Federal agencies are investigating two cases of "Havana Syndrome" that have hit U.S. officials on American soil. One such attack took place in November 2020, and the other in November 2019. Both occurred, alarmingly, in or near Washington, D.C. CNN Reporter Katie Bo Williams refreshes our memories on what constitutes this debilitating illness.
"This all dates back to late 2016, early 2017 when we had diplomatic and intelligence personnel in Cuba and later in Moscow and other places around the globe reporting this weird constellation of symptoms. They were getting headaches, they were getting nausea, they were dizzy. Some of them were later diagnosed with traumatic brain injury," she explained. The cause and method of attack remains a mystery, though supposition is that it's "some kind of directed energy attack by foreign adversary."
John Berman asked her to focus on the events in Washington, D.C., and Williams explained that in the November 2020 case, a National Security Council official developed the same "constellation of symptoms while on white house grounds last year." A GQ article linked to in the CNN piece describes the November 2019 incident, in which a White House staffer was afflicted while walking her dog in Northern Virginia.
Brianna Keilar asked Williams if there was a sense of who might be behind the attacks. Williams said, "From the intelligence professionals I've talked to, the most likely culprit, if we can establish these are in fact, attacks, most likely Russia, possibly China. But it's one of these sort of sophisticated, large nation-states that the United States is so worried about right now."
Berman asked how certain the Pentagon and other investigating agencies are about all of this, and Williams' answer was disconcerting.
"The bottom line is, not at all, other than that they are sure that something happened," she said. "There is still this sort of high level of uncertainty within the intelligence community about what exactly is causing this. Who is doing it. And even how real some of these symptoms are and which ones can really be traced to some kind of weapon." She continued with an even more upsetting story implying there may be many more cases that have not been properly identified as Havana Syndrome, or part of this series of attacks.
"[T]here's been some debate inside government about whether or not some of these case were being taken seriously enough. You've seen at least one official, who was forced to retire because of these injuries, come out and say, 'The CIA didn't take care of me because they didn't believe my injuries were real.'"
Color me shocked that Traitor Trump's agencies might not have taken the injuries seriously, or aggressively investigated the incidents. Let's hope Biden's administration is as different in this regard as it has been in every other way. This is terrifying, and needs a response to protect our diplomatic and intelligence officials.
