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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend.... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (24146)	12/5/2006 1:33:43 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

The Brits Finger The Kremlin By Captain Ed on International Politics Captain's Quarters The British intelligence services have concluded that the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko had to be an operation of the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB. This points the finger directly at Vladimir Putin in the midst of several suspicious deaths of Putin critics: <<< Intelligence services in Britain are convinced that the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko was authorised by the Russian Federal Security Service. Security sources have told The Times that the FSB orchestrated a “highly sophisticated plot” and was likely to have used some of its former agents to carry out the operation on the streets of London. “We know how the FSB operates abroad and, based on the circumstances behind the death of Mr Litvinenko, the FSB has to be the prime suspect,” a source said yesterday. The involvement of a former FSB officer made it easier to lure Mr Litvinenko to meetings at various locations and to distance its bosses in the Kremlin from being directly implicated in the plot. Intelligence officials say that only officials such as FSB agents would have been able to obtain sufficent amounts of polonium-210, the radioactive substance used to fatally poison Mr Litvinenko only weeks after he was given British citizenship. >>> Some have speculated that the obvious nature of a polonium poisoning pointed away from Putin. Such a blatant use of a closely controlled substance would immediately implicate the Russian government, the argument goes, and therefore would never have been used by real FSB agents. However, the British say that the assassination was meant to send a clear message to Putin's critics and anyone tempted to offer information to Western nations about the activities of the Putin regime. The Russians are not happy about the direction of the investigation. They're threatening the UK by suggesting that the probe has damaged diplomatic relations. The British ought to point out that conducting assassinations in their country damages diplomatic relations as well. captainsquartersblog.com timesonline.co.uk

To: Sully- who wrote (24146)	12/8/2006 4:53:46 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

If Putin did it By Charles Krauthammer Townhall.com Columnist Friday, December 8, 2006 WASHINGTON -- The poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, renegade Russian spy and fierce critic of Vladimir Putin's government, is everywhere being called a mystery. There is dark speculation about unnamed ``rogue elements'' either in the Russian secret services or among ultra-nationalists acting independently of the government. There are whispers about the indeterminacy of things in the shadowy netherworld of Russian exile politics, crime and espionage. Well, you can believe in indeterminacy. Or you can believe the testimony delivered on the only reliable lie detector ever invented -- the deathbed -- by the victim himself. Litvinenko directly accused Putin of killing him. Litvinenko knew more about his circumstances than anyone else. And on their deathbed, people don't lie. As Machiavelli said on his (some attribute this to Voltaire), after thrice refusing the entreaties of a priest to repent his sins and renounce Satan, ``At a time like this, Father, one tries not to make new enemies.'' In science, there is a principle called Occam's razor. When presented with competing theories for explaining a natural phenomenon, one adopts the least elaborate. Nature prefers simplicity. Scientists do not indulge in grassy-knoll theories. You don't need a convoluted device to explain Litvinenko's demise. Do you think Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist who was investigating the war in Chechnya, was shot dead in her elevator by rogue elements? What about Viktor Yushchenko, the presidential candidate in Ukraine and eventual winner, poisoned with dioxin during the campaign, leaving him alive but disfigured? Ultra-nationalist Russians? Opponents of Putin have been falling like flies. Some jailed, some exiled, some killed. True, Litvinenko's murder will never be traced directly to Putin, no matter how dogged the British police investigation. State-sponsored assassinations are almost never traceable to the source. Too many cutouts. Too many layers of protection between the don and the hitman. Moreover, Russia has a long and distinguished history of state-sponsored assassination of which the ice-pick murder of Trotsky was but the most notorious. Does anyone believe that Pope John Paul II, then shaking the foundations of the Soviet empire, was shot by a crazed Turk acting on behalf of only Bulgaria? If we were not mourning a brave man who has just died a horrible death, one would almost have to admire the Russians, not just for audacity, but for technique in Litvinenko's polonium-210 murder. Assassination by poisoning evokes the great classical era of raison d'etat rubouts by the Borgias and the Medicis. But the futurist twist of (to quote Peter D. Zimmerman in The Wall Street Journal) the first reported radiological assassination in history adds an element of the baroque of which a world-class thug outfit such as the KGB (now given new initials) should be proud. Some say that the Litvinenko murder was so obvious, so bold, so messy -- five airplanes contaminated, 30,000 people alerted, dozens of places in London radioactive -- that it could not have possibly been the KGB. But that's the beauty of it. Do it obvious, do it brazen, and count on those too-clever-by-half Westerners to find that exonerating. As the president of the Central Anarchist Council (in G.K. Chesterton's ``The Man Who Was Thursday'') advised: ``You want a safe disguise, do you? ... A dress in which no one would ever look for a bomb? Why, then, dress up as an anarchist, you fool!'' The other reason for making it obvious and brazen is to send a message. This is a warning to all the future Litvinenkos of what awaits them if they continue to go after the Russian government. They'll get you even in London where there is the rule of law. And they'll get you even if it makes negative headlines for a month. Some people say that the KGB would not have gone to such great lengths to get so small a fry as Litvinenko. Well, he might have been a small fry but his investigations were not. He was looking into the Kremlin roots of Politkovskaya's shooting. And Litvinenko claimed that the Russian government itself blew up apartment buildings in Moscow in 1999, killing hundreds of innocent civilians, in order to blame it on the Chechens and provoke the second Chechen war. Pretty damning stuff. But even Litvinenko's personal smallness serves the KGB's purposes precisely. If they go to such lengths and such messiness and such risk to kill someone as small as Litvinenko, then no critic of the Putin dictatorship is safe. It is the ultimate in deterrence. The prosecution rests. We await definitive confirmation in Putin's memoirs. Working title: ``If I Did It.'' Charles Krauthammer is a 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner, 1984 National Magazine Award winner, and a columnist for The Washington Post since 1985. townhall.com

To: Sully- who wrote (24146)	12/11/2006 4:49:09 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

REASSESSING RUSSIA NEW YORK POST Editorial December 11, 2006 Moscow says it's perfectly willing to cooperate in Scotland Yard's investigation of the poisoning death in London of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko - as long as its own agents run the probe. Moreover, says the Kremlin, no matter where the investigation leads, no Russian citizens will be extradited to Britain. And any Russian who is accused in Litvinenko's death by radiation poisoning - following his outspoken criticism of President (and former spymaster) Vladimir Putin - will stand trial only in Russia. Some cooperation that is. Not that it makes any difference. With the security services - the FSB, successor to the once-dreaded KGB - installed at all levels of Russia's government, is it reasonable to trust Russian investigators to follow leads of any sort? Especially if, as widely suspected, they all lead to Putin? Maybe if Arkady Renko, the anti-authoritarian Russian police detective hero of Martin Cruz Smith's novels, was handling the probe. Unfortunately, Renko - like Sherlock Holmes - never actually existed. And if he did, he'd probably turn up fatally radioactive, too. Meanwhile, the list of poisoning victims keeps growing. And, save for the British government - which doesn't take kindly to its citizens being poisoned by agents of a foreign power - the rest of the world has responded to all this intrigue with a curious, but decided, yawn. To be sure, despite Litvinenko's deathbed accusation, there is as yet no hard evidence linking Putin and the FSB to his death; the polonium-210 contamination of more than a dozen locations in Britain and three other individuals. And Putin himself has declared any suggestion he was involved "nonsense." But there has been an ominous backsliding in Putin's Russia away from its post-Soviet democratic gains. * More than a dozen journalists - all critical of the state - have recently been murdered. * Large businesses have been seized from their private owners and placed under state control. * Former KGB officials now control lucrative utility and railroad monopolies. * Freedom of expression - particularly the freedom to criticize Putin and his government - increasingly is being squelched. Now the attack against Putin's critics has moved beyond Russia's borders. Thus it can no longer be dismissed as a domestic, or internal, affair. If Putin and his thugs are not involved, it is their obligation to move forcefully to prove it by fully cooperating with British investigators. Failing that, other Western governments must start re-examining their relations with the Kremlin. Putin & Co. seem intent on dragging Russia back to the dark ages, and this has profound security and policy implications for the West. It's certainly not too soon to be acting accordingly. nypost.com

To: Sully- who wrote (24146)	12/18/2006 6:50:03 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

The $10 Million Man By Captain Ed on Europe Captain's Quarters In the speculation surrounding the death of Alexander Litvinenko, people keep coming back to the central fact: the assassination method. The poison used eliminates all but the most powerful suspects, and not just because of its relative rarity. As the Times of London points out, the amount of polonium used would cost its assassins millions of dollars: <<< British investigators believe that Alexander Litvinenko’s killers used more than $10 million of polonium-210 to poison him. Preliminary findings from the post mortem examination on the former KGB spy suggest that he was given more than ten times the lethal dose. Police do not know why the assassins used so much of the polonium-210, and are investigating whether the poison was part of a consignment to be sold on the black market. They believe that whoever orchestrated the plot knew of its effects, but are unsure whether the massive amount was used to send a message — it made it easier for British scientists to detect — or is evidence of a clumsy operation. A British security source said yesterday: “You can’t buy this much off the internet or steal it from a laboratory without raising an alarm so the only two plausible explanations for the source are that it was obtained from a nuclear reactor or very well connected black market smugglers.” >>> In an age where nations keep close track of nuclear material for fear of terrorist acquisition, the thought of that much polonium going unnoticed in a black-market transaction stretches credulity. The only way that much could find its way into Litvinenko's system would be from an entity that produces polonium in bulk. That leaves out all but the nuclear powers, as polonium comes from the nuclear cycle. This seems to undercut the notion that Litvinenko dosed himself, either accidentally or for some purpose known only to Litvinenko -- and as for the latter, the excruciating nature of his death argues against that anyway. Litvinenko would hardly have spent $10 million on polonium without someone noting the transaction, nor would the Russians have just given it to him, given his dissident status. So which nuclear power would have wanted Litvinenko dead? Only Russia. The overkill of so much polonium was meant to send a message, which is that they will spare no expense in eliminating opponents of the Putin regime. timesonline.co.uk timesonline.co.uk