Hello and welcome back to the re-education. I'm Eli Lake, and today's show is about

the wilderness of mirrors, that web of half-truths, lies and falsehood. Spies and counter-spies

spin to deceive their adversaries. This episode examines this in the context of Russian and Soviet disinformation and

psychological warfare. My guest is the great Peter Savodnik, a senior writer and editor

for Barry Weiss's Common Sense Substack and the author of the 2013 book, Interloper, about

Lee Harvey Oswald's sojourn to the Soviet Union.

A Soviet military publication claims the virus that causes AIDS leaked from a U.S. Army

laboratory conducting experiments in biological warfare.

You just heard from Dan Rather, the former anchor of CBS News, who is today a resistance Twitter personality.

Back in 1987, when this report was filed, Dan Rather did not know it, but he was being played by the commies.

The research paper that he references here was pure bullshit.

It was commissioned by the East German Stasi and authored by an East German medical researcher

named Jacob Siegel and claimed that the AIDS virus was created by a secret US bio-weapons

lab.

Now that paper was first distributed to diplomats from the non-aligned movement in

1986 and then recycled in Soviet propaganda organs.

The groundwork, however, had been laid in 1983 by the Soviet KGB, who sent an anonymous letter

to an Indian newspaper, ironically called The Patriot.

And that letter claimed to be from a prominent American scientist.

Slowly at first, the story began to spread.

Eventually, it was picked up in many Western newspapers, including the Daily Mirror.

And then Dan Rather slipped it into his nightly newscast.

...