Читать онлайн "State Secrets: An Insider's Chronicle of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program" - Мирзаянов Вил Султанович - RuLit

I should mention that beginning in January 1, 1993, the new List of Information of State Secrecy, which practically repeats the words of the old one, was introduced in Russia, and it also lacks any kind of wording about chemical weapons.

This conclusion came as no surprise to me, because the majority of the members of the expert commission were representatives of the military-chemical complex. These people were much more guided by their official responsibilities than by their feelings of civic duty. The fact that the experts Major General Vadim V. Smirnitsky (whose military rank was not listed in the document) and Colonel Nikolai I. Chugunov refused to sign this conclusion confirms this. Each of them wrote his own personal conclusion, in which each denied that I had disclosed any state secrets. Their conclusions could be summed up as follows from the resolution written by Nikolai Chugunov:[167]

“If the indicated information is true, it can’t constitute a state or a work-related secret because it doesn’t contain specific facts about the structure of the new chemical agent; therefore, its disclosure can’t have a negative impact on the quality of the military and economic potential of the country or have any other grave consequences for the defensive capability, or the state security, or seriously damage the political interests of the state, or damage the state in any other way.”

General Smirnitsky stressed in his conclusions[168] that the information about the newly synthesized chemical agent didn’t disclose:

-its name (conventional or chemical);

-its physical or chemical properties, which are indispensable characteristics of any synthesized product;

-the name and quantitative ratio of the components of the binary system, without this the notion “binary bomb” makes no sense;

-information about what types of ammunition the new chemical agent is intended for;

- or information about whether the chemical agent was adopted by the army.

Victor Shkarin tried to lessen the significance of the conclusions written by the respectable veterans of the Chemical Troops, and he conducted additional interrogations[169]^,[170]^,[171] to “clarify” their positions, which were already quite obvious. They didn’t change their minds, which of course was a serious blow for the carefully concocted “findings” of the Investigation Department. During the interrogation on April 23, 1993 Nikolai Chugunov entirely destroyed one of the main accusatory tricks of Shkarin. When he asked Chugunov about my alleged disclosure of the results of the “goal-oriented program” he said, “It’s difficult for me to answer the question as to whether Mirzayanov revealed the results of some kind of concrete program of scientific research work, because the materials presented to the Expertise don’t contain any information about a concrete program of scientific research and its elements”. Defiant Shkarin tried to save the situation by using the term “goal-oriented program” and immediately sent a letter to Director Petrunin[172] asking for clarification, but the director[173] was almost helpless to respond because there was no real goal-oriented program, except for the General Directives for the creation of a new chemical agent. I was certain that such a “special purpose program” for the development of chemical weapons had never existed and does not exist today. After this crash, Captain of Justice Shkarin simply erased all references to a “goal-oriented program” from all copies of the lists of state secrets quoted in the case and edited their items as if they never ever contained any of those words. He also deleted this from all the other documents and transcripts of interrogations attached to the case except for the letters.

Trying to repair the damage, Shkarin also interrogated the members of the expert commission Anatoly Kochetkov,[174] Boris Kuznetsov[175] and Igor Gabov.[176] The first two of them surprisingly “admitted” that Mirzayanov meant the new chemical agent A-232 in the article “A Poisoned Policy”. I had never used this codename in my publications and interviews, and I didn’t mention the term “Novichok” either. Before these experts testified, Andrei Zheleznyakov and Vladimir Uglev[177]^,[178] had publicly disclosed them. I didn’t understand why Shkarin created this perfidy, until the case went to trial.

There was already a greater blunder in the works, apart from the mistakes mentioned above regarding the arbitrary interpretation of the terms on the lists of secrets, where even the words “chemical weapons” weren’t to be found. We also insisted that if all lists of state secrets didn’t contain any definition of chemical weapons or chemical agents, then it would not be legal to apply them to my case. The definition “ammunitions” from any reasonable point of view cannot be applied to chemical weapons or chemical agents. Certainly the Investigation Department was in an awkward situation to argue with this logic. To try to save the situation, the Investigation Department of the MB RF sent a letter to General Staff Headquarters of Russia.[179] The answer was confusing,[180] though it slightly comforted the investigator. I consider it my duty to say that both the request and the answer are highly provocative.

Those who compiled the new list of secrets and those who interpreted it supposed that the development of chemical weapons would continue in the future. This is despite the fact that by September of 1992, when the new list of secrets was compiled and the term “chemical weapons” still wasn’t to be found there, the Chemical Weapons Convention had been initialed and Russia was one of the major participants of the negotiations. However, the signatories participating counted on secrecy and were certain that their secrets would never be made public.

The Russian Government Comes Running to the Aid of the KGB

Evidently, there was more than enough juridical “evidence” of my guilt, from the point of view of the investigation, to justify conducting closed legal proceedings.

On the other hand, the lists of secrets did not contain even an indirect reference to the development of chemical weapons, and it was impossible to ignore this deficit any further. General Balashov and his subordinates understood that if another specialist repeated my actions, they would have practically no legal basis for conducting a legitimate investigation. That is why General-Chekist Demin[181] initiated the urgent adoption of an amendment to the Temporary List of Secrets.[182] The new Russian definition included “information that discloses the content of former or current works in the area of chemical or biological weapons, or the essence of those works, the results achieved, as well as information on the protocols of synthesis, production technologies, or articles of production equipment.” On March 30, 1993, it was issued in the form of Resolution N 256-16, signed by Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.

This was already quite a different story. Finally a real document was issued, in which for the first time in history Russia legally admitted that chemical weapons were being developed. I can say without any exaggeration that it appeared thanks to me.