Vadim Birstein - The Perversion of Knowledge

Even recently, Russia seems to have been engaged in secret scientific work that is prohibited by international law and agreements. In 1991, a group of military chemists was awarded with the prestigious Lenin Prize for the development of a new extremely destructive neuroparalytic weapon. 166One of the supervisors of this project, Academician Irina Beletskata (b. 1933, became an academy corresponding member in 1974), who heads the Laboratory of Organic Elements Compounds of the Chemistry Department of Moscow University, was elected a full academician in 1992, just after the finalization of the project. 167

Almost simultaneously, on October 22, 1992, a Moscow chemist, Vil Mirzayanov, was arrested by the police and put into Lefortovo Prison. He was accused of divulging state secrets in newspaper articles published in 1991–1992. In these articles Mirzayanov exposed “the military-industrial complex, which, on the eve of the signing of a Government convention to ban chemical weapons, developed a new type of chemical weapon five to eight times stronger than all known weapons.” 168In 1993, Russia signed the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention banning chemical weapons. 169The new type of weapon was a binary nerve agent called Novichok, which means “newcomer” in Russian. The development of Novichok was based on the idea that after the reaction of two neutral chemical compounds, an extremely strong toxic substance can be produced. 170In this way, the country that keeps the neutral compounds can deny that it has chemical weapons. The binary phospho-organic paralytic nerve gas called Novichok-9 especially has an extremely high toxic activity. 171

According to Dr. Mirzayanov, Novichok was developed in 1973 by the chemist Pyotr Kirpichev, who worked at the Shikhany (the town of Volsk) branch of the State Scientific Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology (GosNIIOKhT). Another chemist, Vladimir Uglev, joined in the research in 1975. At first Novichok was tested at the Shikhany institute and then, in 1986–1989 near the city of Nukus (Uzbekistan), at a special military testing base. In 1987, a Moscow scientist, Andrei Zhelezov, was accidentally exposed to the residue of the gas during tests. He died in 1992. 172Mirzayanov made his accusations together with Lev Fedorov, president of the Union of Chemical Safety (Moscow), and one of the inventors of Novichok, Vladimir Uglev. 173He refused to testify at his own closed trial, which began on January 6, 1994. On February 22, 1994, Mirzayanov was released from prison, and at present he lives in the United States. 174

In his interviews, Dr. Mirzayanov pointed out that ricin, one of the most dangerous of Mairanovsky’s poisons, was produced in Russia as a chemical weapon. 175Soviet scientists had the same technological problem of dissemination with this toxin in enemy territory as British and American experts had during World War II. Due to the high temperature of the blast from a shell or a bomb, most of the ricin would be inactivated. The idea of putting ricin inside hollow steel needles was then considered by Soviet scientists. During the explosion of a bomb containing such needles, ricin would retain its toxic ability and could easily be introduced into the bodies of numerous victims. Mairanovsky could not have come up with a better solution himself. However, this technology was not introduced into production due to the very high cost of the procedure.

It seems that the Americans did not know about Mairanovsky’s experiments with ricin in the late 1930s–1940s and the more recent discussions of Soviet military scientists regarding the use of ricin as a weapon. In an interview with investigative writer David Wise, Benjamin Harris, a former technical director of the Maryland Air National Guard Office at Edgewood Arsenal near Baltimore (one of the main American research facilities on chemical weaponry), said:

I was aware of one incident where we were asked by the [American] intelligence people to supply information on a toxin that was not a good candidate for use as a weapon. It was ricin. It was considered a toxin because it was produced by a living organism, the castor-bean plant. We did not consider it a good candidate because it was difficult to come by in large quantities and had not been synthesized at that time. 176

Analyzing Markov’s assassination and Harris’s information, David Wise came to the wrong conclusion: “Whether the information about ricin was passed to the Soviets, either in the deception phase of SHOCKER [a code name for an FBI/army operation against the Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU) spies who collected information on the development of American nerve gas weaponry] or in a separate, parallel counterintelligence operation, is not clear.” 177Definitely, neither Harris nor Wise knew about Mairanovsky’s “achievements” with ricin.

Drs. Mirzayanov and Alibek warned their colleagues and Western politicians that despite all international agreements, Russian scientists would continue to work on chemical and biological weapons. In 1990–1991 in the USSR, eighteen research institutes with 42,000 employed scientists and six plants were working on the problems and production of biological weapons. 178In 1999, Dr. Mirzayanov was convinced that the only serious problem for the main Russian research institute on chemical weapons, the GosNIIOKhT in Moscow, was lack of funding. If funded, chemists at this institute and its branches will develop new poisonous agents that will be able to penetrate the filters of gas masks. 179Dr. Alibek pointed to the fact that publications in scientific literature in 1996–1997 showed that Russian scientists have continued the development of genetically engineered strains of virulent viruses and bacteria for biological weapons. 180These studies were done with the involvement of the Russian Academy of Sciences and under FSB/SVR control. Such scientific work is a definite violation of the Russian agreement with the United States and Britain signed in 1992 that prohibits all work on biological weapons. 181

Despite the warning, in May 2000 the United States, the European Union, and Japan decided to provide $1.61 million to improve security at the State Research Center for Applied Microbiology in Obolensk (about fifty miles from Moscow), one of the former most secret military installations in the Soviet Union. 182For the first time, an international conference took place at this center and Western scientists were shown the infamous Building No. 1 where the most top-secret research was previously conducted. 183General Nikolai Urakov, director of the center, pledged to open the “curtain of secrecy” and convert the center from military to peaceful research. However, the center will still be in the system of military institutions, and there is no guarantee that a group of scientists within this institution will not continue studies in biological weaponry.

In contemporary Russia, academic science is in trouble because of poor governmental funding. 184At the celebration of the two hundred and seventy-fifth anniversary of the academy in June 1999, President Academician Yurii Semenov declared: “[In 1998] we lived in a state of emergency. All promises of state support for science were not fulfilled.” 185In 2000, the situation became even more desperate. Because of the underfunding of science and miserable salaries, many academic researchers, especially young scientists, have left scientific institutions, and their number in 2000 fell to 910,000, half the figure for 1990. 186Scientists working in the system of the KGB’s secret institutes (since the August 1991 coup, the official name of the KGB has changed several times, but it is easier to refer to it in the old way) never had such a problem, and presumably still do not. In February 1994, after Mirzayanov’s release from prison, General Golushko (at the time head of the Federal Counterintelligence Service—alias the KGB) told the journalist Yevgeniya Albats: “The scientific-technical directorate includes institutes for the design of special technology and intelligence equipment. The scientific-technological directorate, along with the designers and the institutes, numbers about ten thousand people. We also work for intelligence and help the Ministry of Internal Affairs.” 187These words are confirmed by the fact that since 1989, special Spetsnaz troops have been armed with guns to shoot bullets that contain neuroparalytic chemicals. These chemicals are produced at a secret research institute in Klimovsk, a town not far from Moscow. 188Apparently, KGB laboratories are thriving in the economic disaster of contemporary Russia. The general’s estimate of 10,000 scientists being involved in secret service work is impressive. The staff at Mairanovsky’s laboratory numbered approximately only 20–30.