How can a world of debauched people be saved?

Posted on 2009 December 14 by probaway

Yesterdays post was about the book State Secrets: An Insider’s Chronicle of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program by Vil. S. Mirzayanov which was about the development of chemical weapons and nerve gasses. The whole subject is distasteful and the worst part wasn’t the perfecting the techniques for killing — that has been going on since the very beginning of life itself. What was most disturbing to me was the keen intelligence of the author and yet his willingness, even eagerness to participate in this kind of research and development. It saddens me because I have encountered that attitude time and time again when meeting with famous scientists. What bothers me is what fine people they are and how dedicated they seem to be in trying to make the world a better place. The people I have known have been associated with designing and deploying H-bombs and not nerve gasses but the end results of their research is going to be the same — lots of mostly innocent human beings dieing agonizing deaths.

What may seem strange to most people is that these scientists were not doing their creative work for the money! The author of this book, Dr. Mirzayanov, when in prison, tells the story of a conversation with a murder who claimed to spend more on women every night, before entering prison, than this world-class research scientist earned in a month.

I don’t believe these brilliant scientists were evil and that their motivation was in the least motivated by wanting to destroy other human beings. The ones I have met have been some of the most pleasant people one could hope to meet. And yet … they create these horrible weapons.

It isn’t because these extraordinarily intelligent men haven’t thought about the outcomes of their research and development. J. Robert Oppenheimer famously said on seeing his first atom bomb explode at Alamogordo, ”Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” And yet he went on developing weapons until forced to quit because of his suspected possible loyalties to communists. I met privately with him at his house in Princeton and we talked for half an hour. I found him to be one of the friendliest and most considerate, of my personal feelings about things, of anyone with whom I have ever spoken. This was heart felt honesty. You can convincingly fake being nasty much easier than fake being a really decent person and he was a decent person.

One would doubt that these scientists (politicians and everyone else) motivation be, the gaining of respect of the other people in their chosen fields of science, when so many of their companions end up treating them so very badly? Dr. Mirzayanov’s gives many examples, in his book, of ugly behavior by those with whom he supposedly is on the best of terms. He is photographed with looking as comfortable with some of these others as a couple of lovers and yet they easily get ugly and deceitful. Oppenheimer had very similar problems with his companions, such as with Edward Teller.

Perhaps they were seeking public fame. This seems unlikely because most scientist types, and certainly the ones mentioned in this post were reputed to be very private people. Perhaps they wanted some personal self adulation and the public adoration was only some sort of proof of their self aggrandisement.

Or is it possible, as I wrote a couple of days ago in, Is a perfect world possible?

Perhaps unlimited debauchery is the natural human condition.

Each human being is only seeking their own form of debauchery and for these scientists it is found in research. The simple fact that their work is destructive of humanity doesn’t compute in their equations for unlimited satisfaction for their personal form of debauchery.

Filed under: psychology, research, survival Tagged: Debauchery, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Motivations, Personal motivations, Scientists motivations

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State Secrets by probaway

State Secrets: Russian Chemical Weapons – review

http://www.probaway.wordpress.com/2009/12/13/state-secrets-russian-chemical-weapons-review/

Posted on 2009 December 13 by probaway

State Secrets: An Insider’s Chronicle of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program by Vil. S. Mirzayanov is for me a very scary book for several reasons. (1) You can’t trust a nation’s leadership to tell the truth even when they are making solemn international agreements. (2) You can’t expect the legal processes to reliably release innocent people. (3) You can’t expect the formal powers that are in control to follow clearly stated laws when it conflicts with their own self-interest. (4) You can’t expect scientists to keep secret their success in creating novel new ways of killing people. (5) You can’t expect the details of how to create these new ways to be kept secret from other governments. (6) You can’t expect that the exact methods for creating these horrible new war gasses from becoming common knowledge and easily available on the internet.

My take home message after reading this book: This book is a must read for all policy makers of the world because it illustrates why it is so important to have verifiability of instituted agreements. Making fine sounding laws written up into eloquent text and spoken by refined politicians with perfect idealistic rhetoric means absolutely nothing and in fact may be counterproductive without a mechanism for checking to make sure everyone is obeying the agreements. This requires numerous parties with conflicting interests traveling into the mutually antagonistic situations with different supporters to be able to check everywhere and at any time for compliance. Furthermore, there must be built-in instantaneous punishments for noncompliance. This can be done by having each independent party having something of great value to them already submitted to an escrow holding authority and held in common by the other parties which can be taken away immediately.

If one of the parties can circumvent the agreed upon conventions then they have an advantage and if they can keep it a secret they have a double advantage, if they can keep the other from developing the parallel advantage they have a triple advantage and if they end up deploying the item, such as a super poison gas weapon, they have an ultimate advantage. That is why the inspecting teams must already have in their possession the power to punish the transgressors instantly. Punishment after “thoughtful deliberations” for transgression is futile because there is always plenty of weasel room in post negotiations.

This all seems obvious but the book shows that even as major chemical warfare agreements were being drawn up between the USSR and the Western Powers, there were cunning efforts by the USSR to write out of the negotiations subtle precursor war chemicals which could easily be hidden in standard agricultural insecticide production. Thus, there could be developed a vast weapons program which could easily be hidden. Apparently thousands of tons of these precursor chemicals were stockpiled for near instant use even though the chemicals themselves were relatively benign. The contending countries were developing what are called binary weapons which mixed the relatively safe precursor chemicals in special artillery shells after they had been fired from a standard gun. Using these techniques relatively safe “agricultural chemicals” could be transported to a battle field without violating the carefully negotiated conventions. This is a policy of infinitely evil. It is hypocrisy carried to the ultimate and it will lead to the destruction of common humanity.

At great risk to his life Dr. Mirzayanov had worked for years helping to develop these chemical weapons and then at what appeared to be even greater risk to his life he became a whistle-blower on the hypocrisy of their development. He published an article called A Poisoned Policy which exposed the Russian political duplicity on this issue, without revealing any secret formulas. He was brought before the judicial system of the old USSR with a recent veneer of a new more democratic constitution but the enforcers of this new system were still of the old mentality. Although eventually declared innocent of the charges he was subjected to months of prison confinement before and during a secret trial. The confinment was so brutal it can only be assumed that it was intended to sicken and kill him “accidently” and thus eliminate their judicial problem.

In my proposed beautiful new world of the distant future Weapons of Extermination ( WOEs ) must not only be unavailable they must he absolutely hidden and those who seek them or the knowledge of how to make them must be eliminated. That may be harsh to these few intentionally evil people but it is kind to the vast numbers of innocent ones who won’t die because of these chemists wicked actions.

In the future world we may have peace— in the present world, it is impossible.

Biohysteria

Isn’t it enough is enough?

Six years ago I wrote this article and forgot to publish it in internet. Today I found it and decided to publish. Why ? Because some people in US still are trying to convince about this non-existent treat.

Probably I am not single person who is shocked by almost everyday warning of the people in US by upcoming biological attack of America on TV and newspapers. It is continuing more than decade and have achieved a pinnacle after September 11 disaster. Not too many but very energetic specialists and journalists are contributing to this large scale campaign. So far we have unfortunately only victims as result of it. Much more than result of another obsession with a Y2K bug. For me last one is an example of very good organized corruption in History of modern America with I hope unintentional involvement of two branches of the government. Sure USA lost on this fraud more than 10 billions dollars but there were ( thanks God ) no losses of human lives. I’m not going to blame all of these specialists and a lobby of biological defense people. But I’m sure that I have to try to explain from my point of view the realities of the biological and chemical weapons threat by the terrorists or states with a irresponsible regimes and give an example of use of doubtful specialist from Russia.

First victims of anti-biological rage came with a victory in Gulf War. Before this military campaign tens of thousands soldiers were vaccinated against the antrax. After this war thousands of veterans are suffering from unknown decease more likely originated as witnessed many doctors resulted by this unfortunate vaccination. It is almost absolutely clear that Gulf veterans decease wasn’t originated from the exposure of the soldiers to Irak’s chemical weapons (CA). Why ? Because at first there is no evidence that Irak did use the CA during this war. Unfortunately there was an accident connected with a irresponsible destroying of the Irak’s CA storage by barbaric method of explosion. It was very possible that part of chemical agents were pulled out by dust and smog created by the explosion and covering by them relatively big area occupied by ally troops. Secondary many soldiers being that time far from this area have the same symptoms of Gulf veterans decease.

Last victims of the antrax are widely known and they definitely are not connected with a terrorist attack. Opposite is more likely true: they are victims of the domestic criminal connected with a development of the BW or defense against it. Unfortunately it is impossible to avoid assumption that this directly or indirectly was not inspired by BW defense specialists to drive out funds for themselves. It would be not excessive to tell that aggressive lobbying by BW defense specialists in Congress and the covering by mass-media created situation close to the hysteria. Sometimes I and my family are right now naming CNN as antrax channel.

I’d want to emphasis that there are no base to support the opinion that terrorists will use the biological weapon with an antrax or something similar to that. Why? Because there is no biological weapon in all world to use it like even the chemical weapons. I am sure that if some extreme creasy to be terrorist would have try to use non-weaponized biological agent he’ll kill himself before to begin to kill others. It is true also about so called countries with irresponsible regimes. Sure they can have or produce significant quantities of antrax or another biological agent but there is an unresolved task of the weaponizing of these agents. The problems connected with this task were fortunately extremely difficult and funds required for their resolution were meaningless from the point of view of military strategy. Even Soviet Union couldn’t (or didn’t want) develop an effective delivery system of these agents to the aimed objects for covering by them a meaningful area. Proposed systems were not tested at the military polygons because there was no corresponding infrastructure for a testing including the field-analytical chemistry, medical service and hospitals for emergency cases. The extreme safety rules and regulations which are necessary to meet at such works have absolutely excluded even the primary evaluations. Exactly because of these circumstances the examples of a real biological weapon never was used at any military exercises. If Deputy Minister of the Foreign Affairs of Russia G.Berdennikov at the 1996 Conference of signatories of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention told that Russia never developed, produced, or stored biological weapons it is absolutely true. Probably nobody will suppose that a powder is a weapon before it’ll be used in bombs, rockets or bullets et ct. The same should be fair about antrax or any biological agent. In this relation there is no doubt about chemical agents.

For instance ricin is natural product extracted from some beans and like antrax is a powder and extremely poisonous. It was very tempting for specialists to try to use it as chemical weapon. Russian chemical weapon specialists in GosNIIOChT spent a lot of time and funds for weaponizing of the ricin without any visible success. Neverthless nobody have tried to give it as a chemical weapon.

The biological weapons lobby is intensively using “ a top biological weapons specialist who had ran all program in Russia” Mr. Ken Alibek. They also are giving him as a deflector from Russia. Recently Mr. Ken Alibek with Mr. Stephen Handelman published the book titled “Biohazard” as “the chilling story of the largest covert biological weapons program in the world – told from inside by the man who ran it”. I must say that reading this book was really chilling for reasons I’ll try to explain.

The book is starting from the episode when Mr. Alibek was ordered to come to a meeting at “at Soviet army headquarters on Kirov Street in Moscow”. Mr. Alibek noted that the clipped voice on the phone said “ We’ve set aside a special room for you, Colonel”.

I don’t understand what does mean Mr.Alibek under the “Soviet army headquarters” but nobody in Soviet Union and Russia (also in USA) uses this term. If under this term author means the Defense Ministry of USSR it is definitly not at Kirova Street. It was at Frunzenskaja naberejnaija and right now at Arbat Street in Moscow. If author means under abovementioned term the General Stuff of the Soviet Army or Russian Army it was and is at the Frunze Street. By the way later Mr. Alibek at last pointed out that he means under the “Army Headquarters” the Ministry of Defense.

As a former Russian chemical weapons specialist who had been working within a strict secret system I can say only that it was absolutely impossible by someone to invite or order for something on the telephone.

Further Mr. Alibek is writing about the meeting. According to him general Lebedinsky asked “Are we ready?” After “general led us into an adjoining sound-proof room. Notepads had been placed on the large wooden table, in front of each chair.”

Such a demonstrative violation of the rules of the secrecy would have never happened. This system has required to get any papers or notepads in First Department of the office responsible for a meeting under the personal signature and return them after a work was done. Any kind of lost even one page or list of papers was a very reason to start investigation process with severe consequences for everybody. However Mr. Alibek and other violators “…shook hands, packed our papers, and congratulated one another on a productive session” It was and is absolutely impossible to pack up any papers from a secret meeting because of strict rules. If someone could have forgotten these rules an officer of the First Department will unconditionally stop any violation. For that or other reasons absolutely all secret meetings were supervised by KGB officers. In Soviet army there were adequate officers of the Special Service. It is a real fiction to write that “ Driving back to my office, I opened my briefcase to jot down a few more notes.” It was absolutely impossible to carry out any secret papers from a secret meeting in your briefcase. If you did some notes on the secret notepads after returning them to the office of the First Department you had to ask it to address papers to you office after receiving permission from the Chief of the office who was responsible for the meeting. For the transportation of secret materials there is a secret mail system of KGB. Nobody never could have right to do this instead.

After more than suspicious beginning Mr. Alibek is writing about the unbelievable subject of the meeting in the Defense Ministry. They were discussing a project to launch the intercontinental missiles with disease agents to the USA and Mr.Alibek was calculating how long it’ll take to produce these agents.

I must to tell that it didn’t happen even at the climax of cold war simply because there was never any biological weapon in the arsenal of Soviet army. I’m not going to defend soviet generals, among them there were a lot of creasy ones. However in general they’ve been not creasy to degree to spend almost for nothing from the military point of view billions dollars. They preferred the real weapons to destroy USA and allyes.To tell the truth they really hate chemical weapons specialists supposing that they just distracting funds from the real means. With a taking into account that it allegedly happened in 1988 when almost all economy of the USSR collapsed and the Communist Party was desperately trying to survive and to make both ends meet to keep the country under the control it was absolutely impossible to imagine that such a meeting with such a agenda could have taken place. There is only one reason “to justify” author to write this fiction. Unfortunately he was transferred from the province to Moscow only this year. I must to tell to Mr.Alibek’s attention that any decisions about the development a new weapon or their production before they would have been taken by Politbureau of KPSU were discussed at the level of the experts including a mentioned in the book Military Industrial Commission. It was absolutely impossible by the way how it was explained to Mr. Alibek by some general that “ A decision had been made at the highest levels,…, to arm SS-18 missils with disease agents”. First of all a general should give to Mr. Alibek the text of this decision with a remark “secret of special importance” with his signature that he was familiarized with a document. Only after this unavoidable procedure they could have discussed about any decision.

It is very interesting fact that Mr. Alibek who “ran the Soviet BW program” doesn’t give even any hints about the locations of Soviet BW storages with a bombs, rockets, shells and their technical details. Had he really run this program and there were such weapons I think he should give to reader this information. May be someone from very curious environmentalists could go to these locations and tell us about the real existence weapons. Even in the case sometime ago they had been destroyed there is very possibility that environment next to the storages could be contaminated and is still continuing to be a source of many deceases. For instance almost everybody in Russia and West knows right now about locations of the Chemical Weapons storages in USA and Russia and this information I am sure helps people to be more confident about verified and safe destruction of these weapons. By the way there is any copy of a secret document or it’s number with data pointing data of issue which can make an affirmation about the testing, production and stockpiling of BW. It is more than strange. Even I who didn’t ran chemical weapons program have numbers of very important documents including of decision to start to develop and test soviet binary chemical weapons. Two years I kept them in my web-site which recently I deactivated.

Fortunately I am sure Mr. Alibek is not person who “ran the Soviet BW program” and he is definitely not deflector as many BW lobby trying to give us him. They probably didn’t read this book. In last chapters of the book Mr. Alibek is writing how he was working in Alma-Aty ( Capital of the independent country Kazakhstan) and traveling to Moscow and abroad including USA after his retirement from the allegedly secret job. Any person who worked with secrets in USSR and Russia knows that it was and is absolutely impossible to get a travel passport without permission of KGB. I am not person who ran the Soviet Chemical Weapons program but even for me it took almost one year of the struggle with KGB to take permission for travel passport. Only a decision of the special Commission of the Council of the Ministry of Russia under the pressure of many famous former Soviet dissidents helped me solve this problem. Why ? Because I was so called a carrier of secrets. According to Soviet and Russian Code such a person can apply for travel passport only in 5 years after he retired from his job. In special cases this term is much more longer or unspecified. For instance some of my colleagues( even they didn’t ran any big chemical weapons program) from GSNIIOKhT still cannot receive travel passports.

If you are not a carrier of secrets there are no problems with a travel passport in Russia. I am sure one of them is Mr. Alibek who didn’t have any problems to travel to Malta or New York before he allegedly deflected to USA. He and his allegedly chiefs were participating at the international conferences and been photographed. Some of them Mr.Alibek posted in his book. I must say that it is absolutely impossible according to rules of secrecy to participate at the any public conferences and to be photographed. Because of it nobody can find photographs of any chemical weapon designers and developers.

Probably it is clear enough with a BW threat to USA today. Even though BW defense lobby already could pull out several billions from USA budget for the protection against non-existing biological weapons.

Are there any threats of possible BW attack today? Definitely not.

Are there threats of possible attacks with use of CW? With a high level of possibility there are not. However there are possibilities of use of the chemical agents or poisonous chemicals like hydrocyanide or chlorine-gas which could be legally purchased or stolen. It is real disturbing when according to media one of terrorists of September 11 attack was interested by use of agricultural planes which are equipped for dispersing of the solvents with a pesticides. Sure we cannot exclude the use of some versions of binary systems when their components could be precursors of civilian products but for that reason terrorists have to have skilful CW scientists-specialists and for the safety reasons I don’t want to discuss the possible concrete versions. In any case all these possibilities could be realized if the responsible government bodies will not take measures to prevent them. For that reason we have to start the work of investigation of the situation whether there are possibilities to smuggle abovementioned chemicals from industry and agriculture chemicals storages. For the fulfillment of these tasks and permanent monitoring and analyzing the whole situation under the Department of Governor Ridge should be created the Technical Counterintelligence Service.

Isn't it corporative cover up?

So far I don't know how the OPCW has handled the issue connected with Russian use of chemical agent against its own people during the Moscow Dubrovka Theater siege in October 2002. Surprisingly the next day after this gas attack a very knowledgable New York Times reporter, Ms. Judith Miller, who is also a friend of Scooter Libby, assistant of VP Cheney, published this article http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/dll/knockoutgas2.htm where she reported about the use of fentanyl. She told that all information was provided by some intelligence people. I cannot buy this trick. First of all Russia didn't have at that time any fentanyl at all. If in Russia someone was planning to produce it, he could do it only in GosNIIOKhT. But GosNIIOKhT didn't have at that time any production facility for fentanyl. After September 11 2001 Mr. Bush and Putin became almost friends cooperating in anti-terror war. Fentanyl was poduced that time in Europe and USA. For some medical purposes Russia was purchasing fentanyl in Romania. After the Russian Theater gas attack the surviving European victims were released from Moscow Hospital in several days to be sure that traces of this agent would disappear from their urine and blood samples. When these victims came home, local hospitals were able to perform more precise analysis and determine exact kind of agent. I believe they did that but there was no information in the mass media whatsoever. It looked like all specialists in Russia and West were working in a very coordinated way. No one state in this world sent any complaint to OPCW about the abuse of CW by Russians to kill own people. Why? Probably, as usual, West is still doing blind eyes at Russian authorities when they're killing and poisoning their own people happily supposing that it is their pure internall affairs. I think it is a big mistake. It definitely encouraged them to poison at first to be President of Ukraine at that time Mr. Yuschenko in 2004 and then in 2006 to kill Mr. Litvinenko not in Russian territory but in London in continuation of old KGB practices when they killed Trotsky, Bandera and many other victims abroad. I should to remind that in Russia in 1940-50-s by Dr. Majronovsky, chief of the special KGB Laboratory, were developed a lot of methodes of poisoning of "enemies" and he also personally killed with their help many innocent victims ( look: Vadim J. Birstein, The True Story of Soviet Science.The Perversion of KNOWLDGE, Westview Press.). With help of his method (with ricin-tipped umbrella) KGB agent killed Bulgarian dissident G. Markov in 1978... again in London. By the way the ricin was produced in my former Institute, GosNIIOKhT. If US and European countries will continue this deeply wrong policies I'm afraid Russians will start to use CW more intensively everywhere to kill and silence their political opponents. Because of this I'm sure also that in area of CW should be real transparency but not it's imitation as it's going right now. I contributed there publishing my book with real chemical formulas of the Novichok series of CW developed in GosNIIOKhT in : Vil Mirzayanov. State Secrets: An Insider's Chronicle of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program. Outskirts Press, Denver Co.

On the left from me Nobel Prize laureat, President of New York Academy of Sciences Dr. J. Lederberg. 1995.

Vil Mirzayanov (left) receives the Academy's 1994 Heinz R. Pagels Human Rights of Scientists Award from George Soros (center) at the dinner in Moscow on March 15 as Nobel laureat James D. Watson looks on (right)

Right move

Happy to write that http://www.amazon.co.uk returned my book: Vil Mirzayanov. State Secrets:An Insider's Chronicle of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program to it's category Biological&Chemical. Right now my books sale's rank is not so good but in this category it is no. 12. It was some time even no.2 which is not too bad for self-published author. My competitors definetly have an advantage because their publishers openly promoting their books. My advantage is very clear: I am specialist who worked 26 years in this area. Almost all authors in category Chemical Weapons are not specialists in this particular area and writing what they learned from other sources creating books about books.

Mysterios move of amazon.com

Why http://www.amazon.co.uk/State-Secrets-Insiders-Chronicle-Chemical/dp/1432725661/ref=pd_ts_b_10?ie=UTF8&s=books

Today at 5:49pm Edit Note Delete

moved my book from category Biological&Chemical?
I like to watch book sales in www.amazon.com because they selling mine either. It is very disturbing when British amazon.com moved my book from this category simply to Russian. But my book is mostly about Chemical Weapons. It happened when somewhat my book there became successful. At first I supposed that this seller eliminated a category Biological&Chemical. But not, there all books except of mine. Isn't it some kind of way to divert an attenition of potential customers interested with problems of chemical weapons? I am upset because goal of my book is real chemical disarmamement which cannot be fulfilled without putting under the OPCW control the Russian Novichok weapons.

January 24 1994. In front of Moscow City Court. In couple days FSB will arrest me again and send to Matrosskaya Prison.

Is there free media in USA?

I asked The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal to publish my article "Mission not accomplished". They refused to publish it. But some time ago they published a lot about my case and I'm thankful for that. I supposed these papers are too politically correct ones and they don't want to spoil their relationship with adiministration. Ultimately I sent my article to conservative paper The Washington Times supposing that it'll publish the article because it looks like independent paper. This paper also didn't publish my article. I'm sure that FBI blocked publication. Anyway I am absolutely sure that this article doesn't disclose any American secrets or violate US law and because of it publishing over here.

MISSION NOT ACCOMPLISHED

By Vil S. Mirzayanov, PhD Chemical Science

It is a very encouraging sign that President Obama wants to work once more for the global abolition of nuclear weapons. At the same time, there is a lot of unfinished business in the field of chemical weapons (CW). We need to take some measures to eliminate the flaws built into the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (CWC), which were strategically crafted by the former Soviet rulers during the negotiations of that treaty. Their goal was to eliminate the old obsolete weapons while keeping the new generation of CW codenamed Novichok out of treaty control.
The Novichok agents developed by Petr Kirpichev are 5-8 times more potent than those known before. One of them, A-232, is not a traditional phosphoorganic nerve agent of known structure in the phosphonate group. It is related to the phosphates, which are widely used in the production of agricultural pesticides. Moreover, a pesticide with an analogous structure to A-232 was synthesized with the goal of masking it completely.
This opened up a real Pandora’s Box - the possibility of using agricultural chemicals as components of binary weapons. Two relatively harmless components can be mixed in flight to produce a deadly chemical agent end product. Also binary weapons eliminate most of the expense and danger of the production and storage of chemical agents.
After his nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize and after Russia signed the Agreement on the Nonproduction and Elimination of CW on September 23, 1989, President Mikhail Gorbachev signed Resolution 844-186 thirteen days later, sanctioning the start up of the binary weapons program. Already a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Gorbachev awarded the Lenin Prize on April 23, 1991 to the leaders of the military chemical complex for the successful development, testing and production of binaries based on Substance 33, which is somewhat similar to VX gas. The following year, Gorbachev was going to award the Lenin Prize for the development and production of binaries based on Agent A-232, but he ran out of time, when the Soviet Union collapsed.
Despite the fall of the Communist regime, the Novichok program continued up until the end of 1992, and possibly after that. I witnessed these events firsthand as the Chief of the Department of Foreign Technical Counterintelligence at the State Scientific Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology (GosNIIOKhT), the main developer of chemical weapons in Russia. All documentation on the development and production of chemical weapons was entirely falsified, and a special effort was made to mislead the West.
Under these circumstances I stopped participating in these illegal activities and appealed to the world community to pay attention to this problem. During 1991 and 1992, I wrote a few vague articles and gave interviews, and I was sent to prison twice for that. In 1994 my case was dropped for lack of evidence, but more likely it was the support of the international scientific community that helped the most. Nevertheless, the Russian expert commission assigned to my case clearly confirmed the veracity of the development, production and testing agents of the Novichok series and the binary weapons based on one of them. It also corroborated their high toxicity and incurability after poisoning.
Eventually I immigrated to the United States, and I became a proud US citizen. I supported ratification of the CWC by the US Senate in 1996, hoping that amendments would be made to this Convention to put the Novichok agents of Russia under its control.
I waited in vain for 12 years and nothing happened. These dangerous chemical agents were never declared by Russia and were never placed in the Control List of the OPCW, the body that administers the CWC. The US and the Russian governments simply ignored the situation.
These agents entirely satisfy the criteria of the “Guidelines for Schedules of Chemicals” of the CWC for crafting an amendment. There is no longer any necessity for long negotiations with the Russian Government to disclose them. To help expedite the process, I decided to publish the chemical formulas of these agents in my memoir, “State Secrets: An Insider’s Chronicle of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program” (Outskirts Press, Denver Co., 2008). Now the US Government can accomplish the next step in its mission to rid the world of chemical weapons by officially proposing an amendment to the CWC listing these agents.
After that, it seems that the logjam blocking the “challenge inspections” could be broken by agreeing to allow inspections at known CW development and production centers in both Russia and the US. For now, there is no need to burden civilian chemical industry with these inspections, creating the possibility of lawsuits, which claim the loss of commercial secrets.

P.S. This article I'v posted in http://armchairgeneralist.typepad.com as a comment under the article "Britain's Secret CW History " from 29 June 2009. Surprisingly my article was censored and someone deleted my remarks about Russian tricks with binaries on base of Substance 33 and etc. Isn't it strange when they're disclosing technical secrets how to use mustard gas for killings which could be used very easy by terrorists, the same supervisors are meticulously protecting Russian secrets?

When FSB arrested me in October 22 1992 in couple days Moscow News publshed it's front page with this photo and headline: Are we imperialism agents again? On the left Dr. Lev Fedorov, my co-author.