Domaradsky would do. That summer, in preparation, he defended a new doctorate dissertation in biology. “Had I known what was in store for me I would not have wanted to do it,” he recalled later of the move to Moscow, “and I would certainly have refused.”6 He was assigned to work at a government agency, Glavmikro- bioprom, which was a shortened name for the main directorate of the microbiological industry. Originally, the agency was created to help improve agriculture and medicine, such as creating artificial sweeteners and proteins. When Domaradsky got a small office there, he recalled, he wasn’t sure why.
In the West, genetics and molecular biology were accelerating. The experiments of cutting, pasting and copying DNA fragments by Herb Boyer and Stanley Cohen in California were pushing the science of molecular biology to new levels. Many of the advances came just as Domaradsky was transferred to Moscow. The 1973 experiments of Cohen and Boyer marked the dawn of genetic engineering.7
Soviet leaders made a momentous decision. Up to this point, their germ warfare program had been a military one. They had signed the new biological weapons treaty. But in deepest secrecy, they decided to violate the agreement, and to expand their pursuit of offensive biological weapons to exploit the new advances in genetic engineering. In the past they had used natural pathogens for weapons. Now they rushed to modify nature and create dangerous new agents. Domaradsky was recruited to be at the center of the program.
The germ warfare effort was far different from the nuclear arms race. Both superpowers formally negotiated on nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons were legal by the rules of the day. The countries made treaties, set limits and went to great lengths to regulate the competition by arms control negotiations, which they discussed in the open. To protect against cheating, they created verification regimes. But when the Soviet leaders expanded their biological weapons program in the early 1970s, they moved into a dark underside of the arms race. The Soviet program was illegal by the terms of a treaty that Soviet leaders had signed. They broke their own promises, and there was no regulation, verification or enforcement. Their actions give the lie to decades of Soviet propaganda about seeking disarmament. Almost every participant in the Soviet program has said they assumed the United States was also cheating. But in fact the U.S. program had stopped.
At the time, Brezhnev was influenced by a leading molecular biologist, Yuri Ovchinnikov, vice president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He and several colleagues persuaded Brezhnev to harness the new genesplicing technology for offensive military purposes. According to Ken Alibek, who became deputy director of the Soviet biological weapons program, Ovchinnikov “understood the significance of what he had read in Western scientific journals, and he knew that there were no Soviet laboratories, and few Soviet scientists, equipped to match that level of work.” When it came to convincing the military of the value of this new quest, Alibek said, “Ovchinnikov was persuasive. The most skeptical military commander would have to agree that it was dangerous, if not outrageous, to be behind the West in anything. Ovchinnikov found an influential ally in Leonid Brezhnev. The onetime metallurgical engineer who led the Soviet Union for eighteen years until his death in 1982 regarded the magisterial
The message was: they had to catch up. As part of the effort, Domaradsky recalled that several prominent Soviet scientists scoured the West for literature on molecular biology and genetics. Among them was Victor Zhdanov, a noted virologist who had initially proposed the global campaign to eradicate smallpox in 1958. Zhdanov won the high regard of Western scientists, and was often permitted to travel abroad. Domaradsky described Zhdanov as sophisticated and worldly. But Zhdanov was also aware of the terrible secrets—plans for a new generation of Soviet biological weapons.
In microbiology, a fine line exists between research that offers the promise of improved human life—better vaccines, drugs and agricultural products—and research that could be used to exploit human vulnerability to toxins and infectious disease. In the early phases, the same laboratory can be used for either purpose. Joshua Lederberg, the Nobel laureate, wrote that in biological weapons, the “underlying science is unalterably dual-use.” This allowed the Soviet leaders to hide their weapons program.9
In 1973, soon after the treaty was signed but before it took effect, Brezhnev established a new organization, Biopreparat. The cover story would be that Biopreparat was making medicines and vaccines. But the truth was that Biopreparat was the dual-use mechanism for a recharged and ambitious Soviet effort to discover new offensive biological weapons. Under the cover of civilian pharmaceuticals, Biopreparat would be researching the most dangerous pathogens known to man. To guide it, Brezhnev ordered the creation of a secret, inner council. Brezhnev put the respected virologist Zhdanov in charge of the council, and Domaradsky was named deputy director.
Within the council, Domaradsky was also put in charge of a “special department” for planning biological weapons development. He had frequent contact with the military bioweapons laboratories, government ministries, Academy of Sciences, and security services. He was now at the “brain center” of the germ warfare research program. The code word for the new offensive weapons drive was “Ferment.” Eventually, it grew to employ tens of thousands of workers and received the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars in funding.10
In 1974, the Soviet government issued another decree, this one public, seeking to accelerate Soviet work in microbiology. “The meaning of this order was clear,” Domaradsky said, “to let the nation and the world know that we had at last awakened and resolved to overcome our backwardness in this field.”11 But once again, the open decree was intended to conceal the truth. The Biopreparat-run laboratories were secretly intended for weapons work and were being erected at Koltsovo and Obolensk. By Alibek’s account, it was the most ambitious Soviet arms program since development of the hydrogen bomb.12
In his new assignment, Domaradsky was to work in the shadows. All documents concerning Ferment were transported with armed escort in special vehicles. Meetings of the council were held in a specially soundproofed hall, which was checked for bugs by the security services before every meeting. Domaradsky’s subscriptions to scientific literature had to be screened in advance by the security service. He was prohibited to travel outside the Soviet bloc, and often not even there. “I knew too much,” he acknowledged. The travel restrictions, often imposed on those with access to top-secret materials, nonetheless caused him embarrassment. “I had to think up some reason for turning down pressing and very tempting invitations from my foreign colleagues.” He would say he had broken his leg, or come down with an illness, or he had “family problems.” Once, he was on the verge of leaving for an international conference on microbiology in Munich. At the very last minute, the KGB man accompanying the delegation stopped Domaradsky in the street, told him he could not go and demanded his ticket and travel money back.
Domaradsky and his researchers held ten “inventor’s certificates,” for introducing genetic material into plague, but these papers were classified. Keeping such papers secret was common procedure. Domaradsky was given only a number and date of registration. To see his own certificates he had to enter a special security room and could not take any documents out.
Domaradsky was deeply conflicted. He desired to explore science, yet was aware he was contributing to instruments of death. The pathogens he developed would eventually be turned into weapons, although he did not deal with the actual bombs, just the germs. “I found the science of Problem Ferment intriguing indeed,” he said. “The attraction of that science seemed more important to me than what was to be done with its results.” He added, “Compromising with my conscience seemed, at the time, like a small price to pay.” Domaradsky said his family’s long struggle with persecution had taught him to be ready to bend. “To survive, I had to hide my true attitude toward the Soviet regime from childhood; I learned quite early to adapt myself to this regime.”
Moreover, Domaradsky felt a “vaulting pride” at being in the heart of the Soviet effort. He had a secure Kremlin phone, car and good salary. “We saw ourselves engaged in patriotic work,” he said, “advancing the study of molecular biology, immunology, and genetics in the Soviet Union, where these fields had been allowed to languish.” He knew of the treaty prohibiting biological weapons, but assumed Americans were also cheating.
At the core of the entire bioweapons effort, Domaradsky was in position to see the paperwork, talk to the military and visit the laboratories. As Biopreparat took shape, Domaradsky drafted a plan, approved in 1975, to expand the drive for genetically engineered germ weapons in five major directions, including resistance to antibiotics. This was a key turning point. Programs got underway to transfer the genes from various deadly agents into the cells of bacteria, or into the DNA of viruses, to boost the pathogenetic factors. Domaradsky wanted to inject the genetic material directly into plague. These programs were called “Bonfire” and “Factor.” While Domaradsky worked as deputy director of the council in Moscow, the council also set up a parallel program to use genetically altered viruses and germ weapons to devastate crops and livestock, Project “Ecology.”
