Nov 28 2006
Alexander Goldfarb Slips Up
Alex Goldfarb, the mouthpiece spokesman for accused corrupt oligarch Boris Berezovsky, made a major slip today as he tried to hold up the assassin facade and claimed Litvinenko was ‘sweating’ the Polonium-210 (PO-210) as he went from place to place. He was attempting to give a cover story to his boss – Berezovsky:
Traces were also found at three offices in Mayfair, including that of Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky.
Litvinenko went there to warn Mr Berezovsky he was on the “KGB hitlistâ€.
Litvinenko’s friend Alexander Goldfarb said: “Everything he touched would have left a radioactive trace.
“Radiation was being secreted through his sweat.â€
Pure BS. The lethal dosage of PO-210 is quite small, fractions of a gram. So there is not enough material to sweat out of your glands. But recall the timeline. There is the gap from 1200 to 1500 between the time Litvinenko purchased a newspaper at Picadilly News Agents and his meeting with Scaramella at the Sushi Bar. By the time he reaches the Sushi bar he is contaminated. If he ingested the material at the Sushi bar as a poison then the material would be in his stomach and intestine for quite some time before actually seeping into the tissues.
Digestion in the stomach takes 3.5 hours – so there is no way a poison administered between 3:00-4:00 PM is going to show up in the tissues between 4:00 and 4:30 (the estimated window of time between the meeting with Scaramella the Sushi Restaurant and the meeting with the Russians at the Hotel Bar). This is the 30 minute window Litvinenko supposedly used to go warn Berezovsky of a possible hit list. Was Litvinenko the only man in London without a cell phone?
This obviously shakey alibi is a clear desparation move on the part of Berezovsky. There is no time between the meeting with Scaramella and the ex-KGB Russians for Litvinenko to run to Berezovsky’s office and tell him of this plot. Recall the Scaramella sat and talked to Litvinenko as he ate lunch. These folks aren’t like Americans – lunch is going to be at least an hour. So why the lie? Why the tall tale?
Clearly Berezovsky is in serious trouble if his office was actually the site of the initial contamination between 1200 and 1500 – the mysterious three hour gap. No one would be so clueless as to throw out a desparate line about sweating PO-210 unless they were panicking. There was not enough material to reach the sweat glands, there was not enough to lose through all the pores, and there was not enough time to digest the material anyway. The final proof is the hospitals caring for Litvinenko not once detected the alpha emission with their Geiger counters – proving that the material was not being ‘sweated’ out of the skin. They only detected the material in the urine. The true culprit would seem to be trapped and spinning away madly to keep the focus on Putin and not him and Litvinenko. Berezovsky has some serious explaining to do. I suspect his alibi will collapse on the timeline and some CCTV cameras that will show Litvinenko meeting Boris before Scaramella.
What is the motive for Berezovsky to kill Litvinenko?
Isn’ t it possible that Goldfarb thought that it was possible for it to be “sweated out”. Look at that map again–and you will see how close the Russian Embassy is to all the sites in question. Then think of the ways the polonium could be placed where Litvinenko would ingest it. On his cigarettes. On his teacup. On his newspaper.
I have no idea how long it would take to get to Berezovsky’s office but it may well be that the info Scaramella gave him might be considered too sensitive to be transmitted by cell phone.
Yes, I have to agree Clarice. But it is odd that his family has like no exsposure.
I know this whole thing is not beyond Putin, but can’t shake the feeling he’d choose a little less detectible/traceable means.
Something feels slavic-ly VIPS.
Or, I should say…some “aspect” feels slavic-ly VIPS.
Fraction of a gram? Try 6.8 PICO grams. In other words 6.8 micro-micro grams is a fatal dose according to Los Alamos Lab.
Link
Digestion typically takes about an hour or less in the stomach. The figure of 3.5 hours is an “up to” notation. I have watched minute to minute glucose values (in a peripheral arm vein, so there is some lag there) go up in 35 minutes after the ingestion of a mixed meal.
If the polonium were inorganic, it might be absorbed even through the mucus membranes of the mouth while on the way to the stomach; i.e. a polonium compound might not require ANY digestion.
Clarice,
Everyone assumes this was an intentional act – I don’t. I am of the opinion Litvinenko came into contact with some illegal contraband and became contaminated. In order to divert attention away from the illegal contraband, he a Berezovsky concocted the Putin line. It is also possible Berezovsky had no more use for the guy and allowed him to get contaminated so he could use him as a PR item. The uber-greedy have no problem killing someone. But there are more rationale examples like this that make a lot more sense than some ridiculous assassination scenario with a strange material when there are thousands of tried and true assassination methods at hand.
Why was Litivenko meeting Scaramella in the first place? I have seen no word on this at all. Perhaps Litivenko was going to switch again and was eliminated by Berezovsky. But that theory goes down the tube in light of Litivenko insisting this was a Russian plot. It gets curioser and curioser. Unless Berezovsky convinced Litivenko that the Russians were behind it. That maybe Scaramella poisoned him in the Sushi Bar. When I said Russian politics were complicated, I believe I made an understatement. I agree with the above poster that if Putin was behind this, he would have been more efficient. Therefore, it must be the Chechens behind this. All three of these murders have been badly handled with maximum publicity, maybe on purp0ose, and I don’t see Putin fumbling to this degree. All this is probably done to cause friction between western countries and Russia. That is the playbook for the terrorists, is it not? And the media, as usual, has run with it in their usual hysterical fashion.
Oh yeah, isn’t Goldfarb the guy Litivenko met in prison. And wasn’t Goldfarb working for Soros at that time?
Scaramella reportedly met with Litvinenko to pass on to him an email of a Putin hit list on which Litvinenko’s name appeared.
Goldfarb may have been working for Soros but he is head of a group working for civil rights in Russia.
I seriously doubt that this was an accidental poisoning though it is not possible at this point to definitively discount AJ’s theory.
The reason I am not too interested in the “anyone can make polonium” angle is that a ton of uranium ore contains 100 micrograms of it. In order to obtain 1 gram of the stuff, you would have to process 1000 tons of uranium ore and do that rather quickly before the stuff decays. There are only a few people that have access to both the amount of ore that would take and a processing facility that could produce the stuff fast enough to be useful.
The way it is generally produced is by bombarding bismuth with neutrons in a reactor. Nuclear regulatory authorities look for polonium production as it generally has two uses: as a fuel to generate heat which generates power for spacecraft and in nuclear weapons. Iran has been discovered to be engaging in polonium production as far back as 2004 and possibly earlier. This activity was hidden.
I don’t really care who poisoned who or why. To me the greater worry is to find out exactly where this stuff came from and how it got to the UK. This stuff is potentially a worse weapon than nerve gas in that it could be spread around for a period of time without any knowledge and by the time people started getting sick, it would be too late to stop it. Unlike anthrax or another biological agent, there is no Cipro or vaccine that can protect against it. Unlike nerve agent or other chemical poisons, there is no antidote. And it is relatively non-persistent in that within a period of months, the toxicity wanes. In a period of 4 years or so, the amount of it would be reduced by 1000 fold so it wouldn’t contaminate an area forever. This stuff is a dangerous weapon in the hands of a maniacal group out to destroy people such as I believe to be the case with Iran. If they are claiming that the US, UK, and Israel will “come apart” soon, this could be the way they plan to do it. Not with any nuclear bomb, but by a nuclear poison.
There has been hope expressed in various reports that a “fingerprint” of the material can be obtained and the place of manufacture learned. This would be true if it has been manufactured at known reactors from known sources of material. There are too many clandestine nuclear programs these days. North Korea or Iran could be producing this stuff in quantity.
Until they discover exactly where this stuff came from, I am going to be very, very worried.
Strata is as incisive on this subject as he is in la la land on the Iraq War. Credit where credit is due and encouragement to focus on his area of expertise.
But one warning. No one should assume the UK government will
ultimately come clean on this matter if it indeed is ultimately in their provenance to do so. The reason being that Russia under Putin
might well already be regarded as an irreconcilible rival by the
pivotal players in both the UK and US political class.
Goldfarb?
Scaramella?
Is this some Connery-esque Bond film?
Goldfinger….
Scaramanga…
The Man with the Golden Gun is next…?
Boss, de plane, de plane “Knick Knack” is not far behind…