WHAT DID HAPPEN AT SVERDLOVSK?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000301900092-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 92
• Publication Date: May 28, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/24: CIA-
THE WASHINGTON POST
28 May 1980
DP90-00965R000301900092-1
What Did Happen at Sverdlovsk.?
Ilowiand Evans and Robert Novak
One day recently President Carter re-
ceived and read a devastating intelli-
eence report that appears to eliminate
;ill lingering doubt that the 1979 Sverd-
lovsk explosion resulted from germ war-
fare, a finding that now confronts Secre-
tary of State Edmund Muskie with a
hard test of his U.S.-Soviet policy. ?
In chilling detail, the report states, on
the strength of aewide number of intelli-
gence sources, that the "first casualties
were a fairly large number of male [mili-
tary] reservists at the military installa-
tion," site of the biological warfare labo-
ratory that mysteriouely exploded in
April 1979. The report says the com-
mander of the military installation com-
mitted suicide and thatDefense Minister
Dmitriy Ustinov made an unannounced
inspection two weeks after the explosion.
The Carter administration admitted on
March 18 that it suspected Soviet germl
warfare experimentation after prelimi-
nary reports of the deadly accident fil-1
tered through Soviet secrecy to the West.
Now, Muskie confronts two choices:
charge the Russians with violating the
1975 treaty banning germ warfare ex-
perimentation or production, or sweep
it under the rug at a time of heightened
U.S.-Soviet tensions.
Complicating the answer are grave
new questions linking Soviet violation of
the unenforceable germ warfare treaty
to American efforts to verify Soviet com-
pliance with treaties on strategic arms
limitation and nuclear testing. U.S. skep-
tics have always warned that, *without
verification, Moscow will cheat the U.S.
blind. Also at stake, as the untutored
Muskie comes to grips with American
policy toward the Soviet Union, are spe-
cific?but unpublicized?demands of
U.S. friends for immediate international.
policing to force compliance with the
germ warfare treaty.
This effort is being led by Sweden,
which with other European states has
reacted with understandable horror to
the mysterious Sverdlovsk disaster.
'Muskies predecessor, Cyrus Vance, and
the ardent U.S.-Soviet detentista who
advised him flatly rejected Sweden's
pressure at the recent Geneva confer-
ence called to review the unenforce-
able 1975 treaty. Vance wanted to limit
talk about the Sverdlovsk explosion
and its alleged treaty violation strictly
to Washington and Moscow.
"It is far too important for teat," one
leading European ambassador told us.
"It belongs to all of us, not just to the
U.S., because we are all imperiled."
Just how imperiled becomes clear
from reading the lurid yet understated
intelligence report recently sent to the
Oval Office. The report fully justifies
the demand for an immediate interna-
tional move to insist on ways to enforce
the germ warfare treaty.
In the past few years, the report
states, the Soviets "have acquired sig-
nificant technology and equipment,
built large-scale biological fermenta-
tion facilities and made progress in
other areas considered useful should
Moscow decide to pursue production of
biological weapons."
Starting in late May 1979, persistent
rumors were heard on the streets of Mos-
cow?one of the few places where con-
versation is safe from police discovery?
that a "disaster" had occurred in Sverd-
lovsk. Workers in an adjoining Sverd-
lovsk institute trying to flee the fatal
germ poisoning released in the explosion
"were held inside the facility by security
personnel." Other workers, downwind in
a ceramics factory, died even though
they remained inside their building; ven-
tilators had sucked in the fatal bacilli.
When Soviet authorities finally de-
cided a public statement was mandato-
ry, they blamed the deaths on infection
from a slaughtered cow that had been
suffering from anthrax.
But that "explanation" of the disaster
as an outbreak of a "rare disease"
called gastric anthrax was undercut
when a Soviet general, who command-
ed the installation that housed the
germ factory, committed suicide. Fur-
ther weakening the "rare disease".
myth was the unpublicized arrival of
Defense Minister Ustinov, one of the
three or four most powerful men in the
Kremlin and a possible successor to ail-
ing President Leonid Brezhnev.
The question of why a leading mem-
ber of the Politburo would bother him-
self about the outbreak of a rare dis-
ease in a distant provincial city is so bi-
earre that the intelligence report does:
not address it.
Adding to evidence that the dead
died from pulmonary anthrax? !
breathing in of the biological agents
released by the accidental explosion, !
not infection from touching or eating .!
diseased meat?is the fact that "large
areas around the military Installation.
were graded and covered with asphalt"
for decontamination.
An effective lethal dose of anthrax for '
an average man is about 10,000 spores.
Accordingly, the death of several berme i
dred human beings indicated "an ex-.;
teemely large number of anthrax spores
?effectively negating any assessment o4
peaceful or defensive research being
conducted" at the military facility.
That is the intelligence finding given !
Jimmy Carter, with all its dispassion:
What to do about it now becomes ,a
showcase example for Edmund Sixths
Muskie as he approaches the most im
portant challenge in his new joie- -the
challenge of how to deal with the,
'Soviet Union.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000301900092-1