Murder Experts in Houston

I've been researching and talking about murder for the best of two years now, but only last night encountered what must be the greatest concentration of part-time homicide experts in the United States. The encounter was at Murder By The Book, an incredible independent Houston bookstore whose managers say they are the largest shop in the U.S. specializing in murder thrillers.

Linda Wuest, the head of the Houston World Affairs Council, invited me to the store to talk about Putin's Labyrinth, and there I met wall to wall murder fans. Murder may be grisly, but to this sturdy gang, it's also a hobby.

For the like-minded among you, the managers suggested the following two Russian murder thrillers: Tom Rob Smith's Child 44 and Brent Ghelfi's Volk's Game.

Anything Goes In Russia: What a President Obama or McCain Should Do

John McCain said it best the other day, quoted by The Washington Post's David Broder: "We have to deal with them, negotiate with them, especially in light of their hoard of petrodollars. But we can't sit by and watch a country murder people in England."

McCain was referring to the 2006 murder of KGB defector Alexander Litvinenko. As you recall, someone slipped a nuclear isotope into Litvinenko's tea at a London hotel, and Britain has filed murder charges against another former Russian intelligent agent who's now a member of the country's Parliament. Moscow refuses to extradite the man, whose name is Andrei Lugovoi.

Much is made of Russia's muscular attitude surrounding its oil. As McCain suggested, the rise of oil prices has given Russian leaders Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev a megaphone abroad -- where the world largely ignored Russia when it was down economically through the 1990s, it now feels almost obligated to give Moscow an ear because of the petro-leverage it exerts, especially in Europe. That the Russians appear again to be pushing a Western oil company out the door -- this time BP -- seems somewhat troubling to the market. But, since other oil companies have had their assets squeezed previously, no one is shocked. It seems more like, Well, there the Russians go again. That reaction is appropriate. But using the leverage of its energy resources for political gain in Europe is another matter.

I am often asked who I think would handle Russia better starting next year -- Obama or McCain. I reply that both would do well. Whether one comes from right of center or left of center, one will reach the same place, which is that Russia is going to pursue interests that are contrary to the West's. That is especially the case in oil.

One thing I learned over again during the last 18 months or so in researching Putin's Labyrinth is that, when Russia pursues its interests, its approach is "anything goes." That is, Russia will go to any length to achieve its aims. That's why, when someone decided to murder Alexander Litvinenko, he or she did not order him pushed off a subway platform or shot with a pistol; it was decided that he would be poisoned with a nuclear isotope.

When the next president is sitting in front of Russian interlocutors, he cannot underestimate Moscow. Because in its view, anything goes.

Labyrinth with The American Entrepreneur

I spoke with Ron Morris -- "The American Entrepreneur." Here is the recording. (Ignore the Moody Blues at the beginning.)

Labyrinth At The Commonwealth Club

I spoke on Putin's Labyrinth at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. A video was just posted.

The Economist reviews Labyrinth

Labyrinth is reviewed alongside three worthy colleagues by Edward Lucas at the Economist.

Labyrinth At Google

I spoke about Labyrinth yesterday at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Ca.

A Moratorium on Murder?

Russia and Britain are in the latest throes of their dustup over the nuclear assassination of Alexander Litvinenko in central London. The latest chapter is a TV report detailing apparent British conclusions that the Russian state -- and not just individuals or rogues -- were responsible for the poisoning. The Russians have demanded an official British "explanation," meaning a refutation, which the British have refused to provide.

What seems lost in all of this noise is a strange quiet elsewhere -- there have been no sensational murders or state-assisted slaughter involving Russia in well over a year, since Litvinenko's slaying in November 2006.

Even if one counts the mysterious death of journalist Ivan Safronov in March 2007, when he fell five floors from his apartment building, it is still a relatively long time.

Vladimir Putin and his successor Dmitri Medvedev have put up an impassive face toward international outrage toward the string of murders and deaths during Putin's time in power. Earlier this week, Medvedev is said to have rejected British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's face-to-face renewal of Britain's request for the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi, whom Britain has charged with Litvinenko's murder.

Yet, one wonders whether the persistent global opprobrium cast on Russia and the Kremlin has had some impact.

Yet it's one matter to call an effective moratorium on murder. It's another to have decisive judicial action on prior cases. Wednesday was the fourth anniversary of the murder of Paul Klebnikov, the crusading editor of Forbes Russia, who was gunned down near his office as he walked to the Metro. His family marked the date by insisting that the Russians find and try Klebnikov's assailants.

Britain's Brown said that he told Medvedev at the G-8 summit in Japan that the U.K. will not drop the Litvinenko case. Murder carried out in the U.K. must be adjudicated. So far, it's not clear that the Russians get that point.

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Rights: Creative Commons

Update: Brown and Medvedev in Japan

The British papers report that Britain's Gordon Brown made no progress with Dmitri Medvedev today in the Litvinenko murder case (see item below), nor in persuading the Russian leader to intervene in a row between BP and its Russian partners in the TNK-BP oil venture. Without sourcing, the Financial Times provides the most complete -- and colorful -- version of the pair's meeting at the G-8 summit in Japan. Here is a more straight-forward account from the BBC.

Food, Energy, Global Warming. But What About Murder?

Oil and food prices are going through the roof, and the world isn't getting any cooler, so it's appropriate that these topics dominate the talk among the leaders of the world's main economies meeting in Japan right now. But British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has another issue on his mind, and that's murder.

Marina Litvinenko says she's received word that, when Brown meets with Russian leader Dmitri Medvedev, he'll probably bring up the 2006 murder of her husband, KGB defector Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned with polonium-210, a rare nuclear isotope. Britain has charged a member of the Russian Duma, Andrei Lugovoi, with murder, and has so far unsuccessfully sought his extradition for trial.

It seems highly unlikely that Medvedev will reverse the position taken by his predecessor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who says the British failed to provide sufficient evidence backing up the charges, and that furthermore Russia's constitution bars extradition of its citizens.

Though his style seems more accommodating than Putin's, and Medvedev says he's willing to compromise on disputes with Britain if Gordon will, too, Medvedev hasn't shifted away from any of Putin's main policies.

Yet one wonders whether, in this case, he's prepared to embrace one of his predecessor's main personal idiosyncracies, which has been a strange willingness to be seen as a killer, or a harborer of them.

The answer will help inform the G-8 leaders -- and the next American president – how to deal with oil-rich Russia as it likely grows stronger in the years ahead.

At issue is a series of unsolved murders that weigh over Putin's eight-year rule. Together, they have revealed Putin to be the latest in a long line of Russian dictators whose common thread is an indifference toward the lives of their people.

Putin wishes Russia to be regarded as a rightful member of G-8, the group of industrialized nations that includes the United States, western Europe and Japan. But the Kremlin's record of behavior toward its citizens – an attitude of bespredel, or anything goes, in perceived defense of the state – sets Russia apart from the group's other members. Only in Russia is there a line that, when crossed, can subject its violator to murder, while leaving the culprit unpunished and free to kill again.

Earlier this month, Medvedev told a Berlin audience that Russia would prosecute "to the end" all cases of slain journalists, who make up many of the most high-profile victims. One hopes he was sincere, but skepticism is warranted since Putin promised similarly yet did not deliver.

One of the cases is that of New York-born Paul Klebnikov, the 43-year-old editor of Forbes magazine's Russia edition. Klebnikov, a descendant of Czarist-era Russian nobility, was best known for a ground-breaking investigation of billionaire Boris Berezovsky. But in 2004, gunmen killed him outside his Moscow office.

Police used telephone records to quickly identify two suspects. The defendants, Chechens named Kazbek Dukuzov and Musa Vakhaev, were acquitted in May 2006, but then re-charged, which is permitted under Russia's justice system. Whatever queasiness a westerner might have with double jeopardy, at that point senior Russian officials seemed to be watching. But since then the case has languished. Crucially, police say they can't find Dukuzov to try him again.

In recent weeks, equally troubling news emerged in the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, an internationally known investigative reporter who was shot execution-style in 2006 in her Moscow apartment building. Prosecutors charged three men, but said nothing about the actual alleged killer, Rustam Makhmudov, a brother of two of the defendants. And, as in Klebnikov's case, the identity of the mastermind remains a public mystery.

Doubts about the official investigations in the Klebnikov and Politkovskaya cases don't start at the precinct level – the police work in both seemed first-rate. But there are suspicions of political interference. Some of the skepticism was fueled by Putin, who famously remarked after the Politkovskaya slaying that it was a pity but that her "influence on the country's political life . . . was minimal."

The most notorious murder is that of Litvinenko. The United Kingdom charged Andrei Lugovoi, a former Russian intelligence agent, and sought his extradition from Russia. Putin could have acquitted himself and Russia as a whole by cooperating with Britain. Instead, he rejected the request, and last December, Lugovoi won election to the Duma, thereby gaining immunity from prosecution within Russia while a wanted man in Europe. (Lugovoi denies the charge, and blames British intelligence for the murder.)

There's no evidence that Putin ordered, or even knew in advance about, any of the killings. Yet opinion hardened abroad that he was at the least complicit for creating the atmosphere of impunity for killers in his country. That he seemed unmoved to counter this menacing impression was perhaps intentional -- he may wish to send the message, Don't mess with Russia. But if that is the aim, it is not a formula for the serious relations that Russia claims to seek with the rest of the world.

Putin's authority seems to remain key in Russia. Yet, as Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama formulate their foreign policies, Medvedev's own attitude toward death should be a pivotal consideration. Whether he genuinely prosecutes killers, or continues the policy of bespredel, will speak volumes on whether to embrace Russia, or treat it from a distance.

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Rights: Creative Commons

Latest Labyrinth Review

The venerable Registan.net has reviewed Putin's Labyrinth.

Labyrinth Excerpt

Business Week is running an excerpt of Labyrinth next week. Here is the link to it on the web site, where it went up last night.

Book Note

Putin's Labyrinth is out today. For those whom I won't meet on the tour, I am happy to mail you an inscribed sticker for your copy. Just send an email to info@oilandglory.com with how you want it to read along with your address.

The Trouble With Being a Mobster

The Semyon Mogilevich story is becoming more intriguing. Over the weekend, Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy at the Guardian in London weighed in with a long piece linking the notorious alleged mobster to the assassination of former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko.

Mogilevich, who has been on the FBI most-wanted list for years, was arrested last Thursday on tax charges in Moscow. Russian authorities said they had long been looking for Mogilevich, who has lived for years in plain sight in the Russian capital. There is much conjecture on why he was arrested just now. Some of it involves supposed efforts to unwind the shadowy natural gas trade between Russia and Ukraine, in which Mogilevich appeared to have a role.

The Guardian story is quite an involved piece of journalism. The top half is background, but it then picks up with a tale of Litvinenko investigating Mogilevich, who according to the piece griped about it to his FSB pals, who got angry at Litvinenko … well, you get the picture. It all ends with Litvinenko having polonium 210 dropped into his tea in November 2006.

I have to note the remarkable coincidence of two huge Mogilevich stories breaking at precisely the same time. First his arrest, and now the accusation of involvement in one of the biggest murder cases of recent years.

One can be certain that the FSB is scouring its voluminous unsolved case file for items to hang on the unsympathetic Mogilevich.

Brits Go Home

The latest in the fracas between the U.K. and Russia would be amusing were its origin not so serious. Here it is in a nutshell: Russia, angry that Britain won't let bygones be bygones in the London poisoning murder of Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko, has sent a message to that effect by closing down Britain's cultural arm in cities outside Moscow. Britain, angry that Russia presumes to have control over its own territory, says these British Council offices will remain open. As one might expect, we now have a farce involving the St. Petersburg police, the son of a lord (yes this country still calls grown men "lord") and fears of "provocative games."

This all goes back to Litvinenko's assassination in November 2006 by a rare nuclear isotope called polonium-210. Britain rapidly tracked back the polonium to Moscow, and specifically to two former Russian intelligence officers who, for reasons unproven as yet in a courtroom, apparently had this alpha-emitting isotope all over their clothes, and left traces in Hamburg and London. Britain has filed murder charges against one of them, a recently elected member of the Russian Duma named Andrei Lugovoi. Vladimir Putin has chosen to treat the case similar to a traffic violation, and argue (innaccurately) that he's constitutionally barred from extraditing Lugovoi. Britain says rightly that the case is anything but run-of-the-mill, and that Putin should send Lugovoi to Britain post-haste.

Meanwhile, Britain has expelled some Russian diplomats, and Russia has ordered the British Council offices in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg closed. For reasons known only to God, Gordon Brown and perhaps the Queen, Britain has rejected Russia's right to close these offices, and left its staff there. So yesterday you had the spectacle of Putin upping the stakes by having the FSB (successor to the KGB) summoning some Russian employees of the British Council for questioning, and detaining the head of the St. Petersburg office, Stephen Kinnock (whose father is Lord Neil Kinnock, a British politician), for an hour on an alleged traffic violation. In the case of the FSB questioning, the intelligence agency said it was acting to prevent them being from used by Britain as an "instrument in provocative games" by Britain, according to the Bloomberg account.

I'm sympathetic with the U.K.'s case. You are right to pursue the Litvinenko murder. But you don't have a leg to stand on in this latest turn. In the world of diplomacy, you have to pack up those offices.

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Rights: Creative Commons

Russian Spy Priests and Venture Capitalists

I'm reading two excellent stories that use different prisms to examine the growing tentacles of the intelligence services in Russian society.

In the first, Andy Higgins, my former colleague at The Wall Street Journal, produces one of his best pieces in a couple of years. It's a look at how Vladimir Putin has re-corrupted -- or perhaps just increased the corruption -- of the Russian Orthodox Church. The church, which was a conspiring arm of Stalinism, has granted Putin deific cover, silencing any priest who strays from Putin's pronouncements. Higgins' main character, Sergei Taratukhin, transforms in the telling from a stiff-backed human rights proponent and defender of imprisoned oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky into a sniveling sycophant of the Putin regime. As the Journal is not yet free on line, you might have to borrow or buy a copy to read this one. But it's worth it.

The second piece, by New York Times writer Andrew Kramer, offers a new take on the often-told story of the FSB's intrusion into high Russian business. Now senior intelligence officials are the ranking investors in multi-billion-dollar venture capital equity funds. The story's lead character is Oleg Shvartsman, a smooth, English-speaking VC who wanders into Silicon Valley and smoothly informs his interlocutors that he represents these spies. He was outed by a Kommersant reporter. Shvartsman does not deny his words but says that, for his indiscretion, the reporter should "drink poison." How apt.

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Who's Afraid of Vladimir Putin?

In a long interview I did last night for Bob Brinker's show Money Talk, a man asked me whether I think that Vladimir Putin is the most dangerous man on Earth. I replied that I could think of five men more dangerous.

But the exchange raises a question: How has Putin -- a glad-hander of rogues to be sure, a petro-nationalist definitely, an intolerant autocrat at home as well -- managed to earn the impression of a menacing figure abroad? He hasn't started any wars; as far as I know, he hasn't sold nuclear weapons or fissible materials to anyone he shouldn't have.

A more sensible view of the 55-year-old Putin -- whose party won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections yesterday, and appears likely to be the country's leader for some years to come -- is that he's a politician who one underestimates at one's peril. He is indisputably dangerous to his domestic enemies, both directly and in the atmosphere of impunity toward murder that he has created at home.

Human Rights Watch should harangue him about his human rights policy. The British should continue to demand the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi in last year's Alexander Litvinenko assassination. And Washington and the European Union should move to prevent Gazprom from gaining a bigger foothold in the European natural gas market.

But Putin is not likely to provoke a war. I also don't think he believes he's contributing to Iran's nuclear weapons capability -- he lives in the neighborhood, and could be among those to suffer most directly in a nuclear exchange.

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Nikolai Khokhlov: 1922 - 2007

Khokhlov (right) and Okolovich

Nikolai Khokhlov, a KGB defector who survived the world's first known assassination attempt by a nuclear isotope, died last week. He was 85.

Khokhlov, who recounted his story in the classic memoir "In the Name of Conscience," first gained fame in 1954 when he defied a Kremlin order to organize the assassination of an anti-Soviet dissident named Georgi Okolovich. Heading a three-man unit operating in Frankfurt, Khokhlov walked up alone to Okolovich's apartment, and informed him just what he was sent to Germany to do. With that, the murder was sabotaged.

The heroic tenor of the event turned tragedy, however, when the CIA failed to rescue Khokhlov's wife, Yana, and son, Alek, in Moscow, as the agency had promised as part of his defection. The wife and son were arrested, and Khokhlov saw them again only 38 years later, in 1992, when Boris Yeltsin pardoned him. He and Yana had meanwhile divorced, and Khokhlov had remarried.

In 1957, Khokhlov again attracted international attention. While he was attending an anti-Communist conference in Frankfurt, someone slipped a dose of a radioactive isotope of thallium, a metal, into his coffee. Khokhlov's doctors were certain he was going to die -- his hair had fallen out, his skin was covered with bloody splotches, and his body seemed to be working against him. Instead, Khokhlov somehow came out of it.

In the 1960s, Khokhlov went on to begin an entirely new career as a tenured psychology professor at California State University at San Bernardino. He became known as an exceedingly articulate defender of parapsychology, and conversely a critic of Freud and Jung.

Interest in Khokhlov became renewed in November, when another defector from Moscow -- Alexander Litvinenko -- was poisoned by a nuclear isotope in London. Litvinenko displayed almost identical symptoms to those suffered by Khokhlov. It turned out that he was poisoned by polonium, another radioactive isotope. Litvinenko died in November. Khokhlov gave several interviews in which he pinned the blame on the Russian spy services.

Khokhlov leaves his wife, Tanja, a son, two daughters and five grandchildren.

Moscow's Red Lines: Kosovo, Missiles and Berezovsky

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has used the occasion of a university speech to lay down an implacable position on some of the most divisive issues between Moscow and the West. It was another indication that Moscow is engaged as much in policy as in image-building as someone no longer to be trifled with.

Here is the first paragraph of the Agence France Press story: Russia will not back down on "red line" issues including the future of Kosovo and opposition to US plans for an anti-missile defence system in central Europe, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday. Read story

And an important quote from the piece: Lavrov said that some were worried by "the rapid rebirth of our country as one of the leading countries of the world. However, this does not mean that it's necessary to think up yet another myth about the Russian threat."

Steve's comment: Lavrov made the remarks today at Moscow State Institute of International Affairs. For those accustomed to negotiating with Moscow, whether during the Soviet or post-Soviet period, it is nothing new for it to "stick to our position until the end," as Lavrov put it.

Its immovable positions, he said, include a refusal to hand over Andrei Lugovoi to Britain in the case of the Alexander Litvinenko murder, rejecting Kosovo independence unless Belgrade itself agrees, and opposing Washington's plans to install an anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic (on the last item, one wonders about the hulabaloo on either side over an as-yet unproven system).

Lavrov also resurrected Moscow's chagrin over Britain's sheltering of oligarch Boris Berezovsky, whom he called one of several "odious characters" from Russia living there.

As a whole, these do not differ fundamentally from postures Russia has taken previously during the post-Soviet period. What is different is that it appears unlikely this time to shift position. And that appears to be as much show as principle.

Politkovskaya: Arrests and Apprehension

The Kremlin used the occasion of a planned Moscow commemoration for slain journalist Anna Politkovskaya to announce the arrest of ten suspects. All are accused of a role in the hit team – which included former and current members of the Interior Ministry and an officer in the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB – and none of actually ordering last October’s murder. A memorial ceremony is planned in Moscow on Friday to mark her birthday. She would have turned 49 Thursday.

Interfax quoted Politkovskaya’s boss at Novaya Gazeta, Dmitry Muratov, as finding the results of the investigation "very convincing and professional".

But, while Politkovskaya’s colleagues expressed confidence in the arrests, some also saw the makings of a political dimension to the news, for instance that the government might accuse Putin's political enemy, oligarch Boris Berezovsky, of being the mastermind of the murder. Here is the piece by Politkovskaya's newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, on today's events (it's the newspaper's own rough English translation).

Federal prosecutor Yuri Chaika fed that apprehension by saying that the murder was planned abroad. He also said that Politkovskaya knew the person who ordered her killing, and had met with him. She had met with Berezovsky several times in London.

Here are three reports:

Russia Today
Regnum.ru
bbc

In a televised meeting with President Putin and a followup news conference, Chaika outlined the murder, which occurred as she walked from the elevator of her apartment building. He said it was “carefully planned,” with two surveillance groups watching Politkovskaya. Evidence previously released, based on video from a surveillance camera near her apartment, showed a lone figure – apparently the trigger man – entering the apartment building and then walking out at about the time of the murder.

Chaika identified the leader of the hit team as the ethnic Chechen head of a Moscow crime group specializing in contract murder. Without providing the man’s name, he said the group had organized murders in Russia, Ukraine and Latvia. He said the same hit team may have been involved in the 2004 murder of Forbes Russia editor Paul Klebnikov and the 2006 killing of central bank deputy chief Andrei Kozlov.

An FSB official identified the FSB suspect as Lt. Col. Pavel Ryuguzov. He is the only suspect whose name was released. The arrests were made from Aug. 15 through last Thursday.

How Moscow Will Respond to Britain's Expulsion of Russian Diplomats

Britain's soft spot in Russia is BP. Watch for Russia's response to today's expulsion announcement not only in a predictable tit-for-tat removal of British diplomats from Moscow, but in a tougher line toward the British oil giant.

In the past, Britain's Russia policy has been led by the requirements of BP, its largest publicly held company. And BP has walked softly with Moscow from the time of the Soviet collapse. In the 1990s, BP opposed the U.S.-backed Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline, until it decided that its U.S. interests -- its wish to purchase Arco -- trumped its plans for the former Soviet Union. The British government walked lock-step with BP in the anti-, then abruptly pro-pipeline policies.

In the past few months, BP, like some of the other multinational oil companies, has buckled under to Moscow; they have had to because of the much more challenging global exploration environment. So it is that BP has provided cover to a Russian "auction" of a Yukos property by making a "bid" on it; and it has surrendered its rights to the Kovykta natural gas field.

In expelling four Russian diplomats, Britain has taken a principled stand on the Litvinenko murder case. A component of Moscow's calibrations is likely to take note that a quarter of the global production of Britain's marquee company -- BP -- comes from Russia. That is where President Putin is likely to pressure Britain.