12/10/06
We have been
reminded that the old KGB lives on in new guises, because in
fact we have known this for some time. True, the old
employees no longer belong to a single all-powerful
institution. Some (“the stupidest,” according to Oleg
Gordievsky, the former double agent) have stayed with the
agency, joining either the domestic service (the FSB) or the
foreign service (the SVR). Others went into business, some
joining the security entourages of new Russian millionaires,
some becoming millionaires in their own right. Still others,
to put it bluntly, went into organized crime. And some —
Putin is the shining example here — went into politics.
Despite their
widely varying fates, it has long been perfectly clear that
many of these old comrades continue to work together in
mutually profitable ways. As far back as 1999, for example,
a group of Russian-born bankers was caught laundering money
through a New York bank, probably using information obtained
one way or another by Russian intelligence. Since then, it
has become clear that a number of Russia’s largest companies
were launched with money from mysterious sources and a
number of former KGB officers have also shown up at the helm
of businesses and banks.
This same
mutually profitable relationship will also make it extremely
difficult to find Litvinenko’s real killer. After all, this
set of post-KGB relationships is nothing if not complex:
There are conspiracies within conspiracies, agents of agents
of agents, people who pretend to be acting on behalf of a
particular oligarch or Chechen insurgent who are actually
acting on behalf of someone quite different. It is possible
that Litvinenko was murdered by “rogue secret policemen,” as
the British press suspects. It is also possible that the
rogue secret policemen were working for someone who worked
for the Kremlin, or someone who worked for a Russian
oligarch, or who worked for a Russian oligarch who worked
for the Kremlin.
As the
investigation progresses, I’m sure many more wonderfully
shady characters will emerge, along with many theories about
who was trying to discredit whom. But though it’s doubtful
that he ever gave an actual order to an actual thug, Putin
is certainly responsible for Litvinenko’s death in this
deeper sense: He presides over this web of old intelligence
operatives. Indeed, he sits at its center. And he approves
of their methods.
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We
may never find out whodunit or who ordered it
done, but we know what Litvinenko was
investigating at the time of his death: the
killing of decorated Russian journalist Anna
Politkovskaya, who had been exposing alleged
Russian misdeeds in Chechnya.
Were the killings of Politkovskaya and
Litvinenko isolated incidents, the Kremlin's
protests that it suffers most from the bad
international publicity would be more worthy of
sympathy. But Politkovskaya was at least the
21st Russian journalist to be killed since Putin
was elected in 2000, according to Reporters
Without Borders. Two others have disappeared and
are presumed dead, and there have been 320
assaults.
This would be alarming in any country, but it
comes during a period in which the Russian
government has nationalized private TV stations
that had been critical of the regime, backed the
takeover of independent media by political
allies, arrested media executives or forced them
into exile and repeatedly brought criminal
charges against journalists. The human rights
group Freedom House ranks Russia as simply "not
free" when it comes to the media.
The result has been de facto impunity for those
who would enforce public silence — be they
corrupt government officials, sleazy
businessmen, gangsters or any others who fear
exposure or debate. That some news outlets have
accepted payment to print or withhold sensitive
information in the anarchic post-Soviet
marketplace certainly complicates the picture.
But the pattern of censorship, intimidation and
deadly violence against the Kremlin's fiercest
critics makes it increasingly difficult to give
Putin the benefit of the doubt.
Politkovskaya, one of the bravest reporters of
her generation, was gunned down Oct. 7 in what
many suspect was a contract killing. She is the
third journalist from her newspaper, Novaya
Gazeta — one of the last Russian publications
that dares do investigative reporting — to die.
Last month, two other Novaya Gazeta reporters
received death threats; one was investigating
Politkovskaya's slaying. While the newspaper's
staff risks their lives to shed light on the
inner workings of Putin's Russia, the West has a
moral obligation to insist that the Russian
government protect them.
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