Well, I don't know what happened. In fact I posted it the second time and got a message about a duplicate comment, so I know for a fact that the system _has_ swallowed it. Maybe it will pop up later.
OK, anyway, here's the comment, slightly edited (brushed up the language, though not the structure).
Do with it what you want. If you want to post it with your replies, fine, I will reply in the comments. (Don't post my e-mail address plz.)
Caveat emptor: I see Putin and his corrupt conservative authoritarian regime as a total disaster for Russia; I have no use for FSB, the regime's faithful bulldog trying to crush the opposition. So me "defending" Putin and FSB in this instance means nothing more than that I detest what I see as unfounded conspiracy theories. If someone will accuse Hitler of eating babies, I will "defend" Hitler from such an accusation.
Before commenting on some of your claims let me make some preliminary remarks/inquiries regarding CTs. I will use 9/11 CT as an example because the structure of both CTs is almost identical - a government allegedly performs an "inside job" of demolishing some buildings/murdering people and blames it on Islamist terrorists, using it as a pretext for some action or another.
1. Do you consider the mere question of CIA involvement in 9/11 to be legitimate? I'm not even talking about any conclusions, simply the question.
If you don't consider it to be legitimate now, was there ever a period you considered it to be legitimate? (E.g., between 9/11 and the date when the official report was released, or some such interval.)
Do you think that people that do consider such questions legitimate are kooks?
Do you think that the American mainstream considers such people to be kooks?
2. If you don't consider the mere question of CIA involvement to be legitimate, how can you justify such a question being legitimate in regard to FSB and the 1999 bombings without being inconsistent?
(I'm pretty sure you won't reply with anything like "CIA good, FSB bad", "America good, Russia bad", "Bush good, Putin bad" crap, so I'm genuinely curious as to your reply.)
3. Would you agree that most people (including most "pundits") consider 9/11 truthers to be nutters not because most people have an in-depth knowledge of all the relevant issues (from Middle East politics to steel beam mechanics), but because the 9/11 CT itself is prima facie absurd, and thus they reject the 9/11 CT out of hand, without going into a long and arduous study of all the arguments and counter-arguments?
It is, after all, a major conspiracy theory with a seemingly non-totalitarian government murdering its citizens to frame some other people, and I would say that the empirical (though of course not "logical") rule regarding these theories is that it is more or less safe to reject them out of hand.
If so, isn't it legitimate for these people (including "pundits") to reject the FSB bombings CT out of hand without going into all the arguments and counter-arguments? (And yes, they "may" be wrong, just as anti-truthers "may" be wrong, that is not the issue.)
And if it is legitimate for them to reject it out of hand, surely the fact that they don't hold these bombings against Putin doesn't mean that they're pro-Putin, that they're complacent, contemptible, etc.?
Now to the heart of the matter.
4. What credible evidence can you adduce for your claim that FSB was behind the bombings?
I understand that there is no single definition of "credible". But here are some types of arguments that seem to be intrinsically not credible to me: qui bono arguments, which never prove much; where there's smoke there's fire arguments; testimonies _too_ tainted by bias which simultaneously lack credible corroboration.
5. "Our main arguments all have to do with the bombing, such as the FSB agents being arrested after having planted a bomb identical to the others"
I'm not sure what you're talking about. You probably mean Ryazan' incident, but nobody was arrested then.
According to the official information, that was a case of an anti-terror drill gone bad. This looks very probable to me, including all the alleged defects during this drill, since this is the usual Russian SNAFU.
You may not accept the official version, but you still have to show beyond the reasonable doubt that it is false, one way or another, if you're going to blame FSB.
The official version, while not without quirks, seems at least prima facie reasonable. For one, because FSB did indeed perform similar drills even before 22.9.99.
E.g. in this program on 16.9.99
https://echo.msk.ru/programs/beseda/11242/the then head of TsOS FSB Zdanovich openly talks about a fake IED which they had planted somewhere in Volkhonka (Moscow) during a drill. Interestingly, Litvinenko and Felshtinskij used this incident to "prove" that there were cover-up drills _after_ the Ryazan' incident. Which kinda says something about the value of their book.
6. Even if you succeed in undermining the official version, this alone doesn't let you jump to the most extreme conclusion, namely, that FSB tried to blow up the building in Ryazan' and therefore it is also responsible for the rest of the acts of terror.
There is an (admittedly speculative) intermediate version which I will accept much sooner than the FSB-did-it conclusion, namely, that there was an earnest attempt to imitate the _prevention_ of the act of terror for PR value, which went bad. In this case there is both a conspiracy and a cover-up, but no proven intent to murder anyone and no proven connection to the other bombings.
I.e. you will have to disprove this version too before jumping to the last possible conclusion on the Ryazan' incident. (If you still want to use the incident as evidence, that is.)
7. "or the Speaker of the Duma being handed a note and then mistakenly announcing a bombing in a Russia city that didnt end up happening for another couple of days (he was meant to announce the bomb that had went off that day in another city)"
Seleznyov said on 13.9.99 in the context of the terror attacks in Moscow and Dagestan:
"Here's another message being transmitted. According to a message from Rostov-on-Don, today at night a residential building was blown up in Volgodonsk".
(The "message" probably being in the running news feed, not in a separate note; at least there is no evidence that this was a "note".)
The famous terror act, when a building was blown up with IIRC 18 or 19 victims happened on 16.9.99 which gave a reason for some to claim that Seleznyov was referring to the future event and thus all of it had been planned by the Russian higher-ups.
This is ridiculous. The building was blown up on 16th, thus whether the event planned or not, Seleznyov could not have referred to it on the 13th.
The explanation usually given for this by the conspirologists is absurd beyond any measure: it was the FSB's mistake, they had leaked the info earlier than necessary. Except of course they somehow leaked it only to a single "public" person, Seleznyov. Why wasn't it leaked to any newspapers, TV, etc.? Because if we suppose that there is some devious sekrit preparation of news going on, then surely it is done on a massive scale, with the news items distributed to many sources at once.
But it's hard even to suppose that such a sekrit news preparation would accidentally contain this tidbit. Why would anyone bother with inserting it? How could it have happened even accidentally?
The news is reported as events happen. There is no need to prepare and plant news items beforehand. If FSB planned this bombing, there is no reason to suppose they would "plant" anything like that, the explosion would happen and the press would report it automatically, because that's what it does. What, then, is the purpose of the supposedly planted news item?
So this particular conspiracy bit makes no sense whatsoever. It certainly can't serve as any sort of evidence for the CT in question.
But what was Seleznyov referring to? This is easily explained by looking at the news of what had happened the day before in Volgodonsk.
http://www.polit.ru/news/1999/09/13/536535.htmlhttp://somnenie.narod.ru/bl/volgodonsk/zapisk2.html
There was a powerful explosion in a Volgodonsk apartment building (though the building itself was not destroyed), 2 or 3 passers-by were injured by flying debris (presumably glass). Later it was found that this was an assassination attempt against some criminal authority.
There were no fatalities, but the press (including the central RIA "Novosti") did carry items about this explosion. Thus Seleznyov was referring to this particular incident.
Undoubtedly conspirologists will point out that Seleznyov's remark made a much stronger claim: "...a residential building was blown up in Volgodonsk". But they ignore the fact that this was an offhand remark, not a literal quote, about an explosion in a Volgodonsk building, which, of course, was made in light of the previous explosions which had happened on 4.9.99, 9.9.99 and in the very same day, 13.9.99, in the morning (the Kashirskoje shosse explosion). In these explosions the buildings _were_ blown up, so Seleznyov must've made the wrong assumption in the heat of the moment.
Indeed, the comment was made during the discussion of these very terror bombings. Thus in the immediate historical context Seleznyov's imprecise, brief offhand comment is absolutely non-incriminating. And this is one of the "best" arguments the conspirologists offer.
8. "the fact that many prominent government figures and FSB hangers-on later squealed"
Who exactly and why do you find these particular testimonies to be credible?
9. "one of whom was poisoned in an unusual manner in London, as you may or may not recall"
If you mean Litvinenko, then he certainly wasn't any kind of a witness to the bombings, preparations, etc. So his "squealing" is hardly relevant. His interpretation of events is just that.
10. "and that sort of thing"
Anything else?