SUBSCRIBER+ INTERVIEW — Who – or what – is to blame for the debilitating symptoms known as “Havana Syndrome”? The question has been asked repeatedly since symptoms (that can include debilitating headaches and vertigo) were first reported nearly a decade ago. Now, fresh reporting from a group of respected investigative journalists suggests that Russia may have a hand in what some believe to be a series of calculated attacks against U.S. government employees and Congress is investigating a possible Russian connection.
It’s called “Havana Syndrome” because the first reported symptoms were traced to U.S. officials who were based in the Cuban capital. But symptoms have also been reported in many other parts of the world.
“Dating back to 2014, a number of U.S. diplomatic military and intelligence officials and their families have reported major medical symptoms that have affected their auditory and sensory motor skills,” August Pfluger (R-TX), Chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence said earlier this month. “It’s paramount that we acknowledge the gravity of the situation.”
Expert witnesses told Pfluger’s committee that Russia may have “targeted and neutralized” dozens of U.S. intelligence and government officers in a covert operation using sonic weapons. The hearing was called after The Insider published the findings of an investigation conducted in cooperation with 60 Minutes and the German news magazine Der Spiegel which reported that Havana Syndrome symptoms – severe headaches, nausea, loss of balance, and cognitive decline – may have been caused by “directed energy weapons” wielded by members of a special Russian military intelligence unit.
The revelations are very different from U.S. intelligence assessments that concluded - with varying degrees on confidence - that links to any foreign adversary were “very unlikely.”
"I had my own assumptions when I became the Director about the possibility that a foreign adversary was responsible," said CIA Director Bill Burns in a message to the CIA workforce reviewed by The Cipher Brief. "We remain focused on identifying threats to our officers and their families at home and overseas. We look into any such reports thoroughly and work closely with FBI and other agencies to investigate any credible leads. As CIA's leadership team, we want our officers to continue to feel comfortable raising events or circumstances that generate CI concerns and we encourage any officer with health concernes that have a CI nexus to contact the relevant offices."
The Intelligence Community refers to the Havana Syndrome as Anomalous Health Incidents (AHIs) and after The Insider investigation, an ODNI Spokesperson told The Cipher Brief, "We carefully reviewed the details presented in recent press reports alongside our Intelligence Community Assessment released in 2023, in which most IC agencies concluded that it is very unlikely or at least unlikely a foreign adversary is responsible for the reported AHIs, though with varying degrees of confidence. While this additional review, which is now complete, did not cause IC elements to alter their analytic judgments - we continue to remain focused on identifying new information to help improve our understanding, particularly in areas we have identified as requiring additional research and analysis."
Part of the issue, according to sources close to the investigation, is that the IC was not able to confidently identify a weapon that could consistently cause the range of symptoms that have been reported. In short, the IC hasn't identified a smoking gun.
The lead reporter for the Insider investigation, Christo Grozev, testified that the Insider report was “not a smoking gun but a very plausible operational theory” to explain the cause of Havana Syndrome. "The totality of the evidence…has proven that Russia has the motive, the means and the opportunity to have developed and used non-lethal acoustic or electromagnetic wave weapons against members of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement community,” Grozev told the committee.
In a recent episode of the “State Secrets” podcast, Cipher Brief Managing Editor Tom Nagorski spoke with Grozev, Insider Managing Editor Michael Weiss, and Marc Polymeropoulos, a long-time CIA officer and one of the highest-ranking U.S. officials to report symptoms. [Ed note: Polymeropoulos is one of more than 180 Cipher Brief Experts who contribute insights on national security issues to provide better context to our readers.]
THE CONTEXT
- Symptoms asssociated with Havana Syndrome were first reported in late 2016, by diplomats stationed in the Cuban capital of Havana. There have been around 1,500 reports of similar symptoms across the U.S. government since then. Reported incidents have significantly dropped in recent years.
- U.S. intelligence agencies assessed that it is “very unlikely” that Havana Syndrome symptoms were caused by a foreign adversary. Their assessment did not identify a weapon or device that caused the ailments and the community assessed that symptoms were most likely caused by environmental factors.
- Studies by the National Institute of Health published in March 2024, failed to find evidence of brain injury in medical scans of U.S. diplomats and spies who reported Havana Syndrome symptoms. The findings contrasted previous studies by the University of Pennsylvania in 2018 and 2019 that suggested Havana Syndrome victims had brain injuries different from typical concussion injuries.
- The government of Russia has said it has had nothing to do with reported Havana Syndrome cases.
THE INTERVIEW
This excerpt of the State Secrets podcast has been edited for length and clarity. You can also listen and subscribe to State Secrets wherever you listen to podcasts.
Nagorski: I wanted to start by asking each of you to take us back to your own first experience with Havana Syndrome. Marc, it seems only appropriate to start with you, because you have the most personal experience with this.
Polymeropoulos: It started in December 2017 when I was on, in essence, a routine business trip to Moscow. I was the Deputy Operations Chief for the Europe and Eurasia Mission Center. I was going to meet with my counterparts in the Russian security services, as well as the U.S. Ambassador in Moscow, Jon Huntsman.
I woke up in the middle of the night with an incredible sense of vertigo, splitting headache, tinnitus, feeling physically ill. It started a journey in which I've had a headache every day for six and a half years.
I fought for healthcare for a very long time, finally got it when I went public with this, was treated and diagnosed at Walter Reed's Traumatic Brain Injury Center, diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury. And I've been an advocate for healthcare for victims.
I think that there was an incredible amount of government malfeasance, agency senior officers at the time of my injury not taking this seriously, and a lack of accountability for that.
Nagorski: Christo Grozev, how did you first come to be aware of this and start looking into it yourself?
Grozev: I was working with Bellingcat at the time and was simultaneously working on three or four investigations. When I read the first articles about Havana Syndrome, it was extremely esoteric-sounding, very intriguing. However, I thought, if this is happening to U.S. government officials, it will definitely be solved by U.S. government authorities. So I parked this to the fringe of my attention.
It was a major surprise to me when I was approached by a member of the intelligence community who said, Are you looking at this? And I said I am, but I'm just reading what you guys will discover. And he said, Well, I suggest you look at it yourself.
It became clear to me that if a member of the intelligence community is asking for an independent investigator to look into this, then there may not be the maximum attention to this topic within the government and within law enforcement. I started a panel of colleagues who were interested in the topic from Der Spiegel, The Insider and former Bellingcat colleagues. And we started gathering data about who had the motive, who would have the capability, and so on and so forth.
Weiss: I joined The Insider last summer. When we started to drill down and attribute that if there is a likely culprit here, it's not just the Russian intelligence services, but it is this particular unit, I became incredibly intrigued by it, because these guys are characters that I've been interested in for several years now.
Nagorski: All three of you are investigators of a certain variety. Marc, what sleuthing of your own did you do?
Polymeropoulos: I came back from Moscow in December of 2017. Throughout 2018, I was really focused on trying to get healthcare. So it wasn’t a question of investigating what happened. I ended up retiring in mid-2019 and was in really bad shape.
But right as I was about to retire, another senior officer came to my office and he had just gotten back from a trip and had some of the same symptoms. And I told him immediately to go to our medical staff. He was rejected as well, but that's when I started thinking, Hey, this is really something.
I made the decision in October 2020 to go public. And soon after that, I was admitted to Walter Reed for a one-month intensive program. Ultimately, it was clear to me, seeing others who were being treated, that this was happening around the world. Not really investigative efforts on my part, but when I saw individuals who were affected, I would help them try to lobby for healthcare as well.
Nagorski: You must have been thinking, at least in your better moments, about what had caused this. Did your mind go to some weird illness, or to something possibly much more nefarious?
Polymeropoulos: The Soviets and the Russians have a long history of doing some really awful things to U.S. embassy personnel. Plus, you have Vladimir Putin, who has made it almost a sport to conduct active measures campaigns, which I think have gone beyond traditional harassment.
In Moscow, when it happened to me, the first hours I thought it perhaps was food poisoning. I knew something bad had happened. And then when I got home, there was no doubt: either it was poison or some kind of attack, because I was in top physical and mental condition and all of a sudden, I lose all cognitive abilities. I can't drive. I lose my long-distance vision. I'm forgetting things.
It was just a question of what was it? It was clear to me that this was something nefarious. I was an intelligence officer. I don't believe in coincidences. This was not a coincidence.
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Nagorski: Let's come to some of the conclusions, or at least operating theories. Michael, The Insider recently published what you called “the most far-reaching investigation of Havana Syndrome to date.” Can you give us the highlights?
Weiss: The intelligence community had assembled this expert panel which put out a lengthy report suggesting that of the plausible explanations for what could cause this consortium of symptoms, the two most likely would be acoustic sound waves or pulse microwave radiation. And it was Christo who uncovered evidence that members of (Russian intelligence Unit) 29155 in particular had been researching acoustic sound wave technology – the title of the prospectus was “uses of non-lethal acoustic sound in the context of an urban warfare environment,” which is almost on the nose for what it is that the IC expert panel had suggested as a plausible culprit.
And we had sources from outside the U.S. government, one of whom everyone saw on 60 Minutes, Greg Edgreen. He was the lead DIA investigator into Havana (Syndrome), had access to all the classified intelligence and said on camera, ”It's the Russians. If it's not the Russians, I'll come back on your show and eat my tie.” Well, that seemed pretty categorical for a former intelligence officer.
So we looked at where (Unit) 29155 operatives had gone and where, to our mind, the most credible victims had experienced some kind of traumatic event, and we kept coming back to the country of Georgia, to Tbilisi, the capital.
One of the people we interviewed is the wife of a DOJ attache who was stationed at the embassy in Tbilisi. And she describes in vivid detail the experience. She was taking laundry out of the dryer and all of a sudden she was struck by something, a directed energy beam, it felt like.
Nagorski: Symptoms uncannily similar to what Mark has described here in this conversation.
Weiss: Exactly. The directionality of it is key. The nausea, ringing in the ears, the feeling of some kind of attack that you're experiencing, particularly in your head. All of this was consistent.
She goes outside, and this is a very posh neighborhood in Tbilisi where a lot of diplomats live, and she saw this guy, a young guy. The characteristic she remembered is that he was very tall. Blonde hair, striking features. And she wanted to memorialize this and she reached for her phone to take a photo. But by the time she got the phone out, he had gotten into a car and drove off. So instead she photographed the car as it was departing.
We found evidence suggesting that it was very likely a guy called Albert Alveryanov, son of the founding commander of Unit 29155. This is a sabotage and assassination squad of Russia's military intelligence service, the GRU.
We showed photographs of him to (the American woman in Tbilisi) and she was taken aback by the physical features of this guy. She said she was getting goosebumps or felt nauseous looking at a photograph of him, because that's exactly the guy that she remembers seeing outside of her house.
So that was kind of interesting. This is the first case of a victim of Havana Syndrome who positively identifies a Russian, not just any Russian operative, but (from) the notorious murder squad that Putin has assembled. We also had U.S. government sources who said that they could positively place Albert Averyanov in Georgia at around the time.
We had additional evidence, documentation that shows that (Unit) 29155, in addition to being in the same places at the same times when two different victims were struck, separated by almost a decade and thousands of miles apart, we can also establish in our investigation that 29155 was playing around with exactly the kind of weaponry that our own IC had concluded is a plausible explanation for what is causing these maladies.
Nagorski: Christo, a question for the layperson: What is Unit 29155?
Grozev: The first time I learned about the existence of the unit was within weeks or months of the Skripal poisoning (the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia) which took place in March 2018 in Salisbury. We started looking at who might have done it and simultaneously with our own investigation, the British counterterrorism police published photographs of two suspects who had been photographed on security camera footage near the house of Skripals.
We at Bellingcat published our first identification, of the initial suspect and then the second. They were both members of a secretive GRU unit that travels internationally. We identified them as members of this Unit 29155, and we started creating a map of who else is a member. We expanded this unit's nomenclature to about 70 people, and by looking back at where they had traveled to and what had occurred at the times they traveled to, we began building a portfolio of their operations.
This is a kinetic unit that goes beyond what is permissible in intelligence operations. So that's what we knew at the time of potentially linking this unit to the Havana syndrome.
Nagorski: Marc, you said you don't believe in coincidences. When this information that The Insider put out becomes known to you, does it surprise you? Or does it just confirm what you were thinking?
Polymeropoulos: What Michael and Christo have found is quite seminal in my journey because it's validation. It's the idea that we've been discounted by the U.S. government over the years. What Christo and Michael did was validate the notion – this is not something we're going to take to the court of law, but it certainly undercuts the idea that the IC was putting forth that there's a very small likelihood that this was an adversary doing this. I think it's incredibly important.
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Nagorski: I think it's important that we spend a moment on some of the things the government said. I'm paraphrasing and summarizing here, but the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in its findings, said that with the “anomalous health incidents,” as it called them, it was “very unlikely that a foreign adversary” was behind them.
The National Institutes of Health, in a paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, said there were no abnormalities compared to a population of “healthy volunteers.” The symptoms were certainly there, but without “persistent or detectable pathophysiological changes.”
And the point has been made repeatedly that there may have been a psychosomatic effect in play – that after the Havana incidents, the State Department notification went out, and then many other people reported in.
Marc, when you first heard any or all of that, give us a thumbnail of your response.
Polymeropoulos: My colleagues that I know have been affected by this were at the top of their game, both mental and physical health – CIA officers in the operational directorate, at the tip of the spear. The officers I know who were affected, nearly all of them were working the Russia target and some of them working the most sensitive Russian operations.
For myself, this is not psychogenic. I wasn't thinking of this. I was going on a business trip.
And I'll throw something out there. A colleague of mine who was affected in Eastern Europe, it was not just her, but she was sitting in her apartment and her six-month-old baby was affected as well. And the baby was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury. How is that six-month-old suffering some kind of psychogenic incident? So to me, this kind of stuff is nonsense.
A lot of it has to do with this notion of trying to disprove the idea that it could be something. To me, that just doesn't make sense. That's not the scientific method. Analytically, what they should have been doing is trying to prove that it was an adversary, not going into it trying to prove that it wasn't. I think that's the big question. Why was there such an inclination to disprove that an adversary was involved?
Nagorski: You used the word “prove.” And this leads me to something that you said, Michael – that you wanted to stress that The Insider investigation was not in and of itself proof.
Weiss: Absolutely. Some of the criticism we've received is, Well, you haven't cracked the case. We don't say that we have. At the end of the story, we say one day we hope that the mystery of Havana Syndrome will be solved.
But what we've provided is evidence, evidence that I think complicates and perhaps undermines the “very” adjective used in, “very unlikely that a foreign adversary is responsible.”
One thing I would put out there: How did the CIA conduct its own investigation? Did they locate 29155 operatives in the places that we did? And if so, did they then ask, Well, if we don't think they're responsible for directed energy attacks on American diplomats and spies, what the hell were 29155 doing in these places? There's a specific remit of this unit. They engage only in kinetic operations. They do assassinations, they do sabotage or diversionary operations.
If (the CIA) did interview victims, did they show them photographs of 29155 operatives who they could then geolocate in these places? Basic detective work. I would love to know the answers to these questions.
The two most plausible or persuasive reasons for why they didn't really want to find a foreign adversary or state culprit involved in this thing are as follows: One, if you can establish Russia is doing this to scores, if not hundreds of American intelligence officers of Marc’s stature and caliber, DOD officials, diplomats, et cetera, is that an act of war? And if it is, what do you do in response to it?
Number two, if you do say, yeah, there is something untoward happening and these are attacks on American officials stationed abroad, how do you protect your spies and your diplomats?
Nagorski: Christo, you called this “a case for the prosecution.” What did you mean when you said that?
Grozev: I treat this as any investigation that does not have an active law enforcement agency transparently investigating and bringing it to court. I would look at the totality of evidence and I would look at motive, I would look at means, I would look at opportunity. And I would look at alibis.
And in this particular case, putting all of these together, we see, first of all, one of the detracting arguments against this whole investigation is, Is there a crime? And I believe there is a crime. Our own due diligence has shown that at least 68 cases conform to the concept that something is there.
Second, is there a motive? Well, obviously there is a motive. The Russian government has self-declared the motive. In 2013, President Putin created an entity called the Institute for Advanced Military Studies, where he said one of the tasks, one of the remits of this institute is to develop and test a wave weapon which can be either acoustic-based or electronic-magnetic-based. Furthermore, we know that this particular institute was awarded a prize for the development and testing of a non-lethal acoustic weapon in 2017.
And then we come to the coincidences. We're talking about at least six overlapping trips of members of this kinetic unit, including two trips in China at the time when there were a lot of incidents in China with American diplomats. Now tell me: What can a Russian clandestine kinetic operator have been doing in an ally country, in China? Would they be going there to fight Chinese spies? To assassinate Chinese diplomats? Clearly it was somebody that was an enemy of Russia that had to be the target of this kinetic trip. And we have three or four incidents during the months of these trips.
So you're putting all this together and you're seeing a holistic picture of so much overlapping and mutually corroborating coincidences that you have to leave the alibi to somebody else – because you can't find an innocent explanation to all of this.
After we published our findings, I expected my colleagues from my friends or contacts from Russia, former intelligence officers in Russia, to be the alibi providers, to be the guys who would call and say, What the f*** have you published? This is not real and it's not true.
Instead, they were much more accepting of the findings than the American intelligence committee has been. They said, Of course we did it. That's what we would do. So they had absolutely no doubt that their own agency is capable, has the motive, the capability, and has been planning to do this for years.
Nagorski: Marc, six and a half years later, what would you like to see next? Not that it's going to make you feel better necessarily.
Polymeropoulos: I'll remove my old New Jersey street thug hat in terms of what I'd like to see happen to some of my old adversaries with Russia. On a serious note, three things have to happen here.
One is accountability. The senior officers, the CIA, there has to be accountability on how they denied us healthcare. There's an inspector general's report. There needs to be accountability for both former and current officials who treated us terribly. I feel very strongly about that.
The second is access to healthcare. I was asked to do a lot of interesting things over a 26-year career. I always thought that the agency would have my back if I got jammed up. They didn't. That can't happen again. So there has to be access to healthcare.
And the last piece is attribution. There's a permanent select committee investigation on this issue. I think it's really important. And that has to do with the notion that Russia is the adversary. That has to go forward. And I don't think that CIA is the entity capable of investigating this. There's got to be a true, real investigation, because ultimately we have to figure out who did this – again, not only in terms of whether this was an act of war, but also to assure people going overseas abroad for the U.S. government that they and their families are safe.
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