CIA’s Report: Havana Syndrome Not the Result of Deliberate Foreign Campaign

Thursday, January 20, 2022

Lucas Leiroz, researcher in Social Sciences sat the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

After several unsubstantiated allegations that Russia and China were using microwave radiation weapons to cause health problems in American diplomats, the CIA admitted that there is not enough evidence to claim that the so-called “Havana syndrome” is deliberately provoked by foreign agents. However, the US intelligence agency continues to claim that there is evidence of foreign involvement in some specific cases, which seems to show that Washington is simply avoiding accusations of using conspiracy theories but maintaining anti-Russian and anti-Chinese rhetoric.

Recently, the CIA published information about a report resulting from a study on the cases of Havana Syndrome. After several analyzes and investigations, the agency seems to have concluded that there is not enough evidence to affirm the existence of a global campaign deliberately organized by “hostile powers” – commonly associated to Russia or China – to provoke the symptoms described by the American diplomats.

In fact, despite the government’s allegations, no evidence of the use of radioactive weapons has been found. There was no identification of any specific mechanism that would be used to cause the symptoms. CIA spokespersons also clarified that there are about two dozen cases that have not yet been concluded and that new studies and data could suggest the existence of a deliberate foreign action.

However, the CIA did not take a very clear position on the topic. While admitting that there is no evidence of a deliberate global plan of action on the part of enemy nations, the agency has made it clear that there is a possibility of foreign involvement in some specific cases. Interestingly, no details were provided on what would be such “specific cases” and their evidence of foreign action, which leads us to conclude that once again conspiratorial accusations are at the heart of Washington’s rhetoric.

These were some of a CIA senior’s words during an interview about this topic: “There’s no one explanation… We don’t see a global campaign by a foreign actor (…) We would definitely not rule out the possibility of foreign actor involvement in some discrete cases [but] we have not identified a causal mechanism, a novel weapon, that’s been used at this point”.

Since 2017, the US government has adopted as official narrative the discourse that Moscow and Beijing are using technologically advanced weapons to provoke symptoms such as nausea, dizziness, tinnitus, and mental confusion among US diplomats. The most commonly accepted hypothesis by US officials is that the symptoms are generated by the victims’ exposure to radioactive waves emitted by microwave weapons, supposedly used by secret agents of US enemy countries.

Obviously, such claims are absolutely unsubstantiated. At first, there is not enough evidence to claim that any country in the world has such technology capable of causing the effects described by the diplomats. Sometimes the American accusations sounded like not only conspiratorial words but really futuristic ones. So, before claiming that there is involvement of this or that country in this type of activity, it would be up for the US to prove that such weapons really exist.

Another point is the fact that if any country actually possessed this type of weapon, it is questionable whether US diplomats stationed in Cuba and other developing countries would be the chosen targets of such a powerful technology. Still, it is necessary to say that the symptoms reported by the diplomats are very common for different types of diseases, mainly related to stress and situations of exposure to danger, which makes it premature to say that the reports constitute sufficient evidence to speak about a new “syndrome”.

What we see now  is not a real change of belief on the part of the US government from its previous speech. On the contrary, it is just an attempt to “validate” the conspiracy theories that are being disseminated. Washington does not seem interested in admitting that there is no evidence of foreign involvement, but it feels obliged to do so in order not to be accused of using conspiratorial and anti-scientific rhetoric, which would damage the image of the US in international society. This explains the ambiguous position of the CIA: it is admitted that there is no evidence so far to affirm the existence of a foreign plan, but, at the same time, it is claimed that not all cases have been studied yet and that there is a possibility of foreign involvement in some specific situations.

The CIA is simply paving the way for the US to claim in the future that it has found enough data to prove the existence of the foreign plan. It is a way of “justifying” and giving “scientific validity” to baseless theses.

Source: InfoBrics