Who Plants Conspiracy Stories? From Operation Denver to the Online Amplification Machine

In July 1983, an Indian newspaper published a story claiming that AIDS had been created in a United States military laboratory. The article offered no virus sample, no research name and no military document. It linked a new disease to Fort Detrick, a real American site associated with biological-weapons research, and asked whether Washington was testing a weapon on civilians. A rumour that seemed to come from a small paper crossed borders, was repeated on Soviet-aligned radio and in newspapers, and then cited as "the truth they were hiding."

Declassified records show that the rumour did not grow by itself. In September 1985, the KGB sent instructions about the AIDS campaign to Bulgaria's security service. East Germany's security service called the operation "Denver." The goal was blunt: plant the idea that the Pentagon had made HIV as part of a biological-weapons programme. After that, newspapers and broadcasters in several countries repeated the story without ever telling readers who had written the first claim.