Lots of things available online... Note the one-year warranty.
Posted on 12/13/2006 12:22:30 PM PST by jdm
But exactly what Litvenenko was mixed up in, how the FSB caused this to happen and how the two Russian buddies and the Italian guy fit in, I have no idea!
If I'm the President of Russia and thinking of rubbing out an enemy, do I choose a method which costs millions and which allows the movements of the various personnel involved to be traced all over London and Europe, or do I go for something simpler........like a bullet, say.....which costs $1, plus or minus a few cents and is much harder to trace?
Even if they wanted to poison this guy, there are other, far more subtle and sophisticated ways than putting an atom bomb's worth of polonium in his vodka.
What a crazy case. Either there is far more to this than we're being told, or this was planned by the Russian Keystone Cops.
They are only speculating on the price because it's possible that he used coupons.
I agree - way too messy for a hit by anyone in the Russian government - no way they've lost all their expertise.
This is something else gone wrong. Will be interesting to see just what. I guess if this guy was providing polonium-210 to terrorists to make a dirty bomb, he got his just deserts.
"Reports that KGB defector Alexander Litvinenko converted to Islam before his mysterious poisoning with radioactive polonium 210 is raising suspicions that he may have been involved in a plot to smuggle the deadly substance to terrorist groups willing to pay millions even for a gram, Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin is reporting today...Their biggest fear, the paper reports, is that Litvinenko, who died of polonium-210 poisoning in a London hospital, may have been helping al-Qaida or other extremist groups get hold of radioactive material to be used in a devastating "dirty" atom bomb."
>From WorldNetDaily.com
There has been a lot of speculation as to how Litvinenko came to be poisoned with Polonium 210. Most of it endlessly repeating that Po210 is "highly radioactive". The truth of that is Po210 is an Alpha emitter. Alpha particles are stopped by as little shielding as a sheet of paper. The human skin is more than enough to stop Alpha radiation. The danger comes once it is within the human body as it causes damage to lungs and the digestive tract. There is further speculation that he was dabbling with Po210 for a dirty bomb, which makes no sense. Po210 has a half-life of 138 days as compared with. Pu-239, a more common isotope of Plutonium which has a half-life of 24,000 years. The half-life of Po 210 is short enough to make isolation a useful treatment strategy for contaminated areas. In short, if you are going for a dirty bomb, skip the Polonium 210 which must be manufactured fresh because of its' short half life and go for the Plutonium which may be found in spent reactor fuel and lasts virtually forever.
All of this begs the question "What was Litvinenko doing with Polonium 210? The answer lies back in the early days of nuclear bomb development. Polonium 210 was combined with beryllium to make an "initiator" for the early (crude) nuclear weapons. These initiator devices acted rather like a spark plug to guarantee that the nuclear chain reaction started at precisely the right time. This function has been replaced by an electronic component in more modern designs. The early, crude designs have the merit of being simple and straight forward requiring no high speed timing electronics. As a mater of fact "little boy" required no electronics at all to fire, it could have been as simple as yanking a lanyard on an artillery piece.
There has been speculation that more then a few "suitcase nukes" of KGB origins have gone missing. They have been sitting around since the height of the cold war and so their beryllium/polonium initiators have long ago ceased being functional. All they require to bring them up to speed is replacement Polonium in their initiators. I think that Litvinenko was working with an extremist group to provide a key component for an actual nuclear weapon already in their possession.
Regards,
GtG
PS FYI ...At the bottom of the hole one or more beryllium/polonium initiators (different from the implosion initiators; simpler in design, with less polonium) could be mounted...4 ABNER initiators out of a batch of 16 shipped to Tinian were used in Little Boy. These were fastened radially to the front end of the target assembly.
-Click Here- Search in page for "polonium".
It was not really a messy hit. They did not discover the Polonium until a few days prior to Litvinenko dieing. It took them over a month to discover it and the way they positively identified the Polonium made it impossible for Scotland Yard or any Police Agency to identify the Polonium. It was only discovered by Atomic Weapon Scientist who developed a new method to isolate the Polonium from the organics. The Scientists were shocked to discover an alpha emitter. This was a new Radiation weapon. If the alpha emitter was not discovered, we would have no idea what killed him and England would be contaminated and may not even know it was contaminated. Meters have to be within centimeters of an alpha emitter to measure the radiation. Look, the Russian were flying airplanes, attending Soccer games, staying in Hotels and traveling within Germany without setting off any radiation detectors. Thank god that the British Atomic Weapons Scientists positively identified this alpha emitter. Speaking of dirty bombs, it is just as likely the the Russians were the ones making the dirty bomb as it is likely that Chechen Islamists were making the dirty bomb. We simply do not know the full story yet.
Obviously he was dieing. Thanks for the additional accurate and valuable information. Let us all hope that the suitcase nukes are not related. The Polonium however does make a good assassination weapon if you could get the target to ingest it. The FSB agent who is in jail in Russia, who also claims to know the assassin, stated that they probably gave too much Polonium to Litiveniko. Apparently he was supposed to slowly die over a period of a couple of months. Also, the assassins may not have known the short range alpha emitter would leave tracks everywhere. At least those are the reports relating to the assassination theory, which currently looks to be a 'safer' theory for the world then suitcase nuke triggers.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.