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

The generals were planning to keep cheating their American colleagues, because only VX and its precursors would be mentioned in all the international agreements. There were even some people in the U.S. who tried to cast doubt that this suggestion was based only on the facts. Naturally, the Americans were ashamed to admit they had been led by the nose so easily and for so long! I would like to offer them my interpretation of Resolution N 508-RP of the President of Russia, and explain why the technical documentation on the production of the Substance 33 and the development of binary weapons based on it was forged and passed off as documentation for the production of the VX gas. The fact that precursors of the chemical agents A-230 and A-232 are not on this list is entirely natural, since the generals wanted to keep them for the future.

In an interview published on November 11, 1992 in Rossiskaya Gazetta , 253General Anatoly Kuntsevich tried to accuse me, saying that my article was an attempt to “slander Russia.” He expressed deep satisfaction that the Americans didn’t fall for this “provocation.” Of course, how could they “fall for it”? They received most of their information from Kuntsevich himself! The general went too far with the publication of the above-mentioned resolution. He hastily sent copies of it to all countries, including the U.S. Even the celebrated U.S. intelligence services swallowed this bait. This took place when Bush senior was president. Bill Richardson, who was the Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Chemical Matters and Kuntsevich’s U.S. partner in the CWC negotiations, didn’t expect such a dirty trick. He said that it wasn’t even the threat of the development of new chemical weapons that worried him: “The concern is [that] those conniving bastards aren’t dealing with us honestly. How much else are they lying?” That was a very harsh reaction by the former US deputy aide on chemical weapons. [107] Michael Satchell, “Death rattle of poison gas” U.S. News and World Report/September 13, 1993.

Many Muscovites in the street, passing by the building of the newspaper Izvestia , could see a huge photo-poster in the window of the editor’s office. In the picture taken by a photo-correspondent of this newspaper, one could see Kuntsevich fraternizing with Richardson during his trip to the U.S.

It seems to me I ran slightly ahead in my narration. However, all this, apart from the last episode, looked more than strange on the threshold of the signing of the Chemical Weapons Convention. However, even today I can’t stop thinking about the question, as to why General Kuntsevich lied to them and to others.

Neverthless, the general authoritatively enlightened a correspondent by saying, “Military chemical work, like all other defense work, has special status. Each department engaged in weapons development creates certain norms to protect secrecy… I am no legal expert. But it is possible that merely by announcing that a particular institute was working on chemical agents one is divulging a state secret.” 253

It is curious that the general was so willing to drone on about the subject of selling secrets, which, according to him, “is not stipulated by democracy, even American democracy.” Kuntsevich repeated this assertion, with explicit hints obviously directed at me in a TV interview on Channel One. It looked as though this topic haunted him, inadvertently giving away something lying deep inside of him. Probably by the categorical nature of his statements, he meant to suggest that “democratic types” like Mirzayanov were the ones most likely to sell out their Motherland. Finally, I had to respond to these jabs in several interviews, but unlike Kuntsevich, I didn’t use any half-hearted thrusts. I said directly that only our generals could sell out our country. I meant General Kuntsevich, of course, and my words proved to be somewhat prophetic. I don’t think that his preparations, for secretly selling precursors of Substance 33 to another country, were what stressed out the general. Obviously he was under the tremendous pressure of a crime that he had already committed. 107, [108] In 1996 in the US, one of my good American acquaintances told me that General Anatoly Kuntsevich during his visit got quite drunk in the hotel where he was staying and started to sexually harass service woman. Along came the police and started an investigation for this crime, but the case was settled. What was the price was paid by Kuntsevich?

Asnis participated in my interrogation process for the first time on November 24, 1992. Investigator Shkarin tried to create the impression that everything now depended on the decision that the qualified specialists of the “expertise” (an appointed commission of experts) would make after examining my case. Naturally, fundamental questions about the goals of the expertise arose, because everything that I “had committed” was out in the open – written on paper and published, and there was no need for technical experts to look over and to analyze my writings.

In any case, the examination came down to a legal analysis of published articles – a comparison of the texts of my publications and rough drafts with the existing sub-legal norms pertaining to the regime of secrecy, of the institute rules for internal security, and others, which were top secret documents that no one had ever seen with their own eyes. That is why when Shkarin showed us a resolution about the appointment of the “expertise” with a list of instructions for the experts, Asnis and I started to seriously doubt that this commission could objectively carry through with this procedure.

We immediately wrote a petition asking that we be allowed to see all the sub legal acts and lists of secrets, which the “expertise” was supposed to base its work on. Naturally, Shkarin refused to do this, because he understood that if he showed us these lists, he would cut off the branch he was sitting on. He only agreed to show us individual bits and pieces from these acts, which he considered necessary for the work of the expertise. I reminded him that I couldn’t agree to play the role of the illiterate monk Varlaam, who was forced to rely on an imposter who could read and write, in the immortal Pushkin drama “Boris Godunov.” However, when he was faced with the threat of arrest, even that monk suddenly remembered how to read, and then he understood that it was not he who was mentioned in the Tsar’s decree, but Grishka Otrepyev, who was only trying to make a fool out of him and the ignorant policemen.

Understandably, we sent an appeal about Shkarin’s decision to the RF (Russian Federation) Attorney General’s Office. Another problem was that the expertise commission was composed almost exclusively of people who had conflicts of interest, since they were representatives of the military-chemical complex. Moreover, several of them were personally interested in the outcome of my case, because I had harshly criticized them in my articles. For example, in the manuscript that Fedorov voluntarily gave to Chekists, I had mentioned Igor Gabov, the former head of Workshop 34 of the Volgograd Industrial Association VPO Khimprom, and I had pointed out Gabov’s dishonesty in fulfilling his job responsibilities. This man was on the list of experts, so he got the chance to even the score with me for my criticism.

I also mentioned another expert, Boris Kuznetsov, in one of my articles. In “Inversion” I wrote that specialists on questions of chemical weapons did not go to the Geneva negotiations, but instead some proxies of the military-chemical complex were sent there, and these were people who were a long way from understanding the heart of the matter. At that time Kuznetsov was the only representative from GOSNIIOKhT who went to Geneva as an expert for the Soviet delegation. Even though he was extremely obtuse, he could not fail to understand that I was writing about him.