Vadim Birstein - The Perversion of Knowledge

136. Seth, Ronald, The Executioners: The Story of SMERSH (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1967), pp. 144–183; Rositzke, Harry, The KGB: The Eyes of Russia (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981), pp. 108–109. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB , pp. 464–465.

137. From the Written Motivation of the Verdict in the Stashinsky Trial before the Federal High Court in Karlsruhe (West Germany), cited in Seth, The Executioners , p. 24. See a photo of this weapon in Melton, The Ultimate Spy , p. 154.

138. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield , p. 374.

139. Rositzke, The KGB , p. 109; Wise, David, Cassidy’s Run: The Secret Spy War over Nerve Gas (New York: Random House, 2000), p. 78.

140. Kalugin, O., “Tipichnoe ‘bolgarskoe’ ubiistvo.”

141. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB , pp. 644–645.

142. See a photo of the shooting device of the umbrella in Melton, The Ultimate Spy , p. 152.

143. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield , pp. 388–389.

144. Bryden, John, Deadly Allies: Canada’s Secret War, 1937–1947 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1990), pp. 295–296. I hope that after my disclosure of Mairanovsky’s activity there will be no uncertainty that the KGB executioners in fact used ricin as a deadly poison.

145. Kalugin, “Tipichno ‘bolgarskoe’ ubiistvo.”

146. In his book published in 1994, Kalugin gives fewer details on Markov’s murder than in his newspaper interview (Kalugin, Oleg, The First Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence Against the West [New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994], pp. 178–186).

147. Kalugin, “Tipichno ‘bolgarskoe’ ubiistvo.”

148. Kalugin, The First Directorate , p. 186; Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield , p. 389.

149. “Bulgaria to See Interpol,” Financial Times , September 9, 1998.

150. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB , p. 645.

151. Alibek, Biohazard , pp. 171–172.

152. Ibid., p. 302.

153. Ibid., pp. 171–174.

154. Rimmington, A., “Fragmentation and Proliferation? The Fate of the Soviet Union’s Offensive Biological Weapons Programme,” Contemporary Security Policy 20 (1) (April 1999): 86–100.

155. Popovsky, Manipulated Science , pp. 57–58.

156. This is according to Ovchinnikov’s sister, who was also an organic chemist and worked at the Belozersky Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry within the Moscow State University.

157. Schnol, Geroi i zlodei , pp. 403–418.

158. Alibek, Biohazard , pp. 40–41.

159. Domaradsky, “Perevyortysh,” pp. 58–65; Alibek, Biohazard , pp. 42, 158.

160. Baev, A. A., “Moya biografiya” [My biography], Vestnik Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk 64 (4) (1994): 356–365 (in Russian).

161. Alibek, Biohazard , pp. 174–176.

162. Ibid., p. 177.

163. Ibid.

164. Ibid., p. 176.

165. Wolf, Markus, and Anne McElvoy, Man Without a Face: The Autobiography of Communism’s Greatest Spymaster (New York: Times Books, 1997), pp. 212–213.

166. Beletskaya, I. P., and S. S. Novikov, “Khimicheskoe oruzhie Rossii” [Chemical weapons of Russia], Vestnik Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk 65 (2) (1995): 99–111 (in Russian).

167. According to the Russian press, Academician Beletskaya recently funded a pyramid scam, the Moscow company Alma Mater Libera established by her son, Sergei Shakirov, and two of his friends. All three are graduates from the Chemical Faculty of Moscow University and have tight connections with the university. In her interview for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta , Academician Beletskaya did not deny her participation in the scam and approved the racketeering, beatings of, and extortion of expensive cars from the unfortunate “debtors” by her son (Voloshin, P., “Sitsiliiskaya sem’ya akademika” [Academician’s Sicilian family], Novaya Gazeta 58, October 23, 2000 (on-line version, in Russian).

168. New York Times , January 28, 1994.

169. Krauss, C., “U.S. Urges Russia to End Production of Nerve Gas,” New York Times , February 6, 1997. On October 31, 1997, the Russian State Duma ratified the ban (“Russia Ratifies Chemical Arms,” Russia Today Report , November 6, 1997 (on-line version, in Russian). According to the Russian officials, in 1999, of the 24 former poison-gas factories, 6 were planned to be destroyed, and 18 had already been destroyed or converted to peaceful use (Miller, J., “Russia Discloses Details of Its Former Chemical Arms Program,” New York Times , November 30, 1999). Poorly kept in warehouses, chemical weapons and the wastes from their production are a very serious threat to the environment in many areas of Russia and the Central Asian republics. On the pollution from mustard-gas derivatives, see, for instance, Hoffman, David, “Russia’s Forgotten Chemical Weapon,” Washington Post , August 16, 1998.

170. A review on the binary agents and their production in the USSR in the 1980s–1990s is given in Tucker, J. B., “Converting Former Soviet Chemical Weapons Plants,” Nonproliferation Review 4 (1) (1996): 1–15 (on-line version).

171. Bulatov, Valerii I., Rossia: Ekologia i armia [Russia: Ecology and the Army] (Novosibirsk: TsERIS, 1999), p. 57 (in Russian).

172. Wise, Cassidy’s Run , pp. 191–195.

173. Albats, The State , pp. 325–328; Hoffman, David, “Soviets Reportedly Built Weapon Despite Pact,” Washington Post , August 16, 1998.

174. “Update on Mirzayanov,” Surviving Together 12 (1) (1994): 20; Wise, Cassidy’s Run , pp. 194–195.

175. From a documentary movie: Poisons, Discovery Magazine Series, 1996, Discovery Communications, Inc.

176. Wise, Cassidy’s Run , p. 60.

177. Ibid., p. 61.

178. Bulatov, Rossia , p. 62.

179. Interview with Dr. Mirzayanov in Smithson, A. E., “Toxic Archipelago: Preventing Proliferation from the Former Soviet Chemical and Biological Weapons Complexes,” Henry L. Stimson Center, Report no. 32 [1999]: 1–117; available at www.stimson.org/cwc/toxic.htm), p. 47.

180. Alibek, Biohazard , pp. 258–269.

181. A detailed analysis of the current situation with the institutions involved in the research on chemical and biological weapons, including Biopreparat, Vector, GosNIIOKhT, etc., is given in Smithson, “Toxic Archipelago,” and Biological Weapons: Effort to Reduce Former Soviet Threat Offers Benefits, Poses New Risks (Washington, DC: U.S. General Accounting Office, April 2000), GAO/NSIAD-00-138.

182. Heintz, J., “Russia Germ Lab Security Gets Boost,” Washington Post , May 24, 2000.

183. Miller, J., “Russia Opens Doors to Lab That Created Deadly Germs,” NewYork Times , May 24, 2000.

184. See, for instance, Graham, Loren R., Science in Russia and the Soviet Union: A Short History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 190–196; Aldhous, P., “A Scientific Community on the Edge,” Science 264 (1994): 1262–1264; Stone, R., “New Minister Sets Lofty Goals,” Science 282 (1998): 1979–1980; Levitin, C., “Aim for Better Business Sense to Bolster Russian Science,” Nature 401 (1999): 628.

185. “Obshchee sobranie Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk prizvalo Akademika Primakova stat’ prezidentom” [The Russian Academy of Sciences’ General Assembly called for Primakov to become president], Nezavisimaya Gazeta , June 3, 1999 (in Russian).

186. “Minister Sounds Alarm for Russian Science,” Agence France Presse, February 15, 2001 (on-line version).