rnational pandemic preparedness system developed?

Which laboratories collaborated?

How were biological samples exchanged?

Which agencies funded research?

Which institutions specialized in emerging infectious diseases?

Which organizations coordinated preparedness exercises?

Those questions led me across the United States and Europe.

Fort Detrick.

Fort Belvoir.

Chapel Hill.

Rotterdam.

Geneva.

The Hague.

Hamilton, Montana.

Each destination offered another piece of a much larger institutional map.

The map eventually became more important than any single destination.

Along the way I interviewed scientists, former employees, physicians, engineers, military veterans, government officials, and ordinary citizens.

Some conversations confirmed established understanding.

Others raised additional questions.

Many led nowhere.

That is the nature of investigative reporting.

Most leads fail.

A few reveal unexpected connections.

Still fewer change the direction of an investigation entirely.

The COVID-19 pandemic transformed these long-standing interests into an urgent global story.

Almost overnight, virology became front-page news.

Terms previously confined to scientific journals entered ordinary conversation.

PCR.

Spike proteins.

mRNA.

Variants.

Neutralizing antibodies.

Furin cleavage sites.

Laboratory safety levels.

The public suddenly found itself immersed in subjects that previously occupied only specialists.

At the same time, disagreement became unavoidable.

Scientists debated origins.

Governments released differing assessments.

Journalists attempted to interpret rapidly changing information.

Congress launched investigations.

Inspectors General issued reports.

Freedom of Information Act requests uncovered internal emails.

Peer-reviewed publications challenged one another.

Public confidence in scientific institutions became increasingly polarized.

This book does not claim to settle every scientific controversy.

Instead, it tells the story of an investigation.

It describes why certain questions appeared important to me, how those questions evolved over time, where the reporting led, and why I believe citizen journalism contributed something valuable to the broader public conversation.

Readers may agree with some conclusions and disagree with others.

That is entirely appropriate.

My hope is not that every reader reaches identical conclusions.

My hope is that readers appreciate the importance of continuing to ask difficult questions while distinguishing carefully between documented evidence, inference, and speculation.

One lesson became increasingly clear throughout this journey.

Scientific understanding evolves.

Public narratives evolve.

Evidence accumulates.

Questions once dismissed sometimes receive renewed attention.

Other hypotheses lose support as additional evidence emerges.

Good journalism must evolve alongside the evidence rather than becoming permanently attached to any single narrative.

That principle guided my work from the beginning.

It continues to guide it today.

The title, Fauci and Me, therefore should not be misunderstood.

This is not simply a book about Anthony Fauci.

Nor is it solely a book about COVID-19.

It is a book about two very different ways of approaching the same historical era.

One represents official institutions.

The other represents independent investigation.

Between those two perspectives lies the complicated, unfinished story of one of the most consequential public-health crises in modern history.

The camera is still rolling.

The notebook remains open.

The road continues.

Welcome to Fauci and Me.
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George’ Webb Task Force Orange Journal
Fauci And Me - A Technical Preface

<picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!CdqP!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F27898182-69eb-4f1a-8cbe-f1bfd3d5d106_1536x1024.png <svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line The Genes That Decide What Belongs From South Africa to HLA, MHC and the Death of My Friend By George Webb

My interest in the genetics of immunity did not begin in a laboratory.

It began with a question.

In 1978, I was a young man looking at apartheid South Africa and wondering how far a government might go to preserve a political system built around racial separation. I was interested in the intersection of military power, biology and population. I did not possess the vocabulary I would acquire decades later. I didn’t know enough immunology to talk intelligently about antigen presentation, HLA polymorphism or MHC haplotypes. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!XVUj!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffc8ba69a-66fb-4839-ad7a-7ef1d5907c3a_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line (This Preface is meant to provide the reader with a deeper understanding of my investigation into HIV and AIDS, but this technical explanation is not necessary to read “Fauci and Me”. Skip this Preface if you find it too technical).

But I understood the question. Could biology be used politically?

That question stayed with me.

Years later, the documented history of apartheid South Africa would reveal that this was not an absurd subject to investigate. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission examined the apartheid government’s secret chemical and biological warfare program, Project Coast. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!MIr1!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3c72b7df-e275-482f-bf3a-70ed93628aee_768x1024.jpeg

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line George Webb at the Rhodes Statue in Company Gardens in Cape Town, South Africa.

The historical record places Project Coast’s formal beginnings in the early 1980s; former defense minister Magnus Malan testified that he approved it in 1981. The TRC subsequently investigated experiments involving humans and animals conducted between 1981 and 1994. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!pO3r!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5ec3c003-1be0-4608-97ba-83289c828876_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line I have gone through the process of procuring a liver for a good friend to deliver life from the jaws of death since my initial reaction that South African transplant experiments were being categorized as “acquired immune deficiency”. I have internalized this techspeak and nomenclature. Was organ transplant testing part of Project Coast testing in Cape Town? Were early HIV cases blood rejection cases? <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!q8Qo!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffa05da26-1d9a-4db6-b1a9-02bf646d3f06_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line I want to be precise about the investigation into what was revealed to be Fauci’s HIV and AIDs chronology and how it mapped to the South African experience.

I am not saying that Project Coast existed in 1978 or that I knew about it then. The evidence we have places it later.

What I am [...]

saying is that in 1978 I had already become interested in the broader question of whether biology could become an instrument of state power.

At the time, I couldn’t have imagined where that question would eventually lead me. Read more

George’ Webb Task Force Orange Journal
Fauci And Me - Chapter One - The Convenient Emergence

<picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!n5Wy!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F884e756f-8590-49e3-a370-ef39ead66c32_1024x1536.png <svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line Chapter One The Convenient Emergence South Africa, AIDS, and the Question That Would Follow Me for Forty Years

History rarely announces that something important is beginning.

There is no bell. No narrator. No title card.
George Webb's Intelligence Network is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Usually there are only fragments.

A strange illness.

A laboratory report.

A government under pressure.

A few scientists asking questions.

And somewhere, usually far from the cameras, somebody collecting blood.

That was the pattern that first caught my attention in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when I began following reports from southern Africa. I was a freshman at Miami University in 1978. I wasn’t an immunologist. I wasn’t a virologist. I wasn’t employed by an intelligence agency.

I was simply curious. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WaoC!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F23858e5d-3827-4ded-987c-c61d00f557ec_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line And South Africa gave me plenty to be curious about.

Apartheid was ultimately doomed, although nobody could say exactly when it would fall. A white minority government was attempting to maintain political control over a much larger Black population. Resistance movements were growing. South African forces were fighting beyond the country’s borders. Angola and Namibia had become theaters in a much larger Cold War.

Then biology entered the picture.

South Africa established a secret chemical and biological warfare program called Project Coast. That is not speculation. It is part of the historical record.

Wouter Basson, the physician who headed the program, would eventually stand trial on dozens of charges associated with his activities. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard evidence concerning poisons, bacteria and other unconventional weapons developed during the apartheid period.

That history matters because it established something I could never forget: A modern government really had been willing to investigate biology as a political and military weapon.

That fact does not prove that apartheid South Africa created HIV.

It does something subtler.

It makes the question of biological warfare in that historical setting legitimate.

And it taught me an investigative lesson that would become important again four decades later: When a new biological threat emerges during a period of extraordinary political pressure, examine the biology—but also examine the institutions surrounding it. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!uKaL!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0d962d9a-91c9-406c-b5f0-7d4075a25fe4_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line The Disease That Didn’t Fit

AIDS was formally recognized in the United States in 1981.

Young men were appearing with diseases physicians ordinarily expected only in severely immunocompromised patients. Pneumocystis pneumonia. Kaposi sarcoma. Opportunistic infections.

Something was destroying—or disabling—a critical part of the immune system.

Eventually HIV was identified as the cause of AIDS.

Modern phylogeneti[...]

c evidence provides a detailed evolutionary history: HIV-1 descended from simian immunodeficiency viruses, with the pandemic HIV-1 group M tracing to an SIV lineage circulating in chimpanzees in southeastern Cameroon. Molecular-clock studies place that emergence decades before AIDS was recognized in 1981.

That is the scientific consensus.

But my interest was developing along a different track.

I was fascinated by what the virus did. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!e3YB!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6205c3ca-e893-45b8-89cc-fec2438484a5_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line The human immune system had an extraordinary ability to distinguish self from foreign material. T cells, antigen presentation and what I would later learn to call the Major Histocompatibility Complex formed an elaborate biological identification system.

A virus that could progressively dismantle that defense system seemed almost unimaginably consequential.

My working question became: What happens when the biological machinery responsible for recognizing foreign material stops functioning properly?

That question sent me toward transplantation biology, HLA markers, T cells and eventually genomics.

It also sent me back toward South Africa.

Because another revolution was happening simultaneously.

Scientists were getting increasingly good at identifying human biological differences from blood. Blood Becomes Information

Before the Human Genome Project, a blood sample could tell researchers only a fraction of what one can reveal today.

But that fraction was already powerful.

Blood groups.

Disease-associated markers.

HLA types.

Inherited traits.

Population differences.

The technology was primitive by today’s standards, but the direction was obvious.

Blood was becoming information. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!M7Mn!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F70543260-bffb-4f02-aa0b-661cba30b0a0_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line And information about populations inevitably interested governments.

I began looking at biological sample collection differently.

A vial of blood wasn’t merely a diagnostic specimen.

It was a biological record of the person who supplied it.

As marker technology improved, that record became richer.

Then came sequencing.

Then computational biology.

Then enormous genomic databases.

Then inexpensive whole-genome sequencing.

What had been a handful of markers became millions of data points.

That progression became central to my investigation. My original introduction describes this as the beginning of my interest in blood collection, genetic markers and the eventual transformation of biology into information science.

But another question remained.

What happens when governments possessing that capability become desperate?

South Africa provided an uncomfortable historical example.

Project Coast demonstrated that the apartheid military really did pursue chemical and biological capabilities.

It did not establish that Project Coast created HIV.

That distinction is essential.

But it was enough to make me keep looking. The First Parallel

Forty years later, another biological mystery arrived during another extraordinary political moment.

It was 2019.

Donald Trump was preparing to seek reelection.

The American economy was strong. Political polarization was extreme. Impeachment dominated Washington.

Then, thousands of miles away, a cluster of unexplained pneumonia appeared in Wuhan.

Within months the world stopped.

Airports emptied.

Businesses closed.

Schools closed.

Governments invoked emergency authorities.

Congress autho[...]

rized extraordinary spending.

And suddenly another obscure piece of molecular biology became politically important.

The furin cleavage site. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!QJ2T!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4b8415e-507d-4f12-975e-d53326e19dd8_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line SARS-CoV-2 possesses a multibasic furin cleavage site at the junction between the S1 and S2 portions of its spike protein. Furin cleavage helps prepare the spike protein for the membrane-fusion process involved in cellular entry. SARS-CoV-2’s site distinguishes it from the closest known sarbecoviruses that lack an equivalent site.

To most people, that was molecular trivia.

To me, it was a flashing light.

Not because a furin cleavage site proves laboratory engineering.

It doesn’t.

Furin cleavage sites occur naturally in multiple virus families, and evolutionary mechanisms including mutation, insertion, deletion and recombination can produce major changes in viral genomes.

The unanswered question was narrower: How did this particular virus acquire this particular feature?

And that question reminded me powerfully of the questions I had asked during AIDS. Millions of Years—and One Remarkable Moment

Evolution does not work according to election calendars.

Viruses do not know who occupies the White House.

A nucleotide does not vote Republican or Democrat.

That is precisely why coincidences between biological events and political events attract my attention.

Not because coincidence establishes causation.

Because coincidence generates a question.

The sarbecovirus lineage behind SARS-CoV-2 represents an evolutionary history stretching far beyond human political history. Yet SARS-CoV-2 emerged possessing a consequential cleavage feature at exactly the historical moment when humanity had acquired extraordinary capabilities for manipulating viruses—and when the United States was entering one of its most consequential elections.

That juxtaposition became impossible for me to ignore.

Again, the responsible question was not: Did somebody engineer a virus to stop a president from being reelected? <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UY8z!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3657013a-7442-4b71-ba6b-3c5a9b8487e2_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line There is no evidence establishing that proposition.

The investigative question was: Given the political consequences of the pandemic, the existing research capabilities, and the unusual genomic feature, what evidence would distinguish natural emergence from laboratory-associated emergence?

That is a very different question.

And it is answerable, at least in principle.

Laboratory notebooks.

Sequence databases.

Grant proposals.

Sample inventories.

Experiment records.

Research collaborations.

Virus passage histories.

Emails.

Funding documents.

Those are not conspiracy theories.

Those are evidence. Two Crises, One Investigative Method

South Africa taught me not to look at biology in isolation.

COVID taught me the same lesson again.

The parallels were not proof that the two events shared an origin.

They were methodological.

In southern Africa: Political instability → biological research → military programs → population sampling → emerging disease → enormous institutional consequences.

Four decades later: Advanced biotechnology → pandemic preparedness → coronavirus research → emerging disease → emergency government powers → enormous institutional consequences. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!R5QY!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-me[...]

dia.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F109c453a-b359-4826-922a-e5ac59a825ee_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line Those sequences do not establish intentionality.

But they tell an investigative journalist where to look.

Follow the samples.

Follow the laboratories.

Follow the scientists.

Follow the grants.

Follow the military programs.

Follow the patents.

Follow the emergency contracts.

Follow the people who possessed the capability before the emergency made that capability valuable.

And above all: Follow the chronology.

Because chronology cannot tell you why something happened.

But it can tell you what was possible before it happened. The Chimpanzee Problem

My skepticism about HIV’s emergence eventually focused on the conventional zoonotic story.

The modern evidence for an SIV origin of HIV is substantial. Scientists have found closely related viruses in wild chimpanzees and gorillas, mapped their geographic distribution and reconstructed multiple cross-species transmissions through phylogenetics. HIV-1 group M—the lineage responsible for the global pandemic—is traced to SIVcpz in central chimpanzees.

That evidence deserves to be stated plainly.

But another fact fascinated me even more.

SIVcpz itself has an evolutionary history.

Research indicates that the chimpanzee virus is a recombinant derived from SIV lineages associated with monkeys. In other words, the evolutionary story itself involves cross-species transmission, recombination and adaptation before the lineage eventually reached humans.

That is fascinating biology.

It also reinforces a principle that would become central to Fauci and Me: Viruses have histories. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!qVo5!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe7aecbff-63b7-48df-bb13-2ef9d271edf1_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line Those histories leave fingerprints.

Mutations.

Insertions.

Deletions.

Recombination.

Adaptation.

Geography.

Host changes.

And increasingly, laboratories leave histories too.

Passage records.

Freezer inventories.

Genetic constructs.

Sequencing files.

Grant applications.

Emails.

Databases.

The journalist’s job is to compare the two histories. The Question Behind the Question

By 2020 I had spent decades watching biotechnology become increasingly powerful.

The tools had changed almost beyond recognition.

In 1980, scientists hunted for a few markers.

By 2020, researchers could synthesize DNA, alter viral genomes, construct infectious clones, perform serial passage, manipulate receptor binding and sequence an entire viral genome faster than earlier researchers could characterize a handful of genes.

That technological transformation changed the nature of investigative journalism.

The question was no longer simply: Could nature produce this?

Nature can produce extraordinary things.

The better question became: Could humans produce it too? <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!hsA-!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5e8a5b91-bd84-412f-8d60-66e153afd7e0_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line And if both answers are yes, then there is only one responsible path forward:

Look for evidence capable of distinguishing them.

That principle applies equally to HIV and SARS-CoV-2.

It doesn’t require believing that either virus was engineered.

It requires refusing to decide the answer before examining the evidence. Fauci and Me

This was where my path and Anthony Fauci’s path began moving toward one another.

Fauci approached emerging disease from inside America’s biomedical est[...]

ablishment.

I approached it from outside.

He had laboratories.

I had notebooks.

He had NIH grants.

I had airline tickets, rental cars and conference badges.

He could call scientists into meetings.

I cornered them in hallways.

He participated in the institutions making policy.

I wanted to know who funded those institutions, who collaborated with whom, what experiments they performed and what they knew before the public knew it.

HIV was the first great epidemic through which those two approaches developed.

COVID would bring them into direct collision.

And the bridge between those eras was biotechnology itself.

AIDS taught the world that an invisible sequence of nucleotides could transform civilization.

The Human Genome Project taught us how to read those sequences.

Synthetic biology taught us how to change them.

COVID forced us to confront the question that naturally followed: Once humanity learned to rewrite biology, how could the public distinguish an accident of evolution from an accident—or product—of experimentation? <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DSXk!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F912639e5-8f47-4d6c-a8b4-4bd99ae37dd2_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line That became my question.

Not because I knew the answer.

Because by then I knew enough to understand how important the answer could be.

South Africa had taught me the first lesson.

Governments under extraordinary pressure sometimes do extraordinary things.

Project Coast proved that much.

HIV taught me the second.

The smallest biological changes can have enormous historical consequences.

And SARS-CoV-2 taught me the third.

A tiny stretch of genetic material—the furin cleavage site—could become the center of a global argument about where a pandemic came from.

Three stories.

Three eras.

One question running through all of them: When biology and political power converge at precisely the right historical moment, who is willing to follow the evidence backward?

That is where Fauci and Me begins.
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George’ Webb Task Force Orange Journal
The DNA Is Catching Up: My September 11 “Tyler And Team” Hypothesis Revisited

<picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ht-w!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F72fdff9a-1b56-4e14-b742-bc3e503c23e9_1586x992.png <svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line The DNA Is Catching Up: My September 11 “Tyler And Team” Hypothesis Revisited What the emerging forensic record supports—and what remains to be proved
George Webb's Intelligence Network is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
On September 11, 2025, while most of America was being presented with the emerging story of a lone suspect named Tyler Robinson, I began asking a different question: What if we weren’t looking at Tyler alone? What if we were looking at Tyler and a team? <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!YoqN!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F06f07117-c77d-441b-9fa9-59b200fb108e_1320x1616.jpeg

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line That distinction has driven my investigation ever since.

Weeks later, in my September 27 Substack article, See The Team, See The Murder, I argued that endlessly debating a single figure at the Utah Valley University amphitheater wasn’t going to solve the murder of Charlie Kirk.
I wrote that I wanted to begin on the safest ground available: Kirk had been shot and killed at Utah Valley University in Orem on September 10, 2025. From there, the job was to reconstruct people, movements, evidence and relationships rather than force everything into a predetermined narrative. See The Team, See The Murder⁠ (George Webb⁠)

That distinction matters even more now. The Rifle Becomes a Forensic Witness

The most important development is not another blurry surveillance image.

It is DNA. <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nWl5!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc0be4fb5-c54c-4919-bb55-8072788e3b80_1320x1663.jpeg

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line The publicly reported prosecution evidence says Tyler Robinson’s DNA was found on the rifle’s trigger, elsewhere on the rifle, on the fired cartridge casing, on two unfired cartridges and on the towel used to wrap the rifle. (PolitiFact⁠)

That is significant evidence connecting Robinson to the weapon.

But it does not, by itself, tell us the entire history of who possessed, transported, prepared or handled that weapon.

And that is precisely where my September 11 hypothesis becomes worth revisiting. THE ORIGINAL QUESTION <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!NQtC!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F946101a5-2ccc-4c7f-8ed0-948beb734d5a_1320x880.jpeg

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line Was Tyler Robinson the only person handling the rifle?

My investigation has consistently focused on reconstructing the human network surrounding the physical evidence rather than assuming that identifying one person’s DNA necessarily identifies every person who may have interacted with an object.

A firearm can potentially carry a history of handling.

That history should be investigated. THE TRIGGER <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DANG!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0ab00dc9-715f-4ccf-8f40-7d6072a48ff1_1536x1024.png

<svg<g[...]

<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line The trigger is especially important because prosecutors reportedly say Robinson’s DNA was recovered there.

That is real evidence.

It establishes a forensic connection between Robinson and a particularly significant portion of the rifle. (PolitiFact⁠)

What it does not automatically establish is when he touched it, how many times he touched it, or whether anyone else subsequently handled the same surfaces.

Those are separate forensic questions. TOUCH ONE <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!oI-E!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3d8740fb-8abc-4f8d-8ddf-6467ca7a4f0c_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line My working reconstruction begins with: TOUCH ONE — TYLER ROBINSON

That portion now has substantial support insofar as the publicly described evidence places Robinson’s DNA on the trigger and elsewhere on the rifle.

The prosecution therefore has something considerably stronger than a surveillance-image resemblance connecting Robinson to the weapon.

It has biological evidence. TOUCH TWO THROUGH TOUCH SEVEN <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Kvhh!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb76aaf99-dc8e-4eb3-a321-2aca9698e6b2_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line This morning I created a series of visual investigative slides illustrating the next question.

They depict Tyler as Touch One, followed by six hypothetical additional handlers: Touch Two.
Touch Three.
Touch Four.
Touch Five.
Touch Six.
Touch Seven.

These graphics are investigative models—not laboratory reports.

That distinction is critical.

I am not claiming that the publicly available forensic record presently proves six additional people touched the trigger after Robinson. I am illustrating the hypothesis that should now be tested against the complete DNA and latent-print evidence.

If laboratory reports ultimately establish multiple distinct contributors on the trigger, trigger guard or associated rifle components, then the obvious next questions become:

Who are they?

Where did they touch the rifle?

Can their profiles be identified? <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kDZ5!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9acc2351-dc57-49ff-adfc-7ed2e9668209_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line And can forensic science reliably establish anything about the order in which those deposits occurred? DNA DOESN’T PROVIDE A TIMESTAMP <picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!HHzP!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F393bbffa-3aad-4b1a-90c1-174ac849aff5_1122x1402.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line This is where an investigation has to resist getting ahead of its evidence.

DNA can associate a biological profile with an object. Latent fingerprints can sometimes associate a particular person with a surface.

But neither ordinarily functions like a surveillance-camera timestamp.

Degradation can be affected by surface characteristics, heat, moisture, sunlight, cleaning, handling and numerous other variables. Consequently, a weaker or more degraded DNA sample cannot simply be translated into: “This person touched it first.”

That proposition would require considerably more forensic support.

So my slides showing progressively numbered touches should be understood as a timeline hypothesis to test, not a laboratory-established chronology. AN IMPORTANT BALLISTICS COMPLICATION[...]

<picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!oMSF!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbb6baf7b-8e6d-4e7c-ad1d-305966f4d98b_1536x1024.png

<svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line There is another reason the physical evidence deserves careful examination.

According to reporting based on 2026 court filings, an ATF comparison involving a bullet-jacket fragment recovered during Kirk’s autopsy and the recovered rifle produced an “inconclusive” result.

That does not mean the rifle was excluded.

Forensic experts explained that an inconclusive result means there wasn’t enough information on the fragment to determine whether that particular rifle fired it. Additional comparative testing was reportedly underway. (PolitiFact⁠)

This is precisely why evidence should be separated into categories rather than blended into one sweeping conclusion.

DNA asks who may have handled something.

Ballistics asks whether a projectile can be associated with a firearm.

Video asks where people were.

Timestamps ask when.

Each piece has to stand on its own before the pieces can responsibly be assembled. SEPTEMBER 11, 2025 REVISITED

So where does that leave my September 11, 2025 “Tyler and Team” hypothesis? Part of it has gained meaningful forensic support.

Tyler Robinson is not connected to the rifle merely through an allegation or a photograph. According to the prosecution evidence described publicly, his DNA was recovered from the trigger and multiple other rifle-related items. (PolitiFact⁠)

That makes the rifle an important forensic anchor.

But the larger “and Team” portion remains an investigative hypothesis unless and until laboratory records establish additional contributors and other evidence connects those contributors to relevant events.

That’s the line I want to draw clearly.

The new evidence doesn’t end the investigation.

It makes the next questions more important.

Release the complete DNA laboratory reports.

Release the mixture interpretations.

Release the latent-print examinations.

Identify every reportable contributor, if there are multiple contributors.

Show precisely which surfaces produced which profiles.

Then compare those results with the surveillance timeline, vehicle movements, communications and witness evidence.

Nearly a year after I first started asking whether investigators were looking at one person or a network of people, the physical evidence gives us a much better place to ask that question. Follow the rifle.
Follow the DNA.
Follow every identifiable hand that touched the evidence.

Because truth leaves a trace.

— George Webb
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George’ Webb Task Force Orange Journal
Chapter Two — The First Envelope And The First Spike

<picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!iusB!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6673be72-1721-4875-b211-e14c267d0224_1536x1024.png <svg<g<path<svg<polyline<polyline<line<line

Chapter Two — The First Envelope And The First Spike


<picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!gnLg!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8b1945e4-1481-430a-9e81-0dc11b616dfd_1536x1024.png

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The HIV Virus was like Tom Cruise jumping to board a helicopter in Mission Impossible. First the virus must grab the helicopter skid rail to attach, preferablybwith two arms, then pull itself into the cell to infect the immune cell. The two arms were proteins called GP120 and GP41.


<picturehttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5xvP!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff48ff08d-98c8-4730-ad64-528e077c4c0e_1536x1024.png

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In 1988, a doctor named Fauci explained how my good friend Rob, so young and so healthy, died in 1987. The explanation came quickly, like Rob’s death, which is the signature for military live exercises.

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