Fooled by Hoax, Cameron Attacks Putin

British Prime Minister David Cameron's personal mission to hit Russia hard over the MH17 disaster triggered a reopening of the dormant 2006 Alexander Litvinenko death case. Apparently the goal is to unearth evidence that might incriminate Putin.

"Former KGB spy makes deathbed statement blaming Russian president Vladimir Putin for his death," is the essence of the mainstream news stories that emerged back in 2006. But there is nothing in that storyline that is true.

I studied and analyzed all the news coverage of Litvinenko at the behest of the International Federation of Journalists in 2007. What I found is that Litvinenko never did KGB espionage work, and by his own last public statement apparently believed he had been poisoned by a shady character from Italy.

The mainstream news story had been a cunning fabrication perpetrated by a political arch enemy of Putin's. I detailed all that in my book, The Phony Litvinenko Murder.

In light of this, Cameron looks pretty foolish. In his fervor to get Putin, he allowed himself to be taken in by an old fabricated story that has no factual basis.

In 2012 British high court judge Sir Robert Owen tried his hand at incriminating Russia over Litvinenko. He had been appointed coroner in the then six-year-old unsolved murder case. But ultimately he refused to perform his statutory duty to rule on how, when, and where Litvinenko came by his death. Instead he led an intense witch hunt to pin criminal culpability, something coroners are forbidden by law from doing.

When news got out of Owen's rogue activities, he attempted to outmaneuver the rules. He asked the British government to convert his coroner's inquest into an official Inquiry that could be held in secret.

Home Secretary Theresa May denied Owen's request, ruling it unnecessary. She told him stop the witch hunt and concentrate on his statutory responsibilities.

But Cameron's current anti-Putin crusade surprisingly has prompted May to reverse herself. She inexplicably gave Owen the Inquiry he wanted. While last year she said that Litvinenko's widow and son "would learn no more from an Inquiry than from the inquest," she is now saying she hopes "this Inquiry will be of some comfort to his widow Mrs. Litvinenko." That's all quite a dramatic turnabout. How embarrassing it must be for Mrs. May.

Her troubles are not over, though. I've seen where Owen based his request for the Inquiry on falsified facts. For instance, he claimed Litvinenko had made a public statement that fingered Putin for his death. But that statement was a hoax. The hoaxer has confessed and admitted there was no factual basis for his claims.

The final kicker is May's appointment of Owen to lead the Inquiry. That flies in the face of the legal requirement for impartiality. Owen has demonstrated he's interested in one thing -- Russian culpability -- and was willing to flout the law in hot pursuit.

What's more, until Owen was put on the Litvinenko case, he was facing mandatory retirement from the bench in September. Extending his activities in the Litvinenko Inquiry keeps him on the government payroll indefinitely. I wonder what British tax payers will think of that. The Litvinenko inquest has already cost them over $4 million. How is Mrs. May going to explain all this?