Pod Insights The Rest Is Classified 169. The Murder of Litvinenko: Poisoned in London (Ep 1) About this episode A Russian security service officer murdered in London, with radioactive poison. But who gave the orders and why?
Listen as David and Gordon begin their six-part investigation into the 2006 murder of former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko on the streets of London.
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0:25 Speaker 00 A Russian security service officer murdered in London with radioactive poison. But who gave the orders and why? Well, welcome to The Rest Is Classified. I'm David McCloskey.
0:36 Speaker 01 And I'm Gordon Corera.
0:37 Speaker 00 And this week, we are beginning a new and very exciting series looking at one of the most dramatic spy stories, I think, of this century, the killing in 2006 in London of Alexander Litvinenko. Now, Litvinenko is a former Russian FSB Security Service officer, and he is murdered in a very shocking way, a way that I think shocked London, shocked the world. He is poisoned with polonium. And in this series, we are going to be looking at this story, which I think will be a bit of a murder mystery in many ways, looking at
1:19 Speaker 00 who Litvinenko was really, why was he killed? How was he killed? The people behind it. And it's a story, Gordon, that I think lets us peel back the layers on modern Russia, Vladimir Putin, friend of the show, of course, Vladimir Putin.
1:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:40 Speaker 00 MI6 spy operations and some really dark corners of the underbelly of the modern Russian state. So it's got a little bit of everything. It's also, Gordon, I think it's fair to say that the nexus of Russian spies poisoned at London, right in the middle of that diagram, you have Gordon Corera, because this is a subject of intense interest for you.
2:05 Speaker 01 It is, yeah, definitely. It's a really interesting, dramatic. Story with a tense murder story, kind of true crime and all these layers of spy stories. But yeah, for me, people might remember this case, but I certainly do because I reported on it at the time and have covered it the aftermath, really for a good decade afterwards. It's worth saying there's a lot more to it that I think people may have realised. People might know some of the broad outlines, this idea of radioactive poison. But I think what's interesting about this is that when you burrow deep into it in the way we're going to do, you can see these other layers, the layers of how the Russian
2:46 Speaker 01 criminal nexus with the security service operates, how that fits with Vladimir Putin, how London operates as a place in which Russians could have had at one point free rein to carry out their operations and some real deep spy stuff between MI6 and the Russians, where the two sides are very much working against each other. So I think there's, there's a lot to the story, isn't there?
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6:21 Speaker 00 I think it in many ways dovetails really nicely with the the series we did last year at the pod with Mark Gagliotti, where we looked at the rise of Vladimir Putin, the man himself, the system that he inherits and then and then builds. So it's it's also a story about Putin's Russia in a lot of ways. And and, you know, I think in the case of Litvinenko, the kind of people who who stood up against that system and who tried to make Russia different from what it had been, and who, of course, I mean, tragically ultimately fail in their efforts to steer Russia in in a different, different direction. Because, I mean, the heart of this story is to some degree, a very personal animosity
7:05 Speaker 00 between Litvinenko, the victim, and Vladimir Putin.
7:09 Speaker 01 And it does get to this bigger issue about how Putin operates, what kind of state Russia is, which all matter for today. This isn't just a history story in that way. But it also tells us how and why the Russian state kills its enemies abroad. And it's fair to say that a lot of people, not just Litvinenko himself, who we're going to meet in this story, end up dead in, at the very least, mysterious circumstances, and some certainly a bit more mysterious than that, very suspicious, I think.
7:39 Speaker 00 It's also a story about the the British state standing up, isn't it, Gordon, and just saying, no, no to Russian influence, no to Russian money in the city. You know, we are not going to tolerate the murder of Russian dissidents and British citizens on British soil, right? So it's really a story about about, you know, Britain's standing up strong against a malevolent Russia, wouldn't you say, Gordon? Or do I have it wrong? Is it? Is it actually the exact opposite of what I just what I just said?
8:10 Speaker 01 Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. You've made your point. It does pain me somewhat. Actually, no, I'm not sure it does pain me. It perhaps doesn't even surprise me to say that this is the story about the British state struggling to work out what we're doing more than just struggling to work out how to deal with Russia, but actually.
8:28 Speaker 00 It's not struggling. There wasn't a struggle, though, right?
8:30 Speaker 01 No, it wasn't a struggle. They basically didn't want to know. I mean, they didn't want to know what Russians were up to. There were other interests at stake, which we'll get to. And there were a lot of people in the British state who did their best to move on from the murder of Alexander Litvinenko and just put it all behind us, pretend that it wasn't something extraordinary. I mean, this is the early 2000s era when, you know, people worried about Al Qaeda and nuclear bombs and terrorism. And yet you have another state using radioactive material to kill people and endanger people's lives in London. And the British state's reaction, I think, is frankly, I think, quite shocking. And a lot of the details that we're going
9:15 Speaker 01 to talk about may not have come to attention if it hadn't been for, for instance, the campaigning of Alexander Litvinenko's widow, Marina, to get the truth out there. It's worth saying, we're going to have her as a guest for a bonus episode for members. So do join up if you want to hear that. We'll also be hearing from some of the police officers who are directly involved in investigating this, to just understand just how significant this story was, not just for individuals, but I think for Britain, as well as in the bigger spy wars with Russia.
9:48 Speaker 00 Well, the man himself, Alexander Litvinenko, is the heart of the story. So maybe we start with him. So who is Alexander Litvinenko, Gordon? Where does he come from?
9:59 Speaker 01 So Alexander Litvinenko, born 4th December 1962 in Varanej in southwestern Russia, then part of the Soviet Union, of course, Cold War days. His parents, Walter and Nina, divorced when he's young. And his childhood, I don't think was very easy. He's moving around different parts of the family. From age 12, he's actually living with his grandparents in a place called Nalchik, which is in the footholds of the Caucasus Mountains. The Caucasus is close to Chechnya, which is one of the republics that made up the Soviet Union and will play a role in this story. He leaves school at 17, applies to go to university, doesn't get a place, so instead goes to military college. Grandfather had fought in the Second World War, so that might have been an influence.
10:42 Speaker 01 His college is a training centre for the Interior Ministry, so still in Soviet days, located in the city of North Ossetia, about eighty miles from Nalchik where he's growing up. And he graduates in nineteen eighty five as a lieutenant, lieutenant. Sandy hair, quite serious. I don't know if you've seen the pictures of him when he's young. He's got a kind of, both a serious and a kind of slightly innocent boyish face, which I think maybe goes a bit to his personality, as we'll see. And then he serves in something called the Zhaginsky Division of the Interior Ministry between nineteen eighty five and nineteen eighty eight. I like this, his duty, so he's not really a spy at this point. But one of his jobs is protecting trains carrying gold bullion around the Soviet Union.
11:27 Speaker 01 So he's more at this point, more like a kind of upmarket armed guard, you know, than a spy as such.
11:34 Speaker 00 Well, and then in nineteen eighty eight, he is recruited to join what was then still called the Committee for State Security, of course, the KGB. And I was struck here, why? I mean, it doesn't, up to this point, if he doesn't have a family history with the KGB, obviously he is inside Soviet officialdom, so I guess that kind of makes sense. But he's not up to this point, you know, he's not been an intelligence officer. And certainly the family pedigree doesn't suggest that this would be a place he would, he would wind up. But he, he does. I mean, how, how did the KGB find him and why?
12:08 Speaker 01 Well, I guess he's, he's come through the Interior Ministry. So it's the next step up, if you're ambitious, is to go from the Interior Ministry into the KGB. And we should say, the KGB at this point is big. And it's not like CIA or MI6, because it includes a foreign intelligence arm, but it also includes a domestic arm. And it also includes the equivalent of border guards and quite kind of junior officials, people who are more like soldiers. So I think he's in that world initially. But he's still going to join and get posted to KGB headquarters in Moscow. Worth saying a little bit about his personal life, because he'd got married already to his First wife Natalia, when he was still a student, so very young, he has a son and a daughter.
12:53 Speaker 01 That relationship's going to fall apart as we see, but August nineteen ninety one, he's in Moscow. Big moment for the Soviet Union, the KGB hardliners try a coup against Gorbachev, who's then leading the Soviet Union and is reforming it. The coup fails, it peters out, the Soviet Union's going to collapse into its constituent parts, including Russia. At this point, Litvinenko is assigned to a new division, which is the Economic Security and Organized Crime Unit of what was the KGB, but it's going to become known as the FSB, the Domestic Security Service, and he's going to work in that department until nineteen ninety four.
13:33 Speaker 00 This is a, an unsettled time in the Russian state, shall we say, Russia has or is descending into a kind of Wild West style mafia capitalism. I mean, you know, having spoken to agency officers who served in in Moscow and Saint Petersburg over this time period, I mean, this was a, this was a time in Russia where people who served remember hearing a lot of gunfire in the streets regularly. There was a lot of gangland violence as the Russian state had severely weakened. At the same time, I guess you have something that is trying to be a free market that's taking off, people are trying to make money, you have businessmen who are essentially looting
14:17 Speaker 00 and taking over what had been Soviet state enterprises and violence, because again, the Russian state scholars would debate whether it has truly collapsed, but it has gotten, it has gotten very, very weak. And violence as a result is being used to sort of settle business deals, both small and large, as that as that state control has, has collapsed, and I guess Litvinenko is. In the middle of this because he is part of the this sort of former KGB unit that is that is looking at organized crime.
14:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, so he's right in the heart of this new Russia with all its tensions. He's doing things like investigating kidnapping. So he helps rescue a 19 year old boy who'd been kidnapped and ransomed for a million dollars. He's also investigating the activities of something called the Tambov Organized Crime Group, which is based in St Petersburg. So the the port city looks towards Europe up in the northern part, the European end of Russia. And he's looking at evidence that the Tambov Group was engaged in smuggling drugs from Afghanistan via Uzbekistan, then to St Petersburg, and then from the port getting shipped to Europe and beyond. And he becomes convinced that there was collusion between the Tambov Group and former KGB and
15:34 Speaker 01 Security Service officials. And who by chance is a senior official in St Petersburg at this time and a former KGB officer? First appearance Vladimir Putin. He Putin had grown up in the city, served in Germany, and then comes back to Russia. At this point, he's left what was the KGB and the FSB. He's involved in politics in the city.
15:54 Speaker 00 He's out, right? He's fully out of the KGB.
15:57 Speaker 01 No such thing as a former KGB officer. Do they have that phrase for CIA officers? I don't know. They definitely have it for the KGB. But that's the world of that Litvinenko hasn't yet met Putin, but that he's investigating. And I guess what he's seeing is the way in which the security services are becoming intertwined with this new chaotic economy and with organized crime. And that's going to be his specialism, investigating those links between the different sides.
16:26 Speaker 00 At the same time, you have this effectively a kind of merger between Russian organized crime and the, you know, former KGB now FSB.
16:38 Speaker 00 Litvinenko is is trying to to uproot the organized crime that has actually embedded itself in the organization that he serves. So you can see there's going to be a lot of, you know, a lot of tension in that relationship.
16:52 Speaker 01 Because he's idealistic. I think that's the one thing about him. He's quite idealistic. I think he and he believes he can make a difference. He's also, at this point, going to meet another important character in our story, Marina. Marina's born Moscow, 1962. She does five years at university, but her real passion is ballroom dancing, and she does this professionally and competitively. She marries her dance partner, but that marriage ends around 1989. By 1993, she's no longer dancing competitively, but has become a dance teacher. And it's interesting, because at this point, two of Marina's friends from her dancing days, a couple, are getting demands for money. So extortion, threats of violence from a former business associate. They report this to the authorities, and Litvinenko comes
17:36 Speaker 01 in to investigate. And he takes it seriously. He offers to help them. He offers them protection. He seems really dedicated. It's that bit of his personality, which is quite idealistic, quite dedicated. The couple invite him to dinner at Marina's flat to celebrate her birthday, June 1993. Litvinenko's marriage to Natalia is breaking down at this point. So he moves out. They divorce soon after. And then he and Marina get together, and they will get married in October 1994. And earlier in that summer, their son Anatoly is born, June 1994. So he's taken on a new family life as well in Moscow.
18:14 Speaker 00 And it's about at the same time in 1994 that Litvinenko is going to meet another key character in the story, a man named Boris Berizovski, who I also think it's it's sort of de rigueur that any Russia intel story that takes place in the 1990s and early 2000s must include the character of Boris Berizovski.
18:34 Speaker 01 Exactly.
18:35 Speaker 00 He is all over the place. And he's also somebody that you've met before. And and you have you have visited his office, which I think we had maybe talked about when we did our our Anna Chapman episodes over a year ago. But you you actually you knew the man a little bit.
18:51 Speaker 01 Yeah, I wouldn't say I knew him that well, but I did visit him and meet him face to face in his office. And we'll come back to that, because actually, that's going to form. Part of that story and what he was talking to me about at that point. Really interesting, really important character, super smart, brooding, intense, ambitious, pugnacious, a plotter who is going to play a key role, as we'll see in the rise of Vladimir Putin, but will then become his enemy. Beresovsky had gone into business in the late eighties as the economy is being liberalised. He starts with a car dealership, then he moves into broadcasting, TV channels, airlines, oil industry.
19:29 Speaker 00 None of that makes sense, by the way.
19:31 Speaker 01 No, as a conglomerate.
19:33 Speaker 00 You wrote it all together like it somehow makes sense as this natural rise, but.
19:38 Speaker 01 I think it's fair to say you buy what you can get hold of in these years in Russia. They're like privatising industries which had all been state controlled. And it's just like, yeah, I'll try and buy that. I'll get hold of a bit of that. And I think that's what they're doing, these oligarchs, as they become known, are making huge fortunes by being aggressive in how they buy some of these companies, which have been state owned. And he's going to become first among equal of the oligarchs, Beresovsky, which also means that he's going to move into politics because that's what happens is business and politics are merging because that's where power lies. It's the nature of oligarchy. And that means he's going to have enemies and enemies will want to kill him.
20:19 Speaker 01 So the first time he really sees that, and we're going to come back because there's going to be a lot of plotting on people's lives, but Beresovsky's first plot, then maybe more, comes on the evening of June 7th, 1994, when he's getting into his Mercedes car to drive away from his office and a remote control bomb placed under the car explodes. His driver is killed, reportedly decapitated, sorry for the grisly detail, but Beresovsky himself is injured but survives. And it's front page news in Russia. It's a big deal, big businessman, the arrival of car bombs as a way of settling business disputes.
20:59 Speaker 01 But the crucial thing is that a sandy haired, serious minded, 31 year old FSB officer is assigned to investigate the assassination attempt, and that's Alexander Lipinenko.
21:11 Speaker 00 And Litvinenko is ordered also to spy on Beresovski, isn't he? So this gives you a sense of maybe some of the tensions in the organization, which is trying to navigate this chaotic, really violent world of, you know, sort of post-Soviet Russia, while also ostensibly trying to bring perpetrators of these kinds of crimes to justice. But Litvinenko is sort of a fascinating element of the man that he is, you know, he's given this, this job, which is both go solve the crime, but also spy for us on, on the victim, who is a really important businessman. And I guess it makes sense if you're the FSB, you want to know what's Beresovski up to. And, you know, you probably want leverage over this guy.
21:57 Speaker 01 Yeah. So Litvinenko is going to accompany Beresovski on a trip to Switzerland, but using an FSB passport. But what's interesting is that Litvinenko will end up becoming closer to Beresovski and in many ways more loyal to Beresovski than he is to the FSB, the security services employers. Very interesting progression. There's a story where a TV presenter on the channel Beresovski owns is murdered. Police come to talk to Beresovski about it. Beresovski gets a message to Litvinenko that they're coming. And Litvinenko arrives and draws his gun and stops the police taking Beresovski away. Because the fear is that this was somehow, the whole thing was a pretext
22:40 Speaker 01 to get hold of Beresovski and maybe get rid of him and bump him off using the police, which gives you an idea of how much plotting and uncertainty there was in Russia at the time. But Beresovski, as a result, starts to feel indebted to this security service officer.
22:55 Speaker 00 Was Litvinenko being paid by Beresovski at this point in time?
23:00 Speaker 01 No, I think there might be an element of friendship or loyalty, but the signs are he really does just attach himself. And the two, two men, very different power relations. Start to become, I mean, friends is perhaps the wrong word, allies, maybe that's a better way of putting it, because they both have uses for each other. Beresovski's powerful, Litvinenko's in the FSB. And Beresovski's power is going to grow, because at one point, it looks like Yeltsin's going to lose, who's the, Yeltsin being the president of Russia at this time, might lose the 1996 election to a communist. So Yeltsin needs money. So he does a secret deal with the oligarchs where they're going to throw their money and influence behind his campaign. And in return, they're going to get a bigger stake in some of the industries,
23:45 Speaker 01 so even more economic power. Beresovski brokers this deal. And as a result, he's going to end up becoming deputy head of the National Security Council in the wake of the election. So you can see Beresovski is moving closer and closer to power. And Litvinenko is to some extent with him in that journey.
24:02 Speaker 00 But then there is this very interesting interlude for Litvinenko, because, and it'll, I think it really does cast a long shadow over this story for him personally, which is that he ends up going to Chechnya, where in 94, this absolutely brutal conflict breaks out. Now, Chechnya, of course, had been one of the Soviet republics, it's largely Muslim, had been seeking independence. And Litvinenko is sent there to work on counterterrorism.
24:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, and it's partly because he's, it's close to Nalchik, where he grew up. So he knows the terrain. And so he's going to get asked to do interrogation, interviews of people. He's also, at some point, certainly going to be involved in combat operations. He's present at one siege, and he's going to see the violence that Russian forces use to subdue Chechen desires and fights for independence. I mean, the Russians are going to flatten Chechen cities.
25:00 Speaker 00 There's kind of a line, we talked about this, you know, when I was, when I was working on Syria at the, at the agency, you could, you could kind of draw a line in many ways from the way the Russians acted in Chechnya. To what they did in Syria, to what they're, what they are doing in Ukraine, where Russian, Russian counterinsurgency is basically just destroy everything.
25:22 Speaker 01 Yeah, flatten, flatten the place. And that's what they're doing in Chechnya. It's interesting because it, the experience there starts to change Litvinenko. There's one example where he's involved in interrogating a 17 year old Chechen prisoner. And he realizes all the pupils in that boy's class had taken up arms. And he begins to compare the Chechen defense of their country with the actions of Russians in the Second World War, defending their country against an invader. So he's starting to, it's starting to change his mindset to maybe these people are fighting for freedom. So he's, he's, he's idealistic, almost naive and more open to different ideas about the Russian state. Partly, he's developing this sympathy, I think, with, with Chechnya.
26:06 Speaker 01 But soon he's going to be back in Moscow from this interlude. And there he's going to directly confront Vladimir Putin in a dramatic encounter, which will define his life and death.
26:17 Speaker 00 Oh, there's our cliffhanger. Let's take a break and we come back. We'll see how this encounter plays out.
26:27 Speaker 04 There we are getting a statement from Number 10 on that flight with 350 passengers on board.
26:36 Speaker 05 The Great Game, strategic struggle between Britain and Russia.
26:44 Speaker 06 We assess, Prime Minister, with high confidence, it was Russian.
26:50 Speaker 03 Holding the Russians accountable is World War III. They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.
26:55 Speaker 05 Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, do you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing.
27:08 Speaker 07 We would need to understand the policy context.
27:10 Speaker 05 All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today, disseminated into an operation order, or FRAGO.
27:19 Speaker 07 A FRAGO that says to kill the president of Russia? Yes.
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28:11 Speaker 01 So, welcome back. By the summer of 1997, Litvinenko's returned from Chechnya, back to the FSB, back to Moscow, and he's in a new TIB in the Lubyanka, the famous headquarters of the Russian security services, KGB in the old days, now the FSB. And it's a team for the investigation and prevention of organised crime, known as UPO, U R P O. But, David, are they preventing organised crime? Or are they part of it? That is the question.
28:42 Speaker 00 The answer is yes, right? They're both preventing it, and then, more broadly, the FSB is also part of it. And Litvinenko, I do, I just, I find this fascinating about him, Gordon, is that he's, he's distressed by this. He seems surprised that the FSB is embroiled, not just in maybe mundane corruption, but much more serious things like kidnapping, carrying out... Violent vendettas for both politicians and criminals that's involved in some cases, most likely in murder. And so Litvinenko, this kind of idealistic, somewhat naive guy who's supposed to be stopping all of this as part of his work with Urbo is actually
29:27 Speaker 00 seeing it take place on his watch and it's being conducted by his colleagues.
29:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, and he's outraged by it. And then the next thing that happens, now he's in this unit, he's asked to look into assassinating no less than Boris Beresovsky, the guy he got close to. I mean, which is wild, you know, that there is a discussion about this. Although in true intelligence, you know, service style, the request is given verbally. It's not like a piece of paper going, please assassinate, you know, the deputy head of the National Security Council. But that gives you a sense of what people in this organization were doing. They were fulfilling vendettas and dealing with political agendas and using murdering criminals to do it. It's pretty, it's pretty crazy stuff. And Beresovsky certainly has
30:15 Speaker 01 a lot of enemies. He's just negotiated a peace deal with the Chechen rebels. Hardliners see that as a sellout. He's obviously a powerful figure. But Litvinenko, this is the guy he'd got to know, protecting a few years earlier. So he's shocked. And he goes and tells Beresovsky about the plot, late 97, early 98.
30:33 Speaker 00 And again, he's not being paid at this point by Beresovsky. Is that right?
30:38 Speaker 01 Not as far as we know.
30:39 Speaker 00 It's sort of hard to believe, I have to say, just because he very much, if you just, you know, look at this on the face of it, it very much seems like he's a Beresovsky's, one of Beresovsky's agents inside the FSB. But I guess maybe he's friends with the man and as a result, because of that friendship is trying to protect him, is what you're saying.
31:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think there's an element of friendship and there's an element in which they do see themselves as allies against the corrupt hardliners of the FSB. So Litvinenko is Motivated by this idealism and Beresovsky is also actually at this point thinking, I want to clear out some of these old KGB hardliners and trying to do it. So you can see that they've got an alignment and this is going to draw them even closer together because Litvinenko and others in the FSB want to be whistleblowers about the corruption. They're nervous. They make a video of their allegations. It's filmed by one of Beresovsky's TV presenters, Beresovsky's datter. You're looking pained at the idea of doing that. I mean, it's a risky move.
31:43 Speaker 00 It seems like a bad idea. Yeah.
31:45 Speaker 01 Yeah.
31:45 Speaker 00 I guess only in retrospect perhaps, but at the time it must have been seen as a risky move in any respect.
31:51 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think, I think a lot of what we're going to see him do in this period in retrospect looks mad, but at the time, at the time, I think there was still this view that Russia was on a path to perhaps cleaning up some of this problem and that that was possible. Now, in hindsight, we know it didn't happen, but at that time, I guess they, they think it is possible. So he, Litvinenko and Beresovsky go to the head of the FSB, a man called Kovaliev, and the FSB, of course, bosses and others are really unhappy that Litvinenko has told Beresovsky about the plot. It's like, what are you doing? And why are you making these allegations about corruption? That's kind of what we do. And they're saying, you've
32:31 Speaker 01 got to withdraw this. So he's now coming into tension and into these clashes with his bosses. He'll talk about getting beaten up in the street, harassed, bugged.
32:42 Speaker 00 Litvinenko's beaten up in the street?
32:44 Speaker 01 Yeah. Yeah. So he's beaten up by some, I think some youths on the street and he, he takes it as possibly having been arranged by his enemies in the FSB. But I think, you know, can't be sure about that. And he thinks he's bugged. He gets harassed at work. All this stuff's happening. So it's, it's getting spicy, but President Yeltsin removes the head of the FSB, Kovaliev. So this looks like Beresovsky's clear out drive is winning.
33:12 Speaker 01 And he might be able to increase his power.
33:16 Speaker 00 Put a reformer in at the FSB, right Gordon?
33:19 Speaker 01 Yeah.
33:19 Speaker 00 Someone, someone from the outside who's really gonna, really gonna clean up, clean up shop.
33:24 Speaker 01 Someone you can trust, David, that's what you want, someone you can trust. So Beresovsky himself, engineers, it looks like, or has a role in putting this, you know, this young guy who, well, youngish, you know, looks like he might be the future, Vladimir Putin.
33:41 Speaker 00 Oh, and he is the future, he is the future.
33:43 Speaker 01 He is the future, not in the way people think, not in the way people think. So he's the new FSB head. We talked about this in the series we did on, on the rise of Putin with Mark Galiotti for our club members. This is, at the time, it was seen as pretty weird because Putin hadn't been a big senior KGB officer. He'd not been very senior, been in St Petersburg in a mayor's office. And suddenly he's the head of the FSB, you know, he's kind of jumping over lots of other people who should have got that job.
34:08 Speaker 00 He's seen, I, I think by Beresovsky as a kind of blank slate that Beresovsky can write his own message on. And he's, you know, Beresovsky can control him, is the thought, right, is.
34:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
34:21 Speaker 00 We'll see how that turns out, you know.
34:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
34:23 Speaker 00 With no spoilers here, but let's, let's see if Beresovsky can keep Vladimir Putin under control.
34:29 Speaker 01 So Beresovsky arranges for Litvinenko to go and see Putin, the new FSB head, July 1998. And this is this pivotal moment for both men, actually, because they're going to have this confrontation. It doesn't last long, maybe 10 minutes, but it is incredibly important for what happens next, particularly for Litvinenko and his life. Putin, of course, not a tall man, takes up martial arts at school so he can stand up for himself and likes to intimidate, but on this occasion he's cagey. But we do have an account, don't we, from Litvinenko himself? And it's interesting, shall we, shall we read it? Do you want to read it?
35:04 Speaker 00 I'll read it, Gordon, let me read it. So here's, this is Litvinenko's account of the meeting with Putin. He came out from behind the desk to greet me. Apparently he wanted to show an open, likable personality. Which, okay, has Putin ever, was there a point in his, this is me now, was there ever a point in Putin's life where he was attempting to show an open, likable personality? Anyhow, back to the Litvinenko account. We operatives have a special style of behavior. We do not bow to each other, do without pleasantries, and so everything is clear. Just look into each other's eyes and it becomes clear. Do you trust the person or not? And I immediately had the impression that he is not sincere. He looked not like an FSB director, but a person who played the director.
35:47 Speaker 01 It's a great description, isn't it?
35:49 Speaker 00 I guess, but does, I, I mean, maybe this is my, this is my American bias, Gordon, but I would presume that most FSB directors are also not sincere, trustworthy individuals. But that's, that's just, you know, that's just the former CIA man in me.
36:04 Speaker 01 No one would ever say that about CIA people. So Litvinenko, so this meeting is so interesting because Litvinenko is there to, to outline his knowledge of corruption in the FSB and the links to organized crime. And he's brought, he's brought along this dossier that he's drawn up and everything he knows.
36:21 Speaker 00 Dossiers are bad ideas. We've established this in our Rock WMD series. Never bring a dossier anywhere.
36:27 Speaker 01 No, and I'm afraid in this case, this dossier is also going to be destined for the rubbish heap of history because it's everything that Litvinenko has collected about links to drug smuggling and organized crime from the FSB. And he offers to hand it over to Putin. And Putin goes, nah.
36:49 Speaker 00 I mean, it's, in retrospect, it seems like such an insane thing to do because Putin is deeply, and this is what, does Litvinenko not know at this point that Putin has been involved in these activities in St. Petersburg?
37:03 Speaker 01 Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't.
37:04 Speaker 00 He missed it in the dossier.
37:05 Speaker 01 He missed it in the dossier. But I guess what he's thinking is Putin is perhaps Beresovsky's guy like me. Perhaps Putin is there, you know, thanks to Beresovsky to some extent. I think Beresovsky always exaggerates how much, you know, influence he has over these decisions. But he's perhaps hoping. This is the new guy, the last guy after all got sacked by the president. So maybe this is the guy. But when he tries to hand over the dossier, Putin goes, you keep it. It's your work. I mean, that's a bad start. And then he's also got this list of all the FSB officers who Litvinenko thinks are clean. And he tells Putin, well, there are some honest people in the system.
37:46 Speaker 01 And together we could battle corruption and the mafia despite the dangers. And I like the description, Putin nods.
37:55 Speaker 00 Yes.
37:55 Speaker 01 Putin writes down Litvinenko's home phone number and he says, sure, I'll call you. I mean, ah, it's tragic, you know? I mean, I find it sad, you know?
38:06 Speaker 00 It is sad.
38:07 Speaker 01 It is sad, you know, because this is a guy who thinks everyone else is breaking the rules, but we can change the system. And of course, as soon as Litvinenko leaves the room, Putin orders an investigation into Litvinenko. And for the investigation into the corruption allegations to get dropped. So immediately Putin is showing his hand, I think, isn't he?
38:28 Speaker 00 I do think it is a very sad, very tragic undercurrent to the story that there are so many people in Russia at this time who are trying, even inside the system, like Litvinenko, who think that there's a different and better way to run the state. And, and they, they are ultimately, of course, of course, not successful because they're up against, you know, we talked about this in our series on Vasiliy Matrokin, they're up against this massive organization, the KGB, which by the end of the Soviet area was the most powerful organization in, in the Soviet Union. And it hasn't been dismantled at this point.
39:06 Speaker 01 Yeah.
39:07 Speaker 00 It's very much, very much alive and well. So then, I mean, Litvinenko, and I find this is, this is wild, Gordon, because on November 17th of 1998, he then decides to do something which in retrospect seems totally insane. Because he goes public with his criticism of the FSB.
39:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, he and some of his colleagues are going to organize a press conference saying they are FSB officers. And it's really interesting because the other FSB officers wear ski masks, kind of balaclavas to hide their faces. But Litvinenko is the one guy who doesn't do that.
39:47 Speaker 00 Why?
39:47 Speaker 01 It's again, yeah, I just think he's got this. Idealistic, as you said, maybe naive, that's maybe also the word, view that the truth is going to win out, I'm going to be open about this, I'm going to fight it. And he's gonna just say that, you know, we've received illegal orders to kill, to kidnap, to extort, instead of protecting the state, senior FSB officials are part of the problem. And this press conference is obviously massive at the time, and you can see pictures of it. Beresovsky is in the background, of course, and he's hoping he can use this, perhaps to get Putin to purge the old guard and the enemies. And he doesn't realise, I
40:30 Speaker 01 think, that Putin is allied to that old guard of, you know, KGB, as you said, FSB officers who are tied into corruption, that he's already chosen his side, he's not capable of being pushed to a different direction. So these hopes are going to be dashed. And it marked Litvinenko out as a man who'd, you know, Putin's eyes, in colleagues' eyes, as a traitor. And Putin is going to actually single out Litvinenko in a personal way, in some comments soon after, talking about his marriage and other things. And it's that sense where Putin really takes things personally. He's the kind of guy who has grudges, and particularly people he views as traitors. And I think that's, yeah, that's something
41:12 Speaker 01 we'll come back to when we look at the murder. So Litvinenko and the other men are all going to get sacked. Litvinenko is arrested, March 1999. He spends eight months in prison, the famous Lefortovo prison in Moscow, where spies and political prisoners are held.
41:26 Speaker 00 It was Stalin's favourite shooting prison, also, Gordon.
41:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, so that's the place to be.
41:31 Speaker 00 I did a decent amount of research on Lefortovo for my second novel, Moscow X, which of course all takes place in Russia. They have this very interesting system in which they don't want the prisoners to interact with each other. And so when they're transferred around in the corridors, they actually have these, like, wooden boxes that almost look like coffins that are on either end. So if two teams of guards are taking prisoners down a corridor at the same time, so the prisoners don't see each other, they might stick one of the prisoners inside that box while the other one passes. And the guards have these weird kind of metal. Clackers, like little cricket things that they they click because they don't want the prisoners to hear the guards' voices.
42:15 Speaker 01 Wow.
42:16 Speaker 00 And so the the guards will click these things to signal who's going into which box and who passes and all that. So it's a very, I mean, a lot of deep history at that prison, but it's, you know, it's a pretty grisly place. They actually, they shot a lot of people there during the terror and they have these in many of the the cells that are these kind of scupper drains that are built into the walls because they were shooting so many people that they had to, they had to have cleanup.
42:43 Speaker 01 Drain the blood.
42:44 Speaker 00 Right, and so there's drains on the side of the walls and then they've got pressure hoses or had pressure hoses in most of the rooms so they can shoot someone, spray the thing down and bring someone else in.
42:53 Speaker 01 Oh, it's grim, isn't it?
42:55 Speaker 00 This is the rich history of the prison where they hold Litvinenko.
42:58 Speaker 01 And luckily he does make it out and he actually gets, it's it's really interesting. He gets acquitted in his first trial in November nineteen ninety nine. As he is acquitted, FSB officers come into the courtroom and arrest him again. I I mean, it's just like you couldn't get a clearer signal, we are going to get you. And then he's released on bail in December nineteen ninety nine. This is such an interesting moment because so much else is going on in Russia. Big changes in Russian politics. President Yeltsin was ill. His priority is getting out of office in a way that protects him and his family from corruption charges. They think we need an empty vessel who will do that, who will give us immunity, come up with a deal. Who do they pick? Who do they pick? Vladimir Putin.
43:42 Speaker 00 Volodya, yes, indeed. Everyone thought, everyone thought this guy was was malleable.
43:47 Speaker 01 Our guy.
43:48 Speaker 00 Yeah, our guy.
43:49 Speaker 01 And and, you know, he's a spy. He's going to bring strength and stability. So he gets first of all made prime minister, August nineteen ninety nine. So he's moving up the ladder from FSB prime minister. And then something important happens, which we will come back to because there's a series of devastating bomb blasts which hit apartment buildings in Russia in September. So just after Putin is made prime minister, hundreds of people are killed. These appear to be dramatic terrorist attacks which scare the country. It's blamed on Chechens. They confirm the idea you need a strong man, a former KGB man, some might say, to take on the Chechen insurgents.
44:29 Speaker 01 And this paves the way for Putin's rise and also for a new war in Chechnya to take on those who are said to be responsible. We'll come back to these bombings because they're very interesting and very important. But Putin's on the rise. You've had the bombings. Yeltsin then resigns. New Year's Eve, nineteen ninety nine. Putin from almost nowhere is acting president. Does the deal with the Yeltsin family. He's going to become president. Very quickly, though. It becomes obvious, doesn't it, that he's not the empty vessel because summer two thousand Putin summons all these oligarchs, the big businessmen to a barbecue. I mean, I love the image of the barbecue. Sausages. I don't think Putin would be grilling the sausages himself.
45:08 Speaker 00 Putin had the chef's hat on and the apron that he's turning the sausages over.
45:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, I don't think that's how it works. And he says to the oligarchs, you're not running me, I'm running you. You know, you are my guys. You bend the knee or else you're out. Stay out of politics, then you can keep your money. If you interfere in politics, I'll take you down. And Beresovsky is the guy who is not happy with that. He's one of a few who are not happy with that. But he's the one of the first ones to really clash with Putin. And there's this really interesting thing where there's a moment where this really comes to life. Because a Russian submarine, the Kursk, sinks in the Barents Sea, August two thousand. A hundred and eighteen people are on board. It's a really dramatic story as families are hoping maybe these men could be rescued.
45:54 Speaker 01 And Beresovsky's TV stations, we said he owned TV stations, go hard on the new president Putin. Critical of him. Putin's on holiday.
46:05 Speaker 00 It's only twenty six years later, Gordon, that this is now an impossible situation to imagine. That you'd have, you actually have Russian media that are taking the president to task because Putin's Putin's on vacation when this happens, right? And it's kind of, the response is seen as as slow and kind of tepid and Beresovsky just has his stations. Rake him over the, over the coals for this. Putin is not amused by, by this treatment though.
46:33 Speaker 01 No, it's fair to say so Putin summons Beresovsky to the Kremlin and basically says, hand over your TV channel, you know, give it to me because you can't go on like this. It's the new Putin way, which is I'm going to put order in oligarchs aren't going to tell me what to do. Beresovsky refuses. And so he flees to the United Kingdom, late 2000 by France, I think, claims asylum. And from there he begins to plot. He's a plotter. But the crucial thing is, he's not the only one to flee.
47:01 Speaker 00 So during the year 2000, Litvinenko is, he's out on bail and, and a very unsurprisingly concerned for his family. He's getting harassed, fair to say, getting messages from people inside the FSB that he's, he's viewed as a traitor. And Marina has said that her husband had actually been approached by an FSB Colonel who had said, we will not continue discussions with you. We will kill you. To be clear, we will kill you and your six year old son. You're being prosecuted, not for any crimes that you may have committed. Everybody knows that you did not commit them. You're being prosecuted for betraying the system and openly acting against the system.
47:41 Speaker 00 So wow, that, that is a very clear message that it's, it's time for the Litvinenko family to go.
47:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's right. So late September, Litvinenko tells Marina he's flying to Nalchik to visit relatives, but he then crosses into nearby Georgia. He can get in there. He's, his international passport has been taken by the FSB, but he's got an internal one which he can use to cross the border, goes to the capital of Georgia, Tbilisi. He passes a message to Beresovsky, who in turn contacts some of his people. So particularly a guy called Yuri Felchinsky, a Russian American writer investigator of the FSB. Felchinsky travels from Boston to Tbilisi to meet Litvinenko. All of this and all that we hear about, it's going to be funded by Beresovsky. Litvinenko gets a message to Marina, his wife, tells her to buy a new mobile phone, calls her on the new phone, tells her and Anatoly, their son, has to go on holiday
48:33 Speaker 01 anywhere, just get somewhere. They go to Malaga in Spain. Then he speaks to her when she's in Spain and he says, he's not in Nalchik, he's in Georgia. They have to decide if they're ever going to return to Russia. If they go back. The chances are he's going to get arrested, jailed, killed, maybe even their son. They can't be safe. And Marina, I think at that point agrees it's time to go. So meanwhile, Litvinenko's in Tbilisi, Felchinsky is with him. They're worried, they're worried the FSB are going to know that they've gone, they're going to be tracing them. People are starting to call around Moscow, including to Felchinsky, saying, have you seen Litvinenko?
49:14 Speaker 01 So it's interesting, they first try the US Embassy in Tbilisi, looking for political asylum. It's refused.
49:21 Speaker 00 Hmm, makes, I think it makes some sense, yeah.
49:24 Speaker 01 And then Litvinenko gets a false Georgian passport, not entirely clear how. They then use that to go to Turkey, to Antalya. Felchinsky goes and gets Beresovsky's private plane, he's got a private jet, it's helpful when you're trying to escape places, to collect Marina and bring her and Anatoly to Antalya, so the family are reunited. Felchinsky at this point is replaced by another Russian exile, a guy called Alex Goldfarb, scientist activist from New York. Alex asks people, you know, before he leaves in Washington, he says, you know, how do I get this guy out? Can I take him to an embassy? They say, don't get involved, too dangerous. So now it's Goldfarb, Litvinenko, they go to Ankara in Turkey, try the US Embassy there. Litvinenko and Marina interviewed separately by US officials in secure rooms.
50:08 Speaker 01 Do you think, I mean, would that be CIA doing that? You know, if it's a pre-arranged, you've got an FSB guy turning up?
50:15 Speaker 00 I tend to think it would, yeah, it would probably, it would probably start with a, a consular officer and then make its way to eventually to someone from, from the agency, I would think. I mean, because it seems like these were not, it wasn't a 10-minute interview, they end up having longer discussions with him. So I'd imagine at some point, yeah, you would have the CIA involved, which, which I think is interesting because and maybe it speaks to something of the Maybe both the politics of the times where, of course, Russia is not the implacable foe that it is today. And at the same time, also, maybe what Litvinenko isn't, he's not offering his services as as an asset. He doesn't, he probably doesn't want to be debriefed by,
51:01 Speaker 00 you know, the CIA about the inner workings of the FSB. I mean, this is very much a political asylum case, isn't it? Where he wants, he wants a safe, safe haven, a place to to land.
51:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, rather than being a spy. So yeah, he gets interviewed by the Americans for three hours. He goes back to the hotel that evening, I think, realizing he's not going to get out and he's going to be told the next day, no. I think you're right. I think it's looks a bit complicated, looks a bit murky. The politics with Russia are, do you want to get into a fight with someone who's the new Russian leader's enemy? So they escape, they drive out of, out in the middle of the night from the car park. They fear the FSB are on their tail. At this point, they're getting pretty desperate, I think. One of Beresovsky's business partners suggests sending a boat to pick them up in Istanbul. But Goldfarb is, Alex Goldfarb is with Litvinenko is researching where they could get by air without a visa.
51:52 Speaker 01 And the solution they eventually hit upon was to fly to the UK, to London, by purchasing tickets from Istanbul to Tbilisi via London, as that didn't require a transit visa. Now, this, it's a slightly weird route when you think about it, isn't it? You're going from Istanbul in Turkey, or, you know, to Tbilisi.
52:11 Speaker 00 To London, to Tbilisi.
52:13 Speaker 01 Via London, via London. It's like, that's not a logical route. But that's the one they picked precisely because they, because of the visa regime. So first November 2000, Alexander Litvinenko, Marina and Anatoly fly to London. They land at Heathrow. Litvinenko approaches the first police officer he can see in the transit area, and he says, I am KGB officer, and I'm asking for political asylum.
52:39 Speaker 00 We'll be there, Gordon, with London now set to become Litvinenko's new home. Let's end this first episode of our series on Litvinenko. When we come back, we will see. How this battle with Putin is going to get even more dangerous.
52:55 Speaker 01 And don't forget, if you want to hear those episodes right now, then you can by joining the Declassified Club at therestisclassified.com. You get early access, ad-free listening, lots of other things, including some bonus episodes where we're going to be talking to people directly involved in this case, including one of the police officers who led the investigation into what happened. So do join the club. But otherwise, we'll see you next time.
53:17 Speaker 00 We'll see you next time.
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