Voice from Past Haunts Ukraine President - His Own
Aleksander Karpushov
Thu May 27, 2004 08:06 AM ET
By Adam Tanner
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A ghost of seasons past is haunting
Ukraine's leader, one who bears President Leonid Kuchma's own voice.
In the often secretive halls of post-Soviet power, conversations
typically stay secret, but thanks to a former KGB agent who worked on the
president's security staff, his words keep coming back to haunt him.
Mykola Melnychenko secretly recorded hundreds of hours of
conversations in the president's office from 1998-2000, then he was granted
asylum in the United States where he has only gradually revealed their
contents.
"I knew that president of my country was a bandit and I decided to
stop these crimes," he told Reuters during a visit to San Francisco. "No one
ordered me to make these tapes."
"Some say the CIA must have ordered up these tapes; others say it was
Moscow," he said. "It wasn't. If I had worked with anyone, it would have
come out long ago."
The 37-year-old said he acted on his own to make more than 700 hours
of recordings because of his concern about Kuchma's policies, which he said
were enriching corrupt politicians.
The tapes have already inflamed several scandals.
The U.S. government suspended some aid to Ukraine in 2002 after
concluding parts of the Melnychenko tapes showed Kuchma had breached U.N.
sanctions and sold Iraq an early warning system. In 2001, the tapes caused a
sensation when they appeared to link Kuchma to the murder of Ukrainian
journalist Georgiy Gongadze.
In the latest tape excerpts made available to Reuters, a voice
Melnychenko identified as that of Igor Smeshko, chairman of Ukraine's
security service, talks to Kuchma about what he describes as an American CIA
analyst working as a spy for the former Soviet republic.
"A very valuable source in the United States," Smeshko tells Kuchma in
Russian. "She is an official with the Central Intelligence Agency."
"Mainly she looks through the CIA reports with evaluations of the
situation in Ukraine and the opinions of the highest political leaders."
When the tapes were made in the late 1990s, Smeshko was the head of
intelligence at the Defense Ministry.
The veracity of the tapes and the allegation could not be
independently confirmed and neither the CIA nor Ukrainian officials would
comment.
In the past, Ukrainian officials have questioned the authenticity of
the recordings, saying they were edited after they were made.
It's unclear what impact the tapes, recorded more than four years ago,
might have on U.S.-Ukraine relations. Ties were already strained over
illegal arms sales to Baghdad before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, but
Kuchma has since sought to improve relations by contributing Ukrainian
troops to the U.S.-led occupation of post-Saddam Iraq.
PRESIDENTIAL INTRIGUE
One expert on Ukraine said he thought the latest tapes were likely
authentic, although he said that Smeshko may have exaggerated the alleged
spy's ties to the CIA.
"Everything he (Melnychenko) has revealed has been proved to be
correct; he's not lied about anything," said Taras Kuzio, a fellow at the
Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Toronto.
But Smeshko "may be using that (spy) label too broadly," he said,
referring to the Russian word "sotrudnitsa" or official linked to the CIA.
"They use a lot of consultants and outside people who have maybe links or
advisers or whatever."
Another expert on espionage said it is also possible that a CIA
official was working as a double agent and deliberately feeding information
to Ukraine.
The latest recordings surfaced on the sidelines of the trial of
ex-Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko in U.S. federal court in San
Francisco on money laundering charges.
Defense lawyers cited the recordings as they wanted to show that
Kuchma attempted to influence the case against Lazarenko. But the judge
ruled the tapes were not pertinent and would not be heard by the jury.
In Kuchma's conversation with Smeshko, who served as the military
attache at Ukraine's Embassy in Washington from 1992-1995, the intelligence
officer tells him that the CIA spy had produced documents related to the
Lazarenko trial.
Kuchma can then be heard paging through papers.
Melnychenko would only play certain segments so as to prevent the name
of the CIA analyst from being heard.
Even though some years have passed, Melnychenko, who lives in the
Washington D.C. area, bristles at the suggestion that it was improper to
record Kuchma secretly.
"I had a right to record the Ukrainian president," said Melnychenko,
who has tightly cropped hair and a reserved manner typical for an-ex Soviet
security agent. "To stop a crime, the police are allowed to exceed the speed
limit."
"I'm doing everything I can to improve things in Ukraine," he
continued. "I don't want to be a hero. I don't even know if I will live to
see the results of all this."
"I could be killed at any time."
Reuters
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Aleksander