Poisonous Minds

The ongoing war of propaganda against Vladimir Putin being played out in the editorial offices and television studios of the western mainstream media plumbs new depths with every passing day. The barrage of differing explanations for the condition and subsequent death of Alexander Litvinenko - with the suspected cause changing almost on a daily basis - looks very much like a classic use of misdirection. First it was thalium, then radioactive thalium and now the story has, for the time being at least, settled on a radioactive isotope, Polonium 210. The only one consistent theme in an otherwise constantly morphing story is the presumed guilt of Vladimir Putin.

The official reason for the all the finger pointing directed at Putin is that Litvinenko, a well-known fierce critic of Putin, had apparently been investigating the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, another strident critic of Putin, who was gunned down at her Moscow apartment last month. In the absence of any substantive evidence - the circumstantial evidence that Litvinenko and Putin were far from the best of chums is far from substantive - the Russian president has been indicted, tried and found guilty by a media chorus. A large number of aspects of this case should give any thinking person cause for disquiet.

Public Spectacle
The “hit” was designed from the outset to be a public spectacle. If… and this is an if of monumental proportions… if Putin wanted Litvinenko dead for whatever reason, why on earth would those charged with carrying it out do it in such a sloppy and unprofessional manner? There are those who will argue that it was played out publicly as a warning to others, but this is a specious line of reasoning, not least because there is an assortment of methods for communicating such threats other than via the media in countries that are frequently hostile to Russia and Russian interests.

If he really did choose to publicly execute such a vocal critic, Putin would have to be masochistic beyond belief. As for the method, there are far more reliable methods of “getting the job done” than playing around with dangerous radioactive isotopes. Most if not all of the world’s secret services are well-versed in techniques designed to be indistinguishable from death by natural causes. So again, why choose such a novel and potentially unreliable method?

Attempts by the likes of the BBC to create a link between the Litvinenko case and a tiny number of poisonings carried out during the cold war serve only to add weight to the suspicion that this is a propaganda exercise aimed unfairly and squarely at Russia.

A rare isotope
Polonium, which apparent is the method of assassination du-jour, is considered a very rare element, and is present in uranium ores at around 100 micrograms for every metric ton, making it about 500 times less abundant than radium. It is so rare that it is estimated that only about 100 grams are produced per year. The polonium 210 isotope has a half-life of approximately 138 days, and emits enormous quantities of energy during its decay, sufficient energy to take the temperature of half a gram above 750 Kelvin, in other words, in excess of 470 Celsius. The energy is released in the form of alpha particles, which are hazardous to health only if ingested.

Experts in nuclear chemistry have suggested that large-scale processing equipment, such as a nuclear reactor, would be needed to produce amounts of Polonium 210 sufficient to result in death. According to Dr Andrea Sella, a lecturer in chemistry at University College London, "It is not as simple as the idea that somebody might have broken into a radioactivity cabinet at some local hospital and walked off with some polonium".

Assuming that a nuclear reactor was required to produce the substance, that reactor could just as easily be in Los Alamos or Dimona as it could be in Sarov.

A fierce critic, or a crank?
The charges made by Litvinenko against the Putin administration have frequently been lacking in hard evidence and on occasion have lapsed into bizarre fantasy. He co-authored a book “Blowing up Russia : Terror from Within” in which he accuses the Putin administration of actually responsible for the terrorist attacks on apartment blocks in various Russian cities, for which Chechen terrorists were officially blamed. However, having made the allegation, he failed miserably at producing even a prima-facia case to support his allegations. He also made the ludicrous claims that the FSB was behind the events of September 11th, 2001 and that senior Al-Qa'eda officials were actually agents of Russian intelligence. Litvinenko had a piece published by the now defunct Chechen Press in July of this year where he made the (unsubstantiated) claim that Putin was a paedophile.

Not a Russian Modus Operandi
According to Nigel West, a British intelligence expert, “neither the FSB nor the KGB has ever killed a defector on foreign soil and their predecessors, even under Stalin, did so only once in the case of Walter Krivitsky in Washington in 1941”. He stated that he would be “most surprised if the FSB had tried to kill Mr Litvinenko because it would fly in the face of 65 years of Soviet or Russian practice”.

The Israel connection
According to Israeli news media, Litvinenko had been passing documents to a former Yukos CEO in Israel in the months before his death. The suggestion by this former CEO that the information was harmful to the Russian administration is only to be expected and should be taken with a pinch of salt. After all, it was Putin who put an end to the reign of the kleptocrats, so it is not beyond belief that they would be committed in their attempts to besmirch his reputation.

You can tell a lot about a man from his choice of friends
Boris Abramovich Berezovsky. Need I say any more? Berezovsky is Russian Jewish billionaire who had served as Secretary of the Russian National Security Council, and who went into exile when it seemed he would be a victim of Putin's campaign against shady business practices. In an article entitled "Godfather of the Kremlin?" by Paul Klebnikov, published by Forbes magazine, Berezovsky was portrayed as a mafia don who thought nothing of having his rivals murdered. Although Berezovsky sued the magazine for libel and the magazine subsequently retracted both claims. Klebnikov made similar allegations in a book with the same title as the article. Berezovsky did not legally contest the claims made by Klebnikov in that book. Klebnikov went on to become the editor of the Russian edition of Forbes and was gunned-down in Moscow on the July 9th 2004.

Who benefits?
The web of intrigue weaved by the media on the death of Litvinenko reads like a thriller, albeit a third-rate bargain-basement offering written without the either the panache or knowledge of the likes of John Le Carré. Given the complete absence of substantive evidence, there is only one reliable way of getting close to what might be the truth behind images produced with smoke and mirrors – that is to ask “Cui Bono... Who benefits?” or to put it another way, "follow the money".

There is no shortage of potential candidates and Putin certainly is not one of them. The burgeoning Russophobe club has a diverse membership, ranging from assorted oligarchs and bankers - people who are almost universally reviled amongst ordinary Russians - who are very upset that their playthings have been taken from them and that Putin has put a stop to their perfidious theft. After that there are a host of multinational companies and their shareholders who have been denied unfettered access to Russian resources. Finally we come to the Chechens, and their assorted hangers-on in the west, many of who are hailing from the neo-con camp, such as the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya.

Russia has also proven to be an extremely tough nut to crack in energy supply negotiations and a persistent thorn in the side of the axis of hypocrisy, both in respect to their invasion of Iraq and to the putative invasion of Iran. Indeed, Putin has also had the audacity to enter into sizeable contracts to supply advanced weaponry to Iran.

There are plenty of individuals, organisations and governments who would prefer that Russia and her leadership tow the line. Those same individuals, organisations and governments want Putin to permit, if not actively encourage, the pillage of Russian resources by multi-national corporations. There is no shortage of parties who would stoop to such a low in order to punish a recalcitrant Putin.

Much like the poisoning of Yushchenko, the demise of Litvinenko will be continually discussed and disected in the media, with the narrative shifting as required, but the blame remaining locked on to the Kremlin. However, no serious effort will be made to find the perpetrators or solve the crime, as it is far easier to continue to use the affair as a foreign policy stick with which to beat Putin, demonise the FSB and force Russia to once again open its doors to wholesale larceny.