The Dead Hand

by David Hoffman

  In 1992, Senators Nunn and Lugar took a gamble with history. Back then, skeptics suggested it would be best to let the former Soviet Union drown in its own sorrows—to go into “free fall.” Nunn and Lugar did not agree. They helped Russia and the other former Soviet republics cope with an inheritance from hell. The investment paid huge dividends. In the years that followed, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine completely abandoned nuclear weapons. A total of 7,514 nuclear warheads, 752 intercontinental ballistic missiles, and 31 submarines were deactivated.4These were required by arms control treaties, but Nunn-Lugar provided the resources that made dismantlement a reality.

  Many of the facilities with unguarded fissile material in the mid-1990s underwent security upgrades. By 2008, more than 70 percent of the buildings in the former Soviet Union with weapons-usable nuclear materials had been fortified, although the uranium and plutonium were still spread across more than two hundred locations.5 After Project Sapphire, highly-enriched uranium was removed, often quietly, from an additional nineteen research reactors and sensitive installations around the former Soviet bloc.6 The International Science and Technology Center, started after Baker’s visit to Chelyabinsk-70, made grants over fourteen years that benefited, at one time or another, about seventy thousand scientists and engineers involved in building weapons.7 The anthrax factory at Stepnogorsk was destroyed, including the giant fermenters in Building 221. On Vozrozhdeniye Island, eleven graves where anthrax was buried were pinpointed; the substance, pink with a texture of wet clay, was excavated and the pathogens neutralized.8 On the steppe near Russia’s southern border, a $1 billion factory has been constructed that will destroy the huge stockpiles of chemical weapons, including sarin, stored in the nearby warehouses. At the Mayak Chemical Combine in the city of Ozersk, a massive fortified vault was built by the United States at a cost of $309 million to store excess Russian fissile materials. With walls twenty-three feet thick, the Fissile Material Storage Facility answered the need so starkly evident after the Soviet collapse—a Fort Knox to guard uranium and plutonium.

  It was never going to be easy for a country so turbulent as Russia to accept the hand of a rich and powerful rival, and it wasn’t. Suspicions, delays, misunderstandings and errors were abundant in the years after the Soviet collapse.9 But overall, given the immense size of the Soviet military-industrial complex and the sprawling nature of the dangerous weapons and materials, the Nunn-Lugar gamble paid off. The world is safer for their vision and determination. It was also a bargain. The yearly cost for all facets of Nunn-Lugar was about $1.4 billion, a tiny sliver of the annual Pentagon budget of more than $530 billion.10

  In a cemetery in Yekaterinburg, the city that was Sverdlovsk in Soviet times, on a cold snowy December day, I found a cluster of graves amid tall pines and birches. Wilted roses lay upon some of the tombstones, while others showed signs of neglect. What they all shared were the same dates of death: April and May 1979. These were the victims of the anthrax outbreak, their names a roll call from a long-forgotten battlefield of the Cold War. Andrei Komelskikh was sixty-seven years old when he died April 13. He was a grandfather. “You are always in our hearts, from your wife, children and grandchildren,” his headstone was inscribed. Neither Andrei nor the other victims knew why they died in those horrific weeks of 1979. Except for a brief, one-sentence comment by Yeltsin, neither the Soviet Union nor Russia has ever admitted, either to the families or to the world, how or why the biological weapons disaster occurred.

  On February 10, 2005, I was admitted to the once-secret Biopreparat headquarters at No. 4a Samokatnaya Street in Moscow. This was the same building where Ken Alibek worked as first deputy director. I went to the second floor to interview Valentin Yevstigneev, the retired lieutenant general who once headed the 15th Main Directorate of the Ministry of Defense, which supervised germ warfare. Yevstigneev was part of the old guard that had participated in the cover-up of Biopreparat activities in earlier years. Now wearing a business suit in a modern office, he handed me his card: first deputy general director of a privatized company, Biopreparat, a commercial enterprise. On a table, I picked up a glossy brochure about the new Biopreparat, containing photographs of test tubes, syringes and pills, describing the company’s activity manufacturing medicines and medical technology. There was no mention of the pathogens of the past.

  When I asked Yevstigneev about the anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk in 1979, he repeated the story that it was spread by contaminated meat. Then he suggested it was caused by sabotage or terrorists from outside the Soviet Union. This was another line of disinformation that had been floated by the military in earlier years.11

  Telling the whole truth about the Sverdlovsk outbreak would be a good first step toward putting the terrible secret history of Biopreparat to rest.

  The truth matters. Deception is a tool of germ warriors. The same disguise that concealed the Soviet biological weapons program as civilian research could be used today to hide a dangerous germ warfare program anywhere. The anthrax letter attacks in the United States in 2001, the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003 and the dramatic advances in biosciences have all underscored the destructive nature of biological agents. The National Academy of Sciences concluded in a report in 2009 that closed cities like Obolensk with a relatively large footprint are no longer necessary to house an illicit biological weapons program. A dangerous pathogen, say a virus, could be spread with no discernible signature. The workspace of a biological weaponeer or terrorist could be safely nestled inside a university or commercial laboratory, impossible to discover by satellite reconnaissance. People are the key, as Vladimir Pasechnik demonstrated by following his conscience and revealing Soviet misdeeds. To detect such dangers in the future requires human contacts, networks, transparency and collaboration, the painstaking building of bridges that Andy Weber pursued.

  In the 1990s, Russia seemed vulnerable and desperate, but starting in the year 2000, a surge of oil wealth fueled a new sense of independence. Also, Russia was led into another period of authoritarianism under President Putin, during which it grew hostile to outsiders. Under Putin, Russia increasingly shut down cooperation with the West on biological weapons proliferation. Russian officials have insisted that since the country has no offensive biological weapons program, there is no need to cooperate. But it also appears Russia is reverting back to Soviet-era habits. Putin’s security services went on a hunt for suspected spies among scientists, which put a chill on joint projects with the West.

  Russia has long refused to open the doors of three military biological research facilities. To this day, it is unknown how far the Soviet Union went in creating warheads and bombs from the bacteria and viruses that were developed at Obolensk and Vector. Did the Soviet scientists produce a super-plague resistant to antibiotics? Did they create a cruise missile capable of disseminating anthrax bacteria spores? Or warheads for an intercontinental ballistic missile to carry smallpox? And if they did these things, all in violation of an international treaty they signed in 1972, should the details at last be brought to light?12 A string of Russian antiplague institutes and stations that once fed into the germ warfare program also remain closed to Western cooperation. If there are no weapons, no offensive program, as Russia claims, then what is behind the closed doors? What formulas for weaponization remain in the military laboratories? And most importantly, what has become of the scientists with know-how to create pathogens that can be carried in a shirt pocket?

  What are they working on today?

  If it wasn’t worrisome enough that Russia was weak and vulnerable after the Soviet collapse, another jolt came in the 1990s: terrorists and cults were in search of weapons of mass destruction. The people who would commit mass terror lacked the resources or industrial base of a government or military, but they burned with the ambition to kill in a large and theatrical way. Terrorism certainly wasn’t new, but terrorists in possession of the arsenals of the Cold War would be devastating.

  In 1995, the Aum Shi
nrikyo cult released the deadly nerve agent sarin on three Tokyo subway trains, killing twelve people, injuring over one thousand and causing mass panic. Technical problems, leaks and accidents plagued the cult. But the Tokyo subway attack showed what only a small amount of dangerous material could do. The Tokyo calamity resulted from 159 ounces of sarin. By contrast, in Russia, in a remote compound near the town of Shchuchye in western Siberia, there are still 1.9 million projectiles filled with 5,447 metric tons of nerve agents.13

  Osama bin Laden was reportedly impressed with the Tokyo subway disaster and the chaos it generated. In 1998, Al Qaeda leaders began to launch a serious chemical and biological weapons effort, code-named Zabadi, or “curdled milk” in Arabic. Details of the effort were later revealed in documents found on a computer used by the Al Qaeda leadership in Kabul. Ayman Zawahiri, the former Cairo surgeon who that year merged his radical group, Islamic Jihad in Egypt, with Al Qaeda, noted that “the destructive power of these weapons is not less than that of nuclear weapons.”14 In 1999, Zawahiri recruited a Pakistani scientist to set up a small biological weapons laboratory in Kandahar. Later, the work was turned over to a Malaysian who knew the 9/11 hijackers and had helped them, Yazid Sufaat. He had been educated in biology and chemistry in California, and spent months at the Kandahar laboratory attempting to cultivate anthrax. George Tenet, the former CIA director, said the anthrax effort was carried out in parallel with the plot to hijack airplanes and crash them into buildings.15 He believed, he said, that bin Laden’s strongest desire was to go nuclear. At one point, the CIA frantically chased down reports that bin Laden was negotiating for the purchase of three Russian nuclear devices, although details were never found. “They understand that bombings by cars, trucks, trains, and planes will get them some headlines, to be sure,” Tenet wrote. “But if they manage to set off a mushroom cloud, they will make history … Even in the darkest days of the Cold War, we could count on the fact that the Soviets, just like us, wanted to live. Not so with terrorists.”16

  It is difficult to build a working nuclear bomb, but less difficult to cultivate pathogens in a laboratory. A congressional commission concluded in 2008 that it would be hard for terrorists to weaponize and disseminate significant quantities of a biological agent in aerosol form, but it might not be so difficult to find someone to do it for them. “In other words,” the panel said, “given the high-level of know-how needed to use disease as a weapon to cause mass casualties, the United States should be less concerned that terrorists will become biologists and far more concerned that biologists will become terrorists.”17

  The tools of mass casualty are more diffuse and more uncertain than ever before. Even as securing the weapons of the former Soviet Union remains unfinished business, the world we live in confronts new risks that go far beyond Biopreparat. Today one can threaten a whole society with a flask carrying pathogens created in a fermenter in a hidden garage—and without a detectable signature.

  The Dead Hand of the arms race is still alive.

  ————— ACKNOWLEDGMENTS —————

  I had the good fortune to be a White House correspondent for the Washington Post during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, and then bureau chief in Moscow in the 1990s. This book had its origins in those experiences, and I am grateful to many friends, colleagues, sources and participants who provided insights, recollections and materials.

  My insights into Reagan were drawn from several interviews as well as his eventful eight years in office, and my understanding further enriched by publication of his memoir and private diary. Mikhail Gorbachev granted two interviews for this book, and I benefited from his memoir and extensive writing and public speaking. Anatoly Chernyaev gave me his personal recollections, and his diary is one of the single most valuable accounts of the years of perestroika and glasnost.

  Pavel Podvig shared his knowledge of Russian weapons systems and helped decipher the Katayev papers. Svetlana Savranskaya guided me with precision and patience through Cold War memoirs and documents. For additional insights and comments on the manuscript I am grateful to Bruce Blair, Christopher J. Davis, Milton Leitenberg, Thomas C. Reed, Mikhail Tsypkin, Andy Weber, Valery Yarynich and Ray Zilinskas.

  I am very much in debt to Ksenia Kostrova, who assisted with the papers of her grandfather, Vitaly Katayev. After the Soviet collapse, Katayev tried to adapt, establishing a private company. He was not very successful, but he continued to dream. One of his more spectacular ideas was to use surplus intercontinental ballistic missles to assist stranded sailors, fishermen or mountain climbers. The missiles would release a rescue package tethered to a parachute. Katayev drew charts and trajectories for his ambitious plan, which he called “Project Vita.” His dream was never realized. Katayev passed away in 2001. His papers are deposited at the Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University.

  Masha Lipman has long been my guiding light on Russia and offered valuable comments on the manuscript. My thanks also go to Irina Makarova, Vladimir Alexandrov and Sergei Belyakov.

  At the Washington Post, I am deeply indebted to Katharine Graham and Donald Graham for their trust. They built a newsroom of creativity and dynamism under the leadership of Benjamin C. Bradlee and Leonard Downie Jr. Four gifted colleagues at the Post provided years of inspiration as well as valuable comments on the book: Rick Atkinson, Steve Coll, Michael Dobbs and Glenn Frankel. In addition, Robert G. Kaiser and Philip Bennett were unceasing in their friendship and encouragement, for this project and many others, over all the years we worked together.

  Lou Cannon was my partner and tutor in Reagan’s time. My thanks also go to Post colleagues Laura Blumenfeld, Jackson Diehl, David Finkel, Peter Finn, Mary Lou Foy, Michael Getler, Jim Hoagland, Don Oberdorfer, Keith Richburg, Julie Tate, Gene Thorp, Joby Warrick and Scott Wilson. For support in a thousand ways, I am indebted to Rebekah Davis. My thanks also to Katja Hom, Kate Agnew and Terissa Schor.

  Robert Monroe shared far more about chemical demilitarization than I could ever absorb, and I am deeply grateful for our long conversations. For research, my thanks to Alex Remington, Josh Zumbrun, Robert Thomason and Anna Masterova. Maryanne Warrick and Abigail Crim transcribed interviews.

  An important contribution came from Thomas S. Blanton and the National Security Archive in Washington, which provided key historical documents and analysis. I am also grateful to Anne Hessing Cahn for access to her collection of papers at the archive.

  I have been enriched by years of guidance and teaching by Archie Brown at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University.

  Valuable contributions were also made by Ken Alibek, Martin Anderson, James A. Baker III, Rodric Braithwaite, Matthew Bunn, Joseph Cirincione, Thomas C. Cochran, Dick Combs, Igor Domaradsky, Sidney Drell, Erik Engling, Kenneth J. Fairfax, Andy Fisher, Chrystia Freeland, Oleg Gordievsky, Tatiana Gremyakova, Jeanne Guillemin, Cathy Gwin, Josh Handler, Anne M. Harrington, Laura Holgate, Richard Lugar, Matthew Meselson, Vil Mirzayanov, Kenneth A. Myers III, Sam Nunn, Vladimir Orlov, Sergei Popov, Theodore A. Postol, Amy Smithson, Margaret Tutwiler, Yevgeny Velikhov, Frank von Hippel and Lawrence Wright.

  I am grateful for a media fellowship at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, in 2004, which allowed me time for research. At the Hoover Library and Archives, I was assisted with great professionalism by Carol Leadenham, Lara Soroka, Heather Wagner and Brad Bauer.

  At the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, Kings College, London, my thanks to Caroline Lam and Katharine Higgon, and at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, my gratitude to Lisa Jones. I also profited from research at the British National Archives at Kew, and the U.S. National Archives at College Park, Maryland.

  To Esther Newberg, my deepest appreciation for unflagging commitment and enthusiasm. At Doubleday, Bill Thomas gave the project a life. From our first conversations, Kristine Puopolo provided wise counsel and was a thoughtful, inspiring editor. And my thanks also to Stephanie Bowen.

  To my wife, Carole, who read the ent
ire manuscript many times over, to my sons, Daniel and Benjamin, and to my parents, to whom this book is dedicated, I express profound appreciation for loving support on the long and winding road.

  ——— ABBREVIATIONS IN NOTES ———

  DNSA Digital National Security Archive, http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com

  EBB Electronic Briefing Book of the National Security Archive

  FOIA Freedom of Information Act

  FBIS Foreign Broadcast Information Service

  Katayev The papers of Vitaly Katayev at the Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University, and in author’s possession

  NIE National Intelligence Estimate

  TNSA The National Security Archive, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/index.html

  RRPL Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

  ————— ENDNOTES —————

  Prologue

  1 Margarita Ivanovna Ilyenko, interview, Nov. 30, 1998. Roza Gaziyeva is quoted by Sergei Parfenov in Rodina, no. 5, Oct. 24, 1990.

  2 Matthew Meselson, Jeanne Guillemin, Martin Hugh-Jones, Alexander Langmuir, Ilona Popova, Alexis Shelokov, Olga Yampolskaya, “The Sverdlovsk Anthrax Outbreak of 1979,” Science, 1994, vol. 266, pp. 1202-1208; Jeanne Guillemin, Anthrax: The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); 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), Ch. 7.