The accusation is an effort by the Russian Government to tie Mr Litvinenko's death to what it claims is a convoluted web of economic and other crimes that destroyed Yukos, once Russia's richest company. Russia's prosecution of Yukos was widely seen as a Kremlin-led campaign against a company defiant of the President, Vladimir Putin.

A spokesman for Mr Nevzlin, who lives in self-imposed exile in Israel, dismissed the accusations as "ridiculous".

The accusation against Yukos comes as a dispute between Gazprom, the Russian energy monopoly, and Belarus worsened. Gazprom reacted angrily on Wednesday to a suggestion from Belarus that it would pull natural gas out of export pipelines rather than pay a higher price for the fuel.

About 8 per cent of the European Union's gas imports pass through Belarus, which imports natural gas for domestic consumption and transits fuel to markets further to the west. Gazprom warned Poland, Lithuania and Germany of possible supply disruptions.

"We are interdependent," the Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus, Vladimir Semashko, said during an interview on Russian state television. "If I don't have a domestic gas supply contract, Gazprom won't have a transit deal."

About 20 per cent of Gazprom's exports to Europe go via Belarus, and 80 per cent through Ukraine. Mr Semashko brushed aside Gazprom's threat to halt supplies to Belarus. "With Ukraine there was an attempt like this. After two days, everything fell back into place."

A price dispute between Ukraine and Russia at the beginning of the year led to a two-day embargo that caused jitters among Gazprom's European customers.

Gazprom responded to Belarus's defiance by issuing a deadline to shut off the gas.

"You shouldn't expect new year's presents from Gazprom," a company spokesman said. "Gazprom is not Santa Claus."

Mr Nevzlin, meanwhile, who has long evaded Russian attempts at extradition, arrived in the US on Sunday prompting new demands by the Russians that the Americans arrest him.

Mr Nevzlin's name has surfaced in connection with the Litvinenko case before. He met Mr Litvinenko before his poisoning and after his death said Mr Litvinenko had provided him with a dossier that "shed light on most significant aspects of the Yukos affair". The dossier's contents are not known, but Mr Nevzlin said he had handed them to British investigators.

The afternoon of Friday, Nov. 8, 1985, a co-worker at the Anti-Terrorist Alert Center in Suitland, Md., noticed Pollard wrapping a thick batch of TS/SCI materials (top secret/special compartmented information), which he said he had received by mistake. He claimed to be preparing to return them to a documents center.

A few minutes later, the co-worker saw Pollard's wife Anne drive up to the headquarters entrance. Pollard emerged carrying the envelope he had said he was returning. Something seemed amiss. On the drive home, the co-worker discussed his suspicions with his own wife, who also had a security clearance. Perhaps there was a legitimate reason for what Pollard was doing? His wife finally told him "that if he felt so strongly there was something wrong, he needed to report it."

Thus was set into motion the chain of events that led to a defiant Pollard eventually admitting to Mr. Olive that he was giving security information to an outsider.

(Predictably, he lied, first claiming the material went to a Washington journalist.) And in due course, the Pollards were arrested outside the Israeli embassy, where they had futilely sought refuge. Mr. Olive says that "to this day, few know [the co-worker's] identity."

A secondary theme of Mr. Olive's engaging book is an account of the utter failure of systems controlling the circulation of classified material. Anyone even vaguely aware of security rules will be appalled to read how Pollard systematically obtained highly-classified documents from intelligence agencies all over the D.C. area, simply by ordering them from repositories maintained by various offices, including the CIA. Pollard had no "need to know" because the bulk of these documents he had acquired had no relevance to his work.

No matter. Internal courier services brought the papers to Pollard in carload lots. He stuffed them under his desk, and then took to his car at his leisure in briefcases. In one episode related by Mr. Olive, in a single evening Pollard lugged enough documents to fill five suitcases stacked in the rear of his car. (My neighborhood branch of the D.C. public library pays more attention to what leaves the building than did the ATAC "guards.")

Each weekend, Pollard lugged the papers to an apartment Israeli agents rented at Connecticut Avenue and Van Ness Street NW, a few blocks from the embassy. High-speed copy machines worthy of a Kinko's churned through the papers -- in 18 months, more than a million pages, enough to fill a 6-by-10-foot room that is 6 feet high.

From his prison cell, an unrepentant Pollard still claims a double-cross by U.S. prosecutors who had promised not to seek a life sentence. Mr. Olive dashes this protest: The government did not recommend the term. It was meted by U.S. District Judge Aubrey E. Robinson Jr., after reading a still-secret memo from Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger detailing the grave damage Pollard caused to national security.

Mr. Olive concludes by summarizing "reforms" intended to prevent pillaging by another Pollard. What is needed, in my view, is a dollop of common sense. Pollard first tried to join CIA. A polygraph operator caught him in a blatant lie: instead of smoking marijuana "on just a few occasions," the true count was about 600 times.

CIA rejected Pollard, who immediately applied for a navy intelligence slot. When the Defense Investigative Service asked CIA for information it might have on Pollard, the agency refused, citing his "right to privacy." Superiors who contemplated revoking Pollard's clearances because of his slip-shod handling of documents and general . . . well, workplace nuttiness . . . were deterred by threats of lawsuits.

I did detect one possible legal reason for keeping Pollard locked up despite the changes in parole laws. As part of his plea agreement, he swore not to disclose any classified material he obtained while working for the navy. Further, he swore not to "provide information for purposes of publication or dissemination" unless it was reviewed by the director of naval intelligence.

To the astonishment of prosecutors and investigators, three weeks before his sentencing, Wolf Blitzer, a correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, wrote a long article stemming from a jail-cell interview with Pollard. It also ran in the Washington Post under the headline, "Pollard: Not A Bumbler, but Israel's Master Spy."

Pollard told Mr. Blitzer what he provided the Israelis: reconnaissance satellite photography of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) headquarters in Tunisia, specific capabilities of Libya's air defenses and far more. "In general," Mr. Blitzer wrote, "Pollard gave Israel the pick of U.S. intelligence about Arab and Islamic conventional and unconventional military activity, from Morocco to Pakistan and every country in between. This included both 'friendly' and 'unfriendly' Arab countries." (Mr. Blitzer now works for CNN.)

The U.S. Attorney's Office considered voiding the plea agreement and putting Pollard on trial but decided not to bother, given that the life sentence was at hand. When Pollard comes up for parole, hopefully some government lawyer will dust off the already-violated plea agreement and cite it as a reason to keep him behind bars.

Joseph C. Goulden is writing a book on Cold War intelligence. His e-mail is JosephG894@aol.com.

The accusation introduces another colourful and controversial character to a murder enquiry already featuring ex-KGB men, exiled critics of President Vladimir Putin, a mysterious Italian security consultant, and allegedly the world's first use of nuclear material as a murder weapon.

But whether the addition of Nevzlin to the list helps solve the mystery behind Litvinenko's agonising death in a London hospital on November 23 -- a killing that Litvinenko and his friends blame on the Kremlin -- is another question.

Nevzlin, who has been accused of links to several murders in Russia, was one of the key figures in the Yukos oil firm headed by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, formerly Russia's richest man and now serving an eight-year sentence in Siberia for financial crimes.

Israel has refused to extradite Nevzlin to Russia and Nevzlin, like Khodorkovsky himself, claims he is being persecuted for having challenged Putin's increasingly dominating grip on power in Russia.

According to Russian press reports, an attempt is currently underway to extradite Nevzlin from the United States, where he had gone on holiday with his family. Interfax news agency reported he was briefly detained for questioning, but released.

But Alex Goldfarb, an associate of exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky who was Litvinenko's friend and spokesman, told AFP that the allegation was "total nonsense."

"Accusing Nevzlin, the Kremlin is just trying to cover up," he said. The accusation "just raises the suspicion that the government is trying to hide its responsibility."

So far the Litvinenko investigation has focused on the roles of ex-KGB officer Andrei Lugovoi and former Soviet army officer Dmitry Kovtun.

They met with Litvinenko, a former security services agent who won asylum in Britain, at a London hotel on the day police believe he was poisoned with the deadly radioactive substance polonium-210.

British detectives spent two weeks in Moscow this month trying to unravel the complex web of evidence, which includes traces of polonium in Moscow, Germany, as well as at several locations in London.

Further muddying the waters, Lugovoi and Kovtun have not been seen in public for weeks and are themselves, according to Russian reports, undergoing checks or treatment for radiation poisoning.

Russia's prosecutors classify Kovtun as victim of an attempted murder involving polonium-210, while police in Germany suspect he may have been transporting the deadly material.

The Vremya Novostei newspaper described the linking of Nevzlin to the Litvinenko case as "rather extravagant."

"That's an amazing number," an academic who has studied the FBI's record-keeping procedures, Athan Theoharis of Marquette University, said in an interview yesterday. "These are very sensitive investigations. ... They could be called to account for whether they are monitoring reporters. These are records that should be handled very well."

Over the past decade, the FBI has waged an epic struggle to computerize and automate its records systems. The agency abandoned a $170 million "Virtual Case File" project last year after years of Congressional hearings and critical evaluations led to the conclusion that the system would never be implemented successfully.

One frequent critic of government database programs, Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union, said that record makes it understandable that a substantial proportion of the leak files would be mislaid.

Despite contacting every school in the borough, the Recorder received no responses. We have therefore been forced to submit an application for the details under the Freedom of Information Act - the response to which will be due on Tuesday, January 23.

The revelations may panic parents worried about the tapes falling into the wrong hands.

Cllr Jeanne Alexander, executive member for children's services, admitted she was unaware of the situation, but said the decision was each school's alone to take.

She said: "It was the place where bullying happened when I was school, and schools have tried all sorts.

"It's down to the heads and governing bodies - our headteachers are sensible people. They wouldn't do this unless there was a problem. There must be a reason for it. CCTV is not cheap. Our schools are sensible and money is so tight.

"Also, pupils often break pipes and cause floods and they put toilet paper in the sinks.

"I think it's going to help. We have to take strong action on bullying.

"There'll be parent governors on the governing body so they should be keeping the other parents informed."

A Barking and Dagenham Council spokesman added: "We do have CCTV in certain school toilets, but we won't specify which schools for obvious reasons - we don't advertise the fact.

"But they are not in the cubicles and pupils will not be filmed in the cubicles.

"They are in various positions facing the wash basin areas.

"There's no secrecy around the cameras - most pupils know because it's for their own safety.

"We have them in primary and secondary schools. We don't want to say how many of the schools they're in. They're there for the safety and security of both pupils and staff.

"We're increasing what schools we have CCTV in. Eventually we want to have them in most schools.

Police Capt. Steve Cercone said horrified guests were eating breakfast in the atrium at the time, and a number of witnesses saw Sanford fall from somewhere between the 9th and 12th floors.

"I'm at a loss for words," said Sanford's friend and business associate, Monterey attorney Shawn Mills. "Paul really had his fingers in a lot of different pies. He was from the East Coast, and I used to call him our 'West Coast Kennedy.'"

In addition to running his criminal defense practice in Capitola, Sanford was active in community organizations and hosted several independent radio shows in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties.

For several years, he was programs supervisor at the Volunteer Center in Santa Cruz and a teacher at the Monterey College of Law, where Mills said Sanford was an alumnus who mentored many students.

Sanford recently purchased his mother's home in Pebble Beach, and Mills said his friend planned to retire there one day.

Sanford was also active in the national arena. He appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004 beside Elk Grove resident Michael Newdow when he argued unsuccessfully that the words "under God" should be stricken from the Pledge of Allegiance.



The White House incident sparked controversy after Beltway bloggers incorrectly described Sanford as a reporter for the Air America radio network. At the time, he was associated with Watsonville radio station KOMY, an Air America affiliate, and Sanford told reporters he never claimed to work for Air America.

Sanford eventually filed suit against station owner Michael Zwerling after Zwerling was reported as saying Sanford had not been authorized to represent the station as a reporter, a statement Sanford refuted.

Mills represented Sanford in that suit, which was scheduled to begin in Santa Cruz County Superior Court in February. Mills said he did not know if the case will continue after Sanford's sudden death.

Although the dispute with Zwerling caused Sanford a great deal of stress at the time, Mills said his friend was feeling fine about it and believed he would soon be vindicated in court.

Sanford and Mills also have hosted the "Paul and Shawn Show" on Saturdays at Seaside radio station KRXA, where they covered last fall's election and interviewed former Salinas mayor and now Assemblywoman Anna Caballero, Pacific Grove Mayor Dan Cort and others.

In 2002, Sanford inadvertently found himself at the center of a controversy in Santa Cruz County when his independent election fundraising was characterized in the Santa Cruz Sentinel as last-minute "developer" contributions on behalf of supervisor candidate Mark Primack. Primack lost to incumbent Mardi Wormhoudt by fewer than 600 votes.

Friends and associates expressed disbelief at the news of Sanford's death and that it was ruled a suicide, saying Sanford seemed happy and had made many plans for this week and in coming months. Mills said he and Sanford recently decided to open a shared law office to serve Monterey and Santa Cruz counties, something Sanford was looking forward to doing.

He and Sanford spoke on the phone "around four or five times a day," Mills said, and the two had just spoken on Thursday, "tweaking a marketing plan" for their new law practice before Mills went out of town for the Christmas holiday.

"I just don't know what happened since Thursday. There was nothing on the horizon there to know this was going to happen," Mills said. "We were going to get together this week."

Mills said he had spoken to Sanford's wife, Paula, and that she also was in shock. He said Sanford, a father of two, was a devoted family man.

"This is a horrible thing for his family. He would never have intentionally put his family through that trauma. Something's not right, it doesn't make sense."

Police said that before Sanford fell, hotel housekeepers saw him pacing the hallway of an upper floor. Cercone said Sanford's car was parked next to the hotel, and he was not checked in as a guest.

Police declined to state exactly why they ruled the case a suicide.

Mills said he and Sanford often met at Chili's restaurant next to Embassy Suites Hotel Monterey Bay because the KRXA studio was nearby.

Mills said Sanford should be remembered for his volunteer work in the local community. "People don't like to work for free, and Paul worked for ideology. He didn't like the attention a lot. The attention he's going to get now would upset him."