Russian Dolls

Mi6 Headquarters

by John Andrews

11/26/06

The curious death by poisoning in London last week of Mr Alexander Litvinenko, described as a ‘Russian dissident’, is quite remarkable not so much for the death itself, but for the extraordinary amount of attention it has attracted from the media.

I had never heard of Mr Litvinenko until he was admitted to hospital a couple of weeks ago, at which time he immediately became front page news. It was not as if he was some internationally known rebel leader or champion of Russian liberty. Yet his name has hardly been out of our papers, or his sad jaundiced face off our TV screens for these last ten days. Last night BBC TV devoted quarter of an hour of its prime time 6 o’ clock news bulletin to Mr Litvinenko’s demise. Saturday’s Times led with the story on its front page as well as giving it two full pages inside and full editorial attention. Why all the fuss?

The Russian Secret Service is obviously everyone’s preferred choice of suspect, well, if the BBC and the Times are anything to go by. The luckless Mr Litvinenko apparently died from an overdose of radioactive Polonium-210, which we are led to believe is only available from Russian-type spooks. Now as someone who’s never contemplated murdering anyone, I’m poorly placed for offering an opinion on how I would go about the job, but you sort of think that if you did want to bump someone off, you probably wouldn’t leave your calling card, not if you’re the steely eyed professional everyone says you are. Call me a cynic, but the whole thing is rather wiffy to me, and not for the reasons the BBC and Times would have us believe.

I worked as a public servant for fourteen years – nothing as sordid as MI6 I’m happy to report – but a servant of her gracious majesty nonetheless. After a while I learnt what the public ‘services’ are all about – empire building. They are nothing whatsoever to do with providing a useful service to those who can’t afford better. Whilst there are some very dedicated professionals working within all the public services, passionately committed to their careers for all the right reasons, these people are not the decision makers. The public services are led by faceless bureaucrats, unelected administrators, mandarins whose sole interest is the expansion of their own personal empires. Expanded empires equal higher salaries which equal bigger gongs which equal higher pensions and more important boardrooms in which to while away one’s retirement.

A couple of years ago I was in the car listening to Radio 4’s Women’s Hour. It was at the time when Russia was our new best friend, a steadfast ally in the ‘war on terror’. Two elderly ladies were on chatting about their experiences as wives of MI6 agents, who had either retired or died, I don’t remember. The ladies were wistfully recalling headier times, when their husbands were heroically leading the struggle against communist domination of the world, the so called ‘cold war’. The quite remarkable thing was that far from feeling happy that the world was now a safer place since the ‘Russian menace’ was defeated, their mood was definitely melancholy; they were bemoaning the fact that there was ‘no excitement’ anymore. They didn’t say it in so many words, but they were clearly concerned that there was nothing for MI6’s spooks to do anymore. Unemployed spooks meant a collapsing empire, and we can’t possibly have that now can we?

The mandarins of the secret services are more fortunate than their colleagues running more open government departments in that they have a permanent excuse for hiding the details of how and why they exist. But they still need to hold their hands out for state cash – they can’t just help themselves – yet. Although they can keep ducking and diving to some extent about their spending, compared with health or education bosses, say, even the dullest treasury minister is likely to raise a questioning eyebrow about the need for hundreds of spies when there’s no big bad bear to spy upon.

I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Russia’s new KGB is quite willing and able to knock off almost anyone they want anywhere they want anytime they want, but I doubt very much that they would do it in any way that might implicate Mr Putin.

Two thousand years ago the Roman lawyer Cicero made legal history when he based his defence of a client around the question ‘Qui bono?’ – who benefits? How does Mr Putin benefit from the death of someone nobody’s ever heard of and who could be no possible threat to him in a manner and in a country guaranteed to point a finger at the Kremlin? How does Russia possibly gain by that, compared for example, to a crumbling spy network desperate to reinvent a purpose for itself?

John Andrews leads a small but perfectly formed political party, The Organisation of Free Democrats (www.freedemocrats.co.uk), dedicated to providing real democracy for the British people.