In Litvinenko Case, Secrecy Wins Out Over Inquiry

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/world/europe/in-litvinenko-case-secrecy-wins-out-over-inquiry.html

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LONDON — Ever since Alexander V. Litvinenko died, his supporters have nurtured a hope of one day learning answers to two critical questions: Did the Kremlin plan his poisoning in central London in November 2006? And could British spymasters have prevented it?

The answers would have weighty implications for both Moscow and London.

Mr. Litvinenko, 43, was a turncoat K.G.B. officer, a whistle-blower assailing organized crime and the Kremlin; he was a newly naturalized British citizen with ties to the late Russian oligarch Boris A. Berezovsky; and according to his widow, he was an employee of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.

The toxin that killed him, moreover, was a rare radioactive isotope, polonium 210, the bulk of which is produced supposedly under strict safeguards in Russia. British prosecutors accused another former K.G.B. officer, Andrei K. Lugovoi, of murder — a charge he denied.

But there was another question that would determine whether the first two were answered: Would the British establishment ever permit disclosure of its knowledge of the affair?

The answer came last Friday, when Robert Owen, the senior judge acting as the coroner at an oft-postponed inquest into Mr. Litvinenko’s death, ruled in favor of a request from the British foreign secretary, William Hague, to exclude evidence relating to the “possible involvement of Russian state agencies” and to the British authorities’ “knowledge and/or assessment of threats to Mr. Litvinenko’s life.”

With those words, the central questions — and the likelihood of answers — were removed from the inquiry.

Not only that, but the 16-page ruling given to the public stated clearly in bold type that some evidential topics had been “redacted,” but it gave no clue as to the nature of what exactly had been censored. The public, thus, could not even guess at the outlines of what other matters the authorities did not wish to be known.

Given the constraints, Judge Owen said, his “duty to carry out a full, fair and fearless investigation into the death of Mr. Litvinenko” would be compromised, leading to “incomplete, misleading or unfair conclusions.” Thus, he said, it may now be more worthwhile to hold a public inquiry with fewer procedural restrictions.

After years of preliminaries, the inquest seemed to be on the brink of collapse.

Marina Litvinenko, the former K.G.B. officer’s widow, called the outcome “a tragedy for British justice.”

Arguably, though, it was inevitable, a triumph of official opacity in a struggle of competing definitions of what the public should be allowed to know.

One was the notion, advanced by Mrs. Litvinenko and cited by many British media outlets opposing the excision of critical evidence, that “open justice requires maximum disclosure,” as one precedent cited in Judge Owen’s ruling put it.

Against that, the British authorities built their case on the potentially adverse impact of disclosure on the operations of the intelligence services and on the ability of British diplomats to pursue their relationships with foreign powers.

In fact, since the early days of the affair, British leaders have gradually recalibrated their initial outrage at the killing, shifting to more pragmatic considerations of trade, energy, intelligence-sharing and other ties to Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia.

The prospect of an open inquest, by contrast, seemed to herald embarrassing disclosures.

Last December, a lawyer for Judge Owen’s inquest concluded that British government documents showed a “prima facie case as to the culpability of the Russian state” in Mr. Litvinenko’s death. And Mrs. Litvinenko herself disclosed that her husband was a “registered and paid agent” of MI6.

So, in February, Mr. Hague requested “public interest immunity” to restrict key evidence at the inquest, and on Friday, the judge seemed to largely concur. Britain, Mrs. Litvinenko said, had struck “a secret political deal” with Russia to “prevent the truth from ever seeing the light of day.”

Conspiracies, of course, are notoriously difficult to prove. By their essence, they flourish in a twilight zone of self-interest and secrecy, signposted more by circumstantial evidence than fact.

The judge’s ruling, indeed, came just a week after Prime Minister David Cameron met with Mr. Putin at the Black Sea resort of Sochi and the two men agreed on a “limited” resumption of intelligence cooperation, suspended since Mr. Litvinenko’s death, in the approach to the Winter Olympics there next year.

But, far from erasing the stain of suspicion, the ruling may have deepened it, prompting questions about why the British authorities had gone to such lengths to gag the inquest. If British officials had nothing to hide, some of Mr. Litvinenko’s supporters have taken to asking, why did they seek immunity from testifying? And who were they shielding?

“It’s an admission by the British government that the Russian state is culpable,” said Alex Goldfarb, a close associate of the Litvinenko family.

But that is probably small solace for Mr. Litvinenko’s supporters: The questions remain. Those who know the answers have displayed the depth of their reluctance to share them.