Hopefully, after this resolution was passed my colleagues, the specialists in chemical weapons, finally got their chance to appeal to the authorities and ask to have their pensions increased to the level of other employees working in especially dangerous and hazardous conditions. However, they probably don’t know that such a document exists. This is another reason why I am disclosing this document. Of course the KGB didn’t have these noble objectives in mind when it composed this document. It was designed to accuse me by retroactively creating a quasi-legal base to prove my guilt. A number of U.S. human rights organizations, politicians, representatives to the United Nations and others immediately started paying attention to this after I sent the “Resolution” on to my friend Gale Colby, who is now my wife, along with other excerpts from my case.
The “experts” Anatoly Kochetkov174 and Boris Kuznetsov175 and others started constantly referring to this resolution during their additional interrogations in the Investigation Department. So then, there it was. There were no doubts left about how and why this hurriedly adopted government document appeared. With a goal of intimidating the American journalist Will Englund in April 9 1993, the Investigation Department summoned him for interrogation as a witness.[183], [184], [185], [186] Will Englund categorically refused to testify against me and didn’t sign the transcript of interrogation. Unfortunately his interpreter Andrei Mironov made a mistake and signed the interrogation transcript as the interpreter, which could be taken as Will’s refusal to sign this document – just because of his lack of knowledge of Russian.
The investigator had no clear legal grounds on which to base my indictment, and so he tried to compensate for this gap by speaking about the alleged serious damage that my publications caused to interests of the state. The List of Major Information of State Secrecy contained the definition of secrecy. Information was considered secret if its revelation resulted in damage to the defense capability, state, military, political, or other interests of the country. For this reason Shkarin appealed to a number of departments with respective inquiries.[187], [188], [189], [190], [191], [192]
The response of the military188 didn’t leave any doubt as to what their attitude toward my actions was.
This document became eloquent evidence of how “originally” our military leaders interpreted the Convention for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Probably there is a general style of stating the objectives of the Convention that escapes me. But still, I couldn’t get rid of the thought: our military people are certain that the prohibition of the development of chemical weapons is not subject to any control – not only for them, but also, as they expressed, for other countries involved in the development of chemical weapons. I don’t know what other people would say, but I think this is more than alarming! Still, I felt slightly better because I knew that, to a considerable extent I had helped to prevent this perversion of the Convention, which hadn’t yet been ratified and or entered into force.
General Kolesnikov’s attempt to insert his overall contribution into the substance of my indictment proved less fruitful, except for exposing himself with the military’s “flexible” interpretation of the Convention.
The investigation asked the general whether I had damaged the defensive capabilities of Russia, which is the primary concern of the Head of the General Staff Headquarters. However, in response, the general refers to politics and some strange “military damage” without deciphering what it involved. Kolesnikov was openly deceitful when he accused me of disclosing the “…conventional names of these new substances and the overall development programs.” I have tried to cite all my articles in this book, so that the reader can independently judge what I wrote. It is very easy to see that there was no trace of “conventional names,” and even more so no “overall development programs.”
The answer of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs put everything into its proper place.192 In its response, it precisely indicated that the factor which precipitated the Mirzayanov case and all the ensuing scandal, was the dangerous actions of the Russian military-chemical complex.
On May 13, 1993, I was summoned for the last interrogation, at which Senior Prosecutor Buivolov from the Attorney General’s Office, was present. The investigator showed me and my lawyer a resolution to drop the charges against me for my part in “disclosing information about the system of organizing promising applied scientific research work, carried out in the interests of the defense of the country, and about the cooperation of specific designers and the producers of chemical weapons…”
Evidently this clause was too absurd, even from the investigator’s point of view, because at that time there was enough information in the press regarding this, even without my articles. However, all the charges that I mentioned above, which the expert commission had obligingly rubber-stamped as expected, still stood in force. They were just reformulated in a new indictment. The interrogation that followed, after I was shown this new indictment, was a rather formal procedure. However, it didn’t prevent the investigator from sticking to his line and asking questions that had already become stereotypical. Such as the following excerpt from the transcript of the interrogation of May 13, 1993:[193]
“Question: Do you plead guilty to the charges filed against you in the indictment?
Answer: No, I am absolutely not guilty of the charges brought against me in the indictment. [bold type and italics by me—V.M.].
Question: What explanations can you give concerning the indictment that was shown to you?
Answer: The charge I was shown today appears to be an exact copy of the ones I was shown before, and I regard it as a political provocation performed by the Attorney General’s Office and the RF Ministry of Security with the goal of discrediting the democratic transformation in our country. This is an attempt to scare democratically minded scientists by my example. The indictment is a crime against the country that signed the Convention for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. This is an attempt to undermine the trust of the whole world community in Russian foreign policy. I think that as neither the form, nor the essence of the indictment corresponds to the current Temporary List of Information of State Secrecy, this fact discredits this criminal case. I am not going to give any explanations regarding the indictment.”
On that day the investigator decided to record one more transcript of an interrogation to fulfill some kind of plan he had. He was interested in my attitude toward the General Staff Headquarters. In particular, he wanted to know what I thought about the assertion that the term “ammunition” also covered chemical weapons. He asked what I thought about the additional clarifications of the “experts” Gabov and Kochetkov.
Here are my answers to these questions:
“I looked though the transcripts of the experts’ interrogation and the letter, and I am claiming that the experts didn’t answer the essence of the question I had posed, because neither of them referred to any special purpose program, the results of which I had allegedly disclosed. Let each of them show me a specific program and point out the statements in my articles that are completely identical with the wording of the results of the aforementioned program. Then I will consider that the experts did their job conscientiously. Otherwise, I will have to consider the conclusion of these experts biased and unscrupulous. For this reason I request an additional expert commission. I think that the answer of G. Funygin, Deputy Head of Department Eight of the Administration of the General Staff Headquarters, is incompetent. It discredits the policy of our country after we have signed the Convention for the Prohibiting of Chemical Weapons. This answer means that the new list adopted on January 1, 1993 provides for the protection of secrets in the area of the development and testing of chemical weapons.
183
Pavel Gutiontov, “Let’s Begin with the American to Teach Others”,
184
Kim Gamel, American Journalist Interrogated in Lefortovo,
185
Justin Burke, “US Reporter Called For Questioning By Russia’s KGB”,
186
Jon Auerbach, “US reporter refuses to testify in Russia”,
187
Letter of the Head of Investigation Department Mayor General S.D. Balashov to Colonel General M.P. Kolesnikov, Head of the General Staff Headquarters of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, 6/01341/April 5, 1993. Secret.
188
Letter of Head of the General Staff , Colonel General M. Kolesnikov to Major General S.D. Balashov, Head of the Investigation Department at the Ministry of Security of the Russian Federation, April 29, 1993 N 312/10/053. In response to N 6 01341 of April 5, 1993.
189
Letter of Head of the Department Major General S.D. Balashov to V.P. Ivanov, Chairman of the RF Committee for Chemical and Petrochemical Industry , 6/01342 April 5, 1993.
190
Letter of Chairman V.P. Ivanov to S.D. Balashov, Head of the Investigation Department at the Ministry of Security of the Russian Federation. Secret.
191
Letter of Head of the Department Major General S.D. Balashov to G.V. Berdennikov, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, 6/01343//April 5, 1993. Secret.
192
Letter of Deputy Minister of G.V. Berdennikov to S.D. Balashov, Head of Investigation Department at the RF Ministry of Security, May 11, 1993 N 61/drk. Secret. See Annex 53.
193
Transcript of interrogation of accused V.S. Mirzayanov, May 13 1993, Investigation Department of Ministry of Security of RF, Case 62, v. 1, p. 223-224. Top Secret.