December 11, 2006 (the date of publication in Russian)

Konstantin Cheremnykh

ECOTERROR: INTOXICATION WITH FEAR

Sectarian logic behind London assassination

The death of retired FSB Lt. Col. Alexander Litvinenko – as proven by today, resulting from intoxication with a polonium isotope – remains in the focus of global and Russian media. Though mass media have proposed a lot of interpretations of the lethal incident, numerous observers, analysts, specialists in radioactive substances have not yet answered a number of crucial questions: on the origin of the poison; on the motives of choice of such kind of a toxic agent; and, finally, on the substantiation of costs of purchase and delivery of the fatal substance, estimated in 30 million US dollars. Moreover, most of the coverage does not clarify but rather adds more uncertainty in these issues. Meanwhile, any action – political, economic, and criminal – is judged upon its effect. The sacramental question: quo prodest? – suggests an analysis of a number of collisions – political, structural and merely personal – in order to approach the central subject: identification of the actor and the background of his motives.

 

A JOKER AS A HERO

A day before the death of Lt.Col. Alexander Litvinenko, an observer of Kommersant Daily reminded the reader and the Russian authorities about the infamous case of Georgy Gongadze's assassination in Ukraine. It is well known that this criminal case provoked the first wave of the political crisis in Kiev which eventually resulted in an involuntary resignation of President Leonid Kuchma.

Kommersant Daily recently belonged to Boris Berezovsky, the person whose interests Mr. Litvinenko had been pursuing for years, especially in his detailed writings on Russian special services, where truth was interwoven with suggestions, and suggestions with fantasies. The parallel, drawn by this paper, forces two opposite affected sides into a simplistic interpretation of their own.

In case defector Litvinenko is the Russian version of Gongadze, then the reason for his extermination is to shake up and gradually discredit the Russian power. Therefore, the part of the audience which sincerely perceives the ex-oligarch as the incarnation of liberty and justice, is supposed to view the incident as a new proof of a sophisticated plan of physical elimination of key opposition figures for the purpose of terrifying the rest; those who sympathize with Vladimir Putin, on the contrary, should regard the same incident as a "ritual" victimization for the purpose of discrediting the Russian state.

Before making judgements over vicious forces, let us make clear to what extent this parallel is adequate.

Even some liberal Ukrainian journalists admit that the case of Gongadze not just surfaced at a convenient political moment, but rather had been thoroughly prepared, in order to be involved in the political context most efficiently. In this case, still reaping its political crops, the political scenario involved distribution of roles, being supplied with a perfect cast of actors: one hero, Gongadze himself, serving as an embodiment of romantic youth, bringing his life to the universal altar of freedom of press; another hero, a repentant security serviceman, wiretapping sensitive talks of top officials with special equipment (quite obviously, the two roles could not be combined in one person); and the weak, desperate and therefore cruel corrupted dictator, whom Hero No.2 exposes of an excessively brutal railroad of Hero No.1. The mise en scene had been prepared for months; for this time, a second-rate journalist, one of the many, emerged as an enfant terrible of the corrupted regime; for the same period of time, the munitions of explosive were accumulated quantum satis – and finally, the operational guns, hung on the wall in the first act of Chekhov's play, concertedly fired in the scene of culmination.

In the case of Alexander Litvinenko, we don't see any signs of a thoroughly outlined scenario. His death was not preceded with an intended inflation of his image to a large-scale and symbolic dimension. Until the first news of his poisoning, he remained who he was – one of many defectors, with a far from perfect biography. His image did not correspond with the traditional pattern of an innocent victim; he had not acquired any halo of "democratic sanctity" like Galina Starovoitova or Anna Politkovskaya. The small portion of the Russian and global audience which was informed of his existence and was acquainted with his writings, perceived him rather ambiguously, and that was natural: neither an operative of an elimination squad (in accordance with his own confession), nor a defecting intelligence servicemen, regardless from the motives, does not fit into the role of a cult hero.

New details of his image, surfacing days after his death, were rather tragicomic. On the background of a courageous Gongadze, founder of a unique anti-bureaucratic mass medium, a person featuring himself before the British (!) flag with a Scottish (!) forage cap on and a Chechen (!) sabre in his hand, looked rather like a joker.

Litvinenko's decision to convert into Islam, shortly before the mysterious poisoning, was splitting the image even more. The confused fraud of close friends and relatives, first trying to deny the very fact of conversion and then hurrying with its muddled justification, only added uncertainty to the features of the supposed victim of Kremlin's despotism.

Even the photo on the deathbed, mastered – as well as well as probably the text of an anti-Kremlin testament – by Bell Pottinger, a company whose permanent client was ex-oligarch Boris Berezovsky, could not improve the staging, if it existed at all. The separation of the funeral procession, as well as the repast, into two teams – religious and secular, created an impression of an amateur performance, in which none of the actors could even fit into his emploi. This confusion among the friends, as well as the confusion among haters, indicates that we are dealing with not a classical scenario of sacrifice, which is usually a product of an unofficial decision of quite official state bodies of one country which intends to undermine another. Meanwhile, the interpretation in a standard framework, though seemingly relevant, is actually distracting the audience from really serious dramaturgy.

 

SKELETONS IN THE ISRAELI CUPBOARD

The readers of Alexander Litvinenko's conspiro-mythological texts, also those belonging to journalist and intelligence circles of Britain, have definitely paid attention to his description of KGB's methods of elimination of unwanted persons by poisoning. The former lieutenant colonel demonstrated this knowledge in particular contexts, such as the explanation of a mysterious malady which struck Ivan Rybkin, former Berezovsky's boss in the National Security Council of Russia, during his unofficial business trip to Kiev on the eve of the 2004 elections of the Russian President. Now, a specialist in poisons dies from poisoning. Before that, he converts into Islam, in order to be declared a Shahid. Not only a sympathizer of Kremlin but an independent journalist could raise a question of a suicide, planned months before. This hypothesis quite corresponds with the hero-joker's psychopathic character. In case he considered himself an exceptional person, he could imagine – even though quite baselessly – that his voluntary decease, disguised as assassination, would trigger a desired psychological shock in Russia, and cure the desperate opposition from paralysis of will.

The mise en scene, however, involved some additional characters, later hyped from secondary into prior in the process of investigation, both British (Scotland Yard) and German (BKA).

These characters represented Russian business circles with foreign interests, seeking contracts in London with Mr. Litvinenko's assistance. And Mr. Litvinenko did assist them, repeatedly in October, and even on the day when he felt bad, November 1, he was still planning a business date for the next day, which he was forced to cancel.

A human being, and a psychopathic person in particular, if planning a suicide, would engage himself or herself with anything but business arrangements. On the other hand, in case a person exaggerates his possibilities, that is not necessary a sign of inadequate self-appraisal. Already within the first week after the lieutenant colonel's death, it was found out that he was involved in a very serious collision of business interests, or at least in related sensitive information.

Moskovsky Komsomolets, a popular daily tabloid, was the first to suggest that the lieutenant colonel could be poisoned not in the UK but in another state which he visited weeks before. This peculiar state was Israel, where Mr. Litvinenko traveled in order to meet with Leonid Nevzlin, ex-major shareholder of Yukos Oil. Leonid Nevzlin, one of most bitter enemies of Kremlin, claimed that Litvinenko conveyed to him some confidential knowledge concerning the division of the corporation's assets.

MK's risky hypothesis encountered indignant remarks in British press. Days later, the same theory surfaced in Russian papers with a more serious reputation. In addition, doctorant Yulia Svetlichnaya, the owner of the odd photo of Mr. Litvinenko with a sabre, reported that Litvinenko had offered her a deal in blackmail of certain Kremlin-loyal business figures, thus confirming that the ex-counter-gangster operative possessed information far exceeding his modest rank, and was going to use it most pragmatically.

Days after those revelations, a team of security servicemen from Israel – where refugees from Russia are also treated with double suspicion – descended upon London. Israeli servicemen were emphasizing that their interest is restricted with anti-terrorist aspects of the problem; in case somebody, even speculatively, suggests the ex-KGB officer's connections with Al Qaeda, this version should be completely excluded. Meanwhile, the British counterparts were similarly interested in these negotiations, as they could not completely neglect Moskovsky Komsomolets' version. After all, Israel's nuclear technologies and particularly isotopes is a Baghdad mystery: until recently, this country did not confess of possessing nuclear weapons, though the Dimona reactor was an open secret. Most alarming – both for the British and Israeli services – was recent evidence of faulty guarding of the Israeli nuclear object, as well as information about its employees.

The version of poisoning on the territory of Israel was based exceptionally on the Yukos case. It is true that the fate of some assets of the now defunct corporation is a matter of importance for the Russian leadership – but not only. A number of mass media had mentioned that after the arrest of Yukos's founder and former president Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the right for inheriting his personal share in Yukos became a subject of controversy between his closest partner, Leonid Nevzlin, and Khodorkovsky's high-positioned patrons in international corporations, including Baron Nathaniel Rothschild V. In case Mr. Litvinenko's sensitive information represented danger for one of the sides of this brawl, its owner could get into personal trouble. The contest for Yukos's posterity, affecting extremely delicate political matters and hardly resolvable within the framework of international law, involved sufficiently high stakes to substantiate an exotic method of "neutralization” and relevant investments.

Still, such a kind of scenario is hardly feasible for both political and merely psychological reasons. With his reputation of an adventurer, being also in the focus of another investigation over financial wrongdoings of Bank Hapoalim's clients in Israel and Spain, Mr. Nevzlin is too much interested in improving his image in Israel and internationally to get involved in such a risky business, with use of substance leaving so visible traces. In addition, Khodorkovsky's old partner would hardly allow himself a luxury of elimination of one of his few links with the London emigration – which was Litvinenko.

A member of the top financial family, deeply rooted in Britain for generations, is even more unlikely to appreciate a spread of radioactive clouds above the tiny and cozy Britain, where the family owns its major real estates. After all, the isotope was detected not in some dirty port town but in a most prestigious quarter of London, a home for most influential businessmen and financial tycoons.

 

THE NEUROTIC OUTLAWS

How could an ordinary lieutenant colonel, with a background of everyday counter-gangster operative work, and no domestic experience in financial scrutinies or economic counterintelligence, acquire especially sensitive information on Russian oligarchs and their doubtful deals? Even sincere sympathizers of Russian human right circles and involuntary refugees have got too many questions to ex-oligarch Boris Berezovsky – who may have really collected excessive knowledge on top Russian business figures, along with personal envy towards the luckier oligarchs who – unlike him – have a possibility to enjoy political recognition and business prospects both in Moscow and London.

Boris Berezovsky's appetite for a share in gold mining in a remote and unstable Kyrghyzstan can hardly be interpreted otherwise as a "choice of despair". During the past five years, every attempt of the ex-oligarch to purchase a proprietary or political stake in Russia or Ukraine have turned a scandal with a zero profit, or miserable losses.

In case political and economic investments don't bring any incomes, could an investment in "kompromat" be more lucrative – especially in case this "kompromat" is supposed to surface in the midst of public excitement over a political death, ascribed to the infernal Lubyanka, or more – to a joint venture of the infernal Lubyanka with top Russian private interests?

Just a year ago, this suggestion could be viewed quite seriously. However, for this period of time Boris Berezovsky managed to completely undermine his reputation with too careless statements over his own effort of preparing a coup d'etat in Moscow, as well as with his foreign trips under the guise of "Elenin", a reference to the leader of Russian Bolsheviks. Such kinds of phantasies, even subconsciously, arouse anxiety not only among law enforcement officials but also among neighbors in London's Mayfaire.

Despite a spectacular reduction of personal fortune, not speaking of incalculable missed profit in his exile, Boris Berezovsky was still enough wealthy to purchase exotic radioactive substance. Still, the exiled oligarch hardly "feels like a suicide". It is not in his ingenious nature.

After Litvinenko's death, we don't see Berezovsky with a mocking mask of Vladimir Putin pulled upon his face, or with a revolutionary passport. His today's behavior is not eccentric but exceptionally servile to British authorities, and spectacularly anxious. His reputation has too many times raised questions in the country which so generously granted him political asylum. For instance, when a director of a company named Rosvzryvcenter (Russian Center of Explosives) confesses of having received a business proposal from the London-based refugee, or when Ukrainian police discovers a cargo of explosive in a car, parked by Berezovsky's proven contact at the office of the major political party, the heavy charges of arranging expolsion in Moscow houses in 1999, brought by Berezovsky against Putin and multiplied through Litvinenko's books, sound more and more ambiguous: who would tell us? The background of eccentric affairs which the ex-oligarch used to stage in his old manner of string-pulling, has turned against him nowadays, while his obviously excessive expenses for Bell Pottinger's PR services reflect a really desperate effort of face-saving.

Was he really interested in the whole hullabaloo? One quote from the forum of Scotsman magazine's website well illustrates how the dissident oligarch is viewed by the British vox populi, and particularly by the owners of the now devaluated mansions of the isotope-contaminated and police-raided, once quiet and cozy Mayfaire:

We should as Mr Boris Berezovsky (et al) to fuck off and go live in Israel where he has automatic right of residence. All these rich Russians have done for us is to push up house prices in London and spend their cash on Bond Street. In return we have radio-active poisoning in London!!!!!!

This sudden outbreak of nearly racist "petty bourgeois" despair reflects physical pain from the blow, delivered by a terrorist boomerang – which is seen by an increasing portion of the British population as a deserved vengeance. Though unexpected, the isotope blow, as well as the recent bomb in the Heathrow airport, was pretty predictable. The quiet and cozy England had served for too many decades as a safe haven for all kinds of eccentric outlaws, and now, its natives have to pay a heavy price.

For the referred vox populi, a Russian, Ukrainian, or Chechen origin of a suspiciously rich dissident does not make any difference: all of them should be kicked out from mother Albion. Could Berezovsky, Litvinenko and Zakayev foresee this outbreak of anti-immigrant sentiment? They certainly did. The hatred from neighbors was the back side of the Damocles sword of extradition to Russia – which British officials could once undertake just for populist reasons.

From this standpoint, let's again return to the issue of the reasons for Alexander Litvinenko's conversion into Islam. As we have figured out, he was no Shahid; days before his death, he was preparing not to a trip to the Heavens – but possibly for a travel to a safer place, along with his friends in disgrace.

The fears of possible extradition could not be cured by means of a dirty bomb. A much more rational option was flight to a third country – definitely a cozy one, definitely on a picturesque coastline, definitely with a possibility to continue the same kind of semi-political, semi-economic affairs; a place safer than England, where political stability is independent from any anti-war or anti-immigrant vox populi.

From the rather broad array of options, mostly concentrated in the Middle East, an adventurer personality like Berezovsky would most probably choose Qatar. The country is quiet, cozy, with best accomodations in avail, as well as prospects of business – with assistance of Mideast-involved companies like Erinys, to which Litvinenko introduced the two secondary business characters from Russia. The highest advantage of precisely this country of the

Persian Gulf is the exceptionally cold relations between its leadership in Russia. Two years ago, this very Emirate was shaken with the explosion in the car of Chechnya's politician and Islamic ideologue Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, and the following arrest of two Russian servicemen.

On this cozy coastline of the Gulf, Ahmed Zakayev would become a most honored guest of the local intellectual community, especially by Shaikh al Qaradawi, who had signed a formidable fetwa denouncing Vladimir Putin for his policy in Chechnya. In his turn, Alexander Litvinenko would serve as a symbol of the attractive power of the Quran, while Boris Berezovsky, even without conversion, would find an unofficial but lucrative job in the Sheikh's numerous media projects. Add the absolute immunity from the nasty FSB, the superstitious Mossad, and the hyperactive Scotland Yard. Just live and enjoy new fame under the new pseudonym of Al Elenin, for instance.

The whole trio could be dreaming – and was certainly dreaming – of starting a new life with the same comfort, an even higher recognition, and a definite sympathy from international political interests, determined to undermine Russia's policy in the Gulf. Such kind of a project was most attractive. With Litvinenko's death, it was doomed. Berezovsky lost not just a key partner but also a most devoted friend, one of the few persons he could rely upon. Now, he has to stay in the same Britain, but in a new role which is essentially miserable, regardless from hardly sincere sympathy from a few top officials. Losing political and business prospects in the whole post-Soviet territory and not only; losing particular contracts with "international security business", losing sympathy from neighbors, Boris Berezovsky became an ordinary refugee, like the half-forgotten Vladimir Bukovsky. Should he follow Bukovsky's example and try to resume scientific studies in his own original specialization in meteorology? In any case, the wind is blowing in a direction unfavorable for him. Exposed to any winds, he is standing before the cameras, each of his words being recorded, each of his phone talks thoroughly monitored. Shadowy business? Secret "kompromat" utilities? A new life? Forget all this. That is now impossible – for a long while, if not forever.

 

A COLOMBIAN WATCHDOG

The efforts of the imagemaking firm, servicing not only Berezovsky but also the Windsors, remarkably coincide today with the direction of Scotland Yard's logic, in the pursuit of the "Russian trace" personified by a bunch of little-known businessmen with a too doubtful reputation to have access to radioactive substances in Russia – at least today, and too questionable motives for a high risk, also for their own health. Visiting offices of three British security companies just in order to leave radioactive traces there? What for? For the sake of Kremlin's safety from Litvinenko's books, long vanished in the ocean of conspirological paperback literature? Even a TV thriller with such a plot would be ridiculed.

The appearance of Russian dealers, excessively highlighted in international media, is not suspicious: it is banal. These mediocre personalities with elusive eyes, with their mediocre attempts to avoid interrogation behind the doors of a local ambulance, are far from a Shahid-like or even an adventurer-like pattern. The evidence is falling apart; in a recent report, The Independent's authors admit that in case the radiological findings are authentic, Litvinenko seems to have been intoxicated with the same substance not once but twice, first in Millennium Mayfaire hotel, and then in the sushi bar – which, for some reason, is a figure of neglect in Scotland Yard's investigation.

Meanwhile, the first suspicions of the British police had fallen not upon the second-rate Russian dealers but upon the person with whom Litvinenko met in the sushi bar, a self-styled professor with a bearing of an officer and a glare of a hypnotizer. It is noteworthy that those suspicions were originally raised by Litvinenko himself, before intervention from Bell Pottinger. The unfortunate Russian defector perceived the Italian – whom he was well acquainted with – with an odd mixture of mistrust and fear.

The Italian's behavior raised questions among British reporters as well. He did not order anything in the sushi bar, later testifying that he had had lunch in a Pizza Hut. "Very strange for a Neapolitan", commented Nick Pisa, a British author of Italian origin. In the professor's speech, one couldn't also discern a bit of Neapolitan accent.

In the original test, the Italian guest was not found contaminated with radioactive substance. In a few days, repeatedly arriving in London, this person, still, was found contaminated. That was not the only difference. At his second arrival, he was treated in London, as he said, "as if I were the Prince of Wales". The professor seems to have uttered some magic word which could avert suspicions and simultaneously open high doors.

The Italian guest did not seem nervous over the traces of radioactivity, found in his organism. This personality does not look like fearing nuclear contamination – unlike his numerous iodeological parish to which he regularly conveys the horror of environmental pollution.

Mario Scaramella, a lawyer by education, is professed in environmentalist preaching. However, in Italy he is more known as a member of the scandalous "Mitrokhin Commission", a special body named after a deceased Russian defector to Britain.

The commission, until being closed in February 2006, was focused on connections between top figures of Italy's Socialist Party with former KGB officers. As Scaramella admits today, he was tasked to monitor financial transactions of companies and funds, associated with the party – under formal supervision of the Commission's chair, Forza Italia senator Paolo Guzzanti, and ostensibly in the interests of Sylvio Berlusconi, in whose Prime Minister's term the special watchdog was established.

In 2004, however, Mario Scaramella introduced himself to La Repubblica's author as an expert in security issues, with a background of training in Britain, France, and Belgium. He boasted that years before, he acquired an invitation to work in Colombia in the interests of the CIA, in order to "disclose the links between Russian spies and drug barons". As Daily Mail's authors found out, Mr. Scaramella was really employed as a scientist with two universities of Bogota since 1996, and later taught at the University of San Jose, California. His closest colleague named Pericles Papadopoulos, who he says has introduced him to the Mitrokhin Commission, is employed with the same internationally respected high school. This Dr. Papadopoulos, according to Scaramella, has also inherited the top position in an international environment control institution, earlier chaired by Scaramella himself. This institution, founded in 1997 with support from the University of Naples, convened its first conference in San Francisco, and the third one in Bogota, Colombia.

In Naples, this international institution is headquartered, for some reason, in the Fucino Space Center, enjoying technologies of satellite surveillance "for monitoring environmental crime in Southern and Eastern Europe". In San Francisco, the same institution is running a Special Research and Monitoring Center.

The institution is dubbed ECPP, Environmental Crime Prevention Program. According to its ambitious charter, the certificate of its member provides a right to participate as an observer at all kinds of international forums, under the auspices of the United Nations, OSCE et al.

In their report in Mail on Sunday, Nick Pisa and Glen Owen report that Mario Scaramella chaired the powerful but little known international network between 2000 and 2002. This information is hard to be verified, as ECPP's website is presently defunct.

Still, a number of copies from ECPP's sit are available in the Net. In particular, the documents of the first conference, where Mario Scaramella is already identified as President, assisted by two Vice Presidents: Mr. Nandimithra Ekanayake, Ecology Minister of Shri Lanka, and Josef Liscak, Justice Minister of Slovakia. In the following years, top staff was recruited from governments of countries ranging from Angola to Western Samoa. The scope of the international watchdog's activities was really global. Its observers were greeted by renowned environment-concerned public from the London Convention, as well as by OSCE's criminologists, focused on money laundering and "specific features of suicidal terror". Even the World Intellectual Property Organization accepted ECPP as an associate member along with the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries.

The relatively rare name of Pericles Papadopoulos may be found on a number of German business websites. The mysterious Greek dealer is involved in import of fruits to Eastern Germany, also being a shareholder of a shipyard in Fort Worth, Texas. The combination of business interests may raise a question whether the institution, designed for monitoring drug trade, could be engaged with similar business, as well as in delivery of weaponry to territories of permanent conflict. What else is common for such distant territories as Colombia and Shri Lanka? At least, the two countries are far from champions of environmental pollution.

Still, professor Scaramella is able to detect an environmental crime even in a neighbor pool. He seriously boasted that his surveillance technique allowed to discover a spot of pollution on the surface of a lake in the outskirts of Naples, which appeared to be a result of activity of a local mafia group. The specific features of mafiosi could be evidently more visible through a telescope! Even a Soviet-time corrupted director of a research institution would not try to sell such a fable to a supervising Party bureaucrat.

In his presidential capacity in the international eco-crime watchdog, Scaramella was spending time not only staring through the magnifying glass. In the same period, he studied in Stanford University, and even managed this high school's special program in Lithuania – under the auspices of NATO.

Leaving the presidential position in ECPP, Scaramella, as Mail of Sunday reports, returned to Bogota. For some reason, he did not boast with his catch in the lakes of Colombia. Did he feel there as convenient as a rare crayfish in a specially protected pond? Anyway, since 2002 he combined his Bogota studies with preaching environmental law in Greenwich University, in the time free from activity in the scandalous Mitrokhin Commission.

Today, Senator Guzzanti testifies that the dirt on Romano Prodi and two of his party colleagues was provided from London by Alexander Litvinenko. Allegedly, this information was once conveyed to the defector by his former Moscow boss, General Anatoly Trofimov. Last year, this general was assassinated in Moscow, thus conveniently avoiding Scotland Yards's interrogation.

The fabulous Mitrokhin Commission was dissolved after the newly-elected Prime Minister Romano Prodi tasked police to wiretap Scaramella's phone talks. The effort, again reminding of the Gongadze case – rather as a parody, revealed a conversation in obscene Russian, led by the environmentalist professor with a certain Yevgeny Limarev. That was the very Mr. Limarev from whom Mr. Scaramella says to have received a secret list of potential victims of FSB's special operation, including Anna Politkovskaya, Alexander Litvinenko, ex-dissident Vladimir Bukovsky (presently a modest British microbiologist, almost forgotten in Russia), and Senator Guzzanti.

The fax with this list, which the France-based Limarev now ascribes to one of his contacts in Russia, was allegedly the very important message which Scaramella handed to Litvinenko (as an officer to an agent?) in the sushi bar. Though, as the still surviving Litvinenko claimed, this message could be just e-mailed. According to Litvinenko's words, the whole talk was strange. This impression is shared by Ahmed Zakayev, who reported at that time that the Italian professor regularly communicates with Russian top-level intelligence officers right in the Lubyanka headquarters.

However, since the Italian professor returned to London and treated as a "Prince of Wales", the brave Ahmed Zakayev, former deputy of Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov, was keeping his lips closed. Meanwhile, General Oleg Kalugin, a defector of a much larger scale than Litvinenko, hurried to whitewash Mr. Scaramella, intoning that Litvinenko was poisoned before visiting the sushi bar. British media passed a comment that Mr. Kalugin belongs to a different circle than Boris Berezovsky. Meanwhile, Mr. Scaramella was delivering one sensational piece of testimony after another. Allegedly, Litvinenko was hunted by an organization of Russian veterans of foreign intelligence. Allegedly, the retired generals were after the retired lieutenant colonel because of some top sensitive information he possessed on criminal circles from St. Petersburg.

With an impressing speed, the St. Petersburg gangster version was detailed in Germany by Juergen Roth, author of a scandalous research in shadowy connections between the St.Petersburg City Hall of the time of the early 1990s and the notorious Tambov criminal community.

The same evergreen community was recently exposed by debka.com, a security information-trading Israeli website, of connections with Moscow-loyal Chechen politicians, whom a few Russian human right-specializing media blame for the death of journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

In his latest writings, Juergen Roth was assessing Russian organized crime with a deeper insight than before. The renowned interpretor of police evidence has at least admitted that economic globalization, in its present shape, welcomes most powerful international criminal clans which efficiently subordinate local gangs which could dream of their independence and power back in early 1990s. For some reason, Mr. Roth – under influence or direct order? – reproduces his original mechanistic scheme, using it for speculation over the supposed links between the fabulous Tambov group and Russian's Nuclear Energy Agency.

This theory, in its turn, rests upon a single name of a top Russian official with a St. Petersburg background. The renowned criminologist, with his typically German accurate style of argumentation in his books, reproduces one half of the recent official statement of NEA's chairman Sergey Kiriyenko – that the whole industrially produced polonium is exported from Russia by Techsnabexport Concern. The second half – that his whole (very modest) amount is delivered to the United States of America, is carelessly overlooked by the author. This reminds of the character of Ivan Krylov's philosophic fable who enjoyed watching worms and frogs in the city zoo but failed to notice the elephant.

This half-blindness is especially strange, as Juergen Roth, especially in his recent writings, not only exposed drug and weapon running networks but admitted its connections with not only with Russian intelligence but with CIA as well. Now, he is choosing a scheme with a very special kind of bias. The exposure of criminal links with Techsnabexport, in the context of the Litvinenko case, suggests that not only the Russian but also the US official side, which trust the Russians, is under suspicion.

In case we are dealing, so to speak, with a contract research – using the pattern of a contract assassination – then who, or what is the target? Is that not only Russian but also American nuclear science? Where is this contract, or order, coming from, and what is its ultimate purpose? And finally, why does the subject of this order or organizer of this contract need dossiers along with surveillance technique?

 

TOWARDS THE ULTIMATE GOAL

Providing royal-level services to a controversial Italian scholar, Scotland Yard failed to use the precious last days of Litvinenko's life to find out more about the personality whom the victim itself originally identified as the source of its own fear. Scotland Yard failed to find out how, on which orders, on under what conditions the modest lieutenant colonel was serving to the "international security expert" and founder of a most secretive though ostensibly public environmental watchdog. The deceased Russian defector will never tell us how often, and under which pretext, he met with the Italian "professor" or his agents before.

These agents are as colorful as Scaramella himself. In particular, Yevgeny Limarev recently chaired another institution of a similar kind as ECPP – the Swiss-based National (?) Sustainable Development Foundation. The brand is easy to recognize from the direct reference to the concept of "sustainable development", very familiar to the Russian scientific community. Since the Club of Rome, co-founded by American, Russian, and Italian scholars, unified with fear of scientific and technological growth, this concept had been multiplied in lots of titles of articles and books, and since late 1980s also in names of institutions, most typically involving former intelligence specialists.

Sustainable development is not science. It is ideology. It is as distant from science as environmentalism is distant from ecology. Despite the terms and the official agenda, the alpha and omega of environmentalism is not protection of nature but reduction of human population. The classic of social theory, beside whom Alexander Litvinenko is buried in Highgate Cemetery, would define this ideology as neo-Malthusianism.

As any kind of ideology, environmentalism manipulates its adept with non-economic levers. I've met with such adepts a lot of times in Russia. One of them, Navy Colonel Alexandr Nikitin, became an activist of Bellona, officially a public Norwegian organization, not because of a high salary but on terms of views.

Alexander Nikitin's report on "probable damage from the nuclear waste of (the submarines) of Russia's Northern Fleet", was not secretly conveyed from hand to hand in exchange for a bag with US dollars. Not typically for traditional intelligence practice, the sensitive details, contained in the report, were hung out in the Internet. The well described nuclear munitions and storages could not be replaced in a matter of weeks since the moment of exposure. Yeltsin's Russia was short of finances, human resource, energy and commitment for this replacement. The smoking gun was left on the wall for the disposal of any curious or vindictive passer-by.

The author of the sensitive report was later accused of treason but eventually acquitted by the Supreme Court, as the Russian Federation's State Secrecy Act was not yet passed by the parliament; as the only legislation which the prosecution's arguments were based upon, was an outdated unofficial order of the Soviet Defense Ministry; as practically all the data, conveniently combined in Nikitin's report, had been published between in 1991 and 1994 by a lot in pieces, and the author only picked them, as a modest fisherman, from the ideological ocean.

The investigation elevated him not only in the eyes of the international preachers but in his own eyes as well; with an ordeal behind, as a Russian revolutionary of the early XX century, he is even more convinced of the exceptional truthfulness of the ideology which he was initiated into, and even more committed to use his intellect in energy for the cause of Sir Thomas Malthus. Hanging his Damocles sword above the scientists, engineers and workers of his native country, he does not regard it is an assault on the human race. He does not doubt Malthus – as a Russian revolutionary would never doubt Karl Marx. He does not bother to realize that he is recruited to the army of death; that his ideological instructors – advanced, or strategic environmentalists – are committed to the central idea of Sir Thomas Malthus which is precisely the extermination of the Human.

In his development from a Navy officer to an officer of a global anti-industrial army, Alexander Nikitin was ideologically shaped not only by the Norwegian public activists but also by a retired US Army Colonel. The investigators from the supposedly mighty FSB which launched and failed the Nikitin case, know the name of this colonel but some invisible force prevents them from making it public. Is that the same invisible force which leads the end of the pen of renowned criminologist Juergen Roth?

I switch on the TV, and I know what I am going to be told about: the terrible polonium has leaked into the Thames. I recognize the alpha and omega of this view, as Nikolay Chernyshevsky's main hero would say.

The alpha and omega of the environmentalist view is fear. Fear production is both an instrument and purpose. Even a primitive enemy ceases to proliferate in a state of fear. In the ideal environmentalist view, a human being is a desperate creature surrounded by scares. He is scared of nitrates in food, chlorides in water, and even of ozone in the air. He gets irrational; he gets wild; he believes in an oncoming catastrophe and therefore abandons any idea of construction, as well as the concerns for posterity. Forgetting his dignity of the Human, he tries to escape from all the mounting fears, eventually falling and crawling on hands and heels, like Ralph in the brilliant cinema version of Golding's Master of Flies.

Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Litvinenko was trying to escape from this mental prison. He depended on Scaramella, who knew his past well enough to keep him hooked. Moreover, without assistance from his guru and master, Litvinenko's stepbrother, Maxim, could not prolong his residence permit in Italy. Scaramella humiliated him, telling in public which information his agent had delivered – as public as Bellona's disclosure of location of nuclear devices to anyone.

This is the principle of "fear management" – the principle which is quite workable, as we see.

Consciously or blindly, this principle employs philosophers, engineers, officials and the rest of the immense perish of environmentalism. In any of their libraries, the preachers eagerly demonstrate their own candidate for US Presidency, who lost in 000 by a very narrow margin, – Albert Gore. To be honest, they should add the name of Gore's assistant and tutor, Leon Fuerth, a long-time specialist in nuclear waste with decades of "diplomatic" experience in Eastern Europe.

Organizations like ECPP emerged in late 1990s on the initiative of Al Gore and his circle, along with anti-money laundering watchdogs – which ostensibly concentrate on research in shadowy economy but actually seek to grasp all the levers of supranational management of the human race.

Sylvio Berlusconi denies any relation to the scandalous Mitrokhin Commission – sincerely, or wishing to conceal his weakness before the "professor" from Naples. He is quite well informed that the powerful watchdog which has managed to climb the surveillance center and to run a policy, having nothing to do with his state, may target Prodi today and Berlusconi tomorrow. After all, they are neither leftist nor rightist, their goals are universal (or anti-universal on a universal level), and their target is not a particular Prime Minister but generally, statehood.

Definitely, the space center opened its doors not on a wave of a magic stick. Definitely, "professor" Scaramella pulls something from his pocket, addressing top Italian or British officials – something which guarantees him a "Prince of Wales" treatment. Certainly, that is not a CIA card – at least for the reason that foreign-based surveillance operations are in the competence of a different US service, namely DOD's National Security Agency, NSA.

In the United States and worldwide, this service is regarded as the least transparent. Therefore, it is very hard to assess the extent to which the command staff of this institution is initiated into "ultimate" environmentalism. The less transparent is a service, the better its objects are protected from any eyes, the easier is to use it as an instrument. For this purpose, it is sufficient to initiate a bunch of top staffers.

As an instrument, this service is the most convenient of all, as it represents a universal Eye (though not a Divine Eye). In Europe, its facilities are most developed in Norway, Denmark and Germany.

I had an opportunity to sit at the same table with Bellona's president Frederick Hauge. He was addressing his personnel, teaching them to prepare a surprise action on the occasion of Bill Clinton's arrival in Moscow. That was not a speech but a real sermon.

Formally, Bellona is a public organization. Officially, it operates under the auspices of Norway's Foreign Ministry. Unofficially, its service is of demand in US military circles. But in its essence, it is neither a club nor a foreign policy tool nor an intelligence arm per se. In its essence, it is a sect.

Today, existence of environmentalist sects is not a secret from anyone, as well as facts of environmentalist terror. If you said "ecoterror" twenty yours ago, you'd not be just understood. Today, this term has entered major European languages.

Shoko Asahara, whose environmentalist sect blasted an explosive in the Tokyo subway, sophisticatedly chose a peculiar place – an international symbol of population density. The fact that he was committing this against his mother nation, was just an additional reason for delight. He watched them getting choked and dying, and religious ecstasy was overflowing him.

The design of ECPP, especially the combination of its non-transparence with its penetration capacity, reminds of a similar pattern. The manner of activity of its founder and top functioneer proves at least that for him, as well as for Asahara and Hauge, the supreme ideological purpose justifies any means.

A real sect would never easily allow its precious asset to break the internal code and leave. Top preacher Mario Scaramella has definitely spent enough time to bring up a disappointed, intellectually dependent, dreamy and naive personality as Litvinenko into a soldier of the Universal Army, in the same way as Alexander Nikitin – with a lot of common psychological features in the two – was brought up. But this Litvinenko appeared to be an apostate. He converted into a religion, essentially inconsistent with the Pagan essence of neo-Malthusianism. The motivation for his elimination is sufficient; the allied service would not object for a lot of its own reasons; the political conjecture is perfect; the scapegoat is at hand – Russian businessmen; KGB where their career once started; Russia itself, with its too independent behavior in defense and energy – including nuclear policies.

A real sect, committed to use fear as the means and the purpose, would quite logically select a toxic agent which is easy to detect, as well as the place where ecohorror is the easiest to spread as an epidemy.

Scaramella's meeting with the earlier intoxicated Litvinenko in the sushi bar was really unnecessary from the standpoint of normal logic. From the view of the same sectarian logic, it was essential – to make sure that the receipt is functioning; to watch the fear in the face of the traitor; to use a note from Fra Yevgeny (Limarev) to in order not just to mislead the investigation but to identify Russia as the Image of Evil.

Since that moment, the actors are predetermined to play their roles. Scotland Yard will keep following the Russian trace; Moscow will keep demanding Berezovsky's extradition; the Israeli services will arrange plastic surgery for Nevzlin. All the affected sides will continue this volleyball with a hot polonium potato. The behavior of state officials and public is similarly predictable. The EU bureaucracy will torture taxpayers with excessive environmental taxes; business will face gigantic losses; the petty bourgeois British class will demand expulsion of racial minorities from mother England, while ex-USSR functionaries will humbly bow to legions of environmental and military control officers, marching across their lands with black lists, prepared by Russian agents of Fra Yevgeny. And all the actors altogether, step by step, curtsey by curtsey, will approach to the condition of walking on hands and heels.

Who will be the first to rise? Probably a leader who possesses enough dignity of a Human; who knows the enemy by name; who is capable of thinking in the scale of generations; who esteems the memory of fathers and posterity of children. One day will be enough for him to neutralize the agency of environmentalist influence, just closing all the numerous eco-sectarian foundations and academies, and convey the liberated space (after a thorough sanitization) to obstetric wards and kindergartens.

Number of shows: 1831

(no votes)