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Luke Harding - A Very Expensive Poison

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Luke Harding A Very Expensive Poison
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    A Very Expensive Poison
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A Very Expensive Poison: summary, description and annotation

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1 November 2006. Alexander Litvinenko is brazenly poisoned in central London. Twenty two days later he dies, killed from the inside. The poison? Polonium; a rare, lethal and highly radioactive substance. His crime? He had made some powerful enemies in Russia.

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The saga of Edward J Snowden the man whose leaked documents revealed the - photo 1

The saga of Edward J. Snowden, the man whose leaked documents revealed the Orwellian dimensions of the National Security Agency, reads like a le Carr novel crossed with something by Kafka at least it does in Luke Hardings new book, The Snowden Files But the book still gives readers, who have not been following the Snowden story closely, a succinct overview of the momentous events of the past year. And if it leans toward dramatising everything in thrillerlike terms, the book also manages to leave readers with an acute understanding of the serious issues involved: the NSAs surveillance activities and voluminous collection of data, and the consequences that this sifting of bigger and bigger haystacks for tiny needles has had on the public and its right to privacy.

Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

Luke Hardings breathless page-turner reads more like a spy thriller than a piece of dry political analysis this is a riveting read and it unravels the mystery better than anything thats been published so far.

David Runciman, Guardian

The Snowden Files as the iPhone episode suggests is a super-readable, thrillerish account of the events surrounding the reporting of the documents, with a few interludes sketching out what some of the stories have revealed Harding has done an amazing and speedy job of assembling material from a wide variety of sources and turning it into an exciting account.

Daniel Soar, London Review of Books

Hardings account of how the leaks came to be published is thrilling, full of intrigue, last-minute flights, secret meetings and heroic hacks and editors it is a vital account of the story of the decade and the issue of our age: when our lives are lived on wires, how safe are we from those who would use our private information against us, whether criminals, foreign agents or our own governments?

Padraig Ready, The Irish Times

Without one mans courage and a life-altering decision, millions would never know about this most secret abuse of power by the intelligence agencies. This is the story of our age, brilliantly told.

Henry Porter

Contents

Dioxin: Any of three unsaturated heterocyclic compounds, two having the formula C4H6O2 and the third C4H4O2

Gelsemium: A colourless, inodorous, bitter alkaloidal substance obtained from the root of G. sempervirens

Polonium: A highly radioactive metallic element, discovered in 1898 by Professor and Marie Curie in pitchblende

Ricin: An extremely toxic lectin present in the seeds of the castor oil plant, Ricinus communis.

Thallium: The chemical element of atomic number 81, a soft silvery-white metal which occurs naturally in small amounts in iron pyrites, sphalerite and other ores. Its compounds are very poisonous (symbol: Tl)

Source: Oxford English Dictionary

Prologue:
The Men from Moscow

Passport control, Gatwick Airport, Sussex 16 October 2006

Two of the Russians arriving that morning stood out. What precisely made them suspicious was hard to identify. But in the mind of Spencer Scott the detective constable on duty at Londons Gatwick Airport there was a curious sense of doubt. It was 16 October 2006. Passengers were disembarking from a Transaero flight from Moscow. They were collecting luggage. A stream of new arrivals queued up at passport control, and then proceeded for customs and excise checks.

The first Russian was of medium height, thirty-something, with blond Slavic hair. He was wearing a casual jacket and carrying an expensive-looking leather laptop case. He appeared prosperous. The second, with dark hair, receding slightly, and a yellowish complexion, was clearly his companion. They werent behaving oddly as such. And yet there was something a furtiveness that pricked Detective Constable Scotts attention.

I though they were of interest and basically as they came through immigration controls I stopped them and questioned them, he recalled. Scott hadnt been told to look out for them; he was acting on a hunch. He asked them their names. One man spoke English and identified himself as Andrei Lugovoi. His friend, he said, was Dmitry Kovtun. Kovtun said nothing. It appeared he spoke only Russian. Scott took a grainy low-res photo of them. Lugovoi was on the right. In it they look like dark ghostly smudges. It was 11.34 a.m.

Lugovoi and Kovtuns story seemed convincing enough they had flown into London - photo 2

Lugovoi and Kovtuns story seemed convincing enough: they had flown into London for a business meeting. Lugovoi said he owned a company called Global Project. Moreover, his friend was a member of the finance department at a respectable Moscow bank. Their travel agent had booked them in for two nights at the Best Western Hotel in Shaftesbury Avenue. The hotel wasnt cheap: 300 a night. Lugovoi handed over his reservation. It was genuine.

Still, there was something unsettling about their answers, Scott felt: They were very evasive as to why they were coming to the UK. Normally, those subjected to a random stop would open up about families, holiday plans, the lousy English weather. The two Russians, by contrast, were elusive. As I asked them questions, they werent coming out with the answers that I wanted to hear or expected to hear. They were giving me very, very short answers, Scott said. Their replies offered no information.

Scott looked on the internet but couldnt find Global Project. The Russians told him that their business meeting was with Continental Petroleum Limited, a company based at 58 Grosvenor Street in London. Scott rang the firms landline. A man answered, confirmed they were registered with the UKs financial authority. OK, then. The constable checked the police database. Nothing. Britains intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6, hadnt flagged Lugovoi and Kovtun either. Apparently, they werent of interest.

A coppers nose was one thing; hard facts another. With no evidence to go on, Scott took soundings from his sergeant, who advised him to let both men go forward. Britains judicial and police system rests on a presumption of innocence unlike in Russia, Lugovoi and Kovtuns homeland, where judges take informal guidance from above. After twenty minutes the Russians were told they were free to leave. They collected their luggage and headed for central London. Scott put their photo in a file. It was stamped: For intelligence purposes only.

It was little more than a month later that Scotland Yard faced with a situation of unprecedented international horror realised Scotts instinct had been preternaturally correct. The two werent businessmen. They were killers. Their cover story was just that. It had been painstakingly constructed over a period of months, possibly years. And it worked.

That morning, Lugovoi and Kovtun were bringing something into Britain that customs had failed to detect. Not drugs, or large sums of cash. Something so rare and strange and otherworldly, it had never been seen before in this form in Europe or America.

It was, as Kovtun put it, talking in confidence to a friend in Hamburg, a very expensive poison. A toxin which had started its surreptitious journey to London from a secret nuclear complex in south-west Siberia. An invisible hi-tech murder weapon.

Lugovoi and Kovtun were to use it to kill a man named Alexander Litvinenko. Litvinenko was a Russian migr who had fled to Britain six years previously. Hed become a persistent pain for the Russian government. He was a remorseless critic of Vladimir Putin, Russias secret policeman turned president. By 2006, Litvinenko was increasingly anomalous: back in Russia many sources of opposition has been squashed.

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