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It was a full 19 minutes before Wahl resigned. Inside the offices of the Foreign Policy Initiative, a neoconservative think tank in Washington D.C., a staffer logged on to the group’s Twitter account to announce the following:

“#WordOnTheStreet says that something big might happen on RT in about 20-25 minutes.”

Then, at 5:16, exactly 10 minutes before Wahl would quit on air, FPI tweeted:

“#WordOnTheStreet says you’re really going to want to tune in to RT: http://rt.com/on-air/rt-america-air/#SomethinBigMayBeGoingDown”

Up until two minutes before Wahl’s resignation, FPI took to Twitter again to urge its followers to tune in to RT.

And finally, at 5:26 p.m., at the very moment Wahl quit, FPI’s Twitter account broke the news: “RT Anchor RESIGNS ON AIR. She ‘cannot be part of a network that whitewashes the actions of Putin.’ ”

The tweets from FPI suggested a direct level of coordination between Wahl and the neoconservative think tank. Several calls to FPI for this story were not answered.

Just over an hour later, an exclusive interview with Wahl appeared at The Daily Beast. It was authored by James Kirchick, a 31-year-old writer whose work has appeared in publications from the neoconservative Commentary to the liberal Israeli paper Haaretz.

Kirchick acknowledged having been in contact with Wahl since August, but cast himself as a passive bystander to the spectacle, claiming that they merely “stayed in touch periodically over the past 6 months, and I always encouraged her to follow her conscience in making a decision about her professional future.”

Kirchick wrote that by quitting, Wahl paid “the price real reporters—not Russian-government funded propagandists—have to pay if they are concerned with quaint notions like objectivity and the truth.”

Later that evening, Kirchick tweeted a photo of himself with Wahl, calling it a “Freedom selfie.” The two had apparently gathered to celebrate.

On March 7, Kirchick and a camera person stationed themselves outside the office building on D.C.’s G Street housing RT America’s headquarters. On a self-proclaimed mission “to find out more about RT,” he badgered dozens of random passers-by with questions like the following: “What is a more appropriate punishment for the women of Pussy Riot: two years in a Siberian labor camp or public whipping by Cossacks?”

Kirchick says RT staffers called the D.C. police department to remove him from the premises. However, several RT staffers told us that a security guard notified the police because Kirchick had mistaken employees at two adjacent law firms for employees of RT—“the wannabe thugs at 1325 G St,” he called them—and began harassing them. (An update inserted at the bottom of The Daily Beast summary of the incident noted that it was building security and not RT staffers who called the D.C. police.)

So who was Kirchick, and what sort of commitment did he maintain to “objectivity and the truth?”
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As an american working RT, and someone who knew Liz Wahl pretty well, in and out of the office--- I can say that A. nothing about Liz's resignation had anything to do with Russia/ Putin/ or the new formation of eastern block countries. Liz (from a local news channel) was given a great deal of editoral freedom at RT. She tried to leave RT after a failed attempt at bullying bosses over a pay raise months before the on air stunt. They wouldn't give her a pay raise. She wouldn't come in the office for days on end out of "protest"... She applied for other jobs, she couldn't get one. She knew that Jamie had gotten AC 360 after his "display" on air, and that Abbie got Piers, after voicing her opinions. Whomever hires her going forward, one thing is clear--- this behavior has nothing to do with Russia, and probably won't stop if employed at a US or other non-Russian media outlet. It has to do with money, and fame-- of course, what else?