An extraordinary disease outbreak hit the Soviet city of Sverdlovsk in April of nineteen seventy-nine, serious enough that the authorities imposed a and did not get the situation under control until late May. The Soviet Union announced nothing, which was unlike its handling of natural epidemics. The Weapon and Space Systems Intelligence Committee reviewed what was known. What did it find?
Probably , from an accident at a military facility. The committee placed the accident in southwest Sverdlovsk, at a site long suspected of research on biological warfare agents. It judged the quantity of infectious agent involved to exceed what , protective or other peaceful purposes could reasonably require. Alternatives, including improperly conducted vaccine testing or production, did not adequately explain what occurred.
The assessment is dated the tenth of March, nineteen eighty, and opens plainly. The Weapon and Space Systems Intelligence Committee had reviewed all available intelligence to determine whether a reported disease outbreak in the Soviet Union in April nineteen seventy-nine was associated with a biological warfare program.
prints it in full, and its findings run as a short list. An extraordinary outbreak of a disease, probably pulmonary anthrax, occurred at Sverdlovsk in April nineteen seventy-nine. The number of deaths and the virulence were significant enough to force a quarantine, and the situation was not brought under control until late May. The outbreak resulted from an accident at a military facility in southwest Sverdlovsk long suspected of work on biological warfare agents.
Two further observations do the argumentative work. The nature of the accident and the number of victims strongly indicate that the quantity of infectious agent exceeded what prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes would reasonably require. And the official silence stood in sharp contrast to the usual Soviet announcements of naturally occurring epidemics.
The committee states that it considered other explanations, including an improperly conducted vaccine testing or production program, and that none adequately explains what occurred. It concluded there was a high probability of an active biological warfare agent program still at the facility. The State Department dissented: it accepted that the accident provided evidence that biological warfare stocks were involved, while holding that the evidence did not support a conclusion about current production.
wat. The quantity was the tell. Nothing peaceful needed that much of it in one building.
wat wat
The document shows an intelligence community reasoning in the open about an ambiguous event, naming the alternatives it considered and recording where one of its own members refused to go along.
How do we know?
The intelligence assessment of the tenth of March, nineteen eighty, appears in the State Department’s published documentary record, with portions still not declassified.
What is still unknown
An assessment written in nineteen eighty from sources that are partly still classified, and the Committee itself hedges with probably and high probability rather than certainty.
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