Former CIA officer warns against trusting Russia's account of mysterious death in Siberia

Glenn Corn, a former CIA officer, told Fox News Digital that Russias decades-long history of deception makes it difficult to trust the Kremlins account of a possible disease outbreak following the death of a 28-year-old researcher at a facility containing dangerous pathogens.

Darya Shipilova, who worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East, got sick near the end of September.

After unconfirmed reports that Shipilova died from pneumonic plague were shared far and wide on social media, Russian authorities pushed back, saying she died on Oct. 2 from "pneumonia of unknown etiology" and that testing found no evidence she had been infected with a pathogen from her lab.

Yet the Russian governments past messaging around major crises has left Corn wary of its official account.

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"This is what the challenge is, because they have the history of the 'boy who cried wolf syndrome.' They have this history of being deceitful. It's very hard to believe what they're saying," Corn said.

Corn, who is fluent in Russian and spent more than 20 years overseas during his intelligence career, gave several examples of elaborate Russian coverups, including the 1979 anthrax outbreak that killed at least 64 people in the Soviet city of Sverdlovsk, now called Yekaterinburg.

For years, the Soviet Union claimed that the deaths were caused by intestinal anthrax from tainted meat, according to PBS Frontline. It wasn't until 1992 that President Boris Yeltsin finally admitted the illnesses were the result of military activity at a nearby biological weapons facility.

This dedication to deception, Corn said, remains a feature of the current government under President Vladimir Putin.

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Corn pointed to the Kremlins past denials of ties to the Wagner mercenary group, whose murky relationship with the state allowed its fighters to advance Moscows interests overseas while Russian officials maintained plausible deniability. Putin later acknowledged that the group had been fully financed by the Russian state.

"This goes to the strategic culture of leadership in Russia...and their fear of the rest of the world, and their belief that they have to deceive everybody because everybody is deceiving them," Corn said.

Corn said this style of narrative control is also characteristic of China, which remains under Communist Party rule, while modern Russia inherited many of the institutions and governing practices of the communist-led Soviet Union.

For example, China faced criticism in the early stages of the

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