The Dead Hand

by David E. Hoffman

  35 Chernyaev diary, June 15, 1987.

  36 Katayev, Hoover.

  37 Cochran told the author that by measuring the spacing between the centers of the radio transmitter housings, one could calculate the signal half-wavelength and therefore the frequency of the transmitter. This was evidence that the frequency was too low (the wavelength too long) to be a battle management radar.

  38 Cochran, interviews, Aug. 19, 2004, and Feb. 25, 2008. Also, courtesy Cochran, “Preliminary Report to the Speaker of the House on Fact-Finding Trip to the Soviet Union;” “Memorandum,” to Senator Edward M. Kennedy from Christopher E. Paine, Sept. 9, 1987; “Chronology of Trip from Moscow to Krasnoyarsk Radar Site,” Sept. 5, 1987. TASS reported the Gorbachev offer. On the Soviet leadership, Katayev, including, “Consideration of the question connected with problems of ‘violations’ of the ABM agreement,” Nov. 21, 1987, signed by Shevardnadze, Zaikov, Chebrikov, Yazov, Dobrynin and Maslyukov, and a Central Committee staff report on the same date; also see William J. Broad, “Inside a Key Russian Radar Site: Tour Raises Questions on Treaty,” New York Times, Sept. 7, 1987, p. A1.

  39 George Shultz, p. 1001.

  40 Leon Aron, Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), pp. 200–206. Also see Archie Brown, The Gorbachev Factor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 168.

  41 “Gorbachev: Soviet Economic Modernization and the Military,” Defense Intelligence Agency, Defense Research Comment DRC-82-87, November 1987. The paper was presented to the Joint Economic Committee on Sept. 14, 1987.

  42 “Whither Gorbachev: Soviet Policy and Politics in the 1990s,” NIE 11-18-87, November 1987, carried many of the same points that Gates had made in the memo. The assessment failed to catch the dynamic of radical change. TNSA EBB 238. Shultz said, “I felt a profound, historic shift was underway: the Soviet Union was, willingly or unwillingly, consciously or not, turning a corner; they were not just resting for round two of the cold war.” Shultz, p. 1003.

  CHAPTER 13: GERMS, GAS AND SECRETS

  1 Domaradsky and Wendy Orent, Biowarrior (New York: Prometheus Books, 2003), pp. 233–250.

  2 Popov, interviews by author.

  3 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), pp. 87–106.

  4 Alibek, p. 118. If Alibek’s account is correct, Gorbachev signed this only a month after his January 1986 speech calling for abolition of all nuclear and chemical weapons. The document has never been made public.

  5 Chernyaev interview, Feb. 4, 2005. Chernyaev said, “Gorbachev was in favor of ending it. But he was being deceived. I don’t remember when, but he was given a report they were already closing down the military part of this program…Shevardnadze told him several times, ‘They lie to us, Mikhail Sergeyevich,’ on the subject of this program.” When I asked Chernyaev who was deceiving Gorbachev, he replied, “The manufacturers of this weapon who dealt with this system. The military and the scientists who were involved.”

  6 “Visit to Moscow of Professor Matthew Meselson,” Moscow 14971, State Department cable to Washington, Aug. 29, 1986, courtesy Meselson archive. Also see Jeanne Guillemin, Anthrax: The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), p. 18. While still in Moscow, Meselson asked U.S. officials if they had any questions to pose to his Soviet hosts, according to the cable. Meselson told the author the officials did not respond. After his trip, on September 12 in Washington, Meselson briefed officials from the CIA, Departments of State and Defense, and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Meselson repeated that the Soviet explanation about bad meat “seemed to hang together.” The U.S. officials did not believe him and thought he had not asked tough questions. TNSA EBB 61, doc. 27.

  7 The papers are attached to a letter to Gorbachev from the Big Five, dated approximately August 1, 1986. Katayev. The review conference was held in Geneva, September 8–26, 1986. Israelyan, “Fighting Anthrax: A Cold Warrior’s Confession,” Washington Quarterly (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2002), Spring 2002, pp. 17–29. Also see remarks by Soviet Ambassador Israelyan, Summary Record of the 5th Meeting, BWC/CON./11/SR.5, Sept. 19, 1986; R. Jeffery Smith, “Soviets Offer Account of ’79 Anthrax Outbreak,” Washington Post, Oct. 9, 1986; and Science, Oct. 19, 1986.

  8 “Anthrax Epidemic in Sverdlovsk 1979 and Soviet Compliance with the BW Disarmament Convention, CISAC-Moscow October 8, 1986,” Joshua Lederberg papers, Box 116, Folder 1. Lederberg and Meselson met in September and Lederberg wrote a note Sept. 12, 1986, “Memorandum from Joshua Lederberg,” Box 116, Folder 3. In the note, Lederberg said Meselson was told the anthrax was spread by contaminated bonemeal sold in Sverdlovsk, and also by an infected cattle carcass sold at the ceramics factory. Lederberg noted, “… there was no military involvement.” Sometime after this note, Lederberg called CIA director William Casey and told him that he should take Meselson’s account “seriously.” Handwritten note to Meselson from Lederberg, Sept. 25, 1986. Box 115, Folder 13. Separately the Defense Intelligence Agency issued a report in 1986 warning “the Soviets are rapidly incorporating biotechnical developments into their offensive BW program to improve agent utility on the battlefield.” See “Soviet Biological Warfare Threat,” Defense Intelligence Agency, 1986, report DST-1610F-057-86.

  9 “On improvement of organization of works on special problems,” no date, an information memo in Katayev’s files listing the turning points and decisions on biological weapons from 1986 onward. Katayev, Hoover.

  10 BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, Aug. 10, 1987, SU/8642/A1/1. Smidovich interview, April 23, 2008. Vice President George Bush had proposed inspections on demand in 1984, and the Soviets refused at the time.

  11 The order accelerated by three years the deadline for having “biological sites” prepared “for international verification for presence of chemical weapons.” The new deadline was January 1, 1989. The spravka is undated. Katayev, Hoover.

  12 Matthew S. Meselson, “The Biological Weapons Convention and the Sverdlovsk Anthrax Outbreak of 1979,” Public Interest Report, Journal of the Federation of American Scientists, vol. 41, no. 7, Sept. 1988, pp. 1–6. This article is Meselson’s account of the Soviet visit to the United States in 1988 as well as his 1986 visit to Moscow. He reported the Soviets had identified one source of contaminated bonemeal used as a cattle feed supplement from a “meat processing plant at Aramil, a town 15 km southeast of Sverdlovsk.” The story was that the Aramil plant had not followed sterilization and autoclave procedures in making the bonemeal, therefore allowing the anthrax bacteria to spread to cattle and, when the cattle were slaughtered, to consumers. In 1991, Peter Gumbel, Moscow bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal, investigated the Sverdlovsk outbreak by going to the city three times, including to Aramil. “In fact, there is no meat processing plant in Aramil,” he reported. He found a small flour mill there instead, and quoted the director as saying he never produced bonemeal. Gumbel said in his article that “sloppy note-taking” by Meselson “could possibly account for this discrepancy,” but Gumbel suggested a Soviet cover-up. He wrote that “the official Soviet version is riddled with inconsistencies, half-truths and plain falsehoods.” Peter Gumbel, “Sverdlovsk—What Really Happened?—The Scientific Evidence: The Anthrax Mystery,” Wall Street Journal, Oct. 21, 1991, p. A18. Meselson told the author the Aramil discrepancy was a note-taking mix-up on his part. On Burgasov, see R. Jeffrey Smith, Philip J. Hilts, “Soviets Deny Lab Caused Anthrax Cases,” Washington Post, April 13, 1988. The CIA was unconvinced by the Soviet visitors in 1988. On May 12, the Directorate of Intelligence issued a top-secret report. Although most is redacted, the title was “Soviet Explanation of Anthrax Incident at Sverdlovsk: The Deception Continues.”

  13 Alibek, p. 148.

  14 “Biological Weapons Proliferation Prevent
ion Project Integration: 100% Final Submittal—Phase 0 Feasibility Study for Threat Reduction Activities at Vozrozhdeniya Island, Uzbekistan,” Bechtel National Inc., August 31, 2001, released to author under FOIA, Defense Threat Reduction Agency; “Vozrozhdeniya Island (VI) Pathogenic Destruction Operations (VIPDO) Final Report,” June 6, 2002, released to author under FOIA.

  15 The reader is reminded that while biological weapons were made from living organisms, such as pathogens, chemical weapons are made from inert substances that cause damage and death to living organisms.

  16 Tucker, p. 158.

  17 Most of the weapons were quite old, according to documents in the Katayev files.

  18 John-Thor Dahlburg, “Soviets Lift Secrecy on Chemical Weapons Program,” Associated Press, Oct. 4, 1987; Celestine Bohlen, “Soviets Allow Experts to Tour Chemical Weapons Facility,” Washington Post, Oct. 5, 1987. On the weapons, Katayev, Hoover.

  19 Reagan diary, Dec. 18, 1987. This entry has been partly redacted.

  20 Mirzayanov, interview with author; Oleg Vishnyakov, “‘I Was Making Binary Bombs,’ This Man Is Talking After Five Years of Silence. He Was Poisoned by Chemical Weapons Made by His Own Hands,” Novoye Vremya, no. 50, Dec. 1992, pp. 46–48, 49. An account is also given in David Wise, Cassidy’s Run (New York: Random House, 2000), Ch. 20.

  CHAPTER 14: THE LOST YEAR

  1 Gorbachev had hoped for a treaty to cut strategic weapons in half at the Moscow summit, but the United States was not ready. “Reagan, Gorbachev and Bush at Governor’s Island,” TNSA EBB No. 261.

  2 Brent Scowcroft, who became Bush’s national security adviser in the White House, was deeply cautious about Gorbachev. George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Knopf, 1998), pp. 12–13.

  3 “Session of the CPSU Politburo,” June 20, 1988. Masterpieces of History: Soviet Peaceful Withdrawal from Eastern Europe, Svetlana Savranskaya, Thomas Blanton and Vlad Zubok, eds. (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2009), Doc. 26.

  4 See TNSA EBB 261. To bypass possible military opposition, Gorbachev took the paperwork to the Defense Ministry for approval on a Sunday when Minister Dmitri Yazov was not present, Shevardnadze said at a Politburo meeting on December 27. “Comrades were not in place” then, he said. News reports at the time said that Akhromeyev decided to retire in protest of the troop cuts. In his memoir, Gorbachev said this was “sheer nonsense.” Gorbachev, Memoirs, p. 459. Akhromeyev said the decision to retire came in September 1988, before the speech, but he was disenchanted. He remained an adviser to Gorbachev. Sergei Akhromeyev and Georgi M. Kornienko, Glazami Marshala i Diplomata (Moscow: International Relations, 1992), pp. 213–215.

  5 Reagan diary, Dec. 7, 1988.

  6 Any evaluation of Reagan’s legacy must deal with not only his avowed dream of nuclear abolition, but the fact that he did not consummate a strategic arms treaty by the end of his presidency. Some have argued that if he had been more interested in negotiating arms reductions in his first term, he might have had more to show at the end of his second. However, the author believes that Reagan’s first-term military buildup and challenge to the Soviets were set by his own internal compass—his campaign pledges, his desire to stand up to Moscow and his negotiator’s sense of timing and tactics. He could not have done it otherwise.

  7 Bush said, “Wanting to avoid specifics, I pledged general continuity with Reagan’s policies toward the Soviet Union. I told Gorbachev I would be putting together a new team. I had no intention of stalling things, but I naturally wanted to form my own national security policies.” Bush and Scowcroft, p. 7.

  8 Masterpieces, Gorbachev at Politburo, Dec. 27–28, 1988, doc. 34.

  9 This Week with David Brinkley, ABC News, Jan. 22, 1989.

  10 James A. Baker III, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace, 1989–1992 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995), p. 68.

  11 Bush letter to Sadruddin Aga Khan, March 13, 1989, in Bush, All the Best, George Bush, p. 416.

  12 Dennis Ross, director of policy planning at the State Department, said “testing” was his idea. “For those who said Gorbachev was not for real, I said, let’s test the proposition. If he’s for real, then he’s going to respond.” Ross, interview, June 2, 2008. In a speech at Texas A&M University in May 1989, Bush unveiled the results of the policy reviews, an approach that he called going “beyond containment.” He did not offer major new initiatives, but set the tone for the “testing” approach, which was also codified in NSD 23, written in March and signed in September 1989. The directive said, “the United States will challenge the Soviet Union step by step, issue by issue, institution by institution, to behave…”

  13 Cheney made the comment on CNN. When Baker went to Moscow a few weeks later, the first thing he told Shevardnadze was, “We have no interest in seeing perestroika fail.” Baker, p. 73.

  14 William C. Wohlforth, ed., Cold War Endgame: Oral History, Analysis, Debates (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), p. 26. An analysis of the pause in 1989 is contained in an essay in the same volume, “Once Burned, Twice Shy? The Pause of 1989,” Darek H. Chollet and James M. Goldgeier, pp. 141–173. By contrast, in three long and illuminating cables from Moscow in February, Matlock laid out the extent of change. “In sum,” Matlock said, “the Soviet Union has, in effect, declared the bankruptcy of its system, and just as with a corporation which has sought the protection of Chapter XI, there is no turning back.” Matlock included a section on “The Military Burden,” which accurately captured Gorbachev’s desire to restrain the military to save the domestic economy. “The Soviet Union over the Next Four Years,” Feb. 3, 1989. The subsequent cables covered Soviet foreign policy and U.S.-Soviet relations. Masterpieces, docs. 42, 44, 46.

  15 On the Shevardnadze warning, a confidential source. Baker, Politics of Diplomacy, pp. 82–83. The Gorbachev offer was certainly a gambit to influence Europe, but also a genuine proposal. The United States was pushing allies to modernize the eighty-eight short-range Lance nuclear-tipped missiles in Europe. After implementation of the 1987 INF treaty, these shorter-range missiles would be among the remaining battlefield nuclear weapons available to NATO against a possible Soviet conventional attack. (There were also thousands of other weapons on bombers.) West Germany was balking at modernization, since use of the Lance missiles in war would quite probably be on its soil. Baker thought Gorbachev was undercutting support for Lance modernization. Wohlforth, Cold War Endgame, p. 32; and Michael R. Beschloss and Strobe Talbott, At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War (Boston: Little, Brown, 1993), p. 67. Baker said of Gorbachev, in an interview with the author, “the way he went about it was the gimmicky part. He did it in order to divide us from our European allies.” When I asked Baker if he thought he could have responded differently, he said no. “It was a unilateral move. It wasn’t a question of our having to accept it.” Baker, interview, Sept. 4, 2008. While Katayev’s files show the Kremlin was well aware of the politics in Europe, they also suggest that Gorbachev was serious about tactical nuclear reductions. The issue was included on a Kremlin work plan for arms control in 1989. A memo in the files argues that these weapons in Europe were dangerous and militarily useless. The undated memo said a group of specialists for the Big Five—whom Katayev described as the “non-military” experts in the working group—“believe that short-range land-based nuclear weapons are the most inconvenient and dangerous for all countries in the deterrence arsenal.” Katayev.

  16 Fitzwater quickly regretted the words. Marlin Fitzwater, Call the Briefing: Reagan and Bush, Sam and Helen: A Decade with Presidents and the Press (New York: Times Books, 1995), Ch. 10.

  17 Masterpieces, July 20, 1989, doc. 73.

  18 “Work Plan,” a list of decisions and deadlines for 1989, Katayev.

  19 “On reduction of the Armed Forces and spending of the Soviet Union on defense,” January 1989, Katayev.

  20 “Growth of Military Spending USSR and USA in 1980–1991,
” a chart, Katayev. In January, Gorbachev ordered a reduction of 14.2 percent in military spending, compared to 1987, and a cut in arms manufacture by 19.2 percent, over a two-year period. Military spending in the Soviet Union was 69.5 billion rubles in 1987, 73 billion in 1988, 77.3 billion in 1989, 71 billion in 1990 and 66.5 billion in 1991, the chart says.

  21 Akhromeyev, pp. 204–205.

  22 Bush and Scowcroft, p. 130. Bush gave a letter suggesting a summit meeting to Akhromeyev during his visit to the United States, to courier back to Gorbachev, bypassing Shevardnadze, who was furious when he found out.

  23 Anatoly Chernyaev, My Six Years with Gorbachev (University Park, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), pp. 225–226.

  24 Baker, interview with author, Sept. 4, 2008. See Baker, Politics of Diplomacy, pp. 144–152. The Bush administration remained deeply divided over Gorbachev. On October 16, Baker gave a policy speech to the Foreign Policy Association in New York, saying the United States and Soviet Union should find “points of mutual advantage.” The next day, Vice President Dan Quayle rejected the idea of helping Soviet reform and said “let them reform themselves.” Baker then squelched a pessimistic speech that Gates, then deputy national security adviser, intended to give. Baker, pp. 156–157; Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 480.

  25 The origin of this trip was the work that Velikhov had done with Cochran of the NRDC on seismic monitoring. The other scientists were Steve Fetter, University of Maryland; Lee Grodzins, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Harvey Lynch, Stanford Linear Accelerator; and Martin Zucker, Brookhaven National Laboratory. “Fact Sheet: The Black Sea Experiment,” Natural Resources Defense Council, Washington, D.C. Frank von Hippel came as an observer. Others who also participated included George Lewis of the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford University; Valerie Thomas, Princeton University; William Arkin, the Institute of Policy Studies; Barry Blechman, of Defense Forecast; John Adams, executive director of the NRDC; S. Jacob Scherr and Robert S. (Stan) Norris of the NRDC; and Christopher E. Paine of Senator Edward Kennedy’s staff.