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.
Source: Sean R. Singer is an apprentice editor at The National
Interest
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