posted January 21, 2007 05:55 PM              

Stiff Right Jab: Russia: Ally of U.S. or Bin Laden?

Steve Montgomery & Steve Farrell
Friday, Sept. 28, 2001
This is Part 3 in our series on the terrorist threat out of Russia – our strange ally.

Read Part 1, Politically Correct Butchers of the Twentieth Century and Part 2, Russia: Bear Trap Alliance?

Last time, Stiff Right Jab stated what should be – but is not – a given. Russia is still a dangerous and deadly bear on the prowl. In fact, more dangerous and, potentially, more deadly than ever. Strategies have changed. The players, and their communist beliefs, remain unaltered.

Russia is the world's leading exporter of crime, terrorism, revolution, weapons of mass destruction and hatred – hatred for capitalism, religion and, most of all, the United States.

Yet Russia ever keeps up a Potemkin Village faηade (1), in lieu of its enduring need of Western aid, and so conducts its dirty work through front organizations. The Russian Mafia is one of them. The Mob works hand in hand with the Russian government, the KGB (now FSB), and Osama bin Laden.

We will not back away from what the evidence suggests.

Fresh signals

The red flags are waving. We only need to pay attention.

1. As reported in the Washington Times on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2001:

U.S. intelligence agencies [two different sources] have uncovered new information that Osama bin Laden and his terrorist group, al Qaeda, are acquiring from the Russian Mafia components for weapons of mass destruction ... [to include] chemical and biological weapons materials and nuclear components.
Russian crime groups also have provided bin Laden's Islamic extremists with small arms. ... They also are believed to help bin Laden launder the proceeds from drug trafficking.

The report also notes "links between the Taliban militia [a major patron of bin Laden] and the Russian mob on opium. ... The Russian crime groups purchase opium from Afghanistan and refine it into heroin that is sold in Europe and the United States." The latter, intentional Russian terrorism against hundreds of thousands of American youth. (2)

2. As reported by NewsMax on Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2001:

The chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Security, Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., warned Monday, Sept. 24, that the U.S. is vulnerable to nuclear attack by terrorists who may have access to as many as 60 briefcase-sized tactical nuclear weapons now missing from the former Soviet Union. ...
Shays said an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin had initially admitted to his committee that "out of 140 of [their tactical nukes], the Russians could only account for about 80 of them.

Now the Russians are denying that and we don't really have a straight answer from our own government," he added. ...

One particular threat that hasn't received much attention is smallpox, the congressman said.

There are only two countries that basically have the germ – the United States and Russia. But the question is, Russia has been somewhat like a sieve in terms of some of their state secrets and some of their weapons – they're getting into the wrong hands. (3)

Are the Russian Mafia, KGB and Government 'One'?

Let's review the territory.

On Wednesday, Sept. 25, this column quoted the April 1994 interview published in the International Herald Tribune, when Georgian Mafia leader Otari Kvantrishvili confessed: "They write that I am the Mafia's godfather. It was Vladimir Lenin who was the real organizer of the Mafia and who set up the criminal state." (4)

Next, former Lithuanian Vice President Algirdas Katkus spoke the truth: "Westerners believe that the Mafia is the product of post-Communism ... in reality it is organized, staffed, and controlled by the KGB." (5)

And then, Yuri Maltsev, former senior adviser to Mikhail Gorbachev, spilled the beans: "Russia has become the criminal capital of the world. In Russia today, the organized Mafia and the government are one and the same thing. They're two hands of the same ruling elite." This state of affairs began with the founding of the Soviet state. "The Soviet state security apparatus was essentially staffed by criminals collected from Russian prisons. ... In short, you had a criminal state using criminals to enforce what it called the law." (6)

Those interviews were made in 1994, 1995 and 1996 – after the so-called fall of the Soviet Union. Why weren't we listening? Was the mesmerizing mantra "communism is dead" from our media, politicians and college professors actually more convincing than the voice of the communists themselves?

More Corroboration – From American Experts

Bringing us up to date, NewsMax's Col. Stanislav Lunev, the highest-ranking military spy ever to defect from Russia and a security consultant to the U.S. government, warned of the Russian Mafia last April:

Many Western intelligence specialists ... suspect, and for good reason, that Moscow spies have gone into business with the Russian Mafia. ... They are said to have joined forces with companies with both legal and illegal operations, with one operation making money and the other conducting covert espionage activities. (7)
Former CIA chief, Russian analyst and National Security Council official Fritz W. Ermarth, testifying in September of 1999 before the House Committee on Banking and Finance, said of the Russian "Mob":

What we've seen here is not so much organized crime as authorized crime intertwined with corrupt government and politics at all levels. And it has abetted and been abetted by organized crime with its money laundering skills and protection racketeering. (8)
And Dr. Joseph D. Douglass Jr., director of the Redwood Institute and author of "Red Cocaine: The Drugging of America and the West," added:
The sudden emergence of Russian organized crime around the globe, including in seventeen major American cities, a year or two following the collapse of the Soviet Union was no accident. ... These crime operations did not suddenly "develop" following the collapse. Nor are they the result of independent entrepreneurs, although that is precisely what we are asked to believe. They were already large and effective long before the collapse and run by KGB agents. The KGB went to great lengths to preserve and protect valuable assets and operations, such as organized crime and drug trafficking, prior to the dissolution of the Soviet empire. It was clear that these criminal operations had become so effective that their presence could no longer be kept secret.
Accordingly, the only logical course was to 'go public' and create the image of their independent emergence as a natural course of events that was of as much concern to the new Russian officials as it was to Western officials. Hence the need for Western security services to "cooperate" with the Russian services in battling organized crime – with the financial assistance of the West! Given the important nature of these operations (not only money, but political corruption and influence operations as well), asking whether the KGB and GRU are still involved is about as naοve as asking whether they are still involved in espionage and influence operations. The answer is yes, more than ever before. (9)

Connecting the Dots
The dots are connecting – the Russian Mafia, KGB and government appear to be one, and if so, likely partners in mass murder with the very terrorists they've been aiding and abetting for decades, the terrorists who killed some 7,000 Americans, and who may yet kill, heaven forbid, countless more.

Keeping a Promise

We were all inspired by President Bush's nuts and bolts, power-packed approach that declared the United States will punish not only the terrorists but also the nations which harbor and sponsor terrorism. So, let's see the proof. Russia has in the past harbored, and does now harbor, terrorists and sponsor terrorism. Our intelligence community knows this. Yet the Bush administration has already enlisted Russia as an ally and is sending out signals to convince us that Russia is victimized by these same terrorists and is thus in need of our cash, our technology, our military plans.

President Bush, connect the dots and keep your promise. The Russian government is one big terrorist organization. It is not our ally. It is our enemy.

Excuses, Excuses

As noted above, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Security Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., says that Russia has acted as "a sieve in terms of some of their state secrets and some of their weapons – they're getting into the wrong hands." (10)

The absurd excuse for the weapons disappearing, offered by Rep. Shays – and we've heard it before – is that "the Russians . . . can't pay their employees. So some of this very sensitive, very expensive and very dangerous weaponry is being sold for ridiculously small amounts of money." (11)

We worry about "rogue" nations having such weaponry – when the truth is this is how they get it, from the greatest rogue of them all.

This analysis is disturbingly sympathetic to communism and the intentional proliferation of American enemies. Granted, Russia doesn't pay its people well. But, truth be told, this has always been the case. Further, we hand over to them billions, and where does it all go but into new weapons systems. And they can't guard them?

But there's more to this. Are we so foolish as not understand nuclear blackmail when it presents itself? And can we not, also, see the dialectical markings of feigned weakness?

Blowing Up Buildings – A Mark of Things Russian

A final thought.

The propaganda engines of the American establishment are beginning to churn the message – the Chechens are "bandits," the Chechens are terrorists. We are already hearing about the Russian apartment complex they supposedly blew up, killing 300.

But we don't and won't hear the other side of the story, that the Russians killed their own to justify, to the West, a war re-uniting oil-rich Chechnya with the old Soviet Union. That Clinton ran to the rescue with aid, following the incident. That Yeltsin changed the "official" story more times than one cares to count. And that the Russians lobbed missiles into a Chechnyan maternity ward and open market in Grozny, killing 140. Nor will they mention the unmentionable, that the Russian government has mercilessly fought, tooth and nail, against aid for the hundreds of thousands of Chechnyan refugees – men, women and children – who have nothing to do with this conflict.

No don't expect the truth about communism.