Posted on 02/13/2007 6:16:39 AM PST by RichardMoore
As Alexander Litvinenko lay dying under tight police protection at London's University College hospital, he pointed an accusing finger at the man he believed responsible for ordering his assassination: Russian President Vladimir Putin. The dying man had good cause for suspecting Putin. Abundant evidence, including a radioactive trail of polonium-210, the substance used to poison him, leads right back to Putin's operatives in Moscow. In addition, the Kremlin's heavy-handed tactics to twart efforts of British police detectives sent to Russia to investigate the poisoning do little for the credibility of Putin's protestations of innocence and his pledges to do everything possible to help solve the crime.
Mr. Litvinenko had become ill on November 1, after a meeting at London's Mayfair Millennium Hotel with three Russian "businessmen": Andrei Lugovoi, Dmitry Kovtun, and Vyacheslav Sokolenko. Lugovoi acknowledges that he is a former agent of the FSB, the renamed KGB. Litvinenko was sure that he had been poisoned later that evening, when he was seized with violent vomiting. After three weeks of agonizing deterioration, in which a fit 43-year-old Litvinenko lost his hair and shrunk to a shell of his former self, he died on November 23.
Even as his life was ebbing away, Alexander and his wife, Marina, had been hoping for a recovery."I did not lose hope."she told the Sunday Times of London. "He was a very handsome man, but each day for him was like 10 years, he became older in how he looked." Mrs. Litvinenko added: "Even until the last day, and the day before when he became unconscious, I thought that he would be OK. we were both completely sure he would recover. We had been talking about bone-marrow transplants and looking to the future."
The poison, initially thought to be thallium, turned out to be polonium-210, which Dr. Andrea Sella, lecturer in chemistry at University College London, told reporters was "one of the rarest substances on the planet" and few could obtain it. "This is not some random killing." Dr. Sella said. "This is not a tool chosen by a group of amateurs. These people had some serious resources behind them."
Polonium-210 leaves a trail and, as many news stories have noted, that trail has turned up wherever Lugovoi and Kovtun went in London, Germany, and Russia: a hotel restaurant, airplanes,an apartment, a soccer stadium. One of the most important polonium traces is on a passport photo of Kovtun, which he left at the Hamburg City Hall in Germany, where he applied for a residency permit two days before meeting with Litvinenko.
When British police detectives from Scotland Yard went to interview a number of witnesses and suspects, including the three men who had met with Litvinenko, they were told that two of the main objects of interest, Lugovoi and Kovtun, were in hospital quarantine for radiation poisoning. The detectives were also informed by Russia's chief prosecutor Yurt Chaika, that, in the words of the Reuters report, they would be "virtually relegated to the role of observers," as Russian police carried out the interviews. Mr. Chaika, a Putin flunky, further made it clear that no suspects would be extradited to England. He has kept the British detectives on a very short leash.
Spokesmen for Putin have denounced susicions of Putin's inolvement as "absurd" and part of a frame-up and conspiracy to discredit Putin and Russia at home and abroad. As to be expected, the Russian press, reflecting Putin's control, points the accusing finger at Putin's enemies, most frequently citing Boris Berezovsky, a former Putin ally now in exile in London, as the likely culprit. Not surprisingly, many journalists in the West have picked up and parroted this theme as well.
However, in addition to considerable evidence tying Putin to the murder through his secret-service minions, it is clear that he--not Berezovsky-- qualifies as the top candidate possessing the classical criteria for a crime suspect: motive, opportunity, and means.
WHAT LITVINENKO KNEW
Mr. Litvinenko, and ex-agent of the Soviet KGB(and it's successor, the Russian FSB), was a fierce critic of Putin even before fleeing to Britain with his family in 2000. He had first come to the attention of the Western media in 1998 while still a lieutenant-colonel in the FSB, creating a stir with his public revelation that he had been ordered to assassinate Berezovsky, one of Russia's richest new oligarchs. It was an order he refused to carry out. The head of the FSB at the time: Vladimir Putin.
After obtaining asylum in England, Mr. Litvinenko became an even bigger thorn in Putin's side, His powerful 2002 book, BLowing UP Russia:Terror From Within, with Yuri Felshtinsky, presents convincing evidence which supports the charges of investigative journalists and Russian analysts that the infamous series of apartment bombings in Moscow and Volgodonsk in 1999 were provocations by Putin's FSB, not the work of Chechen terroists. The September 1999 bombings killed over 300 people and wounded hundreds of others. Putin, who was named prime minister under Boris Yetsin just three weeks before the bombings began, expertly played up the incidents to stir up public outrage in favor of retaliation against Chechnya. Yetsin resigned under mysterious circumstances on December 31,1999, naming Putin to suceed him as actin president. Putin then surprised other presidential candidates and gave himself an advantage by holding the presidential election in March 2000, rather than in the fall, as previously scheduled. Playing up his popular hard-line-against-terrorism image, Putin easily rode to victory.
New evidence has come to light that Alexander Litvinenko may have been involved with Islamic terrorists in the preparation of tactical nuclear weapons for use in the jihad against the United States and its NATO allies.
In recent years, considerable attention has been paid to suitcase nukes that were developed by U.S. and Soviet forces during the Cold War. Reliable sources, including Hans Blix of the United Nation, have confirmed that bin Laden purchased several of these devises from the Chechen rebels in 1996. According to Sharif al-Masri and other al Qaeda operatives who have been taken into custody, several of these weapons have been forward deployed to the United States in preparation for al Qaeda's next attack on American soil.
The neutron source or "triggers" of the reported suitcase nukes are composed of beryllium-9 and polonium-210. When these two elements are combined, the alpha particle is absorbed by the nucleus of the beryllium causing it to decay by emitting a neutron. Such "triggers" were a feature of early nuclear weapons in the U.S. and Soviet stockpiles.
Litvinenko, who was born an orthodox Christian, was a convert to Islam with close ties to the Chechen rebels. His last words consisted of his desire to be buried "according to Muslim tradition."
Polonium-beryllium triggers are packaged in foil packs about the size of a package on sugar on a restaurant table. When the twin foil packages are crushed, the elements mix and the neutrons are emitted. A courier transporting nuclear triggers could have had a mishap causing the packages to rupture and a trail of contamination to occur. Polonium-210 is a fine powder, easily aerosolized. Litvinenko could have inhaled the powder, or had a grain or two on his fingers when he ate the sushi. The most probable source of the polonium packets, according to investigators, remains North Korea. The nuclear bomb which was tested by North Korea on October 9, 2006, registered 4.2 on the Richter scale -- displaying an explosive yield of five to 15 kilotons. The Bush Administration dismissed the test as a "fizzle." But the explosion matched the yield of a Soviet Small Atomic Munitions Device (SADM), such as a suitcase nuke with a plutonium core.
Don't know how reliable the source is, just thought I would throw it out there. I got the link from a comment on Debbie Schlussel's blog.
Thanks. Very interesting.
That's the information I had seen too. Just adds a wrinkle, imho.
One of the reasons that I posted this article is that it is supported by several other events from the recent and distant past. Whatever Litvinenko was up to, he was murdered by Putin's FSB. Putin and the New Russia are the real focus of this article. Their connection to al-Qaeda should concern all of us, since it lends new urgent meaning to the war against terror.
For a less emotional and a more thorough understanding of Russia in these times you should get your hands on the Mitroikan book:KGB The Sword and The Shield. Or his second book: KGB,When things were going our Way. Thes two books outine in painstaking detail just what the KGB has been up to for the last 80 years. For instance, it vindicates Joseph McCarthy's allegation of Soviet spies in the Roosevelt administration, a fact that the media and hollywood continue to deny.
Prodi IS a commie. He's been working to move Italy left all his adult life. He's a Marxist zealot.
This whole natural gas thing that Putin is pulling with Europe is all about bending them to his side against the U.S.. I don't think Putin was associated with 9/11, but he's definitely been getting his groove on since then, especially with Iran.
Litvineko was involved in exposing Prodi as a KGB/FSB agent. The Mitroikin Commission was looking into the KGB/FSB involvement in the Italian Gov't.
Why don't you think that the KGB/FSB had an interest in helping al-Qaeda when al-Zawahiri (mister #2) has been named as a KGB/FSB agent?
Named by whom, when, and on what evidence?
Unfortunately those who were working with Litvinenko have died quite suddenly. General Trofimov and his wife were both shot dead. Gerard Batten, a British member of the European Parliament believed Litvinenko enough to bring this up for investgation. Anna Politkovskaya was murdered after the poisoning attempt failed, and she believed Litvinenko. Should we believe Putin, just because he is still alive?
The KGB has had as sordid a past as can be imagined. The moles in US gov't, the seed money for the "anti-war" crowds here, assasinations, supporting terrorism (of many stripes), etc. McCarthy was right, generally. But the KGB having the world in their palm is false, just as the claims that Mossad has there hands in everything, or that the Bilderbergers run everything.
Of course not. I've never doubted Putin was behind these killings. He's an evil, dangerous man.
He's behind a lot more than the killings. Take a good look at a picture of al-Zawahira tell me if you think he could actually be Russian.
That's just the title of a book. The KGB is the Russian Government. And we are fighting them still. What isn't getting out is the fact that we have pretty much defeated them in the Philipines. How did this "Islamic" threat become global if not aided by some power other than Islamic fanaticism?
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