By Judi McLeod
Friday, December 1, 2006
Are Scotland Yard-identified "rogue elements" within the Russian state terrorism's latest mutation, the faceless nuclear assassin?
Are anti-terrorist detectives in London, working against the clock in tracing the deadly polonium 210 mystery keeping public panic at bay by describing Alexander Litvenenko's killers as more like bunglers than James Bonds?
In the latest development, yellow police tape sealed off a hotel while radiation tests were conducted in yet another potential link in the poisoning of former Russian spy Alexander Litvenenko.
"Officers went to the Ashdown Park Hotel and Country Park in Wych Cross, near Forest Row, East Sussex, to "assist in minimizing the risk to the public," a spokesman for Sussex Police said." (www.uk.news.yahoo.com, Dec. 1, 2006).
The hotel is set in 186 acres of landscaped countryside in the heart of Ashdown Forest.
"Developments in the fast-moving tale, which has echoes of a spy thriller, include the revelations that: "The assassins were so bungling that they dropped the polonium on the floor of a London hotel room, a senior government source told the Daily Telegraph yesterday." (www.telegraph.co.uk, 2006/12/01).
"So new is this type of killing that the murderers may not have known how clearly their weapon of choice would show up, like a glowing trail of footprints around London, followed by Aldermaston scientists with machines called scintillation detectors."
The Guardian is reporting that British intelligence sources increasingly suspect that Litvenenko was the victim of a plot involving "rogue elements" within the Russian state. "While ruling out any official involvement by Vladimir Putin's government, investigators believe that only those with access to state nuclear laboratories could have mounted such a sophisticated plot," the paper notes.
Characters in this nightmare tale include keystone cop type bunglers from an unidentified senior government source and "rogue elements" capable of mounting sophisticated plots, according to British intelligence sources.
Even the substance in the plot is steeped in confusion. There's polonium 210 from a Russian nuclear plant already identified by scientists at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, and the small amounts of polonium 210 selling for $69 on an Internet website.
The tale becomes more nightmarish by the day. Today, Mario Scarmella, the Italian academic who met the poisoned Litvenenko on the day he fell ill, has tested positive for polonium 210. According to www.Briebart.com, Litvenenko's wife tested positive, a friend said.
Ex-Russian Premier Yegor Gaidar was poisoned in Ireland the day after Litvenenko was killed by radiation. An interesting twist to this part of the story is that when Gaidar was prime minister in the early 1990s, ex-KGB agent Andrei Lugovoy was his head of security. Lugovoy met Litvinenko in London on November 1, the day after he is believed to have been poisoned.
Scarmella and Litvinenko were meeting in the Piccadilly sushi bar about information Scarmella said he had about investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who had been gunned down in her Moscow apartment building in October.
The world naturally mourns the courageous Politkovskaya's death, but may have forgotten that she herself believed she had been poisoned on her way to report on the tragic Besian school siege.
There are theories of ties to the Russian FSB in the poisoning of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko in August of 2004 when he was a presidential candidate.
In the latest batch of poisonings, anti-terrorist officers at Scotland Yard believe the polonium was brought into London on a British Airways flight from Moscow on Oct. 25, a week before Litvenenko fell ill.
The British Home Secretary told the House of Commons that 12 sites had shown traces of radioactivity and four aircraft were being searched by scientists with sophisticated tracing equipment.
A fourth aircraft was being studied in addition to the three BA flights already believed to have carried the polonium 210 to London, with traces found on seats and overhead luggage space in both economy and business class.
Some 33,000 people flew in the affected planes on 221 flights between Oct. 25 and Nov. 29.
Whether "bunglers" or "rogue elements", a person or persons unknown breezed into the Itsu sushi bar in Piccadilly distributed deadly polonium 210 and departed the scene without anyone knowing the difference.
Only time will tell if Scotland Yard can put a face on the lethal nuclear assassin.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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