On the menu today: Today is the three-year anniversary of Hamas’s brutal, bloody terrorist attack on Israel. Shabbos Kestenbaum, Shay Khatiri, and Noah Rothman have you covered. Elsewhere in the world, a U.S. researcher who worked closely with the World Health Organization contends, “Clearly, on its face, the [anti-plague research] lab [in Irkutsk] was conducting extremely high-risk research and using shoddy biosafety measures.” And who was August Hanning, who headed up Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, really working for? Apparently, not the Germans. Read on.
Not Again
The World Health Organization finally offered a brief statement about the dead Russian plague researcher; CNN reported this morning:
“If they’re not transparent, if they’re not open to independent accountability, how is it possible to trust the Kremlin is telling us the full and accurate information?” said Lawrence Gostin, a global health law professor at Georgetown University who has worked closely with WHO. “Clearly, on its face, the lab was conducting extremely high-risk research and using shoddy biosafety measures.”
“Extremely high-risk research and using shoddy biosafety measures.” Boy, where have we heard terms like that before?
There are file photos of the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia. One features scientists working at cubicle-like stations with plastic shielding on three sides of their work stations . . . but not the top or the fourth side.
Say, fellas, what do you do if an airborne pathogen you’re working on is carried by air currents up or behind you?
Then there’s this secondhand report from the U.K. Independent: “Independent regional news outlet Lyudi Baikal reported that a second individual with symptoms of severe pulmonary distress had died at an Irkutsk regional medical facility. The report has not been independently verified.”
Russia informed the World Health Organization about the death of a laboratory worker at a Siberian plague research institute last week in line with established procedures, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday, accusing the media of providing false information about the case.
Peskov was commenting on an ABC News report that the United States had lodged a formal diplomatic complaint over Russia’s handling of the reported death, urging Moscow to provide greater transparency about the incident.
The laboratory worker fell ill and died in undisclosed circumstances, prompting authorities to quarantine dozens of people and dispatch the head of Russia’s health watchdog to the Irkutsk region.
Peskov said much of the reporting surrounding the incident was false and that people should rely on information released by state health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor.
There are few governments on earth that can plausibly say, “trust us,” when it comes to something this consequential, and the Russian government must be in the bottom five of the 195 on this planet. As President Ronald Reagan used to say, doveryai, no proveryai — “trust but verify.”
Is it possible that a seemingly healthy 28-year-old woman who worked with plague could suddenly drop dead from a “pneumonia of unknown etiology” that is completely unrelated to her work? Yes. Is it particularly likely? No; the death rate for pneumonia for adults is extremely low, indistinguishable from zero on most charts. Pneumonia is more likely to kill an immunocompromised patient . . . but if you’re immunocompromised, you really, really, really should not be working with samples of contagious pathogens at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia.
Meanwhile, the U.S. embassy in Russia issued a health alert, stating it is “aware of press reports from the Irkutsk region of suspected pneumonic plague resulting in the death of an individual and of associated quarantine measures in, and closures of, hospitals in Irkutsk. We continue to track the situation closely. The U.S. government has limited ability to help U.S. citizens in Russia, especially outside of Moscow. U.S. government personnel may face additional restrictions for personal and official travel to specific regions due to health and security concerns.”
The good news is that quarantines, mass sickness, and panic are hard to hide. Our surveillance satellites and perhaps other countries’ as well are continuously watching Russia, as large as it is. The U.S. has at least 246 known military satellites, and it is extremely likely that by now the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office — a.k.a, “that other NRO” — is watching Irkutsk closely. The number of cars in hospital parking lots, regular vehicle traffic, foot traffic, whether or not kids are going to school, military and police checkpoints — all of this can be seen from above. And that’s not even counting commercial satellites looking down at the earth.
There are also live cameras from within the city, as mentioned in Monday’s edition of this newsletter. I notice the U.K. Express runs the frightening headline, “CCTV cameras show inside Russian city on ‘lockdown’ after plague outbreak” while the article says, “Live cameras from inside Irkutsk show people going about their lives on Tuesday afternoon (October 6). Residents can be seen walking the streets while vehicles populate the local roads and car parks.” Yeah, that doesn’t sound like much of a lockdown.
Euronews is broadcasting man-on-the-street interviews from Irkutsk. One young man says (through a translator), “It’s not that they’re saying much. I just think that if it were really that serious, they would have shut everything down by now.”
As Norm Macdonald Used to Say, ‘Or So the Germans Would Have Us Believe’
It’s a world-class intelligence coup if you can get another country’s spy chief to work for you as a spy. If prosecutors in Germany are right, some other country managed to do that with August Hanning, who headed up that country’s Federal Intelligence Service. The summary from Deutsche Welle, a German state-funded television network:
August Hanning, former head of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), has been arrested, with the federal prosecutor accusing him of espionage, treason and attempted treason.
August Hanning, now 80, headed the BND from 1998 to 2005. But even before then, he had enjoyed a meteoric rise within the security apparatus. After leaving the BND, he served as state secretary in the Federal Interior Ministry, then moved into the private sector and worked as a security consultant.
According to the federal prosecutor’s office, his informant was his former chief-of-staff, named in the statement only as Manfred D.*, who went on to hold this position under Hanning’s successors from March 2012 to March 2026. D. thus had access to a great deal of classified information. . . .
The most serious allegation is that Hanning is said to have maintained close contact with an employee of a foreign intelligence service for years and to have leaked classified information to him. It is not known which country was involved, but reports say it is not Russia.
Russia would have been my first guess; former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder left office and almost immediately started working for Russian state-owned energy companies, including Nord Stream AG, Rosneft, and Gazprom, getting paid almost $1 million per year. (Just this week, Schröder joined the board of Hyperglobus, the Russian arm of the German superstore chain Globus.)
For what it’s worth, the German magazine Bild had other details that contradict the claim in Deutsche Welle:
Authorities are also examining whether Hanning passed intelligence to China or Russia, countries with which Bild said he maintained direct contacts. The newspaper reported that highly sensitive documents concerning Iran’s nuclear program and the Russian military were among the materials found in his possession.
Back in 2023, the German magazine Der Speigel did a report on Hanning’s ties to banks in Latvia and a consulting firm with ties to Russia. Yesterday, Der Speigel reported, “According to SPIEGEL information, the alleged client was the Azerbaijani intelligence officer. Whether the analysis prepared by Hanning actually reached its intended recipient is therefore the subject of ongoing investigations.” Hanning had served on the board of the “German-Azerbaijani Forum, a non-partisan platform for promoting relations between Germany and Azerbaijan.”
The Azerbaijani government denied the report, but . . . let’s face it, it’s not like they were going to say, “Oh yeah, that was us. We had him in our pocket the whole time.”
ADDENDUM: I’m a live-and-let-live guy, but like Luther Abel, I am not a fan of those 15-foot skeletons that appear earlier and earlier in front of houses in autumn.