The Dead Hand (88 page)

50
Frank von Hippel, “Contributions of Arms Control Physicists to the End of the Cold War,”
Physics and Society
, vol. 25, no. 2, April 1996, pp. 1, 9–10. The conference was part of the Niels Bohr Centennial celebration, Sept. 27–29, 1985.

51
Of three proposals considered, Cochran said NRDC’s was accepted because the group could move quickly. The agreement was signed May 28 between Velikhov
and Adrian DeWind, chairman of the NRDC. Cochran, communication with author, July 9, 2008; von Hippel,
Citizen Scientist
, pp. 91–92.

52
Cochran had asked Charles Archambeau, a theoretical seismologist at the University of Colorado, to help organize the seismologists and equipment. Archambeau recruited John Berger, Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, to organize the team to man the Soviet and U.S. installations and identify and order the needed equipment. Archambeau and Berger recruited James N. Brune from the University of Nevada and several others.

53
Natural Resources Defense Council, “Nuclear Test Ban Verification Project,” Status Report, November 1986; and Thomas B. Cochran,
The NRDC/Soviet Academy of Sciences Joint Nuclear Test Ban Verification Project
, Physics and Global Security, vol. 16, no. 3, July 1987, pp. 5–8.

54
Cochran, communication with author, July 8, 2008. The Soviet documents are at Katayev, Hoover.

55
The Central Committee approval was July 9 as Cochran and his team were just arriving on the site. Katayev, Hoover.

56
Chernyaev, pp. 77–78.

57
Gorbachev letter to Reagan, Sept. 15, 1986, RRPL.

58
Reagan diary, Sept. 19, 1986.

59
Chernyaev notes from the Politburo session, Sept. 22, 1986. See
The Reykjavik File: Previously Secret Documents from U.S. and Soviet Archives on the 1986 Reagan-Gorbachev Summit
, TNSA EBB 203, doc. 3.

60
Chernyaev, pp. 79–84. Also see David Holloway, “The Soviet Preparation for Reykjavik: Four Documents,” in the conference report
Implications of the Reykjavik Summit on Its Twentieth Anniversary
(Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2007), pp. 45–95.

61
Chernyaev, p. 81.

62
“Talking Points,” three pp., John Poindexter to the President, no date, RRPL, document no. 9155, Box 90907, European and Soviet Affairs Directorate, NSC.

63
Two sets of notes of the Reykjavik discussions were used for this account. While there are some differences, they largely agree on the substance of what was said. The United States notes are summaries and have been declassified by the State Department; see TNSA, EBB No. 203. The Soviet notes are more detailed, in the form of transcripted speech, and were published in four installments in 1993 by the journal
Mirovaya Ekonomika I Mezhdurnarodnyye Otnosheniya
and translated by FBIS.

64
The U.S. team was led by Nitze, and the Soviet team by Akhromeyev. See Strobe Talbott,
The Master of the Game: Paul Nitze and the Nuclear Peace
(New York: Knopf, 1988), pp. 317–322.

65
Shultz, p. 763.

66
Reagan,
An American Life
, p. 677.

67
This account of the final dialogue is from Shultz, and Reagan gives a similar account. However, Gorbachev said Reagan reproached him, “You planned from the start to come here and put me in this situation!” Gorbachev recalls he replied he was prepared to go back inside and sign a comprehensive arms control
document “if you drop your plans to militarize space.” He quotes Reagan as responding, “I am really sorry.” Gorbachev,
Memoirs
, p. 419.

68
Reagan diary, Oct. 12, 1986.

69
Gorbachev press conference, Oct. 14, 1986, BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, SU/8389/A1/1.

1
Svetlana Savranskaya and Thomas Blanton, eds., “The Reykjavik File,” TNSA EBB 203, doc. 19.

2
TNSA EBB 203, doc. 21.

3
Anatoly Chernyaev,
My Six Years with Gorbachev
(University Park, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), p. 87.

4
Gorbachev needed to raise prices that had long been set artificially low, but he could not bring himself to do it. Stable prices were part of the social compact with the population that went back to the late 1950s and early 1960s. Yegor Gaidar,
Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia
(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2007), pp. 122–139.

5
Politburo instruction No. P34/I to the Ministry of Defense, Oct. 14, 1986, as referenced in an excerpt from Protocol No. 66 of the Politburo meeting, May 19, 1987. Katayev, Hoover.

6
Sergei Akhromeyev and Georgi M. Kornienko,
Glazami Marshala i Diplomata
(Moscow: International Relations, 1992), pp. 124–126.

7
Gorbachev broadcast on Soviet television, Oct. 22, 1982, BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, SU/8398/A1/1.

8
In his televised address from the Oval Office October 14, Reagan said, “We offered the complete elimination of all ballistic missiles—Soviet and American—from the face of the Earth by 1996.” He also described a 50 percent cut in other weapons along with elimination of the missiles.

9
Don Oberdorfer,
From the Cold War to a New Era
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), p. 208. Crowe said in his memoir that he told Reagan the plan was “ill-advised,” but he does not quote directly from his presentation. William J. Crowe Jr.,
The Line of Fire: From Washington to the Gulf, the Politics and Battles of the New Military
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), pp. 266–269.

10
Reagan diary, Oct. 27, 1986.

11
TNSA EBB 203, doc. 23.

12
The arrival of Stinger shoulder-fired antiaircraft weapons to the U.S.-backed Afghan resistance in September marked a turning point in the six-year-old war. Congress pumped $470 million in secret aid to the fighters in fiscal year 1986 and increased that to $630 million the next year. Steve Coll,
Ghost Wars
(New York: Penguin Books, 2004), pp. 149, 151.

13
Chernyaev, p. 95.

14
Reagan, who earlier adhered to the SALT II limits, decided that the United States would no longer do so, and the United States broke through in late November 1986.

15
This was a reference to Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, who was removed as chief of the General Staff in September 1984 but at the time remained in the defense ministry
and continued to be outspoken about the need to provide advanced technology to the military.

16
The radar issue was first raised by the United States in 1983; Gates was repeating the charge.

17
William M. Welch, “Soviets Have Far Outspent U.S. on Nuclear Defense, CIA Says,” AP, Nov. 25, 1985. The
spravka
is in Katayev, Hoover.

18
Sakharov said February 15, “A significant cut in ICBMs and medium-range and battlefield missiles, and other agreements on disarmament, should be negotiated as soon as possible, independently of SDI … I believe that a compromise on SDI can be reached later.” Sakharov,
Moscow and Beyond
(New York: Knopf, 1991), p. 21.

19
See “The INF Treaty and the Washington Summit: 20 Years Later,” TNSA EBB No. 238.

20
Podvig,
Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), pp. 224–226. Gorbachev,
Memoirs
, pp. 443–444.

21
Katayev’s account is drawn from his memoir; a lengthy monograph, “Structure, Preparation and Application of Decisions in Political-Military Problems in the Soviet Union;” and a monograph on civil-military relations.

22
Chernyaev, p. 103, n 4.

23
Margaret Thatcher,
The Downing Street Years
(New York: HarperCollins, 1993), pp. 481–482.

24
Gorbachev,
Zhizn’ i reformi
, vol. 2, pp. 36–37. George Shultz,
Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), p. 890.

25
An upgrade was planned to give the Oka a range of 372 miles, but it was never carried out. Katayev.

26
TNSA, EBB 238.

27
Gorbachev approved May 19. Katayev.

28
Yarynich, interviews with author.

29
This account is based on K. Lantratov, “Zvezdnie Voini, Kotorikh ne bylo” [Star Wars That Never Was], at
www.buran.ru/htm/str163.htm
. Two days after the crash, on May 17, Defense Minister Sokolov sent a message to the Central Committee, saying new programs would be readied for anti-satellite combat as well as the SK-1000 list that had been put on Gorbachev’s desk in 1985. The Politburo referred Sokolov’s message for further study by a four-man committee on May 19. However, most of the projects were never built. “On questions of perfecting the structure of the strategic nuclear forces of the USSR and counteracting the American program to create a multi-echelon system of anti-missile defense,” a memo. Katayev, Hoover.

30
“On completed investigation of the criminal case against Rust,” Central Committee memorandum, July 31, 1987, Hoover, Fond 89, Perechen 18, Delo 117; a documentary by Danish radio, DR, at
http://www.dr.dk/Tema/rust/english /index.html
;
Peter Finn, the
Washington Post
, May 27, 2007, p. A20;
The Observer
, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2002, interview by Carl Wilkinson.

31
Pravda
, May 28, 1992; see Michael Dobbs,
Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire
(New York: Knopf, 1997), pp. 180–181.

32
Gorbachev,
Memoirs
, p. 232.

33
Chernyaev, p. 119.

34
Chernyaev, p. 119. Also, “On Violation of Soviet Airspace and Measures to Strengthen Leadership of USSR Armed Forces,” Volkogonov Collection, Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, Reel 17, Container 25.

35
Chernyaev diary, June 15, 1987.

36
Katayev, Hoover.

37
Cochran told the author that by measuring the spacing between the centers of the radio transmitter housings, one could calculate the signal half-wavelength and therefore the frequency of the transmitter. This was evidence that the frequency was too low (the wavelength too long) to be a battle management radar.

38
Cochran, interviews, Aug. 19, 2004, and Feb. 25, 2008. Also, courtesy Cochran, “Preliminary Report to the Speaker of the House on Fact-Finding Trip to the Soviet Union;” “Memorandum,” to Senator Edward M. Kennedy from Christopher E. Paine, Sept. 9, 1987; “Chronology of Trip from Moscow to Krasnoyarsk Radar Site,” Sept. 5, 1987. TASS reported the Gorbachev offer. On the Soviet leadership, Katayev, including, “Consideration of the question connected with problems of ‘violations’ of the ABM agreement,” Nov. 21, 1987, signed by Shevardnadze, Zaikov, Chebrikov, Yazov, Dobrynin and Maslyukov, and a Central Committee staff report on the same date; also see William J. Broad, “Inside a Key Russian Radar Site: Tour Raises Questions on Treaty,”
New York Times
, Sept. 7, 1987, p. A1.

39
George Shultz, p. 1001.

40
Leon Aron,
Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), pp. 200–206. Also see Archie Brown,
The Gorbachev Factor
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 168.

41
“Gorbachev: Soviet Economic Modernization and the Military,” Defense Intelligence Agency, Defense Research Comment DRC-82-87, November 1987. The paper was presented to the Joint Economic Committee on Sept. 14, 1987.

42
“Whither Gorbachev: Soviet Policy and Politics in the 1990s,” NIE 11-18-87, November 1987, carried many of the same points that Gates had made in the memo. The assessment failed to catch the dynamic of radical change. TNSA EBB 238. Shultz said, “I felt a profound, historic shift was underway: the Soviet Union was, willingly or unwillingly, consciously or not, turning a corner; they were not just resting for round two of the cold war.” Shultz, p. 1003.

1
Domaradsky and Wendy Orent,
Biowarrior
(New York: Prometheus Books, 2003), pp. 233–250.

2
Popov, interviews by author.

3
Ken Alibek, with Stephen Handelman,
Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World—Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It
(New York: Random House, 1999), pp. 87–106.

4
Alibek, p. 118. If Alibek’s account is correct, Gorbachev signed this only a month after his January 1986 speech calling for abolition of all nuclear and chemical weapons. The document has never been made public.

5
Chernyaev interview, Feb. 4, 2005. Chernyaev said, “Gorbachev was in favor of ending it. But he was being deceived. I don’t remember when, but he was given a
report they were already closing down the military part of this program…Shevardnadze told him several times, ‘They lie to us, Mikhail Sergeyevich,’ on the subject of this program.” When I asked Chernyaev who was deceiving Gorbachev, he replied, “The manufacturers of this weapon who dealt with this system. The military and the scientists who were involved.”

6
“Visit to Moscow of Professor Matthew Meselson,” Moscow 14971, State Department cable to Washington, Aug. 29, 1986, courtesy Meselson archive. Also see Jeanne Guillemin,
Anthrax: The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), p. 18. While still in Moscow, Meselson asked U.S. officials if they had any questions to pose to his Soviet hosts, according to the cable. Meselson told the author the officials did not respond. After his trip, on September 12 in Washington, Meselson briefed officials from the CIA, Departments of State and Defense, and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Meselson repeated that the Soviet explanation about bad meat “seemed to hang together.” The U.S. officials did not believe him and thought he had not asked tough questions. TNSA EBB 61, doc. 27.