FICTION FROM THE KREMLIN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100120001-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 10, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: December 29, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/10: CIA-RDP9O-00965ROO0100120001-0
29 December 1985
Jack Anderson and Dale Van Attu
Fiction From the Kremlin
When the hard-eyed schemers in the Kremlin
are stung by truthful reports on their deadly mis-
chief, they respond by cranking up their $4 bil-
lion-a-year "dezinformatsia" machine to produce
diversionary lies. One truth they have been most
determined to conceal if possible, distort if neces-
sary, and deny at all costs is their ruthless testing
of chemical weapons on tribesmen in Afghanistan,
Laos and Cambodia.
We've checked with chemical experts who had
collected evidence on the scene. We've studied
hundreds of pages of classified reports never
made public. We went to Southeast Asia to inter-
view survivors of the attacks.
The Soviets' disinformation campaign was as
diverse as it was fantastic. The KGB planted sto-
ries that the CIA had caused an epidemic of
dengue fever in Cuba; that a University of Mary-
land malaria research laboratory in Lahore, Paki-
stan, is a germ-warfare facility; that chemical and
bacteriological weapons at a U.S. military base
caused 80 infant deaths in Naples, Italy; and that
the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India,
where an accidental release of poisonous gas
killed so many people, was really an American.
chemical-weapons factory.
Some other examples:
^ Marking the anniversary of the Soviet shoot
down of an unarmed Korean Air Lines plane,
Radio Moscow revived the Kremlin's original line
that the passenger plane was on a spy mission for
the United States, and. added a new twist: the
plane was blown up not by a Soviet interceptor's
rocket as the Russians had acknowledged, but by
a U.S. bomb on board the airliner, supposedly
detonated to prevent the Soviets from proving
their charges of espionage. The Soviet broadcasts
even charged that the United States had impeded
efforts to recover the plane's wreckage and
"black box."
The KGB's charges were based largely on re-
ports by "the prominent Japanese military expert
and journalist Akio Yamakawa." But Yamakawa
had been unmasked as a KGB agent years earlier.
^ Waving an apparent West German embassy
cable as proof, a Ghanaian official charged at a
press conference that the U.S. Embassy in Accra
was trying to overthrow.the government of Lt.
Jerry Rawlings. West German officials supplied
proof that the cable was a fake within two days.
^ Hoping to discredit. Italian authorities'
charge that the Bulgarian secret police (and prob-
ably the KGB) had engineered the assassination
attempt on Pope John Paul II, Soviet disinforma-
tion experts faked a pair of cablegrams purporting
to be from the U.S. Embassy in Rome to the
State Department. The first proposed a campaign
to implicate the Bulgarians; the second indulged
in some self-congratulatory crowing about the
campaign's success.
Although the United States is a favorite target
of the KGB's forgers, it's not the only one. Our
sources listed at least 25 countries where Soviet
disinformation documents have been identified.
Nor does the Kremlin's fiction factory respect
high rank. In October 1981 a phony letter bearing
the signature "Ronald Reagan" was sent to King
Juan Carlos explaining how urgent, it was for
Spain to join NATO-meddling that, if authentic,
could have infuriated the sensitive Spaniards and
killed the NATO membership initiative.
And in May 1983, the Russians moved from
the printed forgery to the electronic field, splicing
together snippets of public utterances by Presi-
dent Reagan and British Prime Minister Marga-
ret Thatcher into a supposedly intercepted tele-
phone conversation between the two leaders. On
the resulting tape, assiduously leaked by the KGB
to favored European outlets, Reagan appeared to
be criticizing Thatcher's handling of the Falkland
Islands war with Argentina, accusing her of need-
less escalation of hostilities. The Soviets were
trying to stir up a little mischief-two weeks be-
fore the British elections.
We have been recipients of KGB disinformation
documents. On Nov. 11, 1981, we received a
mailgram that purported to be from the Swedish
ambassador in Washington. It informed as that, as
a matter of conscience, the ambassador was disas-
sociating himseif from his government's decision
to allow a U.S. satellite-tracking station at the
Karlskrona naval base.
It such a decision had, in fact, been made, it
would have been a startling departure from
Sweden's long-cherished neutrality. A call to the
Swedish Embassy confirmed our suspicion that
there had been no such decision.
c 1985, United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
I Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/10: CIA-RDP9O-00965ROO0100120001-0