13 Victor Vyshinsky, interview, Oct. 13, 1998.
14 See “Statement of the Director of Central Intelligence Before the Senate Armed Services Committee,” Jan. 22, 1992.
15 Andrei Kolesnikov, “Russian Scientists Accused of Wanting to Help North Korea Become a Nuclear Power,”
16 Michael Dobbs, “Collapse of Soviet Union Proved Boon to Iranian Missile Program,” TWP, Jan. 13, 2002, p. A19; notes, Dobbs interview with Vadim Vorobei, Moscow 2001. A fascinating account of a second Russian missile expert’s sojourn in Tehran is in Yevgenia Albats, “Our Man in Tehran,”
17 Gharbiyeh set out to obtain advanced missile guidance systems. In November 1994, he appeared at Energomash, a giant Soviet-era rocket engine manufacturer, with a delegation of Iraqis who were disguised as “Jordanian” businessmen. Energomash had built about sixty types of engines over a half century, but in the years after the Soviet collapse, work was scarce, and Energomash was desperate for orders from abroad. Gharbiyeh presented a business card from the “Gharbiyeh Company.” No one at Energomash checked the passports or identity of the businessmen. The visitors outlined technical specifications of the rocket engines they wanted to buy, and on November 18, signed a letter of intent with three Energomash officials to procure them. Victor Sigaev, deputy general director for external economic affairs, and Felix Evmenenko, chief of security for the department for information and international cooperation, NPO Energomash interview, December 1998. They said the deals never went through, the engines were not built and they only learned later that the visitors were from Iraq. Evmenenko said they were given approval in advance from the Russian government to have the initial meeting. The visitors were told that any deal would have to be formally approved by the government, and they never returned, he added.
18 Gharbiyeh purchased the gyroscopes from the Scientific Research Institute of Chemical and Building Machinery in Sergiev Posad, north of Moscow. Using a front company he created, Gharbiyeh negotiated to buy the gyros and other equipment with three deputy directors and the chief accountant at the institute. He had the gyros tested at a Moscow-based company, Mars Rotor. Vladimir Orlov and William C. Potter, “The Mystery of the Sunken Gyros,”
19 “To the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation, V. S. Chernomyrdin,” letter from Nechai as well as union and city leaders, Sept. 6, 1996. This account is also drawn from Boris Murashkin, interview, Dec. 3, 1996, Chelyabinsk; “Pominki v Snezhinske” [Wake in Snezhinsk], Grigory Yavlinsky,
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,”
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
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,
15 On the Lenin Prizes, Mirzayanov originally believed they were for the 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
