United States knew, and he gave it to Baker. As they cruised to Zagorsk in Shevardnadze’s ZIL limousine, flying Soviet and American flags on the front, with no aides but two interpreters in the car, Baker raised the issue of biological weapons and handed the paper to Shevardnadze. Baker recalled that Shevardnadze said, in the present tense, “he didn’t think it could be so, but he would check it out.” Ross recalled the paper was a special effort to make sure Shevardnadze knew Baker took the issue seriously and wanted a response.36
The next day, May 18, the British defense secretary, Tom King, was in Moscow and held formal talks with Dmitri Yazov, the Soviet defense minister. King also pressed Yazov about biological weapons. Yazov said it was inconceivable that the Soviet Union would have a policy of developing biological weapons. Yazov’s manner was hopelessly clumsy, recalled Braithwaite, the British ambassador, who was present. “Yazov muttered to his aide that the British had presumably learned something from ‘that defector,’ went red in the face, but blandly denied all knowledge,” Braithwaite recalled.37
Before his departure for Washington, Baker saw that the Gorbachev revolution was running aground. Negotiations on nuclear arms control—the unfinished business of Reykjavik—were “going nowhere slowly.” Baker wrote to Bush from Moscow: “The economic problems, the public mistrust, the sense of losing control, the heat of the nationality issue, and concerns about Germany, are all weighing very heavily.” Baker said he left “with an overriding impression that Gorbachev was feeling squeezed.” Germany was “overloading his circuits,” and “the military now seemed in charge of arms control.”38
A troubled Gorbachev returned to Washington for a summit May 31, 1990. Two years had passed since his sunny walk in Red Square with Reagan. Bush had finally come around to the belief that Gorbachev was a genuine reformer. In the weeks before the summit Bush called Gorbachev a “tremendous statesman” and “bold Soviet leader” who tried to “initiate daring reforms.” But the hour was late. On Saturday, June 2, Bush and Gorbachev helicoptered together to Camp David, the 143-acre presidential retreat in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland. Bush recalled they were each accompanied by military aides carrying the briefcases that would link each of them to their command posts in the event of nuclear war.
Bush persuaded Gorbachev to change out of his suit and tie into a sweater for an informal discussion at Aspen Lodge, sitting at a glass table on the veranda, overlooking the pool, golf course and putting green. Gorbachev was joined by Akhromeyev and Shevardnadze; Bush by Baker and Scowcroft. The sky was clear and a breeze rustled through the trees. Much of the discussion was about regional conflicts around the world, including Afghanistan.39 Gorbachev recalled that at one point during the day, Bush called him aside for a very private chat. “It was just the two of us and my interpreter,” Gorbachev said.
Bush told Gorbachev that the CIA was reporting that the Soviet Union had not destroyed all its biological weapons and production facilities.
“I said,” Gorbachev recalled, “my intelligence people report that
Bush: “Those are the reports I get.”
Gorbachev: “Well, you are not an expert on biological weapons. And I am not an expert on biological weapons. Let us have mutual verification, mutual verification of whether biological weapons have been destroyed. Let your people come to our weapons facilities, we also know where your facilities are, and we will come to your country. Let’s have an exchange.”
Gorbachev was trying to deflect Bush, just as Zaikov had suggested.
According to Gorbachev’s account, Bush responded to the idea of an exchange by proposing that the Americans should check the Soviet Union first.40
Years later, when Gorbachev was asked directly whether he knew that Biopreparat existed, he seemed uneasy. His reply was vague. “No, I can’t say I remember dealing with that organization,” he said. “But there was medical research and they make vaccines against epidemics. Where is the line, the point where research becomes biological weapons and production? This is still controversial, even today, because you need cooperation, you need the kind of international relationship to make it possible to get rid of those weapons.” Gorbachev then quickly changed the subject.41
When Thatcher met with Gorbachev in Moscow on June 8, she also raised with him “the evidence which we had gleaned that the Soviet Union was doing research into biological weapons.” It was something “which he emphatically denied,” she recalled, “but nonetheless promised to investigate.”42
In July 1990, Baker gave Shevardnadze another paper outlining American concerns about biological weapons.43 Shevardnadze had invited Baker for a relaxing visit to a scenic area of Siberia in early August. Before they met, however, Shevardnadze needed to come up with an answer to the Western protests. On July 27 and again on July 30, a group of officials gathered at Zaikov’s office in Moscow to draft talking points that Shevardnadze would use to respond to Baker. According to the talking points, found in Katayev’s files, the group decided to preserve the facade.44
Baker and Shevardnadze spent most of August 1 boating and fishing on idyllic, mile-deep Lake Baikal. When they got around to discussing arms control, Shevardnadze was guided by the papers written in Zaikov’s office: six neatly typed, double-spaced pages. Shevardnadze opened with a solemn declaration that he took the American and British complaints with “utmost seriousness.” Then he said, “I can state that at the present time no activity is being carried out in the Soviet Union that would violate the articles of the convention on prohibition of biological weapons. We have no biological weapons.”
Shevardnadze claimed the issue of Soviet compliance had been taken up “by the political leadership of the country,” and “special decisions were taken” followed by instructions “to take all measures to provide rigorous compliance with this international agreement.” In fact, the decisions were taken to hide the incriminating evidence. Shevardnadze also said, in a bit of window dressing, the Soviet Union was thinking about enacting new legislation that would make it a crime for any actions that “will” violate the convention—in the future.
Shevardnadze, following the script, promised Baker that the Soviet side was ready “to arrange a visit to any of the biological facilities named by the American side in the U.S. memo.” And, he said, the Soviets would even go so far as to allow American scientists to “work at the Soviet biological facilities.” In a page that was not numbered, but apparently added at the end of his presentation, Shevardnadze suggested both sides work out a program of joint scientific work on defense against biological weapons. Shevardnadze also gave Baker a written paper containing the Soviet response to his questions.
Shevardnadze had been aware of, and participated in, discussions of the scrub-down and cover-up strategy to hide Biopreparat in 1989. In his memoir, Shevardnadze alluded to this moment. “If anything, Jim could have had some doubts about my honesty, in connection with an unpleasant story I do not intend to tell here.” He added, “Lying is always unproductive.”45
Back at the CIA in Washington, a decision was made not to punish the Soviets but to take up their offer of visits. “We said to ourselves, about Shevardnadze, he’s lying, but let’s not decide to ram it up their ass,” MacEachin recalled. “The number one objective for U.S. national security is to eliminate, and get onsite inspections. We knew if we accused, there would be 900 meetings of finger-pointing without anything happening.”46 In the months that followed, working in total secrecy, Baker and Shevardnadze negotiated the details of the first visits to suspected Soviet biological weapons sites.47 But they had many other pressing demands to cope with.
On August 2, while Baker and Shevardnadze were meeting privately, they were interrupted by Baker’s spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler, who handed Baker a message saying that Iraq had invaded Kuwait. Baker enlisted Shevardnadze and Gorbachev in what became a concerted, months-long effort to build a diplomatic coalition against Iraq. Gorbachev was reluctant to see the use of force and kept hoping that Saddam could be talked into pulling out of Kuwait. Nevertheless, when Baker came to Gorbachev’s official country residence at Novo-Ogaryovo on November 7, the Soviet leader said, “What’s really important is that we stick together.”48
In these hectic months, a treaty reducing troop levels in Europe was signed, an agreement was reached on the unification of Germany and Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize. At home, Gorbachev sank. He tried to fashion a new Union Treaty to hold the restive republics together, while Yeltsin urged them to grab all the independence they could. Chernyaev observed that “Gorbachev seemed truly at a loss, the first time I’d ever seen him in that state. He could see power slipping from his hands.”49 Shevardnadze brooded over the growing
