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Huh, thanks, now I see the BBC interview was in that 2006 diary. I nearly forgot the details on the Scaramella meeting.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Tue Dec 11th, 2012 at 10:31:09 AM EST
[ Parent ]
That initial ET diary, and the subsequent discussion, really were terribly good. Looking back, it is striking how many of the elements which now appear to be critical in the story are already touched on in it. Among them is the bizarre reinvention of Scaramella.  At the outset, the information he was supposed to have brought to the meeting at the Itsu only related to Polikovskaya -- and was presented as a bait.  Subsequently, the notion that he brought warnings about plots to assassinate both himself and Litvinenko was introduced.  By the time the BBC `Panorama' programme gave its version on 22 January 2007, these warnings were treated as reliable, and a key to the mystery - as they also were in Sixmith's Litvinenko File study, published the following April.  The fact that Scaramella had been arrested on Christmas Eve 2006, on aggravated calumny charges relating to allegations very similar to those supposedly contained in the e-mails, appears simply not to have been noticed by the BBC journalists, or Sixsmith.
by djhabakkuk (david daught habakkuk at o two daught co daught uk) on Tue Dec 11th, 2012 at 10:47:17 AM EST
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Here is the change of the story on what Scaramella showed Litvinenko.

Litvinenko's own words via the 2006 diary (with the original diarist's emphasis replaced by mine):

"I ordered lunch but he ate nothing. He appeared to be very nervous. He handed me a four-page document which he said he wanted me to read right away. It contained a list of names of people, including FSB officers, who were purported to be connected with the journalist's murder.

"The document was an e-mail but it was not an official document. I couldn't understand why he had to come all the way to London to give it to me. He could have e-mailed it to me."

So Litvinenko spoke about a list of perpetrators, and didn't understand why Scaramella thought it important to show it in person. But here is how the BBC presented the story after Scaramella's twists:

BBC NEWS | Programmes | Panorama | How to poison a spy: Transcript

MARIO SCARAMELLA
Spy Investigator
I received the weeks before November 1st several messages from a source mentioning a growing alarm, a growing risk, and Litvinenko was mentioned several times.

[...]

SWEENEY: In return Scaramella wanted to warn his friend that he'd received a death list with both their names on it.

SCARAMELLA: The email was the reasons why I contacted him.

So now the list became one of targets. One could hypothetise that there have been two lists, but Litvinenko's failure to mention it and his wondering about the point of the meeting contradict that.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Tue Dec 11th, 2012 at 11:35:39 AM EST
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