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.
There’s also this:
”
The Millennium Hotel in London where murdered Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko met three men on the day he fell ill appears to have become the focus of the police investigation into his death.
Detectives have ruled out Piccadilly’s Itsu sushi bar – where Mr Litvinenko also had a meeting that day – as a location for the poisoning, and they are concentrating instead on the hotel in Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, it has been claimed.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-6269047,00.html
Clairce,
I never stay in a ‘modern chain’ when in Europe. I have been over to the UK over 15 times stay in local establishments. They even can serve iced tea (and not from powder) if you ask nice encough. There is nothing stopping anyone from taking tea up to a room.
Clarice,
“And BTW I do not see why the FBI statement that those handling the PO may not have known what they were handling is any more supportive of a smuggling than an assassination theory.”
The reason why I believe that the FBI’s statement is more supportive of a smuggle job rather than an assassination, has to do with my assumptions (which, admittedly, could be way off) of what an assassin, at this level, is like. I don’t picture “Johnny HitMan,” who you could hire in some seedy hotel to “take-out” your boss. I picture someone who is an FSB agent or has been an agent in the past. I picture someone who is careful, and who would at least know what it was he was using to poison some one. In fact, many of the possible scenarios that many of you have made up to explain how the assassin carried out his art, paint the picture of some one who was really good. Enlightened even thinks that this assassin was so good as to have kept himself/herself free from contamination while contaminating everything else. Now, you could say that he was a good assassin, who was not told that it was polonium, resulting in him/her moving as if it was something other than a radioactive substance. But then that would make him/her a dead agent as well; for if they thought the substance was something else then they would not have been cautious concerning their own contact with the stuff. Thus, (sorry Enlightened) he/she will more than likely die soon.
Clarice,
Litvinenko would lie about any cause he felt was important enough to die for, or in return for Berezovsky taking care of his family for him. You are really doing all you can to hold onto that assassin theory!
Clarice,
It took me so long to post, I didn’t see that you already thought of the idea that the assassin was lied to about the poison. sorry.
Litvinenko says that’s not how the FSB worked n assassinations. Thus, he noted that if an FSB guy owed a Chechen banker money and didn’t want to pay, he’d find someone with a grievance against the guy and allow him to fo it. Then the FSB would spread info suggesting the victim was a terrorist or his assassin was. In other words, they provided support but used amateurs to do the job.
Re hotel practices, AJ–We just have had different experiences and perhaps a different notion of the layout and operations at the Millenium.
“In other words, they provided support but used amateurs to do the job.”
That is fine, and now we are narrowing things down a bit. So the assassin was one of three possibilities:
1) a good assassin, who was lied to about the substance, and thus not careful as to how it was handled.
2)A poor assassin who knew what it was but was still bad in its handling.
2) A poor assassin who was expendable, and as such did not need to know what the poison was. In other words, a patsy/fall guy
What we have eliminated is an assassin who was both good and possessing knowledege of the poison.
And when I write “knowledge of the poison” I mean, of course, not just what it was but also how it should be handled.
Hey look at that, according to me the number two follows the number two!
I’m sure we have different practices. But I have been in meetings in the lobby and decided to go up to a room to look things up on the computer and told the folks we were taking our drinks with us. They don’t care – especially in a 4-5 star in London.
My only exception to staying in chains is the night before I leave Heathrow. Then I stay at the airport so I can have a leisurely morning. But I don’t eat breakfast at the hotel. For a fraction of the price at he hotel I c an get a passable English Breakfast in the airport international waiting area.
Cheers, AJStrata
Clarice, the boss would have to have hybris from hell, or a low IQ, in order to think that Po trails of large doses left in the middle of London would not be a motivation to trace the source. On the other hand, the boss could be someone who wants to be recognized, or an already known enemy.
There are ways to take care of an unwanted assassin, other than calling it to everyone’s attention.
Now let’s look at each:
1) a good assassin, who was lied to about the substance, and thus not careful as to how it was handled.-
I have a hard time with this because, I would think that an assassin who was worth his “salt” would be able, somehow, to find out what the substance really was. Naturally if someone handed me a poison and said it was cyanide, I would probably fall for it. But I find it hard to believe that a good assassin would only depend on the word of some one else to validate the substance used.
2)A poor assassin who knew what it was but was still bad in its handling.
I don’t think this is a likely scenario, because if it was a poor assassin, and you wanted him to do a “job,” then you would probably know that the polonium would be mishandled and detected as it is being detected right now. In other words, assassin number two would likely become assassin number three, namely a fall guy.
Drudge is posting a story (but no link yet) that aparently claims that two “cops” have been contaminated.
Is this old news or new news?
I like the hotel in Haethrow, too..and it is surprisingly soundproof. Never though to eat breakfast elsewhere, though.
Except for motels near airports etc or Hyatts or Hiltons type places in Europe, I don’t recall staying in a place where I’d have felt comfortable taking stuff to the room. OTOH it may be that I am more easily embarrassed by the staff .Also, I like my coffee hot and carrying a cup up four floors may never have occurred to me.
Weight of Glory are you deaf? You are trying to decide between “assassination theories” and only those theories when the host himself is favoring a botched smuggling theory, which you don’t even address.
Hello?
It’s a freee country and the host a fair minded guy. It’s a better discussion, anyway, when there is a debate.
Gotta Know,
That’s funny! Asking me if I am deaf towards a conversation in cyberspace! You might have not seen my previous posts, but I, along with AJ believe this to be a smuggling job; one that is not simply for money but for Jihad. The reason why I addressed the character of the assassin is because those on this site that hold to the assassination view have come up with some pretty elaborate (yet plausible) ways the assassin carried out his task. What I was trying to do, beginning with what the FBI said (that this was a mishandled assassination), was to try to narrow down the likely characteristics of the assassin, so that as more information comes out, the picture of the assassin involved would have to be applied to the patsy or fall guy character, and not to the sleak, stealthy, spy character.
In other words I am trying those who believe that this was an assassination, to come down on either the side of a good assassin or a bafoon/patsy. I’m trying to pin the assassin theorists down, just as they are trying to pin us smuggling guys down. It’s kinda fun, and the people here are good to debate with. I have had very distasteful debates on some other sites, but not here. good people, good people.