


New reporting from The Insider forensically links Russia’s GRU military intelligence service to so-called “Havana Syndrome” radio frequency/microwave weapon attacks on U.S. government and military personnel in America and around the world. Symptoms of Havana Syndrome center on neurological conditions, including dizziness, an extreme sense of pressure in the head, unsteady gait, auditory problems, and headaches.
Sunday’s developments are big. Working with CBS News’s 60 Minutes and Der Spiegel, The Insider has collected evidence linking specific GRU officers and documents to RF/MW activities and specific global locations where U.S. personnel have reported Havana Syndrome symptoms. 60 Minutes interviewed the Defense Department’s former lead investigator for Havana Syndrome, Greg Edgreen, who stated his high confidence that Russia is responsible.
The Washington Examiner was the first to report in October 2021 on evidence linking the GRU and Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev to Havana Syndrome. Subsequent Washington Examiner reporting provided circumstantial evidence to suggest that George W. Bush, Laura Bush, and others in Bush’s presidential administration may have been victims of Havana Syndrome during the 2007 G7 summit in Germany. The Russians are known to possess and openly boast their possession of RF/MW capabilities designed to impair neurological functions.
Nevertheless, the U.S. intelligence community assessed last year it was “very unlikely” that a foreign adversary was responsible for conducting a global campaign to cause Havana Syndrome (or what the government calls “Anomalous Health Incidents”) and its related symptoms. The intelligence community reached this assessment, which most of the media happily accepted, by vice of two key factors.
First, by deliberately fixating on the need to establish correlating intelligence reporting between the vast majority of reporting victims in different global locations. By failing to establish that the vast majority of reporting U.S. victims can be linked in time and place to Russian intelligence activity, the intelligence community gave itself plausible credibility to deny that a global Russian RF/MW intelligence campaign is underway. Of note, Havana Syndrome reports notably dropped off during 2022 as Russia surged intelligence personnel into the war in Ukraine. Second, the intelligence community’s inability to capture a Russian officer in possession of RF/MW devices. While some efforts have been taken in this regard, sources tell me that the intelligence community’s leadership remains highly cautious against taking physical action against Russian intelligence officers/agents who may be in possession of RF/MW devices. This caution stands in stark contrast to the Russian intelligence service’s treatment of U.S. intelligence officers, particularly in Moscow.
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The new challenge for the U.S. intelligence community is that The Insider has made public what the intelligence community has kept secret and has assessed away as coincidence. Namely, this information includes time, place, and RF/MW capability evidentiary links between Russian intelligence officers/agents and multiple reporting U.S. victims of Havana Syndrome around the world. This underlines why the House Intelligence Committee is investigating the intelligence community’s 2023 assessment and why the intelligence community will face a critical credibility challenge when the full story is told.
Put simply, heads will have to roll in the intelligence community. At a bare minimum, what has just been published is incompatible with the sustained credibility of the intelligence community’s assessment that it is “very unlikely” a foreign adversary is engaged in a global Havana Syndrome-related effort.