On July 9, Forbes magazine journalist Paul Klebnikov was gunned down in Moscow. He was best known as the author of a book titled Godfather of the Kremlin: The Decline of Russia in the Age of Gangster Capitalism. Witnesses say that Klebnikov was walking to the local metro station at 9:50 pm when a VAZ-2115 automobile pulled up and sprayed him with automatic fire. According to reports, Klebnikov was hit by four bullets and died at the hospital. It is believed he was working on a new book about the March 1995 murder of Russian talk show host Vladislav Listyev. – Paul Klebnikov, 1963-2004
NEW YORK - Paul Klebnikov, 41, editor of Forbes Russia, was murdered in Moscow on July 9. He was shot four times as he left work and died shortly thereafter. He left behind a wife and three young children. Forbes
Armed with rumors and stories picked up on the streets of Moscow, Klebnikov promoted allegations that Kremlin oligarch Boris Berezovsky had contracted Listyev's murder. It was a charge that Berezovsky strenuously denied. In fact, Berezovsky sued Forbes with the result that Forbes publicly acknowledged there was no basis for Klebnikov's allegations.
Listyev was Russia's most popular talk show host, trusted and loved by the Russian people. He personified Russia's first steps toward an open society; and then he was brutally murdered. Russia's police - so efficient during the Soviet period - could not find Listyev's killers. Why did they fail at this important task? Perhaps they were upset with Listyev for criticizing the Soviet police state.
Boris Berezovsky and Irina Lesnevskaya alleged that the old KGB remained active in the new Russia. It had put together a special organization in Moscow. "I know who killed Vlad," Lesnevskaya said in a video sent to the Kremlin. "An enormous organization has been created," she explained. "It controls everything - all the mafia organizations, all the criminals - [and] decides who should live and who should die...." (See pp. 330-31, Godfather of the Kremlin.) How did the old KGB impose itself on a new generation of TV producers? The problem for Russia's emerging "democratic media" began when "former" KGB specialists showed up in Moscow. "You need protection," they told the managers of Moscow's independent television station. "Something might happen to you if we're not there." Berezovsky refused to hire them. But someone put a bomb in Berezovsky's car and he got the message. So they were hired - the "old" KGB was let in the front door. Next, they insisted on being present when major media decisions were made. They did not like it when Vlad Listyev shut the door on them and made them leave the room. They could not monitor Listyev's contacts. This was unacceptable. The security men complained bitterly. "I am certain that this [Listyev's murder] was done by these people," Lesnevskaya said. "These people were infiltrated in our midst...."
Berezovsky agreed with Lesnevskaya. The whole thing was a setup. "I personally have no doubts that all this is a provocation," said Berezovsky in a plea to Russian President Boris Yeltsin. "Boris Nikolaevich," he continued, "I would like to say that realistically it is very difficult to tell nowadays who is the real authority." It was a strange remark to make to the country's president. Berezovsky, who later fled Russia to the relative safety of London, then offered a curious insight: "I know that two years ago [because of making documentaries] ... I got on all the lists. On the first day as soon as the power in the country changes, we will be eliminated."
What did Berezovsky mean by saying "I got on all the lists"? Who did he think was making these lists? Why did Berezovsky say "the power in the country" would change? And why would people who made documentaries, who criticized the old Soviet system, be eliminated? Paul Klebnikov was fascinated by Berezovksy's plea to Yeltsin. It was the key to everything. Perhaps Klebnikov began to look into the present situation in Russia, since President Vladimir Putin (a "former" KGB officer) had begun to "eliminate" the capitalists, close down the independent media and reconstitute the old KGB as a new department of government. (Note: the old KGB is being put back together. Instead of being called KGB - Committee for State Security - it will be called MGB or Ministry of State Security. This was the name of the organization at the time of Stalin's death.)
Here are the questions that need to be asked: Did the "old" KGB kill Listyev? Did they subsequently kill Klebnikov because he was getting too close to the truth? Is Russia reverting to a totalitarian state under neo-Stalinist control?
In a July 19 letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal, Kremlin advisor Mikhail Lesin denied that President Putin had anything to do with Klebnikov's murder. It was an odd denial to make. If mobsters gunned down a journalist in Washington, D.C., the White House would not issue a denial to a foreign newspaper. In the case of Putin, a denial was necessary. Russia's president is suspect, for obvious reasons. Here the planet's most formidable gangsters - officers of the old KGB - hold the reigns of power, employing organized crime, extortion and blackmail to assure that secret structures of the old regime remain in control (despite an outward, formal appearance of "democracy"). Throughout the 1990s they kept the "independent" media in line, and Russia's best-loved talk show personality was "eliminated." Now an American journalist is also dead.
No mafia has ever rivaled the power of the KGB and its secret structures. No criminal organization could withstand an assault by the special services of an empire that was governed by provocation, blackmail, torture and intimidation. Last week Berezovsky was quoted by Moscow Times as saying that it was dangerous for Klebnikov to have worked so closely with "former" KGB officers. "This could be the answer to the question of what happened," Berezovsky hinted.
Paul Klebnikov might have been fooled (at first) by his KGB contacts. And yet, he knew that the old totalitarian structures were returning. Perhaps he began to suspect that Lesnevskaya and Berezovsky had told the truth. Perhaps he realized his initial mistake, that the "old" KGB had a list and that future liquidations were planned from the first days of Russia's "democracy."
It is almost certain that whoever killed Vlad Listyev also killed Paul Klebnikov. "I have no doubts," said Berezovsky at the time, "this Jesuitical plan to murder Vlad was thought up and executed by the Most Group ... and the organization that is supporting them - the enormous pyramid with all its branches - the former KGB."
America needs to remember the words of Boris Berezovsky and the groundbreaking work of Paul Klebnikov.
