Exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky employed Litvinenko and Lugovoy

After Litvinenko blamed Putin for poisoning him from his death bed, many Western commentators were inclined to accept the ex-FSB agent's claim at face value. They reasoned that Litvinenko was a harsh critic of the Kremlin and he was investigating the murder of the opposition journalist Anna Politovskaya, so what else did we need to know?

As it turns out, there is a lot that remains puzzling about this case, starting with the trail of radiation British and German investigators have uncovered. Rather than joining the rush to judgment, Slate writer and independent blogger Edward Jay Epstein has done the pundit class a great service, by taking a closer look at the forensic evidence:

According to the murder theory, the assassin would have had to sprinkle the polonium onto Litvinenko's food at the earliest contaminated location and Litvinenko himself would have contaminated the subsequent locations with low-level traces of Polonium 210 that oozed out of his body. The problem here is that Scaramella got contaminated at Itsu Sushi-- the only place he met with Litvinenko before he was hospitalized-- which, according to medical experts, could have only came from his exposure to a primary source (and not Litvinenko's secondary oozings), yet the strength of the Polonium 210 at the Millennium Hotel, which Litvinenko visited before going to the Itsu Sushi, reportedly was too strong to have come from Litvinenko's excretions (Daily UK Telegraph December 1,2006). If so, the Polonium 210 container--presumably a vial or envelope-- was present at two of the locations that Litvinenko visited. Since Litvinenko was at both locations, and Scaramella was not, he would be carrier of the container of Polonium 210.

In addition, the date at the headquarters of Erinys may have been well before the contamination of the sushi bar and the hotel. According to Andrei Lugovoy, the ex-KGB associate whom he met with at the Millennium Hotel, "Alexander Litvinenko, my business partner Dmitry Kovtun and I were in London on October 17 at a meeting in the office of (private security company) Erinys." Since traces of Polonium 210 cannot be precisely dated, the contamination of those offices could have occurred two weeks before Litvinenko was poisoned. If so, either Litvinenko or his associates in this unknown business had a container of Polonium 210 in mid-October.

The accident hypothesis - which also has problems - would explain the radiation from a primary source being found at two locations, as well as the radiation traces that predated Litvinenko's poisoning at the Eryns offices and the British Airlines plane. In this alternative theory, the radiation came from a vial of smuggled Polonium 210, which suffered undetectable damage or some spillage from transferring it from one vial to another. The leakage onto Litvinenko's clothing may have occurred as early as October (accounting for the undated traces in offices and planes). Then, according to the accident hypothesis, some particles would have been ingested by Litvinenko, his wife Marina, and Scaramella.

Chechen separatist spokesman Ahkmed Zakayev (left) at Litvinenko's funeral

To date, most Western commentators have shown little interest in the possibility that Litvinenko may have been smuggling polonium, even after details emerged about his deathbed conversion to Islam and his relationship with Chechen separatist leader Ahkmed Zakayev. Russian prosecutors have accused Mr. Zakayev of fundraising for the late Chechen terrorist Shamil Basayev, the mastermind behind the Beslan school massacre. Litvinenko also worked for Boris Berezovsky, the exiled oligarch whose former company AvtoVAZ has witnessed over 500 contract murders since 1992. Several weeks before his death, Litvinenko reportedly travelled to Israel to meet with another exiled oligarch, Leonid Nevzlin, who is wanted in Russia for ordering contract killings while running YUKOS. Last summer both Berezovsky and Nevzlin were facing the threat of being extradited back to Russia.

While many pundits have already made up their minds that only a spy service like Russia's FSB could have obtained that much polonium, perhaps it is time to consider the possibility that what has been described as "the world's first act of nuclear terrorism" was a botched smuggling operation rather than an assassination. In many respects, the former scenario is more frightening than the latter, because while governments can be deterred, many terrorists seeking nuclear material have proclaimed that they would welcome death for the sake of Allah. For many Westerners, imagining a revival of the familiar Cold War is preferable to facing the unknown.

UPDATE 12/14/06: Today the Washington Post considers the possibility that this was a criminal act rather than a state-sponsored radiological attack, and former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, writing for National Review Online, links to Edward Jay Epstein's Slate article on this topic.