It's been 10 years since some of our diplomats in Havana reported a series of seemingly unrelated symptoms from ringing ears and dizziness to crushing headaches and memory loss.
Since Cuba was a nominal enemy of the U.S. and Russia had a large, clandestine presence on the island, suspicion arose of some kind of attack with a new kind of weapon.
What exactly caused the symptoms of Havana Syndrome became the subject of intense debate over the next decade as the CIA, the NSA, the NIH, and other agencies each had a separate theory on what Havana Syndrome (dubbed "anomalous health incidents" or AHIs) was.
The first reports after the investigation became public in 2017 pointed to a "directed energy weapon" using microwaves. However, the symptoms experienced by victims were varied and not all consistent. Some audio experts pointed out that a microwave device would have destroyed brains not damaged them.
The State Department formally requested an investigation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) into the "unexplained phenomenon" in late 2017. In 2018, the first major medical study by the University of Pennsylvania was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), describing the symptoms as similar to a concussion without a head injury.
The people affected by Havana Syndrome began to notice that the government was dragging its feet or worse, claiming that the victims were "imagining" the symptoms. In 2023, the intelligence community concluded there was no foreign power behind Havana Syndrome. This has led to diagnoses by process of elimination of "mass psychogenic illness." The illness was very real, the symptoms were keenly felt and experienced by victims, but the idea of a "mass psychogenic illness" wasn't an answer. It was a cry for help.
Then, in 2024, a joint investigation by 60 Minutes, The Insider, and Der Spiegel alleged links between the incidents and Russian GRU Unit 29155. There were many holes in their investigation, and the evidence is circumstantial (the unit was in the country during several Havana Syndrome attacks), but by the time the joint investigative piece was published in late 2024, the U.S. government had already purchased a top-secret device that some investigators think could be the missing link to Havana Syndrome.
The device acquired by HSI produces pulsed radio waves, one of the sources said, which some officials and academics have speculated for years could be the cause of the incidents. Although the device is not entirely Russian in origin, it contains Russian components, this person added.
Officials have long struggled to understand how a device powerful enough to cause the kind of damage some victims have reported could be made portable; that remains a core question, according to one of the sources briefed on the device. The device could fit in a backpack, this person said.
The acquisition of the device has reignited a painful and contentious debate within the US government about Havana Syndrome, known officially as “anomalous health episodes.”
As someone who has been following this story since it broke in 2017, I would be very interested in a description of this device, how it works, and its effects on the brain.
The U.S. government has been all over the map on what Havana Syndrome could be. Are the people affected who have been diagnosed with this condition about to get answers to their questions?
“If the [US government] has indeed uncovered such devices, then the CIA owes all the victims a f**king major and public apology for how we have been treated as pariahs,” Marc Polymeropoulos, one of the first CIA officers to go public with injuries he says he sustained in an attack in Moscow in 2017, said in a statement to CNN.
One key concern now for some officials is that if the technology proves viable it may have proliferated, several of the sources said, meaning that more than one country could now have access to a device that may be capable of causing career-ending injuries to US officials.
CNN was not able to learn where — or from whom — HSI purchased the device, but HSI has a history of collaboration with the Defense Department for operations that take place all over the globe. The office has broad jurisdiction to investigate crimes linked to customs violations, including investigations into the proliferation of US-controlled technology or expertise overseas.
Until we get more information on this weapon and what it does, the causes of Havana Syndrome will remain unknown.
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