AMESBURY UK POISONING: NO TO “RUSSIANS DID IT”

SECOND NOVICHOK POISONING IN SAME PLACE—“?THE RUSSIANS DID IT?” NOT LIKELY

Four months ago in early March, immediately following the “attempted assination” of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia by the Soviet produced nerve poison novichok,  the British Thatcher Government quickly blamed the Russians.  The attack took place in the quiet cathedral town of Salisbury.  The lack of evidence, motive and vociferous denials from Russia had little effect in altering the decision to angrily blame Mr. Putin.  The near hysteria in the USA regarding anything Russian and the post-Ukraine imbroglio made the facile decision to point the finger of blame at the Russians a good fit into the on going media narrative of Russian evil doing.  A narrative that the western government’s preferred and have kept prevalent since the at least the 1950s Cold War. 

But the recent events in Amesbury, a quiet village only about ten miles north of the location of the supposed Russian attack,  seems to have the Brits stuttering and groping for a reasonable and logical explanation.

In this latest incident, a local couple: Dawn Sturgess and Charles Rowley, both about 40 years of age, and both residents of Amesbury were found collapsed in their home eliciting signs of nerve agent poisoning (foaming saliva, unconscious, pupils dilated, body tremors) a day after they had made a visit to Salisbury.  Both were transported to hospital where they are listed in critical condition. The backgrounds of the two individuals suggest nothing that would indicate that they had associations with Russia or that they were “targeted”.  

The UK government response to the early March, Skripal poisoning was reminiscent of the  “George Bush rush to war in Iraq” with the media, and public aroused into a hyperhysteria to be satisfied only with some Elizabethan-era style public lynching.  In the end, hundreds of Russian diplomats were expelled from nations across the western world with the USA sending an unprecedented 60 Russians from DC home to Moscow after the Skripal incident.  

The known facts about this new poisoning seems to suggest that this was a not the result of “haphazard disposal” of the earlier  Novichok poison as some UK supporters would have it.  According to the Soviet chemist (Vil S. Mirzayanov) who originally designed the poison— after four months of exposure to air and moisture in the English climate—the compound was not likely to maintain its potency.  Furthermore, the British government had spent millions of pounds on a thorough clean up of the cordoned off areas in Salisbury after the Skripal poisoning.  It is not likely that the typically thorough Brits were likely to do a sloppy job in that critical regard.  

It is noteworthy that both of these “attacks” were on couples.  Both incidents were located only a short few miles from the boundary fence of  Porton Down a “science park”  located on 7000 acres surrounded by a high fence wit “danger area” signs.  The “park” is  situated equidistant from the two villages of Amesbury and Salisbury in the county of Wiltshire.   Porton Down is the site of the Ministry of Defense and its Science and Technology Laboratory. The latter is the UK’s most secretive and highly controversial military research facility.  

Porton Down was first developed to prepare and test chemical weapons during WWI. During WWII both chemical and biological weapons were tested and developed there. During the Cold War years its focus was on developing modern nerve poisons and the chemical means for prophylaxis and therapy of these agents.  In the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union Porton Down became one of the west’s repositories of the deadly nerve agent Novichok.  This gruesome poison had been produced in Russian and in Belarus during the height of the Cold War. When the Soviet Union collapsed, and these facilities lost their security and fell into disuse  UK scientists from Porton Down were dispatched to those sites to  help secure and clean up those sites.  Samples of the up-until-then-unknown new nerve agent Novichok were carried back to Porton Down for testing and “other” purposes.  Other nations including the USA have samples as well.  The sample from the Sturgess-Rowley poisoning was sent to Porton Down for testing to determine if this new sample came from the same “batch” as the Skripal poisoning.   We will see. 

Over its time in operation it is probably understandable that Porton Down has a long history of “controversial” operations such as “open air trials with anthrax”, military deaths related to “human testing”,  civilian litigation regarding misuse of testing, and inhumane use of animals in chemical experiments.  

The “Russians did it” explanation sees a bit shop worn now. 

Perhaps the British government should consider another “explanation” for the strange coincident dual “poisoning” so close to the boundary fence of the Porton Down facility.  

But it is much easier to blame the Russians. Expect that.