by Jon E. Lewis
That evening, in the London suburb of Muswell Hill, Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko (born 1962) began vomiting. Within days he was in hospital; on 23 November he was dead, his internal organs destroyed by a radioactive isotope called polonium-210.
Polonium-210 is difficult to obtain in the UK, and in the amount used to poison Litvinenko – he received more than 100 times the lethal dose – must have come from either a commercial transaction abroad or a foreign nuclear reactor. Either way, it was imported into the country. Reconstructing the events of 1 November, police found that Litvinenko lunched with an Italian investigator, Mario Scaramella, at a sushi restaurant near Piccadilly; the Itsu restaurant later tested positive for alpha radiation. So did Scaramella himself. A security consultant and academic – though the university to which he was said to be attached had never heard of him – Scaramella had ostensibly met with Litvinenko to show the latter evidence of mounting death threats against him [Litvinenko]. After the lunch Litvinenko said Scaramella seemed “agitated”.
Equipped with alpha detectors, British government scientists discovered a trail of polonium-210 around London, with 20 sites testing positive, some of which had been visited by Litvinenko after his lunch at the Itsu but others of which had not. The radioactive trail then led them to Heathrow, where two BA planes also showed the presence of polonium-210. To no one’s great surprise, the planes had flown to and from Moscow. A former lieutenant colonel in the Russian FSB (the Foreign Intelligence Service, the successor to the KGB), Litvinenko had enemies galore in his former homeland.
Broadly, there are six possible solutions to the Litvinenko mystery.
First, he was killed on the official orders of Vladimir Putin. Litvinenko had noisily claimed, notably in his 2004 book Blowing Up Russia, co-written with Yuri Felshtinsky, that Putin and the FSB had conspired to perpetrate the Chechen Bombings. More recently Litvinenko had alleged that Putin was behind the murder of the investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya and had links to organized crime in Russia. Putin would have had few regrets about Litvinenko being murdered, and the Russian parliament had passed legislation allowing the FSB to assassinate enemies of Russia abroad. The principal objection to this theory is that, if any tie between Putin and the assassination should ever be revealed, the diplomatic backlash would more than offset the gain of silencing a minor critic of his regime.
Second, while working for the FSB Litvinenko had targeted Russian mafiosi. Like elephants, they have long memories, but with much less sense of forgiveness. They would have enjoyed revenge, even if the dish was served very cold. Also, for all his assumed knight errantry, Litvinenko did work in murky waters as an envoy between Russian businesses, home and abroad, many of which had connections to organized crime. Yet it is unlikely that the Russian Mafia would have bothered with such an elaborate and potentially self-harming method of murder as radioactive poison.
Third, Litvinenko’s murder was staged by Putin’s enemies, knowing that suspicion would fall on the Russian president. Allies of Putin have put forward the name of Boris Berezovsky, the Russian tycoon living in London, as the perpetrator of the plot. However, Berezovsky was Litvinenko’s friend and employer, and would be unlikely to do anything to endanger his political refugee status.
Fourth, the same Putin allies in the Kremlin have also floated the notion that Litvinenko staged his own murder, again with the notion of getting the blame to fall on Putin. The Putinites maintain Litvinenko was sliding towards madness, as evidenced by his ludicrous public claim that Putin was a paedophile. Against this is the problem Litvinenko would have had as an individual in sourcing polonium-210, not to mention the radioactive traces detected in London sites he had not visited.
The fifth solution is that Litvinenko was murdered by the FSB, but without Putin’s direct say-so. Litvinenko was loathed within the FSB for betraying the service and for accusing it of corruption. Additionally, if the FSB was the perpetrator of the Chechen Bombings, it, like Putin, had every reason to silence Litvinenko. Assassinating him would also serve as a warning to others that defection would never be tolerated by the FSB.
The KGB, many of whose officers staffed the FSB in an archetypal case of old wine in a new bottle, had a track record of using radioactive poison to kill defected spies. In 1957 Nikolai Khokhlov, a KGB captain who went over to the West, addressed a conference of anti-Soviet activists in Germany where someone gave him an unsolicited cup of coffee. Although the coffee tasted normal, for some reason Khokhlov drank only half the cup. He later recorded:
I suddenly felt very tired. Things began to whirl about me in the hall, the electric bulbs were swaying, the rays of light were dancing doubled before my eyes. The world about me seemed to have retreated to nowhere, and my body was convulsed in a terrible struggle with some strange forces. Nobody suspected that a chemical agent of delayed action was working in my system like a time bomb. Friday night it broke loose in my system.
Khokhlov’s eyes oozed a sticky white liquid, his hair fell out, and the blood in his veins turned to plasma. Only six weeks of blood transfusions and steroid injections saved him from what was later identified as poisoning by radioactive thallium.
The Russian authorities have laughed off suggestions that the FSB was involved in Litvinenko’s murder, stating that “for us, Litvinenko was nothing” – a claim dealt a severe blow by an article in The Times in January 2007 which proved that Russian Spetnaz special forces used photographs of Litvinenko for target practice. Unlike the Mafia, the FSB as a government agency would have had little difficulty in obtaining polonium-210.
This leads to the sixth theory, that the FSB supplied the polonium-210 but subcontracted the actual hit to the Russian Mafia or, more likely, to a private Russian security agency. According to Scaramella, the documents he showed Litvinenko in the Itsu identified one such private outfit, Dignity & Honour, as the specific threat to Litvinenko’s life. Headed by Colonel Valentin Velichko, a former KGB officer, Dignity & Honour is seen by many in Western intelligence as an official extension of the FSB.
In December 2006 investigators from Scotland Yard travelled to Russia to interview a suspect in the Litvinenko case, one Andrei Lugovoi, an ex-KGB officer turned owner of a security and consulting business, who admitted being contaminated with polonium-210. Lugovoi was known to have visited many of the sites in London where traces of the radioactive poison had been detected, as well as travelling on the contaminated BA London-Moscow airliners. He insisted, “I’ve been framed.”
The veracity of Lugovoi’s protestations, like much in the Litvinenko case, is unlikely to be proved one way or the other. In 2007 the British authorities requested his extradition from Russia to answer charges. The Russian constitution, maybe handily for Lugovoi and the Kremlin, bars the extradition of citizens to face trial abroad.
Alexander Litvinenko was assassinated by the Russian FSB or its sub-contractors: ALERT LEVEL 9
Further Reading
Tony Halpin et al., “Russian Special Forces Used Image of Litvinenko for Target Practice”, The Times, 30 January 2007
Alexander Litvinenko, “Why I Believe Putin Wanted Me Dead”, Mail on Sunday, 25/11/06
Martin Sixsmith, The Litvinenko File: The True Story of a Death Foretold, 2007
DOCUMENT: ALEXANDER LITVINENKO – WHY I BELIEVE PUTIN WANTED ME DEAD, Mail on Sunday, 25 November 2006
In the summer of 1996, I returned to Moscow from Chechnya and was summoned to see my boss, General Vyacheslav Voloch, head of the Anti-Terrorist Directorate of the Federal Security Bureau (FSB).
“They are putting Khokholkov in charge of URPO,” he said. “That man is a monster. We should do everything to stop him.”
URPO was the acronym for a newly established top-secret unit at the FSB, and Evgeny Khokholkov was a colonel in the anti-terrorist directorate. More than that, he was General Voloch’s subordinate-turned-rival.
The two men had fallen foul of each other ealier that year when Colonel Khokholkov masterminded the as
sassination of a Chechnyan separatist leader. An air-to-ground missile was used to home in on a satellite phone signal – there wasn’t much left of him. It was a sophisticated and costly operation with a hefty budget that, as boss of the Anti-Terrorist Directorate, General Voloch was expected to sign off.
But when the dust had settled nearly a million dollars was missing and Voloch demanded a full account. He was never given one. His subordinate had powerful protectors within the bureau and the matter was papered over, much to General Vo loch’s embarrassment.
Now Colonel Khokholkov was being handed his own directorate to run – a special operations unit that would be allowed to break the law – and he was likely be promoted to full general.
In fact, the very idea of URPO came up as a result of the Chechen experience. In that undeclared war, secret services enjoyed generous operational freedom: they could detain, interrogate and kill without legal constraints. But while no one would think of “due process” before firing a missile in Chechnya, back in Moscow the legal niceties had to be observed.
So the agency bosses decided that it would be handy to have an autonomous, secret unit to carry out occasional “special tasks”, and thanks to his track record Colonel Khokholkov was the natural choice to lead it.
For General Voloch it was a devastating appointment – effectively placing his one-time subordinate in charge of a rival operational division with greater powers than his own. His response to the news of his rival’s success and his reason for summoning me to FSB headquarters that day was to give me a secret assignment. I was to dig out all the dirt I could find on this Colonel Khokholkov.
So began a chain of events that would show just how deep the stain of corruption ran – and which would lead me to Vladimir Putin.
It was not the first time that Colonel Khokholkov had been brought to my attention. Three years earlier, as a young operativnik, I had helped unmask a group of corrupt FSB officers, most of them of Uzbek origin.
My report became known as the Uzbek file and Colonel Khokholkov’s name surfaced in these investigations. But although several of his colleagues were transferred or fired, he remained untouched. I had found no direct evidence against him.
Shortly after I began digging again into his background, I was contacted by a source at the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The Organized Crime Unit of the Moscow City Police had some explosive material on Colonel Khokholkov, I was told.
He had been videotaped in the company of major crime figures as they gathered to carve up the Russian drugs market. This explained Khokholkov’s wealth: he owned a posh restaurant on Moscow’s Kutuzovsky Avenue and a country house worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. And one night, he lost some $120,000 gambling at Casino Leningrad.
It was no surprise to me that the police should have investigated an officer of the FSB. At the time, both the FSB and the police were so deeply involved in the city’s protection rackets they were virtually at war. Some of their rivaly was over who would benefit fromthe supply of drugs pouring from Afghanistan into Europe.
I did not find the videotape, but I did find enough evidence against Khokholkov to charge him – if my superiors would agree.
General Voloch was reluctant to take the decisions,so I took my file to the newly appointed FSB Director, Nikolai Kovaliov.
The meeting was brief and the Director defensive. He shrugged, “What can I do?” when told of the evidence against Khokholkov. I later learned that he had ordered an Internal Affairs file on Khokholkov to be closed the moment he was put in charge.
While the meeting at the Director’s office failed to affect Colonel Khokholkov’s career, it certainly change mine. Before long, in the same office, the Dirtector asked me to become his personal agent in his new department, the URPO.
I was speechless. Work for Colonel Khokholkov?
Reading my mind, the Dierector said: “Forget about Khokholkov. We checked him out. There is nothing there. But it would not harm if I had my own man keeping an eye on him. Agree? Call any time.”
It was an order, not an offer.
So, for many months, I found myself working for the man I had been tasked to expose. But it was only a matter of time before the comromising videotape of Colonel Khokholkov’s meeting to extort money from Moscow’s drug barons surfaced once more.
The incident started with a simple enough case.A local shopowner had seen visited by a man claiming to be a police officer and demanding protection money.
The demands went up and up from $5,000 a month to $9,000 then to $15,000 and more. Next the shopowner received a visit at his home – he was beaten up and threatened. He turned to the FSB.
We identified the vehicle used to visit the shopkeeper that night and it led us to a dingy den where we found a police officer, several men and two terrified girls, one under age. Both showed signs of abuse and had been raped.
We summoned the local police, who obtained a search warrant. The men were booked for rape and a local investigator began questioning them.
Then a remarkable thing happened. A lawyer for the policeman we had arrested showed up, but instead of dealing with his client’s situation he told us that for the past three years the policeman had been forcing him to provide services to companies he had under protection, without any pay. But he wanted to take the opportunity to come clean.
I took the lawyer to the Lubyanka FSB headquarters and taped his testimony. He told us about the massive involvement of the Moscow City Police Organized Crime Unit in criminal activity. His evidence implicated the head of the unit and high officials at the Ministry of Internal Affairs. I was discovering that corruption was everywhere in this city – and I was to find out that it went right to the very top.
When the case was completed and everything was ready for the prosecutor, I felt a certain uneasiness about bringing it to Colonel Khokholkov for signature. Investigating such police corruption was a dangerous business when I knew that the tapes linking my own boss with similar protection rackets were still sitting in the vaults of the Moscow City Police.
As it was, Colonel Khokholkov was conveniently unwell, so his deputy signed off the case. And it was only a matter of time before the organization we were investigating revealed their own evidence about our boss. When it happened, it was calmly and deliberately done. Two police officers showed up at the FSB reception and left the tape of Colonel Khokholkov extorting protection money from drug barons. There was a clear message – forget the investigation or we’ll bring down your boss.
I knew about it the next day when the irate Colonel barged into my office: “What have you been doing? Who authorized this? Why did you go to the prosecutors? Get the case back.”
The case was recalled and I never saw the material again. Most of the criminals are still walking around. The policeman we had arrested was allowed to slip out to Turkey, with much of his money. As for me, I never felt more betrayed. But I was knee-deep in the dirty system in which men like Putin would flourish.
Shortly afterwards, I myself became the centre of a scandal when my unit was ordered to plan the assassination of Boris Berezovsky, the entrepreneur-turned-politician who was close to President Yeltsin. No one told us of the reason, but there was no need to: Berezovsky was the most visible of oligarchs, a billionaire tycoon whose Liberal Russia political party stood against the corruption that flowed through the heart of the FSB and our own unit. He was a threat.
I and five other officers refused to carry out the order. Instead, we went directly to Berezovsky and warned him about the plot. We also complained to the Prosecutor-General. The FSB pressured us to withdraw our complaints and suspended the whole group of officers.
Behind the scenes, Berezovsky was pulling levers in the Kremlin and persuaded Boris Yeltsin to turn on our department. Within a few weeks, our secret directorate was disbanded. Colonel Khokholkov was transferred, FSB Director Kovaliov fired. In his place, Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin, a little-known Colonel working inside the Kremlin.
Putin’s appointment was a shock to everyone – and a disaster for me. I met him soon after his appointment. I was still technically suspended but one day Berezovsky called me. “Alexander, could you go to Putin and tell him everything that you have told me? And everything that you have not. He is new at the Service, you know, and would benefit from an insider’s view.”
Before our meeting, I spent all night drawing up a chart with names, places, links – everything.
I arrived with two colleagues, but Putin wanted to see me alone. It must be incredibly tough for him, I thought. We were of the same rank, and I imagined myself in his shoes – a mid-level operativnik suddenly put in charge of some hundred seasoned generals with all their vested interests, connections and dirty secrets.
I did not know how to salute him without causing embarrassment. Should I say “Comrade Colonel” as was required by the code? But he pre-empted me and got up from his desk and shook my hand. He seemed even shorter than on TV.
From that very first moment I felt that he was not sincere. He avoided eye contact and behaved as if he was not the Director, but an actor playing a role. He looked at my chart, appearing to study it, and asked a couple of random questions.
I knew he could not have grasped the details in the cursory glance he had given it. “Shall I leave the chart?” I asked.
“No, no, thank you. You keep it. It’s your work.”
I gave him another list I had compiled: “These officers are clean. I know for sure that you can rely on them in the war on corruption.” Number one on the list was a colleague called General Trofimov. “There are honest people in the system,” I said. “We could bring the situation under control.” He nodded, acting as though in full agreement. He kept my files on Colonel Khokholkov and his links to the Uzbek drug barons and protection rackets. He said we would keep in touch and took my home number.
