September 14, 2000    
This Date's Issues: 4511  4512   4513

Johnson's Russia List
#4512
14 September 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com


[Note from David Johnson:
1. the eXile: Matt Taibbi, Big Fat Liars. (re Putin election
fraud)
2. Moscow Times: Yevgenia Albats, Information Security Doctrine 
Redux.
3. Nixon Center: Paul Saunders, Fraud in Russia: And the U.S. 
Administration is Indifferent to it.
4. Albert Weeks: In response to Mr. Moore/4509.
5. RFE/RL: Paul Goble, Visa Politics.
6. Wall Street Journal: Paul Beckett, Bank of New York Chairman 
Is Accused Of Profiting on Russian Schemes in Suit.
7. BBC MONITORING: RUSSIAN TYCOON PROMOTING TV PRESENTER AS PART 
OF HIS ANTI-PUTIN PLAN - PAPER. (Berezovsky and Dorenko)]


******


#1
From: Matt Taibbi <exile.taibbi@matrix.ru>
Subject: eXile lead
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000


Big Fat Liars
by Matt Taibbi 
the eXile
www.exile.ru


Give them credit: the Moscow Times last week hit it out of the park. In a 
stunning display of old-school investigative journalism, the paper released 
a massive expose proving more or less incontrovertibly that the election of 
Vladimir Putin to the presidency last spring was an elaborate, out-and-out 
fraud.


Using a team of reporters who traveled around the country, the Times in its 
September 9 piece entitled "And the winner is..?" built its case in the 
manner of a criminal prosecutor's office, compiling a wide range of 
evidence, both documentary and testimonial. They compared official figures 
from local voting precincts in several regions and compared them to the 
figures released by the federal government. In a number of cases, the two 
sets of official figures did not match (with the federal figures ballooned 
in favor of Putin), providing the paper with an instant prima facie case 
proving the fraud. The paper catalogued anecdotal evidence from officials 
who saw people leaving voting booths with sacks. One of their reporters 
claims to have found ashes, the remains of burned ballots. The paper also 
noted the sudden appearance of 1.3 million new voters between the time of 
the Duma elections last fall and the presidential vote a few months later, 
a statistical super-impossibility in a country with a rapidly-declining 
population. The Times even had photographs, for God's sake, of voters who 
claimed they'd been coerced. Marcia Clark couldn't have done better. Oh, 
wait-she didn't.


That Vladimir Putin stole the election was no big scoop, of course. 
Virtually everybody in Russia knew that there had been fraud at some level 
in the election. Allegations of election fraud had already been piled very 
high in Democratic Russia's short history, dating back in particular to the 
1993 constitutional referendum, which Boris Yeltsin is widely believed to 
have stolen. The level of overt media manipulation has likewise risen at a 
parabolic rate in the past few years, to the point where anyone who has 
lived here for any time at all knows that the judgement of the Organization 
for Security and Cooperation in Europe that the press in this country 
"remains pluralistic and diverse" is absurd on its face.


Nonetheless, there is a big difference between knowing something, and 
proving it. The Times appeared to have proved its case. So what should that 
have achieved, given that almost everybody in this country knew or 
suspected the truth anyway?


Well, at the very least, it should have made it impossible for Western 
governments to cling to the lie that the Russian elections were free and 
fair. Unless we here at the eXile are very much mistaken, that was the 
point of the Times's exercise-to disprove the official line that has been 
fed not only to Russians, but to the Times's primary audience, the West.


That hasn't happened, unfortunately. The press response to the Times expose 
has been very weak, particularly among the Americans. At press time, the 
only major American publication to follow up on the story has been the Los 
Angeles Times, which did so under the deflating headline, "Russia Election 
Chief Rejects Fraud Claims in Presidential Vote." The rest of the big 
papers-with the conspicuous inclusion of the New York Times and the 
Washington Post-have ignored the story entirely. In contrast, three British 
heavyweights, including old buddy Giles Whittell of the Times of London, 
Helen Womack of the Independent, and the BBC, picked the story up the day 
after the Times expose hit the streets.


Why has the response been so quiet? Why has the primary Western election 
observer, the OSCE, refused to comment on the Times story? To understand, 
one has to explore the peculiarly mercenary propaganda mission of the 
West's election observers in places like Russia-- and the symbiotic 
relationship they enjoy with their primary consumers, the Western media.


That a free and fair election is in the eye of the beholder is something 
that virtually everyone in the world outside America understands 
instinctively. For proof of this all one has to do is listen to the 
responses to questions about the Times story made by officials of the type 
who think lying for a living is a virtue-like the press officer at the 
LDPR, or the president of he KGB Veterans' club.


The latter figure, former KGB general Valery Velichko, was a coup plotter 
in 1991 who for the last nine years or so has been a grumbling fixture in 
the rolodexes of most reporters in town. A bitter enemy of the Yeltsin 
regime, he is one of many KGB vets who sense that the rise of their fellow 
spook Putin might give them a chance to get back to the show. We called him 
with the aim of getting a former Russian intelligence heavy's perspective 
on Western election observers in general. Does the Russian intelligence 
community view organizations like the OSCE as fronts for Western secret 
services? Do Western election observers have as their primary mission the 
fulfillment of their nations' diplomatic initiatives, rather than their 
stated function of seeking out rigged elections?


"Absolutely not," said Velichko. "If you're referring to the election of 
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, then you are wrong. We followed this vote 
carefully and our opinion is that there were no violations. This was a fair 
vote and Putin had the support of Russians from the very lowest working 
classes on up."


So the OSCE was not wrong when it said in its report that the Putin vote 
"provides a framework for pluralist elections and for a significantly high 
level of transparency in all phases of the electoral process"?


"Of course not," he said. "If you're suggesting what I think you're 
suggesting, you're wrong." Here Velichko paused, and went on to make what 
by any standards is a remarkable statement for a xenophobic Russian ex-spy 
to make: "Obviously you buy any Russian official for nothing. But Foreign 
election observers can't be bought. How can they be? They make enough money 
as it is."


What would prompt a stone-hearted non-defector KGB hack to call Westerners 
incorruptible, and blast his own people as thieves in the same breath? 
Political necessity, of course. While maintaining several times that 
Western election observers never made mistakes, Velichko went on to slip 
and add the following:


"Really, the Putin election was a clean affair. It was, in fact, the first 
fair election we've seen. The other ones were all frauds."


The OSCE, of course, called the 1996 Yeltsin vote free and fair as well. 
Somebody has to be lying. Again, it's all in the eye of the beholder.


As members of his party are wont to do, the LDPR spokesman helped us get a 
grip on the essential nature of things with a witty, concise sound bite:


"Of course, the Western election observers are all working for certain 
organizations, are totally fraudulent, and are fulfilling a political end," 
he said. "On the other hand, the Putin election was absolutely honest from 
start to finish."


The natural conclusion to be drawn from the Times expose is that the OSCE 
is either completely corrupt, or totally incompetent. No other explanation 
is really possible. In order to make its case, the Times hardly had to rely 
on hidden camera footage, phone taps or high-level whistleblowers. All it 
did was look at numbers that were very obviously floating out there in the 
public domain.


One might expect the Western press corps to miss massive discrepancies 
between local poll results and federal returns, or fail to note that 1.3 
million new voters-termed "Dead Souls" in the Times Piece in a 
badly-conceived metaphor (Gogol's Dead Souls were really dead; the Putin 
voters were just plain imaginary)-had appeared on the rolls. But a 
lavishly funded international organization whose sole mission during the 
elections was to seek out vote fraud? Only a conscious deception or a 
catastrophic failure could explain their missing a fake that brazen and 
obvious.


The OSCE declined to answer our questions about what exactly its 380 
informal observers actually did in the way of "observation" during the 
Putin vote. There is evidence, however, that the organization restricted 
its activities to surveillance of the sort that would miss just about 
anything outside of an armed attack on a voting booth.


Andrei Kasminin, a spokesman for Yabloko, summed up his party's experience 
with Western election observers as follows:


"We saw foreign observers at the polls," he said. "But at the actual 
polling booths, everything looked fine. As a result, they wrote that the 
vote was conducted without violations. But actually, the violations were 
committed on a much higher level."


So did the OSCE miss the fraud because they didn't see it, or because they 
didn't want to see it? The communists, of course, have their own opinion on 
that score.


"Obviously, the foreign observers had an agreement with the Electoral 
Commission," said Rashid Arslanov, an aide to Alexander Saliya, the KPRF 
deputy who monitored the elections. "It was agreed that Russia is a 
democratic country, that elections here are also democratic, and that 
therefore, everything must have been democratically done."


No wild conspiracy theories are needed to link the OSCE with the kind of 
shenanigans the communists think they were involved with in the Russian 
elections. Last year, the eXile reported that a widely-reputed CIA official 
named William Walker had been instrumental in uncovering a supposed 
"massacre" that provided NATO with a rationale for conducting the air 
attack on Kosovo. Nearly a year later, on March 12, 2000, New York Times 
reporters Tom Walker and Adrian Laverty reported that the CIA had admitted 
to using the OSCE as a cover to help train and prepare KLA guerillas for 
war. William Walker was the OSCE head of mission in the area at the time. 
Here's an excerpt from that story:


'When the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), 
which co-ordinated the monitoring, left Kosovo a week before airstrikes 
began a year ago, many of its satellite telephones and global positioning 
systems were secretly handed to the KLA, ensuring that guerrilla commanders 
could stay in touch with Nato and Washington. Several KLA leaders had the 
mobile phone number of General Wesley Clark, the Nato commander. European 
diplomats then working for the OSCE claim it was betrayed by an American 
policy that made airstrikes inevitable. Some have questioned the motives 
and loyalties of William Walker, the American OSCE head of mission. "The 
American agenda consisted of their diplomatic observers, aka the CIA, 
operating on completely different terms to the rest of Europe and the 
OSCE," said a European envoy.'


That an American contingent of the OSCE was involved with covert military 
operations in an Eastern European hot spot does not automatically mean, of 
course, that the Russian OSCE delegation consciously falsified its report 
on the Putin vote. But it certainly suggests that it's not outside the 
realm of possibility.


Why would an organization sponsored by democratic nations consciously give 
its stamp of approval to burgeoning dictatorships like the Putin regime? 
The Moscow Times touched on the matter in its own short section addressing 
the OSCE report. Quoting Novaya Gazeta reporter Boris Kagarlitsky, the 
Times gave vent to the opinion that the OSCE weighted its report in order 
to lend support to the political allies of its sponsor nations-in 
particular the "reform" program of Anatoly Chubais, which still survived 
largely intact under Putin.


The OSCE's record in recent election coverage certainly suggests that they 
take an "eye of the beholder" approach no less obvious than, say, 
Velichko's. The organization consistently denounces the elections held by 
unfriendly regimes while praising the elections held in countries formally 
allied with the West-even when more or less exactly the same violations are 
observed.


Compare, for instance, the OSCE's report on the Serbian presidential 
elections in December 1997 to the Russian elections last year. In that 
report, the OSCE strongly condemned the Serbian vote, writing in the very 
first paragraph that the elections were "fundamentally flawed" and noting 
soon afterward that the process was characterized by "blatant election 
fraud", resulting in a vote that "offered a distinct advantage to the 
candidate of the Left Coalition", i.e. Slobodan Milosevic.


The OSCE, incidentally, appears to reserve this kind of language 
exclusively for its assessment of certain regimes. For instance, the report 
it released on the last Uzbek parliamentary election of last December, 
which by virtually everyone's assessment was a truly criminal, stone-age 
affair, used language significantly more ambiguous than it used in the 
Serbian report. Here is its preliminary conclusion about that vote:


"...the election of Deputies to the Oliy Majlis of the Republic of 
Uzbekistan fell short of the OSCE commitments for democratic elections 
enshrined in the 1990 Copenhagen Document. In particular, the commitments 
for free, fair, equal, transparent and accountable election were breached."


Note the language here. The elections were bad, the OSCE agrees, but in 
conclusion, all it says is that they "fell short" of the OSCE commitments 
which were "enshrined" (enshrined?) in the 1990 Copenhagen document. Fell 
short-not even "fell far short". Nothing like the phrase "blatant election 
fraud" could be found anywhere in this report. This is despite a genuinely 
Soviet statistical profile which involved a 93% vote in favor of the 
registered state parties, and an astonishing 98% turnout.


Such nuances in language sound insignificant, but in fact they mean a great 
deal. The OSCE reports, after all, are primarily designed for consumption 
by the mass media, which as a rule takes the OSCE's lengthy reports and 
reduces them to sound bites and headlines. Thus phrases like "fundamentally 
flawed" strike the ear quite differently than phrases like "fall short", 
which can easily be squeezed in to a news report which takes the line that 
Uzbekistan is, say, "struggling in its transition to democracy", as opposed 
to being a villainous totalitarian regime, as Milosevic's government is 
often called.


Getting back to that Serb report and how it compares to the OSCE summation 
of the Putin vote, it is hard not to notice how many of the same violations 
appear in both elections-only to be described in different ways. State 
television news broadcasts in Serbia, the OSCE reported, demonstrated a 
"clear and consistent bias", while opposition voices were severely limited 
"by the fact that the government has made it practically impossible for 
independent broadcasters to register for the necessary broadcast 
frequencies." Nonetheless, the report noted that "there was a commendable 
effort to provide all the candidates with free political advertising, in 
proportion with their representation in parliament" and that opposition 
radio stations and other media did exist.


Compare this to the Russian media situation, about which the OSCE said the 
following: "the media in the Russian Federation remain pluralistic and 
diverse." If you lived here in Russia during the past year and a half or 
so, you know that state television and radio programming not campaigned 
exclusively in favor of the Putin regime, but actively assassinated its 
political enemies, most notably Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov. A broadcast of 
"Vremya" last fall in which Sergei Dorenko showed viewers a doctored image 
of Luzhkov with Monica Lewinsky's hair morphed onto his head comes to mind 
as an example of the approach Russian state television took to opposition 
political forces.


Furthermore, there was no "commendable effort" of any kind to provide other 
candidates with free political advertising. In fact, even very viable 
candidates like Gennady Zyuganov and Grigory Yavlinsky were more or less 
kept hidden from public view in the run-up to the election.


And that was only the national media. As anyone who lives here knows, the 
press in the Russian regions could hardly be farther from being "diverse 
and pluralistic." To put things in more concrete terms, one need only read 
the post-electoral commentary by Robert Coalson, director of the National 
Press Institute. Decrying the OSCE report, Coalson wrote in the Moscow 
Times earlier this year:


"Let's take a look, for instance, at Tambov region, an area with a 
population of 1.3 million only about 500 kilometers from Moscow. According 
to the best information I have, this region is served by 35 general 
newspapers. Of that total, 29 are directly controlled and financed by local 
governments. Of the remaining six, one is published by the Communist Party 
and five are commercial papers, all of which are published and distributed 
in the city of Tambov. The total weekly circulation of all six nonstate 
newspapers is 95,000 copies, of which almost half is the Communist paper 
Nash Golos. The next largest circulation nonstate paper in this entire 
region is Tambovsky Kurier, with a weekly press run of just 20,000."


Another striking feature of the OSCE report on the Serbian election is its 
concern with discrepancies in vote counts. In its overall summation, the 
report concludes:


"The Republic Election Commission seriously neglects to publish preliminary 
and intermediate post-election results, including voter turn-out figures. 
It has relinquished this role to the parties which often reported 
contradictory figures."


Later on in the report, the organization writes in more specific terms, 
noting discrepancies in the tally of votes for opposition candidates:


"Experts recall that on December 8, 1997 at 13.15 hours the SPS 
Spokesperson announced that on the basis of approximately 100% of the 
election results the candidate of the Social Democracy, Mr. Vuk Obradovich, 
had received 122,967 votes, while the final official REC figure was 115,850 
votes (at 15.19 hours on December 10, 1997)."


As the Moscow Times report showed, exactly these kind of violations 
occurred in the Russian election. The Times noted the difficulty it had in 
obtaining election figures from local precincts; this is exactly the kind 
of behavior the OSCE complained about at a federal level in Serbia when it 
wrote that the government "neglects to publish... post-election results, 
including voter turnout figures."


Furthermore, while the OSCE complained about "contradictory figures" in 
Serbia, it paid no attention at all to what the Times discovered were 
fairly obvious contradictions in the Russian election. This kind of 
selective scrupulousness makes it very hard to accept the explanation that 
the OSCE simply failed to notice, or failed to inquire, about election 
returns in Russia. In fact, having read both reports, it's hard to come to 
any conclusion that does not involve a conscious effort on the OSCE's part 
to whitewash a dirty election.


The OSCE's mission when it observes elections is essentially 
propagandistic. Its conclusions, and the conclusions of other similar 
foreign observers, are the stuff that sets the tone not only for public 
debate over policy towards the countries in question, but for the tone of 
economic assessments of a country's investment climate. It is no 
coincidence that the bounce the Russian stock market received after Putin's 
elections came on the heels of the thousands of media reports which quoted 
the OSCE's assessment of the vote as relatively free and fair.


But the Moscow Times's report raises an interesting question about the 
nature of these assessments. Given the complexity of the electoral process 
in countries as vast as Russia, and the capacity of governments, should 
they be so inclined, to commit fraud in any number of ways, it would seem 
irresponsible to submit any kind of verdict about a vote's legitimacy with 
the speed the OSCE habitually demonstrates. It took the Moscow Times six 
months to uncover what it did and dig up the necessary evidence to make its 
case, and even then, it surely didn't catch everything. So how could the 
OSCE responsibly make any kind of judgement within weeks of the election?


If the OSCE is irresponsible in releasing judgements so quickly after 
elections, then the media, obviously, is even moreso. Investigations like 
the Times's are rare; instead, reporters tend to rely almost exclusively on 
organizations like the OSCE to make judgements on the fairness of 
elections. Worse, the response to the Times report proved that the American 
press not only routinely accepts the OSCE word as gospel when its reports 
are issued, but hesitates even to breach the issue of incompetence or 
corruption within the organization when evidence of such things arise.


Even this past Tuesday's article by Maura Reynolds of the L.A. Times-which 
despite its dismissive headline did manage to list the Moscow Times's 
allegations in detail-tiptoed carefully around the issue of the OSCE's 
role. When Reynolds did mention the OSCE at the end of her piece, she cast 
its performance in the most positive light possible:


'In a preliminary report on the election, the Organization for Security and 
Cooperation in Europe--which sent nearly 400 officials to observe the 
balloting--noted that irregularities had been seen but that they "did not 
appear to have an impact on the outcome of the election."
However, in its final report, the OSCE described the fraud allegations 
as serious. The group said it did not have the means to evaluate their 
validity but urged Russian authorities to investigate.'


Three things about this one short passage. First of all, the inclusion of 
the OSCE quote about the irregularities not having an impact on the 
election is almost certainly a preview of the party line to come on the 
issue. If the Times expose ends up having any impact at all, the OSCE will 
probably concede at some point that fraud occurred, but that Putin was 
still the real victor.


This attitude toward elections is a strange one to begin with, of course. 
It would seem that the real issue in weighing the legitimacy of a vote is 
not whether or not the fraud had an impact on the result, but whether the 
fraud occurred at all. A regime which fixes an election it would have won 
any way is still neither democratic nor legitimate. To call an election 
"relatively fair", like calling an auction "relatively fair", is, as we've 
noted before in this paper, something akin to saying a woman is "relatively 
pregnant". An election is either fixed or it isn't.


Next, Reynolds in the one additional paragraph she devotes to the issue 
notes that the OSCE's final report did eventually describe the fraud 
allegations as "serious". While true, the editorial decision Reynolds made 
to include this fact while ignoring the obvious shortcomings of the OSCE 
report (i.e. the classification of the media as "pluralistic and diverse", 
which Reynolds surely knows to be untrue) says a lot about where her 
sympathies lie as a reporter.


Finally, Reynolds notes that the OSCE urged the Russian authorities to 
investigate the matter, while failing to point out that an impartial 
authority asking a government to investigate itself is plainly absurd. 
Foreign observers in theory exist precisely in order to make outside 
judgements about a government's legitimacy. If the OSCE ultimately asks us 
to wait for the Russian government's verdict on the matter, it is admitting 
its own superfluousness in the whole process.


It is certainly good to finally have proof, if we even needed it, that the 
Putin regime is corrupt and undemocratic. But it would be even better to 
see a discussion begin about our own commitment to democracy. If our own 
observers are liars about the level of democracy in other countries, what 
does that say about the health of our own democracy? Surely it can't be a 
small thing when our interests and our ideals are shown so clearly to be 
two different things.


******


#2
Moscow Times
September 14, 2000 
POWER PLAY: Information Security Doctrine Redux 
By Yevgenia Albats 


The Kremlin is erecting another inevitably leaky wall between the authorities 
and society, this time in the form of the Security Council's new doctrine on 
information security. The first two sections of the doctrine, as well as the 
way it is structured and was first presented to journalists f all suggest 
that this is a concept developed by frightened people who have no idea what 
world or country they inhabit. 


The doctrine was presented by Anatoly Streltsov, deputy chief of the Security 
Council's department for information security, who has never been an expert 
on freedom of speech. Streltsov used to work in the Defense Ministry. He 
holds a doctorate in technical sciences and is an expert on radioelectronic 
interference. In other words, he's an expert on real issues in the 
contemporary world that are outlined in the third and fourth sections of the 
doctrine, which deal with defending information from unsanctioned access f 
i.e. from official hackers working in corresponding structures of other 
governments or working in private firms and stealing information, a highly 
valuable commodity that should be defended. 


According to his former colleagues, Streltsov played a part in developing the 
first such Security Council doctrine in 1996. However, according to those who 
wrote that first doctrine, back then the doctrine had nothing to do with the 
control of the media, either Russian or Western, unlike the 2000 doctrine, 
which suggests that the media's activities in Russia should be "put in into 
shape." Thus, those first two sections of the new doctrine are innovations of 
the Kremlin newcomers. 


But there is nothing new about this. Soviet bosses also demonstrated a 
similar fear of the media and its ability to distribute information 
unpleasant to the Kremlin. In 1981, both the ideological department of the 
Communist Party's Central Committee and the KGB noted that "in conjunction 
with the change in Western information agencies to relaying materials with 
speedy computer technology and other modern communications technology f for 
example, the 'telefax' f the work of Glavlit [the government censor] has been 
significantly complicated." The ideologues demanded that the security organs 
be equipped with the latest technology. In those days, they intercepted 
faxes; now they will probably intercept signals from satellite phones and 
keep tabs on the flow of information on the Internet. 


There's another notable coincidence. The parts of the new doctrine that 
suggest more government control over the media are strikingly reminiscent of 
the text of an analytical note, "On the Political Situation in the Country," 
compiled by Vladimir Kryuchkov, the last head of the KGB. In January 1991, he 
wrote, "The interests of defending the Soviet constitutional order strongly 
dictate the maintenance of necessary state control over the mass media þ and 
not allowing them to become a megaphone for antisocialist forces." In the 
2000 doctrine, we read about "the informational support of Russian Federation 
state policy, delivering to Russian and international publics trustworthy 
information about state policy and the official position of Russia on 
socially significant events of internal and international life." 


Finally, the doctrine includes in the realm of information security the 
"compliance with and strengthening of society's moral values, its traditions 
of patriotism and humanism"f i.e. what the ideological and repressive organs 
of the Soviet Union assumed was an area that should be under their control. 
But the Kremlin should remember that this is the duty of a civil society, not 
the state. 


In 1987, Vladimir Rubanov, then a KGB colonel and an expert in the area of 
information security, wrote an article for which he was thrown out of the 
KGB. The article was called, "From the Cult of Secrets to an Information 
Culture." Rubanov argued that the cult of secrets and the sealing off of the 
nation from the world are fatal; they don't allow the nation to develop. What 
year is it these days in the Kremlin? 


Yevgenia Albats is an independent journalist based in Moscow. 


******


#3
From: The Nixon Center <NixonCenter@lists.postmastergeneral.com>
Subject: Fraud in Russia: And the U.S. Administration is Indifferent to It
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 18:13:10 EDT


September 13, 2000
REALITY CHECK 
Fraud in Russia: And the U.S. Administration is Indifferent to it.
by Paul J. Saunders
(This article is reprinted from the National Review Online.)


New evidence of electoral fraud in Russia's March 27 presidential
balloting further underscores the blindness of the Clinton
administration and many other outside observers toward developments in
Russia. Despite numerous reports of irregularities in the voting,
administration officials hailed the election of Vladimir Putin as a step
forward for Russian democracy; officials of international organizations
such as the OSCE were also quick to certify Putin's victory as genuine.
Now, investigative reporting by the Moscow Times demonstrates that the
election was seriously flawed. 


After examining election records and interviewing voters and members of
local election commissions across Russia, the Times found that fraud in
just one of Russia's 89 regions-Dagestan-could account
for up to one-quarter of Putin's narrow margin of victory. After finding
hard evidence of some 88,000 falsified votes for Putin by comparing
local and national vote tallies, the paper conservatively projects that
some 550,000 votes may have gone to Putin illegally in Dagestan alone.
The Times also identifies several other regions in which similar levels
of abuse are likely to have taken place. As a result, it is quite
possible that Putin-who received only 52 percent of the reported
vote-may not in fact have received the 50 percent support
necessary for outright victory in the first round of balloting. 


Despite this, it is virtually assured that Putin would have won the
election anyway. Had he not prevailed in the first round, he would have
easily defeated the number two candidate-Communist party leader
Gennady Zyuganov-in the second round. However, Putin would have
come out of the election with much less momentum, which could have had a
profound impact on his ability to take on Russia's governors and
oligarchs, and to pass key legislation, in the period since the
election. His aura of invincibility would have been punctured in March
rather than August. 


But Putin's first months in office have already happened and will not be
undone. Moreover, since he would have won the election anyway, few
Russians are likely to become particularly upset-and those who
do become upset have few options in today's Russia. In a sense,
electoral fraud in Russia is like the pink elephant in the room; no one
can avoid seeing it, but few are willing to talk about it. 


Needless to say, the Russian government is unwilling to admit to
anything that could undermine President Putin. For its part, the
Communist Party-which theoretically would have the most to gain
as the largest opposition party-protested the election and is
even running its own investigation, but seems largely uninterested in a
serious effort to question the voting. Like in the 1996 election,
Zyuganov and other Communist leaders seem to fear success more than
failure; they are reluctant to take any decisive action that could
provide the country's semi-authoritarian government with a pretext to
destroy the party once and for all. Under pressure from the government,
regional and local officials are able to contain discussion of the issue
in their own areas with threats of retaliation against parties or
organizations (including cash-starved regional media) that stand up to
the authorities. It is telling that it took a small English-language
newspaper with external financing, rather than a Russian political party
or media organization, to make this a major story. 


Outside Russia, the Clinton administration has never been willing to
acknowledge the existence of large-scale fraud in Russian elections
-not to mention the much more widespread and damaging forms of
intimidation used by regional and local officials to deliver the vote to
the Kremlin. Instead, the administration has touted each new election as
a major step on the road to democracy, without regard to the conduct of
the voting or abuses during the campaign. Needless to say, after
promoting the success of its policies since 1993, the administration
cannot recognize the major flaws in Russia's electoral processes without
also admitting that it has ignored the evidence for years. The same goes
for many European governments, the OSCE, and a number of other observer
organizations. In 2000 as in 1996, their satisfaction with the outcome
of Russia's elections-Yeltsin's and then Putin's victories-seemed to
drive their evaluations of the process. 


What are the consequences? This is the bottom line: Putin is unlikely to
suffer much. A combination of apathetic disillusionment with
Yeltsin-style democracy, fatalism about the country's prospects for
genuine democracy, and enthusiasm for Putin's semi-authoritarian
leadership will probably shield the president from significant political
damage. Democracy in Russia will be further undermined. If credible
allegations of fraud emerge and are not addressed, Russians are likely
to lose even more of their already sinking faith in democracy as a
political system. Also, anything happening in national elections is
almost assuredly taking place at every lower level of the system. 


Watch the Moscow Times. Vladimir Putin's Kremlin already has a record of
action against politically inconvenient media; a visit from the tax
police (or other, similarly well-armed government personnel) may be in
the offing. More fundamentally, the easy assumption that Russia turned a
page in its history by electing Putin should be thoroughly questioned.
The machinations that brought him to power were of a piece with those
used by Yeltsin in 1996. It will take much more than a new face in the
Kremlin to bring real change to Russia. 


(Paul Saunders is Director of The Nixon Center.) 


******


#4
From: "Albert L. Weeks" <AWeeks1@compuserve.com>
Subject: In response to Mr. Moore/4509
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000


Permit me to respond to Mr. Moore's objections (in JRL #4509)
to my previous JRL message concerning Utkin's book and other
matters. My point was this, and I quote tangentially from the
current issue of The (London) Economist (Sept. 9, p. 33), with regard to
anti-missile defense: "/Putin/ has not yet closed the door
on modifications to the ABM treaty to allow some kind of more
potent missile defenses if accompanied by deeper cuts in nuclear
weapons." If I read Condoleeza Rice correctly, she is for deployment-now
of fullblown NMD regardless of Russian, or Chinese, or our European
allies' objections. The system she apparently has in mind goes behind
boost-phase interception, which Putin accepts as an option for some form
cooperative ABM, and seems to amount to the all-out, space-borne
"anti-missile shield" proposed by Reagan in 1983 (which is far from
being tested out). This would also entail total U.S. withdrawal from the
ABM treaty instead of working out a deal with Moscow. This is what I meant
in describing her "tough stand" vis-a-vis Russia.
Personally, although I am a staunch supporter of NMD, I think it is
counterproductive to go it alone, full-speed-ahread at the present juncture.
It
would be mistake preemptorily to attempt to deploy some unlimited form
of ABM regardless of the opposition expressed by friendly West European
states, and by the Russians and Chinese. Mr. Moore, speaking appreciatively
of Ms. Rice, appears to support deploying fullblown NMD at whatever
cost--"cost" meaning both in dollars, in premature, failed tests, and in
maintaining good relations with other, key countries. For his part, Mr.
Moore appears to speak as someone who is a
'party-san' of a particular political program. I do not speak from any such
rostrum, offering my views solely as an independent observer.


*****


#5
Russia: Analysis From Washington -- Visa Politics
By Paul Goble


Washington, 13 September 2000 (RFE/RL) -- Governments increasingly are
using visas to promote a variety of political goals far broader than the
traditional function of these documents to regulate who is allowed to enter
their national territories.


And three recent examples of such political use of visas -- one by Estonia,
one by the Russian Federation, and one by the United States -- highlight
just how political the issuance of this type of travel documentation has
become.


On Monday, Estonia unilaterally introduced a full-visa regime at the
Russian-Estonian border, ending the previous simplified regime for those
living near the border.


Russian officials were angered. Aleksandr Safronov, the Russian
Federation's consul general in Narva, complained that this action had a
negative impact on divided families whose members will now have to apply
for regular visas.


But Estonian officials justified this action as a necessary step to bring
Tallinn into compliance with the requirements of the agreement that allows
the free movement of people within the European Union, a body Estonia hopes
to join.


Estonia's decision to require visas from Russians living just over the
border in order to demonstrate its readiness to join a visa-free regime
elsewhere is an example of a trend that is becoming the hallmark of
post-Cold War Europe -- the erection of a higher wall in one direction in
order to dismantle one in another.


Also this week, Russian officials continued to offer explanations of the
impact of Moscow's decision to withdraw from the visa-free regime among
members of the Commonwealth of Independent States.


Foreign ministry spokesman reiterated that this decision, taken at the end
of last month, was not intended to set up new barriers and that in any case
the Russian government would deal with the question of visa requirements on
a bilateral basis with its CIS partners.


The Russian government is completely within its rights to take this
decision just as Estonia is. But observers in several of the countries most
likely to be affected naturally viewed Moscow's decision less in terms of
its effect on Russia than in terms of its impact on them. 


By introducing a visa regime, the Russian government will now be able to
deport or threaten to deport the numerous non-Russians who have moved to
major Russian cities since the collapse of the Soviet Union.


That will certainly please many Russian nationalists who are upset about
the presence of so many non-Russians in their midst. But more important, it
will give Moscow powerful leverage over some of the CIS states.


The Armenian and Georgian economies, for example, depend heavily on
transfer payments sent home from Russia by Armenian and Georgian workers
now in the Russian Federation. 


By ending or threatening to end these visa-free arrangements that allowed
this situation to develop, Moscow can put enormous pressure on either or
both governments to adopt a more cooperative posture with Russia on a
variety of issues.


If as now seems likely Moscow continues the visa-free regime with Armenia
but ends it with Georgia, Armenia will benefit and Georgia will suffer --
unless, of course, Tbilisi is able to come to some arrangement that will
allow for the restoration of a visa-free state.


And that possibility seems to many in the Caucasus and elsewhere to be one
of the most important factors behind Russia's decision to withdraw from
what had been one of the few generally acknowledged achievements of the CIS.


Yet another example of the political use of visas came at the end of August
when Washington refused to grant entry visas to Cuban and Yugoslav
parliamentarians to attend a UN-affiliated conference in New York. The
United States justified its decision not to admit them by pointing to the
actions of both these individuals and their respective governments.


This decision was generally popular in the relevant ethnic communities
inside the United States, and some commentators in Europe were quick to
suggest that the visa denial in this case was first and foremost an
election year gimmick.


But it also drew fire from the Russian government which argued in a Foreign
Ministry statement that the U.S. decision was "a flagrant violation" of
American obligations as a host government of the United Nations organization.


The Russian government added that "Moscow hopes the United States will
fulfill its international obligations and create normal conditions for
representatives of all nations to work at the UN"


In each of these three cases, the governments involved acted within their
rights as sovereign states, but they also did more than simply control who
could enter their national territories.


They delivered a clear political message of their own intentions, and they
helped promote their own political goals. Because other countries are
likely to learn from these examples, more of them are likely to try to use
visas in the same way.


And to the extent they do, something that had been a relatively simple
travel document in the past is likely to be transformed into a political
weapon with untold consequences for international cooperation. 


******


#6
Wall Street Journal
September 12, 2000 
[for personal use only] 
Bank of New York Chairman Is Accused Of Profiting on Russian Schemes in Suit
By PAUL BECKETT (paul.beckett@wsj.com)
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL


NEW YORK -- In the latest legal challenge stemming from Bank of New York 
Co.'s Russia-related business, a shareholder lawsuit alleges that the bank's 
chairman personally profited from complex Russian schemes that moved money to 
offshore accounts -- allegations the bank denied as "baseless."


The claims, contained in an amendment to a shareholder derivative action 
filed last year in Manhattan federal court, are the first that seek to tie 
Chairman Thomas A. Renyi to the bank's alleged involvement in the illicit 
transfer of money from Russia. It also contends that the bank's board ignored 
warning signs that the bank's Russian clients had been infiltrated by 
organized crime and failed to ensure that the bank was adequately protected.


"Both the original suit and the amended complaint are baseless, and the bank 
unequivocally rejects the scurrilous claims against its executive officers 
and directors," the bank said in a statement. "The Bank of New York will 
vigorously defend itself and fully expects to prevail."


The allegations include, but extend beyond, previously disclosed activities 
involving a former Bank of New York official, Lucy Edwards, and her husband, 
who have pleaded guilty to a broad conspiracy to launder money through three 
New York-based accounts at the bank. From 1995 until last year, about $7 
billion was transferred through the accounts from Russia. Bank of New York 
hasn't been charged with any wrongdoing and has been cooperating with an 
investigation by the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office.


The amended suit, unsealed late last week, alleges that 54-year-old Mr. 
Renyi, the bank's chairman since 1998, was paid an unspecified amount through 
interests assigned to him in offshore companies that received funds allegedly 
stolen from Russian banks. Integral to the money-moving operation was 
Inkombank, a now-moribund Russian bank that in the 1990s maintained a 
"correspondent" banking relationship with Bank of New York, which allowed 
Inkombank to transfer dollars around the world.


Mr. Renyi "was assigned various percentage interests in different offshore 
accounts under the code name 'Smith,' " the 65-page amended complaint says. 
It alleges Mr. Renyi "was paid" through six companies incorporated in several 
different countries. Among the evidence cited is an alleged 1994 meeting in a 
New Jersey hospital between Mr. Renyi and Inkombank's chairman.


But people close to the bank said Mr. Renyi had never been to that hospital, 
in Westwood, N.J., and wasn't responsible for the bank's Russian business in 
January 1994, at the time the meeting allegedly took place. The lawsuit also 
claims the bank's board, despite accounts from the press and government 
agencies that Russian banks had been infiltrated by organized crime, 
"intentionally or recklessly failed to assure itself that BONY had 
implemented an adequate and independent system of monitoring and control of 
its correspondent wire transfer business."


The amended suit was filed by New York securities class-action firm Milberg 
Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach. But the people close to the bank said it was 
based almost entirely on unsupported allegations provided by Emanuel Zeltser, 
a director of the New York-based American Russian Law Institute and a 
longtime critic of Inkombank.


"We have given them every opportunity to provide corroborating data and they 
haven't," one person close to Bank of New York said.


******


#7
BBC MONITORING 
RUSSIAN TYCOON PROMOTING TV PRESENTER AS PART OF HIS ANTI-PUTIN PLAN - PAPER
Source: 'Segodnya', Moscow, in Russian 13 Sep 00 


Russian tycoon Boris Berezovskiy is apparently trying to promote former
television presenter Sergey Dorenko as a rival to President Putin,
according to a Russian newspaper. It said that Berezovskiy, who is
"disappointed with Vladimir Putin", may be hinging his hope on the people
tiring of the authorities' "rough, military manner as the election
approaches and again hanker after leaders from more civilian professions".
Dorenko's programme was recently scrapped by Russian Public TV. The
following is the text of an article published in 'Segodnya' on 13th
September: 


At a news conference on Monday [11th September] Sergey Dorenko said that he
intends to get seriously involved in politics. This statement may mean a
new twist in the fate of the popular television presenter - entry into the
grand political arena. From the viewpoint of launching a new political
persona, Dorenko's removal from the air was very opportune. Apparently,
Dorenko's friend, Boris Berezovskiy, advised him to "make lemonade from
lemons", that is, turn his disgrace to his advantage and derive some
political capital from it. 


The promotion of Dorenko in his new capacity is in Berezovskiy's interests.
Obviously, he is disappointed with Vladimir Putin and is now seeking an
alternative to him for the next presidential election. We are not saying,
of course, that the well-known television presenter will definitely be sent
to conquer the summit of power with a nudge from Boris Abramovich
[Berezovskiy]. But Sergey Dorenko may will act as a pilot version of the
"anti-Putin" project. Dorenko would appear to fit perfectly the "superman"
image cultivated by presidential image consultants: big, with a loud,
resonant voice. It would be a civilian model of Gen Aleksandr Lebed.
Berezovskiy is clearly expecting the people to tire of the authorities'
rough, military manner as the election approaches and again hanker after
leaders from more civilian professions. The liking for the strong man has
developed gradually in Russia - from Rutskoy to Putin. Now it has reached
its high point, consequently, it is bound to fall after that. So it is a
pretty clever calculation. 


There is another circumstance that suggests that the "anti-Putin" project
already exists. That is Dorenko's mysterious meeting with the president,
which the television analyst has been saying so much about of late. We do
not know why Putin should have met Dorenko but, if you believe the latter's
version of the meeting, he is not at all frightened of Putin and talks with
him not only on equal terms, but even in strong language. If Dorenko
positions himself as a politician who is not afraid of Putin, he will
pretty quickly acquire "clout", since virtually all the former heavyweights
are now kow-towing to the president. The existence of a major anti-Putin
political project is the only possible explanation of Dorenko's obstinate
refusal to work on the president's team. A more attractive prospect
beckoned him. Or maybe it is merely a mirage? 


Dorenko has certain reputation problems. But this too is something that can
be resolved. By changing jobs, he will also jettison his former reputation.
He will say with a clear conscience that those were the game rules in his
former job, and he does not intend to carry them over into his new one.
Whether he will be able to convert his entire current popularity capital,
which, he says, comprises 40 million television viewers, into political
capital is another matter. Experience shows that such cases are an
exception rather than a rule. 


******