Horrible about Berezovsky if Putin was involved.
One little thing that bugs me about Alexander Litvinenko that the media smudges and others inadvertently spread is the label of "spy".
Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko (Russian: Алекса́ндр Ва́льтерович Литвине́нко) (30 August 1962[3][4] (4 December 1962 by father's account),[5] – 23 November 2006) was an officer of Russian FSB secret service who specialized in fight with organized crime[1][6] In November 1998, Litvinenko and several other FSB officers publicly accused their superiors of ordering the assassination of Russian tycoon and oligarch Boris Berezovsky. Litvinenko was arrested the following March on charges of exceeding the authority of his position. He was acquitted in November 1999 but re-arrested before the charges were again dismissed in 2000. He fled with his family to London and was granted asylum in the United Kingdom, where he worked as a journalist, writer and consultant for British intelligence services.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko
Granted, the FSB was the successor of the KGB, and he went on to consult with the British intelligence services as it states above, but he was what looks like in the beginning the U.S. equivalent of a F.B.I. agent fighting organized crime. The FSB seems to straddle our versions of the F.B.I./C.I.A. for sure, but when Putin himself tried to tar him as a spy, Litvinenko stated that he would be useless to foreign intelligence agencies (even if he wanted to help them) because all he knew about was domestic Russian organized crime. The rub of course is since the Russian oligarchy is so heavily involved in organized crime then he did find out quite a bit about the machinations of Russian intelligences ties at high levels. And once he was pushed outside anyone with any information could tell him because he could possibly release it.
Its a small thing, but I feel like when people say "Russian Spy poisoned" with Litivenko is just feeds the meme that, that is what happens to Russian spies. I mean we've all seen James Bond, Russian spies are supposed to be poisoned. Similarly with Berezovsky. CNN had the headline yesterday something like "A Russian Whodunit?" Like this man's death possibly at the hands of a head of state is just some Agatha Christie shit.
I look at Litvinenko as if Eliot Ness had found out that Al Capone and Herbert Hoover were in bed together and were ordering him to kill Henry Ford. He blows the whistle. Gets charged with made up charges. Flees to France. Is poisoned in France. Headline reads "American Spy poisoned".
Statistics: Posted by brekin — Mon Mar 25, 2013 12:22 pm