"This is not a way you'd want to die -- it's a very slow, painful death," said Kelly L. Classic, a radiation physicist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and the media liaison for the Health Physics Society, a national organization of experts on the health effects of radiation.

Polonium is an "alpha emitter," which, when it decays, emits high-speed volleys of subatomic alpha particles -- each one composed of two protons and two neutrons bound together -- that rip apart DNA coils and bust up the cells within which they reside.

An alpha particle "is huge on an atomic scale," Classic said. "If an electron was a piece of popcorn, the alpha particle (would be) like a bowling ball."

Former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko died Thursday in London, the victim of what health officials said was polonium-210 poisoning at a hotel bar or a sushi restaurant on Nov. 1. Before he died, he insisted that he was poisoned on behalf of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

His illness developed rapidly, causing his hair to fall out and ravaging his immune and nervous systems. Police have reported finding traces of radiation at the restaurant and bar.

Classic, who is not involved with the British police investigation, speculated that, assuming the ex-spy was poisoned, his killer might have done so by sprinkling the poison in liquid rather than powdered form -- perhaps on the spy's food. A powder would have quickly traveled around a large area, whereas British police say that traces of the poison seem to be limited to small locations, as one would expect if the liquid were spattered here and there in small drops.

Experts at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the nuclear weapons lab in Livermore, declined Monday to say how much polonium-210 would be needed to harm anyone. They said they were calculating how much would be needed -- but even if they knew the answer, they wouldn't reveal it publicly for ethical reasons.

"In this day and age, we need to be extraordinarily careful about how to give out 'how-to' instructions," Livermore health physicist Gary Mansfield said, alluding to the threat of terrorism. "We're not going to provide you a recipe to help the bad guys harm (people)."

Polonium-210 is "approximately 100,000 million times more toxic than cyanide," according to "A Guide to the Elements, Second Edition," by Albert Stwertka, published in 2002 by Oxford University Press. (That amount equals 100 billion.)

The isotope has a short half-life of 138 days, which might make it difficult to trace after a relatively short time. Although the alpha particles can wreak devastating damage inside a cell, paradoxically they're too frail to break through human skin -- meaning that no one would be able to detect them escaping from the human body.

In the United States, it is legal for vendors licensed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to sell small amounts of polonium-210 and other radioactive sources without the buyers having to receive special permission from the government.

United Nuclear Scientific Equipment & Supplies of Sandia Park, N.M., will sell you a small amount of polonium-210 for $69 in a small, yellow, disk-shaped container. The firm offers a long list of available radioactive sources on its commercial Web site -- which includes buttons marked, "Add to Cart" next to items for purchase.

"Because our products can be potentially hazardous in the wrong hands," the site states, "we will occasionally terminate and refund orders if we feel you are juvenile posing as an adult, inexperienced with the materials ordered, or using our products to make any sort of explosive device. All packages containing hazardous chemicals will require an adult signature on delivery."

United Nuclear is run by Bob Lazar, who attracted national attention when he claimed to have worked on crashed alien spaceships at a U.S. military base in Nevada called Area 51. In May, the Albuquerque Journal reported that agents from the U.S. Department of Justice raided Lazar's firm in 2003. Lazar claimed that federal government officials wanted his firm to stop selling chemicals that they said could be used to make explosives, the paper reported.

A woman at Lazar's company, who identified herself only as "Michelle," said the firm sells polonium-210 in "small, small, minuscule" amounts ... What we carry is so small you can't see it with your naked eye." She said she is only an employee at the firm and doesn't know where Lazar obtains the polonium-210.

Lazar couldn't be reached for comment Monday.

Scaramella told Reuters by telephone that medical tests in Britain showed he had not been contaminated by the poison.

Media in Britain and Italy said on Wednesday that Litvinenko told a friend shortly before dying that the Italian might have killed him.

"This is all completely absurd," Scaramella said, adding "I am not being investigated or a suspect. I am collaborating with the investigations, which are headed in every other direction."

Scaramella, who has advised Italy's parliament on Soviet-era espionage and describes himself as a security consultant, said he would be able to fully explain himself and speak more freely this weekend.

"But I can't make any statements. Be patient," he said.

Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema told parliament Scaramella had advised a committee on espionage between 2003 and this year but was not part of the Italian secret services.

At the meeting in the London sushi bar, Scaramella showed Litvinenko emails warning that their lives might be in danger from St. Petersburg-based criminals.

Beyond the sushi bar, traces of radiation have been detected at several more sites, including Litvinenko's home, a hotel he visited, the offices of Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky and the offices of Erinys, a security and risk management company. British Airways said on Wednesday that police probing Litvinenko's death had found "very low traces" of radiation had been found on two of its aircraft.

Litvinenko, who became a British citizen while living in London, died in the capital a week ago after being poisoned with radioactive polonium 210.

British Airways said three aircraft had been taken out of service as part of the probe. All had flown between Moscow and London, and one is still in Moscow.

The airline said "very low traces" of a radioactive substance had been found on the two planes being held in London.

Reid told parliament scientists were monitoring a fourth aircraft for possible contamination. The plane, a Boeing 737 leased by the Russian carrier Transaero, arrived at London's Heathrow airport on Thursday morning, he said.

Transaero spokesman Sergei Bykhal said the plane was being held in Britain for checks and that the company would cooperate fully with any official body.

Reid said Britain was also interested in a fifth plane -- a Russian aircraft -- and there could be more involved.

"Those are the five we know of," he told parliament.

SUSPICIONS

The announcement about the planes and their destinations could rekindle suspicions of a Moscow link to the death of Litvinenko, who himself accused Putin of ordering his murder.

In Moscow, Anatoly Safonov, President Putin's counter-terrorism adviser, told Reuters: "As we said before, we are open and willing to offer all the help needed."

"Russia has expressed at the highest levels the political will to cooperate in the fullest way in all aspects of this affair," Safonov told state television.

Reid told parliament that Moscow had promised cooperation to the "highest level" and that British police would use all the powers they needed to search planes.

"There certainly will be no political prohibition on the police following where the evidence leads them," he said.

In Britain, thousands of BA passengers sought health reassurances from the airline after the announcement.

BA says the risk to health is low. But it faces a huge task tracing the 33,000 passengers who used the planes over a five-week period. It has set up helplines to give guidance to them.

Reid said Britain would contact the governments of every country where the planes may have landed.

The search for contaminated sites has intensified since the Nov. 23 death in a London hospital of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, a Kremlin critic who was found to have polonium-210 in his body.

Reid said 1,700 calls had been made to the National Health Service, and 69 people were referred to the Health Protection Agency. Of those, 18 who may have been exposed to polonium-210 have been referred to specialist clinics, but all urine tests so far have been negative, he said.

The Health Protection Agency expected to clear one of the three British Airways aircraft that operate the London-Moscow route - which were identified Wednesday night as having possible radioactive contamination, Reid said. Tests continue on the other two, he said.

Reid said "around 24 venues" have been or are being monitored and that experts had confirmed traces of contamination at "around 12 of these venues."

British Airways said "the risk to public health is low" but that it was attempting to contact to some 33,000 passengers who have flown on the jets since Oct. 25.

Radiation found at sushi bar, homes, hotel
Radiation was detected at the sushi bar where Litvinenko met Mario Scaramella, an Italian KGB expert, on the day he fell ill.

Scaramella denied suggestions he had played any role in the poisoning.

"This is all completely absurd," he told Reuters by telephone, adding: "I am not being investigated or a suspect. I am collaborating with the investigations, which are headed in every other direction."

Traces of radiation have been detected at several more sites, including Litvinenko's home, a hotel he visited, the offices of Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky and the offices of Erinys, a security and risk management company.

London police had said they were also searching the Sheraton Park Lane Hotel Piccadilly and another London address.

BA investors shrugged off concerns that the radiation scare would frighten off passengers. BA shares were trading 1.1 percent firmer at 500-3/4 pence at 0857 GMT.

But it is another public relations setback for Europe's third-largest carrier, which has suffered four successive summers of disruptions from industrial action and security alerts.
Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.

The doctors will make their final diagnosis on Friday, with "a poison unknown to civilian medicine," the most likely cause of his illness, she said.

Gaidar was in satisfactory condition late Wednesday but "there was a serious threat to his life" after he fell ill on November 24 in Ireland, where he had been attending a conference, his daughter said on NTV television.

Gaidar's illness came one day after the death in London of former Russian secret services agent Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned by a rare radioactive substance in an incident that Litvinenko himself blamed on President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin has rejected the charges.

Putin telephoned Gaidar to wish him a quick recovery, London's Financial Times reported Thursday, citing the Kremlin.

Anatoly Chubais, the influential head of Russia's state electricity company and a longtime associate of Gaidar's, connected the former premier's illness with Litvinenko's death and the recent murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, suggesting the Kremlin's enemies were behind all three.

"This deadly design would have been extremely attractive for those supporting unconstitutional, violent means of changing power in Russia," Chubais told RIA Novosti.

Ultra-nationalist parliament deputy Vladimir Zhirinovsky blamed Gaidar's condition on foreign powers attempting "to destabilize the situation or create an atmosphere of suspicion" in the run-up to Russia's 2007 parliamentary elections, RIA Novosti reported.

Gaidar fell ill after eating breakfast where he was staying outside Dublin, he told the Financial Times.

The former prime minister managed to answer questions about his book, "The Death of the Empire: Lessons for Contemporary Russia", in an appearance at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, before he had to be hospitalized.

He was transferred to a Moscow hospital on Sunday.

"We are concerned by the very fact of the poisoning and would not like to make premature conclusions," said opposition politician Leonid Gozman, one of the leaders of the liberal Union of Right Forces Party, of which Gaidar was a co-founder.

As Russia's first post-Soviet prime minister, Gaidar was a chief architect of reforms known as "shock therapy", which helped transform the communist economy but are widely blamed in Russia for capital flight and a 1998 economic collapse.

Utilities chief Chubais, who also helped organize the reforms, survived an assassination attempt in 2005.

Gaidar now heads an economic think tank in Moscow that frequently criticizes Putin's policy of increasing state control over the economy.

Dismissing their appeal, Lord Justice Laws, sitting in London with Mr Justice Walker, said the allegation that the US might violate undertakings given to the UK "would require proof of a quality entirely lacking here".

Mr Ahmad, a computer expert from Tooting, south London, is accused of running websites inciting murder and urging Muslims to fight a holy war. The sites allegedly also aimed to raise money for the Taliban and Chechen rebels.

Mr Aswat, who grew up in West Yorkshire and was arrested in Africa, faces trial on charges of plotting to set up a "jihad training camp" in Bly, Oregon, to train fighters for war in Afghanistan. He has been fighting extradition to the US since being arrested in Zambia and held in the UK.

The judges said they would take time to consider whether both men should be given permission to take their case to the House of Lords, the highest court in the UK, for a final ruling. They will announce their decision at a later date.

Mr Fitzgerald argued that the case raised human rights issues of public importance which should go before the law lords.

Afterwards, Ashfaq Ahmad, the father of 32-year-old Babar, said: "We are very disappointed with the high court verdict today.

"We are hopeful that the high court will certify that a point of law of public importance on military detention and rendition has been raised and recommend this matter should go to the House of Lords."

At a hearing in July, Edward Fitzgerald QC, appearing for both men, asked two senior judges to halt extradition, arguing there was a danger that their human rights would be abused, despite assurances from the US government.

Mr Fitzgerald said the men were in danger of being indefinitely detained at Guantánamo Bay under a military order applying to foreign citizens, or tried and sentenced by a military commission as enemy combatants in what would amount to "a flagrant denial of justice" and European human rights laws. He said they also faced the risk of extraordinary rendition - the process of removing terrorist suspects to third countries for interrogation - and being held in solitary confinement.

Washington has promised that the two British men will not be sent to Guantánamo Bay or turned over to a third country. But Mr Fitzgerald told the judges they should not rely on American assurances that the men would be treated fairly.

Mr Ahmad is a cousin of Mohammed Noor Khan, described by the pressure group Human Rights Watch as a "ghost detainee". He is believed to be in joint US-Pakistan custody, with no access to legal counsel. Mr Khan was arrested in Pakistan in 2004 and accused of sending messages for Osama bin Laden. Mr Khan "has simply disappeared", according to the two men's lawyers.

Mr Ahmad argues that support for Chechen separatists between 1997 and 2000 and for the Taliban does not constitute supporting terrorism. According to his campaign website, he was "deeply affected and saddened" by the September 11 2001 attacks, in which a female relative of his died in the World Trade Centre.

The case against Mr Aswat is based on the evidence of James Ujaama, an American jailed for assisting the Taliban in Afghanistan, whose sentence was reduced in return for his cooperation as a witness.

The MEPs singled out Geoff Hoon, the minister for Europe, saying they deplored his attitude to their special committee's inquiry into the CIA flights. They expressed outrage at what they said was the view of the chief legal adviser to the Foreign Office, Sir Michael Wood, that "receiving or possessing" information extracted under torture, if there was no direct participation in the torture, was not per se banned under international law. They said Sir Michael declined to give evidence to the committee.

The report condemned the extraordinary rendition of two UK residents, Bisher al-Rawi, an Iraqi citizen , and Jamil el-Banna, a Jordanian citizen, seized in the Gambia in 2002. They were "turned over to US agents and flown to Afghanistan and then to Guantánamo, where they remain detained without trial or any form of judicial assistance", it said. The men's abduction was helped "by partly erroneous information" supplied by MI5. It also condemned the treatment of Binyam Mohammed, an Ethiopian citizen and UK resident arrested in Pakistan and at one point held in Morocco where questions "appear to have been inspired by information supplied by the UK". His lawyer has described what the report called "horrific torture".

It referred to the rendition of Martin Mubanga, a UK citizen arrested in Zambia in 2002 and flown to Guantánamo Bay. It said he was interrogated by British officials at the US detention centre in Cuba where he was held and tortured for four years and then released without trial.

It expressed "serious concern" about 170 stopovers at British airports by CIA-operated aircraft which on many occasions came from, or were bound for, countries linked with "extraordinary rendition circuits". The Guardian gave evidence to the committee on the CIA flights. The MEPs also praised help they were given by the all-party parliamentary group on rendition chaired by Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie. "Parliamentary concern about extraordinary rendition is not going to go away," Mr Tyrie said. Next week he will meet John Rockefeller, new chairman of the US Senate intelligence committee.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of civil rights group Liberty, said: "Our government wept hot tears for torture victims in Saddam Hussein's Iraq but adamantly refuses to investigate CIA torture flights despite growing international pressure. The silence in Whitehall is damning."

Yesterday's report described in detail how CIA Gulfstream jets landed in secret at Szymany airport in Poland. There was circumstantial evidence, it said, that there may have been a secret detention centre at the nearby intelligence training centre at Stare Kiejkuty. It disclosed that records, from a confidential source, of an EU and Nato meeting with the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, last December confirmed "member states had knowledge of the [US] programme of extraordinary renditions and secret prisons".

It criticised EU officials such as foreign policy chief Javier Solana and counter-terrorism coordinator Gijs de Vries for a lack of cooperation with the inquiry, and Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Nato's secretary general, for declining to give evidence.

Sarah Ludford, a Liberal Democrat MEP and vice-chair of the European parliament's committee, said last night: "If the EU's aspirations to be a 'human rights community' have any meaning whatsoever, there must now be a forceful EU response to this strong evidence that the CIA abducted, illegally imprisoned and transported alleged terrorists in Europe while European governments, including the UK, turned a blind eye or actively colluded with the United States."

At least 1,245 CIA rendition flights used European airspace or landed at European airports, the report said. It accused the former head of Italy's Sismi intelligence service, Nicolo Pollari, of "concealing the truth" when he told the committee Italian agents played no part in the CIA kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in 2003. It says Sismi officials had an active role in the abduction of Abu Omar, who had been "held incommunicado and tortured ever since".

The Foreign Office said last night that Mr Hoon had answered all the questions put to him. He said the government did not approve of any transfer of individuals through the UK where there were substantial grounds to believe they would face the real risk of torture.

Masri is now trying to use the courts to get a modicum of justice for that treatment -- a radical idea, apparently, in the aftermath of 9/11:

...Masri is waiting to see if the judges will allow the CIA to disappear him again.

This time, it's not the physical, flesh-and-blood, burly, ponytailed German citizen with six kids whom the U.S. government wants to make vanish from the face of the Earth. It's his legal case, his very right to have his argument heard in open court, that the CIA is seeking to have disappeared. They argue, citing the state-secrets privilege, that to proceed with the case would damage national security and that this damage outweighs any legal rights Masri may have.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District agreed with the government in May.

If they have their way this time, the pale Justice Department lawyers swaying back in their chairs before the three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit would prohibit any judge and any jury anywhere from ever hearing the arguments in Masri's six legal pleadings and 40 exhibits, more than 1,000 pages in all. Much of the evidence was unearthed by German prosecutors and European Parliament investigators.

"Pale Justice Department lawyers swaying back in their chairs " -- there's a word-picture for you.

There are also the eight U.S. officials who confirmed to at least one American reporter that Masri spent months in a dank Afghan cell because a couple of CIA officials in Washington had a hunch he was someone he was not and that they just didn't move fast enough when they found out he wasn't.

Read the whole thing -- it's quite a tale.

Speaking of CIA paramilitaries disappearing Europeans, the EU Parliament released a draft resolution that makes for an interesting read (you can grab a PDF here). It builds on an earlier investigative report that showed conclusively that the CIA flew 1,245 secret flights into European airspace, ferrying uncounted numbers of suspected -- that's a key word, I think -- terrorists to countries where they were held incommunicado and subjected to torture.

Highlights:

...The programme of extraordinary rendition is an extra-judicial practice whereby an individual suspected of involvement in terrorism is illegally abducted, arrested and/or transferred into the custody of US officials and/or transported to another country for interrogation which, in the majority of cases, involves incommunicado detention and torture ...

...[The Parliament condemns] extraordinary rendition as an illegal and systematic instrument used by the United States in the fight against terrorism... [and] condemns, further, the acceptance and concealing of the practice, on several occasions, by the secret services and governmental authorities of certain European countries...

...Participating in the interrogation of individuals who are victims of extraordinary rendition represents a deplorable legitimisation of that type of illegal procedure, even where those participating in their interrogation do not bear direct responsibility in the kidnapping and detention of the victims...

...The practice of extraordinary rendition has been shown to be counterproductive in the fight against terrorism and that, in some cases, extraordinary rendition in fact damages and undermines regular police and judicial procedures against terrorism suspects ...

That gets to the heart of what's wrong with so many of the arguments in favor of shredding the Constitution or the central tenets of international law: it is so often counter-productive and actually makes us less safe -- a reality that eludes many of the blood-and-guts types on the hysterical right.

Joining them, of course, is Tony Blair, and I imagine that Bush's Poodle will have the Foreign Office working overtime trying to water down the language of the draft. After all, it contains heresies like this:

...The fight against terrorism cannot be won by sacrificing the very principles that terrorism seeks to destroy, notably, the protection of fundamental rights must never be compromised ... terrorism must be fought by legal means and must be defeated while respecting international and national law and with a responsible attitude on the part of governments and public opinion alike ...

The resolution also "condemns the illegal pursuing of Italian journalists investigating the extraordinary rendition of Abu Omar and the tapping of their telephone conversations." That oart of this story -- the one that's been playing out in Italy -- has been absolutely riveting. If you haven't been following it, see this piece by Stephen Grey and Elisabetta Povoledo in the International Herald Tribune, and this AlterNet story by Jeffrey Klein and Paolo Pontoniere.

Anyway, as I've written before, the idea that the U.S. and its allies are engaged in some sort of global "Clash of Civilizations" is especially unserious given the fact that our tactics violate the underlying principles of Western liberal thought, and that the entire Western world unambiguously rejects our leadership. Oh well.

Let me wrap up with a bit of good news for those of a civil libertarian bent, via Reuters:

A federal judge in Los Angeles, who previously struck down sections of the Patriot Act, has ruled that provisions of an anti-terrorism order issued by President George W. Bush after September 11 are unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins found that part of the law, signed by Bush on September 23, 2001 and used to freeze the assets of terrorist organizations, violated the Constitution because it put no apparent limit on the president's powers to place groups on that list.

Ruling in a lawsuit brought against the Treasury Department in 2005 by the Center for Constitutional Rights, Collins also threw out a portion of Bush's order which applied the law to those who associate with the designated organizations.

"This law gave the president unfettered authority to create blacklists, an authority president Bush then used to empower the Secretary of the Treasury to impose guilt by association," said David Cole of the Washington-based Center for Constitutional Rights.

"The court's decision confirms that even in fighting terror, unchecked executive authority and trampling on fundamental freedoms is not a permissible option," he said in a statement.

Here, again, we have a court upholding the government's right to take steps to stop terrorists, but rejecting the argument that Bush's executive branch is the government. I'm not sure why so many people seem to have such a hard time understanding that, but good for District Judge Audrey Collins for not being among them.

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.

The AP reported last night on eyewitnesses to the immolations, that occurred when Sunni worshippers were leaving a Mosque on Friday and have also substantiated the identity of Iraqi police Capt. Jamil Hussein, who the AP cited as the primary source for its story that the Sunnis were killed while the Iraqi military stood by and did nothing.

Said the most recent AP story:

"Seeking further information about Friday's attack, an AP reporter contacted Hussein for a third time about the incident to confirm there was no error. The captain has been a regular source of police information for two years and had been visited by the AP reporter in his office at the police station on several occasions. The captain, who gave his full name as Jamil Gholaiem Hussein, said six people were indeed set on fire."

You can read the rest of the AP story, which includes the eyewitness accounts, here.

But over the last few days -- ever since a Naval Public Affairs officer demanded in writing that the AP publish a retraction for the article, which the military claimed was false -- our little Bloggers for Bush have been more excited about all of this than Mark Foley at a Boy Scout Jamboree.

"MSM credibility, R.I.P." said Michelle Malkin on her blog, while the Powerline dudes headlined it all with " Story of Sunnis Burned Alive Going Up In Smoke."

Here's Powerline:

"There is no doubt plenty of violence in Baghdad to go around. But the current attitude toward the situation in Iraq is one of hysteria. That hysteria is being shamelessly stoked by news organs like the Associated Press, who rely--apparently uncritically--on reports from stringers who may be imposters, and may be agents of the insurgency. Such reports are repeated endlessly and thereby add to the momentum for surrender in Iraq. The difficulty of getting reliable reporting out of Iraq should not become an excuse for an abandonment of all journalistic standards."

How funny is it to hear lectures on "journalistic standards" coming from these guys?

"It's Official: Media Body Burning Story is Bogus," crowed Newsbusters -- the wingnut National Enquirer -- who just went mad with glee proclaiming that "The news that six Sunnis were captured by Shiites, doused with kerosine [sic] and burned alive, was too sensational to not be picked up by the mainstream media. But it turns out that the event never happened. Furthermore, the Iraqi 'spokesman' relied on to give all information regarding this event is as fictional as the story itself."

Newsbusters took it a step further by also concluding that NBC's decision to begin calling what's going on in Iraq a "civil war" was based in part on the "bogus" nature of that story.

Flopping Aces, which seems to have started this embarrassing affair, has been running a lengthy series ominously called "Getting The News From The Enemy" while The Jawa Report really stands proud and proclaims that "It's unlikely that the Associated Press and other news agencies will issue corrections approaching the sensationalism with which they originally pushed the false stories."

Ouch. That kind of strident crap's got to make their red-state faces pretty damned crimson about right now.

But then, to grotesquely paraphrase Sir Charles Barkley, they would feel the shame that's coming to them, but then they realized that they have no shame.

Bob Geiger is a writer, activist and Democratic District Leader in Westchester County, NY. You can reach Bob at geiger.bob@gmail.com and read more from him at BobGeiger.com.