Who killed Alexander Litvinenko?

After about three weeks of miserable suffering, Alexander Litvinenko lapsed into a coma and died.

But just two hours before he succumbed to the powerful poison, there was unexpected news that left police dumbfounded. Scientists at a special lab had at last discovered the toxin that was killing Alexander. No wonder it took them so long to detect. It was an extremely rare substance called “polonium-210”.

Steve Fowler, radiation specialist: It strikes me as very bizarre that polonium-210 would be used in such a poisoning case. It’s never been used before as far as we know.

Polonium-210 is a radioactive substance sometimes used in industry to reduce static electricity. It can also be used as a trigger for a nuclear bomb.

Fowler: I couldn’t believe that anyone would take the time, the money, the effort and go through the danger of that.

It’s made in nuclear reactors, and is strictly controlled by governments. Only about 100 grams of it are made worldwide each year—perhaps enough to fill a small glass. And it’s very expensive.

Fowler: How much would that cost to have enough polonium-210 to kill Litvinenko in the quantities that they did? It’s probably on the order of $2 million to $3 million.

The scientist says it’s at least a million times more deadly than cyanide, so if inhaled or swallowed, the most minute quantities of polonium-210 can be lethal. Its radioactive particles attack and annihilate the body’s cells.

Fowler: Something about the size of a grain of salt should be enough to kill a person.

Tests showed Alexander Litvinenko had swallowed a lot more than that, perhaps 10 times what was needed to kill him. This had to be a case of murder, police thought.

But why would anyone want to kill him? As they investigated, they found a man of secrets with a dangerous past. He was not just a freelance writer, they discovered. He was a former agent in Russia’s notorious KGB.

Alexander Litvinenko grew up in a small town in the south of the Soviet Union. He was such an accomplished soldier he was called to enlist in the KGB. In the 1980s, he built his reputation as a counter intelligence-officer investigating fraud and busting groups considered anti-Soviet.

But when the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, so did the KGB, which re-formed as “the FSB”. Alexander headed a crack unit fighting organized crime gangs, say his friends, but he had to take orders from corrupt officers.

Paul Joyal, Russia expert: He saw the moral fabric of the system that he grew up in just disintegrating before his eyes.

Ann Curry, Dateline correspondent: You’re describing a moral man.

Joyal: He was driven by principles, no question on that.

Joyal wrote:  Daily Report on Russia and the Former Soviet Republics” - political and economic analysis.

Paul Joyal, who wrote a daily newsletter analysis of Russia in the 1990s, says his friend’s principles were severely tested when, in 1997, Alexander was ordered by his FSB officers do something he’d never done in the KGB: to carry out a hit on a man he knew well—a controversial power broker accused of meddling in Kremlin politics, the tycoon Boris Berezovsky.

Boris Berezovsky: Alexander came to me and said, “Boris, it’s unbelievable. I got order to kill you.” “Boris, I know these people. It’s not a joke.”

But instead of killing Berezovsky, Litvinenko did something remarkable for a serving FSB officer.

Joyal: Litvinenko saved his life. He refused to carry out an order. And not only refused to carry it out, but he went public. 

Litvinenko went public in a way never seen before in Russia. He held a TV news conference with fellow officers to denounce the plot. And he exposed in dramatic style what he saw as rampant corruption in the FSB.

He caused a major embarrassment to the FSB and its chief at the time— a man who the world would soon hear a lot about— Vladimir Putin.

At the news conference, while his comrades tried to mask their identities, Alexander did not.

Curry: How exposed did he make himself?

Joyal: I thought that the man was out of his mind—being so bold in doing something like this in Moscow to expose himself to—

Curry: Death.

Joyal: Death.

Oleg Kalugin, former KGB general: He betrayed his organization.  He betrayed his colleagues.

Former KGB general Oleg Kalugin who moved to the west in 1995, says Alexander’s perceived betrayal was one possible turning point when he sealed his fate under an old KGB code.

Kalugin: Never forget, never forgive.

Curry: That’s the old KGB rule?

Kalugin: Absolutely. And they called him traitor, the one who will never be forgotten, will never be forgiven.

Soon after that bold move, Alexander was discharged from the FSB and jailed for nine months.  But after her husband was released from jail, says his wife Marina, the FSB made death threats that were all too real.

Marina Litvinenko: It was very clear message for Sasha.

Curry: You’re saying he was warned.

Marina Litvinenko: Absolutely.

Curry: By people in the FSB that he was in danger.

Marina Litvinenko: Absolutely.

And, she says, the threats got even worse.

Curry: You’re saying there were warnings that not only was his life in danger, but—

Marina Litvinenko: Exactly.

Curry: --your life was in danger?

Marina Litvinenko: Exactly.

Curry: And your son’s life was in danger?

Litvinenko: Exactly.

It seemed so serious that Alexander made a desperate decision in the year 2000. He used a fake passport and escaped to England where he, his wife and son were eventually given political asylum.

Then Alexander Litvinenko unleashed a firestorm. In his new London home, he wrote inflammatory books and articles accusing the Russian government of mass murder, of war-mongering, and he wrote personal attacks against President Putin, who was videotaped lifting the shirt of a boy and kissing him.

Curry: He wrote that Putin was a pedophile. He wrote that Putin provided cover for drug trafficking. He wrote that the Kremlin staged the apartment bombing that killed 300 people in Russia to justify—what turned into the second war on Chechnya.

Joyal: He was saying things that were just almost inconceivable to people there. He was engaged in slander of the president as they would see it.  He held nothing back. This man was absolutely hated. 

If Alexander had enemies before, he had even more now. Shipment of his book “Blowing Up Russia” was reportedly intercepted on the way to book launch in Moscow.

On a Russian Special Forces firing range, Alexander’s face became the target. And he was worried that others were taking aim at him.

His wife Marina became concerned.

Curry: As he was writing, you felt it was dangerous for him—

Marina Litvinenko: Yes.

Curry: —you were nervous—

Marina Litvinenko: Of course.

Curry: --as he was writing, that he was putting himself at risk.

Marina Litvinenko: Exactly. I ask him, “Are you sure you should do it in this way?”  He said yes. 

But living in England, her husband believed he was untouchable and safe from anyone who might want to get back at him for speaking out against the Kremlin.

Curry: So, when you became British citizens, you felt this cloak of protection—

Marina Litvinenko: More and more, yes.

But that cloak was torn when Alexander began investigating the recent death of one of his friends in Moscow. 

Just three weeks before he was poisoned, an investigative reporter— who like Alexander, was a strident Kremlin critic— was murdered.

Joyal: She was shot—twice in the chest, once in the shoulder. And as she lay on the ground, just to make sure—an additional shot was delivered to her head.

It was while Alexander was investigating his friend’s murder that he too was killed.

Then from beyond the grave, in a remarkable move, Litvinenko would name the man he believed had silenced him, the same man he held responsible for his friend’s death.

In a statement read by a friend Litvinenko blamed Russia’s President Vladimir Putin no less - for his murder, 

“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.

It seemed a preposterous allegation, but the police investigation was about to take an astonishing turn that would leave the world wondering.

Police were about to retrace Alexander Litvinenko’s last footsteps and make even more amazing discoveries.

Dan McGrory, reporter for The London Times: And from there the polonium trail on the day of November 1^st begins to take on quite a sinister and ominous trait.

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