Slava Paperno: So many years have passed, and no one is working on biological weapons in the [former] Soviet Union any more. Why is there such secrecy, and to what area does the secrecy now apply?
Gennadiy N. Lepeshkin:
Well, it's been a long time since we worked in that area, but every government has its secrets, and state secrets have statutes of limitations. For example, in the United States, the statute of limitations is thirty years. Then documents are declassified. In our country, the statute of limitations on such information is also approximately thirty years. True, not everything gets declassified, but there are certain principles that were instilled in us, and the documents that we've read and signed, that kind of prevent us from describing in more detail, more specifically.
Paperno: So you cannot tell everything you know, either, is that right?
Lepeshkin: Yes, I cannot tell everything.
Milton Leitenberg: There's an "ukaz," I think it's called. Yeltsin, in 1992, I don't remember the month (we quote it in the book), reaffirmed this obligation of secrecy about former secret programs.