Dec 01 2006
Now If it Was An Assassination Attempt On Litvinenko…
I have been exchanging emails with a very interesting person who agrees with Clarice Feldman and disagrees with me on whether this entire event was an assassination attempt or not. The reason this person is interesting is she is a well known liberal writer and, while disagree on the motivations, she and I agree on all the questionable reporting. Well this person just emailed me one of the best theories I have ever seen that explains HOW the Polonium-210 might have been delivered so as to kill and leave little trace, and to get Scaramella and Litvinenko and Berezovsky all at once.
The creator of this excellent theory is none other than Raw Story’s Larisa Alexandrovna, and she presents her theory here at her blog:
Now many people have argued that because this is so obvious, it could not have been Putin or FSB without Putin. But people fail over and over to grasp what I have already reported and believe given the people with whom I had talked: this was not meant to be traced, they thought they could get away with it. So, if you had something that you thought no one would be able to trace and you wanted to take out three very visible targets, would you not do it? Ah, exactly, FSB would do it, but they must have miscalculated on the dosages.
…
If Mario is not involved, but contaminated, what did he share with Alex and when? The same question applies to Alex’s wife. What was it, a cup? No, because Mario did not go home to visit Alex’s family.
How about this:
A cigarette. In fact, a cigarette would be an extremely powerful way to distribute the polonium via air, causing another to inhale it. But since the only people that would inhale for any real duration would be people in close proximity to the victim, it is certain to do the trick as smoking at most places is not allowed and also because in small vapor qualities it would not be necessarily lethal, so not too much of a danger to the British public, although somewhat of a danger if things went badly.
This a bit of brilliant thinking. I mentioned myself that if Litvinenko and Scaramella were exposed at the same time, an airborne agent would make sense with the lesser (more dispersed) dose for Scaramella. In the true sense of serendipity, I was sent an email a few days ago by blogger AJacksonian regarding an 1987 study regarding Polonium-210 found in Syrian cigarettes. At the time I dismissed this since Polonium-210 is a natural element and it can be found in lots of places – but the point is it can be hidden in cigarettes (I of course emailed this to Larrisa).
Now if we combine Larrisa’s theory on the delivery mechanism with reader Crosspatch’s notes that Polonium-210 would best be brought in disoved in an acid-salt (probably in crystal form since liquids can be dodgy these days on plays) we have enough pieces to put together a good scenario. The Polonium suspension is possible what spilled in the Millenium hotel. Once in a liquid form of sufficient density of Polonium it one would simply need a syringe to deposit some of the suspension down the center of a cigarette and there you go.
Now do I believe this is what happened? Nope. But it is the first good theory that shows a sophisticated assassination plan, not some half baked one. I do not think the air plane contamination can be explained this way. And cigarettes would not explain the contamination in the planes or the Hotel where the Russians where staying. But you have to admire the beauty of the concept!
Here’s the article:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006550699,00.html
Not a terribly reliable publication..kind of like National Inquirer.
TV BTW seems obsessed with the killer whale incident inSan Diego–far more coverage than this story. (Reminds me of the obsession with shark attacks just before 9/11) Do you suppose there’s a cetapod conspiracy?
I agree that they aren’t a terribly reliable publication but what I was most interested in were the direct quotes of the person serving the sushi.
Not much they can do to mess that up unless they fabricated the quotes.
Isn’t she the cute chick in the pic? Perhaps she made it up to get some coverage.
How could he have been contaminated AS HE ENTERED the restaurant? It seems highly unlikely. He may have been poisoned before, but if AJ is right it takes several hours to take affect and it is unlikely merely serving him his tea and soup (he got his food from the buffet) would cause the rash.
To expand a bit further without getting to far into geek math or nuclear theory, cyclotrons are used mostly in the theoretical physics area to give pure substances in extremely small quantities with massively complex detectors to build databases of even the most short lived events to allow accumulation of base knowledge for a fuller understanding of characteristics that designs can be based on as well as models of distributions. They are not used for production methodology since brute for reactor radiation is much more efficient for day to day production.
However with the knowledge base then you can build up a profile that will tell you with a given design reactor you will produce a desired isotope with a given profile. Based on the design parameters of the given reactor you can model the outcomes. It is essentially like dna or a fingerprint. That is the reason why as the stories have alluded to, if you have a sample of po 210 contamination and observe the statistical decay pattern you can back correlate it to a specific design source.
In fact if unknown sources (blackmarket) po 210 is found in the wild, by doing this same reverse engineering you can tag a found example to a generating source and have a provable smoking gun or even worse you can derive that a sample comes from source not known to be consistent with any producer in your design database. This then says you have either a unprofiled reactor of a clandestine program or maybe even a new source of proliferation.
Having said all that, if you are trying to make po 210 which is an outmoded substance for early crude design nuclear weapons then first you look at the relative availability of substances to be converted. Lead is plentiful, bizmuth not so much so and even another substance candidate is platinum another rare thing.
I was simply adding data, didn’t mean to imply that I happen to believe it is all true. I still favor a “work accident” accidental exposure scenario. Trouble is, no radiation is found at anyplace he visited before the sushi bar, and it is all over the place after.
So far I have read two articles that said he was seen on CCTV footage at various locations before the sushi bar and these locations are free of contamination. So whatever happened, it looks like it happened just before or at the sushi bar. How could he be contaminated as he entered? That’s the problem because I can’t think of a way that contaminates him without possibly contaminating the deliverer of the stuff or others around him. I believe a fine enough spray could be made by a means that makes no sound that is fine enough to be inhaled without noticing. Trouble is it would tend to contaminate others in the immediate area too, albeit to a lesser extent. Think those untrasonic “cold” vaporizors that use ultrasound to blast droplets of water into the air. Such a thing could be covered by the sound of a cell phone ringing and produce a mist so fine that it isn’t noticed.
There are people a lot smarter than I am working on stuff like that so it could be airborne, it could be sprayed on the food as someone walked by, there are any number of ways. The problem with all that is that it would still be pretty targeted and the amount of the stuff we are seeing in airplanes, cars, hotels, etc. would tend to rule out something so targeted and the dosage that the Russian received was apparently very high.
The accidental exposure still makes the most sense to me and it could have happened at the sushi bar, I suppose. Wish I had video of the meeting of those two to see if anything besides paper changed hands between them.
I read at least one article that reports that the polonium-210 apparently came from a Russian power plant. Seems odd that a power plant would be used to produce polonium but nothing in Russia should surprise, I suppose. I can’t say I would place a lot of faith in that article, though, as they didn’t mention the precise source of that information (they didn’t mention a specific person’s name).
I am reading reports like this:
In other words, reports quoting vague, unnamed “reports”.
Another point to be considered is even though a substance is radioactive there is also the toxic effects of a substance that are independent of it’s nuclear profile.
Just another point is that regardless of the isotope makeup distribution of a particular po contamination issue event, the biological half life of po in the body is on the order of 30 to 50 days. That is why at extreme low level exposures the body can still tolerate natural levels of occurrence of radioactive isotopes.
But when you start proposing nuclear isotopes for weapons to kill people you really get into strange math to calculate doses required and mechanisms to effect the transfer to get your target without causing general mayhem due to contamination of unintended targets and so forth. Especially when you have to deal with small doses to start with and quite frankly very expensive materials.
Sounds like reaching for the solution with the most unbelievable complexity.
Lending credence to more likely the unintended exposure in a black market transfer rather than a planed person elimination.
Have to wonder why a recent convert to Islam (Litvinenko) would be involved in a black market transaction of polonium.
CP
More bigger issue with it is that even though po 210 is mostly identified with usage as a portion of a amalgamed trigger device component for early design nuclear weapons, it really is a very extreme outdated technology.
It is like someone trying to go out an blackmarket and abacaus compared to state of the art.
Even casual perusal of open source papers of nuclear physics conferences by scientists involved in clandestine nuclear programs would be laughing their heads off at this kerfuffle.
There are quite frankly to many more efficient and comparatively readily available alternatives that have come to the fore. It is something that just does not pass the smell test.
I read somewhere that Scaramella said he was misquoted…that Litvinenko had not said that he smuggled radioactive stuff out of Russia, but that he was aware of people who had. If I find the cite, I’ll post it. Scaramella is a very reputable guy I do not think he’d be involved with smugglers.
I am inclining toward the latest Times theory that Scaramella and Putin were both targets (perhaps Berezovsky as well) and that there was a team of hitmen involved.
Scaramella after all had just passed Litvinenko a note saying he and Litvinenko were on a Putin hit list.
Bukovsky, a harsh critic of Putin , was also on that list.
CP
Right now we have a parallel universe of MSM credibility going on with certain stories and their backgrounds.
Here we have a very high profile story with only the least bit of disclosure by official sources coming out with quite frankly careful wordsmithed generalizations.
To take as gospel that any MSM source has suddenly got religion due to the importance of a story is to say the least a bit of a reach. Their is still the competitive we broke it first meme out there. Due speculation should be cast on fit and propriety to reality. So buyer beware, there are too many motivations for false leads either due to less than satisfactory research or deliberately planted red herrings.
A lot of people could for a lot of different reasons have equity in this issue. Could make it very hard to sort out.
“There are quite frankly to many more efficient and comparatively readily available alternatives that have come to the fore. It is something that just does not pass the smell test.”
There are only a few reasons for clandestine traffic in polonium. I agree that polonium triggers would be primative but if you don’t have access to tritium, it’s pretty much the only game in town. The initial paki bombs, I believe, used polonium triggers and it is believed that Iran has an early paki bomb design. That is one example of someone who would want polonium who might not be able to obtain it through legitimate channels. Another reason might be jihadis building a dirty bomb for use in the West or even Russia. It is possible that if they were trafficing in polonium, it could have come from Russia and gone back to Russia under the control of different groups.
CP
Neither of your trigger sources are state of the art. Both po and tritium date to the time of the rise of Gregory Peck as an actor of note.
As far as you other comments on dirty bombs, an alpha emitter would be the least reasonable choice. You would be looking for a gamma emitter with a long half life to give the largest area deniablity.
What’s the half life of a Red Herring?
I can’t think of a gamma emitter that would be as toxic as polonium and as easily available. Trouble with gamma rays is that they penetrate so they can be detected at long distances are are hard to shield. A gamma source would be harder to smuggle and would be more difficult to release without immediate detection.
An alpha emitter such as polonium could be easily smuggled and dispersed in a number of ways and would probably go undetected until people started getting sick, by then it would be too late.
I am not saying it is the most efficient, I am saying it is probably the most practical if you can find a source of it. Imagine what only half a kilo could do depending on how it was dispersed. Polonium is one of the most poisonous substances known. Don’t think of it so much as a radiological weapon, think of it as more of a poison, as a sort of a chemical agent.
And I don’t doubt that my trigger sources aren’t state of the art as I am not sure I even want to know the current state of the art. Point is that Iran has an ancient bomb design, or so I have read, so they would probably use an ancient neutron source.
Anyway, the point is that all this is fun to speculate about but I have kids and I worry that some lunatic is about to unleash a particularly nasty weapon someplace. I hope it isn’t so.
But for the life of me, I can’t understand expending so much effort and expense on killing Litvinenko using this method. Whoever did it had to know the poison would be discovered eventually. There are a lot of other choices of poison that are even more deadly and don’t leave a radiation trail. It makes no sense to poison with polonium. They would be no more likely to have been caught at this point had they used something else.
The use of polonium as a poison for murder seems more trouble than it is worth.
“The Polonium 210, mixed with foil-wrapped Beryllium, will initiate a chain reaction in a rudimentary nuke.”
—
Would Polonium allow the construction of a simpler, but still functional weapon than other sources?
Yes. It could be used by itself as a contaminant that would kill for years. People having exposure at levels too low to cause immediate death would be expected to have a greatly increased cancer risk. In other words, it would cause death both immediately and over time and there isn’t much anyone would be able to do about it.
If I were to have found that I had ingested or inhaled any amount of refined (not naturally occuring) polonium, I would be worried. Even the very low levels found in tobacco cause cancers of the mouth, throat, lungs, and bladder. I don’t think there is a such thing as a “safe” dose of polonium.