US Faces Backlash from Victims of Mystery ‘Acoustic’ Weapons

The U.S. is facing a number of uncomfortable questions following a new report suggesting Russian military intelligence may have been behind a range of unexplained health problems inflicted on U.S. personnel.

The report comes after American intelligence had concluded the symptoms were unlikely to have been caused by foreign operatives.

On Monday, a joint investigation published by independent Russian outlet The Insider, CBS’ 60 Minutes and German news website Der Spiegel found that “unexplained anomalous health incidents, also known as Havana Syndrome, may have their origin in the use of directed energy weapons” wielded by Russia’s foreign military intelligence agency, the GRU.

Operatives for the agency were praised and rewarded for efforts related to “non-lethal acoustic weapons,” The Insider said in its write-up of the investigation.

That report came after a March 2023 U.S. intelligence investigation concluded that it was “very unlikely” that a foreign adversary was behind the unexplained health symptoms.

“There is no credible evidence that a foreign adversary has a weapon or collection device” causing the symptoms, the report added. U.S officials said the lack of explanation did not discredit the symptoms described by U.S. personnel and their family members.

The U.S. uses the term “anomalous health incidents” to refer to a variety of symptoms, dubbed “Havana Syndrome.”

First identified in U.S. personnel based in the Cuban capital, those affected by the condition reported a range of symptoms, including memory loss, problems with hearing, insomnia and what appeared to be evidence of brain injury.

More than 1,000 people in the U.S. and elsewhere are now thought to have been affected by Havana Syndrome.

A study published by the National Institutes of Health in March 2024 offered no further insight into the causes of the condition.

The joint investigation published Monday, which alleged that a GRU unit known as 29155 had experimented with “exactly the kind of weaponized technology experts suggest is a plausible cause for the mysterious medical condition,” has raised further questions over the U.S. intelligence community’s confidence in dismissing foreign intelligence influence.

“If my mother had seen what I saw, she would say, ‘It’s the Russians, stupid,’ ” Greg Edgreen, who headed up investigations into Havana Syndrome for the Pentagon, told CBS News. “We did not, as a country and a government, want to face some very hard truths,” he said.

“I don’t think the government, frankly, when I was there, took it seriously, enough,” former U.S. national security adviser John Bolton told CNN.

“The danger that the Russians or any adversary could actually perfect this kind of weapon, the damage it could do to our troops, to high-level government officials at a time of crisis, is very, very concerning.”

“There are significant national security implications of Havana Syndrome,” former Department of Homeland Security official, Samantha Vinograd, told CBS. “It is a public perception that the U.S. government, despite its best efforts, is simply unable to protect public servants deployed overseas, as well as some public servants here in the homeland.”

“If true, a suitably strong response is now required,” added Christopher Steele, a British former intelligence officer, in a post to social media.

Russia has pushed back on the report.

“This is not a new topic at all,” Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters following the release of the investigation. “For many years, the topic of the so-called Havana Syndrome has been exaggerated in the press, and from the very beginning it was linked to accusations against the Russian side.”

“All this is nothing more than baseless, unfounded accusations by the media,” Peskov added.

The White House said on Monday it had taken investigating the roots of Havana Syndrome “very seriously.” State Department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, said on Monday that the U.S. would “look at new information as it comes in.”

Different U.S. intelligence agencies “have varying confidence levels” in determining whether a foreign adversary was involved in the reported symptoms “because we still have gaps given the challenges collecting on foreign adversaries,” the Office for the Director of National Intelligence told CBS.

“We continue to prioritize our work on such incidents, allocating resources and expertise across the government, pursuing multiple lines of inquiry and seeking information to fill the gaps we have identified,” it added in a statement.

Unit 29155 operatives “have been geolocated to places around the world just before or at the time of reported anomalous health incidents,” The Insider wrote.

The unit has previously been linked to the 2018 poisonings in Salisbury, England.