Who Poisoned Alexander Litvinenko? Radioactive thallium link

[Sweejak]

By Julius Strauss in Moscow
July 28, 2004
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/ ... m=storylhs

A Moscow court yesterday charged Yukos' second largest shareholder with complicity in murder and attempted murder, ...

... According to the prosecutor, Nevzlin, who fled to Israel a year ago, had "struck a criminal pact" with the head of Yukos security to organise the murder of business opponents.

... The court alleges that the murders and attempted murders were arranged by Alexei Pichugin, the former security chief at Yukos, on Nevzlin's orders. Pichugin was arrested in June 2003 and is awaiting trial.

... Nevzlin is also charged with ordering several more murders, including that of the head of the communications office at the Moscow mayoralty, that were never carried out.

[Sweejak]

"Dunlop's thesis is in itself an alarming one."  Yeah but I'm sure it's one most of us suspect.

Via Cannonfire blog.

http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2006/12/ ... amily.html

Litvinenko and "The Family"

I am preparing what I hope will be a major piece which will attempt to connect the Litvinenko affair with, god help us, 9/11. If that seems outrageous -- well, I beg you to withhold judgment until you see the details.

In the meantime, this teaser:

The late Alexander Litvinenko was a former FSB spook who became a paid liar in the employ of Boris Berezovsky, the shadowy exiled Russian oligarch (and business partner of Neil Bush). Berezovsky hopes to destabilize Putin and take control of what was once the second superpower.

Before the assassination, few in Russia respected Litvinenko. Few outside of Russia heard of him. Now, a film will be made of his life. The project, starring Daniel Craig (the new James Bond), will derive, in large part, from Litvinenko's book Blowing up Russia.

In that work, Litvinenko attempts to demonstrate that Vladimir Putin was responsible for the apartment bombings of 1999. However, in “Storm in Moscow”: A Plan of the Yeltsin “Family” to Destabilize Russia , an extremely important paper written by the Hoover Institution's John B. Dunlop, a starkly different picture emerges. (Oddly, the Hoover Institute has wiped all trace of this paper from its site.) As Peter Dale Scott summarizes:
Dunlop's thesis is in itself an alarming one. It is that men of influence in the Kremlin, building on the connections established by the wealthy oligarch Boris Berezovskii, were able to arrange for staged violence, in order to reinforce support for an unpopular Russian government. This staged violence took the form of lethal bombings in the capital and an agreed-upon incursion by Chechens into Russian Dagestan.
Dunlop argues that Litvinenko's one-time employer, Boris Berezovsky -- the man who would rule Russia -- arranged these provocations in the final months of the Yeltsin era to prevent reformists from taking control.

Yeltsin, a heavy drinker in poor health, was not the true leader of Russia. Decisions were made by a conspiratorial group calling itself "The Family," which still wields enormous power. Despite the title of Dunlop's monograph, the leader of the Family was not Yeltsin; Yeltsin's daughter Tatyana, Boris Berezovsky (who was vying to become the Rupert Murdoch of Russia) and a handful of others held the real power.

Putin was once a member of this Family. Upon achieving power, he turned against the oligarchs. Ever since, Berezovsky has plotted vengeance.

Long-time readers of this blog will recall that we have encountered the term "The Family" before, in relation to 9/11. I will argue in my upcoming piece that the Berezovskii Family and the Family mentioned by Mohammed Atta were, in fact, one and the same.

You will see subtle evidence to that effect for yourself if you carefully read the Dunlop and Scott pieces cited above. You should also study an important piece by Yuri Yasenev (obviously derived from Russian intelligence files), "An Orange Revolution is in store for Russia."

A mysterious company called Far West Ltd. may have functioned as a business front fro the Family. One of the partners in Far West is Dick Cheney's Haliburton.

An officer of Far West described the firm's business as "connected with the secured transport of commercial shipments from Afghanistan." Decide for yourself how best to interpret those words.

The Family established a wide array of international contacts. Key decisions were taken at a 1999 meeting in Adnan Khashoggi's villa in the south of France. That such a meeting took place is beyond question; Khashoggi himself has admitted as much, although the actual topic of the discussion remains disputed. It is known that French intelligence and the Israelis had a good idea of what went on.

And yet the very existence of this meeting was denied by none other than Alexander Litvinenko. (See footnote 24 of Scott's piece.)

Why would Litvinenko lie about such a thing?

We have many indications that, after the publication of this book, Litvinenko and his patron had a falling out. We know that Litvinenko had planned to blackmail certain exiled oligarchs. Although he did not mention Berezovsky by name, we may fairly presume that he was a potential target.

Virtually all of the suspects in the Litvinenko murder have some tie to Berezovsky.

What was said at Khashoggi's villa? What did Alexander Litvinenko threaten to reveal to the world?

Nota bene: If you are going to do follow-up research, I suggest beginning with Dunlop's thesis, which will reward a leisurely study. Professor Scott covers a wider scope and spotlights some of Dunlop's shortcomings; however, Scott writes in an academic style which some will find impenetrable. (Like many scholars, he assumes that his readers have already familiarized themselves with the material listed in the footnotes.) Dunlop provides a clear, linear narrative which manages to be both gripping yet scrupulously annotated.

I know that I have offered a simplistic and crude introduction to a very complex tale. This is, as I said, but a teaser.

PDF
A Plan of the Yeltsin "Family" to Destabilize Russia.
PDF file

By John B. Dunlop
The Hoover Institution

http://www.sais-jhu.edu/programs/res/pa ... _paper.pdf

[seemslikeadream]

Thanks for everything, especially THIS Cannonfire


jah bless

[Vigilant Guardian]

Thanks a ton for the info all - I've been looking into this for a post on my blog
http://guerillaswithoutguns.blogspot.com/
I'll be combing this forum for leads - I'm a little behind on this one...

[Sweejak]

I suspect, like Constantine's Comair crash series, that we will uncover yet another tentacle of the octopus that is trying to crush humanity.

How long can the PTB stand exposure on these levels? I've seen almost every psy-op outed or at least questioned to the point of dizziness within weeks if not days.

Will they have to shut the web down... hijack, distract, disinfo or worse to stop the slowly growing global awareness of their lies?

You know, Constantine wanted to quit his series at one point too, citing lack of interest. I'm thinking that some of these researchers are a little like the "temperamental artist" archetype.

[Sweejak]

I have to highlight the following quote from Dunlop's paper because it illustrates the amazing.. what is it? Cognitive inability to see the obvious parallels within the vaunted Western systems. I find this noticeable especially among academics who have a sort of inbred blind spot when it comes local deep politics. Give me a run of the mill 'conspiritard' any day!

Reddaway has pointed out that modern Russian political life cannot be understood without reference to the phenomenon of “political technology.” That phenomenon represents, he notes, an extreme form of political consultancy, which involves both manipulation of individuals and large-scale deception. Since, Reddaway goes on to explain, at the core of any Russian “political technologist’s” plan there lies a conspiracy, any competent analyst of Russian politics is required also to be in a sense a conspiracy theorist. Conspiracy theorists, he observes, are usually mocked in countries with transparent political systems (such as the United States). But a system becomes considerably more prone to conspiracies if the ruler remains in power for a long time and controls large parts of its wealth. Russia and Iran, he remarks, would be two examples of present-day countries with conspiratorial politics.

Some other interesting clips:

Two Western Journalists Issue a Warning: It was two well-connected Western correspondents who were the first to publicize the fact that a radical, bold, and lawless group had managed to achieve political supremacy in the Kremlin. On 6 June 1999, the Moscow correspondent for the Swedish newspaper Svenska Daglabet, Jan Blomgren, reported that one option being seriously contemplated by this group was “terror bombings in Moscow which could be blamed on the Chechens.”15 Ten days later, Giulietto Chiesa, the long-serving chief correspondent for the Moscow bureau of the Italian newspaper Stampa, commented at length on several recent bombing incidents in Russia in an article entitled “There Are Also Different Kinds of Terrorists,” in the 16 June 1999 issue of the weekly Literaturnaya gazeta.16 (In a book published later that year, Chiesa revealed that he had written the article after he had “received information concerning the preparation of a series of terrorist acts in Russia which had the goal of canceling the future elections.”17 For this reason, he noted, he had felt compelled to write the article for Literaturnaya gazeta containing “a somewhat veiled warning.”18)
One has to distinguish, Chiesa emphasized in his Literaturnaya gazeta piece, between “small terrorism,” or, in Italian Mafiosi terminology, “a settling of accounts” and a completely different kind of terrorism, which can be termed “state terrorism.” The explosion of a bomb in Vladikavkaz, North Osetiya, on 19 March 1999, which killed a reported seventy persons, Chiesa asserted, was a likely example of state terrorism. “That criminal act,” he pointed out, “was conceived and carried out not simply by a group of criminals. As a rule the question here concerns broad-scale and multiple actions, the goal of which is to sow panic and fear among citizens.”

“Actions of this type,” Chiesa went on to stress, “have a very powerful political and organizational base. Often, terrorist acts that stem from a ‘strategy of building up tension,’ are the work of a secret service, both foreign but also national…. Terrorism of this type (it is sometimes called ‘state terrorism’ since it involves simultaneously both state interests and structures acting in the secret labyrinths of contemporary states) is a comparatively new phenomenon… With a high degree of certitude, one can say that the explosions of bombs killing innocent people are always planned by people with political minds. They are not fanatics, rather they are killers pursuing political goals. One should look around and try to understand who is interested in destabilizing the situation in a country. It could be foreigners…but it could also be ‘our own people’ trying to frighten the country….”

Andrei Piontkovskii, wrote in November 2000, “is the Kremlin’s guru and political technologies specialist, the ideologue and designer of the whole Putin project including the [second] Chechen war… He has read more books than hundreds of Korzhakovs and Putins put together…. He is a character stepped out of Dostoevskii, one of the ‘Devils’ of our time.”84 Pavlovskii was born in Odessa in 1951 and attended university in Ukraine. In the 1970s he became a political dissident and was arrested by the KGB in 1982. He was broken in prison and then abjectly repented of his dissident activities. Subsequently emerging as a specialist in political disinformation and in political provocations, Pavlovskii became a valued reelection campaign advisor to Yeltsin and his entourage in 1996. In 1999, he helped spearhead the Family’s vicious campaign directed against Mayor Luzhkov, reportedly setting up a website containing compromising material on the mayor, and predicting in July of 1999 that Luzhkov would make a “weak and cruel” president.85

Here is a google string on Piontkovsky. He reminds me, from what little I know of him, of the "Summer Santa", Mitia, the character in the film Burnt By The Sun.
http://tinyurl.com/yx9cpl

Who is he working for now?
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/20 ... 67bd8.html

We must all understand who our adversary is. What is characteristic about all these latest terror attacks is that no one has presented any demands. And if someone has taken responsibility for these blasts, it is some murky organization belonging to the worldwide network of Islamic terrorism. What is happening before our eyes is that a large part of the Chechen resistance is joining the ranks of this worldwide network of Islamic terrorism and becoming its reservists. And this is the result of our clumsy policies over the past several years in Chechnya," Piontkovskii said.

Soros comes off looking swell.

“Berezovskii saw the world through the prism of his personal interests,” financier George Soros, who had made the oligarch’s acquaintance in 1996, has commented. “He had no difficulty in subordinating the fate of Russia to his own. He genuinely believed that he and the oligarchs had bought the government by paying for Yeltsin’s reelection [in 1996]…. Berezovskii and Yeltsin’s Family were looking for a way to perpetuate the immunity they enjoyed under the Yeltsin administration…. Berezovskii’s situation turned desperate when the scandal broke over the laundering of Russian illegal money in U.S. banks in 1999, for he realized that he could no longer find refuge in the West. One way or the other he had to find a successor to Yeltsin who would protect him. That is when the plan to promote Putin’s candidacy was hatched.”89

There appears to be abundant evidence that Berezovskii had long been providing extremist elements among the Chechen separatists with millions of dollars in funds. Former MVD chairman and Russian deputy premier Anatolii Kulikov, currently the deputy chair of the State Duma’s security committee, told the weekly Argumenty i fakty in 2002: “I have received a great deal of evidence that Berezovskii was funding Chechen separatists. He did it under the flag of the Security Council, which had enormous powers under Boris Yeltsin. The Security Council was headed by Ivan Rybkin and Boris Berezovskii at that time…. On 28 April 1997, I was informed that Berezovskii’s envoy Badri Patarkatsishvili had arrived at the Ingushetian airport of Sleptsovsk. He gave Shamil’ Basaev $10 million—in the presence of Ingushetian President Ruslan Aushev and Vice-president B. Agapov…. On [30 April]… I told [Yeltsin] about Berezovskii’s transfer of money to Basaev. In Moscow I wrote a letter to the Procurator General…. Once I met Berezovskii… I asked him immediately why he had delivered money to the Chechen bandits. He was at a loss for words… Then I told him about Patarkatsishvili’s visit to Sleptsovsk. He admitted that he had transferred some money to Chechnya, but that it was allegedly only $1 million.”95 In a subsequent statement, however, Berezovskii stipulated that “he gave $2 million to Chechen leader Shamil’ Basaev, but reiterated that both men were government officials at the time and the money was earmarked for reconstruction work.”96

Why were both Berezovskii and the Russian special services engaged in de facto supporting the extremists? “To the extent that Berezovskii represented the interests of the Yeltsin regime in Chechnya,” the late Paul Klebnikov has written, “the Kremlin had been undermining the moderates, supporting the extremists financially and politically... At best, it was a misguided policy… The worst-case scenario is that the Berezovskii strategy with the Chechen warlords was a deliberate attempt to fan the flames of war.”106 “There are interviews given by Berezovskii that show that already from 1997 onward,” French philosopher Andre Glucksmann—who visited Chechnya and Dagestan in the year 2000—has noted, “he foresaw the usefulness of a large-scale war in Chechnya for the 2000 election campaign.”107
Journalist Sophie Shihab of Le Monde has reported that in September 1999 a young French businessman close to Berezovskii contacted her newspaper over the telephone and said: “I will no longer have anything to do with him [Berezovskii]. He must think that in unleashing chaos he will be able to install his own man firmly in power. And in the process to seize new pieces of the Russian cake, including the Caspian. It is for that reason that he organized the invasion of Dagestan by the Chechens.”108

And some spy stuff:

“All night long at the villa,” the recitation concluded, “something was taking place. The watchfulness of the guard at the villa was elevated and a strong magnetic ray spread out onto the territory around it so that mobile telephones in a radius of several meters did not work. In the morning, the same Rolls Royce sped to the airport, and the man similar to Voloshin flew to Moscow. In a day’s time all of the villa’s residents had left… By accident or not, but after a time, in August, there occurred the incursion of the band of Shamil’ Basaev into Dagestan.”
Those who set up this meeting, journalist Boris Kagarlitskii, who has made a study of this episode, has noted, made one key mistake: “The security was so thorough that people in the surroundings started to have problems with their cellular phones. But the members of the meeting did not know about one of the details of the security system. It blocked the hearing on the outside, but it provided perfect hearing from the inside.”115 French intelligence was presumably able to listen in on everything that transpired at the secret meeting.
If these accounts are accurate, it seems clear that an extremely complex secret operation had been mounted on French soil in order to bring the two “principals,” Voloshin and Basaev, together.

Dunlop's paper should give pause to any fool who wants to pick up a weapon and go fight for your country in a government sponsored war. Smedley Butler is still right; war is a racket.

About Putin, the paper gives the impression, to me anyway, of a very clever and careful player who is also capable of making startling moves and occasionally going way out on a limb, but I'm sure he will only do that by first thinking 5 moves ahead. Clearly he was part of Yeltsin's "Family". As to whether he is looking after the best interests of the Russian people or merely making a bigger better badder family I still don't know. Which leads me to consider the systems of government and I don't think anyone can get to these levels without making a deal with the devil. The people we would want to see are murdered or they are simply tossed aside never achieving a position where they can do anything.

[seemslikeadream]

interesting post from my friend robertpaulsen at DU


http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 125x130666


130879, Here's more on the Halliburton link.
Posted by robertpaulsen on Thu Dec-28-06 03:50 PM

How much do you want to bet all these companies are tied into A.Q. Khan's Nuclear Walmart?


Far West Ltd, Halliburton, Diligence LLC, New Bridge and Neil Bush
The connection to Far West Ltd of Filin, Likhvinsky, Surikov and Saidov (along with Alfonso Davidovich) has since been stunningly corroborated by a news story on the Pravda-info website (May 3, 2005) about Far West Ltd and Kosyakov's resignation from it.
At a meeting of its stockholders on May 2 in the Hotel Ritz Carlton in Dubai, Far West Ltd accepted the retirement of the president...Leonid Kosyakov, who moved to government service in Ukraine. Vladimir Filin, member of the Editorial Board of Pravda-info, was elected the new president, at the same time retaining his previous position as executive director. The meeting of stockholders, in accordance with its charter, selected new members of the board of directors of Far West Ltd, which will now contain nine members. Besides Vladimir Filin, Anatolii Baranov and Anton Surikov, it will include four more members of the Editorial Board of Pravda-info: Audrius Butkevicius, Aleksei Likhvintsev, Natal'ia Roeva, and Ruslan Saidov, and also Valerii Lunev,(59) a veteran of the Armed Forces, and Alfonso Davidovich, a political scientist from Venezuela.

Far West, the story said,
...specialises in consulting work on questions of security in conducting business in regions of the world with unstable environments and hiring personnel for foreign private military companies (last three words in English). Its head office is located in Switzerland. In addition, the Agency (Far West Ltd) has a network of representatives in the OAE (United Arab Emirates), Afghanistan, Colombia, the autonomous region of Kosovo, the autonomous republic of Crimea, Georgia, and the Volga Federal District of the RF (Russian Federation).60

In 2005, Filin gave Pravda-info (September 2) some details about Far West's work, and revealed that the firm had been co-founded by "a sub-division of a well-known American corporation". He said that the company's new contract is:
...connected with the secured transport of commercial shipments from Afghanistan, where we have an office, to ports on the Black Sea. In Afghanistan there is a well-known US air base in Bagram. It is connected by an aerial bridge with a number of other US air bases. For example, with the largest base in Frankfurt-on-Main, that's in Germany, with an intermediary landing in Chkalovsk, in the Moscow area. But the most commercially attractive route seems to be that from Bagram to the US air base in Magas, in Kyrgyzstan. By the way, it is quite near the Russian air base in Kant. A significant flow of shipments passes through Magas; there is a niche there for commercial shipments, too. This is very profitable. It is much more profitable than routing commercial shipments from Afghanistan through Tajikistan. Therefore last year we completely withdrew from all shipping through Tajikistan and closed our office in that country.
(Pravda-info:) Who are your partners?
Who our partners are is a commercial secret. I can say that they are four private firms from three countries—Turkey, Russia and the USA—which engage among other things in shipping. One of these firms is a sub-division of a well-known American corporation. This firm is a co-founder of our agency.61

We can assume that Pravda-info is an inside source for information about Far West, for the two organisations seem in fact to be two different manifestations of the same group. Among the directors of Far West on the masthead of Pravda-info we find first of all Anton Surikov, followed by Anatolii Baranov, Aleksei Likhvintsev, Ruslan Saidov, Vladimir Filin, Natal'ia Roeva and Audrius Butkevicius.62
Also on the Pravda-info masthead is Boris Kagarlitsky, who, as we saw in the first part of this essay, is a main source for the Western accounts of the meeting in southern France, written by Patrick Cockburn, Nafeez Ahmed and John Dunlop.63 Many of the Far West directors, notably Anton Surikov, are or have been associated with Kagarlitsky at the Moscow Institute of Globalization Studies (IPROG).64
Although Filin and Pravda-info did not identify the foreign private military companies with which Far West worked, Yasenev did:
Filin and Likhvintsev do business with foreign private military companies (PMCs):
– Meteoric Tactical Solutions (South Africa)—in Angola;
– Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR Halliburton)—in Colombia, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Georgia, and Iraq.
– Diligence Iraq LLC (controlled by the Kuwaiti Mohammed al-Sagar)—in Iraq.
Their cooperation with these companies began in the end of 1994 in Angola on the initiative of Victor Bout, who was involved in the shipments of Soviet-made arms to the antigovernment group UNITA in exchange for raw diamonds.(65) Apparently, Bout became interested in Likhvintsev's contacts (L. worked in Angola in 1986–87). Later, in October of 1998, Filin, Likhvintsev's wife Liudmila Rozkina (b. 1966) and Anton Surikov (at that time he worked in the Russian government) established the company Far West Ltd, with the office in Lausanne, which officially does security consulting for business ventures in countries with unstable regimes. De facto, this is a legalized form of recruiting mercenaries for PMCs.66

Furthermore, Yasenev claims that some of Far West's work with Halliburton is apparently approved by the CIA for geopolitical purposes:
In 2003–2004, Filin and Likhvintsev worked on the Georgian project, financed by KBR Halliburton, apparently, with the approval of the CIA. The project had the goal of weakening the competitors of Halliburton in (the) oil business and, in a broader context, of facilitating the geopolitical objectives of the United States in the Caucasus. The OPS man in Georgia is Audrius Butkevicius, former Lithuanian minister of defense, presently advisor to Badri Patarkatsishvili.67

http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/D ... roup2.html

130895, Gee, I wonder if maybe Brewster, Jennings & Associates tracked this.
Posted by robertpaulsen on Thu Dec-28-06 04:30 PM

Before Novakula's loose lips sunk the whole ship, of course.


US Companies Linked to Vice-President Cheney Supervised the Transfer of Ukrainian WMD to Iran

On 27-30 November 2006, the Russian news agency Novyi Region published a three-part investigation, signed by Valery Briusov, of the illegal sale of Ukrainian KH-55 cruise missiles to Iran in 2001, which contains new and quite sensational information. 1 According to the news agency, the new information-- which includes copies of the SBU internal correspondence--comes from a “former officer of the SBU” (Ukrainian Security Service), who has accused the Ukrainian leadership in suppressing the report on the investigation prepared by then SBU Chairman Alexander Turchinov in the spring of 2005. In April of that year Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko acknowledged the illegal sale of strategic cruise missiles KH-55 to Iran and China from Ukraine. But Turchinov soon was fired and so far only one member of the criminal group was tried and sentenced to prison, while another suspect, Oleg Orlov, extradicted to Ukraine from the Czech Republic last spring remains “out of his mind.” The news agency quotes its source as rhetorically asking:

Is it believable that two petty middlemen were able to carry out such a grandiose operation, during which several great powers for the first time in history blatantly violated the holy of holies: the international agreements on the non-proliferation of strategic arms? Where are the rest of the people involved? Where are the crews of the heavy transport planes loaded with those missiles, which took off from the airport near Kiev and flew to Iran and China instead of Zhukovskoe, near Moscow? Where are those who allowed these flights? How could these planes cross the borders of several states? Who received them in Iran and China and where did they get afterwards?

snip

The article describes close relations between Alfa Group and the circle of Vice-President Dick Cheney. The highest level management of Alfa Group includes US citizens linked to the Anglo-American intelligence community. The leaders of Alfa Group have close contacts with Dick Cheney and the management of Halliburton.

The best known example of these relations was the $600 million credit that the Tyumen Oil Company (TNK), controlled by the consortium of Alfa Group and Access Industries Inc, received from the American Exim-Bank after the political lobbying by Dick Cheney. The deal was followed by TNC's strategic alliance with Cheney's Halliburton in the reconstruction of the huge Samotlor oil fields and the inclusion of several managers from Diligence LLC in the leadership of Alfa Group.

more...

http://www.left.ru/burtsev/ops/novyiregion.phtml

[Sweejak]

Wow, thankfully we have a transparent political system!

Your friend robert has managed to blend this with the Plame affair.

The dimensions of all this are pretty awesome, global.

What are we gonna do?

For Audrius revolutions is a kind of hobby.

http://rigorousintuition.ca/board/viewt ... 3153#93153

In 2005, he and two other co-founders,Anton Surikov, and Alexei Likhvintsev, visited President Bush in the White House. Thereafter he and his partners relocated to Dubai and Europe to escape possible arrest. Surikov is considered a retired officer of the Russian GRU as well as a political scientist who opposes Boris Yeltsin and President Vladimir Putin. He admits a connection to CIA agent Fritz Ermarth, who served on the National Security Council twice and retired in 1998. At a 2003 conference in Geneva, Surikov was accused of being a CIA man. As late as 1999, Ermarth was arranging for guns and money to reach a Chechen group that also sold drugs in Europe.

http://forwardamerica.blogspot.com/2006 ... ricas.html

[Sweejak]

What Scaramella is arrested for.

Via Rossliskaya Gazeta:

Der Spiegel suggests that Scaramella allegedly tried to enlist the services of his vis-a-vis who needed money in compilation of materials implicating Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi.

Scaramella was arrested on his return from London on December 24. The Italian justice turned out to have a great deal of question to the "consultant."

First, the Italian was charged with slander against Alexander Talik, ex-agent of the Ukrainian KGB, who had allegedly planned the assassination of Senator Paolo Guzzanti, chairman of the so-called Mitrokhin Commission. Talik and his three Ukrainian assistants living in Naples were detained. The investigation was thoroughly
dismayed to discover that all of that was a tall tale invented by Scaramella and that he himself had sent hand grenades to the alleged assassins.

Scaramella then said that he had received this information from Litvinenko. The investigation exposed this as another lie. The investigation maintains that Scaramella deliberately misled the Mitrokhin Commission presenting himself as the only authority on KGB activities in Italy and misinformed the police. He told the Naples police in 2005 that a grenade launcher had been smuggled into Italy for terrorist acts. Secret services arrested an Ukrainian
truck with two grenades without fuses in it. Truck owners were vigorously interrogated but kept saying that they had no idea where the grenades had come from. The consultant then informed the police of a weapons cache in Naples. The team dispatched to the site he had indicated found an air gun, a small caliber automatic rifle, and 160 rounds of various ammunition. Prosecutors suspect that Scaramella
himself planted grenades in the Ukrainian truck and the weapons in the heap of rubble but pinned the blame on Russian and Ukrainian secret services. In fact, it was these suspicions that led to Scaramella's arrest.

Surprisingly enough, the exact nature of Scaramella's
activities isn't even known in Italy itself. The "consultant" has described himself as a professor at the University of Naples, but the university's personnel department denies it. The first interrogation made it plain that the investigation would take time and Scaramella will have to meet the New Year behind bars despite his defense's efforts.

[Sweejak]

This is a bit off topic but here is an interesting response by Surkov to an article in the Wall Street Journal about what they got wrong. I don't know much about Surkov, though I did know about his (now in doubt) name changing and have read a few articles about his Sovereign Democracy ideas.

Right now this is interesting to me for the same reason Ahmedinijad's "translations" are revealing. That, and I like to diss the WSJ.

Commentary Challenges 'Facts' Presented in WSJ Article on Putin Aide Surkov

Izvestia
December 22, 2006
Commentary by Natalya Yevgrafova: "Translation Difficulties. The English Language as a Means of Manufacturing Russian Political Heroes"

At times, one precisely spoken sentence brings in its wake the most unpredictable consequences. "When people talk to us about democracy, they are thinking about our hydrocarbons," Vladislav Surkov, deputy chief of the Kremlin (Presidential) Staff, said on one occasion in the summer, during a briefing, and by winter he had received a no-holds-barred response to his penetrating comment in the shape of an article in The Wall Street Journal, "Putin's Pitchman." The entire team of authors, in the shape of "Kremlinologists" Gregory White, Alan Cullison, and Guy Chazan, tried to explain to the American reader, and at the same time the Russian reader (the article was reprinted remarkably promptly in the newspaper Vedomosti, which is published under the auspices of the WSJ), that Surkov is the "former helper of the oligarchs" who is building a dictatorship together with Putin, and that the United States could not care less about Russian oil. WSJ readers most likely believe this interpretation of events completely, especially since for many years they have been getting their idea of Russia from the chess player Garri Kasparov, who publishes articles in the WSJ under headlines like "Putin Must Go" or "If Western Leaders Start Congratulating Putin on His Election Victory, Then They Too Are Accomplices in His Crimes." The logical result of this line in the newspaper was the recent analytical masterpiece by Bret Stephens entitled "Russia -- The Enemy," with the following explanation: "The time has come when we should start considering Vladimir Putin's Russia as the enemy of the United States."

"Surkov, through a spokesman, refused to give an interview or even to answer questions sent through the mail," the WSJ journalists deplore his sinister secrecy. This seems odd -- in the past year Surkov has talked to Western journalists on several occasions. And we tried to find out the reasons for his refusal.

"Surkov refused to talk to journalists from The Wall Street Journal for one simple reason -- for several years this newspaper, deliberately or through ignorance, has been providing distorted information about Russia," one of our Kremlin sources said, explaining, in turn, the refusal by the president's aide. "That is anyone's right. Any other prestigious publication -- yes, fine, but not a newspaper that brazenly tells its readers that 'Russia is the enemy.'"

Naturally, any newspaper has every right to express its opinion on any subject and to describe anyone it sees fit as "a satrap and a despot" -- provided it has the facts. Since many of the events set forth in the article had not previously been written about in the Russian press, we decided to conduct our own investigation so as to establish how far the facts presented to the public by the American journalists correspond to reality.

So, let us begin at the beginning, that is, with childhood. The journalists, exposing Surkov, in the best traditions of propaganda, as adaptable and two-faced, write: "...Born to a Chechen father and a Russian mother...he has reinvented himself repeatedly, changing his name...before he went to college, according to the school." But what actually happened? Our correspondents managed to find out quite easily that a schoolboy with the surname, name, and patronymic Surkov, Vladislav Yuryevich, studied at two schools in the city of Skopin in Ryazan Oblast -- primary school No. 5 and secondary school No. 1, from which he graduated. And at the age of 16, as is usual, he received the passport of a citizen of the USSR with the same surname and the same initials. After all, American journalists are hardly likely to know that in our country, until they come of age, children are given their surname by their parents. But after the age of 16 every citizen, on receiving a passport, is entitled to take a different surname. However, the person who entered the Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys was still Surkov, Vladislav Yuryevich. Graduate of the above-mentioned secondary school No. 1 in the city of Skopin. So Surkov was always Surkov. You do not have to be a star journalist to establish this fact within a day.

It is surprising, in fact, that questions relating to Surkov's origin are being actively discussed not by participants in nationalist rallies, but by representatives of the liberal opposition, which by definition should set a standard of toleration. Maybe much can be explained by the fact that this myth was first actively promoted by Leonid Nevzlin (Menatep shareholder and former partner of Mikhail Khodorkovskiy), who is in Israel as a fugitive from justice, and Stanislav Belkovskiy, the ideologist of the "Other Russia" (opposition movement).

They cited an equally reliable newsmaker as an expert in the sphere of ethics and morality. "The cynicism gene developed before the democracy gene did," Aleksey Kondaurov, "a former colleague of Mr Surkov's from their days at the bank," declares from the pages of the WSJ. For some reason, the newspaper failed to specify that the person talking about the eternal problems of morality is not simply "bank worker" Kondaurov, but a former KGB general who served in the notorious KGB Fifth Directorate (for combating dissidents) under the leadership of the legendary Filipp Denisovich Bobkov. Later, having completed his training on dissidents and human rights campaigners, Aleksey Petrovich (Kondaurov) began to cultivate the "democracy gene" as one of the heads of the Yukos security service. (Incidentally, let us remind you that Nevzlin, the boss of that service, is now accused of organizing contract killings.)

And the American researchers used as their expert on questions of parliamentarianism...Anatoliy Yermolin, lieutenant-colonel of the reserve and graduate of the USSR KGB institute. At one time this expert, who was part of the leadership of Khodorkovskiy's "Open Russia" foundation and was elected to the State Duma thanks to the oil company's efforts, filed a complaint with the prosecutor's office and the Constitutional Court because, at a working session with deputies from the United Russia faction, the deputy chief of staff had rebuked the people's elected representatives with the words: "Vote the way you are told!" Admittedly this story quickly fell to pieces. Other participants in the meeting publicly refuted Yermolin's timely "memories." Timely because it was during those summer months of 2004 that Nevzlin's PR service staged a campaign against Surkov in the media under their control, predicting his speedy dismissal. Now the once-used elastic lieutenant-colonel has been used again, with his "truthful" memories -- as an expert for the "gullible" American newspaper, which is evidently happy to be deceived. It is surprising that a publication that is famous throughout the world for its strict code of "rechecking information with two or three independent sources" confined itself to just one "witness" in the shape of a deputy with links to the special services. Or else what the other sources said did not really coincide with the line and intention of the article.

Evidently in the process of preparing the article the authors fell for the "professional" charm of another of their sources -- former TV journalist Sergey Dorenko. Dorenko has something to be proud of -- he is the only person in the country to have received the honorary title of "TV hitman." With wages of $1 million thanks to the generosity of Boris Berezovskiy, he skillfully brought Prime Minister Primakov and (Moscow) Mayor Luzhkov to the verge of heart attacks. In so doing the TV journalist not only failed to check his facts, he simply invented them, as was subsequently confirmed by the court and by the numerous jokes on this topic.

Incidentally, for some reason the Americans did not take the trouble to dig around in the not too distant past. The story of TV journalist Dorenko on Channel One, like the story of Yevgeniy Kiselev on NTV, is connected with the information war between Boris Berezovskiy and Vladimir Gusinskiy. Accordingly, at 2100 on a Sunday evening Dorenko would slander Gusinskiy's political and business partners on Channel One, and Yevgeniy Kiselev, at 2200, would come out with retaliatory incantations against Berezovskiy. So in order to offer Dorenko any money to work for a legitimate boss, at those wages, you would have to be either a madman or a very devoted believer in talent.

After the oligarchs ceased to own the (TV) channels, the star of the two main TV hitmen also set. Admittedly the twilight of Dorenko's career coincided with a very unpleasant episode. Sergey Leonidovich (Dorenko) was taken to court in the case of the "accident in which the drunken motorcyclist Dorenko hit a person." The brave "TV hitman" was deflated, nervous, and gray in the face. There are witnesses to how, in the breaks between court sessions, Dorenko, although already numbered among the official oppositionists, haunted the thresholds of several Kremlin offices, trembling and agitated. One still wonders -- at what price did he receive such a relatively lenient court sentence for his "drunken" accident?

In fact, the subject of "Kremlin offices" is of particular concern to the creators of the collective portrait of Vladislav Surkov. Accordingly, solo on the theme "the commissars sit in our rooms and take our girls into the office" (lines from a popular song) was sung for the American public by the "democracy-minded legislator" Vladimir Ryzhkov. Ryzhkov recalled how, six years ago, he was taken to see Surkov in his office, and how the perfidious official promised him mountains of gold if he joined the Unity party. Ryzhkov, naturally, proudly refused -- "the two (Ryzhkov and Surkov) haven't spoken since." True, in the Russian political beau monde another version of what happened is much more widely known: Immediately after the 1999 elections, Ryzhkov implored Surkov to include him in the Unity faction. Our sources claim that the impulsive young democrat said he was ready to go on his knees if they would accept him into the party that won the elections, but he was rejected.

It is a pity that the Wall Street Journal journalists have no newsmakers in the Kremlin commandant's headquarters, so as to "collect" information on how many times since then the "democracy-minded legislator" has been into the Kremlin on passes issued from Surkov's office. But, according to our source, Ryzhkov might recall one relatively recent visit to the Kremlin, especially since there are many witnesses to this episode. In 2004 Mikhail Zadornov and Vladimir Ryzhkov embarked on a new political project -- the "Democratic Alternative." At that time these gentlemen visited Surkov with a request for assistance to get representatives of the United Russians to join the club. They say Surkov replied briefly and democratically: "Ask the party." For the rest, Vladimir Ryzhkov, as the WSJ writes, is "an open Kremlin opponent." And naturally he does not set foot in the Kremlin offices.

Evidently the American journalists preferred the phantoms of democracy to facts and figures, otherwise the portrait of "oppressor of Russian freedoms" Mr Surkov would have turned out less vivid. It is much easier for them to recount in detail -- citing yet another objective newsmaker of theirs, Dmitriy Rogozin -- the episode of the "campaign to discredit" Dmitriy Rogozin, former leader of the patriotic Motherland (Rodina) party, by describing him as a "fascist and racist." The fact that in the fall of 2005 Motherland was excluded from the elections by a decision of the Moscow City Court, confirmed by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, on the grounds of "kindling interethnic strife," is of little interest to the Americans. However, if Mr Rogozin had been filmed in a Ku Klux Klan road in an election campaign ad entitled "Let's Clear the Garbage from New York," no doubt that would have gotten through to them a little. But as it was -- this is still remote, wild, undemocratic Russia...

In fact, the biggest problem for the characters mentioned in the Wall Street Journal article is the fact that it was reprinted here. If they had known of that possibility, many of the heroes who serve as pivotal points for the logical construction of the article would never have said what they are quoted as saying in it. Simply because the veil of heroism that they don on the basis of the imaginary danger of being in opposition in our country would yet again have fallen off. And in this case it is difficult to blame it on imaginary translation difficulties. It is not a question of opinions, but of facts...

[seemslikeadream]

sorry if this has been posted already


http://www.axisglobe.com/article.asp?article=252

18.07.2005
Russian Secret Services' Links With Al-Qaeda
Michel Elbaz, AIA general coordinator


The right hand of bin Laden, the Number Two in "Al-Qaeda" was trained at the secret base of the Russian secret services on Caucasus, the former Lieutenant Colonel of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Alexander Litvinenko told the Polish Rzeczpospolita newspaper. Until the end of 1998, Litvinenko had served in several top-secret units that specialized in struggle against the terrorist and the mafia organizations.
Litvinenko claims that Ayman al-Zawahiri, who headed at that time the terrorist organization "Al-Jihad al-jadid" (it was formed from the Egyptian emigrants - activists of "Al-Jihad" and "Al-Jamaah al-Islamiyah"), in 1998 secretly stayed on the territory of Russia.

Alexander Litvinenko

Up to the beginning of 1998, the process of merging of the two most radical Islamic organizations – "Al-Jihad al-jadid" and "Al-Qaeda" was completed. Al-Zawahiri became the second person in the hierarchy of the Osama bin Laden's "Al-Qaeda". In February 1998, being together in Afghanistan, they have created the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders. However, at that time the Western secret services yet did not pay any special attention to al-Zawahiri's activity (several years prior to that, he freely visited the USA, and several countries of the Western Europe). The hunt for him, as well as for his fellows in arms began only after the explosions in the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in August, 1998.
Only then the CIA analysts with the help of the Egyptian and Israeli colleagues managed to restore retrospectively a part al-Zawahiri's "activity schedule" for seven months prior to the attacks in East Africa. As it was discovered, since January till the end of July, 1998, he personally supervised the preparation for the terrorist attacks in Kenya and Tanzania.

Communiqué of the Islamic Front for Liberation of Sacred Places concerning the attack against the American embassy in Nairobi. August, 11, 1998.
For this purpose al-Zawahiri had left the territory of Afghanistan several times, in particular traveling to Sudan (in the middle of May, 1998). In parallel, he paid a lot of attention to strengthening "Al-Qaeda's" ties with secret services of Khartoum and Tehran.

Strange links

Although our American and Israeli sources do not know about al-Zawahiri staying in Russia, they have supplied us with some other interesting details. According to this information, in the first half of 1998, leaders of "Al-Qaeda" tried in every possible way to increase the level of coordination with terrorist groups worldwide. For this purpose the leaders of many such groups and cells of "Al-Qaeda" were invited to Afghanistan. Getting close to the large-scale attack on the USA, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri have organized a "congress" of the adherents from all over the world. It took place on June, 24, at the capital of the talibs - Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan. Among the visitors were the representatives of the Balkan countries, the Middle East and Africa, and even of the radical Islamic groups from the republics of the former USSR. The Uzbeks and the Chechens were especially outstanding. Besides them, the Kazakhs, the Kyrgyz, the Dargins, the Lakks, and the Tatars had also secretly arrived to Kandahar. All of them came here separately, using sideways. A week prior to the beginning of the conference, a group of well-armed al-Zawahiri's assistants had left by jeeps in the direction of Herat. Following the instructions of their patron, in the town of Koh-i-Doshakh they met three unknown men that arrived from Russia via Iran. The latter called themselves by Muslim names, despite the fact that the two of them had a clearly Slavic appearance. After their arrival in Kandahar, the 'guests' split up. One of the "Russians" was directly escorted to al-Zawahiri, and he did not participate in the conference.
Later on, this 'Russian guest', for almost six years disappeared out of the secret services' sight. He reappeared only in 2004. On February, 13, in the capital of Qatar the car of the ex-president of the Chechen Republic Zelimhan Yandarbiev was blown up.

Yandarbiev's car after the explosion
Couple of days after his death, the authorities of the United Arab Emirates detained two Russian citizens. They turned to be the officers of the secret services. For the last three months they had been working in the embassy of Russia in Doha. After Yandarbiev's assassination these two Russians together with several other of their fellow citizens have hastily left Qatar. Having found out all this, investigators have carefully studied video and photo materials made by the counterspies during the last months on a course of supervision over the Russian diplomatic mission. The results were surprising not only for the Qatar's secret services, but also for their Western colleagues. It appeared that at the end of November, 2003, the embassy was visited by the above-mentioned "Russian", who met al-Zawahiri in the summer of 1998 in Kandahar. Although he had changed his appearance, the special computer software precisely established that he was the one, who had met bin Laden's right hand…



Russian Secrets of Al-Qaeda's Number Two
Michel Elbaz, AIA general coordinator
Previous article

Ayman al-Zawahiri – number two in ”Al-Qaeda" - at least in the 1990s, had connections with the Russian secret services. Not only do the former Lieutenant Colonel of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Alexander Litvinenko, and our confidential sources provide evidence to this. Some additional data was acquired by the Americans in autumn, 2001, after the overthrow of the talibs' regime in Afghanistan. All available information allows drawing a certain picture, though not a complete one, of the mysterious liaisons between the architect of the September, 11th attacks and the successor of the almighty KGB.

Azeri route

A mysterious guest from Russia visited Ayman al-Zawahiri at the end of June, a little more than a month before the bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. According to Alexander Litvinenko, the same year al-Zawahiri visited Russia. Such voyage could have stayed unnoticed by the Western secret services only if it had taken place during the first seven months of 1998. It is known that at this period al-Zawahiri had been leaving Afghanistan several times, without drawing much attention of the Americans and the Israelis.
Litvinenko points out that, once in Russia, al-Zawahiri had undergone a 'stage' at a secret FSB base located in the North Caucasian republic of Daghestan. In mentioned period of time, there existed several routes through which the "Afghani Arabs" arrived from Afghanistan to Daghestan. Iranian and Turkmen routes were considered the most convenient ones. Both of them led to Azerbaijan, the North of which borders with Daghestan. After the beginning of the warfare in Afghanistan, in autumn, 2001, the CIA got hold of al-Zawahiri's portable computer. It contained information about the first trip of Al-Jihad al-jadid leader to Azerbaijan, and then – to Russia, in 1996. In December that same year, he arrived in Daghestan under the legend of a Sudanese businessman, accompanied by two assistants. All three were detained by the Russian Border Guard for violating the local passport regime, and were then delivered to the FSB officers.

Al-Zawahiri in jail
Al-Zawahiri's and his men's laptop, electronic agendas, and various documents were confiscated. The electronic devices and the papers contained encoded messages in Arabic as to the activity of Al-Jihad al-jadid in the Caucasus.
Suspected of links with the Chechen separatists, the three detainees found themselves in jail. They spent there about half a year. Their trial took place in April, 1997. FSB representatives then assumed an air of not understanding who the Sudanese businessman really was. This appears to be rather strange, taking in account the fact that by then al-Zawahiri was already for several years leading one of the world's most dangerous terrorist groups. Moreover, in the first half of the 1990s, his emissaries on several occasions were in Tajikistan, where the Russian special services till today have rather strong positions. Besides that, until al-Zawahiri's arrest, articles about him, as well as his photos, had been already published in the Arabic and the French mass media. One can hardly believe that the successor of the almighty KGB – the Federal Security Service – knew nothing about all this. Even more impossible seems to be the fact that in the period of six months, the Russian experts were unable to decipher the writings that were confiscated from al-Zawahiri and his 'assistants'.



Tablet in the entrance of Makhachkala court
In may, all the three went free. Then al-Zawahiri leaved his companions for about two weeks. It is unclear, where he was in this period of time, and what his activity was. Only afterwards did al-Zawahiri leave Russia.

Mosaics fragments

After summing up all the available information, an interesting picture becomes visible. In the end of 1996, al-Zawahiri comes to Russia for the first time. He is detained for violating the passport regime. He is put under arrest, being suspected of links with the Chechen separatists. During the trial, representatives of the FSB acquit him of all the suspicions. Once free, he "disappears" for almost two weeks. Only then does al-Zawahiri leave Russia.
In the first half of 1998, al-Zawahiri is totally occupied by the preparation of the terrorist bombings against the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In the same period, using the same route as previously, he secretly visits Russia. After crossing the border, al-Zawahiri disappears once again, but this time his destination is known – it is a secret FSB base in Daghestan.
By all appearances, already after his return to Afghanistan, al-Zawahiri receives a strange envoy from Russia. This happens a little more than a month prior to the terrorist blasts in the East Africa. In consequence, there appear most serious suspicions that the man, who visited al-Zawahiri in June, 1998, is directly connected to the Russian secret services…

[Sweejak]

http://www.axisglobe.com/article.asp?article=1186

Russian diplomat’s mysterious death possibly related to murder of Litvinenko


Igor Ponomarev

German weekly magazine Focus in its latest issue has paid its readers’ attention to the fact that shortly before poisoning of the former Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officer Alexander Litvinenko in London, a Russian diplomat had died at similar mysterious circumstances.
Last autumn Igor Ponomarev, 41, representative of Russia in the International Maritime Organization (IMO), died in the British capital October 30, 2006, after he collapsed at home after a night at the opera.

Focus writes that the diplomat was attending a theatre performance when suddenly felt badly, and a friend revealed he had been “gasping for water” — a symptom of radiation poisoning.

The Russian had drunk three litres of water, then had died. British daily The Sun writing on this mysterious death today, cites Ponomarev’s friend who said that “Igor’s wife was going to call an ambulance, but when she entered the room he was dead. He had fallen from the sofa and hit his face.”

A heart attack was declared the reason of his death, though Ponomarev had no UK post-mortem or inquest due diplomatic status and his body was quickly flown to Russia. The pal said Ponomarev’s family were shocked as he had no heart problems. And they were puzzled by his link to “intelligence consultant” Scaramella, who met Litvinenko the day he was poisoned, according to The Sun.

Sudden thirst is not known as a symptom of heart attack, according to Dietrich Andresen from the German Society of Cardiologists. Experts believe the thirst was consistent with poisoning by polonium-210, the radioactive substance that killed Litvinenko. In opinion of experts-toxicologists, Gabriela Gerber-Zupan from the Poisoning Emergency Centre in Munich, told the Focus, it could be thallium (it was firstly assumed as a cause of Alexander Litvinenko’s poisoning, too) that might cause similar thirst. Ponomarev’s death came hours before he was due to meet former KGB agent Litvinenko’s Italian contact Mario Scaramella with whom he wanted to go to the appointment with the Russian ex-security officer, according to the late diplomat’s relatives.

Ponomarev’s relatives, according to the Focus, do not exclude that the destruction of the Russian diplomat is connected with the poisoning case of the former FSB officer.

Scotland Yard did not launch investigation of the reasons of death of the Russian diplomat as, according to its spokesman, nobody had applied about its excitation.

[Gouda]

Maybe just a heart attack. 65 years old. Millionaire, at least. Perhaps he's resting incognito at the undisclosed Ken Lay Island of the Undead.

Yukos Creator Found Dead in London Flat
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2007/01/11/002.html

A founding father of the one-time Yukos oil empire, Yury Golubev, has been found dead in his London apartment, former and current Yukos shareholders said Wednesday.

Police are investigating the death on Sunday of Golubev, a shareholder in Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Group Menatep, friends said, but added that they had no immediate cause to think it was suspicious. [some friends! - Gouda]

(...)

Golubev led negotiations for the proposed 2003 sale of the newly merged YukosSibneft to one of two U.S. oil majors, ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco, Yukos shareholder and former vice president Alexander Temerko said.

In a sign of his importance, he continued negotiations even after Khodorkovsky's October 2003 arrest effectively torpedoed the sale, Temerko said....

[seemslikeadream]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070111/wl_ ... lbanker_dc

Russia detains suspect for ordering banker murder


MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia has detained a powerful businessman suspected of ordering the 2006 murder of deputy central bank governor Andrei Kozlov, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor-general's office said on Thursday

Kozlov, who led a crusade against money laundering, was shot last September as he left a soccer game in Moscow. His killing raised concerns about stability and the rule of law under President Vladimir Putin.

"As a result of an operation the suspect was detained at night between January 10 and January 11," the spokeswoman told Reuters. "He is a Russian citizen and head of a large commercial structure."

Kozlov, 41, was Russia's chief banking supervisor and had shut down dozens of banks accused of money laundering.

After his murder, Putin called for urgent action to clean up Russia's banking system, which he said was being used for criminal ends.

Seven people have been detained as part of the investigation, including some who confessed to having been hired to carry out Kozlov's killing, prosecutors said. Kozlov's driver was also killed in the shooting.

Many high-profile contract assassinations, a feature of post-Soviet life, remain unsolved and in cases where killers have been brought to justice, those who ordered the "hit" have often remained at large.

The person or people who ordered the deaths of Paul Klebnikov, the editor of the Forbes business magazine in Russia killed in 2004 and journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a Putin critic shot dead a few weeks after Kozlov, have not been arrested.

Kozlov, a father of three, was well respected in financial circles at home and abroad for the fight against financial crime in Russia's banking system, where prosecutors say hundreds of tiny "pocket" banks are used to launder billions of dollars.

In 2004, he intervened in Sodbiznesbank, a small Russian bank that was accused of laundering ransom money from hostage-taking. Central bank officials took control of the bank.

Rumors spread that other banks were in a similar position, triggering a mini banking crisis. The former owner of Sodbiznesbank was shot dead in 2005 along with his wife.

[seemslikeadream]

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish ... 1627.shtml

Scaramella link to Bush's CIA Miami operations
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer


Jan 11, 2007, 00:52


(WMR) -- WMR previously cited the links between Alexander Litvinenko colleague Mario Scaramella, now under arrest in Italy, and a 22-year CIA veteran based in Miami named Louis Palumbo.

Palumbo's Miami-based security firm, Ackerman & Palumbo, the forerunner of Incident Management Group (IMG), which has been linked to Scaramella and his colleague Filippo Marino, was founded in 1977, just after George H. W. Bush's stint as CIA director.

Recently released CIA documents point to the presence in Miami of a major CIA front company operation that for some time involved George H. W. Bush's Zapata Petroleum and Zapata Offshore. In fact, internal CIA memos from 1975, written at the time Gerald Ford selected Bush to succeed the late William Colby as CIA director, cite a number of Bush-affiliated front companies in which CIA veteran Thomas J. Devine was also involved. These include Zapata; the Wall Street investment firm of Train, Cabot and Associates; and CIA proprietary firms using the cover names WUSALINE and WUBRINY/LPDICTUM.

The minute Bush was nominated as CIA director by Ford, Miami was restored as a major center for CIA proprietary operations. The CIA's Miami station, code-named JM/WAVE, was responsible for planning the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, an operation that involved Bush and Zapata.

After Bush's one year stint at Langley, not only did Miami draw Palumbo, Ted "Blond Ghost" Shackley (who was to assist Bush in the 1980 October Surprise negotiations with Iran in Paris), and other CIA officers but Ackerman & Palumbo hired a senior Foreign Service officer who had been First Secretary of the US Embassy in Paris at the time Bush was in Paris hammering out the "no hostages for arms" deal.