From Mark Mitchell, another compelling chapter on the BCCI bank and its vast criminal network. Don’t overlook the paragraphs describing how the Klebnikov Project, ostensibly devoted to uncovering the facts about the murder of Forbes journalist Paul Klebnikov, was sabotaged from within by another Forbes journalist:
The Global Bust-Out, Chapter 8:
“Pundits and journalists in Russia have opposing views about Berezovsky and his “exile” in London. One view has it that Berezovsky elevated Putin to the presidency, but in doing so, he miscalculated, failing to realize that Putin would not return the favor by allowing Berezovsky and his associates to continue looting Russia, and would, to the contrary, crack down on the oligarchs and strip of them of the power they wielded over the Russian government. The other view has it that Putin’s move against Berezovsky was a ruse, intended only to score political points, and that Putin and Berezovsky secretly maintained close relations. In support of the latter point of view, pundits and media in Russia report that Putin and Berezovsky continued in the years following 2000 to hold secret meetings, and that Berezovsky continued to have business dealings with elements of the Russian intelligence services.
In further support of the latter view, pundits and media in Russia also note that oligarchs and crime syndicates that were among Berezovsky’s closest business partners, and which, along with Berezovsky, played important roles in elevating Putin to the presidency in 1999, continue to this day to operate in Russia with the apparent protection of the Putin government, and in partnership with the powerful Russian intelligence services. Therefore, it cannot be possible, or so it is argued, that Berezovsky, during his years as an “exile” in London, genuinely desired to remove Putin from the presidency.
It might even be (in the view of some Russian pundits) that Berezovsky moved to London not to lead a dissident movement against the Putin government, but to serve Putin as some sort of master spy, seizing control of the dissident movement so as to defuse it, and meanwhile leading the expansion of Russian influence into Britain and other Western nations. Alternatively, some suggest that Berezovsky had been an agent of Western governments at the time when he was the most powerful man in Russia, and Putin became aware of this, one reason why Putin forced Berezovsky to leave Russia, even though it was Berezovsky who had orchestrated Putin’s rise to power. We will see that there is no question that Berezovsky was an asset of Western governments, including the regime in Washington, but the nature of his relationship with Putin after his move to London remains a matter of debate.
Either way, the party line put forth by most major U.S. news organizations is patently false, and it says a lot about the state of the U.S. media that the only mainstream journalist to report the truth about Berezovsky was Paul Klebnikov, author of the 2000 book (“The Godfather of the Kremlin”) and other writings about Berezovsky’s criminality. Even more disturbing is the fact that Klebnikov (who had reported receiving death threats from Berezovsky) was, in 2004, gunned down on a Moscow street, and when he was killed, many of his fellow American journalists did not see fit to report that Klebnikov’s seminal work had linked Berezovsky to organized crime.
For a long time, the last word on Klebnikov’s murder was a 2007 story in Forbes Magazine (the magazine that had employed Klebnikov at the time when he was killed), and this story, authored by a journalist named Gary Weiss, did not even mention Berezovsky’s name, much less the fact that Klebnikov had devoted most of his career to exposing Berezovsky’s criminality. Only after Berezovsky himself was dead did Forbes Magazine publish a story suggesting that Berezovsky had, in fact, been a likely suspect in the murder of Klebnikov. There could be no greater evidence of the timidity of Forbes magazine’s editors than that they could not bring themselves to name a likely suspect in the murder of their own reporter until after the suspect was dead.
All the more appalling was that Forbes had previously given the last word on the subject of Klebnikov’s murder to the journalist Gary Weiss, who was meanwhile helping direct the activities of an outfit called The Klebnikov Project, which had been established by some of America’s most prominent journalists, ostensibly to investigate Klebnikov’s murder, and ostensibly to send a strong message that America’s most prominent journalists would not tolerate the murder of one of their own, and would indeed expose any and all miscreants who would dare so much as threaten a journalist or otherwise seek to infringe upon the freedom of the press. Incredibly, not one of those prominent journalists, in the many stories that they published about Klebnikov’s murder, reported that Berezovsky had threatened to murder Klebnikov, and nor did they report that Klebnikov’s seminal work had not only exposed Berezovsky’s ties to organized crime, but had also linked Berezovsky to multiple murders.
In addition, of course, not one of those prominent American journalists reported that Berezovsky was a likely suspect in Klebnikov’s murder, which was quite in contrast to journalists in Russia, where there is still a free press, and where numerous journalists had not only exposed Berezovsky’s ties to organized crime and had not only indentified Berezovsky as the likely suspect in Klebnikov’s murder, but had also linked Berezovsky to the murders of other journalists besides. All the more incredible was the fact that Gary Weiss, the prominent journalist who helped direct The Klebnikov Project (and who, until after Berezovsky’s death, had the last word in Forbes magazine on Klebnikov’s murder) had previously been employed by the lawyers of none other than…Boris Berezovsky.
Not only that, but Weiss (the journalist who hijacked The Klebnikov Project, an outfit ostensibly devoted to protecting freedom of the press) had been employed by Berezovsky’s lawyers to help quash freedom of the press. More specifically, Weiss (the journalist who also hijacked the Klebnikov Project, which was ostensibly investigating the murder of Paul Klebnikov) had been employed by Berezovsky’s lawyers to provide assistance to a libel lawsuit that Berezovsky had filed against…Paul Klebnikov. In addition, Weiss had been employed (by Berezovsky) to lead a smear campaign aimed at trashing Klebnikov’s reputation.
As part of this campaign, Weiss had authored dozens of anonymous internet reviews trashing Klebnikov’s book, and in these reviews (which DeepCapture reporter and computer technologist Judd Bagley traced to Gary Weiss’s IP address) maintained (falsely) that Klebnikov had fabricated the information in his book linking Berezovsky to organized crime. And if you think we have a free press in this nation, consider that The Klebnikov Project (set up by America’s most prominent journalists to expose those who threaten freedom of the press) not only failed to expose Berezovsky (who threatened the free press), but was, in fact, enthusiastically supported by none other than…Berezovsky.
Meanwhile, many of America’s leading news organizations (e.g. the Wall Street Journal) had come to be owned by people (e.g. Rupert Murdoch) who were among Berezovsky’s closest associates. In addition, the major U.S. news organizations seemed to view with total approval or indifference the fact that Berezovsky (who, after all, was some kind of democracy activist) had meddled in our own democracy, becoming one of the largest donors (or, rather, buyers) of both the Democratic and Republican parties. Equally important, the major U.S. news organizations completely ignored the massive damage that Berezovsky and his mafia associates did to the U.S. economy during all those years while Berezovsky was ostensibly employed full-time as a Russian “exile” and “dissident” in the mold of the heroic Solzhenitsyn.
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In any event, though the information has never appeared in any major U.S. news organization, it has been widely reported elsewhere, and confirmed to be true by numerous prominent investigators, that Berezovsky did (as Klebnikov reported in his book) build his business empire in partnership with leading Russian and Chechen organized crime syndicates. It has also been confirmed to be true (as Klebnikov reported in his book) that Berezovsky, more specifically, built his business empire in partnership with the Mogilevich organization (led by Semion Mogilevich, often referred to as “the most dangerous mobster in the world”) and a Chechen organized crime syndicate who leaders were (in addition to being mobsters) notorious terrorists, trained by trained by Osama bin Laden’s operation and by U.S. military contractors who took their orders from a faction of the regime in Washington.
Berezovsky himself admitted to investing more than $1 million with a Chechen terrorist named Shamil Basaev, who had once planted a radioactive materials in a Moscow park, informing the Russian police that next time the radioactive materials would be exploded as a so-called “dirty bomb,” thereby afflicting thousands of people with deadly radioactive poisoning. In 2004, Basaev did one better by leading a horrific terrorist attack on an elementary school in Beslan, Russia. That atrocity resulted in the deaths of more than 300 people, most of them young children, though there is debate over whether the children were killed by Basaev and his associates, or by Russian police who stormed the school in a botched attempt to rescue the children whom Basaev was holding hostage.
That same year, 2004, of course, Klebnikov, was murdered. That murder has never been solved, and nor have the murders of numerous Russian journalists who reported extensively on Berezovsky. One of those journalists was named Anna Politkovskaya, and when she was assassinated in 2006, it was widely assumed in Russia that her mistake had been to report the same story that Klebnikov had reported. Politkovskaya had been regarded as being Russia’s best investigative journalist, and the American media establishment conferred upon her numerous awards for her reporting and for her efforts to maintain press freedoms in Russia. However, America’s free press failed to inform the public that Politkovskaya’s seminal investigative reporting had been about Berezovsky’s ties to Chechen organized crime and his role in securing the presidency for Vladimir Putin.