Dec 17 2006
Ridiculous Assassination Theory
The assissination theories are really getting strained and bizarre with the latest ‘speculation’ from Yuri Shvets. His theory is pretty lame with lots and lots of wholes in it:
Yuri Shvets, an ex-spy based in the United States, said Mr Litvinenko, who died in a London hospital on 23 November from poisoning by Polonium-210, had been employed by a British company to provide information on five potential Russian clients before they committed to investment. He had helped the former KGB man with information on one of the five.
In an interview with the BBC, Mr Shvets said the report had led to the British company pulling out of a deal, losing the Russian figure potential earnings of “dozens of millions of dollars”. Neither the Russian nor the British company was named, but asked whether the report had lead to Mr Litvinenko’s death, he replied: “I can’t be 100 per cent sure, but I am pretty sure.”
Actually I am sure this is a ridiculous theory. This mystery Russian may have lost a ‘potential business opportunity worth dozens of millions. Let’s say it was $48 million dollars in potential business (4 dozens). The value of the Polonium-210 which Litvinenko ingested alone was $25-50 million. The Polonium-210 trail spread across Russia, London and Germany could easily be the same amount. And the price to pay the smugglers and the assassin would not be cheap. But let’s just use the $25 million dollar number and do some math.
So this guy loses $48 million in business, which may have translated to $5 million in profit after all the costs are accounted for. So what kind of businessman would spend $25 million in profit to pay Litvinenko back for helping him lose $5 million??
The problem with this theory is the guy is throwing away a material that would recoup his losses 5 times over to kill one guy, who could be taken out for a couple grand if you could find a desparate drug addict or street thug. This is the gold brick problem with these lame assassination theories. Who would use a gold brick to kill someone?
Yuri Shvets just wants more than his 15 minutes of fame and is feeding the media’s conspiracy theorists dreams.
Addendum: Let me extend my comments on this before I go in and read the comments people have posted. This story relies on a timeline that is just plain unrealistic. Because of a report supposedly submitted on Sept 21st we find, 3.5 weeks later, Polonium-210 successfully being smuggled into London (this is the date of the Knightsbridge hotel contamination and the earliest reported visit of Lugovoi and Kovtun to see Litvinenko). Now it is not possible to, on a lark of vengeance, go out and get large quantities of Polonium-210. But even if you had iPolonium-210 sitting around (remember the half life situation) then it is not reasonable to assume you could develop a sophisticated smuggling effort, involving many people, to get the material into London in 3 short weeks. And that doesn’t even include developing a way to deliver the poison. Journalists, for some reason or another, have suspended all inquisitiveness on this matter.
Now we have an unreasonable time frame on top of the ridiculous issues a potential bussiness opportunity lost verses the cost to get Polonium-210 for revenge. But let’s not beating this dead horse here. As I have been contemplating this matter it is clear we the evidence to date is not only around a smuggling effort, but a large one. First off we have these three hotels contaminated in multiple rooms on three different dates with Lugovoi coming into London and meeting Litvinenko. We all know that even the amount needed to kill Litvinenko was a thousands of a gram so why three trips? One trip and you can bring in a gram on one person? If you can hide a thousandths of a gram you can hide a gram of this stuff. So multiple trips are not necessary, especiall after the material is in on Oct 16th.
Why multiple rooms at each hotel? Most people do not understand that it takes special equipment to divide material up into thousandths of a gram. So we have trail of Polonium 210 that just doesn’t fit the assassination concept because the dosage could be brought into one place on one trip, because of its size alone.
And why hotels? If the material was destined for the UK why not rent some flat or something and do whatever was being done in these hotel rooms in much more private conditions, without traces due to travel and hotel records? Combining the multiple rooms and keeping in mind the amounts of material that could be worked on in a hotel room setting it seems to me we are dealing with mulitple grams of the material – not thousandths of a gram. I can see people dealing in grams and half and quarter grams in a hotel setting. Once you get below a quarter gram you don’t need multiple people to move the material around.
So I see much larger amounts coming in on each of the dates we are dealing with in these hotel contaminations. This starting amount is divided up in each room and given to a person to take it on its next leg of its travels. With 4-5 rooms per hotel being contaminated that means 3-4 points of departure (assuming one room is Lugovoi’s and hosts the incoming material). What worries me is where could these f3-4 destinations be. Recall that the hotel makes sense as a way-point for people transitting in and out of the UK. Otherwise one would think to use a different location than a hotel.
The other thing to remember is, if Lugovoi did coordinate the movmement and distribution of this material (a common theme in both scenarios), it is doubtful he himself would move the material across the borders and that planes would be used. It would be better to use trains and ships than planes given the level of security on airlines. The Chunnel and Ferries are really nice because people take their cars with them into the UK from mainland Europe.
Recalling that a gram of this material is like a few sugar packs, it is clear there is no reason to use multiple carriers unless distribution to many points is implied as part of this entire effort. The interesting question is whether this was in liquid, salt or solid form. The first two forms may be easier to transport, but if you want to move grams the volumes become quite large. I would assume an increase of 10-100 to 1 for the salt or liquid forms. This may be why there are so many people involved and so many sites. This too really flies against the assassination theory where Litvinenko’s deadly dose of thousandths of a gram translates into only 10ths of a gram in these forms. Something easily smuggled by one person on one trip and not something someone would divide up.
Mariposa….when you say:
“I think they enjoy promoting fallacies.”
“That leaves them blind and deliberately obstinate. ”
This adds a rather condescending note to the “discussion”. If your arguments are strong enough, simply rely on them instead of insulting people.
I have a whole different take on this. I really don’t care if it’s assassination or accident. Really. I just try to look at the facts. And that’s why I supplied a few arguments as to why an assassin armed with a costly poison would not help themselves to some for later use:
1) He doesn’t know what the capsule is.
2) He doesn’t know anything about Po.
3) He doesn’t have more, and wants to make sure Lit dies.
4) He’s professional and gets $$$ per hit, and he does many hits, more than selling Po illegally would give him.
5) He is simply afraid of Po and does not have the lab contacts to set up partitioning of the batch.
Let me play Devil’s Advocate for a moment. Suppose there was an extortion ring which threatened vital resources inside Russia-such as the natural gas pipelines. Also suppose you are Putin, and have been given authority by the Duma (which he was) to track down and destroy terrorists outside of Russia.
If anyone is interested , I know -in general terms- how I would destroy and discredit those involved in the (supposed)extortion-without using $25 million worth of Po-210.
I’m interested, Mr.MeanGenes! Please share.
LitD, thank you, but you still didn’t explain why you said my “argument [outlined in my post to Wiley] didn’t work.” Why?
(i) * polonium would cost a state nothing more than they’ve already invested in the material and equipment that makes it, and that
(ii) * small bits of radioactive materials could be most easily “stolen†by the states theselves, outside of international controls because
(iii) * international controls are frighteningly and notoroiusly awful,
You mean these?
(i) No, it doesn’t cost the state anything, but it represents money for them and the person going through with the assassination. This is the point that I believe me, lizarde1, AJ and others have trouble getting past. However, see above argument where I supplied a few reasons for why an assassin would not be tempted to take som Po, one of which I consider, if not likely, at least reasonable, i.e. – the assassin gets really good money for his work and does a lot of work in this line – he will be only at the outskirts of this story somewhere, untainted by Po.
(ii) Ok, still have to account for the market value of the stuff.
(iii) Ok, d.o.
If I were the Russian in charge of disposing of this ring, I would have the extortion victim agree to a cash payoff. I would then arrange to have the money “fumed” with Po-210 in a glovebox setup. Warm Po-210 up to about 131 degrees or so, and it will vaporize-so you don’t need much !
Still using the glovebox setup, I would shrinkwrap the tainted money-proceed with the payoff -then sit back and let nature take its course.
The tainted currency would find its way into every involved hand,and would be transferred to the clothing, bodies,food,eyes,noses,etc. of all concerned. Those who handed a packet of bills to the wife or ex-wife would be handing them radiation exposure as well.
Those who got the lion’s share (well, maybe the hyena’s share) of the cash would get the heaviest dose of radiation and poison…PLUS a reasonable suspicion they had been smuggling the stuff.
If that’s what happened, some congratulations might be in order !
Wiley.
First off, those who say you could get the material for little money are naive. You have to pay for silence. But the point you completely missed is the Polonium-210 VALUE! It is worth $25 million. That is five times the profit one could skim off a $48 Million dollar business opportunity that makes 10% net. So your theory is the guy lost a $48 million dollar opportunity and then took and threw away $25 million dollars of Polonium to kill Litvinenko? Pulleaze!
Wiley,
CP uses facts and strong arguments. We all know you bought the assassination line from day one. And as it fell apart you have been keen not to lose face. It would have been cheaper and less risky to commission a rebuttal dossier than kill Litvinenko. Sorry to say this, but CP is just being objective and critical.
RosenKreutz,
I hate to say this put Polonium 21o is COMPLETELY traceable in a death. No one will close a mysterious death that has all the earmarkings of being exposed to the core of a nuclear bomb (which is what Litvinenko looked like) until it was completely explained. Not after 9-11. It took ONLY a day to find the source. That is incredibly fast, not long. It was clearl radiation, from there it became a short hunt to find which one. The simple process of elimination led them to Polonium 210. But they were not going to stop until they solved it.
P0lonium 210 is not a assissination tool. I know a lot of folks cannot let go of this theory, but the data shows anything but. BTW, next prediction: those who were in the contaminated rooms and who carried the material onto their next path should be getting seriously ill around now. Also, the Polonium 210 only has a limited life left in it.
DonaldX,
thanks for coming by and putting up with my politics (seriously). I do agree with you this story is being pushed by authorities and is seeing broad play in the media. Now one simply needs to think about why such a whacky story would be out there right now. I have my theories.
Mariposa – read the updates. Tell us how in 3.5 weeks from the report this mystery man was able to acquire the Polonium, set up the smuggling effort and get the assassination in place so that Polonium 21o was now a London hotel on Oct 16th. Not that I am going to buy your speculation.
I just checked sites of popular UK newspapers and it looks like the British press is now silent about the case despite the fact that this is a vintage Le Carré, no matter how you play it…
For example a postmortem examination of Litvinenko’s body took place on Dec. 1. Did anybody hear about the results ? Were they ever published ?
Also “traditional English tee with polonium” version have a crack as one trace of polonium was found in a security company they visited in October but not in November.
The only interesting link that I have found today is about Scaramella and Litvinenko:
http://www.eurotrib.com/comments/2006/11/26/01649/434/25
Keep a good work, fellow conspiracy theorists 😉
And about that PO_210 again. Wiley and others keep saying the PO-210 cost nothing, but they can never explain why, in this new theory of a vengeance driven businessman, what signal was being sent? the Putin assassination theory held together only because the use of Polonium 210 sent ‘a signal’. But now this is not state sponsored, it is a revenge killing – where a single bullet would do just fine.
Those still peddling the fact someone would throw away $25 million dollars of Polonium 210 to avoid buying some bullets are the ones who are just not thinking realistically. Why not use a bullet? Espescially in this scenario – where the damage is done? Sorry f9lks, but the assassination idea is rapidly becoming ridiculous.
I also deal with facts. I work with logic at all times. And if you discount all the spins going on re Goldfarb/Bereszovsky, Lugovi/Kovtun and last but not least the Kremlin then you are left with the basics.
Polonium was being tracked all over for three weeks before Litvinenko got sick. Why? Where did it come from? And what was its purpose.
Lugovoi and Kovtun were the trackers. What were they doing with it?
Theymet Litvinenko many times during this period. Was he also contaminated during these times?
Every hotel Lugovoi and Kovtun stayed at was contaminated one badly signalling an accident of some kind. In fact, all were accidents because I doubt all this tracking was intentiomal.
Just about everywhere these two visited was contaminated wth a few exceptions.
Bereszovsky has publicly stated he would get back into power in Russia with an atomic bomb.
Bereszovsky and Litvinenko were sympathetic with the Chechens. Bereszovsky, however, is said to hate both the Russian government and the Chechens. So it is likely he would use both or either.
Zakayev was a close friend and neighbor of Litvinenko and is a former Chechen leader in the Chechen war. He also would like to get back into power.
Chechens had a dirty bomb in 1995. Only terrorist organization to have one.
Litvinenko was a conspiracy theorist. Made outlandish statements. Trashed Putin at every opportunity. Wrote two failed books with his conspiracies no one paid any attention to.
Litvinenko was said to need money but was seen with rolls of bills and he dressed expensively.
Livtinenko met with Lugovoi and Kovtun for tea at the Millenium bar at 10:00. He was seen by the street cameras buying a newspaper at 12:00 and was not contaminated at that time.
He met Scaramella at 3:00 at the sushi bar (a known favorite of his) and was contaminated. Contamination was found on the table.
Where was he between 12:00 and 3:00? I have asked this question many times and no one seems to want to answer or maybe does not know. Maybe it does not fit with any theory. But he had to have become contaminated and poisoned during this time frame.
He went to Bereszovsky’s office to copy documents Scaramella gave him. Discrepancy re what was in the documents. Goldfarb and Limarev said it was a hit list with Litvinenko’s name on it along with Scaramella. Scaramella says it was about an ongoing investigation he had consulted with Litvinenko before. Bereszovsky’s office contaminated.
Litvinenko met Lugovoi and Kovtun at Millenium Bar at 4:30. Why?
He stayed only 20 minutes, met Lugovoi’s son but drank nothing.
Was Solenko present? Solenko says he toured London the Lugovoi’s family until 5:00. Solenko says he met Litvinenko (Maybe outside hotel. Time frame would be right if proved Solenko stayed out until 5:00.
Called Zakayev for a ride home at 5:15. Car contaminated. Litvinenko got sick that night.
So the facts are that Litvinenko was not found to be contaminated until the sushi bar at 3:00.I don’t doubt that Litvinenko had many irons in the fire but the assassination theory fails with the stuff used to kill him. 1. He didn’t die immediately. 2. He had time to tell authorities were he went all day. 3. He received enough of a dose to kill 100 people which could be called overkill. 4. The authorities seem to be concentrating on Lugovoi and Kovtun and no one else. 5. Litvinenko was suspicious of everyone and was on guard at all times.
I would be interested to know if Litvinenko was contaminated during the weeks before Nov l. If he was not then maybe he was not part of the smuggling. Maybe he found out and could have caused trouble and Lugovoi and Kovtun killed him with polonium to shut him up. Maybe they had no other weapon on hand. That is the only way I would believe this was a murder but not an assassination. Assassination denotes a state funded murder and I don’t think this was state funded. But I believe Bereszovsky had a hand in this whole caper. These are all ruthless people and not deserving of any sympathy. They are the product of the country and the times they lived in. There are no nice guys in this thing and calling an ex-KGB agent lovable is the same thing as calling a rattle snack cute.
“WALKING BACK THE CAT.”
I heard that term used. It’s something detectives do, to re-create what “created” the crime scene. In other words? You’ve got the body. And, you collect the evidence.
The best tool? Occam’s Razor.
GREED. Absolutely a part.
STUPIDITY. Sure. Who really knew about polonium, without reading stuff here? And, as it got told, in other places.
We still don’t know if it was a “powder.” Or if it was a powder dissolved in a liquid.
And, we still don’t know what it was supposed to be used for. IF you reject the “assassination theory.”
One theory tries to explain the polonium as Russian. And, used by the KGB to kill one ex-spy. Me? That’s just a McGuffin.
What were the smugglers smuggling? Why assume it’s polonium? Because thrown out as McGuffin’s are the “costs” which range upwards to a hundred million dollars? Funny. I don’t like that wallpaper. Tell the decorator its like the Emperor’s New Clothes. And, I won’t pay for “nothing.” To go naked.
On the other hand, why would it have been tough to convince the black marketeers to carry about themselves, “something they knew NOT of?” It’s practically Shakespearean.
Who hatched the plot? Now, that all depends. Ya know why? Because Chernobyl was a TERRIBLE accident! Beslan was not.
And, why did the imam refuse to let Litvenenko’s coffin into the center of the mosque for a brief ceremony the faithful get at “departure?” Was the imam NOW afraid of contamination to his flock? And, if so? What would he have done with nuke suitcases, IF he had been storing a few? Seems the Chechyans. When they “practice” their RoP, they use British mosques with alacrity. Easy come, easy go, to radioactive material?
Wha’s developing along these plot lines? Alfred Hitchcock? Where birds can scare you out of your seat? And, out of your pants? Or the Keystone Cops?
Something went down that blew apart a WHOLE black marketeering ring, coming out of Russia. That ain’t chopped liver.
rattle snack = rattle snake
Interesting plot, mrmeangenes, and it sounds like it would be a good one for a movie, too. Truth is often stranger than fiction! I have no way of knowing, though.
LitD and AJ, thanks for putting your argument out there. A lot of that makes very good sense to me.
AJ, the “silence” you would buy with promised rewards, e.g., in this case, if Lugovoi — who, according to several reports, has already been slipped lucrative contracts through FSB — was promised wealth beyond his wildest dreams, that might buy him. Not saying this is what happened, just providing a more concrete example.
“the point you completely missed is the Polonium-210 VALUE!”
No, AJ, in this particular case — as you meant it in relation to what Shvets said — I couldn’t say, because I have no idea what deal fell through (if any), or its long-term value. Neither do you.
“Polonium 21o is COMPLETELY traceable in a death. No one will close a mysterious death that has all the earmarkings of being exposed to the core of a nuclear bomb”
AJ, I believe this was the biggest error of the assassination group’s planners.
The Times article (Dec. 3, Focus: Cracking the code of the nuclear assassin, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2484295,00.html), at the bottom of p1 and top of p.2 makes it clear that this poisoning almost was not discovered, and that
Eventually a sample of Litvinenko’s urine was sent for testing at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) at Aldermaston. Again geiger counters showed only a tiny amount more gamma radiation than the normal background level. In the end scientists decided to use an alpha detector and were shocked to find a stream of helium nuclei being emitted from the sample.
This, though, was only part of the answer, since various substances emit alpha particles, and they wanted to identify the precise emitter. Once again there was a risk of polonium remaining undetected since it is notoriously difficult to isolate.
“It’s not easy because the standard methods you use do not work for polonium,†said Priest. “The methods were worked out at Aldermaston.â€
In typical testing of a sample, organic matter is burnt off to leave foreign substances. But that might easily have vaporised the polonium as well, leaving no trace of the poison.
It was only the skills and experience of the AWE, which used to process polonium for use in the triggers in nuclear bombs, that led to the substance being identified.
If there were killers, I don’t think they knew they were leaving it all over the place, because that had never occurred to them or been discovered before. I don’t think they’re scientists, and the only science that they were concerned about was that it was poisonous and very easily concealed.
LitD, not sure what “d.o.” means. My following arguments on a post to Lizarde took care of addressing a few arguments re. market value, as did some of your own that I had not thought of —
* pride of professioanlism (maybe)
* not having a safe lab in which to cut it (very likely);
* not having more than enough to get the job done (also very likely).
Don’t ignore the barrage of anti-Litvinenko disinformation out there, either, folks. It’s easy to point to Berezovsky’s PR team at Bell Pottinger because there is a higher degree of transparency in our press, but who is directing the anti-Litvinenko campaign? Already, two players in that camp — Julia Svetlichnaya and her fellow student James Heartfield — are completely discredited, and in addition, can present no evidence for their own claims.
DonaldX, thank you so much for your info on Mangold.
“Mariposa – read the updates. Tell us how in 3.5 weeks from the report this mystery man was able to acquire the Polonium, set up the smuggling effort and get the assassination in place so that Polonium 21o was now a London hotel on Oct 16th. Not that I am going to buy your speculation.”
AJ, just saw this and will address it further as I can. But first off, we do not know when that alleged report was delivered, do we? If not, then aren’t you speculating here, too? Can you definitively say no group was in place actively planning a murder of several people, and waiting for the word from some well-placed slivolik to do it? I couldn’t possibly say either way, but I can speculate that the plans could be made in well in advance, even years ago.
Sorry for monopolizing with all the monster posts, folks, and appreciate you slogging through them as you have time, as I try to do with everyone else, too.
AJ,
A few comments on your addendum:
First, I don’t think you can say that multiple rooms were used in each hotel that showed evidence of contamination. As I mentioned in a previous comment, normal maid service would take care of that. It would be interesting to know if the rooms were arranged consecutively, in the manner of the route of a chambermaid.
However, what is unsettling is that, if this is indeed a smuggling operation, I have a hard time imagining Lugovoi working in the service of the Chechnens. And I agree that the facts do not point to a UK operation, it was more of an intermediary collecting or distribution point. That would suggest that Putin’s Russia is behind this, for their own purposes.
And that, I find particularly chilling.
From one news report:
“Shvets says Litvinenko came to him for help after a British security company had offered him a $100,000 contract to do due diligence work on five Russian figures.”
So what if Lit set L+K(+S) up, they found out (perhaps he was trailed by one of them), and killed him with Po to try to connect the whole Po deal on him? This is a happy marriage of the smuggling and murder theories.
Lostinthedrift,
There is no marriage of a reasonable theory and a silly one. If the Russian was involved in smuggling he would not risk exposing it for the same reason he would not throw away $25 million in Polonium-210.
There is no need to resolve the theories. All we do is look at the facts as we know them and decide what makes sense. Assassination has no evidence to support it. None. It relies on the fact you need to smuggle ther Polonium 210 to use it as a weapon. But the amount, trails and everything else about the smuggling actually makes no sense when all you need is a thousandths of a gram to kill Litvinenko.
I believe Solenko said he stayed on the third floor of the Millenium – that would be a different maid service group I think. I believe some of the rooms on the 4th floor including room 441 were stayed in by Lugovoi and his children – he wouldn’t put 5 people (wife and 3 kids) all in one room – so the tracking may have been done by Lugovoi – and probably one of the rooms was Kovton.
Barbara just because no traces were found at the newspaper stand at noon or so doesn’t mean he wasn’t contaminated – this was an outdoor area presumably and the wind and traffic in general could have carted off miniscule amounts – it’s not like he sat there for any length of time like on an airplane seat or at a table.
We haven’t heard anything about the earlier hotels – the Parkes Hotel and the one in Shaftsbury lately – not a peep. The only thing I read somewhere was that they might want to interview Kovton again on Monday
Did Lugovoi, who was very security conscious have a body guard in London? Was that Kovton’s role? I think Litvinenko was full of bluster about his security consciousness – no good spy would always like to go to the same restaurant.
Why weren’t Lugovoy and his wife scared to share tea with Kovton in the sauna hut?