I knew this was becoming "political" when suddenly the papers weren't allowed to call it poisoning anymore -- I mean, even AP stopped for a while, before he died. Although they have started again now.

What is up with the fact checking? Can't Salon find a real expert e.g. from a university instead of a mercenary? The private defense industry is such a scary place; who knows what spin is going on.

Salon should be ashamed for publishing such willful propaganda. If this prevaricated interview proves anything, it is the fact that a deliberate campaign of disinformation has been let loose by the western media.

For christ sake, Putin is not an idiot. He's an ex-KGB. How can anyone even imagine that he would do something as stupid as getting rid of dissenters in such silly ways knowing fully well that the zionist press would be eager to use any such murder to sully his image?

Can't you see that ever since Putin has deviated from the policies of the globalists (stooges of western capitalistic cabals like Gorbechev & Yelstin) and embarked on path of Russia first by nationalizing Yukos oil and cutting down to size the jew oligarchs controlling the Russian economy, the political establishment along with the media has been having a go at him, continuously attempting to portray him as a ruthless dictator out to take Russia back to the bad old statilisque days.

Shame on salon for behaving like any other mouthpiece of the imperialist western empire!

I would wonder whether the motive for the crime could be to extort something out of Putin or get revenge on him for something.

Because -- how many people knew what Litvinenko looked like before he was poisoned?

But who could forget his face now? It's unforgettable.

Maybe this is a message to Putin rather than from him.

Maybe the message is: let Khodorkovsky out of prison now.

That would be one thing to put on the list if one were making a list of things people might want to extort out of Putin.

So much for 'hard to get'.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/29/polonium_available_online/

Grant, the vendor updated the web site to mention that you'd have to buy 15,000 units to get the amount required.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/30/ba_polonium_investigation/

Some factual corrections (retired professor of physcience here).

For Polonium to be an isotope of Uranium it would have to have the same atomic number (# of protons in its nucleus).

Polonium is an element in its own right: #84 to be precise. Uranium is #92. Uranium undergoes a series of spontaneous decays until it reaches a stable state. For Uranium-238 that stable state is Lead-206 (element #82).

Polonium-210 is a short-lived isotope (half-life 138.39 days), and when it emits an alpha particle (two protons and two neutrons) it becomes Lead-206. Polonium-210 is made by bombarding Bismuth-209 (#83) with neutron in a reactor, which creates Bismuth-210, which has a half-life of 5-days, and by beta-decay becomes Polonium-210. The most stable isotope of Polonium is Polonium-209, which has a half-life of 102-years. Polonium-210 is much more radioactive that Polonium-209.

We can all be grateful to the authors of these comments. It is obviously not difficult to purchase a lethal amount of polonium 210 or to steal it from anti-static devices used widely in the textile or film industries. It is clear that Livtvinenko's poisoning was not necessarily the work of a state actor.

So qui bono, as Cicero asked? Who benefits? Putin and the Russian State? Putin and his government may be adopting many of the trappings of a classic authoritarian state, but why would it be in their interest to eliminate a relatively harmless, apparently somewhat delusional, defector like Litvinenko?

In whose interest would it be to encourage a widening rift between Russia on the one hand and Western Europe and the U.S. on the other? Is there a commercial interest at play, either Russian or European (or American)? Or is there primarily a political interest at play, perhaps the interest of a non-state actor?

While resisting terminal paranoia, we may need to ponder whether this episode has any connection to events in the Middle East. Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida brain trust seem to have the capacity to think a step or two ahead of the leaderships of most Western states. Remember how bin Laden staged the assassination of Afghan Northern Alliance Commander Massoud just two days before launching the attacks of 9/11 in the U.S.?

If eliminating U.S. and Western influence in the Middle East is bin Laden's essential goal, would it not be in his interest to provoke a rift between Russia and the West? In the upshot the Russians might well be induced to step up arms shipments to Syria and Iran, provide anti-aircraft missiles to the Iraqi insurgency (it was, after all, the U.S. introduction of Stingers into Afghanistan which served as the catalyst of the Soviet defeat there), and actively oppose Western goals in the region--rather than sit relatively passively on the sidelines as has been the case for nearly 20 years.

If bin Laden wishes to help foment over the carcass of Iraq a regional war that will draw in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Bahrain and Jordan on one side against perhaps Iran, Syria, and Turkey on the other, Litvinenko's assassination could be a piece of his strategic puzzle. As Alec Guiness's character said in the film "Doctor Zhivago" as he marches off with the Tsar's recruits to the First World War, "Out of the war will come the revolution."

Out of a regional war over Iraq with the attendant chaos and massive flows of refugees will come the crumbling of the Saudi and Jordanian (and other Gulf) monarchies--and out of the wreckage will come bin Laden's chance to become a major leader and state actor in the Arab world.

So let us see who really benefits in the end from Litvinenko's poisoning.

I think that if the scientists who wrote letters on correcting (nearly all) of the facts of this article are right then salon should take this article down.