The Dead Hand
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26 Sergei Kortunov, a Foreign Ministry official, said the KGB was unhappy about showing the warhead to foreigners, and tried to block him from participating in preparatory meetings. Kortunov interview, Aug. 30, 2004.
27 Three groups of experiments were conducted. See Steve Fetter et al., “Gamma-Ray Measurements of a Soviet Cruise-Missile Warhead,” Science, vol. 248, May 18, 1990, pp. 828–834; Thomas B. Cochran, “Black Sea Experiment Only a Start,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (November 1989), pp. 13–16. Robert S. (Stan) Norris of the NRDC distributed copies of Soviet Nuclear Weapons, a groundbreaking 433-page book that had more open information about Soviet weapons systems than was available inside the country at the time. Norris, communication with author, June 19, 2008.
28 Velikhov, interview, Sept. 2, 2004.
29 Von Hippel, interview, Jan. 24 and June 1, 2004. Also, Cochran interview, Aug. 19, 2004.
30 Shevardnadze was among the “Big Five” officials who signed the Nov. 21, 1987, document. The speech was Oct. 23, 1989. Later, Akhromeyev wrote in his memoir that he had told Shevardnadze the truth in 1985. Akhromeyev claimed that the military had not misled the political leadership—in fact, it was the political leaders who ordered the station built in the wrong location in order to save money. Akhromeyev, p. 255.
31 Katayev, Hoover.
32 The decision of Oct. 6, 1989, is recorded in Katayev’s spravka titled “On Improvement of Organization of Works on Special Problems,” no date, Hoover. The reference to “parity” really means to preserve what the Soviet system had built; the United States had none.
33 Davis, interview, May 19 and August 11, 2005.
34 MacEachin, interview, July 25, 2005.
35 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. 153–164. He said the vehicle was Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, but Popov said it was Legionella.
36 Popov, interview, March 31, 2005.
CHAPTER 15: THE GREATEST BREAKTHROUGH
1 Pasechnik had specialized in the separation and concentration of radiochemicals in this period. I have drawn on confidential sources for this chapter. For published accounts, see James Adams, The New Spies: Exploring the Frontiers of Espionage (London: Hutchinson, 1994), Ch. 20, “The Weapon of Special Designation.” Adams interviewed Pasechnik in September 1993. Also, Simon Cooper, “Life in the Pursuit of Death,” Seed, issue 4, January–February 2003, p. 68. Pasechnik died Nov. 21, 2001, in Salisbury, England, after a stroke.
2 The Soviet system created larger industrial enterprises and nestled the BW institutes inside them. In this case, the industrial organization was NPO Farmpribor, of which Pasechnik was general director.
3 Davis, the chief biological weapons specialist on the U.K. Defense Intelligence Staff, offered a detailed description of Biopreparat’s scope in an article in 1999, “Nuclear Blindness: An Overview of the Biological Weapons Programs of the Former Soviet Union and Iraq,” Emerging Infectious Diseases, vol. 5, no. 4, July—August 1999, pp. 509–512.
4 U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Technologies Underlying Weapons of Mass Destruction OTA-BP-ISC-115 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, December 1993), p. 96. See W. Seth Carus, Bioterrorism and Biocrimes: The Illicit Use of Biological Agents Since 1900 (Amsterdam: Fredonia Books, 2002), pp. 17 and 23.
5 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. 139–140.
6 Cooper, p. 105; and Adams, Ch. 20, pp. 270–283.
7 Davis, interviews.
8 Alibek, interview, June 18, 2007, and Alibek, pp. 137, 143.
9 Jones interview by Glenn Frankel of the Washington Post in London, August 10, 2004.
10 Alibek confirmed this. “Plague and smallpox were considered strategic weapons” by the Soviet Union, he told the author. In 1992, Davis was honored by Queen Elizabeth, who recognized his contribution to proving that the Soviet Union had a massive strategic biological weapons program.
11 Pasechnik described Soviet research into three key areas: characteristics of each pathogen, susceptibility of targets and vulnerability of users. They tried to improve the production rates and the yield of viable, live microorganisms; increase virulence; boost resistance to antibiotics; maximize viability of the germs during and after dissemination; degrade defenses of the human target; protect the person who launched the pathogens by vaccination; and come up with better detection systems to warn the user.
12 Gorbachev, Memoirs, p. 524.
13 The press conference by Guenter Schabowski at the GDR International Press Center took place just before 7 P.M. Cold War International History Project, translated by Howard Sargent.
14 25 Weekly Comp. Pres. Docs. 1712, Nov. 9, 1989. Bush said Gorbachev sent him a message that day asking the United States not to overreact. George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Knopf, 1998), pp. 148–151.
15 Masterpieces, p. 242.
16 A U.S. participant told the author BW issues were not included in the staff papers for the summit, nor mentioned by Bush to Gorbachev.
17 “On Improvement of Organization of Works on Special Problems,” Katayev, Hoover.
18 Alibek, p. 150.
19 This account is based on documents from Katayev, Hoover, including Yazov’s protest, “On the draft resolution of the Tsk KPSS ‘On directives to the USSR delegation at the Soviet-American consultations on issues of banning bacteriological and toxin weapons,’” signed by Yazov January 10, 1990; Karpov’s response, January 11, 1990, in a letter to Lazarev, V. F.; and a separate spravka signed by N. Shakhov, deputy head of Katayev’s department, outlining the official position on the Sverdlovsk accident.
20 MacEachin’s job was to synthesize the intelligence from several agencies for the ungroup, as well as describing how the agencies differed, and to seek data from the agencies when the ungroup needed it.
21 MacEachin, interview, July 25, 2005.
22 Ross, interview, June 2, 2008.
23 Anatoly Chernyaev, My Six Years with Gorbachev (University Park, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), p. 244.
24 James A. Baker III, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace, 1989–1992 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995), p. 240. Akhromeyev said Shevardnadze’s February concession was “just his mistake.” Sergei Akhromeyev and Georgi M. Kornienko, Glazami Marshala i Diplomata (Moscow: International Relations, 1992), p. 273.
25 A similar thought was expressed by Akhromeyev at a meeting in Zaikov’s office to discuss biological weapons. Katayev took notes, although the date is not clear. The subject was preparing the biological weapons facilities for possible inspection. Katayev noted that Akhromeyev said, “from 6 to 12 months is required to resume the production.” Katayev, Hoover.
26 Alibek, pp. 177–178.
27 The instructions sidestepped past violations. “Additional directives for the USSR delegation to the Soviet American consultations on question of prohibition of bacteriological and toxin weapons,” Central Committee, no date. A cover sheet indicates Politburo approval April 25, 1990, and that they were an expansion of April 2 directives along similar lines. Courtesy Svetlana Savranskaya.
28 Alibek, pp. 189–191.
29 Matlock, communication with author, May 27, 2008.
30 “Memorandum of conversation between the U.S. ambassador to the USSR, J. Matlock, and the British ambassador, R. Braithwaite,” May 14, 1990, Katayev, Hoover. Braithwaite provided a diary extract for the May 14 meeting.
31 “To the President of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Comrade M. S. Gorbachev,” May 15, 1990, Katayev, Hoover. This document is strong evidence that, by this point, Gorbachev and Shevardnadze did know of the offensive biological weapons program, as Pasechnik had said.
33 It is not known how much of this was true. Some of it is confirmed by the fragmentary Katayev handwritten notes from the meetings in 1989, in which dismantlement was discussed, but at the time, they were still debating whether to preserve the equipment. Other evidence, including Pasechnik’s debriefings, indicated that pathogens were still being tested, manufactured and weaponized in 1989.
34 The two earlier decisions were taken Dec. 6, 1989, and March 16, 1990, after the Pasechnik defection.
35 Two of the sites he identified had been used in the pre-1969 biological weapons program: the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah and the Pine Bluff, Arkansas, storage facility. A third site he mentioned was described as a private company, Cetus Corporation, of Amityville, California, which has never been found.
36 Interviews with Baker on Sept. 4, 2008; MacEachin, July 25, 2005; Ross, June 2, 2008. Shevardnadze’s formal instructions for the ministerial meeting with Baker were to repeat that the Soviet side wanted to strengthen trust and broaden openness on the topic. See Fond 89, perechen 10, Delo 61, Hoover. Baker described the visit to Zagorsk in his memoir, The Politics of Diplomacy, p. 248, but did not mention the BW paper. Baker also described the ride to Zagorsk in an interview for the PBS Frontline documentary Plague War, aired Oct. 13, 1998. See www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/plague/interviews/baker.html.
37 Rodric Braithwaite, Across the Moscow River (New Haven: Yale, 2002), pp. 141–143.
38 Baker, p. 247.
39 See Raymond L. Garthoff, The Great Transition (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1994), pp. 425–428; Beschloss and Talbott, pp. 219–228; Don Oberdorfer, From the Cold War to a New Era (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), pp. 410–430; Baker, p. 253; Bush and Scowcroft, p. 283.
40 Matlock said that at first “the bureaucracy in Washington was not happy with the idea of reciprocal visits. They said, in effect, they are violating, we are not. Why should we show them what we are doing? I argued that we should accept reciprocal visits: What did we have to lose?” Matlock, communication with author May 27, 2008.
41 Gorbachev, interview, June 10, 2004.
42 Braithwaite says Thatcher “tackled Gorbachev much more directly” than had her defense minister on biological weapons. “Gorbachev claimed to know nothing but promised to investigate. Intelligence analysts in London and Washington, many of whom still thought there was little to choose between Gorbachev and his predecessors, believed that he knew perfectly well what was going on, and was party to his generals’ deliberate deception,” pp. 141–143. By another account, Thatcher threatened to put Pasechnik on television around the world if Gorbachev didn’t cooperate. Tom Mangold and Jeff Goldberg, Plague Wars (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1999), p. 111.
43 Baker and Shevardnadze met in Paris, July 16–18. The document, prepared jointly by the United States and Britain, painted a picture of a large-scale Soviet germ warfare program that violated the Biological Weapons Convention. Katayev.
44 “Biological weapons,” the Shevardnadze talking points, in draft and final form; also, agendas for the meetings of July 27 and 30, 1990. Katayev.
45 Eduard Shevardnadze, The Future Belongs to Freedom (New York: Free Press, 1991), p. 72. Nikita Smidovich, his aide for chemical and biological weapons policy, said this refers to what he told Baker about biological weapons.
46 MacEachin, interviews, Feb. 7 and 13, 2006.
47 The negotiations resulted in an agreement the first visits would be January 7–20, 1991.
48 Baker, p. 312.
49 Chernyaev, p. 291.
50 Shevardnadze, pp. 197, 212.
51 Michael Dobbs, Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire (New York: Knopf, 1997), p. 325.
52 Confidential source.
53 This account of the visits is based in part on confidential sources. Also, Davis interview, Aug. 11, 2005; Alibek interview, June 18, 2007; Alibek’s Biohazard, pp. 193–206; Davis interview by Frontline, “Plague War;” and David C. Kelly, “The Trilateral Agreement: Lessons for Biological Weapons Verification,” Chapter 6 in Verification Yearbook, 2002 (London: The Verification Research, Training and Information Center, 2002), pp. 75–92.
54 Davis said they could see enough, and did not want to risk ruining the whole mission on this point. Davis, communication with author, Nov. 4, 2008.
55 Popov said the man who tried to stop Davis later received a monetary bonus for his effort.
CHAPTER 16: THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY
1 See Yegor Gaidar, Collapse of an Empire, pp. 201–219.
2 Anatoly Chernyaev, My Six Years with Gorbachev (University Park, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), p. 343.
3 Chernyaev, 1991 g.: Dnyevnik Pomoshchnika Prezidenta SSSR [1991: Diary of an Assistant to the President of the USSR] (Moscow: Terra, 1997), p. 126.
4 Valentin Stepankov and Yevgeny Lisov, Kremlyovskii Zagovor (Perm: Ural-Press, Ltd., 1993), p. 271. Also see Michael Dobbs, Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire (New York: Knopf, 1997), pp. 336–344; and Anatol Lieven, The Baltic Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).
5 Gorbachev said he had not planned the Vilnius violence, Memoirs, p. 651.
6 Chernyaev, pp. 320–323.
7 Baker sent two papers to Gorbachev via the Moscow embassy. The March 5 meeting and the Baker message are mentioned in an April 5 letter from Major to Gorbachev. Katayev, Hoover. Also, see “Biological Weapons,” no date, Katayev.
8 Katayev, Hoover.
9 Jack F. Matlock Jr., Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador’s Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union (New York: Random House, 1995), pp. 537— 539.
10 Matlock, Autopsy, pp. 539–541.
11 Chernyaev, p. 352. Matlock also details the misunderstandings in his foreword to My Six Years.
12 Chernyaev, p. 352.
13 Beschloss and Talbott, At the Highest Levels, p. 400.
14 Chernyaev said he, too, had told Gorbachev of rumors about suspicious military movements around Moscow. Gorbachev was “offended” by these signals, he recalled. Chernyaev said the Supreme Soviet speeches of Kryuchkov, Yazov and Pugo had infuriated Gorbachev. Chernyaev, p. 354.
15 This account is based on Matlock, pp. 539–546; and Chernyaev, pp. 352–353.
16 Blair, interview, Feb. 20, 2004; Yarynich interview, April 20, 2003.
17 “On reply to the U.S. President on the question of biological weapons,” July 4, 1991, Katayev, Hoover.
18 At the time, the idea of a “grand bargain” was being floated—massive aid in exchange for true market reform and democracy. But Bush never approved large-scale aid and Gorbachev never got to true market reform. Despite a dramatic appeal for aid to the larger group of Western leaders, Gorbachev failed to secure a major economic package at the summit.
19 Chernyaev, pp. 358–359.
20 “White House Fact Sheet on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty,” Presidential Documents, vol. 27, p. 1086.
21 Chernyaev, p. 369.
22 Why this moment? The new union treaty was clearly a factor. However, Gorbachev has also said the hard-liners may have overheard the discussion with Yeltsin about replacing them, which took place at the end of July, in a room at the presidential compound, Novo-Ogaryovo, outside of Moscow. The room was bugged. Gorbachev, Memoirs, p. 643.
23 Gorbachev, The August Coup: The Truth and the Lessons (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), p. 19.
24 Chernyaev, Diary of an Assistant, p. 190.
25 By some accounts, the codes on the suitcase were erased and they were not usable. However, the exact condition is not known.
26 Dobbs, pp. 387–389.
27 Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, Vybor (Moscow: Nezavisimoye Izdatelstvo, 1995), pp. 44–45.
28 Yarynich, communication with author, August 2004.
29 Gorbachev has recalled that on August 27 he came home to find that Raisa was in tears. She
had burned all the letters he had written to her over the years. She said she could not imagine someone else reading them if another coup were to happen. Andrei S. Grachev, Final Days (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), p. 171.
30 Dobbs, pp. 418–420.
CHAPTER 17: A GREAT UNRAVELING
1 Nunn, interview, March 10, 2005.
2 Vinson of Georgia, for decades the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, was Nunn’s great-uncle. Senator Stennis of Mississippi was then chairman of Armed Services. Another person who influenced Nunn was Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, who had also been chairman of the Armed Services committee. Russell died in 1971 and Nunn was elected to his seat.
3 Kenneth W. Thompson, ed., Sam Nunn on Arms Control (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1987), p. 19.
4 The visit was February 4–17, 1974. Nunn was accompanied by Frank Sullivan of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Nunn, interview, March 10, 2005. Frank Sullivan, interview, Jan. 31, 2006. Also see Nunn, “Changing Threats in the Post-Cold War World,” speech, Monterey Institute of International Studies, Monterey, Calif., Aug. 20, 1995; and U.S. Senate, 93d Congress, 2d Session, April 2, 1974, “Policy, Troops and the NATO Alliance, Report of Senator Sam Nunn to the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate.” Courtesy of Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory University, Atlanta, Ga.
5 David Miller, The Cold War: A Military History (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin’s Press, 1998), p. 360.
6 Nunn told me the psychology of defeat and its effect on the American military after Vietnam led him to conclude that the Russian military would be demoralized after losing their empire. Nunn, communication with author, Aug. 26, 2008. See Nunn, “Vietnam Aid—The Painful Options,” Report to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Feb. 12, 1975, 94th Congress, 1st Session.