Has Putin Struck Again -- This Time In US?

Have the defenders of Vladamir Putin's name gone beyond gunfire in Moscow and Polonium in London in their retaliation against Putin's critics and brought their violence to the US? The National Terror Alert reports:

FBI agents say they are assisting police in suburban Washington who are investigating the shooting of a Russian expert a man who spoke out on “Dateline NBC” last weekend and strongly suggested that remnants of the KGB were responsible for the bizarre poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko.

Officials said Paul Joyal was walking up his driveway on Lackawanna Street at about 7:30 p.m. when he was confronted by two men and shot. He was taken to an area hospital in serious condition.

Neighbors said police responded quickly to the shooting.

Nothing appears to have been taken from Joyal and a witness claimed to have heard one of the men tell the other man to go ahead and shoot Joyal.

Earlier, at about 6 p.m., Joyal met his friend, Oleg Kalugin, at the Spy Museum. Kalugin, an ex-KGB general, is an advisory director of the museum. After he was shot, Joyal told his wife to call Kalugin to tell him about the shooting, sources told Collins.

Joyal was an acquaintance of Polonium victim Alexander Litvinenko, so conclusion-drawing is good sport in this story. In its report, Al Jaaz comes even closer to implicating Putin:

In an interview broadcast last Sunday on 'Dateline NBC', Joyal had accused the Russian government of trying to silence its critics.

"A message has been communicated to anyone who wants to speak out against the Kremlin: If you do, no matter who you are, where you are, we will find you, and we will silence you - in the most horrible way possible," Joyal said.

The National Terror Alert report also mentions that another participant in the Dateline story has died suddenly and unexpectedly:

In a strange twist, another man who also appeared on the “Dateline” broadcast died of a heart attack last month. Reporter Daniel McGrory of the Times of London, who has written about the Litvinenko case, died Feb. 20, before the “Dateline” segment was broadcast. He was 54. His family said he “died suddenly at home."

There's a lot left to be investigated in this story, but how long will leaders of the West continue to treat Putin, who WaPo described in an editorial today as a "Gangster President," as a peer and not the leader of the world's foremost Mafiacracy?