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4play See other 4play Articles Title: Did Putin also kill Dr. Kelly? Did Putin also kill Dr. Kelly? 2 March 2007, 19:13 By Gordon Thomas MI5 is investigating links between Dr. David Kelly, Britain's leading biological warfare expert, and Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian spy poisoned last year in London by Polonium. Both operated in the shadowy world where science and spying co-exist. Each had close ties to a third equally mysterious person, Vladimir Pasechnik. Russia's foremost biowarfare specialist, he designed a delivery system for smallpox and the Black Death, the medieval plague, to be dropped on Britain by missiles. Kelly helped Pasechnik to defect. All three men knew each other. Kelly first met Litvinenko in one of the most sinister places on earth - the very center of Russia's biowarfare program. These revelations have prompted an MI5 investigation to discover not only who poisoned Livinenko, but if the two other scientists were murdered because they also knew too much about Moscow's secret plans to recreate its own biowarfare arsenal. Litvinenko died in London after drinking a cup of tea laced with polonium. The deadly radioactive poison has long been a favourite weapon of Russian agents. Pasechnik died in bed from an unexplained stroke. Kelly was said to have committed suicide. The verdict was returned by the Hutton Inquiry. It has itself become the subject of intense speculation over its claim that Kelly was of unsound mind after he had been exposed as the BBC source for the "sexed-up dossier" that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Last Sunday a BBC documentary alleged Kelly was murdered by an Iraqi hit squad - a revenge attack ordered by Saddam Hussein for the scientist's efforts to establish if Iraq had WMD. He had found none. His conclusion led to a political firestorm that engulfed Downing Street and the BBC - and led to its director-general, Greg Dyke, resigning. MI5 discounted the Iraqi assassination as "highly improbable." Instead they are tracing the links between Kelly and the two Russians, who were part of his secret world, that only now are beginning to emerge from the shadows in which he lived. It was Kelly who, in 1989, arranged to spirit Vladimir Pasechnik out of Paris in a James Bond-style operation by MI5 after he had sent Kelly a message: "I am ready to come over to the West." When Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher read Kelly's debriefing document on Pasechnik, she telephoned Russia's president Mikhail Gorbachev and "forcefully urged him to allow inspection of where Pasechnik worked," one of the intelligence officers involved in the operation said last week. On Jan. 14, 1991, Kelly and his team arrived from London at Vector, a sprawling, high-security biowarfare complex deep in the larch and birch forests of Siberia. Among the officers assigned to spy on them was Alexander Litvinenko. He was then a 27-year-old major in the Russian Federal Security Service and already a rising star. Kelly's team included Christopher Davis, a member of the Ministry of Defense Intelligence Staff. He has recalled: "We sat down with the Russian scientists to a sumptuous dinner with vodka and caviar and many toasts to friendship." Among those who raised their glasses was Litvinenko. "It is certain there was contact between Litvinenko and Kelly. That would be part of his job," said an MI5 officer last week. Davis recalled: "At some point there was confrontation between us and our hosts over the work with smallpox Pasechnik had been doing. One of the Russians who had been full of bonhomie became very nasty and upset that Pasechnik had told us." But Kelly had stood up to his hectoring host. The MI5 investigators are hoping to establish if this was also the moment Litvinenko's plan to defect to this country took root. More certain is that by 2001 the intelligence officer was no longer a rising star in the FSB. He had become a thorn in the side of his former KGB chief, Vladimir Putin, who was then president of Russia. In November 1998, Litvinenko publicly claimed at a press conference in Moscow that he had been asked to "organise the assassination" of Boris Berezovsky. The 60-year-old billionaire and oligarch fled to London and now lives with a squad of former SAS men to protect him. Litvinenko was arrested and imprisoned in the Moscow version of Belmarsh high security prison. He was tried, but acquitted, then re-arrested and the charges were dismissed a second time. In the year 2000 a third case began. But by then Litvinenko had also fled to London. There he learned of the successful new life Vladimir Pasechnik had begun - the result of Kelly's generous help. Not only had Kelly found Pasechnik an office and lab in Porton Down to work on "defensive as opposed to offensive" weapons, but he had also helped Pasechnik form a small private research company with offices in Salisbury. Kelly had even suggested its name, Regma Biotechnicals. The only clue to its purpose was in its Articles of Association: "To diagnose and treat anthrax and jointly develop capabilities that are either novel or built on existing capabilities." MI5 believe Pasechnik's company had not only come to the notice of the growing Russian 233;migr233; community in London, but also to the attention of the Russian Embassy. With its 33 FSB agents, it is the most powerful foreign intelligence service in the capital. Pasechnik had been warned by MI5 that he remained on Russia's most wanted list of defectors. Litvinenko was listed several places below. Pasechnik, for all Kelly's friendship, found life in Salisbury a lonely one. He knew his wife and family would never be allowed to join him. By the summer of 2001 - three years after his defection - Pasechnik's protection had been withdrawn by MI5. Last week, the intelligence agents working on the Kelly-Litvinenko-Pasechnik triangle believed this was the time the Russian scientist once more met the one person in London who understood how Russian security operates: Alexander Litvinenko. Had Litvinenko given Pasechnik advice on how to protect himself? And did the former spy tell Kelly? The answers are part of the mystery of Pasechnik's death. On Nov. 21, 2001, the scientist left his office at Regma Biotechnicals. One of his staff would later recall: "He was happy and in good health. He said he was going home to cook himself a supper." Next morning when he did not show up for a meeting at Regma, his secretary went to his home where, receiving no reply, she called the police. They found Vladimir Pasechnik dead in bed. No details of an autopsy were ever revealed. Where and when it was held is not known. But one intelligence source said: "There is a strong possibility it was held inside Porton Down." In July, 2003, Kelly's body was found at a local beauty spot near his home in Southmoor in Oxfordshire. Among the data on one of the hard drives from the seven computers MI5 technicians removed from Kelly's office at home was his detailed description of his visit to the Russian biological warfare site in the Siberian forests. There he had met Alexander Litvinenko and confirmed all that Vladimir Pasechnik had revealed. MI5 wants to know how those initial contacts had been developed by Kelly. The answers will ultimately end up where all sensitive matters do - on the desk of the prime minister. In the BBC documentary last week there was a clip of Tony Blair being asked by a reporter if the death of Kelly meant he had "blood on his hands." The prime minister refused to answer. Will that be his response if he is asked to answer the intriguing question: was Kelly not murdered by an Iraqi hit squad, but by infinitely more skilled Russian assassins? Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker insisted last week Kelly did not commit suicide. Further, he claimed on the BBC documentary that Kelly was murdered. His words will fuel the conspiracy theories that now fill thousands of websites where Baker's words are displayed - and which MI5 are pondering. Gordon Thomas, a regular G2B contributor, is the author of "Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad," the new edition of which was published in January 2007. He specializes in international intelligence matters.
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#1. To: Max (#0)
Those damned Oligarchs are going to continue to attempt to set up Putin and take him down till he's no longer around. After he steps down they will probably be successful at assassinating him at last. I read it was pretty much determined that Beresovsky was behind the poisoning, but he wanted to make it look like Putin was. The Oligarchs miss the old days when they were able to loot the country and do what they wanted under the drunken Yeltsin. They are determined to regain their power. Those are some sneaky bastards.
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