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

CHAPTER 6 Into Supersecrecy

After my divorce, there was nowhere for me to live, because of the housing shortage in Moscow. Rita and I still shared a room and the situation was becoming increasingly more stressful. My only option was to try to buy a new cooperative apartment, and I couldn’t afford to continue working at VNIIKA NeftGas on my salary. So I began to look for new work. Unexpectedly, Professor Victor Berezkin, my masters’ thesis advisor, offered to help me. He did not explain where he had recommended me for work, but he proposed that I meet with an acquaintance of his, a man he had once worked with who was a representative of one of the Post Office Boxes.

I agreed to this, though I remembered the story of my friend Volodya Shakhrai about how Berezkin had been poisoned during his time working at the Central Scientific Military Technical Institute (TsNIIVTI), researching chemical agents. After a long cure, and it seems a not an entirely successful one, he developed a strong allergy to literally every chemical solvent.

Several days later I met with Aleksei Beresnev, who introduced himself as chairman of the Analytical Department of “Post Office Box 702”. We didn’t have a professional conversation, but he proposed that I go to his institute and fill out the paperwork necessary to get access to work with secret documents.

I went to the address Beresnev gave me, and there I was stunned by the sight of a gloomy and decrepit old building on the Highway of Enthusiasts. I wondered if I was in the right place. You could get a glimpse of this monstrosity from a bridge that passed over the railway on the way to Post Office Box 4019, where I had worked as a shift engineer for the last 2 years. During that time, I had gone several times to a “night resort”, which was located in the Tarasovka Settlement, half an hour’s trip from the Yaroslav Train Station on the Northern Moscow Rail Line.

Workers visited this night resort from different Post Office Boxes, and allegedly some of them had worked on the synthesis of chemical agents and on their military applications. I listened to their horror stories and came to the conclusion that they were engaged in a suicidal business. How ironic it was that I willingly agreed to work in this kind of nightmare. I was strongly motivated by the salary, so I could have my own place to live in.

Next, I went to explain the reason for my forthcoming departure to my bosses at VNIIKANeftGas. It was bizarre, but my explanation threw the Secretary of the Party Committee into a rage. He refused to approve my application for withdrawal, and accused me of being egotistical. I was forced to work with an old party hack, a lathe operator.

This man tried to change my mind over the course of several hours, explaining that earnings appeared to be a completely trivial motivation for a party member. In his opinion, the fulfillment of your duty to the party was the most important thing. Of course, it was the same Party Committee at my job, which determined what my “duty” was. This old hand and the “party line” did not succeed in changing my mind, because I was pretty sure I could not continue living in a one-room apartment with my ex-wife. Then, I still had to suffer through another committee meeting of the Party Committee, which wanted to “dress down” their obstinate comrade.

I was given a reprimand, but it was really nothing more than a private assault on me. I was hoping that these people would not decide to give me a “party penalty”. Where could I disappear to if they wanted to do this? How would I be able to “continue to fulfill the party line” as they expected, if they didn’t sign off on my withdrawal?

I decided to “shoot the bank”. On the advice of a friend who was a lawyer, I refused to go to work. I had the right to do that under the Soviet Labor Code; moreover, the administration of VNIIKANeftGas was required to pay me in full for my absence from work. Apparently, the demagogic Soviet system, in order to prove the omnipotence of the working class, had written some unexpected idiosyncrasies into the law. Then along came a joker – a daredevil, who threw down a challenge, and established a precedent in the area of private issues.

I openly gave notice to the Party Committee and to the director of the institute that I might utilize this law. “Ah, does this mean you want to live by the law, and not by the rules of the party of Lenin, like a lawyer?” my educator, the lathe operator asked me indignantly. This conversation was already becoming more dangerous, and I barely managed to ignore his provocation.

Several days later, I set out to visit the regional magistrate, where an employee drew me aside to explain the essence of the problem. Finally a telephone call was made in my presence, and this resolved the whole problem in a flash. I was free to leave my job.

In the summer of 1965 I started at my new job by filling out specialized forms with lots of questions, including the following: “Where do your parents live, and if they have died, where were they buried?” Another one was: “Where do the brothers and sisters of the person filling out this questionnaire live, and where do they work?” The longer your list of relatives, the more time was required to start your real job because the Chekists have to spend more time to check everything out.

The purpose of the questionnaire was to grant a security clearance with access to classified documents, in exchange for signing an obligatory pledge to keep the secrets which would be entrusted to you in your job. It was necessary to renew this clearance every 5 years. You had to go through the same process all over again. Since no one made any notes when they filled out the questionnaire the first time, everyone had to be very careful not to allow any discrepancies to appear five years later, when filling out the new questionnaire. It’s entirely possible all the questionnaires were fully checked out by officials, since the original verification process took about 3 months.

Then I was given instructions about my duties as a secret holder. I was entirely prohibited from having any contacts with foreigners, from making any trips abroad, and from visiting any restaurants, exhibitions, museums, libraries etc. without a special permit from the Second Department.

I heard nothing from my future employer until after this process had run its course. Then they contacted me to let me know that I could go to a doctor for a medical checkup, to see if I met the requirements of the Post Office Box – the place of my future employment. The checkup was also complicated, with numerous analyses, and these procedures took about 2 weeks. My health turned out to be good enough.

And so, on November 30^th 1965, I finally passed through the militarized guard post into the enterprise known as Post Office Box 702 for the first time. From there I went to the Analytical Department, which was in the main laboratory building (GLK), where access was guarded in the same way, and I had to show my pass once more.

On the way there, I was shaken by the appalling view of dirty old one-story brick buildings. On the left side of the path, pilot plants which had been constructed in the 19th century or earlier littered a large part of the territory occupied by the Post Office Box (which later became known as GOSNIIOKhT – pronounced ghos-nee-okht). Smoggy white clouds puffed up over dirty roofs of these buildings covered by black bitumen, and there was a whistling sound from the escape of compressed air of some unknown gas from numerous exhaust pipes. This gave it all a dangerous and oppressive aura you couldn’t shake off.

A revolting smell was leaking from a few open doors and broken windows. You could see people dressed in dirty jumpsuits with white skull caps on their heads inside these rooms and near the doors. From that first time until the last days of my residency at GOSNIIOKhT, I was never able to shake off the unpleasant sensation created by these buildings, which were already half destroyed by time. (Later I heard that some new, but terrible and featureless buildings were built in place of some of them).

The new nine-story administration building, which faces onto the Highway of Enthusiasts, is of necessity a modern architectural devil, but it only covered up the repulsive view of the decrepit ghost structures. All of those which remain standing were once jailhouses for political prisoners or sharashka.[10] Before the Second World War and later there was a factory there for the production of mustard gas. Eyewitness accounts document that in October 1941, the staff buried several metric tons of mustard gas in trenches near what is now the main laboratory building (the GLK), as German troops were approaching Moscow. No steps were taken to destroy or degrade the agent. It was simply dumped untreated into the ground.

The GLK is a three-story brick structure built in 1961. The building extends so that it is butts up to the tramway tracks, and trains are constantly rumbling by, creating a small but audible noise in the building and vibrations, which are a nuisance for those working with highly sensitive physical chemical instruments.

On the short end, the GLK is connected with another old three-story building, by a second story bridge which then turns sharply left and connects to yet another horrible old three-story building. This third building looks out on the Highway of Enthusiasts, and almost connects by cast iron rails with part of a bridge that was built across the rail line, shortly after World War II by German prisoners of war. From this bridge it is possible to get a good view of a large part of the GOSNIIOKhT territory, with its buildings. Numerous ventilation pipes are sprouting out of the roofs, direct evidence that a strong ventilation system is working in these buildings – the specters of the work of a chemical laboratory.

Aleksei Beresnev was the head of the Analytical Department, and he was also head of Chromatographic Laboratory 25. He briefly explained the goal of the work of his department and laboratory. Basically it consisted of developing methods for routine analyses at the experimental manufacturing site, and small scale laboratory analysis of the synthesis of chemical agents and their precursors. He also gave me instructions for compiling scientific research records and the basics of the secrecy regime. I was given two weeks to study the regime requirements and safety technique from numerous manuals and to pass an exam on the safety, medical, fire and other requirements for working independently. The exam was to be given by a commission chaired by Aleksander Shchekotichin, the Deputy Director of Science.

I had to go through numerous safety briefings, on fire and gas-handling technologies in special departments, the heads of which had to sign off on my papers, proving that I had satisfactorily passed through these routine procedures.

Also, I had to become familiar with their system of keeping records in the secret work journals. In the GLK, (as in the other scientific research and experimental corps), this was organized by the local branch of the First Department,[11] which controlled every aspect of all systems of paperwork, including sending and receiving secret letters, reports, methodologies, instructions, and various dissertations, the secret library and archives.

Each scientist, coming to the job, was required to pass his “red certificate” (assistants and engineers giving their passes were receiving only notebooks) through a window at the First Department, and in exchange for that he received a briefcase or a suitcase with notebooks for records and accounts. Instructions about working with secret documents were included. All the lines were numbered in every notebook, and it was sewed with strong thread, the end of which was affixed to the last page with a stamped wax seal.

The registration of each notebook in the briefcase was recorded in an “inventory journal”, which contained a specialized chart that kept track of the inventory number of the notebook, the number of pages, the date of the start of the notebook, the date of the verification and destruction of the notebook after it was fully used up, and whether or not its text had been typed up.

If at any time the notebook was traveling to a different department, or even to your boss, it was recorded in the appropriate column in the inventory journal.

It was extraordinarily difficult to persuade a scientist to give up his working notebook to storage, after filling only half of it out, since often the notebook contained results that would be needed several years later. But, if the space in the notebook was already used up, then it was already pointless to try to discuss the matter. This complicated everything and created difficulties at work, as each scientist, before writing up reports or scientific articles, had strongly abbreviated all the details and parts of the research process, often giving just the final results. You can imagine how terrible each scientist felt when operatives from the First Department were checking the content of his briefcase.

In this way, the work system in GOSNIIOKhT created great hardship, even for authors who were using their own reports and methods. No more than four copies of these materials were then typed up and approved by the Deputy Director of Science. Then they were stored in the “Special Library”.

The author could only take out a copy of “his” report for a strictly limited time period, and you had to apply in writing for special permission to become familiar with the work of others. To get this special permission, you first had to go talk to the head of your department. Then the head of the First Department had to sign off on it, after he verified that the suitability of the applicant corresponded appropriately to the theme of the report (there was a special list for checking this compatibility). Then the approvals of the Deputy Director and the Director of the Institute were routinely required.

Ordinarily, it was practically impossible for a scientist to know the status of any problem, since he was not granted access to the card catalog of materials stored in the Special Library. Access was granted to only a very few people at the institute. Later on, as head of the Department of Foreign Technical Counterintelligence, I was given almost unlimited access. But in all fairness, I must say that I hardly ever used this privilege to familiarize myself with materials far removed from my sphere of professional interests. I think my reticence was based on common sense, since many of us knew that officers in the Special Library routinely kept track of everything that happened within their domain, for the Deputy Director. To bring yourself under the suspicion of the KGB was easier than trying to justify yourself later on.

During working hours, your notebook had to be placed only on the writing desk. Other notebooks, the inventory journal, and your instructions for storage procedures had to be placed in a private executive safe in the workroom. During lunch time, all notebooks were locked in this safe, and the head of the department kept a spare key.

In the evening, at the end of the working day, scientists had to put their notebooks back into the briefcase, which was then sealed in a special way with a personal seal with the inscription of Post Office Box 702 engraved on it. Later that was changed to the name of the institute – GOSNIIOKhT, with a five pointed star. Many years before this it was known as NII-42 (Scientific Research Institute 42), but some people believe that the name was changed to GOSNIIOKhT to mislead Western intelligence agents.

Though it is difficult to describe, this system created such a huge psychological burden on every person with a briefcase for secret material, even though they were compensated by a 15% pay increase.

Occasionally a scientist went home without returning his notebook. The head of the department or his deputy was responsible for compliance with these procedures, from the time he came to work until the last employee on his shift went home. When the duty officer from the First Department anxiously informed this boss that one of his employes went home without turning in the notebook, an alert was declared.

The boss tore the seal off the door and unlocked the room with his spare key. Then he entered the room and unlocked the safe of the negligent worker. All the contents of the safe were extracted and given to the First Department, on receipt. As a rule, the worker remembered about his blunder only when he got home, and suffered through the entire night without any sleep.

The next working day, a commission was established specifically to take up this matter, investigate the “case”, and write up a report with the facts (of the worker’s guilt).

The minimum punishment for this “crime” was an official reprimand by the institute and withdrawal of the worker’s quarterly bonus, which sometimes made up as much as one quarter of his paycheck. Additionally, it was not so rare for all the personnel of the laboratory or department to be punished by cutting their bonuses for such a violation. So, the guilty person was responsible for losing money for everyone else. I think every scientist at GOSNIIOKhT experienced several anxiety attacks, waking up at night in a cold sweat with the sinking feeling that he forgot to turn in his ill-fated notebook. Losing your official GOSNIIOKhT seal brought on the same kind of punishment. Not only would it cost you financially, but you would suffer from nervous strain for no less than an entire month. At the workers’ meeting, the department chairman tried to bear down on the guilty worker in every way, and this continued up until someone else was found guilty of the same crime.

There was another strict system for controlling note taking. Writing on anything like a scrap of paper was strictly prohibited. The Department of the Security Regimemade routine periodic checks of the rooms of the scientists. If the officers of this department found any paper with notes, a strict punishment was handed out and the guilty scientist could lose a considerable part of his salary. It was sickening to watch some of these officers, who were recruited from the ranks of metal workers, lathe operators and other representatives of the working class, routing through the trash can in the workroom. Writing down any chemical formula, even having something to do with pesticides or water, on a scrap of paper, was considered an especially serious crime.

All waste paper and rubbish from the workroom were burned in a special incinerator, located within the institute territory, which was also used as a crematorium for the corpses of test animals which had been used in experiments with chemical agents. I’m sure they set up the system this way because all people were considered potential traitors by the KGB.

No one had the right to use either the formula of a chemical agent or of its precursors in the text of a report, and you also weren’t allowed to use conventional chemical notation. There were several codes for each compound. One code was used for recording the “internal number” in the notebook, a second code was used for writing in scientific reports, and the third was used for recording in letters to other secret institutes or organizations. For example, Substance 33 – the code for the Soviet analogue of the well-known nerve gas VX, had to be written up in GOSNIIOKhT notebooks as M-01 (it also was given a trivial name such as “complex ether”), but in letters or reports it was necessary to write “Substance R-33.”

Soman and sarin could be written in notebooks as ordoval-1 and ordoval-2, respectively, and accordingly as M-02 and M-03, but in reports and letters it was necessary to name these substances as R-35 and R-55.

Lachrymators (tearing agents), known in the West as agents CS or CR, were written in working notebooks as “Substance 65” and “Substance 74” respectively, and accordingly in letters renamed as Substance K-410 and Substance K-444.

The typist was not allowed to see any chemical formula combined with a specific code. Therefore, in place of a chemical name or a code, a bracketed blank space was left, which would be filled in later by hand by the author of the report. It was considered a crime if the scientist entrusted anyone else with this business, for example a lab assistant. Since the department chief had his informers in practically every room, violations of these restrictions would always be discovered and punished.

In 1983, Yevgeni Bogomazov, who was a senior scientist in the Physical Chemistry Department, had the misfortune to place his trust in his lab assistant. Someone reported this to the Security Department, and though Bogomazov was not expelled from the institute, he was docked 30% of his quarterly bonus. People thought that the KGB had shown great generosity.

My boss also explained to me the very important daily procedures for entering and leaving your workroom. In each workroom, a specific person was assigned the responsibility of sealing up the room at the end of each day, and had to turn the key in to the duty officer of the department, who checked the rooms and issued receipts for the keys.

The following workday morning, the responsible person was required to check the integrity of the seal on the door of the room and to open it. Workers from the Security Department often violated the door seal and then sealed it back up with another seal. If the person responsible for the room did not notice such a “violation of the internal regime”, sanctions were poured out on him accordingly.

From the beginning of my work at GOSNIIOKhT, I was instructed that no one had the right to take any kind of notes on sheets or scraps of paper at any scientific meetings. If the organizer of the meeting specified that you were allowed to take notes, and the types of notes you could take was determined, then you had to go to the First Department to receive a special notebook with numbered pages. At the end of the meeting, you had to return the notebook immediately to the First Department. If you were a visitor attending the meeting from another organization or enterprise, and were given the right to take notes, then you had to give your special coded address. At the end of the meeting your notebook would be sent to the First Department of your organization. There was a special mailing network system (spetzpochta) run by the KGB for these kinds of communications.

The system of handling notes mentioned above is working very strictly throughout all organizations and enterprises which work with classified information. For that reason, it is simply disinformation when some people in the U.S.A. are writing tall tales in their books, describing how people from the former Soviet Union took notes at secret meetings and carried them out in their briefcases, reading them in the car, etc. No such kind of “business conduct” would ever be tolerated by the KGB. Without any hesitation, this person would be sent behind bars forever, as a spy. Every meeting like this was supervised by one or two officers from the Department of the Security Regime, so no one could take away any notes, even by accident.

Additionally, the Foreign Technical Counterintelligence Department was responsible for making sure the meeting room was acoustically and electronically secure. As the former chief of that department, I can tell you that if you attended any meetings outside of your enterprise, a special written invitation was sent to your boss through the special KGB mail service.

There is also a special high frequency telephone system for emergency calls. It is located inside a special room with no windows, in the Special Communications Service Department[12] of GOSNIIOKhT. This room is electronically and acoustically protected. The Director of the Institute, some of his chief deputies, and the chiefs of the so-called special services departments also have alternating high frequency telephones (with the insignia of the U.S.S.R. in the center of the dials), which are slightly less protected than the special phone in the special room. They have a special telephone book for these phones, and I know from personal experience using this system, that all these phones are supervised and controlled by the KGB. It is absolutely impossible to invite someone to a secret meeting, using an ordinary phone, even if you could distort your voice in some way as the aforementioned authors of tall tales are saying, to try to confuse readers. It should be pointed out that scientists and their assistants were strictly attached to their work places and didn’t have the right to visit any other laboratories or departments without special permission.

Every person in this secret Post Office Box had his own pass with his photo on it and some coded pictograms showing his permit for entrance to the guardian of the building. On the inner side of the door of each laboratory room a list is posted of people who have the right to enter.

The first time I came into the territory of this Post Office Box I was literally stunned, because before that I couldn’t even imagine how all of this is disgusting, insulting and psychologically damaging for normal human beings. I never stopped to think that I sold myself for money. Life behind the doors of GOSNIIOKhT was not free, and everyone there felt himself or herself to be some kind of person who was deprived of some of the most basic rights. Luckily it was only for 7 hours a day, five days a week. The atmosphere surrounding the relationships between scientists and their bosses was doubly totalitarian. It was so oppressive that you had to be lucky and a real survivor to make any progress in your scientific career. Every scientist knew that he had to pay a high price for the relatively high salary and some privileges given by this employment system.

Most workers understood that they were facing a certain amount of danger and agreed to this risky work in exchange for hazard pay. GOSNIIOKhT compensated employees that spent at least three weeks of the month working with chemical agents with a “hazard bonus” that could significantly increase a worker’s salary. For the junior analytical and physical chemists who worked directly though less frequently with chemical agents, the extra pay totaled a maximum of 33 percent of their salary. Those working with chemical agents, not precursors, on a daily basis, received a hazard bonus equal to 55 percent of their salary. This bonus was normal for researchers who synthesized new chemical agents or were involved in the associated medical and biological research and testing.

Employees had to log the number of days they spent working with chemical agents, and they also kept consumption logs in which they recorded the dates and amounts of chemical agents used. From time to time, a special commission audited these records in all of the departments. If they were incomplete, the commission publicly punished the heads of the departments for their negligence and omissions and deprived employees of their bonuses. One could often see researchers feverishly filling out work registers and consumption logs on the day before an audit.

More often, employees who had not accumulated enough hazard pay days simply made false entries in their journals and then destroyed the chemicals involved all at once. To deter this practice, officers from the Second Department of the Security Directorate could force the assistants to weigh ampoules with chemical agents in their presence, but these controllers never knew what was in the ampoules. Consequently, scientists working with chemical agents could do anything they wanted with the chemicals and still get paid their bonuses. The hazard pay system also encouraged abuse from senior GOSNIIOKhT officials, who could punish and manipulate employees by assigning them work that did not involve chemical agents and thereby severely curtail their earnings.

Other than the bonuses, work with hazardous substances did have its perks for some. Every employee working in hazardous conditions had a yearly paid vacation of thirty-six working days. Employees with a master’s degree received an additional week of vacation time, and those with a doctorate got an additional two weeks of vacation. They could take their holidays free of charge at a special resort for people in the chemical industry, which was located in Yalta on the Black Sea coast. GOSNIIOKhT employees who regularly worked with chemical agents could also opt for early retirement. Women could retire at the age of 45, if they had worked with chemical agents for at least 8 years, while men could retire at the age of 50 if they had 10 years of hazardous work. GOSNIIOKhT had a lunch cafeteria that was free for all employees except the laboratory and departmental chiefs, though this could hardly be called a “benefit” because the food quality and choice were so poor. GOSNIIOKhT’s leadership managed to skim enough funds from the main employee lunch cafeteria to allow themselves their own separate senior staff cafeteria, where the food quality and choice were arguably better.