Dec 13 2006
New Clues Emerge In Litvinenko Incident
Two new clues have emerged in the puzzle that is the Litvinenko incident. There are now some vague reports of another Russian of interest associated with Kovtun and his trip to Hamburg from Moscow in October (before Litvinenko fell ill):
An unnamed Russian businessman who flew from Moscow to Hamburg on October 28 with Mr Kovtun is also being sought. Police believe this flight was used to transport polonium-210 into Europe.
There is also another hotel that has tested positive for Polonium-210, which again bolsters the idea this was some sort of large smuggling ring verses some targeted assassination:
In addition, a Swedish couple that had stayed at the Shaftesbury Hotel near Picadilly were Tuesday tested at the oncology unit at Lund University Hospital in southern Sweden, the Stockholm daily Expressen reported.
The hotel room the couple had stayed in apparently had traces of polonium.
Seems like an awefully large group of people for an assassination someone wanted to look like an accident.
Also today, Dmitry Kovtun speaks out and claims Litvinenko was the one who contaminated him, and that it happened on Oct 16-18. This is possible and plausible since Polonium 210 was found at hotels associated with Lugovoi’s visit to London and meetings with Litvinenko. We also have, someplace back in my posts on this subject, I believe Lugovoi’s statement that Litvinenko told him he had poisoned himself before Nov 1st. While it is hard to put much stock in Lugovoi’s word by itself, I find it worth considering since he seems to be a cooperating witness, possibly under a plea agreement.
Update: Both Lugovoi and Kovtun are pointing to Oct 16-18th as the logical (as we all know) first time for Polonium 210 contamination for Litvinenko:
Andrei Lugovoi, a security agent-turned-businessman who met with Litvinenko at a London hotel on Nov. 1, the day Litvinenko suspected he was poisoned, said in an interview with the Moskovsky Komsomolets tabloid that he and Litvinenko were poisoned on Oct. 16.
“Who told you that the contamination took place on Nov. 1? It took place much earlier, on Oct. 16,” Lugovoi was quoted as saying by the paper. Lugovoi is himself undergoing radiation checks in a Moscow clinic.
Litvinenko, 43, a former Russian agent and a Kremlin critic, died Nov. 23 of poisoning from polonium-210.
Lugovoi supported his claim by saying that he and Litvinenko visited a London-based security firm where traces of polonium were later found only in mid-October, but did not go there on Nov. 1, meaning that the contamination couldn’t have taken place on that day.
While Lugovoi is being a bit disingenuous with this logic due to the massive radiation signatures at the Millenium Hotel Room and bar, he is being more accurate than the reporting coming out of the UK media – which has been obsessed with the assassination theory. It should be noted though, that Litvinenko’s final dosage could have been the result of a number of contacts with Polonium-210 which was not being handled properly. He could have been building up his poison levels over many weeks, and received a final larger dose on Nov 1. But I am only pointing this out to show there are lots of reasonable scenarios based on what is known to date. The media has jumped the gun – like usual.
copydude, Putins’ Kremlin is making powerful enemies. All good points.
Some other things… maybe not related, but who knows: I’m still looking for more information on Lugovoi’s (very lightly) reported trip to Yerevan in Armenia, from which he supposedly returned Nov. 20.
Armenia’s location is pretty interesting in regard to the smuggling theory — in between Iran and Chechnya. In addition, politically, Armenia is set to join NATO soon, and in the past weeks is in the process of adopting a new constitution and supposedly averted a coup. So if Lugovoi was there, I wonder what he was doing?
Anyway, I have to get to a meeting soon. See you later, everybody.
See, here is the basic problem …
Originally it was reported that Litvinenko was poisoned with thallium. That put everyone on the poisoning rail (Russia wouldn’t use thallium because there is a widely known antidote for it). So wild speculation began in the papers going down that road. Then when it was found to be polonium, people were already well down the road of “assassination” and made adjustments to their theories to accomodate polonium. One of these adjustments was that it was Russia that did it because supposedly only Russia would use such a thing. But then contamination begins to appear in more and more places, so more adjustments need to be made to the conclusions that have already been jumped to. Now contamination is being found at multiple times in addition to multiple locations and now in multiple countries so even greater adjustments must be made in order to make the evidence that has been reported fit the conclusion that many already came to back when it was thallium. The smuggling scenario needs no adjustment to account for the levels of, locations of, or times of contamination.
The two things that don’t fit the smuggling scenario is the teacup and the huge dose in Litvinenko. So I believe it could be a combination of both scenarios. A murder to cover up (provide plausible explaination of) contamination in the course of smuggling but it is possibly an accident if the teacup was used as an emergency container in a room as AJ has put forward and Litvinenko later used the cup without realizing it. Bet that hotel has teabags and a pot to heat water in the rooms.
If I could have one wish in this, it would be to know the nature of and amounts of polonium found at the various locations.
I think Mariposa’s speculation is valid, given all the disinfo in the press.
There’s a big question mark about what Litvinenko actually said in hospital, given that he was very weak and hardly spoke a word of English.
Can we speculate on the amounts left on the basis of people who the gov. are now urgently seeking and who have been reported on – we know the bar area was high — The 7 or 8 bar workers, the Irish, the Swedes; but now it’s looking like that Schaftsbury hotel could be high also – where they split the stuff off the 16th? ; the German locations – the mother in law’s is still being swept for minute deposits; but the apartment of the ex wife must have had more than say Erinys or Risc. We don’t know ANYTHING about the Parkes Hotel (they seem to be keeping the lid on that) of Oct. 16. Etc.
“There is no evidence whatsoever that Sasha had a previous pattern of criminal activity, and no links to smuggling”
From Fox news:
“Media reports in Britain and Russia on Wednesday said that Litvinenko had been engaged in smuggling nuclear substances out of Russia.
The Independent newspaper reported that Litvinenko told Scaramella on the day he fell ill that he had organized the smuggling of nuclear material for his former employers at Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB. The newspaper reported that Litvinenko said he had smuggled radioactive material to Zurich in 2000.
But Scaramella told the AP that he had been misquoted by the newspaper.
“He (Litvinenko) wanted to see me because he knew about smuggling of nuclear material, but as far as I know he was never involved in nuclear smuggling,” he said.”
So while he was in the hospital he wanted to see Scaramella to tell him about smuggling of nuclear material?
BREAKING NEWS
Kovtun made a call to Berlin from his mther in laws so now the Germans are running off seeking traces in Berlin but the know how to find the traces is not in berlin so the SEC (experts) are racing off to Berlin:
http://www.morgenpost.de/desk/1145257.html
sorry crappy translation more if there is more info in the article
Lugovoi or Kotvun (not sure which at this point) said both their home and office were contaminated too.
CP – your link to Sasha re prior smuggling is speculation.
What I said was Sasha has no prior record of smuggling/criminal activity – find some links to him smuggling in Jan 2006. Or Mar. Or in 2005. Something that would indicate a pattern. And for my own purposes, I will not consider Russian allegations as evidence due to their own complicity in criminal acts, and pattern of murder, and their pattern of allegations as facts.
Correction Kovtun called his mother in law from Berlin
Yeah, that was how I read it too, Lizarde1 but I am unsure of my German (been 20 years since I was last there and it wasn’t very good to begin with). Sounds like the authorities in Berlin didn’t have the proper equipment or something so the team from Hamburg went to Berlin (arriving 90 minutes later … man, they were in a hurry!).
I think her speculation is valid, too, and I agree wholeheartedly with Enlightened’s sum up:
“There is no evidence whatsoever that Sasha had a previous pattern of criminal activity, and no links to smuggling. But he has one thing in common with vocal Putin critics and Chechnyan supporters – he’s dead. ”
Now, of course, more facts may prove our theory wrong..but I see no facts more supportive of an L/K smuggling ring; of a Berezovsky role in smuggling ot Litvinenko’s death; of a Chechen connection to Litvinenko’s murder except that he supported the nationalists there.In fact, I find evidence for those hypotheses slender to none.
Every new contaminated location adds evidence of smuggling.
Well, not evidence, but indication.
Involving the Germans is going to speed up this investigation IMO and probably we’ll get more info via their press conferences etc.
I agree that every contaminated location indicates smuggling. The PO 210 used to murder Sasha was smuggled into and around the UK.
If the PO 210 was not smuggled into the UK, it would have been marked IATA/ICAO labels and paperwork to indicate someone was transporting radioactive material. Since those steps were not taken, the PO 210 was illegally imported – smuggled.
I do not agree that every contaminated location indicates a smuggling for profit ring in operation.
The Germans aren’t as likely to play the entertainment game with news. They are going to approach it in a more clinical manner. I trust their forensic skills. They are going to want to know what happened, not simply “wrap up the case”.
“I do not agree that every contaminated location indicates a smuggling for profit ring in operation.”
Really, why do you say that?
I would expect to find more contamination surrounding a smuggling ring than an assassination. In fact, I wouldn’t expect to find any at all outside of the target if it was an assassination.
Every day that passes in this tends to lend more support for a smuggling operation and less to assassination.
We can also play semantics. It doesn’t need to be “for profit” in that the polonium could have been provided for free from Iran to terrorists. The only money involved would be for transit costs and payment for time.
Three countries with three different concerns and investigations:UK Litvinenko’s murder (showing no concern of large scale smuggling of PO into the UK); Russia (the attempted murder of Kovtun; no apparent interest in where the PO came from in Russia); Germany How PO got into their country.
France’s concern–protecting Limarev
Italy’s concern–threats against Scaramella and the Mitrokhin Commission(and possible connection to claims Prodi and perhaps others were KGB agents)
Different interests. Different investigations. Period. Had there been more PO or a murder on its soil, the German investigation would be different.
smuggling enough polonium for a poisoning would leave no trail. Any trail would probably result in the loss of the polonium becuse the poison would probably exist in the form if a single or at the most a very few crystals.
Put a few grains of salt … say three … in a very small vial. Travel to Europe. Check your luggage. Bet all the grains are still there.
Now drop one grain of it on a carpeted floor and try to find it. Now try to get someone to accidently get it all over themselves. Now have them to change hotels, take a shower, change clothes, and have them get it all over themselves again. See how farfetched it starts to become?
If this was not smuggling for profit, then we can discontinue claiming it was worth any money at all.
If Iran was the supplier, and the product was free, and the intent was a dirty bomb, intended for Chechnya, then why the hell were there Russian middlemen?
Iran would have dealt directly with the Chechnyan’s.
If it was not for Chechnyan terrorists, then Iran would have dealt directly with the terrorists, and would NOT need Russian middlemen.
This was a Russian sanctioned event. PO 210 was smuggled and a Russian is dead.
The terrorist/dirty bomb angle is not holding water.