The newspaper Izvestia kept the spotlight on the problem of allowing my lawyer access to my case, and on November 5, 1992, it published a bitter response in an article “Selling Motherland is Under Great Secrecy.”[101] In this article, journalists made it absolutely clear to the readers that the delay on the part of the KGB was absolutely illegal. They also made another very critical point – that when the investigators looking into the case of the Committee for Organizing the Coup in August of 1991 had demanded a clearance for the famous lawyer Henry Reznik (who defended the coup supporter Plekhanov), they had to give in and allow the defense attorney to take part in the case without this document, because of public pressure.
After another refusal by the Investigation Department to let Asnis take part in my case, he sent another complaint addressed to the Attorney General of Russia. As a result, Deputy Attorney General Ivan Zemlyanushin sent an indignant letter to the Deputy Minister of MB RF demanding that access to my case be given to Aleksander Asnis.[102] The Deputy Minister of the MB RF, Anatoly Safonov, didn’t have any choice but to order General Balashov to “…stop violating the Law”. So, Chekists suffered a second defeat in my case, when my lawyer was granted access.[103]
Izvestia responded to this episode in the Attorney General’s Office with Valeri Rudnev’s article “The Scientist Who was Selling His Motherland Finally has a Defender.”[104]
The journalist remarked that his newspaper was closely following the Mirzayanov case, which, in his opinion, finally started following normal juridical procedure. He characterized Asnis as a highly qualified lawyer, who was concerned with the approaching selection of the qualified experts, specialists in the areas of state secrecy and chemical production. He thought that my lawyer could, as a last resort, invoke the “dire necessity” defense in my case, stipulated by Article 14 of the RF Criminal Code, which releases the accused from criminal responsibility.
I was skeptical about this approach because the successful accomplishment of such tactics required getting evidence from the so-called “responsible people.” And in the end, the “responsible people” cowardly brushed me aside.
The Generals do Some “Brainwashing”
With the goal of misleading public opinion in Russia and abroad, a briefing was held in the Ministry of Security chaired by Colonel Kandaurov, who would soon become Lieutenant General Kandaurov. He was entrusted with the job of conducting dull and irresponsible briefings, at which he would lie about the events in Chechnya. TV viewers who watched this person work, during the time of the freeing of the hostages in Dagestan in the winter of 1996, could appreciate the true worth of this Chekist’s “art” of presenting false information. Finally, he would be forced to retire in disgrace, and ultimately he found his true place as a deputy in the State Duma.
On November 5, 1992, Colonel Kandaurov did his best to rationalize the illegal actions of his colleagues who didn’t allow my lawyer to participate in my case.[105] Then the floor was given to General Demin, head of Legal Services at MB RF, who expressed his dissatisfaction with the press, which had allegedly distorted information about the Chekists who were working on my case. Of course, this general didn’t expect the degree of scrutiny that the public and the press paid to my case, because he and the service that he headed had been accustomed to doing their business under the cover of secrecy. He was the man who had persistently persuaded Minister Barannikov about the expediency of my arrest. This is why the juridical general at the briefing did his best to justify his failure, by referring to lists of secrets that had never been published, but which I had allegedly disclosed.
His reference to the practice of law in Western countries, concerning this problem, was especially comical. The point is that the lists of these secrets are clearly defined abroad and are published openly in the press. The general tried to explain to ignorant TV viewers that the 1989 resolution of the Committee of Constitutional Supervision didn’t touch upon lists of state secrets, because they have nothing to do with human rights. This inquisitorial interpretation of human rights doesn’t hold up under any scrutiny or criticism. If someone could be arrested based on these secret lists, and criminal proceedings could be instituted against him, and then he had no right to freely leave the country, what kind of documents would these be? This was a real model of absurdity.
At the conference “KGB Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow” organized by Sergei Grigoriyants in February of 1993, I asked Sergei Alekseev, former chairman of this committee and one of the authors of the new Constitution of Russia, if the resolution passed by his committee abolished the aforementioned lists. Surrounded by many journalists, the professor of law answered simply and unequivocally, “Yes, it does, because they hadn’t been published in time.”
General Demin, the head of Legal Services of the MB RF, found himself in a funny situation when Aleksei Lukiyanov, a correspondent from Radio Station Vozrozhdenie, reminded him of his reference to American laws about secrets and asked about a similar case that had taken place in the U.S. in 1971. Daniel Ellsberg[106] had used the newspaper The New York Times to disclose secret Pentagon Papers about the war in Vietnam. The judge had ruled he wasn’t guilty. Demin didn’t expect such a question and could only awkwardly “explain it” by a difference in laws, a difference in historical periods, and so on. He categorically objected to allowing lawyer Asnis access to my case. As for the law, the general recognized only the illegal “sub-legal norms” about secrets. That was it.
Another colonel from the chemical troops, Aleksander Gorbovsky, who was the son of the former head of the research center in Shikhany and the Military Academy of Chemical Defense, represented the Committee for Conventional Problems under the President of Russia at the briefing. His task was to try and justify the irresponsible actions of leaders of the military-chemical complex. He claimed that military chemists had never violated anything; they had always acted in accordance with international agreements. Listening to Gorbovsky, you would think that saving people from chemical weapons had always been the only priority of the military. But this propaganda didn’t work. The journalist Likhanov wasn’t a babe in the woods. He caught Gorbovsky with his own words. The colonel asserted that the draft of the Chemical Weapons Convention contained no traps or loopholes. Then the journalist asked him to explain why not one of the components of our binary weapons was included on the list of controlled precursors.
This was a situation that required intelligence and honesty, but the colonel from the committee gave in, and mumbled something about the future and about perspectives. It’s a pity that the mass media at this time completely forgot about Resolution N 508-RP of the Russian government, dated September 16, 1992, about the licensing of precursors of chemical weapons, which was signed by President Yeltsin. This resolution was published in the September 30, 1992 issue of Rossiskaya Gazetta. Colonel Gorbovsky was one of the authors of this document, and he certainly remembered it during his tirades at the briefing about adherence to international agreements.
101
Andrey Illesh and Valeri Rudnev, “Selling the Motherland is Under Great Secrecy,”
102
Letter of First Deputy Attorney General of the Russian Federation State Justice Counselor of the 2nd Class I.S. Zemlyanushin to Deputy Minister of the MB RF Major General A.E. Safonov. December 10, 1992 N 13/2-1040-92,Top Secret.
103
Letter of Head of the Department, Major General S.D. Balashov to Deputy Attorney General of RF I.S. Zemlyanushin. October 17, 1992 N 6/280. Secret. See Annex 16.
104
Valeri Rudnev,” The Scientist who was Selling his Motherland Finally has a Defender”,
105
Press Briefing in the RF Security Ministry,