Very recently the UK news got another quote from a government source close to the investigation, and that quote attempts to answer one of my key points against the government’s case, and fails miserably. The quote goes directly to the implausible story of the Polonium-210 laced (Po-210) Tea Pot and Cup:

Mr Litvinenko died after drinking from a cup of green tea while with Mr Lugovoi and two other Russians at the Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel in central London. The teapot was so irradiated that the bar and several employees suffered from contamination, including a pianist who drank from the teacup after it had gone through a dishwasher.

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The source continued: “If he [Litvinenko] had drunk the whole cup of tea he would have died instantly. It is only because he sipped it that he lingered and polonium was detected.”

Scientifically this is impossible given the fact no one else outside Andre Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun, the two UK suspects also in the Pine Bar, were seriously exposed to Po-210. All other exposures in the Pine Bar, whether kitchen staff or customers, resulted in very low doses. The reason this is impossible is Po-210 is highly energetic and tends to travel around rooms easily, severely poisoning anyone in a matter of a breathe or two. Litvinenko died of an incredibly small, but deadly dose. Some reports have his dosage at a maximum of tens of millionths of a gram. The tea pot and cup apparently are orders of magnitude higher than that.  And I think I know why.

For comparison a gram is the amount of sweetener in one of those packets we all use in our coffee and tea. Ten millionths of that is a grain or two of the finer powder artificial sweeteners. It is much less than a grain of regular sugar.

Yet the Tea Pot and Cup discovered 6 weeks after Litvinenko died, and more like 10 weeks after the poisoning itself, show signs of Po-210 levels ‘off the charts’ – e.g., in quantities which would far exceed Litvinenko’s dosage – even from a sip of tea. I have discussed this scientifically impossible disconnect many times.

In this post I note how one government witness exposes some of the ‘evidence’ that leads the scientifically challenged UK authorities to an impossible conclusion by comparing the evidence found in the Pine Bar with other documented Po-210 contaminations which led to deaths. First the Pine Bar account:

I think the polonium was sprayed into the teapot. There was contamination found on the picture above where Mr Litvinenko had been sitting and all over the table, chair and floor, so it must have been a spray.”

Mr Andrade, from Brentwood, Essex, also revealed just how close he came to becoming an unintended second victim of the assassin. Shortly after the three men left the bar, Mr Andrade cleared the table. It was then that he noticed the contents of the teapot had turned a “funny colour”.

“When I poured the remains of the teapot into the sink, the tea looked more yellow than usual and was thicker – it looked gooey,” he recalled. “I scooped it out of the sink and threw it into the bin. I was so lucky I didn’t put my fingers into my mouth, or scratch my eye as I could have got this poison inside me.

“For nearly three weeks, we were working in a contaminated area. The dishwasher, the bar and the sink were contaminated. In the weeks after what happened, I was feeling hot and had a throat infection.

To have enough Po-210 to melt plant material we must be talking tenths of grams, not ten millionths of a gram. But as I said, Po-210 is very active and once it gets into the air it moves, propelled about by the radioactive decay process that makes it so dangerous. Now check out the descriptions of people dying in laboratories from Po-210 exposure covered in the same post:

A low-dose exposure was blamed for causing the death of Irene Joliot-Curie, the daughter of Marie Curie, who first isolated polonium.
Irene died in 1956 [ten years after the exposure - ajstrata] of leukemia caused by accidental exposure when a sealed capsule of the metal exploded on her laboratory bench.

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The first polonium death occurred in 1927.
The victim was Nobus Yamada, a Japanese researcher in Marie Curie’s lab in France. In 1924, he worked with Curie’s daughter Irene Joliot-Curie to prepare polonium sources. After returning home the next year, Yamada fell ill.

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The first signs of contamination were the traces of radiation on the laboratory desk of Israeli physicist Dror Sadeh. He had taken what he thought were adequate precautions against the hyperactive element.

But those precautions weren’t enough. Radiation was discovered “in my private home, and on my hands too and on everything that I touched,” he wrote in his diary.

Within a month, one student who worked in Sadeh’s lab at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, was dead from leukemia. The lab’s supervisor died a few years later — contaminated by polonium-210 as well, Sadeh suspected.

These were all scientists who were doing what they could to control and contain the Po-210. In the early cases in the Curie laboratory a container ‘exploded’ throwing the material into the air. As we saw in the later case this would have resulted in the material contaminating everything, surfaces, clothes, skin. In all these early cases death took months and years – not weeks.

So how could someone get a dose that kills in weeks or less in a public place like the Pine Bar, causing contamination of pictures on walls, chairs, floors, etc and only Litvinenko die? It’s not plausible, and I would dare say impossible. The Kitchen staff at the Pine Bar had the most exposure because of the steam carrying the contamination all over the place. Yet the dosage supposedly dropped to the point where they were only mildly poisoned while Litvinenko would experience the fastest death on record?

So how do we explain this incredibly hot tea pot and cup, yet the incredibly low levels of poisoning of everyone except Lugovoi and Kovtun in the Pine Bar? Well the first answer is to once again note the 10 weeks that went by between the poisoning and the ‘discovery’ of the tea pot. In my mind the UK case falls apart right here because there is no provable chain of custody for that tea pot and cup over those 10 weeks. The more likely answer is that someone, in possession of large quantities of Po-210, clumsily contaminated the tea pot and cup and left it to be discovered as evidence.

Remember, the tea pot and cup did not show up until 6 weeks after Litvinenko’s death and this became a serious investigation of radiation poisoning. Why so long between the death and discovery – when the tea pot and cup theory was out there PRIOR to Litvinenko dying!

But what is interesting is Gordievsky was sure the man with the poisoned tea was Lugovoi. And he was sure of this BEFORE Litvinenko died and tea cups and contaminated hotel rooms and bars and restaurants and planes and offices and homes and Moscow embassies were all found by police.

Gordievsky, a former KGB station head in London, who still refers to the FSB by its former name, insisted that he did not know the identity of the Russian would-be killer. But he assumed that the man was a former associate of Boris Berezovsky, the former oligarch and Yeltsin confidant, who has been granted political asylum in Britain.

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The man came to London, posing as a businessman and a friend. He met Litvinenko at a hotel and put poison in his tea. That was before Litvinenko had lunch at a Japanese restaurant with the Italian he knew as Mario, who had arranged to meet him because he said he had information about the murder of Politkovskaya, a close friend.

Stunning how this friend of Boris Berezovsky, a Litvinenko associate, knew about the tea so early on? He is also one of those, who supposedly talked to Litvinenko before his death and learned these things (more here on the disconnected stories of Gordievsky’s and company). I think this is planted evidence clumsily concocted because those who contaminated the tea pot and cup did not have the faintest idea about how radiation levels work. They just slathered on the Po-210, not realizing it was probably hundreds of times higher in concentration than what killed Litvinenko. And that would explain how 4-6 weeks of intense government investigation of the Millenium Hotel missed the tea pot and cup before it showed up. It was found right after it arrived on the seen!

But there are three seriously poisoned characters in this play. One who died and two who nearly died. And there is one hot spot on the Po-210 trail across London, Germany and Moscow that shows the kind of radiation levels that are in line with the poisoning levels, and that is a 4th floor hotel room in the Millennium Hotel, where the Pine Bar is located:

The assassins were so bungling that they dropped the polonium on the floor of a London hotel room, a senior government source told The Daily Telegraph yesterday.

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The senior government source, who is aware of the discussions of the Cabinet’s emergency committee, Cobra, said the picture of the killers that was emerging was closer to bungling assassins than cool James Bond-type killers.

Clear traces of the radiation were found on the floor of a room, thought to be in the Millennium hotel in central London, the source said, as well as on a light switch in the same room. The traces were so strong that they indicated the actual source of the radiation was present, not a secondary source such as excretions from Mr Litvinenko’s contaminated body.

This site points to evidence of a meeting between Lugovoi, Kovtun and Litvinenko BEFORE the Pine Bar meeting. And in earlier interviews Gordievsky would claim it was in this earlier meeting in the 4th floor room that Litvinenko was poisoned:

According to police sources, until now it has not been revealed that Litvinenko visited a fourth-floor room at the Millennium Hotel to discuss a business deal.

He had gone to the room with Mr Kovtun and another former Russian agent, Andrei Lugovoy.

The three men were joined in the room later by the mystery figure who was introduced as “Vladislav”.

Mr Gordievsky told The Times yesterday how “Vladislav was described as someone who could help Mr Litvinenko win a lucrative contract with a Moscow-based private security company.

“Sasha (his name for Litvinenko) remembered the man making him a cup of tea.

“His belief is that the water from the kettle was only lukewarm and that the polonium-210 was added, which heated the drink through radiation so he had a hot cup of tea. The poison would have showed up in a cold drink,” he added.

The hotel room where Litvinenko thought he was poisoned remains sealed off. This room reportedly showed the heaviest concentration of polonium-210 found at a dozen locations across London.

There is that tea again! But this time it is served in the hotel room. How is it this story was out there and then changed to the Pine Bar? Well, the first story was not holding up well for the assassination theory because it came too close to showing a Po-210 smuggling effort gone horrible awry. And the timeline was horrible because it led back to Boris Berezovsky’s office (or led from it!). So the poisoning had to move to a new location, a location where all three men were once again together. A location that could have been sprayed with contamination at ANY TIME after Litvinenko was poisoned and before he died and the investigation took off.

Scientifically the tea pot and cup are way too hot to be the vessels that killed Litvinenko, but left Lugovoi, Kovtun to survive severe poisoning and yet barely touch the over 50 other patrons and employees in the bar around the time of the poisoning. I have challenged anyone to prove Po-210 levels which stain porcelain and melt tea leaves could deliver only ten millionths of a gram of Po-210 in a sip of tea. Po-210, once airborne, travels too easily and is way too deadly as history has shown in previous ‘spills’. The idea a dishwasher steam laced with Po-210 did not wipe out the Pine Bar Kitchen staff is ludicrous on its face. Inhalation of Po-210 is much more damaging than ingestion (the stomach lining can act like the skin and shield the radiation and reduce the flow of the material into the body).

But what we do have THAT IS scientifically consistent is a spill in a hotel room that does map well to three people, and only three people, being poisoned. So the only question left is why does the UK government keep hanging onto their completely implausible theory? Probably because the real story, behind the scenes, is not something they want public.

Who would want to explain to the People of the United Kingdom how some of their intelligence assets (Berezovsky and Litvinenko) they paid for information were running a Po-210 smuggling ring in the center of London? That also seems more plausible than a KGB hit using a highly traceable and uncontrollable substance to assassinate a 3rd rate nobody like Alexander Litvinenko.

I have posted extensively on the Litvinenko case of Polonium-210 poisoning ever since the case broke. I and a few other folks have resisted the flimsy stories laid in the UK and US media surrounding the news that a highly valuable and dangerous radioactive elements surfaced all over London. To me the evidence looked to be less the trail of assassination against a two-bit thug and more a case of a smuggling effort in nuclear arms technology gone awry.

And let’s be clear here – Polonium-210 is best applied to mass assassinations, as in Weapons Of Mass Destruction (WMDs). You would no more assassinate Litvinenko with the large amounts of Po-210 discovered running through London two Octobers ago than you would use a battleship to kill a shark. Po-210, as Litvinenko sadly demonstrated, is very useful as the core of a nuclear dirty bomb attack. 10 millionths of a gram (less than a few grains of sweetener in 1 gram paper packet) can kill a person within a month. Can people smell and taste their sweeteners when they rip open a paper packet? If that packet was powdered Po-210 then you would be facing a death just like Litvinenko’s – that’s all it takes.

But even more concerning is the role Po-210 plays in full up nuclear bombs. It is a key element in the trigger device which detonates the bomb (see here for example). What if Litvinenko and Berezovsky were actually aiding Islamic extremists in obtaining the grand-daddy of all WMDs? This scenario is highly plausible, but was ignored in the media in favor of the Berezovsky produced theories of assassination from Putin’s Russia. This is why this story has concerned me – the worst case scenario is frightening and has never been addressed, let alone proven to be unfounded.

In London in October 2006 there were three incidents of Po-210 transiting London hotels, where multiples rooms showed the mark of the material. Was it one source bringing in a shipment coming in and then being broken up into smaller segments and going out multiple paths? Or was it the other way around – multiple smaller shipments coming in and being combined? One thing is clear, only a few grains of dust-sized particles killed Litvinenko. You do not need three shipments to move this microscopic amount, and you cannot divide it or transport these amounts as the trail shows.

Anyway, one of the other folks who never bought into the hype was Edward Jay Epstein, who is now reporting out months of investigation and interviews – with some surprising and not so surprising results (depending on your views of the matter). First off, note how the entire story was being spun by Berezovsky’s media empire.

During his {Litvinenko’s} stay at the hospital, Litvinenko’s condition continually worsened. The initial diagnosis was that he had been poisoned by thallium, a non-radioactive toxin used in Russian rat poison. Since the KGB had reportedly used thallium as a poison in the Cold War era, the theory gained traction in the press that Litvinenko might have been the victim of the FSB. The main, if not only, source for this revenge-murder scenario were people funded by Mr. Berezovsky. A Web site in France, which had received financing from Mr. Berezovsky’s foundation, circulated a report that there was a Russian “hit list” that had Litvinenko’s name on it. Meanwhile, a Chechen website, also supported by Mr. Berezovsky’s foundation, ran stories such as “FSB Attempted to Murder Russian Defector in London.”

Why would you need to spin the story and control it as a media event is controlled unless you needed to divert attention and cover something up? It was this very act of controlling the story through paid surrogates that indicated to me this was not a grieving friend of an assassinated dissident, this was someone working frantically to direct the media in a specific direction. Which the naive and pliable media dutifully did. But note the extremist Chechen connections Berezovsky and Litvinenko both had. After his death, Litvinenko was hailed a martyred hero of Islam – not something bestowed on just anyone, especially Westerners.

So keep an eye on how Berezovsky set the propaganda spin about assassination well before the ‘smoking gun’ of Po-210 was discovered. Also, note that Litvinenko’s accusations against Putin only came after he died – why not before hand? Why wait until he died to make the claim?

As Litvinenko’s condition grew critical, Alex Goldfarb, the executive director of Mr. Berezovsky’s foundation, prepared for Litvinenko’s end by writing out his “deathbed” statement, which, according to Mr. Goldfarb, was drawn from statements Litvinenko had dictated to him.

A few hours after Litvinenko died on November 23, 2006, Mr. Goldfarb arranged a press conference and released the sensational deathbed statement accusing Mr. Putin of the poisoning.

In my view the delay was obvious. While it would have been more powerful to have Litvinenko utter the claim with his dying breathe, the fact is Berezovsky, Litvinenko and the others had no idea how exposed they were. If this was a smuggling ring that basically had an accident through Po-210 exposure, then they would want to delay the accusations until they could make sure they were not going to get caught in a lie. Thallium was clearly not the culprit and so all thallium-Putin lines would be a waste of time. And if Litvinenko survived, the last thing they would want to have come out was the Po-210. This was the second signal to me the too well orchestrated PR blitz was more cover up than anything else.

If my friend was dying and I though it was due to an assassination attempt I would be holding press conferences all day long pushing that story. That is not how this played out.

Just two hours before Litvinenko died, an unscripted surprise developed in the story: The hospital discovered that he had not been poisoned with thallium. Instead, lab tests showed that he had in his body one of the world’s rarest and most tightly controlled radioactive isotopes, polonium-210.

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Even so, as a declassified Los Alamos document notes, the detection of polonium-210 remains “a key indication of a nuclear weapons program in its early stages.” So when polonium-210 was detected in Iraq in 1991, Iran in 2004, and North Korea in October 2006, the concern was that these countries might be trying to build a nuclear weapon.

One truly has to wonder why when Po-210 is found in London transiting through hotels which were all visited by Alexander Litvinenko – and in the offices of one Boris Berezovsky himself – would the WMD angle disappear and only assassination be deemed plausible? Here is my first post on Berezovsky from Nov 25th, 2006, the post where I suspected Berezovsky was a key element of the story on Nov 26th, 2006 and the post when it was learned the Po-210 trail led right to Berezovsky from Nov 27th, 2006. In my mind a corrupt Oligarch working to destabilize Russia with strong connections to extremists Chechens (you know, the kind that act as body guards to Bin Laden and Zawahiri) and a trail of nuclear weapons material in quantities well above that required to kill one man (and bloody expensive to boot) does not point to assassination. But hey, what do I know?

But back to what Epstein has recently discovered:

The Kremlin is not known to be forthcoming with secret documents but, in this instance, I was asking to see British, not Russian secrets. Even so, obtaining access to them was not easy. By the time I arrived in Moscow in late November 2007, the Russian Prosecutor General had consigned this (as well as other high-profile investigations) to a new unit called the National Investigative Committee. It was headed by Alexander Bastrykin, a former law professor and a deputy attorney general from St. Petersburg.

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What immediately caught my attention was that it did not include the basic documents in any murder case, such as the postmortem autopsy report. In lieu of it, Detective Inspector Robert Lock of the Metropolitan Police Service at the New Scotland Yard wrote that he was “familiar with the autopsy results” and that Litvinenko had died of “Acute Radiation Syndrome.”

Like Sherlock Holmes’s clue of the dog that didn’t bark, this omission was illuminating in itself. After all, Britain and Russia had embarked on a joint investigation of the Litvinenko case, which, as far the Russians were concerned, involved the polonium-210 contamination of the Russian citizens who had contact with Litvinenko. They needed to determine when, how, and under what circumstances Litvinenko had been exposed to the radioactive nuclear component. There had already been a leak to a British newspaper that toxicologists had found two separate “spikes” of polonium-210 in Litvinenko’s body, which would indicate that he had been exposed at two different times to polonium-210. Such a multiple exposure could mean that Litvinenko was in contact with the polonium-210 days, or even weeks, before he fatally ingested it. To answer the “how” question, they wanted to see the postmortem slides of Litvinenko’s lungs, digestive track, and body. These photos could show if Litvinenko had inhaled, swallowed, or gotten the polonium-210 into the blood stream through an open cut.

This is very important, as is the dosage he ingested. I have been of the belief, based on eyewitness accounts from Litvinenko’s wife of his last days, Litvinenko inhaled the Polonium – which would put the tea theory into serious trouble, and point to more P0-210 in London than has been reported. Here were my observations at the time:

I also find the fact that Litvinenko’s burns showed up in his mucus membranes all over his body a telling clue which indicates to me he inhaled the material as well as ingested it:

Marina Litvinenko: Later I was told that not only the mucus membranes in his mouth, but everywhere in his body were horribly inflamed and covered with blisters.

I am sure those with a medical background who read this blog will correct me, but it would seem Litvinenko ran into a cloud of this stuff when he was poisoned.

If swallowed then the mucus membranes would see the same damage as all other tissues. It would be the throat and GI tract that would be most damaged. So what would this evidence do to the Tea and Tea Cup theory? Here is the rub. The tea cup and pot were found weeks after the incident. And the tea pot levels were way too high, in my opinion, to be consistent with Litvinenko’s slow death. Levels that discolored ceramics and melted tea leaves would have killed Litvinenko in a matter of days – not weeks. Which leaves only one possible answer – the pot and cup were planted later at the Millenium Pine Bar as a way to throw off the investigation.

As Epstein points out, the autopsy data is key in determining what scenario fits the evidence. And the fact it is still under wraps is very telling. There is no national security secrets that would be exposed by having the autopsy – everyone knows what Litvinenko died from. But there would be damage to the UK if the autopsy doesn’t fit the media stories – and to me that is the only reason to keep the report under wraps. The only secret it can be hiding is that the conventional propaganda surrounding Litvinenko’s death is not scientifically possible given the autopsy. Why else hide it?

And contrary to the conventional view that Russian businessman Lugovoi, who met with Litvinenko many times and had either the second or third most deadly Po-210 poisoning of this affair, is the center of the Po-210 trail, it is actually Litvinenko who is consistently linked to the trail:

From the list of the sites supplied to the Russian investigators, it is clear that a number of them coincide with Mr. Lugovoi’s movements in October and November 2006, but the direction is less certain. When Mr. Lugovoi flew from Moscow to London on October 15 on Transaero Airlines, no radiation traces were found on his plane. It was only after he had met with Litvinenko at Erinys International on October 16 that traces were found on the British Airways planes on which he later flew, suggesting to the Russian investigators that the trail began in London and then went to Moscow. They also found that in London the trail was inexplicably erratic, with traces that were found, as they noted, “in a place where a person stayed for a few minutes, but were absent in the place where he was staying for several hours, although these events follow one after another.” When the Russian investigators asked the British for a comprehensive list of all the sites tested, the British refused, saying it was not “in the interest of their investigation.” This led the Russian investigators to suspect that the British might be truncating the trail to “fit their case.”

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Litvinenko, who was probably the best witness to that day’s events, initially said he believed that he had been poisoned at his lunch with Mr. Scaramella at the Itsu restaurant. Even one week after he had been in the hospital, he gave a bedside BBC radio interview in which he still pointed to that meeting, saying Mr. Scaramella “gave me some papers…. after several hours I felt sick with symptoms of poisoning.” At no time did he even mention his later meeting at the Pine Bar with Mr. Lugovoi.

Not only did the Itsu have traces of polonium-210, but Mr. Scaramella was contaminated. Since Mr. Scaramella had just arrived from Italy and had not met with either Mr. Lugovoi or Mr. Kovtun, Litvinenko was the only one among those people known to be exposed to polonium-210 who could have contaminated him. Which means that Litvinenko had been tainted by the polonium-210 before he met Mr. Lugovoi at the Pine Bar. Litvinenko certainly could have been contaminated well before his meeting with Mr. Scaramella. Several nights earlier, he had gone to the Hey Joe club in Mayfair. According to its manager, Litvinenko was seated in the VIP lap-dancing cubicle that later tested positive for polonium-210.

I have always said the timeline of the trail was the key. The fact is Litvinenko could just as easily been the vector dropping Po-210 all over the place. If you map the trail to Litvinenko you get a much higher association than with Lugovoi. You can multiple scenarios over the trail and contacts – but one stands out:

The Russian investigators concluded that the all the radiation traces provided in the British report, including the “high level” cited by “Scientist A,” could have emanated from a single event, such as a leak — by design or accident — at the October 16 meeting at the security company in Berezovsky’s building. But they could not find “a single piece of evidence which would confirm the charge brought against A.K. Lugovoi.”

This goes back to the three incidents of Po-210 transiting London. The October 16th meeting is the only one which can account for all of the pattern – including Lugovoi’s business associate Dimitri Kovtun’s trail in Germany – which happened independently of Lugovoi’s travels.

With all that said, the case is still an enigma and the missing evidence – which could be public – is critical in solving the mystery. The fact it is not public is more damning to the UK than Russia. Epstein notes that it is the UK who has the most to lose if this incident was fully vetted and all leads followed to their logical conclusions:

The Russian investigation could also have veered into Litvinenko’s activities in the shadowy world of security consultants, including his dealings with the two security companies in Mr. Berezovsky’s building, Erinys International and Titon International, and his involvement with Mr. Scaramella in an attempt to plant incriminating evidence on a suspected nuclear-component smuggler — a plot for which Mr. Scaramella was jailed after his phone conversations with Litvinenko were intercepted by the Italian national police.

The Russians had asked for more information about radiation traces at the offices of these security companies, and Mr. Lugovoi had said that at one of them, Erinys, he had been offered large sums of money to provide compromising information about Russian officials. Mr. Kovtun, who also attended that meeting, backs up Mr. Lugovoi’s story. Such charges had the potential for embarrassing not only the security companies that had employed Litvinenko, as well as former Scotland Yard and British intelligence officers, but the British government, since it had provided Litvinenko with a passport under the alias “Edwin Redwald Carter” to travel to parts of the former Soviet Union.

It has been confirmed Berezovsky and Litvinenko were paid to support UK authorities. It is also clear they had their own agendas and were not above breaking laws to get what they wanted. It is very possible the two Russians were playing the UK, pretending to be working for them while actually the whole thing was a cover up for their own plans. That is the most optimistic scenario. The really bad scenario is the one where the UK knew about the Po-210 shipments and were working with Berezovsky to cover up what was happening with the whole Putin assassination spin.

None of these ‘excuses’ fly in the face of what happened. Back to Edward Jay Epstein to get back to the core of this story:

What it obscured is the elephant-in-the-room that haunts the case: the fact that a crucial component for building an early-stage nuke was smuggled into London in 2006. Was it brought in merely as a murder weapon or as part of a transaction on the international arms market?

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After considering all the evidence, my hypothesis is that Litvinenko came in contact with a polonium-210 smuggling operation and was, either wittingly or unwittingly, exposed to it. Litvinenko had been a person of interest to the intelligence services of many countries, including Britain’s MI-6, Russia’s FSB, America’s CIA (which rejected his offer to defect in 2000), and Italy’s SISMI, which was monitoring his phone conversations. His murky operations, whatever their purpose, involved his seeking contacts in one of the most lawless areas in the former Soviet Union, the Pankisi Gorge, which had become a center for arms smuggling. He had also dealt with people accused of everything from money laundering to trafficking in nuclear components. These activities may have brought him, or his associates, in contact with a sample of polonium-210, which then, either by accident or by design, contaminated and killed him.

To unlock the mystery, Britain must make available its secret evidence, including the autopsy report, the comprehensive list of places in which radiation was detected, and the surveillance reports of Litvinenko and his associates. If Britain considers it too sensitive for public release, it should be turned over to an international commission of inquiry. The stakes are too high here to leave unresolved the mystery of the smuggled polonium-210.

I agree – though there is no way the autopsy contains anything of risk to national security outside the fact it won’t fit the spin forming the conventional wisdom. Inconvenient truths need to be exposed more than any others. What concerns me more is the naiveté of the media and the citizens of the UK. Parts to a nuclear weapon are shipped through one of the largest Cities in the West (London) and the people are lulled into believing this was a murder, not something associated with WMD smuggling. This is not something we can just let slip by. If we can investigate water boarding of terrorists, who the NSA and FISA work to intercept terrorists plans for attacking us, how the CIA moves enemies caught on the battlefield for interrogation, then we can investigate why Po-210 was being shipped through London during the fall (and some say even the summer) of 2006.

Important Update: I want to note one other new item Epstein reports which also dashes the entire Lugovoi-assassin theory. One of the last places made public that had Po-210 contamination was the “Gentlemen’s” club called Hey Joe. Not until today did I learn who was associated with the part of the trail, and where it fell in the time line:

Litvinenko certainly could have been contaminated well before his meeting with Mr. Scaramella. Several nights earlier, he had gone to the Hey Joe club in Mayfair. According to its manager, Litvinenko was seated in the VIP lap-dancing cubicle that later tested positive for polonium-210.

Whatever else, the trail doesn’t lie. It seems the only way for this location to be contaminated was by Litvinenko – before Lugovoi was even in country. Lugovoi came into London the night before he met Litvinenko – late enough that he probably went straight to the hotel with his family. Kovtun came in the day of the meeting in the Pine Bar from Germany (where he was leaving a trail of his own – possibly started two weeks prior on Oct 16th, the last time Litvinenko, Lugovoi and Kovtun were all together (Litvinenko and Lugovoi met a week earlier in London – and yes there was Po-210 detected). So for Litvinenko to be contaminated and leaving traced many nights prior means he was personally exposed before the Pine Bar. Which again makes the Pine Bar assassination theory very, very weak (and possibly contrived).

The biggest problem in all of this is the fact that both the victim and the suspect are long time allies of Boris Berezovsky. Both men trailed Po-210, supposedly to Berezovsky’s London office. And Berezovsky is not shy when it comes to expressing his desire for a coup d’etat in Russia so he could put his puppet in place and start raking in the Rubles again. So is it any surprise I find Andrei Lugovoi’s recent desire to be the next Russian President a bit too coincidental to Berezosvsky’s biggest hopes?

But Lugovoi, the former Federal Guard Service officer wanted in Britain for the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, soon found himself talking about even higher office, telling journalists less than an hour after his confirmation that he would not rule out running in March’s presidential election.

Berezovsky hinted and hinted and hinted to Lugovoi anonomously during the early days that there could be repurcussions (e.g., assassination of him) if he did not work with authorities. I noticed it early on when Lugovoi’s name first appeared. Contrary to the news now (history rewritten in Orwellian ways), Berezovsky’s group initially DEFENDED Lugovoi of the charges:

ABC News reported that British detectives had identified Mr. Lugovoi as a prime suspect in the poisoning. The report cited an unnamed senior British official.
Alexander Goldfarb, a friend of Mr. Litvinenko’s, said he doubted that Mr. Lugovoi played a role in the killing.
“I frankly doubt that he was the hit man because hit men are usually people hiding in the dark,” Mr. Goldfarb told the AP. “I think it’s one of his associates, I think he was used unawares … Now his life is in danger because he knows a lot.”

They knew Lugovoi – he protects Berezovsky’s daughter while she is in Russia. But more interesting is the apparent signal Goldfarb was sending via the media. This is what I posted when I read this back in December 2006:

Now why would Goldfarb go out in public and defend Lugovoi? We know Lugovoi is an associate of Berezovsky’s and his relationship with Litvinenko was all business (Berezvosky business?). What struck me with this comment by Goldfarb was the clear indication of a possible threat message. Was Goldfarb signalling Lugovoi to implicate others and keep quiet about certain aspects of this case? If there is a Berezovsky angle to all this the fact the Russian police will be handling the questioning is probably more of a threat to any smuggling ring than the UK authorities who seem bent on an assassination theory. Or so they appear.

I had expected the Berezovsky team to cheer the identification of Litvinenko’s killer. And if you listen to them spin these days they swear up and down Lugovoi was always the prime suspect. The fact is the prime suspect in Litvinenko’s mind was supposedly Scaramella, then some with Lugovoi, and only recently has it always been Lugovoi.

We see the same shifting excuses with the Po-210 contamination in Berezovsky’s office. First it was from Litvinenko as he sweated out Po-210 (biologically not possible given the time of the poisoning and the hours it takes for the material to move through the body). Then it was from Lugovoi who supposedly visited a day earlier, until we learned Lugovoi’s flight into London that day came in that evening, getting them to their hotel in time for dinner and some sleep. All we know is Po-210 was in Berezovsky’s office and they admit Litvinenko was there (what time we do not know) and some of it is from him. It may be ALL of it is from him and his visit was before he met Lugovoi (that was the original story line, which has never been refuted or changed in any reporting).

Like I said, the evidence is all over the place. But one thing strikes me as quite odd. After all of this, Berezovsky still may get a long time associate of his into the Kremlin as President. What a coincidence?!

I have been focused on the trail of Po-210 and the timeline for the contamination because this is key to the UK authorities’ case, and key to whether the poisoning of Litvinenko was a political assassination, an accidental poisoning in relation to a smuggling ring with an attempt at a media-PR cover up, or some other bizarre plot not yet discovered.

In reviewing these three differing accounts of the days leading up to Litvinenko becoming ill I have discovered some critical disconnects. The credibility of these disconnects is tentative since I only have the press reports to go on and the shakey information they contain. But these disonnects should be easy for authorities to resolve if they want to bolster their theory of how and why Litvinenko died. The first of these disconnects is the apparent Po-210 levels required to discolor a porcelain teapot and turn tea leaves into a gooey muck, versus the microscopic levels that killed Litvinenko (obviously porcelain can stand up to more energy emmission (thermal, radioactive, etc) than human tissue). I discussed this disconnect a previous post and will save folks repeating the post.

But another disconnect has surfaced in my review. Actually, it would be more accurate to say this is a disconnect that has been around since this story broke. From day on the issue has been when did the offices of Berezovsky become contaminated and by whom? One of the most important details to come out of the Lugovoi briefing (which the UK press, in their fit of mob journalism, totally missed) was this claim his travel schedule on Oct 31, 2006 makes it highly unlikely that some of the contamination in Berezovsky’s office was from Lugovoi. Here is what Kovtun said about the theory Lugovoi met with Berezovsky on Oct 31, 2006 – the day before Litvinenko was fatally poisoned.

Berezovsky claims that Lugovoy was in his office in October 31. Check it, it’s easy. Lugovoy flew to London on October 31 on the last plane and was in his hotel at roughly 20.30, has a supper with his family and goes to bed. What’s the purpose of Berezovsky’s claims?

There are witnesses to this – Lugovoi’s family. But where are Berezovsky’s witnesses? Where is the evidence Lugovoi met Berezvosky on Oct 31? Why is this important? Here is Berezovsky’s account, from his testimony, of how PO-210 ended up in his office:

B.: On good will or it did not consciously for me be necessary to work or to encounter with the radioactive materials. But it happened so that in my office after visit its Mr. lugov on 31 October of past year discovered the traces of polonium -210. It is more precise, they were found on those armchairs, on which it [he] sat by Mr. lugov. I again want to emphasize – on 31 October. But also they were discovered in a considerably smaller quantity in those places, where in my office there was Mr. Litvinenko on 1 November. This only from the cases of my contact with the radioactive materials known to me.

The translation is rough since it is by a SW program, but the essence of this is Berezovsky is claiming BOTH Litvinenko and Lugovoi visited his office and trailed Po-210. But what if Kovtun and Lugovoi prove to be correct? Then the only person to trail Po-210 into Berezovsky’s office was Litvinenko – who could have also sat in the same armchair as probably many of Berezovsky’s visitors do. This would really demolish the UK theory – and if so we have a big story on our hands. One other thing to note. Lugovoi admits he did meet with Berezovsky on Oct 28th before he left London – and I believe there was some Po-210 discovered on the plane he took back to Moscow that day (from the Lugovoi/Kovtun presser).

“Berezovsky’s testimony is a lie. I didn’t see him on October 31. I met him four days before that.

Was the Po-210 coming into our out of Berezovsky’s office? Authorities need to be sure. I did find one other interesting surprise in the Berezvosky testimony and it revolves around how Lugovoi acquired the football game tickets he used the night of Nov 1 (which was why he was in town with his friends and family). In this part of the translation “Lugovoi” has been transposed with ‘meadow’ or ‘the meadow’, I guess due to some similarity in the name used and the translation SW. I have added some changes in brackets to fix these translation errors:

B.: I again want to say that 4 I remember no encounters with Kovtun. But I remember well encounter with the meadow [Lugovoi]. To me it was memorized, that this encounter was on 31 October, 2006, when meadow [Lugovoi] arrived to London. 4 it it [he] wanted to thank for the fact that it [he] ensured the protection of my daughter. It [He] arrived into the office, and we with it [he] met in my room. This was on 31 October, 2006, as I remember. And we with it [he] even saw the bottle of dry wine, and that that 4 already he [I] spoke earlier – the armchair, on which sat meadow [Lugovoi] and in my room, and into resepshn, it contained enormous track population polonium. And only these armchairs were iz”yaty Health Protection Agency, after referring to the fact that they cannot be cleaned of it was trace polonium. 4 personally with the meadow [Lugovoi] it [he] were not encountered after this.

K.: What you did discuss during the encounter?

B.: We discussed two questions. 4 he already said that 4 it [he] thanked for help of my daughter. And the second, he to me said that he now has a very successful business in Russia, that the revolutions of this business – tens of millions of dollars, and that it is very glad of this turn of events in its [his] life. 4 I do not recollect so that we would discuss some other problems. This was simply general conversation. Well and also he said that it [he] is going then to go to the football, which exactly takes place on 1 November. And how I remember, the tickets, which are here necessary were necessary to this match, it [he] obtained in my office. But it seems to me that this already occurred next day. But 4 I do not remember accurately.

This is where it get’s interesting. Because, if Lugovoi is found to not have visited Berezovsky then the Po-210 trail in Berezovsky’s office revolves around Litvinenko alone, and would pre-date Litvinenko’s visit with Lugovoi and Kovtun in the Pine Bar. If Litvinenko is contaminated prior to this meeting then he was NOT poisoned in the Pine Bar. And that means the poisoned tea story is a ruse and the teapot may be planted evidence meant to back up the ruse. On the other hand, if Lugovoi is proved to be in Berezovsky’s office on the 31st then Lugovoi is lying and the UK theory is heavily bolstered.

As I said, the football tickets are an interesting twist – but because of who purchased them for Lugovoi. They were provided by Berezovsky’s son-in-law, the husband of the daughter Lugovoi protected back in Russia. These tickets were at Berezovsky’s office. But note Berezovsky cannot recall when the tickets were picked up, Oct 31 or Nov 1. And he thinks they were picked up by Lugovoi. But how can he not be sure which day these were picked up if Lugovoi was there on Oct 31? Why not get the tickets then? My guess is the tickets weren’t there on Oct 31st (something easily checked). We also find Berezovsky attended the game – and then immediately left the country for a few days:

B.: I became known about the encounters post factum, when I returned to London – as 4 already he said, I flew away from London on 1 November. Also after football match.

Interestingly quick departure. Lugovoi has an alibi for the day on Nov 1 since he was with his family. So I still wonder why Berezovsky cannot place when the tickets were provided to Lugovoi and by whom. Especially if he was going to the game himself – where they could have simply met to hand over the tickets outside the gates. But let’s get back to who obtained the tickets for the Lugovois:

K.: In you is a relative on the name Yegor Schuppe?

B.: Yes, I know it [him]. Schuppe – this is the husband of my daughter. I.e., for me this my to zyat’

…

K.: Yegor Schuppe is familiar with the meadow [Lugovoi] and Kovtun?

B.: I consider that yes. At least, I know that precisely Yegor helped meadow [Lugovoi] with the acquisition of tickets to this football match. With other side, neither meadow [Lugovoi] nor Yegor they spoke never me that they are personally familiar. But I assume that this is actual so, because meadow [Lugovoi] also achieved protection of my daughter of Katya and her family. As 4 already he said, Yegor – husband of my daughter of Katya.

…

K.: The following question concerns football. Yegor Schuppe bought tickets to meadow [for Lugovoi] to the match “the Arsenal”- TscSka (Central Sports Club of the Army)?.

B.: How I understand, yes, on the request of meadow [Lugovoi] Yegor at least ordered these tickets. To me it is not known, who paid these tickets. But to me it is known that it [he] took away the tickets of meadow [Lugovoi] in my office.

…

K.: Who and as did transmit tickets to meadow [Lugovoi]?

B.: As far as to me it is known, meadow [Lugovoi] obtained tickets in my office. As rest was there – 4 I do not know.

Is Berezovsky now saying his son-in-law took the tickets from his office, where before he indcated it was Lugovoi who took the tickets? He is sounds as if he is not sure if Lugovoi picked up the tickets when he visited on OCT 31 – why not? Again, this is an important detail which Berezovsky appears to be having trouble trying to fit into his timeline. Or it could just be the poor translation SW? Why would Lugovoi not get the tickets from Berezovsky when he visited Berezovsky on the 31st? No one seems to ask, but it is strange that Berezovsky’s son-in-law is instrumental in getting the tickets to the game for Lugovoi, has them sent to Berezovsky’s office, and Lugovoi doesn’t pick them up on the 31st, nor does he meet Berezovsky at the game to get them. Very strange indeed. Was this a way to entice Lugovoi to London early?

This opens up all those bizarre theories outside the assassination and smuggling scenarios. I will let others speculate on why Berezovsky might entice Lugovoi to London with football tickets and then, all of a sudden, Po-210 traces show up everywhere and Litvinenko suddenly ends up dead. Could this have been an assassination attempt that backfired? Who knows.

If the UK has evidence as to when Lugovoi and Litvinenko visited Berezovsky’s offices I for one would like to see it. This information will not be critical to any court case now that these statements are out in the media. But it is critical to what the underlying motives and activities were. Po-210 traces in Berezovsky’s office left by Litvinenko alone prior to 4:30 PM on November 1 (the date/time of the infamous Pine Bar meeting) destroys the theory that the Pine Bar was the murder site. We need to know if Lugovio can be placed at Berezovsky’s the night of Oct 31, 2006. If he did eat with his family once they reached the hotel (and I would bet their are reciepts that support this) then that meeting would have to have taken place well after 8:30 PM. If Lugovoi did not go to Berezovsky’s, then the Pine Bar location falls apart as the the site of the murder – as does the teapot theory.

And none of these key elements are that hard to prove one way or the other.

Asked by Otvodov who might have wanted to kill Litvinenko and urged to provide proofs should any definite names be given, Berezovsky said there was no way to obtain polonium 210 in such quantity without involvement of state structures, the more so to arrange technology of not only receiving it but also of delivering it to another country. “Once it emerged that it was the polonium and that polonium was so hard to discover, those arguments have covered my previous thought of Putin’s non-involvement. Using exactly polonium leaves no doubts it was the state machine.”

Emphasis mine. Berezovksy again runs into the layman’s inability to comprehend the amounts be discussed here. Getting hold of ten millionths of a gram of Po-210 is NOT hard. For assassination this material would be pre-disolved or suspended in a liquid used to deliver the poison. Access to any of the commercial sources of minute amounts of Po-210 available in commercial sensors used for detecting static charge (if memory serves where Po-210 is used) then you can collect enough that way to kill Litvinenko.

But now if you want to collect the necessary amount needed for nuclear trigger, which I assume to be on the order of grams, that would be an amount that would support Berezovsky’s comments. Supposedly he is as much in the dark about the lethal dose as everyone else. But he seems to be of the mind the amount surrounding this event was quite large, not the microscopic amounts that killed Litvinenko (and the apparently larger amounts the make up the sum of the Po-210 trail). I think Berezovsky was trying to fib up a story and forgot that smuggling amounts are 10′s of thousands (if not millions) of times larger than that which supposedly killed Litvinenko. He may have been thinking in the back of his mind of the amounts he knew about, verses the amount that contaminated Litvinenko. Clearly his testimony is at odds with the cover story – there were no “such amounts” inside Litvinenko.

I also noted that the reporting of discolored porcelain and the one barman witness who claims to have seen melted tea leaves creating a some kind of gooey mass tells me the tea pot was way too contaminated to be the vessel that delivered ten millionths of a gram (or whatever the autopsy supposedly says) as his deadly dose of Polonium. Now I don’t think I have to be even that close (was in 100 thousandths of a gram that killed Litvinenko) because the amounts required to discolor porcelain and melt plant tissues is so much higher we can use estimates.

I worked for a while, a long time ago, with nuclear tagging medical tests, where we subject samples to solutions of nuclear material to see how much nuclear material binds to the biological sample. Low doses to be sure – but repeated constantly over and over again. The fact is animal cells can be killed off easily by radiation – Po-21o shows this to be true. But plants are designed to absorb radiation, it takes a little more melt them away into a pool of muck. But even ignoring this, porcelain is a tough material and the precursor of a lot of heat and energy resisting products we have today.

But forget my suspicions, this can be tested now by the UK and even the media. One only needs to gather up some representative tea pots and run two experiments. The first is to brew some Po-210 traced tea that will in the proper dosage to impart 10 millionths of a gram of Po-210 in six ounces (the teas Litvinenko supposedly gulped down and died from). The second is to brew tea with ever increasing amounts of Po-210 until the porcelain discolors. That will give the amount of Po-210 to discolor the tea pot – and I would bet the two doses will be miles apart. Orders of magnitude different.

If so then this would be the plausible scenarion: When Berezovsky, Zakayev and Litvinenko realize his poisoning could expose the smuggling effort they concoct a way to blame Lugovoi – whom Litvinenko met the day he fell ill. The story involves the tea at the Pine Bar (which was a very early theory it seems). They also plan the PR story about a Putin-directed assassination to buy time and misdirect the media. They wait to see if Litvinenko survives and the news can be contained.

But Litvinenko succumbs and they put their plans in place. But their concocted story has timeline problems – especially in Berezovsky’s office. They begin to realize how much of a trail Po-210 can leave. So they need to bolster their story. But being smugglers, and not scientists, they botch the effort to plant evidence. In a naive misunderstanding of how much Po-210 is required to kill and how solutions contain the same dosage/volume whether in a tea pot or tea cup and they soak the tea pot in Po-210 tea to make sure it is detected when they plant it. But that ruins the planted evidence – which is now way too hot to be the vessel that killed Litvinenko.

A simple test can confirm or dismiss this possibility. I know it. And now the others know who can act. And maybe even those responsible will hear about this – and realize it is only a matter of time before they are discovered.

I suspected we might get more information on some of the details and some are showing up. But it also appears the news media is doing a bang up job of ignoring critical discrepencies in favor of publicizing irrelevent BS – which is a sad commentary on their objectivity. I have two previous posts below which point to critical assumptions in the Po-210 trail and timeline. One of these details is the fact that original reports had Berezovsky claiming it was Litvinenko who contaminated his office after he met Scaramella (and their were reports of Po-210 on the copier he supposedly used). The problem is that would put Litvinenko’s contamination PRIOR to meeting Lugovoi and Kovtun in the Pine Bar, busting the UK’s pet theory.

When it turned out this was a problem Berezovsky claimed (and I thought no one disputed) that it was Lugovoi who contaminated the office when he visited Berezovsky the day before Litvinenko fell ill. Now Lugovoi has come out and contradicted this timeline, saying he met Berezovsky on the 28th of October during his previous trip to meet Litvinenko. This is the trip without Dimitri Kovtun present, who flew to Hamburg from Russia on the 28th and left the Po-210 trail there prior to returning to London on November 1 to meet Lugovoi and Litvinenko again (he met them on during the even early set of meetings around Oct 16th).

“Berezovsky’s testimony is a lie. I didn’t see him on October 31. I met him four days before that. And he never said why he called me. He continues to insist that he met with me to thank me for being his daughter’s bodyguard. And in reality the whole meeting was devoted to discussions of protecting Elena Tregubova. And I hadn’t had contact with him in seven years. He suddenly called me when he found out I was in London – that was a surprise. So he asked me to provide security for Elena. He said he was worried the same thing that happened to Politkovskaya might happen to her,” Lugovoy stated.

Is this true? Who knows. (Note: update with collaborating evidence farther down). In a previous post I noted Zakayev commenting he saw Lugovoi at one of Berezovsky’s birthday parties, which probably was not seven years ago. And supposedly you would think Lugovoi would meet with Berezovsky IF he was providing security for Berezovsky’s daughter (Note: see update 2 below for the answer to this point). But it is assumed someone may have some collaborating evidence or testimony. The point is these conflicts are key to unraveling events and no reporter should dismiss them – that sets them up to be the jury and not the press.

The full transcript of the interview Lugovoi and Kovtun had with the British media (apparently the first one) as some interesting perspectives, and some wild claims. I will limit my comments to some of the interesting items – you all can read the full transcript at your leisure and draw your own conclusions. I found Lugovoi making an interesting point as to why he thinks British intelligence has been involved in this as a supporter of the Berezovsky-Litvinenko claims:

A three-month investigation by Russian law enforcement agencies show – with pictures and phonecall recordings – Litvinenko describing all the developments around me for a year, and they reveal the direct involvement of the UK secret service.

Well, Litvinenko and Lugovoi met 12-13 times over the year before Litvinenko’s poisoning, but if they can show he had more information than would be expected from regular business contacts that would be an interesting development. At least I understand now why he thinks there was some behind the scenes coordination.

They are using this provocatively, to undermine everything taking place in Russia. I definitely mean Mr. Berezovsky and his accomplices and some member of the UK establishment, Lord Bell in particular, who carries out most of the PR campaign against Russia, funded by Berezovsky.

This is an excellent point and one I noted early on. Bell’s PR group were brought in to take those photos of a dying Litvinenko we see all the time. Why would someone bring in a PR group to deal with a friend’s tragic death? The media machine (including Alex Goldfarb who has been the spokesman for Berezovsky all through this) gives this whole incident the air of a staged act. And Lugovoi makes another good point – he and Kovtun voluntarily provided information about his meetings with Litvinenko to authorities before he died and before the Po-210 was discovered:

I draw your attention to the fact that on November 20, three days prior to the death of Litvinenko, I, of my own free will, and being sane, together with Dmitry Kovtun and with my lawyers, went to the UK embassy and made a written statement and handed them over the documents of our meetings with Litvinenko. We left all our contact information – addresses, phone numbers, phone numbers of relatives, e-mails – and definitively offered a meeting.

Recall that Lugovoi was communicating with Berezovsky and Litvinenko up to this point – they were in contact. And also note Berezovsky would not name Lugovoi as a suspect for a long time. Why not try and help Litvinenko and provide his story to authorities? Lugovoi makes another claim the UK media should be able to check out, which does make one wonder what is going on in the UK?

I draw your attention to the fact that our statement to the UK embassy had not been transferred to the police and the Crown Prosecution.. That was a decisive moment for me, which could have solved everything.

Evidence was not transferred to the investigators? Statements on their meetings did not become part of the investigation? This sounds as bizarre as the UK arresting a supposed Russian assassin, then just letting him go back to Russia – and not once mentioning the incident or lodging a complaint to the Russian government! And we get a lot more about some of the vague claims made about Litvinenko’s travels and associations with the most extreme of the Chechen rebels:

Dmitry Kovtun: I want to ask several questions for you to think about. Zakayev [Akhmed Zakayev, Chechen envoy living in exile in Britain and wanted in Russia] claims that Litvinenko has never been to Pankisi Gorge in Georgia. But a week before the book by Goldfarb and Litvinenko’s widow was published, we claimed that Litvinenko was there on the orders of Zakayev. Goldfarb writes in his book that in 2002 Felshtinsky together with Litvinenko were in Georgia. Litvinenko went under the name of Edward Carter and was wearing dark glasses. Check it out, carry out an investigation, who’s lying and what’s the purpose of it?

I have written before about the Georgia angle since it has been a location rife for nuclear smuggling out of Russia (see here). More damning is Berezovsky’s ties to this region as the place where his coup will originate from – and will happen before 2008 (see here). So why was Litvinenko in Georgia under a fake name and passport? We all know the UK gave Berezovsky a fake name and passport for travel. Why are these angles not being investigated – let alone reported? As always I see too many coincidences regarding Russians, Geogia and nuclear materials. Here is one story where weapons grade uranium was trying to be smuggled in January 2006 – making the smuggling of the Po-210 in October a good time to bring in this last, time limited component. And here is a story of a nuclear smuggling ring to Iran being uncovered in the UK. All coincidence?

Is it so hard to concieve of UK authorities trying to cover up the fact their country has been a conduit for uranium and polonium? But I digress. Back to the interview (and the collaborating evidence I mentioned above):

Berezovsky claims that Lugovoy was in his office in October 31. Check it, it’s easy. Lugovoy flew to London on October 31 on the last plane and was in his hotel at roughly 20.30, has a supper with his family and goes to bed. What’s the purpose of Berezovsky’s claims?

If true the theory being peddled by the UK authorities is destroyed. If Lugovoi did not see Berezovsky on the 31st then Litvinenko and Berezovsky’s office were contaminated BEFORE Litvinenko met with Lugovoi and Kovtun in the Pine Bar on Nov 1 around 4:30 PM. I would think the UK authorities would know what flight Lugovoi came in on. And I am sure Berezovsky’s office would have records of when he left for the day. My guess is this will bust the conventional wisdom about this case. But I am not holding out hope the pliant UK media will get off their arses and find out for sure.

One other thought about the timeline. I believe the flight Lugovoi took from London to Moscow on the 28th showed signs of Po-210. If that is the day Lugovoi met with Berezovsky (and there are multiple contamination sites in his office supposedly) it is possible Lugovoi was contaminated at Berezovsky’s office – the opposite of what was proposed up until now.

If Litvinenko was poisoned before he went to the Pine Bar then he too, having visited Berezovsky’s office that day, been contaminated at the same office. It could be that the trail does not lead to Berezovsky’s office, it eminates from it. Food for thought.

The reason I bring this up is I still think this is a smuggling effort gone bad and Litvinenko KNEW he had been exposed to Po-210. This would make the Putin PR stunt (the claim only came out after Litvinenko failed to survive – not while he was still alive) a cover story to hide the smuggling ring. And Lugovoi points to what could have been an unforced error in this cover tale Berezovsky tried to weave through his surrogates:

Eight months after the beginning of this story, Mr. Felshtinsky claims that he saw Lugovoy in London on October 12, that Lugovoy stayed there illegally and that he has firm evidence that Lugovoy is guilty. Let him show it. Whom are they covering with these claims about October 12 and October 31.?

What has Scotland Yard come close to finding out that Berezovsky decides to let Felshtinsky make such statements? Polonium traces could date back to October 12. Think about that? Ask yourself?

Good question. When I heard this strange claim the first time I suspected we had four shipments of Po-210, not the three we think happened (Oct 16-18, 25-18, 31-Nov 1). It definitely does not help the assassination claim to have four runs of Po-210 into London when an amount required to kill Litvinenko is the size of a grain of dust. And there is an even more damning question about the Po-210 trail, which doesn’t seem to follow Lugovoi, just intersects with his movements on occassion:

I ask you why there are polonium traces at locations I didn’t visit, and there are no such traces at places that I did? Why has Scotland Yard asked us about the places we never visited but where polonium traces were found? Why are there no traces of polonium on the plane I flew from Moscow? We flew on a Transaero plane on October 16, where no traces of polonium were found. But three hours after our arrival at the Erius company HQ at 25 Grosvenor St, if I’m not mistaken, large amounts of polonium were discovered. And after all that you claim that the traces are from Moscow.

BTW, that is a new company name for me. And Kovtun makes a pretty startling claim:

Dmitry Kovtun: Check the planes which flew on October 12. Felshtinsky appeared on purpose.

Were there traces of Po-210 on planes on October 12th? And if folks do not know this by now, I read things and post in parallel, so I find things later that answer items I write early on in the post. Given the length of this post and my time constraints I will be adding adding updates in line. We have the answer to why Lugovoi did not meet Berezosvky when he provided her security (update 2):

He claims he met me to thank me for providing security for his daughter. Firstly, he knew nothing about it by then because Lisa contacted me independently and other people paid for her. We discussed providing security for Elena Tregubova. Seven years had passed since our last meeting and we never discussed business in the meantime.

Well, seems Lugovoi is fairly believable – he backs up his claims. Two other interesting points. One on the handling of evidence:

And the British evidence is the traces of polonium that were found after a month. I may sometimes sound cynical, but there is nothing else to say. Everything was found after a month, but are you sure that during that time nobody could have been to these place after me. I am not.

It is a very valid point. I have said many times the teapot and cup found at the Millenium hotel a month later were too hot, too contaminated to have given the fatal dose to Litvinenko. His insides would have melted. If there was a smuggling ring, and they held onto their contraband, it is not beyond reason they tried to lay clues out. And it is also not beyond reason they mishandled the planting of the evidence. We have not seen numbers yet, but the claim there was discoloration of porcelain and melting of tea leaves into a goo are perposterous. Litvinenko died from 10 millionths of a gram. If you read the Zakayev testimony about the tea it was supposedly already poured and Litvinenko supposedly downed it in three gulps. There is no way a concentration of ten millionths of a gram in 6 ounces of tea would do anything to biological material or porcelain. What we need to see is a scientific review of the material to see if it is, as I suspect, way too toxic to be what killed Litvinenko. And if it is way too toxic, then it was planted evidence.

The final item is the fact Litvinenko may have been dripping Po-210 for some months prior to his death:

Why don’t the British Prosecutors send their material here? I’ll tell you, because the evidence of me NOT being involved in Litvinenko’s death, that I presented to Russian prosecutors, is very strong. The absence of polonium traces in the Transaero plane, the things that Livinenko gave me long before October 2006 which have polonium on them.

If he has proof of this, and it might show up as a different batch of Po-210 which has experienced much more decay than the batch that got Litvinenko (contains more lead), then it will add to all the evidence that is just destroying the UK’s case.

Finally, when I read the vague and vacuous news reports regarding this interview I was highly suspicious and critical of Lugovoi. But I realize now that was due to nearly criminally negligent way the UK media is treating this story. There are conflicting statements between Lugovoi and Berezovsky’s cadre, damning ones if Lugovoi is being truthful. The media is not trying to report this story honestly, and given the deadly implications of this issue – dealing with nuclear material that is optimal for a dirty bomb or nuclear trigger – they media is committing a serious misjustice here. Even if Lugovoi is not truthful, since we do not know yet these contradictions cannot be dismissed until we find the truth.

First some words about Zakayev (AZ) and his relationship with Litvinenko from his testimony:

AZ: I, Ahmed Zakayev, am the foreign affairs minister of the Chechen Republic, temporarily located in London. After the British court ruling concerning my illegal persecution by the Russian authorities, the British authorities offered me political asylum, and I am currently living and working in Britain.

…

AZ: And in the spring of 2002 I met with Alexander Litvinenko here, in London, and after that we kept in constant contact and cooperated together. I was also the representative of the government commission for the investigation of war crimes committed on the territory of Chechnya by the Russian occupying troops. And Alexander Litvinenko was inducted by me into that commission. And we worked very productively with Sasha; he helped us very much.

He possessed an enormous amount of information. In fact, with the help of Alexander Litvinenko we identified the people directly in charge of the operations in the Chechen Republic. … And he also worked in our information agencies. He published articles, lists of Russian soldiers and leaders of the Russian military’s special forces who were involved in these crimes. Practically right up to the last days of his life we were working in exactly that direction.

Clearly close associates fighting for the Chechen rebels. Now to the key information:

R: Did your activities at any point include the spreading of harmful or poisonous materials or substances, including polonium-210?

AZ: No, I had never had any contact [with such substances] until the death of Alexander Litvinenko. After his death, it was established that traces of polonium had been found in my car, and it was investigated by Scotland Yard. Precisely the back seat where Alexander Litvinenko was sitting on that unfortunate day. That was the first time in my whole life that I encountered polonium-210.

This much has been known to those of us who follow this story closely. But what has been assumed is this ride home came after Litvinenko left the Pine Bar – and, in some stories, visited some other security firms. The Po-210 would not hit immediately and could take a few hours for Litvinenko to start feeling effects. Early reporting of the timeline had Litvinenko contacting Zakayev to pick him because he was starting to feel ill. But from Zakayev’s only testimony none of this works out:

AZ: In October, I met regularly with Alexander, I can’t say whether at home, at work, around town. If the day in question is November 1, the day of Alexander Litvinenko’s poisoning, that day I picked him up in town. I was in town after lunch, we talked on the phone and after lunch we went home. We came home together, I dropped him off at home, and drove off, and that was all. On the 2nd, he was supposed to come over in the evening, but that evening he never arrived.

This totally destroys the timeline, unless Zakayev has a totally different concept of ‘lunch’ and ‘evening’ (recall this is November in London, where it can begin to get dark around 4-5 PM). Another timeline item to note is Litvinenko’s 3:00 PM meeting with Scaramella where he had just come from some meeting, and was hungry. It is completely possible Litvinenko went home and then was contacted by Scaramella to meet him with the urgent news (per the ealry reporting) of the potential threat on Litvinenko’s and Berezovsky’s life. And as I noted in this previous post this morning, Litvinenko supposedly went from the Scaramella meeting to Berezovsky’s office to copy the files he was given – leaving little time to be driven home by Zakayev, and then get back to the Millenium Pine Bar around 4:30 PM. This timing around the Scaramella meeting is alluded to with the call from Litvinenko (then the subsequent meeting and drive home)

AZ: On November 1, when he called me, I was attending my English class. Sasha told me that today he would be receiving information about who was behind the murder of Anna Politkovskaya.

Clearly this is BEFORE the Scaramella meeting, or else Zakayev would have mentioned getting the information from Litvinenko (he had the Scaramella files and supposedly copies he made at Berezovsky’s office) I should point out Zakayev seems to stumble on the point of the papers – first saying it was after November 1st, then apparently correcting himself:

AZ: And after the first [of November], after that phone call, I was in town, and we talked on the phone, and when we went back home together on November 1st, Sasha had some kind of papers with him that he had gotten, according to him, from Mario Scaramella.

So, was Litvinenko trailing Po-210 prior to the Pine Bar meeting? Looks like it. And that destroys what we have been told to date as the timeline of events. Zakayev’s story shifts and is apparently in conflict with itself, telling me it is a cover story. More if time permits, but here is an interesting tidbit regarding Litvinenko, Berezovsky and Lugovoi:

R: We are going to move on to questions about other people, Lugovoi and Kovtun. Do you know them?

AZ: I know one of them, Lugovoi. I met him once, and Alexander Litvinenko reminded me of that when I was [with him] in the hospital. When Sasha told me that he had met with Lugovoi and with Kovtun, I asked who they are. Sasha said to me, “you know one of them – Lugovoi, you met him at Boris Berezovsky’s birthday party, we sat at the same table.” And when I saw his press conference, photographs [of him], on television, I recognized him, I had seen him once.

…

Is Boris Berezovsky acquainted with Lugovoi and Kovtun?

AZ: I think with Lugovoi, yes, because I met him at [Boris Berezovsky's] birthday party.

Clearly all those who are at the center of this, and who were contaminated, exist in the sphere of one Boris Berezovsky – not Putin.

There is no evidence, there is no proof. Everything that the Crown Prosecution Service says is a lie, inspired by the British top leadership together with the special services,” Lugovoi told British journalists via a video link with Moscow.

He said there is not even any proof that Litvinenko in fact died of radioactive poisoning, adding that the cause of death is still unknown.

…

Lugovoi said that fugitive oligarch Boris Berezovsky was involved in the crime, as well as in the murder of Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

“It was a thoroughly planned provocation. I believe there was to have been the chain ‘Politkovskaya – Litvinenko – Tregubova [journalist Yelena Tregubova],” Lugovoi told journalists.

…

Lugovoi also said he had not traveled to Britain for questioning because the country’s authorities never invited him.

“I am not going and will not go to Britain, because nobody invited me there,” he said.

There is little doubt what killed Litvinenko and made Lugovoi and Kovtun very ill. It must be a Russian thing to say something way over-the-top and think everyone will take them seriously. OK, so that is silly, but parrotting the Russian line about the linking of the deaths without evidence is too much. As is, of course, the expectation Lugovoi was going to get a quaint invitation from Scotland Yard. Too much of a staged show as have been the media bursts in the UK.

But there are some statements which are not so out of the realm of reality:

The head of the investigating committee at the General Prosecutor’s Office said Tuesday Russia has not yet received any evidence from Britain on Lugovoi.

“We have not received any evidence from London of Lugovoi’s guilt, and those documents we have are full of blank spaces and contradictions,” Alexander Bastrykin said in an interview with a government daily, Rossiskaya Gazeta, which was published Wednesday.

I think it is true the UK has held back there evidence – possibly because it would tip off their case and get leaked to the media. But the fact is there is a battle of propaganda and media manipulation raging between the UK-Berezovsky camp and the Russian-Lugovoi camp. And the real question is why would these nominal allies line up against each other? We know Polonium-210 was being smuggled through London. But we don’t know why and why so much being moved when an amount equal to a grain of sand could kill many Litvinenkos.

The Po-210 trail is still the key. I find it strange that Mario Scaramella has dropped off the radar – and we don’t even know if he was exposed to Po-210 or not. It is important because Scaramell met Litvinenko at 3:00 PM on November 1, and 90-120 minutes before meeting up with Lugovoi and Kovtun at the Millenium Hotel’s Pine Bar. If Po-210 is traced to that meeting then Litvinenko was exposed before the Pine Bar.

The other question mark is how adn when Berezovsky’s office was contaminated. Early on Berezvosky was admitting Litvinenko was in his office prior to the Pine Bar meeting. His claims at the time were that Litvinenko was the source of the contamination. This can be seen here in this early post of mine where traces of Polonium were found on a copier he used:

The documents passed between Scaramella and Litvinenko at Itsu also appear to have been contaminated.
After the meal, the Russian hurried to Berezovsky’s nearby office where he appeared, according to a well-informed source, in an “agitated” state.

He showed the documents to Berezovsky, who skimmed through them and passed them to a colleague. Litvinenko then photocopied them. Tests later found traces of radiation on the photocopying machine.

But this conflicts with another line of thinking: (see here).

A further mystery arises because of conflicting evidence about Berezovsky’s Mayfair office, which is near the Sheraton. One source last week claimed that Lugovoi had visited the office during his trip to London between October 25 and 28. But another well-informed source said that Lugovoi had visited it on October 31 or November 1.
The timing is important, because whenever Lugovoi did visit the office he appears to have been strongly radioactive — traces have been found there.
He and Berezovsky greeted each other with a hug and Lugovoi sat on a sofa while they drank white wine. The source said: “When investigators later tested for radioactivity, the maximum activity was on the cream-coloured sofa where Lugovoi was sitting while he drank wine.”

Finally, one other piece of the puzzle is how many people in the office building were actually contaminated (see here):

They are among 116 people – mostly hotel staff, visitors and guests and office workers – who have tested positive for polonium-210.

How many of those 116 (and this number could have grown since this early story) were in Berezovsky’s office? How bad was the contamination? The timeline can go either way and has lots of possibilities. One reasonable scenario is Berezovsky was the source of contamination. What bothers me is we don’t know and are trusting in this media facade going on between the UK and Russia to get to the bottom of this. What has been happening instead is the media circus has been distracting to the essence of this story. Why was Po-210 being transported through London? The assasination theory is only one possible angle and all other options need to be eliminated before it can hold water. So far it appears the optional scenarios are simply being ignored.

ditors at Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper where Politkovskaya worked, praised the investigation as having identified suspects who appeared to be genuinely involved in the slaying.

“We are fully satisfied with the way the investigation proceeded,” said Dmitry Muratov, Novaya Gazeta’s editor in chief. “It was an honest, unbiased and efficient investigation. What’s more, we fully cooperated with the investigators and they didn’t hide anything from us.”

The investigation discovered that officers from the Interior Ministry police and the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the domestic successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB, played “very instrumental” roles in setting up the slaying, Muratov said.

“We know everything the investigators know, and they know everything we know,” he said. “This is why the authorities couldn’t hide the results of the investigation even if they wanted to.”

This is big news which should up end the conventional wisdom that Putin is the dangerous leader. It is turning out those in exile and desperate to get back into power are the ones who would use murder as a propaganda tool. And if this is the case, then why would they not use nuclear material smuggled through London to disrupt Russia and begin the take over of Russia one such Oligarch, Boris Berezovsky, has openly called for. In his own words:

Russia expects exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky to be extradited from Britain where he has refugee status after the billionaire told a newspaper he was planning a revolution to topple President Vladimir Putin, Reuters news agency reports.

“We need to use force to change this regime, ”Berezovsky said in his interview with Guardian newspaper Friday.

I would include executing journalists in the definition of using force to change a regime. Why is the UK still sticking by Berezovsky? It is now clear (and admitted) that Berezovsky worked as an asset to British Intelligence, as did Litvinenko for some time (until they realized how useless he was). Berezovsky could have easily been playing the UK off Russia, establishing tensions where none existed. Providing intelligence does not mean he does not have grander schemes, like the overthrow of Russia. And he has also claimed he has people in place in Russia ready to move when the time comes.

Is Britian being played here? I would bet against it without hesitation on any other matter. But Berezovsky is up to something serious. And it is also possible Litvinenko was running amok and doing something unbeknownst to Berezovsky that involed Polonium-210, since Berezovsky was reducing the young lad’s allowance and Litvinenko needed money.

The Litvinenko death and Politkovskaya murder have always been tied together in peoples’ minds. So what if they were partially right? More from the article:

Chaika said those arrested were the alleged “organizers, accomplices and perpetrators of the crime.”

He suggested that the order to kill Politkovskaya came from opponents of Putin living abroad and was aimed at casting suspicion on the president’s government.

Pro-Kremlin media made similar statements immediately after Politkovskaya was slain. The same argument was later used after Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko died in London last year from radioactive polonium-210 poisoning.

What if these people were right, that it was the Oligarch’s trying to stain Putin so they could garner support for a coup? Putin has what he needs and can get what he wants. He is not facing election. He has no motive outside the conspiracy fantasies of people with no proof. On the flip side, we have the words of these Oligarchs stating their plans. And we know, as the article points out, they are the ones who truly gained from the publicity surrounding these deaths. Publicity they paid PR firms to help promote.

Update: As more people weigh in on this news, the more indications there are that the media’s conventional wisdom regarding the deaths of Litvinenko and Politkovskaya, as well as others. And we see hints of information that does indicate what I have suspected, that the Oligarch’s are the source of much of these acts of violence:

If all of Mr Chaika’s claims are to be believed, it would mean that members of Russia’s security services are under the command of Boris Berezovsky. ” The level of corruption in Russia can bring many unpleasant surprises,” said Gennady Gudkov, a former FSB colonel and now a member of the security committee of the Duma, or parliament. Mr Gudkov said he was certain the London-based exile was behind the killing: “My information leads me to believe that Berezovsky himself, or people controlled by him, are behind both this act and many acts of terrorism.”

It is important to remember that some members of this activity may decide to sing to authorities. We shall see soon enough. But what is fascinating is to see the media face the concept they have been wrong and had jumped to conclusions – many times based on information being fed to them by these very same Oligarchs:

“It’s good that there has been progress in the case,” said Igor Yakovenko, secretary-general of the Russian Union of Journalists. “If we believe everything that Chaika says then this is the end of the sad tradition of the murders of journalists in Russia going unsolved.” But, he said, there were several doubts about the allegations. “It’s worrying that, even before the investigation has been officially completed, they are pointing the finger at people abroad,” he said.

Dmitry Muratov, the editor of Novaya Gazeta, the opposition newspaper where Politkovskaya published her hard-hitting reports on Russian politics and the conflict in Chechnya, expressed similar doubts. “We have known about this for a while. We’ve worked together with their investigation and we trust their professionalism,” said Mr Muratov. “But we are absolutely amazed that they have openly stated they know who ordered the crime before the investigation has even been completed.”

Who wouldn’t be ‘absolutely amazed’ when their preconceptions prove to be in error? The fact is the media as not been scrutinizing the information, has not as been skeptical of claims by the Oligarchs as they were of the Kremlin. The media, in short, as not been objective. That much has been obvious from day one.

Then something truly bizarre happens. The top Oligarch teams up in London with a Chechen ally and a Chechen rebel leader and they begin to put out stories and books that claim the Chechen did none of these things, it was all the government of Putin. This causes the liberal media (who always suspect government and never ‘dissidents’) to go investigate these claims. Now the Putin government, if the claims are as much BS as we all are pretty sure they are, is not worried about any investigation. It finds the whole thing sadly pathetic.

But what if the Chechens, working with their propagandist in London, fear the media investigations will show there is no conspiracy by Putin? What then happens to their reputation and credibility? Well, they have the answer right in front of them. Like moths to the flame the liberal media sock puppets start looking. If they do not penetrate the facade they are fine. But if someone did penetrate the facade, like one probably did, then the answer is clear. Kill the journalist and blame her death on Putin – so as to keep the conspiracy theory alive and the puppets on their strings making some in the world believe there is no way Chechens could bomb buildings, kill children, gas theatres – or plant a nuclear dirty bomb in the middle of Moscow (as the Chechens did in 1995 – the only known nuclear dirty bomb ever deployed).

It is a reasonable string of events given the modern day manipulation of public opinion by nefarious and dangerous groups. So people need to sit back and analyze this kind of news, not accept it as facts for puppet from media puppets:

Russian prosecutors have arrested 10 people in connection with the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. The killers are said to be a Chechen gang with links to Russian security forces.

…

Speaking a few hours later at a news conference, Chaika added more detail. He said that an ethnic Chechen crime boss had organized the killing of Politkovskaya, and that Russian police and security officers were involved. Chaika also said that the person who ordered the Politkovskaya killing is “abroad,” without going into further detail. “Our investigation has led us to conclude that only people living abroad could be interested in killing Politkovskaya,” he said.

I think we are on the brink of some major break through in both this case and the Litvinenko case. Those abroad who have FSB contacts include Berezovsky – who sat on the Russian equivalent of our National Security Council. We all know his long time associates Litvinenko and Lugovoi (yes, both were long term associates of Berezovsky’s) were tied to the FSB and other remnants of the old KGB. The fact is, depending on the truth to the matter, the folks who are lying are the ones who would be interested in stopping the investigation into the matter. And there is more than one murder here:

He also said that the organized crime group suspected of Politkovskaya’s murder may also be linked to the murder of central bank deputy chief Andrei Kozlov, as well as to the 2004 murder of US journalist Paul Klebnikov. Kozlov, who was killed a few days before Politkovskaya, had led a crusade against money laundering, while Klebnikov had written exposés about Russia’s oligarchs and insulted an underground Chechen leader in a book.

The Chechens have a record of bloody brutality. Putin has a reputation for a iron will. It doesn’t take much objective analysis to see which way the pendulum swings. Putin HAS what he wants – killing now gains him nothing. Berezovsky has openly called for the violent overthrow of Russia since, in the next election, there is little chance the people of Russia will reject all Putin has done for them since the days of Yeltsin’s back room deals with the Oligarchs. Who has something they want so bad they would kill for? Chechens and Berezovsky and the Oligarchs all fit that bill.

From my first post on the Litvinenko story I had serious doubts about the planned PR nature of the Litvinenko death and the idea an assassin would use such an unstable, slow acting and detectable substance. Since that post I have noted huge discrepencies between the assassination theory placed in the media by a PR firm hired by Litvinenko’s one time financial sugar daddy – Boris Berezovsky. The Polonium-210 (Po-210) timeline and trail are key to the mystery of how the Po-210 was entering London and contaminating people. The top three contaminated people are Alexander Litvinenko, Andre Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun. Both Litvinenko and Lugovoi have long time ties to exiled Russian Oligarch Boris Berezovsky – whose office is one of the prime contamination sites.

Just in the last few days much more information has been added to the trail, sadly without the benefit if putting the locations on the over all time line. The Daily Mail has an updated map of the contaminated sites:

The new sites include a “Gentlemen’s Club”, another restaurant, a taxi and – very interestingly – Litvinenko’s Mercede’s. The cars are of course not shown. But what is really interesting the details mentioned in another story:

In the “gentlemen’s nightclub” Hey Jo, traces of polonium were found on seating, cushions and cubicle doors. These were then cleaned to reduce the levels of the substance.

Two items in the Moroccan restaurant that displayed high levels of contamination – a fabric shisha pipe handle and a cushion cover – were removed. Mr Litvinenko’s car had high levels of contamination and a large bag of waste was removed from the Lambeth taxi to reduce polonium traces to safe levels.

It is quite clear from these details the material was transmitted via hands or clothing. The “cubicle doors” at the club hint it was Polonium on the hands while the cushions in the club and the Moroccan restaurant indicate the Polonium was also on the clothes.

But as I said, the real kicker is Litvinenko’s car with ‘high levels of contamination’. From reporting and and his wife Marina’s own comments we know that Alexander Litvinenko did not drive his car on or after November 1st – when he was lethally contaminated. So for his car to have a large amount of contamination is suspect. Note that Marina and her son have very low contamination from Po-210 – so it is hard to see how Po-210 could have contaminated her less than the car she may have driven. We know Litvinenko did not drive the car after noon on November 1 because Litvinenko took a cab into London to meet some businessmen at noon (the cab was supposedly clear of contamination) and he was picked up by Chechen Rebel leader in exile (and neighbor) Ahmed Zakayev and taken home that evening were he began to feel ill.

Without time frames for the cab and restaurant and club it is hard to see where this all fits. But I think it is highly unlikely the Hey Jo club was contaminated by Lugovoi during the media’s prime weekend of Oct 31st to November 1st. One of my older posts on this story as a link to one of the best time lines available to date:

They are also expected to question a number of people who have protested their innocence in the Russian media and expressed their eagerness to meet officers from the Yard – one is Andrei Lugovoi, another former intelligence officer, who runs a chain of firms.

He saw Mr Litvinenko in London 12 or 13 times this year to discuss business proposals. Mr Lugovoi says they met on October 16, and the next day [Oct 17]talked at Itsu, the sushi bar where Mr Litvinenko met Mr Scaramella two weeks later, and where traces of polonium-210 were detected.

After going to Moscow the following day [Oct 18]>, on a flight by Transaero, a Russian airline, Mr Lugovoi says he returned to London on a BA flight on October 25. He again met Mr Litvinenko at the Sheraton Park Lane hotel. He returned to Moscow on October 28, and flew to London three days later Oct 31 with his wife and son to watch the Arsenal-CSKA Moscow match on November 1. They stayed at the Millennium Hotel, opposite the US embassy in Grosvenor Square, and met Mr Litvinenko there again on November 1. They returned to Moscow along with several Russian acquaintances on November 3.

I have put dates in brackets so people can note the key periods in the timeline. It is highly unlikely Lugovoi spent his first night in London with his wife and kids at a gentlemen’s club. Possible – but unlikely. So this contamination probably happened on an earlier trip.

What do we know about the timing of the plots in the map above? We know Dimitre Kovtun was with Lugovoi during the Oct 16-18th, flying back to Moscow with Lugovoi. When Lugovoi left for Moscow on the 28th, Kovtun was flying to Hamburg – where the Po-210 trail was detected around his movements there . Kovtun left Hamburg on Nov 1 to meet up with Lugovoi and Litvinenko the day Litvinenko got his fatal dose (and I do believe Litvinenko got his last fatal dose on Oct 31 or Nov 1 – but it was not his first dose).

Airline contamination is a big deal in this story. And we have some interesting details on that as well. First from he last article linked:

Subsequent tests have shown that the Transaero aircraft was not contaminated by polonium-210, and nor was the hotel where Mr Lugovoi stayed on his first visit.

Traces have been found on two BA 767s which flew Mr Lugovoi back to London on the 25th and 31st, and at the Sheraton Park Lane and Millennium hotels, where he stayed on his two final visits. Significant quantities are thought to have been found at the Sheraton. Mr Lugovoi stayed there a week before November 1, believed to be the date Mr Litvinenko was poisoned.

Much of the eighth floor was sealed off last week by police who warned anyone approaching that their health could be at risk.Last night the hotel said polonium-210 had been found in five guest rooms, but not in any public area.

The BBC is now reporting 8 airline flights have shown contamination:

In addition to the four there have been 23 further positive tests including those carried out at Mr Litvinenko’s home, the hospitals where he was treated and on eight aircraft.

I am still wondering if Lugovoi and Kovtun were working WITH Litvinenko in smuggling Po-210 or were unwitting victims. Either way, there are more flights contaminated than possibly available over the three visits from Kovtun and Lugovoi. When were the 8 flights contaminated and by who? We supposedly have two flights from Moscow, on the 25th and 31st of October, to London for Lugovoi showing contamination. But not his return flight on the 18th. (Note: there is a lot of conflicting reporting on which flights in which direction were contaminated). That leaves six flights. I have not seen firm reporing on Kovtun’s flight out of Moscow to Hamburg on the 28th, but this posting of mine on a Washington Post story indicates that Kovtun’s flight from Hamburg to London on November 1 did not show signs of Po-210. So even if we assume the Moscow to Hamburg flight showed contamination, where did the other 5 flights come from?

A side note, there as been confused and shifting reporting on how many trips surrounding Lugovoi’s meetings with Litvinenko in London showed Po-210 contamination. The story above came out before indications Po-210 was showing up during the Oct 16-18th meeting. At last count from this previous post there were four hotels contaminated covering all three trips to London where Litvinenko and Lugovoi met (Oct 16-18, Oct 25-28, Oct 31-Nov1). So we can include travel surrounding this trip as well. I can only assume Lugovoi and Kovtun travelled together on the 16-18th, so maybe these are two of the five contaminated flights left to be accounted for?

And there was reporting in this post at least one flight (10/18, 10/28, or 11/3?) Lugovoi took from London to Moscow showed contamination. So we can safely assume at least one more flight is known to be linked to Lugovoi. This could have been the 11/3 trip back to Moscow as wel. OK, that leaves us 2-4 contaminated flight unaccounted for – but all of Kovtun’s and Lugovoi’s travels in fairly well covered. So who was contaminating these remaining flights? Can all 8 flights really be tied to Lugovoi and Kovtun? Or was there some other flights to other cities at other times? Given the Po-210 trail centers around London and Litvinenko – did he travel and leave some of the trail?

Some other points to make – or make again. Boris Berezovsky is in the thick of the Po-210 trail. He met with Lugovoi in his office on 10/31 and Litvinenko on 11/1, and his PR machine has blamed (alternatively) both visits as the reason why Po-210 showed up in his office (shown as Down St contamination on map above). See this post for a review of the shifting claims and stories. The fact is Berezovsky knew both men long and very well. Something that keeps bothering me with the assasination theory – since Berezovsky would make sense as a target of a political assassination out of the Kremlin. Litvinenko was a joke passing off wild conspiracty theories. He was also being dumped financially by Berezovsky. The possibility Litvinenko was moon-lighting with dangerous contraband has never been fullyu addressed. It would make sense, especially if he and Berezovsky had some relationship with MI6 in the UK. Litvinenko could see himself as sheltered from suspicion, enough to make some money and fame moving dangerous nuclear material useful in dirty bombs.

And one other timeline comment, going back to the very top of this post, is that Lugovoi met Litvinenko 3 times in October/November – which is only three times out of 12-13 times they met last year. There were plenty of opportunities for more Polonium smuggling, contamination, assassination.. As Lugovoi pointed out, he was at Litvinenko’s home during the summer of 2006 – a trip Boris Berezovsky was not made awar of:

Moreover, we met in his home in summer, when his wife Marina was away. By the way, Berezovsky didn’t know of that meeting. It was almost the ideal place for a poisoning. However, when conditions were ideal, it didn’t happen. But in a bar with a lot of people, when he could have failed to turn up, in the presence of dozens of witnesses, it happened. This means that someone wanted us to be seen together in the Millennium Bar.

Lugovoi makes a good point. They were supposedly not scheduled to meet with Litvinenko on Nov 1 – Litvinenko set up the meeting at the last moment. Either due to his noon meeting with people yet to be identified, or due to his meeting at 3:00 PM with Scaramella, or his meeting with Berezovsky (time not known publically). Supposedly the emergency request was due to his meeting with Scaramelle. Lugovoi and Kovtun and Litvinenko had scheduled meetings for 11/2 (which is why the Russians had return flights scheduled for 11/3). It is not credible to think Lugovoi would try some wildly uncontrollable susbtance in a public place and with his family nearby when there were numerous, more quiet and controlled opportunities available.

It is hard to match up the amounts of contamination at each site with the dates in a sequence that makes sense. How did Litvinenko’s car get so much contamination when he never drove it from November 1 on? How is it there was so much contamination in The Sheraton and Millenium Hotels, but so little at the Arsenal Stadium right after the bar incident that supposedly contaminated Litvinenko? Where did the trash from the cab come from – it was also highly contaminated. Levels of contamination need to make sense in a proper sequence. You cannot have low levels, then high levels, then low levels without some key event happening. Look at the top contamination sites:

Several premises were closed for months, including the Pine Bar in the Millennium Hotel, which closed on November 26 and did not reopen until April 18, and the Itsu restaurant, which closed on November 24 and reopened on February 22.

The Sheraton was another place closed for months, as was Litvinenko’s home. But the claim is now that Litvinenko’s contamination on November 1 is NOT tied to the Sushi bar that is so contaminated and which he visited BEFORE the Pine Bar meeting. The claim now is the contamination at the Sushi bar was from Oct 16-18! How is this known? There is a claim the seats are not in the same place, but the only way to know is if we are dealing with two batches of Po-210.

And if we are dealing with two batches, why? The amount that killed Litvinenko is literally smaller than a grain of salt. Once you bring in 200 hundred grains of salt (tiny amount) then you have two hundred shots at Litvinenko. Remember, for this to be an assassination attempt you would not want large amounts of Po-210 if you hope to hide the source of death from detection during autopsy. At least that is what the assassination theorists claim.

Update: As I write this extremely long post more news is coming out. Now we KNOW it was Litvinenko who was at the Hey Jo club:

Dave West, owner of Hey Jo, said in an interview that Litvinenko “came in one night with about two or three men, all Russian. I said hello, shook their hands, like I do to many customers.” West said that the club was popular with Russian businessmen and that he had met Litvinenko on several occasions.

He said that investigators were slow in locating his club; they arrived there about seven weeks after Litvinenko died, after tracing his credit card receipts.

This is very important and at odds with the common theme of the Lugovoi headed assassination. As I said above it is highly unlikely Lugovoi, the first night in town (Oct 31) with his wife and kids, would go out to a Gentlemen’s Club with Litvinenko. In addition, all reporting to date indicates there was NO contact between Litvinenko and Lugovoi prior to November 1, 4:00 PM in the Pine Bar. Now who do we square this? We know Lugovoi did meet with Berezovsky on Oct 31st – but we also know he did went to a major Russia-UK soccer game on Nov 1. Did he go to the Hey Jo? Only Lugovoi can answer. But if Litvinenko was trailing Po-210 before his meeting with Lugovoi then the current theory collapses completely. It does make Litvinenko the probable vector (carrier) of the Po-210 contamination. Here is the rub: Litvinenko was interviewed by police on his death bed and supposedly highlighted all his pertinet travels during the two days in question. So why did it take a review of receipts to discover this meeting with key Russians? And if Lugovoi or Kovtun were there, then did they metion this meeting in their interviews in Moscow? Why would Litvinenko and Berezovsky ignore this meeting if it involved Lugovoi or Kovtun in their discussions with Police? It should not have taken receipts to learn of this meeting. Is this the November noon meeting Litvinenko had prior to meeting Scaramella?

In any event, after Lugovoi was charged he held a press conference implicating the UK’s intelligence agencies because they had worked with Berezovsky and Lintvinenko as ‘assets’ (not employees) to dig dirt on Russia’s government. The two exiles were an obvious choice for this kind of work. Then, a few weeks ago Berezovsky came out in the UK papers (he is a PR expert) and claimed he had just returned to England after the UK foiled another assassination attempt, this time on him. I discuss the incident here and here, and I had a lot of doubts about it then.

In summary, I found the timing of the news way too pat and I couldn’t understand why the UK let Berezovsky take his usual lead in letting the press in on this breaking news. How is it the UK did not scream this news to the papers to demonstrate support to the whole assassination theory? Why did they not parade this man in front of the media as clear evidence Russia or Russians were on a dangerous killing spree in the UK?

Answer? They let the would be assassin go! Yep, they let they showed the guy the border and sent him packing. Then waited three weeks to let Berezovsky break the news in the media. Now do you think the UK sent a blistering notice to Russia that they had detected another assassination attempt on UK citizens (who were Russian exiles as welll)? Do you think there was a diplomatic uproar where the UK government pulled the Russian ambassador into a meeting and showed them all the material they had on this assassination as way to say “we see your agents or people from your country attempting assassination, look who we just caught”? Answer? No!

So the story is supposed to be a Russian assassin comes to London to kill Berezovsky. Berezovsky is, in moment of incredible coincidence, told of the plot first by his Russian comrades (he is trying to over throw the Russian government since he knows the democratic process will not put someone in power he can work with or control). Of course he shares this with the UK authorities, who a while later note the arrival of the alleged assassin. The UK authorities tell Berezovsky to leave the country and they track this guy. Finally they detain him and deport him. But no news in public or private to the Russians on this matter – until recently.

As I noted in the earlier posts Russia wanted to know who this assassin was. And it seems the UK gave them a bunch of bogus, hazy, incomplete information:

The U.K. has failed to submit evidence that a man accused in late June of planning to assassinate fugitive tycoon Boris Berezovsky is a Russian national, Russia’s ambassador in London said Tuesday.

The documents submitted by the British Foreign Office to the Russian Embassy do not make it clear that the person who allegedly planned to kill businessman Boris Berezovsky is a Russian national,” Yury Fedotov said.

The diplomat said the “distorted” documents failed to specify the person’s citizenship, passport number and other important details, only mentioning Kazakhstan as his birthplace and his current residence as Moscow.

Does anyone believe, in these times of terrorists, the UK did not get the passport number for this fellow? They tracked his entry and knew he entered with a child. No details on citizenship?

If this is true this game is getting pretty ridiculous. We are talking about the movement of a material that can kill with an ammount smaller than a grain of salt. Litvinenko ingested or inhaled (I think it was the latter) tens of a millionth of a gram. Get a bag of sugar and take out one grain – that is probably too much right there. Yet there were three rounds of smuggling of the material through London. And Lugovoi and another Russian named Kovtun (who went to contaminate Hamburg) both suffered near deadly doses as well. So this is not some subject to be played loosely with the public. The media is more interested in an under water flag Russia put up at the North Pole than in understanding the Litvinenko incident. I can think of good reasons to keep details from the public on this. But the cover stories which insult our intelligence and also shake our confidence the authorities have this matter in hand.

Most analysts believe that about 10 people would die from radiation poisoning after a dirty bomb attack. Others believe that the only people likely to receive a lethal dose of radiation from a dirty bomb would already be dead from the blast. A perfectly feasible terrorist attack using the ingestion, inhalation or immersion of radioactive material, on the other hand, would be almost certain to kill hundreds. We call attacks of these kinds I-cubed attacks (for ingestion, inhalation and immersion). Such attacks can be sneaky, unaccompanied by a flash and bang.

Nothing we write in any way supplies terrorists with information that they don’t already have. We have consulted with American government experts to be certain. Americans need to understand the risks posed by I-cubed attacks, and how to react when one occurs.

…

Fortunately, it’s hard to kill a lot of people with an ingestion attack. Contaminating a reservoir, or even a water main, is ineffective because the radioactivity is quickly diluted, and most water is not used for drinking or cooking. Contaminating agricultural products is similarly difficult. But there are ways, if the terrorist group has enough material and access to the right kinds of facilities, to contaminate food directly.

An inhalation attack, sometimes called a smoky bomb, would use radioisotopes that can be burned, vaporized or aerosolized, and in a confined space could contaminate the air and be inhaled. Isotopes like polonium-210 that emit alpha particles are particularly effective because they can kill either quickly by radiation poisoning or slowly by causing lung cancer. Terrorists could also use something like an insecticide sprayer mounted on a truck to disperse, for example, a polonium compound dissolved in water.

An immersion attack, which would drench victims with a radioactive solution, could kill with only a small fraction of a teaspoon. Just a few drops of contaminated water on the mouth are enough to cause radiation poisoning.

It should be noted that Po-210 is always an optimal substance for these kinds of stealth nuclear attacks.

The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission believes that alpha-emitting isotopes like polonium-210 and americium are adequately regulated, but we believe that the quantities supplied without a specific license should be reduced by about a factor of 10. In all cases they should be supplied in hard-to-weaponize forms. The regulatory commission has not been diligent in checking the bona fides of applicants for licenses for large sources of any kind, but thankfully this is being changed.

In the United States, commercial users lose about one radioactive source a day — many large enough for I-cubed attacks — through theft, accidents or poor paperwork.

I have always had my suspicions that the Po-210 in London may have been manufactured in Russia, but obtained from America or Canada, which both have abysmal track records with industrial nuclear material monitoring. But what worries me to this day is there were three apparent rounds of Po-210 smuggling through London, each round indicated by a contaminated hotel with multiple rooms showing contamination. Litvinenko died from a microscopic amount (10 millionths of a gram), which is smaller than a fleck of sweatener. So it did not take three trips to move this miniscule amount of Po-210. In fact, the trail of Po-210 across London shows much larger quantities than entered Litvinenko (in my humble opinion). So what was all that Po-210 for?

Why am I telling everyone this? It seems lots and lots of Americium can be found in cruise ship graveyards:

In what is bound to cause another twist to the ill-fated story of ‘Blue Lady’, currently anchored 4,000 feet off Alang coast, Tom Haugen, the erstwhile project manager of the ship (then called ‘SS Norway’), wrote to the Committee of Technical Experts set up by the Supreme Court, claiming that the ship has radioactive material — Americium 241 — on board in at least 5,500 fire detection points.

The SS Norway was once the pride of the French fleet. Now it is a treasure trove of radioactive material which is very deadly and would make a good basis for a nuclear dirty bomb.

But this begs the question: since Americium is so much like Po-210 as an alpha emitter, and only a millionth of a gram of Po-210 (for Am-241, easily found in a few fire detector sensors) was required to kill Litvinenko, why didn’t the so called Russian assassins use this material to kill Litvinenko in London? It would not be traceable to Russia and could be acquired in the UK, no doubt.

It would seem we have another example of why there is little evidence the Litvinenko death was an assassination versus a smuggling effort gone bad. In fact, there is more and more indication that the smuggling effort gone bad makes sense. For assassination, Am-241 would have been cheaper and stealthier, less traceable to Russia and easier to obtain. But somehow these sophisticated killers went for Po-210 instead? Riiighht!