In 2015, U.S. diplomats living in Havana began to report alarming symptoms, including headaches, nosebleeds, confusion, and other neurological symptoms that no one could explain.
Thus was born "Havana Syndrome," and the controversy stirred by the issue over the last decade has probably delighted Russia and China even though they almost certainly had nothing to do with it.
I've been following this story for three years now and have reported on the various explanations and theories trotted out by the government and scientists. Slowly, through the process of elimination, the government has whittled down the list of possible explanations.
At first, the government believed the diplomats were victims of some kind of microwave weapon. But when someone gently pointed out that if that were true, the victims would have been roasted, they posited the possibility of a "sonic" weapon.
But sound waves are harder to control than a "directed energy" weapon, meaning that most or all the diplomats would be suffering from Havana Syndrome symptoms and not a select few.
The National Science Foundation got involved and dismissed the directed energy weapon hypothesis as well as the sonic wave theory. Instead, it concentrated on physical examinations of the victims and found no brain damage and no physical problems at all.
The CIA eventually concluded that Havana Syndrome was not the work of a "hostile foreign power."
That led to the latest diagnoses of a “mass psychogenic illness.” "Once called mass hysteria, mass psychogenic illnesses are now also called functional illnesses because they trouble the conventional medical dichotomy between the brain and the mind," reported the New York Times.
Early work on mass psychogenic illness theory was done by Robert Baloh and Robert Bartholomew. They wrote a book, "Havana Syndrome: Mass Psychogenic Illness and the Real Story Behind the Embassy Mystery and Hysteria."
They postulated that once the illnesses became widely known throughout the government, it "set off a feeling of general unease so that any symptoms of any kind for any reason suddenly took on a heightened psychological significance."
In short, Baloh and Bartholomew theorized, that people talked themselves into feeling bad while others enabled the feelings.
CBS's "60 Minutes" spent a good part of their broadcast looking into the origins of Havana Syndrome and concluded that a secret Russian GRU group was responsible.
“Members of the Kremlin’s infamous military intelligence sabotage squad have been placed at the scene of suspected attacks on overseas U.S. government personnel and their family members,” the Insider, which is based in Riga, Latvia, writes.
The Insider, "60 Minutes," and der Spiegel discuss links to GRU’s Unit 29155, an entity "entirely dedicated to assassination and political destabilization," according to Politico.
Causing Havana Syndrome is reportedly the use of directed energy weapons — and senior members of Unit 29155 have received awards for developing “non-lethal acoustic weapons,” the investigation reports.
Additionally, health incidents might not have started in the Cuban capital in 2016, as originally thought — but rather at the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt in 2014 a few months after Putin illegally annexed Crimea.
More recently, nearly a dozen U.S. officials suffered from an attack involving Havana Syndrome symptoms ahead of a visit by U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris in 2021 to Hanoi, 60 Minutes reported. As part of the investigation, evidence emerged indicating that Russia may be sending long-range acoustic weapons to foreign governments such as Vietnam.
As mentioned earlier, "directed energy weapons" could not be responsible unless the laws of physics have changed in the last few years. That the GRU unit was present in these locations is an interesting coincidence but hardly "proof" that the unit is responsible.
What kind of proof is needed? How about finding and identifying the weapon that causes these symptoms? What technology underpins its use? Why does it cause all these symptoms but no brain damage?
I am perfectly willing to believe Russia is responsible for these attacks. Just give me some convincing proof.
Until then, it remains a fascinating mystery.
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