War in Korea and Indochina } 85
the Presidium of the Council of Ministers of the USSR sent a message to the
Soviet ambassador in Beijing to be delivered to Mao Zedong. It read:
The Soviet Government and the Central Committee of the CPSU were
misled. The spread in the press of information about the use by the
Americans of bacteriological weapons in Korea was based on false in-
formation. The accusations against the Americans were fictitious.^59
Among the recommendations delivered by the Soviet ambassador and
following from the above statement was the proposition: “To cease publica-
tion in the press of materials accusing the Americans of using bacteriological
weapons in Korea and China.” Beijing agreed with this proposal, and material
about “US germ warfare” quickly disappeared from the Chinese as well as
the Soviet media. According to a subsequent report by the Soviet ambassador
after his May 2 delivery of this message, when he received this Soviet message
Mao appeared nervous, “smoked a lot, crushed cigarettes and drank a lot of
tea. Towards the end of the conversation he laughed and joked, and calmed
down.” Mao told the Soviet ambassador that the campaign unmasking the
American use of bacteriological weapons had begun based on reports of the
CPV command.^60 The comment of the North Korean KWP leader after re-
ceiving the same Soviet presentation that Mao received was instructive: “We
were convinced that everything was known in Moscow. We thought that set-
ting off this campaign would give great assistance to the cause of the struggle
against American imperialism.”^61
Before Moscow pulled the plug on the anti-US germ warfare campaign,
Beijing generated considerable activity promoting those accusations. On
March 8, 1952, Zhou Enlai laid out the accusation: the United States had sent
448 aircraft on no less than sixty-eight occasions between February 29 and
March 5 to drop germ-carrying insects. Eighteen different disease-infested
insects, spiders, and ticks, as well as small rodents, had been dropped, along
with germ-carrying paper and “leaflet bombs.”^62 The detail of the charge lent
apparent credibility to it. Following these very specific accusations, Beijing
mobilized two “international commissions” to investigate American germ
warfare “violations of international law” and propagate those charges to the
world in a more credible fashion than statements by China’s premier. One
of these commissions was organized by the World Peace Council (WPC), a
largely Soviet-funded and -guided peace and disarmament group founded
in 1948 and based in Paris. The WPC recruited seven scientists, only one
of whom was a Soviet. The head of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guo
Morou, personally delivered to a WPC convention in Oslo the invitation to
investigate “US germ warfare.” Guo also persuaded his old friend, the emi-
nent British chemist, Marxist, and Sinologist Joseph Needham, to head the
investigation commission.^63