The syndrome came to public attention in 2016 in Cuba when U.S. officials stationed there reported symptoms that included headaches, dizziness, blurred vision and memory loss after hearing strange noises and feeling odd sensations. Initially, there were a few dozen cases, and a subset of those victims reported similar symptoms, but the number later expanded greatly, and the symptoms were more diverse, making for a more difficult investigation. Congress passed and President Biden signed legislation providing compensation to those affected.
A possible cause for the injuries was identified by the National Academy of Sciences in 2020 as the use of “directed, pulsed radio frequency” energy, but there has been little evidence until now about a perpetrator. The most recent Annual Threat Assessment from the Office of Director of National Intelligence, dated Feb. 5, found that the symptoms “probably were the result of factors that did not involve a foreign adversary.”
But the new investigation by the Insider, a Russian investigative news outlet, in collaboration with CBS’s “60 Minutes” and Germany’s Der Spiegel, paints a different picture. It identifies the possible culprit as Unit 29155, a “notorious assassination and sabotage squad” of the GRU, Moscow’s military intelligence service. Senior members of the unit received “awards and political promotions for work related to the development of ‘non-lethal acoustic weapons’” — a term used in the Russian military-scientific literature to describe both sound- and radiofrequency-based directed energy devices. The investigation found documentary evidence that Unit 29155 “has been experimenting with exactly the kind of weaponized technology” experts suggest is a plausible cause.
Moreover, the Insider reported, geolocation data shows that operators attached to Unit 29155, traveling undercover, were present in places where Havana syndrome struck, just before the incidents took place.
Even more concerning, the investigation found that a commonality among the Americans targeted was their work history on Russia issues. This included CIA officers who were helping Ukraine build up its intelligence capabilities in the years before Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. One veteran of the CIA Kyiv station was named the new chief of station in Vietnam and was hit there. A second veteran of the CIA in Ukraine was hit in his apartment in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Both these intelligence officers had to be medevaced and were treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The wife of a third CIA officer who had served in Kyiv was hit in London.
“Of all the cases” examined by the news organizations, they said, “the most well-documented involve U.S. intelligence and diplomatic personnel with subject matter expertise in Russia or operational experience in countries such as Georgia and Ukraine,” both of which were the scene of popular pro-Western uprisings in the past two decades. The news organizations point out that Russian President Vladimir Putin has often blamed these “color revolutions” on the CIA and the State Department. They conclude, “Putin would have every interest … in neutralizing scores of U.S. intelligence officers he deemed responsible for his loss of the former satellites.”
The U.S. intelligence community needs to conduct a full, aggressive inquiry that takes into account all aspects of the incidents — sometimes easier said than done in such investigations. It must include everything: counterintelligence information, case investigatory data, clinical data, and possible concepts of operation for the attacks based on plausible mechanisms and devices identified by earlier research. It needs access to all the available intelligence — including anything previously buried or ignored — and be unbound by preconceived notions about what happened.
Along with the new information, there are compelling reasons to dig deeper. If the incidents are a deliberate attack, the perpetrator must be identified and held to account. Along with sending a message to those who might harm American personnel, the United States needs to show all those who might join the diplomatic and intelligence services that the government will protect them abroad and at home from foreign adversaries, no matter what.
Credit: Source link
