WASHINGTON, DC, July 27 — The hunt for the cause of the sinister Havana Syndrome continues as hundreds of new cases emerge among U.S. government employees and their families.
The illness, which has debilitating symptoms with no apparent natural causes, has led to the notion that the victims may have been targeted by a so-called directed energy device.
An NBC News report says that as many as 200 new cases of Havana Syndrome have been recorded to date from all over the world. The report noted that “A U.S. official with knowledge of new potential cases of so-called Havana Syndrome said a steady drumbeat of cables has been coming in from overseas posts reporting new incidents — often multiple times each week.”
It also underscored the global nature of the syndrome, quoting officials who claim that to date, there have been syndrome cases on every continent except Antarctica.
CIA Director William Burns has assembled a task force to investigate the source and the methods of what could be targeted attacks. Burns assigned an unnamed CIA veteran of the agency’s Counterterrorism Center, who played a key role in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, to head up the task force.
AMAC News coverage last week of the outbreak in Austria pointed out that “it is unlikely the Havana Syndrome is caused by some naturally occurring infection.” For one thing, the symptoms appear to be of a “physical nature,” the result of an injury such as a concussion rather than an illness.
Victims consistently describe crippling symptoms such as dizziness, migraine-like headaches, nausea, loss of balance, visual problems, and difficulty with thinking and remembering.
Some claim that they heard a “stabbing” noise and felt intense pressure on their faces prior to succumbing to the ailment.
As has been the case in every incident of the Havana Syndrome since it was first identified in 2016, all of the 200 new cases are government employees and or their relatives.
As for the cause, it is still under investigation. However, the National Academies of Science [NAS] conducted a probe and found that “In examining plausible causes of these illnesses, the committee that conducted the study and wrote the report considered the possibilities of directed, pulsed radiofrequency energy, chemical exposures, infectious diseases such as Zika, and psychological issues. An Assessment of Illness in U.S. Government Employees and Their Families at Overseas Embassies says that among the mechanisms the committee considered, directed, pulsed radiofrequency energy appears to be the most plausible mechanism in explaining these cases; especially in individuals with the distinct early symptoms.”
If indeed, the Havana Syndrome is inflicted by some sort of “ray gun,” as the NAS suggests, it poses several critical questions:
- Who has such weaponry? According to Professor James Giordano, a senior fellow at the U.S. Naval War College, the Soviet Union was working on the technology for such a weapon, and it was taken over by the Russian Federation when the U.S.S.R. fell apart. And he notes, China is known to have developed its own so-called directed energy device.
- Why would such devices be developed? The consensus is that there is a new arms race that is focused on microwave-based directed energy guns, ultimately eliminating the need for bulky bullets and bombs.
- But why use such a weapon on random targets? The targets of the Havana Syndrome appear not to be so random; to date, they have all been Americans and Canadians, and they have all been involved, directly or indirectly, in government work. Professor Giordano has suggested that the perpetrators may be engaged in field tests. As he put it, the Russians and the Chinese are “very interested in, and dedicated to, developing non-kinetic tools that can be leveraged below the threshold of what would normally be considered acts of war, so as to engage in processes of mass disruption.”