In late August, two U.S. diplomats were medically evacuated from Vietnam, with neurological symptoms linked to the mysterious “Havana Syndrome”, just before Vice President Kamala Harris was due to land in Hanoi. The report was that these people “experienced anomalous acoustic incidents” in their residences, not in the American embassy. This was simply the latest twist in a cloak-and-dagger medical mystery that now enshrouds the CIA and the world’s militaries.
The month before, the CIA had announced it was setting up a task force to look into other Havana Syndrome episodes that began to be recorded in 2016. And to emphasize its importance, the probe would be headed by no less than the guy who helped track down Osama bin Laden. What’s triggered this initiative is that cases are increasing, victims are sidelined or afflicted with serious brain damage, and those targeted are American spies and diplomats working on sensitive issues involving Russia.
To quote Winston Churchill, no amateur at espionage and skulduggery, the Havana Syndrome is a “riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” that, also curiously, was kept hidden for several years. Clues are few. The culprit or culprits are unknown as is the weapon. But what’s obvious is that this is likely “hybrid warfare” and a military “game-changer” that involves unique, repurposed microwave technology.
What’s certain finally is that these are not random events and a perpetrator is slowly coming into focus. In 2017, the Trump administration blamed Cuba for the first Havana Syndrome attack, on 40 officials, but kept subsequent incidents under wraps despite growing concern by intelligence officials. Then in 2018, American intelligence operatives in China were afflicted, more in Vienna and elsewhere, and on April 2020 two National Security Council officials were attacked near the White House. Why the reticence? One whistleblower suggested that “they [the White House] didn’t want to confront Russia”.
The National Academy of Sciences was asked to investigate and began to unravel the cause. By studying the injuries, it was concluded that a microwave weapon was the most plausible possibility. However, this wasn’t definitive, because, unlike other attacks, there were no bullet casings, shrapnel, scars, bruises, burns, fingerprints, or other incriminating clues left behind to solve this puzzle.
Victims were also clueless. They complained of hearing strange high- and low-pitched sounds and then feeling unusual physical sensations. Some ended up with adverse hearing, balance, and cognitive consequences, and some were diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injury, also known as concussion even though they hadn’t sustained a “concussion” style event such as a fall or a collision.
The first victim to go public was Marc Polymeropoulos, a CIA officer who ran clandestine operations in Russia and Europe. In December 2017, he said he was attacked in his Moscow hotel room. Then 48 years of age, he developed migraine headaches so severe that eventually forced him into retirement. He believes the Kremlin is the culprit, that more assaults have occurred than is known, and that each attack constitutes an “act of war” against the United States.
“There has been a long line of U.S. officials who have developed some pretty severe health symptoms after serving in Moscow,” he said. “That’s something that is worth looking into again as well. Whether it’s the old kind of signals intelligence systems [microwave blasts to destroy electronic installations] that were turned up too high or the old spy dust [radioactive tracing dust used in the Cold War], you know, the Russians are very aggressive against U.S. government personnel.”
Microwave technology has been around for years — and is found in most kitchens — except our appliances don’t damage brains because they operate at very low power levels. However, microwave weapons already exist — called Directed Energy Weapons or DEWs — and are deployed by militaries and police forces around the world blast noise in order to control mobs or disorient assailants. But these arms are huge and heavy and must be mounted on trucks, tanks, or ships.
Microwave shenanigans in espionage date back to the Cold War when the Soviet Union bombarded American military or diplomatic installations with high-powered microwaves in order to disable their electronic listening and receiving devices. These weapons were powerful enough to permeate walls and travel long distances, but they didn’t make people ill. People weren’t the targets back then, equipment was.
The National Academy scientists explained that the Havana Syndrome debilitates people because the human head acts as a receiving antenna for waves in the low-frequency range. This would cause them to hear sounds but also bring about headaches, nausea, hearing loss, lightheadedness, and cognitive problems. But the question was how low-frequency, low-power microwaves could penetrate walls or travel distances.
No such weaponry is thought to exist which makes this a perfect crime — and clearly worrisome, given that targets can be pinpointed so accurately. If these are microwave Directed Energy Weapons, they are incredibly advanced because they would have to be small and operate on low power in short bursts, or else victims would heat up and blow up like potatoes left too long in a microwave oven.
But this year, China boasted about successfully using a “secret microwave pulse weapon” against Indian soldiers that made them violently ill — thus forcing them to retreat without firing a shot and without violating the cease-fire ban along the disputed border. India responded that this boast was “fake news”. But militaries all over the world are experimenting with such directed weapons.
In 2020, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper said that Russia and China had already weaponized space with “killer satellites” that could hit targets with Directed Energy Weapons to weaken America’s military, delivered at the speed of light from hundreds of thousands of miles away. “Moscow and Beijing have turned a once peaceful arena into a warfighting domain,” he said.
This opens up the possibility that the Havana Syndrome could be targetting people from space somehow, beyond detection. Not surprisingly, the Department of Defense [DoD] has been doubling down on its own development of directed energy weaponry on Earth and in space.
What is even more perplexing is that electronics weren’t disrupted during these known Havana Syndrome attacks against CIA agents which means that power levels were lower than microwave-directed-energy weapons require, raising the possibility that microwave weapons aren’t the cause.
Clearly, the task force has its work cut out for it. David Relman, who led the National Academy of Sciences team which investigated the cause of the illness, first pointed out that this was real and is not imagined: “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” he said.
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If this is the same DOD that brought us the retreat from Afghanistan, I don’t have a lot of confidence in their ability to deal with a microwave attack.😱😱