Dec 01 2006

Berezovsky’s PR Machine

16 responses so far

16 Responses to “Berezovsky’s PR Machine”

1. Lizarde1 says:

   December 1, 2006 at 12:02 pm

   here’s an early story from Scaramella admitting he drank water at the restaurant:
   http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,231222,00.html and the early story that it was about the Russian plot to kill people – note they always? met in Piccadilly Circus? but there goes my theory since Scaramella claims he paid the bill.
   “I was in London to meet Mr. Litvinenko because I wanted to discuss with him some alarming news,” Scaramella told reporters. “The information I had received was very disturbing and contained details of plots against Russians both in Italy and Great Britain.

   “I called him and we arranged to meet as we always do in Piccadilly Circus. I have met him several times. He is a very good source of mine and has contacts in Russia.
   “I had already had lunch so I had nothing to eat — and had a glass of water.

   “Mr. Litvinenko had some fish from a buffet and some soup was brought to us. He personally took his food from the buffet. I paid for the bill…”

   “I told him that I had received some very worrying and disturbing information. I had been given a list of names and lots of facts from a contact.

   “The information was a list of people — it was a hit list and on that list was his name, my name and Paolo Guzzanti [head of the Italian commission investigating KGB activities in Italy].

   “It was unbelievable and there were also names of people in Britain on it. I asked him to make a call to his people in Russia to evaluate it.

   and who did he meet in the a.m.:
   Scaramella also described how Litvinkeno had mentioned he had been at a meeting beforehand.

   “He said to me that he was in London to see some people in the morning and that he would be free to see me in the afternoon,” he said.

   “When he arrived he did not mention who he met but I understand the authorities are investigating the possibility he was poisoned at this meeting.

2. clarice says:

   December 1, 2006 at 12:17 pm

   That seems cconsistent with the Telegraph story.

   (AJ, I can’t open your link.)

   Here’s something else from the Telegraph story–it supports either of the two major theories but shows how this is a disaster for Russia:
   “The potential political fall-out from the affair grew as it emerged that the Atomic Weapons Establishment can identify the plant at which the radioactive element was made and are in fact thought to have done so. If that is, as many suspect, in Russia, it could cause acute embarrassment to President Vladimir Putin’s government because its head of nuclear security said recently that no similar material had gone missing in the country. “

3. clarice says:

   December 1, 2006 at 12:19 pm

   AJ, I did finally get to the link..So the PR firm represented Yuvshenko et al..I can tell you if I had Berezovskys dough and all this press attentio, I’d hire this guy, too just to have some peace..

4. Lizarde1 says:

   December 1, 2006 at 12:52 pm

   Scaramella tried to put the meeting with the Russians in the a.m. way back on November 21 when he didn’t seem to know he was contaminated so he is either innocent or trying to point the blame backward and get it away from himself. “He said to me that he was in London to see some people in the morning and that he would be free to see me in the afternoon,” he said.” Scarmella is part of the group trying to point the blame toward Russia….I read he has a lawyer now speaking for him. I wonder if the lawyer is on the payroll of Boris?
   Scaramella is also in hot water in Italy: http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.aspx?feed=FT&Date=20061201&ID=6241462
   Romano Prodi, Italy’s prime minister, announced legal action against people linking him to the KGB, the former Soviet intelligence service.

   The main person who has made this accusation, which Mr Prodi rejects as utterly unfounded, is Mario Scaramella, a self-styled expert on Soviet espionage in Italy.he Litvinenko affair has spilled into Italian politics because Mr Scaramella was appointed in 2003 as a consultant to a parliamentary inquiry, known as the Mitrokhin commission, which was investigating KGB activities in Italy.

   The commission wound up its work before Mr Prodi’s victory in Italy’s general election last April. But Mr Scaramella reported to the commission’s chairman in January that he had been looking into alleged links between Mr Prodi and the KGB.

   He told the chairman, Paolo Guzzanti, a member of then prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, that there was no evidence Mr Prodi was a KGB agent, but that some signs pointed to “friendly relations” between Mr Prodi and the KGB.

   Mr Prodi was so offended by Mr Scaramella’s allegations, which appeared in the Italian press this week, that he announced on Thursday night that he planned legal action against the people behind them. He named no one in particular.

   Mr Scaramella had no background as a specialist in Soviet affairs before 2003, and Massimo D’Alema, Italy’s foreign minister, said on Wednesday that Mr Scaramella “has had and has no organic relationship with the Italian secret services”.

   Politicians in Mr Prodi’s centre-left coalition suspect that one purpose of the Mitrokhin commission, which was set up under Mr Berlusconi, was to plant material to discredit the centre-left, especially ahead of the April election. Mr Berlusconi’s party has ridiculed the idea of a smear campaign.

   “They have tried to upset the country’s democracy,” said Piero Fassino, leader of the Democrats of the Left, the largest party in Mr Prodi’s government. “A campaign of personal denigration and institutional destabilisation has been pursued.”

   Mr Prodi’s camp contends that there have been other attempts to destroy his reputation. Prosecutors said in October that several members of the Italian tax police and other state employees had illegally broken into the financial records of Mr Prodi and his wife Flavia.

   During Mr Berlusconi’s five-year premiership, Mr Prodi was plagued by allegations – which he denied adn were never proven – that, when he was prime minister from 1996 to 1998, he took kickbacks in the purchase by Telecom Italia, the Italian telecommunications group, of a stake in Telekom Serbia, the Serbia telecoms company.

   Last month Mr Prodi’s government shook up Italy’s espionage services by dismissing the country’s three top intelligence officers.

5. Lizarde1 says:

   December 1, 2006 at 12:59 pm

   Spy poison squad in hotel radiation alert

   A Sussex hotel has been sealed off after it was revealed a man at the centre of the Litvinenko poison plot was a guest.

   Italian academic Mario Scaramella, a contact of dead ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko, has tested positive for polonium-210 contamination.

   Police and Health Protection Agency officers are at the Ashdown Park Hotel at Wych Cross, near Crowborough.http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/localnews/display.var.1054213.0.spy_poison_squad_in_hotel_radiation_alert.php

6. clarice says:

   December 1, 2006 at 1:07 pm

   Prodi probably was working with the KGB..BTW..and Scaramella is a person of good repute.

7. clarice says:

   December 1, 2006 at 1:10 pm

   “The European Commission: special report

   Philip Willan in Rome
   Thursday October 21, 1999
   The Guardian

   Romano Prodi, the president of the European commission, may have been used by the KGB in an unsuccessful effort to save Aldo Moro, the former Christian Democrat prime minister who was kidnapped and murdered by the terrorist Red Brigades 21 years ago.
   The leftwing magazine Avvenimenti yesterday linked information which Mr Prodi said he had obtained from a seance at the time of the kidnapping to the recent discovery of an Italian KGB agent with links to Moro’s captors.

   Mr Prodi had told the police that Moro was being held prisoner in the central Italian town of Gradoli. He said he had obtained the information in April 1978 during a session at a Ouija board.
   Two weeks later the police found a Red Brigades base in an apartment at Via Gradoli 96 in Rome.

   The KGB became linked to the affair two weeks ago when a list of Italians who had allegedly worked for Soviet intelligence was published.

   The list was part of the Mitrokhin archive, sent to Italian military intelligence by Britain. It contained the name of Giorgio Conforto, a lawyer and journalist allegedly recruited by Soviet intelligence.

   Valerio Morucci and Adrian Faranda, two Red Brigades members who took part in the Moro kidnapping but opposed his murder, were arrested at the home of Conforto’s daughter in 1979.

   The Mitrokhin note on Conforto, who recruited a number of spies from the Italian foreign ministry, says he was unaware of the link between his daughter and the terrorists.

   Avvenimenti says Conforto may have known of the Via Gradoli Red Brigades base and that the KGB gave the
   Italian authorities a discreet tip-off, using Mr Prodi and the improbable ghost as a conduit. ”

   http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:KksFmCMhV1cJ:www.guardian.co.uk/eurocommission/Story/0,,203087,00.html+Prodi+KGB&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

8. clarice says:

   December 1, 2006 at 1:20 pm

   This blog ate my cite on Prodi and the KGB..Sigh..

9. AJStrata says:

   December 1, 2006 at 1:46 pm

   Is this the Prodi link?

   Or maybe this one?

10. Barbara says:

    December 1, 2006 at 1:46 pm

    By and large I agree with Chris Floyd’s commentary. Howver, I think this is one jaded, cynical person. He is totally in ennui. I did not know that Neil Bush was scandal ridden. Where has our media been? And I resented his saying that Bush is capable of wholesale slaughter like Putin. This is liberal speak with no basis for fact just ideology. Fighting a war for survival is not the same as eliminating your enemies.

    This is my theory, and I might be wrong. I think Litvinenko got the polonium from Berezovsky in his office. The time line seems to indicate Litvinenko was in Berezovsky’s office before the sushi bar. I din’t think there was time to visit Berezovsky’s office betweem the sushi bar and the Millenium meeting with the Russians. I think Litvinenko was supposed to deliver the polonium to Lugovi for him to take to Russia and do mischief there. The soccor game attendance was a ploy to get the polonium undercover. Somehow the polonium was not sealed properly and some leaked out continuously which would explain how there is such a wide distribution of it. I don’t see how Litvinenko could sweat so much of it after such a short length of time. I think Berezovsky is a very callous person who masterminded the whole thing with Zaperov (these Russian names are a pain to spell) and everything went wrong. I wouldn’t be surprised that the polonium came from Iran or even from the plant in the UK. Maybe I should write a spy novel. Everything is here except the beautiful treacherous blonde.

11. clarice says:

    December 1, 2006 at 1:51 pm

    AJ My article has now mysteriously reappeared.

12. AJStrata says:

    December 1, 2006 at 1:57 pm

    Somehow you tripped my spam filter. Watch your language young lady!

13. clarice says:

    December 1, 2006 at 2:00 pm

    HEH! Aren’t Italians adorable–Prod i claiming he got Moro’s wherabouts from a seance and a ouiji board..?

14. Ken says:

    December 1, 2006 at 3:52 pm

    Barbara

    “Fighting a war for survival is not the same as eliminating your enemies.”

    Cut the Islamophobic hyperbole.

15. ivehadit says:

    December 1, 2006 at 6:14 pm

    Ken, I am glad you are not in charge of protecting America, much less me and my family.

16. Barbara says:

    December 2, 2006 at 10:12 pm

    Ken

    Don’t tell me what to say or do.