@eduardmarquiz @2xwide_dreaming @danchenko_igor @Hmmm57474203 crossed the finish line first in this identification. I've done a draft on how PSS was identified. Something that happened "overnight" after 6 months working at it on and off. By Friday, we knew that PSS was 4+9, had attended a US university with 10-letter name
@eduardmarquiz @2xwide_dreaming @danchenko_igor @Hmmm57474203 and was from a city with 4 characters. In passing, I firmly expected PSS to be obscure and would get annoyed with people who kept bringing up prominent known names - Igor Deripaska, Sidney Blumenthal - in disregard of both common sense and what we knew.
@eduardmarquiz @2xwide_dreaming @danchenko_igor @Hmmm57474203 3/ The other key new information was that PSS was probably in his late 30s from his biography. This was a BIG departure from previous disinformation suggesting that he was a former Soviet era intelligence operative, thus much older. We followed a false trail with Ilya Zaslavsky
@eduardmarquiz @2xwide_dreaming @danchenko_igor @Hmmm57474203 4/ through Saturday until late afternoon, when inconsistencies became evident. The reference to RIA Novosti enabled @walkafyre to identify the reporters, both of whom had been in contact with Millian. I contacted Millian on Sat evening to search his July 2016 emails for a 4+9
@eduardmarquiz @2xwide_dreaming @danchenko_igor @Hmmm57474203 @walkafyre 5/ meanwhile, Hmmm cleverly used the new information on age range of PSS. He recalled Apelbaum's article on Steele's associates which cited Kieran Porter and a couple of others. He then parsed Kieran Porter's social media for a 4+9, encountering Igor Danchenko, then googling.
@eduardmarquiz @2xwide_dreaming @danchenko_igor @Hmmm57474203 @walkafyre 6/ Danchenko was about the right age, came from Perm, had studied at University of Louisville, then at Georgetown. His FB showed that he'd traveled to Russia in June 2016 (like PSS).
@eduardmarquiz @2xwide_dreaming @danchenko_igor @Hmmm57474203 @walkafyre 7/ also, importantly, he was a US resident, something that we had previously deduced from his availability to Horowitz. (We had also previously deduced that the FBI description of him as "Russian-based" was untrue.) We had speculated before that he lived in northern Virginia and
@eduardmarquiz @2xwide_dreaming @danchenko_igor @Hmmm57474203 @walkafyre 8/ so he did. Because of our previous work on PSS, we were quickly able to endorse Hmmmm's identification (which I credited right away) with total certainty.
