I received an email from Peter Byrne, a reporter for the Kyiv Post directing me to his blog and this interesting perspective on the SBU and the New York Times article on the role of intelligence officers (siloviki) in the Orange Revolution.
Stanislav Reutsky doesn’t write spy novels for a living.
But to hear the story of the 15-year veteran journalist’s recent run-in with the nation’s top spy agency, you’d think he might want to start.
The 41-year-old journalist was invited to the State Security Services headquarters (SBU) on Jan. 17 for an “interview” after revealing previously unreported and unflattering details about shady deals struck by the nation’s espionage chiefs.
Rechinsky authored “Big Changes in Store for the SBU,” published on Jan. 14 by ORD (www.ord.com.ua) - an irreverent new Internet site specializing in scandals about corruption in government.
(...)
The SBU has been involved in numerous scandals in recent years, including Tapegate, an unsolved mystery involving recordings implicating President Leonid Kuchma in the beheading of Georgy Gongadze, the editor of Ukrainska Pravda (www.pravda.com.ua). Like ORD, the site published reports about the nation’s corrupt politicians.
In what appears to be an oddly connected story, the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune on Jan. 17 ran a 3,800-word feature about the allegedly heroic roles played by Smeshko, Galaka and Sarnatsky in preventing Interior Ministry troops from storming Independence Square during protests on Nov. 28.
Serhiy Popkov, the commander of troops from Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, dismissed the charge. He responded curtly in an interview with the national daily tabloid Segodnya on Jan. 18 saying he was "surprised" by the NYT’s interpretation of the events, insisting that the so-called deployment was merely as a drill.According to SBU spokeswoman Marina Ostapenko, the version told to the NYT by her bosses was accurate, if not exaggerated.
“No big mistakes in the article, just a tad too melodramatic,” she said.
Emphasis mine.
So, was the NYT duped? Were the SBU officers using the situation to trump up their roles in order to make themselves look like heroes? Was this a case of people trying to save their necks or were their actions honestly heroic? Or did the NYT knowingly exaggerate events for dramatic effect?
The quote attributed to Ostapenko is interesting because it seems to corroborate what the NYT article says without really denying that the whole story a fabrication. The implication is that the story told to the NYT was not the same one published in the paper.
Stay tuned, I hope.
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