Was the late ex-Iranian a US doctor or bio-weapon scientist?
Iranian media this week offered a glimpse into the purported double life of an Iranian-born American physician alleging he was a secret bio-weapons scientist. They reported that Dr. Noah McKay (formerly Nasser Talebzadeh Ordoubadi) died in mysterious circumstance Saturday, Feb. 14 aged 53, vaguely accusing “intelligence agencies” of causing his death.
Dr. Noah is described in his American biography as a pioneer of Mind-Body-Quantum medicine who lectured in five countries and ran a successful health care center General Medical Clinics Inc. in King County, Washington for 15 years after suffering a heart attack in 1989.
The Iranian media claim his real persona was that of a leading bio-weapon researcher with notable accomplishments in the research of antidotes to toxic weapons. Some toxins respond to antibiotics and penicillin treatment, but others like botulism and ricin still defy treatment.
The Iranian sources hinted he was working on those toxins.
Not a trace of this activity appears in his biography or in his overt relationships.
Born in Tehran in 1956, he came to the US in 1974, attended Tufts University and won his MD in 1983. His father, Mansour Talebzadeh Ordoubadi was Chief of Staff of the Iranian army under the Shah of Iran in the late 1960’s. His maternal grandfather Saad Doleh was prime minister of Iran in the late 1930’s.
Yet debkafiles intelligence sources report the ex-Iranian was a person of interest to US intelligence agencies although he was granted citizenship. He was watched on suspicion of maintaining clandestine connections with Middle East terrorist groups as well as working with Russian mafia elements in the West Coast town of Seattle, reputed procurers of advanced weapons for overseas terrorist organizations.
The US authorities never accused Dr. Talebzadeh of passing his biological weapons researches to Tehran. The Iranian sources claim they lacked evidence that would stand up in court.
But despite his pro-monarchist heritage, he was suspected of –
1. Obtaining access to classified biological warfare weaponry and antitoxins.
2. Using American territory as a convenient base for passing these secrets to Islamist terrorists and Iran.
Dr. Noah himself alleged that on May 13, 1997, eighteen FBI agents visited his home and those of managers of his clinics. According to his account, the FBI took sixty clinic employees before a grand jury, conducted hours of covert wiretaps of employee conversations and phone calls, and had undercover FBI agents posing as patients. He complained the federal authorities were out to get him.
In 2000, the six WellNet clinics the ex-Iranian owned were shut down, he filed for bankruptcy and accepted a plea bargain under which he was sentenced to 35 months in prison for health care and mail fraud under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
The Iranian media stress that the more serious charges of money laundering, funding Middle East terrorists and connections with the Russian mafia in Seattle were “never substantiated, proven or confirmed.”
At the federal prison in Sheridan, Oregan, Talebzadeh is quoted as telling his lawyers that his life was in danger and he must change his name and ask for a transfer to another jail. He served out his sentence and in April, 2003, Dr. Noah successfully underwent open heart surgery.
None but Iranian sources report his death, but even they do not say how and where it happened.
The death of the ex-Iranian doctor/scientist remains as much a mystery as his life.
The Iranian reports only hint that he may have met a similar fate to the British ministry of defense’s bio-weapons expert Dr. David Kelly, whose body was found in an Oxfordshire wood on July 17, 2003, five months after the US invasion of Iraq. At the time, the Bush administration was hunting for Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.
A British inquiry commission issued a verdict of suicide but Kelly’s family and friends were always sure he was murdered.