I could not help but notice Boris Berezovsky, the benefactor of both Litvinenko and Lugovoi and whose office showed some significant Po-210 contamination, seems to be throwing money around to compensate those who may have been contaminated by the Po-210 smuggled into London last fall:

In a telephone interview on Saturday, Mr. Berezovsky also said that he would announce the creation of a Litvinenko Justice Foundation on Tuesday, to be aimed at aiding investigations into Mr. Litvinenko’s death, preventing “in the future the same terror attack” and helping compensate those who suffered psychological, physical or material harm in the case.

This is like Al Capone spreading money around to keep the city of Chicago in line. I gather the UK authorities cannot do much, but one has to wonder why Berezovsky is throwing money into ‘aiding investigations’? I thought he had the utmost confidence in Scotland Yard. He claimed have to provided these interviews with Russian investigators so as to not give Scotland Yard any issues with their investigation – which seemed by press accounts to be leading towards Lugovoi. But one has to wonder why Berezovsky is trying to throw money at the investigation now, after the questioning by Russians? Did Scotland Yard put pressure on Berezovsky and Zakayev to answer Russian Investigators’ questions? The timing with these things is always telling. Litvinenko has to die before his days old accusations against Putin are read to the public. Berezovsky has to be interviewed by the Russians before he announces this foundation.

The whole thing smells fishy, and there is good reason. Those looking into this for some answers are coming up with nothing on the Putin assassination efforts, except some wild extrapolations from logical arguments they cannot answer. But I will deal with that at the end. What they are finding is a lot of shady dealings with Berezovsky and Litvinenko. Now there is a detailed account out of the Berezosvky-Putin-Litvinenko triangle which shows much less of a Putin role in Berezovsky’s problems. It seems this is not the first time Berezovsky has tried to throw money around in order get his way:

In 1997 Berezovsky was probably the most powerful man in Russia. He and other postcommunist billion-aires had rescued Yeltsin from defeat in the 1996 presidential elections with unlimited money and media support. In return, Yeltsin had rewarded them with the keys to Russia’s economy, auctioning off state companies at knockdown prices.

Berezovsky was also a media magnate. His real interest, however, was the acquisition of power. He exerted such influence over the weak and chronically drunk president that he was widely regarded as making decisions for him. By the time Litvinenko was ordered to kill him, everyone knew that Berezovsky was a man not to be trifled with.

…

Berezovsky took the incriminating videotape to a rising star in the Kremlin: Vladimir Putin, at the time a presidential aide. Berezovsky considered him a reformer and a friend. They regularly visited each other’s houses and even took skiing holidays together.

At first the ploy seemed to work. Putin took charge of the FSB, and the hated Khokholkov was transferred. Litvinenko thought he would have a big role in a cleaned-up FSB under his hero Putin.

Berezovsky had helped get Putin appointed and now expected him to pay this favour back by installing friendly faces in all the positions of power. If things worked out, the FSB would become a loyal Berezovsky fiefdom for him in the looming power battles over the succession to Yeltsin.

So it seems the problem between Putin and Berezovsky is Putin simply would not do Berezovsky’s bidding as he plundered Russia. Putin was supposed to hand Russia over to Berezovsky, and Putin refused – to the benefit of the country as a whole. Clearly Putin wanted a democratic Russia, not an Oligarchy. And so Berezovsky used Litvinenko to try and extort Putin into behaving:

To apply pressure on Putin, Berezovsky told Litvinenko and his colleagues to go public with their revelations about the assassination plot in a televised press conference. When some of the shocked agents refused — it was unheard of for FSB men to go public — he told them they had come too far to turn back.

On the eve of the press conference he summoned them to a grey-stuccoed building that had once been the family mansion of the noble Smirnov family. Inside, they were served drinks in Berezovsky’s club, the Logovaz Salon, with its gilded walls, ornate decorations and giant aquarium. Then they were coached on the statements they would be making.

Next day, in front of the cameras, Litvinenko accused his superiors of extortion, kidnappings and murder and, in a not very coded message to Putin, called on the FSB to cleanse itself.

So Putin had helped rid Berezovsky of his nemesis in the FSB ,and Berezovsky rewarded Putin by trying to force him to do Berezovsky’s bidding. For a man who believed in a new, democratically free Russia this crude power grab would be insulting and dangerous to the state – and that is how Putin responded:

Far from being nudged into cooperating, Putin was infuriated. The whistle-blowers were called in by FSB interrogators. Some were threatened, others offered inducements. It was made forcefully clear to them that they had brought shame on the service and the motherland. They could face the prospect of prison, or they could recant and agree to work against the “traitors” who had led them astray.

Putin offered redemption for those under the spell of Berezovsky. Probably because he too once bought into Berezovsky’s lies. But one did not want to play nice – Litvinenko (the sainted one by accounts in the UK media). Litvinenko was apparently an assassin who followed the orders of the people Putin replaced for Berezovsky. It seems Litvinenko had no problem being a vigilante for the people who, in the end, threatened Berezovsky:

There were also less savoury tales of his conduct. His former FSB commander in Chechnya, Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Gusak, publicly accused him after he was poisoned last November of having been a torturer, a killer and a coward.

It is indisputable that the FSB committed many atrocities in Chechnya, and some of Litvinenko’s closest friends accept that, as a member of the feared Osobysty, he must have been involved in dirty work.

…

In Chechnya, questions of legality and human rights rarely impeded FSB operations. Now the same bespredel (lawlessness within the state) was going to be unleashed in Moscow. Litvinenko would later describe URPO as the “bureau of nonjudicial executions”.

Andrei Nekrasov, a film maker and friend of Litvinenko, told me: “That unit, to be completely frank, was composed of people that the leadership thought were capable of pulling off quite violent operations . . . and never talking about them.”

The director of the FSB at the time, Nikolai Kovalyov, says: “Litvinenko and co supported the creation of so-called White Death Brigades — in plain language, hit squads. Their reasoning was that it was impossible to combat organised crime in Russia with legal methods, so illegal methods would have to be used. That is to say, murders . . .”

It is hard to understand Litvinenko’s hate of Putin until you realize it was Putin who took over the FSB and ended the ‘wet work’ Litvinenko was involved in. It seems Litvinenko and Berezovsky supported these death squads and Putin did not. Sort of a switch from the common impression in the UK news media.

So now we come to addressing the level of denial in the news media. While the reporting here is better than usual, with all the evidence compiled the author runs back to one logical argument from the FSB and then runs wild in exrapolating it into pure fanciful speculation:

[FSB] “Look, Martin, do you really think we’d bother assassinating a nobody like Litvinenko? Someone who left the country God knows how long ago? Who was no threat to us and didn’t have any secrets to betray? . . . He just wasn’t important enough. He didn’t know any secrets that would be a reason for liquidating him . . . Do you think we would have mounted such a special operation to eliminate him . . . with polonium that costs the earth? That we would have spent so much money on him? My God, we could have used the money to increase pensions here at home. If we’d needed to eliminate Litvinenko, we would have done it ages ago.”

I thanked them and switched off the tape recorder. It was the closest I was going to get to an admission that such operations do after all take place.

Actually, the argument is simply an attempt to point out the illogic of the authors’ assumption that Putin or the FSB ordered a hit. It is a common method in debate which is to take the opposing side’s view, to “assume you are right”, then follow up with all the reasons the assumptions do not work or make sense. It is not an admission, it is a logical argument. And only someone obsessed with reaching a preordained conclusion would jump to the conclusion that the FSB regularly assassinates people from this statement. It seems the only one in this story who had that trait was Litvinenko.