New in SpyWeek: Frog Poison Killed Navalny, More Gabbard-Russia, Havana Syndrome test, Covert Action in Iran
Also: Bondi on domestic terrorism, Russian and Chinese agents jailed, AI in the Maduro raid, more
Murder They Said: The foreign ministries of the U.K., France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands announced Saturday in London that an analysis of tissue samples from the body of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny “conclusively confirmed the presence of epibatidine,” a neurotoxin secreted by dart frogs in South America that “is not found naturally in Russia.” In other words, Vladimir Putin’s agents had manufactured and employed it to murder Navalny. “Russia had the means, motive and opportunity to administer this poison,” said their joint statement.
Havana Syndrome: Add this wrinkle to the continuing mystery over Anomalous Health Incidents, or AHI, the crippling sensation of “pulsed energy” attacks that have debilitated scores of U.S. diplomats, spies and other government employees: A government scientist in Norway, described as a skeptic of such attacks, “built a machine capable of emitting powerful pulses of microwave energy and, in an effort to prove such devices are harmless to humans, in 2024 tested it on himself,” The Washington Post’s Warren P. Strobel and Ellen Nakashima exclusively reported Saturday.
