"To ensure a good result, the bluff must be led to the end, until exasperation. There is no compromise. You can not bluff halfway up and then tell the truth. We must be ready to expose ourselves to the worst possible risk: the risk of appearing ridiculous".
Titta di Girolamo says it in the famous film by Paolo Sorrentino "The consequences of love" and Theresa May seems to have taken it literally.
The English prime minister seems not enough to have the collection of figures of palta collected just a few months ago; despite having two scartine in hand instead of retiring sadly from the gaming table decided to continue the game by doing "all in".
We try to do a minimum of order in this weird story trying to identify some fixed points.
First of all the timing. The story begins March 4 when former KGB agent Sergej Skripal is found unconscious with his daughter Yulia on a bench in Salisbury, in the South of England. The two are hospitalized with symptoms of poisoning. In all 21 people with illnesses due to intoxication and among them there is also the agent who was the first to intervene on the scene.
From the beginning, May accuses Moscow of the incident as Skripal was convicted in 2006 to 13 years in prison in Russia for delivering the names of Russian agents to the British secret service. In the 2010 he was among the four prisoners released by Moscow in exchange for the release of ten Russian spies arrested by the FBI.
The first hypothesis is that the Novichock used for the attack was hidden in the woman's suitcase in Russia and unknowingly carried to Salisbury probably hidden in a gift, perfume or dress, which Yulia brought to his father on the anniversary of the death of the spy's wife.
On March 14, less than two weeks after the event, with ongoing investigations, the British government expels 23 Russian diplomats; May's justification for the diplomatic tear is that Moscow responded with "contempt" and "sarcasm" to the British ultimatum on the Skripal case and the only explanation is "that the Russian state is guilty". This would already be enough to define the level of prejudice on each other.
The United States and 14 countries of the EU decide at this point also to expel dozens of Moscow diplomats (in the end they will be more than 100) in response to what is considered an act of aggression. Donald Trump, in addition to expelling 60 Russian diplomats has ordered the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle. Poland, France and Germany will turn away 4 each, Italy two (we as always fail to disgruntle all, the Anglo-American allies for the soft response and the Russians for nevertheless took a stand against them. it is second only to our ineptitude).
At the beginning of July, almost three months after the Skripal case and in the middle of the World Cup in Russia, Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley are hospitalized with symptoms of poisoning. According to the British authorities it would be the same nerve agent of the Skripal (which incidentally turns out to be a hundred times more powerful than the Sarin). According to Scotland Yard, in fact, the poisoning would have occurred in Salisbury, visited by the couple the day before the manifestation of the disease (the two reside in Amesbury at 12 km away from Salisbury).
At that moment, as I recalled earlier, the World Cup in Russia entered the competition, but above all the preparations for the Trump-Putin summit were underway.
When these amazing temporal concomitances occur, I always think of the phrase that Cormac McCarthy plays a character in "The counselor":
"My bosses do not believe in coincidences. They have heard of it but have never seen one".
Also on the subject of coinciding Salisbury, where the Skripal were poisoned, it is only eight kilometers from Porton Down.
Porton Down houses one of the UK's most secretive and controversial laboratories, the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), while only the "6 kilometers north-east of Salisbury" is the Defense CBRN Center, which specializes in chemical, biological warfare. , radiological and nuclear.
This is the "oldest chemical warfare research installation in the world", notes the Guardian in an article by 2004, which defines this center "one of the most infamous scientific establishments in Great Britain".
According to the investigation of the British newspaper in that place for years the British government would have for years tested the Sarin on human guinea pigs.
Il Novichok such as Sarin it is precisely a nerve agent.
Coincidences.
Also coincidentally in the days of the poisoning of the Skripal, in Britain was held the exercise "Toxic Dagger, the largest of its kind in the United Kingdom", aimed at countering chemical attacks from nerve gas. A news that came out concealed, but on which at this point it is worth making some consideration.
The official website of the Royal Navy in a note dated 6 March 2018 (Skripal has been poisoned the 4 March, attention to the dates) reports some details of the exercise1:
"The Royal Marines wore gas masks for three weeks to test Britain's combat capabilities in the event of a chemical - or worse - nuclear attack. The 40 ° Commando troops worked in collaboration with the country's leading experts on chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear war to see if they could cope with the worst-case scenario". Obviously, both DSTL and CBRN involved.
"The climax," reads the note, "is a large-scale exercise involving government and industry scientists and more than 300 military; the treatment of the victims was a fundamental part of the Salisbury Plain exercise ".
In an article of the Daily Mail2 another detail reads: "The Salisbury Plain exercise culminated in an attack of green berets on a simulated depot for Sarin, the alleged nerve agent possibly used by Syrian forces earlier this month"(A blow to Syria never hurts, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons - OPCW in English, then proved that there was no chemical attack:"Analysis of samples taken during inspections did not indicate the presence of scheduled chemicals in the samples and the Inspection Team did not observe any activity incompatible with the obligations arising from the Convention".
Coincidences aside (albeit of considerable size), I believe that even the most secreted secret service in the world would have never thought of making a poisoning with a chemical agent of its own manufacture just in the days when the most competent and most sophisticated people Industry technologies were alerted and operational. And exactly in the area of Great Britain interested in the greatest exercise against that particular type of attack.
When asked about the Skripal case, Gary Aitkenhead, director of the Defense CBRN Center, who conducted the investigations on behalf of the British government, said that he had ascertained the nature of the chemical agent, but did not know anything about its origin.
Mirzayanov himself, the Russian chemist who invented the formula, has published a book in which he explains his research and his discoveries in more detail.
If it is all public, any equipped laboratory could reproduce what was discovered by Mirzayanov.
Illogicity aside, the origin of the equation is therefore not understood Novichok equal Russia, the founding point of the current quarrel.
Precisely in this sense, the Israeli government has asked its secret services if it turns out that Moscow is involved in the affair.
This is the answer: although the Novichok (the nerve gas used against the Skripals) "was originally produced in Soviet Russia, today at least 20 governments are manufacturing and accumulating this chemical agent"3.
Despite all this mountain of evidence the government of May has nevertheless decided to pull straight and continues to churn out new reconstructions of what happened, which from time to time end up to clash with the previous ones.
The first hypothesis was that the poison had been hidden in the suitcase of Yulia.
Later it was said that to poison Sergey and his daughter, the killer would have scattered Novichok the door of the former spy's house.
But how is it possible that a handle can be smeared with ultra-fine dust to prevent the life of a man with the risk that the dust may be washed away by rain (a phenomenon notoriously frequent in the UK) or swept by the wind? Is it possible that such a sophisticated secret service uses such a delicate and risky system for such a delicate criminal operation?
In July, a new version is released: the Novichok it would have been sprayed directly onto the bench with a spray; it would have been six Russians to spread it (the famous group assassination like on the Orient Express); in confirmation of this there would be the recordings of the CCTV cameras installed near the bench.
Too bad that no one has had the opportunity to view the film jealously guarded by Scotland Yard.
The last release in terms of time is that of the two simultaneous frames that would portray the alleged murderers at Gatwick airport (from six attackers we returned to a more congruous duo).
Scotland Yard would have released two frames taken from the airport surveillance cameras that would withdraw the two alleged lights passing in the same point at the same time (The time code coincides with the second).
Probably the famous Clouseau would have done better, but he knows he works for the Sûreté.
It should also be said that the Russian authorities were denied participation in the investigation and prevented any contact with the victims of the alleged attack (Yulia is a Russian citizen in all respects).
At this point I stop even if in this story the list of inconsistencies would be long enough to make a television sitcom.
The only fixed points at the end seem to be that the Novichok it is not so deadly because both Julia and Sergej have done well and that in the West we can sleep peacefully as the fearsome FSB can not even kill a spy retired from 12 years.
1 https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news-and-latest-activity/news/2018/march/06...
2 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4436106/Elite-commandos-train-st...
3 https://www.debka.com/israel-opts-out-of-us-eu-anti-russian-expulsions-i...
(photo: web / MoD UK)
