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Polonium For Dummies
Q&A on Polonium, the Poison Picked nationalinterest.org 11.30.2006 Polonium-210 has been in the spotlight since it was identified as the poison that killed Alexander Litvinenko, a former officer in Russia's internal security service. Karl K. Turekian, professor of geology and geophysics at Yale University, explains its basic qualities, where and why it is produced and how it destroys human tissue. In an interview with National Interest online editor, Ximena Ortiz, Turekian also says that the decision to look for polonium as a source of the poisoning required a high-degree of sophistication and possibly some prior knowledge. NIo: Could you explain what polonium is? KKT: First of all, the basic chemistry of polonium: It’s everywhere naturally. Polonium-210 occurs in anything that has uranium, but the levels are very, very low. During the development of the atomic bomb, what was needed was an initiator, something that would get the uranium-235 to start fissioning. They developed a way of manufacturing polonium-210 artificially with bismuth-209. They took that polonium and combined it with beryllium. This emits neutrons at just the right energy to initiate a nuclear reaction. That’s still the major use of polonium-210 now. When polonium-210 was fabricated in such large quantities—they would actually machine it and make shapes, and things like that—they also started using it for reactors in satellites. So there is that use to it as well. Anyhow, wherever there is a nuclear arsenal, there’s polonium-210. It has a half-life of 138 days, which means if you start with ten grams, in 138 days it will be down to five grams and in another 138 days it will be down to 2.5. It will be effectively gone in three and a half years. So they have to keep manufacturing it. NIo: Do all nuclear states manufacture polonium? KKT: Everyone uses polonium-210. People quickly realized they needed an initiator, and polonium-210 is the initiator of choice for a lot of reasons. NIo: Does it make a difference if you manufacture a uranium bomb versus a plutonium bomb? KKT: All of them need something to provide neutrons to initiate the reaction. NIo: Would civilian nuclear reactors also use polonium? KKT: My guess is that polonium-210 is not necessary for a nuclear reactor for energy production, though I’m not an expert in that area. It’s actually manufactured from bismuth in nuclear reactors. Whereas bombs in their compact state—with a core of plutonium-210 and beryllium—are dependent on it. NIo: So you wouldn’t be producing it if you’re not producing a bomb? KKT: Probably not. NIo: Once you obtained polonium-210, how would you use it as a poison? KKT: Polonium-210 is called an alpha emitter. Alpha is essentially a helium atom stripped of all its electrons, and it comes out with a tremendous amount of energy. It does not have a long range, however; you can put a piece of paper over it and it stops the particles. They do a lot of damage close up, but they don’t go great distances. You could carry it around in a box, and no one would know you had any by the radiation. It would get warm if you had a lot of it, but no one could detect it if you had a vial surrounded by sawdust. That’s also the source of its hazards. Being an alpha emitter, with these very energetic, charged particles, if it bombards tissue it destroys the tissue, or causes it to mutate. People have been studying that for quite awhile, for a lot of reasons including the hazards of second-hand smoke. It has an interesting history. A massive dose of alpha particles next to human tissue would cause damage that could lead to sickness and death. NIo: How could one use it as a poison without hurting themselves? KKT: Remember the rays aren’t like X-rays or gamma rays that penetrate a great distance. This stuff, the radiation isn’t going to go beyond the cardboard box. It’s easy to handle as long as there’s a container. NIo: What about removing it, how would you poison another person? Would you put it into food? KKT: Well, you could put it into food. It would act like a small explosion in the cells, and that’s where the damage is done. It could also be inhaled, but I don’t think that’s what you would do to someone else. You’re not going to use an aerosol spray in the air you’re breathing. NIo: How would you go about exposing the food to the polonium? KKT: I’m not really a chef. You don’t need a whole lot of it, though; adding it to food in some way or another need not be obvious or ostentatious. NIo: It still seems like such an exotic property to choose, though. KKT: Well, there’s plenty of polonium-210 available—any place there’s a bomb maintenance facility—and it’s always manufactured. It is a sophisticated thing to know that polonium-210 is dangerous, but that’s been known because it did a lot of harm to people throughout the Manhattan Project. Beyond that, I have no idea. I was surprised that somebody was clever enough to look for polonium-210 during the investigation. If you were looking for alpha emitters, there is a diagnostic energy for polonium-210 no one would mistake. But the act of looking into that shows some insight into what might have been used, and I have no idea how they got that insight. Maybe they knew something about this person or the people he hung around with. Copyright © 2006 The National Interest The National Interest is published by The Nixon Center |
December 1, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor Puffing on Polonium By ROBERT N. PROCTOR Stanford, Calif. WHEN the former K.G.B. agent Alexander V. Litvinenko was found to have been poisoned by radioactive polonium 210 last week, there was one group that must have been particularly horrified: the tobacco industry. The industry has been aware at least since the 1960s that cigarettes contain significant levels of polonium. Exactly how it gets into tobacco is not entirely understood, but uranium “daughter products” naturally present in soils seem to be selectively absorbed by the tobacco plant, where they decay into radioactive polonium. High-phosphate fertilizers may worsen the problem, since uranium tends to associate with phosphates. In 1975, Philip Morris scientists wondered whether the secret to tobacco growers’ longevity in the Caucasus might be that farmers there avoided phosphate fertilizers. How much polonium is in tobacco? In 1968, the American Tobacco Company began a secret research effort to find out. Using precision analytic techniques, the researchers found that smokers inhale an average of about .04 picocuries of polonium 210 per cigarette. The company also found, no doubt to its dismay, that the filters being considered to help trap the isotope were not terribly effective. (Disclosure: I’ve served as a witness in litigation against the tobacco industry.) A fraction of a trillionth of a curie (a unit of radiation named for polonium’s discoverers, Marie and Pierre Curie) may not sound like much, but remember that we’re talking about a powerful radionuclide disgorging alpha particles — the most dangerous kind when it comes to lung cancer — at a much higher rate even than the plutonium used in the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Polonium 210 has a half life of about 138 days, making it thousands of times more radioactive than the nuclear fuels used in early atomic bombs. We should also recall that people smoke a lot of cigarettes — about 5.7 trillion worldwide every year, enough to make a continuous chain from the earth to the sun and back, with enough left over for a few side-trips to Mars. If .04 picocuries of polonium are inhaled with every cigarette, about a quarter of a curie of one of the world’s most radioactive poisons is inhaled along with the tar, nicotine and cyanide of all the world’s cigarettes smoked each year. Pack-and-a-half smokers are dosed to the tune of about 300 chest X-rays. Is it therefore really correct to say, as Britain’s Health Protection Agency did this week, that the risk of having been exposed to this substance remains low? That statement might be true for whatever particular supplies were used to poison Mr. Litvinenko, but consider also this: London’s smokers (and those Londoners exposed to secondhand smoke), taken as a group, probably inhale more polonium 210 on any given day than the former spy ingested with his sushi. No one knows how many people may be dying from the polonium part of tobacco. There are hundreds of toxic chemicals in cigarette smoke, and it’s hard to sort out how much one contributes compared to another — and interactive effects can be diabolical. In a sense, it doesn’t really matter. Taking one toxin out usually means increasing another — one reason “lights” don’t appear to be much safer. What few experts will dispute is the magnitude of the hazard: the World Health Organization estimates that 10 million people will be dying annually from cigarettes by the year 2020 — a third of these in China. Cigarettes, which claimed about 100 million lives in the 20th century, could claim close to a billion in the present century. The tobacco industry of course doesn’t like to have attention drawn to the more exotic poisons in tobacco smoke. Arsenic, cyanide and nicotine, bad enough. But radiation? As more people learn more about the secrets hidden in the golden leaf, it may become harder for the industry to align itself with candy and coffee — and harder to maintain, as we often hear in litigation, that the dangers of tobacco have long been “common knowledge.” I suspect that even some of our more enlightened smokers will be surprised to learn that cigarette smoke is radioactive, and that these odd fears spilling from a poisoned K.G.B. man may be molehills compared with our really big cancer mountains. Robert N. Proctor is a professor of the history of science at Stanford University. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company |
Something is going on, and everyone is suspect (even Western factions).
Excluding Putin himself in the investigation of the deaths of some of his critics would not be the right thing to do, but outright blame without investigation is not right either. I am very curious to see how this comes out, and even if it DOES come out, how much of it will ever reach our ears..... |
Dead spy's contact 'has radiation'
http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/WORLD/eu...lla.afp.gi.jpg Mario Scaramella had lunch in London with Alexander Litvinenko, on the day the former spy was allegedly poisoned. cnn.com December 1, 2006 LONDON, England (CNN) -- A further person -- reportedly an Italian academic who met Russian former spy Alexander Litvinenko on the day he was allegedly fatally poisoned -- has tested positive for radiation, officials said on Friday. It was revealed Mario Scaramella had tested positive for a significant quantity of the deadly radioactive toxin polonium-210, sources told the Press Association. He is the first person to test positive since Litvinenko's death last month sparked a radiation alert. The Health Protection Agency (HPA) confirmed to CNN that a second person had tested positive for radiation, but did not disclose that person's identity. "Tests have established that a further person, who was in direct and very close contact with Mr. Litvinenko, has a significant quantity of the radioactive isotope polonium-210 in their body," the agency said in a written statement. The HPA said the risk to the general public of having been exposed to this substance remained low. Scaramella told The Associated Press Wednesday that doctors had cleared him after tests. It was unclear what prompted the new diagnosis, and Scaramella could not be reached for comment. Meanwhile Friday, the examination on Litvinenko's body was being carried out in London with special precautions being taken because of the nature of his death. Three pathologists were attending the autopsy at the Royal London hospital, CNN's European Political Editor Robin Oakley said. One pathologist represented the UK government, another was attending for Litvinenko's wife, Marina, and the third was an independent specialist who would report to the defense team in case of a criminal prosecution in the case. The scientists wore protective clothing and radiation levels were being monitored constantly during the examination. Health experts said Litvinenko had ingested a significant amount of polonium-210, the isotope that killed him over a three-week period. The funeral of the 43-year-old former KGB agent would be held soon after the autopsy, his friend Alex Goldfarb said. Also on Friday, Britain's Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett met her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Amman, Jordan, and repeated the British government's request for co-operation from the Russian authorities in the investigation of Litvinenko's death. In a deathbed accusation, Litvinenko blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for his poisoning, a charge Putin strongly denied. Lavrov restated earlier assurances that Moscow would cooperate fully, Prime Minister Tony Blair's official spokesman said. The investigation into the poisoning of Litvinenko had focused increasingly on Moscow after a radiation alert on several aircraft that flew to the Russian capital. EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso voiced concern about the case. "We have a problem with Russia. In fact, we have several problems. Too many people have been killed and we don't know who killed them," he said on Thursday. Friends of the former spy said the discovery of radioactivity on British Airways planes reinforced further claims that Russia's security agents were behind the poisoning. One of those planes, which was grounded at Moscow, was due to fly into London's Heathrow Airport Friday for tests. British media reports said Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell had taken advice from the Health Protection Agency after learning she travelled on one of the jets at the center of the investigation. Jowell took a British Airways flight with British Olympics chief Sebastian Coe to Barcelona this month on an Olympics fact-finding visit to the Spanish city. Gaidar probe The Litvinenko investigation had gathered pace in London Thursday. The inquest into his death was opened and adjourned at St. Pancras Coroner's Court in north London where Andrew Reid confirmed it appeared as though he had been exposed to, or administered polonium-210. Home Secretary John Reid revealed that the number of contaminated sites had doubled from six to 12 and was likely to rise again. The FBI said it had been asked to join the British investigation and that its experts in weapons of mass destruction will assist with some of the scientific analysis. Meanwhile Irish police announced they were launching an investigation in to the possible poisoning of Yegor Gaidar, architect of Russia's market reforms. (Full story) Gaidar, 50, became violently ill at a conference in Ireland and was rushed to a hospital there, but was said to be improving in a Moscow hospital. Another attendee at the conference said Friday that Gaidar was ill before he arrived in Ireland. (Full story) British Airways has said that "the risk to public health is low," but it has published a list of the flights affected on its Web site and told customers on these flights to contact a special help-line set up by the Health Ministry. (Flight list) On Friday the airlines said on its Web site that one of the three BA 767s removed from service following the discovery of low traces of a radioactive substance has been given the all clear by UK government agencies. The Health Protection Agency (HPA) told BA it does not believe that overall passengers on this aircraft -- registration G-BZHA -- were at risk over the past month. This aircraft had flown 72 of the 221 flights identified. BA said an estimated 33,000 passengers and 3,000 staff were involved in the alert relating to their aircraft, involving the 221 flights to 10 destinations from October 25 to November 29. The airline said it was continuing to make every effort to contact those involved. The head of Russia's state atomic energy agency Rosatom, Sergei Kiriyenko, told the government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta that Russia produces only 8 grams of Polonium 210 a month and the material cannot be obtained illegally there. Kiriyenko declined to say how polonium was produced but said nuclear reactors such as the Russian RMBK or the Canadian CANDU were needed to make it. Reid said there are between 130 and 150 sites in the United Kingdom where Polonium 210 might be used, but there were no reports of theft from any of the sites. The UK Health Protection Agency (HPA) has said the health risk to tens of thousands of air passengers caught up in the radiation alert is likely to be extremely low. Chief executive Pat Troop said that as alpha radiation cannot pass through skin or even paper, the risk of contamination is "likely to be low." Copyright 2006 CNN. |
aha, weberr ... always a breath of fresh air :: cough, cough ::
and what different kind of sh*t does the Russian press write about this? IMO Putin is not that stupid to be involved with this. More likely than not some other more powerful person is the Prince of Polonium. But you have to admit that a new line has been crossed -- which is not a good situation for any of us http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...milies/eek.png |
Polonium-209 is available on special order from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (which supplies Los Alamos) at a cost of $3600/µCi plus packing costs.
Although they are having a job shifting it as their website gives a special offer if you buy in bulk. http://www.ornl.gov/sci/isotopes/r_po209.html Capitalism thrives!!!! |
Quote:
According to THIS you can get it at the local Bodega or at Duane Reade, thanks to these guys: http://www.philipmorrisusa.com/en/home.asp |
uh-huh ...
And THESE GUYS could have killed Litvinenko, too -- if he tried to sneak any Polonium onto THIS |
BTW, isn't it Polonium 210?
Or did I hear something incorrectly..... |
Quote:
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http://www.amstat.com/
AMSTAT'S nuclear static eliminators are perfect for use in hazardous areas around volatile solvents or explosive powders because they use no electric current. Devices are completely safe, portable, compact, easily installed and maintained. There are no transformers or high-voltage cables to short out or create radio frequency interference to sensitive equipment. NUCLESTAT, NUCLECEL, IONMASTER, and STATICMASTER static eliminators are always balanced, using the alpha-energy isotope Polonium 210 to continuously create an equal number of positive and negative ions. No calibration, balance adjustment, or distance allowance is ever required. Alpha energy, while a strong air ionizer, presents no external radiation hazard. It is incapable of penetrating an ordinary sheet of paper or a person's epidermal (top, dead) layer of skin. Air stops alpha energy at a distance of about 2”. The isotope is pressure welded by a patented process into a multi-layer gold and silver foil that is insoluble and inert in most chemicals. The physical properties of gold and silver provide excellent resistance to oxidation and corrosion. Because the isotope is an integral part of the foil, it is vibration and impact resistant. http://www.amstat.com/images/products/brushes.gif |
Litvinenko Under the Microscope
nationalinterest.org by Sean R. Singer 12.01.2006 A resident of Alexander Litvinenko’s birthplace describes, in Charlotte Dobson’s Black Earth City, the western Russian city of Voronezh as: “So small-minded. Just gossip, gossip.” In the city of Litvinenko’s death — London — gossip, rumors and conspiracy theories continue to surround Litvinenko and his mysterious demise — requiring a higher-minded parsing of the facts from speculation. Litvinenko died on November 23 at the age of 43 in a British hospital with high levels of polonium-210 in his urine, three weeks after falling ill. As for the origins of this isotope, Yale geology and geophysics professor Karl K. Turekian told National Interest online, “Wherever there is a nuclear arsenal, there’s polonium-210.” There are also news reports that polonium-210 can be purchased online. British Home Secretary John Reid has confirmed traces of polonium in twelve locations throughout London, with more possible confirmations to come. Additionally, two British Airways 767s that frequently make the London-Moscow trip shows possible signs of radioactive contamination, and a third British Airways plane in Moscow along with a Transaero aircraft that landed in London on Thursday are the subject of investigation. Scotland Yard suspects, according to London’s Telegraph, that assassins transported the polonium from Moscow to London on an October 25 British Airways flight. The newspaper also reports that British scientists know the polonium's point of origin. Across St. George's Channel in Ireland, former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar fell ill on November 24. According to doctors, “unnatural products” caused the illness, while Gaidar's daughter less euphemistically suggested poison. On November 1, Litvinenko left a radioactive trail all over London that included encounters with a cast of characters seemingly lifted from an Ian Fleming novel. Many of the characters are linked to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) or exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky—and some are linked to both. Years of Living Dangerously The Litvinenko saga and the complex web it encompasses began 16 years ago in the Soviet Union. Litvinenko joined the KGB in 1988, working in counter-intelligence. After the Soviet Union collapsed and the FSB succeeded the KGB, he moved to the Organized Crime Control Directorate, an elite unit investigating terrorism and organized crime. He achieved notoriety in 1998, when he claimed publicly that he refused orders to assassinate Berezovsky. Later that year, Boris Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin FSB director. According to a Litvinenko essay published posthumously, this effectively ended his intelligence career. He wrote that his past investigations had nearly revealed that Putin, while deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, was involved in drug trafficking, organized crime and the smuggling of rare metals. In the ensuing years, Litvinenko served two separate stints in an FSB prison, facing charges relating to abuse of office, though the government eventually dropped both cases. “I was given illegal orders linked to the kidnapping and murder of people”, Litvinenko wrote in retrospect. “When we did not execute these orders, they began to persecute us. Criminal cases against me were opened. I was offered a higher post in exchange for my silence.” In prison, he met and befriended Berezovsky ally and subordinate Alex Goldfarb, who then directed a George Soros-funded project to fight tuberculosis in Russian prisons. In 2000, with Litvinenko set to face jail time on charges of faking evidence in an investigation, Goldfarb helped manage Litvinenko’s escape to England, via Turkey. (Goldfarb, director of Berezovsky’s Civil Liberties Fund, served as Litvinenko’s spokesmen as he lay dying but was typically identified only as a family friend.) Once in England, Litvinenko went on the offensive against Putin. Berezovsky, also in exile in London, financed his 2002 book, Blowing up Russia: Terror From Within, in which Litvinenko accused the Russian government and FSB of responsibility for the 1999Moscowand Volgodonsk apartment bombings that helped justify the second Chechen War. He continued to criticize the Kremlin throughout his time in London. In July 2006, writing on a pro-Chechen website, Litvinenko accused Putin of pedophilia, writing: “When Putin became the FSB director and was preparing for presidency, he began to seek and destroy any compromising materials collected against him . . . Putin found videotapes in the FSB Internal Security Directorate, which showed him making sex with some underage boys.” Moscow vehemently denied the accusations, but Litvinenko’s attacks on the Kremlin continued. Pointing at Putin On his death bed, Litinenko spoke directly to his former KGB comrade, Russian President Vladimir Putin: “You may succeed in silencing me but that silence comes at a price. . . . You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life. May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people.” A Day in the Life of Litvinenko November 1, 2006: At approximately 2 p.m. Litvinenko lunched with Mario Scaramella, an Italian academic with a shady background. He is no newcomer to the Russian security services or nuclear materials—nor, according to Scaramella, was Litvinenko, who reportedly boasted at lunch that, “he had masterminded the smuggling of radioactive material [from Russia] to Zurich in 2000.” Beginning in 1992, Scaramella was a consultant for the Mitrokhin Commission, an Italian parliamentary commission investigating KGB and Eastern Bloc security services’ activities on Italian soil during the Cold War. His self-proclaimed focus was the KGB and its successor organizations’ smuggling of radioactive material. Scaramella is currently under investigation in Italy, where magistrates have suggested that he planted evidence relating to an assassination attempt on him and Italian politician Paolo Guzzanti in 2004, which Scaramella suspects was the work of Ukrainian mobsters but others believe the Neapolitan mafia conducted. Scaramella is currently in a safe house in London and proclaims his innocence in the Litvinenko case. London's Telegraph reported on Friday that Scaramella had tested positive for polonium, with “significant” amounts “detected in his urine.” The purpose of his meeting with Litvinenko is unclear, with reports of two possible sets of documents transferred: one containing a Russian security services “hit-list”, featuring both Litvinenko and Scaramella, and another identifying those responsible for the assassination of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya on October 7. Litvinenko friend Yuri Felshtinsky, who co-authored Blowing up Russia, has stated that around November 12, Litvinenko suspected Scaramella as his assassin. Other speculation has focused on Litvinenko’s November 1 post-lunch meeting with three Russian men—ex-KGB officer and businessmanAndrey Lugovoi, Dmitriy Kovtun and Vyacheslav Sokolenko—at the Millenium Hotel in Mayfair. In the 1990s Lugovoi ran security for Russia’s ORT television, then owned by Berezovsky. Litvinenko’s brother Maxim recently said of the trio: “I am sure they poisoned him. They met him, trapped him and gave him poison.” Lugovoi told Kommersant that he traveled on one of the contaminated aircrafts on November 3, but denies any involvement in the poisoning. Litvinenko also visited Berezovsky’s offices later that day. The Independent also reports that police are not ruling out the possibility that Litvinenko committed suicide to discredit Putin. The Chechen Connection Litvinenko joins a growing list of people whose involvement with Chechnya may have contributed to their deaths. In 2002 the FSB took credit for assassinating Chechen rebel leader Omar Ibn al-Khattab with a poisoned letter. In 2003 Duma member Sergei Yushenkov, who had assembled an independent body to investigate the 1999 apartment bombings, was shot and killed; a Berezovsky associate was convicted in the case. That same year, Novaya Gazeta journalist and chair of the Duma subcommittee on investigations Yuri Shchekochikin died after contracting an unexplained illness. He was also investigating the 1999 apartment bombings along with other high profile criminal cases, included that of then-head of the Russian Atomic Energy Ministry Yevgeni Adamov. More recently, Anna Politkovskaya, also a Novaya Gazeta reporter, known for her criticism and documentation of Russian human rights abuses in Chechnya was shot dead in her apartment building in October. This followed her near death in 2004, which she claimed resulted from a poisoning attempt. In 2004, former Chechen president Zelimkhan Yandarbiev died in a car bombing in Doha, Qatar. Two Russian military intelligence (GRU) operatives were tried and convicted for the bombing, though eventually returned to Russia where they are no longer incarcerated. Yandarbiev had left Chechnya following the beginning of the second Chechen conflict and raised money throughout the Islamic world, eventually settling in Qatar in 2001. He was targeted for funneling money to Chechen terrorists and for his own suspected involvement in the 2002 Moscow theatre siege, in which Chechen militants seized approximately 700 hostages, nearly one hundred of which died during the rescue attempt, which included the use of an incapacitating agent. Litvinenko’s connection to Chechnya dates back to his FSB service there from 1991–1996. The family of former Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov released a statement on November 24, praising Litvinenko’s life work and identifying him as a convert to Islam. “Anyone who values truth, honour, dignity and the future of their country might end up as Aleksandr Litvinenko, Yuriy Shchekochikhin, Anna Politkovskaya and others did. The reason is that our enemy is dangerous and cowardly, it plants bags with hexogen in basements, lies in wait for its victim at the entrance to their homes, kills civilians and resorts to the most barbarous methods—forbids burying people.” For now, most questions in the Litvinenko case remain unanswered. But with the inquest into Litvinenko’s death beginning Friday, it seems that the Litvinenko saga, much like polonium-210 and its 138-day half-life, has both staying power and noxious potential. Sean R. Singer is an apprentice editor at The National Interest. Copyright © 2006 The National Interest |
POISONED-SPY PROBE FOCUSES ON
A SHADOWY RUSSIAN WHO KNEW VICTIM http://www.nypost.com/seven/12032006...s/news009a.jpg MYSTERY MOGUL: Police say the London hotel room of Andrei Lugovoi (above) was contaminated with a radioactive isotope before Alexander Litvinenko was given his fatal dose. nypost.com Sunday Times of London December 3, 2006 -- LONDON - You would be hard put to find better cover to assassinate an exiled Russian dissident. On Nov. 1, hundreds of Russians were in town to watch the Arsenal soccer club play a team from Moscow. It was a major British match - and a killer, or killers could hope to find anonymity among the families, groups and individual fans arriving from Moscow. After the evening kick-off, Arsenal wasted three good chances to score. The match ended n a draw. Elsewhere in the capital, however, someone had struck with lethal accuracy. That evening in Muswell Hill, a little north of Arsenal's stadium, Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy and enemy of Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime, became ill and began vomiting. Within days he was hospitalized. By Nov. 23, he was dead, his internal organs destroyed by a rare radioactive isotope called polonium-210. The death, which increasingly looks like a cunning, ruthless murder, has sparked a huge police investigation that has uncovered radiation at 12 sites across London and on two British Airways planes that had flown between London and Moscow. A senior Scotland Yard source said yesterday that investigators are closing in on a suspect. Hunting with radiation detectors, the police have been painstakingly reconstructing Litvinenko's movements Nov. 1, trying to identify where he went and who he met. Late last week police were still working behind a sealed-off part of the eighth floor of the Sheraton Park Lane Hotel after finding traces of polonium. They were investigating a Russian guest whose room had shown signs of contamination before Nov. 1. If so, it would be a strong clue to the origins of the polonium. The police were giving nothing away about the identity of their target. But The Sunday Times has established that a former Russian agent, Andrei Lugovoi, who was known to Litvinenko, stayed in the hotel in the days before Nov. 1 and that he is, he says, significantly contaminated with polonium. Litvinenko's close friends believe Lugovoi is deeply involved, either knowingly or unknowingly, in the poisoning. But Lugovoi and his business partner, Dimitri Kovtun, who also visited London, vehemently deny involvement and say they have been set up as fall guys. Lugovoi has claimed: "Traces were found even on my children and on my wife. To think that I would handle the stuff and put them at risk is simply ludicrous." Although it remains hedged in murk and mystery, a few firm findings are emerging from the fog of conspiracy theories. They include: * Polonium-210 of the quantity and purity used to kill Litvinenko is difficult to obtain, and cannot simply be ordered over the Internet. The amount used, more than 100 times a lethal dose, implies it was obtained either from a reactor or in an unusually large commercial transaction that "would have raised eyebrows."* Although some polonium is imported into Britain, no polonium is made here and none has been reported missing. This indicates that the isotope was smuggled into the country. London's Evening Standard newspaper reported Friday that British scientists have traced the polonium to a Russian nuclear power plant.* Litvinenko was contaminated on Nov. 1 and not before. Yet it is thought traces of polonium on a plane and in a London hotel date from Oct. 25.* Police have identified a trail of polonium residues at 12 sites across London, including a restaurant, two hotels, some offices and Litvinenko's home.* So far only Litvinenko, his wife Marina and Mario Scaramella, an Italian who met Litvinenko on Nov. 1, have tested positive for absorbing polonium into their bodies.Marina and Scaramella have far lower levels of contamination than Litvinenko suffered and as yet are reportedly showing no ill-effects. THE more that emerges about Litvi nenko's death, the more polonium is revealed as an extraordinary weapon for assassination. Although it leaves a radiation trail, this is of usually benign "alpha" particles that do not register on normal Geiger counters. This is why doctors treating Litvinenko when he fell ill initially were baffled. He exhibited classic signs of radiation poisoning, including vomiting, hair loss and organ failure. But when they tested for gamma radiation with a Geiger counter, they found nothing unusual. The police who interviewed Litvinenko in hospital initially did not know what had caused his illness and had little to go on. There was no trail to follow. The Health Protection Agency was out of its depth. Polonium is so rare that nobody thought to look for it. Eventually, a sample of Litvinenko's urine was sent for testing at Britain's Atomic Weapons Establishment. Again Geiger counters showed only a tiny amount more gamma radiation than the normal background level. In the end, scientists decided to use an alpha detector and were shocked to find a stream of helium nuclei being emitted from the sample. The discovery of what had poisoned Litvinenko was made only hours before he died; but even if it had been made earlier it would have been too late to save him. IN theory, it is possible that a criminal gang could have bought polonium, with careful planning and forged documents. But it would be even more accessible to an organization such as state intelligence service. Since Litvinenko's death, the view put forward by pro-Kremlin interests is that he was a minor character, too insignificant for the FSB to bother killing. However, Russian dissidents thought differently. In August 2002, Mikhail Trepashkin, a Moscow lawyer and former FSB agent, telephoned Litvinenko to warn him that a special unit had been set up in the FSB to target him along with Boris Berezovsky, a billionaire businessman and oligarch who wielded considerable political influence and was a polical enemy to Putin, and their associates. Last week, letters written by Trepashkin to Litvinenko were passed to The Sunday Times. They reveal that Trepashkin claimed he had been contacted by another former member of the FSB who asked to meet him at a Moscow metro station. "[The agent] told me that he was again working for the FSB internal security division . . . and that a 'very serious group' had been set up which will 'pressure all those associated with Berezovsky and Litvinenko,' " Trepashkin wrote. "My clear understanding was that they were planning to take out your relatives . . ." Litvinenko already suspected he was being monitored by a spy called Viktor Kirov acting under diplomatic cover from the Russian Embassy in London. Litvinenko is said to have complained to the police of being harassed by Kirov. In September 2004, someone threw a gasoline bomb at Litvinenko's house. It caused minor damage and Litvinenko tried to shrug it off. He knew there were far more sinister ways to kill him. THE police have been trying to determine the timeline of the polonium trail by examining the BA planes on which radiation traces have been found. If they could identify specific seats as sites of contamination, and match these to the passengers who used them on particular dates, they might be able to pinpoint when the polonium contamination first appeared. Last week, police were believed to be concentrating on an Oct. 25 flight from Moscow. Why would anyone bring polonium in then? And how could the contamination have leaked out? One possibility is that the attack on Litvinenko was planned for late October, but then postponed for a few days. If so, the assassin might have opened his container of polonium to prepare his attack prematurely and then left traces in the days before the poisoning took place. Experts say that, however carefully this preparation was done, small particles would have escaped and sprayed onto the person's hands and clothing. "Polonium is very difficult to hold in one place," said Priest. "The moment you open a container of polonium some of it will come out and deposit on surfaces. It's due to something called 'recoil' - basically the alpha particles kick out atoms of polonium." Yet even if Lugovoi can be shown to have been contaminated with polonium before Nov. 1, it is still no proof that he is responsible for Litvinenko's poisoning. Investigators have to discover how and where someone administered far more than a trace of polonium to Litvinenko. The assassin managed to make him eat, inhale or absorb into his blood enough polonium to create, as his father later said, "a tiny nuclear bomb." On the morning of Nov. 1, Litvinenko was given a lift into the center of London by car. No trace of polonium has been found in that vehicle. Given the high radiation he suffered, he would have fallen ill rapidly. "It would have been within hours, a day at most," said a source at the HPA. It was the evening of Nov. 1 that he became sick. His movements that day are the subject of dispute. According to Oleg Gordievsky, a friend of the victim and former KGB officer, Litvinenko met Lugovoi and Kovtun in the morning. But Lugovoi and Kovtun insist they met in the afternoon. "In the morning, my family went off on a London tour," said Lugovoi. "Dimitri and I went to a business meeting. I had spoken to Litvinenko and we had agreed to meet that day. He told me that he was first seeing an Italian acquaintance." Again, timing matters in attempting to determine when the poisoning happened and who did it. Traces of polonium were found in the Pine bar and the Millennium Hotel, where Lugovoi and Kovtun were staying and where they met Litvinenko. But when those traces were left remains uncertain. About 3 p.m., Litvinenko met Mario Scaramella, an Italian investigator who was in London for a meeting of the International Maritime Organization. Scaramella was keen to see Litvinenko, he said, because he had received information about the FSB targeting people for elimination, including himself and Litvinenko. Scaramella wanted to sit down and Litvinenko was hungry. So they went to the nearby Itsu sushi restaurant in Piccadilly. As Lugovoi knew, this was one of Litvinenko's favorite haunts. The Italian had a drink but nothing to eat; Litvinenko had a plate of sushi. According to Yuri Felshtinsky, Litvinenko's friend and co-author of the book, "Blowing Up Russia," who spoke to him soon afterwards: "Alexander told me the meeting was very sudden. They weren't meant to meet that particular day. Then Mario suddenly called and said he had to meet him immediately. "He thought his behavior was odd. He told me that Mario was very nervous. He was drinking only water or something. Sasha [Litvinenko] ate something. "Then [Scaramella] gave him those papers and they were in English and Alexander actually could not go through them very quickly because his English was not good enough." Scaramella is another mysterious character in a cast of shadowy figures. He has been reported to be an academic but the university he was said to have been attached to has never heard of him. Sergio Rastrelli, a lawyer representing Scaramella, said that tests showed he had been poisoned from the same source as Litvinenko. He was not contaminated by Litvinenko, said Rastrelli. Initial health tests in Italy failed to find any polonium. He was flown to Britain to talk to the police and at first enjoyed the limelight. "The British are treating me like the Prince of Wales," Scaramella told Paolo Guzzanti, a friend and Italian senator. "I'm in a castle [believed to be a Sussex hotel] and been given three escort cars." But British tests revealed his contamination. Yesterday, a spokesman for University College Hospital in London said he was "well" and preliminary tests have shown "no evidence of radiation toxicity." Copyright 2006 NYP Holdings, Inc. |
December 3, 2006
All Aglow Polonium, $22.50 Plus Tax By WILLIAM J. BROAD THE trail of clues in the mysterious death of Alexander V. Litvinenko may lead to Moscow, as the former spy claimed on his deathbed. But solving the nuclear whodunit may prove harder than Scotland Yard and many scientists at first anticipated. The complicating factor is the relative ubiquity of polonium 210, the highly radioactive substance found in Mr. Litvinenko’s body and now in high levels in the body of an Italian associate, who has been hospitalized in London. Experts initially called it quite rare, with some claiming that only the Kremlin had the wherewithal to administer a lethal dose. But public and private inquiries have shown that it proliferated quite widely during the nuclear era, of late as an industrial commodity. “You can get it all over the place,” said William Happer, a physicist at Princeton who has advised the United States government on nuclear forensics. “And it’s a terrible way to go.” Today, polonium 210 can show up in everything from atom bombs, to antistatic brushes to cigarette smoke, though in the last case only minute quantities are involved. Iran made relatively large amounts of polonium 210 in what some experts call a secret effort to develop nuclear arms, and North Korea probably used it to trigger its recent nuclear blast. Commercially, Web sites and companies sell many products based on polonium 210, with labels warning of health dangers. By some estimates, a lethal dose might cost as little as $22.50, plus tax. “Radiation from polonium is dangerous if the solid material is ingested or inhaled,” warns the label of an antistatic brush. “Keep away from children.” Peter D. Zimmerman, a professor in the war studies department of King’s College, London, said the many industrial uses of polonium 210 threatened to complicate efforts at solving the Litvinenko case. “It’s a great Agatha Christie novel,” he said. “She couldn’t have written anything weirder than this.” Mr. Litvinenko, 43, a vocal critic of the Russian government, died on Nov. 23 after a traumatic illness in which his organs failed and his hair fell out. As he lay dying, he claimed that he had been poisoned and blamed Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin. The Kremlin dismissed the charge as absurd. The British authorities soon found that Mr. Litvinenko had died of polonium 210 poisoning in what appeared to be its first use as a murder weapon. Conspiracy theorists said Russia had the motive and means, noting its long history of polonium work, as well as creative assassinations. The recent discovery of traces of radioactivity on British commercial jets flying to and from Russia has heightened the suspicions. As in any good murder mystery, the deadliness was foreshadowed. Marie Curie, who discovered the radioactive element in 1898 and named it after her native Poland, organized its close study. One of her polonium workers died in 1927 from apparent poisoning, according to Susan Quinn, author of “Marie Curie: A Life” (Simon & Schuster, 1995). Another worker lost her hair. At first, mines provided minute samples nearly invisible to the human eye. But the debut of nuclear reactors let scientists make polonium 210 by the pound. The substance emits swarms of subatomic rays, and the Manhattan Project in 1945 used them to trigger the world’s first atom bombs. Such initiators became the global standard for basic nuclear arms. President Eisenhower, eager to promote “atoms for peace,” had the high heats of polonium 210 turned into electricity for satellites. But the batteries lost power relatively fast because of the material’s short half-life, just 138 days. The United States made few such spacecraft. By the 1960’s, researchers worried increasingly about polonium 210’s deadly health effects. Harvard researchers found it in cigarette smoke and argued that its concentrations were high enough to make its radioactivity a contributing factor in lung cancer. Vilma R. Hunt, who helped lead the studies, called polonium 210 a nightmare for health workers, and perhaps sleuths, because it tended to move about in unexpected ways. “It crawls the walls,” she said in an interview. “It can be lost for a while and then come back.” Though dangerous when breathed, injected or ingested, the material is harmless outside the human body. Skin or paper can stop its rays cold. Industrial companies found polonium 210 to be ideal for making static eliminators that remove dust from film, lenses and laboratory balances, as well as paper and textile plants. Its rays produce an electric charge on nearby air. Bits of dust with static attract the charged air, which neutralizes them. Once free of static, the dust is easy to blow or brush away. Manufacturers of antistatic devices take great pains to make the polonium hard to remove. Even so, Dr. Zimmerman of King’s College said it could be done with “careful lab work,” which he declined to describe. The Health Physics Society, a professional group in McLean, Va., that distributes information on radiation safety, estimates that a lethal dose of polonium 210 is 3,000 microcuries (a radiation measure named after Marie and Pierre Curie). Other experts put the figure slightly higher. An antistatic fan made by NRD, of Grand Island, N.Y., contains 31,500 microcuries of polonium 210 — or, in theory, more than 10 lethal doses. The unit often sells commercially for $225.00. Repeated calls to NRD were not returned, but the company in sales literature describes its products as unusually safe. The company’s antistatic brushes contain less polonium, typically 500 microcuries of radiation. The three-inch brush often sells on the Web for $33.99. In theory, by spending $203.94, before tax and any handling charges, and then disassembling six brushes, someone with lab experience could accumulate a lethal dose. In Tennessee, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory sells dozens of types of rare nuclear materials to American manufacturers. But Bill Cabage, a lab spokesman, said it sold no polonium 210 because Russia was able to do so much more inexpensively. “That’s typical” of exotic radioisotopes, he said. “We can’t compete with their prices.” Last week, Russia’s top nuclear official said it exports 8 grams of polonium 210 a month, or 96 grams a year, to the United States. That is 3.4 ounces, which seems like a trifle but in theory is enough for thousands of lethal doses. He also said Russia had made no exports to Britain in the past five years. “Allegations that someone stole it during production are absolutely unfounded,” Sergei Kiriyenko, director of the Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency, said on Tuesday. “The controls are very tough.” Russian officials have repeatedly called Mr. Litvinenko’s death part of a choreographed effort to discredit Mr. Putin. But despite such denials, British tabloids have tended to blame the Kremlin, and the affair has strained relations between London and Moscow. Nuclear experts said the apparent origin of much of the world’s polonium 210 in Russia, including quantities used in American products, meant that investigations of the toxin’s provenance would probably reveal little. What would be surprising, the experts said, was if the radioactive toxin turned out to have been made or mined outside Russia. Still, several experts held out the possibility that close examination of polonium 210 residues from Mr. Litvinenko’s body or from the multiple sites where it has been found around London might reveal nuclear fingerprints that could throw light on the baffling case. “What they’ll be looking for is radioactive contaminants made at the same time,” said Dr. Happer of Princeton. “They’ll do the best they can technically,” hoping to find a match between the London samples and the known attributes of the world’s stocks of polonium 210. “But my guess,” he added, “is that it will take an informant” to clear up the mystery. http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...raphic.750.jpg Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company |
December 3, 2006
There’s a Reason Russians Are Paranoid By STEVEN LEE MYERS MOSCOW BEING prone to conspiracy theories, as Russians certainly are, doesn’t mean that someone is not conspiring against them. That, in essence, has been the response here to the poisoning of Aleksandr V. Litvinenko, the secret agent turned exile in London who died on Nov. 23 — a case that only grew murkier last week with the discovery of radioactive traces aboard three British airplanes and another mysterious illness in Moscow. Mr. Litvinenko’s slow end, the intrigue of his final healthy days, his deathbed statement accusing President Vladimir V. Putin of culpability (in English, some Russians noted suspiciously) — have nurtured a widely held view here that it was all indeed a conspiracy, only not the one embraced by Mr. Putin’s critics. It was, from this point of view, not a plot by the Kremlin to silence a critic, but one by its enemies to discredit the Kremlin, the obvious suspects being Mr. Putin’s critics in exile or, of course, President Bush, the Central Intelligence Agency or the West (generally). Or it could have been a plot by a faction inside the Kremlin to make it look as if a competing faction inside the Kremlin had done it. “There is too much evidence” to think otherwise, said Stanislav A. Belkovsky, a political scientist here with ties to Mr. Putin’s Kremlin. Actually, there is not much evidence at all, only questions and suspicions — which is, by the way, equally true of the accusations against Mr. Putin, no matter how fervently his critics believe them. Every country has its conspiracy theories, of course, and the Spy vs. Spy dramas of the cold war and Hollywood have given life to a fair number of them. But they thrive here in the fertile ground of the Russian imagination as they do in few other places. The Soviet Union’s leaders obsessed over conspiracies, real and imagined. They also rewrote history so regularly, fabricated so many economic reports extolling progress, covered up so many embarrassments like the Chernobyl disaster that few here ever believed they knew the whole truth about anything. And the absence of truth is where conspiracy theories take root. This remains so, and Mr. Putin is at least partly to blame. He has stifled the news media, and the day-to-day operation of the Kremlin is again as opaque as it was in Soviet times. And there is the inconvenient fact that the Kremlin’s critics — including a number of journalists — keep dying in circumstances that investigators have yet to solve. Mr. Putin’s entire presidency has been wrapped up in conspiracy theories, starting with his abrupt rise to power as Boris Yeltsin’s successor in 1999. That fall, a series of apartment bombings killed 243 people, fanning popular support for the second war in Chechnya, Russia’s separatist region. From the start, the bombings were viewed with suspicion, especially after the discovery of federal agents planting what turned out to be explosives in the basement of another building. (A training exercise, officials finally said.) In Russian politics, the violence clearly played to the advantage of hard-liners like Mr. Putin. A vocal adherent of the theory that Russian secret services conspired to bomb their own citizens to bolster the Chechen war effort was Mr. Litvinenko, a former agent of the secret service he accused in a book he jointly wrote, “Blowing Up Russia: Terror From Within.” The book was published with the help of Boris A. Berezovsky, the self-exiled tycoon who lives in London and has become Mr. Putin’s fiercest critic (the feeling is, evidently, mutual). Aleksei A. Venediktov, a radio host and executive editor of Ekho Moskvy, said the failure of the government to investigate the bombings thoroughly has nurtured distrust. In the same way, there are those who believe the authorities know more than they have told about the terrorist school siege in Beslan, in which 332 hostages and rescuers were killed in 2004. “As long as the public is not informed, conspiracy theories will multiply and grow,” Mr. Venediktov said. “This does not mean there is no conspiracy.” His theory? It was neither Mr. Putin nor the secret services. In fact, few here believe Russia’s leaders would have been so obvious as to use a radioactive isotope; it was used, instead, so people would think so! Mr. Venediktov said a death squad working outside of government control killed Mr. Litvinenko to frighten the political elite into insisting that Mr. Putin, stay on for a third term whether he wants to or not. By law he must step down in 2008. “The people who are behind this murder want to lay the responsibility in the future on Putin,” he said, in order to make him afraid to leave office lest he be prosecuted. In the Russian press, where objectivity is as elusive as ever, even darker theories abound, almost always pointing the blame away from Mr. Putin’s Kremlin and back toward his accusers. Izvestia offered four on Thursday. According to one, Mr. Litvinenko was selling radioactive materials on the black market. Another: he and Mr. Berezovsky were making a nuclear bomb to help Chechnya’s separatists. These theories about Mr. Litvinenko are not just ideas on the fringe. The chairman of the upper house of Parliament, Sergei M. Mironov, noted that the deaths of Mr. Litvinenko and Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist who was murdered in October, took place on the eve of trips by Mr. Putin to Europe. “I do not think the coincidence was accidental,” he said. When news emerged last week that Yegor T. Gaidar, a former prime minister and critic of Mr. Putin’s, had fallen ill a day after Mr. Litvinenko died, an ally of Mr. Gaidar’s, Anatoly B. Chubais, linked it to the deaths of Mr. Litvinenko and Ms. Politkovskaya, but not to Mr. Putin. Mr. Chubais, the head of Russia’s electric company, offered a grand conspiracy theory involving an attempted coup against Mr. Putin. The logic behind the conspiracies — let alone the facts — can sometimes be hard to fathom, but a Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry S. Peskov, said that many people in London, exiles and their supporters, were all too ready to believe anything that reflected poorly on Russia. “It is a negative heritage of the old times,” he said. Pressed, he suggested that “commercial interests” lay behind Mr. Litvinenko’s charges. Even Mr. Putin himself struck a conspiratorial tone, questioning the origins of Mr. Litvinenko’s last statement. “If such a note really appeared before Mr. Litvinenko’s death, then a question arises: why this note was not made public when he was still alive?” Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company |
Mystery deepens as ex-spy is buried
By Alex Rodriguez Tribune foreign correspondent December 7, 2006, 4:52 PM CST MOSCOW -- The mystery of the poisoning death of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko deepened Thursday, as authorities in Moscow announced that one of the Russians Litvinenko met the day he became ill also fell prey to radioactive poisoning. The Russian prosecutor general's office said it has opened an investigation into the attempted murder of Dmitry Kovtun, a Russian businessman who together with a colleague, Andrei Lugovoi, met Litvinenko in London the day he fell ill, Nov. 1, and earlier in London on Oct. 16. In a prepared statement, Russian prosecutors said they had determined that Litvinenko "died as a result of radioactive nuclide poisoning, and Kovtun, who met Litvinenko in October 2006, developed the same kind of disease also associated with radioactive nuclide poisoning." The statement by Russian prosecutors did not mention the Nov. 1 meeting, though Kovtun and Lugovoi gave a radio interview in Moscow on Nov. 24 in which they confirmed they met Litvinenko on Nov. 1 at the Millennium Hotel in London. Russian prosecutors also announced they have opened their own investigation into the death of Litvinenko, who died Nov. 23 after ingesting polonium-210, a radioactive isotope that can kill in minute amounts. That investigation will proceed alongside a probe into Litvinenko's death being carried out by a team of British investigators, who arrived in Moscow on Monday. On Wednesday, British authorities announced they now regard his death as a murder. British investigators interviewed Kovtun on Tuesday and Wednesday at a Moscow clinic where he has been undergoing radiation checks. The exact nature of his symptoms had yet to be disclosed as of late Thursday. Russian authorities' announcement of Kovtun's illness makes him the fourth person to test positive for the presence of a radioactive substance in his body. Litvinenko's wife, Marina, tested positive for radiation, but doctors said the level was a trace amount that posed no harm. Doctors also announced that Mario Scaramella, an Italian security expert who met Litvinenko Nov. 1 at a London sushi bar, also tested positive for traces of radioactivity in his body, though he has shown no signs of illness. He was released from a hospital Wednesday in London. Litvinenko had been investigating the Oct. 7 murder of Kremlin critic and investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, and at that Nov. 1 meeting at the sushi bar, Scaramella showed him documents related to the journalist's slaying. Litvinenko, who like Lugovoi once worked for the KGB and its successor agency, the FSB, has also been a harsh critic of the Kremlin and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Before he died, Litvinenko issued a statement blaming Putin for his poisoning, a charge Putin denied. The 43-year-old former Russian agent was buried Thursday at Highgate cemetery in northern London. The non-denominational funeral was preceded by a memorial at a London mosque; before he died, Litvinenko told his father he had thought about converting to Islam and wanted to be buried according to Muslim tradition, according to the Russian newspaper Kommersant. The disclosure by Russian authorities that Kovtun was victimized by radioactive poisoning and his rapid decline in health marked a bizarre, new twist in a case that has captivated both London and Moscow. British media had reported that Scotland Yard investigators wanted to question Lugovoi, Kovtun and another colleague, Vyacheslav Sokolenko, during their trip to Moscow. Both Lugovoi and Kovtun met Litvinenko in London on Oct. 16 and again Nov. 1. Lugovoi met Litvinenko alone on Oct. 26. Sokolenko said during the Nov. 24 radio interview on Ekho Moskvy that he briefly exchanged greetings with Litvinenko in the hotel lobby Nov. 1 but did not sit in on the conversation. Traces of radioactivity were found at the hotel where Litvinenko met the Russians on Nov. 1, as well as at the British Embassy in Moscow, where Lugovoi appeared upon his return to Moscow to deny his involvement in the poisoning. The New York Times reported that radioactivity was also detected at the London soccer stadium that Lugovoi, Kovtun and Sokolenko attended after the Millennium Hotel meeting. And Lugovoi flew on British Airways flights traveling the London-Moscow route that tested positive for radioactivity. Lugovoi is in a Moscow hospital undergoing radiation checks. British investigators were supposed to question him Thursday, but that meeting was postponed, the Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported. Lugovoi told Ekho Moskvy he has known Litvinenko for 10 years. Lugovoi worked at Russia's intelligence agency from 1987 until 1996. He now owns a company that produces wine and soft drinks. Litvinenko became a KGB agent in 1988. He rose through the ranks at the intelligence agency until the fall of 1998, when he appeared at a news conference and accused the agency of asking him to help assassinate Boris Berezovsky, an exiled Russian oligarch who has become one of Putin's staunchest critics and is wanted by Russia on fraud charges. Litvinenko and Berezovsky became close allies. Litvinenko later was arrested on charges of abuse of office and spent nine months in a Russian jail before winning an acquittal in 2000. Later, he fled to Britain and was granted political asylum in 2001. He became a British citizen earlier this fall. Kovtun told the radio station he is a longtime friend of Lugovoi and said he operates a consulting firm that advises Western businesses wishing to enter the Russian market. Sokolenko heads up the bodyguard unit of a Moscow security company called the 9th Degree. Lugovoi has told Russian media that he believes he and his colleagues are being framed for Litvinenko's murder. "As for the hullabaloo about me that has been stirred up by Western media, in my view good theatrical directing is traceable here," Lugovoi told the Russian news agency Interfax. "I've stopped watching television and reading papers. I'm fed up with all this." Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune I see a movie screenplay in the near future. The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle; the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true! |
I forgot that intertwined with miscellaneous ramblings, there was a subtopic in the "Why You Hate Us?" thread that I locked.
Moved above posts to this new thread. |
My bad.
Thanks for the extraction! |
Excellent move, Zip ... I saw this article and was hoping to post:
The Polonium Connection We have to find out where it came from. http://img.slate.com/media/1/123125/...Gist_spyTN.jpg slate.com By Edward Jay Epstein Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2006 Both Scotland Yard and Russian authorities are now investigating the alleged murder of Alexander Litvinenko, an ex-lieutenant colonel in the KGB, who died in London from a dose of polonium-210 on Nov. 23. The focus on Who Killed Litvinenko has led to the neglect of what may turn out to be a far more important question: Where did the polonium-210 come from? Polonium-210 is not a common household substance. It is made by bombarding bismuth in a nuclear reactor with neutrons from uranium-235, the fuel for atom bombs. It rapidly decays, with a half-life of 138 days, which means that it cannot be stockpiled for more than a few months. It is also very rare — fewer than 4 ounces are produced each year. Virtually all of this known production comes from a handful of Russian reactors. Russia continues to produce it because the United States buys almost all of it. And the United States buys the Russian polonium-210 to make sure that it does not leak into the black market. If a rogue nation (or terrorist group) obtained access to any quantity of polonium — even, say, a half gram — it could use it as an initiator for setting off the chain reaction in a crude nuclear bomb. With a fissile fuel, such as U-235, and beryllium (which is mixed in layers with the polonium-210), someone could make a "poor man's" nuke. Even lacking these other ingredients, the polonium-210, which aerosolizes at about 130 degrees Fahrenheit, could be used with a conventional explosive, like dynamite, to make a dirty bomb. Under very tight controls in the United States, minute traces of polonium-210 are embedded in plastic or ceramic, allowing them to be used safely in industrial static eliminators. To recapture these traces in any toxic quantity would require collecting over 15,000 static eliminators and then using highly sophisticated extraction technology. Such a large-scale operation would instantly be noticed, and its product would be adulterated by residual plastic or ceramic. In any case, what investigators reportedly recovered from Litvinenko's body was pure polonium-210. The polonium-210 has also left a tell-tale trail. At least a dozen people have been contaminated, including Litvinenko; Andrei Lugovoi, a former colleague of Litvinenko's in the KGB, who met with Litvinenko at the Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel in London the day he became ill, Nov. 1; Dmitry Kovtun, Lugovoi's business associate, who also attended that meeting; seven employees of the Millennium Hotel; Mario Scaramella, an Italian security consultant, who dined with Litvinenko on Nov. 1 at the Itsu Sushi Restaurant (and whom, one week later, Litvinenko accused of poisoning him); and Litvinenko's Russian wife, Marina, who went with him to Barnet General Hospital on Nov. 1. In addition, traces of the same polonium-210 were detected at Litvinenko's home and hospital, three luxury hotels and a security firm in London, a residence in Hamburg that Kovtun had visited en route to London, and on two British Airways planes on which Lugovoi flew from Moscow to London in October. As polonium-210 has not been manufactured in Britain for years, and it cannot be stockpiled for long, the isotope must have been smuggled into the country. If it is assumed that no one intended to leave a radioactive trail in airplanes, hotel rooms, or homes, or contaminate waiters and other innocent bystanders, there must have been some unintentional leakage of the smuggled polonium-210. Moreover, we know from the Hamburg trail that the leakage occurred well before Litvinenko went into the hospital on Nov. 1. But where did the smuggled polonium-210 come from? The diversion could have come from only a limited number of places. Just four facilities are licensed to handle polonium-210 in Russia: Moscow State University; Techsnabexport, the state-controlled uranium-export agency; the Federal Nuclear Center in Samara; and Nuclon, a private company. Although these licensees are monitored by the Russian government, it would not necessarily require an intelligence service to divert part of the supply into private hands. A single employee who was bribed, blackmailed, or otherwise motivated conceivably could filch a pinhead quantity of polonium-210 and smuggle it out in a glass vial (in which its alpha particles would be undetectable). Such corruption is not unknown in Russia. Or the diversion could have come from outside Russia. A number of other countries with nuclear reactors have been suspected of clandestinely producing or buying polonium-210, including Iran (where it was detected by IAEA inspectors in 2000), North Korea (where it was detected by U.S. airborne sampling), Israel (where several scientists died from accidental leaks of it in the 1950s and 1960s), Pakistan, and China. But whatever its source, the polonium diversion has serious implications. The real problem is not its toxicity, since its alpha particles can't penetrate the surface of the skin and therefore have to be ingested or breathed in to cause any damage. (That can happen if you have polonium-210 on your person or clothes.) The more serious danger is that it could be sold to a country that wanted to set off a nuclear device, clean or dirty. Given its value on the nuclear black market, the relationships Litvinenko had with his contaminated associates may be relevant to its origin. To begin with, there are his contacts with Mario Scaramella. According to Scaramella, Litvinenko told him at their sushi lunch that before he had defected from Russia, his activities had included the "smuggling of nuclear material out of Russia." If true, why did the ex-KGB officer broach the subject of nuclear smuggling? Then, there is the intriguing relationship between Litvinenko and Lugovoi. According to Lugovoi, the two former KGB officers met "12 or 13 times" in London to discuss business. Three of these meetings occurred between Oct. 15 and Nov. 1, and after each of them Lugovoi flew back to Moscow. Between the last two meetings, Litvinenko flew to Tel Aviv and Lugovoi's associate Kovtun flew to Hamburg. Trails of polonium radioactivity have so far turned up in Hamburg and Moscow. So, the purpose of these trips is part of the mystery. Finally, there is Boris Berezovsky. Both Litvinenko and Lugovoi worked for him. Litvinenko had been on his payroll in London since his defection in 2000; Lugovoi had helped organize his security in Moscow and recruited ex-KGB men to work with him. Moreover, his London offices showed traces of polonium-210, suggesting Lugovoi and/or Litvinenko might have met with him. The problem here is not merely catching a murderer — if indeed it was murder — but plugging a leak in the hellish diversion of polonium-210. 2006 Washington Post. Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC |
It is also very rare — fewer than 4 ounces are produced each year. Virtually all of this known production comes from a handful of Russian reactors. Russia continues to produce it because the United States buys almost all of it. And the United States buys the Russian polonium-210 to make sure that it does not leak into the black market. Not exactly true, read this post from RadSafe listserver:
The biggest source of Po-210 is in waste from oil and gas fields. An example is Rn-222 in the Trans Canada gas line that decays to Pb-210, Bi-210 and Po-210. These progeny plate onto the inner walls of the pipe and are routinely "cleaned out" with (as I have heard) by sending a "scrubber" between pumping stations. The waste is "dumped" onto the ground at the station and the Pb-210 and progeny could be "recovered". Another is the Pb-210 in pipe scale. These pipes are often left beside roads and the scale could be "stolen", and the Pb-210 and progeny separated. The ~21 year halflife Pb-210 emits a 60 keV beta and a 46 keV photon, The ~5 day halflife Bi-210 emits a 1.160 MeV beta and the ~138 day halflife Po-210 emits a ~5 MeV alpha that results in a 803 keV gamma at ~0.0011%. I don't know the chemistry but I think that Po-210 would be easy to recover from these sources. |
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