On Sunday December 3rd, the British newspaper The Observer published three stories about Alexander Litvinenko (pictured above right with slain hero reporter Anna Politkovskaya and Chechen rebel leader in exile Akhmed Zakayev in London a few weeks before Politkovskaya’s murder — eerily, the Chechen is the only one still alive).

All three stories were based on the same single source, a Russian woman named Julia Svetlichnaja. First there was a story headlined: “I can blackmail them, we can make money” and then parallel story headlined “Revealed: Litvinenko’s Russian blackmail plot.” A third item, a first person account by the source entitled “Strange Stroll Around Hyde Park that Went Nowhere” also appeared that day. The effect of all three stories was to smear Litvinenko’s character in the wake of his killing, thus serving to deflect blame from the Kremlin. Further, since Svetlichnaja provided the above photograph to the Observer, it tended to tar two other hated enemies of the Kremlin with the same brush. Convenient, isn’t it? Why, it’s almost as if the KGB planned the whole thing.

Svetlichnaja is woman the Observer identified as a “Russian academic, a politics student at the University of Westminster.” She accused Litvinenko of having “planned to make tens of thousands of pounds blackmailing senior Russian spies and business figures” and the paper published a muckraking photograph of Litvinenko, above left, holding a Chechen sword and wearing Scottish garb in front a Union Jack, taken to celebrate receipt of his British passport, a photo allegedly given to Sveltlichnaja by Litvinenko. The Observer reported: “He had asked Svetlichnaja, who is based in London, to enter into a business deal with him and ‘make money’.” So, she’s saying that Litvinenko was killed to stop his blackmail attempts on rich folks, not to silence his acidic attacks on the Kremlin’s anti-democratic behavior. Isn’t that wonderfully convenient, from the KGB’s perspective?

1. Svetlichnaja’s Intitial Report

The Observer’s reports were immediately suspicious because the paper accepted Svetlichnaja’s statements so unquestioningly: A Russian person doesn’t simply pick up one day and decide to study in England. Who was paying for Svetlichnaja’s study? The paper didn’t ask. How did she get access to Litvinenko, and what was her purpose for interviewing him (he had no apparent connection to her dissertation research)? The paper stated: “In early May, Litvinenko first approached Julia Svetlichnaja, a 33-year-old Russian-born academic who is examining the roots of the Chechen conflict for a book she is writing. Litvinenko asked if she was interested in becoming involved in his ‘blackmail’ project.” This is extremely bizarre, to say the least. How did Litvinenko hear about Svetlichnaja, an obscure academic? What evidence did Svetlichnaja offer that he in fact did so? Why was she writing about Chechnya, and what were her credentials for doing so? The paper didn’t ask. Would Litvinenko really make a cold approach to an obscure academic he had never met before and then spill his guts to her, admitting he intended to engage in blackmail? Why? Did Svetlichnaja tell Litvinenko she would participate in the scam to win his trust? Did she actually participate? Again, the paper was mum – inexcusably so, since Svetlichnaja had no preexisting reputation as a scholar and since, quite obviously, the Kremlin had a strong interest in undermining Litvinenko’s credibility in light of the international scorn being heaped upon it. Yet, the Observer reported Svetlichnaja’s attack unquestioningly. It explained that she “interviewed the former KGB agent earlier this year for a book she is writing about Chechnya” but failed to provide any explanation of why she would be writing about Chechnya or what qualifications she would have to do so, much less to name the publisher of the volume. Chechnya has nothing to do with the stated topic of her dissertation research (which is: “the nature of the relationship between art and politics.”) It quoted Svetlichnaja as stating “‘He told me he was going to blackmail or sell sensitive information about all kinds of powerful people, including oligarchs, corrupt officials and sources in the Kremlin. He mentioned a figure of ????10,000 that they would pay each time to stop him broadcasting these FSB documents. Litvinenko was short of money and was adamant that he could obtain any files he wanted.” But it did not set forth any direct quotes of statements actually made by Litvinenko or explain why he would confess this plan to a person writing a book about him, a person he did not know and who had no reputation.

Svetlichnaja wrote: “Ultimately, however, I almost regretted giving my email to Litvinenko. From our first meeting he started to feed me information with such gusto that in the weeks before his death I had started deleting most of his messages without opening them.” Not only is it obviously bizarre that Julia would simply ignore the e-mails of her source (though highly convenient as an explanation for why she cannot produce his materials now), but she then writes: “The next time we met, in the summer, we ended up walking around Hyde Park for hours. I started to wonder whether meeting Litvinenko was a waste of time. He told me shamelessly of his blackmailing plans aimed at Russian oligarchs.” Why would she meet a man again in person if she was so disgusted with him that she deleted his e-mails without reading them? Svetlichnaja didn’t care to explain.

Svetlichnaya also wrote: “Some of his emails were confidential documents from the FSB, the successor to the KGB; others were his own writings for the Chechen press. Many of his ‘political’ texts were too obviously rants to take seriously: one of his wildest claims was that Putin was a pedophile.” Is she really so brave that she can publicly announce having received secret document from the KGB’s files? Or does she know full well the KGB won’t touch her, because she’s in bed with them? The third alternative is that she’s just plain clueless.

2. Aftenposten’s Critique

Three days after the trio of reports appeared in the Observer, on December 6th, the Norwegian daily Aftenposten ran a story that called Svetlichnaja’s background and reliability into question. It stated:

Aftenposten has seen an email from a British human rights activist and Professor of Russian, and member of Litvinenko’s network, who claims to have information that Svetlichnaya was acting on instructions from “a special bureau” – a reference to the secret service FSB – to study in London in order to have easier access to exiled Chechen leader Akhmed Zakayev. The British professor of Russian, who insisted on remaining nameless on this matter, accuses Svetlichnaya of being part of a “massive disinformation campaign” about the Litvinenko affair.

It then reported:

The Observer followed her lead and described her as a student at the University of Westminster in London, but there is no mention made in the articles of her background as information chief for a Russian investment firm. On Monday Aftenposten discovered her name on a web site for the Russian investment company “Russian Investors”. Hidden on a page listing the company’s “philanthropic” activities in equestrianism, she stands listed by name and with a company email address. Aftenposten’s London correspondent phoned the investment company’s managing director Alexei Yashechkin to learn more about Svetlichnaya and her relationship to the company. The conversation with Yashechkin was hesitant and occasionally self-contradictory. The director both denied and admitted that Svetlichnaya had connections to the company. He also said it must be a case of “another girl with the same name”, without any mention that the call had anything to do with the Svetlichnaya in the news who claimed to be a student. After many much stammering and several pauses the obviously nervous director finally ended the conversation and hung up.

Here is a before-and-after screenshot of the web page in question, courtesy of the blog Komisar Scoop, which ran an expos???? of the affair on December 27th:

Even though the website identifies her as the “Communication Manager,” Svetlichnaya has claimed that she was not a direct employee of the Russian Investors firm, but rather only worked on their website while employed as a temp by another company, Diamond Bridge Advisory Services. She has claimed that Diamond is a “British company” but failed to provide any specific details about its ownership or how many other Russians worked there.

Aftenposten’s reporter has provided Publius Pundit with copies of three emails she sent to Svetlichnaja between the publication of the the Observer story and the Aftenposten critique; she says that (and Aftenposten reported) Svetlichnaja ignored all the messages, and only responded after Aftenposten’s story ran. This, of course, if true seriously undermines Svetlichnaja’s crediblity, particularly since she has denied any failure to cooperate with Aftenposten. The reporter does not want the contents of the messages published since, as discussed below, Svetlichnaja has threatened litigation.

Finally, Aftenposten pointed out the fundamental inconsistency in Svetlichnaja’s allegations:

Human rights activist Maria Fuglevaag Warsinski called the accusations of secrecy and blackmail into question, citing Litvinenko’s efforts to publicize information he gained. “He wanted to spread this information to as many as possible and was pleased by the help he got to disseminate this to human rights activists and advocates of democracy,” Warsinski said.

3. All Hell Breaks Loose

After that, things began to get really ugly. Within days, as reported in a followup story by Aftenposten, Julia had convened a press conference
in London with her collaborator James Heartfield and her attorney (that????????s the trio pictured above, with Heartfield on the right and the attorney, apparently from the London firm of Collyer Bristow, which is currently representing her in challenging Aftenposten’s report, on the left). It’s not clear why she felt she needed legal advice during the press conference.

According to Aftenposten, its reporter appeared at the press conference and when she “attempted to ask questions about ÄSvetlichnaja’sÅ role at Russian Investors, she was cut off and verbally attacked. A man appearing with Svetlichnaja, identified as a fellow student, James Heartfield, called Harbo a ‘liar’ and attempted to block further questioning.” Heartfield is an avowed Marxist/communist who has changed his name. His connection to Svetlichnaja, much less their reasons for writing about Chechnya, has never been explained. Aftenposten stated that at the conference Svetlichnaja “admitted she had no taped interviews or documentation to prove that Litvinenko was engaged in extortion, and said she failed to alert police about Litvinenko’s alleged extortion plans because she was too busy with research work.”

Svetlichnaja’s response to the second Aftenposten article was incomprehensible, both in form and substance. She chose to publish her rejoinder on an utterly obscure Russia blog ostensibly put out by an undergraduate student in Rochester which had existed only for a few months, a blog called ZheZhe. So far, she has failed to explain her reasons for doing so, leaving the clear possibility that she did so to avoid any hint of editorial constraint while creating the illusion that her claims had been vetted by the blogosphere (it’s worth noting that the publisher of ZheZhe asked Svetlichnaja to provide a written transcript of the press conference, but she has apparently failed to do so). In the ZheZhe response, she dodges all the critical questions that had been raised about her and then attempts to blame Western suspicions about the Kremlin on anti-Slavic racism, following that up with a vitriolic attack on exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky. Three weeks later, she responded to comments on ZheZhe with a second post. There, she continued to dodge the critical questions and throw up smoke screens. This time, she threatened Aftennposten with a lawsuit and then declared: ???????I am an independent researcher, an academic, my work does not attempt to fit neat realities or take sides.??????? Amazingly, then she then continued her ideological tirade, claiming that Litvinenko????????s circle is ???????unable to engage in any political debate??????? and ???????leads a dirty war against Russia, using the same methods that they condemn the KGB-FSB for.??????? We then read about ???????a post-Soviet criminalization and corruption inevitably caused by the rapid ???????democratization???????? so ill advised by the West??????? and see Svetlichnaja attempt to blame the West, rather than the Russian people, for Russia????????s current state (or maybe she blames them for being stupid enough to listen to the West!). In this light, her claims about being an objective academic seem just plain ridiculous and her claims utterly unworthy of credence. It????????s perfectly plain that she has her own ideological agenda, and the fact that she won????????t even admit this makes it equally plain that she????????s not reliable.

Most bizarre of all, Svetlichnaja wrote: “I simply don????????t know why my name appeared on their website,??????? referring to Russian Investors. This obviously defies credulity. Svetlichnaja is supposedly a journalist capable of revealing the true nature of a KGB spy, and it????????s her name. How is it possible she hasn????????t investigated the matter? Why isn????????t she taking ???????legal action??????? against Russian Investors as well as Aftenposten? How can she possibly be surprised that her name appears on the Russian Investors website if she played a role in creating that website as an employee of Diamond, which she admits.

She also attacks Aftenposten in a brutal and utterly unfair manner, characterizing it as “a paper whose claim to fame is that it published Knut Hamsen????????s eulogy to Hitler on his death in 1945.” A commenter has pointed out that Norway had been invaded and conquered by Nazi forces and was still largely controlled by them in 1945, and regardless of what the paper did half a century ago it’s more than a little suspicious that Svetlichnaja would need to reach back so far, and would reach out for such a polemical topic as Hitler, in order to defend herself against the paper’s charges. Resort to issues of racism and Nazism is hardly the mark of a serious scholar who stands in the right.

4. 60 Minutes

Amazingly, after all this, on Sunday January 7th the 60 Minutes television program aired an investigation of the Litvinenko killing which quoted Svetlichnaja as a minor source on background without mentioning any of the foregoing events. To its credit, the program quoted Berezovsky with as much credibility as Svetlichnaja, but it seems obvious that the alleged bastion of journalistic ethics ought to have at least warned readers about the swirling scandal.

5. Conclusion

Svetlichnaja’s story is a classic Russian imbroglio, full of nagging questions that she won’t (or can’t) make a serious attempt to answer. She’s now claiming that she intends to file a lawsuit against Aftenposten, apparently for libel, and also to sue Britain’s Sunday Times for reporting critical statements about her (though its unclear exactly what these were). She’s a graduate student: Where would she get the money for such an extremely expensive undertaking? She doesn’t say, or even name her attorneys. Something sure smells fishy.

The author of these words would be the very last person on the face of the earth to suggest that a scenario such as that presented by a Russian like Svetlichnaya could not be the result of sheer unmitigated incompetence. On a given day, a Russian committed to opposing Putin would be more than capable of accidentally supporting him, and this goes far in explaining why Russia finds itself in such a godawful mess today on so many fronts. And having committed grievous errors of that kind, a Russian would be more than capable of denying any fault and turning viciously on her critics, making the situation even worse. Fiascos of this kind are routine occurrences in Russia.

But Svetlichnaya has claimed that she is not an employee of the Russian government (of course, a KGB spy would not necessarily admit that) and stated that she does not support Putin’s anti-democratic moves, and yet the main accomplishment of her statements has been to do just that, to help Putin fend off challenges to his power and perhaps to escape responsibility for state-sponsored murder. And she hasn’t given any evidence of statements she previously published criticizing the Putin regime or working against it. Certainly, no such statements appeared in the Observer. She’s made her statements criticizing Putin only when pushed into a corner by Aftenposten’s critique.

If Litivenko really was killed to stop his blackmail efforts, why would the Kremlin seek to delay and obstruct the British investigation of the killing?

What’s happening here? The childish incompetence of a confused student? Svetlichnaja is a bit long in the tooth to claim the privileges of a child, but that doesn’t mean her failure to explain herself adequately is intentional. The alternative is that Svetlichnaja is a Kremlin stooge, being played as a patsy by some Svengali, or an actual Kremlin operative. One thing’s for sure: Either way, it’s very bad news for Russia. As ABC News recently reported, Russians are increasingly in the dark because of the state control over Russian media, meaning they are particularly vulnerable to statements such as those made by Svetlichnaja and they grow less and less able to exercise control over the neo-Soviet Kremlin with every day that passes.

UPDATE

Over at Robert Amsterdam’s blog (he’s one of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s lawyers), hero journalist Grigori Pasko has a post with details about Svetlichnaja’s quasi-employer Alexey Golubovich from “Russian Investors.” First Golubovich was an associate of Khodorkovsky who somehow managed to avoid harm as Khodorkovsky fell; then he turned up as Svetlichnaja’s quasi-employer just as she trashes Kremlin enemy Alexander Litvinenko; and now it seems he is to play a key role in the Kremlin’s efforts to pin the blame for Litvinenko’s killing (and/or lots of other stuff) on Khodorkovsky as part of a new round of charges against him based on his connections to one Leonid Nevzlin (now in Israel, which is protecting him from extradition as Britain is shielding Boris Berezovsky, much to Kremlin chagrin). The amazing convenience of it all is quite breathtaking! Of course, there is a small contradiction in, on the one hand, labeling Litvinenko via Svetlichnaja as a rat who deserved killing and then deciding that the Kremlin must swoop down to to do justice in his killing against the “evil oligarch” on the other, but such contradictions seldom intimidate those who run the Kremlin. Pasko isn’t sure how volitional are Golubovich’s actions, and in the morass that surrounds Svelichnaja it’s hard to be sure of anything except that something sure smells fishy.

UPDATE

The blogger David McDuff of One Day at a Time has reported on the recent airing of a one-hour documentary about Alexander Litvinenko on Netherlands television called “In Memoriam.” An English-language excerpt can be viewed on YouTube. Hopefully, a subtitled version of the whole broadcast will be made available in the future, there’s a link to a longer excerpt in Dutch available on David’s blog. It’s challenging to say the least to watch the excerpt or read McDuff’s comments about the broadcast and still accept Svetlichnaja’s characterizations of Litvinenko as remotely accurate or fair. McDuff writes for instance: “In the film Alexander Litvinenko shows the Dutch film-makers video cassettes, one after the other. On one of them he is listening to his acquittal after having spent several months behind bars on trumped-up charges. At that moment, men in masks burst into the courtroom and arrest him again, taking him off to Butyrka Prison. On another cassette a man with an altered voice admits that he received an order to kill Litvinenko.”

Kim Zigfeld publishes the Russia blog La Russophobe.