KGB disinformation campaign claiming that HIV was a U.S. bioweapon
See also: AIDS conspiracy theories
Operation Denver
Russian
Операция «Инфекция» [1]
Romanization
Operatsiya "Infektsiya" [citation needed]
IPA
[ɐpʲɪˈrat͡sɨjəɪnˈfʲekt͡sɨjə][citation needed]
In 1992, Director of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Yevgeny Primakov admitted that the KGB was behind the Soviet newspaper articles claiming that AIDS was created by the U.S. government.[2]
Operation Denver[3][4][5] (sometimes referred to as "Operation INFEKTION") was an active measure disinformation campaign run by the KGB in the 1980s to plant the idea that the United States had invented HIV/AIDS[6][7] as part of a biological weapons research project at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Historian Thomas Boghardt popularized the codename "INFEKTION" based on the claims of former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi) officer Günter Bohnsack [de], who claimed that the Stasi codename for the campaign was either "INFEKTION" or perhaps also "VORWÄRTS II" ("FORWARD II").[6] However, historians Christopher Nehring and Douglas Selvage found in the former Stasi and Bulgarian State Security archives materials that prove the actual Stasi codename for the AIDS disinformation campaign was Operation Denver.[8][9] The operation involved "an extraordinary amount of effort — funding radio programs, courting journalists, distributing would-be scientific studies", according to journalist Joshua Yaffa, and even became the subject of a report by Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News.[10]
The Soviet Union used the campaign to undermine the United States' credibility, foster anti-Americanism, isolate America abroad, and create tensions between host countries and the U.S. over the presence of American military bases (which were often portrayed as the cause of AIDS outbreaks in local populations).[11] Another reason the Soviet Union "promoted the AIDS disinformation may have been its attempt to distract international attention away from its own offensive biological warfare program, which [was monitored] for decades".[6]
^МОВСЕСЯН, ЛЮСЯ (January 25, 2022). "Операция "Инфекция": как КГБ убеждал мир, что СПИД создали американцы". SpidCenter (in Russian). Retrieved October 25, 2023.
^Cite error: The named reference Kello was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Selvage, Douglas; Nehrin, Christopher. "Operation "Denver": KGB and Stasi Disinformation regarding AIDS | Wilson Center". www.wilsoncenter.org. Retrieved October 25, 2023.
^Reader, The MIT Press (May 26, 2020). "Lessons From Operation "Denver," the KGB's Massive AIDS Disinformation Campaign". The MIT Press Reader. Retrieved October 25, 2023.
^"The Slavic Connexion - Douglas Selvage". www.slavxradio.com. The University of Texas at Austin.
^ abcCite error: The named reference Boghardt was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Cite error: The named reference Kramer was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Selvage, Douglas; Nehring, Christopher (July 22, 2019). "Operation "Denver": KGB and Stasi Disinformation regarding AIDS". Wilson Center. Retrieved July 23, 2019.
^Selvage, Douglas (Fall 2019). "Operation "Denver": The East German Ministry of State Security and the KGB's AIDS Disinformation Campaign, 1985–1986 (Part 1)". Journal of Cold War Studies. 21 (4): 71–123. doi:10.1162/jcws_a_00907. S2CID 204771850.
^Yaffa, Joshua (September 7, 2020). "Is Russian Meddling as Dangerous as We Think?". The New Yorker. Retrieved September 21, 2020.
^Soviet Influence Activities: A Report on Active Measures and Propaganda, 1986–87 (PDF) (Report). United States Department of State. August 1987. Retrieved September 1, 2021 – via GlobalSecurity.org.
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