In 1975, a young chemist named Vladimir Ivanovich Uglev joined Kirpichev’s research team. At first Uglev felt uncomfortable working on chemical weapons, but he gradually accepted the rationale that they were necessary for the nation’s defense. Without a credible deterrent, he was repeatedly told, the U.S. imperialists would unleash the horrors of gas warfare against the Soviet homeland. By the time Uglev arrived at GITOS, the preliminary development work on A-230 had been completed. Over the next few years, Kirpichev, Uglev, and their colleagues synthesized more than a hundred structural variants of A-230 and subjected them to systematic testing in laboratory animals. Most of the analogues were so unstable that they rapidly lost potency, but five were sufficiently toxic and stable to be of potential military interest. These compounds were therefore subjected to intensive study, and the most promising turned out to be A-232.
The molecular structure of A-232 was nearly identical to that of A-230, but with an important difference. Whereas A-230 was a phosphonate containing a direct carbon-phosphorus bond, A-232 was a phosphate, meaning that the carbon and phosphorus atoms were linked through an oxygen atom. Although phosphonates have only a few civilian applications in the production of certain pesticides and fire retardants, phosphates are used for a wide variety of legitimate industrial and commercial purposes. Because A-232’s precursors and breakdown products did not contain a carbon-phosphorus bond—the telltale “signature” of nerve agents such as Sarin, Soman, and VX—its production would be far easier to conceal from foreign spies and arms control inspectors. A-232 had some disadvantages, however: it was less toxic than A-230 by a factor of two or three and tended to degrade rapidly in the presence of moisture.
After the invention of A-230 and A-232, Kirpichev and his colleagues tried to keep their findings quiet so that they could continue their work without interruption. But Victor Petrunin, the deputy director of GITOS, was eager to send news of the breakthrough to his superiors in Moscow. A few days later, the GosNIIOKhT director, Ivan Martinov, arrived at the Shikhany institute and asked to be briefed on the new compounds. Impressed by what he heard, he allocated high priority to the Foliant program and supplied Kirpichev with top-quality laboratory equipment. All research on A-230 and A-232 was henceforth classified “Top Secret—Of Special Importance,” the highest level of secrecy at the time. Research reports on the new compounds were no longer circulated for internal review but were sent directly to Moscow, often in the form of handwritten manuscripts.
In 1976, a pilot plant at Volgograd produced a few kilograms of A-230 and A-232 for testing purposes. The first battery of tests involved measuring their physiochemical properties and toxicity in laboratory animals by injection, inhalation, and skin application. Soviet scientists then conducted a series of open-air trials at the Red Army’s Central Military Chemical Testing Site at Shikhany using rabbits, guinea pigs, dogs, horses, and monkeys. In the field tests, the new agents turned out to be five to eight times more lethal than VX. This extraordinary potency had not been predicted from laboratory studies and appeared to result from the fact that A-230 and A-232 passed rapidly from the bloodstream into the central nervous system by penetrating the blood-brain barrier. The new agents also inactivated cholinesterase irreversibly in minutes. Indeed, the results of the field trials were so impressive that the GITOS scientists hesitated to report their findings to Moscow for fear of being accused of exaggeration.
DURING THE EARLY 1970S, the technical service of the French Army carried out a series of trials involving live Sarin and nerve agent simulants at the Camp de Mourmelon near Reims. These trials were given a series of code names beginning with the letter “C,” including “Citronelle” and “Canelle.” Also during this period, the French government decided to produce a stockpile of chemical weapons, although this decision was reversed a few years later.
In 1972, France negotiated with the Algerian government for an additional five-year lease of the chemical weapons testing site at B2-Namous. Under the 1967 agreement, the French had merely been required to notify the Algerian authorities in advance of each test campaign. This time, however, the Algerian side was more demanding. The field trials could no longer be organized and controlled exclusively by the French authorities. Instead, the Algerians demanded the right to authorize each individual experiment and insisted that their own observers be present. Despite these oppressive conditions, the French chemical weapons trials continued for several more years. In 1977, an extensive testing campaign was carried out, but it proved to be the last.
Beginning in 1978, the French dismantled and decontaminated the testing site at B2-Namous, and in 1981 it was finally handed over to the Algerian authorities. From then on, small-scale trials of nerve agents continued in metropolitan France at the Camp de Mourmelon and Bourges. These test campaigns supported the development of offensive chemical weapons as well as defensive equipment for detection, protection, and decontamination. IN THE UNITED STATES, the binary program continued to be plagued with technical and bureaucratic problems. The Navy, which had been ambivalent about chemical weapons from the start, became disenchanted with the slow progress and political controversy surrounding the development of the Bigeye bomb and tried to cancel the program in 1972. After the Air Force expressed interest in taking over the development effort, the Pentagon reinstated the Navy as lead service in February 1974, with the Air Force in the role of “participating service.” The Navy, however, delegated the mission of delivering the Bigeye to the Marine Corps, whose vertical-takeoff Harrier fighter-bombers could fly from land bases as well as carriers.
In July 1974, one month before Richard Nixon resigned the presidency over the Watergate scandal, he met with Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow. The two leaders issued a communiqué on July 3 stating that their governments intended to launch bilateral negotiations aimed at eliminating the “most dangerous” chemical weapons in their respective stockpiles. The relevant paragraph read: “Both Sides reaffirmed their interest in an effective international agreement which would exclude from the arsenals of States such dangerous instruments of mass destruction as chemical weapons. Desiring to contribute to early progress in this direction, the USA and the USSR agreed to consider a joint initiative in the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament with respect to the conclusion, as a first step, of an international Convention dealing with the most dangerous, lethal means of chemical warfare.”
In the fall of 1974, the U.S. Senate finally gave its consent to ratification of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, nearly fifty years after it had been negotiated. Gerald Ford, who had assumed the presidency after Nixon’s resignation in August, signed the instrument of ratification on January 22, 1975. According to the widely accepted interpretation of the Geneva Protocol, the United States was now legally bound not to use chemical weapons in war except in direct retaliation for a chemical attack.
In Geneva, the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament (CCD), the United Nations’ arms control negotiating forum, began to discuss a global ban on chemical weapons. The initial talks were exploratory and soon bogged down over basic questions such as the definition of a chemical weapon and the scope of the future convention. Another major challenge facing the negotiators was the need to verify that countries followed through on their commitment to eliminate existing stocks of chemical weapons and to halt further production. Because nerve agents could theoretically be produced at commercial chemical plants, intrusive on-site inspections would be required at both military facilities and industry sites. Although the participating countries agreed in principle on the need for verification, the Soviet leadership was deeply opposed to on-site inspections, which it viewed as tantamount to espionage. Accordingly, most of the verification proposals allowed each nation to police its own compliance, an approach of dubious effectiveness and credibility.
Arms control experts warned that if the Pentagon began to procure binary weapons, other countries participating in the Geneva talks would conclude that the United States was not negotia
ting in good faith. Responding to these arguments, Congress denied the administration’s funding requests for binary weapons in fiscal years 1975 and 1976. Although the Army did not seek funds for this purpose in FY 1977, Congress passed the Defense Authorization Bill with a provision blocking funds for the production of binary weapons until the president certified that they were “essential to the national interest.” At the same time, however, growing U.S. concerns about the Soviet chemical warfare threat led the Secretary of the Army to reverse his earlier decision to abolish the Chemical Corps.
EVEN AS THE UNITED STATES and the Soviet Union were developing next-generation chemical weapons, several other countries, including China, Egypt, Syria, North Korea, Yugoslavia, and Iraq, were pursuing a basic nerve agent production capability. The Iraqi chemical weapons program dated back to the early 1960s, when a group of army officers had traveled to the Soviet Union for training in chemical defense and, after their return, had founded the Iraqi Chemical Corps on January 14, 1964. Seven years later, impressed by Egypt’s extensive use of chemical weapons during the Yemen war, the Iraqi leadership launched its own chemical warfare program. In 1971, the Iraqi Chemical Corps built a small research laboratory near the village of Al-Rashad on the northeast edge of Baghdad, where organic chemists, many of them educated in the West, synthesized small amounts of mustard, Tabun, and Sarin.
In 1974, responding to perceived military threats from Iran and Israel, the Iraqi government established a new organization for scientific research and development called the Al-Hazen Ibn Al-Haitham Institute. Although this entity reported to the Ministry of Education, it actually conducted clandestine R&D on advanced military technologies. Directed by a Chemical Corps officer, the Al-Hazen Institute was organized into four divisions or centers. The First Center, focusing on chemical weapons development, was based at Al-Rashad and masqueraded as the Center for Medical Diagnostics. To oversee Iraq’s unconventional weapons programs, the Baghdad regime established a three-man Strategic Planning Committee chaired by Saddam Hussein, then chief of internal security and vice president of the Revolutionary Command Council. Saddam did not assume the presidency until 1979, but in the mid-1970s he was already the power behind President Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr.
In January 1975, the Iraqi State Company for Construction Contracts hired a Baghdad design firm to plan a chemical production facility. Later that year, the Iraqi government retained a Beirut-based consulting firm called Arab Projects and Development to recruit scientists and technicians from throughout the Arab world with attractive salaries and perks. This effort was successful, and more than four thousand foreigners came to Iraq to help build chemical plants. In addition, Iraqi procurement teams disguised as commercial representatives traveled to Europe and the United States in search of chemical manufacturing equipment and know-how.
Because Baghdad had broken diplomatic relations with Washington during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Iraq hired the U.S. subsidiary of a French engineering firm to find an appropriate American partner. The French intermediary recommended the Pfaudler Company of Rochester, New York, a leading manufacturer of glass-lined reactors and other corrosion-resistant chemical production equipment. Iraqi agents contacted Pfaudler and asked the company to prepare detailed plans for a factory that could manufacture 1,200 tons per year of the organophosphate pesticides Amiton, Demeton, Paraoxon, and Parathion. The planned location of the plant was at Rutbah, in the western desert of Iraq just south of Akashat, the site of a phosphate mine that could supply critical raw materials.
Pfaudler sent two chemical engineers to Baghdad to meet with Ministry of Agriculture officials and discuss the construction of Iraq’s first pesticide factory. The Americans then returned to Rochester and began to prepare blueprints and equipment specifications. Because of the high toxicity of the organophosphate pesticides that Iraq planned to produce, Pfaudler considered it advisable to build a pilot plant to train the local workers about safety. But when company representatives presented this proposal to an Iraqi government delegation on January 24, 1976, the Iraqis made clear that they were not interested in a pilot plant and wanted to begin full-scale production as soon as possible. After Pfaudler balked at this request, the Iraqis broke off the negotiations. By this time, they had obtained drawings and specifications for the pesticide plant, although the production equipment was still lacking.
In late 1976, Iraqi officials from the State Organization for Technical Industries approached several West European companies seeking corrosion-resistant reactor vessels, pipes, and pumps for the Rutbah plant. Executives at Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) in Britain were suspicious of the Iraqi request because the pesticides they planned to manufacture were highly toxic. Convinced that the Iraqis were seeking a plant that could be readily converted to the production of nerve agents, ICI officials rejected the request and informed the British government of their concerns. The Iraqis then turned to Montedison of Milan, a giant Italian chemical company that at the time was in serious financial trouble. According to Iraqi sources, a subsidiary of Montedison called Tecnimont agreed to construct the pesticide plant in nine months for $52 million, but Tecnimont executives later claimed that Iraq had broken off the contract negotiations. Reportedly, the Rutbah plant was finally built in the early 1980s by Klöckner Industrie, a West German chemical company, and was subsequently used to produce nerve agents.
IN AUGUST 1976, bilateral U.S.-Soviet talks on chemical arms control resumed after a two-year hiatus. Diplomats expressed hope that by the following spring, Washington and Moscow would be able to break the deadlock and develop a joint proposal for a global chemical weapons ban. Although the two superpowers agreed in principle on the scope of the treaty, they remained far apart on the verification measures needed to ensure that countries would not secretly cheat and acquire a militarily significant stockpile of chemical weapons.
In parallel with the arms control talks, the U.S. development of binary weapons continued. Based on extensive field testing with simulant chemicals, the Army Armament Command concluded in November 1976 that the M687 Sarin artillery shell was ready for production, and the Marine Corps submitted a formal procurement request. But five months after President Jimmy Carter took office in January 1977, the new administration took stock of the binary program and its potential impact on the Geneva negotiations. On May 19, 1977, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote a memorandum directing a group of high-level officials called the Special Coordination Committee to review U.S. chemical warfare policy. The committee was asked to assess the impact of various chemical disarmament options on the security of the United States and its allies, U.S.-Soviet relations, and other foreign policy interests; the requirements for verification; and the chances of successfully negotiating an arms control treaty. This review concluded that a U.S. decision to procure binary weapons might spur chemical weapons proliferation worldwide and provoke the Soviets into either blocking a disarmament treaty or insisting on a poorly verifiable one.
In a letter to Defense Secretary Harold Brown dated October 23, 1977, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance wrote that in the bilateral negotiations with the Soviet Union, the Carter administration sought to prohibit the development, production, and stockpiling of chemical weapons. “I believe that if we were to forgo plans for production,” Vance wrote, “we will have achieved a significant psychological advantage over the Soviets. This would force them into a position of having to respond to the U.S. initiative by taking a positive step toward reducing their own CW program.” To convey the seriousness of its commitment to chemical disarmament, the administration rejected an Army request for $13.2 million in the fiscal year 1978 defense budget to prepare for DF production at Pine Bluff Arsenal.
The Chemical Corps and its supporters, in contrast, argued for the need to modernize the U.S. chemical stockpile in parallel with the Geneva talks on chemical disarmament. According to Brigadier General Lynwood B. Lennon, the Army’s deputy director of strategy, plans, and policy, “Near-term national a
nd collective security requirements need not and should not be sacrificed to the allure of an elusive arms control agreement. The history of such negotiations seems clearly to reinforce the common sense notion that deterrence must continue until an enforceable, verifiable agreement can be reached.”
The most vocal advocates of chemical modernization were a small number of right-wing “defense intellectuals” who worked at Pentagon-funded think tanks and wrote for military journals, including Amoretta M. Hoeber and Stephen Douglass, Jr. They argued that the U.S. stockpile of unitary nerve agent munitions was deteriorating and no longer provided a credible deterrent against the Soviet Union, which continued to upgrade its own arsenal. Douglass postulated that the Soviets did not intend to devastate Western Europe but rather to occupy it and exploit its assets for postwar economic recovery. For that reason, he wrote, the Soviets would prefer to employ weapons that killed people without causing the wholesale destruction of buildings, factories, and other infrastructure. Nerve agents, Douglass argued, “are ideal for Europe if one is interested in minimizing physical destruction.”
NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, General Alexander Haig, Jr., claimed that the capability of the Western alliance to counter a Soviet chemical attack was “very weak.” Moscow, he warned, might use missile warheads filled with persistent V agents to knock out NATO airfields and nuclear weapon storage sites early in a war, and nonpersistent G agents to attack allied troop concentrations. In 1979, U.S. military commanders played a war game called “Wintex” that simulated a conflict between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. During this fictional scenario, the Red Army launched a chemical attack with nerve agents, forcing NATO commanders to decide whether to retaliate with tactical nuclear weapons and risk escalation to full-scale nuclear war. This outcome suggested the need for a modernized chemical arsenal capable of deterring the Soviets from the first use of such weapons. But U.S. military strategists were split between those who sought to bolster deterrence by acquiring a credible stockpile of binary artillery shells, and others who wished to procure long-range ballistic missiles with chemical warheads for “deep strikes” against enemy airfields and staging areas inside Warsaw Pact territory, as part of a new NATO war-fighting strategy.
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