A medical mystery grows as US Consulate workers in China fall ill

[TSA321]

US pulls staff from Cuba over 'specific attacks

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-41446697

The US is withdrawing more than half of its staff at its embassy in Cuba in response to mysterious attacks which left its diplomats unwell.

Washington is also warning Americans not to visit the country because some attacks occurred in hotels.

At least 21 staff reported health problems ranging from mild brain trauma and deafness to dizziness and nausea.

Earlier reports suggested that sonic attacks were to blame. Cuba denies any involvement in them.

At least two Canadians were also affected.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said America would maintain diplomatic ties with Cuba and the two countries would continue to co-operate in investigating the attacks.

Details of new 'sonic attack' emerge

Who is leaving?

The US is ordering all non-essential staff in the embassy in Havana to leave, along with all family members. Only "emergency personnel" will remain.

The US has suspended visa processing in Cuba indefinitely.
"Until the government of Cuba can ensure safety of our people, we will be reduced to emergency personnel," a US state department official said.

What do we know about the attacks?

"At least 21 employees have been targeted in specific attacks," the official said.
Despite an investigation involving the FBI, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Cuban authorities, there is still no full explanation as to the cause of the incidents since late 2016.

"We don't know the means, the methods or how the attacks are being carried out," the official said on Friday.

But earlier reports suggested they were sonic attacks in which staff in Havana were targeted by audio waves, leaving several with chronic hearing issues.
Using an inaudible sound device for a stealth attack "is quite plausible from a technical point of view", Denis Bedat, a specialist in bio-electromagnetics, told AFP news agency this week.

"Ultrasonic waves, beyond the acoustic capacity of humans, can be broadcast with an amplifier, and the device does not need to be large, or used inside or outside a house."

He gave as an example the Active Denial System (ADS), an anti-riot gun used by US police forces that emits electromagnetic waves which produce a sudden unbearable burning sensation.

What is a covert sound weapon?
Who is behind the attacks?

The US has not blamed Cuba for the suspected attacks.
Both the US and Cuban governments "have not yet identified the guilty party", the state department official said.

"We have not ruled out the possibility of a third country as a part of the investigation but that investigation continues," the official added.
How have US relations with Cuba been?

President Raul Castro had reportedly given his personal assurance to the then-US charge d'affaires in Havana that Cuba was not behind the attacks.
The US reopened its embassy in Havana in 2015 following decades of frozen relations.

In 2016 President Barack Obama became the first sitting US president to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge in 1928.

In June President Donald Trump announced a partial roll-back of Mr Obama's Cuba policies but said he would not close the US embassy in Havana.

 

[Varun]

GUANGZHOU, China: A crisis over a mysterious ailment sickening US diplomats and their families — which began in Cuba and recently appeared in China — has widened as the State Department evacuated at least two more Americans from China on Wednesday.

The Americans who were evacuated worked at the US Consulate in the southern city of Guangzhou, and their colleagues and family members are being tested by a State Department medical team, officials said. It is unclear how many of them are exhibiting symptoms, but a State Department spokeswoman said Wednesday evening that "a number of individuals" had been sent to the United States for further testing.
For months, US officials have been worried that their diplomats have been subjected to targeted attacks involving odd sounds, leading to symptoms similar to those "following concussion or minor traumatic brain injury," the State Department says.

The cases in China have broadened a medical mystery that started in 2016, when US Embassy employees and their family members began falling ill in Havana. In all, 24 of them were stricken with headaches, nausea, hearing loss, cognitive issues and other symptoms after saying they heard odd sounds. The issue has roiled relations with Cuba, which immediately fell under suspicion, and led the United States to expel Cuban diplomats.

But with Americans now exhibiting similar symptoms in Guangzhou, US officials have raised suspicions about whether other countries, perhaps China or Russia, might be to blame.

That is sure to complicate already strained relations with both countries over a variety of economic, political and security issues. Russia has been accused of meddling in the 2016 American presidential election, trade disputes have erupted with China and US officials fear that the Chinese are undermining relations with North Korea before a summit meeting with President Donald Trump planned for next week.

The new illnesses in China come just weeks after US officials reported finding their first case here in Guangzhou, where a consulate employee got sick. Some American officials in this city live in apartment complexes filled with other foreigners and wealthy Chinese; that is where the ailing employees were subjected to unusual noises.

But it remains unclear whether the illnesses are the result of attacks at all. Other theories have included toxins, listening devices that accidentally emitted harmful sounds or even mass hysteria.

The mystery spread to China this spring, when the first employee fell ill, and fears escalated last month when the government warned other employees to seek medical attention if they experienced unusual ailments. So far this week, another employee, his wife and their two children were evacuated after the parents exhibited neurological symptoms. Officials said they expected that at least some others would be flown out of the country as well.

The illnesses appear more widespread than the State Department initially reported last month, when it said that one person had "reported subtle and vague, but abnormal, sensations of sound and pressure."

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last month at a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the symptoms of the first US employee in Guangzhou to report being ill "are very similar and entirely consistent with the medical indications that have taken place to Americans working in Cuba."

There are roughly 170 American diplomats or employees in Guangzhou, as well as their family members, and a senior US official said a sizable number had undergone or would soon undergo testing by the State Department doctors who arrived on May 31.
The officials cautioned that no final determination had been made about what caused the illnesses.

The latest American employee evacuated from Guangzhou is Mark A. Lenzi, a security engineering officer at the consulate. He left Wednesday evening with his wife and two children after having suffered in recent months from what he described in an interview as neurological symptoms. He said that his wife had similar symptoms and that they had heard unusual sounds in their apartment.

On Tuesday, Pompeo said in a statement that the symptoms in the first case discovered in Guangzhou were similar to the ones experienced by the 24 Americans who became ill in Havana. He said that the cause had not yet been established.

The injuries in Cuba, like those in China, followed disturbing sensations of sounds and vibrations that have been described variously as the sounds made by cicadas, static, metal sheets waving or, in Lenzi’s case, marbles rolling around a metal funnel.

After the injuries were diagnosed in Cuba, the Trump administration expelled 15 Cuban diplomats, saying Cuban officials had failed to adequately to protect American diplomats. The Cuban government denied any involvement and questioned whether any "attacks" had taken place. US officials suggested it was too soon to consider such a response in China, though they have raised it with the Chinese government.

On May 23, the State Department disclosed that an employee stationed in China had complained of "subtle and vague, but abnormal sensations of sound and pressure" over several months from late 2017 until April. That employee, who was evacuated, was not identified.

"We are not aware of any similar situations in China, either inside or outside of the diplomatic community," the department said in the health alert. It advised others with "concerns about any symptoms or medical problems" to consult a doctor.

The disclosure caused anxiety and anger among US government employees in China. Others have since come forward to report similar experiences or symptoms.

In a statement on Wednesday evening, the State Department’s spokeswoman, Heather Nauert, said that "a number of individuals" had been sent to the United States for further testing and that the medical examinations continued in Guangzhou.

Among those who reported symptoms was Lenzi. In an email sent to the entire staff of the consulate, he complained that the first employee was evacuated in April, but that no one was told of the health concerns until a month later — after doctors in the United States had found evidence of brain trauma. The initial health alert, he said in an interview, suggested it was an isolated case. "They knew full well it wasn’t," he said.

The consulate itself, which opened in 2013, is a state-of-the-art building designed to withstand electronic eavesdropping and other security and intelligence threats. Instead, the ailing employees said they experienced the strange sounds and sensations in at least two apartment complexes where American government workers live, along with other foreigners and wealthy Chinese.

In an interview before leaving China, Lenzi said that he had lived in the same apartment tower as the officer evacuated in April. It is one of several high-rise buildings in The Canton Place, a modern complex built around a plaza and bordered by restaurants, cafes and galleries. Another diplomat who reported symptoms was at a different upscale building near the consulate.

Lenzi said that over the past year he and his wife had experienced similar physical symptoms, including headaches, sleeplessness and nausea, and on three or four occasions they heard odd noises, though they did not put them together until the disclosures last month.

Even if people are evacuated for further tests, that does not necessarily mean that they have suffered injuries or illnesses, the officials emphasized. Only 25 percent of those evacuated from Cuba, for example, were later found to have health problems.

But the Chinese cases have raised alarms inside the State Department. Now led by Pompeo, the department appears eager to avoid the criticism it faced over what some called its handling of the Cuba cases.

In addition to the department’s medical team, William E. Todd, the acting director-general of the Foreign Service, and Michael T. Evanoff, the assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, flew to Guangzhou to assess the situation. Their visit was not announced in advance, and they were not made available to comment before departing on Wednesday.
In Tuesday’s statement, Pompeo said he had created a health care task force to examine "the unexplained health incidents that have affected a number of US government personnel and family members stationed overseas."

The statement left open the possibility that there have been similar events at other US embassies or consulates. One US official said that he was aware of reports of isolated episodes, but that there did not appear to be any discernible pattern.

Guangzhou is a major commercial hub of 14 million people on the Pearl River, about 75 miles north of Hong Kong. In addition to the embassy in Beijing and the consulates in Guangzhou and Hong Kong, the United States operates consulates in Chengdu, Shanghai, Shenyang and Wuhan.

Lenzi worked for the diplomatic security department, and he believes that his work could have made him a target. Before joining the Foreign Service in 2011, he worked with the International Republican Institute, funded by Congress, promoting democratic reforms in Ukraine and Georgia — two countries where Russia has denounced American involvement.

(Steven Lee Myers reported from Guangzhou, and Jane Perlez from Beijing. )

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com...rs-in-china-fall-ill/articleshow/64492194.cms

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[MenInG]

Very worrying. Stuff happened to US diplomats in CUBA also

 

[Last Monetarist]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/29/us-unexplained-health-incidents-officials-washington

The White House has said it is investigating “unexplained health incidents” after a report that two US officials in the Washington area experienced sudden symptoms similar to the “Havana syndrome” symptoms suffered by American diplomats and spies abroad.

The wave of mysterious brain injuries, beginning in Cuba in 2016, are deemed by the National Academy of Scientists to be most likely the result of some form of directed energy device, and the CIA, state department and Pentagon have all launched investigations.

CNN reported on Thursday that two possible incidents on US soil are part of the investigation. One took place in November last year near the Ellipse, the large oval lawn on the south side of the White House, in which an official from the national security council suddenly fell sick.

The other was in 2019 and involved a White House official walking her dog in a Virginia suburb of Washington. That incident was reported in GQ magazine last year.

Officials cautioned that the investigations into these and other incidents have not reached a conclusion.

“The health and wellbeing of American public servants is a paramount priority for the Biden administration. We take all reports of health incidents by our personnel extremely seriously,” a White House spokesperson said.

“The White House is working closely with departments and agencies to address unexplained health incidents and ensure the safety and security of Americans serving around the world. Given that we are still evaluating reported incidents and that we need to protect the privacy of individuals reporting incidents, we cannot provide or confirm specific details at this time.”

The symptoms of the Havana syndrome attacks include hearing strange sounds followed by dizziness, nausea, severe headaches and loss of memory which in some case can go on for years. There are dozens of victims, most of whom were stationed in Cuba and China with a handful of cases elsewhere.

Most of those affected, as well as many officials and experts, believed they were attacked by a foreign power with some form of microwave energy device.

 

[Last Monetarist]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jun/02/microwave-weapons-havana-syndrome-experts

Portable microwave weapons capable of causing the mysterious spate of “Havana Syndrome” brain injuries in US diplomats and spies have been developed by several countries in recent years, according to leading American experts in the field.

A US company also made the prototype of such a weapon for the marine corps in 2004. The weapon, codenamed Medusa, was intended to be small enough to fit in a car, and cause a “temporarily incapacitating effect” but “with a low probability of fatality or permanent injury”.

There is no evidence that the research was taken beyond the prototype phase, and a report on that stage has been removed from a US navy website. Scientists with knowledge of the project said that ethical considerations preventing human experimentation contributed to the project being shelved – but they said such consideration had not hindered US adversaries, including Russia, and possibly China.

“The state of that science has for the most part been, if not abandoned, pretty much left fallow in the United States – but it has not been fallow elsewhere,” said James Giordano, professor of neurology and ethics at Georgetown University Medical Center.

Giordano, who is also senior fellow in biotechnology, biosecurity and ethics at the US Naval War College, was brought in as adviser by the government in late 2016 after about two dozen US diplomats began falling sick in Havana. He later took part in an assessment for US Special Forces Command on which countries were developing the technology and what they had achieved.

“It became clear that some of the work that was conducted in the former Soviet Union was taken up again by Russia and its satellite proxies,” Giordano said, adding that China had also developed directed energy devices to test the structure of various materials, with technology which could be adapted to weapons. A second major wave of brain injuries among US diplomats and intelligence officers took place in China in 2018.

Giordano is restricted from giving details on which country had developed what kind of device but he said the new weapons used microwave frequencies, able to disrupt brain function without any burning sensation.

“This was important – and rather frightening – to us, because it represented a state of advancement and sophistication of these types of instruments that heretofore had not been thought to be accomplished,” he said.

If a US adversary has succeeded in miniaturising the directed energy technology needed to inflict tissue damage from a distance, it makes such weapons a more plausible explanation for Havana Syndrome.

More than 130 US officials, from the state department, CIA and national security council (NSC), have suffered from symptoms, including dizziness, loss of balance, nausea and headaches, first identified in Cuba. The impact on some of the victims has been debilitating and long-lasting.

Some of the most recent incidents have involved NSC officials experiencing crippling symptoms in broad daylight in Washington. The state department, CIA and Pentagon have all launched investigations, but have yet to come to conclusions. A National Academy of Sciences report in December, found that the Havana Syndrome injuries were most likely caused by “directed pulsed radio frequency energy”.

Sceptics of the microwave weapon theory have pointed to decades of US efforts to build such a device during the cold war and since, without any confirmed success. They have also argued that a weapon capable of inflicting brain injury from a distance would be too unwieldy to use in urban areas.

However, James Lin, the leading US authority on the biological impact of microwave energy, said a large apparatus would not be needed to focus energy on a small area, heating it a minute amount and causing “a thermoelastic pressure wave” that travels through the brain, causing damage to soft tissue.

The pressure wave would initially be experienced by the target as sound. Many of the US diplomats, spies, soldiers and officials whose symptoms are being studied as part of the Havana Syndrome investigation reported hearing strange sounds at the onset of the attacks.

“You can certainly put together a system in a couple of big suitcases that will allow you to put it in a van or an SUV,” Lin, professor emeritus in the electrical and computer engineering department at the University of Illinois, said. “It’s not something that you need to have enormous amounts of space or equipment to do it.”

The microwave weapon project for the US Marine Corps, first reported in Wired, was first developed by a company called WaveBand Corporation. Codenamed Medusa – a contrived acronym for Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio – the weapon used the same technology as that suggested by Professor Lin, the “microwave audio effect”, which created rapid microwave pulses that slightly heated soft tissue in the brain, causing a shockwave inside the skull.

WaveBand was given $100,000 for the prototype, which according to the specifications of the contract would “be portable, require low power, have a controllable radius of coverage, be able to switch from crowd to individual coverage, cause a temporarily incapacitating effect, have a low probability of fatality or permanent injury, cause no damage to property, and have a low probability of affecting friendly personnel”.

A navy document in 2004 (which has since been removed from the Navy Small Business Innovation Research site) said the hardware had been designed and built. “Power measurements were taken and the required pulse parameters confirmed,” it said. The document added: “Experimental evidence of MAE [microwave auditory effect] was observed.”

WaveBand’s former president and CEO, Lev Sadovnik, said he was limited in what he was allowed to say about the project, but said the immediate effects of MAE were disorientation and the impression of hearing sounds.

Sadovnik said that a device capable of causing Havana Syndrome symptoms could be relatively portable.

“It’s quite conceivable that you can hide it in a car, or in a van but it would not work over a long distance,” he said. “You can do it through a wall, say, if you are in the next room in a hotel.”

Sadovnik said the Medusa prototype was not powerful enough to cause lasting harm, nor would that be allowed. But he said Russia was more advanced in understanding the human impact of microwave weapons – partly because it did not face the same ethical constraints.

“We have here very strict limitations, of course, on human tests and animal testing,” he said. “The Russians do not adhere to these standards.”

Giordano said that different political and ethical norms in Russia and China, create “unique opportunities to advance bioscientific and technological development in ways that would be untenable in the United States and programs of our Nato allies”.

Although many US officials and victims believe that Russia is behind the attacks, there is so far no compelling evidence that Moscow is responsible. In some cases, Russian military intelligence (GRU) vehicles are reported to have been close to the scene of an apparent attack. But it would not be unusual for the GRU to tail US officials.

The Russians certainly had a long history of using microwave technology against US diplomatic missions. The embassy in Moscow was found to be bathed in microwave radiation in the 1960s and early 1970s, though the intention behind it was never clear. That episode erupted into a scandal when it emerged the US government had withheld the fact from its own diplomats.

At the same time, the US was spending huge amounts trying to develop its own directed energy weapons, both laser- and microwave-based. Mark Zaid, a lawyer representing some of the Havana Syndrome victims, has a CIA briefing slide appearing to date from the 1960s or 1970s which shows a building being hit by microwaves from a nextdoor structure. Zaid said the slide was among the personal effects left by a deceased agency officer.

“The military loves death rays. Everybody loves death rays – and lasers had some of the characteristics of death rays so people kind of got excited about that,” recalled Cheryl Rofer, who worked on laser and auditory weapon research in the 1970s at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

That auditory research eventually led to the Long Range Acoustic Device, or “sound cannon”, used by some police forces against demonstrators last summer. But it did not lead to any “death rays”.

“Thinking about something and actually building it are two different things,” Rofer said. And the experience of seeing billions spent over the decades with little to show for it, has left her sceptical about new claims of microwave weapons development.

“The military has a whole lot of money sloshing around, and they will try lots of different things, and some of them are good and some of them are not so good.”

Giordano said, however, that while development had stalled in the US, it had been continued by America’s adversaries. The initial two dozen cases in Havana, he said, represented a field test of the equipment.

He said that while the US focuses on expensive weapons for traditional warfare, Russia, China and others are “very interested in, and dedicated to, developing non-kinetic tools that can be leveraged below the threshold of what would formally be considered acts of war, so as to engage in processes of mass disruption”.

 

[Last Monetarist]

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/blinken-says-us-still-probing-havana-syndrome-attacks-diplomats-2021-06-08/

The United States is conducting a government-wide review to get to the bottom of who or what caused the suspected "directed" radio frequency attacks that on U.S. diplomats that resulted in various neurological ailments known as "Havana syndrome", U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday.

If Washington would have suspicions that a state actor including Russia or others are involved in this, it would bring it up with them, Blinken said but added that the United States at this point still does not know what or who is causing these incidents.

"We are in the midst, at the President's direction, with the National Security Council in the lead, of coordinating a government-wide review, including the intelligence community, the State Department, the Defense Department, to try to get to the bottom of what caused them, who did it, if anyone did, and of course care for any people who may have been victimized by it," Blinken said.

It was not clear when the review would conclude.

Starting in 2016, dozens of staff in Cuba reported symptoms including hearing loss, ringing ears, vertigo, headaches and fatigue, a pattern consistent with mild traumatic brain injury and initially described as the result of “sonic” or health attacks of some sort.

Dozens of U.S. government employees were affected by the incidents, with New York Times reporting last month that the mysterious injuries had afflicted more than 130 people, far more than previously known, and to civil servants in locations such as Europe and elsewhere in Asia, with some episodes having taking place as recently as this year.

In April, the Democratic and Republican leaders of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee said the incidents appeared to be increasing and the committee was investigating.

Asked if President Joe Biden would raise the issue with Russian President Vladimir Putin in their planned meeting in Geneva next week, Blinken repeated that Washington still did not know the root cause or the perpetrator, if any, of these incidents.

"So certainly if we have concerns, suspicions or beliefs that any state actor, Russia or otherwise was involved ... you can be sure that we will take it to them. But right now, we simply do not know," he said.

On Monday, Senate unanimously passed additional financial support for care of U.S. diplomats who have suffered from these syndromes.

The State Department said in June 2018 it had brought home diplomats from Guangzhou, China, over concern they were suffering similar symptoms.

 

[Last Monetarist]

That old haunt of intelligence officials in the news again.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/austria-investigating-reported-havana-syndrome-cases-among-us-envoys-2021-07-17/

Austria is working with the U.S. authorities to get to the bottom of a reported spate of suspected cases of an ailment known as "Havana syndrome" among U.S. diplomats in Vienna, the Austrian Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last month his country is conducting a government-wide review into who or what caused what it suspects were "directed" radio frequency attacks on U.S. diplomats that resulted in various neurological ailments and that first emerged in the Cuban capital in 2016.

The New Yorker magazine said on Friday that since U.S. President Joe Biden took office in January, roughly two dozen U.S. intelligence officers, diplomats and other officials in Vienna have reported symptoms similar to those of Havana syndrome, making it the second-biggest hotspot after Havana.

"We take these reports very seriously and in line with our role as host state we are working with the U.S. authorities on jointly getting to the bottom of this," Austria's Foreign Ministry said in a short statement.

"The safety of diplomats posted to Vienna and their families is of the utmost importance to us."

A State Department spokesperson said the United States was "vigorously investigating" the reported cases affecting U.S. officials at the U.S. Embassy in Vienna.

Once a centre of Cold War intrigue, Vienna is home to several U.N. agencies and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, meaning bigger countries such as the United States and Russia often have three ambassadors and a large diplomatic presence there.

That has long made Vienna a hub for diplomatic activity and spying, since many spies operate under diplomatic cover.

The Austrian Foreign Ministry's website lists 158 U.S. diplomats as currently being posted in Vienna.

 

[Last Monetarist]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/22/havana-syndrome-cia-officers-family

About 100 CIA officers and family members are among about 200 US officials and kin sickened by “Havana syndrome”, the CIA director, William Burns, said on Thursday, referring to the mysterious set of ailments that include migraines and dizziness.

Burns, tapped by Joe Biden as the first career diplomat to serve as CIA chief, said in a National Public Radio interview that he had bolstered his agency’s efforts to determine the cause of the syndrome and what is responsible.

He confirmed that among other steps, he had tapped a senior officer who once led the hunt for Osama bin Laden to head a taskforce investigating the syndrome, and said he had tripled the size of the medical team involved in the investigation.

The agency also had shortened from eight weeks to two weeks the time that CIA-affiliated people must wait for admission to Walter Reed national military medical center, he said.

“It’s a profound obligation, I think, of any leader to take care of your people and that is what I am determined to do,” Burns told NPR in his first interview since becoming CIA director in March.

Havana syndrome, with symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, migraines and memory lapses, is so named because it first was reported by US officials based in the US embassy in Cuba in 2016.

Burns noted that a US National Academy of Sciences panel in December found that a plausible theory was that “directed energy” beams caused the syndrome.

There was a “very strong possibility” that the syndrome was intentionally caused, and that Russia could be responsible, he said, adding that he was withholding definitive conclusions pending further investigation.

Moscow denies involvement.