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Subject:
former KGB spy, living in New Zealand, to soon publish book on Russian biological warfare
stratego
2/20/2005 6:06:41 PM
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From Free Republic. I believe, based on recollections from SP posts, that The fact of ongoing Russian biological warfare research is well known. But details seem almost non-existant. So this book should be interesting.
link
NZ-based ex-spy exposes Soviet secrets (biological weapons)
News Zealand "Stuff" ^ | Feb. 20, 2005 | NZ news
Posted on 02/20/2005 11:44:28 AM PST by FairOpinion
A former KGB spy and expert on biological warfare has been living quietly in New Zealand for a decade. Anthony Hubbard reports.
Alexander Kouzminov, green-eyed and serious, helped prepare Soviet war plans to poison the west. Now he is a Ministry of Health scientist doing environmental health and safety in New Zealand. Yes, he says in his Russianised English, I was a poacher and now I am a gamekeeper. He doesn't smile.
Kouzminov is short and hard, a kung fu exponent and painter of watercolours. He likes organ music, French poetry, Pushkin, and privacy. But the secretive former spy has now hurled himself into the limelight, publishing a book to warn the world about the dangers of biological terrorism. This puts him in a difficult position.
We can talk about the future of the planet. We can't talk about a lot of personal stuff, such as what his dad did for a living. He is always polite, but you can hear what he is thinking: what part of nyet don't you understand? The PhD in biological science from Moscow State University rarely blinks, and his face is as smooth and motionless as marble. Just occasionally he puts aside his geopolitical project and laughs. "A while ago," he jokes when asked how old he is, "I could call myself AK47. But now I'm AK48." He and his wife Irina brought their two daughters and two suitcases to New Zealand in December 1994: "The day the war began between Russia and Chechnya." Nobody knew he had once been in the KGB. The family lives quietly in Wellington. Irina, a gifted pianist who chose to be a journalist instead, gives music lessons. September 11, Kouzminov explains, put an end to his "peaceful" life of anonymity. The world had witnessed the terror of airborne terrorism. But Kouzminov knew that biological terror could be far worse, and decided he had better say so.
"It was very difficult to organise an attack simultaneously on the towers and the Pentagon and the residency of the president," he notes. "Technically it was difficult. But with biological weapons it's much easier to do that." Biological weapons, he says, are easy to make. "Even biologists with a masters degree may produce a nasty bug." Terrorists cold launch toxic viruses that do not stop at national borders. The wrong sort of bug could bring global catastrophe.
So he wrote a book, Biological Espionage, exposing the super-secret Department 12 of Directorate S of the KGB: the department that specialised in biological warfare. British espionage writer Nigel West, who has written the foreword, says that till now western experts knew nothing about Department 12.
Kouzminov worked in the department from late 1984 till 1992, running "illegals" - deep cover spies - in Western Europe. The Soviet Union, he says, penetrated the heart of the west's biological warfare programmes. It also made plans to hide toxins in strategic places in preparation for what the Russian spies called "D-Day" - the day the war began.
AK49 played a minor role in these plans himself. He was asked to analyse a five-page report on Soviet "dead drops" close to an Australian naval base used by the American navy. Where should the biological weapons of mass destruction be stashed, and how could they best be used to poison the garrison? Through the water supply, the air conditioning and ventilation system, or some other way?
Kouzminov joined the KGB, he says, partly out of "romance". He liked the louche glamour of espionage. Besides, he says, every country has its intelligence services, and every country seeks to preserve its interests. And he thought the Soviet system was a good one: "We had a very good education, we had a good health system, we don't need to pay any extra money. Ordinary people had the good life, the peaceful life." When he joined the KGB in 1984 he discovered that the spies had been watching him ever since he started studying science after his compulsory two years in the army. Department T and Department S had even fought over who would get him. He discovered that his student hostel had been bugged, and they knew all about him. The KGB had decided that he and Irina were an "ideal couple", loyal and reliable.
In fact, the pair privately harboured dangerous thoughts. They sympathised with the dissidents persecuted by the Soviet state. Kouzminov read the novels of the great dissenter Alexander Solzhenitsyn. "We discussed among ourselves that they were good guys, they tell the truth. But for us to oppose official state was very dangerous." Kouzminov notes that he never worked for the section of the KGB that hounded the democrats.
He studied spycraft while finishing his PhD, a desperately busy double life. During the day he would carry out his training exercises - one was to penetrate the pornographic movie business - and at night he would write about peptides. His main teacher, Colonel Yuri E - Kouzminov's book divulges few of his former colleague's names - disliked the "smart-pants" scientist. But he graduated as one of the best student spies.
One of his tasks at the department was to pick up biological samples from Sheremetyevo airport that had been smuggled out of the west. Dangerous pathogens arrived in insecure white foam plastic boxes sealed with tape and were rushed at "shocking speed" in a car to KGB secret laboratories. Two of his colleagues died mysteriously and suddenly: he thinks from accidental poisoning.
The spies sent back not only samples but enormous quantities of information about western biological research. There was even a spy ring in the World Health Organisation.
Department S took a special interest in genetic research. "Genetic" or "ethnic" biological weapons could target specific ethnic groups. Biochemical weapons could target chemicals in the brain that affect and control human emotions, causing mass panic and terror. Kouzminov also saw the other side of the KGB spy scandal that hit New Zealand in 1991. Agent Anvar Kadyrov was expelled for seeking a passport in the name of a New Zealand boy who had died aged six. Kouzminov reveals that Kadyrov's illegal support officer, Major Valery M, was also expelled.
He met him back in Moscow, "angered and dishevelled. He swore with his full range of vocabulary at Directorate S and its Second Department, and the country of New Zealand and its people, which he had underestimated". Kouzminov quit the KGB in 1992 for ethical reasons. He learned the agency was involved in the abortive August coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, the reformist Soviet leader. He remembers the bright sunny morning in Moscow when tanks and soldiers suddenly appeared on the ring road. The retired boss of Directorate S, General Yuri Ivanovich Drozdov, mysteriously showed up at work and said: "We had planned this since last December." And then, as the Soviet system crumbled, corruption set in. When his boss tried to involve him and his agents in a money-laundering scam involving emeralds, he refused and resigned from the service.
In 1994 he and Irina decided to move to New Zealand. He had read about this "beautiful" country as a boy and seen it in Russian movies. He hankered after the coral reefs of the South Pacific, the colourful paradise he had seen in Gaugin's paintings.
This sounds a far cry from windy Wellington, but Kouzminov loves his new country. The people are friendly but with a strong character, he says. The son of "ordinary working people" from the city of Cherepovetz, he was baptised into the Orthodox faith and still believes. Living in New Zealand, he says, made him realise that "something happened with Russia when religion was destroyed. If religion is strong, society is more stable". Now finishing a second PhD in environmental law at Auckland University, he loves the quiet life here. "I am proud I swore loyalty to the Queen and I want to help my new country." He believes the Soviet state was preparing for a biological war, "and luckily it didn't happen". But terrorists could unleash the biological demon, he says, unless the world acts. He wants to see an international body set up under the UN. The International Biological Security Agency, he suggests, would bring together the governments of theeast and west, including their intelligence agencies. The spies, after all, are experts on the business. Pool their expertise, he says, and there is a fair chance of preventing terrorists or rogue scientists from poisoning the globe.
Could governments and spy agencies work together this way? Kouzminov himself believes that the KGB's successor, the SVR, is still doing biological espionage. Russia wouldn't abandon its "humungous" power just because of democratisation, he says. And the new privatised Russian economy gives spies much more scope to disguise themselves as businesspeople.
But look, says Kouzminov, governments co-operate together to prevent nuclear terrorism. Why can't they do something similar to fight the biological sort? In this case, it's the world versus the terrorists.
Is he afraid that his book - published this month in England and next month in New Zealand - will enrage his old colleagues? That they might send a hit squad to deal with him? Kouzminov gives his calm stare. He is trying to help his old country as well as his new one to avoid disaster, he says. And "I'm not a traitor". He doesn't smile.
Biological Espionage, published by Greenhill Books of London, should be available in New Zealand next month.
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