Allegations of Biological Weapons Use - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 252

CHAPTER 13
Allegations of Biological
Weapons Use
MARTIN FURMANSKI
MARK WHEELIS
Only a few instances of actual use of biological weapons
(BW) by nations have been conclusively documented, all before 1945. 1
However, there have been many accusations and speculations since. In
this chapter we analyze the four most important sets of allegations: that
the US employed BW in Korea and China in 1952; that the US used BW
against Cuba in 1962 and thereafter; that in the 1970s and 1980s the So-
viet Union used toxin weapons in Afghanistan and provided them and
supervised their use by the Vietnamese and Laotian governments in Laos
and Kampuchea; and that an anthrax outbreak in 1979 in the Soviet city
of Sverdlovsk was the result of an accidental release from a bioweapons
facility. Retrospective scientific analysis has proved that such a release did
occur. The three allegations of deliberate use all deserve to be considered
seriously, but in all three cases the available evidence is insufficient to
support the allegations, and in two of them the evidence strongly sug-
gests that the allegations are incorrect.
While we use allegations against the US and Soviet Union as case stud-
ies here, they are not the only countries alleged to have used BW since
1945. Others include South Africa, 2 Myanmar, 3 and Rhodesia. 4 We do
not address these here, because they are not supported by sufficient evi-
dence to permit even a tentative conclusion, and they do not have the
geopolitical significance of the US and Soviet allegations. Additional dis-
cussion of the South African and Rhodesian allegations can be found in
Chapters 9 and 11.
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