published in Eastern Economist #452, October 1, 2002
I was supposed to be away on vacation for another week, but
the situation in the country is getting out of hand. Apparently, the US has
decided that the voice Maj. Mykola Melnychenko has on tape in at least one
fairly compromising conversation does belong to Ukraine’s president, Leonid
Kuchma. It’s about time.
This
charade has been going on for nearly two years now, ever since November 2000,
when Socialist leader Oleksandr Moroz first blew the story open in Ukraine’s
legislature.
When
the tapes first started circulating in Ukraine, there was no doubt in most
people’s minds that it was, for better or for worse, the voice of their
president. The man whom, just a year earlier, they had re-elected after a
fairly questionable campaign that left him and the Communist Party leader as
the only two in a run-off.
The
conversations published then were between Leonid Kuchma and Leonid Derkach, the
head of the Secret Service, and Yuriy Kravchenko, the chief of police. They
resembled mostly backroom chat among officials airing their private beefs about
the media and other matters that beleaguered top officials are wont to complain about.
At
the time, the first thing everybody commented on was the foulness of Mr.
Kuchma’s language. It wasn’t just locker-room talk. It was the language of a
person who did not seem to be able to say more than three words in a row
without one of them being foul. Worse, he showed little imagination even in his
foulness, using the same four-letter word over and over – one that is most
commonly associated with the language of teenage boys.
The
second thing was the content. The tapes came in the wake of the disappearance
of an obscure but pesky journalist, Georgiy Gongadze, and the discovery of a
dead body near Kyiv. On the tape, Mr. Kuchma was heard making some suggestions
for getting rid of the nuisancy journalist by “dropping him down among the
Chechens in his gaunchies.”
Admittedly,
that might have been highly uncomfortable, possibly embarrassing, for Gongadze.
But nothing more “serious” was revealed in the conversations that have so far
been publicized. The steps from there to a headless corpse in Tarashcha are
certainly not obvious from the taped conversations aired to date.
Yes,
Ukraine’s president came off as somewhat less brilliant than a rocket scientist
and less well-bred than Emily Post. But there are any number of heads of state
that could be described in equally unflattering terms.
But
this newest transcription is different. It does not reveal a conversation
between a Head of State and a high government official.
It
reveals a conversation between a mafia don and one of his underlings. There is
no other way to describe the content of such a conversation. Here’s what
happens if you change the names:
Larry: There’s
a request for a special operation. Our Jordanian contact says Mohammed wants
four Kolchugas. He’s offering a hundred million bucks cash.
Lenny: What’s
a f'n Kolchuga?
Larry: It’s
a passive anti-aircraft radar, boss. Keeps enemy MiGs off yer turf.
Lenny: Who the f-k makes it?
Larry: Topaz,
Tommy’s crowd. Four of them makes a set, and it goes for a hundred million.
Lenny: Can
you sell it without the f'n Jordanian?
Larry: Sure,
boss. I suggest we get Billy to take care of it. Look at system we have to ship
stuff from here to Iraq. The Kolchuga sits on a KrAZ anyway, so we crate them
along with a bunch of KrAZ’s, that’s all. What’s going to give away that
they’re Kolchugas and not just a lot of KrAZs like we usually ship. So a couple
of our boys go along for the ride with fake passports to install and deploy it.
Lenny: Make
sure the f'n Jordanian doesn’t blab. Those f-kers'll be keeping an eye on the
shipment.
Larry: Who’ll
be keeping an eye on it? We’re not selling them anything new, the Jordies, I
mean. But don’t worry, we’ll be careful.
Lenny: OK.
Go ahead.
Larry: Roger.
Thanks.
This was in July. Nine months later, in late February, Der Spiegel, a major German
weekly, finds a link to Iraq. Two firms in the city of Mannheim are suspected
of being involved in illegal arms export to Iraq and of violating the UN trade
embargo against this country. Their operations are being handled out through
another small company in Germany which had connections leading to Britain,
Switzerland – and Lenny’s home town.
Soon,
the FBI will start sniffing at Lenny’s door. Barely a week after this story
hits the papers, Larry shows up dead in a car crash. In broad daylight. In the
car with him was an underling who claims he fell asleep at the wheel. In broad
daylight.
Now,
put the right names back into the story. •
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