Most state-sponsored assassinations tend to be covert operations, which means that the sponsoring party cannot be conclusively identified, even if it is suspected. Because of their covert nature, assassinations tend to be extremely complex intelligence-led operations, which are designed to provide plausible deniability to their sponsors.
Consequently, the planning and implementation of
these operations usually involves a large number of people, each with a narrow
set of unique skills. But —and herein lies an interesting contradiction— their
execution is invariably simple, both in style and method. The attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal last Sunday
in England fits the profile of a state-sponsored covert operation in almost
every way.
Some have
expressed surprise that Skripal, a Russian intelligence officer who was jailed
in 2004 for selling Moscow’s secrets to British spies, would have been targeted
by the Russian state. Before being allowed to resettle in the British
countryside in 2010, Skripal was officially pardoned by the Kremlin. He was
then released from prison along with four other Russian double agents, in
exchange for 10 Russian deep-cover spies who had been caught in the United
States earlier that year. According to this argument, “a swap has been a guarantee of
peaceful retirement” in the past. Thus killing a pardoned spy who has been
swapped with some of your own violates the tacit rules of espionage, which
exist even between bitter rivals like Russia and the United States.
This
assumption, however, is baseless. There are no rules in espionage, and swapped
spies are no safer than defectors, especially if they are judged to have caused
significant damage to their employers. It is also generally assumed that
pardoned spies who are allowed to resettle abroad will fade into retirement,
not continue to work for their foreign handlers, as was the case with Skripal,
who continued to provide his services to British intelligence as a consultant
while living in the idyllic surroundings of Wiltshire. Like the late Russian
defector Alexander Litvinenko, who died in London of radioactive poisoning in
2006, Skripal entrusted his personal safety to the British state. But in a
country that today hosts nearly half a million Russians of all backgrounds and
political persuasions, such a decision is exceedingly risky.
On
Wednesday, the Metropolitan Police Service announced that Skripal, 66, and his
daughter Yulia, 33, had been “targeted specifically” by a nerve agent. The
official announcement stopped short of specifying the nerve agent used, but
experts point to sarin gas or VX. Both substances are highly toxic and
compatible with the clinical symptoms reportedly displayed by the Skripals when
they were found in a catatonic state by an ambulance crew and police officers
last Sunday. At least one responder, reportedly a police officer, appears to
have also been affected by the nerve agent. All three patients are reported to
be in a coma. They are lucky to have survived at all, given that nerve agents
inhaled through the respiratory system work by debilitating the body’s
respiratory muscles, effectively causing the infected organism to die from
suffocation.
In the past
24 hours, at least one British newspaper stated that the two Russians were “poisoned by a
very rare nerve agent, which only a few laboratories in the world could have
produced”. That is not quite true. It would be more accurate to say that few
laboratories in the world would dareto produce sarin or VX, which
is classified as a weapon of mass destruction. But no advanced mastering of
chemistry or highly specialist laboratories are needed to manufacture these
agents. Indeed, those with knowledge of military history will know that they were produced in massive quantities
prior to and during World War I. Additionally —unlike polonium, which was used
to kill Litvinenko in 2006— nerve gas could be produced in situ and
would not need to be imported from abroad. It is, in other words, a
simple weapon that can be dispensed using a simple method, with little risk to
the assailant(s). It fits the profile of a state-sponsored covert killing:
carefully planned and designed, yet simply executed, thus ensuring a high
probability of success.
By
Wednesday, the British security services were reportedly using “hundreds of detectives,
forensic specialists, analysts and intelligence officers working around the
clock” to find “a network of highly-trained assassins” who are “either present
or past state-sponsored actors”. Such actors were almost certainly behind the
targeted attack on the Skripals. They must have dispensed the lethal agent in
liquid, aerosol or a gas form, either by coming into direct physical contact
with their victims, or by using a timed device. Regardless, the method used
would have been designed to give the assailants the necessary time to escape
unharmed. Still, there are per capita more CCTV cameras in Britain than in any
other country in the world, which gives police investigators hope that they may
be able to detect the movements of the attackers. It is highly unlikely that
the latter remain on British soil. But if they are, and are identified or
caught, it is almost certain that they will be found to have direct links with
a foreign government.
*Source:
https://intelnews.org/2018/03/08/01-2283/
***JOSEPH FITSANAKIS, BSocSc, MSc, PhD, is Associate Professor of Political Science in the Intelligence and National Security Studies program at Coastal Carolina University. Prior to joining Coastal, he built the Security and Intelligence Studies program at King University, where he also directed the King Institute for Security and Intelligence Studies. An award-winning professor, Dr. Fitsanakis has lectured, taught and written extensively on subjects such as international espionage, intelligence tradecraft, wiretapping, cyberespionage, and transnational crime. He is a syndicated columnist and frequent contributor to news media such as BBC television, CBC television, ABC radio, and NPR, and his work has been referenced in outlets including The Washington Post, Newsweek, Forbes, Foreign Policy, Politico, and The Huffington Post. He can be contacted via email at joe [at] intelnews.org, or by calling 423-742-1627 in the United States.
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