Can the Pentagon really tell if Putin is autistic?

The CAPPB report on Sadat was unsubtly titled “Sadat’s Messiah Complex” (retitled for Carter “Sadat’s Nobel Prize Complex”); what made him tick was his view of himself “as a grand strategist.” Carter and Kissinger played to that impulse. “I always had the impression that he looked on himself as inheriting the mantle of authority from the great pharaohs, and was convinced that he was a man of destiny,” Carter wrote.

In 1990, the House Armed Services Committee heard about another “messiah” when Post presented to it a psychological profile of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Post rejected the label of Hussein as “the madman of the Middle East,” stating that his record revealed “a judicious political calculator, who is by no means irrational, but is dangerous to the extreme,” on account of a “constellation” of disturbing traits: “messianic ambition for unlimited power, absence of conscience, unconstrained aggression, and a paranoid outlook.” Post predicted that Saddam, if “backed into a corner,” would come to “a tragic and bloody final act.”

Using similar techniques — a close examination of body language, speech patterns, biographical facts, and much more — the Pentagon has profiled Moammar Qaddafi, the former dictator of Libya; Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, and North Korea’s Kim Jong-il (and no doubt his son — particularly in light of recent events). Those profiles, and presumably many others, remain classified.