RUSSIAN SCIENTIST VANISHES IN SPAIN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100590003-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 21, 2011
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: July 16, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/21: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100590003-7
NEW YORK TIT'ES
A4 16 July 1985
RUSSIAN SCIENTIST
American Confirms Report
John M. Wallace, director of the
Joint Institute for the Study of the At-
VANISHES IN SPAIN mOsPhere tand on in Oceans at the in ersity
of Washington in Seattle, said said in a tele-
phnne interview that he h
d
U.S. Colleagues Seem Puzzled
by Disappearance During
a Nuclear Arms Parley
By PHILIP M. BOFFEY
Special to The New York Times
WASHINGTON, July 15 - A Soviet
expert on computer modeling and on
the potentially catastrophic effects of
nuclear weapons in changing the
world's climate disappeared while at-
tending a meeting in Spain, according
to his American colleagues.
The Russian, Vladimir Aleksandrov,
vanished while in Madrid in March,
leaving behind his passport, some air-
line tickets and perhaps a few addi-
tional belongings, the colleagues said.
His disappearance appears to have
attracted little attention outside the
few scientists who knew him. It was
brought to wider attention in a report
from Stockholm. Sweden, published in
the July 4-10 issue of Nature, a British
scientific journal.
a
received
word from sources in the Soviet Union
that Mr. Aleksandrov was missing. -
Dr. Wallace said that he subse-
quently reached the organizers of the
meeting, which was held in C6rdoba,
Spain, and learned that Mr. Alek-
sandrov had disappeared while in Ma-
drid.
Dr. Thomas Malone, a scholar-in-
residence at St. Joseph's College in
West Hartford, Conn., said a Soviet
delegate said in a scientific workshop
in Britain last month that Mr. Alek-
sandrov had "disappeared in Spain
under circumstances that they did not
understand."
He told the workshop group, which
had expected Mr. Aleksandrov to at-
tend, that the Soviet Union had re-
ferred the matter to the International
Red Cross.
Mr. Aleksandrov is the author of a
computer model that supports conclu-
sions by American scientists that a nu-
clear war would cause a climatic chill,
the so-called nuclear winter, by throw-
ing so much dust into the atmosphere
that sunlight would be obscured.
The article in Nature cited specula-
tion that Mr. Aleksandrov might have
defected or been forcibly repatriated to
the Soviet Union, or had even been
killed before he could defect or could
say something in opposition to Soviet
policies. The article acknowledged that
the suggestions were farfetched.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/21: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100590003-7