A new report on whether foreign adversaries are responsible for a series of mysterious illnesses that befell U.S. personnel abroad, known as “Havana syndrome,” showed the intelligence community is more divided than previously thought.
On Friday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released its assessment on Havana syndrome, the illness that a small group of U.S. diplomats and spies overseas have reported since 2016.
Seven intelligence community agencies were involved in the report, five of which “continue to assess that it is very unlikely a foreign adversary is responsible for the events reported as possible.” Of those five, “two of them still have moderate to high confidence, and three still have moderate confidence in the product being released.”
These five believe it to be “very unlikely” that a foreign actor has “used a novel weapon or prototype device to harm even a subset of the US government personnel,” the official said.
However, of the remaining two elements involved in the new report, one found “roughly even chance a foreign actor has used a novel weapon or prototype device to harm a small undetermined subset of the US government personnel.” The other agency determined that there is “roughly even chance a foreign actor has developed a novel weapon or prototype device that could have harmed a small, undetermined subset of the US personnel,” but they continue “to assess it is unlikely a foreign actor has deployed such a weapon in any of the events.”
The two agencies in the minority had “low confidence” in their findings. It’s unclear which of the agencies were in the minority. The U.S. intelligence community is made up of 18 organizations, including the ODNI and CIA.
The U.S. officials who reported these mysterious illnesses said the symptoms in different locations include dizziness, head pain, vision problems, cognitive troubles, vertigo, and possibly traumatic brain injuries and began at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba in 2016.
The intelligence community reached a similar conclusion in a highly anticipated 2023 report on the subject, which followed a CIA report from January 2022 that concluded the same findings — no adversary was responsible for the mysterious bouts.
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The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence CIA Subcommittee also investigated whether a foreign adversary is responsible for these cases, and the chairman of the subcommittee, Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR), said in December 2024 that the IC’s conclusion in the 2023 report is “dubious at best and misleading at worst.”
“After years of traveling the world holding meetings and hearings with credible whistleblowers and leaders in our Intelligence Community (IC), I have discovered that there is reliable evidence to suggest that some Anomalous Health Incidents (AHIs) are the work of foreign adversaries,” Crawford added at the time when the committee released its interim report last month.