Cryptome
November 24, 2000
THE FIFTH BOMB:
DID PUTIN’S SECRET POLICE
BOMB MOSCOW IN A
DEADLY BLACK OPERATION?
John Sweeney on the evidence that the old KGB
deliberately planted bombs in Moscow and
blamed them on Chechen terrorists.
The critical evidence are these photographs of a detonator.
The photographs of a detonator, taken by a Russian bomb squad, and other
fresh evidence point to a plot carried out by the FSB working to assist their
old spymaster, Vladimir Putin, in his rise to control the world’s number
two superpower and its nuclear arsenal.
The secret policeman stood on the
edge of a field of rubble and burnt wreckage, the ruins of what had been
only the night before a block of flats.
He looked Central Casting’s idea of a KGB operative, sporting a cowpat
hairdo, a cheap black raincoat, black tie, lean, tall, clean shaven, saturnine.
They call the KGB the FSB these days, a new name for the Soviet state’s
old organ of terror.
There had been two bombs in Moscow in four days. The first bomb exploded
just after midnight at a block of flats at Guryanov Street. It killed 92
Muscovites sleeping in their beds in the early morning of 9th
September, 1999. Several bodies were rocketed into the surrounding streets.
By daybreak people could see the sad detritus of the atrocity: children’s
clothes, a sofa hanging off a ledge in what had been someone’s living
room, open to the sky, books, pictures scattered far and wide. Broken glass
crackled underfoot in all the surrounding streets. The edge of fear in Moscow
was tangible.
Four days later the second bomb blew up a similar block of flats at Kashirskoye
Highway at five in the morning. The wounded, shocked, painted in dust, as
semi-naked as when they went to sleep, a night and a lifetime ago, were carried
off in stretchers. The most haunting image was of a man quite blackened by
soot from a fire, crawling on his hands and knees through the wreckage: more
beast than man. He survived. 130 other residents in the block of flats -
men, women, children - did not.
Enter the secret policeman. He walked up to the TV cameras and presented
to the compound eye of lenses a black and white e-fit picture. The e-fit
depicted a Chechen man, with a fleshy face, almost Buddha-like in its plumpness,
swarthy skin and tinted spectacles. This was the Chechen terrorist the
authorities were blaming for the bomb. He was using the name of Mukhit Laipanov,
who had recently rented ground floor space in the two apartment blocks devastated
by the bombs. The real Laipanov died in a car crash earlier in 1999. The
authorities were very quick to pin the blame on a group of Chechen trained
terrorists. It was the Chechens who did it - that was the instant effect
of the secret policeman’s e-fit. It was posted up all around the bus
stops of Moscow. The Russian authorities have yet to produce a single solid
piece of evidence to support their theory that Chechen terrorists blew up
Moscow. No-one has been tried, no chain of evidence explained. A few men
have been arrested, but none of the alleged ‘ring-leaders’. Three
days after the second bomb, the bulldozers moved in, obliterating the sites
and also destroying evidence against the bombers.
Two more bombs had exploded in cities in southern Russia. The four bombs
together killed more than 300 people in less than two weeks.
There was a fifth bomb. This one didn’t go off. But the fifth bomb -
proved by photographs of its detonator shown above - provides hard
evidence that challenges the official ‘Chechen version’ of the
Moscow bomb outrages. The fifth bomb points the other way: that the KGB-FSB
bombed Moscow deliberately to blacken the name of the Chechens as a pretext
for the second Chechen war.
The photographs of a detonator, taken by a Russian bomb squad, and other
fresh evidence point to a plot carried out by the FSB working to assist their
old spymaster, Vladimir Putin, in his rise to control the world’s number
two superpower and its nuclear arsenal.
When the two Moscow bombs went off, Putin had just been appointed prime minister
by President Yeltsin. With no public track record, the former secret policeman
was widely mocked as a political nobody, a cold, faceless Kremlin insider
who had spent 16 years in the KGB and had emerged as the chief of its successor,
the FSB. Boris Kagarlitsky is a seasoned Kremlin watcher in Moscow: ‘You
cannot turn a bureaucrat into a glamorous person. He is as grey as he used
to be. There is a propaganda machine which works but that is exactly the
weakness of Putin, because as a politician he is a nobody. To be a politician
you need some kind of past.’
Matt Ivens, editor of the Moscow Times, thought the same: ‘Yeltsin
had been through a couple of prime ministers and each time he dropped them
he made it clear that it had something to do with elections.
By the end he's picking Vladimir Putin. No one has ever heard of Putin, except
very careful watchers of politics or people from St. Petersberg. He's announcing
"this is my successor, this is a man who can run the country" and there is
widespread ridicule. All the newspapers in town including ours said, there's
no way this guy could win an election, unless something really extraordinary
is going to happen.’
The Moscow bombs were the extraordinary thing.
Putin struck out in the immediate aftermath of the bombs: ‘Those that
have done this don't deserve to be called animals. They are worse …
they are mad beasts and they should be treated as such.’
His poll ratings soared, and he struck again: ‘we will waste them. Even
when they are on the bog.’ This was pure gangsterese, but it went down
a treat with the Russian public. Putin was working with the grain of Russian
racism. For centuries, the Muslim renegades from the savage rocks of the
Caucases have been the folk devils of Russia. The nineteenth century poet
Lermontov wrote a lullaby which has stuck in the Russian mind:
‘The Terek streams over boulders,
the murky waves splash;
a wicked Chechen crawls on to the bank
and sharpens his kinzhal;
But your father is an old warrior
forged in battle;
sleep my darling, be calm,
sing lullaby.’
The Chechens had humiliated the might of Russia in the first Chechen War,
which Yeltsin had started in a drunken rage in 1994. They had kidnapped and
killed mnay Russian soldiers, sometimes in a bloody and disgusting fashion.
The Islamic terror
Now it was the turn of the old guard, the Russian military and the FSB, to
get their own back. And the Chechens were wasted, Grozny mulched to rubble,
again, their economy annihilated, their ecology destroyed, their men shot
and tortured and dumped in pits - to this day.
The tanks started to roll, and the war in Chechnya which has seen a Russian
victory at the expense of thousands of civilian lives, began.
Putin’s brisk, savage reaction to the Moscow bombs made him a Russian
superstar. The Chechens lost everything they had gained from the first war.
One Chechen view is this: ‘if we had wanted to bomb Moscow, we would
have blown up the Kremlin or a nuclear power station. Why should we blow
up a couple of blocks of flats?’ Putin’s tough guy stance saw his
opinion poll ratings rocket from close to zero to 70 per cent. Hugely popular,
he was anointed President of the Russian Federation by Boris Yeltsin on
New’s Year Eve. Sick, drunk, a joke but not a funny one, Yeltsin bowed
out, escaping a fraud and money-laundering investigation by the Swiss Chief
Prosecutor which was getting very close to his ‘family’ in the
Kremlin.
Earlier in 1999 Special Prosecutor Yuri Skuratov had been hot on Yeltsin's
case. He had received damning evidence from the Swiss investigators, evidence
that put Yeltsin’s daughter, Tatiana, directly in the frame. Then he
got a phone call. ‘We’ve got you on tape. Resign, or you’re
finished.’
Skuratov refused to be blackmailed – and then Russia's TV millions saw
him being entertained by two young prostitutes. They saw their Special Prosecutor
lying on his back, naked, one of the woman on top of him, her head bobbing
up and down. It was a classic dirty trick.
And the man responsible? Skuratov said: ‘As head of the FSB, Putin was
one of those who fought against me, who compromised me, who plotted to get
me off the case.’
The shaming of Skuratov finished off the Special Prosecutor, but not the
case. By August 1999, the evidence against Yeltsin and his family was growing.
It centred around an expensive refurbishment of the Kremlin, the central
allegation being that a Swiss businessman of Albanian origin had supplied
credit cards to members of Yeltsin’s circle in return for the contract.
Worse, the evidence was in Swiss, not Russian, hands. Yeltsin’s popularity
rating was hitting 2 per cent. At that point he promoted his spy chief, Putin,
and made him prime minister.
At the same time Russian TV showing a video of clip of Chechen guerrillas
purportedly torturing and killing Russian soldiers. The worst clip shows
a knife being put to the neck of a shaven-headed white man. Then his artery
is severed and one can see his blood drain from his face in close-up. The
next shot is of the man lying prone on the ground, to all intents and purposes
a corpse. There is no way of telling whether the victim was a Russian soldier
and the killers Chechen, no supporting evidence. Nevertheless, this and other
clips were shown on Russian TV repeatedly - as if someone in authority was
minded to soften Russian public opinion against the Chechens. And this happened
before the bomb outrages.
The first came in the southern city of Buinaksk, killing 62 in September
4th, 1999. Then came the two bombs in Moscow, then a fourth that
killed 17 in the southern city of Volgodonsk on September 16th.
The Russian government’s case that Chechen terrorists or Chechen-backed
terrorists bombed Moscow and the two towns in southern Russia was spelt out
by Vladimir Kozlov, head of the FSB’s anti-terrorism department, in
a Moscow press conference a year after the outrages. Kozlov said that the
terrorists were members of a radical Islamic sect, led by one Achemez Gochiyayev,
who was paid $500,000 by the feared Chechen warlord Khattab. He recruited
Yusuf Krymshamkhalov and Denis Saitakov to deliver the Moscow blasts. None
of these men have been arrested. But two other men have been: Taukan Frantsuzov
and Ruslan Magayayev. The evidence against them, when or if it comes before
the courts, is keenly awaited.
The terrorists were trained in Chechnya, then dispatched to neighbouring
North Caucasian republics, such as Karachayevo-Cherkassia, with tons of
explosives, said the FSB. There, they rented trucks and smuggled the explosives
to Moscow, usually camouflaged as sugar, potatoes or some other produce.
Most of the bombs were made of a mixture of potassium nitrate and aluminium
powder, with Casio watches used as timers, according to Kozlov. FSB detectives
say they also found 500 kilograms of this mixture near the Chechen city of
Urus-Martan in December, 1999, citing this as proof that those responsible
for the attacks were not only trained in Khattab’s camps in Chechnya,
but also obtained explosives there.
Common sense says it would be madness for a group of Chechens to smuggle
explosives all the way from Urus-Martan to Moscow. Since the first Chechen
war, Chechens are routinely singled out for harrassment by Russian police,
vehicles stopped and searched, identity papers demanded. Besides, there has
long been a strong Chechen mafia in Moscow, very capable of getting its own
hands on arms or explosives locally. In Russia, you can bribe your way into
a nuclear rocket silo or buy the list of the lost sailors of the doomed
submarine, the Kursk. The ‘Chechen terrorists’ would have been
risking a great deal by hauling their explosives roughly 1,000 miles to Moscow,
when they could have bought them locally.
Six of the suspects, including those for the bombs in southern Russia, have
been killed in fighting with federal forces in southern Russia. Dead men
don’t tell tales. Much of the evidence presented at the FSB news conference
was circumstantial.
But the FSB’s official version of the bomb outrages starts to fall apart
when you examine the case of the fifth bomb. The story of its discovery,
defusal and denial casts huge doubts on the Kremlin’s line.
Around 9pm at night on 22 September in the provincial city of Ryazan, 100
miles south east of Moscow, Vladimir Vasiliev, an engineer coming home for
the night noticed three strangers acting suspiciously by the basement of
his block of flats at 14/16 Novosyolov Street, literally New Settlers Street.
Vasiliev said: ‘A white was parked outside the entrance, with the boot
towards the entrance. In the car were two men, young men, also young, about
20 or 25 years old.’
Vasiliev noticed that the last two digits of the car number plate had been
stuck on with paper, showing 62, the Ryazan regional code. Underneath the
paper was the true plate number, giving a Moscow code. Vasiliev, puzzled,
decided to call the police. ‘As we were waiting for the lift and it
was empty, one of the young guys got out of the car and the girl asked: "have
you done everything?" "Yes." "OK, let’s go." And they got into the car
and quite quickly left.’
Vasiliev observed the three in the car with the mismatched plates. ‘I
remember the driver sat at the wheel, quite thin, with a moustache, and the
other man was heavier. The girl had blond hair, cut short, wearing sports
clothes and a leather jacket. They were Russian, absolutely, not Asiatic.’
The police arrived. Inspector Andrei Chernyshev from the local police was
the first to enter the basement. He said: ‘we had a signal from a man
on duty. It was about 10 in the evening. There were some strangers who were
seen leaving the basement from the Building 14/16 at Novosyolovo Street.
We were met by the girl who stood by the building. She told us about the
men who came out from the basement and left with the car with a licence number
which was covered with paper. I went down to the basement. This block of
flats had a very deep basement which was completely covered with water. We
could see sacks of sugar and in them some electronic device, a few wires
and a clock. We were shocked. We ran out of the basement and I stayed on
watch by the entrance and my officers went to evacuate the people.’
Grandmother Clara Stepanovna recalled that night: ‘the neighbours began
to knock at the door and said: "get out fast, something’s been planted
underneath us." We quickly grabbed what we could and leapt out. My daughter
leaped out not dressed, without stockings, without tights, not anything,
just flung a jacket on. The kids also dashed out not dressed. They held us
away from the block of flats and started investigating. They didn’t
give us permission to come near.’
Vasiliev said: ‘After we were standing in the square, my wife remembered
that she hadn’t switched off the stove, so I went up to an MVD officer
to tell him. We went up in the lift. He told me they had really had found
a device.’ (MVD stands for Ministerstvo Vnutrennykh Del, the Interior
Ministry.)
Yuri Tkachenko, head of the local bomb squad, went down into the basement.
‘For me it was a live bomb. I was in a combat situation,’ he said.
He tested the three sugar sacks in the basement with his MO-2 portable gas
analyser, and got a positive reading for Hexogen, the explosive used in the
Moscow bombs.
The timer of the detonator was set for 5.30am, which would have killed many
of the 250 tenants of the 13-storey block of flats.
The sacks were taken out of the basement at around 1.30 in the morning and
driven away by the FSB. But the secret police left the detonator in the hands
of the bomb squad. They photographed it later that day.
As the residents were finally allowed back into to their homes at seven in
the morning, one of the policemen let Mrs Stepanovna see what was left. She
said: ‘there was a bit left, and the policeman said: "there, that’s
it. That’s the stuff that was meant to blow you up.’
The local police arrested two men that night, according to Boris Kagarlitsky,
a member of the Russian Institute of Comparative Politics. ‘FSB officers
were caught red-handed while planting the bomb. They were arrested by the
police and they tried to save themselves by showing FSB identity cards.’
Then, headquarters of the FSB in Moscow intervened. The two men were quietly
let go.
The next day, on September 24, the FSB in Moscow announced that there had
never been a bomb, only a training exercise. There was no hexogen, only sugar.
Pro-Kremlin newspapers reported that the Ryazan bomb squad had made a mistake
when they detected hexogen. One newspaper commented that perhaps they
hadn’t washed their tester, a remark to which Tkachenko the bomb disposal
expert replied: ‘it wasn’t an enema. There are two sources of radiation
in the tester. These people don’t know what they are talking about.
Alexander Sergeyev, head of the Ryazan regional FSB, said, when asked about
the training exercise: ‘the decision wasn’t taken by our local
FSB. If it was a training exercise, it was done for everyone to check the
combat readiness of all the towns in Russia. Nobody told us it was a training
exercise and we didn’t receive a call that it was over. For two days
and nights, we didn’t receive any documents or order that it was
finished.’
Officially, the Minister of Interior has forbidden the police and the FSB
from talking about the bomb that never was. But few believe the Kremlin’s
version that it was only a training exercise.
Vasiliev said: ‘I heard the official version on the radio, when the
press secretary of the FSB announced that it was a training exercise. It
felt extremely unpleasant. A lot of neighbours started to call me and say:
"did you hear that?" I heard it, but I cannot believe it.’
The credibility of the FSB version of events hangs on the notion of a training
exercise. Why use real hexogen and a real detonator in a dummy bomb? If was
just a training exercise, why turn out the residents of the block of flats
for a sleepless night? And why should the Ryazan bomb squad be so concerned
about a dummy detonator that they took a photograph of it?
The concern of locals deepened when the newspaper Novaya Gazeta alleged
that sacks of hexogen were found at a military base in Ryazan. The paper
reported that a paratrooper on guards duty at a weapons warehouse outside
the city discovered piles of sacks labelled sugar. He opened one of the bags
and tried to use the white powder to sweeten his tea, only to recoil at the
taste. An explosives expert called in to examine the bags declared that they
contained hexogen.
Putin has declared: ‘there is nobody in the Russian special services
capable of committing such a crime against our people. It is immoral even
to consider such a possibility. In fact, this is nothing but an element of
the information war against Russia.’
His problem is that the residents of the Ryazan block of flats, among others,
do not believe his word or the word of the FSB on the matter.
Copyright 2000 John Sweeney.
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