Dec 12 2006
Litvinenko Dosage Was Massive
There is an article out today which helps put the dosage of Polonium 210 into perpsective, and a history lesson which would dictate the Litvinenko incident was not an assassination. It is the only recorded death by Polonium 210, and clearly demontrates Polonium is not a weapon of assassination:
A low-dose exposure was blamed for causing the death of Irene Joliot-Curie, the daughter of Marie Curie, who first isolated polonium.
Irene died in 1956 of leukemia caused by accidental exposure when a sealed capsule of the metal exploded on her laboratory bench. Polonium’s alpha rays damage DNA, although in Irene’s case they took more than 10 years to do their deadly work.
Litvinenko passed away much more quickly. On Nov. 23, the 43-year-old died in a London hospital from the intense radiation polonium emits, having ingested it sometime in late October. Even though the dose of poison was tiny — maybe no more than the weight of a speck of dust — it was deadly.
…
The maximum safe body burden of polonium is only 7 picograms (7 trillionth of a gram). It appears that Litvinenko was given something like a milligram (a thousandth of a gram), which is a billion times the safe level. Polonium-210 is regarded as one of the most dangerous substances known because it ejects alpha particles.
The history shows ten years before the first accidental exposure to what must have been a large amount of Polonium dust took its victim. True, the Curie’s were scientists and they took precautions. But an assassin would have to consider this example a poor result. The assassin theory has mutiple conflicting assumptions. First the assassin is sophisticated so he/she selects this exotic weapon. Then it turns out they know little about the weapon and the trail it leaves:
Whoever the assassin was, he or she had some method of concealing the poison before it was given to Litvinenko. The hidden poison would be undetectable because this isotope emits almost no telltale gamma rays. However, polonium has a tendency to leak from containers. This probably explains why traces have been found in five airliners, particularly those used for flights to Moscow. (Passengers in those aircraft were not at risk.)
Where Litvinenko was poisoned is still not known. But wherever he went after he was poisoned, he left traces of polonium, including his home in the north London suburb of Muswell Hill, a sushi restaurant near Piccadilly Circus where he dined with a friend, a luxury hotel where he met two unidentified Russians, and the home of Russian billionaire exile Boris Berezovsky. His room in the hospital was the most contaminated.
So was this a smart assassin? Apparently not. But why hire a low brow (and low budget) assassin to deliver a poison which costs tens of millions of dollars? That makes no sense either. Polonium 210 is useful as a weapon. Very useful. But that use has nothing to do with poison pills in tea. That is not an effective use of Polonium 210. Its role in a nuclear device or dirty bomb is much more deadly and cost effective. Now, you don’t need to tell a smuggler exactly what they are smuggling when you want to transport contraband. And smugglers might not think or even know about the trail Polonium 210 can leave. If I was in on the smuggling and then took ill, I would spend some serious time negotiating an air tight role as a whistle blower to get as light a sentence as possible in any prosecutions. The radiation poisoning would be punishment enough in many people’s minds.
On a slightly separate topic I would expect people involved in a smuggling ring that went bust like the Litvinenko incident might have to start running for cover. And that is apparently what we see.
Paris. A key witness in Litvinenko case,
Andrey[Evgeny; ajstrata] Limarev, has disappeared from his home in the French Alps, the Echo of Moscow Radio reported citing a statement of News Ru. Limarev is a former Federal Security Service agent and a colleague of Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned recently in London. Some time ago, Limarev accused a former agent of the Federal Security Service, of Litvinenko’s death. Limarev told the British press that he would be the next victim. A day later, he went missing.
l which will be twisted by those trying to divert attention from themselves as some sort of act by Putin. Clearly someone is trying to hide something and some form of cleaning up is taking place.
Major Update: I can confidentally predict Lugovoi has signed a plea agreement in this matter:
Russian businessman Andrei Lugovoy, a presumed key witness in the case on the death in London of former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, has flatly dismissed media reports alleging that Russian and British investigators repeatedly interrogated him on Tuesday.
“There have not been any investigatory actions today. I have only signed a protocol on not divulging preliminary investigation secrecy, and the signing of a protocol is not, as it is known, an investigatory action,†he told ITAR-TASS.
Berezovsky and Goldfarb and Zakayev must be getting pretty concerned about now. They do seem awefully eager to please all of a sudden. It is not good to pollute the home of someone who has given you shelter.
BTW, here is an interview of Lugovoi in Der Spiegel from a while back which is interesting. I have meetings today but will try to drop in and blog when I can. Update: This is fascinating reading and I hope I can join the debate later today, but one thing that should be noted about Polonium 210 poisoning is it can happen over time. If a person repeatedly visits a location where Polonium 210 is being handled one can build up the toxin to the point it becomes deadly. I only note that because Lugovoi and Kovtun stated Litvinenko was claiming to be poisoned as early as Oct 16th. I would wager this smuggling effort, if it is one, went on for months and involved many more carriers than we are seeing reported now.
http://www.kommersant.com/p729847/r_530/Alexander_Litvinenko_Vyacheslav_Sokolenko/
more luguvoy ranting today as well as Sokolenko
They were going to go to a soccer game DEC 6 in Hamburg but now they can’t
re the 2% output of PO – that’s why they have to do a 24 hour urine test in order to detect it apparantly.
I wonder if they were Berezovsky’s guys and inside men in Russia…but surely that must have been known to Putin. That piece of the puzzle doesn’t fit. Double agents?
LostintheDrift,
I seem to recall in an earlier thread where it was said that British hospitals could only detect for gamma radiation. They had to send a specimen out to a nuclear lab to test for Po.
Lizarde:” I still wonder why Kovtun went to Germany and what he was doing there – he didn’t go to see his ex wife, her mother, her new boyfriend and somebody elses kids – and why did he hide out with them? ”
I don’t know why he went there. He did have an apt and apparently a car there along with an ex-wife, a former mother-in-law and step kids.
He did stay with them and registered to stay with his ex(German law requires non-residents register all overnight stays) so he wasn’t
hiding out with them”.
Hello, everybody. You guys were prolific today — and tons of good theories, too. Not much new information in the press today, though, other than Interpol announcing its entry into this investigation. Going back to reading to get back up to speed.
A brief thought about the Russian investigation, the purpose was stated be to investigate the attempted murder of Kovtun – but not Lugovoi. Quite an odd distinction for the investigators to make, if I were Lugovoi I’d be aggrieved about that. But maybe it’s a strategy to play the two against each other, sort of a modified prisoners dilemma. If so, maybe this is an indication of a serious investigation by Russia, though it could easily go off the tracks at any time I’d say.
Jerry , I thought that the Russians did that because Lugovoy is so keen on saying he’s fine whereas there were all these rumors that Kovton was sick…and I wondered if it were in fact true that Lugovoy was fine and Kovton was sick…I guess I was naiive!
The first report was that Kovtun was dying, but it appears he isn’t. Interesting that the Russians are not investigating the PO trail that leds to and from Russia.
Ha! You probably have all seen it, but I just found this photo at Der Spiegel from the December 3 Russian interview, when Kovtun had no hair. It’s Kovtun with Lugovoy’s wife sitting in the sauna — doesn’t look like anyone’s much interested in drinking tea, does it?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,grossbild-757503-453803,00.html
great find mariposa – but it does look as though his head is shaved – but maybe he shaved it after the hair started falling out like cancer patients sometimes do.
Times:Limarev is gone claiming he fears for his life Russians trying to cast suspicion on Berezovsky. Some news about Kovtun and Lugovoy:
“In Moscow, nine detectives from Scotland Yard’s counter-terror squad are seeking a further interview with the two Russian businessmen who met Litvinenko in a London hotel where police now believe that he was poisoned.
Both men are still being kept at a clinic run by the Federal Medico-Biological Agency of Russia, which is sealed off.
Russian authorities describe Dmitri Kovtun as a target for the assassin who killed Litvinenko. British police still call him a significant witness, while prosecutors in Hamburg say they are investigating him for allegedly illegally handling the radioactive polonium-210, which they believe was smuggled from Russia through Germany to Britain. Mr Kovtun denies any role in the assassination.
His business partner and a former KGB bodyguard, Andrei Lugovoy, refused to divulge details of his questioning by Russian and British investigators, saying that Russian officials had made him sign a gagging order. ”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2501273,00.html
Yes, Kovtun’s hair does look shaved. Is it possible that the entire story about his illness is just a ruse to keep him in the hospital away from reporters and to help control Brit investigators’ access to him?
Clarice the British/Russian team interogated him for three days last week – don’t have source but you can google it
Lizarde, no, they tried to interview Lugovoi at least three times, and finally did their interview yesterday — a week after the British team arrived in Moscow.
I think Kovtun’s head is shaved in that picture, too. Either guess is good — exposed, and his hair’s falling out in clumps so he shaved it, or he shaved it so he could hide out in the hospital.
Litvinenko’s hair did not fall out early on. It wasn’t until his hair fell out that his doctors tested his urine at the atomic lab.
as to the date of the der Spiegel interview – I think that Kovton was in the hospital by about Dec. 3 making that der spiegel interview about Nov. 29 or so. Nov. 24 they both gave a newspaper interview where Kovton is pictured with hair on about page 2 or 3 of the article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/26/nspy26.xml.
Mariposa – the der spiegel interview of LUGOVOI and Kovton took place five days before Kovton was admitted to the hospital….read the article again that is linked to above by AJ. The Kovton interview of today is the first since he went into the hospital
sorry Mariposa – I meant they interviewed Kovton for three days last week – and Lugovoi only once this week – I misread your post.
You could be right about the date, Lizarde. I was basing Dec. 3 on the reporter’s phrase “the Saturday before last” in Der Spiegel’s article, and that they were counting from publication date. But I don’t know.
Noticed a report today that they are looking for someone who flew with Kovtun to Hamburg. They made it sound like they have been unable to locate this person and didn’t say his name.