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Former kgb agent investigating gunned down journalist { November 25 2006 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/25/POISON.TMPSince 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://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/25/POISON.TMP
Rare radioactive substance killed former KGB spy
- Alan Cowell, New York Times
Saturday, November 25, 2006
(11-25) 04:00 PST London -- Radiation poisoning killed Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian KGB officer and foe of the Kremlin, authorities here said on Friday, further complicating a case that has taken on all the mystery and menace of a political thriller.
From his deathbed, Litvinenko's family said, he had accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of being behind his poisoning. Outside the hospital where he died late on Thursday, alarm spread across London after the police found traces of radiation in three places the former spy had been: a sushi bar, a hotel and his North London home.
Scientists were astounded at the use of the rare and hard-to-produce substance, dangerous when breathed, injected or ingested. All the while, diplomats scurried to prevent the case from becoming an international incident.
The cause of his death was so unusual, so baffling and so chilling that a senior British official called it "unprecedented." The government called a high-level meeting restricted to the most senior ministers -- code-named Cobra -- and the Russian ambassador was summoned to the Foreign Office. Rebutting the accusations of foul play, Russian officials hinted at a devious conspiracy to discredit Putin.
The former agent's family, citing what they called a statement dictated by the dying Litvinenko, accused Putin of a "barbaric and ruthless" murder -- a charge the Russian leader promptly rejected. Litvinenko's father, Walter, also accused Russian authorities of responsibility and said his 43-year-old son, who had been inquiring into the killing of a journalist in Moscow last month, was "killed by a little, tiny nuclear bomb."
But the British police said they were treating the case as an "unexplained death" -- displaying some caution about calling it a murder inquiry.
Photographs of the dying Litvinenko showed him hairless and gaunt, wearing a green gown and lying in a hospital bed. Friends who visited him before his death said he looked ghostly, far removed from the fit figure he presented just weeks ago. Developments in the case over the past week have tantalized Britons, confronting them with the notion that their land might have been used as a theater for sinister machinations more familiar in a James Bond movie.
Litvinenko's slow and inexorable death was among the most bizarre since Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident, was murdered in London with a jab from a poison-tipped umbrella in 1978.
It was not the first time that modern-day Russia has been suspected in a prominent poisoning in a foreign land. Doctors said that the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yushchenko -- who campaigned in 2004 to move Ukraine away from Russian influence and forge closer ties with the European Union -- was poisoned with dioxin when he was running for office, leaving his face badly disfigured. Russia, as well as an array of Yushchenko's political adversaries, was suspected in the poisoning, but the matter was never resolved.
Word of a possible radiation attack, using what officials identified as a highly radioactive isotope known as polonium 210, raised fears of contamination, though many Londoners seemed to take word of the official alert with a degree of stoicism, or even indifference, on a damp Friday evening.
"Spy Radiation: Major Alert," said a banner headline in the Evening Standard. Inured to such scares by acts of terrorism in their city, including the bombings in July 2005 by Islamic militants, many seemed to shrug off the news.
The police searched several locations that Litvinenko had visited in early November -- the Itsu sushi bar on Piccadilly, his home in the white-collar Muswell Hill neighborhood of north London and the Mayfair Millennium Hotel near the U.S. Embassy in Grosvenor Square -- and said they had found radioactive traces at each of them. Television footage showed plainclothes officers carrying away a metal box and several tote bags of evidence from the Itsu restaurant.
At the Mayfair Millennium Hotel, where people jammed the lobby and bar, the health and safety manager, Brian Kelly, seemed to play down the alarm. "If we had a radiation problem here, do you think my restaurant and bar would be so full of people?" he said.
The authorities said they were also trying to find nurses and other medical staff who had treated Litvinenko since he began to complain of an unspecified illness on Nov. 1, in case they had been contaminated.
Roger Cox, the director of the Health Protection Agency's center for radiation, chemicals and environmental hazards, said a large quantity of alpha radiation had been found in Litvinenko's urine. Referring to the effects of polonium 210, he said: "If that enters the body by ingestion, then it will rapidly track through the body and go to most major organs," causing "tissue damage characteristic of radiation."
It was not immediately known why it had taken so long for the source of Litvinenko's poisoning to become clear. Medical authorities denied earlier reports that Litvinenko had been poisoned by thallium, a toxic metal.
Litvinenko was a former operative in the KGB who became a colonel in its successor organization, known by its Russian initials as the FSB. In the late 1990s, 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.
Before news broke of the radiation poisoning, Alex Goldfarb, a friend of Litvinenko, read what was described as the former spy's deathbed statement, addressed largely to Putin.
"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."
Putin found himself on the defensive when he appeared in Helsinki after a meeting with leaders of the European Union, as he had been when he traveled to Europe after the death of Politkovskaya.
He called Litvinenko's death a tragedy, but suggested that there was "no indication that it was a violent death," citing what he said was a British medical report. He called for an investigation and pledged the assistance of Russian authorities.
"I hope that the British authorities will not contribute to the fanning up of political scandals having no real grounds," he said in remarks televised in Russia.
Putin also brushed aside the significance of Litvinenko's poisoning, suggesting his death was being used for political purposes.
"Those who did it are not the Lord and Mr. Litvinenko is not Lazarus," he went on. "It is regretful that even such a tragic event as the death of a human being is being used for political provocation."
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