This is from the book "We Are Bellingcat" by Eliot Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat, an investigative website specializing in open-source intelligence:
Maks Czuperski, a young staffer at the Atlantic Council, the influential Washington-based think tank, knew of my work on Syria and Russia, and asked me if Bellingcat would embark on a joint project with them. This, I realized, could provide the boost that we wanted, showing the powerful figures who circulated around the Atlantic Council that we were more than online amateurs.
Our first collaboration was a major report in May 2015, "Hiding in Plain Sight: Putin's War in Ukraine," about Russia's direct military involvement in eastern Ukraine. The work made waves, and soon I was traveling the globe explaining these findings and what exactly Bellingcat did.
Two other major Atlantic Council report followed: "Distract Deceive Destroy: Putin at War in Syria" and "Breaking Aleppo," about the Assad regime's devastation of the city. Another consequence of my period as a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council was our creation of the Digital Forensic Research Lab, today a leading incubator of open-source innovation, with its annual "Digital Sherlock" summit bringing together online sleuths from the around world.
Here is a link to the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRL) and here is the site for DigitalSherlocks.
The book also that that Andy Carvin, who is a senior fellow at the DRFL, got nightmares and panic attacks from the work he did and was eventually diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
