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This is because of my previous career: I worked in the central staff of the Soviet KGB for several years and afterwards in the Russian security services. And I know for sure that had Pichugin really given instructions to kill Kostina, Kolesov and the Gorins, there was no way he could have concealed it from the truth drug. He would have given away everyone he had hired for the job.
Had Demidov gone to Ognennyy island for Korovnikov's incriminating testimony after the truth drug, this to me would have indirectly implicated Aleksey. It would have meant that after being drugged he had owned up and named Korovnikov and his gang as accomplices.
But Demidov and his colleagues went to Korovnikov long before 14 July. Which means they had decided the prosecution's story in advance regardless of what had actually happened.
And they were given the true picture by the truth drug, from which there was no escape. Remember: neither the investigation nor the court established just whom Pichugin had hired to abduct the Gorins. The actual, and brutal, killers are still at large but nobody cares. Were Pichugin behind it, he could not have stopped himself from turning in all his accomplices. He had hired them, after all. He could hardly forget about them, even if he could only name the middleman.
For me, the key to the real facts lies in the truth drug episode. Not in the switching of items for expert examination, or in the lack of any evidence to speak of, or the rule-breaking. With apologies to the human-rights community, strict procedural compliance does not in itself guarantee that the truth will be found, especially in a complex case. But the drug does.
I still sometimes think like a KGB man. And I know that Soviet chemists conquered the human mind long ago. I watched the whole tragic story unfold from the moment the drug was used on Pichugin.
The Pichugin case answers a question asked by many people I know. A question that always offends the uniformed classes. Put bluntly: "How can you work in state security but still keep your integrity?"
Some would say the two notions are incompatible. Such people are not without merit. But as they judge the rest of us from their moral high ground, they fail to understand the logic of the oath of allegiance. The indecision when the chance came of the Decembrists, or of the war heroes dealt their fate by an awaiting Stalin on their return from conquered Germany, tells us much about what moral courage really means.
Some of our liberal intelligentsia are as blinkered in their purity as Putin's friends are in their paranoia. What they think is patriotism is in its own way cowardice.
With little or no support, Aleksey continues to resist. What drives him?
Even thugs who carry out crimes can get suspended sentences. So for admitting to instigating a crime that he did not himself commit, what would Pichugin have got? A suspended sentence. Aleksey Pichugin was an ordinary man raised to love his own country and nation, a caring father and husband, a man admired by those who worked for him. But he stood up to the machinery of state and its criminal investigation and court.
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