On Saturday, October 7, Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was found dead. She had been shot four times in an elevator. According to the Washington Post, “At least a dozen other journalists have been murdered in contract-style killings [in Russia] … and not one of those murders has been solved.” Every journalist in the country knows why Politkovskaya was murdered. They know it was a political killing. Under the updated and revised Soviet regime, which has no use for overt communism, the secret police do not come for you in the middle of the night. Charges of treason, wrecking or espionage aren’t manufactured for the sake of a prison term. The new KGB simply applies to its underworld allies and you are assassinated.

Immediately after Politkovskaya’s death, Russian President Vladimir Putin promised U.S. President George W. Bush to do everything in his power to solve the journalist’s murder. President Putin, however, made no such promise to the Russian people. In fact, he said nothing about Politkovskaya until cornered by journalists during a visit to Germany. And this is what the Russian president said: “Regardless of who has done this we must recognize that it is a hideous crime. However, as many reporters confirm, the degree of her influence on the country’s political development was insignificant.”

The Russian president was cold and correct, as usual. Politkovskaya was one of Russia’s last voices for freedom, and freedom in Russia has given up the ghost. Two years ago Anna Politkovskaya finished a book. It was titled Putin’s Russia: Life in a failing democracy. According to Politkovskaya’s introductory notes, “This book is about Vladimir Putin – but not, as he is normally viewed in the West, as seen through rose-colored glasses.” Among her disturbing revelations from inside Russia: first, that the Chechen government had been financed from Moscow; that “today’s Russian, brainwashed by propaganda, has largely reverted to Bolshevik thinking”; that the vast majority of big businessmen in Russia are former Communist Party officials; that the fall of the Soviet empire was merely the “fall of the visible structures of the Soviet system” while secret structures remained in place. Who in the West could absorb such revelations? “The return of the Soviet system with the consolidation of Putin’s power is obvious,” she wrote. Gorbachev’s New Economic Policy (NEP) ended as Lenin’s NEP ended. It fooled the capitalists, who invested in Russia. It fooled Western leaders, who no longer think of Russia as a threat. This great deception has thereby disarmed the West as it brought money and technology to Russia for rebuilding the country’s antiquated heavy and military industries. It does indeed appear that the “collapse of communism” was orchestrated and planned. And now that six thousand KGB officers have taken direct charge of the Russian government, we must ask the question that Politkovskaya asked: “Is the return to power of the secret police a coincidence?”

This is the fundamental question of our time because the KGB is the world’s most dangerous, most heavily armed criminal gang in the world. It is now the mother of all mafias, the fountainhead of terror and the mainstay of a planet-wide anti-American movement. If given a true account, Russia would be found to have more weapons of mass destruction than any other country. Its government plots with all the rogue states and terror regimes worldwide.

To what end?

Russia’s authoritarian rulers hate America and the system of economic liberty called “capitalism.” The attempt to enable this system in Eastern Europe has been thwarted by hidden communist structures. “There is a great fashion at present for bogus political movements created by directive from the Kremlin,” Politkovskaya wrote. “We don’t want the West suspecting that we have a one-party system, that we lack pluralism and are relapsing into authoritarianism.” A lone voice for the KGB’s latest victims, Anna Politkovskaya was assassinated for telling the truth.

The KGB was long ago tasked with destroying freedom. It is also tasked with bringing America to its knees. It has created, supported and fueled international terrorism for decades. KGB-directed false flag terrorism in Chechnya has justified the re-establishment of dictatorship in Russia (see the work of former KGB/FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, author of Blowing Up Russia). What we have to understand is that the KGB’s murderous intentions extend far beyond the borders of Russia, far beyond the victimization of Chechny. The Moscow-directed false-flag terrorism of Chechnya is only one leg of a two-legged monster. The Chechens are merely guinea pigs for testing new weapons and new methods. One day these weapons will be used on Americans.

In the last paragraph of Politkovskaya’s book, she stated: “All we hear from the outside world is ‘al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda,’ a wretched mantra for shuffling off responsibility for all the bloody tragedies yet to come, a primitive chant with which to lull a society desiring nothing more than to be lulled back to sleep.” And yes, the West is asleep and wishes to remain asleep. America accepts, as a matter of convenience, the rise of KGB President Putin. “We cannot just sit back and watch political winter close in on Russia for several more decades,” she warned. The problem is not simply Russia’s. An emerging coalition of countries, secretly led by Russia for purposes of destructive warfare, is a global problem. But the West has always believed the Kremlin lies. It believed Stalin’s lies. It believed Brezhnev’s lies. It believed Gorbachev’s lies. And Putin knows we will believe his lies. We say to ourselves that Russia is unimportant because Russia is poor. No, my friends, Russia is dangerous because Russia’s rulers have nuclear weapons and they have mastered the criminal underworld. The Kremlin can neutralize the security services of any country through blackmail and murder. It can sabotage the most powerful economy through false flag terrorism. It may eventually wage nuclear war without regard to economic or environmental consequences. The KGB’s intellectual forebears regarded capitalist civilization with contempt. Let it burn. Such were the teaching of Marx, Engels, Lenin and many American university professors.

The death of Politkovskaya is openly acknowledged in Russia as a political assassination. As such, it sends a chill through those who know the truth. Who will dare to warn the West in yet another book? Who would give their life in an appeal to the apathetic sneers of the indifferent?

Such is the tragedy of Anna Politkovskaya.