Why pick up the latest John LeCarre novel, when the Litvinenko murder mystery is making headlines? A rare radioactive substance poisons a self-styled Russian “dissident”—was it murder? A smuggling operation gone wrong? And why would someone kill with such an exotic isotope—which could be used as a nuclear trigger for a “dirty” bomb?

The “mainstream” media is going for the “Putin-did-it” theory, which holds that, rather than shoot Litvinenko in the back of the head on a dark street, it was somehow necessary to knock him off using polonium-210, a radioactive substance that conveniently leaves a trail leading back to the killer. In my own columns for Antiwar.com, I’ve thrown plenty of doubt on the “official” theory, and now here is Edward Jay Epstein, with a ruthless debunking of the “new cold war” narrative being sold to us by the British tabloids, Her Majesty’s prosecutors, and Gordon Brown.