Anonymous tapes hint at his gruesome murder An autocrat selling himself as a pro-Western reformer If this sounds like the case of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi But the scenario also describes the sensational disappearance in 2000 of journalist Georgi Gongadze in Ukraine who had appointed pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko as prime minister Gongadze’s headless body provided proof of his death The real Gongadze story is a cautionary tale about believing authoritarian governments in sensational crimes where their leaders have much to gain or lose That may seem obvious. Indeed, most observers are justifiably skeptical about Riyadh’s protests of innocence. Yet, in the age of fake news and foreign disinformation, too many have rushed to believe the juicy but anonymous government leaks from Turkish media — the sole sources of nearly all the gory allegations in the case The CIA’s own apparent wiretaps are far more mundane and ambiguous such as the recently reported transcripts prepared by Turkish authorities of the most shocking alleged recordings none have been independently authenticated there has never been a public airing or independent analysis of the forensic evidence in Gongadze’s disappearance is no friend of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman or of the press And there are hardly any independent journalists left in Turkey to conduct their own investigations into Khashoggi’s disappearance or the truth of their own government’s assertions By repeating reports from politically muzzled Turkish media as “facts” or NGOs and politicians may end up acting as loudspeakers for Turkish (and perhaps other) foreign intelligence services state propaganda and opaque internal intrigues The situation mirrors early 2000 in Ukraine who already exerted ruthless control over the media stood out as a voice of opposition on his radio show in Kiev about to embark on his fourth nuptials with a Turkish Ph.D a father of twins with his second wife Myroslava and he was having an affair with Olena Prytula a reporter in Kuchma’s exclusive press pool Former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma | Vasily Maximov/AFP via Getty Images he and Prytula started a political webzine called Ukraiinska Pravda or “Ukrainian Truth.” It had a shadowy sponsor These allies used leaks to pursue their goals and smear opponents and the UP’s republication of dirt from Russian media did both while also fanning the president’s dislike of Gongadze When UP posted a Russian article with dirt about a crony’s son the upset father told Kuchma — falsely — that Gongadze wrote it UP’s secret sponsor had dropped the publication the journalist was mostly worried about money But many questioned the rush to cry foul play Men caught between wives and lovers can skip town And Prytula evidently had powerful protection headless corpse was discovered in a forest near a town called Tarashcha The body reportedly was found with Gongadze’s necklace Kiev’s top forensics expert said the corpse was too old to belong to the missing journalist the town coroner kept the unidentified corpse in the morgue Georgi Gongadze in Kiev in 2000| Dima Gavrish/AFP via Getty Images Photos from that day showed a badly mutilated It would never be seen again: When the group wasn’t looking The local coroner instead gave them a tissue sample from his work on the body she announced the likely discovery of Gongadze’s body on the webzine UP Like the gruesome rumors of Khashoggi’s dismemberment the headless corpse focused public attention on the missing journalist setting the stage for the bombshell revelation of the Kuchma tapes These were secret recordings of the president of unclear provenance They were released in late November when attention on the case was already high Kuchma could be heard cursing Gongadze and making vulgar threats — though it’s not clear his underlings took him very seriously Added to the headless corpse that seemed to be Gia’s After pro-West Prime Minister Yushchenko was ousted that spring the West shunned Kiev and Kuchma would remain firmly under the grip of Moscow and then-recently elected President Vladimir Putin Though an ex-bodyguard claimed he taped Kuchma with a digital device under the couch occasionally intersecting intrigues in which no single player — including Kuchma — knew everything Here too there are parallels to Khashoggi’s case Given the royal scheming surrounding MBS at home a similar network of conspiracies could be playing a role there too And despite assumptions that nothing can happened without MBS’s knowledge autocrats also depend on sycophants who will lie to save their skins or flay an opponent’s some time after the discovery and disappearance of the headless corpse — it is still unclear when exactly — another body appeared Gia’s widow was brought in to view it in late December The problem was it looked nothing like the corpse in the photos from Tarashcha there was a pile of completely dismembered bones Former Prime Minister of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko | Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Concordia Summit Putin’s government offered to do the genetic testing convinced that “Tapegate” was an American plot The test found a 99.9 percent probability that the sample Ukraine provided belonged to Gia but Kuchma decided to publicly identify the Tarashcha corpse as Gongadze’s he gambled that acknowledging the death meant the body — and the problem — could be buried Others got involved and things quickly got confusing A private German DNA clinic tested the tissue sample that Prytula brought from Tarashcha: It wasn’t Gongadze’s at all this time by the FBI on the bones in the morgue could not “exclude” that the DNA was Gongadze’s Adding fuel to the speculation: Gia was born a twin but the other boy disappeared from the hospital as an infant the Tarashcha corpse become identified as Gongadze’s a handful of ex-policemen were convicted for Gongadze’s murder following a closed trial that appeared to have been falsified Kuchma later faced charges for ordering the murder too It is unlikely there will be in the Khashoggi case either Protesters hold a portrait of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi on October 9 2018 in Istanbul | Ozan Kose/AFP via Getty Images Gongadze’s mother never accepted that the pile of bones in the Kiev morgue belonged to her son there was no one to object to burying them under a tombstone bearing his name it remains unclear whose body is buried in Gongadze’s grave located in the yard of the Mykola Naberezhny Church in Kiev But the story of the Tarashcha corpse shows how regimes with politicized law enforcement and no independent watchdogs can spin lurid tales that blind the public to flimsy evidence and ulterior motives With the truth about Jamal Khashoggi likely to remain as murky as the true fate of Georgi Gongadze in the fall of 2000 it would be prudent to question what comes out of Ankara or Riyadh or directed a USAID-funded program in Ukraine that worked on the Gongadze case She is the author of “Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl” (Joseph Henry Press 2005) and recently completed a modern mystery about a prehistoric murder