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

In reality, the situation was different from what Shkarin wanted to present. For example, I wasn’t allowed to work on the development of binary weapons. This is why I made a mistake in the article “Poisoned Policies”, when I wrote that the leaders of the military-chemical complex received Lenin Prizes for creating binary weapons based on a new chemical agent.

I couldn’t have known that the binary weapon was based on “Substance 33”, which had been produced for a long time at the Cheboksary Chemical Plant, and had already been tested and added to the arsenal of the Soviet Army. The investigator, his bosses, and even more so his consultants from GRNIIOKhT knew about this very well, but this didn’t prevent them from deliberately hurling false accusations at me. Their scheme was simple: the jailed suspect can’t properly defend himself. This is why Shkarin stubbornly stuck to the basis of the accusation – “the conclusion of the Permanent Technical Commission” at GRNIIOKhT.

A little later I understood the tactics of my investigator and made amendments to my answers on binary weapons. As for the rest, I had no intention of renouncing what I had written based on information I knew from GRNIIOKhT. The articles were conceptual and they didn’t disclose any technical or other kinds of details.

When Shkarin finished taping the investigation protocol, somebody knocked on the door and in came a lieutenant colonel with the happy face of a man who has accomplished something very important. Later I found out that he was investigator N. Fanin, who had arrested and brought Lev Fedorov to Lefortovo. Fanin told Shkarin that he and his man had “finished the job very well”. I discovered from my case materials, events that were some developments which I came to understand as the downfall of my co-author.

The idea of renouncing the articles I published in the press in order to save myself seemed monstrous to me. Theoretically I could do this, especially since the investigator encouraged me to pass the blame to my co-author Lev Fedorov.

I could have claimed that he had written the largest part of “A Poisoned Policy” and a lot of problems would have been settled, but Fedorov, unlike me, didn’t work in a secret area, and he wasn’t legally liable for that. This was unacceptable because of moral considerations. Sadly, Fedorov proved to be not quite up to the same high mark when he appeared before his interrogator that same day.

On October 22, 1992, Lev Fedorov was brought to the Investigation Department of the MB RF. Before that, his apartment had been searched, and the report of the search says that he voluntarily produced all the materials that the investigation was interested in, so the Chekists didn’t have to search his apartment. These materials were three manuscripts of my articles. Other papers belonging to Fedorov were not confiscated. [93] “Report of the search”, Committee of Governmental Security [KGB] of the USSR. Top Secret. See Annex 8. Surprisingly the Chekists wrote this document on the paper with title of former title of their Agency.

It seems that Lev Fedorov was not so uncomfortable with his investigator in Lefortovo. Ten months later, Lev Fedorov renounced his testimony after I showed the transcript of this report to Mironov and distributed it among my friends along with a copy of the entire case materials. Even so, it remained an enigma to me and many others that he didn’t do it the day after he was released, right after his interrogation.

According to the transcript of Fedorov’s interrogation [94] “Transcript of the Interrogation of the Witness”, Investigation Department, Case 92 (Moscow: Ministry of Security of RF, 22 October 1992, Top Secret). See Annex 9. that day, he refused to have anything to do with the information which was the basis for the main idea of his published articles. In his conversation with the Chekists, my co-author reduced his role to that of a literary editor of the material presented by me.

To top it all off, Lev Fedorov signed a confidentiality contract on the subject of his interrogation, thereby entering into secretive cooperation with the investigation. However, there is some reason to doubt that his cooperation only began at this time.

I can confirm that Fedorov kept his promise in full. After I was released from prison, he never said a word about his confessions at the interrogation. Moreover, for a long time Lev played the role of a hero, who had suffered from persecution by the Chekists.

Unfortunately, I found out about this too late – only after the interrogation phase of my “case” was concluded and I could read through all the materials. No one can ever guarantee that spiritually weak people won’t attach themselves to a noble cause, or that they won’t prove to be agents of “our valiant Chekists”.

Obliging readiness to give such detailed and pejorative testimony shows that Lev was ready to betray everybody. How else can we explain why he even told the Chekists the full name of the secretary of the Editor in Chief of the newspaper Argumenti i Fakti ? How else can we understand his detailed description of meetings with Starkov, Vishnyakov, and other people? And why did Fedorov tell the investigators that there were two versions of the prepared article in the editor’s office of Argumenti i Fakti ? It all looks like undisguised cooperation with the Chekists. God forbid if they confiscated only one copy of that article!

Lev’s coached testimony was in fact followed by searches of the editors’ offices of the newspapers Moscow News , Argumenti i Fakti , and Novoe Vremya . In addition, Oleg Vishnyakov from Novoe Vremya was immediately brought to Lefortovo for interrogation. It is curious that there is no time registered in the transcript of that interrogation. In summer of 1993 when I was reading over my case materials, I asked Investigator Cheredilov, who had interrogated Vishnyakov, about it. He said that he had forgotten to do this but he added “You can write a complaint about my error”. Isn’t such forgetfulness a strange oversight for an investigator of special cases? However, I already knew that Vishnyakov was interrogated about 4 P.M., shortly after Fedorov had spoken to the Chekists.

During the following two days, the Chekists processed information received from Fedorov’s interrogation, and Lieutenant Colonel Cheredilov toiled away thinking that he was on the right track. After a successful catch in the editor’s office of Novoe Vremya , he hurried over to the editor’s office of Argumenti i Fakti , where, according to my co-author, there were two prepared versions of the article about chemical weapons. The investigator, along with other civilian employees from the MB RF who acted as official witnesses, produced an injunction for the confiscation, and as before, he received the papers he wanted without any interference (it never occurred to anyone to refuse to hand over the articles!)

After I signed my transcripts of interrogation, Shkarin called a guard who ordered me to get up and follow him, while holding my hands behind my back. I obeyed and we walked down the corridor to a door which a constable opened, after receiving a light signal in response to his ringing of the buzzer.

The prison made no particular impression on me. It smelled of fresh paint and it was quiet. There was not a soul around. We descended to the first floor and came to a door where another guard was waiting for us. He opened the door and we went to the basement, where I was ordered to take off my clothes and have a shower.

After that, they took me to one of the cells on the first floor. It was a narrow room about six meters long and two and a half meters wide. There was a barred window across from the door, at the height of about two meters. Three iron beds were tightly fastened to the floor. On one of the beds there were two sheets, a mattress, and a quilt. In the middle of the cell, a sink was attached to the wall with a pipe and a valve for water. Nearby there was some kind of a lavatory pan without any water tank or similar device. Above the door there was an iron grating, from which protruded the handle of a radio-loudspeaker. I recognized the voice of the announcer as that of Radio Station Mayak .