The Dead Hand

by David Hoffman

  11 Note made by a participant who asked to remain anonymous, undated.

  12 Keith Almquist, communications with author, Dec. 14, 2008, and Jan. 24, 2009. Later, Sandia procured materials for another ninety-nine upgrades and sent these in standard shipping containers to a Russian rail car factory in Tver, Russia, and then contracted with the factory to do the conversions. The upgrades involved changing the insulation and locking down the movable platform. Sandi also provided alarm-monitoring equipment. Some older Russian rail cars were made of wood. The United States also provided armored blankets and “supercontainers” to protect warheads from gunfire.

  13 “President Boris Yeltsin’s Statement on Arms Control,” TASS, Jan. 29, 1992.

  14 This account is based on Mirzayanov interview, July 26, 2008; Mirzayanov, Vyzov (Kazan: Dom Pechati, 2002), published in English as State Secrets: An Insider’s Chronicle of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program (Denver: Outskirts Press, 2009); and Mirzayanov, “Dismantling the Soviet/Russian Chemical Weapons Complex: An Insiders View,” in Amy Smithson, ed., Chemical Weapons Disarmament in Russia: Problems and Prospects (Washington, D.C.: Stimson Center, October 1995), pp. 21–34.

  15 On the Lenin Prizes, Mirzayanov originally believed they were for the binary novichok agents, but later learned that they had received the prize for creating another binary.

  16 The article was signed by Mirzayanov and Lev Fedorov, a chemist who, in the 1990s, founded and headed the Association for Chemical Security, a group concerned about storage and destruction of chemical weapons arsenals.

  17 His coauthor, Fedorov, was interrogated, as were some journalists, but not charged.

  18 The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction was adopted in Geneva on Sept. 3, 1992, by the Conference on Disarmament. It was opened for signature in Paris from Jan. 13 to 15, 1993, and entered into force on April 29, 1997. Both Russia and the United States ratified the treaty.

  19 Mirzayanov drew support from around the world. Scientists, politicians and human rights activists wrote letters on his behalf to the authorities in Moscow. Mirzayanov and Colby later married. Mirzayanov now lives in the United States.

  20 On March 11, 1994, the attorney general closed the case. During the proceedings, another disenchanted veteran of the chemical weapons program, Vladimir Uglev, had corroborated what Mirzayanov said. Uglev later threatened to release the formulas of the novichok agents unless the case was dropped. Oleg Vishnyakov, “Interview with a Noose Around the Neck,” Novoye Vremya, Moscow, no. 6, Feb. 1993, pp. 40–41, as translated in JPRS-UMA-92-022, June 29, 1993. Vladimir Uglev, interview, June 10, 1998. Uglev said his threat to reveal the formulas was a bluff. “I don’t know if I could have done that,” he said.

  21 This account is based on interviews with Blair, Feb. 20 and March 9, 2004; The Logic of Accidental Nuclear War (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1993); “The Russian C3I,” a paper by Valery E. Yarynich, Feb. 24, 1993, and a copy of Yarynich’s review, May 31, 1993, both courtesy of Blair; and interviews with Yarynich.

  22 Yarynich had already made two authorized presentations overseas on nuclear command and control. On April 23–25, 1992, Yarynich was delegated by the General Staff to participate in a conference in Estonia, and he made another presentation Nov. 19–21, 1992, in Stockholm.

  23 After Blair’s op-ed appeared, Yarynich wrote his own article, emphasizing the role of Perimeter as a “safety catch” against a mistaken launch. He also called for more openness about nuclear command and control systems. “The Doomsday Machine’s Safety Catch,” New York Times, Feb. 1, 1994, p. A17. Other articles began to appear by Russian experts on Perimeter, and Yarynich published a more detailed description in his book, C3: Nuclear Command, Control, Cooperation (Washington, D.C.: Center for Defense Information, 2003), pp. 156–159.

  CHAPTER 20: YELTSIN’S PROMISE

  1 Braithwaite, Across the Moscow River (New Haven: Yale, 2002), pp. 142–143. Also, Braithwaite diary entries and communication with author, May 19, 2008. A confidential source told the author Yeltsin also called the biological weapons scientists “misguided geniuses.”

  2 James A. Baker III, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace, 1989–1992 (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995), p. 620. On the same day he met with Baker, Yeltsin issued a lengthy statement on arms control in which he declared that Russia “is for strict implementation of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention.” “President Boris Yeltsin’s Statement on Arms Control,” TASS, Jan. 29, 1992. Also, Ann Devroy, R. Jeffrey Smith, “U.S., Russia Pledge New Partnership; Summits Planned in Washington, Moscow,” Washington Post, p. A1, Feb. 2, 1992.

  3 Popov, interview, May 16, 2005; Gait, communication with author, July 7–8, 2008.

  4 Ken Alibek with Stephen Handelman, Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of theLargest Covert Weapons Program in the World—Told from the Inside by the Man Who Ran It (New York: Random House, 1999), pp. 242–244.

  5 Braithwaite, journal entry.

  6 At the Third Review Conference of the BWC, held in Geneva Sept. 9–27, 1991, the parties, which included the Soviet Union, agreed to a series of confidence-building measures, including “declaration of past activities in offensive and/or defensive biological research and development programmes” and agreed that exchange of data should be sent annually to the U.N. no later than April 15, covering the previous calendar year.

  7 “Decree of the President of the Russian Federation from April 11, 1992, No. 390, On Providing Fulfillment of International Obligations in the Field of Biological Weapons.”

  8 In his diary Braithwaite wrote of his reaction, “I say that the right response is to take it at face value, and that the Prime Minister should ram the thought home by sending Yeltsin a personal message congratulating him on his courageous and decisive action. That will make it harder for the Russians to backslide or weave about.” Braithwaite, diary entry, April 23, 1992.

  9 “Declaration of Past Activity Within the Framework of the Offensive and Defensive Programs of Biological Research and Development,” also known as “Form F.” Yeltsin admitted to the newspaper Izvestia the military was trying to hide the biological weapons program from him. He recalled his conversation with Bush at Camp David this way: “I said I could not give him firm assurances of cooperation. Certainly, this is not acceptable among politicians, but I said this: ‘We are still deceiving you, Mr. Bush. We promised to eliminate bacteriological weapons. But some of our experts did everything possible to prevent me from learning the truth. It was not easy but I outfoxed them. I caught them red-handed.’” Yeltsin offered few details but said he had discovered two test sites where experts were experimenting with anthrax on animals. Izvestia, April 22, 1992.

  10 Braithwaite journal entries for these dates.

  11 Komsomolskaya Pravda, May 27, 1992, p. 2.

  12 “Text of President Yeltsin’s Address to US Congress,” TASS, June 17, 1992.

  13 The drafts were discussed June 4, June 15 and July 28, primarily with officials in the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, according to records made available to the author. Also, R. Jeffrey Smith, “Russia Fails to Deter Germ Arms; U.S. and Britain Fear Program Continues in Violation of Treaty,” Washington Post, Aug. 31, 1992, p. 1.

  14 Frank Wisner, interview, Aug. 12, 2008. See TNSA EBB 61, doc. 32, for Wisner’s talking points. For this account I have also relied on an authoritative confidential source.

  15 “A Deputy’s Request,” Larissa Mishustina, undated. Alexei Yablokov, letter to Yeltsin, Dec. 3, 1991. Spravka, signed by Yablokov, Dec. 6, 1991. All three documents courtesy Meselson archive. Yablokov says in both the spravka and the letter to Yeltsin that documents on the Sverdlovsk case were destroyed by instructions from the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union on Dec. 4, 1990, No. 1244-167, “On Works of Special Problems.”

  16 Guillemin was at the time a professor at Boston College and has since become
a senior fellow at the Security Studies Program at MIT in the Center for International Studies. The story of the expedition is told in greater detail in her book. She and Meselson are married.

  17 Meselson conveyed this paper to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, where it was published. Faina A. Abramova, Lev M. Grinberg, Olga V. Yampolskaya and David H. Walker, “Pathology of Inhalational Anthrax in 42 Cases from the Sverdlovsk Outbreak of 1979,” PNAS, Vol. 90, pp. 2291–2294, March 1993.

  18 Meselson et al., Science, vol. 266, no. 5188, November 18, 1994.

  19 Alibek, pp. 244–256.

  20 Confidential source, and David Kelly, “The Trilateral Agreement: Lessons for Biological Weapons Verification,” Chapter 6 in Verification Yearbook 2002 (London: Verification Research, Training and Information Center, December 2002).

  21 Kelly interview with Joby Warrick of the Washington Post, June 17, 2002. Warrick notes. In fact, the Pokrov plant was a standby factory for producing smallpox and anti-livestock diseases in the event of war mobilization. According to a confidential source, the plant was capable of producing ten tons a year of smallpox agent. Joby Warrick, “Russia’s Poorly Guarded Past; Security Lacking at Facilities Used for Soviet Bioweapons Research,” Washington Post, June 17, 2002, p. A1.

  22 Letter from President Clinton to Congress, Nov. 12, 1996. State Department press guidance for worldwide embassies on July 7, 1998, said, “In November, 1995, the United States imposed sanctions on a Russian citizen named Anatoly Kuntsevich for knowingly and materially assisting the Syrian CW program.” State Department cable 122387, released under FOIA to author.

  CHAPTER 21: PROJECT SAPPHIRE

  1 Gerald F. Seib, “Kazakhstan Is Made for Diplomats Who Find Paris a Bore—At Remote New Embassy, They Dodge Gunmen, Lecture on Economics,” Wall Street Journal Europe, April 22, 1992, p. 1. This account of Project Sapphire is based on interviews with Weber; Jeff Starr; a personal communication from Elwood H. Gift, Oct. 22, 2008; and “Project Sapphire After Action Report,” Defense Threat Reduction Agency, U.S. Department of Defense, declassified to author under FOIA, Sept. 21, 2006. Several other useful published sources were William C. Potter, “Project Sapphire: U.S.-Kazakhstani Cooperation for Nonproliferation,” in John M. Shields and William C. Potter, eds., Dismantling the Cold War: U.S. and NIS Perspectives on the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, CSIA Studies in International Security (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997); and John A. Tirpak, “Project Sapphire,” Air Force magazine, Journal of the Air Force, vol. 78, no. 8, August 1995; and Philipp C. Bleek, “Global Cleanout: An emerging approach to the civil nuclear material threat,” Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, September 2004, available at www.nti.org.

  2 Embassy of Kazakhstan and Nuclear Threat Initiative, Washington, D.C., Kazakhstan’s Nuclear Disarmament, 2007, see illustration after p. 80.

  3 Martha Brill Olcott, Kazakhstan: Unfulfilled Promise (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002), p. 204.

  4 Gulbarshyn Bozheyeva, “The Pavlodar Chemical Weapons Plant in Kazakhstan: History and Legacy,” Nonproliferation Review, James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, Monterey, California, Summer 2000, pp. 136–145.

  5 Embassy of Kazakhstan, p. 94.

  6 Olcott, Ch. 1, “Introducing Kazakhstan.”

  7 After some initial hesitation, Nazarbayev agreed to removal of all the strategic weapons back to Russia, and Kazakhstan ratified the Start 1 treaty and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

  8 Mikhailov interview with Nukem Market Report, a monthly published by Nukem, Inc., based in Stamford, Connecticut, and one of the world’s leading suppliers of nuclear fuel. Earlier estimates were about six hundred tons, but there was a high degree of uncertainty. Oleg Bukharin estimated independently in 1995 that Russia had thirteen hundred metric tons of HEU. Bukharin, “Analysis of the Size and Quality of Uranium Inventories in Russia,” Science and Global Security, vol. 6, 1996, pp. 59–77.

  9 Jeff Starr, interview, Aug. 26, 2008.

  10 “The President’s News Conference with President Nursultan Nazarbayev,” Public Papers of the Presidents, 30 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 289.

  11 Norman Polmar and K. J. Moore, Cold War Submarines: The Design and Construction of U.S. and Soviet Submarines (Dulles, Va.: Brassey’s, 2004), pp. 140–146. Gerhardt Thamm, “The ALFA SSN: Challenging Paradigms, Finding New Truths, 1969–79,” Studies in Intelligence, vol. 52, no. 3, Central Intelligence Agency, Sept. 2008.

  12 “Analysis of HEU Samples from the Ulba Metallurgical Plant,” E. H. Gift, National Security Programs Office, Martin Marietta Energy Systems Inc., Oak Ridge, Tennessee, initially issued July 1994, revised May 1995.

  13 Gift and others said they saw the crates labeled “Tehran, Iran,” and were told it was beryllium, but none was actually shipped.

  14 See Ashton B. Carter and William J. Perry, Preventive Defense(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1999), p. 73.

  15 Fairfax said these nuclear materials were often much harder to track than warheads. Fairfax, interview, Sept. 3, 2008, and communication with author, Sept. 9, 2008. Nearly all the seizures of stolen HEU or plutonium to date have been such bulk material. Matthew Bunn, communication with author, Oct. 11, 2008.

  16 The remark was made by Nikolai Ponomarev-Stepnoi, an academician and vice chairman of the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, in a meeting with a delegation headed by Ambassador James Goodby, March 24, 1994. State Department cable Moscow 08594, declassified for author under FOIA.

  17 On the glove episode, “Status of U.S. Efforts to Improve Nuclear Material Controls in Newly Independent States,” U.S. General Accounting Office, March 1996, report GAO/NSIAD/RCED-96-89, p. 25. On the navy case, Mikhail Kulik, “Guba Andreeva: Another Nuclear Theft Has Been Detected,” Yaderny Kontrol, no. 1, Spring 1996, Center for Policy Studies in Russia, pp. 16–21.

  18 For his cables on the fissile materials crisis, Fairfax received the State Department’s 1994 award for excellence in reporting on environment, science and technology issues by the Bureau of Oceans, Environment and Science. Also, “Diversion of Nuclear Materials: Conflicting Russian Perspectives and Sensitivities,” State Department cable, Moscow 19996, July 14, 1994.

  19 Management and Disposition of Excess Weapons Plutonium, Committee on International Security and Arms Control, National Academy of Sciences, (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1994).

  20 Matthew Bunn, interview, Oct. 4, 2004, and communications Aug. 24, 2008, and Oct. 11, 2008. Both Fairfax and Bunn found that one way to ease the mistrust was to arrange visits by the Russians to facilities in the United States.

  21 Rensslaer W. Lee III, Smuggling Armageddon: The Nuclear Black Market in the Former Soviet Union and Europe (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998), pp. 89–103.

  22 State Department cable Moscow 024061, Aug. 23, 1994, released in part to author under FOIA.

  23 Von Hippel, interview, June 1, 2004. “My Draft Recommendations and Notes from Mayak Workshop,” von Hippel files, Oct. 23, 1994. Von Hippel, “Next Steps in Material Protection, Control, and Accounting Cooperation,” Nov. 15, 1994.

  24 They were uranium metal, uranium oxides, uranium-beryllium alloy rods, uranium oxide-beryllium-oxide rods, uranium-beryllium alloy, uranium-contaminated graphite and laboratory salvage. Memorandum, Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Dec. 21, 1995. Beryllium is an ingredient in making nuclear warheads.

  25 “DoD News Briefing,” Wednesday, Nov. 23, 1994. Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs), www.defenselink.mil.

  26 The United States paid Kazakhstan about $27 million for the material. About $3 million was paid to the Ulba plant, and Weber had the privilege of presenting the check to Mette.

  27 Bunn, interview by author. Holdren later provided a summary of the PCAST study in an open paper, “Reducing the Threat of Nuclear Theft in the For
mer Soviet Union: Outline of a Comprehensive Plan,” John P. Holdren, November 1995. The title of the PCAST study was “Cooperative U.S./Former Soviet Union Programs on Nuclear Materials Protection, Control and Accounting,” classified S/Noforn, Office of Science and Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President, March 1995.

  28 Bunn, communication with author, August 25, 2008. Also see Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, One Point Safe: A True Story (New York: Anchor, 1997), Ch. 11. On Sept. 28, 1995, nearly four months after the briefing, Clinton signed a presidential order, PDD-41, “Further Reducing the Nuclear Threat.” The order gave the Energy Department primary responsibility for nuclear materials protection in the former Soviet Union, a shift from the Defense Department. Bunn helped draft the presidential order, but he told me the lack of high-level support after it was signed meant it had less impact than he had hoped.

  29 Engling, interviews, Sept. 29 and Oct. 13, 2003.

  30 The highly-enriched uranium was kept at the institute’s facility in the suburb of Pyatikhatki. Nuclear Threat Initiative, www.nit.org.

  CHAPTER 22: FACE TO FACE WITH EVIL

  1 Acting CIA director William Studeman said the U.S. intelligence community believed the Russian Defense Ministry wanted to continue supporting research into dangerous pathogens and maintain facilities for war mobilization of biological weapons. See “Accuracy of Russia’s Report on Chemical Weapons,” FOIA, www.cia.gov. The document appears to have been written in 1995.

  2 See Ken Alibek with Stephen Handelman, Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World—Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It (New York: Random House, 1999), Ch. 19, pp. 257–269.

  3 Gennady Lepyoshkin, interview, March 28, 2005.

  4 In addition to Weber and Lepyoshkin interviews, this account is based on photographs, forty-nine documents and nine videotapes describing Stepnogorsk before and after dismantlement obtained by the author under the FOIA from the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency, 2005–2007. Other sources included Roger Roffey, Kristina S. Westerdahl, “Conversion of Former Biological Weapons Facilities in Kazakhstan, A Visit to Stepnogorsk,” Swedish Defense Research Agency, FOI-R-0082-SE, May 2001; and Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg and William Broad, Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), pp. 171–176.