Search for killer of ex-spy a daunting task

LONDON -- With its warm oak paneling and imposing grand piano, the Pine Bar, tucked inside the Millennium Hotel in fashionable Mayfair, is a good place for a late-afternoon drink.

But it was here, in one of the most convivial corners of London, that police believe Alexander Litvinenko , a former Russian spy, was poisoned. Police believe that while Litvinenko met with some other Russians on Nov. 1, someone slipped him a radioactive substance, possibly into his cup of tea. Twenty-three days later, he was dead.

If police seem to know where Litvinenko was poisoned, they are still puzzled over why, and by whom.

More than a month after he died, Litvinenko's murder presents Scotland Yard police detectives and MI 6 intelligence agents with what some of them are calling the most complex criminal investigation faced by British authorities since the end of the Cold War.

In interviews, several law enforcement and intelligence officials described a minefield of investigative, cultural, and diplomatic challenges. While they say the "radioactive fingerprints" left by the isotope polonium-210 used to kill Litvinenko will help them close in on his killers, they are less confident at being able to corroborate information and generate a prosecution in Russia, where they believe the plot, and the poison, originated.

On his deathbed, as his body was being eaten away from within, Litvinenko accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of orchestrating his poisoning. It was one of many of the accusations Litvinenko made against the Russian intelligence services that he once worked for and which Putin headed before becoming president.

In a series of interviews, British police and intelligence officers explained the difficulties they are facing as they try to determine who poisoned Litvinenko and why. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, they expressed frustration at trying to sort out criminal, political, and business interests in Russia.

By protocol and necessity, British intelligence officers have turned to their Russian counterparts in trying to figure out who killed Litvinenko and why. But, as one British intelligence officer explained, there is an inherent conflict in receiving information from those whose agency is among those suspected in the murder.

Perhaps just as Litvinenko's killers hoped, British authorities suspect the use of such an exotic poison seems almost too obvious, meant to steer investigators in a particular direction.

As one police official put it, "Why not just shoot him in the head?"

But British authorities don't accept that only those in the Russian intelligence services would have access to polonium-210, or the willingness to kill someone in such a chilling fashion. Indeed, the Kafkaesque confluence of spooks, both former and present, organized crime, and big business in Russia presents British officials with their biggest challenge. Yesterday, Russian prosecutors said they were investigating whether Russian exile Leonid Nevzlin, a former owner of the Yukos oil company, was involved in Litvinenko's death. They did not explain the basis for the allegation .

British officials said they are puzzled by the timing of Litvinenko's poisoning, coming eight years after he made his most damaging allegations against the FSB, which succeeded the KGB when the Soviet Union collapsed. They said much of the more sensational allegations Litvinenko made subsequently -- for instance, that FSB agents trained Al Qaeda operatives -- lacked credibility.

Litvinenko was poisoned just a month after he became a British citizen, ensuring a more robust investigation than had he been merely an exile.

Litvinenko's expertise and experience as an FSB agent was in Russian organized crime. He defected to Britain in 2000, two years after he publicly accused his FSB superiors of ordering him to kill Boris Berezovsky, a tycoon who fell out with Putin and also later took up exile in London. Like others who surfaced here after working in the Russian secret services, Litvinenko carved out a new career by helping steer British-based businesses toward the Russian market.

A former US Marine now working for an international security firm said Litvinenko was on the payrolls of at least two security firms. The former Marine, speaking on the condition he was not identified, said Litvinenko and other former KGB and FSB officers sell themselves as consultants able to guide legitimate companies through the Byzantine business world in Russia where the legitimate and illegitimate merge.

A delegation of British law enforcement officials returned to London last week after conducting a series of interviews with both witnesses and potential suspects in the case.

Following protocol insisted on by Russian authorities, the British officials observed as Russian law enforcement officials did the questioning, according to British officers.

Among those questioned were Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi, Russian businessmen who told a Russian radio station that they met with Litvinenko at the Pine Bar to discuss unspecified business deals.

Both men have insisted they had nothing to do with Litvinenko's poisoning. But German authorities have said that Kovtun was contaminated with polonium when he passed through Hamburg on Oct. 28 on the way to London, a few days before he met with Litvinenko. Lugovoi is another former Soviet agent who went into the security business.

British officials say that even if they identify with some degree of certainty who killed Litvinenko and why, a prosecution is unlikely. Police suspect that whoever had Litvinenko killed, and whoever carried it out, is no longer in Britain and is most likely in Russia. The UK and Russia do not have an extradition treaty.

John Underwood, an adviser to Litvinenko's lawyer, said Litvinenko was extremely cautious when he first came to London six years ago. He became increasingly comfortable in exile, Underwood said, but never thought he was completely safe.

Underwood scoffs at Russian media suggestions that Litvinenko was not beyond poisoning himself in a bizarre suicidal plot to discredit Putin. But he shares the frustrations of those trying to solve the case.

"I'd be surprised if this was anything other than murder," Underwood said, "and I'd also be surprised if anybody is ever brought to justice."