Mr. President, Let David Satter in!

Mr. President, at the time of this writing, it is gratifying to know that your security men and our special agents are working together to battle Islamist fascism, with its revenge-hungry black widows, deluded martyrs and racist beliefs that resemble the lethal lunacy of Mein Kampf. Though many still ignore the danger, a worldwide struggle against terrorism is underway. We admire your resolve to meet this challenge because it is our challenge as well. Dagestan birthed one of the two terrorists who in 2013, killed several U.S. citizens and injured two hundred others in Boston.

However, it behooves us to be critical of your country when necessary. While pursuing terrorists, on your watch your “competent authorities, “ i.e., the officials of the Federal Security Service (FSB) made a tragic mistake by denying a return visa to David Satter, a formidable American scholar, formerly living in Moscow before his recent visit to the Ukraine. We are familiar with Mr. Satter, a Financial Times, Russian expert turned fellow at the SAIS of Johns Hopkins, an alma mater of one of these writers. Like us, he is often critical of Russian officials, but we criticize our own officials as well in the belief that the political health of a country depends on uncovering the corruption of officials, cronyism and bureaucratic politics. Nor can the lasting establishment of democratic institutions exist in the absence of an untrammeled press.

We do understand the sensitivity of the FSB to Satter´s prior critiques of the Russian government´s policies in Chechnya and Dagestan and the still not fully explained deaths of two prominent critics of your policies. However, Satter´s writing is part of contemporary history where various interpretations compete and coexist. Moreover, because some Chechens and Dagestanis have resorted to terrorism with aid of Islamists in Middle East they have lost both legitimacy and Western support. With respect to terrorism, America is on your side, so is David.

We do not know if you were actually involved in the FSB decision-making that has castigated Satter. We recall the arrest and expulsion of the late Yale university professor and Russian expert Professor Frederick Barghoorn in 1963. Years ago he told one of these writers that he was the victim of the domestic services of the KGB, which engineered his phony arrest and expulsion from the USSR to jeopardize the new reset of Russo-U.S. relations between Nikita Khrushchev and Jack Kennedy. We wonder if something similar is happening with David Satter.

There is indeed a body of thought that the 1999 bombings of apartment buildings in Moscow which you blamed on Chechen and Dagestani separatists were actually the work of the FSB. Some attribute the bombings to the Yeltsin family´s desire to stay in power by destabilizing the country and launching a war against Chechnya. As someone who knew President Boris Yeltsin personally, this writer finds that extremely hard to believe. I hosted Yeltsin in 1989 during his trip to Miami and had a vodka dinner with him at his home in Moscow. In Yeltsin´s chest beat the heart of an ardent democrat, much influenced by Andrey Sakharov´s democratic vision. You yourself shared that vision once, with your mentor Anatoly Sobchak . In our view, Yeltsin would never have supported such an action.

A close relative of former Chechen president, Dzhokar Dudeyev told us that there would have been no war had Yeltsin spent ten minutes with Dudeyev. He claimed that Russian generals, much involved in military profiteering, made sure that would never happen. Yeltsin, of course, had previously received significant help from Dudeyev, the former commander of a Tartu garrison, in preventing the August 1991 putsch. Then you were with Sobchak firmly on Yeltsin´s side.

We do not believe that Mr. Satter´s intention is to undermine you or your state. Like us, he has no desire to advance the cause of radical Islamist terrorists and is well aware that their views equate to fascism. Many of us in the West admire your foreign policy even-handedness. The Late Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon believed you were “a friend of Israel.” We are also aware that you are committed to protecting Christians in the Middle East and have met with the pope to aid the reconciliation of the Eastern and Western branches of Christianity. Moreover, you have lately been taking new steps in the direction of greater human freedoms and toleration of dissent as evidenced by the recent release of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Pussy Riot. You have also showed restraint in handling the Ukrainian crisis. This cannot be easy as in Russia there is perpetual resistance to reform by the troglodytes.

We urge you to allow Mr. Satter to return to Moscow. He is a journalist, not a spy. Neither is he an ideologue. Reading his books, he has addressed his topics in an objective fashion and should be allowed to continue his research. Moreover, David Satter loves your country, its people, its culture and its rich history. Like these writers, he believes that Russia basically belongs, together with America and Europe, to the Judaic-Christian civilization. Mistreatment of an American journalist is counterproductive to the end of a much needed, new and genuine reset of the relationship between the U.S. and Russia. It is surely wiser to permit Satter´s return to Moscow than to let him carry the mantel of the first foreign journalist to be expelled from Russia since the attempted 1991 coup.