The strange case of US diplomats in Cuba: as the mystery deepens, so do the divisions in Washington

The strange case of US diplomats in Cuba: as the mystery deepens, so do the divisions in Washington https://i0.wp.com/www.eresviral.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/El-extraño-caso-de-los-diplomáticos-estadounidenses-en-Cuba-a-medida-que-el-misterio-se-profundiza-también-lo-hacen-las-divisiones-en-Washington.jpg?fit=219%2C146&ssl=1

The strange case of US diplomats in Cuba: as the mystery deepens, so do the divisions in Washington









		





This story was co-published with Univision.







On the night of May 27, a young woman recently assigned to the Embassy of the United States in Havana heard a disturbing noise at her home in the neighborhood of Playa, in the city. As he had been ordered, he called a security officer from the embassy, ​​who rushed to investigate. He also heard something.

Both employees of the embassy soon left Cuba. At the Center for Brain Injuries and Repairs at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, they were diagnosed with concussion symptoms similar to those found in 2017 between 24 Americans and a smaller group of Canadians, all of whom had also served in Cuba.

The new cases from Havana, along with what Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the "very similar and totally consistent" medical problems of a young consular official in China, aroused fears that US envoys were now being attacked by a mysterious and high technology enemy. on a global scale.

However, more than a year after the CIA secretly closed its station in Havana and the State Department withdrew most of its diplomats from Cuba in response to the incidents there, which caused a cold new cold war between Both countries. US researchers still do not have a clear idea. Who or what made Americans sick?

Extensive research has enlisted law enforcement officers, intelligence officers and defense experts, as well as scientists and medical specialists inside and outside the government. Analysts have reviewed interceptions of secret communications and technologists have tried to reverse engineer arms that could produce the effects reported by diplomats. However, after more than 18 months of work, researchers have not been able to answer basic questions about all the important aspects of the case, many officials said.

"Cuba's thing is one of the few unresolved mysteries we have," said a US national security official. Referring to a legendary airline hijacker who disappeared from a plane over the Pacific Northwest in 1971, he added: "There's D.B. Cooper on the plane, and there's this in Cuba."

The episode in Havana last May is still as inexplicable as everything that came before. When FBI agents inspected the girl's house in early June, authorities said, they found nothing to contradict Cuban investigators who had tracked the noise reported to a faulty water pump. The agents could not reconcile this explanation with the findings of the doctors who eventually linked their diagnosis with the previous cases of Havana.

New details of how the incidents developed and the government's response, obtained from dozens of interviews with former Havana diplomats, national security officials and others, suggest that key officials of the Trump administration joined almost immediately the belief that some diplomats were being attacked by some undercover enemy. His suspicions of Cuban participation, agitated by the first evaluations of the CIA, hardened even when questions about the Havana episode multiplied.

The Cuban government has vehemently denied having anything to do with the injuries of the diplomats. Clinging to what remains of the historic approach of the Obama administration, Communist Party leader Raul Castro and other Cuban officials have promised to help in any way. However, as tensions mount, Cuban officials have also demanded that Washington stop talking about "attacks" that it can not prove.

"We believe that everyone who complained about feeling sick was sick," said Dr. Mitchell Joseph Valdés Sosa, a neurologist who led a delegation of Cuban scientists to Washington in September. "But that does not mean they have been damaged or attacked by a mysterious weapon."

The continued insistence of the Trump administration that the Americans were attacked has led to notable divisions within the government. In classified reports, the CIA has singled out Cuba and Russia as possible suspects, possibly as part of an attempt to gather intelligence information with outdated or defective equipment, officials said. The FBI has flatly refused to use the term "attacks" because its agents have not yet found evidence that the injuries were caused by hostile actors.

The White House, along with the Cuban-American leaders in Congress, has only hit harder the alleged Cuban participation. Although some assistants from the State Department and the National Security Council rejected those claims last year, most of those officials were replaced by others more in line with the views of the administration, said people familiar with the internal debate.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo established a task force this year to take charge of investigating the case of US diplomats in Havana. In May, he linked his medical symptoms to those of a US commercial attaché published in Guangzhou, China.
(Alex Wong / Getty Images)


"It is very important that someone is responsible for what happened to our diplomats," said the president's national security adviser, John Bolton. Said during a visit to Miami. last week. "We are not satisfied with the performance of the Cuban government regarding its security, so we are going to examine this very carefully and make some decisions."

The rupture has also resonated among the diplomats and spies who served at the US Embassy in Havana when the incidents took place. Among the afflicted staff, it seems that there are few, if any, who are not convinced that they were victims of an attack. Others, although sympathetic to the suffering of their colleagues, suspect that the stress of service in Cuba or unrelated medical problems may also have played a role in some cases.

The symptoms of the Americans who served in Cuba are, according to all the versions, real. Of the 150 diplomats, intelligence officers and family members of the United States. UU Who sought medical attention, doctors at the University of Pennsylvania tested 10 men and 11 women and found they had a "generalized brain network dysfunction" that resulted in cognitive, balance and eye movement problems.

Most of the patients suffered common problems such as dizziness, fatigue and difficulties to remember or concentrate. A smaller group had more unusual disabilities, including three cases of partial hearing loss on one side. Although the severity of its symptoms varied widely, Penn doctors saw a pattern like that of a mild traumatic brain injury, but without signs of trauma, "a concussion without concussion," is called one.

The same pattern of symptoms was found in at least part of a group of 10 Canadian diplomats and family members who sought treatment at the Penn center after leaving Cuba last year, authorities said. And the doctors of the State Department also saw the same symptoms in the young commercial attache in China, whose case was cited by Pompeo. (Of the 15 additional US consular employees who were subsequently transferred from China for evaluation, it was found that 14 of them did not have a similar condition, while one of those cases remains unclear, a spokesman said. Department of State).

But from the moment last February, Penn's doctors published their study of the Havana cohort in the Journal of the American Medical Association, questions have been raised about other possible causes, and if a Working group led by the Department of State Established by Pompeo is doing enough to explore them.

Among the alternative explanations considered by the medical team is whether some of the patients may have suffered a functional neurological disorder, possibly caused by trauma or stress, which could affect their balance, movement, vision or other areas.

"These are very common symptoms in any neurological clinic," said Jon Stone, a neurologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. "And, given how common they are, why do we listen to helmets and think of zebras? They are talking about the possibility of weapons that no one has ever heard of. But what is the most plausible?



At the end of December 2016, little more than a month after Donald Trump was elected with the promise to end the opening of Barack Obama to Cuba and weeks after the death of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, an official of the CIA of about 30 years entered the medical clinic at the Embassy of the United States in Havana. The officer, who worked under diplomatic cover, told the nurse that he felt sick after hearing a strange and sharp noise in his house at night, authorities said.

Two other CIA employees soon reported having similar experiences and also feeling sick. Some described something as a beam of sound, pointing to their rooms, sometimes accompanied by undulating pressure. Some officials reported that the noise stopped when a door was opened.

Both CIA officers and senior diplomats in Havana suspected a low level of harassment by Cuban security forces, something like the tit-for-tat provocations in which both sides had participated during the Cold War. . Diplomats said that such behavior generally faded during the normalization of Obama's diplomatic relations, starting in 2014. But one official said that during the latter part of 2016, there were some subtle intrusions into the homes of Obama's staff. Embassy while they were outside. A couple at the same-sex embassy also reported being taunted with anti-gay slurs, including what looked like derogatory words scribbled on their sport utility vehicle. (It was not clear if those incidents had anything to do with the Cuban security forces).

The suspicious fact that the CIA agents seemed to have been hit first and disproportionately by the strange sounds and diseases: at least four people connected to the small station in Havana reported symptoms, as well as a CIA employee who arrived at the station. island of temporary service later. - He directed agency officials to assume that the incidents were some form of harassment or electronic monitoring effort directed at intelligence officials, officials said.

People gather at Havana's boardwalk, the Malecón, a section of which runs along the United States Embassy.
(Yamil Lage / AFP / Getty Images)


Based on the agency's theory that officers had possibly been hit by some type of sonic weapon, government doctors turned to an ear, nose and throat specialist at the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami, He had previously treated soldiers with brain injuries in Iraq as a marine doctor.

Dr. Michael Hoffer reaffirmed the initial suspicions of the CIA, the officials said, finding that the diplomats had suffered damage to the inner ear, apparently from an outside force. "I thought they were being attacked," he said recently. "I still think they were being attacked."

Hoffer noted dizziness in 23 of 25 patients and hearing loss in eight of them, despite not having reference tests of his hearing. (He reported that only six patients, or 24 percent, suffered from headaches, which he later interpreted as a bias against a diagnosis of mild traumatic brain injury).

Back in Havana, senior US diplomats belatedly revealed incidents to diplomatic personnel in late March 2017, leaving many of them upset by information about a possible danger to their families. The Embassy staff was advised to be on guard against any strange sound and to get away quickly "leave the X", as the security officers said, if they heard anything.

In the following weeks, more than 130 embassy employees and their families sought medical attention in a community that included only about 53 diplomats, some of them single or unaccompanied. Of those, 35 were transferred to Miami for an additional evaluation.

While Hoffer has argued that his diagnoses were more "pure," in the sense that they were not distorted by media attention that began in August 2017, diplomats who served in Havana at that time said there was a widespread concern about the dangers and an almost palpable fear. A smaller group of embassy staff.

"Cuba is considered a position of high risk and high stress," said an official who served at the embassy. "Before going to Cuba, it gets in our heads: there will be surveillance. There will be listening devices in your home, probably in your car. Suppose you are always looking. For some people, that puts them in a high-stress mentality, in a way of anticipating threat. "



The pace of reported incidents and positive diagnoses increased in April and May 2017, when embassy staff met in a secure conference room to receive frequent updates on the situation.

A diplomat who had been listening to what he thought were insects in his garden heard an officer's tape recording of the suspicious noise and felt sure it was the same sound. Both the diplomat and his wife, who previously had not felt ill but were under unusual stress, were diagnosed in Miami as affected, officials said.

Shortly thereafter, the same diplomat warned his neighbor in Havana, a Canadian diplomat who had also been listening to the cicada noise in his garden at night. That diplomat and his family also left Cuba. It was later confirmed that a member of that diplomat's family was the first of the 10 Canadian cases that would be diagnosed.

In contrast to the State Department, the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs adopted a skeptical approach, avoiding any discussion of the attacks and emphasizing that it had no reason to suspect Cuba's participation. But, after returning to Canada, some of those who reported feeling sick (including two children) sought treatment on their own at the University of Pennsylvania. Although only two of the Canadians said they heard something similar to the strange noises reported by US diplomats, it was found that some of the 10 had similar symptoms, authorities said. Subsequently, Canada stopped sending families to Havana and joined the working group of the United States as an observer.

At the US embassy, ​​diplomats began reporting on a variety of sometimes frightening experiences: at least two patients heard sharp, high-pitched sounds in their garden for several hours at a time. An experienced middle-aged official thought he was suffering from migraines after a strange incident in his home, which was followed by a painful sensitivity to light. A younger diplomat was suddenly struck with a high, undulating noise that almost seemed to paralyze him as he lay in bed on the top floor of a Havana-occupied hotel, the Capri, in a room overlooking the sea. A government doctor in temporary service in Cuba later reported a similar incident at the same hotel.

The US Embassy UU On September 29, 2017, after the United States began drastically reducing its staff there.
(Adalberto Roque / AFP / Getty Images)


Two more incidents took place in August at the iconic National Hotel, owned by the government, when the CIA was closing its station. In the middle, some diplomats reported feeling bad despite not having heard any noise. Of the 21 patients evaluated in Penn, 12 said they felt a strange sensation of pressure or vibration before their symptoms began. But Hoffer said in a recent presentation that he had seen about two dozen patients who thought they had been affected but who, in turn, were classified as "well-concerned."

Those who became ill represented a fairly large cross section of staff, from older women who had suffered past medical problems to at least three younger, athletic men. (The average age of male patients was 39; women, 47.) An experienced security officer assigned to deal with the problem was also among those affected, authorities said.

In a few weeks, it began to appear that the symptoms of the diplomats did not follow the typical pattern of mild concussions. Instead of being more pronounced after the initial injury and then retreating for a few weeks or months, their cognitive and balance symptoms often started to appear days after the presumptive exposure, and sometimes got worse weeks or months later.

With sometimes conflicting information from different doctors, the medical office of the State Department has determined which diplomats are "medically confirmed" as injured. Several of those affected complained that the office seemed especially concerned about leaving them in a state of medical evacuation after leaving Havana, which required the department to pay the daily expenses. Diplomats also complained that the department delayed getting more medical help.

"When people requested more advanced or more appropriate reviews, they were rejected and told, 'This is our policy,'" an official said. "They were very inflexible."

State Department chief medical officer Charles Rosenfarb said his office only began looking for brain injury specialists after determining that the diplomats' problems "were probably not located in the acoustic system." According to the study by the University of Pennsylvania, the doctors there completed their examinations of Cuban patients an average of 203 days, or nearly seven months, after the first exposure. (A recent Department of State responsibility review He said that the medical office responded to the situation in a "competent and professional" manner.

Throughout 2017, CIA officials defended a probable attack at inter-agency meetings, briefings for other US officials, and briefings for foreign intelligence officials, often pointing to Cuban security forces as suspects and, sometimes, suggesting also the possible participation of Russia.

"They claimed that this was an attack and that some new weapon had been used, a weapon that they had not yet been able to identify," said a European intelligence official who was briefed on the matter last year. "They also alleged the participation of the Cubans, which does not make any sense to me." The CIA also suggested that the Russians could have been involved. I know the Russians well and I know what they are capable of, we have a lot of experience with them, but what I saw did not convince me. They just did not have much of a case. "




Pompeo, who was then the director of the CIA, was less skeptical, officials said. Stirred by the wrath of some CIA officers and his fear of a constant threat, Pompeo decided not to expect more clarity. Although Cuba was still a center of intelligence activity on the part of Russia, North Korea and Venezuela, the work of the small agency team in Havana had a considerably lower priority than it had been before. As the health incidents developed, the season's interim chief was a young and inexperienced agent in his first position abroad.

Before the height of summer, Pompeo ordered that the Havana station be closed and that his officers return home. The logistically complex movement was kept secret. But it had a powerful impact on the broader policy of the United States towards Cuba, which had already begun to change.

In May, seeing the hand of the Cuban security services, the Trump government expelled two Cuban diplomats who were believed to be intelligence officers working in a covert manner. A few weeks later, the White House announced the first of several moves to reverse parts of the Obama administration's opening and re-adjust travel and other restrictions.

As then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson considered the options in the following weeks, he decided that if the CIA could not protect its spies, its diplomats were at least as vulnerable, officials said. Although more than 30 diplomats and spouses of the embassy signed a letter asking that he be allowed to stay in Havana, he went ahead with drastic staff cuts, which became permanent shortly before Tillerson was fired in March.

The withdrawal from the State Department left only a staff cane on the island: of some 53 diplomats, the number was initially reduced to less than a dozen before stabilizing at around 15. The government also forced Cuba to send all but eight of the approximately 25 diplomats. previously he had stationed in Washington.



More recently, the Trump administration has gone from warning American travelers to a return to the rhetoric of the Cold War. In his speech in Miami, just before the mid-term elections (with three Cuban-American Republicans running for seats in the House of Representatives from South Florida), Bolton lashed out at a "Troika of Tyranny" and a "triangle of terror" between Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

The Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, left, and his predecessor, Raúl Castro, at a May Day rally in the Plaza de la Revolución in Havana on May 1, 2018. Díaz-Canel assumed the presidency in April .
(Yamil Lage / AFP / Getty Images)


At an important moment of political transition in Cuba, with President Miguel Díaz-Canel replacing Raúl Castro last April, US intelligence reports on the island have declined, officials said. The restrictions have also created difficulties for Cubans who have long been of particular concern to Cuban-American groups in the United States.

Diplomats from the US embassy with few personnel have had to reduce contacts with Cuban human rights activists, independent journalists and others, officials said, even as more Hawkish officials under Bolton and Pompeo have challenged Cuban human rights policies more aggressively. from Washington and the United Nations. .

"There used to be an official who had daily direct contact with us," said a prominent dissident, Marta Beatriz Roque, in a telephone interview from Havana. "Now everyone is doing multiple jobs. It's like a baseball team where you have to play pitcher, receiver, everything. "

A decrease in the flow of American tourists to Cuba has affected small family restaurants and people who rent out their apartments to tourists, often on Cuba's growing Airbnb service. Small Cuban companies, which had been a priority for consular officials in the United States, have also been hampered by the inability of their owners to travel to the United States in search of supplies, a new Report of the Research Service of the Congress. famous.

The most important thing is that the elimination of all consular services, except emergency services, in the United States Embassy has led to a dramatic decrease in the number of visas issued to Cubans who wish to travel to visit relatives or move permanently to the United States.

Under a 1994 agreement that ended an avalanche of Cuban beams in the Straits of Florida, Washington promised to allow at least 20,000 Cuban immigrants in the United States each year, in addition to those sought by close relatives who are citizens of the United States. USA UU (The average number of Cubans admitted to the United States during the first 20 years of the agreement was more than 32,000 per year). During the first 10 months of the current fiscal year, only 3,195 Cubans received immigrant visas, according to official figures.

When asked if the Trump government would do anything to address the fact that the United States did not respect the immigration agreement, a spokesman for the State Department said the agency is still offering visa interviews to Cubans, but only if they can pay. a trip to the Embassy of the United States in Georgetown, Guyana. . Cubans and Cuban-Americans have complained bitterly that the agreement is an often insurmountable obstacle for people whose average salary in the government is just over $ 30 per month.



Above: Cubans waiting to emigrate to the United States in line in front of the Colombian Embassy in Havana. Since the Embassy of the United States reduced its personnel, the State Department has directed Cubans to the US embassies in Colombia and Guyana. Below: people are standing on a cruise ship docked in the port of Havana. The Trump administration has imposed new restrictions on American tourism in Cuba.
(Above: Ramon Espinosa / AP Photo Below: Francesco Pistilli / Bloomberg through Getty Images.)


The Embassy of the United States in Havana has stopped accepting refugee applications completely. After admitting at least 177 Cubans as refugees in fiscal year 2017, the United States did not admit anyone in the first 10 months of this year. (Of some 54,400 Cubans who became legal permanent residents of the United States in 2015, 88 percent were classified as refugees.)

"It has been a terrible mistake to reduce the staff at the embassy," said Francisco Hernandez, president of the Cuban American National Foundation, the lobby group that for a long time dominated Cuban-American politics in Washington and Miami and has historically aligned with the Republicans. "What for? They say they still do not know what happened, what we have to do is open our resources and our support to civil society in Cuba, if those people start to disappear, forget it."

Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who has pushed the Trump administration's confrontational policies toward Cuba and supported the withdrawal of diplomats, refused through a spokesperson to address questions about the negative impact of the withdrawal on Cuban activists. , small entrepreneurs and their own Cuban organization. American constituents



Since Pompeo replaced Tillerson at the State Department in April, officials said, he has taken a much more active stance on the mystery of Havana, establishing the working group and strengthening the investigation. The larger effort has brought more resources from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy, among others.

Defense Department technologists and other agencies have also stepped up efforts to try to determine what kind of previously unknown weapon could have caused the injuries that diplomats and spies have suffered in Havana. So far, however, those efforts have not been successful.

Earlier this year, officials said, some scientists defended microwave radiation as a possible explanation. Russia had experimented with technology for decades, returning to the use of microwave energy by the Soviets to carry out surveillance at the United States Embassy in Moscow from the 1950s. It is also known that it is capable of produce the sensation of sound as part of what is called the Frey effect.

But other scientists are very skeptical of the microwave hypothesis. In part, this is because many believe that the hazards of regular low-level microwave exposure from sources such as communications towers are not proven. Officials said that the theory of microwaves has also been ruled out by experts who believe that microwaves intense enough to damage the brain would have to burn other tissues.



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Some scientists have suggested electromagnetic pulse technology, or pulse radiofrequency, or laser as possible causes. Others have argued that ultrasound or infrasound may have been the "mechanism of injury." Pero se han perforado todas esas teorías, dijeron los funcionarios, porque las circunstancias físicas de los incidentes en La Habana habrían dificultado el despliegue de esas tecnologías. En un informe aún clasificado que se preparó a fines del año pasado, el FBI descartó la posibilidad de que se hubiera utilizado un arma sónica, dijeron los funcionarios.

Los investigadores continúan examinando si los diplomáticos resultaron heridos por el mal funcionamiento de la tecnología de vigilancia electrónica que podría haber sido utilizada por las fuerzas de seguridad cubanas. Hasta el momento, sin embargo, no se ha descubierto evidencia de ningún dispositivo o tecnología de este tipo en las búsquedas en los hogares de los estadounidenses en La Habana, dijeron los funcionarios.

A medida que la lista de posibilidades disminuye, otra pregunta se hace eco: ¿es plausible que una potencia extranjera pueda desarrollar secretamente un arma tan nueva que los científicos estadounidenses ni siquiera puedan identificarla, y luego desplegarla de manera encubierta y repetida, en un entorno altamente monitoreado como La Habana? no dejar rastro en absoluto?

James Giordano, un neurólogo del Centro Médico de la Universidad de Georgetown, fue reclutado por el Departamento de Estado para tratar de ayudar a determinar, a partir de las lesiones de los diplomáticos, qué tecnología podría haber sido utilizada en su contra. Giordano reconoció que aún no está claro dónde se ubicó la lesión primaria en los pacientes.

"Podría estar pasando algo en el cerebro", dijo. "Podría ser algo que sucede en el oído interno. O ambos. Puede o no interrumpir los tejidos. Eso hace que sea realmente difícil decir: "Ahí está el proverbial agujero de bala y está la pistola humeante".

Giordano, quien ha estudiado las llamadas neuroweapons, dijo que pensaba que el sospechoso tecnológico más probable era alguna forma de pulsos electromagnéticos o energía hipersónica. Dicho dispositivo podría reducirse a aproximadamente el tamaño de un termostato, dijo, pero probablemente funcionaría solo en una sola habitación, incluso si se implementaran múltiples dispositivos simultáneamente para mejorar el efecto.

Algunos expertos en armas han propuesto escenarios similares. Pero los funcionarios familiarizados con la investigación advirtieron que esas teorías deben compararse con las circunstancias físicas planeadas por el FBI: las paredes y ventanas que un arma tendría que haber penetrado, las calles estrechamente vigiladas que tendrían que transitarse, los vecinos Quien aparentemente no escuchó los ruidos fuertes y penetrantes.

En la hipótesis de Giordano de un dispositivo de pulsos miniaturizados, los adversarios habrían tenido que ingresar a casas unifamiliares o habitaciones de hotel en algunas de las secciones más pobladas de La Habana, la capital de lo que generalmente se considera un estado policial. Si hubieran quitado los dispositivos antes de poder encontrarlos, habrían tenido que ingresar a cada ubicación al menos dos veces.



Tal escenario golpeó a los funcionarios de inteligencia actuales y anteriores como inverosímiles. En entrevistas, esos funcionarios cuestionaron si los agentes de inteligencia rusos, por ejemplo, tendrían la motivación o la habilidad para atacar repetidamente a los estadounidenses en La Habana sin dejar ningún rastro.

El deseo de Rusia de socavar el poder de los Estados Unidos en el hemisferio occidental y su presencia de larga data en la isla, lo ha convertido en un sospechoso entre los funcionarios de los Estados Unidos desde el principio. A medida que Washington ha reducido su presencia en Cuba, Rusia también se ha mudado a Ampliar su relación económica y de seguridad. con la isla. El presidente ruso, Vladimir Putin, recibió a Díaz-Canel en una visita oficial la semana pasada, prometiendo préstamos para comprar armas rusas y lazos estratégicos cada vez más fuertes.

Sin embargo, Rusia parece tener pocas razones para monitorear las actividades de los espías y diplomáticos estadounidenses de nivel relativamente bajo en Cuba, dijeron los ex funcionarios de inteligencia, y probablemente no correrían el riesgo de ataques serios y gratuitos contra el personal estadounidense.

"Si lo están haciendo, tiene que tener un propósito de espionaje", dijo el ex subjefe de operaciones de la CIA, John Sipher. “Los rusos son increíblemente descarados, increíblemente implacables. Pero no estoy al tanto de que realicen operaciones que solo están diseñadas para dañar a los estadounidenses ".

Díaz-Canel le da la mano al presidente ruso Vladimir Putin en el Kremlin durante la visita del presidente cubano a Moscú el 2 de noviembre de 2018.
(Alexander Nemenov / AFP / Getty Images)


Los oficiales de seguridad nacional dijeron que a pesar de una búsqueda exhaustiva a través de señales de inteligencia y otros medios, aún tienen que encontrar cualquier información que claramente implique a los rusos, incluso circunstancialmente. Several officials specifically disputed the accuracy of a recent news report asserting that secret intercepts of electronic communications had shown the Russians to be “the main suspect” in the Cuba incidents.

Although FBI teams have visited Cuba at least six times, their investigation on the ground in Havana has been constrained, officials said. In many cases, agents were only able to see homes, apartments or hotel rooms in which the diplomats were struck long after the fact. Some U.S. officials also said the Cuban government has so far failed to turn over some video surveillance footage the FBI has requested from areas where some of the diplomats lived. For the most part, FBI officials have emphasized the Cuban government’s cooperation with their inquiry. The FBI declined to comment for this article.

The Trump administration’s sharpening criticism of Cuba has contrasted with Pompeo’s praise of the Chinese government’s response to the problem at the U.S. consulate in the southern city of Guangzhou. A State Department spokesman would not explain the discrepancy, or specify what actions Cuba had failed to take at Washington’s request to protect U.S. personnel.

One case in which the FBI was relatively quick to survey the site of an incident was that of the young woman who heard a noise at her Havana home in late May. Even then, bureau agents were not on the island at the time but arrived about a week later. Officials said the agents found nothing to contradict the Cuban authorities’ conclusion about a loud water pump, and one official said they appeared skeptical that any sort of attack had taken place, notwithstanding the woman’s subsequent diagnosis.

Similarly, FBI agents have been unable to find any further link between the Havana cases and the experience of a 31-year-old commercial attaché in Guangzhou, Catherine Werner, who fell ill in the fall of 2017, amid a flurry of news reports about sonic “attacks” in Cuba. The woman’s case is the only one from China that has been linked by State Department doctors to the diplomats in Havana.

“As time passes, I’ve got to ask: What’s a more logical explanation?” said one official who was previously convinced that diplomatic colleagues had been attacked. “I don’t deny they had symptoms. But, I have to ask: What does the phased onset of symptoms mean as time goes on? Is it really repercussions of an attack? Are you replaying it in your head, and psychological and stress factors are kicking in?”



Those who have been afflicted have strongly (and sometimes angrily) rejected any notion that psychological factors might be part of the medical equation. “Most people believe they were targeted,” one of the diplomats said. “If you ask the Canadians, they would say they were targeted, too.”

For months, the State Department vacillated on the matter of whether to describe what happened as “attacks” on the diplomats. CIA officials who initially argued that their colleagues had been deliberately targeted, have backed away from that claim more recently, officials said.

But the Trump administration’s public stance has only hardened. Since taking over the State Department, Pompeo has unequivocally described the incidents as attacks and other State officials have quickly fallen into line. The National Security Council staff, which now has a committed opponent of the Cuban regime, Mauricio Claver-Carone, as its senior Latin America policy official, has also ratcheted up the rhetoric, officials said.



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The Sound and the Fury: Inside the Mystery of the Havana Embassy

More than a year after American diplomats began to suffer strange, concussion-like symptoms in Cuba, a U.S. investigation is no closer to determining how they were hurt or by whom, and the FBI and CIA are at odds over the case. A ProPublica investigation reveals the many layers to the mystery — and the political maneuvering that is reshaping U.S.-Cuba relations.







While some outside specialists have raised questions about whether the diplomats could be victims of some kind of mass psychogenic illness, or “mass hysteria,” doctors who have evaluated the patients or reviewed their records discount that possibility.

Over the last several months, some officials have raised questions about the continuing difficulties of some of the Havana patients, including several who said they thought they had been surreptitiously monitored or even followed since returning to the United States. FBI agents have dutifully investigated the alleged incidents, but have been unable to corroborate any of them, officials said.

Some medical specialists have also wondered whether some diplomats might have suffered a functional neurological disorder — a disruption of the central nervous system, often triggered by illness or trauma, that can affect the functioning of an organ system even when there is no structural damage. Such disorders include irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. But they can also affect balance and cognition in ways that resemble the difficulties of some of the Havana group.

One syndrome raised in response to the Penn doctors’ February report is a functional disorder called persistent postural-perceptual dizziness, or PPPD. That condition, known by the shorthand 3P-D, is characterized by dizziness, vertigo and other neurological impairments. It can be set off by physical trauma, a panic attack or even chronic anxiety.

Medical experts including Stone, the University of Edinburgh neurologist, said PPPD would not encompass some of the symptoms reported by the Havana patients, such as headaches, problems with recall or sleep disturbances. But he said the condition can commonly occur alongside migraine headaches or cognitive problems.

For months, some of the stricken Havana diplomats felt their condition was not taken as seriously as it should have been amid then-Secretary Tillerson’s chaotic reorganization of the department. The State Department’s administrative and medical bureaucracy was slow to find them further treatment after their Miami assessments, grant them needed leave and even cover their medical bills, officials said.

As they grew more concerned, some of the Havana patients took matters into their own hands. Early on, they enlisted representatives of the foreign-service officers union to advocate for them with the department. Some have also met with Cuban-American and other members of Congress, who have been vocal in their defense. Some patients also hired a lawyer to represent them.

Regardless of how the investigation unfolds, that constellation of forces is likely to give the stricken diplomats some influence over how any conclusions about what happened in Havana. Already, the State Department leadership has been dismissive of the idea that psychological factors could have been part of the medical equation.

“Any suggestion that this is some sort of mass hysteria is simply counterfactual, and the medical community — every doctor I’ve spoken to about this — is unanimous,” the deputy secretary of state, John Sullivan, assured some Cuba patients on a conference call last month that was first reported by NBC News. “It’s real. It happened. And that’s the set of facts.”





Jake Pearson contributed reporting.





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