Unfortunately, I didn’t know these people, though I had heard about them when I was working at GOSNIIOKhT. Still, I completely trusted my lawyer’s judgment and didn’t doubt that Smirnitsky and Chugunov would be decent and honest experts.
The results of their work showed that these two people entirely justified our hopes and thoroughly shattered the “findings” of the expert commission prepared by the investigator. I met with General Smirnitsky and Lieutenant Colonel Chugunov for the first time at the judicial proceedings. They both impressed me deeply with their professionalism and logical testimony, which was notably different in nature from the statements of other members of the expert commission.
A Person from Volsk and Petrenko’s Patriotic Impulse
The legal battles in the investigator’s office in Lefortovo coincided with the signing in Paris of the Convention for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (CWC) in January of 1993. At that time I harshly objected to the signing of this convention, because I saw its flaws, which the opponents to chemical disarmament could use to their advantage. First of all, I couldn’t catch the logic behind the usage of a very unclear term in the convention “prohibiting the development of chemical weapons,” while allowing scientific research work in this field was, at the same time. All my attempts to receive a comprehensible answer, about where the clear distinction between these two notions lay, were fruitless. Moreover, at the level of scientific development at the time, there was absolutely no necessity for the technologically dangerous production of chemical agents. These days and even then, chemical weapons could exist primarily in a binary form, with non-toxic binary components. There was no need to carry out the dangerous and expensive testing of binary weapons. All this could be done in a laboratory, where practically any kind climatic conditions can easily be modeled.
The text of the convention had obvious loopholes that dishonest generals could exploit for their own selfish ends. I gave numerous interviews to the press, on the radio, and on television trying to explain these dirty tricks which were embedded in the convention. Almost no one tried to refute my arguments. The Russian authorities and specialists on chemical weapons kept their dead silence and didn’t comment on my statements. I received no answer from foreign specialists, either.
Still I continued to explain that such a convention was far from the best instrument for struggling against chemical weapons. This is why I harshly criticized the convention in my speeches on French TV, on radio station “Echo Moskva,” and others, and spoke against its signing. Soon I realized I was no longer alone. Suddenly I found an unexpected ally, a senior engineer at the Volsk branch of GOSNIIOKhT, Vladimir Uglev, who was also a deputy of the Volsk City Council at that time. He was responsible for the ecological issues on this city council and spoke out against the activities of military chemists, who frequently exploded chemical shells at the military testing site, posing a threat to the safety and health of the local population.[152] Also, it turned out that he had worked for a long time with Petr Kirpichev, the creator of chemical agents A-230 and A-232.
When we first met at the beginning of January 1993, Vladimir made a good impression on me, with his determination to struggle against chemical weapons and against the barbaric destruction of the stockpiles at the Shikhany military test site.
Several of his remarks about new developments made it clear that he was a highly qualified specialist who understood the questions of the synthesis and testing of new chemical agents very well. He was well informed about the events that unfolded around the invention of Agent A-232 and how former director of GOSNIIOKhT, Ivan Martynov, was giving the patent authorship for Substance A-232 to his son Boris.
I was very pleased that Uglev was ready to support me. It was extremely important at that time, because there were few people either in our country or in the U.S., who believed in the existence of a secret program for the development and testing of a new generation of chemical weapons. However, along with such positive impressions, I also heard something that was for me an alarming confession. Vladimir told me that some time ago he had been recruited by the KGB to spy on Petr Kirpichev, who was his scientific supervisor. According to his story, he had told Kirpichev everything, and justified his decision to become an informer because he believed that otherwise some other unknown person would have been in his place. Oh, blessed naiveté! You see the KGB made sure its informants had understudies, to exclude the possibility of a “monopolization” of information sources. However, I can’t strictly judge those who agreed to be informers, because the KGB was truly omnipotent. Reporting was rampant and very few could resist the suggestion to “become useful to the Motherland.” Suspicion practically paralyzed any communications and any discussions, including scientific ones. I tried to avoid suspicions as much as possible, even if I didn’t know people well, but sometimes it seemed to me that there were always at least a few informers among the people who surrounded me. Sometimes I got irrefutable evidence confirming my intuitive guesses, but I always pressed myself not to be tempted to retaliate. Unfortunately, I didn’t always succeed and that resulted in conflicts.
I asked Uglev to be extremely careful in his dealings with Lev Fedorov. As I understood, Fedorov’s major objective in his relations with Uglev and me was to obtain any kind of information, which he would later use for writing his articles, and for passing himself off as a prominent specialist in chemical weapons. It was more than a provocation at that time, when my lawyer and I were trying with all our might to prove that I hadn’t disclosed any state secrets connected with the technical side of the problems of chemical weapons.
A vivid illustration of this is Fedorov’s article in which he deliberately and nonchalantly described the formula of Substance 33 and the principle of binary weapons based on it, passing himself off as an outstanding specialist in the sphere of chemical weapons.[153]
Of course it was no big secret to the FSB (the KGB), where this information was really coming from. Uglev was soon under the threat of being charged with disclosing state secrets, and the Saratov department of the FSB started an investigation. Before that Vladimir Uglev gave a sensational interview to Novoe Vremya. In this interview, he confirmed my account about the toxicity of the new chemical agents and spoke about the history of their development at the Volsk branch of GOSNIIOKhT. He said that precursors of these agents were not included on the lists of substances controlled under the Chemical Weapons Convention. Moreover, he claimed that a batch of the components of binary weapons was stockpiled at a secret base in the Bryansk Region. Uglev shared my apprehensions that the components of binary weapons, based on the new agent, could be disguised as civilian products, which would make international control much more difficult.[154]
I don’t doubt a bit that Uglev’s position was sincere. He always adhered to it when he gave interviews to the press. It was extremely important to me that one more person from the military-chemical complex was earnestly struggling against chemical weapons and wasn’t afraid of persecution.
We developed rather good relations and met from time to time when he came to Moscow. During these meetings, which took place in my apartment, we openly discussed the problems connected with the prohibition of the development and production of chemical weapons and the destruction of their stockpiles. I was certain that the KGB recorded our conversations because I knew its surveillance techniques. However, this didn’t worry me because we didn’t discuss any technical secrets.
152
Vladislav Borovitski, “Over all Saratov is poisoned sky”,
153
Lev Fedorov, “Chemical Weapons or Chemical Warfare?”,
154
Oleg Vishnyakov, “Interview with a Noose around his Neck”,