Posted on 01/26/2007 9:35:08 AM PST by Ben Mugged
British officials say police have cracked the murder-by-poison case of former spy Alexander Litvinenko, including the discovery of a "hot" teapot at London's Millennium Hotel with an off-the-charts reading for Polonium-210, the radioactive material used in the killing.
A senior official tells ABC News the "hot" teapot remained in use at the hotel for several weeks after Litvinenko's death before being tested in the second week of December. The official said investigators were embarrassed at the oversight.
The official says investigators have concluded, based on forensic evidence and intelligence reports, that the murder was a "state-sponsored" assassination orchestrated by Russian security services.
Officials say Russian FSB intelligence considered the murder to have been badly bungled because it took more than one attempt to administer the poison. The Russian officials did not expect the source of the poisoning to be discovered, according to intelligence reports.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.abcnews.com ...
Putin has been busy.
I'm a little Teapot, Short and Stout...........
Tea for two anyone?
And remember all those kegebuns and putinoids who reflexively and predictably insisted that it was anything else, from a criminal chechen dust-up to suicide? 160 years ago there was "an NCO widow who whipped herself" [an official explanation concocted for the incoming inspection by the corrupt officials who had her whipped]. This quotation from Gogol became idiomatic.
the "hot" teapot remained in use at the hotel for several weeks .....
How many others got ill or died?
Another "Teapot Dome" scandal?
The radiation from the polonium warmed the tea it was reported. Wouldn't the fellow who put the stuff in the tea be almost as bad off as the victim?
I wonder how much danger the pot held after it was emptied and washed.
I remember all too well. I thought at the time it was amazing that what sounded like KGB disinformation had found its way onto FR.
Don't you mean "Tea for two-ten"? (Ducking quickly)
Anyone else served from the same teapot till it was emptied and rinsed. Those served after that would get progressively smaller doses. A smart assassin would not have much tea prepared in it [to minimize the traceabilty], so it is likely that the amount was small and the teapot was rinsed pretty soon after the intended use.
One could have bet any money that it was FSB, even before or without an investigation. Kegebuchaya von' oozes out of the whole story - the smell test alone is sufficient. What is more amusing is to watch our own kegebuns on FR going through the motions.
another article says some 128 people were discovered to have had 'probable contact' with the teapot, including 8 hotel staff members. Only 13 of those tested at a level which had any known long-term health concerns. This is from ABC's web site.
Well, with radiation poisonings- if one gets something like 10% of lethal dose [LD] or less, there would be preciously few symptoms. So, if the teapot was rinsed from the old [used, radioactive] tea, it would not generate a mass poisoning trail afterwards.
right, speculation I read was that the glaze of the teapot had absorbed some of the radioactivity, something the assassin(s) may not have anticipated (it isn't clear they expected the polonium to be identified ever, at all).
A smart assassin would have prepared the Polonium to make it very soluble in water.
If the polonium was still “off-the-charts” after being in use for several weeks after the poison was administered the polonium would have to have been strongly adhered to the inside of the teapot.
Unless the teapot had not been washed at all it is inconceivable that it would still be easily detectable after three or four washing and uses.
The only two ways this makes sense to me; one is if the Hotel did not wash the tea pot at all between the poisoning of the teapot and the police discovery of the teapot, the other is if the compound the Russians used was only slightly soluble in the tea and the poison adhered tightly to the teapot (at least in the US this would be the more likely, but then I am not familiar with the cleanliness standards in UK hotels).
But anyway I believe that the agent performing the poisoning may not have chosen the correct pathway for the administration of the poison. The poison may have been in powder form and been intended to be sprinkled on food in which case it may have adhered to the film that is commonly found in frequently used teapots and coffee pots.
It adhered to the surface [as it should]: the amount used was small, say, on order of 100 micrograms, as clean aqueous solution, and the teapot surface absorbed quite a lot of it [before becoming saturated]. Sitting there in absorbed state, it would be released rather slowly - it is unconceivable that the hotel would not have washed the dishes for months. To clean that teapot would have taken an aggressive treatment involving etching/dissolving the teapot surface material in corrosive solutions. Ages ago, when studying the chemistry of radioactive tracers, washing the things was one of the more "joyful" parts of the lab work.
"One could have bet any money that it was FSB, even before or without an investigation. Kegebuchaya von' oozes out of the whole story - the smell test alone is sufficient. What is more amusing is to watch our own kegebuns on FR going through the motions."
Funny how they all seem to have avoided this thread like the plague -- or polonium.
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