THE LOW POST: Murder on the Polonium Express

Moreover, let's point this out. Boris Berezovsky does have connections with Chechen separatists, including, notoriously, the legendary Zelig of the Chechen terrorist world, Shamil Basayev. And just two years ago, in February 2005, Berezovsky gave an interview to Komsomolskaya Pravda in which he claimed somehow to have knowledge that "the Chechens have their own kind of atom bomb" and hinted that what he meant was a kind of dirty bomb. Berezovsky claimed in the interview that when he heard about the existence of this bomb through his own circle of acquaintances, he informed the FSB director of what he knew.

But subsequently, a mysterious Chechen figure named "Zakhar" wrote to Komsomolskaya Pravda and claimed that Berezovsky had lied in the interview, that it was Berezovsky himself who had this dirty bomb, and that, far from informing the FSB of its existence, he had tried to sell it to the Chechens.

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All of which could be bullshit, or it could be absolutely true. Almost everyone involved in this story is capable of anything. One thing that is interesting to note is that one Maksim Shingarkin, a former officer in the Defense Ministry and an expert on nuclear weaponry, wrote in Komsomolskaya Pravda over the weekend that Polonium-210 was industrially produced by the Soviets in the '50s -- at that very factory in Arzamas-16 -- for use in a kind of primitive "dirty bomb" that the USSR was developing before it had large stockpiles of more sophisticated atomic weapons. The unique properties of the element made it somewhat ideal for this kind of weapon: although it has a short half-life, it is both highly destructive and easy to transport, as the Soviets apparently discovered fifty years ago. Thus the idea that a Polonium-210-based "dirty bomb" is floating around somewhere in this labyrinth of political deviants is not entirely implausible. These bombs existed once already, and it just might be that they have come back into vogue.

That's what's truly scary about the Litvinenko story. Although something very twisted is clearly going on in Russian politics -- most likely a struggle over the 2008 succession that may yet become bloodier, but perhaps something as mundane as a gangland disagreement between political exiles -- the more serious issue is the use of a deadly radioactive material in a Western capital. In virtually every scenario you can imagine the Litvinenko story describes the misuse and misplacing of nuclear material.

If it arrived in London by way of a faction within the Russian government, then the Russian government is an absurd shambles and presents an urgently serious security risk. (Remember, this same Russian government once gave sarin gas to the Japanese death-cult Aum Shinriko -- you think al-Qaeda couldn't outbid those clowns?) If it arrived by way of someone like Shamil Basayev, that's even worse.

Think about it: While the U.S. was busy burning the national treasure digging for nonexistent nukes in the Iraqi desert, gobs of green glowing shit were making their way from Arzamas-16 to Piccadilly Square. The fact that we don't know who did it doesn't make it a more interesting mystery. It makes us that much more fucked. More suspects means more holes in the system -- and that's not exactly the kind of thing we need to hear in the post 9/11 world.

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