 The Pentagon has studied and researched the “body movements” of Russian President Vladimir Putin twice over the past six years in an effort to predict his future decisions and actions, defense officials revealed Friday. The "Body Leads" project backed by the Office of Net Assessment (ONA), the think tank reporting to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, uses the principles of movement pattern analysis to predict how leaders will act. U.S. policymakers are seeking any advantage they can find as they try to anticipate Putin, who in the past week has ordered Russian troops into neighboring Ukraine and laid claim to the Crimea Peninsula. Since 2009, the Pentagon expanded the program and has paid $300,000 to outside contract researchers to study body movements of various world figures in an effort to determine their truthfulness and how they may react or what decisions they may make in a variety of circumstances. The program called the “Body Leads Project” released a 2008 report entitled “Movement, The Brain and Decision-making, the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin." Connors acknowledged her work on Putin and other leaders, but declined comment and referred all questions to Hagel's office. Pentagon officials declined to comment on the record about the program, but confirmed ONA's involvement and that Putin was among the foreign leaders studied. Last week, the war college announced Rende had received another no-bid contract to study "movement analysis relative to human development and the brain and decision-making" as part of the Body Leads project. For the latest Washington news, follow @wsjpolitics 
 
 
 
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– How to figure out what Vladimir Putin might be up to next? You might stare into his eyes to plumb his soul, as George W. Bush famously did. Or you can spend serious money to study his body language, as the Pentagon has done. Defense officials confirmed yesterday that they've commissioned two such studies, one in 2008 and the other in 2012, reports NBC News. In fact, the Pentagon has shelled out $300,000 since 2009 to study the body movements of Putin and other world figures, though no Americans are among them. It's called the "Body Leads" project, and USA Today explains that it builds off research that first emerged in the 1940s. Here's a taste: Researchers "believed each individual has a unique 'body signature' consisting of how one body movement links to the next. These 'posture/gesture mergers' can lead investigators to learn more about a person's thinking processes and relative truthfulness when matched with what the person says." Sound a little strange? Apparently, the Pentagon itself thinks so. The studies "have not informed any policy decisions of the Department of Defense,” the Pentagon's press secretary insisted yesterday. He added that defense chief Chuck Hagel hasn't read the studies of Putin, notes the Wall Street Journal.