The Main Enemy by Milton Bearden (epub e reader txt) 📕

back the clock. Early Monday morning, Soviet television and radio announced the creation of a new emergency committee, which claimed that it had acted in part because Gorbachev was suddenly ill. Gorbachev, along with his family and a few close aides, remained isolated at Foros, uncertain whether they were to be executed, sharing the fate of the Romanovs at the beginning of the Soviet experiment.

Moscow, 0700 Hours, Monday, August 19, 1991

Dave Rolph’s drive into work at the U.S. embassy from his southern Moscow apartment seemed no different from any other early Monday morning commute. As he guided his BMW through Moscow’s streets, he saw nothing that would alert him to the events that were already under way. He had gone to sleep early the night before and hadn’t listened to the news before leaving for the office. As far as he was concerned, it was just another sultry August morning in the Soviet capital.

Walking into the office at 7:00 A.M., he ran into other embassy officials who told him that some kind of an emergency had just been announced on the radio and that there were reports that the military had been called into Moscow. That’s how the CIA’s Moscow station chief found out about the coup that changed the twentieth century. The CIA simply did not have any assets inside the Kremlin who were in a position to give the Americans detailed and timely information about when or where a coup might take place. So when David Rolph walked into the embassy Monday morning, he did not realize that the coup had actually been under way since the day before, did not know that Mikhail Gorbachev and his family had been surrounded and cut off from all communications.

But Rolph moved quickly to catch up and scrambled his case officers out onto the streets; it was still the middle of the night in Washington, so he could wait until about noon to have his first cable waiting on the desks of senior CIA officials when they arrived at work. Rolph realized that he would once again be in a race with CNN, just as he had been in Berlin. He was, in fact, already playing catch-up with the media. At 11:30 Sunday night in Washington, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft learned from CNN reports that a coup might be in the works in Moscow.

As Rolph began to hear back from the case officers fanned out across the city, something quite remarkable was becoming clear. There were no roadblocks, no checkpoints established to restrict movement around the city. In fact, after driving out to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, one officer reported that not only was the road to the airport open, but the airport itself had not been closed down. Meanwhile, the television and radio stations didn’t appear to have been commandeered by the leaders of the coup, at least not effectively. They were still reporting on what was going on. There were Army units in the streets, mostly armored units with tanks and armored personnel carriers, but they didn’t seem to be taking any action.

As the morning wore on, a question formed in Dave Rolph’s head: What the hell kind of a coup is this?

After dashing off his first cables, Rolph picked up a phone and dialed a number at Lubyanka.

“May I speak with Gavrilov?” he asked the anonymous KGB officer who answered his call. When he heard the smooth and familiar voice of Rem Krassilnikov, Rolph didn’t mince words. “How soon can we meet?”

First Chief Directorate Headquarters, Yasenevo, 0900 Hours, Monday, August 19, 1991

Leonid Shebarshin saw it all coming together now. As he sat in his corner office in the First Chief Directorate’s leadership suite, reading the announcement of the new “emergency committee,” he had a sense of foreboding. All through the summer he had picked up murmurings that something was brewing, some bold move would make things right again, and he had studiously avoided getting drawn in. He knew enough to know he didn’t want to know more.

It had begun in June, when Yeltsin won the presidential elections in Russia. At that moment it was clear to Shebarshin that the die was cast for the Soviet Union. The idea of the putsch now unfolding had begun even before Yeltsin’s victory, and he had picked up on it then. But his personal decision to distance himself from such an ill-fated enterprise had been easy. Now, looking down at the text of the emergency committee’s announcement, he saw that there was not a single new idea in it—it was a hodgepodge of fuzzy ideas about going back to the way things were. Shebarshin thought it would fail. And he suspected that the costs of that failure would be high.

Moscow, 1200 Hours, August 19, 1991

As tanks from the Taman Guards Division and other units lined the streets of Moscow, Rolph drove out of the American embassy compound. He headed north along the Garden Ring Road and then parked just off Mayakovskaya Square. He walked to a black Volga parked nearby and slid into the backseat next to the white-haired Krassilnikov. As he got in, the KGB driver quietly opened his door, got out, and walked across the square for a cigarette, leaving Rolph and Krassilnikov alone. On the first full day of the coup, the CIA and the KGB had a lot to talk about.

Rolph tried to probe Krassilnikov to find out what he knew about the situation, particularly about the KGB’s role in the putsch.

Krassilnikov responded defensively, arguing that the actions of the emergency committee were lawful and constitutional. Gorbachev was sick and unable to act, Krassilnikov insisted, but the Supreme Soviet would soon meet to review the actions of the emergency committee to make sure they complied with the law. Without providing any real information about the KGB’s involvement, Krassilnikov sounded a tone of support. It is a mistake for Yeltsin to defy the emergency committee, Krassilnikov said. But if Yeltsin wants a confrontation, the KGB general