Now it turns out that the set of mysterious ailments and physical dysfunctions suffered by hundreds of US employees and diplomats known as Havana Syndrome was not caused by spy devices or secret weapons from any enemy country. The US intelligence community concludes that such a possibility, strongly targeted for years, is "highly unlikely." The most novel and film-like explanation of the case remains on the back burner, even though the mystery continues.
In September 2021, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sent a circular to the 2.9 million military and civilian dependents of the Pentagon. Subject: the damn syndrome detected for the first time at the end of 2016 at the Washington embassy in Havana. “Over the past few years, and especially abroad,” Austin explained, “members of this department have reported a number of disturbing sudden sensory events, such as noise and pressure or heat, at or just before the sudden onset of symptoms such as headaches, nausea, or dizziness.”
It was the description of the evils that, with points in common, hundreds of spies, soldiers, employees and diplomats of the country throughout the world, as well as relatives of each other, had reported to the heads of their embassies. The buzzing, dizziness and pain that a handful of officials stationed in the Cuban capital had initially complained of were repeated in the cases of their colleagues in the legations of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, China, Colombia, Russia, India and Vietnam.
In his note to the soldiers and Defense employees, Austin asked them that, if they experience the same or similar symptoms to those described, they should quickly leave the area with their own and inform their superiors and doctors.
The Pentagon circular was prompted by the study that the National Academy of Sciences had published months before to warn that the conditions of the Havana syndrome were compatible with microwave and radiofrequency energy emissions; emissions that are not continuous, but directed and based on pulsations, which could be related to old Soviet weapons from the cold war that both the Russian military intelligence service (GRU) and agencies of other countries that inherited the weapons of the USSR could continue to use . Some leaks indicated that the GRU had sometimes used these devices to listen, but not to do harm. And that perhaps the problem was in defective or poorly calibrated devices.
Now, the seven US intelligence agencies that for six years have studied the matter with scientific help are debunking the theory of the external enemy as the cause of the syndrome. “The symptoms reported by US personnel were likely the result of factors not involving a foreign adversary, such as pre-existing conditions, conventional illnesses, and environmental circumstances,” the intelligence report released yesterday says.
Three of the agencies participating in the studies judge the involvement of external enemies "very unlikely" with a level of "high confidence" in such an assessment; Three other agencies ratify it with "moderate confidence", and a last one, with "low confidence" due to the lack of conclusive data. The seven bodies agree, however, that those who reported the ailments did so "sincerely." An appreciation that the State Department spokesman, Ned Price, insisted on. “We know that your pain is real,” Price said, and assured that those affected will continue to receive the aid for medical care established in the Havana law that President Joe Biden promulgated for this purpose in November 2021.
But the Executive's messages did not reassure all the victims. Mark Zaid, lawyer for more than twenty of them, rejected the report on the grounds that "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" of certain facts. The lawyer sees "inconceivable that, with an overwhelming number of questions still unanswered, this report is considered a last word."
Republican Senator Marco Rubio agreed with Zaid and assured that he will continue working on the "issue until they receive real explanations."
It's hard to accept such a frustrating ending.
