Posted on 09/20/2004 4:10:21 PM PDT by neverdem
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September 20, 2004, 8:14 a.m. No Peter the Great
Vladimir Putin looks more and more like a heavy-handed imitation of Yuri Andropov does anyone still remember him? Andropov was that other KGB chairman who rose all the way up to the Kremlin throne, and who was also once my de facto boss. Considering that Putin has inherited upwards of 6,000 suspected strategic nuclear weapons, this is frightening news.
Former KGB officers are now running Russia's government, just as they did during Andropov's reign, and the Kremlin's image another Andropov specialty continues to be more important than people's real lives in that still-inscrutable country. The government's recent catastrophic Beslan operation was a reenactment of the effort to "rescue" 2,000 people from Moscow's Dubrovka Theater, where the "new" KGB flooded the hall with fentanyl gas and caused the death of 129 hostages. No wonder Putin ordered Andropov's statue which had been removed after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991 reinstalled at the Lubyanka.
In the West, if Andropov is remembered at all, it is for his brutal suppression of political dissidence at home and for his role in planning the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. By contrast, the leaders of the former Warsaw Pact intelligence community, when I was one of them, looked up to Andropov as the man who substituted the KGB for the Communist party in governing the Soviet Union, and who was the godfather of Russia's new era of deception operations aimed at improving the badly damaged image of Soviet rulers in the West.
In early 2000, President Putin divided Russia into seven "super" districts, each headed by a "presidential representative," and he gave five of these seven new posts to former KGB officers. Soon, his KGB colleagues occupied nearly 50 percent of the top government positions in Moscow. In a brief interview with Ted Koppel on Nightline, Putin admitted that he had stuffed the Kremlin with former KGB officers, but he said it was because he wanted to root out graft. "I have known them for many years and I trust them. It has nothing to do with ideology. It's simply a matter of their professional qualities and personal relationship."
THE NATIONAL POLITICAL PASTIMEIn reality, it's an old Russian tradition to fill the most important governmental positions with undercover intelligence officers. The czarist Okhrana security service planted its agents everywhere: in the central and local government, and in political parties, labor unions, churches, and newspapers. Until 1913, Pravda itself was edited by one of them, Roman Malinovsky, who rose to become Lenin's deputy for Russia and the chairman of the Bolshevik faction in the Duma.
Andropov Sovietized that Russian tradition and extended its application nationwide. It was something similar to militarizing the government in wartime, but it was accomplished by the KGB. In 1972, when he launched this new offensive, KGB Chairman Andropov told me that this would help eliminate the current plague of theft and bureaucratic chaos and would combat the growing sympathy for American jazz, films, and blue jeans obsessing the younger Soviet generation. Andropov's new undercover officers were secretly remunerated with tax-free salary supplements and job promotions. In exchange, Andropov explained, they would secretly have to obey "our" military regulations, practice "our" military discipline and carry out "our" tasks, if they wanted to keep their jobs. Of course, the KGB had long been using diplomatic cover slots for its officers assigned abroad, but Andropov's new approach was designed to influence the Soviet Union itself.
The lines separating the leadership of the country from the intelligence apparatus had blurred in the Soviet satellites as well. After I was granted political asylum in the United States in July 1978, the Western media reported that my defection had unleashed the greatest political purge in the history of Communist Romania. Ceausescu had demoted politburo members, fired one-third of his cabinet, and replaced ambassadors. All were undercover intelligence officers whose military documents and pay vouchers I had regularly signed off on.
THE MAKING OF A DICTATORGeneral Aleksandr Sakharovsky, the Soviet gauleiter of Romania who rose to head the Soviet foreign intelligence service for an unprecedented 15 years, used to predict to me that KGB Chairman Andropov would soon have the whole Soviet bloc in his vest pocket, and that he would surely end up in the Kremlin. Andropov would have to wait ten years until Brezhnev died, but on November 12, 1982, he did take up the country's reins. Once settled in the Kremlin, Andropov surrounded himself with KGB officers, who immediately went on a propaganda offensive to introduce him to the West as a "moderate" Communist and a sensitive, warm, Western-oriented man who allegedly enjoyed an occasional drink of Scotch, liked to read English novels, and loved listening to American jazz and the music of Beethoven. In actual fact, Andropov did not drink, as he was already terminally ill from a kidney disorder, and the rest of the portrayal was equally false.
In 1999, when Putin became prime minister, he also surrounded himself with KGB officers, who began describing him as a "Europeanized" leader capitalizing, ironically, on the fact that he had been a KGB spy abroad. Yet Putin's only foreign experience had been in East Germany, on Moscow's side of the Berlin Wall. Soon after that I visited the Stasi headquarters in Leipzig and Dresden to see where Putin had spent his "Europeanizing" years. Local representatives of the Gauck Commission a special post-Communism German panel researching the Stasi files said that the "Soviet-German 'friendship house'" Putin headed for six years was actually a KGB front with operational offices at the Leipzig and Dresden Stasi headquarters. Putin's real task was to recruit East German engineers as KGB agents and send them to the West to steal American technologies.
I visited those offices and found that they looked just like the offices of my own midlevel case officers in regional Securitate directorates in Romania. Yet Moscow claims Putin had held an important job in East Germany and was decorated by the East German government. The Gauck Commission confirmed that Putin was decorated in 1988 "for his KGB work in the East German cities of Dresden and Leipzig." According to the West German magazine Der Spiegel, he received a bronze medal from the East German Stasi as a "typical representative of second-rank agents." There, in those prison-like buildings, cut off even from real East German life by Stasi guards with machine guns and police dogs, Lieutenant Colonel Putin could not possibly have become the modern-day, Western-oriented Peter the Great that the Kremlin's propaganda machine is so energetically spinning.
Indeed, on December 20, 1999, Russia's newly appointed prime minister visited the Lubyanka to deliver a speech on this "memorable day," commemorating Lenin's founding of the first Soviet political police, the Cheka. "Several years ago we fell prey to the illusion that we have no enemies," Putin told a meeting of top security officials. "We have paid dearly for this. Russia has its own national interests, and we have to defend them." The following day, December 21, 1999, another "memorable day" in Soviet history Stalin's 120th birthday Putin organized a closed-door reception in his Kremlin office reported as being for the politicians who had won seats in the Duma. There he raised a glass to good old Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (Stalin, meaning "man of steel," was the dictator's nom de guerre).
Days later, in a 14-page article entitled "Russia on the Threshold of a New Millennium," Putin defined Russia's new "democratic" future: "The state must be where and as needed; freedom must be where and as required." The Chechens' effort to regain their independence was mere "terrorism," and he pledged to eradicate it: "We'll get them anywhere if we find terrorists sitting in the outhouse, then we will piss on them there. The matter is settled." It is not.
SCAPEGOATING AND CONSOLIDATINGOn September 9, 2004, Chechen nationalists announced a $20 million prize on the head of the "war criminal" Vladimir Putin, whom they accuse of "murdering hundreds of thousands of peaceful civilians on the territory of Chechnya, including tens of thousands of children."
For his part, President Putin tried to divert the outrage over the horrific Breslan catastrophe away from his KGB colleagues who had caused it, and to direct public anger toward the KGB's archenemy, the U.S. Citing meetings of mid-level U.S. officials with Chechen leaders, Putin accused Washington of having a double standard when dealing with terrorism. "Why don't you meet Osama bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to the White House and engage in talks, ask him what he wants and give it to him so he leaves you in peace?" Putin told reporters in Moscow.
Then Putin blamed the collapse of the Soviet Union for what he called a "full scale" terrorist war against Russia and started taking Soviet-style steps to strengthen the Kremlin's power. On September 13, he announced measures to eliminate the election of the country's governors, who should now be appointed by the Kremlin, and to allow only "certified" people that is, former KGB officers to run for the parliament.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, its people had a unique opportunity to cast out their political police, a peculiarly Russian instrument of power that has for centuries isolated their country from the real world and in the end left them ill-equipped to deal with the complexities of modern society. Unfortunately, up until then most Russians had never owned property, had never experienced a free-market economy, and had never made decisions for themselves. Under Communism they were taught to despise Western democracy and everything they believed to be connected with capitalism, e.g., free enterprise, decision-making, hard work, risk-taking, and social inequality. Moreover, the Russians had also had minimal experience with real political parties, since their country has been a police state since the 16th century. To them, it seemed easier to continue the tradition of the political police state than to take the risk of starting everything anew.
But the times have changed dramatically. My native country, which borders Russia, is a good example. At first, Romania's post-Communism rulers, for whom managing the country with the help of the political police was the only form of government they had ever known, bent over backwards to preserve the KGB-created Securitate, a criminal organization that became the symbol of Communist tyranny in the West. Article 27 of Romania's 1990 law for organizing the new intelligence services stated that only former Securitate officers "who have been found guilty of crimes against fundamental human rights and against freedom" could not be employed in the "new" intelligence services. In other words, only Ceausescu would not have been eligible for employment there. Today, Romania still has the same president as in 1990, but his country is now a member of NATO and is helping the U.S. to rid the world of Cold War-style dictators and the terrorism they generated.
Russia can also break with its Communist past and join our fight against despots and terrorists. We can help them do it, but first we should have a clear understanding of what is now going on behind the veil of secrecy that still surrounds the Kremlin.
Ion Mihai Pacepa, a former two-star general, is the highest-ranking intelligence officer to have defected from the Soviet bloc. His book Red Horizons has been republished in 27 countries.
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http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/pacepa200409200814.asp
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But the Chechens have admitted it. It is possible that the Russian intelligence services had heard "chatter" of an operation such as this though.
ping!
ping
I remember the hostage situation in the theater. I also remember thinking it was a very risky move on the part of the police, but I didn't see much alternative at the time, either. As far as I was concerned, all the people in the theater were dead, so anybody who could be saved was a bonus, and most of them were saved. What were there, something like 800 people in there? And I'm not surprised at all that attack helicopters were at the school within minutes...not surprised at all. They had 3 days to get there, after all. And they had to be ready for anything...such as the terrorists escaping the school. I don't see a problem with that. And most of what I read on the massacre was from the BBC, and while I think their was poor coordination and organization amongst the various agencies on the scene, and I think they should have gotten the armed civilians away from the area pronto, the survivors all pretty much tell the same story. That a bomb went off inside the building, and then all hell broke loose.
You might have it in for Putin, which is fine, but that doesn't mean the Chechens aren't total scum, completely capable of being scum and gangsters and mass murderers without the help of the KGB-types.
1,500 hostages. around 800 or so lived - many with injuries.
The Chechens have admitted to seizing the school and the people, for that alone they should be put to death.
Now, let's go on to the actual massacre.
My problem lies with the fact that the Russian warships and the tanks behind the school having a gun battle which involved not only the Russian forces and the terrorists, but also the townspeople did nothing more than elevate the casualties; I find it quite disturbing that in spite of the fact that the crossfire between the 30+ terrorists, and all the firepower outside that school, every single casualty is blamed on the terrorists, who by even official Russian accounts, were trying to flee the scene.
There are a lot of reports out there that cast doubts on exactly what we know and what we don't know about this.
I for one, don't believe that the FSB is any different than the KGB, especially since it's run by the same people, and I remember the KGB's brutality, and their disdain for human life.
ping
ping
ping!
What monstrosity.
ping
Now I know the entire cabal here. Thankyaverrymuch!
Russia: Recounting The Beslan Hostage Siege -- A Chronology
By Jeremy Bransten
Precisely what happened in Beslan and why remain a mystery
It has been nearly a week since the end of the hostage crisis in North Ossetia on 3 September. With each passing day, a few new details emerge about what exactly went on in Beslan. But many fundamental questions remain unanswered. RFE/RL correspondent Jeremy Bransten, in cooperation with RFE/RL's North Caucasus Service, compiles a chronology of events that recapitulates what we know so far -- from the start of the drama on Wednesday, 1 September, until its bloody conclusion on Friday, 3 September. We examine the differing official and unofficial versions and what we have yet to find out.
Prague, 9 September 2004 (RFE/RL) -- It is the first day of the Russian school year, Wednesday, 1 September.
In Beslan, a city of 30,000 inhabitants in Russia's Caucasus republic of North Ossetia, parents, students, and teachers are gathering in the early morning at the city's main school for the expected opening ceremonies.
At the same time, a group of militants, in a convoy of three passenger cars, are headed toward the school. The militants, whose identities remain unclear and whose departure point is also unknown, soon arrive at the school building.
This is what happens next, according to Russian Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov's report to President Vladimir Putin: "Having arrived in Beslan, they drove into the school courtyard, where -- following the order of their leader, who went by the name of 'Colonel' -- they surrounded the schoolchildren and adults and led away all the citizens located on the square."
The parents, teachers, and children -- now hostages -- are led into the school gymnasium. For several hours, the situation remains chaotic. Parents and relatives gather outside the school buildings as police reinforcements arrive. At 11:30 a.m. North Ossetia's President Aleksandr Dzasokhov is on the scene. Putin flies to Moscow, cutting short his vacation in Sochi.
According to officials, the hostage takers request talks with local authorities and the release of detainees involved in recent attacks in Ingushetia. They also ask for well-known Moscow-based pediatrician Leonid Roshal -- who mediated the 2002 "Nord-Ost" hostage crisis in Moscow -- to be flown to Beslan. Officials say no other demands are made. They say the hostage takers are holding some 200 to 300 people and draw a link to Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov.
In fact, the militants hold some 1,200 people in conditions so cramped that some hostages are forced to sit on each other's hands and feet. According to testimony from former hostages after the crisis, the militants spend the next couple of hours laying down mines and booby traps throughout the gymnasium building.
To this day, it is unclear how they got their weapons into the school. Ustinov, in his report to Putin, claimed the hostage takers brought their arsenal with them, in their three cars. But former hostages say the militants had managed to hide weapons and explosives in the school, prior to the attack, pointing to meticulous preparation and raising questions about how they gained access to the building in the weeks prior to the hostage drama.
Shortly after 1:00 p.m., the hostage takers drop a note from one of the windows outlining their main demand: the withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya. The demand is widely reported by Russian news agencies, but quickly disappears and is never mentioned by officials.
Later that afternoon, Russian commandos ("spets-naz") arrive and take up positions around the school.
In an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's North Caucasus Service, Akhmed Zakaev, the London-based spokesman for Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov, condemns the hostage takers -- rejecting Kremlin claims of Maskhadov's involvement.
"Claims of President Maskhadov's involvement in this terrorist act are part of a well-planned misinformation campaign, which also includes statements by [Russian] officials that there were Arab and African mercenaries among the terrorists," Zakaev said. "Their goal is to explain this terrorist act as being part of some foreign conspiracies. Those are lies."
In the early evening, Russia calls for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council. Doctor Roshal arrives in Beslan. Night falls.
It is now Thursday, 2 September. During the night, the hostage takers speak with Roshal. The content of the conversation is unknown. Before sunrise, news comes that the UN Security Council has voted to condemn the hostage taking. Putin postpones a planned visit to Turkey.
At noon, Lev Dzugaev, the press secretary of the North Ossetian president, says "technical talks" are continuing with the hostage takers on getting them to accept deliveries of food, water, and medicine. The hostage takers' main demand remains unpublicized. Authorities continue to say around 300 hostages are in the school and that they do not know the hostage takers' motives.
At this point, Putin makes his first public comment on the crisis. During a meeting in Moscow with Jordan's King Abdullah, Putin says his main priority in ensuring the welfare of the hostages: "Our main task, of course, is to save the lives and health of those who became hostages. All actions by our forces involved in rescuing the hostages will be dedicated exclusively to this task."
Officials of the Federal Security Service (FSB) also exclude any resolution of the standoff by force.
Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliev and FSB head Nikolai Patrushev arrive in Beslan and set up a crisis team. Ruslan Aushev, former president of Ingushetia, enters the school to negotiate with the hostage takers.
Twenty-six hostages are soon released. North Ossetian presidential press secretary Lev Dzugaev calls it a "first success" and credits Aushev's negotiating skill.
That evening, at around 8:00 p.m., Dzasokhov and Aushev telephone Zakaev in London. They ask Zakaev whether Maskhadov can use his influence to end the hostage crisis. The fact of the conversation is never made public.
A few hours later, Maskhadov issues a statement on the chechen.org website harshly condemning the hostage taking. Again, Russian state media take no notice.
Three Russian tanks are brought outside the school, to the surprise of parents and local journalists gathered outside.
Overnight, a police officer is wounded by shots fired from the school. Talks are broken off, then resume on Friday, 3 September. Early in the morning, Dzasokhov and Aushev once again telephone Zakaev. He tells them Maskhadov is willing to do anything in his power to put an end to the crisis.
Zakaev detailed the conversation as well as his previous talks with Aushev and Dzasokhov, in an interview with RFE/RL: "Yesterday I spoke with the President of [North] Ossetia, [Aleksandr] Dzasokhov and the former Ingush President Ruslan Aushev, and I informed President Maskhadov about the content of our talks. For his part, Maskhadov pledged to do everything in his power to find ways to resolve this situation without blood and without harming the children. Today Dzasokhov and Aushev again called me and we spoke. I told them that I informed [Maskhadov] about our previous conversation. I also outlined [Maskhadov's] position and his efforts to do everything in his power to resolve this situation without bloodshed and any harm coming to the children. He said he was willing to look for ways to achieve this."
Shortly before noon, President Dzasokhov holds a meeting with relatives of the hostages at a Beslan cultural center. He tells them the latest information indicates there are actually over 500 hostages held in the school. Dzasokhov reiterates what many have believed since the beginning -- that the hostage takers' main demand is the withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya.
Minutes later, Dzosokhov's spokesman says the hostage takers have agreed to hand over the bodies of several people killed during the standoff. A car from the Emergency Situations Ministry pulls up to the school with several emergency personnel. According to the official version of events, two explosions go off inside the school. The hostage takers begin shooting at the emergency personnel as well as the crowd waiting outside the school. Chaos breaks out. A group of hostages manages to escape. Russian forces begin storming the school.
Within minutes, four Russian combat helicopters join the battle. The roof of the gymnasium collapses. Outside the school, there is mayhem, as groups of children and other hostages stream out, in the midst of gunfire from all sides.
Within a couple of hours, Russian forces claim control of most of the school, but it is not until late into the night that the shooting dies down.
The ultimate toll is horrific: over 300 dead, half of them children. More than twice that many are injured, and 200 are missing. The missing have still not been found. What happened to them remains a mystery.
The authorities initially say some of the hostage takers managed to escape during the chaos of the rescue operation. Later, they claim all of the militants have been killed, except for three who have been taken into custody. They say 10 of the dead militants are Arabs and one is an African. No proof is ever provided.
Still later, one detainee is shown on state television. He is now the only survivor, according to the authorities. His story exactly matches Ustinov's report to Putin: the attack was planned by Aslan Maskhadov and Chechen commander Shamil Basaev. The militants were directed by a sadistic madman called the 'Colonel.' Their aim from the very start was to blow up the school.
Negotiations, according to Ustinov, would have been fruitless: "Constant threats were addressed to the hostages and members of the bandit group [by the group leader]: 'We are going to die anyway, we have only one goal and that is to carry out this terrorist act.' After two days, when they started changing their system of explosives for some reason, an explosion took place, after which panic began, many of the hostages tried to escape, and the gunmen opened fire."
But the official version is contradicted by many eyewitnesses and former hostages. According to the newspaper "Izvestiya," whose reporter interviewed one of the emergency staffers who drove up to the school in the minutes before the siege was broken, there were no initial explosions.
He said someone -- he does not know who -- opened fire from outside the school, at which point the militants fired back. Then came the explosions. Other witnesses suggest the initial gunfire might have come from among the crowd of parents and relatives waiting outside the school. Some say the explosions were actually Russian tank fire, which blew off part of the school's roof.
Moscow-based military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer also doubts the Kremlin's version of an unplanned, last-minute decision to storm the school, saying the appearance of attack helicopters points to a coordinated, pre-planned move.
"Although there is an air base near Beslan, I know how much time it takes to transmit instructions to pilots. Even if the helicopter was fueled, armed, and waiting, and the pilots were already suited up -- if it had been a spontaneous decision -- they would have had to wait for instructions. An order would have had to be given. They would have had to get aboard, to warm up the engine. They could not have made it to the school in less than half an hour or even more," Felgenhauer said.
Whether the hostage takers intended to die from the very start is also unclear. They did in fact have a demand -- the withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya -- despite the Kremlin's initial denial of any motive.
And it appears they were also open to talks. In addition to the negotiations with Aushev, one former hostage interviewed by "Izvestiya," a 15-year-old-girl, says she spent several minutes talking to the chief militant who told her of the pain of losing his daughter in the war in Chechnya. Shouldn't a professional psychologist have been included in the negotiating team, "Izvestiya" asks?
But asking too many questions does not seem to pay off. "Izvestiya" Editor in Chief Raf Shakirov said he was forced to resign after the paper's publisher objected to his "negative" coverage of the crisis. RFE/RL Russian Service correspondent Andrei Babitskii was detained at a Moscow airport on charges of hooliganism and never made it to Beslan. Anna Politkovskaya, another well-known reporter with extensive experience in the Caucasus, said she was poisoned on her flight out of Moscow, en route to Beslan. After losing consciousness, she awoke in a hospital in Rostov-na-Donu.
Ruslan Aushev, who could hold many of the answers to the hostages' identities and motives, has disappeared, turning off his cell phone.
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2004/9/94E355D2-B747-4EE3-AB9D-28A2CBE53429.html
Have you noticed the very Democrat-like habit of these people to attack the individual at every chance?
The author's credibility dismissed simply because he is a Romanian.
Haldol dispensor? I want I want...
Sorry, while perhaps Russia could have handled the situation differently, imo the terrorists get all the credit.
But your opinion is based on news completely controlled by Russia.
Independent reporters headed into the scene were poisoned before they got there.
I've a friend who was a hostage at Dubrovka two years ago, and we've gone round and round on "blame". Finally, we've agreed to disagree. But I my opinion is the same as your in both cases - it could have been handled differently, but the terrorists deserve it all.
It's not about the effecitveness of Russia's actions, or even negligence. Show me Russia's culpability in creating the situation, or in deliberately murdering hostages.
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