So there you have it. Sounds like Andrei Lugovoi was right after all. The London Daily Mail revealed today that Alexandr Litvinenko was indeed a paid MI6 agent. Says the Mail:
Alexander Litvinenko was receiving a retainer of around £2,000 a month from the British security services at the time he was murdered.
The disclosure, by diplomatic and intelligence sources, is the latest twist in the Litvinenko affair, which has plunged relations between London and Moscow to their lowest point since the Cold War.
Sources also say that Litvinenko was recruited by Sir John Scarlett. Scarlett now heads the Crown’s secret service. Before that he was stationed in Moscow. It’s also said that Litvinenko was working for MI6 at the time of his murder.
Litvinenko’s wife Marina denies that her husband ever worked for MI6. But why would she know? I’ve seen enough Hollywood spy movies to know that wives being clueless about their husbands spy work has some grain of truth in reality. Marina Litvinenko is in Portugual trying to lobby European leaders to put pressure on Russia to extradite Andrei Lugovoi. It’s no wonder she would want to deny the MI6 story even if she did know it. I doubt this revelation will garner any sympathy. Regular murders are one thing. But spy vs. spy killings involving radioactive materials. Well that is another . . .
One thing, however, is clear. Mrs. Litvinenko is indeed worried about her husband’s legacy. So much so that she’s bankrolled it into a Hollywood film. It was announced last week that Hollywood blockbuster veteran Michael Mann has bought rights from the Litvinenko Justice Foundation to make a film about Litvinenko’s murder. I don’t know how much the rights were sold for, but I’m sure it can buy a lot of “justice.” Mann’s version (Johnny Depp is said to making a similar film) is based on, you guessed it, Marina Litvinenko’s book (co-written with Alexander Goldfarb) Death Of A Dissident: The Poisoning Of Alexander Litvinenko And The Return Of The KGB. The film deal news coincides with the book’s release in Portugal. What a coincidence! Marina Litvinenko is in Portugal to “lobby” European leaders at the same time her book comes out there, and news about a movie based on said book is announced. Here in Tinsel Town that’s called a publicity tour. Whichever PR firm handling all this gets a gold star!
This is not to sound like I think Marina Litvinenko and her colleagues at the Litvinenko Justice Foundation (whose founders incidentally include Boris Berezovsky, Goldfarb, and their lawyer Louise Christian) are not interested in finding the killer. After all, you can’t make a good film without an evil villain. And spinning the murder into some elaborate Kremlin plot might be too ephemeral for audiences to follow. Just think of the celluloid confusion Syriana induced. For Alexandr Litvinenko to be fully canonized as an anti-Kremlin dissident (that is if his canonization isn’t complete already) , the evildoer needs to be caught. Because if left in the hands of Hollywood scriptmeisters who knows what kind of elaborate tale will be wrought.
db is right, Ivanov. You wrote that no official result was released and he showed you that indeed it was released. You may not like the official result, you may not believe it, but you cannot claim that there is no official cause of death. Litvinenko died of of polonium poisoning.
This reminds of the time you mocked statistics showing that the murder rate in Russia is several times higher than in the US. When I showed you that the numbers I relied on where based on 2006 figures of the Russian Федеральная служба государственной статистики you went quiet.
Well I think it is extremely unlikely, but it is _conceivable_ that the results were fabricated, which I think is what Ivanov is suggesting.
Ivanov is saying three things:
1. There is no official confirmation that polonium was the cause of death.
2. Even if it was, it may have been consumed to cover up another potential cause of death.
3. There is no official confirmation that the death was a murder.
I disagree with the first of these. The medical authorities made an official announcement. That’s enough for me.
The second is pure speculation based on nothing other than Ivanov’s suspicions.
Contention No. 3 therefore rests on how exactly the polonium was consumed. I agree that we have had no formal affirmation that it was administered by a third party with intent. Could have been self-administered or administered by others, and accidentally or deliberately in either instance.
Which is why it would be good to hold an inquest. An open CPS case doesn’t preclude holding an inquest.
FYI – I know матчасть. And I learned it not from newspaper or ЖЖ…
Good. Then I don’t have to explain to you why Po-210 is so deadly when swallowed yet relatively difficult to detect.
I think he was accidentally exposed, either because he was handling the stuff himself and got careless or came into contact with somebody else who had.
The problem with your hypothesis is that polonium smuggling doesn’t exist. It just makes no market sense; and before you ask, no, polonium is no good for making a dirty bomb.
“results were fabricated, which I think is what Ivanov is suggesting.”
Negative. I doubt any expert would undertake such risk. It’s much easier and safer not announcing them for whatever reason. Brits are the best in giving “reasons” and “explanations”, I have to admit this.
“…the wishes of the Scotland Yard and David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, who both told me that making the evidence public would prejudice a criminal trial”
In BAE/Saudi case it was “interest of national security”, with Iraq’s WMD – just warong interpretation of “facts” etc…
“It just makes no market sense; and before you ask, no, polonium is no good for making a dirty bomb.”
You’re assuming that the people doing the trading are 1) as chemically knowledgeable as you (presumably) are or 2) are doing so for market reasons.
To clarify: whether P can or can’t be used to make a dirty bomb (or other nasty object) is irrelevant. What matters is if the potential recipient believes that it can.
FYI – I know матчасть. And I learned it not from newspaper or ЖЖ…
Good. Then I don’t have to explain to you why Po-210 is so deadly when swallowed yet relatively difficult to detect.
==================================
Please explain. Like how relatively difficult is really difficult, for instance.
I’ve never said I learned polonium матчасть. I’ve learned investigation матчасть…
Please explain. Like how relatively difficult is really difficult, for instance.
Polonium 210 is not detected by generic equipment, so you really need to know beforehand what you are looking for.
db.
Have your ever dealt with radioactive material or just read about it? Have you worked in the med lab?
If you are looking at Litvinenko photo – this is one of the first thing that comes to mind – лучевая болезнь.
I also doubt that British doctors use only generic equipment – like thermometer – for analysis.
Usual tests are for gamma radiation. Hospitals don’t have the equipment to test for alpha-emitting substances, like polonium 210. Ultimately in the L case, the UK health protection agency — more normally involved in workplace toxicity and radiation issues — tested for alpha particles.
”Polonium 210 is not detected by generic equipment, so you really need to know beforehand what you are looking for.”
db, wouldnt an Atomic Absorption spectrometer find that easy enough (assuming you had the correct lamp and actually tried to find it) or maybe an ICP-MS?
ivanov -I think the issue is whether or not it was looked for, I would think it is easily found if you are actually looking for it. But I know myself conventional tox tests, especially preliminary ones, would probably miss it.
”Negative. I doubt any expert would undertake such risk. It’s much easier and safer not announcing them for whatever reason”
There’s no doubt in my mind that the Brits have used an accredited method that has been validated and externally audited, presumably to ISO 17025, which is a strict technical audit. The Brits have called a positive, and I know myself from working in anti-doping that a false positive means likely the end of your career and the tarnishment of the lab. Besides the levels the Brits are alluding to would be quite easily detected by an ICP-MS, no problem at all. Junior chemists work.
”Usual tests are for gamma radiation”
I dont think thats even necessary. Assuming some polonium has survived, it would be easily detected itself, not by its radioactive emissions.
After a quick search I’m struggling to find a paper that says polonium is tested for using ICP-MS, a not uncommon instrument, but I cannot off the top of my head see why it couldnt -there are almost certainly a few of these instruments somewhere in London, though maybe the forensic tox labs dont have one -I suppose its not every day of the week they are looking for the likes of polonium
Ger,
I’m a theoretical physicist, what do I know about ICP-MS?
As far as I understand, the standard polonium test is done (roughly speaking) by evaporating 24 hours worth of piss and putting the residue into an alpha spectrometer.
FH, I agree with you. The official cause of death is that Litvinenko received a lethal dose of polonium. Whether it was murder or an accident is a different issue. I assume that he was murdered, but I certainly do NOT discount the possibility that his death was accidental (caused either by Litvinenko’s or someone else’s mishandling of the material).
Sorry db. I knew you were a scientist of some description.
”As far as I understand, the standard polonium test is done (roughly speaking) by evaporating 24 hours worth of piss and putting the residue into an alpha spectrometer.”
well that answers that then. Its down to the Brits actually simply thinking of testing for it.
Does the last post mean that we should continue in new thread?
2 fh
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ivanov is saying three things:
1. There is no official confirmation that polonium was the cause of death.
……
I disagree with the first of these. The medical authorities made an official announcement. That’s enough for me.
———————————-
I knew that this was enough for you
So what?
For millions of others it was even “clear from the beginning” that it was Putin who ordered the murder. They “knew” it without any “official report”.
BUT!!! From legal and medical point of view so called “official” version is BS.
From Epstein’s blog (remember – I haven’t heard about him till yesterday!)
“10. We don’t know the findings of the Coroner .
The British authorities have not released the Coroner’s Report, if it was completed. So there is no official cause of death.”
If you don’t trust us – ask your lawyer
“I assume that he was murdered, but I certainly do NOT discount the possibility that his death was accidental (caused either by Litvinenko’s or someone else’s mishandling of the material).”
My wild shot-in-the-dark idea is that L was looking for a big score of some sort that would prove his worth and the value of his connections and get him back in the good graces of his boss, who was cutting him off, and didn’t really know what he was doing. We have to think like a low-level Mafia flunky with delusions of grandeur here. “This will really impress the Don!”