Vadim Birstein - The Perversion of Knowledge

12. During the time of “perestroika,” in 1988–1990, Vadim Bakatin (b. 1937) was Minister of the Interior (MVD). In 1991 he was appointed head (chairman) of the KGB (see Wise, D., “Closing Down the KGB,” New York Times Magazine , November 24, 1991). In December 1991, Bakatin was replaced by Viktor Barannikov. Despite all Bakatin’s efforts to solve the mystery of Wallenberg’s death, the KGB stopped independent archival investigation on this issue.

13. Petrov, N., and T. Kasatkina, “Ekspertiza ‘Memoriala’” [Memorial’s expertise], Moscow News 39 (1990) (in Russian); Gevorkyan, N., and N. Petrov, “Terakty [Terrorist acts], Moscow News 31 (1992) (in Russian); Gevorkyan, N., and N. Petrov, “Priznat’ tselesoobraznym osushchestvlenie aktov terrora” [Carrying out terrorist acts should be recognized as expedient], Moscow News 35 (1992) (in Russian).

14. Bandura, Yu., and S. Bura, “Grigorii Mairanovskii: gipotezy i fakty” [Grigory Mairanovsky: Hypotheses and facts], Moscow News 39 (1990) (in Russian); Burbyga, N., “Prigovoryen k ‘medosmotru’” [Condemned to a “medical examination”], Izvestiya 114, April 16, 1992 (in Russian).

15. The manuscript was translated from Russian by the well-known translator Catherine Fitzpatrick.

16. Bobrenjow, Wladimir, und Waleri Rjasanzew, Das Geheimlabor des KGB: Gespenster der Warsanowjew-Case (Berlin: Edition Verlags-Gmb-H, 1993).

17. Bobryonev, Vladimir, “Doktor Smert,” ili Varsonofievskie prizraki [“Doctor Death,” or the Ghosts of Varsonofyevsky Lane] (Moscow: Olimp, 1997) (in Russian).

18. For example, see Weinreich, Max, Hitler’s Professors (New York: Yiddish Scientific Institute, 1946); Lifton, Robert J., The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killings and the Psychology of Genocide (Basic Books, 1986); Deichmann, Ute, Biologists Under Hitler, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996).

19. Müller-Hill, Benno, “Bioscience in Totalitarian Regimes: The Lessons to Be Learned from Nazi Germany,” in Roy, D. J., B. E. Wynne, and R. W. Old, eds., Bioscience and Society (Chichester: John Wiley, 1991), pp. 67–76; Müller-Hill, Benno, “Science, Truth and Other Values,” Quarterly Review of Biology 68 (3) (1993): 399–407.

20. The first publication of the book was in 1988; here I use the latest version: Müller-Hill, Benno, Murderous Science: Elimination by Scientific Selection of Jews, Gypsies, and Others in Germany, 1933–1945 (Cold Spring Harbor, MI: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 1998).

21. Materials of the Trial of Former Servicemen of the Japanese Army Charged with Manufacturing and Employing Bacteriological Weapons (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1950); Williams, Peter, and David Wallace, Unit 731: Japan’s Secret Biological Warfare in World War II (New York: Free Press, 1989); Harris, Sheldon H., Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932–45, and the American Cover-Up (London: Routledge, 1997); Parker, John, The Killing Factory: The Top Secret World of Germ and Chemical Warfare (London: Smith Gryphon Publishers, 1996), pp. 85–89.

22. Andrew, Christopher, and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story (New York: Harper Perennial, 1991), pp. 644–645; Kalugin, Oleg, “Tipichno ‘bolgarskoe’ ubiistvo Interviyu Olega Kolugina zhurnalistke ‘Moskovskikh Novoste:’ N. Gevorkyan” [A typical “Bulgarian” murder: An interview of Oleg Kalugin by the Moscow News journalist, N. Gevorkyan], Moscow News 17 (1991) (in Russian). Markov’s biography and a detailed description of his murder are given in: Bereanu, Vladimir, and Kalin Todorov, The Umbrella Murder (Oxford: TEL, 1994), pp. 13–46.

23. Harris, Robert, and Jeremy Paxman, A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret Story of Chemical and Biological Warfare (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), pp. 226–237; Ranelagh, J., The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), pp. 202–216; Marks, John, The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate” (New York: McGraw Hill, 1991).

24. These experiments continued even later. In her book Secret Agenda (p. 171), Linda Hunt wrote: “Thousands of American soldiers, seven thousand of them between 1955 and 1975 alone, were used as unwitting guinea pigs in the tests. They were gassed, maced, and drugged in the search for the ultimate mind-control weapon” (Hunt, Linda, Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip, 1945 to 1990 [New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991]).

25. Marchetti, Victor, and John D. Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974).

26. Colby, William, and Peter Forbath, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), pp. 317–319.

27. Originally published by John Marks as The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate”: The CIA and Mind Control (New York: Times Books, 1978). In this study I have used the latest edition of his book, published in 1991.

28. See details in Welsome, Eileen, The Plutonium Files: America’s Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War (New York: Dial Press, 1999).

29. The nerve gases tabun, sarin, and soman were discovered and synthesized in 1936–1938 by Dr. Gerhard Schrader at I. G. Farben in Nazi Germany. After World War II, the Soviets dismantled the gas-producing plant in Breslau (Poland) and reassembled it in the Soviet Union. Dr. Schrader was captured by the Americans, and American scientists learned from him about the production of these gases in Germany. In the 1950s, British and American military scientists developed a new powerful nerve gas, VX (Harris, Robert, and Jeremy Paxman, A Higher Form of Killing, pp. 57–61, 70–71, 151–152, 203–204).

30. Gilligan, A., and R. Evans, “Soldiers Tricked into Chemical Tests,” Electronic Telegraph 892, November 2, 1997 (on-line version) Syal, R., “Porton Down Faces Criminal Inquiry into Airman’s Death,” Electronic Telegraph 1528, August 1, 1999 (on-line version); Evans, R., “Scandal of Nerve Gas Tests,” Observer , September 3, 1999.

31. Parker, The Killing Factory , p. 196.

32. Gilligan, A., and R. Evans, “MoD Admits Airborne Germ Warfare Tests,” Electronic Telegraph , November 16, 1997 (on-line version).

33. In 1991, I gave a talk on Mairanovsky at the Conference on International Aspects of Ethical and Social Issues in Human Genome Research, Washington, DC. In 1996, I included new data in my presentation at another meeting, the Third World Congress of Bioethics: Bioethics in an Interdependent World, San Francisco, November 20–25.

34. See Vavilov, Yurii N., and Yakov G. Rokityansky, “Golgotha: Arkhivnye materialy o poslednikh godakh zhizni akademika N. I. Vavilova” [Golgotha: Archival materials on the last years of Academician Vavilov’s life (1940–1943)], Vestnik Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk 63 (1993): 830–846 (in Russian).

35. About the structure of the Politburo, see Löwenhardt, John, The Soviet Politburo (Canongate: Thomson Litho, 1982).

36. See, for instance, “O tak nazyvaemom ‘Dele Evreiskogo Antifashistskogo Komiteta’” [On the so-called “Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee Case”], Izvestiya TsK KPSS 12 (1989): 35–40 (in Russian); Rapoport, Louis, Stalin’s War Against the Jews: The Doctor’s Plot and the Soviet Solution (New York: Free Press, 1990), pp. 80–97. First Deputy MGB Minister Sergei Ogoltsov (1900–1977) was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for carrying out the organization of the assassination of Mikhoels. On April 3, 1953, Ogoltsov was arrested, charged with carrying out the assassination, and deprived of his position as first deputy minister and the award. He was released on August 6, 1953, and discharged from the MVD in January 1954. See Petrov and Skorkin, Kto rukovodil NKVD, p. 323.