Lies, Forgery And Skulduggery: The Long History Of 'Active Measures'
Russia's interference in the 2016 election is part of a tradition of mischief that goes back centuries — and remains pernicious, leaders warn. Tuesday ex-CIA Chief John Brennan testifies on the topic.
In 1983, an explosive story appeared in an Indian newspaper, The Patriot: the AIDS virus was the result of American biological weapons research.
Two years later a Soviet newspaper picked up the thread: The U.S. Army had developed AIDS as a bioweapon at Fort Detrick, Md. Other publications followed suit and by 1986, an East German biology professor was publishing "research" in which he explained that the virus had been tested on service members used as human guinea pigs — who then began spreading it among vulnerable populations.
None of it was true. All of it was fiction created by
