THE LESS YOU KNOW, THE BETTER YOU SLEEP:
In its September 2009 GQ carried an interesting article by Scott Anderson on the September 1999 apartment bombings in Russia that left hundreds dead and led to Vladimir Putin’s rise to power. The piece profiled former Russian FSB officer Mikhail Trepashkin and collected evidence suggesting that the bombings were perpetrated by the FSB rather than by Chechen terrorists.
It was the kind of intriguing investigative piece that most publications would have featured prominently, but GQ buried it. Purchasing a copy of the magazine, I first spent several minutes trying to find the issue’s table of contents (I gave up), and then the article itself, afraid I’d blown $4.50 on the wrong issue of the magazine. I found the article at page 246 of the September issue. NPR explained the mystery behind GQ’s treatment of the story.
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Satter’s National Review article “The unsolved mystery behind the act of terror that brought Vladimir Putin to power” provides a good summary. David Pryce-Jones reviewed the book for National Review in “Russia moves toward a reckoning.”
Related: Vladimir Putin — KGB Agent: New video by historian Mark Felton.