Although it has confirmed that victim symptoms are real, not imagined, a newly released National Institutes of Health report has failed to identify a pattern of MRI brain scan markers for reported victims of Havana Syndrome. This further public confusion offers the latest reason that the House Intelligence Committee is rightly assessing the intelligence community’s work on this issue.
Referred to by the government as “Anomalous Health Incidents,” Havana Syndrome has seen hundreds of U.S. government and military officials complain of strange, unexplained ailments while serving abroad. Symptoms include dizziness, an extreme sense of pressure in the head, unsteady gait, and other difficulties.
Last March, however, the IC found that the incidents were unlikely to be the result of action by a foreign power. That finding represented an abject failure of intelligence analysis facilitated by management pressure (particularly at the CIA and the NSA) and the selective use of intelligence reporting to provide a desired analytical product.
The House Intelligence Committee should uncover this reality as it considers what the IC has in its evidentiary portfolio, how the IC assessed that information, and what other intelligence reporting it ignored or unjustly deemed unreliable.
The main point is that while some Havana Syndrome/AHI reports involve other medical conditions or paranoia, others are very likely the product of radio frequency/microwave devices employing pulsed nanosecond bursts. These bursts are exceptionally difficult to detect. Nevertheless, a highly credible and diverse array of technical and signals intelligence reporting suggests that these RF/MW devices are employed by a deniable element of the Russian intelligence community.
Russian intelligence command and control for highest-sensitivity deniable operations and other circumstantial evidence suggest that the AHI unit’s leadership responsibility rests with Nikolai Patrushev. Patrushev is a former FSB domestic security service director and the Kremlin’s dominant “Siloviki” security service maestro. The confusing, sometimes serious life-changing symptoms and general morale effects involved with Havana Syndrome represent pitch-perfect Russian intelligence tradecraft. This is well-understood in the IC’s operational cadres and those of America’s closest intelligence partners.
To emphasize, the IC’s analytical failure is a scandal of stunning proportions. I understand from sources, for example, that the CIA’s AHI investigation team ignored evidence that then-President George W. Bush, Laura Bush, and other U.S. officials were victims of Havana Syndrome during the 2007 G8 Summit in Germany. Similarly, in 2016, the NSA’s then-Counterintelligence Director Kemp Ensor reported evidence supporting the conclusion that former NSA officer Mike Beck and colleague Charles Gubete had been targeted with RF/MW in 1996 (Beck and Gubete were in Russia at the time). Both contracted early onset Parkinson’s disease, they believe, as a result of their exposure to the weapon. Gubete has since died. Beck has fought a long and largely fruitless battle for NSA recognition and compensation for his on-the-job injury.
Most absurd, the Russians have barely attempted to hide their Havana Syndrome-related capabilities.
As I reported previously, “a 2012 Russian government gazette recorded how its intelligence services had RF/MW capabilities ‘that influence the psycho-physical state of an individual with their fields and rays’ and bragged, ‘in a number of areas not long ago our specialists were far ahead of the Americans.'” I also discovered a 2019 Russian army report that claimed RF/MW weapons “have significantly decreased in size and can be installed on a tank turret and even at the head of a tactical missile … The [target] begins to hear non-existent noises and whistles … When exposed to low frequency electromagnetic radiation, the human brain releases chemicals that regulate its behavior. [The RF/MW devices] can cause symptoms of various diseases.” And Russian scientists have also previously published research on RF/MW effects against the human body.
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Again, Russia’s Havana Syndrome hand is a secret only to those in the U.S. IC, military, and broader government who fear that admitting the truth will set them onto a new confrontation with Moscow. But the Russians are surely laughing at this continued American theatre of public confusion.
Let us hope that the House Intelligence Committee is able to summon some greater courage and seek some actual truth in the sea of evidence.
