The Dead Hand

by David E. Hoffman

  3 Popov interviews, Jan. 21, 2005, March 31, 2005, May 16, 2005 (with Taissia Popova), and Feb. 22, 2007, as well as correspondence.

  4 According to Michael Gait, who sponsored Popov at the laboratory, in 1980 the task was how to make short sections of DNA “using our new chemical methods of solid phase, machine-aided synthesis that I and a few others in the world had developed. These short sections were being used in several applications in molecular biology including whole gene synthesis. They indeed wanted this technology in Russia and Sergei was sent to learn it.” Gait, communication with author, July 8, 2008.

  5 The other organization was the M. M. Shemyakin Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, named for its founder. At the time of the interferon work, it was under the direction of Shemyakin’s successor, Yuri Ovchinnikov, who became a founder and architect of the secret biological weapons program. In 1992, the institute was renamed the M. M. Shemyakin and Yu. A. Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry.

  6 Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Health and Human Services, “Smallpox Overview,” Aug. 9, 2004.

  7 Jonathan B. Tucker, Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press), 2001, pp. 2–3.

  8 This account is based on Domaradsky’s memoir as well as interviews with him, August 1999 and Sept. 6, 2004.

  9 Based on a tour, May 24, 2000, and information from employees.

  10 Secret military institutes and bureaus in Soviet times were usually identified by a post office box number.

  11 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Health and Human Services, “Consensus Statement: Tularemia as a Biological Weapon: Medical and Public Health Management,” July 1, 2005, drawn from D. T. Dennis, T.V. Inglesby, D.A. Henderson et al., Journal of the American Medical Association, June 6, 2001, vol. 285, no. 21: 2763–2773.

  12 Lisa Melton, “Drugs in Peril: How Do Antibiotics Work?” and “Bacteria Bite Back: How Do Bacteria Become Resistant to Antibiotics?;” and Robert Bud, “The Medicine Chest: The History of Antibiotics,” The Wellcome Trust, http://www.wellcome.ahc.uk.

  13 Alibek, p. 161.

  14 The term was taken from five health problem commissions set up in the 1950s and 1960s. According to Raymond A. Zilinskas, “Problem No. 5” was responsible for defense of the population against bacteria, including biological weapons. The commission operated out of the N. F. Gamaleya Scientific Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology of the Soviet Academy of Medical Sciences, in Moscow, and all research was top secret. See Zilinskas, “The Anti-plague System and the Soviet Biological Warfare Program,” Critical Reviews in Microbiology, vol. 32, pp. 47–64, 2006.

  15 On Lysenko, see Valery N. Soyfer, Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1994), Leo and Rebecca Gruliow, trans.; Zhores Medvedev, The Rise and Fall of T. D. Lysenko (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), I. Michael Lerner, trans.; Medvedev, Soviet Science (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978); and David Joravsky, The Lysenko Affair (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970). On Vavilov, see Peter Pringle, The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008).

  16 George W. Christopher, Theodore J. Cieslak, Julie A. Pavlin, and Edward M. Eitzen, Jr., “Biological Warfare: A Historical Perspective,” in Biological Weapons: Limiting the Threat, Joshua Lederberg, ed., Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999), p. 18. For additional details, see The Problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Vol. 1, “The Rise of CBW Weapons,” Chapter 2, and “Biological and Toxin Weapons: Research, Development and Use from the Middle Ages to 1945,” SIPRI Chemical and Biological Warfare Studies, No. 18, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Erhard Geissler, John Ellis, Courtland Moon, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

  17 SIPRI, The Problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Ch. 2, p. 128.

  18 The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee favorably reported the protocol in 1926, but there was strong lobbying against it, and it was withdrawn from Senate consideration because it lacked the necessary two-thirds vote. The protocol entered into force on Feb. 8, 1928, without the United States. The protocol was ratified by the United States in 1975. George Bunn, Gas and Germ Warfare: International History and Present Status, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, January 1970, vol. 65, no. 1, pp. 253–260; and U.S. Department of State, http://www.state.gov/tlac/trt/4784.htm.

  19 “There is no evidence that the enemy ever resorted to this means of warfare,” said a U.S. report, “Biological Warfare, Report to the Secretary of War by Mr. George W. Merck, Special Consultant for Biological Warfare,” Jan. 3, 1946. But the history of this period shows the Japanese program was intense and deadly. See Sheldon Harris, Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932–1945, and the American Cover-up (New York: Routledge, 2002); Peter Williams and David Wallace, Unit 731: Japan’s Secret Biological Warfare in World War II (New York: Free Press, 1989); Daniel Barenblatt, A Plague upon Humanity: The Secret Genocide of Axis Japan’s Germ Warfare Operation (New York: HarperCollins, 2004); and Hal Gold, Unit 731 Testimony (North Clarendon, Vt.: Tuttle Publishing, 1996).

  20 On the civil war, see Alibek, p. 32. The army in 1926 set up the Vaccine-Serum Laboratory, responsible for developing vaccines and sera against common infectious diseases, at Vlasikha, outside of Moscow. This laboratory undertook secret research on offensive germ warfare, according to Jonathan B. Tucker and Raymond A. Zilinskas, The 1971 Smallpox Epidemic in Aralsk, Kazakhstan, and the Soviet Biological Warfare Program, Occasional Paper No. 9, James Martin Center (Formerly the Center for Nonproliferation Studies), 2002, p. 5. The system was renamed the Biotechnical Institute in 1934, and in 1937 moved to Gorodomlya Island, in the Tver oblast. Zilinskas, communication with author. Documents in the Russian military archives indicate that in 1937 the laboratory was engaged in offensive biowarfare work, including gravity bombs and anthrax. Russian State Military Archive, Fond 4, Opis 14, Delo 1856. The author is indebted to Mikhail Tsypkin for these documents.

  21 “Soviet Russia, Bacteriological Warfare,” January 17, 1927, CX 9767, a report from the British S.I.S., file WO 188/784, British National Archives. The report said tests were planned with anthrax, plague and encephalitis.

  22 Alibek, pp. 33–37.

  23 The Hirsch report contained detailed information on Soviet activities from 1939 to 1945, based on his interrogation of Soviet prisoners of war and material taken from German intelligence files. It identified the island as a BW proving ground. Wilson E. Lexow and Julian Hoptman, “The Enigma of Soviet BW,” Studies in Intelligence, vol. 9, Spring 1965. Also, Special National Intelligence Estimate, “Implications of Soviet Use of Chemical and Toxin Weapons for US Security Interests,” SNIE 11-17-83, September 15, 1983, Annex B.

  24 “Soviet Capabilities and Probable Courses of Action Through Mid-1959,” NIE 11-4-54, Sept. 14, 1954, p. 24.

  25 Lexow and Hoptman, “The Enigma.”

  26 “U.S. Army Activity in the U.S. Biological Warfare Programs,” Feb. 24, 1977, Vol. 1. This is the official history. Vol. 2, Annex A, is the Merck report to the secretary of war, recapitulating the events of the biological weapons program during the war, Jan. 3, 1946. Also see Theodore Rosebury, Peace or Pestilence (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1949), pp. 6–7.

  27 Milton Leitenberg, The Problem of Biological Weapons (Stockholm: National Defence College, 2004), pp. 49–94.

  28 The United Kingdom, the United States and Canada began a joint program for an anthrax cluster bomb. The United States was to provide agent production, and Canada provide safe facilities for trials. It was called the “N-bomb” project. By war’s end, field trials had shown the feasibility of tactical use of biological weapons agents in cluster bombs, but the U.S. plant had not begun production, nor approved the use of biological warfare. Separately, at Porto
n Down, the United Kingdom created an unsophisticated anti-livestock weapon, a squat, cylindrical cattle cake of linseed meal laced with anthrax spores. The production lines made 5 million cattle cakes between late 1942 and April 1943. The plan was to spread the cattle cakes into German fields, dropping them from bombers, to cripple German animal production—only in retaliation if the Germans used such weapons first. The Germans did not; the cattle cakes remained unused and were destroyed after the war. Confidential source; also see Deadly Cultures, eds. Mark Wheelis, Lajos Rózsa and Malcolm Dando (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 4; and Brian Balmer, Britain and Biological Warfare: Expert Advice and Science Policy, 1930–1965 (Hampshire and New York: Palgrave, 2001).

  29 Ed Regis, The Biology of Doom: The History of America’s Secret Germ Warfare Project (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1999), pp. 71–74.

  30 U.S. Army history, p. 38. Also, see Conrad C. Crane, “No Practical Capabilities: American Biological and Chemical Warfare Programs During the Korean War,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, vol. 45, no. 2 (Spring 2002): 241–249. Crane concluded: “When the war ended, American chemical and biological weapons stocks were not much more than when it began.” The available biological weapons stocks included only anti-crop rust.

  31 Tularemia strains were used, for which there were effective antibiotics.

  32 The tests are listed in the U.S. Army study, Vol. II, Appendix IV, to Annex E, tables 1–6.

  33 Matthew Meselson, “Averting the Hostile Exploitation of Biotechnology,” CBW Conventions Bulletin, June 2000, pp. 16–19. Also see Jeanne Guillemin, Biological Weapons: From the Invention of State-sponsored Programs to Contemporary Bioterrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), pp. 103–105. The British carried out five series of sea trials between 1948 and 1955 with some American support. Balmer, Britain and Biological Warfare. Also see www.fas.org/bwc.

  34 Regis, p. 206, quotes from the final report of this test that a single weapon was calculated to have covered 2,400 square kilometers, or 926.5 square miles. British research had also shown that off-target releases by ship, plane or vehicle had considerable advantages over bursting munitions such as those envisioned during World War II.

  35 Confidential source familiar with the British trial results.

  36 Meselson was assisted by a researcher, Milton Leitenberg, who said in a communication with the author that the petition had origins in opposition to the use of the agents in the Vietnam War. Donald F. Hornig, “Memorandum for the President,” Dec. 8, 1966, LBJ Library, courtesy Meselson archive. On the military’s opposition, see Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume X: National Security Policy, Documents No. 173 and 178.

  37 Richard D. McCarthy, The Ultimate Folly: War by Pestilence, Asphyxiation and Defoliation (New York: Knopf, 1970), p. 109.

  38 NBC’s First Tuesday, on Feb. 4, 1969.

  39 Robert A. Wampler, ed., “Biowar: The Nixon Administration’s Decision to End U.S. Biological Warfare Programs,” TNSA EBB 58, doc. 1. Also, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Vol. E-2, Documents on Arms Control, 1969–1972, Part 3: Chemical and Biological Warfare; Geneva Protocol; Biological Weapons Convention.

  40 Chemical and Bacteriological (Biological) Weapons and the Effects of Their Possible Use, Report of the Secretary-General, the United Nations, Department of Political and Security Council Affairs, New York, 1969.

  41 “Health Aspects of Chemical and Biological Weapons,” Report of a WHO Group of Consultants, World Health Organization, Geneva, 1970; submitted to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Nov. 28, 1969, p. 19.

  42 Jonathan B. Tucker, “A Farewell to Germs: The U.S. Renunciation of Biological and Toxin Warfare, 1969–1970,” International Security, vol. 27, no. 1, Summer 2002, pp. 107–148. Also see Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976.

  43 Kissinger Telephone Conversations, DNSA, Nov. 25, 1969, 12:30 P.M., and 6:30 P.M. National Archives, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, Henry A. Kissinger Telephone Conversation Transcripts (Telcons). Chronological File. Box 3. November 18–28, 1969.

  44 H. R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1994), p. 111.

  45 William Safire, “On Language: Weapons of Mass Destruction,” The New York Times Magazine, April 19, 1998, p. 22.

  46 Matthew Meselson, “The United States and the Geneva Protocol of 1925,” September 1969, Meselson personal archive. Jeanne Guillemin, Biological Weapons: From the Invention of State-sponsored Programs to Contemporary Bioterrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), p. 123. Also see BioEssays 25:12, pp. 1236— 1246, 2003.

  47 White House science adviser Lee A. DuBridge said the President’s Science Advisory Committee recommended that the U.S. “renounce all offensive BW; stop completely the procurement of material for offensive BW; destroy existing stockpiles of BW agents and maintain no stockpiles in the future.” TNSA EBB 58, doc. 5. Also see “Averting the Hostile Exploitation of Biotechnology,” CBW Conventions Bulletin, Quarterly Journal of the Harvard Sussex Program on CBW Armament and Arms Limitation, issue no. 48, June 2000, pp. 16–19.

  48 “HAK Talking Points, Briefing for Congressional Leadership and Press,” TNSA EBB 58, doc. 11.

  49 Public Papers of the Presidents, 1969, pp. 968–1970.

  50 Memorandum for the President, July 6, 1970, from Melvin Laird, Tab A, “Material to be destroyed (biological and toxin),” TNSA EBB 58, doc. 22.

  51 Report to the National Security Council, U.S. Policy on Chemical and Biological Warfare and Agents, TNSA EBB 58, docs. 6a and 6.

  52 Foreign Relations, 1969–1972, Vol. E-2, “Minutes of NSC Meeting on Chemical Warfare and Biological Warfare, Nov. 18, 1969.”

  53 Raymond L. Garthoff has offered a suggestion, which remains unproven, that U.S. disinformation persuaded the Soviets that the United States was continuing work on biological weapons after the Nixon decision. According to Garthoff, the FBI fed disinformation to the Soviets that the United States was undertaking a clandestine BW program. See Garthoff, “Polyakov’s Run,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 56, no. 5, September/October 2000, p. 37. It is known there was a disinformation campaign for chemical weapons, which is described by David Wise in Cassidy’s Run: The Secret Spy War over Nerve Gas (New York: Random House, 2000). Details of a disinformation campaign on BW are not known.

  CHAPTER 5: THE ANTHRAX FACTORY

  1 Jonathan B. Tucker and Raymond A. Zilinskas, “The 1971 Smallpox Epidemic in Aralsk, Kazakhstan, and the Biological Warfare Program.” The paper includes “An Epidemiological Analysis of the 1971 Smallpox Outbreak in Aralsk, Kazakhstan,” by Alan P. Zelicoff, Sandia National Laboratories, pp. 12–21.

  2 Burgasov later gave bogus explanations for the Sverdlovsk anthrax epidemic, saying it was caused by contaminated meat. However, his comments in this case seem worth examining; he would have known the truth at the time.

  3 Yevgenia Kvitko, “Smallpox, Another Useful Weapon,” an interview with Pyotr Burgasov, Moscow News, no. 47, Nov. 21, 2001. Burgasov made several errors in the statement. He was wrong that there were no survivors. Also, the smallpox formula was not “developed” at the island, which was a testing site.

  4 The British closed down their bioweapons program in the 1950s. For the British declaration of Aug. 6, 1968, see “The Problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare,” SIPRI, Vol. 4, CB Disarmament Negotiations, 1920–1970, p. 255. For additional insights on the thinking, see “Cabinet, The Queen’s Speech on the Opening of Parliament,” Oct. 16, 1969, British National Archives, file FCO 66/297.

  5 Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1972: Vol. E-2, Documents on Arms Control. The State Department transcribed portions of the following: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, White House Tapes, with Kissinger, April 10, 1972, 12:44–1:06 P.M., Conversation No. 705–13, and with Connally, April 11, 1972, 3:06–5:05 P.M., Conversation No. 706–5. See http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/frus/nixon/e2/8
3722.htm.

  6 Domaradsky, Biowarrior: Inside the Soviet/Russian Biological Warfare Machine (New York: Prometheus Books, 2003), p. 120.

  7 James D. Watson, with Andrew Berry, DNA: The Secret of Life (New York: Knopf, 2003), Ch. 4.

  8 Ken Alibek, with Stephen Handelman, Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Weapons Program in the World—Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It (New York: Random House, 1999), p. 41.

  9 Joshua Lederberg, ed., Biological Weapons: Limiting the Threat(Cambridge, Mass.: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 1999), “Germs as Arms: Basic Issues,” Table 1.1, p. 4.

  10 The formal title was the Interdepartmental Scientific-Technical Council for Molecular Biology and Genetics. Domaradsky said orders to begin this work were first given in 1971, the year before he came to Moscow. However, other evidence, including dates given by Alibek, suggests the decisions came later, in 1973–1974. Estimates vary on the precise size of the program. A document in Katayev estimates the main organization, Biopreparat, had thirty facilities and twenty-five thousand employees, but some of these may have been working on legitimate civilian projects. “Khim-Prom,” Katayev, Hoover, no date. Alibek, p. 43, says there were thirty thousand employees in Biopreparat, with sixty thousand in the biological weapons effort overall at the peak.

  11 Domaradsky, p. 151. The open decree was April 19, 1974. A separate secret decree May 21, 1974, established the microbiology institute at Obolensk, and the founding decree for the institute at Koltsovo came Aug. 2, 1974.

  12 Alibek, p. 41.

  13 “Iz vystupleniya predstavitelya SSSR v Komitete po razoruzhenniu A. A. Roshchina 12 iyunia 1975g” [From the appearance of the representative of the USSR at the Conference on Disarmament], Katayev, Hoover.

  14 William Beecher, “Soviets Feared Violating Germ Weapons Ban,” Boston Globe, Sept. 28, 1975, p. 1. Beecher identified facilities in Sverdlovsk, Zagorsk and Omutninsk. These were part of the older military system, not the concealed Biopreparat facilities.