Biohazard

"Our military developments were the reason [for the accident]," Yeltsin said cryptically, adding that he had asked then-KGB chairman Yuri Andropov and Defense Minister Ustinov to close down the bacteriological facility as soon as he heard about the anthrax release.

When the reporter asked why he had been silent for so long, Yeltsin answered, "Nobody asked me."

Now, for some reason, the coverup has resumed. In 1998, Russian newspapers published articles quoting officials on the "real" cause of the anthrax outbreak two decades earlier.

They said it was contaminated meat.

Progress

Stepnogorsk, 1983-87

Within a few weeks of my assignment to Stepnogorsk I was ordered to Moscow for briefings. It was a sobering experience. At the KGB's First Department, on the top floor of the Samokatnaya Street headquarters, I was shown a secret decree issued by Brezhnev the previous year, in 1982. I had never been allowed to see such top-secret material before.

An intelligence officer pulled the decree from a red folder tied with a string, placed it gravely on a desk, and stood behind me while I read. He would only let me see the sections that corresponded to my duties. I already knew the gist of the order: we were to transform our sleepy facility in northern Kazakhstan into a munitions plant that would eventually replace Sverdlovsk.

Anthrax 836, first discovered in Kirov in 1953, was our best candidate to become what we called a "battle strain" — one that was reproducible in large quantities, of high virulence, and transportable. Once I'd worked out the technique for its cultivation, concentration, and preparation, I was to develop the infrastructure to reproduce it on a massive scale — a goal that had eluded our military scientists for years. This meant assembling batteries of fermenters, drying and milling machines, and centrifuges, as well as the equipment required for preparing and filling hundreds of bombs.

My job at Stepnogorsk was, in effect, to create the world's most efficient assembly line for the mass production of weaponized anthrax.

There were many in Moscow's close-knit biological warfare establishment who believed it couldn't be done and who hoped that Biopreparat and its assertive commander would stumble in the effort. Our success with tularemia the previous year had turned Kalinin into an influential figure. He was ruffling egos throughout the army command.

At one of my Moscow meetings, an elderly general named Tarasenko, then deputy commander of the Fifteenth Directorate, pulled me aside.

"Congratulations on your new job, Major Alibekov," he said, patting me on the shoulder. "It's about time we gave our young people more responsibility."

I smiled, pleased by his attention. Tarasenko was a veteran military scientist, one of the most respected figures in Soviet biological and chemical weapons research.

"But you should watch out for yourself," he continued. "The mountain of metal they want you to build down there will never do what it's supposed to do. Believe me, I've had thirty years of experience with these things, and I know what works. This won't."

I was too stunned to reply. He nudged my shoulder again.

"I'm sure you'll be given everything you need," he said, "but Biopreparat is trying to create a monument, and in the end you'll be the one who will have to dismantle it when it falls."

The Kazakhstan Scientific and Production Base was established in 1982, tacked on to a state enterprise called the Progress Scientific and Production Association, which manufactured pesticides and fertilizer. The new facility occupied more than half the buildings in the compound, but the several thousand pesticide workers employed there could not be told of its new function. It had been chosen as one of six biowarfare facilities in the country designed to be mobilized as special production units in the event of war.

Officially, I was deputy director of the Progress Association, but my secret job title gave me more authority than the director: I was "war commander" of the entire installation. This was a daunting prospect for someone whose military knowledge was based on two years of basic training. I was expected to take control of the factory during what the army called "special periods" of rising tensions between the superpowers. Upon receipt of a coded message from Moscow, I was to transform Progress into a munitions plant.

Strains of virulent bacteria would be pulled from our vaults and seeded in our reactors and fermenters. Anthrax was our main agent at Stepnogorsk, but we also worked with glanders and were prepared to weaponize tularemia and plague. The pathogenic weapons that emerged would be poured into bomblets and spray tanks and loaded into trucks for shipment to a railroad station or airfield, from which point they would be transported to military sites around Russia for placement on bombers or ballistic missiles.