NBC’s Dateline will be addressing the poisoning of Litvinenko tonight at 7 PM (EST). Check local listings of course. I am not holding out a lot of hope for a detailed news report.

There are signs there is a shift in the Litvinenko story, a shift that has media reporting starting to distance itself from the assassination claims of Litvinenko’s ‘friends’ (or one could just as easily call them ‘business associates’). This first article is interesting in that it takes elements of the assassination theory, clearly associates these ideas with these so called associates of Litvinenko, but then get’s the views of authorities, which many times conflict with the prevailing assassination theory (as I would suspect since I am still not buying that hypothesis). I have separated the assassin rumors from the views of officials in order to emphasize the change in tone:

[Assassin Theory]: As London prosecutors determine whether to file criminal charges, Felshtinsky and others of Litvinenko’s expatriate Russian friends have pieced together their own picture of how the former agent died.

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They believe that the true killer might have been a tall, elusive Russian man known only as “Vladislav,” who shows up on airport surveillance videos and was present briefly during Litvinenko’s fatal lunch, then disappeared without a trace. Most likely, they say, he was a highly trained Russian spy operating in Europe.

[Authorities’ View]: London police appear not so ready to settle on a motive. “It’s still a complex picture,” said a British security official familiar with the case. The official confirmed that investigators are looking at the mysterious Vladislav, although he was cautious about the Russians’ description of him as a top intelligence operative.

While the FSB/KGB agents who had their covers blown by Litvinenko may harbor fantasies of payback (think our own Aldrich Ames for a comparison) the description of this man makes him a bit young to be on a mission of vengeance. Also, if he was out to pay Litvinenko back he would not still be under cover. Authorities are clearly warning to back off viewing this man as some master agent, though he is still probably someone of shady character. In the context of a smuggling ring theory, this could be another low level mule, someone who lives on the seedier, illegal side of life. But no mastermind. Here is a classic case of mixed message:

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This is just a summary of some discussions I have seen in response to the Tea Pot news that came out last week and continues to roil the Litvinenko story today. What has been an eye opener for me is how little people generally understand the chemistry and physics of nuclear materials and their “poisoning” abilities. That is not meant as a slam on anyone, it is just a reminder to me how diverse people are and how they are very,very different from my own life experience. We spend so much time looking for common ground we sometimes forget to see the gaps that make us unique.

Here is a classic example of the current reporting and how, if it is accurate, it also must be completely impossible in reality.

A POT full of radioactive tea was used to poison former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, police revealed yesterday.

The “hot” teapot was found at London’s Millennium Hotel with sky-high readings of Polonium-210 – the deadly radioactive material used to murder the former KGB man.

And despite a huge police investigation, the teapot wasn’t found so it was STILL IN USE at the posh hotel in Mayfair until December 10 – six weeks after the poisoning. Even then it had “off the chart” radioactivity readings.

The problem here is a general one of all liquids – they do not change their content when moved from one container to another. So the ‘hot’ pot has to be aligned with the dead Litvinenko.

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Litvinenko was either the victim of an assassination or part of a smuggling effort that was moving Po-210 through London. Investigators have discovered Po-210 at three hotels which were used by Andrei Lugovoi on three trips in October. But the Po-210 was not found in one room (as would be the case with an assassin), but in multiple rooms in each case. And at each visit and the surfacing of Po-210 at the scene Lugovoi met with Alexander Litvinenko.

Lugovoi and Litvinenko share a common history – they both worked for Boris Berezvosky. The one man with the funding and motivation to acquire Russian Po-210 outside of Russia, in countries which import the material, and smuggle it back into Russia in order to execut false flag attacks on Russia in the hopes of pinning them on Putin. To make good on his threat that he would topple Putin with force.

And the amount of Po-210 that has been found across London, Hamburg and Moscoq is hundreds or thousands of times the amount ingested by Litvinenko. Recently it was reported that Litvinenko was exposed to Po-210 twice. Some, grasping to the unraveling assassination theory, tried to say this was two attacks on Litvinenko.

The jokeon this train of thought is if someone had just had two grains of Po-210 the size of a salt grain they could have killed Litvinenko a thousand times over. Why would anyone keep smuggling such small amounts of Po-210 they would equal a thousandth of a grain of salt on two occasions when a grain of salt’s worth would do the job without any doubt? Well, this ridiculous line of thinking is now being expanded again as we learn Litvinenko was exposed more than twice to Po-210:

The former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko is likely to have been the target of “multiple” poisoning attempts before his death, it has been reported.

…

ut the first attempt to poison him with polonium-210 may have come weeks earlier, when he met two former KGB men in the same sushi bar on October 16, according to the BBC’s Panorama programme.

Oh please! Enough of this nonsense. It takes no special extra effort to get a grain of salt’s worth of Po-210 into London than it does to get a thousandths or a millionth of a grain of salt’s worth. For the other exposures to not kill Litvinenko means he was exposed to levels that are well under the 50 billionths of a gram that are the lethal dosage. Billionths of a packet of sweetener? What were all these ‘attacks’ suppose to accomplish? One small sliver of Po-210 and the man is dead in less time than he actually died.

So now we are suppsed to believe these assassins risked using this dangerous and expensive and easily traced material and kept dosing Litvinenko with these sub-microscopic amounts which were so small they were never able to get killer dose in Litvinenko? Sorry folks, but you can only stretch this nonsense so far. One grain of salt’s worth and he was dead.

And one other point. When Po-210 comes from a single production run, all the Po-210 has the same signature and decay time. It is impossible from looking at Po-210 from the same batch to say WHEN it was ingested over multiple exposures. Each dose of Po-210 would look identical to the others – same source signature, same time since production.

So, if there is clear indication of multiple expsoures then that is a clear sign we are seeing different production runs of Po-210. This is another fact of physics which cannot be disputed. Po-210 from two processing facilities will not have the same signature. And even two different production runs in the same facility will not have the same decay signature since the decay signature is predicated on the creation date.

So what does it mean there were two or more different batches of Po-210? It means the Po-210 was acquired from different sources, possibly in different countries. This will put the nail in the assassination theory. This kind of acquisition is overkill millions of times over if all you need is one grain of salt’s worth in a tea cup. An amount of Po-210 the size of a grain of salt would kill Litvinenko thousands of times over. It would make 100-1000 doses (or more) of the dose that killed Litvinenko. A grain of salt’s worth. You don’t need two or more consignments to get this grain of salt’s worth. You don’t need to go through the expense and risk to get consignments from two or more sources (read countries) and risk the smuggling to kill Litvinenko. One source, one grain of salt’s worth, and you can still do what was done to Litvinenko a thousand times over.

So since there is a clear indication of ‘mulitple’ exposures, this tells me the clarity of these conclusions is the fact the Po-210 smuggled on each occasion was from a different batch and source. There is no other way to explain the surity of these conclusions. And I would predict there may have been more than three consignments – we only know of the three linked to Lugovoi-Litvinenko meetings.

The assassination theory is a scientific joke. The amounts we are talking abouyt which killed Litvinenko are so small they cannot be seen by the human eye. Yet people think someone tried three times, with these microscopic amounts, to assassinate Litvinenko, and failed. When an amount the size of a salt grain would do it easily this assassin broke it into millionths of that amount and kept failing to kill Litvinenko. Yeah, and pigs can fly.

This was not an assassination. That young, central asian man who flew to London with Kovtun and idisappeared the same day all the Po-210 left London sounds like a Chechen, monitoring the final movements of all the Po-210 that made its way through London last October. There are amounts of Po-210 spread all over London, Hamburg and Moscow that would kill Litvinenko many times over. How is it this assassination effort got more Po-210 on the rug of a hotel room than they ever got into Litvinenko after ‘multiple’ tries? Forget the assassination theory. If the trail and the poisoned people are simply the debris from handling (and mishandling) the Po-210, then the big questions is what was the amount of Po-210 that was being smuggled that left this trail?

This is a follow up to my previous post on the news that police are now publically admitting what I predicted a while ago: the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko took place in a 4th floor room of the Millenium Hotel, and not in the Hotel’s Pin Bar has had been assumed for many weeks now. And this was all after the sushi restaurant meeting with Scaramella had been eliminated as the prime spot for the event. Now that we have three key people and three key pieces of evidence all in the same room, we can put the assassination theory to rest. This post is long – be patient. This is a complicated crime which requires some knowledge of chemistry, biology and physics to sort through.

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Update: I have extended this topic in a second post above, for those interested. It discusses why this news eliminates the assassination theory as a possible explanation for Litvinenko’s death. – end update

It seems the Litvinenko poisoning did take place inside a hotel room in the Mayfair hotel as I said it did, and not in the Pine Bar as everyone has been assuming. First to the money quote which I predicted weeks ago

:

According to police sources, until now it has not been revealed that Litvinenko visited a fourth-floor room at the Millennium Hotel to discuss a business deal.

He had gone to the room with Mr Kovtun and another former Russian agent, Andrei Lugovoy.

The three men were joined in the room later by the mystery figure who was introduced as “Vladislav”.

It is gratifying to see that I was correct on what the Po-210 trail was indicating. This also means I was correct when I predicted the Pine Bar contamination was due to the tea cup being washed in the dishwasher. This brings us to an interesting nexus: Litvinenko was in the room where the Po-210 was spilled and cleaned up. But there is still one more player in this dance of death

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The Litvinenko saga is still, disturbingly, unsolved with possibly (and probably) a significant amount of the extremely dangerous Po-210 still unaccounted for. One of the strangest late breaking stories related to the Litvinenko poisoning was out of Russia, where authorities were seeing a connection between Yukos-related oligarchs in exile and a series of potential Mercury poisoning events in Russia:

Prosecutor General’s Office said yesterday it suspects former co-owner of YUKOS Leonid Nevzlin of being involved in the poisoning of former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko in London. Nevzlin also became suspected in being linked to the “poisoning of Russian citizens with toxic agents”.

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The Office claims that investigators established connection between this crime and a certain attempt at poisoning by means of mercury. The Office says that mercury vapors “were found in cars, apartments, country houses, and offices both in Moscow and in London”. It has already created an investigatory group to probe into those crimes. The Office intends to prepare documents soon and to “direct requests for legal help in the criminal cases under investigation to corresponding competent authorities, and to raise the question of extradition of several citizens charged with heavy crimes who are taking refuge abroad”.

It is not accidental that mercury vapors appeared in the case. Former head of MENATEP bank’s investment management Alexei Golubovich, arrested in Italy this spring, gave testimony that there was an attempt to poison him and his family with mercury which was left in his offices, home, and car. Golubovich said that Nevzlin might be interested in poisoning him, because YUKOS shareholders and CEOs were then arguing over who would control foreign property and funds of the company. Some time later, London witnessed a scandal when a Scotland Yard officer handed over information on extradition to Russia of London-based Russian citizens to British security agency ISC Global. The agency was part of MENATEP, and Nevzlin, among others, used its services. Polonium trace was discovered in November in the office of former ISC Global, which is now called RISC Management.

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Not a lot of earth shattering news from the ‘news media’ (which is not a surprise), but Copydude, who graces this blog with his comments time to time, has really put together an excellent overview of how exiled these powerful exiled Russians and their shady connection (e.g., Scaramella) have had all their claims delunked. What is most amazing is the connection between Litvinenko’s blackmailing efforts and the conduit he was using to get the dirt he needed:

Julia ‘it was just a temp agency job’ actually worked as communications director at Russian Investors for Alexei Golubovich, a long serving board member of Yukos, now under house arrest in Italy at Russia’s request. Like Khordokhovsky, he’s charged with fraud and embezzlement of billions.

Prior to Julia’s appointment, a girl called Elena Collongues-Popova worked for Golubovich. And prior to Litvinenko’s meeting with Julia, he and Limarev had been pumping Elena for dirt on the former Yukos official.

Certainly, Elena knew all about Golubovich

French tax police had discovered large money transfers she was moving to and from offshore accounts owned by Golubovich. The authorities ordered her to pay back taxes and penalties amounting to $15 million – including $1 million from a criminal trial in Paris where she was sentenced to a year in prison, suspended provided she paid up.

When Golubovich refused to take responsibility for the taxes in deals detailed in cartons of documents police seized from her home, she sought to take control of a Swiss account she had run for him but which was listed in her name. This led to legal battles with her former boss and his wife.

Litvininenko and Limarev wanted big time dirt. They were pushing Elena for details of bribes and ‘offshore banking services’ rendered in Lithuania in respect of the Maziekiu Nafta (MN) oil refinery – formerly Yukos’ refinery in Lithuania – a potential scandal involving the former Lithuanian Prime Minister.

Copydude has the story peppered with links, so I suggest folks go read it. It is hard to believe Litvinenko would blackmail the hand the fed him, esecially since one of his last trips was to Israel to meet the former head of Yukos, Nevzlin. Maybe he was playing both sides, and maybe Nevzlin was trying to push out one of his old partners. But Copydude is right, the PR story is in tatters. Folks will also find interesting the fact that Anna Politkovskaya’s colleagues dismissed Litvinenko, as did Anna herself it seems:

Politkovskaya’s colleagues at the newspaper Novaya Gazeta laughed off those claims as ridiculous. ‘It’s nonsense that Litvinenko was investigating Anna Politkovskaya’s death before he was poisoned. How could he be doing it in London?’ said Roman Shleinov, Novaya Gazeta’s chief investigative reporter. ‘Litvinenko had nothing to do with Politkovskaya. She herself was very skeptical about his activities.’

It is hard to know what to make of Litvinenko. He is either a bungling fool are a dangerous, aggressive crook. I tend towards the former.

Another report out today claims the mystery man who flew with Kovtun from Hamburg to London is a supposed assassin using fake passports:

Gordievsky said that, already in the first days of the probe, Scotland Yard detected some illegal visitor, who arrived in London from Hamburg under the forged documents November 1.

The man is a professional killer. He arrived in Heathrow under the forged passport of the EU to pass unnoticed. The police were looking for him all over London, but no hotel registered him.

It means the killer changed the passport for another passport of the EU. He left the same night after Litvinenko’s poisoning (or perhaps, early next day), using the third passport, Gordievsky said, specifying the detectives have a photo of the possible killer taken by the airport’s surveillance cameras. His first passport was photographed as well.

a very plausible theory, that this whole matter has to do with some scheme cooked up by these ridiculously wealthy oligarchs in exile to topple Putin. I am still not buying Litvinenko was the target of an assassination – still too much Po-210 worth way too much money, which is unproven as a quick and silent killer and dangerous to use. But as this plot expands we do see the fallacy of the PR stunt by Berezovsky start to fall apart and expose a much more complex story of intrigue and power and money. Lots and lots of serious money. Enought to die for.

And make no mistake, the fact Marina and Goldfarb are making movie deals worth millions tells me my initial suspicion that Goldfarb got the Litvinenko deathbed claim only in return for his family’s long term financial well being was spot on. There is evidence someplace to hold Goldfarb and Berezovsky’s commitment to that deal. If I am correct of course.

The Litvinenko case has gone from the strange into the bizarre. What is truly compelling is that Andrei Lugovoi stated he would not have anything to say until things got going on January 15th. Well some interesting things got going today.

Apparently Russians believe the Litvinenko death is somehow tied to the Yukos oil companies legal problems. It seems Yukos is Russian for “Enron” if the reporting from Kommersant is accurate (and there is not reason to not to believe it is accurate). It seems Russian investigators were running up the organization getting the small fry to turn evidence on the higher ups in a classic law enforcement pincer move. And it seems clear we have paper transactions on oil with huge windfalls involving billions of dollars:

In April 2006, Judge Elena Yarlykova of the Basmanny Court began hearing the case against Valdez-Garcia and two other defendants, former general director of YUKOS affiliate Ratibor Vladimir Malakhovsky and former deputy director of the YUKOS foreign debt directorate Vladimir Pereverzin. They were accused of involvement in the embezzlement of $13 billion, of which $8.5 billion was allegedly laundered. According to investigators, crude oil produced by YUKOS subsidiaries was delivered on paper to Fargoil (which was headed by Valdez-Garcia) and Ratibor (headed by Malakhovsky). Those companies are registered in tax exemption zones in Mordovia and Evenkia, respectively. The crude oil bought at artificially low prices by those companies was sold at market price and the proceeds sent to offshore companies. That was done to economize on taxes, but the Prosecutor General’s Office saw embezzlement and laundering of YUKOS money in those actions

…

Valdez-Garcia’s disappearance has interrupted sentencing in the case, which is closely tied to a new case against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev. The charges that the Prosecutor General’s Office is preparing to make any day now against them at the Chita holding facility are connected with the delivery of oil by YUKOS subsidiaries to Fargoil and Ratibor, which, according to the investigation took place only on paper. The prosecutor was hoping that the sentencing of the “lower link in the criminal organization,” that is, Valdez-Garcia, Pereverzin and Malakhovsky, would take place in February, so that the investigation could make reference to it as prejudicial in its accusations against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev in the new case. Now that sentencing has been postponed indefinitely.

While some may quibble on whether this is a power play or not, paper transactions valued at $13 billion, where no oil moves an inch, is a clear accounting shell game. And these amounts clearly represent a plausible motive to kill. I still find it amusing the Enron-hating western press love the Enron-clones in Russia who bankrupted a country and starved the Russia people while destroying what savings they had. Clearly Enron on a national level. From reporting here and here it is clear the case against the Yukos executives is going forward. And there is pressure on the US and Israel to stop harboring these apparent robber barons. I am still not clear how this all folds together, but it seems we understand why Berezovsky and the other Oligarchs want Putin out before 2008. He is still a threat to their wealth empires. It now seems the Russians have recieved a request from the UK to have another round of investigators visit Moscow. This was a response, it seems, on a Russian request to come to London and sit in on the interrogations of self-exiled oligarch Berezovsky and Chechyan dissidant leader Zakayev, both friends of Litvinenko and both tied to the Polonium trail in London. Russians believe there may be another murder related to Yukos in London as well, that of a chief witness against the Yukos barons.

So, was the Po-210 being shipped into Russia in order to pin a conspiracy theory on Putin and remove the legal pressure from these oligarchs who are sitting on billions of dollars of money skimmed off the Russian economy? The fact the Po-210 may have been obtained AFTER it was exported from Russia means the signature of the Russian processing was still intact in the Po-210. This would have pointed any attack using this material right at Putin’s government, fulfilling theories put forth for years by Berezovsky, Litvinenko and Zakayev. Theories of state sponsored false flag attacks on Russia’s citizens. And that would explain why Berezovsky and Goldfarb had their PR group ready to move out when Litvinenko died with a variation on that theme – the Putin sponsored state attack. The smugglers knew the Po-210 would be traced to Russia, even though Russia has accounted for the material up until the point of export. The fall of Putin under such a staged scenario would releive the barons of scrutiny and legal jeopardy. The fact the UK and Russian authorities are still working together indicates to me that they are not buying the media spin (since they may be the source of it anyway) and have some other angles they are following. Was Litvinenko part of an effort by the oligarchs to destroy Putin and remove pressure on them? Seems like reasonable speculation to me.

The most intriguing and vague part of the Litvinenko Polonium-210 trail relates to those sights that could truly be implicated in contraband nuclear smuggling effort. These sites all share some common traits: (1) they are all business associates of Litvinenko and Berezovsky, (2) they are sites of Po-210 outside the restaurants, hotels, planes (public areas basically), and (3) we have no definitive time line for any of them reported. Every other site is tied to one of the three suspected shipment dates for the Po-210 contamination. But not these sites, they all remain untied to the timeline:

(1) Berezovsky’s offices at 7 Down Street
(2) Offices of RISC management at 25 Grosvenor Square
(3) Offices at 58 Grosvenor Square (Erinys?)

This has been the unreported story – who contaminated these sites and on what day and at what time. I predicted that some of the late breaking contamination would be around these sites if they were involved with the Po-210 somehow, and now there are indications this is, in fact, the case:

They are among 116 people – mostly hotel staff, visitors and guests and office workers – who have tested positive for polonium-210.

Emphasis mine. Again, we have to watch how, at each point on the trail, the Po-210 travels and contaminates. Bodily fluids will not produce a toxic trail, per the UK HPA reporting itself:

I work with someone who has a urine sample result showing elevated Polonium -210 levels. What is the risk to my health?

You are not at risk, if you work, or have social and household contact with people who may have elevated Polonium-210 levels in their urine. They are not a risk to others when normal hygiene practices are followed. You would only be at risk of harm from Polonium-210 if you have ingested it which is unlikely as only a tiny amount of it is excreted in body fluids.

The only person who MIGHT be a source of contamination through bodily fluids was Litvinenko – but his wife showed very low poison levels and she was much closer to him and his fluids than anyone else. So this contamination must be from Po-210 dust or particles being shed by someone – or possibly by the leaky container itself! We know the Milleniun Hotel was the site of contaiment failure – big time. And that is how so many staff and guests and visitors became poisoned (albeit at safe levels).

But these office workers are a new piece in the Po-210 puzzle. If these are associated with Berezovsky’s office, then there is a possibility that the Po-210 in its container was in the office area. Recall that the Po-210 did not poison people beyond the Millenium Hotel in secondary contamination. You had to be at the location to get the poisoning. The material clearly became air born there. If we see a similar pattern in the office then we are seeing a trail of the material – not a trail of people who have been in contact with the material.