Alexander Litvinenko

by Blowing Up Russia (lit)

  It was apparent immediately after the first bombing of an apartment block that the attack was the work of professionals, not so much from the actual implementation of the terrorist attack itself as from its planning and preparation. A massive terrorist bombing, which involves the use of hundreds of kilograms of explosive, several vehicles, and a number of people is hard to put together in a hurry. Many former and serving members of the secret services including, a former GRU employee, retired Colonel Robert Bykov, believe that the terrorists must have shipped the explosives into Moscow in several batches over a period of four to six months. Modeling of terrorist attacks has shown that it would have been impossible to prepare for an explosion of this type any quicker. The model was constructed to take account of all the stages of the operation: finalization of the contract, making initial calculations based on the plan of the building, visiting the site, adjusting the initial calculations, determining the optimal composition of the explosive, ordering its manufacture, making final calculations adjusted according to the actual composition of the explosive, renting premises, and shipping in the explosive, etc.

  This meant that the preparations would have had to begin in the spring of 1999. During that period, the Chechens could not have been preparing terrorist attacks in response to the counter-offensive by Russian forces in Dagestan, since the Chechens had not yet made their own incursion into Dagestan territory.

  Rumors about imminent terrorist attacks had been circulating long before the first explosions occurred. On July 2, 1999, the journalist Alexander Zhilin obtained possession of a certain document dated June 29, 1999. He believed that it originated from

  85

  86

  the Kremlin and that the leak had been arranged by Sergei Zverev, deputy head of the president s office, which was why he was removed from his post.

  The contents of the document were baffling, but even so Zhilin. passed it on to Sergei Yastrzhembsky, vice-premier in the government of Moscow. Yastrzhembsky, however, failed to react to it (some time later Yastrzhembsky left Luzhkov s administration, which is hardly surprising; however, he was then taken on by Putin, which really is surprising).

  If the document had been published after the explosions, everyone would have believed it was a fake produced after the fact. But the newspaper Moskovskaya pravda went ahead with the publication of the document under the headline Storm in Moscow on July 22, before the explosions had occurred: Confidential Certain information concerning plans with regard to Yu.M. Luzhkov and the situation in Moscow.

  The following information has been received from reliable sources. One of the analytical groups working for the president s office has developed a plan for discrediting Luzhkov by means of acts of sabotage intended to destabilize the public mood in Moscow. The plan is known by the planners as Storm in. According to our sources, the city can expect serious upheavals. For instance, it is planned to carry out sensational terrorist attacks (or attempted terrorist attacks) against a number of state institutions: buildings of the FSB and MVD, the Council of the Federation, the Moscow Municipal Court, the Moscow Arbitration Court, and a number of buildings. The abduction of well-known people and ordinary citizens by Chechen guerrillas is envisaged.

  A separate chapter is devoted to armed criminal activities directed against commercial organizations and businessmen who support Luzhkov. The order has been given to dig up and also manufacture operational material on Kobzon, Gusinsky, and the Most-Media group, Djabrailov, Luchansky, Tarpishchev, Tarantsev, Ordjonikidze, Baturina (Luzhkov s wife), Gromov, Yevtushenkov, P. Gusev, and others. In particular, incidents in the close vicinity of Kobzon s office and [the company] Russian Gold have supposedly gone off according to the plan in question. The purpose is to create the firm conviction that the businesses of those who support Luzhkov will be destroyed and that the safety of his confederates themselves is not guaranteed.

  A separate program has been developed in order to set the organized criminal groups active in Moscow against each other and provoke war between them, which the authors of the report believe will, on the one hand, create an intolerable crime wave in the capital and, on the other hand, provide a screen for the planned terrorist attacks against state institutions in the form of a settling of accounts between criminals, and general chaos.

  86

  87

  These measures pursue several goals: creating an atmosphere of fear in Moscow and the illusion of entirely unfettered criminal activity; initiating the process of removing the present head of the UVD of Moscow from his post; instilling in Muscovites the conviction that Luzhkov has lost control of the situation in the city.

  In addition, according to information from our sources, while all of this is going on, the press will be swamped with information about who in the government of Moscow has links with the mafia and organized crime. The particular individual represented as the major controller for organized criminal groups will be Mr. Ordjonikidze, who will be linked in the press, amongst others, with Chechen criminals who have been granted use of the Kiev railway station, the Radisson-Slavyanskaya Hotel, the shopping complex on Manezhnaya Square, etc. Material will be placed in the red and patriotic press about the domination of Moscow by people from the Caucasus, about their wild excesses in the capital and the damage done to the security and material welfare of Muscovites. The statistics on this are already being put together in the MVD. In addition, the same channel will be exploited for materials already fabricated concerning Luzhkov s links with international Zionist and sectarian organizations.

  Several days before the explosions took place State Duma deputy Konstantin Borovoi had a meeting with a GRU officer who gave him a list of the names of participants in a terrorist attack. Borovoi immediately passed on the list to the FSB, but his warning met with absolutely no response. Borovoi believes that he was not the only channel through which the secret services received warnings about imminent terrorist attacks, but no measures were taken to prevent them. It would be possible to dismiss Borovoi s opinion if it only it did not coincide with the opinion of one of the most famous Russian specialists in sabotage and terrorist activity, retired colonel and former GRU officer Ilya Starinov. He declared that it was simply impossible for his department not to have known about the planned explosions. This fatal disregard by the FSB of warnings of imminent terrorist attacks can only be explained by the fact that the FSB itself was planning the attacks.

  One of the organizers of the explosions in Moscow was FSB Major Vladimir Kondratiev.

  On March 11, 2000, he sent a letter of penitential confession entitled I bombed Moscow! via the internet to the electronic publication FLB of the Free Lance Bureau at the Federal Investigative Agency. It should be emphasized at this point that, as patriotic citizens should, the employees of the FLB site immediately informed the FSB about the letter, and its contents were reported to Patrushev. Two computer specialists from the FSB promptly arrived, downloaded the letter, and promised to get to the bottom of the whole business. No one ever saw them again. Here is an extract from that letter: Yes, I was the one who blew up the house on Guryanov Street in Moscow. I am not a Chechen or an Arab or a Dagestani, I am a genuine Russian, Vladimir Kondratiev, a major in the FSB, a member of the top secret Department K-20. Our department was set up immediately after the signing of the Khasaviurt Accords. We were set the task of planning and carrying out operations to discredit the Chechen Republic, so that it would

  87

  88

  not receive international recognition. For this purpose, we were granted very extensive powers and access to virtually unlimited financial and technical resources.

  One of the first operations we planned and carried out successfully was called Kovpak.

  It essentially consisted in our traveling round all of Russia s [penal] colonies and recruiting criminals (preference was given to individuals from the Caucasian nationalities), assembling them into groups, giving them weapons and money, and then transporting them to Chechnya, and settin
g them free with a single specific goal, to abduct people, in particular foreigners. And it should be said that our pupils handled it very well.

  Maskhadov and his people were traveling all round the world, trying in vain to obtain foreign support, and at the same time, foreigners were disappearing in their republic. The most effective points of this operation were the abduction and murder of British and Dutch engineers, carried out on our orders.

  In June last year, our section was set a new task, provoking general hatred in Russia for Chechnya and the Chechens. We worked up some ideas through the effective use of brainstorming. One of our brainstorming sessions produced several ideas, including distributing leaflets with threats from the Chechens throughout the country, murdering the country s favorite singer Alla Pugachova, blowing up apartment buildings, and then throwing all the blame on to the Chechens. All of these suggestions were reported to the leadership of the FSB, which selected the final one as the most effective, and gave the go-ahead for its implementation.

  We planned bombings in Moscow, Volgodonsk, Ryazan, Samara, as well as in Dagestan and Ingushetia. Specific buildings were picked, the explosive was selected, and the amount calculated. The operation was given the code name Hiroshima. I was made directly responsible for its implementation, since I was the only explosives expert in our section, and I also had quite a lot of experience. Although in my heart, I did not agree with the idea of blowing up apartment blocks, I could not refuse to carry out the order, because ever since our section was set up, every member of it has been put in a situation, which means he has had to obey any order. Otherwise, he was simply silenced for all eternity. So I carried out the order! The day after the bombing, I went to the site of the operation, intending to assess its implementation and analyze the results. I was shaken by what I saw there. I have already mentioned that I had blown up buildings before, but they were not people s houses, and they were not in Russia. But here I d blown up a Russian house and killed Russian people, and the Russian woman weeping over Russian corpses were cursing the one who d done this in my own native language. And standing beside them, I could physically feel the curses enveloping me, sinking into my head and my chest, filling my body, infusing every cell. And I realized that I WAS CURSED! Going back to the section, instead of reporting on the implementation of the operation, I wrote out a statement requesting to be transferred to another section on grounds of mental

  88

  89

  and physical exhaustion. In view of the state I was in, I was temporarily suspended from all operations, and the second bombing, which was planned for Monday, was entrusted to my partner. To make sure I couldn t do anything to prevent it, they decided quite simply to eliminate me.

  On Saturday, in order to be alone and think over what I should do and gather my thoughts, I went out of town to my dacha. On the way, I felt the brakes fail in my car, which I had always taken good care of and which had never let me down.

  I realized they had decided to get rid of me in the classic way used in my department, and I did exactly what we d been taught to do in such situations and drove the car into water, since there happened to be a small river on my route, and that very day, I used operational channels to get out of Russia.

  Now I live thousands of kilometers away from my homeland. My documents are in order-I am now a citizen of this small country. I have a non-Russian name, and no one here has any idea who I really am. I know that the FSB is capable of anything, but I hope my colleagues will not find me here.

  In my new country, I have set up a small business, I have money, and now I can live here in peace for the rest of my days. So why am I writing all of this to you and risking exposure? (Even though I have taken precautions by having the letter sent from a third country by a third party.) . ..I have already mentioned Samara as one of the towns planned for a bombing. The victims there were to have been the residents of a house on Novovokzalnaya Street.

  Although I think it is possible that after the failed attempt to blow up the building in Ryazan, our section might have completely given up operations like this, even so I consider it my duty to warn you about it.

  Following the publication of Kondratiev s letter in the internet, the Association of Alpha Veterans issued a denial just a few days before the presidential elections, stating among other claims that there was no section K-20 in the secret services. It is, therefore, worth our while to take a moment to trace the history of Department K s creation.

  Back in 1996, an Anti-Terrorist Center (ATTs) was established in the FSB on the basis of the Department for Combating Terrorism. The ATTs included an operations department (OU), which built up information on terrorists and tracked them down, and a Department for the Defense of the Constitutional Order (Department K), the former Fifth Department of the KGB, which built up information on political and religious groups, organizations, and dissidents. Later, the ATTs was transformed (or rather simply renamed) into the Department for Combating Terrorism and the Department of Constitutional Security (Department K). On August 28,1999, before the September wave of bombings began, it

  89

  90

  went through yet another transformation, becoming the Department for the Protection of Constitutional Order and Combating Terrorism.

  These numerous reorganizations should not be regarded as simple coincidence. In restructuring various departments and offices, the FSB was simply attempting in the most primitive manner to cover its tracks. In the face of such frequent transformations, it seemed absolutely impossible for any outsider to figure out who was in charge of what, who gave the orders, and who was subordinate to whom. These complicated and confusing titles, so similar to each other, were created quite deliberately. All this also served to throw journalists off the scent. In reality everybody stayed in his own job, and to this day, officers of the state security service sit in their offices on the seventh and ninth floors of the building at number 1 Bolshaya Lubyanka Street, just as Sudoplatov sat there in Stalin s time. Nothing has changed.

  The head of the new department was Vice-Admiral Herman Alexeievich Ugriumov, who died in his office in Khankala in Chechnya on May 31, 2001. Immediately after his death, information began to circulate that Ugriumov had committed suicide. It was reported that a man dressed in civilian clothes had entered Ugriumov s office at 1 p.m. and left half an hour later. The vice-admiral supposedly shot himself fifteen to twenty minutes after that.

  If former members of the Fifth Department of the KGB were entrusted with the task of combating terrorism and defending the constitutional order of democratic Russia, we may be sure that the only business conducted by Department K was organizing terrorist attacks and opposing democracy. As Sobchak (the mayor of St. Petersburg) said, these were people for whom the words legality and democracy simply had no meaning.

  Nothing exists for them except orders, and for them laws and rights are a mere hindrance. Does this mean that apart from the secret section K-20 mentioned by Major Kondratiev, there were at least another nineteen special groups?

  Remarkably enough, even state security agents believed that the terrorist attacks were the work of the FSB. Erik Kotlyar, a journalist at the newspaper Moskovskaya pravda, described one particular instance in an article of February 10, 2000: Last fall I happened to have a meeting with a member of a super-secret service& And this is what he told me: That evening I got back late. There was no one at home. My wife, daughter and motherin-law were at the dacha. I d just cracked some eggs into the frying pan, when there was a deafening explosion outside the window. Lumps of glass came flying straight into the room together with clouds of fumes and dust! I dashed out onto the landing, my neighbors were out there in a panic. For some reason they were trying to call the lift. I shouted at them: Go down the stairs, the lift might fall. .. I dashed out on to the street, and there was almost nothing left of the middle section of the house opposite!.. The next day I got answers to a few questions and made a firm decision: I m taking my family out of Russia, it s dangerous
to live here, and I ve only got one daughter! But it was the Chechens who planted the bombs in Moscow& The Chechens had nothing to do with it, he said gesturing his hand angrily. Kotlyar drew the conclusion that his acquaintance knew something.

  90

  91

  On September 10, the governor of the Altai Territory, Alexander Surikov announced that the explosions in Moscow were due to echoes from Dagestan, but that the people who were interested in terrorist attacks were in Russia and in Moscow. Surikov proposed holding an extraordinary session of the Council of the Federation (SF) to discuss the declaration of a state of emergency in the country.

  During the night of September 12-13, the newspaper Moskovsky komsomolets set up for printing an article entitled The secret account of a bombing. It attempted to analyze what had happened.