Biohazard

ILLUSTRATIONS

^{My grandfather Abdrahman Aitiev at his desk in the 1920s. One of the leaders of the Communist revolution in Kazakhstan, he was the first People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, responsible for police and security services in the 1920s and 1930s. A Kazak national hero, he was imprisoned in 1936 and died that year in a prison hospital in mysterious circumstances. Several streets in Kazakhstan are named after him.}

^{My parents, Rosa and Byzak Alibekov, in 1950, when my father was a junior police lieutenant and my mother was pregnant with me.}

^{Taking the army oath to enter the military faculty of the Tomsk Medical Institute in 1973.}

^{A break from military training with fellow medical cadets in 1974. I am second from the left. To my right is Talgat Nurmagambetov, recent chief of medical services for the Kazak army.}

^{Military training: laying a simulated mine at Tomsk in 1974.}

^{Delivering a report on the tularemia outbreak at the Battle of Stalingrad at a scientific conference for military cadets in early 1975.}

^{With my platoon at graduation: June 1975. I am bottom row, second from the right. Top row on the far left is Yevgeny Staroverov. He was assigned with me to Omutninsk, where still worked in the late 1980s. In the second row, second from the left is Yevgeny Stavsky, who joined the Fifteenth Directorate after graduation and went to Vector in the 1980s as a department chief to develop a smallpox weapon.}

^{With my first child, Mira, at Berdsk in 1979, when I was working with brucellosis and was accused by the KGB of illegally developing biological weapons.}

^{An official army photo, taken in 1982, after I was promoted to deputy director of Omutninsk. I am wearing a medal for "wartime services" awared for the successful development of a tularemia biological weapon.}

^{May Day at Stepnogorsk, 1985. Anthrax weapons developers and their children.}

^{Part of the Stepnogorsk compound: a view from Building 221. The building in the fore-ground housed aerosol explosive chambers. Directly behind it is an anthrax drying facility. The bunkers in the foreground were for filling and assembling biological munitions.}

^{With my family in August 1987. From the right: Lena, Alan, Mira, Timur. This photo was taken after the successful testing of my new anthrax weapon, a month before we moved to Moscow.}

^{General Kalinin presides: an annual conference of bioweaponeers — institute directors, sci-Urakov, director of Obolensk; me; Oleg Ignatiev, chief of Biological Weapons Directorate of the Military Industrial Commission (VPK); unidentified official; and Kalinin.}

^{General Kalinin's audience.}

^{First doubts: with Colonel Professor Tarumov, one of the main developers of tularemia biological weapons, at a scientific conference in Moscow in 1990.}

^{Military coup: Biomash employees at CM barricades in front of the Russian White House in August 1991.}

^{Pine Bluff, Arkansas: inspecting American facilities. Sitting, from left to right: General Urakov; GRU colonel Dzuby; Lev Sandakchiev, director of Vector; Colonel Shcherbakov, chief of the scientific directorate at Biopreparat; Lisa Bronson, head of the American delegation; me. Third from the right, Handing, it Colonel Vasiliev, deputy commander of the Fifteenth Directorate. Standing in front of the pole is Grigory Berdennikov, head of the Russian team. He was appointed deputy minister of foreign affairs in 1992.}

^{Giant autoclave in Building 221 at Stepnogorsk, used to sterilize nutrient media and for the deactivation of anthrax cultures.}

^{Dismantling Stepnogorsk: Pilot plant installation for filling and sealing biological bomblets.}

^{Fort Detrick, Maryland, 1998: with three successive commanders of USAMRIID — Charlie Bailey, Dr. Dave Franz, and Dr. Jerry Parker.}

^{Fort McClellan, Alabama: a briefing at the U.S. army biological weapons reconnaissance installation. The truck behind us is equipped to detect and identify biological weapons.}

^{New York, Sunday November 9, 1997: Emergency workers evacuate a "victim" of a biological weapons attack in a training exercise a few blocks from City Hall.}

^{Visiting Charlie Bailey at home in Alabama, 1998.}