Thread by @christogrozev

In addressing the Havana Syndrome controversy, I'd stick to the old golden triangle for crime investigations: who had the Motive, Means and Opportunity - and if a suspect is found, does s/he have an Alibi (short thread)

In his February 2012 "election" platform essay, Putin wrote:

That same year, Putin created a military R&D program that was tasked with developing "directed energy weapons", among other "futuristic" weapons. This was clearly Putin's pet project.

This entity was called "FPI", the Foundation for Advanced Studies owned by the MoD. It was launched in 2013. This entity launched a (secret) competition for the delivery of various working solutions. One of the competitions was for the creation of "a non-lethal acoustic weapon".

We know about this contest because we landed a signed copy of a contract between FPI and the winner of exactly this contest. The contract was buried in the email archive of this winner's assistant hacked by Russian hactivists in 2019; we only discovered it a few months ago)

As this "weapon" (clearly one of many per Putin's wish list) was being developed, US spies under diplomatic cover in Russia and Western Europe began experiencing unprecedented aggression: their homes broken into, their pets killed, feces dumped on the floor, etc etc.

All of this goes to say, *Motive* was clearly there. Motive was even explicitly acknowledged by Patrushev last year:

Was there "Means" though? Well clearly the Russians thought they had the means.

And then, the Opportunity, which has been the gaping hole in this investigation for years. Until we found that the literal winner of that competition - and 8 of his subordinates, were in parts of the world, under cover, at times and in places where there were reported incidents.

Mind you, these people are not traditional spies - they are not trained to gather intelligence. They are trained to make short attack trips. They are trained to poison. blow-up things, snipe, and operate contraptions. This is an example of what they make in field conditions:

So...there's Motive, Means & Opportunity. Does our investigation prove definitively Unit 29155 inflicted AHI incidents? No.
It's a working hypothesis that requires further investigation. But until someone comes up with an Alibi for these assassins, it will be our main hypothesis.

Last: obviously we can't expect Russia to provide an alibi for their spies. But if the US ODNI is certain this wasn't a hostile operation from Russia, they should provide a plausible innocent explanation (=alibi) for what these trained saboteurs and assassins were doing there.