"You can't buy this much off the Internet or steal it from a laboratory without raising an alarm so the only two plausible explanations for the source are that it was obtained from a nuclear reactor or very well connected black market smugglers."
Posted on 12/17/2006 6:10:09 PM PST by shrinkermd
BRITISH investigators believe that Alexander Litvinenko's killers used more than $US10 million of polonium-210 to poison him. Preliminary findings from the post mortem examination on the former KGB spy suggest that he was given more than ten times the lethal dose.
Police do not know why the assassins used so much of the polonium-210, and are investigating whether the poison was part of a consignment to be sold on the black market.
They believe that whoever orchestrated the plot knew of its effects, but are unsure whether the massive amount was used to send a message - it made it easier for British scientists to detect - or is evidence of a clumsy operation.
A British security source said yesterday: "You can't buy this much off the internet or steal it from a laboratory without raising an alarm so the only two plausible explanations for the source are that it was obtained from a nuclear reactor or very well connected black market smugglers."
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.news.com.au ...
*BUMP*! . . . This is good evidence Putin ordered the hit.
"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...
Article from a published source? A few of pajama-wearing types have been posting that analysis here intermittently: polonium 210-beryllium 9 neutron sources.
I keep wondering whether a whole trigger was being smuggled, in which case there might should be beryllium contamination at the sites, too. (Might or might not--the two have to be kept separate until the ignition sequence for the plutonium bomb--if only the polonium containing part was breached, there might not be beryllium residue. OTOH, beryllium residue at the contaminated sites would kill the assassination theory, and be *very* scary, as there is no proof only one trigger was involved in the smuggling operation.)
yeah, but there are cheaper ways to do it. To say this is wierd is an understaement.
yeah - no doubt that this came from the Kremlin - we already know it came from Moscow and this amount means it came from the govt.
This is highly exaggerated. Probably it would cost $10 million to buy that much on the open market, because the amounts you can buy on the open market are minuscule.
I doubt it would cost anything like that if you had access to nuclear facilities which produced it as a by-product. So either it was a Russian government operation, or someone with connections paid to get it from a nuclear plant, again most likely Russian.
It does seem possible that Litvinenko himself was smuggling the stuff and it was leaked from him to the people who met with him, rather than the other way around.
No suitcase nuke would be using an alfa source with 138 days half-life [it would need continuous maintenance and replacement], while longer lived ones are available. More, the nuke source would not be in a form of aqueous solution, but as a well-encapsulated solid.
I.E. the moment the guy died died FR was immediately rushed by posters who claimed that Putin had ordered the hit. Their evidence ....none, just that they were 'sure' it was Putin.
A few days later a new wave came up that said that it could have been an oligarch (who obviously had a bone to pick with Russia, had the financial resources being a multi-billionaire, and was one of the last people that had contact with the ex-spy). There was also no evidence here, just some speculation.
Then a reverse backlash occured, with the 'Putin did it' camp saying that no other person could have done it apart from Putin (my favorite comment being that Putin did it because he was KGB). Once again no evidence.
Then it came out that the guy had converted to Islam (a point that the 'Putin did it' camp VEHEMENTLY denied until the guy was actually buried in an Islamic ceremony. Some of the 'Putin did it' camp actually went as far as saying that the Islamic conversion story was a psyops attempt by the Kremlin).
Hence you can see why I am very sceptical ....with both camps. It appears that FR is divided into two groups in regards to this case. One group believes Putin is the devil (more or less) and is responsible for this, and nothing can dissuade them from that. The other group believes that Putin had nothing to gain from this and it must have been due to some other actor or event (eg an oligarch, or the guy actually poisoning himself while trying to deliver the stuff to sell to some group trying to activate suit-case nukes).
Hence when you say that you have 'good evidence' that Putin did it I am immediately curious and would love to see this evidence. Hopefully it is coherent and not another dose of regurgitated speculation.
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.
Nah. Kronos77, I believe, posted on FR a Times article quoting Litvinenko's wife and best friend as seriously doubting his deathbed conversion. The question to ask would be - who would be interested in discrediting litvinenko by pumping up this "conversion", and in whose eyes? Besides, having organizational access both to the press manipulation and to polonium would dramatically limit the circle of suspects. The whole affair stinks with kegebuns even upwind.
But it's the UK, and handguns are illegal. Hence, the use of an alternative.
"You can't buy this much off the Internet or steal it from a laboratory without raising an alarm so the only two plausible explanations for the source are that it was obtained from a nuclear reactor or very well connected black market smugglers."
Like hell it is. Russians are nothing if not EFFICIENT killers. Killing someone with a 10 million dollar weapons is more in line with the old US style of hitting a few empty tents with Tomahawk Cruise Missiles.
If Russia was going to kill someone with radiation, Cesium-137 would be a lot cheaper and maybe just as effective.
Hence you can see why I am very sceptical ....with both camps. It appears that FR is divided into two groups in regards to this case. One group believes Putin is the devil (more or less) and is responsible for this, and nothing can dissuade them from that. The other group believes that Putin had nothing to gain from this and it must have been due to some other actor or event (eg an oligarch, or the guy actually poisoning himself while trying to deliver the stuff to sell to some group trying to activate suit-case nukes).
Hence when you say that you have 'good evidence' that Putin did it I am immediately curious and would love to see this evidence. Hopefully it is coherent and not another dose of regurgitated speculation.==
Heh heh:) I beleive you' never get the answer:). "Good evidence" is just new speculation.
But in jurisprudence there are 3 most question on which the investigator has to find answers and he gets the perpetrator: the motive (the beneficiary of the crime), the access to the means to commit crime, the accessebility to commit crime(has acces to the object of the crime).
Putin has no motive and has no accessibility. Because Litvinenko was the small fish which was negligible to Pitin power with his 75% approval rate. Same time Litvinenko was the former body guard, they say he was KGB spy but it s is not true,(it was Putin who was the KGB spy). So Litvinenko as the former bodyguard knows how to defend himself against the attack. So get near him one has to be trusted by him.
Berezovskii has the motive to create anti-Putin scandal and he has the access to Litvinenko who was his friend.
The means: the Polonium-210 was assesible to both.
If Russia was going to kill someone with radiation, Cesium-137 would be a lot cheaper and maybe just as effective.==
Exactly:).
I think it will be proven that Putin's butler did it.
Just wondering, do they have to bury him in a high level nuclear waste dump?
Does this mean they'll be sending him to Nevada for internment?
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