Even America’s Best Scientists Shake Their Heads Over Enigmatic Diseases: Traces Lead to the Kremlin

Now, four years later, there are still no answers to these questions. The topic has been brought to light thanks to exciting new insights, including new posts from The New York Times and GQ. US officials suspect that whatever happens may be a very well-coordinated attack by US enemies.

The causes of these symptoms are not yet clear. There are many and very different theories, from microwave energy weapons and poisoning to mass hysteria. So far, only one thing is clear: US officials working abroad suffer from debilitating symptoms, and many say they are not getting the help they need from the US government.

That is what is already known.

Do we know what causes those symptoms?

In short, no, we don’t know. But scientists and officials have relied on various theories, one of which is that of microwave weapons. In 2018, the medical team produced a publication in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which found that it had found damage to the brains of Cuban victims in Cuba similar to those left by concussions, even though they had not suffered injuries in the head.

Douglas H. Smith, director of the Penn Center for Brain Injuries and Treatment at Perelman Medical School, who led the study, later told The New York Times that while there was no initial skepticism, there were growing suspicions that the brains of diplomats were affected by microwaves.

The US military itself is developing prototypes of direct energy weapons that can cause non-lethal damage. Only the American system is the size of a truck and it even takes a few hours to get up; To put it mildly, it would be too difficult to wear one in a diplomat’s apartment in Havana.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union attacked the US embassy in Moscow in the microwave for decades. It even had his name: the Moscow landmark. These were not mind control devices, but a way to activate blakes hidden within the embassy walls.

“In the 1970s, the Soviets used a large number of high-energy devices for technical data collection operations. It turned out that not everything was completely thought out, it also had a negative impact on human health. I always thought it was something as well as what was happening in China, Russia and Cuba, ”says Steven Hall, former commander of the CIA station in Moscow, who retired in 2015.

There are other theories, such as toxins or even mass hysteria. Canadian diplomats working in Cuba also suffered enigmatic brain injuries, about the same time as their counterparts in the United States.

The authors of a study commissioned by the Canadian government draw attention to the side effects of chemicals used to kill mosquitoes. They note that the damage to the brain of the diplomats occurred precisely in the area most sensitive to neurotoxins.

Others suspect a massive psychogenic illness when individuals in a particularly related group persuade each other to experience the same symptoms. One professor called it the “reverse placebo effect” in Vanity Fair. Only the authors of the 2018 study point out that some of the symptoms reported by diplomats could not have been faked, and that cases of massive psychogenic illnesses do not last as long.

The best hope that an answer can be found is provided by a study conducted by the National Academy of Sciences. Following a request from the State Department last spring, the academy brought together neurologists, electronic engineering experts, toxicologists, and epidemiologists.

The committee presented the results to the State Department in early August, but so far neither legislators nor the public are aware of them. “It was a very shocking and truly amazing experience for me and my colleagues,” said David Relman, a professor of medicine at Stanford University who chaired the committee.

Although Mr. Relman cannot share its findings, the committee says it has looked at four possible explanations for the health effects, one of which has been shown to be the most likely. But that does not mean that one mechanism explains everything. Again, from a clinical point of view, these are very complex things. Lots of people, different places, different times. “

When did it all start?

The enigmatic ailments first came to the public’s attention in 2017, when American officials at the United States Embassy in Cuba reported feeling hard of hearing, dizzy and headache, tired from fatigue, trouble cognitive and sleep disorders. The following year, US diplomats working in China began to complain of symptoms that, according to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, “are very similar and consistent with the medical indications associated with the condition of Americans working in Cuba.”
At least one of those cases can be found long before the incidents in Cuba and China.

In 2013, Mike Beck, an employee of the National Security Agency, filed an application for employee compensation with the Employment Department, claiming he had experience with microwaves while traveling to a hostile state in 1996, resulting in the Parkinson’s disease at an unusually young age of 46.

The agency released a summary of the classified intelligence assessment, which states that the country Beck visited “is believed to have an extremely powerful weapon in the microwave system that can weaken, intimidate or even kill an enemy over time without leaving trail”.

The New York Times wrote that those familiar with the assessment say that the hostile country in question is Russia (the Employment Department rejected Mr. Beck’s claim).

How did the government react?

The response to Cuba did not pose any additional difficulties, as the Trump administration was already looking for ways to help end the warming program in relations with the island led by the administration of former President Barack Obama.

Washington sent 15 Cuban diplomats and the State Department issued a travel alert to US citizens (the Cuban government denies any involvement in the alleged attacks). In China, the response was much calmer as Trump tried to find common ground with Beijing on a trade deal.

“We were left there for the fate of fate,” Mark Lenzi, one of the affected diplomats, told The New York Times.

During a press conference, Pompeo called such statements “political concerns” undoubtedly “one way or another” due to political fears.

And it’s not just China. Marc Polymeropoulos, a former deputy director of CIA operations in Europe and Eurasia, who experienced all of the above symptoms after a visit to Moscow in 2017, told GQ magazine of his experience when the agency refused to transfer him to Walter Reed Military Hospital for receive treatment.

“It just came to our notice then. Like the National Football League fifteen years ago with brain injuries when it just stuck its head in the sand,” he told Foreign Policy.

What is behind all this?

The shadow of suspicion falls on the Kremlin, which is also due to the fact that Russia has repeatedly used microwave weapons against the United States, and one of Moscow’s main goals is to ensure that US relations with China and Cuba are strained. .

Moscow has repeatedly shown its willingness to hunt down enemies in the West and even offers bonuses to Taliban fighters for US troops killed in Afghanistan. The Russian Foreign Ministry denies any link to the incident in Cuba.

However, the facts suggest otherwise. According to GQ, a CIA investigation that used location data on mobile phones revealed that Russian security services were close by at the time that US officials began to feel the first symptoms in those countries. According to The New York Times, top American officials would like to obtain evidence before pointing the finger at Moscow.