There is a new development in the years-long international mystery about the Havana syndrome: the US has succeeded. testing a device officials believe it may be related to the debilitating condition.
Sources said the device was quietly obtained by the Department of Homeland Security in late 2024, nearly a decade after symptoms of the so-called Havana syndrome were first reported by US embassy staff in Cuba. The Pentagon has been testing a backpack-sized portable device that emits pulsed radio frequency energy and contains Russian-sourced components.
Sources said Homeland Security researchers believe it may be able to reproduce the effects described by victims of Havana Syndrome. The Pentagon and DHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and the CIA declined to comment.
Here’s what you need to know about the mysterious disease.
“My brain is broken”
Havana syndrome is derived from cases first reported by US diplomats and intelligence officers in the Cuban capital. After the opening of the US embassy there in 2015, the media began to report strange medical symptoms affecting US embassy staff working in the country: dizziness, fatigue, memory problems and impaired vision. Other symptoms include nausea, migraines, pressure in the head, vertigo, and ringing or popping sensations in the ears.
Many people with Havana syndrome describe hearing an aching, aching sound that seems to subside when they move to another location. consequences so serious for some, they were finally forced to quit their jobs.
“My brain is broken,” former CIA analyst Erika Stith said CBS News in 2022.
“We got this because of serving our people. And we deserve to be cared for,” he said.
The US government refers to the cases as “anomalous health events,” or AHI, and officials have not confirmed what caused them.
But “60 minutes” has spoken to experts who believe the incidents are targeted sound or microwave attacks.
Many victims believe they were injured by a secret weapon that fires a high-energy beam of microwaves or ultrasound.
Some victims of Havana Syndrome have spent more than a decade trying to bring attention to their cases, often blaming the government for not providing them with enough help or access to specialized medical care.
Who has been affected?
More than 1,500 US officials have reported experiencing the condition since 2016, including White House staff, CIA officers, FBI agents, military officers and their families. Cases have appeared in dozens of countries, and have also been reported in Washington
In 2021, a Havana syndrome-style incident was reported in Vietnam shortly before then-Vice President Kamala Harris. He visited Hanoi. The US embassy said at the time that a “potential anomalous health event” required the evacuation of at least one official for medical attention, prompting Harris to delay his arrival.
“60 Minutes” later learned that 11 people reported being hit: two officials at the US Embassy in Hanoi and nine others who were part of a Defense Department team preparing for Harris’ visit. While Harris was away, some wounded US personnel were flown out of Vietnam.
In another case, a State Department security officer working at the US consulate in Guangzhou, China “60 Minutes,” he said that he and his wife began experiencing symptoms after hearing strange sounds in their apartment in 2017.
Security officer Mark Lenzi described it as a “marble” circling through a “metal funnel” and said he heard it four times, always in the same place, at the same time of day: when he put his son to bed at night. He described the sound as “quite loud” and unlike anything he had heard before. He and his wife started feeling sick shortly after hearing the sounds.
Lenzi said he believed he was targeted because of his work using top-secret equipment to analyze electronic threats to diplomatic missions.
“It was a direct attack on my apartment … it was a weapon,” he told reporter Scott Pelley. “I think it’s RF, radio frequency energy, in the microwave range.”
Questions about Russia’s possible role
“60 Minutes” reported In mid-2024, about a major development in the Havana Syndrome investigation: a suspected link between the Tbilisi, Georgia attacks and a top-secret Russian intelligence unit, as well as evidence of what a reliable source called a “receipt” for acoustic weapons testing by the same intelligence unit.
Lt. Col. Greg Edgreen, the retired Army lieutenant colonel who led the Pentagon’s investigation into these incidents, told “60 Minutes” at the time that he was certain Russia was behind the attacks, and that they were part of a worldwide campaign to neutralize U.S. officials.
“If my mother had seen what I saw, she would have said, ‘They’re Russians, stupid,'” Edgreen said.
US ratings
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released its 2023 US intelligence assessment find it was “highly unlikely” that a foreign adversary was responsible for the diseases—a conclusion that was confirmed in one. updated review he was fired a year ago. That review found that most of the intelligence community continues to view foreign involvement as highly unlikely.
Both agencies, however, revised their positions, saying there was an “equal possibility” that a foreign adversary had developed a device capable of harming US officials and their families, regardless of whether that device was directly linked to the reported AHIs.
In 2024, the House Intelligence Committee he concluded in a report The 2023 assessment by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence “lacked analytical integrity and was highly uneven in its formulation.” The report said, “It is increasingly likely that a foreign adversary is behind some cases of what officials are calling ‘anomalous health events.’
Office of the Director of National Intelligence He says he is doing an exam The intelligence community remains committed to sharing its previous investigations into the incidents and “sharing the findings” with the American public when completed.
Former CIA intelligence officer Marc Polymeropoulos said that “a new and full analytical review is now warranted, and the DNI must demand it.”
Polymeropoulos, who has spoken publicly about the symptoms he suffered after claiming to have been beaten in Moscow in 2017, has criticized agencies for saying earlier inquiries were insincere.
“The CIA always said none of this technology existed, no device existed, and their (assessments) were based on that,” he said, “so all of their analytical assumptions are blown.”