The New York Review of Books says it has found the mysterious Misha. Mikhail Allakhverdov says he's no Svengali

When Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev's family members started mentioning a mysterious man named Misha, and suggested he was a driving force behind Tamerlan's descent into radical, violent Islam, it didn't seem like it should be too hard to find the man: How many balding, red-bearded Armenian Muslim converts live in the Boston area?

Then days passed, with no news but lots of speculation. Many Armenians protested that no such figure could exist, since the stalwartly Christian nation's bloody history with its Muslim neighbors would prevent any Armenian from converting to Islam. In The Week, Walter Katz suggested that Misha may be an FBI informant who started grooming Tamerlan for a federal sting operation before giving up (prematurely).

On Saturday, anonymous law enforcement sources released a dribble of news: The FBI had identified Misha, they told The Associated Press, but found he had no ties to terrorism generally or the Boston bombings specifically. On Sunday evening, Christian Caryl at the New York Review of Books introduced the world to the man he says is Misha:
http://news.yahoo.com/boston-bombings-misha-red-herring-070000283.html