In the late 1970s and early 1980s, reports persisted that the Soviet Union was using chemical and biological weaponry in Laos, Cambodia, and Afghanistan in violation of the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.
Lao tribesmen described bombs unleashing clouds of colored gas and oily liquid. Some Dutch journalists covering the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan even filmed a Soviet helicopter dropping canisters emitting a yellow cloud on a village near Jalalabad, and the CIA sent in operatives into Southeast Asia to collect plant and tissue samples from areas where the attacks occurred.
The evidence was damning. An Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center toxicologist found that the symptoms of those exposed were consistent with thichothecene mycotoxins, a poison produced by certain types of mold. A Special National Intelligence Estimate concluded that the Soviets were mass-producing the substance as a chemical weapon. Even President Jimmy Carter acknowledged the Soviets were likely violating the treaty, though he pushed ahead nonetheless with efforts for a Strategic Arms Limitations Talks Treaty.
President Ronald Reagan’s election upset many in the nonproliferation, diplomatic, and intelligence communities. They feared not only that he might use definitive proof of Soviet cheating to torpedo arms control talks, but also that Reagan could use proof of Soviet chemical weapons use to justify renewed U.S. chemical weapons research and production.
Soon, government scientists wary of Reagan began leaking an alternate theory: the “Yellow Rain” hypothesis. The yellow clouds, they posited, might be a naturally occurring mixture of pollen and bee feces. The planes that dropped the bombs? A coincidence. Ditto the fact that the yellow clouds only appeared over war zones. The State Department reassessed Hmong refugee interviews and dismissed them. Extensive Soviet literature on mycotoxins? Not relevant when bees were the culprit.
Even though Reagan returned to diplomacy, the Washington elite never fully trusted him. George H.W. Bush, the blue blood scion of a prominent family who had spent his career in government service, was a different story. Only when Reagan left the White House did the intelligence community revert to its initial finding that the yellow rain represented a Soviet Union biological and chemical attack. They had little choice. President Boris Yeltsin ultimately acknowledged as much. The decadelong battle over the origins of “Yellow Rain” became, for more than 40 years, Exhibit A in how Washington professionals politicized intelligence to constrain a president’s ability to hold culprits to account.
It now seems that the debates over COVID-19’s origins are the 21st-century equivalent of the “Yellow Rain” episode. During the Trump administration, bureaucrats feared Trump’s volatility, especially after he ordered a drone strike on Iranian general and master terrorist Qassem Soleimani. Others were hostile to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s depiction of communist China as an adversary more than a competitor, let alone a partner. Under such circumstances, attributing COVID-19 to Chinese incompetence or malfeasance might give Trump fodder upon which to make decisions that many civil servants opposed. To promote the idea that COVID-19 spontaneously and naturally erupted in Wuhan, China, was to absolve China of responsibility and eliminate any possibility that Trump might antagonize a country that many American diplomats and intelligence professionals hoped to accommodate.
With Trump gone and Joe Biden president, intelligence assessments are changing. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines now reports, “The [intelligence community] assesses that the virus probably emerged and infected humans through an initial small-scale exposure that occurred no later than November 2019.” While U.S. intelligence agencies continue to not point their finger unequivocally at China, Haines shared her frustration with Beijing’s obfuscation.
The idea that COVID-19 erupted naturally just miles from China’s premier biological research facility was always far-fetched. Sen. Tom Cotton was correct two years ago to suggest a lab leak was more likely. His critics cited science, but their own political bias and arrogant disdain for elected officials blinded them. Haines rightly blamed Beijing for its foot-dragging, but it is a sad fact that political hatred led civil servants and journalists to subordinate the search for truth and instead carry water for the world’s largest dictatorship.
Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
