AN AIDS YARN IN UNRAVELED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403060001-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: April 7, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
i Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403060001-1
Jr- ARTICLE-APPED
A
QN PAGE Z
WASHINGTON TIMES
7 April 1987
T REED IRVINE
An AIDS
yarn is
unraveled
0 n March 30, 1987, Dan
Rather gave the following
report on "The CBS Eve-
ning News"
"A Soviet military publication
claims the virus that causes AIDS
leaked from a U.S. Army laboratory
conducting experiments in biologi-
cal warfare. The article offers no
hard evidence, but claims to be re-
porting the conclusions of unnamed
scientists in the United States, Brit-
ain and East Germany. Last October.
a Soviet newspaper alleged that the
AIDS virus may have been the result
of Pentagon or CIA experiments."
Mr. Rather, who recently publicly
accused his new boss, CBS Pres-
ident Laurence Tisch, of cutting the
budget of CBS News to a degree that
threatened to transform its vaunted
excellence into "mediocrity," did not
report any official U.S. reaction to
this Soviet charge. Maybe the per-
sonnel cuts have been so deep that
there simply wasn't anyone
available to call the Pentagon or
State Department.
That is unfortunate, because one
phone call to the State Department
press office would have kept CBS
News from being suckered by a So-
viet disinformation operation that is
a year and a half old and that was
thoroughly exposed at a special
State Department press briefing on
Nov 3, 1996. At that briefing it was
disciused that the first allegation
that the U.S. Army had developed the
AIDS virus appeared in the Soviet
magazine, Literary Gazette, a year
earlier. The article cited as its
source an Indian paper called The
Patriot. The KGB is said to plant sto-
ries in this paper from time to time
to enable Soviet media to quote non-
Soviet sources for their disinfor-
mation. In this case, there was evi-
dently a breakdown in communi-
cation. The Patriot was quoted in
Moscow even though it had not yet
published the AIDS story.
The story subsequently appeared
in other Soviet publications and in
the foreign media. It made headlines
in the London Sunday Express after
a Czech publication quoted "French
researchers" as making the allega-
tion that the Pentagon was
spreading AIDS.
They turned out to be Jakob and
Lilli Segal, residents of East Berlin.
The story was obviously being
taken seriously abroad and was do-
ing great damage to the reputation
of the United States. That is why the
State Department took the trouble to
trace its origins and expose it as a
Soviet disinformation operation.
It is shocking and disgraceful that
five months after this big lie was
exposed as a KGB fabrication, it was
reported seriously as a news item on
"The CBS Evening News." Just days
earlier, two Soviet defectors had tes-
tified in a court in London about the
unceasing efforts being made by the
KGB to plant disinformation in the
Western media. Ilya Dzhirkvelov,
who worked for Radio Moscow be-
fore he defected, testified that he
had worked with Vassily Sitnikov, as-
sistant director of the Department
of Disinformation of the KGB, on
projects designed to get their stories
in liberal and even rightist publica-
tions in foreign countries. He said
that both The New York Times and
The Washington Post were "used ac-
tively" by the Soviets. He claimed
they were able to do this without the
publications knowing that they were
being used.
Dan Rather's broadcasting the So-
viet disinformation on AIDS demon-
strated the validity of Mr. Dzhirk-
velov's claim that our prestige media
are vulnerable to this kind of manip-
ulation. The CBS case suggests sev-
eral reasons for this.
First, there is the obvious igno-
rance among the highly paid CBS
News staff of major Soviet disinfor-
mation themes.
Second, there is the willingness to
report Soviet allegations, no matter
how wild, without seeking a reaction
from the U.S. government.
Finally, top CBS officials have ad-
mitted in the past that they have no
special measures to guard against
Soviet disinformation or even pen-
etration by Soviet agents.
Reed Irvine is chairman of Accu-
racy in Media.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403060001-1