Helena Merriman

That's why we have housemasters to help you.

Yeah, it's a really good question because...

When you look back at it now, you think, why wasn't everyone asking these questions all over the world?

And this journalist I interviewed, David Satter, who was one of the first Western journalists to ask these questions, he writes an article for The Washington Times.

He speaks to some of his sources who are former members of the intelligence services who raise a lot of questions, particularly about Rizan, but also about the bombs and whether Chechen militants really could have been capable of doing it.

And he writes this article.

But it disappears into the wind.

And I think it's partly because the idea back then that the FSB could have been involved in something like this just seemed so unimaginable, so beyond the realms of what anyone thought was possible at that time, that people just couldn't believe it.

It sounded like a conspiracy theory, you're saying.

Exactly.

And so you almost have this divide between what happens in the Western press,

which moves on, partly because you then have President Yeltsin resigns on December 31st, Putin becomes acting president.

So events are moving very quickly.

And so in the Western press, it's full of coverage of Vladimir Putin, the new acting president of Russia.

And he was warmly welcomed by the West, it seems, at that time, right?

Exactly.

He was thought to be leading Russia in a new direction.

Exactly.

And you have Western leaders lining up to meet him and court him.

And Tony Blair comes to Russia and watches opera with him.