Cold War Fake News: Why Russia Lied Over Aids And Jfk

[Flashermac]

In the early 1980s, the Aids virus seemed to emerge from nowhere.

 

There was no cure and its origins were a mystery. But one theory began to surface - that it was the product of secret US military research at the Fort Detrick Laboratory.

 

What was the source for this piece of fake news? The answer was the KGB, the Soviet intelligence service.

 

"The Aids disinformation campaign was one of the most notorious and one of the most successful Soviet disinformation campaigns during the Cold War," argues Thomas Boghardt, a historian at the US Army Center of Military History who has studied the case in detail.

 

KGB political officers in the field were tasked with spending up to a quarter of their time on what were called "active measures".

 

Mr Boghardt believes the KGB station in New York first came up with the idea, which played into distrust in US institutions and rumours of covert biological warfare programmes.

 

"Intelligence meant not only gathering but using - or weaponising - that intelligence for influence operations," he explains.

 

Amateurish

 

The aim of these "active measures" was to sow confusion and distrust either within a country or between allies. He says that in 1980, the Soviets spent an astonishing $3bn (£2.4m) a year on active measures.

 

It was not the only time the KGB successfully pushed a conspiracy theory.

 

Within weeks of the assassination of President Kennedy, it tried to circulate stories of official CIA involvement.

 

t even covertly financed a book on the subject published in America within a year of the killing.

 

Many attempts at disinformation were amateurish and failed. The main challenge was crafting something plausible. Those that succeeded either blended fact with fiction or worked with the grain of existing conspiracies.

 

When it came to targeting Britain, Moscow had help in the shape of former MI6 officer and KGB spy, Kim Philby.

 

"He would provide advice on how to do it," General Oleg Kalugin - formerly of the KGB and Philby's ex-colleague - told me. "He said 'this would not work, that sounds too Soviet'."

 

 

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http://www.bbc.com/n...europe-39419560