Alejandro Ernesto / EPA
US Embassy in Havana, Cuba
The mysterious syndrome that affects US diplomats and government officials is once again on the lips of conspiracists.
In a recent report on the program 60 Minutes, former US government officials speak in a alleged weapon associated with the phenomenon which had been in possession of a North American military laboratory for more than a year.
For a decade, U.S. and Canadian diplomats, intelligence officers and other personnel stationed abroad began reporting similar symptoms that included dizziness, headaches, nausea, tinnitus, cognitive difficulties, balance problems and persistent fatigue. The first cases emerged in Havana, Cuba.
According to sources heard by , including former CIA operatives and other government officials under anonymity, the device would be small enough to be carried by a person, but capable of hitting a target hundreds of meters away, through windows and plaster walls.
The same sources state that the device will have been tested on rats and sheep. It produced lesions “consistent” with those seen in humans.
Even so, the symptoms attributed to Havana Syndrome are not uniform among allegedly affected patients, which continues to raise doubts about the coherence of the clinical picture.
Among the former agents who agreed to identify themselves in the CBS report is Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer with a 26-year career in covert operations in the Middle East. He harshly criticized the US authorities’ response to the case and challenged the intelligence community’s assessment released in 2023 that it was “very unlikely” that the neurological symptoms were caused by a foreign adversary.
Polymeropoulos also accuses the government of failing to provide medical support to its own operatives and describes a deep feeling of institutional betrayal. The whistleblowers cited by CBS even spoke of a large-scale cover-up and demanded clarification.
Despite the political repercussion of the mystery, the scientific community remains divided, essentially because until now, There is no peer-reviewed study confirming the existence of such a weapon in the hands of United States adversaries.
The , despite everything, questions whether the CBS report has new relevance or whether, given the critical context of US-Cuban relations, it only serves to spread more chaos.
