all costs...

From the March 14^th, 1964 Jerusalem Post:

areas of Rome and Genoa are in a state of panic as both cities fight to

rid themselves of the Rome virus that has claimed nearly a hundred

lives in less than a month....

From the March 16^th, 1964 Boston Globe:

NEW STRAIN OF THE DISEASE MAY BE EVOLVING

Warns Second Form Of Germ May Be More Deadly Than The First

From the NBC Nightly News of March 19^th, 1964:

after the British physician who first diagnosed it --has manifested itself

outside Italy’s borders. A policeman in the Austrian city of Linz was

rushed to a local hospital late this afternoon after informing his chief

that he was suffering from the headaches commonly associated with the

disease, which is so far estimated to have killed more than 150 people and

infected 315 more....

From the March 21^st, 1964 London Times:

From a Canadian Broadcast Corporation news report dated March 24^th, 1964:

to safeguard this country against an outbreak of Morgan’s disease similar to

to the one which has killed 200 people in Italy and six in Austria during the past

month. As the casualty toll from that virus continues to rise and the virus itself

defies all scientific efforts to find a cure, Canadian tourists in Italy are desperate

to get out of the country....

From the March 27^th, 1964 Chicago Tribune:

From the March 28^th, 1964 Toronto Globe & Mail:

From a KGB senior field agent’s coded message to the agency’s headquarters in Moscow, dated March 31^st, 1964:

my operatives have died of the Rome virus and three others are infected

with it. The press here say that there are 410 dead in Italy, 25 in Austria,

and three in Switzerland as a result of this disease and I do not wish to

see my surveillance activities compromised by it...

From the April 2^nd, 1964 New York Daily News:

UN SCIENTISTS CONFIRM EXISTENCE OF TWO NEW STRAINS OF

MORGAN’S DISEASE

From a memo sent by Secretary of State Rusk to President Lyndon Johnson, dated April 5^th, 1964:

personnel home from our diplomatic outposts in Italy and Austria. I’m particularly

concerned about our Rome embassy, given that current WHO estimates indicate

one-third to one-half of the city’s population will be infected with Morgan’s disease

within 2-3 weeks...

From the April 7^th, 1964 London Times:

From the April 9^th, 1964 Montreal Gazette:

From the April 12^th, 1964 Sydney Morning Herald:

450 DEAD IN ITALY, 40 IN AUSTRIA, 11 IN SWITZERLAND--

From the April 15th, 1964 issue of Newsweek:

with the 1918-19 influenza pandemic that devastated much of the world. This lethal virus,

of which three strains are already known to exist and a fourth is suspected to be developing

even as you read this article, is posing a severe challenge to modern medical science; after

nearly two months doctors have yet to even find a treatment for the virus, let alone a cure or

vaccine…

From the April 17th, 1964 L’Osservatore Romano:

asked people everywhere to pray for the souls of those who have succumbed

to Morgan’s disease. This terrible contagion has killed 500 in Italy, 66 in Austria,

and 37 in Switzerland since it was first diagnosed in Rome nearly two months

ago…

From a BBC Radio Home Service broadcast dated April 19th, 1964:

reasons as yet unknown, a mood of terror has gripped the Italian people as

the epidemic nears its third month. There are now 600 dead in Italy from

the disease, which has also claimed the lives of 70 Austrians and 33 Swiss;

in Paris, French health authorities are bracing for a possible outbreak of the

virus in southern France…

From the April 20th, 1964 Los Angeles Times:

From a report by the US Surgeon General dated April 23rd, 1964:

these general characteristics:

From the April 24th, 1964 New York Times:

12 DEAD IN MILAN; ITALIAN AUTHORITIES SEAL OFF TURIN

From the April 28th, 1964 San Francisco Chronicle:

apart yesterday with the news that a sailor in the port of Marseilles

has been hospitalized with Morgan’s-A, the earliest known strain of

the disease; he is the first French citizen to contract the fatal

airborne virus, which has already killed 800 people in Italy, 200 in

Austria, and 70 in Switzerland…

From the April 30th, 1964 Manchester Guardian:

order the full evacuation of all remaining dependents and non-essential

personnel from British diplomatic facilities in Italy. The order comes in

response to concerns that these people may be infected by the Morgan’s

virus if they continue to remain on Italian soil; the virus, which has killed

nearly a thousand people in Italy since it first broke out there in late

February, has also claimed hundreds of lives in Austria and Switzerland

and spread as far as southern France…

From a CBS-TV newscast dated May 1^st, 1964:

absent from this afternoon’s May Day festivities in Moscow’s Red Square;

both have been recalled by their governments for consultations on what

can be done to prevent the Morgan’s virus from spreading across the

Austrian border into Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Conversely, by the same

token the Soviet, Hungarian, and Czech embassies in Rome are all still in

lockdown tonight to keep out potential carriers of the virus, which has to

date killed almost 1100 people in Italy alone...

From a May 2^nd, 1964 letter sent by a Kansas City travel agency to its longtime clients:

tours to Italy, Switzerland, and Austria have been cancelled until further notice. We

apologize for the inconvenience and will refund money immediately to those who’ve

already booked such tours...

From the May 4^th, 1964 Dublin Post:

From a BBC-TV newscast dated May 7^th, 1964:

humanitarian nightmare on a scale rivaling the Black Death of 1348. To

name just one example, Genoa’s police and medical resources are groaning

under the strain of trying to preserve a modicum of civilization among its

streets; its residents find themselves increasingly hard-put to cope with the

grim reality of their plight...

From an ABC-TV newscast dated May 8^th, 1964:

Fascist repression, and Nazi occupation, may soon be brought to its knees by a germ smaller

than the typical human thumbnail. As a consequence of the Morgan’s epidemic Rome’s main

airport has been closed to commercial air traffic for weeks, causing economic hardship which

parallels and exacerbates the physical suffering brought on by the disease...

From an AP dispatch out of Paris dated May 10^th, 1964:

From the May 13^th, 1964 New York Times:

EPIDEMIC ‘My Country Is In Mortal Jeopardy’ He Declares

From the May 15^th, 1964 Daily Mail:

From the May 18^th, 1964 Washington Post:

Monaco Royal Palace Under Quarantine

From the May 20^th, 1964 New York Daily News:

Monaco Mourns Passing Of First Head Of State To Contract Morgan’s Disease

From the May 21^st, 1964 News of the World:

Our Special Correspondent’s Exclusive Story!

From the May 23^rd, 1964 Chicago Tribune:

USSR COUNCIL OF MINISTERS IN EMERGENCY SESSION

From a Channel 9(Australia) newscast dated May 26^th, 1964:

From the May 28^th, 1964 Pravda:

disintegration syndrome, CPSU First Secretary Khrushchev has formed

a special committee of the country’s most eminent doctors to prepare a

medical strategy at the earliest possible date...

From the May 31^st, 1964 Boston Herald-American:

Israeli Armed Forces Put On Full Alert

From the June 1^st, 1964 Los Angeles Times:

From the June 3^rd, 1964 Manchester Guardian:

From the June 5^th, 1964 South China Morning Post:

From the June 7^th, 1964 New York Times:

From the June 10^th, 1964 San Francisco Chronicle:

From a UPI bulletin out of Munich dated June 12^th, 1964:

Visiting a hospital ward this evening, West German chancellor

Konrad Adenauer refused to comment on rumors that his government

is in secret talks with the Ulbricht regime in East Germany to accept

Warsaw Pact help in dealing with the Morgan’s disease epidemic that

has killed nearly sixty people in West Germany so far and is believed

to have caused the death of Pope Paul VI on June 9^th...

From the June 15^th, 1964 New York Times:

PHONE SERVICE TO ROME AND GENOA DISRUPTED

From the June 17^th, 1964 Jerusalem Post:

if anything can be done to contain the Morgans disease epidemic that

has claimed 50 lives since it was first brought to Israel less than a month

ago by two passengers from the Australian tourist ship SS Ocean Empress.

Despite the closure of Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Eilat to all commercial sea and

air traffic from abroad, the virus continues to spread...

From an ABC-TV newscast dated June 20^th, 1964:

within the past hour it has been confirmed that six people in Hungary have

been admitted to a Budapest hospital with symptoms of the disease...

From a top secret CIA report to President Johnson dated June 23^rd, 1964:

down; no matter what measures are taken-- quarantines, travel bans, port

closings, etc. --it keeps finding a way to cross borders. If a cure for the disease

isn’t found soon we could be seeing outbreaks in every part of continental Europe

by the end of the summer; some of our analysts’ worst-case scenarios even

suggest a possibility of the virus spreading to northern Africa...

From the June 24^th, 1964 New York Post:

From the June 26^th, 1964 Detroit Free Press:

DISEASE

Dearborn Native, 39, Is First US Citizen Infected With RDS

From the June 30^th, 1964 Wall Street Journal:

From the July 1^st, 1964 Toronto Globe & Mail:

Widespread Fear RDS Virus May Soon Cross Atlantic

From a BBC Radio Home Service broadcast dated July 3^rd, 1964:

relics, is feared lost tonight after it disappeared during a riot which

broke out after local security forces clashed with 1500-plus marchers

protesting the government’s refusal to end their isolation from the

rest of Italy...

From a special televised Independence Day message by Vice President Hubert Humphrey to the American public dated July 4^th, 1964:

disintegration syndrome and sharing that cure with the rest of the world...

From an AP dispatch out of Geneva dated July 9^th, 1964:

the RDS epidemic which has been ravaging Europe and parts of Israel

since late February now stands at 6000. Spain became the latest country

to be stricken with the virus when an attaché being flown home by

military plane from the now-closed Spanish consulate in Bordeaux, France

began showing symptoms of the virus shortly after his plane touched down

in Madrid. With commercial air traffic in Europe at a virtual standstill due to

the moratoriums imposed since the epidemic began, diplomats in all parts of

the continent must rely wholly on military transport aircraft to travel to or

from their home countries...

From the July 10^th, 1964 New York Times:

From the July 15^th, 1964 New York Post:

From an editorial in the July 20^th, 1964 Chicago Tribune:

in his stall as the RDS pandemic drags on. Two of his brethren, Pestilence and

Death, have already galloped across half of Europe, and if the latest rumors

out of the Middle East are correct a third-- War --will be saddling up before

long....

From the July 22^nd, 1964 International Herald-Tribune:

From the July 24^th, 1964 New York Daily News:

3 Admitted To Hospital As North America Sees First RDS

Outbreak

From a CBC Radio newscast dated July 26^th, 1964:

afternoon, sparking fears that another Arab-Israeli war may be imminent.

This incident comes just as the Israeli Health Ministry is announcing a death

toll of 200 in that country’s RDS epidemic...

From the July 27^th, 1964 London Times:

From an MI-6 top secret report dated July 31^st, 1964:

sources in Vienna suggest it may only be a matter of weeks if not days

before the national government collapses...

From the August 2^nd, 1964 Saigon Post:

closing its embassies in Paris, Vienna, and Bonn...

From a dispatch out of the American embassy in Paris to the Deputy US Secretary of State for European Affairs dated August 5^th, 1964:

not been able to reach their senior staff in three days. However, the

last reliable report from there to reach us indicates that most of the

embassys Marine guard detail is dead...

From the August 7^th, 1964 Chicago Sun-Times:

From the August 9^th, 1964 Baltimore Sun:

From a CBS-TV newscast dated August 13^th, 1964:

Sinai peninsula following an attempted incursion by Egypt into southern Israel. Meanwhile, the Syrian

foreign ministry is vehemently denying UPI reports that a Damascus man has been hospitalized with

respiratory disintegration syndrome....

From a ZDF-TV(West Germany) newscast dated August 15^th, 1964:

noon today...

From the August 17^th, 1964 New York Times:

FOUR QUEENS RESIDENTS ADMITTED TO COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL FOR

MORGAN’S DISEASE

First Known RDS Outbreak In Continental United States

From the August 18^th, 1964 Wall Street Journal:

124-Point Decline Biggest One-Day Drop In NYSE History; Surpasses "Black Thursday"

Crash of 1929

From the August 20^th, 1964 Boston Globe:

From the August 24th, 1964 Miami Herald:

CUBA DENIES RUMOR OF FIDEL CASTRO BEING INFECTED

WITH MORGAN’S DISEASE

From the August 26^th, 1964 Montreal Gazette:

EPIDEMIC BEGINS SECOND WEEK

From an editorial in the September 1964 edition of the Catholic magazine St. Anthony Messenger:

been more serious than the papal succession crisis triggered by the RDS epidemic

currently afflicting much of the world. Many potential successors to the late

Pope Paul VI are prevented from reaching Vatican City due to the commercial

flight moratoriums imposed as a consequence of the virus; many others have

been killed by the virus itself...

From the September 2^nd, 1964 Miami Herald:

CUBAN GOVERNMENT ADMITS CASTRO SUFFERING FROM ILLNESS BUT

INSISTS IT IS NOT RDS

From a coded dispatch by a CIA operative in Cuba to the agency’s station chief in Mexico City dated September 4^th, 1964:

Looks like your hunch was right...even though they’ve got half of Cuba in

lockdown these days Castro somehow still managed to pick up that damn RDS

bug. My contact in Havana gives him eight more hours, twelve at the outside,

before he finally dies from the virus....

From a UPI dispatch out of Damascus dated September 6^th, 1964:

after one of the correspondents filed a story detailing a suspected RDS outbreak in

Aleppo....

From the September 10^th, 1964 London Times:

From the September 13^th, 1964 New York Daily News:

Worldwide Casualties Estimated at 35,000

From the September 15^th, 1964 Boston Herald-American:

From the September 16^th, 1964 Boston Globe:

From the September 19^th, 1964 Washington Post:

reports of a rift between himself and President Johnson over the

President’s recommendation that the November elections be

postponed 30-60 days pending resolution of this country’s ongoing

RDS crisis....

From a French foreign ministry statement dated September 22^nd, 1964:

complications related to acute respiratory disintegration syndrome...

From the September 26^th, 1964 Hollywood Reporter:

Zone and more recently did the screenplay for John Frankenheimer’s film

Seven Days In May, is fighting for his life after being admitted to UCLA

Medical Center early this morning with an apparent case of Morgan’s-C...

From the September 28^th, 1964 Sporting News(USA):

’64 WORLD SERIES

1^st Cancellation of Fall Classic Since 1904

From the September 30^th, 1964 London Times:

Italian Embassy In London Verifies Phone and Telegraph Connections With Rome

Have Been Lost

From the October 2^nd, 1964 ABC(Spain):

the RDS epidemic currently afflicting much of this country....

From the October 4^th, 1964 Irish Times:

From a report by Secretary of State Rusk to President Johnson dated October 8^th, 1964:

Soviet Union, every nation in Europe is experiencing at least one

strain of the Morgan’s virus, and half of those are being hit with

multiple strains...Excluding Vatican City, six governments have

fallen and three others are teetering on the brink of collapse.

Foreign Secretary Butler thinks it may be just a matter of weeks,

or even days, before the virus jumps the Channel and we start

seeing outbreaks in southern England...

From the October 11^th, 1964 Asahi Shimbun(Japan):

Health Officials To Meet In Tokyo With The Emperor

From the October 13^th, 1964 San Francisco Chronicle:

WORLDWIDE CASUALTIES ESTIMATED TO EXCEED 150,000

From the October 16^th, 1964 Chicago Tribune:

From a BBC newscast dated October 19^th, 1964:

The nightmare of a respiratory disintegration syndrome

outbreak in Great Britain became stark reality this morning

as three Leeds residents were hospitalized with Morgan’s-D,

generally acknowledged to be the most lethal form of the

virus...

From a North Vietnamese foreign ministry press release dated October 24^th, 1964:

for an undisclosed location in order that he may be safeguarded

from contracting Morgan’s disease...

From the October 27^th, 1964 St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

WORLDWIDE CASUALTIES CLOSE TO 450,000

From the November 2^nd, 1964 Daily Telegraph(UK):

PRIME MINISTER DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY IN WALES

AND SOUTHERN ENGLAND

From the November 8^th, 1964 Dallas Morning Herald:

THAT WORLDWIDE RDS DEATH TOLL HAS REACHED 600,000

From the November 9^th, 1964 Boston Globe:

Loss Of Key Employees To RDS Forces Decision

From the November 12^th, 1964 Houston Post:

NORTH CAROLINA

West Coast Zone Slowly Expanding Toward San Francisco

From the November 15^th, 1964 Daily Mail:

FRANCE AND BRITAIN CUT

From a CBC-TV newscast dated November 20^th, 1964:

government in Ottawa of using the present RDS emergency as

an excuse to curtail French-Canadian civil liberties. The accusation

comes on the heels of the arrest of three separatist leaders at a

protest rally in Montreal held last night to denounce the martial

law decree that has been in force throughout the province for

almost four months...

From the November 22^nd, 1964 Providence Journal(USA):

From the November 27^th, 1964 Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

From the December 1^st, 1964 Hartford Courant(USA):

WORLDWIDE TOLL EXCEEDS 1.5 MILLION

From the December 5^th, 1964 Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

PREACHER AND CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER DR. MARTIN

LUTHER KING DIES FROM RDS VIRUS

From the December 8^th, 1964 Wall Street Journal:

From the December 14^th, 1964 Kansas City Star:

From the December 21^st, 1964 edition of the Australian newspaper The Age:

Minister Sato’s order closing all the country’s major airports to anything other

than vital defense and medical relief flights. Emperor Hirohito and his family have

quarantined themselves inside Tokyo’s Imperial Palace...

From a letter by a US military advisor in South Vietnam to his brother in Minnesota dated December 23^rd, 1964:

the tree this Christmas is caskets and shovels...every day before I head out into the

field and every night after I come back I pray that if I die, I have the good luck to be

killed by the VC and not that damn RDS bug I’ve been hearing about. Who would

have thought a Cong-infested hamlet could be safer than the good old USA?

From the December 27^th, 1964 London Times:

From the December 30^th, 1964 Newark Star-Ledger(USA):

From a BBC-TV newscast dated January 3^rd, 1965:

guard tonight as opposition mounts against the martial law decree that was

issued for metropolitan London five days ago....

From an Associated Press dispatch out of Seoul dated January 7^th, 1965:

South Korean intelligence officials report today that North Korean dictator

Kim Il Sung may have been placed in quarantine to protect him against the

risk of being infected with RDS. As their main evidence they cite the fact that

Kim, who has ruled North Korea with an iron fist since his regime was founded

in 1948, has not been seen in public in over 36 hours....

From the January 13^th, 1965 Boston Globe:

NEW YORK TIMES ON INDEFINITE HIATUS

Wall Street Journal Now Only Major Newspaper Still Publishing In Metropolitan New

York Area

From the January 20^th, 1965 Washington Post:

take the presidential oath of office for the second time. Most of the gala events that

had been planned to mark the occasion have been cancelled due to the U.S. Morgan’s

virus epidemic which has been ravaging much of the country since last August....

From the January 23^rd, 1965 Times of India:

UNDER QUARANTINE

From the February 7^th, 1965 Ha’aretz(Israel):

From the February 13^th,1965 La Prensa(Mexico):

The Economic Ministry announced yesterday that sixty percent of the adult population

of this country is unemployed as a consequence of the current worldwide RDS emergency...

From the February 24^th, 1965 Des Moines Register(USA):

From an editorial in the February 25^th, 1965 Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

at this point it’s hard to tell which is deadlier: the virus itself or the despair it

has induced as it keeps spreading around the world in defiance of all efforts to

cure it. The already staggeringly high worldwide casualty count of 4.1 million

is certain to climb, particularly when one takes into account the hundreds if

not thousands of suicides being committed every day out on the East Coast

alone...

From the March 2^nd, 1965 London Times:

CPSU First Secretary Brezhnev’s Whereabouts Presently Unknown

From the March 5^th, 1965 Portland Oregonian:

Phone service between Los Angeles and San Francisco remains out for a third straight

day....

From a UPI dispatch out of Cairo dated March 11^th, 1965:

From the March 18^th, 1965 Detroit Free Press:

Mayor Daley Funeral and Cremation Held Under Heavy Police Guard

From the March 22^nd, 1965 Irish Times:

From a report by Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara to President Johnson dated March 27^th, 1965:

Vietnam at this point. The Viet Cong hardly pose much threat to anyone under the

present circumstances, and the NVA will have its hands full for the foreseeable future

keeping a lid on internal dissent in North Vietnam. Furthermore, we’ll need every

spare hand we can get in the field in Europe in case Brezhnev-- or whoever’s minding

the Kremlin in his absence --gets antsy and tries to make a grab for West Berlin...

From the March 29^th, 1965 Washington Post:

DEFENSE SECRETARY MCNAMARA FIRED

From a top secret KGB report to Soviet defense minister Sergei Grechko dated April 4^th, 1965:

southern Italy have detected few significant signs of human survivors in the regions affected by the RDS

plague...

From the April 8^th, 1965 Indianapolis Star:

Paper Operating With Only ¼ Of Normal Payroll, May Have To File For Bankruptcy

From the April 13^th, 1965 Wall Street Journal:

be suspended indefinitely after today’s edition...

From the April 21^st, 1965 People’s Daily Worker(China):

ever be infected with respiratory disintegration syndrome...

From the April 25^th, 1965 Hartford Courant:

From a Manchester United press release dated May 3^rd, 1965:

club is suspending all operations until further notice...

From the May 10^th, 1965 Providence Journal:

NEW YORK METS DISBANDED

Three-Year-Old Expansion Team Financially Crippled By RDS Epidemic

From the May 16^th, 1965 Rand Daily Mail(South Africa):

REFUGEE SHIP

From the May 22^nd, 1965 Edmonton Sun:

AIR CANADA OUT OF BUSINESS

From the May 29^th, 1965 Dallas Morning Herald:

From the June 4^th, 1965 Tulsa Herald:

From the June 10^th, 1965 Scotsman(UK):

From a dispatch by the US embassy in Canberra to Secretary of State Rusk dated June 13^th, 1965:

just said the Soviets are closing their embassy in Hanoi....

From a Reuters dispatch out of Helsinki dated June 18^th, 1965:

by mutinous elements of his own secret police...

From the June 22^nd, 1965 Stars & Stripes:

From the June 28^th, 1965 Variety:

From the June 30^th, 1965 Calgary Albertan:

From an autopsy report by the Washington State medical examiner’s office dated July 3^rd, 1965:

SUBJECT NAME: Manson, Charles Milles (a.k.a. Charles Milles Maddox)

AGE: 30

SEX: Male

RACE: Caucasian

HEIGHT: 6’1"

WEIGHT: 135 lbs.

HAIR: Brown

EYES: Blue

NATIONALITY: American

DATE OF DEATH: July 2^nd, 1965 at 11:32 PM

PLACE OF DEATH: Hospital wing, McNeil Island Federal Prison

CAUSE OF DEATH: Subject apparently succumbed to infection of respiratory

disintegration syndrome

To be continued....