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

Three days later we were brought some more papers, and we read them from cover to cover, because it helped us to pass the time. On the morning of Monday October 26, when a special team from the prison administration was collecting different appeals and letters to the judicial authorities, I submitted my appeal to the People’s Court with a request to release me. It was almost an exact copy of my application addressed to the investigator.

Of course my appeal was written incorrectly from a legal point of view, because I was supposed to ask the court to set me free, since I didn’t present a danger to the public; holding me under arrest wasn’t in the interests of an unbiased investigation, etc. Instead of saying that, I stated the case from my point of view. But what could I do if my cellmate was my only lawyer at that time?

Three more days passed. The investigator kept silent and didn’t call me in for any interrogations. My cellmates remarked that it was a tactical move on Shkarin’s part, as he wanted me to be in the agony of suspense and relent. However, I found out later that my appeal had caught the Chekists off guard. They hadn’t expected me to decide to write my appeal for release from arrest so quickly, so they had to urgently prepare documents for the forthcoming hearing in court. They didn’t even have time to show me the official indictment. With a little delay, my cellmates asked the security guard to bring the October 23, 1992 issue of Izvestia . I later took that copy with me when I left the prison.

The journalists Andrei Illesh and Sergei Mostovschikov wrote an article titled “Each Journalist Can Now Become a Traitor to the Motherland”. They wrote that a month after the article “A Poisoned Policy” was published, the editor’s office of Moscow News was searched, and copies of the article were confiscated. The authors summarized the original article and analyzed the problem of defining state secrets, which in the end amounted to bureaucratic secrets. They suggested that the specialists from GRNIIOKhT, who they had criticized in their article, had most probably prepared the resolution of the “expert commission” on the article. According to the authors, my arrest gave reason to suppose that I could disclose the creation of stockpiles of binary weapons in Russia, which were completely concealed from the public eye, and probably even Boris Yeltsin had no knowledge of it. Under the sub-title “Arrest-1992” the authors described what happened on October 22, 1992 in the Lev Fedorov’s apartment. My co-author told journalists from Moscow News in an interview that about twenty employees of the MB RF arrived at his apartment and produced a search warrant. However, according to the journalists, this was useless because all the Ministry of Security found in Fedorov’s apartment, was a huge pile of folders with scientific works, mostly in English. The article in Izvestia goes on to say, “Finally, the men from the Ministry of Security confiscated two copies of Moscow News for a reason that only they know and took Lev Fedorov to the Investigation Department of the Ministry of Security at Lefortovo.”

When Fedorov delivered a speech at the annual conference “The KGB, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow” in February of 1993, he entertained his audience with an embellished version of this story about how a crowd of stupid Chekists arrived to search his apartment and spent a long time fiddling around with English language books and articles. But since they had to take something, they confiscated two copies of the article “A Poisoned Policy.” This colorful story of the fighter against the KGB and chemical weapons received peals of continuous laughter from other conference participants, while Colonel Kandaurov, who was there from the Ministry of Security, turned red and then white. Obviously he had good reason for that. Unlike everybody else, he knew that the reality had been very different from the scene the speaker-actor painted up for his audience.

On the morning of October 28 th, I was taken to the investigator, and once more he told me that Nuria had called and said that she and the children were alive and well. She also said that Moscow News had hired a lawyer for me, Aleksander Asnis, and they had assumed the financial responsibility for his services, for working on my case.

I was very pleased to hear this. Now I had a defender and my family wouldn’t suffer financially from that. However, the investigator added that Asnis couldn’t work on my case because he had no clearance for classified documents. Shkarin also stated that Asnis was offered such access, but the lawyer had refused. I understood, however, that he had made the right decision. He didn’t want to make any commitments that would limit his freedom in the future. Then the investigator changed the subject and said off the record, “The stir in the press is growing. Today Moscow News published Fedorov’s and your portraits on the front page.”

I asked Shkarin to let me have a look at this issue of Moscow News . He replied that he had given it to someone, but he would give it to me as soon as he found it. I saw this colorful issue for the first time, with the wonderful materials of the journalists, only after my release. It still makes me feel excited even today. [97] There are articles: Interfax Agency about the MB RF report of my arrest; “Statement of Editorial Office of Moscow News”; Victor Loshak, “The State Lie as a State Secret”; Natalya Gevorkyan, “To be prisoner according to Law which doesn’t exist”; Aleksei Pushkov, “Really Russia didn’t violate anything?” Moscow News N 44 (639), October 28 – Nowember 1, 1992. Then Shkarin started the interrogation. From the beginning, I declined the services of lawyer Leonid Belomestnykh. The investigator’s goal was to confirm that all the information in the article “A Poisoned Policy” was given by me. Certainly, he also wanted me to confirm that this information was known to me because of my work.

The transcript of the interrogation [98] “Transcript of the suspect’s interrogation”, Investigation Department of MB RF, Case 92, 28 October 1992. Top Secret. See Annex 11. was compiled in such a way that they would be able to charge me with disclosing information that constitutes a state secret, according to some secret lists, which I knew nothing about at that time. I guessed about that, but didn’t try to change anything before signing the transcript. Why? It was because I had no intention of renouncing what I had written in my articles. All of this was more than obvious. So it wasn’t the “psychological gingerbread” of the investigator (his revelation that the press supported me) that made me “compliant.” It simply never occurred to me that I could or should deny the obvious facts. Several times the investigator hinted that perhaps I wanted to share the responsibility with someone in this case. This idea was completely unacceptable to me. I assumed all the responsibility, because I deliberately initiated and wrote my articles with the goal that is stated in the transcript of the interrogation (and I insisted on this wording).

At that time I couldn’t even dream that one day I would copy and publish this transcript. Back then I imagined my future as imprisonment stretching out for long years. Internally, I was ready for such an outcome. I even told the investigator with emotion, that one day people would know about my actions, and my sons wouldn’t turn red with embarrassment because of their father. I must admit that his “psychological gingerbread” inspired me and I became cocky. Shkarin good-naturedly included all of this in the transcript. After all, even in his worst nightmare he couldn’t imagine that some time would pass and all his work that was stamped “Top Secret” would be open to public scrutiny.