The Dead Hand (64 page)
Authors: David Hoffman
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]