Pod Insights The Rest Is Classified 172. The Murder of Litvinenko: Russia’s Nuclear Weapon (Ep 4) About this episode Alexander Litvinenko has been poisoned in London… Now the race is on to work out what is slowly killing him.
In this episode David and Gordon tell the story of the race to discover what the Russian security services used to murder Litvinenko.
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0:25 Speaker 00 Alexander Litvinenko has been poisoned in London. Now the race is on to work out what is slowly killing him. Well, welcome to The Rest Is Classified. I'm David McCloskey.
0:34 Speaker 01 And I'm Gordon Corera.
0:35 Speaker 00 And we are on the fourth episode. Gordon of this deep dive into the life and times and death of former FSB Russian Security Service Officer, Alexander Litvinenko. And last time, we went really deep on a particular day, November 1st, 2006, which is when Litvinenko met the two men who are going to be his poisoners, his assassins, in the Pine Bar at the Millennium Hotel in London. And we left Alexander Litvinenko having taken a few sips out of a teapot. And it is going to be a fateful decision. We left him there.
1:20 Speaker 00 He was heading home and he is getting ready to fall tragically ill.
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4:37 Speaker 01 That night was the anniversary of Litvinenko and his family's arrival in the United Kingdom. So his wife Marina had cooked his favourite chicken. They eat, but then soon after going to bed that night, he rushes to the bathroom and throws up. And then again, it happens 20 minutes later, and again, and there's a bit of foam and blood. By the early hours of the morning of November the 2nd, he says to Marina, he thinks he might have been poisoned. And during that day, he can't keep food or drink down, he's vomiting, there's stomach cramps. Interestingly enough, one of the people he calls that morning of November the 2nd is Andre Luhovoy, the guy, you know, who poisoned him in the Pine Bar. And he says, he's got to
5:20 Speaker 01 cancel their meeting that they'd planned with a due diligence company because he's feeling ill. And then the next day, of course, Luhovoy and Kovtun, his partner, fly back to Moscow and leave the scene. Whether Litvinenko blames Luhovoy or thinks it's him, we'll come back to that because it's an interesting question. But Marina then calls an ambulance that night. So we now head into the night of November 2nd, early hours of November 3rd. Paramedics come, but they say he's just suffering a bacterial infection and should just drink more water. But things get worse during the day. And by 4pm, an ambulance is going to take him to Barnet Hospital in the North London suburbs.
6:01 Speaker 00 When he had first fallen ill, Litvinenko had asked Marina to bring a couple phones for him to the hospital. And on one phone, again, it's fascinating, isn't it? He makes a call to, again, Andre Luhovoy. And Litvinenko, I mean, I guess he's thinking, like many of us would, if we had fallen ill, that we have, we have work, you know, arrangements and commitments, and we need to start cancelling things and moving things around. And so Litvinenko explains to Luhovoy that he won't be able to go on that trip to Spain, the business trip to Spain. It is interesting because Litvinenko...
6:38 Speaker 00 Seems to think at this point or suspect that he's been poisoned. I would, maybe I'm just, I'm rocking some hindsight bias here, Gordon, but I would wonder if in the back of his mind, he's thinking about Lugavoy, Kovtun, the tea and the pine bar, but he doesn't seem to really be behaving as if he believes that Kovtun and Lugavoy are his poisoners yet.
7:04 Speaker 01 No, I think that's absolutely right. I think the realization, I think it might be there as a part, the swirl of possibilities. And of course, he's getting ill. So, you know, his mind may not be working a hundred percent, but I don't think he's settled on them as the killers. There are certainly other possibilities in his mind. And yes, it's amazing. He's calling Lugavoy to say, we can't go to Spain. He uses the other phone. So interesting. Two phones Marina brings to Barnet Hospital and he uses a different phone to call a guy called Martin. Now, the fact he's using a different phone is maybe a clue that Martin is someone interesting. And we'll, we'll come back to Martin because he's going to appear a little bit later in the story. But
7:46 Speaker 01 at Barnet Hospital now, there's this medical mystery which is unfolding and which is going to unfold over the next few weeks because they don't know what's wrong with him. And there's this initial diagnosis of gastroenteritis with mild dehydration, which they assume he's got because he's throwing up. But then the results of those initial blood tests show that although his platelet count was normal, his hemoglobin and white blood cell count were high. So he's put on antibiotics, but then they see his platelet count fall to a unusually low level. And then the red and white blood cell counts fall even further. And this is all a bit odd. It just doesn't fit the pattern for a normal illness. It's a mystery for the
8:29 Speaker 01 staff. And on November the 7th, Marina is going to ask a doctor if it could be poisoning. And she says to the doctor, you know, he knows dangerous people, friends of his, friends of ours have been poisoned. But the doctors at this point just don't take it that seriously.
8:46 Speaker 00 It reminds me a little bit of the reaction to Georgie Markov being poisoned by the rice and tipped umbrella, that series we did last year, where these poisonings are so uncommon. And the, you know, the initial kind of symptoms could be explained in so many different ways that that the the poisoning victims kind of get dismissed right off the bat and just say, oh, you know, it's no way this is something else.
9:16 Speaker 01 No way.
9:16 Speaker 00 No way. It's kind of crazy. In retrospect, the doctor says it's unlikely. But then, I mean, Litvinenko from the hospital gives an interview to the BBC's Russian service where he says he's recovering from being poisoned. So he, whatever the medical staff says, he he's decided at this point that it's poison.
9:34 Speaker 01 And it's interesting because in that interview, I was looking at a transcript of it just earlier, he mentions he met someone the day of the poisoning and he's talking about Scaramella here, Mario Scaramella, the consultant on the Metropin Commission, who he'd met in the Itsu sushi bar that day. And he's talking about him. He doesn't mention the others, Lugavoy and Kovtu. Now, whether it's because he's business partners, whether there's something else going on here, whether he doesn't suspect them, not entirely sure, but we're going to come back to that. But it's interesting, people, even his friends like Alex Goldfarb, who hears about this and hears about him being ill, are pretty skeptical about the poisoning. They'll come visit, they'll start to take it seriously.
10:15 Speaker 01 But the BBC's Russian service interviews, his attempt to get people interested in this, but at this point, it's just not breaking through. And in the meantime, he's getting worse. And that's the problem. November 12th, Marina, who's visiting every day, strokes his hair to comfort him and she stares at her hand in horror because clumps of his his sandy blonde hair are coming away as she strokes his hair. And and he actually asked for it all to be shaved off. She keeps some of the hair and that will actually come in useful. So the doctors are really confused because it it just doesn't fit. And it does strike one doctor that the symptoms were similar to a patient's
10:56 Speaker 01 Suffering from acute leukemia who'd been treated with intensive chemotherapy. So they'd had their total body irradiation done prior to a bone marrow transplant. So there is, people are starting to kind of go through different theories, aren't they, about what it could be?
11:12 Speaker 00 It now started on the fourteenth and fifteenth of of November. So, I mean, a couple of weeks after he's been poisoned and started showing symptoms, the staff actually start testing for for radiation for poisoning. And they use a Geiger counter, which comes up with nothing. The reason being that it detects the wrong type of radiation inside him. It's looking for, you know, gamma and more common types of radiation instead of the alpha radiation that is that is destroying his body. And the next day, you know, the staff wonders, okay, well, maybe it's thallium poisoning. Symptoms sort of fit, but but not quite.
11:53 Speaker 00 And then on the fifteenth, Scotland Yard is finally informed, which seems late to me, I have to say. But there's a lot of uncertainty swirling over the case in these first couple of weeks.
12:04 Speaker 01 That's right. And I think that reflects the fact they're not sure that it is poisoning. And it's only around the fifteenth that they think, okay, this really could be poisoning because nothing else explains it. Maybe we had better inform Scotland Yard. And he's going to be transferred on November seventeenth to University College Hospital, UCH Hospital, which is a big recently built tower block in central London near Warren Street Tube. Professor John Henry, who's an internationally renowned toxicologist with an interest in rare poisons, is going to get involved and looking at it. He's going to talk to friends like Alex Goldfarb on the eighteenth and say, it does look like this thallium poisoning.
12:43 Speaker 01 And one of the reasons why that comes up is it is something that that the Russians had used in the past, that the KGB, for instance, had used it in the late fifties. There's this Russian intelligence defector Nikolai Koldkov, who defects in nineteen fifty seven, he's an assassin. And then he's actually poisoned with thallium, with a drink with thallium. So they think, oh, well, maybe that could be it, but it's still not quite fitting. But the key thing here is that the police are involved. And he's been trying to get people convinced of his poisoning and that that happened. And finally, the police are gonna turn up. They initially are actually on their way to Barnet Hospital
13:25 Speaker 01 on the on the seventeenth, but by the time they're on their way, they're told, no, he's being moved to UCH Hospital. Interestingly enough, it's two officers from the murder command. So the people would deal with a regular criminal event. And the briefing they get is there's someone in the hospital claiming they've been poisoned, probably nothing. But it's gonna change their lives, I think, for these these policemen who go, because they turn up. So around midnight, just after midnight, so we're really into the early hours of the eighteenth, they're they're there and a detective inspector from the Metropolitan Police's homicide team is sitting by Litvinenko's bed.
14:05 Speaker 01 And it's interesting because the the medical team are still kind of dismissive of all this. And give the police the impression they're getting in the way. And the police say to the medical team, well, can you guarantee he will still be alive tomorrow for us to talk to him? And the medical team have to go, well, we can't guarantee anything. And so the police go, well, then you may think we're getting in the way, but we're gonna start these interviews right now because, you know, we can't wait. We don't know what's gonna happen.
14:35 Speaker 00 Then in something that does feel very much out of a spy film, I guess. The two officers sit down in the room. They've got an old fashioned tape recorder, not an iPhone, recording the conversation. There's a uniformed officer at the door, but no armed guard. And then Litvinenko starts in with his kind of like testimony, you know, his his last statement. He says, I have name Alexander Litvinenko. I am former KGB FSB officer. And then he kind of goes on in this, you know, faltering English and and explains really his whole story.
15:15 Speaker 00 And, you know, the the policemen kind of sit there rapt and it's something that I'm sure they
15:23 Speaker 00 They've never forgotten.
15:24 Speaker 01 That's right, because they're going to sit there for hours as he tells them a story of his time in the FSB of meeting Putin. And at this point, he's still alert. He can even occasionally get up from his hospital bed, walk around the room, but he's clearly in pain. He gets up at one point, they remember, and he looks out of the window across London, and he's thinking hard about the events that led to his illness. And he wants to share every detail with the police. And there are a lot of extraordinary aspects to this case. But one of them was, the police have in front of them what one would call a living murder victim, a man who was dying, but who you could interview. And as with any murder inquiry,
16:07 Speaker 01 the key is to find the point of contact between the victim and the weapon that killed him. And normally, you're reconstructing that. But here, you can interview the person. You can say, tell us who you met. Tell us, you know, what you did on that day. And I think because he's a former FSB officer, he's really good at recollecting things. He notices things, doesn't he?
16:28 Speaker 00 Well, yeah, I guess he has been, you know, he's been trained to take in the environment and to log details and anomalies and use that to build a picture of the world around him. And that's an immensely useful skill for these investigators. And it's interesting because pretty soon thereafter, Litvinenko focuses in on three suspects, doesn't he? Who he thinks must have been involved in some way.
16:59 Speaker 01 Because they're the three people he was with on the day he fell ill. And the three men are, first of all, Mario Scaramella, the person with whom he'd eaten at that Itsu sushi bar on the afternoon of the first November. Also, Andrei Lugavoy and Dmitry Kovtun, who he'd met later in the Pine Bar. But it's interesting because at this point, he tells the police officer, Detective Inspector Hyatt, he says, although he'd spoken publicly, meaning the BBC interview about his meeting with Scaramella, he hadn't talked about his meeting with Lugavoy and Kovtun. Now, he will say and suggest that that's partly because he doesn't want to tip them off. He doesn't want to show his hand that he knows it might be them, knowing that they've probably left the country or that they have left the country.
17:43 Speaker 01 And he's hoping that might encourage them to come back. But he does seem to have told some close friends and associates at this point that he did think it might be Scaramella who'd done it. And so it is possible he's trying to play a clever game to lure Kovtun and Lugavoy back. But actually, others do think that he's also slightly embarrassed that if it was Kovtun and Lugavoy, he's made a mistake in his own judgment. I think that that's also quite challenging for him. So initially, he is focusing, I think, a bit more on Scaramella.
18:18 Speaker 00 What would have been Scaramella's motive? We wouldn't exactly know what Lugavoy and Kovtun's motive was unless we talked about it over the last couple of episodes. But what could have possibly been the reason? Scaramella seems like the least likely of the three because he's not going back and forth to Moscow. Yeah.
18:38 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. So I think that's right. There isn't an obvious motive, but I do think this sense in which Litvinenko is either publicly, but maybe even privately wary of pointing the finger at the people who really did do it. Maybe, I mean, Yuri Shvetz, this former KGV officer who Litvinenko knew, also thinks that Litvinenko was a bit embarrassed by the possibility that he had trusted his assassins. You know, he says, you know, Litvinenko was a professional. He was always saying he can identify an enemy a mile away. What if he'd really screwed up this time? So there is this slight tension about who he's accusing. But these interviews, this first interview, which happens with the police.
19:23 Speaker 01 It starts around midnight, goes on well past two in the morning. And you know, you get to past two in the morning and the police officers are obviously getting a bit tired. And they are slipped and you go, aren't you tired? You might be tired, he says. I'm happy to carry on and it's only at quarter to three in the morning. They finish that interview at UCH. I mean, it's amazing. And, and they're so intrigued by what they heard that they don't go back to the office or home or wherever they were due to go. But about four in the morning, they go, they're outside the Itsu sushi bar in Piccadilly. Where Lipinenko met Scaramella, because they just want to see it.
19:58 Speaker 00 We need to put this sushi bar on our, our spy tour of London, Gordon. We'll have, we'll start with a, a lunch at Itsu sushi.
20:06 Speaker 01 I think it's another place, a bit like the Pine Bar, which doesn't like to talk about its radioactive past. So, um, I think we'll have to be a bit, bit careful about it. But it was definitely closed up four o'clock in the morning. But yeah, they, it, it just shows how, how the story must have really captured them, I think.
20:21 Speaker 00 And this will be the first of four interview sessions that take place over the next three days. But Litvinenko, his condition is worsening. He's vomiting blood, his heartbeats weakening. And then on November the 19th, he goes into the ICU.
20:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, but despite this huge pain, he keeps talking to them. Even though at one point the case, I think was close to being abandoned as the police couldn't find any evidence of the deliberate poisoning. But he just wants to keep talking and at five PM on November the 20th. A senior investigating officer known in the police jargon as an SIO is assigned to the case. And importantly, they're from the counter terrorist command and that handles national security cases. And it's an officer called Detective Superintendent Clive Timmons. He's hardly ever spoken about this public plea, but we're going to be speaking to him. You're going to be able to hear from him in a bonus episode for our club members. So do join the declassified club if you want to hear.
21:20 Speaker 01 It's an extraordinary account of what it was like to be the lead investigator into this absolutely extraordinary case. And now as well, outside the hospital. You've got public interest growing, particularly the media. Because.
21:36 Speaker 00 Oh, the media, Gordon.
21:38 Speaker 01 Here's where I come into the story, David. You'll be pleased to know, you've been waiting for that.
21:42 Speaker 00 I have been waiting. Bated breath. When will Gordon Carreras scoop come into the story? We're there at last.
21:49 Speaker 01 Litvinenko, I didn't get the first interview. Actually, the first interview in his hospital bed had been done. The BBC Russian service did it and then the Sunday Times journalist. And that appeared on the 19th of November. And that caused a big fuss. And I was actually going through my notes and I could see that. I did a report the next morning on the BBC on the 20th of November. And I'd already spoken to a source. I still, 20 years on, will be delicate about who that was. Although I do think I know. Who said that they thought he'd been poisoned. And at the time, I think they suggested to me it was more likely to be thallium. And they pointed to the fact that thallium had been used by Russians elsewhere in Europe, but not in the UK, they said.
22:33 Speaker 01 And they pointed me to the fact that they were seeing lots of Russian intelligence activity in the UK, not necessarily at Cold War levels, but not far off. And so at this point, I'm starting to cover the story and lots of other people are. And I remember, I remember standing outside UCH hospital in those days, reporting that inside Litvinenko was fighting for his life and saying that. And so the media scrum is also really growing as this word spreads that there's a former Russian FSB officer who most people had never heard of, but claiming he'd been poisoned.
23:09 Speaker 00 And the police are still doing their interviews, aren't they? I mean, they're still talking to Litvinenko as much as they can, given, given his condition. And I think this is, this is fascinating because at the end of one of the tapes, the police officer asks, I guess, a very simple question, which is, can you think of anybody else who may wish to do this sort of harm to you? And let Venn go, let's just say, oh, he doesn't, he doesn't point the finger at the actual poisoners, let's say. He kind of, this is where I think it, to me, it's fascinating because he says, I have no doubt whatsoever that this was done by the Russian secret services. I know the order about such a killing of a citizen of another country on its territory, especially if it had something to do with Great Britain, could have been given only
23:54 Speaker 00 by one person. And then the police officer asks, would you tell us who that person is? That person is the president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin. So pointing the finger in high places, he is.
24:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, he, he thinks he knows who is ultimately responsible for poisoning him. And we'll come back, I think, at the end of this series to the evidence for that. But let's take a break there. And when we come back, we'll look at who comes to see Lipinenko and at his final days.
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25:48 Speaker 04 There we are getting a statement from Number Ten on that flight with 350 passengers on board.
25:57 Speaker 05 The Great Game, strategic struggle between Britain and Russia.
26:05 Speaker 06 We assess, Prime Minister, with high confidence it was Russian. Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.
26:13 Speaker 03 They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.
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26:22 Speaker 02 You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing!
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27:28 Speaker 00 Well, welcome back. And Gordon, you've teed up this mysterious visitor, Martin, who I think all of our listeners know who Martin works for, but, but I think it's time that we tell them.
27:40 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly. He must have slipped past me while I was reporting outside anonymously, as any good spy would. But yes, at the second police hospital interview, Litvinenko's condition was clearly worse. The pair of officers are believing it's a poisoning now. And they asked Litvinenko, whom he met the day before he fell ill. And Litvinenko says there was one meeting at four P M on October the thirty first in Waterstones bookstore in Piccadilly, fine bookstore.
28:11 Speaker 00 Great bookstore, great bookstore.
28:12 Speaker 01 It's a really good one, lots, anyway.
28:14 Speaker 00 Yeah.
28:14 Speaker 01 Floors and floors of it and cafes and stuff. But he, Litvinenko, won't provide the man's name while the tape is running with the police. And the police, of course, go, it could be absolutely vital you tell us who that person is. Because they're thinking, well, could it, could it, could it, could it been poisoned the day before? And Litvinenko says, you can call him and he will tell you. And at that point, I love the detail, the tape gets stopped. And you can find the transcripts to these tapes, so that's why we know exactly what happened. And it's two hours before it's turned on again, the tape recorder. And in those two hours, Martin has actually come and gone from the hospital room. And we know he embraces Litvinenko when he arrives.
28:59 Speaker 01 And it's clear that the pair know each other really well. And then the tape goes back on. And the officer asks if the person who'd just been in the hospital, Martin, was the man whom Litvinenko had met at Waterstones. And Litvinenko said he was. And then it's so interesting, the police officer says on the transcript on the tape, I don't want to ask you what you talked about with that person. I mean.
29:25 Speaker 00 That's wise, that's wise.
29:26 Speaker 01 It's wise.
29:27 Speaker 00 He doesn't want to know.
29:27 Speaker 01 It's so interesting, isn't it?
29:30 Speaker 01 Because you can immediately sense that, you know, the police are realising this case is kind of bumping up against M I six. And the fact clearly that Martin is an M I six officer.
29:40 Speaker 00 Shocking, it's a shocker. I didn't see it coming. I didn't see it coming.
29:44 Speaker 01 But I, I mean, you, you'd love to know from Martin what they talked about.
29:48 Speaker 00 So it's been two weeks since he's been poisoned. Had Martin been visiting or had there been interaction with Litvinenko up to that point with M I six or no?
30:00 Speaker 01 Well, I think there was definitely interaction, because he'd called Martin with his special M I six Martin phone when he'd first gone into Barnet that Marina had bought. So I think they'd been in touch and it's entirely possible Martin had been visiting regularly in that period. And I think M I six as well, my senses initially as well were.
30:24 Speaker 01 Not willing to believe the idea he'd been poisoned, but increasingly are coming to that view. And of course, it is interesting that it's at this point around this time that the case is treated as a poisoning and handed to the Metropolitan Police's Counterterrorism Command. Because we should explain to people that the Counterterrorism Command, it sounds like it does terrorism, but actually does anything national security related. And their officers are vetted, are cleared to see secret intelligence and therefore to work with MI5 and MI6. So you can see also the transfer of the case to Clive Timmins is also part of MI6 taking this seriously and the realisation that there's going to be secret bits to investigating it.
31:09 Speaker 00 Well, and now MI6 is trying to figure out what's going on. And the medical staff, the police, I mean, there are no answers at this point. What's actually affecting him? And what will be the last police interview comes on the evening of November the 20th. I mean, we're almost three weeks after the poisoning at this point. Litvinenko has been moved into intensive care that day. We have wires and monitors all around him. He doesn't have any hair, it's been shaved off at this point. And he's lying there. And I think this is Gordon, when this, I think it's a pretty iconic photo.
31:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
31:52 Speaker 00 Is taken of Litvinenko lying there in his green hospital gown.
31:57 Speaker 01 Yeah. It's interesting. The photo is really interesting because he's got these people around him, Alex Goldfarb, people around Boris Beresovsky, who also understand this is becoming a big media story. There's public interest in this. It's important to get out the message that he's been poisoned. And one of the ways will be through a picture. Marida is quite reluctant about the picture, I think. She doesn't want to reveal to the world. You can understand why, can't you? That how ill he is, how he looks. But she agrees to have this picture taken, which is this iconic picture of him. Actually, it's a remarkable picture because he looks, I mean, he does look very different without
32:41 Speaker 01 his hair. But he does at that point look defiant somehow against what's happening.
32:48 Speaker 01 It's that look of defiance he has, which I think is really powerful. So that's happening. The police officers are still there. They're getting to their last interview now with him. One thing he wants to talk about to them is the fact that just last month in October, he got his British citizenship. And he says to the police, I love this country and its people, although unfortunately I haven't learned English language completely yet. I'm proud to say I'm a British citizen. Yes, they did try to kill me. And possibly I may die, but I will die as a free person and my son and wife are free people. And Britain is a great country. Now, as that last interview is coming to an end. Litvinenko is asked if there's anything else he wants to say, and he remembers taking his son to the Tower of London, showing him
33:34 Speaker 01 the British crown and saying, this is a country that you should defend. But he makes one last request for the police officers. And at this point, I mean, his condition is really worsening. He's actually struggling to talk because there's blisters on his throat. And he says to the police, I want you to pursue the case wherever it goes. And he says, I know there might be political interests which could get in the way. He's upset, for instance, that British political leaders, American political leaders are sitting round the table with Putin at the G8 summit and at other meetings. And he knows that that may cause things to be difficult. But he wants them to keep going. And at that point, the buzzer sound signaling the tape is about to finish.
34:19 Speaker 01 And Litvinenko tells Brent Hyatt, the detective inspector, you know, I trust you completely. Bring this case to an end as far as it's possible. And Brent Hyatt makes the Russian a promise, I will do absolutely everything within my power to ensure this case is properly investigated. And I think it is testament that in this case, the police don't let him down. They really will pursue this case.
34:42 Speaker 00 But of course Litvinenko is beginning to surrender to the radiation that is very much just cooking his body from the inside out. And it's on that Tuesday, the 21st of November, that this iconic photograph is taken, that that defiant look at his eyes across his face, as you mentioned, Gordon.
35:04 Speaker 00 And it's it's still a mystery. What is afflicting him? Litvinenko does not have any significant damage to his his nerve endings, relatively low thallium levels. So it doesn't fit with the theory, of course, of thallium poisoning. And then on the 21st, the medical staff, the examiner shift to a theory that it could be radiation of some kind. And of course, at this point with him, he's not, he's not dead yet, but you know, one tool in a murder inquiry is of course going to be a postmortem, which may shed light, the investigators think, on what what is actually killing Alexander Litvinenko.
35:45 Speaker 01 That's right. I mean, you normally carry out a postmortem on a someone who's died, but it's back to the idea of this being a really unusual murder inquiry in which the victim is still alive. And so Clive Timmons, this police officer who's in charge, orders what he describes as a living postmortem, a battery of tests, an examinations to try and find out what's happening. He holds up two pictures, one before where Litvinenko is fit and healthy and one after where he's pale and emaciated. And he says, how did he go from that to this? And they're looking at everything. They're looking at, you know, the Geiger counter hadn't shown up any radiation, but they do send a urine sample to the Atomic Weapons Establishment, AWE, which is an aldermast
36:28 Speaker 01 and a famous site which builds the UK's nuclear weapons.
36:32 Speaker 00 Probably not accustomed to receiving urine samples at the Atomic Weapons Establishment.
36:36 Speaker 01 No, I don't know, maybe they are. But it's, you know, it's a strange, interesting place where some of the most secret work goes on. So Litvinenko is struggling. He actually has two cardiac arrests, has to be resuscitated. But then something I find quite odd happens. During this time, these last days effectively, Ahmed Zakharov, his Chechen friend, who's also in exile in London, comes to visit and brings an Imam to Litvinenko's bedside. Now, Litvinenko had been technically baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church, but he'd so become, I guess, emotionally attached to the Chechen cause, he'd expressed a desire to convert to Islam. And they'd been talking about that while he was in Barnet Hospital.
37:22 Speaker 01 And so he's gonna undertake a ceremony at this point. And Litvinenko's father, Walter, also arrives from Russia on this day, the 21st of November. And Litvinenko tells his father about the conversion and the father says, it doesn't matter. At least you're not a communist, which is one way of seeing these things.
37:41 Speaker 00 I, I would not have had, when we started this, this series or even this episode, I would not have had deathbed conversion to Islam on my bingo card, but here we are.
37:52 Speaker 01 It's kind of curious, strange detail, isn't it?
37:54 Speaker 00 Comes out, it comes out of nowhere, kind of.
37:56 Speaker 01 It does, it does, but I think it makes you realise how attached he'd become to the Chechen cause, which I think is also interesting. So now we get to November 22nd, there's a big meeting here of the police, atomic weapons establishment people, medical consultants, Clive Timmins, the, the police officer in the chair. They go through all the possible options now that Thalium has effectively been ruled out. Some of them are really obscure, something called Stevens Johnson Syndrome. I've never heard of that, but I think they're having to go through really obscure things because nothing else fits. And then at this meeting, one person from AWE chirps up and says they'd found a tiny spike of polonium in the urine sample, but it was probably just cross contamination from something else. And Clive Timmins goes, you mean plutonium?
38:41 Speaker 01 Because of course, you know, no one's heard of polonium, you can't blame him for that. And the AWE person goes, no, polonium. And literally no one had heard of it and we'll come back, we'll be pleased to know into what it is. But people think, well, we've never heard of this, it seems really obscure and bizarre. So they say, well, to test properly, we need a litre of urine to, to see if there's any real evidence, rather than just a small sample.
39:07 Speaker 00 It's a lot of urine.
39:08 Speaker 01 You are taking the piss, said Timmins bluntly. Meaning how are we going to get a litre of urine because he's not producing any? And only then realising the slight irony of his words, because Litvinenko has stopped eating and drinking and, and not producing any urine, but actually they kept a sample, fortunately, from a week earlier, which gets sent off here on the 22nd. There's a filmmaker who comes in to see Litvinenko and takes some video. It's only released later and it's really haunting. I mean, it's very different from the ghostly defiant image. This is him just looking, I mean, terrible, there's wires everywhere. And then there's this 8pm, the evening of 22nd November. Marina is there, but she tells him she has to go, she has to go home, got this son.
39:53 Speaker 01 She feels guilty, you know, don't worry, she says, I'll be back tomorrow. And he just says, I love you so much. And those are the last words he speaks to her.
40:04 Speaker 00 The urine sample arrives at the Atomic Weapons Establishment in the early afternoon of the 23rd of November and the results are confirmed. It's polonium contamination. And the staff at A W E call Clive Timmins just after 3pm to tell him. And he's, they say he's dead and no, he's not, he's alive. Clive's thinking, no, they explain he's absolutely going to die. Nobody, nobody survives this. And so the mystery is solved, he's still alive, the mystery is solved. But now he just has hours left to live.
40:40 Speaker 01 That's right. So it's at 8:51pm on Thursday, the 23rd of November, that Litvinenko suffers a third cardiac arrest. An ICU consultant on duty tries to resuscitate him, doesn't work. And at 9:21pm, he's pronounced dead from multiple organ failure. So the news is going to get out. And after his death, a statement that he'd agreed to just before he died is going to be read on the steps of the hospital the following day by Alex Goldfarb, his friend, one of the people who got him out on his journey to London. Now Marina, like with the photograph, had been cautious about this idea of the statement because she'd always hoped he'd survive.
41:25 Speaker 01 And she'd said that preparing this statement to be read in the event of his death was like giving up. But now it's there and it's read out. And I think, I think it's worth reading it all, isn't it, David? Because I think it's a really powerful statement. "I thank my wife Marina, who has stood by me. My love for her and our son knows no bounds. But as I lie here, I can distinctly hear the beating of wings of the angel of death. I may be able to give him the slip, but I have to say my legs do not run as fast as I would like. I think therefore that this may be the time to say one or two things to the person responsible for my present condition."
42:06 Speaker 01 You may succeed in silencing me, but that silent comes at a price. You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed. You have shown yourself to have no respect for life, liberty, or any civilized value. You have shown yourself to be unworthy of your office, to be unworthy of the trust of civilized men and women. You may succeed in silencing one man, but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life. May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me, but to beloved Russia and its people.
42:50 Speaker 00 And it's at this point with cameras filming the statement outside the hospital that this news story absolutely explodes. Because not only do we have a former Russian spy dead in London, but he says he's been poisoned by Putin. And then the UK Health Protection Agency reveals that they have found traces of a radioactive substance in him. And they need to start looking for it all around London. So maybe there, Gordon, let's end this episode. And when we come back, we'll see how investigators, the police,
43:30 Speaker 00 the spies track this palladium trail, this radioactive trail, all through the city of London.
43:38 Speaker 01 That's right. And just a reminder, if you want to hear the rest of this series, you can right away by joining the Declassified Club at therestisclassified.com. Also, please do sign up for our newsletter. If you're a member of the club, you will also be able to hear that interview from Clive Timmins, the police officer who we've talked about in this episode, who led the investigation. And of course, tickets for the live show on the 4th and 5th of September. But otherwise, we'll see you next time.
44:02 Speaker 00 We'll see you next time.
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