Putin in Dresden

OK, let's see if we can connect a few dots.  We know Bad Vlad was in Dresden in the late 80s (just what his brief was remains an open question).  We know the KGB was running revolutionary groups out of Dresden (Red Army Faction, Baader-Meinhoff, PLFP).  We know the KGB was running out of Dresden rather than Berlin because they thought there were no prying, Western eyes in Dresden (It probably kept the operation away from prying, GRU eyes as well.  And Stasi.  Apparently much of this was done without Stasi's approval or even knowledge.  At the very least, it gave Stasi plausible deniability.).  We know they kept the operation records in Dresden, close to the vest (only summaries going to Berlin and Moscow), and the operations included bombings and assassinations in the West.  We know that in the late 80s a number of KGB officers saw the writing on the wall and started preparing for their personal futures by setting up entities in the West and skimming Soviet money into them.

And we know that in December 1989, Bad Vlad suddenly emerges from behind the curtain in full hero mode.  The Berlin Wall had fallen the month before, and an angry mob that had been busily tearing apart the Dresden Stasi HQ started turning its attention to the nearby KGB HQ.  Putin bluffed the mob into jogging on, protecting the facility (Accounts differ on whether he was brandishing a pistol.  Putin himself has never claimed to have been armed.).

Now we get to the speculative parts.  Just what was Putin doing there?  Actual information is thin on the ground (more on that in a bit).  This lack of information has led the usual suspects to conclude Putin deliberately destroyed the records to hide he was chief of Black Ops at the Dresden station.  Ahem.  People, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.  Putin's career before and immediately after Dresden does not support this grandiose conspiracy theory.  Bad Vlad was the guy who carried the briefcase for the actual players.  Did he work with the officers who handled the foreign revolutionaries?  Yes.  Was he himself the show runner, or even a show runner.  Let's just call it unlikely and leave it at that.

As to the lack of documents, Putin himself has said he along with everyone else was burning documents as fast as they could, which appears to be true as far as it goes.  There is very little documentation concerning anyone who was operating at the Dresden station.  Most of our information on Dresden comes from three types of sources: 1) KGB associates of various sorts who flipped prior to Putin's being there and so could not have known about Putin's activity; 2) KGB associates of various sorts who are selling memoirs and such; and 3) people who may or may not have been in the revolutionary groups and may or may not have been to Dresden but who are more than willing to talk about it in an effort to rehabilitate themselves.  Little of this information can be corroborated, and even less can stand on its own without corroboration.  Except perhaps for those who just want to attract readers and viewers, as opposed to those trying to parse actual information from fool's gold.

So what happened in Dresden in December 1989-January 1990?  All evidence indicates a massive amount of documents were destroyed.  But suppose that isn't the whole story (Try to contain your shock.).  Suppose an ambitious, reasonably intelligent, and in his mind underappreciated KGB officer saw a number of those documents and didn't see "security risk" but "leverage".  Here were a pile of Soviet officials, including who knows who many KGB officers, with their fingerprints all over "third-party" wet operations in the West.  Officials and officers who were now trying to make nice with the West, even find soft landings there.  Landings that would get a whole lot bumpier if Western authorities learned of their parts in killing Western citizens.

So this KGB officer packages up these gold nuggets, perhaps with the assistance of a couple of close associates, but how to move them?  Certainly not through KGB channels.  Enter Major General Horst Boehm, Stasi chief for the Dresden district and the KGB officer's long-standing local contact.  Unlike Putin, Boehm had been unable to protect Stasi HQ, and it was royally trashed to his chagrin and shame.  It was apparent to Boehm the game was up and he needed friends in other places.  Whatever the KGB officer threw at him, Boehm slurped it up with a big spoon.  So he moved the documents to Destination Unknown on one of Stasi's rapidly crumbling and therefore unsupervised mule trains.  Probably via Rotterdam, but that's experience talking, not evidence.

Corroboration?  None.  You see, in February 1990 Boehm and two of his district chief colleagues became so depressed and ashamed over everything that they "committed suicide".  Am I alleging our KGB officer had them whacked after their services were delivered?  Absolutely not; there's no way he had that kind of pull.  Boehm was terminated with extreme prejudice because, among his efforts to cultivate friends in the West, he devised a plan to leverage his knowledge of the complicity of Dutch and Swedish officials in East Germany's international arms smuggling.  Boehm's two colleagues were probably in on it, but that's fuzzier.  The only question is how anyone with sufficient muscle to hit three secure targets in an East Germany still crawling with Soviet military and security forces found out about Boehm's plan.

His documents secured and Dresden station being cooked, our KGB officer is transferred to Leningrad.  From there he blackmails his way up the ladder, builds a coterie of cronies around him, and takes command.  And becomes filthy rich in the process.

The interesting question before us now is, "What has changed?"  Why is Putin no longer concerned about burning down whole wings of the house, ranging from foreign relations to former friends?  I figure the options are as follows, and they aren't mutually exclusive: 1) He figures he's so powerful he no longer has to rely on the Dresden docs; 2) He figures he's so powerful the gang he built around himself using the Dresden docs is expendable; 3) The people who could have been threatened by the Dresden docs are now all gone, the docs are now irrelevant, and any part of his power still based on those docs needs shifted.  I recommend that intelligence agencies focus on researching those points.