The Dead Hand (64 page)

In this memo to Gorbachev about biological weapons on May 15, 1990, Politburo member Lev Zaikov wrote the word
biological
by hand, due to its sensitive nature. [Hoover Institution Archives]

Senators Sam Nunn, Democrat of Georgia (right), and Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, saw the dangers of loose nuclear materials and weapons in the former Soviet Union. [Ray Lustig/
Washington Post]

Andy Weber, a U.S. diplomat, located 1,322 pounds of highly-enriched uranium in Kazakhstan. Here, an image of the uranium, which was airlifted out in Project Sapphire. [Andy Weber]

Loading the uranium onto cargo planes to be flown to the United States. [Andy Weber]

President George H. W. Bush raised questions about biological weapons in a private talk with Gorbachev at Camp David, June 2, 1990. [George Bush Presidential Library and Museum]

Christopher Davis, the senior biological warfare specialist on the British Defense Intelligence Staff, makes a video recording during a second visit to Pasechnik’s institute in November 1992. Yeltsin promised to end the biological weapons program, but it continued nonetheless. [Christopher Davis]

Ken Alibek was chief of the anthrax factory built at Stepnogorsk, and later served as deputy director of Biopreparat, the Soviet biological weapons system. [James A. Parcell/Washington
Post]

The Stepnogorsk anthrax facility, with underground bunkers in the foreground. [Andy Weber]

Inside the Stepnogorsk complex, machines were ready to create tons of anthrax for weapons if the Kremlin had given the order. [Andy Weber]

Dry, deserted Vozrozhdeniye Island as seen by Weber and his team as their helicopter approached for the first time in 1995. The island held clues to years of biological weapons testing. [Andy Weber]

Searching for buried anthrax on Vozrozhdeniye Island. [Andy Weber]

Weber, who helped uncover the secrets of the Soviet biological weapons program, found rusting cages once used to hold primates for germ warfare testing on the island. [Andy Weber]

In a tin can of peas at a lightly guarded institute, Weber once found samples of plague agent. [Andy Weber]