Вил Мирзаянов - State Secrets - An Insider's Chronicle of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program

I was taken to the basement again, and I sat there until the lunch break was over (food for me was out of the question). Then I was escorted along the usual route back into the cold and gloomy courtroom.

It turned out that some witnesses had been summoned on that day to give their testimony: my former subordinate Anatoly Ryskal, whose low qualifications and laziness had disappointed me, and Leonard Nikishin, from Moscow News. However, Ryskal wasn’t in Moscow, and even his relatives didn’t know when he was coming back. I am certain that he simply got cold feet. His absence disrupted the plans of those people who were counting on an “accusatory” testimony from my former employee.

Nikishin, on the other hand, had arrived and was prepared to give his testimony to the court. Leonard suffered from his excessive weight and was very short winded. He tried to be calm, but he was anxious from time to time and it showed.

He spoke about his acquaintance with Lev Fedorov and how he had obtained the manuscript of the article that was called “A Poisoned Policy.” His testimony completely concurred with the transcript of his interrogation in Lefortovo, and he was clear on the point that I hadn’t read the final text. The day before the article’s publication, Leonard read me the text prepared for publication over the phone, and I agreed with it. Nikishin stated that he hadn’t seen any state secrets in this article when he worked on it in 1992, and he didn’t see any now. The prosecutor and judges asked him a few more formal questions, and the journalist was dismissed.

Finally, Judge Sazonov announced that the day’s session was over. Poor Judge Yudin, looking like a martyr, struggled to lug the heavy volumes out of the courtroom again. I was taken back to my cell in the basement, which I was becoming accustomed to, and from there I was driven back to prison.

News awaited me there. There was a new prisoner in our cell. He was a stocky middle-aged man, with a slightly swarthy and tired, but pleasant, face. It was clear from his black hair and his black eyebrows above black eyes that he wasn’t a Russian. We got acquainted, and it turned out he was a Tatar named Ravil Sitdikov. He told us how he ended up there, and I remembered a report in one of Moscow Newspapers about the arrest of a high-ranking employee of the Bank of Russia. Sitdikov was charged with unlawful operations associated with falsified letters of credit.

Between our conversations, I saw a report on the NTV channel from the Moscow City Court about the events surrounding my case. Television crews managed to film me through the bars on my way to the courtroom, surrounded by the guards and the dogs. The correspondent Mitkova also reported on President Yeltsin’s statement that they had “carried the Mirzayanov case too far.” However, the President thought that he shouldn’t intervene or pressure the court. Then the telegenic Asnis appeared on the screen and spoke about some details of the trial process. In particular he stated that I had started giving testimony.

I spent Saturday and Sunday in front of the television screen. It was good at the time that we had two television sets. Ravil had brought his portable one. The Saturday newspapers published materials about the trial, based on information that Asnis had presented in between court sessions. [333] Vladimir Nazarov, “Behind Closed Doors…” Kuranty , February 5, 1994. , [334] Sergei Mostovshchikov, “The Case of Vil Mirzayanov: the Trial has Begun After All”, Izvestia , February 5, 1994.

The next court session took place on February 8 th. General Smirnitsky and Colonel Chugunov, who was a longtime member of the Russian delegation at the CWC negotiations in Geneva, were summoned to the court as witnesses for the defense. As I mentioned before, they had both refused to sign the findings of the commission prepared by the MB RF’s Investigation Department and GOSNIIOKhT, and they had expressed their opinions independently. They clearly pointed out that my articles didn’t disclose any information of state secrecy, and in their opinions I hadn’t disclosed any chemical or technical information about the new weapons, showing once again that the charges against me were absurd. Both experts spoke lucidly and persuasively.

The judge asked if someone could reproduce the new chemical weapons based on information I had presented in the press. Both experts answered that it was impossible. The prosecutor wanted very badly to hear something negative from the experts, so he even asked if my article could motivate foreign intelligence to look for this information. Smirnitsky calmly answered to Pankratov that this question was outside the area of competence of a specialist on chemical weapons. Pankratov also wondered what damage the information I published had caused to the defense capability of the country. The general was laconic again, “It couldn’t cause any damage.”

“Do you think that publishing conventional names and codes of new chemical agents openly in the press means disclosing information of state secrecy?” continued the prosecutor. The general said that it was certainly intolerable.

I should note that I had never used any terms defining codes or codes of scientific and research topics or chemical compounds. However, I decided against clarifying this question because it seemed to me that such action would be misinterpreted as an attempt to justify myself. When Colonel Chugunov was asked how he rated the information that I had published, he answered that there were grounds for resorting to administrative sanctions for violating work instruction manuals, but no more than this. He thought that the whole problem of the information disclosed in my articles no longer made any sense, including the violation of the above mentioned work instruction manuals, because of the signing of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

The truth is that I saw Chugunov and Smirnitsky for the first time in that courtroom. I hadn’t known them before, but each man left a great impression on me, both by the level of his knowledge and his ability to properly present his point of view. Apparently not only orthodox-minded people studied at the Academy of Chemical Defense, but also some people who could think independently…

Their testimony was in complete contrast to that of Boris Kuznetsov, who was summoned by the prosecutor. He had memorized and rehearsed his testimony, which was written down by Captain Shkarin in the transcript of his interrogation at Lefortovo. Then he reproduced it almost exactly word for word in the courtroom. I had a suspicion that the transcript had been prepared in advance at GOSNIIOKhT by better-educated people, because Kuznetsov’s level of knowledge and his amazingly confused articulation gave serious grounds for such doubts. His answers to the questions were straightforward and terribly obtuse, as if he were one of the sergeants on special duty at Matrosskaya Tishina Prison. When he finished with his testimony Kuznetsov asked Sazonov, “Comrade Judge, do you have a latrine here?” Sazonov didn’t understand at first, but then he asked him, “Do you mean the toilet? Well then, please ask the sergeant at the door,” and happy Kuznetsov bolted for the bathroom.

Will Englund from the Baltimore Sun was also summoned on the same day. However, according to Judge Sazonov, he hadn’t come to the trial because he was on an extended business trip. This wasn’t quite correct, to put it mildly. Alexander Gordeyev [335] Alexander Gordeyev, “Reporter Refuses a Role in Closed Chemist Trial”, The Moscow Times , February 9, 1994. quoted Englund as saying that he wasn’t inclined “to testify unless he could do so in an open session.” Additionally, Englund who had been interrogated at the Ministry of Security in April of 1994 said, ‘“The essence of a free press is to maintain an atmosphere of trust, and I feel that if I attended a closed trial, it would be a betrayal of that trust.”‘ Referring to his experience of interrogations in the Lefortovo Investigation Department, the American said that he would abstain from giving testimony because his words could be distorted. “I emphasized repeatedly that Mirzayanov had given me no formulas of the chemicals, but that was deleted from the charging papers,”‘ the American journalist said to Gordeyev. Unfortunately it was the usual practice of the KGB. Amy Knight wrote a good article [336] Amy Knight, “Yeltsin’s KGB. Back to the Bad Old Days in Moscow?” Washington Post , February 13, 1994. about that called “Back to the Old Bad Days in Moscow?” A similar question was raised in The Moscow Times . [337] Carey Scott, “Chemist Evidence ‘Falsified’”, The Moscow Times , February 10, 1994.