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- Since the beginning of the second campaign in Chechnya, both the FSB and the Interior Ministry should have boosted efforts to nip terrorist threats in the bud by penetrating separatist groups, said Gurov and Nikolai Leonov, a retired general and former head of the KGB's analytical department.
Both experts acknowledged that it is extremely difficult to plant informers inside tight-knit groups, like Chechen separatists, and that tapping their vaguely worded communications might have failed to provide crucial details of when and where they could strike.
However, even if they were unable to learn about the attack during the planning stage, law-enforcers could have netted some of the terrorists during their deployment, Gurov and Leonov said. This would have been possible if Moscow police had had an adequate network of agents in local Chechen gangs and cells of Islamist extremists, some of whose members have reportedly maintained close contacts with the separatists and have even fought on their side, the experts said. It would have been extremely difficult for the terrorists to sneak into the city, select and case out the target and carry out the attack without logistical support from such individuals or groups based in the Russian capital, they said.
Perhaps the most glaring failure was that as many as 50 terrorists managed to travel around Moscow in cars with arms and explosives, Karaganov said.
- Karaganov noted, however, that Russian security services have prevented terrorist attacks in the past and said it would be wrong to put the blame entirely on the FSB and Interior Ministry. Even if they operated efficiently and focused entirely on prevention, law-enforcement and security agencies would not be able to intercept all terrorists, Karaganov and Leonov said.
"It is like intelligence and counterintelligence," said Leonov, who worked in the KGB's intelligence unit. "The latter will always be at an advantage, because it picks where to act, while the former physically cannot protect everything."
To close the eerie parallels loop: despite 9/11, anthrax, Bali, and now Moscow, the US "remains 'dangerously unprepared' to deal with another major terrorist attack":
- "In all likelihood, the next attack will result in even greater casualties and widespread disruption to American lives and the economy" than the Sept. 11 attacks, said the task force chaired by former Sens. Gary Hart, D-Colo., and Warren Rudman, R-N.H. The report was released late Thursday.
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