Questions Regarding the Hexogen Explosives

Contradictions in Official Statements

• Why do the statements of FSB generals regarding hexogen still contradict each other, despite the results of the official forensic examination, which they are all required to know by virtue of their official duties?
• Why were there initially statements from the UFSB for Moscow and the Moscow Region, as well as the heads of the FSB system, Generals Patrushev and Shagako, and other officials about the presence of hexogen, and then General Zdanovich disavowed all of this, after which (in official comments) the FSB generals carefully avoided the word "hexogen"?
• Why did the MVD of the RF report industrial explosives (that is, created at a state production facility for very specific tasks), while FSB General Mironov specifically noted a "kitchen" method of its preparation?

The differences are significant, since industrial explosives are a matter of special accounting, and handling them is strictly regulated. If the explosives were indeed industrial, such a fact dictates additional questions:

• Where exactly in the state system of explosive circulation did a breach occur?
• And why, and at what stage, did the accounting and control system fail? (This point will be considered in detail in the next part.)

The "kitchen" method of preparing the explosive mixture, which FSB General Mironov spoke about, does not allow one to even think that a leak occurred from some state enterprise, and excludes these two questions in advance.

Official Position and Public Trust

• Is there, finally, a final, agreed-upon and approved position of the FSB of the RF and other security forces regarding the explosives used in the 1999 terrorist attacks?
• If there is, why has this position, despite the international scandal surrounding the situation with the apartment building bombings, still not been published along with the experts' conclusions?

When officials are unable to join forces and say something unambiguous (even if by agreement), this causes a quite natural public distrust of information from state sources. And it leads to the emergence of other, independent versions of what actually happened.

Most Serious Version of the Origin of Hexogen

There are documentary grounds to believe that some components of the explosives, namely its most powerful element—hexogen—did indeed have an industrial origin (as noted in the statement of the MVD of the RF). Moreover, it could have reached the "black market," and subsequently the terrorists, due to the state of affairs at a state institution—the NII "Roskonversvzryvtsentr," located in the center of Moscow in close proximity to the complex of buildings of the FSB of the RF and the UFSB for Moscow and the Moscow Region.

Background on NII "Roskonversvzryvtsentr"

• The Research Institute "Roskonversvzryvtsentr" was formed by a decision of the government of the RSFSR in 1991 to conduct research and development work on the problem of ammunition disposal and the creation of industrial explosives based on them.
• Due to various circumstances, the institute was transferred to the management of the Ministry of Education of the RF.

By the period of the terrorist attacks in Moscow and other Russian cities, an extremely difficult situation had developed in this NII: in the illegal, shadow turnover (besides... [text cuts off]).