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Opinion

Spy's death raises questions

John Arterbury 
Opinion Columnist

In his final, agonizing hours dying in a London hospital, former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko blamed the Russian Federal Security Service for poisoning him. He claimed to know the exact operative within the local embassy in charge of the unit monitoring him, although he did not name the man. 

The assassin's use of the highly complex isotope polonium-210, with its short half-life, implies that it was engineered in a highly developed laboratory. This has led many to blame the Russian government, although polonium-210 can be ordered online. 

Litvinenko's death helped resurrect the Russian boogey-man in the mind's eye of Western pundits and media. Many see the death of the man, whose spurious status among native Russians is often overlooked, as a sign that Moscow is returning to more archaic, brutal times.

The mysterious murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in her Moscow home this October also set off alarm bells with watchdogs around the globe. People wondered if the Russian Federal Security Service resorted to the heavy-handed tactics of the Soviet era. But silencing a critic with a gunshot is not particularly spectacular -- not as spectacular as using a ricin-tipped umbrella, the likes of which was used to kill exiled Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in 1978, who was also murdered in London. History has shown that the KGB was almost certainly complicit in Markov's silencing.

The parallels are uncanny: an Eastern European dissident is eradicated with a poisonous substance while seeking refuge in London. But Litvinenko lacked something Markov had: credibility. Markov, as a result of his polemics, found himself in a brutal political showdown with then Bulgarian dictator Todor Zhivkov. Markov's writings won international accolades, and his career landed him a broadcasting role on Radio Free Europe. He was a viable threat, undermining the Bulgarian autocracy at home and abroad. His sting against the Soviet bloc was palpable. 

Litvinenko was far from being as much of a nuisance. In 2002, he published Blowing up Russia: Terror from Within, made possible with the financial backing of Russian fugitive-in-exile Boris Berezovsky. Like many of his publications, the book implicated the Russian government in the murder of hundreds of Russian civilians through a series of terrorist bombings Russian authorities attributed to Chechens. 

He even had the audacity to claim Russian authorities orchestrated the Beslan school massacre, the deadliest terrorist attack since 9/11. In 2005, he said the Russian Federal Security Service had trained al-Qaida members in Dagestan. Ultimately, Litvinenko's works were rife with shoddy scholarship, and reception in Mother Russia was lackluster at best. Most Russians did not take his musings seriously, The Sunday Times reported.

Special attention should be paid to Berezovsky, an automobile baron who made his fortune through a labyrinth of shady financial deals in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse. One of the first billionaires in the former Soviet bloc, Berezovsky soon found himself among the so-called "oligarchs" of Boris Yeltsin's Russia. 

Before long, however, he was floundering in legal woes, and after numerous attempts on his life and a warrant placed for his arrest, he fled Russia. In turn, he established a network highly which was critical of Vladimir Putin's administration, consisting of a motley crew of former politicos and tycoons. With a $3 billion fortune and a publishing wing of full-time spin doctors, Berezovsky has consolidated his own empire of Russian dissidents. 

Even one of his harshest critics, Forbes editor Paul Klebnikov, was gunned down in 2004. But like many Russian journalists, Politkovskaya included, Klebnikov had done extensive investigation into both Chechen racketeering and organized crime. 

Some Russians posit that Berezovsky's anti-Putin cartel would be willing to surrender Litvinenko as a sort of sacrifice: by using such a rare poison, they would directly implicate the Kremlin. 

The murder of a conspiracy theorist would go relatively unnoticed with a muffled gunshot, but a radioactive dose would make international headlines. Yet at the same time, the Russian oligarchs would not lose much -- they would only lose Alexander Litvinenko, a man previously unknown in the West and scorned in Russia. Not to say that this is the case -- Litvenenko straddled a fencepost with intrigue on either side. 

In reality, the case is far too fresh to draw any conclusions. The days of bearded, vitriolic Slavs playing villains on the television have passed, but speculating wildly about the Russian government's sinister motives has not. 

While valid criticisms of the Russian government exist -- like the treatment of Georgian nationals or hazing practices in the Russian military -- implicating Putin in the murder is too hasty, and it only harkens Cold War Russophobia. Assuming this to be the case that ups the ante -- are Kremlin officials willing to murder a foreign national in a foreign land while risking the lives of bystanders just to eliminate a no-name dissident? The argument seems weak on the surface. 

No matter who perpetrated the heinous crime, speculators would do best to afford Scotland Yard the time it needs to investigate rather than haphazardly placing blame. In a crime as steeped in intrigue as Litvenenko's fall, the truth of the matter may be far more complex than anyone imagined.

Arterbury, a communication sophomore, 
can be reached via dccampus@mail.uh.edu