Yahoo News survey finds ‘growing skepticism’ about link between Havana Syndrome and foreign ‘attacks’

A Yahoo News investigation found there was « increasing skepticism » among US officials of Havana syndrome cases linked to foreign attacks, the outlet reported Wednesday.

Brian Nichols, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, told Yahoo News that there was no evidence that foreign actors caused the Havana Syndrome health issues that have been reported in recent years. last years.

“A Yahoo News investigation found there is growing skepticism among senior officials about a key underlying premise of the new law: that symptoms associated with Havana syndrome, which the government officially calls incidents Abnormal Health (AHI), can be linked to no means of hostile attack by a foreign power, » the outlet reported.

President Biden signed the HAVANA Act in October 2021, which provides up to $187,300 for victims who are former or current Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents who suffered brain damage and other related health issues known as Havana Syndrome, according to The New York Times.

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U.S. officials reported the first cases of Havana syndrome in Cuba in 2016. « We have not identified any outside causation in the abnormal health incidents, » Nichols said on Yahoo News’ « Conspiracyland » podcast titled « L ‘Strange History of Havana Syndrome’.

CIA Director William Burns also said they found no evidence that would link foreign actors like Russia to a « sustained global campaign on the scale of what has been reported. »

The CIA can respond for the majority of Havana Syndrome cases, but there are still a few that are still under investigation. « But privately, senior officials say the lack of hard evidence has made them increasingly skeptical of the existence of a supposed microwave superweapon or other exotic devices that could have caused the symptoms – an emerging view that suggests the whole Havana Syndrome narrative, as has been reported by most media over the past five years, may end up being a conspiracy theory that didn’t pan out. just never materialized,” the Yahoo News report said.

“As I started to read the data, read the intelligence, read the results of the surveys and the assessment work that was going on around the world, it became more and more difficult to explain these cases as a attack. I’ve never seen anything that was clear and even provided an identification of who was doing it…or a definitive source of what was causing these symptoms, » said John Cohen, former acting undersecretary for intelligence and an analyst at the Department of Homeland Security, at Yahoo News Podcast.

The seal of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is seen at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, April 13, 2016.
(SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

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Yahoo news reported that there were often clashes between officers skeptical of the Havana Syndrome link to foreign attacks and those who believed they were « victims of hostile actions by a foreign adversary ».

Cohen said intelligence officials were « even pursuing a theory that the whole Havana Syndrome controversy was fueled by a foreign intelligence ‘disinformation’ campaign designed to exaggerate health incidents in order to create chaos within. » of the American intelligence community and to undermine « internal cohesion ». ‘ » Yahoo News reported.

They added that no evidence has been found for this theory.

The seal of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is displayed in the lobby of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia August 14, 2008.
(SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

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In 2021, several American diplomats at the Embassy in Berlin reported having symptoms of Havana Syndrome. Symptoms include hearing sudden piercing noises, dizziness, headache, intense fatigue, vertigo, nausea, and sometimes cognitive difficulties.