Yeah, and OJ Is Still Looking for the Real Killers
While most of the attention the last couple of days has focused on Vladimir Putin doing his turn as Fats Domino, there have also been reports that the FSB much earlier covered Chuck Berry’s “It Wasn’t Me”* (h/t R):
Russia was tracking the assassins of dissident spy Alexander Litvinenko before he was poisoned but was warned off by Britain, which said the situation was “under control”, according to claims made in a leaked US diplomatic cable.The secret memo, recording a 2006 meeting between an ex-CIA bureau chief and a former KGB officer, is set to reignite the diplomatic row surrounding Litvinenko’s unsolved murder that year, which many espionage experts have linked directly to the Kremlin.
The latest WikiLeaks release comes after relations between Moscow and London soured as a result of Britain’s decision to expel a Russian parliamentary researcher suspected of being a spy.
The memo, written by staff at the US embassy in Paris, records “an amicable 7 December dinner meeting with ambassador-at-large Henry Crumpton [and] Russian special presidential representative Anatoliy Safonov”, two weeks after Litvinenko’s death from polonium poisoning had triggered an international hunt for his killers.
During the dinner, Crumpton, who ran the CIA’s Afghanistan operations before becoming the US ambassador for counter-terrorism, and Safonov, an ex-KGB colonel-general, discussed ways the two countries could work together to tackle terrorism. The memo records that “Safonov opened the meeting by expressing his appreciation for US/Russian co-operative efforts thus far. He cited the recent events in London – specifically the murder of a former Russian spy by exposure to radioactive agents – as evidence of how great the threat remained and how much more there was to do on the co-operative front.”
The memo contains an observation from US embassy officials that Safonov’s comments suggested Russia “was not involved in the killing, although Safonov did not offer any further explanation”.
Later the memo records that Safonov claimed that “Russian authorities in London had known about and followed individuals moving radioactive substances into the city but were told by the British that they were under control before the poisoning took place”.
Since we have the word of an ex-KGB colonel general I guess that’s that. Move along, nothing to see.
*And to close the circle, Chuck Berry regularly performs at Blueberry Hill on Delmar in University City (a St. Louis suburb).
