Biohazard

Helicopters ferried us to other sites. Our escorts answered every one of our questions with no apparent hesitation. I was impressed, yet I knew that our own technicians had also been well rehearsed.

"They're doing nothing here," declared Sandakchiev. Urakov said nothing. The military contingent was annoyed. As we flew to our next stop in Arkansas, we held anxious, whispered conversations.

"This whole trip is just eyewash," Vasiliev said, who came over to my seat to share a drink. "They're not going to give anything away."

It was true. The Americans were doing a much better job of hiding evidence than I had given them credit for. But my doubts were growing.

The Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas manufactured chemical munitions during World War II. In 1953 the facility expanded to produce biological warfare agents, but the installation was turned over to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1969 for civilian research. This, at least, is what we were told by our hosts. To my discomfort, the evidence seemed to support it.

The layout of the Pine Bluff compound was once again similar to our own facilities. One building housed giant grayish blue tanks used to treat contaminated wastes. We had tanks like these in our plants. When our guides unlocked the door and brought us inside, I noticed that the floor was covered with a layer of dust. The tanks were wrapped in insulating material, cracking with age. As I wandered through the building, a black notebook on the floor caught my eye. I bent down to pick it up, blew away the dust, and quickly scanned its pages. I couldn't read the handwriting, but the year in which the entries were made was printed clearly: it was marked 1973.

We went into another facility that had once been used for assembling and filling bomblets with biological agents. It had since been reconfigured and divided into laboratories where American biologists worked alongside cages of mice and other animals.

When we found out what they were doing, the scientists in our group became enthralled. The shortage of space at Pine Bluff had forced the Americans to convert their old weapons plant into a center for medical research into immunosuppressive substances— substances capable of preventing the body from mounting a normal defense against invading bacteria.

This research is of immense importance to organ transplant surgery, as doctors must find ways of preventing the body from rejecting a transplanted heart or kidney. The technicians were busy grafting pieces of bird skin and other organs on the mice.

We spoke with the scientists for several hours, to the evident displeasure of some of the nonscientific military members of our group. Sandakchiev couldn't stop asking questions. By then, I was convinced that the Americans were no longer involved in biological weapons work.

Our military cohorts didn't agree, and the difference in perspective soon became embarrassing. On the second day of our Arkansas visit, I climbed into the bus beside one of the Defense Ministry officers, a colonel named Zukov. As our escorts pointed out various structures passing by our window, I dozed.

Suddenly Zukov began to shout. "Stop the bus! Stop the bus!" I woke up in alarm. "What's wrong?"

He pointed to a tall metal structure standing on a rise. "We have to check that out," he said. "Don't be ridiculous. It's a water tower." "I don't think so," he said.

Zukov ran to the water tower. He began to climb it, all the way to the top. Behind me, I could hear our American escorts trying to stifle their laughter. One took a picture.

At that point, the absurdity of our quest was clear to me. We could go on like this for weeks, but it would get us nowhere. Perhaps there were other sites in America where secret biological weapons work was going on, but these were the ones we'd asked to see. I remembered the conviction with which our GRU briefer had spoken of evidence of weapons work and had shown us his surveillance photos.