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The Independent reported that Alexander Litvinenko may have committed suicide in an attempt to discredit Russian President Putin. Police are currently investigating this possibility due to large concentrations of the radioactive poison Polonium 210 in Mr. Litvinenko’s home.

See Ace and Allah for more on the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko after looking at what I found below. Ace:A dupe? Someone used by his Russian intelligence sources to suggest a sushi meal with the ex-spy, in order to give…

Ah, fugu him. And if you’re not careful, fugu you too.

I can’t believe nobody went for the fugu line..

Radioactive sushi and they are not looking at Godzilla? Foolish of them.

Oh, they know.

But Godzilla is busy enriching uranium at an undislosed Iranian facility controlled by Halliburton. They can’t afford to blow his cover.

The Italian contact he met after the ex-FSB “businessmen.” This might be the most interesting twist yet. Hard to say if this is just coincidence or something more sinister. The last person to meet Alexander Litvinenko before he succumbed to……

It takes a very technically sophisticated scientific establishment to produce Polonium, which is very rare, and extracting it from quite a lot of uranium ore yields only a tiny amount of this highly radioactive and very volatile metal which has a helf life of only 138 days, so this stuff was very recently produced.

Not someth9ing you can just stroll on down to Target and pick up, I’d say.

Thanks Mr E, I knew I read that somewhere.

bbz123 on November 25, 2006 at 3:12 PM

bbz123, I’m a lady not a gent – you’re most welcome.

I also believe there might be European forces in place to never solve this – much easier, even if they know what happened, to claim that they don’t. That might even include the U.S.’s take. They might then be able to ‘threaten’ Putin with something…I doubt that too.

It’s almost as if they don’t want to solve this.

They don’t.

If they did solve it, then they would then be required to do something about it.

What is Britain going to do, Invade Russia and arrest its leader for dcommissioning a murder?

Nope, much simpler to just sweep it under the rug.

Spraying it on his food would risk contaminating or even killing many people, including the assasin.

This manner of death is an intentional message to the ‘cognoscenti’:
“Putin, the ‘big bad’ of the KGB is BACK (if he ever left) and will kill you in any of thousands of rare and unpleasant ways if you cross him”.

The idea of suicide in this manner is laughable.

Given that the victim was who he was, I suppose that it is within the realm of possibility that he accidentally poisoned himself with something he was trying to sell or buy , but I REALLY doubt it. If you know enough about how to get it , you surely know enough to not sprinkle it on your food and clothing.

I imagine it is quite possible that analysis of the polonium itself could tell us precisely which nuclear refinery, lab or particle accelerator it came from; If I’m remembering correctly, most of that sort of material can be identified pretty precisely as to source. Do that, and you have what they call in murder investigations ‘a clue’.

The Russians had motive, the target was killed in one of those *STUPID* cartoon super-villain kind of ways — poisonous umbrellas? — he was left *ALIVE* long enough to sing, and the toxin used to trace him was *RADIOACTIVE*, probably with a half-life of a gazillion years.

Why didn’t Putin just rappel down the side of a building in Leicester Square in purple and gold lamme’ spandex supervillian suit, complete with cape, announcing “I’m gonna kill me some Litvinenko”…and kill him with a flame-thrower…after hanging him for *HOURS* over tank of hammerhead sharks…while monologuing…and then retire to the Planet Hollywood to twirl his mustache.

The only thing missing is the bad ’60′s pow-poppa-pow-pow semi-porn soundtrack.

I’m waiting for Austin Powers and Dr. Evil to weigh in on this.

First, why would they have used a mist instead of solid particles? The mist puts them at greater risk of accidentally ingesting the substance (by inhaling).

A liquid spray would have been ideal because it could be easily concealed, and quick to use. It could be disguised as a breath freshener or something. It would pose no threat to the user because it would be small and liquid/solid. You wouldn’t have a bunch of polonium vapor flying around in the air, it would all end up on and around the food you sprayed it on. By contrast, delivering solid particles would be a major pain. What would you do, handle highly lethal dust with your bare hands? what if it clumped up on the food and was visible? Polonium is so radioactive it gives off tremendous heat AND it GLOWS. You’d have to dilute it somehow, and putting it in liquid for a spray seems like the logical choice.

Also, the spray container would contain the alpha radiation, whereas handling a raw solid would not. I suppose you could use something like a salt shaker, but how discreet is that?

And assuming it was Russian agents who did it, when would they have applied this mist to his food?

When the sushi order was sitting on the sushi bar just before a waitress would pick it up to take it to the guy’s table, someone sitting closeby at the sushi bar or someone who happened to walk past could discreetly wave their hand over it and spray maybe.

The polonium wasnt necessarily delivered at the sushi place, but it is possible. It would be more likely that it ended up in his tea when he met the russians earlier, since it would have only taken 1 of them to secretly have been working for the KGB.