To talk about the train and these cannot be when the United States goes down. They gave them money to enforce. Right now i just have an assumption that its pretty logical. I dont think anybody on one more [speaking spanish] [speaking spanish] [speaking spanish] [speaking spanish] looking at Central America which was very important to. Especially in the context of mexico. Having applied for the last 20 years. They are from one to another to another. [inaudible] if i have the answer i write another book just with those. What happened in Central America because it is very diverse and you cannot compare coaster rica its not. Its the biggest construction of the state. Thats the first chapter of the book. The states. [speaking spanish] i think thats a huge problem that society was built i covered to Police Massacres and one of eight people [inaudible] if the crossfire but for example, 16 years than they have just one bullet inside her mouth and theres another. There is that massacre on the human rights reports. They survived the massacre. She hears how his son begged for his life and she just talked with us. She hears how the police told her son and just talked with journalists because we counter so tha what does that tell you t the state you have a mother who doesnt believe in the state even after they killed her son. What can happen in a society where a mother in the best of the case goes with journalists and publish the story that we have about how to publish the story. The states and of the government and institutions. [applause] [applause] i want to thank everybody else here who helped make this happ happen. Ooscar can sign books. They are on sale here. 50 off so we can have the trafficking books. This is not a reality tv show. It is as real as it gets. We will make America Great aga again. A former moscow correspondent for the Financial Times argues that the Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin presided over the criminalization of russia. Mr. Satter was the first journalist to be kicked out of russia since the fall of the soviet union. This book is the less you know the better you sleep. Um. We welcome those that join him n the heritage. Org website as well as those joining in the future. We remind all of the outside viewers you are welcome to send comments at any time emailing speaker heritage. Org we will appreciate checking your mobile devices to see if they have been silenced or turned off as a courtesy to the presenters. We will post the program on that page following the presentation for everyones future reference es future r as well. Is doctor broman is the Research Fellow at the American Relations part of the Margaret Thatcher center for freedom. He joined heritage as the director of National Security studies teaching diplomatic history and grand strategy and was a lecturer in history and affairs for the masters of arts program. A columnist for newsday and thes post and the right of commentary for other news outlets and is an adjunct professor at the Strategic Studies Program at Johns Hopkins university schoola of advanced international studies. Please join me in welcoming tim. [applause] thanks very much. Its a tremendous pleasure toem welcome my good friend davidid satter at the foundation to speak on his latest book published just two days ago the less you know the better you sleep under yeltsin and putin. The story david tells us the storstory as is a double tragede rise through acts of domestic terrorism and criminality of the regime of Vladimir Putin and the failure to understand what was actually happening in russia. In reading the book i was very b struck by the comment made and i will read it for you now. I critical to the credence given in the west to the russian explanations with an ability to accept the idea that the regime that murdered hundreds of its own citizens and a terrified the nation to hold onto power. The refusal however came at a cost. The crippled policy towards russia rendered it naive and didnt affect the relation to the reality i think it is fair to say that there were few people who tried harder to drive the image of russia back towards reality than david satter. David graduated and went on to become a Rhodes Scholar at oxford from 1976 to 82 he was the moscow correspondent for the Financial Times and since they served as a special correspondent on the sovietde affairs for the wall streetstrt journal as the fellow andity senior fellow at the Foreign PolicyResearch Institution in philadelphia as Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution and ap variety of prestigious academicf institutions. Capping all of this on this one he received in 2013 when he was the first journalist to beeivedh expelled by russia towards the end of the cold war. David has testified for the newspapers and publications in the u. S. And around the world. The decline and fall of the soviet Union Published in 1996, darkness at dawn the rise of the russian criminal state published in 2003 and was a longtime ago and it never happened anyway russia and communist past published in 2011. After davids remarks he will be glad to take questions in their copies of davids book available for sale in the lobby. His schedule after his remarks is fairly tight but he will be available for a few minutes afterwards to sign copies of his book. For now the eight welcome david satter to the Heritage Foundation and invite him to speak on the less you know, the better you will sleep russias road to terror and dictatorship under yeltsin and putin. David. [applause] thank you very much tired and thanks to all of you for coming. The history of postsoviet russia is a history that should concern more than just russians because russia has become and has revealed itself to be in recent years and aggressive states ready to disrupt the existing framework of international relations. Since the second world war, there had been no case of a successful seizure of territory and provisional borders by a country that was considered to be part of the civilized world and was a party in fact innumerable international agreements. The seizure of crimea in effect was a break in the postwar european and global border that should have been an event that inspired real serious contemplation and thinking on the part of the u. S. About the nature of the russian regime. After all, if the russian leaders are so contemptuous of the world order, that order that has been responsible for keeping the peace since the second world war, is there something deeper involved . What kind of regime is this and were we mistaken when we in a whole series of policies toward russia extended goodwill toward backcountry and treated it really as a nation with which its possible for the United States to develop trusting and mutually dependent relations . In fact, the core of the misunderstanding is reflected in a single set of incidents that took place in 1999 what brought putin to power, which guaranteed the security of president yeltsin, that laid the foundation for the future dictatorship and that culminated and in effect brought to the logical the criminalization that it taken place in the 1990s. These were the apartment bombings in russia that took place in the city in the region of dagestan in moscow. The apartment bombings caused 300 lives in a terror as the country and they created the conditions for a new war in chechnya. That war was very convenient and very fortuitous because on the eve of that war the that popularity rating of yeltsin was 2 . Now sociologists understand that any Public Opinion poll, 6 of the responders dont understand the question so it was really debatable whether anyone in russia supported yeltsin and that his chosen successor Vladimir Putin, a littleknown former head of the fsb, the Security Police and the successor organizations of the kgb was similarly supported by 2 of the russian population. Seemed impossible that anyone associated with yeltsin could win in the 2000 elections that were scheduled and it was for that reason it was widely believed in moscow at that time that some type of massive revocation was going to take ways to make it possible for yeltsin and his entourage to declare marshall law and cancel the elections. The explosion of the buildings seem to be suspiciously timed to guarantee exactly that result. There were 30,000 Apartment Buildings in moscow alone. Patrols were organized in every one of those buildings because people were afraid to go to sleep at night for fear of being blown up in their beds. It was said that there was a chechen trail. No one suggested that there was chechen proof and in fact the chechens denied having any connection to those bombings. But the trail was enough to mobilize the country which had been opposed to a second war in chechnya and to make it possible for the Political Leadership to again invade chechnya. The first chechen war was a disaster. It was organized hurriedly and unprepared troops were thrown into battle in the narrow streets that were annihilated in the war dragged on for two years and ended with the victory by the chechen guerrillas. The second war was much better prepared and the tactics that were used were much more violent the indiscriminate showing including of refugee columns followed ultimately by security sweeps in which thousands of people disappeared but from the point of view of a not very well informed russian public it appeared that Vladimir Putin who had been put in charge of the war, even before he was elected resident, was carrying out the war effectively, was avenging the attack on innocent russian people who were murdered in their beds by terrorists with no mercy and no moral values at all. He is a result became a National Hero. His poppy or degrading went up dramatically to the point where a person to refuse to campaign who had no local career previous to being appointed Prime Minister and put in charge of the chechen war whose most important experience was in the Security Services who is completely lacking in charisma, who refuse to debate his opponents or even discuss his issues, any of the issues facing the country. Nonetheless on the strength of his supposed that avenging of the terrorist attack launched against innocent russian civilians suddenly became a National Hero. That National Hero was elected president in 2000. There was only one problem. And that was a fifth bomb was discovered in the basement of an Apartment Building in the city southeast of moscow. After for bombings its fair to say that the entire country was in a state of panic. No one knew when the next bombing was going to take place or where. A bombing had taken place in the provincial city. That was a signal that any city could be the scene of the next terrorist attack. As a result in reassigned as in many russian cities people were on edge and they were looking for the slightest sign that we too might even next victims and residents of the building noticed that three people were behaving suspiciously out in front of the building and were scaring sacks of an unknown substance into the basement. They called the police and the police did want to go down there because in fact itd been used used as a lavatory by the local drunks and derelicts but the residents insisted. The police went down they bolted back up the stairs and they said theres a bomb down there. The entire building was evacuated and not just the building but the entire corridor. Everyone. The night on the street. The building was tested, im sorry the bomb was tested and tested positive for hexagon which is the high explosive that was used in the other for bombings. The local police and the local fsb cordoned off basically the entire city. It was impossible for anyone to enter or to leave. Long lines of cars extended for miles on the outskirts. They couldnt get into the city. Nobody and no one could depart the city. No one could take a train out of the city and nobody could fly out of the city. A telephone call was overheard on the interurban telephone by an attentive telephone operator. Someone was saying that they have got the whole city surrounded, how do we get out of here . A voice said, break up and leave one by one. The operator was convinced that she was listening to the terrorists and she gave the number to the local police and fsb. They called the number come expecting to be connected to the chechen terrorists. They were connected instead to the fsb central headquarters in moscow, the Security Police. A description of the persons who had placed the bomb in the basement was provided and they were caught and they were arrested and promptly produced fsb documents. Now the russian authorities were in a very difficult position. They had announced that the residents had successfully repented a terrorist attack. The terrorists have been caught but who did they turn out to be but fsb agents . The head of the fsb got on National Television literally hours after it had been announced that the terrorists were caught and said actually this was not an attempt at a terrorist act. It was a general intended to test the residents for vigilance and the residents have performed brilliantly. They showed that they were in fact very vigilant. And the fsb congratulated them on their own wariness of the threat facing the nation and afterwards they were even, some of the key people were even given gifts including a television set. But the residents absolutely did not believe that this was any kind of test. They were convinced that the bomb was genuine and they asked why is it that they were forced to stay out on the street for 24 hours if this was just a test . Why were they not informed afterwards that it was a test or warned beforehand that there might be a test and more to the point, if this was a test, why was the bomb immediately seized by the fsb and sequestered and why were the agency put the bomb in the building shielded so that no one could ask them any questions even though this by the way is a direct violation of the law on the law and security in russia according to which you cannot declare state secrets, anything that involves a violation of human rights or security of the population. Those materials are now sequestered for 75 years but nonetheless, the questions have not disappeared. It was a chaotic time in russia. The president ial elections were about to take place and the bombing of chechnya in response to the supposed that terrorist acts was being escalated as was the invasion of the country itself. But doubts remained and they were raised by at that time the still relatively free russian media, but in the fastmoving flow of quite dramatic events, the subject managed to get buried in there were not the forces in Russian Society which is not like american society, replete with ngos, independent press and people with a democratic tradition and a readiness to challenge authorities proved itself not to be capable of raising the issue on a sustained basis. There were motions in the state duma to investigate the strange events that those motions were voted down with the help of the monolithic support of the pro Putin United Party as it was then called, an independent commission was formed to investigate the offense and its members began to be murdered one by one. The first person to die was Sergei Yushenkov. I met him in the state duma and i also took an interest in what happened in a reassigned and i interviewed the residents of the buildings and the police. Even the police did not believe that this was in a kind Training Exercise and that when i told them i cant test them about the Training Exercise, they all began to laugh ironically as if i was saying something totally ridiculous. But i met Sergei Yushenkov weeks before he was shot in front of his own Apartment Building and he told me that he was going to do Everything Possible as i was trying to do at the same time, to bring out the truth about what happened in ryazan and the truth of how this regime came to power. Three months later another member of the social commission which was trying to investigate was poisoned and died a horrific death. Two other people who raised this issue were Alexander Litvinenko and on a poll of costco yet. The leading investigative journalist, she argued that the 1996 president ial elections, im sorry in 2004 president ial elections in which putin ran for reelection were the last chance to raise seriously the issue of what happened in ryazan and who really blew up those buildings. She was shot as she got out of the elevator in her apartment holding. Alexander but then you go who used a lot of the same materials that i did but simply taking advantage of his experiences as a former fsb officer provided commentary about what was normal fsb procedure. He died as a result of being poisoned with a radioactive isotope. As a result of this series of killings i became literally the only person left who was raising this issue publicly, protected by the fact that im an american citizen and also participated in the political process in washington. I cant say that i have had overwhelming success and calling this to the attention of the political world in washington but i do write about it in the wall str