Assassination: Served up Cold War Style

[3113]

I'm sure you've all heard about this already. I can't quite get over it myself. Talk about old school...and truth being stranger than fiction. This is right out of some old Cold War novel...

LONDON — Counter-terrorism police investigating the mysterious death of a Russian spy-turned-dissident warned Friday of a potential public health hazard at two hospitals that treated him and three other locations where officials found traces of the radioactive material thought to have killed him.

On a day of dramatic revelations and accusations, authorities said they believed Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB agent and a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, died Thursday night from a lethal dose of polonium-210, a radioactive substance that is deadly only if ingested.

What stikes me, of course, is that this is no easy way to kill a man. (1) You have to protect yourself from being poisoned by the stuff. (2) You have to give the guy exactly the right amount. Too little and he lives (abet unhealthy), too much and he dies on the spot. Someone knew what they were doing. And (3) you have to slip it undetected into his food--in this case, sushi (or whatever he was drinking)...not the easiest food to doctor.

A very dramatic, cold blooded, public and professional assassination. And to make matters worse, one that threatens others:

Contamination could result from direct contact with the dead man's bodily fluids, authorities said, or by swallowing polonium-210, inhaling it or absorbing it through an open wound. Investigators suspect the 43-year-old was poisoned Nov. 1, when he had meetings in central London at a sushi restaurant and a luxury hotel. Traces of the radioactive material have been found at both locations and his home in North London.

Health officials said they had worked overnight interviewing staffers at the hospitals that treated Litvinenko and were trying to determine the number of people at risk. The government appealed Friday night to anyone who ate at the restaurant Nov. 1 to contact health officials because they may have been contaminated.

But don't go accusing Putin just yet. Things may be even more Byzantine.

In contrast to the victim's deathbed accusations against Putin, Russian leaders alleged Friday that exiled Russian "oligarch" Boris Berezovsky, a rival of Putin and ally of Litvinenko, may have engineered the plot to discredit the Kremlin.

Moreover, police have not discounted the possibility that Litvinenko, a veteran of an intelligence culture steeped in the use of poisons, somehow ingested the substance while handling it, the British official said.

So what do you all make of this--besides horror and amazement--and are all of our London members okay?

 

[Stella_Omega]

Every once in a while, this publishing company sends me a thriller about one Cold War relic or another- this sounds like one of those plots.

Truth just as strange as fiction...

 

[rgraham666]

To me it shows how utterly petty Russian politics have become.

First, whoever did it made a very silly decision. Murdering someone for political reasons is silly and petty.

Then they decided to off someone so unimportant. So what purpose did it serve?

And if the purpose was to say 'Don't cross us', well, don't cross who? Nobody knows who did it and why which kinda negates the whole point.

As I said, utterly petty.

 

[3113]

And if the purpose was to say 'Don't cross us', well, don't cross who? Nobody knows who did it and why which kinda negates the whole point.

Well, in theory (and this is only in theory, mind you), those who would likely cross those folk know who they are. Kinda like in The Da Vinci Code. So people on the inside, who are most likely to know them and cross them have been warned..but everyone else is in the dark and so can't gang up on them.

In theory.

 

[Dr_Strabismus]

The story is odder and odder the more you read about it.

 

[672]

i wish they would poison more people these days. this is great.

would love to see more of it done.

 

[oggbashan]

The residual effects of radiation from whatever it was are minimal and wouldn't cause any real health concerns. More radioactive material is held in any general hospital.

What is weird is that the poison requires a nuclear state to produce it. The poison is a message, but what is the message?

Perhaps:

1. He had really pissed off the Russians and they killed him this way to prove that they could - and to deter others.

2. Someone wanted him killed in such a way that the Russian state would be blamed and that person or organisation had access to polonium either by theft from a Russian facility or it was from an ex-Soviet facility perhaps in the Ukraine.

3. Someone was trying to be TOO clever. Ricin or thalidomide are much easier to obtain and less distinctive. A 22 bullet would have been cheaper.

Og

 

[human_male]

The Rooskies will never change.

 

[3113]

What is weird is that the poison requires a nuclear state to produce it. The poison is a message, but what is the message?

Yeah, I should have added that to my list. It's why it comes across like a spy novel...it's so over-the-top to use polonium of all things.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

I feel sorry for the long-suffering Russian people. The saying goes that people get the government they deserve - good and hard - but it seems that ever since since the Mongols and their successors set the tone the poor Slavs have never had a chance.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

The residual effects of radiation from whatever it was are minimal and wouldn't cause any real health concerns. More radioactive material is held in any general hospital.

What is weird is that the poison requires a nuclear state to produce it. The poison is a message, but what is the message?

Perhaps:

1. He had really pissed off the Russians and they killed him this way to prove that they could - and to deter others.

2. Someone wanted him killed in such a way that the Russian state would be blamed and that person or organisation had access to polonium either by theft from a Russian facility or it was from an ex-Soviet facility perhaps in the Ukraine.

3. Someone was trying to be TOO clever. Ricin or thalidomide are much easier to obtain and less distinctive. A 22 bullet would have been cheaper.

Og

The Russians are rather notorious for using poisons, ever since Rasputin, probably. And it's very likely the kiling was done by Bulgarians, who the Russians use to do most of their dirty work.

There was just a thing on TV about the Russian "Brolly Murders" in England and France where a man was killed with an umbrella as he waited for a bus by a KGB agent. The agent poked him with the umbrella and left, and the man didn't think anything of it until he became very sick and no one could find the cause. He finally died, and a very careful autopsy revelaed that the tip of the umbrella had injected a tiny metal ball into his calf. The ball had a hollow in it that was filled with ricin and plugged with a biodegradable polymer. The polymer plugs dissolved in a matter of days and released the poison into his system, and that killed him. The poisoned ball would never have been found if it hadn't been for some specific tip. As I recall, Bulgarians wee involved, although British intelligence decided that the ball and the ricin had to have come from the USSR.

A similar method was used on a Russian or Bulgarian dissident living in Paris, who was shot with an umbrella gun with a smiliar ricin-filled ball. Something went wrong with this one, though, and the man lived.

Then there was the Prsident of some Soviet republic (can't remember the name) who just a few years ago was being slowly poisoned with some weird metal - selenium or gadolinium or something. He lost all his hair, got very sick and anemic and almost died, but I think he lived. It was another KGB job.

The use of polonium is not as silly as it might seem. Polonium 210 is the leading carcinogen in cigarette smoke, and all smokers have highly elevated levels of polonium 210 in all their tissues. It's estimated that 90% of lung cancers caused by smoking are caused by the polonium 210 rathwr than by tars, so if this guy was a smoker, it would be very hard to tell that he'd be poisoned.

Polonium is also volatile, which means that it evaporates at room temperature, and so it kind of cleans itself up and disappears after it's done its job. This guy was apparently given enough to cause a quick and pernicious cancer, so it would have looked like he died from natual causes. You can't get polonium down at the market, but any nation that proceses uranium could probabl come up with some.

The KGB liked this kind of assasination - subtle, slow, and untraceable.

But let's not forget the CIA had their poisoning plot too. They injected female hormones into Castro's vegetable garden to try and make his beard fall out. That wasn't the smartest plan in the world either.

 

[3113]

But let's not forget the CIA had their poisoning plot too. They injected female hormones into Castro's vegetable garden to try and make his beard fall out. That wasn't the smartest plan in the world either.

Okay. This is sad. The KGB has umbrella guns...we've got hormonal veggies. It's a wonder we won the cold war.

 

[Pure]

it's scary stuff, alright, like the poisoning of the Ukrainian fellow (who was a bit more lucky). it does sound like cold war intrigue, but it has to be remembered that Russia has many of the same goals as the old SU.