The Sverdlovsk Incident

...This is reportedly one of nine in the USSR that intelligence experts have suspected of producing or storing biological weapons...

...The Soviets, being fully aware of this difficulty, naturally are likely to take the safest course and squat low...

...It is exceedingly rare for regional Soviet newspaper editors to discuss internal problems with Western correspondents, especially where international repercussions are possible...

...The West German tabloid, Bild Zeitung of Hamburg, repeated the account the next day, and on February 13 of this year added more details...

...officials are saying privately that they are virtually certain the Soviet Union has violated the central provision of an international arms control treaty...

...But since the daily FBIS selection of foreign broadcasts and press items seldom includes material more than two weeks old, some correspondents covering the State Department reacted with skepticism to the belated presentation of the two Bild pieces...

...Thus, as the Sverdlovsk case plays out over the next few months, U.S...

...If contracted from the meat of infected cattle, it causes severe inflammation of the intestines, vomiting and eventual death...

...Whatever the cause of the eruption, it is thought to have released hundreds of thousands of anthrax spores...

...Not until Moscow was confronted with inquiries from Washington did it acknowledge the epidemic...

...The Soviet representatives left Geneva without offering a satisfactory explanation of the epidemic...

...Their patients, they noted, showed clear symptoms of pulmonary anthrax...

...In this Presidential election year, with the major candidates raising doubts about Soviet peaceful intentions, and the Kremlin's own actions clouding the international horizon, the disclosure would at the very least be taken as further proof that the U.S...

...They were followed six days later by the first of more than 200 civilians who were moved into the hospital after other patients had been evacuated...

...For one thing, they want the Soviets to understand that the U.S...

...The information gathered by American analysts, including some accounts of medical personnel on the scene, indicates that the disease took this latter form...

...Among the ancient plagues of animals and man, anthrax attacks humans in two ways...

...As more cases developed, military physicians were brought into Sverdlovsk to handle the staggering load...

...A coverup story, though, was already in the making...

...This would be a breach of a 1975 accord signed by the U.S., the USSR and 85 other nations, outlawing the production or stockpiling of bacteria for such purposes...

...If inhaled from the atmosphere, anthrax germs cause paralysis of the bronchial tubes and lungs, choking victims to death within hours...

...The Sverdlovsk Communist Party newspaper published three articles late last spring warning of the dangers of anthrax, and describing symptoms associated with the gastric variety...

...If the Soviets vetoed that, the next possible step would be an American-initiated discussion in the General Assembly...

...All the hospitalized soldiers and civilians are known to have died, and hundreds more, unable to get into the overcrowded hospital, are thought to have perished at home...

...What concerns Washington, as one official put it, is that the U.S...

...Thus when news of the epidemic surfaced in Washington in mid-March of this year, the editor of Evening Sverdlovsk, Yuri Cheremovsky, was prepared to tell UPI in Moscow by telephone that, yes, he had approved publication of the anthrax series...

...Told that "Siberian ulcer" had been spread by anthrax-infected black market meat, the newly arrived doctors disagreed...

...The victims were said to have eaten diseased meat...

...may never be able to produce "courtroom evidence" that 1) pulmonary anthrax killed hundreds of Soviet citizens, 2) the germs came from a Soviet military installation, and 3) the Soviet government knowingly violated the 1975 biological weapons treaty...

...By an unhappy coincidence, the Sverdlovsk incident erupted in the American press while diplomats were meeting in Geneva for the five-year review stipulated in the germ warfare treaty...

...The civilians lived and worked in an area downwind from the explosion site, indicating that they, too, had contracted anthrax from the Mark Hopkins, a past contributor ioThe New Leader, is a specialist in Soviet and East European affairs...

...Should the Soviet Union fail to come up with one in the near future, the United States could appeal to the UN Security Council...

...In an unusual move, for example, the Foreign Ministry telephoned a statement to Western correspondents in Moscow warning that American suggestions of secret Soviet germ warfare facilities could "shatter current international accords and complicate the efforts of states to curb the arms race...

...Cooking the meat kills the germs, they note, and Soviet citizens would unquestionably cook black market meat...

...They suspected that it was part of an American campaign to castigate the Soviets in the aftermath of Afghanistan, a campaign they felt had already produced exaggerated charges of Soviet troops using poison gas in that invasion...

...It is known that the Kremlin attempted to cover up the outbreak of anthrax that killed hundreds of people last spring in Sverdlovsk, a military-industrial center 875 miles east of Moscow...

...Secondly, they have no desire to give the Soviets an excuse for avoiding a frank discussion of the facts...

...They insist that a deliberate effort has been made to handle the whole matter in a serious, quiet manner...

...Although the United States delegation voiced its suspicions of a Soviet violation of the agreement, the press treatment undermined the discussions...

...The first published story about the incident, however, appeared October 26,1979, in the British magazine NOW, although this mistakenly gave the place as Novosibirsk and the time as June...

...officials may reach the point where they conclude that it would be best simply to release whatever facts are in their possession...

...intelligence analysts concluded an explosion had occurred the night of April 3-4, 1979, at a military facility on the outskirts of Sverdlovsk...

...One reliable source maintains that a discussion among State Department, CIA and Pentagon analysts—who had been sifting through information for months—led to the unintentional publication of the Bild Zeitung articles...

...The agreement does permit the production or use of limited amounts of bacteriological agents for research and other peaceful purposes...

...cannot trust the USSR to abide by its arms control bargains...

...The "Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Producing and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction" was signed in 1927 and went into force in 1975, when the three depositary governments—the United States, the Soviet Union and Great Britain—ratified it...

...The treaty provides for a hearing of evidence and a Security Council investigation...

...Initially, resident Soviet physicians told concerned citizens that autopsies had indeed proven death from anthrax —but of the gastric variety...

...While the editor had been primed to respond to UPI questions, for a full year the Soviet government failed to mention the outbreak of anthrax, despite the fact that it is on the list of diseases that are supposed to be reported to the World Health Organization in Geneva...

...On March 14, the Foreign Broadcast Information Service bulletin, published by the CIA, reprinted the German articles, creating some controversy over the reasons for the move...

...Like the soldiers, the civilians were suffering from choking, fluid in the lungs and high fever...

...Now it is maneuvering to prevent a full investigation of the incident out of what appears to be fear that the findings would irrevocably doom salt II and the Vienna talks for a mutual reduction of forces in central Europe, as well as critically undermine existing agreements like the one banning orbiting nuclear weapons...

...American officials scoff at the notion that infected meat caused the deaths...

...Four days after the explosion the first victims—about 40 military personnel—were brought to the Sverdlovsk hospital...

...Publicly, CIA Director Stansfield Turner told a recent conference of newspaper editors here that there is a "reasonable possibility" an epidemic of anthrax a year ago in Sverdlovsk was caused by bacteria intended for military weapons...

...has no intention of exploiting an event of such import without cause...

...But 10,000 anthrax spores are considered sufficient for any research, and hundreds of thousands had to be released to kill the number of persons known to have died in Sverdlovsk...

...State Department officials directly involved in the Sverdlovsk case were privately enraged by this interpretation...

...Some of these were incorrect, too, yet clearly the newspaper had access to sources close to the event...

...in this form, the disease has long been known in Russia as "Siberian ulcer...

...Actually, it was after piecing together bits of information from eyewitnesses and emigrant sources that U.S...

...air...