The Dead Hand

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.

6 Olcott, Ch. 1, “Introducing Kazakhstan.”

7 After some initial hesitation, Nazarbayev agreed to removal of all the strategic weapons back to Russia, and Kazakhstan ratified the Start 1 treaty and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

8 Mikhailov interview with Nukem Market Report, a monthly published by Nukem, Inc., based in Stamford, Connecticut, and one of the world’s leading suppliers of nuclear fuel. Earlier estimates were about six hundred tons, but there was a high degree of uncertainty. Oleg Bukharin estimated independently in 1995 that Russia had thirteen hundred metric tons of HEU. Bukharin, “Analysis of the Size and Quality of Uranium Inventories in Russia,” Science and Global Security, vol. 6, 1996, pp. 59–77.

9 Jeff Starr, interview, Aug. 26, 2008.

10 “The President’s News Conference with President Nursultan Nazarbayev,” Public Papers of the Presidents, 30 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 289.

11 Norman Polmar and K. J. Moore, Cold War Submarines: The Design and Construction of U.S. and Soviet Submarines (Dulles, Va.: Brassey’s, 2004), pp. 140–146. Gerhardt Thamm, “The ALFA SSN: Challenging Paradigms, Finding New Truths, 1969–79,” Studies in Intelligence, vol. 52, no. 3, Central Intelligence Agency, Sept. 2008.

12 “Analysis of HEU Samples from the Ulba Metallurgical Plant,” E. H. Gift, National Security Programs Office, Martin Marietta Energy Systems Inc., Oak Ridge, Tennessee, initially issued July 1994, revised May 1995.

13 Gift and others said they saw the crates labeled “Tehran, Iran,” and were told it was beryllium, but none was actually shipped.

14 See Ashton B. Carter and William J. Perry, Preventive Defense(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1999), p. 73.

15 Fairfax said these nuclear materials were often much harder to track than warheads. Fairfax, interview, Sept. 3, 2008, and communication with author, Sept. 9, 2008. Nearly all the seizures of stolen HEU or plutonium to date have been such bulk material. Matthew Bunn, communication with author, Oct. 11, 2008.

16 The remark was made by Nikolai Ponomarev-Stepnoi, an academician and vice chairman of the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, in a meeting with a delegation headed by Ambassador James Goodby, March 24, 1994. State Department cable Moscow 08594, declassified for author under FOIA.

17 On the glove episode, “Status of U.S. Efforts to Improve Nuclear Material Controls in Newly Independent States,” U.S. General Accounting Office, March 1996, report GAO/NSIAD/RCED-96-89, p. 25. On the navy case, Mikhail Kulik, “Guba Andreeva: Another Nuclear Theft Has Been Detected,” Yaderny Kontrol, no. 1, Spring 1996, Center for Policy Studies in Russia, pp. 16–21.

18 For his cables on the fissile materials crisis, Fairfax received the State Department’s 1994 award for excellence in reporting on environment, science and technology issues by the Bureau of Oceans, Environment and Science. Also, “Diversion of Nuclear Materials: Conflicting Russian Perspectives and Sensitivities,” State Department cable, Moscow 19996, July 14, 1994.

19 Management and Disposition of Excess Weapons Plutonium, Committee on International Security and Arms Control, National Academy of Sciences, (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1994).

20 Matthew Bunn, interview, Oct. 4, 2004, and communications Aug. 24, 2008, and Oct. 11, 2008. Both Fairfax and Bunn found that one way to ease the mistrust was to arrange visits by the Russians to facilities in the United States.

21 Rensslaer W. Lee III, Smuggling Armageddon: The Nuclear Black Market in the Former Soviet Union and Europe (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998), pp. 89–103.

22 State Department cable Moscow 024061, Aug. 23, 1994, released in part to author under FOIA.

23 Von Hippel, interview, June 1, 2004. “My Draft Recommendations and Notes from Mayak Workshop,” von Hippel files, Oct. 23, 1994. Von Hippel, “Next Steps in Material Protection, Control, and Accounting Cooperation,” Nov. 15, 1994.

24 They were uranium metal, uranium oxides, uranium-beryllium alloy rods, uranium oxide-beryllium-oxide rods, uranium-beryllium alloy, uranium-contaminated graphite and laboratory salvage. Memorandum, Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Dec. 21, 1995. Beryllium is an ingredient in making nuclear warheads.

25 “DoD News Briefing,” Wednesday, Nov. 23, 1994. Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs), www.defenselink.mil.

26 The United States paid Kazakhstan about $27 million for the material. About $3 million was paid to the Ulba plant, and Weber had the privilege of presenting the check to Mette.

27 Bunn, interview by author. Holdren later provided a summary of the PCAST study in an open paper, “Reducing the Threat of Nuclear Theft in the Former Soviet Union: Outline of a Comprehensive Plan,” John P. Holdren, November 1995. The title of the PCAST study was “Cooperative U.S./Former Soviet Union Programs on Nuclear Materials Protection, Control and Accounting,” classified S/Noforn, Office of Science and Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President, March 1995.

28 Bunn, communication with author, August 25, 2008. Also see Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, One Point Safe: A True Story (New York: Anchor, 1997), Ch. 11. On Sept. 28, 1995, nearly four months after the briefing, Clinton signed a presidential order, PDD-41, “Further Reducing the Nuclear Threat.” The order gave the Energy Department primary responsibility for nuclear materials protection in the former Soviet Union, a shift from the Defense Department. Bunn helped draft the presidential order, but he told me the lack of high-level support after it was signed meant it had less impact than he had hoped.

29 Engling, interviews, Sept. 29 and Oct. 13, 2003.

30 The highly-enriched uranium was kept at the institute’s facility in the suburb of Pyatikhatki. Nuclear Threat Initiative, www.nit.org.

CHAPTER 22: FACE TO FACE WITH EVIL