WEEKEND EDITION: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America". David, thanks very much for being back with us.
DAVID WISE: My pleasure.
: And what can you tell us about this man? We have seen his pathetic portrait of a man on the brink of death. What do we know about him?
WISE: Well, Alex Litvinenko was not you ordinary run-of-the-mill defector in the sense that he had been in the KGB, and when the KGB split in two, essentially, one arm for foreign intelligence, the SVR, and the other arm, the FSB, for internal affairs, he joined the FSB. And there he, in 1998, held a remarkable press conference in which he announced, flanked by about five other FSB-niks in dark glasses, thinly disguised, he announced that a criminal group within the FSB had ordered him to assassinate Boris Berezovsky, the oil and media billionaire who was at odds with Putin. And Putin had just taken over the FSB at this time, so of course the press conference did not go down well with him at all.
He was arrested several times after this press conference and spent several months in prison in Moscow, but he was acquitted each time. And finally the third time he was arrested, his pals told him, look, Putin's really going to get you this time. He didn't have his passport. They had taken it away. But he managed to slip into Turkey, and there his wife and young son joined him. They flew there on tourist visas, and then they made their way to Britain, where he asked for asylum, and he was granted asylum.
: He subsequently wrote a book, too, where he accused the FSB of bombing several apartments in Moscow and then blaming it on Chechen rebels.
WISE: Yes. In 2003, he published that book, "The FSB Blows up Russia". And about 300 people were killed in these bombings.
: What was he doing in London? How did he support himself?
WISE: Well, he wrote a book, and I guess the book got pretty good publicity, because the Russians grabbed 4,000 copies on the way to Moscow.
: Well, they are literature lovers, David, I remind you...
WISE: Yes. Right. And you know, Scott, someone might ask, well, if the FSB is suspected, as some people do suspect them, although there's no solid evidence, that they were behind the poisoning of Litvinenko, one might ask, well, this was a domestic service, so how could they operate outside of Russia? How could they operate in Britain? Well, I've been told that not too long ago they created a special department of the FSB for operations outside of Russia.
: Given his background, given the circumstances by which he came to London were so well known, was he living with any visible or reputed protection from British officials?
WISE: Not to my knowledge. He lived in a northern part of London, a pleasant neighborhood, Muswell Hill. He was an ally, of course, of Berezovsky, who was living - fled to London the same year that Litvinenko did.
: And has a lot of protection and a lot of money.
WISE: And Berezovsky has a lot of money and he obviously spent some, apparently spent some time with Berezovsky around the time he was poisoned, because they found traces of it in Berezovsky's office in London, according to news reports.
: Was Mr. Litvinenko backed financially by Berezovsky in any way, in any of his investigative ventures or...
WISE: That hasn't come out, but it's a reasonable assumption that they were allies and very close, because once somebody says I've been ordered to kill you and I won't do it, it tends to create a certain bond.
: On Friday, it was announced too, that traces of polonium-210 were found on the Italian agent Mario Scaramella, who met Mr. Litvinenko at that famous sushi bar on Piccadilly on November 1st. Any idea as to why they would be meeting?
WISE: Well, yes. Scaramella, Mario, was a consultant to an official Italian parliamentary inquiry into KGB activities in Italy. And Scaramella, who is a self-professed expert on, incidentally, on nuclear matter, which is kind of interesting, flew to London, he says, because it came into his possession e-mails that indicated that the two of them, both Litvinenko and Scaramella, were on a hit list of a criminal gang in St. Petersburg and that in addition this same criminal gang was behind the murder in October of Anna Politkovskaya.
: The world has gotten to know about Alexander Litvinenko over the past week or so as the victim of a terrible crime and a brave man who was outspoken in his denunciation of the Russian president and the FSB. It must be asked, because he's a former KGB agent, does he have blood on his hands too? I mean could've his murder also have been some kind of retribution for something in his past?
WISE: Well, it could have been, and that's an interesting point, because when he was in the FSB and before he broke with them very publicly, his specialty was fighting organized crime. So it's possible, and this is just speculation, that he made enemies in the Russian mafia, in organized crime, and Mario Scaramella, the Italian who met with him the day he became ill at the famous sushi restaurant, says that he was marked for execution by criminals in St. Petersburg. So it could very well be that there are some roots that go back to his crime-fighting days in the late '90s.
You know, the possibility of this thing ever being solved I think at this point is remote. Now, Scotland Yard is very good and the polonium is leaving traces all over the place, so that may be their best trail. I mean these are better than bread crumbs.
: David Wise writes about international espionage. His most recent book, "Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America". David, thanks very much.
WISE: My pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
