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The mysterious illness that affected US diplomatic personnel in Cuba could have been caused by direct exposure to microwave radiation, according to the first official report that attempts to explain the symptoms of the so-called “Havana syndrome.”
The report, prepared by the United States Academy of Sciences at the request of the State Department, is not to blame for not being able to say if there was an attack and from whom. But he says at some point that more than 50 years ago the Soviet Union conducted studies on the effects of this radio frequency energy.
The disease affected staff at the US Embassy in Havana in 2016 and 2017. Some officials complained of dizziness, nausea, headaches, cognitive decline and anxiety. The United States accused the Government of Cuba of having carried out a “sonic attack” against the embassy, which Havana denied.
The case took place two years after President Barack Obama reopened the embassy in Havana, in a decision by several aimed at bringing about a rapprochement between the two countries that had broken relations for decades after the Cuban Revolution. In the wake of the symptoms, President Donald Trump ordered a 60% reduction in staff at the Cuban embassy. At the Canadian embassy, where there were also symptoms, there was also a reduction in staff.
“Some patients began to hear a sudden loud noise (…) accompanied by pain in one or both ears, around a large area of the head and, in some cases, a sensation of pressure or vibration in the head, dizziness, tingling, visual disturbances, vertigo and cognitive difficulties, ”says the report.
Symptoms are believed to be due to exposure to an acoustic signal outside the audible range. The United States accused Cuba of having carried out a “sonic attack” against its embassy, raising the possibility that the country has a “secret sonic weapon” with which it attacked US diplomats.
In January, a scientific study by the universities of Berkeley (California) and Lincoln (United Kingdom) concluded, after analyzing the audio recordings made by diplomats (and disseminated by the Associated Press), that the sound corresponds to the chirping of crickets. The investigation highlighted that the hypothesis of the attack could not be ruled out or confirmed, only guaranteeing that the recorded sounds are emitted by insects.
The report now published by the US Academy of Sciences does not attribute a source to these sounds. But he says there was already “significant research by the Soviet Union into the effects of pulsed exposure, rather than continuous [a esse tipo de radiação]”.
“Although we are not in a position to comment on how these cases arose, or what was the source of exposure to that direct and pulsed radio frequency energy, the mere hypothesis that this scenario exists raises concerns about the existence of a world where there are evil actors who they are not inhibited from using these new tools to cause evil, as if the United States government did not have its hands full of problems that occur from natural causes, ”the scientists write in the report.
