Covert Contact 94: The Poisoning of Sergei Skripal

Fred Burton joins me shortly after the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the United Kingdom to discuss the attack’s implications for intelligence services, defectors, and the people responsible for protecting them. Fred brings his experience as a former deputy chief of counterterrorism at the Diplomatic Security Service to a conversation recorded while many of the facts remain unresolved.

We discuss why we suspect Russian involvement and what a highly visible attack could communicate to former intelligence officers and people considering cooperation with Western services. The threat extends beyond an individual source. Concern for children and other family members can weigh heavily on a decision to defect, and an attack abroad challenges the assumption that reaching a new country brings lasting safety.

Fred walks through the kinds of questions an investigator would ask: how the attackers found and watched their target, how the material reached the country, what travel and diplomatic activity might reveal, and what surveillance footage could help reconstruct. We distinguish those investigative possibilities from established facts. The recording does not resolve the delivery method, the chain of authorization, or whether there were failures in Skripal’s protective arrangements.

We also consider the danger to first responders and bystanders, who may encounter a toxic substance while responding to what appears to be a medical emergency. For counterintelligence agencies, the incident raises immediate questions about protection for other defectors, risks to active sources, and whether earlier suspicious deaths deserve another look. Competing demands from counterterrorism complicate the allocation of people and attention.

The discussion closes with the problem of deterrence. Diplomatic expulsions, sanctions, and other responses carry costs and may invite retaliation that damages intelligence capabilities on both sides. Sending a public message is relatively straightforward. Finding a response that changes the attacker’s behavior while protecting vulnerable people is considerably harder.