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.
Lizarde, just read that in the Times article, too, that Litvinenko didn’t smoke or drink. What kind of Russian “spy” doesn’t smoke or drink? My new theory is that’s the real reason they bumped him off. He made the rest of them look bad.
Also, one isn’t likely to get a fatal dose of polonium from breathing fumes in the same room as a cup of tea containing polonium. A given amount of polonium will vaporize 50% after a period of more than 2 days when heated to 50c. So if there was a 50x dose of pure polonium metal in a 50c cup for two days and you inhaled ALL the vapor, you could possibly get a 25x dose. In a solution, you aren’t going to see as significant effect from alpha radiation kicking a polonium atom into the air because chances are that alpha particle isn’t going to hit a polonium atom. So in pure metal, the alpha particle acts as a cueball that strikes a polonium atom and causes it to fly. Once a polonium atom has released an alpha particle, it becomes an atom of lead. After one half-life lead atoms are evenly distributed through the material so any vaporization begins to reduce as well because at that point an aplha particle has a 50% chance of hitting a lead atom. So as time goes by, the amount of polonium being vaporized decreases and the decrease is on a curve, not a linear line.
CLarice, you have any cite that Scaramella is now in Italy?
Last word I have is he is still in London.
Mariposa, that’s a very good theory on Scaramella.
Here’s something interesting re the timeline of testing at the Millenium etc:
Anger at hotel testing ‘delay’
Gareth Walsh and David Leppard
JOHN REID, the home secretary, is furious with public health chiefs for taking a fortnight to discover hotel staff had been contaminated with the radioactive poison that killed Alexander Litvinenko.
Times online: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2496525,00.html
mariposa,
“What kind of Russian “spy†doesn’t smoke or drink?”
heh!
“But the Health Protection Agency said further tests showed his levels were less than those from one year’s natural exposure to background radiation in the atmosphere.”
Okay, then everything makes sense.
Work accident contamiantes everyone. They kill Litvinenko as a cover so they can seek treatment. Litvinenko was probably becoming a greater threat than an asset to Boris.
I have some background on my blog about what Litvenenko and other dead Putin critics have said about Putin.
http://legendofpineridge.blogspot.com/2006/12/if-i-did-it.html
Hey, thanks, Snapple — I’ll check that out.
CP, more scientist than engineer. More SW systems and distributed C&C. But I understand your question. It does not look like a flush at all, it looks like a normal flow. There is not enough metal to kick in any flushing response, even in Litvinenko.
To add to the complications the stomach acids are great for holding Polonium in! The Polonium could stay in the stomach for weeks and slowly come out over a period of time. I would have to bone up on how metals come into the blood stream but my recollection is they are bound to vitamins or proteins. Free floating metals would not necessarily come in the biological way, and therefore would hang out in the digestive track – which is what we are seeing. There are some exceptions, but I would suspect the liver and kidneys could be locations where Polonium would pool up and do damage.
AJStrata
Interesting:The HPA was officially informed at 6pm on November 23 that Litvinenko had been poisoned with a massive dose of the radioactive metal. It knew within 12 hours that significant traces of radiation were being found at the hotel, where Litvinenko had met business associates. article linked just above – so why did the media go with the insane sushi bar theory so strongly from the beginning???
If litvinenko were given a cup of tea with 100x a fatal dose, all those other people would not have gotten such a high dose ingested simply from sitting at the same table with him.
They were smuggling polonium, I am now convinced of it.
I have not approached this by having an opinion and making the facts fit the conclusion. I have approached this by looking at the evidence as it was reported and deciding what the evidence was saying is the most likely scenario. It points to smuggling considering the trail of material going back weeks. It points to leakage. It could be Litvinenko was contaminated in some final major spill, but I doubt it. His contamination level is so far beyond anyone else it appears intentional. He was murdered, just not by putin.
Lizarde1,
We all know why the media went whacko. They bought the Litvinenko-Berezovsky line and went with it. Just as they are now.
Lizarde, Mariposa suggests that the police, suspicious of Scaramella, originally told him that he’d received a fatal dose in the hope that if he were involved he’d make “a death bed confession” or even if he just had some knowledge about events, he’d talk more freely.
When news of the Scaramella contamination got out, reporters tracked Litvinenko’s trail and found out the two had met only at the Sushi bar. Then, the police released info that there had been some contamination found at Itsu.
We don’t know that Lugovi and Kovtun have received such high does. Lugovoy says he’s okay and the Russsians nevertheless have kept the Brit investigators from him, cancelling three opporuntities. He is said now to be receiving outpateinet treatment.
Kovtun, reportedly is in a coma, something his lawyer absolutely denies.
***We don’t know that Lugovi and Kovtun have received such high doSes****
**OUTPATIENT***
The rotten heart of Russia–A good look at the threats to, widespread corruption and murders of businessmen in Putin’s hellhole.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/10/wrussia10.xml&page=1
AJ only the police know if this 4 page email of Scaramella’s actually ever existed – this whole scenario of going over to Boris office to xerox the memo and telling the Chechen driver about it in the car – you gotta wonder if there was even such a memo or if it wasn’t all made up to get the press going in Boris/Goldfarb’s direction – i.e., blame Putin
Oh, Brother..And the PO in Boris’ office copy machine?
If you read the Times article I just cited, you will see that the slander is more from Russia against Berezovsky and all the businessmen who don’t play ball with pooty poot and his merry band of thugs and assassins.
Yep, Clarice Boris is a real saint.