Dec 05 2006
Iran And Polonium-210
One angle which has not been explored sufficiently is that of Iran and Polonium-210. It was reported back in Feb 2004 that Iran has produced Polonium as part of their nuclear production efforts:
WASHINGTON, Feb 24 (AFP) — Iran produced and experimented with polonium — used in the timing of nuclear explosions — some time ago, but says it was not used for such purposes, The Washington Post said Tuesday.
The International Atomic Energy Agency will include Iran’s experimentation with polonium in a report to be submitted this week at the United Nations, two people familiar with the report told the daily.
Iran has submitted to IAEA inspections to show the world it does not have nuclear weapons ambitions, but its dabbling with polonium coupled with the IAEA’s discovery of components for an advanced uranium-enrichment centrifuge have raised serious doubts about Tehran’s forthrightness.
Iran has acknowledged the experiments with polonium but has offered an explanation involving another of polonium’s possible uses, including power generation.
The IAEA has left the issue “hanging there,” one person familiar with the matter told the Post.
He said the experiments took place “some time ago,” the daily added.
Polonium has some industrial purposes, but in combination with beryllium it can be used to ensure the chain reaction leading to a nuclear explosion begins at the right time.
More here with the clear implication that where you find large amounts of Polonium you may find a nuclear weapon. As we all now know Polonium has very limited use in the general commercial market due to its toxicity. So let’s assume the reports that the Russian production of Polonium has been suspended for two years now and all inventories and exports have been accounted for. That would make the Iranians a plausible secondary source. Let’s connect some dots between Russia and Iran’s nuclear program:
Russia and Iran have signed an agreement for Moscow to supply fuel to Iran’s new nuclear reactor in Bushehr.
Under the deal Iran has to return spent nuclear fuel rods from the reactor, which was designed and built by Russia.
The clause is a safeguard meant to banish fears that Iran might misuse the rods to build nuclear weapons, a concern of the US, Israel and others.
The agreement sets out a time-frame for delivery of the fuel, but officials said the dates would be kept secret.
This kind of arrangement is what many on the left might like to see with Iran as opposed to the Bush administration’s efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear program. It was hoped this arrangement would avoid Iran having some of the materials to make a nuclear bomb. But it doesn’t appear to address by products that could be made like Polonium-210. And now one more dot for consideration: The Chechen’s:
Iran is secretly training Chechen rebels to enable them to carry out more effective attacks against Russian forces.
Teams of Chechen fighters are being trained at the Revolutionary Guards’ Imam Ali training camp, located close to Tajrish Square in Tehran, the Sunday Telegraph cited Western intelligence reports.
In addition to receiving training in the latest terror techniques, the Chechen volunteers undergo ideological and political instruction by hardline Iranian mullahs at Qom.
The paper noted that this information would not “go down well in Moscow, which regards itself as a close ally of the Iranian regime.â€
This angle deserves a lot more analysis and may explain why the UK’s AWE initially determined that it was a Russian reactor that created the Polonium-210. Maybe it was just a Russian designed reactor located someplace else.
And why did Luguvoi stay in Russia while a huge no. of rich Russians moved to Londonistan to enjoy their wealth in a stable (?) environment. Lugovoi is a rich man – he wouldn’t be a mule in all of this – there is something else afoot – and he was at the security firm erinys (sp?) who has Iraqi etc. dealings early on in October.
If it was legally manufactured polonium that has been diverted, it would probably have a tracer that could be identified. If it was of clandestine manufacture, probably not.
While most radioactive things that come from Uranium can be traced back to their source because of trace elements from the ore, ratios of various isotopes, etc. this is a differen case.
In this case a non-nuclear material (bismuth-209, the stuff you buy in the drugstore to treat nausea) is bombarded by neutrons which causes it to become polonium-210 (actually very slightly more involved than that, but that’s close enough). The polonium-210 is then refined out of the bismuth.
You have no way to trace this particular kind of a material back to a source unless a tracer was added when it was made because neutrons themselves aren’t traceable.
Wasn’t there an article that Scaramella busted some dudes in Sam Marino (isn’t this the same island as Mark Foley’s priest? Life is stranger than fiction, I must say) trading in P210 or Uranium? Isn’t it likely that Scaramella found in his investigation that KGB were actively moving this stuff around and the 2 investigations are related?
Nuc trading – KGB – NUC trading BY KGB?
I seriously think the only bad guy in this is Putin – and by proxy his security apparatus and Gov. – but that Putin didn’t poison Litvinenko
Also, while I think that Scaramella was working in tandem with Litvinenko to expose it – I think that Scaramella did get an email that he and Litvinenko were on a hit list because KGB got wind of something, but I think Litvinenko accidently poisoned himself before the hit.
What I find surprising is the widespread assumption that anything showing signs of radioactive contamination is assumed to have been contaminated by Polonium – which,as we all know, is not the most common metal on the planet !
I’d be more inclined to suspect the presence of Cesium or even a sample of partially enriched Uranium.
regarding the documents:
Russian secret service denies poisoning ex-agent
Jeevan Vasagar, Tom Parfitt in Moscow
Thursday November 23, 2006
The Guardian
Russia’s secret service yesterday issued its strongest denial yet that it was to blame for the poisoning of the former KGB agent who is seriously ill in a London hospital.
The denial from the Russian foreign intelligence service, the SVR, came as Alexander Litvinenko’s condition deteriorated, according to a friend. Sergei Ivanov, an SVR spokesman, told the Interfax news agency that the dissident was not important enough for it to mount a risky assassination attempt: “Litvinenko is not the kind for whose sake we would spoil bilateral relations. It is not in our interests.” Mr Litvinenko became ill on November 1 following meetings with contacts, the first with two Russian men at the Millennium hotel in Mayfair and the second with Italian academic Mario Scaramella at the Itsu sushi bar in Piccadilly. Mr Litvinenko claims he met a former KGB agent, Andrei Lugovoi, at the hotel along with another Russian. Mr Lugovoi said yesterday that he would not comment until he had met British embassy officials in Moscow.
Article continues
A University College Hospital spokes-man said Mr Litvinenko was in a stable condition, suffering the effects of an unidentified poison. At Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper where journalist Anna Politkovskaya worked before her assassination last month, there was scepticism over Mr Litvinenko’s claims that he obtained documents about her death on the day he was poisoned.
Mr Litvinenko has said the Italian contact he met at the sushi bar, Dr Scaramella, a defence consultant, passed him material that suggested secret service operatives were connected with the death of Politkovskaya. Dr Scaramella also showed him a hit list which named the two men. Before Mr Litvinenko became seriously ill, he promised to hand the documents to Novaya Gazeta once he recovered.
Andrei Lipsky, deputy editor of Novaya Gazeta, told the Guardian: “Nothing has been handed over to us and I doubt this will be important.”http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,,1954687,00.html
Enlightened ,
If, after discussion, there is no reason to believe that the polonium was not manufactured in Iran, then the speculation will end there. But you cannot begin with the conclusion. That is why AJ is posting this possibility; not because it is that which was, but rather what might have been. And the only way to go from one to the other is by this kind of speculative circumlocution. To say you don’t “feel” the Iranian angle at the end of a discussion is fine, but you shouldn’t begin there.
“was not manufactured” = “was manufactured”
here’s something else interesting – Mr Lugovoi attacked Mr Litvinenko’s friend Alex Goldfarb for implicating him in the affair. He said that he had met Mr Goldfarb only a couple of times briefly. “I think he is just trying to attract attention to himself and maybe this is his way of doing it,†he said.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2469663,00.html
In this same interview with the times (his first interview) he leaves out and denies that Vladimir a tall guy was there – later this turns out to be Sokolenko:
Mr Lugovoi dismissed reports that a mysterious tall stranger named Vladimir had attended their meeting. He named the third man (Litvinenko, Lugovoi and Korvron – my note sloppy writing)at the meeting in the London hotel as Dmitri Kovron, a businessman and childhood friend who was quite short.
reminder: from earlier thread: Scaramella’s computers and documents were seized by Italians today because he was accused of “illegally throwing away waste”
Don’t know if this has been posted yet but…this seems a bit ballsy
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2489024,00.html#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=Britain
Also from the article:
“Andrei Lugovoy, the key figure of interest to the police, who was among the last people to see Litvinenko on the day he fell ill, was suddenly admitted to hospital in Moscow yesterday. He claimed that he was too ill with radiation poisoning to speak, but later from his hospital bed said that he had nothing to hide and was ready to meet the detectives.”
I’ve been gone most of the day so I don’t know if ya’ll have discussed this yet.
I think -not to be tiresome-the material MOST likely to have caused the contamination is good ol’ Cesium-137:
http://216.109.125.130/search/cache?p=cesium+137&ei=UTF-8&fr=b2ie7&u=www.ead.anl.gov/pub/doc/cesium.pdf&w=cesium+137&d=FZi0ipIFN2-0&icp=1&.intl=us
ps: It can be found in nuclear waste.
There was a Woody Allan Movie, where once he was supposed to snort cocaine. Except that he sneezes. In a room full of party-goers, waiting their turn.
“Manu-FRACTURED,” wouldn’t be a bad working title.
And, according to Occam’s Razor, crooks can be greedy AND stupid.
While the “smuggling ring” wasn’t of insignificant size, how many would have been in the “know?” And, how many mules? Comfortable, let’s say with an ITALIAN Passport. As well as one from Londonstan. Would Putin put this “team” out to assassinate anybody, with Russian passports? And, traceable names?
It’s not the Geiger Counter, alone, that is NOT clicking.
And, the Italians? They were Saddam’s “pals.” Very interested in carting MONEY into Iraq’s terrorists; even while Sgrena’s case was covered as an “abduction.”
While there are a host of people who were once “in.” Who are “out.” And, Robert Gates? He carries the CIA credential not of a “spook” but of an analyst. With his “expertise” on Russia. (Ditto, Condi’s credential of expertise in international affairs, as well.)
Tenet’s out. Powell’s out. And, Armitage is out. So, who are the professionals around DC who you’d ask?
No need to ask? Just to give Robert Gates a pass?
I swear, Peter Sellers, doing his best imitation of a nincompoop, couldn’t get further along on this case. With, at least, THE BAD GUYS DYING FIRST!
And, yes. Great reads, here. Especially the Italians realizing that Scaramella should being tossing away “so much waste.”
Bottom line? Did all the extended hands for payoff find themselves “out of the loop,” too? This is getting as good as Sherlock Holmes gets.
Russia has been asking for the extradition of those guys forever. Ever since they went to the UK. Any time the UK asks for the extradition of a Russian, Russia says “fine, give us Boris”.
That game has been played for a very long time.
Also:
“Meanwhile, in Moscow yesterday a search was carried out at the British Embassy for traces of polonium-210 in the room visited by Andrei Lugovoy when he applied for a visa to visit Britain.”
So it was when he applied for a visa.
I just googled “Andrei Lugovoi” and Iran and got a german site that i can only access by using the cache (it’s toward the end of the google entries of which I got 257)- lots of this is in German but half way down the page is an interview with someone – here is a quote: Maybe someone who understands this better than I do might like to take a look at it.
ere “black market dealsâ€, often handled by Russian, Chechen or other mafias. And the End User Certificates, demanded for legal trade in nukes, were often made under a false flag. In the 1990s, I was also in China, a number of times. I learned about the Chinese military intelligence handling Russian nuclear products and selling them to unknown customers via Hong Kong companies, often owned by the Chinese Intelligence. China was aggressively trading in nuclear materials, weapon parts and designs, for its own sake and also providing them to such foreign countries as North Korea, Pakistan, Libya, Indonesia, Iraq and Iran. In some cases, the original source of these materials was Russia, the Ukraine and Kazakhstan. In most of the cases, which I could examine, the handlers were intelligence services on the seller’s and buyer’s side
There has been no cesium detected anywhere. It would be much less of a threat if that were the case. Polonium has been detected.
So far as I know, no cesium has been detected anywhere in London but polonium has. It would be quite a relief if it were only cesium that were involved, cesium is much less toxic by several orders of magnitude. You can eat cesium pancakes and the result would be an elevated cancer risk but you would survive.
Cesium is a gamma and beta emitter but not alpha. Polonium emits alpha radiation but not beta or gamma.
Gee, Lizarde1 it seems we have a lot of people surrounding this little escapade that have a history in or know something about or have been looking into nuclear black marketing.
Lizarde1
In some cases, the original source of these materials was Russia, the Ukraine and Kazakhstan. In most of the cases, which I could examine, the handlers were intelligence services on the seller’s and buyer’s side
—
It’s almost a big duh, isn’t it?
here’s some more from that cache:
I volunteered to monitor the illegal trade of nuclear materials, technology and weapons between the states of the former USSR and the outside world. This meeting, arranged at the historical King David Hotel in Jerusalem, in February 1992, had started my “private investigationâ€, which lasted several years and covered about 20 countries. Shalheveth Freier died in 1994. Earlier in the same year, I obtained from a London-based intelligence source a full commercial offer for the sale of Polonium-210 and a number of other rare isotopes. This offer had the original markings and stamps of a Russian military nuclear laboratory, affiliated to a commercial enterprise “Promekologiaâ€, singled out by a decree of the then President of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin, as a channel for exports of nuclear materials. If I remember well, the price of one gram of Polonium-210 exceeded 2,000,000 US dollars, and the prices of other rare isotopes reached even $4,000, 0000. I was asked to try to sell these products. The copy of the Russian offer and contract was faxed to Rehovot in Israel for examination. The result was positive, showing that the documents and technical descriptions were authentic. Then, I offered these products to a president of a U.S. corporation, Aerospas, based in Atlanta, Georgia
and what was that Berizovsky/Yeltsin connection: Boris Berezovsky, a key wheeler and dealer of the Yeltsin era …
Boris Berezovsky, a close ally of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin