Kuchma's chief of staff files slander suit against Moroz (12/10/00)

Kuchma's chief of staff files slander suit against Moroz

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - While President Leonid Kuchma's chief of staff, Volodymyr Lytvyn, filed a criminal suit for slander against National Deputy Oleksander Moroz in a Kyiv court on November 30, for publicly accusing him of helping to organize the disappearance of a Ukrainian journalist, the European Parliament called for an independent investigation into the matter.

Meanwhile, many here were simply still trying to understand whether the shocking audiotape Mr. Moroz presented on November 28 to support allegations he had made from the floor of the Ukrainian Parliament was a forgery or not, and, if so, why persons would go to such great lengths to create such a scenario.

On November 30 Jan Wiersma, a representative of the European Parliament, sent a letter to Verkhovna Rada Chairman Ivan Pliusch stating that a full and independent investigation must take place into the disappearance of journalist Heorhii Gongadze, including allegations by Mr. Moroz that the matter involves the highest echelons of the Ukrainian state. (The text of the letter appears on page 9.) Mr. Gongadze is the missing Georgian-born, 31-year-old journalist whose disappearance on September 16 after leaving the apartment of an associate sparked an outcry from the mass media and led to insinuations of government involvement in the matter.

Meanwhile President Kuchma said on December 1, while in Miensk at the meeting of the heads of state of the Commonwealth of Independent States, that the situation with the Moroz tapes might be a grand conspiracy by foreign agents.

"This is a provocation, foreign special services may have had a hand in this," explained President Kuchma, according to Interfax-Ukraine as Georgian President Edvard Shevardnadze stood at his side. "We shall have to clear up which special services."

Mr. Shevardnadze, who is mentioned in the tapes as a person who might assist in getting Mr. Gongadze out of Ukraine and back to Georgia, added, "Or guess."

Mr. Kuchma's remarks came three days after Mr. Moroz, leader of the Socialist Party and former chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, turned Ukraine on its ear when he told a session of Parliament that President Kuchma, Mr. Lytvyn and Minister of Internal Affairs Yurii Kravchenko had planned and executed the disappearance of Mr. Gongadze, a controversial and outspoken Kyiv journalist and founder of one of Ukraine's first Internet publications.

Mr. Moroz announced at the time that he had an audiocassette of several telephone discussions among the three men that implicated them in the case.

In the last few days many lawmakers have criticized Mr. Moroz's decision to publicize the tapes in such dramatic fashion and have said the former chairman of the Rada had left himself vulnerable to dire consequences should he not be able to prove that the audiotapes are in fact authentic. He could be sentenced to as much as five years' imprisonment if he is found guilty of slandering Mr. Lytvyn. Mr. Moroz, however, has reminded journalists on several occasions that he has immunity from criminal prosecution

First Vice-Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Viktor Medvedchuk said on December 1 that Mr. Moroz should not have made a grand public display of what he had obtained, but should have turned the tapes over either to law enforcement agencies or to National Deputy Oleksander Lavrynovych, chairman of the Verkhovna Rada's ad hoc committee investigating the disappearance of Mr. Gongadze.

At the core of the controversy is a tape that Mr. Moroz alleges is a recording of several conversations between President Kuchma and Mr. Lytvyn, his chief of staff, as well as with Minister of Internal Affairs Kravchenko. What is not clear is whether the tape is a well-produced forgery or an authentic recording. In the recording, which is of poor quality, the voices are audible although not clear, but one would be hard-pressed not to concede that they are those of the three men named.

The three are heard discussing how to get rid of Mr. Gongadze, who is mentioned by name and also as the owner of the Internet publication, Ukrainska Pravda. However, at no time during the 11 separate conversations, which are staccato-like and do not present clear and well-developed ideas, are direct suggestions made that the journalist should be killed, murdered or eliminated in any manner. At one point a person states that he has a highly trained elite force free of moral principles that will do just about anything. For the most part, the ideas thrown about focus on having Mr. Gongadze perhaps kidnapped by Chechens or forcefully evicted from Ukraine and moved to Georgia, his country of birth.

Because Mr. Moroz has offered few answers, even as he has raised many questions about the contents of the tape, the central unanswered questions are: Is the tape recording real? Who would go to such lengths to implicate the president whether the tape is authentic or not?

While Mr. Moroz said he has already had international experts verify the authenticity of the tapes, he has not produced the names of the experts. Nor has Mr. Moroz explained specifically who handed him the tapes and why. He has said only that a worker of the Security Service of Ukraine turned the recording over to him. The lawmaker has explained that he waited about a month to make his announcement because he wanted to assure the safety of the Security Service employee. Mr. Moroz has suggested that the person, if indeed he does exist, has left Ukraine with his family and is in hiding, perhaps in Belgium or the Netherlands.

The Security Service of Ukraine, however, issued a statement the day after Mr. Moroz's announcement that rejected even the possibility that the tape could be real. A spokesman explained that there is no way the president's telephone line could have been bugged or conversation picked up by outside electronic surveillance.

Ironically, less than two weeks earlier, during a special television program on a day in the life of President Kuchma, an assertion was made that not only was it possible but that the president's office, in fact, had been bugged earlier. During a conversation between the current head of state and his predecessor, Leonid Kravchuk, the former president told a story of how security officials found dozens of listening devices in the panel walls of the office soon after he took office.

In any case, the day after Mr. Moroz turned the cassette tape over to Mr. Lavrynovych's committee, a copy was provided to the Council of Europe by National Deputy Yurii Karmazyn, chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Corruption and Organized Crime, who asked the human rights body to do an independent analysis of the contents.

Experts are also at loggerheads as to whether it would be possible at all to produce a forgery of such a tape. An editor for a new Ukrainian news publication, 2000, went out of his way in an article published on December 1 to state that a forgery easily could have been developed using a relatively common computer feature called a "talking mouse," via which a computer can read aloud text that is presented on its screen. But most knowledgeable sources agreed that such voices would sound stilted and unnatural, which is not the case with the voices on the tape.

The other question posed is who would be interested in exposing a real or fabricated discussion on a conspiracy of murder by the president of Ukraine and his team. The respected Kyiv weekly, Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, in its December 2 issue, speculated on several possible theories. [Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, is the Ukrainian-language version of Zerkalo Nedeli, which has been published for several months now and is increasingly being referred to by the Ukrainian version of the name.]

Among the hypotheticals is one that puts the onus on U.S. spy agencies, while another one mentions Russian intelligence networks.

In the first scenario, the theory goes that U.S. intelligence forces gave Mr. Moroz the audiocassette to destabilize the situation in the country, which would lead, if all went as planned, to the removal or resignation of the president from office and new elections. If this were to happen, Prime Minister Viktor Yuschenko, who has solid support in the West, would become the acting president.

The rationale is that because the various political oligarchs are currently snipping at one another Mr. Yuschenko's chances to get elected president are now at a premium. In the end it would allow the United States to solidify Ukraine's role as a buffer between Europe and a reanimated Russia, while giving its businessmen a better toehold in the country.

Another theory holds that Russia is responsible for giving Mr. Moroz the tape. In this scenario the thinking is that Russia, where imperialistic ambitions have re-ignited and the Russian intelligence services under President Vladimir Putin have been reinvigorated, is ready to force Ukraine into a Slavic union with itself and Belarus. The first step towards such an objective would be to discredit the Kuchma administration in the eyes of the West. It would have to be done to such a degree that financial and economic cooperation would have to cease, which would force Ukraine to turn fully to the East to sustain its weak economy. Mr. Kuchma would need to become ever more authoritarian to maintain his grip on power, and a Belarus-type situation would result.

Another version for how the tape came to see the light of day holds that it is the result of a power struggle between law enforcement agencies. In this scenario, Leonid Derkach, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine, who recent reports suggest has been losing influence with the president in competition with Mr. Kravchenko's Internal Affairs Ministry, had the tape made to save his hide. The president cannot now fire his top spy without actually admitting that the tape is authentic. Meanwhile, the publication of the tape lets the president and his partners know that Mr. Derkach has weapons at his disposal if there is to be a fight for his chair.

And, finally, there also is the version presented by Mr. Moroz: that President Kuchma, ever impatient with criticism of himself, and his two subordinates decided that Mr. Gongadze needed to be eliminated because he was a fly in the ointment whose disappearance could be used to send a strong message to the mass media on how it ought to cover the power elite.

As the speculation continued, Mr. Kuchma said on December 6 that he will not allow for the various claims and counterclaims to lead to "whipping up a political crisis" or to demands for early presidential elections, according to Interfax-Ukraine. The president also said he would abide by the law and would not consider "authoritarian actions" or a change in the political course on which he has taken the country.

The next day Mr. Kuchma ordered a security detachment for Mr. Moroz for the next three months. Meanwhile, the Procurator General's Office said the same day that it could not analyze the audiotape in question for authenticity because Mr. Moroz had provided a copy and not the original.

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