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

After this, I met Victor Krasheninnikov, a handsome young man with gray hair and a kind face, which contrasted with his responsibilities. He was the deputy head of the Third Administration, but he in turn answered to another deputy head of the same department, Elena Batova, a woman in her late 50s.

The amiable intelligent manner of Victor Ivanovich won people over, and it was difficult to imagine that he could hurt other people or let someone down. I liked him at once, and this impression lasted for a long time – I was never mistaken about Krasheninnikov. I think that he was a rare exception among the officials of such an odious department. To the end of my days on the job, I couldn’t imagine what his responsibilities were. Aside from monitoring the PD ITR at the ministry, he also arranged for the development of different industrial exhibitions. However, as far as I was concerned, his most important responsibility was connected with processing applications for imported equipment.

Scientific research institutes could buy new foreign scientific equipment, for the purpose of evaluating it. This was necessary so that recommendations could be made for its purchase on a large scale. A pretty woman collected these applications at the institutes, discussed them with Krasheninnikov, and decided whether or not they could be submitted for approval at the next meeting of the Military Industrial Commission (VPK) at the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.

Krasheninnikov was shrewd enough to understand my major objective in my new position. I was primarily interested in scientific activity, and the PD ITR was my second priority. Still, he did everything he could to support my plans.

The Ministry of Chemical Industry, along with the employees from the PD ITR Department, elaborated the one-year plan as well as the long-term plans. These plans included the evaluation of the institutions involved in the development of the “Foliant” project, from the standpoint of their vulnerability to foreign technical intelligence. The next step was the development of a plan to fix the weaknesses in the system. In order to do this, it was necessary to provide the PD ITR Department with a technical basis, and I knew that it was useless to rely on other GOSNIIOKhT departments in that area. Krasheninnikov liked the logic behind my reasoning and he promised to help.

The branch research conference scheduled for November of 1986 fit my plans perfectly. I was very grateful to the predecessor of Stroganov for his efforts to organize this conference. A year later I personally felt very sorry for him when I was forced to suggest he leave his job. Unfortunately, there was absolutely nothing for him to do when we really started working at the PD ITR Department. The qualifications of the retired Colonel Stroganov, a veteran of the front lines who had served at Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site for a long time, were just not right for laboratory work. He even had trouble writing because his hands were always shaking.

The bulky “top secret” general instruction manual, approved by the Military Industrial Commission of the Central Committee of C.P.S.U., stipulated the objectives and tasks of the PD ITR, and the rights and responsibilities of its agencies. One of the most important tasks was the development of methods of permanent control over the activities of defense organizations and enterprises, in order to control the activities of foreign technical intelligence. This gave me the right to study all scientific and technical documents and plans of the scientific departments and laboratories.

All planned technical tasks for implementing scientific, technical, and design work were required to comply with a section of the specifications on PD ITR and had to be signed by the head of the PD ITR Department, among others. So there was a lot of paperwork, but I found a good way out of this. Retired Lieutenant Colonel Svyatoslav Sokolov, a senior scientific assistant, was also working in my department. After graduating from Moscow State University, he worked at the KGB Scientific Research Institute, and he was the head of the Physical Chemistry Laboratory there, so he understood scientific questions quite well. Svyatoslav Sergeevich was intelligent, had gentle manners and, therefore, he was the ideal person for communicating with the heads of research subdivisions at GOSNIIOKhT. Unfortunately, he was past his prime and, despite all his efforts, he couldn’t work at the laboratory of the department that I soon put into order. Work there required both manual labor and the skills of a specialist. Still, for a long time, Sokolov helped me out by attending numerous committee meetings in my place, as the head of the PD ITR Department, and by inspecting the documentation.

On the sixth floor of the GOSNIIOKhT’s modern new administrative building (the picture of this building was published in many articles devoted to my “case”), there was a room near my office that received all the bugged phone calls. All the telephone lines went through there, including the ones for internal use. With the help of the switchboard, it was possible to intercept telephone conversations so that people talking didn’t notice anything, and tape-recorders were installed there, too.

One of our employees sat at the control panel and monitored this dirty work. Before I was appointed head of the department, I heard in passing that there was such a service, but I really didn’t want to believe that it was true.

I decided to get rid of this unpleasant burden at any cost. The briefs I studied didn’t mention the use of such underhanded strategies of the PD ITR. I went to Ministry of Chemical Industry, to Krasheninnikov and Tkachenko, in order to get more precise explanations. They confirmed that tapping telephone conversations was outside our area of responsibility. It was done at the request of local KGB agencies. The head of the PD ITR Department at the Redkino subsidiary of the scientific industrial company (NPO) “Khimavtomatika”, who was present during our conversation, said that he had this service transferred from his department to someone in the First Department.

The responsibilities of PD ITR included the technical protection of the telephones from tapping by foreign intelligence services, but that was a very different matter and we took it very seriously and even helped the Main Department of Ministry of Chemical Industry with that.

We had to develop measures against taping conversations, meetings, and scientific conferences, as well as the meetings of the science councils and their sections. According to the recommendations of the department, the office doors of the heads of departments and laboratories were provided with acoustic protection. Additionally, a large part of our work was devoted to protecting GOSNIIOKhT’s computer center and the computers from electromagnetic radiation, which could be a source of information for foreign intelligence. It was possible to eliminate information leaks through an electric cable by installing a special transformer. However, it was very difficult to provide protection from external radiation. This work required considerable expense. The walls of GOSNIIOKhT’s two-story computer center (with a total area of several hundred square meters) were covered with a fine-steel net. There was another system of steel nets to protect the windows and doors. Together, these nets encased the building.

From time to time, the PD ITR Department checked the efficiency of this protection with special instruments. However, we didn’t have the necessary equipment to gauge the leakage of radiation on certain frequencies, so a special service of the PD ITR Department at “Khimavtomatika” at Redkino did this work. It was the only institution in the system of the Ministry of Chemical Industry that had the right to examine rooms with electronic computers.