Posted on 04/10/2005 7:44:16 PM PDT by Leo Carpathian
By Boris Volodarsky, Wall Street Journal (Europe) Brussels, Belgium, Friday, April 7, 2005, Pg. A.10
Viktor Yushchenko was intentionally poisoned during Ukraine's presidential election campaign last year. By now that fact can hardly be disputed. Yuri Lutsenko, newly appointed Ukrainian interior minister, publicly announced in February that he knew precisely "who brought the poison across the Ukrainian border, which official took it to the scene of the crime, and who personally put it into Yushchenko's food." Officials also suspect that Mr. Yushchenko, now the country's president, imbibed the poison during a Sept. 5 dinner with the then- chairman of Ukraine's security services, Igor Smeshko, and his deputy Vladimir Satsyuk.
A team of American doctors that secretly flew to Vienna to assist Austrian colleagues in treating Mr. Yushchenko found a substance in his blood -- a highly toxic dioxin of the type 2,3,7,8-TCDD (Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin) that a Russian laboratory had successfully experimented with a few years earlier. The question now left unanswered is: Who produced this poison and authorized its use?
Former Soviet spies and intelligence historians like myself, listening to the debate and taking note of the victim, the timing and the early confusion surrounding Mr. Yushchenko's symptoms, can speculate about the source with some authority. Even before the news that the poisonous compound had been found, we had already noticed uncanny similarities to the past work of the "Kamera," or as KGB veterans might remember it, "Laboratory No. 12".
This highly innovative research institution began life in 1921 in a secluded corner of Lenin's Cheka, the first name of the Soviet KGB that today's Russians know as the FSB, which handles domestic security, and the SVR, the old First Chief Directorate of the KGB, responsible for foreign intelligence and "special operations." Kamera -- Russian for chamber -- is the name that it bore under Stalin. But like its parent organization it has been renamed and even "abolished" in occasional fits of reform.
In 1934, when it was located at No. 11 Varsonofyevsky Lane just meters away from the main KGB building, Kamera actively developed deadly poisons and gases. According to Alexander Kouzminov, a former SVR bio-spy handler who published "Biological Espionage" in New Zealand in February, it is it is now the main consumer and supplier of Department 12 of Directorate S of the SVR which handles biological warfare. Russian President Vladimir Putin is a former FSB chief and junior SVR officer.
Whatever its official name, Kamera's products -- poisonous biological and chemical agents -- have been constantly refined over the years as advancing science opens new possibilities and as Kremlin leaders have new requirements. They are highly specialized, tailored for each recipient to cause the desired effect -- usually death or incapacity -- in specific ways.
But one thing in their design is constant. They must make the victim's death or illness appear natural or at least produce symptoms that will baffle doctors and forensic investigators. To this end the Kamera developed its defining specialty: combining known poisons into original and untraceable forms.
The Kamera met the demanding standards of Joseph Stalin. He granted its chief a medical doctorate and the Stalin Prize for his research. Today this division presumably no longer enjoys access to its Stalin- era test facility. Grigory M. Mairanovsky, a colonel in the Medical Corps, and State Security Lieutenant Colonel Okunev, under the orders of the lab's overseer and Beria's chief executioner General Vasili Blokhin, would try out the Kamera's products on condemned prisoners before shooting them, unless poison saved them from the bullet.
President Yushchenko's case produced just the kind of confusing symptoms that would characterize a poison produced by the Kamera. It took weeks to pinpoint the cause of the Ukrainian democratic leader's ailments, which started with severe stomach and back pain and later chloracne on his face. But on Oct. 31, after the first round of the elections, Christopher Holstege, an expert in chemical terrorism and treatment of poison victims at the University of Virginia, identified dioxin as the most likely substance in Mr. Yushchenko's blood. A laboratory in the Netherlands confirmed this diagnosis in December.
From the very beginning it was clear that dioxin alone would not cause these precise symptoms. Two other dioxin-intoxication cases studied by experts at Vienna University's medical school showed that this poison by itself wouldn't act so quickly or lead to Mr. Yushchenko's reported ailments. Now it appears that he was hit not by one known chemical agent but by a sophisticated compound. As I learned from his physician, Nikolai Korpan, whoever came up with his poison had produced a veritable bio-bomb, combining 2,3,7,8-TCDD with Alpha- Fetoprotein, a protein that helps the dioxin move around the body. Before this case, dioxin was considered an inappropriate poison because it can't be dissolved in water, took effect only 10 to 13 days after contact and wasn't fatal. But when mixed with the fetal protein, dioxin appears to be soluble and much more toxic, and acts almost immediately. Such creative combination is usually the claw mark of the Kamera.
I'm reminded of the 1955 attempt on Nikolay Khokhlov, a defector from the KGB. He drank a cup of coffee at a public reception in Germany in 1957 and fell ill. In his blood the doctors found traces of thallium, a metallic substance commonly used as rat poison. But the appropriate treat- ment had little effect and it was not until weeks later when Khokhlov was close to death that imaginative doctors at a U.S. Army hospital in Frankfurt found the hitherto undreamed-of answer. The thallium had been subjected to atomic radiation so that the metal would slowly disintegrate in the system, giving symptoms as common as gastritis as a patient slowly died of radiation poisoning. By that time, the thallium would have disintegrated and left no trace even for an autopsy.
Countless others -- literally countless, for who can count poison victims when no poison is detected? -- suffered this fate. I have identified more than a dozen examples through the years. The Chechen rebel leader Khattab was poisoned by the FSB in March 2004. A KGB agent poisoned the food of the Afghan leader Hafizullah Amin in December 1979. Trotsky's secretary Wolfgang Salus died mysteriously in 1957. The anti-Soviet emigre writer Lev Rebet was thought to have died from a heart attack in October 1957 until the KGB assassin defected four years later and told how he had sprayed a Kamera mist containing poisonous gas from a crushed cyanide ampoule into Rebet's face as he passed him on a stairway.
The Kamera also provided ricin in tiny, specially tooled pellets to be injected undetected, with hardly the pain of an insect's sting, causing death without trace. Lent to the Bulgarians, this poison pellet killed the anti-Communist emigre radio journalist Georgi Markov in 1978 in London. His cause of death and the means of its delivery were discovered only long afterward, and by chance. Oleg Kalugin, former KGB general who now lives in the U.S. and who was in charge of this operation from the Soviet side, described it in "Spy Master," published in 1994.
The nature of the poisons themselves sometimes determined the delivery system: the ricin pellet in a sharp-tipped umbrella, the spray vented from a tube hidden in a rolled newspaper, a poison- carrying bullet (designed for Russian emigre Georgy Okolovich in 1955) shot from a very short range pistol concealed in a cigarette packet. The Kamera leaves to other parts of the Russian services the task of getting its poison to the victim, like putting the powder into Khokhlov's coffee cup.
If the Kamera is somehow behind Mr. Yushchenko's problems, it did its work with great skill. Some 20 specialists, from dermatologists to neurologists, were unable to make an exact diagnosis in his case. "It is an atypical case," said Dr. Korpan, "One seldom observes complex acute disease combined with neurological signs."
Russian intelligence veterans will also recognize, as I do, the characteristic campaign of Soviet-style "active measures" to confuse the issue. Officials in the government of Leonid Kuchma said that the candidate ate some bad sushi, or maybe caught a virus, or even disfigured himself on purpose to win electoral points. And they accuse the doctors and laboratories of "medically falsified diagnoses." Former KGB Colonel Viktor Cherkashin, who handled the two notorious American traitors Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames, was recently quoted as saying, "I have my doubts about whether Yushchenko was poisoned at all. It looks more like a dermatological problem."
Without knowing all the details, it's hard not to agree with Dr. Korpan at the Rudolfinerhaus hospital in Vienna that Mr. Yushchenko was poisoned with the aim to disfigure, weaken and end his threat to the now deposed pro- Kremlin Ukrainian government.
An interesting and somewhat skeptical take on this:
CSI MEDBLOGS: YUSHCHENKO'S DISEASE: A TALE OF TWO POISONS
http://codeblueblog.blogs.com/codeblueblog/2004/12/csi_medblogs_yu.html
The dioxin wasn't the only poison.
Yushchenko may yet kill himself with booze.
An interesting and somewhat skeptical take on this:
But not on this article. The link you posted is to an old article from late December & does not address the dioxin/ alpha-fetaprotein compound theory nor acknowledge that American specialists were assisting the Austrians.
Here's what probably happened to Yuschenko. Just what we all tried to tell you two before.
ping
Bullsheet. A) it was determined that the poison was not given at said dinner and B) the reason it was not identified as dioxin was that Yushchenko refused to go for diagnosis or provide a skin sample (the only way to detect dioxin).
A Dinner in Ukraine Made for Agatha Christie
But the most popular theory - that Mr. Yushchenko was poisoned at the dacha - contains flaws, strong enough that even his own supporters raise questions about it. And as investigators seek deeper insight into the case, they say a chief obstacle has been Mr. Yushchenko himself, who has used the poisoning almost as a theme in his campaign, but has not fully cooperated with the authorities, even as the trail of his would-be assassin grows cold.
Depending on who is talking, Mr. Yushchenko was poisoned either by his enemies in Mr. Kuchma's government, or by members of his own inner circle. Alternately, he was poisoned by Russia's intelligence services, or by organized crime figures working for any of the above.
Volodymyr Sivkovych, chairman of a parliamentary commission that has reopened its investigation into Mr. Yushchenko's illness, complained that Mr. Yushchenko has declined even to give a proper statement to his commission or to investigators. Nor have Ukrainian investigators received the latest test results from Vienna, which they say are essential evidence.
"All the political goals have been achieved," he said. "But those who most need the evidence - the people who must catch a murderer - do not have it."
Without his cooperation, the case has taken the form of theories, and for the news media the most popular has been the dinner at the dacha. But as details and a greater understanding emerge, that version remains open to question.
First, General Smeshko said, Mr. Yushchenko was ill and in pain before the meeting, and had postponed the dacha visit a day because of exhaustion and a backache. Mr. Zhvaniya confirmed that, but said Mr. Yushchenko has a history of back troubles, and his pain the previous night might not have been related to poison.
A second, more intriguing, complication is that toxicologists say that after a person is contaminated with dioxins, it typically takes three days to two weeks before symptoms appear. Mr. Yushchenko was racked with pain hours after the dacha dinner, which understandably cast initial suspicion on the meal. But the theory was weakened this month when doctors in Vienna announced that the poison was dioxin; his would be the only known case of a dioxin acting that fast.
Dr. Arnold Schecter, a specialist in dioxin contamination at the University of Texas, and co-editor of "Dioxins and Health," a medical reference, said it was possible but highly unlikely that Mr. Yushchenko was poisoned on Sept. 5. "It doesn't make sense, medically," he said. "I would go back 14 days before that."
Mr. Zhvaniya agreed. "It is a stupid theory," he said. "The poisoning could have happened at any moment. He was always touring. He met hundreds of people in hundreds of places. To link it to that evening can be called only paranoia."
B) the reason it was not identified as dioxin was that Yushchenko refused to go for diagnosis or provide a skin sample (the only way to detect dioxin).
BS. There is a blood test for dioxin.
Moreover, you posted an article dated December 24, 2004. Apparently some folks think that the statute of limitations for information on this story expired in late December last year.
Oh did you read? Tymoshenko and her party are planning on breaking with Yushenko and running seperately in the elections (backed by her nazi UNO-UNSA allies). She is taking credit for all the bills passed so far to win the Yushenko backers to her side. When you swim with sharks...
bump
By the way, Leo, are you in support of Yushenko's obsession for Ukrainian enslavement to the European (Soviet) Union? Nice bunch of socialists, atheists and islamicists that bunch.
It reminded me about yet another KGB version of the death of ex-Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania. Some another KGB turncoat (anonymous that time) claimed that he was poisoned with iron pentacarbonyl dissolved in his bottle of mineral water. Unfortunately for the source, he did not know that iron pentacarbonyl is not soluble in water. Not at all. What a pity, what a nice russophobic story this might have been, if not for this damn 5-th grade chemistry...
You still keep on with this even though medical experts say that it happened during one exposure. They altered the dioxin jb. That changes the way it is metabolized.
I didn't expect you to believe it, but you still needed to see it.
Oh and about Tymoshenko? No I hadn't heard that but it sure sounds like normal politics to me.
We've already covered that ground Destro. Everything in that article has been rebutted.
Like hell it has - those are Yushchenko's own cronies saying the poisoning could not have come from the dinner party and it is a fact the idiot refused medical treatment/testing till after the elections.
The medical experts say it could and did happen that way.
The "idiot" as you called him, didn't stop campaigning because that's what the intention was when he was poisoned.
The entire intent was to get him out of the campaign. Period.
I wouldn't get out either.
And he DID get medical treatment you fool. You are hung up on the biopsy, but a biopsy wasn't necessary.
A blood test showed the dioxin. It wasn't necessary to get a biopsy.
You really are a dense little guy aren't you?
Dr. Arnold Schecter, a specialist in dioxin contamination at the University of Texas, and co-editor of "Dioxins and Health," a medical reference, said it was possible but highly unlikely that Mr. Yushchenko was poisoned on Sept. 5. "It doesn't make sense, medically," he said. "I would go back 14 days before that."
Mr. [David V. Zhvaniya, the Yushchenko campaign manager who arranged the dacha meeting and attended it himself] agreed. "It is a stupid theory," he said. "The poisoning could have happened at any moment. He was always touring. He met hundreds of people in hundreds of places. To link it to that evening can be called only paranoia."
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Not part of the NYTimes article but published in dozens of sources is that Yushchenko refused to give a skin sample - the only way you can detect dioxin - that is why the "poison" was not detected in the tests. Any routine American emergency room visit would have had a skin sample taken (dioxin concentrates in tissue fat) - but he REFUSED to have one done.
Sorry for you those are the facts and it does not pass the smell test on the Orange side of things.
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