Pod Insights The Rest Is Classified 173. The Murder of Litvinenko: The Killers Escape (Ep 5) About this episode Radioactive poison has been used to kill Alexander Litvinenko on the streets of London. But where will the trail lead and can the police follow it to find his killers?
Listen as David and Gordon reach the penultimate episode in their exploration of the murder of Litvinenko.
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0:25 Speaker 00 Radioactive poison has been used to kill Alexander Litvinenko on the streets of London. But where will the trail lead? And can the police follow it to find his killers? Well, welcome to The Rest Is Classified. I'm David McCloskey.
0:39 Speaker 01 And I'm Gordon Corera.
0:40 Speaker 00 Gordon, we left off last time with the really tragic and moving final statement that had been written by Litvinenko just before his death that condemned Vladimir Putin and really pointed the finger at Vladimir Putin for his murder. Litvinenko has died, and we still, though, have this mystery. Now, we know polonium, a radioactive poison, has been used as the murder weapon, effectively. But because it's a radioactive poison, there is now a massive problem, which is, where has this poison been in London? What is the trail of this poison?
1:24 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:25 Speaker 00 That killed Alexander Litvinenko? So even though Litvinenko is dead, in many ways, the police investigation is just getting started.
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4:44 Speaker 01 So the police have got this investigation which is unprecedented, extraordinary. I mean, the first thing you do is do a post-mortem on the body. That is really challenging because they know there's all this radiation in the body. And one of those involved in it described it as one of the most dangerous post-mortem examinations ever undertaken in the Western world. That's because as they're looking for samples, they know that there is this incredibly toxic, dangerous radioactive substance, which we'll come back to, polonium, which is inside his body. And they know it's in there. And they can see, even though they can't take the normal samples you'd want for a post-mortem,
5:26 Speaker 01 they can take some and they can see that his organs and inner tissues have been destroyed. I mean, they have been cooked from the inside by this radioactivity. And the determination will be the cause of death was acute radiation syndrome. And it is thanks to this thing called polonium. I think it is time to explain what polonium is.
5:49 Speaker 00 I think so too, Gordon, and because you are the resident Rest is Classified science explainer. I think it falls, it falls on your, your worthy shoulders to explain what polonium is. So take it away.
6:04 Speaker 01 We could get Hannah Fry and V-Sauce from the Rest is Science over, but I think.
6:07 Speaker 00 No, no, no. No, that's the thing. We don't need Hannah Fry and V-Sauce. You are the science, you are the resident science explainer.
6:13 Speaker 01 Okay.
6:14 Speaker 00 This is our show. You take it away.
6:15 Speaker 01 Okay. Okay. Let's talk about firstly, the alpha particles which are emitted by polonium 210. Ionizing radiation, including gamma rays and alpha particles can kill cells by damaging biological molecules within them, including DNA.
6:30 Speaker 01 Alpha particles, though, which is what we're talking about here, are particularly effective at killing cells because they only travel short distances, a few cell widths, but they deposit a lot of energy along their paths. They can be thought of as atomic bullets capable of killing at a cellular level. Enough alpha particles will kill enough cells to cause gross tissue damage, organ failure and death. Now, David, tests show that 4.4 GBQ or giga bequrels of polonium 210 were there.
7:05 Speaker 00 Sounds like a lot. It sounds like a lot. I've never heard of it. It's more giga, it's more giga bequrels than you would want in your body.
7:12 Speaker 01 Exactly. But that's what he had, 4.4 giga bequrels. And interestingly enough, they can tell though, from the post-mortem, that only 5% came through inhalation. And therefore that it was much more likely ingested. In other words, he drank or ate it. Now, come to my next bit of my science lesson. How do you make polonium, David? I hear you ask. Let me explain. A target of bismuth 209, which is a stable isotope, is inserted into a nuclear reactor where it's bombarded with neutrons. During the bombardment, bismuth 209 atoms capture neutrons and thereby become bismuth 210 atoms. Bismuth 210 is an unstable isotope which decays
7:56 Speaker 01 by emitting a beta particle so that one of its neutrons changes into a proton. Beta, beta, privacy, privacy. That converts the bismuth 210 into a polonium 210. When the target is removed from the reactor, a process has to be undertaken to isolate or remove the polonium 210 that has been created in this way from the remaining bismuth target. Thank you very much.
8:18 Speaker 00 So what you're saying is that.
8:22 Speaker 00 Anybody could make this at home.
8:24 Speaker 01 I think that is exactly what I'm not saying, David, is you cannot make this at home.
8:28 Speaker 00 You can just find it somewhere.
8:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, you need all that stuff like bismuths and reactors and isotopes and stuff in order to do it. So that is going to be an important clue when we get to who was behind this and state responsibility.
8:43 Speaker 00 You need to have, you need to have a nuclear reactor.
8:45 Speaker 01 You need to have a nuclear reactor.
8:47 Speaker 00 To have polonium, yes.
8:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's basically the, that's the point. Now, I think it is interesting, it's worth saying that polonium in some ways was the best and the worst murder weapon. The best because actually it's pretty hard to detect and hadn't been seen before. As we saw in the previous episode, the symptoms are so unusual that people don't know what to make of them. And the expectation, I think, in using it is that someone will die quickly and mysteriously. So that it's never identified. And the fact that Lipinenko only ingested, remember, he only took a few small sips in the pine bar. And that he was actually in very good physical shape meant he survives much longer than if he'd had a proper drink of it.
9:33 Speaker 00 If he'd had a full cup of tea, he would have died within.
9:36 Speaker 01 He'd have died within a day or two. And, and even, even then, remember, it took three weeks to solve the medical mystery. He, he's poisoned on the first, they only work out what it is on the day of his death, on the 23rd. So that's, you know, that's three weeks to solve it. So any quicker and they may not have solved it. And if it had happened in a day or two, it would have just gone down as an unexplained death. So I think that's why you can see it's potentially a useful murder weapon. But it's the worst murder weapon because once you do discover what it is, you can follow a trail of where it's been. Because it's really persistent and you can detect the tiniest speck of it.
10:18 Speaker 01 And because it's so unusual, you can, you can basically look and see where those who've come into contact with it have been.
10:27 Speaker 00 Which then allows the police to follow a trail that goes from Itsu sushi bar to the pine bar to.
10:37 Speaker 00 Emirates Stadium, the home of Arsenal Football Club, because Lugavoy had gone to a match there that night.
10:44 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:45 Speaker 00 So I would also imagine that this becomes a massive news story. Because it's not secret that he's died. It's not secret that he blamed Putin on his deathbed. And now the government, although I guess not, the public maybe not quite yet, but the government knows, the UK government knows, that because polonium was involved, they now have to essentially follow this trail all through London. And that is going to be visible to the public.
11:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, and you can't keep quiet the fact that there are public health elements because people know there's a mystery to this and that there's radioactivity. So anyone who remembers this from the time will remember it was kind of amazing because I think London, the whole country and large parts of the world watched transfixed as more and more sites around London get closed off by white-suited forensic specialists searching for radioactive particles. And of course, there is this worry for the general public because a lot of people potentially would have come into contact with it. There's a Cobra, which is the name of the emergency meetings governments have, and one police officer remembers as he comes out of it, reporters shouting to him, are people safe?
12:00 Speaker 01 And he's thinking to himself, I don't know. I mean, because no one's ever dealt with this before. I mean, no one's planned for it. And I think in all, there's going to be 40 sites and 750 people who were tested by the Health Protection Authority from 52 different countries, because London's so international. And these are tourist sites, you know, talking about Mayfair and Piccadilly and places like that. And 139 people show some degree of contamination from polonium. And the four groups which had the higher levels were Lipnienko's friends and family, office staff from the offices he visited, guests at hotels, and also the hotel and bar staff. And what's interesting is they're able to distinguish between what's called primary
12:45 Speaker 01 contamination, so something directly touched by polonium, and secondary where it's been transferred, where it's gone on someone's clothes and then a speck has fallen off and ended up on a seat or a restaurant or on an airline. And that's crucial.
13:02 Speaker 01 They're also going to be able to use science to look at where and how Lipinenko might have taken it. And if you remember, Marina had kept a clump of his hair which had fallen out, and they're able to use that and test that to show that there had likely been, and this is important, two intakes of polonium. The first one a hundred times smaller than the second, and the first one probably in mid-October and the second one on November the first.
13:38 Speaker 00 Because there was that, well, it was the first attempt, I guess, that Lugavoy and Kovtun made to slip some of his drink.
13:46 Speaker 01 It looks like he didn't even have a sip, and all you've got is the secondary contamination being enough.
13:51 Speaker 00 I see.
13:52 Speaker 01 Because he was sick at that point. So it's so interesting. So using this mix of science and detective work, they're able to look. And of course, the first place they go, one of the first places, is that Itsu sushi bar in Piccadilly. And that's where he met Scaramella on November the first, the day of the poisoning, but before he went to the Pine Bar, and they find contamination there. And this is really interesting, because if you think that Lugavoy and Kovtun are the suspects, then you're going to, you'd expect to find it at the Pine Bar, but not where he was before the Pine Bar, at the Itsu sushi place. So immediately, in the very first days of the investigation, that makes Scaramella a suspect, because he meets Scaramella on the first, and there's contamination
14:37 Speaker 01 there before he goes to see Lugavoy and Kovtun. And it's interesting, Scaramella gets tested, they test the hotel Scaramella stayed at, but there's nothing. And of course, what they then realise is that Lipinenko was also in the same sushi bar on October the 16th, when he met Lugavoy, the same sushi bar. So what if it's leftover from then? So immediately, they're starting to kind of narrow it down a bit.
15:06 Speaker 00 They also find it at that boardroom where he'd met on the 16th of October, is on the green tablecloth in between where Lugavoy and Lipinenko had sat when they were having their conversation about the due diligence work. It's primary contamination, so not transferred from somewhere else. There's also secondary contamination of, remember the shisha pipe that the, that Lugavoy and Kovtun had used that evening, their secondary contamination at the bar. One of their hotel rooms is also later contaminated. There's particularly, this makes sense, particularly strong primary contamination in the sink of their room.
15:48 Speaker 00 So I guess the, the thought here is, it looks like they had made an attempt, they had mixed the poison, he had failed to drink it, and then they throw the rest out, and this is down the sink, and then this is that night where they had that night paid for at the hotel, and then decided to leave. And I guess it makes sense because you wouldn't want to continue using the bathroom where you would just, you know, dumped out a whole bunch of radioactive poison.
16:13 Speaker 01 That's right. And so they're starting to build a picture of that first trip. They test the aircraft that Lugavoy and Kovtun flew out on, on October the 18th, at the end of that trip, and they find secondary contamination in the area of the seats on which Kovtun and Lugavoy had sat. They never get the chance to test the incoming flight because the Russians are playing, once this starts to get public, playing games with what flights they can test and refusing to let some be tested. But then they find it as well, because Lugavoy, of course, made a second trip in late October, and here they find absolutely massive readings in the bathroom of the Sheraton Hotel on Park Lane that Lugavoy had used.
16:56 Speaker 01 And there is so much that the detectives doing the testing, it said, literally run out of the room. I mean, they, they look at their, you could imagine them kind of looking at their, you know, whatever you use to detect the podium and go, that is off the scale. And they just, they just bomb it out of the bathroom.
17:17 Speaker 00 Wow.
17:17 Speaker 01 And the, actually, the highest readings for contamination anywhere are found in that hotel room and in the bathroom bin. And they also find contamination in two towels which had been through the hotel laundry. So now you're starting to understand the second trip, and the best guess is that Lugavoy spilled the poison in the bathroom.
17:40 Speaker 00 How does he spill the poison?
17:41 Speaker 01 He must drop it. He must drop it.
17:46 Speaker 01 Was he drunk?
17:47 Speaker 00 Maybe he's drunk.
17:48 Speaker 01 Maybe he's drunk.
17:49 Speaker 00 When he's handling the poison. I feel like if I were in London to murder someone with poison, that I would be very, very careful with the poison.
17:59 Speaker 01 I think I would be.
18:01 Speaker 00 I would be like, I'm really gonna focus on not spilling this poison when I take it out of my bag.
18:06 Speaker 01 You know? Instead, you can just imagine in the bathroom, it drops and then you get some towels to wipe it up. Puts it in the bin. I mean, it's like, ah, I mean, it's bizarre. So then they're gonna find it on Cobtoon's Hamburg trip he takes at the end of October. They find it in the car, the passenger seat, even on a teddy bear. And what that looks like is he's shedding little particles of it. So it's not a lot from his earlier attempt. So he's still kind of got it on his system or on his, on his body. And then crucially, they find it for that November, the first trip. They find it in the room Cobtoon stays in at the Millennium Hotel, places Cobtoon touched. Uh, it looks like they think mixed in the toilet downstairs by reception, which we talked about.
18:51 Speaker 01 The two men went in there. And then it looks like from the readings that it was poured away in the sink in Cobtoon's room afterwards. What, whatever was left over. So it looks like they've been trained to mix it somewhere. And then after they've deployed it, pour it away down a sink. And that seems to be a pattern that you see from these various visits.
19:14 Speaker 00 Now, the pinbar is obviously key. And the detectives are told that the 600 cups and saucers and 100 teapots that the hotel used had gone through 42 washes since the visit. Since let Ben go had been there with Luca Boy and Cobtoon. But three hours later, the tests come back with what an investigator describes as a nuclear teapot with readings consistent for polonium poured through the spout. And this, at long last, is the murder weapon. It's the teapot.
19:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's right. They found the nuclear teapot. So they have their suspects. They've got the evidence. The next step is to talk to them. Let's take a break there and afterwards we'll come back and look at a trip by the police to Moscow.
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22:07 Speaker 00 Well, welcome back. It is now December of 2006, and officers from London's Metropolitan Police are going to make a formal visit to Moscow to interview witnesses and try to talk, in particular, to Kovtun and Lugavoy.
22:25 Speaker 01 And the officers are given a security briefing beforehand, warned they'll be under surveillance. I think the spooks give them that briefing and watch out for honey traps. It's the briefing everyone gets before they get to Moscow. I'm sure you've had that too.
22:37 Speaker 00 Isn't it surprising like that the Russians even agree to let them come? I mean, what, what, what a different world this is 20 years ago, that, that there's even the British investigators go to, to Russia to, to even look at this. It's impossible to imagine today.
22:54 Speaker 01 And we used to take the statements from the Russian authorities almost seriously. You know, the Russian prosecutor would say, well, we've found this or we've done that. And we'd kind of dutifully report it, even with a bit of skepticism, increasing skepticism. But you're right, it does feel like a different age where the police would, you know, would be allowed to do that. But I think at this point, there is a battle over narratives. I mean, you could imagine if the, if the Russians didn't expect to be exposed for having poisoned him, if we, we'll come back to that, I guess, as the assumption, then they've suddenly got a bit of a problem. And so they're trying to work out, how do we respond to it? Maybe we can deflect, maybe, you know, we don't want to look too evasive.
23:36 Speaker 01 So, so they're, they're going to play games with the police on the visit. There's tons of TV cameras and media when they arrive. They meet Russian officials from the Russian prosecutor's office and it doesn't go well. Officially, of course, the Russians say, we'll do everything we can to help. But they put loads of obstructions in the path of the police. I mean, there are even moments where they're driving to an interview, to a location, and there are cars driving around them erratically. You know, there's attempts to lose them, there's attempts to trail them. There's all kinds of, you know, games that are being played. But the priority is seeing Kovtun and Lugavoy in person. And the Brits think
24:18 Speaker 01 they're in a place called Hospital Number Six, which has been built for radiation patients from Genoville, which I guess makes sense. The British team are told, are told that these two poor Russians are being treated for radiation sickness. Somehow they've become ill. And so there's delays, there's a two hour drive to get to the hospital. Everything is done to delay that initial meeting. And I think, looking back, it's partly to get the witnesses ready. Police are told you can't bring in recording devices, only one person can be present, you have to be quick. And, you know, the claim is that they're radioactive, Kovtun and Lugaboy, so detectives are gonna have to wear protective suits.
25:01 Speaker 01 Now, this is where, again, the story almost descends into farce if it wasn't such a tragedy. I mean, Kovtun is dressed in cream-coloured pyjamas and wearing a kind of paper face mask and a blue plastic head covering, I don't quite know what that looks like. But what it means is you can only see his eyes.
25:22 Speaker 00 Is it him?
25:23 Speaker 01 Is it even him? I mean, do you know? And at the first interview, they get 13 minutes with him, in which he basically denies everything. So it's pretty hard. And whilst they're there, the news breaks back in London that this is being treated as a murder inquiry and not just an unexplained death. I mean, I guess that's obvious, but it does put the pressure on the team and raise the tension with Moscow. Because the men are now being treated as potential suspects, not just witnesses. But the crucial thing is seeing Lugaboy. And here, the interviews get cancelled on short notice. You know, the claim is Kovtun meanwhile has got ill, he's in a coma.
26:03 Speaker 01 I mean, even some of the, this is interesting, I mean, some of the police officers themselves feel sick during the visit. One does, then another one is offered tea the next day with the Russian prosecutor, and he has diarrhoea after that. And they do wonder, these police officers, if they've been poisoned. I mean, not to kill them, not polonium, but just to make their life difficult. I mean, I don't know whether you think that's plausible, whether it's just bad water, but you could believe that there's a...
26:36 Speaker 00 Sure, that would make sense for the Russians to hassle them, I think that would be... That would be in pattern. Why make it pleasant for the investigators who are coming over to take a look at these two guys? And they're trying to get Lugavoy for an interview. Interviews get cancelled, delayed. They do finally see him, and this is wild. So he's in a hospital gown. He's got a designer t-shirt on underneath and doesn't seem sick at all. His hair's not falling out. Kind of looks like he's just shown up at the hospital in his t-shirt and thrown on a gown over it.
27:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:08 Speaker 00 And they get the investigators do get a longer interview, but are not permitted to record it themselves. The Russians do that, and it's through a translator. And, you know, he's less than truthful, I think it's safe to say throughout this this interview.
27:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, he gets some of the timings wrong of when he was at the Pine Bar. He says he only arrived at four, but they've got CCTV of him arriving at 3:30. And they're just not getting many details. And, you know, this detail the police remember at the end of the interview, he just smirks at them. And then in English, everything else has been done in translation. He says, good luck with your investigation.
27:46 Speaker 00 Why are they even admitting that they've that these two guys have have radiation sickness?
27:52 Speaker 01 They're going to claim they are victims.
27:55 Speaker 00 Of what?
27:56 Speaker 01 I think they're going to claim that either Litvinenko tried to poison them, or someone else tried to poison Litvinenko. And they were.
28:03 Speaker 00 And they just happened to be there.
28:05 Speaker 01 And they got contaminated.
28:06 Speaker 00 At the Pine Bar.
28:06 Speaker 01 Because I guess it it helps explain the contamination that's on them and where they've been. If you say, well, we were the victims of someone else.
28:15 Speaker 00 Yeah, okay.
28:16 Speaker 01 So you can, I mean, it's interesting, the police interview Lugavoy's wife. It's an interesting question, because you wonder if she's a bit annoyed at the fact.
28:25 Speaker 00 That he spilled poison everywhere on multiple trips in London and then had the whole family there. And didn't it was Lugavoy's son who he insisted give Litvinenko a hug?
28:37 Speaker 01 Uncle Sasha, shake his hand. Yeah.
28:39 Speaker 00 Shake his hand.
28:40 Speaker 01 I mean, a few years later, they do get divorced. So.
28:43 Speaker 00 Shocking, shocking.
28:44 Speaker 01 Yeah, shocking. In all, it's a two week trip. I mean, two weeks in Moscow in December for the detectives. I mean, yeah, I'm not sure it's the most glamorous foreign travel that you get as a detective.
28:55 Speaker 00 Well, and all the diarrhea they had.
28:57 Speaker 01 Yeah. I mean, it's memorable, but for the wrong reasons. And then they're made to appear before the Russian media at the end. They get the tapes of the interview because they'd not been allowed to tape the Lugavoy interview themselves. They get back to London. Put the tape in the machine and of course it's blank. There's nothing there. I mean, you're just like, oh, come on.
29:19 Speaker 00 Now Lugavoy, in particular, will come up with a lot of great and bizarre counter narratives in media interviews. And the main one is that Beresovsky, Boris Beresovsky, killed Litvinenko because the two had fallen out and Beresovsky had, you know, cut off his financial support to Litvinenko.
29:40 Speaker 01 It's interesting, that one, because that's the one they seem to push. Because of course, the Russians want to blame Beresovsky for everything. He's the arch plotter. But there is this conversation which Lugavoy recalls that he had in Chinatown on October 17th with Litvinenko, where Lugavoy says that Litvinenko tells him and Kovtun that Litvinenko admits to collecting dirt on people, to blackmail them and make money, including Beresovsky, but with Beresovsky to have to do it through a cutout because he doesn't want to, you know, be exposed as the blackmailer. And he says Beresovsky is still paying for his son's tuition. Now, he's obviously got an incentive to try and pin this on Beresovsky
30:23 Speaker 01 and also have a motive for why Beresovsky and Litvinenko might have fallen out. And it is true that the Litvinenko Beresovsky relationship had been a little bit more fractious. They'd had an argument in the summer, maybe about security advice. The money had been reduced from Beresovsky to Litvinenko, but everyone says they'd actually made up after the argument. They hadn't fallen out. And Marina says the underlying friendship wasn't broken and they were still close. And I think what you're seeing there is the Russians throwing out theories, you know, throwing out different possibilities as much as they can to try and confuse the picture, which is something we see later as a kind of Russian tactic.
31:03 Speaker 00 And there are also some other giveaways, aren't there? Because after Litvinenko's death, Kovtun has a conversation with, of all people, his ex-wife's mother about the radiation poisoning that he himself is suffering from.
31:18 Speaker 00 And then when interviewed by the German authorities, his ex-wife's mother gives this account of the conversation, he told me that he had probably got some of the poison which killed Litvinenko. He said, word for word, those arseholes have probably poisoned us all. And it's, it's a fascinating little turn of phrase because who are, who are the arseholes?
31:42 Speaker 01 The FSB.
31:43 Speaker 00 It's the FSB, right?
31:45 Speaker 01 Yeah.
31:45 Speaker 00 That comment, and frankly, the Lugavoy behavior in the bathroom with like the spilling and the towels and stuff, strongly suggests that these two guys, Lugavoy and Kovtun, probably didn't know what they were dealing with. They probably didn't know it was radioactive. And, and so it's, you know, the, what they were given by the FSB was probably that they were told it's poison, put it in his drink, but they weren't told what they actually had. And so they themselves are appalled at the risk that the FSB put on them and their, and in Lugavoy's case, I'm sure his family, it's a really interesting insight into how little information even the, the poisoners had about what they, what they actually had in their vials.
32:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think it is a really telling comment because it, it then, you're right, a lot of other things then make sense in the way, you know, wiping it up with towels, you know, Lugavoy introducing his son, all of that makes sense if you think this is a poison that you're given and you're told has to be ingested in food, hence needing the chef, you know, going finding the drinks or these things, but you not knowing that it's, that it's radioactive and leaves a trail because they don't act in a way that would suggest they knew that, but it would suggest they knew it was a poison, but just not quite how deadly and how persistent it was. So that, I think, I agree. I think that, that comment from Kovtun's ex-wife's mother is actually
33:15 Speaker 01 almost the most, the ex-wife's mother, that's the one to be, that's the one to be worried about. That's the one that really gives you away. I do think, I think it, you know, it's, it's very telling. But yes, so by May 2007, the police, the Crown Prosecution Service say there is sufficient evidence to charge Lugavoy with the murder of Litvinenko.
33:36 Speaker 01 At that point, Lugavoy does a press conference denying it all. And he also, at this point, starts talking a lot more about having been approached by MI6. We talked about that earlier as one of the potential motives and he's going to put that out there. It's interesting because at the time, I think most people thought, again, is this disinformation? Is it true? Could be disinformation, but it also, I think, is quite plausible as an element of truth for it. There's a warrant issued for his arrest. Later, there'll be one issue for Kovtun as well. But the problem is Russia says it won't extradite its own citizens.
34:09 Speaker 00 So what is the, what does the UK government do, Gordon? What's the hammer that gets brought down on Moscow for murdering a British citizen with radioactive poison in the middle of London?
34:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, Thor's hammer is the mighty hammer of the British state is brought down for using radioactive material in London. When the UK Foreign Secretary in July 2007 expels four diplomats. I mean, I have to say, that is, you are right. You are right to be cynical, David. I'm going to take it.
34:42 Speaker 00 Gordon, Gordon, don't, don't forget, don't forget that MI6 cuts off its liaison relationship with the SVR too. So all of that, all of that, I'm sure, just very juicy human intelligence that, you know, SIS was doubtless sharing with the Russians is, is cut off.
35:00 Speaker 01 Suddenly stopped.
35:00 Speaker 00 I'm sure, I'm sure there was very, very little, very little of substance actually being passed. So that's cut off. And then I guess returned Russia expels four, for Brits from the embassy in Moscow. And that's kind of, that's kind of it.
35:15 Speaker 01 It's crazy, isn't it? Don't you think?
35:17 Speaker 00 It doesn't feel like, like a strong response to the murder of one of your own citizens at the heart of your capital. I think, well, I think we'll talk more in our next episode about what, what were the options and what could actually be done? I think for all we've been joking, it is a, it does raise some big questions about what you do. You know, how do you actually respond to something like this? You know, in a way that is maybe proportionate or that is at least in keeping with the nature of the crime? It's a very tough, it is a tough question, isn't it?
35:51 Speaker 01 Yeah, and we will get back to that in the next episode, I think, in the longer term. But I do think it is extraordinary and weak. I mean, maybe the argument is we've let the police do their thing. You know, we've got charges out for these two guys, but you still think it's obvious the Russian state is behind this. We'll come back to the evidence, but everyone's worried in this period about al Qaeda and terrorists using weapons of mass destruction. We've got to war with Iraq over WMD. And yet here you've got another state using a weapon of mass destruction in maybe not mass destruction, but a nuclear weapon in the sense of a nuclear poison against civilians. And the response is, oh, it's just feeble, really. I mean,
36:35 Speaker 01 I do. I do think it's shocking, actually. Really shocking.
36:38 Speaker 00 And do you think it was purposely weak? Because as we talked about in, you know, the first episode of the series, there's so much Russian money and influence in London in this period that there's a desire to not rock the boat. I mean, I'm not sure there are good options, but there's probably better options than expelling four diplomats and cutting off what was already probably a somewhat weak sauce liaison relationship in response. It seems like there is more you could have done. British state chose not to.
37:09 Speaker 01 I think the British state just didn't want to confront the truth of what had happened. So meanwhile, I mean, Litvinenko himself, a month after he dies, he's buried, he's buried in a lead lined coffin. It's such a detail, isn't it? Because of the radioactivity, because they're worried about that still leaking. It's just extraordinary to think that they were still worried about the danger. And he's buried in Highgate Cemetery. I actually went to his grave earlier this year. Have you ever been to Highgate Cemetery, David?
37:42 Speaker 00 I have not, no.
37:44 Speaker 01 It sounds a strange thing on the tourist trail, but actually of London, but it is extraordinary because there's two wings to it. And one wing, you've got Karl Marx's grave, you know, and on another, you've got Litvinenko, but also these amazing, it's incredibly cinematic, actually, the ruins of some of the graves and these old mausoleums built for rich people in years gone by. But they're on one of the paths. Is the grave for Alexander Litvinenko. So that's the investigation. But the story isn't quite over in trying to bring those behind it to justice.
38:21 Speaker 00 Well, I think Derek Gordon is a good spot to end. When we come back for the final episode of this series, we're going to look at Marita Litvinenko's battle for justice, the other murders in Britain linked to this case, and whether Litvinenko was right and we can point the finger for his murder at none other than Vladimir Putin.
38:42 Speaker 01 That's right. Remember, you can hear that final episode right now. If you're a member of the Declassified Club, you can join at therestisclassified.com. Also hear the bonus episodes that we're going to do where we're going to dig a little bit deeper into some aspects of this story, including the police investigation. And do also sign up at the website for our newsletter. But otherwise, see you next time.
39:03 Speaker 00 We'll see you next time.
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