This has become widely known in reverse order, with new State Department commentary (Reuters.) The American Interest has two very  good articles, if the paywall does not intervene.

The principle fact to be concealed would be whether the unnamed diplomat was a CIA agent. At this point, it’s a PR issue, since if he was, he cannot return to Moscow. But it is contrary to practice, principle, and policy to identify a person as a CIA agent. Since the Russian public gives high credence to the official media, they probably believe this already.  The reconstruction of the event can be enhanced without compromise of U.S. interest, and it’s entertaining. So why not? In what follows, assume the mere speculation, that the individual assaulted by the Russian guard was a CIA officer.

The popular image of the CIA is of an overly technological group, of blunt intelligence,  subject to massive blunders, and continually outfoxed by  the opposition with superior people-skills. But this evaluation, with qualitative differences, applies to all the services. Even Mossad, who have many admirers, have had bad days. British MI6 has an illustrious history, yet arguably suffered the most egregious penetrations. The overall record of the KGB is  the most impressive, yet the West remains free. Information was not the panacea for the ills of the Soviet Union.

So it should not come as a surprise that, during the Cold War, the CIA had some brilliant minds, brilliant in what is known as tradecraft, and they went to Moscow to test themselves against the best of the adversary.  And they didn’t do badly at all. They perfected their tradecraft with the precision of applied mathematicians, applied it with athleticism, and prevailed many times against apparently insuperable odds.

The environment of those days was incredibly hostile to intelligence work. To keep costs reasonable, the embassy relied on the Soviets for mundane services, such as housekeeping staff.  The embassy was vulnerable to listening devices. Ordinary hallways and offices of the foreign service were exposed to Russian surveillance. The Soviet maid sweeping your office could be memorizing your face, timing your presence, and looking for odd objects in the wastebasket. In Moscow, even pocket lint had value.

Only the code rooms, where messages were prepared for transmission to the U.S.. and decoded on arrival, and the CIA’s special suite, were thought to be securable. And even there, penetrations were both attempted and suspected. Memoirs of professionals from both sides doubt the importance of their services in changing history in any meaningful way. Yet the accomplishments of the CIA in Moscow display remarkable ingenuity. Various memoirs offer considerable qualitative detail.

Pre-Glasnost Moscow was a police state. Compared to the U.S., where Washington is merely a center of government,  Soviet industry, and targets of espionage, were mostly concentrated in the vicinity of Moscow. There was much to explore, and much to protect. The Kremlin  had a vast army of poorly paid eyes in the guise of babushkas and  militia,  saturating Moscow with a forest of guard shacks and  shift-change rooms in the basements of innocuous buildings. Even the dead of winter did not curtail their presence, though the temperatures and frequent shift changes made their sufferings obvious.

The event of an intelligence officer’s foray into the Moscow of the Soviets was the very occasional and exceptional meeting with a source, to service a device, or most frequently, to service a dead drop. But no task could be accomplished without a method to evade the army of watchers.  In the 60’s, the depressing consensus was that it was impossible. But later, the aforementioned brilliant minds developed a set of techniques that actually worked. These became known as “Moscow Rules.” Some of the modern press have misunderstood the term as a kind of mutual courtesy of treatment. This existed, but was not the meaning of the phrase.

The tradecraft known as Moscow Rules has been described qualitatively in memoirs. Part of it involves the use of disguises.  The Russian account of the assault asserts that the individual was wearing a mask. Defeat of the army of watchers was accomplished by a combination of methods, which in sum served to overwhelm the eyes:

• Disguise, comprising masks and other techniques.
• Multiple targets whose identities can be confused.
• Disguise changes on the move.
• Route changes, while driving or walking, precise to within a few seconds. The kinds of route changes are specific to the technique.

The successful outcome occurred when the intelligence officer “went dark”. With successful evasion, the Soviets no longer knew where the agent was or what he was doing. With the mission accomplished, the individual would typically spend the night “somewhere else”, returning to the embassy the following day. The resources of the trackers would be further worn down in the interval.

Let’s continue with the speculation that the assaulted individual was an intelligence officer. Why would he return to the embassy wearing a mask, as the Russians claim? “Moscow Rules” are a battle against the adversary’s desire for information. Every piece of description known to the adversary about appearance, demeanor, physique, habits, postures, idiosyncrasies, nervous tics, unconscious gestures — anything at all – lessens the probability of going dark. Perhaps three agents went out, of which two were decoys. No inference can be let slip as to who was which.

Since diplomacy has never offered spies titles corresponding to their service, like “Third Underspy”, etc, CIA employees were and are given what is known as diplomatic, or official cover,  any job  the embassy could create for them. The Russian housekeeping staff  constantly watched to see who actually worked at their jobs. A frequent cover job was “mechanic”. One CIA station chief, whose vehicles turned out to be too reliable, washed the ambassador’s limousine.

During the Cold War a courtesy developed that saved a lot of broken bones. Spies with diplomatic cover were only briefly detained, not subject to physical abuse, and subject to no penalty other than expulsion. This was rigorously observed, except for one case of Soviet retaliation to what they perceived as a violation. Spies without this cover, meaning in practice, Soviet citizens, were typically executed. In the recent altercation, the U.S. individual received a broken shoulder. Why, even if he was a spy, was he not extended the courtesies of the past?

Perhaps it is remarkable that, after all these years, Moscow Rules, or variants, still succeed with going dark. But in today’s  wealthier Russia, a babushka/militia army of watchers is not a reasonable expense. Modern-day Moscow is more like a typical Western city. It must be frustrating to the FSB to watch an agent go dark and witness his return at night. Perhaps the Russians, at some level, not necessarily the highest, are attempting to deter what they cannot prevent. Perhaps the intelligence officer, if he was that, was concerned with some other form of compromise. Or perhaps, as some have asserted, the Russians are paranoiac about the West.

As with most affairs of espionage (if that is what it was), the objective truth will not come to light for many years, if ever. Nor is it important in the scheme of things.

But it’s very entertaining.

The pundits are absorbed with the populist note, because it’s just won. Every angle related to the possible success of other populist movements is explored. For example, Russia’s KGB might have had a hand. Excepting representations of Russian propaganda outlets, evidence of hidden subversion, though plausible, is not open source. But in the open, communicative society of the UK, not many percentage point were buyable. The passion was Brit-to-Brit. And so it will be in most of the other EU countries where “leave” is being mooted as a populist sentiment.

In New Cold War, Not!, I wrote about the current nonexistence of blocs. Perhaps I should have allowed myself a loophole. But while the term “bloc” is overloaded with connotations of fear and compulsion, “community” is not. Because the idea of a European community is not coterminous with “European Union”, rumors of the demise of Britain’s integration with the European Community are greatly exaggerated. The formalities will change, but Britain’s younger generations will be heard.

We may take heart in the example of NATO and France. In 1966, Charles de Gaulle took France out of NATO. In 2009, preceded by many years of de facto reintegration, France rejoined the NATO command structure. Economic integration is much more complex than military integration. But the pundits who venture the complexity as a barrier to reversible change are premature.

Politicians are not great mathematicians. They prefer to count on their fingers. The reality of a European community is the sum of these four kinds of issue: populist, macroeconomic, geopolitical, and national. These rubrics suit the organization of the article. You might try choosing your own, but simplification or over elaboration would just muddy things. Of these, national interest is virtually ignored by pundits. But by depriving the EU of rationale, it has the potential of a slow acting poison.

The particular poison is the lure of trade with Russia and natural gas pipelines. Italy and Hungary, as major consumers of Russian gas, are major fracture points. Unless the Ukraine crisis is resolved, the end of sanctions would vitiate the reality of a credible, unified, EU foreign policy. But what of the grand center of the EU, Germany?

In White House Years, Henry Kissinger recounts that in 1969, a fault line emerged in NATO, over the Ostpolitik (new eastern policy) of Willy Brandt, consisting of “small treaties”, some bilateral with the Soviet Union and some multilateral, involving the Four Powers. In a time of overwhelming Soviet superiority of conventional forces, Brandt’s overtures were viewed apprehensively in the West, as opening the door to the neutralization of West Germany. Kissinger revisits the issue of German-Russian relations in Does America Need a Foreign Policy?  (2001). Quoting from page 40,

As Germany’s relative role and power grow, and as Russia recovers, there will emerge temptations for a special Russo-German rapprochement based on the Bismarckian tradition that the two countries prospered when they were close and suffered when they were in conflict

and

These trends will tempt other European nations to court Russia, in part as a reaction to American dominance, in part as a counterweight to Germany…

The urging of German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier to relax sanctions demands comparison with Kissinger’s recounting of Ostpolitik in White House Years. In Does America…, Kissinger draws on his vast experience to attempt a futurist view. Perhaps fifty percent has carried into the present, a remarkable achievement. Most futurists end up entirely wrong.

The four categories can be factored into attractive and repulsive forces:

• Populist and national are repulsive.
• Macroeconomic and geopolitical are attractive.

The fate of the European community, distinguished from the formal machinery of the EU, lies in the balance of these forces. The relative strengths are determined by the recognition and exploitation of them by world leaders. Some what ifs are interesting subjects for academic papers. What would be the effect on EU stability if:

• Russia had not intervened in Ukraine?
• Ukraine succeeds/fails in political reform?
• Greece receives/denied loan relief?
• The U.S. were to replace Russian gas?

This blog was on hiatus till the Brexit event. It was impossible to compete with what everybody wants to know, but nobody can figure out.

The most unanswerable questions of intelligence revolve around public opinion. The tools of the pollster register binary choices, but not ardency of belief. “Stay” campers were not inspired to violence. One “Leaver” was inspired to murder politician Jo Cox. The electorate reacted to the event, the polls ringing like a planet struck by a meteor, when all the apparent solidity of the crust is belied by the liquidity of the molten core. There was cognitive dissonance to the last moment, vitiating the 60% “stay” vote predicted by the majority of polls.

The Brexit vote is a secession from the quasi-government of the EU, with more than passing analogy to revolution. In this manner, it joins a long list of predictive failures by intelligence organizations, pollsters, and everybody else with a finger in the pie. The inspiration for the genesis of the IARPA program FWE (Forecasting World Events) was the intelligence failure of the 2011 Egyptian revolution. To call this a failure is not really fair to the intelligence community, because no one has ever established a track record of similar predictions to rise above random chance. Those who tried occupy a reputational graveyard shared with financial mavens.

The mathematical reason is that these are systems of chaos. With few exceptions, conventional tools of prediction  are entirely based on trend extrapolation. Chaotic systems contain points called “attractors.” A system orbits around a particular attractor for a while, lulling its observers into somnolence, until it makes a switch to another attractor. This event motivates the popular press to exhibit banner headlines with generic rubrics like “game over.” But it is never a game for those who understand the problem. It remains a perplexity.

But as “new game”, or similar, will become a staple in the popular press, does accumulation of analysis offer any benefit in understanding the bounds of the new attractor Brexit has created? This in itself is a question. Pundits are now offering diverse opinions, well aware that if they score, they become famous. If wrong, rapid public amnesia will offer the option of another shot a few years hence.

An example from the stock market illuminates. In this example, imagine that every big money investor is a pundit. On the day of an interest rate change, the market reacts. But typically, the direction of reaction reverses on the second or third day, and becomes the semi-durable trend. The analogy with Brexit consequences is immediate. The mental framework of pundits of today is neoteric. As the event recedes, the neoteric framework will be replaced by a contemporary framework. The framework will eventually become historical, until sudden rupture when the international system jumps to yet another strange attractor.

What will the “second day” of Brexit look like? The vote split is suggestive, because the young wanted to stay. Over the coming years, the trade relations of the EU economic umbrella may be substantially replaced by piecemeal agreements recapitulating the original evolution of the EU. The EU did not spring into existence. Its distant ancestor, the European Coal and Steel Community, dates to 1951. In 1957, it was joined, in tandem, by the European Common Market. These institutions, and several others, were gradually subsumed to form the EU. Supported by the firm pronouncements of nervous EU authorities, the pundits concentrate their thoughts around an immutable EU structure, with less or more members. This may not be predictive, because those authorities are themselves groping for certainty.

But stress points for subsequent fractures, as well as healing glues, can be enumerated. It’s a good time to do this, because it will help us identify emerging trends more quickly. Four kinds of interests contribute to the generic _exit debate, in play in multiple EU countries:

• Populist. Including immigration, job export, and social inequality, populism is pro-exit.
• Macroeconomic. Multinational economic interests, which have evolved for 41 years in a large market, have adapted to specific business conditions, so they are against exit. If the historical environment had been a small, protectionist market, this would not have to be the case.
• Geopolitical, represented by thinkers whose mental spaces inhabit a hostile international system. Since World War I exploded the idea that economic interdependence made warfare impossible, geopolitics and macro economics have moved in a wary, partially decoupled embrace. NATO, the world’s most powerful military alliance, is the expression of the European geopolitical imperative.
• National interest, pro exit, to be distinguished from populist by rationalism. Greece is the in-play example. In July 2015, in Oracles of Greece, I wrote that Greece will exit the euro, which has equivalence to the current question. Greece will leave because it is mathematically unaffordable to stay.

Next: The interaction of the four categories.

This is not a political blog.  But  the importance of the Clinton-Trump struggle  transcends politics. The Democratic Party has chosen someone who is actually electable, and well-schooled in the traditions of democracy and our government. Many  comparisons  have been made between the U.S. and Rome:

• Some have focused on the power that accrued to the appointed Roman dictators when the borders of the Empire came under attack.
• Others have pointed to the historical inability of all empires, most notably the British, to shed the military burden when the economic benefits of empire dwindled.
• Others have emphasized the dispossession of the plebeian farmers when Egypt became the granary of the Empire.

The spoken and documented sentiments of the electorate point to the third reason. But there has always been a rich, a middle, and a poor. Walter Lippmann’s theory of how democracies  choose wisely is based upon a pyramid of  interpretation,  so that the issues of the electorate become matters of trust, not facts.

In the case of the Republican nominee, Lippmann’s interpretive process broke down. Republican voters went straight for promises, bypassing the intellectual shield that perceives and interprets what the electorate cannot see directly. Why did it break down now?

The lesser cause is social stress, much of it of a “moral” nature, that has distracted the diligence of Republican electorate from protection of the Republic. The more direct reason is that the middle class is vanishing. Trickle-down economics did not work. And even if it did work, something remains undefined. Which is more important to political stability, the total wealth of the nation, or the way it is distributed? Polemics favor the extremes. The middle way is hard to hold, and hard to argue.

The exposure of “Trump University” may have saved American democracy for now. But the next challenge  may feature a demagogue whose  deception is more perfect. Since this blog is about prediction, let’s frame a question. How long will American democracy continue?

The stressors of democracy are three:

• Immediately, increasing income disparity.
• Climate change, and issues of a more general Malthusian nature.
• The coming technological singularity, discussed in Address to Davos.

The short of it is that the background of human existence, defined by technology, is about to tear away from human potential to follow, benefit, or adapt. This was explicitly recognized by the sponsors in Switzerland of a guaranteed income proposal, which was just rejected in referendum. We will hear more of this as the problem becomes more defined.

If the stressors acquire a unique identity in the public mind, so that they can be addressed as a public policy issue, there is a chance that remedies could prevail against special interests and conservative thinking, which, by definition, will be helpless against the Singularity. The Trump candidacy is an early warning of a kind of decay that proceeds over the time scale of a generation. One generation takes us to 2036, not far from the median prediction of the Singularity of 2040.

So, twenty years hence,  a coincidence of factors may topple American democracy. This is the kind of prediction I prefer to be wrong about.  Optimistically, the Clinton Administration may be the first to be aware of the challenge in its totality and with the intellect to politicize.

What of the face of the demagogue? Perhaps something Peronist. At least we can have a good musical.

CNN: Did ISIS attack Russian military equipment at key Syrian base?

This is asserted by STRATFOR, a reliable organization. The analysis is good. The open-source conclusion is that, Russian assertions to the contrary, the strike occurred.

The success of ISIS in damaging Base T4, at which advanced weapons were stationed, doubtless evokes the shudders of the Soviet-Afghan War. After ten years of Soviet presence approximating 100,000 soldiers, Soviet losses forced a withdrawal in February 1989.

In New Cold War, Not!, I wrote

All labels carry baggage. The Cold War label carries this: We are in conflict with a powerful, implacable enemy. But it’s not true. The canary is Syria, and the cat is going to have serious indigestion.

Since I wrote that, I have been wondering whether some of the readers of this blog would be interested in a more explicit warning as to how bad it could get. Has the Kremlin considered the consequences if one of the regional enemies they have recently made decided to supply the insurgents with MANPADs?  Three things drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan: the indigenous mujahideen, the CIA, and Stinger MANPADs.

Some of the irritation Russia has supplied to the West has been trivial, such as barrel roll intercepts of reconnaissance aircraft. Some of it has scared the West enough to spend good money, as with the five new NATO “tripwire” brigades. Some of it is just a pain in  the ass,  little pinpricks intended to erode, by infinitesimal degrees, American “hegemony.”

But with all that, the U.S. is too sane to give MANPADs to the Syrian opposition. Other regional powers, to whom the Russian presence is a more existential threat, could break the unspoken compact. ROKETSTAN, a Turkish company, manufactures Stingers under license. But even without the MANPAD complication, the Russians are now to have the experience of indigestion.

This is because the effectiveness of the opposition, whatever the composition, is not simply a matter of arms, or even politics. On a very basic level, it is the nature of an indigenous resistance to adapt, and therefore, become more efficient. One of these steps has formal recognition in the literature, the emergence of an insurgency, as happened after the American conquest of Iraq.  But as the Syrian insurgency has existed from the start, it is important to recognize other steps. Even as the military order of battle of an insurgency deteriorates, it can become more efficient through a process of evolution. As the Russians know well from their Chechen experience, the only cure for it is scorched-earth warfare with massive commitment of forces.

The Russians recently proposed, again, that Russia and the U.S. commit to joint airstrikes against ISIS. This was personally surprising. Henry Kissinger has explained that Vladimir Putin, at some point, was a client. Kissinger explains that Putin is not a friend, but that “they want to know how things work.” If some things were left unexplained,  Kissinger’s “White House Years” explains everything. It’s a big-hearted look at diplomacy that explains why this is not in the cards.

Thus far, Russian diplomacy resembles the musical pentonic scale, missing some notes to which the Western ear is accustomed. Adeptness with surgical saber thrusts is the base note. Ascending the scale,  It blusters, it threatens, and it occasionally makes nice. The “Year of Friendship” with North Korea was a nice gesture. The fifth note of the scale might be the Russian emphasis on the reliability of their friendship, as was granted to Hafez Assad in the Soviet era, apparently without restrictions on subsequent behavior.

American policy is not exempt from criticism. Failing to recognize that hope is inadequate justification for  foreign policy, it lacks a prospect for the Russians to grasp. And with their musical limitations, the Russians are apparently unable to synthesize it themselves.

The five notes of Russian foreign policy are not enough. The Kremlin must find those missing notes, stat.

There is a marked difference in the official responses to the loss of EgyptAir Flight 804, and the Sinai Metrojet disaster six months prior, discussed in this post.

A half year ago, on October 31, 2015, Russia’s  Metrojet Flight 9268 disintegrated above Sinai. Hull losses of this airplane have been extremely rare, and the weather was fine. The laxity of ground controls at Sharm-el Sheikh Airport had already been noted by some, with a “buy your way through security” policy. The  permeation of Egyptian society by radical elements is significant, though not overwhelming. So  rude statistical thinking advocated immediate adoption of a terrorism-based theory.

But even though ISIL claimed responsibility almost immediately, Egyptian and Russian pronouncements exhibited negative bias toward the hypothesis of terrorism. For both Egypt and Russia, a solution of the question in that form would have negative economic, political, and social consequences. Egypt’s Prime Minister seems more accepting of the idea for Flight 804, though still with traces of political reluctance. Quoting Reuters,

Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said it was too early to rule out any explanation for the crash, including an attack like the one blamed for bringing down a Russian airliner over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula last year.

The physical evidence in the current case is scanty. U.S. satellite imagery shows no evidence of explosion. This means only absence of

• An infrared signature indicative of  fire.
• Separation of a major structural component, such as an entire wing.

It does not rule out damage of the control systems by a small bomb. Cockpit invasion or pilot suicide are also possible, suggested by the swerving motions preceding complete loss of control.

Comparison of official reactions to the two disasters is noteworthy. Rude statistical thinking is a powerful tool in the evaluation of the extraordinary, but it is frequently  obstructed by custom or bias. Sometimes the obstruction is legal caution, which is proper. Sometimes it is political, which is not.

This is  an instance of a general human flaw, the belief-preference for the demonstrated threat over the highly plausible yet hypothetical one.

If you find the material in this blog useful, let’s talk. I am open to:

• The U.S. intelligence community and executive branch.
• The Five Eyes.
• Western academic institutions.
• Members of Congress.
• Candidates for national office.
• The press.

You may merely wish to have the posts authenticated. Perhaps you’d like some expansion on the topics. Perhaps you have a particular interest. Let’s explore. Email to contact@intel9.us. Discussions of substance require an authenticated channel other than email.

The  popularity of the two part post, Mikhail Lesin, a Kremlin Hit, has been a pleasant surprise. I would have been even happier had such enthusiasm been directed towards the five part series, Address to Davos, with  weightier concerns than whether a dubious personage got knocked on the head with an ingenious gadget in D.C.   Mikhail Lesin founded RT, for which reason my tears might be of the crocodile variety.

If you’re looking for the gadget, it is not likely to be found. Although high-tech wizbang cannot be ruled out, it might be rather simple, assembled out of common objects, and completely unrecognizable until assembled. It may consist of operator technique as much as device.

The historical root of Soviet assassination as a state tool was the Comintern, which established it as a prerogative of Soviet foreign policy, unconstrained by national boundaries. The Soviet officer in charge, Pavel Sudoplatov,  of whose autobiography Special Tasks (co authored with his son Anatoli)  I am honored to have an autographed copy, was by all accounts someone you might have wished to have as a friend, who describes himself as badly mislead into thinking that his patriotic acts were also morally correct. Sudoplatov was badly tainted by his use of the products of a lab known variously as “Laboratory 12…,13, 1”, (the numbers kept changing), the Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services, whose products were tested for efficacy on human subjects.

All this has been long abolished. But what was formerly institutional policy lingers like a bad habit. The peculiar situation by which the Russian elite park their wealth abroad has created a vast pool of sophisticates who could reach for the quasi-official and perhaps all the way to the official when a knife in the ribs is desired. Of all the unknowns that define the “Elite”,or  the “Inner Circle”, the nature and extent of this relationship is one of the most pressing. The possible involvement of Russian political leadership, the actual “nomenklatura“, is another.

Assassination is a bad habit. As with other acts of violence, it inspires imitation. Sudoplatov was convicted of crimes, none of which exceeded his actions under direct orders, and served fifteen years in prison. The Soviets themselves were so afraid of him, early release was not contemplated. By Sudoplatov’s account, his latter interrogator was astonished when told that every assassination had been meticulously documented, and was part of the record. It is likely that even members of the Russian government are scared this could get out of hand. You cannot build a civilized nation on extrajudicial slayings. The ghosts move the hands of the living to perpetuate the horror.

Soviet adeptness with domestic propaganda lead to their belief that the image constructed by Western minds of Russia can be managed. With post Soviet Russia these manipulations have had  modest success, sometimes causing Western reaction in the desired direction, and sometimes in the reverse. If the “Inner Circle” thinks assassination has a tolerable cost, it is a consequence of the successes.

Russian overconfidence in the management of Western perceptions entails the risk of dangerous  miscalculation. It is the best justification of the resources  consumed by investigations of possible assassinations. Since Russia remains a partly open society, their understanding that we understand them may be profoundly beneficial to how they understand themselves.

Let us pretend that we have established that Lesin was assassinated, but have no idea who did it. We would do what all detectives did before DNA testing: look for motive.

Lesin was a former advisor to Putin. Almost by definition, he possessed knowledge exceedingly dangerous to individuals in the Kremlin. The Daily Mail claims a Panama leak connection: “Murdered over money? Panama leaks reveal that Putin’s former media chief who died in a Washington hotel room was linked to offshore company ‘used by the Russian leader'”.

Quoting another Daily Mail article “Yet some 16 months earlier, Senator Roger Wicker had called for a Justice Department probe into whether Lesin was engaged in money laundering.” Quoting further,

Former Russian vice premier Alfred Kokh openly asked this week whether Lesin could have been murdered – like a new Alexander Litvinenko, a Putin foe poisoned by radioactive polonium poured into his tea in London nine years ago.

Kokh spoke amid fears in Moscow that he was ready to trade his inside knowledge of the Putin court for an end to any American investigation into the propriety of his wealth.

Was Lesin of such character that he could have provided assurances to the Kremlin that he would not turn coat?

• He was a heavy drinker.
• He was prone to antisocial outbursts.
• He was in Washington, which according to Kokh is a very boring town. Quoting The Daily Mail, “Questioning why Putin’s former media manipulator was in the US capital, Kokh asked in an online posting: ‘What’s so interesting about Washington? I’ve been there quite a few times. ‘And I’d answer – nothing. At all. It’s a boring city without a touch of spice.'”

Since the Russians possess more sophisticated means of assassination, such as nominally undetectable poisons, why was Lesin  beaten? And it has been asked, if Lesin was murdered, why in Washington and not in Russia, where he had recently been? Lesin had been exporting his wealth, removing an important lever of behavioral control. A compatible answer is that it was intended to be a visceral warning to all expatriates: Russia can reach you.

It may have been technologically sophisticated. Since the full knowledge of the coroner is not available in open source, only speculative examples can be given.  Lesin’s encounter with an assassin could have been not inside his room, but elsewhere. A subdural hematoma, caused  by a hypothetical  gadget, could produce an immediate feeling of only mild illness, allowing Lesin to retreat to his room. But such hematomas, untreated, tend to cause death within hours.

The theory incorporates a number of reasoning techniques, which sum to what is called a suspicion. Productive use of this combination of techniques has not been formalized, and it should be. The ability of the individual to execute a theory of this type varies widely. Dysrationalia is common. But it seems that the construction of  a theory of suspicion has these characteristics:

• Postulates  of low quality, so that individually, they have a high probability of being false.
• High internal consistency.
• A  structure that results in a theory with a higher level of confidence than isolated consideration of the individual postulates. It occurs when consistency implies dependency.  Part of this is analogous to Feynman diagrams of physics: The chance of arriving at a state is the sum of all the ways of getting there.
• Global clauses that, while not linked in any specific way, bias the probabilities. Example:  “They’ve done this sort of thing before.”

If I were not a game player, and were asked to assign a probability to the truth of the theory, I might say slightly better than chance. But I have been a game player, in the IARPA program/competition FWE (Forcasting World Events), in 2013-2014. The game was so constructed that to improve one’s score, one had to assign a probability, either positive or negative, higher than one’s cumulative average. Mine was 80.535, with a rank of #9/4460. To use this question to improve my score, I would have to assign high certainty to my prediction.

In the IARPA/FWE frame of mind, how would I grade the theory that this hit came from the Kremlin? Better than 90%. Perhaps you would then ask, what is my estimate that Vladimir Putin approved the killing? Solely to maintain my score, I would exercise the other FWE option, to decline the question.

The dynamics of the Kremlin are far more complex than one might suppose. There is a popular desire to use events such as these for political purposes. The event of Lesin’s death/murder is vulnerable to this, because so little is known, at least in open sources, about the inner workings of the Kremlin. Only preciously obtained human intelligence can reveal it. What is revealed is guarded with the strictest secrecy, or the sources would not last long.

Putin’s rule is a mixture of persuasion, compulsion, and consent of the ruled. Every mold of rule has different implications. If we decide he is a tribal chieftain, then he is surrounded by a circle of confidants and confidence. If it should break down, the chieftain is deposed. The chieftain is obliged to protect. If someone demands protection, what does he do?

So the question posed as, “Did Putin order the killing of Lesin?” is the wrong question. The correct question is to understand the entire process of decision, of who was pressured, who was threatened, who encouraged, and who acquiesced. And although it has never been feasible to stop assassinations on American soil, we want to understand the execution.

We want to understand these things because knowledge is power, not mere political capital.

Mikhail Lesin, former Kremlin advisor, was found dead in a Washington hotel room in November. The determinations of the Washington medical examiner were a long time coming. Quoting NBC News,

Autopsy results show that he died from “blunt-force injuries of the head,” according to a joint statement Thursday from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and Office of the Chief Medical Examiner reported by NBC Washington, but the exact manner of death was undetermined. Also contributing to his death were “blunt-force injuries of the neck, torso, upper extremities and lower extremities,” the statement said.

In street lingo, this says he was beaten to death. But quoting the Washington Post, “Dustin Sternbeck, the D.C. police department’s chief spokesman, said the case remains under investigation. He would not say whether the medical examiner’s ruling means a crime may have been committed.”

If Mikhail Lesin were a sufficiently interesting person, if he were more a good guy than he was, his somewhat mysterious death would spawn a frenzy of conspiracy theories. The error of the conspiracist is to assume that anything that possibly happened, happened. But the event is interesting enough to spawn a theory. So that I don’t have to put a qualifier in each sentence, please assume that in what follows, it is already there. What follows is not a deduction of facts, but a theory with the virtues of two kinds of consistency: with the facts, and of internal logic.

So  let us proceed. The language and conclusions are unusually cautious. The street interpretation of the coroner’s report is that Lesin was beaten to death.  Let us not hasten to conclude that the coroner’s office held back for political reasons. Forensics is an exceedingly developed science.  The corpse has doubtless been examined in almost microscopic detail, characterizing tissue injuries and post-death flows of blood. The picture of foul play is challenged by the absence of signs of forced entry. So to conclude that Lesin was beaten to death, that process, with all the physical postures Lesin assumed, as well as those of the hypothetical attacker, would need to be rigorously reconstructed.

If the reconstruction doesn’t cohere,  all that’s left are the the bruises, but not the order in which they occurred, or what Lesin and the possible assailant were doing. We could conclude that Lesin danced around his hotel room, banging into things until he was dead. This, of course, is ridiculous.

Because it is ridiculous, the coroner’s indecision has meaning. Choices:

• There is genuine confusion in the coroner’s office. Non supportive to the theory. 
• There is  enough to conclude that Lesin was beaten to death, but not enough to reconstruct the crime. Non supportive to the theory. 
•  The scene has been reconstructed, but deliberately not disclosed. An interesting reason exists. Suppose it was a Kremlin job.  Regardless of whether the job was executed by a Russian state employee, or a freelancer, the Russians would want a report card. A coroner’s reconstruction of the crime serves as that report card, enabling the perpetrators to refine their techniques. Supportive to the theory. 

If you’re frustrated with the coroner’s report, so are the Russians. Quoting NBC,

The Russian embassy in the United States has repeatedly requested through diplomatic channels concerning the investigation into the death of a Russian citizen,” spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said…The American side did not provide us with any substantial information. We’re awaiting explanations and official information from Washington concerning the progress of the investigation.

And this is congruent with suspicion of the Russians.

The KGB had great expertise in the art of undetectable murder. Their talents have not been lost. The same goes for undetectable entry into the hotel room. In spy parlance, this is called a “black bag job.” We are almost done with the meager evidence of an actual crime. But there is one more thing.  Quoting the NY Times, “And then, in November, he was found in a hotel here in Washington, the victim, the Russian state media he had helped build said, of a heart attack.” No domestic U.S. report, from EMT responders, cops, or the coroner’s office offers it as a cause. So why did Russian media report this? There are two possibilities:

• It was the planned response to a successful assassination.
• The alternative is  provided by the Washington Post: “Citing his long-term illnesses, family members told Russian news media in November that they thought Lesin had suffered a heart attack.” This is contrary to the practice of U.S. and other western media, who rely on official sources for this kind of information. The family members may have been coached.

Next: Motive, and Grading the Theory.