US spies likely being targeted by energy waves in some 'Havana Syndrome' cases, panel says

WASHINGTON – U.S. intelligence officials announced Wednesday that a high-tech device shooting pulsed electromagnetic energy or ultrasound waves could be causing at least some of the cases of “Havana Syndrome,” the battery of mysterious and debilitating medical symptoms sickening U.S. spies and diplomats working overseas.

The finding, made by a panel of intelligence community experts, is consistent with at least one hypothesis given by U.S. officials in recent years that Russia, China or some other nation-state adversary is targeting unwitting Americans with some kind of weapon.

In a joint statement, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and CIA chief William J. Burns said that the panel – part of a top-secret multi-agency investigation into Havana Syndrome – is “making progress” in homing in on potential medical and scientific explanations for some of the severe headaches and, in some cases, brain injury reported by potentially hundreds of federal government employees.

More: CIA rules out hostile foreign power behind medical symptoms known as 'Havana Syndrome'

The CIA caused an uproar last month when it issued an intelligence assessment ruling out Russia, China or any other foreign power’s involvement in causing such widespread “Anomalous Health Incidents,” or AHIs, the U.S. government’s official term for "Havana Syndrome."

That assessment was controversial because it also attributed all but a few dozen of the many hundreds of reported cases to medical, environmental or "technical" causes that intelligence officials said were unrelated to any coordinated effort to target Americans.

In response, some congressional lawmakers and other critics accused the intelligence community of being too dismissive of the controversy. They cited the wealth of information that has been made public about U.S. spies and other employees having to return home from overseas posts, or even retire, due to documented injuries.

On Wednesday, Haines, Burns and several U.S. intelligence officials sought to push back on that narrative by disclosing the findings of the panel of experts, including its conclusion that the “signs and symptoms of AHIs are genuine and compelling.”

The panel of scientific, technical, and medical experts based their assessment, in part, on the fact that some incidents have affected multiple people in the same space, and clinical samples “from a few affected individuals” that showed evidence of cellular injury to the nervous system.

“We continue to pursue complementary efforts to get to the bottom of Anomalous Health Incidents (AHIs) – and to deliver access to world-class care for those affected,” Haines and Burns said. “We will stay at it, with continued rigor, for however long it takes.”

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the new findings declassified and disclosed Wednesday "underscore the need to continue investigating the source of these symptoms, and prioritizing access to care for those suffering from these medical conditions.”

Lawmakers on the House side are also seeking answers as to what – and who – might be causing those injuries that cannot be explained away by other factors.

The House Intelligence Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on Havana Syndrome this week, "and we look forward to examining the classified findings of the Expert Panel in greater detail to inform our work," said committee chairman, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.

"Let me stress that, though this and other recent IC efforts have helped to answer important questions we have about these incidents, much more remains to be done – and must be," Schiff said.

More: Another U.S. intelligence official has come down with Havana Syndrome symptoms. What are they?

The Experts Panel intentionally did not focus on attribution, or who might be behind any coordinated effort to sicken or injure U.S. employees, U.S. intelligence officials said. They did not say whether they believe any foreign government might have been behind the relatively few cases in which a directed energy source might have been used.

Instead, Haines and Burns said, panel members drilled down on the subset of a few dozen U.S. employees whose cases could not be easily explained by known environmental or medical conditions, and in which “certain external factors” might have contributed.

U.S. intelligence officials would not say how many people were in that subset of unexplained cases reviewed, or what kinds of external factors might have been found. They also confirmed that they have found no specific device that could have been used to target Americans.

But, the experts panel concluded, “Pulsed electromagnetic energy, particularly in the radiofrequency range, plausibly explains the core characteristics” of reported cases.

“Ultrasound also plausibly explains the core characteristics,” the panel reported, but only in cases where someone would have had close access to the potential victims of such an attack.

In both of those scenarios, the experts cautioned that significant “information gaps” existed that make it hard to conclude attribution with any certainty.

But, one intelligence official said, “It’s more than theory — we were able to obtain some level of evidence."

A study on Havana syndrome by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine concluded in 2020 that more than 100 victims had suffered real physical injuries, and that some form of electromagnetic radiation was a likely cause.

Some experts have said that an electromagnetic beam, sent at the precise wavelength, could travel hundreds of yards and create the same symptoms in unwitting victims as those seen in Havana Syndrome incidents.

“If this is the case, it’s likely that these beams are interfering with the electrical functions of the brain and central nervous system," Iain Boyd, a professor of aerospace engineering, wrote last September.

The incidents began in 2016 with reports of multiple people at the U.S. embassy in Havana, Cuba, experiencing unexplained and often alarming symptoms. Those included a feeling of pressure in the ears or on the face, intense headaches, confusion, nausea. In some cases, symptoms have gone away, but others have reported permanent health effects.

More recently, cases of Havana Syndrome have occurred worldwide, and affected Canadian diplomats and spies as well as Americans. Two diplomats in Hanoi, Vietnam were struck by symptoms, disrupting Vice President Kamala Harris’s foreign travel schedule last August.

In the U.S. intelligence community report released Wednesday, the experts also concluded that a host of other potential causes “are all implausible explanations” for the illnesses. Those include ionizing radiation, chemical and biological agents, infrasound, audible sound, “ultrasound propagated over large distances,” and bulk heating from electromagnetic energy.

The experts panel was composed of experts from inside and outside the U.S. Government with expertise in relevant areas of science, medicine, and engineering, U.S. officials said.

Before issuing Wednesday’s conclusions, they received dozens of briefings and more than 1,000 classified documents on a range of scientific, medical, and intelligence topics, including sensitive intelligence reporting, AHI incident reports, and trend analyses, the U.S. intelligence officials said. Panel members also engaged with a dozen or so affected individuals who shared their personal experiences and medical records.

“Moving forward, the work of the IC Experts Panel will help sharpen the work of the IC and broader U.S. Government as we focus on possible causes,” Haines and Burns said.

The White House welcomed the findings. A spokesman for the National Security Council praised the panel for undertaking "a rigorous, multi-disciplinary study that has identified important findings and recommendations that will inform intensive research and investigation moving forward as we continue our government-wide effort to get to the bottom of AHI.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: US spies likely targeted by energy waves in some Havana Syndrome cases