Post Editorial: Political Poison

Today the Washington Post is running an editorial about the Litvinenko poisoning. Here’s an extract:

Former colleagues of Mr. Putin in the KGB don’t doubt who is responsible. One, Oleg Kalugin, pointed out that the president pushed the Russian parliament to authorize the secret service to take action against “terrorists” outside the country. Another, Oleg Gordievsky, the former KGB chief in Britain, told the Times of London that he believed the attack was “state-sponsored” and was carried out by another former Russian agent. We trust that the British authorities will vigorously investigate the attack on Mr. Litvinenko — who is now a British citizen — and that Prime Minister Tony Blair will take seriously the possibility that a colleague in the Group of Eight sanctioned a political murder attempt in London. While Mr. Litvinenko’s story was emerging over the weekend, President Bush was pictured exchanging jollities with his “friend Vladimir” at a summit in Vietnam. Does Mr. Bush regret having given so much support to a leader who has dismantled his country’s nascent democracy and whose opponents keep turning up in hospitals and morgues? If so, he’s keeping his own secret.