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Speaker 2: Warning, the following episode contains explicit language and sexual themes.
Speaker 3: Listener discretion is advised topping our Worldly today is a
Speaker 3: tale that seems straight out of a spine novel. So audacious,
Speaker 3: so horrific, it would have to be a work of fiction,
Speaker 3: but it's all too true.
Speaker 4: This is the tragic story of Alexander Livignanko.
Speaker 2: Familiar ma Lietuinian because the olpe mi in Alexander here
Speaker 2: buship Olkovnik.
Speaker 5: In Russian, I have a named Alexander Litvinenko. I am
Speaker 5: a former KGB FSB officer. My rank lieutenant colonel. My
Speaker 5: position deputy head of Section Top Secret Department of FSB.
Speaker 4: Alexander Livinenko was a former FSB officer who is fighting
Speaker 4: organized crime. He soon discovered a connection between high ranking
Speaker 4: officers in the FSB and Russian criminal gangs. When he
Speaker 4: began investigating this FSB corruption, he was blocked by Putin. Frustrated,
Speaker 4: he soon became a whistleblower for the FSB's dirty tricks,
Speaker 4: their organized crime activity, their secret assassinations, even their supposed
Speaker 4: involvement in the terrorist apartment bombing it was used to
Speaker 4: justify at the Second Chechen War.
Speaker 3: The former Federal Security Service agent admits he's worried about
Speaker 3: coming forward with the allegations and says he fears for
Speaker 3: the life of his wife and child, but Litfonnanko says
Speaker 3: he decided to come forward because quote, if these people
Speaker 3: are not stopped, this lawlessness will flood the country.
Speaker 4: Livignenko eventually fled Russia England. We shared his secrets work
Speaker 4: to try and bring down Putin and start protection from
Speaker 4: the British government. While there he connected with Russian historian
Speaker 4: Yuri Felshtinsky and together they wrote the book Blowing Up
Speaker 4: Russia Terror from Within. Delshtinsky recalls the last time he
Speaker 4: saw Lefnienko in person.
Speaker 2: So last time we met in London and there was
Speaker 2: a memorial service for Annapolitkovsko, which was killed like a
Speaker 2: week before, and they came slightly earlier. The door was
Speaker 2: still closed, and I saw Litwinianko from a distance. He
Speaker 2: was running through me and yelling to me. Yuri I
Speaker 2: just got British citizenship. Now they will not be able
Speaker 2: to touch me. And so this was on certains of
Speaker 2: October and on the first of November he was poisoned.
Speaker 6: On the first of November, just after he become a
Speaker 6: British citizen, he met two former colleagues from Russia's intelligence
Speaker 6: wealth in a pine bar at the Millennium Hotel. Two
Speaker 6: days later, he was admitted to his local hospital vomiting
Speaker 6: and a great pain.
Speaker 4: Here's Yuri Felshtinski again with something I never knew about
Speaker 4: how these international poisoning missions work.
Speaker 2: This is very important. You notice probably that every time
Speaker 2: somebody is poisoned, it's usually like two people or even
Speaker 2: more involved. And this has a reason the FSB still
Speaker 2: does not trust those people whom they sent to kill,
Speaker 2: because the chance that they would defect is very high. Now,
Speaker 2: that's why you always send them in groups at least
Speaker 2: two people, and they have to be together all the time.
Speaker 2: They sleep in the in one room in the hotel,
Speaker 2: so they really are not allowed to not to be
Speaker 2: alone because one is control in the other.
Speaker 4: There's one other safeguard that helped keep Litvinenko's assassins from
Speaker 4: defecting independent in their mission. The fact that they used
Speaker 4: radioactive polonium two ten, said to be one of the
Speaker 4: most toxic substances on earth, to do the job.
Speaker 2: If they're operating with radio active poisoning, they then they
Speaker 2: actually are not able to defect because the fs WE
Speaker 2: will find them very quickly because they are already marked
Speaker 2: with radiation.
Speaker 4: A few days after Litvinenko, the FSB whistleblower, entered the
Speaker 4: hospital for treatment, Valshtinski spoke with him and Livinenko was
Speaker 4: feeling optimistic.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 2: I talked to him by fore several days, soon after
Speaker 2: the first of November, and he told me that, look,
Speaker 2: I was poisoned, but I survived, and then after the
Speaker 2: first ten days his health deteriorated.
Speaker 4: Ertoshtinsky, Lievinenko's co writor and friend, shares next explain something
Speaker 4: that you talk about when covering these poisonings in the news,
Speaker 4: how unbelievably horrible they are.
Speaker 2: He was telling me that, you know, this was so
Speaker 2: painful that if I have a choice, and Lutwinanko was
Speaker 2: at one point in Russia are arrested by the government
Speaker 2: and put in prison for almost a year, and he said,
Speaker 2: you know, if you give me a choice to spend
Speaker 2: another year in prison or to go through this poisoning.
Speaker 2: I would rather spend another year in prison, that's how
Speaker 2: painful this was ban on twenty of Nowember.
Speaker 8: He died in the late afternoon of Thursday, twenty third November.
Speaker 8: The police confirmed with the Health Protection Agency that a
Speaker 8: significant quantity of the radio activisor to polonium two, one, zero,
Speaker 8: two and ten have been found in mister Vinenko's urine.
Speaker 4: I asked Kalshtinsky after experiencing all this, what does he
Speaker 4: think people don't know about Russian intelligence that they need
Speaker 4: to know?
Speaker 2: What people do not really understand that we have the
Speaker 2: largest special services structure in the world, with the largest
Speaker 2: budget in the world, and enormous amount of people and
Speaker 2: tre well, now we do not really know how many
Speaker 2: people work for the FSB, And so.
Speaker 4: We resume Aleiah's story as she's unknowingly about to begin
Speaker 4: a similar journey with her colleague Sasha uncover corruption in
Speaker 4: the FSB from within, an investigation that, as history clearly shows,
Speaker 4: does not usually end well for the agents involved, and
Speaker 4: this investigation would be no exception.
Speaker 3: I had to kill you.
Speaker 2: I'm really sorry I had to do it. That I
Speaker 2: got on my duty thins away. I was old and
Speaker 2: my god, I got to to you. I had to
Speaker 2: kill you.
Speaker 7: Bs is so much for.
Speaker 4: Episode fourteen, Chapter thirty, gathering evidence. It was finally time.
Speaker 7: Sasha brought me sleeping pills, which supposed to help me
Speaker 7: to put Vladimir into long sleep, deep deep sleep.
Speaker 4: Lee's mission was the slip sleeping pills into the dinner
Speaker 4: of her target, Vladimir, leader of one of the most
Speaker 4: dangerous gangs in the city. While he was knocked out.
Speaker 4: She planned to photograph the documents in his office for
Speaker 4: her colleagues in the FSKN, the Federal Drug Control Service
Speaker 4: of Russia.
Speaker 7: It was like a quiet evening. I cooked some dinner
Speaker 7: and I gave him the pill in the glass of water.
Speaker 7: Then we went upstairs and I was massaged when rubbing
Speaker 7: his shoulders when he was like just laying on the side,
Speaker 7: and I was telling him some kind of like bullshet
Speaker 7: from the university about teachers. So it was like really slow.
Speaker 7: There is a technique about a hypnosis. When you want
Speaker 7: like your target to relax and fall asleep, you put
Speaker 7: your target into the trunds. So I did that and
Speaker 7: Vladimir started to sleep, and I was laying looking at
Speaker 7: the ceiling, looking at myself and thinking how do I
Speaker 7: do it? I was waiting till about like one am,
Speaker 7: so it will be late late night, and very very slowly,
Speaker 7: almost like a cat, and I walked out from the
Speaker 7: room into that office room. I took my camera and
Speaker 7: I took the small flashlight, and I basically photographed all
Speaker 7: these papers and I just saw like many numbers and
Speaker 7: some places and many many different names. And I opened
Speaker 7: also notebook. I did like all the photos over there
Speaker 7: with telephone numbers. So I photographed everything, and when I finished,
Speaker 7: I just returned to bad and I hided my back
Speaker 7: with the camera like onderneath of the clothes which was
Speaker 7: on the armchair. Early morning.
Speaker 2: We woke up.
Speaker 7: Vladimir felt good and he said, oh, I had such
Speaker 7: a good sleep. Finally, yeah, thanks to me.
Speaker 4: The next morning, Aleah prepared to meet with her colleague
Speaker 4: Sasha and hand over the camera, making sure to download
Speaker 4: a copy of the files for herself first. They were
Speaker 4: both new to intelligence work and given this mission by
Speaker 4: their commander to fail, but inexperience often comes with enthusiasm,
Speaker 4: and they were succeeding, perhaps too well. For their own safety.
Speaker 7: I was in rush to only one thing, which I did.
Speaker 7: I took the memory card, so I downloaded all the
Speaker 7: things in my computer. I installed it back to the camera,
Speaker 7: and I passed the camera to Sasha.
Speaker 4: Back at home, Lia sat down at her computer to
Speaker 4: examine the photograph she'd taken of the documents in Vladimir's office.
Speaker 7: And what I've seen there blew my mind. I texted
Speaker 7: Sasha and I said, I think I found out something
Speaker 7: important which might be a big explanation in all this mess,
Speaker 7: and maybe it gives us the light of what just
Speaker 7: happened with this case. Let's meet at the same place tomorrow.
Speaker 7: He said, yeah, let's do it. And he didn't come.
Speaker 7: He didn't show up, and I was really worried. I
Speaker 7: didn't know exactly what to do. I called him, he
Speaker 7: didn't pick up. I texted, he didn't reply.
Speaker 4: When aliyahs Vladimir later that day, she tried to conceal
Speaker 4: her worries about Sasha and what may have happened to him.
Speaker 7: So Vladimir he asked me, like, I said, everything okay,
Speaker 7: And I said, like, no, everything is okay, And I
Speaker 7: try not to be worried about Sasha, and that day
Speaker 7: I heard the conversation between Vladimir and his army friend
Speaker 7: and it was a big argument, and army friend was
Speaker 7: saying to Vladimir, we've been losing many many drugs recently
Speaker 7: and this is not good. I'm responsible in front of
Speaker 7: these people in Afghanistan and if something goes wrong, de
Speaker 7: will cut off my head, not yours. And Vladimir said
Speaker 7: it won't happen. I will protect you. Everything will be
Speaker 7: all right. But the conversation finished on the note where
Speaker 7: I understood that the army friend wasn't really satisfied. I
Speaker 7: reached out Sasha again the next day and he came
Speaker 7: to that place where I usually met and I was
Speaker 7: like almost cremated him, like I'm like, what the hell
Speaker 7: you didn't pick up the phone? You like freaked me out.
Speaker 7: I thought something happened to you. And he said, the
Speaker 7: reason why I couldn't contact you is because for the
Speaker 7: whole night and day I was spying on our commander.
Speaker 7: And he'll be shocked to what I will tell you
Speaker 7: right now. So in these documents which I photographed, there
Speaker 7: was a few times written the name of our commander
Speaker 7: and Sasha when he was spying on our commander. Our
Speaker 7: commander had a meeting with Vladimir's friend. Then he said,
Speaker 7: why our commander sent us to this drug operation and
Speaker 7: we arrested people and we confiscated drugs, and yet now
Speaker 7: he's speaking with this guy. I asked Sashall if he
Speaker 7: has done any photos or anything like that. So apparently
Speaker 7: he did, which is good. And also we had this
Speaker 7: document stating that our commander was involved. So more or
Speaker 7: less I had some evidences, some compromat, let's say, to
Speaker 7: our commander, and I started to dig in more, and
Speaker 7: eventually in my head I created a plan how to
Speaker 7: save myself and Vladimir out of all this big mess.
Speaker 4: Chapter thirty one, This sting. The next day, Eliah met
Speaker 4: with her friend Anna, who is part of the gang's entourage,
Speaker 4: to see if she knew anything more about what was
Speaker 4: going on.
Speaker 7: She said, the man with whom she was dating, he
Speaker 7: said to her that the whole gang had started to
Speaker 7: be divided, so slowly the army front wore bringing his
Speaker 7: people together to create kind of a good confrontation towards
Speaker 7: Vladimir's people. I felt sorrow because I started to realize
Speaker 7: that there is something going on behind his back, and
Speaker 7: he doesn't even know, you know, like I wanted to
Speaker 7: kind of like protect him.
Speaker 4: This is probably not standard practice for an undercover agent,
Speaker 4: but this is what happens when he mix love and war.
Speaker 4: As much as the state would like to turn people
Speaker 4: into robots or at least sociopaths without empathy, they're still
Speaker 4: human at the end of the day, and a human
Speaker 4: connection usually wins over a work order. When a Liah
Speaker 4: met with Vladimir next, she tried to find a way
Speaker 4: to hint to him that his army friend, his second
Speaker 4: in command, who has saved his life during the war,
Speaker 4: might be plotting to betray him.
Speaker 7: I tried to start the conversation and I asked him, like,
Speaker 7: do you trust your friend? And he said, yeah, I
Speaker 7: trust him. He saved my life. I owe him for that.
Speaker 7: I understood that moment that it would be just almost
Speaker 7: impossible to tell him anything. I thought, like, you know,
Speaker 7: I will find a way how to make it write.
Speaker 7: So next day we met with Sasha again and he
Speaker 7: gave me some photos, like there were like a couple
Speaker 7: photos of our commanders standing with this army friend, and
Speaker 7: he told me, I am worried about my life he said,
Speaker 7: I know too much now, and you do. And he said,
Speaker 7: if something happens with me, promised that you will take
Speaker 7: care of this information and you will make sure that
Speaker 7: he will get what he deserve. And that moment I
Speaker 7: remembered about colnel because I remember that dinner when a
Speaker 7: first time met my future commander, and I remembered them
Speaker 7: sitting and drinking vodka and just having this kind of
Speaker 7: look to each other, and something told me that all
Speaker 7: of them involved in this thing, something like it's just
Speaker 7: like a gut feeling, but yet without evidences, it's just
Speaker 7: a thought.
Speaker 4: Leah told Sasha about the colonel, her abuser at the
Speaker 4: military academy and the commander's close friend, and asked if
Speaker 4: it was possible to see if the colonel was involved
Speaker 4: with the gang at all. Sasha replied that they should
Speaker 4: just keep taking down the trafficking network and watching everyone closely,
Speaker 4: and eventually the truth would be revealed.
Speaker 7: He said, like, let's see what would be the react
Speaker 7: once we know, we will understand who is really involved
Speaker 7: in there and who is not.
Speaker 4: They decided to rate another one of the spots out
Speaker 4: of Vladimir's map. They timed the operation to take place
Speaker 4: during a celebration that the gang was planning for a
Speaker 4: member's birthday. This way Eliah could watch everyone's responses.
Speaker 7: Then Sasha can arrest them and we will see how
Speaker 7: like other people in this chain, how will they respond.
Speaker 7: So that day we organized everything. I remember even like
Speaker 7: what I was worrying that day.
Speaker 4: That afternoon, Aliyah's colleague Sasha showed up with their team
Speaker 4: as a suspected drug dealing operation, and as usual, sent
Speaker 4: in an informant to buy drugs with marked money. Meanwhile,
Speaker 4: Aliyah was with Vladimir at the gang member's birthday celebration.
Speaker 7: So everybody was drinking for the house of the birthday person,
Speaker 7: and suddenly the army guy stand up and he leaves.
Speaker 7: Somebody called him. I opened my back and I texted
Speaker 7: Sasha that the army guy just left. Vladimir is here.
Speaker 7: I'm just like I'm controlling the whole inform of situation.
Speaker 7: I will text you what's going on. He texted me,
Speaker 7: It's okay, we work on it. I will text you later.
Speaker 7: And I never heard from him since that moment. So
Speaker 7: I'm sitting there. Vladimir is like stressed. He receiving some calls.
Speaker 7: He replies, but it's all kind of like yes no, yes, no,
Speaker 7: and I couldn't understand what's going on. I'm just sitting
Speaker 7: but I'm going to the toilet. Text Sasha, Hey, what's up?
Speaker 7: Text me? And no answer. Came back again from the toilet,
Speaker 7: sitting again with Vladimir. Everybody drinking and so on. I
Speaker 7: couldn't eat a drink. I was just sitting there and
Speaker 7: pretending that I'm okay and I'm smiling. Go to the toilet,
Speaker 7: text Sasha, no messages, back, coming back again, sitting stressing
Speaker 7: again and again and again and again, and I had
Speaker 7: like this kind of feeling inside of me where you know,
Speaker 7: something is like not good. We were driving home and
Speaker 7: Vladimir was sitting with come was probably the same face
Speaker 7: because like we didn't really talk.
Speaker 2: I was just like.
Speaker 7: Opening my bag and trying to see the telephone, my
Speaker 7: small matarola if there are any message from Sasha, and
Speaker 7: it wasn't. It was empty. You just drove back. When
Speaker 7: we came to the city, Vladimir voiced like intense and
Speaker 7: I said, you know, like I don't feel good. I
Speaker 7: wanted to just like lay down. Can you drop me home?
Speaker 7: And He's like yeah, of course. Besides, I want to
Speaker 7: check something too, So he dropped me home and I
Speaker 7: didn't call to the commander obviously, and I didn't call
Speaker 7: anyone apart from one person who was in our team.
Speaker 7: I texted him. He didn't reply. I called him. He
Speaker 7: picked up the call and I said like, hey, hey,
Speaker 7: it's me. What's going on? And I heard his voice
Speaker 7: was almost like broken. His voice sounded like so far away,
Speaker 7: And I asked him, do you know where it is? Sasha?
Speaker 7: He said yes, said so what happened? Can you tell me?
Speaker 7: He said, so, we sent our drug bait guy who
Speaker 7: does all this transactions with the mark money, and when
Speaker 7: we entered the house, we entered the main door, he
Speaker 7: said like there was like few Afghani men and they
Speaker 7: started to shoot, and Sasha was the first who entered
Speaker 7: as the commander of the team, and he said he
Speaker 7: was the one who received the first bullet. And I
Speaker 7: asked him, Sasha always worrying the bullet protection jacket. He
Speaker 7: said yes, he does, and I said, so is he okay?
Speaker 7: He said no, And I said, like where was the
Speaker 7: bullet proof jacket? And he didn't reply to me, and
Speaker 7: I said, like, where was the bullet proof jacket. I
Speaker 7: was almost like screaming, and he said, he's in the
Speaker 7: the mark. I said, what's going on with the commander?
Speaker 7: What did he say? He said, like he was like
Speaker 7: really pissed off, and he said that he's all going
Speaker 7: to put us to jail because they did the whole
Speaker 7: operation without his permission. I standed there at the room
Speaker 7: and I just couldn't. I couldn't do anything, and I,
Speaker 7: you know, like this feeling where I started to hate,
Speaker 7: like the strong like anger, the anger that he's just
Speaker 7: not here anymore, and the guilt.
Speaker 4: Leah felt that the commander or someone must have told
Speaker 4: the drug dealers to expect a raid and to expect impunity,
Speaker 4: otherwise they would have had their guns out and started
Speaker 4: firing immediately.
Speaker 7: And I just hated I would commander so much. I
Speaker 7: felt like he betrayed Sasha, He betrayed his own people
Speaker 7: for his own good. It was a very dark, dark day.
Speaker 7: I remember Sasha told me the last time I saw him,
Speaker 7: if something happened to me, promise me that you will
Speaker 7: get the justice and you will finish this case. And
Speaker 7: I gave him this word. And I had almost like
Speaker 7: every single evidences towards my commander. I had voters him
Speaker 7: and the criminal leader, this army friend of Vladimir I
Speaker 7: had handwritten name on the papers. And I was thinking, okay,
Speaker 7: so if I will have all these documents and all
Speaker 7: these evidences, whom do I go to prove it that
Speaker 7: my commander is criminal? And there was like one main
Speaker 7: commander who was the general of the whole state. The
Speaker 7: next morning and a Monday, I called to the receptionist
Speaker 7: of the general. I said to her, like, I have
Speaker 7: some information about the case. I have some evidences. I
Speaker 7: need to speak with the commander. And she said to me, oh, like,
Speaker 7: you can pass me information, I'll give it to him.
Speaker 7: I said, like, no, I need to meet him in person.
Speaker 7: I cannot give this information to anyone apart from him.
Speaker 7: She said, I will speak with him, and just basically,
Speaker 7: like in a few minutes, she called me back. She
Speaker 7: said when can you come in? And said I can
Speaker 7: come in, like in thirty minutes. She said, he will
Speaker 7: be waiting for you. I got dressed, I put the
Speaker 7: files into USB. I took the USB. I took these
Speaker 7: photos which Ash gave me. I was just thinking, if
Speaker 7: I can't really trust but I wanted just to understand
Speaker 7: if he knows anything or not, then if he's really
Speaker 7: involved or not. So I came into the main building,
Speaker 7: beautiful with the big columns, and I walked through their
Speaker 7: security check. I said, I have an appointment with the general.
Speaker 7: They let me in. I went upstairs to the second floor.
Speaker 7: I came to the reception and there was a woman
Speaker 7: about forty five years old, and she was having this
Speaker 7: strict face. I called the military people do and she said,
Speaker 7: he's waiting for you.
Speaker 4: To die For continues in episode fifteen.
Speaker 7: He told me that this is the end, this is
Speaker 7: the last moment of your life. And when he told that,
Speaker 7: he punched me from this side so hard that it
Speaker 7: just crushed my bone.
Speaker 4: To Die For is a production of Tenderfoot TV in
Speaker 4: association with iHeart Podcasts. The show is hosted and written
Speaker 4: by me Neil Strauss, with additional writing assistants by Tristan Bankston.
Speaker 4: Executive producers are myself, Donald Albright, and Payne Lindsay. For
Speaker 4: iHeart Podcasts, executive producers are Matt Frederick and Alex Williams.
Speaker 4: Lead producer and editor is Tristan Bankston. Additional editing by
Speaker 4: Miles Clark and Christian Brown. Supervising producer Tracy Kaplan. Consultants
Speaker 4: include Nushin, Valiza day, Chelsea Gooden and Jamie Albright. Artwork
Speaker 4: by Byron McCoy, original music by Makeup and Vanity Set,
Speaker 4: mixed and mastered by Dayton Cole. Our theme song is
Speaker 4: Killer Shangli Law by Psychotic Beats featuring Pattiamore. Special thanks
Speaker 4: to Aren Rosenbaub and the team at Uta Beck Media
Speaker 4: and Marketing Aarren Siegel, Becky Jensen, the Nord Group, Meredith Stedman,
Speaker 4: Rose Baruch and alex Vespustad.