Pentagon Report Claims Vladimir Putin May Have Asperger’s Syndrome

USA Today has uncovered a 2008 Pentagon report that claims Russian President Vladimir Putin has exhibited symptoms of Asperger’s syndrome, which is a form of autism. The Office of Net Assessment (ONA), a Pentagon think tank, compiled the report.

Brenda Connors, an expert in movement pattern analysis, said Putin’s “neurological development was significantly interrupted in infancy,” and his movements show “that the Russian President carries a neurological abnormality.”

From USA Today:

Researchers can’t prove their theory about Putin and Asperger’s, the report said, because they were not able to perform a brain scan on the Russian president. The report cites work by autism specialists as backing their findings. It is not known whether the research has been acted on by Pentagon or administration officials.

The 2008 report cites Dr. Stephen Porges, who is now a University of North Carolina psychiatry professor, as concluding that “Putin carries a form of autism.” However, Porges said Wednesday he had never seen the finished report and “would back off saying he has Asperger’s.”

Porges said officials need to interact with Putin in “quieter settings” since his “behavior and facial expressions reveal someone who is defensive in large social settings.”

“If you need to do things with him, you don’t want to be in a big state affair but more of one-on-one situation someplace quiet,” he claimed.

Multiple personal accusations have plagued Putin this week. Declarations made in 2006 by ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko—months before dying of radiation poisoning, surfaced this week accusing Putin of being a pedophile after he kissed a young boy’s stomach in public. Litvinenko claimed people who knew Putin at the Andropov Institute, a training ground for future KGB agents, said Putin was a pedophile. This is the reason why bosses did not accept him into foreign intelligence, which “was a very unusual twist for a career of an Andropov Institute’s graduate with fluent German.”

Then Litvinenko wrote that Putin destroyed all evidence against him when he was the Federal Security Service (FSB) director, the organization that replaced the KGB after the Soviet Union fell. He “found videotapes in the FSB Internal Security Directorate, which showed him making sex with some underage boys.” Litvinenko provided no direct evidence to prove his accusations before his death.

Litvinenko died on November 23, 2006 from radiation poisoning after he met with ex-KGB agents Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoy. The United Kingdom opened a public inquiry into his death with the two men as prime suspects. Litvinenko’s widow testified in court on Monday.

From The Daily Mail:

In her evidence at a public inquiry into her husband’s death yesterday, Mr Litvinenko’s widow Marina said: ‘It was written in 2006 after everybody saw how Putin behaved when he met a little boy in a Kremlin tour group. He went under his t-shirt and kissed his stomach.’

Robin Tam QC, counsel to the inquiry, said: ‘You have no idea if that allegation is true?’ Mrs Litvinenko replied: ‘No, I have no idea.’

She also agreed that making the allegation in a public forum was ‘not the way to go about making friends’ with Mr Putin.