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The Shadow Dossier — The Nerve Agent in Salisbury · The Shadow Dossier

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  The Shadow Dossier. Act I. A park bench in an
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  English cathedral city. On March 4th, 2018, emergency
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  responders in Salisbury, England, found a man
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  and woman unconscious on a public bench, showing
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  symptoms that initially puzzled paramedics on
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  scene. The man was Sergei Skripal. A former Russian
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  military intelligence officer who had worked
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  for years as a double agent for British intelligence
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  before being caught, imprisoned in Russia and
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  eventually released to Britain as part of a 2010
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  spy swap. The woman was his daughter, Yulia,
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  visiting from Russia. Both have been poisoned
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  with Novichok, a military -grade nerve agent
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  developed by the Soviet Union decades earlier.
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  specifically designed to be more potent and harder
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  to detect than earlier generations of chemical
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  weapons. Act II, a weapon designed to be deniable.
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  Novichok agents, developed by Soviet chemical
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  weapons programs beginning in the 1970s and continuing
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  into the 1990s. were engineered with a specific
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  strategic purpose in mind, according to later
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  analysis by Western chemical weapons experts,
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  creating compounds that fell outside the specific
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  chemical structures explicitly banned under international
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  chemical weapons treaties at the time of their
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  development, along with formulations designed
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  to evade standard detection equipment used by
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  international weapons inspectors. British investigators
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  determined that the Skripals had been poisoned
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  through Novichok applied directly to the door
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  handle of Sergei Skripal's home. A delivery method
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  that exposed both victims to a small but ultimately
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  near lethal dose upon contact. The nerve agent
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  absorbing through skin and causing severe rapid
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  neurological symptoms consistent with organophosphate.
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  poisoning at a scale far beyond what commercial
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  pesticides or other more readily available toxins
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  could produce. The investigation's most tragic
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  development came months later, in June 2018.
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  When a Salisbury resident named Dawn Sturgis
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  died after her partner found and gave her a discarded
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  perfume bottle he'd picked up, unaware it actually
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  contained residual Novichok, believed by investigators
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  to be the container the original attackers had
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  used to apply the nerve agent before discarding
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  it. Sturgis had no connection whatsoever to Skripal,
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  Russian intelligence, or any aspect of the broader
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  case. She became... in the assessment of British
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  investigators, an entirely unintended casualty
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  of a weapon whose lethal properties persisted
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  undiminished in a discarded object for months
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  after the original attack. British Police and
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  Intelligence Services working with extensive
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  cctv coverage across salisbury and nearby london
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  where the suspects had traveled from and returned
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  to identified two men traveling under the names
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  alexander petrov and ruslan basharov as the primary
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  suspects tracking their movements to and from
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  salisbury on the day of the attack with considerable
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  precision investigative journalists at the open
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  source outlet bellingcat working alongside Russian
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  investigative media, subsequently identified
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  the two men's true identities as Anatoly Chepega
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  and Alexander Mishkin, officers of the GRU, Russia's
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  military intelligence agency, using a combination
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  of leaked passport databases, facial recognition
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  analysis, and other publicly available records.
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  An investigative approach that has become increasingly
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  significant. in exposing state intelligence operations
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  in the years since the two suspects gave a widely
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  mock televised interview on russian state media
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  shortly after being publicly identified claiming
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  they had traveled to salisbury purely as tourists
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  specifically to see the city's famous cathedral
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  an explanation british officials and much of
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  the international media treated with open skepticism
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  given the timing the men's documented movements
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  and their subsequently confirmed gru affiliations
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  act v the diplomatic fallout that followed the
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  british government's response extended well beyond
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  the immediate criminal investigation expelling
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  British diplomats in retaliation and offering
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  various alternative explanations for the attack
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  over time, none of which gained meaningful acceptance
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  among Western governments or independent investigators
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  who had reviewed the accumulated evidence. The
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  case remains alongside the Litvinenko poisoning
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  this dossier has already examined. One of the
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  clearest documented instances of an apparent
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  state -sponsored assassination attempt carried
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  out on foreign soil against a former intelligence
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  asset. Using a weapon whose sheer lethality and
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  persistence ultimately claimed an entirely unconnected
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  victim months after its intended target had,
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  against considerable odds, survived. What the
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  Salisbury poisoning ultimately demonstrated was
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  the continued willingness of state intelligence
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  services to pursue former defectors even years
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  after their initial exposure and formal exchange,
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  using weapons specifically engineered to be deniable,
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  while also revealing through the accidental death
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  of a bystander with no connection to the case
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  at all. Exactly how uncontrollable a chemical
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  weapon's actual battlefield can become once deployed
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  in an ordinary civilian environment rather than
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  the controlled circumstances its designers presumably
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  imagined. This concludes declassified file number
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  0042 of the Shadow Dossier, the nerve agent in
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  Salisbury. What dangerous secrets await in our
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  next file? If you want early access to upcoming
• 7:23
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  ss .com. and YouTube so you never miss an official
• 7:44
  declassification. This is the Shadow Dossier.
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  Thank you for listening.