As Plot Unfolded, She Had Fax on It : Putsch: Costa Mesa woman edited dispatches from Soviet Union and fired them off. She considers Gorbachev a ‘satisfied customer.’

Stationed in front of a computer screen in her Spanish-style bungalow from almost the moment news of the Soviet military coup broke, Arana J. Greenberg found herself in the eye of a hurricane sweeping a nation more than 10,000 miles away.

As the sole U.S. representative of Postfactum News Agency, an independent network of Soviet journalists, Greenberg feverishly edited dispatches that had been collected from across the Soviet Union and transmitted to her via computer lines, then sent them by fax machine to news outlets around the world during the three-day takeover attempt that began last week.

Two clients were Radio Liberty and Voice of America, which Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev said were two of only three links he had to the outside world during his 72 hours under arrest by coup leaders.

“I would consider Gorbachev a satisfied customer,” a tired but smiling Greenberg said last week in the living room office she has dubbed “Information Central.”

Greenberg is a partner in Postfactum, which was created in 1989 as a department of the FACT information service and now boasts of being one of the largest independent news organizations in the Soviet Union. Its original mission was to collect and disseminate news on economic shifts during a profound period of change in the Soviet Union. It has 32 staff reporters and 50 part-time correspondents, many of them respected scholars and journalists who also write for other publications.

Within the Soviet Union, the agency provides news bulletins three times a day to about 3,000 subscribers, including the Supreme Soviet, the Soviet Council of Ministers, the Lithuanian Parliament, and the Moscow bureaus of Agence France-Presse, Deutsche Press Agentur, the British Broadcasting Corp., Reuters, Associated Press and Cable News Network.

Around the world, there are fewer than half a dozen subscribers for Postfactum’s English-language daily computerized dispatches and in-depth monthly analytical publications. Those, Greenberg said, are primarily think tanks and groups such as Johns Hopkins University’s School of Social Policy and the Washington Research Institute in San Francisco.

In the past 1 1/2 years, Greenberg and her Soviet partners have tried to change that by perfecting the English-language bulletins as well as the computer hardware and software needed to transmit it reliably over satellite data lines to the computer in her Costa Mesa living room.

The Macintosh computer lines in Postfactum’s central Moscow headquarters performed admirably despite power surges, jamming and overloaded telephone circuits that plagued many news organizations.

“During the crisis, the (facsimile) and phone lines didn’t work at all, but the (computers’) electronic mail did. I tried for three days to direct dial, but I never did get through by telephone,” said Greenberg, a 41-year-old specialist in multimedia marketing and development.

Greenberg received the first post-coup message from Moscow at 4:08 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time on Aug. 19.

“I hope you already know what has happened,” wrote Nina Belyaeva, a partner with Greenberg who is affiliated with Postfactum in Moscow.

“The last news . . . is that about 12 tanks are now surrounding the building of the Supreme Soviet of Russian Federation and a meeting is going to be held today in the center of Moscow in support of the call for an overall union strike. Crowded around (the Russian Federation building are) fighting light military machines.

“There are about 200,000 people in Manezh Square (outside the Kremlin in opposition to) the military. The Military Committee (has) issued an order forbidding all political parties . . . (and) forbidding all demonstrations and gatherings.”

Belyaeva’s missive ended with: “Please check the connection. This could be the last channel. Get back to me as soon as you can. Nina.”

Greenberg was frightened for her colleagues and panicked that their work of 18 months could be wiped out.

“That was a very tough day,” she said. “It was a helpless feeling. . . . I was worried sick about about my partners in Moscow. I knew they were out there reporting this story and that some of them had tanks staring right at them.”

As a consultant who customarily juggles multiple projects in any given month, Greenberg went into overdrive.

“My first reaction was very logical. I knew what my job was: I had to distribute their information as fast and as widely as I could,” she said.

And so, with a brimming coffee pot never far from reach, Greenberg parked herself at her desk in an ergonomically designed backless chair. She pored over voluminous, tersely worded details and statements collected from Estonia to the Urals to the Pacific coastal regions, sleeping only a few hours each night.

The English translation of Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin’s speech arrived at 9 a.m. Aug. 19, well before Greenberg said she heard it blaring over Cable News Network.

Postfactum’s “information was very good during the coup,” said Brian Linver of Inlex Corp., a Dallas-based data service that supplied many U.S. groups with the Soviet agency’s dispatches.

“It gave minute-by-minute, blow-by-blow accounts, and it came within hours of it actually taking place,” said Linver, vice president of marketing and sales for Inlex, which is in negotiations with Postfactum for U.S. distribution rights. “We had a number of publications asking for it, such as U.S. News & World Report.”

In Costa Mesa, Greenberg’s telephones jangled constantly. Sometimes callers wanted news of friends and colleagues because they could not get through by telephone and knew that Greenberg was a subscriber to several electronic mail systems linked to the Soviet Union. Others were from Radio Liberty’s Munich headquarters and elsewhere asking for everything she could send from Postfactum.

What they got were reports such as these on last Tuesday:

* From the city of Sverdlovsk in the Ural Mountains: “Deputy chairman of Sverdlovsk’s regional Soviet, Anatoly Grebenkin, . . . described the (ruling committee’s declaration of leadership) as an ‘attempt at a military coup d’etat. ‘ . . . According to Grebenkin, at present the leadership of Sverdlovsk region is awaiting a response from the apparatus of (Russian Federation) President Boris Yeltsin to the ‘declaration of the leadership of the country.’ ”

* In Odessa, a Ukrainian port on the Black Sea: “Heavy tank-transporting vehicles are in full readiness. Odessa’s radio and television have been blocked pending special instructions. The Republican Ukrainian television is quiet. Traffic police patrolling the city are armed with submachine gun. Intensive movement of military equipment is observed.”

* In Omsk, in western Siberia: “Vladimir Varnavsky, chairman of Omsk’s city Soviet and a deputy of (Yeltsin’s Russian Republic) learned of the creation of the (eight-member ruling committee) and about Gorbachev’s resignation . . . (and) said, ‘It looks like a gesture of despair and of retreat.’ Sources close to the KGB department for (the) Omsk region said Maj. Gen. Alexander Bannikov, chief of the department, knew nothing about the change of power.”

The picture painted was of uninformed KGB chiefs, resistant regional authorities and armed camps in outlying regions of the Soviet Union, Greenberg said.

When the coup attempt ended on Wednesday morning, it was a welcome relief to the adrenaline-charged Greenberg. And it may well have put Postfactum on the map.

Postfactum is not the only independent news service operating in the Soviet Union. Interfax, formerly affiliated with Soviet television, is regarded by some analysts as the most comprehensive such organization. Radio Liberty has a network of correspondents, including at least one who was inside the Russian Federation building in Moscow with Yeltsin and his supporters, according to Greenberg.

Still, it was the breadth of coverage outside Moscow and the speed with which Postfactum delivered it that caught the eye of those organizations trying to explain events to listeners, viewers and readers around the world.

“I would say they were head and shoulders above most of their competitors, especially the government-affiliated outlets like Pravda and Tass,” said Inlex’s Linver.

“They’re very good, especially some of the people who work on their (monthly) analysis papers,” said Joan Beecher, a Soviet affairs analyst for the Voice of America in Washington. “These fellows certainly know their business, certainly more than the people over here we call experts. . . . I think they can be very proud of themselves.”

Greenberg and the Soviet colleagues who did the front-line work are hopeful that American and European clients will buy their product and earn them the hard currency necessary to pay the expenses.

Even more so, they pray that intense media coverage of the coup has shown the Soviet Union in a way that has piqued the interest of the American public and the developed world. Foreign investors may begin to see opportunities in helping to build a market economy with modern industries in the economically crippled nation.

Long-Distance Headlines

Soviet citizens, including President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, got much of their news about the coup attempt from two U.S.-funded radio stations, which received data from the independent Postfactum News Agency by way of a small office in Costa Mesa.

1) Gathering the Facts

Postfactum’s network of 82 full-time and part-time Soviet journalists file reports to the agency headquarters in Moscow.

2) Channeling the Data

The reports were compiled and translated into English, then transmitted overseas by computer lines.

3) Passing the News

Arana Greenberg in Costa Mesa, Postfactum’s U.S. representative, received some of the data, which she printed and faxed clients.

4) On the Air

Two Postfactum recipients were Radio Liberty in Munich and Voice of America in Washington, both if which Gorbachev monitored.

Example of Dispatch

“This is an attempt to revert the country by use of force to previous times, and we know what methods are used to make our people obedient. In my view, this will be a hard matter. Workers’ committees in all cities are now discussing the situation in the country.”

--Vyacheslav Golikov, Chairman of a workers’ committees council in the Central Asian Kemerovo region of the U.S.S.R.