It is official. The British are accusing Russian businessman Andrei K. Lugovoi of poisoning KGB defector Alexander Litvinenko with polonium-210. But Lugovoi isn't simply a businessman. He was a KGB officer. And so he remains: a businessman on the outside, a likely assassin on the inside. KGB officers sometimes operate businesses, or "front companies." Traveling abroad on "business," such people can perform various assignments.
The British Crown Prosecution Service intends to extradite Lugovoi. The Russian government, however, cannot be expected to honor its commitment to the 1957 convention on extraditions. The case is too sensitive. After all, we are not talking about an ordinary murder. We are talking about a state-sponsored hit on a naturalized British citizen who was trying to warn the West about Russia's double game in the war against terror. Turning over a KGB/FSB officer for prosecution and interrogation, especially one who carried out an overseas execution for the Kremlin, is inconceivable. If the Kremlin betrays Lugovoi, the morale of the KGB would plummet. Therefore, the Russian prosecutor general has already ruled out extradition. Instead, Russia is proposing that Britain hand over its files relating to the Litvinenko murder so that Lugovoi can be tried in Russia. And who doubts he will be exonerated? Typically Russian assassins aren't caught, or else they beat the rap. Russian murder cases involving journalists like Paul Klebnikov and Anna Politkovskaya remain unsolved - which is difficult to understand insofar as Russia is a police state led by a former KGB officer. Since, in practice, neither witnesses nor suspects have rights in Russia, and the Russian police are famous for applying torture and threats to get the information they want, the government's inability to find the killers is more than a little curious.
The Russian side will argue, of course, that fair is fair. After all, the British are refusing to extradite Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky - a political enemy of President Vladimir Putin. Until the British hand over Berezovsky the Russian government will not be obliging on the matter of Lugovoi. Furthermore, the accused "former" KGB officer, Andrei Lugovoi, has denied any involvement in Litvinenko's murder. In fact, he has accused the British government of playing politics, and has also suggested the evidence gathered by British authorities cannot be trusted. In this matter Lugovoi is promising to make a sensational public announcement. Whatever tricky statement is envisioned, it will only serve to muddle the muddled, confused the confused and distract from what is essential in the case.
The British are pressing hard, saying that they expect full cooperation from Russia. In effect, the British seem to be determined to flush Putin into the open - to expose his crimes before the court of world opinion. Many have speculated about the motive for assassinating Litvinenko. Why would Vladimir Putin risk Russia's standing with Britain? As in the case of Anna Politkovskaya, the Kremlin thought Litvinenko's writings dangerous. For obvious reasons, the KGB could not allow him to shed light on the larger strategy behind the Chechen War and, by implication, the Kremlin's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. They did not want anyone familiar with Chekist methods to inquire into the use of these methods against Islamic militant groups.
For those who do not understand KGB methods, a brief description may suffice. Tennent H. Bagley, former CIA chief of Soviet bloc counterintelligence recently wrote: "[From its inception, the KGB] created fictional movements ostensibly militant and treasonous, that would attract potential regime opponents and put them under an all-seeing eye and controlling hand." The KGB has always created its own opposition, luring enemies into groups led by its own agents. The methods of the KGB, employed from the 1920s onward, were not suspended when it came to the Muslim world. The plan for dealing with Islam was true to form: Invade Afghanistan and cause anti-Soviet groups to form; then kill the leaders of those groups to make way for KGB agents planted deep within them. As Bagley noted, "Unlike their Tsarist predecessors the Chekists [KGB] were not content merely to penetrate and manipulate opposition groups. They made a leap forward and created false ones of their own."
According to a secret KGB history cited by Bagley: "set up false organizations and, using them as bait, begin operational games with enemy intelligence agents and foreign anti-Soviet centers." In Afghanistan the Soviets elevated future mujahideen commanders like Gen. Rashid Dostum and promoted the legend of Gen. Ahmad Shah Massoud. Meanwhile, Mohammed bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahri nested indiscreetly inside the Taliban. Throughout the period of Soviet occupation, through the bloody battles of attrition organized by Najibullah's Communist regime, independent rebel groups were decimated while KGB-controlled groups were allowed to grow and advance under a false Muslim banner. Islam always posed a threat to the Soviet Union. What better strategy than to infiltrate and hijack the Islamic cause in order to direct it away from Russia, to attack the United States and Western Europe? And this is exactly what happened. Twenty years after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan we find NATO troops battling Islamic tribesmen instead of Russian troops. We find the World Trade Center reduced to rubble instead of the Kremlin. At the same time we find Grozny, a Muslim city in European Russia, bombarded into moonscape.
From allegations that bin Laden acquired Soviet nuclear warheads through Chechnya, to FBI fears of an imminent WMD attack on the United States, the various pieces of this larger puzzle depend on a campaign designed to control our perceptions, to guide our thoughts by eliminating witnesses who've acquired special insights or inside information. The strategists in Moscow don't want their machinations exposed to the light of day. The KGB/SVR/FSB is engaged in a program of mass deception across the board. This program involves the deception of academics, politicians, intelligence officials and military leaders. It is not a small operation. It is ambitious, large-scale, long-term and long-range. At the core of this strategy we find an unceasing attack on the West's faculty of understanding. We are bombarded with thousands of small lies, each one capable of shifting our conclusions off the vital ground of truth. We have been told, and continue to be assured, day after day, that America's Cold War enemy has disappeared. But the entire process, beginning with Gorbachev and continuing through Yeltsin and Putin, was guided by a secret center, serviced by clandestine structures.
During the final phase of the Russian long-range strategy, it is ignorance and confusion that rules Washington. There is no coherent strategy, no plan for final victory. There is no clear idea of who the enemy is, or what the enemy's actual strength might be. It is ironic that today's reigning ignorance should imagine that the United States is the aggressor, and George W. Bush is Adolf Hitler. If we had eyes to see, we would be forced to acknowledge a continuous string of Communist victories since August 1991. We would be forced to admit that Communist terrorists have triumphed in mineral rich Angola, Congo, South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe (among others). We would be forced to admit that oil-rich Venezuela has joined the new Communist Bloc. Where is the supposed victory of democracy and capitalism in countries like Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador and Brazil? Have the Marxist guerrillas in Colombia been defeated? America's strategists are clearly incompetent to have lost so many vital, resource-rich areas to the Communists. In fact, one might say that the CIA no longer opposes Communism because the Communist threat no longer enjoys an official existence.
The fool who reckons the U.S. has deceived the Russians, that NATO's advance to the borders of Russia is a proof of American wickedness, fails to see that Moscow's double agents in Eastern Europe (disguised as pro-Western democrats) sought membership in NATO on Kremlin orders; knowing full well that the KGB's secret structures in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary would thereby gain access to NATO's secrets and a veto power over NATO actions. Despite the weakness of the Atlantic alliance, despite its bloated enfeeblement, the Kremlin has used the occasion to cry "foul" and warn darkly of NATO's aggressive intentions - of Washington's secret plan to destroy Russia utterly. They point to NATO's misguided bombing campaign against Serbia. (Not an aggrandizement of NATO, but an ill-advised humanitarian interference provoked by very real atrocities.)
The West does not hate Russia, but seeks to make Russia into a constructive partner. In London, in Washington, there is no agenda to destroy Russia. The Democrats would never endorse such a program and the Republicans are too busy supporting business interests eager to extend aid and trade. There is no party, cabal or group in America that actively seeks the dismemberment of Russia. The CIA itself - made impotent by the treason of Aldrich Ames in the 1990s - had nothing to do with the fall of the Soviet Union, which was effected by Kremlin policies outlined by Gorbachev and Shevardnadze at the Malta summit in 1989.
The public, however, is easily misled. Thousands of lies, dozens of conspiracy theories, linked with an envious rhetoric transforms public opinion as it divides and conquers. Under the present information regime, lies and distortions continuously overwhelm the truth. Those few witnesses to the truth, competing for attention against the entertainment media and the inanities of television news, face the additional hurtle of surviving the KGB's assassins.
