CHAPTER 19: REVELATIONS
1 Hecker’s father, an Austrian who had been drafted into the German army, was lost at the Russian front four months after he was born. He never saw him again. As a young boy in Austria, Hecker had grown up with only dark impressions of Russia, reinforced by his teachers, who returned from the front with grim war stories. At thirteen years old, he emigrated to the United States, and later earned a doctorate in metallurgy and materials from the Case Institute of Technology before going to work at Los Alamos. He rose to become director of the laboratory in 1986. Almost immediately, he was drawn into the arms control debates. In 1988, Hecker and other U.S. scientists carried out a joint nuclear weapons verification experiment with Soviet scientists. The experiments brought the Americans into contact for the first time with Victor Mikhailov, the leading Soviet expert on nuclear testing diagnostics. Hecker, interview, Dec. 9, 2008.
2 See “Russian-American Collaborations to Reduce the Nuclear Danger,” Los Alamos Science, Los Alamos National Laboratory, no. 24, 1996, pp. 1–93; and Steve Coll and David B. Ottaway, “Secret Visits Helped Define 3 Powers’ Ties,” Washington Post, April 11, 1995, p. A1.
3 The International Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter, Dec. 29, 1972, entered into force for the Soviet Union in 1976.
4 At first, he disclosed waste dumping, and later the reactors were revealed in February 1992 in the newspaper Sobesednkik, by Alexander Yemelyanenkov, who represented Arkhangelsk in parliament. Josh Handler, interview, Dec. 19, 2003. Andrei Zolotkov, “On the Dumping of Radioactive Waste at Sea Near Novaya Zemlya,” Greenpeace Nuclear Seas Campaign and Russian Information Agency, Monday, Sept. 23, 1991, Moscow. The author also received recollections from Zolotkov, Oct. 13, 2008; Floriana Fossato, Aug. 6, 2008; John Sprange, Aug. 10, 2008; and Dima Litvinov, Aug. 6, 2008.
5 See “Facts and Problems Related to Radioactive Waste Disposal in Seas Adjacent to the Territory of the Russian Federation,” Office of the President of the Russian Federation, Moscow, 1993.
6 Yablokov, interview, June 25, 1998. Yeltsin formed the commission Oct. 24, 1992.
7 After the Bush-Gorbachev unilateral withdrawals in September and October 1991, talks with Moscow made little progress, Undersecretary of State Reginald Bartholomew told Congress. “Trip Report: A Visit to the Commonwealth of Independent States,” Senate Armed Services Committee, 102nd Congress, 2nd Session, S Prt. 102-85, March 10, 1985.
8 “Next Steps on Safety, Security, and Dismantlement,” Jan. 24, 1992, cable to the State Department and the White House from Moscow. Declassified in part to author Sept. 22, 2006, under FOIA.
9 Burns, interview, Aug. 12, 2004.
10 “Delegation on Nuclear Safety, Security and Dismantlement (SSD): Summary Report of Technical Exchanges in Albuquerque, April 28—May 1, 1992,” State Department cable.
11 Note made by a participant who asked to remain anonymous, undated.
12 Keith Almquist, communications with author, Dec. 14, 2008, and Jan. 24, 2009. Later, Sandia procured materials for another ninety-nine upgrades and sent these in standard shipping containers to a Russian rail car factory in Tver, Russia, and then contracted with the factory to do the conversions. The upgrades involved changing the insulation and locking down the movable platform. Sandi also provided alarm-monitoring equipment. Some older Russian rail cars were made of wood. The United States also provided armored blankets and “supercontainers” to protect warheads from gunfire.
13 “President Boris Yeltsin’s Statement on Arms Control,” TASS, Jan. 29, 1992.
14 This account is based on Mirzayanov interview, July 26, 2008; Mirzayanov, Vyzov (Kazan: Dom Pechati, 2002), published in English as State Secrets: An Insider’s Chronicle of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program (Denver: Outskirts Press, 2009); and Mirzayanov, “Dismantling the Soviet/Russian Chemical Weapons Complex: An Insiders View,” in Amy Smithson, ed., Chemical Weapons Disarmament in Russia: Problems and Prospects (Washington, D.C.: Stimson Center, October 1995), pp. 21–34.
15 On the Lenin Prizes, Mirzayanov originally believed they were for the binary novichok agents, but later learned that they had received the prize for creating another binary.
16 The article was signed by Mirzayanov and Lev Fedorov, a chemist who, in the 1990s, founded and headed the Association for Chemical Security, a group concerned about storage and destruction of chemical weapons arsenals.
17 His coauthor, Fedorov, was interrogated, as were some journalists, but not charged.
18 The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction was adopted in Geneva on Sept. 3, 1992, by the Conference on Disarmament. It was opened for signature in Paris from Jan. 13 to 15, 1993, and entered into force on April 29, 1997. Both Russia and the United States ratified the treaty.
19 Mirzayanov drew support from around the world. Scientists, politicians and human rights activists wrote letters on his behalf to the authorities in Moscow. Mirzayanov and Colby later married. Mirzayanov now lives in the United States.
20 On March 11, 1994, the attorney general closed the case. During the proceedings, another disenchanted veteran of the chemical weapons program, Vladimir Uglev, had corroborated what Mirzayanov said. Uglev later threatened to release the formulas of the novichok agents unless the case was dropped. Oleg Vishnyakov, “Interview with a Noose Around the Neck,” Novoye Vremya, Moscow, no. 6, Feb. 1993, pp. 40–41, as translated in JPRS-UMA-92-022, June 29, 1993. Vladimir Uglev, interview, June 10, 1998. Uglev said his threat to reveal the formulas was a bluff. “I don’t know if I could have done that,” he said.
21 This account is based on interviews with Blair, Feb. 20 and March 9, 2004; The Logic of Accidental Nuclear War (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1993); “The Russian C3I,” a paper by Valery E. Yarynich, Feb. 24, 1993, and a copy of Yarynich’s review, May 31, 1993, both courtesy of Blair; and interviews with Yarynich.
22 Yarynich had already made two authorized presentations overseas on nuclear command and control. On April 23–25, 1992, Yarynich was delegated by the General Staff to participate in a conference in Estonia, and he made another presentation Nov. 19–21, 1992, in Stockholm.
23 After Blair’s op-ed appeared, Yarynich wrote his own article, emphasizing the role of Perimeter as a “safety catch” against a mistaken launch. He also called for more openness about nuclear command and control systems. “The Doomsday Machine’s Safety Catch,” New York Times, Feb. 1, 1994, p. A17. Other articles began to appear by Russian experts on Perimeter, and Yarynich published a more detailed description in his book, C3: Nuclear Command, Control, Cooperation (Washington, D.C.: Center for Defense Information, 2003), pp. 156–159.
CHAPTER 20: YELTSIN’S PROMISE
1 Braithwaite, Across the Moscow River (New Haven: Yale, 2002), pp. 142–143. Also, Braithwaite diary entries and communication with author, May 19, 2008. A confidential source told the author Yeltsin also called the biological weapons scientists “misguided geniuses.”