It's long been suspected that the 1999 apartment bombings that killed some 300 people, and helped bring Putin to power, were a false flag operation carried out by the Russian security service. David Satter, author of The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: Russia's Road to Terror and Dictatorship Under Yeltsin and Putin, in the National Review a year ago:
I believe that Vladimir Putin came to power as the result of an act of terror committed against his own people. The evidence is overwhelming that the apartment-house bombings in 1999 in Moscow, Buinaksk, and Volgodonsk, which provided a pretext for the second Chechen war and catapulted Putin into the presidency, were carried out by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). Yet, to this day, an indifferent world has made little attempt to grasp the significance of what was the greatest political provocation since the burning of the Reichstag.
But how much did the US government know about this? Here's Satter again, in Tablet - How America helped make Vladimir Putin dictator for life:
The bombings changed the course of Russia’s post-Soviet history. They were blamed on the Chechens, who denied involvement. In the wake of initial success, Russia launched a new invasion of Chechnya. Putin, who had just been appointed prime minister, was put in charge of the invasion and his popularity soared. Six months later, he was elected President.
On July 14, 2016, I filed a request for documents on the bombings from the State Department, the CIA and the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act. I wanted to know whether the U.S. had information to support the view—which is widespread in Russia—that the Russian authorities themselves blew up the bombings in order to bring Putin to power. The responses I received showed that the United States had considerable evidence that the Russian authorities were responsible for the bombings, but chose to ignore it.
The bombings have influenced U.S.-Russian relations to this day. The policy of self censorship in the case of the bombings has been applied to every one of the Putin era crimes in which there was evidence that the real author was the regime. The 1999 apartment bombings were followed by the 2002 Dubrovka Theater hostage siege, the 2004 Beslan school massacre, the murder of former Federal Security Service (FSB) agent Alexander Litvinenko in London and the murders of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya and opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in Moscow. In each instance, U.S. policy was to ignore the evidence of official involvement, and move on. It was this that made possible the Obama ‘reset’ policy and helps to explain why President Donald Trump, as a candidate, questioned Putin’s responsibility for the murder of journalists and oppositionists and later, as President, justified Russian crimes with the statement, “we kill people too.”
One of the things I wanted to learn as a result of my FOIA requests was the U.S. assessment of who was responsible for the bombings. The State Department provided six documents but nothing about an assessment. I made a renewed request and on March 22, the State Department responded that documents concerning the U.S. assessment of the bombings would remain secret. The CIA refused to produce any documents and the FBI produced nothing that was not publicly known.
In a draft Vaughn index, a document used to justify withholdings in FOIA cases, the State Department said release of that information had “the potential to inject friction into, or cause serious damage” to the relationship with the Russian government which was “vital to U.S. national security.” The response did not mean that it was the assessment that would “inject friction.” The assessment may have been withheld because it would incidentally reveal “sources and methods.” It is the former possibility, however, that is consistent with the attitude that has characterized U.S. behavior in regard to the bombings ever since they occurred. This silence, in turn, has had consequences for the whole fabric of U.S.–Russian relations. By not raising the most important issues, the Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations have allowed Russia to present a false image of itself which, over time, we ourselves have come to believe, undercutting belated efforts to object to Russian crimes and making us vulnerable to Russian manipulation.
There was a fifth bomb, in the basement of a building in Ryazan, south-east of Moscow. It was deactivated before it could go off. It was of the same type as the other four. The bombers were captured. They were members of the FSB, the Russian Federal Security Service.....
If Russia’s rulers committed terrorist acts against their own people in order to come to power, it means that they differ little from those who place car bombs in crowded markets in order to polarize Shiites and Sunnis. I think it is obvious that such people cannot be reliable partners in the war on terror.
At the same time, a thorough examination of the bombings is necessary because it has the potential to blunt and perhaps put an end to the Russian propaganda assault against the West. Even the most deluded citizen of a Western country would be sobered by awareness that the authors of that propaganda are capable of crimes far beyond anything with which they accuse the West.