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HAVANA SYNDROME WHITEWASHED AND THE CASTRO REGIME’S PATTERN OF ATTACKING DIPLOMATS

Knife in the back’: Havana Syndrome victims dispute report dismissing their cases

Excerpt:
“Patient Zero,” an American official stationed at the U.S. embassy in Cuba, was in his Havana apartment one night in December 2016 when he heard a strange sound and felt what he described as a “head-crushing pressure” and a “massive ear pain.”

The sound stopped after he moved to another residence, but the symptoms remained, he told the Miami Herald: “I would wake up with nosebleeds that wouldn’t stop.”

A doctor the CIA sent to investigate had a similar incident himself in his Capri Hotel room just hours after arriving on the island’s capital in April 2017. “I woke up with severe pain in my right ear. I had a deafening, resounding headache and nausea. I sat on the bed and realized I was awake. I had this extreme feeling of pressure. I thought, ‘This can’t be happening; it’s crazy,’” he told the Herald.

That morning, the physician was so disoriented he said he didn’t know whether to pull or push to open a door and couldn’t concentrate enough to count money to exchange currency.

Around the same time, in early 2017, two Canadian diplomats posted in Cuba had similar symptoms, suddenly feeling extremely nauseous and disoriented, with headaches and ear pain, the two told the Herald.

The children of some Canadian diplomats also had nosebleeds, nausea, loss of memory and concentration and vision problems for no apparent reason.

In December 2017, a high-ranking CIA official, Marc Polymeropoulos, at the time deputy chief for operations in Europe and Eurasia, woke up in a hotel room in Moscow “with a terrible case of migraine and vertigo,” he told the Herald.

All of these people have been diagnosed with brain injuries or inner-ear problems that doctors who treated them believe are part of a new disorder known for the place it all started: Havana Syndrome. They went through years of tests and rehabilitation therapies and are still suffering from debilitating effects.

The Miami Herald spoke to three former CIA officials and two Canadian diplomats affected by the strange incidents who said they are convinced they were targeted while serving their countries abroad. And all said that a recent U.S. intelligence report blaming their ailments on pre-existing medical conditions or environmental factors is an attempt to whitewash the Havana Syndrome affair, likely due to political considerations.

Most of those who spoke to the Herald requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation, concerns for their security or because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the cases.

“A betrayal,” Polymeropoulos said of the U.S. intelligence assessment published in March. “An attempt at public influence and disinformation,” said another of the victims.

.....Because the intelligence agencies could find no evidence of a foreign power targeting American officials, the “symptoms reported by U.S. personnel were probably the result of factors that did not involve a foreign adversary, such as preexisting conditions, conventional illnesses, and environmental factors,” National Intelligence Director Avril D. Haines said in a statement.

.....A declassified summary of the assessment shows that the agencies that contributed to it sometimes disagreed with each other, with some stating they had “low confidence” in particular findings because of gaps in the evidence, and one even abstaining from backing up some of the report’s conclusions. But a lack of evidence does not mean something didn’t happen, Polymeropoulos said.

.....Critics of the assessment say it has a major flaw: It looked at 1,500 cases, a figure dramatically higher than the original reports because the Biden administration asked government employees to report any suspicious symptoms. By casting such a wide net, critics say, and without a clear explanation of the criteria and methodology, the report minimized the findings related to a core cluster of cases, mainly from Havana, that do follow similar patterns — and that the CIA acknowledged were difficult to explain in an interim finding in early 2022.

“This is a very dangerous report that represents the worst type of science possible,” a scientist familiar with the Havana Syndrome cases told the Herald. He asked not to be named because he was not authorized to discuss the the subject. “They were very indiscriminate in who they included as a possible victim. When you include individuals who may or may not have been affected, you don’t get an accurate view of those who were truly affected.”

The scientist pointed out that the data was sometimes collected years after the person was affected.

.....The CIA closed its station in Havana in September 2017, according to a declassified internal review obtained by the National Security Archive. The document mentions that several “temporary duty officers” were injured in Havana, including two who “experienced medical injury from an incident at a Havana hotel” in August 2017.

.....Most sources interviewed for this story said they couldn’t say why the U.S. and Canadian governments were slow in responding to the threat. Still, they mentioned geopolitical interests and staffing concerns as possible reasons. The incidents have been a major roadblock in U.S. relations with Cuba and contributed to thousands of Cubans using irregular means to get to the U.S. after the embassy stopped issuing immigration visas. The Biden administration started staffing the embassy again in late 2021.

.....The CIA doctor who was affected in the Havana Capri Hotel incident said he believes that some of the participating intelligence agencies behind the March assessment “had an interest in diluting the results, as they were involved in the premature decisions to ignore the medical complaints.

“The impact of the relentless impugning of the Havana group’s integrity and motivation has had serious impacts on their well-being,” he added, noting the group had passed extensive medical and psychological tests.

“If anything,” he said, “it is the report’s cherry-picking of facts and cases to formulate their opinions that really falls apart.”
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Interesting that these career CIA swamp creatures can’t believe the government’s actions now that they suffered potential injuries on the job while working for the same swamp creatures. Yet they want to remain anonymous. ‘Betrayal’ they say and act like they are the victims when they have been the administrators of such weapons themselves.