American diplomats, intelligence employees, and their families have been suffering from a strange malady since at least 2019. The most common symptoms are headache, nausea, vertigo, and lethargy.
The symptoms were first reported at the U.S. interests section in Havana, so the government is calling it "Havana Syndrome." They officially refer to the condition as “anomalous health incidents” (AHI) because not all government personnel afflicted with the condition suffer from the same symptoms. More than 1,500 Americans have been diagnosed with Havana Syndrome.
What is it? Intelligence agencies believed they had reached a consensus earlier this year that the sickness was not due to any sort of a "directed energy weapon" or "sonic weapon" operated by a hostile power. That conclusion was reached because no such weapon exists that wouldn't be detectable and wouldn't leave traces on the targets.
Now, two agencies are breaking with that consensus and postulating that our personnel are, indeed, being attacked, probably by Russia. The break with consensus underscores the war that's going on among intelligence agencies over the origin and nature of Havana Syndrome.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released an update to the 2023 report that suggests there is no longer a high probability of certainty that there was no weapon involved in AHIs and that the use of a weapon could not be ruled out.
The confusion is understandable if not conducive to finding out what the hell is going on with our diplomats. In 2020, the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) released a report on Havana syndrome that concluded: "directed, pulsed radio frequency energy appears to be the most plausible mechanism in explaining these cases."
“It is just a totally incredible explanation for what happened to these diplomats," said University of Pennsylvania bioengineer Kenneth Foster. "It’s just not possible. The idea that someone could beam huge amounts of microwave energy at people and not have it be obvious defies credibility."
Foster points to the biggest problem with the "directed energy weapon" hypothesis: no such weapon exists. It's also probable that the entire investigation was well and truly botched, according to Robert Bartholomew, a psychology professor noted for his studies of "mass psychogenic illness." He says that the social factors regarding the spread of Havana Syndrome suggest this unusual but not unprecedented theory.
The answer could very well be that there are many explanations for AHIs that very well might include a new kind of weapon that has targeted some of our diplomats.
Two intelligence agencies have now “shifted their judgment to reflect a greater possibility” that a small number of cases indeed were “caused by a foreign actor,” an intelligence official told reporters in a briefing. The agencies have examined new information that “foreign actors”—he didn’t say which—“are making progress in scientific research and weapons development.”
One of these intelligence agencies—again, he didn’t name them—determined that the chances that a foreign actor has used some novel weapon, or a prototype, to harm a small number of U.S. government personnel or their family members are “roughly even” with the odds that one had not. The other agency identified a “roughly even chance” that a foreign actor has developed a weapon that could have harmed people, but determined that any such device was unlikely to have been deployed yet.
If it is Russia targeting our people, what should be the U.S. response? We've already sanctioned Russia and many top Russians to the hilt. We could kick their diplomats out of the U.S. and get other countries to do the same, but that would be an escalation that might not be controllable.
Getting Russia to fess up isn't likely. The Chinese won't come clean about killing 6 million people, so why should Russia admit to sickening a few hundred American diplomats?
This mess is going to be dumped into Donald Trump's lap on January 20. He will probably do nothing because "doing something about the problem" isn't always the best course of action.
