The Dead Hand

by David E. Hoffman

  The germ warfare effort was far different from the nuclear arms race. Both superpowers formally negotiated on nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons were legal by the rules of the day. The countries made treaties, set limits and went to great lengths to regulate the competition by arms control negotiations, which they discussed in the open. To protect against cheating, they created verification regimes. But when the Soviet leaders expanded their biological weapons program in the early 1970s, they moved into a dark underside of the arms race. The Soviet program was illegal by the terms of a treaty that Soviet leaders had signed. They broke their own promises, and there was no regulation, verification or enforcement. Their actions give the lie to decades of Soviet propaganda about seeking disarmament. Almost every participant in the Soviet program has said they assumed the United States was also cheating. But in fact the U.S. program had stopped.

  At the time, Brezhnev was influenced by a leading molecular biologist, Yuri Ovchinnikov, vice president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He and several colleagues persuaded Brezhnev to harness the new genesplicing technology for offensive military purposes. According to Ken Alibek, who became deputy director of the Soviet biological weapons program, Ovchinnikov “understood the significance of what he had read in Western scientific journals, and he knew that there were no Soviet laboratories, and few Soviet scientists, equipped to match that level of work.” When it came to convincing the military of the value of this new quest, Alibek said, “Ovchinnikov was persuasive. The most skeptical military commander would have to agree that it was dangerous, if not outrageous, to be behind the West in anything. Ovchinnikov found an influential ally in Leonid Brezhnev. The onetime metallurgical engineer who led the Soviet Union for eighteen years until his death in 1982 regarded the magisterial akademiks of the Soviet scientific establishment with a respect bordering on awe. Ovchinnikov was soon giving private lectures on genetics to Brezhnev and his aides. Slowly the message sank in.”8

  The message was: they had to catch up. As part of the effort, Domaradsky recalled that several prominent Soviet scientists scoured the West for literature on molecular biology and genetics. Among them was Victor Zhdanov, a noted virologist who had initially proposed the global campaign to eradicate smallpox in 1958. Zhdanov won the high regard of Western scientists, and was often permitted to travel abroad. Domaradsky described Zhdanov as sophisticated and worldly. But Zhdanov was also aware of the terrible secrets—plans for a new generation of Soviet biological weapons.

  In microbiology, a fine line exists between research that offers the promise of improved human life—better vaccines, drugs and agricultural products—and research that could be used to exploit human vulnerability to toxins and infectious disease. In the early phases, the same laboratory can be used for either purpose. Joshua Lederberg, the Nobel laureate, wrote that in biological weapons, the “underlying science is unalterably dual-use.” This allowed the Soviet leaders to hide their weapons program.9

  In 1973, soon after the treaty was signed but before it took effect, Brezhnev established a new organization, Biopreparat. The cover story would be that Biopreparat was making medicines and vaccines. But the truth was that Biopreparat was the dual-use mechanism for a recharged and ambitious Soviet effort to discover new offensive biological weapons. Under the cover of civilian pharmaceuticals, Biopreparat would be researching the most dangerous pathogens known to man. To guide it, Brezhnev ordered the creation of a secret, inner council. Brezhnev put the respected virologist Zhdanov in charge of the council, and Domaradsky was named deputy director.

  Within the council, Domaradsky was also put in charge of a “special department” for planning biological weapons development. He had frequent contact with the military bioweapons laboratories, government ministries, Academy of Sciences, and security services. He was now at the “brain center” of the germ warfare research program. The code word for the new offensive weapons drive was “Ferment.” Eventually, it grew to employ tens of thousands of workers and received the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars in funding.10

  In 1974, the Soviet government issued another decree, this one public, seeking to accelerate Soviet work in microbiology. “The meaning of this order was clear,” Domaradsky said, “to let the nation and the world know that we had at last awakened and resolved to overcome our backwardness in this field.”11 But once again, the open decree was intended to conceal the truth. The Biopreparat-run laboratories were secretly intended for weapons work and were being erected at Koltsovo and Obolensk. By Alibek’s account, it was the most ambitious Soviet arms program since development of the hydrogen bomb.12

  ———

  In his new assignment, Domaradsky was to work in the shadows. All documents concerning Ferment were transported with armed escort in special vehicles. Meetings of the council were held in a specially soundproofed hall, which was checked for bugs by the security services before every meeting. Domaradsky’s subscriptions to scientific literature had to be screened in advance by the security service. He was prohibited to travel outside the Soviet bloc, and often not even there. “I knew too much,” he acknowledged. The travel restrictions, often imposed on those with access to top-secret materials, nonetheless caused him embarrassment. “I had to think up some reason for turning down pressing and very tempting invitations from my foreign colleagues.” He would say he had broken his leg, or come down with an illness, or he had “family problems.” Once, he was on the verge of leaving for an international conference on microbiology in Munich. At the very last minute, the KGB man accompanying the delegation stopped Domaradsky in the street, told him he could not go and demanded his ticket and travel money back.

  Domaradsky and his researchers held ten “inventor’s certificates,” for introducing genetic material into plague, but these papers were classified. Keeping such papers secret was common procedure. Domaradsky was given only a number and date of registration. To see his own certificates he had to enter a special security room and could not take any documents out.

  Domaradsky was deeply conflicted. He desired to explore science, yet was aware he was contributing to instruments of death. The pathogens he developed would eventually be turned into weapons, although he did not deal with the actual bombs, just the germs. “I found the science of Problem Ferment intriguing indeed,” he said. “The attraction of that science seemed more important to me than what was to be done with its results.” He added, “Compromising with my conscience seemed, at the time, like a small price to pay.” Domaradsky said his family’s long struggle with persecution had taught him to be ready to bend. “To survive, I had to hide my true attitude toward the Soviet regime from childhood; I learned quite early to adapt myself to this regime.”

  Moreover, Domaradsky felt a “vaulting pride” at being in the heart of the Soviet effort. He had a secure Kremlin phone, car and good salary. “We saw ourselves engaged in patriotic work,” he said, “advancing the study of molecular biology, immunology, and genetics in the Soviet Union, where these fields had been allowed to languish.” He knew of the treaty prohibiting biological weapons, but assumed Americans were also cheating.

  At the core of the entire bioweapons effort, Domaradsky was in position to see the paperwork, talk to the military and visit the laboratories. As Biopreparat took shape, Domaradsky drafted a plan, approved in 1975, to expand the drive for genetically engineered germ weapons in five major directions, including resistance to antibiotics. This was a key turning point. Programs got underway to transfer the genes from various deadly agents into the cells of bacteria, or into the DNA of viruses, to boost the pathogenetic factors. Domaradsky wanted to inject the genetic material directly into plague. These programs were called “Bonfire” and “Factor.” While Domaradsky worked as deputy director of the council in Moscow, the council also set up a parallel program to use genetically altered viruses and germ weapons to devastate crops and livestock, Project “Ecology.”

  As a young man, Domaradsky had admired the heroic workers of
the anti-plague institutes, who protected the public from scourge. Now, the same institutes were quietly dragged into the search for agents of killing. According to Domaradsky, the “Problem No. 5” for civil defense became a cover story for weapons work. The institutes were asked to gather dangerous pathogens they found on the steppe, and to study what made them virulent, so they could be fed into the Biopreparat flasks.

  The Biological Weapons Convention entered into force on March 26, 1975. That June, Alexei A. Roshchin, the Soviet ambassador to the disarmament committee in Geneva, declared: “At the present time, the Soviet Union does not have in its possession any bacteriological (biological) agents or toxins, weapons, equipment or means of delivery specified in Article 1 of the Convention.”13

  Whether Roshchin was aware of the reality is unknown, but Domaradsky certainly knew the truth. “I knew that I was part of a system that was out of control, but I could not think of an alternative way to live my life,” Domaradsky reflected later. “Like my colleagues, I faced a terrible choice: remain with a corrupt and non-functioning system, doing work of (at best) a certain moral ambiguity, or sacrifice my entire scientific career.”

  ———

  Soon after the biological weapons treaty was ratified, U.S. intelligence satellites picked up signs of unusual new factories being built in the Soviet Union. William Beecher, the military correspondent of the Boston Globe, reported that satellites detected six potential biological warfare facilities. The plants “feature extremely high smokestacks and refrigerated storage bunkers associated with germ warfare production,” Beecher wrote.14

  Then in April 1979 came the Sverdlovsk anthrax epidemic. Fragmentary reports began to reach the West. The intelligence community had long suspected a secret Soviet biological weapons program existed. Now perhaps there was evidence.

  The first reports began filtering into the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency through Soviet émigrés. A top-secret CIA intelligence report on October 15, 1979, cited an unnamed Soviet émigré as saying that three close friends had told him in May “of an accident at a biological warfare (BW) institute in Sverdlovsk which resulted in 40 to 60 deaths. Other sources have also heard rumors of such an accident.” The report was vague, but noted there was “a suspect BW installation in Sverdlovsk” and that “two reports of the accident suggested a disease that also affects cattle, and one source identified the bacterial agent anthrax as a possible cause.”15

  In December, Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan. The SALT II treaty was endangered. If the Soviets were found to have violated the five-year-old biological weapons treaty, it would be yet another serious setback to ratification of the nuclear arms agreement.

  Unexpectedly, fresh intelligence arrived in Washington about Sverdlovsk. A secret CIA report on January 28, 1980, said: “Recent intelligence strengthens allegations that an accident at a BW installation caused civilian casualties in southern Sverdlovsk during April 1979.” This report added the claim of a possible explosion at the plant that caused the release. The report said that “pathogenic bacteria allegedly escaped into the air and spread over industrial and residential areas of southern Sverdlovsk.” The report also took note that, “An announcement about an anthrax epidemic in a public health context appears to have been designed to prevent a possible panic among Sverdlovsk’s million-plus population. The magnitude of the epidemic and the causative organism remain conjecture.”

  In January and February 1980, a practicing surgeon from a Sverdlovsk hospital gave U.S. intelligence agencies a new and more detailed account, which the Defense Intelligence Agency described in a top-secret report March 3. Although some details were vague, the surgeon was correct about many specifics. He said the accident occurred inside a military installation where “dispersible biological weapons” were produced. He said that in April 1979 there had been a “loud explosion which was attributed to a jet aircraft”—this later turned out to be an error—and he noted that within four days, victims had been arriving at Hospital No. 20.

  He also recounted the symptoms of the victims, the deaths of workers at the ceramics factory, the decision to send patients to hospital No. 40 and the announcement that tainted meat caused the outbreak. He added, “This explanation was not accepted by the doctors in attendance because the fatalities were caused by the pulmonary type of anthrax as opposed to the gastric or skin anthrax which would be more likely if one had eaten or handled contaminated beef.” The intelligence agency concluded in the report that the information “presents a very strong circumstantial case for biological weapons activity” at the facility.

  In Moscow on Monday, March 17, 1980, the U.S. ambassador, Thomas Watson, raised the Sverdlovsk anthrax epidemic in a quiet inquiry with the Soviet Foreign Ministry.16 The ministry did not respond right away. In Washington on Tuesday, March 18, a State Department spokesman, responding to questions from journalists, read out a public statement saying there were “disturbing indications” that “a lethal biological agent” might have hit Sverdlovsk in 1979 and this had raised questions “about whether such material was present in quantities consistent with” the biological weapons treaty. The Soviets were surprised by the State Department’s public announcement, which they hadn’t expected.17 The Soviet response came on Thursday, March 20, that the outbreak was caused by contaminated meat.18 The issue was extremely sensitive because that same week in Geneva, diplomats from fifty-three countries were winding up the first five-year review conference of the Biological Weapons Convention. They were on the verge of approving a final declaration. The U.S. ambassador to the talks, Charles Flowerree, told his Soviet counterpart, Victor Israelyan, about the message of concern over Sverdlovsk delivered in Moscow.

  The Soviets decided to keep stonewalling. On Friday, March 21, acting on instructions from Moscow, Israelyan made a public statement to the conference. He reassured the conference there was nothing to worry about. “There are no grounds whatsoever” for the questions raised by the United States, he said. “In March–April 1979 in the area of Sverdlovsk there did in fact occur an ordinary outbreak of anthrax among animals, which arose from natural causes, and there were cases where people contracted an intestinal form of this infection as a result of eating meat from cattle which was sold against the regulations established by the veterinary inspectorate.”19

  The same day, after this statement, the conference approved a final declaration on the Biological Weapons Convention. The treaty was working, the member states declared. No one had filed any complaints about violations. Indeed, the word “violation” did not even appear in the final declaration. All the nations that signed the treaty reaffirmed their “strong determination for the sake of all mankind” to avoid biological weapons.20

  A week later, the United States passed a secret message back to Moscow, saying that “reports available to us indicate a prolonged outbreak of pulmonary anthrax in Sverdlovsk, involving a large number of fatalities. Based on our experience, we would expect an outbreak of anthrax resulting from contaminated meat to have been of relatively short duration and to have resulted in only a small number of fatalities.”21

  In Washington, the Central Intelligence Agency turned to experts, including Matthew Meselson, the Harvard molecular biologist who had earlier urged Nixon to outlaw biological weapons. Meselson got a call from Julian Hoptman, the CIA’s longtime analyst of biological weapons. For a week, Meselson stayed at Hoptman’s home, and, with secret clearances, worked at Hoptman’s office at CIA headquarters. They pored over the raw intelligence reports, but the evidence was ambiguous. Hoptman had located the practicing surgeon from Sverdlovsk mentioned in the DIA report, who had emigrated to Israel, and interviewed him. But other sources traveling through Sverdlovsk heard nothing about an epidemic. It turned out the report of an explosion was not correct, but there were many unanswered questions, especially about the diagnosis. In notes he made from that week, Meselson wrote, “The main technical question in my mind at this point concerns the diagnosis of respiratory anthrax.” Was t
he anthrax inhaled by the victims, which might point to biological weapons dispersed in an aerosol, or was it ingested by them, which could be explained by distribution of bad meat? Or was it some other respiratory disease altogether?

  A related puzzle was why the cases continued for seven weeks. The textbooks Meselson consulted had suggested the incubation period for anthrax was a few days. If there was a single cloud of spores, there should have been a rapid fall-off of new cases. Instead, people kept getting sick for quite some time. In his work in Hoptman’s office, Meselson concluded that they needed to know much, much more before they could reach a conclusion. Where did the victims work when they were exposed? Where did they live? Which direction were the winds blowing? What would they learn if they plotted all the victims on a map, and then drew an ellipse from Compound 19—how many would be inside that ellipse? And what was going on at Compound 19? Did the local authorities respond with drug therapy, and if they did, was it effective? Why were there so many fatalities if they had drugs readily available? At this early stage, Meselson was cautious, and probing. Meselson also learned that a Northwestern University physicist, Donald Ellis, had been on an academic exchange program with his family in Sverdlovsk at the time. He tracked down Ellis, who recalled he heard nothing about the epidemic. This added to Meselson’s sense of caution.22

  Biological weapons were the ultimate challenge for spies, soldiers and scientists. From space, satellites could photograph intercontinental ballistic missile silos, and they could be counted. But germs were another matter. A satellite might spot an unusual building compound, like the one in Sverdlovsk, but seeing flasks in laboratories proved nearly impossible. That is why understanding Sverdlovsk was so important. It was a tantalizing bit of genuine evidence. With Sverdlovsk, the enormity of the Soviet germ warfare program had been glimpsed, but was still not proven.