Details surrounding Dmitri Kovtun’s experiences in the Polonium-210 incidents in London last Oct and early November are starting to come out as Kovtun talks reporters. The NY Times provides readers two things on this breaking news, it enlightens us all to the details that have been shrouded in an investigation hidden to the public, and it demonstrates the liberal media’s self denial that any other story than a Putin-ordered assassination is at play. As this story has unfolded, the trail of Po-210 surrounds Litvinenko and Berezovsky, not Putin, so there are more than one clear possibility. And for once the media is acknowledging that authorities are not providing them clear indications this story is as it has been portroyed in the media.

Let’s begin with Kovtun’s story:

Dmitri V. Kovtun arrived in London for the first time in his life last Oct. 16. He dropped his bags off at a hotel near Piccadilly Circus and immediately went to meet, also for the first time, Alexander V. Litvinenko…

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But Mr. Kovtun says they have it backward, maintaining that Oct. 16 was the day that Mr. Litvinenko exposed him to the poison, polonium 210. “I am far from thinking that something was premeditated,” Mr. Kovtun said. “I think things that were not premeditated were happening.”

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Everywhere they went on Oct. 16 — Erinys, an international security company on Grosvenor Street; Itsu, a sushi bar on Piccadilly, and the Best Western Premier Shaftesbury Hotel near Piccadilly Circus — later showed traces of polonium 210, according to British health officials. So did the Parkes Hotel, where they checked in the next day, unhappy with their first choice of accommodations.

Well at least this clears up the issue of the Sheraton and Best Western hotels I posted about here. It is now clear the four hotels in question still involve meetings with Lugovoi and Litvinenko. Recall there were meetings around October 25th with a Po-210 trail which does not involve Kovtun, but did include Lugovoi and Litvinenko. What this also shows is how the reporting on this can be innaccurate as authorities send misinformation out. The people in the Best Western story are adament the police said Lugovoi and Kovtun stayed in the hotel 2 days prior to them, making it Oct 25th. But, as I noted, Kovtun was in Moscow on Oct 25th. So the reporting in this earlier story is not accurate, though I am sure people are correctly relaying what authorities have told them. The only cocnlusion is the authorities are putting out information and it is being reported as facr. As we shall see later in this post, it is important to know what the authorities are NOT confirming.

What is also important to note in Kovtun’s version of events is there were no plans to meet Litvinenko on Nov 1, a trip the Russians planned to see a Moscow soccer team play a key game in London. Therefore there could be no ‘plan’ to take out Litvinenko in the Pine Bar, and assassins have no need to shift their plans – especially when there are meeting opportunities every two weeks.

After his visit to Germany, Mr. Kovtun returned to London on the morning of Nov. 1 aboard a plane belonging to an airline, Germanwings, that did not test for contamination, German officials have said.

He and Mr. Lugovoi did not plan to meet Mr. Litvinenko on that day, but they said that Mr. Litvinenko called them insistently on Nov. 1 to arrange a meeting.

How interesting that the assassination victim called Lugovoi and Kovtun to set up the planned assassination in the Pine Bar! How lucky could the alleged assassins be? Remember the police have phone records to confirm all of this, so I would suggest this is an accurate account. So how is it the Polonium 210 made it into the rooms of the Russians in the Millenium Hotel if they only met Litvinenko in the Pine Bar? Here is the final stages of the infamous meeting in the Pine Bar on Nov 1st:

The three men agreed, at last, to meet later that afternoon at the Pine Bar in the Mayfair Millennium, where traces of polonium were found and seven members of the bar staff were exposed to small, nonfatal doses. Traces were also found in rooms, apparently those occupied by the Russians.

This meeting occurs around 4:30-5:00 PM on the day Litvinenko takes ill. And he is clearly not well (this is something Scaramella concurs on with his earlier meeting around 3:00 PM). Shortly after this meeting his picked up and taken home. But he doesn’t go to the contaminated rooms in the hotel – so what gives? Well it turns out Litvinenko and Lugovoi went one other place – at different times – where Polonium 210 was discovered: Boris Berezovsky’s offices. Berezovsky already admitted Litvinenko visited his offices that day since his mouthpiece, Alex Goldfarb, made early claims Litvinenko sweated out Po-210 in the offices (which we now know is not scientifically possible). This places Litvinenko in Berezovksy’s offices on the day in question by their own admission – and PRIOR to the Pine Bar meeting with Lugovoi and Kovtun.

And just recently Berezovsky had to admit he met with Lugovoi on Oct 31st, the day before Litvinenko had his last visit (which doesn’t preclude Lugovoi and Litvinenko in the same meeting). So the Po-210 trail could be spreading from Berezovsky’s office to Litvinenko and and Lugovoi, not the other way around. I still think the prime exposure was in the Millenium Hotel room and was accidental, but clearly the flow of Po-210 could be the other way around. And clearly Kovtun is saying the incidents surrounding the Po-210 is “not premidated”, therefore he sees it as an accidental ste of circumstances.

What I want to focus on in ending this post is the mistakes of the media by their buying into their preconceptions instead of reporting what is known. There is a key statement in the NY Times article that was put there deliberately to sheepishly declare the lack of solid support to the assassination theory:

In British news media accounts not disputed by Scotland Yard, investigators have focused on a meeting that Mr. Kovtun and Mr. Lugovoi had with Mr. Litvinenko on Nov. 1. Together, they have been portrayed as secret agents sent to avenge Mr. Litvinenko’s betrayal of the K.G.B.’s domestic successor, the Federal Security Service.

Emphasis mine. The entire assassination theory in the UK media is based on the authorities, who are trying to keep details secret, not disputing the theories the press have put out. The media does this lie all the time, they put forth some wild claims, authorities say ‘no comment’ or something along those lines and the media run with the claims. Pathetic. For example, here is another over-the-top story full of exaggeration and supposition being presented as fact:

Father-of-two Steve Atkins unwittingly drank from the same cup laced with radioactive Polonium 210 which killed the 43-year-old former KGB agent.

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Mr Atkins drank two cups of coffee in the hotel’s Pine Bar a day after Mr Litvinenko is thought to have been poisoned there.

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Professor John Henry, consultant toxicologist at St Mary’s Hospital, London, said: “No one has studied high-dose contamination of polonium in humans. We don’t really know the long-term effects. This man must have ingested the polonium. It is likely he drank from the affected cup.”

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Fifty-two, including Mr Atkins, were found to have larger doses – of varying degrees – indicating direct contact with the deadly chemical. Most of these were staff working at the hotel.

That so called expert is an idiot. It has been clearly reported that the tea cup and a teapot contaminated the Pine Bar dishwasher, which in turn contaminated people and other items. 52 people did not drink from the same cup. The fact he has a low level of contamination and not something strikenly higher than most means his contamination is no different from any of these people. This is classic media hype and someone needs to ask why is a story coming out now pushing the tea cup myth right after Lugovoi and Kovtun speak?

The other question is when will we get more details on these interviews. So far all I can find is the NY Times story which just presents their shock with the fact the assassination theory is falling apart. My bet is the news is being leaked more and more now because events are about to shift into higher gear.

One final note on all the dead journalists. I would like to point out the pattern in all of these deaths. Each has a lead on a different important story that might shake up Putin’s reputation. But the truth is none of the stories have panned out, and Putin is as much a lame duck as Bush is and will step aside for a new President next year. So he has no need to kill off journalists and get all this bad press – none. But the Oligarch’s who want to get back into power and get back to sucking Russia dry of its wealth do have motives. And there is a classic game you can play with journalists which can have a new deadly twist added to it.

The game is this: plant a false story with a journalist that looks to be a Putin scandal, let the journalist get the early word out, and then kill the journalists to make it look like a cover up by Putin’s administration. The fact these killings are continuing at pace tells me this is not a Putin effort. Once the pattern was set up, it would be easier for the government to feed the journalists false stories and then publically expose them as fools believing fantasies than kill them and take the PR heat. This is because the government only needs to destroy the reputation o f journalists. The Oligarch’s need a string of dead bodies to achieve their goals. So one has to wonder why Putin has not shifted to simply destroying reputations? Well, the one answer probably is he is not the one behind all this.