The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2022

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022 39 down its staff at Embassy Havana, and some officials hinted darkly that we were under some sort of foreign attack, others were much more sanguine. Armchair psychiatrists and “experts” who had never met the victims or diagnosed their illness in a professional setting leaned to the theory that it was all a “psycho- genic illness”—in other words, people had symptoms, but the stresses and strains of work were the cause, and they were imag- ining themselves into sickness. There were even theories that a certain type of Cuban cricket was triggering this “mass hysteria” with its peculiarly loud call. These theories all came a cropper, however, when reports of what soon came to be called “Havana syndrome” gradually spread to other embassies around the world, always seeming to affect embassy officials and their families away from work, in public places, or in apartments and hotel rooms. By 2021, more than 200 persons had been affected. The victims of what the U.S. government is now calling “anomalous health incidents,” particularly those who were State Department employees, began to feel that their complaints were not being taken seriously, and that they were being met with indifference and even disbelief. Some had trouble getting medical treatment. Other agencies, such as the CIA, approached the problemmore seriously, but generally the U.S. government’s approach was disunited. Eventually Congress got involved, notably Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Congressman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), passing the HAVANA Act (Helping American Victims Afflicted by Neuro- logical Attacks), which mandated that persons who suffer from Havana syndrome should be treated as if they were wounded veterans, which in fact they are. In December 2020 the National Academies of Sciences, Engi- neering, and Medicine published an analysis of Havana syn- drome, “An Assessment of Illness in U.S. Government Employees andTheir Families at Overseas Embassies,” concluding that the most likely cause was microwaves. The symptoms fit, as did the reports of the victims. But this conclusion could not be reached with certainty due to a lack of physical evidence. Moreover, there was a more basic question that needed to be asked: If microwaves In 1960, U.S. Representative to the United Nations Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. points to the spot on the U.S. Great Seal (a 1945 gift from the Soviets that hung in Spaso House for decades) where it had been bugged, providing proof of Soviet espionage to the U.N. Security Council. The Theremin device inside was activated by external electromagnetic signals, making it difficult to detect. BETTMANN/GETTY