Many of the victims firmly believe that information exists that offers clear evidence that Russia is behind their symptoms, some of which were severe enough to force early retirement.
The United States Department of Defense spent more than a year testing a device purchased in a covert operation that some researchers believe may be the cause of a series of mysterious health problems that have affected American spies, diplomats and military personnel, known informally as Havana Syndrome, according to four sources familiar with the matter.
A division of the Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), acquired the device for several million dollars in the final days of the Biden administration, tapping Defense Department funding, according to two of the sources. Those responsible paid “eight figures” [entre 10 e 99 milhões de dólares] for the equipment, they said, refusing to indicate a more precise value.
The device continues to be analyzed and there remains an ongoing debate — and, in some sectors of the government, skepticism — regarding its connection to a few dozen anomalous health incidents that remain officially unexplained.
CNN has asked the Pentagon, HSI and the Department of Homeland Security for comment. The CIA declined to comment.
The device acquired by HSI produces pulsed radio waves, one of the sources said — a mechanism that, for years, some officials and academics have speculated could be the cause of these incidents. Although the equipment is not entirely of Russian origin, it contains Russian components, this source added.
For a long time, those responsible have been trying to understand how a device powerful enough to cause the damage reported by some victims could be portable; This continues to be one of the central issues, according to one of the sources informed about the equipment. The device can fit in a backpack, he said.
The acquisition reignited a painful and controversial debate within the US government about Havana Syndrome, officially known as “anomalous health episodes”.
The mysterious illness first emerged in late 2016, when a group of US diplomats stationed in the Cuban capital, Havana, began reporting symptoms consistent with head trauma, including vertigo and extreme headaches. In the following years, cases were recorded in various parts of the world.
In the following decade, the community of intelligence and the Department of Defense tried to understand whether these employees were the target of some type of directed energy attack by a foreign government. Senior intelligence officials publicly stated that there was not enough evidence to support that conclusion, while victims accuse the US government of manipulating them and ignoring important evidence that Russia was attacking US state officials.
Still, Defense officials considered the conclusions serious enough to inform the House of Representatives and Senate Information Services committees late last year, including references to the acquired device and ongoing testing.
One of the main current concerns of some officials is that, if the technology proves viable, it could have proliferated, according to several sources, which would mean that more than one country could now have access to a device capable of causing career-ending injuries to US officials.
CNN was unable to determine where — or from whom — HSI purchased the device, but this agency has a history of collaborating with the Department of Defense in operations carried out around the world. HSI has expanded jurisdiction to investigate crimes linked to customs violations, including investigations into the proliferation of US-controlled technology or knowledge abroad.
These investigations are “the biggest point of collaboration between HSI and the US military,” according to a former Department of Homeland Security official.
For example, when the U.S. military found U.S. technology in Afghanistan or Iraq that raised questions about how those components arrived in the region, they turned to HSI, this official explained.
It is also unclear how the US government was aware of the existence of the device to the point of being able to acquire it. Havana Syndrome — and its cause — continue to be deeply opaque, both to the intelligence as well as the medical community.
One of the problems faced by doctors is the lack of a clear definition of “anomalous health incidents” (AHIs). In some cases, the tests were carried out long after the onset of symptoms, making it difficult to understand what physically happened.
In 2022, a panel of intelligence who investigated the cause of AHIs stated that some episodes could “plausibly” have been caused by “pulsed electromagnetic energy” emitted by an external source.
But in 2023, the intelligence community publicly stated that it had been unable to link any of the cases to a foreign adversary, considering it unlikely that the unexplained illness was the result of a targeted campaign by an enemy of the United States. As recently as January 2025, the global assessment of this community maintained that it was very unlikely that the symptoms had been caused by a foreign actor — although an official from the Office of the Director of National Information stressed that analysts are unable to “exclude” this possibility in a small number of cases.
This position has long outraged victims, many of whom firmly believe that there is information that offers clear evidence that Russia is behind their symptoms, some of which were severe enough to force early reforms.
Some current and former CIA officials have raised concerns that the agency has softened its investigation, as CNN previously reported.
The acquisition of the device was seen by some victims as a possible validation of their suspicions.
“I know [governo dos EUA] did discover devices of this type, so the CIA owes all the victims a public and monumental apology for the way we were treated like pariahs,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, one of the first CIA officers to make public the injuries he says he suffered in an attack in Moscow in 2017, in a statement to CNN.
*Kylie Atwood contributed to this article
