2 James A. Baker III, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace, 1989–1992 (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995), p. 620. On the same day he met with Baker, Yeltsin issued a lengthy statement on arms control in which he declared that Russia “is for strict implementation of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention.” “President Boris Yeltsin’s Statement on Arms Control,” TASS, Jan. 29, 1992. Also, Ann Devroy, R. Jeffrey Smith, “U.S., Russia Pledge New Partnership; Summits Planned in Washington, Moscow,” Washington Post, p. A1, Feb. 2, 1992.
3 Popov, interview, May 16, 2005; Gait, communication with author, July 7–8, 2008.
4 Ken Alibek with Stephen Handelman, Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of theLargest Covert Weapons Program in the World—Told from the Inside by the Man Who Ran It (New York: Random House, 1999), pp. 242–244.
5 Braithwaite, journal entry.
6 At the Third Review Conference of the BWC, held in Geneva Sept. 9–27, 1991, the parties, which included the Soviet Union, agreed to a series of confidence-building measures, including “declaration of past activities in offensive and/or defensive biological research and development programmes” and agreed that exchange of data should be sent annually to the U.N. no later than April 15, covering the previous calendar year.
7 “Decree of the President of the Russian Federation from April 11, 1992, No. 390, On Providing Fulfillment of International Obligations in the Field of Biological Weapons.”
8 In his diary Braithwaite wrote of his reaction, “I say that the right response is to take it at face value, and that the Prime Minister should ram the thought home by sending Yeltsin a personal message congratulating him on his courageous and decisive action. That will make it harder for the Russians to backslide or weave about.” Braithwaite, diary entry, April 23, 1992.
9 “Declaration of Past Activity Within the Framework of the Offensive and Defensive Programs of Biological Research and Development,” also known as “Form F.” Yeltsin admitted to the newspaper Izvestia the military was trying to hide the biological weapons program from him. He recalled his conversation with Bush at Camp David this way: “I said I could not give him firm assurances of cooperation. Certainly, this is not acceptable among politicians, but I said this: ‘We are still deceiving you, Mr. Bush. We promised to eliminate bacteriological weapons. But some of our experts did everything possible to prevent me from learning the truth. It was not easy but I outfoxed them. I caught them red-handed.’” Yeltsin offered few details but said he had discovered two test sites where experts were experimenting with anthrax on animals. Izvestia, April 22, 1992.
10 Braithwaite journal entries for these dates.
11 Komsomolskaya Pravda, May 27, 1992, p. 2.
12 “Text of President Yeltsin’s Address to US Congress,” TASS, June 17, 1992.
13 The drafts were discussed June 4, June 15 and July 28, primarily with officials in the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, according to records made available to the author. Also, R. Jeffrey Smith, “Russia Fails to Deter Germ Arms; U.S. and Britain Fear Program Continues in Violation of Treaty,” Washington Post, Aug. 31, 1992, p. 1.
14 Frank Wisner, interview, Aug. 12, 2008. See TNSA EBB 61, doc. 32, for Wisner’s talking points. For this account I have also relied on an authoritative confidential source.
15 “A Deputy’s Request,” Larissa Mishustina, undated. Alexei Yablokov, letter to Yeltsin, Dec. 3, 1991. Spravka, signed by Yablokov, Dec. 6, 1991. All three documents courtesy Meselson archive. Yablokov says in both the spravka and the letter to Yeltsin that documents on the Sverdlovsk case were destroyed by instructions from the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union on Dec. 4, 1990, No. 1244-167, “On Works of Special Problems.”
16 Guillemin was at the time a professor at Boston College and has since become a senior fellow at the Security Studies Program at MIT in the Center for International Studies. The story of the expedition is told in greater detail in her book. She and Meselson are married.
17 Meselson conveyed this paper to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, where it was published. Faina A. Abramova, Lev M. Grinberg, Olga V. Yampolskaya and David H. Walker, “Pathology of Inhalational Anthrax in 42 Cases from the Sverdlovsk Outbreak of 1979,” PNAS, Vol. 90, pp. 2291–2294, March 1993.
18 Meselson et al., Science, vol. 266, no. 5188, November 18, 1994.
19 Alibek, pp. 244–256.
20 Confidential source, and David Kelly, “The Trilateral Agreement: Lessons for Biological Weapons Verification,” Chapter 6 in Verification Yearbook 2002 (London: Verification Research, Training and Information Center, December 2002).
21 Kelly interview with Joby Warrick of the Washington Post, June 17, 2002. Warrick notes. In fact, the Pokrov plant was a standby factory for producing smallpox and anti-livestock diseases in the event of war mobilization. According to a confidential source, the plant was capable of producing ten tons a year of smallpox agent. Joby Warrick, “Russia’s Poorly Guarded Past; Security Lacking at Facilities Used for Soviet Bioweapons Research,” Washington Post, June 17, 2002, p. A1.
22 Letter from President Clinton to Congress, Nov. 12, 1996. State Department press guidance for worldwide embassies on July 7, 1998, said, “In November, 1995, the United States imposed sanctions on a Russian citizen named Anatoly Kuntsevich for knowingly and materially assisting the Syrian CW program.” State Department cable 122387, released under FOIA to author.
CHAPTER 21: PROJECT SAPPHIRE
1 Gerald F. Seib, “Kazakhstan Is Made for Diplomats Who Find Paris a Bore—At Remote New Embassy, They Dodge Gunmen, Lecture on Economics,” Wall Street Journal Europe, April 22, 1992, p. 1. This account of Project Sapphire is based on interviews with Weber; Jeff Starr; a personal communication from Elwood H. Gift, Oct. 22, 2008; and “Project Sapphire After Action Report,” Defense Threat Reduction Agency, U.S. Department of Defense, declassified to author under FOIA, Sept. 21, 2006. Several other useful published sources were William C. Potter, “Project Sapphire: U.S.-Kazakhstani Cooperation for Nonproliferation,” in John M. Shields and William C. Potter, eds., Dismantling the Cold War: U.S. and NIS Perspectives on the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, CSIA Studies in International Security (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997); and John A. Tirpak, “Project Sapphire,” Air Force magazine, Journal of the Air Force, vol. 78, no. 8, August 1995; and Philipp C. Bleek, “Global Cleanout: An emerging approach to the civil nuclear material threat,” Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, September 2004, available at www.nti.org.
2 Embassy of Kazakhstan and Nuclear Threat Initiative, Washington, D.C., Kazakhstan’s Nuclear Disarmament, 2007, see illustration after p. 80.
3 Martha Brill Olcott, Kazakhstan: Unfulfilled Promise (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002), p. 204.
4 Gulbarshyn Bozheyeva, “The Pavlodar Chemical Weapons Plant in Kazakhstan: History and Legacy,” Nonproliferation Review, James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, Monterey, California, Summer 2000, pp. 136–145.
5 Embassy of Kazakhstan, p. 94.