It took years of struggle by Sasha’s widow, Marina Litvinenko, to force a proper inquiry into his case. It finally reported in 2016, a decade after his assassination, that it had been an act of the Russian government ‘probably’ approved by the FSB head and President Putin.
However, even at that long-awaited inquiry, the Foreign Secretary had issued a Public Interest Immunity Certificate to prevent the release of certain intelligence service documents. These included details of Litvinenko’s work for MI6, but also those key intelligence agency judgements that his murder and the 2007 attempt on Berezovsky’s life had been acts of the Russian state. Even eight years after our Newsnight story about MI5’s assessment to this effect, the government still regarded the view of its own experts as being too hot to handle.
In the case of Berezovsky it became clear that the British had picked up Atlangeriev’s trail at Heathrow on the basis of secret intelligence. Whether that was an agent in Russia or intercepted communications, who knows? In Berezovsky’s case there was less of a lasting impact because, of course, the plot was unsuccessful. But both of these examples showed up an official nervousness about calling out the Kremlin or the FSB, its favoured security agency, for plotting murder on British soil. Because once such an accusation is made, and there is a refusal on Russia’s part to acknowledge what has happened, let alone cooperate, the consequences would plague the Anglo-Russian relationship for years.
In the years since that attempt a number of people connected with Russia have died in suspicious circumstances in the UK, leading investigative journalists at Buzzfeed to compile a list of fourteen cases worthy of further examination. Among these were Berezovsky’s death in March 2013 in the bathroom of his home. An inquest returned an open verdict, though the likeliest explanation is that Berezovsky took his own life, having talked of suicide after being ruined financially by a disastrous legal fight with fellow oligarch Roman Abramovich.
Interestingly, while the Kremlin might assume that ardent critics would take any chance they could to make mischief against Russia, my own contacts have not claimed to have any particular evidence in the fourteen cases compiled by Buzzfeed. Rather they go back to the Litvinenko case and the June 2007 attempt on Berezovsky’s life when asked about Russian state assassination plots in this country. And what that second planned act shows most clearly is that even after the diplomatic damage done by Litvinenko’s poisoning, the FSB was ready to try another assassination in Britain.
At the time of these events Skripal himself was languishing in a Russian labour camp, of course. An attempt to appeal against his thirteen-year sentence had failed and he had been consigned to the forested oblivion of Mordovia. He had plenty of time to reflect there on his choices, especially that one he had made to take Richard Bagnall’s offer in 1996 in Madrid. He is not a man given to too much introspection or regret. But Skripal, ever the professional intelligence officer, did entertain a good deal of curiosity about the way he was caught. He had learned from his interrogation and trial that the FSB took quite a while to build the case against him. But how had it started, what was the impetus? It was years into his sentence, and back in Madrid, that some answers finally emerged.
13
THE FATEFUL LETTER
On a chilly January morning, the Guardia Civil prison bus dropped its passengers outside the Audiencia Provincial. Just two men descended, walking up towards the shiny modern office block that serves as one of Madrid’s main courts. One of them was a compact, tough-looking character, shaven-headed, suited, and handcuffed, the other one his uniformed guard. The defendant was arriving for a case so secret that he had been held incommunicado for years while on remand, and the court documents used a codename, Teofilo.
In the court room itself were the defendant’s lawyer, a couple of prosecutors, the three magistrates who would sit in judgement (it was not a jury trial), and some other guards. Cameras were briefly allowed to take a shot of ‘Teofilo’ sitting next to his attorney – they captured rows of empty seats where the press, public, and relatives would normally sit but would not be allowed in this exceptional case. Lawyers love to break new ground, to explore areas of untried jurisprudence, and that morning in 2010 they would get their chance. It would be the first, and so far only, trial for treason since the restoration of Spanish democracy in 1978. As soon as the media people were shooed out, proceedings could start. ‘It was like the players were on the pitch for a Premier League match,’ one participant would observe, ‘but with nobody in the stands.’
Over the five days of this hearing, the charges were laid out: that the defendant had accumulated a hugely damaging trove of documents during his work for the Spanish national intelligence service; that these materials had been found during a search of his flat following his arrest in 2007; and that he had communicated state secrets to a foreign power. Teofilo, alias Roberto Florez, had served Spain’s secret state between1991 and 2004. Both his own former service and MI6 believed he was the man responsible for giving away Sergei Skripal and Yuri Burlatov. In terms of the three betrayals that would be needed to resolve the questions Sergei asked himself, that of Florez appears to be the first. But as so often in counter-espionage cases, the question was whether they could prove it to the satisfaction of a court.
Florez, a native of the northern region of Asturias who was forty-four at the time of his trial, joined the Spanish intelligence (then called CESID but subsequently known by the acronym CNI) from the Guardia Civil or paramilitary police. He served undercover bravely and effectively for years in the north of the country, countering Basque extremists. People who know him told me how smart Florez is, and how good with people too.
Late in 1999 he was posted to Lima, in Peru, where he was given the task of political information-gathering, while working undercover at the Spanish embassy. His cover was blown by a newspaper, and the allegation that Spanish spooks were trying to influence Peruvian elections resulted in his speedy recall to Madrid two years into his posting.
Back in Spain, his bosses decided that since he had been comprehensively blown, with his name and photo appearing across the media, his days as a field agent were over. Florez, who had relished the challenges of being an undercover operator, found it hard to accept that from now on he could only be a desk man. So a grievance emerged between employee and bosses, normal enough in any workplace but always potentially hazardous in an intelligence agency. That was particularly so when the desk that the disgruntled spy would eventually get to was in the Counter-Intelligence Division. In the meantime Florez busied himself with a number of projects, including a paper on techniques for recruiting human sources.
Being back at headquarters, Florez was able to access and copy all manner of secret documents.
Given the study he was engaged in, he would have been well aware of the activities of one of Russia’s most successful penetrations ever, FBI agent Robert Hanssen, since he was arrested early in 2001. Hanssen’s long spying career, going back to the mid-1980s, depended for most of its length on never meeting the Russians face to face. The Russians were too heavily penetrated for him to want to do it any other way. Hanssen provided classified information (leading to the death of several Russians working for the Americans), and the Russians in return left him large amounts of cash in dead drops.
The Hanssen affair may well have shaped the Spaniard’s ideas about how the perfect spy should operate. But he knew from this and other examples that the Russians might be very wary of someone offering information anonymously. There had been all too many cases of KGB or SVR officers being expelled, having nibbled the bait in anonymous messages that were being offered by writers who were not traitors at all, but Western intelligence people who had opened communications for the very purpose of entrapping the Russians. In order to convince them, you needed to offer a hefty up-front disclosure of classified information, something really convincing. That’s what Hanssen had done.