Last year, the Innocence Project helped exonerate nine people who had served a combined 200 years in prison. Some of the cases seemed to be built on strong evidence. A detective claimed Keith Hardin made incriminating statements. A forensic dentist testified that Alfred Swinton was responsible for bite marks left on a murder victim. An eyewitness stated that he saw Johnny Tall Bear beating a man to death. Eric Kelley and Kevin Bailey both confessed. But DNA testing helped clear all of them.
Even the most convincing evidence passes through a criminal-justice system that is tainted by biases, emotions, and errors. The result is a profusion of injustices: wrongful convictions, racial discrimination, overlooked or dismissed evidence, abuses of power, unwarranted police shootings. No amount of reform, perhaps, can wholly eradicate the faulty human element from law-enforcement agencies or courtrooms. But by making discrete, practical policy changes, police officers and prosecutors could change the structures that support and entrench those injustices.
Jennifer Eberhardt, a Stanford psychology professor and the author of Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do, has done extensive research into racial bias in law enforcement. In a conversation Thursday at the Aspen Ideas Festival, which is co-hosted by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic, she said she’s found that police officers have a “black-crime association” that can shape the way cases move through the criminal-justice system.
In an attempt to combat that bias, Eberhardt has worked with law-enforcement agencies to introduce practical reforms that will combat prejudice before it builds into narratives and, maybe, unjust outcomes. “One of the ways to correct these biases is not simply through a bias training or something,” she said. “It’s trying to understand what practices or what policies might be driving the disparity.”
To counteract eyewitness misidentification, for instance, she said she has encouraged police officers to change the way they show lineups to witnesses. By explicitly telling witnesses that the perpetrator may not be present and by introducing each member of the lineup individually, she found that officers could deter witnesses from feeling like they should just pick whoever looked the most like the person they saw. She has also worked to change policies that required officers to handcuff anyone they stopped who was on probation or parole—policies that led to a disproportionate number of black men being restrained.
Practical reforms can also combat prejudice in prosecutors’ offices. For example, in the past four decades, some state and local governments have targeted “blindfold laws,” which still allow district attorneys to indefinitely withhold information like the names and statements of witnesses from defense teams in nine states. “Open file” laws, which require prosecutors to share that evidence well before trial, have replaced them. New York State changed its policy in May.
Such changes introduce “a different set of defaults that guard against the biases and against this tremendous power that people in law enforcement have,” said Emily Bazelon, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and the author of Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration, in conversation with Eberhardt on Thursday.
Bazelon said that challenging the power of prosecutors is especially significant because, legally, they have absolute immunity for the decisions they make on the job and cannot be sued for mishandling cases. (Police officers have qualified immunity, which allows them to face lawsuits only for professional actions that violate “clearly established” federal laws or rights.)
“People who wield huge amounts of power have to have checks on that power, and we seem to have forgotten that lesson in the realm of prosecutors,” Bazelon said.
Prosecutors, she said, have been resistant to reforms like open-file laws that would introduce more transparency to their jobs. “Sometimes we see these human tendencies [toward prejudice and confirmation bias] reinforced by another tendency, which is people’s faith in the status quo,” Bazelon said. “You’ve done it one way for a long time, and that must be the way that you have to do it.”
But since 2016, she observed, voters in several big cities have elected progressive district attorneys to disrupt that status quo—to reduce incarceration, combat racial discrimination, and build a more just and equitable prosecutorial mold. Those new incentives could adjust the mind-sets prosecutors bring into their offices. And in doing so, maybe they could change the court system for the better.
The United States may no longer be its old hegemonic self in the realm of geopolitics. But in this World Cup, the women’s national soccer team has seemed like a juggernaut from the time of Pax Americana—a team with supreme self-confidence and an almost evangelical sense of mission. There have been moments, these past few weeks, when their swagger has veered towards arrogance. In their second match, the team started seven fresh players, resting its brand names. And in the aftermath of the replacements’ commanding victory, defender Ali Krieger quipped, “We have the best team and the second best team in the world.”
But an arrogant team would be unable to appreciate its own weakness, and tonight the team made self-aware tactical adjustments to compensate for its inferior component parts. Put differently, this team is brimming with idealism—it is, after all, a squad in pursuit of equality, as well as a title—but to beat France, the host nation and its near equal, it reverted to an uncharacteristic pragmatism.
In the first four games of the tournament, the U.S. team imposed itself on the game, possessing the ball for higher percentages of the game than any other in the tournament. No matter the opponent, the U.S. had refused to vary its way of playing. It has kept right on relentlessly attacking, mustering the same offensive resources against the minnows from Thailand as it did against powerful Sweden.
France, however, was another matter. Over the last few years, the French have troubled the Americans, beating them last year and tying them in an exhibition match a few months back. France has overwhelming pace on its wings and technical wizards in the middle of the park. Members of the team play in well-financed professional clubs that are in the process of matching, and perhaps exceeding, the quality of their U.S. counterparts.
One of the most incredible qualities of this American team is its capacity to catapult itself out of the tunnel. The team starts games with unnerving intensity. I can’t remember any squad that scores so consistently in the opening minutes of games. Tonight, it only took five minutes for Megan Rapinoe to scythe a free kick into the near corner of the French goal, a characteristic combination of her power and her ability to manipulate the ball to perfectly follow the geometric designs she draws in her head.
This wasn’t the most majestic game that U.S. has played, and that was the tactical plan. Coach Jill Ellis noticed that France, for all its pace and skill, has struggled to pick apart congested defenses. As the game progressed, Ellis compressed her team’s defense deep in its own end, clogging the goal box. The central midfielder Julie Ertz melted into the backline, providing a fifth defender. Rapinoe and her fellow winger Tobin Heath largely abandoned any pretense of pushing forward into attack. The United States broke from character—instead of attacking, they parked themselves in front of the goal and absorbed the pressure from France. This looked helter skelter at moments—and they had patches where they failed to string together passes that would allow them to escape France’s assault—but the French had relatively few opportunities to score for all the time they spent controlling the game.
So, the United States progresses to a semifinal match with England. I find myself more wrapped up in this team than any World Cup squad I can remember. In part, it’s the unmistakable sense of camaraderie they possess—and how the team’s success is inseparable from its sense of moral purpose. On the eve of the tournament, these players banded together to sue their employer, the U.S. Soccer Federation. Over the course of a tournament this long, there are usually moments of frustration, when a pass is misdirected or when a player selfishly shots on goal. But I have not seen a single moment of that. They win because they have so much camaraderie and coherence—and they have that because they joined together to take such a big political risk.
A World Cup is a unique experience in sport. Teams remain in a foreign country for many weeks. They live, eat, and train together, as if at summer camp. Because a World Cup is rare, the tournament yields insane pressure, and none have been more pressure-filled than this one. No women’s team has ever repeated a World Cup—as the U.S. is poised to do—and certainly no team has prevailed while its co-captain rhetorically jousts with its president and the squad battles its boss for equal pay. This team has flourished in the face of all this, and actually seems intent on milking the experience for all the pleasures it can provide. A day after Donald Trump denounced her, Megan Rapinoe played perhaps her best game in the American jersey. This is history in the making, folks. The movie version won’t be nearly so good.
It didn’t take long for the political classes to decide that the biggest loser in part two of the first Democratic primary debate was former Vice President Joe Biden. California Sen. Kamala Harris ripped Biden for bragging about maintaining relationships with segregationists, leading Biden to bizarrely defend the right of local governments to pursue segregation as a policy. And the moderators raised his vote for the Iraq War while in the Senate.
The most unlikely Biden call-out, though, came in the form of a recent-history lesson by longshot candidate Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet. Bennet turned one of Biden’s own talking points back on him by pointing out the former vice president’s revisionist version of when he was taken to the cleaners by Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell.
Biden attempted to defend his acumen for negotiating with Republicans during Thursday night’s debate by citing his ability in late 2012 to convince McConnell to raise taxes. The problem for Biden was that multiple people on stage had witnessed Biden’s effort, and it was an utter catastrophe for Democrats.
Bennet jumped on Biden, laying out the reality of Biden’s faceplant. The episode was the subject of an Intercept article published earlier this week, drawn from my new book, which looked back at the pivotal “fiscal cliff” negotiations.
Tax cuts from the George W. Bush era were set to expire, which would have brought $3 trillion in revenue to the federal government over 10 years. Biden settled with McConnell for a mere $600 million, making the rest of the tax cuts permanent.
Bennet wasn’t having it. “The deal that he talked about with Mitch McConnell was a complete victory for the tea party,” Bennet said. “That was a great deal for Mitch McConnell. It was a terrible deal for Americans.”
Fact check: True.
Biden botched the late 2012 talks badly, but the cascading effects of the deal were even more damaging for Democrats. The deal did not address the debt limit and punted what’s known as the sequester — automatic spending cuts — only to March, rather than eliminating it, as Democrats had been pushing for.
Senate Democrats urged Obama to threaten to veto any spending bill that didn’t fix the sequester, but Obama declined, saying he didn’t want to risk a government shutdown. As Roll Call reported at the time, “By making all of the tax cuts permanent but only avoiding the sequester for two months, the president traded away most of his leverage in return for only half of the revenue he had been seeking — and no clear way to force Republicans to the table for more.”
The Obama administration expected that, by the spring, it would be able to win further concessions from McConnell. It turned out — quite obviously to many observers at the time — that McConnell had no interest in negotiating: He had gotten everything he wanted, and wouldn’t agree to lift the sequester. That meant spending was cut to austerity levels, which slowed economic growth and kept unemployment higher than it otherwise would have been. Obama himself warned the sequester would cost 750,000 jobs and knock half a point off GDP. “We’re not making that up. That’s not a scare tactic. That’s a fact,” Obama said.
It did indeed take a bite out of the economy, and that slower growth helped Republicans take the Senate in 2014. In 2016, when Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died, Obama nominated Merrick Garland to replace him. But without control of the Senate, Obama couldn’t force a vote. McConnell held the seat open, and after Donald Trump’s election filled it with Neil Gorsuch.
TALLINN, Estonia—Deniss Metsavas was visiting his relatives in Russia in the summer of 2007 when the incident occurred.
While out with his cousin at a nightclub in Smolensk, Metsavas struck up a conversation with an attractive woman he hadn’t met before. They hit it off and spent the night flirting and dancing before retiring to a sauna in the early hours of the morning. Though saunas in much of Russia are bathhouses where men drink vodka and are flagellated with oak leaves, this one was a sex motel. He and the woman slept together there, but feeling awkward about what was inevitably going to be a one-night stand, Metsavas went out to buy her flowers. “I cannot leave her money,” he recounted to me. “She’s not a prostitute.” Metsavas laid the bouquet by the bed, then returned to his relatives’ home to steal a few hours of sleep.
Estonia lies at the frontline of efforts to contain Russian revanchism. Once occupied by the Soviet Union, the country has no intention of losing its independence again and has eagerly joined Western economic and defense alliances. Where others have lately made noises critical of the European Union or NATO, Estonians see these institutions, and their participation in them, as existential necessities—the only thing keeping the Baltic state from being swallowed up again by its giant neighbor. And after Moscow annexed Crimea, that fear is no longer dismissed as paranoia in Brussels and Washington. Yet ties between Russian and Estonian citizens are much more fluid. Metsavas had joined the Estonian army almost a decade earlier, but would regularly come to Russia to visit his mother’s family. Six feet tall, with a round face and close-cropped hair, he was ethnically Russian, spoke both Estonian and Russian fluently, and moved easily in Smolensk. With this particular holiday almost over, he made plans after waking up to head downtown to do some shopping.
The moment he stepped outside the house, though, two men dressed in plain clothes approached him and identified themselves as police officers. They showed him an affidavit in which the woman Metsavas had spent the night with claimed he had raped her. He could face up to 15 years in a Russian prison if convicted, they warned him, and they told him to follow them to the police station. Once there, one of the officers pulled out a small digital camcorder with a playback screen that showed Metsavas in bed with the woman.
Until then, Metsavas had found little time to think—things were happening so fast. Once he saw the video, though, it was clear to him he had been entangled in a “honeytrap,” a sexual sting operation. “They said they could solve my problem if I cooperated,” he told me. Metsavas agreed and signed forms whose content he can no longer recall.
The ensuing conversation with the officers was vague, and he wasn’t pressed for any information about his service, or the Estonian army. Hours later, Metsavas was released, with no instructions to remain in Smolensk or to return for further questioning. At no point was he handcuffed, read his rights, booked, or offered a lawyer. It was his first time in a police station, and because it was in a country not known for its respect for those being held, his first instinct was to get out as quickly as possible. The thought of calling the Estonian embassy hadn’t crossed his mind: Even the hint of criminality, however false or contrived, might sink his military career. He fell victim, he said, to arrogance, a false belief that he could navigate the situation, and obedience, a result of his training as a soldier. Single at the time, he told no one of the encounter and returned to Estonia.
A full year passed without any mention or reminder of the incident. Then, in the fall of 2008, as he was leaving his mother’s house in Tallinn, a man approached him and began speaking in Russian. “He asked if I remembered what happened in Smolensk,” Metsavas told me, “and my promise to cooperate.”
When I met Metsavas, in March, he wasn’t wearing an orange jumpsuit or shackles, and the handcuffs he’d worn during his transport to our interview had been removed. The room we sat in was sparsely furnished and lay just a few feet from the fortified antechamber into which visitors to the Kaitsepolitseiamet—Estonia’s Internal Security Service, known more commonly as KAPO—first enter. Wearing a light-gray T-shirt and a windbreaker, he could easily have been mistaken for an off-duty agent popping into the office. “Don’t shake his hand when he comes in,” Aleksander Toots, KAPO’s deputy director and the country’s chief spy-catcher, had warned me. “We consider it an insult to shake hands with a traitor.”
Metsavas was shivering when he walked in. “Prison is cold,” he said. He’d spent the previous six months behind bars, and while it was clear he was nervous, he appeared fit and healthy. We were in the same room he’d been taken to immediately after being arrested by KAPO officers in September 2018. This room, no larger than 200 square feet, with a window facing a major intersection in central Tallinn, was KAPO’s interrogation room, where the service questioned all suspected spies. As we talked, Metsavas sat in the same chair in which he’d already spent hundreds of hours, willingly helping KAPO piece together what was, by all accounts, a highly damaging breach of Estonia’s national security.
Weeks before our meeting, Metsavas was convicted of spying for Russia’s military intelligence service and sentenced to 15 and a half years in prison. He pleaded guilty at his trial and cooperated with Estonian counterintelligence, offering details of how he was co-opted by Moscow, of his conversations with his longtime handler, and of the classified information—most of it Estonia’s, some of it from Estonian allies—he passed along to Russia.
I spoke to Metsavas under the auspices of KAPO, which gave The Atlantic virtually unrestricted access to him, but not to his friends or family. Notably, I was not allowed to speak with his wife, his mother, or his father, the last of whom played an integral role in his son’s ordeal. The rules of engagement were simple: I could ask my subject anything I liked, but he had been instructed beforehand not to divulge information that might compromise KAPO’s counterintelligence investigation, particularly any details that would telegraph to the Russians what the Estonians knew about their tradecraft and the secrets they had stolen. “They don’t deserve it,” Toots said.
For KAPO, the interview was an opportunity to publicize its already legendary reputation of catching Russian spies. For me, it was an unmissable chance to speak to a contemporary spy and raise the curtain on the inner workings of a Russian intelligence agency whose century-long history of skulduggery—from election tampering to dirty wars, from attempted coups to assassination plots—shows no sign of abating. And for Metsavas, it was a chance to atone for his high crimes against his country, his comrades in the army, his friends and family. I believe he had little apparent incentive to lie: Everything he said would be within earshot of at least one KAPO case officer, tasked with ensuring that he didn’t speak out of turn, or embellish or misrepresent his autobiography. I got the impression that Metsavas, as much as the men who had unmasked him, took such matters earnestly. In general, there was a strange camaraderie between Metsavas and the KAPO case officers who flitted in and out of the interrogation room as our interview wore on. All interacted with him not as an enemy of the state, but as an old acquaintance, with an intimacy born of close proximity and repetition. I asked Metsavas whether he felt compelled in any way to talk to me. He said he didn’t and insisted that this whole thing was his idea in the first place. I eventually saw why.
Deniss Metsavas, pictured here in KAPO custody, was convicted of spying for Russia’s military intelligence service. (Daniel Lombroso / The Atlantic)
In my conversations with him, as well as with half a dozen Estonian security officials—all of whom, bar Toots, requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters—I was told the story of a genuinely patriotic soldier who was blackmailed into becoming a spy, then coerced to keep going by a handler who knew exactly which weaknesses to prey on. Metsavas’s recruitment, and, even more so, the longevity of his treason, illuminated just how pragmatic, cynical, and cunning officers of Vladimir Putin’s special services can be in prosecuting a cold war against the West, a war that Estonians believe, with good reason, hasn’t begun anew, but never really ended after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Of all the countries to emerge from the wreckage of the Soviet empire, Estonia is one of the most successful. This country of 1.3 million people has a rare degree of social cohesion and uniformity of vision for where it ought to go, joining the EU and NATO in 2004 and adopting the euro in 2011, the first former appendage of the U.S.S.R. to do so. It also has outsize technological impact, as the birthplace of Skype, a country where internet access is enshrined as a civil right.
Yet that drive, in some ways, also makes it uniquely vulnerable. After living under Soviet totalitarianism and occupation for a half century, Tallinn has pursued memberships to Western alliances that Moscow sees as threats, and its relationship with Russia is tense, at best. In 2007, Estonia’s government, banks, and news organizations were hit by an enormous cyberattack that rendered websites inoperable nationwide. Properly understood, that event was more akin to a digital invasion, one that shut down much of the nation’s online infrastructure for weeks. The campaign, Estonian officials and most analysts agree, was almost certainly ordered and orchestrated by Russia.
The Baltic state’s geographic proximity to Russia, and its close cultural and linguistic ties—ethnic Russians make up a quarter of Estonia’s population—have also meant, however, that it has always been forced to contend with the more tried and tested human variety of espionage. When the country gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, it had to create entire law-enforcement bodies from scratch, and cast about for officials with training and experience. Among the options it relied on was to grandfather in Soviet-era operatives to continue their work, but for a sovereign Estonian state. Inevitably, sleeper agents were among those recruited.
When most countries ferret out spies, they prefer to trade them back for their own captured intelligence officers, with little or no public fanfare. Estonia is the rare country that trumpets the arrest and sentencing of foreign intelligence operatives. “There are a lot of myths about the Russian services, that they’re invincible and we cannot counter them,” Toots told me. “We won’t accept that … This has got to be seen as uncomfortable territory for them to operate in.”
According to KAPO, in the time since Toots took on his position as deputy director in 2008, Estonian courts have convicted six people of treason, “and another 12 of committing crimes against the state by collaborating with Russian special services,” including five with Moscow’s military intelligence service, the GRU. Metsavas was the fifth.
Metsavas’s first meeting with his Russian handlers was, as he recalls, “very, very superficial.” In December 2008, he traveled to St. Petersburg and was picked up by a man who gave his name only as Anton, then was taken to a safe house, where he was asked about his personal life, the early stages of his career, and bewilderingly simple questions about Estonia’s military: How many howitzers did the Estonians have? Could he point out individual buildings on a map of military installations? Metsavas thought they were playing amateur hour. “You could find that stuff on the internet very easily,” he told me. He was offered a small sum of money that his interlocutors said were to cover his expenses, and went back home.
That first exchange had felt innocuous; even though a tentative plan had been set to meet again the following December, Metsavas said he still didn’t feel like a spy. And yet the table had been set. He had accepted money for information—“That was the first step,” he told me—and met the man who would be his handler for the years to come, Anton. Throughout the conversation, the Russians he spoke with peppered their discussions with questions about Metsavas’s family, querying whether his mother’s flower business was doing well and asking after his father’s health. “They never said obviously that something could happen to my parents if I didn’t cooperate,” Metsavas said, “but I understood it that way.”
Over the period they knew each other, Metsavas learned little about Anton, or whether that was even his real name. All he could work out was that his handler had a military background, which appeared clear from his comfortable use of jargon, and that he was greatly interested in Ukraine and Georgia, two countries Metsavas had traveled to as an artillery liaison officer. That was all by design.
“It’s a pattern in GRU methodology to keep the service ambiguous,” Toots told me. “Nobody ever shows a badge. Metsavas didn’t know the true identities of his handlers and their ranks until we told him.” In fact, Metsavas didn’t even know which Russian intelligence service he was spying for until KAPO informed him.
Russia’s Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces—officially known by the acronym GU, though more commonly referred to as the GRU—is unlike the KGB’s successor organizations, the SVR and FSB, in many ways. Since its founding under a different name by Leon Trotsky in 1918, it has enjoyed virtually uninterrupted continuity as the Russian military’s covert security apparatus. Headquartered in a fortified complex in Moscow, the centerpiece of which is an enormous building known as the Stikliashka (or “Glass House”), the GRU answers directly to Russia’s chief of the general staff and is therefore technically under the authority of the defense ministry.
It also has a different ethos than the KGB and its descendants. The KGB typically drew from the ranks of Soviet intelligentsia, but a typical GRU officer is a more rough-hewn type. “The KGB is a vain and arrogant courtier, having the right to speak at the King’s council,” Viktor Suvorov, a GRU officer who defected to Britain in 1978, wrote in his book Inside Soviet Military Intelligence. “The GRU is an ugly hunchback.” Most GRU officers are picked from within the Russian armed forces, before being sent for at least three years of training at the Military-Diplomatic Academy in Moscow. Their overriding objective, according to an analyst with Estonia’s Foreign Intelligence Service—who, like many of his colleagues, requested that he not be named—is to “prepare Russia for war with the West.” GRU agents aim to steal military secrets from rival nations, trying to learn as much as possible about their strategic strengths and weaknesses, as well as their infrastructure, telecommunications systems, and—where relevant—nuclear-weapons capability. During the Cold War, operatives from this service were also known to plant caches of weapons and ammunition across Europe and North America in case a hot war broke out between Russia and the West.
It was the GRU that choreographed the seizure and annexation of Crimea, as Vladimir Putin admitted in a documentary that aired on Russian state television in March 2015. Since then, Ukraine has functioned as a laboratory for Russian military doctrine and GRU subversion efforts. According to Mark Galeotti, a Russia security specialist at the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank in London, the Glass House oversees “the gangster-warlords, militias, and mercenaries of the Donbas” of eastern Ukraine. Bellingcat, an open-source investigations website, reported that a senior GRU officer named Oleg Ivannikov “supervised the procurement and transport of weapons across the Russia-Ukraine border” when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down in 2014. The Kremlin has denied responsibility for the crash without commenting on Ivannikov’s alleged involvement. And a court in Montenegro has convicted two alleged GRU officers for masterminding a complex, murky, and ultimately unsuccessful coup attempt in 2016, a year before the Adriatic country was due to join NATO.
The GRU has lately focused its energies on more ambitious targets, including those in the United States and the United Kingdom. Two different units of its operatives hacked Democratic Party emails in the lead-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, according to an indictment issued by the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The intelligence agency then disseminated their contents via GRU-run internet personae called Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks. (As a further indication of its competition with its sister agencies, the GRU wasn’t alone in hacking the DNC—a different cadre of Russian cyberspies allegedly got inside the servers, too, as part of a presumably autonomous operation.)
Then, last year, the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England, was blamed on two GRU hit men, later identified by Bellingcat as Anatoliy Chepiga and Dr. Alexander Mishkin. (The Kremlin has denied involvement, as have the two men, who say they were there as tourists.) British authorities said the murder weapon was a proscribed military-grade nerve agent called Novichok, the unleashing of which ultimately killed one British civilian, landed several more in critical condition, and forced months-long quarantines in the sleepy cathedral city. Skripal had been a GRU colonel who spied for MI6, Britain’s foreign-intelligence service, from 1996 until his arrest in Moscow in 2004, ultimately spending six years in prison before he was traded back to Britain as part of an Anglo-American spy swap with Moscow. The Skripal poisoning, a spectacular act of international terrorism, rallied a bloc of more than 20 Western countries into collectively expelling more than 100 Russian diplomats, many of them believed to be intelligence officers. The GRU then tried to cover up its crime by tampering with the evidence and trying to hack into the servers of the international organization tasked with investigating Skripal’s poisoning. (Moscow denies this too.) The hackers were thwarted.
Metsavas grew up in Lasnamäe, a mostly Russian-speaking, working-class enclave of the Estonian capital. His father, Pjotr Volin, had served in the Soviet border guard before taking up a series of manual jobs, including working as a diver repairing the underwater infrastructure of Tallinn’s seaports. His mother, an obstetrics nurse, was born in Russia and immigrated to Estonia after marrying Volin.
Although Metsavas lived in Tallinn, his childhood revolved around Russians: Most ethnic Russians in Estonia live in homogeneous metropolitan areas or communities—Lasnamäe was itself built in the late 1970s to accommodate an influx of Russian contractors tasked with preparing for the 1980 Summer Olympics, for which Tallinn hosted the sailing competition. Like most children in the area in the 1980s, Metsavas attended a Russian-language primary school, and only started learning Estonian when he was 6 or 7. “We had two completely different worlds,” he told me. “You didn’t have to speak Estonian or know anything about Estonian culture growing up in Lasnamäe. You were completely Russian.”
The family home was devoid of the intense intellectual debates that consumed much of Estonian society as the Soviet Union collapsed and Tallinn became the capital of the newly independent country. Metsavas, however, was drawn to the military. He wanted to emulate American action-movie stars such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Chuck Norris, whose movies he loved, and “didn’t like the idea of becoming an office rat.” By the end of high school, his grades were good, his English sufficient, and his Estonian fluent enough that he was able to join the army, where he was assigned to the Presidential Guard, the post-Soviet equivalent of his father’s assignment. Metsavas was even placed in the same barracks his father had served in, a source of familial pride. (The same year he enlisted, his parents divorced. Volin later remarried and moved, first to London and then to Vladivostok, in Russia’s Far East. Metsavas’s paternal grandfather had changed the family’s surname to Volin in a show of ideological loyalty to Moscow—volya in Russian means “will”—but once Estonia won its independence, Metsavas changed his last name back; his father opted to keep his unchanged.)
A decade into his military career, Metsavas was fully ensconced in the Estonian security forces. He had graduated from the country’s military academy and become an artillery specialist, transiting from a base in Tapa, southeast of Tallinn, back to the capital, and on to Finland, where he underwent further artillery training.
Metsavas shakes the hand of Riho Terras, a previous head of the Estonian Defense Forces.
As his career progressed, his value to the Russians only increased, and what began as low-level questioning in Metsavas’s early interactions with Anton soon became more complicated, more detailed, and more dangerous. They asked questions about Estonian military allies, particularly the U.S. and the U.K., and what weaponry and ammunition they stored on Estonian soil. Metsavas’s expertise was especially useful to Moscow, because while Estonia does not have much of a navy or air force, it is proficient in artillery warfare. Anton wanted to know about the U.S.’s activities outside Estonia. “The United States was the strongest interest,” Metsavas said, without going into much detail.
Toots had earlier volunteered that the handler wasn’t much concerned with Estonia’s native defense capability, but rather with what it was receiving from stronger allies. “Metsavas was an artillery specialist, and he knew about the stuff we get from our partners,” Toots told me.
In 2012, Metsavas deployed to Afghanistan as a company liaison officer stationed in Helmand province. Upon returning home, he was assigned to the Estonian military’s headquarters in Tallinn, where he served as a staff officer in the artillery inspectorate, part of a department responsible for preparing an overall national-defense strategy. His access to see classified intelligence was limited, but he could still get his hands on plenty of sensitive documents.
Something had changed in his disposition, though: He had seen what war was like up close, embedded alongside Estonian comrades with whom he’d risked his life against an ideologically committed adversary. While deployed, he’d also been receiving three times his normal salary, a financial bonus for soldiers in active war zones, and had calculated that he’d soon have enough money to possibly retire from the army—and therefore from his espionage for Russia—and settle down with a place of his own in Tallinn.
He made plans to see Anton in St. Petersburg in the summer of 2013 and tell him he wanted out. The pair began by talking about Metsavas’s tour in Helmand, but Anton showed little interest, instead focusing on his agent’s new job at defense headquarters. After talking for some time, Metsavas finally told Anton he wanted to stop passing information to Moscow. He was financially secure, and his career was more and more at risk. “Then,” Metsavas said, Anton “dropped Father on me.”
While Metsavas was in Afghanistan, GRU agents had traveled to Russky Island, off the coast of Vladivostok, to meet with his father. Volin had retired there from London years earlier to be closer to his new wife’s parents, but his partner had fallen ill, and Volin—who remained resolutely pro-Russian, even after becoming an Estonian citizen, according to Toots, who described him as “Homo sovieticus to his core”—agreed to help Moscow in exchange for money to pay for her treatment. They had recruited Volin into the operation. His father, Metsavas said, “was a perfect thing to use” against him.
At first, with Volin based in Russia’s Far East, there was little tangible need for him, aside from making Metsavas feel like he had fewer routes out of spying for Russia. The Estonian officer continued to steal documents from headquarters, passing them to Anton in St. Petersburg. (Neither Toots nor Metsavas would offer details on what kinds of reports were being shared beyond generalities, and all Metsavas would say was that Anton was drawn more to the classification of the documents he passed along than to the inherent value of the information they contained.)
That soon changed. Months after seizing Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, Russia kidnapped a KAPO counterintelligence officer who, according to KAPO, had been dispatched to Estonia’s southeastern border to disrupt a cigarette-smuggling ring. The officer spent a year in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo prison before he was traded, Bridge of Spies–style, for another former KAPO officer who had been caught spying for Russia’s FSB. The Estonian government then issued a general advisory to all state and military personnel: Don’t go to Russia.
Metsavas’s commanding officer would now have to sign off on all his travel across the border. Had this been a few years earlier, Metsavas would have been ecstatic—it would have meant no more meetings with Anton and thus a de facto end to working for the GRU. But Volin was by now living in Tallinn again, having moved back after the death of his father-in-law. In 2016, he became the courier for his son’s stolen intelligence, the agent who’d hand over the goods to Anton in St. Petersburg. (KAPO denied me access to Volin, who was convicted alongside his son in Harju County Court, in Tallinn, in February. He was sentenced to six years in prison.)
If his father had been one of many GRU “hooks,” then Metsavas’s own impending fatherhood would prove the sharpest. In 2015, Metsavas learned he was about to become a father. He had a son with a woman he’d known for years, a fixture like himself at a gym in Tallinn. The pair were friends before getting involved romantically. In 2016, they married. His future wife’s pregnancy, he said, was “the point of no return.” He’d never be able to turn himself in now.
In hindsight, Metsavas’s decision making is hard to rationalize. On multiple occasions, he could have given up, or offered to help Estonian intelligence feed poor information to Russia, something he himself acknowledges. He was not in obvious financial distress, nor was he questioning his loyalty to Estonia. Yet each time, he declined. Studying his behavior, and that of others like him, however, makes it easier to understand.
In an article titled “Psychology of Treason,” Alan Studner, a CIA psychologist who has analyzed defectors—including Oleg Penkovsky, the GRU colonel who in 1961 volunteered to become an Anglo-American spy—argued that those like Metsavas were, in some way, unhappy. “Defection is a response to an acute overwhelming life crisis or to an accumulation of crises or disappointments,” Studner wrote in the article, published in Studies in Intelligence, the in-house journal of the American intelligence community, and declassified in 2014. Ideology was a low-order motivation for traitors. Instead, many defectors came from broken homes. In Metsavas’s case, his parents had undoubtedly played a significant role in his development, but what about beyond that? I wondered. Had the GRU alighted upon him even earlier than the honeytrap in Smolensk? Had Volin colluded with the Russian organs well before that moment, or—and here was a question it was no longer possible to dismiss as paranoid—perhaps even helped orchestrate the compromising of his son?
“The capacity for splitting and shifting loyalties, once incorporated into the personality of the developing child, remains present even if unconscious throughout life, a latent mechanism which can be quickly reactivated and drawn upon later,” Studner wrote. “Some defectors in their oppositional behavior are playing out in their adult lives the unresolved conflict of the adolescent striking back at his parents. Only now the regime has taken the place of the parent.”
Five years ago, after Russia annexed Crimea, precipitated a “separatist” insurgency in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region, and sowed unrest in much of the rest of the country with a wide-ranging disinformation and propaganda campaign, Estonian military planners’ worries began to heighten. If the Kremlin could so swiftly seize another country’s territory, so easily upend the security of a European nation, where did that leave them?
They redoubled their efforts, and in particular they showcased Estonian soldiers who could speak against Russia and whose background and career paths were living evidence of Russia’s lies. Metsavas stood out. By then, he was a 15-year veteran of the Estonian military and had completed a deployment with the NATO mission in Afghanistan. Metsavas soon became the Estonian military’s de facto spokesman for the country’s ethnic Russian community. He gained a measure of celebrity, appearing on Russian-language television shows and giving radio interviews about Estonian defenses and NATO training exercises. He spoke at a local high school on patriotism and democracy, cautioning students against Russian propaganda before taking them to observe military field exercises, where they would fire assault rifles and briefly stay in tents. He was, in effect, a totem for how Estonia sought to present itself: liberal, tolerant, cosmopolitan.
Life eventually moved on. Estonia kept its eyes trained on its larger neighbor to the east, but Metsavas got a new position. Then, last year, on a foggy morning, Metsavas climbed into his car with his young son and took him for his first day at a local nursery school. Once there, the boy did not want to release his father’s hand, eventually relenting only after Metsavas promised he would bring him ice cream. Instead, as many parents do, he got back into his car and called his wife to tell her how the drop-off had gone before starting the engine and setting off for work.
He had driven only about 200 yards when he was pulled over by an array of vehicles. Out of one stepped Toots. Metsavas, he said, was under arrest. For more than a decade—while he represented the Estonian military on television, while he served in uniform in a war zone, while he railed against Russian trolls on Facebook—Metsavas had been spying for the Kremlin.
“Somehow,” Metsavas told me, “I was ready to be arrested. I thought about it thousands of times.”
“I just didn’t know where, or when, or how it would happen,” he said.
(Caitlin Cadieux / The Atlantic)
Under Estonian law, a convicted traitor must serve two-thirds of his sentence before being eligible for parole. At that calculation, Metsavas, who was 38 at the time of his arrest, will be nearly 50 before he is free. Does he have any plans for when he gets out? “In 10, 15 years, Elon Musk will develop his Hyperloop already, and a lot of things will be very different from today,” he answered, smiling. “I can dream.”
Things are already different in Estonia. The day I arrived in Tallinn was the day of the nation’s parliamentary election. Like other European countries, Estonia has a far-right problem, and it was getting worse. The Conservative People’s Party, or EKRE, did unexpectedly well, garnering nearly 18 percent of the vote, which put it third overall, and it is now part of a tenuous coalition government. EKRE is outspoken in its hatred of immigrants and the European Union—and ethnic Russians, who are seen as fifth columnists and pollutants of the purity of the Estonian race (itself a hodgepodge of continental lineages). EKRE has naturally seized on the Metsavas affair for political advantage. Ruuben Kaalep, the chairman of the party’s youth movement, addressed it directly last September in an interview with the Baltic News Service. “The only logical explanation for his actions is that blood is thicker than water,” Kaalep said. “Loyalty is not guaranteed by Estonian citizenship or even a soldier’s oath given to the Estonian state. Loyalty is based on a feeling of ethnic belonging and a bond with one’s ancestors.”
The list of those Metsavas betrayed is long. There are his colleagues, fellow soldiers, people he called his friends whom he served alongside in a war zone. There are the students he taught, and the Russian diaspora in Estonia, the one constituency he was meant to reassure.
He does not blame anyone but himself for his plight. Anton was just doing his job, Metsavas maintained, no different from how Toots was doing his when he read Metsavas his rights. “When you buy a bottle of whiskey and you become an alcoholic, it’s not the whiskey’s fault,” he told me.
But if Metsavas revealed anything over the course of the two long days I spent with him, it was that he was a man riven on multiple levels by a double identity. An Estonian soldier who was also a Russian spy. An ethnic Russian who loved Estonia and was committed to defending it from the very government he ultimately betrayed it to. Metsavas said he was scared when he first met Anton because his future handler seemed to know everything about his new agent, his life and family. Yet Metsavas dealt with Anton anyway. I was reminded of the quintessentially human element in intelligence. Unlike the binary data of signal intercepts or the black-and-white roll-call facts in stolen documents, a handler of spies works with people—rabota s’lyudmi in Russian. He must be a combination of friend, therapist, and father-confessor, but his goal remains constant: to persuade his agent to slowly, methodically destroy himself.
Even the times Metsavas railed against Russians while he spoke for the military—was that all part of the ruse, I asked him, to keep up appearances? He swore that it wasn’t, that he was genuinely angry and defensive to see his comrades criticized. “I was asked here at KAPO, what would I do if war started with Russia. My answer was that I would fight for Estonia.
“I understand it’s hard to explain how, on the one hand, I can spy for Russia, and on the other hand, I am speaking patriotic stuff on television,” he continued. “One part of that identity is what I hate … the other part is who I am.”
As election results in the Queens district attorney race began coming in Tuesday evening, it was looking quite good for Melinda Katz, the Queens borough president who had the backing of the famous Queens machine. That supporting cast included every local member of the congressional delegation (save one), as well as the most famous ex-member, the one-time King of Queens, Joe Crowley.
Crowley lost his seat in a stunner a year ago this week, and a shock was in store for Katz, too. As the votes continued to be tallied, Tiffany Cabán, running on a radical decarceration platform, surged into the lead, and supporters of Cabán erupted. She held the lead through the night, and declared victory just before midnight, with 99 percent of the precincts reporting, holding on to a lead of 1,090 votes. The outstanding precincts were all in Jackson Heights, a Cabán stronghold, and there don’t appear to be enough absentee ballots outstanding to swing the election.
A local contest that typically has low voter turnout and gets little attention from national media drew endorsements from two of the leading Democratic presidential candidates — not to mention John Legend — along with a shocking, if not muted, backing from the New York Times editorial board. All for underdog public defender Tiffany Cabán.
Cabán’s apparent victory is a show of force in New York for the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, which worked hard for Cabán early, as well as for the Working Families Party and Real Justice PAC. Larry Krasner, the Philadelphia district attorney elected with the help of Real Justice on a similarly radical platform, was in attendance at Cabán’s election night party.
The most significant endorsement, however, likely came from Bronx and Queens Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The district attorney has jurisdiction over all of Queens and its some 2.4 million residents, but Cabán put up huge margins in portions of Queens represented by Ocasio-Cortez, which is both a reflection of their aligned politics, and the influence of Ocasio-Cortez. A year ago, the party establishment could claim — whether it was true or not — to have been caught off guard by Ocasio-Cortez. That rationale is absent in Tuesday’s race. The eyes of the country were on Queens, and the machine was as prepared as it could be. It simply couldn’t muscle out the vote.
“Take nothing for granted,” said Daeha Ko, who spent his day canvassing for Cabán in Astoria, early in the night to a fellow supporter. By the end of the night, he might have been talking to Queens borough president Melinda Katz.
While Cabán’s election night gathering exploded by the end of the night, Katz’s — at an Irish pub in Forest Hills — was much more muted. As the TVs turned from cheering Cabán supporters to ESPN, she left without conceding, gesturing to the absentee ballots that have yet to be counted. “Mainly they were able to get out the vote,” said Sohail Rana, a volunteer with the Katz campaign. Rana said he supports Katz because of her position on bail and her years in public office.
One of the seven candidates, New York City Councilman Rory Lancman, who led a promising campaign but dropped behind as Cabán’s campaign picked up steam, dropped out with just five days to go. After months of denouncing her for being a career politician and having no criminal courtroom experience, Lancman announced he’d be endorsing Queens Borough President Melinda Katz. And one of the trailing candidates in the race, former deputy attorney general Mina Malik, told a crowd in Southeast Queens on the Thursday evening before election day that “Bernie Sanders is the reason we have Trump in the White House.”
With a few weeks to go, Katz, the favorite of the Queens Democratic machine, started sending out fliers attacking both Cabán and retired New York Supreme Court Justice Greg Lasak — a move that one strategist close to the race who declined to speak on the record described as a sign that her campaign was “running scared.” Sending out negative mail, they said, is not something a confident frontrunner would do.
But at a time when the nation is grappling with how to address the largest incarcerated population in the world, reckoning with a history of wrongful convictions that have disproportionately landed innocent black people in prison, and reimagining a rehabilitative rather than a strictly punitive justice system, the office overseeing one of New York City’s largest incarcerated populations is finally coming around to change.
Katz, who was running for her sixth elected office in New York in 25 years, had support from former congressman and former Queens County Democratic Party Chair Crowley, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, along with New York Congressional Reps. Gregory Meeks, Tom Suozzi, Carolyn Maloney, and Adriano Espaillat, and a host of local and state unions. Meeks, despite a key vote on Capitol Hill Tuesday, was at Katz’s election night party. Earlier, he slammed Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., for endorsing Cabán without consulting leaders of the machine. The move, he said, was “arrogant” and “patronizing.”
But progressive groups coalesced around Cabán and brought the race national attention. Organizers pushing to end the construction of new jails, decriminalize sex work, and build relationships between the district attorney and the communities most impacted by choices the DA makes knocked on doors, organized rallies, and got out the word to propel Cabán’s campaign further than many expected it to go.
The last time Queens elected a new district attorney, the late Dick Brown got lucky. His only primary challenger in the 1991 race, the late Vincent F. Nicolosi, was disqualified from the race for irregularities and at least one case of fraud among the signatures he collected to get on to the ballot. With Nicolosi gone, and overwhelmingly Democratic Queens generally indifferent to the Republican challenger, Kerry J. Katsorhis, Brown’s win was easy. He would stay in office for the next 28 years until his death in May.
Brown had kept the Queens DA office behind on the curve of criminal justice reforms being welcomed in other offices across the country, and even in neighboring boroughs of New York City. The Queens office is the last in the city without a conviction review unit and still prosecuted low level nonviolent offenses like possession of small amounts of marijuana and fare evasion. Each of the candidates promised to change that, and all of them styled themselves as progressives at odds with the way the office had run for close to three decades under Brown.
With less than a week to go before the Democratic primary, Cabán raked in endorsements from Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders — leading to a brief spat over who was first to back her. She’d already gotten support from district attorneys Larry Krasner in Philadelphia and Rachael Rollins in Boston.
The Sunday before election day, New York State Sens. Jessica Ramos, Mike Gianaris, and Luis Sepúlveda; New York City Council members Jimmy Van Bramer and Brad Lander; Comptroller Scott Stringer; and former mayoral candidate Cynthia Nixon held a rally for Cabán in Queens’ Jackson Heights neighborhood. She also received recent endorsements from Sunrise New York City, the Muslim Democratic Club, the New York State Immigrant Action Fund, Empire State Indivisible, and Central Park Five exoneree Yusef Salaam.
In the last filing period, Cabán received the most individual donations of all of her opponents by more than 3,000 contributions. “Cabán has three times as many donors from Queens as all her opponents combined,” Monica Klein, a spokesperson for the Cabán campaign, said in a statement to The Intercept. During the last filing period, according to Klein, Cabán raised $242,030 from 3,884 donors, including 776 donors in Queens donors. In the same period, Katz raised $172,152 in 133 contributions, including 57 in Queens — and Lasak raised $144,697 from 211 donors, including 108 in Queens. “We’ve raised the most money in the race and are in the strongest position to win (and just want to note we’ve tripled Caban’s fundraising),” Grant Fox, a spokesperson for Katz, said in a statement to The Intercept.
According to their most recent filings, Malik, Nieves, and Lugo all raised under $40,000 from fewer than 100 donors, including fewer than 20 from Queens.
Lasak, a career judge and former prosecutor, won recent endorsements from the New York Daily News, the New York Post, and New York City’s Citizens Union. In the final days of the race, a campaign aide told The Intercept, they felt confident, having cut into Katz’s base and closed in on her polling lead by 18 points in addition to swinging undecided voters his way. Lasak’s campaign poured at least an additional $150,000 into TV ads, increasing their spending on digital ads as well and putting another six pieces of mail into circulation. He finished with less than 15 percent of the vote.
Given that Queens leans heavily Democratic, Cabán, if she survives whatever challenges from Katz may be filed, is all but assured a general election victory. That election will take place on November 5, 2019.
There are a lot of emotions commonly associated with sex: love, happiness, excitement, maybe even relaxation. But for many women, one sexual feeling that comes to mind is a darker one: fear.
In a recent study, Debby Herbenick, a professor and sex researcher at the Indiana University School of Public Health, found that nearly a quarter of adult women in the United States have felt scared during sex. Among 347 respondents, 23 described feeling scared because their partner had tried to choke them unexpectedly. For example, a 44-year-old woman wrote in that her partner had “put his hands on my throat to where I almost couldn’t breathe.”
Sex can involve consensual choking, but that’s not what’s going on here, as Herbenick explained to an audience during a panel at Aspen Ideas: Health, which is co-hosted by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic. Instead, “this was clearly choking that no one had talked about it and it got sprung on somebody,” she said. Many sexual-assault cases among students at her university now center around nonconsensual choking. According to her research, 13 percent of sexually active girls ages 14 to 17 have already been choked.
The reason such young kids know about such a violent sexual act is likely porn, said Dan Savage, a sex columnist and the host of Savage Lovecast, who was also on the panel. And that’s not the only disturbing change that might be attributable to porn, added Kate Julian, a senior editor at The Atlantic and the author of a recent magazine cover story on sexual behavior among young people. For her story, she talked with many women who said their male partners seemed to be taking a cue from what they had seen in porn, pounding away or penetrating then anally when they weren’t ready.
Julian heard about a university health center that was seeing women with vulvar fissures, something that’s typically a sign of sexual assault. Except these women hadn’t been raped. “They just had been having sex that they didn’t desire,” Julian said. “They didn’t know it was supposed to feel different.”
Savage believes the reason porn is creeping into—and worsening—young peoples’ sex lives is that schools are failing to provide kids with sex education that’s porn-aware. Instead of learning that what they see in porn might not resemble real life, young people watch porn and come to believe that it’s what their partners want. Savage summarized the mind-set as, “I don’t want to do that, but that’s what I have to do because that’s what she expects from me.”
Obviously, one solution is for parents to simply try to keep kids from watching porn that promotes sexual violence. But otherwise, how can we encourage young people—and older people—to talk with their partners about whether they’d actually like to experience some porn-inspired moves? Savage, who is gay, said this is something “gay people can give straight people.” Because same-sex partners have the same genitals, when they are ready to go to bed together, Savage said they often have to discuss what, precisely, they’re going to be doing. “I call it the four magic words,” Savage said. “The question that’s asked when two guys are gonna be in bed together for the first time: What are you into? Because it can’t be assumed. Straight people default to vaginal intercourse.”
Too often, Savage said, “when straight people get to consent, they stop talking about what’s next, about what they want to do. When gay people get to consent, that’s the beginning of the conversation.” That conversation could be when the couple discuss what is—and isn’t—okay.
Perhaps it’s yet another thing that straight couples can learn from gay couples.
Os estudos de João Roberto Martins Filho são a prova de que, no Brasil, os conflitos se repetem, nunca cessam. Quando ele iniciou o mestrado, nos anos 1970, o país estava sob domínio dos militares e, nas ruas, a oposição mais ruidosa emergia da ala estudantil. Na época jovem acadêmico e fã de História, Martins se interessou pelo tema e se debruçou sobre documentos, entrevistas e livros para entender os grupos de estudantes na ditadura militar. O resultado lhe rendeu tese de mestrado na Unicamp, mas o principal fruto que colheu foi o fascínio pelo plano de fundo da pesquisa: as disputas internas das Forças Armadas do Brasil, assunto pouco explorado na academia.
Nos anos seguintes, Martins Filho se tornou uma referência no tema. Foi ele que, no doutorado, refutou a ideia de que havia apenas dois grupos que explicavam o regime — o moderado, dos castelistas, e o linha-dura. Na sua tese, adotada até hoje por outros estudiosos, mostrou como as divisões internas nas casernas eram numerosas e complexas.
Hoje, 25 anos depois, o pesquisador se concentra em atividade similar, mas para tratar do governo de extrema direita de Jair Bolsonaro. Com adaptações ao método de outrora — agora, além de pesquisas, leituras e conversas, também vasculha redes sociais — ele busca mapear os diferentes interesses entre os militares no poder. Suas conclusões não são animadoras: se, de um lado, o alto escalão do Exército que apoiou Bolsonaro na campanha não está feliz com o governo, de outro, o baixo escalão está insatisfeito com o próprio Exército. Para Martins Filho, não é difícil imaginar que, num cenário de extrema crise, Bolsonaro possa usar de sua influência entre os postos inferiores do Exército para provocar uma revolta, uma inquietação popular.
A percepção do pesquisador tem fundamento: o comportamento errático de Bolsonaro. No mês passado, quando enfrentava sua pior crise de popularidade e via protestos em massa contra os cortes na educação, o presidente apoiou manifestações favoráveis a seu governo que tinham como alvo pilares democráticos como a Câmara dos Deputados e o Superior Tribunal Federal. “Nada impede que, ao se sentir ameaçado, dentro da sua tradicional irresponsabilidade, o presidente também faça acenos para os escalões inferiores do Exército”, conta Martins Filho ao Intercept. “Seria um desastre. E essa possibilidade só existe porque o Exército, em vez de ficar profissionalmente fora da política, decidiu apoiar Bolsonaro.”
Martins Filho acredita que parte da tensão que vivemos agora se deve ao fato de que os militares — sobretudo o Exército — erraram ao voltar ao protagonismo da política. Hoje são oito representantes das Forças Armadas nos ministérios, número maior do que todos os governos da ditadura militar. Para ele, os militares endossaram, em nome do antipetismo, com o claro objetivo de afastar a centro-esquerda do poder, um candidato que, agora percebem, é despreparado para funções básicas do cargo. “Me parece que os militares entraram nesse projeto para criar uma imagem positiva entre a população, mas, na prática, foi um tiro pela culatra”, diz.
Pouco antes do regresso das Forças Armadas ao centro do poder, Martins Filho se concentrava em estudar práticas repressoras da ditadura. Professor titular da Universidade Federal de São Carlos, em São Paulo, ele destrinchava a colaboração do governo da Inglaterra com o do Brasil para criar um aparelho de repressão com salas de tortura no Rio de Janeiro. Com espanto, viu, em 2015, políticos e eleitores de classe média celebrarem a figura do torturador Coronel Brilhante Ustra durante o rito que culminou o impeachment de Dilma Rousseff. Ali percebeu que era hora de mudar seu foco para o presente. “Ninguém pode dizer que a classe média não sabia quem era Bolsonaro”, fala Martins Filho. “Um homem capaz de elogiar tortura, de elogiar ditadura, de dizer que ia metralhar os petistas, expulsar os petistas do Brasil. Todo mundo sabia quem era esse homem. Uma vez eleito com 58 milhões de votos, continuou sendo quem era. E é nesse ponto que estamos.”
Conversei com Martins Filho por uma hora e meia no começo de junho. Ele falou da demissão do general Santos Cruz, da relação do governo com Mourão e outros generais e dos possíveis riscos que Bolsonaro representa à democracia.
Legenda.
Foto: Gabriela Di Bella
Intercept – Qual é o tamanho real da influência do presidente entre os militares?
João Roberto Martins Filho – Com exceção da eleição de 2014, quando teve votação mais expressiva, Bolsonaro sempre se elegeu deputado federal com aproximadamente cem mil votos, não muito mais ou muitos menos do que isso. Foram seis eleições com retrospecto parecido. Seu eleitorado sempre foi a família militar, sargentos e soldados. Ele passou 28 anos falando para esse pessoal. Nesse caminho fez coisas absurdas, como elogiar o governo militar.
Bolsonaro era desprezado nos escalões maiores. O general Ernesto Geisel falava que Bolsonaro era um péssimo militar, por exemplo.
Nos escalões mais altos, como coronel e tenente, ele sempre foi considerado um péssimo exemplo porque mal chegou a capitão e publicou uma carta à revista Veja para reclamar de salários. Só não foi punido porque se percebeu uma grande insatisfação nos setores mais baixos do Exército e houve certo receio de transformar o caso num pólo de agitação. Então ele acabou sendo afastado da Escola de Aperfeiçoamento de Oficiais e com isso não poderia mais progredir na carreira. Bolsonaro era desprezado nos escalões maiores. O general Ernesto Geisel falava que Bolsonaro era um péssimo militar, por exemplo.
No inquérito, o oficial responsável diz que Jair Bolsonaro era um homem de extrema ambição financeira. Não era feito para carreira militar. Mas, como o eleitorado dele era de famílias militares, sempre ficou com pé em cada coisa. Sentia que era militar sendo um político. Uma vez que assume o poder, é o mesmo jogo. Ele pensa, acima de tudo, nele próprio. Interessa a ele manter a corte de militares na medida que fortaleça o poder dele. Quando tentam controlá-lo, ele mobiliza outro setor, o da extrema direita. O que acho errado é chamar essa ala de extrema direita de ideológica. Ideológico todos eles são. O que levou todos a apoiar o Bolsonaro foi o antipetismo.
Durante as eleições, as Forças Armadas demonstraram apoio a Bolsonaro. Muitos oficiais fizeram até campanha. Você diria que hoje a relação entre as duas partes não é tão sólida quanto parecia na época das eleições?
A questão fundamental era afastar a centro-esquerda, e Bolsonaro conseguiu. Quase perdeu a eleição, mas conseguiu. Se não houvesse acontecido o atentado em Juiz de Fora durante a campanha, não sabemos o que poderia acontecer. O fato é que, uma vez entendido que ele era a única opção para afastar a centro-esquerda, os oficiais engoliram muitas coisas. A sucessão de fatos que veio depois, porém, é lastimável. É impossível achar que oficiais da Aeronáutica, da Marinha e do Exército não se incomodem com as declarações e as posturas do presidente, nem que não sejam mais inteligentes do que Bolsonaro.
Sinto que há oficiais que ridicularizam algumas bandeiras como esta última de Bolsonaro, a de transformar Angra dos Reis numa Cancun. Como que alguém com mínimo de inteligência pode achar que isso é a bandeira de um Presidente da República? Então acho que, ao apoiar Bolsonaro como alternativa para derrotar centro-esquerda, os militares deram um crédito de confiança, mas, desde então, ele tem se revelado um presidente que envergonha o país. Isso também tem efeito dentro das Forças Armadas.
De onde vem o antipetismo das Forças Armadas? Em recente entrevista à Folha de S.Paulo e ao El País, Lula mencionou que modernizou instalações, que comprou equipamentos para os militares e que tinha bom diálogo com os oficiais. Quando a situação começou a ficar hostil para os petistas dentro das casernas?
O antipetismo é uma atitude irracional de parte dos setores da Forças Armadas, principalmente do Exército. Como tal, tem uma série de motivações. Eu diria que as Forças Armadas aderiram ao moralismo de classe média na luta anticorrupção, como se tivessem finalmente achado o motivo de toda a corrupção do país no PT. Por outro lado existe o preconceito de classe média que nunca foi resolvido, mesmo na época de boa popularidade de Lula, que nunca admitiu que um trabalhador chegasse à presidência da República, embora durante o governo de Lula e de parte do governo de Dilma as Forças Armadas tenham se adaptado à direção civil por meio do Ministério da Defesa.
‘O Exército aderiu institucionalmente à candidatura Bolsonaro.’
Um terceiro motivo, e esse é bastante concreto, foi a questão da Comissão Nacional da Verdade, as investigações que ela fez e o relatório que ela divulgou culpando toda a cadeia de comando das cinco Presidências da República, os generais, entre 1964 e 1985. E o quarto motivo foi o fato de que o PT, numa reunião de diretório nacional, aprovou uma moção dizendo que deveria ter mexido no currículo das escolas militares, entre outras medidas que não tomou. Esse moção foi aprovada no congresso nacional do PT e foi completamente inoportuna. Isso porque o PT teve três mandatos e meio pra ter uma política de defesa e essa política foi, digamos, em grande parte favorável às Forças Armadas. Não tinha sentido dizer o que não foi feito e provocar uma grande área de atrito com as Forças armadas que já tinham essa postura antipetista. O PT fez muito pelas Forças Armadas, as instalações foram modernizadas, houve novas construções, houve manutenção, houve a retomada do submarino nuclear, houve o projeto dos submarinos convencionais em acordo com a França, houve o fechamento do acordo com os caças da Suécia, houve uma série de projetos do Exército aprovados. Do ponto de vista das verbas no investimento das Forças Armadas, a época do PT foi uma época de ouro.
Hoje tanto Bolsonaro quanto os ministros afirmam que não existe uma ala militar no governo. Você, ao contrário, parece entender que não só há uma óbvia ala militar como ela também possui conflitos internos. Quais são os motivos de rusgas?
No governo militar, sempre se procura dizer que os militares atuam unidos. Hoje é a mesma coisa. Você nunca vai ver um militar reconhecer que há conflitos, “partidos”, digamos assim. Mas o fato dos generais falarem sempre à imprensa significa que eles assumiram papel fundamental no governo Bolsonaro. Então, a primeira constatação é que houve, infelizmente, uma volta dos militares à política. Esse retorno foi organizado pelo então comandante do Exército, o general Eduardo Villas Bôas (ele ocupou o cargo de 5 fevereiro de 2015 a 11 de janeiro de 2019).
Você percebe essa intenção pelas declarações que ele começou a dar depois da queda da Dilma Rousseff em 2016. Quando ela caiu, houve uma mudança de postura do Exército. O Exército aderiu institucionalmente à candidatura Bolsonaro. Os militares que hoje estão no governo formam uma ala militar, queiram ou não. A segunda constatação é que, ao se tornar parte do governo, eles inevitavelmente entram na luta política. Todo o governo tem luta política interna. O que não está claro é como eles vão se acomodar a esse conflito externo, com a ala civil.
O ex-ministro Santos Cruz ao lado do ex-comandante do Exército Eduardo Vilas Bôas.
Foto: Divulgação
Os militares precisam se adaptar ao conflito com a ala de Olavo de Carvalho, você diz?
Isso. Mesmo que os militares não quisessem ser uma ala militar, há uma ala civil, uma ala de extrema direita, a que segue os ensinamentos de Olavo de Carvalho — a exemplo dos filhos de Bolsonaro e o ministro das relações exteriores —, que está medindo força há meses com a ala militar. Ultimamente, resolveram ficar quietos, mas é algo que não deve durar muito. Pois é só essa ala civil perceber alguma influência maior dos militares que vão voltar a atacar.
E entre os próprios militares, por trás do falso discurso de unidade, há grandes conflitos?
A questão é saber se os militares do alto comando, mais profissionais e pouco envolvidos em política, vão se distanciar do governo Bolsonaro com o desenrolar do processo político. Poderia haver, assim, um distanciamento entre os militares que são muito próximos ao Bolsonaro, palacianos, e os militares da ativa. Outro problema do Exército é saber se o Bolsonaro, em algum momento, vai precisar usar as bases políticas dele. Isso significaria também apelar às forças inferiores do Exército. Aí já houve sinais de que pode haver algum tipo de inflamação, principalmente nas redes sociais. Isso se Bolsonaro se sentisse ameaçado. Não sabemos se isso acontecerá ou não.
Existe o risco de uma revolta de baixas patentes inflamada pelo próprio Bolsonaro?
É uma situação extrema. Só surgiu a ameaça quando os militares divulgaram o que chamaram de versão da reforma da previdência militar. Muitos ali perceberam que era, na verdade, um projeto de reestruturação de carreira. Essa postura pegou muito mal nos postos de major pra baixo, porque não trazia benefícios para os oficiais e praças e sargentos, trazia apenas para os postos mais altos. Houve um surto de manifestações nas redes sociais desses setores inferiores. Sabemos disso porque o comandante do Exército foi obrigado a se manifestar.
Há uma latência e uma contradição desses fatores que ficaram claras nesse episódio da reforma. Os militares, principalmente sargentos, também têm queixas constantes sobre como os oficiais usam sargentos e soldados para fazerem serviços pessoais. Isso pega muito mal. Muitos deles atuam como empregados domésticos sendo militares. O Bolsonaro sabe explorar essa revolta muito bem. É isso que está em jogo, e muitas pessoas não sabem disso. Para virar uma rebelião, seria numa situação extrema, algo que não estamos vendo agora. Mas é uma potencialidade. Bolsonaro pode apelar para o eleitorado dele, composto sobretudo pelo baixo escalão, e acontecer alguma rebelião. O primeiro eleitorado dele é essa turma, a oficialidade baixa, os sargentos, que não tinham como se expressar e se expressavam através dele.
Qual seria o estrago dessa revolta de baixa patente?
Seria o pior dos estragos. Já há um estrago: o fato de que os militares foram levados ao centro da vida política. Foram xingados e atacados como nunca tinham sido em outro governo, desses que ele, Bolsonaro, vive atacando. Nos últimos 24 anos, nenhuma autoridade desses governos — FHC, Lula e Dilma — ofendeu generais em público como aliados do Bolsonaro fizeram. O pior dos estragos seria mexer com a hierarquia dentro das Forças Armadas. Como o governo é populista, que morde e depois assopra, capaz de articular pressões em protestos, como fizeram com Rodrigo Maia no último dia 26, com bonecos e tudo, nada impede que, ao se sentir ameaçado, dentro da sua tradicional irresponsabilidade, o presidente também faça acenos para os escalões inferiores do Exército. Isso seria um desastre. E essa possibilidade só existe porque o Exército, em vez de ficar profissionalmente fora da política, decidiu apoiar Bolsonaro.
Que impacto poderia ter a reforma da previdência dos militares?
É uma incógnita, eles não só se desprestigiaram muito ao tentar escapar da reforma da previdência, como também criaram uma divisão. Conversei com militares da reserva em relação a essa proposta e, entre os que estão de major pra baixo e os que estão acima de major, não se sabe como vai estar. O tema desapareceu. Quando o tema voltar, vamos ver a repercussão.
Qual o interesse da entrada do Exército na política? O que interessa a eles agora que estão lá?
O Exército nunca perdeu ideia de que é uma espécie de pai da nação. E sempre se referiu ao artigo 142 da Constituição, que fala da Garantia da Lei e da Ordem, interpretando-o como se dissesse que, em último caso, a Constituição permite uma intervenção. O fato é que não, a Constituição não permite. Ela permite intervenção militar em locais determinados por solicitação de um dos poderes da República, nunca a Constituição permitiria que os militares viessem para salvar a pátria.
‘O que ocorre é que o governo Bolsonaro é associado a generais, não a almirantes ou brigadeiros’.
Essa ideia de salvador da pátria continua a existir no Exército. Só que, num ambiente democrático, o Exército foi se adaptando ao ambiente civil. O Exército entrou na política porque, em primeiro lugar, tinha um projeto conservador que era afastar o PT. Isso se percebe em qualquer entrevista, eles realmente odeiam o PT. E, depois, o Exército também tem um segundo objetivo que é mostrar como ajudar o país a encontrar estabilidade. Acho que idealmente não seria pela via de um governo Bolsonaro, mas o mais importante era afastar a centro-esquerda. A partir daí, segundo eles, o Brasil se encaminharia. O Exército então mostraria que tem quadros que podem ajudar o país a sair do buraco.
Na prática, nada disso aconteceu. Os militares estão num governo de opereta. Eles se submeteram a constantes vexames. Além de serem xingados, Bolsonaro arrastou o Exército e as Forças Armadas para comemorar o Golpe de 64. Isso foi transmitido para todo mundo, não era o que os militares queriam. O Exército sempre fez isso discretamente. Ele associou os militares à ditadura militar, o que foi um golpe baixo. Então, me parece que os militares entraram nesse projeto para criar uma imagem positiva entre a população, mas, na prática, foi um tiro pela culatra.
João Roberto Martins Filho: “Não importa para ele [Bolsonaro] o que é verdade histórica. Para ele o que importa é se aquilo que o vai falar pegará bem com os seguidores dele ou não. Você não vai ver ninguém das Forças Armadas tão reacionário assim.”
Foto: Gabriela Di Bella
No caso da Aeronáutica e da Marinha, os interesses são outros?
Hoje você tem uma aberração que é o general como ministro da Defesa. Quando foi criado o Ministério da Defesa, o maior medo da Marinha era que caísse na mão do Exército. Porque o ministério foi criado para ser civil. Então, a Marinha engoliu o ministério, mas não apoiava. Uma vez criado o ministério da Defesa, houve muitas quedas de ministros, mas surgiu uma cultura de comando civil dos militares. A primeira coisa é essa. Nessa onda conservadora, tanto na Marinha quanto na Aeronáutica, a grande maioria votou em Bolsonaro, mas os comandos das duas percebem que o Exército está tendo um papel que sempre, historicamente, acharam exagerado, o de salvador da pátria. A Marinha recusa retoricamente esse papel. Depois, a Marinha também tem um projeto enorme, o do submarino nuclear, e a Força Aérea tem um projeto muito grande também, tecnológico, o dos caças suecos. São projetos que vão se estender por muitos anos, vão acabar quando não tiver mais governo Bolsonaro. Eles percebem que é perigosa a associação a um governo específico. Isso não quer dizer que não tenham entrado na onda conservadora e apoiado a candidatura Bolsonaro. Se você observar, o governo também tem almirantes, brigadeiros e coronéis, mas são pessoas que estão em cargos burocráticos e em quantidade bem menor do que em relação ao Exército. Na verdade, o que ocorre é que o governo Bolsonaro é associado a generais, não a almirantes ou brigadeiros. Nessa altura, então, a Marinha e a Força Aérea devem achar que fizeram bem. É um governo errático.
Como você avalia a atuação do Ministério da Defesa nesses primeiros meses de governo? Está sendo como o esperado?
A criação do ministério (ocorrida em 1999) foi um avanço nas relações entre civis e militares, inegavelmente, com todos os problemas. Tenho esperança que, com o passar do tempo, prepondere lá e no comando do Exército uma visão mais realista do que é o governo Bolsonaro e, assim, ocorra algum recuo para o profissionalismo. Tenho conversado com oficiais da reserva, que acabaram de sair, inclusive, e alguns deles, os mais lúcidos, consideram que a conta do fracasso do governo Bolsonaro vai ser jogado em cima do Exército. Isso é muito ruim para a imagem deles. Embora o Exército diga que é sempre bem avaliado na pesquisa de opinião pública, houve, pela primeira vez desde 1985, uma queda de popularidade na última pesquisa.
O presidente Jair Bolsonaro e o vice-presidente Hamilton Mourão durante Cerimônia de Formatura da Turma do Instituto Rio Branco.
Foto: Antonio Cruz/Agência Brasil
Visto de fora, pelo Twitter e pelas declarações dos olavistas, o general Hamilton Mourão atua como uma espécie de indesejado contraponto à ideologia bolsonarista. Era esperado que ele agisse assim? Faz parte da estratégia de Bolsonaro ou Mourão está, de fato, incendiando as articulações do governo?
Acho que existe uma contradição. O Mourão se coloca como alternativa se o governo Bolsonaro não der certo. Como ele também foi eleito, não pode ser demitido. Bolsonaro já deixou claro que demite sem escrúpulos, o que é uma característica da política no Brasil. Mas, veja, o Mourão declarou que tinha oito assessores antes do mandato. Ele elabora projetos e programas, ele foi treinado pra não soar como aquele general rude e ignorante. O Mourão passou a ter imagem de alguém equilibrado, que faz contraponto às barbaridades que Bolsonaro fala.
‘Pode-se dizer que o Congresso inteiro é mais capacitado do que o Bolsonaro’.
Para o país seria muito ruim as duas opções: esse governo que já temos e a outra a de um governo chefiada por um general que acabou de sair do Exército. É evidente que os empresários, a mídia, o setor da agricultura, os donos do poder estão considerando a possibilidade Mourão, mas, para uma perspectiva democrática, nenhuma das duas é boa. Era melhor deixar o governo Bolsonaro mostrando que o Brasil é um governo de direita do que dar uma recauchutada com um governo de alguém mais preparado, que é o Mourão.
Como você avalia a relação entre Bolsonaro e Mourão? Mourão, embora vice, é mais respeitado pelas Forças Armadas do que o presidente. Ele não parece ser um cara muito submisso…
O Roberto Requião, que foi muito importante no parlamento, fez um perfil psicológico do Bolsonaro como deputado de baixo clero que passou por inúmeros partidos e que era uma pessoa que tava sempre reagindo a qualquer pessoa que era mais capacitada do que ele. Ele tinha uma insegurança básica. Pode-se dizer que o Congresso inteiro é mais capacitado do que o Bolsonaro. Foi uma falha, aliás, não terem cassado o mandato dele por falta de decoro parlamentar. Havia base para isso. Então, a atitude do Bolsonaro com o Mourão, muito diferente de FHC com seu vice, de Lula com seu vice, até de Dilma com seu vice, ainda que este caso seja bem complexo, é justamente o medo de que o Mourão passe a perna nele. Isso nos leva a crer que ele é profundamente inseguro. Ele e os filhos acham que a rasteira está perto. O Mourão, para ele, é uma espécie de sombra, alguém que pode dar facada nas costas a qualquer momento. Ele não pode brigar com Mourão, porque ele é um fantasma pra ele e pros aliados mais próximos.
Na sessão de votação pelo impeachment de Dilma Rousseff, Bolsonaro fez uma saudação a Brilhante Ustra, um dos responsáveis por torturar pessoas na época da ditadura. Durante as eleições também vimos apoiadores do político usarem camisetas de Ustra. Como o senhor avalia essa normalização ou relativização de um comportamento abominável, como o ato de tortura, por parte de um chefe de estado e de muitos que o elegeram?
É evidente, está mais do que provado, até por inúmeras fontes absolutamente incontornáveis, que houve tortura no Brasil. Execuções, atos bárbaros, assassinatos e desaparecimentos, não há como negar. Há um documento oficial, um relatório da Comissão da Verdade. A coisa mais gritante é que Bolsonaro foi aplaudido pela classe média que tava assistindo à sessão do impeachment na Avenida Paulista. Ninguém pode dizer que a classe média não sabia quem era Bolsonaro. Um homem capaz de elogiar tortura, de elogiar ditadura, dizer que tinham matado 30 mil pessoas, que ia metralhar os petistas, expulsar os petistas do Brasil. Todo mundo sabia quem era esse homem. Uma vez eleito com 58 milhões de votos, continuou sendo quem era. Chegou a ponto de visitar Israel e dizer que Holocausto tem que ser perdoado. Tem certa dose de ignorância aí, de burrice, pode-se dizer, mas ele não tem o menor respeito pelo conhecimento histórico, não sabe nada de História do Brasil. Se fizessem uma sabatina com ele, tiraria uma nota sofrível em História, de qualquer período. Uma das coisas que queima o Exército no governo Bolsonaro é como esse homem passou na academia de Agulhas Negras, como não foi reprovado em História. É uma coisa interessante de se perguntar.
Durante a campanha, Bolsonaro citava bordões que prometiam acabar com comunistas. Esse inimigo imaginário se consolidou na mente de seus apoiadores, de modo que, ainda hoje, pelas correntes de WhatsApp, o principal alvo dos grupos bolsonaristas são partidários do comunismo, tidos como a escória da sociedade. Bolsonaro realmente crê nisso ou é uma estratégia?
É difícil saber. Ele é uma pessoa… Eu nunca colocaria a característica de pessoa inteligente, ele é uma pessoa esperta. Quando falava essas barbaridades, conseguia dois objetivos: mantinha o eleitorado dele e aparecia na mídia. O Bolsonaro só saía da obscuridade quando falava uma barbaridade. Isso teve preço caro porque hoje, em todo lugar do mundo que ele vai, pegam essa frases dele e mostram o que ele é. Talvez ele acredite no que diga. Mas é bem possível que não importa para ele o que é verdade histórica. Para ele o que importa é se aquilo que o vai falar pegará bem com os seguidores dele ou não. Você não vai ver ninguém das Forças Armadas tão reacionário assim, embora houvesse o general Luiz Rocha Paiva, uma espécie de caricatura. O apoio ao governo militar é feito com algum cuidado por parte dos militares. Bolsonaro nunca foi ponderado. No começo da carreira, chegou a falar que fuzilaria o Fernando Henrique Cardoso, à época na Presidência.
Dois dias depois da publicação da reportagem que mostrava diálogo ilegal entre o então juiz Sérgio Moro e o procurador Deltan Dallagnol, o general Villas Bôas divulgou em suas redes uma mensagem de apoio ao agora ministro Moro. O que isso representa?
No contexto dessas revelações de mensagens que em nenhum momento tiveram sua veracidade questionada, num momento de alta especulação sobre quem teve capacidade de hackear as mensagens nessas dimensões e num momento de crítica geral da inconstitucionalidade da atuação da tabelinha entre juiz Moro e promotor Dallagnol, causou uma estranheza muito grande a declaração do ex-comandante do Exército Villas Bôas, tido por muito tempo como um cara ponderado, em apoio ao ministro Moro. E essa aproximação de Moro aos generais tem se firmado há algum tempo. Acredito que o general Villas Bôas continua expressando opiniões que são as mesmas do alto comando. Se não forem, o alto comando tem que de alguma forma deixar claro opiniões diferentes, mas acho que isso não acontece. Há generais, próximos ao grupo do Palácio do Planalto, que são praticamente irmãos siameses do Bolsonaro, com destaque para o general Heleno. Mas não era de esperar isso do Villas Bôas, embora ele seja assessor do Heleno no Palácio do Planalto. Até segunda ordem, Villas Bôas amplificou a opinião do Exército. É estranha a postura do Villas Bôas porque ela é uma clara intervenção na política, o que não é de se esperar em qualquer situação numa ordem democrática.
Você já deve estar cansado de responder essa pergunta, mas é preciso esclarecermos: há risco para democracia?
Olha, você tendo um líder populista com tendências fascistas — embora eu prefira chamar isso e analisar o fenômeno brasileiro como “bolsonarismo”, expressão brasileira da extrema direita no mundo —, já é uma ameaça à democracia em si. Uma ameaça de golpe de estado vejo mais afastada. O grande projeto do Exército era usar o governo Bolsonaro para se mostrar como responsável, mas isso não está dando certo.
Sua carreira acadêmica começou com estudos sobre movimentos estudantis durante a militarização do estado, entre 1964 e 1968. Como você vê agora esse levante a favor da educação e contra o governo de Bolsonaro?
O modo como o governo Bolsonaro conduziu a política educacional fez surgir uma oposição ao governo dele, de um novo tipo. Não é uma oposição partidária. Quem foi na manifestação viu que todos os grupos da esquerda estavam presentes, mas nenhum deles quis liderar, um movimento de massa, amplo, em defesa da educação, e o governo Bolsonaro, na ignorância dele, não percebeu que as famílias brasileiras, independente da classe social, almejam ter o filho na universidade e enxergam claramente que as políticas do governo vão diminuir essa possibilidade e vão enfraquecer o ensino superior. Então esse movimento tende a dar muito trabalho ao governo Bolsonaro. É um movimento de tipo novo.
Você acha que a demissão do general Santos Cruz muda o clima dentro do Exército?
Acompanhei a cobertura dos três principais jornais e dos telejornais sobre o episódio. Logo se construiu a versão de que foi uma vitória da ala ideológica ou olavista do governo. A meu ver a coisa é mais complicada. Há efetivamente uma direita civil no governo Bolsonaro, que disputa poder com a ala militar. Mas ideologicamente não vejo diferença entre eles. Evidente que os militares não gostaram de ser atacados com palavras de baixo calão por Olavo de Carvalho. Foi a reação do general Santos Cruz a isso que provocou sua demissão, pois o colocou em rota de colisão com os filhos de Bolsonaro e este acabou tomando o partido deles contra seu velho amigo, um homem conservador mas de opiniões fortes.
Mas a explicação que destaca uma suposta vitória olavista não é limitada apenas porque são todos ideológicos. Ela também não explica por que o ministro da Defesa estava presente no momento da comunicação da decisão (o general Heleno também estava, mas ele não conta, pois é uma espécie se irmão siamês do presidente). Ou seja, o ministro da Defesa deve ter indicado o nome do general Ramos, ainda na ativa e comandante do Sudeste, o mesmo que em meados de março deste ano enviou convite para a cerimônia de aniversário da Revolução Democrática de 31 de março de 1964, alguns dias antes que o próprio presidente ordenasse comemorações do evento. O general é um homem de confiança do ministro da Defesa e do comandante do Exército. Não parece ter a independência de opinião do general que sai. Resta conferir. No final, sai um militar, mas os militares permanecem fortes.
