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Former Spy Poisoned By Radiation In UK
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Nov 24, 2006 04:34 PM
from the fishy-quite-fishy dept.
from the fishy-quite-fishy dept.
An anonymous reader writes "BBC new is reporting the death of the ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko with a major dose of radioactive polonium-210. But nobody knows how it got there. Suspicions have fallen upon the Russian security services (who deny involvement). The task of the pathologists now is to unpick what really killed him and how it was administered. Quite what techniques they will use to solve this puzzle is unclear." From the article: "A post-mortem examination on Mr Litvinenko has not been held yet. The delay is believed to be over concerns about the health implications for those present at the examination. But Roger Cox from the HPA said a large quantity of alpha radiation emitted from polonium-210 had been detected in Mr Litvinenko's urine."
Related Stories
[+]
UK Lab Traces Polonium To Russian Nuclear Plant 413 comments
reporter writes "British authorities had identified polonium 210 to be the radioactive poison that killed Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian spy who defected to Great Britain. Now, according to a disturbing report, the authorities have identified the source of the poison to be Russia. Bloomberg ominously reports, '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 cold chill just fell on relations between Russia and the West." In another twist to this developing story, the shadowy Italian security consultant who dined with Litvinenko has also fallen ill with radiation poisoning.
[+]
Your Rights Online: British Police Identify Killer in Radiation Case 235 comments
reporter writes "According to a front-page story by The Guardian, British authorities have identified Andrei Lugovoi to be the murderer who used radioactive pollonium-210 to kill Andrei Litvinenko. The British government will ask Moscow to extradite Lugovoi. The Guardian states: 'Associates of the dead man have repeatedly accused President Vladimir Putin's government of being behind his murder, a claim the Kremlin rejects. While it is known that detectives believe they have uncovered evidence pointing to Mr Lugovoi's involvement, it is not clear whether they have established a motive for the murder'"
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Reading the artcle...... (Score:5, Funny)
"Mr Putin himself has said Mr Litvinenko's death was a tragedy, but he saw no "definitive proof" it was a "violent death"."
Clearly the term "violent death" has a different definition in Russian than it does in English.
Re:Reading the artcle...... (Score:5, Interesting)
Mr Putin himself has said Mr Litvinenko's death was a tragedy
Mr. Litvinenko was apparantly more than your average former KGB agent - he's accused [72.14.253.104] Putin of pedophilia, among other things. Even if Putin weren't behind this poisoning (which he almost certainly is), he probably wouldn't consider Mr. Litvinenko's death a tragedy at all.
Isn't it strange how Putin's most vocal critics [economist.com] inside Russia are just dropping like flies...
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Putin Pedophile Link (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a video there of Putin kissing the 5 year old boy's stomach. This started a lot of speculation and I have read that the KGB gathered video from a hotel room proving that he was from years ago. When Putin headed the KGB all these videos obviously disappeared. There is stuff about it on teh web if anyone needs to do some research. I suspect it's true.
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Re:Putin Pedophile Link (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Reading the artcle...... (Score:5, Insightful)
According to Justin Raimondo's analysis of the case, Litivenko is a raving lunatic whose accusations in general have been ridiculously unsubstantiated.
Therefore, the likelihood is that he was killed precisely to frame Putin for his murder, since he had no other value to anybody, apparently.
The assumption that Putin is behind it just because the individual was ex-KGB is a clear case of jumping to conclusions based on no evidence.
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Re:Reading the artcle...... (Score:4, Insightful)
http://unitednuclear.com/isotopes.htm [unitednuclear.com]
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United Nuclear (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Reading the artcle...... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Reading the artcle...... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Reading the artcle...... (Score:5, Insightful)
Before that the UK medics went through a list of at least 3-4 different hypothesis each of which proved to be loads of bull. Tallium, radioactive Tallium, strange objects in his intestines, etc you name it.
So at the point where Putin said it nothing was known yet. I have not heard what he said in Russian so it is also quite likely that some nuances have been lost in translation (like a "yet" at the end of the sentence).
As far as you noticing that his idea of violent death differs from our idea of violent death that is a definite. He would not have had his past job if this was not so.
It is quite interesting that AFAIK this is the first high profile poisoning with radioactive substance. Considering the guaranteed lethality and obvious ineptitude of the medics in diagnosing it I am surprised that this does not happen more often. Actually, probably it does, but using much smaller doses which end up in effects indistinguishable from cancer. If the dose was a small fraction of what he got he would have died quietly from leukemia 6 months from now. Whoever killed him wanted to make a point and also wanted the fingers to be pointed at the usual suspects.
Which makes me on a second thought post anonymously
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, also what he could mean is that there are not conclusive evidence to tell if was he was killed, or it was accidental (touching dust/old things from work/whatever and
Re:Reading the artcle...... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes, it can be a translation problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course it's way more fun to use "violent" in articles, as it paints Russian President as a fierce person who doesn't think that deaths not involving excessive violence are worthy of an investigation.
Frankly I personally don't know what to think about this whole story. It's some sort of James Bond in real life. If it was really an evil plot, why did they use highly exotic means? Why not just shoot him during "robbery" or "accidentally" run him over with a car? To give him enough time to make an accusation? Did perpetrators they take into account his hate toward Russian government and simply used him for their own purposes? Or they knew we'd think that and reality is even more twisted? I don't think he'd do it on purpose -- sacrificing one's life is a very high price for a political statement to make.
So my only option is to wait for the final results of the autopsy and then hope that source of the radioactive material will be found quickly, to prevent any other radiation poisonings.
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History repeating, sort of (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder how they got the polonium into him. For a death this rapid, he'd pretty much have had to ingest it.
Re:History repeating, sort of (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:History repeating, sort of (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:History repeating, sort of (Score:5, Interesting)
But as far as I understand it, it is not claimed that he died from the radiation, but from the fact that Polonium is also very toxic.
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Re:History repeating, sort of (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:History repeating, sort of (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that Po-210 is a potent alpha emitter [bnl.gov]. Since these guys are kicking off 5 MeV alphas, you will get a huge dose localized to a few cm from the parent nucleus. In the digestive system, you'll quickly tear things apart, killing the stem cells of the intestinal tract. It gets worse if absorbed into the bloodstream and the bone marrow.
While I'm not a toxicologist, I am a nuclear physicist; one of the foremost rules of radiation safety is to avoid ingesting alpha sources (or any other source, for God's sake) for precisely this reason. FWIW, alpha sources are one of the safer things to work with, for exactly the same reason that they're so bad for you if ingested: a few cm of shielding is sufficient to stop the penetrating alpha particles.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Not sure if they would be able to put polonium into sushi without him realising? Not even sure what it is or how large a dose you'd need to kill someone!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:History repeating, sort of (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
For the curious, Thallium is odorless and tasteless [wikipedia.org]. I guess animals just don't evolve receptors for substances not usually found in nature.
Re:History repeating, sort of (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:History repeating, sort of (Score:5, Interesting)
I read another article in which Litvinenko suspected the poison was in the tea served to him.
Also, Litvinenko and Putin have a long history:
New York Times [nytimes.com]: (from the archives, paid registration required)
Report of Plot to Kill Tycoon Leads Yeltsin to Call Inquiry
By MICHAEL WINES
President Boris N. Yeltsin ordered an inquiry today into spectacular charges leveled earlier this week -- so far without evidence -- that Russia's equivalent of the F.B.I. plotted to kill one of the country's most influential tycoons.
The tycoon is Boris A. Berezovsky, an oil magnate and director of Russia's biggest television network, who was a leading supporter of Mr. Yeltsin during the last presidential campaign in 1996.
Mr. Berezovsky, who is still alive, released a letter last week asserting that the Federal Security Service, a spinoff of the old Soviet K.G.B. that is responsible for domestic law enforcement, plotted last winter to murder him.
On Tuesday the source of Mr. Berezovsky's information, a Security Service colonel named Aleksandr Litvinenko, called a news conference to elaborate on the accusation and warn that a rogue element was running wild within the agency.
...
The list of very prominent people who once opposed Putin and suffered extremely nasty reversals of fortune is growing conspicuously long:
Ironically, an interview of Litvinenko from December 15 2004 included this prophetic quote:
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examination (Score:5, Informative)
The delay is believed to be over concerns about the health implications for those present at the examination.
If they're concerned, they're too ignorant about science to be qualified to do the exam. The rule of thumb is that alpas are stopped by air. Even if the guy's body fluids got on you, the alphas wouldn't get through your epidermis -- and I assume people doing autopsies are going to be wearing latex gloves, a mask, etc., since they don't want to get exposed to AIDS, etc.
Worried, me? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hands up who's not worried by this?
Lots of talk of what Al Qaeda might do, but these are the people with their hands on thousands of nukes, much of the energy supplies and they are now poisoning people with radioactive isotopes because they say they are scheming murdering psychopaths [cnn.com].
Do we really need another bunch of homicidal f*ckwits in the world?
Re:Worried, me? (Score:4, Insightful)
The ex-KGB boys used a poison that is produced at the rate of 10 grams per year worldwide. They didn't do it to be clever. They did it to send a message that they did it, there's nothing that can stop them, and when you fuck with Putin and the New Russian Order and you get a creative agonizing death.
Putin was behind it. So again with the reporter a few months ago. Protest, die.
Now that we know that our "ally" is putting the finishing trim on his capitalist dictatorship, how will our millionaire media airheads and our millionaire government respond? Do I hear crickets?
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Re:Worried, me? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know this for a fact? How?
Certainly, it's possible...but there's no proof. Moreover, I fail to see how Litvinenko's very public death would benefit Putin. The old KGB apparat splintered into many pieces after the demise of the USSR. Some of them work for the present Russian government, some are self-employed, and some work for...other organizations. It's possible that Litvinenko's poking around was getting close to someone in the "Russian Mafia" who had the means to pull this off, or the motive may be something as banal as a personal grudge held by an ex-subordinate. Litvinenko certainly flouted one of the basic rules for enjoying a long life: avoid making enemies whenever possible. He not only had many enemies—his enemies were dangerous.
It does seem likely to me that Litvinenko's death can be attributed to the ex-KGB, if for no other reason than that they are one of the few organizations that would have had quantities of exotic poisons stashed away. The problem is which faction or members of the ex-KGB might be responsible. Russian mafia? Rogue clique within the present Russian secret police org? An old boy (or a whole pissed-off department of the defunct KGB) pulling in some favors and activating connections to finally get even? Insufficient facts, I'm afraid.
You might want to pick up Litvinenko's book: Blowing up Russia : Terror from Within [amazon.com].
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Re:Worried, me? (Score:4, Interesting)
I can tell you that when 9/11 happened, the overwhelming feeling over here was "yankees got what they deserved". I remember the results of the polls published soon afterwards showed the same reaction on the large scale. It was really scary. It seems that the hatred towards America and the West in general was so deeply indoctrinated to everyone in the USSR that it didn't took much for it to surface again.
What's worse, in the last few years, there has been a large-scale Westernophobia campaign coming from the government. They're telling us about how morally corrupt European countries and the U.S. are, denouncing Western liberalism (that's social liberalism - freedom of religion/speech/press etc - not economical) which is "morally harmful" and "destabilizing society", and then go ahead to tell how superior Russia is in going our own "special" way - reminds you of something going on in some other parts of the world mayhap, say, Iran, or North Korea? Oh, apparently we also need some special kind of democracy for our country - "sovereign democracy" is the official term for it - somehow distinct from the evil and corrupting Western democracy.
The worst part of it is that most people here seem to support this political course. So, yes, you should be worried about this. But there's nothing you can really do - we've got nukes, and lots of them too. And nuclear subs. And other nasty stuff like biochem weapons. And people shall willingly take the arms and fight against NATO forces if it ever comes to a war to "defend the country against foreign aggression" (and with it, the corrupt regime).
So your leaders will keep smiling to Mr.Putin, and they will always be good friends, and Russia will always be just a special kind of democracy, absolutely unlike Iran or NK.
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Former USSR = nutbag central? (Score:5, Interesting)
He's been labelled a heckler, when he may well have a genuine issue at hand. The same thing, perhaps a little more dramatic, happened at a press conference regarding the demise of the Kursk [wikipedia.org].
When Russia (yes, even modern-day Russia) gets its hands near an investigation, the result is usually indeterminate or irrelevant, never indisputable.
Polonium-210? What legitimate uses does it have? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Polonium-210? What legitimate uses does it have (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like all our Russian "friends" needed to do was to visit the local camera store's going-out-of-business sale.
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Re:Polonium-210? What legitimate uses does it have (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Polonium-210? What legitimate uses does it have (Score:5, Interesting)
Even a THOUSAND TIMES the lethal dose of .5 mCi would be a mere tenth of a milligram.
At 9196 kg/m^3 [webelements.com] ~= 9 mg / mm^3, that's about a hundredth of a cubic millimeter, assuming it was given in elemental form.
The sheer quantity of alpha radiation it produces also explains why it's used in satellites - "The power density of polonium [globalsecurity.org] is unique and made it attractive as a power source. One pound of polonium-210 occupies a volume of approximately 3 cubic inches and produces heat at the rate of 3.6 x 10^8 British Thermal Units (BTUs) per minute or about 64 kilowatts of electric power."
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You can't save a patient that has this level of radiation poisoning. Impossible. Maybe he knew it, so he decided to play for the maximum political advantage. If people can fly aircraft into buildings, they can do this. Anyway it's just a creepy thought, probably not true at all - where would he get it? It will be interesting to see what the cause of the radiation is at the sushi bar. So
Strange way of killing someone (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's hard to imagine a better way of drawing attention to the government.
Maybe that's the point of it: a message to others thinking of disgracing the state, "who do you THINK could use this to poison him, of course it's us". Kind of a classy (in a twisted psycho way) to do a state execution before the world's eyes That being said, I take anything in the media with a grain of salt. The west (incl UK) isn't exactly friendly to Russia. They would probably rather make it sound like a Russian hit given a chance
Re:Strange way of killing someone (Score:5, Interesting)
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Polonium (Score:5, Informative)
The maximum permissible body burden for ingested polonium is only 0.03 microcuries, which represents a particle weighing only 6.8 x 10-12 g. Weight for weight it is about 2.5 x 1011 times as toxic as hydrocyanic acid. The maximum allowable concentration for soluble polonium compounds in air is about 2 x 10-11 microcuries/cm3.
From: there [lanl.gov]
Soluble in acidic environment.
Apparently he was repeatedly invited by by an unkown russian person to drink tea....
A little sourness in tea with a few milligram of metal dissolved.
What an awful headline (Score:5, Informative)
The former implies that it was the radiation present in the UK that poisoned him; the latter makes it clear that he happened to be in the UK when he was poisoned by radiation.
Polonium 210? (Score:4, Insightful)
Answers to the question... (Score:5, Insightful)
The answer is: it's very, very far from obvious. The mere fact that it's taken so long to work out what the poison was indicates how subtle Polonium poisoning is.
1. Based on the Wikipedia entry for Polonium, the dosage required is incredibly small. We're not talking milligrams, here; we're talking micrograms, or less. Just detecting such a tiny quantity distributed throughout the victim's body is going to be incredibly hard.
2. The poison won't produce discernable radiation outside the victim's body, either, because alpha radiation is so readily absorbed by tissue. (That's also what makes it such a good poison, of course.)
3. The thing with poisons is that you have to actually look for them. Polonium is such an unlikely poison - given its rarity and inherent handling hazards - that even considering it is far-fetched. The fact that the victim's urine contained helium was the only clue the pathologists had, and I think they deserve a huge amount of credit for getting from that result to polonium as the cause.
The Kremlin Pedophile By Alexander Litvinenko (Score:4, Interesting)
The Kremlin Pedophile
By Alexander Litvinenko
A few days ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin walked from the Big Kremlin Palace to his Residence. At one of the Kremlin squares, the president stopped to chat with the tourists. Among them was a boy aged 4 or 5.
'What is your name?' Putin asked.
'Nikita,' the boy replied.
Putin kneed, lifted the boy's T-shirt and kissed his stomach.
The world public is shocked. Nobody can understand why the Russian president did such a strange thing as kissing the stomach of an unfamiliar small boy.
The explanation may be found if we look carefully at the so-called "blank spots" in Putin's biography.
After graduating from the Andropov Institute, which prepares officers for the KGB intelligence service, Putin was not accepted into the foreign intelligence. Instead, he was sent to a junior position in KGB Leningrad Directorate. This was a very unusual twist for a career of an Andropov Institute's graduate with fluent German. Why did that happen with Putin?
Because, shortly before his graduation, his bosses learned that Putin was a pedophile. So say some people who knew Putin as a student at the Institute.
The Institute officials feared to report this to their own superiors, which would cause an unpleasant investigation. They decided it was easier just to avoid sending Putin abroad under some pretext. Such a solution is not unusual for the secret services.
Many years later, when Putin became the FSB director and was preparing for presidency, he began to seek and destroy any compromising materials collected against him by the secret services over earlier years. It was not difficult, provided he himself was the FSB director. Among other things, Putin found videotapes in the FSB Internal Security Directorate, which showed him having sex with some underage boys.
Interestingly, the video was recorded in the same conspiratorial flat in Polyanka Street in Moscow where Russian Prosecutor-General Yuri Skuratov was secretly video-taped with two prostitutes. Later, in the famous scandal, Putin (on Roman Abramovich's instructions) blackmailed Skuratov with these tapes and tried to persuade the Prosecutor-General to resign. In that conversation, Putin mentioned to Skuratov that he himself was also secretly video-taped making sex at the same bed. (But of course, he did not tell it was pedophilia rather than normal sex.) Later, Skuratov wrote about this in his book Variant Drakona.
Dissappointing (Score:4, Insightful)
Their treatment of Georgia and other nearby states is not good lately, and this suggests that there are powerful and nasty organisations still calling shots there.
Please, Russians, don't go down the same road again!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Apparently (Score:5, Interesting)
Wrong answer. This may be intended as a very public warning to other possible defectors and traitors not to follow in Litvinenko's footsteps. The same deal as the (apocryphal?) story Oleg Penkovsky (GRU double agent in the 60ies) being burnt alive and a film of the execution being shown to all new KGB recruits to discourage disloyalty.
-b.
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screenplay by Roald Dahl (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I am surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Same old Russia (Score:4, Insightful)
Like rigging elections, assasinating democractically elected heads of state they don't agree with, invading countries for suggesting they might prefer to sell oil in Euros thus causing a huge run on the already weak dollar, selling arms and torture equipment to countries with appalling human rights records, wire-tapping their own citizens on a scale undreamed of by the most autocratic of regimes, collaborating with despots for profit, operating an institutionally rascist judicial systm, atempting to deny women rights fundamentally accepted as basic by the entire western world, accepting graft as a proxy for politic.. yadda yadda yadda..
I'm not saying the rest of the western world's any better.. the brits, the french, the israelis.. they're all doing their bits to help out f ck it all up.. but really.. it's the sheer bare-faced hypocrisy of the US that disappoints the most.. still.. we seem to be growing up slowly..
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