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12.10.07
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What Hangs On Cherkesov's Hook?
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By Dmitry Babich
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Infighting Rattles the “Chekist Community”
In an attempt to justify the increasing influence of former secret service operatives in Russia’s political life, their supporters often cited the widespread belief that the KGB was "the least corrupt" organization in the Soviet Union. Facts recently revealed by the Russian press about infighting in the ranks of Russia's two most powerful secret service branches have led to increased skepticism about the former KGB's internal unity and integrity.
Russia's political vocabulary has acquired a new term – "Cherkesov's hook." The term was coined by Viktor Cherkesov himself. Currently the head of the Russian anti-drug task force, officially known as Federal Service on the Control of Narcotics Circulation (FSKN), Cherkesov is a former KGB operative leading a force of 40,000 armed men and women, most of them former police officers, military, tax inspectors and, yes, KGB operatives.
As for the hook, Cherkesov used it as a symbol of some sort of a manifest destiny of what he calls the "Chekist community" in the "disintegrating" Russia of the 1990s. According to a letter Cherkesov published in Kommersant daily, these former or active secret service officers, calling themselves Chekists after the name of the KGB’s feared predecessor the Cheka, are the most consolidated part of Russian society and have thus managed to start reconstructing "the system" that collapsed in the early 1990s:
"Falling into the abyss, the post-Soviet society clung to the Chekist hook and hung on it," Cherkesov wrote in Kommersant. “And someone wanted it to fall down further and break itself to pieces. So, this someone got very upset, and started expressing indignation, speaking about the awful qualities of the hook that held our society over the abyss.”
Having thus eulogized his colleagues, Cherkesov called on them from the pages of Kommersant "to become a normal community," staying united even under a new system that has split them among various organizations rather than in the one and only KGB.
It was not a sudden pang of pride that made Cherkesov take to his pen, but the arrest of one of his officers, Alexander Bulbov, the head of a FSKN department and also a former KGB operative. Bulbov’s lifestyle, which included owning mansions in Moscow and Kaliningrad Regions, as well as several apartments in the city of Moscow, suggested that Bulbov was not the most incorruptible of Chekists.
Officially Bublov is charged with using information obtained by wiretapping to extort money from businessmen. However, his main fault, in the opinion of his defenders, was uncovering corruption among the operatives of the Federal Security Service (FSB) who were investigating irregularities in the Tri Kita furniture company. Several high-placed FSB generals were forced to resign over the case several years ago.
Bulbov’s wife, Galina, claims her husband believed that FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev had a vendetta against him and started sending people to tail him a year ago. On Oct. 1, Bulbov was arrested at Domodedovo airport by a group of FSB special troops. On the same day, a group of heavily armed FSB agents arrived to the Bulbovs' mansion in Moscow in order to search it. They were met there by a group of equally heavily armed FSKN. "They had to negotiate in order to avoid a bloodbath," Izvestia daily commented.
In an interview with Kommersant, Galina Bulbova said that when she heard people knocking on the door, she suspected robbers and for that reason called her husband's colleagues for help. When Bulbov's case was presented in court, several FSKN generals asked the judge to release Bulbov into their care. The generals came to court with personal armed guards, frightening the judge, who immediately declared the trial closed to the public.
"I don't really know what General Bulbov is charged with because the case is a secret one," said Alexander Fyodorov, deputy head of the FSKN at a press conference on Wednesday in Moscow, where he spoke instead of Cherkesov. "But my colleagues and I suggested his release on bail because we know he is an honest officer and he will not hide from investigators. As for the question of whether he is guilty or not, I don't know. What I know for sure is that press reports about some of his misdemeanors are not true and that Bulbov honestly fought in Afghanistan and was promoted to the rank of general by the president himself."
It was not clear why Cherkesov failed to appear at the press conference, sending his deputy instead. "Probably he did not want to respond to some of the reporters' questions," explained Vladimir Ovchinsky, a former police general and the author of several books on security issues. "In my opinion, the whole FSKN may be liquidated, so he has to calculate his moves."
Cherkesov has probably already exhausted his publicity potential. According to Galina Bulbova's interview in Kommersant, when the Tri Kita affair happened, Cherkesov spoke with Putin about it and this helped resolve the problem - for a while. This time, instead of the president, Cherkesov went to the press - an extremely rare move for someone of his stature and background.
"We are ready for a war on corruption. We wage battles with drug traffickers. But we are against another war in addition to the internecine war within the Chekist community," Cherkesov wrote in Kommersant.
As the moment of Putin's departure nears, Cherkesov's hook will have to withstand a lot of pressure, which may be why the author went to the press instead of going to president, a friend from his KGB days. |
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