From Johnson's Russia List. I'm under the impression that the Jamestown Foundation, is of a right-wing flavor, from a cursory glance in the past. http://www.jamestown.org/ Chubais, was Gore's pal, no? I have yet to read Stephen Cohen, "Failed Crusade, " waiting for the pb. I betcha, on the looks of the adapted excerpt in The Nation a few months back, more details there. And, "Red Mafiya, " by Robert Friedman, looks like another good read in related areas. Chapter Excerpt: Red Mafiya by Robert I. Friedman ... himself as a prominent Russian Jewish dissident. He wrote two books, as well as articles for Dissent, Jewish Digest, and ... Copyright 2000 by Robert I. Friedman. ... www.twbookmark.com/books/63/0316294748/chapter_excerpt10134.html http://www.ukar.org/friedm01.shtml (Hmm, Ukranian Nationalist website defending WWII fascists, have fun!) "Zealots of Zion: Inside Israel's West Bank Settlement Movement, " by Robert Friedman. Michael Pugliese #1 Jamestown Foundation Monitor July 18, 2001 DID CHUBAIS LAUNDER MONEY THROUGH THE BANK OF NEW YORK? Oleg Lurye, the well-known investigative reporter for the biweekly newspaper Novaya Gazeta, has written an article in the paper's latest issue alleging that Anatoly Chubais, currently head of United Energy Systems (UES) and a leader of the Union of Right-Wing Forces (SPS), and Alfred Kokh, currently head of Gazprom-Media, were involved in large-scale money laundering via the Bank of New York (BONY). The article refers to a document first cited earlier this year by Novaya Gazeta concerning a trip Kokh made on January 3, 1996 to the Barbados, which, as Lurye notes, is known--among other things--as "an offshore haven for laundered money." Kokh allegedly traveled to the island with one of the leading figures in the BONY scandal of 1999, Natasha Gurfinkel-Kagalovsky, and her husband. She was a BONY senior vice president in charge of the bank's Eastern European division; her husband, Konstantin Kagalovsky, was at one time Russia's representative to the International Monetary Fund and then a top executive first at Menatep Bank and afterwards at the Yukos oil company. It should be noted that no charges in connection with the BONY case have been brought against Gurfinkel-Kagalovsky, who was suspended from the banks at the height of the scandal and who later resigned. Last year she filed suit against the bank, denying any connection to the money laundering scandal and demanding US$270 million in compensation for damages to her reputation. At the time of the alleged Barbados visit, Kokh was first deputy chief of the State Property Committee, which was then formally headed by Sergei Belaev but actually under the control of Chubais, who was then a first deputy prime minister. Chubais would within weeks be dismissed by Boris Yeltsin for the notorious loans-for-shares privatization scheme at the end of 1995, but almost immediately rise from the ashes to run Yeltsin's re-election campaign. Lurye quotes an unnamed top U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation official as telling him recently that the FBI had also been aware of Kokh's and the Kagalovskys' visit to Barbados. According to the FBI official, Kokh, in making the visit, was acting on behalf of Chubais, who at the start of 1996 needed a "mechanism" by which to send billions of dollars received as a result of privatization offshore and to launder a portion of these funds for Yeltsin's re-election campaign. The Bank of New York was "the ideal variant," the official told Lurye. Lurye also quotes the FBI official as saying that Chubais, "being a vice premier and a well-known figure," did not want to meet directly with BONY officials, and thus sent Kokh as his "emissary." At the same time, Lurye says, Chubais knew the major players in the BONY scandal very well and had met with them secretly in the United States. Lurye also cites an audit carried out by the Audit Chamber, an independent Russian state agency, into the State Property Committee's activities from 1992 to 1995. The state auditors expressed alarm, first, that U.S. and British firms had managed to acquire controlling shares in Russian aircraft manufacturers--including MAPO-MiG, Sukhoi, Yakovlev, Ilyushin and Antonov--and, second, that Germany's Siemens had acquired a 20-percent stake in the Kaluga Turbine Factory--which, among other things, holds a state monopoly in welding technology needed for the construction of nuclear subs (see the eXile, #31, March 5, 1998). Lurye also quotes from a joint letter written by the Federal Security Service (FSB) and Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) charging that the privatization of military-industrial enterprises like those was followed by a transfer of Russian military technology to the West so large that NATO inaugurated a special program devoted to processing the acquired information. Lurye concludes that between 1993 and 1995 Chubais "organized the sale of unique Russian [military] technology to the West," for which the Russian budget received only US$450 million. Some of the remaining proceeds went to Yeltsin's re-election campaign but, Lurye alleges, "the lion's share" was hidden in BONY accounts. The journalists also cites an Audit Chamber finding that "privatization structures" connected to Chubais had received more than US$2 billion in credits from the West earmarked for "the development of privatization in Russia," but that most of this money also disappeared. Lurye says there is "certain information" that "foreign special services" found some of these funds in BONY accounts (Novaya Gazeta, July 16). Oleg Lurye, it should be noted, has investigated alleged corruption by top officials such as Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, Kremlin chief of staff Aleksandr Voloshin and Pavel Borodin, the former Kremlin property manager who is now state secretary of the Russia-Belarus union. Last December, Lurye was severely beaten and had his face slashed by unidentified attackers (see the Monitor, March 26, December 18, 2000). ******* #11 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Ira Straus) Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 Subject: Jamestown spins vicious circles (re NATO/Baltics) Jamestown spins some vicious circles on NATO enlargement to Baltics: Notes on a dangerous way of thinking (The opinions expressed below are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of any organizations I am associated with. I write them as one who was among the first to advocate NATO expansion to all of Eastern Europe, including the Baltics, and of course including Russia, in 1989. - Ira Straus) In "GETTING READY FOR NATO'S ENLARGEMENT", Jamestown Foundation Monitor, July 13, 2001 (CDI Russia Weekly, 7.15.01), we read the following ominous news: "A NATO naval squadron, the strongest to visit any of the three Baltic states since 1991, laid anchor at Klaipeda on July 6 and conducted exercises in Lithuania's territorial waters through July 12.... The exercise, Cooperative Ocean 2001, featured inter alia the detection and inspection of potentially hostile ships, relief of friendly ships in distress, antisubmarine warfare, search and destroy operations... "Concurrently, Russia's Baltic Fleet conducted a large-scale command-and-staff exercise in the Kaliningrad Region.... The scenario envisaged that Russian forces stop and destroy two NATO brigades that supposedly cross into that Russian exclave from Poland." In brief: both sides conducted, simultaneously, large-scale exercises for military combat against potential hostility from the other. While it is not stated explicitly that NATO was training specifically against Russia, this is implicit in the location and contents of the exercise. This, one would think, is a clear warning sign of what NATO's moving into the Baltics would mean. It means removing the space between the NATO and Russian militaries, without removing the suspicions on either side. It means that mutually adversarial exercises would inexorably become more frequent and more provocative. It would be hard for a danger to be more obvious. Yet Jamestown manages to ignore it in the remainder of its article, or rather, to erect an entire series of mental barriers against noticing it. It informs us that Western critics of marching into the Baltics, who think that this would increase tensions with Russia, are just repeating Russian propaganda that is "traceable" to Primakov (it would be more accurate to trace it to Yeltsin and Kozyrev, but this would not be useful for insinuating that anyone who disagrees is a dupe of the Primakov KGB). They are "Russia Firsters", and they are playing into the hands of the Russians: "on the political front, Russian military officials and propagandists are moving to exploit an opening offered by Western critics of NATO's Baltic enlargement." When Russians themselves say anything about the likely consequences of marching into the Baltics, they are not stating something important that is on their minds, rather, they are to be described as making "threats", and crude ones at that. The Russians, by quoting back the arguments of the "Russia Firsters" and proceeding to make their crude threats, will engender the increase in tensions that they say they're against. Etc. etc. All this has a strange flavor of old Soviet writing. All the way through the thought process, possible enemy influences are traced and tagged. Vicious circles are drawn, short circuits are constructed in the mind, double-binds are tied and knotted. Pavlovian reactions are cultivated against ever agreeing with Russia. Moral and rhetorical punishments are meted out in advance against deviations from some given line on Russia. How shall one describe this reasoning -- Cold War hangover? McCarthyism? Vyshinskyism? the "principle of reversal"? If Russia is against something, this becomes ipso facto proof that it must be done and anyone who says otherwise is a Russian dupe or agent. The dupes, by the way, evidently include Lawrence Eagleburger, who was one of the original people who diverted NATO expansion from the broad umbrella of the NACC into a narrower anti-Russian course; some years ago he said that anyone who advocates NATO going into the Baltics ought to have his head examined. A researcher at the Nixon Center wrote recently that NATO seems to be talking itself into admitting the Baltic states for no good reason except that Russia is against it. In the real world, the loss of the buffer is a real-life problem, not a problem of Soviet disinformation. The mutually adversarial exercises last week show that the buffer between Russia and NATO is already beginning to shrink, as the NATO and Russian militaries begin to contemplate the scenario of Baltic membership in the Alliance. The habit of the two sides' comparing and training their militaries against one another, a habit which in the early 1990s had been put to the side with great fanfare (although never properly overcome by integration of the military planning of the two sides), is being revived. Once inside NATO, the Baltic states would have a full voice on the North Atlantic Council, which would go to the extent of pretension to a right of veto in keeping with NATO rhetoric, while Russia's voice would be sitting out-of-doors and still subject to vilification against anyone ever agreeing with Russia. How would the Baltics use their voice and their ? The most plausible scenario is: (a) to obstruct any "concessions" to Russia, i.e. any NATO cooperation with Russia on terms that are not unduly one-sided and punitive of Russia, and (b) to get NATO to concentrate more and more on planning and exercising for the defense of their territory against Russia. Planning and exercising against Russia invites renewed tit-for-tat dynamic, or rather, would a continuation and exacerbation of the tit-for-tat dynamic that has already begun again. Not only on the NATO side, but also on the Russian side, it means an increase in adversarial military planning and exercising. The next logical steps in the tit-for-tat are: an increase in adversarial military procurements and programming; new regional military competition; and a risk of tensions spiraling out of control in some dispute. There is no inevitability of coming to this end result; there is always the possibility that some other dynamic or a reconsideration would intervene; but it would be foolhardy to deny the seriousness of the danger. The very process of adversarial planning and exercising meanwhile reinforces the view that the two sides have inherently opposing national interests; a view which cannot help but express itself in mutually hostile diplomatic and geopolitical moves on other "fronts" -- Ukraine, Caucasus, Central Asia, Iran, Iraq, China... It is worth noticing that, the moment Russia has begun making moves or countermoves on these fronts, we have begun losing on most of them. We have a lot to lose from enemy relations, just as much as Russia does. We would be fools to go on acting out of overconfidence. A month ago, I raised with a German MP, who was also an officer of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, the question of starting some serious discussion on the prospect of Russian membership in NATO, since this is the only way to defuse the issue. The MP was one of the few Germans to advocate expansion into the Baltics. He dismissed Russian membership in a way that made it clear that it was not on his mental map, and went on to dismiss Russian fears of an expansion from which they are excluded: - The Russian fears are unwarranted (he said), they are the result of old Cold War habits of thinking that NATO is their enemy. The more closely we deal with them in the Baltics, they will come to see that we don't think of them as an enemy and we're not a threat to them. - The Russian concerns have an objective basis (I said); as the militaries come at closer range, there would be more exercises against one another. - Nonsense, that's not what we do in NATO, because we don't regard them as enemies. - Why should Russians trust NATO's reassurances, after all their not particularly good experiences in the last decade? You wouldn't ask the Baltic states to trust Russia's reassurances, would you? - (smile) - The Baltic states regard Russia as a threat, this is inevitable, the Russians know it, they're not fools. Once inside NATO, the Balts would be in a position to press for more planning and exercises against Russia. - Nonsense, fantastic. It seems that the "fantastic" has come to pass already, in a matter of a month; and as a result not even of Baltic membership in NATO, but merely of both sides' contemplating the prospects of Baltic membership. There is only one way to bring the Baltic states into NATO without painting Russia into the corner as the implied enemy. That way is, by bringing Russia into NATO at the same time. Or, at the very minimum, by having a serious plan in motion for Russian membership to be achieved. This would seem to be an obvious reality. To state it is not to be against the Baltics joining NATO, it is to be in favor of them joining NATO in the only way that would do them and the West any good. The necessity of inclusion of Russia is so evident that even Dr. Brzezinski has spoken of it, albeit in a tongue that most Russians would consider forked. He has written that NATO and the U.S. President should declare NATO open for Russia to join someday, and that this would make it easier to bring in the Baltic states meanwhile. Russians, however, read statements like this in a context of feeling that they have been fooled and tricked by the West too often. They notice that all statements thus far on NATO openness to Russia have been pro forma. While they always welcome these statements, they also express the suspicion -- as strana.ru did recently -- that they are decoys for slipping the Baltics into NATO and then slamming the door in Russia's face. It would not be easy to refute their suspicions; not when some NATO officials and some leaders of NATO member states have declared themselves against Russia ever joining under any circumstances -- and this is the one matter on which each member state really does have a veto, since it is a treaty amendment. Meanwhile the most that is said by Lord Robertson and President Bush is that maybe it will someday be possible to speak seriously about Russia joining. To get its protestations of openness taken at face value by Russians, NATO would have to go on record with a clear, officially adopted commitment to the goal of Russian membership. And it would need to retrain its entire milieu to dig out of the vicious circles in their thinking about Russia and start thinking instead in terms of how to make it happen. The Baltic peoples have every right to pursue NATO membership and to have serious hope of entry on their merits, within the context to be sure of NATO's right of strategic and diplomatic discretion, and of course with an honest evaluation of their merits, not one that is whitewashed for fear of giving an argument to Russia. The Russian people should have the same right of pursuing NATO membership and to be taken seriously on their merits and on the strategic assets they can bring to the alliance, and Mr. Robertson and Mr. Bush have said as much. But in reality, Russia is denied that right; it has been widely assumed that strategic discretion means excluding Russia forever, evidently without troubling to consider that Russia is the only Eastern European country that could bring more assets than liabilities into the alliance. Meanwhile many Westerners are arguing that no discretion should be applied regarding the Baltics, even though they would bring few assets but extreme liabilities if taken in without Russia, because to do so would mean agreeing with Russia. It is argued that for NATO to apply discretion to the Baltics would be "discriminatory" and "hypocritical" and would amount to giving Russia a "veto". Somehow this is said with a straight face and treated as a decisive moral point, when the actual meaning of it is that discretion and discrimination and vetoes are to be applied only one way, against Russia. The irony of this posture seems to be lost on Western officials. It is not lost on Russians, who have become all too good at noticing Western hypocrisy. The underlying argument, articulated by Dr. Kissinger, is that the alliance has always been and must be defined by the enemy relation with Russia. Actually in the first two world wars the enemy of the Atlantic Alliance was Germany, but people have short memories and the belief is widespread that Russia was the defining enemy and all the talk about not viewing Russia as an enemy is just diplomatic eyewash. In the case of Germany, new thinking began immediately after the end of the Nazi regime and was fully implemented by including Germany in NATO in less than a decade. In the case of Russia, new thinking is still just beginning a decade after the end of the Soviet regime. As long as Russia continues to be denied anything like a fair, equal-opportunity hope and prospect in NATO, bringing in the Baltics would be a wildly discriminatory act, not a normal action taken on its merits. People in the West may argue themselves into turning a blind eye to the likely consequences and to the facts that make them likely, but this will not spare us the damage from the consequences. NATO's plan of expansion in 1995 was inadequate and it made arbitrary discriminations and de facto exclusions inevitable, because it neglected the questions of internal NATO procedural reforms that would be needed to make feasible a full-blown expansion. This is the root of the situation in which, if the Baltics were invited to join in the year 2002, its historic significance would be as an act of discrimination and exclusion against Russia, not as an act of fairness and openness to the Baltics. NATO will need to revise its plan substantially if inclusion of the Baltics is to become a sound proposition. ******* ------- David Johnson home phone: 301-942-9281 work phone: 202-797-5277 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] fax: 1-202-478-1701 (Jfax; comes direct to email) home address: 1647 Winding Waye Lane Silver Spring MD 20902 USA Web page for CDI Russia Weekly: http://www.cdi.org/russia Archive for JRL (under construction): http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson
