The Dead Hand

collection of papers at the archive.

I have been enriched by years of guidance and teaching by Archie Brown at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University.

Valuable contributions were also made by Ken Alibek, Martin Anderson, James A. Baker III, Rodric Braithwaite, Matthew Bunn, Joseph Cirincione, Thomas C. Cochran, Dick Combs, Igor Domaradsky, Sidney Drell, Erik Engling, Kenneth J. Fairfax, Andy Fisher, Chrystia Freeland, Oleg Gordievsky, Tatiana Gremyakova, Jeanne Guillemin, Cathy Gwin, Josh Handler, Anne M. Harrington, Laura Holgate, Richard Lugar, Matthew Meselson, Vil Mirzayanov, Kenneth A. Myers III, Sam Nunn, Vladimir Orlov, Sergei Popov, Theodore A. Postol, Amy Smithson, Margaret Tutwiler, Yevgeny Velikhov, Frank von Hippel and Lawrence Wright.

I am grateful for a media fellowship at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, in 2004, which allowed me time for research. At the Hoover Library and Archives, I was assisted with great professionalism by Carol Leadenham, Lara Soroka, Heather Wagner and Brad Bauer.

At the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, Kings College, London, my thanks to Caroline Lam and Katharine Higgon, and at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, my gratitude to Lisa Jones. I also profited from research at the British National Archives at Kew, and the U.S. National Archives at College Park, Maryland.

To Esther Newberg, my deepest appreciation for unflagging commitment and enthusiasm. At Doubleday, Bill Thomas gave the project a life. From our first conversations, Kristine Puopolo provided wise counsel and was a thoughtful, inspiring editor. And my thanks also to Stephanie Bowen.

To my wife, Carole, who read the entire manuscript many times over, to my sons, Daniel and Benjamin, and to my parents, to whom this book is dedicated, I express profound appreciation for loving support on the long and winding road.

——— ABBREVIATIONS IN NOTES ———

DNSA

Digital National Security Archive,

http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com

EBB

Electronic Briefing Book of the National Security Archive

FOIA

Freedom of Information Act

FBIS

Foreign Broadcast Information Service

Katayev

The papers of Vitaly Katayev at the Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University, and in author’s possession

NIE

National Intelligence Estimate

TNSA

The National Security Archive,

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/index.html

RRPL

Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

————— ENDNOTES —————

Prologue

1 Margarita Ivanovna Ilyenko, interview, Nov. 30, 1998. Roza Gaziyeva is quoted by Sergei Parfenov in Rodina, no. 5, Oct. 24, 1990.

2 Matthew Meselson, Jeanne Guillemin, Martin Hugh-Jones, Alexander Langmuir, Ilona Popova, Alexis Shelokov, Olga Yampolskaya, “The Sverdlovsk Anthrax Outbreak of 1979,” Science, 1994, vol. 266, pp. 1202-1208; Jeanne Guillemin, Anthrax: The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); Ken Alibek, with Stephen Handelman, Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World— Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It (New York: Random House, 1999), Ch. 7.

3 Theodore J. Cieslak and Edward M. Eitzen Jr., “Clinical and Epidemiologic Principles of Anthrax,” in Emerging Infectious Diseases, vol. 5, no. 4, July–Aug. 1999, p. 552.

4 Alibek was told the accident resulted from failure to replace a filter, but this account has never been confirmed. Alibek, pp. 73–74. Alibek said the release occurred on Friday, March 30. Given wind patterns, Monday April 2 seems more likely. Alibek told the author Monday was possible.

5 The children may have been indoors, in schools, or had a different immune system reaction, or been less susceptible to airborne anthrax than adults.

6 Lev M. Grinberg and Faina A. Abramova, interviews, Nov. 30, 1998. Abramova’s account also appeared in Rodina.

7 Guillemin, p. 14.

8 Vladlen Krayev, interview, Nov. 1998. It was later realized the incubation period could be much longer.

9 Some months after the epidemic, the KGB searched Hospital No. 40 for materials. Abramova hid unlabeled samples on a high shelf. The KGB did not find them.

10 Petrov interviews, January 1999; Jan. 22, 2006, May 29, 2007.

11 Pavel Podvig, “History and the Current Status of the Russian Early Warning System,” Science and Global Security, October 2002, pp. 21–60.

12 Podvig, p. 31.

INTRODUCTION

1 Bernard Brodie, ed., The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and the World Order (New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1946).

2 Albert Carnesale, Paul Doty, Stanley Hoffmann, Samuel P. Huntington, Joseph S. Nye Jr., and Scott D. Sagan, Living with Nuclear Weapons (New York: Bantam Books, 1983), pp. 31–32.

3 Admiral G. P. Nanos, “Strategic Systems Update,” Submarine Review, April 1997, pp. 12–17. Nanos quoted another admiral but affirmed this was a “reasonable, unclassified scale.” See “The Capabilities of Trident Against Russian Silo-based Missiles: Implications for START III and Beyond,” George N. Lewis, Theodore A. Postol, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Feb. 2–6, 1998.

4 David Alan Rosenberg, “The Origins of Overkill, Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy, 1945–1960,” in Strategy and Nuclear Deterrence, Princeton University Press, 1984, pp. 113–181. Also see William Burr, ed., “The Creation of SIOP-62: More Evidence on the Origins of Overkill,” EBB No. 130, doc. 23, “Note