'The Terminal Spy: A True Story of Espionage, Betrayal, and Murder -- The First Act of Nuclear Terrorism and the New Cold War' by Alan S. Cowell
BOOK REVIEW
A foreign correspondent analyzes the poisoning death of dissident Russian intelligence agent Alexander Litvinenko.
WHEN veteran foreign correspondent Alan S. Cowell turned his superb newspaper coverage of dissident Russian intelligence agent Alexander Litvinenko's bizarre 2006 murder into a book, he knew he was writing a real-life post-Cold War thriller rich in implication.
His title and subtitles, "The Terminal Spy: A True Story of Espionage, Betrayal, and Murder -- The First Act of Nuclear Terrorism and the New Cold War," suggest just how rich. It's hard to imagine, however, that even Cowell could have foreseen this complex tale's urgently prophetic dimension, since it's a story that repeatedly leads back to Vladimir Putin, shedding important light on the Russian strongman's exercise of power and on his attitude toward the West. As the Georgian crisis grinds on, understanding Putin and his brand of statecraft are matters of more than passing interest.
Cowell, a longtime correspondent for the New York Times, was reporting from the paper's London bureau when the Litvinenko story broke. The Russian had begun a lifetime involvement in intrigue as a counterintelligence agent in the Soviet KGB. After the fall of communism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, he entered the domestic branch of the FSB, successor agency to the KGB, joining an organized crime unit. Like many a Russian with an eye for the main chance in that wild west interlude, Litvinenko attached himself to one of the emerging oligarchs fattening like carrion birds on the chaotic and corrupt privatization of former state resources -- in his case, Boris Berezovsky.
At one point, Litvinenko intervened to keep his patron from being framed by elements of state security for the murder of a television commentator at a station Berezovsky owned. The mogul fled the country and Litvinenko became a whistle-blower, alleging widespread misconduct and corruption in the FSB, which had him jailed for his trouble. Upon his release, Litvinenko joined Berezovsky and a growing number of Russians in London exile. There, he continued an obsession with Putin and what Litvinenko correctly saw as a reemerging Russian authoritarianism with its roots in the security services -- in other words, a creeping coup by elements of the old KGB.
While denouncing Putin in interviews with journalists and filmmakers, Litvinenko worked at putting together a private security business. It was in that connection that he joined another former KGB man, Andrei Lugovoi -- who was visiting from Moscow -- for drinks at London's popular Millennium Hotel bar. Litvinenko took a few sips of green tea with honey. Three weeks later, after a stunning and agonizing illness, he was dead.
