by Marcus Papadopoulos
“Agreeing to disagree” summed up the outcome of this week’s meeting in Moscow between Foreign Secretary David Miliband and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.
In what was the first visit to Russia by a British Foreign Secretary in five years, both London and Moscow were under no illusions that Anglo-Russian relations could be significantly improved during Mr Miliband’s two-day visit.
Before the visit, Mr Miliband said that he did not expect “the key problems in the UK’s bilateral relationship with Russia” to be resolved during his trip to the Russian capital.
Overshadowing the meeting between Britain and Russia’s most senior diplomats was the ongoing saga concerning the murder in London three years ago of the former KGB officer and defector Alexander Litvinenko.
British police believe the killing was carried out by Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB officer, who is alleged to have been acting on behalf of the Russian security service.
The Kremlin has continued to refuse British requests to extradite Mr Lugovoi. It should be noted, however, that Russia does not have an extradition treaty with Britain or any other country.
During what was a frosty press conference following their discussions, both foreign ministers were candid in voicing their opposing views on the Litvinenko affair. Referring to London’s extradition request, Mr Lavrov said: “Our position has not changed. I believe our British colleagues understand their demands that we amend our constitution are absolutely unrealistic.”
But Mr Miliband reiterated the British Government’s call for Mr Lugovoi to be extradited to Britain, adding that the murder of Mr Litvinenko had been “horrific”.
Responding to Mr Miliband’s call for his extradition, Mr Lugovoi, now a member of the Russian parliament, said that if the case into the murder of Mr Litvinenko was heard in a Russian court, which the Russian government has said it is prepared to see happen, Britain would be “afraid that the true criminals will be revealed” – a veiled reference to Russian accusations that the exiled Russian oligarch in London, Boris Berezovsky, was the man behind the killing.
The meeting between Mr Miliband and Mr Lavrov failed to add much warmth to relations between London and Moscow.
Indeed, their declaration of support for the Non-Proliferation Treaty, of concern over Iran’s use of uranium and of the need to achieve lasting stability in Afghanistan, could have been said during the course of a telephone conversation.
I am retransmitting my earlier comment because for some reason portions were inadvertently omitted from the orginal version.
I have no doubt if a trial was held in Russia revisiting the death of Alexandre Litvinenko contained in Andre Lugovoi’s statement that “Britain would be afraid the true criminals will be revealed”, in what Marcus Papadopoulos alluded to as a veiled reference to Boris Berezovsky, would prove Lugovoi right. A trial in Russia would prove beyond reasonable doubt the British knowingly and willfully allowed Berezovsky and his entourage of disenfranchised KGB and FSB agents and the malcontented Russian dissidents Berezovsky assembled as the only witnesses to the specious accusations the Litvinenko was murdered by Lugovoi to drive their investigation into the death of Litvinenko.
Lugovoi did not murder Litvinenko. Litvinenko was not murdered. He died from accidental contamination of polonium 210 during smuggling operations that evidence supports were financed by Berezovsky. That evidence can be found in the summaries of the wiretaps authorized by Italian prosecutors of Mario Scaramella’s telephone conversations with Guzzanti, the Chairman of the Mitrokhin Commission, whose employment Scaramella was in at the time of Litvinenko’s death. on a Berezovsky funded m to .
In October 2005, Yuri Shvets, a member of Berezovsky’s entourage and a key witness who would dismissed by the CTC after Shvets’ e-mails to me would prove he fabricated his testimony in support of Berezovsky’s testimony that Litvinenko identified Lugovoi as responsible for his death, requested that I provide an introduction to John Rizzo, then acting General Counsel of the CIA, on behalf of Scaramella on a Berezovsky funded initiative. Rather then arrange the introduction to Rizzo, in a fax dated October 31, 2005 I warned Rizzo to run and to warn others to run if they were approached by any member of Berezovsky’s entourage or anyone affiliated with Berezovsky. The FSB had written and disseminated a dossier on Berezovsky to the CIA, French, Italian and Israeli intelligence services that Berezovsky wanted the CIA to retract. In exchange for their retraction of the FSB dossier, Scaramella, and presumably with Litvinenko’s help, was prepared to offer evidence in support of the CIA’s rendition of Abu Omar, the Muslim Imam renditioned by the CIA under the directives of Robert Sheldon Lady, the CIA Chief of Station in Italy, that Omar was an al Qaeda operative trained by the FSB in what Litvinenko alleged was a secret FSB training camp located in Dagestan. I found it to preposterous I hastily issued the warning to Rizzo
But as the wiretaps of Scaramella’s telephone conversations would prove, it would not end there. After learning from me that I did everything possible to kill Berezovsky’s paid for mission into this heinous scheme, Shvets recruited Marshall Lee Miller of Baise & Miller, a lifelong friend, former Yale alumni graduate and colleague of former DCI R. James Woolsey. Berezovsky’s paid for mission would change under Miller. Litvinenko would accuse Romano Prodi of having been a Soviet era KGB asset, newly re-recruited into the service of the FSB. Miller using Woolsey access to Vice President Richard Cheney would arrange a meeting with convicted spy Aldrich Ames, whose first mission as a KGB spy was in Italy. They would seek Ames collaboration that Prodi was a KGB era spy. From there they would tie Prodi to the FSB and the FSB’s alleged support of al Qaeda operations in Italy, specifically Abu Omar. Cheney, in Scaramella’s wiretapped telephoned conversation, committed the complete support of the White House.
The summaries of the wiretaps of Scaramella’s telephone conversations were made available to me from de Gondi, a collaborator of David Habakkuk with whom de Gondi is a frequent contributor on the European Tribune. de Gondi is admirably guarded and meticulous in his representations and analysis of evidence. I am confident he will support me in the evidence of my involvements with Shvets, Miller and Woolsey that extend to my collaboration with MI 6 during their investigation into the death of Litvinenko that would led to Shvets’ dismissal as a key witness who offered false and misleading testimony in support of Berezovsky’s testimony.
Where de Gondi and I may part ways is in the conclusion I drew from a ten year affiliation with Shvets, Miller and Woolsey, and from my knowledge of Shvets’ embroilments with Berezovsky as Berezovsky’s disinformation specialist. Berezovsky would use Litvinenko and Shvets to manufacture intelligence they would allege was obtained through their former but still active KGB and FSB colleagues. And here is where de Gondi and his collaborator Habakkuk and I may differ. From my knowledge–first-hand involvement with Shvets, Miller and Woolsey, and from knowledge of Berezovsky funded initiatives and projects under taken by SHvets, I have reason to believe that the polonium 210 smuggled in London was destined for Italy. All that was missing from the initiative Berezovsky funded to tie Prodi to the FSB and the FSB’s alleged al Qaeda backed operatives in Italy was a weapon of mass destruction.
Scaramella had long promulgated the fallacious allegation that World War II Soviet era nuclear torpedo’s were buried in the Bay of Naples. Equally important if not more important, is Scaramella’s well documents history of convictions for smuggling nuclear materials and weapons into Italy that were ignored by the CTC during their investigation into the source and destination of the polonium 210. One cannot rule out the probability that the polonium 210 was destined for Italy with an intended use to manufacture a nuclear suitcase bomb that could be tied to the FSB’s alleged al Qaeda trained operatives in Italy.
This is not a conspiracy theory. Cheney, Woolsey and Miller’s involvement in arranging a meeting with convicted spy Aldrich Ames that would have required the consent and participation of the CIA Directorate of Operations takes it completely out of the realm of the possibility of a conspiracy theory. It was a Berezovsky funded mission that lead to a CIA covert operation that was inexorably linked to Prodi as a former KGB Soviet era spy newly recruited into the service of the FSB and to the CIA’s rendition of Abu Omar.
No one of sound mind can possibly believe that Lugovoi, an alleged FSB assassin dispatched to assassinate a pathetically demented former member of an FSB crime squad–and make no mistake that Litvinenko was not a skilled spy trained in the art of spying with a trade craft, he was a member of crime squad who beat, tortured or otherwise murdered Russian and Chechen crime figures–would heat Litvinenko’s tea with a nuclear radioactive isotope over Happy Hour at the Pine Bar in the very public Millennium Hotel in the bustling Mayfair District of downtown London.
But please do allow me to pose the question that the British would not raise: Who can doubt that Berezovsky, the man who financed a documentary and a book entitled Blowing Up Russia, that he disseminated to broadcast and print media around the globe, based on an allegation made by Litvinenko that a former FSB colleague told him the FSB planted the bombs that were used to bomb the apartment buildings that Berezovsky would allege was orchestrated by Vladimir Putin to win an election would not be capable of planting a suitcase bomb in Italy manufactured with polonium 210 smuggled into London from Russia by Lugovoi destined for Italy to manufacture a suitcase bomb that Berezovsky could use to implicate Putin and his FSB to supplying a WMD to FSB al Qaeda trained operatives in Italy?
This is but the tip of the proverbial iceberg of what Berezovsky has demonstrated he is capable of in documented files and reports submitted by me to the CTC during my collaboration with them on the death of Litvinenko, to Rizzo, and a host of others as well as documents and files that were transmitted by my attorney Charles A. Patrizia of Paul Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, who crossed every “t” and dotted every “i” on initiatives and projects Shvets brought in that Miller, Woolsey and I were involved in to Senator John Warner, a majority member of longstanding on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and to CIA Inspector General John Helgerson. But no one single documents bespeaks more of the extent Berezovsky will go to than the article Berezovsky had Shvets plant on the Ukraine website Berezovsky paid Shvets to operate for him than the article Shvets would published and disseminate accusing Russia of selling a nuclear choke to Iran alleged to have been buried 2,000 feet underground in a secret nuclear weapons facility in the desert that held out the possibly of igniting World War III.
There is no length this Machiavellian mobster without equal will not go to destroy his greatest rival, Vladimir Putin. Litvinenko was not murdered. But I have no doubt that Berezovsky financed the smuggling operation on the nuclear radioactive isotope that would result in Litvinenko’s accidental death that he has used to accuse Putin of sanctioning and his FSB of implementing that will be the oxygen of conspiracy theorists for time immemorial.