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

According to the instructions in carbon copy the following materials were at the disposal of the expert:

- The article “Inversion” published in “Kuranty” October 10, 1991;

- The taped manuscript of “Inversion”;

- The article “Poisoned Policy” published in “Moscow News” September 20, 1992;

There were listed 13 carbon copies of manuscripts and articles.

Further listed were the questions to be clarified by the expert:

The decision of the experts was established based on the following questions:

e) What specific information about the research and works in the area of the development of chemical weapons did Mirzayanov disclose in his publications and interviews?

f) Does the information about the development of chemical weapons that can be found in the publications [all my manuscripts and articles are enumerated – V.M.] correspond to reality by volume and nature?

g) Is the information about the research and works in the area of the development of chemical weapons included by Mirzayanov in his articles, interviews, and manuscripts, factual? If the answer is affirmative, what is the degree of secrecy of this information? Does it constitute a state or a work-related secret?

h) Did Mirzayanov’s actions have any negative consequences? If so, specifically what consequences?

- The Expert conducted the investigation and established there is information about research work in the field of the development of chemical weapons.

- Further, fragments from articles and manuscripts are listed containing information about chemical weapons development.

I can not determine whether the information listed above corresponds to reality, because I haven’t had any connection with scientific research work in the field of chemical weapons since 1988, and I don’t have any knowledge about the latest achievements in this area.

If the information stated is real, it can not be a state secret or a confidential business secret, because it doesn’t contain any data about the structure of a new chemical agent, and revealing information about it by this way can not cause negative consequences for the military-economical potential of the country or cause other severe results for the defense capability, state security or serious damage to the state’s political interests or any other damage to interests of state.

Expert

N.I. Chugunov

Top secret

Moscow

April 8, 1993

Captain of Justice Shkarin, Senior Investigator of the Investigation Department of the Ministry of Security of the Russian Federation, in accordance with the requirements of Article 192 of UPK RSFSR questioned the expert Nikolai Iosifovich Chugunov in his office …..

Interrogation started at 5:10 PM

Interrogation ended at 7:15 PM

Question: In the process of the Expertise examination of the credibility and the degree of secrecy of the information set forth in the Case N 62, you came to different conclusions than those of the majority of experts, and on March 18 1993 you wrote a separate conclusion in which you pointed out that there are no state secrets in field of research work on the development of chemical weapons in the materials brought to the Expertise. Clarify, why did you come to this conclusion?

Answer: From 1959 until 1988 I was involved in work connected with the testing of new chemical agents and munitions in their charged state, research work in the field of substantiation of their major trend and the program of development of chemical weapons, and also with the substantiation of tactical-technical requirements for new chemical agents. I was also a member of all the scientific-technical and coordination counsels in the field of the creation of chemical weapons.

From 1976 up to 1982 I was an expert and later an advisor at the Soviet-American negotiations and the Committee on Disarmament in Geneva. In the last years I was working with the development of the basic direction of advancement of chemical weapons in the Defense Ministry of the USSR.

During the process of the Expertise, I analyzed all the materials presented and chose from them information which is related, as I supposed, to the field of chemical weapons. I pointed out this information in my conclusion. After evaluating this information, I concluded that it is impossible to actually derive anything about the achievements made in this area. The mention of a binary weapon, without giving the concrete components of this weapon, doesn’t lend itself to judgments about its specifications of construction, of its munitions and its effectiveness. The mention of a new chemical agent without its chemical name or formula doesn’t permit judgments to be made about the level of results achieved during the investigation of this kind of substance. Indicating the superiority of such a substance as 5-8 times that of a known analog is subject to a range of experimental error during the evaluation of the toxicity of all the analogs. I couldn’t determinate anything about the real chemical agent created at GOSNIIOKhT because of the lack of published chemical formulas and chemical names. Proceeding from this point, I came to the conclusion that the materials presented to the Expertise don’t contain state secrets in the field of chemical weapons.

Q: Does the information presented to the Expertise include materials about a new chemical agent created at GOSNIIOKhT and development of a binary weapon on its basis – information about the achievement of the results of scientific research work for the defense of the country?

A: I believe that this information is not information about the results of scientific research achieved in the interests of the country’s defense, because there is no information in the publications about whether this substance and its binary weapon passed through the stages of state tests with positive results.

Q: In Article 56 of “The Temporary List of Information Constituting State Secrets”, of N 733-55, confirmed on September 18 1992 stated that information about results achieved in the area scientific research, conducted in the interests of country’s defense is top secret and constitutes a state secret. In this article they pointed out the results, but didn’t specify whether they are positive or negative. What kind of explanation could you give in connection with this?

A: I don’t understand what kind of substance is discussed in the materials presented for the Expertise, what stage of testing it passed through or what kind of result was achieved. I know from experience that if the results of the state tests are positive, the degree of secrecy increases during the adoption of a tested example, and if the results are negative the degree of secrecy remains unchanged.

Q: You concluded in your conclusion of March 18 1993 that there is no work-related secret in the materials presented to the Expertise. Can you clarify this?

A: Yes. I’d like to clarify that all information which I indicated is information which constitutes a confidential business secret. I came to this conclusion on the basis of the abovementioned considerations. In my opinion it doesn’t represent a state secret and the government should not protect it.

Interrogated and conducted this transcript

Senior investigator of Investigation Department of

MB RF Captain of Justice

V.A. Shkarin

Top secret

Moscow

April 23, 1993

Captain of Justice Shkarin, Senior Investigator of the Investigation Department of the Ministry of Security of the Russian Federation, in accordance with the requirements of the Article 192 of UPK RSFSR questioned the expert Nikolai Iosifovich Chugunov in his office…..