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

Soman and sarin could be written in notebooks as ordoval-1 and ordoval-2, respectively, and accordingly as M-02 and M-03, but in reports and letters it was necessary to name these substances as R-35 and R-55.

Lachrymators (tearing agents), known in the West as agents CS or CR, were written in working notebooks as “Substance 65” and “Substance 74” respectively, and accordingly in letters renamed as Substance K-410 and Substance K-444.

The typist was not allowed to see any chemical formula combined with a specific code. Therefore, in place of a chemical name or a code, a bracketed blank space was left, which would be filled in later by hand by the author of the report. It was considered a crime if the scientist entrusted anyone else with this business, for example a lab assistant. Since the department chief had his informers in practically every room, violations of these restrictions would always be discovered and punished.

In 1983, Yevgeni Bogomazov, who was a senior scientist in the Physical Chemistry Department, had the misfortune to place his trust in his lab assistant. Someone reported this to the Security Department, and though Bogomazov was not expelled from the institute, he was docked 30% of his quarterly bonus. People thought that the KGB had shown great generosity.

My boss also explained to me the very important daily procedures for entering and leaving your workroom. In each workroom, a specific person was assigned the responsibility of sealing up the room at the end of each day, and had to turn the key in to the duty officer of the department, who checked the rooms and issued receipts for the keys.

The following workday morning, the responsible person was required to check the integrity of the seal on the door of the room and to open it. Workers from the Security Department often violated the door seal and then sealed it back up with another seal. If the person responsible for the room did not notice such a “violation of the internal regime”, sanctions were poured out on him accordingly.

From the beginning of my work at GOSNIIOKhT, I was instructed that no one had the right to take any kind of notes on sheets or scraps of paper at any scientific meetings. If the organizer of the meeting specified that you were allowed to take notes, and the types of notes you could take was determined, then you had to go to the First Department to receive a special notebook with numbered pages. At the end of the meeting, you had to return the notebook immediately to the First Department. If you were a visitor attending the meeting from another organization or enterprise, and were given the right to take notes, then you had to give your special coded address. At the end of the meeting your notebook would be sent to the First Department of your organization. There was a special mailing network system (spetzpochta) run by the KGB for these kinds of communications.

The system of handling notes mentioned above is working very strictly throughout all organizations and enterprises which work with classified information. For that reason, it is simply disinformation when some people in the U.S.A. are writing tall tales in their books, describing how people from the former Soviet Union took notes at secret meetings and carried them out in their briefcases, reading them in the car, etc. No such kind of “business conduct” would ever be tolerated by the KGB. Without any hesitation, this person would be sent behind bars forever, as a spy. Every meeting like this was supervised by one or two officers from the Department of the Security Regime, so no one could take away any notes, even by accident.

Additionally, the Foreign Technical Counterintelligence Department was responsible for making sure the meeting room was acoustically and electronically secure. As the former chief of that department, I can tell you that if you attended any meetings outside of your enterprise, a special written invitation was sent to your boss through the special KGB mail service.

There is also a special high frequency telephone system for emergency calls. It is located inside a special room with no windows, in the Special Communications Service Department [12] The Third Department was also operating under the control of Deputy Director of the Security Regime. of GOSNIIOKhT. This room is electronically and acoustically protected. The Director of the Institute, some of his chief deputies, and the chiefs of the so-called special services departments also have alternating high frequency telephones (with the insignia of the U.S.S.R. in the center of the dials), which are slightly less protected than the special phone in the special room. They have a special telephone book for these phones, and I know from personal experience using this system, that all these phones are supervised and controlled by the KGB. It is absolutely impossible to invite someone to a secret meeting, using an ordinary phone, even if you could distort your voice in some way as the aforementioned authors of tall tales are saying, to try to confuse readers. It should be pointed out that scientists and their assistants were strictly attached to their work places and didn’t have the right to visit any other laboratories or departments without special permission.

Every person in this secret Post Office Box had his own pass with his photo on it and some coded pictograms showing his permit for entrance to the guardian of the building. On the inner side of the door of each laboratory room a list is posted of people who have the right to enter.

The first time I came into the territory of this Post Office Box I was literally stunned, because before that I couldn’t even imagine how all of this is disgusting, insulting and psychologically damaging for normal human beings. I never stopped to think that I sold myself for money. Life behind the doors of GOSNIIOKhT was not free, and everyone there felt himself or herself to be some kind of person who was deprived of some of the most basic rights. Luckily it was only for 7 hours a day, five days a week. The atmosphere surrounding the relationships between scientists and their bosses was doubly totalitarian. It was so oppressive that you had to be lucky and a real survivor to make any progress in your scientific career. Every scientist knew that he had to pay a high price for the relatively high salary and some privileges given by this employment system.

Most workers understood that they were facing a certain amount of danger and agreed to this risky work in exchange for hazard pay. GOSNIIOKhT compensated employees that spent at least three weeks of the month working with chemical agents with a “hazard bonus” that could significantly increase a worker’s salary. For the junior analytical and physical chemists who worked directly though less frequently with chemical agents, the extra pay totaled a maximum of 33 percent of their salary. Those working with chemical agents, not precursors, on a daily basis, received a hazard bonus equal to 55 percent of their salary. This bonus was normal for researchers who synthesized new chemical agents or were involved in the associated medical and biological research and testing.

Employees had to log the number of days they spent working with chemical agents, and they also kept consumption logs in which they recorded the dates and amounts of chemical agents used. From time to time, a special commission audited these records in all of the departments. If they were incomplete, the commission publicly punished the heads of the departments for their negligence and omissions and deprived employees of their bonuses. One could often see researchers feverishly filling out work registers and consumption logs on the day before an audit.

More often, employees who had not accumulated enough hazard pay days simply made false entries in their journals and then destroyed the chemicals involved all at once. To deter this practice, officers from the Second Department of the Security Directorate could force the assistants to weigh ampoules with chemical agents in their presence, but these controllers never knew what was in the ampoules. Consequently, scientists working with chemical agents could do anything they wanted with the chemicals and still get paid their bonuses. The hazard pay system also encouraged abuse from senior GOSNIIOKhT officials, who could punish and manipulate employees by assigning them work that did not involve chemical agents and thereby severely curtail their earnings.