alice wonderland
Regular readers will have noticed that most of my pieces on the Salisbury poisoning have been dedicated to showing the implausibility of the official narrative, rather than attempting to come up with my own theory of what took place. I am merely debunking a conspiracy theory, not attempting my own.

There are two reasons for this. The first is that there are simply too many unknowns for me to have any confidence in any theory I could advance. The second is that despite the lack of facts available to make an all-encompassing theory, what is evident is that the official story did not happen. If it had happened, it would stack up and make sense. But it doesn't and it can't. Reality simply won't allow it. And so - for what it's worth - I have preferred to devote time on the case to exposing the flaws in the official myth, possibly in the hope that someone with more clout than the likes of me will pick it up and take it further.

In my last piece, I set out why the door handle theory is implausible. But I want to now take this a bit further. As I pointed out in that piece, because it was known that Mr Bailey visited Mr Skripal's house by 9th March at the latest (this was when that information was made public), and because The Maltings as the place of his poisoning had been ruled out, the source of Mr Bailey's poisoning can only have been at the house - according to investigators that is. And so the house should have been locked down, with forensic experts busy taking swabs from top to bottom, and inside out, from the moment it was known he had been there. Which would of course have included the door and door handle.

And yet, to the best of my knowledge, the first swabs at the door and the door handle were not taken until 22nd March - probably more than two weeks after it was known that Mr Bailey had been there. I say this on the basis of this report in The Mirror, on 24th March, which stated the following:
"On Thursday [22nd] forensics teams at Mr Skripal's home were spotted with a checklist that outlined key areas to be swabbed for evidence."
And also on the basis of a report in The Mail, on 22nd March, which has a couple of images captioned:
"Investigators work in the garden of Sergei Skripal's house in Salisbury. A taped checklist can be seen on the back of one of the workers."

and

"Investigators in breathing apparatus were seen in Mr Skripal's back garden today."
So both reports suggest that 22nd March was the day that a forensics team was first at the house. Can we be sure that this is so? I think so. Had swabs been taken before this date, according to the official narrative high concentrations of nerve agent of a "high purity" would have been discovered there, and the search for the location of the poisoning would have ended. Yet this was not the case, and it was only on 28th March when the door handle as the location of the poisoning was made official.

Now, in my previous piece I stated that "the forensics team doing this [i.e. taking the swabs on 22nd March] was the OPCW, and it was the first time that the door handle had been a focus." However, I now think this is not the case, as the forensic teams referred to in both The Mirror and The Mail reports appear to be British. The Mail refers to them as "military and anti-terror experts", which would rule out the OPCW, and certainly neither report mentions the OPCW being there, which you'd think they would if this were the case. Yet the curious thing about this is that the OPCW was in Salisbury from 21st to 23rd March on a full deployment where, amongst other things, they were said to have taken samples from various locations. In fact, here is how the OPCW described it in their summary report, which was released on 12th April:
"The team was able to conduct on-site sampling of environmental samples under full chain of custody at sites identified as possible hot-spots of residual contamination [my emphasis]."
But let's suppose, for sake of argument, that the chaps in the HazMats on 22nd March from The Mirror and Mail reports were from the OPCW. This itself would raise a number of questions:
Firstly, how could the door handle have been identified as a possible hot-spot for the OPCW to examine if British forensics had not already swabbed it?

Secondly, to flip that question over, if it had been identified as a potential hotspot, why was it not swabbed by a British forensics team before the OPCW arrived?

Thirdly, if it had not been swabbed by a Britain forensics team, but was still identified as a potential hotspot, how exactly was this identification made? Was it because it was known that Mr Bailey had been there? If so, why hadn't British forensics swabbed it before the OPCW arrived? Was it the infamous door handle manual? If so, again why was it not swabbed before?
But as I say, I'm convinced from The Mirror and Mail reports that the chaps they show in the HazMats on 22nd March were British. If this is the case, it actually raises even more crucial questions:
Firstly, the OPCW says that they took samples at sites identified as possible hot-spots, but nowhere in their summary report do they identify where these locations were. Was the front door handle of Mr Skripal's house one of them?

Secondly, if so, on what day did the OPCW take their samples? Was it on 21st, 22nd, or 23rd March, i.e. the day before, the same day, or the day after British forensics took their samples?
This all seems mighty odd to me. My understanding was that the OPCW came to take samples for analysis from the same locations that British forensics had already taken them from, so that they could confirm or rebut what the UK Government and investigators were saying. And yet - and do please correct me if I've got this wrong - British investigators, despite knowing from 9th March at the latest that Mr Bailey had been to the house, appear to have only taken swabs there on 22nd March - that is, during the OPCW's deployment. Is that not curious?

Indeed it is. Yet - cried Alice - it gets curiouser and curiouser. As our regular commenter, Liane, has pointed out, the statement given by the OPCW's Director-General, Ahmet Üzümcü, to the Executive Council, on 4th April, only adds to the confusion:
"The OPCW experts visited the locations where two of the victims were reportedly exposed to a toxic chemical and collected several environmental samples. The team also took biomedical samples from these two victims, as well as from a third individual, a police officer reportedly exposed to a toxic chemical [my emphasis]."
Two of the victims? But what about the third? The police officer? Was he not exposed to the toxic chemical at that same location - the door handle, presumably? If so, why is he not mentioned as one of the victims? If not, where was he exposed to it?

I don't know the answers to these questions. I think, however, I know enough to say that something ain't quite right.