kind of substances for killing people that you never will be able to recognize. why do we have to go into some kind of a bar and put it in someone's tea cup and everyone's laughing at it? i mean, the state cannot be involved in that. >> reporter: litvinenko's friend paul joyal, who believes he was the target of a botched assassination, agrees that in some ways litvinenko's killers were indeed clumsy and careless. but he says that's because they were probably just pawns in a much bigger game. >> do you think that any of them knew what that substance was? do you think that they knew they were handling polonium? >> reporter: why wouldn't they have known what they were handling? >> because you don't want them to know.