Michael Chapman

] I wouldn't do that if I were you Gazzer: you will have Sid 'Citation' Walker on your case quicker than you can say, "Sergeant Jack Granthan is allegedly Ian 'Rocky' Hurst." PS Martin's Blog seems to have gone the way of that of a distant colleague who goes by the name of Richard Tomlinson. How cynical are you? All that Ingram stuff is hyperbole, I'm sure it's purpose was to unsettle the ranks of the Republican movement - there seemed to be internal 5 & 6 battles to variously wreck and support peace moves. Remember 27 landrovers at Stormont with all the attendant press to remove 1 floppy disk, the Castlereagh break in, when the only people ever actually caught breaking into Castlreagh were British intelligence (is that an oxymoron??) agents. Both these events brought down Government here!!! You APPEARED to back my analysis of Iraq which is a facsimile of Gaza/West Bank which is a facsimile of Ulster. IRA top brass have always been 'moled' (Stephen Hayes Chief of Staff '41 is perhaps the best example). If that's an oxymoron what does that make smart asses like us who TRY to figure out what they're up to?

New Labour has yet another new bruvver. And in keeping with recent treacherous Tory tradtion he's toffee'd of nose and plumby of voice (and he's even got the tolerant 'hang 'em and flog 'em views to match). In fact, he's probably the biggest right/left defecting toff ever (despite pleby 'John' being his real first name). Apparently Europhile Quentin (comma before 'Europhile' omitted purposely) is a bit upset with Europhobe Cameron over 'Europe.' Oh diddywiddums! Odd that this is virtually the only specific rationalisation he can give for his strange leftward leap into a party that's now led by someone who's lukewarm Europhilia borders on Europhobia. True, 'Daz' (washes greener!) Cameron does appear a little wishy washy and 'Bliarly' non-commital but if us folks stuck in the gods can see what's coming then all I can say is that Davies and chums in right front stalls have premature macular degeneration. I'd caution any 'brother' about having a spot of breezy banter with their latest recruit over a jar in The Members Bar. Going by Quentin's Wiki resume, his new found friends will probably be 'advised' to vote for the invasion of Iran as well as have their inner most thoughts transcribed into files in Thames House and Vauxhall Cross: He attended Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degrees in history in 1966 and was a Frank Knox Fellow at Harvard University. After his education, he joined the diplomatic service and was appointed Third Secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1967, and became a Second Secretary at HM Embassy Moscow in 1969, before returning to London as one of several hundred First Secretaries at the Foreign Office in 1972. I wonder if it was the then young Prof Pritchard who, during Quentin's punting days at Gonville and Caius, tapped him on the shoulder and asked him if he would like to meet a 'friend' of his who was coming up from London? Careful, lads, careless talk costs elections... (John) Quentin (Mole) Davies MP

Definitely Stephen, Northern Ireland was a fertile ground for intelligence and military training/testing of various insurgency/counter insurgency techniques. A lot of people killed here were no more than guinea pigs. I'm very informed in most of this stuff, but have a tendency to write on the fly, I might actually have to dig out some stuff now for this one. Cheers Gary I wouldn't do that if I were you Gazzer: you will have Sid 'Citation' Walker on your case quicker than you can say, "Sergeant Jack Granthan is allegedly Ian 'Rocky' Hurst." PS Martin's Blog seems to have gone the way of that of a distant colleague who goes by the name of Richard Tomlinson.

Gazzer, I'm a great believer in 'Mocking Bird.' I think 'The Fisherman' believes in it too! The Fisherman

So, what exactly were the 'antics' of the Jamaican authorities in relation to the investigation of Bob Woolmer's death? Well apart from the slew of contradictory and misleading statements that were fed to the hacks by police 'sources' there was serious anarchic buggeration of formal procedures required under law. Procedures like autopsies, toxicology tests and inquests. So a quick quiz question for you: How many post mortems were REPORTED as having been performed on Bob Woolmer? (i) Two (ii) Six (iii) Three MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION INDUCTION UPDATE Sky News will not confirm whether Denise Nurse (pictured previously) was on duty at their weather centre on the night/morning of Woolly's death and have refused to release the tapes. An inside source has revealed that Ms Nurse 'handed over' to a Ms Jo Wheeler at least three hours before Woolly was found unconscious in his room. Jo Wheeler - it seems that five children and a weekly 1,000 mile commute from her home in Portugal have not affected her ability to send pulse rate monitors into overdrive.

Of course, everyting that I have said so far doesn't amount to a hill of beans. Our four 'gofers' could really be innocent and Seshaiah Dr Ere a botcher and bungler of the highest Masonic order. So we have a double problem: proving that Woolly was bumped off in the first place as well as establishing that there was a compelling motive for this drastic course of action. Well the antics of the Jamaican authorities have made this a very easy case for me (not like the Litvinenko business which as you will see takes many bizarre twists and turns). The only slight problem with the Woolly affair is working out PRECISELY who dunnit and the various accessories before and after the fact. Of course, there will be those establishment types who will dismiss the prosection's case as hearsay and uphold the findings of Dr Nat Carey's 'autopsy' (why the inverted commas you may well ask?!) that Bob Woolmer died of natural causes. Well in the spirit of cricket and fair play it is only right that I play devil's advocate and provide the most likely natural cause of myocardial infarction in a stressed out, middle aged diabetic, alone in his five star hotel bedroom in the early hours of Sunday 18th March 2007: Sky News weather girls - nothing comes close (fnarr! fnarr!)!

After looking at mugshots of some desperate but wholly 'innocent' types I think that the majority of this forum's membership would prefer to look at photographs of some fine upstanding citizens like these: This pleasant middle aged couple go by the name of Dr and Mrs Ere. Dr Seshaiah Ere has had a tough time of late. Not only has he had to endure the entire Western media referring to him backwardly as 'Dr Ere Seshaiah' but he has also had to put up with accusations of being a bungler and a botcher. Worse, he has had to weather calls from a Mr Derrick Smith (an NLP member of the Jamaican Parliament and opposition spokesman on 'National Security') for his resignation from the rather spookily named post of 'Chief Consultant Forensic Pathologist - Ministry of National Security.' You see, Dr Ere had the dubious distinction of presiding over both the first ('inconclusive') and, if our media is to be believed, second autopsy on Bob Woolmer. Derrick Smith MP Not content with 'bungling' and 'botching' Woolly's post mortem(s) it appears that Dr Ere compounded his error by defending his findings that Bob Woolmer had been murdered. Ere's professional pride and stubborness cannot help but put me in mind of a former eminent British toxiciologist, Professor John Henry , who also rather (too) publicly stuck to his guns by maintaining that a certain London based Russian emigree had been poisoned with thallium in early November last year. Professor John Henry Amongst other things, Professor John Henry's Times obituary stated that he could be 'stubborn.' Careful Ere Seshaiah Dr, there are bad men out there!

Well, The Sun reported that three gofers 'handed in their notice' on the day that Woolly succumbed to myocardial infarction. However, the April Fool's day edition of The Daily Mail disagrees. Trotsky's favourite tabloid states that one of them, a Mr Erfan Chaudhary (a lab technician from New York), went voluntarily to the Jamaican police before flying home. It appears that the blame for the failure of Mr Hamed Malik (lowest profile member of the gofer groupies ) to assist Jamaican police with their enquiries could not be laid at the door of his friends and family who, according to the Mail made herculean efforts to contact him: The family of Mr Malik, a sales director of a Manchester (UK) catering firm, say they have spoken to him in the Caribbean and insist he is innocent. A relative said: "He is just hopping from island to island at the moment. As far as he is concerned he is out there enjoying the cricket. He is not aware that anyone is looking for him. He has not spoken to the police. We know 100 per cent he is not involved in anything." Seems like in their excitement, Malik's family forgot to tell their errant scion that Kingston's finest wanted to 'eliminate him from their enquiries.' Another interesting biographical nugget for the anoraks amongst you: Hamed lives with his mum and visits his wife often in Pakistan. Hmm - unusual departure from the standard model of Asian connubial bliss wouldn't you say or am I guilty of racial stereotyping?

And here's another mugshot of one of the now er... 'Least Wanted.' Goes by the name of Jundie Khan and was/is domiciled in Hollywood, Florida. Apparently he was one of three Pakistani ex pats (two from the USA and one from the UK) who flew into Jamaica do a bit of freelance 'gofering' for their idols. Jundie doesn't strike me as the kind of a guy who gets awe stricken - a bit streetwise for a bag carrier don't you think? Funny how one of Rupert's rags (The Sun) got hold of his name. And funnier still that Jundie and his impressionable mates were reported as having done a runner after Woolly's 'heart attack.'

Not enough mugshots on this board that's what I say. Anyway here's one that some of you might be very interested in (no, it's not one of those luscious Sky News weather girls). It's of Tariq Malik, a 'car dealer' from Kingston Jamaica who hosted a reception for the Pakistan cricket team. Apparently he went straight to the Jamaican police to declare his innocence shortly after Woolly's 'heart attack.' It would appear then that all those rumours that he was the ISI 'point man' in Jamaica for a 'hit' on an unspecified national cricketing coach are utterly scurrilous in the wake of Nat Carey's (Home Office Pathologist's) authoritative post mortem. The authoritative one that contradicted the two other authoritative autopsies...

...the 'Foreign Office Crowd' do have a (dark, very dark) sense of humour. And the brass necks to go with it too: "It's the politicians fault - they proposed him(!)" - Sir Robin Janvrin, Private Secretary to the Queen. I wonder whether it was his or his great mate Charles 'Pole the Mole' Powell's idea (Bliar's former Chief of Staff, Cabinet Secretary and 'human bridge' to VX)? Is it me or does this evil little scheme have the whiff of a valedictory trick about it? And silly Salamander, caught out by his vanity AGAIN! Surely he must have smelt a rat when he got the Royal invitation ('there's a gong going - it could be yours') or did the scent of finest oryx arse vellum addle his olfactory tract? Didn't he notice there weren't that many literary knights knocking about (even Martin Amis is still just plain ol' mister after wisely abandoning his 'definitive account' of 9/11 after Hunter S. Thompson's 'suicide' opting instead to pen his provocative cold war tract 'House of Meetings'). Or did Rushdie REALLY believe it hadn't been all downhill for him since his 'Naughty but Nice' ad copy days at Ogilvy & Mather and that he was still (a bit) of a darling of the 'Chelsea (Anglo-Saxon Writers Hating) Arts Club (many of whose members are still on the OUP's official waiting list for the 50 volume 'Revised Standard and Compleat Oxford Dictionary' to get them off page 57 of 'Midnight's Children')? Looks like he's got the rozzers for company for another ten years...

Arghhh, and I thought that was a genuine battle between Saudi/US backed Sunnis and Iranian Shia's for control of Iraq and an increased geopolitical position in the Middle East ultimately preventing a pan-Arab front against Israel etc. According to the conspiracy chatter that I tune into (Shoenman et al) the real plan (kept secret even from PNAC - which explains why some of their luminaries have distanced themselves from the Bush administration) was/is to break Iraq into three. Quite how any of the hydrocarbon legislation currently stalled in the Iraqi parliament will then apply is anybody's guess (the law, if passed, will allow foregin companies access to over 75% of Iraqi oil fields). Then there's all this talk of the 'newly discovered' oil reserves under the (Sunni) Western desert (second largest in the world apparently). I wonder just how many former Baathi brigadiers might suffer a bout of temporary amnesia over a 'Free & United Iraq' when divying up their oil 'commissions' on the back of a Marlboro pack...

Sadly also the case with the 'Syrian' backed 'Sunni Insurgency' and the 'Iranian' backed 'Shia Resistance' in you know where...

And I assume you have reams of evidence to back these claims. Yes sarcasm intended, your only reason for posting here seems to be showing how clever you are rather than actually setting the record straight about any of the subjects discussed on this forum. Calling Alan Johnston "a hack" is extremly unfair he strikes me as a couragous guy with the guts to work in dangerous place due to his commitment to getting out the truth. Dom't you write for B2B publications, who's the hack? 1) Surely you must realise by now why I am an attention seeking egomaniac Len, me ol' fruit??? 2) There are many worse names by which employees of the spook infested Coproration should be known. I empathise with Johnstone's predicament but please don't insult my intelligence by suggesting that either he or his employer have any interest in the truth. 3) The term 'hack' does not adequately describe a person in my position - because there is no adequate pejorative term for someone who effectively subs advertorial for a living. I agree with Len. The comments about Johnston are tasteless. Under your scenario, he is colluding in his capture. In the absence of evidence, those comments are tantamount to kicking a dog when it's down. I also think the claim that you are less than a perfect person is a thin excuse for poor behaviour. Anyone who's aware of being an "attention-seeker" can do something about it. It would be a good move, IMO FWIW, because minus the occasional self-indulgent outbursts, I think you contribute some fine material to the forum. The forum's hit rate would plummet (remember I have a fan club to think about). And the best is yet to come... PS Up until recently 'hack' was the media colloquialism for 'journalist.' When the industry (in the UK at least) became stuffed with its own self importance (around the same time as BBC Radio Five came into being) the amiable diminutive 'journo' was coined - a term I refuse to use. PPS You're a good egg Sid.

And I assume you have reams of evidence to back these claims. Yes sarcasm intended, your only reason for posting here seems to be showing how clever you are rather than actually setting the record straight about any of the subjects discussed on this forum. Calling Alan Johnston "a hack" is extremly unfair he strikes me as a couragous guy with the guts to work in dangerous place due to his commitment to getting out the truth. Dom't you write for B2B publications, who's the hack? 1) Surely you must realise by now why I am an attention seeking egomaniac Len, me ol' fruit??? 2) There are many worse names by which employees of the spook infested Coproration should be known. I empathise with Johnstone's predicament but please don't insult my intelligence by suggesting that either he or his employer have any interest in the truth. 3) The term 'hack' does not adequately describe a person in my position - because there is no adequate pejorative term for someone who effectively subs advertorial for a living.

Yes I know I should be solving the Litvinenko business (cracking ending folks!) and sorting out WWII (WATCH OUT FOR MY WORLD EXCLUSIVE) but I really can't let events in Gaza pass by without comment. A Hamas dominated Islamic 'statelet' in Gaza is a bit of a curate's egg to most liberal minded sorts. And so it should be. After all, Hamas is a Mossad creation and modern day Islamic fundamentalism is largely CIA inspired (unlike what the poxy Trots would have us believe and I hope by saying that, that I have grieviously offended any of the COINTELPRO stooges on this forum). The double bind here is that Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah, with the poisoning of arch kleptomaniac Yasser Arafat in Ramallah (later finished off by DGSE 'doctors' in a French military hospital), is increasingly under Mossad/CIA influence too. There is no way that Hamas, with less than a tenth of the militia force at Fatah's disposal could have taken control over Gaza, unless the latter were stood down. And no way too that all this could have happened without the very public clear out of Jewish settlers last year. This whole stunt has been carefully choreographed in Tel Aviv (but all is not yet lost, Abbas is simply begging Olmert to let his fighters cross over Israeli territory to reclaim control!) What we are witnessing here folks is the creation of the first of many 'dhimmi' that may well come to litter the Middle East as the decades roll by. This was the vision of Israeli 'journalist', Oded Yinon, who, nearly 30 years ago, advocated a remodelling of the Ottoman 'Millet' system of statehood in the Middle East for the modern era: small, autonomous states that were ethnically and religiously homogenous. The principal purpose of this resurrected scheme would be to defeat pan Arabism (ironically, Saddam's path to power was CIA backed to prevent an Iraqi/Syrian union) which Mossad perceived as the greatest existential threat to the state of Israel. It goes without saying, of course, that this kind of arrangement would also be the ideal political environment for oil and gas exploration and extraction by the 'Super Majors.' PS Watch out for the very public release in the coming days/weeks of a certain BBC hostage (curiously, the only Western hack left in Gaza at the time of his abduction) by a previously 'unknown' (ie Mossad) Islamic 'terror' group as part of the 'new' Gaza's charm offensive.

Trust me fella's - anyone who's read my Pulitzer prose on Litvinenko knows I aint no buller... I'll give you chapter and verse how Paris lost 2012 (it woz MI6 wot lumped London with it) and how and why they're going to get it back again. And how UEFA were and are still trying to stop England getting 2010 by setting up and dissing Man U, Spurs and Liverpool fans throughout European competitions last season. And how Roma tried to frame 'Manure' but were found out and had to pay the price 7-1!

You have my undivided attention. What's an ISI agent? A finger on a tentacle that stretches all the way to Langley, Virginia... Or as Wikipedia puts it: The Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (also Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI) is the largest and most powerful of the three main branches of Pakistan's intelligence agencies. The BBC have a lot of funny sounding names for them like 'Al Qaeda' and 'Taliban.'

Woolly was murdered by four ISI agents (one domiciled in Jamaica, one in the UK and two in the USA). More on this later...

...he gets such a bad press? This sneak preview from an NBC 'exclusive' might throw a little light on the matter. PRINCE HARRY: You know when people think about it they think about her death. They think about you know how wrong it was. They think about you know whatever happened. I don't know for-- for me personally whatever happened you know that night. Whatever happened in that tunnel. You know no one will ever know. And I'm sure people will always think about that the whole time. LAUER: Have you stopped wondering? PRINCE HARRY: I'll never stop wondering about that. Watch out for the CIA, sorry, ISI, sorry again, I mean the TALIBAN in Afghanistan me ol' mucker!

England - the idiom comes from the catchy, maudlin theme song by the 'Lightening Seeds' for the 1996 European Championships. I will elaborate on all this later - I've just posted my hunch now so I cannot stand accused of being wise after the event.

2012 Olympics will go back to France (an election present for Sarkozy - an ouster scandal for Brown) 2010 World Cup will be 'coming home' (an election present for Cameron - and a rap for Mbeki and the ANC who have embezzled all the stadia construction finance). Just my hunch - but a lot of evidence for it. More later...

PPP Latest instalment of the PPP above - post did not register in 'Political Conspiracies' content section

PPP Chapter Six - The PR Fix On November the 22nd The London Evening Standard ran one of the two iconic photo's of the hospitalised Litvinenko (a bit rum don't you think that neither The Times nor the BBC were allowed bespoke snaps for their Litvinenko interviews conducted on Barnet General's 'cancer ward?') and nonchalantly provided its readers with this nugget: While the pictures undoubtedly illustrate the extraordinary pain Mr Litvinenko is going through, they will also be used to embarrass the Russian government. The pictures of Mr Litvinenko were released to the media yesterday by one of Britain's leading public relations firms. Although no one was able to confirm who was footing the £10,000 a day PR bill, friends of billionaire Mr Berezovsky believe he was involved in some way. One could be forgiven for asking the stupid question about exactly how a private citizen, who happens to be an associate of a possible victim of an alleged criminal conspiracy, goes about establishing control over the flow of information relating to the case - particularly when the police are investigating it. The Guardian of the 24th November revealed the identity of the leading PR firm referred to above (who must have accidentally Tippexed out their letterhead in the press pack sent to Northcliffe Newspapers) who were no doubt delighted to get away with issuing garbled and conflicting statements about Litvinenko for 10K a day: One of London's leading public relations companies, headed by Lord Tim Bell, Lady Thatcher's former advertising consultant, fielded media queries about his condition. It also arranged for a photograph of Mr Litvinenko in his hospital to be distributed to the media via a news agency... Lord Bell's public relations consultancy is retained by Boris Berezovsky, the multi-millionaire Russian oligarch who is a friend of Mr Litvinenko. This claim was later corroborated both by The Independent and The Financial Times (the latter reporting that Lord Bell's firm, Bell - Pottinger, had represented Beresovsky for four years). I wonder for just how many amateur sleuths on the Litvinenko poisoning trail did this revelation come as their defining moment: that there were no reported facts that they could rely on to construct an hyopothesis. One reported fact that was aired on Tuesday 21st November was that the Litvinenko story was hardly being covered at all by Russian news outlets. Tony Halpin, Moscow correspondent of The Times, asserted: “The fate of Alexander Litvinenko may be hot news in Britain, but Russia’s press is almost completely ignoring him... none of the major dailies covers the story today." The (ironic) operative word in the above quote was 'today.' Tony seems to be the kind of hack who relies on the BBC to provide his copy on all things Russian because much of a report posted on BBCI the previous day by Kyrill Dissanayake (BBC Monitoring) adopts a similar admonishing stance: Most noticeably for a media landscape dominated by television, Russia's three main TV networks seem to have steered clear of the story. There appears to have been no mention of Mr Litvinenko in any of the main news bulletins or discussion programmes on state-controlled Channel One and Rossiya, nor on NTV, which is owned by the energy giant Gazprom Well, probably one reason for that was that there was nothing new to report on the Litvinenko case by the 20th November. Just look at the first line of Dissanayake's report: Reports that the dissident former Russian security officer Alexander Litvinenko had been poisoned in London first surfaced in Russia's mainstream media on 11 November. Notice the date anyone? THE 11TH NOVEMBER - ONE FULL WEEK BEFORE THE DAILY MAIL'S 'SCOOP.' Dissanyake goes on to grudgingly concede that in addition to the mainstream media report on Litvinenko (Echo Moskvy - a radio station) the corporate-owned Ren TV channel and business channel RBK TV also ran with it. Far from covering up the Litvinenko affair the independent media analyst and specialist publisher William Dunkerley seems to think the Russian press have shown more than a bit of Glasnost in their coverage: It appears that the Litvinenko story first broke at 8:35 AM Moscow Time on November 11, in a report on KavkazCenter.com, a Chechen news site. It carried the headline “FSB Attempted to Murder Russian Defector in London.” Later in the day, the story was picked up by the Regnum News Agency. Utro.ru had it, too. They reported getting it from a Chechen source. Lenta.ru carried the story, and referred to an Echo Moskvy story of the same day, which in turn had referenced Chechen media. On November 13, three more Moscow outlets had stories that referred to Litvinenko. Kommersant ran the headline, “Litvinenko Did Not Digest the Information,” and explained that Litvinenko said he was “poisoned when meeting an informer who delivered documents about the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.” The Moscow Times reported that Litvinenko claimed he “might have been poisoned by a man who had sought to meet him, saying he had documents related to the death of the journalist.” Later Moscow News carried the same information with attribution to the Moscow Times. The one thing that all the above mentioned Russian news sources have in common is that all of them covered the Litvinenko poisoning case BEFORE it was first reported in the UK. However, it must be borne in mind that many of these 'Russian' news outlets are deeply hostile to the current Russian administration and that includes the KavKaz Center, the Chechan website (voice piece of the 'Caucasian Mujahideen') that broke the Litvinenko story. The surprise on visiting both the KavKaz and other Russian news sites is that one is not confronted with a Litvinenko 'prequel.' The reports contain (and develop) much of the information carried in the London press a full week later. And there's the rub: the central timelines of the case are skewed. Here's just one (but important) example: A friend of the Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko who is now being treated in an unnamed London hospital after he had been poisoned by a Russian secret police agent said that the clinical condition of Mr Litvinenko worsened. Doctors do not know what happened to him, according to a report from a Russian radio station, Echo Moskvy ("Moscow Echo"), This report was posted @ 8.54 on the 15th November on the KavKaz website a full four days BEFORE Litvinenko's 'first' deterioration reported on BBC News 24 that caused him to be moved to intensive care at UCH. If one dons one's conspiratorial cap for a moment one could say that the Litvinenko story was first fed to and rehearsed with the rebel, liberal, Western oriented (ie subversive) media outlets in Russia before opening (with a deeply flawed performance) on the news stands of London's West End. We will return to Tony Halpin's 'disinterested' Russian media later in our travels. But the facts of the Litvinenko case as reported in Russia are no truer because that is where they were heard first. Our genuine (poisoned) souvenir 'Litvinenko Dolls' appear to have been made by Beresovsky Ltd of London. A final irony. It seems that BBC monitoring overlooked one of the main media outlets to broadcast the Litvinenko poisoning case to the Russian masses on November 11th. Strange that it should do this as the station in question, unlike its media rivals, actually aired the first interview with Litvinenko after his poisoning. According to William Dunkerley: The BBC Russian Service ran an interview with Litvinenko at 4:48 PM. They told me it had been taped in London about an hour earlier. You don't think BBC Monitoring's coyness about its sister station's 'scoop' had anything to do with the fact that the Russian Service's 'bedside interview' with Litvinenko's completely buggers up the BBC's claim that Litvinenko was not admitted to Barnet General until two weeks after his poisoning?

PPP Chapter Five - A Brief Life Monday 20th November brought us the first (and only) photographs (just two) of the thallium stricken, hospitalised Litvinenko, a name for the mysterious 'old friend' who had poisoned his tea (Andrei Lugovoy) and, of course, a raft of motives. At the moment there are at least a dozen motives in circulation about why Litvinenko was murdered and most of them, unsurprisingly, seem to belong to the Kremlin. Those of you on this forum who mis-spent their youth reading Agatha Christie will appreciate that it is unwise to speculate about motives until the physical circumstances surrounding the victim's demise have been clearly established. AND IN LITVINENKO'S CASE BEFORE WE CAN FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM WE FIRST HAVE TO ESTABLISH WHAT DID NOT HAPPEN TO HIM In the (dis?)information blizzard whirling around Litvinenko, Professor John Henry (remember the name!) appeared a beacon of authority. This devout RC and kidney transplantee was Britain's celebrity toxicologist in residence who opined openly about the potential long term damage of cannabis and ecstasy on the nation's 'yoof'. He had been very publicly 'brought in' in the Yushchenko poisoning case (exactly what his role was was never clarified - a striking parallel with his involvement in the Litvinenko case) and had determined that the Ukrainian's soup du jour had been seasoned with dioxin. There were two striking features of Henry's interview on Litvinenko to camera on BBC NEWS 24 (the Real Player download is on a BBCI page dated the 19th November) mentioned in Chapter 4. The first was his steadfast belief was that it was thallium and thallium alone that was responsible for Litvinenko's condition. The second was his equivocation on Litvinenko's prospects. Henry's (relative) optimism is reported in The Guardian on the 20th November: Dr Henry estimates that Mr Litvinenko 's recovery process will take at least six months. "His main problem in the next two to four weeks when the acute illness is gone, will be his nervous system," he said. "He will have a lot of muscle weakness and will need major physiotherapy." Seems like there's life threatening 'gravely ill' and non life threatening 'gravely ill.' But Henry's benign prognosis and his conviction that thallium was the agent used to lay his patient low would come under a sustained assault. So much so, in fact, that the Professor emeritus would have to revise his opinion that thallium was found in Litvinenko's bloodstream and, in so doing, call into question the postive test conducted at Guys Hospital on the 16th November and the accuracy of medical documents perused by journalists of that august journal, The Times It was Dr Andres Virchis (cancer specialist and haematologist at Barnet, Enfield and University College Hospitals) who was first reported as having doubts about the sufficiency of the thallium diagnosis (see Chapter 3). From the 20th November onwards his 'misgivings' would be taken up and reworked in a way reminiscent of Rachmaninoff's 'Improvisation on a Theme by Paganinni' by at least three other UCH clinicians - none of them toxicologists. Virchis has some clinical neck. After all, it appears that he at least collaborated in the misdiagnosis of Litvinenko. Here is his 'confession' as reported by ABC 7 NEWS "As his condition deteriorated," said Dr. Andres Virchis, a hematologist, "it became clear to us that this was no longer just an episode of gastroenteritis or food poisoning, but that actually something serious had happened to Alexander." The hallmark cliche's of the Litvineko saga are the various tenses of the verb 'deteriorate' and the noun 'deterioration.' Litvinenko's first spiral downwards in 'real time' after the story broke was reported by a UCH encamped hackette, Nicola Pearson, to BBC NEWS 24 on Sunday 19th November. She stated that Litvinenko had been moved to intensive care. This 'development' begs many questions. Had Litvinenko been on a UCH public ward before this move? Why had he been moved from a Barnet General cancer ward (where else would you put a 'gastroenteritis' case?) to UCH where there did not appear to be either a specialist toxicology unit or RESIDENT toxicologist to treat him? And exactly how did Litvinenko's family manage to 'bring in' their own toxicologist in the shape of Professor Henry (did he bill them by the hour?) to a rigid, rule bound, NHS hospital? In The Times of the 21st November a Dr Amit Nathwani (one of the 'team' treating Litvinenko at UCH) put a lot of muddy water between himself and Professor Henry: "His symptoms are slightly odd for thallium poisoning and the levels of thallium we were able to detect are not the kind of levels you would see in toxicity." The same article quotes Henry as considering 'radioactive thallium' as the agent used, an idea developed in the following day's Daily Telegraph Prof Henry said he no longer believed thallium sulphate to be the most likely poison used. “It is very likely that he has had radiation poisoning because his white cell count has gone down to zero. Now we are beginning to think it may well be radioactive thallium. I have managed to see more of his details today. The thallium levels are lower than expected. “The thallium [sulphate] is the least of it - the radioactivity seems more important. He may need a bone marrow transplant to get him better. Something other than thallium is involved. There are several possibilities as to what this something is. “One is that he was given thallium plus a second cytotoxic {poisonous to cells] drug, the second is that he was given thallium plus a different radioactive compound, the third is that he was given radioactive thallium. At this stage radioactive thallium seems the most likely cause.” But both The Times of the 21st November and a BBC website report of the 23rd November have Nathwani and the UCH Trust ranged against Henry, radioactive and non radioactive thallium and all... "We cannot rule out the possibility that Mr Litvinenko's condition was caused by a radioactive material - including radioactive thallium - although not all of his signs and symptoms are consistent with radiation toxicity", the trust added. Based on results we have received today and Mr Litvinenko's clinical features, thallium sulphate poisoning is an unlikely cause of his current condition. One could be forgiven for thinking that the main purpose of these statements was to undermine Henry (because of his unwillingness to let go of the 'thallium theory' or because he refused to consider the later revised standard polonium 210 version of events?). It seems that all this was too much for the venerable Professor because on the 23rd November he withdrew from the case according to The Guardian: Prof Henry had not been treating Mr Litvinenko, however, and the hospital said he had not seen any of the test results when he first raised his theories in media interviews.... The professor said yesterday that he was withdrawing because he had had his "fingers burnt". It is no exageration to say that the claims made in this extract were a slur on Professor Henry's professional reputation and the manner of his departure was extraordinary. On May 8th 2007 Henry was to appear in an episode of the BBC 'Horizon' science documentary series entitled 'How to Commit the Perfect Murder.' Although he referred to Litvinenk he did not come up with any new facts or theories about his case. The shock came at the end as the credits were rolling when the continuity announcer interjected: 'We regret to inform you that since the making of this programme Professor John Henry has passed away.' John Henry died at The Royal Free Hospital, London, on the very same day that the documentary was screened after complications set in after a successful operation to remove a diseased kidney. No flies on that NHS Trust's PR machine then... Another final irony is that Professor John Henry's high profile involvement in the Litvinenko case was not included either in an obituary run on his University's website (Imperial College) nor on BBC Radio Five's acclaimed obit show 'Brief Lives.'