SOTT Focus SOTT Focus: The Pictures We See - Do You Get the Picture? SOTT Focus: Obsessive Sarkosis: The new neurosis SOTT Focus: Signs Economic Commentary for 5 May 2008 SOTT Focus: Golden Nuggets - Sexing Up An Iranian War SOTT Focus: JFK Spins From the Grave SOTT Focus: Signs Economic Commentary for 28 April 2008

One of the many strange things surrounding the murder of Alexander Litvinenko is the fact that it is being discussed at all. The exact details of the method used to assassinate him, his 3 week hospitalization, with pictures supplied by Lord Bell (more about him below) and Litvinenko's ultimate death have all been publicized to the greatest extent possible. This, it has to be said, is somewhat surprising given that covert intelligence matters (even those involving intelligence agencies of other nations) are usually kept covert.

One of the many strange things surrounding the murder of Alexander Litvinenko is the fact that it is being discussed at all. The exact details of the method used to assassinate him, his 3 week hospitalization, with pictures supplied by Lord Bell (more about him below) and Litvinenko's ultimate death have all been publicized to the greatest extent possible. This, it has to be said, is somewhat surprising given that covert intelligence matters (even those involving intelligence agencies of other nations) are usually kept covert.

For comparison, consider the death of Dr. David Kelly. Despite the overwhelming evidence that Kelly was murdered, the responsible parties (which undoubtedly included the Blair government although it is unlikely it was the only one) possessed sufficient control to muzzle the truth, with the official record showing 'death by suicide', general public skepticism about the affair notwithstanding. Control of the press is the cornerstone of any aspiring covert autocracy. If you control the press you control the minds of the masses and therefore....well, pretty much everything. From this we conclude that those who hold the real power in the UK wanted the blame for Litvinenko's death to fall on Putin, and to this end, allowed complete freedom of the press. From there it follows that those in control of the press in the UK are enemies of the current Putin government and, it can be reasonably argued, had a hand in Litvinenko's murder.

Lord Bell Of Belgravia

Speaking of the media. "Jewish" "Russian Oligarch" Boris Abramovich Berezovsky is a close confidant of one Lord Timothy Bell, an establishment "Conservative" party member and one of Britain's most successful and experienced public relations experts. In an interview published in 'The Observer' on April 27 2003, Berezovsky boasted that his "campaign to resist extradition and win political asylum is being masterminded by Conservative politicians and, in particular, the communications guru Lord Tim Bell. Berezovsky says: 'I have a lot of connections here, not so much with New Labour but with the Conservatives. Lord Bell for example.' Lord Bell of Belgravia (as he likes to be known) is also a purveyor of PR advice to media luminaries such as Rupert Murdoch and has also peddled PR to Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko (another victim of poisoning), and is a longtime confidant of none other than the iron lady herself, Baroness Thatcher, who he almost single-handedly propelled into Downing Street in 1979. (True power in Western "democracies" has never lain with the public faces of government it seems. Or did you know that already?)

Did Berzovsky have a hand in the murder of Litvinenko?

According to Friends of Litvinenko it is ludicrous to suspect Berezovsky of harming the man who once saved him from a possible assassination attempt. "Boris owes his life to Litvinenko and would never do anything to harm him,"said Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB defector and family friend. Indeed, most people would agree that if someone had saved the life of another, that other would forever be indebted and grateful, and for 94% of the population that is probably true. However, like most of the population, Litvinenko's friends and family are probably unware of the existence of psycohpaths - many in positions of power and influence, just like Berezovsky.

Akhmed Zakayev

The problem is that Berezovsky isn't exactly the perfect poster boy for those who would extol the virtues of giving asylum to foreign dissidents. For one, Berezovsky happens to be good friends with Akhmed Zakayev, who was appointed culture minister in the new cabinet of the Chechen government in exile of Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev. Sadulayev's second in command is Shamil Basayev, the warlord behind the 2004 school siege in Beslan in which hundreds of school children were killed. Nice company for sure. If nothing else however, Brezovsky was generous with his billions, esepcially to his "friends":

On a quiet and opulent residential street in north London stands the �500,000 Litvinenko family home. Almost opposite is the �700,000 home of the aforemenionted Akhmed Zakayev. According to the Daily Mail, the UK Land Registry shows that both their homes are owned by companies based in the British Virgin Islands which are believed to be controlled by Mr Berezovsky. Then again, I can't recall a UK government that ever had any problem with employing terrorism as state policy, so we shouldn't be surprised.

For the record, I have no beef with Chechen claims to independence, but with people like Berezovsky associated with (and probably financing) such a campaign, it can hardly be called "grass roots". The Chechen independence movement is over 30 years old, and while its founders undoubtedly had a legitimate cause, such legitimate causes are generally quickly co-opted by the powers that be, because freedom fighters anywhere are a threat to the controling stake of the Pathocrats everywhere. The notion of true Freedom is a virus that must be stamped out and replaced with paramoralistic and double-speak definitions of the term. Evidence that the any genuine freedom for Chechnya campaign has been successfully co-opted is seen in the fact that Muslim Chechen freedom fighters have now been lumped in with "Islamic terrorists" - more grist for the Israeli-American fake Islamic terror mill. Not that simply being labeled a "terrorist" by a Western government is evidence of anything (far from it), but when so called "Chechen freedom fighters" begin to employ the bizarre method of attacking and killing innocent civilians (often their own) in an attempt to further their cause (Belsan in 2004 for example) it is a safe bet that the original light of the genuine freedom fighters has been successfully eclipsed.

On that point: I will offer a little tip to any leaders of armed freedom fighter groupings around the world: if you wake up one morning to find that every mainstream newspaper is carrying reports that your organization has just indiscriminately killed members of your own civilian support base, and you find yourself scratching your head wondering who gave that particular order, it is a sure sign that you have been infiltrated and/or co-opted by agents of your chosen state enemy.

Litvinenko claimed he and his family had been friends with murdered Russian journalist Politkovskaya for three years - though others say he did not know her well.

A perhaps insignificant (or not) note, Politkovskaya was actually an American citizen, having been born in the U.S

"After her book, Putin's Russia, was published she had quite a number of threats which became more frequent, directly from the Kremlin.

"And during one of our last meetings she asked me directly: 'Can they kill me, do you think they can kill me?' And I told her quite frankly: 'Yes they can and I really suggest that you leave the country [Russia]'."

A few days after that meeting, on October 28, Litvinenko received an e-mail from Mario Scaramella, an Italian academic security consultant with whom he had previously exchanged information about suspected Russian agents. Scaramella said that he had important information about the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian investigative journalist who was killed in the lift of her Moscow apartment block and wanted to come to London to meet Litvinenko. They agreed to rendezvous on November 1.

What happened next is the subject of dispute and a continuing investigation by Scotland Yard counter-terrorist command.

By some accounts Litvinenko first went to the Millennium hotel in Piccadilly to meet Andrei Lugovoi, a former agent of the KGB (the forerunner of the FSB). Initial reports suggested that Lugovoi and another mysterious Russian named only as Vladimir took tea with Litvinenko. According to a friend: "This Russian man poured the cup of tea and Litvinenko drained it."

Late last week, however, Lugovoi, who now runs a security firm in Moscow, vigorously denied this. He said he had been in London to watch a football match and the two men had met at the hotel where he was staying to discuss a business deal.

"In the last year I flew a dozen times to Britain. Every time I would have several meetings with Litvinenko," he said. "I was in town and had spoken to Litvinenko and we had agreed to meet that day. I don't recall him having a drink and we had no food."

However, Litvinenko did meet Scaramella in a London Sushi bar on November 1st:

Mario Scaramella

"We met at Piccadilly Circus," said Litvinenko. "Mario said he wanted to sit down to talk to me, so I suggested we go to a Japanese restaurant nearby.

"I ordered lunch but he ate nothing. He appeared to be very nervous. He handed me a four-page document which he said he wanted me to read right away. It contained a list of names of people, including FSB officers, who were purported to be connected with the journalist's murder.

"The document was an e-mail but it was not an official document. I couldn't understand why he had to come all the way to London to give it to me. He could have e-mailed it to me."

"I put it in my bag because I thought I'd look at it at home. But he said he wanted me to look at it right now. So I pulled it out of my bag. There were people who had to do with Politkovskaya's murder."

The document apparently named a group called Dignity and Honour, a mercenary organization made up of former KGB spies. It is suspected of being used by the FSB for "deniable" operations.

"He [Scaramella] asked me: 'Are these dangerous people? Am I in danger?'," said Litvinenko.

"I looked at some names. And I said I cannot tell you right away who these people are. There were some names in the text . . . Something about Berezovsky, something about me. I cannot accuse him of anything but the whole meeting was very strange."

After the meeting the Italian had simply "disappeared", although Litvinenko emphasised that he was not in a position to accuse him of involvement in his poisoning. What is certain is that that night Litvinenko suddenly began to feel very ill.

Mario Scaramella is a self-proclaimed "International security consultant" and a very interesting fellow. According to the UK Daily Mail who spoke to him recently:

Between 2000 and 2002, Prof Scaramella was secretary general of a little-known organization named the Environmental Crime Prevention Programme. The ECPP describes itself as an organization which 'provides environmental protection and security through technology on a global basis'.

It has offices at the Fucino Space Centre in Italy to deploy 'aerial surveillance to detect environmental crimes in Eastern and Southern Europe'.

On its website, the ECPP described itself as a 'permanent intergovernmental conference' with a secretariat in Naples and rotating presidencies held by countries such as Angola and Samoa.

None of the contact details listed for the organisation on its website work. When Prof Scaramella was asked where the group's head office was he said there wasn't one - you had to contact the general secretary, who currently was a Professor Papadopoulos from California's San Jose university.

A Dr Perikles Papadopoulos - listed as an assistant secretary general of the organisation - could not be reached. And last night, neither the campaign group Greenpeace, nor the Environment Investigation Agency, which campaigns against environmental destruction, could recall working with the organisation.

In 2003 Scaramella made the jump from environmental expert to KGB specialist when he was appointed as a consultant to the Mitrokhin commission. It was that work which put him into contact with Litvinenko and led to the sushi lunch, which he says he arranged to discuss a 'death list' which named both him and Litvinenko

Vasili Mitrokhin was a senior archivist for Russia's foreign intelligence service. His records of the period have led to inquiries across the globe, including the UK. One of the conclusions of the Italian inquiry was that the former Soviet Union was behind the assassination attempt on the late Pope John Paul II in 1981.

Prof Scaramella explained that he had been approached by the commission because his career had given him a passing connection to Russia. "My work involved a lot of Soviet issues - the dumping of radioactive waste, which can be detected from space, and the loss of nuclear devices,' he said.

"I said to them, "I am not an expert on security services, only nuclear waste." But the commission said they wanted people from outside to investigate. So in 2003 I looked at the operations of the KGB and Eastern bloc countries on Italian soil, including the funding of Italian journalists by the KGB."

Scaramella also told us that he also found time in 1999 to become a visiting scientist at Stanford University in California, and was made director of a university Nato programme which involved visiting Lithuania.

In 2002, at the same time as he says he was completing his duties for the ECPP, he also started a school of national security in Colombia to train local police. The same year, he says he was also based for four months at Greenwich University in London, again working on environmental law.

It is hard to corroborate details of Scaramella's career.

Wow. Environmental expert, nuclear waste expert, cold-war espionage expert, Colombian security force trainer to name but a few. Quite a resume. While Scaramella was suitably coy in his interview with the Daily Mail, denying that he was ever involved with any intelligence agency, according to the Scottish Daily The Scotsman, reports from Italy suggest that Scaramella was a member of SISMI, the Italian secret services, and that he had "worked" for the CIA and Colombian intelligence (these latter two being one in the same these days). Interestingly, in 2005, SISMI was involved in providing the faked-to-order "Niger Yellowcake" documents to Dick Cheney and his Israeli Neocon friends who then tried to pass this off on the world as "proof" that Saddam was in possession of WMDs. In the summer of 2006, several SISMI directors and station chiefs were arrested for their part in the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" (abduction and torture) of Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr. As part of that investigation, a SISMI-run black operation targeting current Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi and a vast domestic surveillance program was also uncovered.

As mentioned by Scaramella above, the Mitrokhin archives gave rise to a parliamentary inquiries in the UK, India and Italy. In Italy, the inquiry (called the Guzzanti Commission after its chairman Senator Paolo Guzzanti), alleged that Romano Prodi was a KGB agent. In April of 2006, a UK Independence Party MEP made a speech to the European Parliament where he stated:

One of my constituents, Alexander Litvinenko, was formerly a Lieutenant Colonel in the Russian Federation's FSB, the successor to the KGB. Mr Litvinenko's exposure of illegal FSB activities forced him to seek political asylum abroad.

Before deciding on a place of refuge he consulted his friend, General Anatoly Trofimov, a former Deputy Chief of the FSB. General Trofimov reportedly said to Mr Litvinenko, "Don't go to Italy, there are many KGB agents among the politicians: Romano Prodi is our man there."

In February 2006 Mr Litvinenko reported this information to Mario Scaramella of the Guzzanti Commission investigating KGB penetration of Italian politics.

Chairman of the Italian inquiry is Senator Paolo Guzzanti, who is also a member of recently deposed Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi's Forza Italia party. The allegation against Prodi came just before the Italian general election this year when Berlusconi was ousted, so we might put it down to one of the pre-election dirty tricks for which Berlusconi was famous. Scaramella claims that his work involved a lot of Soviet issues - the dumping of radioactive waste, and that it was for this reason that he was asked to submit testimony to the inquiry.

Uranium to make atom bomb sold to four Italians

BBC International Monitoring/Corriere della Sera

June 12, 2005/June 11, 2005

Rome: "During the month of September 2004 I was approached by an Ukrainian national, whom I know by the name of Sasha, who wanted to sell me a briefcase containing radioactive material, and, more precisely, uranium for military use." There is enough testimony by Giovanni Guidi, a Rimini businessman, and by other defendants - Giorgio Gregoretti, Elmo Olivieri and Giuseppe Genghini - to fuel a spy story worthy of a novel by Le Carre. Involved is a briefcase containing five kilos of highly enriched uranium, half of which would be enough to build an atomic device, which remained for months in a Rimini garage. A briefcase, however, which eluded investigators, and which managed to get back into the hands of the Ukrainian national, who perhaps is still in Italy. Together with another briefcase having a similar content, and a third believed to conceal a tracking system. The entire kit geared to the assembly of a small tactical atomic bomb.

A mystery story fueled by information supplied the Rimini police department by a consultant of the Mitrokhin committee, Mario Scaramella, who, acting on behalf of the agency presided over by Paolo Guzzanti, was trying to track illegal funds from the former USSR that had transited through [the Republic of ] San Marino. The two defendants' defence attorney warns that this "could be the trial of the century, but also the century's biggest hoax". The mystery, however, continues, and emerges from the testimony of the defendants, who were questioned Wednesday [8 June] night and all day Thursday, and subsequently released with the charge of possession of war weapons.

The uranium was allegedly contained in a hermetically sealed, black, leather briefcase, along with a photo illustrating its content. Five uranium bars weighing one kilo each. Sasha delivered the briefcase to Guidi. "My precarious economic situation induced me to accept," explains the 46-year-old Rimini businessman, who is married to a Russian woman, and runs an import-export firm that has dealings with Russia and Ukraine. Guidi in turn informed Giorgio Gregoretti, who "placed it [the briefcase] in a cardboard box, which he subsequently stored in his garage." There it remained until it was placed in the trunk of Gregoretti's car, where it was seen by Elmo Olivieri, a financial consultant. Time passes "without their finding anyone interested in the material", says Guidi, and the Ukrainian "asks for the briefcase back".

The most interesting thing about the above is not the fact that Scaramella was claiming that someone was smuggling components to make a small nuclear device out of (or perhaps through) Russia and the Ukraine, but rather that the man selling the material was known only as "Sasha". On the third page, near the bottom of yesterday's Sunday Times article on the death of Alexander Litvinenko, the following sentence appears:

"The morning after Litvinenko passed away, his father paid tribute to his son, whom he called Sasha."

The title of the Times article is "The Bastards Got Me" because that is what Litvinenko is alleged to have whispered (off the record) to a friend in his dying moments. He also added "but they won't get everybody". The "bastards got me" was a strange thing to say if Litvinenko was, as is claimed, placing the blame at the door of Putin, and it also contrasts with his alleged message for Putin which appears to address the Russian leader only.

But as I lie here I can distinctly hear the beatings of wings of the angel of death.

I may be able to give him the slip but I have to say my legs do not run as fast as I would like.

I think, therefore, that this may be the time to say one or two things to the person responsible for my present condition.

You may succeed in silencing me but that silence comes at a price. You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed.

You have shown yourself to have no respect for life, liberty or any civilised value.

You have shown yourself to be unworthy of your office, to be unworthy of the trust of civilised men and women.

You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life.

May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people.

The fact is, Litvinenko could speak only a few words of English as is evidenced by a press conference he gave shortly before being poisoned, where, after a brief greeting in strongly-accented English, he asked for his comments to be translated. We are told that the above denunciation of Putin was dictated to Berezovsky's lawyer Alexander Goldfarb, and therefore must have been translated into English by him. Did translate and transcribe it faithfully?

Litvinenko was poisoned by Polonium 210, which is a rare radioactive metalloid that occurs in uranium ores. It was discovered by Marie Curie and her husband Pierre Curie in 1897 and was later named after Marie's homeland of Poland (Latin: Polonia). Poland at the time was under Russian, Prussian and Austrian domination, and not recognized as an independent country. It was Marie's hope that naming the element after her home land would add notoriety to its plight. Enough polonium-210 to produce a lethal radiation dose of 10 sieverts if ingested, weighs just 0.12 millionths of a gram. Polonium 210 was used (together with Beryllium) as a trigger for early nuclear bombs. It could also be used today in the manufacture of a small tactical atomic bomb.

Polonium was used to kill Litvinenko. Was the method of his murder meant to be a subtle warning of some sort? If so, if something 'unexpected' happens, we'll know where to look.

Litvinenko claimed that the Moscow apartment bombings of 1999 in which almost 300 people were killed, and which were blamed on Chechen rebels, were in fact the work of agents of the Russian interior intelligence agency the FSB. The bombings were a classic "false flag" operation designed to demonise the Chechen rebels. Litvinenko was involved in attempting to expose this and had been digging into the war between the Kremlin and Chechen separatists, but as is often the case of honest ex-spys (John O Neill for example) did Litvinenko make the mistake of digging too deep?

In a July 2005 interview with the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita, Litvinenko alleged that Ayman al-Zawahiri, along with other al-Qaeda leaders, was trained by the FSB in Dagestan (a republic neighboring Chechnya) in 1998.

Given what we already suspect about who really controls Chechnyas "freedom fighters" and what we know about the reality of "al-Qaeda", did Litvinenko, in his investigations, get too close to the truth? If the event as described by the Italian Mitrokhin committee last year actually occur, was the mysterious "Sascha" Litvinenko? Did he believe that he was on a mission to entrap "Islamic" or Chechen "terrorists" and expose the FSB as a way to attack Putin? In the process of other such undercover journalistic investigations, did he discover something about the origins of "Islamic terror" or details of a plot to detonate a small nuclear device and blame it on "terrorists"?

I would only ask the reader to think about who, in the final analysis, has the most to gain from the promotion of the "reality" of worldwide"Islamic terrorism", from Britain to Chechnya to the Middle East to Indonesia and back again. Is it Putin? If so, what sense does it make for him to defend Iran and Syria and stonewall US and Israeli attempts to rally world public opinion behind an attack on these alleged "terror-sponsoring" nations? In the new American-Israeli century, all major conflicts, particularly those involving "Islamic terrorism" must be seen in the context of the ongoing fabrication and promotion of the broader and perpetual US-Israeli "war on Islamic terrorism"

The era of mere 'double agents' is long since gone it seems. In today's world we must try to wrap our brains around not 'double' but at least 'quadruple agents', individuals who are used abused and often sacrificed by their Russian, Israeli, British or American oligarch masters in the hope that they can spin a web so complex that no one will see the men behind the curtain. Who are they? They are the psychopaths in power - the pathocrats - those men and women who, as a function of their inability to feel empathy for another human being, have risen to the very top of the game here on planet earth. They control banks, governments and the mainstream media and as a result, much of the rest of human society. They are the architects of the current end game of our civilisation also known as "the global war on terrorism", and they play both sides - Islamic and Judeo-Christian - against each other. To what end? Read the news. The answer should be more than clear.

Go To Final Part