The Skripal Poisoning - A Very Deep British Affair

[Peter Lemkin]

It is [as far as I can tell from the three text books I have on biological warfare agents] true the Russians invented the Novichuk class of nerve agents - but all major countries know the chemical formula of them and thus could build them themselves [or have some that was from the original Russian stockpile when 'destroyed']. They are really NOT complex chemicals nor difficult to construct. What is difficult given their lethality is protection of those making it and then storing it until used. However, while it is stated that this was a Novichuk [of which there were many variants], there is a United Nations based entity that needs to test and verify that. Any nation might have reason to not tell the truth as to the agent. Once one has the agent, one still does not have proof of the nationality of the maker without standard police investigative techniques [chain of custody, et al.] - and HONEST police work at that. What little is known publicly of Novichuks is hard to square with the Skripal's still being alive and the policeman having been released. They were very lethal in very small amounts - with no known antidotes [or so the mythology goes]. If there is now a legal case, I hope the Judge will ask for proofs of all of these allegations..... One can make 'logical' assumptions based on initial partial evidence, but even that needs to be proven with fact and definitive evidence. One can also make political assumptions.

[David Guyatt]

I don't think there is a "legal case" Pete. The situation I was referring to was where the government applied to the court to draw more blood from the Skripal's specifically for the OPCW investigation, as Salisbury Hospital refused to do it without a court order, as they wished to protect the rights of their patients.

[David Guyatt]

Meanwhile, more details of how the use of Novichok in the 1996 murder came about. It sounds just about right to me. In those early Yeltsin years a great many state employees, in the military and elsewhere weren't being paid. Officers of army, navy and air force units were selling equipment for gawd's sake. Back then you could buy a nuke, or a military jet or tank -- all you needed was the means to get it out.

Below extract from Moon of Alabama

Bryan MacDonald @27khv
Russian opposition newspaper @novaya_gazeta reveals a police interrogation of Novichok creator Leonid Rink in which he admitted poison resembling #Novichok was removed from a lab and eventually sold to gangsters. It has already been used to kill in Russia.
https://www.novayagazeta.ru/articles/201...m-novichka
It is in Russian and I can only glean from it via machine translation.
In short:
- Prof. Leonid Rink, describe above in my piece, was tasked with looking into binary production of the four new agents Vladimir Uglev and Pyotr Kirpichev had developed
- This was at a time in the early 1990s when the state would not pay its scientists
- Rink was asked by someone he knew for a poison to kill "a dog". He synthesized a small amount of one of the new agents and sold it
- The person he sold it to came back and wanted more. He threatened to otherwise send some mafia killers.
- Rink was afraid (he reasonably says) and created more stuff (enough to kill 100 or so) and sold it to that person
- Over a few stations some of this stuff ended up killing a mafia banker in Moscow (as described above by Uglev in his interview.)
- The police eventually traced the stuff back to Rink but the case was made top secret and he was never indicted. Later the case was picked up again but it was too late for a indictment.
- It is not know where the rest of the stiff made and sold by Rink ended up.
(all the above without any guarantees - the machine translation may be wrong or may interpret it wrongly)
Novayagazeta says they have old top-secret protocols of Rink's interrogation by police. Their reporting seems to be solid.
Agents created in the early 1990s will likely have fallen apart by now. Such stuff isn't even stable under very careful storage conditions and 25 years is a quite long time.
But if the stuff created in the early 1990s by Rink and in the hands of whoknownswho was the stuff applied to the Skripals it MIGHT explain why they were not killed. I don't for now think this to be likely but one should give it a thought.

I thought the above was quite interesting - I had copied and saved this earlier this morning, but when I just went to get the URL for this post I saw that MoA had deleted this entire extract -- no reason given? Was it because the translation was inaccurate? Could it be that the article it relied on was wholly unreliable? I have no idea. What I do know is that the underlying info that came from the Twitter account of one Bryan MacDonald@27khv is still extant HERE.

In this respect I suppose it's also worth mentioning that a Daily Mail article of 20 May 2018 published at the unearthly hour of 03:49 (a.m.) and headlined: "Did Russian exile Nikolai Glushkov die in a kinky sex game" has also vanished. The Daily Mail website now return a 404 for the link and a search of their website comes up with zero for that headline. But why? My guess is that the article mentioned the presence in the house that night of "Denis", Glushkov's "young Russian lover". The article went on to reveal that Glushkov had been strangled with a dog leash. All good kinky stuff, if you're into S & M, but not, apparently, considered helpful in some quarters as the entire article has been Orwell-ed. I note only that the investigation into Glushkov's death is also being undertaken by Special Branch (now known as the Antiterrorism Unit).

[Peter Lemkin]

According to anonymous sources in the U.S. the nerve agent used was a dust/powder - which fits NONE of the organophospates I know of, which are all liquids. The same 'source' also said [based on who-knows-what] that they were likely exposed in their car's ventelation system. On the face of this, this sounds wrong, beyond bizarre. These agents act in 20 seconds or less - how quickly they incapacitate depends on exposure level, but they went to a restaurant, had a meal and then somehow got to the bench outside the restaurant. In car....from car to restaurant...enjoy meal...pay and leave....to bench and found incapacitated is just too long, even though I don't know the timeline...I'd guess 1-2 hours. Impossible. And how would 'U.S. sources' know any of this? This same article claims it still was a Novichok agent...but as dust.... The only way that would be possible would be to put droplets of the agent on dust particles of some kind and find a way to slowly have them enter an airstream.....right out of James Bond.....

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018...s-us-media

[Peter Lemkin]

Nerve agent was used in 1995 murder, claims former Soviet scientist

Vladimir Uglev, developer of Soviet-era chemical weapons, contradicts Russian denials at existence of novichok nerve agents



Andrew Roth in Moscow
Fri 23 Mar 2018 18.33 GMTLast modified on Fri 23 Mar 2018 22.00 GMT

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[/URL]
Russian soldiers check metal containers with toxic agents at a chemical weapons storage site in the Saratov region in 2000.Photograph: APA developer of Soviet-era nerve agents related to the one used against former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia has told the Guardian that a similar poison was used in the murder of a Russian businessman in the 1990s.
The remarks by Vladimir Uglev, a Soviet chemical weapons scientist, contradict official Russian denials that the country had any chemical weapons programme tied to the name novichok, with the formal codename foliant.

It's got me': the lonely death of the Soviet scientist poisoned by novichok

Read more



"If you're asking who made the substances that poisoned the Skripals, his name and his country, it's possible it was made by my hands," Uglev wrote to the Guardian. "But we're unlikely to find out about that, at least according to the information I have at the moment."

Uglev is one of three Russian scientists to confirm the existence of the top secret chemical weapons programme since the Salisbury attack. His remarks were sent to a handful of journalists on Friday, and he answered follow up questions for the Guardian.
Uglev on Friday said he had been questioned by police immediately after the grisly 1995 murders of banker Ivan Kivelidi and his secretary in an apparent poisoning, and recognised a nerve agent synthesised by his own working group at a closed state laboratory near the Volga river.
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Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin attends the funeral of Ivan Kivelidi in 1995. Photograph: Reuters"Immediately after Kivelidi's telephone was analysed, the investigator in my case asked me a number of questions as the substance was synthesised in our group," Uglev wrote to journalists. He first went public on Wednesday.

Guardian Today: the headlines, the analysis, the debate - sent direct to you

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Court documents first reported by Reuters and later published by the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta said that a member of Uglev's lab, Leonid Rink, had been jailed briefly after admitting to selling a small amount of a deadly nerve agent developed under Russia's so-called foliant programme.
That programme has become famous in the west in recent days as novichok, identified by British authorities as the Soviet-era nerve agent used in Salisbury earlier this month.

The likely sale of the nerve agent to a criminal group in the 1990s will raise questions about Theresa May's assurances that only a state could have ordered the attack on Skripal.
Quick guide

What is novichok?

But nerve agents typically deteriorate quickly. And a binary, which increases shelf life by storing the future nerve agent in two stable precursors, was never achieved at his laboratory, Uglev said.
Nevertheless, he speculated it could remain potent for some time. "If properly stored, I imagine it could poison someone even 50 years later," he wrote.
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Vladimir Uglev. Photograph: HandoutUglev worked in the State Scientific Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology in the city of Shikhany, Saratov region, from 1972 until 1993. He said he handled foliant nerve agents for the last time in 1990. They were not on the list of chemical weapons submitted by Russia as part of the Chemical Weapons Convention signed in 1993.
In follow-up remarks to the Guardian, Uglev said he knew of three people who had died as a result of accidents while developing novichok: a scientist named Andrei Zheleznyakov and "two officers who held tests on our testing range".
Asked by the Guardian about what the chances are that British investigators might be able to tie the novichok to a specific country or lab, he said "probably close to zero".
"They have the footprint of the substance in Salisbury … but no data about the substance (its fingerprint) in the database, so how can they say where it is from," he wrote.
That could change, he added, if they are able to gather earlier samples from Soviet and Russian labs. Russian police, he noted, were able to identify him quickly after the death of Kivelidi, the businessman, in 1995.
The poisons he helped develop in the 1970s and 1980s were especially lethal, he added.
"If any of these four substances" were used to poison the Skripals, he wrote, referring to several chemicals he helped developed, then "their chances are nil".
"But medicine doesn't stay in one place, and perhaps in the last 30 years, during which I've been out of the system, something has changed for the better."

[Lauren Johnson]

[FONT=&amp]In what the BBC is unironically referring to as "a remarkable show of solidarity," the US and more than 20 other countries have participated in the largest collective expulsion of Russian diplomats ever in history. The US topped them all with no less than 60 diplomats expelled, far exceeding the 23 diplomats expelled by the UK, the location of the alleged "Novichok" poisoning which the expulsions are intended as a response to.
[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]This is just the latest gratuitous cold war escalation against the Russian Federation by the Trump administration, which will still remain plagued by accusations of Kremlin collusion despite this latest act and all the others preceding it. Those previous escalations include Trump's capitulation to the longstanding neoconservative agenda to arm Ukraineagainst Russia, killing Russians in Syria as part of its regime change occupation of that country, adopting a Nuclear Posture Review with greatly increased aggression toward Russia and blurred lines between when nuclear strikes are and are not appropriate, sending war ships into the Black Sea "to counter Russia's increased presence there," forcing RTand Sputnik to register as foreign agents, expanding NATO with the addition of Montenegro, assigning Russia hawk Kurt Volker as special representative to Ukraine, shutting down a Russian consulate in San Francisco and throwing out more Russian diplomats in August of last year.
[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]Isn't it weird how when you ignore the narratives being promoted by both sides and just look at the raw behavior, being a "Putin puppet" looks exactly the same as being a dangerously aggressive Russia hawk?[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp][/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]As we've discussed previously, this "Novichok" poisoning was suspiciously inflicted upon an ex-spy who had been strategically irrelevant for many years, in a way that both (A) failed to kill him and (B) looks really Russian. Other intelligence agencies take out key strategic assets and make it look like an accident, but the FSB fumbles its assassinations while implicating itself.
[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]These facts alone make it very hard to believe such an assassination attempt just so happened to occur at a time when the US-centralized empire is facing post-primacy and desperately needs a major turn of events to secure its dominance, but if you need further evidence the excellent Moon of Alabama blog has been doing a great job of pointing out all the gaping plot holes in the establishment narrative about the Skripal case.
[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]And yet here is the US-centralized empire, collaborating to deteriorate diplomatic relations with a nuclear superpower without having seen a shred of reliable evidence. The empire has an extensive history of using lies, propaganda and false flags to manufacture public support for insane escalations that the people would otherwise refuse to consent to in order to advance elite agendas of global domination, and there is certainly no reason to go believing them about this new case.[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp][/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]But it's working anyway. Democrats support each of these escalations because they suffer from the delusion that any attack on Russia is an attack on Donald "Literally Hitler" Drumpf, and Republicans consent to it because it's being done by their president and they believe it helps fight the collusion narrative, which they fear will hurt them in the midterms.
[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]Well I got news for you, snowflakes: if we all get nuked, there ain't gonna be no midterms. Democrats won't get Joe Biden riding in to the throne room on a white horse in 2020 after a completely uncontested primary. Republicans won't get to see "Qanon" proven right as Trump delivers the final uppercut to the deep state and jails every Democrat and Never-Trumper in Washington for pedophilia. None of your weird political fantasies will ever come true if a world war erupts between nuclear superpowers, as it is looking increasingly likely.
[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]Stop consenting to these escalations and insist on detente. Spread the word and fight the lies with truth. They wouldn't be working so hard to manufacture our consent if they didn't need it.
[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp][/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]So refuse to give it to them. Fight the disinformation with information. Attack the propaganda machine at its weakest points, and never stop throwing punches. Remain agile and willing to switch tactics on a dime. Refuse to fight the empire on its terms. Be unorthodox. Break the rules. Hide brass knuckles in your boxing gloves. Think outside the box, keep throwing gravel in the gears f the machine, and never give these bastards time to establish a dominant narrative.
[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]If we are creative and relentless enough, we can disrupt the propaganda machine so much that the spell of believability falls away, and instead of being paced into consenting to world war for the preservation of imperial hegemony, we can shrug off the old mechanizations of manipulation and control and build a new world together.
[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]Fight their lies. Be aggressive, be creative, and never, ever give up. If these pricks are going to drive our species into extinction, the least we can do is make it hard for them.[/FONT]

Source

[Lauren Johnson]

will not attend the World Cup.

[David Guyatt]

According to anonymous sources in the U.S. the nerve agent used was a dust/powder - which fits NONE of the organophospates I know of, which are all liquids. The same 'source' also said [based on who-knows-what] that they were likely exposed in their car's ventelation system. On the face of this, this sounds wrong, beyond bizarre. These agents act in 20 seconds or less - how quickly they incapacitate depends on exposure level, but they went to a restaurant, had a meal and then somehow got to the bench outside the restaurant. In car....from car to restaurant...enjoy meal...pay and leave....to bench and found incapacitated is just too long, even though I don't know the timeline...I'd guess 1-2 hours. Impossible. And how would 'U.S. sources' know any of this? This same article claims it still was a Novichok agent...but as dust.... The only way that would be possible would be to put droplets of the agent on dust particles of some kind and find a way to slowly have them enter an airstream.....right out of James Bond.....

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018...s-us-media

If memory serves, Novichok 4 was developed in a powdered form - all other Novichok's were liquids for delivery, presumably by aerosol etc.

Other than that the Guardian's report about delivery via the car's ventilation system is, I agree, nonsensical - but then so much that has been reported is utter tosh anyway. We're never going to be told the truth, but have to try to prise out the best possible interpretation based on what apparent facts are, or become, publicly available.

A friend drew my attention this morning to a comment on Craig Murray's website left by "Ross March 26, 2018 at 19:20" concerning the one person the media has avoided speaking about other than to refer him as a hero. Although no one really knows why he is thus lionised, we are simply asked to believe his heroic action/s - but are not told what they apparently are ---- and that, of course, should ring alarm bells, especially if one considers that the psychology of compensation can manifest in a Collective setting of one-sidesness (see No. 4 here).

The fact is that no one knowv very much about DS Miller at all, and this may be why (in Ross's words):

Well, I've been chasing the DS Bailey story. Hit a couple of police contacts trying to find out more and got stonewalled. An hour later one of them rang me and said don't bring this up with me again. Half an hour after that he rang again and basically said this is a dangerous subject, move on, there's nothing for you here. I know the party concerned well, they don't scare easily.

[David Guyatt]

The UK's Briefing Paper to the EU on the Skripal affair has, allegedly, been published on the internet now.

If this is a true copy, and I suspect it probably is, then it is simply laughable. But I'll leave it readers here to dig out all the contradictions and flaws for themselves. Slide (page) 4 is particularly worth ogling because it now looks like piling lies on top of other well-known lies has become official foreign policy.

See HERE.

[David Guyatt]

Meanwhile, there is a further yawning contradiction in the official story that dates back to a Daily Bellylaugh story on 9th March 2018, under the byline of Robert Mendick, the Bellylaugh's Chief Reporter - so clearly is something the newspaper considers to be an accurate report.

Firstly let me repeat that military grade Novichok, which Theresa May tells us it was, when delivered in aerosol form takes only seconds to kill. I've been unable to find data on the powdered form other than that it will "take longer" - and my working hypothesis, given that this is regarded as the most potent nerve agent in the world several times more deadly than VX, is that death would take only a minute (or just a few) if delivered as powder.

Secondly, the time-line we have from the police is that the Skripal's headed out from home and enjoyed a leisurely lunch at Zizzi restaurant. They may or may not have stopped at a pub for a drink (?) and then both went for a stroll through a shopping mall and collapsed on a park bench. I'm assuming maybe 2-3 hours from leaving home to reaching the park bench and collapsing.

Thus armed with these facts (or as factual as I can get without a great deal of work), read on the Daily Telegraph:

Russian spy may have been poisoned at home, police believe, as military deployed to Salisbury

• Robert Mendick,Chief Reporter
  
• Ben Farmer,Defence Correspondent
  

9 March 2018 10:50amThe investigation into the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal took a dramatic turn today when it emerged the detective made seriously ill in the nerve agent attack was poisoned at the home of the Russian spy.

Around 180 specially trained troops from the Royal Marines and the RAF Regiment will be deployed on Friday to safely remove potentially contaminated material from sites in Salisbury.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: "The Counter Terrorism Policing Network has requested assistance from the military to remove a number of vehicles and objects from the scene in Salisbury town centre as they have the necessary capability and expertise. The public should not be alarmed and the public health advice remains the same.

"The military has the expertise and capability to respond to a range of contingencies. The Ministry of Defence regularly assists the emergency services and local authorities in the UK. Military assistance will continue as necessary during this investigation."


Forensic science experts, working alongside member of the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism team at the home of Sergei Skripal Credit:Vagner Vidal/ INS News Agency Ltd

Gavin Williamson, Defence Secretary, said: "Our armed forces have stepped up to support the police in their investigation in Salisbury, building on the vital expertise and information already provided by our world-renowned scientists from the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down.
"We have the right people with the right skills to assist with this crucial inquiry. This is a dreadful incident and my thoughts remain with the victims and their families."


Home Secretary Amber Rudd visits the Maltings area of Salisbury after the attempted murder of ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, YuliaCredit:Geoff Pugh for the Telegraph

Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, who is being treated in hospital, was made seriously ill after being sent to Colonel Skripal's house in Salisbury.

Det Sgt Bailey was one of the first police officers to attend the house in a cul-de-sac a few hours after Col Skripal and his daughter Yulia collapsed in Salisbury town centre.

The admission he was made ill at the house was made by Lord Blair, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, in a BBC interview.

Asked if there were any leads in the case, Lord Blair told the Today Programme on Radio 4: "There are some indications that the police officer who was injured had been to the house, whereas there was a doctor who looked after the patients in the open, who hasn't been affected at all.

"So there maybe some clues floating around in here."

The Telegraph has confirmed that Det Sgt Bailey did attend the house.

The disclosure that Det Sgt Bailey was poisoned at the Skripal family home - rather than at the scene where the pair collapsed - strongly indicates that the nerve agent was administered there.

That means the Skripals were in all likelihood not attacked in the street, as previously thought, but poisoned in their own home.

Counter-terrorism police and security services will now be investigating how the nerve agent was administered. Nerve agent is most toxic if weaponised in an aerosol spray and takes immediate effect.

Royal Marines and defence scientists held joint drills to practice dealing with chemical and biological attacks as recently as last month.
Exercise Toxic Dagger held in February was the biggest practice of its kind and saw the marines detecting and dealing with deadly toxic threats.


Yulia and Sergei Skripal were believed to have been poisoned while out for a meal - but it has emerged they were probably exposed to nerve gas at home

The revelation that Det Sgt Bailey was poisoned at the house suggests that the Skripals may have ingested the nerve agent and will raise the possibility that Yulia Skripal had inadvertently brought some gift for her 66-year-old father from Moscow that contained the nerve agent.

Miss Skripal, 33, had flown into London on Saturday, the day before the pair collapsed.

Both remain in intensive care, unconscious and fighting for their lives.

Col Skripal was convicted of treason in 2006 and jailed for 13 years for selling secrets to MI6, which had recruited him in the 1990s.

Col Skripal, a senior intelligence officer with Russian military intelligence GRU, was pardoned in a spy swap in 2010 and settled in Salisbury.

The Kremlin is being blamed for the assassination attempt.

The Skripal were, according to Lord Blair, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, poisoned at home -- not in the restaurant or elsewhere. DSgt Bailey was also poisoned in the Skripal's home, apparently.

At the very least this proves that the nerve agent used cannot have been "military grade" anything. Sarin, which is far less potent, kills in minutes, as anyone unfortunate enough (as I have) to have seen the pictures of the dead lying strewn in the dust in Halabja by Saddam Hussein in 1988, can attest.