Dec 07 2006
Millenium Hotel Now The Poison Site, Smuggling Theory Expands
First off, another one of my predictions I made which I said would come true if this was a smuggling effort came true. I predicted back on December 5th that if this was a smuggling effort we would find Polonium traces at hotels that lined up with the trips of Lugovoi on Oct 15th, Oct 25th and Nov 1st because these were trips where Litvinenko met Lugovoi (as if to check on the status of some effort). That has now come true:
Traces of polonium-210 has been found at Parkes Hotel, Mayfair, it was confirmed last night. It means that radiation has been found at all three hotels where Mr Lugovoy had stayed since flying to London on October 16. The Parkes was the first he stayed at.
The radioactive isotope has also been found at Risc Management, a security firm in Cavendish Place, visited by Litvinenko with Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun on October 17.
Back on December 1st I said if this was a smuggling ring that was exposed by an accident one of the Russians with Lugovoi (who would be coordinating the smuggling, not handling the material himself) would fall ill. Obviously that happened today as well. I am now ready to be proven wrong, if it all possible. If there were three rounds of Polonium 210 shipments, and Litvinenko was only poisoned as one of these shipments came through, how much Polonium is still out there?
The UK media are chasing their conspiracy spinning tails on the Litvinenko incident, but finally they may be seeing the light. As I proposed here, and in numerous other posts, I think the second major contamination site at the Millenium Hotel at Grosvenor’s Square is where the poisining of Litvinenko took place. I think there is a case to be made that Litvinenko met twice with Lugovoi and Kovtun (two Russian “business associates” of Litvinenko and Berezovsky): once in the morning or mid-day before the Scaramella meeting, and then again after the meeting in the early evening. Reporting keeps getting conflicting inputs because the idea of two meetings in one day has not been widely contemplated. In any event, the Times UK is now moving the site of the major poisoning event to the Millenium Hotel:
All seven bar staff working at the Pine Bar in the Millennium Hotel that night have tested positive for polonium-210, the radioactive isotope that killed Litvinenko. Health authorities are trying urgently to contact the 250 customers using the busy bar on November 1.
The Pine Bar is a popular haunt for businessmen and foreign guests at the five-star hotel in Grosvenor Square. Many of those overseas travellers have returned home after being told they were at no risk.
Health experts said they were surprised to find that the levels of radiation found in the seven bar staff approached that found in Litvinenko’s wife, Marina.
As I mentioned in this previous post the contamination level can be used to derive how close the person was to ground zero event (when the major contamination happened that poisoned Litvinenko). Litvinenko was at ground zero (obviously) and the closest one since had the highest dose (he fell ill first and died first). The second closest to ground zero may be Kuvton, who seems to have fallen ill and could be on his way to dying. The third known contamination is Scaramella – who is a second tier vector having been contaminated by Litvinenko at his Sushi Bar meeting. No other restaurant staff were contaminated at that location. The next closest contaminated people are the 7 staff members at the Millenium Pine Bar and Litvinenko’s wife. They seem to be like Scaramella in that they ran into a prime vector (Litvinenko or Kovtun) who was at ground zero, but far enough away in time that whatever contamination was on the vector had dissipated by some means or another so that they received less of a dose than Scaramella.
As distance, or time, or some other intervening vector creates distance from ground zero and the two prime vectors we know of (Litvinenko and Kovtun) the risk to people drops off. What is not clear is whether there are any more prime vectors who were at ground zero. Was Lugovoi? We should know soon because they should be getting ill pretty soon.
But someone is really stringing the media along here:
Michael Clark, of the agency’s radiation protection division, said last night that it was possible that Litvinenko was poisoned by a contaminated cigarette or drink.
A minute quantity of polonium-210 placed in Litvinenko’s glass would explain how he ingested the radioactive poison that led to his agonising death three weeks later.
The vapour that evaporated from the drink would have been inhaled by anyone in the area, with a greater concentration for his Russian companions and staff, who would have been in the bar much longer.
Litvinenko did not have a minute quantity of Polonium-210 by toxic standards. He ingested 50-100 times the lethal dose, which represented 30 million euros worth of Polonium-210 (at its peak purity – assuming minimal decay time since production). The ‘vapors’ do not explain how Scaramella received 5 times the lethal dose, and it number three on our dose chart (Kovtun looks to be number two and I would guess that if he is truly as ill as people say he could be at 10-20 times the lethal dose). The other problem we have is there could have been a build up over many exposures in Litvinenko or Kovtun over the three week period in questions. It is possibly the cumulative dose is the result of a number of smaller exposures. But this theory being put out to the UK Times seems a very strained. My theory holds up better, which entails an early meeting in a hotel room which is the true ground zero:
Investigators believe the poison cocktail was likely to have been manufactured in a guest room at the hotel, a short walk away from the US Embassy. Significant traces of polonium-210 were found in a fourth-floor room, which was occupied by a visiting Russian.Police believe that the killer may have stalked Litvinenko in London that day and had first tried to poison the ex-KGB colonel in a sushi bar. That failed but the poisoner left ample traces of the deadly radioactive isotope in the Piccadilly restaurant. Traces were also found on an Italian academic, Mario Scaramella, who was in the Itsu sushi bar. Toxicologists found polonium-210 in every place that Litvinenko visited after his drink at the hotel. It was not until he arrived home two hours later that he was violently ill.
This theory is pretty lame (except the fact there was ‘a spill’ of what must have been a Polonium-210 acid suspension in the hotel room) because it proposes the assassin had no clear opportunities to get Litvinenko in an open area like a street, or had to trail him and get the job done that one day. The amount of Polonium available was enough to kill Litvinenko 50-100 times over. An assassin could have trailed at his liesure, leaving a drop in a drink while passing by and slowly building up the toxicity of the Polonium-210 in Litvinenko. If an assassin selected Polonium-210 it is assumed they took the time to study how it could be administered covertly.
Update: Larisa Alexandrovna has posted something she says will make me very happy – so I thought I would share it with everyone.
So where is the MONEY TRAIL of the SMUGGLERS?
You are all assuming this was a botched terrorist plot/smuggling ring – and you have not linked a single penny to any of the players.
So you think we should assume that this highly toxic, extremely valuable black market product was just being punted around by the players? They were too stupid to handle it – but got it without paying for it?
Enlightened – do I look like someone who has access to money transfers? The only people who have that access are the investigators and they are not going to release that.
Keep it real, will ya?
Or they talked about something completely unrelated and Scaramella has been convinced to play up to the death list story. That doesn’t explain why they’ve found Po-210 on him, however, unless he ingested it later on purpose (which would account for the apparent miscalculations about how much he got). The idea of L going to the Milennium hotel many times that day, somehow it just seems ad hoc. ..
If you’re going to be dividing up Po-210 during the day, why would you take a break to go chat with some Italian who might as well have sent you an email instead?
Sky News via Drudge:
“There is confusion over reports that a man who met former Russian spy Alexander Livtinenko has fallen into a coma with radiation poisoning.
Dmitry Kovtun met Mr Livtinenko on November 1, the day it is believed he was poisoned with radioactive substance polonium-210.
Russian’s interfax news agency said that Mr Kovtun fell into a coma immediately after being questioned by British and Russian detectives, with doctors describing his condition as “critical”.
However, a lawyer for another wintess in the Litvinenko denied the reports.
Andrei Romashov said: “His health right at this minute is no different from the state of his health when he was questioned by Russian and British investigators.” “
Lostinthedrift,
The Scaramella angle is easy. Scaramella called Litvinenko and pleaded with him to meet him – it was not planned in advance. It was either bad timing or Scaramella was on the trail of nuclear contraband (his night job – so to speak) and used the email list to entice Litvinenko to the meeting. If Scaramella was an agent hoping to uncover the smuggling ring this would make sense. He just picked the wrong day to get close. If he was as he claims and really just rushing to tell Litvinenko and Berezovsky (it seems clear Berezovsky used Litvinenko as a buffer to keep at arms length from people) then it was just bad timing in general. The hit list doesn’t have to have anything to do with the smuggling itself, it was just the item that got Scaramella and Litvinenko talking that day.
Speaking of money, maybe that’s the contamination vector for Scaramella, maybe some others too. Contaminated cash.
I am glad to see the Guardian has posted the bio of Lugovoi that we had here from Axis yesterday – they are really up to speed.
“So where is the MONEY TRAIL of the SMUGGLERS?”
Talk to Boris, I will bet he knows.
AJ – You are speculating on many levels, and yet the one thing that smugglers do business for – money – you refuse to speculate on, but you continue to state the product was worth 50 Million dollars –
At this point in time of the investigation, a money trail to smugglers should have surfaced as easily as the exposure points have, at least RUMORS of a money trail would be out there by now.
we are talking 20 or so briefcases of cash – in euros it would be less as they have big denominations – you get in a car and you drive it to Luxemburg or Switzerland via the chunnel and distribute it among lots of accounts- where’s the trail? They are very accomodating in Switzerland for example – they offer you extra safes if the one in your hotel room isn’t big enough
If it was murder, in my opinion, Boris did it because Litvinenko was potentially a larger liability than potential asset. With all this talk of blackmail and his little investigations, I could see where Boris would think Litvinenko could cause him more trouble than good. He probably couldn’t just fire him because Litvinenko probably had enough dirt on him to prevent that. In other words, Litvinenko is already effectively blackmailing him for whatever his salary is. Boris wants him off his back and decides to have his boys do it with their “undetectible” nuclear material.
If you’re smuggling Po, why divide it up at all, these quantities won’t be much bigger than a pill. Why divide up the polonium at a high profile hotel for heavens sake? Why not go to some rundown warehouse basement somewhere, and why not bring along some geiger counters, just in case the most dangerous substance known to man gets loose — and the terrorists become the terrified?
Yes, Enlightened. I agree.
You open it if you want to
A: verify that you didn’t get ripped off by your seller
B: bought a large quantity from a seller to provide two smaller quantities to different buyers
C: are thinking of taking some of the polonium out, adding a little lead (making the original polonium the right quantity but “older”) and either keeping the extra until you have enough to sell yourself or selling it outright. Drug dealers do that all the time.
Or you could be combining smaller purchases into a larger sale.
“At this point in time of the investigation, a money trail to smugglers should have surfaced as easily as the exposure points have”
It isn’t that easy. You could have accounts in many different countries under many different names and be using electronic transfer. I doubt any of them are going to be using accounts that are in any of their names. Probably accounts in the name of some foreign company that they can authorize money movement from with a phone call.
The polonium surfaced much more quickly because someone died.
Example:
Joe’s Auto Repair and Fish Farm has an account with $100 million in it. Joe Blow is authorized to transfer funds. But it isn’t really Joe Blow’s money, it’s Boris’. One day Joe Gets a phone call from Boris telling him to make an electronic transfer to some account in the Cayman Islands. He does. The transaction is in no way related to Boris. It can’t be traced to Boris and has Boris’ name nowhere on it.
The cite Larissa gives you mixes a soupcon of fact with a boatload of crap.
Somebody must have been severly mislead to think they could dilute and divide a polonium shipment like drugs, and I can’t imagine getting near the stuff (opening the container!) without a geiger counter no hand.
Gladio! So Larissa thinks it’s real, I’m off to read and get creeped out.
That should be “without a geiger counter on hand”
Jerry, the way I see it we don’t know if they were gathering together a bigger batch of Po, or if they were dividing it. And as far as the contaminated hotel room goes, there wouldn’t be a problem unless the container broke and someone got sick. If the substance was in powder form, no Geiger meter would help, if it was to get out in the room, and the only way they would be able to do it would be in a lab with a ventilated work bench.
I’m wondering if it is at all possible that Lugovoi and Kovtun could be alive for much longer if they were in the same room with L as the container broke. It does seem more and more likely that the Milennium hotel is ground zero. If the personel in the bar have some contamination, there should be more contamination to Litvinenko’s other associates.