Category: Soviet Active Measures

• The Sober Origin

  This entry refers to the Soviet-era disinformation campaign that claimed the United States had invented AIDS as a biological weapon to destabilize Africa, discredit U.S. military presence abroad, and intensify social fracture among already marginalized communities, including gay men. In scholarship, the campaign is more commonly identified as Operation Denver and is often popularly called Operation INFEKTION. The documentary record strongly supports that the KGB and allied bloc services spread the Fort Detrick/AIDS story through forged documents, planted press items, and proxy outlets. The campaign’s public claims were false, but the campaign itself was real.