Putin’s Assassination Targets Revealed in Declassified Memo
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has released a long-classified memorandum shedding light on the targeted killings of Vladimir Putin’s political adversaries, following nearly eight years of persistent public records efforts.
Alexander Litvinenko lies in a hospital bed at the Intensive Care Unit of University College Hospital in London, on Nov. 20, 2006. Litvinenko, a critic of the Kremlin who lived in the U.K. capital, died about three weeks after ingesting radioactive polonium.
Photographer: Natasja Weitsz/Getty Images
Happy FOIA Friday! I’m excited about the documents that anchor this week’s FOIA Files. After nearly eight years of painstaking public records work, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declassified a closely guarded memorandum related to the targeted assassinations of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s political foes. It’s a huge score. If you’re not already getting FOIA Files in your inbox, sign up here.
Prominent critics of the Kremlin, and Putin in particular, seem to have a terrible habit of dropping dead under very suspicious circumstances. Some fall out of windows, bludgeon themselves to death, are poisoned or are said to have committed suicide in ways that defy logic. Anonymous US intelligence officials have long said they suspected that some of the mysterious deaths over the years were part of a campaign by Putin to assassinate his enemies. But internal US government documents that contained such explicit assertions have never really surfaced. Until now.