An investigative report carried out over a year byThe Insider, In collaboration with60 Minutes andThe mirror, provided evidence suggesting that abnormal health incidents (AHIs) - also known asHavana syndrome- may have their origin in the use of“directed energy weapons” wielded by members of Unit 29155 of the Russian military intelligence services (GRU).
As revealed by the extensive and detailed journalistic work, members of the Kremlin's military intelligence sabotage squad have been located at the sites of alleged attacks against US government personnel abroad and their families.
The revelations put the spotlight on Washington's statements and decisions related to the AHI,a confusing amalgam of research and explanations of the different intelligence agencies involved, which fails to identify a cause and a person responsible for the health problems of its officials.
Furthermore, the evidence collected by investigative journalists reinforces the victims' doubts about what Washington knows about the origins of the Havana syndrome, in addition to raising questions about what appropriate response such an attack might entail for the victims. Occidental countries.
“It just pierced my ears, it came in through my left side, it felt like it came in through the window, into my left ear,” he recalled.Joy an American nurse and wife ofHunter, attaché of the Department of Justice of the United States Embassy, stationed in Tbilisi, Georgia. (Both names were changed byThe Insider to protect their identities).
“I immediately felt a feeling of lightheadedness and a throbbing headache,” said Joy, who – after the “impact” – ran out of the laundry room where she was and vomited. The first thing he thought of was to follow the instructions received during his training. “Escape from the
A black Mercedes Benz was parked right behind the gate of his property, right in front of his laundry room. Joy came out and that's when she saw a tall, thin man. He raised his phone to photograph it. “It was like he looked me in the eyes. “He knew what he was doing,” he told the aforementioned media. Then he got into the car and drove off. Joy managed to take a photo of the car and its license plate as it drove away.
Three years later he recognized it when they showed him a photograph ofAlbert Averyanov, a Russian agent attached to Unit 29155, a famous GRU assassination and sabotage squad.
Albert is not just any Russian spy. He was only 23 years old when this encounter took place and was the son of the founding commander of Unit 29155, GeneralAndrei Averyanov, 56, who is now the powerful deputy director of the GRU, charged with directing the Kremlin's foreign policy in Africa.
When Joy saw Albert's face three years later, she had a “visceral” reaction and confidently stated that he looked like the man she saw that day in front of her residence.
A journalistic investigation based on data
Among the main findings of the research carried out byThe Insider is the fact that high-ranking members of the unit received awards and political promotions for work related to the development of "non-lethal acoustic weapons", a term used in Russian military scientific literature to describe both sound and radio frequency of directed energy devices, as both would cause acoustic artifacts in the victim's brain.
These agents assigned to Unit 29155, who were traveling undercover, were geolocated in locations around the world just before or at the time of the reported AHIs.
Contrary to the usual information about Havana Syndrome, known in 2016, there were probably attacks two years earlier in Frankfurt, Germany, where a US government employee stationed at the consulate in that city was knocked unconscious by the impact of something resembling a strong beam of energy. The victim was later diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury and was also able to identify an agent from Geneva-based Unit 29155.
The Insider, 60 Minutes andThe mirror discovered documentary evidence that Unit 29155 has been experimenting with exactly the type of weaponized technology that experts suggest is a plausible cause of the mysterious illness that has to date affected more than one hundred far-flung American spies, diplomats, as well as like several Canadian officials.
Of the victims, many are experienced specialists in Russia and are fluent in the language; Others have experience in different fields, such as the Middle East or Latin America, but after the seizure of Crimea they were assigned to sensitive US government functions aimed at countering Russian aggression and intelligence operations in Europe and North America.
GRU Unit 29155
For the US intelligence community, Unit 29155 is a threat. "Its reach is global to carry out lethal operations and acts of sabotage," a former high-ranking CIA officer with experience in the matter in Russia told the aforementioned media. "Your mission is to find, fix and finish, all in support of the imperial dreams ofVladimir Putin".
Originally conceived as a Training Unit within the GRU, it was reorganized and expanded in 2008 as an operations team dedicated to assassination, sabotage and political destabilization campaigns around the world. Three members of said unit, ColonelAlexander Mishkin, the colonelAnatoly Chepi and the major generalDenis Sergeev, were responsible forpoison British double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with the military-grade nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury, England, in 2018.
In 2015,Denis Sergeevand other members of the unit poisoned the Bulgarian arms dealer twiceEmilian Gebrev with a similar organophosphate weapon, because Gebrev's company, EMCO, was selling ammunition to Georgia and Ukraine, two countries that had been at war with Russia. Unit 29155 also used Serbian mercenaries to orchestrate a failed coup in Montenegro on the eve of that nation's accession to NATO in 2016, according toThe Insider.
Unlike other teams within Russia's growing intelligence apparatus, this one does not engage in espionage, at least not for the purpose of gathering information. It is dedicated exclusively to so-called "kinetic" military operations, that is, violent ones. Its predecessor and analogue was the Soviet KGB department dedicated to “special tasks”, which carried out assassinations and acts of terrorism abroad.
The Havana syndrome, a “special task” for Moscow?
Havana syndrome, long thought to be the cumulative biological effect caused by a different type of single weapon, encompasses a variation of symptoms including: chronic headaches, vertigo, tinnitus, insomnia, nausea, psychophysiological impairment lasting and, in some cases, blindness or hearing loss.
Many victims have said they were fine one moment and then suffered intense pain or pressure in the skull the next, usually located on one side of the head, as if they were caught in a beam of concentrated energy. A good number have been diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injuries. Others have suffered long-term cognitive and vestibular sequelae so severe that they can no longer function and have been medically removed from government service.
Havana syndromefirst came to public attention in 2017. The cases were recorded in Havana between May 2016 and September 2017, when the Trump administration radically reduced the State Department's presence on the Caribbean island and the CIA withdrew all its staff from the reopened US embassy there.
However, few in the intelligence community believed that the Cubans were behind the phenomenon. Given Moscow's enormous influence on the island, the prevailing theory was that the Russians had carried out the attacks as part of an effort to hinder rapprochement between the United States and Cuba, taking advantage of the arrival ofDonald Trump at the White House.
Since then, more than 100 cases of AHI have been reported around the world, affecting spies, diplomats, military officers, contractors and, in some cases, their spouses, children and even pets. Places as far away as Guangzhou, (China), Delhi (India) and as close as Washington, DC, have been scenes of these alleged attacks.
The Havana Syndrome and Washington's hesitation
For the past eight years, Havana Syndrome has been the subject of intense controversy, described by some as a mass psychogenic illness, or perhaps the outbreak of mass hysteria; and by multiple medical studies, the last of which ruled that AHIs had "a unique combination of core characteristics that cannot be explained by known environmental or medical conditions and could be due to external stimuli."
In March 2023, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a report stating thatit was “very unlikely” that the AHIs were caused by a foreign adversary. This assessment caused shock among the hundreds of victims, many of whom feel betrayed by their government for not identifying the culprit for their situation.
The Insider and its research partners have uncovered new evidence, in the form of intercepted Russian intelligence documents, travel logs and call metadata, along with eyewitness testimony, the entirety of which defies Washington's official assessment.
“What this long-term investigation has shown is that either the intelligence community is incapable of carrying out its most basic function, or it has worked to cover up the facts and deceive victims,” he toldThe Insider Adam, pseudonym adopted by Patient Zero, the first CIA officer affected by Havana Syndrome in Cuba.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligenceis currently investigating how US spy agencies reached their assessment March 2023, denying the involvement of a "foreign adversary." The US Defense Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency suspect the hand of a foreign adversary behind these incidents.
A “weapon” previously used against Russia's enemies
Before the emergence of the so-called Havana Syndrome, American officials were victims of AHI in 2014, in Frankfurt, Germany. Asked by journalists, the officials recalled the exact moments of the appearance of symptoms and the events that surrounded them. Faced with photographs presented by the media, they recognized GRU agents who were involved in strange events immediately before suffering the first symptoms.
In that same year, in Ukraine, Unit 29155 had their work cut out for them in thwarting what they considered a pro-Western revolution. Several members of the unit were sent under disguised identities to that country, and since then the members of the Unit began a series of staggered trips to central and western Europe, in what is considered a preparatory phase for major sabotage or assassination operations.
Greg Edgreen, former Havana Syndrome investigator for the US Department of Military Intelligence (DIA), told60 Minutes that his working group examined “a large amount of data, ranging from signals intelligence, human intelligence and open source reports.”
“Anything related to the Internet, travel records, financial records, whatever. And we continue to see a series of critical data. This was happening to our top 5%, 10% of officers across the Defense Intelligence Agency. There was always a link with Russia. "There was an angle where they had worked against Russia, they had focused on Russia and they had done it extremely well," he added.
Just as reports began to emerge in China of curious ailments experienced by American officials working for the State and Commerce Departments in 2016 and 2017, one of Skripal's poisoners crossed the country, disguised among a group of Russian auto mechanics to participate in the Silk Way Rally, an off-road racing event that runs through Russia and China. According toThe Insider, the event served for years as a cover for GRU agents who attacked US officials in China.
"I absolutely believe that my experience in Russia is the reason I was attacked," he toldThe Insider Mark Lenzi, a State Department official assigned to Guangzhou in 2017. "The United States government publicly shrugs its shoulders at my family's ordeal; but behind closed doors, government personnel have acknowledged to me that the traumatic brain injuries diagnosed in me and my family are due to exposure to high temperatures. levels of pulsed microwave radiation".
Washington's fears of publicly facing the facts
According toThe Insider, there is a consensus among the growing community of AHI sufferers that the United States government (and the CIA in particular) is hiding everything it knows about the origin of Havana Syndrome.
The victims offer two general hypotheses about the motive. The first is that revealing all intelligence about Russian involvement could be so scandalous as to convince the American people and their representatives that Moscow has committed an act of war against the United States, raising thorny questions about how a nuclear power fan of showing off its hypersonic missiles should have to pay.
The second is that recognizing that Havana Syndrome is caused by a foreign adversary could curb recruiting for the CIA and the State Department. After all, how many Americans would be willing to serve their country abroad with full knowledge that their next load of laundry or their next morning excursion to the embassy could result in permanent physical and mental ailments?
"It has been very disturbing to see how much effort our government has gone to to cover up the true details of these attacks, undoubtedly carried out by a foreign adversary," the lawyer said.Mark Zaid, which handles the cases of several AHI victims. "I have spent more than a decade fighting for U.S. government employees and their families (sometimes young children and even pets) who have been victims of AHI abroad and at home."
Russia has even boasted of its ability to disable officials of Western powers.Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council, a former KGB officer who has traveled to Cuba on several occasions, wrote in September 2023 in the internal magazine of the SVR, Russia's foreign intelligence service: “In recent years, hundreds of employees of foreign intelligence services, as well as other persons involved in the organization of intelligence and subversive activities against our country and our strategic partners,have been identified and neutralized”.
Wake up toThe Insider, the Havana Syndrome shows all the characteristics of a Russian hybrid warfare operation and its deployment could be considered one of Putin's greatest strategic victories against the United States.
Final note
The Insider is an independent online newspaper specializing in investigative journalism, fact-checking and political analysis. The newspaper is known for exposing fake news in Russian media.CyberCubarecommends reading his extensive research, which can be found by clickinghere.
Asked about the reportThe Insider, the Kremlin spokesman,Dmitry Peskov assured this Monday that the report's conclusions are "unfounded," according toAFP.
"This issue has been talked about in the press for many years now. And from the beginning, most of the time it has been linked to the Russian side," he said at a press conference. "But no one has published any convincing evidence, so all this is nothing more than an unfounded and baseless accusation," he said.
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