Revenge of the spies. How to become a target for the CIA, MI6, FSB and Mossad all at once.

2nd Edition

My business involves assisting foreign companies with trade and investment in Russia. So I have a more than passing interest in Russia’s international relations. At times, because my office is in the provincial city of Saratov rather than in Moscow, I have perspectives on Russia that do not seem available to journalists and embassy staff based in the major cities.

I’m writing about the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Julia because the British media seems to have closed far too quickly on a single line of enquiry that is very convenient for the government.

The attempted Skripal assassination

The following link to John Helmer’s Dances with Bears sums up most of the evidence made public by the police. Since the Anti-Terrorist unit took over the investigation from the local police force and Scotland Yard no new evidence has been revealed. So, let’s discuss this in terms of the detective story triad of means, opportunity and motive. Motive is last because there is a lot to discuss.

Means

The Soviet counter intelligence agent Vil Mirzayanov described a family of chemicals that he called Novichoks (Novices). This was done in Russia in a Russian newspaper in 1990 before the fall of the Soviet Union. He was arrested and put on trial for treason but following the collapse of the former Soviet Union the trial was not prosecuted. He now lives in the US. So, since 1990, the list of Novichoks has been known. Mirzayanov's story is very confused. The chemicals are said to be instantly deadly. He has described them as powders but he has also described a potential weaponized system that involves mixing and spraying liquids. It is clear from events at Salisbury that the action of the nerve agent is not instantaneous. It also seems to decay quickly as the Police Sergeant exposed to it at the Skripal house was less severely affected than the Skripals. The passers-by who attended the Skripals and the other diners at the Zizzi pizza parlour appear not to have been exposed. It was not deadly so far for the Skripals or the policeman.

This sounds like a weapon designed to deny an area such as an airfield to the defending side. The delayed action means many exposures as unsuspecting people enter the contaminated zone. Disabling victims rather than killing them means that the defending side is burdened by taking care of casualties rather than quickly repairing the facility. An airfield denial weapon would probably decay quickly so that the attacking side could use the airfield themselves later. The material can be easily neutralized. According to the advice given to the public in Salisbury, exposure to household detergent will be enough to neutralise the chemical. It is probably relevant that the military unit assigned to assisting the police was the RAF Regiment which specializes in airfield defence. Such characteristics could mean the hypothetical poison has been used before for assassination but the quick decay meant it was usually undetectable and unsuspected. The deaths could have been attributed to natural causes. There have been somewhat mysterious deaths of Russian oligarchs in the UK, Beresovky's being the most publicized.

Both Russia and the UK have denied or avoided the question of possessing stocks of the relevant Novichok or indeed of ever having made it. This is reasonable given the secret nature of chemical and biological warfare. It is unbelievable that any lab interested in chemical weapons has not made Novichoks. Every country with the capability needs to design suits and respirators to defend against exposure. Every country needs to characterise the poisonous effects of the chemical. Every country needs to explore the possibility of making an antidote. Manufacture would be in small quantities for lab tests. Of course, large stocks capable of military use would be destroyed by any responsible country under the OPCW rules.

Mirzayanov, who did not work in the lab itself, says that only the most sophisticated countries could make Novichoks. This list would be the US, the UK, France and Russia. Actually, in 2016, Iran declared that it had made five members of the Novichoks family. If Iran can make Novichoks there are probably at least 20-30 other countries with the capability. Iran gave the spectral data to analyse the agents to the OPCW. The OPCW is therefore very well-placed to analyze the British samples. Novichoks are apparently not difficult to make in principle. Two relatively innocuous agrochemical precursors can be carried by an individual. Creating deadly Novichok is apparently just an issue of mixing together. How this produces a powder at first pass is beyond me. So, before being put into a weapon it must be made and tested. The big problem is to avoid killing yourself after mixing the precursors. The huge investments at government run CBW sites include enormous levels of protection against accidental exposure of the public. A sufficiently desperate mafia chemist might decide to work with a fume cupboard, a Hazmat suit and a sealed room with a shower outside dispensing detergent based shampoo. After all, household detergent can neutralise traces left behind, particularly in the case of a fast decaying agent. Deep protection for the public would be trusted to luck in a mafia lab.

There are two claims about potential Soviet sources. Mirzayanov says that the material was made in Nukus, a facility in Uzbekistan. The precursors came from a pesticide factory in Kazakhstan. US inspectors pulled down the Uzbekistan facility in 1999, somewhat late, considering that the Soviet Union fell in 1991. If the material had any shelf life, it could have been a leftover from Nukus. Another option for Russian production is Shikhany near Saratov, where my office is based. This is a more serious option as a source. Saratov was a closed city, precisely because of the presence of this facility and the nearby Engels Air Force Base for long-range bombers.

A chemist from Saratov, Vladimir Uglev appears to have been the bench chemist responsible for developing the basic compounds. He believes that there are a dozen people, at least, still alive in Russia who could make it. He also thinks that German and British chemists would need very little information to develop similar products. He said that there were no antidotes at the time the nerve agents were first synthesised.

Turning the basic compounds into binary components was the work of Professor Leonid Rink's team, also in Shikhany. In 1995, in return for payment,  Rink made a batch of chemical used to murder a Russian banker and his secretary. He served a short sentence as an accessory to murder. The poison was put in a telephone mouthpiece on a piece of cotton wool. He is convinced that the Skripals were not poisoned by his novichok as it would have been absolutely deadly immediately. Rink kept a supply of chemical weapons stored in his garage!

Without samples of the Russian novichoks, it is impossible to say that the poison came from Russia. With samples, it can be done by looking for matching impurities in Russian samples, if they exist, that correspond to the Salisbury sample. It can be done less reliably by looking for matching impurities in the precursors. It could just possibly be done by looking at the ratios of phosphorous isotopes in the compound. This could indicate the general area in which the phosphates were mined. Unfortunately Russia is one of the biggest exporters of phosphates in the world so Russian phosphates could be anywhere. The only useful conclusion would be their absence.

Opportunity

Seems very unlikely that someone was wandering around Salisbury with a spray can, on the off chance of being able to spray a poison on a bunch of flowers, a pizza or the family cat. Even the car door handle or the outside door handle seem extremely uncertain. Also, the personal hazard to the assassin would have been enormous. The assassin would have had to have complete trust in any antidote. None are known. Neither of the versions of poison delivery offered by zerohedge seem to work out. With the exception of the cat, the chance of discovery while administering the poison would have been high.

Rink considers that the poison would not survive the journey so it would need to be mixed in the UK. Perhaps it didn't in its most lethal form which explains the survival and recovery of the victims. I contend that Skripal was fencing the poison for the assassination of Nikolai Glushkov, a former aeroflot executive associated with Beresovsky. Mixing the two components on his kitchen table might have been more hazardous than expected. It should be noted that Glushkov was killed a week later by strangulation. There was an attempt to disguise the  strangulation.

Motive

Revenge assassination

Novichoks are far from unknown and obscure. The British company sky TV and the American company Cinemax co-produced the spy thriller called Strike Back:Retribution. It was first broadcast on 17 October, 2017. A key part of the plot involves a novichok. A rogue Russian scientist makes the nerve agent in a Mafia lab otherwise used to produce crystal meth. The lab is located in Ukraine near Chernobyl This series could have bought the attention of mafia gangs, Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs and terrorists everywhere to the novichoks as a weapon of assassination.

Somebody wanting to assassinate Glushkov could have contacted Skripal asking for Novichok. Skripal then arranged for a chemist formerly working for the USSR development programme to make some additional product (Rink had already done exactly that) or perhaps there were some leftover supplies in Mafia hands from the plant in Uzbekistan. Julia worked for PepsiCo. One of the difficulties PepsiCo faced when entering Russia was that Wimm-Bill-Dann, its takeover target owned a specialist company capable of producing defence material, such as microbial agents. Julia was also in a position to have arranged synthesis of the chemicals.

So Skripal may have been sourcing and reselling a Novichok for a mafia revenge attack. Ownership of Beresovsky's money was controversial and Glushkov was the accountant for a large part of it.

When the package was delivered (I orginally thought Julia but see below for the FRU agents) and mixed at his house, something had gone wrong, resulting in contamination of Skripal, his daughter and later the police sergeant. This seems the least awkward explanation for the near death of the Skripals.

More on Attempted Assassination

Why would anyone want to assassinate Skripal? The Russian government had given him a modest sentence and included him in a spy swap. All he had to do to live a long quiet life was to give up the spy game after an initial debriefing. To attract attention, he would have had to become active in security matters. It appears that he did in fact become active.

Skripal had been recruited for British intelligence by a spy called Pablo Miller who now lives in Salisbury. Miller’s boss was Christopher Steele. After Steele left MI6, he joined an investigation company called Orbis. Orbis was commissioned by an unknown client of Fusion GPS, Orbis’ partner in the US to investigate connections between Donald Trump and Russia. This resulted in a scandalous dossier about Trump and his alleged connections with Russia. Steele and his family mysteriously disappeared for two months after the source of the dossier was revealed. According to Craig Murray, the UK’s former Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Skripal reviewed Steele’s dossier in return for cash. This would have attracted the attention of the CIA, the FSB and MI6. There is already a trail of dead bodies concerned with the dossier. FSB General Oleg Erovinkin an alleged source for the dossier was found dead in his car in December. In February, a Saratov Airlines flight leaving Domodedovo airport on an unique routing for the airline crashed killing all on board. Sergei Millian said to be one of the sources for the dossier is alleged to have been on board. Certainly he has disappeared. (Later note. It wasn't that Sergei Millian on the Saratov Airlines flight. He re-emerged weeks later. It doesn't mean that he wasn't thought to be.).

FSB revenge on Skripal

Skripal was a personnel officer in the FSB. He had access to the phone book. He supplied the names in the phonebook to the British Secret Service. He was caught and sentenced to 13 years in jail. He was extracted during a spy swap. 13 years in jail does not suggest that he was an important spy. Skripal betrayed his country and his colleagues. I have attended an FSB Day Celebration (Secret policeman do have balls). From such direct observation I can say Russian teams are close knit. Perhaps he was again motivated by money, despite having a comfortable life in Salisbury even if it stopped short of conspicuous consumption.

In the same vein, The Sun newspaper claims that Julia's boyfriend works for a Russian security service. His mother, a high ranking official, was so upset by the relationship with a traitor that she arranged to poison the Skripals by giving Julia a present.

It was the Israelis

No good conspiracy theory can be completed without a reference to Israel. There are many mentally ill people on the web who attribute all wrongs to the Jews. Craig Murray, the ambassador discussed above, suggests that Israel has the capability, the country is not a member of the OPCW and the motivation to have attempted the assassination. (I suspect that Mossad's list of attempted assassinations is a short one). The motive, according to Murray would be to keep Russia and the UK apart at the peace negotiations about Syria which was due to start in two weeks. This suggestion seems extraordinary. Another motivation would be to keep Trump in office. Again this seems extraordinary.

Suicide

Sergey Skripal had lost his close family. He suffered from type I diabetes. He had no regular employment. These are conditions to trigger depression and thoughts of suicide. Julia however was 33 with a good corporate job and a boyfriend.

To me suicide seems a very unlikely explanation. In particular, comments by Julia's friends suggest she was happy with life.

Conclusion

For what it is worth, I think the illegal arms deal gone wrong is the most likely scenario. Skripal poisoned himself with precursors delivered by moonlighting Russian agents. Action by countries associated with the Trump-Russia dossier cannot be ruled out. This does bring Russia back into the frame but it also brings in the US or the UK acting for the US. Whoever was involved, some one intended to commit murder on UK soil. Skripal and the Russian agents were accessories.

The next place to look for evidence is Moscow. British-Russian relations seems to make that impossible.

Update 19 July

Now a perfume spray bottle containing the nerve agent. has been found in Salisbury,.

Update to be improved.

Bellingcat identified ex GRU in Salisbury. The media immediately says they were assassins but they might equally as likely have been mules to bring poison to Skripal to mix and pass on to kill Glushkov or someone in Spain.

Loose end. The cat. 

Loose end. The BMW in Amesbury which disappeared off the news. 

Loose end The perfume bottle first found "under a park bench" then "in a skip".

Who rummages in a skip and then takes a perfume bottle? There is alcohol in them but the amount would be tiny.