Russian TV went to these extremes as part of its coverage of the nerve agent attack on another ex-Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter in Britain earlier this year. They survived, but an innocent bystander was later contaminated and died. The British prime minister cited the Litvinenko case to highlight Putin’s penchant for killing his detractors with exotic toxins, so Putin’s propaganda produced a fake narrative with a fake perpetrator — that is, me — in a stage-managed melodrama that showed the true murderers fraternizing with the victim’s elderly father, a pathetic figure fully controlled by the Russian secret police.

AD

AD

I am a retired professor of microbiology in New York and a lifelong campaigner for democracy in Russia. I came to this country 40 years ago fleeing Soviet communism. When the U.S.S.R. collapsed, I returned to Moscow to work for democratic reform. Those hopes were shattered a decade later when a kleptocratic KGB clique led by Vladimir Putin came to power. My last deed in Russia was helping Litvinenko and his family flee to London from imminent arrest for his whistleblowing on abuses in the Russian security service where he had worked fighting organized crime. I have not visited Russia since 2000.

The 2016 London inquiry seemed like long-sought closure to both Marina Litvinenko and me. But the Litvinenko saga resumed after the attack in Salisbury. Both Russian channels are widely viewed in the United States, which prompted me to file a libel suit with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. I am grateful to more than 100 people who are helping with the costs through my crowdfunding page. Without such help, I would have little hope of protecting myself.

AD

AD

U.S. law gives strong protections to the media against libel claims. To win the case I have to prove, among other things, “actual malice” — that the broadcasters either knew they were lying when they broadcast the lies, or acted with reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of their reports. To that end, I will argue that the defendants deliberately discounted the British finding that Litvinenko was killed by someone else.

This is not an isolated case. Television is extensively and effectively used by the Kremlin to sow chaos and undermine American democracy — just watch RT’s English-language programs for a couple of days. Recently, Marina Litvinenko and I went to Washington trying to persuade the U.S. lawmakers to put the two networks, and their executives, on the list of economic sanctions under the Defending American Security From Kremlin Aggression Act of 2018, which is pending in Congress. Why are other sectors of Russian economy are being sanctioned but not the media?

We’ve been told that it is hard to litigate against the media, because they are protected by the First Amendment. In 1964, the Supreme Court in Sullivan provided legal confirmation to public officials that they must prove actual malice or reckless disregard of the truth by a media organization in a libel claim.

AD

AD