Submitted by john, Dec 1, 2006 10:21

From the start, Epstein's' argument that there two - and only two - possible explanations is fraught with logical errors and errors of judgment. First, if the exercise is to look beyond the obvious and intuitive conclusion that Litivenko was poisoned, there are for more possible reasons than the arbitrary selection of two – poisoning by way of food and accident by way of nuclear smuggling. Indeed the need to restrict the poisoning to be "by way of food" actually argues against the second – "by way of food" being appended to the simple fact of poisoning because Polonium needs, not just to be "in close contact" (the layers of the skin are sufficient to protect one from Polonium poisoning) but actually ingested into the body to be an effective poison at the levels detected in Litivenko. Had a container of smuggled Polonium leaked – and one assumes those carrying it wish not to die – it is also necessary to explain how the leaked Polonium entered Litivenkos body – and no one else's. Given the extreme ease of protecting and disguising even a minute sample of smuggled Polonium – from embedding in Lucite, like a paperweight, or the even more impossible to open, plastic blister pack that almost all of our gizmos come packaged in – the possibility that the Polonium leaked from a failed smuggling effort, then secondarily entered into Litivenko's body, all while not leaving a trail of similarly contaminated and thus dead bodies, much less a trail that one could trace – not just to five places – but up and down the street and back again, does not meet the test of Ockham's razor, much less the laugh test. "Leaking" Polonium particles would be far more traceable and far less ingestible than what we have encountered thus far.

Furthermore why assume it is not the ideal murder weapon? Yes, rat poison is fast, but maybe that's not what murderers wanted. Indeed if the idea was to send a message of the grisly fate that awaits those that cross the KGB, err excuse me, the FSB, then death by Polonium poisoning is an ideal weapon. Not only does it cause a gruesome and lingering death, it has the added benefit of blaming the victim, who, no doubt , was smuggling Polonium – or at least somehow mixed up in that kind of thing; or failing that at the very least mixed up in all sorts of bad things. And the difficulty of determining the exact methodology only suggests that the murderers can get you anytime, anywhere, even in a restuarnt where nothing suspicious was reported.

Yes, Litivenko was "interested in nuclear smuggling" but then both Al Qaeda and the Federation of American Scientists are "interested in nuclear proliferation" – to very different ends. Litivenko was a courageous critic of Putins' Russia, and was acting in the tradition of those brave souls who left the KGB over the years – he was warning the west of the true nature of that regime. As to the idea that he was demonstrating how easy it was to smuggle Polonium out of Russia, it is not only not nearly as likely, but also not as nefarious.

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