Common Sense and FSB Conspiracy

On February, 2 ‘The Guardian’ published an article ‘Asylum decision suggests that US patience with Putin is wearing thin’ by Simon Tisdall. The US granted granted political asylum to Alyona Morozov last month. “Ms Morozov accused Russia's secret services of involvement in a series of apartment block bombings in Moscow and elsewhere in September 1999 which killed 246 people. <…> Chechen separatists were officially blamed for the attacks. <…> The independent television station NTV reported on the eve of the March 2000 election that police had detected FSB agents allegedly planting another bomb in apartments in Ryazan two weeks after the attacks. <…> The FSB claimed its agents were conducting a security exercise.”
Now what surprises me in such accusations is the lack of reality check. I read about this FSB conspiracy dozens of times and I know a lot of people who sincerely believe in the secret plot and dismiss the idea about a security exercise.
OK, let us imagine a situation like this. A flight school at a god-forgotten American town, like Wichita, Kansas. September, 25, 2000 – two weeks after 9/11. A couple of Arabs with Saudi passports show up at a local flight school and say: “We wanna learn to take off and to fly a Boeing. We don’t need to learn how to land.” So guys from the flight school immediately call 911 and police officers promptly discover that the “Arabs” are actually FBI agents from local Wichita station who on their own initiative conduct a ‘security exercise’ to learn if citizens are alert enough. Now there are two possible conclusions to be made from this story: (1) 9/11 is an FBI plot to boost the popularity of George Bush or (2) FBI agents in Wichita, KS are morons. I personally think that the second conclusion is more probable. Somehow in case with FSB agents in Ryazan common sense doesn’t work.
I remember quite well what was the general atmosphere in Russia after Moscow and Volgodonsk apartment bombings. To say that people all over the country were paranoid and hysterical is to say nothing. Residents organized into patrols that 24 hours a day surveyed all cars close to their buildings, they checked id’s of everyone who entered and left their building. Above all – sacks with sugar was a taboo. Police was doing nothing but responding to hundreds of calls about suspicious people carrying sacks with sugar. Although in Russia a sack is the most popular bulk package for sugar, wholesalers started packing sugar into boxes.
So in the midst of this paranoia a car stops at an apartment building in Ryazan about fifty feet away from a patrol of alert citizens. The number plates of the car are ‘disguised’ by sheets of paper. Two suspiciously looking guys and a woman wearing ‘hijab’ (!) get out of the car and start doing what? Right! Unloading sacks with sugar into the basement of the building… The police soon discovered that the car belong to the local FSB station and ‘terrorists’ are actually Ryazan locals hired for this ‘special case’. FSB Chief Patrushev said that ‘citizens’ alertness check’ was an initiative of Ryazan FSB station that wasn’t exactly ‘smart’. The fact that inside sacks there was sugar with hexogen only says that Ryazan FSB officers are not just morons but big time morons.