”British citizens who came into contact with former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko are not advised to get too close to Michael Karpin’s recent book, “The bomb in the basement: How Israel went nuclear and what that means for the world” (Simon and Schuster). On the other hand, the book is recommended to Israeli citizens troubled by the government’s nuclear ambiguity and the danger of a radioactive leak. Karpin reveals in the book that polonium 210, the radioactive substance used to poison Litvinenko, killed several Israeli scientists a few decades ago. The Weizmann Institute scientists were exposed to the dangerous substance, which was found at a number of London sites the late spy had visited, as well as in three British Airways planes that flew the Moscow-London route.

According to the book, in 1957 a leak was discovered at a Weizmann Institute laboratory operated by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). Traces of polonium 210 were found on the hands of Prof. Dror Sadeh, a physicist who researched radioactive materials, as well as on various objects in the professor’s home. The AEC handled the accident with deep secrecy. After a short investigation, whose results were not presented to even the workers, the lab was hermetically sealed for several months.

A month after the lab closed, a physics student died of leukemia. A few years later, Prof. Yehuda Wolfson, Sadeh’s direct supervisor, also died, and Prof. Amos de Shalit, the department’s director, died of cancer in 1969 at age 43.

When the leak was discovered, Sadeh was terribly anxious, but tests indicated he was well. But according to Karpin’s book, the tests did not include his bone marrow. Sadeh and his wife hid the facts from their family and friends until he died prematurely. The cause of death was cancer.

The Israeli authorities did not admit that the leak and the deaths were connected, but people close to Sadeh confirmed that the state took responsibility for the accident and compensated his family.”

I really don’t know why this information wasin the middle of an article on the green line and what is its pertinence for the London killing.

A newspaper article I was reading last night included a statement from MI6 suggesting that he was blackmailing fellow expatriates but yet still they claimed they suspected Moscow, but the latter assertion is clearly a smoke-screen. This rabbit-hole goes much deeper I suspect.

I have been particularly enjoying how thallium, sorry, polonium is being trumpeted as material that only the Russian government could get its hands on

because, as we all know, security of radioactive material in the FSU has been watertight for years now

Anyway, lets all just sit back and enjoy watching what a bunch of manipulated clowns our media, and at least some of our security forces, have become

I agree with you and Stef on this issue. This is an assassination to frame someone, Lebanese style assassination I would say, looking from a proximal perspective. The day after the assassination, a journalist from Radio Canada English was speaking by phone with someone who presented himself as a friend of Litvinenko (I just had time to hear his first name, Alex). This man was practically orienting the inevstigation. He says that the source of radioactive material should be the most important trail in the investigation and I thought that this was bizarre because this is a man who supposedly was mourning his dear friend and at the same time seems preoccupied only by where the investigation should go. The other thing that bothered me is that the radioactive material trail is a labyrinth, Many countries and organisations and groups possess or have acess to radioactive material today but we all feign that this matter of fact does not exist in order not to scare ourselves (Global warming and what one may call ‘the democratisation of radioactive materials’ are major threats now). When the journalist became more pressing in her questions (we still have some good ones here in Canada, especially radio journalists) Litvinenko’s friend said with much irritation that he couldn’t go on because he has some other business to do. But still she was able to keep him for another two or three questions while softening the interrogation…I don’t know if we can find the transcript. It was on ‘As it happens’ CBC news.

The radioactive material trail is supposed to produce 2 effects: a lot of scare and at the same time a dead end in the investigation.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/76d62eb4-7988-11db-b257-0000779e2340.html

As far as I can tell there hasn’t been much reference to the story in the mainstream media subsequent to this

Funny that…