A peculiar rumour went flying through the British newspapers over the weekend involving the now dormant case of Alexander Litvinenko (for my posts on the matter and my theory of what happened with the Polonium 210 last October jump here). The rumour was that someone in the British government had asked the prosecutors to not charge the media’s favorite suspect: the 2 Russians who met with Litivinenko 2-3 times when Po-210 traces showed up in the hotel where they were staying. One of these Russians, Andre Lugovoi, was in London at each hotel showing Po-210 contamination. He was a regular business associate of Litvinenko’s, but a longtime comrade of Boris Berezovsky – the man who has Po-210 inside his office. In my mind the lot of them were working on something that went wrong, and Litvinenko died from an accidental exposure which nearly killed Lugovoi and the third man, Dmitry Kovtun.

But what is interesting is not the lame charge, but the response the charge elicited and what it can tell us about what happened with the case:

A British Sunday newspaper reported Britain’s foreign secretary has blocked prosecutors from charging two Russian suspects in the poisoning of former security agent Alexander Litvinenko to avoid upsetting the Kremlin.

…

The News of the World, without citing any sources, said Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett told a meeting of COBRA, the government emergency committee chaired by Prime Minister Tony Blair, that prosecutors must not file charges because Britain can’t afford to upset Moscow.

This sounds like someone is twisting a fair warning to prosecutors to make sure they have a sound case before laying charges at the feet of the Russian government. Why someone would exaggerate this kind of obvious statement of caution into an attempt to stop an investigation is what intriques me. Who benefits from this? Is Berezovsky or his media allies trying to put pressure on British authorities to start a diplomatic row? So what is the status of the investigation? Here is what we have:

A Crown Prosecution Service spokeswoman, however, said prosecutors had yet to decide whether any charges should be laid at all. The Foreign Office had no immediate comment.

…

But a Crown Prosecution Service spokeswoman said Saturday that discussion of arrest warrants was premature because prosecutors were still considering the evidence.

“No decision had been made on whether charges should be laid,” she said on condition of anonymity in line with department policy.

And similar statements from other sources can be found here. What is amazing is the fact the prosecution is still looking at the evidence so long after it was submitted. The media sees this case as a simple assasination attempt with a few people involved. They ignore the earlier Po-210 contaminations and the possibility that the Po-210 was being smuggled for nefarious purposes (like a dirty nuclear bomb – which the material is optimal for).

The smuggling scenario would extend well outside the few players we see in the media (Litvinenko, Kovtun and Lugovoi) and might extend to people who were ‘mules’, transporting the material through London where it was either being collected or, worse, distributed. The fact is three times Po-210 entered the UK in October, and only a microscopic fraction was used to kill Litvinenko. My guess is the spill of Po-210 in the 4th floor hotel room at the Millenium hotel is orders of magnitude larger in size than what killed Litvinenko or sickened Kovtun and Lugovoi. And if rumors are true that Scaramella is now ill as well, then we may have a picture of a smuggling effort gone bad. The timing of events during the day have always been suspect. I maintain Litvinenko met with Lugovoi and Kovtun in Lugovoi’s hotel around noon the day Litvinenko became ill (the timing seems right for the effects to begin to be felt). That is when the massive spill occurred which was cleaned up. But Litvinenko was contaminated inside and out and started trailing the material to Berezovsky’s office, and then onto his meeting with Scaramella, before looping back to report results to Lugovoi and Kovtun as they headed to the soccer game.

My theories aside, this case is not as it is being protrayed in the media. And I doubt anyone has tried to stop charges, but is simply making sure the case is air tight and complete.