State Secrets: An Insider's Chronicle of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program

The Court Releases Me from Prison

Our usual walk was cancelled on the morning of November 2nd, because of the trip to the People’s Court. Right after breakfast I was taken to the Investigator Shkarin’s office again, and the lawyer Vasiliev was waiting there too. Shkarin noticed that I wasn’t exactly pleased to see this “guest”, and he rushed to calm me down, saying that the arrangement stood and I was going to the People’s Court. But I would need a lawyer there, and he suggested I sign a paper confirming that I agreed to use Vasiliev’s services.

I wouldn’t stand for that. I almost lost control over myself, and exploded in a passionate fit of rage. The main point, I shouted indignantly, was that I wouldn’t let them play with me as an ignorant jailbird.

“If you have decided not to let Asnis participate in my case,” I continued. “I won’t let you dupe me with a dummy lawyer.”

“Ah, why do you insult me so? I gave up everything and came all the way over here for your sake,” Vasiliev whined melodramatically.

I answered I would certainly have apologized if I had invited him, and then suddenly refused. Unfortunately, I added, he was forced upon me, instead of the lawyer hired by my wife and the newspaper.

Shkarin again hurried to “calm me down” saying, “OK, OK, Vil Sultanovich. You will return from court and we will discuss everything quietly. Maybe we will find a solution to the problem.”

I countered sharply, “Look here, Captain! Did it even occur to you that the court could decide to release me?!”

To his credit, the investigator didn’t carry on with the topic any further, but remarked philosophically, “Nowadays everything is possible.”

“So you see,” I agreed having relaxed a little bit.

We left the investigator’s office and followed a route I wasn’t familiar with. Soon we found ourselves in the jail’s courtyard, where I spotted a few people who seemed vaguely familiar to me. Then I remembered I had seen the blond couple in front of the editor’s office at Novoe Vremya, before my arrest. It was clear to me they were there, just in case, trained to remember my “scent.”

The paddy wagon drove into the courtyard, the rear door opened, and I was told to climb into the “basket”. It was full of people, prisoners collected from various Moscow jails, who were to be transported to different Moscow district courts.

On the way I chatted with a few prisoners. It turned out that they had heard about me on the radio and on TV. They were indignant that I was the one in jail, instead of those scoundrels who poisoned people. I was delighted to hear this, because even people who had nothing to do with the problems of disarmament understood that the big bosses were simply punishing a man who dared to speak his mind.

A few prisoners and I were taken in handcuffs to the dark and dirty basement of the shabby old courthouse building. It was damp in there, stinking of urine. There were cages for holding prisoners, waiting to be summoned into the courtroom. I was placed into one of them. The walls were decorated with obscenities and curses addressed to the judges. One of the inscriptions read, “Damn you, Judge Schanin!”

It seemed that an eternity had passed before the door to my cage finally opened and two escorts took me somewhere upstairs. At last, we reached the right floor and entered a lobby where about a dozen people were gathered.

It had been eleven days since I last saw free people. I was taken by surprise, when I heard a voice full of enthusiasm calling out my name. Immediately, I was blinded by camera flashes. I was quickly escorted into a room with a lot of benches. I understood that I was in the hall of Kalinin District People’s Court in Moscow.

I was ordered to sit down on a bench behind a short wooden barrier. Guards were standing on each side behind the barrier. When the door to the hall occasionally opened, correspondents started feverishly snapping photos of me.

Finally, the door closed and we waited for the judge to appear. Just in case, I mentally prepared myself for a stiff sentence. The most important thing was not to humiliate myself. I would not beg them to release me. Since I had started all this, it was important for me to have the courage to keep my dignity. It was encouraging that the press was interested, and I no longer felt forgotten or abandoned.

A young lady appeared on the platform and inquired if the prisoner Mirzayanov had arrived. One of the guards confirmed this and she uttered, “All rise. Court is in order!”

I stood up and saw a lean, bearded young man with a large forehead. He was wearing a beautiful light gray suit and strongly resembled an atomic physicist from one of the Soviet movies. I liked him even before he started talking, because I could feel that he was an intelligent person who could never deliver a demagogic sermon on patriotism. A strange idea popped into my mind – “Even if he does something harmful to me, it won’t be very bad.”

The name of the judge was Aleksander Schanin. I was no longer agitated and focused completely on what was going on.

The judge inquired about me and asked if I had a lawyer. I answered that the Investigation Department of the MB RF had deprived me of a defense attorney, and therefore I was going to defend myself. Judge Schanin read my application and gave me the floor. I laid out the essence of my case, which was whipped up by forces that wanted to return Russia to its past. Their major concern was preserving the military-chemical potential, in order to continue the devastating and useless chemical arms race, which no one except the leaders of the VPK needed, because it supported their welfare. The Chemical Weapons Convention had already been initialed, and Russia was just about to sign it. This useless waste of people and their resources no longer made the slightest sense, especially when you considered the serious shortages of industry, food, medications, and many other things in Russia.

The judge asked me my opinion about state secrets and asked if I recognized the necessity of keeping state secrets. I replied that all my work at the State Russian Science Research Institute for Organic Chemistry and Technology (GRNIIOKhT) showed that I was honestly fulfilling my duties, and I also taught my subordinates to do the same. I addressed fundamentally important issues in the press, without disclosing any state secrets. I also stressed in my speech that there was not even a single hint about the technology of producing chemical agents or their chemical formulas in my statements. Anyone could read my article and see that it was true.

Then Prosecutor Buivolov spoke. He declared that I had committed a state crime, so I couldn’t be released from jail. I asked for the floor again, saying that thanks to this prosecutor I still didn’t have a qualified defense attorney and had to defend myself.

“Those who initiated my case, which can’t be fairly investigated in the future, want to keep me in jail,” I said. “The prosecution is afraid of publicity and wants to unfairly convict me under the guise of secrecy.”

The secretary announced that the court would adjourn for a conference, and I remained seated in my place. The door of the hall opened, and I saw the photo-journalists snapping off shots with their cameras again.

The break lasted about 20 minutes. Then Judge Schanin returned to the hall and read out the court’s resolution, which agreed “To satisfy the complaint of Vil Sultanovich Mirzayanov and release him from custody into the court hall,” and “To secure a written statement from V. S. Mirzayanov not to leave his permanent place of residence. The Resolution is final, not subject to appeal or protest.”[99]

Should I even mention what I felt hearing the resolution about my release? I was just happy! Even experienced people couldn’t remember that the court ever released anyone from Lefortovo.

I can’t judge whether that was true or not. In any case, the ruling of Judge Aleksander Schanin confounded all the plans of the Chekists, who were accustomed to dealing with powerless prisoners under the cover of secrecy. The secretary of the court immediately asked me to come up to the judge, and sign a receipt for a copy of the resolution, and a written statement of consent not to leave Moscow.

The doors of the court hall opened and journalists, many of whom kept taking pictures, asked me for a few words for the press and television. I did this with pleasure, because I knew that, to a great extent, I owed my release to the mass media, which brought my case to light with an obvious sympathy for me.

However, I wasn’t freed immediately after signing the statement of obligation with the judge, because there were a few formalities that had to be taken care of with the guard who had brought me to the court. Once more I was escorted to the court’s basement, and the head of the guard made a phone call to confirm that no other criminal proceedings had been instituted against me. Having found out that there were no problems of this sort, he gave me a paper to sign, which said that I had no complaints about the guards escorting me.

After that I was free to leave the court basement and go out into the street, where a TV journalist was waiting for me. I gave an interview as if I was in a dream. I was so joyful about my unexpected release that I couldn’t even believe that it had happened. At the end of our conversation the journalist asked where I was going to go, and I responded that I was going straight home to my children. Suddenly, I remembered that I didn’t have even a ruble in my pocket. The journalist saw my embarrassment and she volunteered to lend me some money for the fare.

Forty minutes later I made it home, where journalists were waiting for me. They took pictures endlessly of my reunion with my children and asked us to repeat this scene again and again.

The next day the phone rang constantly, and I gave numerous interviews to Russian and foreign correspondents explaining the essence of my case. I never forgot for a minute that my case was only in the initial stage and that I had to prepare myself for a difficult struggle.

The KGB vs. Asnis

On November 3^rd, the lawyer Aleksander Asnis arrived and we agreed to discuss the details of my defense. The major obstruction for my case was the demand by the prosecution that Asnis get a security clearance for access to classified documents. Naturally, my lawyer couldn’t agree to that and insisted that the letter and the spirit of the law should be observed. Investigator Shkarin called and summoned me, and I answered, “It’s my duty to come to the interrogation, but our talk will be absolutely useless until my lawyer is present. Before he is allowed to participate, I won’t even greet you, to say nothing of signing any transcripts.”

The Investigation Department of the Ministry of Security (MB RF) and the Attorney General’s Office were in a very awkward position. It was impossible to deny my lawyer participation in the case on legal grounds, when practically every day the press was holding the spotlight on our struggle.

My lawyer made a strong play to resolve the problem. He wrote a letter to the Attorney General’s Office, petitioning to legally transfer my case to his office for prosecution. The correspondence between officials from the prosecutor’s office and the FSK (another incarnation of the KGB) shows they were quite embarrassed about it.

What can we say? There had never been a clash of this sort between the unlimited freedom of the Chekists’ investigation and formal practice of law which the Attorney General’s Office had to observe under the circumstances.

The KGB understood that the case would become completely hopeless despite all the efforts of the investigators, without the cover of secrecy. This is why General Balashov, the Head of the Investigation Department of MB RF, acting upon the advice of Investigator Shkarin, wrote a letter imploring the Prosecutor’s Office not to ruin the former practice of conducting business. He said it was essential to their work and added “In our opinion, if we let Asnis participate in the case without observing the established requirements, the investigation will find itself in a situation where it will have to disclose information that constitutes a state secret”.[100] He was right, but he had only himself to blame for throwing himself into this hole…

The newspaper Izvestia kept the spotlight on the problem of allowing my lawyer access to my case, and on November 5, 1992, it published a bitter response in an article “Selling Motherland is Under Great Secrecy.”[101] In this article, journalists made it absolutely clear to the readers that the delay on the part of the KGB was absolutely illegal. They also made another very critical point – that when the investigators looking into the case of the Committee for Organizing the Coup in August of 1991 had demanded a clearance for the famous lawyer Henry Reznik (who defended the coup supporter Plekhanov), they had to give in and allow the defense attorney to take part in the case without this document, because of public pressure.

After another refusal by the Investigation Department to let Asnis take part in my case, he sent another complaint addressed to the Attorney General of Russia. As a result, Deputy Attorney General Ivan Zemlyanushin sent an indignant letter to the Deputy Minister of MB RF demanding that access to my case be given to Aleksander Asnis.[102] The Deputy Minister of the MB RF, Anatoly Safonov, didn’t have any choice but to order General Balashov to “…stop violating the Law”. So, Chekists suffered a second defeat in my case, when my lawyer was granted access.[103]

Izvestia responded to this episode in the Attorney General’s Office with Valeri Rudnev’s article “The Scientist Who was Selling His Motherland Finally has a Defender.”[104]

The journalist remarked that his newspaper was closely following the Mirzayanov case, which, in his opinion, finally started following normal juridical procedure. He characterized Asnis as a highly qualified lawyer, who was concerned with the approaching selection of the qualified experts, specialists in the areas of state secrecy and chemical production. He thought that my lawyer could, as a last resort, invoke the “dire necessity” defense in my case, stipulated by Article 14 of the RF Criminal Code, which releases the accused from criminal responsibility.

I was skeptical about this approach because the successful accomplishment of such tactics required getting evidence from the so-called “responsible people.” And in the end, the “responsible people” cowardly brushed me aside.

The Generals do Some “Brainwashing”

With the goal of misleading public opinion in Russia and abroad, a briefing was held in the Ministry of Security chaired by Colonel Kandaurov, who would soon become Lieutenant General Kandaurov. He was entrusted with the job of conducting dull and irresponsible briefings, at which he would lie about the events in Chechnya. TV viewers who watched this person work, during the time of the freeing of the hostages in Dagestan in the winter of 1996, could appreciate the true worth of this Chekist’s “art” of presenting false information. Finally, he would be forced to retire in disgrace, and ultimately he found his true place as a deputy in the State Duma.

On November 5, 1992, Colonel Kandaurov did his best to rationalize the illegal actions of his colleagues who didn’t allow my lawyer to participate in my case.[105] Then the floor was given to General Demin, head of Legal Services at MB RF, who expressed his dissatisfaction with the press, which had allegedly distorted information about the Chekists who were working on my case. Of course, this general didn’t expect the degree of scrutiny that the public and the press paid to my case, because he and the service that he headed had been accustomed to doing their business under the cover of secrecy. He was the man who had persistently persuaded Minister Barannikov about the expediency of my arrest. This is why the juridical general at the briefing did his best to justify his failure, by referring to lists of secrets that had never been published, but which I had allegedly disclosed.

His reference to the practice of law in Western countries, concerning this problem, was especially comical. The point is that the lists of these secrets are clearly defined abroad and are published openly in the press. The general tried to explain to ignorant TV viewers that the 1989 resolution of the Committee of Constitutional Supervision didn’t touch upon lists of state secrets, because they have nothing to do with human rights. This inquisitorial interpretation of human rights doesn’t hold up under any scrutiny or criticism. If someone could be arrested based on these secret lists, and criminal proceedings could be instituted against him, and then he had no right to freely leave the country, what kind of documents would these be? This was a real model of absurdity.

At the conference “KGB Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow” organized by Sergei Grigoriyants in February of 1993, I asked Sergei Alekseev, former chairman of this committee and one of the authors of the new Constitution of Russia, if the resolution passed by his committee abolished the aforementioned lists. Surrounded by many journalists, the professor of law answered simply and unequivocally, “Yes, it does, because they hadn’t been published in time.”

General Demin, the head of Legal Services of the MB RF, found himself in a funny situation when Aleksei Lukiyanov, a correspondent from Radio Station Vozrozhdenie, reminded him of his reference to American laws about secrets and asked about a similar case that had taken place in the U.S. in 1971. Daniel Ellsberg[106] had used the newspaper The New York Times to disclose secret Pentagon Papers about the war in Vietnam. The judge had ruled he wasn’t guilty. Demin didn’t expect such a question and could only awkwardly “explain it” by a difference in laws, a difference in historical periods, and so on. He categorically objected to allowing lawyer Asnis access to my case. As for the law, the general recognized only the illegal “sub-legal norms” about secrets. That was it.

Another colonel from the chemical troops, Aleksander Gorbovsky, who was the son of the former head of the research center in Shikhany and the Military Academy of Chemical Defense, represented the Committee for Conventional Problems under the President of Russia at the briefing. His task was to try and justify the irresponsible actions of leaders of the military-chemical complex. He claimed that military chemists had never violated anything; they had always acted in accordance with international agreements. Listening to Gorbovsky, you would think that saving people from chemical weapons had always been the only priority of the military. But this propaganda didn’t work. The journalist Likhanov wasn’t a babe in the woods. He caught Gorbovsky with his own words. The colonel asserted that the draft of the Chemical Weapons Convention contained no traps or loopholes. Then the journalist asked him to explain why not one of the components of our binary weapons was included on the list of controlled precursors.

This was a situation that required intelligence and honesty, but the colonel from the committee gave in, and mumbled something about the future and about perspectives. It’s a pity that the mass media at this time completely forgot about Resolution N 508-RP of the Russian government, dated September 16, 1992, about the licensing of precursors of chemical weapons, which was signed by President Yeltsin. This resolution was published in the September 30, 1992 issue of Rossiskaya Gazetta. Colonel Gorbovsky was one of the authors of this document, and he certainly remembered it during his tirades at the briefing about adherence to international agreements.

This resolution, adopted on the threshold of the signing of the CWC, prohibited the export of precursors of military chemical agents from Russia, according to an attached list. The list included all known precursors for producing chemical agents: soman, sarin, mustard gas, lewisite, and VX gas. However, there were no precursors for agents A-230 and A-232 on the list. The first one, as I wrote above, had been successfully tested and added to the arsenal of the Soviet Army. The situation was the same with Substance 33. However, our country had never produced either VX gas or its precursors. Why did our president end up on the same team with the liars? It was simply because the leaders of the military-chemical complex were certain that no one in the country would ever dare to expose their true faces. This is why all the technical documentation of the Novocheboksary Plant, which produced Substance 33 but not the notorious American VX gas, was re-written. The generals were glad that the Americans really believed their “canard”, that the U.S.S.R. allegedly produced VX gas and not something else.

Why was this fraud so important for them? It was because they cared a great deal about the problems involved with stockpiling Substance 33.

After Substance 33 was successfully tested and binary weapons based on it were added to the arsenal of the Soviet Army, the problem of stockpiling and, consequently the related flaws of this chemical agent were magically eliminated.

The generals were planning to keep cheating their American colleagues, because only VX and its precursors would be mentioned in all the international agreements. There were even some people in the U.S. who tried to cast doubt that this suggestion was based only on the facts. Naturally, the Americans were ashamed to admit they had been led by the nose so easily and for so long! I would like to offer them my interpretation of Resolution N 508-RP of the President of Russia, and explain why the technical documentation on the production of the Substance 33 and the development of binary weapons based on it was forged and passed off as documentation for the production of the VX gas. The fact that precursors of the chemical agents A-230 and A-232 are not on this list is entirely natural, since the generals wanted to keep them for the future.

In an interview published on November 11, 1992 in Rossiskaya Gazetta,²⁵³ General Anatoly Kuntsevich tried to accuse me, saying that my article was an attempt to “slander Russia.” He expressed deep satisfaction that the Americans didn’t fall for this “provocation.” Of course, how could they “fall for it”? They received most of their information from Kuntsevich himself! The general went too far with the publication of the above-mentioned resolution. He hastily sent copies of it to all countries, including the U.S. Even the celebrated U.S. intelligence services swallowed this bait. This took place when Bush senior was president. Bill Richardson, who was the Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Chemical Matters and Kuntsevich’s U.S. partner in the CWC negotiations, didn’t expect such a dirty trick. He said that it wasn’t even the threat of the development of new chemical weapons that worried him: “The concern is [that] those conniving bastards aren’t dealing with us honestly. How much else are they lying?” That was a very harsh reaction by the former US deputy aide on chemical weapons.[107]

Many Muscovites in the street, passing by the building of the newspaper Izvestia, could see a huge photo-poster in the window of the editor’s office. In the picture taken by a photo-correspondent of this newspaper, one could see Kuntsevich fraternizing with Richardson during his trip to the U.S.

It seems to me I ran slightly ahead in my narration. However, all this, apart from the last episode, looked more than strange on the threshold of the signing of the Chemical Weapons Convention. However, even today I can’t stop thinking about the question, as to why General Kuntsevich lied to them and to others.

Neverthless, the general authoritatively enlightened a correspondent by saying, “Military chemical work, like all other defense work, has special status. Each department engaged in weapons development creates certain norms to protect secrecy… I am no legal expert. But it is possible that merely by announcing that a particular institute was working on chemical agents one is divulging a state secret.”²⁵³

It is curious that the general was so willing to drone on about the subject of selling secrets, which, according to him, “is not stipulated by democracy, even American democracy.” Kuntsevich repeated this assertion, with explicit hints obviously directed at me in a TV interview on Channel One. It looked as though this topic haunted him, inadvertently giving away something lying deep inside of him. Probably by the categorical nature of his statements, he meant to suggest that “democratic types” like Mirzayanov were the ones most likely to sell out their Motherland. Finally, I had to respond to these jabs in several interviews, but unlike Kuntsevich, I didn’t use any half-hearted thrusts. I said directly that only our generals could sell out our country. I meant General Kuntsevich, of course, and my words proved to be somewhat prophetic. I don’t think that his preparations, for secretly selling precursors of Substance 33 to another country, were what stressed out the general. Obviously he was under the tremendous pressure of a crime that he had already committed.^107, [108]