of a microbiologist, Michael Gait. In the summer of 1991, Gait came to Moscow for an international scientific conference and was delighted to see Popov again. Popov had driven all the way into the city to see Gait, and invited him to visit his home and meet his family. They headed south, driving an hour to Obolensk in Popov’s white Zhiguli car. As they approached the restricted zone around the institute, Popov warned Gait to be absolutely silent as they drove through the checkpoints. No one stopped them. They didn’t go to the institute, but to Popov’s apartment, where Gait enjoyed a meal with the family, sampling homemade brandy and listening to the Beatles. Gait recalled that the Popovs told him their money was drying up. Taissia was in tears. They asked for help in getting a postdoctoral appointment for Sergei in the United Kingdom. Gait promised to do everything he could. In the autumn, he received a letter from Sergei saying they were down to their “last sack of potatoes.”35
Alibek finally got a chance to see America. At the last minute, he was added to the Soviet delegation making a reciprocal visit to the United States for the one in January to the Soviet Union by the British and American experts. (Davis and Kelly came, too, representing the United Kingdom.) For many years, the KGB had claimed there was a hidden U.S. germ warfare effort. Now Alibek could check for himself. The thirteen-member Soviet delegation arrived in Washington on December 11, 1991. The delegation also included Sandakhchiev, director of Koltsovo, and Urakov, director of Obolensk. They were two of the most important institute directors in the Soviet biological weapons program.
The first stop was Fort Detrick, Maryland, where biological weapons research had been halted in 1969 by Nixon’s decision. “We didn’t believe a word of Nixon’s announcement,” Alibek recalled. “We thought the Americans were only wrapping a thicker cloak around their activities.” In the first building the Soviet team wanted to see, white-coated technicians explained that they were working on antidotes to toxins from shellfish and animals. Alibek thought they were too friendly. “I despaired of ever penetrating beneath the surface,” he wrote in his memoirs. Next, the Soviets asked to inspect a large structure on the grounds at Fort Detrick, which looked like an upside- down ice cream cone. Their bus took them there, and through a pair of open bay doors, they saw a gray powder. They asked the Americans what it was.
“Salt,” they were told, for treating icy roads in the winter.
One member of the Soviet delegation went up to the pile, put his finger in it and put it to his mouth. He looked embarrassed. “It’s salt,” he said.
They went on to visit another laboratory, which they were told was developing vaccines against anthrax. “The small size of the operation made it clear that weapons production was out of the question there,” Alibek recalled. “The Americans had just two specialists in anthrax. We had two thousand.”
They flew to Salt Lake City, Utah, to see the Dugway Proving Grounds, where germ warfare experiments were halted in 1969. On the way, Alibek said, “I stared in wonderment at the well-paved highways, the well- stocked stores, and the luxurious homes where ordinary Americans lived.” While some of the buildings at Dugway seemed similar to those used in Soviet test sites, Alibek saw “there were no animals, no cages, not even the footprint of experimental weapons activity.”
Then they flew to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where the United States once had a stockpile of pathogens, which were destroyed after Nixon’s decision. Alibek realized as he walked through the buildings that the facilities were now solely for civilian use. On the second day, the Soviet delegation was on a bus, passing various structures, when one of the military officers shouted, “Stop the bus! Stop the bus!” The officer pointed to a tall metal structure on a rise. “We have to check that out,” he insisted.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Alibek replied. “It’s a water tower.”
“I don’t think so,” the officer said, running to the tower. He climbed it all the way to the top. Alibek could hear some of the Americans stifle a laugh. “At this point,” Alibek concluded, “the absurdity of our quest was clear to me.”
There was no American biological weapons program, as Alibek had believed for years. “It was a shock,” Alibek said. “When you spend 17 years doing something, you considered it important, and—suddenly you realize, you have been lied to for 17 years! I was really offended, and I started hating the system.” Alibek was instructed to write a report about the trip, saying he found evidence of biological weapons in the United States, the exact opposite of the truth. At this point, he decided to quit Biopreparat. He returned to Moscow on December 25. As he entered the hallway of his apartment, arms full of gifts from the United States, his wife told him some startling news about Gorbachev.36
Gorbachev fought to hold the Soviet Union together, but could not. Soon after Baker had arrived on December 16 for meetings with Gorbachev and Yeltsin, he learned that Yeltsin had already signed decrees effectively taking over the Soviet Foreign and Interior ministries. Yeltsin went out of his way to display his preeminence, making sure he met with Baker in Saint Catherine’s Hall in the Kremlin, the gilded chamber where Baker had often held talks with Gorbachev.37 Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, the defense minister for the new commonwealth, was at Yeltsin’s side. Baker saw the end was near for Gorbachev. “I was really saddened,” he recalled.38
Baker and Yeltsin were left alone at the end of their meeting to talk about nuclear command and control. Yeltsin gave Baker a description of how the system would work: in effect, only he and Shaposhnikov, commander of strategic forces with control over all the nuclear weapons, would possess the briefcases, the Cheget. The three other republics with nuclear weapons, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, would get a “hot line,” a telephone, but not a nuclear briefcase. Gorbachev still had a briefcase, but his would be taken away by the end of December, Yeltsin said. The system was one of “consultation,” Yeltsin said, “not coordination.”
According to Baker’s notes of the conversation, Yeltsin told him the leaders of the other republics didn’t understand how nuclear command and control worked. “They’ll be satisfied with having telephones,” he said. And once Russia got all the nuclear weapons back on its soil, even the telephones would be removed. Baker wrote in his notes:
“5 tele.—2 briefcases for now
Only Pres. of Russia can launch—Def. Min. won’t be able to alone.”
Later, in a private meeting with Shaposhnikov, Baker asked him to go over, once again, the nuclear command and control arrangements. Shaposhnikov confirmed what Yeltsin had told Baker.
“Who gives you orders today?” Baker asked.
“Gorbachev,” Shaposhnikov replied. He would not speculate about the future.
But Baker was worried. He had written at the top of his notepad a question: “Who gives Shaposhnikov his orders?”39
About 5 P.M. on December 25, Gorbachev called Bush, who was at Camp David celebrating Christmas morning with his family. The Soviet president said he planned to resign, stepping down as commander in chief and transferring his authority to use nuclear weapons to Yeltsin. “I can assure you that everything is under strict control,” he said. “There will be no disconnection. You can have a very quiet Christmas evening.”40
At 6:55 P.M., Gorbachev entered the crowded Kremlin television studio, Room No. 4, crammed with network cameras and bright lights. He was carrying a briefcase with his departure speech, and a decree giving up his role as commander in chief of the armed forces. He put the decree on the small table and asked Andrei Grachev, his press secretary, for a pen. He tested it on a sheet of paper and asked for one with a smoother tip. The head of the CNN crew reached over Grachev’s shoulder and offered his own pen to Gorbachev. With a flourish, he signed the document just before he went on the air.
His short address reflected his long, remarkable journey. When he took office in 1985, Gorbachev said, he felt it was a shame that a nation so richly endowed, so brimming with natural resources and human talent endowed by God, was living so poorly compared with the developed countries of the world. He blamed the Soviet command system and ideology, and he blamed the “terrible burden of the arms race.” The Soviet people had “reached the limits of endurance,” he said. “All attempts at partial reform—and there were many—failed, one after another. The country was losing its future. We could not go on living like this. Everything had to be drastically changed.”
After the speech, Gorbachev went back to his office, where Shaposhnikov was waiting for him, along with the duty officers carrying the suitcase with the nuclear command codes and communications links. Yeltsin earlier
