WAS SHINGTON – A strange sound came at night: cracks like a marble on the floor of the apartment above them.
Mark Lenzi and his wife had headaches, sleep issues and headaches, and their children were waking up with bloody noses – there were thoughts that there might be smoking symptoms in Guangzhou, China, where Mr. Lenzi worked for the State Department. But air pollution, forgetting the names of work tools, could not explain their sudden memory loss.
What began as bizarre voices and symptoms between more than a dozen American officials and their family members in China in 2018 has turned into a diplomatic mystery spread across multiple countries and involved speculation about secret high-tech weapons and foreign attacks.
Trump administration officials believe whether Trump administration officials believe Mr. Lenzi and other diplomats in China experienced the same mysterious pain as dozens of diplomats and spies at the U.S. embassy in Cuba in 2016 and 2017, known as Havana syndrome. American employees in both countries reported hearing strange noises, followed by headaches, dizziness, blurred vision and memory loss.
But the treatment of episodes has been radically isolated by the government. A New York Times investigation has found that the State Department, which oversees the cases, has made inconsistent assessments of patients and incidents, ignored medical diagnoses and withheld basic information from Congress, the New York Times investigation found.
In Cuba, the Trump administration withdrew most of its staff members from the embassy and warned of travel, saying U.S. President Trump expelled 15 Cuban diplomats from Washington and Washington and launched an independent review, although Cuba has denied any involvement.
The administration has taken a softer approach with China. In May 2018, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who served as CIA director during Cuban events, told lawmakers that the medical details of an American official who fell ill in China were “very similar and fully consistent” with the syndrome in Cuba. The administration fired more than a dozen federal employees and some of their family members.
The State Department quickly retreated, labeling what happened in China as “health events.” Some officials and their lawyers say that while officers in Cuba were placed on administrative leave for rehabilitation, China initially had to use sick days and unpaid leave, some officials and their lawyers say. And the State Department did not open an investigation into what happened in China.
The administration has said little about what happened in China and the idea that the reactionary force may be responsible. But similar episodes have been uncovered by senior CIA officials who visited the agency’s stations abroad, said three current and former officials and others familiar with the incident.
That includes Moscow, where Mark Polymoroplos, a CIA officer who helped carry out intelligence operations in Russia and Europe, experienced what he called an attack in December 2017. Mr. Polymeroplos, who was 48 years old, had severe dizziness in his hotel room. Weakened migraine headaches developed in Moscow and later, forcing him to retire.
Cases involving CIA officials, none of which have been reported in public, have raised suspicions that Russia carried out the attacks around the world. Some senior CIA Russia analysts, State Department officials and outside scientists, as well as many victims, view Russia as a potential criminal with weapons that inflict brain injuries and are interested in severing Washington’s ties with Beijing. And Havana.
The CIA director is unrelated, and state department leaders say they have not been able to reach a compromise for some reason.
Critics say the way officials are treated stems from diplomatic and political considerations, including the president’s desire to strengthen ties with Russia and win trade deals with China.
Chinese diplomats began reporting bizarre symptoms in spring 2018, as U.S. officials based there were trying to coax their Chinese counterparts into a trade deal, which Mr. Trump promised to deliver. The president was also looking to Beijing for help in holding nuclear talks with North Korea and continued to praise China’s authoritarian leader Xi Jinping.
According to half a dozen U.S. officials, State Department leaders realized that following the same action they were taking in Cuba – including the evacuated mission in China – could strain political and economic ties.
Along with Cuba, Mr. Trump demanded the reversal of President Barack Obama’s term. U.S. in Havana during the events. The embassy’s mission chief, Jeffrey de Laurentis, said the repatriation of members of the Trump administration’s staff was “deeply entrenched in their intentions on Cuba.”
People fleeing China have fought for more than two years to get the same benefits given to victims in Cuba and others who have been attacked by foreign powers. According to interviews with more than 30 government officials, lawyers and doctors, the fighting has made their recovery more difficult and promoted a change of government that would have permanently damaged their careers.
U.S. lawmakers have criticized him for calling the state a state of secrecy and inaction, forcing the agency to release a study obtained in August Gust from the National Academy of Sciences, which investigated the possible causes of the episode.
Democrat Senator GN Shaheen of New Hampshire said, “These injuries and the subsequent treatment by the U.S. government have been a living nightmare for these dedicated public servants and their families.” “It’s clear that the U.S. opponent will get a lot out of the disorder, distress and division that has followed.”
Stanford University Professor Dr. David A. Rileman, who chairs the National Academy of Sciences committee investigating the cases, said it was “disappointing and extremely disappointing” that the state department refused to share the report with the public or that Congress “excluded us.”
In a statement, the department said, “The safety and security of U.S. personnel, their families and U.S. citizens is our priority. The U.S. government has not yet determined a cause or actor.”
Mr Lenzie said he has sued the department for discrimination with disability, and the U.S. Special Counsel Office is conducting two investigations into the State Department’s conduct.
Special Fees’ special adviser declined to comment. But in an April 23 letter seen by the Times, special advisers said investigators found a “significant possibility of malpractice” by the state department, although the investigation is ongoing.
“This is a deliberate, high-level cover-up,” Mr. Lenzi said. “They’ve hung us up to dry.”
The situation is complicated by the fact that American officials and scientists are still debating whether there were any symptoms of an attack.
Many diplomats, CIA officials and scientists suspect that microwave radiation weapons damage victims’ brains. But some scientists and government officials argue that it is a mental illness that spreads in the stressful environment of foreign missions. Some draw attention to chemical agents, such as pesticides.
The Trump administration has not made its position clear or said exactly how many people have been affected.
At least 44 people in Cuba and 15 in China were assessed or treated at a brain injury and repair center at the University of Pennsylvania. Others went elsewhere. At least 14 Canadians in Hawaii say they have taken similar symptoms.
Some senior State Department officials and former intelligence officials said they believed Russia had a role to play. The country’s intelligence operatives have fueled violence around the world, poisoned enemies in Britain and attacked US troops in Afghanistan.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union attacked the American embassy in Moscow with a microwave. In a document of 201 documents, the National Security Agency said it used high-powered microwave weapons to bathe in the living quarters of the target in the microwave, containing the intelligence of the hostile country, causing damage to the nervous system. The country’s name was classified, but people familiar with the document said it refers to Russia.
According to two people familiar with the matter, some cases against the CIA traveling abroad to discuss plans to combat Russian covert operations with the partnership’s intelligence agencies were affected. Some CIA analysts believe that Moscow was trying to derail the work.
Mr. Polymeropoulos declined to discuss his experiences in Moscow, but he did criticize how the U.S. The government has handled its injured employees. He is pushing the agency to allow him to visit the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, a hospital where some of the affected people in Cuba have been treated.
Some top US officials insisted on seeing more evidence before accusing Russia. CIA Director Gina Haspel has admitted that Moscow intended to harm operatives, but she is not sure if she is responsible for the attacks, two U.S. officials said.
“The first priority of the CIA has been and continues to be the welfare of all our officers,” said Nicole de Hae, a CIA spokeswoman.
Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called any teachings about Moscow’s involvement “absolutely absurd and bizarre.” A spokesman for the Russian embassy in Washington said the attacks were largely a case of “mass hysteria”.
Mr Lenzi, who has a broad background working in the former Soviet Union, said classified material had invaded the country that carried out the attacks, but the State Department denied him access to documents.
Mr Lenzi said top officials “know exactly which country is responsible”, adding that it was not Cuba or China but another country that the Secretary of State and the President did not want to confront.
The first person to fall ill in China, Catherine Werner, a Commerce Department official who lived next to Mr. Lenzi, experienced April laziness, ause buccaneers, headaches and dizziness for months when she was flown to the United States in April 2018.
According to a whistle-blower complaint filed by Mr. Lancey, the State Department took action only after Ms. Werner’s visiting mother, P Rann of the Air Force, used a device to record high-level microwave radiation in her daughter’s apartment. The mother also fell ill.
That May, U.S. officials raided a U.S. base in Guangzhou. A meeting was held to reassure the officers that Ms. Werner’s illness appears to be a separate case. But a diplomatic security official, Mr. Lenzie, wrote in a memo to the White House that his supervisor insisted on using low-quality devices to measure microwaves in Mrs. Werner’s apartment, calling it a “check-box exercise.”
“They didn’t find anything, because they didn’t want to find anything,” Mr. Lenzi said.
He sent an email to American diplomats in China warning they could be put at risk. His superiors sent a psychiatrist to evaluate him and gave him an official “letter of advice”, Mr Lenji said.
Months after he began reporting symptoms of a brain injury, he and his family were medically moved to the University of Pennsylvania.
Other officials in China were experiencing similar symptoms. Commerce Department official Robin Garfield was evacuated from Shanghai in June 2018 with his wife and two children.
Doctors at the University of Pennsylvania told Mr Garfield that his injuries were similar to those of Americans in Cuba, but the State Department’s medical bureau said he was suffering from a 17-year-old baseball injury, he wrote in a Facebook group for American diplomats in March 2019.
The State Department has named only one Chinese official as the “full constellation” of features consistent with the Cuban case: Ms. Werner, First Evacu. In an internal letter, the department said some of the symptoms and clinical findings of 15 others in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing in Cuba were “similar”, but could not determine if they were “suffering from air syndrome.”
Doctors at the University of Pennsylvania said they do not share individual brain scans with the State Department, so the government lacks the information needed to rule out brain injuries in China.
“It seems to me and my doctors that the state does not want any additional cases from China,” Mr Garfield wrote, “regardless of the medical findings.”
