Looking at Litvinenko

Like most everyone I’ve been paying some attention to the horrifying poisoning death of former KGB/FSB spy Alexander Litvinenko. Will it be solved? I suspect not, but if Raelynn Hillhouse’s sources are correct, it may well be:

It sure sounds like the FSB to me, but it also sounds like they’re experiencing the same blowback from an exodus of experience that the CIA is currently contending with.

Back in the old days, an appropriate dose would’ve been discretely shot

into the guy in a dissolving subcutaneous pellet that would’ve killed

him in a couple of months, left no real traceable evidence as to the

perp, and sent the right message to other potential ex-FSB/KGB critics

who understood the technology via the symptoms.

Feeding it to him in a restaurant while lunching with known Russian

intel types and then him leaving traces of it all over London, possibly

contaminating innocents in the process, is really amateur hour.  If the Agency’s Italian rendition team weren’t so busy doing commercials for cellphones, the two could hook up for a match made in espionage screw-up heaven.

Hillhouse rounds up some of the less outlandish (for now) theories on Litvinenko’s death, while Rosemary Herbert spoke to Boston’s WBUR station about poison in fiction – showing that once again, truth trumps all. And if you’re looking for a copy of the 2002 book Litvinenko co-wrote, be prepared to pony up a nice chunk of money….