Steve LeVine’s “Putin’s Labyrinth: Spies, Murder, and the Dark Heart of the New Russia”
Here is a book review I wrote for the New York Post. The “house style” and headline choices are quite painful for me, but beyond my control – bear with us here. STRONG MEDICINE By ROBERT AMSTERDAM June 22, 2008 Putin’s Labyrinth: Spies, Murder, and the Dark Heart of the New Russia – by Steve LeVine (Random House) In 2002, when terrorists took over a Moscow theater, government troops responded by gassing the building, killing over 100 terrified hostages. On July 4, 2004, Paul Klebnikov, the American-born editor of Forbes Russia, was shot four times in the street by assailants following him in a slow-moving car. It took an hour for the ambulance to arrive at the scene, it had no oxygen bottle and when Klebnikov finally reached the hospital (still alive), the elevator taking him to the operating room broke down. Klebnikov bled to death. On Vladimir Putin’s 2006 birthday another prominent Russian journalist and government critic, Anna Politkovskaya, was gunned down in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building. (This was after she survived drinking poisoned tea in 2004.) Later in 2006, in London, KGB defector Alexander Litvinenko was died from polonium in his tea. The world was outraged. The Russians yawned.