The Dead Hand

1 Acting CIA director William Studeman said the U.S. intelligence community believed the Russian Defense Ministry wanted to continue supporting research into dangerous pathogens and maintain facilities for war mobilization of biological weapons. See “Accuracy of Russia’s Report on Chemical Weapons,” FOIA, www.cia.gov. The document appears to have been written in 1995.

2 See 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. 19, pp. 257–269.

3 Gennady Lepyoshkin, interview, March 28, 2005.

4 In addition to Weber and Lepyoshkin interviews, this account is based on photographs, forty-nine documents and nine videotapes describing Stepnogorsk before and after dismantlement obtained by the author under the FOIA from the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency, 2005–2007. Other sources included Roger Roffey, Kristina S. Westerdahl, “Conversion of Former Biological Weapons Facilities in Kazakhstan, A Visit to Stepnogorsk,” Swedish Defense Research Agency, FOI-R-0082-SE, May 2001; and Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg and William Broad, Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), pp. 171–176.

5 Anne M. Harrington, “Redirecting Biological Weapons Expertise: Realities and Opportunities in the Former Soviet Union,” Chemical Weapons Convention Bulletin, no. 29, Sept. 1995, pp. 2–5. This account is also based on an interview with Harrington.

6 Weber recalled, “To me what was so interesting was the planning. They were going to hit us with nuclear weapons, then hit us with biological weapons to kill those that nuclear weapons missed. Then, wipe out our crops and our livestock to deny the ability of those who survived to live, to feed themselves. And they were going to grow crops and raise livestock in that post—nuclear exchange environment.”

7 Nikolai Urakov, speech text and author’s notes, May 24, 2000.

EPILOGUE

1 They published their appeal in the Wall Street Journal, Jan. 4, 2007, p. A15. Also see Reykjavik Revisited: Steps Toward a World Free of Nuclear Weapons, Shultz et al., eds. (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2007). The four authors established the Nuclear Security Project. See www.nuclearsecurity.org. Also see Hans M. Kristensen, Robert S. Norris and Ivan Oelrich, From Counterforce to Mutual Deterrence: A New Nuclear Policy on the Path Toward Eliminating Nuclear Weapons. Occasional Paper No. 7, FAS and NRDC, April 2009.

2 Warhead data are from the authoritative Nuclear Notebook, by Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 64, no. 1, pp. 50–53, 58, March/April 2008, and vol. 64, no. 2, pp. 54–57, 62, May/June 2008.

3 Bruce G. Blair, “De-alerting Strategic Forces,” Ch. 2 in Reykjavik Revisited. Blair estimates that 1,382 U.S. and 1,272 Russian missiles are maintained on high alert, p.57.

4 “The Nunn-Lugar Scorecard,” Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., accessed at www.lugar.senate.gov.

5 Matthew Bunn, Securing the Bomb, Project on Managing the Atom, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, commissioned by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, 2008, pp. 90–93.

6 Bunn, p. 51.

7 Stephen Bourne, ISTC, communication with author, Dec. 8, 2008. The total project funding as of December 2008 was $804.45 million. Not all the scientists were receiving these grants all the time, but the author found many examples in which the grants were a lifeline for the weapons scientists and engineers.

8 “Vozrozhdeniya Island Pathogenic Destruction Operations (VIPDO) Final Report,” Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, June 6, 2002, obtained by author under FOIA from Defense Threat Reduction Agency. The anthrax was doused in calcium hypochlorite.

9 One of the biggest mistakes was a facility which the United States built, at a cost of $95.5 million, to convert toxic liquid rocket fuel and oxidizer to commercial products. After the money was spent, the Russians informed the United States that they had used the fuel for space launches. Cooperative Threat Reduction Program Liquid Propellant Disposition Project (D-2002-154), Office of the Inspector General, Department of Defense, Sept. 30, 2002. Another puzzle has been the Russian handling of the Fissile Material Storage Facility. Although it was built to handle one hundred metric tons of plutonium or four hundred tons of highly-enriched uranium, the Russians have loaded only about one-sixth of it, and with plutonium only. It is not clear why such an expensive and modern facility remains so empty. The United States and Russia have been in conflict over congressional demands for a degree of transparency about what is stored there. Nunn and Lugar, interviews with author after visit to the facility, Aug. 31, 2007.

10 The Cooperative Threat Reduction programs were a mere .07 percent of the Defense Department’s overall budget request for fiscal year 2009, 3.86 percent of the Energy Department’s request and .8 percent of the State Department’s request. See Bunn, p. 116.

11 Valentin Yevstigneev, interview, Feb. 10, 2005. Yevstigneev’s comment repeated the claim made in an article published May 23, 2001, in the Russian newspaper Nezavisamaya Gazeta. Stanislav Petrov, the general in charge of chemical weapons, was a coauthor. The piece claimed the Sverdlovsk anthrax outbreak was the result of “subversive activity” against the Soviet Union. Stanislav Petrov et al., “Biologicheskaya Diversia Na Urale” [Biological Sabotage in the Urals], NG, May 23, 1001.

12 The closed military facilities are: the Scientific-Research Institute of Microbiology of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Kirov, which is the main biological weapons facility of the military; the Virology Center of the Scientific-Research Institute of Microbiology of the Ministry of Defense, Sergiev Posad; and the Department of Military Epidemiology of the Scientific Research Institute of Microbiology of the Ministry of Defense, Yekaterinburg.

13 When the United States and Russia signed the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997 they promised to destroy stocks of chemical weapons by 2012. The sarin and other chemical weapons mentioned here are to be eliminated by the plant now under construction with U.S. assistance, near Shchuchye.

14 Alan Cullison and Andrew Higgins, “Files Found: A Computer in Kabul Yields a Chilling Array of al Qaeda Memos,” Wall Street Journal, Dec. 31, 2001, p. 1.

15 George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA(New York: HarperCollins, 2007), pp. 278–279. Also, 9/11 Commission report, chapter 5, p. 151. Sufaat received a degree in biological sciences with a minor in chemistry from California State University, in 1987. 9/11 Commission, note 23, p. 490.

16 Tenet, p. 279.

17 World at Risk: The Report of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, Bob Graham, chairman (New York: Vintage, 2008), p. 11.

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Text

Sir Rodric Braithwaite: Excerpts from Sir Rodric Braithwaite’s unpublished diary. Reprinted by permission of Sir Rodric Braithwaite.