The book presents active measures which, according to authors, have been undertaken by Russian state-security services to bring FSB leaders to power, from an attempted coup allegedly organized by Alexander Korzhakov in 1996 to the election of Vladimir Putin, who became popular as a result of the Second Chechen war.

However, according to the book, Putin was appointed the Prime minister of Russia as a result of a secret deal with oligarch Boris Berezovsky.

According to the book, the FSB received a direct order from Russian President Vladimir Putin to kill Alexander Litvinenko, and it also had a hand in the 1999 apartment bombings, the Moscow theater hostage crisis and the murder of Anna Politkovskaya.

Blincoe points out the problem, that "if everyone, including Goldfarb, is in Berezovsky's pay, there are no disinterested accounts, only potential apologists for his world-view."

Blincoe further asserts that the fact that Berezovsky was the mastermind behind Putin's rise to power is evidence that no KGB-sponsored coup d'état took place - contrary to what was claimed in the book.