Beyond The Fringe

This story from the UK Independent, on the 600,000 and more Iraqi casualties slaughtered by the Coalition of the Gobbling, received pathetically little coverage in the dailies.

As it’s such a significant and horrific admission on the part of the United Kooks, we’ll help air the facts some more. The Coalition of the Gobbling is certainly way ahead of Saddam’s efforts at this stage and is not looking like letting up. But what the hell - when the West kills en masse, it’s only collateral damage and a necessary side effect of creating “democracy” - yet when some tinpot dictator created and coddled by the West till he’s served his purpose does it, it’s genocide.

British backtrack on Iraq death toll
By Jill Lawless

British government officials have backed the methods used by scientists who concluded that more than 600,000 Iraqis have been killed since the invasion, the BBC reported yesterday.

The Government publicly rejected the findings, published in The Lancet in October. But the BBC said documents obtained under freedom of information legislation showed advisers concluded that the much-criticised study had used sound methods.

The study, conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, estimated that 655,000 more Iraqis had died since March 2003 than one would expect without the war. The study estimated that 601,027 of those deaths were from violence.

The researchers, reflecting the inherent uncertainties in such extrapolations, said they were 95 per cent certain that the real number of deaths lay somewhere between 392,979 and 942,636.

The conclusion, based on interviews and not a body count, was disputed by some experts, and rejected by the US and British governments. But the chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence, Roy Anderson, described the methods used in the study as “robust” and “close to best practice”. Another official said it was “a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones”.

What are the wily Iranians up to? Are they intentionally trying to provoke an international incident or is their version of events correct? Or is this payback for their Iraqi consulate staff being kidnapped by the United Stupids?

Claiming they were in Iranian waters, Iran has captured 15 British seamen, who have supposedly confessed their transgression. The United Kooks government says their ships were in Iraqi waters.

The Iranian military says it can prove that British naval personnel captured in the Gulf yesterday entered Iran illegally.

A senior officer in the armed forces says the 15 British sailors have confessed that they crossed into Iranian waters.

…

The British Government says the sailors were in Iraqi waters, a claim supported by Commander Kevin Andal, US Navy fifth fleet spokesman, which helps maintain security in Iraqi waters.

“We’ve been operating in those waters for some years now and all our ship commanders who are participating in the coalition are under clear understanding,” he said.

“Our charts are very accurate and up-to-date, as well as our GPS information.

“We know where the lines are and we respect those lines and we don’t cross them.”

The 15 sailors have been taken to Tehran.

Concurrently new UN sanctions have been whacked on Iran for its non-compliance with suspension of U enrichment.

The council’s 15 members adopted Resolution 1747, co-sponsored by Britain, France and Germany, that broadens UN sanctions already imposed on Iran in December for spurning repeated demands to suspend the nuclear fuel work.

…

The resolution bans all Iranian arms exports, freezes the overseas assets of 28 additional officials and institutions linked to the Islamic Republic’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs and restricts financial aid or loans to Tehran.

It gives Iran 60 days to comply with the repeated UN demands or face “further appropriate measures” - economic sanctions but no military action - under Article 41 of the UN Charter.

There’s little probability that Iran will comply.

Con Coughlin does it again in this waffly piece of shillery, overflowing with unnamed senior sources, claiming Israel is seeking authorisation from the Pentagon to whack Iran. Interestingly and simultaneously, the uber conservative Daily Telegraph broadcasts this story wherein Cheney warns that military action against Iran remains a possibility.

AP debunks the Coughlin shillery swiftly.

The subject has a revealing history of similar deceptive preemptive pro-war journalism. Is MI6 involved as well?

A report, put together by Campaign Iran and published at the end of 2006, revealed that Daily Telegraph’s political editor Con Coughlin, the man who ‘broke the story’ of Iraq’s 45 minute WMD capacity, was behind 16 articles containing unsubstantiated allegations against Iran over the past 12 months. The Press Complaints Commission has launched its third investigation into Coughlin in as many months after a number of high level complaints about his latest article on Iran. The investigation is looking at an article by Coughlin on 24 January relying on an unnamed “European defence official” alleging that North Korea is helping Iran prepare a nuclear weapons test.

Back in 2000, the British Journalism Review remarked that “officers of MI6… had been supplying Coughlin with material for years.” It is known that the MI6 has a shadowy programme called “I/Ops” (Information Operations), whose activities within Fleet Street have never before been so clearly exposed.

Supposing the Tele story is an MI6 plant, what should we make of this Times Online story that several US generals are prepared to resign if Doodoo gives the order to attack Iran?

“There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran,” a source with close ties to British intelligence said. “There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible.”

A British defence source confirmed that there were deep misgivings inside the Pentagon about a military strike. “All the generals are perfectly clear that they don’t have the military capacity to take Iran on in any meaningful fashion. Nobody wants to do it and it would be a matter of conscience for them.

“There are enough people who feel this would be an error of judgment too far for there to be resignations.”

A generals’ revolt on such a scale would be unprecedented. “American generals usually stay and fight until they get fired,” said a Pentagon source. Robert Gates, the defence secretary, has repeatedly warned against striking Iran and is believed to represent the view of his senior commanders.

The threat of a wave of resignations coincided with a warning by Vice-President Dick Cheney that all options, including military action, remained on the table. He was responding to a comment by Tony Blair that it would not “be right to take military action against Iran”.

Perhaps there are secret wars within the intel agencies themselves. Who is feeding the pro-war line in the Brit press and the Pentagon? Could it be none other than the recently departed torturer and his evul cohorts? Seymour Hersh spills the beans on the United Stupids tilt toward Iran:

The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser. While Rice has been deeply involved in shaping the public policy, former and current officials said that the clandestine side has been guided by Cheney. (Cheney’s office and the White House declined to comment for this story; the Pentagon did not respond to specific queries but said, “The United States is not planning to go to war with Iran.”)

Ironically, the tilt against the Shite Iranians will benefit the most radical, fundamentalist Sunnis, from whom the likes of Bin Laden came. Whose side are the torturer’s mob really on?

“The Saudis have considerable financial means, and have deep relations with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis”—Sunni extremists who view Shiites as apostates. “The last time Iran was a threat, the Saudis were able to mobilize the worst kinds of Islamic radicals. Once you get them out of the box, you can’t put them back.” The Saudi royal family has been, by turns, both a sponsor and a target of Sunni extremists, who object to the corruption and decadence among the family’s myriad princes. The princes are gambling that they will not be overthrown as long as they continue to support religious schools and charities linked to the extremists. The Administration’s new strategy is heavily dependent on this bargain.

Nasr compared the current situation to the period in which Al Qaeda first emerged. In the nineteen-eighties and the early nineties, the Saudi government offered to subsidize the covert American C.I.A. proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Hundreds of young Saudis were sent into the border areas of Pakistan, where they set up religious schools, training bases, and recruiting facilities. Then, as now, many of the operatives who were paid with Saudi money were Salafis. Among them, of course, were Osama bin Laden and his associates, who founded Al Qaeda, in 1988.

What is the payoff for the torturer? More war, re-election of the neocons, more oil, more profits for Helliburton etc. - his mates.

With the planned withdrawal of all Danish troops by August 07, the Coalition of the Gobbling will lose another member entirely. Lithuania is considering removing its forces too. Bliar’s concurrent announcement of a reduction in troop numbers by one quarter is greeted with approval from Basrawis. The wily rodent and Bliar spin the troop reduction as success. More likely Bliar can read the writing on the wall and may be looking to avoid further confrontation with an angry local populace which would shred any tattered vestige of a chance he has remaining of claiming justification for the ill-considered Iraqi misadventure. Why were the Brit troops withdrawn and not redeployed to support Doodoo’s surge?

“We welcome any withdrawal of British forces from inside the centre of the city,” said Hakim al-Mayahi, head of the Basra provincial security council, which has had a fractious relationship with the British.

An AFP reporter who visited British forces in Basra and at the airbase last month found both under almost daily mortar attack from militias in the city.

…

“Iraqi forces in Basra are ready and able to ensure security. Every Basrawi wishes to see all British forces leaving at one time not gradually,” he said.

And Razzaq Nasir, a 58-year-old oil worker, was categoric: “There is no need for them. The British forces in Basra are a big problem for the Iraqi forces and for ordinary Basrawis.”

The Whorestralian prime monster, with the repugnant Lon Cheney visit upon us, sticks with his plans to retain the present level of troops and send more military trainers to Iraq and indicates he is considering more troops for Afghanistan, the central battleground of the Great Game and historical graveyard of empires.

But as British columnist Gwynne Dyer noted, Australian leaders long ago realized that the United States is the only country that might be willing to come to their aid in an emergency. Keeping the White House happy is an Australian priority.“If the United States invaded Mars,” Dyer wrote, “Australia would send a battalion along to guard the supply depot.”

Ugh.

Kevvie presses the political advantage:

KEVIN RUDD: If it’s ok in Mr Howard’s view for the Danes to pull out some 460 troops from Iraq, why is it not ok for 520 Australian troops to be brought home to Australia, some time next year?

Well, mate, maybe little Johnny is thinking of all those lovely barbies at Crawford he’d miss out on in his retirement.

Meanwhile, Prodi resigns when the Italian Senate refuses to back his pro-US foreign policy initiatives.

Rome was plunged into political turmoil after Mr Prodi failed to muster enough Senate votes to approve the continuing commitment to Italian troop deployments in Afghanistan and the expansion of a US military base at Vicenza.

Unfortunately Prodi’s resignation and consequent electoral turmoil may prove a gift to the way out there and round the bend Berlusconi camp if Prodi can’t rally support among the multitudinous factions that adorn Italian Parliament.

Devoid of the belated political nous exhibited by Bliar, Doodoo refuses to get the message that Iraqis really don’t want the United Stupids in their country and haven’t for years. Yet according to Cheney, the Dems won’t be able to prevent Doodoo’s surge.

Iraqi woman, Riverbend, horrified by an alleged coverup of rape by the pseudo-democratic Iraqi government and proposed execution of three Iraqi women, points out the COG was defeated long ago:

And yet, as the situation continues to deteriorate both for Iraqis inside and outside of Iraq, and for Americans inside Iraq, Americans in America are still debating on the state of the war and occupation- are they winning or losing? Is it better or worse. Let me clear it up for any moron with lingering doubts: It’s worse. It’s over. You lost. You lost the day your tanks rolled into Baghdad to the cheers of your imported, American-trained monkeys. You lost every single family whose home your soldiers violated. You lost every sane, red-blooded Iraqi when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out and verified your atrocities behind prison walls as well as the ones we see in our streets. You lost when you brought murderers, looters, gangsters and militia heads to power and hailed them as Iraq’s first democratic government. You lost when a gruesome execution was dubbed your biggest accomplishment. You lost the respect and reputation you once had. You lost more than 3000 troops. That is what you lost America. I hope the oil, at least, made it worthwhile.”

Posted by Dub and written by Douglas Herman, read the chilling Aftermath: Day 2 of the War With Iran.

An excerpt:

In the first fierce day of war, when coordinated air strikes on Iranian targets destroyed most of the Iranian air force and navy, the US military appeared invincible again. Wrecking a second-rate military power does that for an imperial war machine.

By the second day of the war, however, most American and Iranian citizens wished for peace. Unfortunately, wars are always easier to get into than out of. While the war planners in the Pentagon and Israel had devised a workable plan to force Iran into war, using a fake attack on US warships by Iranian gunboats (as the faked Tonkin Gulf attack initiated the Vietnam War), the US Navy fared far worse than the planners wished.

Journalistic luminary John Pilger provides a timely, superb summary of the current precarious situation.

(more…)

Although Lugovoy has insisted that the meeting with himself, Kovtun and Sokolenko and Litvinenko occurred after Litvinenko’s rendevous with Scaramella at Itsu, it seems the timeline is being fixed by the media despite Scotland Yard not having released an “official timeline.”

“Investigations in Britain have focused on the Pine Bar at London’s Millennium Hotel, where Litvinenko held a morning meeting over tea and gin with three fellow Russians on Nov. 1 — the day he fell ill.

Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper said police were testing a teacup and dishwasher at the hotel for signs of radiation.

Andrei Lugovoi, also an ex-Soviet agent, Kovtun and Vyacheslav Sokolenko, the head of a private Russian security firm, joined the meeting in the hotel’s intimate, blond oak-paneled bar.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16122363/page/2/

Regardless whether the Millenium Hotel meeting preceded Itsu or otherwise, according to the Times, Litvinenko *still* went straight to Berezovsky’s office after Itsu.

“The documents passed between Scaramella and Litvinenko at Itsu also appear to have been contaminated.

After the meal, the Russian hurried to Berezovsky’s nearby office where he appeared, according to a well-informed source, in an “agitated” state.
He showed the documents to Berezovsky, who skimmed through them and passed them to a colleague. Litvinenko then photocopied them. Tests later found traces of radiation on the photocopying machine.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2484295_5,00.html

Why wasn’t Berezovsky contaminated? Everyone else who was associated with Litvinenko that day became contaminated including 7 staff at the Millenium Hotel, yet Berezovsky is apparently clean despite supposedly “skimming through” the contaminated documents.

Luguvoy has also worked for Berezovsky.

“Both men served in the KGB but did not know each other at the time. They met in 1996, by which time Mr Lugovoi was working as head of security for ORT, a television channel owned by the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky. Mr Litvinenko was also employed by the billionaire.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=KWBSCAZDEKIZRQFIQMGSFGGAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2006/11/24/npoison224.xml

There’s been skulduggery in the past at ORT:

“Georgian tycoon, close associate of Boris Berezovskii. Cf. Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin, 262: “Often Berezovskii acted in Chechnya through Badri Patarkatsishvili, the Logovaz partner who, according to the Russian security services, had long served as the company’s primary intermediary with organized crime groups.” Klebnikov reports (161, cf. 331) that Moscow police heard in early 1995 from a gangster that “he had been approached by Berezovsky’s aide, Badri, with a contract for Listyev’s assassination.” (In February 1995 Listyev, the director of Russia’s most important TV network ORT, was shot dead in his apartment building.)”

http://www.satyacenter.com/news-alt_news-drugs-911

Did Luguvoy know too much? was he involved in the above assassination or does he have critical information about it?

Additionally, as evidenced in this 2005 article, Berezovsky has plenty of motive for discrediting Putin.

“Having an Israeli citizen at the highest levels of the Russian government is ideal, from Israel’s point of view. In Berezovsky they had such a man. The Jerusalem Post article mentioned above is revealing. It describes Berezovsky as “the Godfather of the Oligarchs’ and Kingmaker of Russia’s Politics’” and reports Berezovsky’s statement that “Putin’s Russia is dangerous for Israel.”

http://www.counterpunch.org/weir02172005.html

COMMENTS FROM OLD HC BLOG:

Fringe:

Was Litvinenko poisoned more than once? If the source of contamination was the document which Scaramella gave him, possibly not. Litvinenko would however have been poisoned each time he read/touched the document. Still don’t know whether Litvinenko was a smoker though.

“The battle to besmirch or lionise the memory of Mr Litvinenko came as Scotland Yard detectives were investigating whether the former KGB lieutenant-colonel was the victim of multiple attacks on 1 November ­ the day he fell ill. The Independent has learnt that toxicology tests have revealed two separate “spikes” of polonium-210 contamination, indicating that he was attacked twice.

Detectives believe that Mr Litvinenko could have been targeted at the Itsu sushi restaurant, where he met the Italian academic Mario Scaramella, and the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair, where he met two Russian business contacts ­ Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun. Mr Lugovoi and Mr Kovtun have also been contaminated with polonium-210 and are suffering from radiation sickness in a Moscow hospital.”

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2060070.ece

“Evidence that a PR counter-attack was under way came in lengthy tape recordings broadcast by Channel One of conversations between Mr Litvinenko and Boris Berezovsky, the exiled oligarch who was the former spy’s ally and financial sponsor. The recordings sought to suggest that Mr Litvinenko was inventing allegations that would help his patron in return for “a fee” . The programme, The Person and The Law, alleged that Mr Berezovsky had cut his monthly allowance to the former agent from £5,000 to £1,500 and he had money problems.”

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2060070.ece

“Mr Lugovoi, who had previously shied away from all publicity, went so far as to hold a televised press conference to issue his denial of any involvement in Mr Litvinenko’s murder and promptly took his family off to be tested for exposure to the radioactive isotope.

He said afterwards: “Traces were found even on my children and on my wife. To think that I would handle the stuff and put them at risk is simply ludicrous.”"

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2060004.ece

“For the next three years, Mr Lugovoi became a vital part of Mr Berezovsky’s empire, recruiting to his security operation former KGB colleagues such as Vyacheslav Sokolenko, who was also among those who travelled to London.

When Mr Berezovsky suddenly fell out of favour and fled to Britain in 2000, Mr Lugovoi was caught in the backlash. In 2002, he was jailed for 14 months on charges related to unproven fraud allegations against his former employer.

The perception that Mr Lugovoi has “done time” for Mr Berezovsky has been highlighted as one reason why his involvement in the murder of Mr Litvinenko, a close ally of the oligarch, is unlikely.

But the Yard is understood to be looking closely at the theory that Mr Lugovoi, whether with his knowledge or not, was used as a cover by Mr Litvinenko’s assassins.

The two men met 13 times in London this year to discuss various business ventures and swap intelligence, including at the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair on 1 November, the date when Mr Litvinenko fell ill.

The traces of polonium-210 found in Mr Lugovoi and at various locations such as Arsenal’s Emirates stadium, where Mr Lugovoi and his partner, Dmitry Kovtun, watched a match with CSKA Moscow on 1 November, could emanate from contact with Mr Litvinenko on that day.

But there is also evidence the polonium was in London for at least a week before 1 November and could have been brought into Britain by a member of Mr Lugovoi’s party on a previous trip. A British Airways flight and five rooms in a hotel, the Sheraton Park Lane, used by Mr Lugovoi and his party on 25 October have tested positive for polonium-210.

Mr Lugovoi has said: “Someone is trying to set me up.”"

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2060004.ece

” By 1994, Berezovsky had moved beyond dependence on mobster protection. He had forged a more potent alliance by paying for the publication of Boris Yeltsin’s memoirs, thus gaining entree to the inner circle around the grateful author/president. This court was populated with strange figures, such as the “hippie journalist” Valentin Yumashev, through whom Berezovsky obtained his entree; Yeltsin’s tennis coach, who ran a large criminal empire of his own from a Kremlin office; not to mention Alexander Korzhakov, for a while the powerful chief of Yeltsin’s Praetorian guard who later reported that Berezovsky had asked him to kill a business rival. Korzhakov performed great services to history by his assiduous bugging of everyone’s phones, leaking the tapes when it seemed useful, and by his forthcoming reminiscences once he had fallen from his master’s graces.

Once inside “the family,” Berezovsky masterfully parlayed political connections into cash. Key to his modus operandi was the realization (shared by many of his peers in the rising business oligarchy) that it was not necessary to control a business, simply its cash flow. In a remarkably candid 1996 interview with Klebnikov he termed this approach the “privatization of profit” A fascinating chapter lays out in detail, complete with the transcripts of bugged phone Calls, how this method was successfully applied to the looting of Aeroflot, the formerly profitable state airline. Thanks in part to the appointment of Yeltsin’s son-in-law as the company’s head, Berezovsky was able to siphon off huge chunks of Aeroflot’s considerable hard currency earnings through a series of shell companies in Switzerland.

From aviation, Berezovsky moved on to the really big money in Russia–oil. His entry into the oil business was facilitated by the most egregious of all the great ripoffs that have charactarized post-Soviet Russia, the “loans for shares” scheme by which our hero and his fellow oligarchs helped themselves to priceless chunks of the country’s resources, for pennies on the dollar, in return for financing Yeltsin’s re-election in 1996. Following that free, but hardly fair, election, the godfathers increased his political profile, taking various high-level government posts (without of course ceasing his business operations for a second). It was at this time that his interest in Chechen matters re-emerged, in the form of lavish ransom payments to kidnappers in Chechnya for the retrieval of their victims. Klebnikov points out that this flow of money to the gangs in the devastated territory effectively made it impossible for the elected Chechen leader to stabilize his country. The consequent anarchy, culminating in the invasion of Dagestan in the summer of 1999 by fundamentalist Islamist Chechens, provided the backdrop for the second Chechen war and the rise to power of Vladimir Putin. Klebnikov suspends judgment as to whether any of the leadership in Moscow had a hand in the terrorist bombings in the capital that provided the final pretext for the invasion of Chechnya last year, although George Soros has been less demure, heavily hinting in an article in the New York Review of Books that Berezovsky deliberately fomented the war in furtherance of his political intrigues.”

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_10_32/ai_66495297

http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents/secchech/secchech.htm
http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2002/0709.htm
http://iwpr.net/?p=crs&s=f&o=159404&apc_state=henicrs2002
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/63/251.html
http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/8359-13.cfm

“Last Sunday, The Observer carried an allegation by a Russian woman named Julia Svetlichnaya that Mr Litvinenko was a blackmailer. She went on television yesterday to repeat her claim that he had planned to blackmail an unnamed Russian oligarch.

Ms Svetlichnaya is believed to have been employed as communications manager for Russian Investors, a state-owned agency in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. Her name was removed from the company website on Sunday.

Mr Zakayev hit back at the newspaper allegation and said: “I can unequivocally state that Alexander Litvinenko has never, under any circumstances, tried to blackmail anyone. Everything that he knew, all the information that he had, he published in the two books that he wrote, in the press or on the internet.” ”

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2060057.ece

Very suss and a possible black mark on Putin.

A new story just come out with some Russian commentary.

“Experts have said that as little as three millicuries (a microscopic dose) of polonium-210 is enough to kill, and the cost of producing such a dose is about one million dollars. Mr Litvinenko’s autopsy is said to have revealed that the dose he ingested would have cost closer to $40 million to produce.

…

Before his fateful meeting at the Pine Bar, Mr Litvinenko also met with Italian security consultant Mario Scaramella for lunch at the Itsu sushi restaurant in Piccadilly. Mr Scaramella had arranged the meeting to warn Mr Litvinenko that his life was in danger, based on information he had received via email. Mr Scaramella later suffered a brief illness and was admitted to hospital, where he was found to have ingested “significant amounts” of polonium-210. His condition improved and he has been released. Meanwhile, no traces of the substance have been detected in either the Itsu restaurant’s staff or premises.

Vladimir Simonov, a political commentator for the Russian News and Information Agency Novosti has questioned the murder/assassination theory in the Litvinenko poisoning. He argues that $40 million is high for any professional hit, and that Mr Litvinenko posed no real threat to the Russian government. Moreover, polonium-210 leaves an easily detectable radioactive trail that leads back to operatives and the original source.

Mr Simonov believes Mr Litvinenko may have been smuggling polonium-210 because he “badly needed money”, “made a bit on the side by smuggling toxic isotopes”, and “wanted to earn from the transaction”. Mr Simonov also states that on the day of his poisoning, Mr Litvinenko visited Boris Berezovsky, an exiled Russian businessman and “key wheeler and dealer of the Yeltsin era”, and left traces of the radioactive isotope in Mr Berezovsky’s office.

Apart from accidental self-contamination, Mr Simonov further suggests that Mr Litvinenko may have been murdered by Mr Berezovsky because he “knew too much” about fraud charges pending in Russia and “posed a threat to the exiled oligarch”. He said a memorandum of cooperation between Russia’s Deputy Prosecutor General and Scotland Yard does not bode well for Mr Berezovsky, who may have figured that “a dead acquaintance is better than a living friend who talks too much”.

In an alternative scenario, Mr Simonov cites a recent television broadcast in Russia in which Mr Litvinenko was linked with “an underground London laboratory where a dirty nuclear bomb was being made for Chechen terrorists”. He also states that: (1) “One of Litvinenko´s close friends was Akhmed Zakayev, the former commander of Chechen fighters, whom Russian prosecutors want to see in Moscow in connection with cases of murder and torture in Chechnya”; and (2) “About two years ago, Berezovsky told the world that Chechen separatists had acquired a portable nuclear bomb and lacked only one minor detail. That “minor detail” could be polonium-210.””

http://www.bayoubuzz.com/articles.aspx?aid=9070

So what was the method of delivery of the polonium to Litvinenko?

It seems he did leave his food to visit the loo during the meal at Itsu.

“A waitress at the Itsu restaurant said Litvinenko had been served sushi in a sealed box, but that he did leave it to visit the toilet.

Scotland Yard pinpointed the Sushi bar after tracking the former KGB agent’s movements from his home in Muswell Hill, north London.

By using information from his mobile phone records, Oyster travel card and CCTV footage, detectives plotted his route through London to Piccadilly tube station.

Locations along the way have been tested for radiation contamination, but all proved negative.

Ela Malek, 22, a Polish waitress who said she served Litvinenko, told the Sun he arrived alone before being joined by a man - Scaramella. She was convinced Litvinenko’s meal could only have been spiked after it was presented to him.

“The food is prepared in the kitchen and is put in a box with a clear lid, which is sealed with a label.”

“I know everyone in the kitchen and there’s no way they would be involved in this. Once the box is sealed it is taken straight to the customer.”

“At one time I think Litvinenko went to the toilet, leaving his food on the table. I suppose anyone could have slipped something in then.”

This NZ story at least gets the timeline right, as opposed to the Times and BBC.

The 12 locations where traces of contamination have been discovered:

* Itsu sushi restaurant, Piccadilly - Believed to be where Litvinenko was poisoned with radioactive Polonium 210. Litvinenko met Mario Scaramella, an Italian academic, for a meal on November 1, the day he fell ill.

* Millennium Hotel, Grosvenor Square - After the sushi meal Litvinenko met two Russian contacts - Andrei Lugovoy, a former KGB bodyguard who runs a security company, and a man named Andrei Lugovo. (My comment: There were supposedly three men there - Lugovoi and two business associates, Dmitri Kovtun and Vyacheslav Sokolenko.)

* Litvinenko’s home, Muswell Hill, north London - Accommodation provided by Boris Berezovsky, an exiled Russian millionaire and critic of President Putin.

* A car in Muswell Hill, north London - Used by a neighbour of Litvinenko to take him to hospital.

* Barnet General Hospital - Several hours after his meetings on November 1, Litvinenko complained of feeling sick and was admitted to the hospital in north London.

* University College Hospital - On November 18 Litvinenko was transferred to the hospital in central London as his condition deteriorated.

* 25 Grosvenor St - Traces of Polonium 210 have been found at this address which houses the headquarters of international security company Erinys, visited by Litvinenko. (My comment: Erinys has associations with Haliburton)

* 58 Grosvenor St - Office buildings found to be contaminated, not clear what links with Litvinenko.

* 7 Down St - Traces of Polonium 210 found in the office of Berezovsky. (My comment: Lugovoy went there.)

* Sheraton Hotel, Park Lane - Low level radioactive contamination found at the five-star hotel. One of Litvinenko’s contacts is thought to have visited there. (My comment: Luguvoy has admitted this and says he’s being framed - Lugovoy may have been contaminated from Oct 25)

* Low levels of radioactive traces found on two grounded British Airways Boeing 767 aircraft at Heathrow.

Berezovsky has thrown the scent toward Lugovoy. Lugovoy says he’s being framed.

Was it an assassination or suicide? If an assassination, who had the most to gain from Litvinenko’s death?

Britain’s intelligence agencies last night claimed that the poisoning of the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko bore the hallmarks of a “state-sponsored” assassination.

A senior Whitehall official told The Times that confirmation that the former Russian spy, who had become a British citizen, had been poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 and other evidence so far not released pointed to the murder being carried out by foreign agents.

…

Cobra, the Cabinet’s emergency security committee, met yesterday after toxicologists confirmed that the 43-year-old former KGB colonel had a large dose of alpha radiation in his body. The committee chaired by John Reid, the Home Secretary, considered the risk to the public after the discovery of radioactive material in a Central London sushi bar and at the Millennium Hotel, near the US embassy in Grosvenor Square, where Mr Litvinenko held meetings on November 1. Radioactive traces were also found at his family home in Muswell Hill, North London.

The quantity of polonium-210 used could only have been obtained from a nuclear instillation, scientific experts said.

…

Security sources said that MI5 and MI6 were engaged in a “joint enterprise” with Scotland Yard in what was “an unprecedented death” in Britain. Anti-terror squad Continuedetectives refused to say where the deadly element was placed, or in what quantities they found it at the Itsu sushi bar in Piccadilly or the Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel, where the dissident met two Russians on November 1.

…

Mr Putin interrupted preparations for an EU/Russia summit in Helsinki to deny involvement. He criticised Mr Litvinenko’s entourage, the media, the British secret service and even the Italian Mafia. He claimed that the letter accusing him of being “barbaric and ruthless” was a forgery concocted by Mr Litvinenko’s wife and father: “If this note was produced before the death of Mr Litvinenko, I wonder why it was not published when he was alive?”

COMMENTS FROM THE OLD HC BLOG:

technologist:

“quantity of polonium-210 used could only have been obtained from a nuclear installation”

As far as I know, one can buy about 10% of lethal dose of Po-210 online for $30-70. I therefore doubt taht a nuclear reactor is necessary. More likely, KGB used a credit card.

Fringe:

Interesting thanks for that insight.

The plot thickens with a connection to Israeli ex Yukos CEO Nevlin. Nevlin is wanted by the Russian authorities.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/792436.html

“Mr Lugovoi said there was no Vladimir at the meeting, which he said lasted between 20 minutes and half an hour. He identified the second Russian as Dmitry Kovtun, a business associate whom he said he had introduced to Mr Litvinenko the previous month.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=KWBSCAZDEKIZRQFIQMGSFGGAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2006/11/24/npoison224.xml

“Dmitry Kovtun, Managing Partner, is responsible for business development, company strategy and marketing. Prior to joining VFBS Dmitry worked at Gazprom and the Alfa Group.”

http://www.vfbs.ru/team.htm

More about Nevzlin:

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

About Litvinenko’s career:

“By 1997 his department, ostensibly in charge of the fight against organised crime, was, in his words, “responsible for illegal punishments or so-called extra-legal executions of “unsuitable” businessmen, politicians and other public figures. In parallel, the department blackmailed the same targets for funds.”"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=X5SDP41MSK5KDQFIQMGSFGGAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2006/11/25/npoison225.xml

xcellent commentary and revelations here:

http://martinkelly.blogspot.com/2006/11/death-of-alexander-litvinenko.html

Berezovsky in the past has implicated himself as desiring the overthrow of the democratically elected Russian government by force.

And

“Mr Berezovsky, as we all know, is Machiavelli’s Prince in living form, a notorious manipulator who once pulled the strings at the Kremlin.”

http://martinkelly.blogspot.com/2006/11/litvinenko-poisoning-continued-it-pays.html

Scaramella is a shadowy character whose previous pronouncements have proved unreliable and odd.

As well

“The finger of blame has been pointed at the Russian government without a shred of evidence and when there are other parties who wish to see regime change in that country who might possess the means, motives and willing candidates to mount a risky smear campaign against Vladimir Putin.
A carefully orchestrated public relations campaign appears to have taken place, with the assistance of one the UK’s leading PR men; a man who appears to have had a long and close association with a person who wishes the democratically elected government of a friendly foreign power overthrown by force.”

“Mr Scaramella, who is involved in an Italian parliamentary inquiry into Russian secret service activity, said they met because he wanted to discuss an e-mail he had received.”

“By the same token Scaramella presumably had no access either to Litvinenko’s home or to the hotel where he met Lugovoi.
Of course neither might be ruled out as members of a conspiracy - but that’s a slightly different thing from being a poisoner.
Which leaves the question - who did have access to Litvinenko’s home? And to the sushi bar? And to the hotel? ”

Berezovsky owned the house in which Litvinenko lived.

“There are few trails which do not lead back to Mr. Berezovsky. The 60 year old- who is wanted in Russia on charges of fraud - finances a number of Russian factions who want Mr. Putin out of the Kremlin.
Nowhere is this more evident than in a quiet, residential street in North London.
On one side of the road is the £500,000 Litvinenko family home, where the former KGB man lives with his wife and 12 year old son.
Almost opposite is the £700,000 home of Akhmed Zakayev, who was one deputy prime minister of Chechnya and has been granted political asylum here.
Zakayev and Litvinenko would once have been deadly enemies but now, united in opposition to Mr. Putin, they are close friends.
The Land Registry shows that both their homes are owned by companies based in the British Virgin Islands - both of which are believed to be controlled by Mr. Berezovsky, who has much to gain by their occupants’ anti-Putin stance.
He gains, too, from the claims that Mr. Putin tried to kill Mr. Litvinenko. To gain maximum benefit, Mr. Berezovsky has hired Margaret Thatcher’s former chief spin doctor Lord Bell to handle the publicity.”

Another involved fellow:

http://martinkelly.blogspot.com/2006/11/litvinenko-poisoning-continued-it-pays.html

“And the ubiquitous Alex Goldfarb, so often described as Litvinenko’s ‘close friend’, is in fact the chairman of Berezovsky’s Civil Liberties Foundation (I would post a direct link to its website, but I can’t find one), who once indicated that he was ‘not sick and tired of being Berezovsky’s right hand’.”

Then there’s the Bush connection:

“Oddly one cannot find any reference to any comment from either Berezovsky, Goldfarb or Litvinenko in relation to Berezovsky’s having been declared persona non grata in Latvia after he visited the country - allegedly as a ‘business adviser’ to Ignite Learning, the educational software company run by Neil Bush; brother of George W. of that ilk.”

“On January 26 2006, Agence France Presse quoted Boris Berezovsky as follows -
“President Putin violates the constitution and any violent action onthe opposition’s part is justified today, and that includes takingpower by force, which is exactly what I am working at,” the oligarch, looking vibrant despite five years in self-imposed exile, told AFPat his Piccadilly office.
For the past 18 months, “we have been preparing to take power by force in Russia,” he said, claiming he would finance this with a fortune that had “tripled” over the last five years to billions of dollars.”
There is no reason why this man’s claim to be planning the overthrow of a friendly foreign power’s democratically elected government should not be taken seriously.
He might have much to gain by smearing Vladimir Putin for having ordered the attack on Alexander Litvinenko.
At the very least his asylum status should be reviewed.
And one must ask - given their closeness to Berezovsky, have Goldfarb, who appears to be an American citizen, Litvinenko, now a British citizen, and Zakayev, like Berezovsky a recipient of the United Kingdom’s asylum, all been aware of and perhaps involved in his parapolitical plans?”

“Until recently, news stories about the international backers for Neil Bush’s firm Ignite! have focused on Taiwanese businessmen, and Middle East billionaires, such as Defense Minister and Crown Prince of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum.[92] But it was a surprise to learn in September 2005 that “Exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky was in Riga along with Neil Bush, the brother of the U.S. president, to discuss an educational project with Latvian businessmen.”[93] In an interview with Interfax, “Berezovsky pointed out that he is one of the shareholders of Ignite! Inc., an educational software company. U.S. President George W. Bush’s brother Neil Bush is the company’s chairman and chief executive.”[94]”

“Much remains to be learned about Far West, Ltd., its personnel, and the American firm which co-founded it. Reportedly it was founded in 1998; and already had Surikov and Saidov as directors when they attended the meeting in Khashoggi’s villa in July 1999.

I suspect myself that the meeting did indeed have to do with destabilizing Russia, as Dunlop claimed. But I believe also that the group at the meeting was more concerned with facilitating drug-trafficking than with strengthening the Kremlin. I believe further that they also discussed the Russian presence in Kosovo, and the imminent increase in the flow of Afghan drugs through Kosovo.”

“Georgian tycoon, close associate of Boris Berezovskii. Cf. Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin, 262: “Often Berezovskii acted in Chechnya through Badri Patarkatsishvili, the Logovaz partner who, according to the Russian security services, had long served as the company’s primary intermediary with organized crime groups.” Klebnikov reports (161, cf. 331) that Moscow police heard in early 1995 from a gangster that “he had been approached by Berezovsky’s aide, Badri, with a contract for Listyev’s assassination.” (In February 1995 Listyev, the director of Russia’s most important TV network ORT, was shot dead in his apartment building.)”

http://www.satyacenter.com/news-alt_news-drugs-911

“Forum.msk.ru belongs to a group of former officers and agents of the Soviet military intelligence (GRU) whose leader is said to be Ret. Leutenant-Colonel Vladimir Ilyich Filin. The group’s business face is the “consulting” agency Far West, LLC (formerly Far West, Ltd). It controls a number of periodicals, including the “nationalist” weekly Zavtra (chief editor Alexander Prokhanov) and the Moscow Institute for Globalization Studies whose director is the prominent Russian leftist Boris Kagarlitsky. In the last three years this group, which also includes the former Luthunian defense minister Audrius Butkevicius, has been alleged in press to be an organized criminal society, involved in narcotrafficking, illegal arms trade, ties with Western and Saudi intelligence, and subversive activities against Russia. The main sources of these allegations were the former officer of Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR) Sergei Petrov (aka Serge Rodin) and the officer of Russian military counterintelligence Armen Sarkisian who in the spring of 2005 provided over fifty pages of information on the activities and the background of the group’s leaders to the investigative group burtsev.ru. Petrov was killed in South Africa in January 2004. Sarkisian was killed and his counterintelligence unit dissolved in July 2005. Since then several anonymous author(s) have occasionally used forum.msk.ru to post bits of information on the activities of Filin’s group. The internal evidence of this information suggests that it may come from some elements in Russian secret services or/and the group’s competitors.”

http://www.left.ru/burtsev/ops/filinnervous.phtml

Putin does not benefit. Boris Abramovich Berezovsky does and so does Israel, which has been itching to unleash American firepower on Iran, and has only been held back by Putin.

What evidence is there that Putin has done anything illegal? None. In fact Putin has stood up for the law - international law - when Britain and its master the US rode roughshod over it, the end result of which has been the utter destruction and disintegration of the most advanced Arab state, 650,000 of whose citizens have been murdered by the Western criminals who have the chutzpah to stand in judgment over Russia without a shred of evidence.

Now let’s talk about Boris Berezovsky and his top - and now mercifully dead - henchman Alex Litvinenko. Forbes magazine’s Moscow editor Paul Klebnikov, the world’s leading expert on Yeltsin-era Russian robber barons like Berezovsky, wrote a book called GODFATHER OF THE KREMLIN: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia. Klebnikov described how Berezovsky colluded with the Chechen mafia to take control of the capital and the Yeltsin government, sometimes fighting street battles with the Russian mafia alliance trying to drive the Chechens out.

He showed how Berezovsky helped start the second Chechen war by financing Basayev’s wahhabi terrorist army through a money-for-hostages deal inspired by Ollie North’s shenanigans with Iran and Hezbollah.

Litvinenko was Putin’s appointee to the FSB directorate charged with preventing the infiltration of mafiosi like Berezovsky into Russian intelligence. Litvinenko instead ensured that Berezovsky had full access to the FSB, and finally resigned when his cover was blown, immediately afterward becoming Berezovsky’s employee.

Berezovsky was at that time trying to acquire complete control of Russia’s Channel One TV station to complete his full-spectrum supremacy over Russian media. One man, ORT’s (Channel One) director and popular anchorman Vlad Listyev, stood against him. Berezovsky had him shot. Litvinenko then became “head of security” at ORT.

Paul Klebnikov, the Forbes aditor, was painstakingly gathering the facts about this latest crime of the mafia boss Berezovsky when he too was shot.

The Chechen warlord who ordered his murder - by Chechen hit men - was a former Chechen mafia leader-turned-terrorist who had worked for Berezovsky as a “security chief” and as a manager of one of his car dealerships.

Litvinenko was the guy that Berezovsky recruited from the FSB so that he wouldn’t have to call the Chechen slimebags and haggle over the hit contracts himself.”

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1957385,00.html

“Mikhail Chernoy’s brother Lev has been a prime target of the Swiss investigation into the Russian Mafiya since he attempted to take over the Russian aluminum industry—allegedly with the assistance of Marc Rich. Also, according to Robinson, Swiss investigators believe that Lev Chernoy has ties with the Mega-linked “Russian oligarch” Boris Berezovsky, who is accused of siphoning $200 million in hard currency out of Aeroflot accounts and into Switzerland. Both Chernoy and Berezovsky are suspected of involvement with the Bank of New York, which laundered billions of dollars in hard currency and state assets out of the Soviet Union during the early 1990s. According to Robinson, the person behind many of these murky deals was Likud campaign contributor Grigori Loutchansky. A recent international law enforcement probe of the Bank of New York operations has turned up evidence that Marc Rich was a silent partner of Loutchansky’s in the Nordex operations, which started out as a KGB money-laundering front in the late 1980s.”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1113.htm

http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=17653

“Interpol Unblocks Warrants
23rd May 2006
The Associated Press

PARIS — Interpol has backed Russian arrest warrants for self-exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky and several other criminal suspects wanted in Russia, Itar-Tass reported.

Deputy Interior Minister Andrei Novikov said Interpol’s move would provide Russia with “additional arguments for nations giving shelter to those who are being sought,” Itar-Tass reported late Thursday.

An official at Interpol’s Paris headquarters said in a telephone interview that the agency had just ended the legal review of its so-called “red notices” related to Russia — Interpol notifications to member countries that the country in question has issued an arrest warrant.

The legal review of the notices, conducted following a legal challenge, has concluded that there are no problems with them, said the Interpol official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

He said that the hold on the notices was therefore lifted. The official would not say on what basis the Russian warrants had been challenged.

Itar-Tass said the Interpol red notices referred to Berezovsky, his associate Yuly Dubov, Yukos shareholder Leonid Nevzlin, Yukos chief legal expert Mikhail Gololobov and Menatep bank department head Natalya Chernysheva.”

The media is painting Putin black - no mention that Nevzlin has been wanted by Interpol in today’s Times story.

“A dossier drawn up by Alexander Litvinenko on the Kremlin’s takeover of the world’s richest energy giant will be given to Scotland Yard today as police investigate the former KGB spy’s secret dealings with some of Russia’s richest men.

It emerged yesterday that Mr Litvinenko travelled to Israel just weeks before he died to hand over evidence to a Russian billionaire of how agents working for President Putin dealt with his enemies running the Yukos oil company.

He passed this information to Leonid Nevzlin, the former second-in-command of Yukos, who fled to Tel Aviv in fear for his life after the Kremlin seized and then sold off the $40 billion (£21 billion) company.

Mr Nevzlin told The Times that it was his “duty” to pass on the file. “Alexander had information on crimes committed with the Russian Government’s direct participation,” he said.

“He only recently gave me and my attorneys documents that shed light on the most significant aspects of the Yukos affair.”

Investigators have told The Times that Mr Litvinenko had apparently uncovered “startling” new material about the Yukos affair and what happened to those opposing the forced break-up of the company.

Several figures linked with Yukos are reported to have disappeared or died in mysterious circumstances while its head, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and others have been jailed.

Originally it was Mr Litvinenko’s vocal opposition to President Putin’s rule that led to accusations of Russia’s secret service involvement in his death, but police are investigating whether he made enemies through his links with a number of oligarchs.

Detectives involved in what they admit is one of the most complicated inquiries Scotland Yard has faced say that they are working through Mr Litvinenko’s formidable list of friends and foes, which includes some of the world’s wealthiest men.

One figure close to the investigation said: “At present we have a bewildering number of theories and names put to us, and we must establish some firm evidence.””

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,170-2473385,00.html

Does Litvinenko’s death give Berezovsky & Nevzlin an opportunity to exonerate themselves? How will the police authenticate the documents given to them by Nevzlin?

Planted, accidental, or a definite clue to the villain?

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,,1958709,00.html

“Detectives have found traces of polonium 210 at the London offices of the exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, it was revealed last night.

…

Sources confirmed that traces of polonium 210 had been found at the address. Mr Berezovsky, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, refused to comment yesterday on the revelations. “I don’t want to comment anything about it,” he told the Guardian. “I don’t know anything about police at my office.”"

First he wasn’t, and now he is.

More info on this colourful individual here:

http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2006/11/19/20439/209

Make sure to read the comments in the above link - lots of tasty stuff about Litvinenko’s past.

http://ukipuncovered.blogspot.com/

http://martinkelly.blogspot.com/2006/11/death-of-alexander-litvinenko.html

It’s looking more and more to me like a Russian mafia plot set up to discredit Putin.

Lots of motives and lots of characters with shadowy track records of fraud and murder.

http://www.eurotrib.com/comments/2006/11/19/20439/209/16?mode=alone;showrate=1#16

“Why Litvinenko is being called a “spy”? NPR today also used “spy”. He was working as investigator in Organized Crime Division of FSB (same as FBI investigator in the US context) where he got via the prison guard service.

At some point he seemed to realize that his career in FSB was over, as, among other things, he was under Internal Affairs investigation for beating and torture of detainees, warrantless searches and explosive trafficking allegations. That’s when he participated in political combination of Berezovsky, who at that time was one of the people effectively running the country. Berezovsky was concerned that some of the branches of the government were not enough under his control and manufactured a scandal that should have brought FSB in line.

Litvinenko and few of his fellow officers called the press conference alledging that his FSB management ordered a hit on Berezovsky. Since then courts recognized his allegations as false, but the end result was that after Berezovsky’s talk with Yeltsin Organized Crime Division was disbanded and FSB got a new head (Putin, then little known).

Litvinenko got his 1 million $ for this press conference (as alledged by the officers who participated in this conference with him), was arrested following Internal Affairs investigation results and the moment he was released left for UK, where he got political (???) asylum. Courts eventually recognized him as guilty but free on probation, so at the moment he is not even wanted in Russia.

I really doubt that he was a “friend” of Politkovskaya, and contrary to NPR reporting, Goldfarb is also not a “friend”, but a trobleshooter lawer for Berezovsky and also the source of this story and few of the stories below.

BTW, poison and conract hits, real or imagined, keeps poping up quite regulary around Berezovsky.

Allegation of imminent poisoning of Berezovsky by (you guessed it) FSB was one of reasons UK courts decided not to extradite Berezovsky to Russia in 2003; “Evidence” was provided by Litvinenko. I’m wondering how dependant Berezovsky’s de-facto immunity from prosecution on what Litvinenko done or knows.

In the same 2003 Berezovsky and Litvinenko “stopped” contract hit on Putin. Alledged would be killers were conviniently some of the same officers that participated with Litvinenko in that press conference back in Russia. They were arrested by UK law enforcement, refused (as I understand, regular in such cases in UK) political asylum and went back to Russia.

Politkovskaya was “poisoned” in 2004, too;

Yushenko was poisoned when Berezovsky became interested in his campaign. 2 years later and Yushenko being the president, the crime (?) still not solved.

Anyone remembers story of presidential run by Ivan Rybkin? The guy was scared to hell, and did not look like it was due to FSB or Putin.”

“Italian reports said that Mr Scaramella had made regular visits to the FSB in Moscow and was a close associate of Viktor Kolmogorov, deputy head of the FSB.

Mr Scaramella claims that his Moscow visits were connected to his work for the Mitrokhin Commission, and that far from working for the FSB he is as much a potential target as Mr Litvinenko.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2462162,00.html

“The shoot out in March 2004 had hilarious developments for Guzzanti’s ridiculous Mitrokhin commission. Scaramella, a self-styled “professor” later claimed that he was actually checking out an antenna which he alleged was to be used by the evil Ruskies to contaminate the Bay of Naples by setting off a dozen atomic weapons (apparently without a nuclear explosion) that had been dumped there by a Russian submarine. Supposedly this event would be blamed on the NATO. The Russians thought the accusations were a bad joke.

The four camorra members involved in the shoot out were actually involved in transporting weapons. They did not shoot at Scaramella to take him out but apparently shot at the two penitentiary cops who were there to meet Scaramella for reasons as yet unknown. One of the members of the camorra was wounded and quickly arrested. The arms were sequestered.

As far as the Mitrokhin Commission goes, what can I say. You can download the audiences on the parliament’s site and sit back for riotous laughing. Guzzanti is best known for having sired the two comics and political satirists, Sabina and Paolo. He does his best to compete with them but is basically a hallucinated psychotic with a strong tendency to go into fits of obscenity. It’s no wonder he’s a senator for Berlusconi’s personal political entity.

As for Scaramella, he is along the lines of Rocco Martino (Niger forgeries) and Igor Marini (Telekom Serbija), con artists that work around the secret services. He has a track record of putting together unsubstantiated claims of Russian nuclear weapons traffic. Thanks to Guzzanti his claims end up in the papers as the usual scare tactics.”

http://www.eurotrib.com/comments/2006/11/19/20439/209/2?mode=alone;showrate=1#2

“Security analyst Glenmore Trenear-Harvey, who met Mr Litvinenko several times, said the media focus on the Kremlin was “lazy” and bore the hallmarks of a John Le Carre novel.

“We have to put this in a historical context,” he said.

“Litvinenko’s last job within the FSB was heading up the anti-corruption unit and he discovered a lot of corruption there and made a lot of enemies within the KGB.”

When Yeltsin broke the KGB into different agencies such as the FSB and the SVR, the majority of its members stayed on but some went into the Duma and a third group went into legitimate business, he said.

But a “murky bunch” went into what was known as the Russian mafia.

Sophisticated poison

“My own belief, and this is speculation, is that it’s not inconceivable that Anna Politkovskaya in her search for murderers within the Russian bank system discovered the contract killings were these former KGB people.

“She was killed and if Litvinenko indeed was privy to her investigations then it could well be that they will emerge as his killers.”

Although the sophisticated nature of the poison suggested it could have come from the state, there was no motive, he said.

The case has caused huge interest in the UK
“There was no benefit to Putin or Russian intelligence services to have a highly publicised operation like this.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6180432.stm

“Since 1995, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has maintained a database on the illicit trafficking of nuclear and radioactive materials.

As of last year, the database contained 827 confirmed incidents. Of these, 224 incidents involved nuclear materials and 516 involved radioactive materials.

The IAEA said it had not received confirmation of polonium finding its way into this underground market, but there have been a number of unconfirmed reports.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6190144.stm

Maybe as you say the clumsy footprints left by the material were intentional. Yet if I were Miss Marple, I would be casting a very close eye over Berezovsky (Litvinenko’s landlord and long time associate with a very shady past and plenty of motive and contaminated) and Nevzlin (associate of Berezovsky, also with plenty of motive). I would also be asking how Scaramella (associate of Berezovsky) had become contaminated.

“British health authorities and the police have said polonium 210 cannot be transmitted through the skin and is not harmful unless it is swallowed, breathed in or passed through an open wound.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/world/europe/29spy.html?em&ex=1165035600&en=455087075151ebe4&ei=5087%0A

Curiouser and curiouser.

Scaramella’s lawyer said that since his client was poisoned, he could not be a suspect.

Yet now it seems he hasn’t had a toxic dose.

Additionally -

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2473384,00.html

“La Repubblica yesterday published interviews that it conducted last year with Mr Litvinenko and Evgeny Limarev, another former Russian intelligence officer, in which both men claimed that Mr Scaramella used his status within the commission to run a shadowy parallel intelligence operation with right-wing aims.”

Limarev was the source of the hit list email - the discussion of which was the purpose of the sushi bar lunch.

And there’s a Cheney connection to Scaramella:

“[La Repubblica Nov. 26-27]

A CHENEY CONNECTION EMERGES IN THE LITVINENKO CASE.

Yevgeni Limarev, a former FSB official whom Mario Scaramella indicated was his source for the story that Litvinenko was on an FSB hit list, gave an interview to Italy’s La Repubblica denying Scaramella’s version and adding a few elements on Scaramella’s networks.

Scaramella, Limarev says, has boasted connections to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney.

Scaramella works for the Washington-based Environmental Crime Prevention Program (ECPP), which, according to Limarev, “has institutional support in military intelligence.”

Limarev reports that Scaramella told him that

“they could rely on Dick Cheney’s team at the White House.”

“It is enough for you to know, Mario and [Italian parliament Mytrokhin committee head] Guzzanti told me, that behind the ECPP there are Italians and Americans, for security reasons. Once in a while, they talked, in my presence, about Dick Cheney, but I never saw Cheney papers.

“They explained to me that ECPP acts officially as an environmental protection agency, and a section of non-official activities whose organizational level does not include offices, base, protocols, etc., financed with tens of million dollars partially in Italy (through the Carabinieri environmental protection fund, they told me once) and partially through the Republic of San Marino-based holding, Finbroker.”

Through the ECPP, Scaramella tried to involve both Limarev and Litvinenko into fabricating dossiers against Italian anti-war politicians, which were channelled to the Parliament Mytrokhin investigating committee.

Limarev mentions Prime Minister Romano Prodi and current Foreign Minister Massimo D’Alema as top targets,
but the list includes also several leaders of the PdCI, Rifondazione, and Green parties.

Scaramella tried to get from both Litvinenko and Limarev dossiers proving that these politicians had been KGB agents.

Allegedly, when Litvinenko and Limarev realized that Scaramella and his boss Guzzanti were not interested in harming Putin, they withdrew their collaboration.”

Interestingly

“International ’security consultant’ Mario Scaramella, who joined Litvinenko for the now infamous clandestine meeting in a London sushi bar, headed an organisation which tracked dumped nuclear waste, including Soviet nuclear missiles left over from the Cold War.

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976850175

and even more background on Litvinenko’s recent activities

“Alexander Litvinenko may have been killed after a deal that went wrong with associates involved in the ruthless world of Russian business.

According to security sources, investigators are looking at the former spy’s dealings with Russian businessmen involved in the lucrative energy sector and the shadowy world of private security. “We are looking at a very long list of Mr Litvinenko’s friends and foes since he has been in London,” one source said.

The list includes exotic figures ranging from billionaire businessmen, former Kremlin spies and KGB agents to underworld bosses.

In the six years that he was in Britain, Litvinenko appeared to have acquired a formidable collection of friends and enemies. Although he described himself as a journalist, Litvinenko tried unsuccessfully to muscle in on several lucrative business deals with Russians.

On the day that he fell ill he was attempting to broker a gas and oil exploration deal involving a British conglomerate that he claimed to represent. He was envious of the money that many of his former colleagues were making.

He also had talks about providing trained personal protection guards recruited from Russia, and claimed to represent a number of British interests wanting bilateral deals with Russian investors.

Police will look at investigations that his friends say he claimed to be involved in at the time of his death, including smuggling rings for nuclear material and prostitutes.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2482861,00.html

[Corriere della Sera, wires Nov. 29]

ITALIAN PARLIAMENT COMMITTEE TO INVESTIGATE LITVINENKO-SCARAMELLA CONNECTION.

The Parliament Intelligence Oversight Committee (Copaco) has announced hearings with Interior Minister Giuliano

Amato and Scaramella’s boss, Sen. Paolo Guzzanti, for next week, to “make clarity on a story which has assumed

grotesque aspects,” said Copaco chairman Claudio Scajola.

The Committee wants to find out the truth about the “permanent working group” led by Mario Scaramella and

Guzzanti under the cover of the former Mytrokhin Parliament Investigating Committee.

As reported by former FSB official Yevgeni Limarev in a newspaper interview, Scaramella and Guzzanti boasted of

having ties to Dick Cheney.

In the meantime, Scaramella has again been accused of being the person who poisoned Litvinenko.

Yuri Felshtinsky, co-author of Litvinenko’s book “Blowing up Russia”, told the Sun:

“When I talked to Alexander around 12 November about who poisoned him … he was sure at this time it was

Mario. He was telling me that he was in a scheme.”

Scaramella was interrogated in London on Wednesday as a witness by Scotland Yard and found to be not

radioactive.

[Source: Ha’aretz, Nov.25,2006]

ALEXANDER LITVINENKO WAS IN ISRAEL SEVERAL MONTHS AGO WHERE HE MET EXILED RUSSIAN OLIGARCH LEONID NEVZLIN.

Nevzlin was a shareholder in the Yukos oil company and is wanted in Russia for tax evasion, budget

irregularities, and for connection to the murder of the mayor of a Siberian town.

Nevzlin claims Litvinenko gave him documents containing classified information possibly damaging to the

leadership in Russia.

He claims he turned the documents over to the British Metropolitan Police.

[Source: Russian and other media]

Nov. 30–GAIDAR’S ILLNESS FEEDS FRENZY OVER POISONINGS.

Former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, the radical liberal economist who presided over “shock therapy” in

the early 1990s, collapsed during a conference presentation in Ireland last Friday, Nov. 24.

Hospitalized in intensive care in Dublin, after vomiting blood, Gaidar was then flown to Moscow and is being

treated at an undisclosed hospital.

While the Irish hospital initially put out that his symptoms appeared to be related to diabetes, today Gaidar’s

press secretary said that doctors consider them the result of poisoning by an “unnatural” substance, i.e., not

food poisoning.

Media rushed to make connecto links to the Litvinenko case, insofar as ex-KGB man Lugovoy, who met Litvinenko

in early November, was Gaidar’s former security chief. But, no official diagnosis of Gaidar’s condition has

been announced.

Yesterday, he was well enough to take a phone call from President Vladimir Putin.

Anatoli Chubais, Gaidar’s political ally (though on good terms with Putin, as CEO of the national power

company), said yesterday that Gaidar had nearly died, according to RIA Novosti.

He suggested that the incident was part of an attack on the regime, saying that, “The deadly triangle –

Politkovskaya, Litvinenko, and Gaidar — would have been very desirable for some people, who are seeking an unconstitutional and forcible change of power in Russia.”

“Boris Abramovich Berezovsky is a Russian Jewish billionaire who was head of Russian National Security under Boris Yeltsin. When Putin came to power he opened investigations into Berezovsky’s business activities, including money laundering. Berezovsky responded by fleeing to the UK where he was granted political asylum.
Boris Abramovich Berezovsky

Berezovsky has been accused of money laundering by the French authorities.

Berezovsky either holds or has held, Israeli citizenship.

In its Dec. 30, 1996 issue, Forbes Magazine published an extensive article called “Godfather of the Kremlin?,” in which it charged Berezovsky with responsibility for the 1995 killing of popular television journalist Vladimir Listev. The magazine also accused Berezovsky of having numerous mafia connections and embezzling $50 million collected by his company from thousands of Russians who purchased AVVA shares-allegedly to start producing a new passenger car.

Boris Berezovsky has admitted that he is plotting the violent overthrow of the Russian government and was “warned” by Jack Straw, (who was subsequently sacked from his position as British Foreign Secretary) not to “abuse” his asylum status in Britain. Putin has demanded that Berezovsky be extradited to Russia. Blair had refused to do so.

Boris Berezovsky’s lawyer is Alexander Goldfarb. Goldfarb helped Berezovsky secure asylum in the UK. Goldfarb is a Russian dissident who now holds American citizenship.Goldfarb was also a close friend of Litvinenko. Litvine