Former Spy Poisoned By Radiation In UK

An anonymous reader writes "BBC new is reporting the death of the ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko with a major dose of radioactive polonium-210. But nobody knows how it got there. Suspicions have fallen upon the Russian security services (who deny involvement). The task of the pathologists now is to unpick what really killed him and how it was administered. Quite what techniques they will use to solve this puzzle is unclear." From the article: "A post-mortem examination on Mr Litvinenko has not been held yet. The delay is believed to be over concerns about the health implications for those present at the examination. But Roger Cox from the HPA said a large quantity of alpha radiation emitted from polonium-210 had been detected in Mr Litvinenko's urine."

Comments

Reading the artcle......

[8127972]

......found this curious comment:

"Mr Putin himself has said Mr Litvinenko's death was a tragedy, but he saw no "definitive proof" it was a "violent death"."

Clearly the term "violent death" has a different definition in Russian than it does in English.

Re:Reading the artcle......

[Anonymous Coward]

Or more likely, he's just not being honest.

Mr Putin himself has said Mr Litvinenko's death was a tragedy

Mr. Litvinenko was apparantly more than your average former KGB agent - he's accused Putin of pedophilia, among other things. Even if Putin weren't behind this poisoning (which he almost certainly is), he probably wouldn't consider Mr. Litvinenko's death a tragedy at all.

Isn't it strange how Putin's most vocal critics inside Russia are just dropping like flies...

Re:Reading the artcle......

[Anonymous Coward]

This was said before the postmortem and before Po poisoning was officially confirmed.

Before that the UK medics went through a list of at least 3-4 different hypothesis each of which proved to be loads of bull. Tallium, radioactive Tallium, strange objects in his intestines, etc you name it.

So at the point where Putin said it nothing was known yet. I have not heard what he said in Russian so it is also quite likely that some nuances have been lost in translation (like a "yet" at the end of the sentence).

As far as you noticing that his idea of violent death differs from our idea of violent death that is a definite. He would not have had his past job if this was not so.

It is quite interesting that AFAIK this is the first high profile poisoning with radioactive substance. Considering the guaranteed lethality and obvious ineptitude of the medics in diagnosing it I am surprised that this does not happen more often. Actually, probably it does, but using much smaller doses which end up in effects indistinguishable from cancer. If the dose was a small fraction of what he got he would have died quietly from leukemia 6 months from now. Whoever killed him wanted to make a point and also wanted the fingers to be pointed at the usual suspects.

Which makes me on a second thought post anonymously :-)

Re:Reading the artcle......

[Anonymous Coward]

We have always been allied with Russia. We have always been at war with Islamic fundamentalists.

Re:Reading the artcle......

[goddidit]

Minitrue mark the post doubleplusfunny.

Re:Reading the artcle......

[Master of Transhuman]

According to Justin Raimondo's analysis of the case, Litivenko is a raving lunatic whose accusations in general have been ridiculously unsubstantiated.

Therefore, the likelihood is that he was killed precisely to frame Putin for his murder, since he had no other value to anybody, apparently.

The assumption that Putin is behind it just because the individual was ex-KGB is a clear case of jumping to conclusions based on no evidence.

History repeating, sort of

[Phanatic1a]

Shades of Georgi Markov, a Soviet expatriate/dissident who was also assassinated in London. He was stabbed in the leg with a special spring-loaded umbrella that subcutaneously injected a metal pellet contaminated with ricin. They didn't even find the pellet until he was already dead, and it took some work to find out just what had killed him.

I wonder how they got the polonium into him. For a death this rapid, he'd pretty much have had to ingest it.

Re:History repeating, sort of

[Phanatic1a]

It is for a death from radiological causes. To kill someone in mere days requires obscenely high doses of radiation, we're talking prompt-criticality accidents. Slotin took 2100 rems in an instant, enough to noticeably heat the air in the room, and he still lasted for 9 days.

Re:History repeating, sort of

[ahillen]

It is for a death from radiological causes. To kill someone in mere days requires obscenely high doses of radiation,

But as far as I understand it, it is not claimed that he died from the radiation, but from the fact that Polonium is also very toxic.

Re:History repeating, sort of

[deglr6328]

Polonium is horribly toxic BECAUSE of its unbelieveably high radioactivity rate. It is a radiotoxicity not a chemical toxicity. I'm sure Po also posesses chemical (heavy metal) toxicity properties as well but you would be stone dead from the radiotoxicity alone of a tiny dose LONG before any heavy metal toxicity was an issue. I don't think people are appreciating just how radiotoxic it actually is, for instance a mere tenth of a milligram of Po-210 would give you a dose hundreds of times greater than Louis Slotin had.

Re:History repeating, sort of

[kravlor]

The problem is that Po-210 is a potent alpha emitter. Since these guys are kicking off 5 MeV alphas, you will get a huge dose localized to a few cm from the parent nucleus. In the digestive system, you'll quickly tear things apart, killing the stem cells of the intestinal tract. It gets worse if absorbed into the bloodstream and the bone marrow.

While I'm not a toxicologist, I am a nuclear physicist; one of the foremost rules of radiation safety is to avoid ingesting alpha sources (or any other source, for God's sake) for precisely this reason. FWIW, alpha sources are one of the safer things to work with, for exactly the same reason that they're so bad for you if ingested: a few cm of shielding is sufficient to stop the penetrating alpha particles.

Re:History repeating, sort of

[cmd]

New York Times: Mr. Litvinenko, 43, a prominent opponent of the Kremlin, was hospitalized earlier this month. He said that he fell ill after having lunch at a sushi restaurant with a man who said he had information about the killing of Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who had made her name as a critic of the government's policies in Chechnya.

I read another article in which Litvinenko suspected the poison was in the tea served to him.

Also, Litvinenko and Putin have a long history:
New York Times: (from the archives, paid registration required)

November 21, 1998
Report of Plot to Kill Tycoon Leads Yeltsin to Call Inquiry
By MICHAEL WINES

President Boris N. Yeltsin ordered an inquiry today into spectacular charges leveled earlier this week -- so far without evidence -- that Russia's equivalent of the F.B.I. plotted to kill one of the country's most influential tycoons.

The tycoon is Boris A. Berezovsky, an oil magnate and director of Russia's biggest television network, who was a leading supporter of Mr. Yeltsin during the last presidential campaign in 1996.

Mr. Berezovsky, who is still alive, released a letter last week asserting that the Federal Security Service, a spinoff of the old Soviet K.G.B. that is responsible for domestic law enforcement, plotted last winter to murder him.

On Tuesday the source of Mr. Berezovsky's information, a Security Service colonel named Aleksandr Litvinenko, called a news conference to elaborate on the accusation and warn that a rogue element was running wild within the agency.

...

The list of very prominent people who once opposed Putin and suffered extremely nasty reversals of fortune is growing conspicuously long:

• Life sentence to a Siberian gulag [Mikhail Khodorkovsky]
• Slow, painful, and irreversible death from radiation poisoning [Litvinenko]
• Execution (hitman style) on one's doorstep [Anna Politkovskaya]
• Execution leaving a soccer game [Andrei Kozlov]
• Execution at one's dacha [Enver Ziganshin]
• Dioxin poisoning (nearly fatal) [Viktor A. Yushchenko]

Ironically, an interview of Litvinenko from December 15 2004 included this prophetic quote:

"The view inside our agency was that poison is just a weapon, like a pistol," said Alexander V. Litvinenko, who served in the K.G.B. and its Russian successor, the Federal Security Service, from 1988 to 1999 and now lives in London. "It's not seen that way in the West, but it was just viewed as an ordinary tool."

examination

[bcrowell]

The delay is believed to be over concerns about the health implications for those present at the examination.
If they're concerned, they're too ignorant about science to be qualified to do the exam. The rule of thumb is that alpas are stopped by air. Even if the guy's body fluids got on you, the alphas wouldn't get through your epidermis -- and I assume people doing autopsies are going to be wearing latex gloves, a mask, etc., since they don't want to get exposed to AIDS, etc.

Former USSR = nutbag central?

[0jjjjjjjjjj0]

It will be interesting to see how this investigation concludes. Some dismiss a lot of what comes out at these press conferences as simple 'nutbag syndrome', however well-founded their claims may be. See, from the article ...

As the conference drew to a close, a heckler interrupted saying he was from Ukraine and had also been the victim of poisoning.

He's been labelled a heckler, when he may well have a genuine issue at hand. The same thing, perhaps a little more dramatic, happened at a press conference regarding the demise of the Kursk.

On 18 August, Nadezhda Tylik mother of Kursk submariner Lt. Sergei Tylik, produced an intense emotional outburst in the middle of an in-progress news briefing about Kursk's fate. After attempts to quiet her failed, a nurse injected her with a sedative and she was removed from the room, incapacitated. The event, caught on film, caused further criticism of the government's response to both the disaster, and how the government handled public criticism of said response.

When Russia (yes, even modern-day Russia) gets its hands near an investigation, the result is usually indeterminate or irrelevant, never indisputable.

Strange way of killing someone

[Jugalator]

I don't understand why of all things, they were using Polonium-210 to kill him. Since that's not exactly something you buy over the counter, wouldn't there be "better" ways of killing him by poisoning without drawing as much attention? Only about 100 grams of Polonium, any isotope, is estimated to be produced yearly and it's extremely rare in nature. It's hard to imagine a better way of drawing attention to the government.

Re:Strange way of killing someone

[Goaway]

Not over the counter, but how about on the internet? Only $69!

Polonium

[no-body]

Polonium-210 is very dangerous to handle in even milligram or microgram amounts, and special equipment and strict control is necessary. Damage arises from the complete absorption of the energy of the alpha particle into tissue.

The maximum permissible body burden for ingested polonium is only 0.03 microcuries, which represents a particle weighing only 6.8 x 10-12 g. Weight for weight it is about 2.5 x 1011 times as toxic as hydrocyanic acid. The maximum allowable concentration for soluble polonium compounds in air is about 2 x 10-11 microcuries/cm3.

From: there

Soluble in acidic environment.
Apparently he was repeatedly invited by by an unkown russian person to drink tea....
A little sourness in tea with a few milligram of metal dissolved.

What an awful headline

[Tim C]

He wasn't poisoned by radiation in the UK, he was poisoned in the UK by radiation.

The former implies that it was the radiation present in the UK that poisoned him; the latter makes it clear that he happened to be in the UK when he was poisoned by radiation.

Re:Apparently

[b0s0z0ku]

Dang... Russia is getting sloppy.

Wrong answer. This may be intended as a very public warning to other possible defectors and traitors not to follow in Litvinenko's footsteps. The same deal as the (apocryphal?) story Oleg Penkovsky (GRU double agent in the 60ies) being burnt alive and a film of the execution being shown to all new KGB recruits to discourage disloyalty.

-b.

Re:Worried, me?

[Catbeller]

I've come to the conclusion that the American illuminati hated the Russians because they were too alike, too close in methodology and goals, to the Americans. Now that all the ideology is stripped away, there really isn't much difference between the Bushes+the CIA and Putin+the KGB. Except that the Russians are so much better at the nasty stuff, as they aren't hampered by thinking of themselves as morally superior.

The ex-KGB boys used a poison that is produced at the rate of 10 grams per year worldwide. They didn't do it to be clever. They did it to send a message that they did it, there's nothing that can stop them, and when you fuck with Putin and the New Russian Order and you get a creative agonizing death.

Putin was behind it. So again with the reporter a few months ago. Protest, die.

Now that we know that our "ally" is putting the finishing trim on his capitalist dictatorship, how will our millionaire media airheads and our millionaire government respond? Do I hear crickets?

Putin Pedophile Link

[ElephanTS]

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251 .shtml?id=1760111n

There's a video there of Putin kissing the 5 year old boy's stomach. This started a lot of speculation and I have read that the KGB gathered video from a hotel room proving that he was from years ago. When Putin headed the KGB all these videos obviously disappeared. There is stuff about it on teh web if anyone needs to do some research. I suspect it's true.

Re:Putin Pedophile Link

[Anonymous Coward]

A link to the hardly unbiased Chechen Press, and a harmless video on YouTube of (shock horror) "a politician kissing a small child in public" are not quite what I would consider hard evidence.

Re:I am surprised

[Xest]

They did try a Geiger counter but it wouldn't detect alpha radiation. As alpha radiation poisoning is so uncommon and unheard of it wasn't an obvious option, also as alpha radiation wouldn't even escape out of his body through his organs and skin the only way to detect it was if traces of it left his body through other methods - i.e. his urine which is where they eventually found it.

Re:Same old Russia

[tobe]

Barbarians compared to the US of course who indulge in no such activites..

Like rigging elections, assasinating democractically elected heads of state they don't agree with, invading countries for suggesting they might prefer to sell oil in Euros thus causing a huge run on the already weak dollar, selling arms and torture equipment to countries with appalling human rights records, wire-tapping their own citizens on a scale undreamed of by the most autocratic of regimes, collaborating with despots for profit, operating an institutionally rascist judicial systm, atempting to deny women rights fundamentally accepted as basic by the entire western world, accepting graft as a proxy for politic.. yadda yadda yadda..

I'm not saying the rest of the western world's any better.. the brits, the french, the israelis.. they're all doing their bits to help out f ck it all up.. but really.. it's the sheer bare-faced hypocrisy of the US that disappoints the most.. still.. we seem to be growing up slowly..

Answers to the question...

[TheOriginalRevdoc]

I've seen a few posts here asking "why use such an obvious method of killing someone?"

The answer is: it's very, very far from obvious. The mere fact that it's taken so long to work out what the poison was indicates how subtle Polonium poisoning is.

1. Based on the Wikipedia entry for Polonium, the dosage required is incredibly small. We're not talking milligrams, here; we're talking micrograms, or less. Just detecting such a tiny quantity distributed throughout the victim's body is going to be incredibly hard.

2. The poison won't produce discernable radiation outside the victim's body, either, because alpha radiation is so readily absorbed by tissue. (That's also what makes it such a good poison, of course.)

3. The thing with poisons is that you have to actually look for them. Polonium is such an unlikely poison - given its rarity and inherent handling hazards - that even considering it is far-fetched. The fact that the victim's urine contained helium was the only clue the pathologists had, and I think they deserve a huge amount of credit for getting from that result to polonium as the cause.

Re:Polonium-210? What legitimate uses does it have

[rkww]

Even a THOUSAND TIMES the lethal dose of .5 mCi would be a mere tenth of a milligram.

At 9196 kg/m^3 ~= 9 mg / mm^3, that's about a hundredth of a cubic millimeter, assuming it was given in elemental form.

The sheer quantity of alpha radiation it produces also explains why it's used in satellites - "The power density of polonium is unique and made it attractive as a power source. One pound of polonium-210 occupies a volume of approximately 3 cubic inches and produces heat at the rate of 3.6 x 10^8 British Thermal Units (BTUs) per minute or about 64 kilowatts of electric power."

Re:Worried, me?

[DrVomact]

Putin was behind it.

You know this for a fact? How?

Certainly, it's possible...but there's no proof. Moreover, I fail to see how Litvinenko's very public death would benefit Putin. The old KGB apparat splintered into many pieces after the demise of the USSR. Some of them work for the present Russian government, some are self-employed, and some work for...other organizations. It's possible that Litvinenko's poking around was getting close to someone in the "Russian Mafia" who had the means to pull this off, or the motive may be something as banal as a personal grudge held by an ex-subordinate. Litvinenko certainly flouted one of the basic rules for enjoying a long life: avoid making enemies whenever possible. He not only had many enemies—his enemies were dangerous.

It does seem likely to me that Litvinenko's death can be attributed to the ex-KGB, if for no other reason than that they are one of the few organizations that would have had quantities of exotic poisons stashed away. The problem is which faction or members of the ex-KGB might be responsible. Russian mafia? Rogue clique within the present Russian secret police org? An old boy (or a whole pissed-off department of the defunct KGB) pulling in some favors and activating connections to finally get even? Insufficient facts, I'm afraid.

You might want to pick up Litvinenko's book: Blowing up Russia : Terror from Within.

Yes, it can be a translation problem

[saikou]

I believe in this case Mr Putin used term "nasilstvennaya smert'" which basically means someone else killed that person. While "nasilstvennaya" has the same root as "nasilie" = violence, the meaning is "forced upon someone" versus "estestvennaya" (which would mean "natural causes" i.e. old age or an illness). Means of inflicting premature death could be violet (hacked with a saw) or not-so-violent (sleeping pills poisoning) but in both cases it would be an "unnatural cause of death"/"nasilstvennaya smert'".
Of course it's way more fun to use "violent" in articles, as it paints Russian President as a fierce person who doesn't think that deaths not involving excessive violence are worthy of an investigation.

Frankly I personally don't know what to think about this whole story. It's some sort of James Bond in real life. If it was really an evil plot, why did they use highly exotic means? Why not just shoot him during "robbery" or "accidentally" run him over with a car? To give him enough time to make an accusation? Did perpetrators they take into account his hate toward Russian government and simply used him for their own purposes? Or they knew we'd think that and reality is even more twisted? I don't think he'd do it on purpose -- sacrificing one's life is a very high price for a political statement to make.
So my only option is to wait for the final results of the autopsy and then hope that source of the radioactive material will be found quickly, to prevent any other radiation poisonings.