International Spyware Tradecraft Transformed Into Brain Assaults

"When James Lin, a professor at the University of Illinois, read the first reports about the mysterious sounds in Havana, he immediately suspected that microwaves were responsible. His belief was based not just on theoretical research, but first-hand experience. Decades earlier, he had heard the sounds himself."

"Since its emergence around World War Two, there had been reports of people being able to hear something when a nearby radar was switched on and began sending microwaves into the sky. This was even though there was no external noise. In 1961, a paper by Dr Allen Frey argued the sounds were caused by microwaves interacting with the nervous system, leading to the term the "Frey Effect". But the exact causes - and implications - remained unclear."

 

"The [United States's] interest in weaponizing microwaves extended beyond the end of the Cold War. Reports say from the 1990s, the US Air Force had a project codenamed "Hello" to see if microwaves could create disturbing sounds in people's heads, one called "Goodbye" to test their use for crowd control, and one codenamed "Goodnight" to see if they could be used to kill people. Reports from a decade ago suggested these had not proved successful." 

 

"'The brain is being seen as the 21st Century battle-scape', argues James Giordano, an adviser to the Pentagon and Professor in Neurology and Biochemistry at Georgetown University, who was asked to look at the initial Havana cases. 'Brain sciences are global. It is not just the province of what used to be known as the West'. Ways to both augment and damage brain function are being worked on, he told the BBC. But it is a field with little transparency or rules."

"He says China and Russia have been engaged in microwave research and raises the possibility that tools developed for industrial and commercial uses - for instance to test the impact of microwaves on materials - could have been repurposed. But he also wonders if disruption and spreading fear were also the aim."

Gordon Corera, Security correspondent, BBC News

"I felt like I was being struck with something."

"Pain that I have never felt before in my life ... mostly in my head and in my eyes ... It was as if I had been seized by some invisible hand and I couldn't move."

"People don't understand what this kind of brain damage can do to you."

"So it's very easy for people to be dismissive and say, 'But you look fine.' But the reality is, I'm not."

"And I don't think very man of us are."

Tina Onufer, 2017 victim of 'Havana Syndrome'

 

United States Embassy in Havana, May 2021   Getty Images

 It wasn't just American diplomatic personnel that were targeted by some inexplicable, strange and terrifying attack on their consciousness, through a source that impacted their brains, giving them massive headaches, making them unable to concentrate through a 'fog', destabilizing their sense of balance, making them feel frail and incapable. Canadians stationed in Cuba in the Canadian Embassy in Havana too appeared to be targeted by this peculiar force that no one seemed able to identify.

From the time 'Havana Syndrome' first emerged in 2016, to the present, the strange phenomenon has been experienced elsewhere than Cuba now, claiming more victims, mostly Americans, and a reliable explanation for what has been happening doesn't appear any closer to being revealed than initially although their numbers have risen to several hundred afflicted people. Governments of those afflicted by this odd brain malady that renders its sufferers unable to take up their normal lives, appear to have no answers.

Just recently yet another instance of what appears to be microwave attacks was described by a victim, a career U.S. diplomat, as being seized by an "invisible hand", struck down by the mysterious syndrome. Yet another American diplomat informed that her brain had aged at least two decades, resulting from the illness she suffered so inexplicably. In the first of the attacks two dozen CIA officers spoke of buzzing in their heads and intense pressure in their skulls.

It was in Havana, Cuba in 2017 when Tina Onufer became a victim, one of what would become hundreds of U.S. officials abroad, including diplomats, intelligence operatives and military personnel. There were three victims that year; besides Ms.Onufer, Doug Ferguson and his wife Kate Husband, all describing the debilitating impact of the syndrome. For Ms. Onufer her career ended as a result of the syndrome's long-term impact.

Her two colleagues were also stationed in Havana when they became aware of a constant annoying sound that went on for weeks. "The way the doctor boiled it down for me ... he said, 'Well, it's like you aged 20, 25 years all at once'," stated Kate Husband. Retired on medical grounds, she still suffers from nausea and mental fogginess.

Although no one in the U.S. government has made any statements that might reveal causation, it would appear that these assaults are the result of intelligence-seeking experiments. Experiments that the U.S. itself engaged in, as did China and Russia, according to a bit of an expose that the venerable old BBC engaged in, in an attempt to clear up the mystery. Which leads to a conclusion of sorts that directed, pulsed radio waves once used for intelligence gathering is now being used as a weapon of intimidation.

Doctors, scientists, intelligence agents and government officials have all been trying to find out what causes "Havana syndrome" - a mysterious illness that has struck American diplomats and spies. Some call it an act of war, others wonder if it is some new and secret form of surveillance - and some people believe it could even be all in the mind. So who or what is responsible?