Cobra meets over fears about assassination squad

[DoYouEverWonder]

25 November 2006

John Reid, the Home Secretary, chaired an emergency meeting of Cobra, the Downing Street crisis team, yesterday over fears that the murder of ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko could mean an assassination squad is targeting dissidents in London.

Senior officials from health protection, the Department of Health, the Atomic Weapons Establishment, the Metropolitan Police and the intelligence services were summoned to the Cobra meeting, underlining the seriousness with which the Government viewed the assassination with radioactive material.

Mr Reid was briefed on the risks to the public health from the radioactive material used to poison Mr Litvinenko. NHS Direct was informed how to handle panic calls by members of the public worried they could be at risk.

Europe's growing anxiety over Moscow's slide from democratic values overshadowed an EU-Russia summit yesterday in Helsinki as the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, struck a defiant and assertive tone.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2013335.ece


Going radioactive, takes this whole thing up a few notches. Either it was an inside job or someone's got some serious security issues and either way, there is no way to know how much more of this material they still have.

[EST]

1. The little real infermation we do have certainly has the

earmarks of a state-backed "intelligence" agency.

The huge assemblage of security and law enforcement types indicates something very different from terrorism and the weapon of choice seems to have been selected to reinforce that notion.

[DoYouEverWonder]

2. This is terrorism

Real terrorism. The attack was meant to strike fear in others. Basically a dirty bomb just went off in London and no one knows if there will be more.

[Warpy]

3. Pretty much, since lethal doses of Polonium could have been

given to anyone who had any of his body fluids including saliva, sweat and tears on their skin.

I hope hospital staff used gloves. I shudder to think what the effect on his wife and kid must be, since they had intimate contact with him before he got deathly sick.

[Henny Penny]

5. But I thought polonoum was an alpha particle emitter... and those

babies couldn't get thru your skin.

This hype is such a crock!

[Warpy]

6. The alpha radiation FROM the Polonium

that was circulating in his bloodstream and ionizing cells wherever it went thus destroying him from the inside out wasn't the problem for family and staff. The POLONIUM itself was the problem, and a lethal dose CAN be passed through some pretty casual contact.

His wife kissing him on the lips could easily have done it if the dose had been more than a carefully measured, one person lethal dose.

People around him wouldn't get zapped by the radiation. If they touched him without wearing gloves, though, they could have been contaminated by the METAL.

That's the difference.

Fortunately, Polonium 210 has a half life of only 5 days, so the number of people he could have contaminated is limited. We'll just have to wait and see whether or not sufficient precautions were taken.

[EST]

4. You make a lot of sense.

I was, of course, thinking of the relatively stateless terrorism that has been all the rage.

[aquart]

8. Exactly.

And it seems to have been ever so easy. Lots of ways to kill someone you want dead. This? They wanted to do more than kill.

[NuttyFluffers]

7. Cobra-la-la-la-la-la!

forgive me, but i was caught up in a childhood memory... :evilgrin:

[jollyreaper2112]

9. Cobra, huh?

So, who's their commander?

[SlavesandBulldozers]

10. heres a pic of the meeting