POISON AND PLAGUE RUSSIA'S SECRET TERROR WEAPONS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100130053-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 21, 2011
• Sequence Number: 53
• Publication Date: September 1, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/21: CIA-RDP9
ARTICLE READER'S DIGEST
0111 FAGS September 1984
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AND
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RUSSIA'S SECRET
TERROR WEAPONS
BY JACK ANDERSON AND DALE VAN AtrA
In October 198o and August 1981, Jane Hamilton-Merritt documented
for Reader's Digest the use of poison gas by the Soviet-supplied Vietnam-
ese and Pathet Lao against anti-Communist H'mong tribesmen in Laos.
The gassings have continued-and spread. In this exclusive account,
investigative reporters Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta reveal top-secret
intelligence on the widespread proliferation of Soviet chemical and.
biological weaponry-and the growing threat it poses to America. . .
I OUR YEARS AGO, Jose Romero*
escaped from Cuba with se-
cret knowledge of a develop-
ment so terrifying that it could
surpass the Cuban missile cri-
sis in portent. Here are the stark
details he related to the Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA):
In the Ig6os Romero studied
chemistry at a college near Havana.
Later he was enrolled in a special
army school at Litnonar in Matan-
zas Province and trained by Soviet
instructors as a chemical and bio-
logical warfare (CBW) adviser to
Fidel Castro's army.
The Russians taught him that
bacteria produced by, rats, flies and
other organisms could be intro-
duced into an enemy's atmosphere
or water supply. Romero said he
had been shown pictures of U.S.
cities that were "possible chemical
and biological weapons targets."
One Soviet briefing claimed that a
deadly toxin strategically released
in Mississippi "could contaminate a
third of the United States."
Romero's story is verified by oth-
er sources, including a former in-
terpreter for Castro. Both defectors
have described Soviet chemical units
and underground-storage sites,
some so sensitive that they were
Not his real name.
protected by surface-to-air missiles.
These facilities, one defector
warned, are "part of a chemical and
biological strategic system devel-
oped by the Soviets and more dan-
gerous than anyone in the United
States can realize."
"Silent Killer." Meanwhile, re-
ports had been reaching DIA head-
quarters revealing that the Soviets
were putting into practice in Asia
what they had been preaching in
Cuba's CBW schools. In March
1981 a Thai citizen died from poison
placed in drinking water by Viet-
namese troops near the Kampu-.
chean border. Others bled profusely
from the nose and mouth. Two
months later, Thai soldiers captured
two Vietnamese trying to poison the
water supply in a Kampuchean re-
location camp in Thailand.
From Afghanistan came one
horrifying report after another of
poisonings and gassings. A favorite
Soviet practice: pouring deadly
chemicals into the guerrillas' kar-
ezes (underground canals used pri-
marily for irrigation).
Victims of the Soviet-made
chemical and biological agents have
included Lao hill tribesmen, Kam-
puchean resistance fighters, Afghan
Continued
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mojahedin, Thai soldiers, Iranian
revolutionary guards, Chinese sol-'
diers, even civilians in the Soviet
Union. A realistic estimate puts
those killed at more than 30,000.
Descriptions of the slaughter are
horrendous. The biologically pro-
duced poison that has come to be
called "yellow rain" causes its vic-
tims to bleed through nearly every
body orifice, including cars and
eyes. Soviet nerve gases cause a
terrible dance of death: breathing
difficulty, sweating, nausea, vomit-
ing, cramps, involuntary defecation
and urination, jerking and stagger-
ing. Finally, the victims collapse in
convulsions, succumbing then to
complete paralysis and asphyxia-
tion. One chemical agent used in
Afghanistan causes corpses to bloat
abnormally, the skin turning black
and flaking away from the bones in
less than a day.
Only one new Soviet agent seems
relatively merciful-an unidenti-
fied substance nicknamed "The Si-
lent Killer." Spread by Soviet
troops in the eastern and northeast-
ern provinces of Afghanistan since
mid-1981, it is so swift that victims
die as if frozen in place.
Blue Ears. Soviet deployment of
chemical and biological weapons is
by no means a recent phenomenon.
Red Army troops captured by the
Germans during World War II
told of an extensive Soviet program
beginning in 1939, including devel-
opment of a "powdery yellow-
brown" agent called lebeda that
could be sprayed from aircraft. A
Soviet scientist who defected in the
195os reported that political prison-
ers were fed toxic material in
ground meat; then were closely
monitored for reactions. A more re-
cent Soviet defector revealed that
the Central Committee of the
Communist Party and the Ministry
of Defense both specifically ap-
proved research into psychochemi-
cals and biological toxins.
But certain intelligence analysts
were so committed to the continu-
ance of the 1972 Biological and
Toxin Weapons Convention that
prohibited development, production
and stockpiling of these materials,
that they at first gave little credence
to any report suggesting that the
Soviets were cheating.
All this changed in 1979, when a
massive explosion rocked the area
around a secret Soviet installation
at Sverdlovsk in the Ural Moun-
tains. Within four days the first
seven or eight victims were admit-
ted to a local hospital, choking,
with high fever, blue ears and lips,
and breathing difficulties. Each died
within six to seven hours, and au-
topsies revealed severe pulmonary
edema and blood poisoning. Soon
victims were collapsing throughout
the region. By the time the epidem-
ic had run its course two months
later, up to loon people had died.
Not until the following April did
President Carter receive the un-
equivocal report of "strong evi-
dence that a biological production
or storage site is at the Sverdlovsk
facility. It shows an extremely large
number of anthrax spores were re-
leased-effectively negating any as-
sessment of peaceful or defensive
research being conducted there.
This flies in the face of the 1972
convention."
Since then, intelligence has iden-
tified another "major BW-related
research and production installa-
tion" at Zagorsk, six more suspected
sites-at Omutninsk, Aksu, Pokrov,
Berdsk, Penza and Kurgan-and a
storage facility in the town of
Malta. A secret report reveals that
the "offensive BW program" is run
by a "covert apparatus" within the
Ministry of Defense called the
Seventh Main Directorate.
Eroding a Theory. Governmen-
tal foot-dragging also prevailed in
the investigation of "yellow rain"
gassings of H'mong people in Laos.
The gassings appeared to be retri-
bution against the tribe, which had
fought for the United States against
the Communists in Laos until the
American withdrawal in April
1975. The earliest known chemical
attack occurred in the summer of
1975. But, it took four years-until
September 1979-before a compe-
tent U.S. medical team was dis-
patched to Thailand to investigate.
By that time at least 4596 H'mong
had been killed with deadly bio-
chemical weapons, according to
U.S. estimates.
Even then, however, eyewitness
reports weren't enough for the ana-
lysts. Among the literally millions
of hours of intercepted communi-
cations it routinely records, the Na-
tionalSecurity Agency found the
key pieces of the Laotian puzzle.
One piece revealed that a Laotian-
army chemical unit in Xiang-
khoang expected a visit by a Soviet
military team on February 7, 1979,
and prepared Soviet-manufactured
chemical items for their inspection.
Another revealed that a Soviet
team of seven chemical-artillery ex-
perts was scheduled to inspect
chemical supplies at a Savannakhet
storage facility the following June.
A third indicated the Soviets would
be looking over the same chemical
agents used against the H'mong.
Finally, on February 2, 1982, six
years after the attacks began, an
interagency intelligence report con-
cluded that the Soviets were direct-
ing chemical-weapons training,
storage and use by the Pathet Lao
and Vietnamese forces-in Laos and
Kampuchea. It also charged the
Soviets with using lethal chemicals
in Afghanistan.
One aspect of the attacks was
unexplained: what was the killing
agent in "yellow rain"? Journalist
Sterling Seagrave, later,the author
of Yellow Rain, and Army medical-
intelligence specialist Sharon Wat-
son discovered that peasants killed
by a fungal poison in the Orenburg
district of Russia during World
War II exhibited many of the same
symptoms as those who died dec-
ades later in Laos. More than 30,000
Russians perished of a trichothecene
toxin (T2) in that epidemic, which
resulted from fungal-contaminated
millet, wheat and barley. Starving
peasants baked it in bread. Tests
since 1981 have identified unnatu-
ral levels of T2 and other trichothe-
cene toxins at attack sites in Laos
and Kampuchea.
The most vocal critic of this evi-
dence, Harvard biochemist Mat-
thew Mesclson, argued that the
yellow-rain poisons are produced
in nature by fungi on the feces of
bees. That theory eroded in May
when two leading Canadian scien-
tists reported that fungi collected in
Thailand show little or no ability to
produce yellow-rain poisons.
Rutgers University scientist Joseph
D. Rosen analyzed yellow-rain
samples and found not only fungal
poisons but a man-made chemical
Conhnuej
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3
(polyethylene glycol) that could not
possibly have been produced natural-
ly. Asks Rep. Jim Leach (R., Iowa),
one of Congress's top CBW experts:
"How can the bee-excrement theo-
rists explain how thousands of peo-
ple have died from a bee-borne
plague where no history of such
plagues has ever been recorded,
where the geography is so diverse,
ranging from the arid mountains of
Afghanistan to the jungle plateaus
of Cambodia to the semi-tropical
mountains of Laos?"
New Threats. Although there
has been a marked decline in the
use of CBW weapons since early
1983, U.S. Ambassador Eugene
Douglas, the coordinator for refu-
gee affairs who helped bring "yel-
low rain" to world attention, fears
that the decline represents only a
temporary lull as the Soviets pre-
pare to test a new group of horror
weapons. Indeed, President Reagan
received an alarming report from
the CIA earlier this year about bio-
logical-warfare possibilities of Soviet
gene-splicing techniq eyes. A secret
program directed by Gen. V. I.
Ogarkov is utilizing recent ad-
vances in biotechnology to produce
toxins more potent than ever before.
The report estimated that Soviet mil-
itary biotech research could field
such weapons in three to five years.
Intelligence agencies acknowl-
edge another threat: the Soviets have
tailored one of their strategic rock-
ets for delivering chemical or biologi-
cal weapons to America. It is the
Mod 4 variant of the SS-11 "Sego"
intercontinental ballistic missile
with three to six re-entry warheads.
Apocalyptic Prophecy. How can
we defend ourselves against such
weapons? As one answer, we main-
tain large CW stockpiles of our
own, including tons of agents located
under our control in West Ger-
many. But we are still vulnerable to
the threat of Soviet-backed terror-
ists' using these horrific agents in
America. So much more needs to
be done:
1. Intelligence regarding chemi-
cal and biological weapons must
be upgraded. All CBW agents used
by the Soviets must be identified,
and defenses prepared against them.
2. As intelligence is gathered, it
must be shared by all law-enforce-
ment agencies. All thefts of deadly
pathogens and chemical agents
should be reported to a central
information-gathering facility, per-
haps at the FBI.
3. Two SWAT teams should be
created, one each to deal with
chemical and bacteriological threats
by terrorists. A national serum bank
should be established and stocked for
use during massive epidemics.
4. The Customs Service, Defense
and Commerce Departments
should cut off any exports of chemi-
cal or biological agent precursors
and gene-splicing information to
Soviet-bloc countries.
5. The U.S. government must
vigorously pursue verifiable chemi-
cal- and biological-weapons bans-
along the lines of Vice President
George. Bush's chemical-weapons
proposals to the Soviets last April.
It should consider, along with other
governments, the possibility of a
nonproliferation treaty regarding
CBW weapons.
We can no longer ignore the
threat. We have had sufficient
warning of a potential devastation
so appalling that it would fulfill the
plagues and pestilences in apoca-
lyptic prophecy.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/21: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100130053-2