The Dead Hand

by David Hoffman

  After the visitors left, Alibek felt victorious. Although the Westerners had suspicions, he recalled, “they could prove nothing, and we had given nothing away.”

  The delegation knew they did not get a full view of Biopreparat, but they had seen enough. They wrote in their report: the sheer size and scope of the program, the configuration of the facilities, the nature and extent of the work on pathogens, the guards and physical security and the large aerosol experiments—all of it pointed to an offensive germ warfare effort that was far beyond anything needed for civilian purposes.

  Pasechnik had told them the truth.

  ————— 16 —————

  THE YEAR OF LIVING

  DANGEROUSLY

  In the winter months of early 1991, nearly six years after the Politburo had chosen him as a younger, energetic standard-bearer who could save the party and state, Gorbachev, approaching his sixtieth birthday, felt exhausted. His attempt to create real, competitive politics gave rise to a potent rival, Boris Yeltsin, who became a rallying point for many who opposed Gorbachev, the establishment and the party. Nationalities long suffocated inside the Soviet Union began to awaken, with aspirations for independence, something Gorbachev had never foreseen.

  Gorbachev’s perestroika, or restructuring—which began with a goal of rejuvenating socialism, and later was aimed at creating a hybrid of socialism and capitalism—was never a full-throated drive to free markets. Gorbachev had experimented with capitalism, and given permission for the first private entrepreneurs to set up their own businesses, known as the cooperatives. But shortages, disruption and hardship spread across the country. A catastrophic drop in oil extraction, along with low oil prices, took a heavy toll; foreign currency reserves were almost exhausted, and a lack of commercial credits made imports almost impossible. Flour was rationed. Gorbachev announced at a meeting of the Security Council one day in the spring that, in two or three months, the government would no longer be able to feed the country.1 And his halting half-steps away from the centrally planned economy led to demands, championed by Yeltsin, for a more radical leap to the free market.

  “There were already bread lines in Moscow like those for sausage two years before,” Chernyaev recalled. “I took a car on Saturday and drove all around Moscow. Bread stores were closed or absolutely empty—not figuratively, but literally!”2 He wrote in his diary on March 31, “I don’t think Moscow has seen anything like this in all its history—even in the hungriest years.” And, he added, “on that day, certainly, nothing remained of the image of Gorbachev.”3

  The aggrieved losers in this vortex of change began to resist. They included the military, which felt humiliated as soldiers and tanks retreated from Europe, only to discover they were almost destitute at home; the party elite, which lost its monopoly on power; and the security agencies, primarily the KGB, who saw themselves as guardians of a power structure under siege and a country near disintegration. Gorbachev attempted to buy time. He tried to satisfy the disillusioned old guard while hanging on to the allies of perestroika, the progressive intellectuals, but he could not do both, and succeeded at neither. The progressives abandoned him for Yeltsin, a more promising agent of change. The hard-liners pushed Gorbachev to use force, and declare a state of emergency to reassert control in the old Soviet tradition. A coterie of the hardliners, from the KGB, the military and the party, would soon take matters into their own hands.

  In earlier years, Gorbachev and Reagan, in a courageous break with the past, managed to slow the speeding locomotive of the Cold War arms race. After some hesitation, Bush also realized Gorbachev was a man to do business with, a negotiating partner, an anchor in a stormy sea.

  Then the anchor broke loose. Gorbachev lost control.

  Very early on the morning of Sunday, January 13, Soviet tanks, led by members of Alpha Group, an elite KGB special forces unit, attacked pro-independence demonstrators at the television tower in Vilnius, Lithuania. The troops opened fire and killed more than a dozen people in a massacre that caused a wave of apprehension and revulsion. The assault had been secretly orchestrated in Moscow by the hardliners around Gorbachev, perhaps in expectation that Gorbachev would have no choice but to order a crackdown and state of emergency. On the night of the assault, Kremlin records showed the hard-liners met in the office of Gorbachev’s chief of staff, Valery Boldin, from 7:15 P.M. until 2:30 A.M., shortly after the shooting began.4

  The day after the Vilnius massacre, speaking to parliament, Gorbachev insisted he had known nothing about the violence until it was over, “when they woke me up.” He blamed independence leaders in Lithuania for provoking it. His comments didn’t answer the central question: either Gorbachev, as commander in chief, was in control of his own security forces or he wasn’t. Both were disturbing possibilities. Liberals who had been at Gorbachev’s side, appalled by the use of force, quit the party, including the entire editorial board of Moscow News, a leading voice of perestroika, which published a devastating joint statement from the intellectuals. Chernyaev wrote in his diary on January 14 that Gorbachev’s address to parliament was “a disorganized, confusing speech full of rambling digressions …”5

  “I was in complete despair,” said Chernyaev, perhaps Gorbachev’s most loyal adviser. He wrote a letter of resignation, admonishing Gorbachev that “…you chained yourself to policies that you can only continue by force. And so you contradict your own philosophy.” The hard-liners were “pathetic and shameful,” Chernyaev said. “They discredit you, making the center look ridiculous. And you’re following their logic, which is basically the code of the streets—you beat me up … so now I’ll call my big brother and you’ll get it!”

  “You’re losing the most important thing that we’ve gained from new thinking—trust,” he wrote. “You’ll never be trusted again, no matter what you do.” Chernyaev reminisced about his partnership with Gorbachev “the great innovator and father of perestroika.” But “now I don’t recognize or understand him.”6

  However, Chernyaev never gave Gorbachev the letter, and did not resign. In the days that followed, Gorbachev did not order more repression, as the hard-liners hoped he would. But at the same time, Chernyaev said, Gorbachev never figured out that his public appeals to reason and negotiation could not halt the Baltic secession. It was all but inevitable.

  The American and British biological weapons team departed the Soviet Union on the weekend of January 19–20, even more worried than when they arrived. In late January and February, the teams met in Washington to go over their notes and write a report. On March 5, the new British prime minister, John Major, told Gorbachev of his concerns about the biological warfare program during a tête-à-tête meeting in Moscow. On March 25, Baker again raised it in papers sent to Gorbachev that outlined concerns raised by the January visits.7 Neither Major nor Baker said a word about it in public.

  When Pasechnik’s revelations were first made, the rationale for keeping it secret was to avoid creating problems for Gorbachev. Now Gorbachev’s situation was far more vulnerable. A new strategic arms treaty, years in the making, was finally nearing completion. If details of a massive Soviet biological weapons program and blatant violation of earlier treaty commitments became public, it would swiftly wreck any chance for Senate ratification.

  On April 5, Braithwaite, the British ambassador, came to see Chernyaev, this time with a formal, written message from Major, a detailed, damning and very accurate list of findings based on the outcome of the January visits.8 On May 11, Foreign Minister Bessmertnykh delivered an answer to Baker’s papers from March, continuing the cover-up on every point.

  In late May, Margaret Thatcher, now out of office, visited Gorbachev in the Kremlin. After a dinner with him, she returned to the British ambassador’s residence, where Braithwaite was waiting, along with the American ambassador, Matlock, whom Thatcher had invited. With an after-dinner drink in her hand, Thatcher settled into a chair in Braithwaite’s study, turned to Matlock and said, “Please get a message
to my friend George,” meaning the president.

  “We’ve got to help Mikhail,” she pleaded. “Of course, you Americans can’t and shouldn’t have to do it all yourselves, but George will have to lead the effort, just as he did with Kuwait.” She paused, Matlock recalled, and then explained why she felt so strongly. “Just a few years back, Ron and I would have given the world to get what has already happened here.” She wanted Bush to invite Gorbachev to the Group of 7 summit in London in July and deliver a massive Western aid package. Matlock hesitated. The Soviet economy was a shambles, and pouring aid into it might be a waste, he said. Thatcher glared. “You’re talking like a diplomat!” she responded. “Just finding excuses for doing nothing. Why can’t you think like a statesman? We need a political decision to support this process, which is so much in everyone’s interest.”

  Matlock sent Thatcher’s message to Bush that night. Then he wrote in his own journal, “I think that Mrs. Thatcher is right.”9

  On June 17, Valentin Pavlov, the prime minister and one of the hardliners who had planned the Vilnius attack, asked the Supreme Soviet to give him extraordinary powers that were granted only to the president. He did not tell Gorbachev beforehand. It was a daring power grab, but Gorbachev reacted only with a statement that he hadn’t endorsed the proposal. In a closed meeting of the assembly, other hardliners at the center of the gathering storm—KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov and Interior Minister Boris Pugo—also backed Pavlov’s move.

  Matlock was surprised at Gorbachev’s timidity. Why didn’t he fire these appointees trying to usurp his power? On June 20, Matlock had coffee with Gavriil Popov, a close ally of Yeltsin who had just been elected mayor of Moscow on the shoulders of the growing democratic movement. When they were alone in the library at Spaso House, the ambassador’s residence, Popov took out a sheet of paper, scribbled a note and handed it to Matlock. In a large, uneven Russian scrawl, it said:

  A COUP IS BEING ORGANIZED TO REMOVE GORBACHEV.

  WE MUST GET WORD TO BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH.

  Yeltsin was at that moment in the United States.

  Matlock then wrote on the same sheet:

  I’LL SEND A MESSAGE. BUT WHO IS BEHIND THIS?

  Popov wrote on the paper and shoved it back to Matlock:

  PAVLOV, KRYUCHKOV, YAZOV, LUKYANOV

  Popov took the paper back when Matlock had read it, tore it into small pieces and put them in his pocket.10

  Matlock sent an urgent message to Washington for Bush, who was to meet with Yeltsin at the White House later that day. Within hours, Matlock was instructed to take a warning to Gorbachev. About 8:20 P.M.in Moscow, early evening but still broad daylight at this time of year, Matlock arrived at Gorbachev’s office. Chernyaev was present. Gorbachev greeted him as “Comrade Ambassador!” and lavished praise on Matlock, which made him uncomfortable. Matlock sat at the long table in Gorbachev’s office facing the window, with Gorbachev and Chernyaev on the other side.

  “Mr. President,” Matlock said, “President Bush has asked me to notify you of a report we have received which we find greatly disturbing, although we cannot confirm it. It is based on more than rumor but less than hard information. It is that there is an effort under way to remove you, and it could happen at any time, even this week.”

  Matlock did not name his source. He was trying to convey that the information was not from intelligence sources, but that was just what Chernyaev and Gorbachev assumed he was saying. On his notepad, Chernyaev wrote, “American services” had given the warning the coup would be the next day.11

  Both Gorbachev and Chernyaev laughed. Matlock recalled that Gorbachev then grew serious. “Tell President Bush I am touched. I have felt for some time that we are partners, and now he has proved it. Thank him for his concern. He has done just what a friend should do. But tell him not to worry. I have everything well in hand. You’ll see tomorrow.”

  According to Chernyaev, Gorbachev also said, “It’s a hundred percent improbable.”12

  After Matlock spoke, Gorbachev lapsed into a soliloquy, saying that things were unsettled, Pavlov was inexperienced and had realized the mistake of his power grab earlier in the week, Yeltsin was being more cooperative, a new union treaty would soon be signed and Gorbachev’s visit to the London summit would be a further step into the world economy.

  Looking back, Matlock said later that Gorbachev may have wrongly interpreted what he was saying, and assumed he was referring to the reactionary forces in parliament as the source of trouble. Chernyaev’s notes confirm Gorbachev mistakenly thought Matlock was referring to the parliamentary hard-liners, not Kryuchkov of the KGB and Yazov from the military.

  The next day Pavlov’s power-grab proposal was defeated in parliament. Talking to reporters afterward, Gorbachev was flanked by a grim Yazov, Pugo and Kryuchkov, and said, with a large grin, “The ‘coup’ is over.”13 But Matlock was not sanguine about Gorbachev. “He was the one with the most to lose, and yet he was acting like a somnambulist, wandering around oblivious to his surroundings.” In fact, Gorbachev got warnings from other sources, too. Just after Matlock left, Gorbachev told Chernyaev that he’d received a warning the day before from his special envoy, Yevgeny Primakov.

  “Beware!” Primakov had insisted. “You’re trusting the KGB and your security service too much. Are you sure you are safe?”

  Gorbachev replied, “What a chicken! I told him, ‘Zhenya, calm down. You of all people shouldn’t yield to panic.’”14

  Two nights after Matlock’s warning, Bush phoned Gorbachev, who brushed off the chances of a coup.

  “A thousand percent impossible,” he said.15

  On June 21, Valery Yarynich walked into a small conference room with a single wood table on the upper floors of the Institute for World Economy and International Relations, a prestigious Soviet research institute in Moscow. Yarynich was the expert on communications who had worked many years in the Strategic Rocket Forces. He worked on Perimeter, the semiautomatic system for launching a retaliatory nuclear strike. Perimeter was still ultra-secret. After Perimeter was finally put into operation in 1985, Yarynich served during the Gorbachev years at a think tank inside the military’s General Staff headquarters in Moscow, where he concluded, based on mathematical models, that deterrence could be guaranteed with far fewer nuclear weapons.

  Yarynich was invited to the conference room to participate in a meeting between Russian and American civilian experts on the problems of command and control of nuclear forces. Such a meeting would have been unheard of in earlier years, but in the atmosphere of greater openness, it was possible to talk about subjects that had long been strictly offlimits. Waiting in the conference room was one of the foremost civilian experts in the United States on nuclear command and control, Bruce Blair, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a leading Washington think tank. Blair came in a coat and tie, and carried a small notebook. He had a lot of questions. During service in the Air Force, he spent two years as a Minuteman missile launch officer in the early 1970s, working shifts in underground silos. Subsequently, he carried out top-secret research on the vulnerability of American command and control of nuclear weapons for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. At Brookings, Blair wrote a book about American nuclear systems, Strategic Command and Control. For his next book, Blair had been searching, since 1987, for clues about Soviet command and control. While Blair had valuable sources in the United States, it was excruciatingly difficult to learn the truth in the Soviet Union; anything about nuclear command and control was top secret. Often, Blair gathered fragments of information but could not figure out the larger picture. Day after frustrating day, in countless smoke-filled rooms, he conducted interviews. When he met with Yarynich in the conference room, Blair realized he had finally connected with a real expert, someone who shared Blair’s depth of knowledge about launch systems and procedures. Yarynich emphasized that he was speaking only for himself, not for his superiors. “He’s here on his own, a confid
ential meeting,” Blair wrote in his notebook. He also noted that Yarynich was from the Center for Operational and Strategic Research in the General Staff, a specialist on command and control. However, Blair didn’t write down Yarynich’s name; in his view it was still too sensitive.

  Blair found it took hours and hours of conversation to extract anything useful from Soviet military officers. But Yarynich was surprisingly assertive; he seemed to be “someone who had a lot on his mind.” Yarynich told Blair a Kremlin leader might have only two to four minutes to make a decision about retaliation if warned of a missile attack. The Soviet leader might have to make a decision in the dangerous situation known as “launch on warning,” in other words, firing off nuclear missiles based entirely on a warning. If a false warning, it could be a disastrous decision. Blair took careful notes.

  From his American sources, Blair had heard of a Soviet system called the Dead Hand, a computer-driven machine that would, in the event the Soviet leadership were wiped out, launch a retaliatory attack without human hands on the button. When Blair asked about it, Yarynich responded that there was no Dead Hand in the Russian system. Blair wrote those words in his notebook. But Yarynich was careful to tell Blair something else, too. There was no automatic Dead Hand, but there was a semiautomatic system of some kind. Blair didn’t fully comprehend that day what Yarynich was telling him, but some details were in his notes. He didn’t connect the dots, at first.16

  A year and a half had passed since Pasechnik’s defection. Gorbachev had been the recipient of repeated, specific complaints from the Americans and British about Biopreparat. The latest came in a letter June 19 from Bush to Gorbachev, which once again asserted that the Soviet Union had a large-scale biological weapons program and called for another meeting of experts.17 Gorbachev wrote back to Bush in mid-July. His letter pledged to keep up the spirit of “frank dialogue” between them. But Gorbachev was not forthcoming. He followed the script of the Soviet cover-up—deny the weapons program, proclaim a desire for openness and refer to the narrow line between offensive and defensive biological research.