There is so much more to this story than I think any of us can fathom. Who kills someone... a single person... with a $10m weapon?
He really, really, really wanted him dead.
This was a smuggling case gone awry and there is more of this poison out there somewhere.
Is it possible that Litvinenko inadvertently poisoned himself -- that HE was the one who had the polonium and had intended to use it to poison others? When it came out that he made a deathbed conversion to Islam, and had sympathies with the Chechens (remember the Beslan massacre), it roused my suspicions. Perhaps he was in the process of planting polonium in various places as a terrorist act. Does anybody else think this is a possibility?
No one. An ice pick, a bullet, a lethal dose of ricin, would all be Chekist-style. The Russian mob would probably uses something equally cheap, but a bit more gruesome.
The amount of polonium, Litvenenko's Chechen connections and conversion to Islam, the possible use for polonium in neutron sources needed in the triggers of 'suit case' nukes, or even--given its toxicity--its utility as a component in a 'dirty bomb', all point away from the assassination theory, and toward a smuggling operation in support of Islamist terrorists operating against the West.
"Who kills someone... a single person... with a $10m weapon?"
Someone who could care less what it costs, and has no financial interest in it...
...like governmental employees....
...Or black marketeers...
I think these values are based on fanciful, if not completely made up, economic equations. Every time the DEA seizes a drug shipment, it has a "street value" of tens of millions of dollars; and yet we never hear about smugglers who made one such shipment and then bought an island to retire to.
......Who kills someone... a single person... with a $10m weapon?......
A person with access. Remember the Soviet mentality. You set people to producing and then pay them year after year after year. The industrial plan called for the production of polonium with no regard for how much or even if any was actually required. In such a society, there is no economic penalty for capital absorbing inventory over production.
God only knows how much of the generally unneeded stuff was produced and stock piled. Marc Rich, Bill Clinton and Al Gore got rich cornering and selling the Soviet aluminum stock pile. The market was trashed when the glut hit.