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

On January 12, 1993, Shkarin summoned me to his office once more. As I expected, he showed Asnis and me a bundle of resolutions-refusals to all our petitions. They were written pro forma and openly demonstrated arrogance and contempt for my lawyer and me. On the surface, everything was done correctly: I participated in the interrogations, wrote numerous petitions, and signed the transcripts. This created the impression that the investigation was proceeding along an entirely legal course. That was the goal of the investigator. He wanted to sculpt the indictment quietly and calmly. Of course, that didn’t suit me. I warned Asnis before the interrogation began that if the investigator once more showed me piles of refusals to our petitions, then I would stop testifying and signing the interrogation transcripts. My lawyer said that it might make our defense more difficult, but he respected any of my decisions, and therefore he didn’t object.

When we came for an interrogation on January 12, 1993, and the investigator, as expected, showed us refusals to all our petitions, I wrote an appeal in which I protested against the arbitrary investigation that systematically violated my rights to a defense. Then I refused to participate in the interrogations. I also pledged to respond appropriately to all summons by the Lefortovo Investigation Department.

The investigator tested me by asking me a question about some papers that had been confiscated during the search in my apartment. Of course, I didn’t answer and he recorded this formally in the transcript.

The same scene played out again on January 13th and 14th. In this way Shkarin probably goaded me on to use stronger forms of protest. If I refused to come to the Investigation Department for the interrogation, he would arrest me with pleasure and would continue fabricating my case, without any fear that the public might find out about his actions. I decided not to play into the hands of the sneaky captain.

Under the circumstances, the investigation worked solely with my lawyer. Shkarin showed us an enactment about the appointment of the expertise. Since the General Staff Headquarters of the Armed Forces refused to take charge of the expertise, Shkarin added new people to the expert commission and decided it would have to work at Lefortovo. The details of the problem of the investigation were well laid out in Izvestia . [151] Valeri Rudnev, “‘State Criminal’ up to now doesn’t know what his crime is”, Izvestia, January 19, 1998.

After a long ordeal, the investigator complied with one of our requests and seated the two people we had suggested as members of the commission. The first was Reserve Major General Vadim Smirnitsky, former Commander of Military Unit 64518. He was the head of a special subdivision at the U.S.S.R. Ministry of Defense, which dealt with questions of special weapons. Also they seated Reserve Colonel Nikolai Chugunov, who had a master’s degree in science, and was the chief specialist for special weapons at the U.S.S.R. Ministry of Defense. He had been an advisor to the Soviet delegation at the Soviet-American negotiations leading to the CWC.

Unfortunately, I didn’t know these people, though I had heard about them when I was working at GOSNIIOKhT. Still, I completely trusted my lawyer’s judgment and didn’t doubt that Smirnitsky and Chugunov would be decent and honest experts.

The results of their work showed that these two people entirely justified our hopes and thoroughly shattered the “findings” of the expert commission prepared by the investigator. I met with General Smirnitsky and Lieutenant Colonel Chugunov for the first time at the judicial proceedings. They both impressed me deeply with their professionalism and logical testimony, which was notably different in nature from the statements of other members of the expert commission.

The legal battles in the investigator’s office in Lefortovo coincided with the signing in Paris of the Convention for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (CWC) in January of 1993. At that time I harshly objected to the signing of this convention, because I saw its flaws, which the opponents to chemical disarmament could use to their advantage. First of all, I couldn’t catch the logic behind the usage of a very unclear term in the convention “prohibiting the development of chemical weapons,” while allowing scientific research work in this field was, at the same time. All my attempts to receive a comprehensible answer, about where the clear distinction between these two notions lay, were fruitless. Moreover, at the level of scientific development at the time, there was absolutely no necessity for the technologically dangerous production of chemical agents. These days and even then, chemical weapons could exist primarily in a binary form, with non-toxic binary components. There was no need to carry out the dangerous and expensive testing of binary weapons. All this could be done in a laboratory, where practically any kind climatic conditions can easily be modeled.

The text of the convention had obvious loopholes that dishonest generals could exploit for their own selfish ends. I gave numerous interviews to the press, on the radio, and on television trying to explain these dirty tricks which were embedded in the convention. Almost no one tried to refute my arguments. The Russian authorities and specialists on chemical weapons kept their dead silence and didn’t comment on my statements. I received no answer from foreign specialists, either.

Still I continued to explain that such a convention was far from the best instrument for struggling against chemical weapons. This is why I harshly criticized the convention in my speeches on French TV, on radio station “Echo Moskva,” and others, and spoke against its signing. Soon I realized I was no longer alone. Suddenly I found an unexpected ally, a senior engineer at the Volsk branch of GOSNIIOKhT, Vladimir Uglev, who was also a deputy of the Volsk City Council at that time. He was responsible for the ecological issues on this city council and spoke out against the activities of military chemists, who frequently exploded chemical shells at the military testing site, posing a threat to the safety and health of the local population. [152] Vladislav Borovitski, “Over all Saratov is poisoned sky”, Saratov , October 22, 1993; Vitaly Zemljak, “The poisoned secrets”, Interview of Vladimir Uglev and Vladimir Petrenko by Correspondent of Radio Liberty Dmitri Volchek , Saratov , August 17, 1993; Lydia Malash,, “When they are shutting up scientists in Moscow explosions are clattering in Shikhany”, Megapolis Express , February 16, 1994; Anatoli Mikhailov, “The City-Hell, Would “ The Chemical Reactor” of Volsk-17 explode?”, Trud , April 19, 1994; Olga Nikitina, “The Shikhany Syndrome. There is a smell of impending disaster”, Saratov , May 14, 1994. Also, it turned out that he had worked for a long time with Petr Kirpichev, the creator of chemical agents A-230 and A-232.

When we first met at the beginning of January 1993, Vladimir made a good impression on me, with his determination to struggle against chemical weapons and against the barbaric destruction of the stockpiles at the Shikhany military test site.

Several of his remarks about new developments made it clear that he was a highly qualified specialist who understood the questions of the synthesis and testing of new chemical agents very well. He was well informed about the events that unfolded around the invention of Agent A-232 and how former director of GOSNIIOKhT, Ivan Martynov, was giving the patent authorship for Substance A-232 to his son Boris.

I was very pleased that Uglev was ready to support me. It was extremely important at that time, because there were few people either in our country or in the U.S., who believed in the existence of a secret program for the development and testing of a new generation of chemical weapons. However, along with such positive impressions, I also heard something that was for me an alarming confession. Vladimir told me that some time ago he had been recruited by the KGB to spy on Petr Kirpichev, who was his scientific supervisor. According to his story, he had told Kirpichev everything, and justified his decision to become an informer because he believed that otherwise some other unknown person would have been in his place. Oh, blessed naiveté! You see the KGB made sure its informants had understudies, to exclude the possibility of a “monopolization” of information sources. However, I can’t strictly judge those who agreed to be informers, because the KGB was truly omnipotent. Reporting was rampant and very few could resist the suggestion to “become useful to the Motherland.” Suspicion practically paralyzed any communications and any discussions, including scientific ones. I tried to avoid suspicions as much as possible, even if I didn’t know people well, but sometimes it seemed to me that there were always at least a few informers among the people who surrounded me. Sometimes I got irrefutable evidence confirming my intuitive guesses, but I always pressed myself not to be tempted to retaliate. Unfortunately, I didn’t always succeed and that resulted in conflicts.