There is a new growth within the yearslong worldwide thriller over Havana Syndrome: The U.S. has obtained and has been testing a tool that officers consider may very well be linked to the debilitating situation.
Sources mentioned the system was quietly obtained by the Division of Homeland Safety in late 2024, virtually a decade after signs of what turned referred to as Havana Syndrome had been first reported by U.S. embassy personnel in Cuba. The Pentagon has since been testing the transportable, backpack-sized system, which emits pulsed, radio-frequency power and comprises parts of Russian origin.
The sources mentioned Homeland Safety investigators consider it could be able to reproducing the results described by victims of Havana Syndrome. The Pentagon and DHS didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark, and the CIA declined to remark.
This is what to know concerning the mysterious sickness.
“My mind is damaged”
The time period Havana Syndrome is derived from the instances first reported by U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers in Cuba’s capital. After the U.S. embassy opened there in 2015, media shops began reporting on unusual medical signs affecting U.S. embassy personnel working within the nation: dizziness, fatigue, reminiscence issues and impaired imaginative and prescient. Different symptom embody nausea, migraines, head stress, vertigo and ringing or popping sensations within the ears.
Many individuals with Havana Syndrome describe listening to an intensely high-pitched, painful sound that appeared to subside after they moved to a different location, with results so extreme for some that they had been finally compelled to depart their jobs.
“My mind is damaged,” former CIA analyst Erika Stith advised CBS Information in 2022.
“We acquired this on account of serving our nation. And we need to be taken care of,” she mentioned.
The U.S. authorities refers back to the instances as “anomalous well being incidents,” or AHIs, and officers haven’t confirmed what brought about them.
However “60 Minutes” has spoken with consultants who consider the incidents contain focused sonic or microwave assaults.
A lot of these affected consider that they had been wounded by a secret weapon that fires a high-energy beam of microwaves or ultrasound.
Some Havana Syndrome victims have spent greater than a decade making an attempt to attract consideration to their instances, typically faulting the federal government for failing to supply sufficient assist or entry to specialised medical care.
Who has been affected?
Greater than 1,500 U.S. officers have reported experiencing the situation since 2016, together with White Home employees, CIA officers, FBI brokers, army officers and their households. Circumstances have emerged in dozens of nations, and have even been reported in Washington, D.C.
In 2021, a Havana Syndrome-style incident was reported in Vietnam shortly earlier than then-Vice President Kamala Harris visited Hanoi. The U.S. embassy there mentioned on the time {that a} “potential anomalous well being incident” required at the very least one official to be evacuated for medical care, and it prompted Harris to delay her arrival.
“60 Minutes” later discovered that 11 individuals reported being stricken: two officers on the U.S. embassy in Hanoi and 9 others who had been a part of a Protection Division group making ready for Harris’ go to. Whereas Harris was unhurt, a few of the injured U.S. personnel had been medevac’ed out of Vietnam.
In one other case, a State Division safety officer who labored within the U.S. consulate in Guangzhou, China, advised “60 Minutes” that he and his spouse began having signs after listening to weird sounds of their house in 2017.
The safety officer, Mark Lenzi, described the sound as a “marble” circling down a “steel funnel” and mentioned he heard it 4 instances — at all times in the identical spot on the identical time of day: above his son’s crib when he put him to mattress at night time. He described the sound as “pretty loud” and like nothing he’d heard earlier than. He and his spouse started to really feel in poor health shortly after listening to the sounds.
Lenzi mentioned he believed he was focused as a result of his work utilizing top-secret gear to research digital threats to diplomatic missions.
“This was a directed standoff assault in opposition to my house…it was a weapon,” he advised correspondent Scott Pelley. “I consider it is RF, radio frequency power, within the microwave vary.”
Questions on Russia’s potential function
“60 Minutes” reported in mid-2024 on a significant growth within the Havana Syndrome investigation: a suspected hyperlink between assaults in Tbilisi, Georgia, and a top-secret Russian intelligence unit, in addition to proof {that a} dependable supply known as “a receipt” for acoustic weapons testing executed by the identical intelligence unit.
Lt. Col. Greg Edgreen, a retired Military lieutenant colonel who led the Pentagon investigation into these incidents, advised “60 Minutes” on the time that he was assured that Russia was behind these assaults, and that they had been a part of a worldwide marketing campaign to neutralize U.S. officers.
“If my mom had seen what I noticed, she would say, ‘It is the Russians, silly,'” Edgreen mentioned.
U.S. assessments
A U.S. intelligence evaluation launched in 2023 by the Workplace of the Director of Nationwide Intelligence discovered it was “not possible” {that a} international adversary was answerable for the sicknesses — a conclusion reaffirmed in an up to date evaluate launched a yr in the past. That evaluate discovered that a lot of the intelligence group continued to view international involvement as extremely inconceivable.
Two companies, nonetheless, revised their positions, saying there was a “roughly even likelihood” {that a} international adversary had developed a tool able to harming American officers and their households, whereas stopping wanting linking such a tool on to the reported AHIs.
In 2024, the Home Intelligence Committee concluded in a report that the 2023 evaluation by the Workplace of the Director of Nationwide Intelligence “lacked analytic integrity and was extremely irregular in its formulation.” The report mentioned it “seems more and more seemingly {that a} international adversary is behind some instances of what officers consult with as “anomalous well being incidents.”
The Workplace of the Director of Nationwide Intelligence says it has been conducting a evaluate of the intelligence group’s earlier investigations of the incidents and “stays dedicated to sharing findings” with the American public when it is full.
Former senior CIA intelligence officer Marc Polymeropoulos mentioned that “a brand new, full analytic evaluate is now warranted, and the DNI should name for one.”
Polymeropoulos, who has spoken publicly of the signs he suffered after he mentioned he was stricken in Moscow in 2017, criticized the companies for what he mentioned had been disingenuous prior inquiries.
“The CIA at all times claimed that none of this expertise even existed, {that a} system did not exist, and so they primarily based their [assessments] on this,” he mentioned, “so their whole analytic assumptions at the moment are blown up.”
