This is an astonishing book. It is a reporter’s triumph; it tells an important and (as far as I know) absolutely unknown story. It is also suspenseful and well-written; John LeCarre’s endorsement on the back on the book is well deserved.
David Hoffman is a longtime colleague on The Washington Post, but I do not think I’m overrating his book out of friendship. The story it tells is roughly this: immediately after signing a treaty banning chemical and biological weapons in 1972, the Soviet Union set about building a new, secret, and very extensive biological weapons capability. They were successful; they created frightful new weapons (a chemical weapons program was added later). Amazingly, Hoffman interviewed and has documents from scientists who led the program. The persistence (and language skills) required to get hold of these documents and conduct these interviews won’t come along again soon.
The weapons included anthrax, smallpox and plague and many more. Much of this was recovered by a ragtag team of American diplomats and scientists during the Yeltsin years. Was all of it? Probably not. (One of Hoffman’s sources was recruited to teach at a university in Iran and says that many of his colleagues went there as well).
While this story unfolds, Hoffman tells the more familiar story of Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and the unraveling of communism. He also chronicles the Soviet-US interactions in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush years, in wonderful detail and including much new data gleaned from US and Soviet negotiators.
The book is a combination of diplomatic history, suspense story, and completely original reporting. I cannot recommend it too highly.
A review by Donald E. Graham on Amazon.com