David Hoffman: The Dead Hand

10 The Cooperative Threat Reduction programs were a mere .07 percent of the Defense Department’s overall budget request for fiscal year 2009, 3.86 percent of the Energy Department’s request and .8 percent of the State Department’s request. See Bunn, p. 116.

11 Valentin Yevstigneev, interview, Feb. 10, 2005. Yevstigneev’s comment repeated the claim made in an article published May 23, 2001, in the Russian newspaper Nezavisamaya Gazeta . Stanislav Petrov, the general in charge of chemical weapons, was a coauthor. The piece claimed the Sverdlovsk anthrax outbreak was the result of “subversive activity” against the Soviet Union. Stanislav Petrov et al., “Biologicheskaya Diversia Na Urale” [Biological Sabotage in the Urals], NG, May 23, 1001.

12 The closed military facilities are: the Scientific-Research Institute of Microbiology of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Kirov, which is the main biological weapons facility of the military; the Virology Center of the Scientific-Research Institute of Microbiology of the Ministry of Defense, Sergiev Posad; and the Department of Military Epidemiology of the Scientific Research Institute of Microbiology of the Ministry of Defense, Yekaterinburg.

13 When the United States and Russia signed the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997 they promised to destroy stocks of chemical weapons by 2012. The sarin and other chemical weapons mentioned here are to be eliminated by the plant now under construction with U.S. assistance, near Shchuchye.

14 Alan Cullison and Andrew Higgins, “Files Found: A Computer in Kabul Yields a Chilling Array of al Qaeda Memos,” Wall Street Journal , Dec. 31, 2001, p. 1.

15 George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), pp. 278–279. Also, 9/11 Commission report, chapter 5, p. 151. Sufaat received a degree in biological sciences with a minor in chemistry from California State University, in 1987. 9/11 Commission, note 23, p. 490.

16 Tenet, p. 279.

17 World at Risk: The Report of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism , Bob Graham, chairman (New York: Vintage, 2008), p. 11.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published and unpublished material:

Sir Rodric Braithwaite: Excerpts from Sir Rodric Braithwaite’s unpublished diary. Reprinted by permission of Sir Rodric Braithwaite.

Harper Collins Publishers Inc.: Excerpts from The Reagan Diaries by Ronald Reagan, edited by Douglas Brinkley, copyright © 2007 by The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Foundation. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Ksenia Kostrova and The Hoover Institution Archives: Excerpts from Vitaly Katayev’s papers. Reprinted with permission of Ksenia Kostrova and the Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, Calif.

The National Security Archive: Excerpts from The Diary of Anatoly Chernyaev , translated by Anna Melyakova and Dr. Svetlana Savranskaya, editor of the English-language edition of the diary. Reprinted by permission of The National Security Archive.

Prometheus Books: Excerpts from Biowarrior: Inside the Soviet/Russian Biological War Machine by Igor V. Domaradskij and Wendy Orent. Reprinted by permission of Prometheus Books.

Random House, Inc.: Excerpts from Biohazard by Ken Alibek, copyright © 1999 by Ken Alibek. Reprinted by permission of RandomHouse, Inc.

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“A stunning feat of research and narrative. Terrifying.”

“The Dead Hand is a brilliant work of history, a richly detailed, gripping tale that takes us inside the Cold War arms race as no other book has. Drawing upon extensive interviews and secret documents, David Hoffman reveals never-before-reported aspects of the Soviet biological and nuclear programs. It’s a story so riveting and scary that you feel like you are reading a fictional thriller.”

“The Dead Hand is deadly serious, but this story can verge on pitch-black comedy— Dr. Strangelove as updated by the Coen Brothers.”

“In The Dead Hand , David Hoffman has uncovered some of the Cold War’s most persistent and consequential secrets—plans and systems designed to wage war with weapons of mass destruction, and even to place the prospective end of civilization on a kind of automatic pilot. The book’s revelations are shocking; its narrative is intelligent and gripping. This is a tour de force of investigative history.”

“[A] taut, crisply written book…. The Dead Hand puts human faces on the bureaucracy of mutual assured destruction, even as it underscores the institutional inertia that drove this monster forward…. A fine book indeed.”

“An extraordinary and compelling story, beautifully researched, elegantly told, and full of revelations about the superpower arms race in the dying days of the Cold War. The Dead Hand is riveting.”

“No one is better qualified than David Hoffman to tell the definitive story of the ruinous Cold War arms race. He has interviewed the principal protagonists, unearthed previously undiscovered archives, and tramped across the military-industrial wasteland of the former Soviet Union. He brings his characters to life in a thrilling narrative that contains many lessons for modern-day policy makers struggling to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. An extraordinary achievement.”

David E. Hoffman is a contributing editor at The Washington Post and author of The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia . He lives in Maryland.