I am not writing this from a bunker, lined with canned goods and guns. I’m not wearing a tinfoil hat fedora, and don’t even own any camo clothing. I believe the earth is round, chemtrails are contrails, GMOs are a positive for humanity, and that vaccines don’t cause autism. I don’t think that JFK did 9-11 or that fluoride frickin’ turns the frogs gay. The most you can say is that I did once attend a rally that Alex Jones spoke at, some of the documented MKUltra stuff freaks me out, and I could see why a conspiracy theorist might think that Hillary Clinton was reptilian.
That said, what the hell happened in Havana?
Last year, American intelligence agents and diplomatic staff began reporting strange symptoms. Balance problems, brain damage, concussions, dizziness, debilitating headaches, hearing loss, memory loss, nausea, ringing in ears, sleeping problems, speech problems, and tinnitus. They reported strange experiences, like hearing odd sounds in the middle of the night, loudly audible in one area but silent just feet away, as the sound seemed concentrated in areas of their rooms in and around the US Embassy.
Of course, this isn’t how sound normally works.
Theories as to what caused it, and who caused it, have proliferated. Many of the early stories pointed to some kind of sonic device. However, no sonic device we know of can account for all the symptoms, and scientists are skeptical that one could. This is especially true of the white matter damage doctors have detected since. Theories have ranged from bacterial infections to electromagnetic weapons to energy weapons to toxins and viral infections to simple mass hysteria infecting the consulate.
For once, the intelligence agencies, the broader US government, and conspiracy theorists are all on the same page. There is broad consensus that whatever is ailing our diplomats was man-made and either intentional or some kind of new equipment used for spying or some other purpose that was never meant to injure. Intelligence agencies believes the attack was “targeted”, or intentional. What there’s not consensus on is who is behind it.
Cuba itself doesn’t seem to gain much from the diplomatic stir it’s caused, unless Castro doesn’t want improved relations with the US that began under Obama. Dissidents opposed to Castro is another possibility, given they tend to oppose Washington having warmed up to what they view as a tyrannical regime. However, such groups likely lack the kind of technological sophistication necessary to baffle scientists. Other governments working within Havana have been floated as a possibility, especially the Russian government.
Or, of course, it’s man-made nature could have been a mass hysteria among staff in close contact in a high stress environment, as psychosomatic illnesses have been shown to present actual symptoms as the body conforms to the belief of the mind.
Whether this was an attack, a mistake, or a delusion, something happened in Havana between the fall of last year until at least March of this year. Whatever it was, there is no government or scientific consensus on what happened or why, and the entire event remains a mystery.
Our government has been acting like it was an intentional act by a government or other group that was either working with the Cuban government or counting on them to look the other way. Before the story ever became public, the US was already taking retaliatory actions. In May, we expelled two Cuban diplomats from Washington, which the state department later admitted publicly was a response to whatever happened in Havana. Cited officially wasn’t Cuba’s responsibility for conducting the attack, but the “failure of the Cuban government to protect our diplomats”, the implication being that they failed to protect our staff intentionally. Specifically, Heather Nauert of the state department said, “The Cuban government has a responsibility and an obligation under the Geneva convention to protect our diplomats“.
In June, Trump announced a rollback to Obama’s Cuba opening, on the front of both trade and travel. Trade regulations particularly targeted the Cuban military, focusing on preventing trade with the many businesses they own on the island. Travel restrictions were to place limits on the newly reopened tourism allowances. It seems unlikely that these moves were a response to the embassy attacks as much as a fulfillment of campaign promises that Rubio had been lobbying for him to keep, but it keeps with the overall pattern of deteriorating relations between our nations over the past year.
In August, the State Department began publicly discussing the embassy ‘incidents’ for the first time. “Incidents” was the official term being used, but several state department sources described them to reporters instead as “acoustic attacks”, possibly involving a “third country” that may have been “facilitated” by the Cuban government. Three separate US officials described the culprit to CNN as a “sophisticated device that operated outside the range of audible sound“. The first numbers our government listed were 16 confirmed victims, though current estimates are between 22-24.
It wasn’t just the executive interested in the case. In September, five US Senators wrote a letter to Secretary of State Tillerson, pressing him to expel all Cuban diplomats in the US and close the embassy in Havana in response. Rubio, Burr, Cornyn, Cotton, and Lankford, all Republicans, wrote “Our officials and their families have been the targets of unacceptable levels of harassment and ‘acoustic’ attacks that, in some cases, have caused permanent hearing damage and other significant injuries“, and warned that “Cuba’s neglect of its duty to protect our diplomats and their families cannot go unchallenged”.
By the end of that month, Tillerson took action in that very direction. We cut our Havana embassy staff by 60% over security concerns, leaving only what was described as a “skeleton staff”. We stopped issuing visas in Cuba indefinitely. The US issued a travel warning advising against American travel to Cuba. State stopped shy of Rubio’s desire to undo all of Obama’s detente, but it moved sharply in that direction, taking whatever happened seriously.
The next month, shortly after the 22nd confirmed case, the State Department expelled 15 Cuban diplomats. White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, while not blaming Cuba directly, said that “We believe the government could stop the attacks on our diplomats“, again implying that the Cuban government at very least knew more than they admitted. However, days later, Trump went further, saying directly that he believed the Cuban government was “responsible” for the attacks.
During that time, an alleged recording of what the victims heard was released by the Associated Press, while the US Navy was analyzing the recording given it’s advanced capabilities for analyzing acoustic signals for sonar. The recordings themselves are said not to be dangerous for those who listen, so if you’re interested you can hear for yourself here.
The latest clues we have came this month, when neurologists found white matter track abnormalities within the victim’s brains. Such abnormalities suggest that the attack was not acoustically based, given it’s not a side effect of any sound we know of. It also suggests that this is unlikely to be mass hysteria, given the physical effects. However, it’s unclear exactly what percentage of the victims have developed such brain damage, as much of the investigation remains secret.
Embassy news of the day is rightly centered around Trump’s decision to move the US Israeli Embassy to Jerusalem and the effect that such a move may have on the region. But just what happened at our Embassy in Havana remains an intriguing mystery apparently devoid of any definitive answers that satisfy all questions. Espionage, science-fact from science-fiction, possible mass-delusion, paranoia, or none of the above. We’ll keep you updated if facts are released which tell us just what kind of story this even is.
