60 Minutes links Russia to Havana Syndrome and a speeding Mustang with high-tech equipment in Florida

Five-year "Havana Syndrome" investigation finds new evidence of who might be responsible

Embassy of the United States in Cuba overlooking the Malecón. [ Bjen78 ]

 

Eight years later, a string of attacks that started in 2016 and targeted Canadian and U.S. diplomats stationed at their respective embassies in Havana remain unsolved officially. However, after a five-year investigation, CBS Newsmagazine 60 Minutes concluded that Russia was responsible for the attacks, despite official denials from the US government.

“60 Minutes producers Michael Rey and Oriana Zill de Granados discuss the evolution of their 5-year investigation into ‘Havana Syndrome,’ which led them to what one source calls "a receipt" for acoustic weapon testing done by a Russian intelligence unit.”

Officials in the Cuban government have also been quick to dismiss the Havana Syndrome, but the record shows that if Russia was testing an acoustic weapon on American and Canadian diplomats stationed in Havana, the Cuban secret police would know about it, report it to their superiors, and approve it. Havana's role in supporting Putin's illegal war in Ukraine, including the deployment of Cuban soldiers in Russian uniforms fighting on the front lines, underscores their strategic relationship with Moscow.

60 Minutes, March 31, 2024

Havana Syndrome mystery continues as a lead military investigator says bar for proof was set impossibly high

By Scott Pelley

March 31, 2024 / 7:42 PM EDT / CBS News

This report is the result of a joint investigation by 60 Minutes, The Insider, and Der Spiegel

Tonight we have important developments in our five-year investigation of mysterious brain injuries reported by U.S. national security officials. The injured include White House staff, CIA officers, FBI agents, military officers and their families. Many believe that they were wounded by a secret weapon that fires a high-energy beam of microwaves or ultrasound. This is our fourth story and for the first time, we have evidence of who might be responsible. Most of the injured have fought for America, often in secret. And they're frustrated that the U.S. government publicly doubts that an adversary is targeting Americans.

One of them is Carrie. We're disguising her and not using her last name because she's still an FBI agent working in counterintelligence. She says, in 2021, she was home in Florida when she was hit by a crippling force.

Carrie: And bam, inside my right ear, it was like a dentist drilling on steroids. That feeling when it gets too close to your eardrum? It's like that, you know, times ten. It was like a high pitched, metallic drilling noise, and it knocked me forward at, like, a 45 degree angle this way. 

She says she was by a window in her laundry room. 

[ Full transcript and video available here ]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/havana-syndrome-culprit-investigation-new-evidence-60-minutes-transcript/

"Foreign adversaries may be involved in Havana Syndrome, sources say." - CBS Evening News "Connection revealed between Havana Syndrome, speeding Mustang in Florida" - CBS Mornings

 Full report tonight on 60 Minutes on CBS.

 

National Security reporter Jeff Stein, and founder of Spy Talk gives his analysis on the latest installment of the CBS newsmagazine show 60 Minutes report on Havana Syndrome that points to the Kremlin. 

Two teasers, one on CBS News, and another on CBS Morning, offer  reasons for concern, and to question the official narrative.

This blog has been following this story since August 9, 2017 when spokesperson Heather Nauert in a State Department briefing revealed that two Cuban diplomats were expelled from the United States on May 23, 2017 in response to "incidents in Cuba."  According to U.S. officials five U.S. diplomats were targeted by a "sonic weapon" that led to "severe hearing loss" that led to some of them canceling their tours and returning early to the United States. [ Full entry here ]

 

On August 10, 2017 another shoe dropped, the Associated Press reported that Canadian government said that at least one Canadian diplomat in Cuba has also been treated for hearing loss. "Global Affairs Canada spokeswoman Brianne Maxwell said Canadian officials 'are aware of unusual symptoms affecting Canadian and US diplomatic personnel and their families in Havana.'" [ Full entry here ]

The attacks began in November 2016 during the Obama Administration which apparently had no knowledge of what was going on or downplayed it out of fear that it would negatively Cuba normalization policy.

The Daily Mail headline on September 20, 2017 stated "Damning evidence Cuba's launched a sci-fi sonic weapon at America: How 21 US diplomats were hit by hearing and memory loss - and even mild brain damage - after suspicious attack."  

On January 9, 2018 three State Department officials testified before the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on the subject of the 2016-2017 attacks on U.S. diplomats and dependents stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba that seriously impacted 24 of them. 

The three officials who testified are: Senior Bureau Official Francisco L. Palmieri Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs; Assistant Director Todd J. Brown of the International Programs Directorate, Bureau of Diplomatic Security; and Dr. Charles Rosenfarb, Medical Director for the Bureau of Medical Services. 

Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) asked when they became aware that brain trauma was involved and Dr. Charles Rosenfarb responded that the first patient was medically evacuated on February 6, 2017 and over the next two months evacuated 40 people.  [ Full blog entry ]

Injuries have been documented, and hypotheses to explain how they have been caused put forward, but no satisfactory explanation provided to date. 

Efforts to downplay the inconvenient fact that Cuba has a top notch intelligence service, and that such attacks on U.S. diplomats could not be carried out without their knowledge, and consent led to a letter to the editor in The Washington Post to set the record straight.

 

The Washington Post, October 30, 2020 

Opinion

Cuba has a long history of using sonic weapons

The Oct. 26 editorial “Another invisible enemy” was correct when it called for the perpetrators of sonic attacks on Americans in Cuba to be identified, Americans protected and a proper response delivered, but too many are quick to believe the claims from Cuban officials that nothing happened and that they had no knowledge of what caused the injuries.

The Castro regime has a history, stretching back decades, of harassing American diplomats such as: killing their pets, trying to run them down or crash into their vehicle and switching out mouthwash with urine. 

Furthermore, on Oct. 18, dissident Cuban artist Tania Bruguera described and recorded a sonic attack that caused her a headache and ear ache that she found difficult to tolerate. Two former Cuban political prisoners, Ernesto Diaz Rodriguez and Luis Zuniga, described at a forum held on Capitol Hill in November 2017 how prison officials used high-pitched sound to cause them physiological harm in 1979. This history and the recent attack against Ms. Bruguera using the same kind of sonic weapon with similar symptoms that had been visited on U.S. diplomats should invite greater scrutiny of Havana.

John Suarez, Falls Church

The writer is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba.

[ Full blog entry ]

Look closer at Havana: Biden administration should take its time in formulating an effective Cuba policy

South Florida Sun Sentinel, February 3, 2021

Look closer at Cuba

Fidel Castro in Addis Ababa with Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1977.

William M. LeoGrande makes a number of claims that do not stand up to closer scrutiny. [”Biden should act fast on Cuba | Opinion,” Jan. 28] He called President Obama’s 2014 opening “a historic achievement.” The opening was followed by a collapse in U.S. trade with Cuba, a historic increase in repression against Cuban dissidents, and beginning in November 2016, American diplomats suffering brain injuries. The cause, according to the National Academies of Sciences, is “consistent with the effects of directed, pulsed, radiofrequency energy.”

Mengistu visits Cuba in Havana,Cuba on May 1, 1978.

 LeoGrande’s claim that engagement with Cuba “was necessary for ending the conflict in southern Africa in the 1980s” fails to mention that the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s drove the end of conflict in southern Africa with the end of Soviet subsidies. It was not the good offices of the Castro regime. 

The professor ignores the role played by the Castro brothers in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Ethiopia, sending thousands of Cuban troops to assist war criminal Mengistu Haile Mariam carry out a genocide that claimed over a million Ethiopian lives. When formulating policy it is important to provide full context. The Castro regime has been and continues to be a bad actor, and belongs on the list of state terror sponsors.

The Biden administration should take its time in formulating an effective policy.

John Suarez, executive director, Center for a Free Cuba

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/letters/fl-op-letters-panhandling-homeless-fort-lauderdale-20210203-m4vfnrmhbvclnbotlmt6ry4gle-story.html

 

The Havana Syndrome: The dangerous legacy of appeasing tyrants and not recognizing their true nature (What The New York Times forgot)

Update on Cuba's health attacks that many would like to forget.

Did appeasement policy lead to 40 diplomats suffering brain damage?

The question raised by The New York Times in their October 19th article referencing the "Havana Syndrome" with respect to China and Russia titled "U.S. Diplomats and Spies Battle Trump Administration Over Suspected Attacks", was first raised in this blog with regard to Cuba on September 20, 2017:"Did State Department downplaying attacks on diplomats in Cuba endanger others?"  This downplaying of injuries to American diplomats started during the Obama Administration. This blog also asked if the 2014-2017 neo-appeasement policy had worsened the behavior of the Castro regime?

Over forty American employees stationed at embassies in Cuba and China are requiring long term "emergency health and other benefits" due to injuries suffered on the job in these two countries. The largest number were stationed in Cuba.  

In the fall of 2016 U.S. diplomats began to complain of "mild" traumatic brain injury, permanent hearing, and memory loss. In May of 2017 two Cuban diplomats were expelled from the United States over the matter, but the reason was not made known until August 9, 2017.

On December 7, 2016 the United States and Cuba held their fifth Bilateral Commission meeting where they celebrated progress on U.S.-Cuba relations, and according to the Miami Herald signed "11 non-binding agreements on health, the environment, counter-narcotics, and other areas of cooperation." No word on attacks against diplomats.

Cuban troops in military parade chant they'll shoot President Obama in the head

On January 2, 2017 Raúl Castro presided over a military parade in Havana where marching troops chanted about shooting the American President in the head: "Obama! Obama! with what fervor we’d like to confront your clumsiness, to give you a cleansing with rebels and mortar, and send you a hat of lead to the head.”
 
On January 12, 2017 the Obama Administration provided further concessions to Cuba gutting the Cuban Adjustment Act and ending the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program that had bothered General Castro for years.  

On January 16, 2017 the Obama State Department issued a statement that "the United States and Cuba [had] signed a bilateral Law Enforcement Memorandum of Understanding to deepen law enforcement cooperation and information sharing." American diplomats were suffering serious harm, including mild traumatic brain injury, permanent hearing loss that included loss of balance, headaches, and brain swelling. Yet, according to The Wall Street Journal no complaint was made until February of 2017.  

On January 17, 2017 President Obama granted clemency to Oscar López Rivera, a founder of the Armed Forces of National Liberation Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN), a movement responsible for more than 130 bombings in American cities - including one in New York City on January 24, 1975 that went off in the Fraunces Tavern during lunch hour killing four people. Unrepentant, López had 10 years added to his sentence when he and another FALN member were caught plotting a prison break that included killing their prison guards. On November 17, 2017 Mr. 
López Rivera received the Order of Solidarity from the Cuban government.  

American diplomats were being permanently harmed while all these concessions were being made, and regime soldiers contemptuously chanted about shooting President Obama in the head so many times that they'd make him a lead hat. Fabiola Santiago, an Obama partisan, wrote a column on January 6, 2017 outraged at the disrespectful action by the dictatorship titled "Cuban troops’ bizarre chant: We’ll make Obama ‘a hat out of bullets to the head’", and she correctly described it as "a threat to do the U.S. president harm." 

Now CBS says that the State Department "only admitted the attacks were occurring after CBS News Radio first reported them August 9." According to the news agency an "internal Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs document obtained by CBS News shows the State Department was fully aware of the extent of the attacks on its diplomats in Havana, Cuba, long before it was forced to acknowledge them."

Worse yet "experts" such as Fulton Armstrong with a track record of "minimizing Cuba’s ability to threaten U.S. interests and its continued support to terrorists" are engaged in downplaying this latest outrage. What goes unmentioned is that under international law as described below by the International Court of Justice put it in the case of US Diplomatic and Consular Staff in Tehran (paras 38-40):

[t]here is no more fundamental prerequisite for the conduct of relations between States than the inviolability of diplomatic envoys and embassies . . . [T]he institution of diplomacy, with its concomitant privileges and immunities, has withstood the test of centuries and proved to be an instrument essential for effective co-operation in the international community, and for enabling States, irrespective of their differing constitutional and social systems, to achieve mutual understanding and to resolve their differences by peaceful means . . . [and] the inviolability of consular premises and archives, are similarly principles deep-rooted in international law…

The Castro regime has failed to maintain the "inviolability of diplomatic envoys and embassies" in this matter but also has a decades long history of engaging in the wholesale violation of this international norm.   

Former Canadian ambassador to Cuba James Bartleman described events that occurred midway during his  (1981 – 1983) posting: “[h]is family dog was poisoned, a trade officer had a dead rat nailed to their door and the embassy started receiving threatening phone calls.”  

U.S. diplomat Robin Meyers was subjected to cars being used against her as weapons in Cuba in February of 1996. 

In 2006 The Miami Herald reported how a high-ranking member of the U.S. mission found his mouthwash replaced with urine. In another case, after one diplomat’s family privately discussed their daughter’s susceptibility to mosquito bites, “they returned home to find all of their windows open and the house full of mosquitoes.”  American diplomats, like their Canadian counterparts, have also had pets poisoned while stationed in Cuba. 

This is an outlaw regime with a track record that should not be ignored, especially when doing so is led to diplomats and their families being seriously physically harmed.  Back on December 17, 2014 this blog made the following prediction: "Rewarding the hardline and rogue elements in the Castro regime is unlikely to improve the dictatorship's behavior to the contrary it may worsen." 

 

Average Cubans and other Latin Americans suffered at the hands of a more aggressive and violent dictatorship during the 2009 - 2017 warming of relations. An extreme example documented in May 2015 was the machete attack against Sirley Avila Leon by agents of the Castro regime.