By William Walter Kay BA JD ——Bio and Archives--November 9, 2023
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In September 1999 the CIA, and allied agencies, bombed four Russian apartment buildings – killing hundreds, injuring thousands. Said attacks facilitated the placement of Putin into the Russian presidency. This isn’t fringe conspiracy. The basic plotline – that the perpetrators were not Chechens but rather some Yeltsin-Putin cabal – is presented in detail in veteran American journalist David Satter’s The Less You Know the Better You Sleep (Yale University Press) and in Professor Karen Dashiwa’s Putin’s Kleptocracy (Simon & Shuster). Careerists like Satter and Dawisha, however, daren’t put two and two together. If, as is roundly established, the Yeltsin-Putin Administration was a NATO puppet; then Western intel agencies bear prime responsibility for the bombings.
To the rescue rides Philip Short’s 854-page Putin (Henry Holt, 2022). Short, a seasoned BBC correspondent boasting assignments in Moscow, Beijing and Washington, spent eight years writing this go-to biography.
Putin’s “Notes on Sources” begins:
“It is a sound rule of thumb to keep source notes to a strict minimum or, if possible, to avoid them altogether.” (1)
Researching such topics is problematic because:
“…in Britain and the USA diplomatic despatches and other such material is systematically withheld on national security grounds.” (2)
Hence:
“Some information derives from interviews which are not publically accessible.” (3)
Short predicates Putin on interviews of 78 persons. Here’s a sample of seven interviewees:
Mindful of events in Russia circa May-September 1999, here’s a sample of nine more interviewees:
Thirty-four interviewees oversaw Russian operations during the planning and execution of the bombings.
Mere mortals cannot contact such people let alone question them. Putin wasn’t born on a wave in Short’s wizened brain. The book’s concept emerged within top echelons of Western intelligence with Short being but their chosen scribe.
Incriminatingly, Putin is a straight-forward chronology from Vlad’s 1952 birth to his 2022 launch of the Russo-Ukrainian War… with one glaring exception. Entirely out of time-sequence, Putin’s opening 15 pages set out to prove Vlad’s innocence regarding the 1999 bombings.
Before Short trots out his pitiful arguments, he plops a few hitherto un-transmitted facts.
For contextualization Short relies on Swedish journalist Jan Blomgren’s reportage. Blomgren reminds that mid-1999 an alliance of Russia’s Communist and Fatherland parties stood on the cusp of power. Impending regime change spelled doom for nouveau oligarchs and “Yeltsin’s enablers.” Desperate days draw desperate deeds. On June 6, Blomgren foretold: “a state of emergency would be declared after a series of false-flag terrorist attacks.” (6)
(Blomgren developed this theses until persons unknown slipped him a drug knocking him out for 48 hours. He awoke to a burglarized apartment. Thieves were interested only in his computer and recordings; leaving valuables untouched.) (7)
Blomgren wasn’t alone in forecasting bombings. In mid-June Moscow’s most-read paper, Moskovskaya Pravda, quoted “trustworthy sources in the Kremlin” saying Yeltsin signed-off on a programme of terrorist provocations. One source, top Yeltsin deputy Sergei Zverev, was fired after the story’s publication. (8)
After the bombings Russian media erupted with allegations of government culpability. Short relays this, with one erroneous interpolation:
“Putin, it was thought, had taken office too recently and was too much in Yeltsin’s shadow to have organized such an operation himself.” (9)
Prior to “taking office,” Putin was Chief of the Federal Security Service (FSB) – the bomb-plot’s prime suspect. Moreover, in the same paragraph, Short twice contradicts himself. He notes Moskovsky komosomolets – a high-circulation tabloid – blamed Yeltsin for the bombings while stressing that the final go-ahead awaited Putin’s appointment as Prime Minister. (10) Nezavisimaya Gazeta – favored by Moscow’s intelligentsia and liberal establishment – reported:
“…responsibility for the bombings of the apartment buildings in Russia has been clearly (ascribed) to the presidential family and, personally to the head of the government, Vladimir Putin, as the de facto sponsor and organiser of the explosions.” (11)
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Rumors of a state-inspired bomb-plot also circulated in 1996, but bombings never happened. Therefore, argues Short, the 1999 warnings should be discarded as habitual rumour-mongering.
The warnings alone don’t prove government guilt, they do, nevertheless, constitute evidence toward this conclusion. Furthermore, unlike 1996, the 1999 ‘rumours’ were presented by established journalists, broadcast on mainstream media, and sourced to government insiders.
Short further disses the warnings, and subsequent accusations, because they came from “conspiracy theorists” or from Yeltsin opponents. This is laughable given that 1990s Russia teemed with demonstrably real conspiracies; and because Yeltsin’s mid-1999 approval sank to 2%. All Russia opposed Boris.
Short’s main argument is a two-story lean-to set upon a reed.
The first terror-attack was a truck-bombing of a Buinaksk building housing FSB border-guards. Incredibly, Short insists Putin’s FSB were, by conscience, restrained from killing their own. (He doesn’t make this argument regarding civilian victims.) Short asks and answers:
“But would FSB officers murder in cold blood dozens of their fellow soldiers and their dependants in order to manipulate a political succession? Not in the 1990s.” (12)
Short writes as though FSB employees voted on the bombings. This conspiracy required only: Prime Minister Putin, FSB Chief Nikolai Patrushev, several senior security officials; and, a few dozen ground-level operatives who need not have been FSB, or even Russian. The core clandestine work of moving and storing explosives could have been done by persons unawares of the larger plot. Putin and Patrushev have shown themselves happy to spill the blood of Russians, in uniform or otherwise.
It gets worse. After Short rules out his scruple-shackled FSB’s involvement in the Buinaksk bombing he then induces that Islamic separatists committed all the bombings:
“If the Buinaksk bombing was the work of the Chechens or Dagestanis, is it plausible that only four days later, the FSB would have been able to launch a series of bombings in Moscow, which would have required weeks if not months of planning beforehand?” (13)
Herewith, Short concedes that a single group (obviously) committed all the bombings. Said reasoning swings round to bite him on the derriere.
On 22 September 1999, in the city of Ryazan, FSB officers were caught planting a bomb in an apartment building. Suspects were detained by local police but, on Moscow’s orders, released. The local bomb squad confirmed the use of military grade explosives (hexogen) and a sophisticated detonator.
Short focuses on “the sheer, bumbling incompetence of the FSB operatives” in Ryazan. (14) From this, he preposterously infers the FSB lacked the technical/organizational capacity to commit bombings:
“If that was the best the FSB could do in a sleepy, mid-sized city in the provinces, was it credible that it could carry out, undetected massive explosions in Moscow, where security was much tighter?” (15)
The thwarted Ryazan bombing came after the Moscow bombings, when security was approaching hysteria. The Moscow bombs were placed at a time when people wouldn’t have batted an eye onto workmen schlepping sacks into a building.
Short calls two witnesses for his ‘FSB-lacked-wherewithal’ theory. The first, Gleb Pavlovsky, was “an architect of Operation Successor” (the plot to make Putin president); i.e., a co-conspirator. Pavlovsky assures:
“The FSB of those days was not the FSB of today …It was very weak, thin on the ground, most of the specialists had already long since left… There simply was no one there to carry that out. I think it would have been impossible.” (16)
Short’s second witness, “military analyst” Alexander Golts, swears the 1999 FSB floundered in “a state of total degradation” due to budget cuts and reorganizations. Even if they wanted to, Golts contends, they lacked the ability to stage clandestine bombings. (17)
Reality check. One explosives expert could have wired all the bombs. All that was asked of other “specialists” was that they park a truck or carry a sack. The FSB employed tens of thousands. Finding persons blessed with such skills wasn’t an impediment.
Of course, accessing hexogen was tricky. This fact gives Short grave problems.*
Back to Ryazan. Thirty-six hours after the bombers’ capture, FSB Chief Patrushev announced that the foiled bombing was a training exercise. Despite this scenario having been mockingly disproven, Short claims Patrushev’s explanation possesses “a kernel of truth.” (18) For evidence, Short submits a butchered quote from a 1970s KGB manual recommending “operational experiments” to test counter-intelligence preparedness. (19)
True to pattern, Short destroys his own case by introducing a “former senior KGB officer” to testify that:
“We used to carry out exercises like that… the goal was to test systems of protection… But they were always against administrative sites, not residential buildings … People could have heart attacks, they could panic and throw themselves out of the windows.” (20)
The retired officer claimed only an “imbecile” exhibiting “unbelievable stupidity” would order such an exercise on unsuspecting civilians. Operative word – “unbelievable.”
In the face of a public clamour for the paper trail surrounding the “Ryazan exercise” Putin sealed all related documents for 70 years.
The FSB indubitably attempted the Ryazan bombing; hence, according to Short’s ‘single-group’ maxim, the FSB committed all the bombings.
Short contends that because 20 years elapsed without “leaks” the government-orchestrated, false-flag theory must be laid to rest. In support of this proposition Short calls: a) Mark Kelton, CIA Moscow Station Chief during the bombings; b) Richard Dearlove, Head of MI6 in 1999; and c) Dearlove’s successor, Sir John Scarlett.
Sir John briskly quips: “people would have started talking. And they haven’t.” (21)
Dearlove affirms the MI6 had “a lot of penetration” in Russia in 1999. If the FSB committed the bombings, he asserts, “MI6 would certainly have learnt of it.” (22) Translation: “Western agents worked alongside the Yeltsin-Putin cabal. Putin couldn’t have perpetrated the bombings without CIA/MI6 complicity. Accuse Putin, and you accuse us.” Dearlove throws down the gauntlet. Short doesn’t take it up.
Furthermore, there were leaks aplenty.
A top Yeltsin deputy warning Russia’s top newspaper about the bomb-plot – is a leak.
Paratroopers notifying reporters about sacks of hexogen marked “sugar” – is a leak.
A government explosives bureaucrat issuing a statement, backed by documentation, about large quantities of hexogen being shipped across Russia in containers marked “gunpowder” – is a leak
The entire Ryazan fiasco which culminated in a live two-hour nationally televised panel discussion that went very badly for the FSB wasn’t a leak – it was a gusher.
Another leak occurred when a Duma Deputy identified one perp as an FSB officer. For his troubles the Deputy got five years hard labor. The man he named got assassinated – a fate likely befalling other potential leakers, given what we now know about serial killer Vlad Putin.
*
After declaring victory, Short hoists himself on one last petard:
“…it is possible that FSB explosive experts provided professional assistance for mercenary consideration, just as army officers must have been complicit when the hexogen was stolen from military warehouses and police officers paid to close their eyes to truckloads of ‘sugar’ passing through checkpoints.” (23) (Emphasis added.)
All Russian hexogen comes from one hyper-secure FSB-run plant.
The bombings commenced with a Chechen war looming.
Think about it! Short’s theory that ragtag militiamen from a visible minority, under FSB surveillance, acquired tonnes of hexogen, then shipped it across Russia – is less believable than the state-terror theory.
Sources
For a detailed, sourced account of the 1999 bombings see:
Substack – William Walter Kay – Our Man in Moscow: How Putin Became President PART SEVEN: “Operation Successor” and the 1999 Apartment Bombings
Footnotes
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William Walter Kay, Ecofascism.com