C.I.A. accused of hiding news of Soviet N-disaster

Press, 28 November 1977, Page 8

C.I.A. accused of hiding news of Soviet N-disaster

! N'ZPA Washington i I-or nearly 20 years, the American Central In-; telligence Agency kept : secret its knowledge of an alleged nuclear explosion in • the Soviet Union that killed; scores of people and turned 155 sq km into a great void, a i United States citizens’ group j (has charged. I The Critical-Mass Energy I Project s.i d that Central Intelligence Agency documents jit obtained through the Free-' ;dom of Information Act provided new verification of the rumoured nuclear accident in the Ural Mountains, in 1958. , There have been varied i I accounts, but sparse- docu-1 I mentation, of the alleged ac-' , cident in the town of; ; Kyshtym on the Asian side; jof the mountains. The al-1 leged accident is said toi have exposed hundreds of, townspeople to radiation. The citizens’ group said i the newly released C.I.A. I documents constituted the. ! first official response from ;the United States Government to allegations made, 1 earlier this year that a tra-i •gic catastrophe occurred in 1958 that dispersed lethal radioactivity over a wide i area after ' a nuclear accident. Of the alleged Kyshtym accident, the group said that

fthe C.I.A as recently as last|< March wrote: :i "About 100 km from (Sverdlovsk, about 161 km : i north of Kyshtym, we I crossed a strange, uninha- . • bited, and unfarmed area. '(Highway signs along the’ l J way wanted drivers not to listop for the next 20 to 30km > (because of radiation. The! Hand was empty. There were ; Ino villages, no towns, nor • people, no cultivated land:; ilonly the chimneys of des-1 jtroyed houses remained." t I The C.I.A. released 14 of! flits documents pertaining toil jthe alleged accident, but! i (withheld 15 others, citing i I national security as the! (main reason. Portions of the It 14 released documents were deleted for similar reasons, h Mr Richard Pollock, the : I critical-mass energy project', (director, said that his organ- li hisation planned to go to ’(court to obtain the unre-li (leased information as well I: (Jas similar documents thatii . allegedly originated with the J h State and Defence Depart-h intents. !j C.I.A. officials declined to I; , comment on the agency’s (i (withholding of the documents. “We've released theli I (documents as required by ijlaw. and for now . . . they’ll I : •Ihave to stand on their own i] two feet,” a spokesman said. ; i The C.I.A. documents did , not reveal the exact nature •,

|of the alleged 1958 accident,i the citizens' group said, al-/ though there were indica-I tions the blast either involved a nuclear plan at ; Kyshtym or a nuclear-waste' > storage facility there. ■ The Soviet Union had con- j ce.ntrated a number of nu-i i clear reactors in the region, I although it was unclear! (whether the facilities were! : primarily constructed for I | civilian or military purposes,; the organisation said. It said there was a second; ! nuclear-related accident cited!' ■‘in the C.I.A. documents that!' ! occurred either in 1960 or! 11961, accompanied by a ■terrific explosion. The citizens’ group said; {the C.I.A. first learned of;' the alleged Kyshtym acci-h dent in a teletype report on: I May 23, 1958. It said the agency docu-j; ment noted that various] ■ Soviet employees and vis-j< itors to the Brussels Fair!: had stated independently but consistently that the occur-|i rence of an accidental!; atomic explosion during the|] !northern spring of 1958 was!; widely known throughout I i 'the Soviet Union. ‘ “Rumours are common i I i that many people were/ ■ killed. However, the gener-|; jally accepted version is that!] only several score died.” the ; ■teletype report indicated. ii

I Mr Pollock said a February. 1961, C.I.A. document (indicated it was general knowledge that in the area (of Chelyabinsk, an industrial (centre located near (Kyshtym, there was an abI normally high number of (cancer cases. ( Of the second alleged nili clear incident in the Soviet i Union three years later, the (C.I.A. documents said: “The ’explosion was so terrific (that the ground and buildings i shook. A short time after (this explosion occurred all (the leaves, on the trees . . . (were completely covered 'with a heavy layer of red dust." “Very quickly,” the C.I.A. (cited its source as saying, (“all the leaves curled up and i fell off the trees.” In an article published in the British magazine, “New ’Scientist,” in November 1976. a former Soviet biochemist and geneticist. Dr ' Zhores Medvedev, claimed (the Soviet Union suffered (two atomic accidents — one ; allegedly involved over(heating’ with stored radioactive wastes and the second ’involved an unmanned ’rocket that exploded on the launch pad. The Russians denied Dr Medvedev’s (account. Dr Medvedev repeated the story in another article in “New Scientist” i this year.