Litvinenko: Fake out

I have some new ideas on Litvinenko affair -- a mystery which, arguably, fascinates blog writers more than it interests blog readers. I would advise you to give this matter respectful attention, not least because the poisoning may cause a large segment of the public to take seriously Litvinenko's more off-the-wall allegations, such as his charge that Russian intelligence controls both Al Qaeda and the Italian Prime Minister. Not to mention the KGB-shot-the-Pope thing, which still pisses me off.

Beyond that, the controversy reveals that some people want a new cold war with Russia. A serious business, that.

From Joseph's notebook (imagine a crummy black binder picked up for 69 cents at a thrift store in the east San Fernando Valley):

Julia Svetlichnaja is studying political science at the University of Westminster in London. She contacted Litvinenko in an attempt to reach an exiled Chechen leader named Akhmed Zakayev, who lived next door to the poisoned Russian spy. Although she never did get a chance to talk to the reclusive Chechen, Litvinenko drew the student into his own murky world.

In an ill-considered moment, he blurted out his audacious scheme to blackmail the Russian oligarchs. He wasn't the first guy to get blabby while trying to impress a young lady.

This Guardian story by Svetlichnaja has attracted much attention, but few have given it a sufficiently close reading. Here are some important excerpts (with emphasis added by me):

We first met beside the statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus. Wearing dark glasses and leather jacket, Alexander Litvinenko appeared unexpectedly behind my back, saying: 'I was watching you from around the corner. You are not a spy, are you?' I suggested coffee in the nearby Caffe Nero, the first of our often chaotic, erratic conversations we would share from last April until his death.

And:

Ultimately, however, I almost regretted giving my email to Litvinenko. From our first meeting he started to feed me information with such gusto that in the weeks before his death I had started deleting most of his messages without opening them.

And:

After two hours of traipsing around the park, I suggested we sit down somewhere. 'Professionals never sit and talk, they walk and walk around so nobody can overhear their conversation,' he muttered darkly.

And:

It was very late when he drove me to the station. He stopped at the traffic lights and, indicating right, suddenly turned left into a dark alley. We drove round and round the crescent before stopping.

'Demonstration. I was famous for getting rid of the "tail". All you have to do is to indicate and then turn the other way,' he explained.

The lesson I draw from these words is simple enough. Litvinenko was bullshitting. None of this was real spy stuff; he was going out of his way to make a young woman feel as though she had entered a James Bond movie.

"You are not a spy, are you?" Oh, for crying out loud. What real spook would ever say such a silly thing? This sounds like the sort of line Bill Paxton might have tried on Jamie Lee Curtis in True Lies.

First Litvinenko insisted on walking around Hyde Park in a frenetic attempt to avoid electronic eavesdroppers. Then he barraged her with emails, hardly the most secure means of transmission, giving her more material than she knew how to handle. She wasn't even particularly interested in most of it.

Obviously, he didn't care about confidentiality. He was trying to entice a naive young thing, trying to create an exciting atmosphere of intrigue and danger. Lights, camera, action!

I doubt that any Gene Hackman-esque eavesdropper took an interest in their chats, and I seriously doubt that anyone tailed the car. (I mean, why? They didn't go anywhere important.) At any rate, that dramatic method of evasion won't work: Try the experiment for yourself, with a friend following your car. In most real-life situations, the tailee tries very hard not to alert the tail-er that he's been made.

So why the hell did Litvinenko engage in this ludicrous display of faux tradecraft? He was setting the scene, engaging in theatricals: You've entered the exciting world of espionage, young lady. Beware; there are enemies everywhere. My foes are a measure of how important I am. Stick with me, and I will guide you toward some of the world's deepest secrets...

I've seen this exact same tactic at work in previous situations. The target is usually female. Sorry for the sexism, but that's the way these guys think. The "you've entered a spy movie" gambit is a great way of conning the ingenuous into writing whatever horseplop you want to make public.

The motive? I cannot say for certain at this time, although that email cache may contain clues. We know that Boris Berezovsky wanted to recruit a new writer to spread anti-Putin conspiracy stories. The neocons (allies of the oligarchs) always welcome fresh talent, preferably someone who has tumbled out of the turnip truck and seems willing to accept fibs at face value. Litvinenko's own books had gone over like the proverbial lead balloon, gaining an interested readership only after his death. Svetlichnaja might have proven more sucessful at reaching the public.

(I'll have further excerpts from that notebook later...)