A Note Of Caution On Litvineko Story

So, I'm reading the morning Alexander Litvinenko read, all about a former FSB agent's claim that Litvinenko was a target of a special government-sanctioned team that takes out Kremlin critics.

Good stuff to those of us retain our anti-Communist roots and are deeply suspicious of the Putin regime ... but let's not get all giddy.

Today's charges come from Mikhail Trepashkin, who, like Litvinenko, has worked for the FSB. All well and good unitl I came across this in the AP account:

Trepashkin was arrested in October 2003 and convicted on charges of divulging state secrets while investigating allegations of FSB involvement in a series of deadly apartment bombings that killed about 300 people in Moscow and two other cities in 1999. The government blamed the explosions on Chechnya-based rebels, but Litvinenko and other Kremlin critics alleged they were staged by authorities as a pretext for launching the current Chechen war.

Oh, like how Bush engineered the 9/11 attacks so he had an excuse to sacrifice our boys to Big Oil?

Suddenly instead of connections to Putin I see ravnig conspiracy theorists. Prudence now dictates that we wait until the sober British coroner's inquest completes its investigation, and not run about giving credence to each new source's latest claims.

Related Tags: Litvinenko, Putin, Foreign affairs