page 18.4

"he is scum"
<we hope you appreciate that when the library scanner goes out we have to single finger type stuff like this.>


best lines from the article.

wall street journal -

-cret, mr. litvinenko instead turned it over to a prominent tycoon who later aired excerpts on national television. mr. letvinenko then held a news conference denouncing the security service, known as FSB. afterwards he and some of his cohorts were fired from their jobs and he was jailed on criminal charges.

mr. gusak, who was also fired, and other colleagues were furious with mr. litvinenko. mr. gusak says colleagues came to him afterwards to offer their sympathies – and one offered to kill mr. litvinenko, asking, “shall I bring you his head?” mr. gusak says he replied, “don’t bother. he’s scum.”

another crucial player in the litvinenko saga is boris berezovsky, the tycoon who aired the tape. the move backfired on mr. berezovsky, who was trying to gain influence by discrediting top FSB officers and two years later fled to london to avoid prosecution. mr. litvinenko soon followed him there. at one point mr. lugovoi also worked for mr. berezovsky.

british prosecutors did not say yesterday that mr. lugovoi was working for anyone in the murder of mr. litvinenko. british police say mr lugovoi and another former security officer left a trail of rare polonium residue that traced back to russia, where most of the world’s supply is produced in government-run reactors. though used in industry in trace quantities, specialists say the dose that killed mr. litvinenko was massive and most likely came direct from the producer. messrs. lugovoi and the other former officer, dmitri kovtun, have said they played no role in the poisoning, and long ago severed their ties with russian security services.

the tangled case is full of characters with changing loyalties and agendas – including mr. litvinenko himself. his friends believe that the plot to kill him was hatched years ago, and that the FSB was using former agents to execute the plan.

a former FSB agent and sometime litvinenko ally, mikhail trepashkin, contends the agency tried as recently as 2002 to punish mr. litvinenko, and that he was recruited for the job. mr trepashkin, confined to prison in the ural mountains, smuggled a letter to that effect to a moscow newspaper earlier this year. mr. tepashkin was the alleged target of one plot detailed in the 1998 video tape, and appeared alongside mr. litvinenko at his infamous news conference.

mr. putin has stayed close to the FSB since becoming russian president, frequently returning to praise its work at official gatherings. amid of a string of bloody terror attacks and other security failures, mr. putin has doggedly shielded the FSB from criticism and strengthened it with new powers and a massive increase in funding.

mr litvinenko started at the FSB near the bottom, as an officer guarding convoys of gold and diamonds. after the breakup of the soviet union, he was assigned to an economic crime unit where, he once wrote, many officers moonlighted for businesses and ran extortion rackets to supplement their income.

in 1994, he was assigned to a case that symbolized the breakdown in post-soviet russia. a massive car bomb in downtown moscow demolished the mercedes of mr. berezovsky, decapitating his driver and nearly killing him. mr litininko  never solved the murder. but he did strike up a friendship with mr. berezovsky.

a former mathematician, mr. berezovsky was the archetypal “oligarch,” a tycoon who combined political contacts with a vast business empire to amass unparalleled influence and businesses from oil to television. the nerve center of his empire was a renovated 19th-century mansion that he turned into a social club for russia’s business and political elite.

when moscow police, investigating the contract murder of a prominent TV executive, showed up at the mansion to search for evidence in 1995, they were stopped by mr. litvinenko, who identified himself as an FSB officer. “he said that if anyone entered he would shoot,” said yuri skuratov, who later investigated the TV executive’s murder as russia’s top prosecutor. police “were never able to make a proper search,” he said. the murder remains unsolved.

mr berezovsky denies any involvement in the TV executive’s killing, and says mr litvinenko probably saved his life by preventing moscow police from framing him for the murder. he says that he offered to pay mr. litvinenko for his help, but that mr. litvinenko refused.

mr. litvinenko’s security service colleagues say they began to regard him with suspicion. mr gusak, his immediate boss, said in an interview that agents began to call mr. litvinenko “skvoznyak” – russian for “draft” or “breeze” – because he was leaking FSB secrets to mr. berezovsky.

then came the april 1998 video-tape. the men told the interviewer that they had been promoted in 1997 to a special unit charged with fighting “banditry” whose existence was secret even within the ranks of the FSB. but the officers soon clashed with their commanders, who they said were sending them on illegal missions. mr. gusak said that he received word that there was an order to have him killed, so they made the videotape to protect themselves.

mr. gusak, the heavy set senior officer of the group, was quieter than the rest as he stared into his ashtray and smoked during most of the tape. mr. litvinenko and another junior officer, andre ponkin, were more talkative. seated on a couch and some chairs around a small table, the officers complained they were being used as errand-boys for bosses, and ordered to terrorize the agency’s enemies. one of their first assignments, they said, was to beat up or kill mr. trepaskin, who had spoken to a moscow newspaper about then FSB abuses.

as they refused to carry out orders, their bosses had come to distrust them, they said. the tension deepened after the squad was told to abduct the brother of a prominent chechen businessman in moscow and secure a $2 million dollar ransom, to pay for the release of two FSB officers kidnapped in chechnya.

the officers said they prepared for the job: they sought the advice of a sniper, and found a dacha on moscow’s outskirts were they could stash the prisoner. but then they discovered their target was guarded by moscow police, mr. gusak said. “naturally the question arose whether to kill some of our brother officers,” said mr. gusk on the tape. that, he added, “would not be very pretty.”

the officers repeatedly postponed the kidnapping to focus on lower-profile cases. but just before the new year, their boss called them into his office and berated them. mr. litvinenko said on the tape that one of the commanders, alexander kamyshnikov, demanded to know whether he would follow an order to kill mr. bereznovsky. when mr. litvinenko hesitated, he said, mr. kamishnikov walked up to him and shouted at him, nose to nose: “you have to kill berezovsky!” mr. kamishnikov could not be reached for comment.

mr. gusak said on the tape that he was asked the same question, but took it as a test of loyalty, not an order, and says now that there was never any serious plan to kill mr. berezovsky. but he said mr litvinko told the tycoon that a plot existed in order to curry favor with him.

mr berezovsky went to the FSB director to demand an investigation. unsatisfied with the results, he later arranged for the agents to report to a senior kremlin official, triggering an official probe. by summer 1998, the director of the FSB was sacked. it’s not clear whether the firing had anything to do with pressure from mr. brezovsky.

replacing the diector was mr, putin, who was then a little known functionary from the kremlin administration. mr. berezovsky says in an interview that he had a good relationship with mr. putin, who he knew from his days as a bureaucrat in st. petersburg. hoping to spur a housecleaning at the FSB. mr. berezovsky says he then arranged a personal meeting between mr. litvinenko and mr. putin. the meeting lasted about 10 minutes, mr. litvenko told friends. mr. litvinenko later described in a book he wrote that he brought mr. putin a diagram explaining how parts of the FSB were being controlled by criminals. he also gave mr. putin a list of officers he considered to be honest. mr. putin thanked him, and said he would consider the information, mr. litvinenko wrote. they never met again, mr. litvinenk’s friends said. a kremlin spokesman said he couldn’t confirm or deny that account.

seeing no action, mr. berezovsky decided to go public with his attacks on the FSB. in november1998 he published an open letter in a moscow newspaper urging mr.putin to investigate the alleged FSB plot to kill him.

later that month mr. litvinenko and several colleagues followed up with a news conference. mr. litvinenko led the event, and said the FSB was running private hit squads and extortion rackets. he urged the FSB to purge top manager who were “giving illegal orders to commit act of terrorism, killings, hostage takings and extortion.” mr. trepashkin appeared at a news conference with them, as a victim of FSB abuse.

mr. litvinenko appeared bare-faced at the conference. his colleagues tried to conceal their identities – some whore sunglasses, and one wore a ski mask. mr. gusak, who was outside moscow, didn’t participate. but in the next few days after the press conference the television station under mr. berezovsky’s control began broadcasting excerpts of the videotape in which officers, without masks or sunglasses, discussed the sordid details of their secret unit in detail.

mr. gusak said he never gave permission to air the videotape. sergei dorenko, the journalist who aired it, decided to make it public because the FSB’s inner workings came out at the press conference anyway. gradually, the identity of all the officers at the news conference and on the tape leaked out.

mr. puti dismissed the allegations as a public relations stunt and threatened to sue for libel. an investigation concluded there was no plot to assassinate mr. berezovsky, although some of mr. litvinenko’s bosses might have joked that they would like to see him die. “the whole story of the press conference…shows the inner sickness of our system,” mr. putin told a russian reporter later, saying the agents seemed to be trying to ingratiate themselves with mr. berzovsky. he never sued, however.

mr litvinenko was fired from the FSB in the next months. so were his colleagues who appeared at the news conference. some recanted their statements, and said that mr. berezovsky had paid or pressured them to make their accusations. they blamed mr. litvinenko for dragging them into a fight they wanted no part of.

also fired from the FSB was mr. gusak. he was charged with extortion, kidnapping, and using excessive force on a suspect who later died. most of the charges were dismissed, and he received a suspended sentence after one month in prison.

mr. litvinenko was also arrested in 1999 for alleged abuses that he committed years earlier. the charges were dropped but but mr. litvinenko was re-arrested on different charges, then released again. mr litvinenko went to work for mr. brezovsky full-time as a security consultant.

mr. brezovsky initially supported mr, putin’s rise to the presidency in 2000, but soon clashed with the new president. facing criminal charges, mr. berezovsky fled to london in november of that year, vowing to fight to remove mr. putin. mr. litvinenko followed him and applied for political asylum. in 2002 he was convicted in absentia of abuse of office in moscow. he remained on mr. berezovsky’s payroll, and lived in a house owned by mr. brezovsky in london’s north end.

from london he helped mr. brezovsky wage a campaign against mr. putin through books and internet articles. one former colleague from his FSB unit and his 1998 press conference, viktor shebalin, gave an interview to a moscow newspaper in 2000 in which he blamed mr. litvinenko for manipulating his co-workers to benefit mr, berezovsky and “strike a huge blow against the special services.” mr. shebalin called mr. litvinenko  to return to russia and give himself up. “if you are innocent, you have nothing to fear,” he said. “but know this – traitors are not forgiven.”

mr. trpashkin said he was recruited in 2002 for a plot against litvinenko by mr. shebalin. mr trepashkin wrote that mr. shebalin had been offered “forgiveness” in return for his help, but mr, trapishkin said he refused to join and remained unrepentant. mr. shebalin could not be reached for comment.

the next year mr. trepashkin was arrested for weapons possession, and later convicted of revealing state secrets in a case that human-rights groups say was politically motivated. british detectives who came to russia earlier this year to investigate mr. litvinenko’s murder were not allowed to speak to him.

in london, mr. litvinenko told friends that he received death threats, but believed his british citizenship would protect him, said vladimir bukovsky, a soviet-era dissident who befriended him. he continued to meet with former security service colleagues, mr. bukovsky said.

last year, mr. berezovsky began cutting back mr. litninenko’s monthly allowance, after the two agreed he would find work as a private detective, mr, berezovsky says. mr. litvinenko told friends he was compiling reports for western clients who wanted to know about business groups in russia.

his new business brought him in touch with mr. logovoi, a former kremlin security officer who also worked for mr. berezovsky in the 1990s in russia. mr. luguvoi prospered under mr. putin, as head of a beer and soft drink business and a firm that provided bodyguards to prominent businessmen and politicians.

on a business trip to london in october 2006 mr. lugovoi introduced mr. litvinenko to mr. kovtum. mr. lugovoi said they discussed business at a second meeting november 1 at the mayfair millenium hotel in london, after which mr. litvinenko fell ill. for three weeks doctors were unsure what kind of ailment had struck him, but a few hours before he died scientists from a united kingdom atomic laboratory detected in his urine the polonium 210.

afterwards, police found traces of the polonium in the hotel where mr, litvinenko had met mr. lugovoi and mr. kovtun. they also found polonium 210 traces in mr. lugovoi’s hotel room and in an apartment that mr. kovtun visited in hamburg, germany, on his way to london from moscow. it was unclear yesterday why british authorities charged only mr. logovoi.

in russia, state run media have suggested that mr. brerezovsky arranged the poisoning to discredit the kremlin, or that mr. litvinenko killed himself. mr gusak, today a defense lawyer in moscow, says security services had nothing to do with mr. litvinenko's’death - – but that he deserved to die for revealing state secrets.

mr. putin says he does not believe reports that mr. berezovsky arranged the scandal. “I do not really believe in conspiracy theories and, quite frankly, I am not very worried about it,” he said in a meeting with journalists this year. “the stability of russian statehood allows us to look down on this from above.”