Pentagon announcement: An American official had symptoms of “Havana syndrome” at a NATO summit / What would have triggered the mysterious condition among diplomats and spies

A senior official in the United States Department of Defense had symptoms similar to those of “Havana syndrome” at the NATO summit in Vilnius last year, the Pentagon said. An investigation by The Insider, in collaboration with 60 Minutes and Der Spiegel, and published Monday shows that the mysterious condition known as “Havana syndrome” that has afflicted American diplomats and spies around the world appears to have been triggered by the weapons energy used by members of a sabotage unit of the Russian military secret services.

• “I can confirm that a senior official in the Department of Defense has experienced symptoms similar to those reported in the case of abnormal health incidents.
• This person was present there at the NATO summit in Vilnius (no – from July 2023), but she was not part of the delegation of the Secretary of Defense who was also there at that time”, the spokeswoman told the press of the Pentagon, Sabrina Singh, in Washington.

She made this statement when asked by reporters about The Insider’s investigation.

The US Department of Defense did not want to confirm or comment on the information from the investigation that shows that the mysterious condition was triggered by energy weapons used by members of a sabotage unit of the Russian military secret services.

Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said the 2023 intelligence report is still valid.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has confidence in the intelligence services, and they are “continuing to make their own assessment”: “The investigation is ongoing, so obviously we can’t say more at this time.”

The official report published in 2023 cited five of seven US intelligence agencies as saying it was “highly unlikely that a foreign adversary” was responsible for these cases after reviewing more than 1,500 “anomalous incidents of health”.

The reported cases were attributed in this unclassified report to pre-existing conditions, diseases or environmental factors.

When the first cases of “Havana syndrome” appeared

In late 2016, a number of employees of the US embassy in Havana and members of their families began to complain of symptoms such as headaches, hearing loss, dizziness and nausea. The symptoms became known as “Havana syndrome”, being described as “abnormal health incidents”. Similar complaints have been reported in other areas of the world. Those affected said that the symptoms appeared after hearing a strange noise or feeling a strong pressure in the head.

Initially, the American government did not rule out the possibility that these symptoms were some kind of attack.

The US Congress passed the Havana Act in 2021, authorizing the State Department, CIA and other US government agencies to provide payments to employees affected during the mission.

A special unit of the Russian army is linked to the mysterious attacks on US diplomats and spies – The Insider investigation

Journalists from German magazine Der Spiegel, along with colleagues from CBS’s “60 Minutes” and investigative media group The Insider, based in Riga, Latvia, published an investigation Monday citing a U.S. military investigator who stated that the Russian secret services could be behind the “Havana syndrome”.

Insider wrote that members of a Russian military intelligence unit (GRU), known under the code number 29155, are said to have been constantly at the scene of health incidents involving US personnel. The investigation also shows that high-ranking members of Unit 29155 were allegedly rewarded and promoted for work related to the development of “non-lethal acoustic weapons.”

The Insider’s investigation revealed, among other things, that the first incident with symptoms of “Havana Syndrome” may have occurred earlier than 2016.

The publication stated that “there were likely attacks two years earlier in Frankfurt, Germany, when a US government employee stationed at the consulate there was knocked unconscious by what appeared to be a powerful energy beam.”

The victim was later diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury and was also able to identify an agent of Unit 29155 based in Geneva, writes The Insider.

Greg Edgreen, a former US Army lieutenant colonel who led the Defense Intelligence Agency’s “Havana Syndrome” investigation from 2021 to 2023, told CBS that he believes the US is under attack by the Putin regime.

Edgreen said the first 5% to 10% of officers across the agency were affected.

“And consistently, there was a connection to Russia,” said Edgreen, who spoke publicly for the first time on “60 Minutes.”

Mark Zaid, a lawyer for several victims of Havana Syndrome, told 60 Minutes that there was evidence of a “cover-up” by the government.

And other sources said many of the officers affected by the syndrome were involved in Russia-related activities or were stationed in places where Russian spies could easily operate, such as Cuba, China, Vietnam and most of Europe.

Some incidents in Hanoi, Bogota, London and India occurred before or during visits by senior US officials.

Kremlin denies GRU unit behind ‘Havana Syndrome’

The Kremlin on Monday rejected the conclusions of the press investigation.

“This is not a new topic at all. For many years, the so-called ‘Havana Syndrome’ has been exaggerated by the media and from the very beginning it has been linked to allegations against the Russian side,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said during his daily press conference on the press.

“But no one has published or expressed any kind of convincing evidence of these baseless allegations anywhere. Therefore, these are nothing but baseless allegations made by the media,” he added.