Who Poisoned Alexander Litvinenko?

[Rach3]

The ex-KGB detractor Litvinenko died today in London, a victim of a yet undetermined poison:

Former K.G.B. Agent Dies After Possible Poisoning

LONDON (AP) -- A former Russian spy who said he had been poisoned died Thursday night at a London hospital, following a mysterious and rapid decline that left doctors puzzled over the cause of death, officials said.
...
Just hours before he lost consciousness on Tuesday, Litvinenko acknowledged in an interview with The Times newspaper of London that he would likely die and claimed the Kremlin was directly involved in his poisoning.

''This is what it takes to prove one has been telling the truth,'' Litvinenko was quoted as saying.

Doctors at London's University College Hospital said tests had virtually ruled out poisoning by thallium and radiation -- toxins once considered possible culprits behind the poisoning.

This man had become a very vocal denouncer of other political assassinations; I guess his death is all the more ironic.

Litvinenko worked both for the KGB and for a successor, the Federal Security Service. In 1998, he publicly accused his superiors of ordering him to kill Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky -- now exiled in Britain -- and a year later spent nine months in jail on charges of abuse of office, for which he was later acquitted, and which prompted his move to London.

On the day he first felt ill, Litvinenko said he had two meetings. In the morning, he met with an unidentified Russian and with Andrei Lugovoy, a former KGB colleague and bodyguard to one-time Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar at a London hotel. Later, he dined with Italian security expert Mario Scaramella to discuss the October murder of Politkovskaya.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Britain-Poisoned-Spy.html?hp&ex=1164344400&en=7026a89b99471797&ei=5094&partner=homepage

(Politkovskaya you recall, was the journalist brutally gunned down in her apartment the day before she was to release d*mning evidence of ongoing police torture in the Chechnya war. NYT)

This is utter depravity. I wonder if we'll all fall back into the cold war.

 

[Rach3]

I don't know what the U.S. reaction will be, but here's what the State department called for last time (Politkovskaya):

The United States urges the Russian government to conduct an immediate and thorough investigation in order to find, prosecute, and bring to justice all those responsible for this heinous murder.

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2006/73739.htm

Yes, political assassins, investigate yourselves! (And NSA spices, police yourselves! Enron, regulate yourself! GWB, lead the investigation into the Katrina response! Political appointees in science, don't listen to the experts - advise yourselves! Medicare beneficiaries - heal yourselves! Corrupt senators of all colors and stripes - enact ethics bills for yourselves!)

So go ahead, Mr. Putin - lead another investigation, the U.S. supports it. Lead on.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Rach3, I agree that it looks pretty bad for Putin, but your title is a little over the edge. We don't know for a fact what happened.

 

[Rach3]

No we don't, and this is not a civil trial were one is innocent until proven otherwise. The corrupt Russian government has an incredible track record of assassination and political censorship; the most probable explanation here is the simplest one - Litvinenko was murdered, either by contract killers hired by the Kremlin, or powerful Putin sympathisers in a high position in politics or business. It is criminally dangerous to give Putin the benefit of doubt, when high-profile journalists and dissidents are being murdered for exposing corruption and crime, for having a voice and speaking the ugly truth. Public outrage, in countries with freedom of speech and thought (like ours), is the only justice the assassins will come to, because these people will never, I repeat never, stand trial in a legitimate court of law.

 

[Rach3]

Here, naivete is not assuming guilt on circumstatial evidence, naivete is assuming that political dissidents die of freak medical causes at an astonishingly high, but natural, rate. Naivete is assuming there is some semblance of rule of law in Russian government (https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/rs.html#Econ), and that the oligarchies will enforce justice for their opponents, and "investigate" these crimes (as Sean McCormack so idiotically suggests.) Naivete is defending the sham government which kills journalists, saying that they need to be put through their own courts of law and found guilty by themselves before any reasonable conclusions can be reached.(Additionally, naivete is spelled with one 't'. edited by a humbled Rach3)

 

[Ivan Seeking]

In my case, you're preaching to the choir.

 

[devil-fire]

usually assassinations like these are politically heated since it reflects on the amount of tolerance in the polices of said countries and because of this, agencies like the CIA, KGB, or mossad require authorization from political or agency leaders. in this case i bet putin himself gave the nod.

assassinations like these happen fairly often but not so much in a foreign country. the britsh should be upset about this if the SVR (formerly KGB) has the audacity to run around killing people in their capital.

 

[Rach3]

assassinations like these happen fairly often but not so much in a foreign country. the britsh should be upset about this if the SVR (formerly KGB) has the audacity to run around killing people in their capital.

Where were you during the cold war? Everyone was assassinating dissidents left and right, and dissidents tend to be NOT in the country they're dissenting from. Another famous London assassination:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgi_Markov

Of course, some moderators might hesitate in calling that a "murder", per se, I mean the guy might accidentally have drunk too much castor oil by mistake (who knows?). Change that thread's title to "Georgi Markov alleges he's been murdered" to reflect the uncertainty in that case, because, you know, Brezhnev was never convicted or anything.

 

[Rach3]

Litvinenko murdered with radioactive Polonium-210

Ivan - can you change the thread title back? A short "Russian dissident murdered" would suffice for now.

LONDON (AP) -- Former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned by radiation, Britain's Health Protection Agency said Friday. Agency scientist Roger Cox said polonium-210 had been found in Litvinenko's urine. Earlier, Home Secretary John Reid said Litvinenko's death Thursday night was ''linked to the presence of a radioactive substance in his body.'' Reid, the country's top law-and-order official, said experts were searching for ''residual radioactive material'' at a number of locations.

The former KGB agent dictated a statement in the waning hours of his life, blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin and describing him ''as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed.'' Putin said Friday there was no proof it was a ''violent death.''

Litvinenko, a former spy turned Kremlin critic, signed the statement in the presence of his wife before losing consciousness, said Alex Goldfarb, a friend who read it aloud outside the hospital Friday.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Britain-Poisoned-Spy.html?hp&ex=1164430800&en=25524eddddb1440d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

 

[devil-fire]

what i ment was these things don't happen much in western countrys and in the last 10 years

that happened almost 30 years ago and durring the cold war = P

 

[Astronuc]

Po-210 is normally only found in special facilities and laboratories, and it is strictly controlled. Finding Po-210 in someone who is not directly involved in its production or use would be a strong indication that it was deliberately placed in that person - hence Litvinenko was murdered - by an organization with access to a very restricted material. It would seem to implicate Putin's government.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Latest story (via Slate) is that Scotland Yard is going to do a full investigation as an "unexplained death". This sounds good if they really mean it, that they're not jumping to conclusions. Looks to me that this crime (as I think of it) wasn't sufficiently covert, and there may be evidence enough to pin it on the perps.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Ivan - can you change the thread title back? A short "Russian dissident murdered" would suffice for now.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Britain-Poisoned-Spy.html?hp&ex=1164430800&en=25524eddddb1440d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Actually, I had suggested to Evo that the title should be changed originally, but it is up to Evo to decide what is appropriate.

 

[devil-fire]

Latest story (via Slate) is that Scotland Yard is going to do a full investigation as an "unexplained death". This sounds good if they really mean it, that they're not jumping to conclusions. Looks to me that this crime (as I think of it) wasn't sufficiently covert, and there may be evidence enough to pin it on the perps.

i would be surprised if they would be able to get enough evidence together to actually make a conviction. it would be great to get a conviction in this case but short of that, what they could do is arrest other SVR operatives in the UK and make an announcement that "people thought to be associated with the russian foreign intelligence service are being questioned in connection with the suspected murder of russsian dissident and former defected KGB operative". it wouldn't be enough for putin to make any official complaints of injustice, but it would be some pie on his face none the less. it would be a way of telling everyone "we know exactly what happened here and we know who did it, even though we don't have proof".

 

[Rach3]

More from Litvinenko:

“You may succeed in silencing me, but that silence comes at a price,” the statement read. “You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed.”

“You have shown yourself to have no respect for life, liberty or any civilized value,” the statement said. “May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/25/w...5d8f366583c&hp&ex=1164517200&partner=homepage

 

[Rach3]

So whodunnit?

“This is wild,” said Dr. F. Lee Cantrell, a toxicologist and director of the San Diego division of the California Poison Control System. “To my knowledge, it’s never been employed as a poison before. And it’s such an obscure thing. It’s not easy to get. That’s going to be something like the K.G.B. would have in some secret facility or something.”

In a quick search of medical journals, he could find only one article describing the deliberate use of a radioactive poison to kill. It was from 1994, he said, published in Russian.

Polonium is extremely rare in nature. Named by its discoverer, Marie Curie, after her native Poland, it occurs in trace amounts in uranium ore and has been found in minute quantities in plants like tobacco, as well as in humans who had eaten caribou that ate lichens growing near a uranium mine.

But making the “significant quantities” described in Mr. Litvinenko’s body by the British Health Protection Agency would require a nuclear reactor that could bombard the metallic element bismuth with neutrons.

“To most chemists, this is astonishing,” said Dr. Andrea Sella, a lecturer in inorganic chemistry at London’s University College. “This is not available commercially. It is present in food, but only in the kind of trace quantities that can be detected by ultrasensitive analytical techniques. It is one of the rarest elements on the earth’s crust and also one of the most exotic.”

"A Rare Material and a Surprising Weapon" (NYT)


About the only plausible explanation at this point is the obvious one - the Putin administration alone had the ruthlessness (world superpower with a habit of assassinating), the motive (to silence a very loud dissenter in exile), and most tellingly, the means (large quantities of a short-halflife radioisotope with no commercial use, needing the neutron flux of a fission reactor to produce). But there are still interesting questions - like why were they stupid enough to use a poison only they have? Putin claims there's a conspiracy to discredit him, that his government is being framed for the crime. So the (rhetorical) question is, which of the world superpowers is responsible? 'Cause realistically, only a superpower has the means to do this.

...Mr. Putin’s aide in charge of European affairs, Sergei V. Yastrzhembsky, said: “What is alarming is the eye-striking, excessive number of deliberate coincidences of high-profiling deaths of people who positioned themselves as opponents to the existing Russian government with international events in which the Russian president takes part.”

He added that Russia faced “a well-orchestrated campaign or a plan to consistently discredit Russia and its leader,” according to the Interfax news agency.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/25/w...5d8f366583c&hp&ex=1164517200&partner=homepageedit: Same NYT article has a short summary of Litvinenko's political activity, on the second page (useful background, for those too lazy to leave this thread and do research):

Mr. Litvinenko was a former operative in the K.G.B. who became a colonel in its successor organization, known by its Russian initials as the F.S.B. In the late 1990s, Mr. Litvinenko said publicly that he had been ordered to assassinate Boris Berezovsky, an exiled Russian tycoon, but had refused to do so. He fled to Britain and secured British citizenship earlier this year. In 2003, he wrote a book accusing the Russian secret service of orchestrating apartment house bombings in Russia in 1999 that led to the second Chechen war.

Since his illness became known last week, his friends have depicted his poisoning as an officially sanctioned reprisal for his criticism of the Kremlin and his efforts to investigate the fatal shooting of Anna Politkovskaya, a prominent Russian journalist.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/25/w...5d8f366583c&hp&ex=1164517200&partner=homepage

 

[Rach3]

Anyone care to speculate on the British diplomatic reaction in the near future? (Methinks they'll sweep this under the table. Just like that "counterterrorism" murder in the subway of that innocent Brazilian guy, with Ian Blair going on television and spewing fabrications, his cover-up being exposed on the (delayed) release of a security tape (the one they said never existed). Terribly corrupt. )

 

[Rach3]

I've started another thread in nuclear engineering, to address the technical challenges of this amazing assassination:

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=1170073#post1170073

 

[Astronuc]

Sophistication behind spy's poisoning
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6190144.stm

The poisoning of the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko would have required considerable scientific know-how, according to experts.

Mr Litvinenko's death on 23 November was linked to a "major dose" of radioactive polonium-210 found in his body.

Traces of radiation have since been found at five locations around London, including a sushi restaurant and hotel visited by the deceased.

But the radioactive substance implicated is as difficult to obtain as it can be to detect.

Polonium-210 occurs naturally in the environment and in people at low concentrations. But acquiring enough of it to kill would require individuals with expertise and powerful connections.

Professor Nick Priest, one of the few UK physicists to have worked with polonium-210, told BBC News that just one milligram (a thousandth of a gram) of the radioactive substance could have been responsible for Mr Litvinenko's death.

Higher doses than that would have killed the former KGB agent more quickly.

. . .

"To produce the amounts required you would need to use a nuclear reactor" -
Professor Nick Priest, University of Middlesex

The plot thickens. Certainly anyone with access to a research reactor could produce Po-210 in sufficient quantities.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

A brush was sold with trace amounts of polonium in it. This would create a small electrical charge on the brush, which would attract the dust and safely remove it from the record. These brushes are still sold. Polonium has a very short half life, so the useful life of the brush is probably a few years at the most. It appears that the NRC licensing requires the manufacturer to take back the brush, but I suspect that many of them end up in the trash.

Who manages the polonium used to make the brushes?

back in the 40's, some types of spark plugs had trace amounts of polonium in the gap, presumably to ionize the air. This allowed a larger gap to be used.

http://www.blackcatsystems.com/science/radprod.html

Beware of old mechanics as well.

 

[physics girl phd]

There are some (Associated Press) rumors circulating that three British Airways planes are contaminated... if this is true, MAYBE it can be seen whether the flights originated from anywhere interesting...

 

[Gokul43201]

If this was done on the behest of Putin, isn't it the stupidest way to assassinate an obvious dissenter (and deserter)? There are hundreds of effective poisons that are not typically accessible only to a handful of people around the world. This seems so stupid as to make, in my opinion, the likelihood of a set-up not small.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

If this was done on the behest of Putin, isn't it the stupidest way to assassinate an obvious dissenter (and deserter)? There are hundreds of effective poisons that are not typically accessible only to a handful of people around the world. This seems so stupid as to make, in my opinion, the likelihood of a set-up not small.

I was thinking the same thing, however there have been rumors that the job was outsourced to the mob. In that case, perhaps the sloppy job would make more sense, which is part of what got my attention. As for the choice of materials, I don't know. Maybe Putin believes himself to be untouchable.

Today...

Nov. 30 (Bloomberg) -- The unexplained deaths of a former Russian spy, an investigative journalist, a central banker and two business executives have created ``a problem'' between Russia and Europe, European Commission President Jose Barroso said today.

``We have a problem with Russia. In fact we have several problems,'' Barroso told the German Parliament's European Affairs Committee. ``Too many people have been killed and we don't know who killed them.'' [continued]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aZ.4DKQduZDE&refer=europe

 

[Astronuc]

There are some (Associated Press) rumors circulating that three British Airways planes are contaminated... if this is true, MAYBE it can be seen whether the flights originated from anywhere interesting...

Radiation found at 12 locations
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6159927.stm

Experts probing the death of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko have found traces of radioactivity at 12 locations, the home secretary has said. Among them are two British Airways (BA) planes. A third one is awaiting checks.

Home Secretary John Reid told Parliament that two Russian aircraft, one of which is currently at Heathrow airport, were also of interest.

The Health Protection Agency said 24 people had been referred to a specialist clinic for tests.

BA is contacting 33,000 passengers from 221 flights. But Mr Reid stressed the public health risk was low.

Alpha emitters are only effective internally. The skin stops alpha particles, and in fact, clothing would stop alpha particles.

 

[neutrino]

Latest developments...

Scientists at the U.K.'s Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston, west of London, have traced the polonium 210 found in London to a nuclear power plant in Russia, the capital's Evening Standard newspaper reported today. Officials at the establishment didn't return calls.

A ``significant quantity'' of radioactive material was found in an Italian associate of Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian spy who died after being poisoned with the same substance.

The amount of polonium 210 found is of immediate concern as a risk to the man's health, rather than a lower dose that may pose a latent cancer risk, a spokesman for the U.K. Health Protection Agency said today. Italy's government said the man is Mario Scaramella, an academic.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=alIVN4QzXTws&refer=uk

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Unanswered questions after Russian spy poisoning

http://www.nature.com/news/2006/061127/full/061127-17.html

 

[Dense]

Okay, so the man died from radiation poisoning that could only have happened if he had ingested, breathed or otherwise taken the stuff internally.

It's from Polonium-210, which apparently is freely available in unregulated stuff one could buy online. A quantity sufficient to produce a fatal dose can be purchased for only a few hundred dollars.

Other people who were with him got slightly poisoned. That means it was probably not injected, but was rather inhaled or ingested.

Many locations he visited turned out to also be contaminated. That means it was probably not ingested with a meal, but was instead in a fine particulate form that traveled with him.

This leads to only a few likely alternatives:

1) He was trafficking the material, known to be used in the detonation of basic atomic explosives, and the bag it was in wasn't sealed tight and the dust got on his clothes or in his hair. Could have been a courier transporting it to terrorists or rogue countries. But that begs the question of what he was doing transporting it through one of the more security-conscious countries, with both facilities and motivation to stop him. Still, people are known to do stupid things, especially people stupid enough to be couriers.

2) He was the victim of an accident, having visited a place where Polonium-210 was being made/processed/packaged, and got some of it on his clothes or in his har.

3) He was the victim of a particularly Rube Goldberg-like assassination attempt, where instead of using commonly-available and immediately-effective killers like rat poison, bullets, ricin, blunt instruments, deep water, or what have you, the killers instead used something that draws all kinds of attention to the poisoning, takes forever to kill someone, affects other non-targets thereby increasing the odds of detection and punishment, and gives the victim all the time in the world to point the finger at the killer. This sounds remarkably unlikely. But again, people are known to do stupid things.

 

[kesh]

It's from Polonium-210, which apparently is freely available in unregulated stuff one could buy online. A quantity sufficient to produce a fatal dose can be purchased for only a few hundred dollars.

not sure about this. he had 100 times+ the lethal dose, so if your account of the polonium source and cost is correct it would be tens of thousands of dollars.

 

[turbo]

It's from Polonium-210, which apparently is freely available in unregulated stuff one could buy online. A quantity sufficient to produce a fatal dose can be purchased for only a few hundred dollars.

That's not even close. From the website of United Nuclear:

You would need about 15,000 of our Polonium-210 needle sources
at a total cost of about $1 million - to have a toxic amount.

http://www.unitednuclear.com/isotopes.htmAccording to the website linked above Polonium 120 is regulated, but they are permitted to sell it in very tiny quantities without the recipient producing a license. In other words, an unregulated amount because it is relatively harmless. Notice he didn't say that you could accumulate a fatal dose for $1M - he said a "toxic amount". That is quite another thing entirely. The ex-spy not only got a "toxic amount", but apparently at least 100x a lethal amount, and others that he came in contact with were contaminated as well, so there was apparently an excess over and above the dose that he got.

Also, since this isotope has a half-life of only 138 days, the Polonium used in the assassination was likely produced fairly recently, and in quantities that might have perhaps should have raised questions at the reactor. Who could pull that off without setting off inquiries? It would be a stupid thing for the Russian intelligence community to do, since they had the means and the motive, but they are the most likely suspects.

 

[devil-fire]

apparently vladimir putin was in the KGB and was the first head of the FSB (formerly KGB) according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putin .
i don't think someone with as much power and as through an understanding of espionage and intelligence could be the victim of a mass campaign to frame him to look like someone who authorizes the murder of dissidents. i think this whole thing is an intimidation tactic aimed at his enemies. his enemies now know that no matter where in the world they are, no matter what they are doing, if putin wants them dead, they are likely to be subject to a vary long painful death where no one can help them so it's a vary bad idea to cross mr. putin

 

[turbo]

i think this whole thing is an intimidation tactic aimed at his enemies. his enemies now know that no matter where in the world they are, no matter what they are doing, if putin wants them dead, they are likely to be subject to a vary long painful death where no one can help them so it's a vary bad idea to cross mr. putin

You have an interesting and compelling take on this. I must say that if I had the goods on Putin and/or the FSB, I would be a more than a little nervous about coming out with the proof after this demonstration of his reach. I've been thinking about how this assassination could be pulled off, and it would be very easy once you have the Po 120. I think that the safest way to handle the material would be to suspend it in water to avoid the chance of accidental inhalation. Then deliver it to the food or drink of the victim. It would be a cinch to poison someone if you met them for lunch. If you spill a drop or two on your skin, no problem. The alpha radiation won't penetrate your skin.

 

[kesh]

i think this whole thing is an intimidation tactic aimed at his enemies. his enemies now know that no matter where in the world they are, no matter what they are doing, if putin wants them dead, they are likely to be subject to a vary long painful death where no one can help them so it's a vary bad idea to cross mr. putin

yes, and i think that he is leaving it tracable to him deliberately, as part of his assertion of power. it's like leaving a calling card on a corpse.

also europe needs his oil and particularly his gas too much to be too indignant, and he knows it.

 

[Anttech]

also europe needs his oil and particularly his gas too much to be too indignant, and he knows it.

Actually we dont, we choose too for some reason. The EU could as easily shop elsewhere..

 

[kesh]

Actually we dont, we choose too for some reason. The EU could as easily shop elsewhere..

well. not immediately. any land route from europe to *anywhere* has to go through russia. britain is building more LNG terminals at the moment to get gas from the mideast by boat (ooh, another spot with no political issues). we've know for ages that north sea gas was running out, but bizarrely only just started to sort this out.

 

[Anttech]

well. not immediately. any land route from europe to *anywhere* has to go through russia.

You are forgetting Turkey through Asia Minor.

britain is building more LNG terminals at the moment to get gas from the mideast by boat (ooh, another spot with no political issues). we've know for ages that north sea gas was running out, but bizarrely only just started to sort this out.

Yeap, IIRC British Gas only thought that the gas in the North sea would last 10 years after they first turned on the pipes and refitted all the gas cookers (saw it on coast--on the beeb). Eastern Europe is more relient on Russia, the EU *can* shop elsewhere...