Doctors, scientists, intelligence officials and government officials are trying to unlock the secrets of the "Havana Syndrome", a mysterious disease that afflicted American diplomats and spies.
Some consider it an act of war, others wonder if it is a new, covert form of surveillance, and some think the whole thing may be a setup. So who or what is behind this?
It often begins with a sound, which people struggle to describe, ranging from "buzzing" to "crunching metal" to "ear-piercing creaking", as best they can describe what's going on.
One of the women described low humming and intense pressure in her skull, another felt pain due to the sound, and those who did not hear a sound felt heat or pressure, and those who heard the sound did not make any difference covering their ears, and some people who had this syndrome suffered from dizziness and exhaustion for months.
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Washington reveals the exposure of its diplomats in Cuba to "sonic attacks"
The Havana syndrome appeared for the first time in Cuba in 2016. The first cases had appeared in CIA officers, which means that the matter was kept secret, but in the end, the news spread as well as the concern. And 26 people and their family members reported a variety of symptoms. There were whispers that some of the colleagues believed to be suffering from it were in fact insane and that it was "psychological conditioning".
As the BBC has been told, now, 5 years later, there are hundreds of reports on this issue coming from all continents, having a real impact on the US's ability to operate abroad.
Exposing the truth is now a top national security priority for the United States, a priority that one official described as the most difficult intelligence challenge they had ever faced.
Definitive evidence has been elusive, making the syndrome a battleground for competing theories, with some seeing it as a mental illness while others seeing it as a secret weapon. But a growing body of evidence focuses on microwaves as the possible explanation.
Diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba were restored in 2015 after decades of hostility, but within two years, the Havana Syndrome nearly led to the closure of the embassy as staff were withdrawn over fears for their safety.
In the beginning, there was speculation that the Cuban government, or a hardline faction within it that opposes improving relations between the two countries, might be responsible after it deployed some kind of sonic weapon. In general, the Cuban security services were nervous about the influx of Americans into Havana and tightened their grip on the capital.
But more recently, an apocalyptic possibility has its roots in the darker periods of the Cold War, when science, medicine, espionage and geopolitics collided.
When Professor James Lane, a professor at the University of Illinois, read the first reports of mysterious sounds in Havana, he immediately suspected that microwaves were to blame. His belief was based not only on theoretical research but on direct experience as he was He had experienced those voices himself decades ago.
Since the advent of microwaves during World War II, there have been reports of people being able to hear something when a nearby radar is triggered to start transmitting microwaves into the sky, despite the absence of external noise.
In 1961, Dr. Allen Fry argued in a paper that the sounds were caused by the interaction of microwaves with the nervous system, giving rise to the term "Fry effect", but the exact causes, and implications, remained unclear.
In the 1970s, Professor Lin began working on his experiments at the University of Washington. He sat on a wooden chair in a small room lined with sound-absorbing material, an antenna was pointed at the back of his head, and in his hand he held a light switch. Outside, a colleague sent pulses of microwaves through the antenna at random intervals. If Professor Lin heard a sound, he pressed a switch.
One pulse sounded like a whistle or a finger tap, while a series of pulses sounded like a bird's chirping. Those sounds were produced in his head, not as sound waves coming from outside.
Professor Lin believes that the energy is absorbed by the soft tissues of the brain and transformed into a pressure wave that moves inside the head, which the brain interprets as sound. This happened when receiving microwaves from a modern microwave oven or other equipment.
Professor Lin remembers being careful not to communicate with his colleague out loud. "I didn't want my brain to be damaged," he told the BBC.
In 1978, the professor found that he was not alone in his interest as he received an unusual invitation to discuss his latest papers from a group of scientists who were conducting their own experiments.
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Science during the Cold War was the epicenter of intense rivalry between great powers as control regions of the brain were discovered amid fears of superiority from the other side, including microwaves.
Professor Lin was shown the Soviet approach at a scientific research center in Pushchino, near Moscow. "They had a very careful and well-equipped laboratory," Professor Lin recalls. But their experience was more dangerous than his.
The subjects were sitting in cylinders filled with salty sea water with their heads sticking out, and then microwaves were fired into their brains. The scientists believed that the microwaves interacted with the nervous system and wanted to ask Professor Lin for his alternative view.
American spies continued to follow Soviet research closely. A 1976 Defense Intelligence Agency report discovered by the BBC says no evidence of microwave weapons was found in the hands of the Communist bloc, but it says it knew of experiments in which microwaves were beamed down the throats of frogs until their hearts stopped.
The report also reveals that the United States was concerned that Soviet microwaves could be used to impede brain function or to produce psychoactive sounds: "Their internal research on common sense has great potential for development into a system to confuse or disrupt the behavior patterns of military personnel or diplomats."
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The American interest was more than just defensive, as James Lane sometimes made references to covert American work on weapons in the same field.
While Professor Lin was in Bucchino, another group of Americans worried that they had been exposed to microwaves, and that their government had covered it up.
For nearly a quarter of a century, the 10-story building of the US Embassy in Moscow has been engulfed by a broad, invisible beam of low-level microwaves. This became known as the "Moscow signal," but most of the insiders didn't know about it for many years.
The beam came from an antenna on the balcony of a nearby apartment and hit the upper floors of the embassy where the ambassador's office and most sensitive business were located. It was first spotted in the 1950s and later spotted from a room on the 10th floor. But the matter remained a mystery to all the workers inside, except for a few of them.
"We were trying to figure out what it might be for," explains Jack Matlock, the embassy's second-in-command in the mid-1970s.
But the new ambassador, Walter Stoessel who arrived in 1974, threatened to resign unless everyone was told. "It caused something like a panic," Matlock recalls. The embassy staff, whose children were in a basement nursery, were particularly worried. But the State Department played down any risks.
Then Ambassador Stoessel himself fell ill, suffering from an eye hemorrhage as a symptom. In a now-declassified 1975 phone call to the Soviet ambassador in Washington, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger linked Stoessel's disease to microwaves, admitting "we're trying not to bring it up". Stoessel died of leukemia at the age of 66. "He decided to play the good soldier," his daughter told the BBC, not to make a fuss.
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Since 1976, filters have been installed to protect people. But many diplomats were furious, believing that the State Department had initially kept silent, then resisted acknowledging any potential health impact, a claim echoed decades later with Havana Syndrome.
Why was the Moscow signal? "I'm sure the Soviets had other intentions than harming us," says Matlock. They were ahead of the US in surveillance technology and one theory was that microwaves bouncing off windows were to pick up conversations, another theory says they were activating their listening devices hidden inside the building or picking up information through microwaves hitting electronic devices American.
The Soviets told Matlock at one point that the purpose was in fact to jam American equipment on the embassy roof used to intercept Soviet communications in Moscow.
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One theory is that it involved a more targeted way to carry out some kind of surveillance using guided microwaves. A former British intelligence official told the BBC that microwaves could be used to direct electronic devices to extract signals, or to recognize and track signals.
Others speculate that a device (even an American one) may have been poorly designed or malfunctioning and causing a physical reaction in some people. However, US officials told the BBC that no device had been identified or recovered.
After a lull, cases began to spread to countries other than Cuba. In December of 2017, Mark Polymeropoulos, a senior CIA officer, suddenly woke up in a Moscow hotel room. He was in town to meet his Russian counterparts. He told the BBC: "My ears were buzzing and my head was spinning. I felt like I was going to vomit. I couldn't stand up. It was terrifying." It has been a year since the first cases of Havana syndrome, but the CIA medical office told him his symptoms did not match the Cuban cases.
A long battle began for medical treatment but the severe headache never went away, and in the summer of 2019 he was forced to retire.
Polymeropoulos initially thought he had been exposed to some kind of surveillance tool that had been "detected". But when more CIA cases came to light that were all, he says, linked to people working in Russia he came to believe he had been targeted with a gun.
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But then came China, including the US Consulate in Guangzhou in early 2018.
Some of those affected in China have contacted Beatrice Golomb, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, who has long researched the health effects of microwaves, as well as other mysterious diseases.
She told the BBC that she wrote to the Foreign Office medical team in January 2018 with a detailed description of why she believed microwaves were to blame. The non-committal response was, "This makes for interesting reading."
Professor Golomb says that high levels of radiation were recorded by family members of staff at the Guangzhou consulate using commercially available equipment. “The indicator exceeded the highest score available,” but she says the State Department told her staff that the measurements they took were confidential.
Early investigations encountered a range of problems as there was a failure to collect consistent data. The State Department and the CIA failed to communicate with each other, and the skepticism of their internal medical teams caused tension.
Only one of the nine cases from China was initially determined by the State Department to fit the criteria for the syndrome based on the Havana cases. This angered others who experienced the symptoms and felt as though they were being accused of fabricating them, starting a fight for equal treatment that continues today.
With growing frustration, some of those affected turned to Mark Zaid, a lawyer specializing in national security issues who now works for about 20 government employees, half of whom are from the intelligence services.
"This is not the Havana Syndrome," says Zaid, whose clients have been affected in many locations.
Since 2013, Zig has represented a US National Security Agency employee who was believed to have been harmed in 1996 at a still-classified location.
Why the US government is unwilling to acknowledge an earlier date for this issue, Zaid wonders. One possibility, he says, is that it may open a secret fund of incidents that have been ignored over the years. Another reason is that the United States has also developed and possibly deployed microwave devices itself and wants to keep them secret.
The state's interest in microwave weapons extended beyond the end of the Cold War.
Reports indicate that the US Air Force has had a project since the 1990s codenamed "Halo" to see if microwaves can create disturbing noises in people's heads, and one of them was called "Goodbye" to test its use for crowd control, and the other carried Codenamed "goodnet" to see if it could be used to kill people.
Reports a decade ago indicated that these projects had not been proven successful.
But the study of the mind and what can be done with it has received increasing focus in the military and security worlds.
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He told the BBC that work was underway on ways to both increase and damage brain function. But it is an area with little transparency or rules.
He adds that China and Russia have become involved in microwave research and raises the possibility that instruments developed for industrial and commercial uses, for example to test the effect of microwaves on materials, could be redesigned for other uses. But he wonders if disruption and fear-mongering are also the goal.
This technology may have been around for a while, and it may have been used selectively, but that means something has changed in Cuba for it to be noticed.
Bill Evanina was a senior intelligence official when the Havana cases came to light, and he stepped down as head of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center this year. He has little doubt about what happened in Havana. "Was it an offensive weapon? I think it was," he told the BBC.
It is believed that microwaves may have been deployed in recent military conflicts, but he points to specific circumstances to explain the shift.
Cuba, located 90 miles off the coast of Florida, has long been an ideal location for gathering "intelligence" by intercepting communications.
During the Cold War, Cuba was home to a major Soviet eavesdropping station. Reports indicated that when Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Cuba in 2014, the station was reopened. China has also opened two sites in recent years, according to one of the sources, while the Russians have sent 30 additional intelligence officers to the sites.
But since 2015, the United States has returned to Havana with its newly opened embassy and enhanced presence, and the United States was just beginning to establish itself there, gathering intelligence and confronting Russian and Chinese spies. "We were fighting a wild battle," one of them recalls.
Then the voices started.
Who benefits most from the closure of the embassy in Havana? If the Russian government is escalating intelligence gathering in Cuba, it may not have been good for it to be the United States. there".
Russia has repeatedly denied accusations that it was involved in or "delivered microwave weapons". The Russian Foreign Ministry said: "Such unfounded and provocative speculations and fanciful assumptions cannot be considered a serious matter for comment."
There have been skeptics about the existence of the Havana Syndrome, who argue that Cuba's unique situation underpins their position.
"Contagious" stress
Professor Robert W. Paloh, professor of neurology at the University of California, has long studied unexplained health symptoms. When he saw reports of Havana Syndrome, he concluded that it was a collective psychological condition.
Paloh compared this case to the way people feel ill when told they have eaten contaminated food even if the food was not actually contaminated, reversing the placebo effect. "When you see mass psychopathy there is usually some stressful underlying situation, and in the case of Cuba the embassy staff, particularly the CIA agents who were affected first, were certainly in a stressful situation," he says.
He adds that everyday symptoms such as brain fog and dizziness are being reframed, by sufferers, the media and doctors, as a syndrome, and "the symptoms are as real as any". He argues that individuals are becoming more aware and fearful as the reports spread, especially within a closed society. He believes it has become contagious among other US officials serving abroad.
There are still many things that cannot be explained. Why did Canadian diplomats report symptoms in Havana, Mark Zaid asks? Did what happened to them come on the sidelines of targeting Americans close to them? Why did no British officials report the symptoms? "The Russians have literally tried to kill people on British soil in recent years with radioactive materials, but why have no cases of Havana Syndrome been reported?" Bill Evanina replies that the US is now sharing details with allies to identify cases: "I'd probably stop at saying no one in the UK has experienced any symptoms."
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Also, there may be some unrelated cases. "We had a group of military personnel in the Middle East who claimed to have been exposed to microwaves, and it turned out that they had food poisoning," says a former official. “We need to separate the wheat from the chaff,” Mark Zaid says, adding that some members of the public have psychological problems as they go to him claiming they are suffering from microwave attacks.
A former official believes that about half of the cases reported by US officials may be related to attacks by an adversary. Others say the real number may be lower.
The December 2020 report from the US National Academies of Sciences was a pivotal moment as experts took evidence from scientists and doctors as well as 8 victims.
Remembers Professor David Relman of Stanford University, who chaired the panel: "It was very exciting, some of these people were literally hiding out of fear of further action being taken against them by anyone. There were really precautions that we had to take to ensure their safety." .
The committee looked at psychological and other causes, but concluded that directed microwaves with high energy pulses were most likely responsible for some of the conditions, similar to the view of James Lane, who provided the evidence.
But although the study was sponsored by the State Department, it still considers the conclusion to be a plausible hypothesis and officials say they have found no additional evidence to support it.
The administration of US President Joe Biden has indicated that it takes the issue seriously. CIA and State Department officials are given advice on how to deal with incidents (including "leaving Site X", i.e. moving from a location if one feels exposed).
The State Department set up a task force to support staff with what is now called "mysterious health incidents." Previous attempts to classify cases in terms of meeting specific criteria were abandoned. But without defining the definition, counting becomes more difficult.
A new wave of cases has emerged this year, including in the German capital, Berlin, and an even larger cluster in the Austrian capital, Vienna. Last August, US Vice President Kamala Harris's trip to Vietnam was delayed 3 hours due to a case being reported at the embassy in Hanoi. Worried diplomats are now asking questions before taking on assignments abroad with their families.
"It's a huge distraction for us if we think the Russians are doing things to our intelligence officers who go abroad," says Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer who finally received the medical treatment he wanted this year.
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Signs in the blood
Accusing another country of harming US officials has consequences.
"This is an act of war," says Polymeropoulos. Policymakers will demand hard evidence, which officials say is not yet available.
Five years later, some US officials say little is known about when the Havana syndrome began. But others disagree and say that the evidence for microwaves is now much stronger, though not yet conclusive.
The BBC has learned that new evidence is emerging as data is collected and analyzed more systematically for the first time. Some of the cases this year showed specific signs in the blood of a traumatic brain injury. These signs fade after a few days and it used to take a lot of time to discover this. But now that people are being tested more quickly after reporting symptoms they are being seen for the first time.
The debate on this issue remains divisive, and there may be real cases and others that are not. Officials raise the possibility that the technology and its purpose have changed over time, perhaps shifting to try to destabilize the United States. Some even worry that one country is emulating another.
Professor Relman argues: "We like a simple diagnosis but sometimes it's hard to achieve. And when we can't we have to be very careful."
The ambiguity of the Havana Syndrome may be its true strength. Ambiguity and fear reinforce it, making more people wonder if they are suffering, and making it harder for spies and diplomats to operate abroad. Even if the Havana Syndrome began as a narrowly defined incident, it may have developed a life of its own.
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