Watson: “The Polonium trail starts on 16
October 2006, when Alexander Litvinenko met both prime suspects. This is
thought to be the day of a first murder attempt. The sushi bar where they had
lunch was contaminated.”
Watson avoids confronting the possibility that this contamination may have occurred
when Scaramella met Litvinenko on 01 November; for the benefit of his Newsnight
audience, Scaramella, like Berezovsky, is conveniently airbrushed out of the
picture. However, the scenario Watson points to here, that the sushi bar was
contaminated on 16 October, cannot be excluded – though it should be noted that on Kovtun's account, Litvinenko had complained of feeling ill before their various meetings on 16 October.[1]
So let’s
get down to brass tacks. Owen’s report estimates that Litvinenko’s dose of
Polonium-210 on or around this 16 October meeting, was around 100 times smaller
than the fatal 1st November dose; there may be a connection with what
Litvinenko considered to have been some kind of food poisoning. If though we
are in fact dealing here with a scenario consistent with Lugovoy and Kovtun’s
vehement protestations of their innocence, i.e., an extremely complex and
high-risk plot to falsely incriminate them, there
would have to have been a dry run.
“They spent the night at the
Best Western Hotel in Shaftesbury Avenue – very heavy contamination was found
in their rooms.
Lugovoy was back in London on
25 October. His room at the Sheraton, Park Lane, was heavily contaminated, as
was the laundry.
Owen’s
report makes clear that some of the heaviest contamination was discovered on
two towels at the Sheraton Hotel. At
Part 8.153, Owen rationalises this as follows:
“Had Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun
known more about the substance they were handling, I am confident that they
would have dealt with it more carefully. The fact that they did not know what
they were handling explains why it was splashed around in hotel bathrooms and
mopped up with hotel towels that were then left in the hotel.”
This nevertheless assumes a monumental degree of ineptitude on the part of,
supposedly, ruthless secret service executioners, probably carrying out orders from the Kremlin. Leaving that aside
however; if this was an intricately choreographed deception, Polonium-210,
while expensive, would possess a number of useful attributes. It only
kills if it is ingested – its radioactive ‘alpha particles’ cannot penetrate
skin (see 3.178 etc). Therefore, what is the best way to contaminate someone
without killing them? Why – douse the towels
in their hotel bedroom, of course. After the hotel has been vacated, it would
be preferable to retrieve and dispose of these towels. Assuming therefore that
the two Russians are not the Laurel and Hardy figures depicted by Owen in his
report, perhaps deliberate contamination of their bathroom towels, followed by
efforts (not entirely successful) to retrieve them afterwards, was part of the procedure followed by
whoever was behind this plot.
[1]
Testimony given short shrift in Sir Robert Owen’s report, consistent with his
generally contemptuous attitude (mentioned above) towards anything contributed by Russian nationals, and especially those whose guilt he seeks to establish.
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