I’ve lost track of how many stories I’ve personally written about Havana Syndrome over the years. It has been quite a few. But today the Post is reporting that a review of evidence by US intelligence agencies has concluded there’s no secret weapon and no evidence a foreign adversary was behind it.
The new intelligence assessment caps a years-long effort by the CIA and several other U.S. intelligence agencies to explain why career diplomats, intelligence officers and others serving in U.S. missions around the world experienced what they described as strange and painful acoustic sensations. The effects of this mysterious trauma shortened careers, racked up large medical bills and in some cases caused severe physical and emotional suffering.
Many of the afflicted personnel say they were the victims of a deliberate attack — possibly at the hands of Russia or another adversarial government — a claim that the report contradicts in nearly every respect, according to two intelligence officials who are familiar with the assessment and described it to The Washington Post.
Seven agencies looked at the evidence and five concluded it was “very unlikely these were attacks by an adversary.
Five of those agencies determined it was “very unlikely” that a foreign adversary was responsible for the symptoms, either as the result of purposeful actions — such as a directed energy weapon — or as the byproduct of some other activity, including electronic surveillance that unintentionally could have made people sick, the officials said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the findings of the assessment, which had not yet been made public.
One agency agreed with the other five at a lower level of confidence and one abstained. But that means there is no one taking the affirmative position, i.e. that these were attacks by an adversary. It was nearly the same for the question of whether this was the result of some secret weapon.
The intelligence assessment also examined whether an adversary possessed a device capable of using energy to cause the reported symptoms. Of the seven agencies, five determined that it was “very unlikely,” while the other two said it was “unlikely.”
This is quite a turnabout. Back in October of 2021 the White House pushed back on claims that the Havana Syndrome was probably some kind of mass delusion.
The U.S. government is sending a message to diplomats, national security staff and intelligence officers that “anomalous health incidents” — also known as “Havana syndrome” because it was first detected in Cuba — are serious, widespread and pose real danger to their health at home and abroad.
The new workplace guidance is part of a broader strategy by the Biden administration to act with greater speed on reported cases, after finding that quicker action benefits the health of the victim and the investigation of the incident…
The official disputed that the syndrome may have been “mass hysteria,” saying, “The physical effects we’ve seen in several cases are very, very real.”
There was even a report claiming that investigators had found specific markers in blood tests of people who’d been “hit” with the effects. But last January there was a report that the CIA believed most claims of Havana syndrome were unfounded. And just over a year later it seems all of the institutional confidence which had been pushing back on that conclusion has evaporated.
“There was nothing,” the official said. This person added that there was no intelligence that foreign leaders, including in Russia, had any knowledge of or had authorized an attack on U.S. personnel that could explain the symptoms.
The second official, who described a frustrating “mystery” as to why longtime colleagues had become ill, said analysts spent months churning data, looking for patterns and inventing new analytic methodologies, only to come up with no plausible explanation.
What a strange story this turns out to be if there are in fact no attacks and no hidden weapons. I guess there’s a lesson here about believing something is the result of planning and (hostile) intelligence when in fact that wasn’t the case.
Discussion about this post