In terms of disinformation designed to be effective against various countries at once- and in which the alternative media as well as the traditional mainstream media are put to optimum use – the so-called « ethnic weapon » story must rate as one of the most effective to date.
Source : A Southern African Perspective — Johannesburg — February 3, 1989 —
Certainly in Africa, and seemingly in Asia, it has gained credibility through sheer repetition, endorsing the belief of Soviet disinformation experts that if a story is repeated often enough, particularly to an unsophisticated audience, it will eventually gain credibility no matter how implausible or bizarre it is.
The ethnic weapon story is a particularly good example of disinformation in that one theme was concocted, variations of it were created, and the resulting stories cleverly disseminated to embarrass three « hostile » countries at the same time the United States of America, Israel and South Africa.
The ethnic weapon disinformation campaign began way back in 1980 when the charges first appeared in the American communist party newspaper People’s World.
The charges alleged that the United States was involved in research on a biological weapon designed to kill individuals of a particular ethnic group or race.
Since the allegations were first made and the story started gaining international momentum the facts have varied to suit the intended audience.
In Africa, the United States was allegedly co-operating with South Africa to develop a weapon that kills only blacks, while in the Middle East the United States was working with Israel to produce a weapon effective only against Arabs.
Once the story had been placed in a publication in the West to which it could be sourced – no matter how obscure or inconsequential the publication – the formidable disinformation machinery of the Soviet Union was brought into play.
Radio Moscow, Tass, Novosti and Moscow’s Radio Peace and Progress began punting the story repeatedly during the ensuing months and years up to and including the present. Inevitably, through sheer repetition, the story found its way on to reputable wire services and into other arms of the responsible media which would at first have rejected it for the obvious trash it was the fact that even two of the most responsible newspapers in South Africa deemed it worth publishing, albeit it in a deprecatory tone, speaks volumes for the perseverance of its initiators.
They were assured, however, of enthusiastic usage of the story by the rapidly growing alternative media within South Africa, including a network of so-called news agencies which have sprung up overnight.
These agencies have news swopping agreements with known hostile government agencies in the Frontline States such as AIM in Mozambique, ANGOP in Angola and ZIANA in Zimbabwe, all of whom are linked by agreement to the central OAU-created Pan African News Agency (PANA).
A selective study of a partial listing of Soviet stories and broadcasts on the subject is provided here to illustrate the orchestrated continuity of usage, and Soviet persistence in endorsing the stories. These selections were recorded by, among other sources, the United States Department of State publication Soviet Influence Activities of August 1987, and the Foreign Broadcast Information Service daily report on the Soviet Union of 11 January 1988.
August 13, 1984: TASS charged that the US and South Africa were developing « carefully selected pathogenic viruses which are practically harmless to whites and mortally dangerous to Africans, Asians and coloureds ».
It also alleged that Israel was involved and that viruses were being tested « on Africans in prisons of the apartheid state and on Arab prisoners in Israeli jails ».
April 2, 1985: The Soviet daily newspaper Selskaya Zhizn repeated allegations about South African and Israeli cooperation on an ethnic weapon.
July 20, 1985: Radio Moscow in its Russian language service characterised the CIA and the Pentagon as « the initiators of the development of so-called ethnic-weapons ».
Progress began punting the story repeatedly during the ensuing months and years up to and including the present.
Inevitably, through sheer repetition, the story found its way on to reputable wire services and into other arms of the responsible media which would at first have rejected it for the obvious trash it was the fact that even two of the most responsible newspapers in South Africa deemed it worth publishing, albeit it in a deprecatory tone, speaks volumes for the perseverance of its initiators.
They were assured, however, of enthusiastic usage of the story by the rapidly growing alternative media within South Africa, including a network of so-called news agencies which have sprung up overnight.
These agencies have news swopping agreements with known hostile government agencies in the Frontline States such as AIM in Mozambique, ANGOP in Angola and ZIANA in Zimbabwe, all of whom are linked by agreement to the central OAU-created Pan African News Agency (PANA).
A selective study of a partial listing of Soviet stories and broadcasts on the subject is provided here to illustrate the orchestrated continuity of usage, and Soviet persistence in endorsing the stories. These selections were recorded by, among other sources, the United States Department of State publication Soviet Influence Activities of August 1987, and the Foreign Broadcast Information Service daily report on the Soviet Union of 11 January 1988.
August 13, 1984: TASS charged that the US and South Africa were developing « carefully selected pathogenic viruses which are practically harmless to whites and mortally dangerous to Africans, Asians and coloureds ».
It also alleged that Israel was involved and that viruses were being tested « on Africans in prisons of the apartheid state and on Arab prisoners in Israeli jails ».
April 2, 1985: The Soviet daily newspaper Selskaya Zhizn repeated allegations about South African and Israeli cooperation on an ethnic weapon.
July 20, 1985: Radio Moscow in its Russian language service characterised the CIA and the Pentagon as « the initiators of the development of so-called ethnic-weapons ».
October 8, 1985: The US Embassy in Ghana reported that a recent issue of the People’s Daily Graphic had featured an article charging US, Israeli and South African research on ethnic weapons, which it attributed to « Soviet sources. »
November 15, 1985: TASS cited « reports in the press about the development of so-called ethnic weapons in laboratories in the Republic of South Africa and the USA. »
December 27, 1985: The Soviet newspaper Krasnaya Zuezda carried a TASS item citing a report in the Malagasy newspaper, Carrefour, that the US and South Africa were secretly working on an ethnic weapon. The TASS report mentioned a letter from a Dr Tyner, director of the division of neuropsychiatry of Waiter Reed Army Institute of Research to a Defense Department official. The letter, a forgery, alleged US – South African research on « ethnic weapons ».
February 5, 1986: Radio Moscow in Zulu to southern Africa broadcast a report stating « Lately there has been growing talk in Africa of the presence of biological weapons in South Africa that can discriminate on the basis of race. These are meant to selectively kill the black race and leave out the white race. Such diabolical weapons are being researched and manufactured with the aid of the United States. »
February 1986: Novosti cited a Sengalese newspaper, Takusaan, alleging US and South African research on « ethnic weapons. » The same report was published with a Novosti byline by the local writer Garba Inuwa in the February 12 issue of New Nigerian, and the February 10 issue of Nigeria Voice.
It charged « American and South African scientists are doing joint research on so-called ethnic weapons designed to kill only blacks. »
February 18, 1986: Radio Moscow ran a two minute report alleging South African research on ethnic weapons.
September 27, 1986: An article by an author who frequently uses Novosti as a source appeared in the Nigerian newspaper The Voice. He reiterated charges of Israeli and South African research on ethnic weapons. At the same time, according to the US Embassy in Lagos, Novosti was distributing to Nigerian newspapers a story titled « Death at the Cellular Level: United States and South Africa Develop Ethnic Weapons, » by N U Pogodi.
November 18, 1986: Radio Moscow in English reported that South Africa had developed selected biological warfare that could eliminate blacks without harming whites.
January, 1987: TASS reported on an interview given to the Soviet magazine New Times by Professor Yuri Rychkov of the General Genetics Institute, USSR Academy of Sciences. The TASS account gave the impression that Rychkov was very concerned about aiJeged plans to create an « ethnic weapon ». But a comparison of the New Times interview with the TASS account shows that several times TASS incorrectly por trayed information contained in questions asked to Rychkov as comments that Rychkov had made. For example, TASS said, « He (Professor Rychkov) notes that the South African Army had a unit of biological warfare which studies the possibility of developing viruses and other microorganisms affecting only Africans. » But, in the actual interview in New Times, it was the interviewer who said this, not Rychkov.
On June 5, 1987, the Director of the US Information Agency, Charles Wick, protested the ethnic weapon disinformation in a meeting with Novosti director Valentin Falin. The meeting was cut short when Falin asserted that the accusations were true.
Less than one week later, in an interview printed in Moscow News, a joint publication of Novosti press agency and the Soviet friendship societies, Falin reiterated the Soviet claims, saying, « It is no secret that the United States has been working on various exotic weapons, including the so-called ethnic ones. These are biological and chemical agents with selective action against people of different races, populating the same areas yet having different genetic susceptibility or vulnerability to these agents.
Such facts are widely known, too. Take the report, circulated back in 1974, by Dr Hammerschlag, an expert of the National Medical Centre in Duarte, California, which he delivered at the symposium held in Los Angeles by the American Chemical Society, and the materials published in the journal abstracts on Hygiene (Number 55, 1980). » (sic)
In Actuality, Hammershclag’s work refuted allegations that the US had conducted research on an « ethnic weapon ». Hammerschlag concluded – in a report, « Chemical Weapons and US Public Policy, » published by the American Chemical Society – that « we have no story; no hard evidence that ethnic weapons are or even have been under consideration by the Department of Defence. »
January 9, 1988: TASS carried the following report lifted from the Ghanaian Times: « The racist regime of the Republic of South Africa uses chemical weapons, including nerve gases, napalm and defoliants in aggressive attacks against Frontline States and the national liberation movements of Namibia and South Africa.
« The Ghanaian Times newspaper writes that Pretoria has handed over large batches of chemical weapons to MNR rebels in Mozambique and to UNIT A in Angola. South African advisers train the rebels in handling the weapons.
« The newspaper stresses that the regime of apartheid owes the development and stockpiling of its chemical and bacteriological arsenals to the United States in the first place. Under the Reagan Administration the South African military got access to some Pentagon and CIA laboratories for the development of chemical weapons.
« Thus, on September 5, 1986, Richard Ambrosio, South Africa’s leading geneticist, visited Fort Derick laboratory which engages in the development of bacteriological weapons as well as gene engineering and its military applications.
« The Ghanaian Times writes that American specialists, for their part, become frequent guests in the Republic of South Africa. At an air base near Pretoria, the United States and South Africa jointly work on developing binary shells for the 155 mm howitzers which were supplied to the Republic of South Africa through CIA channels at the end of the 1970s.
« The newspaper emphasises that the greatest danger to Africa is posed by US-South African experiments with ethnic weapons which possess selectivity in killing people only with dark colour of skin. Top secret experiments in this field were started in a naval laboratory at Oakland, California, in the 1970s. The Republic of South Africa has been participating in the programme since 1981 despite the congressional ban on military contacts with Pretoria ».
Implications
Moscow’s CBW disinformation campaign illustrates two key elements of Soviet strategy: repetition of even the most unbelievable stories pay ofT in the long run, and even if a disinformation theme has little or no immediate impact on its target audience, it can be replayed or surfaced at an opportune time in the future.
Indeed, Moscow seems to have reaped some benefits from this approach. For example, in mid-April 1987 an official Indian armed forces journal, Sainik Samachar, published a story under the headline, « The Diabolical Chemical Warfare. »
This article repeated the false charges spread by the USSR that AIDS was developed at Fort Derick, that the US started a dengue fever epidemic in Cuba, and that the US experimented with chemical and biological weapons in Vietnam, Korea, Laos and Cambodia.
At a US Department of State-sponsored seminar on « Disinformation, the Media and Foreign Policy » (May 1987), journalists representing newspapers in Latin America and Africa discussed the impact of such stories on readers in their regions. They noted that they themselves had seen disinformation regarding US involvement with biological and chemical weapons in their regional newspapers.
Their consensus was that most readers – particularly those who were not well educated or widely travelled -would believe the stories.
Although no public opinion data are available to gauge the extent to which CBW-related disinformation has had an effect, it is apparent that the USSR finds the campaign useful enough to continue to devote resources to it. Also, the fact that non-leftist media occasionally repeat the stories demonstrates the extent to which they are becoming « acceptable. »
