Post-KGB Agency Given Wider Powers to Kill Russians

Acting on what President Medvedev notes to be his “direct instructions,” the Duma has just passed a draft law which would expand the official capabilities of the FSB, the state intelligence agency which inherited a great number of KGB agents – including Vladimir Putin – after the fall of the Soviet Union.  ”Every country has the right to perfect its laws,” Medvedev noted during a joint appearance with poor Angela Merkel, “including laws on special services.”

Despite concerns from many Westerners and a small minority of Russians, the change in policy bodes well for Russia’s commitment to the rule of law. Previously, the FSB had been in the habit of blowing up Russian apartment bombings and blaming these explosions on Chechen rebels as a pretext to re-invade Chechnya. Because such actions are technically illegal in Russia, they were necessarily kept secret, although not so secret that the facts of the case weren’t obvious to those of us who are in the business of keeping tabs on obvious things. Perhaps the FSB’s expanded legal sphere of action will allow the organization to come out of the closet, so to speak, and conduct further false flag operations without actually breaking any laws.

Now, critics might retort that it is difficult to conduct a false flag operation against one’s own countrymen while still obtaining the desired results of whipping up a population against some convenient enemy if one does all of this openly. I would simply note in response that we are speaking of a country in which tens of millions of people still admire Stalin, whose own conspiracy to kill Russians for what was likewise perceived to be a practical and necessary end was of orders of magnitude greater than the Russian apartment bombings of 1999.

Finally, I must apologize to to New York Times columnist and Pulitzer prize winner Thomas Friedman for mocking him in regards to his 2004 declaration that Russia “is now tilted in the right direction” in terms of democracy, transparency, and the rule of law. The coming codification of the FSB’s tendencies towards black ops against its own countrymen marks a great leap forward for Russia.

Having said all that, I remain concerned that the Kremlin is not doing sufficient background checks on certain guests brought on to those cable networks in which the Russian government is invested, financially and otherwise.