In late 2017, while traveling to Moscow on official duty, I experienced a sudden, debilitating health incident. After a long and arduous battle with the
In late 2017, while traveling to Moscow on official duty, I experienced a sudden, debilitating health incident. After a long and arduous battle with the CIA to obtain treatment, military doctors at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington ultimately diagnosed and treated me for a line-of-duty traumatic brain injury. I was never the same after the incident and years of painful recovery continue to this day.
I served for 26 years in the U.S. intelligence community, rising to the Senior Intelligence Service’s top ranks and receiving the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal upon retirement. Yet my departure from government was not voluntary, it was by necessity.
Since 1996, intelligence officers, diplomats, and military servicemembers have reported hundreds of cases of what is commonly known as Havana Syndrome — a misnomer for a condition officially designated by the U.S. government as “Anomalous Health Incidents.” I am one of them.
After several internal reviews, the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence under the Biden administration issued judgments that downplayed the possibility of foreign involvement, often attributing Havana Syndrome symptoms to “environmental factors” or pre-existing conditions without further explanation. At the CIA, senior leaders in the office of the Chief Operating Officer, the Office of Medical Services, and the Directorate of Analysis often privately denigrated victims — including me — by accusing us of fabricating our conditions for financial gain. After I retired, I testified in closed sessions to Congress about my experiences with such gaslighting. On one occasion, then-Sen. Marco Rubio was in the audience. He seemed like such an advocate for us when we spoke afterwards — but has very surprisingly done nothing since.
In my view, the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment of Havana Syndrome reflected a serious medical and analytic bias — anchored by early CIA senior leadership judgments — that shaped how medical professionals and analysts treated the issue. To date, there has been little visible accountability for those decisions made by CIA senior leaders from both the first Trump administration and then more critically, the Biden team at the agency.
Since late 2024, however, new public reporting and official government statements signaled a possible shift. On Dec. 5, 2024 the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released an unclassified summary that challenged prior assessments. A month later, the National Security Council put out a press statement saying earlier judgments were under review. Both documents, now in the public record, questioned the assessment that there was no intelligence suggesting foreign involvement with Havana Syndrome. Something had changed.
In January of last year, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence then-chairman Rep. Mike Turner went further, stating that “a foreign adversary is likely responsible.” A CIA Subcommittee report criticized the intelligence community for thwarting congressional investigation and said there was “direct evidence” that a 2023 assessment “was developed in a manner inconsistent with analytic integrity.” As of Dec. 2025, Rep. Rick Crawford, the current chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, committed to further investigation and transparency. Press reporting in Oct. 2025 indicated that the committee sent criminal referrals to the Department of Justice, due to potential illegal actions by intelligence officials. Even before these developments, the tide began to turn during the final months of the Biden administration.
On Nov. 12, 2024, senior National Security Council staff invited multiple affected intelligence officers — including me — to a White House Situation Room meeting. By that point, some of us had been meeting with the council for years, as it had pressed a recalcitrant CIA on Havana Syndrome. Many of us leaned on the council’s intelligence shop as an ally — albeit an imperfect one — while our parent agencies had been involved in gaslighting us and rejecting our medical claims. This unclassified session in the Situation Room was extraordinary.
Several senior officials told us directly: “We believe you.” One even admitted, “We failed you.” For those of us long dismissed and doubted, these words mattered. I left the meeting feeling that perhaps the U.S. government had turned a corner. Later, one of the senior officials at the meeting, Dr. David Relman, the senior advisor in the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy at the White House, urged that Havana Syndrome be taken seriously.
Even before the Nov. 2024 Situation Room meeting, a few National Security Council officials privately conceded to the victims — including me — that the intelligence community’s approach had been terribly flawed. They acknowledged that CIA leaders and analysts had resisted and ultimately ignored compelling intelligence that challenged their beliefs. From my perspective, the CIA’s resistance in particular caused victims to suffer without care, unable to access government medical facilities.
During the meeting, Dr. Paul Friedrichs, the director of the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response at the White House, did in fact apologize to the victims — including me. He said that he had never seen such neglect for victims in over three decades of practicing military medicine. For those of us who had suffered for years, we felt vindicated.
Yet Friedrichs’s words were more than an apology — they were a signal that the narrative was changing. The Biden administration’s own National Security Council conceded that something was rotten in the intelligence community, particularly in the CIA. Personally, I believed for some time that a massive coverup was going on. What happened in the Situation Room that day confirmed my suspicion.
The National Security Council told us they wanted to pass on a playbook to the incoming Trump administration to finally get Havana Syndrome right. There was reason to be hopeful.
Current Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has promised a fresh look at addressing the issue, including the possibility of drafting a new Intelligence Community Assessment. In her confirmation hearings and subsequent statements, she committed to this. The victims applauded this decision and in private backchannels to the Trump administration urged her to move swiftly. Personally, I find myself in unusual territory. I have been a frequent and at times acerbic critic of this administration. I agree with it on virtually nothing. Yet in the case of Havana Syndrome, I was encouraged by what I was hearing from Gabbard and others. If the administration does the right thing on this issue, I will be the first to offer sincere public thanks, including to the president himself. The ball is in his court to fix this.
However, despite all the promises from Gabbard, CIA director John Ratcliffe, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to reopen the investigation and recall previous flawed analysis, there is still no visible progress. Recent news that the U.S. government purchased a device on the black market that produces pulsed radio waves and contains Russian components, and that the Norwegian government investigated and tested such a device, contradicts earlier assessments that such things do not exist.
Victims are feeling a creeping sense of betrayal once again. I cannot help but wonder whether the intelligence community, especially the CIA, is continuing to stonewall us.
The Trump administration should act now get to the truth, honor the victims, and ensure the safety of U.S. government personnel on the front lines. Three steps remain essential:
Accountability
First, the administration and Congress should clarify by whom, how, and why earlier intelligence judgments were made, why victims were denied timely care, and why participation in research was required as a condition for treatment. As important, victims should know why they were denigrated by Biden-era CIA senior leaders. Transparency is vital, including declassification and public release of the 2022 CIA Inspector General report. Victims and the American public deserve this. Accountability at the CIA should follow.
Access to Health Care
Second, victims and their family members should have guaranteed access to the best available medical care. Treatment should err on the side of action, not denial. When I asked Walter Reed senior staff how much our month-long intensive traumatic brain injury treatment cost, they told me a startling $37 — roughly the price to check a bag on a flight. That treatment saved lives. All victims should receive lifelong access to Walter Reed — or equivalent care — especially given the CIA’s historical and continued lack of internal capacity to provide adequate medical support.
Attribution
Finally, a foreign adversary appears likely responsible for causing Havana Syndrome. That possibility demands sustained resources and a whole-of-government investigation, not one led solely by a biased CIA. If evidence confirms a hostile power targeted U.S. personnel, the government should respond forcefully. If it is Russia, then the administration should have the courage to act, regardless of consequences. The stakes — for U.S. national security and for those who are called to serve overseas — are too high for equivocation.
The U.S. government asks its intelligence officers, diplomats, and military servicemembers to operate in some of the world’s most challenging environments. They deserve the confidence knowing that if injured in the line of duty, their government will stand with them.
For the victims of Havana Syndrome, the past several years have been marked by physical, emotional, and professional loss. None of us is the same person we were before our injuries. Even more painful has been the sense of moral injury and betrayal — first by the incidents themselves, and then by an institutional response from our own government across multiple administrations that left us isolated and disbelieved.
It is time to formally acknowledge what the victims knew long ago: We were right.
Marc Polymeropoulos served for 26 years at the CIA and retired in 2019 from the Senior Intelligence Service. He served in operational and management roles across the Middle East and South Asia, including extensive time in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the Intelligence Commendation Medal, the Intelligence Medal of Merit, the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal, and the George H. Bush Award for Excellence in Counterterrorism. He is a MSNOW national security contributor and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the U.S. government. Nothing in the contents of this article should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. government authentication of information or endorsement of the author’s views.
Image: Midjourney
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Comments
Note: “We were right” here means “it’s a real thing,” but the article has almost nothing concrete to offer about what actually is going on or who is responsible.
By matthewdgreen 2026-03-1121:12 There has been some recent reporting that has made "Havana syndrome is a real thing" look more plausible:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/02/14/...
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/13/politics/havana-syndrome-...
By colechristensen 2026-03-1121:152 reply Russia developed a less lethal directed energy weapon which is essentially a microwave oven radio signal switched off and on very quickly (likely something like a GHz signal with a highly directional antenna being switched at kHz)
Eyewitness reports at the Maduro kidnapping raid and a recent leak in the last few days regarding the US purchasing such a weapon from Russia and testing it at least on animals tie all of this together.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-military-tested-device-that-...
By DANmode 2026-03-121:05 Someone with Russia-or-better state power developed the tech,
and you can source a working one through Russia,
I believe were the findings.
By rurp 2026-03-1121:00 Exactly, the definitive claim in the headline is not at all supported by the article.
> Pentagon bought device through undercover operation some investigators suspect is linked to Havana Syndrome
https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/13/politics/havana-syndrome-devi...
By vintermann 2026-03-1121:122 reply I think that if you offer Russian criminals millions of dollars for a mysterious device which could possibly cause Havana syndrome, you're certain to get a mysterious device.
This is confirmation bias with the side step of giving a ton of money to Russian criminals.
By matthewdgreen 2026-03-1121:171 reply According to those reports, the US military tested it for more than a year on animals, and found that they suffered similar patterns of brain damage. They didn't just get a device and say "wow, this looks like a bunch of very suspicious electronics, too bad we can't turn it on!"
Naturally the testing claims from insiders could be specious. But once you go down the road of distrusting stories told by spooks, so could the purchase of a weapon in the first place. The CIA might not even be a real thing.
By vintermann 2026-03-127:551 reply No, I'm sure they tested it, and I'm sure they found "similar patterns".
I'm also quite sure that the kind of person who would say "come on guys, this is just a RF noise machine, if they had used this in Havana we would have known ages ago" would not be trusted to work on such an important and serious investigation.
I'm not positing any more dysfunction than I see on the outside all the time. Gro Harlem Brundtland, former PM of Norway, doctor, and one time head of the WHO, was convinced she had RF-hypersensitivity.
One of my mantras is that powerful people believe all the stupid things regular people believe, they just tend to act differently on their beliefs.
By matthewdgreen 2026-03-1321:00 These are not subtle effects. You either have an energy weapon that does visible damage to people and things, or it doesn't. Yes, incompetence is possible. You should not jump to "I mistake a candle for a burning skyscraper" levels of incompetence as your main model for a project that lasts a year and is extremely high-priority.
The rationale for rejecting the syndrome was the reported scientific consensus of the impossibility of such a device being smaller than a large truck. The revelation that such a device is possible, exists, works and is full of Russian parts seemed to change things. Further, the coincidental appearance of Russian agents on video within operational radius of incidents wearing backpacks sized to contain the device raises some questions.
By vintermann 2026-03-128:10 Exactly what kind of device was it that had to be on the scale of a small truck but now can fit in a backpack? What kind of radiation did it emit?
By PLMUV9A4UP27D 2026-03-1120:494 reply I put my bet on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness If the authorities have made the same conclusion, it would be very difficult to tell the affected individuals that. This is since there is a misconception that mass psychosis A) only happens to mentally "weak" persons. B) Symptoms are made up/"just in your imagination"
But the symptoms are very much real, and it's not something that is easily treated. How mass psychosis can lead to actual medical illness is unknown, but the cause and effect is documented.
For that reason it might appear as a cover up, when authorities avoid giving answers.
Even though I'm familiar with the science behind mass psychosis illness, I would still probably have difficulties accepting that as an explanation if I were in a similar situation.
By bryan0 2026-03-1122:42 While there have probably many people that have been affected by the secondary "mass psychosis" effect of havana syndrome, it seems unlikely that is the primary cause considering the device is now out in the wild:
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/13/politics/havana-syndrome-...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-military-tested-device-that-...
If that is so, why not acknowledge that the current working theory is that it is psychogenic, but that doesn’t make it any less real.
The fact that psychogenic illness is not simply “weak” people, but a real phenomenon, strongly supports the fairness and necessity of offering treatment.
The wikipedia article says when authorities publicly take the effects seriously it can induce more cases. But the example was of getting help from a witch doctor, which was a remarkably dysfunctional “validation” to add to an already complex problem.
Another very dysfunctional “validation”: official denial, avoidance, obvious lack of work on solutions or mitigations, and all the trappings of a cover up!
Being direct has so many benefits, vs indirect denial or bad faith “treatments”.
It would be a reassuring response, to those in the same context without symptoms who are concerned about their own health.
Direct responses, with care given, are also in a better position to find treatments for psychogenic symptoms, preventative practices that reduce vulnerability, or alter working theories of cause, as any other evidence emerges.
Chronic anxiety and anxiety attacks are “psychosomatic” on an individual basis. But very real, often caused or impacted by working conditions, and important to diagnose and treat. Psychogenic illness should be the same. “Illness” is not a cause limited concept.
> Direct responses, with care given, are also in a better position to alter working theories as any other evidence emerges.
The problem is that "mental illness" is a career limiting diagnosis.
Security clearance personnel have the same problem as airplane pilots. They can't get treatment for mental illness because it would cut off their career.
Consequently, while "Havana Syndrome" may be real, there are large confounding problems in sorting it out.
I mean, look at how long it has taken to lock in on Gulf War Syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_syndrome
And the evidence for that is way stronger and doesn't have all the cloak and dagger implications.
By Nevermark 2026-03-121:06 The evidence that something wrong is beyond credible.
You may be right, that one diagnosis doesn't have the evidence of another issue you point out. But that is diagnosis. That there is a problem is certain.
It's a complex issue. But a decision has to be made, to either deal straightforwardly with a complex issue, or in a deceptive, avoidant, or secretive manner.
This isn't a choice that removes fundamental complexity, but being direct about problems avoids a lot of manufactured complexity.
If someone is suffering long term life changing mental symptoms, in what sense does the cause make it mental health vs. not mental health? Obviously, it is a mental health issue whether caused by physical or psychological malfunctions.
There is no "winning" for sufferers, in any scenario. But there is better support, or less support.
Generally competent people insisting they are dealing with something serious, should be taken seriously.
--
You may have identified the non-medical systemic problem here:
A strong case could be made that black and white "mental illness" disqualifications for any job are devastatingly out of step with reality and going to damage the careers of people it shouldn't. There should be some means of getting the all clear after any episode, given reasons to believe it has been resolved.
Beyond careers and people suffering unnecessarily, this also critically motivates people responsible for security and safety to hide and bury real problems!
How does that help institutions with safety and security concerns?
By conception 2026-03-1122:453 reply The most obvious and large scale example of this I’ve seen is carpal tunnel syndrome in the 1990s and early 2000s. everybody had carpal tunnel syndrome and then just one day it all went away. not that the people who were suffering with it were faking anything. it’s just what was on everybody’s mind and then it wasn’t.
By bb88 2026-03-1123:21 Assuming that what you're saying is true -- (not ai) and I'm not sure it is. The big difference could be that kids get computers for school now. I used pen and paper to take notes, and I didn't sit at a computer for 8 hours a day until my first job in the 1990's. I'm sure that's true for a lot of people.
It's possible people have "grown into" a keyboard better than the previous generations did.
Further, before the 1990's there was a secretarial pool where managers would send documents to get typed out. Sometime during the 1990's the pool went away and people were expected to type their own documents up. Sure they could create templates now with WordPerfect, say, but the idea is that the keyboard became more and more present in an employees life around that time -- so hence more likely to get carpal tunnel.
> everybody had carpal tunnel syndrome and then just one day it all went away.
It didn't. It just became a routine thing to be diagnosed.
When I had wrist surgery for an accident, every single data entry person at the hospital (almost a dozen of them) knew the surgeon I was going to because they all had their wrists operated on because of ailments from the cheap-ass computer stuff they were using.
You would think that the hospital and insurance provider would see the link and decide that maybe providing better ergonomic conditions would be useful, but ... no. Putting people in for surgery doesn't come off the budget while ergonomic workstations would. So, here we are.
It also doesn't hurt that most tech workers are cognizant of the problem and now happen to be paid well enough that they can do something about it.
By conception 2026-03-1123:181 reply That is conflating two VERY different numbers. 60% is percentage of reported workplace injuries. 9% is of all adults.
That makes me suspect that the total number of RSI cases is much larger right now than from back in 1990. This would back up my assertion that RSI simply became a mainstream medical diagnosis.
And, do note that the data is confounded by being taken during Covid. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr189.pdf
By conception 2026-03-121:27 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/why-carpal-tunnel...
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/67/wr/mm6739a4.htm Generally the rate was lower in the latter years for this study.
Not that I think it’s not a real thing and lots of people don’t get it - but in the 90’s it was definitely a “fad” diagnosis.
I'd think the decline of CTS is better explained by improvements in our material design: our interfaces with the physical world are much less hostile today than in '90 and cause us less harm. For example, consider the NES/N64 controllers versus a modern PS5 controller.
By conception 2026-03-1123:311 reply I dunno. Cheap keyboards are definitely worse today.
By stubish 2026-03-121:34 Most people are also using keyboards less, spending more time waggling their mouse or having a break watching youtube. And people who are mostly employed to type, doing data entry or similar, have problems and physical therapists who understand the problems.
Carpel tunnel and RSI also predates computers. Musicians still suffer this sort of injury, generally by forcing themselves to keep playing when it hurts. Poor computer ergonomics just made it popular.
By mpalmer 2026-03-123:52 I read through the entire article and couldn't find the part where this phenomenon causes or otherwise explains intense pain and detectable traumatic brain injuries.
At the core of "Havana Syndrome" lies the idea that Cuba and/or Russia have managed to develop energy weapons so advanced that the American military command won't even entertain the thought of them existing. I'll let you draw your own conclusions.
> won't even entertain the thought of them existing
Careful, it's also possible that they have thought very hard about such things, and they've decided that revealing what they know would lose them a technological edge.
In other words, what if the CIA/DOD already knows there's a class of devices which could explain the problems, and the denial is about maintaining secrecy over their own operational capabilities?
Imagine something similar in the 1980s: "This tragic mid-air collision was obviously caused by faulty radar or gross pilot error by at least one of the two military planes... Our brightest minds have looked very hard at the problem and there is no such thing as a 'stealth' airplane which doesn't show up on radar."
By fragmede 2026-03-1122:16 Or going back further, Allies having cracked the Enigma encryption had to let Allied ships continue getting sunk and soldiers dying because to act otherwise would have revealed that the Enigma had been broken which would have led to an even greater loss of life.
By sailfast 2026-03-1121:11 The assumption with these weapons was that they would require too much energy to be portable enough to be undetectable in all of these circumstances (at least based on other reporting on the subject).
If the device doesn't require a lot of power, then it's entirely possible that American military commanders and research leadership would miss it.
Add to that an incentive to avoid helping the victims from a cost and overhead perspective, and you get a big ol' mess.
>At the core of "Havana Syndrome" lies the idea that Cuba and/or Russia have managed to develop energy weapons so advanced that the American military command won't even entertain the thought of them existing.
I just don't think that's true at all. The answer could easily be that Cuba and Russia have developed energy weapons that we only know about from classified sources and therefore cannot discuss their existence.
By vintermann 2026-03-1121:122 reply Sure, if you think the intelligence community is better at physics than the physics community.
By everdrive 2026-03-1210:40 I also don't really see this as necessary -- was the physics community attempting to create energy weapons?
There is precedent for this. IC Satellite optics were years ahead of commercial. Same with cryptography. The NSA invented asymmetric encryption and kept it secret. I wouldn’t be surprised if they know a few advanced things about quantum computing that IBM hasn’t figured n out yet
By vintermann 2026-03-125:41 I would, I've written about this before. A common error is to think that say NSA mathematicians have access to what's in the "free world", but those on the outside don't have access to the inside.
The reason this is an error is because research is an interactive process. Spooks can read papers, but they can't freely discuss with outside researchers - not what they themselves are working on of course, but even talking to outsiders about what the outsiders are working on, can be risky, since it can accidentally reveal a lot.
Secrecy cripples research. Even in areas where the TLAs hoover up the majority of graduates (was apparently true of math a while ago), they often fall behind.
There was a time when the TLAs could just call people like Claude Shannon, demand he work for them and never tell anyone about what he was working on, and he would say OK. That time is long gone. They don't have that goodwill any longer, and the price of isolation for a researcher has only gotten worse as communication has improved.
By duped 2026-03-1121:04 There's also the chance it's not a weapon, but something that mistakenly turned into a weapon when it was tested on live subjects.
I don't think randomly attacking embassy staff (iirc, not everyone was CIA - there were just desk people affected) makes sense for anyone to do, but trying to listen on them and fucking up sounds right up their (or our) alley.
By MisterTea 2026-03-1120:59 This was the point I made in another comment here. My bet is the US deployed the weapon and accidentally sickened their own people. So of course they play stupid and deny that any such tech could exist.
Though the Russians have been very clever in the past stumping the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)
By bitexploder 2026-03-1121:27 Or that we have them too…
