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Boris Yeltsin, LTTE and the Indian Gumshoes
30 April 2007
Finally on
April 23, 2007 (Monday), 76 year-old
Boris Yeltsin, the former President of
Russia, fell to a fatal hit � not from the LTTE, but - from the Grim Reaper.
Those who wonder when did LTTE had designs on Yeltsin�s life have to believe
this. My source is none other than the Madras Hindu newspaper, which
prides itself in having strong pipelines to the movers and shakers of Indian
policy and diplomacy. To chew on this �cooked-up� Yeltsin-LTTE connection,
please rewind the time to 1993.
Deceit
of Indian gumshoes
In those
years of pre-internet era, the Madras Hindu (International edition � a
weekly broadsheet) was in my subscription list. In the February 27, 1993 issue
of this broadsheet, I was amused to read a news brief date-lined �Moscow,
Feb.19, 1993�, which informed the readers, under the titillating caption �Tamil
militants tried to kill Yeltsin: aide�:
� The
Indian security service in coordination with Russian VIP security department
officials foiled a plot by Sri Lankan militants to assassinate the
President, Mr.Boris Yeltsin, during his visit to India last month, according
to the chief of the presidential security, Lt.Gen.Mikhail Barsukov. He told
the influential daily Nezavisimoya Gazeta in an interview that the
Tamil terrorists had undergone special training and had had combat
experience in Lebanon. The terrorists had wanted to attract international
attention and force some of their conditions on India, including the release
of arrested terrorists, Lt.Gen.Barsukov said.�
In my
Pirabhakaran Phenomenon (2005) book, I had provided a brief deconstruction
of this cockamamy �plant� provided by the Indian
gumshoes to the Madras Hindu
paper. To quote,
�Though
LTTE was not mentioned by name, other tangential references such as the use of
euphemistic term �terrorist� and the phrase �Sri Lankan Tamil militants� in the
news release indicated that the RAW operatives had fed the story to be planted
in the Moscow daily. Only quoted named source was Lt.Gen.Mikhail Barsukov, who
in all probability would have been a toady to Yeltsin, the then Russian leader.
What was missing in the planned assassination-plot story was, answers to
questions, �Who was the assassin?�, �Where the assassin was captured� and �How
the assassin attempted to kill Yeltsin?�� [page 350]
Whenever
feasible, I always double check my past assertions from more than one source. If
this unbelievable LTTE assassination plot on Yeltsin in 1993 was indeed true, it
should have appeared in other mainstream news sources from the West as well.
After hearing the death of Yeltsin, I checked the Lexis Nexis database for the
year 1993 with the key search phrases �Boris Yeltsin� and �LTTE� or its other
variants such as �Tamil Tigers�. Not a single item turned up. To confirm this
search, I then did a second search using the key search phrases �Boris Yeltsin�
and �assassination� for the period covering 1980 to 2007. In this search, 9
items were retrieved, but not a single one was related to India or Sri Lanka or
LTTE. Thus, score one for the electronics revolution and the easy access of
multiple databases which enables analysts like me to detect deceit in the �news
plants� of Indian gumshoes.
Yeltsin�s coolness to Indian bungling
Its now an
open secret that Boris Yeltsin never warmed up to India in the 1990s, mainly due
to the inept bungling of Indian Poo-Bahs of how they handled the botched plot of
Soviet Communists against Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991. That was when
Yeltsin delivered his prime-time bravura performance to the world. But Indian
Poo-Bahs were applauding the wrong team, by sending a premature �diplomatic
recognition� to the inept Communist coup plotters. One can easily infer that
Yeltsin never forgave India�s foreign policy makers for this false step. Here
are two excerpts from the cover-story �India�s Foreign Policy Losing Direction�,
which appeared in the India Today magazine of December 15, 1991, by
Shekhar Gupta and Shahnaz Anklesaria Aiyar. To quote,
�Beginning
with Prime Minister P.V.Narasimha Rao�s immortal homily to �over-enthusiastic
reformers� on the day of the abortive coup in Moscow, the last three months have
seen an unprecedented degree of drift in foreign policy��
�Soviet
sources express exasperation at India�s lingering nostalgia for �the good old
days� of the Cold War � when Mrs Gandhi could ask Leonid Brezhnev for five
million tonnes of crude at a banquet table, and get it�
Solanki�s
[the then Minister of External Affairs - MEA] Moscow visit and India�s belated
approach to Yeltsin raised further questions. First of all, India showed
pragmatism in making Solanki meet Yeltsin as an envoy of the prime minister and
Mikhail Gorbachev as a mere foreign minister. The distinction was noted in
Moscow. But Yeltsin was abrupt and wanted India to sign a treaty directly with
him, decisively acknowledging Russia as the rightful inheritor to the power and
position of the Soviet Union. Yeltsin and the new Russian leadership seem to
have a poor understanding of India and India has done little to remedy that.
Shockingly, it was the first time an Indian official met Yeltsin after the coup.
Ignoring Yeltsin all this while, before and after the coup, is one of MEA�s
greatest failures. Analysts blame it on a nostalgic commitment to the Kremlin
old guard. Having been so close to the Soviets, India should have had a better
sense of the impending changes. But knowing that a united Communist USSR was in
India�s long-term interest, the MEA became a prisoner of wishful thinking.�
One can
surely add a rejoinder that the Ministry of External Affairs in India is not an
exception to have suffered (and continues to suffer) from this malaise of
wishful thinking. India�s other institutions, including the Intelligence
Agencies and House of Hindu publishers also suffered from the same malady. The
non-existent Yeltsin assassination plot by LTTE in 1993 was a clear example of
how the Indian gumshoes operated to curry some cheap favor from the then toadies
of Yeltsin.
Another
Yeltsin �death-watch� story
While on
the theme of Yeltsin death-watch, I provide the following excerpts from a 2004
commentary by Stephen Sestanovich (professor of international diplomacy at
Columbia University, and US ambassador at large for the former Soviet Union from
1997 to 2001) which I trawled from the New York Times archives. It�s
something to savor and confirms the open secret that even the American gumshoes
don�t get it correct � with all their high tech snooping potential. To quote
Prof.Sestanovich,
�My
favorite is from August 1998 when, with Bill Clinton just three days away from a
trip to Moscow, the Central Intelligence Agency reported that President Boris
Yeltsin of Russia is dead.
In 1998
the news that Mr.Yeltsin had died was, of course, no more surprising than the
news, in 2003, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It matched what we
knew of his health and habits, and the secretive handling of his earlier
illnesses. Nor was anyone puzzled by the lack of an announcement. Russia�s
financial crash 10 days earlier had set off a political crisis, and we assumed a
fierce Kremlin succession struggle was raging behind the scenes.
In the
agonizing conference calls that ensued, all government agencies played their
usual parts. The CIA stood by its sources but was uncomfortable making any
recommendation. National Security Council officials, knowing Mr.Clinton wasn�t
eager for the trip, wanted to pull the plug immediately. The State Department
(in this case, me) insisted we�d look pretty ridiculous canceling the meeting
because Mr.Yeltsin was dead � only to discover that he wasn�t.
Eventually
we decided that the Russians had to let the deputy secretary of state, Strobe
Talbott, who was in Moscow for pre-summit meetings, see Mr.Yeltsin within 24
hours or the trip was off. Nothing else would convince us: no phone call, no
television appearance, no doctor�s testimony. The next day Mr.Yeltsin, hale and
hearty, greeted Mr.Talbott in his office, and two days later Bill Clinton got on
the plane to Moscow.
When the
trip was over, I phoned the CIA analyst who had relayed the false report. He was
apologetic � sort of. �You have to understand�, he said. �We missed the Indian
and Pakistani nuclear tests last spring. We�re under a lot of pressure not to
miss anything else.�
Some of
the lessons of this episode are the same as those emerging from the Iraq debate:
sensitive intelligence is often too weak to guide important decisions; if the
information fits what we already believe, or what we want to do, it gets too
little scrutiny�� [New York Times, July 21, 2004]
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