Active Measures

Russians have learned that there

is an asymmetry in conventional warfare.

The Russian military does not match

How do you then balance out the asymmetry?

One way to do that is to invest in much cheaper measures.

These nonconventional active measures

to try to weaken western institutions,

undermine western democracies versus sending in the tanks.

Putin realizes that if we're divided as a nation

we cannot protect ourselves from threats within and without.

From the Russian point of view,

political warfare is just part of the art of war.

What they're driving at over the longer term

is to watch democracy crumble from the inside out.

I'm sitting with him at dinner.

I told him I'd been at the memorial

of the siege of Leningrad.

He said I'll tell you a story.

He said my father was one of those people

who was on the front lines.

And had gotten 24 hours off to go home.

As he was walking down the street to his apartment,

he saw a big pile of bodies which was not at all uncommon.

He saw a leg sticking out and a shoe on the foot

and he recognized that as being his wife.

So he stopped and he screamed

and said, well, that's my wife.

That's my wife.

I want my wife.

The body collectors told him to leave and he kept demanding.

At this point he's pulling his wife from under the pile.

He took her to their apartment

and nursed her back to health.

And then after the war she gave birth to Vladimir Putin.

Putin sees himself as literally pulling the body

of Russia out of the pile, the dust bin of history.

You know, we are going to revive you.

You are not dead.

And I will take care of you.

I mean, that is the mindset.

I think his ambitions always were to be the president

and then gather all the instruments of power

into the presidency.

His devotion to reasserting Russia's greatness

is certainly in his self?interest

because he wants to be the czar.

He wants to be the richest man in the world

and he wants to settle scores.

He made his way up through the KGB.

His role in the KGB

was to support Russian intelligence officers

living under assumed identities

under deep cover inside the United States

and developing active measures

to impact the policies of the United States.

The KGB was power.

If you said that you were with the KGB, doors were open.

People would stand aside.

In 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed,

every republic that emerged from the debris

of the Soviet Union agreed at the time

to recognize the republics in their then existing borders.

Putin, like many Russians, feels that the dissolution,

the dissolving of the Soviet Union

was a horrific thing because it made the Russian people

and Russia itself smaller.

And the Americans are celebrating all of this.

I think he's dedicated to building it back up.

The first time I met him in the spring of 1991,

he was the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg

working for the mayor whose name was Anatoly Sobchak.

Sobchak was this charismatic western leaning guy

allied with Boris Yeltsin.

His deputy was the exact opposite of that.

Non?descript, grave bureaucrat.

A very soft spoken.

Had you asked me back then to name a thousand people

that might be the next president of Russia

he would not have made my list.

He supported Mayor Sobchak

but he was also organizing this incredible network

of former KGB foreign economic interest and local interest.

In the 1990's St. Petersburg was known

for organized crime and corruption.

State institutions were partnering

with Kremlin organizations to rip off

as much as they could as fast as they could.

Putin was a pretty good fixer.

He could make stuff happen.

He knew how to work the system.

Mr. Putin was able as deputy mayor

to be the focal point of all of these different networks

as they came together.

He was made FSB director.

The FSB is responsible for internal spying.

These are the guys who have the most funding,

the most resources.

He learned which served him in good stead

how to maneuver politically.

That became his primary goal.

Power.

The FSB was simply a ladder.

Almost immediately after the breakup of the Soviet Union,

these oligarchs were able to take over

state owned enterprises at bargain basement prices.

It turned some of these individuals into multi?millionaires

or even billionaires almost overnight.

Under Yeltsin, the oligarchs

became very powerful and very independent.

And the power of the state was crumbling.

The end of the Yeltsin years he obtained

almost sort of a buffoonish type of personality.

You know, a drunk.

A little bit out of control.

Yeltsin was nervous and he chose to go with a guy

that he thought would protect his family and their assets.

That's, I think, the sole purpose why Putin

was selected to then run for president.

Followed by the bombings of the apartment houses.

There were a series of terrorist attacks in 1999.

They found evidence of the FSB

having been there and set that all up.

I know what has been alleged.

I find the evidence compelling and I know

those terrorist attacks helped Vladimir Putin

win the election.

I'm not ready to believe yet

and maybe that's just my idealism getting in the way

of my analytic side that the Russian government

would kill its own civilians to elect Putin president.

The apartment bombings were KGB operations

using a type of explosive that's only made

in a KGB facility.

Oh, sure.

It was very clever and the Russian people

began to look for a leader.

It's not the first time in history.

You can compare it in some degree

to the 1930's and the rise of Adolph Hitler.

With respect to democracy, I think it's pretty clear

from the very get go he feared independent actors.

Putin started forcing the independent media

to knuckle under, putting in state control,

turning it into propaganda outfits.

Started arresting people who had different points of view.

Then he starts going after independent journalists.

They start ending up dead.

Assassinated.

The most prominent journalist in Russia,

Anna Politkovskaya was murdered on Putin's birthday.

Putin brought the oligarchs to heel.

A number of them were forced to leave the country

Some were killed in mysterious fashions.

Those who remained are basically lapdogs of his.

Putin was letting everyone know

that this period of everybody getting to do

their own thing was very much over.

And then he brought his most trusted friends

and confidantes from the intelligence services

into the key positions, controlling all those businesses.

Vladimir Putin and his oligarchs used money,

essentially stolen from the Russian people.

If you're one of these big kleptocrats,

getting your stolen proceeds into a rule of law system

is one of your highest priorities.

Once that money is laundered, they have access

to western banks and they can do whatever they want.

Semion Mogilevich was the first big organized crime figure

in Russia who figured out how to launder massive amounts

out of Russia and the former Soviet Union.

Semion Mogilevich is worth about 10 billion dollars

according to FBI reports.

He's considered the money laundering genius.

He's sometimes called the brainy don

'cause he has a economics degree.

The most important of the Russian crime bosses.

The man who was for years on the 10 Most Wanted list

in the United States.

He still lives happily in Moscow today.

In Russia he still gets the VIP treatment

and is rarely without a bodyguard who chauffeurs him

and his 200,000 pound armor plated bomb proof limousine.

Why did you suss out companies

in the Channel Islands?

The problem was that I didn't know any other way.

Well, they taught us geography at school.

I was sick that day.

The Russian mafia is an adjunct of the Russian government.

I've described it as going from organized crime

under the Soviets to disorganized crime

under Yeltsin to organized crime again under Putin.

His networks recycle back to Mr. Putin's inner circle

and they continue to help maintain Mr. Putin's power.

To the point where today Putin may well be

the wealthiest man on the face of the planet.

Yeah. (laughs)

Yeah.

Everything I know that's interesting I can't tell you.

Now let me try to think of a way to go at 30,000 feet.

Yeah, I know where you're going with this