Endless Cold War

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Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction.............................................................................................................1Chapter 2 Certification Of The Death Of Over 100 Million Victims Of Communism......................................................9Chapter 3 Dresden Survivors........................................................................................................29Chapter 4 Communist Terror Against Finland, Lithuania, And Poland..................................................................40Chapter 5 American Interventions In Russia Against The Bolsheviks And Murder Of My Cousin By Soviet Communists.....................52Chapter 6 Communist Terror In China And Vietnam....................................................................................68Chapter 7 Observations During Second Tour Of Duty In Vietnam.......................................................................109Chapter 8 The Cold War In East Germany.............................................................................................122Chapter 9 Perspectives During Cold War, Okinawa And Korea Service..................................................................157Chapter 10 The Wars In Cuba And The Dominican Republic.............................................................................171Chapter 11 Terror In Afghanistan, Cambodia, Nicaragua, And Peru....................................................................192Chapter 12 Analysis And Lessons Learned............................................................................................203

Chapter One

Background to the Never-Ending Cold War

As of recently, we are losing the Cold War but many in America and Europe do not know that we are in a war. The Cold War started on 25 October 1917, according to Professor Lev Dobriansky of Georgetown University and other scholars. Some historians and intelligence analysts have often ignored the Communist attacks and incursions before and during World War II, and consider the start of the Cold War to have been in about 1947. But records show that Soviet Communist hostilities continued unabated from 1917 throughout the twentieth century, until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. There was a feeling during the 1990s among many Russia observers and historians that the Cold War was old history, not to be renewed again. Then, according to author Edward Lucas and other reporters, a new Cold War started slowly in the summer of 1999, after President Boris Yeltsin unexpectedly named Vladimir Putin as prime minister and within weeks, alleged terrorist bombs exploded in apartment buildings in Moscow and other parts of Russia. At the same time, an attack and mid-intensity war was started again by Russia against Chechnya.

In about 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev started to disband communism in Russia, and in 1991, President Boris Yeltsin, the first democratically elected leader, reduced the Red Terror in Russia and abroad. After the 1991 Communist counter-coup against Yeltsin failed, the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB, Committee of State Security) seemed defeated, and Russia appeared to want to integrate into the free world, where freedom and justice prevailed. The Communist party was forced to relinquish power, and the KGB was dissolved. However, the grip of the many years of Communist darkness on Russia was too great for freedom to survive. The reformers were intelligent and brave with good intentions, but failed because they lacked experience with capitalism, free trade, and the rule of law. Russia fell into the hands of selfish tycoons who called themselves "oligarchs." They were not driven by idealistic principles but were motivated by greed and corruption. After economic crimes and abuses became widespread, the ex-KGB veterans became sought after to restore central control and were slowly reformed into the Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti (FSB, Federal Security Service). With the evolving intervention by the FSB in civil and economic matters in Russia, a new era of confrontation with the civilized world and free societies was born.

Yeltsin's nomination of Putin as prime minister was due largely to the financial crisis of August 1998. After the Russian banking system collapsed, Russia defaulted on its debts and devalued the ruble. The savings of the middle class were wiped out. Supporters of the Yeltsin leadership and members of his party were devastated and were looking for a way out. Their chosen candidate to rescue the country was a quiet, efficient, and loyal former KGB officer who everyone believed could be trusted. During the 1980s, Putin had reportedly served as a KGB major in Dresden, where the headquarters of the 1st Guards Tank Army was located. He had a separate office and kept to himself during his three-year tour of duty in East Germany, according to German army officers who later talked to me about him.

During his tenure, according to Lucas, Prime Minister Putin worked to insure his election to the presidency by employing former KGB officers to create mysterious explosions in apartment buildings in Moscow. The explosions caused a panic and fear among Russians, along with a desire for security at the expense of individual rights and freedom. The security crisis, along with Yeltsin's financial troubles, justified more central control for Putin and a restarting of the war against Chechnya. Soon, political polls showed that Putin had gained great popularity and became a national hero in about four months.

The bombings seemed to most Russians to be genuine terrorist attacks and the result of Moscow's weakness in dealing with its enemies. However, after all the facts became known, the bombings can be seen to have been a cynical plot to get the public to support the new ex-KGB rulers of Russia. With the departure of the Yeltsin-era political leaders, a new ruling class of KGB veterans from St. Petersburg took over and conducted their "FSB-fication" (efesbefikatsiya) of the country. Putin betrayed the positive legacy of the Yeltsin years. As a former KGB/FSB leader in the Kremlin, Putin used the powers of the intelligence agency to bug, blackmail, and assassinate people for enrichment and expansion of power.

Newly Appointed Prime Minister Putin Used the FSB to Create a Security Crisis to Reestablish an Authoritarian Political System and Become President of Russia

According to Lucas, on 9 August 1999, after his appointment to the position of prime minister, Putin enlisted the help of the FSB to take control of the government. The FSB, like the KGB, employed some of the best and the brightest officers in Russia and inculcated absolute loyalty in them. The financial crisis had facilitated Putin's appointment, but he felt that he also needed the security crisis, along with official corruption investigations of possible opponents, to seize power and get elected to the presidency. The following events orchestrated by Putin and the FSB created a security crisis and facilitated his seizure of power: (1) in about mid-August, shortly after his appointment from the position of chief of the FSB to prime minister, obscure news sources reported that fighters from the breakaway province of Chechnya raided villages in neighboring Dagestan, (2) on 31 August, a bomb exploded at a subway entrance in Moscow, killing 1 person and wounding 40, with previously unknown anarchists taking responsibility for the explosion, (3) on 4 September, a car bomb killed 64 people and wounded about 50 in a military apartment complex in Buinaksk in Dagestan, (4) on 8 September, a large bomb killed 94 people and wounded 150 others after exploding in the basement of an apartment building in southeast Moscow, and (5) on 13 September, a bomb exploded in an eight-story apartment building in southern Moscow, killing 118 and wounding 200 persons.

On 16 September, there were seventeen more people killed by a truck bomb in Volgodonsk in southern Russia, and Putin directed that military action should be taken immediately against the "terrorist" Republic of Chechnya. There was great anxiety and fear among Russians as a result of all the bomb attacks and the many casualties that had been sustained. The Chechens were being blamed for the bomb attacks, and everyone looked to Moscow for leadership and security. Putin and the FSB were the real beneficiaries of the attacks and looked like heroes as they came to the aid of Mother Russia and its people. There were nevertheless lingering questions that were whispered in private by some people who doubted certain aspects of the official news. First, the Chechens had not attacked such Russian targets in these ways before. Second, the bombs had been planted in highly expert ways, in vulnerable locations, which required professional skills that the Chechens probably did not have. Third, Chechens usually had no access to the explosives that had been used in the attacks. Fourth, the bombings showed considerable prior planning, but the fighting in Dagestan was only weeks old. Last, none of the previously identified Chechen tactics were used in the bombings, such as taking prisoners and actions to draw attention to the plight of the Chechen people to negotiate more freedom and better terms for Chechnya. The final result of the various bombing attacks in Russia was the total destruction of the already ruined Republic of Chechnya by the full use of Russian military power, including carpet bombing and the employment of weapons of mass destruction.

At the same time, according to Lucas, Russia's most powerful politician and billionaire, Boris Berezovsky, was placed under investigation for allegedly diverting funds from Aeroflot, the Russian airline. A controversy was created about Pavel Borodin, the head of the presidential property department, for costly dealings with Mabetex, a Swiss company in the Kremlin's building restoration programs. In September 1999, the Yeltsin family came under repeated investigation about connections to Mabetex. Mabetex allegedly paid $15 million in bribes to the Yeltsin family, which the family vehemently denied. An attempt to impeach Yeltsin was made but it was temporarily postponed through bribery of deputies in the Duma. The impeachment efforts looked like they would probably have succeeded later, especially since Yuri Luzhkov, the influential mayor of Moscow, threw in his support for Yevgeny Primakov's candidacy for president, and elections were due in 2000. So giving power to Putin and the FSB was Yeltsin's last chance for survival and avoidance of impeachment. Yeltsin's shifting attention away from himself, the allegations of official corruption, and the political infighting in Moscow, to Putin's and the FSB's security crisis and praiseworthy defense of Russia against terrorist attacks, was a successful strategy. However, some journalists, politicians, and foreign diplomats noted that the alleged terrorist attacks, in view of the adverse political circumstances for Yeltsin, appeared too well timed, a little suspicious, and a remarkably convenient coincidence.

Cover-Up of the Bomb that Failed to Explode, Official Conspiracy and Complicity in the Bombings Blamed on Chechnya

On the night of 22 September 1999, Aleksei Kartofelnikov saw a white car parked in front of his twelve-story apartment building on 14 Novosyolov Street, in Ryazan, about 200 kilometers from Moscow. He saw that the license plate had been tampered with to make it look like a local registration. Then he observed three men carrying sacks from the car to the basement of his apartment building. Kartofelnikov called the police, and they found a bomb in the basement. They defused the bomb and removed the sacks, a detonator, and a timer set for 5:30 a.m. Several hundred residents were evacuated from the area and sheltered in nearby facilities. A police ordnance disposal expert, Yuri Tkachenko, identified the yellow granules in the sacks as hexogen, a powerful explosive. The detonators were real and correctly wired for the explosion to go off at the set time. The police put all units on alert, manned checkpoints, conducted searches, and found the white car, which had been stolen.

According to Lucas, on 23 September, Aleksander Zdanovich, the director of the FSB public relations division, stated on an important talk show ("Geroi Dnya," "Hero of the Day") that he was happy to take credit for preventing the bomb explosion but he was not sure of the facts in the alleged terrorist attack. The next day, Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo praised the people of Ryazan for their vigilance in preventing the explosion but was critical of the law enforcement agencies in the matter. On 24 September, Putin praised the Russian airstrikes on Grozny, the separatist capital, but regarding the attempted destruction of the Ryazan apartment building, he thanked the public for their vigilance and only added that no sympathy should be given to the bandits. Putin said that there should be no panic but encouraged a steadfast attitude to defeat the terrorists. He made no suggestion that the bomb plot had been anything other than another terrorist bombing attempt. Then hours later, to everybody's great surprise, FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev stated that the Ryazan bomb plot had only been an FSB exercise. He congratulated the residents of the apartment building for their vigilance and explained that the sacks planted in the basement of the building were filled merely with sugar and not with explosives, as part of several exercises that the FSB was conducting in the area.

In response to Patrushev's statement, there was considerable anger and disbelief at the FSB office in Ryazan. The Ryazan FSB office head said that he was surprised by Patrushev's version of the events, since FSB investigators had identified the home addresses of the three men who planted the bomb in the basement of the apartment building, and the FSB was preparing to arrest them. Further, on the night when the bomb was planted, a telephone operator in Ryazan by the name of Nadezhda Yukhanova overheard a suspicious call to FSB headquarters in Moscow from a man who said that his group had been noticed and needed to leave town rapidly. The FSB headquarters speaker then gave the order to "split up and each of you make your own way out." Patrushev then claimed that his men were among the residents who left the building, showed their photo IDs, and conversed with the police on the scene. However, Patrushev's story was not believed by Ryazan authorities, who by then had arrested two of the three bombing suspects. The suspects produced FSB ID cards and were turned over by the police to a high-ranking FSB officer who came from Moscow to Ryazan to pick them up.

The Kremlin Sealed All Materials Pertaining to the Bomb Plot by FSB Agents, which was Discovered and Denied Official Complicity

In late September 1999, the FSB attempted to produce evidence that the bomb that had been set up by its three agents in Ryazan and was disarmed by the local police was part of a series of exercises. In response to this effort, as explanations were offered by the FSB, more and more information was uncovered by reporters and law enforcement personnel that suggested government complicity in the many murderous bombings that had taken place in Russia and in the planting of the bomb in Ryazan. The government responded with outrage and denied that any conspiracy existed in this or any other bomb plot. Putin stated that it was unwise to rely on the Russian media because they often made mistakes and his enemies could have planted rumors and false evidence. Then the Kremlin sealed all material pertaining to the Ryazan bomb plot for seventy-five years. Attempts to investigate this matter by independent representatives of the Duma were obstructed and stopped by the government. Two Duma members who attempted to get to the bottom of the scandal, Sergei Yushenkov and Yuri Shchekochikhin, have since then lost their lives in suspicious circumstances. Otto Lacis, a reporter who wrote about the affair, was badly beaten. Mikhail Trepashkin, a lawyer who assisted the Duma investigation, was thrown into prison for charges that Amnesty International described as "trumped up."

According to Lucas, most of the evidence has shown that the bomb attacks in Russia were part of a cold-blooded plan to create widespread fear and hysteria. The plan was designed to insure that Putin would become the new president rapidly, with an undisputed mandate to rule in an authoritarian way, as if a state of war existed. Serious opposition leaders like Grigory Yavlinsky, of the Yabloko main liberal party, believed in the end that the government had indeed conducted a mass-murder plot to get Putin elected, and the plan worked perfectly in the 2000 presidential elections. Most of the Russian voters ignored any hypotheses about official conspiracy and complicity in the bombings and wanted a strong man in charge. Putin's popularity had soared against other contenders, and many voters preferred not to worry about what really happened. Putin was a well-trained KGB/FSB officer who was educated, sober, and tough. He was defending Russia well and fighting hard against all enemies. One of his opponents in the elections, Gennady Zyagonov of the Communist party, had political problems and issues. A second opponent, Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, was linked to questionable business practices. Lastly, Primakov, the former foreign minister, was portrayed as old and decrepit in comparison to the young and vigorous Putin.

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Excerpted from Endless Cold Warby Dominik George Nargele Copyright © 2009 by George Nargele . Excerpted by permission.
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