Dec 09 2006
Tea Cup Mystery – Final Clue
Many people are making a lot out of a tea cup at the Millenium Hotel in order to conclude that an assassination attempt must have happened at the Millenium Hotel Bar (despite all the other contaminated sites and people which precede the meeting of Litvinenko with Lugovoi and Kovtun):
POISONED former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko WAS murdered by radioactive tea, it was revealed yesterday.
Scotland Yard detectives have quarantined cups and saucers which show signs of being heavily contaminated with polonium 210 from the Pines Bar at the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair, Central London.
They are convinced that is where Litvinenko was slipped the fatal dose in a cup of tea during a meeting with former KGB colleague Andrei Lugovoi and his business partner Dmitri Kovtun.
Seven bar staff who served them have been sent home showing signs of radiation poisoning. Colleagues say four are already suffering from a “flu like” illness.
A senior Counterterrorism source said: “It’s now a near certainty Mr Litvinenko was poisoned by having polonium 210 slipped into his drink at the hotel, probably while distracted by a phone call or other interruption. The contaminated staff are those who cleared up the crockery and took it to the kitchens.
“We’ve found a cup almost certainly the one poisoned as it has such a high radiation read out.
First back to chemistry 101. Litvinenko had a large amount of Polonium-210 in his system. Polonium can only be disolved or suspended in an acid solution. When free disolved its radiation effect will effect the solution it is in. I doubt the amount of material we are discussing would not show some physical conditions in a cup of tea, if not something alteration to the taste. The tea cup and its contamination exist. So is this the only possibility that fits the facts? Of course not. It is just another in a long list of events where the news media jumped to conclusions to fit their assumed results. And each time they have had to recreate a new scenario with every new fact that has come out. I am not of the opinion whatever the media says will be valid for less than 5 days in this story.
So let’s work on the smuggling ring assumption and see how this plays out. The tea cup, first off, doesn’t have to have come from the bar but could have come from a room. And we have a room of interest on the 4th floor (supposedly 441) where there is a serious contamination and where speculation has it the poison was mixed. The tea cup may be the clue which finally determines whether this was assassination attempt or a smuggling effort gone wrong. And here is why.
It is clear we have a single cup which as very strong indications of a Polonium-210. So strong that it did not lose its contamination signature from washing (which usually cleans off low levels of Polonium 210 from most surfaces). What will scientists do next? They will determine how much Polonium 210 would be needed to leave that kind of signature on the tea cup’s porcelain (a substance known to resist penetration by stains, etc). I predict the results will show that the amount of Polonium-210 that would replicate this ‘burned in’ signature will be many times larger than that found in Litvinenko’s system.
We still have the contaminated room to fold into the story line and here is what I think happened. As I mentioned many times I think there was a smuggling effort which was either combining or dividing Polonium ‘shipments’. This is because this is the third hotel linked to Lugovoi trips to London and meetings with Litvinenko which shows contamination in many rooms (not one). I think on this third known round of smuggling, something happened to one container and there was a desparate need for something to hold Polonium-210 in while the container was fixed or a new one brought in. That would be a tea cup (what us yanks would call a coffee cup) that was in the room and at hand. That is why the tea cup had strong marks on it from contamination.
This makes much more sense than the assassination theory and I will explain why. We have two vessels that supposedly where exposed to the same material – a cup and a human. To leave a signature on a porcelain cup that resisted multiple washings would imply a dosage so strong that Litvinenko should have had his insides burned to a strong degree. I cannot see the same amount of material leaving a strong mark on porcelain and not just destroying the soft tissues of the intestines.
Now I could be wrong because I have not run any chemical equations or anything, but it is like saying an acid that could mark porcelain and would not melt a human being’s insides. So if the amount of material to mark the tea cup was larger than that found in Litvinenko we have another indication this was a smuggling ring. I would suspect police had (or will) test the trash containers, etc to see if anything else was used to deal with the contamination leak in the hotel room. It would make sense that towels might have been used and thrown out. The tea cup should have been thrown out. But I do not think these people, who were the transporters, knew what they were dealing with at all. If they were simply transport for Berezovsky and Zakayev, they would have been told as little as possible.
Which also makes sense with what we see. The bungling could have been due to deliberate ignorance. An assassin would know is weapon and how to be careful with it. A smuggler for hire may not know much except the barest minimum. I would expect the determination on what dose of Polonium-210 would be required to leave a trace on a tea cup to have been done by now. And I doubt it will be leaked to the news media.
And make sure to check out the map/timeline with this story at the Telegraph. It clearly shows what I believe are three rounds of smuggling Polonium 210 into London. Each time Lugovoi is overseeing the activities and Litvinenko seems to the Berezovsky’s messenger for status, etc. And it appears multiple people are transporting small amounts of the material which is why more than one room ends up being contaminated at each site.
Update: The FBI is confirming part of my theory by stating those who handled the material (the ‘assassins’ in the minds of the myopic media) did not have the training (or were even told anything) on how to handle the Polonium-210:
The assassins who poisoned Alexander Litvinenko in a London hotel bar may have exposed themselves to a potentially fatal dose of radioactivity, according to an FBI assessment of the killing.
…
Officials from the FBI, which has been asked to offer technical assistance to the British investigation, have concluded that the killers were not professionally trained to handle the substance. This suggests the use of radioactive material made the killing “as much a message as a murder”, according to FBI sources.
Yeah, right. Or the transporters in a smuggling ring where never told what it was they were transporting – precisely. I doubt anyone would send an assassin out with a weapon that could be traced right back to the source and not explain to them how to avoid getting everyone caught. Sounds more like the FBI leading the news media than them giving a straight response. So the master mind never told the assassin what they had in order – which would make sure the trail never led back to the mastermind! You would think someone who could get their hands on 30 million euros of Polonium would be a bit smarter than that.
Update: No traces found on the plane which took Kovtun from Hamburg to London on Oct 31st. My guess is they will be checking other planes and when/if Kovtun came back to Hamburg after going to Moscow on Nov 3 from London.
I am sure they have room service records for the rooms in question – normally in an upscale hotel room with a minibar there are glasses but not teacups (at least in Europe- they don’t have coffee pots in the room) so my guess would be that a room service delivery had occured and hence the tea cup – probably from breakfast or the so called 10 am. or early morning meeting. That would be interesting to know.
I am so worried that these FBI and British police/counterterrorism experts are so fixated on the assassin theory that they are not going to check out places Litvinenko was alone (with L. & K) between Oct. 16 and Nov. 1. It is already ridiculous that it has taken so long to check out Kovtov’s plane and residence in Germany
I just happened to click on this at der speigel: neuartige Bombengürtel, die von Metalldetektoren nicht entdeckt werden können. – translation – new kind of suicide bomb belt that can’t be detected by metal detectors – put that together with the PO story….
Okay, AJ, here’s are some extremely specific points that may needle holes into your theory — as well as my own, though (the assassination one I proposed on the Hamburg thread last night). The idea of a teacup being used upstairs will not work if 1) the hotel uses a separate china pattern for its room service delivery, and 2) its room service uses a separate kitchen, with its own dishwashing facilities — and both practices are extremely common to the point of being SOP in large hotel operations like the Millennium’s.
(Oh, and we “Yanks” do call them teacups — but what we call coffee “mugs,” Brits often call coffee “cans” instead.)
Mariposa,
When I travel I go down to breakfast and get coffee in the lobby and bring it back up to my room. I always have a cup from downstairs in my room by the time I am off in the morning. Lobby or restaurant coffee is fresh and better than anything you can get in your room. And many of us work in our rooms doing emails, etc before heading out for the day. So while a tea cup doesn’t have legs, it’s user does.
AJStrata
Lizarde, the implications of the German headline you translated are fairly grim
I want to add that just because some of us follow the assassination theory more easily doesn’t mean we aren’t open to the smuggling and terrorism theory. I rarely add to the smuggling theories because you all seem to do a better job going in that direction. I would hope that law enforcement is looking at all angles, too, and that no one is too “fixated” on anything.
To me, the priority that authorities face is the one AJ keeps us focused on all the time: where is the polonium now? And until that is answered sufficiently, its whereabouts truly presents a crisis (IMO) that investigators and authorities seem to be attempting to address calmly.
Lizarde1,
First off, thanks for coming by and posting your comments, you have been a great addition to the Strata-Sphere. If you could post a link to the terror belt story I would appreciate it.
Now, onto the media and the authorities. The authorities have made it clear they are not giving out details or closing their minds. So the media is stuck using hypotheticals to try and tease information out. So the media asks “hypothetically, if this was an assassination, what do you think the amount of Polonium means”. Answer; “hypothetically, it could be a signal”. Fact is much of what we are seeing is the authorities shaping the message.
Here’s the deal. If we have a smuggling ring it probably ran underground when Litvinenko went ill and the media caught wind. I think there are games within games being played right now and I do not wish to speculate too much since I am praying the authorities win out – and quickly. So let’s not assume anyone is bungling beyond the media right now.
here’s the link to the bomb belt story:
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,453506,00.html
AJ, I do the same, but usually bring a “go” (disposable) cup back into the room. I hate the coffee in the ubiquitous little coffee machines that all hotels have in each of their rooms now. So you bring china cups into your room from other parts of the hotel? And probably no hotel staff would bother you for that, even if it’s a practice they aren’t crazy about.
Look at things from a “mafia” perspective. One of Boris’ minions is on the outs with him. He has started going off on his own blackmailing people. That might come back to bite Boris in the hips. So now you have a serious polonium leak and need a cover story. Boris kills two birds with one stone and gets rid of a loose cannon while making a cover story to “explain” the polonium release at the same time. I still say Boris “whacked” him, is instrumental in providing the smuggled “hit list” document and gets the PR machine going once Litvinenko dies. He KNEW litvinenko was going to die because they made sure he not only had a fatal dose but a MASSIVELY fatal dose that was sure to be discovered. In fact, they needed it to be discovered to explain the polonium related illesses that Lugovoi et al were going to soon come down with as a result of sloppy handling/accidental leakage of the shipment(s).
It could also be the Lugovoi did it on his own if he realized he was seriously dosed.
Mariposa,
Scenarion two. Litvinenko comes by to meet them and they begin in the lobby where he orders his tea. Then they move upstairs to the room and he takes it with him.
AJStrata
In looking for an English translation of Lizarde’s Der Spiegel story, I found another story about terrorists bombs undetectable by usual methods.
http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=10314
New terror tactic: Liquid explosives
It seems like the tactics of the Palestinian terror organizations are becoming more and more sophisticated in a clear attempt to circumvent the efforts of Israeli security systems, as a new type of explosive was found on the body of a captured would-be suicide bomber.
The defense establishment has cleared for publication that the would-be suicide bomber who was caught at Tzahal Square in Jerusalem back in July of this year was carrying a bomb belt containing liquid explosives which are undetectable by normal bomb detection methods.
[More at source]
I am sticking by the smuggled illegal PO210 for purposes of assassinating Sasha.
Almost all the other exposures can be explained via transference by exposed victims.
There is no way you can pinpoint an exposure to an exact date or time.
And one big hole in the theroy of smuggling for dirty bombs or other terrorist/nefarious plots – Iran is capable of producing PO210. They have lied about the fact they suspended production years ago. Iran supplies terrorists with weapons, money, people – everything they need to keep the Jihad afloat. There is no need by Jihadi’s to obtain PO210 from Russia, therefore there is no black market searching for PO210 at millions of dollars a deal. There is no valid buyer of this PO210 – Chechen rebels can easily obtain it from Iran as well. And Iran would be willing to part with their supply if they are assured of a spectacular event against the hated infidels.
There is no need for a black market in PO210 from Russia – 10 years ago – maybe. Not now.
There is no evidence to suggest Sasha and his comrades were black marketeers. Sasha was happy in the UK. His life was good there, and he felt secure enough to critique the Kremlin vociferously. He found out something that made him a target – and the target was hit.
I think it’s pretty funny the Russians are in turn coming to London to question witnesses – meaning Berezovsky and the Z guy and Goldfarb….that should be amusing to watch – presumably Scotland Yard will do the questioning and the Russians will watch.
AJ, only thing wrong with that idea that I can think of — how did the bar backs (the staff who bus the dishes and clean tables) and other Pine Bar staff become contaminated if the cup was upstairs? Why not the hotel cleaning staff becoming contaminated instead?
Of course all of our lay theories rely on whether or not we’re being given correct information by the press, and that’s always a big “if,” but now more than usual.
this is hilarious:
Litvinenko’s wife Marina and friend Alex Goldfarb were both prepared to meet Russian officials – but on the condition British police first tested the investigators for traces of polonium, Goldfarb said Saturday.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6269743,00.html
Sasha did not go to the hotel room according to every story I read.
European hotels are not like American ones where they often set out a continental breakfast and you can take the coffee back to your room. You generally have room service or a set dining room where breakfast is served. You would be discouraged by the staff, if not the setting, to take a cup upstairs to your room.
“There is no evidence to suggest Sasha and his comrades were black marketeers. Sasha was happy in the UK. His life was good there, and he felt secure enough to critique the Kremlin vociferously. He found out something that made him a target – and the target was hit.”
Enlightened, I believe this, too. Litvinenko was investigating too many hot issues to ignore him: FSB blackmailing Yukos exiles is the latest revelation; Politkovskaya’s murder; and a new, heavily-annotated edition of his 1999 Russian bombing book published this month. (Which reminds me, next the Russians will probably accuse Litvinenko’s co-author Felshtinsky of the murder, and that it was done in an attempt to push book sales. I’m only joking about that, but who knows what the Kremlin will say next.)
Clarice,
I have talen many a cup to my room in Germany and the UK. They also have internet connections in the rooms where many people sit and deal with emails, papers, etc. in the morning before heading out. You may not do it, be it is now more common than you think.
BTW, prrio to yesterday no one reported contamination in Germany or a tea cup. Lack of reporting is not a convincing argument,