Conspiracies so immense ...: the spooky condition of today's Russia--and yesterday's, too.(THE WORLD II)(Blowing Up Russia: The Secret Plot to Bring Back KGB Terror)

TO talk to Yuri Felshtinsky is to revisit an era meant to have ended when Boris Yeltsin leapt onto a tank in Moscow. But when Dr. Felshtinsky examines photographs of that heroic August day, he sees something else. Visible just behind the Russian leader is Alexander Korzhakov (he's the balding man in a gray suit), the bodyguard who later became chief of Yeltsin's Presidential Security Service. "KGB," notes Felshtinsky. So he had been. Something similar could have been observed in St. Petersburg. The city's mayor was a prominent opponent of the hardliners' coup--but take a closer look at shots of his entourage, and whom do you see? Vladimir Putin, that's who. "KGB," says ...