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

It’s actually laughable that they tried to pretend that they were worried about foreign intelligence services picking up information about new chemical weapons in the environment surrounding GOSNIIOKhT and its branches and test sites, since the contamination was so widespread.

At the end of the 1970s, a new division appeared at GOSNIIOKhT with the intriguing name “the Sector for Foreign Technical Counterintelligence”. Ivan Sorochkin, who looked like a crook, was its first chief. He came to the institute from an establishment connected with the KGB, and his elusive slippery behavior was striking. The mystery of his mission became a little clearer when he appeared in our laboratory accompanied by an elderly man with a gloomy red-veined face and a skinny middle-aged brunette. They started rummaging through the wastebaskets looking for something, and when they found some scraps of paper, they put them into polyethylene bags and departed with satisfied faces.

I became acquainted with Ivan Sorochkin himself, as he was interested in my technique of analysis of micro-concentrations of chemical agents in different media. It turned out that he was a retired lieutenant colonel with a master’s degree in chemistry. His two other employees, who also appeared to be retired military people, spent their time at writing desks in a small room, and they were constantly busy writing something. Later I found out that they were writing reports about analytical work which they had never participated in. They were just copying excerpts from the completed works of others, creating the impression that these works were carried out by their orders and with their participation.

The sector of the institute dedicated to foreign technical counterintelligence (PD ITR) was far from modern. It wasn’t involved in developing technical methods for the determination of trace quantities of chemical agents. Sorochkin lived a parasitic life, imitating activity, in the typical Soviet way. As a specialist on the determination of micro-concentrations of chemical agents and their precursors, it pained me to see Sorochkin and his subordinates use my work to cover up their own idleness.

Back in 1984, I drew the attention of Kurochkin to the “specific character” of the activity of PD ITR, and he promised to talk with Grigory Patrushev, who was then the director of GOSNIIOKhT. I wanted my knowledge and experience to be used for creating an experimental basis for that service. However, our conversation achieved nothing, although real changes were still possible at that time.

The conceited Sorochkin had wormed his way into Patrushev’s confidence, and he virtually became his main advisor on many important issues. Working with the new Deputy Director in charge of the Security Regime, Sorochkin managed to get the director to hold back some departmental specialists. Soon Sorochkin became the head of one of the key subdivisions of the institute – the Scientific and Technical Department (NTO). However, when Sorochkin started plotting against First Deputy Director Guskov, he obviously didn’t properly calculate his own power.

According to an administrative provision on executive personnel, the position of the head of a department is competitive and should be approved by secret voting at the Science Council of the institute. Usually this procedure is a simple formality, because few people dared to vote against him when the director of the institute recommended someone for a position. However, there are always exceptions in life. In fact, everything worked in an atypical manner at that time. In the end Sorochkin became an ignominious failure and was not approved for the position. After that, he decided not to push his luck any further, and he quickly retired from the institute.

After that, Sergei Stroganov, an elderly retired colonel, was appointed the chief of the PD ITR Department. By that time this service had acquired the status of a department. Before that, Stroganov had worked at the Ministry of Chemical Industry. He brought three more people with him, who were also retired military men, who had worked in the technical subdivisions of the KGB. This event coincided with the replacement of Duka, the Director of the Security Regime Department, by Aleksander Martynov, a young KGB major, who had graduated from the Mendeleev Chemical and Technological Institute and had been assigned to GOSNIIOKhT. However, the future KGB officer didn’t stay long there. Te was sent to study at the KGB Academy, becoming a Chekist officially.

This was the situation at the institute when an idea occurred to me… to become head of the PD ITR Department, myself. I went with my idea to Nikolai Maslov, a friend of mine, who was head of the Planning and Economic Department at the U.S.S.R. Ministry of Mineral Fertilizers. For a long time, he had worked at different positions in the leadership of the Ministry of Chemical Industry, and at one point he had been the deputy chief of their Main Administration “Soyuzorgsynthesis”, which GOSNIIOKhT was a subsidiary of. That is why he knew the industry and the work of our institute reasonably well. I met Nikolai on holidays, along with some of our other colleagues, including Aleksander Ivanov. Later Ivanov started working in a section of the Chemistry Department at the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U., in charge of the military-chemical complex. When General Anatoly Kuntsevich was dismissed in 1994 in his capacity as the Chairman of Russia’s Committee for Problems of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Conventions which answered to the president of Russia, Ivanov followed him a year later as the new chairman of that committee.

Nikolai Maslov liked my idea, and he immediately called Ivanov on a high-frequency communication channel. Ivanov quickly understood what we wanted and promised to talk it over with Victor Petrunin, Director of GOSNIIOKhT. This meant that the question was settled. A few days later, Petrunin called me and said that he had decided to appoint me to a very important position, as the head of the Foreign Technical Counterintelligence Department. He added that the formal agreement of the Ministry of Chemical Industry was required, and he hoped that it would succeed without any problems.

I felt that Guskov and Martynov, Deputy Director of the Department of the Security Regime, were not happy with the news about my appointment. Still KGB Major Martynov assured me that he would help out and give me the necessary support.

The next day, I was called to Ministry of Chemical Industry. It turned out that PD ITR answered to the Third Administration of the Ministry of Chemical Industry, in which Mikhael Milyutin, a KGB Lieutenant General, was the director. I was introduced to him by Ivan Tkachenko, head of the PD ITR Department, and a former commander of the division that served at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site in Kazakhstan.

The KGB general turned out to be a gray, slightly hunched elderly man with a slightly swarthy face imprinted with certain traces of intelligence. He was dressed in civilian clothes, and he seemed to be surrounded by an atmosphere of disappointment which was heightened by the backdrop of his huge gloomy office. There were models of ships, tanks, and some other armaments on one of the tables. These were gifts, and each model had an engraved silver plate.

The general asked me to sit down, and he sat opposite me, asking in a friendly way, “How are you feeling?” I said that I would be much better if I could find support for my plans for providing the department with the modern scientific equipment which I considered necessary for implementing the task at hand.

I briefly stated my understanding of our work, and the general answered that Tkachenko and Krasheninnikov would help me out. When we parted, General Milyutin asked me not to hesitate to contact him directly if I encountered any difficulties.