Russian security service 'led poison plot' - Times Online

[applegrove]

Russian security service 'led poison plot'
Stewart Tendler, Michael Evans and Daniel McGrory
The Times
December 05, 2006

*'Former agents killed Litvinenko'
*Kremlin warns of harm to relations

"Intelligence services in Britain are convinced that the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko was authorised by the Russian Federal Security Service.

Security sources have told The Times that the FSB orchestrated a “highly sophisticated plot” and was likely to have used some of its former agents to carry out the operation on the streets of London.

“We know how the FSB operates abroad and, based on the circumstances behind the death of Mr Litvinenko, the FSB has to be the prime suspect,” a source said yesterday.

The involvement of a former FSB officer made it easier to lure Mr Litvinenko to meetings at various locations and to distance its bosses in the Kremlin from being directly implicated in the plot.

............SNIP"
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2487000,00.html

[ixion]

1. but why use something so exotic?

it doesn't make any sense from a covert perspective.

[applegrove]

2. Fear. The man's internal organs were blistering from the inside for

three weeks. That is what they suggest in the article.

[TheWraith]

3. That's what I've been thinking for days.

Assuming that the Russians did this, there's one good reason for using something so exotic and obvious: fear. It guarantees a media spectacle, and when/if the perps get away with it, it will be in essence a grand sweeping strike at every single dissident, expatriate, and nosy reporter. A way of saying "We can kill anyone, anywhere, at any time. We can murder someone in the full glare of the international media, and get away with it. Don't think we can't get you."

[applegrove]

4. Anyone who writes about the Russian oligopoly & Russian Crime boses

were already afraid of being targeted or killed. Sometimes business people have lost their investment (like a hotel) to thugs who just take it over and claim it as theirs. Russia is a mess. I don't know if Putin is helping to stop crime and the crime bosses or not. But this does look like it had to be done by those who have control over reactors. Then again it may be the crime bosses trying to get rid of Putin and ruining his career.

What a bunch of snakes!