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ABSTRACT
From 1949 until 1988, the Soviet Union conducted a nearly continuous campaign of false allegations of biological-weapon (BW) use by the United States. In 1995, senior Russian military officials revived this pattern of false allegations, which continues to the present day. Russian officials amplified the campaign after the US government funded the transformation of former Soviet BW facilities in the Commonwealth of Independent States under the Nunn–Lugar program. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in China in January 2020 prompted a very greatly expanded Russian-government BW-related disinformation effort. This paper aims to present a reasonably comprehensive account of these activities and to assess their significance. The Russian government under President Vladimir Putin has demonstrated open disdain for both the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Dr. Slava Paperno, Dr. John Hart, and Dr. Robert Petersen for providing obscure sources in the original Russian that were difficult to locate and are used in the supplement, as well as translations from the original Russian. The author would also like to thank several correspondents in Georgia and Russia who were able to supply information not publicly available. He would also like to thank Nicole Ball for typing the manuscript.
Supplementary material
The supplementary materials to this article, available online at: https://doi.org/10.1080/10736700.2021.1964755, contain a detailed chronology from 1998 to mid-2021 of BW-related disinformation emanating from Russian government agencies or their proxies: senior officials in the Russian Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense; public-health agencies; and a multitude of media platforms, including many evidently established for this purpose by Russian intelligence agencies. These false allegations include claims that the United States had maintained an offensive BW program, carried out in laboratories all over the world, but particularly in facilities established in former Soviet states surrounding Russia, notably Georgia, and that from these locations the United States was actively attacking Russia with a long list of pathogens. All of these allegations are false, and there can be little question that the Russian government knows that they are false. Most of these facilities had been connected to the Soviet offensive BW program, and were later converted with the support of the Nunn-Lugar program to serve as central public-health laboratories, analogous to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States.
Notes
1 This history is described in detail in Milton Leitenberg and Raymond Zilinskas, The Soviet Biological Weapons Program: A History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), pp. 407–22.
2 In his research during the late 1990s for a book, Schwarzer Tod und Amikäfer: Biologische Waffen und Ihre Geschichte [Black death and Yankee beetles: biological weapons and their history], Erhard Geissler found letters between the top political figures in the German Democratic Republic in 1950 (Walter Ulbricht, the first secretary of the Communist Party of the new East Germany, and his prime minister, Otto Grotewohl), discussing the disinformation campaign. Personal communication, Dr. Erhard Geissler, October 2000. See also “Radio Free Europe and the Invasion of the Colorado Beetles—Fake News,” Cold War Radio Vignettes, July 24, 2018, <https://coldwarradios.blogspot.com/2018/07/radio-free-europe-and-invasion-of.html>.
3 Raymond Zilinskas, “Cuban Allegations of Biological Warfare by the United States: Assessing the Evidence,” Critical Reviews in Microbiology, Vol. 25, No. 3 (1999), pp. 173–228, <https://doi.org/10.1080/10408419991299202>; Milton Leitenberg, The Problem of Biological Weapons (Stockholm: National Defense College, 2004), pp. 78–84; Charles H. Calisher, “Scientist in a Strange Land: A Cautionary Tale, Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 16 (2009), pp. 509–19, <https://doi.org/10.1080/10736700903255151>.
4 Herbert Romerstein, “Disinformation as a KGB Weapon in the Cold War,” Journal of Intelligence History, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2001), pp. 56–57.
5 Milton Leitenberg, “New Russian Evidence on the Korean War Biological Warfare Allegations,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, No. 11 (Winter 1998), p. 183, <www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/bulletin-no-11-winter-1998>.
6 Beria’s accusation was contained in the Soviet Central Committee documents obtained in 1998. Kathryn Weathersby, “Deceiving the Deceivers: Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang and the Allegations of Biological Weapons Use in Korea,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, Vol. 11 (Winter 1998), pp. 176–77.
7 Milton Leitenberg, “China’s False Allegations of the Use of Biological Weapons by the United States during the Korean War,” Cold War International History Project Working Paper, March 2016, <www.cissm.umd.edu/publications/china%E2%80%99s-false-allegations-use-biological-weapons-united-states-during-korean-war≥.
8 Yelena Solomonovna Levina, “Experimental Biology in the System of Russian Security of the Second Half of the Twentieth Century: Biological Weapons or Health Care?” (in Russian), in Nauka I bezopasnost Rossii: Istoriko-nauchniye metodologicheskiye, istorico-teknicheskiye aspekty [Russian science and security: historical–scientific methodological and historical–technical aspects] (Moscow: Nauka, letter to the editor, 2000), pp. 367–94.
9 TASS, “CIA’s Lahore Mosquito Project” March 24, 1982; Vasili Mitrokhin, “KGB Active Measures in Southwest Asia in 1980–82,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, Nos. 14–15 (2003–04), pp. 201–02, <www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/bulletin-no-1415-winter-2003-spring-2004>; Radio Moscow, “US CBW Facilities, Use Program Described,” March 24, 1982; Romerstein, “Disinformation as a KGB Weapon in the Cold War,” quoting Sel’skaya Zhizn [Agricultural Life], April 2, 1985 and Radio Moscow, Domestic Service, July 13, 1985.
10 Leitenberg and Zilinskas, The Soviet Biological Weapons Program, pp. 414–17; US Department of State, Soviet Influence Activities: A Report on Active Measures and Propaganda, 1986–87 (Washington, DC, 1987), pp. 33–51, <http://jmw.typepad.com/files/state-department---a-report-on-active-measures-and-propaganda.pdf>; Thomas Boghardt, “Soviet Bloc Intelligence and Its AIDS Disinformation Campaign,” Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 53, No. 4 (2009), pp. 1–24; David A. Spetrino, “AIDS Disinformation,” Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 32 (Winter 1988), pp. 9–14; Erhard Geissler, “The AIDS Disinformation Campaign Continues and Bears Rotten Fruit,” ASA Newsletter, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2010), p. 14; Erhard Geissler and Robert Hunt Sprinkle, “Disinformation Squared: Was the HIV-from-Fort-Detrick Myth a Stasi Success?” Politics and the Life Sciences, Vol. 32, No. 2 (2013), pp. 2–99, <https://doi.org/10.2990/32_2_2>; Milton Leitenberg, “The Source of Lies about AIDS,” letter to the editor, Washington Post, December 31, 1992.
11 Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 1999), pp. 224–45, 484.
12 Douglas Selvage, “Operation ‘Denver’: The East German Ministry of State Security and the KGB’s AIDS Disinformation Campaign, 1985–1986 (Part 1),” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 21, No. 4 (2019), pp. 71–123. See also Mark Kramer, “Lessons from Operation ‘Denver,’ the KGB’s Massive AIDS Disinformation Campaign,” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 22, No.1 (2020), <https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/operation-denver-kgb-aids-disinformation-campaign/>; Nicoli Nattros, The AIDS Conspiracy: Science Fights Back (New York: Colombia University Press, 2012).
13 US Department of State, Soviet Influence Activities, 1986–87, pp. 34, 44.
14 Valentin Zapevalov, “Panic in the West, or What Is Hiding behind the Sensation Surrounding AIDS” (in Russian), Literaturnaya Gazeta, October 30, 1985.
15 Selvage, “Operation ‘Denver’.”
16 Bill Keller, “American Outraged by Soviet Article,” New York Times, June 6, 1987, <www.nytimes.com/1987/06/06/world/american-outraged-by-soviet-article.html>.
17 “Meeting in the CPSU Central Committee with leaders of mass media and creative unions on further enhancing the role of the press, television and radio broadcasting in the process of perestroika,” July 10, 1987, in Mikhail Gorbachev, Sobranie Sochinenii [Collected Works], (Moscow: Ves Mir, 2008), p. 267.
18 Associated Press, “Soviet Disavows Charges that US Created AIDS,” New York Times, November 5, 1987, <www.nytimes.com/1987/11/05/us/soviet-disavows-charges-that-us-created-aids.html>. Other senior US government officials, as well as US Ambassador Arthur Hartman, had already complained about the campaign, to no effect. Hartman did so on June 25, 1986, in a public letter.
19 David B. Ottoway, “US Links Soviets to Disinformation,” Washington Post, January 17, 1988, <www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1988/01/17/us-links-soviets-to-disinformation/793a560e-ad54-4fd5-83b0-b85205aa4706/?utm_term=.299a978b85e8>.
20 US Department of State, Soviet Influence Activities: A Report on Active Measures and Propaganda, 1987–1988 (Washington, DC, 1989, pp. 1–4.
21 Izvestiya, “Yevgeni Primakov Admits that the KGB Fabricated the Lie that AIDS Originated in Pentagon Laboratories,” March 19, 1992, <http://intellit.muskingum.edu/russia_folder/pcw_era/sect_13b.htm>.
22 Moskovskaya Pravda, August 15, 1992, cited in Romerstein, “Disinformation as a KGB Weapon in the Cold War,” 2001, p. 61.
23 Moskovskaya Pravda, p. 61; Mark Kramer, personal communication, 2019.
24 Nicoli Natrass, “Understanding the Origins and Prevalence of AIDS Conspiracy Beliefs in the United States and South Africa,” Sociology of Health and Illness, Vol. 35, No. 1 (2012), pp. 113–29, <https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9566.2012.01480.x>.
25 Michael W. Ross et al., “Conspiracy Beliefs about the Origin of HIV/AIDS in Four Racial/Ethnic Groups,” Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, Vol. 41, No. 3 (2006), pp. 342–44.
26 Laura Bogart and Sheryl Thorburn, “Relationship of African Americans’ Sociodemographic Characteristics and Belief in Conspiracies about HIV/AIDS and Birth Control,” Journal of the National Medical Association, Vol. 98, No. 7 (2006), pp. 1144–50. See also Harlan L. Dalton, “AIDS in Blackface,” Daedalus: Living with AIDS, Part II, Vol. 118 No. 3 (1989), pp. 205–27.
27 Roger Peabody, “African American People’s AIDS Conspiracy Beliefs Best Understood in Terms of Social Anxiety and Distrust, Not Ignorance,” NAM Aidsmap, January 29, 2015, <https://infohep.org/African-American-peoples-AIDS-conspiracy-beliefs-best-understood-in-terms-of-social-anxiety-and-distrust-not-ignorance/page/2940657/>.
28 Spike Lee, “Interview/Benetton Advertisement,” Rolling Stone, Vol. 12, No. 2 (1992), cited in Jacob Heller, “Rumors and Realities: Making Sense of HIV/AIDS Conspiracy Narratives and Contemporary Legends,” American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 105, No. 1 (2015), pp. 43–50, <https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2014.302284>; Nat Hentoff, “Who Will Speak the Truth to Spike Lee?” Washington Post, December 19, 1992, <www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1992/12/19/who-will-speak-the-truth-to-spike-lee-frivolous-claims-of-genocide-divide-people-and-trivialize-evil/69f7726c-f224-411f-b8c0-e0329630749c/>.
29 Ronald A. Brooks, “HIV/AIDS Conspiracy Beliefs and Intention to Adopt HIV Pre-exposure Prophylaxis among Black Men Who Have Sex with Men in Los Angeles,” International Journal of STD & AIDS, Vol. 29, No. 4 (2018), pp. 375–81.
30 Douglas Selvage and Christopher Nehring, “Operation ‘Denver’: KGB and Stasi Disinformation Regarding AIDS,” Woodrow Wilson Center, History and Public Policy Program, July 22, 2019.
31 Raymond Zilinskas, “Cuban Allegations of Biological Warfare by the United States: Assessing the Evidence,” Critical Reviews in Microbiology, Vol. 25, No. 3 (1999), pp. 173–228, <https://doi.org/10.1080/10408419991299202>; Leitenberg, The Problem of Biological Weapons, pp. 78–84; Calisher, “Scientist in a Strange Land.”
32 Leitenberg, The Problem of Biological Weapons, pp. 78–82.
33 For additional details, see Leitenberg and Zilinskas, The Soviet Biological Weapons Program, pp. 417–21. Paragraphs below are adapted from these pages.
34 Sergei Gerasimenko, “Everything That They Are Saying About US Is a Lie,” New Izvestia, March 3, 1998.
35 Dmitry Litovkin, “Interview; Valentin Yevstigneev on Issues Relating to Russian Biological Weapons,” Yaderny Kontrol [Nuclear control], No. 11 (1999), pp. 43–51 in the English-language edition, pp. 15–25 in the Russian-language edition.
36 Interview with General Valentin Yevstigneev, “Biological Weapons Are the Cheapest Kind of WMD: An Interview” (in Russian), Moscow, November 26, 2001.
37 BBC SWB (Summary of the World Broadcasts), “Russia: Military Bacteriological Centre Short of Funds, (Transmission of Moscow NTV, November 22, 1995),” November 27, 1995.
38 Jens H. Kuhn, Milton Leitenberg, and Raymond Zilinskas, “Russia’s Secret Weapons,” a review of Biological Espionage: Special Operations of the Soviet and Russian Foreign Intelligence Services in the West, by Alexander Kouzminov, Nature, No. 436 (2005), pp. 628–29. At the time of publication of his book, Kouzminov was employed in a New Zealand government agency concerned with environmental affairs.
39 Semantic Visions, “Russia Leading from Behind: Coronavirus-Focused Case Study of Cross-Border Disinformation Spread,” March 27, 2020, <https://euvsdisinfo.eu/report/a-new-chinese-coronavirus-was-likely-elaborated-in-nato-biolabs/>.
40 EU vs DISINFO, “DISINFO: A New Chinese Coronavirus Was Likely Elaborated in NATO Biolabs,” May 14, 2020, <https://euvsdisinfo.eu/report/a-new-chinese-coronavirus-was-likely-elaborated-in-nato-biolabs/>.
41 Polygraph.info, “Russian Media Spew US Coronavirus Conspiracies for Domestic Audience,” January 28, 2020, <www.polygraph.info/a/russia-coronavirus-conspiracy-fact-check/30402622.html>.
42 Igor Makarov, “A Biological Bomb at Our Borders: Dangerous Experiments in Secret Georgian Laboratories Equipped by American Specialists,” Pravda, December 3, 2009.
43 Interfax–AVN Online, “Moscow Suggests US State Dept Report Authors ‘Look in the Mirror’,” July 19, 2013.
44 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, The Problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Vols. 1–6 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1971–83).
45 Filippa Lentzos, “The Russian Disinformation Attack that Poses a Biological Danger,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November 10, 2018, <https://thebulletin.org/2018/11/the-russian-disinformation-attack-that-poses-a-biological-danger/#>.
46 Matt Field and John Krzyzaniak, “Why Do Politicians Keep Breathing Life into the False Conspiracy Theory that the Coronavirus Is a Biological Weapon?” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March 19, 2020, <https://thebulletin.org/2020/03/why-do-politicians-keep-breathing-life-into-the-false-conspiracy-theory-that-the-coronavirus-is-a-bioweapon/>.
47 Peter Pomerantsev, “How Vladislav Surkov Invented the New Russia,” The Atlantic, November 7, 2014, <www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/hidden-author-putinism-russia-vladislav-surkov/382489/>. Kramer, personal communication.
48 Personal communications, March 6 and March 9, 2020.
49 Adam B. Ellick, Adam Westbrook, and Jonah M. Kessel, “Meet the KGB Spies Who Invented Fake News: Operation Infektion,” New York Times, November 12, 2018, <www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000006210828/russia-disinformation-fake-news.html>.
50 Caucasian Research Resource Center, “NDI: Public Attitudes in Georgia,” April 2019, <https://caucasusbarometer.org/en/na2019ge/downloads/>.
51 Personal communication, October 26, 2019. The reference to “Rothschilds” and “international bankers who control the US and Europe” is taken from one of the most successful disinformation projects ever conceived, the fabricated anti-Semitic “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” In 2020, Russian COVID-19-related disinformation repeatedly used the same theme, replacing “the Rothschilds” with a more contemporary figure, George Soros.
52 Personal communications, February 2020.
53 Personal communication, March 18, 2020.
54 Asim Yasin, “Rehman Malik urges UNSG to constitute commission on COVID-19,” The News International, April 4, 2020, <https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/639212-malik-urges-unsg-to-constitute-commission-on-covid-19>.
55 These programs and platforms can be found, respectively, at <https://euvsdisinfo.eu/>, <www.mythdetector.ge/en>, and <www.atlanticcouncil.org/issue/disinformation/>.
56 Doowan Lee, “The Infodemic of COVID-19: Viral Influence Competition,” Zignal Labs, March 18, 2020.
57 Open University, “Emergency Funding to Track the Spread of False Information about COVID-19,” n.d., <www.open.ac.uk/research/news/emergency-funding-track-spread-false-information-about-covid-19>.
58 Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews, “The Russian ‘Firehose of Falsehood’ Propaganda Model: Why It Might Work and Options to Counter It,” PE-198-OSD [2016], <www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE100/PE198/RAND_PE198.pdf≥.
59 It is worth noting that social media and the wider digital space provide a megaphone to amplify the lies and fabrications. This technology lends itself to this sort of campaign of lies and deceit.
60 EU vs DiSiNFO, “The Kremlin and Disinformation about Coronavirus,” March 16, 2020, <https://euvsdisinfo.eu/the-kremlin-and-disinformation-about-coronavirus/>. Boris Nemtsov’s widow reduced the purpose still further, “to maintain Putin in power.” EU vs DiSiNFO, “Consequences of Disinformation,” No. 185, February 27, 2020, <https://euvsdisinfo.eu/consequences-of-disinformation/>.
61 EU vs Disinfo, “EEAS Special Report: Disinformation on the Coronavirus—Short Assessment of the Information Environment,” March 19, 2020, <https://euvsdisinfo.eu/eeas-special-report-disinformation-on-the-coronavirus-short-assessment-of-the-information-environment/>.
62 David Hoffman, “Genetic Weapons, You Say?” Foreign Policy, March 27, 2012, <https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/03/27/genetic-weapons-you-say/>, in reference to an essay by Putin published in Rossiiskaya Gazeta, February 20 2102, and a transcript of a meeting of Putin with his cabinet ministers on March 22, 2012.
63 Raymond Zilinskas, “Take Russia to ‘Task’ on Bioweapons Transparency,” Nature Medicine, Vol. 18, No. 6 (2012), p. 850.
64 Milton Leitenberg, “The Biological Weapons Program of the Soviet Union,” in Assessing the Biological Weapons Threat: Russia and Beyond, Hearing before the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats, Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, Serial No. 113–142, May 7, 2014 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2014).
65 MFA Russian Federation, “Comment by the Information and Press Department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Regarding the Distortion of Russia’s Position on BWC Issues by the US Congress,” May 12, 2014, <www.mid.ru/kommentarii_predstavitelya/-/asset_publisher≥. See also Nuclear Threat Initiative, “Russia Rejects Bioweapons Talk in US Congress as ‘Propaganda’,” May 13, 2014, <www.nti.org/gsn/article/bioweapons-claims-prompt-russian-rebuke/>.
66 Vladimir Putin, “Being Strong: National Security Guarantees for Russia,” Rossiiskaya Gazeta, February 20, 2012, <https://rg.ru/2012/02/20/putin-armiya.html>, and a transcript of a meeting of Putin with his cabinet ministers on March 22, 2012.
67 The Trilateral negotiations are discussed in detail in Leitenberg and Zilinskas, The Soviet Biological Weapons Program, pp. 562–678.
68 For example, Elizabeth Read, US deputy chief of mission in Georgia, in Steve Rosenberg, “Russian Disinformation and the Georgian ‘Lab of Death’,” BBC, November 12, 2018, <www.bbc.com/news/av/world-46157507/russian-disinformation-and-the-georgian-lab-of-death>.
69 Dr. Paata Imnadze, director of the Lugar Center, personal communication, July 12, 2019.
70 MFA Russian Federation, “Comment by the Information and Press Department on developments involving the Richard Lugar Centre for Public Health Research in Georgia,” 803-26-05-2020, May 26, 2020.
71 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia, “Commentary of the Press and Information Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the statement of the Russian Federation Regarding the Lugar Center,” May 27, 2020.
72 MFA Russian Federation, “Comment by the Information and Press Department on the Georgian Foreign Ministry’s response apropos of the Richard Lugar Centre for Public Health Research,” 812-27-05-2020, May 27, 2020.
73 TASS, “US Labs in Third Countries May Be Developing Pathogenic Agents—Diplomat,” April 17, 2020, <https://tass.com/politics/1146327>.
74 Kommersant, “Nikolai Patrushev Warned His SCO Colleagues about Threats from the West,” September 15, 2020, <www.kommersant.ru/doc/4492764≥. The other states that belong to the SCO are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.