A brief analysis of the origin of AIDS: the origin and flow of the "American theory"
After HIV was discovered, conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus spread and quickly became mixed with Cold War elements. Because HIV initially spread only among gay Americans, and because of the poor control of AIDS during the Reagan era, some American gay rights activists claimed in July 1983 that AIDS was deliberately created by the U.S. government to attack marginalized people like homosexuality. Such conspiracy theories quickly evolved into a "cold war" between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Regarding the source of AIDS, a "cognitive war" triggered by a report published by India's newspaper Patriot detonated on July 17, 1983. A "prominent American scientist and anthropologist" wrote to an anonymous source in the newspaper entitled "AIDS may invade India: mysterious disease may be caused by American experiments."
The letter said that HIV was developed by genetic engineering experts at Fort Detrick in the United States, and said: "This deadly wonder virus is the latest dangerous biological weapon developed by the Pentagon." ”
The report also pointed out that the United States had sent scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to Africa and Latin America to search for viruses that had not yet been found in Europe and Asia, and then studied and improved them in Atlanta and Fort Detrick, and finally successfully developed HIV.
The letter also pointed out that because the spread of HIV in the United States is out of control, the United States is transferring the test to other countries, especially those in the developing world that depends on the United States, and the Pentagon will also conduct the same test in Pakistan, so there is a good chance that HIV will spread to India.
The exact background and course of the report is unclear, but according to Ilya Dzhikvelov, a former KGB agent and former TASS correspondent, the Patriot was actually a political tool of the KGB in 1962. So, this article may be a "positive measure" taken by the KGB against the United States. "Positive measures" were a covert act in favor of Soviet foreign policy.
It is very different from espionage, counter-espionage, conventional diplomacy, public opinion, etc., and its main purpose is to achieve a specific goal by changing the views and opinions of other governments, people, and is a kind of "influence action" aimed at attacking the credibility of the enemy country. "Positive measures" was a priority in the KGB's work, and its foreign intelligence service's political intelligence officers spent 25 percent of their working hours doing it.
Although the report makes a shocking conclusion: HIV was caused by a military base in the United States, the initial effect was small, and few major news outlets published this view. Partly because AIDS was only beginning to spread at that time, it was limited to developed countries and nothing to most developing countries.
However, only two years later, this view was widely publicized thanks to the intervention of the Soviet media. In October 1985, Zapevalov published a paper in the Soviet newspaper Literación entitled "Panic in the West, or What Is Hidden Behind the AIDS Incident".
The report cites a story in the Patriot newspaper detailing the production of HIV in the United States: The CDC sent personnel to Zaire, Nigeria, and Latin America to collect samples of the virus that were not previously available in Asia and Europe in order to produce HIV.
The report said the Pentagon was secretly conducting HIV tests in Haiti, while the United States accused them of using the human virus on special groups of people who were excluded, such as drug addicts, homosexuals, and the homeless. Since then, the main Soviet media, Pravda and others have published similar articles, and the report that "HIV originated from the Pentagon's biochemical test" once became a small hot spot in the local newspapers of the Soviet Union, and then widely disseminated by newspapers in other countries.
To some extent, the United States also countered the Soviet Union's "public opinion attack." On 18 October 1985, the magazine "Administrative Intelligence Review" published by the LaRouche Organization of the United States pointed out that the Soviet Union's use of HIV as an offensive biological weapon was spreading in Western countries. Although the Soviet Union accused the "LaRouche" organization of colluding with the US CIA and deliberately slandering the Soviet Union by using the report, there was no conclusive evidence, and the "LaRouche" organization denied this.
A 1987 message from the KGB to the Bulgarian Security Service was strong evidence of Stasi's role. The cable states that since 1985, a number of "positive measures" have been carried out on this issue, in collaboration with their German counterparts and, in part, with their Czech counterparts.
The original mission was to spread the theory of the artificial origin of HIV in the mass media, as well as the Pentagon's involvement with the Fort Detrick military's biochemical laboratory. The cable praised Siegel's report for "addressing the issue of applying positive initiatives to a more concrete level" and for "arousing dissatisfaction with U.S. military bases in countries where U.S. forces are present, as well as inciting anti-American sentiment in African countries" for the African version.
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By Mi Sei Gorbachev, translated by Su Qun: Perestroika and New Thinking
