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!
MerlinOS2,
“If I wanted to take someone out, would I care if it was an alpha emitter, a beta emitter or a gamma emmitter?”
If I wanted to take someone out, my first choice would be neither one. I would have access to labs that have been established to developed poisons just for cases such as this, I would have used one of those poisons. A state security service would not have used this poison or a method of delivery that speads the stuff all over Europe.
If I were a terrorist, I would use what I have access to and what I could disperse with the resources I have. Gamma rays are more penetrating than x-rays. A dispersal would probably be noticed by satellite or aircraft which constantly watch for gamma sources. Alpha rays can not be detected through more than a few centimeters of air.
Polonium is a perfect terrorist poison but is a bad one for a government. Particularly if it is using polonium made in its own country. If I were Russia and I were going to use polonium, I would have used a cleaner delivery method and I would have used foreign polonium. But since I have poison labs that I have been spending millions of dollars on to develop poisons, I would probably have used one of the products of that development. They would have had access to poisons that doctors have never seen before because they had never been used before in the West.
Yes, Sue, he is not suffering from radiation poisoning but was contaminated. Go to the main BBC news site and watch the crawler at the top of the page and click the story. Contaminated but at a much lower level than the Russian was.
CP–That may have been what was used on Gaidar –doctors still cannot determine what was used on him..
the voice of reason?: Meanwhile, one of Britain’s leading security experts, Professor Anthony Glees of the Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies at Brunel University said that the secret and illegal import of Polonium 210 into Britain put a whole new complexion on stringent post-9/11 security measures. Glees said, “the fact that you could get it onto planes despite all the security measures that we all go through every time we fly, is causing very serious disquiet”. quoted in the Voice of Indian
Yes, Gaidar’s illness fits the profile of someone who was poisoned but the fact that he has returned to Russia and is recovering would tend to rule out Gaidar’s being afraid of the Russian government or security services. And the fact that he as been only a mild critic of Putin’s doesn’t make a lot of sense that Putin would have him eliminated. Gaidar is not in danger of returning to office any time soon as he is apparently not very popular in Russia.
It would be like Ronald Regan poisoning Walter Mondale. Doesn’t make much sense.
I am an engineer and one common mistake that many make when they are new in that field is to attempt to find a common cause for multiple problems. Sometimes they are completely different issues that happened at around the same time. Looking for a connection between them can end up wasting a lot of time. A better appraoach is to investigate each event separately and see if those investigations converge than to attempt to look for and assume convergence right off the bat.
Link
“the fact that you could get it onto planes despite all the security measures that we all go through every time we fly, is causing very serious disquietâ€
I suppose it could cause serious disquiet until you think about it a little bit. It is so poisonous that only a tiny amount is needed and there is practically no way to detect it. Packed in checked baggage in a water bottle or mouthwash bottle, there is absolutely no way of detecting it. The container itself shields it. There would be absolutely no way of detecting this stuff but that isn’t really a problem because there is absolutely no way of detecting any number of other equally deadly conventional poisons that could be transported as pills in a prescription container or any other way.
It causes disquiet only if one expects a perfectly secure system with each individual guaranteed to be completely clean of any harmful substances or objects. That is an unreasonable expectation because in order to attain that level of security, every single object a person has would have to be subject to a complete search. That means opening all checked luggage and examining every single item in every single bag very carefully. We don’t have the time for that and people wouldn’t accept that level of invasion of privacy. Every ballpoint pen would require disassembly and the ink checked. Every lipstick would require analysis.
The notion that we could have a system secure enough to stop stuff like this from being moved around is silly. What you do is tightly control the production of polonium and carefully control who has access to it. Apparently some of the material “leaked” out of proper channels. To attempt to somehow beef up airline security to compensate for a failure in the controls of managing nuclear material is kinda silly. It is like handing out sponges to people because a levy is in danger of breaking.
This points out to a breech in the Russian nuclear security system more than any breech in the airline security system. Some substances are dangerous and impossible to find on airplanes, that is why their manufacture and distribution are supposed to be strictly controlled. Because once they are outside of these controls, they are very difficult to regain control of.
Well said, CP.
So the first step which can and must be taken immediately is for Russia to explain to the world, or at least to the people of Britain, exactly how polonium manufactured in one of their power plants appeared in London when 100% of Russia’s polonium exports are supposed to go to the US.
The process of providing that report should be interesting.
CP – do you think we will ever hear anything about the 3 Russians who went back to Moscow including Lugovoy – he has got to be contaminated.
No idea but one thing is certain, this use of polonium has probably caused a serious problem to develop in the area of black market traffic of nuclear material from Russia. This is going to force Russia to tighten controls in that industry and possibly result in some heads rolling. Possibly literally so.
Just read this – how true who knows? but curious = also read elswhere the middle name of the killer! is Igor!
The radioactive isotope was brought from the city of Krasnoyarsk in Russia, and produced – in Zheleznogorsk or Zelenograd. This was confidentially reported by the Observer, UK.
http://www.russia-ic.com/rus_international/in_depth/313/
However, referring to those traces newspapers report that the investigators know for sure that the isotope was brought to the capital of Britain via British Airways Moscow-London flight on October 25.
—–I think it was the third Russian who already was in London before the other 2 came for the soccer game who could have been on the plane and this Russian was unknown to Litvinenko per various news articles.
Nothing really new in that article, Lizarde1. I believe the power plant that produced the material has already been identified. An analysis of the material should be able to give a date within a week or so of when it was manufactured. Autopsy will tell if the material was inhaled or swallowed. So … once a place and approximate date of manufacture is known, a list of people with accesss to the material can be obtained and an investigation begun. While the Brits are working on the trail back from London, the Russians can work the trail from their end. We know, or should soon know exactly where the stuff originated and we know where it ended up. It shouldn’t be all that difficult to determine where it “leaked” out of the system and plug that leak so it doesn’t happen again.
That is another reason I don’t believe this was done by official Russian personnel. Whoever did this either knew that the source would be identified or didn’t care. A trafficker in the material wouldn’t want to lose their source. A government wouldn’t want the finger pointing back at them. A buyer wouldn’t want to risk their source for future purchases unless they figure they will never be needing any more.
So … accident in trafficking or terrorism are the only two explainations that make sense to me. Outside of complete stupidity, that is. It is always possible that someone could have been so totally stupid and been surrounded by equally stupid people, but somehow I doubt that.
I never discount stupidity, CP.
Yeah, I don’t either which is why I leave it in, as unlikely as it seems.
Pros and cons for use of polonium as a poison for assassination:
Pro:
1. Requires a minuscule amount. 2 micrograms is pretty much an assured fatal dose.
2. Easy to hide due to the size of the dose required being nearly invisible to the naked eye.
3. Undetectable in transport.
Con:
1. Very limited availability. Extremely difficult to obtain in the amount required. Requires access to black market in nuclear materials or state sponsorship.
2. If purchased on the black market, it is extremely expensive with a fatal dose costing a million dollars or more. (assumption is that if this quantity costs over a million dollars on the legitimate market, it would probably cost more on the illicit market)
3. Kills though radiation sickness which would be eventually diagnosed particularly with hair loss combined with bone marrow loss. Symptoms will be recognized.
4. Once symptoms are recognized, the agent will be identified and once the agent is identified the source will be identified. In other words, poisoning agent is nearly assured of being discovered and traced to origin.
Crosspatch, you’ve been doing some really good speculating on this thread!
I also agree completely with your conclusion that a country’s security is better served by regulating polonium and other deadly substances, instead of trying to regulate from the other end and attempting to search and analyze every, single object transported into any public area.
And at the end of my first post here, I want to add a hello to everybody, and a thanks to Clarice for referring me to this interesting discussion.
Hi, mariposa. Glad you joined us.
So, Mariposa, what is your take on the whole thing?