Dec 08 2006
Radiation Shows Up In Hamburg, Germany
OK, one more piece in the puzzle as radiation has been detected in the Hamburg apartment of Dmitry Kuvton:
German police say they have found indications of radiation in an apartment apparently used by a contact of fatally poisoned former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.
The traces of radiation turned up in the northern city of Hamburg in the apartment used by Dmitry Kovtun, apparently the same man who met Litvinenko in London on November 1, the day he is believed to have fallen mortally ill.
“There are indications that there has been a source of radiation there, but no source of radiation has been found,” said Ulrike Sweden, a spokeswoman for Hamburg police.
Next question is where did this Polonium come from prior to Hamburg and was it destined for London? I now there is this amazing tea cup story and how it contaminated a dish washer. But people take drinks in their rooms and we have no idea which cup or glass or whatever contaminated the dishwasher. We still have contaminated rooms – which get cleaned during the day and may have been the source not only for the dirty cup, but residue on many other items like dishes and glasses. So while the media grasps the assassin theory, we have one path for the smuggling angle (which is now clearly something that must also have happened).
The fact that Litvinenko was tee-total is interesting. was he always tee-total? or just not drinking on that day? if the assasin knew all three were going to for example share a bottle of vodka it could be poisoned – giving each person a small dose but enough to kill slowly. What if the attempt had started earlier – at the end of october – but each time they met for drinks Litvinenko did not share the alcahol. he therefore had to be given an individual dose on the 1st November in the tea cup. Therefore the other two had been recieving small doses of poison for several weeks beforehand and that is why they were contaminated in october?
Left by tempester on December 9th, 2006
It has been intimated that the contaminated worker were foreign i would make a guess that at least some of them were polish. It may be possible for a russian to blend into the staff.
If it was a smuggling attempt (obviously, there was not an established smuggling ring here), of course the end buyer had nefarious purpose for the PO. But (as Enlightended pointed out), many along the chain would only do so for the $, and so a money trail would be there.
Is it being traced? Yeah, contamination in places, but it ain’t gona be directly linked back to the killer(s). FSB/KGB/Putin won’t allow that.
clarice, In the link you provided for the Pine Bar, it says
“The traditional oak wood panelled Pine Bar”
Now that’s funny!
Lugovoi was contaminated on the 16th and the 25th. He probably ingested his dose long before the Pine Bar. Same with his friend. If I were going to hit Litvinenko, I would put someone at the sushi bar, the place he was known to frequent often, not the Pine Bar which was a one-off meeting. Not adding up.
Expanding on Enlightened’s theory, maybe it was something like this: an assasination agent, who is working with either Lugovoi or Kovtun, or both (but most likely Kovtun) walks into the Millennium, checks into a room, orders a pot of tea and cups from room service, wipes the cups with a light acid polonium solution or powder (either of which he or she spills a little), changes into a Millennium wait staff uniform that they brought with them in a suitcase. Kovtun calls to say they are in the bar. The agent-waiter walks out of the room, hits the light switch, then out into the hotel with the tray, and places tea and cups on the table at the Pine Bar. A tray may have even been ordered and sitting on the table already before Litvinenko arrived.
Latest from the Times:
“Having promised last week to co-operate fully with the British investigation, the Russian Prosecutor-General has thrown four separate obstacles in its way. He has told the visiting detectives that they may request interviews but only observe them, and then only if the interviews are granted. He has ruled out extraditing any Russian citizen for trial in Britain. He has announced his own investigation into the alleged attempted murder of two of Mr Litvinenko’s associates — who, as Russian citizens, provide a pretext for giving the Russian inquiry priority over the British one. And he has twice postponed interviews with the man Scotland Yard most wants to question.
That man is Andrei Lugovoy, the former KGB colonel, who not only met Mr Litvinenko on the day he appears to have been poisoned but also allegedly occupied a hotel room where traces of polonium-210 have been found. Mr Lugovoy has told The Times that he has nothing to hide. Even so, he has been unavailable since the Scotland Yard team’s arrival: they have been denied access to him at a clinic where a third figure in the affair is said to be suffering from acute radiation sickness.
It would be wrong to take entirely at face value Mr Litvinenko’s self-assessment as a persecuted crusader for justice. His loyalties and business dealings were complex and possibly compromised. That he was a strange man does not make his murder any less sinister. The Kremlin had at least three compelling reasons to wish to silence him. First, he claimed before his death to have evidence linking the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist and outspoken critic of Russian policy in the Caucasus, to state security forces. Secondly, he had written a book accusing the FSB of planning to blow up an apartment building to bolster President Putin’s case for invading Chechnya in 1999. A new and heavily annotated edition of the book is due to be published next month. Thirdly, as we report today, he claimed to have uncovered a Kremlin-backed plan to blackmail or eliminate foreign-based Russian citizens holding assets salvaged from Yukos, the oil company founded by the jailed tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Suggestions that the Russian state was involved in Mr Litvinenko’s murder have been dismissed by the Kremlin as preposterous. In a civilised world, they would be just that, and the murder may yet prove to be the result of a private business deal that went wrong. A more likely scenario, however, is that Mr Litvinenko was the victim of over-mighty, underemployed Russian security forces that are themselves increasingly abusing their power in business dealings. The rise of the FSB to the dominant position that its predecessor, the KGB, once enjoyed, fuels corruption, inhibits the economy and democracy, and has the potential to become a serious political embarrassment for Mr Putin. Yet it is largely a problem of his own making, as is the rise of the slavishly pro-Putin youth groups accused of harassing Britain’s Ambassador to Moscow for attending an opposition conference last summer. Mr Putin should remember that power corrupts, and centralised power corrupts the figure at the centre.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,542-2494771,00.html
WoG, I thought an oak-panelled “Pine Bar” was pretty silly, too.
Usually they save that kind of thing for the menus.
if Litvinenko, Lugovoi, Berezovsky, Zakayev and Scaramella, were/are smugglers
I am starting to lean on the side of an assignation, but still can’t shake the feeling of a smuggling – only NOT to assemble a dirty bomb, but as a means to expose the Kremlin sanctioned yet denied illicit weapons trade.
It is the only smggling scheme that makes sense to me.
TSK9, I think some of the players may have believed they were smugglers.
TS – Silencing critics with sensitive, bombshell info, doesn’t make sense? If others friendly with this person get exposed or die as well, all the better, no? And does the slow & horrific , messy death not send a message? And, now we got many all over talking of nukes, smuggling, Chechens, etc. when the obvious is right under our noses?
Wiley, the obvious is right under our noses, and yet none of us can prove anything. Maybe that, too, is the message.
You know what? This story would be a lot happier if a simple letter switch would take place in the word “smugglers.”……m to an n
TS – I think I misread your last statement (sorry).
nite ya’ll!
Mariposa – Exactly
‘Nite to you, too!
Well one aspect of the “expose Russia’s illicit weapons industry” smuggling scheme that could be true is this peculiar substance…if it were a smuggling with the intent to expose Russia – but in the meantime the “players” literally “exposed” themselves to the substance — going public with the “substance” combined with an accusation Putin did this — well, it’s all come down to the substance, P210 and Putin…aka the original intent still sort of worked
(disclaimer – having a hard time articulating my point, so acknowledging above is awkward)
On the other hand
This does soud like a “spray” to me…do we have an idea how busy the place is at that time of day and to postioning of their seatig, remote – off to the side?
–You know what? This story would be a lot happier if a simple letter switch would take place in the word “smugglers.â€â€¦â€¦m to an n
Left by Weight of Glory on December 9th, 2006–
HAH…ad LOL.
Goodnight Weight of Glory and Mariposa.
Apparently — I am in need of an “N” insertion in my typed words too Weight!