The New Intelligence Report on "Havana Syndrome"
A U.S. intelligence report concluded that the mysterious “Havana Syndrome” is not the result of a foreign government using some sort of advanced energy weapon.
Last week, a U.S. intelligence report concluded that the mysterious “Havana Syndrome” — a phenomenon that seems to only affect U.S. spies and diplomats that includes headaches, nausea, and other various symptoms — is not the result of a foreign government using some sort of advanced energy weapon. The report comes from a years-long investigation by seven U.S. intelligence agencies, five of which determined it was “very unlikely” these symptoms were caused by a hostile foreign power.
A report by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) last year came to a similar conclusion. “In about two dozen cases, the agency cannot rule out foreign involvement,” NBC News reported at the time. “But in hundreds of other cases of possible symptoms, the agency has found plausible alternative explanations”.
However, shortly after reporting on the CIA’s findings, NBC News also reported that “a panel of scientific experts working for U.S. intelligence agencies” found that the “brain injuries suffered by a small group of American diplomats and spies overseas were most likely caused by pulsed electromagnetic energy”. The article later states that “The panel's findings expanded on a 2020 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which also found that pulsed electromagnetic energy, also referred to as microwave energy, was the most plausible culprit.”
This latest intelligence report throws a wrench in the longstanding theory that the symptoms experienced by U.S. officials were the result of a foreign adversary using an energy weapon, but many of the supposed victims have refused to accept the report’s conclusion.
The first cases of “Havana Syndrome” occurred in the U.S. embassy in Havana, Cuba, back in 2016. Since then, there have been hundreds of cases reported from all over the world. As alluded to above, one of the most popular theories about what might cause the syndrome is the use of microwaves for deliberately directed energy attacks or as a form of surveillance, in which case the symptoms experienced by U.S. officials would be an unintended consequence. Another theory is that these cases are psychogenic and that once the first cases were reported, it led to more U.S. personnel convincing themselves that they had also been victims of some sort of attack.
Personally, I find the latter theory to be the most plausible. I wouldn’t be all that surprised to find out that a major power has some kind of technology that’s capable of causing the sort of symptoms that have been reported, but I find it suspicious that the only people who experience “Havana Syndrome” are U.S. spooks and diplomats or their family members. It’s also suspicious that there has been such a significant attempt to blame it on countries that the U.S. views adversarially, like China or Russia, especially considering that many of these cases occurred during the same period as the discredited Russiagate nonsense.
Another reason to view the claims about “Havana Syndrome” skeptically is the fact that supposed victims of the syndrome are entitled to compensation from the U.S. government, which creates a financial incentive for people to claim to be victims of this conveniently mysterious phenomenon.
One of the aspects of “Havana Syndrome” that went along with or often preceded the reported symptoms was hearing a ringing or buzzing noise, and that was used to support the idea of these cases being caused by a microwave weapon. However, a report by the State Department, which was written by the JASON advisory group in 2018 but reported on by Buzzfeed News in 2021, concluded that the noises that U.S. officials were hearing were most likely caused by a local species of cricket.
According to Buzzfeed News:
The JASON report provided a far less elaborate explanation. The team was given eight recordings of incidents linked to injuries and performed an extensive analysis of two cellphone video recordings from one patient. After extensive comparison with recordings of various insect species, they concluded with “high confidence” that the sounds in that case came from a particularly loud species of cricket, Anurogryllis celerinictus. (Two academic researchers who ran a similar analysis in 2019 using a recording provided by the Associated Press also concluded that the sound was caused by crickets.) The JASON scientists offered another “low confidence” theory that the sounds could have been caused by a nearby concrete vibrating machine with worn bearings.
Clearly, there is ample evidence to suggest that “Havana Syndrome” is more psychosomatic than anything else, and this latest intelligence report adds to that evidence.
As someone who is often skeptical of the government — especially intelligence agencies — it’s sometimes difficult to know when to trust the kinds of reports like the one that was just released and when to distrust them. When reporting on this story on his show System Update, independent journalist Glenn Greenwald offered his own explanation that I feel encompasses how I view the situation:
First of all, we have to distinguish, as every rational field of discipline does, between assertions that somebody makes that advance or promote their interests, versus assertions that they make that undermine their own interests. So for example if the CIA makes a claim about an enemy of the CIA (…) you should have a huge amount of skepticism, because that’s a case where the intelligence community is making assertions that advances its foreign policy agenda, its interests. But when the intelligence community makes statements that undermine their interests, when they admit that there’s no evidence for a longstanding theory that accuses a U.S. enemy of some dastardly deed, as they’re doing here, then it’s entitled to a lot more faith and confidence because this is a case where the intelligence community is making claims contrary to their interests.
The theory that the symptoms and illnesses that have come to be known as “Havana Syndrome” were caused by a deliberate attack on U.S. officials from an adversarial government is a convenient line of propaganda. What’s also convenient is the mysterious nature of the syndrome which leaves the door open to blame it on whichever country happens to be in the crosshairs of the U.S. empire. Since the first cases were reported, Russia has been the most popular country to blame, and it just so happens that several years later we’re currently engaged in fighting a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.
Hopefully, this new report puts an end to using “Havana Syndrome” as a way to stoke anger and resentment toward a foreign power, especially considering the amount of hostility the U.S. has shown toward China in recent years. While debunking “Havana Syndrome” won’t put an end to the manufactured consent the U.S. empire needs to accomplish its imperial agendas, it’s at least one less line of propaganda in its playbook.
[Read my follow-up piece about civilian cases of “Havana Syndrome” here.]
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Steven I like your opinion piece. My criticism of your reasoning would be that you use CIA’ supposed intent to come up with wether or not the intelligence report should be trusted. I doubt that CIA would show their cards, or that someone can figure out their intent. They manipulate the narrative, and the actual intent remains hidden. We apply this logic to figuring out the intent of people we know well. But we definitely don’t know CIA true agenda. And thus, this approach doesn’t sound reliable to me.
What does sound reliable, is the good ole scientific method, which is not about having evidence in support of a particular hypothesis, but in the inability to falsify it.
You are welcome, Steven. Just my two cents: If the interest of a spy agency is obvious, that’s probably the interest they want you to assume they have. Creating false narrative is the weapon CIA perfected. And we get fooled time after time after time, only to find out 50 years later what was really going on.