The Dead Hand (84 page)

38
NBC’s
First Tuesday
, on Feb. 4, 1969.

39
Robert A. Wampler, ed., “Biowar: The Nixon Administration’s Decision to End U.S. Biological Warfare Programs,” TNSA EBB 58, doc. 1. Also,
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Vol. E-2
, Documents on Arms Control, 1969–1972, Part 3: Chemical and Biological Warfare; Geneva Protocol; Biological Weapons Convention.

40
Chemical and Bacteriological (Biological) Weapons and the Effects of Their Possible Use
, Report of the Secretary-General, the United Nations, Department of Political and Security Council Affairs, New York, 1969.

41
“Health Aspects of Chemical and Biological Weapons,” Report of a WHO Group of Consultants, World Health Organization, Geneva, 1970; submitted to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Nov. 28, 1969, p. 19.

42
Jonathan B. Tucker, “A Farewell to Germs: The U.S. Renunciation of Biological and Toxin Warfare, 1969–1970,”
International Security
, vol. 27, no. 1, Summer 2002, pp. 107–148. Also see
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976
.

43
Kissinger Telephone Conversations, DNSA, Nov. 25, 1969, 12:30 P.M., and 6:30 P.M. National Archives, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, Henry A. Kissinger Telephone Conversation Transcripts (Telcons). Chronological File. Box 3. November 18–28, 1969.

44
H. R. Haldeman,
The Haldeman Diaries
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1994), p. 111.

45
William Safire, “On Language: Weapons of Mass Destruction,”
The New York Times Magazine
, April 19, 1998, p. 22.

46
Matthew Meselson, “The United States and the Geneva Protocol of 1925,” September 1969, Meselson personal archive. Jeanne Guillemin,
Biological Weapons: From the Invention of State-sponsored Programs to Contemporary Bioterrorism
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), p. 123. Also see
BioEssays
25:12, pp. 1236— 1246, 2003.

47
White House science adviser Lee A. DuBridge said the President’s Science Advisory Committee recommended that the U.S. “renounce all offensive BW; stop completely the procurement of material for offensive BW; destroy existing stockpiles of BW agents and maintain no stockpiles in the future.” TNSA EBB 58, doc. 5. Also see “Averting the Hostile Exploitation of Biotechnology,”
CBW Conventions Bulletin
, Quarterly Journal of the Harvard Sussex Program on CBW Armament and Arms Limitation, issue no. 48, June 2000, pp. 16–19.

48
“HAK Talking Points, Briefing for Congressional Leadership and Press,” TNSA EBB 58, doc. 11.

49
Public Papers of the Presidents, 1969, pp. 968–1970.

50
Memorandum for the President, July 6, 1970, from Melvin Laird, Tab A, “Material to be destroyed (biological and toxin),” TNSA EBB 58, doc. 22.

51
Report to the National Security Council, U.S. Policy on Chemical and Biological Warfare and Agents, TNSA EBB 58, docs. 6a and 6.

52
Foreign Relations, 1969–1972, Vol. E-2
, “Minutes of NSC Meeting on Chemical Warfare and Biological Warfare, Nov. 18, 1969.”

53
Raymond L. Garthoff has offered a suggestion, which remains unproven, that U.S. disinformation persuaded the Soviets that the United States was continuing work on biological weapons after the Nixon decision. According to Garthoff, the FBI fed disinformation to the Soviets that the United States was undertaking a clandestine BW program. See Garthoff, “Polyakov’s Run,”
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
, vol. 56, no. 5, September/October 2000, p. 37. It is known there was a disinformation campaign for chemical weapons, which is described by David Wise in
Cassidy’s Run: The Secret Spy War over Nerve Gas
(New York: Random House, 2000). Details of a disinformation campaign on BW are not known.

1
Jonathan B. Tucker and Raymond A. Zilinskas, “The 1971 Smallpox Epidemic in Aralsk, Kazakhstan, and the Biological Warfare Program.” The paper includes “An Epidemiological Analysis of the 1971 Smallpox Outbreak in Aralsk, Kazakhstan,” by Alan P. Zelicoff, Sandia National Laboratories, pp. 12–21.

2
Burgasov later gave bogus explanations for the Sverdlovsk anthrax epidemic, saying it was caused by contaminated meat. However, his comments in this case seem worth examining; he would have known the truth at the time.

3
Yevgenia Kvitko, “Smallpox, Another Useful Weapon,” an interview with Pyotr Burgasov,
Moscow News
, no. 47, Nov. 21, 2001. Burgasov made several errors in the statement. He was wrong that there were no survivors. Also, the smallpox formula was not “developed” at the island, which was a testing site.

4
The British closed down their bioweapons program in the 1950s. For the British
declaration of Aug. 6, 1968, see “The Problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare,” SIPRI, Vol. 4,
CB Disarmament Negotiations, 1920–1970
, p. 255. For additional insights on the thinking, see “Cabinet, The Queen’s Speech on the Opening of Parliament,” Oct. 16, 1969, British National Archives, file FCO 66/297.

5
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1972:
Vol. E-2,
Documents on Arms Control
. The State Department transcribed portions of the following: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, White House Tapes, with Kissinger, April 10, 1972, 12:44–1:06 P.M., Conversation No. 705–13, and with Connally, April 11, 1972, 3:06–5:05 P.M., Conversation No. 706–5. See
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/frus/nixon/e2/83722.htm
.

6
Domaradsky,
Biowarrior: Inside the Soviet/Russian Biological Warfare Machine
(New York: Prometheus Books, 2003), p. 120.

7
James D. Watson, with Andrew Berry,
DNA: The Secret of Life
(New York: Knopf, 2003), Ch. 4.

8
Ken Alibek, with Stephen Handelman,
Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Weapons Program in the World—Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It
(New York: Random House, 1999), p. 41.

9
Joshua Lederberg, ed.,
Biological Weapons: Limiting the Threat
(Cambridge, Mass.: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 1999), “Germs as Arms: Basic Issues,” Table 1.1, p. 4.

10
The formal title was the Interdepartmental Scientific-Technical Council for Molecular Biology and Genetics. Domaradsky said orders to begin this work were first given in 1971, the year before he came to Moscow. However, other evidence, including dates given by Alibek, suggests the decisions came later, in 1973–1974. Estimates vary on the precise size of the program. A document in Katayev estimates the main organization, Biopreparat, had thirty facilities and twenty-five thousand employees, but some of these may have been working on legitimate civilian projects. “Khim-Prom,” Katayev, Hoover, no date. Alibek, p. 43, says there were thirty thousand employees in Biopreparat, with sixty thousand in the biological weapons effort overall at the peak.

11
Domaradsky, p. 151. The open decree was April 19, 1974. A separate secret decree May 21, 1974, established the microbiology institute at Obolensk, and the founding decree for the institute at Koltsovo came Aug. 2, 1974.

12
Alibek, p. 41.

13
“Iz vystupleniya predstavitelya SSSR v Komitete po razoruzhenniu A. A. Roshchina 12 iyunia 1975g” [From the appearance of the representative of the USSR at the Conference on Disarmament], Katayev, Hoover.

14
William Beecher, “Soviets Feared Violating Germ Weapons Ban,”
Boston Globe
, Sept. 28, 1975, p. 1. Beecher identified facilities in Sverdlovsk, Zagorsk and Omutninsk. These were part of the older military system, not the concealed Biopreparat facilities.

15
Robert A. Wampler and Thomas S. Blanton, eds., “U.S. Intelligence on the Deadliest Modern Outbreak,” TNSA, EBB No. 61, doc. 1.
Posev
, a Russian émigré journal, published an article in October 1979 about a germ warfare accident, but identified the wrong city, saying it was in Novosibirsk.

16
Associated Press, March 21, 1980.

17
David K. Willis, “Soviets: U.S. Double-crossed Us on Germ Warfare Charges,”
Christian Science Monitor
, March 28, 1980, p. 10. When the public statement was made, Willis reported, “The Soviets were furious. First they had been approached in private, and now it was around the world.”

18
TNSA EBB No. 61, doc. 10. Willis reported the Soviets issued three separate public statements March 19–20.

19
Jeanne Guillemin,
Anthrax: The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), p. 8. Israelyan admitted it was a fabrication. Victor Israelyan,
On the Battlefields of the Cold War: A Soviet Ambassador’s Confession
(University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), p. 315.

20
Final Declaration of the First Review Conference, March 21, 1980.

21
TNSA EBB No. 61, doc. 10. The message may have been written imprecisely. An outbreak of inhalation anthrax might be expected to have fast impact, while contaminated meat could be prolonged because of transport and storage. But the larger point was that the United States believed it had been inhalation anthrax.

22
Meselson, “Memorandum to files regarding Sverdlovsk,” 1980, 7 pages, courtesy Meselson archive. Meselson, interview, Sept. 18, 2008. Meselson worked alone with Hoptman, but his analysis was fed into a government working group. After several months of examining the intelligence, the group concluded there had been an accidental release at the Sverdlovsk facility that caused an emission of anthrax spores and resulted in the first wave of deaths, possibly followed by a second wave caused by contaminated meat that was purchased on the black market. Leslie H. Gelb, “Keeping an Eye on Russia,”
The New York Times Magazine
, Nov. 29, 1981. Also see Guillemin, p. 9.

23
Alibek, Ch. 5 and 8.

24
He was known then as Kanatjan Alibekov. He changed his name to Ken Alibek years later upon arrival in the United States.

25
Alibek, p. 53.

26
Alibek said 836 was a code number for a natural strain of anthrax that the Soviets had found in Kirov in the 1950s. Alibek, interview, June 18, 2007.

27
Roger Roffey, Kristina S. Westerdahl,
Conversion of Former Biological Weapons Facilities in Kazakhstan, A Visit to Stepnogorsk, July 2000
, Swedish Defense Research Agency, May 2001. Report No. FOI-R-0082-SE, based on a conference held in Stepnogorsk, July 24–26, 2000. Also, Gulbarshyn Bozheyeva, Yerlan Kunakbayev and Dastan Yeleukenov,
Former Soviet Biological Weapons Facilities in Kazakhstan: Past, Present, and Future
, Occasional Paper No. 1, Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, June 1999.

28
Alibek says overall the Soviet capacity was five thousand tons a year, but the actual military mobilization plans were less. A plant in Kurgan was to make one thousand tons, Penza five hundred tons and Stepnogorsk three hundred tons, for a total of eighteen hundred a year.

1
Mikhail Gorbachev,
Memoirs
(New York: Doubleday, 1996), p. 152.

2
Angus Roxburgh,
The Second Russian Revolution
(London: BBC Books, 1991), p. 17; and Archie Brown,
The Gorbachev Factor
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996),
pp. 67–68. By Volsky’s account, Andropov flew into a rage at the deletion, and Gorbachev was sent to calm him down. Gorbachev claimed in his memoirs that neither Chernenko, Andropov nor Volsky ever talked to him about it.

3
Margaret Thatcher,
The Downing Street Years
(New York: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 458.

4
Don Oberdorfer,
From the Cold War to a New Era
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), p. 80.

5
Gorbachev, p. 155.

6
Anatoly Chernyaev,
My Six Years with Gorbachev
(University Park, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), p. 8.

7
Valery E. Yarynich,
C
³
: Nuclear Command, Control Cooperation
(Washington: Center for Defense Information, 2003), pp. 140–141; and Yarynich interviews and correspondence, 1998–2009.

8
Yarynich, pp. 142–145.

9
Yarynich, p. 146.

10
TV Center, Moscow, revealed the “Grot” code name, long a secret, in a broadcast Oct. 10, 2008. Also see
GlobalSecurity.org
. Bruce Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information, wrote in the
Washington Post
on May 25, 2003, that at Kosvinsky, Russian commanders can communicate to strategic forces using very-low-frequency (VLF) radio signals. He added, “The facility is the critical link to Russia’s ‘dead hand’ communications network, designed to ensure semi-automatic retaliation to a decapitating strike.”

11
The decision was dated August 30, 1974, according to a history of Yuzhnoye, S. N. Konyukhov, ed., “Prizvany vremenem: Rakety i kosmicheskiye apparaty konstruktorskogo buro ‘Yuzhnoye’” [Called up for service by the time: Missiles and spacecraft of the “Yuzhnoye” Design Bureau] (Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine: ART-PRESS, 2004).

12
A document from the Katayev archive dated February 1982 confirms that the system was under construction then but not yet tested. The Katayev records also show six SS-17 missiles brought on duty in 1984 as Perimeter. See Podvig, “The Window of Vulnerability That Wasn’t,”
International Security
, vol. 3, no. 1, Summer 2008.

13
Further confirmation of plans for a fully automatic retaliatory system is contained in an internal Soviet defense document in Katayev, Hoover. Oleg Belyakov, who worked in Katayev’s department, complained in a 1985 memo that not enough attention had been paid “to a proposal, extremely important from the military and political point of view, to create a fully-automated retaliatory strike system that would be activated from the top command levels in a moment of crisis (with a notification to the adversary).” The comment about a “super-project” is from Katayev,
Some Facts
. Hines quotes Viktor M. Surikov, who had spent thirty years in building, designing and testing missiles, as saying the Dead Hand was designed by his team and approved by the Central Committee, but a fully automatic system was later rejected by Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, chief of the General Staff. Hines et al.,
Soviet Intentions 1965–1985
, BDM Federal Inc., vol. 2, pp. 134–135.