Was a US adversary actually behind the “Havana syndrome”?

A series of brain injuries and other serious health ailments that affected hundreds of US diplomats and intelligence officials were almost certainly the work of a US adversary, according to a new report by lawmakers, who accuse intelligence agencies Americans to try to hide the truth.

The ailments, commonly known as Havana syndrome, but which the government of US calls anomalous health incidentsor AHIs in English, were first publicly reported among diplomats and other employees of the US embassy in Havana, Cuba, in 2016.

Symptoms range from nausea and dizziness to debilitating headaches and memory problems, and cases have been reported in Russia, China, Poland, Austria and the United States.

A March 2023 intelligence assessment concluded that, despite some initial suspicions, it was “highly unlikely” that the illnesses affecting, and in some cases incapacitating, American personnel had been caused by any of the United States’ enemies.

But the report released Thursday by a House Intelligence subcommittee says that finding is nothing more than an effort to “create a politically acceptable conclusion.”

“It appears increasingly likely, and the president is convinced, that a foreign adversary is behind some serious infectious diseases,” the report states.

“The intelligence community has not voluntarily participated in congressional oversight on this issue, despite the impact that serious infectious diseases have had on personnel in the community,” the report added.

“Instead, the intelligence community has hindered this subcommittee’s efforts to understand serious infectious diseases, their causes and effects, and how the intelligence community reached its conclusions.”

The report further accuses the US government’s 2023 assessment of using flawed methodology.

Lawmakers said the new report is based on dozens of interviews with former intelligence and military officials, as well as medical experts, and includes a review of thousands of pages of documents and evidence provided by U.S. intelligence agencies.

Meanwhile, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the CIA, the nation’s top spy agency, have refuted the committee’s findings.

“This [comunidad de inteligencia] “disagrees with many of the report’s tentative conclusions,” an ODNI spokesperson told the Voice of America.

“Most IC (Intelligence Community) agencies consider it highly unlikely that a foreign adversary is responsible for the reported AHIs, and the claim that we are withholding information that contradicts this analysis or that would otherwise shed light on “This complex issue is unfounded,” the spokesperson added.

The CIA also disputed the report’s conclusions, while rejecting accusations that it sought to hinder lawmakers in their investigation.

“Any suggestion that we are withholding information that would shed new light on this complex and difficult issue could not be further from the truth,” a CIA official told the VOAagreeing to share details on condition of anonymity.

“No one cares more about understanding this than us,” said the official. “These are our friends and colleagues.”

“We applied the agency’s best operational, analytical and technical experience, and our best staff, to what is one of the largest and most intensive investigations in the agency’s history,” the official added.

However, despite the insistence of US intelligence officials that most cases of Havana syndrome can be explained by a combination of pre-existing medical conditions and environmental and technical factors, experts and outside research have raised persistent doubts.

A February 2022 report by a panel of experts had warned that the core symptoms in a small number of cases were “clearly unusual and had not been reported elsewhere in the medical literature” and suggested that some type of device must be responsible.

“Pulsed electromagnetic energy, particularly in the radio frequency range, plausibly explains the core features,” the 2022 report said.

And an investigation last April by “60 Minutes” C.B.S., Der Spiegel from Germany and The Insideralso found that there is reason to believe that the US intelligence assessment reached an erroneous conclusion.

The news organizations said a review of travel documents and cellphone records, along with eyewitness testimony and interviews with several U.S. officials and victims, shows Russia is likely to blame.

Specifically, the investigation linked numerous reports of Havana syndrome to the presence of members of Unit 29155 of Russia’s military intelligence service, known for its role in sabotage and assassinations. It also found that members of GRU Unit 29155 received awards and promotions for their work on sound- or radio-frequency-based directed energy weapons.

But the CIA official who spoke to the VOA he again rejected the idea that Russia was behind such attacks, despite the CIA director’s initial suspicions.

Director William Burns “had his own assumptions when he became director, so much so that he even warned his Russian counterparts in late 2021,” the official said.

But the official said the CIA’s work “indicates that some of our assumptions about early AHI reporting, including in Havana and afterward, were incorrect.”

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