Dec 15 2006
Lugovoi Definitely Berezovsky Ally
I was going to add this in a long line of comments to answer someone’s question, and decided to make a post for everyone to find. Lugovoi was definitely an ally of Berezovsky’s – so the assassination theory seems a little more stretched than it was before. And it explains why Goldfarb first tried to divert suspicion from Lugovoi. Now that Lugovoi is a participating witness (prossibly under a plea agreement) Berezvosky’s mouth piece is having to change tactics. Looks like everyman is now out for themselves in a battle that could put someone away for life. I am wondering more and more whether the Litvinenko incident and the spat of killings is really the preparation for some kind of coup d’etat in Russia.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/16/wrussia16.xml
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/16/wrussia116.xml
This is reported to be an English translation of Mikhail Trepashkin’s letters, one to Alexander Litvinenko, and two to human rights organizations and the press, from the blog of David McDuff, London, U.K.:
http://halldor2.wordpress.com/2006/12/13/the-trepashkin-letters-ii/
one thing made me think of the german media interviews where Lugovois house had tape on the door handles and they said the house was contaminated.
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,20939072-5001028,00.html
The personality traits alluded to in that report would not be inconsistent with the reports from Lugovoi concerning Litvinenko’s conduct at meetings and in general conversation.
If Lugovoi and Kovtun were NOT contaminated there is a chance that they are assasssins. How else explain the fact that they are running around with Po? Unless, of course, Litvinenko was in the smuggling as well and there was an accident.
There is no way of verifying any information from Trepashkin. Who passed letters to him? Goldfarb. It is a tame disinfo source at best. He was chosen as a source from the beginning because his veracity can not be proven.
Someone sitting in a Russian prison giving interviews? It’s a joke.
And no one in Russia – least of all someone in prison – is going to stick their neck out for a dirty little traitor.
copydude
The Trepashkin report in Telegraph UK states that the journalists sent their questions in to him — they don’t say how. Revealing that would be pretty stupid, n’est-ce pas? They managed to ask questions, and he managed to get letters out — and at great risk.
Andrei Sakharov gave interviews the same way when he was “jailed” in his apartment. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote several sections of The Gulag Archipelago under watch, with the KGB routinely searching and seizing his manuscripts. Trepshkin passed letters and answered some journalists’ questions — then was sent to a higher security prison by the FSB.
If that’s a joke, please explain what’s funny about it.
Who is “a dirty little traitor”? Trepashkin? Or Litvinenko? Why would you call either man that?
Here’s what the U.S. State Department has to say about him and his case:
http://moscow.usembassy.gov/bilateral/human_rights.php
The arrest and trial of Mikhail Trepashkin raised concerns about the undue influence of the FSB and arbitrary use of the judicial system. Trepashkin, an attorney and former FSB official, was arrested in October and charged with disclosing state secrets and illegal possession of a handgun and ammunition. A closed trial began on the case in December based on an indictment that was not made public. Trepashkin had served as a consultant to an independent parliamentary commission headed by then-deputies Sergei Yushenkov, who was killed in April, and Sergei Kovalyov, a prominent human rights advocate (see Section 1.a.). With Trepashkin’s assistance, the commission investigated allegations of FSB responsibility for a series of apartment building bombings in 1999 that were blamed on Chechens, and which served as partial justification for the Government’s resumption of the armed conflict against Chechen fighters. Trepashkin’s October arrest came 1 month after his charges of FSB responsibility were cited in a book and 1 week before he was scheduled to represent the relatives of a victim of one of the apartment building bombings. After his arrest, Trepashkin wrote a letter describing extremely poor and filthy conditions in his detention cell (see Section 1.c.).
***
And what’s the deal with all the derision for Goldfarb? So he’s a spokesperson. I’m starting to think he’s your competition, or something.
From the BBC article Tempester linked above:
Mr Litvinenko was convinced that he was poisoned when he met three Russians at the Millennium Hotel in London.
Mr Shvets said: “He drank a tea which was not made in front of him. He was agonised by the understanding that as a professional he failed.
“He was always saying ‘I can identify my enemy a mile away’. But in this particular case, when it came to his own life, he failed.”
Shvets is the former KGB guy in Va who said he told the authorities who killed Sasha, that more people around the world would be killed, and then was going to hide until indictments were announced by the UK or Russian investigation.
Jerry
Saw that. Interesting that Yuri Shvets and Oleg Gordievsky, all Nikolai Khohlov exiled KGB, think it’s the FSB and the Russian three amigos.
Meant to say : Interesting that Yuri Shvets, Oleg Gordievsky and Nikolai Khohlov, all exiled KGB, think it’s the FSB…
I imagine they’d know about that.
One confusing wrinkle, Classic says, is that radiation poisoning usually manifests days after exposure. However, Litvinenko reported feeling immediately ill after eating at two locations on Nov. 1. “Perhaps he was poisoned earlier,” she says.
From a link above. re timeline.
Lizarde, conflicting reports from experts in the press:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-12-13-polonium-guide_x.htm
Q: How did polonium-210 kill Alexander Litvinenko?
A: It emits alpha radiation, which kills living tissues up close, but it is easily blocked by the skin and even a few inches of air. If it enters the bloodstream, high doses kill within hours or weeks.
Most likely, Litvinenko ate or drank enough polonium — around a millionth of a gram — to trigger severe radiation poisoning. Victims suffer food poisoning symptoms, followed by the failure of blood cells and the immune system.
A few salt crystals containing polonium would be one way to poison someone, says medical physicist Dimitri Dimitroyannis of Harvard Medical School. “A tiny little pinch would be enough,” he says.
Temperster,
IMHO Telegraph paper is suspect. As far as I know Spetnas are just elite military units similar to Green Berets
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spetsnaz
BTW those units participated in freeing Beslan hostages.
My understanding is similar to Libkez, spetsnaz are elite military troops that do sabotage type military stuff and are big into counter terror. I knew a spetsnaz guy once who did a lot of hostage rescues, he wasn’t too fond of the Chechens. But from there details do seem to get fuzzy, after all the US and other nations are killing terrorists fairly regularly now if the opportunity presents itself.
“I cannot find one credible bit of information that Litvinenko was a bad guy.
No matter who one thinks killed him or why, I regard the stuff being said about him–psycho, “tor nail puller, smuggler–to be totally unsubstantiated slander of a man who was just horribly murdered.”
Clarice be careful, just because he was horribly murdered doesn’t mean he was good, bad, or indifferent. We don’t know. We’re going by a dozen no doubt biased press reports.
“It is now – with Sue’s great catch – 100% certain that Litvinenko was double crossed by Shebalin.”
Enlightened I suggest slowing down? There’s no way we can be 100% certain of that.
Jerry,
Defectors are even more suspect then mainstream press: they have stakes in proving that Russia is “evil empire” quoting Reagan. To me this “Operation Polonium Freedom” now have some surreal overtones of a major PR show or PR offensive if you wish. What if this is another “Gulf of Tonkin Incident”. I think Temperster and Mariposa as the most prominent “assassionologists” here might be better off switching from “bloody arms of KGB” to the Italian trace 🙂
Everybody in the press and everybody who talks about any of the players has an agenda. The truth is hard to come by – I think we have all seen that in our own allegedly free press. So you have to ask yourself first what is the agenda of the person making the claim and as for the medical/radiation experts I think we can all agree that nobody really knows what they are talking about – the sense I am getting is that this is more or less new territory. Anyway I had a flu shot reaction and have a fever so I am maybe not making any sense!
“The personality traits alluded to in that report would not be inconsistent with the reports from Lugovoi concerning Litvinenko’s conduct at meetings and in general conversation. ”
Speaking of which, Crosspatch, in retrospect doesn’t it seem like Lugovoi and Kovtun were trying to discredit Litvinenko’s comments posthumously? If you were talking about a deceased former colleague would you point out that he obsessed about money and embarrassed you at meetings?
I really do think that Lugovoi and Kovtun were knee-deep in this, whatever scenario you adhere to.